Mayhem at the Halloween Wedding; A Letter to the Luminous Deep

 

The second book in the Lazy Bones Bookshop series was disappointing. 

One year after her disastrous first literary festival, Bailey is back. Her second festival went much better, but now she's gearing up for her friend Raven's Halloween wedding (oh, and the potential love interest from the last book? Got a throwaway sentence about how they went on a few dates but it didn't work out). 

Raven and her fiancé, Emmett, are excited to have a Halloween themed wedding. Raven's parents are fully on board, but Emmett's parents aren't happy and would have preferred a more traditional wedding. So would Raven's sister, Harmony, who's a social media influence (ugh). Harmony is bitter that Raven picked her friend Ivy to be her maid of honor instead of her and is picking fights with everyone in the wedding party, including Bailey and Colby. But then again, so is Ivy. Honestly, none of these people were likable, even Raven sounded awful. And why is Colby antagonizing people? It felt like everyone was at a level 11 on the stress meter. Even the poor Boortio cart lady got dragged into it somehow. It was wild how everyone in a ten mile radius hated Ivy and Harmony. 

Suffice to say, when Ivy turns up dead there's a whole bunch of potential suspects. Bailey eventually figures it out and Raven has a nice Halloween themed wedding. 

Meanwhile, I fear these books are going to start to suffer from Miss Marple syndrome, where all these random murders keep happening in a quiet little town. In the first book, a police officer made a statement about how there hadn't been a murder in decades (or something like that) and now between these two books there have been at least five in a little over a year. I can't imagine those crime stats look great for their tourism agencies. 

It took me months to get through this one. I should have given up, honestly. It wasn't worth it. But I wanted to like it so badly. On paper, it sounded perfect. A fantasy set in a world where everything is underwater. 

It's told in epistolary format, a series of letters from one person to another. It starts out with E. (her full name is Erudite, she goes by E. No one blames her for this) hopefully writing to a scholar named Henerey Clel about the sights outside of her home, the famous Deep House her mother built. Henerey starts responding back, and before long a sweet sort of blossoming romance begins to form between the two very shy people. 

A seaquake destroys the Deep House while Henerey is visiting E., and both are presumed lost. While going through their siblings' belongings, Sophy (E.'s sister) and Vyerin, Henerey's brother, discover their correspondence and start trading letters, hoping to understand their siblings better and potentially figure out what might have happened to them. And that's where the book ends. 

So why didn't I like it? Well, the letters were extremely formal in tone and she used a lot of made up names and words, too many for me to keep track of. I have a hard time with names I can't pronounce (I had a lot of the same issues while reading "The Song of Ice and Fire" series). The pacing was absolutely glacial. Nothing happened. At all. For hundreds of pages. 

It's unfortunate, because I liked the premise but the execution was just not what I needed it to be in order to keep reading the rest of the series.   

A Trinket for the Taking

I 100% checked this book out because there's a hedgehog on the cover. I love hedgehogs, and I'm still sad that my state doesn't allow them as pets. I have a friend at work who is Finnish, and she told me hedgehogs run wild in the forest there. Between that and the fact that Finland loves black licorice and saunas, I think I should have been born Finnish. 

At any rate, on to the actual book! It was fun, I liked it. Dovey is a two hundred year old mystic. Mystics are a type of magical being. They can cast spells and have trinkets that they infuse with their essence. 

Dovey is bound to Elric, a very old and powerful mystic, meaning she can't ever break free from him. Dovey loves Elric very much, so she's okay with this...until Elric asks her to track down a powerful trinket that's been stolen. Dovey goes to work and in the process of her investigation meets a handsome and charming FBI agent named Grant Bartholomew. Sparks fly between them and Dovey realizes she's toeing a dangerous line. The bound can't have relationships with the  unbound (the common people) without causing major problems. Not to mention Elric would have him killed if he so much as suspected Dovey had feelings for him. 

Dovey puts that aside to concentrate on finding the trinket as more members of a powerful Greek pharmaceutical family keep dying in horrific ways. 

