The Case of the Mythical Monkeys

 

This was a really fun one. Gladys is a personal secretary to bestselling author Mauvis. Mauvis's book caused quite a sensation and the author is in high demand. She sends Gladys to the Summit Ski Resort to meet with a man named Carlisle, who's purporting to be from the movie studio that has optioned Mauvis's book. She tells Gladys a shortcut to get down from the mountain, since traffic on Sunday is bumper to bumper. Gladys goes and has a great weekend, but hits a snag taking Mauvis's shortcut. There's a bad storm and her car gets stuck. Gladys manages to find a cabin. The man in the cabin seems standoffish and irritated that she's there and refuses to help her get her car out of the mud, claiming he's getting over a bout of pneumonia. Gladys decides she'll take a hot shower and spend the night, and the man, John, doesn't argue. 

When Gladys wakes up the next morning and goes looking for John in the other bedroom, she finds a corpse instead--not John, but another man. She flees the cabin, finds someone has pulled her car out of the bog and she races back to the city, only to discover Mauvis's penthouse has been ransacked. Mauvis told her to go to Perry Mason if there's any trouble, so she does. 

Mason gets himself (and poor Della and Paul) up to their eyes in trouble with this one, but of course it all worked out in the end. 

The Windsors at War; The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife

 

Apparently this was a follow-up to "The Crown in Crisis" (which I did not read, and my library does not own), which talked about the abdication crisis. This was about the Duke, Duchess, and the King during WWII. The Duke of Windsor was whining about all manner of ridiculously inconsequential nonsense while his poor brother was desperately trying to hold his country together and win a war against a tyrant. It really solidified the fact that England had the right king during the war, Edward would have been a disaster. 

A nearby library system has *almost* all of the Perry Mason books, so I'm determined to read as many as I can.

This one did not feel familiar in the slightest, so I'm going to guess I've never read it. A woman named Jane and her sister visit Mason. Jane's husband died and left her with a little bit of money, which his brother has been investing for her (not well, by the way). Jane recently sold a little island to a millionaire named Parker Benton. There's just one little snag: there's an oil lease on the island owned by Scott Shelby. Since Shelby hadn't made payments in five months, Jane thought it was lapsed, but it turns out there's a clause that says Shelby has up to six months to make any back payments and retain his rights. Shelby tries to pay Jane the five months back pay, but she won't take it. 

Benton invites everyone involved (and then some) on his yacht to go visit the island and discuss the issue in order to hopefully come to a peaceful resolution. Unfortunately, Shelby is killed and it looks like his wife is the culprit. Mason doesn't buy it though and starts digging into things. It was very clever and I enjoyed the twists and turns it took. 

Gates of Zion

Book one of the Zion Chronicles series is set in Palestine in 1947. Ellie Warne is an American photographer who is staying with her Uncle Howard, an archeologist. She thinks she's in love with Moshe Sachar (whose brother, Eli, was one of the main characters in "Jerusalem Interlude"). Moshe is a Professor by day and a member of the Hagenah in his other time. Ellie doesn't know this, though, for her own safety. Her uncle is away when two Bedouin herders show up with ancient scrolls. Ellie photographs them and the Bedouins leave. Ellie is able to consult with a Rabbi Lebowitz in the Old City, who confirms the scrolls are the Book of Isaiah but cannot tell how old they are. Rabbi Lebowitz has a grandson named Yacov (who was smuggled out of Warsaw in "Warsaw Requiem" as the rest of the Lubetkin family went to Auschwitz). Eldest Lubetkin daughter Rachel gave her forged British passport to Eva (Eva was a main character in "London Refrain" and "Paris Encore"). 

Moshe ends up rescuing a young Jewish woman he's helping to smuggle into Palestine, and she turns out to be Rachel Lubetkin. There was a lovely reunion with Rachel, Yacov, and their grandfather until it took a tragic turn. The Mufti are after Ellie because of the pictures she took of the scrolls, which Uncle Howard and Moshe determine are on leather, not parchment, dating them 2,000 years old. They're desperate to get them back. Meanwhile, the world has voted to give Jews their own nation, and the British are planning on leaving Palestine. Jews will finally have a homeland again--if they can survive the Arab onslaught. Oh, and Ellie's boyfriend from California shows up--David Meyer. Who we last saw planning to marry Annie in "Dunkirk Crescendo". Not sure what happened there, but I'm not holding out much hope I'll find out. Thoene doesn't seem to care overly much about loose ends. 
 

