April 2020 ~ What are you reading?

A new month = new book adventures!

Enjoying this free book via audiobook.com intro offer ~

Dear Wife by Kimberly Belle (4 stars)

(domestic thriller/spousal abuse)

I have finished up The Lucky Stiff, part of the John J. Malone series by Craig Rice, and a reread of The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin. Now I am moving onto my library book - A Better Man by Louise Penny.

Next up in crime is Cop Killer, written by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and translated by Thomas Teal.

>4 rabbitprincess: I thought that was a good entry in the Martin Beck series. But I seem to think that about almost all of them!

Started this free book via audiobook.com intro offer ~

Woman in the Water: A Prequel to the Charles Lenox Series by Charles Finch

(London, 1850/young Charles Lenox aims to be a detective)

My Kindle died. I'm in reading purgatory until the new one arrives in a couple of weeks so I'm just marking my spot until I can get back to reading.

>7 seitherin: RIP Kindle. Hope your new one gets to you soon!

>5 leslie.98: I also thought this was a good entry. Ended up finishing it in one day :D

****

After finishing Cop Killer in one day, next up in crime is a re-read: Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene.

I'm reading Fell Murder by E.C.R. Lorac right now. It's one of the British Library Crime Classics, and I think the best one I've read so far. I will have to track down more in this series.

>7 seitherin: Oh, I feel your pain! Are you able to read on another device (I know Nothing compares to e-ink) until your replacement arrives?

Just beginning missing pieces by Joy Fielding

>7 seitherin: My Kindle Keyboard died last month so I sympathize. I have a Kindle Fire which I bought to use for videos and as a tablet - it is not as good for books as my old Kindle which I am still mourning.

Well, Our Man in Havana was irresistible. Enjoyed it much better on this reading. I think reading it in a classic orange Penguin paperback helped.

Next up in crime, mystery and thriller will be Isvik, by Hammond Innes.

>8 rabbitprincess:
>10 mvo62:
>12 leslie.98: I have the Kindle app on my phone so I do have the book I was already reading on it to keep me going. It's a fantasy: Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff, second book of a trilogy. I'm getting a Kindle Fire. Reading and watching shows a plus.

Enjoying this OverDrive audiobook ~

Mortal Friends: A Novel by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

(DC high society satire/murder mystery)

Mr. Campion and Others by Margery Allingham. A collection of short stories beginning with The Widow, written in 1939.

Golden in Death by J D Robb
#50 In Death series
4*

Spring is in the air, but so is murder. Lt. Eve Dallas, NYSPD, is called to the home of a prep school headmaster. She finds the headmaster's spouse dead from an unknown poison. The poison was delivered in a cheap plastic golden egg. Not long after another similar victim, the wife of a college professor, is found dead in her home. Eve and her partner Det. Peabody need to find the connection and to stop any further murders. I really enjoyed the twists and turns leading to the capture of the killer. Sex, drugs, love, affairs, power, and old grudges put Eve through her paces. A good strong 50th entry into the Zin Death series.

I have read a few more mysteries - most recently Mr. Polton Explains, the 27th Dr. Thorndyke book. Very good entry in the series. I have also read an Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot book that I had never read before (color me surprised!) - Taken at the Flood.

Next up is another Nero Wolfe - The Mother Hunt.

Hitchedby Carol Higgins Clark
3*

Regan Reilly, PI, is getting married to Jack Reilly (no relation), NYPD detective. She traveled from her home in LA to her folk's place in NYC to stay until the wedding in one week. Regan, her mom Nora and Regan's best friend went over to the bridal salon for a final fitting. Upon arriving they found a shredded bloody bride's gown hanging in the salon, with the other gowns, including Regan's, missing. The owners were found tied up on their bed in a back room. Chaos ensued as the other brides found out about he robbery. Regan and Jack were determined to find the gowns and robbers. Quirky characters, kidnappings, mean dogs, bank robberies, false IDs, posses of bridesmaids, broken engagements and bumbling robbers kept Regan on her feet. This story was more disjointed and rambling than the last few novels. But, alls well that ends well. A silly light hearted read for me.

I finished Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon. This is a fun, engaging espionage thriller about a low-level U.S. operative trying to navigate all sorts of mayhem in 1945 Istanbul to try to save a high-level escapee from the Soviets because the American government thinks this fellow has information they can use about those darn Ruskies. The war is over and all the spies are leaving Turkey. Well, not quite all the spies, of course. Anyway, the plot is pretty good and the various twists and turns enjoyable, with just enough history worked in to add spice. Just a smidge of character development, but, how much do you need in a "entertainment" like this one? I read Kanon's The Good German a while back, and enjoyed it a bit more than this book, but still I would recommend Istanbul Passage to fans of the genre. Kanon does employ a narrative tic I can do without, the cobbling together, by comma of phrase smash-ups meant to approximate train of thought breathlessness. Occasionally, annoying, but not so much as to ruin the fun.

I just started Laced by Carol Higgins Clark. I'm trying to finish this series by summer.

I finished Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr. This is the eighth book in Philip Kerr's addictive "Berlin Noir" detective series featuring Bernie Gunther. The series starts out with Gunther as a wise-cracking, Nazi-hating homicide detective in mid-1930s Berlin, only surviving in the post--for a time--because he's good at his job. Over the course of the series, Kerr has already taken Gunther through World War II, as a very reluctant officer (and even more reluctantly technically a member of the SS) on the Eastern Front, and then out the other end to his post-war life. Prague Fatale, however, is a flashback, taking Kerr back to 1941, and back to his forced work relationship with Reinhard Heydrich, the real life "Butcher of Prague." It is Heydrich who calls Gunther to his headquarters outside Prague to solve a murder that's taken place in that headquarters during a gathering of top Nazi officials. There is much less espionage intrigue here than in most Gunther novels. This one's more straight-forwardly a murder mystery, but with several twists, of course, and the standard amount of historical content, some straightforwardly factual and some as imagined by Kerr. While not quite up to the top standards of the series, this is still a very entertaining entry. Philip Kerr passes away a while back, but I still have six more Bernie Gunther books to enjoy.

