Clanlands

 

Of course I love "Outlander", both books and show. I've been watching "Men in Kilts", which is Sam and Graham's show that they filmed and wrote this book about. The two of them basically spent a week roving around Scotland in a camper van, visiting historic sites and learning more about Scottish history while drinking lots of alcohol and eating great food. It sounds like they had a ton of fun, I had fun reading it and learned quite a bit about the actual history of Scotland, so win-win. 

Skim Deep

 

A super fun Hard Case Crime written by Max Allan Collins. I don't know why I haven't read more of Collins's books, I always enjoy them. 

At any rate, Nolan has retired from the biz (hit man, robbery, all around general bad guy) and asked his long time girlfriend Sherry to marry him. They go to Las Vegas to tie the knot, and end up getting unwittingly involved in a plot to skim money off the top of a mobbed up casino. The actual perpetrators of the crime want to frame Nolan, but Nolan has other ideas. 

Once he extracts himself and his new bride from that mess, they head home and discover the brother of a guy Nolan killed is out for revenge. Unfortunately for him, he's a bit of a bumbler and Nolan has no trouble neutralizing the threat. 

Jane Eyre; Moonflower Murders

 

My friend was telling me "Jane Eyre" was one of her favorite books. I was pretty sure I had read it before (I remembered the crazy wife being locked in the attic, etc.) but I didn't remember the particulars. I started reading it and none of it sounded the least bit familiar, so I started to think maybe I hadn't read it before. I got about 2/3 of the way through it and came to a scene that was very vivid in my mind, so I think I did read it at some point when I was younger and just didn't remember it that well. At any rate, I enjoyed it. If you don't know the story: Jane Eyre is an orphan whose mean aunt sends her to a charity boarding school. It's pretty bad when Jane first gets there, but eventually conditions improve and Jane is able to get through school and teach for a few years before applying for a job as a governess. She travels to Thornfield Hall and meets Mr. Rochester, the guardian to little Adele. Despite Jane describing him as "ugly", it's clear from the get go that the two of them are attracted to each other. There is an odd woman living in the house, Mrs. Poole, who is apparently a seamstress, but Jane pays her no mind. Someone lights Mr. Rochester's bed on fire one night, and then one of his guests is mysteriously attacked. Nevertheless, when Mr. Rochester proposes, Jane accepts. At the altar, a surprise guest shows up to stop the whole thing. It turns out Mr. Rochester is already married, and his crazy wife is locked up in the attic at Thornfield. Jane flees and ends up finding a lovely family who take her in (this was the scene I remembered so vividly). Eventually Mr. Rochester and Jane find their way back to each other and it was a lovely happy ending.

EDIT: Hahaha, I was feeling nostalgic so I was rereading some of my old posts about books I read in 2007 and I totally read "Jane Eyre". I even blogged about it! Too funny. 

I'm glad I read the "Magpie Murders" first. I actually liked "Magpie" much better, although this one was good, too. I just felt the whole book within a book thing worked better the first time around, this time it felt really forced.

Former editor Susan is living in Crete with her boyfriend when she is visited by the Trehernes. They used to run a hotel in England and eventually their daughters took it over. Alan Conway, the author of the Atticus Pund books that Susan used to edit, stayed at their hotel not long after one of their guests was brutally murdered. The police blamed the murder on one of the hotel employees, who is currently in prison, but their daughter Cecily thinks Alan knew who the real killer was and wrote about it in his third Pund book, "Atticus Pund Takes the Case". Cecily told her parents she had figured it out--and now she's vanished. The Trehernes ask Susan to investigate, figuring she knew Alan better than anyone else. Susan accepts and goes to their hotel, where she re-reads the Atticus Pund book (and then we get to read it, too) about a former wealthy American movie star who is brutally murdered in her own home in the 1950s. There are plenty of suspects, but Atticus is able to figure it out. Of course after re-reading it Susan is totally perplexed as to how the book is related to the hotel murder. They're completely separate types of murders that bear no resemblance to each other. Horowitz was able to tie it all together very nicely with plenty of red herrings that kept me guessing. 

And Then There Were None; Magpie Murders

One of my friends at work told me this is her favorite Agatha Christie book. I knew I had read it, and remembered the basic plot, but couldn't remember the ending, so I reread it. 

Ten people of various backgrounds are lured to Indian Island under false pretenses. When they get there, they are all accused of murder by an anonymous voice on a record. It kind of reminds me of the movie "Clue", which I'm sure borrowed from Christie. At any rate, one by one the guests are murdered in ways that coincide with a nursery rhyme hung up in each room, "The Ten Little Indians" (which was the original title of this book). The remaining guest become very suspicious and wary of each other, but the murders continue until everyone is dead. The ending was very clever, typical of Christie's books. 

 

I put the second book in this series, "Moonflower Murders", on hold, not realizing that "Magpie Murders" came first. I'm glad I decided to read it first, I think I would have been a little lost if I hadn't. 

It was a mystery within a mystery, and very cleverly done, too. The book starts out with Susan, who is an editor for Cloverleaf books, reading the latest manuscript from an author named Alan Conway called "Magpie Murders". We the reader also get to read the manuscript. It was a very charming mystery set in a quaint English village in 1955, starring Conway's signature detective, Atticus Pund. 200+ pages later, Pund announces he has solved the mystery and we turn the page only to discover the last chapter of the manuscript is missing. Susan is understandably annoyed, as are we the readers. Then she hears the news: Conway is dead, apparently by suicide. She tells her boss that she's going to try to find the missing chapter so they can still publish the book, so she travels to his house and talks to everyone in his life only to discover that many of them don't believe Alan committed suicide but was actually murdered. At this point we need a scorecard to keep track of everything: Susan is trying to determine if Alan was murdered and also where the last pages of the manuscript went so we can find out who the murder was in "Magpie Murders". I love Horowitz, all of his books have been so well written. 

The Last Days of John Lennon; The Thin Man

When I was around 15, I became obsessed with the Beatles. Listened to everything, watched everything, read everything. I read this one even though I knew I probably wouldn't like it (I didn't) because I was curious what Patterson's stable of writers would have to say. As it turns out, not much. 

First of all, the title is misleading. The book covered John's entire life (good thing, too, otherwise the book would have been very short). No real new information in it, the most I can say is at least the chapters were short. If you're looking for a really good book about John Lennon's final years, check out Fred Seaman's "The Last Days of John Lennon". Fred was John's personal assistant the last few years of his life and describes how miserable John was not making music and how excited he was to finally be creating again when he and Yoko made their last album, "Double Fantasy". It was fascinating. 

A few years ago, I watched the first few Thin Man movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy and enjoyed the heck out of them. I tried to read Dashiell Hammett when I was in college and didn't particularly care for him, but since I found the movies so charming I thought I would give "The Thin Man" a chance. It was pretty good, I think I might have just been a little too young to appreciate his writing style. Maybe I'll try to read "The Maltese Falcon" again someday. 

"The Thin Man" stars Nick and Nora Charles, a wealthy couple who spend their days and nights drinking and going to clubs. Nick used to be a private detective, and was a darn good one. He and Nora come back to New York on vacation (they live in San Francisco) and Nick becomes involved in a murder mystery involving an old acquaintance of his, eccentric inventor Richard Wynant. Wynant is the main suspect in the murder of his former girlfriend and secretary, Julia. There's a whole cast of shady characters and high society folks who act worse than the gangsters do. It was a pretty good book, but I must say, I really liked the movie better.