March Wrap Up

I finished a bunch of books in March. 9 books! Settle in and buckle up.

Payback in Death by J.D. Robb - In this installment of the In Death series, we see Lt. Dallas dealing with the murder of a former police captain that was set up to look like a suicide. She twigged pretty quickly that the prints on the weapon weren't right, and there's no way he could have held the weapon to his own neck long enough to produce the burning found there. He would have been electrocuted and seized and dropped the weapon (the weapon in question is some kind of electrical impulse thing called a stunner.) She is also dealing with an unhinged officer she doesn't know who is running around picking fights with other officers and yelling that she's an imposter and she's an idiot who's going to mark the Captain's death as a suicide. He even tries to come for her in the police garage. The fight scenes are always a good time. So the dead Captain was the head of Internal Affairs and he put away a lot of bad cops. While investigating his murder, she and some other folks going through his old files get bogged down in the vast number of bad cops. Robb really gets into how hard it is to look at bad cops all day and it's easy to forget all the great cops that are working every day.

The Windsor Knot S.J. Bennett - This was the book club book. It was also a reread for me. I had a great time. The Queen is hosting a dine and sleep at Windsor Castle. The next morning, one of the people who was there to perform for the guests is found dead in a compromising position. No one wants to tell the Queen about it because she is 89 years old and they think she is fragile. On the contrary, she is smart and cunning, and she puts hints in people's minds to look into certain things, and then they think they have done something fantastic. It was highly entertaining to read about mediocre men thinking they have achieved greatness, when in reality she was there way ahead of them.

Encore in Death by J.D. Robb - This one was less interesting than her usual fare. I hated all the additional characters. I don't have a lot of patience for overdramatic theater types, which all of these people were. The best character was murdered in the prologue. This wealthy, famous couple are having a big party. The wife is a famous Broadway actress and the show that originally made her famous is reopening and she is starring as the mother to the character she played 25 years ago. Her husband is a huge movie actor. She and the girl playing her daughter are singing a duet at the party when her husband drinks some laced wine and dies in the middle of the party. He was the nicest guy in the world. Who would want him dead? Or wait, was the cyanide meant for the wife? It was her drink after all. Also, there is that one guy that just got out of jail for stalking the wife way back when. AND the mother of the girl that overdosed 25 years ago and gave the wife her original shot at stardom. She is delusional and thinks her whole messed up life is because of the wife. The wife is not a nice person.

Desperation in Death by J.D. Robb - This one made up for the lackluster one I read before. In this one, two girls are running away from a place they've been held for months. They were groomed to be sold off to men for sex and drudgery. They are 13 years old. One of them is killed by the people following them, but the other one gets away. The bad people leave some of her blood on the body of the other girl to implicate her in the death. Except Dallas isn't that stupid. She recognizes a setup when she sees one, and realizes there is a girl out there that can help them. It's called The Academy and they have dozens of kids of all ages they are training and drugging and torturing to be sold off. Dallas and her crew have to find the girl and take down the whole international operation. The girl on the run is a fantastic character. I really liked her.

The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl - I don't know if it was because I took a whole month to read it, or what, but this was just meh. I did finally get some time to focus on it, and I read the whole last half in 2 sittings, but it was still meh. Maybe it was because it was written in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson, since he was a character in the book, but it felt too macho for me. Some dude out there probably loves it. The Bookaneers are essentially book pirates. They steal expensive books or manuscripts, or whatever bookish thing is wanted, for money. Lots of it. The three biggest name bookaneers are all that's left now that international copyright is about to be a thing. One of the three is dying in an insane asylum in England, but he tells the other two that RlS is writing his next book in Samoa. Of course they go off to Samoa. Our narrator is Fergins, who is acting as the Watson to Davenport's Sherlock. Davenport is one of the big shot bookaneers. The other one is Belial. He turns up at Stevenson's manor as Father Thomas, a missionary. Davenport pretends to be a travel writer. They are both trying to ingratiate themselves into Stevenson's family circle so they can steal the manuscript when it's finished. There is a lot of adventure and double-dealing involved. By the time I got to the end, I didn't really care anymore.

Conclave by Robert Harris - This was fascinating. I went to Catholic high school, but I have never really paid close attention to the workings of the Catholic church. I guess I figured there was an obvious chain of succession to the Pope status. It seems like bad planning not to have someone ready to step in if someone dies suddenly. On the other hand, being Pope may be even more coveted than being President and it wouldn't be very safe for the current Pope if there was someone chomping at the bit to get his job. Anyway, this is a story about a fictional conclave that had to choose a new Pope. The storytelling was fantastic. I really enjoyed it, and read it in 2 days. I also recommend Pompeii by the same author.

The House With a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs - There was kind of a lot of plot for a book this small. Lewis' parents have died, and he has to go live with his Uncle Jonathan, whom he's never met. Jonathan turns out to be very nice and not a little weird. He has a very weird neighbor lady whose house next door has a secret passage to Jonathan's house. She is there a lot. Lewis makes one friend, and in trying to impress said friend, he accidentally releases the ghost of a powerful wizard from a tomb in the cemetery. Needless to say, the friend is no longer friendly, and Uncle Jonathan and the neighbor, whose name I forget, have to banish the specter back to the depths of her tomb. Also, there is a clock in the walls of Jonathan's house. It appears to be counting down to the end of the world, and the ghost wizard has been speeding it up. Now, they have to find the clock and shut it off. See, that's a lot. It was enjoyable, for a middle grade novel.

Abandoned In Death by J.D. Robb - This one was super creepy. I think I mentioned before that there were extra voices telling the story. That was a really interesting way to tell it. This guy in his 60s starts kidnapping women who look like his mother did in her 20s. When he was 5, she left him on the steps of a rural church and drove her car into a swamp. She managed to save herself, but she was so broken that she couldn't remember who she was. A young doctor found her on the road. He healed her and then married her. They had 3 kids. 60 years later, he died in a car wreck. Suddenly she remembered the life and the child she had had before. She found him in New York and bought him a house, and left him a bunch of money. She sent him a letter explaining what happened and then she swallowed a bunch of pills. He then had a psychic break. He started kidnapping women. He gave them a tattoo that matched hers, and pierced their ears like hers, and kept them chained in his basement while he tried to see if they would be the right mommy. When they didn't work out, he killed them and left them in a park (where good mommies take their kids) with a handwritten sign in crayon that said "Bad Mommy." One of the voices telling the story was from one of the women chained in the basement. The guy kept switching between the voice and actions of a man, and one of a little boy. Creepy as hell. The ending was fascinating as far as who the culprit is. Didn't see that coming.

Beastly Things by Donna Leon - A man is found floating in the canal with three stab wounds in his back. He turns out to be a veterinarian from another town. His wife recently kicked him out for having an affair with a woman at the slaughterhouse he recently started working at. The wife said he had been acting upset about something, but she figured he was trying to worm his way back into her good graces, and didn't listen. He was the veterinarian who checked over the animals to make sure they were acceptable to use as food. Brunetti goes to visit the slaughterhouse. You can imagine how that goes. Ew. With 30 pages left in the book, I didn't feel like Brunetti really had any answers. He was still kind of grasping at straws, but then he questioned the right guy who spilled it all. The thing that really put this book over the top for me was the depiction of the funeral in the last chapter. The veterinarian was well-loved by his patients and most of the people at the service had their pets with them. The dog howling during the final hymn absolutely slayed me.

So there you have it. The 9 books I read in March. Goodreads says I'm 9 books ahead of schedule, right now. Hooray!