Black Plumes, by Margery Allingham

Well, I mean, let's be real. After that whirlwind romance with The Night Circus (which I just very reluctantly took back to the library), no other suitor was going to compare at all. So it might be that. But I really did not like Black Plumes.

No, no, it's not that I didn't like it, it's that I didn't like it, and in fact really it's that I was and am completely apathetic toward it. I read the book, I learned whodunnit, and I was like, "Oh. Okay. That's cool, I guess."

Maybe I've been spoiled by the other "Golden Age Girls"? Sayers, Christie, and Marsh (or really just all the authors of the period that I've read) have given me some crazy death or other that seems impossible or is really weird or has, like, twelve people who could have done it. The murder in this novel just sort of happens and then someone comes to investigate and then everyone suspects everyone else and then at the end it was some other guy who was never suspected, which, I guess I should have called that?

And there was this sub-plot-line with a pretend engagement that I actually didn't like because it was just kind of annoying, and I didn't care about either of the parties or any of the parties in the whole book and I couldn't even tell you what the inspector's name is or anything about him besides that he doesn't say "just" or "joke" but rather "chust" and "choke" because apparently that's what they say wherever he's from and man that accent as done by this narrator was very distracting. So maybe it's an audiobook problem?

I don't know. I have really nothing else to say about this book, and that makes me kind of sad. Should I give Allingham another chance? Is this actually her worst book and I chust made a terrible decision? Please say it's so!

Recommendation: I just... I don't know.

Rating: 4/10
(RIP Challenge, Vintage Mystery Challenge)

Overture to Death, by Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh and I are totally BFFs, even if she doesn't know it, largely because a bunch of her books are on OverDrive and so it is SO EASY to listen to them! After Death of a Fool, I was like, give me more! And so I found this little number, which promised music and therefore I was in.

There's not really music. Unfortunately. But there is a FANTASTIC murder device, which is a gun attached by pulleys to the soft pedal of a piano, such that when our murderee sets down to play some Rachmaninoff, she shoots herself in the face. WHAT.

I am loving Marsh's ability to murder people.

And then the story is even better — it's established in the lead-up to the murder that this woman, called Miss Campanula, and her BFF/arch-enemy Miss Prentice, are not well-liked by anyone. And it is Miss Prentice who is meant to play the overture at the play that night, except that she has been injured and while she really really means to play, no one will let her and Miss Campanula takes her place at the last minute. So, first question: who was meant to be killed that night?

There are red herrings and seeming red herrings all over the place, and pretty much everyone is like, "I wouldn't mind if both of them were dead, except I don't really mean that, or do I," and "everyone" is SO MANY PEOPLE and I suspected all of them at one point or another but only one person did it and it's sort of interesting who and how that happened.

I'm learning Marsh's tricks, so I'm not quite as awed by her mystery-weaving abilities this go-round, but trust me, she's got them.

Recommendation: If you like a whodunnit, you're gonna like this.

Rating: 8/10
(Vintage Mystery Challenge, RIP Challenge)

Death of a Fool, by Ngaio Marsh

What? A new "Golden Age Girl" for my Vintage Mystery Challenge? Delightful!

I had never heard of Ngaio (pronounced "Nye-oh") Marsh, but my friend Jessica has been pushing me to read her, and in my "I have nothing to read doo doo doo" searching of OverDrive for an audiobook, I found two that fit my reading challenge. Perfection! I couldn't decide between the two, so I asked Wikipedia to tell me what they were about. It then just outright spoiled one of the books, so the other it was!

And I'm quite happy with the one I read. It's from near the middle of Marsh's bibliography, so it's got a nice established detective who does not long to be Holmes and also it is obvious that Marsh still likes her detective (I don't know if she ever doesn't; I am basing this statement on my experiences with other writers).

AND it's a locked room mystery, and I love me a good padlocked door.

Well, except that there's not actually a door. Or a lock. Which kind of makes it awesomer. What happens here is that there's one of those pagan plays, with the dancing and the running around chasing girls and all, and this same family has been doing the play forever, and they're doing it again, except this time there's some German lady who drove out for two days to see the play but the fact that she's annoying the crap out of everyone means no one wants her to go see the play, and also there's some infighting amongst the family people who are all kind of sick of each other, and there's a sort of prodigal granddaughter returning to her homeland and also being in love with someone in the play, and whatever and the play goes on and then suddenly the family Patriarch is supposed to have a line or something except he doesn't say it because he has been BEHEADED. In front of everyone, because where else would he be, except no one saw it.

