Book Review: Malice at the Palace by Rhys Bowen

Title: Malice at the Palace (Her Royal Spyness #9)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Although the book opens with a sex scene, it's actually a pretty clean read

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a sucker for Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness books. The series focuses on Georgie, a lesser royal, trying to scrape by in London with no man and no means of support in the 1930s, and usually ending up solving some kind of major crime, sometimes despite herself. The nine books in the series have ranged from delightful and refreshing to rushed and sloppy, and Malice at the Palace is one of the better books in the series. The queen (Georgie's great-aunt) asks her to live at Kensington Palace to act as a companion to Princess Marina of Greece during the weeks before her marriage to Prince George (George and Marina's were actual people whose wedding took place in November 1934). When Georgie discovers a body on the palace grounds her first night there, and learns that the dead woman was one of many who had relationships with the prince, her loyalties are torn-- does she want to know who killed this woman?

I don't know if I've ever stated this on the blog, but in my mind, I've equated the Her Royal Spyness and the Maisie Dobbs series. Right now, they take place at a similar place and time in history (London in the 1930s), and both involve female sleuths. I've always thought as Her Royal Spyness as Maisie Dobbs lite. And while this may be true, maybe now it's only because Maisie Dobbs has taken such a dour turn. While Georgie was pretty silly in the early books, she has matured, as have many of the characters (with the exception of the infuriating Queenie, her maid), and this book in particular feels on point historically, especially as it takes on the issue of unwed mothers during the period. Malice at the Palace is a pretty fun read, with a little more gravitas than some of its predecessors.

I'll miss you, PD James

When I was a kid, I loved reading books in series. I tore through the Little House on the Prairie books, hid out on the back porch with the Betsy-Tacy series, and read (and sobbed over) the Anne of Green Gables books so many times that the bindings fell apart. There was just about nothing I liked more than a great character whose story I could follow over an extended period of time.

So it's probably no surprise that when I was introduced to the work of PD James in college, I developed a serious crush on Adam Dalgleish, the police detective at the center of most of her novels. I loved his great brain, his tortured past, his sideline work as a poet. I loved the way that he was ageless, modern, and generous of spirit. In the fall of my senior year at BYU, I went to London on Study Abroad. I had the great fortune of creating my own senior seminar course, and decided to read the works of great British mystery writers. But I got sidetracked by PD James. While I was supposed to be reading Wilkie Collins, I was actually heading down to Waterstone's to pick up Original Sin. I think I read all eight of the Adam Dalgleish books she had already written while I was in London, along with both of the Cordelia Gray books. When I saw that she was publishing something new, it was always the first thing I put on my Christmas list. Her mysteries were just so smart and insightful, and Dalgleish was my literary Superman.

I wasn't surprised when I heard that PD James died last week (But I'm sad, especially that my literary heartthrob, Adam Dalgleish, has died along with her). She was 94 (and still working on another novel). As I read more of her novels, and learned more about her life, I gained a great admiration for her. While she said in interviews several times that she always planned on being a novelist, she left school at the age of sixteen because she needed to work to help support her family. She married an army doctor in 1941, and had two daughters during the war years. However, when the war was over, her husband's poor mental health prevented him from steady employment, and she continued working. She published her first novel in 1962 (at the age of 42), while working full-time, while caring for her husband and two teenage daughters. In fact, she continued working in the service of the British government until she retired in 1979. Whenever I start to get down on myself for not churning out the great American novel, I think of PD James, who had so many excuses not to write, and whose work showed such a depth of insight that I'm glad she didn't give in to those excuses. In all, despite her late start, despite her full-time job, despite her family's demands, she published more than 20 works of wickedly smart contemporary detective fiction, non-fiction, an autobiography, a dystopian novel, and a Regency romance/murder mystery. So, aspiring writer out there-- don't give up hope-- don't think you have to have that room of your own and five hundred pounds to be a writer.

Thanks, PD James, for all of your wonderful books, and for your remarkable life. 

Book Review: Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Title: Mr. Mercedes
Author: Stephen King
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: pervasive language, sex, and violence. Also incest.

Now that I'm deep into my Stephen King kick, I picked up Mr. Mercedes, which is a hard-boiled crime novel instead of a supernatural thriller. The novel opens with a group of job seekers waiting for a job fair to open, only to be run down by a Mercedes sedan. Eight people die, the owner of the stolen Mercedes commits suicide soon after, and Bill Hodges, a detective, is unable to solve the crime before he retires from the police force.

