The Diamond Master by Jacques Futrelle

Rating: WARTY!

I made it through 80% of this classic mystery book before I all but died of sheer boredom. It's a very short book - about 100 pages - but it made for a slow and tedious read and I just lost interest in it. Jacques Futrelle was an American author who was on the Titanic when it sank

The basic story is that diamonds begin showing up, delivered anonymously to well-known diamond merchants. When it becomes known there has been more than one such delivery, the merchants meet and discover that each of the five of them has received an extremely beautiful and well-cut diamond that is identical in every way to the ones the others received. Once they're aware of the others, they receive further communcation assuring them the damond is real and is theirs to keep. All they have to do in return is to sell an improbably large quantity of diamonds - which will be supplied to them - and the hundred-million dollar profits of which sales will be delivered to a certain individual.

Despite trying to keep tabs on the man who is runnign this operation, he proves always to be one step ahead of them and the private detectives they hire. This was pretty much the entire story for this first 80%, and it was poorly-written, obvious in many cases what was going on, and with an appallingly presented German accent in one charcter which was frankly obnoxious and nauseating tor ead. I grew bored, as I said, and ditched it. I can't commend it.

Lantern by Chess Desalls

Rating: WARTY!

This really was a non-story - very short, about a girl who wanders stupidly in the woods around her home, gets lost, and encoutners a lantern which is lit by some sort of a tiny person inside the lantern. It was boring and went nowhere. And it's suppsoed ot be itnroductory to a series? Yawn. Shrot as it was, I barely had the interest to follow this to the end, I sure as hell am not going to read a whole series on this tedious topic. Since when is a sixteen year old obsessed with scoring candy on Halloween? Scoring a boyfriend I could see. Scoring drugs or booze, maybe, but candy? Honestly?

The Girl Who Came Back by Kerry Wilkinson

Rating: WARTY!

The author is described by The Sun newspaper as a "crime-writing colossus." He's so big I've never heard of him. The story is that "Six-year-old Olivia Adams vanished from her own back garden. Thirteen years later, she returns. But is this the real missing child… or an impostor?" Check her DNA. There. I solved it. You're welcome. Yawn.

Danger in Monrovia by Paul Moxham

Rating: WARTY!

This book is misleading in a sense because it promises to be a 'choose your own adventure' story and that is of course, nonsensical. All you get to do in this case is to choose is one of two options presented by the author, so it's really a choose his own adventure story. It's middle-grade and the plot is about some stolen crown jewels.

I should say right up front that I haven't had any success with novels by this author. In the middle of June 2015, I reviewed The Mystery of Adventure Island and The Mystery of Smugglers Cove and I hadn't liked either of them. I therefore knew going in that I probably wouldn't like this one either, but I was still curious to see how this story worked. The short answer to that is that it didn't! And I mean that literally.

I read the first section and tapped on the link that was supposed to take me to my chosen option, and nothing happened! I tapped on the other link, again without result. None of the links worked which makes this book a waste of money! I actively dis-commend it.

Damn Straight by Elizabeth Sims

Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of a series known as the "Lillian Byrd Crime Stories" because of the protagonist, Lillian Byrd. Note that this is book 2 in the LGBTQIA series, and I have not read book 1. Also I traded an email or two with the author, and I do appreciate her kindness, so I'm not exactly unbiased here! But my review is true and honest - you have my word as a gentleman.

I'm not normally a fan of this kind of story, or of series in general, which is what made this one interesting to me, because Lillian is not your normal "sleuth." In fact I flatly refuse to read any amateur detective story that uses the word 'sleuth' in the book description, so this author was lucky in that regard! She also chose an amusing title which I appreciated.

Lillian is a lesbian and also a little older, I believe, than your usual amateur PI. She was happily (maybe not quite so happily) ensconced in Detroit, with her pet rabbit Todd (who was an amusing, endearing, off-beat and unexpected pet), until friend of hers called from California in a complete mess. I got the impression that her friend was a drama queen. Her name is Truby. It ought to have been Trouble, because I had to wonder how much of a friend she was when she virtually demanded, without offering any explanation, that Lillian drop everything and come running across the country.

When Lillian finally arrived after that frantic phone call, it turned out that this crisis was nothing more than Truby thinking she might be a lesbian. Personally I would have been pissed-off if a friend did that to me, but Lillian takes it all in stride and tries to pass on information that she thinks will be helpful in Truby's exploration of her sexuality. The impression I got is that Truby is bi and in denial!

But this was just to get Lillian across the country, because Truby has tickets to a soirée in celebration of the upcoming Dinah Shore women's golf tournament. It's there that Lillian meets the real subject of this story, in the shape of Genie Maychild. I'm a big believer in making the character's name fit the character in the context of the story, and this particular name is very à propos of that tenet. I liked it! It turns out that Genie is an ace golfer and is playing in the tournament, and expected to be up there with the leading contenders.

