Author: MurderByDeath

Extracurricular Activities (Murder 101, #2)

Extracurricular ActivitiesExtracurricular Activities
by Maggie Barbieri
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 0312355386
Series: Murder 101 #2
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
Pages: 294
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur

 

Well, I didn’t think I’d be able to refrain from immediately picking up the next book, but I’m a bit surprised by how quickly I devoured it.  Almost as good as the first one, though the action got a little bit over the top.  I found the premise believable, but the number of times Allison, the MC, found herself in peril stretched the boundaries of believability, even for a cozy.  Not cozy peril either: she’s shot, she’s stabbed, she’s kidnapped … her insurance rates must be hell.

Still, it obviously kept me riveted.  I miss mysteries like this; I know they’re still out there, but there just harder to find, which makes me all the happier that I can revisit the keepers on my shelves from time to time.

I have the rest of the series on my shelves too, but I’m going to try to hold off starting #3 so I can get some Halloween Bingo reading in.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

Halloween Bingo 2020: The Second Call

Second day, second call.  For simplicity sake, I’m going to just post the calls in the order they’re made:

 

I’ve got Agatha Christie’s  The Thirteen Problems going for the 13 square, and while I have Psych, it’s the square I traded with Lillelara for her Romantic Suspense square, so I have time to continue with 13 and start reading for another square yet to be called.

I finished my read for Dark Academia – Murder 101 – and enjoyed it thoroughly.

If I read a square that hasn’t been called yet, a ghost of stickers-yet-to-come will appear; once the square has been called, the sticker will become fully corporeal.  (Alas, this only works in regular browsers, but I’m in too deep to try to do something different now.)  As the squares get ticked off, a fully formed image will appear.  Previously, I posted the finished image, but this year I’m going to leave it a mystery.

Below is the table that will summarise the books I’ve read for each square, and note if I took advantage of one of the Spell Pack cards, and which one.  If all goes well, Book Titles will link to my review of the book here.

Bingo Square Date Called Book Title Date Read
Row #1
Gothic
Genre: Suspense
Ghost Stories
Dark Academia Murder 101 Sept. 2
Southern Gothic
Row #2
Darkest London
Black Cat
Cozy Mystery
Genre: Mystery
International Women of Mystery
Row #3
Grave or Graveyard
Deadlands
FREE SPACE
In the Dark, Dark Woods
Psych / Romantic Suspense
Row #4
American Horror Story
A Grimm Tale
It was a Dark and Stormy Night
Monsters
Trick or Treat
Row #5
Country House Mystery
13 Sept. 01 The Thirteen Problems
Locked Room Mystery
Halloween
Murder Most Foul

The Spell Pack cards are below – I’ve used a border in the same color as the card to mark the squares where I’ve used one.

Cards used:
Bingo Flip:  Lillelara has agreed to trade my Psych square for her Romantic Suspense square.

I’m planning a follow up post with tentative titles for each square.

Murder 101

Murder 101Murder 101
by Maggie Barbieri
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9780312355371
Series: Murder 101 #1
Publication Date: October 31, 2006
Pages: 288
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur

Safely away from the chaos of Manhattan, St. Thomas, a small college on the banks of the Hudson River in the Bronx, is supposed to be tranquil, bucolic, and serene. Unfortunately, English professor Alison Bergeron has found it to be anything but. Recently divorced from a fellow professor and even more recently without a car---it was stolen---she has been hoofing it to school. One Friday evening, two NYPD homicide detectives drop by her office. The good news is that they found her beat-up Volvo; the bad news is that the body of one of the students in her Shakespeare seminar was in the trunk.

Not only are Alison's chances of getting the car back bleak, but suddenly she's the primary suspect on a list that includes, among others, the murdered student's drug-dealing boyfriend, Vince, and the girl's father's business rivals (he's head of an old Italian family . . .).

Accused of a crime that she didn't commit, Alison enlists her best friend, Max's, emotional support and services as an amateur sleuth. Their fumbling efforts to clear Alison's name could land her in even hotter water with Detective Bobby Crawford, the handsome investigating officer (and former altar boy)---not to mention the nuns at St. Thomas. . . .


