ANN CLEEVES' PAGE: Jimmy Perez/Shetland series 5 through 8...reposting old reviews

DEAD WATER
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Ann Cleeves returns to her critically acclaimed Shetland Island series with this stunning mystery featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, who readers will remember from Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, and Blue Lightning. When the body of a journalist is found, Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted from outside to head up the investigation. Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his local knowledge is needed in this case, and he decides to help Willow. The dead journalist had left the islands years before to pursue his writing career. In his wake, he left a scandal involving a young girl. When Willow and Jimmy dig deeper, they realize that the journalist was chasing a story that many Shetlanders didn't want to come to the surface. In Dead Water, a triumphant continuation to her Shetland series, Ann Cleeves cements her place as one of Britain's most successful crime writers.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: Cleeves' trademark simplicity of language, her amazing gift for limning a character in a sentence and a setting, her painterly use of color and composition to make the story richer: All present, all accounted for. And it's not one single bit of a surprise that British television pounced on these tales. May they have the monster (comparatively) success that Cleeves' other sleuth-series, Vera, has had.

Originally the books were to be a quartet, which I think we all know means four of something. Here we are on the *fifth* book in the quartet...and a cynical little part of me (known as "the whole body and soul") thinks this fifth entry was inspired by the TV show's existence. I feel it shows in the too-muchness of everything in the story. Too much angst, and from more than only Jimmy the widower. The secondary cast is all angst-ridden, frustrated, scared of something happening, something not happening, something coming out to embarrass them. This gets wearing. In the extreme. It took three days for me to read a book whose predecessors were devoured in hours.

One big surprise is the role of the Fiscal, previously a testy martinet. A new light is shone on her character and a resolution is crafted for her that I myownself felt was too sympathetic. The resolution of the mystery, in fact, seems too sympathetic, and the guilty are, well, sprung on us in a feat-of-detection solution to the logic puzzle that all mysteries are. This isn't my favorite of the series, but I can't deny myself the pleasures of reading even an oversized undermysteried Ann Cleeves novel.:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THIN AIR
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland's most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears—apparently into thin air. It's mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor's friend Polly receives an email. It reads like a suicide note, saying she'll never be found alive. And then Eleanor's body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.

Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the legend of the ghost had seemed unhealthy - obsessive, even—to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor's death than there first appears.

Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill—many years later—to protect?

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: Series mysteries are a pleasure to me. I have a (well-concealed) orderly side, one that needs to see Right done even if it's not strictly speaking legal. The Right that's done here is a bit twisty, no doubt about that, but it satisfied me. Eleanor, the murder victim, is the sort of character that just needs killing. I've known Eleanors in my life and feel that way about each of them, though I hasten to say loudly and publicly that I don't condone murder as a means to make things Right.

Really. Honest.

But Jimmy Perez is a cop, a good cop, and even though it seemed to me that he secretly felt that Right was done in Eleanor's death, he set out to solve the crime that was committed in the course of setting things straight. Willow, the new Chief Inspector we met in the previous book, is a great character. She's just awkward enough to make Jimmy feel off-balance yet protective. He's still reeling from his love's death; he's still growing accustomed to being a single dad; he's got Sandy the PC Plod character making him crazy yet advancing in his own detecting capabilities under Jimmy's tutelage. Jimmy's a man with a lot on his plate. Eleanor wouldn't be someone he'd care much for in life and I suspect he'd simply do the minimum were it not for the cast of Shetland originals wrapped deep in the case's toils.

The series brings a delightful place on Earth's surface to light. (Pun optional.) As we follow Jimmy, Willow, and Sandy around in their investigations, the Shetlands feel like so much more than the land that holds the characters up as they walk around. The islands are palpable to me, as though looking out the window while I'm reading about Unst will show me Unst instead of Long Beach. That's a great feeling to have when reading a book about a place I've never been.

The BBC has a series based on the characters in the novels. It's had three seasons to date and a fourth will be produced. It's recently become available on Netflix so I suppose I'll binge it one day soon. I was completely enthralled by Ann Cleeves' other series, Vera Stanhope, in its ITV incarnation, and Brenda Blethyn is my idea of Vera. The seventh season is due next year, 2017, and I will be there for it with bells on. I've been more cautious in approaching the adaptation of this series because Jimmy is portrayed by actor Douglas Henshall, very much not the man I see in my mental movie of the series. A bit like Peter Capaldi as the Doctor...just about exactly wrong from my viewpoint.

Still and all, it pays to remain open. While Cleeves' first four Shetland novels were made into the first two seasons of Shetland, the third season has branched out on its own. That should make the cognitive disconnect of Henshall as Jimmy Perez a good deal easier for me to absorb. The books are a pleasure, there is a seventh full novel (after several novellas) appearing next year; the TV series bids fair to be worthy of attention; it's a good investment of your eyeblinks and dollars to pick up this habit. Start anywhere, the series aspect is a boon to your pleasure but not crucial to it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

COLD EARTH
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of four

The Publisher Says: In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the road and sweeps down to the sea.

At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and peaty water smash through a croft house in its path. Everyone thinks the croft is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. In his mind, she shares his Mediterranean ancestry and soon he becomes obsessed with tracing her identity.

Then it emerges that she was already dead before the landslide hit the house. Perez feels bound by duty—and something more powerful—to find out who she was, and how she died. Within the house, the only clue is a wooden box that contains two photos, one of two small children and one of an elderly couple. And a handwritten letter, which begins: "My dearest Alis..."

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

EVERY SYLLABLE BELOW HERE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK
***
***
***
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

My Review: Ach, Jimmy, you need to pull up your socks and get with the program or Willow's gonna get something better equipped to provide bairns and boom-boom in Inverness! What a pity that'll be!

I'm invested in this novel series. I liked this entry just fine. I had a problem with the resolution: When Simon Shrinky-dink is the ONE AND ONLY voice even implying the the first victim was in any way unhappy, well...five alarms and red red flags, Author Cleeves! It wasn't enough to ruin my pleasure in spending time with Jimmy and Sandy and Willow, mind you. Something else almost was, though: When Andy Hay's gone off to Have A Think, it's about the least deft thing I've read Author Cleeves do! And Janeymum does not twig to her boyo's hidey-hole? No. He's got quite a lot of probletunities, does Andy. He's no mastermind to be successfully invisible to his doting mama when he's a hundred meters away.