And that, my friends, is intriguing. All those things from before the play come into importance when Inspector Alleyn shows up and is all omg everyone seems to have wanted this guy dead, but no one could have done it, and also the way he seems to have died is just not right and what the heck actually happened?

So it's good, is what I'm saying. I liked that there were a bunch of clues that I could figure out, and I solved what is sort of the first mystery before it was revealed, but even with just a few minutes left to go on audio I wasn't sure what the answer to the whole mystery was. And when I heard the answer, I wasn't like, what. I was like, "Ohhhhhhh, iiiiiiinteresting." Also, there is a re-enactment, and although no one has to shut up and be a corpse, it's still a fun time. I will definitely be reading more Marsh in the future.

Recommendation: Do you like classic mystery novels? Then read this.

Rating: 8.5/10
(Global Reading Challenge: Australasia, Vintage Mystery Challenge)

Whose Body?, by Dorothy Sayers

I usually make the case for reading an author's work from the beginning, because so often authors start off strong and then run out of ideas and so the first books are the best. But if I had been introduced to Sayers with Whose Body?... I would probably not ever read another Sayers again. Luckily, I didn't, and I know that things only get better from here!

My primary problem is with our amateur sleuth himself, Peter Wimsey. He is annoying and full of himself and very very eager to be Sherlock Holmes and I kind of wanted to punch him in the face more than once. This is in stark contrast to how delightful I found him in the otherwise mediocre Five Red Herrings, where he is still full of himself and eager to be Holmes, but far less annoying.

My other problem was that the writing was a bit uneven on listening. There are some weird second-person parts that seemed to come out of nowhere, and there's an extended confession at the end that make me think that I would rather not have found out whodunnit, and then some bits and pieces that are just a bit off. Maybe it comes across better in writing?

But the murder mystery itself was quite well done. This guy is found dead in a bathtub, with no obvious way for him to have gotten there except through the window (me: "Maybe it was an orangutan!"). Everyone except the dude who owns the bathtub has a good alibi, so the dude is arrested, but of course he totally didn't do it and so Wimsey, a friend of some sort, is on the case. Wimsey is all, what we need are connections, because the way to get away with things is not to have connections but there always is one and I am going to figure out what it is, and after talking with enough people he finds the connection and then the resulting motives and crime-committing are kind of gruesome. Or really gruesome. Definitely gruesome.

So, good times on the whole, but I'm going to need a really nice Sayers to make up for it. Suggestions?

Recommendation: For mystery lovers, of course!

Rating: 7/10
(Vintage Mystery Challenge)

A Red Herring Without Mustard, by Alan Bradley

I don't know what is going on in Bishop's Lacey. You can't seem to throw a stone in this place without hitting a conspiracy and a dead body. Luckily for everyone, 11-year-old Flavia de Luce is on the case. Well, she's interested in the case. And intrusive in the case. And totally holding back evidence until such time as she is forced to hand it over. Maybe it's not such a lucky thing.

After the interminable opening of The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, I am glad to say that the mystery here gets started within the first sixth of the book, and that the preceding pages are full of Bradley's wonderful writing so it goes by quite quickly. In this go, Flavia sets fire to a gypsy's tent, then attempts to atone by offering the gypsy shelter at her family's estate, then finds an intruder in the house, then finds the gypsy beat over the head and nearly dead. Flavia, delighted by the new mystery, sets off to find the connections between gypsies, thieves, and odd religious sects.

There is also a bit more information about Flavia's dead mum and the slow ruin of her family's estate, and I think quite a bit more insight into the characters of Flavia's sisters and father. I liked this, and I liked the intriguing complexities of this set of mysteries, if not the selective genius of Flavia. It is a lot harder to believe in her 11-year-old-ness in this book and things get awfully convenient for her. But the story is amazingly engrossing and I tore through it in a few hours — though I was able to take a break and have some sleep before getting back to it the next day.

I'm hoping that things calm down around Bishop's Lacey, but if people just want to keep scheming and dying and whatnot, I'm very interested in hearing about it.