Several months later, Bill has been wallowing in his retirement and suffering from depression when he gets a letter from someone identifying himself as Mr. Mercedes, the murderer. Hodges' life resumes as he works to track down the killer before he strikes again.

First and foremost, Mr. Mercedes is a book that should be 100 pages leaner than the 436 pages in the published work. It's wordy, with too much description. Way too much description. While there's no supernatural violence in the novel, that doesn't mean it's not creepy. Mr. Mercedes is one of the creepiest villains I've ever come across, primarily because he looks so normal (he drives an ice cream truck, for goodness' sake!). The two sidekicks Hodges acquires over the course of the novel are pretty great, and I enjoyed the book, but just didn't love it as much as I could have if it had been edited a little more thoroughly.

Book Review: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

Title: The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike #2)
Author: Robert Galbraith
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: disturbing violence, sex, swearing

Cormoran Strike is still basking in the glow of solving the Lula Landry murder when a woman walks into his office. Most of his clients are going after rich, cheating husbands, but this woman looks different. She's unattractive and nervous, and she wants Strike to find her husband, the novelist Owen Quine, who has been missing for several weeks. Strike and his assistant, Robin, soon discover that Quine has been brutally murdered, and the police think Mrs. Quine committed the crime.

This second novel in the Cormoran Strike series, written by JK Rowling, delves deeply into the publishing world, and capitalizes on a knowledge of how agents and assistants and publishers work with and sometimes struggle with their authors. The novel is well-paced and the characters are fascinating. I really like both Cormoran and Robin, particularly as Robin works to navigate her family responsibilities and her work roles, but the secondary characters. There are lots of literary references which might be annoying in another context, but really work in a book about publishing. And, as is rarer and rarer these days, I didn't figure out who the murderer was until the great reveal, which was a beautiful a-ha moment. The novel is gritty and tough to read, but also really great for those who enjoy the genre.

Book Review: Murphy's Law by Rhys Bowen

Title: Murphy's Law (Molly Murphy #1)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Kindle
This book would be rated: PG-13 for threatened sexual assaults

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know I'm a big fan of Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness mysteries. Yes, they're silly, and they can be predicable, and the last one was really, truly awful, but for some reason they're like caramel corn for me. I'm not sure I really like caramel corn, and I'd probably never seek it out as a dessert, but put a bowl of it in front of me and I will gladly inhale the whole thing.

There hasn't been a Her Royal Spyness book out in a while (which is probably a good thing, since it seems like the last one needed a little extra time to simmer), and a few weeks ago I was in need of a Rhys Bowen fix (okay, I lied, sometimes I do make caramel corn when I'm having a craving for it). I knew that Bowen also wrote another series (in fact, it was being widely "recommended for me" ever dang time I opened my Kindle). So score one for you, Amazon.com, because I bought the book.

Murphy's Law is the first in the Molly Murphy series. And if I had to characterize the two series, then Her Royal Spyness would be Ally McBeal, while Molly Murphy would be Private Practice. It's more straightforward, more serious, not nearly as silly. Just before the novel opens, Molly kills a man who is trying to rape her. She manages to escape from Ireland, where she is basically a peasant on this guy's estate, and when she arrives in England, through a serendipitous turn of events, soon finds herself on her way to American in charge of two small children who need to be brought to their father. Once they reach Ellis Island, Murphy witnesses a crime, and once she gets into NYC, she works to solve that crime. I see all sorts of predictable relationships set up in this first novel (the detective she ends up partnering with, for example, will definitely be a love interest). The book wasn't challenging or gritty, but it was a quick, entertaining read, and when I don't have anything on the top of my to-read pile, or I need a bit of escapism, I can definitely see myself turning to other books in this series.

Book Review: The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly

Title: The Tilted World: A Novel
Authors: Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Kindle
This book would be rated: PG-13 for violence and language

Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly are a married couple. He's the author of several previous crime novels, including Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which won an Edgar for best novel a few years ago. She is a poet, and they both teach in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. Based on the recommendation of a friend, and the whole premise of a novel written by a married couple who both bring unique skills to the project, made me eager to dive in to the story, a crime novel set against the backdrop of the devastating Mississippi floods in the spring of 1927.

