WINEMAKER DETECTIVE MYSTERIES PAGE: #8 through #11

MONTMARTRE MYSTERIES (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #8)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Wine expert Benjamin Cooker travels to the French capital, where his is called to help care for some vineyards in Montmartre, a neighborhood full of memories for him. He stops in on an old friend. Arthur Solacroup left the Foreign Legion to open a wine shop good enough to be in the Cooker Guide.

But an attempted murder brings the past back into the present. But which past? The winemaker detective and his assistant Virgile want to know more, and their investigation leads them from the sands of Djibouti to the vineyards of Côte du Rhône.

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

My Review: Virgile must've been a bad lad indeed in book seven, which I have not read. He comes in for much barbed raillery about his free-lovin' ways, not a thing I'd associate with an impending father-in-law relationship; but he is still here, and still obviously his mentor's pet despite the teasing.

Arthur, an old friend of Benjamin's and a former member of the Foreign Legion, is in need of the winelover's assistance hence the men's travel to Paris. Arthur has an attempted assassination in front, more or less, of them; the past in the Foreign Legion coming home to roost...?

We find out, of course; we also learn why Arthur decided to open a wine shop in Montmartre, and how Benjamin came to be his friend. The past is never that far from any mystery, especially in a series; this entry goes a lot further into Benjamin's past than usual. I enjoyed that, and enjoyed how Arthur came to be where he is (in a coma after the attack on him the men interrupted).

The excuse to get the men to Paris is as flimsy as anything I've ever read: A woman running some convent or hospital or something in Paris has a teensy remnant of a vineyard attached to it and asks Benjamin to come resuscitate it; he agrees, more than anything just to make the trip plausible enough. Virgile is the man of the hour, though. He's more the crimesolver than his boss is.

It's not the best book in the series but it worked fine: Arthur's shop is the occasion for much discussion of many delectable sounding bottles. The main lack is odd: the evocation of Paris feels...postcard level, facile and surface-oriented. I wished it had been more as is usual in this series of quite short reads. We're not going into history-book depths anywhere but more than this, if you please. Still quite readable and kept me engrossed enough to enjoy it.

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

BACKSTABBING IN BEAUJOLAIS (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #9)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Anne Trager)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Winemaker Detective goes to Beaujolais, in a French-style cozy mystery for lovers of food and drink, amateur sleuth stories or anything set in France.

A business magnate calls on wine expert Benjamin Cooker to kickstart his new wine business in Beaujolais, sparking bitter rivalries. Can the Winemaker Detective and his assistant keep calculating real estate agents, taciturn winegrowers, dubious wine merchants and suspicious deaths from delaying delivery of the world-famous Beaujolais Nouveau? Another adventure in this made-for-TV mystery series set in France. Both a wine novel and a mystery.

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

My Review: Beaujolais Nouveau was all the rage ten-plus years ago, my memory informs me. I think the wine industry was having us on: “You can drink Beaujolais early on, but the wines frequently open up three to five years after being bottled. They are precocious and aromatic, but round enough to have a lingering taste.”

So there US wine snobs.

As a wealthy philistine wants to acquire a vineyard in Beaujolais to experiment with some new ideas in the making of the stuff, he runs into opposition from local people as well as his own haute Parisienne wife. The latter insists he consult with Benjamin, a renowned expert on wine, to determine how viable his plan to alter the way Beaujolais is drunk. But really, there's quite an amount of inertia in this process: “From time immemorial, {Beaujolais Nouveau} has been celebrated when it’s young, at the start of fermentation. Centuries ago winemakers traded early in the year, and the yeast would complete its job while the barrels were in transit, moving slowly by carriage or boat along the Saône and Rhône rivers or up the Loire.”

Change is hard anywhere. Changing the way the French make and consume wine? If you come for the king, you'd best not miss. That was our millionaire, Guillaume's, error. We're treated to the murder early in the story...but we're not told who's been murdered, so all the characters we meet during the story could be either the victims or the murderers.

It was a nice touch, and I'd've loved to see it on TV because I can't come up with a way to make the idea work. I'll assume it does but man, am I curious as to how. In this installment, Benjamin is the driver of the story because Guillaume has hired him for the legendary expertise he has in the entire world of wine. Of course Guillaume is looking for a certain outcome to the questions he's set Benjamin; he misjudged Benjamin, though, as Benjamin will pursue the truth. It would reflect poorly on his profesional honor to be seen doing Guillaume's bidding. You hire the best, you'd best be ready to believe their report.

Benjamin and Virgile banter and talk and generally behave as always, only now in Lyon and Beaujolais, as they discuss the case, the local wines, literature, how much they loved last night's meal; all the things that keep us coming back to the series.

By the time the murders were solved, I'd sort of accepted there wasn't a solution. There was; and it was dead clever for the authors to hide the victim this time instead of the perpetrator. A very fun entry into the series I'm still enjoying. (Though not really so much thrilled with the lists; they persist.)

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

LATE HARVEST HAVOC (The Winemaker Detective Series Book 10)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Disaster strikes the vineyards in Alsace. Vintners are tense and old grudges surface. The Winemaker Detective's reputation is on the line as he must find the cause before the late harvest starts.

Winter is in the air in Alsace and local customs are sowing trouble, piquing the curiosity of the famous winemaker from Bordeaux, Benjamin Cooker. While the wine expert and his assistant Virgile settle into their hotel in the old city of Colmar, distinguished vineyards are attacked. Is it revenge?

The plot thickens when estates with no apparent connection to one another suffer the same sabotage just days prior to the late harvest. All of Alsace is in turmoil, plunged in the grip of suspicion that traces its roots back to the darkest hours of the German occupation. As he crosses back and forth into Germany from the Alsace he thought he knew so well, Cooker discovers a land of superstition, rivalry, and jealousy. Between tastings of the celebrated wines, he is drawn into the lives and intrigues of the inhabitants.

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

My Review: Benjamin is getting older. As is so often the case, it's something outside himself that sours his usually fairly confident-in-goodness manner. It makes some sense, even, as it comes from nothing so petty as murdering someone you hate for one or another reason.

Someone is attacking the vines of Alsace. Someone is systematically and violently attacking the means of making wine in this ancient part-French, part-German province that Benjamin has known (he thought) most of his career. Some darker mutterings even accuse Benjamin, an outsider from the south, of being connected to the chainsaw attacks on the vines.

We'd get soured by that kind of gross insult to our specialist knowledge and passion, too. Virgile is the one who really shines, and that is always nice to see. He's still a skirt-chasin' houndawg, but he has skills he's honed under Benjamin's tutelage. He uses them to good advantage as he pokes into another viper's nest of Occupation resentments, as we saw in book #4. it felt a little bit weird for the men to wander from Lorraine into Germany and back seemingly at a whim, but it certainly drove home the point that the cultures on either side of the border are subtly different, they're not *dramatically* so; it makes sense to do that in the context of the story's resolution.

I was a bit confronted by the bolder-than-usual sex scene.

I'll say that Alsace, Strasbourg and its cathedral, and gewürztraminer all mean more to me than they ever have. I'm still eager to try, one day, mirabelle plums from nearby Lorraine; since they can't be exported, though, that is a very very unlikely eventuality.

I keep reading these stories, lists and all, because they are short enough to read in a sitting, dense of story enough to satisfy me as I read; and there are enough of them that I can get a solid foothold in their storyverse.

Don't start here, but don't stop before you get here, either.

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

TAINTED TOKAY (The Winemaker Detective Series #11)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In between enjoying sumptuous food and wine, the Winemaker Detective grapples with deceit and deception in Old World Europe.

France’s top wine expert Benjamin Cooker sets off to enjoy the delights of Vienna, a romantic ride down the Danube, a gourmand’s visit to Budapest, and a luxury train through the enchanting Hungarian countryside. All too soon, stolen wallets, disappearing passports, guides who are a bit too obliging, and murder mar the trip. Meanwhile, in Bordeaux, Cooker’s assistant handsome Virgile faces an annoying rival and a mildew crisis in the vineyards just as Cooker’s lab technician is the victim of a mugging.

