Becky's Books –

Another All-Nonfiction Reading Group selection and I think I nominated this one simply because I was attracted to the subject matter, the sample audio was good and the reviews from good places were great.  I got the Kindle version, too,  and I’m glad I did.  There’s a pdf file which goes with the Audible version, but I also want footnotes and other extra-textual material.  The footnotes would have made the Kindle version worth it, but there is also a photo section which is a very nice addition.  

The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone  
by Edward Dolnick
2021 /  314 pages
Read by Fajer Al-Kaisi  8h 32m
Rating: 8.75 / History-Middle East
(Both read and listened)

My background with the Rosetta Stone is probably the same as that of most people.  is.  I’ve heard bits and pieces about it and I’ve been intrigued but haven’t pursued the subject.  I knew that it was very difficult to decode – it took two decades from 1799, when it was discovered, until 1822, when a brilliant young Frenchman named Jean-François Champollion along with a a British doctor and scientist named Thomas Young worked it out.

Up to about page 81 the book is mostly background about what precipitated finding The Rosetta Stone, Napoleon’s raid on Egypt and so on. After that the pace picks up as it follows these two very different major players as they keep working, competing for breakthroughs, at translating the Rosetta Stone.  

But there are many other individuals involved. And the pace does keep picking up. There is quite a lot of less directly related material, too.  The actual dawn of writing, for example, from tax records to scrolls is an example. Dolnick’s ideas seem to go against what David Graeber and David Wengrow say in their book The Dawn of Everything which I read just last month. That was cool to read that – to see what they are/were up against. (But was Egypt ever a nomadic culture?)

I really appreciated the way Dolnick used quotes from a wide variety of sources, Plato to D’Arcy Thompson,  to emphasize various points. This happens on virtually every page where the author is not in the middle of his storytelling.

And the Notes are a wonder of information. A general source is usually found within the narrative, but footnotes are used for all manner of somewhat peripheral material. Fascinating.  (And I love it when footnotes are sourced, too, although …) 

 I’m going to have to keep an eye out for Dolnick’s books. 

Oh what a good thing to read a good book –  good in many senses of the term. But first, although the is a mystery of sorts, it’s not a “thriller” in any sense of the term. 

But yes, it’s “good” in that it’s compelling and enjoyable to read.  It’s also “good” in that it’s heart-warming without being at all mushy.  And it’s well enough written to easily use various structural and narrative elements, literary devices and interesting metaphors. In its own way it’s also a celebration of food.  

The Family Chao
by Lan Samantha Chang 
2022 / 346 pages
Read by Brian Nishi 10h 57m
Rating 9 – A / literary mystery 

All that said, there’s a rather difficult underside to it. It’s about 1st generation immigrants – the first children born here to immigrant parents.  And there’s more than an echo of The Brothers Karamazov with the three brothers, a rich and worldly father, a death, and the clash of ideas and morality, values. 

The brothers in The Family Chao are Dagou who has been the brilliant chef at the family restaurant since his return from an attempt at college.  The second son is Ming who finished college and determinedly stayed away making his fortune in New York.  And there’s John who has just finished his 1st semester in pre-med and has the reputation for being the “good son.”  Father is a brute and mother has given in for years but has recently broken relations and moved in with a Buddhist community. 

The boys come home for Christmas and Dagou prepares his annual Christmas feast.  The next day Father is found dead in the walk-in basement freezer – he was locked in. Murdered. And that’s where Part 2 starts – a who-done-it and a trial.   

Chang explores a whole number of things in this book, immigrants, family, identity, belonging, loyalty, love of all kinds, some mysticism, forgiveness and so on.  Mostly though it’s a character-driven novel with wonderful insight into the nature and foibles of humans. I really didn’t want it to end.

This book was on sale and I thought I recognized the title as having won the Pulitzer last year (2021 prize for a 2020 book).  For a minute, I thought I was wrong, but yes, it did get the prize, but it was for General Nonfiction,  not History as I’d thought.  (Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain won in the History category. It’s on my Wish List.) 

