It was a hot and stormy month... Last year's summer rainy season was a bust, but we have had record or near-record rain this year. Those rainy nights are perfect reading weather! Surprising and unexpected mini-themes: midlife weddings and home invasions.
Strangers on a Skein by Anne Canadeo The Black Sheep & Co. yarn shop and its owner, Maggie, have solved several mysteries over the life of the series that tangentially relate to knitting and yarn. In this latest entry in the series, Maggie's employee Phoebe has struck out on her own, serendipitously landing a stall at the Plum Harbor Farmer's Market after the death of the stall's previous renter. Phoebe is excited to start her own business selling finished knit items and yarn kits, hoping this new venture will take her mind off of her recent break up with her boyfriend, Harry. Then she discovers that her stall is right across from Harry's aunt's stall, and the uncomfortable situation is made worse when vandalism and a suspicious death stalk the market. Like all the books in the series, the yarn shop and knitting are just the hook to attract readers and don't contribute to the story. These books never read as if the author herself has experience with knitting. Minor goofs, like 'casted off' for beginning a project (it's casting on) and vague wording (like "Maggie helped her finish the sock") signal very clearly that Ms. Canadeo isn't a knitter. So diehard knitting fanatics who want to read descriptions of yarn and more meaningful connections between the knitter and her project should pass on this series. This entry is a little better than previous stories in that none of the Black Sheep regulars are suspected of murder, although one of them is involved with a major suspect. The story was fairly fast paced, and Plum Harbor seems like a nice enough little town. A couple of chapters before the end, I began to suspect who the murderer was, but it still came as a surprise that Ms. Canadeo went in that direction. I want to like Maggie more than I do: she's middle aged and has started all over again, found romance, lives in a lovely little town, doesn't have to really work for a living, is surrounded by a group of close friends--but I just don't care that much for her. She's kind of bland. She doesn't like tacos! I'm not sure I can like a character who doesn't like tacos. Her groups of friends have more interesting and distinct personalities. It's a pleasant enough read, and when I stumble across one, like this, I will read it, but this is not a series I'd seek out or eagerly wait for. Net Galley
On Deadly Tides by Elizabeth J. Duncan The Penny Brannigan series is another that I've enjoyed in the past enough that this new title in the series caught my eye. I've enjoyed the locale, Wales, very much, and had hoped we'd read more about it in this story, which takes place in Anglesey. Penny and a friend are taking an artist's retreat with a retired and famous actor. Penny meets both a handsome, intriguing wildlife photographer and a very nice young journalist from New Zealand in the hotel bar, but is horrified when she finds the journalist dead the next morning. Penny embarks on a whirlwind romance with the photographer, and befriends the journalist's mother after she travels from New Zealand to accompany her daughter's body home. The location outside Penny's small village sets this story apart from others but in some ways was underutilized: we're not really shown the sites of Angelsey, and there do seem to be one or two coincidences too many. And the discovery of the final clue was a little too pat and too unbelievable. But the series is still pleasant, despite the annoying villagers who think Penny's marriage is their wedding (who would let them dictate to her where and how the wedding takes place?), and on that level, it's a perfect beach read. Net Galley
Murder by the Bookend by Laura Gail Black This is the second in the series, and I have not read the first, but I often feel that is actually a benefit--the reader can often tell how good the author is by how deftly they write in enough details to fill in the characters' relationships and history without making it read like a sales sheet blurb for the previous story. Jenna Quinn's uncle owned an antiquarian bookstore which she inherited after his murder (the subject of the first book). In this second book, she's re-opened the bookstore under a new name and is eager for a new life in a new town. Things get complicated when someone is murdered with a bookend from her store the night of her grand opening. Jenna is a suspect again, and this time, her new boyfriend Keith, a police officer, cannot help her because he's not allowed to work on her case. Detective Sutter is assigned to the case, and he still holds a grudge after Jenna solved her uncle's murder. Jenna and her new friends decide they have to solve the murder before he completely messes it up and allows the real murderer to escape. The story was ok, although I wasn't as enamored of this small town as I have been of other fictional small towns that served as the settings for stories read this month. The romance is very much a dominant plot line, and of course Keith is too good to be true, so much so that I found the romance was getting in the way of the mystery. I didn't feel I had to play catch up to understand the characters and their relationships to each other. The murderer's motive was a little cliched and they are easy to identify, but again, this is the kind of easy beach read that doesn't make demands on the reader. However, I doubt I'll read another in this series as it just didn't pique my interest that much. Net Galley
