Idealistic court fop Gareth arrives at Alyn Castle in the dirt-poor Winterlands, demanding that Lord John Aversin come to the capital to kill a dragon terrorizing the kingdom. He is shocked at the castle's poverty and Lord John's mistress Jenny, a third-rate magician. When they arrive at the capital after a difficult and dangerous trip, John and Jenny find a few surprises and have to adjust to a snooty court ruled by the King's mistress, the lovely and powerful but vicious witch Zyerne.
I gave up on this book halfway through. The plot just dragged along too slowly to keep my interest, and none of the characters were intriguing enough to keep me reading.
Semi-biography of an Elizabethan physician who, to put it as kindly as possible, had a rich fantasy life. It starts with his parents and progresses through childhood!
Apparently intended to be sympathetic, this book still presents Forman as a liar and rogue. I expected a short story collection and instead got a tedious and uninteresting biography that I barely made it a quarter of the way through before giving up. If the Simon Forman series is this boring, I won't be reading much of it.
Shortly after Melanie checks out a posh daycare for dogs for friend Alice, owner Steve is found murdered. Alice volunteers Melanie's investigative skills to owner's sister Candy, and Melanie finds her usual assortment of suspects and lies.
Fast read without the usual drag-in-the-middle. I'm sorry that I've come to the end of this series!
After seeing Lynley and Helen off on their honeymoon, Havers heads for Essex where a race riot followed the murder of a Pakistani man. The detective in charge welcomes Havers onto the team, giving her an excuse to investigate and talk with her London neighbor, now advocating for the family of the victim's fiancee. The police investigate numerous trails, including a missing gold bracelet and the victim's rumored homosexual activity, under pressure from the Asian community to find the killer - and he had better be white.
George writes the most horrible families ever, complete with offensive and patronizing nicknames. In this book, she gives us a young Pakistani woman who is expected to consent to an arranged marriage and until then treated as a servant by her vindictive sister-in-law, a young English man raised by a super-manipulative grandmother, and a young English woman with the self-centered mother from hell. It was a pleasure to have a book focusing on Barbara Havers. Naturally, everyone the police question has secrets and Havers and cohorts waste endless time pursuing red herrings. This is a slow but rich read and I identified the killer halfway through but still had numerous shocks before the end. However, there were two fairly serious disappointments. One is the George did not resolve all the various plotlines, which I consider unfair to the reader. The other is that the title bore only a glancing relationship to the story, which I consider lazy. These two problems kept the book from the 5 ratings most of the Lynley/Havers books have earned.
After failing to get a slave sacrifice to the altar alive, Yaotl is assigned by Emperor Montezuma to find some missing sorcerers to prevent the downfall of the Aztec empire.
I didn't expect to like this book because I have no sympathy for a culture based on human sacrifice, much less unwilling human sacrifice. And I was right, which is not a criticism of the writing style. Levack actually seems to do a pretty good job of evoking the atmosphere and details of pre-Cortes Aztec life and culture. But I found it so horrible I quit before I got a quarter of the way through, so I can't really comment on plot or characterization except to say Yaotl is another of the flawed characters so popular today.
Lady Grace, Masou, and Ellie investigate how the murder of a Thames boatman is related to counterfeiting of the Queen's new coin. After Grace and Ellie get nowhere following a boastful apprentice, Ellie notices that a poor woman offers better treats to her guests than she should and steers the trio in a new direction.
Fast and enjoyable read, as always. The horribly inappropriate cover art annoys me more with each entry in this excellent series. It portrays a teenaged girl at Elizabeth I's court as a 1950's schoolgirl in cardigan and beret. The publisher should be forced to sit through the most boring history lessons that can be found.
A third-rate opera company preparing "Rigoletto" with a guest soprano has plenty of drama even before an abrasive cast member claims someone is trying to kill her.
Good, unfancy workmanlike mystery, and the first by this author that I actually finished. I like a story that demands some knowledge on the part of the reader, in this case, opera. I'm not a big opera buff but even I am familiar with the character of "Mimi" in "La Boheme." Kept me reading and even though I'm not sure the reader had all the clues to identify the killer, there is nothing missing I can point to.
The Duke is distracted from desperately trying to end a feud that has led to a kidnapping when his wife is found stabbed to death. Mysterious henchman Sigismondo and his mentally challenged servant Benno must wade through secrets to find a killer.
I couldn't get into this book. There was nothing terrible about it, but the different stories were too unrelated and I don't find enigmatic characters particularly intriguing. I quit about halfway through.
When an aged professor visiting a small Australian town is found with his throat cut, a detective with more interest in adultery than doing his job stumbles into investigating.
I had high hopes for this one because it was described as funny, and humorous mysteries are rare. But every character was incompetent or vicious or both, which I don't consider funny at all. Nor was the story involving or intriguing enough to compensate for the unlikable characters; in fact, it was just boring. I got a quarter of the way through before giving up.
Guardia Civil Sergeant Tejada is sent to investigate the murder of another guardia, who turns out to be a former compatriot. He executes a woman found bending over the body and pursues why the victim had a child's school notebook. Meanwhile, the woman's boyfriend is determined to execute her killer, and both men wind up tracing supplies being diverted from the guardia to the black market.