Wilmington’s Lie:The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
by David Zucchino
2020 / 562 pages
Read by Victor Bevine 11h 26m
Rating – 9 / US Civil War History

Probably like most readers, I’d never heard of this riot/insurrection by White Supremacists which occurred in 1898 in Wilmington North Carolina.  At first it was reported as a race riot started by Blacks and that’s the lie which was perpetuated. But after a couple decades of digging that idea was changed. The “Fusion” political party which consisted of both Blacks and Whites had won the election and the White Supremacists didn’t like that and deliberately stole the election because they wanted all power back.

But Zucchino starts in the Prologue with the actual riot but in Chapter 1 he goes back to 1865 for the background and how it lead up to the violence.  After the Civil War Wilmington, like many other Southern cities, was in chaos and ruins.  There was filth everywhere and within weeks Blacks were again being hunted as well as for sale.  The Union armies came in and maintained order until the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and even then it didn’t all fall apart for another 20 years of brewing resentments on the part of the Whites.

Bitterness and even hatred was never far beneath the surface in Wilmington and although the Black population was doing relatively well economically, that’s what was resented by the powerful Whites as well as those who competed with Blacks for jobs..

So the ideas behind White Supremacy were only a speech or a newspaper editorial away.  Lo and behold a Black newspaper was purchased by Alex Manley and he figured prominently in the White rage writing editorials and news of interest to the Black community. There were many Black professionals and a growing middle class – no Black owned banks though.  

And still the insurrection/coup went on.  It was a murderous night and the next day it continued.  Thousands of Blacks simply left town – and many didn’t move back. Many Blacks who still had jobs were fired – unless they were necessary for domestic services.

Most people just hushed it all up. Whites took over all power and Blacks either didn’t go back or didn’t talk/write about it. White Supremacists were actually proud of what they’d “accomplished.” And Jim Crow commenced across the South with all their new laws.

More information has become available as Black Studies programs and there have been protests about various statues. The memorial marker in honor of Alex Manley, the editor of the Black newspaper in Wilmington has been necessarily updated with appropriate information.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/13/795892582/wilmington-s-lie-author-traces-the-rise-of-white-supremacy-in-a-southern-city

One of the reasons I got this book though was that Patrick Radden Keefe wrote the fabulous book,  Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018). 

Empire of Pain:The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
by Patrick Radden Keefe
2021 (560 pps hardcover)
Read by author 18h 6m
Rating:  9 / current events 

It would be hard not to have heard about the Sackler family and their “miracle drug,” Oxycontin, which partly drove the opioid epidemic in the US.  Opioids have been around for centuries, but to develop “timed release capsules” and then to hire a huge well-trained and incentivized sales force to market them was rather new.  No,  it wasn’t against the law and the company went through the motions of developing and distributing a remedy for acute pain,  but they did a few extra-legal things, too.  And what was sold as a non-addictive pain remedy pushed a lot of people into active addiction to morphine while enriching the family which was behind it.  

And the Sackler family got very, very rich. They got so rich they got their name put on many colleges and art museums and actually opened wings at others. Did they know what was going on?  How could they help but know?  But denial is a tricky thing and just like an addict will deny he’s addicted, the Sacklers denied any wrong doing and any harmful qualities in their product.  Kathe couldn’t think of anything she would do differently knowing what she did at the time while Richard denied everything all the way to the bank.  (“People are responsible for their own behaviors and there are consequences.”) 

Empire of Pain is about the Sackler family and the involvement of their company, Purdue Pharma, in the  epidemic of opiod abuse which has run rampant through the US starting in 1999.  

The book outlines the family history from its beginnings as immigrant Polish and Ukrainian Jewish children to New York in the early 20th century. Three boys were sent to good colleges to become doctors and the boys worked their way up, too.  And these boys got as addicted to the money and what it would buy as the addicts got to their drugs.

