Book Notes: Louise Penny *Love*

Louise Penny is another mystery novelist that I've discovered this past year and loved loved loved.

She's Canadian too, which makes her pretty darn cool. AND, her books are set in small town Quebec, which is doubly cool.

I'd seen her name around the shelves, thought 'I should probably read her someday', but got my push to actually do it when I read about her on the CBC website. I really enjoyed the first and read the rest of the series in such rapid succession that I'm sure Eric wondered when he'd get his wife back.

Of course, once you've finished all the published works, you have to WAIT forever for new ones! Her latest, The Beautiful Mystery, comes out in August...and I'm super excited.

I love learning about Franco/Anglo relationships and history, and about her perspective on light and darkness in humanity. I love the way she describes food - everything centres around food - crisp baguette with soft cheese is almost its own character in the books. If you're not hungry when you start, you will be partway through your read.

I also loved her detective. It's very important to hang your mystery on a detective that people like and can relate to. Her Chief Inspector Gamache is a kind, warm, grave person. Not flashy, but with real depth. He listens to people, sees people, and gets to the heart of the mystery that way.

I dropped out of took a "Detective In Film and Fiction" English course at CMU some time ago. The prof was very interested in how death was portrayed in the books we read. The "cozies" - Agatha Christie being a prime example - were almost entirely bloodless. There wasn't much grief or horror at finding a body, it was just a plot point - the introduction or start of the puzzle to follow.

These books are different. There is death, there is evil. They are very serious. We see their ramifications playing out over many books. There is also light, love, and hope. Looking forward to August, and wishing every success to this very admirable Canadian author.

Book Notes: My New Obsession with Lee Child

I do love a good thriller/mystery/intrigue. I was raised on Sherlock Holmes (We had the complete set - a book so huge you can't hold it up to read. Laying it flat is the only way), Agatha Christie (Poirot only, please), Tom Clancy, Dick Francis, and probably others I'm forgetting.

But this genre is akin to fantasy in that there's a lot of badly written stuff out there. I should know - I did spend all of high school devouring any fantasy that I could get with little discrimination. I've since become a bit more selective. I'll read it if it looks interesting, but if it sucks, I won't read the rest of the series (because in fantasy-land, it's almost always a series).

With the thriller/mystery genre I tend to do the same. Find an author I like, become a crazy person and rip through all the books they've ever written, and then wish that there was more once I'm done.

I first took Lee Child seriously when Macleans did a write up because they're planning a movie based on the books. I'd seen his name amongst the stacks of course, but dismissed him as yet another over-hyped serially-pumping-out-the-crappy-books author. Like (Which is such hypocrisy because there are authors I love that do exactly that, but I love them anyway.)

I decided to give him a shot, and I'm so hooked. So hooked. I've read the first three of the series, and have two more sitting waiting for me (I've promised myself to read the 14 other books that are due earlier before I dive into them)...

Jack Reacher - the main character - is just so cool. Do I like improbable dangerous-but-caring alpha males? It seems I do.

He's like a modern day, military, less-smooth Bond. He's a former Military Police officer who's quit the army, and is now wandering around the States, getting to know the country he's from but has never spent significant time in (an army brat, he grew up on various bases around the world). With no family and no commitments, he's free to roam as he pleases.

I guess the part that strains credulity (other than his exceptional fitness, reaction time, and his clinical detachment that lets him analyse a fight as he's in the midst of it) is that wherever he roams, he stumbles into a mysterious and dangerous situation. And there's always a beautiful woman.

It may be a sad, tired cliche, but I don't care. I love it. I love the writing, I love his voice, I love his perspective, I love being inside his head (some of the books are written in first person - a perspective I don't usually love).

There's a compelling immediacy to his writing - he's one of the few authors where it's sometimes just too intense, like - OH MY GOODNESS WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN??!! I get this with mildly suspenseful movies all the time, but rarely with books.

Can't wait to finish my other more "worthwhile" "literature" and jump into this pure pleasure read again!

Book notes: Period mysteries

I am not the world's biggest fan of historical fiction.

Maybe that's a huge generalization. But none of the ones I've read have had any pull for me. I've enjoyed novels written in the 19th century, so why don't I enjoy current novels set in the same periods?

One of the worst was when I tried to read Diana Gabaldon - not only an historical piece, but  also involved time travel of all things. What is it with romance-y type writers and their fascination with the old Scots or Irish? I'm sure they weren't actually that appealing. So this nurse, happily married, is holidaying in Scotland and goes for a walk that takes her too near some magical place and she gets sucked into Scotland of old and ends up forced into a marriage there and she affects history and a bunch of nonsense like that. And her medical knowledge is far beyond anyone else at the time, so she's kind of a miracle worker. And the sex she has with her new husband is way better than what she had with her actual husband in the actual world. So that means that it must be true love and she should stay in the past forever with her new lusty, smelly Scottish husband. That's the sum total of my memory of the first book. 

It was nonsense. I didn't like it. I didn't read the sequels (I say sequels for I believe there were several).

But now I'm sidetracked. Back to my recent mysteries.

2 historically set mystery novels - okay for historical fiction but will not be pursuing any more by these authors:

Bloodstone by Paul Doherty - A medieval friar with a penchant for puzzles is brought in to solve a series of murders involving a monastery and a cursed gem. Some of the details of daily life at the time were interesting, and it seemed well researched. Slow moving and I realized I didn't even care when the (not-so) big reveal came. Not a good sign.

The Constant Lovers by Chris Nickson - Better than Bloodstone - set later, I believe (history is not so much my strong suit - perhaps why I'm no fan of these books), a Sheriff (of Nottingham, no less) and his men solve a murder. The sheriff was likeable and I liked his relationships with his men and his family. And their relationship with the criminal element of the city - an interesting, shifting uneasy peace between the known criminals and the law enforcement. The solving dragged out a bit and seemed to involve a lot of walking around the countryside fruitlessly. There was a 'twist', but since we only had 2 suspects, it could be seen a long way out, so a little anti-climactic.