Review of The Mislaid Magician, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

Alternate History, Fantasy, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Mislaid Magician
or
Ten Years After

Being the Private Correspondence Between Two Prominent Families Regarding a Scandal Touching the Highest Levels of Government and the Security of the Realm

by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

Harcourt, 2006. 328 pages.
Starred Review

I loved these authors’ earlier books, Sorcery and Cecilia and The Grand Tour, so much, it was a no-brainer to buy this third book about cousins Kate and Cecy in a magical regency England just as soon as it came out. However, I was still at the stage where I only got library books read, because library books have a due date. So the book sat in one of my many to-be-read piles and peeked out at me tantalizingly.

Well, after I loaded up on Advance Review Copies at ALA Annual Conference this summer, I decided to make myself a rule, or I’d never get any of those books read. Now I alternate. After every library book, I read a book I own. It’s working great, and this was one of the first books I own that I selected. I was so happy to finally get around to reading it!

The books are set in an alternate England, where people mix their attention to manners with magic. The authors have written the books by writing letters between the characters, Kate and Cecy, who are cousins. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the earlier books, but that wasn’t a problem with understanding what was going on. And, after all, the book is set ten years into the young ladies’ marriages, so it’s probably appropriate to read it later.

At the start of the book, Cecy and her husband James are asked by the Duke of Wellington to investigate the disappearance of a distinguished magician who was investigating a problem with the ley lines — lines of magic that run throughout England. They leave their children with Kate and Thomas, and the precocious children of both couples figure into the correspondence.

What follows is a mystery and an absorbing adventure. This is clever, light reading. There are some very fun and surprising bits of magic thrown into the mix. I don’t need to say a lot more. These books take regency England mixed in with magic. If that sounds delightful to you, you should definitely read them. This one isn’t really a romance like the first, but it is a fun mystery and reminds me more of Amelia Peabody books from when Ramses was young.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my own copy, purchased via Amazon.

Review of The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

Fiction Review, Light Reading, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

by Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon Books, New York, 2011. 213 pages.
Starred Review

I do love the No. One Ladies’ Detective Agency books! This is the twelfth book in the series, and I really do think you will enjoy them more by reading them in order, though I’m sure you would also enjoy them jumping right in.

These books are for people who don’t mind a little author meandering. The fact that Mma Ramotswe is a detective adds some interesting cases, and plot related to that, but mostly the book is about the people and the interesting problems they encounter. Some of the problems always relate to their own personal lives, but they are also tied in with the problems brought to them in their role as detectives.

In The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, Mma Ramotswe seems to be haunted by the ghost of her beloved tiny white van; Mma Makotsi is finally preparing for her wedding, including finding the perfect shoes; the apprentice Charlie has gotten into bigger trouble than ever; and they have a large and complicated case, involving rich men, a possibly innocent child, and someone cruel enough to harm animals.

The details of the plot are not the point of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books. They are about spending time with dear friends, kind friends who take seriously the bad things out in the world, but also thoroughly enjoy the good things. I happened to read this volume in the hospital, and it was the perfect light pleasant reading, not requiring a lot of thought, but nicely taking my mind off how I was feeling.

I love Mma Ramotswe’s musings on life. Here is one brought on by a remembrance of her father:

“Later, much later, she remembered his words and pondered them. We cannot always stop the things we do not like. She knew now what he meant, of course — that nature had to be left to take its course — but she had realised that there was a far greater truth there too. There were some things that one could stop, or try to stop, but it was a mistake to go through life trying to interfere in things that were beyond your control, or which were going to happen anyway, no matter what you did. A certain amount of acceptance — which was not the same thing as cowardice, or indifference — was necessary or you would spend your life burning up with annoyance and rage.”

And here are her musings on weddings:

“She stood still for a while, thinking about marriage. A wedding was a strange ceremony, she thought, with all those formal words, those solemn vows made by one to another; whereas the real question that should be put to the two people involved was a very simple one. Are you happy with each other? was the only question that should be asked; to which they both should reply, preferably in unison, Yes. Simple questions — and simple answers — were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.”

