mystery

Pictures of You

mandy — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Reading Pictures of You is like having encounters with people you randomly meet on the street, at the beach, on in a park. Novelist Caroline Leavitt’s compelling characters have lived through unpredictable tragedies—some of them more than one—and knowing their stories compells the reader to consider why these people are who they are, and how they have managed to survive their respective hardships.

Pictures of You begins with a dark and unimaginable situation, which sets the scene for the remainder of the read. An accident brings the main characters together, and then proceeds to tear them apart. As they struggle to recover and re-adapt to their lives, each person’s experiences feel palpable and close to home. As their stories, their stories become intertwined, brilliantly intermeshed in survival. The characters are faced with uneasy decisions about love, death, fear of loss, and the pursuit of happiness. They find answers to difficult questions: when do you follow your heart and do you ever cease to question the certainty of your decisions?

In building the characters’ backstories, Leavitt proves she is able to sustain the pace and move through the difficult experiences. She uses peripheral characters to help define the basic structure of the story and set it up for its end. The realness the author brings to the characters moves them forward to face their pain with hope for the future. She deftly nails every character using direct language to provide inner dialogue. While reading, I felt pangs of pain through their grievous times and rejoiced in their accomplishments.

At times reading as a mystery, Pictures of You gives us encouragement to enjoy the lives we live—or make the necessary changes now.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, April 1st 2011

Miss Don’t Touch Me, Vol. 2

gwen — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Hubert

NBM Publishing

My knowledge of graphic novels is limited to having only read The Watchman. When you’re reading a book you imagine what the character looks like and maybe even the environment where she lives. When you experience a graphic novel, an interconnected array of words and colors awaits you much like what a child sees when looking at a picture book. I think it’s a fabulous genre and I look forward to reading more.

Miss Don’t Touch Me, Vol. 2, takes place in Paris in the 1930s. I recommend you read Miss Don’t Touch Me, Vol. 1, first, as there is good back story to the characters in Volume 2. Miss Don’t Touch Me, Vol. 2 centers on a frightened and nervous young woman named Blanche, who is overshadowed by her sister Agatha, a fun-loving free spirit who frequently goes out dancing. They both work as maids and are barely getting by financially. Blanche experiences a tragedy when someone very close to her is shot. She takes it upon herself to find the people responsible, which leads her to the Pompadour, a house of call girls. Blanche becomes a dominatrix and is given the name “Miss Don’t Touch Me,” because she is still a virgin and her male customers are not allowed to touch her.

The other prostitutes at the Pompadour are jealous of Blanche and are constantly bullying her, but she stands up for herself. Through Blanche’s eyes we see a division between the prostitutes and the people with all the money and power—who are often the prostitutes’ customers. In Blanche, we see an advocate for her friends that are abused or mistreated. She has a complicated relationship with her mother and she falls in love with a man who is struggling with his own sexual identity. Blanche grows from a nervous woman to someone who fights the male dominance and the power hungry individuals that threaten to bring her down. She is still frightened, but she works through her fears and tries to survive in a world that is very much against her.

The Miss Don’t Touch Me series is not for everyone and if you’re easily offended by images of men getting whipped or women being tied up, this is probably not the best introductory graphic novel. But if none of the above bothers you, then you will enjoy this strange—albeit entertaining—tale filled with horror, S&M, mystery, and romance.

Written by: Su Lin Mangan, March 23rd 2011

Chasing Alliecat

barbara — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Rebecca Fjelland Davis

Flux

In this action-packed thriller written for a young adult audience, author Rebecca Fjelland Davis brings multiple themes to the forefront, places them on the table and gets dirty—dirty as in riding mountain bikes in the woods of a small town and scarily getting involved with some unsavory characters in the wilds of northern Minnesota. With a plot interwoven with themes of death, friendship, family, and abuse, this novel provokes your senses and makes it all worthwhile. At the end of the novel, you hope for a sequel, because you want to know what is going to happen next for the well-drawn characters.

