Uncategorized 9:01 pm
Auntie M has been on hiatus for the past few weeks due to a multitude of things you don’t even want to begin to know!
BUT I’m blogging over on ECO WOMEN: PROTECTORS OF THE PLANET today, so come on over and check me out!
Hope to back to several times a week shortly!
Uncategorized great book; bloggers must read 8:32 pm
Bloggers beware: Jeffrey Deaver has a wicked look and an imagination to match.
Anyone who has read one of his Lincoln Rhyme novels can attest to that–a protagonist who is a quadriplegic forensic scientist? An agent with the California Bureau of Investigation who is a kinesics expert?
In Roadside Crosses it’s CBI agent Kathryn Dance’s turn at bat. The haunting beauty of the Monterey Peninsula becomes disrupted when a killer starts leaving roadside crosses complete with red roses and a disc with the date inscribed. Only these aren’t memorials after a traffic accident; these are announcements of murders he’s about to commit.
Deaver is a master of twists and unexpected turns, and Dance’s personal life entwined in an interesting but not absurd way. The world of bloggers and of online role-playing games becomes a focus, and I learned more about the ins and outs of both of these worlds in a mind-boggling plot that will leave you breathless.
Just when I thought I had it all figure dout, there was one more twist, and then one more. And the end was NOT what I saw coming at all.
Heads Up: Deaver knows everything about you!
Uncategorized 12:00 pm
Meg Gardiner caught Auntie M’s eye with her novel The Dirty Secrets Club, where she introduced Jo Beckett, a forensic psychiatrist with an unusual specialty: she conducts psychological autopsies, an investigation into a person’s life to determine whether their death was natural, accidental, suicide or homicide.
It’s an interesting premise for a protagonist, and Gardiner makes the most of Beckett, her expertise, and her background. This time Beckett is called to help deal with an aircraft passenger whose erratic behavior she finally determines is due to anteretrograde amnesia, an unusual amnesia where the patient has total recall of his past life, but is unable to hold onto new thoughts for more than five minutes.
I’d never heard of this kind of amnesia, but Gardiner does a good job of explaining it and its devastating effects on her patient, security expert Ian Kanan. Imagine living your life by scrawling yourself messages in pen or your arm, surrounded by post- it notes to keep refreshing what you were doing five minutes previously.
It’s an exhaustive and horrifying illness, and when it starts to affect people Kanan has had contact with, Beckett knows she is up against some kind of deadly biological agent, and the race to prevent a catastrophic exposure to this agent becomes the focus of the action.
Gardiner also has five novels in the Evan Delaney series, including the Edgar Award finalist China Lake.
Uncategorized great forensic read 12:00 pm
This is the third book Beckett has written featuring forensic anthropologist Dr. David Hunter. While the first two took place in Hunter’s (and Beckett’s) native England, Whispers of the Dead takes Hunter across the pond in the heat of the Tennessee summer to Knoville’s legendary “Body Farm.”
In a bid to escape London and the violence of The Chemistry of Death, Hunter has returned to the field laboratory where law enforcement personnel study real corpses in different stages of death and in different settings. This real-life lab has been the setting for several other novelists featuring forensic analysts, among them Patricia Cornwell and Jefferson Bass.
Hunter needs to find out if he can still do his job dwelling on death after his own near-death experience. He hasn’t been working long with his old mentor, Tom Lieberman, when the men are called to a grisly death scene. It soon becomes apparent that the murderer is adept at masking forensic details, and as the bodies pile up, Hunter finds himself pushed further into the manhunt for a serial murderer who is trying to capture the exact moment of death.
Beckett has an attactive protagonist in Hunter, a fallible man with strengths and weaknesses, and we eagerly follow him on this journey to track down a killer who is in love with death itself.
Uncategorized great read, intriguing ideas 8:49 pm
Kate Wilhelm is an accomplished author with over thirty novels and a dozen collections of short fiction on her resume’.
But this was my first read of hers, and a friend passed me her Northwest mystery, Death Qualified. More than a legal thriller, and not a traditional mystery at all, but a read that has more twists and turns than an Alps switchback road.
Barbara Holloway has literally run away from practicing law in her father’s practice. When he summons her home to help him defend a neighbor accused of killing her husband, Barbara must examine her past, and come to terms with her future. Barbara is “death qualified” –legally able to defend clinets who face the death penalty if convicted.
And what a case Frank Holloway has given his daughter–Nell Kendricks is accused of shooting the husband who abandoned her and his two children. In order to save Nell, Barbara and Frank launch into finding out where Lucas Kendricks has been for the past seven years, and the answers turn up an extraordinary sequence of events.
Wilhelm must have done exhaustive research to complete this book. I won’t give away any of the details, but here is a quote from the New York Times Book Review: “A book not about ideas but about the impact of ideas . . . The ending, which I found both surprising and believable makes good on all her promises.”
I’ll be looking for more from Wilhelm.
Uncategorized 12:00 pm
That’s the word everyone is using lately, so Auntie M is getting in on it, too.
Readers, you MUST go to Eco Women: Protectors of the Planet and check out the newest ideas going on. (EcoWomen.wordpress.com)
This is a group of six ecologically-minded women who blog about everything from recycling and organic baby foods to healthy pets and saving our planet.
There are Quick Links and Easy Eco Actions as regular features, too.
The big news is that EcoWomen now have their avatars on tees and bags you can purchase through Cafe’ Press. And when you do, the monies made will find their way to a really cool charity. So you’ll be spreading the word AND doing something good for Mankind, Animalkind and The World.
Check out today’s blog for the FIRST BIG GIVEAWAY and you, too, can be a part of this growing movement.
