tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22467332533776321582024-01-09T04:06:28.106-08:00Not New For LongIt's more than four months old, but it's still worth reading...seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.comBlogger354125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-80509999188374998322022-05-07T20:39:00.002-07:002022-05-07T20:39:39.444-07:00Happy Free Comic Book Day, 2022!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifdwDN3jTQcQDzDCVP93moE1q3Pto1Wp35fcVjUpsFmCzmdH3dLk4nMY3YsdsCNCR5LSFn70vdBOEevziHKOXZo_nkjn3Kl1PgkF3mhRsSmtffJdZaly15tRYhW00PIPuNPPAhEOKH4oph_Or8nvporxt2nQmz6aJ2z_T-FkqSVE9f6IqRk7UR7fVccA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="244" data-original-width="206" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifdwDN3jTQcQDzDCVP93moE1q3Pto1Wp35fcVjUpsFmCzmdH3dLk4nMY3YsdsCNCR5LSFn70vdBOEevziHKOXZo_nkjn3Kl1PgkF3mhRsSmtffJdZaly15tRYhW00PIPuNPPAhEOKH4oph_Or8nvporxt2nQmz6aJ2z_T-FkqSVE9f6IqRk7UR7fVccA" width="203" /></a></div><br /> I'll start off by apologizing for the fact that I didn't write this post in time for you to actually <i>participate </i>in this wonderful day today. That's because I almost forgot about it myself. Two years ago, it was cancelled due to the pandemic and last year I was so out of sync with the natural rhythms of my community that I forgot about it entirely until it was too late. So all I can say to you who have happened to miss it this year is that a new year will come around soon enough, so put a big circle around the first Saturday in May on whatever kind of calendar you use. By my calculations, that would be May 6th, 2023, but don't rely on me. Check it out. <p></p><p>I had looked it up earlier this year, but I had totally forgotten about that until some kind of inner alarm clock went off this afternoon and I thought, I wonder when Free Comic Book Day is this May? Looked it up. Today? Today! The inertial part of me was ready to concede defeat, but the fan of this event said, Don't be ridiculous. Get down there!</p><p>In Santa Cruz, we are lucky enough to have two great comic book stores right downtown--<a href="https://atlantisfantasyworld.com/" target="_blank">Atlantis Fantasyworld </a>and <a href="https://comicopolis.myshopify.com/" target="_blank">Comicopolis</a>, listed in strictly alphabetical order. A few years ago now, I was working on an early May Saturday and one of my young coworkers mentioned it was Free Comic Book Day and that anyone could go to our comic book store neighbors and get some free comics. I was so surprised and hesitant and embarrassed to even go ask, but I did. And sobecame enthralled. </p><p>I'm not your usual comic book reader. When I go to this event, I'm not looking for a particular superhero or a particular artist or anything like that. As a kid, I always liked comics--in fact I think I learned to read partly from a classic comics series rendition of The Bremen Town Musicians that our neighborly babysitter had. But as an adult, I wasn't intrigued with it. I didn't disdain it. I think I even felt quite not up to it, because many adults who were into it seemed a bit more hip than I was. And artistic. And I didn't quite get anime. My bad. </p><p>But then I for some reason read Scott McCloud's <i>Understanding Comics</i>, which was originally put out by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra_Publishing" target="_blank">Tundra Publishing</a>. He was so good at explaining this medium--its difference, its creativity, the different way it told a story. I got it. And I understood that the burden was on me to learn--not the other way around. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE4GOGKXyXqZluZDp-bZHhW9Dz65qzB0y-sDVkJKkUHD0vurdOzHshBPTIa2rlsDLWhs9T-zcsdgWIMIwCCUZNnwjfKFvj89u76VXfqnKa8Ic3vRgK1Mn85PwsAMjAJubWioZB0c4tDzoX_1kyKt8vjY6xxrv42AuVezr5EJrfY27b5rNubqyG_9epyA/s391/UnderstandingComics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="391" data-original-width="254" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE4GOGKXyXqZluZDp-bZHhW9Dz65qzB0y-sDVkJKkUHD0vurdOzHshBPTIa2rlsDLWhs9T-zcsdgWIMIwCCUZNnwjfKFvj89u76VXfqnKa8Ic3vRgK1Mn85PwsAMjAJubWioZB0c4tDzoX_1kyKt8vjY6xxrv42AuVezr5EJrfY27b5rNubqyG_9epyA/w260-h400/UnderstandingComics.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Free Comic Book Day brings me joy. It's a community event that's also an international one, at least on the North American continent. I am indiscriminate in my collecting. I get as much as I can. The people in both stores are completely generous in just handing over your free comics, which are special issues put out by Diamond Comic Distributors, so these small stores don't have to dive into their own stock. (If you enjoy comics, support these people, my friends!)</p><p>And I've already discovered someone I hope to follow. Malaka Gharib, of Egyptian descent, has put together a graphic memoir called <i><a href="https://www.freecomicbookday.com/Catalog/JAN220038" target="_blank">It Won't Always Be Like This</a>. </i>It's about a summer getting to know her dad's new girlfriend when Malaka was a child. I'm already looking forward to getting her larger memoir<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575400/i-was-their-american-dream-by-malaka-gharib/" target="_blank"> I Was Their American Dream</a>. And I know just where I'm going to order one. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIZ75NzsEEBTJa5rUmNd6XSsnp37bmc4rF3pfpKJ8ExgsuRMerHH6MHfS5vyUaMNBDn4XRAOCP39H2fFTiL4YpVrLfBpOTKKM3k1HE9RO11ZpMfOsZiMDKulsf_Qr-DMyOc4UkTqVBbAJ70X-mtYWlzBUExyZ3tMfELMAS_n512EGqx000pY8yoRSHg/s450/I%20was%20their%20american%20dream%20malaka%20gharib.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIZ75NzsEEBTJa5rUmNd6XSsnp37bmc4rF3pfpKJ8ExgsuRMerHH6MHfS5vyUaMNBDn4XRAOCP39H2fFTiL4YpVrLfBpOTKKM3k1HE9RO11ZpMfOsZiMDKulsf_Qr-DMyOc4UkTqVBbAJ70X-mtYWlzBUExyZ3tMfELMAS_n512EGqx000pY8yoRSHg/s320/I%20was%20their%20american%20dream%20malaka%20gharib.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575400/i-was-their-american-dream-by-malaka-gharib/" target="_blank"><br /></a></p><p><br /></p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-16382594544652944102021-12-08T10:47:00.000-08:002021-12-08T10:47:33.908-08:00The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides<p> </p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10964693-the-marriage-plot" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Marriage Plot" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328736940l/10964693._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