I thought I probably wouldn't like this book because Spain in the 1930's is not a time period I enjoy reading about, with hooligans on both sides and millions of innocent civilians suffering. The plot further aggravated me, as it snowballed from a single mistake and caught a little girl in its careless jaws. I quit a quarter of the way through, but it was the gloom and needless suffering that make it intolerable, not any flaw in the writing; in fact, one of the best character presentations I've ever read came early in the novel, when a young policeman can't think of anything to say that doesn't make him sound like a star-struck teenager. His thoughts did more to illuminate both his character and Tejada's than pages of more conventional description would have. If you can stand the depressing atmosphere, I suspect you would find this an engrossing book.
Kate is off at a house party when Sir Charles is called to a murder of a policeman near Marsden Manor. Kate returns with a shy young Beatrix Potter in tow, and the two investigate the murder and a subsequent claim that the policeman had been a poacher and dishonest. Then a missing child spurs everyone's determination to find the killer.
I dislike incorporating real people into fictional stories, but this one wasn't too bad. If the quotes at the beginning of each chapter are indeed from Beatrix Potter's tales, the Alberts did an amazing job of devising a fictional situation to presumably be the basis for some of Potter's stories. Sir Charles' excessive "niceness" - not being able to declare his feelings for Kate since his friends are interested in her - struck me as stupid rather than honorable; he was basically refusing to give her information so she could make an informed choice. Very patronizing! I threw the first in this series across the room because it depended totally on spiritualism, but there was no problem with this story, and it held my interest to the end without even the dragging-in-the-middle so common in book-length fiction.
Young housemaid Hilda and her beau Patrick stumble over a murdered woman. Butler Mr. Williams' instructions to Hilda to stop thinking about the murder determines her to find the killer. As she watches the victim's social-elite family, she fights the prevalent anti-immigrant bias.
Dickens combined social crusading with enthralling stories, but few of his literary successors manage the blend. Certainly Dams doesn't. There is no question that immigrants were unfairly treated during much of U.S. history, but Hilda's ranting is not enjoyable to watch, and a fiction writer's first duty is to entertain. I wasn't even halfway through when the ranting became too much to tolerate, and the story hadn't caught my interest enough to skip to the end - I just quit reading.
Newly widowed Renisenb thinks her family unchanged when she returns to her father's house: oldest brother Yahmose is still bullied by wife Satipy, middle brother Sobek is still reckless and his wife Kait still obsessed with her children, and youngest brother Ipy can still do no wrong in their father Imhotep's eyes. But Imhotep's new concubine shatters the family dynamic for her own ends and winds up dead, and Renisenb feels obligated to identify her killer.
This is reputedly the only historical mystery Christie ever wrote, and she should have stuck to her usual style. There are long sections where nothing happens to either advance the plot or delineate the shallow characters, and I finally gave up halfway through. It might have made a good short story but was a tedious book. I can't find anything to praise in it.
Finding himself unsuited to a monastery, young Roger becomes a travelling peddler or "chapman." But two seemingly unrelated reports of wealthy travellers disappearing near the same inn pique his curiosity and he investigates.
While there was nothing glaringly awful about this book (other than some heavy-handed "I didn't know I'd be putting my life in danger" foreshadowing and occasional irrelevant comments from the now-elderly narrator), neither was there anything glaringly right. None of the characters felt real and the story never grabbed my attention. I got halfway through, realized I didn't care what happened next, and skipped to the end (and found I'd been right about whodunit).
Abbess Heloise asks young novice Catherine LeVendeur to pose as a misfit and leave the convent, in order to inspect a psalter sent as a gift which reportedly now contains heretical elements. She finds the psalter and copies the alterations, but also finds a murdered friend and is determined to bring the killer to justice. An unlikely workman who befriends her may be a help or a distraction. Her investigations reveal a complicated web of larceny and evil, in which her beloved father and uncle may be involved.
Superb presentation of believable medieval people. Catherine is not just a 21st-century girl placed in the 12th century, as happens too commonly in historical novels. Demons and saints are as real to her and her family as knights and horses. The story I'm not so sure about. It dragged a bit in the middle but not so badly that I started skipping sections. There was nothing obviously wrong, and I can't point to anything and say "the reader wasn't given this information," but it just wasn't a satisfying resolution.
Highlights of the yearly Ketterick arts festival include an opera starring a famous Russian coloratura and directed by a legend, and a production of "The Chaste Apprentice" at the ancient Saracen inn. But new landlord Des Capper's know-it-all attitude drives the performers crazy. When Capper is found dead, Inspector Dundy has a plethora of suspects who detested him.
Fast read and held my attention. The major drawback is that there wasn't a true main character, so the constant focus switches were disorienting. I had to look at the series title to realize who was supposed to be the main character, and found it was a very minor character who didn't even appear until halfway through and then didn't say ten lines during the whole book.
Troubled youth John Tyree joins the Army and straightens out. Home on leave, he meets lovely Savannah and falls in love. He re-enlists after September 11 and Savannah, spending long months alone, falls in love with another man. He returns and finds her married but with a secret.
The whole book is a flashback, which I really dislike. The "introduction" doesn't add anything to the story. I skipped most of the first 20 or so pages about John's childhood and dissociation from his father. Even after he meets Savannah, the story moved at such a glacial pace I skipped lots of chunks without missing any important story elements - not a good sign. Only the last quarter of the book held my attention. The element that rang truest was John's attitude towards his combat experience. This would have been a good novella but is a tedious novel.
Blossoming writer Kate Ardleigh, struggling to survive in 1894 New York, heads for England to accept a job as secretary-companion to an aunt she did not know she had. There she meets the neighbor Marsdens and their guest, Sir Charles Sheridan, and becomes involved in both her aunt's spiritualism and a murder investigation.
