Academy Girls by Nora Carroll

Rating: WARTY!

I ditched this book at 90% in because there was one-the-hell-way-too many stanzas of over-rated Emily Dick and some for my taste. I honestly could not stand to read one more obscure-to-the-point-of-vacuous line from her. On top of that, I felt this was a bait and switch on two levels. I requested to read an advance review copy of this novel precisely because it wasn't (according to the blurb) a teen high school melodrama. It was, so I was led to believe, about an adult!

I've sworn off reading any more YA novels with "Academy" in the title, and this promised to turn that on its head by being adult-oriented, and focusing on a teacher at the purportedly prestigious Grove Academy instead of on the bitchy, air-headed girls who usually infest such stories. It wasn't. It was the latter going under the guise of the former. Worse than this even, was that this was really nothing more than an overblown attempt at explicating Dickinson drivel in place of telling a real story. I didn't even get the obsession with that poet; any such poetry would have served the same purpose hers did in this context.

On top of that, what story there was, was all over the place. It was flashing back on several levels and with such obsessive-compulsive dedication that I was at one point considering filing a lawsuit for whiplash. Even in the sections that were not dedicated flashbacks, there was an ostensibly plagiarized novel in play which was telling exactly the same story we were also being told in the annoyingly extensive flashbacks, if you can get your mind around that, and in annoyingly extensive detail. It was tedious, and I started routinely skipping these sections.

On top of that, the supposedly mature teacher was behaving like a teen herself around a certain other teacher who I highly suspected (rightly or wrongly, I can't say) was ankle-deep in whatever it was that happened during those flashbacks - which themselves flashed back to an even earlier generation where there was yet another murder. How this Academy managed to maintain its prestigious veneer with all of this going on was really the only unexplained mystery here for me.

Jane Milton - yes, that's really her name - was a student at Grove, left without a diploma, tried writing, failed, got married, failed, and now was forced to come back to her old school, cap in hand, begging for a job as a teacher, for which she was wholly unqualified. Her story is what interested me, but we never got that story except in passing, and in a way that felt like it was completely incidental to the other story/ies. Instead, and pretty much from day one, we got the mystery of what happened when she was in high school investigating, with her two "friends", what happened when her own mother would have been in high school. Convoluted doesn't begin to describe it adequately.

I think if maybe I'd had the time and patience - and sufficient Promethazine to get me through the dick poetry which slathered these pages with all the delicacy of a bull in a book store (and was in the final analysis, utterly irrelevant to the story except in the most pretentious way imaginable), I might have made it through this in one day and been able to actually keep track of the plethora of potential villains who were randomly popping up and ducking down like whack-a-mole characters, but to try and keep a handle on the endless names over multiple readings over many days was impossible, which robbed the story of any potential it might have had to retain my attention and favor.

I quickly lost interest in Jane, since she consistently proved herself to be a spineless idiot with nothing interesting to offer me. The only thing which prevented me from wishing she would be bumped-off was the fact that she was a single mom, but she wasn't even very good at that, either! Her relationship with her son was virtually non-existent and what did exist was almost completely unrealistic. I'm tempted to say that the story was disorganized, but that would involve using the word 'organized' in connection with this novel, and that would be too generous in describing this patchy mashup. I cannot recommend this at all.

Killing Secrets by Dianne Emley

Title: Killing Secrets
Author: Dianne Emley
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
There wasno..." - space missing, should be "There was no..." (p10 Adobe Digital Editions version).
There were a couple of other errors of this nature, but otherwise the writing was pretty well done.

This is your standard murder detective story with all the associated tropes and clichés. That doesn't mean it can't be an engrossing story, just that it was too early to tell in chapter one. I had some issues with it as detailed below, and in the final analysis I can't recommend it. I quit reading twenty pages from the end as soon as the supposedly ruthless villain began monologuing and we had a précis of the entire novel. Not only was it boring, it was the last straw in what had been a very borderline novel even to that point!

The vics, a teacher and a teenage boy were found by Emily Vining, daughter of detective Nan Vining, in a park. So already we have a family involvement and a conflict between daughter and mom since Emily is at the park after dark with a boy she knows her mother will not like. We're pretty much telegraphed that there's a conspiracy going on here, up the highest levels, as the saying goes.

One thing that immediately bothered me is that the female vic is described as pretty and young - as though the murder wouldn't have been so bad had she been old and/or 'ugly'. We're told that she's young twice in almost as many lines, but when the guy is described, we don't get pretty for him, or 'studly', or handsome, or beautiful, or good-looking. He's just a guy, so obviously we need to go deeper than mere skin for him than we do for a female, where a simple definition by age and skin-deep appearance is apparently quite sufficient to categorize her.

I don't get this obsession with describing all women as pretty or beautiful in novels (except for where the plot calls for them to be old or repellent in some way, of course). Why do writers do this in such a disturbingly knee-jerk manner? Why do they - and I'm concerned about female writers especially here - feel this evidently overwhelming need to make even victims of a murder pretty rather than just regular everyday people? I'd rather read about real people in my fiction, not caricatures or fantasies, or popular habits. But that's just me.

"Police Detective" Nan is advised that she will probably want to drive Emily home, because no teen girl can possibly drive herself home after this, no matter who she is. She's only a weak woman after all (and pretty, too!), a girl of at least sixteen who Nan nevertheless infantilizes by calling her "sweet pea" which could with a slight change of spelling just as ably describe the constitution of her urine as it can a wilting flower. No wonder she can't drive herself home. She's been disabled since birth by her own mom. We see this friction in stark profile later.

Another thing which was really confusing was the hierarchical relationship within the Pasadena police department. We learn that Sergeant Early (and she is consistently described as a sergeant, never as a detective sergeant) is Nan's "commanding officer" but a sergeant really isn't a commanding officer. She may be Nan's superior officer, but only if she's a detective sergeant and Nan a lower-ranked detective. The problem is that we're also told that Nan is the senior officer in Homicide, so there's a lot of confusion as to what this means.

Senior could mean that she's the highest ranked officer, or merely that she's been there longest, but that latter option begs the question as to why her rank isn't higher. We're not initially told her rank, but later, a superior officer refers to her as 'corporal'. I have personally never heard of this actually being a rank in the police (as far as I can recall), although I understand it's considered one in some unformed branches. It's not a detective thing as far as I'm aware. But that's only as far as I'm aware.

I skipped chapter fifteen because it brought a huge screeching halt to the story just as I was actually beginning to become somewhat interested in it. Another thing which bothered me came right after this when they had a memorial service for the vics, which took place breathlessly close to the discovery of the bodies, but the problem was that some known gang members and prison parolees were in the crowd. Instead of being asked to leave, they were allowed to stay. I didn't get that at all. It was in no way appropriate for them to be there.

One problem with Detective Nan Vining is that she seems to be incompetent. Despite being told that the teen victim, Jared, was researching his father's death, not believing that it was a suicide, she fails to take the boy's laptop, which is the obvious repository for any research he might have been doing, and then the laptop is stolen. She fails to pursue any laptop or other device for the female Victim Erika, and later those things are evidently not in evidence as well! This didn't imbue me with any faith at all in her ability, and this faith further retreated into inaccessibility the more I read of her actions.

Just before the half-way point in the novel, Nan calls a guy who is in DC, and who is obviously more than just a friend, but the assumption here is that every reader knows who this is. Since I have read no other books in this series, I had no idea who he was or what he really represented to Nan, but there was nothing in the text here to offer even a modicum of guidance. This was came completely out of the blue, especially since he hadn't been mentioned at all, not even in passing, up to this point. That struck me as odd.

I managed to stay with this story almost to the end, but as I said, it wasn't credible, there were what seemed to me to be pointless digressions from the investigation which served only to irritate me, and I didn't find the story overall to be credible. I didn't like the main chracter and had no desire whatsoever to read more about her. Your investigation may yield different results!

