The Woman in the Woods

 The Woman in the Woods by (Charity) Lee Blackstock is another one of those inverted mysteries. I've said before that I'm not a big fan of this kind of mystery. I enjoy pitting my wits against those of the detective in the story to see if I can figure out who did it. I'm not so much into sitting on the edge of my chair and waiting to see if the killer (who I know already) is going to get caught. This one does have an advantage over The Chocolate Cobweb, though. The characters talk sensibly and the story line is a good one.

This story revolves around a skeleton discovered by two schoolboys who have been playing truant. When it becomes apparent who the victim was, the next question is why would anyone want to kill her? She seemed like such a nice woman...friendly with everyone. Of course, the reader already knows who did it. The clues to her identity and to that of her killer are glowing neon signs...except to the people in the book.

Over all, Blackstock tells a good tale. It's a decent story and I found most of the characters to be engaging and believable. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if she had told it as a straight mystery story, though. I wonder if she had removed the telling paragraphs where the killer was revealed in the beginning chapters if I would have spotted him/her? Three stars out of five.

Follow Friday 40 & Over!

It's Friday and time again for the Follow Friday 40 & Over blog hop (which is in its 22nd edition). Sponsored by Never Growing Old, this blog hop asks: Are you a blogger over 40? Yeah, welcome to the club! Please join in the fun and get to know your fellow bloggers!!

The RULES to join in are very simple:

*Grab the button
*Add your link to the list on the blog site
*Visit as many blogs as you can
*Follow the ones you like (and comment to let them know you're following)

Message for Old & New Followers: Check out my 100-Plus Followers Give-Away! (click link)

All I Want for Christmas Is... (2)

This is a feature/meme sponsored by Danya at A Tapestry of Words where we choose a book each week leading up to Christmas and say why it's made it onto our wishlists – and she'd love to see what books everyone else is hoping to get! So if you want to make your own blog post about it, please link up at Danya's site.

Since I missed the first posting, I'm going to post two Christmas wishes.



First up--The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks by James Anderson: Who ever tires of the zany British country house murder? Lord Burford, for one. When his wife wants to allow nine guests to stay at their country home ("just for the night"). Lord Burford protests that the last time they had a large number of guests stay there had been unfortunate incidents. Lord Burford's misgivings were understandable. After all, the "unfortunate incidents" had been murders. But these people were travelling a long way for the funeral of an elderly relative. There was nowhere else for them to stay in the village, so the Earl really had to offer them accommodations at Alderley, the Burfords' Carolean mansion. Things started to go wrong when one of guests claimed she had knowledge that would ruin the others' reputations. But nobody took that seriously. Until, that is, she was found murdered...

The Affair of the 39 Cuff Links, lighthearted sequel to The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy and The Affair of the Mutilated Mink, delighfully captures the atmosphere of the 1930s country-house mystery. I absolutely adored the Egg Cosy and Mutilated Mink stories. I would love to get my hands on this one.


Second--Panic Party by Anthony Berkeley: Mr Pidgeon is the unlikely and lucky owner of a large yacht and a desert island. Gentleman sleuth Roger Sheringham is one of the members of the party Pidgeon invites for a cruise. When the ship and its crew return to port without them, the party are marooned for a fortnight on the private island. Sheringham is shocked to discover Pidgeon has organised the whole thing as an experiment. He has brought them together to enact a bizarre murder and detection game. But then the madness starts and tragedy strikes.

This was written in the 1930s and I'm a big fan of Golden Age mysteries. I wouldn't mind seeing a whole pile of mysteries from that era under my tree!

Sherlock Holmes & The War of the Worlds

In The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The War of the Worlds, Manly W. Wellman and Wade Wellman have taken the Sherlock Holmes we all know and love and joined him up with Doyle's other brilliant character, Professor Challenger. These two analytical men investigate and try to come up with a response to the alien invasion previously chronicled in H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. There are several startling revelations...one in particular about Holmes and a few that "set the record straight" (as Watson would put it) about the events In London during the attack.

