Prince Philip Revealed; Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon

First up, a fun biography about Prince Philip, who turns 100 this June. It's mind boggling to me to think about being 100 years old. It wasn't a traditional biography in the chronological sense. Rather, it talked about how his early years and schooling influenced him. He had to be self-sufficient and spent a lot of years fending for himself. He tends to get frustrated with people who whine and complain and he's disappointed that his children and grandchildren have a different perspective on royalty. I can totally understand that. She also made a really good point about how he's been accused of having affairs but no one has ever come forward with a single shred of proof of any kind. After all these years, you think there would have been something (I for one never believe he did cheat on the Queen in the physical sense. I'm sure he flirted and things like that, but I really think he's very loyal to her and wouldn't do such a thing). 

"Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon" was written by a journalist, James Hibberd, who had an inside look at the show by being on set from day one. He interviewed a lot of the cast and crew and divided it up by seasons. It was a really fascinating look at the hit show. Of course he interviewed Dan and David (the showrunners who screwed it all up) and they insisted they always planned to end the show after season 7. HBO wanted more, and they compromised on season 8. They (and everyone else interviewed) insisted that the last few seasons weren't "rushed" (yes they were) and that the quality and story was just as good as the early years (no, they weren't). Everyone made excuses for the shoddy ending by saying it couldn't have ended any other way, really (yes, it could have. I could give you 15 different endings right now off the top of my head that would have made more sense). Hibberd says that at the last Comic-Con the cast attended the crowd cheered and cheered, so clearly the ending wasn't *that* bad. The crowd cheered because the actors did the best they could with the shit material they were given to work with. I don't blame them at all. Most people I've talked to don't. We know where the blame lies. 

At any rate, I'm looking forward to the prequel that should be coming on next year about the Targaryens. They've case Matt Smith, who, ironically enough, played Prince Philip in seasons 1 & 2 of "The Crown". Excellent choice! You know who else would be good at that show? Alexander Skarsgard. What has he been up to since "True Blood" ended? Oh, and Charlie Hunnam from "Sons of Anarchy". 

Seriously, they should just hire me to cast it :)

The Cousins; In League with Sherlock Holmes; The Astonishing Life of August March; A Rose for the Crown; The Brothers York

Bet you can't guess what I spent my long weekend doing! :)

First up, Karen McManus's "The Cousins". Her books are always so much fun, with terrific twists. Even though I guessed the end to this one well in advance, it was still a good ride.

Twenty-four years earlier, the four Story siblings each got a letter from their mother, saying "You know what you did". Subsequent attempts to contact her have failed, and all four siblings insist they have no idea what they did to make their mother cut them off so completely and abruptly. Then one day each of the three grandchildren get a letter from their grandmother, inviting them to spend the summer at her exclusive resort. The cousins don't really know each other that well, but they can't pass up the opportunity to meet their grandmother and potentially find out why she cut their parents out of her life. Of course it helps that grandma is worth a ton of money and the grandkids would like their share. Once they get to the island, though, they discover that not only did their grandmother not invite them, she's really unhappy they are there and will do anything to get them to leave. 

"In League with Sherlock Holmes" wasn't what I was expecting. Most of the stories didn't feature the great detective at all, they were Sherlock adjacent, as it were (one of them was about Benedict Cumberbatch, for instance). Some were pretty funny, like the one about Irene Adler's great-great-granddaughter solving a murder on the Jersey Shore to clear her BFF's name, or the serial killer who thinks he's Sherlock. Some were just kind of blah, which is par for the course with any collection of short stories.  

"The Astonishing Life of August March" was whimsical (which isn't a word I use often enough). August was born in a theater (literally: his mother was an actress who gave birth to him in between acts of a play she was performing and left him in the laundry basket). The aged laundress, Eugenia Butler, raises him (sort of, honestly August raises himself) at the theater, where his education consists of watching great plays night after night. When the theater is torn down August is tossed to the streets to make his own way in life. It was a charming little story. 

"A Rose for the Crown" by Anne Easter Smith was wonderful, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a fictionalized account of Richard III's mistress, the mother of his acknowledged illegitimate children, Katherine and John. Nothing is known about who this woman (or women) was in real life, so Smith has license to make up her story. Kate Haute was born on a poor peasant farm, but has the beauty, grace, and charm to be noticed by a minorly important cousin, Richard Haute. Richard arranges for Kate to come and live with him and his wife and his daughter, Anne, who is Kate's age. Kate learns how to be a gentlewoman and is eventually married: first to an old merchant who leaves her a young, well off widow, then to a cousin named George Haute. Kate is very much taken with George's attractiveness, but quickly discovers he prefers men to women and their marriage becomes a disappointing sham. Kate wants to be loved and have children. She has the good fortune to meet fifteen year old Richard Plantagenet while he's out hawking one day and the two fall for each other and quickly become lovers. It was sweet and romantic and I cried at the end when Richard died. My only quibble (and it's a very small one, but still) is that she has Kate go visit Richard shortly after his wife, Queen Anne, dies, and mentions how he looks much older than his 31 years. He was 32, actually, something Smith, as a Ricardian, should have known or at least verified. 

And finally, "The Brothers York" by Thomas Penn. I was really looking forward to this one because of course anything new about Richard III is exciting. 

Unfortunately, he relied on historians who have been discredited and are considered very biased towards the Tudors, like Thomas More and Polydore Vergil. He tried to make out like the three York brothers: Edward, George, and Richard; were somehow quite unusual for how they fought with each other and tussled over everything. They were in fact very much a product of their times. He contradicted himself quite a bit once Richard became king, talking about how greedy he was and how he wanted to usurp the crown so badly he murdered his nephews, and in the next sentence how being king was such a burden it weighed him down. He called Henry Tudor's marriage to the former Princess Elizabeth "a true union" but Richard was all too glad to get rid of Queen Anne and was eager to marry Elizabeth himself (utter rot and nonsense, of course). Not to mention the little errors that grated on me a bit: called the coronation feast the "wedding" feast, etc. There are much better, fairer, books about Richard and his brothers out there. 

