The Baker Street Letters (Baker Street Mystery, #1)

The Baker Street Letters
by Michael Robertson
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780312538125
Series: Baker Street Mystery #1
Publication Date: January 1, 2009
Pages: 288
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

First in a spectacular new series about two brother lawyers who lease offices on London's Baker Street--and begin receiving mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes

In Los Angeles, a geological surveyor maps out a proposed subway route—and then goes missing. His eight-year-old daughter in her desperation turns to the one person she thinks might help—she writes a letter to Sherlock Holmes.

That letter creates an uproar at 221b Baker Street, which now houses the law offices of attorney and man about town Reggie Heath and his hapless brother Nigel. Instead of filing the letter like he's supposed to, Nigel decides to investigate. Soon he's flying off to L.A., inconsiderately leaving a very dead body on the floor in his office. Big brother Reggie follows Nigel to California, as does Reggie's sometime lover, Laura – a quick-witted stage actress who's captured the hearts of both brothers.

When Nigel is arrested, Reggie must use all his wits to solve a case that Sherlock Holmes would have savored, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans will adore.

An impulse grab at my library, I had no idea what to suspect from this book – I was unfamiliar with the author and series, but the premise sounded like potential fun: legal chambers at 221B Baker street are obliged, by the terms of their lease, to open, read and answer letters written to Sherlock Holmes.

The book turned out to be well-written and fast-paced, though it lagged a bit in the middle for me. The plot was interesting and well-constructed, although grand in a way that, at the risk of generalising, seems to be SOP for male authors. It was good, and I enjoyed it, but this is not the kind of mystery where the reader really gets to participate; this is a traditional mystery with pretensions of thriller-ism.

In the Real World, I tend to find men more relatable then women, so I suppose in the karmic balance of things, it’s natural that I’m the exact opposite in the Book World. In Book World, I prefer my authors to be female, as – again, at the risk of generalisation – they have voices that I find most relatable, as well as an ability to write characters and their relationships in a way that hooks me. There are exceptions on both sides, of course, but this isn’t one of them: while it’s a good story with a great setup and a lively style, the characters failed to click with me. I liked them, but they didn’t feel natural, and I’m completely dismissing the “romantic” element. Laura is great, but her connections to the main character and his brother feels wooden, at best. Luckily, that chemistry, or the lack of it, is irrelevant to the story and easy to ignore.

There are at least 4-5 more books in this series, and I have the 3rd one checked out – my library didn’t have the second one. I may read it before the due date, but I’m going to put it aside for now; this feels like a series I could enjoy periodically but never binge on.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022, for the Amateur Sleuth square. It takes place mostly in Los Angeles, so it would also work for the Golden State Nightmares square.

The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #4)

The Hunt for Red October
by Tom Clancy
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 0870212850
Series: Jack Ryan #4
Publication Date: October 1, 1984
Pages: 387
Genre: Political Fiction, Thriller
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

I haven’t read this since soon after it came out in the late 80’s, although I’ve seen the movies numerous times over the years. It’s every bit as good as I remember – even better, really, because this time around I didn’t have any trouble keeping track of the boats and the subs. True, bits of it are dated (the average American salary being 20k a year, or even more startling, the superiority of the CRAY-2 supercomputer, which cost tens of millions of dollars, was available only at NASA and a few military centers, ,,, and had the same computing power of the first iPad.), but overall the action is fast, the writing intelligent, and the suspense top notch.

Having gone so long between reads, and having seen the movie enough times in between, I had forgotten how much the movie deviates – especially at the end – from the book. I’m generally pretty vitriolic about movie adaptations, especially when they significantly alter things, but full credit to the screenwriters; I don’t know that the book’s ending would have worked as well on-screen, but the spirit of the thing was caught perfectly. Re-reading this ending was like experiencing it for the first time and it was tense.

I’m thankful to Peregrinations for getting me thinking about this book again. I’m sort of tempted to re-read a few other Ryan books now. Or, at least, after Halloween Bingo.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022, but I’m still not sure which square I want to use it for – either Fear the Drowning Deep, or Film at 11. For now, I think I’ll assign it to Fear the Drowning Deep, since that square has already been called.

The Dark Place (Gideon Oliver Mystery, #2)

The Dark Place
by Aaron Elkins
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 0802755658
Series: Gideon Oliver #2
Publication Date: January 1, 1983
Pages: 200
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Walker Publications

Deep in the primeval rainforest of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, the skeletal remains of a murdered man are discovered. And a strange, unsettling tale begins to unfold, for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver determines that the murder weapon was a primitive bone spear of a type not seen for the last ten thousand years. And whoever—or whatever—hurled it did so with seemingly superhuman force. Bigfoot “sightings” immediately crop up, but Gideon is not buying them.

