The Mystery of the Lost Cézanne (Verlaque and Bonnet, #5)

The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne
by M.L. Longworth
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780143128076
Series: Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery #5
Publication Date: September 15, 2015
Pages: 320
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Crime

Something went wrong somewhere in this book, and I don’t know what it was or where it happened. Ok, yes, I know where part of it went wrong; I knew who the murderer was reaching page 80, but that shouldn’t have mattered much to my overall enjoyment.

The book is about the discovery of a lost painting of Cézanne’s, which right away I love; I even enjoy the flashback POV chapters, a device that I’m at best ambivalent about. The setting is Aix en Provence and it sounds as wonderful as it always has in Longworth’s books, and Verlaque and Bonnet get more and more likeable with each book.

But at some point after about 2/3 of the way through, it fizzled. I don’t like to say it’s because there was no perilous climax, but it might be. Everything was tied up neatly at the end, but it still felt unfinished, or more accurately, un-satisfying.

Still an enjoyable read I always wanted to get back to, but not nearly as well constructed as the previous 4.

Murder on the Île Sordou (A Provençal Mystery, #4)

Murder on the Ile Sordou
by M.L. Longworth
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780143125549
Series: Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery #4
Publication Date: September 30, 2014
Pages: 320
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Crime

I hovered over the 4.5 star mark for a second or two before settling on the 4 star. This is a really good entry in the Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal series.

On holiday in a new resort 15 miles off the coast of Marseille, Verlaque and Bonnet are trying to keep a low profile, but the resort only has guests in 7 rooms and they all become friendly, until one morning after a storm, one of them is found dead on the shore.

Verlaque is definitely the main focus of this book; Marine Bonnet is there every step of the way but there’s very little told from her POV. Verlaque has come a long way from the overly aloof, even arrogant, judge he was at the start and even he worries he is becoming too soft. This is a relief, given that the reader spends most of the time with him.

In spite of the murder, Longworth made me wish I could be there with them; dead body aside it sounded divine: great food, gorgeous setting, wonderful staff and friendly guests. And the way she wraps up the mystery (which was heartbreaking), I wouldn’t have even minded sharing my week with the killer.

(This would qualify for a locked room type mystery, and at a stretch, a ‘country house’ mystery; only the guest and staff, and the old lighthouse keeper are on the island, with no access on or off, and no cell phone reception. This would also work just fine as a stand-alone.)

Murder in the Rue Dumas (Verlaque and Bonnet, #2)

Murder in the Rue Dumas
by M.L. Longworth
Rating: ★★★★
Series: Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery #2
Publication Date: September 25, 2012
Pages: 296
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Crime

The second in a (so far) 6 book series, this one started off much more slowly for me, as the author takes the time to set the murder scene, introduce the suspects, and hint at motivations before we ever hear from our two MCs. I recognise the value of this, but I mostly find it tedious.

Once the body drops, the pace starts to pick up, albeit slowly, and Bonnet makes very few appearances until the last half of the book. From this point on, I once again fell into Aix-en-Provence – and Umbria Italy! – and lost myself in the mystery, the setting and the characters.

The mystery plotting was very good, although I think Longworth could be accused of over-complicating it. But I totally didn’t see that ending coming and when it came it was tense.

Murder in the Rue Dumas wasn’t quite as good as the first one, but it was still better than most cozies available now – it’s got a much more ‘traditional mystery’ feel and I can’t wait for book three to arrive in the post.

This was my Free Friday Read #5 and was 296 pages long.

The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt

The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science
by Andrea Wulf
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781473628793
Publication Date: October 27, 2015
Pages: 434
Genre: History, Natural Science
Publisher: John Murray

Alexander von Humboldt was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. In North America, his name still graces four counties, thirteen towns, a river, parks, bays, lakes, and mountains. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether he was climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infected Siberia or translating his research into bestselling publications that changed science and thinking. Among Humboldt's most revolutionary ideas was a radical vision of nature, that it is a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone.

Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simon Bolivar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt's writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt's influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau's "Walden."

With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science.

The Lost Hero of Science is not hyperbole. It’s one of the great tragedies of history that this man’s name is no longer on the tip of every man, woman and child’s tongue (at least in the English speaking world).

I don’t know where to begin, but to put it as concisely as possible, read any headline about environmental science today and Humboldt called it almost 200 years ago. Deforestation: check. Desertification: check. The long term devastation of monoculture: check. Climate change: check. At the more extreme ends, he was calling for the creation of the Panama canal decades before it was a glint in America’s eye and he insisted that even rocks contain life (they do – look it up).

