Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die (Blackbird Sisters Mystery, #4)

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die
by Nancy Martin
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451213952
Series: Blackbird Sisters #4
Publication Date: March 6, 2005
Pages: 262
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: NAL / New American Library

A TEMPEST IN A C-CUP

Nora’s next journalistic assignment: the unveiling of the most miraculous bra in fashion history. But before Nora can hand in her uplifting story, her boss is found shot execution-style and trussed up in expensive panty hose—an Abruzzo family trademark. Now Nora must find the killer before her innocent lover takes the rap. That means shadowing the most glamorous suspects in Philadelphia—including a bad-boy designer, a former child star, a high-strung ad exec, and a pair of luscious twin models. Though Nora’s accustomed to upper-crust murder, cross your fingers for the Blackbird sisters, because this time, high society has never seemed so low-down dirty.

Probably the edgiest of the series, the storyline of this book delves into bullying and just brushes the edges of sadism, with a cast of characters that are anything but cozy and charming, yet the author still manages to keep the overall tone of the book from becoming too dark, although at times it’s definitely difficult to read. Martin also uses this book to both redeem and get rid of a loathsome recurring character, which frankly made me happy as I don’t really like the nemesis trope much.

The plotting got the job done. I’m not sure if I was surprised by all the revelations the first time I read the book – it’s been too long – but on the second read, everything clicked along without any shocks; it wasn’t transparent, but it all made sense in the end.

Some Like it Lethal (Blackbird Sisters Mystery, #3)

Some Like it Lethal
by Nancy Martin
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451211743
Series: Blackbird Sisters #3
Publication Date: April 6, 2004
Pages: 310
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Signet Mystery

When the husband of a wealthy dog food heiress is found bludgeoned to death at an exclusive hunt club, Nora Blackbird is as surprised as anyone. Worse still, the evidence points toward a devious blackmail scheme-with Nora’s sister, Emma, as the main suspect. Investigating with the help of friend and foe alike, Nora uncovers the secrets of some of Philadelphia’s high-and-mightiest-and attracts the unwanted attentions of the real killer…

Nothing like a spot of blackmail amongst the upper classes. It’s all fun and profit until someone is murdered, and Nora’s youngest sister is a suspect because she was found passed-out drunk next to the body.

Martin continues to address the themes like addiction and abuse that most cozy mysteries wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pen, and she continues to do it in a way that lends the gravitas these issues demand, while keeping the overall read cozy. She also explores the hypocrisy of class double-standards, as Nora and Michael hash their way through why some illegal activity (mob crime) is considered worse that others (crimes of the upper crust), and how that criteria can suddenly change when it becomes convenient. She offers no answers, just plenty to chew on for those that feel philosophical.

The plotting was good; I felt sure I knew who the murderer was – or, who I wanted the murderer to be, but I was wrong. The murderer was craftily unexpected and, in the end, tragic, with Martin once again playing with reader expectations by questioning the meaning of justice.

Dead Girls Don’t Wear Diamonds (Blackbird Sisters Mystery, #2)

Dead Girls Don't Wear Diamonds
by Nancy Martin
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451208866
Series: Blackbird Sisters #2
Publication Date: July 1, 2003
Pages: 250
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Signet Mystery

When a high society jewel thief winds up drowned at the bottom of a pool with a tacky garden gnome tied to her ankles, Nora must swing into action to save her old flame from a hasty murder charge.

The jewel-thief wife of an old college flame of Nora’s has been found dead at the bottom of the pool after a party one night.

While Nora is never really considered a suspect, she’s close to the family and the patriarch is up for a big government position so Nora once again uses her social schedule, listening to, and chatting with, people who knew the victim and who might have wanted her dead.

The plot of this one was a little bit wacky, but touches on a few darker and racier themes that are usually a no-go in cozies, but Martin does it so well the reader rarely notices. The culmination of the mystery ends up with Nora in peril, but kudos to Martin for coming up with a rather clever method of self defence that, while wholly implausible except under the most unusual circumstances, wins points for sheer creativity.

How to Murder a Millionaire (Blackbird Sisters Mystery, #1)

How to Murder a Millionaire
by Nancy Martin
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451207241
Series: Blackbird Sisters #1
Publication Date: August 1, 2002
Pages: 254
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Signet Mystery

Nora Blackbird, society columnist and down-and-almost-out former debutante, reclaims her place within Philadelphia’s elite when she stumbles upon the murdered body of a millionaire art collector.