Overall, the Wellmans do an adequate job of telling their story and incorporating the worlds of Doyle and Wells. It is a bit disjointed in places...evidence that the novel was originally published as several "articles" which were meant to tell the "truth" about the Martian invasion. I think the portions which focus on the Professor's and Watson's point of view work best. Some of the writing from Holmes' point of view don't ring quite as true. I definitely enjoyed the interactions between Holmes and Challenger, and I am now eager to read the works that feature the egotistical professor.


***Spoiler Alert***
My major quibble with the story is the supposed romance between Holmes and Mrs. Hudson. There is no way that anyone will get me to believe that Watson, dull as he is sometimes portrayed, would have missed that relationship's reality. AND, given the good doctor's inclination to describe and have great sympathy for the beautiful women who employ Holmes as clients, you can't tell me that he wouldn't have mentioned that Mrs. Hudson was a youngish (30-ish), blonde, blue-eyed, statuesque, beauty. If there's anything the doctor notices, it's a pretty face.

Three stars out of five.

WWW: Wednesdays

WWW Wednesdays is hosted by MizB over at Should Be Reading.

To play along, just answer the following three questions....

*What are you currently reading?
*What did you recently finish reading?
*What do you think you'll read next?

Current:
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The War of the Worlds by Manly W. Wellman & Wade Wellman: Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger and Dr. Watson meet their match when the streets of London are left decimated by a prolonged alien attack. Who could be responsible for such destruction. Manly & Wade Wellman's novel takes H. G. Wells's classic story of Martian invasion and throws Holmes into the mix, with surprising results.

Finished Since Last Wednesday (click titles for reviews):
The Divine Comedy: Paradise by Dante Alighieri (trans by Dorothy L Sayers & Barbara Reynolds)
The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong
The Art of the Sonnet by Stephen Burt & David Mikics
Blameless by Gail Carriger
Lay On, Mac Duff! by Charlotte Armstrong
The Conference of the Birds by Jean-Claude Carriere & Peter Brooks

Up Next (from my latest garage sale book-haul):
The Woman in the Woods by (Charity) Lee Blackstock [book blurb: She had been an odd little woman, but harmless and quite delightful. Why would anyone want to kill her?]

Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham [Synopsis: The imperious Caroline Faraday runse her house like a Victorian fiefdom, unconcerned with the fact that it's 1931. The Faraday children--now well into middle age--chafe at the restrictions, but with no money of their own, they responde primarily by quarreling amongst themselves. Their endless squabbling is tedious but nothing more until one of them turns up missing and then dead, followed shortly by his petulant, whining sister. Though neither will be much missed, decency demands that Caroline Faraday hire the nearly respectable Albert Campion to investigate their untimely ends.]

Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh [Synopsis: Often regarded as her most interesting book...Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel. It was a horrible death--Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any nubmer of people could have killed him: the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted--if he wasn't a spy himself...

Killing the Goose, Death of a Tall Man, or Hanged for a Sheep by Frances & Richard Lockridge

A-Z Wednesday: The Letter K

It's A-Z Wednesday!! Sponsored by Reading at the Beach.

To join, here's all you have to do:

Go to your stack of books find an author whose first or last name starts with the letter of the week

Post:

1~ a photo of the book

2~ title & synopsis

3~ link (amazon, barnes & noble, etc.)

4~ Go back to Reading At the Beach and leave your link in the comments.

If you've already reviewed the book, add it of the link to your post.

This week's letter is: "K"

The Bohemian Girl by Kenneth Cameron

(Click Title for my Review)

Info & Synopsis from Amazon:

Hardcover: 320

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0312538979

ISBN-13: 978-0312538972

Price: $24.99

Category: Historical Mystery

Synopsis: When Denton, the famous American author and expatriate in turn-of-the-century London, receives a letter from a young woman saying she's in danger and needs his help, he doubts there's anything he can do. The letter is months old, and was only forwarded to him when the buyer of a painting found it stuck behind the frame. But why did she hide the note instead of sending it? The search for answers leads Denton into the heart of Bohemian London--the world of artists and their models, of brilliance and depravity, where the border between genius and madness is hard to discern but easty to cross. And before he has learned the shocking truth, Denton will discover what it's like to be the object of a lethal obsession and endure a terrifying confrontation with his own demons.