And Dovey has a magical pet hedgehog named Bits who helps her choose her daily wardrobe 😀

It was the first book in a series and I'm excited to read the second one. 
 

Lombardi and Landry

 

I'm not well-versed enough on the logistics of football games to have really appreciated this book. It got pretty technical with formations and plays. I understood some of it, but a lot of it went right over my head.

The parts I did understand I enjoyed, so there's that 😊

Before he coached the Packers, Vince Lombardi was an offensive coach for the New York Giants under head coach Jim Howell. Tom Landry was the defensive coach for the Giants at the same time, before he went on to coach the Dallas Cowboys. Both coaches helped propel the Giants to winning seasons and championships (before the Super Bowl). Lombardi left to go to Green Bay, and a few years later Landry went to Dallas. Both coaches became legends in their respective towns (and of course, as we know, the Super Bowl trophy is named after Lombardi, since the Packers won the first two matchups). Landry led Dallas through the raucous '80s when the moniker "America's Team" was hung on the Cowboys (unjustly so, in my opinion). The Giants faltered and it took them a long time to return to their former glory. Most people blamed the Mara family for letting Lombardi and Landry get away. 

History is full of hindsight, so it's hard to know what might have happened "if". 

Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop

 

This was a fun, quick read. Cozy mysteries are a nice change of pace from some of the heavier, more graphic things I tend to gravitate to. Plus, a dog was a main character. 

Bailey runs her granddad's bookshop in a sleepy little town in Oregon. After a popular horror movie was filmed there a few decades earlier, the town leaned into the "spooky" vibe and created a Halloween all year around theme, with shops naming themselves things like "Ghostly Gouda" (a local artisan cheese shop). Honestly, this town sounds right up my alley and I wish it was real because I would visit in a heartbeat. 

Bailey is holding the town's first annual Literary Festival. While there are a few hiccups, for the most part the festival goes well. Until Bailey discovers a dead boy in the hay maze. The police peg her as a suspect because she'd had an argument with the deceased and kicked him out of her shop for causing damage. Bailey is determined to solve the mystery and clear her name. 

I do have a few small qualms with this one. I didn't love the ending, it felt rushed. And she has all of the older folks in town ("older" meaning "my age") using very current slang, like "dipped out". I'm sorry, I don't talk like that, and I find it hard to believe other people my age would either. I use slang that I learned as a teenager/twenty-something (which really wasn't that long ago, honestly). But other than those two minor nitpicks, it was a decent read. It's the first in a series, so I might check out the second one just to see what happens with Bailey and the hinted at love interest. 

And So It Is...

Jamie Lynn Sigler has been living with MS for over half her life, she was diagnosed at 20, while she was still working on "The Sopranos". It's amazing to me that she was able to keep it together to film all of the shows she's worked on, and on stage, too. 

Jamie landed the role of a lifetime as Meadow Soprano and she realized how lucky she was to work with such great actors. She spoke highly of everyone involved, but her memories of Jim Gandolfini were especially nice to hear. She married young and got divorced not long after, but eventually found her soulmate, Cutter. They've been together for a long time and have two sons. She's had a lot of hardships in her life: her own illness, her older brother passing away unexpectedly, and her son's life threatening illness. Her story is very inspiring and I enjoyed reading it. 
 

Western Star

 

I can't really believe Larry's been gone for five years. I remember when I heard the news and I was devastated. Even though he'd quit writing for several years before he passed, it was still sad news. 

Larry was born into a family of cowboys at the end of the cowboy era. His uncles and dad all worked with horses and cattle. He grew up in a small, dusty town, devoid of books, desperate to escape, and did, often for years at a time, only to keep coming back. He got married and had a son, James, but cheated on his wife and they ended up divorced. He also ended up raising James, since his ex-wife wasn't really interested in being a mother. I imagine that was a rather interesting and commented upon arrangement in the 1960s. He knew a lot of writers from that era that you wouldn't necessarily connect with him, like Ken Kesey. 

