April 2014-what are you reading?

Still reading Black Horizon by James Grippando

Just started Mother, Mother by koren zailckas

Just started The Million Dollar Mystery which has started out with a bang. I know it's going to be a great, old-school adventure. Mysterious semi-orphan, missing money, shadowy secret society in hot pursuit.

Just about to start a review copy of Blood Med. I enjoyed the previous book in the series The Anarchist Detective.

Just downloaded the audiobook Grave Goods by Ariana Franklin. 12th century female doctor/pathologist from Italy summoned by the king to England to solve some murders. Great series (Mistress of the Art of Death) so far, but this will be the first one I listen to.

>5 raidergirl3: I really liked that when I read the print book. Enjoy!

Nearly finished with The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker. A pretty good one.

For the next little while I am planning to listen to:

Paper Doll by Robert B. Parker (Spenser 320)
The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill
Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block

First line:
~ For seven consecutive Fridays I got telephone calls from him~

This afternoon I finished 'reading' / listening to Lawrence Block's Time to Murder and Create.

I really liked this crime / detective novel which is a re-read for me. I have read all of the Matt Scudder novels before but I am starting again from the beginning. I read The Sins of the Fathers back in January and have just requested In The Midst of Death on audio from the library.

In this, the second novel of the series, Block continues the story of sometimes investigator, Scudder.

We learn more about Scudder’s values and come to know him as honourable and trustworthy in spite of his very serious flaws.

His controlled drinking gets out of hand in this book. He allows himself a real binge, with resulting blackout, but only when he is certain that no harm will come to anybody else.

I enjoyed this story more than “Sins of the Fathers’ and I know it only gets better as the series goes on.

Really though, for me the actual story is secondary, the real appeal of these books for me is the development of Scudder as a character and the insights gained from him as a person.

Love flawed characters who are really good at what they do!

3.75 stars

I am almost done with The Hangman's Daughter - mixed feelings about this one so far. I like the historical fiction but it is too long & I think I have figured out who was the bad guy by about halfway through.

I am now reading The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski, the first time I've read anything by an author who seems to be trying to produce a book that Quentin Tarantino would want to film. It's certainly a change of pace.

Currently I'm reading When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman. It's the first of his Alex Delaware novels. While I've read quite a few of the later books in this series this is the first time I've read the first.

I'm reading The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth and it's excellent. For some reason I thought it would be boring with lots of politics. Not so.

I'm reading The Vault by Ruth Rendell. I keep enjoying her Wexford detectives!

I have finished The Poisoned Chocolates Case which I thought was terrific!

starting Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

I'm now reading The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver.

Just picked up another Martha Grimes; The Blue Last.

three quarters of the way through The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill. It is like visiting family!

And also racing through Shame by Karin Altvegen which is causing me to put aside all my other books to devote myself to this one. Love it!

Finished Bad Blood (DI Marjory Fleming) by Aline Templeton and Kissed A Sad Goodbye by Deborah Crombie. Enjoyed both. Bad Blood started off a bit shakily but got better towards the end.

Also finished Invisible Ink: How 100 Great Authors Disappeared by Christopher Fowler to see if there are any mystery authors I should add to my "look out for these" list.

Just about to start Endless Night…

About three quarters of the way through The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams. It's very good--it's about the search for a serial killer in Atlanta.

started Killer by Jonathan Kellerman today. Finished Brilliance yesterday

Just finished Shame by Karin Alvtegen

First line:
~Dear God, take away all the war and all the violence and everything that is unjust and make it so that all the poor people have money so they can buy little food~

I don’t know what to say.

Another reviewer sums it up beautifully.

“Karen Alvtegen can keep you up way past your bedtime with these eerie stories of people gone off the curb.”

This is a psychological thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat and up waaayy past my bedtime. And it is definitely eerie. I loved this book which was my first exposure to Karin Alvtegen and certainly won’t be my last.

I have several books on the go at one time and they were all put aside so that I could focus on this one.

The characters were real. Although their lives do not mirror my own, in many ways I could relate to both of them. Childhood trauma inflicts deep wounds that take deep commitment to work through as adults. Both of these characters suffer greatly.