It’s a good book. Not as good as Say Nothing but almost to that level. Keefe is an has done some excellent research and he’s given us the sources. Then in the Acknowledgments section he expands on his source work. This was also true of Say Nothing.   

Still, I have issues.  To my thinking, Keefe is a bit loose with blame.  Their father, Isaac Sackler, told them the only real thing of value they have is their name. They apparently didn’t heed his advice. Of the original Sackler brothers none is innocent if you consider Arthur’s involvement with advertising.  Arthur died prior to Oxycontin even being thought of and Mortimer and Raymond seemed to have some scruples once in awhile, at least at first.  But Richard, Raymond’s son, just pushed ahead with his job of, as he said, “making the family richer.”  And he defended their right to the money by any means necessary.   So instead of being what I think could have been an even-handed investigation of the Oxycontin scandals which drove the morphine-based pain killer epidemic, it fell into sensationalism and knee-jerk finger-pointing.  But if that’s what you’re interested in reading it’s great for that (And I did give it a 9.)

Second issue is that I don’ think it’s a good idea for an author to read his own books.  Although I’ve read some good author-as-reader books,  this isn’t one of them.  

Empire of Pain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Pain

Nominee for the my own Best Science Fiction of the Year 2022! This book had been on my Wish List since it was announced as “to be released” so when I saw it on the New Release “shelf” at Audible, I snatched it up.  I’ve so greatly enjoyed some of Mandel’s prior books.

The Sea of Tranquility 
by Emily St John Mandel 
Read by John Lee + others 5h 47m
Rating 9.5/B sci-fi (time travel) 

 The story of this short book opens in 1912 with Edwin St Andrew crossing the Atlantic on his way to British Columbia. He has mortified his very British family in colonial India at a dinner party so he’s now “exiled” for saying rude things about the English there.  He was planning to leave anyway, but in a year or so.  

The scene switches to the future and a very popular author who is on a book tour, “The Last Book Tour on Earth, 2203.”  And then there’s Gaspary Roberts who is from the year 2401 but travels widely and gets in some pretty serious trouble.  

A couple of the characters have appeared in Martel’s prior novels and I believe there’s a certain David Mitchel influence here, The themes are exile something lovely which I won’t spoil.  Oh – and the narrators do an outstanding job even if that’s not clear at first.

This is an excellent review – no real spoilers, but it touches on the beauty and the complexity of the novel.  

https://www.wired.com/story/sea-of-tranquility-essay/

Originally published in 1976, this is an older book but it’s been revived over the years so I figured it looked promising and yes, it’s excellent True Crime. It deals with the background problems of the several involved families in which a rich, beautiful woman dies of unknown causes. Her husband, a plastic surgeon with access to drugs and methods, is the prime suspect.

Blood and Money
by Thomas Thompson 
1976 (original) – 474 pages 
Read by Mike Chamberlain 21h 8m
Rating: 9+ / True Crime 

Then there are the procedural issues of the small hospital and its lack of facilities from bedside care to autopsies.Then comes the Houston area police departments and its District Attorney office plus all the publicity of the press. Then another murder and police work. Finally there are the trials. This book covers it all.

I don’t remember hearing or reading anything about the somewhat mysterious death of Joan Robinson Hill a wealthy young Houston woman whose very rich father, Ash Robinson, spoiled her and pretty much bought her a plastic surgeon and musician husband at age 26. But that murder was back in 1969 and in Houston – I was 21 years old and in California. So this story was brand new to me and I’m glad I picked it up when I saw it on sale.

First Thompson goes into the background of Ash Robinson, where he came from and how he got his money and small family.  Then there’s Joan Robinson, Ash’s beloved only child, a Houston socialite and horsewoman who on her third try, married the man of her dreams.  John Hill, Joan’s husband becomes a plastic surgeon but he was not exactly what Joan had hoped for and eleven years later Joan was dead with John on trial for her murder and Ash determined to put John behind bars forever.  John’s lover stood by him and married him after his divorce , for awhile. 

And so it goes through five Parts with lots of characters and so many twists and turns it could be several novels but it’s one story –  whew!   