Sixteen-year old protagonist Sadie Lester arrives to stay with her aunt and uncle's home in the woods for the summer and expects the worst. Hoping to escape from her eternally fretting aunt and her wacky uncle, Sadie takes her bike out for a spin and meets Allison Baker (known as Alliecat). Alliecat appears a bit rough around the edges, but she eagerly invites Sadie to ride with her and to enter a mountain bike competition upcoming in the area. She also keeps her life mysteriously guarded; this curious character keeps the the story flowing. Soon after becoming friends the two girls, along with Sadie's cousin Joe, come upon a nearly dead body in the woods. Uncharacteristically, Alliecat disappears, leaving both Sadie and Joe to face new worries.

Along with her complex handling of the plot, Davis also lends her experience as a serious bicyclist to the novel. References to contemporary cyclists and technical bicycle machinery dot the surface of the novel as the story unfolds. The camaraderie of the bicycling community offers a support system for the main characters as they experience fear in dealing with difficult situations.

This story keeps the reader guessing. The mystery unfolds as the characters mindfully try to figure out what is going on and how to protect themselves. Multiple themes, many of them somewhat mature (including death, relationships, and abuse), become a little overwhelming, but the author delivers enough information to tie up loose ends as well as to insert her ideas of the young peoples' thoughts and needs to make the story complete.

Winner of the honorable mention in the Loft Award for Children's Literature/Older Children, Chasing Alliecat is quite an accomplishment. Davis opens up an amazing door of adventure.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, March 23rd 2011

The Incident at New Providence

mandy — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Olivia Free-Woman

Acacia Publishing

The Incident at New Providence begins with the uncomfortable reunion of two sisters who can fairly accurately be called Country Mouse and City Mouse. At that point, however, any resemblance to a cute children’s story comes to a screeching halt. Olivia Free-Woman has written a story with racism, sexism, sexual abuse, abortion, small town politics, and a lesbian heroine that feels entirely plausible. As with most entertaining fiction, the back story evolves throughout, leaving the reader intrigued without feeling too much in the dark. The action moves the story forward as Terri (City Mouse) discovers things she wishes she hadn’t about some of the people she grew up with, and her big sister Grace struggles to keep her from getting into trouble.

The Incident at New Providence isn’t so much a mystery as a story about two sisters whose reactions to the same childhood trauma took them in entirely different directions. The resentment and misunderstanding between them begins to dissolve as the assumptions they have made about each other for decades are proven wrong. Terri comes to town with the smug notion that she has grown up and moved on while her sister has remained in town to hide from reality. She quickly discovers that Grace possesses a quiet strength that leads her to stand by her convictions and work to make life better for the next generation. While many of the customs of this small town disgust Terri, including the strong divide between Black and White residents, it becomes clear that there is a delicate balance that the town has struck which allows an ugliness to exist beneath the surface.

The only complaint I have about The Incident at New Providence is that I finished reading it too quickly. At 142 pages, it is a slim volume to add to my library, but Free-Woman’s ability to tell such a powerful tale in so small a package is amazing. The author died in 2010 and all proceeds from the book go toward a scholarship fund she established to help elementary students in Phoenix, Arizona go to college.

Written by: Kari O'Driscoll, March 20th 2011

The Autobiography of Jenny X

beth — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Lisa Dierbeck

Mischief + Mayhem

The Autobiography of Jenny X is amazing. Every time you think you know what is going to happen, author Lisa Dierbeck takes the story in a different, exciting direction. Using a well-known starting off point, Dierbeck opens up a whole new world.

The book switches between three narrators: Nadia Orsini, a photographer with a beautiful family, gorgeous house, and happy marriage; Dan Orsini, her driven, doctor husband; and Christopher Benedict, the former hippie, current incarcerated convict. Dan finds letters from Christopher addressed to “Jenny X,” and in his mind, his perfect marriage falls apart. The same letters cause Nadia to go to great lengths to ensure secrets stay hidden. To Christopher, the letters give him hope for the future, and a connection to his past. The lives of the three are connected in more intimate ways than any of them are comfortable with, and mere possibility of that connection causes all three of them to act out of character. Using the turmoil of the ‘60s as the beginning and through the ostensible mystery of who Jenny X is, Dierbeck takes the story someplace unexpected.

