The Write Hobby

Amuse Bouche, by

2026-04-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

The Book

Russel Quant, PI is mired in a string of uninteresting cases. In fact, in the year ish he's been in business, he hasn't had an interesting case at all. He's wondering if he made a mistake being a PI. Little does he know when one of Saskatoon's real estate moguls calls him, asking him to take a case and use his discretion, will he be searching for a murderer.

Harold Cheval is a gay man who was about to marry the love of his life Tom XXX. But Tom fails to show. A few days later, Harold is told by a friend that Tom has turned up in France, following the honeymoon itinerary the two had planned in happier times. Harold hires Russell to find out why Tom left him standing at the alter. But not long after Russell comes home from France, Tom's murdered body is discovered at Harold's lake house. Now Harold wants Russell to clear his name.

In a case that will take Russell from his crisp autumn Saskatoon morning, to the south of France, and cause him to wonder if his client is guilty, Russell is up against a very careful planner. A murderer smart enough to establish an alibi and convince the police someone else did it. Can Russell figure out who killed Tom before the murderer kills him?

My Thoughts

Oh wow! I love reading first ever novels. Especially if they're mysteries. First time novelists are unafraid to take risks. To a certain extent, they haven't had the market pigeonhole them, yet. Russel Quant is a fun, gay, PI. The book is set in Canada in the early 2000s (why couldn't we have been the aughts like the last time? Asking for a friend). Back in a time when being gay was just starting to be accepted. Where gay marriage was more of a ceremony than an actual, real, thing. Which is where this book starts.

Also, I love a writer who can keep me guessing until the end who might have murdered our victim. And I was getting down to crunch time with absolutely no idea who might have done it. The clue was so skillfully buried, that despite the cheat at the end, the sidestepping of the one clue that could have wrapped up the case, I missed it. Well done Anthony Bidulka. Well done.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This is yet another of the books my friend Jenny snagged for my from the sad closure of her favorite bookstore. As you can tell from the pic, this book sold at that time for $3.00. I have been a decidedly bad owner of this book. In short, someone in my house literally put a fork in it and now there are two small stab wounds in the front of the book that penetrate all the way through the first chapter. I will have no qualms when I go back and re-read the book highlighting the ever living junk out of it, since there's no chance of this thing ever going anywhere.

This Book $0.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $216.83

Private Books

This Book $03.00

Total of Private Books $55.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $284.58

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, Agatha Christie

2026-04-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

The Book

Miss Marple, having survived bronchitis, is being driven crazy by the kindly, well meaning paid companion her nephew Raymond has provided for her, Miss King. Her doctor prescribes a bit of unraveling, since her eyesight is making knitting difficult. And by unraveling he means solving a murder. Miss Marple decides he's right. She's bored and goes exploring the new Development near her house. While there, she has a fall and meets Mrs. Heather Badcock, who is very sweet to her, but self absorbed.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Bantry, that good friend of Miss Marple's we last saw in The Body in the Library, comes to visit. Her old house, the venerable Gossington Hall, has been sold to an actress, Miss Marina Gregg and her husband, the director Jason "Jinks" Rudd. She tells Miss Marple, she's happy to see the house in such good hands.

Not long afterwards Mrs. Bantry is invited to a charity fete at Gossington Hall. While there, she meets Marina, Jason, and Heather Badcock. Mrs. Bantry is allowed to give a tour of the house, where they all go to look at the bathrooms. They are disappointed to find the bedrooms locked, but they return to the landing where the reception is taking place only to find Mrs. Badcock having an episode. Before a doctor can be brought up the stairs, Mrs. Badcock dies.

The local inspectors are brought in, but they are at a loss to find a motive to kill Mrs. Badcock. Then they find out the drink, which had been poisoned, was originally Marina Gregg's. They call in Scotland Yard and Inspector Dermot Craddock, a Miss Marple "nephew". Of course he seeks out her advice. Together, through Miss Marple's well placed gossips, and Craddock's broad investigative powers, they find Marina's long lost adoptive children, a long lost ex-husband, and the real reason Marina's drink was poisoned, how, and by whom.

My Thoughts

This is a very well written book. I just love Miss Marple, and her old age. She's still sharp as a tack, even if her body is failing. She's still able.

I also love that Agatha Christie writes her books as fair play. She's exceptionally even handed with the readers, especially the readers of the day. Of course, the readers of the day would've know the risks of German measles, measles. flu, chicken pox, etc, more than the modern reader. Vaccines have all but eliminated these, although the decline of vaccination rates, we might find the stuff out all over again. Sigh. But I digress.

Once you know the major clues, it's not hard to work out whether Heather Badcock or Marina Gregg was the intended target. And from there, guess who had motive to kill whom. I can't say as I was surprised by the outcome, I can say, I found the solution satisfying.

I can only hope I end up writing mysteries just as well.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Zion Benton Public Library. They don't tell me when this book entered their system. But, it's in really good condition. No marking, dog ears, and the cover looks practically new. The back of the book says it originally cost $18.99. That's the number I will use.

This Book $18.99

Library Items Reviewed This Year $205.92

Private Books

This Book                                                       $00.00
Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year      $279.57
Still Here?

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At Some Disputed Barricade, by Anne Perry

2026-04-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Book

The Reavleys are back at it. Joseph is still at the front, being a chaplain to his men. Matthew is still in the intelligence services, Judith is still driving an ambulance, and Hannah is still holding down the fort. Matthew finds out that the man he believed to be the Peacemaker wasn't. Now he's trying to unravel a bundle of lies wrapped around two promising junior lawmakers/government ministers. He can't save both of them, it's doubtful he can even save one. But he's got to try. And he's got to do all of that without alerting his three remaining suspects that he's on the trail of the Peacemaker again.

Meanwhile, back in France, Judith and Joseph are wrapped up in the murder of Colonel Northrup, the only child of General Norththrup. Joseph must solve the mystery of the man's murder, a murder he would've been reluctant to report had not the journalist Richard Mason force him into it. If Joseph does not, an extremely brave and admired doctor facing the firing squad.

The journey takes Matthew to emotional terrain as fraught as Joseph's trip behind enemy lines. And Judith realizes too late, she may have done the emotionally compelling thing, but maybe it was wrong, after all.

My Thoughts

It's a fairly tightly written book. It takes us through the near mutinies on the Western Front after the mutinies by the French troops in 1917. Joseph flies in the the airplanes, with a run in with the notorious Red Baron, and finally behind the German lines, where starvations reigns and everyone is ready to quit the war. As a broad overview of 1917 in WWI, it's not a bad backdrop.

I did not find this plot, so similar to Shoulder the Sky, to be as compelling. Nor did I find Colonel Northrup as well drawn out as Prentice, the despicable journalist killed in the previous novel. In fact, it seems, Joseph's moral weariness is the only reason to have included this plot.

Likewise, I did not find Matthew's story arc compelling, and I got too little of Judith to make something of her story arc. All in all, it seems, so far, Angels in the Gloom, is perhaps the best of this series. We have two more books to go, and still 3 suspects to find out who is the Peacemaker. Aiden Thyer, the president of St. John's college in Cambridge, seems an excellent choice, but again, if it's Matthew where the deepest betrayal will hit close to home, then Calder Shearing is the most likely suspect. However, there are reasons, unless Perry has mistaken herself, to believe Shearing is not the Peacemaker, notably, things Shearing would have known and the Peacemaker seems not to know in this book. That makes, by reason, Dermont Sandwell our most likely Peacemaker. He fits the profile we need. He was a friend of John Reavley, he's high enough placed in government to both know the secrets and to manipulate the ends, he's well connected, and there are gaps in the Peacemaker's knowledge that his distance from Joseph and Matthew makes sense.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Des Plaines Public library (hi Cam!). It looks like it entered their collection, which was already on a digital system in March of 2007. The plastic library cover is a bit scuffed, but otherwise this book is in excellent condition. There are no internal markings or dog ears (yay). The book was easy to hold, so I believe it has been read regularly enough, but not so much as to wear out the glue in the spine The receipt says Des Plaines calculate this book at $21.95 and the inside cover agrees. That's the number I will use for the book.

This Book $21.95

Library Items Reviewed This Year $196.83

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $261.58

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly

2026-03-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Book

Mickey Haller is back in court. After his ex, Maggie McPherson (Maggie McFierce), wins her election for DA, he's out of criminal court and into federal civil litigation. The client, Brenda Randolph is suing a small AI startup called Tidalwav. Randolph is claiming Tidalwav's companion AI, Clair, told an impressionable teenager to kill her daughter and that's what led Becca's ex-boyfriend to kill her.

Before they can go to trial, Brenda is joined in the suit by Becc's ex-boyfriend's parents Trish and Ruce Colton. Aaron Colton is looking at a long stay in either jail or a mental facility for walking on their school grounds and killing Becca in front of multiple witnesses.

Joining Mickey Haller on the case are the usual suspects, Lorna and "Cisco" Wojciechowski and an unusual suspect, Jack McEvoy. We are told in story, Harry Bosch can't join the gang because he's having heart problems.

Maggie gets burned out of her home in he LA fires and moves back in with Mickey. They rekindle their romance. Mickey is happy because he believes he never loved anyone other than her.

As the case against Tidalwav goes on, a witness turns up dead, Tidalwav's surveillance scares several people, and makes Mickey angry. Opposing council, the Mason brothers, underestimate Mickey, but they have a trick or two up their sleeves as well.

Meanwhile, the daughter of one of Mickey's former defendants wants him to pursue a habeas petition for her father, on the ground he was wrongly convicted. She was misdiagnosed as a child, her osteogenesis imperfecta wasn't caught and her father has done nearly 20 years in jail for child abuse he never committed. Mickey agrees to take the case.

Ironically, this case, not the Tidalwav case causes a fracture between Maggie and Mickey. She decides not to ask of the client's release on the grounds Mickey should have known and defended his client with it when it went to trial all those years ago. Mickey is disappointed but goes back to working on the case.

When everything seems at their most desperate, the founder of Tidalwave offers Mickey and obscene amount of money, bribe money, to quit the case. Mickey refuses. And Tidalwav offers the plaintiffs more money than any sane person would refuse, all they have to do is drop the insistence that Tidalwav did anything wrong. Brenda refuses. The Coltons settle.

But when the Mason's blow a hole in Mickey's case, will he end up on top?

My Thoughts

As usual, Michael Connelly writes a very compelling book. And maybe it's because AI is coming for my job (novelist), or because it's so controversial among writers, that it seems I know as much about the basic information behind AI as Connelly. Indeed, the case whose pleadings he cited as inspiration, is a case several of my friends in the tech world have followed. Connelly is an excellent reporter and a very crafty novelist. Unlike the last time Connelly waded into the vast ocean of where advances in technology meets law, (see Chasing the Dime and molecular computing) Connelly has learned his lesson. He doesn't get to into the weeds of the tech, and he made sure this really was revolutionary tech, not speculative.