I am happy to have read some of the longer and more appreciative reviews at GoodReads because it reminded me of some of the parts I most enjoyed, which were nearer the beginning. I would say the novel has a few different moods going on, or maybe it's just that the mood grows darker. <br /><br />Eugenides is roughly of my era of college life and although the East Coast setting and the upper class Wasp nature of Madeleine and her family aren't really anything I'm familiar with, I did find Mitchell a very recognizable character, with his unrequited love and his spiritual investigations. My group of college friends were all about Mother Teresa and Merton too, though as far as I know, none of them made it as far as India. <br /><br />One thing I really enjoyed about this book was the way it captures a certain time of life--not college so much as that period after college ends. Especially if you're not launched into your first big job or graduate school. A person can feel quite adrift and for quite awhile. I thought the graduation scene which begins the book was very well observed. For the parents and other family members, it's a rite of passage, a success story. But for the actual graduates, it's a complicated time where you're wrapping up loose ends and trying to feel your way into the future--the ceremony is almost incidental. There are probably other novels about this period, if only because so many writers starting out are of this age and that's what they know about. But I haven't read them. And this is not an early work of Eugenides. It's about a period that he's returning to and reconsidering. <br /><br />And, although I didn't study semiotics, I find it heartening that this is a novel about people who actually read books, and think about them, and discuss them with each other. Of course, that's part of undergrad life in the humanities. But it's refreshing to have them described as having an influence. <br /><br />I really admired the depiction of Mitchell's spiritual quest, because it so deftly describes its pitfalls. <span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">I </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">don't think we really know where he will end up, but I think that he has at least discovered that he is going to have to be his own guru.</span><br />
<br /><br /><br />seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-58431422378790665562021-10-02T15:00:00.000-07:002021-10-02T15:00:14.174-07:00The Rent Collector by Camron Wright<p><br /></p><div><br /></div>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13628812-the-rent-collector" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Rent Collector" border="0" height="400" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1340468685l/13628812._SX98_.jpg" width="263" /></a><br />
This novel was chosen for my book group by another member, which is why I came to read it. It took me quite a while to overcome my early resistance to it, because at first it strained my capacity for suspending disbelief. It's an odd combination of things. The author writes that he was impelled to do the project after seeing his son's documentary about the people who lived on the edges of the Stung Meachey dump in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and eked out their living by picking through it. I say 'lived' because the dump was closed in 2009, not because it existed in some ancient past. As the author says, this is a work of fiction, though from the photos in the back of the book, it appears to be based on real people, who have the same names as the fictional people, and some of the plot is not so fictional. <br /><br />The part that was hardest for me to swallow was the part Wright added (apparently), which is the relationship of the protagonist to the rent collector of the title and the bargain they strike. The way events developed between them often struck me as unlikely. <br /><br />Interestingly, though, the book grabbed hold of me in the second half. This was, I think , for two reasons. Partly it's because the more improbable part of the story is not so prominent anymore. But it's also because of precisely the point that Wright is trying to convey about literature. Stories pull you in. You want to find out what happens. You stay with it because you care. You are involved. In the beginning I could easily have given up and not thought any more about it. But by the end, I was quite happy to have read the book.<br /><br />In reading, sometimes it can be good to just persist. <br />
<br /><br /><br />seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-58248630175995419132021-06-01T16:09:00.015-07:002021-06-01T16:34:19.163-07:00Every City is Every Other City by John McFetridge<p> </p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55407891-every-city-is-every-other-city" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Every City Is Every Other City: A Gordon Stewart Mystery" border="0" height="400" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1620094767l/55407891._SX98_.jpg" width="258" /></a>
