BONES NEVER LIE by Kathy Reichs

Maybe it’s because BONES NEVER LIE (#17 in the Temperance Brennan series) is a sort of sequel to MONDAY MOURNING (#7, back when these were must-reads for me), but I enjoyed it more than the last couple of entries. Part of the action also takes place in Montreal, and I always seem to prefer the mysteries there over the books entirely stuck in North Carolina. In this entry, Anique Pomereau is back, and the discovery of bodies of young girls may put you off maple syrup for a while. The pacing is very start-and-stop in this one. Fans of the Brennan-Ryan ship will be delighted when she drags him out of the hermit thing he’s been doing, but that subplot has always been something I’ve endured, not enjoyed, so I was less than pleased. And the ending was ridiculous. Putting it that way, I suppose this isn’t a stellar review, but it was certainly better than the last one.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

Teaser Tuesday: A GOD IN RUINS

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Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser:

“All this obsession with ecology isn’t doing you any good,” Viola said. “You’re too old to be getting so worked up.”

Ecology, Teddy thought? “Nature,” he said. “We used to call it nature.”

A GOD IN RUINS by Kate Atkinson, p. 171 (ARE)

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog).

DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS by Amanda Kyle Williams

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Mystery, summer reading

I would probably read Keye Street narrating a trip to the grocery store, so it’s no surprise I loved the third outing in Amanda Kyle Williams’s series about the flawed, alcoholic, ex-FBI profiler private investigator. You *can* start here –you won’t be completely lost or anything–but I recommend picking up THE STRANGER YOU SEEK and THE STRANGER IN THE ROOM so you don’t miss the fun of experiencing Keye’s growth over the first two books.

Keye herself gives an excellent summary of her life so far: “Neil hunched over his Lucky Charms. His spoon hit the side of the bowl on every bite. I stood there for a minute, sipping my coffee, marveling once again at the turn my life had taken. Five years ago I would have bet good money I wasn’t going to end up running a private detective business with an insubordinate pot-smoking former cyber-criminal and an insubordinate nineteen-year-old potty mouth.”

Her private detective business adds laugh-out-loud comic relief to the suspense. I highlighted a dozen or so passages that made me crack up, but I’ll just put one out here: “Hey, Ronald, you missed your court date. We need to get this straightened out.” “Screw you,” he yelled. Sque woo. He was actually finishing his sandwich while being pursued by a bail recovery agent. You have to admire that on some level.”

This entry takes Keye to Whisper, Georgia, a small town with a dangerously sexy sheriff and two very unwelcoming local detectives. The body of a thirteen-year-old girl has been found in a remote area, along with the body of another thirteen-year-old girl who disappeared over a decade before. Are the two cases related? Sheriff Meltzer has called in Keye to consult based on her background as a profiler, and soon a third girl is missing.

The mystery and suspense are well done, as usual, with plenty of twists and turns to keep things interesting. The real gem here, though, is Keye. She’s flawed, funny, and fierce. She knows her own weaknesses very well, and reflects that her attraction to Sheriff Meltzer probably has just a bit to do with her escalating relationship with Rauser. Before she heads out of town, they have a spat:

“He opened a kitchen drawer, pointed down at the contents. “Want to tell me what you felt the need to label the silverware?” He began to read the bright green sticky notes inside. “Knives, small forks, long forks, short spoons, long spoons. What the hell is that, Keye?” So now we were getting to what was really wrong with his mood. I didn’t say anything. “Not only have you labeled the silverware drawer, you’ve dumbed it down. You think I don’t know what a salad fork is?””

This scene perfectly encapsulates Keye’s conflicted feelings about their relationship, and she’s self-aware enough to know that she’s flirting with the cute sheriff partly out of self-sabotage (something she knows quite a bit about). Ordinarily, I have little patience for love triangles, but Williams uses the attraction as character development for Keye, and it works beautifully. In small-town Georgia, she’s an outsider many times over: Chinese-American, big-city accent, former FBI, and the town closes ranks around her.