This novel is filled with all the thing novelist are supposed to do, a compelling reason to move forward in the scenes, believable scenarios, and characters at a transformational moment in their lives. Very nice.

Connelly has things to say about the demise of structured journalism. Far from the nostalgia of yesteryear, he's more focused on how journalist are working and if that works for them. And he promotes Substack of all things, which makes his foray onto James Patterson's Substack livestream when the book was released interesting. I can tell when the book was written and I can tell that Connelly himself at the time didn't know the nuances of Substack. So that let me see how he writes about what he writes more clearly. I learned a few things about story telling. This one is worth the read, even if you are me, and only in love with Mickey Haller.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

I put in a request for this book on October 23rd, 2025, which is two days after release date. I picked up books from the library on October 25th, where I requested how my placement on the waitlist and was told I was at approximately 500th on the list. That means, which I checked the book out of the library, I waited almost 3 months to get it. Connelly has another book out this year, and I managed to put in a request on January 15th, the day after I picked up this book. We'll see how much better that worked. On a side note, I was not the last person on the list, because when I picked up the book on January 14th there were no renewals on it. It was still showing no renewals the day I finished reading it, January 24. But on the day of writing this review, January 30 there are now 3 renewals left. I know for a fact this means the last of the waitlist has been exhausted and there are now more books in the system than there is demand. This is AWESOME! I feel 90 to exhaust the waitlist is appropriate.

I am once again caught up in real time with Michael Connelly oeuvre. This book, is a first edition hardcover from Huntly Public Library and in really good shape. I believe there are 50 or so copies in the suburban system cover all 10 million of us. I strongly approve. There are no marks, nor dog ears in this book. I think fewer people are checking out books these days and as a result, those who remain are better educated in library book etiquette.

What I find interesting is at the back of this book, unlike the one I purchased just a few weeks before this book was released, does not have the Raising Readers as the last page. This book does. Interesting.

The inside cover of this book says is retailed for $32.00. That's the number I will use.

This Book $32.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $174.88

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $239.63

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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The Pale Horse, Agatha Christie

2026-03-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

The Book

Writer Mark Easterbrook is staying with his sister while he tries to finish his book when he is swept into the investigation of the murder of a priest by one of his school chums. The priest was murdered after hearing the dying confession of a Mrs. Davis, who says there is great evil in the world and it must be stopped. She doesn't know who is killing people, but she does have a list of people who were or are going to be killed. The priest takes the list with him, but is murdered before he can get back to the presbytery. The coroner who takes the case is none other than Jimmy Corrigan, who is surprised to find his name on the list. Mark drinks in the story, looking for something to prompt him to finish writing the book.

Mark discovers a rumor that the ladies who purchased The Pale Horse can supernaturally get rid of an unwanted person for you. Intrigued, Mark takes the tour and is given the sales pitch. He is directed to go to a certain gambler, a man known to commit petty fraud now and then and place a wager that person he wants dead will be alive on such and such a date. If the person is dead on that date, Mark would have to pay up. Mark takes it under consideration.

Without the means, how will Mark, much less the cops ever prove it was murder?

My Thoughts

So I figured out the who but not the how in this book. When I got to the end, I wondered if I had missed something in my reading, since I wasn't sure why Mark would know the how. Here Christie is at her most genius. She's using an unusual poison, with symptoms that don't present the same way each time. Genius. Like I said, I figured out the mastermind, after all of the books I've read, if I haven't figure out a Christie set up, I have no business being a mystery novelist.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Lake Villa Public District Library. This was the last book I checked out of my library before it unexpectedly closed for 4 weeks. (Shakes fist at the sky.) The day I picked it up, it was marked with water damage by my clerk. Honestly, the water damage isn't that bad, however the edges of the cover are fraying. Lake Villa helpfully puts the date the book entered into the system on the side pages of the book. It says FEB 2018. The "sticker" on the book says it was adapted for Masterpiece Theater. It is listed as $13.99. A quick run by Amazon tells me today it goes for $10.99. There's a limited TV series, originally airing on BBC, but currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Which I presume is the reason the paperback is discounted. These two adaptations likely drove library demand for this book, hence the wear and tear. However, for an 8 year old book, it's not in really bad shape. We will use the $13.99 price for my list.

This Book $13.99

Library Items Reviewed This Year $142.88

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $207.63

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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Angels in the Gloom, Anne Perry

2026-03-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

The Book

The Reavley siblings are still after The Peacemaker in this third book of Anne Perry's WWI series. Oldest son, Dr. Rev. Joseph Reavley has been injured while carrying a soldier back behind the line of war. His arm is severely injured, but skilled surgeons manage to save it. He is rushed home, hurting, and put in a hospital outside of his hometown. A few days later, with casualties mounting he's sent home to St. Giles to recover. His sister Hannah is there, holding down the family home, while husband, Archie, is at sea, commanding the Cormorant.

Once home, Joseph get reacquainted with one his father's friends, Shanley Corcoran, the head of a scientific unit dedicated to bringing about the next big thing in naval warfare. They are oh-so-close to a breakthrough when a brilliant young researcher, Theo Blaine is murdered. The local vicar is in over his head, so John agrees to go and comfort the widow.

At Lizzie Blaine's John realizes this might be a domestic tragedy, as neither Lizzie nor Theo were faithful to their marriage vows. Inspector Perth, the same man in charge of solving Joseph's student Sebastian's murder, certainly believes jealousy could be the motive. But Perth confides to John, he thinks it might have been something else and he might not be able to solve the murder if there's a national security angle. Perth asks Joseph to bring in his brother Matthew.

Matthew, is busy chasing The Peacemaker and cannot be spared. He is being chased by Bernadetta Hannassey, the daughter of Irish independence fighter, Patrick Hannassey. They both know the other is a spy, so the game is to only let the truths they want out and believe the other is lying. As the game winds on, Matthew becomes convinced the Peacemaker is Patrick Hannassey.

When Corcoran's promised breakthrough fails, Matthew's boss decides to use the failure to flush out The Peacemaker. Matthew is assigned to Archie's ship. While they are at sea, the ship comes under attack, and Patrick goes to disable the equipment. Matthew follows, to catch The Peacemaker once and for all, but the ship is sinking fast. Will Archie and Matthew return home to St. Giles where they belong? And will Matthew figure out Patrick was The Peacemaker's patsy?

My Thoughts

Two more books to go in this series. I have many sympathies with The Peacemaker, even if his identity is the central, over arching mystery of this book. One by one, Perry has been eliminating the suspects who might be The Peacemaker. They were: John Reavley best friend, Shanley Corcoran; John Reavley's counterpart from Germany Count van Haart or his good friend Lord Granville; Joseph Reavley's mentor, Dr. Aiden Thyer, and Matthew Reavley's boss, Sheldon Thorne.

The Count and Corcoran have been eliminated as of this book, leaving Thorne, Thyer, and Lord Granville. Of these, Granville seems the most likely. He's receded enough in the narrative of the last couple of books to make his seeming elimination in book one, a red herring. Thorne seems too obvious and Thyer likely doesn't have enough access. We will know in two books.

How Much My Library Card Saved Mer

This hardcover large print edition came from my own library. It seems to be in nearly unread condition. There were no markings nor damage in the book when I got it. On the large print there is no indication as to how much the book originally cost. And I don't know if this is one of the "library only" editions, meaning the hardcover large prints were not widely distributed to bookstores. That happens, as libraries perfer hardcovers for their longevity. But since it was the only book I picked up, I do know how much my library card is credited with saving me. $31.95, and that's the number I will use.

I picked it up Feburary 3, 2026 and just over a week later the library shut down for a month to replace the carpets. Fun times. As a result, I have not been able to order books. It's a good thing I have a stack at home to read. But it's been a pain in the tushie for the library to be shut down all of these weeks. My understanding is the carpeting was finished on Monday, March 2, but they still needed a week to air out the building because of how toxic the glue was. What's worse, because they had not anticipated shutting down, I will now struggle to get all of the books I need in order to keep this blog from going uninterrupted. So, if I miss a week, dear readers, I'm sorry.

This Book $31.95

Library Items Reviewed This Year $128.89

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $193.64

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Jeanette McCurdy

2026-03-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

The Book

Jeanette McCurdy played Samantha "Sam" Puckett on Nickelodeon's iCarly. The book follows small, six-year-old Jeanette from the phase of hero worshiping her mother, and becoming an actor to fulfill her mother's personal ambitions to adulthood and learning to live for herself. When Jeanette was two years old, her mother beat stage four cancer. As a result, her mother started living her life with more vigor. She "encouraged" Jeanette to start acting and soon, Jeanette is enrolled in acting classes with a bunch of other kids. Jeanette, feeling grateful for her mother's recovering is willing to do anything, anything at all, in order to make her mom happy.

Throughout her childhood, Jeanette experienced several forms of child abuse, it seems the most serious of which was the enmeshment between her and her mother. Jeanette goes from wanting to please her mother, to being cast on iCarly. Her mother pushed her until she reached the top. Jeanette is surprised to realize, she's not happy. However, she finds true friendship with her costar, Miranda Cosgrove, and starts to grow up. But, Jeanette, suddenly at the top of the child acting game, is afraid of growing up. As usual, her mother has an answer.

To prevent Jeanette from becoming an adult, her mother introduces her to "calorie restriction", and convinces Jeanette to become anorexic. This delays Jeanette's puberty and allows her to act in much younger roles. She does not menstruate until she is sixteen, much later than the other girls in her cohort.

When iCarly ends, Jeanette is cast in the spin off show, Sam + Kat, where she costarred with Ariana Grande. Jeanette finds herself, as she describes, unreasonably jealous of Ariana after Ariana and not Jeanette gets to play games at Tom Hanks house. She decides she will never like Ariana. (Side note, I hope she changed her mind, but I get it. The two of them didn't have a whole lot in common.)

During this show, Jeanette gets her own apartment, but her mother, afraid of letting go, worms her way into Jeanette's apartment. Meanwhile, her mother's cancer has returned. Jeanette moves to New York City, while her mother's health declines. Along the way, Jeanette starts to have real relationships with men, much to her mother's dismay. This shifts the dynamic from enmeshment to full on emotional abuse. At this, Jeanette finally begins to shift away from her mother.

The shift comes with drinking and bulimia. Jeanette's life seems to spiral out of control. She meets her first love, and they start to get serious, but he puts up a line when he says he stand by and watch her be bulimic. Jeanette seeks help.