I've been waiting for a new John McFetridge novel to come out for awhile now, and this one was definitely worth the wait. Just for starters, the main character Gord Stewart is a location scout for the booming Toronto movie industry (this is not set during the pandemic), who also happens to do a little unglamorous P.I. work on the side, both of which convincingly open doors into a couple of different worlds. A coworker, knowing that he has a private detective license, asks him to help figure out what happened to her missing uncle. Reluctantly, Gord takes on the challenge, knowing that he probably won't get anywhere. As is often the case with his more self-deprecating assumptions, he is wrong. <br /><br />There is a sad statistic underlying the case of the missing uncle, which Gord learns early on. Single, middle-aged, white men without a college degree have the highest suicide rate of any group, followed by married middle-aged white men without a college degree. As this very much looks to be the case with the missing Kevin, Gord thinks he's on a wild goose chase, but little things aren't adding up. <br /><br />In order to get some help from a big investigation firm with a lot of heft, especially with the police, Gord gets talked into doing a favor for them, a pretty sordid one. But Ethel, an actress who quickly becomes the new woman in his life, pushes him ethically on what he's doing and makes him rethink the gig. <br /><br />Gord sees the whole world in terms of likely locations. This, along with a running refrain that things aren't really like how they are in the movies (except that sometimes they actually are, which McFetridge exploits to comic effect) and of course the title itself sets up a world where everything is also pretending to be something else. You can see how these middle-aged guys, who seem to have lost a certain sense of purpose and identity, could end up being suicidal. And suicide as a force in society comes up several times in the course of the story, including a litany of all the people in the entertainment industry who have taken their own lives. <br /><br />Despite this, this isn't a bleak book. McFetridge's dry, understated humor counters that and Ethel, the love interest, is vibrant enough to inject whatever vitality is needed into Gord's life. And his dad, who he lives with out of inertia, is especially good at puncturing one-liners, often just as he's walking out of the room.<br /><br />One of McFetridge's great gifts is just to notice things that other people haven't, often on a sociological level. As the rest of us hurry along and get caught up in things, it's nice to have his reflective voice reminding us that the world may not be exactly as we think it is. <br /><br />I hope he's hard at work on the next one.<div><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div>
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-57422221668249388612021-05-12T16:51:00.000-07:002021-05-12T16:51:42.619-07:00Safer by Sean Doolittle<p> </p>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4953033-safer" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Safer" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320553347l/4953033._SX98_.jpg" /></a><br />
I had this book on my shelf for quite a while without remembering why I had it. (Working at a bookstore as I did for a long time, you tend to accumulate a certain number of advanced reading copies of books rather impulsively. Or I did.) The title and cover, which on the ARC has a lot of publisher blurbs, made me think it was a public service kind of book, maybe talking about some public health hazard. It was only when I was straightening up around here one day that I looked at it more closely and realized that I had picked it up because it was by a mystery writer whose name I already knew. <br /><br /><i>"My wife Sara and I are hosting a faculty party at our home when the Clark Falls Police Department arrives to take me into custody."</i><br /><br />That, my friends, is what's known as a hook. <br /><br />I've been trying to think since I read it about what book or category of books it reminds me of. Today I realized that one story it shares a little in common with is the television version of <i>Pretty Little Liars</i>. There's the same kind of feeling of trouble brewing in a tight, somewhat isolated community. One thing that's brilliant about the book is that it takes place on a <i>cul-de-sac</i>. So the feeling of everybody being crammed together and watching each other is doubly reinforced. <br /><br />I really enjoyed the escalating tension between Paul Callaway and his creepy, overbearing neighbor. As an outsider from an urban setting, our narrator is in a fine position to notice all the little power moves and enforcement of conformity going on in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, Paul is also his own worst enemy and there's a dark humor in the way that he actually assists in getting himself caught deeper in the web. <br /><br />Doolittle is a talented writer and I will be reading more. <br /><br />I'm really glad this book didn't turn out to be about the dangers in our drinking water.
<br /><br />seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-72332775474978145842021-05-06T16:41:00.001-07:002021-06-01T16:37:22.058-07:00Bangkok Gamble by Tom Crowley<p></p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55995912-bangkok-gamble" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Bangkok Gamble" border="0" height="400" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606108520l/55995912._SX98_.jpg" width="260" /></a><br />
Another enjoyable outing to Thailand in this third Matt Chance adventure. In this one, a gambling tycoon asks Matt's help in finding his missing daughter, who has disappeared while out nightclubbing with a friend. But Matt has extra incentive when he learns that his friend from Special Forces John Scales has already been on the case and has also disappeared. Matt's leads soon take him far out of Bangkok and on the trail of a nefarious cult leader.<br /><br />I particularly enjoy a couple of different aspects of Crowley's writing. One is the detailed portrait of Bangkok, often of some of the more dangerous and seamier sides, but sometimes just impressions of what it's like to live in this busy, humid city. Another is the way he writes action adventure narratives out in the jungle and smaller towns of the country. A particularly effective scene occurs when he and John take part in a raid on the corrupt temple.<br /><br />I'm liking the way Matt Chance's world grows as the series goes along. We already knew his girlfriend Noi and her devoted assistant Plato, genius hacker. John Scales and Matt's half brother Rick, CIA agent, return and now we have Jade Lee, the kickass ex-Army helicopter pilot who as a mixed race ex-military person has more in common with Matt--half American, half Thai--than Matt can first admit.<br /><br />Looks very much like more exciting adventures await.