The only reason I did not give this 5 stars is because I found the ending just a little bit too neatly wrapped up. It seemed to me that the ending did not reflect reality but t maybe that is a good thing. Alvtegen does leave us with some hope for all of us.

4.0 stars

Finished The Stranger You Seek yesterday. It was good--I gave it four stars.

Now I'm reading Helpless by Daniel Palmer. It's about a high-school girls' soccer coach who's accused of having sex with one of his players and of being involved with child pornography. He is innocent. So far this book has been excellent.

Finished The Million Dollar Mystery which, alas, was a disappointment. I posted a review and it's the only one (surprise...lol). Have started the latest Jonathan Quinn novel by Brett Battles. He seems to have settled on a title theme and this one is The Discarded.

This afternoon I finished The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die by Colin Cotterill.

This is the 9th in the Dr. Siri Paiboun series about an eccentric 76 year old (now just retired) coroner in Laos in the mid to late 1970’s. I started this series (because of a book bullet here on LT) just a year ago and have bashed through all nine of them. And I have not tired of them yet.

What I love about this series, besides Dr. Siri himself, is the wonderful cast of supporting characters. They are all real, likeable, fun to read about and although the stories are often about horrific murders they are filled with humour.

I found ‘The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die’ just as enjoyable as the first eight. And really, although the story was excellent and the mystery solved, for me, it is more about the characters than the mystery.

I was very sad when I came to the end. Please tell me that Cotterill is writing another!?

3.5 stars

Last night I completed Cherry Ames Flight Nurse by Helen Wells.

First line:
~Lieutenant Cherry Ames, of the Army Nurse Corps, training at Randolph Field, Texas, to become a flight nurse, decided to take time out, this hot September morning, for a coke~

Cherry, the central character in a series of 27 mystery novels with hospital settings, is a sweet, dedicated working woman. These books were originally published between 1943 and 1968. I read them first when I was a pre-teen and really loved them. I had no idea that these books were written to encourage girls to become nurses as a way to aid the war effort! I did become a nurse and at 61 years of age, I still own 6 of the series. I decided it might be fun to re-visit one of them last month during the MysteryCat Challenge to read a YA / children’s mystery.

This one is pretty much as I remember the series. Not exactly a mystery but something mysterious is going on and Cherry is concerned about it. She doesn’t solve a mystery but we are with her as she is confused and eventually has the mysterious circumstances explained to her.

I used to think I was keeping these books for my grandchildren to read (not that I have any grandchildren yet!) but I don’t think that I want my grands to read this. Too syrupy sweet. And with some unprofessional behaviours that we would not condone in a nurse today. This book is definitely dated but still was a fun easy read

3.5 stars

Greatly enjoyed review copy of Blood Med by Jason Webster set in present day Valencia in the middle of the chaos of Spain's financial chaos. I like this author.
About to start a review copy of Lineup, an Israeli crime story. I did not enjoy the only other Israeli crime novel I have read - The Missing File - so am looking forward to this one in the hopes it will set the record straight.

Started North of Boston by Elisabeth Elo, enjoying so far, though I'm not blown away by it.

Tore through The Discarded as I usually do with the Quinn novels. This one was good, but I dread the note of domesticity at the end. Ugh. Why do all action heroes need to breed and settle down?

Anyway...am about 1/3 into Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, which I don't know if it really qualifies for this genre, but since it deals with murder and capital punishment, it might. I like it a lot despite the fact that it's so dire. Poverty, cruelty, filth, squalor, injustice...it's all in there.

Just read Jack & Jill by James Patterson which I liked very much. 4 stars.

Now I'm reading The First Horseman by John Case. So far it's been very good.

I've just started Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos by Donna Andrews, third in the Meg Lanslow series.

33

The latest Ruth Galloway book, The Outcast Dead, by Elly Griffiths. It's pretty good!

Have finished Pick Your Victim by Pat McGerr, The Summer School Mystery by Josephine Bell and Death of an Old Goat by Robert Barnard in the last week or so. Just started another Robert Barnard, Death on the High C's.

