Review: THE BOOKSHOP OF YESTERDAYS, Amy Myerson

• this edition available as an e-book through Libby
  
• published 2018
• Hardcover : 368 pages
• ISBN-10 : 0778319849
• ISBN-13 : 978-0778319849 

Synopsis (Amazon)

A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self-discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness and a love of reading.

Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric Uncle Billy's bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda's twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda's life. 

She doesn't hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy--and one final scavenger hunt.When Miranda returns home to Los Angeles and to Prospero Books--now as its owner--she finds clues that Billy has hidden for her inside novels on the store's shelves, in locked drawers of his apartment upstairs, in the name of the store itself. 

Miranda becomes determined to save Prospero Books and to solve Billy's last scavenger hunt. She soon finds herself drawn into a journey where she meets people from Billy's past, people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda's mother has kept hidden--and the terrible secret that tore her family apart.Bighearted and trenchantly observant, The Bookshop of Yesterdays is a lyrical story of family, love and the healing power of community. It's a love letter to reading and bookstores, and a testament to how our histories shape who we become.

My Take

Not crime fiction but plenty of mystery in this novel when Miranda Brooks finds out her estranged uncle has died and has left her his book shop. As he did when she was younger, Billy has left her a scavenger hunt to solve. Miranda could have just walked away, but Billy has really thrown down the gauntlet, appealing to Miranda's love of solving a puzzle. And the more she finds out, the deeper the puzzle becomes.

And there is more - stories about the effects of cataclysmic events on family, on events that shape our lives. A very enjoyable read.

My rating: 4.5

About the author

Amy Meyerson teaches in the writing department at the University of Southern California, where she completed her graduate work in creative writing. She has been published in Reed Magazine, The Manhattanville Review, The Bloomsbury Review, The Fanzine and Obit Magazine, and was a finalist in Open City's RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest and in Summer Literary Seminars's Unified Literary Contest. She currently lives in Los Angeles. The Bookshop of Yesterdays is her first novel. 

Review: AUNTY LEE'S DELIGHTS, Ovidia Yu

•  this edition published by William Morrow 2013
  
  
  
• ISBN 978-0-06-222715-7
• 257 pages
• source: my local library

• #1 in the Aunty Lee series
  

Synopsis

This delectable and witty mystery introduces Rosie "Aunty" Lee, feisty widow, amateur sleuth, and proprietor of Singapore's best-loved home-cooking restaurant

After losing her husband, Rosie Lee could have become one of Singapore's "tai tai," an idle rich lady. Instead she is building a culinary empire from her restaurant, Aunty Lee's Delights, where spicy Singaporean meals are graciously served to locals and tourists alike. But when a body is found in one of Singapore's tourist havens and one of her guests fails to show at a dinner party, Aunty Lee knows that the two events are likely connected.

The murder and disappearance throws together Aunty Lee's henpecked stepson, Mark, his social-climbing wife, Selina, a gay couple whose love is still illegal in Singapore, and an elderly Australian tourist couple whose visit may mask a deeper purpose. Investigating the murder are Police Commissioner Raja and Senior Staff Sergeant Salim, who quickly discover that Aunty Lee's sharp nose for intrigue can sniff out clues that elude law enforcers.

Wise, witty, and charming, Aunty Lee's Delights is a spicy mystery about love, friendship, and food in Singapore, where money flows freely and people of many religions and ethnicities coexist peacefully, but where tensions lurk just below the surface, sometimes with deadly consequences.

My take

This was my second venture into the Aunty Lee series, an enjoyable, not overly complex cosy. It gives good background for the later novel that I had already read. Apart from the murder mystery there is interesting commentary on life in Singapore. In style it reminded me just a little of Alexander McCall Smith's No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. 

My book group have suggested I also try the Crown Colony series.

Listings from Fantastic Fiction

Singaporean Mystery
   1. Aunty Lee's Delights (2013)
   2. Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (2014)
   3. Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge (2016)
   4. Meddling and Murder (2017)

Crown Colony
   1. The Frangipani Tree Mystery (2017)
   2. The Betel Nut Tree Mystery (2018)
   3. The Paper Bark Tree Mystery (2019)
   4. The Mimosa Tree Mystery (2020)
   5. The Cannonball Tree Mystery (2021)

My rating: 4.2

I've also read

4.4, MEDDLING AND MURDER #4  in the Aunty Lee series

Review: THE BRISBANE LINE, J.P. Powell

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• Print Length : 242 pages
• Language: : English
• ASIN : B086HL63Y8
• Word Wise : Enabled
• Publisher : Xoum (27 March 2020)
• File Size : 1358 KB

Synopsis  (Amazon)

As WWII ravages the world and the Japanese Empire has set its sights on Australia, the Americans have come to save us. But not all soldiers are heroes and not all heroes are soldiers.

