Review: Biggie and the Fricasseed Fat Man, by Nancy Bell

The day it rained feathers in Job's Crossing, J.R. and Rosebud were gathering pecans in the front yard.

Synopsis: In rural Texas, the tiny but imposing Biggie Weatherford does her best to raise up her grandson, J.R., while keeping a handle on everybody else's business. All the murdered bodies, though, make that a bit challenging.

Texas is all kinds of dangerous, it turns out.

Good book. Not an awesome book, but a good solid mystery. I'd read an earlier one in the series, Biggie and the Poisoned Politician which was a little better, but still, a quick and solid read. Bell's strength is really her characters, and specifically that each book is narrated by ten-year-old J.R. I think it's hard to write really convincing kids, but J.R.'s voice always sounds spot-on.

Technically a culinary mystery, since it includes one recipe in the back, but as with Politician, it was not the recipe I'd been hoping for.

Review: Wicked Gentlemen, by Ginn Hale

The night hung in tatters. Gas streetlamps chewed at the darkness. Candles cast dull halos through the dirty windows of the tenements across the street. Heavy purple clouds pumped up from smoke stacks and patterned the sky like ugly patches on a black velvet curtain. A few fireflies blinked from what corners of black velvet curtain. A few fireflies blinked from what corners of blackness remained.

A pair of them invaded the darkness of my rooms. I watched them flicker, darting through their insectile courtship. They swooped past my face, circled, and then alighted inside the fold of my shirtsleeve.

They crept close to on another, brilliant desire flashing through their tiny bodies. Their antennae touched and quivered. The female firefly reached out and stroked the male. He rushed into her embrace. Holding him close, she crushed her powerful mandibles through his head. Their flickering bodies blinked in perfect unison as she devoured him.

Some romances end more badly than others.

Synopsis: Gothic fairytale meets steampunk murder-mystery.

So good. Sooooooo good. About 100 pages in, I realized that this was the book I've been trying to write for the past year and a half. I can hang up my keyboard and move on. It's just so....lovely. The book has two protagonists, one from the dark side and one out to prosecute his kind, and Hale makes both of them incredibly compelling and sympathetic and I would cheerfully sell my soul for more of their story. The world-building--sort of 18th century London or Boston steampunk with a unique class system--is intense, and goes light on the supernatural, which worked for me.

Okay, there was one moment where Belimai Sykes is described as walking into a stiff breeze, stiff enough to make his scarf billow out behind him all Romantic-like while puffing cigarette smoke enough to form a cloud in front of him. Yeah no.

Totally made up for by the fact that the romance is both incredibly poignant and believable and so so hot.

This will definitely be a re-read, and has knocked Scales of Justice off of my list of favorite novels

I genuinely can't say more about this book without ruining several surprises, but really. You should read it.

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.

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.