Ahira's Hangar

I just read a little mystery called Framed in Lace, written by Monica Ferris. It was apparently the second book in a series, but I was able to figure out what was going on, so tracking down the first book wasn't necessary. It was set in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. A woman who is running her deceased sister's yarn/craft store becomes involved in a mystery when a WW2 era skeleton of a murdered woman and a bit of a lace trimmed hankerchief turn up in an old sunken boat. She has to work with the police and her customers to try to figure out who might have made the homemade lace trim.

I recently started A Murder on the Appian Way by Steven Saylor. It is apprently based on an actual scandalous murder and trial in ancient Rome, one which drove a wedge between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and helped lead to the final downfall of the Republic. So far its pretty interesting. I only hope I can remember enough about ancient Rome (I know a lot more about the Greeks than the Romans) to figure out all of the nuances about what's going on... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I am really starting to get into A Murder on the Appian Way. The murder, of a leading politician named Publius Clodius, by another leading politician named Milo, seems to be the last straw for the deteriorating political condition of the Roman Republic. Mobs are running the city now, intent on rape, looting, and arson. People are crying out for a dictator -- and there are two candidates to be the much desired strongman -- Pompey and Julius Caesar... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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The book by Saylor is quite good. Anyone with an interest in ancient Rome (especially the years toward the end of the Republic) or an interest in mysteries, or both, would probably like this. It is one of a series -- if I ever see any of the other books in the library or in a used book store, I will definately read them. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I've been reading a lot of short mysteries lately, trying to keep my slate clean for GRRM and his Feast For Crows -- I've been waiting something like 5 years for that book, and I want to start it as soon as I get my copy.

I read a book given to me by a friend called The Crossword Connection by Nero Blanc. It involved a bride, two street people (or so they seem) being murdered, a kidnapping, a puppy, and a stalker who sends crossword puzzles. It was sort of a mess, the crossword puzzle thing was a bit too weird for me, and I didn't care so much for it. It probably didn't help at all that it was the second book in a series, and I didn't read the first book.

But the last mystery I read before this one, A Murder on the Appian Way was also part of a series, but I was able to read it as a stand alone. Perhaps that one was so well done, any mystery I read right after would have been doomed in comparison?

I have also read the first two books in a mystery about a man who inherits his great aunt's business, a candlemaking store. They are called At Wick's End and Snuffed Out and they were written by Tim Myers. I like Harrison Black, the main character, and I like how he finds that running his own business eats up a lot of hours, and how he has to worry about money - some very real concerns for small business owners that a lot of mysteries of this type (work place based mysteries) seem to ignore. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I have started the third of Tim Myers's mystery series about the candle store, Death Waxed Over. In this one, the owner of a rival candle making shop is murdered a few feet away from Harrison, and he quickly becomes a suspect! Harrison, a man without a career or a passion until he inherits his greataunt's business, is an interesting and well drawn character. And life in a small southern town, where everyone has his or her nose stuck into everyone esle's business, is well portrayed. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I am reading the latest book in a series called The Chocoholic Mysteries by Joanna Carl. I once had a long post about this series, but it was eaten by the hacker attack...so I will do this again.

The books in the series:
The Chocolate Cat Caper
The Chocolate Bear Burglary
The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up
The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle
The Chocolate Mouse Trap

I read the others months ago, tonight I read the Mouse Trap.

These stories tell the story of Lee McKinney, a young woman who has moved to Michigan to start a new life after her marriage to a Texas tycoon falls apart. She was a beauty queen, and he had married her as a trophy wife. Eventually she couldn't stand that anymore, so she left and came up to her aunt's home and business. The aunt lives in an old farm house and owns and runs a chocolate company and store in a resort town on Lake Michigan (the town seems to be a cross between Grand Haven and Saugatuck).

Lee is terminally nosy, and so becomes involved in investigating crimes that happen around her and to people she knows.

Small town life resort life is captured well -- whether it is the tension between the townies and the megamillionaires from Chicago and their summer "cabins"; the boredom and bad weather of winter; or the sheer gorgeousness of autumn in orchard country.





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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Peggy Lee is the middle-aged widow of a police detective. She is the mother of a young police officer. She is also a botany professor at Queens in Charlotte, down in the Carolinas. She is also the owner of a small gardening center in downtown Charlotte. It had been the dream of both herself and her husband to open one upon their retirement, and when her husband died in the line of duty, she decided to go ahead with their dream.

