Review: TODAY A WOMAN WENT MAD IN THE SUPERMARKET, Hilma Wolitzer

• 
  Bloomsbury Publishing 2021
  
• ISBN 978-1-63557-762-4
• 179 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)
The uncannily relevant, deliciously clear-eyed collected stories of a critically acclaimed, award-winning “American literary treasure” (Boston Globe), ripe for rediscovery―with a foreword by Elizabeth Strout.

From her many well-loved novels, Hilma Wolitzer―now ninety-one years old and at the top of her game―has gained a reputation as one of our best fiction writers, who “raises ordinary people and everyday occurrences to a new height.” (Washington Post) These collected short stories―most of them originally published in magazines including Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post, in the 1960s and 1970s, along with a new story that brings her early characters into the present―are evocative of an era that still resonates deeply today.

In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of her life. And in several linked stories throughout, the relationship between the narrator and her husband unfolds in telling and often hilarious vignettes. Of their time and yet timeless, Wolitzer’s stories zero in on the domestic sphere with wit, candor, grace, and an acutely observant eye. Brilliantly capturing the tensions and contradictions of daily life, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is full of heart and insight, providing a lens into a world that was often unseen at the time, and often overlooked now―reintroducing a beloved writer to be embraced by a whole new generation of readers. 

My Take

The majority, but not all, of these collected short stories are related to a "loosely autobiographical couple", Paulie and Howard. I began reading them, expecting, for some reason, them to be humerous, but in reality they are not. For readers of this blog, I should point out, nor are they crime fiction. They spring rather from the ordinary events of life, of things that have happened, or nearly happened to us.

Events capture the characters, entrap them, and then sometimes there is humour and quirkiness, as they struggle to release themselves.

These stories were written and published over a period of five decades, and in themselves reflect what was important in American society in that time.

For me the most memorable is the last, the author writing in and about the year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The stories:
Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket,1966
Waiting for Daddy,1971
Photographs,1976
Mrs X,1969
Sundays,1974
Nights,1974
Overtime,1974
The Sex Maniac,1970
Trophies,1975
Bodies,1979
Mother,1978
Love,1971
The Great Escape, 2020

My rating: 4.6

About the author

Hilma Wolitzer is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, New York University, Columbia University, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her first published story appeared when she was thirty-six, and her first novel eight years later. Her many stories and novels have drawn critical praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home. She lives in New York City.

Review: HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Kate White

• 
  this edition published by Harper Collins 2020
  
• ISBN 978-0-00-842723-8
• 366 pages
• author website

Synopsis (author)

The key to her missing memories could bring relief—
or unlock her worst nightmares.

On a cold, rainy morning, finance journalist Ally Linden arrives soaked to the bone at her Manhattan office, only to find that she’s forgotten her keycard. When her boss shows, he’s shocked to see her—because, he explains, she hasn’t worked there in five years.

Ally knows her name, but is having trouble coming up with much beyond that, though after a trip to the psychiatric ER, she begins to piece together important facts: she lives on the Upper West Side; she’s now a freelance journalist; she’s married to a terrific man named Hugh. More memories materialize and yet she still can’t recall anything about the previous two days. Diagnosed as having experienced a “dissociative state,” she starts to wonder if it may have been triggered by something she saw—an accident, or worse, a trauma from her childhood that has risen to the surface.

Desperate for answers, Ally tries to track where she spent the missing days, but every detail she unearths points to an explanation that’s increasingly ominous, and it’s clear someone wants to prevent her from learning where those forty-eight hours went. In order to uncover the truth, Ally must dig deep into the secrets of her past—and outsmart the person who seems determined to silence her.

My take

When Ally Linden arrives at work, she doesn't realise she has been missing for two days. Her husband hasn't realised she is missing because when he last saw her she was storming out after an argument. 

Bits of her memory return but she still doesn't have answers to her fugue state, and it seems that something deep in her past may have triggered everything. A friend suggests that she may have had a shock, and Ally is inclined to believe that after she finds blood-soaked tissues in her coat pocket.

A book that kept me engaged right to the end.

