Dexter is Delicious

Dexter is a daddy! Precious little Lily Anne changes Dexter's worldview. He no longer wants to kill. Too bad Cody and Astor don't feel the same way, and now Uncle Brian is back, hanging around, showing the youngsters the way. To make matters worse, there is a group of cannibals killing and eating people, which is extreme even for Miami. Debs is in charge of finding a missing teenage girl, whose friend was found eaten, and is eager to find her before she suffers the same fate. Deb enlists Dexter's help, and  poor Dexter is kidnapped when his attempts to free the young lady fail, but Deb is able to rescue him. Acting on a tip from someone they don't really trust, Deb, her boyfriend Kyle, and Dexter head to the defunct amusement park Buccaneer Land, where they almost become dinner for the cannibal crew, but are rescued in time by Brian. Kyle skips town, embarrassed he was unable to protect Deb, but his timing is awful: Deb is pregnant.

Prairie Fires; Death of an Heir

Two really good ones I've been looking forward to reading. First up: "Prairie Fires" by Caroline Fraser. I love Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books, and over the last few years there have been quite a few books published that have researched Wilder's life and theorized how much her daughter, Rose, actually helped her write them, and if they were factual or not. This one was much, much better than "Libertarians on the Prairie". Fraser concludes that yes, Rose helped her mother edit and polish her original stories, but manuscripts in Laura's own hand show how much she did on her own, and she tried to keep them as factual as possible. What really got me about this one, something I had thought about before but it didn't really hit me until I read this, was poor Almanzo's story. He grew up comfortable in Malone, New York, his parents weren't rich by any means, but they weren't poor like Laura's parents were. They always had plenty of food (as anyone who's read "Farmer Boy" knows only too well) and Almanzo got an early start working on the farm, with horses, and he loved it. He was a brave, hardworking man, he saved the budding town of De Smet when the hard winter hit, risking his life to go get wheat so the settlers could eat. He and Laura were very, very happy at first, and he had no reason not to believe his hard work would pay off and someday he'd be just as happy and comfortable as his folks had been when he was a kid. He wanted to provide for his wife and their future children. He was honest and faithful and a bit of bad luck, catching diphtheria, crippled him for life. He told Rose, so poignantly, that his life had been "mostly disappointments", and that broke my heart. Not just for him, but for all the pioneers who struggled and scrimped and did their best just to stay afloat and failed, not through laziness or bad decisions, but sheer bad luck.

"Death of an Heir" by Philip Jett broke my heart as well, I cried a lot while reading it. Adolph Coors III, eldest grandson to the founder of the Coors brewery, was by all accounts a wonderful man: a good, fair boss; a loving husband and father to his four children; a dutiful son to his demanding father; and a hardworking partner with his two brothers, who helped him run the brewery. Everyone liked "Ad", as he was called. Ad loved living out in the country on a ranch and raising horses, at forty-four years old he was looking forward to phasing out the brewery side of his life and concentrating more on working outdoors. All that ended on February 9, 1960, when Joe Corbett Jr. carried out his audacious plan to kidnap the heir and collect a big ransom. Corbett was a fugitive from California who had murdered a man and managed to escape and get to Colorado. He had worked on his kidnapping plan for years, but what he didn't count on was Ad Coors, a healthy, athletic man, putting up a fight. Rather than surrendering meekly to Corbett, Ad fought back and as a result Corbett shot him, killing him. He then bundled his body up in his car and drove to a dump, where he cast him aside and returned to Denver to mail the prepared ransom note to the widow. After several months on the run, the FBI eventually caught him (well, Canada caught him and let the FBI know) and he was brought back to Denver to stand trail for the murder of Ad Coors. In Colorado, in order to get the death penalty, you had to have either an eyewitness or a confession. The police tried to get a confession out of him with no luck, so he stood trial and got life imprisonment. He professed his innocence to the end of his life, but the kicker was he only served about 18 years in prison and was paroled. He ended up killing himself in 2009 when he found out he had cancer. It just disgusted me that he took a good man's life and only ended up spending 18 years in prison. Ad Coors and his family deserved better.

Hardcore Twenty-Four

I was kind of disappointed by Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum, "Hardcore Twenty-Four". She slumped for a bit there, but the last few years have been pretty decent. Not as good as the first six or seven, of course, but still, better than they were. This one was meh. I mean, how many different ways can Stephanie destroy a high end luxury car that Ranger loans her? After awhile it's all the same. Diesel makes an appearance in this one, and I know he's one of Evanovich's supernatural characters from a different series (although I think he got his start on the Plum novellas she used to write--it's hard to remember at this point), and I'm not really a fan of mixing him in with books that are supposed to be somewhat realistic. It's just jarring and weird. At any rate, it looks like Trenton has been infested by zombies. They turn out to be regular folks who are under the influence of a potent new drug that makes them act like the undead. There's someone going around stealing heads off dead bodies in the morgue, which is gross, and Morelli is at his wit's end trying to figure out who would do such a thing. Stephanie's got her hands full taking care of a pet boa constrictor for a guy she had to take to jail, and she keeps running into the zombies in the woods by the guy's trailer. Definitely not one of her best.