Last Shot by Eve Gaddy

Title: Last Shot
Author: Eve Gaddy
Publisher: Belle Books
Rating: WARTY!

This author got on my good side in only the second paragraph when she wrote: "Brown hair, so dark it was almost black.". If you've read my reviews you'll realize that at times I've taken an author to task for writing something dumb like "black hair so black it was almost blue". It was nice not to see that here, but the novel still packed an awful lot of clichés and sadly formulaic writing, not least of which was the title. Last Shot? Barnes and Noble has three web pages of titles just like this, but I can't rate this positively because its biggest problem was positioning itself as a murder mystery when it's really just a tawdry romance.

I thought this was to be a murder mystery from the blurb, even as I realized that there would be romance "... and no matter how hot he is, she's not interested." I knew that was an outright lie! Della is obsessed with Studly Do-Right's body from the start - not his personality, not his integrity, not his decency, not his warmth, not his friendship, not his reliability, but his body from minute one, and she never lets it go, not for a minute. if a guy had been written with this same one-track mindset, the author would rightly have been pilloried for objectifying women. How is it any different here?

She's obsessing on his body non-stop despite witnessing a close friend get shot. Even when stud-muffin Nick is lying in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound after saving her life, she can't get her mind onto anything but his body. In short, Della Rose disgusted me every bit as much as a male character would if he were obsessing on a female in this same way, so why does Della get a bye for objectifying a guy? What, sauce for the goose is saucy for the gander? Is that it? I don't subscribe to that.

What makes this truly sad is that Della was an interesting character and this was a good set-up for a story. She's a single mom with a past. Her boss is shot. No one knows why. The Sheriff is dishonest, her only hope is a burned-out cop? How cool could that have been had it been handled properly, i.e. not put under the cookie cutter of trope romance?

Even her attraction to Nick wouldn't have been so bad had we not been treated to repeated descriptions of Nick's "beautifully rippling muscles" which really cheapened the story for me immensely. Can we not have a story about ordinary people? Do we have to dwell on buff carnality - which quite frankly destroys the artistry of romance with the caustic paint stripper of lust? I wish more authors would make the effort to grasp the crucial differences between the two. I could have liked Della and rooted for her, but after three chapters of her monotonously boundless lust, I was truly nauseated.

It only got worse when I realized that Eve Gaddy is yet another writer who doesn't know the difference between 'staunch' and 'stanch'. For me personally, I'm a staunch supporter of those who stanch blood running from open wounds. Too many writers are not!

I made it to page 75 in this story and it was just too boring and predictable to stay with it. There was nothing interesting going on, and the author was far more interested in rambling on and tediously on and endlessly on about how hot Della thought Nick looked and how hot he thought she looked. There was no mystery here, no thrills, no adventure, no danger. It was boring. I can't recommend this novel.

I have to issue a final warning on this, too. While this novel read fine in Adobe Digital Editions, and also in my Kindle, on my iPad, the novel read backwards. I am not kidding. It started on page 234 (or whatever the last page was - I forget), and to read it you had to swipe backwards to progress forwards through the novel, watching the page count go down instead of up! It was weird. I've never seen a novel do that before. I even downloaded it afresh, thinking it was just a bad download, but it wasn't. The iPad edition is screwed up.

Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart

Title: Jade Dragon Mountain
Author: Elsa Hart
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WORTHY!

Possible erratum:
Page 272 "indicate" is used where "implicate" would be more appropriate. Either can be used here though, so maybe this isn't an error.

There was a prologue which I skipped as I do all prologues. Chapter one begins on page seven, so the book is some 315 pages long. It's set in China either at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or the beginning of the twentieth, thinks I, depending upon which Prince Frederick of Saxony is referred to in the text. There were three. I was wrong: it was actually set in 1780.

There is nothing in the text per se to show in what year this takes place, not until page 131, where we see a letter which was dated December 1707. We're told that this letter's date is "...only several months ago...", yet the book blurb assures us that this is taking place in 1780! One character mentions Prince Frederick of Saxony. The Kingdom of Saxony existed only between 1806 and 1918, and the only prince Fredericks were: Frederick Augustus I 1806 - 1827, Frederick Augustus II 1836 - 1854, Frederick Augustus III 1904 - 1918.

There was an Electorate of Saxony prior to this, and there was an Elector Frederick Augustus III was in power around 1780, but not in 1707 and anyway, to call him a prince is mistaken and misleading, but aside from that, I noticed no other glaring errors - and they would have had to have been glaring for me to see them since my knowledge of eighteenth century China is non-existent!

Author Elsa Hart is a genuine Roman! She was born in Roma, Italy and has lived in Russia, and in the Czech Republic, the US, and China. This novel was actually written in Lijiang, which used to be known as Dayan, the setting for this story.

It begins with Li Du, a once respected librarian who fell into disgrace because of his association with malcontents in Beijing. He was exiled from the capital by the Emperor himself, evidently lucky to have retained his head. Now Li Du spends all his time traveling alone, and on the very edge of the Chinese borderlands, he stops at the city of Dayan, an outpost which is becoming ever more crowded as people gather to see the all-powerful god-emperor hide the sun. Li Du has to report in to the magistrate, who happens to be a cousin, who is none too pleased with the disgrace Li Du has brought upon the family.

His cousin would normally send him on his way into the mountains, but the emperor is coming to the city to perform his miracle - seemingly to precipitate this eclipse which in reality he knows is coming because it was predicted by Jesuit scholars. Li Du's cousin doesn't trust all the foreigners crowding into his city, and demands a favor of Li Du: spend a few days here, talk to the foreign guests, find out what their attitudes and purposes are, report back, and then he can go on his way with his cousin's blessing.

The first night he's there, one of the two Jesuit Priests, an elderly astronomer, is murdered. Li Du discovers that he was poisoned, but no-one seems to care, not with the emperor due to arrive in only six days. Li Du's cousin becomes annoyed at Li Du's potential for stirring up trouble over this murder, so he signs his papers early and pretty much runs him out of town without even giving him the courtesy of providing him with a rail.

Unable to live with the idea of someone getting away with murder, Li Du abruptly halts his journey and resolves to return to the city from which he was ejected by his own cousin, and solve this murder. He has less than a week to do it and he risks of the wrath of the Emperor should he fail.

As writers we're told to write what we know, but no writer really ever does that when you get right down to it. Joanne Rowling never met a dark lord and she certainly never attended a school for witchcraft and wizardry, yet she wrote seven best sellers in the subject. Jack McDevitt never traveled between the stars, yet he wrote not one but two (mostly) excellent series of novels on that very topic! Elsa Hart never lived in China in the eighteenth century, but she sure lived there when she wrote this, and I think that shows.

You don't have to be Chinese or to have lived in the eighteenth century to write a good novel on the topic. You don't even need to be accurate to write it well, not for me, at least. The truth is that very few people would be in a position to call you out on errors - unless, of course, those errors are glaring. Typically I really don't care that much because for me, she's written it convincingly, regardless of how spot-on accurate or how far adrift from the truth she actually is. That's what's important for me. The only reason I looked up the prince was to try and figure out exactly when this was supposed to be taking place!

Unable to live with the idea of someone getting away with murder, Li Du resolves to return to the city he's effectively been tossed out of by his own cousin, and solve this murder. He has less than a week to do it and the risk of the wrath of the Emperor should he fail.

What follows is a really excellent story, which I enjoyed immensely. The author is a skilled writer and while she did drop into a bit too much detail for my taste here and there, overall the story moved well. It moved intelligently, and the plot definitely thickened! I'm usually bad at figuring out who dunnit, so I was rather thrilled in this case to narrow it down to two people one of whom was the actual killer. I even figured out what the motive was, but what I didn't see coming was not one, but two twists at the end, one of which was big, and both of which I really appreciated. This was an excellent and speedy read, and I fully recommend it. I'd love to have read more about Lady Chen and Bao, but that's a minor complaint.