I recommend this series to readers of mystery and suspense, as well as to fans of early Stephanie Plum – Keye Street is just as laugh-out-loud funny, but with a lot more substance.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher, but I also purchased a copy.

Reviews With Lilah – A SECRET IN TIME (BIG HONEY DOG MYSTERIES #2) by H.Y. Hanna

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adventure, animal narrator, Ghost Story, Mystery

After 2013’s CURSE OF THE SCARAB, which introduced Honey, a Great Dane with a big heart and a bit of a slobber problem, Lilah and I were eager to read the second in the series. This adventure/mystery is set at a dog show, returning for the first time in ten years to the showgrounds supposedly haunted by the dogs who perished in a fire the last time the dog show was held there. As Honey is called into service to impersonate a show dog, one Best in Show contender after another falls victim to strange accidents. Can Honey and friends get to the bottom of mysteries both past and present?

Lilah’s short review: “I love this book. I want to read a million more Big Honey Dog mysteries. I like the way the animals work together and solve the mystery.”

I’m with Lilah. Let’s read a million more Big Honey Dog mysteries. We’ve read the first two full-length novels twice, as well as the three holiday-themed novellas, and we never get tired of them. A first-“person” novel from the point of view of a dog could be ridiculous or tedious, but in Hanna’s hands, it’s delightful. Honey is self-conscious about her drool problem, curious, and eager to help others. Some of her friends from the first novel return to this one, and we also meet a few new ones. As in the first book, not judging others by their appearance, heritage, or first impressions is illustrated without being heavy-handed, and there’s a lovely lesson of forgiveness in SECRET IN TIME that made both of us tear up. At the same time, references to the dogs leaving “pee mail” for each other or exclaiming, “Holy liver treat!” and the like made us chuckle. The mystery is engaging and suspenseful, with a satisfying resolution.

This is a fun ghost story/mystery from the point-of-view of a well-developed character who happens to be a dog. Highly recommend, and we look forward to reading #3.

Our review of BIG HONEY DOG MYSTERIES #1, CURSE OF THE SCARAB, is right here.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the author.

QUICKSAND by Gigi Pandian

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adventure, archaeology, art theft

The most wildly improbable things happen to Jaya Jones, but I never have trouble suspending my disbelief because she’s just so darn fun. In her third adventure, Jaya receives a ticket to Paris from ex-flame/bad boy Lane and decides to temporarily abandon her professorial responsibilities and head out. When she arrives, she finds herself involved in an art heist at the Louvre, seeking advice from an elderly magician, and following clues in an illuminated manuscript. All this takes place in Paris, Mont St Michel, and delightfully creepy subterranean crypts.

It’s no coincidence that Jaya’s last name is Jones. She’s the modern-day, female, Indian-American Indiana Jones I didn’t know I needed in my life. Pandian is adept at incorporating historical information and details without resorting to long expositional passages, making for a layered read of adventure, history, and not-quite-too-much romance. Constant plot twists make for a fun read.

I previously reviewed the first two books in this series, Artifact and Pirate Vishnu.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

THE SECRET PLACE by Tana French

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Ireland, Police Procedural

This was, surprisingly, my first Tana French (after finishing this one, I immediately read the first four), but jumping in at book five was not a problem. I’m not sure how I missed her, but she writes an excellent police procedural. In THE SECRET PLACE, she takes on the world of privileged teenage girls when a photo of a murdered boy turns up on a bulletin board with the message “I know who killed him.” Holly Mackey, a student at St. Kelda’s and daughter to a cop, brings the picture to Detective Stephen Moran, who is desperate to get on the Dublin Murder Squad and advance his career. He and prickly Detective Conway team up to find the truth. The chapters recounting their investigation (lasting one day) are intercut with flashbacks counting down the last year of Chris Harper’s life.

