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What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.

Taking a break from police procedurals, I read Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov.

Uncle Vanya is a tragedy of family and social dissolution. The inaction takes place on a decrepit estate managed by Uncle Vanya, 47, and his young niece Sonia. They maintain the fields and buildings for no pay beyond room and board. The owner of the estate, a retired academician named Seerbryakov and his much younger wife Yelena live expensively, relying on the income from the estate. Which Seerbyakov inherited from his first wife. Who was Vanya's sister. Now the professor intends to sell the land, dispossessing Vanya and Sonia. And the prof's temporary guest, his doctor.Who hates being a doctor. Everyone mopes around, lamenting that the good old days are gone. No one converses; they are in the same place, but each character monologues without paying much attention to the others. In the end, the land is up for sale and no one is happy.

That was so bleak that I read The Cherry Orchard, a laugh riot about, um, family and social dissolution, set on, let's see, a decrepit estate boasting a cherry orchard that produces cherries about three times every decade, and everyone complains about missing the good old days, even the former serfs who wax nostalgic about those times when men were men and they were property. The family is hard up and the only solution seems to be to sell the orchard, which no one can bear to do because sentiment and all, so everyone miles and talks, no one listens, the orchard gets sold, and the family gets evicted, nobody is happy, and the faithful old family retainer lies down for a quick nap, unaware that the bulldozers are about to demolish the house.

This is a comedy. According to Chekhov. Who admittedly was coughing up blood as he wrote it.
 
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While searching for the Cthulhu Casebook series, I ran across another series where Sherlock Holmes fights monsters with a twist. It's called the Classified Dossier series by Christian Klaver and the first one is called Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula:

In this thrilling first instalment of The Classified Dossier, a Transylvanian nobleman called Count Dracula arrives at Baker Street seeking the help of Sherlock Holmes, for his beloved wife Mina has been kidnapped.
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But Dracula is a client like no other and Sherlock and Watson must confront – despite the wild, unbelievable notion – the existence of vampires. And before long, Sherlock, Watson and their new vampire allies must work together to banish a powerful enemy growing in the shadows...
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Another book I found was called Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula: Or the Adventure of the Sanguinary Count by John H. Watson MD (as edited by Loren D. Estleman) and is basically a retelling of the original Dracula by Bram Stoker with Holmes and Watson mixed into the narrative, and then there's the one that really messes with the Sherlock Holmes mystique:

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin.


In Victorian-era London, noted detective Sherlock Holmes attempts to solve the murder of prostitutes by the serial killer Jack the Ripper. He suspects the Ripper to be his nemesis, James Moriarty.[1] In a twist ending, it is revealed that Holmes himself invented the character of Moriarty due to insanity and was himself committing the crimes. There is also an ambiguity to the revelation as a despairing Holmes tries to explain to his companion John Watson that Moriarty has fooled Watson and framed Holmes.



Anyway, needless to say, Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is not your typical Holmes or Cthulhu story either, although, it's obvious the author was a big fan of both, but it does mess with the Holmes storyline a little, but it's all for a good cause.

I recommend it quite highly, even if you don't like the Cthulhu Mythos.


ETA: I've found another Sherlock Holmes and Dracula story called Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula By Stephen Seitz. It seems Holmes and Dracula together is almost a niche market.


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AmyStrange said:
While searching for the Cthulhu Casebook series, I ran across another series where Sherlock Holmes fights monsters with a twist. It's called the Classified Dossier series by Christian Klaver and the first one is called Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula:




Another book I found was called Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula: Or the Adventure of the Sanguinary Count by John H. Watson MD (as edited by Loren D. Estleman) and is basically a retelling of the original Dracula by Bram Stoker with Holmes and Watson mixed into the narrative, and then there's the one that really messes with the Sherlock Holmes mystique:

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin.


In Victorian-era London, noted detective Sherlock Holmes attempts to solve the murder of prostitutes by the serial killer Jack the Ripper. He suspects the Ripper to be his nemesis, James Moriarty.[1] In a twist ending, it is revealed that Holmes himself invented the character of Moriarty due to insanity and was himself committing the crimes. There is also an ambiguity to the revelation as a despairing Holmes tries to explain to his companion John Watson that Moriarty has fooled Watson and framed Holmes.



