THE GOLDEN TOAD: An Ecological Mystery and the Search for a Lost Species, brothers on a mission to do good for Toadkind

THE GOLDEN TOAD: An Ecological Mystery and the Search for a Lost Species
TREVOR RITLAND & KYLE RITLAND
Diversion Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$30.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Costa Rican cloud forest, a mysterious amphibian killer, and a vanished species: with support from Re:wild campaign, twin brothers follow their father’s footsteps into the heart of the modern extinction crisis.

As young boys, Trevor and Kyle Ritland were fascinated by the magnificent golden toad of Costa Rica, a brilliant species their biologist father showed them in his projector’s slideshows. Native to only one wind-battered ridgeline high on the continental divide above the cloud forests of Monteverde, thousands of golden toads would congregate for a few weeks each year in ephemeral pools among the twisted roots to mate, deposit their offspring, and retreat again beneath the earth. But from one year to the next, the toads disappeared without a trace; the last of them vanished more than thirty years ago. Since then, only rumors remain—alleged sightings by local residents, which beg the question: Could the golden toad still be alive?

In The Golden Toad, Trevor and Kyle set off to investigate an environmental mystery with unexpected revelations, a story that speaks to our own collective and uncertain future. Guided by Costa Rican naturalists—including the last person to have seen the golden toad alive—Trevor searches for survivors while Kyle hunts the killer. Their paths lead them through an imperiled forest, a deadly pandemic, and a changing climate, finally intertwining at the site of the golden toad’s last emergence deep in Monteverde’s Bosque Eterno de Los Niños.

The toad’s demise becomes a haunting foretelling of approaching ecological crises, but with a gold lining on the horizon. The Golden Toad changes the conversation around extinction, climate change, and conservation while exploring environmental grief, resurrection, and hope in a changing world.

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My Review: If a conversation ever needed changing towards hope in dark times, it's the one around the worldwide amphibian extinction. In point of fact there aren't too many subjects that we do not need to find ways of discussing that include hope, hopefulness at the minimum.

The Ritland siblings found a way to do that. They have not found any surviving populations of the golden toad, but they have contributed a lot to the information store about the fungal enemy of amphibiankind that is globally decimating the world's population of all amphibians.

A family inheritance of curiosity and wanderlust, plus a strong grounding in biology and science more generally, sent this pair to a global biodiversity hotspot, Costa Rica, to do anything they can for the decades-missing golden toad. I know the story here is factual but it reads like a fictional adventure. The men are the kind of competent and driven people that make compelling reading; they are traveling in a landscape so replete with unique life as to be alien to sedentary US readers; and they encounter so many people intent on their own business who either help the men in their quest *because* of the quest, or in spite of it, or try to influence them away from their golden-toad search. It's a bit, well, repetitious at times. I don't think that's surprising at all. There is a great deal of information important to understanding the way things need to unfold to accomplish the needed tasks. It naturally will require periodic refreshers of facts readers most likely won't have fresh in their minds.

Still takes time and energy out of what was from the start a very propulsive narrative style, so I can't honestly award a fifth star to the reading experience. As a story told, it gets all five stars, however, so that explains the compromise half-star I polished up for the Ritlands.

Batrachochytrium dedrobatidis is a terrible, fatal scourge, one unleashed in its scope of havoc-wreaking by our changing climate. Anyone who contributes to the knowledge base regarding it, its impacts, and ultimately the ways and means of its future control or eradication, should be celebrated and praised. The Ritlands are large figures in this world-wide effort. Please help celebrate their passion and their contribution. Get a copy, give a copy, read a copy. It's definitely not time wasted.

THE INISHOWEN MYSTERIES, fifth of the five to date starring Ben O'Keeffe: THE BODY FALLS

THE BODY FALLS
ANDREA CARTER (Inishowen Mysteries #5)
Oceanview Publishing
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Bridges Down—Roads Impassable—Killer Trapped

April in Florida and Benedicta (Ben) O’Keeffe is enjoying balmy temperatures during the last few days of a six month stint with a U.S. law firm. A week later, she returns to Glendara, Inishowen, where a charity cycle event is taking place. The town is abuzz with excitement, but it starts to rain, causing the cyclists to postpone the start of their event and stay overnight in the town. The rain doesn’t stop—it becomes relentless, torrential.