But something is continuing to kill people, and Gideon, helped by forest ranger Julie Tendler and FBI special agent John Lau, plunges into the dark heart of an unexplored wilderness to uncover the bizarre, astonishing explanation.

I’ve only read one other Gideon Oliver book, and it’s a much later entry in the series (Skullduggery), which I enjoyed. I wanted to start at the beginning but after a lot of research, everyone who has ever read the first book says it’s not worth reading it, so I’m jumping in at #2.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I didn’t really read it with any particular HB square in mind. This was a really good story, and not at all the kind of story I expected. What starts off with 3 disappearances in the rainforest of Washington State leads to dead bodies, an unknown Amerind burial ground, and, for the first 60 pages, Bigfoot is a contender! So much fun!

The reality, as the story progresses, is much, much more interesting than Bigfoot (no offence meant), and this mystery becomes the most anthropological anthropology-mystery I’ve ever read. It’s short – 200 pages – but concise and fast paced. Little is wasted on descriptive filler, although I’d have liked for the sex scenes not to have made the final edits. I’m fine with sex scenes in general, but in a cozy, written by a man, well, for some reason it just sort of squicked me out. But they really were the only unnecessary scenes and were pretty PG, for all I’m complaining about them.

Without giving anything away, it was just a really solid, well-written, mystery, with great characters and an even better setting.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022 and beyond the obvious Genre: Mystery square it also fits Amateur Sleuth, Cozy Mystery, Dem Bones, In the Dark, Dark Woods, Monsters, and The Barrens.

I’m going to use it for Monsters because, Bigfoot! 🙂

Unseen Academicals (Discworld, #37)

Unseen Academicals
by Terry Pratchett
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780385609340
Series: Discworld #37
Publication Date: January 1, 2009
Pages: 400
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Doubleday

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. This is not going to be a gentleman's game.

The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt). As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football. Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!

Every time I start reading a Pratchett, I always ask myself why? Then I get 20 pages or so in, and ahhh, yes, that’s why. MT asked me what about his writing made the beginning such an obvious struggle when I end up laughing myself stupid through the rest, and I think – for this book at least – it’s because he starts with so many random bits. I never quite know where he’s headed or what’s necessarily important, and it makes my brain ache.

But it’s generally worth the ache, as it was with this one. Unseen Academicals, even though it’s about football, or foot-the-ball, as it’s known in Ankh Morpork, and soccer everywhere outside Europe and the UK, was possibly the … earthiest, in terms of humor and innuendo, of all the Pratchett’s I’ve read so far. It was hilarious, and there were a few parts about the football that I had to read to MT. Pratchett nails both the lunacy, and I suppose, the community of fanatical sports.

Underneath all that though, were rather endearing stories about 4 different people who start out only tangentially acquainted through work (although Glenda and Julia grew up together), but who come together to help the Unseen University build a football team, and consequently find their dreams.

This felt like a very sympathetic, dare I say, romantic?, Pratchett, and it was one of the few where I became invested in the characters’ outcomes. Oddly, I’m not sure how I feel about Mr. Nutt’s resolution. I think I’d have liked his ending more if Pratchett hadn’t turned him into a future hero. Regardless, he was my favourite of the four. The wizards got all the best lines, though.

When I started, I feared it was going to take me an age to finish, but once I got past the randomness and the story coalesced, I really did not want to put it down.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022’s Dark Academia square, as the book takes place entirely at the Unseen University. It would also work for Gallows Humor, oddly enough, Monsters might work (Mr. Nutt’s potential), Spellbound, and Sword & Sorcery.

Ruby Fever (Hidden Legacies, #6)

Ruby Fever
by Ilona Andrews
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780062878397
Series: Hidden Legacy #6
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Pages: 384
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Ace

An escaped spider, the unexpected arrival of an Imperial Russian Prince, the senseless assassination of a powerful figure, a shocking attack on the supposedly invincible Warden of Texas, Catalina’s boss... And it’s only Monday.

Within hours, the fate of Houston—not to mention the House of Baylor—now rests on Catalina, who will have to harness her powers as never before. But even with her fellow Prime and fiancé Alessandro Sagredo by her side, she may not be able to expose who’s responsible before all hell really breaks loose.

This arrived on Wednesday, and I tried, I really did, to hold out for Halloween Bingo. I made it 2 whole hours before I caved. I don’t think I’ll need it for HB, but if I do, I’m happy to re-read it.

I admit that of the two sets of characters in Hidden Legacies, I prefer Nevada and Connor, featured in the first 3. I think in part because there was less romance and more telekinesis; I think I prefer someone throwing huge things around to hand-to-hand combat and magic singing. Still, it’s the same family and it’s the family that pulls me in and makes me want to re-read, as much as the action.