She also has a rivalry with an upstart prodigy golfer named Coco Nash - another name I liked. In fact I think I liked Coco best of all in this novel. While Lillian seemed to have a habit of alternately annoying and then intriguing me, I never was keen on Genie who was like this needy vacuum, sucking up all Lillian's attention. I didn't like Truby at all, who was seriously high-maintenance and evidently not too smart, but Coco I could have read a novel about, especially if she'd become involved with Lillian (maybe a future installment in the series - hint, hint!)! But I digress. Genie has a secret past and this is where all the mystery lies - along with Genie's current troubles.

The mystery was multi-faceted and kept me guessing. Although some red herrings were easily fished out of the mix and I fixed on the wrong perp, I did guess right that someone's motives were hardly spotless, but I'm not about to reveal who that was! Lillian is a Freelance journalist, so: amateur detective, and she's quite inventive and definitely dedicated. She's also a freaking angel when it comes to handling Genie who really didn't deserve her. But I liked the way Lillian thought and planned her moves, so for me, while I can't say that the story was exactly entrancing, I can say without fear of landing in the rough, that it was eminently readable and a satisfying whack down the fairway.

If I had a complaint, it would be two of them! One was the golf, which was a bit too much for me, who is not a golf fan, but obviously the story centers around golf and a golfer, so I couldn't really make a legitimate complaint about all the golf!

The other complaint is one I've made in many reviews, which in this case is that Lillian and Genie fall into bed far too quickly and without a word about sexual health, which to me is a problem in this day and age of rampant STIs. Naturally no writer wants to bring the story to a screeching halt with a lecture about sexual diseases, but there are ways it can be worked into the story naturally and organically, or at least touched-on in passing. That said, I did enjoy the story overall, and I consider it an eminently worthy read.

Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus

While this was cute and fun it wasn't something an adult can really derive much from except vicariously by reading it to a kid and seeing how they like it. Since it is aimed at kids, then on that basis, I consider it a worthy read. For me as a grown-up, not so much!

This audiobook is of the original story, first published in 1958, and it features Basil the mouse, who lives in the basement of 221B Baker Street where he learned his detecting craft from listening to Sherlock Holmes solve his cases. Starting out as what appears to be a simple case of missing children, things turn all around when an unruly mob trio threaten all resident mice in the Baker Street basement 'village'. Basil takes exception and resolves to cut the case off at the knees before the villains can make good their threat. He and his assistant Dawson don disguises and head north to run down the villains in their lair. They could of course have simply let the villains move in, then called the mouse police on them, but this seems never to have occurred to Basil.

Like I indicated, the story is simple and innocent, and at times amusing, and should delight young children. I consider it a worthy read for them.

The Candy Mafia by Lavie Tidhar, Daniel Duncan

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a middle-grade book that amused the heck out of me just from the description. Written highly tongue-in-cheek by Tidhar, and with spot-illustrations by Duncan, this tale of a city in the grip of prohibition - of candy - had me smirking so much that it was painful to the face. Things have gone sour, with no chocolate, no licorice, no chewy toffee to be had! The new mayor banned it all three years ago and so of course, an elaborate smuggling operation has sprung up, with all the attendant bribery and corruption.

Not that any of this affects the main character, the honest and upstanding Nelle Faulker, a 12-year-old private detective who is out of work now school is out for the summer and no cases have been coming her way lately. She's a smartie and is sitting in her office (a shed in her back yard) when who should stop by, but Eddie de Menthe, one of the biggest candy-smugglers in town. Eddie has a serious problem - he's lost his teddy-bear.

Nelle takes the case, and even though she smells a rat - or is it a chocolate bunny? - in her sweet innocence, she has no idea what she's getting herself into. Has Nelle been taken for an all-day sucker? No! Trust me when I say she's no marshmallow. She has encounters with the other two big candy smugglers in town: The Sweetie Pies, and Waffles Mackenzie. She also learns of the Big Five Families, and becomes concerned when Eddie disappears like sherbet dip from a punctured bag!

What's going on here? What's the secret of the shut-down chocolate factory and where did the owner Mr Farnsworth vanish to? Why was Nelle's office turned over? What were they looking for? Who is behind all this? Can the cops even be trusted? Will Mayor Thornton get re-elected and continue the candy ban? Just in passing, Thornton's is a brand of particularly delicious toffee in Britain. And most important of all: just what does it mean to be a gum shoe in a candy-apple world?!

All of this and more is answered as this sly romp takes us through the gangster world where the author treats the story just seriously enough to make it even more amusing, and where Nelle proves herself to be one tough cookie. She's as sticky as salt-water taffy when it comes to a case, and she's definitely one of my strong female heroes. I can't say it was a sweet read without getting into trouble with Mayor Thornton, but I will say this book gives a reader lots to chew on, and I commend it highly.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by A Conan Doyle

Rating: WARTY!