The Beguiled

I've been trying to get through Thomas Cullinan's "The Beguiled" for months now. Of course there was a long waiting list for it because of the movie, so I went on the list. Once I got the book, I started reading it, got about 2/3 of the way through, then had to return it because of the holds. Went back on the list, waited, and finally got it again and was able to finish it. Whew! It was actually pretty good. John McBurney is a wounded Union soldier who is found in the woods by Amelia, a young Southern girl attending a small boarding school run by two spinster sisters. The book alternates chapters between the other students at the school and the two sisters who run it. As you can imagine, a small, impoverished all girls' boarding in the middle of the Civil War is a pretty boring place to be, the girls are on each others' nerves, and McBurney provides some welcome entertainment. He is young and handsome and charming, and quite good at pitting the young ladies against each other. He is a shameless liar and flirt, and before long the girls are ready to kill each other over this young man. One of the sisters tries to kick him out, only to have him basically take the school hostage and declare he's not going anywhere until he's good and ready. I loved the ending, even though I saw it coming, it felt very realistic.

Grip of It; Walking Dead Vol. 28: A Certain Doom; Strange Death of Europe

The reviews for "The Grip of It" 'by Jac Jemc sounded pretty good, so I took a shot and wasn't disappointed, it was an appropriately creepy haunted house story with unreliable narrators, so at the end of it I wasn't sure if the house was *actually* haunted or if the husband and wife were just whackjobs. James gambled away his savings, and Julie suggests they move away from the city (and the temptations) and give themselves a fresh start. They find themselves with a fixer upper that was too good a deal to pass up. The neighbor next door is kind of a creep, and no one wants to talk about the house's sad history. Major red flags right there. James and Julie alternate chapters, talking about the escalating weirdness in the house: the strange drawings that appear on the walls, the secret passages, the mold in the water, the stains on the walls that get bigger. Julie finds herself covered in bruises with no idea where they came from, and James just stops showing up at work, obsessed with discovering the history of the house, and gets fired. Neither of them talk to each other, so they're both wondering why the other one is acting so strangely. The kicker comes when Julie throws herself off the roof.   

Getting caught up on the "Walking Dead" graphic novels by Robert Kirkman. I stopped watching the show a few years ago, but I heard they killed off a major character that I really liked, so I'm glad I don't watch anymore. This one picks up where Vol. 27 left off: the herd of undead the Whisperers have unleashed is heading straight for Alexandria. Andrea takes off on a horse with a few others in an attempt to turn the herd and drive them into the ocean. Rick stays behind with the others to defend the walls of Alexandria. When they collapse, Negan actually ends up saving his life (Negan turns out to be sensible character in these novels in a *long* time, oddly enough). Andrea is successful in getting the majority of the herd to jump off the cliff into the ocean, but she is bitten in the process and goes home to die in Rick's arms. That sucked :( Carl and the other Hilltop survivors pitch in to help defend Alexandria, and in the end they're working on rebuilding, with poor Rick devastated about Andrea and unsure how he's going to go on without her.

Douglas Murray's "Strange Death of Europe" is a wake up call to anyone who still thinks open borders are a good idea. In just a few short years, a lot of Europe doesn't resemble Europe anymore. With hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving yearly, countries are scrambling to find shelter and food, in addition to medical care, jobs, and schooling, for all the newcomers. People are angry, and one of the best points he makes is that we can't even have a dialogue about it because if anyone dares to ask why European culture doesn't matter, they are labeled racist and xenophobic. What does it mean to be European? What shared cultural norms are there? It's heavy stuff, and while everyone wants to be compassionate, at the same time the question has to be: at what cost? When do you draw the line and say enough? No easy answers here, but lots to think about.

The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories

Most of the short stories in "The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories" have been published in previous collections and anthologies, so I'm pretty sure I've read most of them before, but only a few sounded familiar. They were all pretty good, I especially enjoyed "Two Blondes", which had Sookie and Pam traveling to a strip club and auditioning together to cover for the fact that they had just killed the club's owner. Only one story really had Eric in it (lame) but they were still fun.