Her first counselor is not much help. She moves on. As she moves on, the second counselor encourages her to concentrate on getting better. As she does this, her love's schizophrenia spirals out of control, causing an irreparable break. Finally, at the end of her rope and at the end of a failed Netflix series, Jeanette gives up acting to concentrate on writing.

My Thoughts

It must be hard to be Miranda Cosgrove or Ariana Grande and hear about Jeanette's life and abuse. No two people experience things the same way. And because abuse can be both highly subjective (what one person legitimately experiences as emotional abuse may not be seen in the same way as another person) and highly secretive, it would take a monster to have no feelings about this memoir. I would hope that they would have enough in common to bind them through it, but I would understand if they didn't. Being a young actor/singer is a hard thing. There are pressures everywhere. There is the nonstop commentary on your physical appearance. And it's not hard to see how this leads to several types of eating disorders and the like.

I found the book difficult to read. The abuse she chronicled difficult. But I did find she has a clear voice, a good grip of pacing, and a way of explaining things in a way that are both captivating and revealing without going to far into cringe. In fact, I might describe her authorial voice as seductive.

My kids grew up without iCarly and Sam + Kat, but...I did know who Jeanette was. We'd seen an episode or two of iCarly after we moved to Illinois, but the majority of the show took place before my kids were ever exposed to cable TV. Hey, one of he advantages of being poor is watching your local PBS station. I can't say I ever saw enough episodes to have a clear opinion of Jeanette or her acting, but I do understand how year after year, and generation after generation misses just how awful being a child actor can be. I would like to see the practice ended. And I'm an adult who wanted to be an actor as a kid.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from DesPlaines Pubic Library (Hi Cam!). The 304 page first edition is in great condition. The pages are stiff, so it feels like it hasn't been read a whole lot. Jeanette has a new book coming out, so I think this book will stay in the collection. The inside cover of this book released in August of 2022 says the book cost $27.99. This is the number I will use.

This Book $27.99

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Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie

2026-02-27T08:50:00.000-08:00

The Book

Miss Boulstrode wants to retire. Sure, she stared Meadowbank with Miss Chadwick, way back in the day, but it seems Miss Vansittart will be her choice of successor. But something is holding her back and she can't quite put her finger on why. She goes ahead, welcoming the students to Meadowbank, not knowing the seeds of murder have been planted in her very garden.

One of the girls is related to the personal pilot of head of Ramat, Prince Ali Yusef. Bob Rawlson, and he go way back, to their public school days. That's why Bob is entrusted to smuggle the emergency jewels out of Ramat the day of the revolution. Bob and Prince Ali then attempt to fly out of Ramat. Their plane crashes, leaving them both dead and everyone wondering what happened to the jewels.

Someone knows the truth. Someone knows where Bob hid them amongst his niece's things, even if Jennifer Sutcliffe does not. Several people are sent to infiltrate the school in an attempt to find and steal the jewels. Meanwhile Jennifer, not liking her tennis racquet, trades it with her roommate Julia.

First Miss Springer, the new PE teacher is murdered. And nobody can figure out why. Sure nobody liked her, and sure, she said she was great at uncovering secrets, but nobody expected murder. Parents begin to take their kids out of school. Then Princess Shiasta is kidnapped, and her uncle is quite upset. Then, Miss Vansittart is murdered and things are all a mess. In the wake of this, Julia discovers something surprising in her tennis racquet and heads to London to consult Hercule Poirot.

When he arrives, he tries to unravel things. Worried that he might succeed, someone has guess who the murderer is. And that someone wants tons of money to keep quiet. But that plan backfires and that person is murdered. With so many people dropping dead left and right, can Poirot save the school before the murder just walks away when the school closes?

My Thoughts

It took forever for this book to get started. It decidedly does not until Poirot arrives on the scene, at about two thirds of the way through the book. The set up is long, but not the longest in a Christie, it's complicated, and it's twisty. All things Christie is known for, but I felt this book lacked something driving the plot forward. Even when the murders started happening, I wasn't invested in the story until Poirot turned up. Once the book picked up, it was an easy read. And I finished it in a couple of hours.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Des Plaines Public Library. It's in pretty good condition, despite the slight water damage (noted by the checkout clerk and marked when I checked the book out) on the last third of the 260 pages. It picked up that damage sometime after it entered their collection in September of 2018 and it was kept on 9/22/2022 or so that marking inside the book say. It's interesting to read all of the coded, stray remarks inside a book. They aren't that hard to discover, usually a date, a set of initials, and a reason, sometimes coded, typically not, in the book. After you've read a few of them, it's not hard to decode, but then I suspect nobody is passing secret messages through random library books. The cover says it cost $13.99 when new. That's the number we will use.

This Book $13.99

Library Items Reviewed This Year $96.94

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $162.69

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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Dorchester Terrace, by Anne Perry

2026-02-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

The Book

It's Thomas Pitt's first real test as head of Special Branch, when he receives word that something suspicious seems to be going on in Kent. The problem with being tasked with preventing terrorist attacks is that sometimes the signs are so subtle, they can be easily missed. In this case, Special Branch agents have word that people are asking mightily specific information about the trains running between Dover and London during a very narrow time frame. A little bit of investigating on Pitt's part, and he find that Duke Alois Hapsburg, a minor Austrian duke, from one of cadet branches of the Hapsburg dynasty is on his way from Austria to London to visit one of his cousins and his grandmama, Victoria. Pitt takes note and runs it up to the Foreign Secretary. But Pitt is being tested, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Tregarron, thinks Pitt is jumping at shadows. He fobs Pitt off onto his new junior assistant, MP Jack Radley.

Jack is in a terrible position. New to his job, it's what he needs to learn to make him good at it. He knows Pitt isn't prone to exaggeration, but he can't use the "Hey I trust my brother-in-law" string on Tregarron. Both Pitt and Jack are vulnerable to accusations of nepotism, Jack, because his wife, the former Lady Ashworth, maintained her vast political and social connections and Pitt because, the former Lady Ashworth is his sister-in-law. He advises Pitt to seek out

Now Charlotte (Pitt's wife) and Emily (Jack's wife) are having a tiff. They know the tension between their husbands, but although the boys are fine, Emily is worried Jack might not be great at his job and Charlotte knows Pitt is vulnerable. Unable to take their concerns to their husbands, the sisters become increasingly ill tempered with each other.

Meanwhile Pitt's former boss, Lord Narraway, bored and unable to stop Pitt's test decides to investigate the death of a friend of Vespasia Cumming-Gould (Aunt Vespasia to Emily by marriage and Pitt and Charlotte by choice). The two cases merge, and if the murderer or murderers succeed, both Pitt and Jack will pay the price.

My Thoughts

Wow, trying to write a synopsis of this book got convoluted really quick. I do believe if I were the author, I would have trimmed a plot point or two. It's not as easy as it looks to merge an A plot an a B plot, as we frequently see in things like Start Trek shows. Sometimes it becomes impossible, or implausible. I would argue the later is the case here. And although Alois Hapsburg makes barely an appearance on the page, I did dig into history to see if I could find him. He's as delightfully fictional as Thomas Pitt. And it was an inventive use of the sprawling Hapsburg dynasty on Anne Perry's part.

I think the thing I found most interesting, is that until the end of the book, I couldn't have told you if I had read it or not. I have not. None-the-less, I've read enough Anne Perry's to guess the end. And I love the twist, even if I figured it out in advance.

From here to the end of the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt books, whether or not I have read them is hit and miss. Sometimes I found the book on the shelves of my local library, sometimes, they would have had to be ordered from local libraries.

We have arrived at my spot in the Anne Perrys where my disputes with the way my local library led me to become a library trustee. In short, when I moved to IL from NC, I had problems getting a library card. Policy which I fought to change, and which I have not yet been successful. As such, when I had to order the book from a different library, I didn't read it. It took five long years to get my library card situation fixed. By then, I was so far behind, I didn't catch up. I'll get them now.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This first edition hardcover came to me from Prospect Heights public library. It entered their circulation in April of 2012. There are small pencils marks, with a date of 7/17 on the same page with the marking lao. Now, we saw something similar, when a previous Anne Perry book entered into the core collection at a different library. I don't know if that's the case with this book, but it bears a similar mark. The book itself is in remarkably good condition and should be in circulation quite a bit longer. The inside cover says this book originally retailed for $26.00.

By this point in time, we may postulate that part of the low cost of the book is due to Amazon pricing power. It is my belief Amazon has been on a decades long push to run publishers out of business by cutting their profit margins to the bone. By this point in time, 2012, Amazon already had the lion share of book sales in the United States. Between the dominance of Amazon and the consolidation of retail bookstores, leaving just BooksaMillion and Barnes & Nobles as the dominate players, indie bookstores were increasingly having to close. 2012, before the rise of the brain rot that is social media addiction, was a peak year for publishing. But they knew they were fighting a downhill battle. Now according to Raising Readers, fewer young people are taking up novel reading as a hobby. If there is one thing I would change, it's bringing novel reading back.

This Book $26.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $82.95

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $148.70

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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Three Men and a Maid, by PG Wodehouse

2026-02-13T09:14:00.000-08:00

The Book

This British comedy follows the lives of Sam Marlowe, his cousin Eustace Hignett, Eustace's ex-fiancée Wilhemennia "Billie" Bennet, and Billie's father's choice for her Bream Mortimer. All four of them cross the Atlantic Ocean in the same steamship. Eustace stays below, too seasick to interact with Bream, Billie, Bille's friend Jean, and Sam. Which works out fine. Same and Billie meet when her dog, a Pekingese bites Sam. Once Sam gets her name, he is shocked to find out she is Eustace's ex-fiancée. After a series of misunderstandings, Sam and Billie get engaged on the boat. All comes out, and Billie changes her mind when Eustace is persuaded to play the piano for Sam's act on the boat's amatuer show. It goes badly. Billie breaks up with Sam, Eustace gets sick drawing the interest of Jean, but he feels too badly to do anything about it. Bream thinks Billie will finally give up chasing after new guys and settle down with him, and Sam is heartbroken and goes to the seaside to recover.

Once in England, Eustace schemes to spend more time with Billie's friend, even if it means spending time with Billie. He lets out his mother's house, without her knowledge, to Billie and Bream's fathers. When the fathers start driving each other crazy, Eustace encourages Sam to enter his dad's law firm to prevent Sam's dad from telling Eustace's mom the crazy thing Eustace has done. And also, Eustace hopes to buy more time to get married before his mother can stop him.

Sam agrees. A whole bunch of crazy commotion later and the book ends with the people who deserve each other, together.

My Thoughts

This is classic British absurdist comedy as practiced by a legend in the field. Easy to read, the plot itself is pretty straight forward and easy to guess. But that's not why I'm reading a comedy, it's to see the hijinks his characters get up to, and boy do they deliver. Like most comedies, Wodehouse uses exaggeration, wit, and upending social conventions to pass commentary on the society he lives in. It is well done. I get the British flavor, I get the commentary (perhaps it was reading through all of those Agatha Christies from the same era), and I loved how absurd the whole venture was.

