Death in Four Courses, by Lucy Burdette



I'm not sure if my recent fascination with Key West is because of an enduring interest in Ernest Hemingway and his six-toed cats, or because my friend told me this summer of a visit she and her husband made there with many of our friends from college days, a small Methodist College, I might add. It seems they accidentally picked the same week as Fantasy Fest and inadvertently wandered into a bar where pretty much the only clothes people were wearing were painted on.  Let me say from the outset that nothing like that happens in Lucy Burdette's latest mystery in her Key West Food Critic series.

Death in Four Courses, by Lucy Burdette
Obsidian Mysteries (an imprint of Penguin Group, Inc.).
2012.  Read in Kindle download

 

Lucy Burdette, aka Roberta Isleib
(photo by Ruthanna Terreri)
Click here to read more about the author

Haley Snow is back in Death in Four Courses, and that means I'm able to visit Key West again, albeit vicariously. Haley barely escapes being charged with murder in An Appetite for Murder, the first Key West Food Critic mystery, and in Death in Four Courses, Haley and her mother barely escape the murderer. (Click HERE if you want to read my review of book one in this series by Lucy Burdette, aka mystery writer and psychologist, Roberta Isleib.)



In the latest Key West mystery, Haley has a permanent place to live and it appears a permanent job as food critic for Key Zest magazine.  She shares her elderly neighbor Miss Gloria's houseboat, which allows Haley to stay in Key West and pursue her passion as a food writer. Toward that end Haley's mother is in town for a visit so mother and daughter can attend Key West Loves Literature conference.  Haley is covering the event and trying to buttonhole famous persons in the food writing industry who are in attendance. 

The conference gets off to an interesting start when the premier speaker, Jonah Barrows, throws out the gauntlet in his opening remarks as he pledges total honesty in all his comments during the upcoming conference sessions.  In a room where more than one person has something to hide, this spells serious trouble.  Before the conference is over, two of the famous food writers are dead and Haley's best friend, Eric, is a prime suspect.  Eric won't defend himself against the police suspicions, so Haley feels she must investigate to keep her friend out of jail. 

It is potentially problematic in a series featuring an amateur sleuth to manufacture a believable reason for the main character to get involved in the dangerous pursuit of a murderer, but Burnette's rationale for Haley's involvement worked for me in this mystery.  Haley's potential love interest, Police Detective Bransford, makes another appearance and other secondary characters from book one return, adding a sense of community and continuity to the series for me. 

Because there is much discussion about food in this book--which even includes recipes, such as: MK's Screw of the Roux Stew (like traditional Louisiana gumbo with tomatoes added); Hot Fudge Pie (delicious-sounding chocolate decadence); and Rhubarb Cake with Streusel Topping (another rhubarb recipe to try)--I'm counting this as part of my Foodies Read 2 reading challenge.  In my somewhat casual count, I think this is my seventh book in this reading challenge, placing me currently at Pastry Chef level.....hmmm, in charge of pastries, sounds like a good position to be in.

I like this cozy and easy-reading Key West Food Critic series.  I'm not sure if the concept contains enough depth to maintain my interest over the course of a lengthy series, but I'm enjoying them at the moment.

Scene of the Blog with My Bargain Basket of Books

I'm excited to have Views From My Highland Cottage highlighted on the award winning Kittling: Books blog, feature Scene of the Blog.  For several years Cathy at Kittling:Books has posted photos and descriptions of the spaces where fellow bloggers read and blog.  It has been fun to share with her and her readers some of the spaces where I can be found reading and writing, two of my passions since grade school!

 Click HERE to see the blog post.

  Welcome, visitors, from Kittling: Books!

Thanks for stopping by.

Those readers who read my last post know that I recently visited a huge book sale and came away with a laundry basket of books.  Nan at Letters From a Hill Farm suggested I take a photo of my bargains that temporarily sit on my library floor until I find time and space to shelve them.  Nan may have actually wanted me to take the books out of the basket for the photo op, but ...... 

 

There is presently an ebb and flow to the books.  I bought several with friends in mind so I've passed them on, and my mystery reading friends added four books to the stack when we got together for lunch last weekend.  I guess I'll shelve my books when I need the basket for laundry!

There are several spaces where I read or write that didn't make the Scene of the Blog post, and here are a few of them. 

I read a lot while I ride my exercise bike because I can read with absolutely no guilt, no matter how long my "To Do" list is.  After all, I'm exercising!

 

Right outside the exercise room (which also doubles as potting shed) is the patio where a few plants make it through our scorching summer.  When the weather is cooler and the West Nile mosquitoes don't pose a threat, I love to sit here and read or journal.

When days turn cooler, I like to find a patch of sunshine and curl up on the sun porch and read.

Reading in bed was a favorite pastime when I was growing up, and I still like to snuggle under a quilt and read on a cold evening. (It gets cold and damp in the Louisiana winters--really!)  Here is one more shot of the guest bedroom where I love to hang out.  

  

Featured below is my childhood bedroom in Virginia where my love of reading was nurtured as I lay on my bed and read whenever I could. The furniture may have changed since then, but not the cozy feeling of reading under the eaves hidden away from the world.

My childhood bedroom

Plum Lucky at the Book Sale

All of my well-intentioned resolutions about not buying more books until I read more of those already on my library shelves went out the window recently when the local college held their big fundraiser, an annual book sale.  Too much temptation, I fear.  My husband and I resisted going for the opening on Friday night, but Saturday found our resistance weaker and our energy levels higher. 

