The "K" in the title The K Team (#903) stands for K-9 Simon Garfunkle, retired police dog, and important member of the newly-formed group of private investigators in Paterson, New Jersey. If "dog" and "Paterson, New Jersey" used together to describe a book seem to strike a chord, you are correct. The K Team is a spin-off mystery series from David Rosenfelt's popular Andy Carpenter mystery series. All the familiar members of the team are here - Andy himself (in a cameo role), his wife Laurie, another founding member, Marcus, the muscle for the group, Sam Willis, the hacking genius and Corey Douglas, also a retired cop, who brings Simon into the mix.
Even their very first client is familiar to Andy Carpenter fans - Judge Henry "Hatchet" Henderson. He's being blackmailed and has hired the K Team to investigate to avoid going public. Things don't seem to be going particularly well for the newly-fledged PIs, but they're not about to give up even as the body count mounts...
It's a great first outing for this new mystery series and made for an enjoyable read with some new dynamics to liven things up with Corey Douglas taking on the principal role here.
One note about the cover art (Yes, my favorite hobbyhorse!): Simon Garfunkle, as the newest canine cast member, is described as a beautiful German Shepherd. Do my eyes deceive me, or is the cover photo actually of a Malinois, NOT a German Shepherd? Just wondering...
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Saturday, May 23, 2020
The Silent Patient
My dentist told me I had to read Alex Michaelides' psychological thriller The Silent Patient (#902). She promised I wouldn't see the final twist coming. I know it was popular recently, but I never did get around to reading it.
I'm sorry to say that as soon as I finished reading it, my very first thought was "What drivel!" I wish I had spent the time reading about more worthwhile and likeable characters. If you're not familiar with the premise of the novel, Alicia is a famous painter who is found standing next to her husband's body within three minutes of a neighbor calling the police after hearing multiple gunshots next door. Only Alicia's prints are found on the gun, but she refuses to say what happened. Five years later, she's in a forensic psychiatric unit, still refusing to speak...
Let's just all leave her there.
Really, the most interesting thing about this book was its references to Alcestis of Greek mythology. There are several versions of her story, but Euripides' play is probably the most well known. Alcestis' husband Ametus is doomed by the Fates to die unless he can find someone to die in his place. After an unsuccessful search, Alcestis volunteers, growing ever weaker as her husband regains his health. After she dies, she is rescued from Hades by either the hero Herakles (Hercules) or Queen Persephone depending on the tale's version, and restored to Ametus. Ametus cannot understand why she will not speak to him. The Greeks hold up Alcestis as a model loving, self-sacrificing spouse. Doesn't that automatically make Ametus a selfish, self-centered dog who would rather sacrifice his aged parents, his subjects or his wife rather than die himself as the Fates decreed? Who would want to go back to that? I certainly wouldn't!
I'm sorry to say that as soon as I finished reading it, my very first thought was "What drivel!" I wish I had spent the time reading about more worthwhile and likeable characters. If you're not familiar with the premise of the novel, Alicia is a famous painter who is found standing next to her husband's body within three minutes of a neighbor calling the police after hearing multiple gunshots next door. Only Alicia's prints are found on the gun, but she refuses to say what happened. Five years later, she's in a forensic psychiatric unit, still refusing to speak...
Let's just all leave her there.
Really, the most interesting thing about this book was its references to Alcestis of Greek mythology. There are several versions of her story, but Euripides' play is probably the most well known. Alcestis' husband Ametus is doomed by the Fates to die unless he can find someone to die in his place. After an unsuccessful search, Alcestis volunteers, growing ever weaker as her husband regains his health. After she dies, she is rescued from Hades by either the hero Herakles (Hercules) or Queen Persephone depending on the tale's version, and restored to Ametus. Ametus cannot understand why she will not speak to him. The Greeks hold up Alcestis as a model loving, self-sacrificing spouse. Doesn't that automatically make Ametus a selfish, self-centered dog who would rather sacrifice his aged parents, his subjects or his wife rather than die himself as the Fates decreed? Who would want to go back to that? I certainly wouldn't!