Reading a master of whatever genre always conveys some lessons. Wodehouse and his comedy shows how a predictable plot can be rendered fun, memorable, and unique by having a strong voice and the wit to hang a lantern on your narrative if you can figure out how to make it delightful. I wish I could do it a third as well as he does, it would go a long way to making my own novels more fun.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

I downloaded the free version of this book onto my Kindle app. As it is in the public domain, Project Gutenberg had a copy available on Amazon. There is a version available from my library, and I'm going to try downloading it soon. I just wanted to get this read before my podcast interview on Wodehousekeeping podcast. (Hi Ian, what a great name for your podcast.) You can catch me there! As this was a digital book, and in my collection, I was free to highlight as much stuff as I wanted. As it cost me nothing, that is the number I will go with.

This Book $0.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $66.95

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $122.70

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

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Ordeal by Innocence, by Agatha Christie

2026-02-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

The Book

When Dr. Arthur Calgary goes to Sunny Point (formerly Viper's Point), to deliver the news that the now dead Jack Argyle did not murder his mother Theresa Argyle he does not know the can of worms he's opening up.

Jack or Jacko as the family calls him, may have had an alibi for the time of the murder, but many of the others in the house do not. None of them, Theresa's husband and father of the clan, Leo; the kids Michael, Hester, Mary (and her husband Phillip), and Christina; nor the help, Miss Kirsten (Kirsty) Lindstrom (the nanny/housekeeper), or Miss Gwen Vaughn (Leo's secretary/new fiancee) believe or want the news to be true. Because if Jacko didn't or rather could not have killed his mother, then one of them must have.

Now the innocent and guilty alike are suffering the consequences of the truth. Leo and Gwen put their wedding plans on hold, perhaps they will not marry now with each believe the other did it. Hester's fiancé is will to stand by her, but only if she will tell him the truth about why she killed her mother. Nobody think Kirsty did it, but then, if she didn't why did she stay on? Michael and Tina (Christina) both have alibis, or do they?

The mistrust is palpable as Mary's husband Phillip trying to solve the case, believing it to be a matter of deduction. He keeps setting what he believes are clever little traps, which does ensnare someone. Someone who has already killed once and will so again.

Let us hope Dr. Calgary and his keen deductive skills figure it out before the killer kills off the girl he falls in love with.

My Thoughts

Well, I knew who was going to marry whom by page 20. It's a fairly standard Christie subplot at this point, so no points to me for reading her foreshadowing properly. I did figure out the clues and who had killed Theresa fairly early on. Christie is a writer who regularly rewards readers for reading closely.

I think this book does well as a stand alone, much better because it's a mystery and not a thriller, which I feel are much harder reads. I found this one a quick read, with easy to follow clues, and yet enough legitimate red herrings along the way to keep me guessing if my conclusions were correct. I was delighted to be accurate in my reading, but I was a bit disappointed at the answer. I felt either Poirot or Miss Marple might have summed it up a bit better. And I missed the presence of one of those characters here. Dr. Calgary did not strike me as quite as strong as either one of them.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Wilmette Public Library. According to the pencil marks on the inside of the book, it appears to have entered their collection on 3/3/21. There was paper clipped onto the title page of the book a slip that said the book was in poor condition when it was received, with instructions not to remove said slip. Okay. Gotcha. The edges of the book did have a few upturned pages. Admittedly the cover of the book is loosing its lamination, but overall I would say the book isn't in really bad condition. Certainly I believe the book should be pulled from the collection, but other than the markings Wilmette put in, there were none. Friends, I fear we have read books in far worse condition. Perhaps this marks a change in the standards of the books that are acceptable in collections. I don't know. We will roll with it. The back of this book says it was $14.99 and the receipt says $15.00. This is the first time the value of the book has exceeded the price on the cover. I have no idea how or why that's the case. Interesting.

This Book $15.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $66.95

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $122.70

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Shoulder the Sky, by Anne Perry

2026-01-30T21:06:00.000-08:00

The Book

The Reavley siblings are back and in the thick of World War II. Rev. Joseph Reavley is stationed in Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium. It's spring of 1915, just after the advent of chlorine gas attacks, and well into the trenches. Ypres (Ieper in Dutch), is the front line of the Western Front, where the Germans have been stopped. At stack, the territorial integrity of Belgium and the freedom of the French. Joseph helps evacuate an injured man, a sapper by the name of Corliss. A sapper's job is to dig and mine the tunnels under no man's land, the area between the forward most English trenches and the forward most German trenches. Crossing no man's land is an impossible task under these conditions. The spring is still new, and the nights are still bitterly cold. It rains more than it's sunny, the trenches are loud, crowded, and short on supplies. Rats, lice and ticks crawl over the dirty men. Everyday men are lost to dysentery, frost bite, and diseases like pneumonia in addition to the wounds of war. Joseph accompanies Corliss back to the first aid station, where the nurses and a surgeon try to save what is left of Corliss's hand. But a reporter by the name of Prentice is there, and he's learned that sometimes men injure themselves when their nerves snap. He knows the type of mostly non-lethal injuries like Corliss sustained are done deliberately by men who want to go home, no matter the cost. Prentice makes the allegation known, angering a number of men in the division where Corliss served.

When a fight breaks out between Prentice and an American ambulance driver with a bad temper, Prentice retreats to general's headquarters to report it. He's overly confident General Owen Cullingford, who is also his uncle, will discipline the men who have injured him. But his uncle refuses, knowing Prentice likely provoked the fight and he can't get any evidence as the men have closed ranks, and refuse to acknowledge they saw anything. Disappointed, Prentice then surmises his uncle, a married man, has a crush on his driver, Judith Reavley. His uses this knowledge to blackmail his uncle to allow him onto the front lines. Everyone goes back to the war.

One night, a couple of weeks later, during a brutal assault, Joseph find Prentice dead, murdered on the battlefield. Joseph returns the body, and buries him. He then goes to find General Cullingford to report the death in person, a grace he affords the general to look him in the eye, rather than inform him by mail. Cullingford appreciates the gesture. While there, Joseph confides to Judith that Prentice was murdered. Judith then agrees to go home to England to visit Prentice's mother on Cullingford's behalf.

Meanwhile back in England, Matthew is still looking for the Peacemaker, the man who had the Reavleys' parents murdered. When Judith and Matthew compare notes, they realize, Prentice is likely a part of the pacifist movement which is looking to undermine England's goals. Judith, through a bit of luck realizes that the man who murdered their parents, and Prentice's likely contact are the same woman. When she returns to Belgium she confides in Cullingford, who then suspects the he knows the identity of the Peacemaker. Cullingford returns to England and is murdered when he goes to Matthew in order to have the Peacemaker arrested.

Joseph, in the trenches, finally figures out who murdered Prentice, but before he can bring the man to justice, he has to go home. While there, the Lusitania sinks, derailing Matthew from his task of finding the Peacemaker. He sends Joseph to Gallipoli to investigate one of the suspects. Joseph goes and finds yet another journalist, hell bent on the same task as Prentice, showing the ugliest side of the war so the people at home revolt. He misdirects Joseph, now Joseph must chase after him and return home in time to go back to Ypres or face a court martial. But with the German U-boats all of the place, will either Joseph or the reporter even make it back to England alive. And without Joseph's information will Matthew ever be able to stop the Peacemaker?

My Thoughts

Anne Perry has a knack for historical fiction. The granular details combined with deeply emotional scenes with stakes has a way of making the past come alive. I could almost smell the dirty trenches of WWI while reading this book. It's enough to motivate me to do whatever it takes to make sure our world does not return to this type of fighting. It's the gross destruction of this war that that's so appalling, and Perry, though writing from an English standpoint, makes that abundantly clear.

I still have problems with the overarching story, the chase for the Peacemaker. Although, in world, this chase makes sense, I think a historian might agree with the Peacemaker's assessment of the situation. Certainly there are many people who would have been better off had the Peacemaker succeeded. There would have been no Russian revolution, and the millions who would die as a result. Stopping the war at this stage, would have prevented the holocaust. Certainly, the war should have just stopped at this point, and Austria-Hungary would have been in a very different situation. There, perhaps, might have been nothing that could have prevented the Great Depression, but there are still millions of lives to be lost in this war and millions will lose them in the war to come.

That is not to say I think the Peacemaker to be a moral man (and I'm certain he is a man). I think he doesn't care how many people he kills in the name of peace. And in that way, he is just a callous as those men who led their countries to war. And that's maybe the problem with humanity, we get so caught up in our political goals that we forget there are humans on the other side of equation.

However, the story is compelling and I'm rooting for the Reavleys, who I know to be on the right side of history, however much I wish the Peacemaker's goals had been accomplished.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Glenview Public Library. This first edition hardcover entered their collection on October 15, 2004 (a few days after publication). It was classified as part of their core collection in August of 2010 and reaffirmed in October of 2015, or at least that's how I interpret their pencil markings on the title page. As with many hardcovers over 20 years old, the glue along the spine is weakening, causing the book to tilt. Aside from this, the book is in excellent condition. I hope I am not the last person to ready this book. The cover says the book cost $25.95 when it was released, that's the number I will use.

This Book $25.95

Library Items Reviewed This Year $51.95

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $107.70

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

The Search for TMMS, by Successful Bread

2026-01-23T13:31:00.000-08:00

The Book

Follow Successful Bread and his (?) excellent narrative about ~40 year search for the name of and the band behind The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet frequently abbreviated to TMMS or just TMS (The Mysterious Song). The book is a history of what actually happened and how one little subreddit figured out which band was behind the TMS.

The story starts in September of 1984, when a teenaged boy recorded a song off of the radio one afternoon after school. In what seems to be a relic of bygone years, in those days, and in West Germany, school started at 7am and got out a little after 1pm, with the teens getting off the bus and into the house just before 1:30pm, when the German radio network NDR's program "Musik fur die Junge Leute" (Music for the Young People). Several of the DJ and producers were known to scrap the corporate mandated playlists in favor of giving local bands a chance to be heard by their audiences. One song on the tape was labels (mistakenly) "Blind the Wind". Fast forward 20ish years and a mysterious poster called Anton Ridel published snippets of this unidentified song across several message boards asking for help identifying. But, the song slipped away.

Then a decade afterwards another teenager, and Brazilian intern at a Spanish radio station took to the internet to try again. What happened was an explosion in interest. The subreddit and the Discord community both grew exponentially. But just as the search online took off in earnest, the pandemic shut down the world. Bored trolls and malicious hoaxsters threatened to tear the community apart. Almost all of the moderators ended up getting burned out and walked away to preserve their mental health. A precious few people remained, dedicated to the song and the search. After this, people continued to trickle in, one of them was Successful Bread, the writer of this book.