Since the college is just blocks from our house, we decided to see how many of the advertised 75,000 books were left in the college's gymnasium   The books are always arranged on tables according to categories, such as: mysteries under $1.00, hardbacks under $5.00, Literature, Food, Travel, Philosophy, Romance, Children's Books, etc.  Volunteers are constantly restocking books on the tables, so we found the tables were still full. 

I purposefully took bags that I had to carry as opposed to the rolling backpacks and suitcases some folks use, but I soon was toting around a very heavy bag!  Before lunch I ended up spending $30.00 on books, then my husband and I ducked out to a local Tex/Mex restaurant for some Huevos Rancheros for brunch and found ourselves back in the gym for the afternoon half price sale.  We spend an additional $10, so for a total expenditure of $40.00, we came home with about 30 books.  Plum lucky or plum foolish, hard to tell. 



People waiting in check-out lines at Friday opening of a previous year's book sale; Saturday is less crowded.

Some of the books became gifts for friends but most of them are now in a laundry basket in the library waiting for me to free up shelf space somewhere in the house where, hopefully, I have a prayer of finding them again when I get ready to read them.

I read with interest the authors of book blogs who state their books are neatly organized according to whether they have been read, ready to be read, recently read or heaven forbid, the Dewey Decimal System.  My books start out being roughly organized according to size, by necessity, then by topic and then whatever I can fit on a given shelf.  It develops my brain, I believe, trying to visualize which book shelf I last saw a book on.

One of the books I picked up for a friend and ended up reading quickly before I passed it on was one of Janet Evanovich's between-the-numbers Stephanie Plum novels,  Plum Lovin'. 



Plum Lovin', by Janet Evanovich

St. Martin's Press. 2007. 176 pages

 

A between-the-numbers, holiday-themed novel, Plum Lovin' finds Stephanie, the intrepid and inept bounty hunter, entertaining a drop-in and drop-dead gorgeous house guest, her old friend Diesel.  Diesel has an unusual proposition for Stephanie.  He has a fugitive that Stephanie wants, but Diesel swears the woman is innocent.  Annie Hart, a relationship expert, has been framed for her crime, according to Diesel, and Annie's problems don't end there--she is also being threatened by the husband of one of her clients.  The husband blames Annie for the problems in his marriage.  Diesel has Annie in hiding for her safety, but Annie makes Diesel and Stephanie promise her that they will handle her five open cases--they have to insure that these five people have a happy Valentine's Day. 

To say this is light reading is a gross understatement, and to call this book a mystery is stretching it, too.  However, Evanovich always includes humor in her books, so she isn't expecting the reader to be too serious about the plot.  In Plum Lovin', there has to be a reason why a pawn dealer claims Annie shot him and stole a valuable necklace.  This is the mystery Stephanie must solve at the same time she seeks out four strangers and somehow improves their love lives before Valentine's Day.  They fifth open case is the boyfriend of Stephanie's sister who wants to marry sister Valerie, the mother of his daughter, but is phobic about a marriage ceremony. 

Of course Stephanie blunders her way through to a happy ending for the clients and clears Annie Hart in the process.  This isn't Evanovich at her best, but sometimes it's fun to read a totally frivolous book, and this one fits the bill!

 Author Janet Evanovich



Paris Adventures

I guess you could say I've been too bogged down to blog, but having completed some research for work on the web tonight, I'm taking a vacation--a virtual one at least and heading to Paris with author Eloisa James and her family, but first I'm remembering my first trip to Paris.



I first visited Paris in 1998 on a group tour while traveling with my mother. It was one of those "If This is Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium" kind of experiences, but for my mom and me it was a Grand Adventure. As our bus entered Paris on the way to our hotel, we passed the soccer stadium where throngs of soccer fans were entering the Stade de France, France's national stadium. We were told by our guide that France was playing the highly favored Brazilian team that night in the World Soccer Final.  Flags hung from windows of high rise apartment buildings, the entire city was in a state of anticipation and high spirits.

 Crowds arriving at Stade de France, St.-Denis, Paris
1998 World Cup

Mother and I were tired, so we opted out of the tour group event that evening.  Instead we strolled around the Montmartre neighborhood where we were staying, got something to eat, then settled in to watch the soccer match on TV.  Neither of us understood French or much about soccer for that matter, but the excitement of the French commentators and the frenzy of the crowd was mesmerizing.  When France beat Brazil 3-0, winning their first ever World Soccer Cup, the city erupted.  The deserted streets of an hour before filled with throngs of people spilling out from cafes onto the streets around our hotel.  The sounds of fire crackers and blowing car horns filled the night air. 

I wanted to enjoy the festivities, so I joined the crowds roaming the streets of Montmartre that night.  A stranger grabbed me and hugged me, chattering in French and I felt bad that I didn't understand him and couldn't make even a simple reply.  Indeed everyone seemed to be hugging each other; when cars came to a stop light, occupants jumped out of the cars, ran around hugging people and shouting, then jumped back into their vehicles when the light turned green. 

Paris crowds celebrating 1998 World Cup win in Montmartre

According to news reports the next day, a million people filled the Champs-Elysees that night.  New York Times reporter, Craig Whitney, wrote: Black and white, Muslim and Christian, Arab and Asian, the people of Paris trooped down the avenue as they had during victory parades after World Wars I and II...It was, the French coach, Aime Jacquet said, a moment of ''national communion.''

The next day Mother and I ate at a sidewalk cafe.  We ordered Quiche Lorraine and when our plates came out, the tomato in the side salad had a French flag stuck in it.  The waiter smiled and said, "Quiche Lorraine France" when he brought our dishes to the table. 

