Strawberry Shortcake Murder

Joanne Fluke's second Hannah Swensen book was a quick, fun read. A flour company is holding their annual bake off at Lake Eden, and Hannah is a judge. One of the other judges has a dental emergency and has to drop out, so the high school basketball coach, Boyd Watson, fills in. Hannah doesn't care for Boyd, since she knows his dirty secret: he beats his wife, Danielle. When Danielle calls her in the middle of the night, begging her to come over, Hannah assumes Boyd has been hitting her again. Instead she finds Boyd beaten to death with a hammer in the garage. Danielle swears she didn't do it, even though she had good reason to, and Hannah believes her. So does Mike, the new detective on the force, but he forbids Hannah from meddling in the investigation like she did last time. Hannah ignores him and enlists her sister Andrea's help. She and Andrea determine a local reporter named Lucy is blackmailing people, and after rifling through her apartment find a roll of film hidden in a secret compartment in her desk. Norman, the local dentist, is an amateur photographer and develops the film for Hannah, and they find out Lucy got a picture of Boyd's murder. Unfortunately the only thing they can make out is a unique cuff link, so Hannah and Andrea go to work trying to track it down.

Popular Crime

I enjoyed Bill James' "Man From the Train" so much that I decided to see what else he had written. Sadly, mostly baseball books, but a few years ago he did write a book called "Popular Crime", looking at what cases have captured America's attention over the last several hundred years and trying to determine what made these cases different. The same snarky sense of humor that made "Man From the Train" so good is here as well, so it was an enjoyable read. He made some interesting conclusions about why crime stories wavered in popularity for awhile (I've oversimplifying, but the press was ashamed of themselves after the Lindbergh trial, so they backed off printing salacious news for the good of the country, which ended up backfiring because people thought they were safer than they were. Violent, ugly crime was still happening in the 40s, 50s, and early 60s, but because it wasn't being reported as nonstop as it used to be people didn't realize it). While I disagree with him about some of his conclusions to unsolved crimes, he makes a good case for his arguments. I do hope he decides to write more crime books, he's a gem. 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder

I was at my parents' house a few weeks ago, and my mom was watching a movie based on this book. I was watching it with her, going "the name Hannah Swensen sounds so familiar, I think it's a book..." and pulled out my phone, did the whole Google thing, and viola! It is a series I've seen for years, working in the bookstore and the library. The movie was actually pretty good, so I wanted to read the books, and I started with the first one. Hannah is a 29 year old baker who owns her own shop, the Cookie Jar, in Eden Lake, Minnesota. She lives with her cat, Moishe. Her overbearing mother, Delores, tries to throw her at every eligible man in a hundred mile radius, and the latest victim is Norman, a dentist who recently returned to town after his father died to take over his practice. Hannah doesn't think much of Norman at first, but as she gets to know him better she comes to appreciate his kindness and wit. Hannah's distracted by the murder of her milk delivery man, Ron, right behind her shop. She was the one who found the body, and since her shop is a hub of tiny Eden Lake gossip, her brother in law, Bill, who is a cop, asks her to keep her eyes and ears open and let him know if she hears anything. Hannah takes this to mean she is now a detective and starts straight up investigating. It was a fun, quick read, I enjoyed it. Hannah is very likable.

City of Thieves; Dexter's Final Cut

A customer at work asked if I watched "Game of Thrones", and I said yes, and he asked if I had read co-creator David Benioff's "City of Thieves" and I said no, and he said I should so I did, and I'm glad I did, it was really brilliant. It's either meant to be semi-autobiographical about David's grandfather or we're to believe it is: the book starts with a young screenwriter named David going to interview his Russian grandfather about his experiences during WWII. He goes to Florida and sits down with his retired grandfather to hear the story about how he killed two German soldiers before he turned eighteen and met his wife to be. The poverty of Russia during the war: people eating the paste out of library books, resorting to cannibalism, was really heartbreaking. Lev is captured when he and some friends go to inspect a dead German paratrooper and taken to a prison known as the Crosses. There he meets Kolya, a young soldier accused of deserting. They are taken to a Colonel who promises to spare their lives if they return in a few days with a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding cake. No one has seen eggs for months, but Lev and Kolya are determined, so off they go, chasing black market rumors and fighting for their lives. The ending was bittersweet.