He wrote, but he also was a book scout and would go on long road trips and just buy books. He ended up opening Booked Up in Archer City, a giant four building bookstore (sadly, when he died, the bookstore went under, which I didn't know, I thought he'd sold it a few years earlier. But Chip and Joanna Gaines bought it and used some of the books to "furnish" their hotel in Waco. That probably hurt more than anything else I read in this book). He continued working for as long as he was able. 

It's hard to sum up a complicated, mesmerizing, incredible life like the one McMurtry led, but Streitfeld did a great job and I think Larry would have liked it. 

 

Here Comes the Judge; The Girl and the Gravedigger

 

"Here Comes the Judge" was a fun read. It was a teensy bit overstuffed with characters that I had a hard time keeping track of, but that's sort of how real life is too, isn't it?

Nancy Gardner lives in Newport Beach and is a local character (in the best possible way). Her father, Judge Robert Gardner, was also a colorful character in the early years of Newport. He wrote a few books about the history of the area as well as a passion of his, body surfing. 

Nancy and her dad wrote a book about a father/daughter private investigation team back in the '60s and had a publisher interested, but it didn't pan out. Nancy updated and revised the book and published it on Amazon, so it's only available as a Kindle book, but it was worth the nominal cost. 

On to the actual book! Samantha (Sam) Harris is in between jobs, so she's keeping herself busy by following her retired judge father, Jake, around town, dragging him out of bars. Jake loves his martinis and holding courtside at the local taverns, regaling the regulars with his stories. Then Jake presents Sam with an idea: they can start a private investigation firm. In fact, Jake already has a client. 

Sam protests, but ends up being dragged along for the ride. It starts off as some shady investment scheme, but people keep ending up dead. Sam and Jake travel all over: down to Mexico, over to San Bernadino (with Jake knowing every bar on the route, apparently. I would like to be Jake's best friend), in search of the truth. They have several close calls themselves, which don't seem to faze Jake, but Sam isn't as cavalier. 

Supposedly Nancy and her dad were going to make it a series if the first book did well, and I'm hoping for more. I like the characters and it's fun to read about places I know. 

Potzsch wrote a sequel to "Hangman's Almanac", which I enjoyed. I hoped there would be more. I liked this one, too. 

Rothmayer and Herzfedlt are back with another baffling case. A professor who is supposed to be in Egypt is found in the local history museum, mummified. At the same time, local young men are being murdered in the streets and brutally disfigured. And if that wasn't enough, the new zoo just opened and already one of the keepers has been killed. 

There was a lot going on, and Potzsch somehow managed to tie it all together and have it make sense. There wasn't a lot of Rothmayer in this one, but he came in just in the nick of time to help solve the various cases. It was an exciting ride. 

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. 

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries

 

I don't know why I don't read more fantasy novels. I always enjoy them. I'll have to make more of an effort to seek them out. On the plus side, this was the first book in a series, so I have more to look forward to. Huzzah!

Emily Wilde is a professor at Cambridge who studies the Fae. She's quite the expert, having traveled all over the world and met many Folk. 

Emily and her dog, Shadow, go to a cold, remote village in the North so she can catalog the legends of that area and hopefully meet some of their Folk. A few days after they arrive, Emily's colleague from Cambridge comes to town. Wendell Bambleby is very charming and handsome and easily wins the townspeople over. Emily has long suspected that he's fae (he is, we find out pretty early on, so it's not too much of a spoiler). She reluctantly lets Wendell help her with her goal after he dangles a prize in front of her: coauthorship of a paper to be delivered at a prestigious conference on Folk. Emily never gets invited to these conferences so she agrees. 

It was a fun story and Fawcett did an amazing job of spinning a world of faeries. It was very vivid and enchanting. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Maltese Falcon; The Impossible Fortune

 

After reading Max Allan Collins' sequel, I wanted to give the Hammett version another chance. I read it many years ago and didn't really care for it, but I've found sometimes if I go back and reread something that I read when I was young, now that I'm older it's better ("Pride and Prejudice" immediately leaps to mind--I love that book now. Thirty years ago? Not so much). 

At any rate, no, it didn't work. I still didn't like it. I guess I just don't care for Hammett's writing style. 