Just took a couple of days to read Try Dying by James Scott Bell. It's about a lawyer who seemingly lost his fiancee in a freak auto accident and finds out after her funeral that she was actually murdered. Also, he's charged with killing a popular TV reporter. The problem is, he didn't do it--and has to prove it. A very good book--four stars.

Just started reading The Chairman by Stephen Frey, which is a thriller set against a backdrop of high finance on Wall Street.

Finished Killer by Jonathan Kellerman and I'm about to start I've Got You Under My Skin by Mary Higgins Clark

Started & finished 4:50 From Paddington in one day. Pleasant. For once I had the murderer pegged early on.

Now for something completely different - The Name of the Game is Death a mid-century noir novel that has a great reputation. I've never read any Dan Marlowe before, but I have high hopes.

Black Seconds by Karin Fossum

First line:
~The days went by so slowly~

What did I think?
A young girl goes missing and seems to have vanished without a trace. Fossum takes us inside the head of her mother, her aunt and uncle, her cousins and the police who are investigating the disappearance.

I won this book a number of years ago in a contest put on by the local newspaper and put it on a shelf. There it sat until this month when the 2014 Category Group chose Nordic Mysteries as the April MysteryCat and I figured this was the time to check it out. I am very glad I did.

Although I figured out ‘who done it’, long before Inspector Sejer did, what worked for me was the depth of the characters and the way that the author crafted the story so that we, the reader do know before the police. We are privy to the ‘thinking’ of the characters so know much more than the inspector does who only has access to physical evidence and whatever information the people involved tell him. And, although I did figure out the perp it was through subtle information ie no one outright said, “I did it”. And it took the rest of the book to understand the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ for the crime.

I’ll definitely check out more by this author.

3.5 stars

Reading a Norwegian book, Malstrømmen (the maelstrom) by Frode Granhus. Pretty good so far.

I can see in the Dark by Karin Fossum , which I read in the English translation, drew me in, initially, thanks to the writing skills of the author, but not enough to prevent me skimming many pages in order to avoid the nastier byways of the psychopathic protaganist's disordered mind and the troubling descriptions of his torturing of the helpless aged and disabled.

Just not my cup of tea. Kudos to the translator James Anderson though. He was never 'visible'.

>42 Thrin: Now that sounds dark!

The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Read Knots and Crosses the first Rebus. Though well written, the plot seemed a bit cliched.

43 ccookie

And I didn't even mention the budgerigar!

I'm listening to old favourite Sara Paretsky's Critical Mass. I was not sure of the last I listened to... Breakdown... it seemed a bit too "Warshawski in perpetual rage"... much as I love her. But so far I am happy with this one.

>30 SaraHope: Your touchstone goes to a poetry collection by Robert Frost.

I am a quarter of the way through The Poisonous Seed : a Frances Doughty Mystery by Linda Stratmann. This is the debut novel of the series. Good stuff!

My latest is a light, quick read by a Canadian thriller writer, Linwood Barclay: Never Saw it Coming. Not bad, not great, and I found some parts of it kind of funny, but maybe that's just me!

I finished Agatha Christie's Endless Night, which I found a bit disappointing. It was well written but not much of a mystery...

Finished Celebrity in Death, and started another Clare/Russ mystery, To Darkness and To Death.

Reading The Redbreast -- my first book by Nesbø.

Ready to go with A Killing at Ball's Bluff, another Civil War mystery by Michael Kilian. First in the series was promising enough to hunt down the next couple.

I'm just about halfway through In Cold Blood. I am finding it seductive and enticing rather than compelling...as weird as that sounds for a non-fiction book about the horrific murder of a family.

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves Am I the only one who always thinks of Henry VIII?

>55 quartzite:, No - and what is worse, the Herman's Hermits Henry the 8th song pops into my head soon after and wont go away!

Finished Death on the High C's by Robert Barnard. Quite good, but the ending was a little disappointing.

Started and didn't finish a couple of duds, but am now enjoying Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett.