Each of these characters is a vivid person, with deep internal lives and powerful, relatable emotions. Dan, a man so used to being in control, panics when he realizes his wife has kept secrets from him. At first, he assumes she is cheating on him, but when he finds the first Jenny X letter, he realizes it may be much worse. Christopher, in prison for the majority of the story, is a relic of the ‘60s idealism. Prison calcified him, and when he is released, judges the world and everyone he knows by the same ‘60s ideals. Dierbeck gives the reader a view of culture shock to the extreme. As their story unfolds, all three reveal hidden depth as the novel goes on. It becomes very difficult to guess what any of them are going to do.

Nadia is the most interesting character in a novel full of them. Discovering who she truly is becomes the key to the story. Parts of the story are narrated by her, but she is still a bit of a mystery. Her connection to Jenny X is not apparent at first, despite how obvious it seems to be. She never becomes a cliché, even when her emotions and actions are familiar. She reacts completely naturally, but still in surprising ways. She has depth in spades.

The Autobiography of Jenny X is an incredible book. Dierbeck took the cliché of the ‘60s and weaved a mystery that takes them to their obvious ends without making the plot line as obvious. Highly recommended.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, February 27th 2011

Old Photographs

gwen — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

By Sherie Posesorski

Second Story Press

Old Photographs by Sherie Posesorski is the story of Phoebe Hecht, a teenage girl who is struggling through most boring summer of her life. Originally from the small town of Barrie, Phoebe moved to Toronto about a year ago when her mother married Greg, a very rich, very serious doctor. While her mother is excited about all the changes in their life, Phoebe is less than thrilled. Her only friend, Yuri, is spending the summer in Tokyo and her current crush, Colin, doesn't seem to know she's alive. Added to that is the fact that she misses her extended family back in Barrie, while her mother seems determined to erase any evidence of their old life, including forbidding any old family photos to be displayed.

Things don't seem like they're ever going to get any better until Phoebe comes across a garage sale being held by Mrs. Tomblin, an elderly neighbor. The two become fast friends and Phoebe soon discovers two things about Mrs. Tomblin. The first is that she suffers from Alzheimer's disease and is selling the majority of her belongings because her son is moving her to an assisted living facility. The other is that Mrs. Tomblin is in possession of a series of photographs taken by her aunt, a world famous photographer. Shortly after their first meeting, Mrs. Tomblin becomes the victim of a brutal assault and burglary. The police are baffled by the crime but Phoebe suspects it has something to do with Mrs. Tomblin's old photographs and vows to solve the case herself.

The characters are the strongest part of this book. Phoebe comes across as a normal teenager. She's very outspoken and hot-tempered but is completely tongue-tied around her crush. She argues with her parents but is never so disrespectful as to come off bratty or annoying. Colin, the object of Phoebe's affection, is smart and hard-working, spending his summer stocking groceries. He genuinely cares about both Phoebe and Mrs. Tomblin and his friendship with Phoebe naturally progresses into a believable relationship. Phoebe's mother is a conflicted woman. She loves her daughter and wants the best for her but has the misguided notion that the only way to achieve that is to ignore everything that happened in their past. The interactions between Phoebe and her mother are full of both friction and love, making for a very real mother/daughter relationship.

My only complaint is that we don't get to see enough of Phoebe's best friend Yuri, who serves as her sounding board for all things mystery-related. Since Yuri is overseas for the majority of the book, she and Phoebe mostly communicate via text messages and e-mails, which has the effect of making the interaction between the two girls pretty dull and lifeless until the end of the novel, when Yuri comes back from her vacation. For those last few chapters, the girls exchange such witty, natural dialogue that you wish that Posesorski had brought Yuri back a whole lot earlier.

The biggest problem in Old Photographs is that it is a mystery novel that lacks a mystery. The reader knows almost immediately what the burglars were looking for in Mrs. Tomblin's house and the only suspects that Phoebe comes up with turn out to be the guilty parties. There are no surprises, no suspense, and the entire novel comes across more as a coming-of-age story than a whodunit. The characters are so engaging, though, that I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel, albeit with a better mystery this time around.

Written by: Victoria Granado, February 2nd 2011

Possible Lives (Las Vidas Posibles)

mandy — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Sandra Gugliotta

Global Film Initiative

As a geologist, Clara’s husband Luciano often travels to Patagonia for work. After calling Clara from the road, he stops answering his cell phone. Once she’s confirmed that he failed to check into his hotel, Clara leaves a note and sets out to find him. Thousands of miles from home, she checks into the room herself. She meets with a police inspector and asks for help finding her husband. “When the weather improves,” he assures her, noting that in such inclement conditions, there are many accidents.

