Becky's Books –

Last book of 2023! I had to quick finish up the last chapter to get it on here – lol! 

Utopia
By: Sir Thomas More
1516 in London
Read by: James Adams, 4 hrs and 10 mins
Rating - 10 / classic lit – philosophy?

Although I’d heard good things about this book since I was in the 10th grade. ??? up until a few days ago I’d never actually read Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Someone in the All-nonfiction group nominated it as a scheduled read and I just put it on the list as though it were nonfiction.  I think I got it confused with Plato’s Republic.  

And now that I’ve read Utopia I don’t think I’ll mix them up again- lol. I must say I enjoyed Utopia far more than expected.  I’m not sure why.  I think because it was not difficult to read or to grasp and it was nicely written and organized. The concepts and ideas were quite interesting. While reading I  sometimes thought about how More’s world was in the 16th centuryand where would he have gotten even an inkling of such a different way of life!?  He wasn’t necessarily advocating the principles he set down about this other, imaginary, society of Utopians.  He was just explaining them. And he had had information about the New World – but maybe only Central and South America.

Anyway, More’s book is regarded as fiction while Plato’s Republic is always categorized as non-fiction (philosophy to be exact). I don’t know why More’s classic and most important work is fiction – but … I’ve only read bits of Plato’s masterwork and even less of Thomas More’s – maybe a few quotes.  I’ll see if I can get a chunk of The Republic read so as to compare/contrast.  

On my first reading I enjoyed almost all of it, 10 chapters about different aspects of life in Utopia, but there are some parts which are harder to read and really fathom. I kept asking how this or that was going to work. After the first chapter which is a kind of frame for the bulk of the text, I was glad the book is short. that Introduction about Raphael Hythloday was not easy but that’s the hardest it gets.

I’ll very likely read the whole book again at least once.  All I know about Thomas More I learned piecemeal at various times throughout my college career and independent reading. A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt (1960) was good.  And I loved all three novels in the Thomas Cromwell series by Hilary Mantel. But Utopia is by the man himself – and it doesn’t show the hard-ass manipulative guy Bolt described.

It’s very difficult to read this without seeing how different our times are from More’s and he was trying to describe a society he’d invented!?.   In my copy there is an Introduction by H.M. ??? which gives a brief biography of Sir Thomas More and a note on the publication history of the book. 

The first section of the book is called “Discourses of Raphael Hythloday of the Best State of a Commonwealth” And that’s what forms the frame for the story.  –              

Interesting quotes:
“No family may have less than ten and more than sixteen persons in it, but there can be no determined number for the children under age; this rule is easily observed by removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to any other family that does not abound so much in them.”

“But if the natives refuse to conform themselves to their laws they drive them out of those bounds which they mark out for themselves, and use force if they resist, for they account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.”

I may have found another new-to-me author worth following. Welsh author Clare Mackintosh has been around and writing crime novels for years but I don’t think she’s had a lot of play over here, or maybe I just haven’t noticed her name come up in the bookish places I visit. Whatever,  it’s long and tangled and juicy – but I suppose I could describe it as a police procedural murder mystery set in a soap opera.  

The Last Party
By Claire Mackintosh 
11/2022 (432 pp) 
Read by  Chloe Angharad Davies: 13h 17m
Rating: A+ / procedural crime 
D.C. Morgan series #1 

 It’s New Year’s Day and a body has been found in Mirror Lake which serves as a border between Northern Wales and England. Every winter visitors come or the New Year’s Eve parties while the locals come for the traditional icy swim on New Year’s morning.  This year, as usual, Rhys Lloyd, has his usual houseful of guests cavorting at his upscale vacation resort – The Shores. The next day it’s his body which is found by locals when they go for their first, annual icy dip.  Lloyd was a hateful man as well as a rich opera singer, with a vacation home near the new development, The Shores, at the lake near where he grew up.  

Detective Inspector Ffion Morgan and her partner Leo Brady each have a bunch of suspects including themselves. And each suspect has his own raggedy bag of secrets and ripe grievances.  The major players even have their own self-serving point of view.  It gets confusing, but very fun.   

The narrative’s structure alternates between New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day going a bit further back and a bit further forward. And as the reader moves through this they get an excellent opportunity to evaluate motives and behaviors of many interrelated characters ages 12 to 80, 

It would definitely be wise to keep a pencil or notepad handy because with this many characters it can get overwhelming. I had to write down the names and a descriptive word or two as they were introduced.

Rhys Lloyd – singer, land developer, and murder victim 
Yasmin Lloyd –  Rhys’ wife –  stalking him 
2 young daughters – twins
(Felicia and Tabitha – row with Rhys) 

Jonty Charlton,  Rhys’ assistant 
Jonty’s wife    
Hester, Jonty’s daughter 
Woody, Jonty’s son

Ffion Morgan, detective, was divorced from Huw Ellis   
Her mother –  Ellen
Saren – Ffion’s younger sister, about age 16.   
Huw Ellis – Ffion’s  ex husband  

DCI Leo Brady – Different patrol area from Ffion 

Young son – 
Ali – Leo’s mouthy ex-wife who has custody of son 

Crouch – Detective Supervisor of Ffion 
Gwen –  researcher at police station

Ceri – young local mail delivery woman- 

Glynnith Lloyd  works with Ceri now. 

