I've done a lot of reading in the past fortnight—most of it in Montreal, and on the trips there and back—and then I came home and find myself busier than I expected, so this is mostly based on brief notes I made at the time.
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage: I think this is the first Miss Marple; I didn't much like the narrator/viewpoint character, a minister. He obviously shouldn't be married to his wife, from what he says about marriage and how little respect he shows her. (That's not germane to the mystery, but Christie gives an impressive example of that kind of relationship problem. And it is a problem here, not "I don't understand this person, but I adore them and we make each other happy.")
Will Cuppy, How to Attract the Wombat: reread of a collection of short bits, most of them at least partly about animals, but with comments about humans in general and ancient naturalists in specific. Not quite as snarky about Pliny as in some of his stuff, but he has some sharp things to say about Aristotle and fact-checking.
John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory: another reread, a book with deliberately silly use of words (hunting the wild gazebo, the Isought Gap, etc.) along with characters who know they're in a fairy tale.
E. K. Johnston, The Story of Owen, Dragon Slayer of Trondheim: recommended by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrissa, a good, fast-moving YA novel about an alternate history with far too many dragons, and therefore some differences in Canadian, US, UK, and other history.
Carl Hiaasen, Tourist Season: I seem to be off Hiaasen (or got another clunker), our senses of humor don't fit together as I remembered.
Laura Antoniou, The Killer Wore Leather: a murder mystery set at a leather/BDSM convention in New York City. Not bad, but I think the author was aiming for funnier than I found it.
Mike Carey, The Naming of Beasts: Fifth in an urban fantasy series about the exorcist Felix Castor, which feels as though it might be the last, since he resolves the main problem that's been driving him. (I mentioned that conclusion to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rysmiel, who said Carey said he is planning to write one more, sometime, but has other projects to work on first.) If I said "if you like this sort of thing, it's the sort of thing you'll like," that's probably true, but I often don't like that sort of thing, and I liked these. Carey manages dark and even gory, without being the wrong sort of grim or gross for me. These ought to be read in order, I think.
Robert Goldsborough, The Silver Spire: authorized-by-the-estate sequels to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. This brings Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, et al. into the early 1990s (so not the present, there's a megachurch and voicemail, but no cell phones); I don't think Goldsborough got the Archie Goodwin voice quite as well as in some of his others.
Anthony Price, The War Game and The October Men: two in his series of thrillers about David Audley (UK intelligence). I've been dipping into this series while visiting rysmiel, and picked up The War Game in part because it seemed about the length I was looking for; when I finished that, rysmiel and I were talking about the books and they recommended The October Men.
The War Game involves weird English Civil War reenactors (in ways not, I think, typical of actual groups of reenactors), gold found to go with a story of pirates in the 17th century, and a murder whose timing fits oddly with the discovery…at one point it had me wondering when exactly Franco had died, but I had shut the computer down and didn't want to bother getting up, restarting it, and checking. ("Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" didn't actually help here.) That one was published in 1976; IIRC The October Men is from 1973. The KGB/Soviets are mostly offstage in this one, but important to the plot.
Julie Smith, Tourist Trap: one of a series of mysteries about a San Francisco lawyer; I found some of the described reactions to a crime wave less than convincing, but a lot of the rest works, and there's some good stuff about the detective's relationships with her boyfriend and her family of origin. (Amazon offered me this as a free download, so I had it on the kindle and read it on the flight home.)
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage: I think this is the first Miss Marple; I didn't much like the narrator/viewpoint character, a minister. He obviously shouldn't be married to his wife, from what he says about marriage and how little respect he shows her. (That's not germane to the mystery, but Christie gives an impressive example of that kind of relationship problem. And it is a problem here, not "I don't understand this person, but I adore them and we make each other happy.")
Will Cuppy, How to Attract the Wombat: reread of a collection of short bits, most of them at least partly about animals, but with comments about humans in general and ancient naturalists in specific. Not quite as snarky about Pliny as in some of his stuff, but he has some sharp things to say about Aristotle and fact-checking.
John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory: another reread, a book with deliberately silly use of words (hunting the wild gazebo, the Isought Gap, etc.) along with characters who know they're in a fairy tale.
E. K. Johnston, The Story of Owen, Dragon Slayer of Trondheim: recommended by
mrissa, a good, fast-moving YA novel about an alternate history with far too many dragons, and therefore some differences in Canadian, US, UK, and other history.Carl Hiaasen, Tourist Season: I seem to be off Hiaasen (or got another clunker), our senses of humor don't fit together as I remembered.
Laura Antoniou, The Killer Wore Leather: a murder mystery set at a leather/BDSM convention in New York City. Not bad, but I think the author was aiming for funnier than I found it.
Mike Carey, The Naming of Beasts: Fifth in an urban fantasy series about the exorcist Felix Castor, which feels as though it might be the last, since he resolves the main problem that's been driving him. (I mentioned that conclusion to
rysmiel, who said Carey said he is planning to write one more, sometime, but has other projects to work on first.) If I said "if you like this sort of thing, it's the sort of thing you'll like," that's probably true, but I often don't like that sort of thing, and I liked these. Carey manages dark and even gory, without being the wrong sort of grim or gross for me. These ought to be read in order, I think.Robert Goldsborough, The Silver Spire: authorized-by-the-estate sequels to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. This brings Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, et al. into the early 1990s (so not the present, there's a megachurch and voicemail, but no cell phones); I don't think Goldsborough got the Archie Goodwin voice quite as well as in some of his others.
Anthony Price, The War Game and The October Men: two in his series of thrillers about David Audley (UK intelligence). I've been dipping into this series while visiting rysmiel, and picked up The War Game in part because it seemed about the length I was looking for; when I finished that, rysmiel and I were talking about the books and they recommended The October Men.
The War Game involves weird English Civil War reenactors (in ways not, I think, typical of actual groups of reenactors), gold found to go with a story of pirates in the 17th century, and a murder whose timing fits oddly with the discovery…at one point it had me wondering when exactly Franco had died, but I had shut the computer down and didn't want to bother getting up, restarting it, and checking. ("Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" didn't actually help here.) That one was published in 1976; IIRC The October Men is from 1973. The KGB/Soviets are mostly offstage in this one, but important to the plot.
Julie Smith, Tourist Trap: one of a series of mysteries about a San Francisco lawyer; I found some of the described reactions to a crime wave less than convincing, but a lot of the rest works, and there's some good stuff about the detective's relationships with her boyfriend and her family of origin. (Amazon offered me this as a free download, so I had it on the kindle and read it on the flight home.)
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