Review: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

# 51: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie:

"She's been up to something," he opined, as he took a last hasty drink of coffee. "Depend upon it, she's been up to something."

(That's the quote I'd like as my epitaph).

Synopsis: A jape appears to have gone horribly awry during a countryhouse weekend and a promising, if emptyheaded young man lies dead. But what does that have to do with the mysterious Seven Dials society, and how can Bundle Brent find a way to risk her life finding out?

Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent's main occupations in life are wearing trousers, driving motorcars very very fast and worrying her father. So when the opportunity arises for her to embroil herself in the mysterious death of Gerry Wade, she leaps in headfirst. And then runs down another young man in her fast fast motorcar. Fortunately he'd been shot first, so she comes out ahead there. And then the peril starts.

This was a great read, definitely one of Agatha's finest. It combines witty dialogue, fast-paced action, plot plot plot and more plot. And of course, Bundle Brent. It's a smart mystery combined with a drawing room comedy. The servants are all deferential and all-knowing, all the ladies are clever and determined, and all the young gentlemen are foppish, mildly confused and easily startled. There is a sort of casual misandry that runs throughout the book; Bundle and her female cohorts are basically beset by men who are in no way their equals. Much as I know the right thing to say is gosh how awful, I confess I did enjoy it quite a bit. It made a refreshing change from the rest of Western civilization.

And I did not see the ending coming one bit. At all. There were at least three plot twists that snuck by me like ships in the night, and at the end, I was flabbergasted. Completely flabbergasted. It was glorious.

My only complaint is that the pacing if anything, is too fast, which is an amazing change from pretty much everything I've read in the last 15 years. But at points it is a little hard to keep up with the quick scene changes and leaps of Bundle logic. Then again, what a great problem to have...

Review: Jubal Sackett - Louis L'Amour

So it was that in the last hour of darkness I went down the mountain through the laurel sticks, crossed a small stream, and skirted a meadow to come to the trace I sought.

Nearly one hundred years before De Soto had come this way, his marchings and his cruelties leaving no more mark than the stirring of leaves as he passed. A few old Indians had vague recollections of De Soto, but they merely shrugged at our questions. We who wandered this land knew this was no "new world". The term was merely a conceit in the minds of those who had not known of it before.

When someone says "western" to me, I immediately think of Louis L'Amour. He's an above-average writer in a genre I have to admit I don't know well - but to me, that underlines his appeal.

Louis L'Amour has a consistent style, and Jubal Sackett, like the rest of the Sackett series, is written in first person, and with a depth of understanding of the character which for me makes it an engrossing read.

Jubal Sackett is a young man heading west in the mid 17th century, and the book is a tale of his adventures. I am in no position, from my present day living-room, to comment on the likely authenticity of Jubal's experience, but what I can say is that Louis L'Amour makes me believe each and every one, and read "on the edge of my seat" at times. All of it told in the matter-of-fact, story-telling prose that for me makes L'Amour's writing an endless delight.

Jubal Sackett is a Western, and adventure and a romance, with also a touch of the paranormal. I'm a great fan of all L'Amour's writing; I love the Sackett series best of all; and of all the Sackett books, this one (which is one of L'Amour's 4 longer novels) is my favorite.

If you're a Sackett aficionado, this book would come fourth in the series, but it's not necessary to read all, or even any, of the other Sackett novels to enjoy Jubal Sackett.

It's a perfect bedtime book, a lovely way to spend the long summer evenings :)

Review: Dissolution - Richard Lee Byers

"Obviously, you understand the fundamentals of illithid society," said Syrzan. "You probably also know that we prefer to dine on the brains of lesser sentients and that we share your own race's fondness for torture. Still, some of your folk will fare all right. I can't eat or flay everyone, can I?"

Synopsis: The drow city of Menzoberranzan, deep in the heart of a mountain and safe from the light above has come under threat from a new danger: the demon-goddess Lolth herself. She's abandoned her clergy (distracting them somewhat from their fulltime pursuit of trying to kill each other) and stolen their magic. Weakened by the loss, many of the drow turn on each other, leaving two heroes to try to figure out where all the male drows are running away to...

Ah, the problems inherent in taking over the world.

Okay, I sort of liked this book a ton. The writing is facile and intricate, sentences and paragraphs fit to be moved into at a moment's notice, the plot hanging together well but most of all, the characterization is stunning. It's just so well done. There aren't clean-cut heroes and villains, and the people you want to be heroic turn out to be selfish and murderous because they want to win, because that's how things work in real-life.

It's stunning.

So, this is book 1 of a 6-book arc, but each is written by a different author, so I'm really hoping the other 5 are just as good as this one.

