Heading West, at least in my reading....

I've been doing some reading, in addition to all the other "goings-on" at our house since I last checked in.  The film crew from New Orleans has come and gone.  They are competing for the Louisiana Film Prize, and they arrived early last Tuesday morning and filmed for 13 hours straight, mostly in our kitchen.  They staged out of the cottage so it worked out well, but for a day there seemed to be young adults wherever you looked or wanted to sit down! 

I'm working on various projects for work--the federal government never runs out of reports that they want us to turn in.  Luckily I work with some fine staff who help get it all done. 

My latest zucchini adventure was trying my Aunt Jean's recipe for zucchini bread, a healthy variety using whole wheat flour, wheat germ, honey.  I still need to tweak the recipe a bit more.  We spent a quiet Fourth of July (we were quiet but the neighbors weren't).  Ricky installed a new screen door for the back and fixed some of his delicious shrimp pesto pasta, a highly popular yet simple dish.  Firing up the grill struck us as too hot an activity.

I abandoned the Gothic mystery I was reading--it just wasn't doing it for me--and returned to the West in my books. 

I read another Walt Longmire mystery, Kindness Goes Unpunished, the fourth in the Longmire series and originally published in 2005 but I read the book on my Kindle.    Longmire goes to Philadelphia to visit his daughter, Cady, and things go downhill from there.  Cady is attacked and left for dead.  Longmire and his friend Henry must protect Cady and help her recover, while also catching the bad guys.  It was engaging as all of Craig Johnson's books are, but I prefer the Wyoming setting.

Author, Craig Johnson, with his book

I stayed out West by reading next--

Murder on the Red Cliff Rez, by Mardi Oakley Medawar.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002.

This is the debut mystery in this series featuring main character, Karen Charbonau, aka Tracker, set on a Wisconsin Ojibwa reservation (which seems like the West if you were born in Virginia as I was).  Tracker is called upon to find, i.e., track down, the man who taught her to track because he's suspected of murder.  In the process, Tracker is thrown together with her former boyfriend, Police Chief David Lameraux.  While reviews of this book were positive at the time of publication, I didn't care for it.  I had downloaded the book to my Kindle since I'm drawn to mysteries set on Indian reservations.  The characterization seemed superficial, the plot uninteresting to me and the writing not up to par, even for a genre novel.  However, I did enjoy the setting and learned more about the life and culture of the Ojibwa.

Outlaw Mountain, by J. A. Jance.  New York: Avon Books, Inc. 1999.

The last of the Western mysteries is an older book that I hadn't gotten around to reading before now, but it has been sitting on my library shelf.  I've read many of the Sheriff Joanna Brady series by J. A. Jance, but I had missed Outlaw Mountain.  Jance's mysteries are always enjoyable reading for me, and Outlaw Mountain is the seventh book in this series of 15 or more books.  I like Jance's characters, the writing is tight and the plots fast moving and multi-layered.  It doesn't matter to me that I often read this series out of order.  I bought this book at a used book sale, knowing it would fit the bill for an engaging fast-moving mystery.  This one didn't disappoint.

I'm leaving the West for now and heading to South Louisiana--this time I'm physically traveling for a mini-adventure of my own.  I'll be sure to tell you all about it when I return.