So I twigged to the murderer right quick. I was sure the Hay family was in it, particularly once the nature of the business relationships around the community were limned in acid on the backs of my eyelids. EW! What I had built in my head wasn't the connection that came to light, though: I was sure Michael's girlfriend was employed by Rogerson and the motive was outraged revenge on Simon Shrinky-dink's part.

I'm also curious about a throwaway line that Author Cleeves gives to Mavis Rogerson about her Kathryn: "She's her father's daughter all right." Nothing at all is done with it. Nothing really led up to it, although the mother/daughter relationship appeared to me to be quite businesslike; I put it down to adult-child-back-in-nest syndrome. Might be I was only partway right....

There it is, laddies and gentlewomen. There's the reason I keep going with this series in a nutshell. Author Cleeves gives the reader so much more than she writes on the page. She puts in details that don't exactly redherringize you, but do command a fraction more of your attention than ordinary backgrounding. She doesn't fill them out. She says, in effect, "and what do you imagine will be behind this little nug of goodness?" then leaves us to it.

I get the feeling that she likes her readers and enjoys making things that fun bit extra.

So why, I hear the Parity-for-All Perfectioneers grumble, do you give this a "bad" 3-star plus rating? All those nosegays of praise and then *splat*? That's just wrong! The hell it is, Gold Star Granting Gremlins. You just take yourself off and read Red Bones or better still Raven Black! Author Cleeves is capable of nigh-unto-perfection. This book just isn't that. There's the rating explained.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WILD FIRE
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When the Flemings—designer Helena and architect Daniel—move into a remote community in the north of Shetland, they think it's a fresh start for themselves and their children.

But their arrival triggers resentment, and Helena begins to receive small drawings of a gallows and a hanged man. Gossip spreads like wildfire.

A story of dysfunctional families and fractured relationships, Inspector Jimmy Perez's eighth case will intrigue series fans and Shetland Island newcomers alike.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: Incomers Not Wanted. Southerners, most especially, and most virulently, should not plan to stay here.

This is the message that greets London couple Helena and Daniel and their two children. The autistic son discovers the hanged body of their nanny in the barn. The same barn the original owner of their new home hanged himself.

Islands, unsurprisingly, breed insular social structures. It's right there in the word, one we've generalized to describe unwelcoming, exclusive social mlilieux for quite some time now...at least since 1775, per Etymonline. It is very seldom...I'm always reluctant to say "never" in these maters because alomg will come some "Gotcha!" Gang goofball to say "clearly you're an idiot for not knowing {thing they hunted out to embarrass you}" in their never-remotely charming way...used except pejoratively. We know it's unpleasant, unhelpful, and unkind, but nevertheless we persist in doing it.

Humans. Irredeemable, the lot of 'em.

The crimes and solutions don't really hit the ground running in this, the last book of the Shetland series. There is going to be more to come...you watch!...because of Jimmy and Willow's utterly upending news. I will say Jimmy's behavior is, unexpectedly, pretty caddish and selfish. It's very human, and fits with the series' willingness to show all the characters as people, not archetypes.

That said, I as a family member of several people far down the autism spectrum felt the autism representation...while perhaps appropriate for the broader community...fell very short in Helena's case. She demonstrated deeply hurtful attitudes...tantrums? really?...in front of her autistic child. It's not the best look for the only and last time we'll be here as readers.

The procedural parts are perfectly fine, as usual; I think Author Cleeves does a creditable job of getting the case solved without going into unnecessary mishegas, as has happened in some stories gone by. I will very much miss the Shetlands, the scoobygroup, and the lurid criminality rampant in these insular settings.

ANN CLEEVES' PAGE: Jimmy Perez/Shetland series 1 through 4...reposting old reviews

RAVEN BLACK
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Raven Black begins on New Year’s Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: There are two facts I must convey to you before reviewing the book. One: I am extremely uncomfortable, to the point of pain, around people with cognitive and/or communicative disorders or inabilities. Two: I was the object of my pedophile mother's sexual interest until I was fifteen.

Unsurprisingly, these aren't the sorts of themes I find enjoyable to find in my leisure reading. Raven Black has both! I was thinking seriously of abandoning the read, just quietly taking the book back to the library and forgetting it existed. Cleeves managed to make that an undesirable option, and in doing so, made it possible for me to hold a very unflattering mirror up to my character.

The younger of my two grandsons is autistic. It is extremely hard for his mother to cope with the demands of two active, intelligent, communicative children plus an active, intelligent, uncommunicative one. I don't know how she does it. I would be incapable of doing one-third what she does, with (at long last) support and help from her (second) husband.

Magnus Tait, one of our POV characters, is cognitively impaired. It was *horrible* for me to read the sections of text told from his POV because I could not bear to be in this close contact with him. It made me think of the helpless inability I feel when confronted with my autistic grandson...that sense of having nothing of myself to offer, of withdrawal from avoidable contact...no one can tell me the boy isn't aware of it, and while Magnus isn't autistic, it was a close-enough situation, and to know from the inside what chill and distance feels like...well, how awful, how awful to know it, feel it, and be unable to *understand* it.

At least I understand. But funnily enough, that fails to make it better. It makes it worse.

Pedophilia is present in several characters, no spoilers so no names, and the object of desire's POV is used in the story as well. It's unbelievable to me that Cleeves can recreate the unmixed-but-unsettled feelings of a child who holds that kind of intoxicating, terrifying, inappropriate power over an adult. I hope not, for her sake, but I felt "takes one to know one" so many times in reading certain parts of the book.

The thriller aspects of the book were nicely done, though as an old hand I pegged the murderer and motive fairly early on...but, discomfitingly, I found that I wanted the truth not to be what I knew, but what my prejudices drooled over.

I recommend this book to the unsqueamish. It's strong stuff. Nothing that happens in it is gratuitous. The guilty, and I mean those morally guilty, are punished severely. There is a bleak pleasure in that.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WHITE NIGHTS
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The electrifying follow up to the award-winning Raven Black

Raven Black received crime fiction’s highest monetary honor, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. Now Detective Jimmy Perez is back in an electrifying sequel.

It’s midsummer in the Shetland Islands, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. Artist Bella Sinclair throws an elaborate party to launch an exhibition of her work at The Herring House, a gallery on the beach.

The party ends in farce when one the guests, a mysterious Englishman, bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where he’s come from. The following day the Englishman is found hanging from a rafter, and Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that the man has been murdered. He is reinforced in this belief when Roddy, Bella’s musician nephew, is murdered, too.

