I love the names Peters has given her characters. Emerson and Peabody. Ramses and Nefret. Gargery. Reverend Panagopolous. Even the cat, Horus.
I bring this up only because years ago, when I was quite small, I read a book all the way through before I discovered that the heroine’s name was ABigail, not aBIgal. Then there were the Sigh-ox Indians. And aGAtha Christie. Ever since, I have to decide before I begin reading how I’m going to mentally pronounce all the names. Continue reading »
Henning Mankell’s Pyramid and Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries . . . Henning Mankell is Swedish and has—who would have guessed it—created a Swedish detective in Kurt Wallander. Sweden is a very different country culturally and politically from the U.S. and its policing is different in some respects, similar in others. That gives these short stories and their central character, a police detective, extra dimensions that add interest to each of the different plots.
Putting these mysteries together as they are is, to me, almost a stroke of editing genius. These mysteries were written at different times, some have run in newspapers, two have not seen the light of day until this book was published. (Mankell, in his foreword, sets the tone for the stories in the book. Please don’t miss it.) Mankell wrote Wallander’s First Case long after the others, in response to readers who expressed interest in knowing some back story of Kurt Wallander and how he got to be who he is. Continue reading »
The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry . . . The story Berry tells moves up and down much of the eastern seaboard of the United States—New York City, Washington, DC, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Richmond, Virginia, and the tiny town of Bath, North Carolina, once a hotbed of pirate activity.
It has as diverse a cast of characters as anyone could want, almost too many to easily keep straight. It offers history, mystery, presidents and lesser politicians, assassinations real and faked, double-dealing, a secret code apparently beyond deciphering, privateers and pirates both “old-school” and modern. The action ranges through hotels, Jefferson’s Monticello, Grand Central station in New York, pirate coves, wealthy estates, and an alphabet soup of intelligence agencies, some you know are real, some maybe not. Continue reading »
He is a devoted husband, father, grandfather, leader in his tiny, impoverished Methodist church, trusted friend of many. Gus has seen a bit of the world in past days, done his share of traveling, had some unusual experiences in a variety of places.
He’s at home now, in his real home, a small town in New York’s Genesee Valley. It would seem, at this time and in this place that means so much to him, Gus should be living a well-ordered, peace-filled life, tending his gardens and feeding his extended family from the bounty of his own efforts. But instead of peaceful days and quiet nights, Gus and the town experience a confluence of troubles the like of which it hasn’t seen for many years. If ever. Continue reading »