Bobby Stafford – bare-knuckle boxer and Rhys’ neighbor 
Ashleigh –  Stafford’s  wife.  An influencer who puts the local news on her show
Dee 72-year old mother of Ashleigh ? 
Tabby – Rhys’ daughter 
Felicia – twins 

Mila – local girl, waitress for the party –  tryst with Rhys    
Steffan – neighbor with a grievance 
Clemment Northcott,  single now whit a teenage son. She enjoyed the party – risk?   Went for a dip in the early morning  but got away before she was noticed. 
Caleb – her son – used to live in London, has a hard time with appropriate friends
They’re making payments on home and say that no one liked Rhys. 

Diedre Huxley  – lodge #2 –  beautifully dressed, silver hair, “well-preserved,”  
Doesn’t really answer questions –  
 **************

There are some great lines –  “I was told there were only two of you coming,  it’s a morgue, not a seance!”    “ Ffion’s car breaks down regularly and leaps like Julian Assange.”  Actually, there were a few places which produced a lovely solid belly-laugh from me.    

Still, there are too many characters and the timeline is nonlinear so it feels a bit choppy. I had trouble keeping track of who was whom and when the events were taking place.  The mystery isn’t really that hard to solve if you pay attention, the twists are intriguing. but maybe a bit obvious. Ffion and Leo’s characters and the setting add a layer of depth to this novel. This was a solid start to the series but I have a feeling the “series” may consist of 2 books.  I look forward to seeing Ffion, and hopefully Leo, again in the next book. 

This book is solidly in the tradition of Agatha Christie (and I almost never voice that observation – maybe once prior) and it’s done so well that my saying so is definitely a compliment.  Benedict Brown has penned a  gently humorous and well written murder mystery of the “who-done-it” variety.  It’s  in the  sense of the classic Golden Age of mystery which managed to survive even if Edmund Wilson advised avoiding it

*******
Murder at Everham Hall 
by Benedict Brown. 11/2023
Read  by: George Blagden, 7 hrs and 43 mins
Rating: A- / who-done-it  
A Marius Quin Mystery, Book 1

The literary folks were heavily critical of mysteries of any kind, for their lack of style and intellectual substance. This reputation held until the 1980s in the ivory towers of the lit departments where the aging professors had been trained by predecessors like Harold Bloom or, further back, Cleanth Brooks. And mysteries were becoming more popular but rarely published except in cheap paperbacks with enticing covers – (remember Perry Mason?)

That is until maybe Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose became popular in the US in the 1990s. Then other books turned up with “in the tradition of Umberto Eco,” or “For readers who enjoyed The Name of the Rose and Hollywood turned it into a movie – horrors!  LOL!   (I loved the book and now there the books have their own genre called “literary mysteries,” or something like that.) 

It was Raymond Chandler, among a few others, who first brought the realism of the “hard-boiled” detective (very US)  to the fore to compete with Agatha Christie’s fairy-tale parlor games (very UK).  Then along came Elmore Leonard  followed by the likes of James Lee Burke (literary), Michael Connelly (non-lit), Tana French and Robert Galbraith. And now, since ??? we have the “continued” and “spin-off” tales of Poe, Holmes, Christie and Chandler – even David Parker   Now we had Private Eyes, Police Detectives and Amateur Sleuths to follow because the likes of John Updike’s slow-moving volumes were no longer ringing the register.  – See this page for more info – This subject could be a college course and subsequent PhD topics to follow (I love it.)
https://www.novelsuspects.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-detective-fiction/

So – an overview of the story from Benedict Brown: (This is NOT a literary mystery – it’s a genre (formula) mystery of the 21xt century.) – The formula was written up in the early years of the 20th century. Another reason they sold well is that they were very cheap because paper and the printing press had made reading a skill practiced by the average adult with a working 6th grade education. 

Back to Murder at Everham Hall:
Marius Quinn, the 1st person protagonist, is the author of a recent mystery novel which proved to be very successful, has been unexpectedly invited to a Christmas party. This is December, 1927 in London. Marius should be on top of the world. but instead he’s out of money and way behind in producing another manuscript for his publisher. 

But he runs into his ex-girlfriend, Bella (Isabella) whom he hasn’t seen since he went to war in 1914 or so, and she invites him to a holiday party which will be held at the Sinclair estate, a bit out of town.  He gets there early and finds that Bella has a new boyfriend, Gilbert, so the atmosphere is already somewhat tense. Then Cecil Sinclair, the movie star host who has some addiction issues keels over in the middle of the evening just as the traditional fireworks start. Cecil’s limp body is taken upstairs to a bed while Marius and Belle wait for the police. Cecil now has 3 bullets in his head,

Upstairs, there are a couple more explosions from outside and now Cocil is dead. The police are called at some point here,  but too bad, so sad,  a heavy snowstorm has blanketed the area and the estate is somewhat remote so it’s definitely snowed in.  Ross, Cecil’s father, declares Quinn the investigator until the police arrive,  (Quinn wrote a successful mystery novel, didn’t he? – lol!)  

