Short Story Wednesday: Bullets and Other Hurting Things, edited by Rick Ollerman

From the description at Down & Out Books:

In a career spanning nearly four decades, Bill Crider published more than sixty crime fiction, westerns, horror, men’s adventure and YA novels. In this collection 20 of today’s best and brightest, all friends and fans of Bill’s, come together with original stories to pay tribute to his memory. Authors include: William Kent Krueger, Bill Pronzini, Joe R. Lansdale, Patricia Abbott, Ben Boulden, Michael Bracken, Jen Conley, Brendan DuBois, Charlaine Harris, David Housewright, Kasey Lansdale, Angela Crider Neary, James Reasoner, James Sallis, Terry Shames, S. A. Solomon, Sara Paretsky, Robert J. Randisi, SJ Rozan, and Eryk Pruitt.

I personally have enjoyed books from Bill Crider's Sheriff Dan Rhodes series and a Western, Outrage at Blanco, set in Texas in 1887. I was happy to see this book of short stories honoring him.

I started reading this book of short stories on Monday. I have only read six of the stories but they are all good, so that bodes well for the rest of them.

In "Innocence" by William Kent Krueger...

Nick and his 4-year-old daughter Pet (short for Petula) are traveling in Minnesota. They stop at a motor court in a tourist town. They meet a pretty waitress, and Nick daydreams about staying with her, settling down, fishing at the lake together. But there are other considerations ....

In "Night Games" by Bill Pronzini...

Brennan is an investigator who  specializes in industrial espionage, and is willing to cross the line when necessary. He is searching for his quarry and the money he has taken on a small island off the coast of Washington.

In "Promise Me" by Joe R. Lansdale 

Two hit men are planning to kill an accountant who has taken a large amount of money from the company he works for. Surprisingly, he is at his house waiting for them. The ending was very good.

In "Pretty Girl from Michigan" by Patricia Abbott

Chet Plummer, Chief of Police in West Lebanon, Michigan, is looking into the brutal murder of pretty Lena Lefkowski, who worked in the pet department of Grueber's Department Store. Although he has to call in detectives from Traverse City to help out, in the end he solves the crime with a little help from his mother. I loved this story; it was very clever.

In "Asia Divine" by Ben Boulden

Detective Mike Giles of the Tooele County Sheriff's Office in Utah is investigating the death of a woman whose body was left in a bus in a junkyard. This story includes two of Bill Crider's favorite things, Dr. Pepper and alligators.

After reading the first five stories, I checked out the next to last story in the book by S. J. Rozan, "Chin Yong-Yun Finds a Kitten." 

This one surprised me. It isn't even really a crime story. I am a big fan of S. J. Rozan's Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series, but I did not recognize immediately that Chin Yong-Yun from the title was Lydia Chin's mother. This is an entertaining and fun story, told in first person narration by Chin Yong-Yun and it was good to see her character fleshed out more. However, I don't think you need to be familiar with the character previously to enjoy the story.

Of course I will be continuing to read the stories in this book over the next few weeks, and I encourage you to find a copy and read them too. 

What did I read in April 2020?

Did the first full month of the stay at home orders affect my reading? I think my reading was about the same but reviewing has been much harder. The concentration it requires is often just not there.

Although my main goal this month was to read what I wanted to, I did manage to read some books for challenges: two historical fiction books, a book for the European Challenge, a book for a USA state that I had not covered previously, and seven books from my TBR piles.

And here are the books I read in April, by category.

Mystery reference

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2017) by Mike Ripley

The author describes his book as "a reader's history of one specific category, or genre, of popular fiction—the thriller—over a particular period when British writers dominated the best seller lists at home and abroad." The book covers only British thrillers published between 1953 and 1975. This includes both adventure thrillers and spy thrillers. Of course, I am most interested in the spy thrillers but I enjoyed learning more about the authors of adventure novels also. With a very nice foreword by Lee Child.

Cross-genre Fiction (Mystery & Fantasy)

Westside (2019) by W. M. Akers

This book is a  mashup of several genres: historical fiction, mystery, alternate history, private detective novel, and urban fantasy. Set in an alternative version of New York in the 1920's. My review here.

