The Brutal Telling

by Louise Penny

I wish I could describe my thoughts and feelings about Louise Penny's books.  Everything I come up with sounds so superlative - over the top and unbelievable, but that is really how I feel.  Those of you who have read them know what I'm talking about and those who haven't read them are greatly missing out.

Penny's  writing transports us to the village of Three Pines just south of Montreal and to the wonderful, kooky, flawed, generous characters who live there.  I feel like I could almost dissolve into the book and be there myself, surrounded by good friends.  Of course, I'd be hoping for a murder so Inspector Gamache would have to join the group. 

"He smiled and not for the first time she thought the rarest thing she'd ever found was Chief Inspector Gamache."

The Brutal Telling is the 5th in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series.  It's a series that starts out strong and just gets better with each book.   In this one a murdered body is found in Olivier's bistro - a body that no one in the village can identify!  Gamache and his team are called to to strip back layers of lies and catch an unlikely killer.

There are many facets of meaning to every one of Penny's books.  The plot itself is immensely spellbinding as is Penny's ability to grasp the intricacies of human nature.  I love the way she will use a motif several times throughout her books and apply it to different circumstances or turn it in a new light to add greater meaning and depth.  I've often thought that if these books were not mysteries she would have a greater audience and be among the best selling fiction authors.  Many who shrug off mysteries as unfit literary fare would be surprised and pleased with the graceful, eloquent writing.

I'm anxiously looking forward to the next in the series which will be out the end of Sep.  I may have to fight my husband for it because he loves the books as much as I do.  And then there's my mother - but I think we can grab and run with it faster than she can!

A few of my favorite passages.  I like to reread the passages I've book darted and when I do the story comes back to life for me.  I'm only going to add two of the many that I marked.  You are welcome to read these, if you'd like, but I include them mostly for my benefit.

What a tale those eyes told Gamache.  In them he saw the infant, the boy, the young man, afraid.  Never certain what he would find in his father.  Would he be loving and kind and warm today?  Or would he sizzle the skin off his son?  With a look, a word.  Leaving the boy naked and ashamed.  Knowing himself to be weak and needy, stupid and selfish.  So that the boy grew an outer hull to withstand the assault.  But while those skins saved tender young souls, Gamache knew, they soon stopped protecting and became the problem.  Because while the hard outer shell kept the hurt at bay, it also kept out the light.  And inside the frightened little soul became something else entirely, nurtured only in darkness.

He was like Pinocchio.  A man made of wood, mimicking humanity.  Shiny and smiling and fake.  And if you cut into him you'd see rings.  Circles of deceit and scheming and justification.

A Rule Against Murder

by Louise Penny

I just can't give enough praise for the Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series and for Louise Penny's writing.  I love them.  While reading this series I feel like I gently slip deeper and more comfortably into the coziest of overstuffed chairs.  It's a feeling that I cherish and am most grateful for.

This, the fourth in the series, is set in an old, log lodge set on a beautiful lake, surrounded with beautiful forest and just a short drive from the village of Three Pines.  Gamache and his wife are celebrating their anniversary with a week stay at the lodge.  At the same time there is a family reunion taking place.  Of course, a murder takes place and Gamache is the one who looks into the past to discover who has been harboring a wound that has grown into the act of murder.

 Penny keeps me totally wrapped up in the story, the mystery of who the murderer was and why and how it was committed.  But she also thrills me with her turn of a phrase and the way she uses words to paint a a feeling, an atmosphere, a lesson, a character, etc.

I liked this description of the lodge:
That was the other ingredient of the Manoir.  It was filled with suspects, it was filled with Morrows, huffling and silent.  But more than that, it was filled with relief.  It was like a sigh, with structure.

In the story the father had left each of his children a short note with advise on it. 
You can't get milk from a hardware store.  It was a funny sort of thing for a father to tell a daughter.  But by then she'd broken the code, and knew what her father had been trying tell her.  Stop asking for something that can't be given.  And look for what is offered.

Advice given by Gamache to his friend and also, a suspect:
Be careful.  You're making hurting a habit.  Spreading it around won't lessen your pain, you know.  Just the opposite.

I feel most blessed that Louise Penny has such a marvelous talent and that she decided to share that talent with me.  I'm not a writer, have no desire to be but I'm grateful for those who are.  Penny is one of my absolute favorites.

The 5th Horseman

by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

I've enjoyed listening to this series while I do none thinking tasks on the computer - like scanning my mother's pictures, playing solitaire, and, well those type of things.

I like the characters and their friendship and the way they offer feedback and support to each other.  And I love mysteries.

It's been several weeks ago since I finished this and I don't remember many details, but I do remember enjoying it.

Against Odds

by Dick Francis

A few weeks ago my high-school best friend called me from her home in Alberta, Canada.  We chatted for some time when the conversation turned to books.  She asked for some authors and books I really like.  I go blank when people ask me point blank for anything and I did then as well.  So I told her I'd email her a list, which I did and let me tell you it was not all that short!  She may regret asking me, but in return I asked for a list of her favorite authors and books.  I don't regret asking.