Paris in Love, by Eloisa James
Random House, 2012
(Read in Kindle Download)

My goodness, my trip down memory lane took longer than anticipated, and I've left Eloisa James and her Paris memoir hanging.  Eloisa James is the pen name of a successful romance author who in her other life is Mary Bly, a Shakespeare professor at Fordham.  After losing her mother to breast cancer and having a brush with the disease herself, James and her Italian-born, university professor husband decide to apply for sabbaticals and move their family to Paris for a year.  Paris in Love is the story of that year. 

James takes the Facebook entries she posted that year from Paris, expands some into longer essays and organizes her reminiscences into the seasons of the year for this book.  This adds to the "You are there with her" feeling of the journal.  Her two children--fourteen-year-old son, Luca, and irrepressible eleven-year-old daughter, Anna--are often less than enthusiastic participants in this cross cultural experiment and provide frequent fodder for James' musings. 

James also writes a lot about ordinary days:

Parisian life is small and quiet.  I pack the children off to school and then think greedily about how many hours I have before they come home.  I have come to the conclusion that silence and time are the precious commodities.

Paris (and our apartment) is so dark and quiet this morning that I feel as if I'm entirely alone.  This sky is the color of gray flannel, the darkness broken only by the dormer window of another early riser.  The women who lives in that attic painted her walls yellow, and reflected light bounces out like a spring crocus.  If light were sound, her window would be playing a concerto.

The main character of this memoir is Paris, as the City of Light is always a scene stealer.  James describes other scenes outside her apartment window as she sits and writes, the homeless man who has pitched a tent on the heat grate near their apartment, her explorations of the city, her children's experiences in an Italian school, French food, the small, lesser known museums not to miss on one's next trip to Paris, the trials and tribulations of the family's obese chihuahua, Milo.  Her observations are concise, yet evocative.

Description of a winter scene from Paris in Love:

High up, somewhere in the milky sky, the snow clings together before it pinwheels gently down in little clumps.  Thousands of cotton bolls were trying to seed themselves on rue de Conservatoire.

But James is most eloquent when she writes of her family and her motivation for seizing this opportunity to live in Paris:

My grandmother was diagnosed with dementia, and was silent the last decade of her life; my father, my darling father of a thousand poems and more, has taken to watching leaves fall from their trees.  Rather than knit those leaves into words, he simply allows them to fall.  It's a cruel fate: to watch without recounting the fall of the leaf; to grieve without creating anew; to age without describing it.

I know how James feels.  My mother, who gamely tramped all over Europe at age 76, is now losing her words and the names of her great-grandchildren, but she and I will always have Paris.

To take a virtual trip to Paris in the footsteps of Eloisa James, visit the wonderful Paris Breakfast blog.  The blog's creator has posted quotations from Paris in Love and paired them with photos of Paris.

To see more of France, you might also be interested in my past blog posts about our 2011 trip.  To see the French home where my husband and I stayed in the French Alps town of Serres, click here.  Click here for post about our visit with another friend in Veynes in the Alps.  Click here to read and view photos of the village of Cucuron in southeastern France where part of the movie, A Good Year, with Russell Crowe was filmed and where Ricky and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary.  To read and see photos of two other villages in Provence, click here.  And to view Marseilles scenes, plus more of Serres in the French Alps, click here.  

Cotswolds Cozy Fails to Deliver

The Evil That Men Do, by Jeanne M. Dams

Severn House Publishing, Ltd. 2011

(Kindle Download) 

Dorothy Martin, a retired American school teacher, and her second husband, Alan Nesbitt, a former Chief Constable in the fictional English village of Sherebury, spend a lot of time walking in the countryside, drinking tea and going from village to village pursuing vague leads about missing people in the latest offering in Jeanne Dams' cozy series featuring Dorothy as an amateur sleuth.  The retired couple have settled into a routine since their marriage, but they also enjoy travels around the UK, and though they are probably approaching seventy, The Evil That Men Do finds them on a walking tour of the Cotswolds undertaken as a series of day hikes. Any reader knows that murder doesn't take a holiday, so while Dorothy and Alan hike in the countryside, they become disoriented and stumble upon a body in an old quarry. Meanwhile, Dorothy meets a young man, Paul Jones, a guest at the Bed and Breakfast where they are staying, who seems to be troubled and perhaps in trouble.  When he and a friend of his vanish, Dorothy feels she must take action.

I hate to be overly critical of an author who has brought me pleasure with other books, but this latest Dorothy Martin mystery doesn't work for me on multiple levels.  The motivation behind Dorothy's involvement in the mystery is thin at best.  The secondary characters aren't well developed, so  I actually didn't care that they disappeared.  There isn't a logical connections of events--Dam often seems to be "over-reaching" as the story moves from scene to scene in the narrative.  The plot is slow moving--other reviewers comment it is more a travelogue than a mystery.  Even Dorothy, who has been compared to Miss Marple and can be a very spunky and likable heroine, seems wooden and emotionally wobbly in this book.  While the pace picks up toward the end, the believability factor becomes more far-fetched to me. By the end of the book, I even begin to weary of the scenic Cotswolds setting, certainly a strength of the novel. 

Contrast this to Winter of Discontent, a 2004 Dorothy Martin offering from Jeanne Dams.  I've read it twice, and I rarely read a mystery more than once.  But I'm a sucker for mysteries set at Christmas so Dams hooks me with her first paragraph: "I looked at the calendar and sighed.  Not only a Monday, but December eighth.  Exactly seventeen days till Christmas and I had done almost nothing.  No cookies had been baked, no cards sent, no presents bought, let alone wrapped."