I generally have to keep lists of characters when reading mystery novels, so here’s mine for Murder at Evesham Hall. I generally like to keep a list of characters when reading mystery novels – here’s this one:

Cecil Sinclair – the victim – son of Ross
Ross Sinclair- father of the victim – a rich widower with a new young girlfriend, Poppy Cecil did NOT want Poppy for a stepmother. 
Poppy – Cecil’s girlfriend ofcouple weeks but her act is the grief-stricken paramour
Carl Wilson – declines the opportunity to be a detective
Edith Wilson – Carl’s prim wife, 
Antoine and Elma Cavendish 
Bella – Quinn’s ex-girlfriend who invited him
Quinn – the 1st person narrator and acting detective.

One word - the game ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings. 

I suppose this might be considered “history lite” but toward the end Butler makes a definite point and gets quite heavy-handed about it – imo.   While totally ignoring 1 factor in the issue but … 

White Evangelical Racism:
The Politics of Morality in America 
by Anthea Butler
2021  –  168 pages 
Reader: Allyson Johnson – 3h 44m 
Rating: 8 / politics and religion  (and too short) 

In this book Anthea Butler is pretty much calling all evangelicals racist who are led by power-hungry white men.  I can’t totally disagree with that as a broad-brush generalization,  but Lutherans call themselves evangelical while they tend to be liberal – not as much as Quakers or Unitarians but maybe a wee bit more than Roman Catholics. 

Personally, I’m not an evangelical in any way, but I know many people who are. My mom was one but her definition was that evangelicals are missionary types – spreading the “Good News” of the Gospels.  My mom didn’t have a racist bone in her body and got very hurt when she overheard her friends at church (Lutheran) the only reason to be against Obama was that you were racist. She wasn’t against Obama for any reason other than his being too close to socialism than any other Democrat tended to be. She was very much like Jimmy Carter, the only Democrat she ever voted for.  (“Because he was so Christian.)

Another time she was very hurt that a woman next to her was saying something about gays should never be allowed to marry or serve any position in the church –  sorry but my mom’s son is gay and she’s not willing to send him to damnation (or to therapy like his parents tried).  My mom was horrified by Trump’s “wall” although she voted for him. She could spot racism better than I could. She believed “he was sent by God.”  One time when she was 95 or so, she asked herself if she would evangelize to a new neighbor who was Muslim. It was hypothetical and she never came to a conclusion that I know of – she was horribly torn. 

So what is it the book says?  Basically that the racism we see in Evangelical US churches today has been around for a long, long time.  NOT all Evangelicals are racists (racism, even historical racism, disgusted my very Evangelical Lutheran mother.)

Anyway, the book was on sale and, conflating it with The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta, I got it.  I have yet to get it – lol. So when I started this one it wasn’t as good as I’d expected and I put it down for awhile. Then, when I picked it back up, I felt like I was in a different section – not a different book really – but different in that it was suddenly much more appealing.

During that time I’d looked into the author’s background and that may have piqued my curiosity ???  I found that today Butler is a Catholic by choice, but she was evangelical for awhile including the time she was in training at an Evangelical Pentecostal college.  

From the book: “The Church of God in Christ (COGIC), an African American Pentecostal denomination founded in 1896, has become the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States today. Although an international and multi-ethnic religious organization, it has a predominantly African American membership based within the United States.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthea_Butler

What is an evangelical? (I got curious.) https://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/pluralism/files/fundamentalism_evangelicalism_and_pentecostalism.pdf

In contemporary America, evangelical generally means happy and spreading the “good news,”  but it’s also come to mean a kind of fundamentalist approach to Christianity. It’s not in any rules book but if you look around. Evangelical Christians are white-skinned with European ancestry.   

White Evangelical Racism: covers the period from Reconstruction to George Floyd and a bit beyond (published 2021).  George Bush (a truly evangelical president)  and Donald Trump. “King Cyrus.”  were supposedly evangelicals.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/5/16796892/trump-cyrus-christian-right-bible-cbn-evangelical-propaganda

After 9/11 many Evangelicals in the US targeted anyone who looked Muslim  and it didn’t matter if they were Sikhs or Pakistani or anyone else wearing a turban.  

Barrack Hussein Obama, although assumed to be Muslim (leading to the “birther conspiracy”), went to church to hear Rev Jeremiah Wright, a Black minister from the African Methodist Church, and his very harsh sermons often concerning the US and race.  And then came Sarah Palin with the kind of anti-Islam/Muslim harangue the Evangelicals embraced. She was followed by the Tea Party with its ongoing rants about economic and social issues.These T-vangelicals were concerned with various “entitlements” including health care coverage, schools, and more. 

