Book Reviews – Page 109 – Carol's Notebook

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

February 5, 2019February 7, 2019 by Carol10 Comments

I don't want to tell you much about The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I don't want to ruin it for you. Someone described it as "Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day" and I think that's pretty dead on. If you enjoy a good country house mystery, but like to take a chance with a book that's outside the usual, that may confuse/frustrate you at times, you should definitely pick it up. Aiden Bishop is our detective, but he doesn't remember being Aiden. He only knows that he's here, in Blackheath, and has to solve a murder that doesn't look like a murder. He repeats the same day eight times, but in eight different bodies. There are clues and red herrings, helpers and adversaries. We've got the standards of a house party, relatives who don't get along, guests with tons of secrets, scandals and drugs. And then we've got the almost sci-fi aspect of switching hosts and affecting how the day progresses...

Murder at Larkfield Barn by Betty Rowlands

February 4, 2019February 4, 2019 by Carol2 Comments

Murder at Larkfield Barn is the second of the Melissa Craig mysteries I've read, so while I usually avoid books with serial killers, I knew the type of book it was going to be and wasn't too concerned. Melissa is a mystery writer with a Private Investigator boyfriend, so it's really no wonder she gets mixed up in these mysteries. The blurb gives you the lay-out. There's a serial killer in the area who paints horrible smiles on the victims. But the police aren't convinced the murder in Upper Benbury was committed by the same person, maybe it's a copycat. It turns out that of course there's more than one killer. And Melissa is always at just the right place at the right time to put all the clues together. Rowland can be a little heavy-handed in this one. The foreshadowing is annoying rather than suspense-building. It's pretty easy to guess who the killer(s) are, just based on how they're portrayed, but...

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

January 30, 2019January 29, 2019 by Carol8 Comments

I knew I'd love The Three Musketeers. The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas is one of my favorite all-time books and this is even more mentioned/read/known. So, I was happy when the Classics Club Spin hit #1 and my challenge was then to read The Three Musketeers by the end of January. Dumas takes the historical events of France, 1625-27, and plays with them to bring us one of the best adventure stories ever. The beautiful Anne of Austria is Queen of France, but she is lukewarm, at best, toward her husband, XIII. Cardinal Richelieu, the true ruler of the country, has made advances towards her, but been rebuffed; he's eaten up by jealousy and spite, especially since he knows through his network of informers that Anne's heart in fact belongs to the handsome Lord Buckingham. These fictionalized historical figures are at the center of the story, it's their loves, desires, conquests and favors that everyone else's life revolves...

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

January 29, 2019January 28, 2019 by Carol2 Comments

Sapiens looks at our history, but that history is 100,000 years long, so it's more of a quick overview of our history. I found it rather fascinating though. He takes us through the history of human development and migration, through the Cognitive Revolution, and Agricultural Revolution. He looks at how currency and coinage developed, the creation of religions, the arrival of imperialism and capitalism, and the history of inequalities and injustices. Yes, he has his own biases, but I loved the bits of information. So many things from this book pulled into conversations I was having, like the worth of a slave's life and the bank run in It's a Wonderful Life (which I've never watched by the way). In the end, he veers off into predictions for the future. I, personally, didn't find it particularly pessimistic, and there was a lot of hope too, like how relatively peaceful it is now. If you love history, I wouldn't suggest reading...

Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 by Carol11 Comments

Penny's Inspector Gamache series is definitely one that is best to read from the beginning. However, this is #14, which makes it a bit difficult, so it you want to jump in here, I'd recommend you at least read Glass Houses, #13, as it connects closely with some of the events in Kingdom of the Blind. We've got two story lines in this one. There's the mysterious will and dead man in a collapsed house. Then, there's secondary one involving the drugs Gamache allowed to get onto the streets of Montreal in the previous. The Baroness, Bertha Baumgartnor, a cleaning woman who lived near Three Pines, wrote the will mentioned in the blurb, splitting between her children a vast fortune and properties that she clearly did not have. The dead man is her son. The piece about the collapsed farmhouse, about the search and rescue, is one of the tensest scenes on the book. Winter in Quebec can be dangerous. I loved...

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie

January 3, 2019January 3, 2019 by Carol6 Comments

When will these older, wealthy men stop inviting their whole families, most of whom hate them or each other, to Christmas house parties? Simeon Lee is the one who's done it this time. All his children, a grandchild none of the others know, and an old "friend's" son, are at the house for Christmas and of course Simeon Lee ends up dead, killed in a locked room. There are plenty of motives, although how was he killed is a good question. The killer was a surprise to me. I'm not sure we really had enough clues to guess who it was on our own. But it's a good ending. I do love Christie. I also listened to this short story. It's another Christmas only this time, Poirot already knows what the crime was, a stolen gem. It's his job to track it down. But he also learns how enjoyable an English Christmas can be. There's no actual murder in this one, which...