I lost interest in this book when it seemed all the characters were spiritualists. It was written in very Victorian prose, certainly authentic to the period but rather tedious to wade through. I'll try the next book in the series to see if Paige can write about anything other than spiritualism.
Ross Harte wants to write detective stories but decides all the good plots have been used. Then he finds himself in the middle of a classic locked-room murder, in which all the suspects are magicians of various kinds. As frustrated Inspector Havigan attempts to identify the killer, Harte suggests bringing in famous magician Merlini, reasoning that it will take a magician to catch a magician.
I was curious about this magic-based mystery because it made a “best locked room mystery” list put together by the editor from recommendations of several mystery authors, including Jon L. Breen, Frederick Dannay (better known as Ellery Queen). I have never read such a talky mystery. But even as Harte, Merlini, Havigan, and the other characters find hidden items by talking, shatter alibis by talking, and verbally rationalize how it must have been done, Rawson STILL managed to pull a "Oh, I've solved it" but leaving the reader out in the cold. He does give the reader the needed information, along with ten million red herrings. The admittedly clever solution wasn't enough to overcome the talkiness and hiding the solution from the reader, though, and I really hate leave-you-dangling endings.
Aramis, Porthos, Athos, and their new friend D'Artagnan stumble across a musketeer corpse that strangely resembles royalty, and swear to find the murderer.
I gave up on this book fairly quickly. First, it started with an "introduction" claiming that the author just found this old manuscript, which always annoys me. Then it featured characters that I already know quite well, acting in a manner inconsistent with their established personalities. I typically have this problem more with real people used as characters, but apparently misuse of fictional characters can also bother me. Finally, the copyediting of the book was so atrocious it distracted me from the illogical plot, such as "comradery" instead of the correct "camaraderie." I might have been able to struggle through if not for the other problems, but instead the word misuse was the last straw.
Retired dentist Paul Osborne is shocked when his fly fishing guide turns out to be Loon Lake's first woman police chief, Lew Ferris. But he is even more shocked when he stumbles over a body while night fishing. Drafted by Chief Ferris as a forensic dentist, he becomes more interested in the lady as she pursues a killer.
There was nothing terribly wrong with this book. Osborne and Lew are both nice enough if rather one-dimensional. There were only a few flashbacks and they were kept brief. There was a lot of fishing-related activity, which didn't particularly interest me and I skimmed or skipped. The killer was pretty obvious, but I've forgiven that flaw in other books if the story was intriguing enough. This one, for some reason, never caught my interest and the characters never seemed real. I got halfway through and realized I didn't care if I picked it up again.
Kaze stumbles across a murdered merchant and pauses in his search for his late mistress' daughter to right a village troubled by bandits, a greedy lord, and a cruel magistrate.
Odd and inconsistent but involving story. Why was Kaze so sensitive to the needs of peasants? That really would not have been a samurai characteristic, although it makes a more compelling story to 21st century readers. Kaze solves mysteries more by exercise of "little grey cells" than fighting, which keeps this convoluted story interesting.
A dead police officer falls out of a plane in front of Roe and Angel. Naturally half the police force, as well as Roe's erstwhile beau Arthur and the two mysterious men from Atlanta, think she had something to do with her old adversary's death. As Angel battles her own problems, Roe tries to figure out who wants Angel so badly.
The solution was kind of strange, and I'm not sure all the evidence was given to the reader but I can't point to anything that wasn't. However, the first book in this series had an equally strange rationale, so at least the author is consistent. As with the others, this one kept me reading to the end. And the title is perfectly relevant!
British art historian Charles Mowbray doesn't want to lose his young Italian wife Rafaella to a rich banker, while two female lovers waffle about leaving their husbands.
Not only is there enough adultery here to populate Peyton Place, it's not even interesting. When I got a quarter of the way through and nothing had actually happened, I gave up.
In response to a blurred message from Rami, Pharaoh Ramses sends Semerket to Babylon to find his ex-wife Naia and bring back a Babylonian idol to heal Pharaoh. Searching for the Elamite princess missing since the slaughter in which Naia supposedly died, Semerket is summoned to the Elamite king and commanded to find the princess if he wants to take the Marduk idol back to Egypt. Semerket may not survive the waves of treachery and political machinations he must wade through to find answers.
The plot moves right along as Semerket finds allies and enemies on the trail to Babylon, and kept me reading to the end. However, following this story really depends on having read Geagley's first book more than is usual in a series. I also dislike wait-for-the-next-book endings, especially featuring unbelievable events, but up to the "epilogue" this was a winner.
Lord Nicholas, home on a brief respite from Henry VIII's court, finds his steward Matthew murdered and his neighbors possibly conspiring against the King. He also finds himself drawn to lovely Jane Warrener, a young woman who is determined to help him bring Matthew's killer to justice. Henry's spies arrest the conspirators but "Ultor" the avenger is still at large, threatening Henry's planned visit to Peverell's home, and Nicholas is told to eliminate the traitor in the ten days before the King's visit. But clever Ultor agitates the townspeople against an old woman, distracting Nicholas and Jane.
Involving story with minor fact errors, such as Henry VIII signing a handwritten note "Henry T." He was always jealous of royal privileges and would have signed Henry R. The story moves right along, weaving multiple storylines that may or may not be related, and avoiding middle-of-the-book doldrums. Jane is unacceptably forward for a Tudor maiden, but her neighbors and even her indulgent father are just as shocked at her behavior as the reader. Nicholas is a bit of a plodder, but honest, tries his best, and doesn't resent those more gifted intellectually than he is (including Jane). There is also a great example of subtle foreshadowing, when the jackdaws in the church tower are unexpectedly noisy as Benedict and Jane rehearse. The ending was somewhat weak and had a feel of "I've met the page count so let's wind it up" which is why this gets a 4 rating instead of a 5, but overall a very good read.