>54 lesmel: By way of tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman... I've just watched the dvd of Capote which essentially revolves around the writing of In Cold Blood. It's a very good film. Beautiful photography too. And left me wondering if the "cold blood" was Capote's.

started Destroyer Angel by Nevada Barr

>58 greydoll: I have the DVDs of In Cold Blood & Capote on hold request. I am very curious about the writing of the book & Capote's life during that time period.

I'm reading In Matto's Realm, by Friedrich Glauser. Swiss, written in the 30s about death and disappearance in an insane asylum, by a man who was often in one.

I am reading the 6th James Bond book, Doctor No… Once again I am surprised by how much more human Bond is in the books than in the movies!

Finished Thankless in Death after a mishap with the audio version from the library (one of the disks turned out to be blank so had to finish in print form) and am getting ready to read World of Trouble, the finale in The Last Policeman trilogy.

Just read In the Blood by Lisa Unger which is about a troubled college student who takes a job as babysitter for an emotionally-disturbed 11-year-old boy. It was a superb psychological thriller--five stars.

Just started reading the cozy mystery Lending a Paw by Laurie Cass about a librarian who drives a bookmobile and is accompanied by her cat. At her last stop on the bookmobile's maiden voyage the cat leads her to the dead body of the benefactor who wrote the check funding the bookmobile. So far this book has been very good.

Finished In Matto's Realm. It was entertaining but bleak, man, bleak. Not reading any other mysteries at the moment.

Just finished The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did the others in the series; Flavia seems to be maturing so much now-I miss her reckless, impulsive self!

Just downloaded Fire and Ice by Kate Shugak. I'm excited that it was free too!
I'm also really looking forward to Street Justice by Kris Nelscott. I love Smokey Dalton. (I'm a newbie. Couldn't figure out how to highlight a book that didn't come up as a touchstone.)

I'm now reading Hard Candy by Andrew Vachss, fourth in the Burke series.

>67 MelissaYuanInnes: Hi, Melissa ~ Welcome! I think there's a wiki page that tells you how to do a lot of neat stuff on the threads, but I like to go here and here for the quick and dirty.

I'm enjoying these historical series with great, authentic detail of the times -

Just finished Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear.
The first in the series is Maisie Dobbs
These are set in Britain post WWI.

Almost done with Ashworth Hall by Anne Perry.
First one is Cater Street Hangman
Charaters Charlotte and Thomas Pitt solve crimes in Victorian England.

Next mystery on my bedside table is Murder in Little Italy: a Gaslight Mystery by Victoria Thompson.
First one - Murder on Astor Place
Sarah Brandt is a midwife at the turn of the last century in NYC.

Finished Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett and The Pursued by C.S. Forester.

>70 nrmay: Love all these authors...have probably read Victoria Thompson the least of the three, but I've liked the ones I've come across.

Have you seen that Jacqueline Winspear is releasing a stand-alone World War I novel next month? (The Care and Management of Lies) It's on the bucket list, but I'm still a couple behind in the Maisie Dobbs Series. First things first.

Reading and enjoying No Mark Upon Her by Deborah Crombie.

At long last, starting on Elegy for Eddie. Lovely how, when you pick up on a favorite author after a long absence, all the details and characters of previous installments in a series come rushing back.

I'm a Reacher creature and I read the latest in the series - Never Go Back and got to say I was very disappointed. The story was so so and really dragged. Maybe my expectations were too high and I hope its not the start of a decline.

Finished up recently with Tuesdays Gone, which I enjoyed despite the plausibility issues that seem to plague the books of Nicci French. They're appealing stories, regardless.

I am about 70 pages into Broken Harbour by Tana French, and am really enjoying what looks like being quite a long journey (over 500 pages). The characters are beautifully drawn, and the author's subtle wit nicely balances the bleakness of the tale. For me that's what is missing from a lot of recent crime (and other) fiction: Wit. I wonder if it's something that gets lost in the translation into English of some of the 'Scandinavian' novels, for example.

Anyway, I just hope my initial interest in Broken Harbour can be sustained throughout this rather 'big' book: Too big and heavy to take with me on the bus. I know, I know, I *could* get a Kindle (or one of its kithles).

