Monthly Archives: January 2009

Review: Dead Giveaway by Leann Sweeney

Posted on by

Title: Dead Giveaway (A Yellow Rose Mystery)

Author: Leann Sweeney

Publisher: Signet Books (2005)

ISBN: 978-0-451-21708-0

Abby Rose is a Houston private investigator who specialises in cases involving adoption and in her third outing is tackling one where a baby was abandoned in odd circumstances 19 years earlier. That baby is now a college basketball star and wants to know who his birth parents are but it’s clear from the outset that someone doesn’t want that information made public.

This is a pretty well written book aside from the over use of cutes similes (I don’t know what the ideal number is but three on one page is too many) and, late in the action, a ridiculous piece of femjep* that had me gnashing my teeth. It’s a good, well-constructed story that’s far more credible than a lot of cosy mysteries and I was quite engaged by the idea of an adoption investigator. There’s a nice build up of clues and suspense and the resolution is not entirely predictable and is very satisfying.

What was missing for me was great characters. Aside from Abby there’s her boyfriend Jeff who’s a police sergeant and her twin sister Kate, a psychologist who assists Abby by treating some of her clients professionally if there are issues to be worked through regarding their adoption case. I imagine these two feature in all the books (I’ve not read any others in this series) and thus make up the ‘regular cast’ of this cosy series. All three of them are very nice, normal people who I’m sure would make great neighbours. However, they, along with the characters who relate only to this case, are all a bit too dull and ordinary to really hold my attention. I know it’s possible to go too far with quirky and eccentric but, for me anyway, there does need to be a spark of something windswept and interesting about some of the people for me to want to return to a series and I didn’t find that here.

*short for female in jeopardy, usually in a ludicrous situation that she gets herself into by going somewhere or doing something dangerous (e.g. visit the house of a murderer in the dead of night) without telling anyone where she is and having no hope of defending herself should something terrible happen. Readers/watchers are all thinking “don’t do it you dolt” while being able to predict the outcome with 100% accuracy.

My rating 2.5/5 (it lost half a point due to the femjep)

Other reviews

Who Dunnit review

Too hot to read?

Posted on by

 

the only living thing properly evolved for this climate

the only living thing properly evolved for this climate

It’s seriously hot here in Adelaide. One of the ways I know it’s hot is that everyone, and I mean everyone, is talking about the heat and wondering what the government is going to do about it (is there anything we can’t blame governments for?). Yesterday we had the hottest day for 70 years (45.7C which is around 114F) although I must say I didn’t notice much difference today which they tell me was half a degree cooler. There’s a point at which the exact number is irrelevant and I think we passed it a few degrees ago. 

Another way I know it’s seriously hot is that I can’t read. Not that my eyes have melted or anything so dramatic but having a light on makes it just that bit warmer. At least it feels hotter with the lights on. So they’re off. And as soon as my next audiobook finishes downloading the laptop’s going off too because it does little but produce hot air.

Fortunately my iPod doesn’t make me feel hot. Someone recommended P G Wodehouse to me a few posts ago and audible just had a special on the first Jeeves book so in a few moments a chap with a lovely English accent will read to me while I sit in the dark and think cool thoughts. It’s as close to bliss as I’m gonna get for a while and at least it will stop me having to have yet another conversation that starts with “hotnuffforya?”

Review: Trick or Treat by Kerry Greenwood

Posted on by

Title: Trick or Treat

Author: Kerry Greenwood

Publisher: Allen & Unwin [2008]

ISBN: 978-1-74175-000-3

In the fourth book of this series baker Corina Chapman is having a tough time with a competitor opening up shop a few doors away from her business and her boyfriend inviting a long-legged, beautiful woman to stay with him. If that’s not enough it seems there might be some extra-nasty drugs being sold nearby that are sending people mad.

Do you have a friend who you’ve known for ages and whose family gatherings you are automatically invited to? And does this friend’s family delight you with its eccentric members and good-heartedness although you can see how it might be less delightful to be related to them than to drop in (and out) when it pleases you? I do have a friend like this but I have to say that the gang in the Corina Chapman series are nearly as much fun to visit as her family. Corina is funny, socially conscious and a highly credible reluctant amateur detective, her boyfriend is a former Israeli soldier who does a nice line in romantic gestures and in this outing her friend the white witch and an ex drug-addict turned apprentice baker feature heavily. They’re all, along with the rest of the residents of the Insula apartment building, great characters.

I often think, at the start of these books, that I’m just going to revel in the characters and not worry too much about the invariably slightly-odd story but I always get engaged by the deft way in which the subjects are handled. This one features a couple of story lines that are both intriguing and well researched and, in combination with the clever and amusing writing style round out a terrific reading experience. If you’re into ‘cosies’ you’ll love this book and if you’re looking for something a little light but still intelligent and witty then I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Sure it’s a little fantastical but a happy ending every now and again is just what my doctor ordered.

