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Readingomnivore Reviews

Blaize Clement’s CAT SITTER ON A HOT TIN ROOF is the fourth in her Dixie Hemingway series, published in 2008. Dixie is a former sheriff’s deputy who, following the deaths of her husband and young daughter in an accident, is now a professional pet sitter on Siesta Key, a barrier island in the Gulf off Sarasota, Florida.

When Dixie accidentally meets Laura Halston, she’s impressed by Laura’s beauty and her courage in leaving behind a powerful and abusive husband n Dallas, Texas; the women begin to form a friendship. Or at least Dixie does. When Laura is brutally stabbed to death and her face mutilated, Lt. Jean-Pierre Guidry of the Homicide Investigative Unit of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department discovers everything she’s told Dixie is a lie. But there are three men on the key who’d had issues with Laura--Martin Freuland, president of a bank in Laredo where Laura worked as a clerk and as his mistress; Frederick Vaught, a creepy ex-nurse who may be a serial killer of elderly patients, who’s stalking her; and Mr. Gorgon, a thug thought to be Mob connected. Despite all advice to the contrary, Dixie gets involved in trying to find out who killed Laura and why.

The plot is satisfyingly complex with Laura’s murder and all the conflicting stories told by and about Laura Halston. There’s a heart-warming secondary story line about Jeffrey Richards, a three-year-old with a major seizure disorder and a loving service dog, a golden retriever named Mazie. Dixie and one of her workers Pete Madiera care for Mazie while Jeffrey is hospitalized in St. Petersburg for brain surgery. There’s also the continuing story line of Dixie’s recovering from the devastation of the loss of her family and tentatively considering a relationship with Guidry or with attorney Ethan Crane. The murder plot is adequately foreshadowed, but Clement manages a surprising conclusion.

Characterization is strong in this series and in CAT SITTER ON A HOT TIN ROOF. Dixie Hemingway is believable with her emotional baggage and her determination. “Sometimes people are surprised to learn that pet sitting is a professional like any other. I approach it the same way I approached being a deputy. I was always aware that lives could depend on my being alert, on my remembering my training, on handling of my job in a professional manner. I feel the same way about pet sitting. Pet owners entrust me with animals they love, and I take that trust very seriously.” (7) Her sense of self is well developed: “I didn’t say goodbye to Sheila. I was afraid it would interfere with her concentration and enrage her manicure customer [Gorgon]. That’s the kind of thing that makes me grateful for my own profession. I don’t have to be a different person at work than I am at home. I don’t have to suck up to people I despise so that little pieces of my soul get chipped away every day.” (75-6) That being said, she’s totally naive in believing without question everything Laura tells her. She pulls TSTLs, especially in her assumption about the ending of danger when one of the men is arrested. Dixie is supported by realistic continuing characters: her brother Michael, a firefighter; his long-time partner Paco, an undercover cop; Tanisha and Judy at the Village Dinder; Ethan Crane; and Guidry, late of the New Orleans PD. It’s best to read this series in order since the relationships continue and develop, just like real life.

Setting, especially atmosphere, is extremely well done in CAT SITTER ON A HOT TIN ROOF. I “...grinned at the contradiction of a wide-hipped Silverado pickup with a gun rack in the back and a RAPTURE! sticker on the bumper. Florida is an Old Testament state where God walks with us in the cool of the evening. But he tells us not to get too smart, not to eat of the tree of knowledge, or we will die. And all around us, a sibilant sea whispers the soul’s terrifying truth: ‘If you eat of the tree, you will not die.’ It’s no wonder so many of us are gun-toting fundamentalists.” (87) Clement is clever at using atmosphere to illuminate character: “Lightly sauteed sea scallops lay over a heap of white beans. The white beans were atop a mound of steamed fresh spinach leaves. The whole thing was topped with a scattering of chopped red tomatoes. It was a red, white, and green dish, sort of an Italian flag of food. ... Anything Michael makes is delicious, and this was downrght soul stirring. The white beans were flavored with garlic and something else that raised them above ordinary white beans, the scallops were delicately sweet and tender, and the spinach and tomatoes made everything else sit up and take notice. I tried not to make a pig of myself, but I had two helpings, plus two hunks of hot bread with butter,,,, My idea of heaven is a place where people who love one another gather for good food and good conversation, so I was in heaven. It’s good to be able to recognize those heavenly moments, good to be inwardly grateful to be so lucky.” (123-4)

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF is a satisfying read. (A)
 
“Darcy and Bingley” is an e-book short story prequel to Pride and Prejudice. It was published in 2014 by author Gianna Thomas.

After Fitzwilliam Darcy stops three upperclassmen at Cambridge University from beating Charles Bingley, an underclassman unacceptable to them because his father’s in trade, the two young men become fast friends. Bingley helps bring Darcy out of his isolation, and Darcy offers a brake on Bingley’s enthusiasm. After a trip to Pemberley by Bingley, his sisters Caroline and Louisa, and Louisa’s husband Gilbert Hurst during which Caroline pursues Darcy relentlessly, Darcy and Bingley set off to inspect three estates that may meet Bingley’s requirements. The best choice is Netherfield, near Meryton in Hertfordshire. He leases it for six months, to live there while making the final decision about purchase, and arranges to take immediate possession. Meanwhile, Darcy is recalled to London to deal with business and, when his chaise breaks a wheel, is forced to take a public stage. Two young women, the blonde Melanie and the dark-haired Lizzie, are the only other passengers. Darcy listens to their discussion of the latest of Mary Wollstonecraft’s books, and he’s much impressed with Lizzie’s beauty, intelligence, and good humor. The story ends with the coach overturning.

Though set before the Bingleys’ move into Netherfield, Mr. Collins has already visited Longbourn at least once, since Melanie and Lizzie mention him as illustrative of points made by Wollstonecraft. Melanie and Lizzie are traveling unaccompanied on a public stage to London, to buy material for dresses for the ball at Netherfield the next week. Having been in company, even if not in conversation with Lizzie (they haven’t been introduced!), it seems doubtful that Darcy would be so dismissive of her when they do meet at the assembly ball in Meryton.

I’m annoyed by sections one and three of the story being written in past tense, while the middle section uses present tense, for no apparent reason. The story illuminates neither action nor characters in Pride and Prejudice. Not recommended. (D)
 
BAD SONS is the first in Oliver Tidy’s Booker and Cash mystery series. It was published in e-book format in 2014.