Squee!
Uncategorized good books; historical read 9:13 pm
I have a special affinity for Anne Perry, as she was my first interview published years ago in “Mystery Review” magazine. At that time, Perry was gaining fame for her Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, set in Victorian England. The first in that series, “The Cater Street Hangman,” was subsequently filmed by the BBC and shown on our PBS Mystery series.
Perry has branched out over the years, adding a set of WWI novels, six holiday novels, and a second Victorian series featuring detective William Monk and his nurse wife, Hester.
EXECUTION DOCK is the newest in the Monk series, and continues to live up to Perry’s reputation for exhaustive period research. This time readers find themselves on the bustling docks along the River Thames, where the empire’s merchant ships unload the treasures of the world. The sights, sounds and scents of the dark alleyways and busy dockside comes alive for us as Monk plunges into the seamy underworld where sex merchants take advantage of homeless young boys.
When a thirteen-year old sex slave is found with his throat cut, his tortured body tossed in the river, Monk attempts to bring the kingpin of this dark world to justice, despite the man’s wealthy clientele.
Readers may find Perry’s lavish descriptions overdone, but her plots are twisted intrigues, filled with the realities of the social era and manners of that age. Great reading for anyone who enjoys historical novels.
Uncategorized 9:32 pm
Doc is down. He started having terrific pain this weekend with his knee. When we went to PT Monday he it was decided he has tendonitis in the knee, so he’s off PT for a week, on steriods and back in bed the knee with it iced. Ugh. To say he’s pissed frustrated would be a gross understatement.
We live nine miles off the main highway, in a very rural area, as some of you know. The car ride home yesterday was pretty quiet. Suddenly in front of us on the road, blocking our path, we saw THIS:
AND THIS:
AND THIS:
Now there was only one house on this part of the road, but I don’t know the owner. As I got out of my truck, I noted the closed front door and lack of a car in the driveway. There was, however, a radio on in the garage, so I headed up the driveway.
And so did the livestock. They trailed behind me like I was the Pied Piper. I stopped midway and the calf nuzzled my hand. They were all just so darn cute!
Of course, the garage was empty, radio or not. BUT behind the garage I saw the edge of a pen. I beckoned the animals, calling out “Come on Cow, follow me little goats, this way piggies.” I look back at Doc and he was hysterical with laughter, sitting in the front seat watching the spectacle. They followed me willingly.
The animals let me re-pen them and secure the gate. I got back in the car and Doc was still laughing. It did my heart good and lightened his mood for the rest of the day. “You did your good deed for the day,” he said.
I sure hope I brought those animals to the right house~
Uncategorized great book, great read 12:29 pm
Yorkshire writer Ann Cleeves was shortlisted twice for the CWA Gold Dagger Award before winning it for Raven Black, her first Shetland Islands mystery. Now she returns with the second of a planned quartet,White Nights.
Cleeves is the author of the Inspector Ramsey novels and well as the Vera Stanhope books. The latter has been optioned for television. She is also reader-in-residence for the Harrowgate Crime Writing Festival. All of her novels have in common a taut, atmospheric quality with interesting and realistic characters and cunningly crafted plots.
In White Nights, Detective Jimmie Perez is once again on the case of an Englishman found hanging from a rafter the day after he arrives in the middle of an art gallery show and dissolves in tears, claiming amnesia. It complicates things that the woman Perez wants is drawn to is one of the two artists showing at the gallery.
It’s midsummer in the Shetland Islands, the time of white nights when the birds sing at midnight sun never sets, just dims. Cleeves set her plot in motion and we watch Perez and Fran Hunter as they delicately merge their relationship with the chilling murder investigation. The setting is unusual, the plot intriguing, and I found myself caught up in and staying awake to finish it.
Uncategorized 9:17 pm
Make sure you empty your bladder before diving into Janet Evanovich’s latest Stephanie Plum read, Finger Lickin’ Good.
Set in Trenton, New Jersey, Evanovcich gets the neighborhood of the Burg just right as she concocts the most ridiculous plot twists and situations to drop Stephanie in.
Evanovich is the one writer whose ridiculous images make me laugh out loud. From Stephanie’s ex-’ho friend Lula to her Grandma Mazur, from the hunky cop Morelli to the dangerously sexy Rangeman, I guarantee you I will be laughing with tears rolling down your face at least once a book, if not more, at the image she conjurs up. This time the one that got to me was chubby Lula, squeezed into yellow spandex and a black flak jacket, getting stuck out the window of a borrowed Porsche. Her V-neck sweater pulls down, the huge chocolate boobs float out–you get the picture!
Fifteen’s premise has bounty hunter Plum earning extra money helping Rangeman at his security firm by figuring out how his sophisticated alarm system is being usurped, causing a string of thefts that may sink his business. But that’s just the subplot.
The main plot has Lula witness the bizarre murder of a barbeque sauce king, and as the murderers come after her, she enlists Stephanie to help her track them down for the cash reward before they get to her. This involves entering a BBQ sauce cookoff with Grandma, although none of this trio can cook. And Stephanie still has to do her bounty job, one she clearly is atrocious at does not excel at.
Evanovich is a master of eccentric characters, putting them in all-too-believeable situations, surrounded by relatives who remind you of those you want to forget.
Who cares? This quick read is perfect for the summer, a light fun book I call brain candy.
 | My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Imperial Majesty Auntie M the Educated of Throcking by Hampton Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
 | Henry Walloon on Eco Lassie |
 | ninsthewriter on Roadside Crosses |
 | laurenwrites on The Memory Collector |
 | melissawest on Whispers of the Dead |
| melissawest on Execution Dock |