My rating: 4.5

About the author 

Kate White is the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels of suspense: seven standalone psychological thrillers, including Have You Seen Me? (an Amazon Editors’ mystery and thriller pick for 2020), as well as eight Bailey Weggins mysteries.

Her next suspense novel, The Fiancée, will be published on June 29, 2021.

For fourteen years Kate served as the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, and though she loved the job (and all the freebies to be found in the Cosmo beauty closet), she decided to leave eight years ago to concentrate full-time on being a suspense author.

Her first mystery, Even If It Kills Her, was a Kelly Ripa Book Club pick and #1 bestseller on Amazon. She has been published in countries around the world. Her most recent Bailey Weggins mystery, Such a Perfect Wife, was nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award.

Like many female mystery writers, Kate fell in love with the genre after reading her first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of Redgate Farm.

Kate is a frequent speaker at libraries and conferences and loves to share her journey from magazine editor to suspense novelist in a talk called “On Becoming an Author: Forging a New Creative Path and Finding Winning Ideas All Around You.”

She is also the editor of the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, a collection of recipes from the field’s top-selling authors. In addition to writing mysteries and thrillers, Kate is the author of several bestselling career books, including The Gutsy Girl Handbook: Your Manifesto for Success, as well as I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: How to Ask for the Money, Snag the Promotion, and Create the Career You Deserve, and Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do.

She divides her time now between New York City and Las Flores, Uruguay.

Review: THE BONE CODE, Kathy Reichs

• 
  this edition published by Simon & Schuster Australia 2021
  
• ISBN 9-781760-858582
• 351 pages
• #20 in the Temperance Brennan series

Synopsis (Publisher)

NUMBER ONE NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author KATHY REICHS returns with her next edge-of-your seat thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A storm has hit South Carolina, dredging up crimes of the past.

On the way to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec fifteen years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she flies to Montreal to gather evidence and convince her boss Pierre LaManch to reopen the cold case. She also seeks the advice—and comfort—of her longtime beau Andrew Ryan.

Meanwhile, a storm of a different type gathers force in South Carolina. The citizens of Charleston are struck by a bacterium that, at its worst, can eat human flesh. Thousands panic and test themselves for a rare genetic mutation that may have rendered them vulnerable.

Shockingly, Tempe eventually discovers that not only are the victims in both grisly murder cases related, but that the murders and the disease outbreak also have a common cause…​​

My Take

It is some time since I have read one of this series. THE BONE CODE is set in 2020, acknowledging the presence of the Covid-19 pandemic. However it is not the pandemic that plays a role in this novel but a virus that is killing dogs. Is it possible it can also infect their human owners?

In South Carolina the two bodies washed up in a shipping container remind Tempe of an unsolved cold case in Quebec fifteen years earlier. In a secondary mystery she is trying to track down why the photo of a death mask many decades old looks so familiar.

Tempe calls in a number of favours to help her solve her problems, and eventually tracks down the reason for the similarity between the two sets of bodies separated, in discovery, by 15 years.

I did feel at a distinct disadvantage from having read so few of this series. For me, the book worked relatively well as a stand-alone.

My rating: 4.4

I've also read

CROSS BONES - #8
4.1, MORTAL REMAINS  -#13 AKA SPIDER BONES

Review: DYING ON THE VINE, Aaron Elkins

• 
  this edition published by Berkley Prime Crime 2012
  
• ISBN 978-0-425-24788-4
• 294 pages
• #17 in Gideon Oliver series

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Now, the celebrated Skeleton Detective is visiting friends at a vineyard in Tuscany when murder leaves a bitter aftertaste...

It was the unwavering custom of Pietro Cubbiddu, patriarch of Tuscany's Villa Antica wine empire, to take a solitary month-long sabbatical at the end of the early grape harvest, leaving the winery in the trusted hands of his three sons. His wife, Nola, would drive him to an isolated mountain cabin in the Apennines and return for him a month later, bringing him back to his family and business.