One author she recommended was Dick Francis.  I remember reading two or three of his books 20 or 30 years ago and liking them but I lost track of him.  I did a little internet research and discovered that 4 of his books feature an ex-jockey turned private detective, Sid Halley.  So I mooched those and started the first, Odds Against.

Sid Halley, an injured jockey, becomes a private eye and carries out some work for his father-in-law, who believes a man is trying to financially ruin Seabury racecourse, so that it can be sold to property developers. Sid and his father-in-law have a laughable relationship, though at the same time it is warm and endearing.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing, the characters and the mystery.  I'm anxiously looking forward to reading the next book featuring Halley, Whip Hand.  And then I'll be reading some of the stand-alones.  A big thanks to Diane for this recommendation.

I found this interesting write-up about Dick Francis on alibris.

Dick Francis was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys. The winner of over 350 races, he was champion jockey in 1953/1954 and rode for HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, most famously on Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National. On his retirement from the saddle, he published his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, before going on to write forty-three bestselling novels, a volume of short stories (Field of 13), and the biography of Lester Piggott. 

During his lifetime Dick Francis received many awards, amongst them the prestigious Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the genre, and three 'best-novel' Edgar Allen Poe awards from The Mystery Writers of America. In 1996 he was named by them as Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement. In 1998, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of 2000. Dick Francis died in February, 2010, at the age of 89, but he remains one of the greatest thriller writers of all time.

Think Twice

by Lisa Scottoline

You all know I love mysteries and I love Lisa Scottoline so when I stopped at the library to get some books for my mother and saw this on the new shelf -- well, you know!  To my credit I did finish the book I was reading before starting Think Twice.

In Think Twice we get to catch up with the fabulous characters that make up the all female Rosato & Associates Legal Firm.  Bennie Rosato's twin sister shows up again and causes untold problems for Bennie.  

The format reminded me of a Mary Higgins Clark novel - chapters switching between characters and action of the story.  Chapters shuffled between Bennie, her twin sister Alice and Mary DiNunzio until all 3 characters come together for the final chapters of the book.

The pacing is fast and I zipped through this book in a hurry.  Had to get answers and find out if Alice was going to totally fool Bennie's boyfriend.  

I love Scottoline's stand-alones but it's always fun to come back to this series.  What Scottoline needs to do is write one stand-alone and one Rosato book every year - or more often, I won't complain!

The Cruelest Month

by Louise Penny

I've read some really good books this year but this is the only one I wanted to read straight through the night. I usually don't have a problem putting a book down when I'm ready for bed reassuring myself that it will be there for me tomorrow and that I will have longer to savor it. That rational usually works, but not this time. I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen to Inspector Gamache.

There are three story lines in this book. The first is the mystery itself - Who killed the victim? Why? How? The second is who is trying to bring down the Inspector and why? The reader finds out the who and the why fairly early on but not how it would end. The third was a small subplot concerning a married couple, both artists, both people I've like in previous books but one is trying to undermine the other.

The Cruelest Month is the third in the Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series. The setting is a picturesque, small community south of Montreal. The characters are quirky, human and very likable. Even Ruth, the angry poet.

I really like Inspector Gamache. He likes to read, he loves his wife and two grown children, he's kind and he's good at his job. I love this description of him (it's also a good description of Clara):
"She often felt foolish, ill constructed, next to others. Beside Gamache she only ever felt whole." That's how I think I would feel next to him. Obviously, not everyone feels that way or someone wouldn't be plotting to ruin his career.

I suppose this series would fit into the cozy mystery genre but there is so much more depth and meaning to be thrown in with some of the lightweights of this genre.

What I did not like: There's only one thing - the use of the F word. Way too much. It was like Penny had just learned that word and wanted to use it a lot or maybe her publisher said her books would sell better if she sprinkled them liberally with foul language. Actually, no other foul language except that one word. I know not everyone cares about the language and I can usually skip over some, but this was too much. I hope it doesn't continue into the next books. I was recommending this series to my husband and mention this problem to him. His response - "That cinches it. I won't be reading it. There are too many really good books to have to put up with stuff like that." Darn, I really wanted to discuss this series with him.

Will I be reading the next two? Yes. Definitely!

Johhny and the Dead

by Terry Pratchett

I liked this second book in the series better than the first, Only You Can Save Mankind. The characters are quirky, interesting and most of them are dead. Pratchett's humor is always wonderful and usually insightful.

I liked this passage:

It occurred to Johnny again that the human mind, of which each of his friends was in possession of one almost standard sample, was like a compass. No matter how much you shook it up, no matter what happened to it, sooner or later it would end up pointing the same way.

If you are trying to encourage a young reader I think this book would be great. And I would go with this one rather than the first, it really doesn't need to be read in order. The suggested reading level is ages 9-12, but I think it can be appreciated by much older readers, too.

