Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens
by Andrea Wulf, Robin Sachs (narrator)
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780307989659
Publication Date: May 1, 2012
Genre: Natural Science
Publisher: Random House Audio

On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the earth and the sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system—but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Overcoming incredible odds and political strife, astronomers from Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and the American colonies set up observatories in remote corners of the world, only to have their efforts thwarted by unpredictable weather and warring armies. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs: eight years later, the scientists would have another opportunity to succeed.

Chasing Venus brings to life the personalities of the eighteenth-century astronomers who embarked upon this complex and essential scientific venture, painting a vivid portrait of the collaborations, the rivalries, and the volatile international politics that hindered them at every turn. In the end, what they accomplished would change our conception of the universe and would forever alter the nature of scientific research.

Before starting this book, I’d read two of Wulf’s books. The first was about Alexander von Humboldt, and natural history, so I was inclined going in to love it. The second one was about the birth of Romanticism; a subject I’m less interested in, but it included von Humboldt and Goethe, so again, I was inclined to really enjoy it.

Chasing Venus was the acid test of Wulf’s writing for me, because space bores me silly. Yes, the stars are pretty to look at, and I urge everyone to find access to some dark corner of the world in which to view the Milky Way, because … wow. And the Auroras are definite bucket list musts. But beyond that, the planets, constellations, black holes, etc … eh, don’t care.

I hadn’t even intended to read this one, but it showed up as available in audio at one of my libraries and I gave in to curiosity – could Wulf make the race to watch the transit of Venus in the 1700’s interesting to someone like me?

Turns out she can … sort of. Did I care about will they/won’t they question of success at getting the measurements? No, not really. But Wulf totally sucked me in to the drama and adventures of those men who rushed to the far corners of the globe (‘rush’ being a highly relative term in the 1700’s) in the often vain hope of seeing the transit of Venus, and not dying in the process from disease, war, or boredom.

I listed to this on audio and I thought the narrator did a terrific job, BUT, my American tin-ear for accents made some of the names really difficult to comprehend, coming from an British accented narrator and many of the names being French. This got better as the book progressed, but I do think I’d have probably gotten a bit more out of this book had I read the print version.

It’s Friday! What I’m reading this weekend

It’s been a week. Not bad, just busy, with a moderately busy weekend ahead as we prepare for stage one of the Great House Restumping project. Because our house was built with a crawlspace, but NO CRAWLSPACE ACCESS (who does that?!), they’re actually going to have to tear off the back wall to gain access to the stumps, so we have to clear everything away from the back wall. Luckily, I’m using ‘we’ in the royal sense, since people bigger and burlier (sort of) than I are coming around to assist with moving the big pots. I’ll be focusing instead on washing all the new bedding we had to buy for our new king size bed, which will be delivered on the 11th of April, just after we’ve had our bedroom floor sanded/refinished. Good times.

Laundry lends itself to to reading though, and this is what I have going currently:

The Secret World of Weather
by Tristan Gooley
isbn: 9781529339581
Publication Date: April 14, 2022
Pages: 375
Genre: Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Sceptre Books

The weather changes as we walk around a tree or turn down a street. There is a secret world of weather – one that we all live in, but very few see.

Each day we pass dozens of small weather signs that reveal what the weather is doing all around us – and what is about to happen. The clues are easy to spot when you know how, but remain invisible to most people.

In The Secret World of Weather you’ll discover the simple rules that explain the weather signs. And you’ll learn rare skills that enhance every minute you spend outdoors, whether you are in a town, on a beach or in a wilder spot.

As the author of the international bestsellers The Walker’s Guide and How to Read Water, Tristan Gooley knows how to de-code the phenomena and signs to look for. As he says, ‘I want you to get to know these signs as I have, as characters. By studying their habits and behaviours, the signs come to life and the meaning reveals itself. From this flows an ability to read what is happening and what is about to happen.’

This is the ultimate guide to exploring an undiscovered world, one that hides in front of our eyes.