Conference of the Birds: aka How to Confuse the Heck out of the Reader

The Conference of the Birds by Jean-Claude Carriere & Peter Brook (based on the poem by Farid Uddi Attar)

When I first mentioned this book as one that was on my TBR list, I told how I had this fabulous quote from the original poem and that I wanted to read this book to find more of the same. Uh. Yeah. Not so much. I'm still really interested in reading the original poem (not printed in this book at all) just to see if the rest of the poem is as beautiful as the quote I found.

This book wound up being a play based on the poem which was composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran. Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. The quote I like so much? Not in there...at least not in any recognizable form. And the whole thing just confused the heck out of me. Okay, so I've got the main plot. The birds are in an uproar because there's so much fighting and suffering amongst them. And they all become convinced to go off in search of "god" so they can be happy and at peace. After a long, arduous journey, they discover that "god" was in them all along. Okay, fine. But, honestly, having read this play...I can't imagine it being staged--not as written. And there's usually not much wrong with my imagination. I suppose maybe I just don't fully understand the "marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism an esoteric system concerned with the search for truth"....but the stories told within the play just don't do it for me. And I don't see how this could have been "the supreme theatrical event of the season" as it is lauded by Mel Gussow from The New York Times. One star out of five. I could only really recommend this to someone who is far better acquainted with Islamic allegory and stage productions than I am. Maybe they would understand it.....

Read My Review: Romance

Read My Review is a chance for book bloggers to share new and old reviews, related to a theme. It is hosted by A Trillian Books and this weeks theme is Romance. It doesn't have to be an actual romance novel as there's romance as a fairly main part of the book.

What you need to do:

*Find one of your reviews that fits this week's thme (new or old).

*Leave your link with Mr. Linky at the bottom of A Trillian Books' post.

*Visit some of the other reviews and leave a quality comment (a couple of sentences).

*Grab the button and post about Read My Review.

Here's mine: Nine rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean.

Teaser Tuesdays

Miz B of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.

*Open to a random page.

*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (You don't want to ruin the book for others!)

*Share the title & author too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teaser!

Here's a teaser from my current read, Sherlock Holmes & the War of the Worlds by Manly W. Wellman & Wade Wellman:

"Gentlemen, the regular army has tried to fight and was hopelessly defeated." he reminded them. "The invaders saw at once how we gave battle and brought that sort of resistance to less than nothing."

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Fictional Crushes

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's questions asks us to list our top ten fictional crushes.

I wasn't sure I could come up with ten...and I was right. Although I got pretty darn close--a lot closer than I thought I would. I've been asked about favorite villains before and had a hard time with that one as well. I just don't seem to collect villains or crushes. Just good reads. But here goes...my crushes:

1. Lord Peter Wimsey. Had no problem coming up with this one. Lord Peter is wealthy, intelligent, and witty. He may not be the most handsome, but he certainly is devoted and entertaining. He could talk piffle to me all day.

2. Bunter. If I can't have Lord Peter, then I'll take his right-hand man. Bunter is always on the spot with exactly what one needs. And I hear he toasts the perfect crumpet.

3. Rhett Butler. I'm also partial to the suave handsome man who has some of the bad boy in him. Gotta love how he stays devoted to Scarlett all that time. It's a shame she waits until just too late to realize what a real catch he is.

4. Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. I'm sure he's going to appear on a lot of lists.

5. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Another witty man. I love his verbal sparring with Elizabeth. I'm very much a word person...so verbal games are a big draw for me.

6. Henry Gamadge from Elizabeth Daly's mystery series. A man who loves old/rare books. And is a detective? How could I not love him?