My rating 4/5

My earlier reviews of the previous three books in this series

Review of Trick or Treat on Aust Crime Fiction

Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

Posted on by

Title: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Author: Stieg Larsson

Publisher: Maclehose Press [2009]

ISBN: 978-1-84724-557-1

The Girl Who Played With Fire starts about a year after the events in the first book in the series. Lisbeth Salandar has cut off all contact from Mikael Blomkvist for reasons he cannot fathom. While she travels the world Mikael faithfully but fruitlessly visits her apartment regularly and, at the same time, becomes something of a celebrity as everyone wants to interview him about the explosive events known as the Wennerstrom affair. As Mikael becomes somewhat jaded by the attention he’s asked to consider a proposition from a young journalist: publish a well-researched book about the awful trade in the trafficking of teenage girls into the country. The journalist is prepared to name names of powerful people in Sweden but before the book can be published events take a dramatic turn.

Larsson is a first rate story teller. He spins a page-turning, edge-of-your-seat yarn and has, if anything improved since The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (his first book in this series which was no slouch in the great story stakes). In this outing there are still multiple threads but he seems to have a better handle on them all and he connects them better than in the first book. There are, again, stories within a story, but they’re satisfyingly resolved and don’t detract from the overall novel even when they have little to do with the main events (such as Lisbeth’s adventure on the night a tornado levels a tropical island at the beginning of the book). The best thing of all is that he doesn’t take the predictable course of action and for that I, as a reader, am eternally grateful.

However, no matter how good the stories, I’ll always remember this series for the characters. Lisbeth Salandar again features as the troubled young woman with disconcerting, sometimes downright abnormal, social skills. She’s also intelligent, determined and highly moral. She’s quite unforgettable. But the other characters too are well depicted. It doesn’t matter if they’ve a bit part to play or a starring role, whether they’re bad guys or good they are believable and complex and rounded rather than the caricatures that appear in a lot of fiction.

Importantly, for me anyway, Larsson has a much better control of his social conscience in this book. My only big criticism of the first book was that he stepped outside the narrative more than once to lecture readers about his undoubtedly important message. Here though that message is in some ways stronger it is far more delicately incorporated into the story and, consequently, packs a more powerful punch. I have no objection to an author with a message, especially not one as close to home as the ongoing mistreatment of women across the world is to me, but I hate being badly preached at in my fiction.

I’m glad I read the book with as little expectation as I could achieve by not reading reviews or any of the chat that’s been clogging up the corner of the internet where I hang out. I started the book with a tingly anticipation of re-visiting characters I’d enjoyed but no more than that and was able to dive right into the book and appreciate it on whatever merits I could find. For the record I don’t think it’s perfect. The first 100-150 pages could easily have been more tightly edited for example. But I don’t care. I love it despite, or perhaps because of, its flaws. As I raced towards the end I started experiencing that internal conundrum where you want to keep reading because you have to know what happens but you don’t want to finish because you don’t want to say goodbye. I am quite inconsolable that I have to wait 12 months for book three in the series.

My rating 5/5 (second one for the year and it’s only January)

More information

The Girl Who Played With Fire Official Website

A review of the book on Euro Crime

A review of the book at Readings

A review by The Australian newspaper

Sunday Salon 2009-01-25: Expectations

Posted on by

This week hasn’t been a great week of reading, or blogging, or reading of blogs for me. I have been particularly busy at work which has given me far less time than I’d normally spend on these activities but that’s only part of the explanation. I’ve also been struggling with expectations.

I started out the week tackling Barbara Vine’s The Minotaur for an upcoming discussion at 4 Mystery Addicts. You’ll see from my review that I was underwhelmed. I didn’t know anything about the book itself but I did have an expectation that someone of Ruth Rendell’s experience and skill wouldn’t make such clumsy writing mistakes as the ones which littered this book (Vine is a pseudonym of Rendell’s).

I then picked Alex Barclay’s Blood Runs Cold off Mount TBR. I’d heard the book discussed late last year on the BBC Books Podcast and the reviewers made is sound so interesting that I immediately ordered myself a copy. I’m not sure now what the reviewers found so engaging but the book hasn’t exactly kept me up at night. It’s not awful, it’s just not very memorable. I had no trouble putting it down a third of the way through in favour of something else.