The first book in what would become a 10 book series (not counting novellas) sets the tone. Nora is the middle sister of three who were raised in a blue-blood Philadelphia Main Line family to be debutants, but whose parents spent all the fortunes, raided their trust-funds, then stole enough money from friends to leave the country, leaving the oldest with the family furniture, the youngest with the family’s art collection, and Nora got Blackbird Farm, complete with a 2 million dollar tax bill.

With no skills but great connections, she’s given a job as the assistant to the social columnist at the tabloid newspaper, owned by a family friend. At a party celebrating the newspaper’s longevity, she finds said owner dead in his bedroom and its obviously murder.

I like that Martin chose to make Nora the opposite of the clichéd amateur sleuth: she’s not fragile at all, takes Krav Maga for exercise, but she has a fainting problem, and being kind and classy is deeply woven into her dna. But she can’t help but want to help people when they ask her to, and her job attending parties gives her a ready made opportunity to ask questions and listen to gossip. I like that Nora’s obvious romantic interest is the son of a mob boss who is fighting to stay out of the family and against the criminal instincts he was raised with, and that he shows his interest with sincerity instead of braggadocio.

The mystery was well plotted with a resolution that neither transparent nor obvious, and it made sense at the end.

My week in books

As my leg continues to heal, and I take on more rehab tasks, I’ve had more pain. In fact, this last week was the first time I’ve had pain significant enough to wish I still had the industrial-level pain pills. What this has meant to my reading? Re-reads. Lots of re-reads.

I spent the week un-plugged and binging on an older cozy mystery series written by Nancy Martin – the Blackbird Sisters series. They’ve held up beautifully over the years, and are an example of the higher quality cozy mysteries that used to be written before cozies became an assembly-line commodity, written to formula and thrown at the public en masse, hoping a fraction of them will stick.

Most of the series I read before I started documenting my thoughts, so I’ll be writing reviews for those in the next few hours. Apologies in advance if I spam your feed.

Reading Status Update: I’ve read 68 out of 208 of Venom

Venom
by Eivind Undheim, Ronald Jenner
isbn: 9781486308378
Publication Date: October 1, 2017
Pages: 208
Genre: Natural Science, Science
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing

A fully illustrated guide to venom, its evolution in different animal groups, its effects and its treatments.
When we enter the world of venom, we enter the realm of one of the most diverse, versatile, sophisticated and deadly biological adaptations ever to have evolved on Earth.

Since it first appeared in ancient jellyfish and sea anemones, venom has proved so effective that it has since evolved independently in dozens of different animal groups. The authors reveal the many unique methods by which venomous animals deliver their cocktail of toxins and how these disrupt the physiology of the victims.

Jenner and Undheim also consider how humans have learnt to neutralise venom’s devastating effects, as well as exploit the power of venom in innovative ways to create new drugs to treat a variety of serious conditions. Fully illustrated throughout, this illuminating guide will appeal to all those with an interest in the wondrous world of venom.

When I started this book, I thought it was going to be introductory, aimed at a mainstream audience. It’s introductory, in its way, but I can’t imagine it’s really meant for a mainstream audience; lots of latin names and terminology that’s not advanced (no molecular structures, so far) but not really reader friendly either.

I’m really enjoying it; I like the informative charts I’ve come across so far, and there is a generous number of full colour photographs that are beautiful. Some of the information is old-hat for me, but quite a bit of it is new, and I’m only done with 2 chapters.

This is a slow read that will ruin my average reading time stats, but will be well worth it, I think.

One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America

One Day: The Extraordinary Story Of An Ordinary 24 Hours In America
by Gene Weingarten
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780399166662
Publication Date: October 22, 2019
Pages: 375
Genre: History
Publisher: Blue Rider Press

Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Gene Weingarten explores the events of a random day in U.S. history, offering a diorama of American life that illuminates all that has changed—and all that hasn’t—in the past three decades.

On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day—chosen completely at random—turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing.

That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, prejudice, selflessness, coincidence, and startling moments of human connection, along with evocative foreshadowing of momentous events yet to come. Lives were lost. Lives were saved. Lives were altered in overwhelming ways. Many of these events never made it into the news; they were private dramas in the lives of private people. They were utterly compelling.

One Day asks and answers the question of whether there is even such a thing as “ordinary” when we are talking about how we all lurch and stumble our way through the daily, daunting challenge of being human.

The subtitle of this book should have been The Extraordinary Stories of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America; it would have better encapsulated what this book is about, in a way.

A day was chosen at random – December 28, 1986 – and Weingarten digs into the stories and events that happened in that 24 hours, fleshing out their backstories and, in some cases, providing epilogues (I appreciated this; it always annoys me that news outlets rarely follow up on stories). Some of them are beyond tragic; events that were catalysts for change both at home and around the world. Some of the stories are terrible and shocking on a more personal level, and many are hopeful, a few inspiring, and a couple are downright cheerful.