When Dorothy and Alan's next-door-neighbor, the feisty and thoroughly likable Jane Langland, discovers that her former lover is first missing, then found dead, I understand perfectly that Dorothy must set aside her holiday preparations to help Jane get some answers. The town, the climate, the church all create an atmosphere for the book that pulls me in as a reader. The plot is more cohesive, better paced and believable.

Dams' first Dorothy Martin book, The Body in the Transept, published in 1995, won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery and received critical acclaim, e.g., Publisher's Weekly wrote, "With her penchant for colorful hats, Dorothy establishes herself as a fresh, commanding and always genteel presence among female elder-sleuths of the '90s."



Photo from killerhobbies blog. Click here to see this blog.

 



In this photo of mystery authors, Monica Ferris on the left and Jeanne Dams on the right, we see that Dorothy Martin isn't the only one with a penchant for hats.  Both of these authors of cozy mysteries enjoy modeling the latest additions to their wardrobes.

Dams, a widow, lives in South Bend, Indiana, where she also writes another historical mystery series set in the South Bend of a 100 years ago, featuring Hilda Johansson, a young Swedish housemaid, who works in the Studebaker home there.

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, by Sara Roahen

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, by Sara Roahen.

W.W. Norton & Co. 2008. 293 pages.

 

This is the fifth book I've read for the Foodies Read 2 Reading Challenge this year, and I loved the book.  I bought Gumbo Tales several years ago, and it is another one that sat on my library shelf waiting for the right time for reading. Unfortunately, hurricane season in Louisiana is the apropos time to read this series of essays on the food culture of New Orleans area, because Roahen's book discusses venues destroyed by Katrina and the elderly restaurateurs who didn't survive the evacuation. 

Today, as I write, people in New Orleans are digging out after Hurricane Isaac, while others in South Louisiana are evacuating because of broken or breached levees.  The destruction wrought by hurricanes, even supposedly low level 1 hurricanes, wreak havoc on a state still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish exactly seven years ago to the week (Katrina was a slow developing catastrophe).

While some stories in Roahen's book are tragic, she uses humor effectively to prevent the essays from being too depressing,  pessimistic or maudlin.  She divides her book into chapters on emotion-laden subjects, at least in my household--topics, such as:  gumbo, po-boys, crawfish, coffee and chicory, and red beans and rice.  Other important subjects she scrutinizes are sno-balls (snow-cones);  red gravy (Italian tomato sauce); turducken (if you watch football, you should know this one); and oysters.  Other chapters include Sazeracs, vegetables, poisson meuniere amandine, pho, coconuts, king cake & y-ka-mein, le boeuf gras, and turkey bone gumbo.

Roahen's descriptions will interest anyone wanting to know more about the melting pot of New Orleans inhabitants as told through their food.  Roahen does explain in her foreword that some of the places mentioned were washed away, and she doesn't know if or when they might return, e.g. the Vietnamese market area outside the city, but they were so much a part of the fabric of the New Orleans she experienced that she couldn't leave them out.  Roahen herself no longer lives in New Orleans, but the reader knows that the city has become part of her so she will return often.

Anyone familiar with the Crescent City will undoubtedly see favorite neighborhood venues mentioned.  I know we rarely visit New Orleans without stopping by Mandina's, an Italian-creole neighborhood restaurant on Canal that has been totally revamped since Katrina.  And drinks on the porch at The Columns on St. Charles will become part of our ritual after our recent visit. 

This book to be one to be read slowly and savored, and I plan to pack it to use as a culinary guidebook for our next visit to NOLA.

Gone Missing, by Linda Castillo

It is a busy time of the year for educators and Early Head Start is no exception.  My consultant friends and I have been busy aligning our Early Head Start School Readiness Goals with our assessment instrument and our curriculum--FOR INFANTS AND TODDLERS NO LESS!!--but it's largely completed and the teachers have received pre-service training according to all the bureaucratic requirements of our funding source and our state government. 

I'm hopeful this may enhance the teachers' understanding of developmental milestones and give them some cultural capital needed to participate in the debates over education during these challenging times.  I still have to develop several implementation plans, educate parents on what we are trying to do and get them engaged in the process and write the continuation federal grant.  BIG SIGH......

I've often commented to friends, facetiously, that murder and blues elevate my mood--by this, I mean reading an engrossing mystery and listening to some down and dirty blues, or R and B, make me feel better.  Go figure.  This may be one reason I so enjoyed forgetting everything this past weekend and reading a hard boiled mystery set incongruously in Amish Country.



Gone Missing, by Linda Castillo.  Minotaur Books. 2011. 277 pages.

 

Police Chief Kate Burkholder knows the Amish culture in Ohio where she presides over a small police department in a generally peaceful, rural region.  Burkholder grew up Amish but rebelled in her teens and left the culture and life style behind.  But, when Amish teenagers begin to disappear, Buckholder is the person called in to consult on the case.  It is lagniappe that this allows her to work again with State Agent John Tomasetti with whom she has a burgeoning romance.  Soon the case takes on alarming and dark overtones, and young women's lives are at stake.  Will Kate find them in time?

 

This is a hard-boiled mystery rather than a feel good cozy.  The setting may be Amish country, but there is evil and insanity lurking among these peaceful, aloof folk.  Sometimes the police deductions seem slow, but the pacing of the plot makes this a page turner.  The book also taught me something about Amish culture, e.g. the existence of "Rumspringa," a time before baptism when Amish teens are allowed to experience the life of the "English" culture without rules. 