It's important to note that this is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by A Conan Doyle, not by the Conan Doyle. Just kidding. Seriously, I came back to this through the British TV series Sherlock penned by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and wondering whether they would ever get around to a fifth season. It's looking rather like they won't, and maybe that's not such a bad thing after season four. But I got to wondering if they did, what would it be like: would they continue into season arcs like they had, or simply get back to basic mystery solving like the show was when it first began. This led me to the original stories and to this volume which contains a dozen adventures:

1. A Scandal in Bohemia
   This is the only story featuring the absurdly overrated Irene Adler, who is trumpeted today as Holmes's equal, when in reality, all she doe sis protect her property. The sad thing about this story is that Adler's "brilliance" is only visible because all other women in the Holmes canon are treated as cannon fodder, so be shot out as needed to display empty headedness, a predilection to fainting away, and other traditional feminine traits. The fact that Adler is none of these things makes her stand out, but it does not make her a mastermind. Holmes isn't even a mastermind in this story, so it's hardly an act of genius to bea thima t his own game. She just knew what she wanted and succeeded in protecting something that was valuable to her. It had nothing to do with smarts, only with determination if not outright desperation. That's it. The story isn't that good.
2. The Red-Headed League
   A story about a redhead who is tricked into leaving his place of work every day so the villains can dig through to the bank using a basement under his store.
3. A Case of Identity
   In which a money-grubbing stepdad hatches a bizarre scheme to keep his step-daughter;'s income in the family.
4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery
   Two Australians at war in rural England.
5. The Five Orange Pips
   Improbable tale of the KKK
6. The Man with the Twisted Lip
   A married man begging to keep a secret.
7. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
   A stolen blue diamond is added to the crop
8. The Adventure of the Speckled Band
   No one, and I do mean quite literally no one has ever called a snake a 'speckled band" except Doyle in this story! The whole story sucks. Snakes are effectively deaf to airborne sounds; they hear by resting their jawbone on the ground, so the idea of training a snake to respond to a relatively high-pitched whistle is for the birds. Holmes wasn't so smart after all, was he?!
9. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
   Counterfeiting in the English countryside isn't something to thumb your nose at.
10. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
    Twice toiled tail.
11. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
    Doyle gave us the six Napoleons, Moffat gave us the six Thatchers, this story gives us the three beryls.
12. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
    An Unwelcome fiancé is made to rue the castle.

Can't commend this based on the average stories inlcude din this collection. Perhaps retirement Holmes rather than Sherlock?

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

Rating: WARTY!

Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that the initials for this book title are BS! Again this is a middle-grade book and I'm far from middle-grade, but I've ready many middle-grade novels that have entertained me well. This one did not, and I quit it about three-quarters of the way through, in disappointment.

The premise here is that there is a book publisher based in San Francisco, which fortuitously is the city to which the major character has just moved with her family. This publisher likes to create book games, and one of them is the eponymous scavenging, by which used books are secreted in places around town, and clues to their location are left online. The finder of the book gets to read it, and gets finder points, and then gets to hide it again themselves. It sounds like fun, and while I can see problems with that practice, it's likely to become a dying art with mega corporations like Amazon forcibly moving everyone to ebooks and all that entails, and forcing authors to sell their work for less than a dollar for the most part, or even offer it for free just to get a foot in the door.

The basic plot here, is that this publisher is about to launch a new game, and is off to the launch when he's assaulted by two low-lives who are evidently in the employ of someone who wants the specific book this publisher is going to use to launch the game. Because they're idiots, they fail to secure the novel (The Gold-Bug - a prize winning short story by Poe, which was probably his best-read work during his lifetime).

Instead, the book falls into the hands of the main character, whose name I've completely forgotten at this point, but it's really not important when you get down to it. Instead of trying to get the book back into the right hands, the main character decides to hold onto it and to try and solve the puzzle herself, thereby causing all kinds of horrors, and putting children at risk, including herself, which would never have happened had she acted responsibly. I think this novel could have been written a lot better.

One major problem with it is that it moved appallingly slowly, and would have made for a better read had it been shorter and consequently better paced. Another problem was the fact that young children were put in harm's way and the last thing they think of doing is alerting the police. For me this is a serious problem with the writing. Yes, to have a 'fun' adventure, children often have to be placed in fictional peril, but if you're going to do that, at least have the writing chops to make it work: make there be a reason why the authorities can't help. Don't go writing the idea into children's heads that the best way to deal with an adult threat is go it alone as this author seems intent upon doing!

For these reasons I cannot commend this as a worthy read.

The Unexpected Spy by Tracy Walder

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was the unexpected memoir for me because it popped up as an invitation in my email box and I didn't need to be asked twice! The book was very short (about 200 pages) which I normally love, but frankly I could have stood to have read a lot more of this. The author doesn't waste words or pages, and after a very brief mention of her childhood and college, both of which are relevant to things that occur later, we get right into her recruitment at the CIA, the work that she did, and then a switch to the FBI, which I did not expect but which I think I found even more interesting than the CIA, which had been engaging aplenty.

