December was a fairly light month for reading because I was busy with holiday activities.
- Viviana Valentine Goes up the River by Emily J. Edwards. This is the second in the Viviana Valentine series and I thought I should catch up since the third book was recently released. These novels are set in the early 1950s and are light hearted mysteries with main characters that sound as if they should be in hard boiled mysteries. This time the scene is reminiscent of an English country house mystery (although it is outside NYC) with Viviana spending time at a rich guy's mansion to figure out where the "noise" he is hearing is coming from. These are not deep mysteries and I guessed the culprit pretty early. But they are lighthearted fun that work as good pallet cleansers between deeper books.
- Home at Night by Paula Munier. This is the next in the Mercy Carr mystery series. Mercy solves crimes with her dog Elvis. She is helped by her partner Troy and his dog, Susie Bear. This one involved an eerie old house that Mercy wants to buy and fix up. But strange things are going on there. I love this series because I love the two dogs and usually the mystery is pretty good too. I was told that the author said this one was inspired by the novel Possession by AS Byatt and I can see that.
- Woof by Spencer Quinn. I was in the mood for another dog-led mystery and someone on the internet was talking about this series so I thought I would give it a try. Birdie Gaux is a little girl who lives in a town near the Louisiana swamps. At the beginning, for her birthday, she is allowed to adopt a dog and she picks Bowser (her name for him). The mystery is told completely from Bowser's point of view and is delightful. It's not a complex mystery. This series is published by Scholastic so I suppose this is a YA novel but that didn't really matter. It was the point of view of Bowser that made it enjoyable. I think kids would like this.
- The Hero of this Book by Elizabeth McCracken. This is not a memoir, the author makes very clear. It is a "novel". She says "If you want to write a memoir without writing a memoir, go ahead and call it something else. Let other people argue about it. Arguing with yourself or the dead will get you nowhere." So this is a "novel" in which the unnamed narrator takes a short trip to London in August 2019. You know, before the world changed. "Things", she writes, "felt dire, which now seems laughable." It is 10 months after the death of the unnamed narrator's mother. The last time she visited London was in 2016 with her mother. I read this the day before the 3 year anniversary of the death of my own mother. I wasn't sure that was wise but it turned out to be perfect. The mother of the unnamed narrator was nothing like my mother but I still related to the feelings in the book. And London is one of my favorite cities. In addition to a book about a larger than life mother, this is also a book about writing. "Perhaps you fear writing a memoir, reasonably. Invent a single man and call your book a novel The freedom one fictional man grants you is immeasurable." I enjoyed this very short book very much.
- Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead. Whitehead is one of my favorite authors but this novel is not one of my favorites. It is more like a series of three linked short novellas and that's not a form I particularly enjoy. The writing is, as usual, brilliant but I did not find the story as interesting as I found the story of Harlem Shuffle (this is a sequel). The initial premise is that, in order to score tickets to a Jackson 5 concert for his daughter (it's the 1970's) Ray Carney is drawn back into the life of petty crime he previously abandoned. But it is much more violent and dangerous than previously, just as New York became much more violent and dangerous in the 1970's. While I didn't enjoy this novel as much as his others that I've read, I did regularly think that it would make a good TV series.
