Plants and Animals at the Plant Nursery

Last week we made our second visit to the plant nursery this year. I have been trying not to overbuy, so as not to put too much pressure on myself to get things planted while I am still working on cleaning up the yard. But we always enjoy looking at what they have and my husband takes photos. This visit it was overcast, the lighting was perfect and he got some great shots.

 

This was the first time that we saw this cat and the chickens.

 

                      

                                      Note:  Click on an image for best viewing quality.

Bangkok 8: John Burdett

This is the first book in a series of six books set in Thailand. The main character is a Thai policeman, Sonchai Jitpleecheep. In the opening scene, his partner (and life-long friend) is killed on the job, and Sonchai has vowed revenge. He narrates the story and I really like the voice it is told in. The story covers some challenging topics: transsexualism, prostitution, drugs and alcoholism. 

The book was told from the point of view of a Buddhist Thai policeman, and I wasn't sure how much the writer actually knew about that and how much was his own invention. He does comment on that in an Author's note at the beginning. I also enjoyed the look at a very different culture. This story was published in 2003, so I don't know how much things have changed in nearly 20 years. 

Sonchai's mother was a prostitute and Sonchai's father was an American soldier who was in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Occasionally Sonchai recounts his and his mother's experiences with some of her long-time lovers. They spent time with one of them in Germany and another in France. I enjoyed those segments especially. His relationship with his mother was also well done.

The book is written in present tense. I used to strongly dislike the use of present tense in a novel, but this one did not bother me at all. The book also has very short chapters, 52 chapters in a book with 315 pages. I love short chapters. Much easier to read a book with short chapters than one with 30 - 50 page chapters.

I was immersed in the book while reading it, and liked the style of writing. And that is what I look for in a book. For a book with such a downer beginning and the coverage of very serious topics, it had a surprisingly upbeat ending.

For other information I will point you to two articles at Crimereads: 

Far-flung Thrillers for World Travelers and 

Bangkok's Expat Crime Fiction Scene is Booming

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Alfred A. Knopf, 2003 
Length:       315 pages
Format:       Hardcover
Series:        Sonchai Jitpleecheep
Setting:       Bangkok, Thailand
Genre:        Mystery
Source:       On my TBR for at least 15 years.

Short Story Wednesday -- Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales

Recently my son went through his paperback books for books to donate to the book sale. He offered me three short story anthologies in the Catfantastic series, and I just could not pass them up without reading some of the stories first. 

I read the first two stories from Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales, edited by Andre Norton and Martin H. Greenberg. I liked both of them, so I guess I will be holding on to all the books for a while. The book is designated (on the cover) as fantasy, but I think some of the stories are science fiction. 

"The Gate of the Kittens" by Wilanne Schneider Belden

I found this first story to be confusing, much was not explained. The writing was excellent though. A young cat is a mouser for a property. The master of the property has located a Gate which allows things to pass from one world to the other. To test the gate the Master chooses to send the cat to the other side. On the other side, Judith, a librarian out in the bookmobile nearly runs into a cat in the road. She rescues the cat and further adventures ensue. 

It seemed to be a sort of time travel tale, but one reviewer noted a connection to Andre Norton's Witch World. I would have liked this better if it had been longer and the story expanded. The cat and the librarian were great characters.

"The Damcat" by Clare Bell

This story focuses on two men who are involved in building the Black Canyon Dam. One is a white man, an engineer, who takes measurements to assure the structure of the dam is safe. The other man, Mike, is of the Hopi tribe and is a high-scaler; high-scalers climb down the canyon walls and prepare the surface for the concrete pour. The cat in this story is a small bobcat that is Mike's partner in his work. Although there were definitely supernatural elements in the story, the story was fairly straightforward and very interesting. 

This original anthology of fantastic cat tales was published in 1989 and all of the stories were first published in this book. I look forward to reading more stories in this book and I will probably sample some from Catfantastic II and Catfantastic III also.

Last Seen Wearing: Hillary Waugh

Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh, published in 1952, is an early example of a true police procedural. I have wanted to read this book for years, because I am a fan of police procedural mysteries, whether vintage or current. 

I often label all mysteries involving police detectives and the police department as police procedurals, but true police procedurals follow the tedious day-to-day work that policemen do to identify the criminal, plus gathering enough evidence to convict. An example of this type of series is Ed McBain's 87th Precinct mysteries, which started in 1956 and continued up to 2005.

Summary 

The story starts with the disappearance of a young female college freshman, Lowell Mitchell. The college she attends is in Bristol, Massachusetts, a fictional small town near Boston, Massachusetts. She goes missing on a Friday in early March 1950 after attending a morning class. Once the college dean ascertains that she is missing, the police are called in to investigate. The small police department in Bristol has less resources and less men to assign to the case than a big city police force. The press and the public are soon pressuring them for a solution, and Lowell's distraught parents also come to town. 

The police chief starts working on the assumption that Lowell had found out she was pregnant and might have been looking for an abortionist. Her family strongly objects to this supposition. The police discover her diary, and read it for clues, but Lowell seemed to have no ongoing relationship or boyfriend. They develop a large list of men that she could have been in contact with and investigate them one by one for any possible connection to the crime.