While biding her time in the middle of nowhere, Clara meets a real estate agent who bears a striking resemblance to her missing spouse. She feigns interest in buying property to spend time with him, despite the fact that he has a wife. She prowls around his house at night. She asks awkward questions about his personal life and, eventually, she even ignores information from the police about her husband’s actual disappearance.

Possible Lives, a sleepy eighty-minute film in Spanish with English subtitles, is an interesting concept but lacks suspense. Though pretty, it isn’t terribly eventful. Without much time to learn about the characters’ relationships, it’s difficult to feel connected to their problems, to Clara’s fright and grief; yet it’s always quite easy to discern what is happening in what could be an elegant mystery about losing one’s mind and losing one’s partner. It’s a perfectly fine film to catch along with a series of other during a festival showcase, but you shouldn’t rent it expecting a riotously entertaining drama.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, January 23rd 2011

The Monochrome Madonna

mandy — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Kalpana Swaminathan

Penguin India

For the last year or so now, I have been avidly pursuing murder mysteries by an Indian author or with an Indian connection. Some have turned out very good, and some were simply tolerable. The latest in this genre to fall in my way is The Monochrome Madonna by Kalpana Swaminathan (of Kalpish Ratna fame). I approached the book very positively, having read much praise of their work, but I have to confess that The Monochrome Madonna left me feeling let down.

First, a quick outline. The Monochrome Madonna is a "Lalli mystery"; Lalli being an aging detective who has retired from the Bombay police. For much of the novel, however, Lalli is away, and it is her niece Sita (not Seeta, she reminds you, though I still can’t tell the difference) who is stuck with the corpse and the sleuthing.

Sita is all at ends, and the involvement of Ramona, a friend’s suicidal teenage daughter, doesn’t help. The couple in whose flat the corpse is found are an odd pair, and for much of the novel, it is not clear what any of the characters are thinking. It is only upon Lalli’s return that things start falling into place... slowly.

Part of the reason the book didn’t appeal to me much is the somewhat florid language. Especially in the first half of the book, everything is simile, and rather outlandish ones at that.

Festive in a hot pink and purple chaniya-choli, she looked like a designer candle, solid, waxy, sequined. Besides I didn’t like her voice. It rang like a coin at the end of every sentence, metallic, definite, with an exact sense of its value...The scalp had unfurled like a scarlet hibiscus, trailing sticky pistils of bloof all over his matted hair...There was a light bulb up there. It made the maw of that low space smoulder like a sulking volcano.

All this within ten pages, by which time I was wishing the book had a ruthless editor who would’ve chopped off the verbiage. This is part of the reason why, at 250 pages, the book feels too long.

The other (and perhaps larger) issue with The Monochrome Madonna is that the plot itself is too slow for a mystery. For long stretches, nothing much happens. Even when Lalli returns and things start happening, we are not given much insight into the motivations of any of the characters. There are interesting digressions, and Sita is the one character who comes out strongly etched, but it isn’t enough to make up for the somewhat vaguely written and numerous other characters.

At the end of a mystery novel, I like to be able to plot together a logical outline and trace how the author has led up to a certain ending. It is no fun to feel that character A could as well have been the murderer as B, and the only thing preventing that was the author’s whim. I guess what I’m saying is that the reader needs to be able to work with the detective and at the end feel that the culprit had the best possible motive and opportunity. With The Monochrome Madonna, this doesn’t happen, and the end feels quite arbitrary. To me, this is the worst sort of thing one could say about a murder mystery.

Cross-posted from Apu's World

Written by: Aparna V. Singh, November 14th 2010

Laughed 'Til He Died: A Death On Demand Mystery

barbara — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Carolyn Hart

Harper Collins

I do like a good mystery, though I normally tend to go for either an author I know, a series I know, or a “world” I know. Since the author and locale of Laughed ‘Til He Died were both completely new to me, the fact that this book held my interest, and had me doing some late-night page-turning to see how it all turned out, speaks well for it.

