Country Chick-City Chic

All eyes on the village green.

“Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch” is a fun, cozy mystery set in a quaint English Village.   Lori is an American homemaker who’s settled in Finch with her husband and twin boys for her husband’s work.  When a well known artist comes to town with a mystery to solve Lori throws herself into finding a solution.  The artist is Amelia Thistle and she’s recently lost her beloved brother.  After his death she finds among his things a piece of parchment that was written by a distant relative…..distant as in he lived in Finch and worked as a clergyman in the 1600’s.  The parchment begins a tale of a woman who’s been accused of being a witch, a serious charge at that time.  The first installment ends with a sigil that points to where the next part of the story can be found.  As Lori and Amelia continue their search they quickly pick up other villagers who want to help.  This is definitely a feel good novel.  It has a slight paranormal aspect to it in the form of Aunt Dimity but even that part seems believable.  Don’t hesitate to read it even if you haven’t read other books in the series.  It easily stands alone and it’s lots of fun.

Are we there yet?

I love that publishers are bringing back these vintage titles.  This one was originally published in 1965.  That’s not to say the story is dated.  It’s about a young Irish woman with an eight year old son who’s been separated from her husband for a year.  She’s also gone without sex for at least that long and she’s missing it.  When her husband takes their son on a camping trip she bounces around her house for a bit, has a desultory sexual encounter with a conflicted neighbor, and then decides to go somewhere exciting.  That place is the South of France, in August, of course.  There she meets men she finds attractive who aren’t interested in her or misguided men who find her attractive though she’s not vaguely attracted to them.  All around her is the tumult of sex but still it eludes her.  She meets a younger American girl who’s just run into a famous Hollywood actor in their hotel.  The actor and his hangers on stop by their table at the bar and they’re swept into a party at someone’s mansion.  There’s a tragedy concerning someone outside their party so they’re forced to head back to town.

They head to a burlesque show and the flirting and innuendos continue but Ellen is really only interested in the actor.  The problem is so is her friend.  The actor flirts with both women.  Ellen feels angst over this until something far, far worse happens.  She receives word of a something that turns her world to black.  Flirting now becomes a compulsive distraction rather than a physical need.

I loved O’Brien’s character, Ellen.  She’s not still a girl and not quite a woman.  She’s trying to figure out how to define herself and how to live the rest of her life.  This isn’t a happy book but it’s also not maudlin.  A few plot points are a bit over the top but for all that it’s still a realistic portrayal of a woman in Ellen’s predicament and at her time in life.   In my opinion O’Brien is a less happy and less moral Barbara Pym, she’s a MUCH happier and sexier Anita Brookner and for some reason I want to throw in W. Somerset Maugham as well, specifically his “Up at the Villa” though maybe that’s more for the similar settings.

4.5/5 stars

Please pass the crumpets.

Campbell tells some great ghost stories.  The book chronicles her lifetime of being ghost sensitive and often having others around her who are sensitive as well which is great since she’s able to talk about her experiences.  The books starts out in Tennessee with encounters at her second childhood home and ends when she and her family move into her first home, the one she inherited from her grandfather in Florida.  Lots of the ghosts are friendly or at worst confused but some of them aren’t so friendly in fact the first half of the book has such a different tone it almost feels like it was written by a different author.  It’s not of course but I say that because Campbell comes across as earnest and serious.  Most of the scarier spirits are also in this first half of the book.  In the second half of the book Campbell has finished with the dark ghosts and the spirits she now meets come to enjoy tea parties and other family gatherings.  Even some neighbors see and become familiar with the ghosts.  Campbell has more of a jocular style in recounting her adventures in this second half of the book.  The parts I liked best were the tales of these happier ghosts as well as the spirits she and her dorm mates were aware of in their old college house.  Great fun.

This review was based on an e-galley supplied by the publisher.

“The last of the senses to go is love.”

I was blown away by Lupton’s “Afterwards”.  It’s incredibly inventive and though it’s on the romance side of the mystery genre it wasn’t cloying.  Likewise the fantasy or paranormal elements feel believable.  The story is told in almost omniscient, first person, present tense by a mother who is a fulltime homemaker.  Grace has a son, Adam who’s just turned eight and a beautiful seventeen year old daughter, Jenny.  On Adam’s school sports day Jenny is working as the onsite nurse and Grace is there to watch the games.  It’s a beautiful, warm July day with kids running everywhere having fun.  Then tragedy strikes, the school catches on fire and Grace runs in to the inferno to rescue Jenny.  She’s almost too late.  Jenny is horribly burned and Grace suffers a serious head injury.  They both wind up in the hospital.

So far we’re in the mundane world but things change when Grace and Jenny find they can leave their damaged bodies and talk to one another freely.  They watch, unseen except by one another, as their loved ones mourn, worry, and try to solve the mystery of who purposely set the school fire and why.  I know some people are put off by first person accounts as well as those told in the present tense but Lupton writes so beautifully and with such insight it’s not a distraction…..in fact it seemed to me the perfect way to tell this moving story.

This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publisher.

Will Robie is a loner, he’s precise, and he’s a hit man who takes out America’s enemies.  In the first 50 pages or so we go along with Robie on a few of his missions but the next one goes horribly wrong and now he’s being hunted by some scary folks.  On his escape he teams up with a 14 year old named Julie Getty who’s just left foster care only to witness the murder of her beloved parents.  She narrowly escapes the killers.  In “The Innocent” Baldacci takes us all over the globe and into international politics including current and past wars.  He also explores what makes us human and how things we do can change us.