If you love cozy culinary mysteries, amateur detective stories, international mysteries with French flair, or anything wine-related, this made-for-TV series offers armchair travel at its best with gentle mysteries.

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

My Review: Vienna? Hungary?!

What the actual. I was not expecting this, nor was I bargaining on Benjamin leaving Virgile in Bordeaux to make this lucullan journey. And does Virgile ever get the short end of the stick! All the practical problems are his to figure out and then to solve.

Benjamin, meantime, is spending time with his much-loved Elisabeth as they take in the scenery of the wine world along the Danube. It is genuinely the main pleasure I had in this story, their charming interactions. The authors make it clear these are soul mates, real genuine friends married and very devoted to each other. The tribulations of the murders around them merely make that clearer; they handle the different challenges with the sangfroid of long-established couples.

Back in Bordeaux, the disasters plaguing Benjamin's premises are affecting his every asset. Alexandrine, whose tenure with Benjamin exceeds Virgile's (I think; could be wrong about that), has hitherto kept her distance from Virgile which makes her more interesting, frankly.

Well, that's over.

Too bad, that, she went from mildly interesting in a greyscaled-Moneypenny way to just being another woman on Virgile's cosmic rapsheet. It was here that I determined the series and I were parting company. I'm just not able to gin up much interest in Virgile's exploits in bed, they outnumber the times he's taken the investigative lead, and...well...Vienna? I'm not very interested in the Danubian plains, and it's usually a sign we're going to spend more time outside the wine-world of France when we get time in foreign places back-to-back.

I had an excellent time with Benjamin, Elisabeth, Virgile, and the crew. I'd prefer to leave smiling so that's what I'm doing.

WINEMAKER DETECTIVE MYSTERIES PAGE: TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX, #1; #4 through #6

TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #1)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Anne Trager)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: THE PERFECT BLEND OF MYSTERY & GASTRONOMY

Treachery in Bordeaux is the first book in the beloved Winemaker Detective novels, the "addictive" French series featuring master winemaker Benjamin Cooker and his sidekick Virgile. When some barrels turn at the prestigious grand cru Moniales Haut-Brion wine estate, Cooker and Virgile start to investigate. Is it negligence or sabotage? They search the city and wine region for answers, welcoming readers into the underworld of a global luxury industry. Grab a glass of your favorite Bordeaux and delve into a world of money, deceit, inheritance, greed, and fine wine.

Brimming with description, intrigue, and compelling characters, Treachery in Bordeaux kicks off this unbeatable series, which was adapted to television in France.

"I love good mysteries. I love good wine. So imagine my joy at finding a great mystery about wine, and winemaking, and the whole culture of that fascinating world. This is a terrific new series." — William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Back Bay and The Lincoln Letter

"A fine vintage forged by the pens of two very different varietals. It is best consumed slightly chilled, and never alone. You will be intrigued by its mystery, and surprised by its finish, and it will stay with you for a very long time." —Peter May, international bestselling author

“Intrigue and plenty of good eating and drinking within just a few pages.”—Booklist

“Those who like detective stories that rely on the fine qualities of the investigator will find Cooker an enjoyable lead.”—Publishers Weekly

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

My Review: I read these ages ago; I blew through them in a week, all eight that I possess. They're all short, punchy reads, really an afternoon's enjoyable reading and pondering.

More than anything else, the scratch the same itch as Martin Walker's Bruno series does, the desire to be taken into a place that feels charmingly unfamiliar yet guided around that place by a friendly, experienced polymath who makes us feel less...foreign...than a less cultured native's PoV would. In this story he is training a new assistant, Virgile, in the course of investigating a murder among the élite of historic winemaking center Bordeaux. That makes the emotional investment in the action so much easier; and it provides a reason for some basic questions we'd like answered to be asked.

The book offers us this explanation of the writing duo responsible for the series:

Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio and television journalist when he is not writing novels in southwestern France. He is a genuine wine and food lover, and won the Antonin Carême prize for his cookbook La Truffe sur le Soufflé, which he wrote with the chef Alexis Pélissou. He is the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. Coauthor of the series Noël Balen lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music. He plays bass, is a music critic and has authored a number of books about musicians in addition to his novel and short-story writing.

As is obvious from this potted biography, the duo clearly understand wine, luxury goods, and storytelling; the series was adapted to TV and was available in the US via the MHz Channel. I do not know if they are still available there; I'm disgruntled enough that the books are only available on Amazon.

Anyone wanting to escape the challenging emotional landscape of 2025 would do well to follow Benjamin and Virgile as they navigate the high-stakes world of French cultural treasures like wine, paintings, and that indefinable thing called "milieu." As cozy and escapist as a satisfying (if brief) vacation into the world of those who exist as natives in a beautiful lifestyle in a beautiful setting can be.

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

DEADLY TASTING (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #4)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: When wine tasting turns to murder.

A serial killer is on the loose in Bordeaux. A local chief detective calls wine expert Benjamin Cooker to the crime scene of a brutal murder. The killer has left a strange calling card: twelve wine glasses lined up in a semi-circle with the first one filled with wine.

Cooker is charged with the task of identifying the fabulous grand cru and is astonished by what he learns. A second victim is found, with two glasses filled. Is the killer intentionally leaving clues about his victims and his motives? Memories are jogged about the complicated history of Bordeaux during Nazi occupation. It was a dark time: weinfuhrers ruled the wine trade, while collaborationists and paramilitary organizations spread terror throughout the region.

In present-day wine country, time is running out. Will Cooker and his young assistant Virgile solve the mystery before all twelve glasses are full?

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

My Review: I missed the second and third installments when Le French Book was offering them on EW+, but in a series, that's less fatal than starting your read of it with a later book. I'd read, and really enjoyed, volume one, so I felt I could hop back into Benjamin and Virgile's milieu. Luckily I was correct.

A major subplot in this very short afternoon's amusement is Cooker the wine expert being required by his lady wife, Elisabeth, to give up wine...horror number one...and go on a cabbage diet. Bad enough already, horror number two is it's a liquidized cabbage diet.

The lady's established as a fabulous cook; his life is spent in the wine world of France; and he does not either divorce her or cheat on his diet. For seven days. True love indeed.

The murder that ignites the book is engendered in France's ugly, collaborationist past. The winemakers were, as most others were as well, getting on with their lives as the occupation wore on. Those who stood up to the vile occupiers have never stopped holding grudges. Debts are going to be called in as the time to do so grows ever shorter.

The staginess of the way the murder scenes are set-dressed makes it very clear they're not meant to be under-the-radar killings; no other reason for them to be so very obviously, unmissably, linked up. It does not lead to the immediate solution to the crimes. That was a very interesting touch to me. The collaborationists faded into the background where they could, where they were allowed to; but memories are long for betrayers of those who chose resistance.

I was more intrigued by the history than I was by the actual murders because the motive for them are so little explored; at least in Anglophone translations that make it here to the US. I'm really interested in how memory works on a cultural level. It is becoming a very great deal more relevant here in 2025 all over the world. I'm glad we have a few cultural objects around us to point out the signs of incipient rot.

I'm seeing a prose trend that could, if overused in future entries, cause me acute discomfort: there are a lot of lists (eg: "Elisabeth had cut a large head of cabbage, four slivers of garlic, six large onions, a dozen peeled tomatoes, six carrots, two green peppers, and one stalk of celery and plunged them into three quarts of water with three cubes of fat-free chicken broth. The mixture, seasoned with salt, pepper, curry powder, and parsley, had been boiled for ten minutes and then simmered until all the vegetables were tender.") in this story. A. Lot. It's not *quite* OTT yet, but could easily go there. The characters, major and minor, get reintroduced rather more elaborately than I myownself find helpful or necessary.

As of now these are grunts of annoyance. Watch this space....

ETA: I just learned that the stories in this series are novelizations of the TV show's scripts! Much is now clearer as to the way the writing sometimes does not flow in the reader's experience; try seeing them from a visual PoV and complaints are minimal. I'm so glad to find this out!