My Thoughts:

When I was a child I watched Dragnet, probably the first police procedural on TV. It was one of my father's favorite TV shows (along with Gunsmoke). When I started reading this book, some of it reminded me of watching an episode of Dragnet. Later I read the introduction, and it mentioned that the earlier radio program version of Dragnet was an influence on Hillary Waugh when he wrote this novel.

I am very glad I read this book finally, and it was a good read, but some portions of the first half of the book are very slow going and fairly boring just as a real investigation would be boring to outsider observers. Regardless, there is plenty of tension in the story. At first the police don't know if the young woman is merely missing or is dead.  Once the body is discovered, the investigation is more focused. 

I guessed who did it very early on but it was far from a certainty in my mind. A good bit before the book ends, the police know who did it but cannot prove it, so they have to come up with something that will prove it. 

I liked the two main police officers, the police chief and his sergeant. They have a friendly rivalry because the sergeant is college trained and his boss came up through the ranks. The relationship felt realistic and interesting. Other than that there is not a lot of character development, and the personal lives of the policemen are not explored in any depth. 

The introduction by Leslie Klinger is very good, with an excellent overview of the first police procedurals. There is also an "About the Author" section that is very useful and a list of recommended further reading related to this book. If you are interested in reading this book I recommend buying the Library of Congress Crime Classics edition of the book.

One additional note about this edition: I did not like the footnotes added by Leslie S. Klinger. Some of them provided useless information not related to the text; some seemed really elementary (but then maybe that is because I am older); some were interesting information, but took me out the story. Some other reviewers liked the footnotes, though.

Also see reviews at:

Pretty Sinister Books

Past Offences

Dead Yesterday

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Poisoned Pen Press, 2021. (orig. publ. 1952)
Length:  240 pages
Format:  Trade Paperback
Setting:  USA, Massachusetts
Genre:   Mystery, Police Procedural

Short Story Wednesday: Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier

After I purchased this book of short stories, I noticed that the cover was a blurry photo of a face of a person in anguish, or so it looks to me. Later I learned that it is a video still from the horror film Repulsion. At that point I wasn't sure what to expect.  Are these horror stories? I had never associated that word with Daphne du Maurier before, but it appears that many reviewers do consider some of her works to be horror. So far, however, I have found none of the stories in this book horrifying. I did find some of them dark and tension-inducing. 

Each of the first three stories in this book are very different. They vary in length from 20 to 55 pages.

"Don't Look Now" has elements of the supernatural and is set in Venice, where an English couple is vacationing. They have recently lost their youngest child, and the trip is an attempt to move past that. Sometimes the supernatural in a story puts me off, but not in this case. The atmosphere is tense and I was dreading the outcome of the story. It wasn't what I expected at all. (about 55 pages)

The second story is "The Birds," which was the inspiration for the film by the same name. I say inspiration because the story is quite different from the film, but both are unsettling. The story focuses on a farm hand and his family who are trying to save themselves from birds of all types and sizes who are driven by some compulsion to invade their house. He recognizes the threat early on but most people laugh it off, and are not prepared.

This story comes the closest to horror (but then I don't read many horror stories).  I would say that the story is darker than the film but it has been years since I have seen the film. (about 40 pages) 

"Escort" confused me a bit, but I liked it. A tramp steamer is returning to England from a Scandinavian port in the early months of World War II. At some point they see the periscope of a German submarine. Another ship comes up beside them, offering to escort the ship to safety. At first I thought this one was just a simple, straightforward story, but it turns out to have a supernatural element too. (about 20 pages)

Patrick McGrath's introduction to this collection of stories notes that du Maurier often writes inconclusive endings; the stories are not tied up neatly, with a clear ending. She leaves the reader to embellish the ending or decide how they think the story ends. This is true of at least two of these stories: "The Birds" and "Escort." And "Don't Look Now" certainly left me tense and reviewing the events for quite a while after finishing it.

Per the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Escort" was first published in 1940, "The Birds" in 1952, and "Don't Look Now" in 1970.

20 Books of Summer for 2022

 

This is my seventh year of participating in the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. That is hard to believe. 

The event is very flexible. You can go for 15 Books of Summer or 10 Books of Summer if 20 is more than you want to commit to. Books can be substituted along the way. And that is fine. The event is hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. 

This event starts June 1st, 2022 and ends September 1st, 2022. Sometimes I read all twenty books, other years I have been less successful, but I never review them all. I have given up on that part of the goal. 

To be honest, coming up with the list is the best part. Here is my list.

Mysteries

Steve Burrows: A Pitying of Doves

Catherine Aird: Some Die Eloquent

Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express (Europe / Russia)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (short stories)

L. R. Wright: Fall From Grace 

Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye

Louise Penny: The Long Way Home

Luke McCallin: The Man From Berlin (Europe / Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, 1943)

Robin Spano: Dead Politician Society

Ted Woods: Dead in the Water    

Stef Penney: The Tenderness of Wolves

Science Fiction

John Scalzi: Head On 

Connie Willis: Fire Watch (short stories)

Martha Wells: Rogue Protocol

General Fiction 

Penelope Fitzgerald: The Bookshop

Gail Honeyman: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo 

Harry Mulisch: The Assault (Europe/ The Netherlands)

Adrienne Chinn: The English Wife 

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina