U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton
Latest Kinsey Millhone mystery
Happy New Year - I finished up 2009 with a great book!
Still in 1988, but with flashbacks to 1967. Kinsey's latest case involves Michael Sutton, who claims that he recently recalled an event that occurred when he was just six years old. In July of 1967, four-year-old Mary Claire Fitzhugh was abducted from her home in Horton Ravine, California. Although her parents agreed to pay the ransom demanded by Mary Claire's kidnappers, the money was not picked up and the child was never seen again. Sutton remembers playing in the woods when he saw two men digging a hole and burying a bundle in the ground, and he cannot help but wonder if the pair was burying the corpse of little Mary Claire. Michael hires Kinsey to reconstruct the past and find out if his memories are accurate.
While this seems like a straight forward case Kinsey quickly finds siblings of Michael coming forth to disspell his memories. In his teens he claimed he was molested by his father and siblings which caused a huge rift in the family and years later feelings are still running hot. After his parents death he recanted saying it was placed memories under hypnosis. So Kinsey starts to doubt him and wonders if it is worth her time. But she is having problems of her own as her newly discovered family is not pulling any punches in trying to get her to come to them.
It is an interesting match between the flashbacks that at first you wonder how are connected to the story and to the final chapter that left me gasping as I frantically turned the pages to see how it would end. I think this is one Grafton's best yet and I really love seeing her stories get stronger and more complicated. It's hard to believe that there are only a few letters left. I might have to re-read the entire series again.
My goal was to read more books this year than any other and I did it! My record was 76 books read in 2006 and in 2009 I hit 86! Maybe someday I'll hit a 100 but I have a ways to go.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas!
Cold Christmas by Charlene Weir
Set in Hampstead, Kansas, Police Chief Susan Wren has a lot on her plate as Christmas approaches. Half of the town's police force is out with the flu, and a series of burglaries is confounding those still standing. Meanwhile, Wren is nervous about her long-overdue trip home to San Francisco, where her cantankerous parents await, along with her old boss, determined to hire her back.
Christmas spirit is nowhere to be found at the home of Caley James. She had caught the flu, the house is falling apart, her ex was no help at all, her three kids were living in front of the television eating cold cereal, and then the furnace decided to die. Life had definitely hit rock bottom, and just when she figures things couldn't get worse, her four year old daughter finds the furnace repairman, Tim Holiday, dead and badly burned in the basement. Police Chief, Susan Wren, takes on this case herself, but immediately hits a brick wall. Nothing about this murder makes sense. Who was Tim Holiday, and why did he seem to be trying to keep his identity a secret? Though everyone claims theyv'e never seen him before, someone wanted him dead. Plus they quickly discover that Holiday isn't who they thought he was. Add to that, two more possibly related murders, and Chief Wren has her hands full with a whole town full of suspects and too many unanswered questions.
I picked this up as a Christmas holiday read and found myself really enjoying this book. Now that I know that it's a series I want to go back and read some of the previous books to get a better idea of the main characters.
Cold Christmas by Charlene Weir
Set in Hampstead, Kansas, Police Chief Susan Wren has a lot on her plate as Christmas approaches. Half of the town's police force is out with the flu, and a series of burglaries is confounding those still standing. Meanwhile, Wren is nervous about her long-overdue trip home to San Francisco, where her cantankerous parents await, along with her old boss, determined to hire her back.
Christmas spirit is nowhere to be found at the home of Caley James. She had caught the flu, the house is falling apart, her ex was no help at all, her three kids were living in front of the television eating cold cereal, and then the furnace decided to die. Life had definitely hit rock bottom, and just when she figures things couldn't get worse, her four year old daughter finds the furnace repairman, Tim Holiday, dead and badly burned in the basement. Police Chief, Susan Wren, takes on this case herself, but immediately hits a brick wall. Nothing about this murder makes sense. Who was Tim Holiday, and why did he seem to be trying to keep his identity a secret? Though everyone claims theyv'e never seen him before, someone wanted him dead. Plus they quickly discover that Holiday isn't who they thought he was. Add to that, two more possibly related murders, and Chief Wren has her hands full with a whole town full of suspects and too many unanswered questions.
I picked this up as a Christmas holiday read and found myself really enjoying this book. Now that I know that it's a series I want to go back and read some of the previous books to get a better idea of the main characters.
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Kind of cross between Harry Potter meets the Chronicals of Narnia. Or imagine if Harry Potter goes to college without the boarding school. Quentin believes in magic, he re-reads the Fillory books over and over and practices magic tricks in his spare time. But where will his hobby take him? It hasn't helped him get the girl or be popular. Quentin is on his way to a college interview when he discovers the interviewee deseased. After he calls 911 he is given a letter from the paramedic and finds himself pulled into a magical world and examination. After he passes he is informed he has been selected to attend a Brakebills a secret magician university that only accepts 20 students a year.