I’m really enjoying this so far – it’s a very practical discussion of microclimates, rather than the weather forecasts meteorologists focus on, and how to gauge the weather you can expect to experience in your own backyard. It’s written in a very conversational tone, but is full of hard information, with the science behind it all. Full color photographs too!

Under Lock and Skeleton Key
by Gigi Pandian
isbn: 9781250804983
Series: Secret Staircase Mystery #1
Publication Date: March 15, 2022
Pages: 343
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Minotaur Books

An impossible crime. A family legacy. The intrigue of hidden rooms and secret staircases.

After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks.

When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Fearing she was the intended victim, it’s up to Tempest to solve this seemingly impossible crime. But as she delves further into the mystery, Tempest can’t help but wonder if the Raj family curse that’s plagued her family for generations—something she used to swear didn’t exist—has finally come for her.

I just started this one, so early days yet. While I generally enjoy Pandian’s books, I always struggle at the start; something about her writing style trips me up at the start of each book. Eventually the story clicks and the issues fade away. Hopefully that will be the case with this one.

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens
by Andrea Wulf, Robin Sachs (narrator)
isbn: 9780307989659
Publication Date: May 1, 2012
Genre: Natural Science
Publisher: Random House Audio

On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the earth and the sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system—but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Overcoming incredible odds and political strife, astronomers from Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and the American colonies set up observatories in remote corners of the world, only to have their efforts thwarted by unpredictable weather and warring armies. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs: eight years later, the scientists would have another opportunity to succeed.

Chasing Venus brings to life the personalities of the eighteenth-century astronomers who embarked upon this complex and essential scientific venture, painting a vivid portrait of the collaborations, the rivalries, and the volatile international politics that hindered them at every turn. In the end, what they accomplished would change our conception of the universe and would forever alter the nature of scientific research.

I don’t know how much of this I’ll listen to, as I mostly listen to audiobooks only when driving, but it’s a current read. I struggled with the French names and the narrator’s English accent at the start, and while that’s gotten better, I’m still not sure I’m really retaining much of the narrative. I may have to follow this up with a print re-read at some point. My take on it at this point though is that, while interesting, it’s not as engaging as the two other titles I’ve read so far of Wulf’s. Might just be my built-in boredom with all things space, or it might be that this is one of her earlier works and she hadn’t yet hit her stride. Might even be a bit of both.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It

Finlay Donovan is Killing It
by Elle Cosimano
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781472282248
Series: Finlay Donovan Mystery #1
Publication Date: February 9, 2021
Pages: 359
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Headline Review

When struggling crime writer and single mum Finlay Donovan accidentally finds herself employed as a local hit-woman, she suddenly finds herself living the life of crime previously reserved for her characters.

'It is a widely known fact that most mums are ready to kill someone by eight-thirty AM on any given Monday. . . ' Finlay Donovan, single mum and floundering crime writer, is having a hard time. Her ex-husband went behind her back to fire the nanny, and this morning she sent her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an unfortunate incident with scissors.

Making it to lunch with her literary agent is a minor victory but, as she's discussing the plot of her latest crime novel, the conversation is misinterpreted by a woman sitting nearby as that of a hit-woman offering her services to dispose of a 'problem' husband.
And when the woman slips Finlay a name and a promise of a large sum of cash, Finlay finds herself plotting something much bigger than her novel.
And, after all, they do always say: write what you know. . .

Finlay Donovan really is killing it . . .

I’ve seen this title thrown around a few sites, but honestly, the cover turned me off because it was such an obvious knock off of Where’d You Go, Bernadette? that it felt like the publisher was trying to ride some coat-tails. But Irresponsible Reader sang its praises in one of his posts, and I decided to give it a try.

At first, I thought maybe I’d run up against my first IR recommendation dud, because I don’t enjoy reading about people who are hanging onto life by a thread, and Finlay is definitely a big, hot mess at the beginning of this book. But I kept reading, because I couldn’t figure out how the author was going to pull off a protagonist mother-of-two who kills for money and still call the book a comedy.