Right now Trump, at the tail end of 2024, is on top of the polls again even after all his nonsense. But Evangelicals will make excuses and try to believe in him and conspiracy theories until hell freezes over, or the Big Money dries up. but the federal lawsuits might have an effect.    

Sarah Palin’s anti-Muslim rant added to her brand of  pro-Life in action, Conservative Pentecostalism,  To the Evangelicals, Sarah was the very best pick McCain could have made. The enemy was the Obama campaign and Fox News helped out by carrying Palen’s stump speeches. The fear-mongering got bad. And the book gets hard to listen to, heavy-handed toward the end and then just over-the-top in the Conclusion. I kind of wish I’d gotten the Kindle copy for the Notes,  but I can guess.  

Fwiw, the author, Anthea Deidre Butler (born 1960). is an African-American professor of religion and chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies, where she is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought.

“Nothing says Christmas like foliage and an outlined corpse.” That’s a line from the book which is repeated a couple times.

The  Christmas Jigsaw  Murders 
by Alexandra Benedict 
11/9/2023
Read by Sandra Duncan, 8h 56m
Rating, A / Crime fiction 

So this is a cozy in name only because it really gets quite dark. 

First, the author also last years’s Murder on the Christmas Express and both are excellent who-done-its. The trouble with this one is that half the tale is spent exploring the relationships involved – mostly gay or lesbian – and the crime falls to the wayside for awhile.  But perhaps that’s one way to add suspects.  ??  I gave it an A. 

Edie is almost 80 years old now and this year someone sent her a Christmas present. It’s a jigsaw puzzle made up of 6 just pieces which, when put together properly, show part of an unidentifiable corpse.  The note is not signed but tells Edie to “Rest In Pieces.”  

And so it begins, the elderly crossword-making and amateur sleuth who is, at best, even crankier during the Christmas season, takes the puzzle/threat seriously after a man is found dead on the running path near her home.   

Now she has to ponder the situation with her adopted son, Seth, the recently promoted Detective Inspector, and his husband, lliam, who are trying to adopt through an agency. The baby is currently still with the surrogate.  

The point of view changes and when it’s Edie it’s sometimes first person, but also we occasionally get to visit the thinking and mind-set of the perpetrator whom the 3rd person refers to as “they.” (I believe we saw that previously in Robert Galbraith’s 3rd novel, Career of Evil and maybe elsewhere one time. 

I’ll be keeping my eye out for more books by Benedict.

Another YA (imo) novel where the main story (taking place 10 years prior) concerns 17-year olds in a small town. These kids are in their 20s now, Christmas is coming and Madeleine Miller’s bookstore is busy. A pod-cast creator and star has come to town to interview the people involved in that old cold case murder which is what happened 10 years prior. Madeleine was the only surviver.

Christmas Presents  
by Lisa Unger 
10/24/2023
Read by Jennifer Pickens, 5h 39m
Rating: 4/10 (generally poor),  mystery-romance, thriller (YA) 

The results of the case back then were that one young man, Evan Handy, went to jail and he was declared the perpetrator of the murders that night and, by default,  of the three other girls who went missing during that general time period.  (There are many who question this, but could Evan be innocent?)

The major players, Madeleine especially, have to relive the horror in interviews, so the story goes back and forth between time periods.  In the original events Madeleine is the sole survivor, out of a group of ten or so.  Her father was the sheriff then but is now very diminished but at home with a caretaker . Madeline has not made a good life for her in the intervening years, she dropped out of college and now works in a bookstore and as a stripper at night.      

Loved it!!!!! This is just the book I was looking for this Christmas season!  The Christmasy part is NOT just slapped onto a fair mystery. This time we have some skullduggery based on the town’s new Christmas tree and decorations as well as a long-missing husband plus Hamish trying to date the new schoolteacher – and him with his bad-luck love-life.   

A Highland Christmas ~
by M.C. Beaton -2h 7m
read by Graham Malcolm
Rating: A / cozy mystery
(#`15 in Hamish Macbeth series)

A chunk of the Scottish community is quietly Calvinist and do NOT readily take to holiday doings, or a lot of other things as it turns out.

The story opens with a lighted Christmas tree stolen from the community war memorial.  This was their first community tree because of the old religious sentiments, but times are changing.  

Hamish McBeth:  Police Constable who patrols and keeps tabs on the windswept terrain of Lochdubh, Scotland. McBeth is the protagonist of the series. 

Blaire: Detective Chief Inspector – Hamish’ boss who despises McBeth.
 
Mrs Gallagher: An older women whose cat goes missing and calls the police supervisor when that happens. Blaire gets on Hamish and he goes to check but Gallagher suspects her house has been broken into in spite of all her locks, bars, and bolts.  When he arrives she offers him a drink. Her husband is missing too and she really hopes she’s a widow by now.  He asks for more information and she tells him he was arrested in 1971, so him might very well be dead. Hamish says he’ll look into it.  