The story centers on a bootlegger who lost her only son as a newborn, a prohibition enforcement agent, and a baby found in the middle of a murder scene. The other characters include the bootlegger's slick husband, the agent's partner, and the swirling waters of the Mississippi. And while the writing is gorgeous, and the novel worth reading for that fact alone, and the unlikely romance is compelling, I felt like the crime aspect of the story (the whodunit part) wasn't as big of a factor as I had hoped it would be. As a result, I felt a little bit underwhelmed by the story, while being totally enchanted by how the story was told.

Book Review: Heirs and Graces by Rhys Bowen

Title: Heirs and Graces (Her Royal Spyness Mysteries #7)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
This book would be rated: PG

At the end of book six, Lady Georgiana seemed to have her life all planned out for her-- she was going to work for her mother, helping her write her memoirs, until the adorable Darcy O'Mara earned enough money to marry her. Three months later, Georgie's mum has given up on the idea of a memoir in order to run off to Switzerland, and Darcy is nowhere to be found. Georgie has less than a week to find a new place to live and a way to support herself. So she humbles herself and decides to ask her great-aunt, the Queen of England, to find her a place as a lady-in-waiting. Georgie is soon shipped off to the Kentish countryside, where she will teach Jack, the Australian sheepherder who is the newfound heir to a large fortune, the basics of good manners. And then the Duke is found dead.

If Heirs and Graces had been my introduction to the Her Royal Spyness mysteries, I'm pretty sure I would not be a fan of the series. It's not that the book is bad, it just wasn't great. I was surprised to see that Bowen had another book out already (it's only been a few months since #6 was published) and I think that this one shows some haste in publishing. It was quite a bit shorter than some of the other novels, and missed the developments from the secondary characters Bowen usually employs. This is the second time in a row that I figured out who the murderer (or the trick with the murders) relatively early in the novel. This feels like a book written by the book more than one written to keep fans of the series wanting more.

Book Review: The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)

Title: The Cuckoo's Calling
Author: Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
This book would be rated: R for lots of bad language, sexual situations

Okay, I'll admit it. Although this is a book I would have enjoyed if it had been written by Robert Galbraith, I doubt that I would have gone out and bought it immediately after hearing about it if I didn't already know that Robert Galbraith was actually JK Rowling. But I would say that it's Rowling much more in the vein of The Casual Vacancy than of Harry Potter. The book is rough and raw, and there's probably a four-letter word on every page. But if that kind of stuff doesn't bother you as a reader, it's also a totally engrossing story.

Lula Landry was a twenty-three-year-old supermodel who was found dead in the road outside of her London home. Landry's death was ruled a suicide, but her brother, John Bristow, seems determined to have the death ruled a murder, so he hires private detective Cormoran Strike (down on his luck, a former war hero and amputee-- we meet him the day his fiancee has thrown him out of her house) to solve the crime. We're drawn into Lula's life-- the privileged upbringing with her adoptive parents, the squalor of her early years with her biological mother, her drug-addicted boyfriend, other supermodels, and the friends she made in rehab. Rowling does a fantastic job creating the world in which Landry inhabited, and she also creates, in Strike and his assistant Robin, characters who readers want to see again.

There are a few things I'd love to talk about with people who have read the novel. I seem to have missed an essential element for why the case was brought about in the first place, and listening to books on my iPhone makes it hard to go back and skim through to find the detail I missed. Also, I was a little bit uncomfortable, as an adoptive parent, about the way adoptive relationships and particularly adoptive children are portrayed in the novel. That said, I hope that Robert Galbraith is hard at work on the next novel.

Book Review: Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

Title: Gaudy Night
Author: Dorothy Sayers
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Kindle for iPad
This book would be rated: PG

I've read several of Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey novels in the past, and always enjoyed them-- I love the way she combines a great story with insightful social commentary. So I was expecting a lot from Gaudy Night, in which Wimsey's love, Harriet Vane, returns to her college in Oxford for a reunion and gets involved with figuring out who is sending poison pen letters to members of the community. If I were teaching a class on women's studies, I would seriously consider including this novel because of what it says about women in academia in the 1930s. It's a book I really think I would love if I read it under different circumstances.

However, I have an electronic copy of the book and decided to read it on vacation. Maren had overtaken my iPad for a serious Good Luck Charlie marathon, so I read the book on my phone. The language is fairly formal and feels a little bit antiquated, and the characters kept getting mixed up in my mind, so I ended up skimming a fair bit, especially once I figured out who the culprit was relatively early in the novel. It's interesting that there's no murder in Gaudy Night. I wonder if that is part of the reason why it didn't have the same gravitas as many other mysteries.