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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Return of Captain John Emmett, by Elizabeth Speller

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery 0

The Return of Captain John Emmett

by Elizabeth Speller

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. 442 pages.

The Return of Captain John Emmett is a mystery set in England a few years after the Great War. Laurence Bartram has returned from the war. His wife died while he was in France, when she was giving birth to their firstborn son. He’s writing a book on old churches, but not making much progress.

“Then, one Tuesday teatime, he was surprised to find a letter, addressed in unfamiliar handwriting, lying on the hall table. Later he came to think of it as the letter. It had been forwarded twice: first from his old Oxford college, then from his former marital home; it was a miracle it had got to him at all.”

The letter is from Mary Emmett, the sister of a boy he knew when he was in school, John Emmett. She writes:

“I wanted to tell you that John died six months ago and, horribly, he shot himself. He seemed to have been luckier than many in the war, but when he came back from France he wouldn’t talk and just sat in his room or went for long walks at night. He said he couldn’t sleep. I don’t think he was writing or reading or any of the other things he used to enjoy. Sometimes he would get in furious rages, even with our mother. Finally he got in a fight with strangers and was arrested.

“Our doctor said that he needed more help than he could provide. He found him a place in a nursing home. John went along with it but then the following winter he ran away. A month later a keeper found his body in a wood over thirty miles away. He didn’t leave a letter. Nothing to explain it. We had thought he was getting better.”

Mary asks Laurence to investigate John’s death, to try to find out why he would do such a thing. His investigation is leisurely and slow, but one thing leads to another, and he begins to get a picture of John Emmett’s war and especially a firing squad where a British officer was executed, and John Emmett was required to be the commanding officer. Recently, quite a few other people who were there that same day have died or been killed. Is there a connection?

Laurence’s well-connected friend Charles is reading golden-age detective fiction during the book, but this book didn’t really evoke those books. With the details about the war experiences, this isn’t really a “cozy” mystery, and the clues aren’t really in place for the reader to spot the denouement.

However, this book was just perfect for the end of my stroke recovery time off. It told an interesting mystery at a leisurely pace, but really evoked the time period after the Great War and let you watch Laurence Bartram taking a new interest in life. With him, you got to know the many different characters who touched John Emmett’s life, and piece together the story of what happened.

I should add that this book is a first novel, and is very impressive as such. I don’t know a whole lot about England between the wars, but the author clearly does, and fills the book with loving detail.

Don’t pick up this book if you’re looking for an action-packed quick read! But if you’re looking for a leisurely and lingering story of people making sense of a difficult time when the world was changing — then this book is a good choice.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Pericles Commission, by Gary Corby

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Pericles Commission

by Gary Corby

Minotaur Books, New York, 2010. 335 pages.
Starred Review

The Pericles Commission has one of the best first sentences ever:

“A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud.”

The story that follows is an intriguing murder mystery, set in the political turmoil of ancient Athens establishing democracy.

That was enough information for me to know I wanted to read this book. I was not disappointed. The mystery is satisfying and action-packed. And there’s plenty of historical details to make you believe this could really happen. Our hero, the narrator Nicolaos, even meets a spunky priestess who gets involved in the mystery, and the author gives us reasons in the notes at the end why her role is actually believable.

One thing I loved about the book was how Gary Corby mixed in actual people who lived in Athens at the dawn of democracy, and explained in an Author’s Note how it could all have been true. The dead body in the first sentence belonged to Ephialtes, who really did bring democracy to Athens and really was murdered days later. And there really were political reasons for powerful people to have him killed — which Gary Corby brings to play in his book.

Pericles is the politician who gives Nicolaos a commission to solve the crime, and more and more comes to be at stake for Nicolaos. But my favorite real-life character is the annoying little brother who asks lots and lots of questions: His name is Socrates.

There’s a list of characters in the front, which helps keeping the Greek names straight. Stars beside the names of the actual people show up on more than half of the names in the list. So besides getting an excellent mystery, readers also learn a lot about ancient Athens, in a much more memorable way than a text book.