On his quest Robie has the help of some former co-workers and FBI agent Vance but he’s having trouble getting the pieces to fit.  Are the bad guys after him or after Julie or both of them?  Is this about his past or hers?   He keeps looking through his last cases trying to find who and why someone is hunting him, at the same time he tries to figure out why people who knew Julie’s parents keep dying.  I know it’s a cliché to call a book a page turner but this one really is.  Baldacci drops enough clues to make you feel like you’re in on the hunt but just when one plot point becomes clear another mystery pops up and the story takes off again.  I’m not usually a thriller reader but Baldacci might have me hooked after reading “The Innocent”.

This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publisher.

Lack of Objectivity?

I found this book upsetting not because it dealt with ghosts and the paranormal but because of the methods used to contact the entity Harmon calls Mary Bell.  Don’t get me wrong it’s a compelling story and Harmon explores the paranormal thoroughly in part because he’s a retired Texas policeman.  After he retires from police work he and his family relocate from Texas to Fort Collins, Colorado.  They begin to have odd occurrences in their new house, noises, feelings, and sightings.  Harmon starts to film these goings on and notices some orbs.  He decides to gathers his family at the kitchen to actively try and whoever is causing this.  This is where I had my first negative reaction to his methods.  He has an older teenage daughter living with him from his first marriage as well as three younger daughters with his current wife.  The younger girls are 3, 5, and 7 years old and they tell their dad they’re scared and don’t want to participate in the séance (Harmon repeatedly refers to it as ‘contacting the ghost’ rather than calling it a séance) but Ken tells them they have to be there.  He goes so far as telling them to play singing games while he films because he’s noticed that seems to attract the ghost.  I’m not in any way saying he was purposely trying to harm his kids but this seems very short sighted to me.  In fact his entire story seems tunnel visioned, he narrowly walks the line of being obsession in my opinion.

I know as a cop he was charged with being thorough in his research methods with the goal of proving his case against the bad guys in order to protect others.  I respect that tremendously.  Communicating with ghosts however, is a completely different matter.  In my opinion working with those who can’t or haven’t moved on after their death has a completely different goal with different research methods.  The goal should be to help the entity resolve the reason why they can’t move on, it shouldn’t be to fulfill the researcher’s need to know more about what happens after death.  Another line I feel Harmon crosses is in the last chapter where he asks the ghost some unsolved mysteries such as a) was Amelia Earhart captured by the Japanese, b) was Marilyn Monroe murdered, c) did the US really land on the moon, etc.  Again this is the researcher’s curiosity and in no way helps the ghost and more importantly there’s no reason someone would know the answers to such questions merely because they’ve died and remained attached to the earth?  I do believe ghosts exist and that research into the paranormal is legitimate but I’m not at all convinced that whoever or whatever Harmon was in contact with was who he thought she was.  I also think he became overly involved and lost sight of the big picture which was why the entity was still earthbound.  In another review someone said Harmon was not a good writer.  I’d agree that he’s not inspired but he does write clearly which makes the story easy to follow; I would have liked more objectivity applied to the subject and more sensitivity to his family however.

This review is based on an e-galley supplied by the publisher.

Film Noir meets Georges Simenon

“The Thief” was amazingly good.  It’s about a Tokyo pick pocket who gets caught up with some big time criminals.  It’s a very short book so I was shocked at how psychological it was.  I’m not sure how the author was able to include such an in depth take on Nishimura, the main character in so few words.  Nishimura spends his days on packed trains and packed streets finding his mark and swiftly moving in.  He has standards though.  He only takes the cash and puts the rest of the wallet with its contents in the mail to be sent back to his victim.  Then an old friendship leads him to the gangsters.  He’s forced into pulling what they say is a one time job.  Nishimura is a loner until a street kid and his mother manage to touch his heart though he spends all his time denying it.  This complicates his life but also makes him feel more hopeful.

It’s not so much what happens in this book that’s important but the meaning behind it.   “The Thief” has a Film Noir atmosphere to it and I was also reminded of Georges Simenon’s fiction.  There’s a dark cloud hanging over Nishimura and though he works hard to carefully put one foot in front of the other doom seems to hover right behind him.  I still can’t believe the level of insight Nakamura was able to cram into so few words.  He’s definitely a writer to keep your eye on.  I hope the translations keep coming.

4.5/5

This review was based on an e-galley provided by the publisher.

Suspend your Disbelief

“The Vanishers” has a nice twist on the paranormal craze. Julavits manages to present a fresh outlook as well as a believable plot as long as you’re willing to suspend belief and go with the premise. Mid twenties Julia Severn is attending a course in honing her psychic skills in lieu of a more traditional graduate course. She becomes fixated on her mentor, Madam Ackerman, in part because she lost own mother as a baby and still longs for her. Then things blow up at school and Julia becomes so ill she must take time away. She meets some shady (or perhaps they are merely pieces of her life puzzle) people who influence her to go to Europe in search of recovering her health but also to uncover a mysterious female director who is thought to be involved with an organization that helps people stage their own disappearances, leaving only a film for their loved ones to view stating their reasons for their suicide or disappearance. I did say you’d need to suspend belief right? I didn’t love this book but enjoyed it enough to keep turning the pages. As I’ve said it balances a tightrope walk through fairly unbelievable plot points but Julavits does a great job with the pacing of the story, in fact the pacing and the freshness of the plot were her strong points.