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

COGNAC CONSPIRACIES (The Winemaker Detective Mysteries #5)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen; Luc Brahe & Éric Corbeyran (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The heirs to one of the oldest Cognac estates in France face a hostile takeover by foreign investors. Renowned wine expert Benjamin Cooker is called in to audit the books.

In what he thought was a sleepy provincial town, he is stonewalled, crosses paths with his first love, and stands up to high-level state officials keen on controlling the buyout. Meanwhile, irresistible Virgile mingles with the local population until a drowning changes the stakes.

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

My Review: Oh the horror! the horror! Benjamin's latest edition of his guide to wines is required to go in depth about...can he even think it!...American "wines"!

Snob.

Well, it *is* a very French series and they *are* very protective of their cultural heritage....

Virgile makes more of a splash in this entry into the series. It's odd, too, because while Benjamin drives the revelations, it's Virgile we see most of (and some of the folks of Cognac seem to want to see a lot more still). The series has multiple women as characters though it largely underuses them (slightly disappointingly it's more in the service of men than the plot, if you see what I mean, this time out). Virgile is, I hope, going to come to the fore a bit more.

Cognac, many US readers might learn for the first time, is a real place. It is so charmingly evoked in this short read that it feels more like the main character than any mere human. Benjamin is, as I guess should not shock a savvy reader, a man of Appetites and refined tastes...he reconnects with a long-ago love in this story who really seems to get him very exciteable. So to speak. It's why Virgile takes more attention, I suppose, since otherwise Elisabeth (Mme Cooker) might have problems.

I'm still barely on the good side of the list-use bubble, though sorely tried by: "He took in the scents of pear, apple, kirsch, cherry, strawberry, cranberry, fig, apricot, plum, quince, muscat, lemon, orange, grapefruit, citron, and Mirabelle plums. He wafted fragrances of violent, mint, verbena, fern, moss, anise, fennel, linden, gentian, angelica, tobacco, lavender, and mushroom, along with some spicy aromas, including cinnamon, pepper, clove, ginger, nutmeg, licorice, and saffron."

Family ties, no matter how...um...close they may be are not proof against greed and a desire to punish those you love for not being perfect. As a reason for murder, that's as old as Cain and Abel, as intense as Chinatown, and as uncomfortable as possible. Very much not my favorite read in the series.

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

MAYHEM IN MARGAUX (The Winemaker Detective Series #6)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A made-for-TV series. Gourmet sleuthing in French wine country.

Fine wines, dirty secrets. It’s summer in Bordeaux.

There’s a heat wave, the vineyards are suffering, vintners are on edge, and wine expert Benjamin Cooker’s daughter is visiting. A tragic car accident draws the Winemaker Detective and his assistant Virgile into a case where the stakes are very personal, and they uncover the dirty secrets hiding behind some of Bordeaux’s finest grand cru classé wines from Margaux.

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

My Review: Oh myyyy, as Takei would say, is Papa Benjamin going to go all protective dad because wounded daughter Margaux is Interested in his charming assistant Virgile?

He wouldn't be the first daddy to lose his child to his assistant's charms in all of fiction. It happened to Gamache in the Three Pines books, after all. Is Papa Benjamin only worried because his daughter, visiting from her job in New York City, is wounded in the latest affront to the wonderful world of wines and the celebration of French culture that he must solve? Or is he feeling the writing on the wall as Margaux (named after the wine, of course) shows her increasing adulthood? Either way, the car she was riding in was clearly sabotaged, and the smarmy git driving her around in it is dead.

It's business as usual in the lovely liminal world of Bordeaux's cultured elite. Virgile and Margaux aren't the first two slightly-too-close pair to get Interested in each other. They both love, in their different ways, Benjamin. They share cultural antecedents in the world of wine. Now what are they going to do with these feelings? The threat posed by whoever caused Margaux's accident can't be dismissed out of hand, despite being convenient.

The drought in this story is palpable, the wine consumption way down as a result, and some of the usual scrumptious food descriptions are instead evocations of seasonally appropriate salads that just don't have the same level of mental delight for me as a reader. I did get why the choice was made, and in the decade-plus since I read the story we've seen tragic and unprecedented fires due to drought and extreme heat in this region it's probably all anyone there actually eats anymore.

Then hot-button issues like metal screwcaps replacing traditional corks fix the story in time.It's a debate that will never really cease, but the sheer efficacy and efficiency of screwcaps have become more and more obvious, so that dated the story just a bit.

I'm rootin' for Virgile to get his wooing of Margaux off the ground. I'd like to see more of her.

THE GRACEVIEW PATIENT, spooky #Deathtober scarefest (for rational reasons)

THE GRACEVIEW PATIENT
CAITLIN STARLING
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Misery meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers in this genre-bending, claustrophobic hospital gothic from the bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence.

Margaret lives with a rare autoimmune condition that has destroyed her life, leaving her isolated. It has no cure, but she’s making do as best she can—until she’s offered a fully paid-for spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial.

The conditions are simple, if grueling; she will live at the hospital as a full-time patient, subjecting herself to the near-total destruction of her immune system and its subsequent regeneration. The trial will essentially kill most of, but not all of her. But as the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister living and spreading within the hospital.

Unsure of what's real and what is just medication-induced delusion, Margaret struggles to find a way out as her body and mind succumb further to the darkness lurking throughout Graceview's halls.

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

My Review: I've had gout for decades, starting in my earliest twenties. My family has gout throughout it. I'm convinced, and medical orthodoxy agrees, there is a genetic component to the condition. If someone had told me in the 1980s "we have a truly horrifyingly painful way to rid you forever of your gout" I'd've had my bags packed for the trip to Graceview Hospital before I stopped smelling the garlic the utterer had eaten for lunch.

So this story was a "sign me up!" from giddy-up to whoa. As I got to know Margaret, to be in her familiar-but-dreadful world of "how much is there for me to do, versus how much is there available for me to do it with?" calculus of living, worry with her as she tries to balance practical necessities, dealing with a narcissistic parent, and leap with joy at the sudden promise of the lifeline she's flung, I wanted so badly for things to go well for her.

Bait-and-switch much, Author Starling? It's a spooky place, Graceview, and Margaret's a very vulnerable lassie. Bad stuff's gonna happen! It's part of the read!

As Margaret gets deeper and deeper into the meddical hell she was warned awaited her, odd things occur. One of her nurses becomes a patient. The weird offness of Graceview Hospital intensifies, though of course the medication and the extreme nature of the treatment combine to present mental-health challenges to the participants. As you'd expect! Still, having experienced medication-induced psychosis first hand, I can tell you Margaret's utter horror at the psychotic break's symptoms is spot-on.

So that's the secret to my four-star rating of this weird, creepy, deeply unsettling story: I never for an instant believed this was anything other than a perfect;y reasonable side-effect of a perfectly horrible medication that was meant to cure something previously incurable. Spooky stuff seldom gets even this far up in my literary estimation because I'm so deeply materialist in my worldview.

Author Starling writes her socks off creating this setting, making it a very real place, imbuing it with eerieness and thus setting Margaret up for her nightmarish experiences. That she would've had them no matter what is what kept me from feeling this was more or less a prurient exercise in psychological torment as entertainment. It is real and honest in its presentation of what a psychotic break feels like. The terror of being unmoored from reality while undergoing very physically challenging treatment to improve your quality of life is the central fact we're dealing with here.

And that is the reason I enjoyed this story as a horror read for #Deathtober. It's got gothic rags draped over its granny-panties, so I can trust it to deal with the scary stuff as *feelings* not Reality, which they manifestly are not. Mostly, anyway.

The lack of even a fraction of a fifth star is down to a more serious problem I had: the ending is as ambiguous as possible, leaving every concerning thing well and truly unresolved. I'm as unhappy as the next reader when authors spoon-feed me a little-bow-wrapped ending; but there exists a middle ground between "the end" and this book's stopping place.

I'd say more but y'all're really, really spoiled and complain about spoilers with the verve of the wronged adolescent denied the car keys.

