I actually bought this book in November but put off reading it right away so
I could savor it in January when things slow down. And, darn, then I forgot
about it until I rearranged my bookshelf the other day. It was like my
birthday all over again.

I like P.D. James mysteries, a lot. The way she sets up the plot, develops
all the characters and then brings in Dalgliesh to sort thru the mess of the
crime is so elegantly done I find it hard to class her with other mystery
writers. She’s more mainstream in her writing; more literary than genre. And
she does it again in this book.

The DuPayne Museum is a privately held museum on the outskirts of London
dedicated to preserving the social and political event of the years between
WWI and WWII. Of special interest is the room dedicated to the famous
murders and their results of the period called The Murder Room. It’s full of
ghastly photos and exhibits of crimes committed and persons found guilty.

The three trustees are the children of the founder and all must sign the
renewal of the lease on the building for the museum to continue. They don’t
get along and one is refusing to sign. They employ a curator who is a former
government official now writing a book on some esoteric topic concerning the
period, a receptionist/office manager who has the personality of a grumpy
crab and a housekeeper who enjoys her work and especially the home she has
found in the cottage attached to the museum.

And then one night one of the trustees is set on fire, alive, in his car in
exactly the same manner as one of the exhibits of the Murder Room. And all
the folks involved in the murder have motive and possibly opportunity.

The book is one of her better ones, I thought. And considering that she
turned 80 in 2000, I am in awe that she is still able to plot and write with
such manifest skill. But I do think it’s the last Dalgliesh mystery. There
are two many final notes in the book. Too many of the main characters were
old people looking at a graceful exit from the stage. And at the end, when
Dalgliesh throws back his head and laughs his triumph aloud, I was sure
there weren’t going to be any more stories well told about him. Read it and
see if you agree.

Update: I’ve moved The Old Man in the Hat Comes Back to our fiction page; that’s where I’ll be posting all updates.

The beginning of this book was very promising but then it degenerated so
quickly into a knock-off of other authors that I found it irritating. It’s
the story of Pug, the young orphan boy, who is taken as apprentice to the
local magician and finds that although he has no talent for conventional
magic, in high stress situations something just happens and magic flows.
And then there is this weird rift in space/time that is letting really
bad guys from another place thru to plunder Pug’s world and all the good
guys are trying to figure who they are and how to defeat them. Oh, yes,
there are elves and dwarves. The elves live in the woods that are
magically imbued with their essence and the dwarves are miners and metal
workers. And there is a mysterious woodsman
who has dealings with the elves. And there are little dragons, who
thankfully don’t have swirly eyes or I’d have tossed the book across the
room, but who are taken as pets by the wizard. And there is a princess whom
Pug is just really hot for but you know, he has a destiny to fulfill and
can’t really commit right now.

I finished it but it became so obviously dependent on Tolkien and others
that I don’t think I will read the next one in the series. By the end of the
book the plot was so confused and disjointed I just didn’t care anymore. It
might make a good read for the young adult audience and I will probably pass
it along to a 10-year-old I know, but there are too many other good stories
well told to read that don’t rip off other authors. Bah!

We had a big snowstorm this week. I’m unemployed right now, which is not a
bad thing during a huge snowstorm, and I had my housetending chores out of
the way and supper in the crockpot so I settled down with this book and
just read. It’s a good book for a snowy day when you have nowhere to go.

The novel’s setup is fairly simple. An entire county of West Virginia is
mysteriously transported back in time, intact, to Germany in 1632. Power is
shut off, communications are gone and roads end in a clean cut at the
perimeter of the area. Those within the area are left to cope with what
supplies they have and good old American ingenuity. Fortunately, it’s an
area well armed with hunting rifles and hand guns. Fortunate also, they just
happen to be sitting on a viable source of coal with a town full of coal
miners and have the local power plant sent back with them. This is all
fortunate because they landed smack dab in the middle of the Thirty Years
War and the Inquisition among neighbors who live with the plague and believe
in witchcraft.