Anyway, needless to say, Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is not your typical Holmes or Cthulhu story either, although, it's obvious the author was a big fan of both, but it does mess with the Holmes storyline a little, but it's all for a good cause.

I recommend it quite highly, even if you don't like the Cthulhu Mythos.


ETA: I've found another Sherlock Holmes and Dracula story called Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula By Stephen Seitz. It seems Holmes and Dracula together is almost a niche market.


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I believe I have read all of these, plus Saberhagen's The Holmes Dracula File which has Dracula, Holmes and a plague.
 
Spektator said:
Everyone mopes around, lamenting that the good old days are gone. No one converses; they are in the same place, but each character monologues without paying much attention to the others. In the end, the land is up for sale and no one is happy.
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Oh god. I read a book like that not too many years ago (it's a book I just refer to as That Book now). Not much really happened, and when something did happen it was almost always bad, and if something good happened the author seemed to think it needed to be immediately offset with some tragedy or catastrophe. The characters virtually never spoke, except to express how much they feel sorry for themselves. The absolute worst.
 
Lady Killer, Ed McBain

The eighth installment in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, Lady Killer was written in exactly nine days while McBain was on vacation.Like all the earlier novels in the series, it is short and tightly written, and like its immediate predecessor, Killer's Wedge, its plot limits itself to less than a day.

Lady Killer kicks off with a familiar trope: the cops receive an anonymous note composed of words clipped from a newspaper and pasted on a sheet of typewriter paper*. This one warns the cops that someone called The Lady will be murdered in twelve hours and asks "Can you stop me?"

It's a hot July day, and Carella, Hawes, Kling, and Meyer set out chasing down clues to learn the identities of both the note sender and the lady and, they hope, prevent a murder. It sounds and is a bit more old-school than the earlier McBains, but it is clever and allows the guys in the forensics lab to shine.

McBain was about to change publishers, finally fed up with micromanaging editors. Soon after his books would appear as hardcovers, not paperback originals.

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*As in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle. Scholar Gorge Dove tracked down the actual issue of the Sunday NY Times that McBain used for the Lady Killer paste-up.
 
La Peste had some eerie parallels to the Covid pandemic, showing perhaps that human nature is much the same in every time and place.

Back to the Bobby Owen series by E R Punshon and the fifteenth book, Ten Star Clues. Earl Wych has been shot dead just after recognising a claimant to the title and estate who has turned up out of the blue despite being reported dead many years ago.

The great-nephew who had believed himself to be the heir has had an angry quarrel with the Earl a few minutes before the shooting, but there are several more suspects - the Countess, the Tichborne-style claimant, a granddaughter who is engaged to the great-nephew but who breaks the engagement in favour of pursuing the claimant, the Countess's companion who is the vicar's daughter and who is in love with the great-nephew (and he with her), the vicar himself, a solicitor, a cousin who skulks in bushes to spy on the occupants of the estate and a butler with a history of blackmail.

It's 1940 and Bobby has been refused permission to leave the police to join the army, which he unhappy about but gets on with doing both war work and leading the Wychshire CID.

His Chief Constable Colonel Glynne's indispositions occur conveniently whenever there is work to be done and is apt to lose his temper with witnesses, so Bobby finds the investigation hard going at first.

This was well-plotted with several red-herrings strewn across the reader's path, though the clues were there. I didn't spot the murderer until almost the end, which always pleases me.

Onto the sixteenth book now The Dark Garden and the action has moved to 1941, with the war intruding on the rural life of Wychshire.

An angry farmer accuses one of the partners in a solicitor's practice of embezzling his wife's trust fund of £5,000 (worth about £380,000 today). Not long afterwards the solicitor is found shot and drowned in a canal, echoing a previous death in the same canal which was also linked to the farmer. Colonel Glynne is again suffering from one of his convenient illnesses, so Bobby is relying more and more on his junior officers to help him out with the routine work.

I think I have guessed the murderer but I may well be wrong!
 
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At the moment, I'm reading my favorite Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Drowning Duck. The old B&W TV series version sucked compared to the original novel, but I'm sure no one wants to hear about that.

Anyway, after that, I'm going to read some stories from the Joe Grey series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy that are about three talking cats that help solve murders.

I found this series when I finished my first three novels and wondered if there were any other talking cat stories, and I even wrote a blog piece about the search and the series itself.