DAVID FOENKINOS'S PAGE: THE MARTINS, his latest; & SECOND BEST, a very interior story of "missing out"

THE MARTINS
DAVID FOENKINOS (tr. Sam Taylor)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: ‘Go out into the street and the first person you see will be the subject of your next book.’

This is the challenge a struggling Parisian writer sets himself, imagining his next heroine might be the mysterious young woman who often stands smoking near his apartment...instead it’s octogenarian Madeleine. She’s happy to become the subject of his book—but first she needs to put away her shopping.

Is it really true, the writer wonders, that every life is the stuff of novels, or is his story doomed to be hopelessly banal? As he gets to know Madeleine and her family, he’ll be privy to their secrets: lost loves, marital problems and workplace worries. And he’ll soon realise he is not the impartial bystander he intended to be, but a catalyst for major changes in the lives of his characters.

Told with Foenkinos’s characteristic irony and self-deprecating humour, yet filled with warmth, The Martins is a compelling tale of the family next door which raises questions about what it means to be ‘ordinary’, and about the blurred lines between truth and fiction.

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

My Review: I don't think most Anglophone readers are aware that "Martin" is the most common surname in France. In the US, the equivalent title would be "The Johnsons," our commonest surname. The joke being established, let's look at these bog-standard, government-issue, salt of the earth just folks. (I could probably pack a few more epithets onto that sentence, but I'll resist.)

Does everyone have a novel in them? As a former literary agent who read endless forests of murdered trees invested in the attempted proof of this nostrum, I'd say, "sorta...kinda...it depends...".

In attempting to prove this is a truth not merely a truism, an author sets himself the challenge in the first paragraph of the synopsis. He tricks himself into believing today will be the day he gets to talk to the alluring woman who smokes in front of the travel agency on her breaks.

"Ha ha ha," says Melpomene, reaching past her laurel wreath for the Mask of Tragedy. Following his self-imposed rule, he must interview an old woman pushing her shopping home. As any seasoned reader knows, here comes the punchline: Mme Madeline Tricot ("Mrs. Cotton") was once in the fashion industry in a small position thus has stories about Lagerfeld et alii being horrible to each other and everyone else.

Score! Or...is it? See, Mme Tricot is sliding into dementia. Her daughter, whom he meets immediately upon going home with Mme Tricot,is naturally very protective of her mother. Thus we're launched into an exploration of modernity, celebrity "culture," and the absurdities of aging...why extend the lives of the old relentlessly and pointlessly if all you're going to do with them is ignore and/or belittle them?...through the lens of The Martins, France's any/every/body family.

Why I enjoyed the read was that Author Foenkinos commits to the bit. He keeps our narrator saying he's reporting alone while, in fact, he's embroiled with the Martins. As a nod to his disingenuous self deletion while in fact performing self insertion, Foenkinos peppers the text with authorial footnotes explaining, justifying, in short intellectualizing, our narrator's many choices. Foenkinos treats us to the narrator's rocky relationships with the people he's trying to make into The Martins, his characters; we read the narrator's account of being termed a con man and an emotional vampire, accusations he, reluctantly, acknowledges carry some truth in their hurtful rejection.

Changing from novel, to non-fiction, to memoir, to metafiction in turns, The Martins is a charming and entertaining exploration of the overlooked, the unconsidered, the devalued, as full and satisfying subjects for our attention. It thus shines a searchlight on the tendency of modern storytelling to ignore simpleness in favor of simplicity. Making their own lives easier by inventing Big!Important!Amazing! people whose lives and doings have only the depth of a narrative purpose, Foenkinos implicitly accuses himself and other authors of avoiding the incredible richness with its immense labor of La Comédie humaine, to cite an ancient example. We're ever less likely to get to know, really know, the people around us, even our own family members as this novel quite clearly demonstrates.

It lends this entertaining read a special poignance, and makes the only slightly veiled warning to our distracted selves sting a good bit more. Multilayered meditation on storytelling, stories, the tragedy and comedy of ordinariness, and the need to attend the moment you're in: A very twenty-first century kind of a read. One I recommend to almost everyone except those in the throes of divorce or breakup, or the recently bereaved.

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

SECOND BEST
DAVID FOENKINOS (tr. Megan Jones)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A witty, moving international bestseller about a 10-year boy whose life is shaped forever when he loses out on the role of Harry Potter.

It's 1999. Martin Hill is 10 years old, crazy about football and has a minor crush on a girl named Betty. Then he makes it to the final 2 in the casting for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In the end, the other boy is picked for the role of a lifetime. A devastated Martin tries to move on with his life. But how can he escape his failure, especially when it's the most famous film series in the world? As Martin grows up, he finds every aspect of his life is invaded with a sense of failure and missed opportunity, and he struggles under the weight of the life he isn’t living.

This bittersweet comedy is full of surprising truths and touching moments, as its unforgettable character discovers that sometimes, the lives we wish we’d led might not be all they’re cracked up to be.

An international publishing sensation, Second Best has been adapted for stage and won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers.

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

My Review: Published in 2022 in its original French and brought out this week by Pushkin Press after their acqusition of Gallic Books, this is a wonderful meditation on the idea of "almost" as it defines us. Our Western culture valorizes "winning," defined as gaining an objective, fulfilling a need to see ourselves in those who exceed or transcend averageness, mediocrity; this is invidious. By definition, there are more who do not "succeed" or "excel" than those who do; the bar moves ever farther from the mass in the middle, and we are subtextually told we're not as good as, as deserving as, as successful as the few that excel.

Capitalism 101 there...create scarcity from abundance, then keep the abundance away from the maximum number of people.

Being on the outside of the circle, then being uprooted from the normalcy of his life before tragedy of s familial sort scars him further, Martin is a kid who's asked to bear social burdens way above his paygrade. Similar circumstances have crushed adults (famously Pete Best, though the comparison is unfair and inexact) into tailspins more intense than Martin's. Adolescence is hard enough...putting this on top...well, it's no wonder Martin begins to fanatically and fearfully avoid the cultural juggernaut that was Pottermania.

Not terribly successful, that. With the expected consequences.

Watching a talented, not exceptional, adolescent fall into psychosis was uncomfortable to read. Martin imagines...carefully note verb choice...people are laughing at him, judging him, thinking of him as second best, because this epic piece of bad luck befell him. This is, to an adult, clearly imaginary; also clearly missing that most painful of adolescent lacks: Perspective. Watching Martin stumble and bumble his way through what could have been a very good career indeed turned into a prison of self-doubt and fantasy...well...it's rough for me as a reader to soldier on, resonating as I do to his terrible, ongoing struggle. Reading the rumination, by definition repetitive, of someone caught in their mind's cruelest trap...what might have been...is, no matter how brief (only 200-ish pages), quite an ask for entertainment.

Author Foenkinos was inspired to write this story by an interview with the film in question's casting director who recounted the process of anointing Daniel Radcliffe as Potter in contrast to another boy who didn't have some quality Radcliffe did. I do not know if that other child was ever named in any other venue. I certainly hope not. Bad enough to lose out; worse to be known as the loser. The story moves at a slow pace because rumination is not susceptible to the plot drivers that keep us flipping pages. It is an interior novel, this, one that says "here we are in this head and here we stay" which isn't quite the same thing as a récit, but really closely related. In both there is a relentless inward gaze. It gets wearing.

That this would make a very interesting French film is undeniable; it's purported to have been adapted to the stage, though I can't find any official source that mentions this. I can barely imagine how Foenkinos is getting away with mentioning Potter at all without The Lawyers℠ being all over him like vultures on a gut-cart for not paying Warner Bros. a cut. (Maybe he is; I kinda doubt it.)

What I found troubling is the way this examination of fame culture was presented in its downside was pointed but never pointed out. I'm not sanguine about the readers attracted to the story getting a sense of resolution from the ending. It's why I'm only offering four stars for a five-star idea.