Just started The Zebra-striped Hearse which is one of many Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald. Love these. The writing is superb and Archer is so great. I never get to the guilty party ahead of him.

I really like this mystery series, set in post WWI England-just finished #4 A Woman Unknown by Frances Brody

23- bookmarque-I am also a huge fan of these books. They are beautifully written and as a Brit I really love the Californian settings. I have to rely on my e book provider to get hold of them however as not easily available in paper book format over here. Penguin did publish 4 of them a few years ago and I heartily wish they would publish them all.

I finished a couple of rereads - Lord Peter Views the Body, a collection of short stories, and Brat Farrar. Then I read a WW2 English spy thriller - Without Lawful Authority, #4 in the Tommy Hambledon series.

Just finished No Bad Deed by Heather Chavez, now on to finishing No Exit by Taylor Adams

25- Maura49 - I've read most of them as audio books. There are two primary narrators who sound so much alike it's really hard to tell them apart, and both are good choices for the style of the writing and Archer as a character.

Bookmarque: Thank you for the suggestion. I am also going to see if the likes of Abebooks can help.

I have finished another Nero Wolfe - Trio for Blunt Instruments. I am getting close to the end of the series, only 5 more to go!

A a little more than 1/2 way through the latest Lucas Davenport novel by John Sandford - Masked Prey. It's great as usual.

I'm reading and loving Island of the mad by Laurie King, another in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series.
This is one of my top favorite mystery series.

Happily, my local library service offers ebooks via Libby/OverDrive. I read the first Jack Reacher book by Lee Child a number of years ago and remembered quite liking it. So now I'm reading them (bar one, which for some strange reason is not available). It struck me that they owe a debt to John D MacDonald's Travis McGee series, and so apparently is acknowledged by Child: an elderly Catholic priest has this information on his blog:

"In an introduction to a re-issued paperback of the first of the 17 novels, author Lee Child gives some background to his creation of the tough guy character. In particular, I was struck by his story of getting on a plane for a return home to England after a vacation in Yucatan, Mexico. Looking for something to read on the plane, Child buys "The Longly Silver Rain," by John D. MacDonald. He knew nothing about MacDonald, nor about the central character, Travis McGee. "Silver Rain" was the 21st, and last, in a series of novels about the boat bum from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Child describes how reading that book -- and every one of the others in the series -- affected him: "Nobody needs me to sing MacDonald's praises, but that yard of books did more for me than provide excellent entertainment. For some reason the McGee books spoke to me like textbooks. I felt I could see what MacDonald was doing, and why, and how, as if I could see the skeleton beneath the skin.... I wanted to do what MacDonald had done." Several years later, when Lee Child was fired from his job as an award-winning producer with a British TV network, he decided to change careers and write novels. With Travis McGee in his memory, he created the character Jack Reacher."

>33 sarahemmm: Wow - that is fascinating!

Yesterday I read An English Murder, by Cyril Hare, in one sitting. Just what I needed!

>35 rabbitprincess: I like Hare but that one should be read at Christmas time! Just kidding...

>36 leslie.98: It was snowing off and on today, and it felt a lot like that Christmas Eve blizzard!

So I've finished the NOs(Bad Deed & Exit) and so it's on to finishing Tear it Down by Nick Petrie and Obsession in Death by J D Robb and starting The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurwitz and Memory Man by David Baldacci

>37 rabbitprincess: lol! Some random flakes coming down here in New England today but not enough to feel like a blizzard :)

Having finished another Bruno, Chief of Police books - The Devil's Cave - I am left with the desire for French food and wine. The mystery was fine but it is the life in St. Denis that I really like in these books.

Now I am rereading Murder Down Under (aka "Mr. Jelly's Business") by Arthur W. Upfield. If I can't go to a good French restaurant, I can dream of the warmth of Australia!

A new (to me) Nordic crime fiction series-pretty good read. Medusa by Torkil Damhaug

The Private Patient by P. D. James. From my most accessible TBR pile, a first for me from this most prolific author.

>41 ted74ca: ted74ca:
Sounds interesting! Never heard of the author before.

Polished off a couple of cozies -- Buried by Buttercups, a novella by Joyce & Jim Lavene, & Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris.

I finished At Death's Door by Robert Barnard. This is a nice and breezy, good-but-not-great English murder mystery, first published in 1988. Barnard, who died in 2013, was a prolific and popular mystery writer. He wrote two books featuring Inspector Idwal Meredith. I read the first, Death of a Mystery Writer a short time ago and enjoyed it, deciding at the time to read this second Meredith case as well. Like the first Meredith mystery, we get about half a book's setup here before the crime is even committed. So part of the fun is guessing who is going to be murdered before trying to think along with Meredith to figure out who done it. We have here an aged famous writer on death's door in an upstairs bedroom, his soon and step-daughter tending to him, his much younger daughter, product of his scandalous second marriage showing up with her boyfriend, the second wife, a famous and revered professionally if roundly loathed personally also coming by with her new husband, plus other assorted family members and connective characters putting in appearances. Lots of ego, jealousy and questionable motives. An enjoyable diversion, all in all.

I had high hopes for this debut mystery novel, set in Scarborough, Ontario and with the 1990's Balkan war/genocide as a central theme, but. I didn't like the writing and thought the characters were not well developed- some simply caricatures. The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan

NEW THREAD: https://www.librarything.com/topic/319761