Humboldt was acerbic, impatient, and had a level of energy few can imagine without pharmaceutical assistance. He devoted his life in every way to science and nature, eschewing most personal relationships in favour of relentless study, but he was also generous with his knowledge and money – much to the betterment of the world and the detriment of his finances. He was in almost every way a true hero, as the title claims, and unarguably a role-model for more than just fellow scientists. Without Humboldt we very likely would not have Darwin (Darwin himself said without Humboldt, he would not have found his calling on the Beagle). Without Humboldt we wouldn’t have those lines on weather maps, either (isotherms/isobars).

In short, his life was incredible and Wulf does a better than creditable job illustrating not only his adventures and indefatigable levels of energy, but his impact on the world; not just scientists, but artists, authors, poets and politicians. She writes a very readable narrative and communicates what must have been an enormous amount of information in a way that remains coherent throughout. She remains objective but is never dry or academic. My half-star demerit is only because some of the chapters devoted to others I found less interesting that the star of the book himself.

I’d like to insist that every single person read this book, but realistically… every single person should read this book. For those that enjoy science and history, it’s a definite do-not-miss.

(This was a BookLikes-opoly Free Friday Read for July 7th and was 341 pages (minus the various appendices and index).

Death at the Chateau Bremont (Verleque and Bonnet Mystery, #1)

Death at the Chateau Bremont
by M.L. Longworth
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780143119524
Series: Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery #1
Publication Date: June 28, 2011
Pages: 320
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Crime

Let me get the most egregious bit out of the way: the editing was bad. I’d go so far as to say no human being copy-edited this book. Missing words, wrong words (it instead of is or to instead of so), words in the wrong order, and my favourite:

“She lingered under the shower, watching the hot water roll over her tummy, which was beginning to protrude a bit, down to her toes.”

If your stomach is protruding down to your toes, it’s probably protruding more than a bit.

And finally, I hate the word ‘tummy’ the same way so many hate ‘moist’, and it’s used a lot in this book.

But it was a delightfully great mystery in a more traditional, rather than cozy, style. I had my doubts because frankly, I’d never heard of it or the others in the series and since it was a Penguin publication, I had to wonder why it didn’t seem to receive much in the way of marketing love.

Verleque is an ass; he comes from great wealth and has grand ideas about food and wine and cigars, while his ex, Bonnet is cheerful and kind and universally loved. The death of Bonnet’s old childhood friend brings them back into each others’ orbits as Verleque investigates the death and relies on Bonnet’s connections and memories to sort out what happened.

This is not a book for anyone with a low tolerance of character building; a lot of the book (third person pov) is spent getting to know Verleque and Bonnet as individuals before seeing them work together. What would feel like extraneous filler in other books seems necessary here to make Verleque sympathetic; he’s still a bit of an ass, but by the end it seems more understandable, and a great personal secret lurks in the background, presumably to be revealed in a later book.

The mystery was really well plotted; so many possible avenues, a killer I didn’t see coming and a not entirely neat and tidy ending. And the atmosphere: Aix-en-Provence – what is it about French countryside settings?

If you want a good, traditional mystery that spends time creating rich, complex characters, I definitely recommend this – but if you read digitally, maybe check out the ebook version in hopes that the editing debacle has since been corrected.

Page count: 311

$$: $9.00 (location multiplier applied)

Secrets in the Mist

Secrets in the Mist
by Anna Lee Huber
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780997939620
Series: Gothic Myths #1
Publication Date: October 25, 2016
Pages: 378
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Brightstone Media

2021 Update: I actually enjoyed this more the second time around, enough to give it a 4 star rating over the original 3.

——–

Hmm… how to sum up my thoughts about this book? Mostly, it needed a harsher editor.

I’m a huge fan of Anna Lee Huber’s Lady Darby series, and the writing in this is equally as good, but it’s just too long. The story dragged for at least the first half of the book, and as Ella is a poster child for co-dependency, a situation that was played to the hilt, the reading was tedious at the start.

Once it got going though, the reading became much easier, even at times, exciting. Huber never goes for the fantastical and cliched plotting choices, but still weaves an impressive story. The ending felt a bit abrupt, but I can’t say that’s a fair call; I think I tried to anticipate how the end would happen, and being completely wrong is what felt abrupt.