But the detective’s relationship with Fran Hunter may have clouded his judgment, for this is a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems.

A stunning second installment in the acclaimed Shetland Island Quartet, White Nights is sure to garner American raves for international sensation Ann Cleeves.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: This is the second Shetland Islands Quartet thriller, which marketing decision was a good one...calling these thrillers instead of mysteries sets up the expectation of a whacking good read though not necessarily the play-fair-with-the-reader puzzle-solver that modern mysteries are.

Cleeves writes wonderfully clearly and carefully about flawed, real, lovable characters in bad emotional states because of violent, evil acts disrupting their very ordinary lives.

The stories she tells in this series, to date, are proof to me that she's looked deeply into human nature and seen what its outlines show to the astute...there but for the grace of God go I. Everyone in this book flees from their hurts. Their flight is, inevitably, unsuccessful. Jimmy Perez can't run from his flaming co-dependence. Fran Hunter can't run from her seething ambition. Bella Sinclair can't run from her self-created persona, an Iron Maiden as effective as any Inquistor's torture device. Inspector Taylor, back up from Inverness, can't escape his fear-driven energy. No one, not any one, escapes.

The white nights of the title are a phenomenon of the far north. The sun never *quite* sets enough for true, dark night to fall. It's unsettling to some, it's a biorhythm disturber of tremendous power to have the body's million-year-old clock disrupted by absence of night. It's used by vile people the world over as a form of torture to deprive a human of good rest. And yet, there are thousands whose entire lives are lived with this condition as backdrop, and they seem not to feel its downside too strongly.

But let's face it...this fact of nature is a thriller-writer's best birthday present. What better metaphor, and even a pretty subtle one, for bringing to light old wrongs, shining the pitiless lamp of the torturer on the consciences of those guilty of undiscovered crimes, than a sun that won't go down?

That's a very nice backdrop you've chosen, Mme Cleeves, and it works very, very well for your chosen story, right up to and including the resolution of the multiple crimes. It does not make up for the sense I got, throughout the book, that your focus wasn't on me, your reader.

I recommend the book, yes. I even think there are some things about it that are outstanding, including the character developments of Perez and Taylor. But as I careened from incident to incident, I didn't sense that you were laying out this tale for my delectation, but rather leading me, like a museum docent, from exhibit to exhibit, trying in a haphazard way to lead my somewhat dim brain to a conclusion you'd already reached and were now impatiently awaiting my "aha!" moment. I am already in possession of Red Bones, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what you have planned for me next, but I am a little bit put out by this sense of magisterial disdain that I got from the resolution to White Nights. I wish you'd let me get there with you, instead of running ahead and pointing and waving your arms.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

RED BONES
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.125* of five

The Publisher Says: When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find—or a more contemporary mystery?

Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson—his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.

The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.

Surrounded by people he doesn't know and in unfamiliar territory, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then there's another death and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: This is the third in what the publishers call The Shetland Islands Quartet in some places, A Shetland Islands Thriller in others. I hope that this betokens a realization on the part of Cleeves and her publishers that the series has the essential ingredient for longevity: Terrific characters entwined in believeable relationships.

We see Jimmy Perez, our sleuth, living without gal-pal Fran Hunter while she's down south in London to visit family and friends. His every waking thought seems to return to her, to her daughter Cassie, and to the natural fears of a man in love whose lover is far away: Is she safe, is she having too good a time to want to come back, is this the end of my dream of happiness, all the stuff men think but never admit they're thinking.

Sandy, Perez's Detective Sergeant, is also away, though closer to home...he's on Whalsay, a short ferry ride from Lerwick where Jimmy is based. While visiting home, Sandy's beloved grandmother is shot. It looks like a horrible, horrible accident. Sandy is first cop on the scene, naturally, and has to make hard calls about how to pursue the matter before Jimmy shows up to take over. Sandy's family will never be the same again, of course, but more importantly for the story, Sandy won't either. Jimmy helps Sandy grow into his manhood during this investigation, and this makes the book far richer than we'd have any right to expect from a simple thriller. When a second horrible death occurs, Sandy and Jimmy both conclude there are connections here that the two of them aren't making, and whether or not the deaths were intentional, the connections need to be investigated and explored. This takes each of them farther from his comfort zone than either expected.

Cleeves's plot snake-twines around each character, squeezing the past and the present tightly together, and finally forcing the characters into one inevitable crushing future. It looks nothing like the present. It looks nothing like the future the characters saw coming. And that's why I recommend this book, and this series, with such a strong voice.

2017 UPDATE: The TV series based on the idea of the books is on Netflix in the US. Aired four years ago, and you can tell:

PEREZ: For more holiday lets? Christ Duncan you're turning into Shetland's answer to Donald Trump.

DUNCAN: *laughs*

That line spoken in Scotland today would lead to blows and severed friendships.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BLUE LIGHTNING
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4 very very disgruntled stars of five

The Publisher Says: In the fourth book of Ann Cleeves’ critically acclaimed series set in the Shetland Islands, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez brings his fiancée home to Fair Isle, a birder’s paradise, where strangers are viewed with suspicions and distrust. When a woman's body is discovered at the island’s bird observatory, the investigation is hampered by a raging storm that renders the island totally isolated. Jimmy has to find clues the old-fashioned way, and he has to do it quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the chance to strike again.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: Jimmy and Fran go to visit Jimmy's parents, Big James and Mary, on Fair Isle, since they're planning to be married. Big James and Mary make a nice engagement party for the happy couple at the North Light, which now serves as the centerpiece of a birding reserve and research center. Maurice and Angela, who run the reserve, have attracted the best chef *ever* in the form of Jane, a lesbian escapee from life's more hectic and less forgiving pace in London. Throw in some birders, a weird subspecies of Homo obsessivus, a misery of a teenaged daughter, a snotty young upperclass Brit-twit, and some genuinely surprising revelations about the families and lives of the characters we who are fans have come to love, and then...drumroll please...kill off an extremely main character for absolutely avoidable reasons and throw the entire cast of characters into a major tumult, and you have book four of the Shetland Islands Quartet.