Meanwhile, a young girl who is obedient and very intelligent is being raised by her very strict Calvinist parents who will not allow her to celebrate Christmas or eat candy or go to movies. They have plenty of money and say they love her so she even has her own apartment on the top floor – but she has no friends.

Meanwhile another woman has moved to town and she’s a schoolteacher. Apparently Hamish has been having a rough time in the romance department. The new woman is called an “incomer” – and “once an incomer, always an incomer.” There is a very brief shootout at a remote trailer but otherwise this is fairly non-violent.

In this case the book # in the series is #1.5 and only 2 hours and a few minutes long. What this means to me lately is that it gives me a chance to sample the author. (I’ve seen Beaton’s name, but never read the books) but I do enjoy a good series. 

I’ve tried some series by reading the Christmas novel first (Crewel Yule by Monica Ferris or 23rd Christmas by James Paterson and Maxine Paetro or David Rosenfeld’s ) and sometimes I love them and start the whole series from book 1, or I don’t really like the book and put the whole series away. (With Rosenfeld I loved the Christmas book, didn’t care much for the others, so now I read the annual Christmas novesl – ever since 2016.) This year there seem to be more of them on the market and although I have a few other books in mind to read this monty, I’ll be reading maybe 10 this month including one for New Years which I already found. 😁

This started out fine. It’s mysterious and somewhat spooky, but still fun and it got better with more of the story behind it. Then about 1/3 through it turned occult in some way, and I’m not into occult unless it’s light and very well done in some way.  It’s not that, but the book was not a complete loss,  it definitely has its own very compelling style and substance. And the plot moves slowly, building the tension. 

When Christmas Comes 
by Andrew Klavan 
2021 / (254 pages)
Read by Adam Barr, 5h 54m
Rating  7.5-B/ mystery/romance 

The story itself has very little Christmasy anything, there’s a bit but that could have been an afterthought although I suppose it could have been used to emphasize the loneliness of all the major characters.

Cameron Winter, a discharged Afghanistan war vet and current local English professor, gets a message from Victoria, his prior lover and now lawyer. She wants him to look into the murder of Jennifer Dean, a newcomer to town and the librarian at the school. Travis Blake had been involved with Jennifer until she suddenly disappeared, he killed her (?). And Travis had a lot of other baggage from his prior life.  

The story is sad, melancholic really, and complex so the pace is slow, as I suppose it should be. It’s not a thriller but there’s a super twist at the end which I had no idea was coming. I doubt I’ll be reading the next two in the series.

I loved this show when it was on TV and I’ve enjoyed the books, too, even  if most of the ones I’ve read have been kind of corny. That’s okay – they’re relaxing. With the books,  Jessica Fletcher is always the 1st-named author, but Jessica is a fictional character from the TV show Murder She Wrote which ran from 1984 to 1996. In the show Jessica is an amateur sleuth and  author of mysteries. She’s portrayed by Angela Lansbury.  

Murder, She Wrote: Murder in Season
By Jessica Fletcher and Jon Land 
2020 / 
Read by Laural Merlington 8h 29m  
Rating: A+  / cozy and historical mystery –
(#52 in Murder She Wrote series)

Only 5 years after it premiered as a television show,  Donald Bain, an established US fiction writer, began writing cozy crime novels to go along with the show. Fletcher’s name is used as the primary author and Bain considered himself the “ghost writer.”  He did this almost until his death, from 1989 until 2015 – that’s 25 years and 44 books. He died in 2017!  Since then the second writers have included Jon Land for 5 books and Terrie Farley Moran for 6 books (so far).  Murder in Season is book #52 out of 58 through 2024. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Murder,_She_Wrote_novels

The narrator for the audio books  has also changed a 4 or 5 times over the years but the readers keep reading or listening. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/f/jessica-fletcher/murder-she-wrote/

Rumors about concerning possible real locations for Cabot’s Cove. This articles is by Donald Bain’s daughter: https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/jessica-fletchers-cabot-cove-maine/

When Jessica’s backyard is dug up for a new septic system, a large, old wooden box turns up. Inside the box there are human remains and a documents folder with documents in it. What, and how, in the world?  Meanwhile, Cabot Cove has been found to have an extraordinarily high number of homicides compared to the rest of the US so a reporter is coming to write about that.  

Murder in Season gets into historical fiction because what a reporter has come to Cabot Cove to investigate is not the high murder rate he tells the citizens of the town,  but his real interest is what happened to a certain group of early investors and the money and treasure they brought, what they found, what they invested in, and how their descendants have fared since then.

That’s the basic frame story. Along with the box and human remains, the box also included the journal of John Henry Cabot, one of the original founders of Cabot’s Cove and in whose honor the town was named.  There are murders in both the frame story and the interior story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Fletcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder,_She_Wrote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Lansbury

https://www.greenhealthymaine.com/blog/atlantic-black-box
This is a very interesting piece about a mixed race group on an island off the coast of Maine.
Also see This Other Eden ~ by Paul Harding my blog entry for the book which was selected for the Booker Short List. This is historical fiction about a group of mixed race people residing for decades on an island off the coast of Maine. There is plenty of evidence for the slave trade stretching up the Maine coast.