DAVID R. SLAYTON'S PAGE: Adam Binder series, 3 & 4...DEADBEAT DRUID; REDNECK REVENANT

DEADBEAT DRUID (Adam Binder #3)
DAVID R. SLAYTON
Blackstone Publishing Inc. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The living cannot be allowed to infect the dead.

Adam Binder has lost what matters most to him. Having finally learned the true identity of the warlock preying on his family, what was supposed to be a final confrontation with the fiend instead became a trap that sent Vic into the realm of the dead, where none living are meant to be. Bound by debt, oath, and love, Adam blazes his own trail into the underworld to get Vic back and to end the threat of the warlock once and for all.

But the road to hell is paved with more than good intentions. Demons are hungry and ghosts are relentless. What awaits Adam in the underworld is nothing he is prepared to face. If that weren’t enough, Adam has one more thing he must do if he and Vic are to return to world of the living: find the lost heart of Death herself.

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

My Review: More wasted time with Vic, exploring this weird new "guys are hot" idea he's having, and Adam (the hot guy) separated.

This is really pissing me off. Are you trying to have your queer cake and still eat the straight-people-squeamish market?

This story, obviously, made me really mad. I thought Adam had really gotten his head around how Robert (né Bobby) was doing what he could to be in Adam's life. I though the Elven thing with Adam would go somewhere. So far we're just wandering around keeping these newly-in-love guys apart for no obvious reason. Then...surprise! There's a twist that really, really, really ramped up my annoyance because it's a total rug-pull.

I got as far as three stars because there's still some chance this could all be redeemed in book four; its existence, and my receipt of the DRC for it, are really the only reason I finished this book after checking it out.

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

REDNECK REVENANT (Adam Binder #4)
DAVID R. SLAYTON
Blackstone Publishing, Inc. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 papernback, available nowbr />
Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From bestselling author David R. Slayton, Redneck Revenant is an exciting new chapter in the Adam Binder series.

Adam Binder’s life has never been better. Sure, he has no money, no car, no home to call his own, and he’s worried about creating a future with his boyfriend Vic, but he’s closer to his family than ever before. He’s also Page to the Elven Court of Swords, and that appointment is not without its perks—like the invisible sword strapped to his back.

But on Halloween night, Adam’s life takes a disturbing turn. Annie, his brother’s long-lost wife, turns up on her husband’s doorstep alive and well, with no memory of her death. But is it really Annie, or a Trojan horse from some new magical enemy?

To uncover the truth, Adam will need help from those he loves most—as well as a couple of friends at Rogue Community College. As he navigates a perilous maze of magical politics and battles terrifying creatures from beyond the known realms, Adam will discover a secret darker and more unsettling than anything he could have imagined.

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

My Review: Oh sure. Why not go into the straight people's traumadrama?

I'm glad to say I wrapped up my reading experience with some sustained Vic-and-Adam time, at least, seeing the way I've been cheated of it for most of the series. I'll give Adam and Vic my biggest props for, when they have page time to do it, really digging in to their love as a source of sustenance, frustration, irritation, and happiness...just like the real thing. It's also heartwarming that they're still, well, underclass guys not magically somehow without financial worries or suddenly imbued with a frictionless path forward. The way they handle being in therapy...! Big ups!

So what's this crap with Bobby's Annie coming back from the dead for another bite of the apple? It's not a twist I saw coming; so good for that; but it's not a relationship I care about, so I'm out.

This is obviously the start of the Rogue College books that I won't be reading. It's clear that most people do not share my sense of "this ain't what I want" so go! go! go! Author Slayton. Succeed and bring joy.

Not to me, sad to say.

DAVID R. SLAYTON'S PAGE: Adam Binder series, 1 & 2...WHITE TRASH WARLOCK; TRAILER PARK TRICKSTER

WHITE TRASH WARLOCK (Adam Binder #1)
DAVID R. SLAYTON
Blackstone Publishing Inc. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Guthrie was a good place to be from, but it wasn’t a great place to live, not when you were like Adam, in all the ways Adam was like Adam.

Adam Binder hasn’t spoken to his brother in years, not since Bobby had him committed to a psych ward for hearing voices. When a murderous spirit possesses Bobby’s wife and disrupts the perfect life he’s built away from Oklahoma, he’s forced to ask for his little brother’s help. Adam is happy to escape the trailer park and get the chance to say I told you so, but he arrives in Denver to find the local magicians dead.

It isn’t long before Adam is the spirit’s next target. To survive the confrontation, he’ll have to risk bargaining with powers he’d rather avoid, including his first love, the elf who broke his heart.

The Binder brothers don’t realize that they’re unwitting pawns in a game played by immortals. Death herself wants the spirit’s head, and she’s willing to destroy their family to reap it.

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

My Review: Kinda like Harry Dresden and October Daye had a gay son.

Brothers Adam and Robert (Bobby growing up) have a troubled, lower-class upbringing in common. They're as different as chalk and cheese, with Robert running as far and as fast from his background as he can; Adam, well...he wasn't given the luxury of that choice. Robert even had him slung into the psych ward because he was "hearing voices."

It never occurred to Robert they were real.

As this story opens, the brothers are reconnecting (not very willingly) because Robert's had to confront the "hearing voices" he so thoroughly denied was reality, was not hallucination.

"People aren't less just because they don't live the way you do."
"I didn't say that," Robert said.
"You think it," Adam said. "You think we're all trash because we don't have nice cars and ugly houses. Life isn't just about money."

I squirmed for Bobby-that-was; I was just as accused as he was. I'd want my weirdo little brother who "hears things" to get fixed, to be normal, just like Robert does...just like Bobby did. In spite of the fact Robert needs Adam's "weirdness" to cope with his own wife's, um, unusual (murderous, possessed) behavior with that weirdness. Adam should be able to help, right? Well, yeah, there's a lot under the bridge between them, they're ultimately branches from the same unhappy, unloving mother and runaway father, so Adam will help:

He thought back on all the clear signs that Annie loved Bobby... If Adam had that, he wouldn't make the guy his second priority. He'd—well, he didn't really know what he'd do with a guy in the long term. He'd be like the dog who finally caught the car.

It's worth noting that Adam isn't worried about being gay, hiding being gay, or denying he is who he is. Big bonus points. No, he doesn't know what he'd do with a guy, long term; but not because he's a guy but because Adam's never been able to do more than scratch out day-to-day survival. Poverty has no sexual preferences. He's been locked up and treated for schizophrenia (those voices now acknowledged as real by Robert) for long enough that the idea of a forever (or more than a night) with a guy he loves is far out of his reach.

But once upon a time, before the hospital, there was a certain someone; an elf, one who lives in Denver among his kind, so there's a good personal reason to help Robert in spite of Bobby's long-ago betrayal....

It's a joy to go here with a QUILTBAG sibling, one struggling with anger, one whose "voices" are real but give him only the most limited abilities that he now has to level up to help Robert. And maybe their vanished bastard-wizard father can finally be found. But about that love long gone...well, now he's gone and hooked himself to this cop who was about to be offed, and now they're...it's getting...the situation is...

...complicated. Like the story itself. But all in a good way, honest. Vic the cop and Adam the low-power witch and Robert the rotten brother with real, honest motives, are all learning as they go, are discovering they're in a very different situation than the one they saw themselves as being in.

And that's why it's a series.

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

TRAILER PARK TRICKSTER (Adam Binder #2)
DAVID R. SLAYTON
Blackstone Publishing Inc. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: They are my harvest, and I will reap them all.

Returning to Guthrie, Oklahoma, Adam Binder once again finds himself in the path of deadly magic when a dark druid begins to prey on members of Adam’s family. It all seems linked to the death of Adam’s father many years ago—a man who may have somehow survived as a warlock.

Watched by the police, separated from the man who may be the love of his life, compelled to seek the truth about his connection to the druid, Adam learns more about his family and its troubled history than he ever bargained for, and finally comes face to face with the warlock he has vowed to stop.

Meanwhile, beyond the Veil of the mortal world, Argent the Queen of Swords and Vic Martinez undertake a dangerous journey to a secret meeting of the Council of Races . . . where the sea elves are calling for the destruction of humanity.