Recommendation: For fans of the Flavia and of precocious science-minded child mystery solvers in general. Are there others? I should go find out.

Rating: 8/10
(Global Reading Challenge: North America)

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, by Trenton Lee Stewart

Here's another series that I'm enjoying on audiobook... I listened to the first book about a month ago and have just now gotten to this first sequel. It's definitely great for work because the plot is quite simple so there's not too much stopping and going back any time my work area gets too loud or I have to go chat someone up.

The idea of this book is the same as its predecessor... children who are very smart and talented in different ways work together to solve seemingly insurmountable problems. But whereas in the first book this idea was set against a plot of trying to take down an evil genius from inside his base of operations, here the plot is a bit... weaker. The same evil genius is back, and he's kidnapped the titular Benedict, but for the most part his existence and actions are just there to give the story a time limit of sorts. The real plot follows a path of puzzles that Benedict had laid out for the children to follow for funsies, before he got all kidnapped and whatnot.

This plot is both better and worse than the one before it. Better, because I liked the puzzling parts and enjoyed having more of them to try to solve myself (where possible). Worse, because outside of the puzzles there is very little to this book. The characters do their thing, I guess, but it's not terribly interesting.

But! The puzzles are generally interesting, and some of the scenarios the characters find themselves in are in fact intriguing, and if you're listening to this book while doing something else you can skip all the boring parts. Sweet!

Recommendation: Good if you like puzzles!

Rating: 7/10

Dead Man's Folly, by Agatha Christie

I am slowly working my way through Christie's novels in a quite haphazard fashion... this one I had originally picked up because it was the only Christie audiobook at the library, but I ended up reading it in print from the beginning after the CDs were too damaged to play and the book took so long in getting to me that I had forgotten all the important bits! Dedicated, I am. Sort of.

I say this both to impress you and to impress upon you that I have read/listened to this book 1.5 times, and still when I got to the ending I was like... what. It is possible, I suppose, that a keen mind could have pieced together the clues that led to this ending, but mine was not that mind. Alas.

The story is delightful — Christie brings in her alter-ego, Ariadne Oliver, who is off at some rich person's house concocting a murder mystery event. Things get weird, so Oliver contrives to enlist the help of our good friend Poirot, whose moustaches are fine indeed. Oliver tells Poirot that things are hinky and that she's worried that her murder mystery puzzle will turn into a true murder mystery, but Poirot writes off her intuition. Until, of course, someone turns up dead. And someone else doesn't turn up, missing. Sacre bleu!

There are a ton of characters in this novel, and therefore many suspects, and I felt things got a little busy trying to sort out how everyone was related and all of their backstories and whatnot. And a lot of the actual mystery solving takes place off-page, Holmes-style, which was a little disappointing. But regardless, Christie writes a fine mystery and even though I was a bit baffled by the solution, it still affected me as it should. And how can you argue with her wonderful descriptions? You can't.

All in all a successful story. Which should I read next?

Recommendation: For anyone who likes a classic whodunnit.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Vintage Mystery Challenge)

Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy Sayers

I found this book in Mac's Backs when I was up in Cleveland for New Year's, and since I've never seen any other Sayers novels there (and because I still have some store credit there), I snapped it up right quick! It even took precedence over my library book for in-flight reading material, because I liked Gaudy Night so much I wanted my Sayers fix pronto!

This was, for the most part, a very good idea, especially the plane part, because I might not have been able to focus on this book were it not for lack of anything else to do. The story is interesting, don't get me wrong, but Sayers buries the whole thing in so much train timetable nonsense and sometimes indecipherable Scottish dialect that more than once I found myself a bit confused by something but too overwhelmed to go back and figure it out. So I may be missing any subtler parts of this mystery.

But basically, you've got a dude. A belligerent dude, who is not terribly well liked by most of his friends. And so then he dies, seemingly accidentally, and that's all well and good until one Lord Peter Wimsey is like, "Oh, ho, but this one piece of evidence that would totally make this an accident is missing!" and Dorothy Sayers is all, "But I'm not gonna tell you what that evidence is because where's the fun in that?" except she actually writes, "(Here Lord Peter Wimsey told the Sergeant what he was to look for and why, but as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page.)" Which is both sexist and unnecessary, because I sort of knew what she was talking about but it didn't help me figure out whodunnit any faster, so whatever.

