I usually post my monthly summary after the end of the month (because I'm usually still reading on the last day of the month) but with the New Year's holiday I'm posting this today because I know I won't finish any books until after today.
I knew, going into December, that this was going to be a fairly light month of reading for me. The holidays take up a lot of time. I also was spending time watching television (catching up on an old Masterpiece Theater series that I had missed) instead of reading. I also had some books that I wanted to save for the New Year and didn't want to crack open in December. Because of that, I resigned myself to mostly comfort reads that I knew would be quick reads. But those turned out to be quite entertaining.
These are the books I finished in December:
A Moment's Shadow by Anna Lee Huber
The latest in the Verity Kent mystery series finds Verity and her husband still in Ireland seeking some missing phosgene gas. This is a direct continuation of the last book which I read in March and I feel about this one the same way I felt about that one. Huber clearly did a lot of research into the Irish situation in the early 1920's and of course she wants to use every bit of that research. She seems to reference every single attack by the IRA and retributive attack by British forces - even though usually Verity is nowhere near where they occur and reads about them in the newspaper or hears about them from friends and acquaintances. Huber does a good job in setting the stakes for Verity. Phosgene gas was the gas used in World War I that killed so many people and left others injured for life. That part of the story kept my interest, but I kept hoping that once the gas was found they would leave Ireland and we could leave the Irish struggles behind. Unfortunately, the book ends on a cliff hanger which means the next book will at least begin in Ireland. I generally like this series and the time period it is set in, I'm just not that interested in the Irish portion (even though I'm very Irish).
Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor
One reason not to make a list of "best" or "favorite" books for a year in November is because you may read a real gem in December. Whale Fall was a real gem for me. Set immediately prior to WWII on an island off the coast of Wales where many of the inhabitants don't speak English, the main character is a young woman who has learned to speak English from the nuns and longs to leave the island. She is kept there tending her younger sister while her father plies his trade as a fisherman. One day a whale washes up on the beach and the carcass sits on the beach until, scavenged by the mainlanders for meat and oil, only the skeleton remains. Shortly after the whale washes up, two Oxford scholars arrive to research the folklore of the island and they enlist our main character to be their secretary and interpreter. The story doesn't really involve the whale which is a metaphor for life on the island and how the islanders are "scavenged" by the scholars. This is a short novel and the chapters are very short so it is a quick read. O'Connor builds a picture of the island and its inhabitants that is vivid even though she uses few words. The writing is beautiful and I felt emotionally attached to the main character. There isn't much of a plot but I still felt dread as the story went on that our main character would not achieve what she wanted. This will go on my list of favorite books this year.
The Killing Stones by Ann Cleves
When Ann Cleves ended her Shetland series, we thought we were finished with Jimmy Perez forever. He was moving to Orkney with his pregnant girlfriend/boss. Well, Ann Cleves may have been finished with Shetland but she wasn't finished with Jimmy Perez. This novel finds Jimmy and Willow happily living in Orkney and expecting their second child. In fact Willow is technically already on maternity leave, anticipating celebrating Christmas with her family. But the murder of one of Jimmy's close friends puts both of them on the case. Visiting Orkney has always been on my bucket list and this novel only made me want to go there more - but not in winter when there is no light most of the day. The mystery is good, as it usually is with Ann Cleves. Jimmy is still Jimmy and I liked Willow more than I remember liking her in Shetland. I'm glad Cleves decided to continue the story.
Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J. Jefferson Farjeon
This was the last of the British Library Crime Classics I inherited from my mom and since it was a Christmas theme I saved it for December to read. A group of people are traveling by train on Christmas Eve during a blizzard and end up stuck on the tracks. Rather than staying with the train (as sensible people would) they head off in the storm and end up in a mysterious house where the door is unlocked, fires are going, the larder is fully stocked and tea is laid out, but there is no human being in sight. Although this novel is dated in many ways, and went on a little longer than I would have liked, I still enjoyed it. The story reminded me of the kind of story that a young Alfred Hitchcock would have used for a film. In fact, the plot reminded me very much of a plot on an episode of the British TV series Endeavor, which I was watching at about the same time I read this novel. I've found the BLCC books to be hit or miss for me over the last two years and I was happy that this one was a hit.
