April was an incredibly light reading month for for me, I only finished a few books. Which is a bit of a relief because it tells me that I'm somewhat back to normal. All of them were sequels.
The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi. This is the sequel to The Henna Artist which I read earlier this year. The story takes place at least eight years after the first novel and is mainly the story of Malik, who in the first novel was a 12 year old orphan in Jaipur. By the end of the first novel he had moved to Shimla and was able to attend a prestigious private school. In this book he's a young man trying to decide what he wants to do with his life. He has fallen in love with a local woman, a young widow with two children. But Lakshmi, his benefactress to whom he thinks he owes so much, has encouraged him to return to Jaipur to learn the construction trade. We know at the beginning of the book that there is a huge construction catastrophe and the rest of the book relates how that happened and its afermath. I didn't find this book as engrossing as the first book although I did enjoy it. Joshi writes well and really establishes a sense of place, but the construction plot didn't really interest me. When the story was back in Shimla with Lakshmi I was much more invested. I will read the third (and I think last book) in the series because I really like the characters. Although this is a sequel I don't think it is really necessary to have read the first novel to enjoy this one.
Who Cries for the Lost by C.S. Harris. This is the next installment in the Sebastien St. Cyr mystery series which has become a favorite of mine. Harris is a good writer and creates a real sense of time and place. This is not a time period that I've ever known much about (the end of the Napoleanic wars). In this installment Sebastien St. Cyr and his wife Hero and their children are back in London where he is still recovering from the wound he received in the last book. Napolean is on the march and, although we know he will meet his Waterloo, the characters don't. So everyone in London is on edge. In the meantime, a mysterious unidentified body pulled from the Thames calls for Sebastien's attention because it is possible that Alexi Sauvage, the midwife who lives with Sebastien's friend Paul Gibson, could be accused of the murder. Sebastien and Alexi have no love for each other but he has no desire for an innocent woman to hang. This installment filled in some of the past of both Alexi and Sebastien. Kat Boleyn is back as a side character. As a mystery, it kept me guessing but it was not one of my favorites in the series, mostly because there was not nearly enough Hero. Also I keep wondering how they are explaining the "extra" son who looks just like Sebastien. She never addresses that. I recommend the whole series but you should start at the beginning.
Night Flight to Paris by Cara Black. I love Cara Black's mystery series featuring detective Aimee LeDuc. I was not wild about her last (apparently) stand alone novel, Three Hours in Paris, partly because it is set during WWII and that is not my favorite time period to read about. The truth is that I don't remember too much about that novel except that the main character, an American woman working for the British as a sniper, is tasked with taking out Hitler (no suspense there, we know from the beginning she won't). Now Black seems to have turned this into a series and the sniper, Kate Rees, is sent on another mission. Since the last novel Kate has been teaching snipering (is that a word?) but now she is convinced to go back into the field undercover to deliver some much needed penicillin to a doctor in Paris, assassinate an important Nazi and, most importantly to Kate, rescue her undercover friend Margo who previously saved Kate's life. Because I remember next to nothing about the first book I don't remember if Margo was in it. Certainly in this book Black gives me nothing to make me care deeply about Margo's fate even though Kate certainly does. The novel is fast paced but it just didn't keep me on the edge of my seat. I knew from the beginning that Kate wasn't going to die and I didn't care about Margo (whoever she was). A lot of the novel is told through Kate thoughts and that is, in my opinion, a flaw. Kate is (justifiably) suspicious of everyone but that leaves no room for the reader to be suspicious. It's as if Black doesn't trust her readers to understand how dangerous the mission is and has to have Kate constantly remind them. All in all, this book wasn't for me and I don't even know if I'll read the next installment when it comes out as I'm sure it will.