A South Carolinian island is the location for this latest installment in the Death Walked In series. It’s a sleepy town where everyone knows everyone else. Unlike Cabot Cove, Jessica Fletcher’s TV domain, however, the mystery writer who pops up to help out now and again in this book has a minor role, playing fourth or fifth fiddle to a likable amateur crime-solving couple and the town police. In Laughed ‘Til He Died, the plot focuses on a community center, a philandering bigwig, and half a book’s worth of potential suspects. Characters were slow to stick in my head, and were introduced more quickly than I normally like, but by the end of the book they were well fleshed out and memorable, all of them making consistent, believable choices.

A couple of characters jumped in and out of the story a bit haphazardly for me, but I could tell they’d been established in previous books in the series, though Hart neatly avoids that tired old identical exposition chapter at the start of nearly every other book series.

Slightly jarring choice: there were titles of other mysteries name-dropped throughout the book. I know this series is set in a mystery bookshop, but I felt like... the only way I can describe it is that I felt like the author was evangelizing. It didn’t sit well with me, and I’m a devout Agatha Christie fan.

Otherwise, though, this is a well-crafted addition to the genre.

Written by: Chella Quint, October 10th 2010

Running Dark

alicia — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jamie Freveletti

William Morrow

Running Dark is the second book in Jamie Freveletti’s action-mystery-thriller series featuring chemist and long-distance runner Emma Caldridge. The first book, Running from the Devil, establishes the character of Caldridge as a strong scientist with a flair for quick thinking and physical endurance in the worst of situations. Running from the Devil followed Caldridge as her commercial plane was hijacked and crashed in the Colombian rainforest; Caldridge managed to get away from the group of surviving passengers as they were rounded up and lead through the forest by a group of Colombian fighters playing the middlemen for a drug cartel, intent on ransoming the survivors at their destination.

Caldridge demonstrated her physical and mental endurance as well as her scientific knowledge of natural chemistry, as she carefully followed the group through the Colombian jungle, surviving first on the remains of increasingly-rancid airplane food and then native plants. The group walked several miles a day; as Caldridge followed, she often had to race ahead or double back to avoid detection, landmines, and another mysterious group who begins to track her path with the help of trained dogs.

Occasionally, crash survivors were killed by the Colombian fighters, or left for dead on the path. When the kidnappers realize that Cameron Sumner, a U.S. government agent, might threaten their plan for ransoming the survivors, they hurt him badly. Caldridge eventually stumbles upon him, helps him through infection and fever, and makes an ally in the process. Their dependence on one another for personal survival and professional secrecy established the core relationships at work in the next book in the series.

Following on the heels of Freveletti’s first thriller, Running Dark takes place in South Africa, Somalia, and on the high seas of the Gulf of Aden as Caldridge makes her way from an endurance race during which she survives a roadside bomb and injection by an unknown substance to a cruise ship in peril of being overrun by Somali pirates. On that cruise ship is Cameron Sumner, working for Darkview, a United States-based independent security firm.

The pirate strike is a surprise to Sumner and the crew; because weapons are illegal on cruise ships, they barely manage to stave off several attacks using Sumner’s smuggled gun and the help of several passengers and crew members. Meanwhile, no one but Caldridge and the Darkview team back in the U.S. know that amongst the cargo on the ship might be several vials of Sarin, a colorless, odorless, and very deadly chemical weapon. When Caldridge finally reaches the imperiled boat, Sumner and Calderidge work with the crew and passengers of the ship to fight the invasion and try to safely operate the ship despite the nearly-constant threat of chemical and conventional attacks.

As was Running from the Devil, Running Dark is fast-paced and filled with interesting details about the characters’ lives, work habits, and career-oriented knowledge. The chapter narratives move back and forth in point of view from the bad guys to the good guys, keeping the reader on her/ his toes and introducing new and dangerous scenarios every few pages. Running Dark is not as all-absorbing as is Running from the Devil, and unfortunately there are several chapters that feel as if they are marking time until the final climax. I highly recommend reading the first novel before the second in order to contextualize the relationships and understand the back story of the events and characters revisited in Running Dark; if you’re a fan of international thrillers and/ or layered female characters, give Freveletti’s Emma Caldridge a try in this series.