Obviously a lot of this is about the CIA, so the details she gives are naturally censored in parts. This was my only problem with this book - not that things were censored, but that the author had chosen to leave the expurgated portions (which were not that many) in the text, but as a series (in my copy) of tilde marks, rather than write around the topic. For example, I read at one point, "I'd been moved into what was then a deeply classified operation within the CIA, the ~~~~~~~~ Program." I didn't get why she hadn't simply changed it to say something like "I'd been moved into what was then a deeply classified program." At another point I read, "if we ever were to ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~, that action would never be taken without thorough analysis." That could easily have been rendered as something like "any action on something like that would never be taken without thorough analysis." The tildes were most annoying when they ran on for many lines - twelve or nineteen on a couple of occasions. But as I said, it wasn't that often and it wasn't a book-killer for me.

The author was born with what's called 'floppy baby syndrome' or more professionally known as hypotonia, in which the body's muscles are less than sturdy, but she overcame that. I'd never even heard of it until I read this book. Here it stands as an foreshadowing of some things the author had to overcome in her career. This led to some bullying in school, then on to her being a blonde Delta Gamma sorority girl and hardly - to some people's narrow minds - the kind of person who would end up in the CIA! But she did, and started out life eying satellite photographs and analyzing them as an aid to tracking terrorists. It reminded me of a scene from that Harrison Ford Tom Clancy thriller Patriot Games in which they were similarly examining photographs to try and identify people at a camp.

Apparently the CIA has a crazy course in vehicular pursuit, called Crash and Bang, where they get to drive these old beat-up cars and have to try to run the opponent off the road. The course ends with them deliberately crashing into a cement wall just so they know how it feels, which seems a bit extreme to me, but I guess it's better to be prepared. I assume it's a relatively low speed crash, but they were told if they didn't hit hard enough to render the vehicle un-drivable, they'd have to do it again!

I got to read about how it was in the CIA right after 9/11, when people like George Bush, as well as Condoleezza Rice, and Dick Cheney would come in unexpectedly, asking rather desperately if the operatives had managed to find a link between this guy Zarqawi, who they knew was into making chemical weapons, and Saddam Hussein, and each time the CIA would report in the negative. At one point the administration learned that Zarqawi had been to Baghdad for surgery, so they used that as the link, changed the heading on the information this author supplied them, and went on national news claiming a link! That news meant that Zarqawi went underground and they lost track of him for a while. It also meant they had manufactured a 'justification' for invading Iraq. It was disturbing to read things like this, it really was. The book was an eye-opener in many regards.

After some time with the CIA, the author wanted a change of pace and applied to the FBI where she was accepted for training. I'm not sure I'd personally consider that a change of pace, but each to their own! At Quantico though, unlike in the CIA, it seemed like there was an institutional program of resentment and bullying of females, and particularly of one who 'claimed' to have worked in the CIA. The three trainers seemed intent upon employing the same genderist attitude toward her from day one, despite one of the trainers being a woman. Their behavior was appalling.

The book is replete with anecdotes and interesting information not about the details of the work (where permissible!), but about the way the work is done and how hard these people strived to keep a country safe - and how awful it is when they feel like they have failed, either because they did not reach the right conclusions in time or because they did, but those who could act on the information would not listen to the experts who were telling them there was a threat. It made fascinating reading and I commend it whole-heartedly.

Get a Clue! by Lisa Banim

Rating: WARTY!

This is the first book in the Lizzie McGuire Mysteries series. It's the last one I will ever read! The front cover won't tell you (way to diminish people Disney, you dicks), but it's written by Lisa Banim and based on the TV series created and developed by Terri Minsky. I've been curious about the series, but never watched it. After this book I don't intend to.

The plot, if you can call it that, is that someone has been leaving notes is assorted places around the school, with cheesy messages like "I Know What You Did Last Week." Other than the annoyance factor, it's hardly a major crime. The "twist" if you can call it that, is that the notes are in Lizzie McGuire's handwriting. Lizzie decides to take it on herself to track down the suspect, and she pretty much lives up to the absurd 'ditzy blonde' trope in doing so. That's when I called out, "Check please! I'm done here." I can't remotely commend this based on the portion I managed to suffer through. I fear for young readers and readership in general if this kind of garbage actually appeals to people.

Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh

Rating: WORTHY!

After the disappointment of Princess Ugg, I might not have read another Naifeh novel, but this one was already in the works, so I ended up reading it and was glad I did. I don't believe in pirate treasure stashes. I don't think pirates were the kind of people to hoard their loot. I think they spent it as fast as they stole it, and while I'm sure there were some who set themselves up in a new life after a piracy voyage and never went back, I think the majority just spent all they had, and then went right back to sea to go after some more.

