Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times No. 7

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. This time I am looking at an actual bookshelf. All of the books on this shelf are unread, and this is just a small portion of it.

The Robert Amiss Series by Ruth Dudley Edwards

Since there are two books on the shelf for Ruth Dudley Edwards, I will start there. I have read and reviewed two books in the Robert Amiss series: Corridors of Death and The St Valentine's Day Murders. I loved the first one; my reaction to the second one was tepid. But I still desire to continue the series, so I will be reading the books on this shelf eventually. The English School of Murder is the third book in the series. Amiss has left the Civil Service and finds a job at a language school teaching English to newcomers. Ten Lords A-Leaping is #6 in the series and I will probably read the intervening books before I move on to that one.

There is a good post about the series at Mystery Fanfare (written by the author).


The Jack Taylor Series by Ken Bruen

On the right end of this set of books are two by Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers (2002) and The Magdalen Martyrs (2003). These are books 2 and 3 in the Jack Taylor series and I read the first in the series, The Guards, back in May 2012. I liked that book a lot and have more in the series but never continued it. Jack Taylor, a member of the Garda Síochána (the police force of the Republic of Ireland), was thrown out because of serious problems with alcohol. He becomes a sort of private detective.This series is much more bleak and dark than the series by Ruth Dudley Edwards, which leans toward the cozy.

I actually liked Bruen's other series better, the Inspector Brant series. I read the first three books in that series (A White Arrest (1998), Taming the Alien (1999), and The McDead (2000) in 2013. That series is set in London and Brant is part of the Metropolitan police force. He is not the type of cop I usually prefer; he is amoral and does what he has to do, legal or not, to get things done. Still, I loved those books.

Both series include frequent mentions of books, especially mystery novels. Inspector Brant is a big Ed McBain fan.

I think I have gone on enough here. I might return to this portion of the shelf sometime, because there are other interesting books on it.

Westside: W. M. Akers

From the introduction to the book at HarperCollins:

It’s 1921, and a thirteen-mile fence running the length of Broadway splits the island of Manhattan, separating the prosperous Eastside from the Westside—an overgrown wasteland whose hostility to modern technology gives it the flavor of old New York. Thousands have disappeared here, and the respectable have fled, leaving behind the killers, thieves, poets, painters, drunks, and those too poor or desperate to leave.

It is a hellish landscape, and Gilda Carr proudly calls it home.

Slightly built, but with a will of iron, Gilda follows in the footsteps of her late father, a police detective turned private eye. Unlike that larger-than-life man, Gilda solves tiny mysteries: the impossible puzzles that keep us awake at night; the small riddles that destroy us; the questions that spoil marriages, ruin friendships, and curdle joy. Those tiny cases distract her from her grief, and the one impossible question she knows she can’t answer: “How did my father die?”

The story opens with Gilda working on an investigation for a woman in the Eastside. She is trying to find a lost glove for Mrs Edith Copeland, whose husband, Galen, owns a shipping firm. As a result she sees Galen Copeland shot and killed but when she reports this to the police, they are not interested. This "tiny mystery" leads to discoveries related to what happened to her father and why. Gilda breaks her own rule of sticking with the smaller mysteries, and digs further into the mysteries surrounding her father's disappearance.

My thoughts on this book:

This book is a  mashup of so many genres, but in a good way. Historical fiction, mystery, alternate history, private detective novel, and urban fantasy. The story is told in first person, thus we only get Gilda's perspective. That works very well to keep the suspense going. And she is a very entertaining narrator.

I really liked this book.  The story telling is good and it kept me engaged. I especially liked the way the author built this alternative version of New York in the 1920's. Prohibition. Bootleg liquor. Jazz. But a dark and damaged version.

Gilda is a strong female character, capable, not afraid to take chances but she is also childlike and innocent in some ways, which makes her very appealing. The secondary characters are interesting, although in this dark and evil place we know that they may not be trustworthy.

I felt like the mystery element was the strongest and overshadowed the fantasy and supernatural elements. But if you like your mystery straight with no fantasy mixed in, this might not be for you.

