The Emperor's Conspiracy

I've had The Emperor's Conspiracy (#1,131) sitting by my bed for quite a while now, but all this time I've been thinking it was set in Napoleon Bonaparte's France.  It's not.  This Regency mystery by Michelle Diener was a pleasant surprise.  The heroine, Miss Charlotte Raven, is the ward of an influential lady in society.  To all appearances, Charlotte is the perfect product of that society.  Only she and her guardian Lady Howe are amongst the very few people who know Charlotte's true origin.

It's that background which gets Charlie mixed up inadvertently with a Crown investigation into missing British guineas.  Cash is being smuggled out of England at an alarming rate, but for what purpose and who is behind it?  Someone is playing deadly games and Lord Edward Durnham is determined to find out who.

It's a different set up for this high stakes romance set in the ballrooms and the slums of Regency London.  If you're looking for a romance with a little more substance, The Emperor's Conspiracy might just be your ticket.

Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun

I seem to be reading the third book in several series this month!  The latest is Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (#1,130) by Elle Cosimano.  Finlay is still trying to get out from under the thumb of Russian crime tsar Feliks Zhirov by disposing of the tell-tale Aston Martin he saddled her with, and simultaneously finding enough money for her live-in nanny to escape the clutches of an Atlantic City mobster.  Vero is into him for a cool quarter million dollars.  In other words, nothing much has changed from the previous book!

Feliks has given Finlay the assignment of identifying an assassin-for-hire who goes by the name Easy Clean.  Finlay and Vero have narrowed the field down to him being a cop.  But which cop?  What better way to find out and stay out of Felik's range than to enroll in the week-long Citizens Police Academy?  Well, it makes sense to them, and provides the reader with a series of hilarious (and dangerous) mis-adventures.  Will Finlay ever get up the courage to admit to hot cop Nick that she has feelings for him?  Will she ever be able to get her ex-husband Steve out of her life?  (But definitely not the kids' lives!)  And why is Vero getting so deeply invested in her role as a pseudo cop?  The action never stops, and neither does Finlay!  You can just see where the next book in the series is going, and I, for one, can't wait!

Since the action does pick right up from the previous two books, don't make the mistake of trying to get into the Finlay Donovan series by starting with Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun; nothing will make sense to you. 

The Bullet That Missed

The Thursday Murder Club sleuths again in Richard Osman's The Bullet That Missed (#1,129).  This time they've settled on the death of a TV journalist who died ten years ago when her car went over a tall cliff into the sea.  In fact, the intrepid silver brigade has manuevered Mike Waghorn into conducting an interview with Ron Ritchie onsite at Coopers Chase.  Once they've lowered Mike's guard by judicious use of alcohol, they hope to get the inside scoop on his former co-presenter, Bethany Waites.  Was anything suspicious going on in her life at the time she vanished?

They succeed in capturing Mike's interest, but in the meantime, Elizabeth and her husband Stephen are kidnapped on their daily walk.  The hoods are removed from their heads in a well-stocked library to face an unknown man.  The Viking has an order for Elizabeth: kill Viktor Illyich.  If she refuses, the Viking will kill Joyce Meadows instead to ensure Elizabeth's compliance.

Love, hate, greed, friendship, spycraft, worsening dementia and cryptocurrency - it's all grist for the mill in this thoroughly enjoyable third installment of Richard Osman's mystery series featuring the inhabitants of an English assisted-living facility, aided by the frenemies they've made within the local constabulary.  Does anyone come out alive at the end, and is the mystery of Bethany Waites solved?  I'm sure you can guess, but all the fun is in getting there.

Did I mention that a delightful new member of the cast has made his debut?  It's Alan - Joyce's rescue dog!  Love is in the air all around.

The Family Man

I recently enjoyed hearing Elinor Lipman speak at our local BookMania! event sponsored by our county library system.  She was on a panel which discussed not just romance, but the power of friendship - the ties that bind us to others.  After listening to the witty discussion by the panelists, I decided I had to read more of Ms. Lipman's work, not in any particular order.  Thus, The Family Man (#1,128) because it was available in large print!