It’s an interesting premise and what Flint does with recreating the
situation of the Founding Fathers is a tribute to the democracy and the
American Way. And I don’t mean that cynically either. He puts the his
characters in a fantastic situation and then lets them struggle and develop
based on the principles we all talk about but never really have to put into
practical use on a daily basis because the mechanisms and institutions are
established. What would happen if they just went away? The heroes in this
book aren’t the theorists or white collar guys who run things. The heroes
are the working class folks who can get the power back on and deal with the
realities of producing food and heating the houses and defending the town
from the natives until negotiations can be made.

It’s not a staid book either. The culture shock of 20th century meeting 17th
century is funny in parts and full of rollicking derring do in others. I
kept thinking to myself that folks who are anti-hunting and anti-gun would
have a bird reading parts of this book. And my practical side kept wondering
what they are going to do for little things like, oh, toilet paper or
toothpaste or baking powder once the town’s supplies are gone.

Now I have to read the next one, 1633. It’s available on line at the Baen
website so I downloaded the first couple of chapters to see if keeps the same
tempo before heading off to the bookstore with my wallet.

This is not a book I would see on a bookstore shelf and think, gosh that
looks like a good book. Even the blurbs on the back don’t really sound all
that interesting. I read it because my book group decided they wanted to
read it.

Michael Perry writes about returning to live, after 10 years in the wide
world, to his home town of New Auburn, WI, pop. 485. In a community of
loggers and farmers he is a writer and poet, and though a native son he needs
something to help ease himself back into the community. He joins the local
volunteer fire department. Each chapter is an essay on some emergency or
another that he is called out on, often humorously told with himself as the
butt of the joke. The story about working on a guy down in a cow barn wedged
between two cows while he, the first responder, is dressed in bike shorts
and work boots and in direct line with a cow’s business side is sweet and
hilarious. His descriptions of the other guys in the department are so
vivid I bet if I drove up to New Auburn, I could pick them out. And when
they go to the local school to do the Firemen’s Talk, which he calls
“cultural interdiction,” I could just see the kids in the gym sitting on the
floor, absolutely enthralled by the firemen. But essentially it’s a
meditation on community and neighbors and being dependant on the people you
live among. I found it engaging and sweet. I hope he writes more.

A few times a year I’m asked to review somebody’s new book. Most of the
time I say no. If the book isn’t the sort of thing I usually read
there’s no way I can review it fairly or objectively. I suspect many
authors wouldn’t care about my fairness or objectivity provided that I
liked the book–but if it were the sort of book I like it would be the
sort of book I read, if you follow me.

So I’ve established some rules. I only accept book review requests if
it’s the sort of book I might read anyway, and if they are willing to
send me a review copy. Once in a while those conditions are actually
met…and then, of course, I have to read the darn thing, and then review
it. And that’s a problem.

It’s very odd. I’ve been reviewing pretty much everything I read for
over six years. I know when I pick up a book that eventually I’ll be
recording my opinion of it for posterity–or, at any rate, for you folks.
And yet, it’s different when I’ve been asked to review a book. I find I
can’t approach it with an open mind and an open heart and simply try to
enjoy it; instead, I’ve got my critic’s hat on from page 1. And,
absurdly, this just makes it harder for me to know what I think, because
I end up watching the book instead of reading it.

I say all this as fair disclosure–Firedrake, a young adult
fantasy novel, is one of the rare requests that made it through my filters.

So what’s it about?

Shan is a young girl. Since she was a small child she’s been in training
to be a Wolf, one of the elite soldiers who guard the borders of the land or
Perinar. Once, long ago, the common folk loved and honored the Wolves,
for it was the Wolves who kept them safe. Several centuries past,
however, after having saved Perinar from a horrible enemy, a group of
wizards known as the Arkanan took over the rule of the country. They
also discovered a horrible way to live beyond their normal span of years,
and since that time all of their skill and strength has been devoted to
retaining their lives and their rule. The Wolves are their chief tool.

The common folk have a prophecy that the Arkanan will be destroyed by a
blind woman, a madman, and a wizard. Shan isn’t blind, quite, but
everything beyond arm’s length is a blur. Could she be the blind woman
of the prophecy?

In this genre, that’s pretty much a rhetorical question. Of course she
is, and of course the Arkanan are going to be destroyed. The only
question is how. And the answer is, pretty well; it’s an interesting
ride.