Ahem. Anyway, dude-face is dead, and it's an artist what killed him, and in particular one of six potential artists who had the motive and means to do it. Interestingly, most of these artists have gone missing, so it takes rather longer than it probably should to round them all up, figure out their stories, and solve the case. And even then, the case takes a while to solve, because it gets all Clue up in Scotland. Or, I should probably say that Clue gets all Five Red Herrings up in Mr. Boddy's mansion, but I saw Clue first and I'm sticking with it. What I mean to say is that several people offer theories of what might have happened, and then Wimsey is all, "Nuh-uh, you're wrong and I'm right like Sherlock Holmes!" and then, and I am not kidding about this, Wimsey stages a real-time reenactment of the crime that is, again, totally unnecessary but which is in fact delightful.

So. Minus points for the incredibly dense writing, but super-awesome plus points for lines like, "'You shut up,' said Wimsey, 'You're dead, sir.'" and, "'Now, corpse, it's time I packed you into the car.'" Though I admit that if anyone had ever said, "To make a long story short," I would have had to shout, "TOO LATE!"

Recommendation: For fans of classic-type mysteries who are not adverse to a little translation in their reading or a little math (for the timetables).

Rating: 8/10, mostly for the delightful ending
(A to Z Challenge, Vintage Mystery Challenge, What's in a Name Challenge)

Mr. Peanut, by Adam Ross

This is a strange, strange book. I'm not sure what I think about it. I liked the concepts that Ross was working with, of Escher and tessellations and Hitchcock and disorientation; I liked the way he built up a million questions and seeming incongruities and then made them all work out, in one form or another, at the end; I liked that he gave me a nudge in the right direction when things got all literary and subtextual. I didn't like the characters, who were by design all very similar and possibly by design all really annoying; I didn't like the interlude with Sam Sheppard that didn't really go anywhere, by which I mean it didn't seem to move the story along and also it didn't seem to fit in with the story, at the end; I didn't like that Ross's nudges sometimes turned into pushes or slaps.

If you had asked me yesterday, when I was about halfway through, what this book was about, I would have told you pretty much what you'll see on the jacket flap: some guy called David Pepin is said, on the very first page, to be a continual day-dreamer of ways that his wife might die. He's a little morbid, that one. And then poof! A few pages later, his wife is dead, and the manner in which she died is either a suicide or a murder and it's pretty much impossible to figure it out. But a couple of detectives, including Cleveland's own Sam Sheppard, are working on it. Slowly. While dealing with bad relationships of their own.

But today... it's odd, because on the one hand I don't want to say too much for fear of ruining the intense maze that is this novel, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure that no matter how much of the plot or conceit I gave away there would still be something in this book that would surprise you. Because there is a LOT of stuff in here.

So I think I will talk about my favorite and least favorite parts: the Escher and the characters, respectively. Bad things first!

The characters are whiny as all hell. In an interview, Adam Ross said that he didn't consider his characters' marriages dysfunctional, because what's functional and also don't all marriages have their ups and downs? I can agree with him on that, and I didn't mind too much that his married characters were sometimes in love and sometimes not — I've certainly seen that enough in my lifetime.

BUT. I have never heard of anyone staying bed for five months to prove a point, what point I'm still not sure. And I swear, if the dead wife in this story were mine, I would be seriously contemplating her death as well. I cannot deal with people who don't use their words, and I especially cannot deal with people who use their words to say, "If you don't know what's wrong, I'm not going to tell you." Ri-freaking-diculous. And all of the female characters, and to a lesser extent the male characters, do this throughout the novel. Scott heard me loudly complain more than once about it.

Okay, good things. I wrote on the Twitter that the title page of this book is decorated with Escher, who is one of my favorite artists ever. This predisposed me to like the novel, and it also helped me get through a lot of the novel. See, it's broken up into bits and pieces, with some dude-wanting-his-wife-dead over here and some detectives-investigating-the-mystery there and some oh-hey-I-should-probably-explain-who-Sam-Sheppard-is-because-it-turns-out-he's-just-like-that-guy-that-wanted-his-wife-dead right in the middle. And then these pieces, they're sort of thrown up in the air and land wherever they want and there aren't any chapters and you just sort of have to hope that when you get to a new paragraph you'll be able to figure out what's going on. And that is SO Escher.