Edited, a few hours further into Broken Harbour, to add that the ironic wit I detected in some of the earlier dialogue seems to have evaporated as the police proceed with their investigation. This book has certainly got my full attention though. Quite gripping.

Since I last posted I read Delayed Diagnosis by Gwen Hunter. As medical thrillers go it was very good--I gave it four stars.

Now I'm reading The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz. The protagonist, Izzy, has a wacky, dysfunctional family so there's a lot of funny stuff. So far I've been enjoying it.

I have read several since my last posting here:

Maigret and the Black Sheep
The Way Through the Woods
The Abominable Man

and am currently on The Absent One... of those, The Abominable Man was the best, although the Maigret was a solid police procedural.

I started Broken English by P.L. Gaus. It's the second in a series set in Amish country. I enjoyed both the characters and the setting in the first one. I found it not quite a cozy but certainly not a violent thriller either. This one began with an Amish man being unable to forgive his daughter's murderer as he'd intended to do. Promising.

Mid April I finished reading In the Midst of Death by Lawrence Block.

First line:
~ October is about as good as the city gets~

This, the third book in the Matt Scudder series, moves us along in getting to know Scudder, a skilled, private investigator. If you have read my reviews of Book 1 and Book 2 The Sins of the Fathers and Time to Murder and Create you will know that I am more interested in the development of Scudder than in the actual mystery that he solves. Having said that, I always find Block’s stories keep my attention to the end.

In this book, Scudder investigates on behalf of a policeman who has been framed for a murder he did not commit.

And as he investigates we get more insight into Scudder and how he lives his life, on the edges of skid row. His struggles with alcoholism continue. His denial has been solid. A new friend who is an alcoholic suggests he might be one also and at one point Scudder finds himself outside an AA meeting. However, he leaves without going in. We can see that he is beginning to question whether or not he can ‘take it or leave it’ as he often maintains.

I do enjoy this series very much and I am on to the next one as soon as I can get it from the library.

3.5 stars

April 16th I finished listening to Paper Doll by Robert B. Parker I am happily rereading all the Spenser books and still loving them as much as the first time through many years ago.

First line:
~London Tripp, wearing a seersucker suit and a Harvard tie sat in my office on a very nice day in September and told me he'd looked into my background and might hire me~

Spenser is hired by a find upstanding citizen, Louden Tripp, whose wife was brutally murdered. Tripp does not believe, as the police do, that the killing was a random act. Spenser finds something ‘off’ in the perfect life that Tripp describes to him. He discovers a world of illusion. Nothing is as it seems. There are twists and turns and Spenser solves the mystery in his inimitable style.

And along the way we learn more and more about Spenser, the love of his life, Susan and his friend and colleague, Hawk.

I love this series!

3.5 stars

April 19th : finished Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum

First line:
~Ragnhild opened the door cautiously and peered out~

This is Karin Fossum's second book in her Inspector Sejer series but the first published in English. I can see why she is known as the Norwegian Queen of Crime. I read Black Seconds and immediately read three more of her books. She is amazing. I cannot believe the way that she gets into the antagonist's head or, rather, allows us to get into the antagonist's head.

I have found that as the reader is privy to the thoughts and feelings of the perpetrator of the crime, we know more than the police which is really very different from other books I have read. The depth of the characters captures my interest. I want to know more about Inspector Sejer and his partner, Jacob Skarre.

This story deals with a murder of a teenage girl and the clues unfold carefully and subtly as we learn more about each character.

Very disturbing and yet a great read.

3.5 stars

April 21st finished He Who Fears the Wolf by Karin Fossum - TIOLI #3 - Read a book by an author or in a series or about a topic of which you have multiples on your TBR/wish list

First line:
~A dazzling ray of light slanted in through the trees~

What did I think?
This is the third book I have read by Karin Fossum who I just discovered a few weeks ago. I love her writing, the way she crafts the mystery and the depth of her characters.

This story involves the brutal murder of an elderly woman and a bank robbery. The perpetrators of the crimes intersect with devastating consequences. There are multiple suspects and along the way we learn more about Inspectors Sejer and Skarre. I love these books and am immediately moving on to the next one.

I’ll give this one 4.0 stars just because there was so much in it!