Oh, owww. I thought Lousy Louise Penny had hurt me as badly as a novelist could with her perfidious, horrible, and completely unforgiven emotional drubbing in book 5 of Three Pines. I suppose I should have been on the alert for a similar anguishing event because Lousy Louise herself blurbed this book. I was, however, all padded up in cotton wool, interestedly following Jimmy around his hometown Fair Isle, meeting and tutting over the characters who are slated to die; I had my murderer all picked out (I was right) and I was practically *drooling* with eagerness to see my candidate suffer, be blamed, pay for a horrible crime, a forgivable one too though honestly had the first murder gone unpunished I wouldn't've been even a little fussed about it; and then *BLAMMO* right between the eyes, *smash* went the skull with a twist I did NOT see coming; and then, and then...! Cleeves kicked me square in the teeth with the ending!!

I cried. I was very upset. I felt I'd been hurt in my real life. It takes a good, good storyteller to make that happen.

These are well-written books, and they convey a clear sense of life in the Shetland Islands. They're very much worth reading on that basis alone. But Cleeves creates characters that are deeply real, ones you can invest in, and that's the most important quality a writer can have. I strongly recommend the books. This one, obviously, should be saved for last; I suspect, though, given the last few lines of the book, that Cleeves's publishers have prevailed upon her to make the Quartet more open-ended. I am not at all sure I think that's a good thing, if it's true. Still, I hope you will go and procure them for your reading pleasure, because it will be a pleasure.

THE KILLING STONES, Jimmy and Willow are back!

THE KILLING STONES (Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves #1; Shetland series #9)
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The Killing Stones marks the eagerly awaited return of Ann Cleeves' beloved detectives from the Shetland series, and a gripping new investigation with a stunning new setting, from the New York Times bestselling author and creator of three iconic detectives beloved in TV and DI Jimmy Perez (the Shetland series), DI Vera Stanhope, and DI Matthew Venn (The Long Call).

It's been several years since Detective Jimmy Perez left Shetland. He has settled into his new home in Orkney, the group of islands, off the northern coast of Scotland, with his partner Willow Reeve and their growing family. One stormy winter night, his oldest and closest friend, Archie Stout, goes missing. Ever the detective, Perez catches a boat to the island of Westray, where Archie worked as a farmer and lived with his wife and children.

But when he arrives he finds a shocking scene: Archie's body, on an archaeological dig site and an ancient Westray story stone with precise spirals carved into it beside him, the clear murder weapon. The artifact, taken from a nearby museum, seems to suggest a premediated murder.

But Perez is so close to the case that he struggles to maintain an objective distance from the potential suspects. He finds it difficult to question Archie's wife, whom he's known for years. Rumors swirl about the dead man's relationship with a young woman new to the island, an artist. With each new lead, the case becomes more twisted and Perez wonders if he will ever find out what happened in his friend's final days.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I was totally all-in from the moment I heard we were going to Westray! The Westray Wife has fascinated me since I first saw Alice Roberts slightly lose it when she was allowed to hold it on Digging for Britain. (Now that Time Team's basically quarterly, I get my UK archaeology fix from Professor Roberts.)

So I was primed to love his new branch of the Cleeves mystery dynastic tree...with Jimmy and Willow leading the charge into this gloriously beautiful landscape, how could I go wrong, right?

Oh dear.

Much back-and-forth travel is natural for people on islands; it's there in the earlier Shetland series as well. It felt more foregrounded here, I suspect because Author Cleeves is also establishing the Orcadian landscape in our readerly minds. We're also awash in cups of tea as the sleuths sit down for a cuppa with, seemingly, every single inhabitant of Westray. The sheer amount of talky-talky in this book leads me to recommend against an ear-read, or one would go stark staring mad trying to keep up with the speakers.

What really sealed my not-that-favorable rating was the fact Jimmy officially gets involved in his friend's murder investigation because Christmas is coming and the locals don't much want to do anything. I think that's bloody unlikely to hold up in court. The identity and motive of the killer are pretty predictable...once revealed...but still arrived out of what felt to me like left field.

This story begins a new series with Jimmy and Willow expecting their second child, living in Orkney, and Willow being a full-time carer...a trope I get, but pregnant again, still working enough to help, and Jimmy lunges at a chance to get into a murder he has no sensible reason to be involved in against all ethical boundaries? I really do not think someone who has not read the Shetland series will have an easy time feeling welcome.

I'll keep going in the new stories. For now. But it will be in hopes of a return to prior form.

VLADIMIR SOROKIN'S PAGE: Oprichnik's Russia duology

THE SUGAR KREMLIN (Oprichnik's Russia #2)
VLADIMIR SOROKIN (tr. Max Lawton)
Dalkey Archive Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 trade paper, preorder for fulfillment tomorrow

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A puzzle of colorful, sardonic episodes that come together as a portrait of totalitarian society as a whole.

Sugar Kremlin follows the near-future universe of Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik, crafting a set of 15 chapters that all return to the symbol of the The Sugar Kremlin. Thousands of these creations are being given away to citizens on the street, from lucky children to secret political dissidents, torture-obsessed civil servants, sex workers in a nearby bordello, and more.

As Sorokin moves from story to story, he draws the reader through the dark streets of life in Russia, creating a metaphysical encyclopedia of the Russian soul through a deceptively sweet sugary treat. Presenting a wide variety of genres and tones, Sugar Kremlin lays out a frightening vision of speculative mercilessness and quirky political horror.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Not a novel. A collection of fifteen stories set in the storyverse of Day of the Oprichnik but without overlapping or recurring characters. The structure here is centered around a literal "sugar Kremlin", a treat made of sugar in the shape of the Kremlin that's like an Advent calendar or a fruitcake or other holiday treat in ubiquity and celebratory affect.

That alone makes this unnerving, dystopian fantasia of a 2028 Russia unsettlingly like the Project 2025 US we're living in. The characters are constantly munching on, consuming, discussing the lusciousness of, this nutritionless pure sugar abomination.

On the nose much, Author Sorokin?

Expect the usual transgressive behaviors (I've been uneasily eyeing my hammer), the expected degradation and cruelty, the obligatory violent and vicious conduct. Sorokin is not going to coddle your imagination. The stakes here are too high. This duology (this one published in 2008 in Russian, 2025 in English, printed now that Dalkey Archive's under new ownership) is a trumpet blast, containing every dissonant and perverse note in Literature's instrumentation, to get the reader to see, really see, what is going on. It's been the brief of this press since its founding in 1984.