Review: Sleeping with the Fishes - Mary Janice Davidson

Above-average romance involving several heroes and a mermaid named Fred, this first of a new series by Mary Janice Davidson is funny and fast-paced, and opens with one of the most memorable scenes I've run across in awhile. The heroine, Fred (the mermaid) walks in on her mother and stepfather, in flagrante on the sofa, and from there talk turns to her memorable parentage, explaining her uncanny ability to hold her breath underwater...not to mention the fact that water also makes her break out in a tail.

Okay, so you have to do a little suspension of disbelief with this one. Maybe more than with your average Harlequin romance. But this is not such a bad thing. Once you buy into the whole story and just hang on for the ride, it's quite adorable.

Fred gets a job at a local aquarium (hee), and becomes involved in the fight to save it from local developers. It's not entirely clear how she does this, except by making a gorgeous marine biologist fall in love with her, along with the High Prince of the Black Sea (merman), so they'll unite forces and figure out who's poisoning the bay.

Trust me, it's super cute! Fred gets to be strong and sassy and ignore everyone, and she doesn't commit to one dude or the other simply because it would make a pat storyline. She's not that easy to pin down, and she's only known them for a few days apiece.

Cute book! Definite beach reading. ;)

Review: At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie

# 48: At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie:

His eye was caught by a movie theater sign: Walls of Jericho. It seemed an eminently suitable title. It would be interesting to see if Biblical accuracy had been preserved.

He bought himself a seat and stumbled into the darkness. He enjoyed the film, though it seemed to him to have no relationship to the Biblical story whatsoever. Even Joshua seemed to have been left out. The walls of Jericho seemed to be a symbolical way of referring to a certain lady's marriage vows. When they had tumbled down several times, the beautiful star met the dour and uncouth hero whom she had secretly loved all along and between them they proposed to build up the walls in a way that would stand the test of time better. It was not a film destined particularly to appeal to an elderly clergyman; but Canon Pennyfeather enjoyed it very much. It was not the type of film he often saw and he felt it was enlarging his knowledge of life.

Synopsis: Miss Marple begins to notice strange goings-on at Bertram's Hotel, the ultra-posh luxury throwback to a London long-past and very much missed. At the same time, a girl and her mother have the ultimate dysfunctional relationship, a string of robberies plagues the West Midlands and a member of the clergy accidentally sees a porno and goes missing.

There's also a mysterious race car.

Okay, I read this one last when I was 12, and I remember at the time thinking that it was very posh and exciting and all, but this is one that did not, sadly, stand up to a reread. It's an Agatha Christie, true, so there's a base level of quality (for me, ymmv), which consists largely in word-choice and well-written, rhythmic sentence structure, but overall, I was kind of unimpressed by the whole effort. The crimes aren't very interesting, for a start, and Miss Marple's been relegated to the background by the efforts of a PC Plod who turns out to be brilliant and only need her help to make any progress on the case whatsoever. And the resolution was sort of meh.

Overall, it was 250 pages of Dame Agatha banging on about Kids These Days, which is totally her right, but next time I'm rereading Peril at End House.

Unnecessary But Lovely Things for Book People on Etsy

Because I need to spend money on absolutely nothing this month in order to stay on budget, I went over to Etsy and perused for all things bookish. I am a weak, weak woman.

Unnecessary But Lovely Thing 1: Book Pillow



This is kind of clever! I totally wish I'd thought of it first, because it makes a terrible kind of logical "but I bought it because it's useful" sense. I'm not sure how well I could actually put it into practice, though. I'm more of a "lean backwards to read" type of gal. But it's a step in a clever direction.

Unnecessary But Lovely Thing 2: Vintage Pulp Novel Wrist Pouch



No, there is simply no excuse except "I didn't have a purse with a dame on it already". And I love that it just slides around your wrist.

UBLT 3: Recycled Harlequin Romance Journal



Finally! The answer to what to do with that big stack of already-read Harlequins you're never going to touch again! Also, there'd be a strange sort of satisfaction in perverting the paradigm of heteroromance by scribbling your latest m/m story inside....

Okay maybe that last one's just me. 

(Must be good and touch nothing. Touch nothing, buy nothing...)

Review: Indigo Dying - Susan Wittig Albert

# 38: Indigo Dying by Susan Wittig Albert:

Ruby had managed to light the kerosene lamp, and it cast a golden glow around the cabin. She'd alread y taken a shower and was sitting cross-legged on her bed, a henna-haired buddha in a floral-print caftan. There was a book on her lap, the latest Cat Who adventure; a bottle of blue nail polish and shiny nail implements on one side of her; and a box of chocolates on the other. Delicately, so as not to mar her freshly painted blue nails, she screwed the cap back on the polish bottle.