The Girl Who Played With Fire Adapted by Denise Mina

Title: The Girl Who Played With Fire
Author: Denise Mina
Publisher: DC Comics (Warner Bros)
Rating: WORTHY!

Art by Andrea Mutti, Antonio Fuso, and Leonardo Manco.
Colors by Giulia Brusco and Patricia Mulvihill, and Lee Loughridge.
Letters by Steve Wands.

I already reviewed this novel so what's up here? Well I originally read this in print book form. Later, I listened to it in audio book form, so now it's only right that I check out the graphic novel too, right?! That's why this review is shorter than I normally write. I'm not going into any details of the plot since I've been there and done that, and you can get those from my original review. This review is all about the graphic side of things.

The graphic novel again relates Steig Larsson's original story faithfully and while there's just as much violence in this volume, there's no sex at all worth the mention. I don't know why, but the art work here didn't grab me like it did in the first two volumes. I was nowhere near as fond of the rendering of Lisbeth here as I was in the previous outing, but the art was very workman-like and got a complex job done. It just didn't leave quite the same pleasant taste the previous material did. One notable exception (illustrated on my blog) was the full page rendition of Lisbeth's dragon tattoo, which I thought was really good.

The lettering felt better in this one than in the previous volumes, and it seemed a better reading experience to me for that. Maybe I was just more used to it this time after reading two previous volumes? On this topic, I was amused where we saw one frame of a report which was actually information about a software license, but imaged with the lettering backwards! Later we get a news report, but if you look at it. It consists of the same paragraph repeated over and over again.

We do get to meet a member of the Evil Fingers punk band which is mentioned in the book, and which is now a group of female friends who are close - as close, that is, as Lisbeth would ever let anyone get. Lisbeth was never in the band since she's tone deaf, but she was part of the post-band gatherings. It doesn't specify the name of the band member who is interviewed. We know it's not lead singer Cilla Norén, unless she's changed her hair completely and lost a lot of weight, yet that's the band member whom officer Faste interviewed in the novel.

So, to sum up, I didn't like this quite as much as I liked the first book (which was in two parts), but I still think it's a worthy contribution to the canon. I am looking forward to, and hoping for, the third volume to be completed.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Part 2 Adapted by Denise Mina

Title: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Part 2
Author: Denise Mina
Publisher: DC Comics (Warner Bros)
Rating: WORTHY!

Art by Andrea Mutti and Leonardo Manco.
Colors by Giulia Brusco and Patricia Mulvihill.
Letters by Steve Wands and Lee Bermejo.

I already reviewed this novel so what's up here? Well I originally read this in print book form. Later, I listened to it in audio book form, so now it's only right that I check out the graphic novel too, right?! That's why this review is shorter than I normally write. I'm not going into any details of the plot since I've been there and done that, and you can get those from my original review. This review is all about the graphic side of things.

Again, as with volume one, I was impressed with this. Denise Mina's writing covered everything of import, but also kept the pace tight. Steve Wands's and Lee Bermejo's lettering was nothing spectacular, and a bit on the small side. Obviously you can't hide the image under large blocks of text, but for me, and especially in this era of e-comics, lettering is nearly always a too small. I was glad I read this in print form as opposed to on an e-pad. What impressed me were Giulia Brusco's and Patricia Mulvihill's colors and Andrea Mutti's and Leonardo Manco's art work which continued the same standard set in volume one. The covers were excellent in quality, but as I mentioned in the review of volume 1 thought that the cover for part 2 didn't capture Lisbeth Salander. The face was wrong, somehow. The interior artwork captured her magically.

The hilariously squeamish depictions of nudity continued. I found it curious that there were no-holds-barred when it came to violence, but that genitalia were deemed too horrific to show! One of the most important scenes - the rape of Lisbeth Salander, was glossed over a little too conveniently. We get the full gloory of the headless cat, with its bloody entrails all over, yet a central event of the brutal rape of a woman is deemed inappropriate?

Nothing overt was depicted except blood and strongly implied violence. A sheet strategically covered her butt crack afterwards. Seriously? If you're going to show the violence, then show it, don't blow it. If all you feel you can show is blood spatter, then don't show anything. This part made no sense because it robbed Lisbeth of the full horror of her torture. I didn't get the point of a graphic novel that's inconsistently graphic! Why the artist would baulk at that, and not at blood spray and cat entrails is weird to me.

That gripe aside, I really liked this overall, and I recommend it. I'm certainly going to buy it if I get a chance.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Part 1 Adapted by Denise Mina

Title: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Part 1
Author: Denise Mina
Publisher: DC Comics (Warner Bros)
Rating: WORTHY!

Art by Andrea Mutti and Leonardo Manco.
Colors by Giulia Brusco and Patricia Mulvihill.
Letters by Steve Wands and Lee Bermejo.

I already reviewed this novel so what's up here? Well I originally read this in print book form. Later, I listened to it in audio book form, so now it's only right that I check out the graphic novel too, right?! That's why this review is shorter than I normally write. I'm not going into any details of the plot since I've been there and done that, and you can get those from my original review. This review is all about the graphic side of things.

So I was very impressed with this work. It's been somewhat updated from the original novel to include smart phones, for example, but otherwise is faithful to it. Denise Mina's adaptation was sparse but covered everything that was important, and kept the story moving at a clip. Steve Wands's and Lee Bermejo's lettering was pretty much boiler-plate comic book, so there was nothing there to praise. On the downside, lettering is nearly always a little too small for my taste, especially if you're trying to read it on a screen, such as an iPad. I'm glad I read this in actual print form. It would have been annoying on a pad. What impressed me were Giulia Brusco's and Patricia Mulvihill's colors and Andrea Mutti's and Leonardo Manco's art work. Both were excellent for my taste and really brought the story to life. The covers were excellent in quality, but I thought that the part 2 cover really didn't capture Lisbeth Salander. The face was wrong, somehow. The interior artwork captured her magically.

I was amused by the depictions of nudity (and almost every eligible female gets nude in this graphic novel, even young Harriet, whereas only one guy does). The amusement came from the apparent squeamishness of the artists to depict genitals and butt cracks! I've never understood this, especially when violence is depicted without a single thought to covering it up! Are we to understand from this that our society believes that looking at something sensuous and beautiful is verboten, whereas violence is cool?>/p>

To me breasts are far more out there, provocative and 3D, than ever female genitals are, so what's with the shyness? We got mammaries a-go-go, but whenever there was any danger of a vulva heaving into view, there was always something in the way: panties, or a judiciously draped sheet reminiscent of the wispy gauze which inexplicably floated around in classical paintings of nudes. The same applies to male genitalia.

So, overall, I highly recommend this - especially if you haven't read the original. It's a great introduction to the first novel of the trilogy, but the cost, I have to say is pretty steep. It's forty dollars for both of the volumes which make up the first novel, so you might want to get this from your library before you decide to buy, or look for it used. I would definitely like to buy these two.

Murder and Mendelssohn by Kerry Greenwood

Title: Murder and Mendelssohn
Author: Kerry Greenwood
Publisher: Bolinda Audio
Rating: WARTY!

Read impeccably by Stephanie Daniel.

'
I first met Phryne Fisher on Netflix where two seasons can be found as of this writing, both of which I've seen. There will be a third series and perhaps more, since this is a real money-spinner for ABC (that's the Australian ABC, not the US ABC!) and deservedly so. I fell in love with Phryne from the first episode. Essie Davis is magical in the title rôle, and the whole show is smart, fast-paced, daring, socially conscious, and majorly fun. Note that the name is pronounced Fry-Knee - which is why the TV series came to be titled "The Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries" - no one wanted to have to teach everyone how to pronounce the name!