<br /><br /><br />seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-76813609932571175622020-11-22T14:10:00.000-08:002020-11-22T14:10:33.759-08:00<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243353.The_Coroner_s_Lunch" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="The Coroner's Lunch (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436464374l/243353._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243353.The_Coroner_s_Lunch">The Coroner's Lunch</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/142410.Colin_Cotterill">Colin Cotterill</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3627578990">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I've been meaning to read this series for a long time and have had a couple of volumes of Cotterill's lying around the house forever. This first in a series featuring the reluctant coroner Dr. Siri introduces us to a lot in Laotian culture and history that I hadn't even thought to ask about. <br /><br />I am a little more ambivalent about the endeavor than I would have been at the time it was written. 2004 is not all that long ago, but it's still on the other side of a watershed moment when more of the general public began to look at things through the lens of critical thinking about cultural appropriation. It's not that I noticed or even think that Cotterill got anything in particular wrong. I'm not in a position to know. It's just that in our very 'woke' moment, a Western writer writing a Laotian character stands out in a different way and raises questions that wouldn't have come up so much when it came out.<br /><br />Nevertheless, Dr. Siri is an engaging character and he turns out to have an even more interesting backstory, which is revealed in the later portion of the book. One thing that definitely wouldn't have caused a stir when Cotterill wrote the novel is that in Laotian society, a great deal of polite handshaking goes on. Reading this as I did just as we were all learning the etiquette of social distancing, this oft-mentioned ritual made me gasp a few times in a way the author definitely never intended.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1435517-seana">View all my reviews</a>
seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-47456121596611579642020-07-17T16:09:00.002-07:002020-07-17T16:09:51.852-07:00Murder at the Slaughterhouse by Tom Crowley<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22980135-murder-in-the-slaughterhouse" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Murder in the Slaughterhouse" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1421886787l/22980135._SX98_.jpg" /></a><br />
<i>In most cities of the world, you could say as the dawn eases its way above the horizon that the city begins to stir. In Bangkok, that wouldn’t be precisely correct. The mystical mix of the city’s night beat continues through the verge of dawn and the pace of the city only hesitates. There is a somewhat perceptible pause in the city’s life movements as the often desperate human night activity slows to a crawl, around dawn, as the night people complete their retreat with the last of the seductively clad sex workers and transgender beauties scurrying out of the growing light into the back of taxis. But the beat is taken up virtually immediately with the morning traffic of the day people as they begin to reclaim the city.</i><br />
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So opens Chapter One of this second Matt Chance thriller, which, like the first, is set largely in Thailand. The first few paragraphs continue this almost lyric ode to Bangkok, which appreciates the city’s beauty but doesn’t shy away from describing the darker side. But before long, this wide pan of the city landscape homes in on the violated body of a teenage boy, found within the perimeters of a slaughterhouse for hogs. <br />
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Matt turns out to have known this boy as a student in a kickboxing class for at-risk youth at which he has helped out. Through his connections there, he is pressed into trying to find out what happened to the youth, but finds himself entangled in an ever widening circle of people involved in one way or another with this tragedy, reaching the highest levels of both crime syndicates and governmental agencies. And their range isn't confined to Thailand alone.<br />
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Crowley, who is a Vietnam vet who went on after the war to work in both governmental and business communities in Thailand and Washington, has a lot of knowledge to draw on from these quarters. But just as valuable is his observation of daily life in Bangkok, where he has volunteered at a center for Thai street children, which I’m sure helped him flesh out the the community that the murdered boy of the novel comes from. <br />
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I've been remiss in waiting so long to get to this story, but at least I'm not too late to be ready for the third Matt Chance book, which is rumored to be coming out in November. <br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-82705587070440301092020-03-05T19:42:00.000-08:002020-03-05T19:42:02.069-08:00Ten-Seven by Dana King<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41677271-ten-seven" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Ten-Seven" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546501736l/41677271._SX98_.jpg" /></a><br />
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This is the fourth outing in King's Penns River series, featuring Detective Ben Dougherty and a host of recurring characters. In an interview for <a href="http://crimespreemag.com/behind-the-book-dana-king/" rel="nofollow">Crime Spree</a> magazine, King describes Penns River as a fictional version of a three city area in western Pennsylvania that King grew up in and returns to often. After a death in a casino parking lot, Dougherty is called in to investigate, and because it's a casino, the local mob connections can't be far away. There's a large cast of characters and probably the best thing to do is to start the first in the series, <i>Worst Enemies</i>, because there are a lot of people with continuing story lines. But I haven't read the books in consecutive order and I got by, as the backstory is brought in deftly. <br />
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One of the interesting threads in this novel features three women cops who have been brought onto the police force in Penns River by a federal decree. I appreciated that this played out as not just one story but several different stories, as the men and women all assess each other in their new relations. <br />
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I was quite impressed with the unexpected slam bang opening, although it might not have the same impact if you read about it in the intro from Goodreads and some of the reviews. So don't. just jump in.
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-8119809350044831912020-03-02T14:35:00.000-08:002020-03-02T14:35:05.505-08:00Heart of the Hunter by Deon Meyer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/508985.Heart_of_the_Hunter" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Heart of the Hunter" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175370451l/508985._SX98_.jpg" /></a><br />
I'm not much of a thriller reader, but I've realized lately that I do really enjoy the subcategory of the cat and mouse type when I come across them if they're well written. Geoffrey Household's <i>Rogue Male</i> was the first one I read where I became explicitly conscious of this. <br />
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I think I made a couple of attempts at starting this book when it came into the bookstore where I worked, but the opening didn't reveal the subgenre of the book to me, and in fact, you have to get through a couple of setup chapters before you get to the main thrust of the story. After that, though, even these secondary stories of the people giving chase to a man impelled on a heroic quest across South Africa add to the story rather than taking away from it. <br />
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Although many of the characters in this novel are black--his protagonist is Xhosa, but other native South Africans appear as well--Deon Meyers is white, and this book was originally written in Afrikaans. Although he is an enormously popular writer in both South Africa and Europe, this was the first of his many titles to be published in America. At the time I was working in a bookstore, he didn't seem to have found his following here yet, and that's a shame, because deserves one. This particular story happens not too long after Apartheid has ended, and Meyer gives a sense of how complicated this transition was and how many different players were involved, without making it too dry. <br />
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His main character, Tiny Mpayipheli, is a man we meet enjoying a quiet life after being heavily involved in many unsavory things that different political powers were up to in his youth. One of the questions Tiny asks of himself throughout the book is whether one can turn from their essential nature. I'm not sure we really discover the answer to this in the course of the story, but it does give him a complexity that adds dimension to his story. <br />
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Aside from the suspense, there is an aspect of the novel that also places it in the road trip genre, and one of the pleasures of the book is getting to know South Africa a little through the description of the landscape, as well as some of the different people of the countryside. In truth, Tiny makes his way forward through the kindness (or cluelessness) of strangers more than he does by his own derring-do, but that gives Meyer a chance to add a little humor to an otherwise rather relentless tale. <br />
