This week I read two cozies. The first, Disco Dead by Marcia Talley, is one of my favorite series.
So far, this one is my favorite.
Hannah is asked by a group of retired cops to help solve a cold case involving what they think is a serial killer. Using her skills on Ancestry.com and other family tracking websites, Hannah dives in. Her familiarity with the Navy is also a plus, thanks to husband Paul, and Hannah provides the critical piece to finding the man who has raped and killed young women for decades. Excellent.
I discovered to my dismay that I read these out of order and missed a few so I will have to go back and pick them up.
I began a new series this week with Murder on the Bucket List.
A group of senior citizens, all with sixty items on their bucket lists, are planning to go skinny dipping – one of the items. But their plans are disrupted when one of the ladies smells something funny. A quick investigation reveals a dead body in the gardening shed.
The investigation quickly centers on the husband of one of the ladies and two local celebrities – car racers. Laugh out loud scenes sprinkle the mystery. Lots of fun.
In my quest to read the entire Marcia Talley series, I finished Done Gone this week.
Hannah and her husband are alarmed when their neighbors disappear, with dinner still on the counter, and the cat unfed. Then Hannah receives a phone call from Trish. She sounds scared but promises to tell Hannah everything and arranges to meet in the parking lot of the local mall. As Trish is explaining. a gunshot shatters the window and hits Trish in the head.
She is brought to the hospital, still alive but barely. Hannah, using the few clues Trish has given her, begins to investigate. Georgina’s new man (her husband died in a previous book) assists. Another excellent read.
I also read Murder in Williamstown by Kerry Greenwood, the new Phryne Fisher mystery.
I am a long time fan of these mysteries but I had mixed feelings about this one.
Phryne’s adopted daughters, as part of a school program, volunteer at the local institute for the blind. Jane, who is good with numbers, is asked to look at the accounts. When she does, she finds a pattern of embezzlement. Phryne becomes involved. This case takes up a significant part of the first half.
On a date in Williamstown, Phryne finds an opium pipe. Lin, her long time lover, advises her to let this alone. Then a Westerner who loves all things Chinese, is murdered and a group of men prevent Phryne from pursuing him. The Lin’s wife asks Phryne to search for her missing sister. This was by far the most interesting mystery in the book.
Finally, Phryne is dealing with a stalker.
The focus was diffuse and the more interesting mystery involving drug smuggling and the missing girl did not, in my opinion, receive the attention it deserved. So, a mixed review from me.
This past week I read the most recent book in a series I love: the Sebastian St. Cyr series. Who cries for the lost.
When hostilities flare up in Europe with Napoleon’s escape from Elba, Sebastian frets at being kept home. He is convalescing from a wound that occurred in the previous title. A headless, handless body is pulled from the Thames and the evidence leads to Alexi Sauvage, Paul Gibson’s lover. Fearing that Gibson will be pulled into the accusations against Alexi, Sebastian begins looking into Sedgwick’s life. Sebastian quickly discovered that there are many who would have wanted the cruel and faithless man dead, including his wife, his mistress, the governess he seduced and many others.
Another excellent mystery. I did not see the twist at the end.
The second title, although completely different, was equally as good. Murder at the Jubilee Rally by Terry Shames is the latest in the Samuel Craddock series.
A motorcycle rally has come to town, upsetting the locals with the possibility of mayhem. Sure enough, a body is found behind the stage. The body turns out to be that of a local convenience store owner. Who would have wanted to murder a pillar of the community?
At the same time Samuel is investigating, he is hosting (and dealing with) defiant and rambunctious teenager who tests his patience to the utmost.
From the preponderance of female figures on seals and in frescoes, archaeologists believe Crete worshipped a Supreme Goddess, probably a fertility Goddess from Neolithic times. (Similar to Astarte.)There is some dispute whether the statuary depicting women with snakes in their hands are representations of the Goddess or Priestesses engaged in a ritual.
note the tiered skirt, the short-sleeved jacket and the tight belt around the waist.
Besides the Supreme Goddess, there was a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Poseidon, the God of the Oceans and Earthquakes, is one. (He was adopted by the mainland Greeks with almost no change.) Dionysus is another God, a very old one. A vegetation God, he is the God of wine as well as the Master of Animals. Unlike the Gods and Goddess of Classical Greece, Dionysus is not immortal. He is born each spring, grows to manhood throughout the year, and dies in winter.