I’m not sorry to have read it – it was a good story (and a good romance) – but it \ could have been a more amazing story with tighter editing.

This was my Free Friday Read for BLopoly and it was 378 pages.

Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charlie Davidson, #11)

Eleventh Grave in Moonlight
by Darynda Jones
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250078216
Series: Charlie Davidson #11
Publication Date: January 24, 2017
Pages: 310
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

My entire life can be summed up in one sentence:
“Well, that didn’t go as planned.”
—T-Shirt

A typical day in the life of Charley Davidson involves cheating husbands, errant wives, missing people, philandering business owners, and, oh yeah...demons, hell hounds, evil gods, and dead people. Lots and lots of dead people. As a part time Private Investigator and full-time Grim Reaper, Charley has to balance the good, the bad, the undead, and those who want her dead.

Now, Charley is learning to make peace with the fact that she is a goddess with all kinds of power and that her own daughter has been born to save the world from total destruction. But the forces of hell are determined to see Charley banished forever to the darkest corners of another dimension. With the son of Satan himself as her husband, will Charley be able to defeat the ultimate evil and find a way to have her happily ever after after all?

Darynda Jones is quickly becoming the second author alive for whom I’d go out of my way to have a conversation with. Folded into a zany, quirky, funny urban fantasy series is some deeply well thought out theology; hidden amid the rapid-fire one-liners, Jones tackles head on the issues of God, free-will, and why He “allows’ pain and suffering. And she doesn’t take it lightly, and she doesn’t go for easy answers or glib reasoning. She’s successfully mixed silliness and the very opposite of silliness and I’m a little bit in love with her for pulling it off.

Eleventh Grave… clears a lot of the ongoing questions up, and I’d go so far as to say it brings the major story-arc to a close. The climatic scene was so shattering, the resolution was almost an afterthought. This is by no means the end of the series, as far as I know – there’s still a lot of questions unanswered so it had better not be.

It was mostly excellent but my complaints are twofold: The first – we don’t find out what happened to Strawberry Shortcake’s brother. I hate unresolved stuff like that. Second: I have to preface this with the disclaimer that I’m not a prude. Sex scenes don’t bother me in the slightest, but Jones went a little too far for my comfort in one of the scenes here. It wasn’t that it was deviant in any way, but after 11 books I feel like I’ve come to know Charlie and Reyes; like an invisible, unacknowledged member of the gang. And yeah, I’d rather not know as much about Charlie and Reyes as I got from that scene. At one point it stopped being sexy and started being really awkward. On the flip side, she wrote a hell of a homage to When Harry Met Sally in another scene.

Awkward sex aside, I’m with Jones and Charlie until the wheels fall off. I’d say until hell froze over but apparently, that’s a thing.

Page count: 310
$$: 3.00

The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay

The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay
by Kelly Harms
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250070616
Publication Date: August 9, 2016
Pages: 280
Genre: Romance
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Lily Stewart has reached a crossroads in her life. Her painting career hasn't taken off, her best friend has changed beyond recognition, her relationship is a constant disappointment, and now she can't keep up with the rising cost of living in the city. With no one to turn to, Lily is forced to move from her beloved apartment, but while packing she comes across a piece of mail that had slipped to the back of her junk drawer: a letter detailing further action needed to finalize the annulment of a quickie Vegas wedding. From ten years ago!

Lily decides it's time to gather up the pieces of her life, and the first item on her list of things to fix is that annulment... but you can't just send a text ten years later reading, "Hey BTW we are still married." This is something that must be addressed in person, so Lily decides to track down her husband - the charming, enigmatic man she connected with all those years ago.

Ben Hutchinson left a high-profile dot-com lifestyle behind to return home to his family and the small lake town he loves, Minnow Bay. He's been living off the grid with the express purpose of making it hard to be found—so the last thing he expects is a wife he didn't know he had making her presence known.

I don’t normally draw parallels, but think Mary Kay Andrews, or Jennifer Crusie minus the purposeful hilarity, and you have a good idea of what The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay is going to deliver.

Lily is one of those artists who has the potential to make it big, but she’s a doormat; a cheerful, I-just-want-everybody-to-be-happy, doormat. Normally I’d have tossed this book aside because I don’t like reading about doormats, but Lily never wallowed, so that during the clueless stage of the story the irritating bits washed over me.