The writing is good, better than a lot of them, and sprinkled with light humor, but it’s not a literary book by any means. For the most part Thompson keeps a fast pace quite nicely.  I used up a lot of midnight watts listening to this for 21 hours.  The narrator took some time to get used to but he did a fine job even with what seemed at first a very nasally voice.  

It’s a long book. What with all the backgrounds on people and the detailed procedural and almost verbatim trial sections it just gets that way. It’s a complex story. I might have to read more Thompson.

This was included in my membership from Audible.  I’ve been curious about P.J. Tracy and it looked okay so I went ahead.  It was about as mediocre as you can get.  I think I might have slept through part of it but I did want to find out how it ended so I skimmed enough to get it.

The Guilty Dead
By: P. J. Tracy
Read by: Sarah Borges
Rating:  C/ crime 
Monkeewrench Series, Book 9

I’ve followed Elizabeth Strout since her first Olive Kitteridge novel in 2008.  Oh, William, is her latest offering,  published in 2021, and she’s got another book coming out later this year called “Lucy by the Sea.”  Friends have told me this is definitely worthwhile so I’d better catch up.  

Oh, William 
By Elizabeth Strout
2021 / 
Read by Kimberly Farley – 7 h.
Rating: 8 / general fiction 

Oh William again deals with Lucy Barton who was introduced in 2016 with My Name is Lucy Barton. In the prior book we get the very difficult tale of Lucy and her mother and then in Anything is Possible there’s a reunion of siblings.  So this is the third book about Lucy and her life.  Lucy has not had a happy life. 

This time Lucy’s parents have passed away and Lucy is newly widowed by her beloved 2nd husband’s death.  Her first husband is William who is still alive and was living with Estelle, his 2nd wife, but she leaves him.  Lucy’s daughters are grown and one has her own children. Lucy dearly loved her recently deceased husband, but she’s mourning her prior life with William who is alive.  There were serious problems in the marriage and they had troubles in their lives and he’s now remarried but it seems to me that Lucy is basically mourning him anyway.  

 This is pretty standard Strout – it’s a slow and easy, insightful into real life situations.  She reminds me of Anne Tyler except that I frequently find Strout really sad.  

This was selected for the All-nonfiction reading group and although I didn’t vote for it thoroughly I enjoyed reading it.  So I’ll likely l be reading it again at least certain chapters. 

When Einstein Walked With Godel: 
Excursions to the Edge of Thought
by Jim Holt – 2018
Read by David Stifel- 15h 19m
Rating:9 /philosophy-math
(both read and listened)

It’s a book of essays by Jim Holt who writes popular science for a number of magazines  The first couple chapters are devoted pretty much to Einstein and Godel but after that many topics are covered from Plato and numbers to relativity to

The essays cover all sorts of things from Plato and numbers to Turing, eugenics, plagiarism, women and “bullshit.”  They’re always fascinating.  He follows Einstein and Godel for about 3 chapters there at the beginning but philosophy and the search for truth (Truth?) has traveled all the way from Plato to Godel and Wittgenstein and Trump and Kellyanne Conway (not quite named) getting up to some recent squabbles in the field and naming ideas.  

I read straight through hitting a snag of sorts in Chapter 5 which gets over my head about mathematics. But then in Chapter 6 I was fine again and continued to the end even rereading a few times. I may give Chapter 5 another shot and some of the other chapters as well. The whole book is fascinating.

Eleven hours, 48 minutes can feel like a really long time so it’s no wonder I got quite tired listening. Nevertheless, Never Saw Me Coming won several awards in 2021 so maybe it was the reading which was a bit over-the-top suspense, like a female Scott Brick. Just listening becomes exhausting. 

Never Saw Me Coming 
by Vera Kurian (2021)
Reader: Brittany Pressley 11h 48m
Rating:  A- /  crime-suspense

A fictional university in Washington DC has a special program for students with psychopathic personalities*. The head of the program, Leonard Wyman,  is an expert in the field conducting more research on their behavior using smart watches, interviews, and mood quizzes. There were 7 students in the program to start with that year, then two got murdered. 