This is #10 in the Liz Talbot series of murder mysteries by Loretta Rawlings.  Our protagonist, Liz Talbot, is a private investigator who works with the local police from time to time as required. There are prior stories referred to here so I suggest reading the series in order. That said I wasn’t really lost.  

Lowcountry Boughs of Holly
by Susan M. Boyer
Raed by Loretta Rawlings, 7h 29m
Rating: C –  holiday crime 

In this case a really wealthy local man named C.C. Bonefeld is found dressed in a Santa Suit in a row boat on the beach. This takes place during the annual Christmas parade in the very small, imaginary town of Stella Maris on an island off the coast near the border of North and South Carolina.  Bonefeld was not only very rich, but he has a vengeful wife, now widow, and several grown children. His will is … well, a hefty part of the compelling plot line. 

Yes, there’s a good story here but the sweetness and accents get a little thick. The romance is okay until the end. That might have lowered my rating a point or two, but the additional and unnecessary occult business just squishes the fun so it only gets a “C” because it gave the whole thing a distinctly “stupid” feel. 

This is #19 in the Alex Cross series by James Patterson but it’s a Christmas book “available now” in audio via my library (Grand Forks ND).  Who knows”. I enjoy Patterson writing with Maxine Paetro for Women’s Murder Club but I’ve not enjoyed anything else by him.  We’ll see. What do I have to lose (besides time) if it’s from the library? I get library books as I can but also, I don’t like waiting lists (although I do them sometimes).  

Alex Cross: Merry Christmas
by James Patterson
read by a small cast. 6h 6m
rating: 5 / crime thriller
(# 19 in Alex Cross series)

Brief digression:  
Some years ago I got involved with the Monica Ferris Needlecraft series thanks to her Christmas book, Crewel Yule (#8 in the series). I went on to read and keep up with the whole series until she retired several years ago. I started the Women’s Mystery Club with the #19 – The 19th Christmas.  LOL!  Alex Cross felt like a good series until I got about 2/3 into the book and then …. nope – I finished though!

Alex Cross lives in Washington DC where he works for the local police but gets called on certain FBI cases as needed.  Merry Christmas is really two stories, one definitely on Christmas Eve but the other feeling like it was left-over from some other writing attempt. So it feels a bit slap-dash in order to take care of a Christmas book.

I don’t think Patterson is ever going to be someone I follow for himself.  There’s too much focus on gore and who can grab their gun (or whatever) first.  No thanks.

 I’ve read some exceptional Christmas mystery/crime novels, I’ve also read a bunch of duds. Maybe I’ll post a list when I get through this season.  

Well it’s Christmas and this year at first I was kind of hard pressed to find good Christmasy mysteries that I hadn’t read.  Then it picked up so I have a LOT to pick from! I’ve already read the new David Rosenthal Andy Carpenter series Christmas book – he does this every year.

Christmas Caramel Murder 
by Johanne Fluke 
Read by Suzanne Soren 4h 29m
Rating:  B+/ Christmas themed murder mystery 
(#16 in the Hannah Swenson series) 

The Hannah Swenson series is a bit “cozier,” thank Rosenthal, but still on the “Traditional” mystery side because they are murder mysteries which Hannah, the amateur sleuth, solves.

There are also a number of recipes in each book because in her non-sleuthing life Hannah Swenson is a baker with a shop and, at least for awhile, a truck. She’s a young, childless widow who has her mother and sister around and she’s very active in the small community of Eden Lake, Minnesota, where she grew up.  She has many friends so I doubt she’s ever lonely but her mother keeps trying to get her married again.. 

In this book the “found body,” Hannah is always finding dead bodies, is that of a women who recently moved back to town and seems to be having an affair with the mayor. In high school this woman was the steady girlfriend of the guy who is now the husband of Lisa, one of Hannah’s closest friends.  So who are the suspects?  Well…starting with Lisa…. 

These are very “sweet fluff” books but they can take the edge off a string of more intense books in any genre. 

This was not the right book for me to be reading during the difficulties we’re having in the US and the world.  There’s no need to invent this kind of troubles. And yet there’s Ukraine and Israel/Palestine and who knows?  This book felt just like it might be either one, but it could easily be the Republic of Ireland, the country Lynch chose for his fictional dystopia. 

Prophet Song
By Paul Lynch, Ireland 
Read by Gerry O’Brien, 8h 23m 
Raring 9 /  literary dystopian fiction 

This is the very bleak tale of a semi-imaginary Ireland taking place in the very near future when one power has overtaken the whole nation and there’s quite a lot of war-type fighting. A very authoritarian government has usurped all power in Ireland and there’s a new secret police force which “disappears” the rebels of the few opposing factions still left.  (Lynch said he was thinking of Syria when he wrote it but it certainly strikes home with Ukraine and Israel/Palestine having troubles.)