The problem is that when you're hit like that and become so on-board (with a movie or a show), it's a tough decision as to whether to go to the book, just as it is in moving the other way. Books and movies/shows are very different entities, and the trick when you wish to migrate one to the other is to capture the essence if not the letter. In this case, it worked, because now having read the first in the series of books which kicked-off the shows, I can come down very favorably for both outlets, although be warned, the two are quite different in many respects.

It pains me therefore to have to rate this, the latest volume negatively, but I have to! While I happily admit that there were parts of this novel which were the Phryne Fisher quality I’ve come to expect – blasts of sweet humor, highly amusing observations, delightful turns of phrase, amusing character foibles - the story was, unfortunately, also padded way beyond passing interest-level with endless rambling digressions into the activities of the choristers, which was – ultimately – irrelevant to the mystery, and quite frankly boring the pants off me (not literally, I’m happy to report, which would have been decidedly awkward at 65 mph down the highway). There were endless quotes of the lines they were singing, endless digressions into the politics of the group, endless descriptions of their activities, and it was, frankly, tedious and boring after the first one or two.

I don’t know if Kerry Greenwood was involved in, or has taken up, choral singing herself, but to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes (from A Study in Scarlet), and no matter how much you love your hobby, it is a capital mistake to theorize that everyone else will share your deep joy of your personal interests. It biases the judgment. This novel could have been lighter by many pages and the healthier for it had all this been omitted.

Another example of padding was the affair between Phryne and John and Rupert. Phryne’s purpose is, of course to achieve what she did indeed achieve in the end: the conjoining of the two men in a far more romantic and physical manner than they’d enjoyed hitherto. Admirable as that might have been, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the mystery and it annoyed me because I really didn’t like either character to begin with. If it had been dealt with peripherally and briefly, it would have been great, but it wasn’t. There was more than excessive meandering into this relationship which should have been in some other genre of novel the way it was written, and the supposed pinnacle of this story arc was more like a sinking pinnace.

From reading reviews others have written, the Wilson-Sheffield relationship was evidently Greenwood’s interpretation of the Watson-Holmes relationship, which is bullshit. This was not apparent in the audio book which lacked end notes and author commentary, but of which I have to say that the reader, Stephanie Daniel, was awesome, and way better than the material she had to read. Another thing some reviewers have commented on is the, in their evident view, impossibility of a homosexual guy having any sexual interest in a female. This is completely wrong-headed.

Greenwood wasn’t asserting the inverse of that clueless macho trope (as featured in Ian Fleming’s GoldFinger for example) that all a lesbian needs is a masculine guy to “cure” her. Greenwood was merely revealing a fact: that sexuality isn’t a binary thing. It’s not yes or no, on or off, plus or minus. It’s a sliding scale, and not only from female to male, but also within any individual. Just because a guy is preferentially homosexual (and I use preferentially not to indicate a choice, but an orientation) doesn’t preclude that in certain circumstances he might be attracted to a female. To say otherwise is to deny the existence of bisexuals – many if not most of whom doubtlessly have a preferential leaning towards one gender or the other, but this doesn’t preclude them from finding their ‘less-favored’ gender appealing!

What made this novel worse for me is that all of the three main characters in this story: Phryne, John, and Rupert, were complete Mary Sues (in the original sense). Admittedly, Rupert was endowed with a rudeness which gave him a token flaw, but it was such a caricature that it failed for me (and failed to evoke Sherlock Holmes, to boot!). This undiverting diversion was only exacerbated by Phryne and John’s endless perfection and rectitude, and by their endlessly unimpeachable character referencing, and so on. For goodness sakes! I could have done without that. I love Phryne, but the more I’m told how comprehensively wonderful, heroically selfless, unutterably perfect, and endlessly skilled she is, the less attraction I feel to her.

So in the end, I couldn’t finish this story. I got to within two or three disks of the end of the audio book and gave up on it. I honestly couldn’t stand to hear one more choral line quoted! I cannot recommend this, and I think I may have to take a break from the written Phryne for a while and succor myself on the small-screen version again to get over this particular novel.

Dying to Get Published by Judy Fitzwater

Title: Dying to Get Published
Author: Judy Fitzwater
Publisher: Judy Fitzwater
Rating: WARTY!

This novel sounded really intriguing from the blurb - which means the blurb did its job, I guess! The problem was that what started out as a really grabbing premise - a writer concocted a plot for a murder mystery, and is now in prison accused of the very murder she plotted. Yes, it’s been done before, most notably in the movie, Basic Instinct, but it’s always a good idea if you can put a twist or two on it.

The problem with this, for me, was that the author's idea of a twist seemed to be adding a trope romance. That might even have worked except that the murder mystery was forgotten about as we abruptly flashed-back to her romance. Even that might have worked had the new guy in her life been the villain. This brings me to the second problem - the real villain here is the main character. She's pissed off with an agent who wasn't very nice to her (but then she wasn't nice in return, either), and for no good reason decides to start sending her threatening letters. She's plotting her death and it’s not at all clear whether she's really intending to do this, or if she's just playing with ideas for a novel, if playing a little too authentically.

The romance wouldn’t have been so bad had it something original to offer, but it was so clichéd as to be pathetic. The male is tall, so the female can be rendered into a little girl rather than a woman. He has hair falling into his eyes, he's muscular, he has 'startlingly blue eyes', because brown eyes look like…well, not chocolate (so this style of authorship evidently thinks). And he's going to fix her because she's broken, and you know that every girl needs a guy to both fix and validate her. In short, it went quickly down the toilet.

This is one of a series (of seven as of this review), but detective series are really nothing more than a rehash of the original story when you get right down to it, with a few tweaks to the template in order to try and make the next story sound original when it really isn't. I have no time for writers who milk money out of readers like that while eschewing any efforts towards inventiveness or creativity. Some writers can make a series work, and they are to be treasured, but when a series gets off to a boring and clichéd start like this one, I can neither subscribe to nor recommend it.

There was some nice humor here and there, particularly in the writing group that the "detective" attended, and the novel was relatively short, but that's the best I can say for it. One wonderfully and, I assume, unintentional piece of humor was that at one point the protagonist agrees, right at the end of chapter ten, to meet someone at eleven! I loved that, but to put this in relationship terms, this book was simply not there for me when I needed it.

Skewed by Anne McAneny

Title: Skewed
Author: Anne McAneny
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Erratum:
Page 212 "...either approving of either..." - too many eithers!

This novel could have been a classic example of how you can get away with murder with me and still get a positive review. All you have to do is tell a good story and have interesting characters and I'm willing to forgive a lot, but in the end, there was too much to forgive here.

Also, I have to say up front that this is a first person PoV novel, a voice I detest because so few writers can carry it off, and it ends up being arrogant, self-absorbed and self-obsessed. In this case it wasn't so bad - and the author knows the difference between stanch and staunch, so kudos there. but the problem remains that there are several serious problems with 1PoV even for authors who can get away with it.

The first and foremost of these is that it doesn’t work suspense-wise, because you know the story gets finished – so there's zero drama over whether the narrator will survive! For example when main character (and narrator) Jane gets trapped somewhere during this novel, it doesn't make for a chapter-ending cliff-hanger because there is no question of the outcome.

Another problem, which became apparent in the way that this novel was written, is the extreme limitation of being a first person narrator: you're stuck with you! The narrator can't relate anything that they don't experience personally, or the reader ends up with long info-dumps, or boring conversations where the reader has to sit and wait while someone relays what happened elsewhere. It's completely unnatural.

Maybe some readers (and far too many writers, particularly those of the YA persuasion!) feel it brings more immediacy, but to me it brings irritation and annoyance. I routinely put books back on the shelf at the library or the book-store as soon as I discover that they're 1PoV, but it's a lot harder to do that with ebooks - and no book blurb ever gives you the PoV!