Chloe, the main character, is an excellent student at this somewhat second-rate university because the object of her revenge plotting is there.  Andres, a black student, is there because he was unable to get admitted anywhere else.  Charles, a very wealthy student, is there for his father’s sake.  Emma, a kind of pathetic music student and Megan, Emma’s twin are there for the financial aid package with Megan, a non-psychopath, being a little control group of her own. The program has been going on for several years.  

After the first killing Chloe starts some devious investigating on her own then  Charles and Andres find out and join her. The whole idea is shaky because these students don’t trust each other in the least – and with good reason – they’re superb game-players. 

It’s easy to get the characters mixed up because there are more than I mentioned.  Chloe has her prey,  Charles has a girlfriend and there are fraternity friends and research assistants.  It’s quite solid as a twisty-plotted who-done-it with plenty of action.  

The suspense is there all through the book, but when the high tension starts in, too,  the narrator ratchets up the drama and it becomes quite draining. I gave it an A- rating because the narrator was just too much 

*Psychopathy is characterized by diagnostic features such as superficial charm, high intelligence, poor judgment and failure to learn from experience, pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love, lack of remorse or shame, impulsivity, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, manipulative behavior, poor self-control, promiscuous sexual behavior, juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility, among others.1,2 As a consequence of these criteria, the image of the psychopath is that of a cold, heartless, inhuman being. But do all psychopaths show a complete lack of normal emotional capacities and empathy?
From:
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/hidden-suffering-psychopath

Review: 
https://zachary-houle.medium.com/a-review-of-vera-kurians-never-saw-me-coming-f7234004ea3d

Anyone else addicted to audio books?  I’ve love them for years so I have favorite narrators as well as authors and when I get into a series with one narrator I want that voice to continue.  To me, that narrator’s voice BECOMES the author’s voice . So when the voice changes it can really throw me for a total loop – I have to grieve – everything.

The Missing Piece
by John Lescroart
2022 /
Read by Jacque Roy 8h 27m
Rating: A / legal-crime

I think the biggest change for audio mystery lovers was when Ralph Cosham,  Louise Penny’s  Inspector Armand Gamache, died and was replaced by Robert Bathurst.  There was an uproar even if it really couldn’t be helped. (I really should try Penny with Bathurst reading. There’s a whole story behind that one.)

I don’t know what happened to Alexander McCall Smith’s Lisette Lecat (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) but one day, after 20 books, alas – we got Adjoa Andoh who did not work out well at all.  So she was replaced by the totally perfect Bianca Amato and everyone seems happy.  

Sometimes we can adjust ourselves. John Lescroart used David Colacci for his narrator for books 1-7 and then he switched to Robert Lawrence.  Well – that didn’t work real well with me because I’d started with book #1 and was totally in love with the voice of Colacci. Lawrence lasted for 2 books and then Colacci returned back staying until 2015. But in 2018 we suddenly got Jacques Roy. Yeah? Okay, I tried, but no. Just no.

So now, after 7 years of no John Lescroart at all (!) I figured I’d finally had enough of a break to try a new Dismas. There were other Lescroart novels during this time, There was Abe Glitsky (of course) and Wyatt Hunter got 3 for a different series and there were a couple anthologies which included Lsecroart along with other really great mystery writers (Michael Connelly, Elmore Leonard).  But I was not buying it, him, them. 

And now, with a 7-year break, it worked!  I was able to really enjoy Dismas Hardy again. And Abe Glitsky shows up a lot in The Missing Place. Roy seemed a bit soft at first but I got over it in 30 minutes and by the end of the book I’m ready for another. I might even go back and catch up on a few I’ve missed.  

Back to The Missing Piece. The theme here is different. Now with DNA testing law enforcement has better ways of determining guilt and “innocence projects” and “justice groups” can also go back in time and find that people who were convicted back in 2010 or whenever were sometimes wrongfully imprisoned (for many years) .That’s the background story for this novel.  