Next, I'll be reading two of my favorite David Baldacci series. Each one has a very strong woman character, and I love that in a novel:

The King and Maxwell series:

Split Second
Hour Game
Simple Genius
First Family
The Sixth Man
King and Maxwell


And my favorite of all time is the Atlee Pine series:

Long Road to Mercy
A Minute to Midnight
Daylight
Mercy


And these will be followed by two series about really strong women characters also. Each one basically involves time travel back to the Victorian Era. One character is an FBI agent working to solve serial killer crimes, and of course, when she arrives back in time, she becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer.

The Kendra Donovan series by Julie McElwain:

A Murder in Time
A Twist in Time
Caught in Time
Betrayal in Time
Shadows in Time


This second series has the same time travel gimmick, except this character is a homicide detective from present-day Canada who also brings back with her the man who tried to kill her. When he arrives, he decides to start killing women by copying Jack the Ripper (a little more than a decade before they occurred) to make himself the first Jack and the REAL one a copycat killer, and Mallory has to find him before he claims his second victim.

The Mallory Atkinson series by Kelley Armstrong:

A Rip Through Time
The Poisoner's Ring
Cocktails & Chloroform
Disturbing the Dead


Besides the two strong woman characters, what I also found interesting was the attitude of the men towards women in high society during the Victorian Era. When the first of the series characters, Kendra Donovan, is forced to explain where she came from, I found the resulting read to be highly entertaining.

Knowing she will be thrown out onto the street during a very dangerous time in history for destitute women, the way she explains the truth is simply hilarious, and it works. Imagine someone from the present day talking to someone in the Victorian Age, and you can get a pretty good idea why it's not only funny but also very, very serious.

In short, I obviously recommend the above novels very highly, if for no other reason than they're very good and very entertaining reads.


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The Cat Who.... series doesn't have talking cats but they're pretty smart and communicative.
 
catsmate said:
The Cat Who.... series doesn't have talking cats but they're pretty smart and communicative.
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Yup, I have every book of that series, and I've read through all of them at least twice.

I loved every one of them, but at the end of the series, I found out where Koko got his name from, and it sucks.



The original (real live) Koko was killed when he was thrown out of the window of a high-rise apartment building by some sick SOB.

The only beef I have with the series is by the last book, Qwilleran got on my nerves, because he was constantly second guessing or ignoring Koko's intuitive help in solving the mysteries, thinking it was all a coincidence.

Anyway, my favorite one was The Cat Who Saw Stars.


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I enjoyed the Mallory Atkinson books.

I initially picked the wrong culprit in The Dark Garden, but changed my mind just before the reveal. It ends with an excellent and satisfying solution, and completely changed my view of several characters

The next Bobby Owen book is Diabolic Candelabra. The war is impeding on the daily lives of the characters - rationing is in full swing and even in rural Wychshire there is talk of parachutists and spies alongside the daily difficulties.

Two El Greco paintings and a silver Cellini candelabra (which features horrifying carvings and carries a curse - should the candles be lighted, someone will die within 24 hours) disappeared from Sir Alfred Rawdon's manor house many years ago, and after a desultory investigation the matter was apparently forgotten .

However, all of a sudden several people are looking for the paintings. What does that have to do with a secret ingredient in hand-made chocolates, a hermit and a little girl living in the forest, a woman who locks her stepfather in a cellar for punishment, two mysterious disappearances and a series of burglaries, one involving the near-fatal shooting of Sir Alfred in a house where he doesn't live? Everything, as it turns out.

I clocked the murderer fairly early on, but the motive was so much more complex and the ending incredibly violent.

Intriguingly, this book was published in 1942 and includes a body being stuffed into a hollow tree in Wych forest, whereas the ongoing real-life mystery of Bella in a wych elm happened in 1943. Prescience on the part of E R Punshon!
 
Other Arms Reach Out to Me, Michael Bishop

Michael Bishop (1945-2003) should be better known than he is. Trouble is, he got his start in science fiction, and despite the fact that he won all sorts of awards both in that field and in general (one of his stories appeared in The Year’s Best Short Stories), he found himself in the SF/Fantasy ghetto for far too long. This volume of 15 short stories, published not long before his death, features imaginative (but not science-fictiony) stores that are superbly crafted and feater intriguing characters, settings, and themes.