Historical Fiction

The Light Years (1990) by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Cazalet Chronicles is a series of five books that follow the members of one family from 1937 just prior to World War II through 1957. The first book, The Light Years, covers 1937 - 1938. There is large cast; the parents plus four children (three brothers, one unmarried sister) and the grandchildren, who range from 5 or 6 to teenage. Plus other relations, and servants. This is a lovely book, although not upbeat, with the threat of war coming on.

General Fiction 

The Provincial Lady in London (1932) by E.M. Delafield

This continues the story, written in diary form, of a married woman with two children (and a cook, a French governess/nanny, and a maid or two), living in an English village in the early 1930s. The Provincial Lady is now a published author and has received enough money for this effort to improve the family's financial status. She endeavors to find a flat in London to take more time to write. The tone is light and humorous and fun.

Crime Fiction

Boundary Waters (1999) by William Kent Krueger

This is the 2nd book in the Cork O'Connor series. Set in the Quetico-Superior Wilderness on the Canadian/American border. My review here.

The Brutal Telling (2009) and
Bury Your Dead (2010) by Louise Penny

I read these two books as a pair, based on Bill's recommendation at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan. My review here.

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1992)
by Sharyn McCrumb

This is the 2nd book in Sharyn McCrumb's Appalachian Ballad series. I enjoyed it but I found it to be different from most mysteries I have read. It is a dark story and has been described as gothic. Both this story and the first one in the series featured Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, but he doesn't do a lot of investigating, and the story centers around the wife of the church pastor, Laura Bruce, whose husband is serving as a chaplain in the Gulf War. She volunteers to be the guardian for two teenagers whose entire family was murdered. Set in Tennessee.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's first mystery novel and the first in the Hercule Poirot series. My review here.

A Colder War (2014) by Charles Cumming

Cumming is a Scottish author, and his character in this series, Thomas Kell, is an MI6 agent who is on extended leave with pay until an incident still under investigation is resolved. In this 2nd book in the series, he is given a special assignment by the MI6 Chief, to investigate the death, probably accidental, of a high-ranked agent in Turkey. 

Instruments of Darkness (2009) by Imogen Robertson

This was a very enjoyable historical mystery. It was set in Sussex, England in 1780, a period I haven't read about before. The main characters are the mistress of a country manor in Sussex and an anatomist, Gabriel Crowther, an introvert who just wants to study dead bodies. Harriet Westerman discovers a dead man on the grounds of her estate, and pulls Crowther into an investigation of the crime. It is the first in the series and I will be moving on to the second book in the series.

Boundary Waters: William Kent Krueger

Boundary Waters is the 2nd book in the Cork O'Connor series. I bought this book as soon as I finished Iron Lake, the first book in the series. Not only did I want to know more about what happens with Cork O'Connor, but the writing was very good. And I was not disappointed. This book was different and just as good.

This is the description at the author's web site:

The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh—a country-western singer at the height of her fame—has disappeared.

Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire Cork O’Connor to find his daughter. Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on Shiloh’s trail as well—men hired not just to find her, but to kill her.

This book is a thriller with excellent pacing, more like an adventure story than a mystery. Of course there is the mystery of who is trying to find Shiloh and kill her, and which of the people seeking her are truly trying to help. There are multiple groups interested in finding her.

I praised the first book for the characterizations, and that is true in this book also, although the most fully defined characters are Cork and his family members. While Cork is on the trail, his family is back at home in this one, but is still featured. Another great character is the young Anishinaabe boy, Louis Two-Knives, the only one who can lead them to the cabin Shiloh was staying in.

Cork's estranged wife plays a part in this story, once she is aware that the rescue mission and its members may not be all that it seems. She knows that at least one member of the team is a traitor but cannot communicate with the team. The chapters alternate between Shiloh's struggles as she tries to return to civilization, Cork's adventures, and Cork's wife's activities in Aurora.

The physical setting of northern Minnesota and the exploration of the Anishinaabe culture is a bonus. In this book, Krueger focuses on the Anishinaabe storytelling tradition.

One thing I noticed while reading Boundary Waters was a prevalence of violence (more than in Iron Lake, and that story was not tame). The opening scene was somewhat shocking (although no explicit violence there). Overall, it did not bother me and I felt like it fit the context of the story, but I did wonder if the rest of the series was like this. William Kent Krueger answers that question in a blog post from 2009. (Boundary Waters was published in 1999 and Krueger had published nine books in the series by that time.)  Per the author, only two other books in the series (to that point) were as violent as this one. So I take that to mean that there is good variation within the series, in that area and others.