The fictional Paul Riley has just been released from prison after 11 years because the DNA and other leads were duly investigated by an Exoneration Investigation and it was found that his DNA was not even present at the scene.  Okay, 11 years and a few months later he’s shot point blank in the head in his apartment at his father’s house.  Why? Good question and it gets murkier when the prime suspect turns up dead, too,  

 Unraveling this tangle of a who-done-it is tricky and you have to pay attention because there are not just a couple leads to follow, there are three distinctly different main leads each of which seems to go nowhere. It’s not easy to keep track of the associated characters and their relationships. – 

The police department’s main detectives have changed over the years. Dismas Hardy is now doing more than trials while Abe Glitsky is supposed to be retired from investigating – ha! The poor guy can’t help himself. I won’t go further with this.  Enjoy.

I read this a couple weeks ago and forgot to add it. This is a book and its sequel which are now classics (published in 1993) but There was supposed to be a third book but it never happened. Anyway, I never got to these although I read a couple of other books by her. It’s also dystopian and includes some climate change. 

The Parable of the Talents
by Octavia Butler 
read by Patricia Floyd and others
1994 / 15h 26m
Rating: B+/ dystopian

It’s a lot like The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood – 1985) in that the Christian Evangelicals of Reagan’s time have enormous power while the president uses “Make America Great Again” as his slogan (yah? – prescient). Here the wealth gap is also important but chaos seems to reign more than anything.

I’ve been meaning to read this since the day it came out – it was on my Wish List for months before publication.  But things got in the way and … well … but here I am.  🙂 

Termination Shock
by Neal Stephenson 
2021 / 708 pages
Read by Edoardo Ballerini 22h 58m
Rating: 9  / climate-sci fi 
Both read and listened

 I have enjoyed Neal Stephenson ever since I read Snow Crash back in 2002 or so.  And checking now I see that including this one I’ve read 8 of his books. I skipped most of the Baroque Cycle. Termination Shock is maybe most like The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. in that there’s a fine amount of humor in it.  I also thoroughly enjoyed Reamde.  

And generally I enjoy dystopian climate sci-fi so I was looking forward and was rewarded; knew it from the first few pages, although it certainly is, as usual, long 

So … in the not-too-distant future Frederika Mathilde Louisa,“Saskia,” of the House of Orange in Netherlands, generally known as “the queen,” is flying her jet along with a tiny but nicely armed entourage to Houston, Texas.  Unfortunately they crash land near a small forest close to College Station and immediately encounter a herd of wild boars. Chasing these pigs is Rufus Grant, a professional hog exterminator with a Moby Dick-sized personal quest and grudge against Snout, the main giant hog. Then there’s an alligator who seems to be along for the chase and good eating.    

Btu that’s just for openers – Saskia is headed to Houston to meet with the billionaire TR  Schmidt and the representatives of several other nations to discuss climate change, specifically the almost immediate danger higher sea levels pose to their countries.  They’re from Scotland, the UK, Venice, India, and elsewhere. There are things which can be done but … 

Nothing can be good for everyone, everywhere.  

And when Saskia gets home to the Netherlands from Texas there is an emergency when yellow foam inundates the beach and surfers there – just like in the Netherlands 2020. 

Meanwhile in India a young Sikh American is attempting to cross the Himalayas and  border illicitl and through military lines, into China to learn more about his martial arts sport.  

One of Stephenson’s strong suits is world building but I think maybe he takes a bit too much time with that.  We spend page after page with the new “world” in this respect or that and then a few pages of action there and it’s off to another “world”and lots of techie explanations. It’s all transpiring in probably 2045 or 2050 or so and things have changed.  And although there are a lot of slow places, I’d definitely call it a “thriller.”