I remember being drawn to this book by the striking cover, and thinking that I’d enjoyed Bill Bryson’s One Summer, so I grabbed it on impulse when it first came out. It languished on my TBR for the last 3 years, give or take, until I finally grabbed it last weekend, and it grabbed me right back. Weingarten is a journalist, so the narrative voice is unapologetically journalistic, but he’s a 2 time Pulitzer winning journalist, so the writing is excellent. I found myself deeply involved in each and every story – even the ones I’d really rather have been more detached from. I was both reading parts out to MT, and telling him you really need to read this yourself. The stories are American, but very few of them are uniquely American; they’re stories of the human experience and for the most part could be the experiences of anyone, anyplace.

Weingarten didn’t quite stick the landing; the wrap up was a tiny bit messy and might have been tighter, neater, had he ended it a page sooner, but it’s a negligible niggle and really didn’t detract from a fascinating read.

Chapter and Curse (Cambridge Bookshop Mystery, #1)

Chapter and Curse
by Elizabeth Penney
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781250787712
Series: Cambridge Bookshop Mystery #1
Publication Date: September 28, 2021
Pages: 309
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks

Librarian Molly Kimball and her mother, Nina, need a change. So when a letter arrives from Nina’s Aunt Violet in Cambridge, England requesting their help running the family bookshop, they jump at the chance.

Thomas Marlowe—Manuscripts and Folios, is one of the oldest bookshops in Cambridge, and—unfortunately—customers can tell. When Molly and Nina arrive, spring has come to Cambridge and the famed Cambridge Literary Festival is underway. Determined to bring much-needed revenue to the bookstore, Molly invites Aunt Violet’s college classmate and famed poet Persephone Brightwell to hold a poetry reading in the shop. But the event ends in disaster when a guest is found dead—with Molly’s great-aunt’s knitting needle used as the murder weapon. While trying to clear Violet and keep the struggling shop afloat, Molly sifts through secrets past and present, untangling a web of blackmail, deceit, and murder.

This is one of those books that I sort of liked in spite of itself. The author commits the trope-y sin of her characters thinking they must solve the murder for themselves; she doesn’t go so far as to infer or state it’s because the police are inept, but falls back on the argument that a character must be saved because the police won’t look at anybody else. Pu-lease. Also, the murderer was super obvious from the first clue.

But, the setting is in a bookshop, in Cambridge, I say in a somewhat whinging voice. And I like the characters; I like the little micro-community of the laneway whose name I can’t remember nor find in the text. I like that the author goes a slightly different way in terms of the relationship dynamics between the detective and the other characters. The MI6 character is a bit of a stretch, but whatever. I loved Puck.

So, I have enough hope that I’d be wiling to read a second one, but not a lot of optimism that the series will be a keeper.

Under the Covers and Between the Sheets

Under the Covers and Between the Sheets
by C. Alan Joyce, Sarah Janssen
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781606520345
Publication Date: October 15, 2009
Pages: 175
Genre: Books and Reading, History, Reference
Publisher: Reader's Digest

Bibliophiles, grab your glasses! Here is a compendium of interesting--and often scandalous--facts and quips about the literary world. Featuring authors and tomes of yesteryear and yesterday, from Tolkien's Middle- earth to Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, you'll sections such as:

Parental Guidance Suggested: Banned works of fiction and the controversy surrounding them.

Lions and Tigers and Bears (Oh My!): The real-life stories and inspirations behind beloved "leading creatures."

Time to Make the Doughnuts: Odd jobs of famous authors.

Tell Me a Story: Dahl's short stories, Seuss's political cartoons; the lesser-known, and sometimes shocking, adult writings of beloved children's authors.

The Long Con: Shocking (and sometimes shockingly long-lived) literary hoaxes: Frey, JT Leroy, The Education of Little Tree, The Day After Roswell, etc.

Science Fiction, Science Fact: If alien monoliths are ever found on the moon, the safer bet is that they would be translucent crystal; Sir Arthur C. Clarke is celebrated for making accurate predictions of various technologies, years ahead of their time. A look at which of his predictions held true and the same feats of other authors.

Yes, But is it Art?: The weirdest books ever written: books without verbs, without punctuation...or without the letter "e".

