IN SEARCH OF SCOTLAND: H.V. MORTON

As enjoyable as his England book. The history and the day to day information he manages to cram into his books, all done with a great flourish, make Morton very readable today. The problem now is finding others at my library. I have inter library loan forms filled in and ready to hand request.



RAISINS AND ALMONDS: KERRY GREENWOOD

Phryne Fisher loves dancing, especially with gorgeous young Simon Abrahams. But Phrynes contentment at the Jewish Young Peoples Society Dance is cut short when Simons father asks her to investigate the strange death of a devout young student in Miss Sylvia Lees bookshop located in the Eastern Market.

A tad over done.




THE PRICE OF LOVE AND OTHER STORIES: PETER ROBINSON

Best known — and much admired — for his long-running and bestselling Inspector Banks series, Peter Robinson is also widely and highly praised by mystery mavens for his riveting short stories.
Robinson’s versatile talent is on full display in the twelve stories that comprise his latest short story collection, The Price of Love and Other Stories. Spellbinding plots, suspense that grips and won’t let go, utterly unpredictable twists, psychological truths both sweet and scary, characters you’d like to meet (and some you’d hope never to encounter), all set in places that are characters themselves — these are the fundamentals of story and mystery that Robinson plays like the virtuoso he is.

I'm not a great lover of short stories and will admit that I read all the Banks on offer and skimmed several of the others.



THE COLD LIGHT OF MOURNING: ELIZABETH J. DUNCAN

Duncan, the first Canadian winner of the Minotaur/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel competition, lulls readers with her soothing prose and depiction of small-town life in Wales and then startles them with a shocker of a denouement. Readers who enjoy Louise Penny, another Canadian mystery author of note.

Light and predictable but I will be watching for more by this author. Readable and decent characters.
CASTLE: J. ROBERT LENNON

From The New Yorker
When Eric Loesch returns to the small town in upstate New York where he was reared, he dutifully describes life there in meticulous detail: the woman who sells him his dilapidated house and its six hundred and twelve acres, the hardware store he visits, the large outcropping of rock he can see from his bedroom window. And when he discovers that this rock in the center of his view marks a tiny patch of land that is not, legally, his, and that the owner’s name has been blacked out on the property deed, he decides to fill the gap in the official record. Meanwhile, the reader is wrestling with the narrator’s own troubling omissions: Why does Eric hate his sister? Why can he remember so little of his childhood, and why won’t the woman in the hardware store sell him a gun? As Lennon investigates the lethal consequences of failing to question authority, what begins as a claustrophobic tale of suspense gradually becomes an indictment of national policy.

Decidedly different from anything I've read lately but I found myself unable to put it down. The mix of almost fantasy and then the cold horror as the book comes to an end is very well handled. I picked up an earlier novel by this author at the library today.


5 books