7. Reed Amherst (married to Amanda Cross's professor/detective Kate Fansler). Reed is a marvelous husband for Kate. There when she needs him--supportive even when he thinks she's getting into too much danger. And, again, one of those verbal, witty fellas. I think I see a pattern here.

8. Lancelot. The sexy, lover of Camelot.

9. Calvin from Wrinkle in Time. If I were younger....he'd be perfect.

That's it...can't come up with anyone else right now. If I have a sudden inspiration, I'll add a post script.

Lay On, Mac Duff!

I know I said in my review of The Chocolate Cobweb, that I wouldn't be all that eager to grab another Charlotte Armstrong any time soon. But Lay On, Mac Duff! has been on my TBR (to be found) list for a very long time and I was able to get my hands on it this weekend. That turned out to be a very good thing. Now I'm hoping that maybe the chocolate book was a fluke--or perhaps Armstrong was just trying out some really weird dialogue experiments.

Lay On, Mac Duff! tells the story of newly orphaned Bessie Gibbon who goes to live with her wealthy uncle and his much younger wife. On her very first night, she witnesses a very odd Parcheesi game between her uncle and three "friends." All four men play with intensity...as if their lives depend on the outcome! As well it may. Later that same night one of the men is found shot to death with a red playing piece on his body Is it possible that Bessie's uncle is the murderer? Or is it one of the other men? Or even Aunt Lina, the pretty young wife?

Armstrong's debut novel is a fun, light, cozy little murder. We have our very small set of suspects...a set that keeps getting smaller as the body count rises. It has everything one might want...a large house full of creepy, midnight shenanigans, faithful servants, a love interest for Bessie...and, for me, an amateur detective who used to be a history professor. (I love an academic twist to my mysteries!) Armstrong weaves a very strong tale of murder...that was fun even if I did spot the murderer early on. The characters are finely drawn and the atmosphere is just right. Hopefully, her other novels are more like this and less like the chocolate let-down. Three and a half stars out of five.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading, a bookish meme hosted by Book Journey, is where we gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week. It is a great way to network with other bloggers, see some wonderful blogs, and put new titles on your reading list. So hop on over to Journey and join in...and leave a comment here so I can check out what you are reading.

Here are mine:

Books Read Last Week (click titles for reviews):

The Divine Comedy: Paradise by Dante Alighieri (trans by Dorothy L Sayers & Barbara Reynolds)
The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong
The Art of the Sonnet by Stephen Burt & David Mikics
Blameless by Gail Carriger

Just Finishing Up Today:
Lay On, Mac Duff! by Charlotte Armstrong

Will Be Starting Tonight:

The Conference of the Birds by Jean-Claude Carriere & Peter Brook (based on the poem by Farid Uddi Attar)

Books that spark my interest this week:

(my latest garage sale book-haul)
The Woman in the Woods by (Charity) Lee Blackstock
Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham
Killing the Goose by Frances & Richard Lockridge
Death of a Tall Man by Frances & Richard Lockridge
Hanged for a Sheep by Frances & Richard Lockridge
Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh
Black Orchids by Rex Stout
Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street by Willaim S Baring-Gould

Blameless

Just finished Blameless the third in the Alexia Tarabotti series by Gali Carriger. This one has it all...drunken werewolves, Templars, a ride in an ornithopter, a reckless escape across the Alps, homicidal ladybugs, and a whole lot more. What more could you want? This installment returned the series to full force. Changeless left me a little disappointed at the end, but Blameless has everything back on track. There is plenty of action and adventure as well as the witty repartee that Alexia is well-known for. Armed with her trusty umbrella and supported by Floote (who is well-armed as well) and her friend Madame Lefoux, Alexia leaves England in search of answers about the new life she's carrying. Exactly how is this possible? The answers she finds are disturbing, not only for her, but for supernaturals and humans alike.

But as long as Alexia has her supply of real English tea and can have her new-found favorite, pesto, she is ready to take on Templars, evil scientists out to investigate her delicate state rather too closely, and the murderous hordes of vampires who dog her every step. A rollicking good read with a satisfying ending. And it was nice to see her husband, Lord Maccon come to his senses. Finally. At least for a little while--with Lord Maccon who knows how long that will last. Four stars out of five.