Dunkirk Crescendo

 

All right, so the last book in the series. I gave up all hope early on of finding out what happened to my favorite characters and focused on the plight of all the new folks, who pretty much all got caught up in Dunkirk after fleeing various other parts of France. 

I knew about the miracle at Dunkirk from a movie I watched about Churchill, as well as a book I read about him during WWII. A civilian flotilla rescued over 300,000 English and French soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk and got them to safety. Everyone who had a boat, big or small, went out there to rescue people. Even so, the Allies had a lot of causalities, but without those brave people there would have been hundreds of thousands of more dead. Most of the new characters made it out, some did not. The last two pages of the book wrapped up everyone's story, a paragraph for each of them. Well, cheers, thanks a lot. And they didn't even tell us what happened to Sam and Lucy, if she ever got her baby back from Lori. I hope so.  

London Refrain; Underboss; Paris Encore; The Librarianist

 

I thoroughly enjoyed my long weekend, and I actually did get quite a lot accomplished, not just reading. But I did a lot of that too 😀

So the final three books of the Zion Covenant series were billed as "readers will finally know the fates of all their favorite characters". LIES. Instead of just telling us what happened to Jacob and Lori and Elisa and Murphy and everyone else, Thoene introduced a whole new cast of characters. I do not have the emotional energy to invest in yet *more* people, I'm sorry, I just don't. And they're all carbon copies of Elisa and Murphy. There's Mac, a cameraman reporter who falls for the lovely Eva, the woman Rachel gave her British passport to at the end of "Warsaw Requiem". Davey, a RAF pilot who falls for Annie, studying to be a nurse. Annie's brother, Trevor, is a sailor with the British Navy. Churchill becomes Prime Minister and England kind of enters the war, along with the French. Apparently all these folks show up in other series, which is all fine and well and good, but I must admit, the nonstop heartache in these books is really getting to me. I know it was a tragic war beyond all human comprehension, but making me care about more people who are doomed is just wrong. 

A few months ago I saw Sammy the Bull Gravano's story on a show called "Very Scary People" and I was fascinated. I'd heard of John Gotti, but not Sammy. 

Sammy was John's underboss. He killed a whole bunch of people but unlike John, he kept a low profile and tried not to be noticed. Unfortunately John was so carefree and didn't take proper measures to avoid implicating himself and Sammy ended up arrested, along with John and a couple of others from information gleaned from wiretaps. When Sammy heard John basically making him out to be the fall guy on the tapes, he turned and testified for the prosecution. At the time, Sammy was the highest ranking member of the Mob to do so. John went to jail and Sammy went into Witness Protection--for a time. He found it didn't suit him, so he left, deciding to take his chances. He's still alive, in his late 70s, and has a podcast. It was interesting and a bit chilling to hear him casually describing murder so cavalierly. 

"Paris Encore" was more of the same from "London Refrain". A quick page or two about the main characters from the first six books, then on to the new folks. 

Madame Rose and Madame Betsy, sisters from America, have been living in Paris for decades and run an orphanage they fund by taking in washing. Jerome and his sister, Maria, show up after their father goes off to join the war and the woman he left in charge of them sells their boat out from under them. Andre Chardon is hiding a Jewish scientist in his Paris home while he works on decoding the Enigma machine (which he helped build back when Jews could still work in Germany). Josie Marlow, a reporter, is trying to get Yacov Lubetkin to Jerusalem and to his grandfather with the help from an unlikely source. 

And finally, "The Librarianist" by Patrick DeWitt. DeWitt is usually pretty good with the dark humor. This one just made me sad. Maybe because it hit too close to home. 

Bob Comet is a retired librarian living in Oregon. He never knew his father and his mother died while he was relatively young, and he inherited her house and a bit of money. He met his wife, Connie, at the library, as well as his best friend, Ethan. Not long after he and Connie got married, she left him and ran off with Ethan. He never saw them again, although he did hear that Ethan died in a car accident not long after he and Connie married. Bob never remarries (or even dates again) and has no children. One day Bob is out walking and comes across a woman with a card attached to her, identifying her as living in a retirement home, so Bob returns her. He starts hanging out at the home, helping out. He eventually breaks his hip and has to sell his house and moves into the retirement home. It had its funny moments, but all in all it just gave me a too stark vision of my own future.