Thursday, May 21, 2020
The Other Bennet Sister
Poor Mary Bennet! She gets such short shrift in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and doesn't fare any better in TV and movie versions, where her character is generally played for laughs. Finally, in Janice Hadlow's The Other Bennet Sister (#901) Mary comes into her own as a fully developed and immensely sympathetic character.
The first half of this novel chronicles the Bennet sisters' childhoods leading up to and including the events of Pride and Prejudice. Much of it is so painful to Mary the reader wonders how she could have endured it in the Bennet household. It isn't until after Jane and Lizzy's happy endings (and even wayward Lydia's!) that Mary is driven to take refuge in the London home of her aunt and uncle Gardiner. And that makes all the difference.
I won't say more, but in Janice Hadlow's hands Mary Bennet becomes a character well worth discovering. If you are a Jane Austen fan, and enjoy character-driven novels, do yourself the favor of reading and savoring The Other Bennet Sister.
Just one discordant note about the book: I really loved the cover art used for the Advanced Reader Copy of The Other Bennet Sister. The portrait of a young nineteenth century woman with an open book in her lap perfectly captured the character of Mary Bennet in this story. I was dismayed to see in my library catalog that the cover was changed to a vapid-looking young girl. It doesn't suit the Mary which emerges from these pages nearly as well. Shame on whoever made that art decision!
The first half of this novel chronicles the Bennet sisters' childhoods leading up to and including the events of Pride and Prejudice. Much of it is so painful to Mary the reader wonders how she could have endured it in the Bennet household. It isn't until after Jane and Lizzy's happy endings (and even wayward Lydia's!) that Mary is driven to take refuge in the London home of her aunt and uncle Gardiner. And that makes all the difference.
I won't say more, but in Janice Hadlow's hands Mary Bennet becomes a character well worth discovering. If you are a Jane Austen fan, and enjoy character-driven novels, do yourself the favor of reading and savoring The Other Bennet Sister.
Just one discordant note about the book: I really loved the cover art used for the Advanced Reader Copy of The Other Bennet Sister. The portrait of a young nineteenth century woman with an open book in her lap perfectly captured the character of Mary Bennet in this story. I was dismayed to see in my library catalog that the cover was changed to a vapid-looking young girl. It doesn't suit the Mary which emerges from these pages nearly as well. Shame on whoever made that art decision!
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Blame the Dead
If you want to get lost in a book, Ed Ruggero's Blame the Dead (#900) is a good choice. Set in a mobile Army hospital on the front lines during the Allies' invasion of Sicily, MP Eddie Harkins is exhausted from breaking up traffic jams and guarding enemy POWs. When he's flagged down while passing a field hospital on his way to a much-deserved rest, he never expects to find himself embroiled in a murder.
Back in Philadelphia, he was a beat cop, but he's the best available option for the badly understaffed hospital. Pressed into service investigating the murder of a surgeon during an air raid, he begins asking questions somebody doesn't want answered. Nurse Donnelly, an old friend from the neighborhood back home, fills in some of the missing blanks for him. The more he finds out, the more questions he has about how the unit is run, and who had the most to gain by the murder.
It is, as the cover blurb claims, "Riveting". While I was glued to the book, my husband was busy researching trips to Sicily for a time when travel for pleasure might be possible again, rather than just from your armchair, it was that engaging. This is Ed Ruggero's first work of fiction. I certainly hope it's not his last!
Back in Philadelphia, he was a beat cop, but he's the best available option for the badly understaffed hospital. Pressed into service investigating the murder of a surgeon during an air raid, he begins asking questions somebody doesn't want answered. Nurse Donnelly, an old friend from the neighborhood back home, fills in some of the missing blanks for him. The more he finds out, the more questions he has about how the unit is run, and who had the most to gain by the murder.