Written by: Stefanie Snider, October 4th 2010

Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles

brittany — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Kira Henehan

Milkweed Editions

Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles follows Finley, an investigator of sorts, as she fumbles her way through her latest mission and attempts to capture it all down on paper.

Though committed to its accuracy, the report is at times rambling, then repetitive, then self-edited to the extreme; in other words, not an easy read. Finley dives in to her assignment with no clear idea of what she’s meant to find, and with all the earnest desire for answers as a warped, post-modern Nancy Drew.

But this is no Nancy Drew mystery; there is no neatly wrapped up answer, no “aha” moment, no mask yanked off to reveal, “It was Old Man Whittaker all along!” Instead Finley peels away mask after mask with no progress made, never forward, only circular or even back the way she came. Through her take on the girl detective and her exploits, Kira Henehan attempts to color the classic noir with experimental, modern, often disjointed and disorienting writing, an unraveling ball of yarn playfully taking on the tightly-knit genre.

On assignment, Finley is thrust into the strange domestic world of a professor and his puppets, who exist behind a curtain in a miniature world that has a pulse and life force all its own. Her goal, as investigator, remains unclear throughout. When we meet Finley—and the hapless crew to which she is tied—they are maneuvering their way around a gray, barren, and gravel-strewn milieu. For all they know or share about their former lives, they could have been born yesterday, thrust upon this futuristic landscape with all the powers of speech and deduction and human emotions, but no remembrance or mention of a past. And yet faint threads do stitch them together in ways not yet fully understood. The twist of an ending forces Finley to question who the true puppet master is, and who among them may have been all along puppets themselves, dangling from his strings.

The remaining mash up of self-discovery, kitsch vintage surfing memorabilia, competition, potential romance, bowling, duplicity and shrimps fell flat. I wanted to be on board with this novel. I tried to appreciate every syntactical nuance or repetition to unlock the deeper meaning behind the prose. I wanted a juicy mystery, even if the style was too thoroughly “modern” for its own good.

But all told, I was left with an empty feeling in my stomach that a good book can usually fill. While this novel was interesting at times to wander the foreign landscape with Finley as she tries to solve puzzles both personal and professional, Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles just didn’t scratch my itch for a story, the way any self-respecting mystery should.

Written by: Kelly Moritz, September 9th 2010

Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Nicholas Terpstra

Johns Hopkins University Press

Founded in 1554 by a group of charitable women who called themselves the Compagnia della Pietà, the Casa della Pietà, or Compassion House, was built in Florentine to shelter girls who had been orphaned or abandoned by their parents. The goal of the home was to keep children and adolescent girls from turning to (or being forced into) prostitution in the absence of familial support, and to provide them with the possibility of a dowry and marriage. Despite these good intentions, only 202 of the 526 girls and women who resided in the home survived their stay. As Nicholas Terpstra repeatedly asks in Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence, “What was killing the girls of the Casa della Pietà?”

Terpstra sets out to solve this 456-year-old mystery using the limited documentation still available about the home, as well as other documents that discuss contemporaneous Florence. Throughout the text, Terpstra explores and elaborates upon various theories about what was killing the residents of Casa della Pietà, weaving these theories within the story of the home and the conditions of Florence of the era. In telling this story, Terpstra touches on topics such as the work available for adolescent girls, birth control and abortifacients (and the abortion debate), prostitution, and religious fundamentalism. Although the book is structured as somewhat of a mystery, Terpstra’s question about the fate of the residents is only one part of what is ultimately a social history of the Casa della Pietà and Renaissance Florence.

In terms of women’s history, the book is interesting in two ways. First, it discusses the challenges and options an orphaned or abandoned girl could anticipate facing at the time, even when external support was provided. Second, as was previously mentioned, a group of women established the Casa della Pietà. This was not the norm at the time. Although Terpstra warns against overly romanticizing these women, it is somewhat difficult not to, particularly when the author outlines the differences between the way the Casa della Pietà admitted girls and the way that contemporaneous shelters did, and when he compares Casa della Pietà under the guidance of Compagnia della Pietà to the way it operated once the founding members ceased their involved. As Terpstra notes, “these women challenged more than just the sexual politics of Renaissance Florence—they challenged its political and ecclesiastical establishment.”