Unexpectedly orphaned, young Kindan moves in with the stern new Harper. But his dreams of becoming a Harper himself must be abandoned when he has a chance to raise a watch-wher, badly needed to keep the mine safe.
Fast read, shallow story with stock characters, but charming. As the dragonriders are rather minor characters, and the story takes place at some unspecified time near the end of an Interval but all the weyrs are occupied, this really doesn’t warrant being considered part of the Dragonriders of Pern series.
Kate joins the crew of a crabbing boat to investigate the disappearance of two boat hands. She sees the three senior crew make a mysterious visit to a deserted island in the middle of the night, and learns what happened from a handicapped native Alaskan. But can she prove it without risking her own life?
I didn’t like this as much as the previous books in the series; it was more an undercover police procedural than the cultural-setting mysteries I enjoyed. The native element feels like it was just thrown in rather than integral to the plot. Well-enough written, though, and the title was relevant to the story.
Sherlock Holmes thinks Edward Hyde is blackmailing kind Dr. Jekyll and is frustrated when Jekyll refuses his help. After Hyde commits a brutal murder, the Prime Minister commissions Holmes to bring Hyde to justice, and Holmes is sure Jekyll is the key.
Any modern writer trying to replicate an old master’s style automatically arouses my suspicion. And when Estleman dragged in not only Holmes and Watson but Jekyll/Hyde as well, I feared the worst. Hyde’s character is somewhat changed, from low cunning to brilliant deductive abilities rivalling Holmes’ own. Jekyll only becomes somewhat more defensive – still different from the original but not as drastically as Hyde. Holmes’ failure to deduce the astounding truth was also annoying, given his penchant for deduction in his other cases; it felt more like Estleman was dragging the story out. I’m sure it didn’t help that while I’ve always loved the Sherlock Holmes stories, I disliked the classic Jekyll & Hyde tale. I did finish this book, but can’t really recommend it for any true Sherlock Holmes devotees.
Cancer survivor Leigh Girard chucks her husband and Chicago lifestyle to work on a little country newspaper. She is assigned to write two feature-type obituaries and interviews people who knew the deceased.
If this doesn’t sound like much of a story, it wasn’t. It seemed to be at least half flashbacks to Leigh’s diagnosis and treatment, identifying her as a “wounded heroine” type but simply interrupting what story there was. Additional flashbacks to something that happened 25 years earlier disjointed the book further. Lukasik’s portrayal of a cancer survivor may have been authentic but it wasn’t interesting. I got a quarter of the way through the book and still hadn’t found either a plot or a likeable character, so I gave up.
Newly-engaged Daisy visits her cousins to write an article about a rowing regatta. But mere hours after Alec shows up, one of the rowers dies under suspicious circumstances, and the local police are delighted to have Alec investigate.
Alec continues to be frustrated and worried by Daisy’s interference with police procedures, but his innate sense of fairness makes him reluctantly admit that her nosiness does often help. I guessed the murderer almost immediately, but that’s usually not difficult in this series. The reader’s enjoyment comes from seeing Alec and Daisy establish his guilt from the evidence, and (as here) there is usually a twist at the end.
A very early collection of Darkover stories by other authors.
Pretty decent assortment of stories, although I’d read a few in other Darkover collections. To show how long ago it was issued, the introduction references Mercedes Lackey’s “new” series featuring “sentient horses.” Enjoyable for Darkover fans, but not the book to introduce to someone unfamiliar with the Darkover series.
The producer of an English opera festival is frustrated by his temperamental and egotistic singers.
Doesn’t sound like much of a plot, does it? After reading a quarter of the book, that’s all I could figure out. With thoroughly unlikeable characters and nothing particularly happening story-wise, I gave up.
Sigrid investigates the murder of a young mother in between various personal activities.
Slow start, with Naumann dragging Sigrid out for breakfast and a flashback of several pages explaining how they met, and then Roman appearing for dinner leading to a flashback explaining how THEY met. Between flashbacks interrupting the story and uninteresting characters in the story, I realized a quarter of the way through that I didn’t care what happened to the characters, and gave up.
Shardlake tries to defend a girl accused of murdering her young cousin but is handicapped by her determined silence. Cromwell, now Earl of Essex, bribes Shardlake to take on a new assignment: eliciting the long-lost secret of Greek Fire from two greedy thieves. When the men are found murdered, Shardlake must find the missing formula or risk England’s destruction. Shardlake and Cromwell’s agent Barak find the killers have continually been ahead of them, and they don’t know for which power player the killers are working. Meanwhile, Shardlake continues to try to identify the real killer of the young boy to set the girl free and finds an explanation of complete horror.
Another complex and convoluted historical thriller, showing the danger and fear of striving for power under capricious King Henry VIII. Samsom even fooled me about who the spy was. Slow but involving read, and historically accurate as far as I can tell.
Thomas investigates the murder of a doctor and a pimp found mutilated in a London slum. But when the same mutilation is later found on a nobleman, important Londoners demand the murderer be caught. As Thomas desperately seeks a connection between the victims, Charlotte and Emily try to identify the noblewomen the first victim, a procurer, bragged of offering to his clientele.
This series may be palling on me, as the characters have become less likable and more sterotypical. Thomas has become the typical “you do what I say” husband, Charlotte the selfish wife. The story itself moved right along but didn’t hold my attention as earlier books in the series did.