When David Booker returns to Dymchurch in the Romney Marsh of Kent to help his aunt and uncle ship a large book order to an American purchaser, he’s surprised to find them missing. The next morning, his aunt’s body is found in the sea near St Mary’s Bay; she’d drowned at approximately the time David had been expected. Her coat and shoes are missing, and there’s no sign of his uncle. He meets Detective Constable Jo Cash, who’s working on the case under the supervision of Detective Inspector Sprake; Cash seems wiling to believe David’s innocence but Sprake regards him as a person of interest. David is incensed at the apparent lack of police concern about his aunt’s death, which he’s convinced is murder. He observes strange goings and comings in Flashman’s storage yard behind his relatives’ bookstore, and he finds notations in a planner that indicate they had been observing something happening at odd hours, labelled PLUTO. PLUTO had been a World War II project that built a network of pipelines from Dungeness to the Normandy coast to carry fuel to support D-Day and the Normandy campaign. His uncle’s body turns up, also in the sea, but dead of a broken neck after torture; he’d not died until Friday night after David’s arrival on Wednesday. What on earth had his relatives gotten mixed up with?

BAD SONS is narrated in first person by David Booker, very much in storytelling mode. He’s in his thirties, about to be divorced from his Turkish second wife, teaching English in a private school in Istanbul. The deaths of his aunt and uncle, focus him: “As I sat at my uncle’s desk waiting for the shock of the news to release me from its crippling embrace I made a decision. I would not be going back to Istanbul and my life there. Leaving aside the estate I was about to inherit, I had to unravel the secrets surrounding the deaths of the two people who been the closest family I had ever known. And then I had to do something about it.” David does tell Jo Cash what he discovers as he finds it, but together they pull a major TSTL when they go to France to investigate the other end of the PLUTO pipeline without her telling DI Sprake what they’re doing. Both Booker and Cash are realistic.

The plot is almost police procedural in format, with little to indicate the identity of the killers. The motive for the activities that lead to the death of Booker’s relatives is profoundly ironic. Somehow the conversational tone of the story nullifies most of the suspense. I appreciate Tidy’s economy in the number of characters. All are essential.

Setting is strong. “It was another glorious afternoon on Romney Marsh and I felt a twinge of regret at having kept myself inside most of the day. The high tide of the early afternoon was receding. Gulls were swooping and shrieking around something that interested them in the swell. It was warm still and there was no breeze to speak of. The sky was a rich cobalt blue and clear apart from a thin band of dirty cloud on the horizon towards the Normandy coast and the ever present bisecting vapour trails of the jets in the stratosphere. The air quality was giving a good idea that the spring of daffodils, lambs and more temperate weather was hanging up its coat for a visit.”

BAD SONS encourages me to look for more in the series. (B)
 
Elizabeth von Arnim’s THE ENCHANTED APRIL was originally published in 1922, but it has been re-issued in e-book format prepared by Manette Rothermel. Formatting is not attractive. The vertical spacing does not space between paragraphs or within chapter headings, leaving each screen a block of text. Margins are highly irregular, sometimes with only one or two words on a line. The text reads as if spell-checked but not proofread.

Two Englishwomen Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot, unhappy in dreary February Hampstead, see an advertisement for “those who love wistaria and sunshine” (1), offering a small medieval castle in Italy for rent for the month of April. Though the women attend the same church, they are not acquainted, but both need the holiday. They rent the castle from its owner Thomas Briggs and, discovering the cost of the rental and associated expenses, advertise for women to share the holiday. The only two applicants are aristocratic Lady Caroline Dester and elderly Mrs. Fisher. Between February and April Lotty and Rose become tentative friends, but the other two women are complete strangers. Under the influence of the beauty of San Salvatore and its freedom from the routines of their usual lives, the women begin to define themselves and their roles anew. The changes in Lotty and Rose lead to their inviting their husbands, pompous solicitor Mellersh Wilkins and author of racy memoirs of kings’ mistresses Frederick Arbuthnot, to San Salvatore, where the changes in their wives and the atmosphere of San Salvatore work transformation on the men. Mrs. Fisher moves away from living in the past among the spirits of eminent Victorians whom she knew in her youth, and Caroline recognizes both the aridity of her social life and the attractiveness of Thomas Briggs.

THE ENCHANTED APRIL has little physical action. What does occur is simple day-to-day life; the only dramatic action is the wood-fired hot water heater exploding in the “modern” bathroom when Mellersh Wilkins tries to take a bath. In a beautifully comic scene, he emerges from the smoking bathroom clad in a towel, to meet both Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline for the first time.

All the characters are well developed, though the women receive more attention than the men. My favorite among them is Lotty Wilkins, whose unhappiness begins the story: “Nobody took any notice of Mrs. Wilkins. She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible; her face was non-arresting; her conversation was reluctant; she was shy. And if one’s clothes and face and conversation are all negligible, thought Mrs. Wilkins, who recognized her disabilities, what, at parties, is there left of one?” (2) Though the other women at first think her daft, she’s the focus of the changes that revitalize them all.

San Salvatore and its gardens are lushly depicted: “That first week the wistaria began to fade, and the flowers of the Judas-tree and peafeech-tree fell off and carpeted the ground with rose-colour. Then al the freesias disappeared, and the irises grew scarce. And then, while these were clearing themselves away, the double banksia roses came out, and the big summer roses suddenly flaunted gorgeously on the walls and trellises. Fortune’s Yellow was one of them; a very beautiful rose. Presently the tamarisk and the daphnes were at their best, and the lilies at their tallest. By the end of the week the fig-trees were giving shade, the plum-blossom was out among the olives, the modest weigelias appeared in their fresh pink clothes, and on the rocks sprawled masses of thick-leaved, star shaped flowers, some vivid purple and some a clear, pale lemon.” (103-4)

THE ENCHANTED APRIL was adapted for the film ENCHANTED APRIL, starring Josie Lawrence (Lotty), Miranda Richardson (Rose), Polly Walker (Caroline), Joan Plowright (Mrs. Fisher), Alfred Molina (Mellersh), Jim Broadbent (Frederick), and Michael Kitchen (Briggs). Richardson and Plowright won Golden Globe awards for their performances in the film; it received three Academy Award nominations. The film was shot on location in the castle where von Arnim lived while writing the novel. Peter Barnes’s screenplay is one of the best ever adaptations of a novel for film. The characters are faithful to the originals (though the actors playing the roles are older); the atmosphere and “feel” of the novel is beautifully preserved.