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

My Review: I understand why it needed to be this way, but Vic and Adam spending the whole book apart was really a bummer. After what happened in the first book, these guys have a metric love-ton of baggage to unpack. But the main arc of the series, the murders of Adam's family members, needs to take first priority, naturally.

I'm still grumpy about it. I reminded myself quite sternly several times, "It's a series, chill out! We'll get there!" And still the grump continued, casting a foggy pall over the whole read.

It's also a widge weird that our low-powered hero doesn't need to prove himself against the phenomenally powerful elves more than he does. They sort-of accept him at his word that he has these powers but they're more-or-less psychic ones so of course they aren't much stacked up against elven world-altering ones...and no one checks...? Much more space goes into dealing with Vic's utterly altered status...not only is he now emotionally connected to a man for the first time in his life, he's become a Reaper (this is what it sounds like), and the man he feels intense love for is not around to help him work any of it out!

Well, it's book two in a series. There are things to do, and plot points that must be accomplished; if you want a relationship novel, go get one. This is a gay urban romantasy, so it serves different masters. When we're building a magical world, we must do that first so the characters have a solid playhouse to do their various things within that make story-sense.

...and I still want the couple to do some talking...these are guys, I remind myself, they'd rather be tortured than talk about their feelings. They're also, unlike 90% (unverified statistic) of gay love stories, working class, so big points for that. I'm picking nits in my cavils. I'm aware of problems because I'm unsatisfied with the lack of communication between the main couple even though it's down to temporary story circumstances.

As a dual-reality story, the series is as much fun as that ever is. Y'all urban-fantasy lovers are going to feel right at home. As a romance/romantasy, this entry in the series is wanting, but the framework is really solid for that to change. As a book-two, the ending...a serious cliffhanger...will require you to have book three on tap or you (and the author) risk losing momentum.

That really would be a shame.

THE MIDNIGHT KNOCK, does several #Deathtober-y things, none well

THE MIDNIGHT KNOCK
JOHN FRAM
Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A locked-room mystery meets white-knuckle horror in this mind-bending thriller, where strangers must survive a deadly night in a remote Texas motel.

In the frigid west Texas desert, weary travelers converge at a lonely roadside motel nestled at the foot of a massive mountain. Ethan and Hunter have left behind a corpse, a fire, and a horrific act of violence. Kyla and Fernanda are fleeing for the border. Stanley and his granddaughter are returning from Mexico with a mysterious man in hot pursuit. All of them are on the run from something. All of them are hiding something.

And somehow, they’re all connected to the motel’s other guest, an enigmatic woman named Sarah Powers.

Within hours, Sarah is dead. The strange twins who run the Brake Inn Motel inform the surviving guests that her murder demands justice. The guests are given an ultimatum: uncover the killer by midnight—or die when the protective lights around the motel go out.

Because something very old and very dangerous lurks in this corner of the desert. And it’s hungry.

But nothing at the Brake Inn Motel is quite as it seems. As time ticks away, alliances fracture, secrets unravel, and the guests will not only have to confront the violence of the past—they will need to face the darkness within themselves.

A masterful blend of psychological tension, supernatural horror, and layered storytelling, The Midnight Knock pushes the boundaries of what a mystery can be. And with its unforgettable climax, this novel cements John Fram as a contemporary master of the genre.

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

My Review: Gore for the sake of being gory isn't my usual fare; I'm no fan of "supernatural" stuff because I don't believe it's real; but a locked-room mystery, now...with those fripperies added on, let's see how this plays out.

Okay.

Why the people just...accept...that there's a deadline against which they're required to work Or Else puzzled me. So that one woman died...why should that mean anyone else will? Why not just shove past those overbearing twins and start walking til you have cell service?

I'm not the platonic ideal of a reader for this story, as you see. I'm pretty much off this storytelling beam for good from when Groundhog Day-type time loops start happening. The Ship-of-Fools trope was really powerfully evoked by everything from the setup to the ragging on gabardine as a suiting-material choice. I'm sure someone not prone to laughing at Saw movies because they're so deeply dumb will get much more out of the read than I did.

That said, I thought the rural West Texas setting was effective, for me anyway. It's a dry, unnervingly empty place, and the place being at the foot of a mountain is unsettling amid so much nothing-much. It wasn't enough to overcome my reality fetish but it was a solid choice.

When I'm told a story is a locked-room mystery, I expect there to be a serious, logical, undeniable reason the cast can not...not do not, not choose not to...leave. I also expect the mystery to make daytime-world, no spookieghouliewoo-woo reasonable sense. Not delivered. Plus I did not care about the affront to Ma'at that was this victim's murder. I was glad she was dead.

So on balance, I'll say you know your spooky-season reading needs so are best equipped to determine the fit between you and this story. I don't regret reading it, but I still wish I'd got the promised mystery at the least.

CAI EMMONS' PAGE: THE BELLS; two Bronwyn Artair cli-fics

THE BELLS
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: As The Bells opens, thirty-three-year-old Niall O'Malley has failed a five-year mission to live as a monk and is attempting to redefine himself as a high school teacher in New Jersey. The transition has been bumpy. He loves teaching history to inner city teens, but he hits a roadblock when a belligerent student, Colton, possibly a white-supremacist, behaves in ways that threaten Niall.

As troubles mount at school, Niall's girlfriend Lluvia pressures him into make a deeper commitment to their relationship. She wants them to move in together with Lluvia's pre-teen daughter and elderly mother. Haunted by his failure as a Cistercian monk and his troubles with one man in particular, the abusive Brother Thomas, Niall abandons Lluvia and heads back to his old monastery in Massachusetts for a final showdown with Thomas, now dying of ALS. Redemption for Niall is elusive as he strives to mend his faith.

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

My Review: Odd as it sounds, unsympathetic people deserve sympathy and understanding, no matter how hard it is to offer. Niall, one of life's least-lovable characters, is a passive abuse sponge. In this story, we hear him absorbing the pressures that the predators around him...his female companion, one of his students in the high-school history class he teaches...sense his vulnerability and mount their cruelty campaigns against him to...what? prove they can? get a desired result from him?...it's this that resulted in my rating being under four full stars.

I completely get why this is a story worth telling. I know others will not be able to invest in Niall because he feels so passive, yet clearly feels rage about his many instances of abuse. As a horror story for the spooky season, this (to me) makes it a perfect read: Finally acting against Lluvia's pressures and demands, going back to the escape-turned-hellscape of his early adult life in the monastery, it seems as though Niall might at last lift the fog of rage that hides his horizons.

Resolving a lifetime of trauma is very very hard. Closer to seventy than fifty, I'm still mid-process. Niall's not even fiftyish, so I'm right there with him, understanding his issues and his weirdly ineffectual...has life taught him nothing?...attempts to gain a handle on the reality of a lifetime spent being acted on, not acting. It is a big ask to spend 250pp with someone floundering in wreckage he does not see clearly, has no map to understand, and no sense of agency (though plenty of urgency propelling him hither thither and yon) in coping with. It is truly psychological horror.

I'm sorry to say I wasn't satisfied by the resolution *on a story level* not based on the result that occurred. If I'd simply wanted a different resolution I'd be giving the writing alone 4+ stars. What I'm referring to is the resolution to the story does not use the beats to build to something, to make the read a journey. It is very probable that this is intentional, as Author Emmons was capable of writing effective outrage fueling logical story resolution.

It feels very poignant that Author Emmons gave the abuser her own fatal affliction as a trigger to cause Niall to act at last. ALS is a terrible, terrifying condition. It is nightmare fodder to understand what is happening to you and still to know what is happening can not be altered.

I'm not interested in most "horror" because it relies on tropes I find deeply silly and utterly incredible. The psychological horror of this story might, had the author lived longer, have resolved itself in a more effective manner commensurate with the investment of time and attention required of the reader. As it is I got genuine frissons of horror from this resolutely reality-anchored story of psychological abuse and its consequences.