Magazine columnist Lewis Cole investigates the murder of a teenaged waitress in a New Hampshire beach resort town.
Yet another hero with a dark, mysterious past, and another story that had to fight against the current of numerous flashbacks, some revealing the hero’s past and some providing information about other characters. I sure wish authors would realize how flashbacks bring the story to a screeching halt. The hero’s jumpiness didn’t help the story progress, although it was understandable. But I don’t want to feel sorry for a character, I want to be free to follow the story.
Attorney Brady Coyne hops to unusual requests from his wealthy clientele. But one client’s desire to understand the supposed suicide of her only remaining son leads Coyne to neo-Nazis, long-time fugitives, and his own brush with death.
I couldn’t get into this at all. Coyne is a greedy wuss and completely unsympathetic. The great secret was obvious from practically the second page. Not worth my time.
TV researcher Alex contends with a spoiled co-worker, a prostitution ring that may be killing its workers, and her own desire to find her birth parents.
I gave up on this halfway through. Too much of an organized-crime thriller for me.
Collection of Bradley’s own Darkover-based short stories.
What is there new to say about the Darkover series? As usual, I liked some of the stories better than others. Most of the stories I’d already read in other anthologies, so this wasn’t a great new addition to the Darkover mythos. But I continue to (mostly) enjoy them.
Philip’s new girlfriend is kidnapped, and he calls Daisy in to help him rescue her. Daisy brings in Lucy and some other friends in the guise of a house party to search for the kidnapped heiress. Even Alec winds up drafted, at risk to his job.
Workmanlike where-is-she, with the characters only a little behind the reader in identifying the Bad Guy responsible, and the characters remaining consistent to their natures.
A spaceship carrying colonists to a new world crash-lands on a planet with a red-spectrum sun and very cold weather. Although the spaceship captain and crew intend to repair the vehicle, the colonists think repair is a pipe dream and want to focus on building their new lives. And the planet itself has surprises for the new arrivals.
Obviously written to answer readers’ questions about how humans came to Darkover, Bradley works her magic again with believable characters in believable situations, foreshadowing many of the developments in stories from later in Darkover’s history.
Newly promoted Sergeant Hamish is harried by his lovelorn constable and suspicious of a charming would-be “traveller” who arrives in Lochdubh in a camper. Traveller Sean spreads doubt and dissension among the townspeople, and when he is killed, Blair is sure the rejected girlfriend is responsible. As Hamish finds local victims of Sean’s blackmail, he still hopes an outsider is the murderer, but he can only prove it by breaking a solid alibi.
Again, Beaton spends half the book establishing the victim’s evil deeds, which is rather boring. Okay, he’s a bad guy, we get it, let’s move on. Then the denouement was weak, with people shielding the killer who had no reason to. I’m not sure how many more I’ll be reading in this series if it doesn't improve.
A matchmaking weekend is interrupted by the arrival of the matchmaker’s partner, whose greed for food and appalling manners horrify visitors and residents alike. But she still sees herself as irresistible and is sure her partner is just jealous.
Beaton’s titles make it plain who the victim but will be, but she is taking longer and longer to reach the murder. Sure, it’s good to present the victim as someone who lots of people dislike intensely. But three chapters’ worth of piling offense on offense is not entertaining, it’s just browbeating the reader, and if it continues I may give up on the series. Once the murder finally occurred, Hamish investigated in his usual unusual way, and the clues were subtle but adequate.
250 years after their ancestors colonized Pern, the residents prepare for another Pass. The teaching college decides to revamp their curriculum, focusing on using songs to teach the people what is important to know on Pern. Conscientious weyrleaders and Lords Holder confront various problems, including a tyrannical Lord Holder who indulges in torture and deprives his subjects of their basic Charter rights.
McCaffrey is a wonderful storyteller, and peoples this book with her usual array of unforgettable characters, but the Chalkin storyline drags. Yeah, he does horrible things. We get it, we don’t need to be browbeaten while the Lords Holder waffle over removing him. It’s also difficult to keep a one-note theme (Thread is coming) interesting. It’s not the strongest of McCaffrey’s Pern series, but still worth reading.
During the reign of Henry VIII, lawyer Matthew Shardlake serves Lord Cromwell, but is disappointed that reform has become a reign of terror. When a bullying commisioner is found decapitated in a remote monastery, Shardlake and his servant Mark are sent to investigate. But the death of a young novice steers Shardlake into uncovering sexual misconduct and madness on his way to solving the murder.
In our modern romanticism of Henry’s reign, we forget what a scary time it was. The king had absolute power and erratic interests; serving him could bring great wealth, or a traitor’s death if one did not move with the times quickly enough. Sansom captures the fear and gloom of that era well: the spies, the offers of information, and other attempts to curry favor. A slow read with a complicated story line, and one fairly major error: the monastery infirmarian performs autopsies to discover the cause of death. At the time, cutting into people was absolutely prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church, and a monk, even one of Moorish background after Henry had placed himself at the head of the English church, would not willingly have violated that prohibition. But this is a solid historical mystery (hystery?) for those of us who enjoy them.
When much-disliked Arnold Vereker is murdered, the suspects include his siblings, an embezzling accountant, and a mysterious visitor. Inspector Hannasyde has to wade through lies and speculation to find the killer.
The book is full of thoroughly unlikeable characters. The siblings are completely self-centered, the fiances are golddiggers, the servants are obliviously devoted. It says something about the book that the only semi-likeable character is the lawyer. I realized halfway through that the slow-moving story hadn’t caught my attention and skipped to the end.