A couple of random things: I was not surprised by the revelation of Caesar’s identity; I had that nailed after book 1. I was surprised at Andrews’ attempts to humanise Victoria, and the whole ‘we love you even though you’re terrible’. I did not buy that at all. I was also a little surprised by Grandpa, although I shouldn’t have been; I remember well Allessando’s muttered comment in the first Catalina book.

The story wraps up all the open threads, while definitely leaving a few openings for Arabella’s story, presumably in books 7-9, but I read something on the authors’ site about ‘now that we’re through with main-steam publishing’ that makes me wonder if Arabella will get her three books or not, and if so, if we’re going to have to wait years for the authors’ to get around to writing them. (I’m getting bitter about how long it’s taken to get Hugh’s second book, never mind Julie’s).

The Cat Who Saved Books

The Cat Who Saved Books
by Louise Heal Kawai (Translator), Sosuke Natsukawa
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9780063095724
Publication Date: December 7, 2021
Pages: 198
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: HarperVia

Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for—or rather, demands—the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and the cat and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners.

Their mission sends this odd couple on an amazing journey, where they enter different mazes to set books free. Through their travels, the cat and Rintaro meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, an unwitting book torturer who cuts the pages of books into snippets to help people speed read, and a publishing drone who only wants to create bestsellers. Their adventures culminate in one final, unforgettable challenge—the last maze that awaits leads Rintaro down a realm only the bravest dare enter . . .

An enthralling tale of books, first love, fantasy, and an unusual friendship with a talking cat, The Cat Who Saved Books is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper.

I have no idea how I discovered this book – I know I read about it somewhere online, and I thought it was here, but I can find no reference to it, so I’ll just throw out a ‘Thank you!’ to the universe at large for putting this book in my path.

Saying that, the title is a little misleading; I’d argue that the cat does not save the books, but is merely a guide for the teen-aged boy who does save the books. Since I don’t speak Japanese beyond ‘arigato’ I can’t say if this is a translation issue or a marketing one.

As I was reading, two thoughts stayed with me: the first was that this book had a definite Wrinkle in Time vibe – which should be taken with a grain of salt, because I never liked that book, so the parallel is likely tenuous – and second, the philosophy that props this book up feels far more Franciscan than Zen. The translator’s notes at the end point out the so-obvious-I-missed-it connection to Greek mythology and it’s labyrinth, so who knows what connections each reader of this book will make? And I think that’s one of the points this book makes – each reader takes what they need from every book they need, and rarely do two people need the same things.

As a story, it’s an engaging one; a little sweet, a little naive from a Western viewpoint (I’m assuming school attendance laws are laxer in Japan? And perhaps too emancipation laws?), but it’s also a fantasy, so some slack needs to be cut, but not all that much. Rintaro’s life in his grandfather’s bookshop sounds like heaven to me, even without the talking cat; Tiger the Tabby just made it even better. But the ideas addressed about books and the people that love them are anything but sweet and naive, and for book lovers, there’s some deeply fundamental stuff going on just under the surface.

The book seemingly wants to end after the 3rd labyrinth, when suddenly a fourth one is tacked on – and it feels tacked on. At first I resented this … addendum, because it felt like it was pandering and gilding the lily, so to speak, not to mention the ill-fitting ‘save the damsel’ conceit of it. But I have to not only concede that it worked, but that 1/2 star in my rating is for Natsukawa’s cleverness. I like what he did there, in spite of the way he framed it. The ambiguity of who is at the centre of the fourth labyrinth is delicious – I have my suspicions, but so will others that read this book, and I doubt any of us would agree and none of us would be wrong. I love it when that happens!

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
by Oliver Sacks
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781447203834
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
Pages: 256
Genre: Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Picador

In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human.

This has been on my shelf for at least 10 years, and I don’t know why it took me so long to pick it up; I’m a sucker for case studies, and Sacks doesn’t disappoint in that regard.

This is a collection of previously published case studies of various neurological disorders, and reading it reinforces my sense that truly, every day is a miracle when your brain isn’t forsaking you. I alternated between awe, horror, indignation, anger, sadness and, throughout a growing, overwhelming amount of respect for those that dedicate their lives to their patients. Sacks impressed me as both a doctor and a human.

The book wasn’t perfect – Sacks had a tendency to meander through citations of similar cases, or other doctors’ hypothesis, and when that happened, my eyes got a bit glassy, and I skimmed, but overall it’s an incredibly readable collection. I wish there was more follow up for so many of these people – I’m left curious and hopeful that they all found some space in the world for themselves.

DNF: Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond

Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond
by John Lewis-Stempel
Rating: ★★
isbn: 9780857524577
Publication Date: March 14, 2019
Pages: 289
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Doubleday

The Pond. Nothing in the countryside is more humble or more valuable. It's the moorhen's reedy home, the frog's ancient breeding place, the kill zone of the beautiful dragonfly. More than a hundred rare and threatened fauna and flora depend on it.

