Books Read in February 2026

 

This was another good reading month. Mostly mysteries this month, but that is OK. I read a very long, very heavy graphic memoir, but it was worth it. I read a book from my Classics list, in eBook format. And a mystery by a Canadian, set in Saskatchewan.

So, here are the books I read:

Graphic Memoir

You Can Never Die (2025) by Harry Bliss

This is a graphic memoir by Harry Bliss. My husband and I and both read this one. It is 400 pages and very heavy. But even with all the text, it is a relatively fast read. Initially I thought this book was mostly about his dog, Penny, that he had for 17 years. And there is a lot here about the grief that Harry Bliss experienced after Penny died. But there is a lot more about his life than that. His parents and siblings, what his childhood was like. The  writing is good, and I love Bliss's art. But in some cases I think he shared too much. He had a very difficult childhood; his parents were abusive and fought a lot; and he had drug abuse problems. Still I am very glad I read it and it is a book I will enjoy reading again.

Fiction, Classic

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark

I did not enjoy reading this book at all. In retrospect, I can appreciate the good points of the book; it had a unique structure with shifts in time both backwards and forward, which at times was confusing. I can understand why most people have a higher opinion of the book than I did. Read my review here.

Crime Fiction

Going to Beautiful (2022) by Anthony Bidulka

This book was the 2023 winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novel. It is a mystery, but the overarching story is about a man working through his grief after his husband of thirty years dies, and I found it very compelling. The mystery plot sort of sneaks up on you. The story starts out in Toronto, but it is set mostly in Saskatchewan. See my review here.

Violent Ward (1993) by Len Deighton

Len Deighton is best known for his spy fiction, but this book is not in that genre at all, it is comedic crime fiction, and very well written. The setting is Los Angeles, around the time of the Rodney King trial; the main character, Mickey Murphy, is a very shady lawyer in financial trouble. He has gotten himself involved financially with an old acquaintance primarily because he used to be madly in love with the man's wife. A man is killed and the police suspect that Mickey killed him. I enjoyed this book; it was a lot of fun. 

Flair for Murder (2024) by Frances Lockridge and Richard Lockridge

Frances and Richard Lockridge wrote three mystery series together starting in 1936 and ending in 1963: The Mr. and Mrs. North series, the Capt. Heimrich series,  and the Nathan Shapiro series.  Richard continued writing two of those series after Frances's death. This short story book consists of 13 short stories, one about Mr. and Mrs. North, and the others all about Capt. Heimrich. In this post I reviewed the first three stories in the book. In a more recent post, I talked more generally about the other stories in the book. Most of the stories were under 10 pages long.

Death at Greenway (2021) by Lori Rader-Day

I read this book because I wanted a book that had Agatha Christie as a character, but not acting as a sleuth; this fit the bill perfectly. And also because Glen had given me his copy of the book a few years ago. Greenway was Agatha Christie's home in Devon and this mystery is about a group of evacuees living a Greenway during the war. This is a fictionalized version but there really were ten young evacuees, some of them infants, moved to Greenway during the war along with two nurses. There are lots of details about living in a country house in Devon, and how the war affected the people who lived in the area. The mystery revolves around a stranger in the area who is murdered shortly after the evacuees arrive. This book was very well written, possible a bit long at 450 pages, and I enjoyed it very much.

Murder of a Lady (1931) by Anthony Wynne

This book is a vintage mystery and a locked-room mystery. So if you like mysteries about impossible crimes, this could be for you. I felt that this story spent too much time on the locked-room aspect, and not enough on the characters, but still I mostly enjoyed the book. And the setting in Scotland in the early 1930s was interesting. See my review here.

Shanghai (2024) by Joseph Kanon

This book is set in pre-World War II Shanghai in 1938, at the time many European Jews were emigrating to Shanghai because it was the only place that would take them. In December 2025, I reread Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan, which was partially set in Shanghai at the same time, and I was motivated to read more about that time and place. Kanon's book is set almost entirely in Shanghai prior to World War II. This is only the second book I have read by Kanon, and I will be reading more by him.