This was a re-read of a book I’d read years ago, the first in a series that takes place on a private, catholic college campus.   Our MC is a professor of English literature and the formula is fairly basic: she’s an unwitting suspect in a campus murder, and the investigating detective is a tall slab of gorgeous.  Peril and protection follow.

Same old, same old right?  Yes, and no.  When Barbieri wrote this 14 years ago, this formula wasn’t yet so much a formula as it was a trend, and as such, this book doesn’t feel derivative – at least not to me.  This story was written before ‘cozy’ became synonymous with ‘fluffy’ and ‘vapid’.  So we have likeable characters we genuinely cheer on, that are going through some rather heavy duty events involving very real violence.  When the MC sees crime-scene photos, she passes out, then vomits all over the detectives shoes – twice.  But instead of being played for laughs, the author makes us feel the mc’s embarrassment – and the detective’s embarrassment for her.

The plotting was good; not spectacular, but this is a first book, and it was adequate enough that I didn’t guess the culprit. The author did well with presenting an array of viable suspects, and when it came down to it, the solution made sense.

I’m glad I re-read this; I’d forgotten why I loved cozies so much; it’s nice to see that what I fell in love with is not the derivative nonsense cozies have become today.  Of course, I now want to re-read the entire series.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2020, specifically for the Dark Academia square.

Halloween Bingo 2020: The First Call

Let the games – Halloween Bingo – begin!  Today, or yesterday – depending which side of the International Date Line  you’re on – was the official start of our annual Halloween Bingo.  Most of it is taking place on GoodReads this year, and I’m trying, but I really can’t stomach that place, so most of my updates and tracking will be done here.

The first call today was:

My original pick for this, as it is every year I’ve had this square, was Thirteen Guests by J. Jefferson Farjeon but I’m in another group reading Agatha Christie in order, and we’re currently reading … The Thirteen Problems, so it just makes sense to use this book for the square.

If I read a square that hasn’t been called yet, a ghost of stickers-yet-to-come will appear; once the square has been called, the sticker will become fully corporeal.  (Alas, this only works in regular browsers, but I’m in too deep to try to do something different now.)  As the squares get ticked off, a fully formed image will appear.  Previously, I posted the finished image, but this year I’m going to leave it a mystery.

Below is the table that will summarise the books I’ve read for each square, and note if I took advantage of one of the Spell Pack cards, and which one.  If all goes well, Book Titles will link to my review of the book here.

Bingo Square Date Called Book Title Date Read
Row #1
Gothic
Genre: Suspense
Ghost Stories
Dark Academia
Southern Gothic
Row #2
Darkest London
Black Cat
Cozy Mystery
Genre: Mystery
International Women of Mystery
Row #3
Grave or Graveyard
Deadlands
FREE SPACE
In the Dark, Dark Woods
Psych / Romantic Suspense
Row #4
American Horror Story
A Grimm Tale
It was a Dark and Stormy Night
Monsters
Trick or Treat
Row #5
Country House Mystery
13 Sept. 01 The Thirteen Problems
Locked Room Mystery
Halloween
Murder Most Foul

The Spell Pack cards are below – I’ve used a border in the same color as the card to mark the squares where I’ve used one.

Cards used:
Bingo Flip:  Lillelara has agreed to trade my Psych square for her Romantic Suspense square.

I’m planning a follow up post with tentative titles for each square.

Uh huh, I went there again. Twilight series re-read

Why?  I have no idea except I couldn’t sleep one night and I wanted something both paranormal and mindless, and I’d recently re-read all the paranormal on my shelves that I could reach, except these.

I was never a Twilight hater, though I readily admit the mc, Bella, is silly beyond belief.  Neither Edward nor Jacob do heaps for me as romantic leads; I not into sparkly or stupid.  But I enjoyed aspects of the story enough to read the first and skim 2-4.  Actually, I barely read Eclipse because I can’t do whiny tragic.  I think any appeal the books have for me centered on the Cullen family dynamic.

At any rate, it seems I never wrote reviews for these books originally, though I starred them (4, 4, 3.5, 3 respectively).  My thoughts on them remain more or less the same as I remember thinking the first time I read them.  Eh.  Average.

