The Case of the Cautious Coquette; The Case of the Negligent Nymph; Not Forever but for Now

 

Okay, back to Perry Mason!

It starts out with Perry looking for a witness to a hit and run. He's representing the young man who was hit and is now injured. Not one but two different witnesses come forward, both claiming to know who hit the young man, and they're pointing the finger at two different men. 

Perry ends up embroiled in a case with too many suspects, too many ex-husbands, and too many keys. Lucille Barton wants to take her ex-husband for every dime she can so she can marry another man without having to give up her monthly alimony. Perry wants nothing to do with her (smart man) but unfortunately gets tangled up when he and Lucille are spotted at the scene of her ex-husband's murder. The DA is gunning for Perry (as always) and he has to use every advantage he has to get out of it and clear his client. 

Perry is out canoeing (working on another case, actually) when he spies a young woman coming out of the water naked, carrying a waterproof bag. Intrigued, he watches through his binoculars as she puts on a fancy dinner gown and goes into the mansion of George Adler. She comes running out with a dog at her heels and dives into the water. Perry rescues her and takes her to her boat, where she shows him what she took: a glass bottle with a note inside. Perry has her make a copy on her typewriter and suggests she give the original back to Adler. 

Adler complicates things by accusing her of stealing $50k worth of jewelry. It turns out the young woman is related to a woman who accuses Adler of killing her in the note in the bottle. There wasn't enough of Della and Paul in this one for me to love it, but it was entertaining. 

Chuck Palahniuk is certainly unique. 

"Not Forever but for Now" is about a family whose business is murder for hire. The grandfather brags about killing Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, etc., and making them look like suicides or overdoes. The mother supposedly killed Princess Di (her husband was supposed to, but he chickened out, so she killed him, too). Otto and Cecil are the heirs apparent. Otto takes to killing like a duck to water, and Cecil happily goes along with his big brother. They go on jobs their grandfather sends them to do as well as practicing their skills on the servants. It was long on dark and short on humor. 

Dark Reunion

 

This cover is so hysterical. It looks like she has four eyes and a growth out of the side of her head. 

It was told from Bonnie's point of view, since Elena is dead. The vampire that made Katherine, Klaus, is one of the "Originals": someone who was born a vampire and didn't have to die in order to be one. Bonnie, Meredith, and Matt summon Stefan to come back and help them after Bonnie has a dream where Elena warns her something bad is coming and to summon help (they surmise Elena was talking about Stefan, I thought Damon, because he drinks human blood and is therefore stronger than his wimpy, whiny little brother). Both brothers show up, so there's that. Everyone is mean to Damon, which ticked me off. 

They end up defeating Klaus with some help from "unquiet spirits" and then Elena comes back to life. Yawn. 

Apparently Smith sold the rights to the characters when she made the deal with the publisher, so the books continue, written by other writers, but I'm over it. Say what you will about Stephenie Meyer--at least she knew how to give the audience what they wanted. Oh well. I still have the show, which is much more entertaining. 

The Fury

 

Oh man. What a disappointing turn this book took 😒 such a promising start, too!

Elena dies at the end of the second book, but because she's had Damon and Stefan's blood she comes back as a vampire. When she wakes up, she finds the brothers fighting and goes to stop them. She doesn't want Stefan to hurt Damon, since she feels he's the one she belongs with. 

Now, had the author taken it from there and had Damon and Elena get together, it would have been so much more fun. Instead, Elena "comes to her senses" once she feeds and realizes she's in love with Stefan. 

Sigh.

Something big and bad and evil is causing all sorts of trouble in Fell's Church. Since everyone thinks Elena is dead, she has to hide out. Her good friends (Bonnie, Meredith, Caroline, and Matt) know her secret, and along with the Salvatore brothers, go to work trying to figure out what it is and how to stop it. 

It's Katherine, the vampire who changed the brothers over back in the 1400s. They thought she died in 1864, but she tricked them. She wants Stefan back (seriously, why does everyone want Stefan?!). She ties Elena, Stefan, and Damon up in a crypt and tortures the boys (mostly Damon) until Elena figures out a way to kill her. And she does, but she dies in the process too. 

Have to admit, I was not expecting her to *really* be dead. There's a fourth book, how in the heck is the series going on without the main character?! What an odd decision. Well, I'm only halfway through season two of the show and it's really good, so at least I still have that to look forward to. 

The Awakening; The Case of the Vagabond Virgin; The Struggle

I was looking for a new show to watch, and Max suggested "The Vampire Diaries", since apparently I watch a lot of overwrought television aimed at teens. 

What can I say? I have a type. And *maybe* because I just finished watching "Gossip Girl" for the third time...

Anyway. I figured why not, let's give it a go. So far the show is really good. Of course I didn't get far before I decided I needed to read the books, too. Obviously. And simultaneously while watching the show, just so I can really confuse myself as to what is happening (the show differs quite a bit from the books). 