 

There are three earlier books in this series, and I read this last book in the sequence before the others because a friend gave me the book.  I think I would now like to read the first book in the series to get additional background and back story on the recurring characters and the setting.  It's certainly not a typical "Amish mystery."

 

Has anyone else read this series?  What did you think? 

Goddesses--Domestic and Otherwise

 

Gully at Wassona Park

I recently spent over a week back "home" in the mountains of Virginia, visiting my mother and my sisters. My old neighborhood consists of a large gully encircled by a street. On the gully side of the street are trees, creating lovely shade for the road.  The resulting environment is the reason that this neighborhood was originally called a "Park.".  




childhood home

Across the road from the trees are the houses.  My family lives at one end of the circle road, and my grandmother and my cousins lived in houses situated farther around the circle.  It was a perfect neighborhood for us growing up in the fifties.  It was and still is a residential area in rural, small town America.

My sister now lives there near my mother, and she and her husband have a large garden.  While we were there, they fed us well--"Slow Food" grown primarily by them, cooked by my sister with occasional help from the rest of us, using tried and true recipes.  My mouth waters just thinking of the bountiful meals we had last week.




Stuffed peppers, cole slaw, green beans, squash casserole, corn on the cob, deviled eggs--
a home grown, home-cooked meal--with blackberry pie for dessert!




Before I went to Virginia, I wanted something really light to read and my sister-in-law had once suggested I try author Sophie Kinsella when I got a chance.  She went on to say that she couldn't read Kinsella's books in public because she laughed too hard.  When I was looking for a "fast read," I looked on my library shelves and noticed an abridged version of Sophie Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess.  "Okay," I thought,  "I'll give it a try."  I am not a chick lit kind of woman, but I can relate to being an "undomestic" goddess, having suffered culinary disasters in my kitchen unlike my sisters, who both are actually skilled in the domestic arts.


The Undomestic Goddess, by Sophie Kinsella.
New York: Dial Press, 20005
 

In Kinsella's book, a fast track lawyer, Samantha Sweeting, is obsessed with her high stress position in a prestigious British law firm.  She thrives on the pressures of the job and is a total workaholic.  Her family is equally driven and not exactly close-knit, and the book begins with Samantha's less than spectacular birthday celebration.  Nonetheless Samantha's life is roaring along at warp speed until she misses a deadline that causes a client to lose a massive amount of money.

In a daze of disbelief, Samantha ducks out of her office and boards a train to avoid the repercussions of her error until she can think about how to deal with it.  She gets a bit tipsy and has a roaring headache.  When she exits the train several cities later, she knocks on the door of a wealthy couple to request an aspirin and water to clear her head so she can think.  The couple, the Geigers, think Samantha has come to apply for a job as a full-time housekeeper and are impressed with her totally fabricated credentials.  Samantha is hired and the comedy of errors begins, because Samantha knows zero about domestic chores.  Somehow each of Samantha's domestic disasters is salvaged, and she begins to want to learn how to do the tasks expected of her.  Of course there is also a love interest thrown into the mix.

The characters are likable, and Kinsella adds humor to the formulaic story of Samantha's tenure with the Geigers and her ultimate redemption.  I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the book, found myself laughing out loud at times and might even try another of Kinsella's books in the future.

Cozying Up With a Cozy: Jenn McKinlay Library Lover's series

It's the Dog Days of August in Northwest Louisiana, and what's a girl to to do but curl up in an air-conditioned cottage with a good book or two and some Sangria wine to take her mind off the weather.  At least that's the advice I gave myself this week.  And, best of all, I found the perfect companion with Jenn McKinlay, author of the new Library Lover's mystery series.  When I haven't been glued to the TV watching the Summer Olympics, I've been reading.

Author Jenn McKinlay on her board

Author Jenn McKinlay may be familiar to some of you with her Cupcake Bakery series, but the Library Lover's mysteries are my introduction to her work.  I discovered McKinlay thanks to Cathy's Kittling: Books blog .

First, a word about Jenn McKinlay.  I learned from her website that she is the mother of boys, a skateboard enthusiast, horseback rider, hang glider pilot, wife of a musician, and has written books under her own name, as well as pseudonyms.  She now has five mystery series in the works.  Wow!  She's clearly either crazy, on speed, or just highly energetic and efficient with an enthusiasm for living life to the fullest.

After reading the Kittling Books review and discovering that the books are set in a small town library, I thought I would enjoy this series.  Loving the immediate gratification of my Kindle, I downloaded Books Can Be Deceiving and Due or Die--and began reading.

Books Can Be Deceiving, by Jenn McKinlay

Berkley Prime Crime, 2011.  Kindle download

After being downsized from her university archivist position and discovering her professor fiance was cheating on her with a student, Lindsey Norris is looking for a place to start over and finds it in coastal Connecticut as the Director of the Briar Creek Library where her college friend, Beth Stanley, is the children's librarian. Beth is having man problems of her own.  She is engaged to a selfish, reclusive children's author/illustrator, Rick Eckman, who is as "icky" as his name implies.  When Rick is found murdered, Beth becomes the chief suspect after the police discover that Rick and Beth had a public quarrel and Beth had gone to Rick's house to confront him about his lying and dishonesty.  Lindsey and her friends must discover the real murderer because the police chief has stopped looking--he is convinced the perpetrator is Beth!  Books Can Be Deceiving is a great title for this book, and Lindsey is determined to uncover the layers of deceit and clear Beth in the process.