Dexter is given the job of showing actor Robert Chase how to be a forensics geek so Robert can be authentic in his new show. The pilot is shooting in Miami, and Deborah has to show beautiful actress Jackie Forrest how to be a hard nosed detective. Dexter is attracted to Jackie, and she to him, so when she reveals that she's being stalked by a psychopath and doesn't want the network to know for fear they'll recast her, Dexter offers to be her full time bodyguard and moves into her plush suite at a local hotel. Dexter hunts down the psycho stalker and kills him, but then Jackie's assistant Kathy is killed. Dexter is spending all his time with Jackie on the pretense of earning money for a pool cage for their new house, and ignores Rita until she tells him Astor is missing. Dexter realizes she's with Robert Chase, who is rumored to have a penchant for underage girls, and goes looking for them, only to find Jackie dead. He finally finds Astor and Robert at the new house, and Robert has killed Rita. Astor kills Robert, and it looks like it might be the end for poor Dashing Dexter. 

New Annotated Frankenstein

I read "Frankenstein" back when I was a teenager, and again as an undergrad when I took a class on horror literature (Best.Class.Ever.). I hadn't read it since, so while I knew the story (it's one of those books that even if you haven't read it, you probably know the basic story) I couldn't remember all of the exact details. I actually ended up remembering more than I thought I did. I really enjoy annotated books, they add so much fun background information if they're done correctly, and this one was nicely done. It's still amazing to me that Mary Shelley (Mary Goodwin at the time, she hadn't married Percy Shelley yet, although they had already had two children together at this point) was only 19 when she wrote the rough draft for "Frankenstein". The story of how it came about is pretty familiar: while trapped in a villa during a particularly rainy summer, the occupants challenged each other to tell scary ghost stories, and "Frankenstein" was the story Mary came up with. Of course it was a little more complicated than that, and she worked on it for awhile before it was published. Scholars have debated for years over how much help Percy gave her, and it turns out some, but the story was definitely hers. What was nice about this version was that it was the original one from 1818, she revised it quite a bit in 1831 and that's the version most people have read (including me). Klinger did a good job of pointing out that while most of the differences were stylistic, some definitely had to do with what had happened to Mary in the years between the two versions: her young son William had died, she'd given birth to another child, and Percy had drowned. In 1831 she was more sympathetic to her characters than in 1818, realizing that sometimes life just hands you bad luck and it has nothing to do with the choices you've made and the life you've led. It makes perfect sense: at 19 I thought I knew everything, too, and was very hard on people, assuming their poor life decisions led to their circumstances. Now I know better, and it seems like Mary did too.

Man From the Train; I Will Find You; There's Someone Inside Your House

Hooray for four day holiday weekends filled with great crime books! First up, an excellent one, I really enjoyed Bill James's writing style: sarcastic and witty and darkly humorous. In the early 1900s, families were being obliterated by an axe murderer who used the blunt side, not the sharp side like the Axeman of New Orleans. James thinks they were mostly all done by the same perpetrator based on patterns that were followed: early on he lit the houses on fire on his way out, he covered the windows and blocked the doors, took the shades off of lamps, posed the prepubescent females (and did other things to them). All of the murders occurred in small towns fairly close to train tracks, leading James to conclude the murderer worked (since the murders all happened on the weekends) and that he rode a train, hopped off and killed the family, then hopped back on and disappeared. James has a suspect, too, that he thinks went back to Europe and that's why the killings stopped. It was pretty compelling.

I've seen a few episodes of "Homicide Hunter", but not too many. I wanted to like Detective Joe Kenda's book, but honestly, it was pretty dull. He repeated himself a lot, and there were some editorial mistakes that irritated me. He had a really great success rate and was quite tenacious in solving cases, which is all great, I think he just didn't go into too much detail in the book because of the show. 

I loved the hell out of Stephanie Perkins' "There's Someone Inside Your House". It's a YA book I wish would have existed when I was a teen, I would have gobbled it up. Makani is new to Nebraska, staying with her grandmother after a scandal forced her to leave Hawaii (we learn what it was about halfway through the book). The previous summer, Makani hooked up with Ollie, an outcast, but they haven't spoken since, and Makani is confused and frustrated by the whole thing. They finally talk and work things out (big misunderstanding, which I feel is pretty common with teens), just in time for a bunch of murders to disrupt their quiet football loving town. The first girl to die is a popular drama student, then a big time football player. It seems like the killer is targeting popular kids, until he comes after Makani. She and Ollie are able to identify the killer as another outcast named David, and the city goes into full manhunt mode. David is able to evade them and continue killing. It was really good. I'm tempted to read some of her other books, but this is the only one about killing, so maybe not :)

Double Dexter

Jeff Lindsay's sixth Dexter book finds Dexter being followed by someone who caught him in the act and admired his work so much he's decided to emulate him. Dexter doesn't appreciate the fan club, especially when the guy sends him vaguely threatening emails about how easily he could expose him. Deb solves a big case involving cops being beaten to death with a baseball bat, but when another person ends up dead in a similar fashion it looks as if she captured the wrong guy. Dexter is kind of an idiot in this one, which was unlike him. I thought the ending was very fun, if not a bit contrived.

