I'm very late in posting this because I was vacationing in Minnesota at the end of July where I was reading books and not writing about them. July always is a month that is heavy on mystery stories because I often take those to the lake with me as light reading. This year was no different.
- The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff. Everyone in the village believes that Geeta murdered her husband and disposed of his body. In reality he was a deadbeat who left her high and dry. But now women from the village are coming to Geeta for assistance in disposing of their own deadbeat husbands. What is she to do? Should she model herself on the "Real" Bandit Queen who took revenge on her male tormenters (according to lore)? This is a debut novel and in some ways that shows. The author tries to do a little too much and sometimes I found myself skimming the inserted stories about the "Real" Bandit Queen. But on the whole it is a very readable novel and, despite the subject matter, quite humorous.
- The Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman. Very much in the style of Jane Austen but with two older "spinster" ladies as the leading characters (which is somewhat refreshing). They solve crimes as a hobby, although also somewhat unintentionally. Some of the resolutions to the crimes are ... fairly unbelievable, but it is fiction after all. There are three crimes to solve in this novel and I had the impression that the author wrote them as three short stories (and I dislike short stories). There is an overarching storyline too but that isn't resolved, setting us up for a sequel. If you don't mind connected short stories posing as novels you may enjoy this. Hopefully the sequel will read like one novel.
- Blue Lightning, Dead Water, Thin Air and Cold Earth, all by Anne Cleeves. These four books are part of my continuing read of the Shetland Islands mystery series which I am quite enjoying. The mysteries are good and the continuing story has some shocking and unexpected developments. I really enjoy Ann Cleeves and always recommend her mysteries. These have a very developed sense of place and the plots are good. I like the main character and we continue to meet and re-meet the other people on the island. I'm on the waitlist for the latest Shetland novel and then I'll be caught up on all her books, and will have to wait for her to write a new one.
- The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death, both by Anthony Horowitz. After watching Magpie Murders on PBS last year I swore I was going to read at least one Anthony Horowitz novel. Well, I read two. These are mysteries but the hook is that Anthony Horowitz is a character in them, one of the detectives in fact. So as part of the story he writes about himself working on Foyle's War and other things the real Anthony Horowitz does in addition to trying to solve the mystery. Which is meta but also very amusing. The mysteries are good. I really enjoyed both of these books.
- The Secret of the Villa Serena and One Summer in Tuscany, both by Domenica de Rosa. I'm a great fan of the mysteries of Elly Griffiths, whose real name is Domenica de Rosa. When I found that out last year, I bought all three of the books she wrote under her real name. I didn't care much for the first one I read so the other two sat on my shelf until I hauled them up to the lake for vacation reading. The Secret of the Villa Serena involves a woman who has moved her whole family to Italy because she always wanted to live there. But now her husband has left her and she is starting to fall for the mysterious archaeologist excavating her land. One Summer in Tuscany involves a woman who runs writing workshops in a castle in Italy. The business isn't very lucrative and she may have to sell the castle. Both have very good senses of place but in both I found the characters a little annoying. And I did not find the endings of either book very believable. So I can't really recommend them, but I highly recommend the books she writes as Elly Griffiths.
- The Appeal by Janice Hallett. I thought 2/3 of this book was really good. I wish I could have excised the middle 1/3. The first 1/3 is a series of emails, etc. that two people (paralegals? Law Clerks? Junior Lawyers?) are reviewing to determine who committed a murder. It includes the text messages between the document reviewers. The title of the book has a double meaning - the reason these persons are reviewing the files is for a legal appeal, but the file involves an appeal for donations to fund the medical costs of a sick child. As the cover says: One murder; 15 suspects. The end of the book gives us the answers to all our questions. All of that is fascinating. But the middle of the novel is the analysis by the two reviewers of the evidence - and I found that incredibly boring. Probably because I am a lawyer and I had already done all that analysis in my own head as I was reading. I kept thinking: "Trust the reader".