Dexter by Design

Jeff Lindsay's fourth Dexter book, "Dexter by Design", starts with Dexter in Paris, on his honeymoon with Rita. They come home and Dexter faces an interesting case at work: someone is making performance art pieces out of dead bodies. Deb asks for his help, and when they go to question a witness, Debs is stabbed. Her new partner, Coulter, is onto Dexter and giving him a hard time. Dexter enlists Deb's boyfriend, Kyle, to help him track down the guy who's trying to "frame" him for killing the guy he thought stabbed Deb (Dexter actually did kill him, and was caught on camera, so his story is that the film is bogus). Oh, and the guy he thought stabbed Deb *actually* didn't, so he kind of killed an innocent man. Whoops. At any rate, it all worked out in the end and Rita has some wonderful news for Dexter--he's going to be a Daddy!

Whispering Room

Jane Hawk's mad run from the law continues in Dean Koontz's "The Whispering Room". Jane gets an unlikely ally in the form of a sheriff from a rural Minnesota town who is devastated when an upstanding member of the community turns her car into a bomb and drives it into a hotel, killing a bunch of people. Luther finds Cora's journals at her house and reads about the spider in her brain that she wrote was taking over her life, and knows something big is going on. He lights out for Iron Furnace, Tennessee, where Cora went to a convention the year earlier and came back "different", according to a close friend of hers. Jane shows up in the town at the same time, on a trail given to her by one of the lawyers involved in the conspiracy to eliminate people who are a threat to their takeover of the world (confused yet? Shockingly, it all made sense in a scary sort of way). Jane and Luther team up and rescue a group of kids from the town and take them to safety, and Jane heads to San Francisco to confront the big bad guy, who turns out not to be the big bad guy after all but a front. Oh dear. I have a feeling this is all going to get worse before it gets better.

Member of the Family

I put Dianne Lake's book, "Member of the Family", on hold as soon as we ordered it, and I got it right when Manson finally died. Good riddance. Fifty years too late, in my opinion. Why the state of California kept that piece of human garbage alive and fed is beyond me. At any rate, ever since I read "Helter Skelter" at the age of 13, I've been fascinated by the Manson family and read everything I could about them. Dianne Lake was just fourteen when she joined his killer cult, a lost, rebellious teen whose own parents were no fit guardians. They were happy to let Dianne go off with a group of complete strangers, since she had been causing problems in the communes they flitted to and from. Charles made Dianne feel loved and secure and safe, and she spent two years with the family, until they were all arrested at Barker Ranch and Susan Atkins spilled the beans and the cops realized they had more than just drug taking, dune buggy stealing hippies behind bars. Dianne spent some time in a mental hospital, regaining her sanity (she was psychotic, mostly from all the LSD she'd ingested over the years) and when she got out she was fostered by a kind cop and his wife. She had to testify at Manson's trial, since she witnessed Leslie Van Houten burning items belonging to Rosemary LaBianca (she didn't participate, or even know about the killings until after they happened). It was a powerful and moving story, and she didn't flinch from telling the uncomfortable details. I'm glad she's had a good, healthy life since then, and I'm even more glad Charles Manson is dead.

Dexter in the Dark

In the third Dexter book, "Dexter in the Dark", Dexter shows up at a crime scene where two young women have been burned and decapitate, their heads replaced with ceramic bull's heads. It's not particularly gruesome or more awful than other crime scenes he's been to, but for some reason this crime scene scares the bejeesus out of his Dark Passenger, who flees, leaving Dexter alone for the first time in his life, unsure of how to proceed, and totally uninterested in killing. His sister and the rest of the detectives are trying to solve the murders, Rita is trying to get him interested in planning their wedding, Cody and Astor are trying to convince him they're ready to kill on their own, and all Dexter can think about is getting his Dark Passenger back. Poor damaged Dexter!

Miss D and Me

I really enjoyed Kathryn Sermak's "Miss D and Me". I think I've read one other book about Bette Davis, before I started keeping this blog, so it's been quite awhile. I've seen a few of her movies, "Baby Jane", of course, and "Jezebel", which I really like. Kathryn was Miss Davis's personal assistant and good friend the last decade of her life, traveling with her to Europe and spending time with her family. She grew to love and appreciate her as a person and not just a celebrity. Kathryn's admiration for her spirit and courage come through loud and clear. I especially enjoyed hearing how Bette named her Mustang "Black Beauty", which is also what I named my Camaro :)

Twin Peaks: the Final Dossier

So I was hoping Mark Frost's "Twin Peaks: the Final Dossier" would help clear up some of the last season of "Twin Peaks", but it kind of didn't. It helped for some things, like Shelly and her daughter, but mostly it just summarized what had happened over all three seasons, provided some backstory in some spots, and theorized what might have happened during the interim between seasons two and three. Still, it was a quick read and a good refresher on what all went down (and yes, I know technically the last season isn't really season three, but it makes sense in my head to call it that, so I am). I have more questions than answers after reading it, but in a good way. That's what "Twin Peaks" has always been about :)