Necessary Roughage

 

A bit of good trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.

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Phyllis McGinley, author

 

I have been on a light-reading binge lately with little to say about the various books other than I enjoyed them for one reason or another but don't have much else to say about them. These are books that aren't part of series that I am working my way through (Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, Ngaio Marsh, Charles Todd et. al). On The West Wing, they called it "taking out the trash day," getting rid of the unresolved minutiae so they could move on to the big stuff.

 

The Van Gogh Deception

 

 

By: Deron Hicks
Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
Series: Lost Art Mysteries Series, Book 1
Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins

 

 
Publisher's Summary
A Sunshine State Young Readers Award nominee 
Dan  Brown meets Jason Bourne in this riveting middle-grade mystery  thriller. When a young boy is discovered in Washington DC's National  Gallery without any recollection of who he is, so begins a high-stakes  race to unravel the greatest mystery of all: his identity. 
As  the stakes continue to rise, the boy must piece together the disjointed  clues of his origins while using his limited knowledge to stop one of  the greatest art frauds ever attempted.
©2017 Deron Hicks (P)2020 Tantor     

 

DD recommends. I might even read more in the series, if I can borrow them from the library. This is thriller at my speed.

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The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Dramatized)

 

 

By: Dorothy L. Sayers
Narrated by: Ian Carmichael, Peter Jones, Martin Jarvis
Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
Performance

Publisher's Summary
The elegant, intelligent amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey is one of detective literature's most popular creations. Ian Carmichael is the personification of Dorothy L. Sayers' charming investigator in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. The dignified calm of the Bellona Club is shattered when Lord Wimsey finds General Fentiman dead in his favourite chair. A straighforward death by natural causes? Perhaps... but why can no one remember seeing the general the day he died? And who is the mysterious Mr Oliver? Lord Peter moves between London and Paris, salon and suburbs, to unfold the intriguing case.
©1991, 2002, 2006 BBC Audiobooks Ltd (P)2006 BBC Audiobooks Ltd

 

I don't like dramatizations. But it was free and it has been sitting in my Library for a while... and it is a Dorothy Sayers. So I sat through it but I was right, I don't like dramatizations. It is even worse than reading an abridged edition. But there isn't a lot of Sayers available on audio and I have read all that I can get my hands on. Time for some re-reads.

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Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

 

 

By: Donna Andrews
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
Series: Meg Langslow, Book 3
Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
Unabridged Audiobook

Publisher's Summary
Yorktown, Virginia, is reliving its role in the Revolutionary War by celebrating the anniversary of the British surrender in 1781. This year, plans include a reenactment of the battle and a craft fair. Meg Langslow has returned to her home town for the festivities - and to sell her wrought-iron flamingos.
Meg's also trying to keep her father from scaring too many tourists with his impersonation of an 18th-century physician - not to mention saving her brother from the clutches of a con man who might steal the computer game he's invented. It's a tough job - until the swindler is found dead, slain in Meg's booth with one of her wrought-iron creations. Now Meg must add another item to her to-do list: Don't forget to solve the murder!
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC

 

Pure mind candy

This is a series that I am not rushing through. It is just sitting on the back burner waiting for those days when I want to read something that is entirely mindless and entirely preposterous. Something I can laugh with and at.

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The Luck of the Bodkins

 

By: P. G. Wodehouse
Narrated by: Jonathan Cecil
Series: Drones Club, Monty Bodkin, Book 1
Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

Publisher's Summary
Things on board the RMS Atlantic are terribly, terribly complicated.... Monty Bodkin loves Gertrude, who thinks he likes Lotus Blossom, a starlet who definitely adores Ambrose, who thinks that she has a thing for his brother, Reggie, who is struck by Mabel Spence, sister-in-law of Ikey Llewellyn (movie mogul, Ambrose’s prospective employer and reluctant smuggler), but hasn’t the means to marry her. With well-meaning but unhelpful ship’s steward Albert Peasemarch and a toy mouse with a screw-top head thrown in for good measure, it will, indeed, take the luck of the Bodkins to sort it all out.
©2012 The Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate (P)2012 AudioGO

Wodehouse delights in absurdities and I delight in Wodehouse. 'Nuff said.