In the book by Joyce and Jim Lavene called Pretty Poison, we meet Peggy when she is having an interesting morning. Fist she is late for in getting to the lecture she is giving. Then when she is biking from her lecture to her store, someone in a car abruptly pulls out into the path of her bicycle and she hits it. But the driver turns out to be an attractive, single man, so maybe that was OK! When she gets to her store, the day really goes downhill, because the murdered body of one of the wealthiest philanderers in the city is on the floor in the middle of her locked business!

In order to clear herself (as she was the one who found the body) as well as her employees (all of whom have keys), she gets involved in investigating the murder - besides trying to deal with the starving Great Dane who wishes to adopt her! ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Lili Marino was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She watched the Twin Towers burn and fall, rushed to help with rescue efforts in what ways she could (dragging water out to the people flooding back over the Brooklyn Bridge, offering support to her friends who were widowed that day, etc.)

She is a freelance writer, and when someone can only pay her for her work by giving her a cottage in the Hudson Valley, she decides to accept it. After Sept. 11 she decides that she needs a change in her life. So she decides to live in the cottage in a peaceful small town, and see if her hobby (decorating gourds) can become a livlihood.

In The Gourdmother by Maggie Bruce we meet Lili in her new rural life. Unfortunately, though, it proves to not be as peaceful as she envisioned when she finds the body of her new friend's husband floating in a pond on opening day of deer hunting season... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 1/30/06 10:19 am
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I have been reading Crime Brulee by Nancy Fairbanks lately. In it, three couples who all met in college get together in New Orleans to attend a professional convention (many, though not all, of the six people are now chemistry professors and it is a convention for chemistry researchers). One of the women gets into a fight with her husband on the first night when the couples are at dinner and simply disappears after she storms out of the restaurant.

One of the other women, Carolyn Blue, a professional food writer working on a book about New Orleans traditional foods and married to a chemistry professor, decides to try to track down her missing friend.

It's a little weird reading about the Convention Center and other New Orleans places in this book, considering that some of these same places now represent pure human misery in our real post-Katrina world.

But the food talk is interesting, the main character is quite likable, and when you put Katrina out of your mind, the New Orleans setting is quite exotic to this Yankee girl in the middle of a cold winter. <i></i>

I am currrently reading the sequel to the book in the above post, Nancy Fairbank's Truffled Feathers. In it, we find Carloyn Blue, food writer and restaurant critic, accompanying her husband to New York City. Once again someone they know is murdered, and Carolyn gets to eat her way through many wonderful meals which are described in loving detail.

These books make me very hungry! ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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As I work my way through my TBR stack, I have gotten down to a book a friend gave me a few months ago. It is called Devil May Care and is written by Elizabeth Peters.

The author is well known for a mystery series set in Egypt in the early twentieth century involving archaeologists and dig sites. I have been wanting to read those books for quite awhile now. This book, however, is not one part of that series. As far as I can tell, it is a stand-alone, which is quite fine as I am very pressed for time these days.

Quote:
Ellie is young, rich, engaged, and in love. These are the carefree days before marriage and new responsibility, and anything goes - including house-sitting at eccentric Aunt Kate's palatial estate in Burton, Virginia. Ellie feels right at home here with the nearly invivible housekeepers and the plethora of pets, but she soon realizes that there are disturbing secrets about the local aristocracy buried in a dusty old book she has carried into the mansion. And her sudden interest in the past is attracting a slew of unwelcome guests - some of them living...and some, perhaps not. And the terrible vengeance that Ellie and her friends seem to have aroused - now aimed at them - surely cannot be...satanic.

I am not sure if this one is a mystery or a horror, but I guess I will find out as I read. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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In addition to the Peters book (which seems to be an updated Gothic as much as anything) I have started the latest book in Lillian Jackson Braun's Cat Who series. There is something like twenty of those books (I am much too lazy today to type in all of the titles), and a couple of short story collections, and I think there might even be a cookbook and a Cat Who Companion.

