A Deadly Episode

 

I enjoyed the sixth Hawthorne and Horowitz book. Horowitz has really done a clever job with these stories. 

Their first book together, "The Word is Murder", is being filmed. Anthony isn't really excited about the project: the scriptwriter is making a lot of changes to reflect her passion for the environment, the actor who is playing him is washed up, and no one seems to want or care about his opinion. When the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed on the set, the two of them find themselves embroiled in a new case (and, for Anthony, a new book). 

Turns out David Caine (the actor playing Hawthorne) had made a lot of enemies, so there are no shortage of suspects. Not just the people on the set, but someone who lives in the village where the movie is being filmed who has a grudge against the real Hawthorne: a woman whose husband Hawthorne helped get convicted of murder a decade ago. She claims he was innocent. Hawthorne stands by his belief that he was guilty, although he does admit there are some lingering questions in his mind. 

The second half of the book went back to that crime, before Hawthorne and Anthony met. Horowitz was able to tie it all together in a very interesting way. 

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

 

Book three of the Emily Wilde series was very good, I enjoyed it. Emily and Wendell have traveled to his fairy kingdom so he can reclaim his throne from his stepmother. The former queen fled, but cursed the kingdom, so it's rotting and Wendell and Emily can't figure out how to stop it. 

Emily turns to her trusty research, and discovers a tale that seems to mirror their situation. The problem is that the solution is for Wendell to sacrifice himself. 

Well, no one wants *that*. Emily finds an alternate solution: for Wendell to kill his stepmother. That's more palatable, if they can find her. 

All in all it ended on a happy note and I went online to see when book four is due out, only to discover that it's a trilogy and book three is the last one. Aw (sad face). I really liked Emily and Wendell and their world, but I suppose it's enough to know that they live "happily ever after" 😉

Sisters in Death

 

Another new book that claims to have "solved" the Dahlia case. Frankel has a different suspect than William Mann does, and he also connects Beth Short's murder to one that took place six years earlier in Kansas City: the brutal murder of Leila Welsh. There are definite similarities in the two: Leila's head was nearly severed from her body while Beth was bisected at the waist. Both victims bled out. Leila had a horseshoe shaped piece of flesh cut out of her thigh, the tattoo on Beth's thigh was removed. Leila was killed in her bedroom, a really bold move on the part of the killer, considering her mother and brother were both home. We don't know where Beth was killed, we just know her body ended up in the vacant lot on Norton Ave. Beth's last few days on Earth are a mystery, we don't know where she was or who she was with. 

Frankel makes the case that the killer in both cases was a man named Carl Balsiger. Carl grew up in Kansas City, not far from Leila. They vacationed in the same lakefront area as children and went to the same college. Six years later, Carl shows up in L.A. and becomes a suspect in Beth's murder. He knew her, admitted to having spent time with her very close to her death. He owned a property in a remote area of Benedict Canyon, where Frankel theorizes he could have held Beth and tortured her and took his time killing her. 

It's all plausible, all of the theories I've read over the years have their merits and I'm starting to understand why some cases never get solved. All in all it was an interesting read. 

NFL Moments

 

There are few things I enjoy more than watching a good football game (good meaning Green Bay is winning 😊) but reading about football is also very fun. 

These types of books are always subjective. How do you narrow down over 100 years of history and terrific players to just 125? It's tough. While I agreed with many of his choices, there were a few things he left out that I thought should have been included. For instance, talking about amazing Hail Marys, he didn't even mention Aaron Rodgers or Brett Favre. Rodgers was literally known for winning games for GB on a last ditch, three seconds left on the clock Hail Mary. And in talking about terrible officiating, he neglected to mention the time that the referees robbed Green Bay of a win against Seattle by calling an touchdown instead of an interception (it was a huge travesty--it literally has its own Wikipedia page). 

But all in all, it was fun to remember some of the great players and games from the past. 

John Candy: a Life in Comedy

 

There's a really great documentary on John Candy on one of the 1,000,000 streaming services I subscribe to that I enjoyed watching. Of course none of the aforementioned 1,000,000 streaming services have any of John Candy's movies (at least, not without paying even more than I already do), so that's useful and not the slightest bit frustrating /s.  