About half the book focuses on his 4 years at Brakebills and the friendships he developes. Quentin and his parents are distant and neither seems to miss the others so visits home become shorter and fewer. During one of his last visits home he meets up with his highschool crush who has radically changed into a crazy goth girl and somehow knows that Brakebill is a magic school. It just re-enforces his belief that he is no longer a part of the normal world. After a grueling semester in the South pole where Quentin transforms into the magician he hopes to become he settles in NYC with the gang from Brakebills and life just becomes one big party. Days seem to blend together with nothing ever changing and Quentin becomes to feel despair at his choices and wondering what purpose his life has. He then makes a choice, one that he will regret for the rest of his life that changes everything.
A former classmate from Brakebills, Penny, has hunted them down in NYC and brought a magic button that will take them to the neverworld and then to Fillory. So a quest has been thrown and they all go without thinking about the consequences or cost. The rest of the book is in Fillory and becomes a graphic battle of kill or be killed and Quentin must decide if the cost is worth it.
I enjoyed the majority of the book but did find myself wanting to shake the narrator, Quentin, as seems to whine and dwell on the negative. But I did find the story interesting and enjoyed remembering parts that reminded me of the Chronicles of Narnia. I listened to it on CD and did find that I had to skip some of the more graphic parts.
Kind of cross between Harry Potter meets the Chronicals of Narnia. Or imagine if Harry Potter goes to college without the boarding school. Quentin believes in magic, he re-reads the Fillory books over and over and practices magic tricks in his spare time. But where will his hobby take him? It hasn't helped him get the girl or be popular. Quentin is on his way to a college interview when he discovers the interviewee deseased. After he calls 911 he is given a letter from the paramedic and finds himself pulled into a magical world and examination. After he passes he is informed he has been selected to attend a Brakebills a secret magician university that only accepts 20 students a year.
About half the book focuses on his 4 years at Brakebills and the friendships he developes. Quentin and his parents are distant and neither seems to miss the others so visits home become shorter and fewer. During one of his last visits home he meets up with his highschool crush who has radically changed into a crazy goth girl and somehow knows that Brakebill is a magic school. It just re-enforces his belief that he is no longer a part of the normal world. After a grueling semester in the South pole where Quentin transforms into the magician he hopes to become he settles in NYC with the gang from Brakebills and life just becomes one big party. Days seem to blend together with nothing ever changing and Quentin becomes to feel despair at his choices and wondering what purpose his life has. He then makes a choice, one that he will regret for the rest of his life that changes everything.
A former classmate from Brakebills, Penny, has hunted them down in NYC and brought a magic button that will take them to the neverworld and then to Fillory. So a quest has been thrown and they all go without thinking about the consequences or cost. The rest of the book is in Fillory and becomes a graphic battle of kill or be killed and Quentin must decide if the cost is worth it.
I enjoyed the majority of the book but did find myself wanting to shake the narrator, Quentin, as seems to whine and dwell on the negative. But I did find the story interesting and enjoyed remembering parts that reminded me of the Chronicles of Narnia. I listened to it on CD and did find that I had to skip some of the more graphic parts.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Gate at the Top of the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Set just after 9/11, Tassie Keltjin, 20, a smalltown Iowa girl weathering a clumsy college year and finds a job as a nanny by brittle Sarah Brink, the proprietor of a pricey restaurant who is desperate to adopt a baby despite her dodgy past. Subsequent adventures in prospective motherhood involve a pregnant girl with scarcely a tooth in her head and a white birth mother abandoned by her African-American boyfriend—both encounters expose class and racial prejudice to an increasingly less naïve Tassie.
I tried to read this and about half-way through just didn't care about finishing it. It was due back to the library so just returned it. It just felt like it was going nowhere and while some of the observations were funny it wasn't enough to engage me.
Set just after 9/11, Tassie Keltjin, 20, a smalltown Iowa girl weathering a clumsy college year and finds a job as a nanny by brittle Sarah Brink, the proprietor of a pricey restaurant who is desperate to adopt a baby despite her dodgy past. Subsequent adventures in prospective motherhood involve a pregnant girl with scarcely a tooth in her head and a white birth mother abandoned by her African-American boyfriend—both encounters expose class and racial prejudice to an increasingly less naïve Tassie.
I tried to read this and about half-way through just didn't care about finishing it. It was due back to the library so just returned it. It just felt like it was going nowhere and while some of the observations were funny it wasn't enough to engage me.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry
A Mystery graphic novel set in gloomy 1940s London, PI Fernández Britten is known as the Heartbreaker. He's the one who follows cheating spouses and delivers news that ruins marriages. He's so tired of the life that he states dramatically that he won't get up for anything less than a murder. But when Charlotte Maughton, the daughter of children's publishing magnate Maurice Maughton, hires him to look into the alleged suicide of her fiancé, Berni Kudos, Britten glumly takes the case.