In the first book, beautiful Queen of Fell's Church, Elena, meets the new boy at school, Stefan Salvatore. He's absolutely gorgeous, and seems to want nothing to do with Elena. Since she's used to getting what she wants, she takes it as a personal challenge and goes after him with every tool in her considerable toolbox. Stefan has a dark secret (not that hard to guess, given the name of the series). He wants Elena, but he's scared for her safety. Even more so when his brother, Damon, shows up. Damon has a bad habit of taking things that belong to Stefan, just for spite. 

I took a short break in between Vampire Diaries books to finish a Perry Mason I had started. This one felt very familiar, I think I read it before, ages ago. 

Perry gets a frantic call at his office from Addison, a wealthy department store owner. A young lady he knows, Virginia, has been unfairly arrested for vagrancy. Addison wants Mason to do whatever it takes to bail her out, only keep his name out of it. He stresses what a sweet, innocent young girl Virginia is. 

Virginia plays the part well, but Perry doesn't buy it. The girl is up to something. He finds out Addison picked her up hitchhiking. Ironically enough, out on a lonely country road by a house his business partner just bought and whoops! just turned up murdered in. And can you believe it, right around the time Addison was driving by?! The main clue was the window the bullet went through and which side was on the inside or the outside. 

Book 2 of the Vampire Diaries. Damon is determined to have Elena. When Stefan goes missing, Elena and her friends finally find him trapped in an old well and rescue him. Elena gives him her blood to save him. She continues to walk a dangerous line, trying to keep on Damon's good side so he won't hurt Stefan, but not give in to the growing attraction between them (just do it, Elena. He's so much more interesting than boring, brooding Stefan). 

The book ends on a very interesting cliffhanger, and if I'd had to wait a year to read it I would have been frantic, but luckily, since these books are 30+ years old, I have book three ready to go. 

 

Killing of Lord George

Wow, what an interesting book!

"Lord" (he gave himself the title and no one questioned it) George Sanger grew up in the traveling entertaining business in Victorian England. His family traveled the countryside in a caravan, putting on shows for the locals. When George reached adulthood, he and his older brother John set out on their own and created the biggest and most well-known circus in England. He married a former lion tamer, Nellie, and had two daughters who both participated in the family business. 

After his wife died, George retired from the business and took up residence in his house in East Finchley. He was used to a bustling and exciting life and he was lonely in retirement, so he hired companions to keep him company. One of the them was Herbert Cooper. George's mind seemed to slip in his advancing years, and he was forgetful and belligerent at times. He unceremoniously fired Cooper one day and hired Harry Austen to take his place.

Here's where it gets interesting. By all accounts, Cooper returned to the farm and attacked Harry and George with a felling axe. George died from his wounds the next day, Harry recovered. Cooper was found dead after a nationwide manhunt. He had put his head on a railroad track and the first train that came by killed him instantly. Shaw pointed out the inconsistencies in the official record. For one, Cooper was rumored to be having an affair with Harry Austen's wife. Since Austen was the only other person in the room who survived, we only have his testimony as to what actually happened. Decades after the murder, we have the Villisca axe murders to know what happens to a body when it's hit with a large felling axe. George's wounds were nowhere near as devastating. Shaw theorized that in the scuffle, George picked up a brass candelabra that was found on the scene and ended up getting knocked in the head with it. He didn't die instantly, but the blow rendered him unable to speak until he did ultimately pass, so we don't have his side of it. Shaw pointed out how difficult it would have been for a tall man like Cooper to swing a heavy axe in a small room and not cause more damage. And then the police spent hours looking for the murder weapon, only to have a Sanger family member find it tucked into a nook by the fireplace. Did Cooper really take the time to put the axe there before escaping, after murdering his former employer? And why couldn't the police find it? I really enjoyed this one. 
 

Girls and Their Monsters

 

I really wanted to like this book. It sounded so interesting: in 1930, Sadie Morlok gave birth to identical quadruplet girls. Right from the start, the girls garnered a lot of media attention. There was even a contest to name them. Sadie and her overbearing, abusive husband Carl, vacillated between trying to keep the girls cloistered in a bubble and using them to their advantage. The girls toured when they were little, wearing matching outfits and dancing and singing. But Carl refused to let them go to friends' houses or invite anyone over. They went to a dance in high school and he drove over to the school and straight up lied, telling them their mother was in the hospital, to make them leave. When he drove them home instead of the hospital, his response was something like "you had enough fun". 

In their early 20s, the girls were all diagnosed with various types of schizophrenia. It was heartbreakingly tragic what these poor girls were put through in the name of science. Only one of them, Sarah, managed a semi-normal life, working outside of the home, getting married, having two sons. The other girls tried to leave home and work, only to fail and have to come back. Carl died relatively young, but Sadie took care of them for as long as she could, until she passed away. 

The parts of the book about the Morlok quadruplets was interesting, but Farley went far afield and started talking about the history of mental health care in America and all its shortcomings. I felt like those observations really deserved their own book, not to be kind of shoehorned into this one. As soon as I would reach one of those passages the book literally ground to a screeching halt. I had to slog through them. It's too bad, if she'd just stayed on topic it would have been a really fascinating book. 