Book Review: Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

Title: Leaving Everything Most Loved (Maisie Dobbs #10)
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible (although I also bought a hard copy for myself)
This book would be rated: PG-13 for violence

On my last day in China, once we found my phone (which Rose had hidden in the room service menu, and which I had gone all over the city, trying to pantomime "lost phone" to people who undoubtedly thought I was crazy), I checked my email and was delighted to learn that Leaving Everything Most Loved was waiting in my Audible queue. If you've been reading my reviews for some time, you know that I am Jacqueline Winspear's biggest fan. If I could wake up and occupy a fictional character's life for a day, I would choose Maisie Dobbs. However, I was also quite disappointed in Elegy for Eddie, the previous book in the series, and I felt like this book would either make me go sour on Dobbs or it would make me fall in love with her all over again.

Reading the Maisie Dobbs books is like taking a master class in internal and external conflict. As a psychologist and investigator, there is plenty of plot in these novels. In Leaving Everything Most Loved, Maisie is working to solve two separate investigations, one involving the double murder of two Indian women living in a boarding house run by a missionary couple, the other the case of a missing boy with an invalid mother and a father who is acting decidedly weird about the whole situation. And then there's the side story, now into the fourth book, I think, about Maisie's relationship with James Compton. Maisie and James grew up in the same house-- Maisie as a maid, and James as the son of the master, and this provides a lot of tension in how she perceives herself and her freedoms within the relationship. There's also the backdrop of history-- Leaving Everything Most Loved takes place in 1933, and while the WWI stories have receded into the background, WWII and Hitler are on the horizon, and James's work in aeronautics and bombs has Maisie decidedly uneasy.

While Winspear does a great job keeping readers involved in all of these plot elements, the reason why I keep coming back to the stories is because of what is going on in Maisie's head. The book is expertly narrated by Orlagh Cassidy, and I love hearing her read her way through Maisie's thoughts, her prejudices, and what she's learning in the process of solving crime (she does have a slightly annoying habit-- Maisie, not Cassidy, of trying to correct people that I'm not sure she is aware of). Anyway, while I think that some readers might consider this novel a bridge between Maisie's resolve in the last novel not to marry James and to go out and find herself, and the next, in which she will do the finding in India, I wasn't disappointed by the way that the overarching story moved forward only incrementally. But I do have a suggestion for Ms. Winspear-- I know exactly how to end the next novel: "YES STOP."

Book Review: Deadly Undertakings by Gregg Luke

Title: Deadly Undertakings
Author: Gregg Luke
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Whitney Finalist
This book would be rated: PG (violence)

The life expectancy for centenarians is pretty short, so it's not surprising when they die. What is surprising is when they're murdered. So when detective Josh Logan and his girlfriend, Rebekah Smith (the assistant to the state medical examiner), start working a case involving a serial killer going after people with AB blood over the age of 100, they know they've run into a unique situation, one that could end up endangering their own lives.

I've been pretty tough on Gregg Luke's books in the past, but Deadly Undertakings is probably the most interesting and cohesive of his books that I've read. The premise of the story is interesting, and he does a great job capturing Salt Lake City in the book, and of making the medical examiner's office come to life.

However, I feel that the characters in Deadly Undertakings don't feel consistent. Although Rebekah and Josh have been dating for several years, they don't seem like they're really in love. And it's more than just the fact that they both have issues in their past they're trying to work through. She's constantly on him for his food choices and his cleaning and decorating, and it feels like they might not be good for each other. Luke always reveals his villain early on in his novels, and this one felt like a stock baddie. In fact, he reminded me a lot of the bumbling Hal Stewart in Megamind, a poor fool who turns to evil. But the least consistent characters were the second baddie and someone who turned out to be good, both moves felt underdeveloped and came out of the blue to me.

I read the book in less than 24 hours (I'm on a schedule-- trying to read a book every day before we get Eli), and I'm not sure that I would have felt the impetus to push on if I hadn't been on the clock. Nevertheless, it's an interesting read.