In the middle of the night, Police Sergeant Tom Molloy is called out to Mamore Gap, where a body, dislodged from a high bank by the heavy rain, has fallen onto a passing vehicle. It is identified as Bob Jameson, a well-known charities boss and the organizer of the cycling event. Stunned, the local doctor finds evidence of a recent snakebite. Terrible weather persists and soon bridges are down and roads are impassable. Glendara is completely cut off and since there are no native snakes in Ireland, could there be a killer trapped in the community? With no help from the outside world, it’s left to Molloy—with Ben’s assistance—to find out who is responsible for Bob Jameson’s bizarre death.

The novels in the Inishowen Mystery Series stand on their own and can be read in any order.

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My Review: I don't entirely agree with the publisher that these books can be read in any order. I myownself suggest that you begin at #1 Death at Whitewater Church, and progress in an orderly fashion to this one, #5. But that is, of course, merely a recommendation.

I think, though, that without having seen Tom Molloy the Garda sergeant and Ben develop their feelings for and about each other, I'd've missed a major pleasure of the series mystery. Going back to earlier books, knowing what's happened in this book, would negatively impact my pleasure in the read. After Ben's return from Florida, which is totally unexplored in this book but where groundwork has been laid for future troubles to come Ben's way, she gets right back to trouble in her parents' home: The Usurper, as she mentally refers to him, has moved in and taken over the day-to-day running of their lives. They met in a group for grieving parents that all belong to. Ben, jet-lagged and knowing she's out of line to speak about the living arrangement of compos mentis adults, still feels...weird...about the situation.

However, Inishowen and six months' absence-worth of work to catch up on the disposition of ring a loud bell. To her own mild surprise, Ben is really looking forward to her homecoming...it's really home, she knows after leaving it. The locum, Marina, and her legal assistant are no doubt going to need to spill a lot of tea. Yay! Except for the filthy weather forecasted for the whole of Ireland that she must pilot her Mini (befouled by having been lent without her knowlege or consent to The Usurper) through, this is a great day.

Oh Ben. Sweet summer child.

Based on the factual Irish flooding and resultant disasters of 2017, there's really no let-up of either rain or trouble for Ben, Inishowen, Tom Molloy, ans a certain murdered party. (Whom I loathed from his first appearance. Though I found Author Carter's description of him perilously close to body-shaming.)

What mostly happens in this entry into the series is rain. Ungodly, Biblical-flood rain. Stuff falling over, people needing rescuing rain, and all of that's real. The author even points us, in her Acknowledgments, to national Irish papers doing the story in 2017. Everything that happens to the deadie happens because gawd let loose a strong stream of atmospheric water on Inishowen. How's that for a ready-made plot?!

What we get, in book five, is a reckoning of sorts between Ben and Garda Tom Molloy for their very tentative relationship's new course. I loved the way it led Tom, in extremis with the flooding, to resign himself to Ben's usual snooping...even saying at one point he needed the help given the tragic weather-disaster consequences.

As this book deals with someone being murdered whose murderer(s) I found delightful for their willingness to do it at all...cleaning the gene pool, I call it...that I was almost ready for an Orient Express solution. I didn't get one. Darn it. But instead there were more deths to Inishowen's people revealed. I am always glad that the author does this for us, makes the characters matter to us and still tells the tough stories that require resolution.

I'd say this entry was the best in the series. I feel more clear about Tom and Ben and their whatever. And the ending makes me think there's a lot of mileage in the couplehood they have set course for. In many ways they remind me of Mr. and Mrs. North, the Lockridges' sleuthing pair, in their earlier adventures. I hope that vibe continues.