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The Raphael Affair

 

 

By: Iain Pears
Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
Series: Jonathan Argyll Art History Mysteries, Book 1
Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins

 

Publisher's Summary
Set in Rome, The Raphael Affair features the perpetually beset General Bottando of the Italian National Art Theft Squad; his glamorous assistant, Flavia di Stefano; and Jonathan Argyll, a British art historian. When Jonathan is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. The painting disappears - then reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for?
There is also the curious matter of the safe deposit box full of sketches closely resembling features of the newly discovered painting. A hideous act of vandalism occurs, then murder. Bottando faces the most critical challenge of his career, and Jonathan and Flavia find themselves in unexpected danger.
©1990 Iain Pears (P)1996 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Found this in the Audible Plus catalog of free books. I grabbed it because I like art history. No idea who the author is but the premise looked interesting. The book wasn't bad and I thought I would try other books in the series.

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The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman

 

By: Julietta Henderson
Narrated by: Katherine Parkinson
Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

Publisher's Summary
"Charming, warm and uplifting...there is so much to love about this book." (Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This is How It Always Is)
A triumphant and touching debut about the unlikeliest superstar you’ll ever meet.
Twelve-year-old Norman Foreman and his best friend, Jax, are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a plan to take their act all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe. But when Jax dies, Norman decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the festival himself. The problem is, Norman’s not the funny one. Jax was.
There’s also another, far more colossal objective on Norman’s new plan that his single mom, Sadie, wasn’t ready for: he wants to find the father he’s never known. Determined to put a smile back on her boy’s face, Sadie resolves to face up to her own messy past, get Norman to the Fringe and help track down a man whose identity is a mystery, even to her.
Julietta Henderson’s delightfully funny and tender debut takes us on a road trip with a mother and son who will live in the reader’s heart for a long time to come, and teaches us that - no matter the odds - we must always reach for the stars.
©2021 Juliette Henderson (P)2021 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

DD recommends. I liked it. It was bittersweet but with the emphasis on the sweet. Surprised that it was published by Harlequin; it is much better than what I've come to expect from that imprint.

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The Man That Got Away

 

 

By: Lynne Truss
Narrated by: Matt Green
Series: A Constable Twitten Mystery, Book 2
Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

 

Publisher's Summary
1957: In the beach town of Brighton, music is playing and guests are sunning themselves when a young man is found dead, dripping blood, in a deck chair. Constable Twitten of the Brighton Police Force has a hunch that the fiendish murder may be connected to a notorious nightspot, but his captain and his colleagues are - as ever - busy with other more important issues. Inspector Steine is being conned into paying for the honor of being featured at the Museum of Wax, and Sergeant Brunswick is trying (and failing) to get the attention of the distraught Brighton Belles who found the body. As the case twists and turns, Constable Twitten must find the murderer and convince his colleagues that there's an evil mastermind behind Brighton's climbing crime rate.
Our incomparable team of detectives are back for another outing in the second installment of Lynne Truss' joyfully quirky crime series.
©2019 Lynne Truss (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd

 

I read the first book in the series. A Shot in the Dark and I still agree with what I said:

"It's the characters, not the mystery

... Suspend disbelieve all ye who enter here. While it isn't the best mystery story I have read, how can you not laugh at a Police Chief who has no interest in catching criminals and his rookie constable who is smarter than he is and does have an interest in catching  them. I like her wry humor; it is the saving grace."

Book 2 is better than the first. If I can find them at the Library, I'll be back for 3 and 4. And I love the cover art.

The Eighth Detective

also published as Eight Detectives
by Alex Pavesi (read by Emilia Fox)

Library loan

 

 

Publisher's Summary
 
There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective.

Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked all the rules out - and wrote seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate. But that was 30 years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days.

Until Julia Hart, a brilliant, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past and an editor keen to understand it.

But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve.