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A minor quibble is that with some of the secondary characters, Meyer can't seem to refrain from pointing out distinctive physical features, especially if they might be viewed as negative ones. Once a character is designated as fat, you are sure to be told it again at every opportunity. One of the characters pitted against Tiny has a small hump on his back, which I think we are reminded of at least thirty times. This is a pity because Meyer is actually quite good at character and has some better arrows in his quiver than these. <br />
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That said, though, this certainly won't keep me from reading more from this master storyteller. <br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-90505636428199462062020-02-25T14:57:00.002-08:002020-02-25T14:57:32.230-08:00Winterkill by C. J. Box<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/244100.Winterkill" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Winterkill (Joe Pickett, #3)" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1427388697l/244100._SX98_.jpg" /></a><br />
Although I've known of C. J. Box for years, this is the first of his books I've actually read. It's the third in the series and I chose it because it happened to be a random unread book on my shelves. I think it would probably be better to start from the beginning of the series, as some important events that happened in earlier books are mentioned here. But I really enjoyed finally becoming acquainted with the author's work.<br />
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In an epigraph to the novel, we learn that"winterkill" is defined as "to kill (as a plant or animal) by, or to die as the result of, exposure to winter weather conditions. There are quite a few deaths in this story, and it <i>is</i> winter, but Box is expanding the meaning of this term a bit to cover most of them, some of which could have happened in any season at all. <br />
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I really enjoyed Box's gift for rendering the Wyoming landscape--and the Wyoming winter--so vividly. His protagonist, game warden Joe Pickett, spends a lot of time traversing wide expanses of wild land, and it's never boring. His work reminds me a bit of Tony Hillerman in his descriptions of the Southwest. <br />
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Another enjoyable aspect of the book, and presumably the series, is that Pickett's roaming is counterbalanced by his home life with his wife and daughters. They are portrayed lovingly and with an eye to their individual aspirations. A couple of the women outside of this sphere are portrayed in a black and white, good and evil sort of way, where I think they could have been painted a little more complexly. Box is capable of it, as seen in the shadowy character Nate Romanowski, who pops up part way through the novel. But it's a small quibble. I look forward to reading more of the series. <br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-40406270354959429592020-02-05T12:11:00.000-08:002020-02-05T12:11:02.970-08:00Until Thy Wrath Be Past, by Asa Larsson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10416235-until-thy-wrath-be-past" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Until Thy Wrath be Past (Rebecka Martinsson, #4)" border="0" height="320" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328767573l/10416235._SX98_.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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Although I had read Larsson's first Rebecka Martinsson novel, <i>Sun Storm</i>, ideally I probably should have read the two books that come between the first and the forth, as this one refers a lot to several people's backstory that occurs in one or the other of those. That said, though, you really don't need to have read the books in order to understand the crime story told in this volume. <br />
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Right from the outset we know that one of the main characters here has already died, but her strong narration of this event is one reason this book gets off to such an exciting start. <br />
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In terms of mystery, there don't end up being a whole lot of suspects, so if you're looking for a puzzle this may not satisfy you. The things I enjoyed about the story are different. First, Larsson writes of a certain mystical or spiritual element, and not just the immediate appearance of the dead girl. As another reviewer here writes, there is an element of redemption here, but it's not an easy fix and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone. <br />
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Second, Larsson apparently grew up in this small Swedish mining town of Kiruna herself and has a real gift for describing the natural beauty of its surrounds. And she is good on animals, particularly dogs, as well. <br />
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Finally, there is a lot of interesting Swedish World War II history that is part of the story, particularly Sweden's complicated relation to Germany, which it allied itself to for awhile. My impression is that this was not so much ideologically as in an effort to save itself from the Soviet Union, a nation they perceived as a bigger threat. There is a list of books she read to fill out this aspect at the back of the book, for those who want to know more.
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(Originally posted on GoodReads.)<br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-44576628677409497262020-01-05T14:04:00.000-08:002020-01-06T13:18:49.217-08:00The Pavilion by Hilda Lawrence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeF9dRLiJzqULfUj_d6X_3LVcLLA_EfThNsDAyowBRV0G4Ondm0cPAFtw_tgE8srz19vFEtBuHmSJp-FgO5d-hJcVjcpBXROwloRBS4WaKjF7z2Nmy4uvOq2R5v4Oz2iCHlQvdTY2SNM44/s1600/the-pavilion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="314" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeF9dRLiJzqULfUj_d6X_3LVcLLA_EfThNsDAyowBRV0G4Ondm0cPAFtw_tgE8srz19vFEtBuHmSJp-FgO5d-hJcVjcpBXROwloRBS4WaKjF7z2Nmy4uvOq2R5v4Oz2iCHlQvdTY2SNM44/s320/the-pavilion.jpg" width="187" /></a></div>
I really enjoyed this atmospheric novel from the forties. Regan, whose mother has died only a month before, decides to visit her Uncle Hurst at his request, as both remember the simpatico relationship they had when she was a small child. But by the time Regan arrives at the Herald family mansion, Hurst is already dead and she is left to fend for herself among his family, his in-laws, and some household servants. At the same time, Regan gradually becomes aware that there is an event in her own past here that she's so far managed to suppress.<br />
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The creepy old house has an equally creepy bunch of inhabitants and I enjoyed Lawrence's skill at bringing them to life. Although Lawrence was an American writer and this story is set in a small town on the Eastern seaboard (I think), her characters remind me of certain eccentrics that spring up in British crime fiction--I'm thinking particularly of the earlier work of Margery Allingham.<br />
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<i style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Cousin May was old, Regan knew that. Older than Hurst, nearly seventy, she thought. But the white hair curled youthfully about her soft face , and foamed and frothed into curls around her jeweled ears. Her round cheeks quivered as she held out her hand.<br /><br />Regan advanced, full of pity when she saw how each step forward robbed Cousin May without mercy. When she reached the outstretched hand she saw an old, old woman, hiding under a shell of pink powder.</i><br />
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Regan teams up with her considerably older cousin Fray, who does most of the real detective work in the story. But Regan's gradual and intuitive understanding of the situation felt convincing to me and I admired the way Lawrence was able to pull this off.<br />
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My copy of this book is an old Penguin Crime series book with the distinctive green spine. I was surprised that GoodReads doesn't offer that particular cover as a choice, as it must have been fairly common at one point. And Lawrence herself seems a little hard to track down. She wrote other crime fiction, though not a lot, and you would think there would be more reviews and interviews from her day. In fact, the only Wikipedia article I found on her is in French.<br />
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I have to admit a particular pleasure in discovering a writer I like who is not currently much remembered. More than with such perennially popular writers as Christie or Sayers, I feel that, against all the odds, a talented author has managed to breach the chasm of time and speak to me directly.<br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-85715460505814237162019-11-19T11:05:00.002-08:002021-06-01T16:36:40.483-07:00Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39961982-eleanor-oliphant-is-completely-fine" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine" border="0" height="320" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1525583112l/39961982._SX98_.jpg" width="212" /></a><br />
Perhaps because I entirely missed the epigraph, I mistook the tone of this book for awhile, thinking it was something along the lines of <i>Bridget Jones</i> or some of the other better written books in the genre that I still think of as Chick Lit. I found it engaging and funny, but I still wasn't sure why it had been recommended to our book group. However, once I realized that it had unsuspected depths, and was willing to treat openly of subjects like loneliness and shame, I was hooked. Its two main characters are each engaging in unique ways, and it highlights the importance of simple kindness in our lives in a way that makes us see this virtue with fresh eyes. Some of Eleanor's back story seemed a little obvious, but I'm not sure that the author was all that focused on some big reveal as much as just telling Eleanor's story.