I highly recommend both THE ENCHANTED APRIL (novel) and ENCHANTED APRIL (film). (both solid A)
 
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’s BLOOD SINISTER was originally published in 1999, then reissued in THE THIRD BILL SLIDER OMNIBUS in 2007. It’s one of her mystery series featuring Detective Inspector Bill Slider of the Shepherd’s Bush CID in London.

When prize-winning journalist Phoebe Agnew is found dead, it looks like a murder following upon forcible rape--she’s nude from the waist down, her hands tied together and to the headboard of her bed. Forensics turn up semen and a used condom. As Slider and his team investigate, the obvious suspect is Josh Prentiss, well-known architect, famous set designer, political consultant to the Government on inner city redevelopment, and Phoebe’s friend since school days at University College London. He’s lied to the police, his fingerprints are on a whiskey glass in Phoebe’s flat, and witnesses place him there just about the time she was killed. The semen is a DNA match to him. But he steadfastly denies having sex with Phoebe and insists that she’d been alive when he left her flat. Is there any other possible explanation for Phoebe’s death?

The plot is convoluted, with layers of deception and motives that range from the reasonable to the bizarre. The motive and the identity of the killer definitely come as a surprise. One must be willing to suspend disbelief, which isn’t difficult.

Harrod-Eagles has created a viable community of police in Slider’s team, giving them enough individuality and personal lives to make them believable. There’s the sense of life continuing in the intervals between books. Slider’s divorce becomes final, but he and Joanna face financial problems. Most of his salary goes to pay alimony and child support, and Joanna’s bookings as a violinist are drying up. She’s offered a permanent job with a prestigious group, but it will involve relocating to Amsterdam. Sergeant Jim Atherton, still recovering emotionally from nearly being killed in an earlier case, cats around on Sue Coversham and plans to invest everything he has in a syndicate on a race horse. WDC Norma Swilley plans her long-delayed wedding to the mysterious Tony, fights with the caterers over the menu, and asks Slider to give her way. Humor is often involved in the characterization. Of Superintendent Fred “The Syrup” Porson, Slider’s boss: “Porson used language with the delicate touch of a man in boxing gloves playing the harpsichord. It was one of the endearing things about him--as long as you didn’t suffer from perfect literary pitch.” (290)

Setting and especially atmosphere are strong, often used to show character: “Campden Hill Square was on a hill rising steeply from the main road, with a public garden in the centre graced by massive plane trees. Fog now draped their bare branches like cobweb, and made fizzy yellow haloes round the street lamps. The steepness and the narrowness of the houses gave it a Hampsteady feel to Swilley. The houses looked unstable, as though they might topple like dominoes and send two hundred years of architecture rumbling out into the Bayswater Road in a lava flow of bricks and slates. And good riddance, in her view. She had as much respect for old London architecture as the Luftwaffe.” (322)

BLOOD SINISTER is worth a read. (B+)
 
DEATH ON ACCOUNT is the third book in J. J. Salkeld’s Lakeland Murder series featuring Detective Inspector Andy Hall. It was published in e-book format n 2013.

When Trevor Royal is murdered with a garrote, Hall’s landed with a major case indeed. Trevor Royal had been in reality Neil Williams, an informant/witness in the re-trial of Tom Cafferty for double murder. Tom Cafferty is the younger brother of crime boss Billy Cafferty, whose family has ruled the Liverpool underworld for forty years and who seems untouchable. Williams had been in witness protection with his location and new particulars confined to a limited number of police. So Hall has three problems: who killed Williams, who furnished the information on his location to the Cafferty organization, and how to connect the murder to Cafferty. The Kendal police department is stretched thin, with Sergeant Ian Mann still on suspension pending the Crown Prosecution Service decision whether to try him for killing two criminals while defending Detective Constable Ray Dixon and DI Hall. Smalltime thug Terry Walker has caused problems for years for next door neighbor Eleanor Barrow, who’s full-time care giver for her wheelchair- bound daughter Gemma; his latest is throwing hot barbeque coals at them in their garden because Eleanor complains of the noise he and his drunken mates are making. Intraoffice politics live and flourish in Kendal station.

The plot of DEATH ON ACCOUNT seems realistic, especially in the limitations put on policing by economic constraints, the CPS’s refusal to prosecute cases not a sure win, and office politics that hamper investigations. This is a police procedural, so who’s ultimately responsible for the murder of Neil Williams is never in doubt. Hall and his opposite number in Liverpool DI Tony Sheridan identify the killer quickly; Hall and Detective Constable Ray Dixon uncover the identity of the mole in Kendal station. The secondary story lines end more satisfactorily.

Salkeld has created a believable cast of continuing characters, most of them Hall’s team at Kendal, a collection whose whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Each member has specific strengths, and successful police work is clearly shown as teamwork, not the product of a solitary genius. Shifts in point of view reveal character, providing insights into their lives and feelings. Dixon, now that the retirement he’s counted off toward for years, finds in himself a change of heart: “...if this was going to be one of his last jobs on the force he was determined to do it as best he could, and not merely as well as the bosses expected. If someone in Kendal nick, or associated with it, had grassed Neil Williams up then he would find that person out. It would be a kind of leaving present from him to Kendal station.” Because this series is very much character driven, it’s good to read the books in order.

Setting is not much emphasized in DEATH ON ACCOUNT. Formatting has all paragraphs begin at the left margin with no indentations or line spacing. Copy editing misses consistency on names: Ian Mann, Andy Hall, but no Ian Hall; Maureen or Eileen McGrath?

Still, DEATH ON ACCOUNT is a good read. (B)
 
Annalise Ryan’s FROZEN STIFF is the third book in her mystery series featuring Mattie Winston, former ER and OR nurse who’s now a deputy coroner in Sorenson, Wisconsin. It is available in e-format.

When new police hire Ron Colbert finds the body of a young woman dumped on the side of a snow-covered road the Friday before Thanksgiving, homicide detective Steve Hurley takes one look and removes himself from the case, calling in semi-retired detective Bob Richmond to run the investigation. The woman’s identified as Callie Dunkirk, formerly investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, now working for the TV news magazine Behind the Scenes, and Hurley’s former girlfriend. One of his hairs is stuck in the blood of Callie’s wound; there are metal blobs from his metal-working hobby in her hair, and the knife with which she had been stabbed is distinctive and belongs to him. Then Harold Minniver dies of what turns out to be cyanide poisoning; he’s Hurley’s neighbor, involved in a lawsuit with him over the fence between their properties. The spare key to Minniver’s house is found in Hurley’s workroom along with potassium cyanide, used in metallurgy. Mattie’s soon-to-be ex-husband had a very public confrontation with Hurley in the grocery store a month or so before, and now someone torches David’s house with him inside. He’d have died if Maddie, who lives nearby, hadn’t seen the fire and rescued him. Hurley’s gas can, complete with his fingerprints and hand-written label, makes him the suspect in the arson and attempted murder. Who is going to such trouble to set Hurley up for murder?