One particularly interesting feature of Dionysus is his birth, in a cave and nourished by nanny goats. Sound familiar? The Cretan Zeus, a relative latecomer to the pantheon, is ascribed the same birth story. In Classical times, the same tale is told of Zeus’ birth, (although with a myth about the Titans surrounding it.) Zeus, of course, was elevated to the major God for the Classical Greeks.
The Goddesses are more complicated. Were they individuals or aspects of the Supreme Goddesses? Maybe a mix of the two? Aphrodite is connected to the Bronze Age and her name is pre-Greek. Artemis was a virgin, and the hunt was sacred to her, just as the Classical Greeks believed. Hera was another important Goddess. Shrines to her have been found in Crete. She was responsible for childbirth, a task she shared with Artemis. In the Classical Greek pantheon, she was reduced from being an important Goddess in her own right to Zeus’s jealous wife.
Britomartis meaning Sweet Virgin or Sweet Maiden, was worshipped by the fishermen. Her other name is Diktynna for the nets the fishermen used. I took her name and used the second half, Martis as the name of the protagonist in In the Shadow of the Bull and the sequels.
What about the Minotaur? Was the bull-headed man a God?We know that bulls were very very important in Ancient Crete. The statuary and frescos of bull leapers and the many representations of bulls is proof of that. But, was the Minotaur sacred? I choose to believe that the Minotaur was a creation of the Mainland Greeks, representing something they did not understand – rituals involving masked priests.
As excavations and study of this amazing culture continues, I’m sure we discover more about their religion.
This week I read two books, and they couldn’t be more different.
Jane Harper’s The Dry is the first using Aaron Fulk as the protagonist (followed by Exiles.) I read them out of order but it didn’t matter.
Aaron returns to his small Australian town for the funeral of his childhood friend, Luke. When young teens, their good friend was found drowned – murdered and Aaron has always been blamed for the murder. Some of the townspeople, in fact, still blame him.
Aaron plans to leave immediately after the funeral, but he is sucked into investigating Luke’s murder. As he does so, he slowly unwinds the events of that long ago summer, and the identity of his friend’s murderer.
Amazing!
The second book is Joanne Fluke’s Triple Chocolate Cheesecake Murder.
When Mayor Bascombe is murdered, Hannah’s sister Andrea is the primary suspect. She was involved in a very public argument with the mayor that ended with Andrea slapping the Mayor and knocking him to the floor.
Since the Mayor is unlikeable, Hannah is sure there are other suspects in town.
Hannah’s investigation is interspersed with meals, recipes included.
The mystery is very light but the recipes look interesting and fun, as usual.
On March 8, the Mavens of Mayhem will host Murderous March, a conference for both readers and writers.
I will be on the first panel on Saturday: Creating the Reluctant sleuth, with several other authors.
Panel 1Panel 2 – Female PIsFinding an agent of a publisher -query letters and your pitch.Impact of settingThe title says it all.
Registration information will come out soon. Typically, the Mavens also schedule Master classes that pinpoint a particular writing issue, taught by a well-known author or expert. More about the Master classes in a few weeks.
I missed a few Mondays because I went on a vacation to Europe. I always find it interesting to walk the streets of France, Germany, or any of the Scandinavian countries. Houses built 500 or even 1000 years ago are still in use. Humbling. Because of my passion for history, I take many excursions. (Although I admit I quickly tire of the plethora of churches).
But I digress. I read three books while traveling. On the plane to Amsterdam, I read Storm Watch by C.J. Box.
On the trail of a wounded animal, Joe Pickett comes upon a small nondescript building in the middle of the woods. The building is humming with fans and, stuck into one of them, is a man with the top of his head sheared off. Joe takes pictures and then heads home, to avoid the blizzard settling down on the mountains. But when he shares the photos with the Sheriff and they investigate, they do not find the dead man. Murder mixes with cryptocurrency, Chinese spies, and political corruption. Another winner!
I also read Murder off Stage by Mary Miley.
This is the fifth Jessie Beckett Roaring Twenties mystery. Jessie has gone from a vaudeville actor to a movie script girl who works with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. In this offering, Jesse and her good friend Adele Astaire attend a play. Unfortunately, when the actress shoots the actor, he falls down dead. The actress is immediately assumed to have murdered her colleague, but Jesse isn’t convinced. She just can’t figure out how this murder, and several others as well, were committed. Jessie is almost murdered herself before she solves the case.
I’ve read all five and enjoyed them. Miley says this one will be the last – sadly. I thought this one was the best so far and I wish she would continue the series.
Finally, I read Footprints to Murder by Marcia Talley.