Written in gorgeous prose, Still Water tells the seasonal story of the wild animals and plants that live in and around the pond, from the mayfly larvae in the mud to the patrolling bats in the night sky above. It reflects an era before the water was polluted with chemicals and the land built on for housing, a time when ponds shone everywhere like eyes in the land, sustaining life for all, from fish to carthorse.

Still Water is a loving biography of the pond, and an alarm call on behalf of this precious but overlooked habitat. Above all, John Lewis-Stempel takes us on a remarkable journey - deep, deep down into the nature of still water.

Straight up this book was not at all what I was expecting. The title implies a close analysis of pond life; the pull quote at the bottom reinforces this expectation.

Instead, this is a philosophical naval-gaze / memoir / diary. Disappointing, given that I was in the mood for a discussion of bugs, amphibians, fish … maybe some algae for color. But I’ve also enjoyed other books similar to this (A Farmer’s Diary comes immediately to mind) so I shifted my expectations and persevered. Unfortunately, even with shifted expectations I could not get past “Winter”; the writing was just a bit too meta and the prose was trying too hard to be poetic. One season in – about 25% of the book – and I still really wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish.

I gave it two stars because it was technically well written, the cover is gorgeous, and it might just be me.

A Pelican at Blandings

A Pelican At Blandings
by P.G. Wodehouse
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780099514022
Publication Date: August 7, 2008
Pages: 249
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Arrow Books

Unwelcome guests are descending on Blandings Castle uaparticularly the overbearing Duke of Dunstable, who settles in the Garden Suite with no intention of leaving, and Lady Constance, Lord Emsworth's sister and a lady of firm disposition, who arrives unexpectedly from New York.

Skulduggery is also afoot involving the sale of a modern nude painting (mistaken by Lord Emsworth for a pig). It's enough to take the noble earl on the short journey to the end of his wits. Luckily Clarence's brother Galahad Threepwood, cheery survivor of the raffish Pelican Club, is on hand to set things right, restore sundered lovers and even solve all the mysteries.

Who doesn’t like Wodehouse? It’s situational and narrative humor at its best. But you really have to be in the mood for it, and even then, I’ll go so far as to say Wodehouse is best consumed in short story form. It’s hard enough to sustain the humor for a novel length book at Wodehouse’s madcap pace, but it’s been harder to sustain the laughs. After a few chapters a reader can become inured to the comedy, and start to feel a bit numb, especially when character development is necessarily thin-to-non-existent, and the plotting not much more complex than the characters. This isn’t a criticism; humor succeeds where both are pushed to the background.

Short or long length though, Wodehouse is a genius.

Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle
by Hesketh Pearson
Rating: ★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1974
Pages: 256
Genre: Biography
Publisher: White Lion Publishing

Conan Doyle (1859-1930) will always be remembered for the character of Sherlock Holmes, but he was a prolific writer—of short stories, of science fiction and historical fiction1including The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. In his comprehensive biography, Pearson considers how his life is reflected in his books—including his background as a doctor and his enduring (and public) belief in spiritualism.

Not quite what I expected, I don’t think. I knew this wasn’t going to be a typical biography, just based on the slimness of the volume, but it sat on the TBR shelves for a few years because I really have to be in the mood for the tedium that comes with biographies. However, Pearson skipped the tedious bits and instead, this is more an overview of Conan Doyle’s life. In that it’s a great ‘first look’ at this magnificent author’s life.

My problem, and hence the three stars, is that it’s truly a mystery whether Pearson even liked Conan Doyle. This is not an unbiased look at a literary titan’s life – it’s totally biased. But which way? Throughout the text, Pearson is extolling Doyle’s genius, praising his ability to write gripping tales, and at the same time calling him simple whenever he can. He uses the word ‘simple’, and I could give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he means ‘free from guile’ – which Doyle was – but he takes snipes at him in other ways too that makes me wonder.

Pearson continued to irritate me the further along in the text I went; he went off on a long diatribe about the difference between having an imagination and being fanciful. Apparently, Shakespeare had imagination, but Doyle was merely fanciful, as, apparently, was Edgar Allan Poe. He also kept referring to “the war of 1914-1918”, or “the 1914-1918 war”, refusing to call it World War I, or even the Great War. This bugged me more than it should have.

But the part that pissed me off the most was the last chapter where he tackles the elephant in the room – Doyle’s embracement of spiritualism. It is, to put it mildly, extremely unsympathetic, unbiased and, frankly screw mildly, the man was sneering and contemptuous and couldn’t have written it more condescendingly if he tried. He made me want to thump him right between the eyes for his extraordinary poor form. I could rant about this for ages, but I’ll save time and just say, the last chapter cost him a star and a half.

It’s an easy and informative read, but unless you can tolerate an author who talks out of both sides of their mouth in a completely biased fashion, there are probably better biographies of Conan Doyle out there.