Spade's partner Miles is murdered while they're working the case to try to find the falcon statue, which is supposed to be worth a lot of money. There are about twenty other people looking for it, too (I'm exaggerating a bit. It wasn't really twenty, it just felt like it). More people die, Spade proves to be a real jerk, and in the end no one has the falcon. 

Enough said. Moving on. 

The next Thursday Murder Club mystery was much better. I love when a series keeps its original charm. It's hard to do after so many books (I'm thinking of Stephanie Plum, but to be fair, the last dozen or so have been better). 

Joyce's daughter, Joanna, is getting married! Joyce is, of course, beside herself with happiness. Her fiancé, Paul, is a nice guy. His best man, Nick, confides to Elizabeth that someone is trying to kill him--there was a bomb strapped to his car that morning. Elizabeth is intrigued, even more so when the Club interviews Nick's business partner, Holly, who is promptly blown up with a car bomb. 

Meanwhile, Ron's daughter's husband, Danny, has beaten her black and blue for the last time. Suzi pulls a gun on him and orders him to leave, which he does, but of course he's planning on killing her. And her brother Jason and Ron too. 

There was a lot going on, but it all tied together and was a lot of fun. I'm all caught up now, so I'll be over here, impatiently waiting for the next one 😄 

You With the Sad Eyes

 

This one was sad 😢I really feel for her. Her life has been rough. 

I loved "Married with Children", I used to watch it with my Dad when I was a kid. I thought Kelly (Christina's character) was so pretty. It's heartbreaking to hear how she thought she was overweight and "plain". She's anything but plain! My goodness. 

Christina grew up in Laurel Canyon with her mom. Her dad left when she was a baby but they ended up having a good relationship before he passed away. Her mom had abusive boyfriends, she was abused, she had abusive boyfriends, the whole nine yards. 

She had a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and then the MS diagnosis came. It sounds like she really struggles with it and is in constant pain. 

It never fails to amaze me what human beings are capable of withstanding. You think we'd break, but the human spirit and will to live is strong in so many. Of course some folks do break, and that's tragic. It was a tough one to read but I couldn't put it down. 

The Last Kings of Hollywood

 

In the 1970s, a fresh crop of film school graduates were looking to shake up the old Hollywood system of having to beg studios for financing and distribution. They had a vision of doing things their way and helping other inspiring directors and writers. 

Leading the pack was Francis Ford Coppola. He and George Lucas became friends. Steven Spielberg was a few years younger than them and looked up to and admired them. Coppola started his own movie studio production in the Bay Area, but lack of administrative oversight quickly brought that to a close. 

Lucas learned from Coppola's mistakes and made some extremely smart business decisions in the beginning regarding his films, mainly keeping a large percentage of the gross profits and retaining the right to merchandising. In turn, each of them would shatter previous records for the biggest movie ever: Coppola with "The Godfather", Spielberg with "Jaws", and Lucas with "Star Wars". Spielberg shattered Lucas's record with "E.T." And so on. Each movie was bigger and better and it ended up changing the old Hollywood system. Maybe not for the better: thanks to these giant blockbusters, movie theaters no longer wanted to show the kind of smaller, more independent films they used to. The takeaway (for me, anyway) was that they ended up inadvertently destroying the things they wanted to nurture. Coppola almost lost everything and Lucas became a recluse who walked away from his "Star Wars" franchise, selling it to Disney. I've read some about the early days of Hollywood so it was really interesting to read about a different time. 

When the Wolf Comes Home

 

Jess, an aspiring actress in L.A., is having a terrible day. She's working the late shift at a crappy diner when one of their regulars makes a mess in the bathroom. She and her coworker make a deal: if Jess goes and cleans it up, she can go home. While cleaning the bathroom (which was described in all too graphic detail), she accidentally pricks her finger on the used needle the customer hid behind the toilet. 

Well that sucks.

Jess goes home and tries to work up the courage to go to the hospital to get checked out, but then all Hell breaks loose. A giant wolf rampages through the apartment complex, killing a bunch of people. Jess manages to escape, taking along a little boy she found hiding in the bushes. 

