Review: V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton

Author: Sue Grafton
Publisher-Format: Random House Inc; Books on Tape; audio 15:11 hrs
Narrator: Judy Kaye
Year of publication: 2011
Subject: Shoplifting rings, police corruption, organized crime
Setting: Santa Rosa California
Series: Kinsey Millhone mysteries, The Alphabet Series
Genre: mystery - private detective
Source: public library download

Unlike some writers who get boring and formulaic and whose writing deteriorates as a series progresses, Sue Grafton continues to delight with fresh plots, well-developed characters, and excellent writing.  In this episode, many of the auxiliary characters we have come to love have very small parts: Henry, Rosie, and William put in only cameo or background appearances.  The story centers around Kinsey's inadvertent witnessing of a shoplifting, and the perpetrator's subsequent questionable suicide.  Hired by the decedent's "fiancé" to prove it was not a suicide, Kinsey suddenly finds the situation dissolving into a very sticky mess, involving a big-hearted loan shark, dirty cops, stereotypical big brawn small brained thugs, unhappily married couples, etc etc. All the players stories come together to produce an ending that  many readers may not be pleased with, and frankly, I'm not sure the resolution is one I feel morally ok with, but given the choices, Grafton's denouement  is solid and convincing.

Grafton has several different points of view running concurrently, a fairly new device for her writing, and she does it well.  In addition to watching Kinsey's investigation, we watch the lives of  one of the "bad guys" and another story line of one of the disaffected spouses and see how their actions and emotions influence what happens as the story progresses.  I haven't read one of these in awhile, and I don't remember previous volumes being quite this involved.  The story line while complex, flows well and Judy Kaye continues to do a great narrating job to keep us listening to the audio (in fact I took the long way home today just so I could finish one of the discs.)

In this series, "V" is every bit as good as "A" was. In fact, if I had time, I'd love to start this series over from the beginning and read them again.  For new readers, the best part is that they can be read as stand alones and there's no need to feel you need to go back to the beginning.  Grab any of them, and be prepared to meet a smart, sassy, level headed private investigator who is one of my favorite characters.  She knows when to involve the police, when to say "no" to stupidity, and generally shows us a professional who generally doesn't participate in activities beyond her scope.  A great way to start the New Year.

Review: Turning the Tide by Ed Offley

Author: Ed Offley
Narrator: James Adams
Publisher/Format: High Bridge Company; Audio, Unabridged; 17.25 hours
Year of publication:  2011
Subject: WWII - Battle of the Atlantic
Setting: North Atlantic Ocean
Genre: Naval History
Source:  Publisher review copy furnished through Early Review program at LibraryThing.com

I actually received this book last July - just before the Independence Day holiday. It took quite a while to finish it. As I review this, I need to separate the format from the content. As you know, I normally LOVE audio books, and was delighted to receive the audio from the Early Review program.

BUT...................this is a book that has to be read in hard copy to be fully appreciated. The narrator, James Adams does a yeoman job of getting through this tome but it simply is not a book well suited to audio. There are hundreds of alpha-numeric designations and numerical descriptors that do not lend themselves to oral recitation. For example, at the beginning of chapter 6, pg. 107 of the print copy, we see:

Three weeks earlier, U-653 had damaged the 9,382-ton Dutch Madoera, a straggler from westbound Convoy ON166, and just four days before it had dispatched the drifting 7,176-ton American freighter Thomas Hooker, which had been abandoned by its crew after suffering major structural failures during the previous week.

Try reading this aloud (Pay close attention to every syllable and you'll get an idea of how cumbersome this is to the ear):

Three weeks earlier, U -six-five-three had just damaged the nine thousand three hundred eighty two ton .....a straggler from westbound Convoy O- N-one-six-six, and just fours days .....the drifting seven thousand one hundred seventy six ton......yada yada yada.  

There are literally three to ten such sentences on every one of the 392 pages of the print edition.  Trying to follow the story from the audio was painful....there was simply no way one could track who was doing what to whom without resorting to pencil and paper.  After the first of 13 discs, I gave up and went hunting for the book.  I finally located the one copy in the State of Maine system, and had it sent from a community college library to mine here on the coast.

I then was able to listen to the audio, but had the book at hand to supplement the story with all the enlightening illustrations, maps, charts, glossaries, Convoy lists, etc. It's a wonderful wonderful history of one of the most important battles of World War II, and the audio simply does not do it justice.  Our ears and brains just don't register that kind of data without having to stop and make mental notes.  Audio books should tell a story in a continuous flow so that the listener/ear-reader can follow along seamlessly.  Listening to this was like driving along a turnpike that had speed bumps every 1/2 mile.  You never get up to speed, and you're constantly off on the shoulder to check the map and make sure you know where you are.