It's a bit of an uneven series. Some of the books are very good. Some of them are not as good. I tend to like the early ones, set before the main character becomes extremely wealthy and settles down in a tiny town in the far north (in a thinly disguised Michigan's Upper Penninsula) on the shores of Lake Superior, and the books where he travels elsewhere for a month or so. The books where he is at home in the little town of Pickaxe suffer from a bit of "long series-itis" where a lot of the book revolves around with checking in with favorite small town eccentric characters rather than on the plot of that particular book. The initial books in the series feature a financially struggling and recovering alcoholic main character working as a reporter in a thinly disguised Detroit, and are much more gritty than the later books.

This one is called The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell and is a Pickaxe book.

The reason that "Cat Who" appears in all of the titles is because they tell the story of James Qwilleran and his two beloved Siamese cats, Koko and YumYum. Koko is very intelligent and seems to have ESP abilities, and helps Qwill (a reporter turned newspaper columnist) solve crimes. The cats are usually very charming.

While these books are not ground breaking literature, they are enjoyable in a mind-popcorn sort of way, especially the cats.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Since I have a bit more time right now, here we go:
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern
The Cat Who Turned On and Off
The Cat Who Saw Red
The Cat Who Played Brahms
The Cat Who Played Post Office
The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue
The Cat Who Went Underground
The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts
The Cat Who Lived High
The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal
The Cat Who Moved a Mountain
The Cat Who Wasn't There
The Cat Who Went into the Closet
The Cat Who Came to Breakfast
The Cat Who Blew the Whistle
The Cat Who Said Cheese
The Cat Who Tailed a Thief
The Cat Who Sang for the Birds
The Cat Who Saw Stars
The Cat Who Robbed a Bank
The Cat Who Smelled a Rat
The Cat Who Went Up a Creek
The Cat Who Brought Down the House
The Cat Who Talked Turkey
The Cat Who Went Bananas
The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell

Short Story Collections:
The Cat Who Had 14 Tales
Short and Tall Tales
The Private Life of the Cat Who

I think there is also a companion guide to the series, and maybe even a cookbook!



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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I recently read a pretty good little novel called Death at Bishop's Keep by Robin Paige. It is set in New York City and in the English countryside back in the Victorian Age.

The main character is named Kathryn Ardleigh, and she is an orphan raised by her Irish aunt and uncle in New York City. To earn a living she learns typing skills, and moonlights as the author of penny dreadfuls - little sensationalized serialized thriller stories.

The one evening she is approached by a Pinkerton detective with a mysterious job offer from an unknown aunt in England...

When she arrives in England she finds out that she actually has two aunts; one kind and generous and one cruel and tyrannical. The kind aunt is involved in what seems to be an odd cult. The cruel one seems to have mistreated the household servants to where they have reached the point of potential violence...

And then the murders begin... <i></i>

I am currently reading a book passed on to me by the friend who loves mystery stories. It seems to be the third book in a series (she passed books 3-6 on to me, but so far it seems as if I can figure out what is going on without having read the first two books ).

It is called The Bohemian Murders and was written by Dianne Day. It is in the Fremont Jones Mystery series.

Thus far a woman named Fremont Jones was forced to leave San Francisco and her small business (she was a typist) after the great earthquake and fire in 1906. She follows a former suitor to Carmel, where they break up, and she takes a temporary job as a lighthouse keeper when the regular keeper needs to take a few months off.

Early on in her tenure at the lighthouse, a corpse washes up with the tide. Fremont is curious as to the identity of the woman, and it looks as if she is going to become involved in some serious stickiness in trying to discover who the woman was, and what happened to her!

I like this book, in that the main character has gone through something very traumatic, and it shows in her life in all sorts of ways, just as it would with a real disaster victim.

Quote:
An earthquake is a great learning experience. I suppose the same is true of any disaster that shakes you up and turns your life upside down; when you start to put yourself back together again, you find that nothing looks quite the same as it did before. And if you lost a great deal, as most of us did in the quake and fire, you will learn quickly what means the most to you by the ferocity with which you long to have it back.

Love and friendship aside (for the moment I am understandably confused on that score), what I missed most after the earthquake, with a longing that was almost physical, was the daily routine of going to my office and having a job to do that earned me a living wage. I learned that any work, paid or not, is better than none; and that forming one's own routine and sticking to it can be the equivalent of a port in storm...
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 2/14/06 10:49 pm
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