Sometimes I find McKinlay tries too hard with her metaphors.  It's not that they aren't evocative or descriptive, but for me, they interrupt the flow of her story.  Examples are: "Not surprisingly sleep eluded Lindsey like a cat that did not want to be found." or "The bike ride into work woke her up, as the brisk October air pinched her cheeks like an affectionate auntie."

However, McKinlay creates an interesting group of people who live in Briar Creek: the retired actress, Violet LaRue; Lindsey's landlady, Nancy, a widow; Mary who owns the local diner with her husband, Ian; Mary's brother Michael "Sully" Sullivan who begins to ignite Lindsey's interest in men again; Mrs. Cole, "the lemon" and Lindsey's nemesis at the library; Milton Duffy, the 82 year old yogi and frequent visitor to the library.  These characters all are back for book 2 in the series, Due or Die.

Due or Die, by Jenn McKinlay

Berkley Prime Crime, 2012. Kindle download

Carrie Rushton, a well-respected nurse, is elected President of the Friends of the Library in an acrimonious election.  A couple of the townspeople are upset by the election, and one unhinged library patron makes veiled threats against both Carrie and Lindsey as director of the library.  When Carrie's generally disliked husband is murdered the night of the election, people wonder if Carrie is the intended target or if she could be the murderer.  Carrie is so upset by the murder, she moves in with Nancy and Lindsey in Nancy's home where Lindsey has an apartment. 

Lindsey seems slow to suspect that there is more going on at the Briar Creek library than meets the eye, but after a series of mishaps, the mystery is satisfactorily solved. 

As the Kittling Books blog suggests, one of the most enjoyable parts of Due or Die is experiencing, vicariously, the nor'easter that buffets Briar Creek during the course of the book, while here in my world the outside the temperatures hover around 100 degrees.  Hurricane force winds are not unknown to Louisiana, by any means, but to pair the wind with a blizzard and frigid temperatures, then it begins to sound truly uncomfortable.

This strengths of this series don't lie in the tension of the plot, the keen detective work of Lindsey and her friends, or the thrill of the discovery of the murderer. It's about spending a relaxing evening in the company of people who are becoming folks you care about and want to get to know better.  Add a lovable mutt into the mix and the appeal factor keeps going up.  If you like a cozy mystery series that doesn't take itself too seriously, I recommend this one.  Book 3 in the Library Lover's series, Book, Line and Sinker, is scheduled for release December 2012

In Dallas with Another Man's Moccasins

If anyone is wondering, it's as hot in Dallas as it is in Shreveport at the end of July, with a hot, dry breeze blowing here in Dallas, which is better than no breeze.  Though Shreveport bears many similarities to Texas, once you enter East Texas, there is a different feel to the land.  The trees look "scrubbier" along with the cattle, and there are more fields full of round hay bales wrapped in plastic--looking like giant Texas-sized, vanilla Tootsie Rolls.

I am getting hungry at this point, so everything is beginning to remind me of food.  The Hyatt provides no free room food, unfortunately.  I should have told Maria, my personal greeter, that this might be one way to make my stay more pleasant.  I find it interesting that Maria zeroed right in on me as someone with a Head Start program, as opposed to being part of the other large group meeting here--Mary Kay Cosmetics.

While writing this, I have scrounged through my purse and have eaten the single grape lifesaver and the Sun Burst that I had leftover from some other Head Start workshop. It is now time to call my traveling companions and look for real food.

Later, with a full stomach....


Dallas feels like the beginning of the West, so it's a good place to discuss the latest Walt Longmire mystery I've read--Another Man's Moccasins, by Craig Johnson.  (2008, 304 pages, read in Kindle download)

The setting returns to Wyoming with this book.  Walt's daughter, Cady, is back in Wyoming to continue her recovery from the traumatic brain injury she suffered in Kindness Goes Unpunished, and Walt  must solve the murder of a Vietnamese girl whose body is dumped in a ditch near the culvert where a troubled Indian has been living.  Everyone thinks the massive Indian has to be the murderer, but Walt isn't ready to charge the guy without more concrete evidence.  There are other strangers in town who seem involved in the case and sorting it all out is what Longmire does best.

In this book the action alternates between flashbacks to Walt's time in Vietnam as a young marine when he won't stop until he finds out who murdered a young Vietnamese bar girl , and the similar investigation he's pursuing in the present.  We get to see the young, thoroughly decent, stubborn and brash Walter Longmire and note that little has changed, except Walt is now older, a bit wiser,and certainly more world weary.  Walt and his second in command, Vic, are still tiptoeing around the idea of romance, but Cady and Vic's brother aren't so cautious as they deepen their relationship.

The action in Vietnam is violent and apocalyptic, while the present-day case evolves slower and with a lower body count.  I'm not a big fan of flashbacks, but I am a fan of Craig Johnson, and the author utilizes this technique to propel the plot forward and to shed more light on Walt Longmire's character.  The reader emerges from this book knowing Walt--his weaknesses and strengths--better.

Arm Chair Traveling, or Still Reading

Ricky and I are trying to decide whether our next big trip is to tour around the American West, or set out for an adventure in Scotland.  Ricky has become interested in whiskey-making (and tasting), and Scotland has a large number of distilleries, especially in the Highlands and Central Speyside sections of Scotland.  Of course, our ancestors hail from Scotland and Ireland so it makes a trip to that part of the British Isles doubly interesting.  Since my Scott (my maiden name) grandfather-- many greats added--who settled in Virginia in 1770's came from Northern Ireland, we probably wouldn't go there and would just confine our explorations to his wife's (my many great's-grandmother)
native country of Scotland. 

