The Book Count 2022

[Greg]

Lost Luggage by Wendall Thomas

Cyd Redondo is a Brooklyn based Travel Agent. She wins a trip to Tanzania for her efforts to book seniors on their own trips to Tanzania. But right before Cyd leaves her next door neighbor is murdered. Soon Cyd is caught up with what appears to be an exotic animal smuggling ring. And she is pegged as one of the smugglers by Interpol. She needs to find out what is going on all the while helping her clients with problems on their trips.

It's very female oriented. It reminds me of Janet Evanovich or had that same feel with a female protagonist who is in over head but her lack of awareness to what is going on around her doesn't preclude her from getting out of jams. I saw reviews that found this book very clever and funny. I can't say the same.

[Greg]

The Vanishing Man by Charles Finch 

Another early Charles Lennox mystery. A painting was stolen from Duke Dorsett, but the question is did the thieves steal the right painting. Lennox is brought in to solve the case which touches on possibly a missing work of William Shakespeare.

I like the younger Lennox more than older Lennox. He is still out making mistakes and learning his craft. And everyone is trying to find him a wife to get him to settle down.

[Greg]

The Last Passenger by Charles Finch

Young Lennox tries to help out a detective who doesn't want to be a detective find out who killed the passenger in a third class cabin on the last train from Manchester. The big problem is that all the clues to the dead man's identity are missing. They need to find out who he is before they can even find who killed him and why. The background subject for this story is the abolition movement and whether there will be a Civil War in the United States.

The early mystery novels seemed to have more mystery in them. The puzzle is the main thrust rather Lennox's domestic life, even though all those characters appear.

[Greg]

Holding by Graham Norton

Graham Norton of The Graham Norton show wrote a mystery novel set in Ireland. I don't know why I expected for this novel to have wry and quirky tone, but I did. When it turned out to be a dreary slog through rural life in small town south Cork, I was disappointed. Every character in the fictitious town of Dureen has a terrible life. Whether it's the three spinster sisters or the overweight Garda or the alcoholic housewife, all their lives have problems. Then workmen find bones on one of the farms. It's possible it could be a man who supposedly left the town twenty years ago and no one has heard of since. The missing man had ties to the spinsters and the alcoholic and the Garda gets to investigate.

The mystery was kind of twisty but it was small and you had to wade through a lot to get there. It took me a long time to get through this rather short book because I didn't really care. It compelled me just enough to finish it. I don't think I'll be reading any more novels by Norton.

[Greg]

An Extravagant Death by Charles Finch

I think I've caught up on this series. I think my main pleasure from this series derives from just looking at everyday life in a different era. But I get the feeling that the author, Finch, is running out of things to do with the character. He's looking for the Reichenbach falls moment. But maybe not quite yet.

The setting switches to the upper crust in America. There's been a murder in Newport, RI and Lennox is called upon to solve it. The idea for this book was to compare and contrast the upper society of America with England. Also learned where the word Shrapnel comes from.

[Greg]

Unleashed by Emily Kimmelman

There has been a deal floating around on Facebook for this series of books by Kimmelman. Pay what you want for 8 books. The minimum you can pay is $8. I thought why not.

The book is about Joy and her dog blue and the murder they stumble upon while Joy is performing her new job as a dog walker. Joy's life is a mess. She just got fired from her job as a barista. She stumbles into the job as a dog walker. She has broken up with her boyfriend and gets the dog Blue to cope with the heartache. She drinks too much. She sleeps around. She doesn't have much going on.

But she wants to find out why this guy was killed in the alley. Mainly because people are telling her to stop and her life is being threatened because she is being nosey. It's kind of a rough first novel. Some of the interrogation seems are the opposite of organic. The author just handing out information rather than weaving it into the story. It's kind of clunky.

And the whole murder plot is very absurd. I came to the book for the dog Blue but there wasn't much of Blue in the book despite the fact he appears prominently in the ad copy.

But it is kind of well written. The characters are engaging and there is enough action to keep me turning pages. Hopefully they will get better.

[Greg]

Death in the Dark by Emily Kimelman

Kind of a cheat. This is a novella. Joy goes to Mexico to drink herself to death on some beach. She's rescued by Mulberry who escaped with her and got half of the money from the previous book's heist. Mulberry hires a trainer to make her into a super soldier and the trainer is also good with dogs so the trainer trains Blue, as well.

Eventually Joy becomes Sydney with the aid of a new passport. She also goes a on a spree to save her landlord's daughter and her friend. All very plausible. What makes all this possible are the unending funds she received from the found gold in the first book.

[Greg]

Insatiable by by Emily Kimelman

Sydney is given the job to find the missing daughter of a Mexico City power couple. Her reward for doing this will be the expunging of the record of Joy. Unfortunately, Joy has become something of a cult hero complete with website of dedicated fans. And the person who hired her also runs the company that framed her. Lots of torn loyalties.

The plots are becoming slightly more realistic but not much. Sydney very quickly has gone from this curious non-violent dog walker to this capable killer. Like I said slightly.

I did stop reading this book when I was about 95% through because all of a sudden I had a swole stack of books from the library. But when the power went out yesterday, the only books I could read in the dark were on the Kindle. So, I finished this one up. Thank goodness the power is back.