Book Review: Banana Split by Josi Kilpack (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Banana Split
Author: Josi Kilpack
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Whitney Finalist
This book would be rated: PG (references to drugs and a murder)

For the last two years, when Josi Kilpack was the president of the Whitney Committee (and therefore ineligible to receive awards for her books), I missed her Sadie Hoffmiller culinary mysteries. When I read Lemon Tart, the first book in the series, several years ago, I enjoyed the way that I could get lost for a few hours in an entertaining story that was cute and well-written. Banana Split is the seventh book in the series, is even better than the first. In this novel, Sadie Hoffmiller has fled to Hawaii, where she's suffering from anxiety and depression after her life was threatened in a previous case. For several months she hides out and wallows in Kauai, until she falls into the water during a rare outing with the Blue Muumuus (kind of like the Red Hat Society, Hawaiian style), and discovers the dead boy of Noelani, a young recovering drug addict, a single mother who had been trying to get her life back together.

Suddenly, Sadie's life has a purpose again. She's not sure if she should throw herself into the investigation, but when Noelani's son Charlie seeks her out, she finds herself returning to her own habits. But can the new, damaged, anxiety-ridden Sadie handle the challenge?

Three years ago, when I read the first Sadie Hoffmiller mystery, the whole cozy mystery genre was new to me. I'd read a lot of police procedurals, all of the Dragon Tattoo books, and every single thing PD James had ever written, and I'd come to expect violence and dramatic, scary scenes when I was reading mystery novels. Consequently, I think I misjudged where Kilpack was coming from in her novels. I made fun of her recipes and nitpicked about Sadie's character. But now that I've seen that what she's doing is intentional, and enjoyable, and getting better after seven books, I'm convinced. Three  years ago I said that Lemon Tart was the kind of book I'd pass on to my mom and she'd love, but Banana Split is a book that I really enjoyed too.

Book Review: City of Saints by Andrew Hunt

Title: City of Saints: A Mystery
Author: Andrew Hunt
This book would be rated: PG-13 for language, adult situations
Source: Personal Copy
Enjoyment Rating: ****

A few weeks ago, Ed came up to our bedroom and said, "I can't believe it. Mike Crapo was arrested for drunk driving." For those of you who aren't political junkies like my husband, Mike Crapo is a US Senator from Idaho. A Mormon US Senator from Idaho. A former bishop. A stand-up kind of guy. I don't presume to know what led up to Crapo's arrest or what kind of guy he really is, but I was reading City of Saints at the same time I heard about Crapo's arrest, and I couldn't help but see parallels between these events in our day in the events in the novel. City of Saints takes places in the 1930s in Salt Lake City, and opens with the gruesome murder of a doctor's young wife. Art Oveson, working with the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, is put on the case. Oveson is just the kind of guy you would expect to find in Salt Lake City in the 1920s-- he's a returned missionary, married within a year of arriving home from his two years in Southern California, father of two children. But Oveson soon learns that the other men of the city-- the prominent lawyer friend of the doctor, the head of the sheriff's office, and pretty much everyone else in town, has blood on their hands.

City of Saints was an entertaining, enjoyable read. Oveson's voice was perfect for a small-town hick, but it didn't feel comical or contrived. As I've read mysteries about LDS characters for the Whitney Awards for the last few years, I've noticed that authors seem to be reluctant to make the bad guys in their books Mormon, but Andrew Hunt doesn't seem to have that same fear, and I'm glad for it. Salt Lake is a pretty great place to live, but I know it isn't perfect, and neither are the people who live here. The book is based on a series of actual unsolved murders that took place in the city at the same time, and Hunt took his time with the historical details to give the piece the perfect feel of the period.

Book Review: The Twelves Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen

Title: The Twelve Clues of Christmas (Her Royal Spyness #6)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ****
This book would be rated: PG
Source: Audible for iTunes
Books I've read this year: 128

When we meet Georgie in the latest installment of the Her Royal Spyness mysteries it's Christmas time again, and faced with the prospect of spending the holiday at Castle Rannoch with Fig and her extended family (including a very handsy brother-in-law) Georgie escapes to the tiny village of Tiddleton-Under-Lovey, where she lands a position as the token royal at a big house party. While Georgie knows that her mother, grandfather and Noel Coward will be staying down the street, she's unprepared for some other surprises-- including the arrival of Darcy, her erstwhile boyfriend, and the murders that start happening at regular daily intervals.

Sometimes I want to shake Georgie because she can be so dumb, and since I figured out the pattern on the first murder, there was at least a hundred pages in the middle where I wanted to say, "Duh!" But there did turn out to be a deeper mystery in the story, and while there wasn't much advancement in the overall plot during the first five books, fans of the series will find this story very satisfying.