Jess and the nameless boy (he claims he doesn't have a name) go on the run but unfortunately, everywhere they go the wolf follows and kills. Soon Jess realizes that the little boy can make things happen by believing in them. His fears come true (hence the big bad wolf, who is actually just his dad). He watches a cartoon on TV and the characters jump out of the TV and start terrorizing the hotel they're at. Jess isn't sure how to keep him (and the rest of the world) safe from his own mind. 

It was really good, I enjoyed it, even if the ending felt a little anticlimactic. It's really hard with these types of stories. I've read a lot of them where the ending just falls flat. 

Black Dahlia

 

A friend at work asked me about my favorite true crime stories and I mentioned the Black Dahlia. Elizabeth Short's unsolved 1947 murder is one of my OG true crime interests. Manson, Dahlia, Lindbergh, and Lizzie Borden. Those are the four that I read everything I can get my hands on. 

About a decade ago, Mann wrote a book called "Tinseltown" about the unsolved murder of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor. Mann starts out by saying that he's not trying to solve the Dahlia case, but of course he does have his favorite suspect: Marvin Margolis. Marvin was a USC medical student and a known boyfriend of Betty's (despite being married). His wife's family were butchers. As a Jewish man, Marvin faced antisemitism at USC. Most likely due to his horrifying experiences in WWII as well as the trauma of being harassed for his ethnicity, Mann theorizes that he probably had a lot of rage in general. Combined with some knowledge of anatomy (it's pretty much a given that the Dahlia's murderer knew something about dissection, given how neatly her body was sawed in half) and access to USC's medical labs, which were deserted at the time of year Betty was murdered, he makes a fairly compelling argument. 

The point of the book, however, was to rehumanize Betty. Teach us about the real life young woman behind the myth. Betty was an adventurous young woman who didn't want to stay home and follow the more conventional path of marriage and children, she wanted to see the world. She lived by her wits and made friends easily, friends who she could call on for a place to crash for a night or two, friends who could help her out with rent or food money in a pinch.

It was an interesting book, I enjoyed it. It is a shame that we'll probably never know for sure who killed this poor young woman whose life was just beginning. 

Best True Crime Stories of the Year 2025

Like most books of short stories, some of these were good, others not so much. 

One of my favorites was "The Heiress at Harvard", about wealthy Frances Glessner Lee, who started forensic science at Harvard. I've heard about her "nutshells" before: she created extremely intricate dioramas of crime scenes, little miniature dollhouses basically, and used them to teach crime scene investigators how to properly process a crime scene. Even though Lee died in 1962, her nutshells are still in use at the Maryland Medical Examiner's office. 

The last story in the book, "The BTK Killer's Daughter", was absolutely depressing. I've heard of "CrimeCon", where true crime aficionados go to network with other like minded folks and meet some victims and their families. When I first heard about CrimeCon, I thought "oh, that sounds like fun, I should try to go one year!". 

No. Nope. Don't want to go now. It sounds utterly heartbreaking. Some of the victims of less publicized crimes go in an attempt to drum up interest in their loved ones' cases. The thought makes me absolutely sick for those poor families and friends. I just can't even imagine going around, begging people to care. 
 

Return of the Maltese Falcon

 

I read Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" several decades ago when I was younger and didn't care for it much. I really tried to like it, after all, it was set in San Francisco, a city that I've always been fascinated by, and was deliciously noir. I'm willing to give it another chance now that I'm older, I just don't have time right now. 

All that is to say: I don't remember the book very well. I also tried to watch the Humphrey Bogart version movie several times and just couldn't get into it. So I wasn't terribly surprised that I had a hard time getting through this book, even though I like Collins and have enjoyed his other stories. 

"Return of the Maltese Falcon" picks up where Hammett's book left off. PI Sam Spade is contacted by multiple interested parties who would like him to find the fabled gold and jewel encrusted statue. Everyone's lying, including Spade, people are getting killed right and left, but in the end Spade untangles everything and there's a somewhat happy ending. The book picked up towards the end, the last fifty pages or so were engrossing, but it was a bit of a slog to get there. 