Actually, we have have no idea where we might end up on our next big adventure, but isn't thinking about traveling half the fun.  In reality, my next trips include several days next week in Dallas for work, then a trip back to Virginia to visit my family the following week.  I'm looking forward to these jaunts, too. 

In my reading, now I'm heading Out West again with two of my favorite mystery authors: J. A. Jance and Craig Johnson.

Damage Control, by J. A. Jance (William Morrow. 2008. 374 pages)

Sheriff Joanna Brady never experiences a dull moment, certainly not in this book as she juggles marriage, a new baby, the demands of her husband's "jobs" as an author and stay-at-home dad, and her teen-age daughter from her first marriage.  Joanna's mother's is acting more strange than usual, and several puzzling deaths are thrown in on top of all this for good measure. 

An elderly couple dies in a suicide pact, but their unfortunate deaths are puzzling as more information becomes available about their family circumstances.   If that isn't enough, body parts are found wrapped in plastic bags in the desert, and Joanna is determined to find out who is responsible for this gruesome crime, especially when she discovers the victim had developmental disabilities.

The action is fast paced and, unfortunately, Joanna loses one of her own before the perpetrator is brought to justice.  Add a couple  personal mysteries in Joanna's family that she seeks to resolve, and the 13th book is this series is another page turner.  With multiple deaths and sub-plots, there are many loose ends to tie up before this mystery ends  The action of the plot and the engaging characters are what make Jance's books satisfying to me, more so than the final resolution. 

This was another of those books that I found on my library shelves.  A friend passed this mystery along to me sometime in the past, and I appreciate her generosity--it provided me with light summer reading, which I find relaxing after a day at work.

Tomorrow I'll continue the blog with a review of Craig Johnson's Another Man's Moccasins, a Kindle download.

Foodies Read 2: Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl

Despite meetings for my historic neighborhood association and the work projects crowding my schedule, I continue to find time for reading :-) .  I was fortunate that the two meetings this week, relating to my volunteer work with the neighborhood, took place at near-by restaurants--doubly gratifying because the Highland neighborhood has some of the best eating establishments in the city!

On Tuesday I was treated to a delicious, spicy but light quiche at TWINE, a new restaurant and bar on Line Avenue, the major street that separates the two historic districts in our neighborhood.  It was a veggie quiche but the vegetables were mere suggestions, spots of color in the quiche, which must have included bits of hot pepper that provided the perfect "punch" of taste to wake up the mild quiche.

Then on Wednesday evening after work, tapas were on the menu at the reopened and re-imagined restaurant, STIR, tucked into the neighborhood a few blocks from my house.  I savored the creamy shrimp remoulade served on fried green tomatoes, while my friend tried the lobster wrap.  The shrimp remoulade is a destination dish, one of those foods you would return to a restaurant just to taste again.


Since food was on my agenda for this week, it should come as no surprise that my reading material echoed this interest and was also part of my Foodies Read 2 Reading Challenge.  I vicariously (and literally, it would seem) ate my way through the week with Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Broadway Books. 1998. 282 pages. Memoir).


This is one of the many books that I've picked up on the cheap at the local college's annual Book Bazaar fundraiser.  This book cost $1.00 and is one I've had on my shelves for awhile, apparently waiting for the right moment to read it.  Reichl has been a food writer, restaurant critic and is now producing television food shows.

If you have ever wondered how one lands this kind of job, this memoir shows the circuitous route Reichl took, and it's probably not a path to emulate.  Her career path started in childhood when Reichl's family assignment was to protect the dinner guests from her mother's strange dishes and casual attitude toward food freshness and storage.  Reichl proceeds to take the reader on a wild and funny ride through her childhood and early adulthood in a household with a bipolar mother and a father who escapes through his passion for his job as a book designer. 

Reichl encounters frequent personal challenges--having an unpredictable manic depressive mother, being sent away to Montreal to boarding school against her will and being picked on by the class rich girl.  After three years, Reichl returns to live with her parents as a high school student, only to essentially be left alone during the week to raise herself, but Reichl has the knack for turning disaster into opportunity, with a dose of laughter thrown in to avoid appearing pathetic.  We follow Reichl to college, her first marriage and her first cooking jobs.

This memoir is highly readable, is interspersed with a few recipes, as well as many wonderful descriptions of foods, meals and the people who propelled Reichl ultimately toward a writing career.  Good stories, tight writing and interesting characters elevate this memoir above the norm.  I am late coming to this book and its author.  I'm sure many of you read Tender at the Bone and the sequels years ago, so I'm glad I held onto this book waiting for the right time to "devour" it.

New Orleans Memories Continued

Evening events kept me busy this week so not much time for blogging or, more accurately, not much energy left for blogging.  However, sitting in my library on this scorching Saturday afternoon, my mind has returned to New Orleans.....

There have been many trips to New Orleans since my first memorable college experience--other conferences attended--with graduate school and working in education, academia has been a major part of my life.  One of my favorite conference experiences was when my ex-husband and I lived and taught at Sinte Gleska College, now University, on the Rosebud (Sioux) Reservation in South Dakota. 

Shortly after our arrival, we attended a Native American Education Conference with our friend who was tribal chairman of the Rosebud Sioux. Our friend was open-mouthed during our tour of the French Quarter and looked on in puzzlement as small boys accosted him in the Quarter, yelling, “I bet you a dollar I can tell you where you got dem boots.”  Our friend was dressed in the traditional Indian cowboy attire--jeans, ribbon shirt, silver and turquoise accessories, cowboy hat and boots-- and presented a handsome silhouette on Bourbon Street, so ladies of the evening also called out to him, much to his embarrassment. 