Prophet Song is the story of one family during the crisis. Eilish is the mother and a scientist by trade, her husband is Larry who, at the opening of the novel, doesn’t come home from work. There are grown children and a grand baby as well.

Eilish Stack’s 17-year old son has been called up to serve in the military. His dad seems to have disappeared already and although Eilish holds out hope, there really isn’t any to cling to according to some people she knows. This is the story of people blinding themselves because really, what else can they do?  Eilish does all she can possibly do.  

The Booker Prize 2023 judges lauded Prophet Song because it is “propulsive and unsparing, and it flinches away from nothing.” 

“Things are falling apart. Ireland is in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny. And as the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society – assailed by unpredictable forces beyond her control and forced to do whatever it takes to keep her family together. ” 

The style is extraordinarily powerful, so powerful that parts struck me as being almost horrific – but the violence is never really graphic. The violence is not the point. Kristin Martin at NPR did an excellent review-

And now on to lighter reading – 

I knew I was going to read this book from the time of the first announcement, back in Sept I think it was. So this past Wednesday, when I realized it was available at Audible, I grabbed it.  I had to finish my current read before I started, but I was ready.   

Oath and Office: 
A Memoir and a Warning
By Lynn Cheney 2023
Read by author: 12h 14m
Rating: 10 (for honesty and courage) 
– politics and activism – memoir

Aaaaaaah –  I’ve read a lot of the Trump books over the last couple years, but none about the times after Jan 6. I watched the actual event and I read The Mueller Report: https://mybecky.blog/2019/05/13/the-mueller-report-by-the-washington-post/ .

And then I watched the hours of very slick televised presentation of the  House Investigation. And after all that I watched the follow-up impeachment hearings. Actually, I thought there might not be anything new in the book.  WRONG! 

What I read and saw were only the parts which were made public, but yes, there was plenty not made public or,  a biggie, that I didn’t get to read at the time.  At least some of it is included in Cheney’s book is very informative. Yes, I suppose Cheney evaded or skimped on or shaded some parts; this is a memoir and no matter how careful you are,  you can’t escape your own perspective.  

Liz Cheney has never been a liberal by any means, and she even hung out with the more Conservative Republicans. I can’t expect to share her values. On the other hand, she was never a member of the Freedom Caucus or anything that extreme.  I certainly share her thoughts of Trump’s disregard for the truth and traditions of the United States.  I, too was raised in a home full of Republicanism. My dad worked for the Republican Party (of Minnesota) and after a decade or so of that he became a history teacher and an old “Rockefeller-Republican” politico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican

My mom (an Evangelical Republican) actually dropped a wee bit away from Trump when he didn’t show up for the “peaceful transfer of power.” But I don’t think she could leave the Republican Party. And Trump just kept lying. He’s still lying. I have thoroughly distrusted him since he rode down that escalator at Trump Towers.  I wasn’t fond of him from back in the days of the Central Park rapist scandal but this got stupid.

Oath and Office is not about that though – it’s about Trump’s game-playing with the election, game-playing and breaking the law because … why? He wanted himself to stay in office – it wasn’t about any of his beliefs or ideas – it was about him and his glory and power.

The book though, is about what it took Cheney to put the House Investigation together and it’s fascinating and very well written.  

This book probably challenges those who think that because a Represntative votes conservative (and Cheney certainly does that!) they are a no-good, lying blankety-blank and no one should believe any part of anything they say – they are “Re-thuglicans.”  Fwiw,  Cheney lost her bid for re-election and she was pretty sure she would. but she’s no coward and she didn’t lie or call people names afterward.  We don’t have enough people with that kind of actual integrity in the politics of either party. 

My parents were a lot like Cheney’s, and just like Hillary, I switched to Democrat because during the war in Vietnam, well, it certainly made more sense. But can’t discount all Republicans.  I have come to respect some Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney (I think) and George Conway and others who have shown the courage to stand up to their “orange Jesus.” We have a party of cowards over there.    
I’ve had to think about a lot of things lately, freedom vs equality, the nature of honesty, courage, Paul Ryan and some others.  I wish Lynn Cheney all the best from here on out. I can’t see myself voting for her though – not if there’s a good Democrat on the ballot, or a write-in line. 

I found myself looking at a list of a history bloggers best history books and chanced upon this one. I checked it out, listened to the audio sample and read the Kindle sample.  I decided the Audio would be enough.  There were some complaints about the author reading it but I’ve come to the point that imo, an author reading his own work, especially a memoir, can add a whole layer of authenticity and I’ve grown to quite enjoy it.  I even watched a chunk of the 2018 movie which was directed by Spike Lee. The movie looked like it would be okay and funny, but I’m just not big movie watcher. 