I really enjoyed the developing partnership between Moran and Conway, and the juxtaposition of their working-class roots against the privileged boarding school girls was well done. The suspects in the case include Holly and her close-knit group of three other girls, and a rival group of four girls. Teenage girls can be extremely annoying to read about, but French treats them as complex people, and their conflicting loyalties, rivalries, and secrets ring true. I was taken aback by a touch of magical realism, which seemed completely out of character for a crime novel. I’m not sure it added anything to the story for me, but I’ve decided it at least didn’t diminish my enjoyment.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

THE BODYGUARD by Leena Lehtolainen

After reading Lehtolainen’s SNOW WOMAN, I was excited to read this book, the first in a trilogy about bodyguard Hilja Ilveskero, who according to the blurb “rarely loses her cool” promptly loses her cool when her current employer, a wealthy Finnish woman, insists on buying a lynx fur coat. Lynx clearly have special meaning for Ilveskero, but it will be many, many pages before we find out what that is, which is odd, because the book is written in first person. When this employer turns up dead, Ilveskero must find the killer, since she is a suspect after the aforementioned losing-her-cool incident early in the book.

I’m way behind on book reviews, so I’m not going to go on and on about every little thing about this book that made it a hard slog to get through. My primary complaint is that I really didn’t connect at all with the narrator. She dribbled out bits of information seemingly at random, we learn way too much irrelevant information about her childhood and time in bodyguard school, but the most irritating thing about her is the old “he’s so dangerous and I probably can’t trust him, but I just can’t help myself!” romance trope. Barf.

Romantic suspense really isn’t my thing, especially the “I’m smart and capable and I know I shouldn’t sleep with Dangerous Man, but you know I’m going to anyway!” variety. I can’t really say whether this succeeds as a romantic suspense novel, but as a mystery and as a thriller, it fell flat for me. I don’t have to like a first person narrator, but I need to find some connection with her if I’m to spend a whole novel in her head, and that proved impossible here. And the mystery (in the blurb “layers of intrigue”) was a convoluted mess.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

SNOW WOMAN by Leena Lehtolainen

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Finland, Mystery, Police Procedural

I’ve read quite a bit of Nordic crime fiction, but I believe Lehtolainen’s fourth entry in her Maria Kallio series is the first Finnish police procedural I’ve read.** As in most crime novel series, jumping in at the fourth book wasn’t a problem, but I enjoyed it enough to go back and read the first three (the series begins with MY FIRST MURDER). I’d enjoy watching Detective Kallio’s character development to the point that SNOW WOMAN begins, which is at a women’s retreat run by Elina Rosberg, where Detective Kallio has been sent to do a presentation as outreach. The session erupts into a spirited discussion of women’s rights, the responsibilities of rape victims, abortion, birth control, and religion, divorce and custody, and the abuses of male police officers. A few weeks later, Elina’s aunt, Aira, calls Detective Kallio to ask for her help: Elina is missing. Though it isn’t her department’s responsibility, she agrees to look into the disappearance and, once Elina’s body turns up in the snow, the murder.

Meanwhile, Markku Malmberg, a violent criminal put in prison by Detective Kallio and her partner the previous fall, escapes, and naturally comes after the two detectives who caught him. As if this weren’t enough stress, Detective Kallio is also facing an unplanned pregnancy. Lehtolainen weaves these three threads together to examine an array of women’s issues in an effective way. Malmberg feels particularly vicious toward Detective Kallio because of her gender, but even her allies are problematic: Detective Strom is constantly belittling and taunting Detective Kallio and can’t seem to talk for more than a sentence or two without some sexist comment. As a result of being a woman in a male-centered profession, Detective Kallio has learned to conceal weakness. She’s an excellent detective, but that isn’t enough for a female police officer, so she has cultivated a hard shell to protect herself.

The bleak Finnish winter is a fantastic setting, and the characters are complex and interesting. Even sexist Strom is not reduced to a stereotype – he and Kallio have some surprising bonding moments that add further dimension to both characters. Some readers may find the heavy issues distracting from the murder mystery and thriller plots, but I found them thought-provoking and felt they rounded out the standard police procedural quite nicely.

Read this book on a hot summer day – the frozen Espoo winter colors all the events in the book.

**(While googling/Goodreads-searching to verify this, I came across this rather interesting little article on Finnish crime novels, including a blurb with quotations from Lehtolainen.)