The interesting thing about this is that the author here evidently agrees with me: in this story, we periodically reverted to 3PoV because of these limitations, and for me it failed because it kept halting the story at the interesting parts while we went back in time, and I'm asking myself: "So now who's telling the story?" and I'm losing faith in the reliability of what I'm being told. Is the narrator reliable? Is the third party reliable? Who is the third party? We don't know. More on how I dealt with this anon.

As I said, the main character is Jane Elizabeth Perkins, the narrator, who's a police crime scene photographer. That is to say, she's a police employee who photographs crime scenes (not necessarily only ones where police have committed crimes...).

She doesn't sound like she's very good at her job, but she does sound like she has a ferociously nauseating case of YA romantic interest in one of the detectives. We get bitch-slapped with this on page eight (this is only five pages in, since the novel unaccountably starts on page three). Indeed Jane's obsession with Wexler is pathetic and worthy of a trashy YA nomance, not a serious adult novel. It seriously mitigates against Jane being a likable female character. She pulled her chestnuts out of the fire with sufficient dexterity for me to let this slide by, but it was still annoying.

Jane and John (who-is-tediously-and-inevitably-called-Jack) Perkins are inexplicably famous as 'The Haiku Twins'. Fortunately Jack was a minor character or I would have ditched this novel on principle. I don't read novels any more which have main characters named 'Jack' because that name has gone wa-ay beyond cliché, past ludicrous, and well into plaid by now.

But I digress. Jane and John's mom was in her seventh month of the pregnancy with them when she was accidentally shot by Grady McLemore when he was attacked by a third party - someone who got away Scot-free since the police thought Grady had shot Bridget Perkins deliberately. Now Jane's getting anonymously-sent photos of the crime scene - photos which seem to prove that there was indeed a third party present at the scene - namely the guy who took the pictures.

John Perkins doesn't have any interest in solving his mother's murder. He's more interested in his run for DA. Indeed, he sounds like a complete jack-ass, so maybe he was named appropriately. There are two things which bothered me at this point. The first is that the author expects us to believe that some three decades after their birth, everyone still refers to John and Jane as haiku twins, and everyone recognizes them on sight. Frankly, that took far too much to believe. The second problem is that Grady McLemore is still alive. How this works in a nation which has pretty much Universal death penalty - and has been that way for decades - is the real unsolved mystery here! Virginia has been aggressively pro-death penalty, so how did McLemore escape the electric chair in 1985? No explanation!

I had thought that chapter one, which takes place 30 years (and zero hours!) before the present was the prologue, and praised the author for incorporating it into the body of the novel (I don't do prologues), but then I reached chapter five and now we're 30 years (and eleven hours) into the past again. This I did not like because now we're not reading a story, we're riding a switch-back and are risking whiplash!

I'm not really very fond of stories that continually interrupt the flow of the narrative and the action for a flashback. I really don't care for a blow-by-blow account of what happened thirty years ago. I care about what's happening now, and the author is denying me that knowledge. So do I skip the flashback chapters? After reading chapter five - a second flashback chapter - and discovering how utterly irrelevant and boring it was, I decided I was indeed going to skip any and all future flashback chapters (there was a bunch of them). Rest assured that I did not miss them.

Those problems solved, I was able to get on with what turned out to be really a rather good novel (previous complaints aside). So Jane takes these photos she received, and accompanied by Wexler and Nicholls - another detective - delivers them to Sophie Andricola, supposedly some sort of Sherlock Holmes consulting detective type, who evidently doesn't grasp that you can buy decaf coffee pretty much everywhere, even in Virginia. Jane wants her to look at the photos and see if Sophie (name means wisdom, you know!) can provide any further clues. Frankly, I'm not sure I understood the point of this part of the novel. Ultimately Sophie's contribution was irrelevant.

Some parts of this story didn't ring true. For instance, Jane's grandfather is ill and when she visits him in the hospital, he re-writes her mother's last words telling Jane something slightly different from what he's previously told her. This is also rather irrelevant, but anxious to know if he's rambling, Jane asks an "orderly" what medications he's on - trying to decide if he's likely to be coherent.

An orderly? Seriously? Is this the fifties and the military? No, if you want to know what meds he's on, you ask the doctor, or more likely the nurse, who is the one who actually administers the meds, yet despite the author being female, we get a male doctor, a male orderly, and no nurse, male or female. I didn't like that and I find it hard to understand why female authors so routinely marginalize females in their work. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong authors?

The author does do a good job of writing a mystery, and of dangling red herrings misleading throughout, and the romance wasn't as god-awful as it had threatened to be with annoying hints being dropped loudly and routinely, but by this time it was too late. I read about 90% of this novel and then gave up because it was dragging on way too long and it was becoming ever more boring. I got to the point where I really didn't care how it ended and I gave up on it. Life is too short, and there are far too many books out there calling. Every one of them (although doubtlessly many are lying!) promises to be more gripping. I can't recommend this book, but this author does have a future, I think.

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

Rating: WORTHY!

I first met Phryne Fisher on Netflix where two seasons can be found as of this writing, both of which I've seen. there will be a third series and perhaps more, since this is a real money-spinner for ABC (that's the Australian ABC, not the US ABC!) and deservedly so. I fell in love with Phryne from the first episode. Essie Davis is magical in the title rôle, and the whole show is smart, fast-paced, daring, socially conscious, and majorly fun. Note that the name is pronounced Fry-Knee - which is why the TV series came to be titled "The Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries" - no one wanted to have to teach everyone they spoke to how to pronounce the name!

The problem is that when you're hit like that and become so on-board (with a movie or a show), it's a tough decision as to whether to go to the book, just as it is in moving the other way. Books and movies/shows are very different entities, and the trick when you wish to migrate one to the other is to capture the essence if not the letter. In this case, it worked, because now having read the first in the series of books which kicked-off the shows, I can come down very favorably for both outlets, although be warned, the two are quite different in many respects.

The basic plot is the same. Phryne Fisher is (or rather becomes during this introductory edition) a very feisty, plucky, and successful Lady Detective. She's of independent means, so she never charges for her services, and her cases frequently lean towards supporting the downtrodden. Having successfully and very speedily solved a jewel theft at a soirée she was attending in London, Phryne is asked if she would travel to Australia to uncover who might be poisoning. The TV shows starts with the Honorable Phryne Fisher arriving in Australia and taking up residence in a charming house. The book begins with the jewelery theft and then has Phryne travel to Melbourne, where her roots lie, and where she installs herself at the exclusive Windsor Hotel.

Phryne was originally of exceptionally humble means, and came into money (that story deserves telling, but it hasn't yet been told, to my knowledge), so while she thoroughly appreciates (indeed, luxuriates in) the amenities which money can bring, she has not lost sight of where she came from. Phryne knows Doctor Elizabeth MacMillan, an ex-pat Scot who dresses like a man and is as good as any one of them. She's a physician in a women's hospital and this is how Phryne learns of an abortionist (abortion was sadly illegal back then, even in Australia) known as the Mad Butcher, who like to rape his pregnant victims before he virtually kills them performing his 'surgery'.

Cec and Bert, two Aussie blokes who each have a share in a run-down taxi-cab, find themselves with a girl named Alice, post op and tossed into their cab, bleeding onto the seats. They rush her to the hospital, thereby saving Alice's life - just.

Meanwhile Phryne begins to socialize with a view to becoming intimately acquainted with Lydia Andrews, the poisoning victim. As if these two events are not enough, there's also the King of Snow - the cocaine dealer who has taken up residence in Melbourne with a view to making a killing in an untapped market.