Book Review: The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

Title: The Cat's Table: A Novel
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible for iTunes
Books I've read this year: 111

The first two times I tried to listen to The Cat's Table I gave up in frustration. I had forgotten that Michael Ondaatje is not an author whose work I can listen to while the kids are talking to me or I'm multitasking. This ended up being a book that I great to appreciate only when I was listening to it out running by myself. I think part of this is because Ondaatje narrates the book himself. I've been to one of his readings, and while he has a lovely voice, it's also a little bit quiet and mumbly, and I remember wondering during his reading if he read like that because it forced his readers to really give themselves over to listening. When I did give myself over to listening to The Cat's Table, I finally found the experience rewarding.

The bulk of The Cat's Table takes place in 1952 on a journey from Sri Lanka to London. The eleven-year-old protagonist, Michael, his cousin, and several friends are all seated with an assortment of colorful characters at what they call "The Cat's Table," the one furthest, in both physical and psychic distance, from the captain's table on their ship. At first, the book seems to be a collection of spotlights on the characters at the table, interwoven with some travel narration. The boys find themselves in scrapes, the older passengers sleep together, steal, and spy on each other. But eventually, the book seems to turn into a bit of a mystery-- who is the prisoner in chains on the ship? Will he escape? What fallout will result? In the second half Ondaatje turns to the fallout in Michael's life after the journey as well.

One of the most unsettling aspects of The Cat's Table is the faux-memoir nature of the book. Like Ondaatje, the character was 11 in 1952, like Ondaatje the character moved from Colombo to London by ship, like Ondaatje the character was named Michael and grew up to be a writer living in Canada. But the book calls itself "a novel" and other biographical details do not hold. I'm sure it was some kind of artistic experiment, but as a Wikipedia-fingers kind of girl, it also bugged a little bit.

Book Review: Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen

Title: Naughty in Nice (Her Royal Spyness Mysteries #5)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible for iTunes
Books I've read this year: 81

Once I finished Royal Blood, I looked in my audible account and realized that I was almost done with the Her Royal Spyness books. Boo. These books have been so much fun to listen to this summer. In fact, I think they're a perfect summer read/listen. Katherine Kellgren does a fantastic job with the narration-- easily switching from Georgie's high class tones to her grandfather's Cockney to the snooty French inspector's exasperated accent. Furthermore, you know what you're going to get with a Royal Spyness book-- it follows a comfortable formula, although each story deviates just enough to make it interesting.

In this book, the Queen sends Georgie off to Nice to reclaim a snuffbox that was stolen from her several months earlier. The only problem? Before Georgie can sneak the snuffbox away from the house, the "gentleman" robber first tries to rape her, then he turns up dead in his swimming pool, with Georgie as the prime suspect. Is she able to clear her royal name? Does she get the snuffbox back? Does she finally get Darcy into bed? Which evil murderer puts her life in danger this time? Read the book, and you'll soon find out.

Book Review: Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen

Title: Royal Blood (Her Royal Spyness Mysteries #4)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 79

After a while, Rhys Bowen's books tend to blend together. Is this the story where someone tries to kill Georgie in Scotland or France? It's been several weeks since I finished Royal Blood, and despite the somewhat formulaic nature of all of the books in the series (the Queen sends Georgie off to do some covert operation for her-- something like spying on her son's girlfriend, Georgie gets herself involved in a situation, someone gets killed, she almost gets killed by the killer, she gets rescued by Darcy, etc...), I remember this book very well, and I think it's my favorite of the Her Royal Spyness Mysteries so far.

In this incarnation, the Queen sends Georgie off to Transylvania, to be the representative of the English royal family at a wedding of a Hungarian princess to a Romanian prince (or vice versa). But when Georgie arrives in Transylvania, nothing is what she expected it to be-- the chubby old school chum who will be the bride has become a svelte, beautiful woman. The castle seems to be haunted. And then there's the creepy man who Georgie found standing over her bed at night. He has to be a vampire, right?

If you've read the other Royal Spyness Mysteries, you're in for more of the same, executed deftly. Georgie's character gets more endearing as the series progresses, and she manages to pick up a maid who provides excellent comic relief in this novel.