With his trusty sidekick and confident, Stewart Brulightly—who just happens to be a teabag (Brulightly provides the comedic layer needed to prevent the story from bogging down with the gloom) —Britten begins sniffing around Kudos's job at Maughton Publishing, keeping in mind Charlotte's suspicion that her fiancé's death could be tied to a blackmailing scheme aimed at her powerful father. The deeper Britten digs, the more mired he becomes in a pit of long-festering family secrets. For a man who's made his living telling the truth, Britten begins to realize that there are some instances when it's best to stay quiet.
On the surface this appears to be a gloomy graphic novel but then the subtle nuances come to light. It is illustrated with dark washes of sepia, blue and grey that give backdrop to the gloom and disappointment and sadness that sets the stage for the story. It's a bit refreshing to read a story that you just know is not going to end well but doesn't wallow in the muck plus the mystery is not apparent on who done it and was a surprise even to the end. Not a GN to read lightly.
A Mystery graphic novel set in gloomy 1940s London, PI Fernández Britten is known as the Heartbreaker. He's the one who follows cheating spouses and delivers news that ruins marriages. He's so tired of the life that he states dramatically that he won't get up for anything less than a murder. But when Charlotte Maughton, the daughter of children's publishing magnate Maurice Maughton, hires him to look into the alleged suicide of her fiancé, Berni Kudos, Britten glumly takes the case.
With his trusty sidekick and confident, Stewart Brulightly—who just happens to be a teabag (Brulightly provides the comedic layer needed to prevent the story from bogging down with the gloom) —Britten begins sniffing around Kudos's job at Maughton Publishing, keeping in mind Charlotte's suspicion that her fiancé's death could be tied to a blackmailing scheme aimed at her powerful father. The deeper Britten digs, the more mired he becomes in a pit of long-festering family secrets. For a man who's made his living telling the truth, Britten begins to realize that there are some instances when it's best to stay quiet.
On the surface this appears to be a gloomy graphic novel but then the subtle nuances come to light. It is illustrated with dark washes of sepia, blue and grey that give backdrop to the gloom and disappointment and sadness that sets the stage for the story. It's a bit refreshing to read a story that you just know is not going to end well but doesn't wallow in the muck plus the mystery is not apparent on who done it and was a surprise even to the end. Not a GN to read lightly.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment
The book features one long weekend in the life of Ruth and Alex Cohen, an elderly New York couple hoping to sell their East Village apartment of 45 years. Ruth is a retired teacher and Chekhov devotee, and Alex is an artist, currently adding colorful illuminations to the couples' old FBI files. As they ready for an open house, a gas tanker truck gets stuck in the Midtown tunnel, seizing the city with gridlock and fear of a terrorist attack.
Meanwhile, the Cohens' beloved dachshund, Dorothy, falls ill and has to be taken to an uptown animal hospital. Since no cabs are running part of the story is them trying to get her to the vet and then trying to get back to visit her. As the real estate market swings in response to the news about the tanker, the Cohens wait for news about their dog and confront the reality of leaving their home.
I picked up this book because it caught my eye as it has an outline of a dachshund on the cover. It is short book, less than 200 pages, but I found myself slowing down to read it almost relishing the story. It isn't a complicated tale yet a lot is happening. We see the story from the couples point of view but some of the most interesting part of the story comes from Dorothy, the couples little dachshund who spends most of the story at the vet recovering from a back operation.
The book features one long weekend in the life of Ruth and Alex Cohen, an elderly New York couple hoping to sell their East Village apartment of 45 years. Ruth is a retired teacher and Chekhov devotee, and Alex is an artist, currently adding colorful illuminations to the couples' old FBI files. As they ready for an open house, a gas tanker truck gets stuck in the Midtown tunnel, seizing the city with gridlock and fear of a terrorist attack.
Meanwhile, the Cohens' beloved dachshund, Dorothy, falls ill and has to be taken to an uptown animal hospital. Since no cabs are running part of the story is them trying to get her to the vet and then trying to get back to visit her. As the real estate market swings in response to the news about the tanker, the Cohens wait for news about their dog and confront the reality of leaving their home.
I picked up this book because it caught my eye as it has an outline of a dachshund on the cover. It is short book, less than 200 pages, but I found myself slowing down to read it almost relishing the story. It isn't a complicated tale yet a lot is happening. We see the story from the couples point of view but some of the most interesting part of the story comes from Dorothy, the couples little dachshund who spends most of the story at the vet recovering from a back operation.
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