FROZEN STIFF is written in police procedural format so there’s little doubt about who’s ultimately responsible for Hurley’s dilemma, but the identity of the actual killer comes as a major surprise.

Characterization is a strong point in the series. Mattie as first person narrator is believable, carrying emotional baggage from her failed marriage, her tentative attraction to Hurley, and her mother’s paranoid hypochondria. She has an attractive self-deprecating sense of humor: “...I have a theory about weight ups and downs. I’m convinced there are set amounts of fat that exist in the universe, as well as within every little microcosm of society, be it a work group, or a family, or a set of friends. Like other forms of mass, fat can’t just disappear, and it tries to maintain a state of equilibrium. So if one person in a given microcosm loses weight, someone else in the same group has to gain. It’s the basic physics of fat and, unfortunately, my little niche of the universe seems to be populated with a bunch of persistent, consistent losers who keep trying to shift their share of the fat onto me. If I ever figure out who they are, I’m going to start spiking their meals with Ensure.” (21)

Part of the pleasure is the well-developed circle of continuing characters: the Medical Examiner Izzy, Mattie’s boss; Izzy’s partner, actor in the local drama society, and gourmet cook Dom; evidence technician and conspiracy theorist Arnie. FROZEN STIFF features Bob Richmond prominently. Almost retired, grossly overweight, appearing “in your face” about Izzy’s sexual preference and women’s role in law enforcement, he proves to be a good cop, much more open-minded than expected. It’s good to read the series in order, because it is character driven.

Setting focuses on atmosphere, the attitudes that create a specific culture. “Snow blowers are a measure of macho in Wisconsin and after any hefty snowfall you can find men on every block metaphorically unzipping and comparing blade size, horsepower, stages, and throw-capacity. Any guy using a shovel is assumed to have gonads the size of a squirrel’s.” (13-4)

Deer season is a major event in Sorenson: “Both men are wearing insulated bib overalls made out of camouflage fabric. I’m guessing hunters wear this getup so the deer won’t see them as easily, but over top of the camouflage both men are wearing vests and earflap hats--standard hunting fare--done in a blaze orange so bright it’s likely visible from Mars. Despite this precaution, every year a couple of hunters are shot--supposedly by mistake--because some yahoo thinks deer have blaze orange fur. Here in Wisconsin we’ve learned to adapt to this idiocy because hunting is as much a rite of passage as growing pubic hair. In fact, I know a hunter or two who think the act of killing an innocent animal is what gives you pubic hair. During deer hunting season the air is filled with the sound of gunshots, the roads are riddled with carcasses of fleeing, frightened deer, and girlfriends and housewives everywhere are holding hunting widow parties--all-female get-togethers that often involve recipe sharing, chick-flick marathons, and frank discussions of everything from sex to what to pack in the kids’ school lunches.” (52)

FROZEN STIFF is a good addition to the series. (B+)
 
Sounds good, haven't heard of this author before, will have a gander at her - always looking for other interesting authors.
 
Pamela Mingle’s THE PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET is a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, told in first person by Mary Bennet some years after the marriages of Elizabeth and Jane. It was issued in e-book format in 2013.

Mary Bennet is not a happy woman. She feels unloved by her family, and her mother and Kitty tell her to her face that no man will ever want her in marriage. She feels doomed to spinsterhood, tending her aging parents and being at the beck and call of her married sisters when they need extra help. Mrs. Bennet has already planned for Mary to go to Newcastle to tend to Lydia Wickham during her soon-to-occur lying in with her first child, much against Mary’s wishes. However, when Lydia arrives unannounced at Longbourn, she discloses that she’s left Wickham for good, due to his attentions to other women, most especially a Miss Susan Bradford. When Darcy tries to reunite the Wickhams, Wickham discloses that he is not the father of Lydia’s baby, and he refuses to take her back. He’s eloped, planning to divorce Lydia and to marry the wealthy Miss Bradford. Can this scandal be hushed up? In the meantime, Kitty is convinced that she’s about to become engaged to Henry Walsh, a neighbor and friend of Charles Bingley, who’s bought an estate in Derbyshire, High Tor. Mary had met and liked Henry Walsh and, when Jane takes Kitty and Mary to High Tor to remove them from Lydia’s influence, comes to care for him. He gives every indication of courting her, but his allowing Kitty to preempt him at a neighbor’s ball convinces Mary he doesn’t love her. She refuses his proposal. Will Lydia’s secret be revealed, and will Mary and Henry Walsh find happiness together?

As Austen fan-fiction goes, THE PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET isn’t bad. There are Americanisms that somewhat mar the sense of time period, but nothing too dire. The plot is a reasonable development from the personalities created by Austen, especially the actions and attitudes of Wickham and Lydia.

Mary Bennet, especially early in the story, has a definite inferiority complex. “Since my older sisters had married, Papa paid me more attention than he used to do. I believed he missed Lizzy’s sharp wit and intelligence, and I hoped I might someday take her place, if not in his heart, at least intellectually. Though I was foolish in so many ways, I harbored no improbable dreams of replacing Elizabeth in his affections.” (5) She has no confidence in herself or in her ability to attract a husband. “For my whole life, I had felt unloved by most of my family. Not mistreated but left out. Jane and Lizzy were the only ones who showed me affection--and more recently, my father in his own peculiar way. In the past, when I was at my most pompous and overbearing, even they’d sometimes become irritated with me. If my own family didn’t love me, how could such a man as Henry Walsh do so? I knew, even if my sisters refused to admit it,that the reason he’d avoided me last night was because his regard for me extended only so far as a few stimulating discussions. When it came to dancing, or anything remotely romantic, he avoided me.” (122) She does, however, change, improving her looks and consciously reading and thinking beyond her former confines of Fordyce’s Sermons.

THE PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET is one of the better Pride and Prejudice sequels. (A-)
 
Thanks readingo, did get the book for my Kindle, found her just a wee bit too smart alecky but will probably continue to read it as it's quite different.
 