What made this a slightly-less-stellar read than Day of the Oprichnik for me was the episodic nature of stories...they don't really synergize to create a paralyzing terrified awareness of the overarching story's validity and possibly even applicability to 2025 US life. It's not what stories do, nor are they supposed to. What they've done as collected here is make the whole feel more melodramatic than dramatizing reality as a novel does. I was a bit thrown by a story titled "The Queue" because that's also an (unrelated) novel by Author Sorokin. It was brief but it threw me out of my flow state.

I am, then, one of those who are not au fait with Author Sorokin's contention that "The contemporary world is so complex and protean that it is no longer possible to describe it with linear prose and squeeze it into a traditional novel's structure." (From his interview with Joshua Cohen that forms the Introduction to the book.) I read a lot of linear novels; they do a creditable job of linear presentation of an inherently nonlinear world; I do not see that what I've just read has a notable advantage over, say, The Words That Remain (a linear-prose novel that presents complexity, pathos, cruelty, and love effectively). I readily stipulate that I'm possibly missing the point of his statement, or too dull of apprehension to get more than a dim gist of it.

Nonetheless, I experienced this read as a collection of well-made stories ready to épater les bourgeois as they...we...so badly need literature to do. Author Sorokin is ready, willing, and able to do this duty, with verve and panache, and scatology and violence.

It needs doing. It needs reading.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK (Oprichnik's Russia #1)
VLADIMIR SOROKIN (tr. Jamey Gambrell)
FSG
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Moscow, 2028. A cold, snowy morning.

Andrei Danilovich Komiaga is fast asleep. A scream, a moan, and a death rattle slowly pull him out of his drunken stupor—but wait, that’s just his ring tone. And so begins another day in the life of an oprichnik, one of the czar’s most trusted courtiers—and one of the country’s most feared men.

Welcome to the new New Russia, where futuristic technology and the draconian codes of Ivan the Terrible are in perfect synergy. Corporal punishment is back, as is a divine monarch, but these days everyone gets information from high-tech news bubbles, and the elite get high on hallucinogenic, genetically modified fish.

Over the course of one day, Andrei Komiaga will bear witness to—and participate in—brutal executions; extravagant parties; meetings with ballerinas, soothsayers, and even the czarina. He will rape and pillage, and he will be moved to tears by the sweetly sung songs of his homeland. He will consume an arsenal of drugs and denounce threats to his great nation’s morals. And he will fall in love—perhaps even with a number of his colleagues.

Vladimir Sorokin, the man described by Keith Gessen (in The New York Review of Books) as “[the] only real prose writer, and resident genius” of late-Soviet fiction, has imagined a near future both too disturbing to contemplate and too realistic to dismiss. But like all of his best work, Sorokin’s new novel explodes with invention and dark humor. A startling, relentless portrait of a troubled and troubling empire, Day of the Oprichnik is at once a richly imagined vision of the future and a razor-sharp diagnosis of a country in crisis.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: From the vantage point of late 2025, a post-Putin neo-medieval Russia in 2028 sounds...oddly optimistic...as well as wrong. From 2005's standpoint it probably seemed more likely; even though nothing in this book could be called hopeful, it was probably sounding good to Sorokin just not to have Little Vladdy Pu-Pu on the tsar's throne.

Predictions always miss something. Usually they're too optimistic, too hopeful, and weird to say that's the problem with this bleak prediction-fest. *waves at Little Vladdy Pu-Pu on his throne* I'm not entirely convinced the religious fervor of the Oprichnia, as revived from the days of Ivan the Terrible (an epithet with multiple valences in English, all of them applicable to the bearer then...and by extension now), is not active in 2025 let alone 2028.

With his characteristic OTT revulsion-inducing behaviors foregrounded, this book is automatically beyond the pale of all too many squeamish readers. I would say "try to get past it" but honestly...don't. One is meant to be revolted and put off by it, much as the 1972 John Waters shocker Pink Flamingos is not meant to titillate but shock and offend (fifty-plus years on, it still does). The world Author Sorokin posits is intended to be just as appalling and revolting, to disgust you and repel you! The entire reason to hold a dark mirror of satire up is to draw attention to the wrongness and cruelty of the world being posited. By no means is it accidental that so much of it is grimly familiar. The theocratic angle is the one not quite fully rolled out by our allegedly separate government. Just wait.

This edition was published in 2011, and it is only more relevant and more horripilating in 2025's world of ICEstapo and wholesale social upheaval caused and inflamed by the most powerful in our country.

September 2025's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Glorious People by Sasha Salzmann (tr. Imogen Taylor)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A remarkable story exploring the disintegration of the Soviet Union, told through mothers & daughters and stretching from the 1970s to the near present

Loaded with “vibrancy and humour”, Glorious People is a vivid depiction of how the collapse of the Soviet Union reverberated through the lives of ordinary people taking place across several generations of two families (TLS).

As a child, Lena longs to pick hazelnuts in the woods with her grandmother. Instead, she is raised to be a good socialist: sent to Pioneer summer camps where she's taught to worship Lenin and sing songs in praise of the glorious Soviet Union. But perestroika is coming. Lena's corner of the USSR is now Ukraine, and corruption and patronage are the only ways to get by—to secure a place at university, an apartment, treatment for a sick baby.

For Tatjana, the shock of the new means the first McDonald's in the Soviet Union and certified foreign whisky, but no food in the shops; it means terrible choices about how to love. Eventually both women must decide whether to stay or to emigrate, but the trauma they carry is handed down to their daughters, who struggle to make sense of their own identities.

Engrossing, rich in detail and unforgettable characters, this is a captivating love letter to mothers and daughters from one of Europe’s most powerful voices in political fiction.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I liked it fine. It seems to have ruffled some feathers that present themselves as Ukrainian, though for the life of me I can not see why. It makes more sense to me that the upset Cyrillic-users were Russians out to discredit this personal-level tale of political upheaval's emotional costs to emigrants.

Lena and Tatjana the emigrants, and their German-immigrant daughters Edita and Nina, are wrapped in the titanic, existential upheavals of Soviet imperial dissolution. The text is not focused enough for me to more than broadly sympathize with any one of them, though the topic, and its effects, is well-delineated. A book I admired more than enjoyed.

Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks for $13.99 for an ebook. Maybe borrow one.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Mystery of the Crooked Man by Tom Spencer

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A distinctive murder mystery with an unforgettably spiky protagonist, for fans of The Twyford Code, Magpie Murders and Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Meet Agatha Dorn, cantankerous archivist, grammar pedant, gin aficionado and murder mystery addict. When she discovers a lost manuscript by Gladden Green, the Empress of Golden Age detective fiction, Agatha's life takes an unexpected twist. She becomes an overnight sensation, basking in the limelight of literary stardom.