While packing to move out of her apartment, Lily stumbles across a 10 year old notice from Nevada telling her the annulment she applied for is incomplete. She’s been married to a guy she can’t even remember for a decade, and of course she’s feeling all her shortcomings, so determines to go to Minnow Bay to apologise in person and fix things. This is when she has her “I’m a doormat” epiphany, and while her turnaround is a work in progress, her wry humor about herself and the way she owns up to her shortcomings made it easy for me to relate to her and like her more than I normally would.

Added to her likeable qualities are the characters of Minnow Bay, all of whom are poster-small-town-perfect and quite a lot of them the kind I wish I had for neighbours. Colleen and Jenny’s antics trying to keep Lily in Minnow Bay are funny and Simone is acerbic but hilarious.

I thought the writing really readable and I easily finished it yesterday afternoon and evening; it’s not a long book and the engaging narrative sucked me in. I’m not sure I’d say it’s worth the sticker price, but it’s definitely worth the used bookshop price (in hardcover) and I thought it was a fun read, perfect for the mood I was in.

Total pages: 280
$$: $3.00

Etched in Bone (The Others, #5)

Etched in Bone
by Anne Bishop
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451474490
Series: The Others #5
Publication Date: March 7, 2017
Pages: 397
Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Publisher: ROC Hardcover

Every book in this series have been marathon reads for me, and Etched in Bone was no exception. I picked it up yesterday morning and pretty much did absolutely nothing else until I read the last page about midnight last night (although I did stop, in the name of marital harmony, to shovel some dinner down; luckily, there was a footy game on last night, so the shovelling went largely unnoticed).

I have loved every moment of this series; been sucked into this world so thoroughly that interruptions leave me hazy about reality and I have been as attached to these characters as much as, or more, than any others. Possibly more than real people I know.

But… this one; this final book concerning Meg and Simon, was not as great as the first 4. Because this book deviated from the rules the author created for The Others. In any of the other books, Jimmy would have been a stain on the sidewalk before chapter 3. I get what she was trying to do here, I get what she wanted to explore, but it was not done as gracefully, and the effect felt forced; its execution more heavy handed. In short, Jimmy got on my nerves; I stopped being horrified and started getting irritated and mumbling ‘why isn’t this man dead yet???’.

Still, I’d recommend this to anyone who likes urban fantasy and/or parables. Because this whole series is one giant parable about the human race: our capacity for grace, our capacity for vice, and our wholesale destruction of everything in our path as long as we remain unchecked. As horrifying as The Others are, I can’t look around at what’s going on today and not sort of wish our Earth had Naimid’s teeth and claws to protect her.

I’m attached so thoroughly to these characters in the Courtyard, I’m not sure I’ll read the next book; which is apparently in the same universe but with a different setting and characters. I want more Tess! But I’ll definitely be re-reading these.

Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson, #10)

Silence Fallen
by Patricia Briggs
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780425281277
Series: Mercy Thompson #10
Publication Date: March 4, 2017
Pages: 371
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Ace

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against Alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes–only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in a foreign country.

Unable to contact Adam through their mate bond, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a supernatural war.

2021 Update: Still my favorite book, with very few flaws. I’ll add that I loved the inclusion of Kabbalistic myth, although her twist on it was … twisty. But what I appreciated most was that this was a book about a woman who saves herself. She still needs Adam to come to her aid, but the aid she needs from him is more administrative (passport, money, etc) than damsel needing rescue. Thoroughly satisfying no matter how many times I’ve read it.

Original review: Mercy is kidnapped by vampires and is taken to Europe, where she escapes, but has no clothes, no money and no passport and must stay on the run until Adam can find her and neutralise the threat to herself and her pack.

I’ll admit I was less enthusiastic about this one than I normally am about the books in this series, because my first thoughts ran along the lines of ‘oh, yay. Woman in peril who must fight to survive and over come obstacles over and over again.’

I could not have been more wrong. Yes, there are perils and obstacles, but they are more than balanced out by moments of control and action and intelligence. This book was also far more about political negotiations and intelligence analysis, if you’ll excuse the out-of-place term here, and I loved that. This felt like a far more intelligent novel that the previous books.

And for the first time in I can’t even remember how long, I was totally blown away by the twist. Never. saw. that. coming. I actually exclaimed ‘holy sh*t!’ out loud. Well played, Briggs. Absolutely brilliant.

There wasn’t anything I didn’t thoroughly enjoy in this book; I had no complaints at all.