DREAM CHASERS is the sixth book in Barbara Fradkin’s Inspector Michael Green mystery series set in Ottawa, Canada. It was published in e-format in 2007.

Mike Green is on vacation with his wife and son when high school student Lea Kovacev goes missing, but Superintendent Barbara Devine soon recalls him to coordinate the Major Crimes Unit’s investigation and to deal with the media. Investigation turns up that Lea had been in love with a boy whom everyone expects to become a star, but no one will name him. School social worker Jenna Zukowski thinks she can find out more from Lea’s friends and fellow students than the police, so she begins to try to identify him. About the time Lea’s body turns up in the Rideau River, Green and his men realize that Jenna has gone missing. Lea had died of heart failure brought by smoking pot laced with an overdose of crystal meth. Jenna’s body turns up in Bruce Pit, dismembered and her head missing. She’d last been seen at the home of Riley O’Shaughnessy, expected to go in the first round of the NHL draft; he’s living with his uncle Darren to play with a semi-pro team in Ottawa, being coached by his agent Vic McIntyre. Millions of dollars ride on Riley’s career. Did Lea represent a threat to someone’s vested interest in Riley O’Shaughnessy?

The plot is police procedural. Fradkin emphasizes that solving crimes is a team operation, not one man’s inspiration or deductive powers. There’s enough foreshadowing that the conclusion may not come as a complete surprise to an experienced reader, but neither is the killer’s identity a certainty until the final confrontation.

I appreciate the presence of a well developed group of individuals working together, and this is one of the strengths of this series. It’s good to read the series in order. Shifts in point of view reveal character, and personal details give the sense of the characters’ lives continuing between books. Sue Peters, so gravely injured in the last book, is having a long physical recovery, but she suffered no brain damage, and Green’s ready to move her back to work for a couple of hours a week. Bob Gibbs, in love with Sue, is slowing regaining the confidence he’d acquired before her injury. Sullivan is a hockey dad. Green’s relationship with daughter Hannah continues rocky, though both show reasons for optimism.

Sense of place is excellent. “A wall of heat hit him the instant he walked outside. The haze had thickened, and a hot wind buffeted the trees, portending a thunderstorm that would wreak chaos with the crime scene on the Rideau River. His shirt was glued to his back, and his hair hung in sodden strings by the time he was halfway up Elgin Street. At the height of the afternoon, its pubs and trendy shops were crowded, and large clusters of young people hung out in shaded alleyways and under trees in the park. Mournful jazz wafted from the bistros as he passed. Ottawa Senators banners still hung in the windows and bits of faded flags and costumes still clogged the gutters, the only reminders of the Stanley Cup madness that had transformed the strip into a screaming, hornhonking frenzy earlier in the month.” (78)

DREAM CHASERS is a satisfying addition to the series. (A-)
 
KILLER CRITIQUE is the fourth in Alexander Campion’s Culinary Mystery series featuring Commissaire Capucine Le Tellier of the Police Judiciare in Paris. It was published in e-format in 2012.

When Gautier du Fesnay, senior food critic for La Figaro, is murdered at the hot new restaurant Chez Beatrice, Capucine’s knowledge of the restaurant industry causes her boss’s boss, Controleur General Tallon to assign her to the case. She knows du Fesnay through her husband Alexandre de Huguelet, who’s senior food critic for Le Monde. du Fesnay had been shot with an air-gun pellet doctored with curare that paralyzed him so that he drowned in his soup. Over the period of the next weeks, three other food critics are killed in various exotic ways. After consultation with eccentric Docteur Vasasseur, Capucine knows the killers’ identities but has no evidence. How to prove the murderer’s guilt?

First, the plot does not play fair in disclosing what Capucine discovers as she uncovers evidence. I can’t say much about the conclusion without doing a spoiler, but it’s not foreshadowed. At least as much focus goes toward the culinary descriptions as toward the mystery element. I don’t know enough about the French police and its judicial system to draw conclusions about the accuracy of KILLER CRITIQUE.

Campion creates the community of Capucine and her Brigadiers David Martineau and Mohamed Benarouche and Brigadier-Chef IsabelleLemercier, but over the course of the series, the role of her subordinates has been minimized. Capucine herself has become almost more involved with fashion, the good life, and angst than with police work. “For once, Capucine decided that, given the hour and her mood, she might as well look like very other female detective on the force and show up in grunge. She pulled her T-shirt back on and decided it was just the ticket, even though it was a Jean Paul Gaultier original and cost far mare than she would ever confess to Alexandre. The low-heeled Zanottis were probably all wrong, too. But so what? She was never going to be a typical female flic no matter how hard she tried.” (59-60)

The preparation and consumption of food and its pairings with appropriate wines occupy major portions of the book. Every meal involves detailed description. “They had finished the lobster Jacques and Alexandre cleared away the dishes, and Jacques opened the heat-retaining canisters containing the sweetbreads. The air filled with an aroma that was round and unctuous at the center and pleasantly sharp at the edges. On their plates the half-inch-thick medallions of sweetbreads were surrounded by nubbly little navels of miniscule tortellini, which in turn were surrounded by the muted hues of the ‘forgotten vegetables.’ They all fell silent, intent on their meals.” (323) “ ‘This is quail stuffed with foie gras on a bed of pistou, accompanied by carrots and haricots primeurs. Of course, they’re not really primeur this late in the season. I have a supplier who plants late to make them look like early spring vegetables. What do you think?’ Both Capucine and Jacque peered intently, sniffed as energetically as hound puppies and beamed identically.” (104) It all becomes a bit much.

By far the strongest element of the series is the sense of place. “Capucine followed Jacques’s lefts and rights until she reached the Pont Marie, which led to the Ile Saint Louis, that marvelous bark of an island that eternally navigates the waters of the Seine untouched by the passing of time. ... They walked under the tall poplars a few feet down the peaceful quai, lined with elegant seventeenth-century hotels particuliers, until they reached a cut in the ancient stone parapet. The sun shone; the river murmured; birds chirped. It was a picture postcard of a Paris that had never really existed.” (147)

One thing that bothers me is the inconsistency with which French terms and titles are italicized. KILLER CRITIQUE is okay, but I don’t think I’ll be continuing with the series. (C)
 
THREE DAYS TO FOREVER is one of Lauren Carr’s Mac Faraday series published in e-book format in 2015.