Alex Pavesi's The Eighth Detective is a love letter to classic detective stories with a modern twist, where nothing is as it seems, and proof that the best mysteries break all the rules.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company 
©2020 Alex Pavesi (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

 

A solidly three-star read.

I grabbed this one after reading Elanterri's review. I wanted to see if I agreed with her assessment or if as a reader of mysteries I would have a different take on the book. I agreed with her but have my own take on the book.

McAllister's mathematical analysis of the 4 ingredients (as they were described in the book, not rules) were interesting but, in the final analysis, banal. It might make a fun paper to write for a college "math for poets" paper to show that you understand set theory. ("For poets" was a designation we used at my college to describe a series of somewhat watered-down classes that were aimed at fulfilling the requirement that we all had to take at least two classes in each of four areas of endeavor). For lovers of murder mysteries, this mathematical analysis is just one more way to look at the stories we love to read.

The structure of the book is just plain weird: stories within a story with some twists. Julia Hart reads the stories to McAllister and then they discuss them and when they get to the end of the 7th short story, all hell breaks lose. That same discussion 6 times over just got boring. Honestly, I would have been just as happy to read the unadulterated short stories because they were much more interesting that the rest of the tale.

The bottom-line is that something was missing from this book, something that makes this a "meh" rather a "wow."

 

The Last Judgement

Life's Too Short

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Publisher's Summary

In an exchange of favors with an art dealer colleague, Jonathan Argyll unluckily offers to transport a painting from Paris back to Rome. It seems routine work, and Jonathan gets to meet his girlfriend, Flavia, who works for Rome's Art Theft Squad.But when a would-be thief tries to take the painting at the train station, and the art dealer seems less interested in his purchase once he sees it, Jonathan wonders why, as events unfold, someone is willing to kill for it. With customary wit and panache, Jonathan and Flavia embark on a breathless chase to capture a killer who has been refining his own particular art for many years.

©1993 Iain Pears (P)1997 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

 

 

It is so much easier to write about the books you hate!

 

A few weeks ago I read The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears. It was enjoyable but nothing to write home about. The other day, I picked up another book in the series, The Last Judgement. It was DNF within 15 minutes -- just as soon as a supposedly intelligent man falls for one of the oldest cons in the book and lets a stranger watch his bags, which include a purchase (i.e., not his property) that he is delivering to buyer on behalf of a gallery owner while he goes off to buy cigarettes. The stupidity of the whole set-up so utterly pissed me off that I quit reading before the chase was even underway. I don't care how amazing the rest of the story is supposed to be.I lost interest in pursuing it. DNF!

 

I soothed away the hurt with a nice Ngaio Marsh.

How Iceland Changed the World

 

by Egill Bjarnason  (read by Einar Gunn)

 

 

 

 

Going to Iceland? Read this before you go. Not going? Read it anyway. It is not full of boring historical details but paints a vivid picture of this island on the crossroads and its history-making roll over the last millenium. Best of all, with the audio version, you get to hear how all the names and places are pronounced.

Four stars -- for making history enjoyable

No Highway

 

by Nevil Shute (read by Ben Elliot)

What a Honey of a story.

 

Every time I read a Nevil Shute story, I wonder why no one writes stories like this any more.

Theodore Honey is metallurgical engineer on the cutting edge of studies of metal fatigue and stress in airplanes and in particular of a particular airplane design that has just come on line. The wings fall of the plane after so many hours of flying. Honey, really the wrong man for the job, is sent off to the wilds of Canada to find and examine the plane that just went down. When it turns out that the plane taking him to Canada is one should have been grounded, all hell breaks loose.

Moon Over Soho

 

by Ben Aaronovitch (read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith)

Rivers of London, Book 2

 

 

 

 

Fun, light read

I don't look for any depth in this series just an entertainingly good story that I don't have to think about, or even remember, when I am finished. I love the idea of it , the characters and I love the narrator.

I have not been reading the series in order but waiting to buy the titles when I see them in a sale pile. Maybe one day, when I have them all, I will have a Rivers of London marathon and read them all one after another.

Four stars -- because it's fun and entertaining and clever