Lost Story of Eva Fuentes; Chorus of the Union

 

I've enjoyed Cleeton's novels so far, and I enjoyed this one up until a certain point. When I explain why, I'll try not to spoil too much. 

Margo lives in London in 2024. She's recently divorced and has a business where she tracks down lost treasures for clients: furniture and artwork and the like. A client contacts her about a book, apparently very rare. There is only one known copy in existence and it's called "Time of Forgetting" by Eva Fuentes, a Cuban author. 

Margo reaches out to a bookseller she works with to see if he's familiar with the book. He's not, but he gives her information about a woman who's tracking lost Cuban possessions from families who had to flee Cuba. And then he's murdered. Margo's office is ransacked and she's wondering why this book is wrecking havoc and considers telling the client she's out. 

The book is told from three points of view: Margo, Pilar, a librarian in Cuba in 1966 who is hiding books from families fleeing Castro's regime, and Eva herself, in 1900. Eva was a schoolteacher who participates in a program to travel to Boston for the summer to attend classes at Harvard.

All right, here's the dicey part. About 2/3 of the way through the book, a character is introduced who says he's Eva's grandson. His mother, her daughter, was born in 1901. He's in the 2024 part of the book, and he's in his sixties.

My brain screeched to a halt. How is that possible? I started doing math in my head: if he's in his sixties, he was born in the 1960s, right? And his mother was born in 1901, meaning she was in her *sixties* when he was born? 

Huh?

I hoped I misread, that he was actually Eva's GREAT grandson, but no, very clearly, grandson. 

Did no one stop and do the math? Surely I'm not the only one who picked up on that, right? 

At any rate, I barely paid attention to the end of the book because I was so flummoxed trying to figure out the math. I hate when things like that happen. It ruins an otherwise good story. 

"Chorus of the Union" was pretty good. It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago about the 1860 Republican convention, "The Lincoln Miracle". 

Lincoln and Douglas were longtime political rivals in Illinois, with Douglas always beating Lincoln. They debated often and both of them were great speakers. They went head to head in the 1860 Presidential election and Lincoln won due to the Democratic party splitting up into three separate faction over the issues around slavery. Despite not even being on the ballot in most of the Southern states, Lincoln still carried the day, and the South immediately started talking secession.

Despite losing, Douglas was a Unionist through and through. He cautioned the states to give Lincoln a chance and not secede. He was willing to work with Lincoln (and Lincoln was willing to work with him) to save the Union. Unfortunately, Douglas died just a few months into Lincoln's first term and the nation broke out in Civil War. It was a fascinating look at how men who were different in almost every other way could come together on a topic that they both felt strongly about. I don't know much about Stephen Douglas but I'm interested in reading more about him now. 

 

We Did OK, Kid

 

First off, it's killing me to type "OK" instead of "okay". My work prefers "OK", and I refuse. It's just *wrong*. 

That minor grammatical irritation aside, Hopkins' memoir was really good. I can't believe he's 87! I had no idea. Silence of the Lambs just came out what? two, three years ago? Something like that. 

Anthony is Welsh and his dad was a baker. He was an only child and not terribly bright in school. Everyone kind of wrote him off, didn't think he'd amount to much, which made him determined to prove them all wrong. He was good at memorizing and losing himself in poetry, and he managed to parlay that into a successful acting career. 

He has a lot of good life advice and terrific taste in poetry. And I love how down to earth he is. So refreshing. 

Ain't Nobody's Fool

 

Unfortunately, this one was disappointing. 

I love Miss Dolly and was really hoping for an engaging biography about her life, but it read like a dry academic paper (complete with teeny tiny footnotes I had to strain to read). As someone who has read a lot of dry academic papers for school and work, I can attest that it's not really the genre I want for casual reading. 

At least the author did a nice job of showing how smart Dolly is. She said no to Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis when they wanted to record her song "I Will Always Love You". As much as she wanted Elvis to sing it (me too. Can you imagine how amazing that would have been?) she wasn't willing to give up 50% or all of her copyright, which was the only way the Colonel would let Elvis record it. Smart move in the long run. 

