Trackers 3 and 4

Oh, what a glorious weekend - I inhaled books. I needed to read!
On Friday I treated myself to a trip to the bookstore - I was desperate for an afternoon of reading mysteries! I bought four and read two of them almost without stopping.

First was a surprising delight.
The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery
By Nancy Springer
A 2007 nominee for the Edgar Best Juvenile Mystery
Read my post here.

Second was
Open Season: A Joe Pickett Novel
By C. J. Box
2001 Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel by an American Author

I have seen C. J. Box recommended on several mystery lists I visit but had never read one of his titles. This one had a glowing recommendation on its cover by Tony Hillerman, one of my favorite authors. So I bought it. Hillerman’s Navajo mysteries contain gorgeous imagery of the landscape, so I can understand his attraction to Box whose imagery of Wyoming is equally beautiful.

When the canyon walls finally opened, the bowl in the mountains was even more lush and untrammeled than Joe had imagined it could be. It was a beautiful, remarkable place. Around the rim of the bowl in all directions were sheer, red rock cliffs, which provided both protection and a windbreak. Thin rivulets of water that looked like old lace streamed down the rock walls from above.

I have to say that more and more I avoid mysteries that graphically describe the crimes involved and that use language that Captain Kirk in Star Trek IV describes as colorful metaphors. This one did both. However, the characters became very real to me from the first pages. And the plot was fantastic. It sent me to the internet to learn more about endangered species and the laws that protect them. In my opinion, that is what good writers do. Their research when well done is so much a part of the action that readers don’t know that they are learning. Drawing from my long ago college days, I cling to the belief that literature - including mysteries - should instruct as well as entertain.

Open Season happens to be a 1st in a series title (but not on my challenge list). However, though I thoroughly enjoyed it and read it in one sitting and would really like to follow the development of Game Warden Joe Pickett, I don’t think that I can - that pesky language and those crime descriptions.

Joe Pickett is new to his beat as game warden. He is not totally trusted because he is replacing a much loved warden. Trusted or not, he is soon drawn into a tangled web of deceit, murder, and mysterious hints to a animal species long thought extinct that if it resurfaces could change the lives of everyone in power around Joe. If found to still exist, the government would move in and the economy of the entire area would suffer.

'Do you realize what would happen to this valley if it got out that there might be something in the mountains? . . . They'd [logging truck drivers, cowboys, outfitters, fishing guides] be unemployed while the Feds roped off the entire valley for the future. Environmentalists from all over the country would move in with their little round glasses and sandals and start giving press conferences on how they're here to protect the innocent little creatures from the ignorant locals.'

Pickett has a very interesting philosophy concerning communication.

Joe had always considered individual words as finite units of currency, and he believed in savings. He never wanted to waste or unnecessarily expend words. To Joe, words meant things. They should be spent wisely. Joe sometimes paused for a long time until he could come up with the right words to express exactly what he wanted to say.

And I will waste no currency of communication to hint what the "innocent little creatures" might be. But Joe's solution made the read worthwhile.

4 Delights!!!!

Tracker 2

My second finished book of 2008:
Murder Shoots The Bull
A Southern Sisters Mystery
by Anne George

I have enjoyed the southern sisters several times on audio books - I always have an audio book in my car - but this is the first print version by George for me. One of my favorite bloggers awards her reads bookmarks from 1-5 as a grading system. I love bookmarks; but I honor her great blog; I do not want to plagiarize, so I am experimenting. I am trying out delights first of all - delights 1-5. My idea of delight is a good book with a good cup of coffee within easy reach; thus my symbol for delight is:

Murder Shoots The Bull gets 4 delights. Again, I am experimenting here. I think that I will only award a book 5 delights if in addition to being a great, delightful read, it has more depth and is more complex than a traditional cozy mystery. Cozy mysteries are gentle mysteries typically set in genteel settings like English country houses or villages. They have very little violence other than the murder. The victim doesn’t suffer. Usually death is instantaneous with no prolonged suffering. Usually the mystery is solved by an amateur sleuth, all loose ends are tied up, and the villain caught and punished by the novel’s end - again with no graphic description. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Novels typify this mystery subgenre. (Definition derived mainly from that of Erin Martin of Cozy Mystery Dot Com and from that of About Dot Com)

In Murder Shoots The Breeze, Patricia Anne and Mary Alice have to solve a convoluted mystery involving blackmail, family issues, an investment club, strange women, old love affairs, and, of course, the murder. The cozy setting is a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. The amateur sleuths are 60 year old Patricia Anne, a retired English teacher, and her 65 year old sister Mary Alice, a wealthy widow many times over. The fun of this series is the relationship between these feisty, funny, southern sisters.

The way my sister Mary Alice got us arrested was simple enough; she hit the president of the bank over the head with my umbrella. Grabbed it right away from me and 'thunk' let him have it. I think he was more surprised than hurt. There was hardly any blood, and everyone knows how much head wounds bleed. There wasn't even a very big knot. Probably wouldn't have been one at all if he'd had any hair. But he screeched like she'd killed him and the security guard came rushing in, saw Mr. Jones staggering around holding his head, and pulled a gun on us. He looked like Barney Fife, the guard did, and chances were the bullet was in his pocket, but you just don't take a chance on things like that. At least I don't. Sister said later that she might have hit the guard, too, at least knocked the gun out of his hand, if he hadn't looked so pitiful standing there shaking like a leaf.

4 Delights!!!!

Following My Path

- * - My first entry for a new blog and the first time I have written 2008 - * -

It is such a cliché to say that I still had trouble writing 2007, but it is sadly true. I have always said that the hardest thing to accept about growing up is to accept that what your mother always told you is true. Time does go faster the older you get!

At any rate, in keeping with the first stated purpose of this blog, I record my first finished book of 2008:

All The Crazy Winters
by Deborah Adams
A Jesus Creek Mystery

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read - light, entertaining, but with some very interesting points. Two of the characters are very eccentric librarians; and since I am a librarian, I thoroughly enjoyed them - even though one of them was already dead when the book began. I might become an eccentric librarian as well!

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

The second stated purpose of this blog is to track the reading challenges that I accept. My first challenge of this year is

Who: hosted by Joy
What: read 12 books that are the 1st in any series
When: between January and December 2008

I am very picky about my reading choices. My genre of choice is the mystery; I prefer women authors and a female protagonist; and I am compulsive about reading all entries in a series starting with the first if possible. Therefore, it was difficult to locate and then pick choices for this challenge. I spent a very long time researching which titles to select - many, many pages of Amazon’s “those who bought this book might also like . . . ”. I reserve the right to change my mind if I don’t like the title I am reading and to pick my alternates at a later date.

With that said, listed below are my initial choices for the 1st In a Series Challenge:

1. Evans Above by Rhys Bowen
(The Constable Evans Series)
2. Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn
(The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries)
3. A Share in Death by Deborah Crombie
(The Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Series)
4. O’ Artful Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor
(The Sweeney St. George Series)
5. Blood Ties by Lori G. Armstrong
(The Julie Collins Series)
6. Consigned to Death by Jane K. Cleland
(The Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries Series)
7. The Xibalban Mystery by Lyn Hamilton
(The Lara McClintoch Series)
8. Generous Death by Nancy Pickard
(The Jenny Cain Series)
9. The Whole Truth by Nancy Pickard
(The Marie Lightfoot Series)
10. Death at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham
(The Albert Campion Series)
11. Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
(The Nora Gavin, Pathologist, Series)
12. Miss Zukas and the Library Murders by Jo Dereske
(The Helma Zukas Series)

Let the reading begin!