But Agatha's newfound fame takes a nosedive when the 'rediscovered' novel is exposed as a hoax. And when her ex-lover turns up dead, with a scrap of the manuscript by her side, Agatha suspects foul play.

Cancelled, ostracised and severely ticked off, Agatha turns detective to uncover the sinister truth that connects the murder and the fraudulent manuscript. But can she stay sober long enough to catch the murderer, or will Agatha become a whodunit herself?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Agatha...get it?...is a solidly drawn amateur sleuth, investigating an entertaining bibliomystery motivated by sheer cussèdness and rancor against dishonesty. My kinda gal! I relate to her bluntness and grouchy affect against people she's got reason to believe aren't doing the right thing.

There are easter-eggs for Dame Agatha mystery lovers to spot, if they're in the mood. No knowledge of the œuvre in question? Nothing will make no sense without that specialist knowledge. A very pleasant afternoon spent chuckling and smiling through the twisty bits.

Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $11.99 for an ebook, and cheap at the price.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Glitter in the Dark by Olesya Lyuzna

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The search for a kidnapped singer in Prohibition-era New York leads an intrepid reporter from Harlem speakeasies to the dazzling world of the theater, all while grappling with her warring passions.

Ambitious advice columnist Ginny Dugan knows she’s capable of more than solving other people’s beauty problems, but her boss at Photoplay magazine thinks she's only fit for fluff pieces. When she witnesses the kidnapping of a famous singer at Harlem’s hottest speakeasy, nobody takes her seriously, but Ginny knows what she saw—and what she saw haunts her.

Guilt-ridden over her failure to stop the kidnappers and hard-pressed for cash to finally move out of her uptight showgirl sister’s apartment, Ginny resolves to chase down the truth that will clear her conscience and maybe win her a promotion in the process. When private detective Jack Crawford starts interfering with her case, Ginny ropes him into a reluctant partnership but soon finds herself drawn to the kind heart she glimpses beneath his brooding exterior. Equally as alluring is Gloria Gardner, the star dancer of the Ziegfeld Follies who treats life like one unending party. Yet as Ginny delves deeper into the criminal underworld, the sinister plot she uncovers seems to lead right back to the theater.

Then a brutal murder strikes someone close to her, and Ginny realizes the stakes are higher than she ever imagined. This glamorous world has a deadly edge, and Ginny must shatter her every illusion to catch the shadowy killer before they strike again.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The speakeasies, the sex, the showgirls, the secrets! Harlem during Prohibition never looked more glam. If you can see it through the proliferation of subplots, minor characters foregrounded, and lush overdone descriptions.

Enjoyable for all that, and sure to please my fellow series mystery lovers. (If this ain't a book one, never saw one more wasted.)

Mysterious Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires you to surrender $17.95 (any edition) before legal possession is transferred to you.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Roundabout of Death by Faysal Khartash (tr. Max Weiss)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: "Potent ... intimate, humorous and compelling ... One of the best Syrian novelists of his generation and one of the most exciting writers to emerge from the region since the Arab Spring."— The Times Literary Supplement

Set in Aleppo in 2012, when everyday life was metronomically punctuated by bombing, Roundabout of Death offers powerful witness to the violence that obliterated the ancient city's rich layers of history, its neighborhoods, and medieval and Ottoman landmarks. The novel is told from the perspective of an ordinary man, a schoolteacher of Arabic for whom even daily errands become life-threatening tasks.

He experiences the wide-scale destruction wrought upon the monumental Syrian metropolis as it became the stage for a vicious struggle between warring powers. Death hovers ever closer while the teacher roams Aleppo’s streets and byways, minutely observing the perils of urban life in an uncanny twist on Baudelaire's flâneur.

The novel, a literary edifice erected as an unflinching response to the erasure of a once great city, speaks eloquently of the fragmentation of human existence and the calamities of war.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Like life—as we are told in multiple stories both fiction and nonfiction—lived in war zones, this is a collection of vignettes and impressions that impress themselves on the narrator. He is a Syrian teacher of Arabic, the man on the Clapham omnibus, and at the mercy of the violence then ravaging now-destroyed Aleppo in 2012. Simple daily acts carry huge time penalties and require significant personal risk of harm, let alone crossing the many internal control points to find his kidnapped brother.

A moving story, sure to appeal to vibes-reading souls who urgently desire peace; for all that I think this 2017 book might be "of its time" not necessarily ours.

New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) exacts $16.95 from you for reading privileges.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Killer Wedding by Joan O'Leary

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Wildly witty and wickedly fun, A Killer Wedding is a juicy debut whodunit about toxic family dynamics hidden beneath the surface of billionaire-level wealth that reads like The Devil Wears Prada protagonist played a game of Clue at a White Lotus Hotel.

Christine can’t believe her luck. The iconic Gloria Beaufort, founder of the billion-dollar beauty empire Glo, has personally chosen her to cover her grandson’s wedding for Bespoke, the cult fashion magazine that every A-list bride dreams of being featured in. A career-making scoop and a free trip to a castle turned five-star hotel on the Emerald Isle? It feels too good to be true…

Because it is.

Gloria is found dead on the very first morning of the celebratory weekend, and her entire family wants to keep her death a secret and for the wedding to march on. When Gloria’s heirs issue a chilling warning to Christine to keep things quiet, she can’t help but wonder if one of them is guilty. There’s the son who’s hiding a damaging lawsuit; the resentful daughter-in-law; the grandson who’s had a few too many run-ins with the law; the ambitious granddaughter who’s hiding more than one secret; and Gloria’s favorite grandchild, the too-good-to-be-true groom. As Christine navigates a world where glamour masks grimy secrets and everyone she meets is a suspect, she realizes that among this glitzy elite, nothing is as it seems.

Set against the dazzling backdrop of ultimate luxury and an endless reveal of surprises, A Killer Wedding is a fast-paced, humorous mystery that proves you’ll never forget your wedding day…especially if it starts with a murder.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I know we're supposed to love stories about how ghastly the superrich are, while still covetously drooling over their overpriced tat. I'm over it. A debut novel that spends about 40% of the page count modishly snarking while obsequiously documenting a culture I only want to know about if there's naked guys parading for my pervy pleasure.

Plenty of humor I wasn't that impressed by, lots of stylish...stuff...lovingly described, and who the hell care if that harridan was murdered because the wonder is it took so long.