She's been working hard her whole life and brings a lot of joy to a lot of people and sadly, she deserves better than this. Hopefully a better biography will turn up one day. Or she could update the one she wrote a few decades ago. 

They All Came to Barneys

 

Sadly, I never got to go to Barneys. Apparently there was one at South Coast Plaza but by the time I was old enough to know about such things it was long gone. I went into Neiman's once and immediately turned around and went out. I could see it was definitely too bougie for me (my budget, not my tastes. As far as tastes went, it was right up my alley). I'm pretty sure Barneys would have been similar.

Barney Pressman started Barneys in New York in the 1920s as a discount men's suit store. His son, Fred, decided to take the store in a different direction and focus on quality and up and coming designers. Fred loved well made clothes. When his son, Gene, turned twenty-one, he joined his father and grandfather at the store. Gene was the one who convinced Fred to branch out into women's clothing, and the store flourished for decades. Barneys became known as the place to go to see the newest, coolest things. Not just clothes, but home furnishings. Barneys sold things that you couldn't get anywhere else and discovered some major designers and brought them to America for the first time. 

So how did it all fall apart? Part of it was ambition. They wanted to open more stores throughout the country and of course the stores had to be built with the finest materials and designed by famous architects. They ended up going into a partnership with a Japanese firm. They couldn't pay the bills and Barneys declared bankruptcy. By then Barney was gone and Fred followed not long after. Gene and his younger brother, Bob, ended up losing the company their grandfather built from nothing. 

From what I understand, Bob is also writing his own tell-all book, and Gene doesn't come out of it looking well. So Gene struck first.

One of the best parts of the book was when Gene talked about hiring a woman for the store who thought nothing about wearing tiaras to work as business casual and how she was the only one he'd ever met who thought that way. That's me too! I don't honestly understand why more people don't wear tiaras (and crowns) to work on a regular basis. You only get the one life. You should enjoy it.  

The Last Death of the Year

 

I have to say, I was disappointed by this one. Normally I really enjoy Hannah's Poirot mysteries, but for some reason this one just didn't hold my interest. 

Catchpool and Poirot go to the Greek island of Lamperos for New Year's Eve. They're staying at a house known as the Spitty, inhabited by a group of people who, forty years later, would be called a commune. It's a ragtag group of people who subscribe to a philosophy of forgiveness above all else. 

Their leader, Austin, proposes a game in which everyone writes down their New Year's resolution and puts it in a container. Catchpool will them read them one by one and everyone has to try to figure out which resolution belongs to which person (sounds dreadfully boring to me, but hey, it was the 1930s). 

Catchpool comes to one resolution about murdering Matthew, one of the male members of the group, and he and Poirot are horrified at the prospect. Matthew takes it in stride, laughs it off as a joke, but no one confesses to having written it. 

So of course Matthew is murdered that evening. 

I can't say too much more without giving it away, but it was just lackluster. 

Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear

I finished this book on Sunday, which was National Winnie the Pooh day. I found that an interesting and unplanned coincidence!

I love Pooh bear. There's just something about him that makes me smile. I have a Pooh bear, he's my constant companion. He's a good friend. 

Christopher Robin Milne received his teddy bear for his first birthday, the other friends from the Hundred Acre Woods followed later. His father, A.A. Milne, wrote children's stories about Christopher and his bear. Milne was also a successful poet, playwright, and adult author as well, but of course he's best known for Pooh's stories. 

Christopher was his only child and while they were close when Chris was younger, they drifted apart once Chris became an adult. There was some resentment on Chris's part about how he helped his father gained success. He made his peace with being "Christopher Robin" in his later years, especially after having a daughter with cerebral palsy. The fortune he inherited from his dad's stories allowed him and his wife to get Clare the medical attention she needed, and to this day the trust in her name helps others with disabilities. 