Oh, and one of those smacks to the face that Ross doles out is all but breaking the fourth wall to tell you that you should read this book to figure out the plot, then read it again to take notes on it, and then discuss it with people. And so I will do this! Thanks goodness for a book group.

Recommendation: Read this if you like or are at least intrigued by movies like Memento or Primer. Also very good for Hitchcock fans, I think.

Rating: 8/10 -- Most of this rating comes from the novel's structure. If it were just the murder-mystery plot or those darned characters it would be much lower.
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Devourer of Books

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich

The other day at the library, I asked a woman if I could help her find anything. She was standing in front of the "new mysteries" section, and she said that she'd read all of these already and asked if I could help her find a good action or adventure mystery. I was like... um...

Because I haven't read an adventure-y mystery in a really long time! Most of my fare is either classics or literary-style mysteries, neither of which would probably have appeased this woman. And in fact, I realized that of all the mystery authors who get multiple shelves with multiple copies of each book? I've read exactly zero. I decided I ought to rectify this, so I grabbed a copy of One for the Money and went to town.

Well. I suddenly remember why I like the classics and the literaries. Stephanie Plum is not a detective; she's an unemployed lingerie-buyer who conveniently has a bail bondsman cousin who, with a little blackmailing, is willing to let her "shag" (you would not believe how happy I was to discover the 1994 definition of that word!) a bail jumper for a cool ten grand. And this jumper is none other than some guy who diddled her in kindergarten and then again in high school. And he's a cop. Who killed someone. And Plum is totes going to get him. Somehow.

I will grant that it was interesting watching Plum be a complete idiot (V.I. Warshawski she is NOT) about... everything related to nabbing a bail jumper, and also to watch the strange cat and mouse game that she and the guy were playing. But the whole story just required this drastic suspension of disbelief that I just could not manage. Many things were incredibly convenient, many people were conveniently very stupid and/or bad at their jobs, and Plum seemed pretty much devoid of common sense and yet still managed to get her man.

It makes the brain hurt.

Please, suggest to me another popular mystery author, and perhaps a title of his/hers that won't make me want to cry over the inanity?

Rating: 5/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Black Minutes, by Martín Solares

I saw this book hanging out in the "new mysteries" section of my library, and I was completely drawn in by the cover. And then I skimmed through the jacket flap and discovered that the author is from Mexico and said, "Hey! Orbis Terrarum book! Excellent!" So I grabbed it.

What a tough book. It starts off with a three-page cast of characters, many of whom have not just a given name but also a nickname (or two). I was glad for these pages later in the novel when I was like, "Who are these people? Is this guy that guy from before? No? Who the heck is he?"

It's also tough because the mystery at the beginning, which is all interesting and stuff, is actually a frame story for a mystery from twenty years earlier which takes up most of the book. So then when it's time to get back to the present, you get a bit of whiplash. The novel is broken up into three "books" to delineate these times, but it's still a little confusing.

And, for even more fun, the book switches from third person to first person (with different first people) on a regular basis, and there are a couple of weird dream-sequence-type things that I'm not sure about. I'm not up on the literature from Mexico, so maybe this is a thing? Or maybe it's just Solares' thing. I don't know.

But, regardless, the story — especially the 20-years-ago mystery — was incredibly interesting and engaging. It reminded me of Tana French's novels in that the mystery is good, but the novel is about so much more than that. In Solares' case, his novel is really about corruption in the Mexican government and police and everywhere, really, and how a man trying to stay uncorrupted can deal with all of that and even, later, how a corrupt man can deal with all of that. Solares does a great job of showing how rampant corruption is, and today, a few days after finishing the book, I'm still feeling a little paranoid. I think that's a sign of an excellent storyteller.

Recommendation: Check this out if you like your mysteries with a little more literary slant, like Tana French's, and have some time to spend reading this through slowly. This is not a novel you'll get through in a day.

Rating: 8/10
(RIP Challenge, Orbis Terrarum Challenge: Mexico, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

Before we even get into the story here, let me tell you that I. Hate. Acid paper. My copy of this book is the 1974 movie tie-in edition, and although I thought they were done with this terrible paper by then, they were not. So now my copy of Murder on the Orient Express is technically two half-copies of Murder on the Orient Express. Sigh. I suppose that it could have been worse, that I could have lost a page without noticing and be missing 1 percent of the book — possibly an important 1 percent!

