The theme that emerged this month was vacation. After 13 months of pandemic lockdown and restrictions and the thought of another year with the rollercoaster of the COVID-19 risk level ahead of me (and having just spent a lot of money on my home renovation), I decided to spend most of April reading books that took place somewhere else, maybe someplace I'd like to visit. My father always insisted "we were Scottish, not English!" (there must be a great family story there somewhere), and a spate of recently published novels that take place in Scotland started off my vicarious vacation mystery month.
Double or Muffin by Victoria Hamilton This is book 7 in the Merry Muffin series, featuring muffin baker Merry Wynter, but it's the first in the series that I've read. I didn't feel lost at all, despite it being clear that there were backstories to each of the characters and these backstories were alluded to in dialogue or descriptions, but overall I think the author did a good job in making this series one you can start anywhere. Merry inherited a large castle in upstate New York, and has turned it into a boutique hotel with out buildings and rooms in the castle that can be rented for short stays or for special events. In this entry to the series, she is also deep into plans to create a performing arts center on the grounds. It's not clear from this book if Merry inherited a lot of money with the castle, but I am assuming she did. The series and the character have fans online, but I confess to finding Merry quite annoying on a certain level. By Chapter 5, we had already read about her Birkin tote bag, a not-so-subtle play on the Birken tote bag that costs tens of thousands of dollars (or more!) and which probably none of the readers of this series could afford (this reader, convinced by the name dropping that it was real, had to look it up and was not impressed). So I began the book having a hard time relating to the main character. She's great a muffin making, and the castle has a huge professional kitchen that is presumably fully stocked, and she feeds the crew frozen lasagna the first night (understandable, they dropped on her doorstep) and then spaghetti on night number 2? After multiple trips to Costco are mentioned? I'd want a fancier meal than that if I was paying to rent the entire castle. And while amateur detectives have to be nosy, her inserting herself into an argument over what a contestant should wear was spurious at best and unwarranted at worst (she's catering and housing, not production). The arrival of a reality TV production centered on contestants vying for an opera career is topical (although this reader has only seen one episode of a reality TV show ever, I know they are hugely popular), with just that edge of distinction (classy opera) to stand out. Merry's business partner, Pish, has agreed to do the production company a favor and convinces Merry to rent the castle to them for a week's worth of filming. Naturally, nothing is as easy or uncomplicated as it would appear, and secrets, tangled relationships, and murder ensue. There is one plot device that was used three times at pivotal moments that I found very irritating: Merry will be in the middle of a conversation with someone and about to reveal her suspicions or information she's learned, and the dialogue ends. We the reader are not privy to the rest of the conversation. The information is revealed later and is crucial to solving the mystery. This plot device is quite annoying, as it removes the reader from being part of the story and identifying with Merry. And what is up with the names of people: Pish, Brontay, Merry's former married name of Paradiso, Sparrow? Just a bit too twee. The mystery itself is pretty good, the opera show cast and contestants were mostly interesting, the setting in upstate New York sounded divine, yet the irritations add up to a C+/B- for me. It remains to be seen if I will read others in the series.
A Scone of Contention by Lucy Burdette Hayley and her newish husband Nathan travel to Scotland for what they are calling their honeymoon, but since they are joining his sister and her husband and bringing family friend Miss Gloria and Nathan's mother with them, it's really less a romantic trip and more of a family reunion. The story starts with trip preparations getting sidetracked by another family friend, Ray, arrested for brandishing and shooting a gun in public. This insertion of this side story was very confusing to me; why did the author do it? The story would have moved happily along without it; it's an unnecessary and, to the reader, unwelcome intrusion and distraction. It also means that we get musings on whether policeman Nathan will bring his gun with him to Scotland (only if he gets a Visitor Firearm Permit from Scotland and only if he can get it through the TSA screening process here in the US). Nathan's sister Vera is working on a book with some college friends, and relations between them have become strained with the passage of time and the stress of the book project. Vera takes the group off on tour of some of Scotland's sacred places that will be included in the book, but even before they leave, someone falls ill to poison, and accidents and murders stalk the tourists. I have to say, this book, too, employed a plot device that's crucial to getting our nosy amateur detective further along the investigative process but which is such an unbelievable stretch that it annoys the reader. In this case, Hayley, a food critic, tracks down the bereaved family of the murder victim within days of his demise and invites herself, a complete stranger who witnessed his death, into their house to ask them questions. The author has the heartbroken family not only talk to her, but welcome her and confide in her. What? I've lost people I've loved so very dearly, and if a complete stranger had tried to push her way into my grief with these kinds of questions and under the silly pretext of getting my award-winning scone recipe (hey, has Ms. Burdette been watching Father Brown on PBS?), I'd have had less than kind words and shown her the door. Hayley confessed to feeling "a little sick about pushing my way into their grief." She should have felt a lot sick, since she follows that statement with a thoughtless description of seeing the woman's son dead on the ground, and my already razor-thin interest in her as a character morphed into disgust. And yet she has the nerve to feel "slightly" ambushed herself when her mother-in-law tries to find out what she was doing all afternoon; imagine how that mother felt, Hayley. Pot, meet kettle, thine own self. I'm not a fan of paranormal stories, and while the repeated episodes Miss Gloria has in various historic locales might appeal to fans of Outlander, they didn't appeal to me. The abduction of Vera as a teenager swirls around the edges of this story, coloring her relationships with most people. I found it hard to believe that there was little post-traumatic therapy for Vera and her family, that she herself is still not in therapy, which was just another element that didn't seem to make this story more realistic. The author avoided directly stating whether she had been raped or not, although the implication is there. That makes the lack of psychological help and therapy even more distracting. The author seems to have wanted to write a cosy, and has blended several subgenres--cooking (Hayley is a food critic), paranormal, with a dash of psychological thriller with Vera's subplot--all of which is just too much. There's too much going on, and the reader's attention is pulled in too many directions for this to be a satisfying read. Living on a houseboat in Key West would normally pique my interest, but I won't revisit this series and give this entry a C (mostly for the discussion of Scottish food and some settings).