The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman This is the second inthe delightful Mrs. Pollifax series. Mrs. Pollifax has settled back into ther quiet life in New Brunswick, New Jersey, after her unexpected yet thrilling first adventure for the CIA. SHe's happy to be called into action once again, for a simple courier job: getting apassport and money to defecting spy in Turkey. Of course, nothing is every simple when Mrs. Pollifax and the CIA are involved. The usual formula for the series was followed: a seemingly straightforward job is highjacked by unexpected complications, Mrs. Pollifax finds a ragtag group of innocent bystanders who prove remarkably adept at international spying, and ultimately she has to rely on her own wits to save her life and that of her companions. Despite being formulaic, the series is so well written, and the characters so genuine and real, that even the dated storylines can be overlooked (for example, in this book, the Cold War spy is defecting from Russia). I read these about 25 or more years ago, and decided to re-read the series. I'm enjoying it just as much as I did the first time around. (audiobook)
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell Excellent biography of Virginia Hall, an American WWII spy who was instrumental in helping the French resistance but whose contributions were unknown outside a small circle of intelligence specialists. This is one of the best books I've read in 2021. I listened to the audiobook, read by Juliet Stevenson who did a great job, but I do wonder if I missed some photos that might have improved my appreciation of the woman and France during the war. Hall served as a wireless operator, rescued 12 agents who'd been arrested and imprisoned, completed a harrowing escape on foot across snow-covered mountains, and armed and organized hundred of French resistance fighters. Klaus Barbie was obsessed with identifying and arresting this mysterious agent, but ms. Hall outwitted him and the Germans at every turn. I'm so surprised this book and Virginia's life have not been made into a movie, as it has everything: drama, tragedy, war, romance. Parts of the book are not easy to read, notably the descriptions of the horrific tortures the Nazis inflicted on their enemies, but perhaps it's important that we read and remember as those who witnessed the horrors die and leave only their memoirs to remind us. (audiobook)
A Treacherous Curse by Deanna Raybourn The third in the Victoria Speedwell series, this was the first I had read. Victoria is the illegitimate daughter of the heir to the British throne who has led a life of unimaginable adventure and excitement, often in exotic locations. But in this adventure, Victoria and her mysterious partner, Stoker, are asked to find an amateur archaeologist who has disappeared in England after returning from a successful Egyptian excavation season. Is it a mummy's curse, or something more wordly? The adventure is made more perilous as the missing man is married to Stoker's former wife, and Stoker is himself the number one suspect in the man's disappearance and possible murder. No, Victoria and Stoker do not act like real Victorian-era people would have, even the well-known real Victorian explorer, and generally that lack of historical accuracy annoys me. But if you can suspend your expectations and beliefs, this can be a fun romp to read, and it, too, would make a rollicking movie.
Murder Has a Motive by Francis Duncan Mordecai Tremaine is off to visit his friends in Dalmering and walks right into a murder mystery. Who would want to kill Lydia Dare, a popular and friendly young woman who doesn't seem to have an enemy in the world? Unless it's the man who has been not-so-secretly in love with her for years who is incensed to learn she has fallen in love and decided to marry after a whirlwind romance. But then another body is found, and a third, and the evil simmering under the surface threatens even Mordecai's life. I know some dislike Mordecai Tremaine for not being a heroic kind of amateur detective, quick off the mark and smart and handsome, but that's actually why I really like him. He's smart but human and can be fallible.