But there were no missing pages, and every page was delightfully intriguing. This book had been an option in a mystery novels class I took in undergrad, so though I read a different book from the list (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, another Christie novel with a crazy ending) I knew how this one ended. Even still, I was drawn in to the story and the odd detecting skills of M. Poirot.

The story starts off as a classic locked-room problem — a Mr. Ratchett is found dead in his compartment on the Orient Express train. The chain is in place on his side of the door, and the communicating door between his compartment and the woman's next door is also locked. His cause of death is twelve stab wounds to the chest, of varying levels of severity. The doctor on board the train immediately presumes a crime of passion perpetrated by a woman, but the pipe cleaner left behind at the scene says perhaps a man. But the handkerchief also left behind says a woman. And while most of the stab wounds say right-handed person, one definitely says left-handed person. And, everyone on the train has an alibi for the presumed time of death. Poirot gets dragged into solving this impossible problem, and of course he does, because that's sort of his job.

I greatly enjoyed finally reading this novel, which is similar to a Sherlock Holmes story but with better showing of clues to the reader. I felt like I could have solved this case myself even without knowing the final result, and I liked watching Poirot come to his realizations mostly along with me (he is a bit smarter than I, unfortunately). I also absolutely love the ending; not the solution bit, but the bit right after that.

Rating: 7/10
(RIP Challenge)

See also:
an adventure in reading

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Chalk Circle Man, by Fred Vargas

I have... absolutely no idea where I heard about this book, but I heard about it somewhere and was like, "zomg I must read this!" So I put it on hold at the library, and many moons later it finally came in, and I read it. I know, you're like, "No way." Way.

Right. Back on topic. No idea why I read this book, and no real expectations going in, which was probably a good thing, as it is French and therefore super-weird. Just a couple pages in, there is the greatest dialogue of the whole book, which I cannot transcribe for you because I had to return the book to the library pretty much ten seconds after I finished reading it, but which involves Shakespeare-level puns on blindness. The dialogue goes downhill from there, but it is still amusing.

It is a mystery, and the mystery is that there is some guy drawing chalk circles around Paris. Terrifying, yes? He's been drawing them around random bits of garbage, but a detective called Adamsberg who is sort of like Sherlock Holmes but French and a little daft thinks that soon enough there will be a dead body in one of them, so he has his officers go out and photograph garbage for a while. Then, of course, there is a dead body, and the hunt is on!

There are a lot of potential killers, and I thought Vargas did a really good job of leading me around — I thought I knew whodunnit, then I was like, crap, no I don't, and then I was like NO WAY that is ridiculous and also awesome. There is really no character development to speak of, but I still enjoyed all of the characters that she created in their one-dimensional wonder. I guess this is part of a series of Adamsberg mysteries, so I might have to check the rest of them out someday.

Rating: 7/10
(Orbis Terrarum Challenge: France, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Back to Books

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Faithful Place, by Tana French

And finally, we get to the new book! I have been very excited for this book ever since I heard it was coming out, which was maybe not that long ago, but still! And I got it from the library the first day I could, but I was all busy with reading other books and it took me like A WEEK before I could read it. The travesty!

Maybe it was all that excitement from the first paragraph, or maybe it's because I got myself all worked up by reading the previous two books first, but I felt rather let down by this installment. :( No, I know what it was... French's books have always been more character-driven than mystery-driven, but this book pretty much threw away the mystery story in favor of an in-depth look into Frank Mackey, who I didn't care much about in the first place. Sigh.

The mystery, what it is, is first that a suitcase shows up in Mackey's family's neighborhood, and it belongs to the girl he meant to run away to England with many years ago. She never showed, but Mackey went off anyway and never went home... until this suitcase thing. It quickly turns out that his girl, Rosie, is dead under some concrete in a dilapidated building, and then before you can wrap your head around that Mackey's brother ends up dead, having fallen out of a window in some manner or other. Mackey, being Mackey, goes off to do his investigating while being bombarded on all sides by family and history.