I have to mention the narrator, Edoardo Ballerini, who gives a splendid performance.  

https://slate.com/culture/2021/11/metaverse-snow-crash-neal-stephenson-termination-shock-review.html

I’m trying the Alphabet Challenge of mystery writers on the 4-Mystery Addicts Reading Group again this year.  I’ve done pretty well with only 2 months gone, but I thought I’d get an “X” author I found stashed for the letter “X” stashed. Besides,  I sometimes enjoy rather gentle mysteries about seniors.  

Aunt Bessie Assumes
By Diana Xarissa (2014)
Read by Rosalind Ashford 7h 47m
Rating: B / cozy
(1st in Isle of Man series)

Aunt Bessie assumes that she’ll have the beach all to herself on a cold, wet, and windy March morning just after sunrise, then she stumbles (almost literally) over a dead body. 

From the publisher via Audible: 

“Elizabeth (Bessie) Cubbon, aged somewhere between free bus pass (60) and telegram from the Queen (100), has lived her entire adult life in a small cottage on Laxey Beach. For most of those years, she’s been in the habit of taking a brisk morning walk along the beach. Dead men have never been part of the scenery before. Aunt Bessie assumes that the dead man died of natural causes, then the police find the knife in his chest. Try as she might, Bessie just can’t find anything to like about the young widow that she provides tea and sympathy to in the immediate aftermath of finding the body. There isn’t much to like about the rest of the victim’s family either.

“Aunt Bessie assumes that the police will have the case wrapped up in no time at all, then she finds a second body. Can Bessie and her friends find the killer before she ends up as the next victim?” 

I guess this book was pretty fun after I got used to it.  The protagonist is an elderly woman who really resents anyone calling her “older” but enjoys sleuthing – “like Miss Marple.” Her friends are of varying ages and enjoy getting together to drink tea, eat biscuits and analyze the situation to make plans which almost get to the level of thriller.  The Isle itself is nondescript but it’s a small touristy community in the off season.  

Barbara Seranella was the only author I had not yet read from the list of favorite authors submitted by members of a mystery reading group.  The list is cumulative over the last several years and it’s #12. Other than there, I’d never heard of Seranella before, so I picked this particular book because it’s the first in a series and it sounded good.  

No Human Involved
Barbara Seranella – 1997
Read by Paul Boehmer 7h 43m
Rating: B+ / crime 

Yes!  It is very good!  Also I read up a bit on Seranella’s biography so the books ix that much more impressive. https://web.archive.org/web/20070928111000/http://www.yourfleshmag.com/artman/publish/article_635.shtml

Miranda “Munch” Mancini has been crazy too long and decides to get her life together (again).  She leaves the scene of a murder, drives down the freeway in LA, gets into a small wreck with a wall, sleeps a bit then wakes to find a job as an auto mechanic because that’s what she does aside from stealing and turning tricks.  Then she gets baptized by a priest goes for a new identity and tries to start living a new life.  But heroin doesn’t let go that easily.  

I was impressed by the story-line and the character development but there were places it kind of bogged down. Those parts were also quite good as they developed Munch’s character but they slowed the main action. I was riveted to the AA/NA parts. I don’t think I’ll be continuing with this series though as it seems dated to me – There were places it felt like it must have been set in 1980s but then a cell phone would appear.

This is a good book but I was personally disappointed for a couple reasons.

The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai
2018 /
read by Michael Crouch 18h 17m
rating: 8 / contemp fiction

The Great Believers opens in Chicago 1985, about 2 years into the AIDS crisis. In the book, Nico Marcus, age 30?, died of the disease about two weeks prior and now there is a family funeral for him – not mentioning AIDS or gayness. Mean- while, his close friends are having their own party at a private residence. That’s where Yale Tishman and his rather high-strung partner Charlie are going.  

The next chapter unfolds in 2015 when Fiona Marcus, Nico’s sister but who was also at the party for Nico, is flying to Paris in search of her own daughter, Claire.

And so the relatively short chapters alternate between 1985 and 2015 with each plot thread continuing to gather characters as time goes on, but also losing several (and then more) on the way and finally overlapping some.