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

Reviews With Lilah: FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF A MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCESS

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Childrens 9-12

Lilah (age 8) and I have very different reviews of this book, which is clearly the start of a new princess-themed series by Meg Cabot of PRINCESS DIARIES fame. Neither of us has read the Princess Mia books, but I’ve seen (and enjoyed) the film version of THE PRINCESS DIARIES (and now Lilah can’t wait to see that as well).

Lilah (as I would have at her age) loves the premise of the average girl who finds out she’s a princess, and can’t wait to read more of Princess Olivia’s adventures as she moves to Genovia. For me, this book fell squarely in the “okay” category. It wasn’t excruciating to read (well, except for the text-message transcripts between Olivia and her best friend, Nishi). I’m not familiar with Cabot’s writing, so it’s not fair for me to suggest that she was phoning it in on this one, but it’s insubstantial and misses several opportunities to explore serious issues in a lighthearted way. A book can be both a fluffy, quick read and still meaningful, but this one was simply the former.

Let’s start with the suspension of disbelief required. Olivia lives with her aunt, uncle, and two step-cousins because her mother died when Olivia was a baby. She writes letters to a father she’s never met (although we know he’s white – Olivia’s mother was African-American), and he writes back. Her mother apparently had wanted Olivia to grow up in a normal environment, without ever knowing she’s a princess, and her father is content to never set eyes on her or to let her know she has a sister. Mmmmkay. We are told that he cares deeply for his daughter, and writes to her regularly (I wonder what they write about, since he can’t mention he’s royalty – she only knows he “travels all the time for work”), but is fine with never seeing her and with keeping her and her sister ignorant of each other’s existence. I’m really excellent at suspending disbelief, but I couldn’t get past this one. Her father finally enters the picture when Olivia’s aunt and uncle decide the family is moving to another country. Princess Mia arrives at Olivia’s school in a limo to drag her off to meet her father as paparazzi go bonkers. Really? There wasn’t a less traumatic way to do this?

The relationship between Mia and her newly discovered sister is sweet, if insubstantial. She teaches Olivia the “princess wave” (awwwww) and introduces her to their grandmother. Olivia views the whole princess revelation with wide-eyed wonder, and immediately agrees to move to Genovia. There is barely a moment of angst over leaving Nishi behind in New Jersey. After all, they can text. There’s some trouble with Olviia’s aunt and uncle trying to keep custody of her, but that is eliminated with very little suspense. Olivia holds no resentment at all toward her father for keeping her from growing up in a loving home for the first twelve years of her life, or for keeping her from growing up with a sister.

Again, Lilah is in the demographic for this book and I am not, but I was disappointed and, to be honest, bored. Olivia has an African-American mother (and presumably aunt and uncle, not sure about step-cousins), while her father and other royal relatives are white, and this could have been interesting, but Cabot just throws out that Olivia’s mother is African-American, but this apparently has zero effect on Olivia’s life. Her best friend, Nishi, is of Indian descent, but this also fails to play into the story at all. Do they go to a mostly white school? Is it diverse? We have no idea, because these two characters’ identities are asserted but not examined.

I could go on and on about how much this book irritated me, and I suppose I have. I don’t have anything against fluffy, fun books, but this one feels like the start of a series made entirely to profit from the parents of princess-crazy young girls. But Lilah thinks it’s fun, so perhaps I’m taking it too seriously.

Available May 19, 2015

Source disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the publisher.

DOORS by Daniel Brako

The premise of this short novel is fantastic: psychologist David Druas has a patient who sees mysterious doors everywhere–and only he can see them. Eventually, Dr. Druas begins to notice the doors as well, and they lead him into amazing worlds. When his patient turns up murdered, Druas is the prime suspect and uses the doors to evade capture. Doesn’t that sound like a good read? I thought so too. The problem is in execution. The book is too short for the plethora of points-of-view Brako uses here, and I found myself constantly pulled out of the thread of the story to adjust to yet another viewpoint. I never really developed sympathy for any of the characters, none of whom is particularly well-developed. The whole thing felt sketched, so I never felt invested.

All in all, a disappointing read, but an amazing premise.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.