At another academic conference when we were still grad students, my ex and I had to travel on our own meager budget.  I remember this conference because we stayed in some small Canal Street store-front hotel where you had to get buzzed in.  The rooms had high ceilings, ours was spacious and kind of sectioned off, so we shared it with my husband's major professor because we were too poor to get our own room!  We presented academic papers on Social Foundations of Education at the conference, enjoyed the intellectual give-and-take of the discussions, and explored the city with colleagues after the sessions ended each evening.

Dauphine Orleans Hotel, New Orleans

Later, I went to work as a regional preschool coordinator for the Louisiana Department of Education, a project then housed in the School of Allied Health Sciences, LSU Medical Center in Shreveport.  Preschool coordinators were then part of a summer seminar in New Orleans. My colleagues and I stayed in the French Quarter on Dauphine Street, enjoyed late afternoon teas at our hotel and compared seafood dishes at various restaurants around town.   

Courtyard, Dauphine Orleans Hotel

Our week long class was held each summer at the University of New Orleans (UNO) and, as I’ve never been one to pass up a book store of any kind, I browsed through the UNO book store during breaks, purchasing esoteric titles on the history, sociology, anthropology or philosophy of education.

My husband Ricky and I love New Orleans. Before we were married, we attended Mardi Gras where we dived for beads and slept in passion tangled sheets on a pallet on the floor of a friend's small St. Ann Street house. We attended Jazz Fest to hear famous performers, then ended up in a tiny neighborhood club where a sensual man played the saxophone in a smoke-filled room and mesmerized patrons swayed to the music like snake charmers.

Our friends' second story front porch where we sit and people watch

When Hurricane Katrina and the flood hit, Ricky and I took in a family who were evacuated to the V.A. Hospital in Shreveport. They lived in our guest cottage until we could find them a house to rent. Though they were strangers to us when we met, like many relationships forged by the tragedy of Katrina, they have become our friends. This has been great for us because we have close friends to visit when we travel south to New Orleans.


When I first visited New Orleans so long ago, I never imagined this unique and troubled city would become part of who I am.

NOLA, the first time

In the sea of memories, "the first time" often stands out--the first day of school, the first kiss, the first formal evening gown, the first trip to New Orleans.

My first trip to New Orleans was a spur of the moment trip to a history conference while I was in college.  One of my hometown friends stopped by my dorm room to lament the fact that she was due to leave the next day to attend a history conference in New Orleans, but the other girl scheduled to go had cancelled.  The history professor taking the group to the conference wouldn't let just one female go by herself.  The hotel accommodations for the males attending were separate from those of the female students because of room availability. 

"I'll go with you," I quickly volunteered, "if my parents will let me."  I called home and did some fast talking.  The next day I was heading to New Orleans for the first time.  The history professor drove a van with 4 or 5 students, and it seemed like a long trip from the mountains of Virginia.  I don't remember the boys who went with us from our college, but I do remember New Orleans! 


The history conference was lively--there were heated discussions between young black activists and author William Styron because he, a white man, had the audacity to tell the story of Nat Turner in Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner that won the Pulitzer Prize that year (1968).  These angry black men in the audience also disagreed with the literary license Styron took in painting his portrait of Nat Turner. We sat in an aisle of the filled-to-capacity meeting room to listen to the debate. 



 My friend Annie and I continued our historical and cultural studies the next day in a tiny bar as we drank bourbon and Coke, while an older black man played the piano for us and very few other patrons--of course it was before noon!  We took a bus tour of New Orleans and walked through old cemeteries and looked for sites associated with voodoo queen, Marie Laveau.


 
One evening all of us from our college went with others from the history conference on a river boat cruise on the Mississippi.  Half intoxicated history professors danced with coeds, trying to grope them.  After an overly friendly, middle-aged professor danced with me, I pointed out my friend as a slow dance began and told the professor that she liked to dance much more than I did, which was true.  She could also handle herself better in delicate situations. 

A tropical rain storm descended as the cruise ended, and there were no taxis to be found.  All of us from our school ended up in the revolving bar atop the Monteleone Hotel to wait for a taxi.  That in itself was interesting since we attended a Methodist College that frowned on student drinking.  We had one drink and watched the city of New Orleans slowly revolve or so it seemed from our vantage point.  Once we were able to secure a cab, it dropped off the professor and male students at their hotel, with them all claiming extreme fatigue.  We later learned everyone from our college went back out that night, each intent on adventure.

Annie and I were not ready to call it a night, so instead of having the driver take us to our hotel, we had the cabbie take us to a bar we had visited earlier in the week.  It had been full of Tulane students, we had befriended the wait staff, and we felt it was a safe option for two girls alone in the Quarter. 

We didn't stay there long, however. We soon met two young sailors on leave and with them, we proceeded to hit every bar on Bourbon Street.  The shows in the bars were risque and my sailor got a bit frisky, so I made my friend trade with me.  I was happier to be paired with the shyer of the two guys.  The evening ended hours later with a brief kiss, probably to the disappointment of the sailors.  In truth, they  were even younger than we were, and at least they could tell their shipmates they had dates for the evening. 

As soon as our escorts left us, my friend and I were out on the street again, hunting for food this time.  We found an all-night diner close-by and put some food into our stomachs to counteract the bourbon we had consumed. 

As I recall, we headed home the next day.  I've always felt the Crescent City had to live up to high standards if subsequent visits were to be as eventful as my first, but more about that later. . . .

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.