At any rate, John Candy. What a treasure he was. I still have the People magazine from when he passed away in March of 1994. "Uncle Buck" was one of my dad's favorite movies, we used to watch it all the time. I also really loved him in "Summer Rental" and of course his amazing cameo in "Home Alone". Myers talked to a lot of his old pals from SCTV (which, again, not streaming anywhere. In this day and age!), many of whom remained friends with John his whole life. They worked together on projects whenever they could. It was such a shock when he died, so young, just 43. I remember watching the funeral procession on TV where they shut down the 405 for him. Everyone loved John and it sounds like they had good reason to, he was a genuinely nice guy who was always looking out for everyone. It was a lovely tribute to a man taken much too soon. 

Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line

 

I can't believe this is book 6 of the Finlay Donovan series! How did that happen?! It was really good, probably my favorite one so far (even without hot cop Nick being in most of it...)

Vero is under house arrest in Maryland, awaiting trial for stealing $200,000 from her sorority. Finlay is determined to clear her name and decides she can figure out who actually took the money. 

Nick offers to stay home and watch the kids while she and Javier (Vero's boyfriend/husband...not sure if the sketchy Atlantic City wedding was legit or not since they used fake names) go to Maryland. Finlay is reluctant to leave Nick in charge, mostly because she's afraid after spending a few days with her kids he's going to run for the hills and never look back, but she finally agrees. 

Vero is at her mother's house, where she's wearing an ankle monitor and can't leave the yard except for a few hours a week to run errands and attend church. Finlay, Javi, Vero's cousin Ramon, and teen hacker Cam all get in on the hunt for the real thief so they can clear Vero's name.

It was a lot of fun and I love how the mystery of the thief turned out. The book ended on a really great cliffhanger that made me gasp out loud. Can't wait for book 7!

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands; Meet the Newmans

 

Book two was just as fun and charming as "Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries". 

At the end of the first book, Wendell proposed to Emily. She hasn't made up her mind yet, but she does want to help him find a backdoor into his realm so he can reclaim his rightful place as King. His stepmother, the sitting Queen, is sending assassins after Wendell to ensure she keeps her power. 

Emily, Wendell, Emily's niece Ariadne (side note: how on earth do you pronounce that?! I kept reading it as "Adriane"), and their department chair (who invites himself along) Dr. Ferris Rose, journey to the Alps to look for a nexus, which is supposed to be a spot with doors leading to many different fairy realms. A scholar named Danielle de Grey disappeared in that part of the world decades earlier while searching for a nexus. Emily hopes to succeed where she failed. 

Wendell is poisoned and Emily needs to figure out how to cure him and fast, before any other assassins show up. He's too weak to fight them off. She realizes she has to find her way to Wendell's kingdom and bring him back his cat, Orga. All without running into his stepmother. Sounds totally doable. 

It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the third book. 

I wanted to like this one. Truly, I really did. 

And it was okay. Kind of like Niven's Velva Jean books. I read two,  but they didn't interest me enough to go to the effort of reading the rest of them. I loved "All the Bright Places", her YA book, and "The Aqua Net Diaries", her autobiography about high school in Indiana. 

The Newmans have been on CBS for twelve successful seasons. But it's now 1964, and their brand of corny, feel good television is no longer resonating with an America in upheaval. Del, Dinah, and their two sons, Guy and Shep, play the perfect family on TV, but in real life, they're all hiding things. Del moved out of their bedroom and Dinah suspects he's having an affair. Guy can't let anyone know his roommate and best pal, Kelly, is actually his boyfriend. And sixteen year old Shep, a rising pop star who is only topped in the charts by the Beatles, got one of his girlfriends pregnant but he's in love with Eileen, who plays Guy's girlfriend on the show. 

Things are a mess. And Del is convinced that CBS is not going to renew their contract, so with only a few episodes left, he's determined to make the Newmans relevant. 

Then Del is in a car accident and ends up in a coma, so it's up to Dinah and the boys to make the last episode of the show a success. 

The premise was good and I completely understand that there was a lot of terrible things going on in the world at the time, but the book felt like it was smacking me over the head with all of it. Page after page after page of preaching and complaining. 

I get it. I do. You want to make a point. Great. Subtlety seems to be a lost art in entertainment these days. First and foremost, I read fiction to be entertained. A book with a cover like this says (to me): fun! Light escapism! Charming and cute and bubbly! It was none of these things. So I was disappointed. It wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't what I was expecting.