The original Pooh and his friends live at the New York Public Library. Milne sent them on a publicity tour to the US, and they ended up at his New York publisher's office. Chris didn't want them back, so there they stayed until the publisher donated them to the library. They are the number one attraction, out of all the amazing things at NYPL. Over the years attempts have been made, including President Obama and the Prime Minister calling to ask the library to send the bear back home, and the library has politely declined. Pooh is theirs, and he's staying. 

The first story featuring Pooh bear was published on December 24, 1925, so we are celebrating 100 years of Pooh bear. I'm sure he will be around for 100 more 😊

 

Trixie Belden and the Mystery off Glen Road

It's been a hot minute since I reread this one, so I figured why not? It's quick and it makes me laugh. 

A storm blows through Sleepyside, and a tree knocks out part of the roof of the Bob Whites newly restored clubhouse. The kids don't have a dime to their name, having spent all their money on fixing up the clubhouse, except for Brian, who has saved $50 for Mr. Lytell's old Ford. Brian, being all noble, insists that he spend the money on supplies to fix the clubhouse.

Trixie doesn't want Brian to lose his car, and since the Wheeler's game keeper quit abruptly, she suggests the Bob Whites take over patrolling the preserve for the week, since it's the Thanksgiving holiday. That way, they can earn the $50. The only problem is, how to keep Mr. Lytell from selling the car before then? 

Trixie has a solution, of course! Jim gave her his great-aunt's diamond ring, which her father put in a safety deposit box. All Trixie has to do is convince her dad to let her have the ring for the week, give it to Mr. Lytell for security until they earn the $50, and then Brian can still have his car. Honey agrees it's a fine idea, but how to convince Mr. Belden to let tomboy Trixie have her ring? It's not like she dresses up or wears jewelry.

Honey has a solution, of course! Her cousin, Ben Riker, is coming to spend the holidays with the Wheelers, so Trixie must pretend to have a crush on Ben and therefore, become more feminine and want to wear jewelry, like her ring. Trixie hates the idea (mostly because Ben is a big pest and no one likes him) but without another solution forthcoming she rolls with it.

It works! Mr. Belden gets the ring for Trixie, who turns it over to a very suspicious Mr. Lytell, and the kids start patrolling the preserve. When Trixie and Honey discover a deer carcass, they're convinced they've come across a poacher on Mr. Wheeler's land!

It was lots of fun and the kids tease each other mercilessly (in a nice, clean cut, 1950s kind of a way), so that's always amusing. I love Trixie and her friends. 

The Last Devil to Die; Dolly Parton: Star of the Show

 

I swear I've been reading over the last few weeks, just not *finishing*. But I did finish two over the weekend, and they were both really good.

First up, the fourth Thursday Murder Club Mystery by Richard Osman (I watched the Netflix movie about the first book a few weeks ago and it was really good! I'm hoping they'll make more, but since they changed Bogdan's story in the movie I'm not sure what they can do going forward). This book had a lot of sad moments that I don't want to spoil, but I cried several times. 

One of Stephen's (Elizabeth's husband) friends is murdered after discovering heroin in a box that someone left at his shop. Now the box and the heroin are missing, and there are quite a few people looking for it. And even more dying. 

And Garth was wrong. The best Nirvana songs are not "Sliver" or "Heart Shaped Box". I'd put "Heart Shaped Box" in the top 10, but not "Sliver". The best Nirvana songs are: "Blandest", "Drain You", and "Lounge Act". 

All in all, it was a solid story with a good ending and I'm looking forward to the fifth one. I think that gets me all caught up, so Osman will need to write faster now 😊

Speaking of great songs: National treasure Dolly Parton. I will listen to "Jolene" on repeat for days. There's a legend that she wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day. If it's true, then she accomplished more in 24 hours then I have in *mumble mumble* years. Just amazing. 

What a classy lady and she has such great style. This book was full of terrific photos and her memories of performing over the last sixty plus years. It wasn't a traditional biography per se, but it was fun to hear her remember some of her favorite moments from her shows. She's been working her butt off her whole life. I was exhausted just reading it. 

She's approaching her 80th birthday and I know she's having health issues. She isn't going to make her celebration at the Grand Ole Opry. I hope she'll be okay. I don't think any of us are ready for her to go just yet.