'You know,' she said, 'I could get to like this pioneer life.'

'Some pioneer,' I replied with a laugh. 'I'll bet you wouldn't be wearing that caftan if you had to spin every inch of threat that went into it.

'Oh, absolutely,' Ruby said. 'I'd go naked.' She reached for a chocolate.

Synopsis: Small-town Texas politics and the cosy murder mystery collide.

So there's a big bad bad guy up to environmental badness, and a small town standing up to him, and a fiber-dying workshop, phony legal papers, Harleys, car chases, shotgun booby traps, child abuse, llamas, eavesdropping and kerosene lanterns. Good times.

A seriously above-average cosy mystery set in Texas and written in the first-person present. I adored the protagonist and her crazy best friend, and there was quite a serious amount of placeporn going on, which y'all know floats my wee readerly kayak. I will definitely be reading another in the series.

Review: Bloodroot - Susan Wittig Albert

# 39: Bloodroot by Susan Wittig Albert:

When I was a little girl, Aunt Tullie used to bring me with her when she came to put fresh flowers on the graves. She'd point out the headstones to me, one by one, and we'd say the carved names until I knew them, and the relationships, by heart. She would encourage me to connect the characters in our family stories, to see them, not as individuals, but as part of our clan. It was like reading the Family Record page in the Bible. It was a family history lesson.

But now our family history had a much more ominous significance now that I had learned about Aunt Tullie's illness, and as I thought of this, another shadow seemed to wheel across the evening sky. I shoved my hands into my pockets and stood still, realizing that the secret of her frightful genetic inheritance--and Leatha's and mine, as well--was buried somewhere in this cemetary. Somewhere among these graves was the Coldwell who had sentenced those who came after to a dreadful end. Who was it? Where did Aunt Tullie's dying begin?

Synopsis: When herbalist China Bayles is summoned by her absent, flawed mother to come help cope with her great-aunt's decline in the family's Mississippi plantation house, a ton of dark family secrets come to light and need burying all over again.

If anything, this book was even better than Indigo Dying, seeing how I just sat down and read it cover to cover today instead of getting anything done like I was supposed to. Also, apparently I am just going to read this series entirely backwards. Go me.

Actually, that's not bothering me overmuch so far, because while Albert sprinkled both these novels with references to past events, no spoilers are included (Diane Mott Davidson I am looking right at you), and it just makes the stories more layered and interesting.

So. China Bayles' wayward alcoholic mother demands she drive from Texas to Mississippi right this red hot instant to help with "complications" that have arisen from her great-aunt's slow death from Huntington's Disease. When China arrives, her past basically roundhouse-kicks her in the head, and bodies start popping up, and ugly old secrets start being uncovered, and things get all mystical, and it's a great big party, with the Old South as the guest of honor.

Good book. I continue to enjoy China's voice (hush, you) but I am mesmerized by her control of pacing and the way she makes places live and breathe and crawl off the page and up your arm. It's stunning. I also liked that the book doesn't shy away from dealing with race at all, and everyone gets called on their bullshit. Strong female characters of various colors, who are not all in the mystical Negro role.

It's and interesting picture of a South where there are flaws and family and things that go bump in the night.

You know what they say about this country. Folks die, but they never leave.

Review: D*U*C*K - Poppy Z Brite

# 40: D*U*C*K: a tale of men, birds and one's purpose in life by Poppy Z Brite:

Shake knew his family was coming in for dinner, but he hadn't expected their arrival to be heralded by his father's loud and unmelodious voice singing the jingle that had advertised the family's pest control business since 1953. 'Don't let termites cave your WALL IN! Dial five two two six thousand, DAWLIN!'
A few minutes later the hostess ducked into the kitchen, a haunted look in her eye. 'My God, Shake, your dad--I just asked him where I'd heard your family name before, because it's so unusual, and he started, like, bellowing at me--'

Synopsis: Latest in the Liquorverse saga so far, Rickey and G-man take their kitchen crew to Opelousas to prepare 150 wild ducks for Rickey's childhood hero, Bobby Hebert.

Of course I loved it.

Reread. One of the books I turn to when it's 2am and I'm trying to be virtuous and go to sleep and yet failing badly. I love it because it's like a warm bath, these familiar characters in this familiar world, and this sweet story that's part of Rickey and G-man's history together, this swan song to a pre-Katrina New Orleans. I love Rickey and G-man together, being there for each other, but even more so, this book is all crew, about having people around you to count on. Anything more would spoil it, so I'm going to shut up now.

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