When the answer to that started becoming clearer, the book started to click for me, because the deeper Finlay found herself in it, the more interested and invested I became. Coincidentally, the less of a hot mess she became. The introduction of the nanny-partner also helped, because her pragmatic personality was one I could identify with (although she takes her pragmatism further than I ever could).

What I was left with was a very well written, well plotted mystery that entertained me. Cosimano gets the bonus points for pulling off a very-plausible-for-fiction explanation for all the events that take place, and for dovetailing it all nicely together at the end.

This is the first of at least 3 books (so far) and I’m definitely interested in reading the next one. Thanks again to Irresponsible Reader!

Bodies from the Library 1 (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

Rather than create a separate post for each short story, I’m appending them under the anthology title as I read them. Older short stores will be behind the ‘read more’.

Bodies from the Library 1
by Tony Medawar (editor)
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780008289225
Publication Date: January 1, 2018
Pages: 324
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Collins Crime Club

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 16 tales by masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a newly discovered Agatha Christie crime story that has not been seen since 1922.
At a time when crime and thriller writing has once again overtaken the sales of general and literary fiction, Bodies from the Library unearths lost stories from the Golden Age, that period between the World Wars when detective fiction captured the public’s imagination and saw the emergence of some of the world’s cleverest and most popular storytellers.

Each of these 16 forgotten tales have either been published only once before – perhaps in a newspaper or rare magazine – or have never before appeared in print. From a previously unpublished 1917 script featuring Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados, to early 1950s crime stories written for London’s Evening Standard by Cyril Hare, Freeman Wills Crofts and A.A. Milne, it spans five decades of writing by masters of the Golden Age.

Most anticipated of all are the contributions by women writers: the first detective story by Georgette Heyer, unseen since 1923; an unpublished story by Christianna Brand, creator of Nanny McPhee; and a dark tale by Agatha Christie published only in an Australian journal in 1922 during her ‘Grand Tour’ of the British Empire.

With other stories by Detection Club stalwarts Anthony Berkeley, H.C. Bailey, J.J. Connington, John Rhode and Nicholas Blake, plus Vincent Cornier, Leo Bruce, Roy Vickers and Arthur Upfield, this essential collection harks back to a time before forensic science – when murder was a complex business.

The Inverness Cape by Leo Bruce: ✭✭✭½ (12 March, 2023)

I’ve read at least one other full-length Leo Bruce novel (Death on Allhallowe’en) and liked it quite a bit. This short story was clever, although not complex. Told as a memory of a past case, but still structured as a mystery (the guilty party isn’t named until the end). I liked the subtle tip-o-the-hat to Doyle and Holmes. Well, maybe it’s not subtle, but it’s a tip-o-the-hat to his existence and eminence, and perhaps it’s done in a sly sort of way. As I said, it’s not a complicated mystery, but it’s a short-short story and it’s done well for the few pages it occupies.

Continue reading Bodies from the Library 1 (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

The Murder of Mr. Wickham

The Murder of Mr. Wickham
by Claudia Gray
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780593313817
Publication Date: May 2, 2022
Pages: 382
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Vintage Books

The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even broader array of enemies. As tempers flare and secrets are revealed, it’s clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet they’re all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered—except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst.

Nearly everyone at the house party is a suspect, so it falls to the party’s two youngest guests to solve the mystery: Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry, eager for adventure beyond Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, the Darcys’ eldest son, whose adherence to propriety makes his father seem almost relaxed. The unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions and uncover the guilty party—before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.

I’m conflicted about this book. On the one hand, the mystery was very good (although the ending was somewhat predictable, not because of bad plotting at all, but because of who the suspects are). On the other hand, Gray is trying to write Austen’s characters, which for some of them, I can’t say she succeeded overmuch.