One thing I do feel bad about: I liked the start of this book so much, I ended up buying a copy. My son has always loved stories of ancient Greece, so I want him to read it. That’s not the bad part. The bad part is that once I finished reading it, it’s taken me months to actually write the review, since it’s not a library book and doesn’t have a due date. I hope to do much better when the sequel, The Ionia Sanction, comes out next month. I’m pre-ordering it today, in fact.

PS: Even worse, I wrote this review last month and didn’t get it posted until now! When I heard that the Ionia Sanction is out (Where’s my copy, Amazon?), I thought it was HIGH time I finally posted this review! I loved this book! Don’t let my slowness make you miss it!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a book I purchased and gave to my son (but read before he did).

Review of A Red Herring Without Mustard, by Alan Bradley

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

A Red Herring Without Mustard

by Alan Bradley

Delacorte Press, New York, 2011. 399 pages.
Starred Review

Hooray! Flavia de Luce is back in this, her third mystery and adventure. She bikes around the family’s estate and nearby village in England on a bicycle named Gladys, and manages to find all sorts of trouble. The book begins with Flavia accidentally burning the tent of a Gypsy who tells her fortune. The next morning, Flavia discovers the Gypsy has been bludgeoned, and Flavia summons help — but not before she gets a good look at the evidence.

Flavia’s old friend, Inspector Hewitt, comes to the scene, and this will give you the flavor of why you shouldn’t trifle with eleven-year-old Flavia:

“‘You’ve got goose bumps,’ he said, looking at me attentively. ‘Best go sit in the car.’

“He had already reached the far side of the bridge before he turned back. ‘There’s a blanket in the boot,’ he said, and then vanished in the shadows.

“I felt my temper rising. Here was this man — a man in an ordinary business suit, without so much as a badge on his shoulder — dismissing me from the scene of a crime that I had come to think of as my own. After all, hadn’t I been the first to discover it?

“Had Marie Curie been dismissed after discovering polonium? Or radium? Had someone told her to run along?

“It simply wasn’t fair.

“A crime scene, of course, wasn’t exactly an atom-shattering discovery, but the Inspector might at least have said ‘Thank you.’ After all, hadn’t the attack upon the Gypsy taken place within the grounds of Buckshaw, my ancestral home? Hadn’t her life likely been saved by my horseback expedition into the night to summon help?

“Surely I was entitled to at least a nod. But no —

“‘Go and sit in the car,’ Inspector Hewitt had said, and now — as I realized with a sinking feeling that the law doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘gratitude’ — I felt my fingers curling slowly into involuntary fists.

“Even though he had been on the scene for no more than a few moments, I knew that a wall had already gone up between the Inspector and myself. If the man was expecting cooperation from Flavia de Luce, he would bloody well have to work for it.”

In this adventure, another murder follows, and past secrets surface. Flavia still is obsessed with chemicals and poisons, and in this book she actually finds a friend near her own age.

The best thing about Flavia de Luce is that I am confident that the Inspector’s worst fears will come true: She will not be able to stay out of further trouble. I hear that the next book is coming out this Fall!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Red Glove, by Holly Black

Fantasy, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Red Glove

The Curse Workers, Book Two

by Holly Black

Margaret K. McElderry Books, New York, 2011. 325 pages.
Starred Review

Red Glove is the second book in Holly Black’s Curse Workers trilogy. And, yes, you definitely need to read White Cat first.

This is an alternate world where certain people are born with the ability to do magic with a touch. There are luck workers, emotion workers, dream workers, memory workers, physical workers, death workers, and the most rare of all, transformation workers. However, doing magic has been declared illegal, so the curse workers have gone into organized crime. Magic tends to run in families, and some powerful crime families rule the underworld.

Red Glove continues the absolute brilliance begun in White Cat. Right at the beginning, Cassel’s oldest brother Philip turns up dead. Who killed him? Did the head of the crime family, who promised not to kill him, go back on his word when he learned Philip had gone to the Feds?

I’m afraid I didn’t find Red Glove terribly satisfying. Cassel has no good choices. He’s in love with Lila, who plans to be head of the Zacharov crime family. Her family wants him to work for them. His remaining brother wants him to work for a rival family. And the Feds want him to work for them. But they also want him to investigate several disappearances — disappearances that Cassel learns he was responsible for himself.