<br /><br /><br />seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-17193630737414357192019-06-25T17:30:00.000-07:002019-06-25T17:30:23.699-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42779092-the-chain" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Chain" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543430536i/42779092._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42779092-the-chain">The Chain</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12433.Adrian_McKinty">Adrian McKinty</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2871926878">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
McKinty's fans will notice that this book shares something in common with many of his other titles. He likes to figure out both plans of attack and plans of escape. He likes to think up situations that seem impossible to solve, and then solve them. In this story however, the villain seems to have come up with the perfect crime. How do you get someone to do the unthinkable? Get someone else to do the unthinkable to them first. In this case, the unthinkable is the kidnapping of a child. If your own child is abducted, how far will you go to get that child safely back? <br /><br />"The Chain" as this fiendish strategem is called, seems to be unbreakable, and Rachel, our protagonist, is resourceful, but she's not a superhero. She goes to work to save her child, and in the process becomes part of the dark side herself. Although in the screenwriting world, this story is what would be called a 'high concept' work (and it does have 'movie' written all over it), it also takes some passing glances at the deeper sides of human nature and human meaning. What can it really mean to call oneself a good person when in reality we are all vulnerable and thus easily compromised?<br /><br />In an afterword, McKinty refers back to the dark power chain letters had in the small northern Irish community of his childhood, where the danger of breaking the chain was taken more seriously than it was in, say, my youth. The author witnessed someone take it upon herself to break the chain and it made a lasting impression on him. I have no doubt that the power Rachel ultimately finds in herself derives in no small part from that woman. <br /><br />One thing I miss in this novel is McKinty's trademark humor, as there is very little to laugh about here. But never fear. Word is that there's a new Sean Duffy coming out in the fall. Good time now then, to catch up on or reread that series.<br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1435517-seana">View all my reviews</a><br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-17437681519899172512019-01-20T17:28:00.006-08:002019-01-20T17:28:52.725-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35721172-from-cold-war-to-hot-peace" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="From Cold War to Hot Peace: The Inside Story of Russia and America" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1520607377m/35721172.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35721172-from-cold-war-to-hot-peace">From Cold War to Hot Peace: The Inside Story of Russia and America</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/110973.Michael_McFaul">Michael McFaul</a><br />
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I bought this book originally because at the time of its publication, Vladimir Putin had just suggested that Trump send McFaul over to Russia to be interrogated and Trump didn't immediately denounce this outrageous and frightening idea. I thought buying the book would be a good way to express solidarity with McFaul, but I didn't necessarily think I'd read a lot of it. I did read it through, though. It held my interest because McFaul writes from a unique viewpoint, having worked both in Washington DC as Obama's Russia expert, and then going on to become the U.S. ambassador to Russia. He worked with both the more moderate Medvedev and the autocratic Putin in their positions as Russian president. I have rarely been given such a clear glimpse into the way people inside government think about issues and how many factors come into play in trying to steer the right course, not always successfully.