Gray was smart; she wrote the book from the POV of all the characters, so she never has to spend too much time with any of Austen’s creations. This keeps her from straying too far outside the lines of their personalities as written by JA. The MCs, on the other hand, are the offspring of the Darcys and the Tilneys (the Tilneys are the only ones that do not appear in the book; instead they are represented by their daughter). This leaves Gray free to develop these characters while remaining true to Austen’s generation.

But, when she does spend time with those characters, she takes some liberties that I’m not entirely comfortable with. She makes Fanny and Edmund so holier than thou – although they are sincere, I’ll give her that. She also takes a HUGE liberty with Fanny’s brother William, in an effort, I suppose, to make the book more socially relevant to today’s audience. It gives Fanny a weakness that can be exploited by Wickham, sure, but its execution is entirely implausible. View Spoiler »

Overall, it’s an excellent mystery and probably an enjoyable read for anyone who hasn’t read Austen’s books more than once. For those of us who have, the same caveats apply to this book as any other work that uses classic characters and reimagines them.

In the Shadow of Agatha Christie (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

In the Shadow of Agatha Christie
by Leslie S. Klinger (editor)
isbn: 9781681776309
Publication Date: January 1, 2018
Pages: 328
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Pegasus Crime

Before Agatha Christie became the world's Queen of Crime, she stood on the talented shoulders of the female crime authors who came before her. This splendid new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger brings these exceptional writers out of her shadow and back into the spotlight they deserve. Agatha Christie is undoubtedly the world's best-selling mystery author, hailed as the "Queen of Crime", with worldwide sales in the billions. Christie burst onto the literary scene in 1920, with The Mysterious Affair at Styles; her last novel was published in 1976, a career longer than even Conan Doyle's forty-year span. The truth is that it was due to the success of writers like Anna Katherine Green in America; L. T. Meade, C. L. Pirkis, the Baroness Orczy and Elizabeth Corbett in England; and Mary Fortune in Australia that the doors were finally opened for women crime-writers. Authors who followed them, such as Patricia Wentworth, Dorothy Sayers and, of course, Agatha Christie would not have thrived without the bold, fearless work of their predecessors and the genre would be much poorer for their absence.

So while Agatha Christie may still reign supreme, it is important to remember that she did not ascend that throne except on the shoulders of the women who came before her and inspired her and who are now removed from her shadow once and for all by this superb new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger.

I read these stories as part of my 2023 short story challenge. I am also going to append all my short story/individual reviews for this specific anthology to this post (in the order they’re read) so that upon completion it will serve as a review of the whole of the book.

March 12, 2023

The Blood-red Necklace by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace ✭✭✭½:

A mystery, sort of, but definitely a complete story about a string of incredibly valuable pearls, an upcoming wedding and a Moriarity-like villainess of crime. The method was diabolical, but the doe-like innocence of the bride to be was too child-like, and she was constantly referred to as a child, so that the whole thing just felt tainted by fumes of pedophilia. She was of an age of consent, but still, the fact that I had to keep reminding myself of that kept me from fully enjoying what was a really well written story.

Previously posted comments about other stories are behind the break.

Continue reading In the Shadow of Agatha Christie (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

Magnificent Rebels
by Andrea Wulf
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9780525657118
Publication Date: September 13, 2022
Pages: 494
Genre: History
Publisher: Knopf

When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, How can I be free?

It all began in a quiet university town in Germany in the 1790s, when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, their writing, and their lives. This brilliant circle included the famous poets Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis; the visionary philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the contentious Schlegel brothers; and, in a wonderful cameo, Alexander von Humboldt. And at the heart of this group was the formidable Caroline Schlegel, who sparked their dazzling conversations about the self, nature, identity, and freedom.

The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape of Europe, but the young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that transformed our world forever. We are still empowered by their daring leap into the self, and by their radical notions of the creative potential of the individual, the highest aspirations of art and science, the unity of nature, and the true meaning of freedom. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfillment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our responsibilities toward our community and future generations. At the heart of this inspiring book is the extremely modern tension between the dangers of selfishness and the thrilling possibilities of free will.