Venetian Vespers by John Banville
I was barreling along thinking that this month I was going to enjoy all the books I read when I ran into this one. In the late 1800's Evelyn (yes, in Britain that is a man's name), a hack English writer (as he describes himself), marries Laura, the daughter of an American billionaire, and they leave for Venice for their honeymoon. However, Laura's father dies unexpectedly and it turns out that he has disinherited the daughter due to some unexplained rift. Venice in winter is cold, damp and, to the narrator, mysterious. The first night there Evelyn cannot sleep so he heads out to visit Florian's in Piazza San Marco where he runs into a man who claims to have been at school with him (although Evelyn cannot place him) and the man's beautiful sister. The next morning he wakes to find Laura missing. What happened to her? As I've often said, I dislike mysteries written in the first person because in order to make them work, often the narrator has to be either a liar or stupid and I tire of being in their heads. In this case he's a pompous ass who is also stupid. I did not like this novel at all. I've read other John Banville novels and liked them but I've never read any of his mysteries before. I figured out the broad outlines of the mystery pretty early on (although not the specifics). The main character was too pompous and stupid for me to enjoy (I also found his behaviour abhorrent) and the other characters are seen through his eyes. There was a sense of place but it is seen through the main character's eyes so it is unclear to me if Venice in winter is as horrible as depicted. All in all, not recommended.
At Midnight Comes the Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming
The latest installment of the Russ van Alstyne/Clare Fergusson series, this was issued in the fall of 2025. It was very good but the plot hit very close this time, involving a white militia group that hates Jews and anyone else who is different. Spencer-Fleming kept the tension ratcheted up without necessarily putting her characters in ridiculous situations as she has in other books. It isn't necessary to read these books in order but it certainly helps with the back stories of all the characters.
A Shipwreck in Fiji by Nilima Rao
This is the second novel in a fairly new series set in Fiji during World War I. I read the first novel, A Disappearance in Fiji, back in 2023. I was only moderately interested in that novel but, since it was a debut novel, I thought I might read the follow up. I liked this novel much better. The main character, Police Sergeant Akal Sing, is a Sikh from India and an outsider in the Fiji community so we learn about Fiji through his eyes. In this story he is asked to escort two ladies, relatives of the local newspaper editor, to a different island in the chain and while he is there he is to look into a report that Germans have landed on the island. This seems unlikely and he believes that, as usual, his superior is giving him pointless tasks that no one else wants. But almost immediately he is pulled into a murder investigation. Just as with the first novel Rao creates a wonderful sense of place that makes the reading worthwhile. The plot of this novel is much better than in the first and she moves the story along. The characters other than Sing could be developed more and I found some of the actions of the young woman character with respect to Sing a little hard to believe, but not enough to stop me from enjoying the book.
The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Back in February of 2024 I read Laura Shepherd-Robinson's novel The Square of Sevens. It was a page-turner but very complicated and I had a vague feeling that the author hadn't played fair when I got to the ending. So I started this novel with some trepidation. Hannah Cole is a recently widowed women living in London in the 1700's during the reign of King George II (of whom I know nothing). She runs a confectioner's shop in the newish St. James area but her husband's estate is tied up in probate because he was murdered and the murder is being investigated by none other than the magistrate Henry Fielding (yes, the author Henry Fielding). She is in danger of losing the store due to debts when a stranger named William Devereux stops in one day and tells her about "iced cream". He then helps her find a recipe for it and instructions on how to make it. The iced creams become a sensation. But who is William Devereux? Should she trust him? Should she trust her feelings for him? Like her earlier novel, this novel has a complicated plot - I think Shepherd-Robinson likes to create puzzles and she is very good at it. This time I had no qualms about how she got to the ending and yes, it surprised me.
And last, but certainly not least:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes tr. Edith Grossman
Yes, I finished my year-long read of Don Quixote! This was a Blue Sky Book Club read-along and I don't know how many people who started with me in January finished (or almost finished) by the end of December. It seems that most people dropped out or at least stopped posting. (I can't complain, I dropped out of the year-long read of Clarissa). I'm very glad that I read this classic novel which was much more modern than I expected. The novel is divided into Book 1 and Book 2. I have to admit that I enjoyed Book 1 much more than I enjoyed Book 2. In Book 1 Don Quixote and Sancho have all the adventures you usually hear about - tilting at windmills, mistaking inns for castles, calling a shaving basin a golden helmet, etc. It was fun. And I enjoyed comparing it to how it was interpreted in the musical Man of La Mancha. (The biggest difference was that Dulcinea is an actual seen character in the musical.) But Book 2 seemed to have been written as a reply to an unauthorized book written by someone other than Cervantes that continued the adventures of Don Quixote. All the characters in Book 2 had read Book 1 and, usually, the unauthorized sequel (which, yes, seems a very modern concept) and instead of Don Quixote and Sancho having (relatively) organic adventures, they had adventures that were "created" for them by people who had read Book 1. I mostly thought this was mean of them and I tired of it. But I kept reading and finished on time. And I'm glad I did.