Meanwhile, the government is pushing for mandatory testing, so everyone will know who’s a curse worker and who isn’t. And Cassel just wants to graduate from Wallingford and make a life for himself.

Cassel pulls some clever plans in this book, but I wasn’t completely happy about how things turn out. Yet I can’t imagine a better option — he’s set up in a world where he can’t win. I’m hoping that’s simply because this is the second book of a trilogy — when things are supposed to look black. I can’t imagine how Holly Black will come up with a triumphant end to this trilogy, but I am confident she’s going to pull it off, and I hope she does it SOON!

This is another exceptionally written book. The world of the Curseworkers is completely believable, and you will find yourself completely pulled in.

I should add that this is the kind of trilogy I prefer — where each book does come to a good stopping place, though all build together. Cassel’s solution is definitely clever, and weaves together several different problem threads that come up during the book. But he’s definitely got some new problems he’ll need to deal with in the third book. I can’t wait!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey

Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Franchise Affair

by Josephine Tey

Scribner Paperback Fiction (Simon & Schuster), 1998. First published in 1949. 300 pages.
Starred Review

After discovering Josephine Tey’s mysteries with her classic The Daughter of Time, I’ve been reading all the other Josephine Tey books I can find. If you like cozy mysteries, these remind me of Agatha Christie’s, but seem more unpredictable, much less uniform.

The Franchise Affair is a mystery completely different from any other I’ve ever read. The crime is not a perplexing murder this time. No, a woman and her elderly mother have been accused of a crime. Marion, the woman, asks country lawyer Robert Blair for help when Scotland Yard shows up at her house. They have a sixteen-year-old girl with them who claims that Marion and her mother abducted the girl and kept her locked up in their house for two weeks, treating her like a slave and abusing her. Marion has never seen the girl before in her life, but the girl has descriptions she couldn’t have come up with if she hadn’t been in the house — could she?

The case is unusual and definitely intriguing. If Robert believes Marion, how can he find out what really happened? How did the girl come up with such plausible testimony? And where was she really for those two weeks?

Josephine Tey presents the case beautifully and even throws in a bit of romance. An ingenious and delightful mystery. If you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned cozy that yet isn’t quite like any other, I highly recommend The Franchise Affair.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Sheen on the Silk, by Anne Perry

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Sheen on the Silk

by Anne Perry

Ballantine Books, New York, 2010. 518 pages.
Starred Review

I have enjoyed Anne Perry’s Christmas mysteries, and have been meaning to read more of her work. However, I wasn’t sure if I should tackle her different series at the beginning, or just dive in with her latest. So when I saw she’d written a stand-alone novel set in ancient Byzantium, I decided this would be a good time to start. I knew she is good with historical fiction, and I was not disappointed.

The book is set in thirteenth-century Constantinople. Anna Zarides has come to the city disguised as a eunuch with the goal of clearing her twin brother’s name. He has been charged with the murder of a political figure and exiled to Jerusalem.

Anna stays in Constantinople for years and gets embroiled in the politics and intrigue. The whole city expects Rome and Venice to attack Constantinople as part of the next Crusade — unless the city can compromise their religious convictions and convince Rome they are all one church.

Anna gets a patron early on in the powerful Zoe Chrysaphes, whose heart is set on vengeance. She was there when Constantinople was first overthrown and is determined to get revenge on the families of the people responsible. But Zoe also seems to be embroiled in the attack which Anna’s brother was exiled for.

Anne Perry shows us Anna solving the mystery, but also gets us involved in the currents and cross-currents of the plans to attack Constantinople — or divert the attack. We also get caught up in the story of Venetian Guiliano Dandolo, whose ancestor led the earlier attack on Venice, but whose mother was Byzantine. Anna makes friends with him, yet all the while she’s holding on to the secret that she is a woman. If her masquerade is discovered, especially after she’s served as physician to the Emperor, she could be executed.