William Morrow (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $14.99, please, but you must supply the Hermès Kindle cover.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Sisterhood (A Lady Emily Mystery #19) by Tasha Alexander

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Lady Emily investigates the murder of a glamorous debutante in the latest irresistible mystery of Tasha Alexander’s New York Times bestselling series.

London, 1907: When the Season's most accomplished and elegant debutante, Victoria Goldsborough, collapses and dies at her engagement ball, the great and good of London Society prepare to mourn the tragic loss of an upstanding young woman. But all is not what it seems, and after a toxic beverage is revealed to be the cause of death, the king himself instructs Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves to unearth the truth.

Who would want to harm one of the most popular women of the year? Is it her fiancé with whom she had an unusually brief courtship; a rival for his affections bitter at being cast aside; her best friend who is almost certainly hiding a secret from Colin and Emily; a disappointed suitor with a hidden gambling habit; or a notorious jewel thief who has taken a priceless tiara from the Goldsborough home? When a second debutante succumbs to poison, the race is on to find a ruthless killer.

Emily and Colin’s investigation leads to a centuries old tomb in the center of London with a mysterious link to another death dating back to Roman times and the violent reign of Boudica, ancient Britain's fearsome warrior queen. As the stakes rise and the clock ticks down, Emily must find the killer before they strike again.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Boudicca's reign and Edward VII's intersect in this truly unexpected story of a society murder set alongside the murder of a society. Not in the least what I was expecting. Enjoyable but pretty slight in its conceit. These timelines do not seamlessly converge nor can I picture a way to make that happen.

Jaded, seen-it-all historical mystery readers should pick up Author Alexander's gauntlet. I might e missing a big...something.

Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) craves the boon of $14.99 from you for a night in its company.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What We Can Know (28%) by Ian McEwan

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: 2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.

2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.

Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.

What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Cli-fi and poetry and postapocalyptic archipelagos where England was and Ian McEwan, taken all together, were simply too many things I don't much like for me to get over my indifference. I got to, "Even if Vivien never read her birthday present, never even untied the scroll, everything I've learned about her suggests that she did not destroy the poem."

That's me done here. More of this guy's maunderings and I might scream louder than I already have. YMMV.

Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $14.99 for an ebook. You do you.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

To the Moon and Back (58%) by Eliana Ramage

Rating: 2.75* of five

The Publisher Says: One young woman’s relentless quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut will irrevocably alter the fates of the people she loves most in this tour de force of a debut about ambition, belonging, and family.

My mother took my sister and me, and she drove through the night to a place she felt a claim to, a place on earth she thought we might be safe. I stopped asking questions. I picked little glass pieces from my sister’s hair. I watched the moon.

Steph Harper is on the run. When she was six, her mother, Hannah, fled an abusive husband—with Steph and her younger sister, Kayla, in tow—to Cherokee Nation, where she hoped they might finally belong. In response, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon.

Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her sister Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret.

In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with each of these women to the point of breaking, at once betraying their love and generosity, and forcing them to reconsider their own deepest desires in her shadow. Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: To say I abandoned this read is to do the read a disservice. It was a decent lesbian coming-of-age novel by the time I quit at the beginning of chapter sixteen. I got no frisson from it.

I really wanted to love it, but did not. You might resonate to it where I did not.

Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires a payment of $14.99 for the ebook. Others will like it more than I did.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Story That Wouldn't Die (Jolene Garcia Mysteries #2) {15%} by Christina Estes

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Emmy Award-winning reporter Christina Estes uses her twenty-year career for inspiration for her mysteries. In The Story That Wouldn’t Die, Jolene Garcia refuses to stop investigating, but someone is determined to kill the story—and maybe her—for good.

Phoenix, Arizona, TV reporter Jolene Garcia is fresh off winning her first Emmy and committed to covering stories that matter to her community. But Jolene’s managers want stories that grab immediate attention and generate clicks, not ones that take time to develop.

When a beloved small business owner dies in a car crash, Jolene isn’t convinced it was an accident. He’d been raising questions about who keeps getting lucrative deals at city hall—questions that powerful people don’t want answered. The deeper Jolene digs, the more suspicious things she uncovers.

Exposing greed, ambition, and deception could become the biggest story of Jolene’s career. Her bosses tell her to drop it. But there’s a story here, and Jolene’s going to find it.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I started reading this DRC in April. I gave up last night when I realized I read this sentence: "It will be interesting to hear what Kris Kruger has to say about the guy who quit working for him, started his own business, and then complained about Kris getting lucrative city contracts," a second time...I restarted the read...and was utterly convinced that no, it very much would not.

I rated her first novel, Off the Air, 3.5* and noted I was not invested in the victim's death because he needed killin'...and lo, here we are again.

Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $14.99 to relinquish their monopoly on the file. Libraries are free to use.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Art of a Lie (52%) by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Rating: 3* of five, because it's me not the book

The Publisher Says: In 18th-century England, a widowed confectioner is drawn into a web of love, betrayal, and intrigue and a battle of wits in this masterful historical novel from the author of the USA TODAY bestseller The Square of Sevens.

Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionary shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I feel caddish abandoning this read. The Punchbowl and Pineapple deserves better from me than abandonment at 52%; yet I had to face facts: I like the idea of the read but am unenthusiastic about the execution. At the beginning of Part III, I faced up to the fact I was slogging along hoping I could finish.

My Goodreads friend who convinced me by example to keep going will most likely unfriend me now. She *loooved* the story. I, sadly, did not.

Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests and requires $14.99 for your access to the file.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

UNVEILED: Inside Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt (41%) by JONATHAN HAROUNOFF

Rating: 3* of five, because it's my mood as much as the book

The Publisher Says: In September 2022, twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Jina Amini is killed by Iran's morality police in Tehran for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely. Outrage triggers nationwide protests. Women rip off their headscarves, setting them afire. Others cut their hair in open defiance. Key industries are brought to a standstill, and once-revered banners of the country's Supreme Leader are incinerated. It's the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic of Iran in its forty-six-year history-not coming from a foreign adversary but from their own freedom-seeking women. Women and girls, perhaps for the first time in the history of the modern Middle East, take center stage in a nationwide uprising, clamoring for a freer Iran and chanting the now-viral battle cry of: "Woman, Life, Freedom."