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-24001150559849465132019-01-07T15:58:00.000-08:002019-01-07T15:58:20.030-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/280352.The_Indian_Bride" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Indian Bride (Konrad Sejer, #5)" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328876774m/280352.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/280352.The_Indian_Bride">The Indian Bride</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/163027.Karin_Fossum">Karin Fossum</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2663311309">4 of 5 stars</a><br />
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A friend who always pointed reliably to good mysteries recommended this author and I believe even this book to me a long time ago. Somewhere along the way, I snagged a used copy of it, and it has been sitting on my shelf ever since. I threw it into my backpack as I headed out to the airport, but didn't manage to get too far into it on my holiday trip. Initially, I found its premise mildly interesting if somewhat unlikely--a reclusive middle-aged Norwegian man gets it into his head to go to India and find a wife. Surprisingly, he does. <br />
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In most cases, I think, this would continue as a cautionary tale about foolish schemes. It is a mystery novel, after all. But that is not where Fossum takes it. Instead she uses what happens to this particular marriage to paint a portrait of a small Norwegian village caught in its wake. My mild initial interest slowly turned into real absorption. I will definitely be reading more of Fossum. <br />
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Reposted from GoodReads. I'll add here that there was a nice coincidence while I was reading this book that I also happened upon Geoff Dyer's reflection on reading books that have been sitting on his shelf for too long--or so some might say. You can read it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/31/better-read-than-dead-how-geoff-dyer-got-to-know-bookshelves-better" target="_blank">HERE</a>.<br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-61099162057987737452018-08-05T15:49:00.003-07:002018-08-05T15:49:54.881-07:00Lu's Outing by John Lugo-Trebble<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40550992-lu-s-outing" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Lu's Outing" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1529266370m/40550992.jpg" /></a><br />
(My Good Reads review)<br />
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A short, charming coming of age story. Tired of being hassled in his Bronx school for being gay, Lu decides to skip it all for a day and heads downtown. He wanders into some of the well-known gay quarters of the city and gradually begins to find people who welcome him and see the world as he does. I found myself wishing that all lonely, outcast youth could find such a haven just by hopping on a train. And the heady, liberated feeling Lu has reminded me of a similar journey to the Castro that one of my friends described to me about first going to the Castro when he was a young man.<br />
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An additional strength of this book is that Lu is short for Luis, who comes from a Puerto Rican American neighborhood, as does the author. The book offers some nice glimpses into that culture and also shows what coming out in that context might be like, in both its strengths and obstacles.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1435517-seana">View all my reviews</a>
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-72826007851343529462018-08-04T21:10:00.002-07:002018-08-04T21:10:29.348-07:00Death al Fresco by Leslie Karst<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36364650-death-al-fresco" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Death al Fresco (A Sally Solari Mystery #3)" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1507310566m/36364650.jpg" /></a><br />
(My Good Reads review)<br />
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Purely by coincidence, I happened to read the third title in this Santa Cruz based series just after reading and reviewing the darker tinged <i>Santa Cruz Noir</i> anthology from Akashic Press. It makes a nice chaser. As with all good series, readers await each new volume not just for the crimes committed and solved, but to hang out with the characters some more. In this one, Sally Solari is helping her dad with a big sister cities event at his restaurant while trying to keep the head chef happy at the more upscale restaurant she inherited from her aunt. Of course a body turns up and Sally's natural curiosity kicks in, making the juggling act all that much harder.<br />
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Long time Santa Cruz resident Karst is great on the vibe of the place, this time especially focusing on the beach and wharf areas. This would be a great beach read for visitors--and locals too, for that matter.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1435517-seana">View all my reviews</a>
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-89433165806983108242018-07-15T18:09:00.000-07:002018-07-15T18:09:45.038-07:00Santa Cruz Noir--blogging the book. Day 21, "It Follows Until it Leads" by Dillon Kaiser<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: georgia, serif;">(To learn more about my "blogging the book" challenge to myself, go </span><a href="http://backlist-seanag.blogspot.com/2018/06/santa-cruz-noir-edited-by-susie-bright.html" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: georgia, serif;">.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The gun on the kitchen table is not mine. Yet there it lies, insisting upon its own </i>fealdad<i>, its ugliness. Infecting my home. Sunlight streams through the window above the sink where Martha has set a vase of flowers and glints upon the gun. It breeds disease. And there, on the table beside my daughter Lupe's Doll, the disease spreads. </i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">The gun is not mine. Worse, it is my son's. </span></i><br />
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Dillon Kaiser's story ends this anthology on a powerful note.People have their own definitions of what noir is, but "It Follows Until it Leads" is the kind of story I think of when I think of noir. There is an inevitability to the sequence of events, but the outcome does have something to do with the protagonist's choices. It's just that the errors don't start with him and don't end with him and it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where he made the truly crucial choice.<br />
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Audible sample of "It Follows Until it Leads" by Dillon Kaiser <a href="https://soundcloud.com/audible/santa-cruz-noir21?in=sue-b-bright/sets/santa-cruz-noir" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Performed by Thom Rivera.<br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-70631010711052910222018-07-14T22:06:00.000-07:002018-07-14T22:07:07.691-07:00Santa Cruz Noir-- blogging the book. Day 20, " The Shooter" by Lee Quarnstrom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(To learn more about my "blogging the book" challenge to myself, go </span><a href="http://backlist-seanag.blogspot.com/2018/06/santa-cruz-noir-edited-by-susie-bright.html" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.)</span><br />
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Lee Quarnstrom's tight little tale talks of a Watsonville before our era, some of it familiar, some not. Fort Ord is still open, it's after the war, which usually means WWII, and people still drive Studebakers, though perhaps not fresh off the assembly line. This story, written by a longtime journalist in this region, was the one that most felt like the kind of tale you might find in some classic film noir to me.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I'd picked out the shooter's car by the time I hopped out of my Plymouth and crossed the dusty parking lot toward the front of the two-story building. It was the rust-specked Studebaker, backed in against the head lettuce field dotted with thousands, maybe millions, of tiny, shiny green shoots sprouting from the chunky black soil of the fertile fields just outside Watsonville.</i></span><br />
