Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: mystery

  • Book: Fatal Error

    J. A. Jance is one of my favorites in the mystery/thriller category, and Fatal Error is up to her best standard. I enjoyed every minute of the book. I didn’t feel like speed reading through anything, and I never felt that she’d left out part of the story, which is a rare thing for me.

    I always hate summarizing the story, but this book features Alli, who has the money to live a life of leisure but wants to be a cop. Unfortunately, she gets furloughed right after graduating from the police academy. But at the same time she’s drawn into a mystery–the disappearance of a friend.

    The story loosely brings to mind those well-off detectives, such as titled characters in British mystery, who have outside resources and aren’t afraid to use them in the cause of justice. As one character in the book eventually decides, Alli is rich and pushy, but also very smart.

    I read the hardcover edition, 353 pages, and rate it 5 of 5 stars.

  • Note: Naked Heat

    I read this book, and the previous Nikki Heat volume, Heat Wave, because I found the concept of a book by a ghost writer, writing for a fictional author interesting. (OK, that sentence is too convoluted, but I’m not going to fix it.) I find the ABC show Castle entertaining in a non-intellectual sort of way. It’s good relaxation.

    As for Heat Wave, it took me half the book to get interesting. It almost fell into a rating of 1 on my scale, by virtue of my failing to finish reading it. But about half way through it managed to become mildly interesting and ended up OK. Because I decided to check out the next volume, it makes it, just barely, to a 3.

    Naked Heat was better. I was interesting throughout. It’s not a book I couldn’t put down. In fact, I put it down in the middle of quite a number of scenes, including one with Nikki Heat in the middle of a fight. I also had a fair idea what was going on too early in the book, though the evidence was not always presented all that clearly. Some authors keep you guessing by having a complex case. Others do it through some obscure presentation of the evidence. This one uses the latter a bit.

    It’s still a decent book, and the concept is fun. I give it 3 out of 5 stars. I also give Heat Wave 3 out of five stars, but Heat Wave barely made it, while Naked Heat is a solid 3.

  • Fantasy in Death – and Reality

    I recently read J. D. Robb’s Fantasy in Death and enjoyed the advanced technology.  I told my wife when we had both read it that I felt that some of the technology described was at least possible and might well happen sooner than later.

    Well, it’s not nearly that type of capability–we’re still a long way from that, but we’re moving down the path.  Today in my gizmag e-mail I got an article on the Third Space FPS gaming vest that lets you feel the gaming action.

    Time marches on … sometimes faster than we want it to.

     

  • Review – The Second Confession

    In this mystery, Nero Wolfe finds himself under attack through one of his dearest things–his orchids. He also finds himself working outside his home, another unusual situation for him. Since much of the action takes place outside of New York City, we don’t have staples such as Detective Cramer, but we do hear about him and some of his police colleagues in the city.

    My wife’s comment on reading this book was simply that this was “a good one.” Since we both like Nero Wolfe, that elevates it about the average of really good books to a place that’s much more fun. Archie Goodwin gets into quite a bit of (potential) trouble. When doesn’t he? But the ending remained somewhat of a surprise, even though in retrospect I thought I should have suspected much, much sooner than I did.

    This is another good book in the Nero Wolfe series of stories.

  • Book Notes: The Laughter of Dead Kings

    The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters has a couple strikes against it.  (Note some minor spoilers ahead.)

    The first of these is that it is not consistent with other books in the series.  Peters admits this and says she doesn’t care, which is obviously her right.  I find inconsistencies in the background of stories fairly annoying.  I like all the stories with the same character(s) to hang together.

    The second is that it attempts to tie two series together, and I don’t think the series were intended to match.  For some reasons those tie-ins don’t seem to work all that well.  In this particular case, I caught on to it fairly early, and the connections are pretty obvious, but to me they don’t add anything to the story.

    On the other hand, it’s written by Elizabeth Peters, after all, so it has to have something going for it.  Even though I have never liked the Vicky Bliss stories as well as the Amelia Peabody mysteries, I have always found them entertaining and fun light reading, which is obviously what they were written for.  It’s quite unfair to criticize an author for accomplishing precisely what she set out to do.

    Vicky Bliss is still in love with John, and when a major artifact goes missing, he’s obviously going to be blamed somehow, especially if the crime seems particularly brilliant.  Who else could have done it?

    We meet many of the old characters again and I must say I especially enjoy reading about Schmidt and his various antics.  Everything comes out OK, of course, but only at the very last minute.

    So despite the two strikes, I call the book a hit, just not a home run–for me.  Others, who don’t have pet peeves about such little things, may find it a home run in entertainment.

    OK, enough with the baseball metaphors already!

  • With No One As Witness

    I first encountered Elizabeth George’s work through the videos of the Lynley series.  My experience is that the movie version is never up to the quality of the book, so in this case I was quite hopeful as I turned to the books for the first time.

    I was not disappointed.  Elizabeth George presents character in a wonderful way, and presents excellent detail on a variety of persons who may be of interest to the reader.  As always, I’m interested in the evidence presented, and whether it truly points to the person who turns out to be guilty.  The ideal mystery, in my view, keeps me from being certain of the guilty party until the very end, but when the actual perpetrator is presented, makes me feel a bit foolish for not having realized it. Thus failure can come either in the form of an easily guessed solution or a solution that doesn’t make sense even after it’s presented.