It's interesting, sure, but I'd gotten used to hearing about French's characters in bits and pieces and anecdotes, not all at once, and because there's so much focus on Mackey's history the mystery part of the book falls flat. I wouldn't tell you not to read this book, but I would personally rather go read In the Woods again first.

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2010, A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'?

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Likeness, by Tana French

So after I finished In the Woods, I had a dilemma. Should I just read Faithful Place, French's new book about a character introduced in her second book, since the books are definitely standalone? Or should I go read those 450 pages of The Likeness again? Obviously, I chose the latter, mainly because I get twitchy about reading things out of order and also because in discussion with my friend Cari I had realized that I could barely remember a thing about this book, the one that I loved so much more than In the Woods.

So I sat down and read this book, but it was not nearly as good the second time around as In the Woods was, nor was it as good as I remember it being in the first place. The premise is spectacular: Cassie Maddox gets called in to help in a murder investigation because the dead girl not only looks startlingly like Cassie but is also carrying around ID that says she's Lexie Madison, a person that Cassie and her boss made up when she was in Undercover. Creepy, right? Said boss, Frank Mackey, has sort of commandeered the investigation because he has decided that it would be awesome to see if Cassie could go undercover as the dead girl into the house where she lived with her four nearest, dearest, and possibly only friends.

It's an interesting thought experiment, but I think the main interest I had in this book came from wondering if and when Cassie was going to get caught. Knowing what eventually happens really takes the suspense out of it, and I was just sort of like, "Okay, whatevs." In the Woods had a cleverly psychotic killer, but (spoiler alert?) this one doesn't, so there isn't that same awe at watching the investigation unfold. But I'm still amazed how realistically Cassie embeds herself into the house, and I do love how the house itself is an important character in the story, so I will maintain my love for this book. Just maybe I won't read it again.

Rating: 9/10 (was a 10... sigh...)
(Flashback Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge, Chunkster Challenge)

See also:
Reading Matters
reading is my superpower

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Gaudy Night, by Dorothy Sayers

This was a weird pick for my book club, largely because we all liked it. :) When we hopped on Skype to chat about it, we were all like, "Um, it's good... and stuff... can we read some more Dorothy Sayers now?" Which is interesting, because it's not really a straight-forward mystery novel like others of Sayer's, it's more of a treatise on marriage with a mystery thrown in. You'd think that three marriage-age women (with me married!) could have come up with something to say about that!

Of course, I had only just finished the book before the club, so I hadn't had too much time to think about what I might want to say about the institution of marriage (not that I've got any ideas now!). I was still all, "I can't believe that that was the murderer! I'm so terrible at guessing these things!" The mystery part goes as follows: Harriet Vane goes to a reunion at her college, and while there picks up some not-very-nice notes. She ignores them and goes home, but soon gets a call from the Dean or the Warden or someone from the college asking if Harriet might oh-so-kindly stop by and help them with this mystery, since she did so well solving that other mystery and also in writing all those mystery novels. The mystery is, of course, that a bunch of other people at the college are also getting these terrible notes, and also some manuscripts are being defaced, and it would all be such a scandal if the real police found out about it.

Harriet takes her sweet time (500 pages!) to figure it out, because there's also a bunch of stuff in there about Peter Wimsey, an amateur detective who has been attempting to woo Harriet for a very long time, and his relationship with Harriet, as well as many, many long, tedious discussions about whether women should marry and if they do should they have jobs because they're just going to flake out on their jobs every time their kids hiccup and if you feel you really just must marry someone should you pick someone you actually like or someone who is convenient for you and oh my goodness.

Sayers seems to side with those who choose to marry, seeing as how the women who argue against marriage read as more uppity than those who are for it, but she does throw in a woman for nearly every stereotype — the married and happy, the married and unhappy, the unmarried and happy, the unmarried and unhappy, the completely apathetic — and they all felt pretty real to me.

And of course I can't argue against marriage, being married myself, but I can certainly see the downside to a woman who gets a wonderful education and then abandons it to motherhood. Of course, I am also in awe of people who can spend all day with multiple children and not want to strangle them, so it's not like motherhood is all bonbons and soaps, right? So really, I am very unopinionated about this topic! Or possibly my opinion is "do whatever makes you happy." Yes, that's it. I like it.