What a ride that was, and, with a few exceptions, what a bunch of self-absorbed prima donnas. I guess you’d have to be self absorbed to be the vanguard of the invention of self, but still, I liked almost none of these people. If their first name was Friedrich, chances were good I didn’t like them. (Spoiler alert: almost everybody was named Friedrich.) My like list of these people is pretty much limited to those with the Humboldt and Goethe surnames. Schiller was ok – I suspect his poor health made him a more complicated man than he had to be. I also suspect Novalis – the melodramatic proto-goth man-child – would have turned out to have grown up into quite a distinguished gentleman, had he lived a full life. Signs of maturity were apparent before he was struck down by illness. As for the rest of them, I just wanted to box their ears. Friedrich Schlegel was an out right selfish ass, and remained that way the rest of his life.

Yet these are the people who launched a revolution in philosophy with the idea of the inner-self and that self’s freedom in spite of the circumstances it is contained in. I have a niggling argument about whether they truly ‘invented’ the idea of self, as the founding fathers of the United States were big on self-determination, which requires an acknowledgement of the inner self’s freedom, a full quarter of a century earlier, and the French revolution was certainly fuelled by a desire by the people to break away from the established monarch in order to find liberty and equality, neither of which is really possible without some awareness of self. Still, the Jena set were unarguably the first to codify the philosophical implications of the self and how it fits in the whole of the natural world.

So why did I rate the book so highly? Because Andrea Wulf’s writing was superb. I mean, I liked almost none of these people, and yet, I kept reading with avid interest. Only a talented writer can do that. She brought everyone to life – for better or for worse – and placed them into the context of the times they lived in, giving the reader a very real sense of what Jena was like from 1794 through to the battle of Jena in 1806. So highly do I think of Wulf’s writing, that I recently checked out the audiobook of another of her works, Chasing Venus about the race to measure the heavens, something about which I could not care less about. Space holds no interest for me, but I am certain Wulf will make me care about the race to measure it, and the individuals who believed it was worth doing.

I read this as a buddy read with BrokenTune, Jaylia Reads and Lillelara. I posted reading updates on our group site, which I’m appending below, under the ‘read more’ break.

Continue reading Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

Mind of the Raven

Mind of the Raven
by Bernd Heinrich
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781515978404
Publication Date: June 1, 2016
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction
Publisher: Tantor Media

Bernd Heinrich involves us in his quest to get inside the mind of the raven. But as animals can only be spied on by getting quite close, Heinrich adopts ravens, thereby becoming a 'raven father,' as well as observing them in their natural habitat. He studies their daily routines, and in the process, paints a vivid picture of the ravens' world. At the heart of this book are Heinrich's love and respect for these complex and engaging creatures, and through his keen observation and analysis, we become their intimates too.

Heinrich's passion for ravens has led him around the world in his research. Mind of the Raven follows an exotic journey-from New England to Germany, and from Montana to Baffin Island in the high Arctic-offering dazzling accounts of how science works in the field, filtered through the eyes of a passionate observer of nature. Each new discovery and insight into raven behavior is thrilling, at once lyrical and scientific.

I don’t know what to think about this book. Would I have liked it more if I’d read the print version instead of listening to the audio? I don’t know, but I suspect … maybe.

Heinrich is a published scientist who studied ravens, so the book is pure behavioural science, no deviations, no asides; all very on-point and full of pure observational research and field studies. I have no complaints about this in theory – it was all very interesting and I can’t remember ever thinking it was getting dull or monotonous. Except that the narrator came very close to making it sound very dull and monotonous. This is why I suspect I’d have liked it more if I’d read it, or if there had a been a different narrator. Norman Dietz was competent; maybe even more than competent, as his delivery tried to be lively and was never wooden. But it was also obvious that he’s an older man, whose voice was often gravely and always a bit breathy, and in spite of his obvious efforts to bring the text alive, his voice still gave the narration a slight monotone that was hard to get past.