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Audible sample of Lee Quarnstrom's "The Shooter" <a href="https://soundcloud.com/audible/santa-cruz-noir20?in=sue-b-bright/sets/santa-cruz-noir" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Performed by Richard Ferrone.<br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-46451336375396868802018-07-12T10:18:00.000-07:002018-07-12T10:18:18.213-07:00Santa Cruz Noir--blogging the book. Day 19, "Pinballs" by Beth Liseck<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(To learn more about my "blogging the book" challenge to myself, go </span><a href="http://backlist-seanag.blogspot.com/2018/06/santa-cruz-noir-edited-by-susie-bright.html" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>You get off the freeway on Riverside Drive, right where you see that abandoned Queen Anne. Go past the strawberry fields, the artichokes and brussel sprouts, and that's where my spot was. You're not going the wrong way, even when you start seeing signs for the condo development. Keep curving around. You can practically smell your way there, there's so much eucalyptus. Chances are, the lot will be empty. It's in between two private beaches, so it seems like you don't belong there, but there's no trick. Pull up, hike over the little path, and thar she blows: a mile of beach almost all to yourself.</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #6a6a6a; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Almost all to yourself, except that's where our protagonist meets Marta and a station wagon so packed with kids that the narrators thinks of them as pinballs. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #6a6a6a; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Although Liseck's story is sat back in the time before seatbelts were the law, I saw this chilling tale as bearing similarities to our own present moment, or maybe it's just showing us how we got here.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Audible sample of Beth Liseck's "Pinballs" <a href="https://soundcloud.com/audible/santa-cruz-noir19?in=sue-b-bright/sets/santa-cruz-noir" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Performed by Beth Liseck.</span><br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-71984398905753090272018-07-11T19:24:00.002-07:002018-07-11T19:24:21.425-07:00Santa Cruz Noir--blogging the book. Day 18, "Crab Dinners" by Lou Mathews<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(To learn more about my "blogging the book" challenge to myself, go </span><a href="http://backlist-seanag.blogspot.com/2018/06/santa-cruz-noir-edited-by-susie-bright.html" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: georgia, serif; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Lou Mathew's story of a detective hired to find out what happened to a daughter's father mentions many aspects of Santa Cruz County that residents, past or present may be familiar with. There's Chef Wong, a fictionalized version of the first chef to bring Szechuan style cooking to the Santa Cruz area. And Manuel's, the beloved Mexican restaurant in Aptos. The university gets a glance. Cockfighting in South County, which was news to me. And then there's the cement ship...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>The SS Palo Alto was one of two cement ships built in 1919 at the US Navy shipyards in Oakland. The war ended before the ship went into service, so they mothballed her for a decade until the Seacliff Amusement Corporation bought her and towed her to Seacliff Beach, where they tethered her to a pier, built a dance hall, a swimming pool, and a cafe on board--and sank her. Probably a great entertainment idea, but not in 1929. They closed in '31, stripped her, and left her as a fishing pier, the focal point of the new state park. </i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I spent a lot of time there fishing and watching the bay. The boat had split apart in '58 and become a paradise for fishermen, an ideal reef, full of fish, mussels, crabs, and the birds that fed on them. </i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(Note to potential tourists. The cement ship was real, but did not survive the massive waves of 2017.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Audible sample of Lou Mathews' "Crab Dinners" <a href="https://soundcloud.com/audible/santa-cruz-noir18?in=sue-b-bright/sets/santa-cruz-noir" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Performed by Susie Bright.</span><br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-33985922754910207482018-07-10T11:33:00.000-07:002018-07-11T14:49:29.234-07:00Santa Cruz Noir--blogging the book. Day 17, "The Strawberry Tattoo" by Maceo Montoya<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(To learn more about my "blogging the book" challenge to myself, go </span><a href="http://backlist-seanag.blogspot.com/2018/06/santa-cruz-noir-edited-by-susie-bright.html" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: georgia, serif; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">As we get into the final quarter of the book, stories focus more on South County, which is more agricultural and more Hispanic than the northern area, though of course there's no clear dividing line. Much of Maceo Montoya's story takes place outside of Santa Cruz county, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have deep roots here. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Marcela's new boyfriend Vicente seems to be perfection itself. At a gathering she mentions a tattoo of a strawberry that he has at the base of his neck, which she loves for its delicacy. But one of her friends has a different take on it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>"Isn't he from Watsonville?"</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"Yeah, why?"</i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">"I mean, I think that's a gang thing. In Watsonville its the strawberry, in Salinas it's a freaking lettuce head. Somewhere else it's an artichoke. My students, I swear, they teach me the randomest shit."</span></i><br />
Audible sample of Maceo Montoya's "The Strawberry Tattoo" <a href="https://soundcloud.com/audible/santa-cruz-noir17?in=sue-b-bright/sets/santa-cruz-noir" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Performed by Almarie Guerra.<br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246733253377632158.post-51495838501460218662018-07-09T17:20:00.001-07:002018-07-09T17:20:19.373-07:00Santa Cruz Noir--blogging the book. Day 16, "Death and Taxes" by Jill Wolfson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(To learn more about my "blogging the book" challenge to myself, go </span><a href="http://backlist-seanag.blogspot.com/2018/06/santa-cruz-noir-edited-by-susie-bright.html" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: georgia, serif; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">One of the characters in this story is a sign dancer, meaning a person hired to stand on the street for hours holding a sign, hoping to get passing cars to notice a business they might have otherwise missed. Not too long ago, I would have had to say that I couldn't remember noticing any sign dancers in Santa Cruz. But just a couple of days before I read this story, I happened to see one. This one was a girl wearing headphones. It was very hot, but she seemed to be in another zone, possibly chemically induced. She didn't seem unhappy, though I would have been. However, I don't think anyone could top Jill Wolfson's Cody for enthusiasm on his first day of the job.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Showtime!</i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Spin that tax sign clockwise like its a Boardwalk ride. Toss it in the air, hurl your body around in a one-footed, tiptoed 360, and catch the sign behind your back. Ta-da.</i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Holy crap on a strap! He actually caught it! Thumbs up from a Prius driver. </i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Another Prius, another Prius. Is there a fuckin' sale on Priuses or what?</i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Yesterday, this corner was just another place. Cody must've eaten a million slices of pepperoni at Upper Crust. Carved his initial into the oak by the U-Wash-it place. Felt up that hippie chick Sequoia by the dumpster behind the Chinese place.</i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>But now? Cody owns this corner.</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Audible sample of Jill Wolfson's "Death and Taxes" <a href="https://soundcloud.com/audible/santa-cruz-noir16?in=sue-b-bright/sets/santa-cruz-noir" target="_blank">HERE</a></span><br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0