I must say this book delivered!  The eponymous Family Man is Henry Archer, a successful New York City attorney.  He hears from his ex-wife that her husband of twenty-four (and a half!) years has died.  Under the terms of the pre-nup Denise signed, she gets nothing unless they had celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.  Can Henry please take a look and see what he can do?

That starts the ball rolling on an off-beat tale which results in several happy endings.  No, Denise and Henry are not reunited; did I mention that Henry is gay and cannot abide his former wife?  Henry has never gotten over the loss of his stepdaughter Thalia when Denise divorced him.  She was adopted by the new husband at age three and was cut out of his life.  He finds her again in the most highly improbable circumstances and finally has a chance to become the father he always wanted to be.

It's funny, it's rude and the emotions are real in this entertaining novel.  It was the perfect antidote to the constant depressing news of the day.  Looking for something to lift your spirits?  The Family Man will do the trick!

The Falcon's Eyes

Francesca Stanfill's latest novel The Falcon's Eyes (#1,127) is subtitled A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine, but I think that's a misnomer.  It's really the reason I picked up this book, as I will be visiting France soon.  However, Eleanor is really a lesser character in the book.  It's really about Isabelle de LaPalisse, an impoverished daughter of a noble family married off to an older, wealthy man for the advantages he can provide her family.

When the book sticks to Isabelle's story, the action moves right along.  After her marriage as Isabelle gradually learns her husband's true nature and his obsession with falconry, things become darker for her.  Her failure to produce a living heir for Gerard leads to their divorce and Isabelle's banishment to an abbey.  Because she can read and write, she is deemed suitable to become a companion to the imprisoned Queen Eleanor in England.

I basically enjoyed the book, but I found that it sagged after Isabelle went to England.  At over eight hundred pages, I thought it could be judiciously pruned without harming the flow of the narrative.  Things did pick up again towards the end, with a cliff-hanger ending.  It's left to the reader to determine what happens to Isabelle.  Some readers may not be happy about that, but I thought it was a suitable ending.

It did make me want to visit the Abbey of Fontevraud, where not only Eleanor of Aquitaine, but her second husband, Henry II of England, and her beloved son, Richard the Lionheart, are buried as well.  Recommended with reservations.

Dinners With Ruth - A Memoir on the Power of Friendships

One of our book club members who reads mostly nonfiction mentioned that she had read Dinners With Ruth - A Memoir on the Power of Friendship (#1,126) by Nina Totenberg.  Since I am a fan of both Nina Totenberg and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I rushed home to reserve the book so I could read it for myself.  The interesting thing to me was that our book club member was a fan of neither women, but still thought the book was worthwhile.

As I read it, I could hear Nina's voice in my head narrating.  Whenever Nina does a piece on the Supreme Court on NPR, she makes the complex issues fit together in a way that makes sense.  I feel that I now have a grasp of the issues at stake.  Given the complexity of the law, that is not an easy task!

Nina's relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a blessing and a retreat for both of them, as is evident in this memoir.  Neither had an easy path as each blazed her trail in her chosen field.  The miracle was that their paths intersected at the right time and place.

Not only does Nina talk about her relationship with Ruth, but she talks about her two husbands, her early widowhood, the many justices she met and befriended along the way, and, of course, her co-workers at NPR, particularly Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts.  Socializing in Washington, D.C. was an important part of life there, and Nina and her first husband Floyd Haskell, a former Senator, and her second husband, surgeon David Reines, were very much a part of it.  It was a fascinating glimpse into her life to imagine her cooking for her own dinner parties!

Nina Totenberg has covered the Supreme Court long enough to be taken aback by recent changes in the makeup and actions of the current Court.  I'm not sure she'll ever retire, but she'll be covering a different animal in the future.