I had no idea that Reader’s Digest was still publishing books, nor that they were publishing things I’d find interesting. (Are they still doing condensed books?) But this little reference tome of odd and interesting facts was interesting; trivia is cat nip for me, and while some of what was in here were things I already knew, quite a bit wasn’t. I found myself reading some sections out loud to MT, and more than a couple sparked interesting conversations, and at least 1 debate. (MT got a bit sloppy and made a throw-away comment about Australia not banning books like America did – to be fair, a national sports icon died young yesterday, and he wasn’t in top form. Still, Wikipedia was called up, and there was a reckoning.)

I always pick these type of books up at used book sales, or remainder shops, so I always feel like the knowledge gained was good value.

Weekend Reading / TBR project

As a couple of you might know, I’ve decided to try to do the whole spreadsheet tracking thing this year. Part of the setup is entering your total TBR books, a number I lost control of a couple of years ago during the Great BookLikes Crises. Having been on crutches the last three months, I haven’t been able to walk around and count them, either, and it seemed way too cheeky to ask MT to do it for me, not to mention the TBR range spans across at least three rooms.

I’m still on crutches, but with more energy, and I’m bored to tears with seeing the books on my bedside TBR bookcase, so this weekend I decided to tackle the counting in stages and at the same time incorporate some swapping of the stock, so to speak, in the hope that some “new” titles next to the bed will re-invigorate my reading. I started yesterday with the medium sized bookshelf located in my lounge room. This room is down a small set of floating stairs from the rest of the house so I only get to spend time in it when MT is here. I’m good on the crutches, but it seems like a Very Bad Idea to tackle floating (highly varnished) stairs when I’m alone in the house.

I pulled the books off and re-arranged them, setting aside the ones that made me go “ooh” or “hmm”. The set-aside pile came to 26 books:

A couple of these are ‘read-in-a-day’ reference type books I can easily process off the pile, and in fact, I’ll be posting a review of the first one after I finish this post. Of the rest, 2 immediately caught my attention, and I started reading them yesterday:

Venom
by Eivind Undheim, Ronald Jenner
isbn: 9781486308378
Publication Date: October 1, 2017
Pages: 208
Genre: Natural Science, Science
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing

A fully illustrated guide to venom, its evolution in different animal groups, its effects and its treatments.
When we enter the world of venom, we enter the realm of one of the most diverse, versatile, sophisticated and deadly biological adaptations ever to have evolved on Earth.

Since it first appeared in ancient jellyfish and sea anemones, venom has proved so effective that it has since evolved independently in dozens of different animal groups. The authors reveal the many unique methods by which venomous animals deliver their cocktail of toxins and how these disrupt the physiology of the victims.

Jenner and Undheim also consider how humans have learnt to neutralise venom’s devastating effects, as well as exploit the power of venom in innovative ways to create new drugs to treat a variety of serious conditions. Fully illustrated throughout, this illuminating guide will appeal to all those with an interest in the wondrous world of venom.

One Day: The Extraordinary Story Of An Ordinary 24 Hours In America
by Gene Weingarten
isbn: 9780399166662
Publication Date: October 22, 2019
Pages: 375
Genre: History
Publisher: Blue Rider Press

Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Gene Weingarten explores the events of a random day in U.S. history, offering a diorama of American life that illuminates all that has changed—and all that hasn’t—in the past three decades.

On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day—chosen completely at random—turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing.

That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, prejudice, selflessness, coincidence, and startling moments of human connection, along with evocative foreshadowing of momentous events yet to come. Lives were lost. Lives were saved. Lives were altered in overwhelming ways. Many of these events never made it into the news; they were private dramas in the lives of private people. They were utterly compelling.

One Day asks and answers the question of whether there is even such a thing as “ordinary” when we are talking about how we all lurch and stumble our way through the daily, daunting challenge of being human.

One Day I’ve only read as far as the introduction but was completely absorbed by what I was reading – I’m expecting to enjoy it, especially as I like these snap-shot looks at history; Venom is going to be a bit of science-candy, I think; the introduction feels like it’s aimed at the more urban reader with less practical experience with the venomous side of life, but it’s fully illustrated and seems like a good warm-up to tackling the slightly more in-depth Venomous by Christie Wilcox, also in that pile.

This morning, I pulled 20-ish books off my large bed-side TBR bookshelf and MT will haul those into the lounge to take residence on the medium sized shelf. They’re still titles I want to read, but I’m so used to seeing, my eyes glide right over them. The stacks above will take their place in the bedroom, doing their bit to shake up my visual field. I’ll also tally up the books on both shelves for my spreadsheet, which will leave me only with 2 smallish shelves in the library, of mostly MM Paperbacks, and then I’ll finally be able to more accurately track my efforts to whittle down my TBR. I hope.