Hour Game

by David Baldacci

I discovered in the first couple of chapters that this book is part of a series, but I continued to read and I don't think it took anything away from the story not to have started with the first book. I did get online and mooched Split Second so I could get in on the beginning.

Former Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have teamed up to form a investigative agency in a quiet community in central Virginia. They are called in to help investigate a series of murders, each one different but each a copy of an earlier famous serial murder.

This is just the type of book I love - a relatively intense whodunit. If I'm correct these are the other books in the series and in the correct order:
*Split Second
*Hour Game
*Simple Genius
*First Family

Anne of Avonlea

by L.M. Montgomery

What a delightful book. I was a bit worried that after Anne finished school (in Anne of Green Gables) the series would loose some of its magic. Not so. Although I missed Matthew, the addition of the twins was fun. Davy is definitely a kindred spirit for Anne.

I used lots of bookdarts in this book. I'll probably use a dozen more when I reread it. Here are some of the ones I marked:

"We make our own lives wherever we are, after all. They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out." --Mrs. Allan

"I wish you could think first and do things afterwards, 'cause then you wouldn't do them." --Davy

"I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string." --Anne

"That is one good thing about this world . . . there are always sure to be more springs." --Anne

Charlotta the Fourth admired Anne wholeheartedly. It was not that she though her so very handsom. Diana Barry's beauty of crimson cheek and black curls was much more to Charlotta the Fourth's taste than moonshine charm of luminous gray eyes and the pale, ever changing roses of her cheeks.
"But I'd rather look like you than be pretty," she told Anne sincerely.
Anne laughed, sipped the honey from the tribute and cast away the sting. She was used to taking her compliments mixed. . . . Anne herself would never believe that she had any claim to beauty. When she looked in the glass all she saw was a little pale face with seven freckles on the nose thereof. Her mirror never revealed to her the elusive, ever-varying play of feeling that came and went over her features like a rosy illuminating flame, or the charm of dream and laughter alternating in her big eyes.

"Now where is the romance in all that?" asked Marilla.
"Oh, there isn't any, when you put it that way," gasped Anne, rather as if somebody had thrown cold water over her. "I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry . . . and I think it's nicer."
Marilla glanced at the radiant young face and refrained from further sarcastic comments. Perhaps some realization came to her that after all it was better to have, like Anne, "the vision and the faculty divine" . . . that gift which the world cannot bestow or take away, of looking at life through some transfiguring . . . or revealing? . . . medium, whereby everything seemed appareled in celestial light, wearing a glory and a freshness not visible to those who, like herself and Charlotta the Fourth, looked at things only through prose.

Anne of Avonlea was published in 1909 - the year my grandmother would have turned ten, almost 100 years ago! It's story is still as fresh and mood-altering today.

A big THANK-YOU to Raidergirl3 who presented me with my copy of Anne of Avonlea when we visited last summer in the PEI. Every I picked up or laid the book down I would be flooded by those memories in the Pub, our good visit, and the bagpipes marching by. Delightful evening!

Bones to Pick

by Carolyn Haines

Amazon Book Description
"Wickedly witty and full of more dirt than a debutante's diary, the mysteries of Carolyn Haines bring the southern Delta to roaring, rollicking life...
Intrepid P.I. Sarah Booth Delaney has been known to single-handedly save her family's Mississippi plantation, converse with Dahlia House's ghost, and capture a killer or two. But when a local girl is found dead in a cotton field, it's enough to make a lady toss back a Bloody Mary before noon on Sunday.

Someone held twenty-three-year-old Quentin McGee's face down in the rich Southern soil until she suffocated. The lawmen think Quentin's lover killed her. When the suspect's brother hires Sarah to prove his sibling innocent, Sarah quickly learns that the victim had plenty of wealthy, powerful enemies. Each had a bone to pick with Quentin for writing a scandalous exposé on her hometown. Adding spice to the gumbo is the news that Quentin was due to inherit the family fortune the day after she was killed...and that a second book was in the works. From illicit lovers and outraged families to slandered aristocrats, everyone is a suspect--and no one is safe..."

This is book #6 in the Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series. I liked it a lot and plan to read more. I've mooched the first 3 in the series. I like the covers of the earlier books better than the later covers, but, oh well.

Cross Bones

by Kathy Reichs

I read this for the Themed Reading Challenge. My theme is books with the word bone in the title. So far I've read two by Kathy Reichs, both in the Temperance Brennan mystery series. Earlier I read Bare Bones - #6 in the series. Cross Bones is #8. I don't feel like it's mattered that I didn't start with the first book.

Since reading Bare Bones I've watched the first season of the TV series, Bones, which is based on the books. They are enjoyable.

The books are based on Reichs real experiences as a forensic anthropologist. In Cross Bones Temperance is called upon to help in a murder investigation of an antiquities dealer. The death may have something to do with some bones that may be from a family grave site at Masada.