Friday, July 24, 2020

Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times No. 17

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. This week I am featuring books on one of my husband's shelves in the glass front bookcase we share. 

If you click on the image of the shelf, you will be able to read more of the titles.



Topping the stack are the three books in The Last Policeman Trilogy. This series follows the activities of policeman Hank Palace in a pre-apocalyptic world. An asteroid is headed for earth, and from the beginning of the series the reader knows that it will be devastating. In the first book, The Last Policeman, Hank was still a detective with the police force, new to the job, and motivated to continue investigating cases. Three months later, in Countdown City, like almost everyone else on earth, he had no job and no prospects, but he took a case for an old friend.  In the final book, World of Trouble, Hank goes on an odyssey to try to locate his sister before the asteroid hits.





Next is Malice by Keigo Higashino. Higashino is the author of the Detective Galileo Series, featuring Manabu Yukawa (“Detective Galileo”), a brilliant physics professor, and police detective Kusanagi, set in Tokyo, Japan. I have read two in that series.

However, I have not read Malice, a book in Higashino's Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series. But now my husband's review at Goodreads reminds that I need to get to reading it very soon.


Here is the text of his review:
Malice is another meticulously plotted mystery/procedural from Keigo Higashino, author of incredibly clever The Devotion of Suspect X. This relatively brief book doesn’t waste time in getting the plot going (the murder on which everything hinges happens almost immediately) and also efficiently introduces the characters (of which there are really only five: police detective Kaga, writer friends Hidaka and Nonoguchi, and Hidaka’s two wives (one is deceased). Each first person section is an interview or account or interrogation or confession and at times it can be a bit confusing. The book has virtually no action with clever detective Kaga assembling and reassembling motives and alibis in an effort to ascertain the why of the crime. Well done.

The four books at the bottom of the stack are all from the Sweeney St. George series by Sarah Stewart Taylor

  • O' Artful Death (2003) [set in Vermont]
  • Mansions of the Dead (2004) [set in Boston, Massachusetts and Rhode Island]
  • Judgment of the Grave (2005) [set in Concord, Massachusetts]
  • Still As Death (2006) [set in Cambridge, Massachusetts]

I read the first three books in 2006, so my husband must have read them around the same time. Per the author's website: "The series features a young art historian who specializes in gravestone and funerary art -- the art of death." The entire series is summarized at the website. This was the perfect series for my husband, who is very interested in gravestones and cemeteries.

For those of you who like mysteries set at Christmas, the first in that series is set around Christmas. I had forgotten that and honestly don't remember how much that enters into the plot. See a review of O' Artful Death at Carstairs Considers.

Sarah Stewart Taylor has come out with a new book, The Mountains Wild. Maggie D'arcy is a homicide detective on Long Island, divorced with a teenage daughter. She travels to Ireland to follow up on the disappearance of a friend that happened over tweny years ago. My husband has purchased a copy. Reviewed at Lesa's Book Critiques.


14 comments:

Cath said...

I'm strangely attracted to the Last Policeman trilogy even though I'm not sure I could bear to read it. What a fascinating premise! I'll think about it. But 'wow'.

Kay said...

We read the first book in the Last Policeman trilogy a couple of years ago in our mystery group. Some went on to continue reading the trilogy and one member loved it so much. I liked that first book and planned to continue, but you know how that goes. I still own all three books. I remember that early series that Sarah Stewart Taylor wrote or remember the cover on the book you featured. Not sure I ever read it, but it seems interesting now. And I am aware of her new book.

Margot Kinberg said...

I like your selection a lot, Tracy! The Last Policeman trilogy is a good one, in my opinion (and I don't usually go for apocalyptic novels). And I'm glad you mentioned the Kaga series. The Galileo series is well done, but I haven't yet tried Kaga; I should.

TracyK said...

Cath, The Last Policeman Trilogy is very well written and I found it interesting just imagining how it would feel to be in that situation. It is written in present tense, if that matters to you, but in this case I only noticed it now it then.

TracyK said...

Kay, I loved the Last Policeman Trilogy and am glad that my husband kept his copies, because I hope to reread it some day. My husband liked the books by Sarah Stewart Taylor than I did, but then that was 14 years ago and my tastes have changed a lot. And I never noted down reading the 4th books in the series, maybe I should go back and try that one now.

TracyK said...

Margot, I like all kinds of apocalyptic fiction and one reason is because I like to see how different authors interpret the situations. In the Last Policeman trilogy, I liked seeing the different ways people dealt with the coming catastrophe.

I will read Malice sometime soon. I saw lots of good reviews of that book.

Judith said...

Tracy, I just ordered O'Artful Death, the first novel in the Sarah Stewart Taylor mystery series. It cost only $7.99, and the description appealed to me, and the location--I love, love visiting Vermont, though, it's true I wouldn't want to live there. Not enough wilderness. Too many people, though, that is a sort of joke. Not densely populated at all, there in Vermont! But many more people than the Adirondack wilderness region.

TracyK said...

Judith, that is funny. I can't even imagine living as far north as Vermont and the Adirondack area. But I bet it is beautiful. I do hope you like that first novel in the series. I remember it as being very atmospheric, I hope my memory is right.

carol said...

I love Higashino's books.

TracyK said...

Carol, I enjoyed the two I read, and look forward to reading Malice. I am not sure if my husband has any others by Higashino. He has introduced me to most of the Japanese authors I have read.

Clothes in Books said...

I know I read one of the Sarah Stewart Taylor books, and loved its atmosphere of autumn leaves blowing across a silent graveyard - I must look up which one it was, I really fancy reading another one now! I don't know why I didn't pursue the series at the time. I don't think I was aware they had such varied but specific settings.

TracyK said...

Moira, I had forgotten that the settings changed. And now I am not even sure I read the last in the series. I don't have it logged on goodreads or in my paper list.

col2910 said...

Nothing in common I'm afraid, even with the titles I can decipher from the back shelf. I guess the Ben Winters' books never really appealed to me.

TracyK said...

Oh, well. We did not intersect here. Rebecca Cantrell would come the closest but still probably not your thing.