The Enchanters; The Case of the Fan Dancer's Horse

 

James Ellroy's latest was, of course, brilliant beyond words. I love Freddy Otash, the anti-hero. I know I'm not supposed to like him. He's a sleeze and admits it, but goddamn if the man doesn't have style. 

It's the summer of 1962 and Marilyn Monroe is found dead. Bobby Kennedy wants Freddy to suppress any burgeoning rumors that his brother John or himself had anything to do with her death. Also, he wants him to get dirt on Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters' leader who is causing some trouble for the Kennedy brothers. 

This one was easier for me to follow than some of Ellroy's other books. I think I was paying closer attention. I doubt I've gotten smarter 😁

This one felt really familiar, and I'm not sure if I read it a long time ago or if it's because I've seen the episode of the TV show based on this book and they actually stuck pretty close to Gardner's story (not usually the case with a lot of the show). 

Perry and Della were returning from Mexico (I think...the book doesn't make it really clear. Maybe there was a case in Mexico in the book preceding it? I don't really remember. At any rate...) when they witness a car sideswipe another car and keep going. They stop to help out the elderly woman in the car that got overturned, but she doesn't speak English. Luckily another motorist who speaks Spanish comes along and offers to take the woman to the hospital to get checked out. Perry and Della search the car to make sure nothing valuable gets stolen and they find a pair of ostrich fans and dancing slippers--a fan dancer's stage costume. They take them and Perry puts an ad in the paper, saying he has the fan dancer's property and will return it if someone can describe it. The fan dancer, Lois Fenton, sees the ad and thinks Perry has found her missing horse. Intrigued, Perry gets embroiled in a case involving two fan dancer's of similar build who are arguing over use of the name "Lois Fenton". When the original Lois Fenton's husband is found murdered, there's a lot of confusion over which Lois Fenton visited his hotel room and at precisely what time. I enjoyed this one a lot, it was fun. Perry was still really mean to Paul, though. 

The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde

 

Perry is intrigued when a young blonde, dressed in a fur coat and nothing else, sporting a shiner, comes into his office with an interesting story. She's been employed for a little while reading articles to a wealthy man who has poor eyesight. His stepson, Carl, has been hitting on her pretty much non-stop, so she finally went to dinner with him, only to get tossed out of the car on the way home for not playing along. Carl was going through her room when she got back to the house and he popped her one. She fled the house, grabbing the coat out of the closet, and came to see Perry. 

The wealthy man, Jason, had one son, who died at Pearl Harbor. He was married to a woman named Helen. Jason thought Helen was a useless gold-digger and had no use for her, until he found out that Helen gave birth to a little boy a few months after his son died. Jason is wild to get his hands on the kid, but Helen won't play ball. 

Believe it or not, the blonde (Diana) and Helen are all mixed up together in some fantastical way, as is the murder victim (Mildred). It was a fast paced story--so fast that poor Paul didn't get to eat his dinner. Perry's so mean to him sometimes. 

The Case of the Crooked Candle; Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I

 

I thought perhaps I had read this one, the bit about the candle felt familiar, but I didn't remember anything else about the book, so I'm not sure. It's entirely possible Gardner used the candle in more than one book, like he did the ice picks. 

Fred Milfield is found dead aboard his partner, Roger Burbank's, yacht. The tides played a big role in this one. The prosecution's theory was that Burbank and Milfield argued on the yacht about a business deal and Burbank slugged him hard enough to cause him to fall and crack his skull open on the brass threshold. Burbank left and as the tide went out the yacht ran aground and the boat tipped, causing Milfield to roll to the other side of the yacht. The police found blood on the floor by the threshold as well as where the body was found on the other side of the yacht. Mason points out the candle was found at a seventeen degree angle, suggesting it was burning when Milfield was killed and it also tipped when the boat did, causing it to tilt and the flame to go out. I immediately guessed that Milfied was actually killed on the low side of the boat (position two to the prosecution) and someone dragged his body to the first position to make it look like he'd hit his head on the threshold. Guess what, I was right! So maybe I did read this one before 😊 at any rate, it was fun. Not his best (not enough of Paul and Perry and Della scenes to score top marks from me) but still entertaining. 

I don't know why I keep reading books about Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn. I've read so much about them that each book that comes out doesn't have any new information. This one was interesting but just rehashed a lot of things I already knew. 

She came at it from the framework of Anne's influence on her daughter, despite dying while Elizabeth was just a toddler. Anne surrounded her with people she trusted to instill the right values in Elizabeth, and she did a good job. Many of Elizabeth's attendants were with her from the time she was an infant and devoted their lives to her service. Elizabeth was a good queen and it sounds like it was mostly due to Anne, not Henry. Borman also noted how Elizabeth II was related to Anne Boleyn through Anne's sister, and Prince William is actually related to the Boleyn's through his mother and his father, so 500 years after being executed, Anne's descendants still rule England. Pretty impressive.