Sergeant Joe Washington, a US Military Police, loves music and photography but spends his days delving into the sordid and petty crimes committed by the thousands of American troops passing through town.

While trying to find stolen gasoline stores, he is sent to investigate the body of an American soldier found dumped in a cemetery. Suddenly Joe is up against notorious detective Frank Bischof.

Although ordered to leave the investigation alone, Joe fears that Bischof is protecting the most likely suspect while trying to pin the crime on an innocent – and intriguing – young woman, Rose. A woman who seems to walk between the parallel worlds of black market deals and Brisbane’s high society.

My Take

This novel gives readers a snapshot of life in Brisbane in a period of approximately 10 days (Friday 8 October 1943 - Sunday 17 October 1943.) Brisbane is home to thousands of American soldiers, committing the usual range of crimes found in Western society, complicated by crimes, corruption,  and conventions typical of Brisbane itself. The book is populated with real life characters as well as fictional one.

While there are a range of crimes committed, I felt that the novel is historical "faction" rather than crime fiction. Two murders have been committed, the investigation shared uncomfortably by an American MP and a detective from the Brisbane police force.

My rating: 4.4

About the Author
JP Powell is an archaeologist and historian with a passion for bringing the past to life. She has worked as a high school teacher, an academic, a National Parks officer, a museum administrator and has excavated in Jordan, Cyprus and Greece as well as leading historical archaeology projects in Australia. Her previous writing includes school textbooks, academic publications, government reports and a biography of the first person to teach archaeology in Australia (Love’s Obsession. The lives and archaeology of Jim and Eve Stewart. Wakefield Press. 2013). In 2017 she was awarded a QANZAC Fellowship by the State Library of Queensland to pursue research into, and writing of, a series of crime novels set in Brisbane during World War II. She lives outside Brisbane

review: THE HOLIDAY, T.M. Logan

• format: e-book available from Libby
• published 2019
• aka THE VACATION
• 380 pages

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

It was supposed to be the perfect getaway: Kate and her three best friends, spending a week with their families in a luxurious villa in the south of France. Through the decades they’ve stayed closer than ever, and seven days of drinking crisp French wine and laying out under the dazzling Mediterranean sun is the perfect celebration of their friendship. But soon after arriving, Kate discovers an incriminating text on her husband’s cell phone.

A text revealing that he’s having an affair.

And that the other woman is one of her best friends.

But which one?

Trapped in paradise with no one to trust, Kate is determined to find out who has put her marriage — and a lifelong friendship — in jeopardy. But as she closes in on the truth, she realizes that the stakes are higher than she ever imagined. Everyone on the trip has secrets…and someone may be prepared to kill to keep theirs hidden.

My Take:

I will certainly be looking for another from this author.

There were several elements of mystery. Each family has secrets, and then Kate is trying to work out which of her friends is having an affair with her husband. Some times relationships become fraught and the tensions come over well.

A good read.

My rating: 4.5

About the author:
TM Logan (aka Tim Utton) was born in Berkshire to an English father and a German mother. He studied at Queen Mary and Cardiff universities before becoming a national newspaper journalist. He currently works in communications and lives in Nottinghamshire with his wife and two children.

Review: WE BEGIN AT THE END, Chris Whitaker

• format: e-book through my local library through Libby
• ISBN: 9781785769627
• Published April 2020
• 464 pages

Synopsis (Allen & Unwin)

A blistering story of murder, revenge and retribution, set under the Californian sun.  As nuanced as it is intense, We Begin at the End is a thriller of exceptional psychological flair, filled with characters who will get under your skin – and might never leave.

This is a story about good and evil and how life is lived somewhere in between.

Thirty years ago, Vincent King became a killer. Now, he's been released from prison and is back in his hometown of Cape Haven, California. Not everyone is pleased to see him. Like Star Radley, his ex-girlfriend, and sister of the girl he killed.