The something else is Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. Apart from the fact I want to read the book the reason I chose to do it right now was that I was finding it very difficult to avoid seeing reviews and discussions of it at the blogs and reading groups where I hang out online. The first book in this series was in my top ten books of last year so of course I had some expectations but I wanted to have as few as possible when I read the book. I didn’t want to know what anyone else thought: not the publishers (I hadn’t even read the blurb on the back of my copy), not fellow bloggers, not ‘professional’ reviewers. I wanted to make up my own mind with as few pre-conceived ideas as I could. For me there’s nothing quite so annoying as reading a book that doesn’t measure up to the expectations I have of it and these days it’s hard to come to a book with ‘fresh’ eyes and no expectations. But it’s the best way to read.

I’m about two-thirds of the way through The Girl Who Played With Fire so you’ll have to wait to find out how it measured up on the expectations scale. Luckily it’s a long weekend here in Australia so, with the housework sacrificed in favour of reading (again), I should finish it before heading back to work on Tuesday.

Weekly Geeks 2009 #3: The Classics Part 1

Posted on by

This week’s Weekly Geeks assignment has four parts, only one of which I can tackle straight away.

1) How do you feel about classic literature? Are you intimidated by it? Love it? Not sure because you never actually tried it? Don’t get why anyone reads anything else? Which classics, if any, have you truly loved? Which would you recommend for someone who has very little experience reading older books? Go all out, sell us on it! 

I don’t have a huge list of classics on my desert island books list (the books I’d want with me if stranded). In fact there are none although Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice would just about make the grade. And, being a fan of the mystery genre, I do have a well-read copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. However, I have a bit of an ‘issue’ with the classics.

I went through high school and university in Australia in the 80′s when studying English meant systematically dissecting classic literature. Perhaps I had a succession of bad teachers and lecturers but every book I read during that time brings back bad memories of having the soul sucked out of everything we studied. I had always read voraciously but pulling apart a book to discern the symbolism of every phrase and analyse the minutiae of the characters’ actions and motivations bored me senseless and took the joy out of my favourite pass-time. In fact I dropped English as part of my degree because I just couldn’t stand the thought of having yet another book to hate. As virtually all the books that I studied were classics I’ve tended to stay away from them en masse for my leisure reading ever since.

A few years ago my father gave me a set of leather bound classics that belonged to his mother. There are 20 small novels in fantastic condition and the collection includes Dickens, two Bronte sisters, Victor Hugo and others. About a third of the books are ones I studied during school or Uni so I stored the books away for a long time. But, as they’re the only thing I have from my dad’s side of the family, I recently unpacked them and put them on my bookshelves. It seemed churlish to keep them locked away. One day soon I plan to start reading them. Not studying them, just reading them.

I shall tackle the last question of this week’s challenge, about finding inspiration for classic reading from other Geeks, later on this week when there are more posts up.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

Posted on by

It seems that everywhere I turn lately someone’s talking about Stieg Larsson’s second book The Girl Who Played With Fire. I really want to read the book with fresh eyes so I haven’t looked at any reviews or participated in any discussions or even read the blurb on the back of my copy. But it’s getting increasingly difficult to avoid seeing mentions of it (a woman was even reading it on the bus this morning) so I think there’s only one solution. On this long weekend (we have a day off on Monday to celebrate Australia Day) I’ll just have to sacrifice myself and ignore the housework and myriad of other chores that have piled up of late and lock myself in a metaphorical cocoon with my book and a glass or three of wine. When I emerge I’ll be able to visit my favourite book blogs and read the messages from my online book groups again without fear of tripping over an errant spoiler. I’ll also know,  finally, what’s become of Lisbeth which will be very satisfying indeed.

Hope you all have just as good a weekend planned.

Review: The Minotaur by Barbara Vine

Posted on by

Title: The Minotaur

Author: Barbara Vine (a.k.a Ruth Rendell)

Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books (2006)

ISBN: 978-0-307-23760-6

Kerstin (pronounced ‘Shashtin’) Kvist is a Swedish nurse hired to care for schizophrenic John Cosway in an English country house. Soon after her arrival it becomes clear there is little for her to do other than accompany the silent Cosway on his walks and ensure he gets his medication. Living in the house are Cosway’s mother and his four adult sisters and, although it is the early 1960′s, the household is reminiscent of the Bennett’s in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in the way it is run and the obsession with getting at least one of the women ‘married off’.

Vine/Rendell is a great story teller and here she has weaved a story that, despite not being full of murders or chase scenes, did manage to capture my attention. Told in the first person narrative by Kerstin the tale is an intricate observation of a dysfunctional family and the few outsiders they deal with and is, in its quiet way, absorbing. The characters, though not terribly unique, are interesting enough and I would happily have immersed myself in the goings on at Lydstep Hall with a deal of relish if it weren’t for the fact this is a very poorly written book.