Black Klansman: Race, Hate and
the Undercover Investigations of a Lifetime 
by Ron Stallworth – 2018
Read by the author; 5h 50m 
Rating:  7  / True Crime – Memoir 

So the book just hit me the right way when I came across it. but after 5 hours (of a 6-hour book) I was kind of burned out.  Sometimes I really appreciate authors who read their own works because the books seem more authentic to me.  Other times the author is just NOT a reader. This is even true of excellent writers like Louise Erdrich who reads way too quietly.  Stallworth’s voice is a bit grating and he’s not terribly smooth.  Finally, after about 2/3 way it gets a bit boring with all the aftermath.  I think the movie was quite a hit and the story itself is quite interesting. 

chttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Stallworth

I’ve been reading Christmasy Mysteries since 2005 or so when I found Crewel Yule by Monica Ferris and proceeded to read her whole Needlecraft series to that point, then I kept going with the new ones as they were released until the last of them . 
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/f/monica-ferris/needlecraft-mysteries/
https://cozy-mystery.com/monica-ferris.html

T’was the Bite Before Christmas
by David Rosenfelt
2023
Read by Grover Gardner 6h 33m
Rating – A / legal thriller
(#28 in Andy Carpenter Series)

And I started the David Rosenfelt books shortly after Ferris stopped publishing. Much to my delight, I love his books. He’s been writing the Andy Carpenter Mystery Series since 2008. That’s- 29 books including the new release scheduled for 2024.  I read the first one but was unimpressed, and then I found the first of the Christmas books, The Twelve Dogs of Christmas and I was hooked.  Later I tried another regular Andy Carpenter, a non-Christmasy one and was somewhat disappointed, so I stuck with reading a Christmas book as a personal tradition.

So what do I like about these little Christmas mysteries? Oh my – Rosenfelt writes Carpenter’s character and dialogue like he’s inside it. Rosenfelt’s  usually dry humor gets me laughing, even out loud sometimes. Another thing is the plots are twisty and there’s quite a lot of court action.  Andy Carpenter is a very rich private investigator but he takes on cases as they appeal to him. He is also an avid dog lover and has two dogs of his own, but has set up a foundation to provide temporary shelter for homeless dogs until he can find *good* adopted homes for them. He has a number of assistants to help with this – they call themselves Tara’s Friends. (Tara is the name of one of his own dogs.).

In this episode Christmas is coming (of course) and Andy’s wife, an ex-cop, is getting ready as she does every year starting at Halloween and then keeping the season going until February 1. Andy is enjoying the company of a few of Tara’s Friends associates when the police arrive to arrest one of them. It turns out Derek is not who he says he is. Derek is in a witness protection program but it looks like he’s murdered an old associate there.

I’ve been following Allen Eskens since, The Life We Bury, his debut novel in 2015, which was super-good  Saving Emma is his 9th novel and has been on my radar since its release in September of this year. This is #2 in the Boady Sanden series and Sanden, a Minnesota lawyer, is now employed at the University, but still associated with the Innocence Project. The new case has its own connections to Sanden’s prior cases.  Sanden himself was a minor character in The Life We Bury and The Heavens May Fall, but he’s a major character in Nothing More Dangerous and this one, Saving Emma.  

Saving Emma 
by Allen Eskers
Read by a cast:  9h 1m
Rating: C / legal thriller 
(Boady Sanden series #2)

In “Saving Emma,” Boady Sanden learns that a church worker who claims he’s a prophet, Elijah Matthews, was wrongly convicted of murdering Jalen Bale, the head minister at a very upscale church near Minneapolis.  He is now residing in a local mental ward because he’s also delusional.  Ruth, Elijah’s sister, calls Boady and he agrees to take the case for the Innocence Project. Ruth believes Elijah strange messages.  

Meanwhile, Emma, the 14-year old ward of Boady and Dee Sanden, has been told that Boady could have saved her father from being shot by a police officer. This is not true, but it impresses Emma and she’s a mess.  A designated aunt is fighting for custody. 

There’s a heavy amount of Biblical talk here – Elijah considers himself a prophet as do others and his life’s work is to help others.  He speaks to God and says God speaks to him.  He quotes scriptures quite a lot.  And, as if that’s not enough, there is a lot of space given to symbolism – names like Elijah Matthews  and Lilith and Cain and  Bale (Baal)   Also,  I just get very annoyed by some protagonists saying “I promise” to everyone they cross.  On its own it was never as irritating as other aspects of the book. 

The problem with this book is that it’s so transparent and usually very predictable with a couple twists. At other times I thought I knew what was going on, but the protagonist was totally in the dark.  Yeah?  I was right about 75%.  Boady’s wife is just sooo wonderful, smart, tender and all-loving” with the “right” answers but soooo from her perspective so that she comes off as seriously bitchy towards her husband. The “bad guys” might as well have horns – there’s no complexity to most of them they’re interchangeable.   And I might as well add this here. Although audio-books read by a cast are often exceptionally well done, I generally do NOT like them. That’s trying too hard to be something they aren’t. I loved reading from books and my brain alone did wonders on the author’s chosen words. (I feel the same way about sound effects and over-dramatization. – Just leave the books as you found them!)

I’ll keep trying Eskens – his others have been fine, As and Bs.