So it went for almost a decade - until the year came when neither of them returned. Months later, a hiker in the Apennines stumbles on their skeletal remains. The carabinieri investigate and release their findings: they are dealing with a murder-suicide. The evidence makes it clear that Pietro Cubbiddu shot and killed his wife and then himself. The likely motive: his discovery that Nola had been having an affair.

Not long afterwards, Gideon Oliver and his wife, Julie, are in Tuscany visiting their friends, the Cubbiddu offspring. The renowned Skeleton Detective is asked to reexamine the bones. When he does, he reluctantly concludes that the carabinieri, competent though they may be, have gotten almost everything wrong. Whatever it was that happened in the mountains, a murder-suicide it was not.

Soon Gideon finds himself in a morass of family antipathies, conflicts, and mistrust, to say nothing of the local carabinieri's resentment. And when yet another Cubbiddu relation meets an unlikely end, it becomes bone-chillingly clear that the killer is far from finished...

My take

The plot of this novel is very similar to the only other book I have read in this series (OLD BONES), in that the setting is linked to a conference on forensic anthropology that the Skeleton Detective is attending and giving several sessions at. The aim of the seminars is to teach detectives to "read skeletons". One of the attendees suggests that he is able to access some skeletons recently found. Gideon Oliver finds that he disagrees with almost everything the pathologists have come up with. The have concluded a murder/suicide. His interpretation is that they have the order of the deaths wrong, and that both people have been murdered. The other similar plot line is that Gideon Oliver has some connection with the dead person.

Some parts of the investigation held very interesting information, but in other parts the plot got just a little  bit too cute, and I thought the final chapter was not very satisfactory at all, and had the feeling of being written far too hastily. 

My rating: 4.4

I've also read 4.6, OLD BONES

Review: THE LAST MOVE, Mary Burton

• 
  this edition published 2017 by Montlake Romance, Seattle
  
• ISBN 978-1542046923
• 325 pages
• source: my local library
• author website

Synopsis (author website)

FBI agent Kate Hayden heads to San Antonio to hunt a serial killer. The tricky part? She already caught him.

Catching monsters helps FBI agent Kate Hayden keep her nightmares at bay. Now an urgent call brings her back to San Antonio, the scene of her violent past. A brutal new murder shows hallmarks of a serial killer nicknamed the Samaritan. Tricky part is, Kate already caught him.

Either Kate made a deadly error, or she’s got a copycat on her hands. Paired with homicide detective Theo Mazur, she quickly realizes this murder is more twisted than it first appeared. Then a second body is found, the mode of death identical to a different case that Kate thought she’d put behind her.

Now Kate and Detective Theo Mazur aren’t just working a homicide; the investigative pair is facing a formidable enemy who knows Kate intimately. While Mazur is personally trying to protect Kate, the closer they are drawn to the killer, the clearer it becomes that in this terrifying game, there is only one rule: don’t believe everything you see…

My Take

Kate Hayden is the FBI's best profiler. She has solved a number of serial killing cases. But this new murder in San Antonio is close to home, close to where her father was killed, and she herself was set on her career path. A text message sent to a burner phone left with the body is directed to her, and the words are hauntingly familiar.

Kate is essentially a loner, but her boss is clear: she must work with the locals on this one, and she has 3 days to make her contribution.  It looks like this murder may be a copy-cat killing: but is it? There are aspects to the murder that only the original serial killer could know, but he is still in jail.

And then Kate realises that a voice is reaching out from the past. He has been in jail for 17 years for the death of her father, but is now free. What does he want?

My rating: 4.3

About the author
Mary Burton, whose latest book, Burn You Twice, her most recent Criminal Profiler novel, loves writing suspense, getting to know her characters, keeping up with law enforcement and forensic procedure, morning walks, baking, and tiny dachshunds. She also enjoys hunting down serial killers, which she does in her New York Times and USA Today bestselling novels. She is a 2019 Montlake Romance Diamond Award winner signifying she’s reached one million readers. Library Journal has compared her work to that of Lisa Jackson and Lisa Gardner, and Fresh Fiction has likened her writing to that of James Patterson.