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken recently when we went for a walk at Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden. The garden has several lovely Hong Kong Orchid trees and Glen took photos of the pink flowers on those trees. The decorated stones were in a creek there. After our walk, we went to a favorite café nearby. The photo below was my son's breakfast (French toast), which he always orders there. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Going to Beautiful: Anthony Bidulka

 

From the description at Goodreads:

International chef Jake Hardy has it all. Celebrity, thriving career, plenty of friends, a happy family and faithful dog. Until one day when a tragic accident tears it all apart. Struggling to recover, Hardy finds himself in a strange new world–a snow-swept prairie town that time forgot–a place where nothing makes sense. Cold is beautiful. Simple is complex. And doubts begin to surface about whether Jake's tragedy was truly an accident after all. As the sun sets in the Land of Living Skies, Hardy and his glamourous, seventy-eight-year-old transgender neighbour find themselves ensnared in multiple murders separated by decades. In Bidulka's love letter to life on the prairies he delivers a story of grief and loss that manages to burst with joy, tenderness and hope. Redolent of his earlier works, Going to Beautiful brings us unexpected, under-represented characters in settings that immediately feel familiar and beloved. Beautiful–a place where what you need may not be what you were looking for.

Praise for Going to Beautiful:

Going to Beautiful is poignant, often funny, always wise…the quiet joy and hopefulness of this novel are gifts readers will value for years to come.

--- Gail Bowen, author of the Joanne Kilbourn Shreve mystery series including An Image in the Lake

My thoughts:

It took me a while to get around to reading this book, and I am glad I finally did. It was a great experience for me. It was the 2023 winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novel. It is a mystery, but the overarching story is about a man working through his grief after his husband of thirty years dies, and I found it very compelling. The mystery plot sort of sneaks up on you. The story starts out in Toronto, but it is set mostly in Saskatchewan. 

After months of grieving the loss of his husband, Jake finds some information about where Eddie grew up while going through his papers. He decides to go to the town where Eddie lived and try to find more about his early life and why he left it behind. Baz, his transgender friend from Toronto, goes with him. 

The town where Eddie grew up was Beautiful, in the province of Saskatchewan. Most members of the community are of Ukrainian descent. The town is dying; it has nothing to offer its youth. But the loyalties and relationships among the variety of residents still living there is inspiring, and they offer their friendship to Jake and his friend Baz. Two of my favorite characters are Chung, the owner of Ming's Café, a gathering place in town, and Sister Genowefa, who is the last remaining nun at her convent. She is over 90 years old and when she dies, the beautiful convent will be sold.

Eddie never told Jake anything about the town of Beautiful or his family, and when he finally meets Eddie's family, Jake is surprised to find out that Eddie had a twin brother. Gradually Jake gets to know more about Eddie's family and truly appreciate the people in Beautiful. Along the way, he clears up some mysteries related to Eddie's death.

This book was a magical read. It is hard to explain why I enjoyed it so much. The story was moving and uplifting without being maudlin. And I learned so much more about Saskatchewan.  

 

I have only read one of the books in Bidulka's Russell Quant private detective series, but now I am going to go back and read more in that series. 

New (to me) Mystery Authors, January - March

Today I am joining in on the meme for the best new-to-me crime fiction authors at Mysteries in Paradise. This meme runs at the end of each quarter. Check out other posts for this quarter.

In the first quarter of 2013, I read ten books by authors I had never read  before. That is a lot of new authors. Twice as many as in the last quarter. So, even if I am not getting through series that I have started, I have read some new authors that have been in my TBR pile a long time.

This is my list of books by new (to me) authors:

1. Publish or Perish by Margot Kinberg
2. The Smoke by Tony Broadbent
3. The Case of the Angry Actress by E. V. Cunningham
4. Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
5. Amuse Bouche by Anthony Bidulka
6. Detective by Parnell Hall 
7. The Loyal Servant by Eva Hudson
8. Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt
9. Deadly Appearances by Gail Bowen
10. A Stone of the Heart by John Brady

All of the books on this list were well-written and entertaining. I plan to read more books in each of the series.

Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt was a serial killer novel with too much graphic violence for my tastes. However, the characterization was so strong in that book, and the plotting and setting are so vivid, that I have to try the next in the series.

Margot Kinberg's Publish or Perish is an entertaining mystery that combines elements of amateur detective, police procedural and takes place in an academic setting. What more can you ask for?

It is hard to believe that it took me so long to read the first book in Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series, Devil in a Blue Dress, which was published in 1990. It has an interesting setting:... 1948, post WWII, a black neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins is a black man who moves to Los Angeles, California from Houston, Texas to look for a better life after serving in the military during World War II.




There were two books in this group that did not fit in my usual guidelines. Both were light, humorous private detective stories. Detective by Parnell Hall is set in New York City. Amuse Bouche by Anthony Bidulka is set in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Normally I shy away from humor in mysteries, but I am discovering that it really depends on the writer, and both of these writers won me over.

A Stone of the Heart by John Brady is another winner. I am really into police procedurals at the moment. This one is set in Dublin, Ireland during the 1980's. I know very little about Ireland or Northern Ireland during this time and I want to know more.

Amuse Bouche: Anthony Bidulka

I found this story to be a fast-paced mystery that held my interest and left me eager to continue with the series. I liked the main character. Russell Quant is a private detective, and to this point in his career he has had small, nondescript cases. Now he has a case where a wealthy client has hired him to find his missing lover, Tom Osborn. The client, Harold Clavell, and Osborn were going to be married in a private ceremony, and Osborn just never showed up. The evidence points to Tom having run off to France, where the two were supposed to spend their honeymoon. Quant takes a trip to Paris to find the missing man... and some answers for his client.

There were several aspects of Anthony Bidulka's writing that I enjoyed. The story is told in first person, which works well in private detective stories. The details of the everyday lives of gays and lesbians are included in an unobtrusive way. Russell is gay (and unattached) and he is investigating the disappearance of another gay man's lover. Another enjoyable aspect is the use of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as the setting. Knowing very little about any province in Canada, I liked the introduction to the area.

A small thing, but I really liked Russell's dog and Russell's relationship with the dog and that Russell has a normal, non-work life with friends and pets. He feels like a real person dealing with a real, although somewhat exotic, case. I mean, he gets to jet off to France.

I have some small criticisms, but none that ruined my enjoyment as a whole. I thought the book was too long. Not sure what I would shave off, but parts of it went on too long. He either spent too much time in France, or the resolution should have been tied up sooner.

This wasn't my usual type of mystery. I don't normally choose light, humorous mysteries. Note that I am not saying it is lightweight, just light in tone. Comments I read prior to reading Amuse Bouche indicated that there is a lot of humor. I did not find the book that humorous. This is not a criticism. I think I am lacking some fundamental humor gene. Regardless, I liked the upbeat feel of the book. Keeping in mind that this was Bidulka's debut novel, I am sure I will enjoy Russell's other cases. There are seven more in the series.

At samesame.com, Anthony Bidulka talks about his writing...

I knew a little about travel and food and wine. I knew about Saskatchewan. I knew about being a gay man on the Canadian prairies. I knew about seeking new directions, following passion, which is what Russell Quant does in the books. It turns out this was the successful combination for me, and just the thing to create a series that truly distinguished me from my colleagues.

If you are like me and wonder what "amuse-bouche" means, here is one definition from wordsmith.org.

This is a tidbit, often tiny, served as a free extra to keep you happy while you are waiting for your first course to come. It gives you an idea of the chef's approach to cooking and the restaurant's attention to your appetite.

And this is the perfect title for this book, because this is a taste of Bidulka’s approach to writing and mystery, and whets the appetite for more.

As a last thought, this is from Anthony Bidulka's page at Amazon (US).

One of my favourite sayings is: Life is short, but it can be wide. I try to remember to do whatever I can to make my life wide, wide with people and places and extraordinary experiences. And I am grateful for every second of it so far and every second of it yet to come. 

I think that attitude is reflected in his writing, and I admire that.