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Publisher:  Atria Books, 2009, orig. pub. 1999.
Length:    402 pages
Format:    Trade Paperback
Series:     Cork O'Connor #2
Setting:    Minnesota
Genre:     Mystery
Source:    On my TBR since December 2019.

Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times

Judith at Reader in the Wilderness has started a new meme and she's calling it 'Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times'. More details are here and here at Judith's blog. The idea is to do this every Friday (but anytime in the weekend is fine). For these times when we are (mostly) confined to our homes, the suggestion is to look through a bookshelf or a bookcase or stacks of books and share some thoughts on the books. Or in general: "Talking about books and reading experiences from the past, present, or future."

My first thought was to go through my stacks and boxes of uncatalogued books choose a few to talk about (and then actually catalog them). For two years now, I have neglected to catalog most of the books I have bought, and that is a large number, because I always buy at least 100 books at the annual Planned Parenthood Book Sale (most of them are $1 each).

So I will start with:
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains. This is book 5 in the Dandy Gilver series, written by Catriona McPherson. I had forgotten I had purchased it online over a year ago.

I have read two previous books in the series. I was lukewarm on the first book, After the Armistice Ball, but I liked the 4th book in the series, The Winter Ground, a lot. And The Winter Ground is set around Christmas.

Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains is set in 1926 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Dandy, a wealthy amateur sleuth, has taken an undercover job as a maid to investigate a possible crime. This sounds like a really interesting premise, so I am glad I uncovered this book.


Next is...
Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger

This one I knew I had, but wasn't sure where it had ended up. Now that I have relocated it, I will read it in the next few months. Boundary Waters is the second book in the Cork O'Connor series, which now numbers 17 books. In December 2018, I read the first book in this series, Iron Lake, after a recommendation by Rick Robinson at Tip the Wink. That one had been on my TBR a long, long time.

This description of the series is from Krueger's web site:

Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe.

Boundary Waters takes place in the Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border.

... and also...
Mistakenly in Mallorca by Roderic Jeffries

Now this is a book and a series I don't know much about. I learned about this from two sources: Margot Kinberg, when she was blogging at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, and Mathew Paust at Crime Time.  I purchased a copy in November 2018.

This was the first book in the Inspector Alvarez series and was published in 1974. There are a total of 37 books in the series, and the last was published in 2013. He wrote several other series, under various pseudonyms.

Enrique Alvarez is a police inspector on Mallorca, the largest island in the Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean. Although it is a part of Spain, the native language is Catalan, with Spanish also an official language. This setting in the early 1970s sounds interesting, and I like police procedurals, so I was willing to give it a try. I should do that soon.

Reading Summary, November 2018

I read nine books in November. One book was a fantasy; one book was a nonfiction book about books and reading. The rest were crime fiction. I started three new (to me) series, and all of those were very good.

I did make some progress on Les Miserables, which I am trying to finish by the end of the year. But I am still only about 2/3 done with that book (800 out of 1200 pages, approximately).

Nonfiction:

I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life (2018) by Anne Bogel

I love reading. When I finish one book, I am always excited about picking my next read. I have to have a book with me to read, just in case... So I appreciate reading about other booklovers. Like any other book of essays, not every one of the topics appealed to me. But overall this was a great read that I will go back to from time to time. Suggested at Kay's Reading Life; see her post for more detail.

Fantasy:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007) by J.K. Rowling

Oh my goodness, I finally finished the last book in this series. It is a whopping 607 pages long. I am glad I read this book, I think it finished the series off very well. I just wish it had been shorter. The last 200 pages were great; the first 400 pages had too much padding. 

Crime Fiction:

The Birthday Murder (1945) by Lange Lewis

Victoria Jason Hime is a successful screen writer and novelist. Her most recent novel has been bought by a film studio and her husband, Albert Hime, is hoping to produce the film. Then, before he gets the chance, he dies of poison and Victoria is the primary suspect. I enjoyed the way the story was told, and the ending was very surprising. My thoughts are HERE.

Entry Island (2013) by Peter May

Entry Island blends historical fiction with a present-day police procedural. Both stories come together in the end, as we expect. I liked what I learned about both settings. The historical focus is on the Highland Clearances which take place on the Isle of Lewis and Harris. The current investigation centers on a death on a small Canadian island (Entry Island, which is a part of the Magdalen Islands). This was an unusual and compelling story.