Shills Can't Cash Chips

 

Super fun Hard Case Crime from Erle Stanley Gardner, featuring Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. An insurance company hires Cool and Lam to find out if Vivian Deshler really has whiplash. Their client has admitted he hit Miss Deshler's car, but she's disappeared and now they're suspicious. They want Donald to find her and see if he can get some good snaps of her running on the beach in a bathing suit to show she doesn't really have whiplash. 

Tough job, but someone's got to do it. 

Donald goes to the small L.A. suburb where the accident took place and starts poking around. It doesn't take long before he figures out something bigger is going on. Typical Gardner, there are about 10 car accidents on the day in question (I'll never forget that Perry Mason book where 10 different people were in one swimming pool one night--all without running into each other or the owner of the house). It was a super quick read. 

Home Before Dark

 

Riley Sager's latest, "Home Before Dark", was a little disappointing. I was surprised, because normally I really enjoy Sager's books. The premise was interesting: Maggie Holt has lived her life in the shadow of The Book (always in caps). When she was five, her parents bought Baneberry Hall in Bartley, Vermont. They only lived there a few weeks before fleeing in the middle of the night with only their clothes on their backs, claiming that the house was haunted by malevolent spirits who were trying to kill Maggie. Maggie's dad, Ewan, got a big book deal out of it, and "House of Horrors" became a huge bestseller. Unfortunately, it's plagued Maggie her whole life, more so because she thinks it was  all a big fat lie. She doesn't remember anything her dad recounted in the The Book. Her parents got divorced a few years after The Book was published and refuse to discuss it. 

Maggie's father dies, and Maggie discovers that he never sold Baneberry Hall and now she owns it. She's determined to get to the truth of the matter so she decides to move in while she fixes it up to put it on the market. The house certainly does seem haunted: lights and record players turn on by themselves, Maggie keeps seeing shadows of people both inside and outside, and things keep disappearing. Since her dad recounted all the same things in The Book, it's starting to look like maybe it all wasn't such a big lie, after all. It all made sense in the end, but it was disappointing. I think I would have preferred if the house had actually been haunted. 

Fortune and Glory; Peachy Scream

 

Janet Evanovich dropped the number naming convention for book 27 of her Stephanie Plum series. It wasn't bad. I think she's getting tired of writing Stephanie, she introduced a new character in this one, a treasure hunter named Gabriela Rose, and it looks like Ms. Rose is going to be in the next book, so I think maybe she's ready to move on. I don't blame her, she's been writing Stephanie for a long time.

Stephanie is trying to help Grandma Mazur find the treasure that her late husband, Jimmy, left her clues for. He and the five other wise guys he was supposed to share it with each have a clue. Put the six clues together with the keys Jimmy left and the fortune is all theirs. Too bad two of the other wise guys are after Grandma and Stephanie. Stephanie and Joe are on the outs, so she hooks up with Ranger in this one, but it seems like Joe wants her back, and she gets jealous when she thinks Joe is dating someone else (seriously, just marry Joe already. This back and forth between him and Ranger is getting tiresome). 

"Peachy Scream" by Anna Gerard is the second Georgia B&B mystery, after "Peach Clobbered". It's Cymbeline's annual Shakespeare Festival, and Nina Fleet is hosting a group of amateur Shakespeare actors who will be performing Hamlet, including Harry Westcott, her nemesis from the first book. One of the actors, Len Marsh, dies under what might be suspicious circumstances (his glass had a weird residue in it that Nina takes to the coroner and has tested). Like the first book, Gerard did a good job of planting red herrings so not only was I guessing who the intended victim was, I wasn't sure who was innocent or guilty. 

And seriously, the town of Cymbeline sounds awesome and I wish it was real.

Fool Me Twice

 

Lindsay's second Riley Wolfe book was really good. Riley is kidnapped after stealing a Fabergé egg from a Russian museum and taken to a remote island where he meets Patrick Boniface, the number one scary badass illegal arms dealer in the entire world. Boniface would like Riley to steal something for him: a fresco that currently lives in the Vatican. Steal an entire wall from the Vatican? Riley knows damn well it can't be done, but what choice does he have? Boniface will kill him if he doesn't, so he agrees. As he's headed to the airport to head home and try to figure out how to steal a wall from the Vatican, Riley is kidnapped again. This time it's Bailey Stone, the number *two* scary badass illegal arms dealer in the entire world. Naturally Stone would like to be number one, so he needs Riley's help to take out Boniface. Another impossible request that Riley is forced to say yes to or be killed. 

I won't spoil it, but there were a lot of good twists and turns. I like Riley, like Lindsay's other dark hero, Dexter Morgan, I know he's a bad guy and I shouldn't root for him, but of course that's why Lindsay writes the way he does.  

O Jerusalem

 

I've been reading a ton of nonfiction lately, so it was a nice break to get through a fiction title. Laurie R. King's fifth Mary Russell book, "O Jerusalem", goes back to the time of "The Beekeeper's Apprentice". In the first book, Mary and Sherlock go to Palestine after Sherlock has been injured by the bomb in his beehive. This book tells us what happened during that time, before Mary and Sherlock were married. 

While in Jerusalem, they uncover and thwart a plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock (at least, I think that's what was happening. I got lost a few times). It was actually pretty good, I enjoyed it (despite not really knowing what the heck was going on most of the time). Not as good as the first one, but definitely better than the last few.