This story is cute and a little bit different in that polly, a new girl at a boarding school where young girls sometimes foolishly fantasize about pirates, is actually the daughter of Meg, the pirate queen. When Meg's pirate crew come looking for Polly, it's out of desperation. There's a map (there's always a map!), and the pirates think perhaps Meg's daughter is the very one who can find it for them. Now since this is Meg's loyal crew who were presumably with her when she hid the treasure, you'd think at least a few of them would know exactly where it was, but no! Hence Polly.

I honestly don't believe there ever was a legitimate pirate map either for that matter. Why would any pirate commit their precious knowledge of their treasure (assuming there even was any) to paper or parchment or whatever? It would be foolish and go against the very grain of a pirate's character! Besides, pirates were largely illiterate and relied on sound memory to supply everything they needed to know to get from A to B and plan their pirating. They had no need of the written word or the drawn map.

But they kidnap Polly thinking she can help them retrieve this map and at first she's completely against it, but then she becomes involved and sneaks out of school at night to go on adventures. It's a bit of a stretch to imagine that she can, like Santa Claus, get it all done in one night (or eventually, in a couple of days' absence), but this is fiction after all - and pirate fiction at that! So Polly becomes ever more involved and eventually she does find the map but the treasure isn't what the pirates thought it would be. I thought the story might continue with a second map that had been hidden in something they found in the treasure vault, but the story pretty much wrapped up after that.

This is a series as far as I know, so it's possible there are other volumes which continue the story (maybe with that second map, assuming there is one), but just as Polly seems done with pirating after this adventure, I think I'm done with Naifeh now. It was a bit oddly-written. Naifeh isn't English and so doesn't quite get the lingo down, and much of it is rather anachronistic so his attempts to make it sound period were a bit of a waste of time. He doesn't know what 'The Sweeney' is for one thing. The term wasn't in use back in the classical pirate era. The Sweeney is rhyming slang: Sweeney Todd - Flying Squad, referring to a division of the London Metropolitan Police. Obviously that didn't exist in the old era of piracy and neither did the stories of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

It was a bit much to think only a young girl could open the treasure vault since most pirates probably had a young boy or two on their crew who could have done the same thing, but overall, I enjoyed this tale. It was a cute and fun story, and while it was nothing which made me feel any great compulsion to search out other volumes, assuming they exist, I did enjoy this one and commend it as a worthy read.

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #14 Sleight of Dan by Stefan Petrucha, Sarah Kinney, Sho Murase, Carlos Jose Guzman

Rating: WARTY!

This was one of three Nancy Drew graphic novels I'm reviewing today. It's also the last Nancy Sue I'll ever read. I never read any of the original novels, and prior to these three graphic versions, I'd seen her in only two movies, once an older 'original' and the other a 2007 knock-off starring Emma Roberts who is evidently a lot more charming and mature in her movies than in real life as judged by her 2013 Montreal fight.

None of these graphic novels were particularly interesting to me, although younger readers might enjoy them. Again, this particular one was nothing to write home about. The color by Guzman, the art by Murase, and the writing by Petrucha and Kinney were all workman-like and nothing special, and the story was quite predictable.

Nancy-Sue, nuttily-named Ned, and some dude named George go to see Dan Devil's magic show. His assistant vanishes - and doesn't reappear. Of course Nancy can't not get involved. An encounter with a hungry anaconda somehow persuades her to become his new assistant. Ri-ight!

Isn't it weird how, in these stories, predators are always, but always, hungry? Judged by its ferocious and unnaturally lively pursuit of Nancy, the reptile evidently hadn't eaten in months. Boring. The largest anaconda is the green anaconda and it is not known to eat people or even large prey save for rare occasions. After a meal, an anaconda can go for six weeks before needing to eat again, so this story is not remotely realistic and is downright misleading, in fact. Shame on the authors. Inventive they may have been, clueless they definitely were. No commendo!

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #13 Doggone Town by Stefan Petrucha, Sarah Kinney, Sho Murase, Carlos Jose Guzman

Rating: WARTY!

I can only give pretty much the same review for this one that I did for the previous volume out of three I read recently. I never read any of the original Nancy Drews (and I'm starting to be glad about that!) although in July of 2017, I did positively review a book which told the interesting story of how the Nancy Drew books came about.

My only experience of her prior to these graphic novels was via two widely disparate movies, one an old one, and one a much more recent version which actually wasn't too bad. None of the three graphic novels were particularly interesting to me, although younger readers might enjoy them. This particular one was nothing to write home about. The color by Guzman, the art by Murase, and the writing by Petrucha and Kinney were all workman-like and nothing special, and the story was unsurprisingly predictable.

Nancy Sue and the absurdly-named Ned Nickerson, who sounds like a character out of the Monty Python sketch 'Election Night Special' are out and about when they encounter an apparently lost dog. They drive out to a remote village and return it to its owner only to discover the entire village is deserted except for the owner, who is absurdly mean. Of course, she did it! Boring.