So far as the book involves a young person going through a training
regimen and growing into a destiny she only dimly understands, the book
reminds me of something by L.E. Modesitt (and doesn’t that
tar Modesitt with a broad brush!). But there’s also an element of
suspense and claustrophic tension that reminds me of
C.J. Cherryh. And like both of those
authors, Ewan dumps you into Shan’s world with a minimum of
exposition–you have to watch and observe to figure out what’s going on.
This is generally considered to be a good thing.

On the whole, I’d say that I liked it. Once I got started I kept
turning pages until I was done, which was for the better part of a long,
lazy day. The writing is quietly competent, rather than flashy, and
Shan’s world has some neat aspects. At the same time, I’m not
head-over-heels in love with the book.

I’m really quite curious to know how I’d have responded to
Firedrake if I hadn’t been asked to review it. Perhaps
someday I’ll pick it up again and read it just for fun, and then maybe
I’ll find out.

I tend to read about one Hiaasen novel a year. On the one hand, he’s
wickedly funny; on the other hand, he’s wickedly funny, and tends
to exceed the level of sex’n’drugs’n’sleaze I’m comfortable with. And
then, he tends to harp on the subject of over-development and related
government corruption in Florida–a serious problem, no doubt, but one
I’m not especially interested in. So I find that about one a year suits
me fine.

And then in January’s Ex
Libris Craig Clarke reviewed Basket Case. I won’t
describe it; click on the link to read Craig’s review. But it sounded
both intriguing and different than Hiassen’s usual thing, or at least
different than the ones I’d read previously.

And in fact it was a lot of fun. It wasn’t as outrageously over-the-top
as I’ve come to expect, and consequently wasn’t as funny as usual; but
then, there was somewhat less sleaze as well. Taken all-in-all the resulting
book is a pretty good thriller, with memorable characters and a nice
little romance thrown in for good measure. Oh, and over-development only gets
a short paragraph. Who could ask for more?

Yesterday a post containing reviews by Deb English appeared under my name, causing great confusion all over the world–or, at least, from Wisconsin to Shanghai. ‘Twas my fault; I plead confusion, and promise that it will surely happen again someday. In the meantime, the error has been corrected.

These are four more books in the Dalziel/Pascoe series by Hill. After
reading On Beulah Height I just had to find more, it was that good. After
a trip to the two Large Chain Bookstores in my area and a side trip to my
local independent store, I came home with nothing. Zip, zero, nada. It was
exasperating but there is also a mystery bookstore in town; I normally avoid
since a visit there is usually a big hit on the wallet, but I called them and,
joy!, had them set these aside for me.

Will has reviewed them before and given excellent plot summaries so I will
skip that. What struck me reading these so closely together is that
each book had several layers and one of them is always a text–a diary, a story, a manuscript–that either mirrors the plot or is key to the mystery
the detectives are trying to solve. In Arms and the Women, Ellie Pascoe writes a story about Odysseus and Aeneas meeting on the island of Calypso and bases Odysseus on Dalziel and Aeneas on her husband. In The Woods Beyond, Pascoe’s
great-great-grandfather’s WWI war diary provides the subtext. Fascinating.

Another thing that stands out when dashing thru the books one after the
other is the way Hill plays with long words. There were times I literally
had to look things up in the dictionary because he was using adjectives and
nouns I had never seen before. Ever. Dialogues with the Dead has
characters playing a hyped-up version of Scrabble that uses word play and
puns in multiple languages and Hill just goes wild tossing off polysyllabic
mysteries that beg to be checked on.

Plus the mysteries are so well plotted I almost never figured them out ahead of time. And I find Dalziel compelling. He’s a truly gross man, fat,
sweaty, cynical and abrasive, but there is something that makes you unable to
take your eyes away from him and after a bit you find he’s messing around
with your mind.

Now I just have to find more of them. There’s always Amazon, I guess.

I’ve got two books waiting to be reviewed, but frankly, not tonight. It’s pouring down rain, my allergy is acting up, and I’ve got heartburn from the bad pizza at a local pizza parlor we’ve made it a point not to go to for years now except that my son had some gift certificates he wanted to use. I am not feeling the slightest bit creative, just at the moment. Humph.