It’s three days until the major social event of the season in Spencer, Maryland--the wedding of multi-millionaire Mac Faraday and Archie Monday, his late mother’s editor and assistant and his lover of several years. Joshua Thornton is one of his groomsmen. Archie is under threat from Russell Dooley, husband of convicted killer Leigh Ann Dooley who suicided some three weeks before when her last appeal was denied; Russell Dooley is out for revenge on Mac as the detective he thinks framed his wife. Some eighteen months prior to the current events, Mac’s half-brother David O’Callaghan, chief of police in Spencer and Major in the U. S. Marine Reserve, took out a major terrorist figure in a special ops mission perhaps involving the Phantoms, an elite military team within the Joint Chief of Staff fighting terrorists in their own mode. In a mansion near Pittsburgh, Reginald Crane is tortured and killed; Thornton’s wife Cameron Gates, a homicide detective for the Pennsylvania State Police, is assigned to the case, then removed when the FBI shows up. Crane had been FBI deep undercover, and his missing assistant Ethan Bonner is also FBI. The only fingerprints at the scene of the Crane murder belong to Agnes Douglas, Archie’s mother, who’s at Spencer Manor when a hit squad of five men attack with automatic weapons. Josh Thornton, who just happens to have multiple burn cell phones and armament up to and including a grenade launcher, is wounded, but he, Mac, and Agnes escape. Josh has been on a special assignment as a captain in the Naval Reserve to pick up and deliver top-secret information; his son Lt. Murphy Thornton will be assigned to complete the mission, which apparently involves the Phantoms. In the meantime, David O’Callaghan discovers Russell Dooley dead in the fleabag motel where he’d been staying in Garrett County, with all signs pointing to Mac Faraday as his killer. WHEW!

I’m giving up at 31%. How much can be piled up and be reasonable? Not only is the mystery component already over the top, but based on previous books in the series, it will get much more hairy before it starts to gel. I don’t doubt that Carr will bring it all together, but I can’t suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy it.

The number of characters is already out of range, and few are developed. Again, for continuing characters, the same descriptions are used--cut and paste. Carr adds the wedding cliches of Archie’s hair being literally ruined by the hairdresser, and Agnes gives clear evidence of being the mother-in-law from hell. Shifts in point of view may cut down on the amount of exposition required, but they do not add characterization, even as they do make the action choppy.

There’s no sense of place. The description of the Spencer, Maryland, police building and its equipment is also cut and paste from at least the two previous novels in the series.

Goodbye, Gnarly! I’ll miss you. I just can’t hack the continuing overmuchness. No grade because not finished.
 
A BIRD IN THE HAND by Ann Cleeves was originally published in 1986 and reissued in e-book format in 2013. It features George Palmer-Jones and his wife Molly, both retirees, she formerly a senior social worker in Guildford, he formerly a Home Office civil servant cum liaison with police. He’s a dedicated twitcher (bird watcher), and she accompanies him.

When Tom French’s body is found in the marshes near Rushy in Norfolk, one of the birding hot-spots of the British Isles, few understand the motive for Tom’s murder--he’d been such a generous, kind man, willing and eager to share his expertise even with the children of the village. Clive Anderson, father of Adam Anderson, a teenager turned on to birding by Tom, is doubtful about the safety of the hobby and hires George to find out if the murder is connected with birdwatching. George, to escape boredom, agrees. As he and Molly investigate, George finds that Tom was not universally beloved. His kindness and generosity had been more for his own image, and he bitterly resented anyone challenging him as the ultimate authority on birding. George uncovers Tom’s hidden connections with Sally Johnson, the unwed mother whom he wanted to marry but had unaccountably threatened with having her child taken into care; Rob Earl, brilliant and charismatic, definitely a challenge to Tom’s leadership; and Peter Littleton, newly divorced, in Norfolk celebrating his freedom, owing Tom a debt he doesn’t realize. But who killed Tom, and why?

Cleeves hides the killer in plain sight up to the climax of the plot, giving few clues and not revealing George’s thought processes until then. I admire her virtuosity but still feel cheated. She includes more information on twitching and the obsession it inspires than every reader may want.

George and Molly Palmer-Jones are intriguing characters. “[Molly] had no interest in the birds, but had become passionately enthusiastic about twitching. Each trip she became tense, excitable with panic, worried that the rarity they had travelled to see had disappeared, but then she hardly bothered to look at it. It was the chase which she enjoyed. When she was a child, the youngest in a county family, she had been taken each year to Scotland where her parents and their friends shot grouse. She had hated both the friends and the blood, but even then had been fascinated by the hunt.” George is a far cry from the self-confidence of a typical detective: “George felt restless, uncertain. All the information he had gained during the day led in circles. The frustration and helplessness were turning. It was his fault. He should have asked different questions of different people. The only person to claim to see the body was mentally defective; aeevnd they had allowed him to run away! But now, at least, he had some information. He had something to work on. He knew that he would sleep badly. Even in his sleep his mind would be working, sorting through the information. He could feel already the tension of insomnia.” Other characters are varied and individual.

Setting is the strongest element in A BIRD IN THE HAND. Cleeves is skilled at using atmosphere to reveal character. “The Windmill was a wooden hut on a piece of flat derelict grassland below the shingle bank, next to the coastguard station. It had been built by Ella and Jack when there had been talk of developing the area for the tourists, plans for a fun-fair and amusement arcade. Perhaps the developers had been dissuaded by the bleakness of the place, the talk of flooding, the pressure of the conservationists, because here was no more building. If tourists went to Rushy they seldom wanted out onto the marsh.... Now, as on most weekends in the migration season, the Windmill was packed. Most of the birders, hungry, dampened by the fog, had given up the dream of finding the big one, and were drinking tea, sharing information, waiting for the phone to ring with news from other parts of the country. Ella, who had been growing middle-aged, grey, with the failure of the business, had been rejuvenated by the twitchers, and expressed her gratitude by promoting their image in the village.... She adopted the twitchers’ code as her own, once banning for a season a birdwatcher who had kept news of a rarity to himself. She mothered them and spoilt them and made a lot of money out of them.”

A BIRD IN THE HAND is not the best I’ve read of Cleeves’s writing, but I will follow up on the series. (B)
 
THREE’S A CROWD is a novella by Mary Lydon Simonsen introducing Detective Sergeant Patrick Shea of London’s Metropolitan Police, whose ambition is to become part of a homicide investigation team at New Scotland Yard. It was published in e-book format.