It is, as the cover blurb claims, "Riveting". While I was glued to the book, my husband was busy researching trips to Sicily for a time when travel for pleasure might be possible again, rather than just from your armchair, it was that engaging. This is Ed Ruggero's first work of fiction. I certainly hope it's not his last!
Saturday, May 9, 2020
Killer Librarian
What a fun cozy mystery series to discover now with the first book in the series, Killer Librarian (#899) by Mary Lou Kirwin! When librarian Karen Nash gets a phone call from her boyfriend while she's waiting for him to pick her up for a dream trip to London, she is devastated when he dumps her instead. Picking herself up mentally from the floor, she calls to book her own ticket on that plane to London. When she spots Dave at the airport with a much younger women, Karen spends the flight plotting revenge...
Checking into the quaint B&B where she had booked them, she finds herself in the midst of a cozy gathering, reunited there every year for the Chelsea Flower Show. When one of the guests turns up dead in the sitting room, Karen finds herself in the middle of a mystery, her favorite genre. What can she do but follow the clues where they lead her, while discovering Caldwell Perkins, the owner of the B&B, is much more to her taste than Dave the plumber ever was! But has she accidentally sicced an assassin on him and his new girlfriend?
It won't take you long to get to the bottom of this mystery, and I certainly had a good time along the way!
Checking into the quaint B&B where she had booked them, she finds herself in the midst of a cozy gathering, reunited there every year for the Chelsea Flower Show. When one of the guests turns up dead in the sitting room, Karen finds herself in the middle of a mystery, her favorite genre. What can she do but follow the clues where they lead her, while discovering Caldwell Perkins, the owner of the B&B, is much more to her taste than Dave the plumber ever was! But has she accidentally sicced an assassin on him and his new girlfriend?
It won't take you long to get to the bottom of this mystery, and I certainly had a good time along the way!
Beheld
Beheld (#898) by TaraShea Nesbit deals in novel form with the first murder of a white colonist by another colonist in 1630 Plymouth Plantation. Told from a number of viewpoints, it chiefly narrates the story through the perspectives of Alice Bradford, the wife of Governor William Bradford, and Eleanor Billington, a former indentured servant and an Anglican.
Though the Puritans came to America seeking religious freedom, they denied it to anyone in the colony who was not a dissenter, as they preferred to call themselves. If you only think of the Pilgrims as godly people dressed in sober clothes and intent on doing right by their neighbors, read this book and think again. If only the writings of the literate colony leaders survive, who gets to tell the real story of what happened in the bleak wilderness in which the Mayflower put to shore in 1620? It wasn't what the laborers in the expedition had signed on for, and they felt tricked and betrayed by those at the top of the social scale making the decisions. The question might be better asked about why it took so long for that first English-on-English murder to occur given the tensions besetting the settlement. And what really did happen to William Bradford's first wife Dorothy?
Ms. Nesbit sets the scene well in this atmospheric novel. If you've ever visited present day Plimouth Plantation, you will appreciate how much she gets right, and how it might have felt to have been one of the underclass there.
Though the Puritans came to America seeking religious freedom, they denied it to anyone in the colony who was not a dissenter, as they preferred to call themselves. If you only think of the Pilgrims as godly people dressed in sober clothes and intent on doing right by their neighbors, read this book and think again. If only the writings of the literate colony leaders survive, who gets to tell the real story of what happened in the bleak wilderness in which the Mayflower put to shore in 1620? It wasn't what the laborers in the expedition had signed on for, and they felt tricked and betrayed by those at the top of the social scale making the decisions. The question might be better asked about why it took so long for that first English-on-English murder to occur given the tensions besetting the settlement. And what really did happen to William Bradford's first wife Dorothy?
Ms. Nesbit sets the scene well in this atmospheric novel. If you've ever visited present day Plimouth Plantation, you will appreciate how much she gets right, and how it might have felt to have been one of the underclass there.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope's social satire The Way We Live Now (#897) was listed on some prominent person's all time favorite book list in a way that piqued my interest. What better time than a "Safer at Home" period to read an eight hundred page literary classic?