These books never explain why it is that Nancy doesn't simply call the police. You'd think the writer would at least offer a token explanation for why she cannot, but no - that's too much to ask for. And what? And entire village goes missing and no one notices? Not the police, not relatives, not delivery people? No one?

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #11 Monkey Wrench Blues by Stefan Petrucha, Sarah Kinney, Sho Murase, Carlos Jose Guzman

Rating: WARTY!

This was one of three Nancy Drew graphic novels which I decided to take a look at, having never read any of the original Nancy Drews and having seen her in only two widely disparate movies. None were particularly interesting to me, although younger readers might enjoy them. This particular one was nothing to write home about. The color by Guzman, the art by Murase, and the writing by Petrucha and Kinney were all workman-like and nothing special, and the story was quite predictable.

Nancy and her mechanic, Bess, drive a car in a race of supposedly environmentally-friendly vehicles. Naturally someone is trying to run Nancy off the road and naturally Mary Drew (or is it Nancy-Sue?) escapes scot-free and solves the 'puzzle'. Boring. Can't commend this one.

Troublemaker by Janet Evanovich, Alex Evanvovich, Joelle Jones

Rating: WARTY!

Illustrated by Joelle Jones, this is a classic example of it's not what you can write, but who you know. The blurb doesn't even pretend that daughter Alexandra Evanovich (or Evanvovich as idiot Amazon, known for screwing-up of author's names, has it!) had any writing involvement at all although she's credited with it, so maybe she did contribute. We'll never know. But what a great way to get your foot in the door, huh, on the fly leaves of your mom?

I thought I could kill two birds with one stone here, reading an Evanovich, which I'd really had no interest in because her titles are far too gimmicky, and seeing what her daughter might have contributed, and all in a short graphic format, but it was a complete fail! I should have paid closer attention to the blurb: "Alex Barnaby and Sam Hooker are back together and fighting crime the only way they know how - by leaving a trail of chaos, panic, and disorder." Yep, that's how to successfully fight crime all right! Not! In the end it was nothing worth my time.

The first problem I had was with how the two main characters are set up. Masculine Sam is the leading man - the daring racecar driver. Alexandra Barnaby is his lackey. No surprises there. It's about what I'd expect from someone of Evanovich's generation, where playing it safe and by the numbers is an unwritten rule. So, a man has gone missing and since all police are pretty much universally useless in these interfering meddler stories, twin clowns Barnaby and Hooker evidently have to go deep into the "underbelly of Miami" (which in this era of climate change is actually underwater), delving int "Voodoo, explosions, gift-wrapped body parts, and a deadly swamp chase." Yawn. This novel sucked, period. That's all it merits as a review. I'm done with these two authors. Nothing to see here. Moving along.

The Missing Activist by Louise Burfitt-Dons

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This story had sounded interesting from the book blurb, but it turned out to be just the opposite in practice, and it moved so slowly that I gave up on it after about twenty-five percent. It didn’t engage me, and it felt a bit like it couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a mystery or a romance, or something else, and tripping itself up in indecision.

The characters were not really very interesting to me either. I didn't meet anyone I particularly liked, much less someone I’d want to root for. The book switched between characters every chapter so it felt very disjointed and fragmented, and we never really got to know anyone. The activist of the title never was properly introduced to the reader, so the fact that he went missing was not an impactful event. I didn't miss him at all, and apparently neither did anyone else, since there was no real concern evident from anyone over his whereabouts - at least not in the portion I read. It seems to me that there would be political points to be scored here over an episode like this, but it was a non-event.

The book had an overall feel like it was not quite ready for prime time. The writing technically wasn't bad in general terms, but there were a lot of instances where I felt the author had written one thing, then later changed it, but never re-read it for coherence, so there were many instances of writing like this “...when she own heaps..” where the author clearly ought to have written "...when she owned heaps...." There was another such instance where I read, “But they also agreed start somewhere just in case" which needed to have read, "to starting somewhere" or "agreed: start somewhere" or something like that.

At another point I read, "When Hailey’s flatmate there, Karen assumed Hailey would be somewhere behind him." Clearly something is missing from the first clause - like maybe a verb? Another instance was "He tried Miller’ number." Clearly there's an 's' missing after the apostrophe. Another instance was where a sentence had evidently been re-arranged but some words were not deleted and ended up repeated; “Karen had even discovered there’d been a woman, wearing a full burka, sighted around the Cardiff Hotel the night Alesha Parkhurst died wearing the full burka.” I don't think we're meant to understand that Alesha Parkhurst died wearing the full burka! Or maybe we are?

Sometimes the wrong word was used, such as where I read, “But soon they were both woofing it down...” where the author ought to have written, "wolfing it down." Occasionally there was an unfortunate juxtaposition, such as in “Karen clenched teeth until she finally had the chance to put her bit in.” Was Karen a horse No! She didn’t actually want to put a bit in her mouth; she wanted to, as Americans would say, put her two cents in. I'm not sure what the Brit equivalent of that is these days. It’s been a long time since I lived there!