A small team used spreadsheets and protocols to contact people asking for information. And they kept at it until they found the band, FEX and the name of the song is Subways of Your Mind. (Insert link to official video here.)

The book concludes with an interview from one of the band members and memories from several of the most pivotal members of the subreddit.

My Thoughts

Holy cow has Successful Bread missed his calling. He should be writing pop history books. I cannot do his narrative skills justice. He has a fine balance of narrative drive and factual details that made reading the book a breeze. He kept the book engaging and fun. Fex's Subways of Your Mind, is one of life's most eccentric mysteries. If you are looking for a light read, read this. If you are looking for a fun read, read this. If you are looking for a great mystery with a great resolution, read this. If you're a fan of lost media, read this. If you are a music lover, read this. If you want to quit doom scrolling and read more, read this book first.

In short, if you haven't read it, you're missing out. Hop to it.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book was a gift to me from my husband, who just loves buying me rando stuff. I mean, he knew I was a fan of the band, the story, and the subreddit, so when he got the link to the book, he just hit buy. It's only available as a paperback, and given the scant scales, despite how well written, neither the story nor the book is likely to be purchased by your local library. You'll just have to pay the $15.00 for it. But it's money well worth the sales.

Library Books

This Book $00.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $26.00

Private Books

This Book $15.00

Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $81.75

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

4.50 from Paddington, by Agatha Christie

2026-01-16T20:12:00.000-08:00

The Book

Originally published in the US, therefore in my dad's collection, as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw, this book sees Miss Marple grapple with her old age and solve a quite puzzling mystery.

Elspeth McGillicuddy is riding north from London on a train when her train pulls alongside another train and through her window she sees a man with his back to her strangling a woman. Mrs. McGillicuddy is convinced the woman died as a result of the attack and she reports it immediately. But, she's believed to be a batty old lady. When she breaks her journey northward to Scotland in St. Mary Meade to wish her good friend Miss Jane Marple a merry Christmas, Miss Marple believes her.

From there Miss Marple is determined to figure out if a murder has been committed and if she can solve it for herself. But being a woman of advanced years, Miss Marple cannot undertake such an athletic pursuit alone. She calls in reinforcements. She gets a favor from her nephew, another from an old friend, and dangles the prospect of an adventure to the very capable Lucy Eyelesbarrow.

Lucy takes on the Crakenthorpe family of Rutherford Hall, where more mysterious things go on. When the family is poisoned, Lucy and the local cops know a murderer is on the loose for real. Then the body Mrs. McGillicuddy saw is found by Lucy. While Scotland Yard is pulling on their boots, Miss Marple assembles the puzzle and figures out who the murderer is, and why.

My Thoughts

As I mentioned before, this book was on the self at my parent's farm where I was visiting in July of 2024. It took me two days to read it, and that was at a fairly leisurely pace. But then the farm tends to be a contemplative place (read no TV, limited Wi-Fi, and no streaming services). I think when the book was published in 1957 this plot might have made more sense. I certainly feel that English trains vary greatly from American ones. Let us pretend we lifted this plot out of the English country side and had the murder occurring on say, an Amtrak, while I was on a commuter rail. Yeah, I don't get how the murderer would get the body off of the train. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this was always the hard part of the novel, the stretch, if you will.

Others will tell you there are precious few clues in the book, and I would agree. This tends to read more as a thriller than a puzzle mystery. And there isn't a whole lot of Miss Marple in the book. Not enough for my taste.

On the other hand, it was an easy read and entertaining. It was fun wondering what hijinks Christie was going to come up with next. I would not be surprised if she wrote this one quickly, especially since the plot doesn't meander and progresses in a relatively straightforward way. It's not Christie's best work, but it's not the worst either.

How Much My Dad Saved Me

This book has been sitting on my dad's shelf since I was a little girl. The edition he has, lost it's paper cover, but otherwise stood the test of time. There's another set of these in Hercule Poirot running around his collection somewhere, but I can't find it. For certain, I have read all of these Miss Marples at one time or another. In fact, I have distinct memories of reading this book in den of my childhood home. One of the many memories of reading books from his shelves in the den in my bathing suit. Here I first read Miss Marples and repeatedly fell out of Hercule Poirots. I was well into devouring mystery novels at this point. I had read through his paperbacks of Sherlock Holmes and every Hardy Boys from his childhood I still had. I had amassed a shocking number of Nancy Drew books, so it's not surprising my father may have picked up this compilations which debuted in 1987 for me. Certainly it was not a present because it was in his collection in the den. My books all sat on the shelves above my dresser. This book has weathered the last 40 year fairly well. There are no markings inside of the book (yay teenaged me) nor any dog ears. The leather cover is nearly pristine with the only damage being the missing paper cover which held the price. Ah, how do I know that? I looked it up. And according to the photos, these books originally sold for $34.75. Remember this is around the same time the leatherette editions are selling for $20 a pop. This seems in line. This is the number I will use. Thanks, Dad!

Library Books

This Book $00.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $26.00

Private Books

This Book $34.75

Total of Private Books $37.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $66.75

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Acceptable Loss, by Anne Perry

2026-01-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

The Book

Scotland Yard sends for Monk after they discover the body of Mickey Parfitt in the River, making it a River Police crime. Mickey Parfitt is the River's successor to Jericho Phillips of the previous novel, the one who abducted Scuff for use on his "pleasure" boat. It seems Parfitt has taken up the same disgusting trade. Now Monk must find Parfitt's killer. Was it one of his blackmail victims? Was it one of the abused boys? Was it the man, the power, the money behind Parfitt's boat. Monk needs to know. If it's the money behind Parfitt, Monk is intent to putting an end to the trade on the River once and for all.

But the scars of the loss from the Phillips case are still fresh. Scuff is still having nightmares. Hester's reputation is hanging on by a thread and it put a serious strain on her relationship with her friends Sir Oliver Rathbone and his wife Lady Margaret Ballinger Rathbone. The ugly allegations that Margaret's father, Arthur Ballinger financed it all taints the relationship. Margaret doesn't believe it. Monk, Hester, and Sir Oliver don't know what to believe.

It seems for a moment, Arthur Ballinger might be spared, when a dissolute patron of Hester's Rupert Cardew is implicated and arrested for the crime. Although Rupert declares he didn't do it, he was drunk that night and cannot account for his time during the murder window. But then, one of the prostitutes he frequents admits to stealing a very distinctive cravat and passing it along, the case against Rupert is dropped and Monk must begin again.

With all of the publicity, when Monk makes his next arrest he's got to win or lose his job as Commander of the River Police. When Arthur Ballinger is arrested it means the end of Hester's friendship with Margaret. But will it be the end of Monk?

My Thoughts

I dislike how dark the entries in this set of books, and I believe there is one more book in this series dealing with the same set of issues, are. But there can be no doubt, Anne Perry is exploring through fiction some of the realities she lived with in while she was growing up. The tension, mismatch, and overall degradation of a marriage is closely chronicled over the course of six books. How two people who you may believe are destined to be happy, indeed every indication in the early parts of their relationship prove to be both fascinating and complementary and slowly, as they face an external crisis how they fail to come together to make their marriage work. Perry certainly had a front row seat to the destruction of her parent's marriage and saw the results of her best friend's divorce first hand. She writes this part of the book with empathy and largely without judgement towards the parties. But I don't like it.

True, this is the extension of the literary foil technique Perry has implemented throughout the series, starting in A Dangerous Mourning, with the introduction of Sir Oliver Rathbone to be a foil for Inspector William Monk and extended after the resolution of that story arc to Margaret Ballinger, who first appears in Death of a Stranger. While Hester grappling with her feels between the ruthless Monk and the polished Rathbone serves a narrative purpose to sharpen both Monk's reformation after his accident and Hester's place in society, the addition of Margaret, in my opinion, does nothing for the narrative arc of the series. No matter how finely done. My advice is to skip the previous book, this book, and the next one and pick up the one after that. If you can.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from the Des Plaines Public library (hi to my friend Cam who works there). It entered their collection in August of 2011. The 305 page first edition is in great condition for a book that is nearly 15 years old. There are no marks, no dog ears, and only one teeny tiny tear on one of the cover pages. Well done Des Plaines readers. The inside cover says the book cost $26.00 when it was released this is the number I will use.

As a side note, if you go back on this blog and track the price of a hardcover first edition of the previous decade, from approximately the year 2000 to the date this was published, you see that the price of a hardcover was about $25 and barely rose to $26. The US inflation calculator tells me that given how inflation actually worked over this period of time, the actual cost of the book should have retailed for $32. The lack of inflation in this regard goes to show just how crowded the book market was. True, eBooks were by this time pushing traditional publishing out of the market place, but saturation and declining reading for pleasure have been driving forces behind consolidation and dropping profit margins, not technology. Interesting.

Library Books

This Book $26.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $26.00

Private Books

This Book $3.00

Total of Private Books $3.00

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $29.00

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

The Big Over Easy, Jasper Fforde

2026-01-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

The Book

Jack Spratt can solve no case...or so the bastardization of the nursery rhyme goes. Well, it would, it's a Nursery Crime and Jack Spratt is actually Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, head of the Nursery Crimes divisions. What are Nursery Crimes, well that would be any crime committed by or pertaining to Nursery Rhyme characters, fictitious characters, or other worldly beings. This is a problem that is specific to Reading, Berkshire, England. (For those of you who like me and have grown up in America, this town is pronounce like reeding not like redding. Pennsylvania would like for you to know redding it the preferred pronunciation there.)

Jack gets as his junior partner Detective Constable, Mary Mary. Yes, Mary Mary of quite contrary fame, well, the latest in a long line of Mary Marys at the very least.

The NCD has two problems, one is the rivalry between Jack and his former partner Friedland Chymes. And NCD's abysmal conviction rate. Chymes is a well liked, popular detective who is regularly published in Amazing Crime Stories. Jack Spratt is lucky if the press sleeps through his press conferences. With little public fascination with his work, the NCD is on the budgetary chopping block. And it looks to get worse when Humpty Dumpty is found dead at the bottom of his wall at his apartment.

Jack and Mary have to navigate this crime through the Nursery underworld, understaffed, disrespected all while Jack is up for admission into the prestigious XXX. Without a compelling backstory, and Chymes on the selection board, Jack is unlikely to get in. Can Jack figure out who killed Humpty? And can he finally expose Chymes and Amazing Crime Stories for the frauds they are?