Duchess Radley, Star's thirteen-year-old daughter, is part-carer, part-protector to her younger brother, Robin - and to her deeply troubled mother. But in trying to protect Star, Duchess inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will have tragic consequences not only for her family, but also the whole town.

Murder, revenge, retribution. How far can we run from the past, when the past seems doomed to repeat itself?

My Take

A layered novel full of mysteries. Like peeling a never-ending onion - the final solution is staggering and unexpected. Duchess Radley seems to have missed out on having a childhood, torn between looking after her mother and ensuring the safety of her young brother. She has an old head on very young shoulders.

Things come to a head when Vincent King returns to the town, and Walk, the Sheriff of Cape Haven, becomes determined that his childhood friend will lead a "normal" life.

There is little that I can tell you about what happens after that, without spoiling the narrative for you. I found it a challenging read, full of interesting characters, and mind-boggling scenarios.

My rating: 4.6

About the author
Chris Whitaker's debut novel, Tall Oaks, was published in 2016. It was a Guardian crime book of the month as well as featuring in Crime Time's top 100 books of 2016 and BuzzFeed's incredible summer reads. It won the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award, and was shortlisted for the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award. All the Wicked Girls, Chris's second novel, was described by Look magazine as 'the next Gone Girl'. Chris lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and two young sons. 

Review: THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT, Hilary Mantel - audio book

• audio book from Audible
• Narrated by: Ben Miles
• Series: The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3
• Length: 38 hrs and 11 mins
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 03-05-20
• Language: English
• Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
• Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020
  Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020

Synopsis (Audible)

The long-awaited sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning Thomas Cromwell trilogy.

‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

My take

We listened to this in the car over a number of weekends (38 hours of it) and were very regretful when it finished, not just because the recording came to an end, but because it was almost as if a well-known friend had died.

The story of Henry VIII and his six wives is one that all history lovers are familiar with, and so we have a broad idea of the content of this book. Where THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT excels is in bringing the times, characters and issues to light both through the text and the excellent verbal rendition.

An excellent series.

My rating: 5.0

I've also read 4.7, BRING UP THE BODIES

Review: THE POET, Michael Connelly

• this book first published in 1996
• this edition: e-book, made available through Libby
• source: my local library
• #1 in Jack McEvoy novels
• Awards in 1997:
  Anthony Awards Best Novel,
  Dilys Awards Best Book

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

The apparent suicide of his policeman brother sets Denver crime reporter Jack McEvoy on edge. Surprise at the circumstances of his brother's death prompts Jack to look into a whole series of police suicides and puts him on the trail of a cop killer whose victims are selected all too carefully. Not only that, but they all leave suicide notes drawn from the poems of writer Edgar Allan Poe in their wake. More frightening still the killer appears to know that Jack is getting nearer and nearer. An investigation that looks like being the story of a lifetime, might also be Jack's ticket to a lonely end.

My Take:

I was mainly prompted to read this because firstly, I have never read it before; and secondly, because there is a new title in this series, FAIR WARNING, recently published.  My Connelly reading has mainly been Harry Bosch.

Apparently before reading FAIR WARNING, I should also read THE NARROWS (2004) and THE SCARECROW (2009)

THE POET is one of those novels when you've just worked it all out, there is another twist, and you realised you've missed something major or there was something that you didn't know. It all makes for very engrossing reading.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read
THE OVERLOOK
THE BRASS VERDICT
THE CONCRETE BLONDE
4.3, THE REVERSAL
4.4, SUICIDE RUN
4.4, ANGLE OF INVESTIGATION 

What I read in August 2020

Things seem to have slowed down a bit this month, as a couple of books took me longer than 3 or 4 days to read.
Nevertheless I have read 3 books by Australian authors and been introduced to 3 new-to-me authors.

My best read was Michael Robotham's latest:
WHEN SHE WAS GOOD

1. 4.5, THE PUPPET SHOW, M. W. Craven
2. 4.5, BLACK SUMMER, M. W. Craven
3. 4.7, THE GUEST LIST, Lucy Foley  
4. 4.8, WHEN SHE WAS GOOD, Michael Robotham - Australian author 
5. 4.3, GATHERING DARK, Candice Fox - Australian author
6. 4.4, MEDDLING AND MURDER, Ovidia Yu
7. 4.5, THIRST, L. A. Larkin - Australian author