To help out a friend, Hannah attends a Big Foot convention, populated by true believers. The descriptions of the characters are captivating even before the body of the murder victim is discovered. There are no shortage of suspects, the victim is nasty to all and has humiliated several of the attendees.
Is there really such a thing a Big Foot? Certainly some people firmly believe. Even without the mystery, this would be a charming novel. I have only a few left in this series and I will be very sorry when it ends. I feel I know Hannah and her family.
This week I read the fourth in a series of time travel mysteries by Carol Pouliot.
A bit of background. Olivia Watson and Stephen Blackwell live in the same house – just separated by eighty years. Olivia lives in the house in 2014 while Stephen lives in it in 1934. One night Stephen sees a woman sleeping in bed. She sees him pass in front of her and disappear into a wall. They discover they can cross from one time to another.
In this fourth offering, Stephen and Olivia have embarked on a relationship. They have been invited upstate, to the Onondaga Cabins for a holiday party. While there, the owner of the camp, as well as a newspaper empire, is murdered. Shortly after, the first victim’s son is murdered as well in a particularly cruel way.
This is, in effect, a locked room mystery. Since they are snowed in, no one can get in or out, although his partner Will and Jimmy Bou snowshoe through the heavy snow to assist.
Pouliot is brilliant in portraying Stephen’s partner, Will, and his questions about Olivia. He’s noticed certain anomalies and does an investigation into her – discovering, of course, that the college she graduated from and the paper she worked for have never heard of her. Pouliot handled Will’s questions, and his inevitable discovery of the secret, brilliantly.
Women have always worked. And up until the modern era, their jobs they’ve done remained fairly consistent.
First and foremost, the care of children. The work that women have done has been tasks that can be scheduled around childcare.
Across cultures, women have been responsible for food production – babies can be brought to the garden – and clothing their families. Although men did some farming, they owned oxen, most of the crops they relied upon were not cereals but orchard crops such as olives and grapes.
Weaving, up until modern times, has always been one of a woman’s primary jobs. Without the textiles the women made, there would be no cloth. Flax – and linen – known since Neolithic times, was joined by wool. Wool is easy to work with since it has a little more stretch than linen. Wool comes in a variety of shades, black gray, cream and more. It takes dyes easily as well How can we be sure they were weavers? Spindles and looms weights have been discovered in the excavations. I saw them myself in Akrotiri, a town buried by ash and now being revealed.
The Minoan men traded these textiles all over the Mediterranean.
The designs were very complicated, so complicated we can only assume a long learning curve, especially if the patterns had to memorized. One of the popular patterns consisted of heart spirals set point to point with red diamonds in the center. Colored spirals were another favorite. How do we know this? Statuary and wall painting depict gorgeously clad women in elaborate clothing dancing, picking saffron, and more. And not just in Crete either. The patterns have been recorded by Egyptian artists.
No wonder Nephele, Martis’s mother is horrified when Martis refuses to become a weaver.
It was not until the Industrial Revolution and mechanization of weaving that hand weaving ceased to be an in-house task and a profession.
Death Among the Ruins is Susanna Calkins seventh Lucy Campion Mystery. (And I have read the entire series!)
Lucy Campion is a printer’s apprentice, quite a step up for a servant in the Middle Ages. She is engaged to Adam Hargreaves, the son of the family she served, although she is quite nervous about the marriage because of the difference in their stations.
Death Among the Ruins begins with a rag picker approaching Lucy because she has found a dead body. Lucy accompanies her to the ruins, some of the many left by the Great Fire of 1666. It is immediately apparent the rag picker has not told the entire story.
An expensive dress leads Lucite the Mobley family, and the sickly daughter Charlotte. Lucy quickly realizes that all of the family members have secrets. But is any one of them the murderer?
Calkins’ real strength is her depiction of the 1600s in London. The descriptions, the characters, even the writing style puts you right there. Highly Recommended.
I have been a fan of Simon Brett for many years, right from his beginning with the Charles Paris mysteries. Mrs. Pargeter is one of his newer series. Mrs Pargetr’s Patio, which will be released later this month, is number seven.
Mrs Pargeter is enjoying the fine weather on her patio when one of the stones cracks, and reveals a human skull. What to do?
Fortunately, the now deceased Mr. Pargeter knew an array of dodgy characters that will gladly assist Mrs. Pargeter until it is the right time to call the police.
Funny as usual. Even the names: Concrete Jacket. Fixin’ Nixon, Truffler, are amusing. Fun.