The title is from the lyrics of “Georgia on My Mind,” fittingly, since every tale in the book is either set in or features characters who are from Georgia. “Andalusian Tripytch” is set in Spain, but a major character, like Bishop himself is an Air Force brat who spent time in Spain.

As for the other stories, they range from magic realism to slice-of-life, often featuring quirky, sometimes endearing, other times intriguing characters. “The Road Leads Back” has as its protagonist Flora, a young woman writer with iffy health, and her friend Hettie, a pious Catholic, and involves a pilgrimage from Georgia to a Benedictine monastery in Alabama. Flora, a doubter, is in search of a miracle (she has already been sent to Lourdes by her mother, to no avail), and Hettie is her driver and protector. What happens is right out of Flannery O’Connor and is a lovely homage, especially a beautiful final image.

Belief and doubt, religion and atheism, run through many other stores, as do various institutions, ranging from the monastery to mental hospitals and hospices. “Unfit for Eden” gives is a protagonist raised in the Jehovah’s Witness church and hating everything about it, finally choosing Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as his preferred testament. “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” gives us a tragic, loving couple who face loss in their family in different ways: He becomes a fundamentalist preacher, she turns to art and crafts, and somehow they keep a little room of hope alive in their marriage.

A good many of the stories involve people connecting, in sometimes unexpected ways with others. “Other Arms Reach Out to Me” has a young female violinist, Dreamy Moody (the names are often nearly Dickensian) sort-of bonding with a cranky, weird old guy in hospice. “The Russian Agent” has a slightly-built Russian literary agent seeking American clients (including the narrator) whose works can be translated for Russian publication (“No money, but such prestige!). The epistolary story “Doggedly Wooing Madonna” follows the letter-writing campaign of a bedazzled fan. “No Picnic” has a puzzling friend-enemy connection between an elderly man in an old folks’ home with a young African-American who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of his ancestors.

For me the standout story is the final one, “Rattlesnakes and Men,” about a couple who, because of the husband’s work, move into a very small Georgia community that is an enclave of a snake-handling Fundamentalist sect. As in every other citizen is deep into the group. And the town ordinance requires that every household, including ones with small children, must allow a fully-grown, unaltered rattlesnake, loose in the house 24/7. It is a reaction to Kennesaw, Georgia, which in the 1980s passed an ordinance mandating that the head of every household in town had to keep a fully loaded handgun, readily available (not locked in a cabinet) at all times. Later that was altered so it had merely to be a firearm, and then gradually granted certain exemptions, but still . . . .

Just as dangerous as a snake. And I’m sure that Mr. Bishop wrote the story because of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April, 2007, in which the murderer used semiautomatic handguns to kill 32 people and wound about 20 more. One of the dead was a young German teacher who died trying to protect his students. He was Jamie Bishop, the son of Michael and Jeri Bishop.
 
Spektator said:
[snip] And I’m sure that Mr. Bishop wrote the story because of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April, 2007, in which the murderer used semiautomatic handguns to kill 32 people and wound about 20 more. One of the dead was a young German teacher who died trying to protect his students. He was Jamie Bishop, the son of Michael and Jeri Bishop.
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That's quite something.

The next book in the Bobby Owen series was Conqueror Inn. The war is rumbling on - it's 1943 - and Colonel Glynne has decamped to unspecified war work in London, leaving Bobby and the few remaining members of the Wychshire police force trying to enforce the myriad regulations as well as solve crimes.

An innkeeper reports the find of a box containing £2000 in used (so virtually untraceable) pound notes, and when he and Bobby visit the site of the find, they discover a mutilated corpse of an unknown man in a hastily dug grave. Lorry drivers (and their boss who ends every utterance with a truism and "that's my slogan"), the IRA, religious intolerance, a secret marriage, jealousy, a multiplicity of weapons, two missing men, and an Army captain who seems determined to thwart the investigation at every turn mean that Bobby's path is strewn with red herrings. But he gets there in the end.

I have the next two books, Night's Cloak and Secrets Can't Be Kept both originally published in 1944, but I'm going to save them for later in the month.

Next I am going to be reading several Jules Verne books in French - I've read Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Voyage to the Moon, Around the Moon and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea in English, but I got what appears to be the complete works on Kindle in French for only £1.99. Apparently it has 68 novels of "extraordinary journeys" as well as over 90 other titles (including poems and essays), so that should keep me busy for a while!
 