I also like the ending of this mystery, but it's a hard slog to get there — take it on at your own risk!

Rating: 8/10
(Orbis Terrarum Challenge: England, Chunkster Challenge)

See also:
Of Books and Bicycles

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Clue of the Broken Locket, by Carolyn Keene

It was kind of a bad idea to read this book basically immediately after reading In the Woods, but it was all I had left to read so that's what happened!

It's your average Nancy Drew story... we have doubles, and a sinking canoe, and someone trapped in a house... I could probably go on, but I just don't want to think about this too hard.

Sadly, I think I'm going to have to call it quits on the Nancy Drew Challenge. I've gotten through 11 of the 56, and I think the other 45 are just going to have to wait until next year. Or the year after. Or when I'm really old and can make my descendents read them to me — they are so much easier to take in audio form!

Rating: 5/10
(Nancy Drew Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

In the Woods, by Tana French

I read this book once before, waaaaay back in the day (well, relatively speaking). I absolutely loved it, and I told everyone who had ears that it was a wonderful book and that they should go read it and why were they still talking to me etc. So when I got to pick the book for and lead a discussion group for my library practicum, I was like, "Have they read In the Woods? Because they should have. I will now make them."

And then I packed up my books to send down to Jacksonville with Scott, and I packed this book omg! So I had to borrow it from the library. The library must really love me.

So I got like six people to read this book all at once, which was delightful, and of course I had to read it again, because although I remembered how it ended I knew there was a lot more in the middle that I was missing in my memory. Oh boy, was there. I had forgotten how much confusion there is — they're looking for a killer, obviously, but then there's this other case that might tie in, and there are so many leads to follow up on and people to talk to and it's a wonder this case even gets solved at all!

And knowing the ending already... man. I could see where all of these threads were leading, slowly but surely, and I was still like, "No! Don't let it happen! CAN'T YOU SEE WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!?!?!" Oh. It's kind of devastating. You can see how ridiculously clever, and plotting, and foresight-having, and completely insane the killer is, and I have a certain respect for that even though of course we should use such powers for good. Of course.

What I'm saying is, if you haven't read it already, seriously, go do that please, and if you have read it and you have some free time on your hands, read it again. Wonderful.

Rating: 10/10 (it was a 9 before, but the ending is much less disappointing the second time around!)
(Countdown Challenge: 2007, Flashback Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge, Chunkster Challenge)

See also:
Reading Matters
reading is my superpower
books i done read

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Password to Larkspur Lane, by Carolyn Keene

Did you know that there is an International Federation of American Homing Pigeon Fanciers? Neither did I, until I read this book! Oh, homing pigeons. You're so useful for nefarious purposes.

Right, so, Nancy manages to intercept one of these delightful pigeons as it falls out of a plane, and it has a cryptic message about blue bells and whatnot and therefore Nancy just knows it's a mystery! Fun times! And then her dear friend Helen Corning (now Archer) comes to Nancy with another mystery happening to her relatives out on their estate, and Nancy's all, I can solve both of these at the same time! But, if you've been following along, you know that these two cases end up intertwined.

Sadly, there is no chloroforming or drowning. But there is disguise and escape and Nancy being thrown into a hole, so we know it's still our Nancy Drew. :)

Rating: 7/10
(Nancy Drew Challenge, Support Your Local Libary Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Sign of the Twisted Candles, by Carolyn Keene

I was so right, Nancy totally does get chloroformed again! Oh, Nancy, you gotta stop killing those brain cells.

Hanyway, the mystery in this book is a little different from Nancy's usual... here she starts off with a seemingly simple mystery in hand — is Asa Sidney, a relative of George and Bess, being taken care of in his inn (another inn? seriously??) as he is supposed to be? Of course, he isn't, and soon some of his other relatives are after him for his oodles of money, and Nancy tries to protect him, but then he dies and suddenly George and Bess are upset that Nancy is protecting all that fortune what was meant to go to their families, and Nancy gets chloroformed, and so does a crappy guard, and it's all just a mess until Nancy ends up solving a mystery no one even knew existed! Goodness.

I have to admit I didn't like this one as much as I liked the eight previous... I need more intrigue in my Nancy Drew. :) Let's hope that Password to Larkspur Lane is more to my style!

Rating: 6/10
(Nancy Drew Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.