In a very tongue-in-cheek way, Trollope regales the reader with a tale centered around a financial wizard lately arrived on the 1870s London scene with apparent barrels of money to support a lavish life style for himself, his wife and his daughter. No one seems to be able to put a finger on exactly where all that money came from, but rumors abound that Augustus Melmotte has been chased by the law out of Paris and Vienna at the very least. His target in England are the idle rich with not much else to do with their time then to drink and gamble away their fortunes. Why shouldn't some of that money make its way into Melmotte's pockets?
A stock venture is proposed to fund a railroad in the New World and prominent Englishmen are duly appointed to its Board in London. The financial wheeling and dealing is worthy of Bernie Madoff himself with results not so very different. At the same time Melmotte is dangling the hand of his daughter, rumored to be worth a considerable fortune, as a matrimonial prize for the highest bidder. Marie is not the most cooperative potential bride-to-be out there, and she is not alone.
It all makes for an entertaining tale. If that seems to be too much effort for you, The Way We Live Now was apparently made into an Exxon Masterpiece Theater production in the early 2000s. If I can hunt it down, I will definitely watch it myself. The paperback edition of the novel I read was reissued in conjunction with that Masterpiece Theater release, complete with a thirty plus page scholarly introduction. I normally read everything right down to the footnotes, but my eyes crossed as all the juice was sucked right out of the plot before I had even read a single page of the novel itself! It reminded me of my junior year in high school when we were assigned to read The Scarlet Letter. I had already read it by then, but our teacher who was currently getting his graduate degrees in English Literature at Harvard marched into our classroom and announced on the very first day, "The minister did it." Way to ruin the only reason some of my classmates would have somewhat willingly plowed through the book - to find out who got Hester in trouble! I never forgave him for that, and vowed when I was a teacher (or reviewer!) to never do that to a potential reader. So my recommendation here is: Skip the intro and get right to the good stuff!
In a very tongue-in-cheek way, Trollope regales the reader with a tale centered around a financial wizard lately arrived on the 1870s London scene with apparent barrels of money to support a lavish life style for himself, his wife and his daughter. No one seems to be able to put a finger on exactly where all that money came from, but rumors abound that Augustus Melmotte has been chased by the law out of Paris and Vienna at the very least. His target in England are the idle rich with not much else to do with their time then to drink and gamble away their fortunes. Why shouldn't some of that money make its way into Melmotte's pockets?
A stock venture is proposed to fund a railroad in the New World and prominent Englishmen are duly appointed to its Board in London. The financial wheeling and dealing is worthy of Bernie Madoff himself with results not so very different. At the same time Melmotte is dangling the hand of his daughter, rumored to be worth a considerable fortune, as a matrimonial prize for the highest bidder. Marie is not the most cooperative potential bride-to-be out there, and she is not alone.
It all makes for an entertaining tale. If that seems to be too much effort for you, The Way We Live Now was apparently made into an Exxon Masterpiece Theater production in the early 2000s. If I can hunt it down, I will definitely watch it myself. The paperback edition of the novel I read was reissued in conjunction with that Masterpiece Theater release, complete with a thirty plus page scholarly introduction. I normally read everything right down to the footnotes, but my eyes crossed as all the juice was sucked right out of the plot before I had even read a single page of the novel itself! It reminded me of my junior year in high school when we were assigned to read The Scarlet Letter. I had already read it by then, but our teacher who was currently getting his graduate degrees in English Literature at Harvard marched into our classroom and announced on the very first day, "The minister did it." Way to ruin the only reason some of my classmates would have somewhat willingly plowed through the book - to find out who got Hester in trouble! I never forgave him for that, and vowed when I was a teacher (or reviewer!) to never do that to a potential reader. So my recommendation here is: Skip the intro and get right to the good stuff!
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