Book Review: Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen

Title: Royal Flush (Her Royal Spyness Mysteries #3)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible for iTunes
Books I've read this year: 83

I was scrolling through old posts on my blog, trying to keep the number of books I've read this year straight (I'm down from last year, I'm afraid-- the driving to and from Provo really helped my numbers), and I found the post for this book buried way down the page. It's been months since I finished it. Like the other Royal Spyness Mysteries, Georgie finds herself on a mission for the queen that puts her in the path of a killer. This time she returns to Castle Rannoch, and it appears that someone has it out for anyone of royal blood. People turn up dead, Georgie ends up in the hands of the killer, and a good time is had by all. It was a fun read, and my blood was pumping in the final pages (was it just because I was running uphill?) as she confronted the killer.

Book Review: A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen

Title: A Royal Pain (A Royal Spyness Mystery)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 59

First of all, you may have noticed something different about the heading of my reviews. I've decided to switch from 1-10/10 system to a *-**** system. I'm a grade grubber, and the number out of ten system makes me feel like I'm failing someone when I give them anything less than a six, and I think it's artificially inflating some of my ratings. So I've decided to switch over to the system used by Goodreads and basically everyone else. One star means it was awful. Two means it was ok. Three means it was good. Four means it was very good. And five means it was amazing and life changing and all that good stuff. So a three-star book is a good book. And A Royal Pain was a solid three for me.

In the second Royal Spyness Mystery, Lady Georgie is still in London in the spring of 1933, still trying to make a living cleaning houses without letting the Queen find out, still looking for a suitable wealthy man to marry, and still getting herself into lots of trouble. A Royal Pain opens with the Queen asking Georgie to house a visiting Bavarian princess, Honey, in hopes that her errant son David will fall in love with Honey and leave that detestable Wallis Simpson alone. However, as soon as Honey arrives, people start turning up dead. First there's an accident at a party, then they stumble over a body in a bookshop, then Honey's guardian dies of a heart attack. The Queen gives Georgie the added responsibility of trying to find out if the deaths are suspicious or related, all while entertaining the boy-crazy princess.

I feel a little bit guilty for liking the Royal Spyness mysteries. They are very light and fun, and also a little predictable. They don't feel like real life, at least not like mine, which I think is part of the allure. They're perfect to listen to while cleaning the house or doing laundry-- Georgie has such an engaging voice (I don't mean that literally, although the reading is fine, I just think she expresses herself in an interesting way). I'll probably keep downloading these books for when I need a break from the heavier stuff.

Book Review: Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs #9)

Title: Elegy for Eddie
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I've read all of them!
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 55

Over the nine books in the Maisie Dobbs series, there are times when I want to cheer Maisie on (she can make such big breakthroughs!) and times when I want to shake her and tell her to get over herself (she can be so dense sometimes!). In most of this book, I felt like shaking Maisie, but towards the end, I think I may have started to cheer for her a little bit.


In Elegy for Eddie, Maisie has to figure out if a suspicious death (which turns into a series of suspicious deaths) in a printing establishment in her old stomping grounds on the east end is a murder or just an accident. Along the way, Maisie gains some insight into the large conflicts on the horizon (the novel takes place in 1933, and instead of hearkening back to WWI, like most of her the previous novels in the series, this one is definitely setting up for the conflicts of WWII).

The story of Eddie is almost incidental to Maisie's navel gazing in this novel. The mysteries often mirror the psychological drama Maisie endures, and I guess that's true in this story, since Maisie discovers that both she and Eddie (the dead guy, who had developmental delays) "walked a narrow path" in life, meaning that they are uncomfortable with change. Maisie also comes to realize that she can't fix everything that goes wrong in other people's lives just because she has the money to do it, which I think is an important lesson for her, because she spent so much of the last book micromanaging everyone with her newfound wealth. 

I'm always curious about the degree that the author's worldview influences characters. For example, I married young and have had a very fulfilling family life, so my life experience has taught me that marriage and family are desirable objectives. It seemed in previous novels that Winspear might be steering Maisie toward marriage and family before her biological clock (which never ticks audibly) would run out. But in this novel, James is such a ninny-- he was so sweet in the previous books, and while I'm all for real, complicated love with real, complicated people, it seems apparent that Winspear doesn't seem to be steering Maisie and James down the path of marriage and kids sliding down the banisters at the Dower House. I wonder how much of this is Winspear's own life experience-- does she think that it would be inconceivable for a woman to balance a fulfilling career and a family in the 1930s? If anyone could do it, Maisie could, it just seems that she might not want to.