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

SINKING ISLANDS
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sinking Islands continues the story of Bronwyn Artair, a scientist who possesses the power to influence the natural forces of the Earth. After several successful interventions, including one in Siberia, she has gone into hiding, worried about unintended consequences of her actions, as well as about the ethics of operating solo. But circumstances call her to action again, and an idea takes shape: What if she could impart her skill to other people?

Gathering a few kindred souls from climate-troubled places around the world—Felipe from São Paulo, where drought conditions are creating strains on day-to-day life; Analu and his daughter Penina from a sinking island in the South Pacific; and Patty from the tornado-ridden plains of Kansas—she takes them to the wilds of Northern New Hampshire where she tries to teach them her skill. The novel, realistic but for the single fantastical element, explores how we might become more attuned to the Earth and act more collaboratively to solve the enormity of our climate problem.

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

My Review: Now that Bronwyn's "out of the closet," so to speak, as someone with a unique and effective ability to change the world's weather as climate change bites us ever harder, she's got qualms.

The men who want to use her powers do not.Retreating from the pressures of the desperate world witb a scoobygroup of others she will teach how to use her newly discovered powers, Bronwyn learns, tests, grows.

Should she simply use her abilities to effect local changes without ever knowing in advance what the global consequences are? Should the same behavior, in other words, that was used to get us into this mess be used to try getting us out? Unlike lesser writers' heroes, Bronwyn considers this ethical and practical conundrum seriously. She does it collaboratively, not solipsistically. She does it with all due haste because the world is changing fast and the consequences are dire (I'd argue condign, as well, but I'm sorta Savonarola-y on the subject.) “Death turns everything inside out. After death, nothing’s the same, for the living or the dead.”

Then, when she's determined what the course of action should be based on all the evidence she can accumulate and all the counsel she can trust, the world feels her scoobygroup's efforts. As climate catastrophes mount, as Bronwyn and her support staff take more and more drastic action, things do change.

Change, then, is possible. Change is necessary. Change can...must...come from inside you as you effect it wherever you are, as you model its reality to anyone who looks or even watches you effect it, and those few who study your efforts to reproduce them for themselves.

This 2021 title deserves our attention, with its prequel for multiple reasons. One is the men and women who surround, support, and assist Bronwyn to bring her vision and her power to reality. Another is the sheer idiocy of male-dominated power structures in their dismissal or outright rejection of ideas from women. A further idea that needs wider currency is the need for women to simply up and do stuff because it all needs doing. Waiting for validation attention or perish forbid permission is no longer an option. The world is very badly in need of all hands running to the pumps to do their own best.

Author Emmons left Bronwyn and company here. I think that's a good thing. I felt the message was delivered, the ideas explored in the depth that informed and encouraged but stopped before overwhelm set in. The books are a good set, a good length of time with these admirable people, and that counts for a lot in a world with too much and not enough always tipping, tipping, tipping....

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

WEATHER WOMAN
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces.

When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia.

A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.

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

My Review: What the heck are women supposed to do when they discover they have actual, utilizable power? Hide it, or course, because some man somewhere will feel threatened by it because he doesn't have it, or have a way to control it, or simply doesn't like that a woman can do something without needing to check it until a man approves of it.

Meet Bronwyn. She's an ordinary woman in an ordinary relationship with an ordinary man. It ends because he ends it. It ends, in other words, because someone not her has determined her worth is not sufficient to deserve his august attention.

So far this is realist fiction with the twist that the woman has Something Extra. But how she discovers that, what it is, and how extremely valuable it is...that's Cai Emmons' secret story sauce. In giving ordinary-everywoman Bronwyn the Something Extra, Author Emmons is sneaking into a realist-fiction piece the verity that all women have power through the metaphor of A Power. She does this as the world...hers of 2018, ours of 2025...faces unprecednted challenges to our future as a species. This passage in time is very reminiscent of the Black Death in its existential crisis. And here's unregarded Bronwyn discovering she could very well have the means to alter a seemingly inevitable death spiral.

Exploring that is, I think, the reason most reviews and ratings that ridicule and belittle the story are by men. Author Emmons dares to say, "what if a woman has the solution to our crisis? Not because a man worked on it, or because she earned it by studying under men, but in and of herself she possesses the answer, the solution, our collective way out?"

Watch the rats empty from the sinking ship to devour the rope tying us to reality.

That's why I'm offering a full four stars to this cli-fic story of how stupid it is to think you know everything thus shutting down possibly lifesaving ideas from outside your purview.

6:40 TO MONTREAL, solidly executed story with atmosphere to spare

6:40 TO MONTREAL
EVA JURCZYK
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: No WiFi, no distractions. No way out…

Agatha needs to get some serious work done on her new book. To help her, her husband bought her quiet time to concentrate: a train ticket for a six-hour ride from Toronto to Montreal. The time aboard sets the stage for a perfect writing retreat, with only a handful of other passengers, plenty of snacks and drinks, and beautiful views.

But Agatha has other plans for her day out… plans that are unexpectedly derailed when the train breaks down in the middle of the frigid Canadian woods, and one of Agatha's fellow passengers dies quietly in his seat. Soon, a pleasant morning in transit turns into a fight for survival against an unknown and unseen enemy. Will Agatha, or any of the passengers, make it out alive?

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

My Review: Nothing about the set-up, or even the execution, of this read is subtle. If you do not know already have prior reading congress with Murder on the Orient Express, I advise you to consider putting this read off for a time and read that classic first. Like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (by the same author), there is only one first time to encounter this plot...I argue you should save yourself for the original because each of these two is a rare flawless read. Christie was not a flawless writer, but those two are her closest to flawlessly executed stories.

Okay, seasoned veterans of the mystery wars, it's just us chickens now. We've read it, maybe more than once, and already know what's up. Does Author Jurczyk have the chops to ring a good change on the Dame's platonic ideal? I'll offer a "yes" vote. I know it's entirely, utterly impossible in today's world for this plot to occur. No part of it would hold up to 2025 reality's technology or its many many many social conventions flouted herein.

Since The Twist℠ isn't much of one for me, I was left to find reasons I was flying through the pages. I like neurotic overwound Agatha, her raggedness from writer's block and looming deadline and simmering suspicion of her husband's motives in gifting her this luxe train trip; she's relatably nutso. As events unfold her responses remain in character for her established neuroticicity (is that a word? I need it so it is now) while drawing on her theoretical expertise in problem solving IRL for the first time.

I also resonated to the Canadian author's evocation of the cold's presence, like it's another character in the story, strongly and positively. I think y'all hothouse fleurs will feel similarly to me on the negative side. That "presence"—the beingness of the cold—is a good narrative technique deployed well, much as in the original. It gives the entire story an agreeably menacing claustrophobia, the kind of containment that, IRL, I'd find intolerable, but feel fine reading about when it's well done. It's well done here.

I'm in the camp that the middle of the story does not maintain the beginning's smart pace; it is down to the exigencies of fair-play storytelling, though, so since I couldn't see a trim or an elision I thought would benefit the pace without snipping off something I could see a need for, I'll tell those carpers to try doing it better before just complaining. The ending was fine, didn't make me roll my eyes like the tidy-bow ending I was expecting would've done. I wonder if fifteen more pages before The Twist℠ might've helped....

Monday-morning quarterbacking at its "finest" which should make Author Jurczyk bask in the glow that she has made the kind of story that her readers really invest in. I'll recommend it for all y'all.

October 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!

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Atlas of unknowable things by McCormick Templeman

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Perfect for fans of The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, with a modern gothic twist.

High in the Rocky Mountains on a secluded campus, sits Hildegard College, a celebrated institution known for its scientific innovation and its sprawling, botanical gardens. Historian Robin Quain has been awarded a residency to examine Hildegard’s impressive collection of ancient manuscripts, but she has a secret. She’s actually on the hunt for an artifact—one she must find before her former best friend turned professional rival gets his hands on it first.