In the prologue an unknown woman walking on Old School Road is assaulted by an unknown assailant. Meantime, Patrick Shea and his new partner Detective Constable Molly Updike are staked out, hoping to see and arrest the so-called Hampden Burglar, which they do. They take the missing person report on Tanya Dorsett, a seventeen-year-old gone for five days; with the help of two uniform-division locals, Shea locates the girl and gets her home the same day. Then his former sergeant in the uniformed branch tells Shea of the assault on Annie Jameson on Old School Road. Shea’d been in love with her and planning to marry her the year before, but she’d confessed to a one-night stand. He picks up from the police report that Annie had not been the victim of a casual mugger, but deliberately targeted; Shea decides to work the case despite it’s being outside the jurisdiction of Hampden nick.

The plot is police procedural in format, realistic in the sense that the detectives work the cases they’re assigned--assault, missing persons, a cold case file, ram-raids on stores, a hostage situation. The solutions to these crimes seem to come too easily, as does Shea’s acceptance of Annie’s explanation for her “one night stand.”

The number of characters exceeds that necessary to carry the story, and most are not much individualized. Shea’s just too much-- handsome, Irish charm, irresistible to women, hard-working, ambitious, an excellent detective--but he’s unbelievably linaive about women and how they’ll react to his dumping them.

Setting is the strongest element in THREE’S A CROWD. “While waiting for the squad car, [Shea] thought about what he would encounter once he entered the complex. The stairwells would be filled with discarded drug paraphernalia and the smells of urine and excrement from broken, but still used, toilets. Fleeting shadows would spread the news that a copper was in the building, and his every step would be watched by eyes peering out at him through torn curtains. Behind the numbered doors were people who had plummeted to the bottom of society because, if they hadn’t, they would no longer be calling South HIlls home.” (63-4)

Setting alone is not enough. I won’t be following up on THREE’S A CROWD. (D)
 
Mary Lydon Simonsen’s FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS is a novella with the subtitle “A Pride and Prejudice Re-Imagining.” It was published in e-book format in 2011.

When Caroline Bingley becomes engaged to Peter Grayson of Derbyshire a few weeks after the marriage of Jane Bennet to her brother Charles, Fitzwilliam Darcy’s circumstances change drastically. If Darcy dies without a male heir, Peter Grayson will inherit Pemberley under the entail. Grayson and Darcy are on bad terms because Grayson had attempted to borrow money to develop manufacturing on his estate, using his interest in Pemberley as collateral; not only had he failed to consult Darcy about the business, but the industrial processes would pollute the river that runs through Lambton and Pemberley. If Grayson inherits, he and Caroline can turn Georgiana Darcy out of her home, and she would lose most of her fortune since it comes from the Pemberley estate. It’s imperative that Darcy marry and produce an heir in short order. The only woman to whom he’s attracted is Elizabeth Bennet so, even believing that she doesn’t love him, he writes frankly to Mr. Bennet and to her to explain his situation and to ask her hand in marriage. Elizabeth’s feelings toward him have gradually changed as she’s observed his interactions with Bingley and Jane. After a visit to Pemberley to spend time with Georgiana, she agrees to marry Darcy, knowing they are marrying “for all the wrong reasons” but hoping that he will come to love her as she now loves him. With the advice of Jane and the vicar and speaking openly about their feelings, they realize that wrong reasons can be made right.

Simonsen doesn’t take huge liberties with the plot and characters of Austen’s original. Caroline Bingley would be willing to marry a man Darcy thinks effeminate if not homosexual in order eventually to gain Pemberley. It wasn’t unusual for men to borrow against their expectations in Austen’s time, and it was considered the first duty of the possessor of an entailed estate to provide a male heir. The other major change, not much referred to, is Lydia’s not going to Brighton and not being embroiled with Wickham. Except in one brief reference about him and Georgiana, Wickham plays no part.

The writing style in FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS is an uneasy mixture of direct quotations from Austen’s dialogue with modern expression. Little is made of the setting; suspense and emotion are lacking. It’s not the worst Austen fan fiction I’ve read, but it’s nothing special. (C)
 
“Attending a Ball” is Gianna Thomas’s short story prequel to the opening of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in e-book format. It’s the first of a trilogy of stories, one detailing the Bennet family, one the meeting and friendship of Darcy and Bingley, and one on Pemberley and the estate.

The first two-thirds of “Attending a Ball” gives a few days in the life of the Bennet family, depicting its members in greater extremes than in the original. Lydia is wilder, Kitty is weaker, Mr. Bennet favors Lizzy even more. Lizzy’s saved her pin money and money made by helping Mr. Farrington arrange his bookshop so that she can go up to London--25 miles!--for material for a new gown for the upcoming ball at Netherfield. The Bennet girls are eager to meet Charles Bingley and his friend Mr. Darcy and to make a good impression. Lizzy and Melanie Farrington travel on the stage which they share unbeknownst with Darcy, forced by a broken carriage wheel to take public transport to London for a business meeting. The girls discuss Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women and The French Revolution, wherewith Lizzy much impresses Darcy. Since they have not been introduced, naturally, they cannot talk. The last third of “Attending a Ball” is identical to that part of “Darcy and Bingley.”

The same alteration in timing occurs: Mr. Collins visits Longbourn a few weeks before the short story opened, and the assembly ball at Meryton does not occur. Mr. Collins has not made an offer to Lizzy or to Jane. Would Lizzy have been allowed to accept money for working in a shop, even to help her ffriend’s father? Would two young women (Lizzy is 21, Melanie 19) be allowed to travel to London on a public stage without a maid to accompany them?

I don’t see the point of either story. Neither enriches the original Pride and Prejudice. Enough, already--“Attending a Ball” (F)
 
Helene Tursten’s DETECTIVE INSPECTOR HUSS is the first book in the series, translated by Steven T. Murray and published in e-book format in 2003. It was originally published in 1998. It’s set in Goteborg, Sweden, and features Inspector Irene Huss of the Violent Crime Unit.

