The Next Dark Age

Book 4

I had seen this in the Used Book Store before.  While it seemed to be a book club favorite, it also looked like a bit of a chick book.  Then I saw it on the list of audio books available for download from the library and gave it a second look.

Margaret, a wealthy, divorced 75 year-old woman in Seattle is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.  She lives alone in an old mansion and her scary try-it-before-you-die thing is to open her home to a boarder.  So she places an ad in the paper and finds Wanda.  A young stage manager type who came to town to find the guy that dumped her in New York.

So you can see why I thought it was a chick book.

Two things happen as the book evolves:  first, the cast of characters broadens.  Margaret meets a gentleman friend.  He moves in.  The caterer at the theatre, a hospice nurse, Wanda’s assistant (not so secretly in love with her).

Also, Margaret’s secret is this:  her money came from her father, who collaborated with bad people who stole the valuables of Jewish families after they were arrested and sent off to concentration camps.  Many of these valuables are still in her house.  Margaret spent some time prior to the action of the novel, trying to find the families and return the possessions with no luck.

So here is the scheme: they start breaking the porcelain and Wanda uses the pieces to create mosaics that honor the victims of the Holocaust.

And lots of other stuff happens.

I’d be all la la la, nice little story…and then stop.  Because something just got heavy.

The narrative is just a bit too..tied up with a bow on the top.  But the theme of the story – broken people/broken stuff – was quite compelling.  I am very glad that I gave it a chance.

Book 3

The third book in the Deborah Knott series has the judge subbing for a colleague on the coast, staying at the cabin of some cousins.  The murder victim is Andy, an acquaintance that led a small alliance of locals fighting against the big, bad developers.  The locals all make their livings off of the water in some fashion and the developers are trying to open the tourist trade.  While there are game warden on the scene, there don’t seem to be any hard-core conservationists.  Just the question of the best commercial use of the land.

The arguments are old news (although they were probably timely at the time of publication).  But there are a couple of good secrets and an illicit affair sprinkled in.  The resolution is neither obvious nor far-fetched, so it was another good one.

Book 2

James Bradley’s daddy was one of the men in the famous Iwo Jima picture.  You know the one – the marines planting the flag  up on the hill – that later became a monument.  After his dad’s death (Jack Bradley was the last surviving member of that particular gang), Bradley started making phone calls.  His dad never talked about the experience and he wanted to hear the story.  The result was this book – a history of the six young men.  Three died on Iwo Jima and three made it home.   Physically, at least.

I have a lot of trouble following battle scenes, because I can’t really picture them.  I had to sort of slog through that.  But I enjoyed hearing the stories of the early lives of these young men.  Of course, the stories of what happened to them upon returning home weren’t all warm and fuzzy.

The running theme is that none of the group thought he had done anything remarkable on Iwo Jima.  But of course, they all carried the experience with them all their lives.

Historians have talked a lot about getting all of the stories down on paper, because the WWII generation isn’t going to be around much longer.  Bradley managed to put together a rather personal history of these six without actually talking to any of them.  Color me impressed.

Book 1, 2013

The second book in the Deborah Knott series introduces more of the family, which is awesome.  Much of the action takes place at the site of a house being built by an army of lady volunteers for the benefit of a single mother who has escaped abuse.

Teenage niece Annie Sue is learning to be an electrician like her daddy, so she is all over this project.  After hours one weekend, she was alone on the site and the heinous building inspector assaults her.  When Aunt Deborah goes to check on her, she finds Annie Sue unconscious.  She was beaten and bruised, but Dude didn’t have time to rape her because someone hit him over the head with a hammer first.  But it wasn’t Annie Sue.

At the same moment, Annie Sue’s dad, Herman, collapsed of something heart attack-like.  It was arsenic poisoning.  Double mystery.

The court scenes are fun, the solution to the mysteries are neither too obvious nor out of thin air and the baby steps toward smoochies with Dwight the detective are bearable.  So it is all good.

Book 69  

The original crime took place in 1972 – young mother and infant daughter disappear.  They are found four days later – mother with a bullet in her head and baby just barely hanging in there.

The action of the story is in 1990.  Deborah Knott is the daughter of a Carolina tobacco farmer (and notorious bootlegger) and an attorney running the office of county judge.  One day the baby – now 18 years old, asks her to investigate the murder again.  Of course, part of the premise is that it is a small town and the murderer is, likely as not, someone they know.

There is a cool scene early on when Deborah goes to visit some people she knows at the State Bureau of Investigation and gets them to tell her the story of the investigation.  Deborah was 16  (and the family babysitter) at the time of the crime.  So the agents talk about all of the suspects – including her – and how they were eliminated as possibilities.  She picks up a couple of clues that she hasn’t heard before, and Maron establishes some friendly professional relationships for her heroine.

Now that I am thinking about it, Maron does a very good job of setting the groundwork for a series (I believe the comic book people call it an “origin” piece) without sacrificing the narrative of the mystery.

The solve is not obvious, but not so terribly convoluted that it made me mad.   The Knott family is so big that I expect funny supporting characters to be coming and going all the time.  And it doesn’t appear (yet) like the inevitable romance is going to be too painful.  So it seems I have a new mystery series to read.

Book 68 of 50 Book Challenge, Book 7 of Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge

My favorite regular customer at the Used Book Store checked this out of the library.  When she returned it the next week, she said that she barely put it down, so I checked it out at the next opportunity.

Among the many reviews I have read on Christmas books, there seems to be a theme – if the book is part of a regular series, it is much less likely to be enjoyed by the average reader looking for holiday reads.  They are mostly books that only true fans love.

I was pleasantly surprised with this one – book 16 in a series about a county judge married to a cop in a rural town with some mysteries to solve.

High school girl runs off the road and is killed in a single car accident that looks more and more suspicious every day.  Then a pair of local hellraisers turn up dead – shot on their front porch.  Set in small town North Carolina..and now cue the Christmas music.

The clues were dropped, the reveal was reasonable, the characters were likable enough and it was an easy read.  So when I returned it, I checked out the first in the series.