Enough about the audio.  The book itself, as I mentioned above, is incredibly well-researched, coherently written, elegantly edited (I didn't see a misspelled word or dangling participle anyplace!), has ample supplemental material enhancing the text, and should stand as one of the best naval history books of World War II.  While the author has a limited scope (the time frame is quite short: the first six months of 1943), he gives us both the Allied and German perspectives on what was happening, who was involved, what lessons were learned, and how it impacted the rest of the war.  It was fascinating, and surprisingly easy to follow in print.  Our eyes and brains seem to have been conditioned to grasp "Convoy ON166" as a single reading bullet vice the seven syllables we had to absorb in the audio.  The charts, maps and pictures added so much- giving us faces to go with names, outlines to go with ship shapes, and places to imagine.

I'm thinking alot today about my father who served in the Merchant Marine during WWII, my father-in-law who marched with Patton through Sicily and Italy (and who probably depended heavily on these convoys being able to get across the Atlantic), my several uncles who served in various branches and those of my generation who served during subsequent wartimes.  Preserving and telling their stories is one of the best ways we can honor them.  I'm so glad I was able to finish this book (it takes a long time) in time to feature it for Veteran's Day today.

We will probably end up buying the print edition of this one for our personal library.  It's a tremendous reference book if you have any interest in this battle at all.  Offley certainly has given us the definitive work on the subject.  I just wish that James Adams' wonderful narrating voice hadn't been so wasted. I'm giving this one 4 1/2 stars as a print book, 1 1/2 as an audio.

Audio Book Review: Burnt Mountain by Anne Rivers Siddons

Author: Anne Rivers Siddons
Publisher/Format: Hachette Audio approx 9 hrs
Year of publication: 2011
Subject: Love lost and found
Setting:North Carolina mountains, Atlanta and environs
Genre: southern fiction
Source: Hachette Audio

Anne Rivers Siddons is one of my favorite authors.  Her writing is some of the best in southern fiction today.  Audio is one of my favorite formats for fiction, so when Hachette Audio offered me the chance to review this one in audio, I jumped at it.

The story took a while to develop.  Reminiscent of some of her others, and of Pat Conroy's southern angst, Siddons defines her characters by their relationships to family, and by their adherence to that ancient Southern code of manners, high society, and propriety.  We see our protagonist, Thayer Wentworth, as she struggles with tom-boy-ism to thwart her mother's attempts to turn her into the Southern Belle she (mom) never had the chance to be. And although it took awhile to get going, along the way we watch as Thayer finds her first love at summer camp, is betrayed by people she trusts, endures loneliness upon leaving home, and ultimately finds love in the arms of a charming Irishman.

Now here's the only part I personally had trouble with.  If you're into Irish mythology and poetry, you will love this book. If dark handsome studs wallowing in magic spells is your cuppa tea, you will love this book.  The rest of us have to suspend our disbelief a bit and continue on.  In the end, Siddons gives us an exceptionally well-written character study with an ending that had two different paths she could have taken.  Some will like the way it ends, others I'm sure would have preferred the second option.  Either way, it's a good solid romance that will add to the author's stature.

Kate Reading does an outstanding job narrating.  Hachette has another winner on its hands.
Thanks to Mitch at Hachette for the chance to review it.

Review: The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel

Author: Stef Penney
Publisher/Format: Simon & Schuster (2008), 371 pages;
                               ISIS audiobooks: 14 discs- approx 14 hr, 45 min
Narrators: Sally Armstrong, Adam Sims
Characters: Francis Ross, Laurent Jammet, Donald Moody, William Parker
Subject: Murder, trade, wildlife, winter survival; Hudson Bay Trading Company
Setting: Canadian Wildnerness, mid 1800's
Genre: historical fiction; mystery
Source: public library

Stef Penny's debut work is a layered, multi-faceted, intricately woven story of love, betrayal, greed, murder, and survival.  Set in the frigid lands of northern Canada, the story revolves around the murder of a French trader, Laurent Jammet, and the search for his missing friend Francis Ross.  Did Francis kill him?  Is that why he hasn't been seen since Jammet's body was found?  Since both the victim and the missing boy are at least loosely connected to the Hudson Bay trading company, and since the company seems to have territorial jurisdiction over the area, the company's factors and magistrates undertake to determine what happened and why.

Central to the story is Francis' mother, Mrs. Ross (we never learn her first name), and she is a major narrator.  The other point of view comes in the third person from Donald Moody (the company's accountant), Francis himself, and from various Norwegian settlers who appear in about the middle of the book.