The Red-Hot Typewriter: The Life of John D. MacDonald, Hugh Mrerrill

A biography of the best-selling novelist who created the detective - no, wait, he prefers the term salvage consultant - Travis McGee, this book covers the facts of MacDonald's life, from his youth and on-again, off-again education, patchy business career, romance and marriage, military career (he wound up a lieutenant colonel), and then his tentative taking up the calling of professional writer.

Within five years he had become such a dominant producer of pulp fiction in various genres that he had to publish under scores of pseudonyms. Occasionally, the entire contents of a magazine issue would be his work, though the stories listed ten different pen names as by-lines.

But the pulp publishing industry was dying. MacDonald salvaged his career by becoming a paperback writer. He and his wife lived as nomads, living variously in New England, Texas, Mexico, and then at last Florida. The pulp magazines didn't pay well (one or two cents per word), and the book publishers weren't much better. However, MacDonald's education had been as a businessman, and he took a businesslike approach. If unit prices were low, he made up for that by volume.

At last with The Deep Blue Good-By, he created Travis McGee, boat bum and expert in recovering stolen valuables in exchange for half the value of the recovery, taking his retirement in installments between cases. A blend of sour realist and romantic idealist, McGee caught on for a run of 22 best-selling books.

Merrill's bio gives the reader the facts, but somehow few insights into MacDonald's processes and philosophies. About 75% of the way through, the pace speeds up for some reason and the last quarter becomes sketchy. Merrill does a competent job, and picking up the color scheme of the McGee books in his title is clever, but really he left this reader wanting more.
 
I've just started Simon Kuper's "Good Chaps" on Carrot Flower King's recommendation and because I found his previous book "Chums" very interesting (Kuper's previous book, I haven't read any by Carrot Flower King!)
 
The Empty Copper Sea, John D. MacDonald

This is the seventeenth novel in the Travis McGee series of, what are they, hardboiled mysteries, adventure stories, vehicles for a grumpy author to bitch about how things are changing for the worse? Toss 'em all in a blender and what pours out is close.

By this point in the series - there were only five novels to go - the pattern is well and truly set. Travis McGee, a tough man with small patience for the petty, the officious, and the bullies, is a boat bum. He lives aboard his 52-foot houseboat The Busted Flush, slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale. His closest friend is semi-retired financial expert Meyer, a marina neighbor and sardonic yet empathetic advisor.

McGee's operation is that he attempts to recover items of value for those desperate losers who are willing to pay him half the value if he can recover the valuables. In this case the client is a recovering-alcoholic skipper-for-hire, crusty Van Harder, who lost his good name while piloting a yacht for Hub Lawless, rich businessman. A gale sweeps in, the yacht pitches, Harder is found passed-out drunk at the helm, and as Lawless and his right-hand man John Tuckerman struggle to get the vessel safely back to harbor, Lawless falls overboard and drowns. Harder gets blamed and asks McGee to recover . . . his lost good reputation.

McGee and Meyer head over to the West Coast of Florida and wade into local politics, drug running, and of course beautiful women and discover that things are not as they seem. Complications,of the violent kind ensue.

The series seems more and more dated (especially McGee's casual romps with tanned beach bunnies). However, the novels are still entertaining reads, sort of like a short beach vacation.
 
Spektator said:
The Empty Copper Sea, John D. MacDonald

This is the seventeenth novel in the Travis McGee series of, what are they, hardboiled mysteries, adventure stories, vehicles for a grumpy author to bitch about how things are changing for the worse? Toss 'em all in a blender and what pours out is close.
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This is something that comes up in Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series. You can tell a protagonist from an antagonist by how much they share the author's likes and dislikes, and Robinson is a Travis McGee fan. In "Callahan's Key" the characters travel to Florida. The author's self-insert main character stumbles across the real-life marina that was the basis for the one where McGee kept his houseboat, and he's absolutely appalled that the owner of the marina not only isn't selling McGee books and heavily promoting the link, but he has never even heard of John MacDonald or Travis McGee.
(A condescending pity for anyone not "enlightened" enough to share the author/main character's tastes frequently comes up too.)
 
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So I finished Braiding Sweetgrass, and to be honest I found it a bit too long-winded for me. Interesting read for sure and did make me think, but got a little bit too samey in the long run and could possibly have been shorter. YMMV, of course.
 
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