On other occasions the description of something was off, such as when I read, "A recent story in Google..." when the situation is that Google doesn't publish news stories - it merely facilitates you finding them, so a better turn of phrase would have been, "A recent story on the Daily Mail's site" or "a recent BBC news article said..." or something like that. What really made me decide to quit this though, was reading a sentence like this: “...Bea, the second wife of James Harrington MP was petite, lively and still pretty for fifty-eight.”

Now if a character in this story had said that, I would have no problem with it, because people really can be that shallow, judgmental, and determinedly pigeon-holing of women, making them both skin-depth and the appendage of their husband, but when the actual narrative of the story says something like that, I have to take issue once again with a female author reducing a female character to nothing but shallow looks and diminished status. If this had been a novel about a beauty pageant or something like that, then looks would certainly enter into it, rightly or wrongly, but this is someone who is for no narrative reason, not only reduced to a male appendage, but to skin depth only. Her role in this novel has nothing to do with beauty or looks, so why is whether she's pretty or not even remotely relevant?

Instead of how she, surprisingly, wasn't a wrinkled crone at fifty eight(!), could we not have her described as a "respected activist" or "an intellectual powerhouse" or "a stalwart campaigner for women's rights"? Something - anything but reducing her to a pretty appendage. You know, I have no problem with a radio station playing "Baby, it’s Cold Outside" and especially not when that same station plays songs far more abusive to women than that old and misunderstood song ever could be. I do have a problem with female authors routinely reducing women to their looks.

I understand this author has an admirable life working against abuses of children and doing good work in other endeavors too, but this review is not about the author, it’s about what was authored, and while I wish the author all the best in her writing, I cannot commend this novel for the reasons I've listed.

More Than Bones by Craig David Singer

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Emily is a med school graduate embarking on her internship. She was lured into working at a Catholic hospital in Baltimore to be near her fiancée, and manages to find a room in a nicely-appointed house run by a usually sweet, but very temperamental guy whose first name, Norton, is the same as Emily's last name. On day one Emily is given a gift by an old man named Frank who lives next door to Norton. Emily tries to refuse it, but he's so insistent that she accepts just to be nice, and she hangs it on this skeleton - a real skeleton that Norton put in her room as a weird sort of housewarming gift for the surgeon intern.

The amulet is supposed to bring her good luck, and Frank is insistent that she wear it, but she doesn't and sure enough, a host of bad luck comes her way. She's late on her first day because of car trouble; later, her fiancée dumps her; Norton becomes seriously pissed-off with her over a remark she makes about him being gay - which he either isn't or is in serious denial of; a fellow female doctor, Mondra, with whom Emily was bonding also becomes angry with her, and an important guy from the local community files a formal complaint against her over her medical conduct when she treated his son - a patient she was tricked into taking by two other senior doctors who didn't want to deal with this kid's abusive dick of a father! After Frank dies unexpectedly and fails to impart some last words to Emily, a private detective shows up asking about his will, which seems to be missing.

The author has an interesting style, repeatedly tricking the reader into thinking one thing while revealing later how wrong you were to think as you did, but that grew rather old after a while as did the story-telling. Emily is neither an interesting nor a likable character and reading this story from her PoV was neither pleasant not engaging. First person voice is rarely the best one for telling a story, especially one like this, and did the main character no fav ors.

I made it only two-thirds the way through this novel before I quit because I could not stand to read about this whiny little self-absorbed ditz any more. At one point, for example, Mondra approaches Emily in the parking lot asking for help, and Emily just leaves her there and coldly drives away. I already didn't like Emily prior to this point, but that killed-off any hope of me growing to like her. At that point I was thinking Mondra's story would have been far more interesting than Emily's was - but not if it was written the same way this one was!

In the end I could not stand to read any more about her, so I DNF'd this. The mystery was boring and taking far too long to go anywhere for my taste. I cannot commend this as a worthy read.

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Usually on Net Galley, you request a book to read and review and you take your chance as to whether it will be approved. Sometimes books are listed as 'Read Now' which tends to mean the book isn't doing so well or is being undervalued, and the publisher wants it read more widely. Those books are great because I've found many gems among them. There is another option though, which is the 'wish for it' category.

This has also been kind to me because I've found some gems there, too, but since the ones I've wished for have all been granted (to my best recollection), I have to wonder if this category is used because the author or publisher is lacking somewhat in confidence in the book and wants to ensure that it's requested only by those who really want to read it? I don't know. Personally I've tended to enjoy the 'wished-for' books, but I can't say that of this particular one unfortunately.

The blurb for this book makes it all about Charles Hayden, which seems rather genderist since Hayden is only one half of a married couple who travel to Yorkshire in the UK, a place I know and from whence both my parents hailed, but we see very little of Yorkshire. We are confined to an ancient manor house surrounded by a castle-like wall, and it's Erin Hayden's family connections which have led to this inheritance: to this manor isolated in an even more ancient wood. Erin isn't even mentioned in the blurb! Charles may as well have been single.