There are some extremely violent scenes in this novel, although honestly I did not notice it that much until it was pointed out in a couple of reviews. There is a lot of action and the pacing is good. Once I got close to the end, I could not put the book down until I knew the denouement.

Bookmarks reports "rave" reviews at Chapter 16, New York Times, NY Journal of Books, and Kirkus.

This was the debut novel for W.M. Akers. He has a new book coming out in this series, in early May, and I am interested because  I can't figure out where it will go from here.


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Publisher:  Harper Voyager, 2019
Length:      291 pages
Format:     Trade paperback
Series:      Westside, #1
Setting:     Alternate version of New York City, 1920's
Genre:      Cross-genre
Source:     I read my son's copy, which was an ARC.

The Chief Inspector Gamache series, books 5 and 6

I am now a full-fledged fan of Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series. When I read the first book in the series I did not care for it enough to continue to the next book. Later, I was encouraged by good reviews to read more of them. Books 2 and 3 in the series had their good points, and I found the 4th book, A Rule Against Murder (also published as The Murder Stone), to be especially good. But now, having read The Brutal Telling and Bury Your Dead in the same month, I am committed to reading the rest of the series.

Ideally I would have read The Brutal Telling in late summer or early autumn, as that is the time of year that the story takes place. It is a lovely time in Three Pines, but a dead body is found on the floor of the Bistro, owned by Olivier Brulé. No one in Three Pines admits to knowing the mysterious man found in the Bistro. The reader is aware that Olivier knows him, but he does not admit this until he is forced to.

Of course, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team are called in. The story centers around finding out the identity of the dead man, and determining who could have killed him, and who would have had a motive. By the end of the book the man has not been identified, and someone has been charged with the murder and convicted, but the ending feels open at that point.

In The Brutal Telling, three new characters are added to the Three Pines cast. The old Hadley house has new owners, Marc and Dominique Gilbert, and they plan to turn it into a spa / bed and breakfast. Marc’s mother, Carole, lives with them.

Bury Your Dead takes place in February of the following year, in Quebec City, when Quebec Winter Carnival (or Carnaval de Québec) is about to begin. It continues the story of the murder of the man called "The Hermit," when Chief Inspector Armand Gamache requests that Inspector Beauvoir reopen the investigation of that crime in Three Pines. Meanwhile Gamache is helping with an investigation in Quebec City, the death of a man fanatically obsessed with finding the burial site of Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City. Gamache is in Quebec City to rest and recover from physical and emotional wounds due to an attack by terrorists. This story is slowly revealed to the reader as Gamache remembers the day of the attack, and his rush to save an agent who is being held hostage. So this book has three story lines, a structure I liked very much.

I did not love both of these books equally. Although both books were about the same length and neither was over 400 pages, The Brutal Telling seemed too long to me. The investigation felt never ending, and I kept waiting for something to happen to change the direction of the book. I also did not like the ending of the book. Bury Your Dead, however, seemed like the perfect length and maybe that was because it had three stories to tell and the balance between the three story lines was perfect. Together, the two books were a wonderful reading experience.

Louise Penny writes beautifully, and the characters and the settings she uses are very well done. The recurring characters in Three Pines are often either very strange and/or have negative characteristics, which seems an unusual choice for an author to make. But it is nice for the characters to be less than perfect and not always likable. I also enjoyed learning more about Quebec and its history in Bury Your Dead.

It was Bill at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan who recommended reading The Brutal Telling and Bury Your Dead as a pair, and I did that. That greatly enhanced my reading of Bury Your Dead, because I would have forgotten key elements of the previous book if I had waited.


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Pub. data for The Brutal Telling

Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2009
Length:      372 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Inspecter Gamache, #5
Setting:      Three Pines, Quebec,  Canada
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2010.


Pub. data for Bury Your Dead

Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2010
Length:      371 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Series:       Inspecter Gamache, #6
Setting:      Quebec,  Canada
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      I purchased my copy April 2020.

Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times No. 6

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. This time I am looking at newly purchased books. I have bought a lot of books recently and these are just a few of them. Two of them I bought from Daedalus at a discount, but they still were not cheap. Two have only been recently published and they were bought from a local bookseller, Chaucer's Books, with sidewalk pickup. We have done two orders that way since the stores have been closed.