Murder in a Scottish Garden by Traci Hall This is book 2 in a new Scottish Shires series set in the fictional town of Nairn, where Paislee Shaw owns a small boutique yarn and sweater shop (organized by color--shudder. I know that's a thing, but this knitter would never shop there.). Hall is trying to set up a location similar to Sea Harbor in the Seaside Knitters mystery series--a small town with a quaint and boutique row of stores, a group of knitting regulars--but her twist gives Paislee a young son whose father she refuses to identify, a grandfather that has just re-entered her life, and more realistic financial concerns. But she doesn't make Paislee a realistic shop owner; for example, the hours seem to be pretty limited, the village is tiny and doesn't appear to have a tourist attraction nearby that will bring customers in, and there's no mention of Cashmere Crush having an Internet presence. Cashmere yarn is expensive. Where did money to build up the inventory come from? Perhaps that's discussed in the first book, but having worked in small shops, nothing rang true for me re: the shop or its maintenance. Despite those financial concerns which are the whole reason she is drawn into the mystery, Paislee (also a little too twee a name for me) seems to spend little time in her shop and a lot of time dashing around. She has just a few days before being evicted and she hasn't looked for a new location yet and she only starts to get customer information then? Most specialty shops I patronize have a book where you can enter your email or address for sales flyers, etc. Paislee is chaperone on a field trip with her son's class when she witnesses a man fall though a hedge, seemingly injured. She doesn't run to help, which struck me as very odd, and when others arrive and find him dead, Paislee, who had escorted a young girl to the bathroom, decides the appropriate action is to keep the door closed and not let the girl out. The scene drags on and on, with the girl wanting to leave and Paislee lying that the door is jammed shut. Why not get the girl out and shield her view of the man on the ground, and escort her back to the group? There was no blood on the victim, as we're told several times, so she could have lied to the little girl that he was feeling sick and the other gentlemen would help him. But the author uses this scene, where Paislee keeps the child essentially locked alone in the bathroom while holding onto the door to prevent her from getting out, as a device to pile on more stress in Paislee's life when the girl's parents threaten to sue her. It's a great plot device to get Paislee to the scene of the crime, but is was grossly mishandled by the author in details and outcome and length. Paislee is also one of those amateur detectives who thinks the police should tell her what's going on with their investigation, just because, and who also thinks they don't know how to do their job. "He didn't owe her, but it wouldn't hurt him to be polite." No, but it would jeopardize his investigation and potentially the court case that will result. Paislee's sense of entitlement in this regard pops up a few times and is quite ridiculous. She will go to dinner at the estate because there should be a gun cabinet and she can find out who had access to it, because the DCI wouldn't think to ask that. But he's not the only character of whom she thinks poorly. She knows better than her son's school headmaster, too, and knows the grounds and the teachers better than he (I mean, she is a school chaperone after all, and she does have a kid in the school, after all, and his being headmaster for several years and working with these teachers for 10 hours a day for years means he probably knows little about them, right?) and that she needs to tell him to make sure the kids will be all right when they return to school. Does she really think that hunters know nothing about the ammunition they use to shoot? There's also much made about "her mother's heart" being affected by various things: a child's illness or feeling compassion when she hears someone crying. This barren spinster would feel the same; these are human reactions that sympathetic humans would feel regardless of whether they have offspring. And like Hayley in the previous book reviewed above, Paislee has no issues gossiping about other people but is shocked to realize people talk about her and her actions. She is shocked when Lady Leery mentions that she could not have raised a child as a single parent but didn't even consider she had shocked Lady Leery just moments before by prying into Lady Leery's son Shaun's need for a kidney transplant (which we the reader know at this point in the story is a family secret and not common knowledge). There are a lot of little things that irritated, but I'll only mention two: "Though average looking, Dan had a wizard's touch in the kitchen." What? What does that even mean? Only good looking people can be chefs? Ugly people don't know how to cook? His looks have anything to do with his talent and personality and value? And why is it impolite for Brady to tell his mother that his grandfather is in the bathroom? She asked Brady where Grandpa was and he told her. What's impolite about that? He didn't use any expletives or naughty words. The author threw in a lot of Gaelic words she clearly looked up on the Internet to add to the ambiance of the story, but her clean as a whistle, no sex or cursing story includes calling someone a wanker. I don't think she knows what this word means. The mystery and murder aren't that compelling, and the red herrings that are tossed in are done so very poorly and do not confuse the mystery as they're supposed to. I have to give this one a D, as there is little in the setting, plot, or characters to merit even an average score. The idea behind the series might be okay, but the author should have worked much more closely with an editor.
Aunt Dimity and the Summer King by Nancy Atherton I know I've always written that I don't like paranormal mysteries, but I guess that's not really true. There is a slightly paranormal element to the Aunt Dimity series (Lori inherited a lovely English cottage from her mother's late best friend, and is able to communicate with Aunt Dimity's spirit through a magical notebook), and I used to really like the series. The conversations with Aunt Dimity are a very minor plot line; most of the stories revolve around Lori, her family and friends, and their charming English village.Aunt Dimity's presence is usually limited to just providing some maternal advice to Lori. I fell behind somewhere around book 8 or so, and there are 25 now in the series, so when this title popped up in my library's audiobook catalog, I thought a vacation in a lovely, sleepy, tiny, English village fit this month's theme perfectly. Time has not stood still for Lori: her twin boys are school age, and she and Bill have just welcomed an unexpected but joyful new bundle, a little baby girl. While walking her infant daughter around the village, Lori becomes perturbed (obsessed) by two cottages that for some reason have been for sale for months and which no one wants to buy. Lori becomes obsessed--in a not good way--with the idea that someone, namely, the realtor, is keeping interested people from placing bids on the cottages for her own nefarious purposes. Everyone Lori asks about for information on the realtor sings her praises as a nice, caring, kind person. Lori, however, is convinced she is not. And that's the plot line that irritated me. Everyone Lori knows and trusts assured her that Marigold, the realtor, was not duplicitous and would never do any of the bad things Lori imagines Marigold might be doing, but she ignores all of them. I'm not making light of real postpartum depression, but all I could think about while listening to this was postpartum craziness on Lori's part. The Summer King and his family, on the other hand, I loved. They were charming and funny and eccentric, and I found myself falling in love with him, just as Lori did. My ire at Lori's behavior kept increasing. Why is she so obsessed with whether these cottages are sold? Why does she spend so much time angrily arguing against any reasons these made-up people might have for not living in a tiny village? Why does she not see that living in a tiny village is not everyone's idea of heaven? Why does she get so angry about this and take it so personally? Why does she castigate "the Handmaidens" for being so nosy without recognizing she is as much a busybody as they are? She even lies to Marigold so she can illegally break into her filing cabinet to go snooping! I think I may have drifted from the series because it was starting to creak around the edges, and Lori's personality in this book argue against reading more. But I'd love to see more of the Summer King and his family, and may have to track down the more recent entries in the series to see if they hav become series regulars; I sincerely hope so. They indicate clearly that Ms. Atherton has not lost her touch. A solid A-.
The Sicilian Method by Andrea Camilleri I've read a couple of Inspector Montalbano mysteries and enjoyed them and the view of modern Italian lives they offer, so I decided that my vacation tour needed to extend beyond Scotland and England to Italy. The story starts with the unexpected discovery of a dead body by Montalbano's coworker, Mimi. Unfortunately, Mimi found the body after jumping off his lover's balcony and breaking into the apartment below her's to escape her husband, which leads to the dilemma of how to investigate a murder that can't be reported? The story is, as always, well written; the plot intriguingly complex and convoluted yet solved elegantly and simply. My only gripe was the relationship between Montalbano and Antonia at the expense of Livia, although it was handled well, because I like Livia. My only gripe with the author was that at the very end of the story, he calls Antonia a girl, after scrupulously calling her a woman throughout the story. Ah well, nothing can be perfect, eh? A solid A.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson My parents raised me to not care what other people thought or said. That if I steered my life according to my own moral compass (although these are not the words they used), it would be a good life. They taught me what was true and just, to not value artifice, to seek to do good, to be good, to live good. To not covet or be jealous, to work hard, to treat others as I would like to be treated in turn. But apparently other parents don't teach that, and other kids don't learn it if they do. Mark Manson's parents were not like my parents, and as a result of his upbringing and the tragic death of a friend of his when they were young, Mark's life went slightly off the rails. This book is his story of how he learned to not care what other people think, and how to care about himself. While I don't need to learn these lessons for myself, his perspective did make me consider how some people I know perceive things, and that's very valuable to my understanding them for who they are. It's a quick read, and for those who never learned how to not give a you know what, worthwhile. I give it B.
I also read One for the Hooks by Betty Hechtman, but gave that a mid-month review, so just scroll down if you're interested.