That said, the story is told from Charles's perspective, thankfully not in first person, but this novel would have been a lot easier to like had either of these two people been themselves remotely likeable. As it was, they were chronic whiners and I was turned off both of them within a few paragraphs of starting to read this.

Both were endlessly wallowing in the loss of their daughter Lissa. A mention of this once in a while would have been perfectly understandable, but as it was, it felt like it was every other paragraph and it became a tedious annoyance, drawing me out of the story as I read again and again of how obsessed they were with their 'lost' daughter. A search for the daughter's name produced 156 hits in this novel. A search for 'daughter' produced another 56. It was too much, and it felt like a failure of writing. It's certainly possible to convey deep grief in a character without rabbiting on about it to a nauseating degree, so this felt like a really bad choice to me.

The fact that we're denied any real information about what happened to Lissa didn't help at all, and actually made things worse. Did she disappear? Was she killed? Did she become fatally ill? Who knows? The author doesn't care to share this information, at least not in the portion of this that I read before becoming so frustrated I didn't want to read any more; nor do we learn anything about the affair Charles had - just that he had one.

This affair is related to us as if it were no more important than his remembering he had once stubbed his toe, so even as big of a betrayal as that was, it carries little import because of the way it's so casually tossed out, yet this woman Syrah, is mentioned a further 34 times in the book. It's another thing that Charles is unaccountably obsessed with. No wonder he gets nothing done: his mind is always elsewhere! And this obsession is a continuing betrayal of his wife.

Frankly, these two, Charles and Erin, were so annoying I wanted to shake them and slap them. Not that I would, but the truth is that they were seriously in need of inpatient psychiatric attention and it showed badly, but no one seemed to care. The fact that we're told his wife has a boatload of medications she's taking and Charles doesn't even care made me dislike him even more intensely. He came across as shallow and selfish and quite frankly, a jerk. His wife was painted a little bit better, but neither of them remotely interested me as characters about whom I would ever want to learn anything more or about whose futures I cared.

At first I had thought the story would end with their daughter being returned to them, but then I learned of another child in the story and it seemed pretty obvious what would happen at that point. I don't know if that's what did happen, but if it did, that would have been way too trite and predictable for my taste. It's been done before.

Charles's other obsession, aside from his daughter, the woman he had an affair with, and the woman, Silva at the local historical society with whom he'd like to have an affair, was this book he stole as a child, and which was written by a Victorian relative of Erin's. He thinks he can write a biography of the author, Caedmon Hollow - yes that's the name of the guy, not the name of the mansion! - but it seems like he's much more interested in getting into Silva's panties than ever he is in writing anything. He's been into that book only once in his entire life, but he's into thinking about Silva at the drop of a hat.

The book and the mystery it was attached to should have been central to the story but there was so much stuff tossed in here (I think there was actually a kitchen sink at one point) that the book robbed that purported mystery of any currency it may have had. It became a secondary issue to everything else that was going on.

Since it was that very mystery which had drawn me to the novel in the first place, this felt like a betrayal if not an outright slap in the face and really contributed to my decision to quit reading. It felt like it was going nowhere and taking a heck of a long time to get there, and I had better things to do with my time. I wish the author all the best, but I cannot commend this book as a worthy read.

Joann & Jane: Who Made This Mess by Brandon T Mayes, Taylor McDaniel

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

If you were hoping to let your kids read this on a smart phone as an emergency distraction, it won't work! The picture is larger than the screen so you can't read the text, and you can't shrink the picture! You'd best plan on reading it only on a tablet or in the printed form.

The screens slide up and down, not side to side, but you can't catch the slide in the middle to maybe read the missing text, because for one thing, the text simply isn't there, and for another, the screen doesn't slide - it quantum jumps to the next image too quickly to ready anything even if there was text there to read at the margin.

That said, it's beautifully illustrated by Taylor McDaniel and engagingly written by Brandon Mayes, and it's wonderfully colored in more than one way, because this is a mixed race family which is very rare to see in a children's book even though such marriages have been steadily increasing in real life.

It's been half a century since mixed-race marriage stopped being illegal in the USA, and they're now at the highest proportion in US history, with one in six couples being mixed race, but it remains the case that Asians and Latinx are more likely to marry outside their race than black or white people are. Unsurprisingly, especially in the present political climate, twice as many Democrats as Republicans believe that mixed race marriage as a good thing.

But I digress! Sisters Joann and Jane can't figure out how their room got into such a mess. I'm sure many parents have heard this excuse many times, but here, it's a bit more complicated, it seems. While everyone is wondering how this happened and J&J are playing detective, the little beagle, known as London Dog, seems to be napping quite contentedly. I wonder why? I thought this was a great book and I commend it.