Bibliomysteries; Anxious for Nothing

This collection of short mystery stories that take place in bookstores or libraries (or other related bookish places) was really fun! I checked it out because of the Mickey Spillane story, but I enjoyed all of the others. My favorite was the one by John Connolly called "The Caxton Lending Library and Book Depository". It's about a shy, introvert who loves to read and thanks to the death of his mother is able to quit his boring office job and move into her little cottage to enjoy a life of leisurely reading. One day while out on a stroll, he notices a woman throw herself in front of an oncoming train. Horrified, he notifies the police. They come out and search for any sign of the presumably dead woman on the tracks, but come up with nothing. Poor Mr. Berger is afraid he's losing his mind, so he keeps coming back to the spot, hoping to see the woman again, and he does! He is able to stop her from throwing herself on the train tracks again, but she takes off before he can get any information out of her. He does follow her to a building with a sign that says it is the Caxton Lending Library and Book Depository. Calls to other big libraries get him nowhere, no one has ever heard of it, there's no phone number, no way to contact them. Mr. Berger stakes the place out until he sees a man go in and approaches him. He's the librarian, and not only is he in charge of the rare first editions and manuscripts within the library itself, he also is in charge of the fictional characters who live there.
That's right: fictional characters who are very popular and well known come to life after their creators die, and find their way to the Caxton Library, where they live. The woman Mr. Berger saw try to kill herself was of course Anna Karenina. Mr. Berger is naturally quite fascinated and keeps coming back to visit with the librarian and Anna. It was a really fun story that made me wish such a job really existed :)

I admit, I find myself anxious all the time, and it's usually for naught. My job is the main source of my stress, although it really shouldn't be. No one's life is in my hands, what I do every day doesn't alter the course of history. I just spend an inordinate amount of my time around unpleasant, rude people who are mean to me for no good reason and as a result I panic a lot. Lucado is of course an inspirational Christian author, and although I don't really subscribe to his religion, I can still take some tips and comfort from what he says. He makes a lot of good points in this book, especially about choosing what you want to think about and dwell on. As tough as it is to say: "just don't think about it", sometimes you really do have to force yourself not to think about it. I'll try.

The Handyman; Everything's Bigger in Texas

I'm not sure what's going on with this cover photo. Is it a demon rising out of the house or something? It's a terrible image that doesn't really capture the book, which is unfortunate, it was pretty good. Daniel is a real estate agent, showing a young couple a fixer upper in Big Bear, and they mention that it looks like a "Frank house". Daniel asks them to elaborate, and it turns out the husband's mom lives in a "Frank house": it was "fixed up" by a handyman named Frank who had no idea what he was doing and made a botch of the thing. Daniel knows only too well: as a kid, his family bought a piece of land in Arizona, along with a prefab house, and hired a local man named Frank to build it. The house was a disaster, and Daniel's brother Billy ended up dying because of Frank's incompetence, and Daniel's parents never recovered from the loss. Daniel had no idea there were other "Frank houses" out there, and he starts investigating and discovers the malignant forces surrounding each of the structures. It was an interesting take on the traditional haunted house story.

I love Kinky Friedman. Not quite sure why. I've read some of his fiction and it's all right, but not brilliant. I've read some of his nonfiction, and it's been hit or miss as well. I've heard some of his music, and it's not really my style. I guess what I like about him is his general life philosophy. Kinky's had an interesting life: he was a chess prodigy as a child, spent a few years in Borneo with the Peace Corps, and founded a band called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. They toured and cut records and actually did fairly well, but never got their big break. The band broke up and Kinky drifted around, mostly doing coke, until he decided to become a writer and started cranking out mystery novels. Again, he had mild success but never got that big break. He quit writing mysteries when he decided to run for governor of Texas back in 2006. He lost, but he put on an interesting campaign that showed that people really are tired of the same politicians who promise a lot but get nothing done. I think what I admire most about him is his love of animals. He founded the Utopia Animal Ranch, where animals who would otherwise be killed are rescued and loved until they find their forever homes. I always said if I ever got rich enough I'd love to do something like that too. It was a well written book, very funny and poignant at the same time.