Huss is an attractive protagonist. She’s the senior Inspector in the Unit, serving under Superintendent Sven Andersson, who’s close to retirement and is still ambivalent about women on the police force. She’s married to a chef Krister and has thirteen-year-old daughers Katarina and Jenny; Katarina is following Irene--formerly Nordic and European champion--into competitive judo, while Jenny has Krister’s creativity, except in music. Enough is shown of family life and worries--Jenny’s attracted to a skinhead--to make her believable. She’s strong, smart, courageous, and empathetic. Tursten creates an authentic community of police in which individuals are distinct personalities with varied skills and attitudes, whose effectiveness is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

The plot is byzantine in complexity. Richard von Knecht, one of the wealthiest men in Sweden, dies in a fall off the balcony of his high-security fifth floor apartment. The death is suspicious because von Knecht had been deathly afraid of heights; the autopsy shows a blow to the head and a cut on his right hand. It’s murder. Who wanted him dead? Investigation reveals questionable financial operations, a strained relationship with his only legitimate son Henrik, a marriage with Sylvia referred to by everyone as “the Thirty Years’ War,” and a long history of philandering that includes an illegitimate son born before his marriage, whom he’d ignored. The day after his death, a pipe bombing and arson destroys his office building, killing the family cleaning woman Pirji Larsson and a tenant. Another tenant , fashion photographer Bobo Torsson lives with his major-criminal cousin Lasse “Shorty” Johannesson and has a longtime friendship with Charlotte von Knecht, Henrik’s wife. Someone blows Torsson up with another pipe bomb. What on earth is going on?

My only problems with the plot are minor. Perhaps as part of the brooding Nordic tradition in the mystery genre, the psychological aspects are more emphasized than the suspense. There’s little sense of direct action, possibly an effect of translation; it’s a slow read. There’s much repetition as theories develop and mutate with the discovery of evidence. There’s a super abundance of characters, many of whom serve no essential purpose. Several time Irene differentiates the depiction of beating victims in fiction and in reality. When she’s attacked and has a rib shattered, she spends the following day resting up after spending one night in hospital for observation for a head injury. She’s at the office the next day, and the following morning, she puts herself through a major judo workout to rebuild her psychological center. The rib’s not mentioned thereafter.

Setting and atmosphere are outstanding. “It was dark and cold, but the air felt clear and crisp. She ran down toward Fiskeback marina without meeting a soul. The salt-saturated wind blew the scent of seaweed into her wide-open nostrils and blew away the heavy feeling in her head. The flint-gray sea slammed its swells against the jetties and wharves. The mooring ropes slapped and the shrouds fluttered on the big sailboat still in the water. The creak of some wooden fenders made her instinctively slow her pace. It was clear that they were protesting being squashed between a huge boat hull and the wharf. Although she had already run almost two kilometers she wasn’t even short of breath. She turned around out by the rocks and ran back a bit, then turned off toward Flundregatorna and jogged the back streets up toward Skarvallsberger. She made it all the way out to the very edge of Hinsholmskilen before she turned back.” (332)

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR HUSS is a satisfying opening of what I hope will be a long series. (A-)
 
Blaize Clement’s RAINING CAT SITTERS AND DOGS is the fifth in her Dixie Hemingway mystery series. It was published in 1995 and is available in e-book format. The setting is Siesta Key, in the Gulf of Mexico off Sarasota County, Florida. Dixie Hemingway is a former sheriff’s deputy, now a professional pet sitter.

There are two story lines in RAINING CAT SITTERS AND DOGS. One involves young Jaz, a teenager whom Dixie and Hetty Soames meet at the veterinarian’s office. Her stepfather hit a rabbit with the car, and she insists on bringing the animal for treatment. Hetty, who raises and trains service dogs, is touched and asks Jaz to help with her new puppy Ben. Dixie’s concerned because Jaz’s stepfather seems indifferent, and he’s wearing a shoulder-holstered pistol. Three gang-type teenagers show up the next day at a home where Dixie’s housesitting a Congo African Gray Parrot named Big Bubba, lsiooking for Jaz; Dixie’s convinced Jaz is in trouble. The second story line involves Dixie’s best friend from high school, Maureen “Mo” Rhinegold Salazar. Mo’s husband Victor Salazar, wealthy, older, in oil, has been kidnapped, a million dollar ransom demanded; Mo wants Dixie’s help to deliver the ransom. After checking that delivering the ransom is not illegal, Dixie agrees to help. But Victor is not returned. His body is found in Venice Inlet, floating; he’d been shot in the head before being weighted and put in the water. Then Jaz goes missing after Dixie’s observed the teenaged boys following her. What is going on, and why?

It’s hard to go into detail on plot structure without doing a spoiler. Clement foreshadows the explanation of Jaz’s situation, as well as Victor Salazar’s kidnapping and murder. An experienced reader may discern both before Dixie.

I enjoy Dixie Hemingway. She’s stronger than she knows, recovering from the devastating deaths of her husband and young daughter, and moving toward acknowledging her attraction to Lieutenant Jean-Pierre Guidry of the SCSD’s Homicide Investigation Unit. She’s loyal to her friends and constitutionally unable to refuse help when called upon. She is a professional: “I take my pet-sitting duties as seriously as i took being a deputy. in some ways, they required the same skills. You have to be smart enough to tell the difference between a situation that requires force and one that requires diplomacy, you have to be quick to respond to unexpected situations, and you have to be patient if somebody upchucks on you.” (40-1) There’s an attractive cast of continuing characters, especially Dixie’s firefighter brother Michael and Michael’s undercover cop partner Paco, who’s more on stage in RAINING CAT SITTERS AND DOGS than in earlier books in the series.

Clement gives Dixie a good story telling voice, with humor as an important element: “...Michael tended to get downright paranoid at the first hint of me being involved in anything out of the ordinary. Not that I blamed him, since I’d got tangled up in some fairly bizarre situations in the last year. None of them had been my fault, but Michael thought I was entirely too willing to stick my nose into places it had no business being stuck. That had never been true, of course, and was not true now; but I knew Michael wouldn’t see it that way. It was strictly to spare him unnecessary worry that I kept quiet about everything that had happened that morning. I thought it was very thoughtful of me.” (38)

Sense of place is outstanding, with Dixie adding humor and insight with her comments: “Some states are picky about guns, but Florida, bless its heart, takes the position that people need to compensate for something, even if’s just their own frightening imaginations. The state therefore offer the right to tote a pistol to anyone with the guts to stare down howling hurricanes, venomous snakes, rapacious developers, and squirrelly elections officials .” (38) “Turtle Beach doesn’t have the floury white sand of Siesta Beach and Crescent Beach. Instead its sand is dark and dense, the kind that turtles love to burrow into. Turtle Beach once led to a boat channel called Midnight Pass through which boats moved from the bay to the Gulf. But in a particularly boneheaded decision, the county tried to change nature’s intention by moving the pass, with the result that now there’s no pass at all, which pisses boaters off like you wouldn’t believe.” (172)

RAINING CAT SITTERS AND DOGS continues a worthwhile series. (A-)
 
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