There are some horrendously annoying things here, made all the more difficult to swallow because a writer of Vine’s undoubted talent doesn’t, or didn’t used to, have to resort to them.

Firstly there are the constant, unnecessary reminders within the text that the book is reminiscent of Jane Austen’s England. The story, indeed the writing itself, literally scream Austen-esque. Read the introduction of Mr Dunsford at the start of Chapter 9 and even if your only exposure to Jane Austen has been to see the movie Clueless you’ll get the reference and won’t need to be endlessly reminded with such clumsy methods as the narrator likening herself to Elizabeth Bennett being interrogated by Lady Catherine de Burgh.

Secondly, and even more annoying, are the vague references about big events still to happen. The narrator’s tale is told in the present day reminiscing about the events of her time spent in the Cosway household. It’s not a spoiler to suggest that the most dramatic event of the book takes place towards the end but until that point there are so many “if only I’d known then what was to come” lines that I would cheerfully have thrown the book at a wall if only it wasn’t so heavy. The written equivalent of a movie-maker’s Da Da Dunnnn has always been a bugbear of mine and what it did to this book was remove the last hint or suggestion of suspense.

Without that it was a pretty humdrum story about some people who were insular, isolated and a little odd but not nearly intriguing enough to carry an entire book of awkward prose.

My rating 2/5

Other Reviews

Mystery Ink (they loved it)

Telegraph UK (they didn’t)

Weekly Geeks 2009 #2: What does it mean to be a geek?

Posted on by

This week’s question for Weekly Geeks is

What does being a member mean to you? What do you enjoy about the group?What are some of your more memorable Weekly Geeks that we might could do again? What could be improved as we continue the legacy that Dewey gave us?

I only joined the Geeks a few weeks before Dewey passed away but the thing that struck me from the beginning was the engaging way it has of bringing bloggers together. Many of the weekly questions that I’ve seen (I lurked a while before joining) force you into genuinely looking at other blogs not just having a quick peek and dropping your link. So if you’re going to participate you actually have to take some time and look around a while at some blogs. I’ve found quite a few of the blogs I now watch regularly via Weekly Geeks (see last week’s post for details). So, that’s what it means for me: not just finding other blogs but being forced to take a proper look under their covers. 

As for topics to re-visit…ummmmm….I enjoyed the one where we had to describe out favourite reading spots because I enjoyed seeing where other people read. Perhaps we could go further and find our ultimate reading spot designs or the places we wish we could read (or perhaps this is just on my mind because I’m thinking about renovating). 

I know that things are always supposed to be able to be improved but I happen to believe in the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ motto that my father swears by. As long as we continue to visit each others’ blogs and participate in each others’ discussions in a friendly way I think we’ll all be doing our little bit to keep Dewey’s legacy going.

Sunday Salon 2009-01-18: Reading for the Mood

Posted on by

This week’s Sunday Salon post is prompted by something I read at the blog of Shauna, another Sunday Salon-er, at Reading and Ruminations last week. She mentions that, for her, historical fiction is what relaxes her and allows her to escape into another world and goes on to ask what others read for comfort or other moods.

In one way all the reading I do for personal choice is comfort reading because reading itself is my comfort and relaxation. However, not all books are equal in that way. There are times, like now when work is very busy and I’m drained at the end of a day, when I don’t particularly want to have to think too hard (e.g. remember lots of foreign names or keep track of particularly complex plots) and I look for a particular kind of ‘entertain me without making me think too hard’ read.

In particular I look for stuff that makes me laugh and it’s very, very hard to find. Perhaps I have an odd sense of humour but much of what passes for comedy in fiction leaves me cold. I do enjoy Ben Elton and last year’s Blind Faith seemed a return to his best work. Although it’s not fiction I adore Bill Bryson’s wry sense of humour and often look to his books for my tired and drained mood. Of course, there’s always my favourite writer ever, Douglas Adams, but as he’s passed away I can (and do) only re-read his words which still make me laugh even though I can recite much of it by heart. I’ve tried lots of other stuff recommended as equally funny but, alas, I’ve not found a lot else to laugh at (remind me to tell you one day about being the only human on the planet who hasn’t laughed at a word David Sedaris ever wrote).

Lately I’ve also been turning to audio books for this mood. I’ve always listened to audio books and podcasts at the times when I can’t read print (while driving for example) but lately I’ve been listening during ‘normal’ reading time too. There is something very soothing about being read to, especially by trained professionals as many of the audio book narrators are. As you’ll see from yesterday’s post I loved The White Tiger which I listened to over the past week or so and, this week, I’ll be on the lookout for more entertaining, hopefully funny, audio books