Moderately interesting collection of stories of how different cultures handle death, with recipes. A bit overwhelming to try to read through at a sitting, however.
Anna runs a branch of NYC’s trash collection service When the police decide a murdered homeless man was responsible for strangling a rich resident, Anna is determined to find the real killer.
Uninvolving and slow-moving story, unsympathetic characters, and no reason to keep reading so I didn’t.
Charlotte dreads turning 60 and worries about her suddenly unreliable memory, but a dead body obsesses her when it turns up in a remodeled house Maid for a Day is cleaning.
One of the better books in this series. It’s incredibly convenient that she happens to know all the suspects, of course, but she doesn’t just trip over the suitably-foreshadowed clues, she finds them. There were very few red herrings to distract the reader from the actual murderer, but otherwise a good solid mystery.
After a fifteen-year journey in coldsleep, the colonists from Earth are delighted to arrive at the planet they called Pern. Little Sorka and Sean befriend newborn dragonets. Pilot Telgar investigates what Avril Bitra and her cohorts are planning. But the greatest danger to the new colony won’t appear for years.
Obviously written in response to fans asking how humans had come to Pern, McCaffrey works in several stories about the settlers. Occasionally a bit slow-moving but overall up to her usual standard.
After planning to run the Inn at Willow Lake and buy it when it was back on its feet, Nina Romano is appalled to learn Greg Bellamy has purchased it. She decides to run it for him and hope he’ll lose interest. Meanwhile, Olivia prepares for her wedding to Connor, and Daisy waits for the birth of her baby.
Sadly, all the flaws with earlier books continue in this one. Yet another pregnant-teen-raising-her-baby set up as an ideal, and long wandering flashbacks that fortunately are easy to skip without losing the plot. But either the stories are getting less interesting or my tolerance for those flashbacks and paeans to single motherhood has decreased, because I found halfway through that I just didn’t care how Greg and Nina worked things out at the inn or how wonderful Daisy would feel about raising her new baby, and gave up.
Rich, elderly Andrew Trent lives to play practical “jokes” that often terrify or horrify his victims. But when he calls his family to visit his north Scotland mansion, claiming he is dying, they come hoping to benefit in his will. He exults in one cruel prank after another, regardless of the victims’ feelings. When his dead body is found as the guests are reaching their breaking points, the relatives’ only concern is finding the murderer and getting away to enjoy their inheritance.
The unusually large number of unlikeable characters in this book bothered me, but there were a lot of nice red herrings and the reader learns information and speculation as Hamish does. And there was one really lovely setup, so adeptly done that I didn’t see it coming. So overall well worth reading.
Two different spacefaring races colonize the same planet at the same time, and each decides this is a good opportunity to check out the power of the other race at minimal risk to themselves.
The Hrubas aren’t McCaffrey’s best-written alien race; they are too human. And some of the events were very unbelievable, particularly using a rebellious 6-year-old as translator. But overall it was an enjoyable, interesting story.
An elderly woman faces loss of control as her self-righteous caretaker daughter seeks relief.
Boring non-story with skipping around in time in the old woman’s memories. And none of the characters were likeable.
A tour operator hires some actors to give a visiting fireman’s convention an exciting stagecoach ride to London.
Boring and full of unlikeable characters. By the time the murder was finally committed, I didn’t care at all who had done it.
15-year-old Prime Laria goes to live on the Mrdini homeworld, while 16-year-old Prime Thian is stationed on a space cruiser searching for the Hive homeworld. 14-year-old Prime Rojer is assigned to a space vessel that has found a Hive colony, but young empath Zara is burdened by an overwhelming concern for the captured Hive queen.
The storyline is rather disjointed as McCaffrey follows each child in turn, and the reaction to “Zara’s Antic” particularly is not believable, but gifted storyteller McCaffrey keeps the reader interested. The ending is a bitter disappointment, not really resolving anything and almost a “till next episode” look-what’s-coming effect not worthy of McCaffrey.
A charwoman finds a murdered vacationer at a rented cottage. Then the story flashes back to a teacher, her young pupil, and her developing romance with a fellow teacher, none of which seems to have any bearing on the opening scene.
I gave up about a quarter way through the book. The sad love triangle wasn’t interesting and the characters weren’t likeable. And the story was still far away from the murder. I have yet to read anything by this author with an involving story or likeable characters, and I may give up on him soon.
Phryne wants revenge on the anarchists who killed a beautiful young man. Meanwhile, she is hired to investigate the whereabouts of a young runaway.
I’m giving up on this series. First, I object ethically to equating sexual promiscuity with mental independence, which frankly is what Greenwood is promoting. Second, Phryne’s world is just too unrealistic: fanatically loyal servants, helpful police, adopted daughters who just happen to attend school with the runaway, even the cabbies put Phryne’s interests above their own. Finally, the stories themselves aren’t very interesting. I can’t legitimately object to red herrings in a murder mystery, but Greenwood’s tales run too far afield to track. And a quarter of the way through the book, I didn’t care who had killed the beautiful young man OR where the missing girl was.
New PI Denton is hired by an ex-girlfriend to find out who her surgeon husband owes money to. When Denton finds the husband, he has just been killed.
The reader can see Womack deciding how to make Denton something other than the typical PI. He’s a fired newspaper reporter, untrained as a PI, doesn’t smoke or drink bourbon. And he’s rather inept as an investigator. I couldn’t get into the story, none of the characters were particularly likeable.