The main story here is how the AIDS epidemic tore through the gay community with a lot of different reactions and responses from the directly affected individuals as well as of others more peripherally involved AIDS affected whole families and friends and colleagues and sometimes goes even to the third generation. What Makkai shows us is the many ways AIDS affected these people

The intimate friends of the diseased are mostly pretty scared to varying degrees for themselves and each other. Some families love and support their victim while others abandon them – or did prior.

In 2015 Fiona, the sister of Nico goes to Paris in search of her daughter Claire who has been missing for several years. Claire has her own problems. Nico was her beloved uncle and his parents (also Fiona’s) were not at all supportive. (And Nora, who plays a large part in the 1980s, was Fiona’s wealthy aunt bequeathing a pricey but problematical art collection to the university museum where Yale works.)

The story comes together in bits and pieces managing to avoid spoilers re the 1980s in the 2015 chapters. Who survives and who doesn’t is slowly revealed.

I was disappointed for a couple big personal reasons because, I think, it’s probably a very good book on its own. First, was the impact that And the Band Played On (1987) had on me. That book pretty much told the very sad story from a San Francisco perspective. I read it in 1997 or so.

The second reason for my general disappointment may be due to the fact that between the time The Great Believers was first published (in 2018) and now a lot has happened in the world – first there was Covid-19, another pandemic, and now there’s Ukraine. In 2018 none of that was even on the horizon so I suppose the reviewers were also wow’d? (Seems like they might have been.) and I was influenced by the hype

But I just have a hard time getting all worked up about the AIDS epidemic now even though I know it’s not over. Fwiw, I was in my 30s during the 1980s so these kids are close to the same age. I remember the panic of the unknown – I also “remember” being pretty much isolated and wearing masks for these past 2 years due to being “at risk.” It’s not over yet, either.

I really enjoyed the first two books of this series but this time not nearly so much.  The series takes place the 1920s before India’s independence so India is still a rather backward colony of England on the verge of independence,  an interesting time. Perveen Mistry, the only daughter of a rich family, is the first female lawyer in Bombay. She’s very intelligent and politically progressive – it almost goes without saying that she’s a feminist for the times (for our times, too, but that’s a matter of reader agreement). Perveen was married briefly to a scoundrel and has only been able to get a legal separation. She lives and works with her father who is also moderately progressive.  

The Bombay Prince 
by Sujata Massey
2022 / 
Read by Sneha Methan  12h 37m
Rating:  B / historical mystery 

This novel opens with Freny Cuttingmaster, a young woman from a local college, coming to visit Perveen about college rules and legal consequences if she is involved in protests during the Prince’s upcoming visit.  Like Perveen’s family she is Parsi (descended from Persians) which is why Freni visited her. This difference is important throughout the novel as Parsi’s have strict behavioral expectations. 

During the parade for his majesty, Freny “falls” from a nearby balcony and dies. When her body is turned over she is found to have a serious wound on her face.  Although Perveen helps with the parents and the police etc,  her behavior is runs the risk of being scandalous while the parents try to have complete privacy for their official mourning.  Pure cleanliness of the highest importance.  

 Perveen and her father become “persons of interest” to the police. 

But Freny was very much in favor of independence from the British Raj, and she also may have a boyfriend in the political circle which supports it. 

The concept of “no-fault” divorce, when it was introduced in California in 1969, was a revelation so the talk between Colin and Perveen where he mentions no-fault divorce is totally anachronistic and I don’t know if others noticed it but I certainly did. But the point of the book is women’s rights and readers will sympathize with that kind of resolution to Perveen’s dilemma. 

I found the way legal matters were handled in India at this time interesting. The main plot concerning the independence movement and some attacks is well done.  

Imo, there’s too much romance, or the possibility of it, in the novel along with a “history of manners” which, I suppose, enables very conservative women of today to feel emancipated and outraged.   There’s also lots of talk of food and clothes and I suppose hat’s what some reviewer was referring to when they commented on the good research.  

The narrator was generally quite good but the Indian names are still hard to decipher.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Wales_riots