Book-spine Poetry, #2

My friend URL Phantomhive did a Book Spine Poetry challenge for the recent BoutofBooks, and it since we’re in a stage 4 lockdown here, I thought MT might enjoy the challenge.  7 POEMS LATER…  Obviously, he really got into it, so I’m posting one every few days to share with everybody

Today’s is one of his longer ones:

Speaking in Tongues
Why the Dutch are Different, The Year of Living Danishly
A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany
True Blue, Fair Dinkum
Down Under, Consider the Platypus
That’s Not English, Greek to Me

(nb:  the text above is as he wrote the poem originally; he wanted to make sure it was posted because he found the arrangement of books confining. )

The Loch Ness Papers

The Loch Ness PapersThe Loch Ness Papers
by Paige Shelton
Rating: ★★★
Series: Scottish Bookshop Mystery #4
Publication Date: April 2, 2019
Pages: 310
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Minotaur

Delaney Nichols is delighted with her life in Edinburgh, working at The Cracked Spine—a shop that specializes in hard-to-find books and artifacts. With a job she loves, and her fast approaching marriage to devastatingly handsome Scottish pub-owner Tom Shannon, Delaney's life could be straight out of a fairy tale—at least it would be, if the pastor meant to perform the wedding ceremony hadn't recently passed away. Outside the church where Delaney is searching for another reverend, she stumbles across Norval Fraser: an elderly man obsessed with the Loch Ness monster. Always attracted to the interesting and unusual, Delaney befriends Norval. But when his nephew is found dead, the police decide Norval's obsession has moved from monsters to murder.

With a wedding to plan, her family arriving soon from Kansas, and the arrival of an over-the-top Texan with a wildly valuable book, Delaney's plate is full to bursting, but she can't abandon her new friend. Determined to help Norval, she sets out to learn the truth. The Loch Ness buries its secrets deeply, but Delaney is determined to dig them up—whether Nessie likes it or not.


I’m a little annoyed that I read this book;  if I’d waited a week or two, I could have used it for the upcoming Halloween Bingo; it’s a perfect fit for the “Monsters” square.  But I didn’t know that when I began the book, though I probably should have suspected.

This series dances on the thin edge between normal cozy mystery and paranormal.  It’s always maybe this or that happened, and always plausible through other explanations.

I should have enjoyed The Loch Ness Papers more than I did; I generally enjoy the author’s writing, and I love the Loch Ness theme.  But either the writing or my attention was too scattered to really get lost in the mystery.  I suspect a bit of both; my attention could have been more focused, but the disparate clues were too disparate, and made a connection between the mysteries obvious.  The sympathy Shelton hoped to garner for certain characters fell flat and she tried to involve too many people as possible suspects, making it impossible to keep them all as active participants in the mystery.  And on top of it all, Delaney’s family is in town for her wedding.  The result was a scattered story that felt chaotic and I suspect even if I was totally focused on the story, it would still be scattered and chaotic.

Reality TV lockdown style

I stumbled across an article about a pair of Peregrine Falcons nesting in downtown Melbourne today, and it included a link to a live cam feed of their nesting box.  I can’t stop watching it.

https://www.367collinsfalcons.com.au

I think it’s the camera quality that’s keeping me glued to the feed.  That and somebody is actively controlling it, so occasionally it zooms in and it’s just too cool.

Screen Shot 2020-08-23 at 11.34.57

 

Book-spine Poetry

My friend URL Phantomhive did a Book Spine Poetry  for the recent BoutofBooks, and it got me thinking “MT would be good at this.” (My husband is the talented writer in this house.)  Since we’re in a stage 4 lockdown at the moment, and it’s been raining consistently all day, I thought he might enjoy the challenge and he’d come up with a quick, pithy example I could share with you all.

Well.  I mentioned it last night and then didn’t think much more about it, until I noticed him walking around the house this morning, making lists.  Moving stacks of books around.  Pecking away at his laptop.

7 POEMS LATER…

So here’s the first one – and my personal favorite.  Also, the shortest.  Some of the results are less quick poems and more epic adventures.  But one at a time …  😉

 

Fucking Apostrophes,
You’re saying it wrong,
Holy Sh*t
Swearing is good for you

It’s not Wordsworth, but it make me smile and I agree with the sentiment.  😉