If I have any complaint about the content itself, it’s only that as a scientist, Heinrich is a bit cold-blooded. While it’s obvious he thoroughly enjoys his ravens and has no problem admitting to often having favorites, his objectivity and efforts to not anthropomorphise means that the ravens’ personalities never really come through. He doesn’t treat them as pets and they are, for the most part, semi-wild, but still, as someone who anthropomorphises everything, I’d have liked to have a better sense of they were as individuals.

I also struggled quite a bit at times with what Heinrich was willing to do in the name of science. While he always fed the ravens using roadkills (apparently ‘fresh’ is as relative a term to a raven as it is to vultures), there were a few studies he did where he blithely sacrificed untold numbers of animals to the ravens – while still alive – just to see how the ravens would react, and in one study he introduced a wild female raven to a tightly knit group of 4 ravens who had grown up together to see how they’d react, which wasn’t a positive experience for the poor caught raven. After a couple of days of witnessing her ostracism, Heinrich went out of town for a day and came back to find her dead from being basically pecked to death. He seemed surprised, but not remorseful, and the whole thing left a sour taste, as I’d have no problem arguing that that little experiment was not only unethical, but valueless from a scientific viewpoint.

Mostly, however, the information was interesting, if a little dated (most of his studies were done in the 90’s).

Rediscovered Terry Pratchett stories to be published

The 20 tales in A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories were written by Pratchett in the 1970s and 1980s for a regional newspaper, mostly under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns. They have never been previously attributed to Pratchett, who died in 2015 aged 66, eight years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The collection was bought by Pratchett’s longtime publisher Transworld for a six-figure sum, and will be published on 5 October.

Full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/27/rediscovered-terry-pratchett-stories-to-be-published

Going Rogue: Rise and Shine Twenty-nine (Stephanie Plum, #29)

Going Rogue: Rise and Shine Twenty-nine
by Janet Evanovich
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781035401932
Series: Stephanie Plum #29
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
Pages: 324
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Headline Review

Monday mornings aren't supposed to be fun, but they should be predictable. However, on this particular Monday, Stephanie Plum knows that something is amiss when she turns up for work at Vinnie's Bail Bonds to find that longtime office manager Connie Rosolli, who is as reliable as the tides in Atlantic City, hasn't shown up.

Stephanie's worst fears are confirmed when she gets a call from Connie's abductor. He says he will only release her in exchange for a mysterious coin that a recently murdered man left as collateral for his bail. Unfortunately, this coin, which should be in the office - just like Connie -is nowhere to be found.

The quest to discover the coin, learn its value, and save Connie will require the help of Stephanie's Grandma Mazur, her best pal Lula, her boyfriend Morelli, and hunky security expert Ranger. As they get closer to unravelling the reasons behind Connie's kidnapping, Connie's captor grows more threatening, and soon Stephanie has no choice but to throw caution to the wind, follow her instincts, and go rogue. She is more shocked by the results than anyone.

I think just about everyone who might possibly read this has read Evanovich’s Plum series, and everyone knows they are the literary equivalent of slapstick comedy, and they can often be hit or miss. I’ve stuck with the series this long because at least once a year I need slapstick in my life, and because I also appreciate Evanovich’s interesting decision to embrace the status quo when it comes to Plum’s romantic life. This is a rare case of what I wouldn’t be able to abide in real life, I can enjoy in the fictional one, especially as it’s all above board.

Anyway, this one was a hit for me. The plot was good, the tension was sharp, and the humor was laugh-out-loud in several spots. At one point, MT looked over at me and asked it I was going to be ok, because I was gasping with laughter. For many Lulu is what makes them laugh (and she had at least one moment in this one), but for me it’s the oldies the bring tears of laughter to my eyes. Evanovich has a way with the oldies, and I can only imagine what her family dinners must be like.

I hope these last two books are a sign of things to come, because it feels like Plum and company (and their author) have found their stride, and I’m already looking forward to #30.