The beautifully woven saga in this book will draw you in to a world far removed from our own. Anne Perry makes you feel you understand it, in all its complexity. You’ll root for Anna to clear her brother’s name, and even more, for Constantinople to be saved.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Man in the Queue, by Josephine Tey

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Man in the Queue

by Josephine Tey
Read by Stephen Thorne

Chivers Audio Books, 2000. First published in 1929. Complete and Unabridged. 6 cassettes.
Starred Review

After listening to Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, I’m on a Josephine Tey binge. It turns out that this one, The Man in the Queue, was the first one she wrote, while The Daughter of Time was the last.

The Man in the Queue, naturally enough, is not about a historical mystery like Daughter of Time. However, it’s a good classic whodunit. The detective, Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, is the same one who solves the mystery in the later book. Already we see his “flare,” his sense of people, knowing who’s telling the truth.

The mystery is intriguing. There’s a large queue to get into one of the last nights of a play in London. When the queue starts moving, and gets up to the front of the line, a man falls over on his face, and it turns out that he is dead, stabbed in the back.

The man has no identification on him, but he has a revolver in his pocket. No one comes forward to identify him. So Grant must not only figure out who killed him; he must also figure out who the man is and why he was in the queue with a revolver in his pocket. No one in the queue with him noticed anything, not even if someone had left the queue. They all claim to have never seen the dead man before in their lives.

The only trouble with my Josephine Tey binge is that these audiobooks always make me feel like I’ve gotten to my destination much too quickly, and I want to sit for awhile in the car and hear more.

The book is not politically correct — the main suspect is called “The Dago” for most of the book. But it’s fun to have discovered a classic mystery author of the same style as Agatha Christie, but whose books are all new to me.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Casting Spells, by Barbara Bretton

Chick Lit, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Mystery, Romance, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Casting Spells

by Barbara Bretton

Berkley Books, New York, 2008. 308 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 Fiction

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today I’m appropriately posting the review of a romance, but this one is a paranormal knitting mystery romance! The combination is delightfully original and a whole lot of fun.

Here’s how we meet Chloe Hobbs:

“By the way, I’m Chloe Hobbs, owner of Sticks & Strings, voted the number one knit shop in New England two years running. I don’t know exactly who did the voting, but I owe each of those wonderful knitters some quiviut and a margarita. Blog posts about the magical store in northern Vermont where your yarn never tangles, your sleeves always come out the same length, and you always, always get gauge were popping up on a daily basis, raising both my profile and my bottom line.”

Chloe’s store seems magical because it is. She’s the daughter of a sorceress who fell in love with a human. But her father died in a car crash when she was six years old, and her mother chose to leave this world to be with the man she loved. Chloe inherited several things from her mother including a basket of roving that remained full to overflowing no matter how many hours she spends spinning it into yarn. But she also inherited a responsibility to the town.

“Over three hundred years ago one of my sorcerer ancestors cast a protective charm over the town designed to shield Sugar Maple from harm for as long as one of her line walked the earth and — well, you guessed it. I’m the last descendant of Aerynn, and if you thought your family was on your case to marry and produce offspring, try having an entire town mixing potions, casting runes, and weaving spells designed to hook you up with Mr. Right.”

Unfortunately, the protective spell seems to be weakening. And there’s more than just protection from accidents and crime at stake. Because Sugar Maple “wasn’t the picture-postcard New England town our Chamber of Commerce would have you believe, but a village of vampires, werewolves, elves, faeries, and everything else your parents told you didn’t really exist.” However, Chloe’s mother really came into her powers when she fell in love, so maybe that’s all that Chloe needs.

But then a visiting beautiful stranger dies. The first tourist or nonvillager ever to die within town limits. Aerynn’s spell is definitely waning, because that’s not supposed to happen.

Sugar Maple doesn’t have any police force, since it doesn’t have any crime. So a policeman from Boston, who knew the deceased, goes up to the scene of the crime to investigate.

What follows is funny and quirky and full of surprises. Can the whole town hide the truth from him? And what will happen to the town if the spell fails? What will happen to Chloe?

I must admit, the romance is not exactly subtle. As Chloe begins to have magick, it basically throws her into the guy’s arms. But it is humorous to read about her trying to explain it!

This book is a light-hearted romp through a most imaginative situation. Definitely the best paranormal-romance-knitting-mystery I’ve ever read! And there are knitting tips at the back! How can you go wrong?

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/casting_spells.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.