Claire’s daughter volunteers her to substitute for a journalism teacher in order to investigate an alleged theft of the yearbook funds. But two murders later, Claire just wants to clear the teacher so she won’t have to chaperone the Homecoming dance.
Claire’s wimpiness is getting old. She apparently isn’t capable of saying no to any unreasonable or bizarre request, and wimpy main characters spoil a story for me. In fact, the combination of Claire’s wimpiness and Caron’s teen dramatics have removed my original interest in the series. Peter does his usual stern-policeman-warning-her-off routine, which she ignores as usual. I skipped to the end when Caron’s self-importance got to be too much, and found Hess had used a very clever way to give the reader one critical piece of information. But it’s not worth putting up with the teen drama queen.
Priscilla volunteers Hamish to help a friend of hers, a spacey woman running a health spa in the Hebrides who thinks someone is trying to kill her. When the actual victim turns out to be an unlikeable guest, everyone except Hamish is content to write it off as an accident. But with the help of an attractive cookbook author, Hamish discovers a secret worth killing for.
Good workmanlike mystery with a surprising secret.
Recovering after removal of a cancer, Alison lets herself be put upon by her rich cousin Maggie. Maggie’s death frees Alison to spend Maggie’s money and sets four would-be suitors on her. Does it also place Alison in danger?
I identified the killer before the murder even happened, but the main problem was that most of the characters are so unlikeable. Maggie is a rich bitch, Alison is a whiny wimp, and the potential husbands Maggie invites are pathetic losers. Not the best entry in this series.
New resident Trixie Thomas galvanizes the community women into protecting bats and standing against smoking, while claiming poverty and asking for bits and pieces. But when she is found dead, many of the Lochdubh men become suspects.
Good workmanlike mystery, with the reader learning relevant items as Hamish does. Particularly enjoyable was Blair’s frustration as his social-climbing superior Daviot cultivates Hamish.
in Shadows over Lyra (omnibus)
Bondwoman Ranira and her young friend Shandy escape the city of Drinn with the help of three foreigners. But will their magic be strong enough to overcome the High Priest’s attempts to recapture them?
I’m not used to series stories that are as unrelated as this was to Shadow Magic, and it just wasn’t as interesting – I skipped a lot of the detailed description of the final battle. It also makes me wonder whether the rest of the series will live up to Shadow Magic’s vibrancy.
Cute (almost terminally so) YA novel of a bored princess who volunteers to become a dragon’s captive and saves the dragons from a wizards' plot.
Fast read, uncomplicated story, mostly nice characters although not really alien.
Hamish is reluctantly sent to another district to cover that constable’s vacation. When a much-disliked man disappears, Hamish has more suspects than he can shake a stick at. Meanwhile, the owner of a lobster business is desperate to keep his buyers from knowing what the lobsters were eating.
Beaton, who knows better, pulled a discovery-at-the-last-minute-of-the-missing-information to identify the murderer. Shame!
I give Katz credit for creating an unusual second-career P.I. who survived a Wall Street financial scandal. And it’s always nice to see a father involved with his children. But neither makes for a particularly interesting mystery; how his daughter arranged her stuffed animals is not relevant to how he is ineptly failing to garner information on the murders. I made it halfway through before giving up and skipping to the end (which was also wordy and minimally related to the mystery).
I really wanted to like this book. It’s set in a nearby city that I’m familiar with, and I try to cheer local authors. And Sefton plays by the rules: the reader is given info at the same time as the heroine, and has the necessary info to identify the killer by the end of the book. But it just didn’t hold my interest. None of the characters seemed real and the storyline itself was rather ho-hum. I got about halfway through before I gave up and skipped to the end.
A brilliant but generally unliked conductor is killed, and Commissario Guido Brunetti is determined to find which of his associates hated him enough to kill. Was it someone angry at his Nazi past, or a victim of his homophobia, or someone he had blackmailed? The characters are very European and just didn’t interest me enough to keep reading. Someone more interested in Euro culture would probably enjoy it.
Vacationing with Warren, Lena stumbles on the body of a little girl, and becomes obsessed with finding her killer. As she searches, one crime after another follows her, as she learns about a horrifying cultural tradition. Webb has an amazing gift for couching a social problem in an involving story, and this is no exception. I’m still not convinced the reader is given all the information necessary to identify the murderer, but with such an engrossing story, I don’t care.
Lady Nicolaa again asks Templar Bascot de Marins to investigate when an unpopular but well-connected squire is killed. Was it revenge for forcing his attentions on an unwilling woman? Or did he know too much about a plot against King John? Once again, the reader is not given the information to identify the killer; Ash blatantly has Gianni pick up information and report it to de Marins without sharing it with the reader. I have enjoyed these stories but cannot recommend them as playing fair with the reader.
From the description, I expected a narrative full of juicy tidbits I didn’t already know. But it was just another history book, nothing new to any history buff. I gave up pretty early in the book.
Priscilla brings her playwright-fiance Henry home for a visit, shocking a lovelorn Hamish. When one of the guests, a rude type who has offended everyone there, is shot during a grouse hunt, Hamish is the only one to recognize murder. As he pursues a killer, Priscilla’s fondness for him strains her relationship with Henry.
I waffled all through reading it as to whether the reader was given the information to identify the killer (one of the mystery writer’s basic tenets). After careful consideration, I have to say “yes.” The information is scattered and buried amidst lots of red herrings, but that’s fair. Priscilla, however, remains such a wimp I’d like to tell her to get a spine.
One of the participants ruins a week-long fishing school by bringing up unpleasant events from the others’ pasts. When she is found dead, village constable Hamish MacBeth wants to identify the killer.