Both the show and the novel have all these ingredients, and the end results are largely the same, but the details are different. In the show, Phryne ends up buying Bert and Cec a new cab to replace their cranky aging vehicle - on the understanding that they'll give her priority when she needs them, but she also, in the show, owns the gorgeous Hispano-Suiza that she drives, rather than just leases it for a week. Dot, her maid in the novel becomes a companion in the TV show.

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is a much more important figure in the shows than ever he is in this novel, but perhaps, as the series progresses, his prominence will increase. Constable Hugh Collins is a non-entity in the first book, and Dot, his girl-friend, is unacquainted with him. Also Dot isn't the one who pretends she's looking for an abortion. This rôle is taken in the book, by WPC Jones, a female police officer. This is interesting because in the second series TV show Phryne mentions to jack that there are no female officers on force, a rôle which she fulfills independently!

To cut a great story short, I recommend both this and the TV show! My biggest complaint about these books is that you can't find them in the book store! I did find a couple in the local library and I am sure they're available on-line.

The Last Fairytale by Molly Greene

Title: The Last Fairytale
Author: Molly Greene
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with The Last Fairy Tale by Laura Dawn, or Last Fairy Tales by Edouard Laboulaye, The Last Fairytale: Rise of the Princesses by M'tain A Dubois, this last fairy tale is about Cambria Butler ("Bree"), who is a journalist, after a fashion, and on the night when she's heading out to interview someone, she runs into an old college friend named Gen Delacourt. The way her first name is used here suggests it's the pretentious form of Jen, but it's actually short for Genevieve. Gen has a "1950's physique"?!?!?! I have absolutely no idea what that means. Luckily for Bree, Gen happens to be a lawyer. Luckily, because when Bree arrives for her interview, the man she's supposed to interview in his office is dead, possibly murdered.

A complete jerk of a man (remember that for later) named Taylor Vonnegon (note that this is the kind of novel in which no main character can be cursed with having an ordinary name!), who worked with the deceased, finds her in the office looking at the body and verbally launches into her as though she just murdered him. Bree is treated like dirt by the police - improbably so, in fact, almost like a caricature or a parody. It took a lot to try and convince myself that the detective would be like this when it hadn't even yet been established that there was a murder. I failed. This behavior made no sense whatsoever.

Having Gen's card in her pocket from their earlier meeting allows Bree to call her with her legal predicament, and Gen immediately comes to her rescue. When Bree arrives home at her apartment that same evening, Vonnegon (remember this jerk?) is there waiting for her. He says he wants to apologize! Yep, this guy stalks her and lurks around waiting for her to get home rather than simply calling her, or leaving her alone and simply telling the police he was wrong about her, which would be the decent thing to do if you were actually not a self-important stalker dick.

And this isn't the worst part of this novel! Bree agrees to meet him for lunch the next day in order to get him to speak up for her to the police! Gen has no problem with this and she is Bree's legal counsel! So now he's blackmailing her and she still has no problem with him? He admits he knows she's innocent and he claims he wants to apologize and explain, but he's behaving like a complete dick.

Despite this, weak-kneed, sad-sack Bree caves-in to his blackmail and agrees to meet with him - the guy who could well be the murderer himself! I am not very fond of Bree or her smarts at this point, or of Gen's competence. Gen doesn't, for example, even think for recording the conversation with the man who could be instrumental in exonerating her client.

Had it not been for the goodwill the writer engendered in me by the writing she had displayed in the first few pages, I would have quit reading this then and there. As it was, it went downhill fast, and I couldn't get past chapter ten - about 25%. The author had been on probation from that earlier point onwards, and she violated it too often! I was rather desperately hoping that this would not be yet another novel which shows a woman who, despite being completely snow-plowed by a guy, falls in love with him anyway! This isn't a YA novel, it just plays one between the covers....

At the meeting, Vonnegon explains his behavior, but it doesn't constitute an excuse. It merely proves that he's still a dick. He starts out using his guests' first names, then unaccountably retreats to calling them "Miss...". Meanwhile It's painfully obvious that Bree is in love, or at least in lust with this jerk who treated her like dirt. Now she can see how cultured and wealthy he is, this evidently excuses his dickishness, so it's fine to fall in love with him because he's going to spoil her rotten with his riches, and after all, diamonds are a girls best friend, aren't they? Who needs hearts when you have diamonds with which this guy is going to club his mate, and get her spade, er spayed...? Vomitous maximus.

Bree's biggest problem was not the possibility that she could be arrested as a murder suspect, but that she was desperate for a relationship when she was no-way-in-hell actually ready for one emotionally. She's also too dumb to see that. That's what this story (judged by what I'd read by the time I quit at 25% in) was really all about, deep down. It's yet another story about a female character, written by a female author who is telling us that if you're a woman, you need a man to fix you and then validate you, and the best person to do that is the biggest dickhead of a guy that you can find as long as he's rich and studly-looking. How sad is that?

Bree's utter lack of smarts is repeatedly thrown in our faces. It's the lawyer who has to tell her that there's a story here, which she could write: one about murder and corporate espionage. Bree didn't have what it takes to see that. No wonder she's not a real journalist! We're told that she is a writer who does "Bios, press releases, newsletters, website content, ghost writing, book editor, blogs, social media." She evidently has no work at the moment, so how she manages to live the rather profligate lifestyle she pursues, swanning around doing nothing all day and eating out routinely, I have no idea.

Gen is no better. We're told she is a lawyer who chases straying husbands and finds lost pets. Her partner is a Secret service agent, who I am sure gets paid decently, but who is hardly paid richly, yet these two live in luxury. Gen evidently has no work either since she immediately starts working full time with Bree on this 'case' without blinking an eye, yet she lives like she does and eats out routinely without a hint of financial concerns. In fact, the conspicuous consumerism in this novel was not only beyond the pale, it was about two states over from that. It's sad to read about these people who (according to the author's lack of mention of same) never lift a finger for a good cause or a charity, yet they supposed to be the good guys?

It was depressing to have to read yet another story about a female main character as lame as Bree is: one who you know is never going to grow. Her life is going to stay exactly as it is until a guy fixes it for her. How convenient is it then, that in investigating all this, she will be required to spend copious time with Mr Dick Bucks?! And why is she even "investigating"? Yeah, she's writing a story, but that doesn't mean that she's a police detective for goodness sakes. Her name should have been Brie, she's so cheesy and soft.

The two of them begin their investigation by trying to dig into Vonnegon's past. They visit his neighborhood while he's at work, but apparently they've never heard of GPS, because they're using paper maps.... This is where the story was not only bad, but now began to be as boring as a manicured lawn, and I lost all interest in these characters and this mystery.

There was nothing going on, no real activity, no real investigation. Maybe it picked up after this, but in order to get me to read that far, you would have to get me engaged with these characters and I had no interest in them. I didn't even like them! I can't recommend it and I couldn't waste any more of my time with it when there are so many other novels out there waiting to be read, many of which I know will really move me.

Tweet Revenge by Rickard B DeMille

Title: Tweet Revenge
Author: Rickard B DeMille
Publisher: MacDonald, Barclay (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is book one is yet another series - this one to be known as 'the Dawn Johnson mystery series', because why strive for something new when you can keep milking the same idea indefinitely? Hey, more strength to you if you can get the public to buy essentially the same novel over and over again. Microsoft has built an entire industry on doing that for decades! It’s a great business model, but it's not so kind to literature, but hey! that's a small price to pay.

I couldn’t finish this novel because it wasn't something which honestly appealed to me. The writing wasn't engaging and I didn’t find either of the main characters that interesting or appealing. When you find yourself not wanting to re-open the book, and when you do open it, discover that you're having to force yourself to read it, then you have to know it’s time to ditch it and move onto something which actually and naturally compels you to keep turning those pages.

