Review: Dead Man's Trail

 by Donna Ball

I hate to say this, but I'm getting really bored with her Raine and Cisco mysteries.  It's sad--I love her writing and I've loved Raine and Cisco from the first book. But she seems to have fallen into a predictable rut of pointless violence and mass murder with almost a third of the book spent inside the killer's head. There is no cool and unusual trailing work that Cisco has to do; there is no complicated puzzle solving that Raine and her colleagues have to perform. It's just all action and adventure and not very adventurous at that.

Strange...I just read a description of the difference between a mystery and thriller. And by those criteria, this book is a thriller. Maybe I'm just into the wrong genre!

Spoiler alert follows

In this book she introduces an interesting character who has a serious issue with Raine and her dog. He seems to hate them both for no reason; he is clearly not stupid or simply prejudiced--there must be some deep and peculiar problem he has that Raine must understand and overcome....

And bang!  He's dead.

And so are a bunch of other people.  It's all just blood and gore, and since I skipped the parts inside the killer's head, I don't even know why he was doing it all. I expected to find out where Raine did, but I didn't. So, blah.

Very disappointing for such a great author and characters.

 

Review: Walking with Rocks

 Walking with Rocks: An English Woman Loose in the Woods

by Esther Parry

I enjoyed this...until I didn't. She's a fun, lively writer and a pretty interesting person. Her travel on the AT seemed to suffer from lack of advance planning, but then, doesn't every ones?  The only way to find out if you're up for long distance hiking is to do long distance hiking. And I must say, she makes a valiant effort at it.

One of the things that put me off was her tendency to take a good bit of time away from trail. She goes to New York City--a fun adventure and I heartily agree with it--but right in the middle of the hike of a lifetime?  I think she did herself a disservice there. And she does a lot of Ubering to motels.  That interruption throws a wrench into the whole routine of a walk, it seems to me--rather than a thru-hike, it seemed more like a series of day hikes.

 But that's my own quibble. When she was on trail, she put forth a valiant effort and seemed to enjoy the journey.  Though she's not quite as "deep" on paper as I would prefer in a travel writer, she's interested in the world around her and interesting to read.

 So I'll give this journey a big "maybe."

Review: Arbroath Smokie Slaying

Steve Higgs

 The dog + stray cats + gulls part of the adventure was a lot of fun and well "worth the price of the book."  The mystery was only so-so, and the author persisted in telling a whole bunch of the story from the perspectives of the evil-doers, which trashed all of the mystery in the mystery--what fun is it watching the detective figure out things that you already know, because you just spent the last two chapters with the bad guys. It's stupid and not at all enjoyable.

 With that in mind, I might read the next one but only if I can get a copy for free at the library or on KindleUnlimited.  I'm certainly not paying for a book when I have to skip half of it.

Review: The Frozen River

 by Ariel Lawhon

Can I first say that this story is great?  Absolutely engrossingly great--especially if you have an interest in midwifery, early American history, or women's experiences in the olden days.  And just plain old good storytelling. This has it all.

 It's inspired by the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife in Maine in the years shortly after the revolutionary war and the establishment of American government. Neither of which is anything to do with the story, but it places it in time for me.  Martha gads about doing good--and losing her temper at times--whilst birthing babies and caring for mothers--and gets dragged into a nasty murder when the hanged body of a man is dragged from the river and she's asked to perform a postmortem on it.

 I loved her. And I loved the story. But I am so very angry at the author of it. I read her afterword, in hopes she'd apologize for making up a fictional story about a real human being. But she didn't--although she did freely admit her crime. She outlines the known facts of Martha Ballard's life story and she explains a few of her speculations about what might have happened behind the lines of Martha's diary and why she thought them plausible enough to include in the story.

Why, oh why, couldn't she have written a historical fiction "inspired by the life of Martha Ballard" and named her heroine "Jane Fremont", set the story in SomewheresMill, Maine, and came up with unique names for all her people and places?  Wouldn't it have been just as good a story?  And that would have left the real Martha Ballard's story unsmeared by imagination. Good, loving imagination, to be true. But not the stuff of storybook dreams. 

 I'd already read the biography of the real Martha Ballard, and this is not her. It feels so wrong to make up stuff about real people.

 By the way--Live Oak trees do NOT grow in Maine.

Review: The Marlowe Murder Club

 by Robert Thorogood

Three, or really four, very interesting, different and well-drawn women characters collude to solve a very complex series of murders. I kept reading because I really wanted to see how it ended and how the characters developed and whether or not their budding friendship would survive the stresses of trying to work together despite their differences. And their oddities, too. One has a secret past; one a severe case in inadequacy and OCD; the third is scarily strong-willed and outspoken.

So as I say, I kept reading and enjoyed the way they all came out. But the murder mystery itself was just kind of stupid, IMHO. Complicated (overly so), and stupid.

I don't think I'll read another but that doesn't mean I don't recommend this book if it seems to be your cup-of-tea. It's fast-moving and has a pretty intense ending.

 

Review: A Walk in the Park

The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

by Kevin Fedarko

I was expecting a fun hiking adventure and I got it--and a lot more. Although I confess to a near-fatal disbelief in the beginning--how could two guys be so naive and clueless as to set out on a trip so stunningly unprepared?  I wanted to quit reading but only slightly less than I wanted to see how he could have gotten such a long book out of such a fatal disaster.

I was glad that I persisted, and them too. Because the adventure turned out better than it started--with a lot of near-disaster along the way--and the book ended up being about much ore than just a hiking adventure. It was the story of the canyon from many perspectives--the hikers and boaters who explored it early on; the native tribes that lost it and recovered it and are in the process (possibly) of losing it again; and the companions and helpers of the author and his colleague who live to explore it nowadays.

There's a lot in this book and it's still a greatly enjoyable adventure. Highly recommended.

 

Review: Iron Lake

Cork O'Connor, #1

by William Kent Krueger

I listened to this audiobook because I'd just finished This Tender Land and I didn't want to let the author (and the time and the place) go so soon. But my reaction is very, very mixed.  This book exhibits the same complex character development and the same sense of place, mysterious and awesome, as the other book. But this was clearly written by a much younger man.

Why do I think that? Because...it seems immature, somehow. More violent (is that possible?) A frequent reliance on coincidences in the plot--not once but twice does a photo negative manage to fall out of the bag and stick in a dark corner to provide a clue to continue the action. And so many people are so obsessed with sex and call it love. I was especially irritated at the woman "Jo", his ex-wife, who is made out to be so stinking irritating and immature that I don't see how she was ever expected to get a law degree. She's alternately sharp, spineless, whiny, and stupid.

But I see this book was written in 1998 and he's written quite a few others since then, possibly as many as 19. So I will try another one soon and see if I like it better.