This one is a slow starter, but that pace allows the reader to absorb the many intertwined lives and facts needed to carry the story forward.  It is incredibly well-written.  In spite of the numerous story lines, and a large number of characters, all the characters are well defined, and the back stories fill out the plot as it marches inexorably to its climax. All along the reader experiences the bitter, numbing, killing cold, the blinding sun on snow, the howling wind, the soul squelching weather elements making life as barren as it was for both humans and animals.  Bleak landscapes are blended with human kindness, as well as greed and deceit to build the tension as the search moves further and further into the wilderness.  The ending is stunning, not unexpected but well portrayed and believable.

This is a masterful piece of storytelling, sure to please the outdoorsman, the romantic, and those who love a good mystery.  It came to my attention from the readers in the 75 book challenge on LibraryThing.

Review: Still Alice

Author: Lisa Genova
Publisher/Format:  audio 7hr, 45min; 320 page equivalent
Narrator: the author
Subject: Early Onset Alzeihmer's Disease
Setting: Cambridge Mass
Genre: fictional memoir
Source: public library

Lisa Genova has given us a thought-provoking, breath-taking novel written as the memoir of a 50 year old college professor who witnesses herself  going through periods of forgetfulness and is then diagnosed with Early Onset Familial Alzheimer's disease.(EOFAD).  As we meet her, Alice Howland is a world renowned professor of linguistic psychology at Harvard.  She begins forgetting appointments, finds herself lost in Harvard square (where she has walked everyday for over 20 years), and begins the process of  watching her mind (and therefore herself) disappear.  She devises 5 questions to ask herself every day so she can see whether she is "still Alice" and has her Blackberry set to remind her of these questions every day.

It is fascinating and gut-wrenching to watch as she deteriorates, and as she helps her family - husband, 2 daughters and a son- cope with her leaving them and with their own possibilities of carrying a genetic marker common to those with EOFAD.  Genova has done her homework and gives us a well researched indication of how the disease is diagnosed, treated, and what clinical trials are in progress.  Alice and her husband (a cancer researcher) are quite energetic in finding out everything they can about the disease and its mind-robbing progression, in looking for any possibility of a cure or at least a slowing of the ongoing loss of memory.

In this beautiful portrait, the science is never allowed to intrude on the human story: the story of a new grandmother struggling to figure out who is this beautiful young mother who is holding the beautiful baby in pink; the story of a wife struggling to help her husband and life-time lover deal with his own doubts and fears of losing her; the story of a mother struggling to accept another previously alienated daughter; the story of a son in medical school who knows first hand what is coming.  Throughout it all, we are able to experience Alice's fears, her loss of speech and thought processes, and the slow uncontrollable down-hill slide to a happy land where she knows she is 'still Alice' but doubts if others know that.

I thought it would be a depressing and discouraging story but it wasn't.  The hope for a future cure, the strides being made in the treatment, and Alice's own recognition of her condition bring the reader to an acceptance of the inevitability of life and its raw deals.  It's a book that should be read by all, not just for the information, but for the beauty of the writing.

I had the opportunity to listen to parts of this as an audio.  Normally I steer clear of books read by the author, but Ms. Genova was quite articulate and soothing. And.....even though it is fiction, and technically not a memoir, the point of view is one, and I'm feeling it is a great way to kick off my month of memoirs.

Mini-review: The Island

Author: Elin Hilderbrand
Format: audio: approx 11 hours
Characters: Chess, Tate, Birdie, India
Subject: Women's woes
Setting: Tuckernuck Island off the coast of Nantucket
Series:  I hope not!
Genre: Chick lit fiction
Source: Audio book from Hachette Audio group received in exchange for running blog contest and providing a review.



Drivel, drivel, drivel, the kind of writing that gives chick lit its oft deserved bad name. Cardboard characters trying to convince themselves and the reader that their oh so predictable problems are interesting to anyone else.  Four women ( a mother, her 2 daughters, and her sister) go to an island to lick their wounds, do some female bonding(???) and expect to emerge whole after one month.  A  predictable (and boring) plot read by a whiny-voiced audio narrator who tried hard to make this more interesting than it was. The setting is totally unrealistic -- like how many rich women today will willingly spend $100K to build a fake floating island in a pond in their back yard for a wedding, but then be equally willing to go off to spend 30 days with no hot water, an icebox (not a refrig but an ICEBOX!!) only one toilet, no phone, no internet, no tv, no way off the island but a hired boat, no cell phone coverage, nothing-nada-zip-zilch.  And we're supposed to believe this is romantic??? The pretty "everyone lives happily ever after" package she ties up with a bow in the epilogue is particularly annoying and overdone.  The story would have been much stronger had it been omitted.