The Unsuspected (1945) by Charlotte Armstrong

In this impressive, disturbing novel of psychological suspense, Luther Grandison is a famous director of stage plays and movies who holds sway over his two young female wards, one rich, one beautiful. His young secretary, Rosaleen, has recently committed suicide by hanging herself. Rosaleen's good friend Jane has taken the position of secretary to Grandison, as she suspects that the death was not suicide. There is a film version starring Claude Rains as Grandison (which I have not yet seen).

Iron Lake (1998) by William Kent Krueger

This is the first novel in the long running Cork O'Connor series, set in the small town of Aurora, Minnesota near Iron Lake and the Iron Lake Reservation. Cork, the former sheriff, is half Irish and half Anishinaabe. An influential local judge is found dead, an apparent suicide; Cork is the one who discovers the body. A young Indian boy is missing and his mother seeks Cork's help to find him. I loved this book and plan to read more of the series. My thoughts are HERE.

Never Go Back (2012) by Lee Child

This book is the 18th Jack Reacher novel (out of 23). It is the book that the latest Jack Reacher film is based on, which is why I read it now. This is only the third book in the series I have read and I loved it. 

Bruno, Chief of Police (2008) by Martin Walker

The first installment in a wonderful new series (to me) that follows the exploits of Benoît Courrèges (Bruno for short), a policeman in a small French village. This seemed like a fantasy because the life in the village is (at least on the surface) so rustic. That description makes it sound on the cozy side, and it is not that at all. Although this book is heavy on the details of Bruno's past and the setting of the series, I am sure I am going to enjoy more of these books.

Dead Sand (1994) by Brendan DuBois

As the first novel in the Lewis Cole series, Dead Sand also features a lot of backstory on the protagonist, and I liked that.  Cole's place in the community is unusual; he is a journalist who writes a regular column for a magazine but he also gets involved in helping out the local police on a regular basis. Sometimes that help is welcome, sometimes not. There are two mysteries in this book. Who is Lewis Cole and how did he come to Tyler, New Hampshire? And who is behind a series of local deaths?

Iron Lake: William Kent Krueger

Iron Lake is William Kent Krueger's first novel, starring Cork O'Connor, the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota, ousted in a recent recall election. Many residents of the small town still think of him as sheriff and ask him for help when they get into trouble. Cork is also half Irish and half Anishinaabe Indian. The Anishinaabe reservation is near to Aurora, and the town and the reservation share usage of nearby Iron Lake.

This story tells us about Cork's connection to the reservation, and his history with his wife and family. Gradually we learn about the political situation in the town and the disputes between the townspeople and the reservation. I like the way the story is slowly revealed. Although we know from the beginning that a death has occurred, we don't know if it is murder or not for quite a while.

This book has it all. Complex characters. A meaningful plot. Lots of surprises. Very good pacing.

At first I found Cork's wife to be a cipher, I could not connect with her. I don't know that I ever liked her, but in the end she was just as complex as any of the other important characters. Sometimes, I didn't like Cork all that much, but the story explains a lot of his behavior, his background, and I found him admirable in the context of what he had experienced.

The family dynamics are very, very good. He has children that he cares about and he wants to be with them; yet he and his wife are separated, so he cannot be a real part of their lives. The children are at different stages of development and I liked his relationship with them and his patience with them.

Another bonus is that the book is set at Christmas. It is not a traditional Christmas mystery by any means but Christmas does play a part in the plot.

And finally, I enjoyed this book for the setting, which not only included the physical setting  of northern Minnesota but also the proximity to an Indian reservation and the juxtaposition of the Indian culture vs the town culture. Cork's mixed race causes issues on both sides.

I am very glad I finally ready this book. I bought my copy of Iron Lake over 5 years ago and it was first published 20 years ago. I was motivated to move it to the top of my TBR pile by a recent recommendation from Richard at Tip the Wink. His review is here. I want to see how a lot of this plays out for Cork. So I will be reading more of the series.

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Publisher:  Pocket Books, 1999, orig. pub. 1998.
Length:    438 pages
Format:    Paperback
Series:     Cork O'Connor #1
Setting:    Minnesota
Genre:     Mystery
Source:   I bought my copy.