Award-winning British-Iranian journalist Jonathan Harounoff, now serving as Israel's international spokesperson to the United Nations, demystifies the context leading up to these historic protests inside Iran and abroad and examines the potential future ramifications. With much of the global spotlight focused on the Islamic Republic's dangerous foreign policy agenda, Unveiled: Inside Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt pays tribute to the people of Iran who have paid the ultimate price for freedom.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Important reminder that progress does not contain guarantees of permanence. It is journalistic prose, neither bad nor good, but serviceable. I gave up when we went back to cell phone footage being dismissed by the regime as fake. I'm not saying anything is untrue, I'm just not enjoying the read stylistically so it feels like I'm taking a beating for no reward.

Leftists scared by modern trends, who believe women are adults with actual rights to bodily autonomy, should look into it.

Black Rose Writing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires $18.95 for a paperback.

MURDER IN THE HOUSE OF OMARI, modern iteration of the Japanese locked-room mystery

MURDER IN THE HOUSE OF OMARI
TAKU ASHIBE (tr. Bryan Karetnyk)
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Osaka, 1943: as the Second World War rages and American bombers rain death down upon the city, the once prosperous Omari family is already in decline, financially ruined by the terrible conflict. Then the household is struck by a series of gruesome murders.

Can anyone solve the mystery of these baffling slayings before the Omari line is extinguished entirely? To do so, and unravel the killer's fiendish plot, they will have to delve into the family's past, where a dark and deadly secret has been festering for decades...

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Dark secrets! Wartime as economic disaster! Lies and murder in a beauty-products business! What more can a mystery reader want?

How about a family saga (bookmark the list of characters or all is lost), with an old family business floundering after losing...somehow...the heir to the place, the prestige slice of the health-and-beauty market they'd banked on keeping to wartime supply and in general the economic depression inherent in postwar economies, and the new head (adopted after marrying the lost heir's sister) not having the power to make changes?

All that and more coming soon. First, though, understand the pace is not twenty-first-century but period-appropriate. The book was written and published in the 2020s, but it feels more vintage than it is. I myownself think this is a feature not a bug, but you might not. Take heed.

This isn't a story with huge revelations, or shocking twists, but with the women who decide to solve it working it through because, well, what's another death in a country so very recently ravaged by World War II and its often-fatal privations? Natsuko, a doctor, is primarily a rational thinker and a keen observer...doctors tend to be both...who sees things differently from the other women, Mineko and Tsuruko, who are her fellow sleuths.

It's not the fair-play playbook, but the clues *are* there; you can indeed solve the murders, and trace the lines of motive, if you're attentive. I paid attention and got it 50% right...it was one of two people and one indeed was guilty.

I found a lot of the interpolations of newspaper stories and the like to be pacing-killers (those missing stars), but enjoyed them nonetheless. I was kept happily engrossed the entire read. I hope you will be as well.

THE TOKYO ZODIAC MURDERS, a fair-play, betcha-you-won't-solve-it Japanese locked room mystery

THE TOKYO ZODIAC MURDERS
SŌJI SHIMADA (tr. Ross MacKenzie & Shika MacKenzie)
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this “bloody and bizarre” Japanese crime novel with a twist hailed as “one of the most original” (Daily Mail).

Astrologer, fortune teller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years—in just one week.

With the help of his freelance illustrator friend, Kiyoshi sets out to answer the questions that have haunted the country ever since: Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, ‘the perfect woman’?

With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion—pieced together like a great stage tragedy—challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain falls.

This quintessential Japanese “logic mystery”—eerie, gory, and intriguing—combines the puzzle-solving of Golden Age Western detective fiction with elements of shocking horror and dark humor.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Japanese locked-room mysteries are pretty much exemplars of the genre. Unlike Dame Agatha's versions of the genre, they include a bit more gore...this one feels like it could easily have made itself a mild body-horror story with very little authorial effort...but the focus really is on the puzzle.

That focus is evident from the epistolary outset. The entire first thirty-plus pages is a letter written in 1936. It is the statement of purpose for the rest of the book: A murderer pens is intended crimes in detail, explaining why he intends to do these...vile, violent, violating...things to women.

Now, that right there? The crimes being committed against women for a man's gratification? That will get me to Pearl-Rule a book for good and ever. In this case I did not because I felt the facts presented in this introductory letter-cum-statement-of-purpose put the reader into the mindset of knowing the murderer's sickness. As a result, there was no prurient titillation of discovering the women's bodies to learn what had been done to them. I got in my head the purpose of the story, as it shifted into forensics, into crime-solving, because I knew what the crimes were for. I had already decided how twisted and sick the crimes were.

You should know this going in: Misogyny is on full display in very deeply disturbing ways.

Kiyoshi Mitarai, our sleuth, is in the modern day of the book...early 1980s Japan...solving an unsolved cold case. He's unusual in today's world for being a New-Age practitioner of astrology, a thing that was really prominent in culture at that time. He gets interested because the daughter of the police detective who failed to solve the case, dead now after a blighted career from this case, thinks her dad's soul can rest if the failure is reversed by solving it. Her brother horns in and sets our sleuth a serious time limit of five days to complete the puzzle, or the son will blow up old dirt about Kiyoshi.

As is necessary for a locked-room puzzle to get solved, Kiyoshi has a sidekick to think out loud to, and to do some legwork that the audience doesn't need to see. We'll learn it when mystery book lover, and importantly book illustrator, Kazumi Ishioka delivers the information anyway. (Side note: There is, for each timeline, a dramatis personae...prepare to use it A LOT.) The way the story is presented is largely through these two guys sitting and talking through what they know, how they know it, where they've been, and the like. Direct action? Not a lot. Fun little grace notes of these dudes preening for each other, making friend-jokes, talking about stuff that really does have something to do with the case but does not look like it? I'll read that over a run-around drenched in gore-fest. The world is violent enough.

The story's replete with floorplans and crime-scene illustrations (courtesy of Kizumi) and the details are numerous, hard to track, well-buried meanings abound. It is a delightful time for logic-puzzle reader. It turns meta when, approaching the end, the author directly addresses the reader, asking if we've solved the puzzle yet. Okay, thought I, now I'm aware that I have all the information I need to do it. So I sat me down to think. I flipped to some illustrations. I thought some more. I came up with a perp's identity. I read the rest of the story.

I was wrong. I was sure I was right, and I did not see until it was explained to me what I had missed.

That's a reading experience I really enjoy a lot. Get you one for some #Deathtober fun and games.