I know the author states in the end that Tuckernuck Island is a real place.  I simply hope that the residents of this privately owned abode of the wealthy have more oomph in their lives than this group of really annoying women.  I found this one had less substance than her other book "The Castaways" which I read earlier this summer. The only reason I finished listening to this one was because the Hachette Audio group provided it to me in exchange for my running a contest earlier here on my blog and providing a review. 

Sorry Hachette, this one is drudgingly boring. Other than that I don't feel strongly about it.  It's pure overrated drivel.

Review: Morning Show Murders

Author: Al Roker
Format:8 discs (9 + hrs), 320 pg equivalent
Narrator:  Al Roker and Dick Lochte
Characters: Chef Billy Blessing,
Subject: murder; TV shows
Setting: New York
Genre: amateur sleuth detective mystery
Source: public library
Challenge: Audio books, Support your Local Library

A very predictable, run of the mill mystery. Chef Billy Blessing (a poorly disguised stand-in for Al Roker of NBC's TODAY Show fame) runs a restaurant, lives in digs upstairs, has a running gig on the Morning Show doing interviews, food segments, Man-about-town, etc.  However, he does not get along with one of the show's producers who turns up dead early in the story. Food from  Chef Blessing's restaurant is found at the victim's home, and the poor guy seems to have died from poison contained in the food.  Chef Blessing is of course accused of the murder, and decides he'll have to take things in his own hands and solve this crime.

There is a believable but non-too-exciting side cast of  characters, and several plot twists that aren't twisty at all.  They were basically ho-hum.  I listened to this one on audio-- it was OK, but much as I like the real Al Roker on TV when I only have to listen to him in 3-4 minutes segments, I found his voice very irritating for long run narration.  The whole thing was so unimpressive, I almost abandoned it out of boredom.

And there weren't even any good recipes.

Review: A Fatal Grace

Author: Louise Penny
Format: audio -8 discs (10 hrs), 368 pages equivalent
Characters: Armand Gamache, Jean Guy Beauvoir
Subject: murder in a small town
Setting: Three Pines, outside Montreal
Series: The Three Pines Mysteries
Genre: mystery, detectives
Source: public library audio book



Once again, Louise Penny takes us to that idyllic village in the Pines outside Montreal, where we all want to go on our vacation to experience the beauty, the quiet, the inhabitants whom we are beginning to regard now as friends.  In this 2nd of the Three Pines Mystery series, we even begin to like that eccentric old lady Ruth, the poet, the head of the volunteer fire department.

Inspector Gamache and his team must find out who killed a woman who was electrocuted on a frozen pond while watching the town's annual Boxing Day curling match.

The fact that absolutely no one in the town liked the victim, or even seemed to know much about her, makes the job even harder.  Penny is beginning to hit her stride in this one, as she offers us several different possibilities for the perpetrator, introduces some new characters, and expands on the character of Armand Gamache that we met in her first book "Still Life."

When we finally figure it out (or did we?) there's still several chapters left, and we find perhaps we didn't get it right after all.

I listened to this in audio and it's such a treat to hear the bi-lingual give and take, the elegance of the Quebecois as they go about day to day life.  To read (or listen) to these books is to fall in love with characters, a town, a region. I can't wait to read more.


Challenge: Supoort Your Local Library, Audio books, Thrillers Suspence and Mystery

Review: A Share in Death

Author: Deborah Crombie
Narrator: Michael Deehey
Format: audio- 6 discs, +/- 7 hrs
Characters: Duncan Kincaid, Gemma James
Subject: murder mystery
Setting: Yorkshire England early 2000's
Series: Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James #1
Genre: police procedural
Source: public library

Here's a great way to ring out the old year, and look forward to the new.  This is the first book in a series.  I'm going to want to read every one of them.  A great british police procedural.  In this first episode we meet Duncan Kincaid, of New Scotland yard, recently promoted to Superintendent detective. Kincaid is vacationing in Yorkshire when he becomes embroiled in a series of murders and attempted murders.  Crombie gives us many suspects, good motivation, a well developed plot, a great sense of place, and doesn't give us enough to solve the mystery until quite near the end.

We also meet, very slightly, Gemma James, Kincaid's detective sergeant who is still back in London holding down the fort while Kincaid tries to avoid the wrath of the local police force who resent NSY's nosing in.

It's a great beginning story, and promises lots more.  I've read another so I know they get even better.  I can't wait to have another helping.

Too bad I couldn't wait until January 1 to count them in 2010 challenges, but there'll be plenty more where these came from.





Challenges: Audio books, Thrillers, Typically British, Support your Library