My Thoughts

This was a really fun read. Breezy and easy to get through, it was fun to follow the twists and turns of the investigation. Fforde really has a way of making sure that no matter what happens, his protagonist's day/case gets worse. Moreover, like really great fiction, especially in the satire area, it levels an accurate critique of the ills of early 21st crime solving. Long before the rise of true crime podcasting, true crime was exploding as a device for police departments to justify their existence. In a book about as silly as you can get, with plot devices that are simply ridiculous, the message of using true crime as entertainment really hits home.

If you're into Christopher Moore, then you're missing out by not reading Jasper Fforde.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book was purchased by friend Gwen Tolios on my behalf last January. I gave her $20 to buy as many random mystery books as she could lay her hands on at her local bookstore's going-out-of-business sale. On the one hand, I'm super sad that her favorite bookstore couldn't make it. Small businesses face cut throat capitalism. I spent $20 for all 7 books she got. One of them had a $3 price tag and since 7x3=21 and that's close to the $20 I actually spent, that's the number I will use. And let us say nothing that I'm starting off a book from my own collection rather than a library book. It'll be our little secret. ;)

Library Books

This Book $0.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $0.00

Private Books

This Book $3.00

Total of Private Books $3.00

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $3.00

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

2025 Reading Year in Review

2025-12-29T11:04:00.000-08:00

By the Numbers

This year I read 41 books. I had 3 reviews in my pocket at the end of last year, and I used two of them. The last one will be up early next year. I checked out 40 books from the library, only one of which will not be reviewed on this blog. The sole book without a review is The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass. I've made a choice not write on this blog about how I do my craft or what influences it if it's outside of the mystery genre.

However, books such as these are readily available at your local library. So get your library card today.

Speaking of libraries, the total value my card gave me this past year was....$817.81. Not bad. But as we discussed in previous years, the value of the card should be measured between how much the median taxpayer pays I will use last year's number and see if I can get my buddy Travis to tell me how much is will be next year. Travis took my seat on the library board this year, as I stepped away to concentrate on standing up my publishing business. He was so new, he didn't know to get that number and publish it. I've educated him, and this is as much my fault as it was his. I didn't check the agenda to make sure he took the appropriate notes. However, we have last year's numbers and I will repeat them here.

How Much My Library Taxed Me: $240.52

How The Referendum Wanted to Tax Me: $346.75

Adding those two numbers together we get: $587.27

How Much My Library Card Saved Me in 2025: $817.81

And if we adjust for inflation, here we have to take a guess, because the tax assessor in my township has been rolling through assessments which both raise the taxes and the tax rate is regularly raised...it's complicated which is why I didn't do a whole lot to explain it out. And then the referendum was based on construction prices two years ago. As we know, we've been in an inflationary cycle, so those numbers are sure to go up. We must add both of them together to measure the true worth of the proposed new building. Why you might ask?

Sure, this is as good a place as any to explain policy out to people.

In Illinois, public libraries are typically a part of one of two types of government units, municipal, or a public library district, which is its own, independent unit of government. There are pros and cons to each approach, But having served as a library trustee for four years, it is my considered opinion that libraries should be run at the county wide level. For a few reasons. Although it's shameful the way libraries are underfunded in America, I feel the larger unit of government would make for more equal sharing of resources. The richest sections of the county have beautiful, well maintained buildings at a fraction of the cost proportionately to those in the poorest sections of the county. Moreover, it would allow the highly trained professionals to diversify the collections into smaller authors, leaving the appropriate number of books for popular authors. (Although, there are those who complain about the wait times to get a new book from a popular author. I am currently still waiting for Michael Connelly's latest release from October to become available. He'll have another one out soon, and I guess I had better put myself on the waiting list soon, or I will be massively behind on his back list. lol.) It would also consolidate administrative overhead, one of the biggest drivers in my county of expenditures. And it would allow county wide priorities, such as redevelopment of economically challenged areas, to be front and center. Libraries are one of the few public goods that are used in person anymore. For every tax dollar spent on a library, the local economy gets one dollar in local taxes returned to it, provided the library is in a commercial area. (Mine is not, and I can't help but think if we were in the downtown area of one of the local villages, we would be of more use to our community.) They provide safe spaces for teens, increase literacy rates, and help with the development of entrepreneurship. They are immensely valuable places, filled with more than just books.

But they need to be used. I don't use my library enough to be considered a super user. But I do use it regularly. I admit I'm an above average user, so the number needs to be more than the two numbers added together. This year it was, last year it was not. Which means that as long as I'm working on this project, it's technically possible to say a new building would be worth it.

Dead Man's Folly, Agatha Christie

2025-12-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

This Book

Ariadne Oliver requests that Hercule Poirot join her on the job of her latest challenge because she thinks there will be a murder. Poirot, bored for the moment, agrees. Miss Lemon thinks he's crazy, but he goes anyway.

Once there, Ms. Oliver explains she was hired to arrange a Murder Hunt. She had several ideas, but as she was in the house planning the hunt, she felt someone behind the scenes arranging things. Although happy with the arrangement of the fake murder, she believes she may have been hired to stage an actual murder. She begs Poirot to prevent it. To the rest of the inhabitants of Nasse House, Poirot is just a famous detective there to pass out prizes. Subtly he tries to get a read on the household. First he meets with a couple of tourist youths, young ladies staying at the hostel next to Nasse House. The neighboring estaste has been turned into one, something Nasse House prevented when Mrs. Folliat, the last of the Folliat family sold the estate to Sir George Stubbs and his wife, Lady Hattie Stubbs. It was as close to keeping it in the family as she could get, Hattie having been her ward.

Poirot meets the rest of the household, the Legges, Alec and Peggy, the Masterstons, Captain Warburton, the effecient secretary to Sir George, Miss Brewis, and the architect hired to rebuild the old folly, Michael Weyman. Poirot listens to the household, respectful of Ms. Oliver's "female intuition". After a couple of days, he believes Ms. Oliver might be wrong. Nevertheless, they both get swept into the plans for the grand and they both go and participate in the Fete. Almost laughing at how foolish Ms. Oliver seems to have been.

And then, in the middle of the afternoon, just before the discount price to get onto the house grounds, Marlene, the 14 year old girl hired to be the body, is actually strangled in the boathouse and by the means Ms. Oliver laid out. Both Ms. Oliver and Poirot are horrified. The local cops are perplexed.

As Inspector Bland investigates the case, he is baffled. Poirot, cannot explain who did it either. They call for Lady Stubbs, but she had disappeared. And now, her husband Sir George is worried she will turn up dead. Poirot is at a loss, but after the inquest of the Marlene, Poirot returns home. When old Merdell is found dead as well, Poirot returns to give his condolences to his family. From there, he find a missing link, which enables him to solve the case before anyone else is murdered.

My Thoughts

I remembered aspects of the David Suchet Poirot too vividly to be surprised by any of the plot twists. Like so many of these stories where I saw the adaptation, but it was many years ago, so I don't remember the intricacies of the plot. Nor can I be certain, though Poirot did an admirable job sticking to the source material, what has and has not been changed. Nevertheless, I do feel I vaguely remembered it. Once I know what I'm looking for, I can now judge whether or not the author has played fair with me. I can say, Agatha Christie is the master of fair play puzzles. We do get all of the clues we need.

Might I say, that in this regard, where deductive reasoning is the height logic and modernity, made these types of stories a lot of fun. The more modern approach, of gritty details, sarcastic sleuths, and science to save the day has far less charm than these breezy reads. This isn't a surprising Christie, but it is a good one. And I don't know why anyone says she got worse as she got older. They've always been hit or miss for me. However, if you are looking to avoid bad late Christie books, this one is safe. And the puzzle is there, not too difficult for you to figure out, but not too easy either.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

I believe in past chronologies of these leatherette editions, we've discovered this book is firmly in the first set of leatherettes, available between 1983 ish and 1987. The second set of leatherettes, later on the decade has a slightly different set of colors, more green, I believe. This book is in really good condition, regardless of its age. There is some staining on the bottom of the book, looks like it might have had coffee spilled on in and then wiped away immediately. The book was not the easiest to hold in my hand, although not as stiff as a new book. I would guess the reason this edition is in my library is that it's a later Christie that few people read. Certainly it predates my library's current habit of marking the date it entered circulation in the book. That goes back to sometime in the 1990s. My guess is this is a procedure (it's not a policy because I didn't vote on it as a trustee) instituted as part of the computer system when they finally got computers. This is an area that frequently lags behind by about a decade, although, I see less of that in my area these days. I'm not certain what our earliest date is on this blog, maybe at some point I will go through and check, but it's not today. We have previously established these books were about $20 each when they were purchased if bought individually, although, I suspect the entire collection was seen as an investment when the library expanded. $20 is the number I will use.

This Book $20.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $730.93

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $85.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $817.81

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

No Graves As Yet, Anne Perry

2025-12-19T08:59:00.000-08:00

The Book

Dr, Joseph Reavley finds out from his brother Matthew that their parents were killed in a car crash. Apparently, their father had his hands on a document that revealed a conspiracy that would lead to an awful, upcoming war. Joseph and his brother vow to get to the bottom of the document and the mystery around their parents' deaths. They are so wrapped up in it, that they miss the major news of the day, the death of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie by an assassin in Sarajevo. Matthew works in the SIS, so he is expertly stationed to follow the clandestine clues.

Joseph and Matthew barely get started when one Joseph's students at Cambridge is found dead, apparently of murder. Inspector Perth comes in to determine who killed Sebastian, God knows plenty of people hated him. As Europe marches towards war, Matthew and Joseph must figure out of their father actually had a document that would have started a war, and if he did, can they stop it? It seems oh so far away, but tragically, one more person is murdered, and war they can't stop is on their doorstep, whatever is an agnostic preacher to do?

My Thoughts

I would like to thank Dr. Michael Neiburg for his exhaustive research into what caused WWI. Subconsciously, I think I was leaning into the research for year specifically because I was putting off reading the five books in the WWI series. The Victorian mysteries I loved. I didn't want to shift time periods. And, I knew too much. I knew that Anne Perry based these books on the experiences of her grandfather, Joseph Reavley. Her grandfather had been a chaplain in WWI. The work is fiction. All fiction. And, knowing what I know from Dr. Neiburg's work, the dramatic irony is more than a little hard to swallow.

Perry does an admirable job of portraying the real feelings of normal people in the fear and disinterest leading up to WWI. But, it doesn't hit home the way the Victorian work does. Perhaps if I knew less, then I would care less. Or maybe, it's because the events portrayed in the book, the dangerous document that would lead to such a catastrophic war, that war pacifists would kill to prevent it from happening. I find this to be such a crazy leap of logic, even given what I know is coming.