    In With No One As Witness, neither of these is a problem.  There are multiple plausible suspects introduced through the earlier portion of the story, but the list is whittled down as the story progresses.  The characters present detailed enough personalities that the reader can actually ask whether that person’s personality fits the profile for the crime.

    I will definitely be reading more of these books, probably starting with the next one in the series, and then moving back toward the earlier volumes.  I prefer the written word to video in any case.  It’s nice to relax and watch a video, but I have never encountered a screen adaptation that really matches the experience of reading a good mystery.

  • Book: Cat in a Sapphire Slipper

    I’m a sucker for light reading that involves cats and mystery, so how could I possibly not enjoy Carole Nelson Douglas’s Midnight Louie mysteries?

    This latest book finds Max Kinsella missing and Temple Barr getting engaged to Matt Devine, while the Fontana brothers are all kidnapped, and generally all hell is breaking loose all over.

    The problem is to solve the mystery before everyone’s life is ruined, and this is accomplished in a most amusing manner in the required number of pages (396). This is pure fun, though I must say if you don’t like cats you may not like it all that well. Midnight Louie encounters an old flame, and we end up with four cats working on the mystery at once.

    What’s not to like?

    View the Energion.com detail page for Cat in a Sapphire Slipper.

  • Feeling Wonder, Wanting to Know

    This is one of those Sunday morning quick posts, because I’m feeling it right now. As a note to my critics, I’ll be off to church in a bit, and that’s partly what got me thinking about this topic. I have been gravitating more and more toward a service at a church downtown that offers weekly communion. Over the years I’ve migrated from a church that celebrated communion quarterly, to the standard United Methodist monthly, to the point now where I find that too rare. Once I found a church service that offered the Eucharist on a weekly basis, I felt the pull!

    Since I am often visiting other churches, I get to take advantage of this from time to time, and now it looks like I may be doing some teaching there, so that will be great. Why? As the incarnation has become more and more firmly placed at the center of my theology, the Eucharist has gravitated toward the center of my liturgy. I think most Christian theologians will understand that. It’s not that the incarnation was ever unimportant, but in my personal theological reflection it has become the antidote to more and more potential problems and the answer to more and more questions.

    There’s a mystery and a wonder in this celebration that becomes greater as one both reflects theologically and dives into the event spiritually. Even when the liturgy is badly done, an unfortunately frequent occurrence in Methodist churches, I feel the sense of mystery and wonder. There is nothing quite like trying to wrap one’s mind and spirit around the concept of infinite God combined with human flesh in that 1+1=2 event to open one’s spiritual awareness.

    Yesterday I blogged about an “unseemly glee”, and it appears that I may have been less clear that I would have wished. Commenter Larry B notes:

    I think you bring up a good point here, but I also think you overstated your case a bit here. Christians aren’t the only ones guilty of the type of feeling you describe here. I would postulate that all religions revel in the mystery of the unknown. Any encroachment on that pulls a little bit at a core sentiment for religion.

    First, I had no intention of suggesting that only Christians have such feelings. I comment on Christianity because I’m a Christian, and that’s what I know. While I have studied other faiths, particularly in the ancient near east, I cannot claim a similar level of knowledge. But to the best of the knowledge I have, Larry is quite correct here. The feeling is held in common over a broad range of religions. But there is a divide amongst adherents of religions, and here I want to comment on Christianity only again, between those who sense wonder and react negatively to exploration and discovery, and those who embrace both wonder and knowledge.

    Skipping a paragraph, let me quote again:

    I think you have just touched a little bit on common human nature hear where we have a yearning for mystery.

    True, but it is not the yearning for mystery that I deplore, but rather the sense of glee against those who seek knowledge. The seekers are often filled with just as much wonder as anyone else; they simply don’t let wonder and yearning for mystery stop the seeking.

    Larry posted a third paragraph between these two that provides an excellent illustration. Go back there and read his comment to get the full connection.

    Let me illustrate my feeling of wonder and desire for knowledge. Of all the sciences, I probably understand geology the best, followed by astronomy. This is purely amateur knowledge gotten by personal reading and “informal field study” (read, I had roadside geology guides and went and looked at the stuff they pointed out). So when I go to Niagara Falls, I have a pretty fair idea of the geological history and a great deal of the geological future of the formation. For some reason, that knowledge doesn’t prevent any of the feeling of awe and wonder that I get in looking at it.

    To try another example, I have a little Shih Tzu dog named Barnabas. He’s quite a character, and he often fills me with quite a sense of wonder. I believe on the one hand that he is the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and many thousands of years of domestication and breeding culminating in the formation of the breed I have. Professional breeders matched his parents. But I do not have a moment of problem calling him a gift of God or wondering at the creator. Barnabas was our son’s companion throughout his illness, encouraging, entertaining. James used to comment that it was hard to stay sad or angry when that dog was around.

    The two things are not in any way incompatible. That’s why I believe that those who try to throw mystery up in the face of scientists are missing the point. Many of those same scientists feel a sense of mystery, but at the same time they keep right on investigating. I believe what I missed in my post yesterday was drawing the line between mystery and wonder, which is quite compatible with seeking knowledge, and either the fear that mystery will go away, or the glee in throwing mystery in the face of those who seek knowledge.

    There is plenty of mystery in the universe. We have learned many things, but we are in no danger of running out of mystery even if we assumed that all sense of wonder was drained from a topic when it was investigated. Both fear and glee are not indicated. Wonder and seeking are.