The book contains fascinating, and sometimes shocking, information about Terpstra’s topic. I appreciated that Terpstra does not exclusively limit himself to the subject of Casa della Pietà, but uses the mystery of what happened to the home’s residents as a way to examine related issues. Admittedly, some of these discussions were less interesting to me than others. For example, although the section that discusses the textile work done by the home’s residents and the wool and silk industry in general is necessary to have as complete an understanding of the home as possible, I did find it difficult to get through because it is a topic in which I have little interest. This is my bias, however, and I appreciated the level of detail Terpstra demonstrated in this section when he turned this focus to topics that were more in line with my interests.

Overall, despite containing a few sections that were less interesting to me, the text puts forth considerable fascinating information. Perhaps most importantly, the text both taught me about a shelter I had never before heard of, and made me want to learn more about the topic and the social climate of Renaissance Florence and its impact on women and girls.

Written by: Erin Schowalter, July 29th 2010

Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:21:00 +0000

By Kate Raphael

Political intrigue is a great backdrop for a mystery. Look at The Manchurian Candidate, The Third Man or any of Henning Mankell’s wonderful Wallander mysteries. A murder can highlight the struggles for power, the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, and the ways people hurt each other at both the micro and macro levels. If they are written well. If they aren’t, the work feels something like Murder Under the Bridge by Kate Raphael.

Set in modern day Israel and the Occupied Territories, Murder Under the Bridge opens with the death of a young woman found in a field near the wall between the two countries. Rania, a Palestinian police officer, and Chloe, an American peace activist, work together (or in parallel) to solve the case, which winds along both sides of the wall through various political ideologies and into human trafficking and war crimes. One of the most important aspects of a good mystery is that all of the pieces have to be put on the table, and then put together. The complexity of the crime is inverse to the number of subplots.

If the victim dies in a locked room from a bee sting when they aren’t allergic to bees, confining all of the players to a big country house focuses the narrative enough to allow the reader to follow the plot twists. When it takes five pages to get from one side of the city to the other, the crime can’t have too many twists, or the reader gets lost. Murder Under the Bridge falls into the second category. An unfamiliar setting, new characters, and a complicated murder with at least fifteen named characters present too many strands for Raphael to weave together coherently. There is not even time for an ending.

I wish Raphael had focused solely on Chloe, the character she cares the most about. Her scenes are dynamic, interesting, and fleshed out. As an outsider, Chloe would be a good introduction to the setting. Not one of the other characters does anything special, exciting, or interesting; everyone starts out as a cliché and ends the same way.

The scenes with Rania are rushed and poorly drawn. When the Israeli police officer was introduced as Rania’s partner, I was hoping that the narrative would focus on them and use their similarities as way for each of them—both very bigoted characters—to evolve. Instead, the longest, most lovingly written scene is of graphic sex that is only tangentially related to the murder. The discussion of finding the dead body is only half as detailed.

Perhaps a good mystery is hidden in this book. Right now, it’s stuck under the layers of useless detail, pointless scenes, and cliché.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, July 21st 2010

Cook the Books

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant

Berkley Publishing Group

Cook the Books is part of a series of mystery books (Gourmet Girl Mysteries) by mother-daughter writing team Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant.

Chloe is a graduate student in her mid twenties, who lives by herself and has a passion for food. She has an incredibly gorgeous best friend named Adrianna, who is married to a goofy but honest and lovable free-spirited (broke) man named Owen. They have a delightful little bundle of joy named Patrick, who happens to melt Chloe’s heart so much that she overspends and ends up in debt because she just can’t resist buying him all the expensive toys and clothes she sets her eyes on; he’s that adorable. Then there’s Josh, her ex-boyfriend, a chef, who left a year before for a better job in Hawaii and left her behind.

Did you get all this? If you didn’t it’s okay because once you start reading the novel, this will be retold in pretty much every chapter. Do you want to know what else is constantly repeated? The word “Josh.” It comes up in every other sentence. Of course there’s more to the novel: there’s murder, there’s cooking, and there’s a villain (or many?). More importantly, at the end Josh returns to make everything alright (because he’s perfect). But don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled the end; you can guess that one by the end of the fourth chapter.