But Hildegard has secrets of its own. Strange sounds echo across the alpine lake, lights flicker through the pines, and the faculty seem more like Jazz-age glitterati than academics. And then there’s the professor who holds the key to Robin’s research. She vanished suddenly last spring. What exactly did she do at the college, and why does no one want to talk about her?

As Robin searches for answers, an unknown source sends her a series of cryptic messages that makes her question whether she’s the one doing the hunting, or whether someone is hunting her. Drawing on historical, botanical, and occult research, and steeped in the gothic tradition, Atlas of Unknowable Things considers what it means to search for meaning in the scientific, only to come face to face with the sublime.

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

My Review: First, read this:

I began to understand. I had stepped through a veil of sorts. Hildegard wasn’t like other places. There were rules here I didn’t understand. There were puzzles and clues and mysteries, and even though I felt an almost immediate and palpable sense of danger, some part of me was excited. I’d spent my entire life waiting for something to feel real, to feel important. I’d always wanted to feel at the center of something truly grand. And though I couldn’t say definitively that what was happening to me was necessarily grand, at least it was something.

This is why the book only gets three and a half stars. Everything Robin, our PoV character, says here is exactly what I was thinking.

From beginning to end. That, my olds, is not great in a gothic story that's trading on dark academia vibes. If I'm *still* not clear on why I, or anyone else, follows her or allows her the access to the things she just...waltzes in and takes stuff...she has no right to, it'll take a lot more than a parade of only vaguely connected references meant to ground me. I'm afraid I never got invested enough to care.

St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $14.99 for the ebook.Read a sample first.

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And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1) by Joshua Moehling

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: They thought he was a helpless old man. They were wrong.

When two teenagers break into a house on a remote lake in search of prescription drugs, what starts as a simple burglary turns into a nightmare for all involved. Emmett Burr has secrets he's been keeping in his basement for more than two decades, and he'll do anything to keep his past from being revealed. As he gets the upper hand on his tormentors, the lines blur between victim, abuser, and protector.

Personal tragedy has sent former police officer Ben Packard back to the small Minnesota town of Sandy Lake in search of a fresh start. Now a sheriff's deputy, Packard is leading the investigation into the missing teens, motivated by a family connection. As clues dry up and time runs out to save them, Packard is forced to reveal his own secrets and dig deep to uncover the dark past of the place he now calls home.

Unrelentingly suspenseful and written with a piercing gaze into the dark depths of the human soul, And There He Kept Her is a thrilling page-turner that introduces readers to a complicated new hero and forces us to consider the true nature of evil.

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

My Review: Unsettling, prurient teen-girl grooming story investigated by a gay cop returning home to small-town Minnesota to work. Absolutely not one hint of salaciousness, nothing played for titillation, all my bugaboos avoided there.

Except the one about psychosexual harm to girls. I finished it, which tells you something important. YMMV depending on your squeamishness levels.

Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $17.99 to let you read it.

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Where the Dead Sleep (Ben Packard #2) by Joshua Moehling

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A small town's dark secrets turn deadly...

When an early morning call brings Deputy Ben Packard to the scene of a home invasion, he finds Bill Sandersen shot in his bed. Bill was a well-liked local who chased easy money his whole life, leaving bad debts and broken hearts in his wake. Everyone Packard talks to has a story about Bill, but no one has a clear motive for wanting him dead. The business partner. The ex-wife. The current wife. The high-stakes poker buddies. Any of them—or none of them—could be guilty.

As the investigation begins, tragedy strikes the Sheriff's department, forcing Packard to make a difficult choice about his future: step down as acting Sheriff and pursue the quiet life he came to Sandy Lake in search of, or subject himself to the scrutiny of an election for the full-time role of Sheriff, a job he's not sure he wants.

There's a hidden history to Sandy Lake that Packard, ever the outsider, can't see. Bad blood and old secrets run deep. But an attempt on Packard's life means he's getting uncomfortably close to the dangerous legacy of the quiet Minnesota town. And someone will do anything to keep it hidden.

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

My Review: Caddish bro-dawggery getting a gladhanding con-man murdered in his bed? A boy can dream...and solved by sweet, seriously misplaced queer cinnamon bun acting sheriff (mulling a run for the real job, since the sheriff's got {terminal?} cancer) of a small Minnesota town? If it gets better I ain't found it yet.

Well...start work on your brother's thirty-year-old cold case or quit obsessing. Also not one soul has walked up and said, "we don't like your kind here f*ggot," so why keep worrying about them voting for a crime-solvin' hometown boy? Pull 'em up and grab the life you want!

Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires $16.99 from you this time.

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Café Unfiltered by Jean-Philippe Blondel (tr. Alison Anderson)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An ode to the French café as a magical place, portrayed by a beloved author with humanity, insight, and tenderness.

At a classic café in the French provinces, anonymity, chance encounters, and traumatic pasts collide against the muted background of global instability. Jean-Philippe Blondel, author of the bestselling The 6:41 to Paris, presents a moving fresco of intertwined destinies. In the span of twenty-four hours, a medley of characters retrace the fading patterns of their lives after a long disruption from Covid.

A mother and son realize their vast differences, a man takes tea with a childhood friend he had once covertly fallen for, and a woman crosses paths with the ex who abandoned her in Australia. Amidst it all, the café swirls like a kaleidoscope, bringing together customers, waiters, and owners past and present. Within its walls and on its terrace, they examine the threads of their existence, laying bare their inner selves, their failed dreams, and their hopes for the uncertain future that awaits us all.

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

My Review: What I loved about this read was its episodic, character-sketch nature; its acceptance of the complexity of human love; and its just-post-COVID sense of reopening, opening up, becoming open to life.

What I was less excited by was the scattershot feeling of wanting more than I got about the people I was ready to love; the not-its-fault datedness of the planet-wide post-COVID intake of breath; and its more ornamental prose bits (not the whole book, I hasten to say).

New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests $17.95 for any edition you care to read. It's a lovely, peaceful, easy-to-love cafe I'd be a regular at.

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The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel (tr. Alison Anderson)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Cécile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation thirty years ago.

In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles towards the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face to face journey—In silence? What could they possibly say to one another?—with the reader gaining entrée to the most private of thoughts. This is a psychological thriller about past romance, with all its pain and promise.

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

My Review: Great loves that end badly don't, in my own experience, end. "The one that got away" and "the slime who broke my heart" and other such angry, wistful, and vaporous utterances are mainstays of entire genres of literature, romantic or suspenseful or violent as they need to be. Love needs an ending, not merely an end.

These two former lovers get a shocking amount of thinking (but nothing else) done on their trip to Paris; home, or not. Voyages are excellent mulling-over time. "Was it worth it?" A question that never offers one answer or even one foundation for an answer.

New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests $9.99 transfer itself to them before you may legally access the nebulous, intellectual jeu d'esprit of a story.

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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.

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Cackle by Rachel Harrison (68%)

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A darkly funny, frightening novel about a young woman learning how to take what she wants from a witch who may be too good to be true, from the author of The Return.

All her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small village upstate. She’s stunned by how perfect and picturesque the town is. The people are all friendly and warm. Her new apartment is dreamy too, minus the oddly persistent spider infestation.

Then Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend. More importantly, she wants Annie to stop apologizing and start living for herself. That’s how Sophie lives. Annie can’t help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the townsfolk seem…a little afraid of her. And like, okay. There are some things. Sophie’s appearance is uncanny and ageless, her mansion in the middle of the woods feels a little unearthly, and she does seem to wield a certain power…but she couldn’t be…could she?

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

My Review: I craved a funny, fantastical story for #Deathtober. Maybe some suspense, maybe some spice, I was primed and ready for a scary, dark read.

Not remotely. Ralph is the scariest character (an absurd idea that will only make sense if you've read the story) in what I found to be a solidly YA tale about two misfit women becoming besties. I hit, "Some men are so foul you wouldn't even save their blood," {Sophie} says. "Sorry?" {this from Annie the PoV}...and realized I could barely distinguish them, didn't care to, and was imagining beige walls in this scary place they are.

Berkley (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) thinks it's worth $9.99 for an ebook. I don't, but I'm a long way from fifteen.