I do think after watching lectures from Dr. Neiburg, Dr. Christopher Clarke, and Dr. XXX, that WWI was probably both inevitable and unpredictable. The world had so much globalization at that point, but just as countries got better at solving their disputes, the forces inside the empires that felt left out/left behind became more radical. Just as capitalism made living easier for even the poorest of the poor, the rise of unspeakable wealth left in it's wake great evil. These forces undoubtedly led to WWI. And yet, I feel, had the Archduke survived, we might never have had WWI.

The plot of the book is thin, the historical portions of the settings, accurate, but twisted. The mystery is solvable. In fact the solution presented itself to me almost immediately, and there is precious little along the way to dissuade me. I'm finishing the series, but I strongly prefer Charlotte and Thomas and William and Hester to the Reavleys.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Park Ridge Public Library. The 368 page hardcover is in really good condition. There is no date on the acquisition of the book on the interior, not all libraries do that, but I find it interesting when they do. Since it's not a first edition, I would conclude that this was an end of the 2003 year purchase. In whatever year they did acquire the book, they were still using the physical check out card system because the card pocket is glued into the back of the book. The only markings in the book are the pristine handwriting, in pencil, by whatever library services tech printed the information that library used at the time to catalogue the book. The publication date was August 26, 2003. The back cover says it sold for $25.95, that is the number I will use.

This Book $25.95

Library Items Reviewed This Year $711.93

Private Books

This Book $00.00

Total of Private Books $85.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $797.81

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

The Only One Left, Riley Sager

2025-12-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Book

This book is based around a made up rhyme, chronicling the terrible deeds of a teenaged girl.

At seventeen, Lenora Hope
Hung her sister with a rope

Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her mother’s happy life

“It wasn’t me,” Lenora said
But she’s the only one not dead

Kitteredge "Kit" McDeere is offered a job as a caretaker to an elderly lady who just happens to be the town's version of Lizzy Borden, or so the rhyme goes. The lady suffered a number of setbacks during the years and is now confined to a wheelchair. Apparently the only movement she has is in her left hand. So, taking up where the previous caretaker left off, Kit rolls Lenora up to the typewriter and reads what the lady writes.

It's supposed to be a full accounting of what happened that night, 50+ years ago. Halloween, 1929 to be exact. But Lenora might not be telling the truth. Kit's predecessor left in the middle of the night without telling a soul. Kit herself is under suspicion of murdering her own mother. So, is Lenora clearing her name, or is she confessing to Kit, the only person in town she believes will understand her? Kit can't be sure. And worse, when she discovers her predecessor didn't leave, but has been dead all along, Kit knows there's a killer on the loose. The question is, which one did it?

My Thoughts

I purchased this book for the cover. Being a novelist, I wanted a book that sold well and had a dramatic cover. Boy did this book deliver. It wasn't until I started reading the book that I read any reviews. One of the most memorable said, "Like most other Riley Sager books, this one has two plot twists too many."

I can't prove to you that Sager, or rather, Todd Ritter, has taken Jane Cleland's Mystery Mastermind classes, I've never taken any of them. But I can tell you, that this book is almost precisely structured as she recommends. It's my belief she honed her plot twist pacing and her theory as to what counts as a plot twist in these classes. I just know I've seen it in her free versions. And I can tell you this book checks off that list precisely. I know, I just got the list the day I started reading this book. What a fun game to play along while reading.

Here's the rub, I was down with the book. It's creepy, it's got a house literally falling off a cliff. Tons of lies. Tons of reasons for people to lie, red herrings galore. Sifting through fact and fiction in this world was pretty twisty. Certainly, Todd has taken a few devices from Agatha Christie as well. He has her gift for authentically crafting parallel plot points. But, it does have too many plot twists. I put down the book, finally done with it and felt...cheated. I don't know if it just has two too many plot twists, or if the last two, well two of the last three plot twists, were just really, really lame.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

I did the bad thing here. I purchased this book for its cover. I have a book where the major setting is a house, and this cover is dramatic. Book was full priced, (you're welcome Todd). And this was the last time I purchased a full priced book. It took me nearly 2 years to get to reading it. The 384 page novel is in what I guess is a mat print? IDK, the cover felt super weird a picked up finger prints like something fierce. I'm shipping this book to my friend after Christmas, but I don't think it was worth the $18.00.

This Book $00.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year $685.98

Private Books

This Book $18.00

Total of Private Books $85.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $771.86

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Hickory, Dickory, Dock, Agatha Christie

2025-12-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

The Book

Hercule Poirot's terribly efficient secretary Miss Lemon has done something she has never done before, made an error in her typing. And not just one, but three! Our dear Poirot is concerned. Is his secretary ill? She is all aghast at the mistake, but she explains her sister has a strange situation on her hands, would Poirot be willing to help out. And being a bored detective, he agrees. They invite her sister to tea.

Miss Lemon's sister Mrs. Hubbard is working as the housekeeper in a youth hostile on Hickory Road. She serves mostly students. They are a normal enough bunch, but now, for the first time in two years a number of things have disappeared and they don't know what to do. Should they call in the police?

Poirot decides to help out. He listens to the list of students living in the hostel. And he hears about how hot tempered Mrs. Hubbard's boss, Mrs. Nicoletis. When more things disappear and a lost shoe is found where Poirot suspects it will be, he convinces Mrs. Hubbard to invite him to dinner so he can meet the students for himself.

There he meets and discusses some of his famous cases with American student Sally Finch, who believes there is something wrong in Hickory Road. Valerie Hobson, Patricia Lane, Celia Autsin, Jane Tomlinson, Genevieve Maricaud, and Elizabeth Johnson round out the women who stay for the talk.

The men are Len Batemen, Colin McNabb, and Nigel Chapman. Mr, Akimbombo doesn't stay, but he does have some information about what's been happening.

After dinner, Poirot admits he was called in by Mrs. Hubbard to investigate the missing items. He encourages Mrs. Hubbard to tell the police. The next day, Celia Austin outs herself as a thief who is struggling with kleptomania. This entices Colin McNabb, our wannabe psychiatrist, to propose to Celia. The house is all agog. But it is short lived because Celia is murdered that night.

Inspector Sharpe is happy calling Celia's death a suicide until he finds out Poirot has been there. From there they work together to see if they can untangle things. But they are in a race against the clock. For someone at Hickory Road is a murderer, and he or she will kill again.

My Thoughts

The Season 6 Episode 2 Poirot starring David Suchet is one of the best acted of the bunch. Even though it debuted in 1995, I watched it on A+E not long after I got married in 1998, and later on PBS. It was perhaps the main reason that until I started this project I could not watch a Miss Marple, only read one, and I could not read a Hercule Poirot, only watch David Suchet.

Aside from Suchet's definitive portrait of Poirot, this is one of the best acted and fortunately cast of the entire Poirot series. Guest starring both a young Damien Lewis and Jonathan Firth, the tension between Len Bateman (Lewis) and Nigel Chapman (Firth) is palpable. This is basically one entire subplot of the book.

Despite this, I don't ever remember who the villain actually is. And when I read the book, I figured out why. The reveal, isn't so much of a reveal when normal deductive skills are applied. There are means, motive, and opportunity. But the thing most important, is personality. Who in the group is ruthless enough to actually commit murder and get away with it.

Since Poirot is all about the little grey cells and psychology of the crime, the murderer, despite their secrets, is pretty obvious. It's a great story though.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Zion Benton Public Library. There are no markings to indicate when the book entered their collection, although this design is credited to be 2011, so sometime after that. The pages are loose enough to be easily held, meaning this book has been read several times. At least five, but my guess would be over 20. It is in great condition, with no markings, dog ears, or any other thing to show wear and tear except the crease at the spine. This 237 page book was listed at $18.99, that is the number we will use.

This Book $18.99

Items Reviewed This Year $685.98

Private Books

This Book $0.00

Total of Private Books $67.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $753.86

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Treason at Lisson Grove, Anne Perry

2025-11-28T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Book

Special Branch work is dangerous and secretive. Thomas Pitt and his junior, Gower, are chasing a man through the slums of London. The man is an informant, and they must get his information before it's too late to foil a major plot. Alas, they arrive on the scene too late and West is murdered mid-chase by a very bold assassin. Pitt and Gower follow the assassin to France, where they find he is staying with a disenchanted British ex-patriot. But the chase is so hot, Pitt cannot tell his wife why he's not coming home.

Meanwhile, back in London, Victor Narraway is falsely accused of embezzling money meant for an informant to leave Ireland. Because the money didn't get to the informant, the informant was murdered. Narraway is out, but he needs to clear his name. He turns to Pitt's wife Charlotte for help. She agrees to go to Ireland with him, knowing that Pitt, as Narraway's protégé, will be targeting for dismissal next.

After many fruitless days in France, Pitt finally figures out there is at least one, and likely far more traitors in Special Branch. He arranges to return to London. On the trip back he's assaulted by a traitor, at the cost of that man's life plus someone who came to Pitt's aide. He is detained by the local police. When Pitt cannot get through to Charlotte, he calls Aunt Vespasia, who arranges for him to be release.

Returning to Special Branch work, Pitt is promoted to take over Narraway's job and he knows he's not ready. He can see, after sifting through the papers that something big is coming, and coming to Britain. But can he assemble the pieces in time. And can he clear Charlotte and Narraway of murder? If not, they might all be living on the streets.

My Thoughts

From time to time in this series, I believe Anne Perry jumps the shark. Perhaps she did in the last book, which ridiculously had Pitt and Gracie inside of Buckingham Palace, but the Prince and Princess of Wales were barely peripheral players. And Queen Victoria wasn't present at all.

But this book, is way more grounded in what might have been. Of course, by writing historical fiction, Perry has the advantage of knowing and studying the types of plots that proliferated throughout Europe during this time, and she clearly knows the types of betrayals people make when they get caught up in "The Game" of spying. A number of things in this story are logical precursors to what will actually happen in 25 or so years. The tide of communism, socialism, and anarchy are rising. While we may never know how many individual plots were thwarted, World War I is coming.

It is through this lens, the plot takes place. I find the traitors to be both chilling and plausible. I find the steps they were willing to go to, logical. In American, we tend to forget that Europe was in the hands of violent extremists for a long period of time. The violence peaked as the accumulation of imperial wealth peaked. And I find that is not a coincidence.

If you have a interest in history, you can do way worse than reading Anne Perry, who will educate you to both the emotional attachments and the political arguments of the day when the story is set. All of this with a rustle of Charlotte's skirt or the panache of a politician's well time wry observation.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Algonquin Area Public Library. Stickers on the inside of this 326 page book state this book entered their collection in May of 2023. I might have been the first person to read this particular book. as it seems brand new. It was normal "new book" difficult to hold. The cover and interior are immaculate. On the back cover the retail price is listed as $17.00, that is the number we will go with.