Mary is routinely featured among the top ten writers in Amazon’s Author Rankings for romantic suspense. Upon publication, her books, including her recent titles Never Look Back I See You, Hide and Seek, Cut and Run and Her Last Word, consistently rank high on the Kindle eBooks Store Bestseller List.

Research is a favorite part of Mary’s workday. She never tires of delving into police work, evidence collection and analysis. She’s known for taking a hands-on approach, whether it means interviews with professionals in the field, forensic seminars or lessons at the firing range.

A Richmond native, Mary has lived there for most of her life. She’s a graduate of Virginia’s Hollins University and worked in marketing before she began writing full time. Her first book was published in 2000. Today she’s the author of thirty-three published novels and five novellas as Mary Burton and six works of contemporary fiction as Mary Ellen Taylor, including her recent Winter Cottage and Spring House and upcoming Honeysuckle Season. She’s co-editor, with novelist Mary Miley, of Deadly Southern Charm, A Lethal Ladies Mystery Anthology.

A member of International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Novelists, Inc., and Romance Writers of America, Mary is known for creating multiple suspense stories connected by characters and/or place.

When not on the road for research or visits with readers at bookstores, book festivals and conferences, Mary remains very much a homebody. She and her husband spend time alternately enjoying their empty nest and spoiling their four-legged babies Buddy, Bella and Tiki.

Review: OLD BONES, Aaron Elkins

• 
  this issue published Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy; Reissue edition (8 July 2014)
  
• Paperback : 216 pages
• ISBN-10 : 1497643155
• ISBN-13 : 978-1497643154
• #4 in the Gideon Oliver series

Synopsis (Amazon)

Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery novel of the year. 1988

With the roar of thunder and the speed of a galloping horse comes the tide to Mont St. Michel goes the old nursery song. So when the aged patriarch of the du Rocher family falls victim to the perilous tide, even the old man's family accepts the verdict of accidental drowning. 

But too quickly, this "accident" is followed by a bizarre discovery in the ancient du Rocher chateau: a human skeleton, wrapped in butcher paper, beneath the old stone flooring. 

Professor Gideon Oliver, lecturing on forensic anthropology at nearby St. Malo, is asked to examine the bones. He quickly demonstrates why he is known as the "Skeleton Detective," providing the police with forensic details that lead them to conclude that these are the remains of a Nazi officer believed to have been murdered in the area during the Occupation. Or are they? Gideon himself has his doubts

Then, when another of the current du Rochers dies - this time via cyanide poisoning - his doubts solidify into a single certainty: someone wants old secrets to stay buried . . . and is perfectly willing to eradicate the meddlesome American to make that happen.

My Take

Members of the du Rocher family have been "summoned" to a meeting at which it's oldest member Guillame intends to make an important announcement. But before they can all get together he is dead, accidentally drowned on the flats of Mont St. Michel, caught by the galloping tide. Guillame's nephew claims to have been in his confidence, and to know what the meeting was about, but he is an unlovely character, and at least one other has a different idea about why they have been brought together.

Then the discovery of a skeleton in the cellar of the chateau, one that has apparently been there for over 40 years, calls for the involvement of the police and a bones expert, an American who is lecturing at a forensic science conference.

This is the first in this series that I have read, and it certainly won't be the last - there are plenty to choose from.

This is a many stranded plot, lots of red herrings, with engaging and interesting characters.

My rating: 4.6

About the author
Aaron Elkins is a former anthropologist and professor who has been writing mysteries and thrillers since 1982. His major continuing series features forensic anthropologist‑detective Gideon Oliver, "the Skeleton Detective." There are fifteen published titles to date in the series. The Gideon Oliver books have been (roughly) translated into a major ABC‑TV series and have been selections of the Book‑of‑the‑Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Readers Digest Condensed Mystery Series. His work has been published in a dozen languages.
Mr. Elkins won the 1988 Edgar Award for best mystery of the year for Old Bones, the fourth book in the Gideon Oliver Series. He and his cowriter and wife, Charlotte, also won an Agatha Award, and he has also won a Nero Wolfe Award. Mr. Elkins lives on Washington's Olympic Peninsula with Charlotte.