The story itself is pretty bland but its biggest sin is mainly that it’s not very relatable. Chloe is supposed to be young, bright and independent, and yet she appears to be everything but. Why am I supposed to care about this character? She has no true interests other than her godson, the lives of other cooks and her ex-boyfriend. It probably doesn’t help that the novel is written with a significant amount of dialogue, which, for the most part, is heavily contrived. For example, Chloe’s employer, a serious man in his mid-thirties has just met new mommy Adrianna and all three of them are sitting down for dinner, his treat:

“And Adrianna,“ he said to my friend, “you especially should eat a lot, since you probably have no time to eat while taking care of a tiny baby, huh?”

This was not meant to be funny, or sarcastic (or creepy) but rather to portray what a great guy Chloe’s employer is! The entire novel is written in this type of dialogue, which aside from being annoyingly predictable, becomes overly repetitive.

Cook the Books is filled with bad cliches and references. The murder that sets motion to the core of the storyline leads to Chloe’s view to the “dark” side of cooking, the cutthroat competitive world of chefs. It’s in fact the same world described by so many other chefs, except that in this case, it’s overly dramatic.

The book cover includes a review blurb promising "snappy dialogue, puzzling murder and mouthwatering menus," which I guess is what fueled my disappointment, as I did believe it. In contrast to other mystery novels that portray unlikely heroines, Cook the Books didn’t hit the mark, It has no sparkle and the heroine lacks a sense of self and definition. It was difficult to really care. It could have been light, fun reading, if only it had been half as long. If I was to recommend the book, it I would assume pre-teens might not mind it, but I don’t know how memorable it would be.

There are some recipes added at the end of the book, which only adds to my confusion as to who the target group for this book is supposed to be. The recipes are courtesy of other authors and chefs. Some are easy enough to follow and make (the Baked Tomato Nests), and some (like the Grilled Ohio Lamb Steak) are meant for the serious cooks who strives to entertain. The Baked Tomato Nests are a cute and fast idea, and in fact, the recipe jumped out at me from one of the actual chapters of the novel, so there was a nice connection there. However, overall the recipes were not very innovative, and in a way, that echoes my overall impression of the book.

To put it simply: it didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth, it needed spice (cayenne, Habanero, or even just plain old pepper)—it was just too bland.

Written by: Jessica Sánchez, May 27th 2010

Angel and Apostle

admin — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:01:00 +0000

By Deborah Noyes

Unbridled Books

Deborah Noyes’s Angel and Apostle, styled as a sequel to The Scarlet Letter, is a fascinating journey and an interesting effort to flesh out the life of a child attempting to live under the shadow of shame, guilt, and community exile. Set shortly after the ostracism of Hester Prynne we see the common adage that the “sins of [in this case the mother] shall be visited upon her children” is a fatalistic axiom that can be made real and that hangs heavy over the heads of Hester and Pearl her precocious and earlier-than-normal world-weary daughter.

Even as the townsfolk lay upon Pearl, the dubious title of “the child of the temptress”, and as much as the other characters of the small New England town would have it otherwise, she appears to lead a life where the consequences of her mother’s supposed social transgression are at the margins of her world. Pearl finds work within house of the sickly mother of a small blind boy, Simon, who she has befriended, and like the child of any time period, sees enthralling mystery and adventure in the countryside. This, for me, is a significant point of the book, the disallowing of the community and previous circumstances through which Pearl, first in New England and then in the “motherland,” seeks her own path and an ultimate sense of individual freedom.

Noyes does a remarkable job of weaving rich depictions of puritanical New England society as the backdrop for the affairs of a strong woman, her bold progeny and the lives of the sordid people that orbit in challenge. Angel and Apostle is a fulfilling next chapter in the darkly romantic or perhaps bittersweet tale of Ms. Prynne and Pearl. Upon finishing every good book, your heart sinks a little at the conclusion of such a wonderful tale but Noyes can rest assured that the humbling task that she assumed in writing a professed sequel to The Scarlet Letter was a riveting success. I am sure that, as I did, Nathaniel Hawthorne would find Angel and Apostle a delightful extrapolation on a master’s work built upon by another master in deliciously page-turning form.

Written by: Brandon Copeland, May 26th 2010