This Book $17.00

Items Reviewed This Year $666.99

Private Books

This Book $0.00

Total of Private Books $67.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $734.87

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Nightshade, Michael Connelly

2025-11-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Book

Detective Stilwell, Stil to his friends, has been sent to Catalina to rot. That's where the LA County Sherriff's Office sends all of their troublesome, but not fireable employees. Because he's a full grade detective, Stilwell is in charge of the substation on the island. And what did Stilwell do to earn such an "awful" assignment? He disagreed with his partner about closing a case. His partner filed to close the case, Stilwell filed a complaint against some corrupt players, and lost. But though this banishment is meant to keep Stilwell down, he's okay with it.

Sure he's a divorced detective and an outsider on an island where California's rich and snooty love to play. But he fell in love with the harbor master, a lady named Tash, who was born and raised on the island. Life is slower than it is on the mainland. There's a lot less crime. And for the moment he's happy. Until a boat scraper finds a body anchored at the bottom of harbor floor. Stilwell knows he can't keep the case, but he's intrigued. And he knows he'll do a better job than Ahearn (his ex-partner) and his partner Sampedro.

As usual, Ahearn is being incompetent, so Stilwell advances the murder case, despite the fact that he should be working a decapitated buffalo case, because of a reported robbery and the highly snooty Black Marlin Club. Stilwell's instincts tell him that the former employee accused of stealing a valuable statue is the woman whose body they pulled out of the harbor. So, he tracks down as much information on her, under the theory that she's the thief. We he's certain that she's the victim, he turns over the information to Ahearn, who blows him off.

Without an identity on the body, Stilwell keeps going, investigating the theft. He follows the leads. Ahearn finds out and tries to get Stilwell fired. It doesn't work. Stilwell has covered his tracks.

From here, the plot gets more complicated, with the stakes being raised at Stilwell's personal and professional lives until it looks like he might lose everything, merely for the sin of being right in a corrupt world.

My Thoughts

Well, I've attempted to do what Connelly does. There's no doubt about it, he's a great writer. And only a great writer is going to get away with a character only having one name (Stilwell) and with as many clearly contrary to policy moves Detective Stilwell makes. He's newer school than Harry Bosch, but not as new school as Rene Ballard.

Here Connelly clearly has something to say about Catalina, California's quirkiness, and what he sees as internal politics in police departments. As he gets farther from his reporter days, it seems the internal machinations of the LAPD became more...mysterious? Or perhaps policy just aligned to keep those things that had fallen through the cracks when Connelly was still reporting onto the straight and narrow. Now they're back, with a backstory and a detective. He has things to say, and he's gonna say them.

But I don't know how I feel about Stilwell. I am downright squeamish about Bosch, who I think as a character is a morally neutral man. I dislike Bosch's flaws. Stilwell, well, the jury is still out on this character. I like Mickey and Rene more. There's another book coming out this spring with Stilwell. And I will be reading it.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book was purchased at my local Barnes & Noble for $15. I know because it was half priced this summer. I was bored and angry about editing choices I had to make. I'd usually wait for the library to send me a copy. God knows Connelly doesn't need my money, not to put too fine a point on it. But, I wa intrigued that Connelly was trying a new character, something of a risk when two of his characters are going like gangbusters on TV these days. I was impressed. But I don't pay full price for any book that isn't indie authored these days. Sorry trads.

Having said that, I spilled coffee on it and I ben the cover. The inside cover is doing something strange. I clearly can't be trusted with books that aren't library books. I might have taken it to my local bookshop for store credit, but I can't do that now. Oops.

This Book $0.00

Items Reviewed This Year $649.99

Private Books

This Book $15.00

Total of Private Books $67.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $717.87

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Destination Unknown, Agatha Christie

2025-11-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

The Book

Brilliant scientist Tom Betterton disappeared from Paris. Now six months later, his wife Oliva is traveling abroad. The British government believes she is travelling to meet her husband. But on her way to Casablanca, Olive's plane crashes. She survives, briefly, but her wounds are fatal.

Meanwhile in Casablanca, Hilary Craven, distraught over her husband's desertion and the death of her much beloved child is preparing to take her own life. She is discovered by the mysterious Jessop and recruited to go on a dangerous mission, switching places with Olive to find out the truth about Tom. Since there is a small chance of survival, Hilary agrees. She meets with Olive, who tells Hilary to warn Tom about his cousin Boris Gilmyr. Hilary agrees.

From there Hilary travels as Olive. She meets a friendly American woman, Mrs. Clive Baker, a distracted British knitter, Miss Heatherington, a wealthy rich Greek, Mr. Aristides and a mysterious Frenchman Mr. Laurier. Hilary, deeply confused, but practically smart glides along in this world the best she can, finding that many of Olive's problems have been pre-solved for her. This leads her to more mysterious travels where she meets several traveling companions.

With Allen Peters, Torquil Ericsson, Dr. Barron, and Miss Nieheim, she travels on to her final destination, a compound at a leprosery colony where she is reunited the Tom. She's nervous, wondering what will happen if Tom disavows her. She takes charge of the situation and disavows him first, not knowing if she's made the right choice or not. Crazily enough, he laughs and claims her as his wife, much to her surprise. Together they start plotting their escape, but Tom is so erratic he can't really help.

Into the this Allen Peters, also starts to go stir crazy. He confides to Olive that he will get her out. Tom notices and congratulates Hilary on her conquest, but Hilary denies anything real is going on between her and Peters, even though she is secretly in love with him. From there she discovers that very few people are who they seem. And what everyone thought was a Communist Plot to horde the scientist, was actually a Capitalist Plot to horde scientist. And like all of the thrillers, our lovers live happily ever after. Once Tom Betterton is arrested for killing his first wife.

My Thoughts

I've never been overly fond of Agatha Christie's thrillers, and this one seems a little too far fetched to me. Even though, there are several plots of similar nature floating around when she wrote it. I guess I don't do Grand Conspiracy very well. The tiny, degradation of one's enemies, and how a strike or a series of strikes will weaken them, that I get. But this we will take over the world, that kind of megalomania doesn't appeal to me as fiction.

Parts of this book are a breezy ready, parts are a slog. And I think I agree with other critiquers, who think that Christie's overstuffed, over complicated plots are delicious to unwind as mystery fair, they don't translate as well to the thriller genre. I'm glad I read it. Because I am getting ready to write a political thriller myself, so I must remember when I'm plotting and revising not to make it too complicated.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from Glenview Public Library. This book entered their system May 16, 2012. It's in pretty good condition for being that old. There are only a couple of pages that have been dogeared at the bottom, and I'm not certain that was intentional, as there is a small crease in the back cover which looks to be the result of a fall, perhaps. Anyway, this book has several more reads in it and I hope some people find this book awesome.

The back cover says the book cost $12.99 and that's the number we will use for this 248 page book.

This Book $12.99

Items Reviewed This Year $649.99

Private Books

This Book $0.00

Total of Private Books $52.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $702.87

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Execution Dock, Anne Perry

2025-11-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

The Book

Finally, Monk has closed Durban's most important open case and brought Jericho Phillips to trial for the murder of the boy, Walter "Fig" Figgis. It's a point of pride for Monk, who hopes this pays his moral debt to Durban and earn the respect of the men Monk leads in his new job as Commander of the River Police. Monk wants the win so badly that he fishes Phillips out of the water instead of letting him drown just so he can stand trial.

At trial, Phillips is ably defended by Sir Oliver Rathbone. Rathbone preys on his deep friendship of Monk and Hester to paint them as overly emotional and lacking certain proof that Phillips is guilty. Phillips is acquitted, although everyone believes Phillips was guilty. Monk and Hester are shaken by what they feel is Rathbone's betrayal. Nevertheless, they start again, with their friends, including the mudlark Scuff, to see if they can gather evidence that will send Phillips away.

At home Rathbone is not enjoying his victory. He is aware, since Phillips was referred to him by his wife's father, that he was manipulated into taking the case, and allowed his vanity and desire to be liked by her family guide his decision. He cannot tell his wife her father was the one who asked him, because it is a professional confidence. After some thought, Rathbone consults his father for advice, without Margaret, and ends up driving a wedge in his young marriage.

As the aftermath of the trial ricochets through London, Monk finds out Commander Durban wasn't who he claimed to be. Now, with the very real possibility that the River Police might get folded into Scotland Yard, Monk must prove that Durban was the good man everyone believed him to be. As the investigation heats up, Phillips get meaner, until finally he takes Scuff. Will Monk be able to close the case in time to save Scuff?

My Thoughts

We have entered the three book arc which will see a most profound change in Sir Oliver Rathbone. And though the subject is distasteful, that of child sexual abuse, it is not depicted between the pages. And she is right, when so many of these characters are sick to see what has happened to the boys Phillips and his backers have abused. In the later stages of this series, I feel Perry make a few too many creative leaps, beginning here. Here we will see Oliver go from what he is in this book to what he will become and back again, all for driving the conflict.

And perhaps nobody knows better than Perry how pride, arrogance, surety in one's own moral compass can lead people astray. This is a woman who has done terrible things in her own life, after all. And her need to tell a story about redemption, completeness after a terrible moral fall from grace must have compelling. The literary worth of this series is unparalleled. In Monk, Hester, and Sir Oliver there are a trio of characters, with flaws and virtues, with brains and guts, with loves and hates. They may be characters from the 1850s-1860s, but they reflect back at us quandries that are as real today as they would have been all of the years ago.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to me from the Des Plaines Public Library. The 306 page first edition seems to be in near pristine condition, although the pages don't crackle like a new book would. It entered into their system in March of 2009. There are no marking, dog ears, or stains on this book. And I hope they are able to keep it for many years to come. The inside cover says the book cost $26.00 at the time it was purchased. That's the number I will use.

This Book $26.00

Items Reviewed This Year $637.00

Private Books

This Book $0.00

Total of Private Books $52.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $689.88

Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

The Write Hobby

Amuse Bouche, by

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

Comments

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, Agatha Christie

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

This Book $00.00Total of Private Books $52.75 Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $279.57Still Here? I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.

Comments

At Some Disputed Barricade, by Anne Perry

The Book

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

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The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

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The Pale Horse, Agatha Christie

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

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Angels in the Gloom, Anne Perry

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Mer

Private Books

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I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Jeanette McCurdy

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Comments

Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

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Dorchester Terrace, by Anne Perry

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

Comments

Three Men and a Maid, by PG Wodehouse

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

Comments

Ordeal by Innocence, by Agatha Christie

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

Shoulder the Sky, by Anne Perry

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Private Books

The Search for TMMS, by Successful Bread

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

Library Books

Private Books

4.50 from Paddington, by Agatha Christie

The Book

My Thoughts

How Much My Dad Saved Me

This Book $00.00
Total of Private Books $52.75

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $279.57
Still Here?

I am now a published author. You can pick up a FREE COPY of my novella The Big Intersection here.