[Greg]

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

This could be the final book in the trilogy. Or not. It does come to a conclusion, but it feels like there could still be stories to tell.

I didn't like this one as much as the first two books in the series and I dearly loved the first one. It seemed like such a fresh take on the magic school trope.  Golden Enclaves didn't seem to have a clear focus on where the story should go. Most of the first part of the book was El moping for her lost Orion. Then she realized that she might have to save him by killing him. Then she realized she needed to save the Enclaves where Wizards live apart from the mundane world. Finally there is a big battle to resolve the questions.

I guess  the sequences built on each other but not really in a solid way. This was the weakest of the three books. Still kind of enjoyable because El is so grouchy.

[Greg]

Chasing the Light by Robert Crais

For the longest time, I looked at Robert Crais's private detective Elvis Cole as just a poor imitation of Robert Parker's Spenser. But over the years, Crais has gotten better and I take a lot of enjoyment from the books. This entry is the first one in a long time that centers mostly on Cole instead of sharing the spotting with the other detective Joe Pike or just being a bit player in a Joe Pike novel. 

Cole is tasked by Adele to find her missing son. But Adele has issues including the 4 man detail guarding her and her distrust of the government and embracing conspiracy theories. The plot moves quickly as everything gets thrown out of whack. There's a porn star in the mix and there seems to be shady dealings down at City Hall that might involve the missing Josh. There is also another group of people looking for Josh who might be connected to the Chinese Government. The usual stuff.

It's all quick and breezy and witty and I can read Crais novels much too quickly. This one went down in a day. I used to just go to bookstores and read Crais's novels in a couple hours. Thank God for libraries.

[Greg]

Bark to the Future by Spencer Quinn

Another comfort food book.

The book is narrated by Chet the dog. His owner is Bernie. And it takes some getting used to because Chet is a dog with memory issues and he kind of remembers things. I can take him in small doses and I do like to catch up on the ongoing adventures in the Little Detective Agency.

Bernie bumps into a former high school teammate, Rocket, panhandling by the freeway. Bernie wants to find out what happened to him and why Rocket is in this state. Unfortunately, Rocket disappears and it is up to Chet and Bernie to find him. There is a lot of delving in Bernie's past at Chisholm High School as he meets old teammates from his high school baseball days.

It's a fun romp. The writing is tighter and so is the mystery. Some times the author, Quinn, loves to just Chet ramble. I can see the problem for some with this series is that Chet references other cases they have worked on in the course of solving this case. If you don't the cases, it might get a bit confusing.

[Greg]

Surrender by Bono

It's everything you ever wanted to know about Bono in U2 by Bono himself. There is a very gonzo journalism style to the whole affair. Hopping around in the narrative style from lyrics to forward in time. At points I wished he could concentrate on the story at hand.

And it's not so much a story of U2, but it's more a story of Bono himself. The band does play a role, but I get the feeling that Bono didn't want to tell Adam, Edge and Larry's stories. Although of course they do appear but he doesn't go into a lot of depth of them. It's mostly how Bono navigated his life from the death of his mother, his relationship with Ali, and his struggles with faith. But in many cases, even here, he is coy about other people. He hints at the stories with going into depth. Most of depth is for him.

There are great chunks about being in the band and how to be creative. He struggles with the fraud of being a rock star and how to achieve that. It was all very interesting. He does credit all his influences. He also writes about his efforts to raise money for debt relief and Aids charities. Those bits were a bit tedious, but kudos to him for doing it.

There is an odd feeling that there is way too much stuff in the book but not enough. I don't feel I learned all that much but I read so many stories about him.

[Greg]

Babel by R.F. Kuang

A Victorian England at the time of the Opium Wars where is enabled by inscribing complimentary words of different languages in silver bars. England rules the world because it does this best. Robin Swift is an English/Chinese boy taken away to England where he is sent to Oxford to learn how to inscribe words into the silver that keeps the world running. At Oxford learns about the racism and colonialism underneath the British power.

I'm a little tired of the people going to school to learn magic trope and this story is rife with it. Sure, the school is a fictionalized Oxford University but it's still the struggles of young wizards. And this book is all about words and their origins. That got tiring very quickly as we went over different words in their different languages. It seemed like the plot was just a device to talk about words and language for 500 pages. And then there were the footnotes. Every couple of pages there was a footnote that has some tidbit about the language or more information or something and it would just drag you away from the narrative. I eventually stopped reading them. Why not just work that information into the regular story. I guess the aim was to make it seem more like a real history novel. The idea failed for me.

This was one of those books I was glad I was done reading because I wouldn't have to deal with the story any more.

[Greg]

The Match by Harlen Coben

The plot revolves around Wilde the boy left in the woods trying to find his family. He does a DNA search on one of those family websites and comes up with a partial match. This starts a long chain of events. He also gets another match with a man who has disappeared.

A good quick fun read. But I'm not going to remember the story in a couple of months.

I almost just reordered this book from the library because I didn't remember it. Thank you, Book List.

[thatguy]

Man and Yosemite by Ted Orland

I finally read the Yosemite book written by DM's neighbor. 

Did I mention that I'm in one of his books? I'm 7th or 8th from the left...

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co...-away.html

Ted Orland, The Zone System Shooting Range



--tg