The story switched back and forth between the PoV of the serial killer - some Dexter knock-off dickhead who took justice into his own hands because (he felt) some murderers had got away with it, and Dawn the FBI agent with, shall we say, a somewhat relaxed morality when it comes to justice. The author goes out of his way to make sure we fully understand that the 'good guy' Dawn, is African American and that she's also not a completely good guy in the traditional sense. I am not sure why that was. I mean it’s kudos for having a non-white character in a leading role - an effort which is sadly lacking in popular literature, but if you have to keep hitting the reader over the head with what you've done, it rather detracts from the self-evident wisdom of act in the first place.

Yeah, I know. And the thing is that I kept getting the feeling throughout the portion I read that in the end, Dawn was going to let this guy get away with murder - literally. I didn't read it all, so my view of this may erroneous, but it bothered me - if indeed it does end that way - that this guy would get away with it. Note that I don’t know if it does wind up like that, nor am I interested enough to find out. I'm just guessing, but if it does, then what does this say about our hero, Dawn, who permits this?

It bothered me that Dexter took justice into his own hands, but there were some mitigating circumstances in his case: first, he was sick in the head(!) and secondly, he went out of his way to get convincing proof that the guy/girl he was after actually was the perp. This didn’t make what he did right, of course, but it did offer some sort of explanation that a fiction writer and the attendant readership/viewership could accept.

The problem with this novel, for me, is that I got none of that: none of the effort required to prove the intended victim guilty. Maybe that appeared in parts of the novel I never read, but it was sufficiently lacking in the parts I did read that it turned me off this character (and it wasn't the only thing). That in turn put me off the main character who was going along with this rough justice (if indeed that's how it turned out) being meted out on what are, in the final analysis, truly sick people in dire need of medical help, deadly though they are. Once you sanction vigilantism, you remove the process from all scrutiny and from checks and balances, and you permit one person to be the arresting officer, the prosecutor, the defense, the jury, the judge, and the executioner.

Even aside from that, if none of that happens in this novel, I still had no compelling reason to keep on reading it. There was no hook for me - nothing that made me think, "Wow!" or "I gotta find out what happens next", or that strongly drew me to any of the characters. To me it was boring, just a series of events laid down one after another like so many dominoes.

There was the trope mystery going on here, too - the one which supposedly transcends the episodes and arcs over the entire series. Those things are artificial and boring to me, and this one has been done before. It’s no different from the one undergone by the female cop, Kate Beckett, in the TV series Castle, or by Carrie Wells, the eidetic cop in Unforgettable. It’s not enough for me to want to follow a formulaic and therefore ultimately boring TV show, or in this case to want to read a series of similarly formulaic novels, especially when I'm offered no good reason to do so.

As Chimney Sweepers Come To Dust by Alan Bradley

Rating: WORTHY!

Flavia Sabina De Luce has been banished to Canada! Toronto to be precise. It’s a girls boarding school, which she has reached by extensive travel by ship and train, and on her first night there, due to some extraordinary circumstances (which you will never guess at, so read it and squee), a dead, desiccated body is discovered in her room. And that's just the first three chapters!

By about page two I was in love with this book and with Flavia, shameless cradle-robber that I am (Flavia is fourteen, the youngest of three daughters, the other two of which are Daffy and Feely. I want to meet the whole family). Alan Bradley is a talented writer who reminds me a lot of Gail Carriger - not in his looks, you understand, but in his style - although having said that, make no mistake that this is his style and not hers. If you like Carriger's writing, and you like some Brit in your lit, you'll doubtlessly like this.

I must confess that I'd never heard of the author until this novel came up for review. He's a Canadian writer who evidently has a really good grasp of English life (either that or the Canadians and the Brits have far more in common than ever I'd hitherto understood!). This isn’t the first in the series; there's a half-dozen others, none of which I've read, but which I'm now definitely planning on investigating forthwith:

• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
• The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
• A Red Herring Without Mustard
• I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
• Speaking from Among the Bones
• The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

Fortunately, the stories are apparently self-contained because while reading this I never felt like I was missing any vital information. No novel is perfect, of course, so there were some instances where I had cause to question the writing, or more accurately, the thinking behind the writing, but there was nothing spectacularly adrift with it. It was generally well-written, with no spelling or grammatical errors that I noticed, and the problems were minor.

One of these relates to how Flavia's name is pronounced. The first syllable is 'flay', not 'flahh'. When a teacher mispronounces it, it's understandable, because she sees it written before she hears it, but when the police inspector mispronounces it, it makes no sense, since Flavia has already introduced herself to him by name!

Either this novel was not well-written in this particular aspect, or the inspector is stupid or nowhere near as perceptive as an inspector ought to be! This is a writing problem: you’re so used to seeing the word on the page and reading it rather than hearing it, that you forget that this is supposed to be a view of life - of people living and moving and having their being, part of which includes conversation. You can’t forget that. You can’t forget that words have sounds, otherwise you make mistakes like this.

To balance this out, let me add that I'd initially thought there was another instance of bad writing which turned out not to be so. Flavia knows who Diana Dors is. I found it highly unlikely that a 14-year-old from Flavia's background (even one who is well-educated) would not only have heard of an actor who died thirty years ago, but was also familiar enough with her to formulate the remark which she makes. It was only later that I discovered that this series is actually set in the fifties! This was quite amusing to me, because for the first page or so, I'd also thought the main character was a boy, and even when that was corrected, I'd thought it was a contemporary story!

Other than questionable instances like those (including questionable perception on my part!), the writing is excellent - and very entertaining. Flavia got into a spot of bother in Britain. She was drummed-out of the girl scouts for one thing, and so this hying to Canada was deemed to be the best thing for her. Endearingly, this girl who (literally) dreams of riding bicycles up stairs and running a chemical laboratory, was not in the least bit discombobulated a have this fascinatingly deceased body plummet into her life like a Christmas present from hell.

Here's another minor correction: we're told that the body is wrapped in a Union Jack, but that's a mistake. It's only a Union Jack when it's flying from a ship, otherwise the British flag is called just that: the Union Flag. To be fair, most people get that wrong, and though the author's "Brit speak" isn’t perfect, but he does a dashed good job of it, what? I was impressed.

On her first full day in the academy, Flavia rapidly becomes acquainted with a variety of other girls, but she never really makes friends. Some of those whom she meets, however, she purposefully cultivates in pursuit of her desire to solve this murder mystery. Evidently the body in her room is not the first girl who has gone missing at Miss Bodycote's Female Academy!

The story really starts to pick up when the principal, Ms Fawlthorne, shares a secret or two with Flavia, and this is the start of a trend. There are secrets galore, and weird behavior, and secret societies, and oddball behavior, and secret activities, and did I mention hidden secrets? Lot's of people are not who they seem to be. Through all of this, Flavia keeps her head. She's no Mary Sue, and far from perfect, screwing-up and breaking the rules, but she never gives up on her pursuit of the murderer. She's determined, resourceful, inventive, and eventually, she gets, as they say, "her man" (not that the perp is necessarily a man, understand).

That's not to say that Flavia is a Mary Sue by any means. She makes mistakes, but she's really smart, deeply interested in science, is feminine without being a wilting violet, she has times of strength and times of weakness, she has flashes of brilliance and flashes of dufus, and guess what? here's a YA novel with no male (or female!) love interest at all. How refreshing is that? As happy as I am to absorb a novel like this, I have to confess it makes me a little bit sad to think that it was a guy who created such an awesome and strong female character. How come he can do it and so many female writers fail in the same quest?

This was an especially refreshing read which I highly recommend, and I'll leave you with this amazing quote which made me laugh out loud. It does help if you properly understand British idiom, however:

"How are you finding it?" Merton asked. "Miss Bodycote's Female Academy I mean?"
"Frankly, Mr. Merton," I said, "Just between you, me, and the gatepost - it’s a bugger."