The first book is ...
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, originally published in 1950.

I don't know much about this book except that it is set (at least in part) in Australia. I read On the Beach in 2019; it was on my Classics Club list. I liked that book very much so I asked for recommendations for other books. This was one that was recommended by several bloggers.

Per the back of the book, the heroine is Jean Paget, and the book starts out in Malaysia during World War II and ends up in the Australian outback.

Next is...
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, published this year.

I bought this book because I enjoyed Station Eleven so much, and I read good things about this book. 

The Glass Hotel focuses on two people, a female bartender named Vincent and Paul Alkaitis, who is running an international Ponzi scheme. The financier is based on Bernie Madoff, but other than that the story is entirely fictional. It is not apocalyptic fiction like Station Eleven. But I think the writing style is similar.

The next two books are spy fiction...

A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming, published in 2017

I consider Charles Cumming to be a promising new spy fiction writer (to add to my list of favorites). But the jury is still out. He has published nine novels, starting with A Spy by Nature in 2001, but I did not read any of his books before 2011, when I read The Trinity Six (which was just OK in my opinion). But that might have just been due to my lack of knowledge of the Cambridge spies. Now I know a little more about the subject.

Then, in 2018 I read A Spy by Nature (Alec Milius #1) and in 2019 I read A Foreign Country (Thomas Kell #1). I liked both of those novels and this month I read Thomas Kell #2, A Colder War, and was also impressed with it. Thus I purchased A Divided Spy, to continue reading about Thomas Kell.

Cumming is a Scottish author, and his character in this series is an MI6 agent who is on extended leave with pay due to an incident still under investigation. He is occasionally called in for special assignments.

The next spy fiction author I am featuring is from the US.

The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer, published this year.

Olen Steinhauer is already on my list of favorite spy fiction authors. He has published 12 novels and I have read 10 of them and I liked them all. His first five novels were historical novels (the Yalta Boulevard series set in a fictional Eastern bloc country) and not strictly spy fiction but there were some espionage elements.

The Last Tourist is the 4th book in the Milo Weaver series. Weaver is in the CIA; in the first book he is in the "Tourist" division, a group that does dirty work for the CIA. I loved that series so of course I have to read this book. Soon, I hope.

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 No. 5

Judith at Reader in the Wilderness hosts this meme: Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times. The idea is to look through a bookshelf or a bookcase or stacks of books and share some thoughts on the books. And of course you can be inventive and talk about books in any context.

I have returned to looking through boxes of uncatalogued books, mostly purchased at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, in 2018 or 2019. I am pretty sure the books I found this week are books from the 2019 sale. Only purchased about 6 months ago, yet still I am surprised by some of them.

Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin

I have been interested in this book for years but never went out of my way to find a copy. It was originally published in 2007 in Sweden, but published in English translation in 2008. Publishers Weekly calls it a "deeply disturbing debut" but reviews I have read are very positive. It takes place on the Baltic island of Öland and is book 1 in the Öland quartet. The subject is the disappearance of a five-year-old boy 20 years previously.

Dark Fire by C. J. Sansum

This is the second book in the Matthew Shardlake series, published in 2004. The first book is Dissolution, in which Shardlake is a lawyer helping Thomas Cromwell to close down the monasteries in England. Shardlake is sent to investigate the murder of a royal commissioner living in one of the monasteries. The history of this time (1537) is very interesting. In the past I had not read much historical fiction set before the 1900s. Dark Fire is set in 1540 and I am not sure where it takes Shardlake but I liked the first one so I expecting this one to be very good too.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

This is Carson McCuller's first novel, published in 1940 when she was just twenty-three, and it is on my classics list. I don't know much about it and I prefer to leave it that way until I read it. 

The Witch Elm by Tana French

I had completely forgotten that I had bought this book at the sale. It is French's first standalone novel, published in 2018, after publishing six books in the Dublin Murder Squad series. I have read four books in that series and liked them all, and I had planned to hold off on this one until I read the last two in the series. But I found The Trespasser (book 6 in the series) and The Witch Elm at the book sale but not The Secret Place (book 5). So I may break down and read this book sooner than planned.