Love and Other Consolation Prizes

I have read and loved Jamie Ford's first novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, so I was pleased to hear that he would be coming to the 2018 BookMania!.  His latest is Love and Other Consolation Prizes (#695) which features the story of a young boy auctioned off as a raffle prize at the first Seattle World's Fair in 1909.  Fast forward to 1962, when Ernest Young's daughter is a journalist pursuing human interest stories to highlight the 1962 World's Fair with its iconic Space Needle.  When she happens upon old stories of the raffled boy, she has no idea that she will be unraveling long-concealed family secrets.

It's unfair to label people, but I think of Jamie Ford as the male Lisa See.  Since she is one of my favorite authors, that's meant to be a compliment, even though their styles are very different.  What they do have in common, however, is their interest in exploring their Asian backgrounds and the discrimination immigrants from the Far East faced. 

I couldn't wait to find out what happened to Ernest next as he moves from China to America where the winning raffle ticket is held by Seattle's most prominent madam.  There in the Tenderloin Ernest will find the first real home he has ever known.  I won't say more than that, because the pleasures in this book come as the layers of character and plot are unpeeled here, but if you love a good story, well told, then this is a book for you.  Highly recommended.

Full Wolf Moon

A lot of books that I read are prepublication copies, so a number of typos, grammatical errors and parsing problems are to be expected.  When I read the published edition of Lincoln Child's latest Dr. Jeremy Logan thriller, Full Wolf Moon (#694), I was surprised that within the first fifty pages I had to stop twice to Google the foods the protagonist was eating.  What on earth are pickled ramps?  And why would a housewife busy home-schooling two children at a remote Adirondack home be feeding a last-minute dinner guest boeuf bourguiignon with scalloped potatoes and raclette?  Do you know what raclette is?  I didn't.  I thought I had a pretty good grasp on culinary terms, but apparently not.  Also, since Jeremy Logan is a professor at Yale, born and brought up supposedly in the United States, why does he root around in the "boot" of his car, looking for a disguise?  When he gets his fifty year old vintage Lotus convertible stuck down a heavily forested driveway why is he forced to lower the top, climb over the "windscreen" and onto the "hood" of the car?  Why weren't these Briticisms edited out?  Either he climbs over the windscreen onto the bonnet of his car, or he goes over the windshield onto the hood.  The mixed metaphors were irritating to this reader.

The plot revolves around savage attacks on hikers in extremely remote areas of Adirondack Park.  Two of the bodies aren't discovered until the bodies are in advanced states of decomposition.  The third victim is found quickly, and the Medical Examiner is able to pinpoint time of death to eighteen hours previously - during a full moon.  Yet the author states unequivocally that all three victims were killed during a full moon,; by a bear or some other animal.  Or were they?  An odd clannish family in the neighborhood with "tainted blood"  points to the possibility of - wait for it! - a werewolf roaming the vast and forbidding woods.  Dr. Jeremy Logan is reluctantly dragged into things by an old college friend, now a Forest Ranger.  He should have stayed at Cloudwater, the artists' colony where he is supposed to be finishing up a paper on medieval history.  If he had, maybe we would all have been spared this unsatisfying potboiler.

On the bright side, I did learn what pickled ramps are ( pickled leeks, in case you were wondering) and raclette as well (cheese often used in Europe as a fondue).  At least I didn't totally waste my time!

The Painted Queen

It was a bittersweet experience reading The Painted Queen (#693).  The manuscript for Amelia Peabody Emerson's final adventure in Egypt was published posthumously three years after Barbara Mertz - writing here as Elizabeth Peters - died.  The book was finished by her good friend and fellow mystery writer, Joan Hess.  She did Elizabeth Peters proud.

The very first book in this wonderful series (Crocodile on the Sandbank) was published way back in 1975, and made such an impression on both my mother and me that I still have a copy of that original paperback amongst my boxes (and boxes!) of books.  Amelia Peabody was a feisty, intelligent and intrepid female who ventured to Egypt on her own to pursue her passion for Egyptology in nineteenth century British-controlled territory.  Armed with her practically indestructible parasol and her belt of essential tools she managed to acquire a handsome husband, a precocious son, a formidable reputation amongst the locals and enemies too numerous to count.  The books are a hoot, but the backgrounds for the many mysteries Amelia (or Peabody, as her husband affectionately calls her) unravels are based on rock solid knowledge of the world of Egyptian archeology.  After all, Elizabeth Peters (or Barbara Michaels, or Vicky Bliss, her other pen names) also published non-fiction  books on Egypt professionally under her own name, Dr. Barbara Mertz.  What a fun way to pass along her wealth of knowledge!

This final story, The Painted Queen, is based on some of the real-life scandals which swirled around the discovery of the iconic bust of Nefertiti, now on display in Berlin.  It wasn't always so...  With Amelia walking stubbornly into danger at every opportunity, and her son Ramses and his boon companion David, determined to keep her safe, there are the usual cast of eccentric and amusing characters, a significant find mysteriously vanishing, and cameo appearances by arch enemy Sethos, the result is an entertaining and page-turning read. 

I don't think that Barbara Mertz intended this as her final book in the series.  Otherwise, she wouldn't have left the Nefret/Ramses situation hanging fire; she would have brought things to a happy conclusion, which was hinted at at the very end.  It was sad to close the cover on the final chapter of this adventure in Egypt knowing that there will never be another, just like its author.  Farewell, Elizabeth Peters!

Matchup

I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but the Matchup (#692) anthology, edited by Lee Child, is an exception to that rule.  All of the short stories here are thrillers; the hook is that each story pairs a well-known female writer in the genre with a male counterpart, featuring a "match up" of their iconic characters.  Although I recognized the names of these writers, for many of them, it's the first time I've read any of their work.  I was not disappointed.  (Okay, confession; my least favorite story was a vampire/Radiant match up.  Too easy to picture a Grace Jones/Fabio look-alike couple as the illustration for this one!).

Where else can you meet Jack Reacher and Temperance Brennan teamed up to solve a case? (Kathy Reichs and Lee Child).  Or how about Steve Berry's Cotton Malone encountering Diana Gabaldon's Outlander characters in pursuit of an antiquarian book?  The match ups here are those of familiar fictional characters' strengths and skills in pursuing crimes, not each other.  If you follow any of these writers included in the anthology, it's fun to watch their creations play off each other.

Although the eleven novellas and short stories here come in at over four hundred pages, time seemed to fly by while I was absorbed in these tales.  Darn, I've just added another list of authors I'll have to find time to read!

Hail to the Chins

Bruce Campbell, along with Craig Sanborn, has added to his B Movie memoirs with this second volume, Hail to the Chins (#691).  Since I first became aware of him as the character Sam Axe in the TV series Burn Notice, I was interested to read what he has to say about the various roles he's played.  It was, for the most part, an entertaining read, but I think you have to be somewhat of a Bruce Campbell fan to appreciate it.

Since he lives by choice in the Oregon woods, I was especially intrigued by his opinions of living in Miami while filming Burn Notice.  Definitely not a fan of our hot, humid climate!  I must say, I do enby the time he spent in New Zealand while making Hercules and Xena, Prinicess Warrior.  Since we also enjoyed those shows, we might sample one of his more recent projects on Starz, Ash v. the Evil Dead.,  but from his description in the book, we'll have to do it on an empty stomach!

My take on Hail to the Chins?  Amusing, but not for everybody.