A few good quotes:

(a drunken Lord Maccon, being maneuvered back home by Professor Lyall)
"Went for a wee nightly run. Needed peace and quiet. Needed air in my fur. Needed fields under my paws. Needed, oh I canna--hic--explain...needed the company of hedgehogs."

"And did you find it?"

"Find what? No hedgehogs. Stupid hedgehogs." Lord Maccon tripped over a daphne bush, one of many that lined the pathway leading up to the side entrance to the house. "Who bloody well put that there?" (p. 25)

"That reminds me of an old saying of Mr. Tarabotti's" offered Floote, speaking for the first time. "Floote, he used to say to me, 'there's no such thing as fate--there's just werewolves, and there's no such thing as coincidence--there's only vampires. Everything else is open to interpretation." (p. 67)

"Shouldn't you be worrying about your own problems?" [Professor Lyall]
"What enjoyment is there in that? Other people's are always more entertaining." [Alexia] (p. 74)

The Art of the Sonnet

The Art of the Sonnet by Stephen Burt and David Mikics is very good at what it does. What it does is sound a heck of lot like literature professors giving little mini-lectures about "one hundred exemplary sonnets of the English language." And, given that I found out about this book through The London Review of Books, I should have known what I was getting. I'm afraid that this English major has been out of the classroom waaaaay too long. Most of the mini-lectures just put me in a very drowsy state. I'm not saying I didn't learn things; I did. But I most of the time I felt the way I felt when I had a class right after lunch...and it was just right warm in the classroom and the professor had this pleasant, steady speaking voice that made me just want to put my head down and sleep.

I did much better once I started skimming the explanations and just paying attention to the sonnets. I love sonnets. I've even tried my hand at a few. And this book is excellent because it has picked some very wonderful sonnets that are NOT in every anthology I ever had to read when I was in college. Yes, there are still a few that any English major should have seen before--but most of these were brand, spanking new. But I do have to confess that I'm pretty much a traditionalist when it comes to the sonnet. I much prefer those that stick to the classic form and rhyme pattern. (AND actually do rhyme) It's not that I don't appreciate poems in other forms or poems that don't rhyme. They're fine. Just don't call them sonnets. About 15 or so of the more modern poems were beautiful...but I'm still scratching my head and wondering, "What the heck are they doing in a book of sonnets?!"

My favorite new (to me) poem is "In Time of War 27" by W. H. Auden. It helps that I just plain like Auden's poetry. But this one is very poignant...bringing up imagery that recalls the fall from Eden--a fall from paradise to a world of choice and a world where we are responsible for those choices. Auden is writing from his experiences of the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of China by Japan. The choices and responsibilities are all about war and the destruction of innocence. But the imagery is hauntingly beautiful.

Three and a half stars out of five.

Hop on Over

It's Friday again! So that means it's time for the Book Blogger Hop hosted by Crazy-For-Books. It's a time to talk about blogging topics and to venture out on the internet and visit other blogs. Visit the link to join in.

This week's question: When you read a book that you just can't get into, do you stick it out and keep reading or move to your next title?

Well, I used to be very demanding on myself and stick it out no matter what. I hated to start a book and not finish it. It must have been my English major training....and maybe, now, if I did book reviews for anything other than fun, I would still be that way. But since I am strictly in this reading, reviewing, and blogging thing for the fun of it, I've decided that there is way too little time ahead of me for reading and way too many books out there to try and read for me to waste time on something I'm not enjoying.

That's not to say that I won't still give it the old college try. I don't have a strict rule about how many pages I'll read before I give it up. But as soon as the reading has become too much like work (ditch-digging, mindless, why am I doing this work), then I'm done. I don't mind difficult (shoot, I just finished Dante's Divine Comedy and that wasn't exactly a walk in the park), as long as there is a reward--learning something, beautiful imagery, great characters, etc. But I don't want to feel like I'm working way too hard for nothing.