The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark

Rating: WARTY!

Read acceptably by Jan Maxwell

So today's the twelfth of the month, which means that it's time to post a review for a novel beginning with the letter 'L'.

What's the deal with two slight variations on the same cover?! I know lots of novels are reissued with a different cover, usually for no good reason, but these two are pretty much exactly the same! What's the point? Did they think we would think it's a different novel? Is it supposed to be better somehow? Is it more artistic?! Which genius came up with this, and how much do they get paid for their 'inventiveness' and 'originality'? No one puts their head deeper in their patootie than does Big Publishing™, I swear!

This novel was supposed to be a detective story, or so I'd believed when I picked it up at the library, but the detectives were only minor characters here! What? I am not kidding you! At least that's how it was for as far as I listened to the audio book, which wasn't very far. The book read (or rather 'listened') like it was a daytime TV soap opera with nothing interesting going on, and populated with boring characters who held even more boring conversations at every turn. It was like the murder was merely a prop for people to get together and mindlessly gossip about anything and everything other than the murder.

The premise is that an ancient letter was discovered, supposedly written by Jesus to Joseph of Arimathea, and that it was in the possession of Biblical scholar Jonathan Lyon, who intended to hand it over to a museum when he had finished studying it. Someone evidently didn't like this plan, and shot him.

It was Mrs Lyon in the study with a revolver - who was discovered with her husband's body lying slumped over his desk, by their daughter Mariah. The wife was suffering some form of dementia, and it seemed obvious from the start that she wasn't the perp, even as she was found holding the gun and covered in blood. Way to trumpet "Red Herring!". OTOH, she may have been the perp. I can't tell you because didn't get past disk one of the CD set. That's how chronically boring this story was. I didn't regret abandoning it, either. The next audio book I moved onto proved to be highly entertaining.

It's hard to believe that an established and experienced writer like Mary Higgins Clark makes the amateur mistake of having a character's description flow from her reflection in a mirror. That's considered, rightly or wrongly, a no-no, and would alone get a novel rejected by your typical agent were it written by any writer who didn't already have their foot firmly in the door. It just goes to show the crap you can get away with when you're not a newbie, doesn't it?

From what I've read in the reviews of others, this ancient letter is irrelevant because it plays no part in the story other than being the motive for the murder. It's also absurd in that this letter, had it been real (not that it could have been, but if) would have been a sensation, yet it's essentially treated as completely unimportant - at least as judged from the portion to which I listened.

I'm an atheist and don't believe there ever was a son of a god. There were lots of Jesuses (or rather Yeshu's or Yeshua's or Yehoshua's since Jesus was not a Hebrew name). Some of them may even have been rabbis, and some may have been crucified. A heck of a lot of people were, but there's no evidence to suggest that any of them was a son of a god, so this part was irrelevant to me, as indeed it was to the story.

The novel was completely uninteresting. Not even a bit of it was worth the listening, so there's nothing more to say except that I can't recommend this based on the portion of it that I suffered through.

The Indian Bride by Karin Fossum

Title: The Indian Bride
Author: Karin Fossum
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Rating: WARTY!

Translated by Charlotte Barslund (no website found).

If it's December nointh, then we're reviewing a novel which has a title starting with 'I'!

I don’t really have polite enough words to describe how god-awful this novel was. I've read Scandinavian works of this nature before and enjoyed them, so I thought this might be interesting too, but it was just the opposite. I managed to finish the book, because the writing itself wasn't technically bad (although this was a translation, I can’t speak for the original), but in terms of plot and execution, it was without a doubt the most insipid, ponderous, uninspiring, tedious, frustrating, meandering, clueless, vapid, dissipated so-called 'mystery' I've ever read.

I know full-well that in the US we’re overdosed on the formulaic and the shallow, and on the template-driven must-be-tidily-wrapped-in-forty-minutes crime stories from TV. I know the books aren’t that much better, but even when pushing that aside and adopting a more cosmopolitan approach to crime stories, this novel still stands out as being completely lackluster, and so bad it was squirm-inducing. Do police in Norway never ever do any forensic work? Do they never follow clues? Are they really more interested in talking about their sick dog with the prime murder suspect than ever they are in discussing the actual crime? I sincerely hope not.

We're told that the woman was attacked and ran and was finally brought down. We find a suspect with scratch marks on his face, yet never once is the question of whether the victim has skin under her fingernails raised. It’s apparently something which the forensic people failed to check. Seriously? I've never been to Norway, but my instinct is that their police and crime work is very much like it is in the US and any other modernized country, yet if we’re to trust this author's writing, Norway is no better than any severely underprivileged and under-funded third world country for how technologically backward it is! Frankly I don’t believe that.

Do suspects routinely submit themselves to endless hours of questioning without ever having their lawyer anywhere near? The main suspect's lawyer is in this novel for about one page and that's it. We never see or hear from him again! He is never once present when the suspect is questioned. The suspect offers all kinds of support for his assertion that he did not do it, and the police fail to follow-up on any of it. One of his items of supportive evidence is actually proven to favor him - but totally by accident, and it never gets raised again. Is this how criminals are brought to book in Norway - pick someone who seems a likely suspect and interrogate him endlessly without a lawyer until he breaks down and confesses - and then blindly assume that this proves that this guy did it?

I sincerely hope that Norwegian police are not as hopeless, clueless, mindless, and useless as Inspector Sejer and his assistant are. The assistant attracts the stalker-ish attention of one of the primary witnesses, who is a young girl, yet when she calls him to tell him she thought there was a man in her yard watching her, he tells her he's off-duty and can’t help her, and he turns over and goes to sleep. Later she's attacked, evidently by this same man. She calls this assistant and he tells her to call her mother! I kid you not. That's his response when a citizen tells him she was attacked; then he turns over and goes to sleep. What happened to her is never resolved or explained. It’s never even followed up. It’s just let go.

There isn't a single person in the entire town who steps forward and openly volunteers information. Everyone holds back and fails to report important things until they're outed by someone else, or until they finally break down and 'fess up what they know. There's no explanation at all given for any of this behavior. I guess we're just supposed to assume that Norwegians love to let major crimes happen and the perps get away with it! One guy - and for no reason at all - disposes of evidence in a lake. It’s just not realistic that every single person would be like that. There are half-a dozen suspects, yet not one of them is properly investigated. Does Fossum really want us to believe her country is like this? Her people are like this?

Inspector Sejer is the most misnamed character ever, since he inspects nothing! Usually the inspector in a story like this is someone who has something going for him: he's really good at seeing through the trees to the forest (or vice-versa!), or he's is acutely observant, or he's brilliantly deductive, or he's great at getting people to expose their own guilt. Sejer is none of these things. Sejer needs to be retired.

In the old TV series Columbo, Peter Falk played a rather rambling, bumbling detective, but underneath that you knew he was sly and calculating, and brilliant at getting people to admit things they really wanted to conceal. Sejer is just like Columbo, but without any of Columbo's positive traits or results! Instead, he really is slow, dull, bumbling, hesitant, un-stimulating, uninventive, unadventurous; a plodding chunk of sheer boredom. He shows no brilliance in anything. Finally he decides, for no good reason at all, that it’s this one particular guy, who has no solid evidence against him, and that guy's arrested and charged without further ado or investigation. We never actually learn if he really did it. This is a first for me in a murder mystery!

The writer is supposedly the Queen of Crime in her home nation, and I can subscribe to that if the crime is lousy plotting and atrocious execution, but if the title is intended as a positive one, meaning that she's the best, then the rest of the Norwegian crime fiction writers must be a sorry lot indeed. I weep for them, but I honestly don't believe that the writer of this novel is the queen of anything but cluelessness.

This book is one of several in the Sejer series. How this lousy approach to writing a detective series ever progressed that far is the only real mystery here.