I read this all the way through, and I’m not sure why. The constable is relaxed to the point of laziness. The school participants range from self-obsessed to delusional, and have their own agendas and secrets. Even the constable’s love interest sums up her romantic notions with the comment that one has to marry somebody. I need to have some likeable characters to enjoy a book, and there just weren’t any.
Argh, another stupid romance. Nurses don’t have time to swoon over handsome doctors, but you’d never believe it from reading stupid books like this.
This intended start of a new series features Griffen and his sister Valerie, who discover they are shape-changing dragons instead of the normal humans they have always thought themselves. As they develop their powers, they deal with various threats (mostly to Griffen). Okay, but not always interesting and gloomier than the Myth or Phule series (not as bad as Thieves’ World, though).
In 1923 Britain, flapper Daisy Dalrymple uses her position in society to wangle a magazine assignment profiling the nobility of Wentwater Court. But an inconvenient corpse turns her snob assignment into detective work. Cute and an easy read.
Our third trip under Dexter's knife takes a turn for the worse. While the first two books gave us a somewhat believable, albeit bizarre, human character and the strange situations that can arise from being a good-hearted slasher with a moral code, D3 turns to the supernatural for an explanation about why Dexter and his colleagues in the serial killer biz do what they do. But I enjoyed the writing style and humorous descriptions of violent Miami life enough that I just ignored the stupid plot and went along for the scenery. You'll see the ending coming from a mile away.
More shenanigans and bloodshed from everybody's favorite serial killer. If you liked the first Dexter book, you'll probably like the second one too. Be warned, there are numerous scenes with detailed descriptions of some pretty horrific body mutilations on live victims. I found myself laughing hysterically at the usual macabre humor only to be confronted mid-giggle with those mutilations - too much detail, Lindsay.
The author and the Showtime screenwriters parted ways for the second book / second season, so the TV series only briefly coincides with the book in the subplot involving who, if anyone, discovers Dex's secret life.
If you don't like extremely morbid humor or detailed descriptions of autopsies and violent crime, stay far away from these books which begat the Showtime TV series "Dexter".
Jeff Lindsay gives us Dexter, a serial killer who operates on a moral code whereby he only vivisects other killers. He does so with self-deprecating humor, introspection about his complete inability to feel emotion, and wry observations about the daily horrors of traffic and crime that Miamians take for granted.
By day, he's a "blood spatter analyst", which I am amazed to discover is a real job that entails figuring out exactly how and where a violent crime was committed based on the way the blood spread from the injury. By night he stalks suspected bad guys until he has enough evidence to convict and pass sentence on the courtroom of his improvised operating table. At his pay grade I wonder how he can afford all the rubber gloves, rubber sheets, and surgical equipment. I also wonder when he finds time to sleep between his day cop and night avenger roles, but who am I to quibble?
The first book establishes a large cast of eccentric characters, explains how Dexter came by his penchant for butchery, and puts our "hero" in a position of both wanting to stop the bad guy and admiring the bad guy's talent for artistically arranging body parts. The TV series first season follows the book fairly closely, so if you have seen the show you will know how it turns out.
Lena is providing security for a documentary being shot about an escape from a WWII POW camp near Scottsdale when a thoroughly unpleasant character meets an overdue end. As her investigation turns up one red herring after another, the attraction between Lena and the handsome documentary director provides a somewhat-welcome distraction. Webb is very good at red herrings, but interrupting the storyline for excerpts from the journal of one of the escaped POWs is awkward and confusing.
When a publisher of racist hate books is murdered and Lena's partner's cousin is arrested, she finds a lot of potential suspects who hated the victim and had access to the poison but narrowing it down to the murderer may be dangerous.
I'm not sure if I liked this one or not. I personally dislike stories in which a mother or a child is threatened, but Viets plays fair and the reader has all the info to solve the murders. I did read it all the way through, so I'll probably try the second in the series.
I didn't particularly like this murder mystery with a sudoku theme, and I'm not sure why. The characters were likable enough and the story moved right along. The plot had overtones of The Man Who Knew Too Much and Foul Play, both of which I enjoyed. I'm not a sudoku fan, but the author clearly provided the sudoku-based information to decode the mystery. She obviously knew that she couldn't count on the majority of the country understanding sudoku. Maybe it was the overabundance of hunky men wanting to start something with the heroine. Maybe it was the classic L.A.-shallow setting. Maybe it was the cookie-cutter villain. Maybe it was the reliance on the bad guys' stupidity to advance the plot -- foreshadowed or not, it struck me as weak storytelling. Anyway, it's not a terrible book but never left me wanting more.
Lofts seems to write two types of novel: one involving stories with fascinating characters, often drawn from history, and another in which occasional terrible things happen to unlikeable characters in their otherwise boring lives but who cares? Sadly, this novel falls into the second category. A beautiful 19th century girl falls for the wrong men and winds up with two illegitimate children and has trouble providing for them. Gee, what an original plot. <yawn>
Not as good as the first book in the series -- nearly everyone was either an abuser or a victim, hardly surprising considering it was set in a polygamous community but more depressing than interesting. In addition, Webb's revealed murderer didn't make sense.
Ex-husband Bob reappears to distract Melanie from the murder in this one, and author Berenson may have finally learned that not all readers are fascinated with dog show trivia. I still wish Melanie would develop a spine, though.
Interesting entry in the female-PI genre, with an emotionally wounded heroine and enough plot twists and turns to earn the "noir" in the title. I didn't guess whodunit and had to read through to the end.