Audiobook – Page 72 – Carol's Notebook

A Gentleman’s Murder by Christopher Huang

August 15, 2019August 15, 2019 by Carol4 Comments

There are a few things you might not know about me. 1.) I love clickbait. 2.) I can be a sucker for ads, not the ones on tv necessarily, more often the ones that show up on websites or facebook, you know those targetted ads. A Gentleman's Murder showed up in one of the ads on Goodreads. I forget what exactly the mini-blurb in the ad said, probably something along the lines of "reminiscent of the Golden Age of Mysteries, but it, along with the title and cover, was enough to send me off to the full blurb and I ended up adding it to my to-read list. A Gentleman's Murder takes place just after WWI in London. While a lot of the mysteries I've read that were actually written in that era gloss over the war, this one faces it aftereffects head-on. "Shell Shock," since this takes places before we referred to it as PTSD, plays an important role in...

The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz

August 13, 2019October 27, 2021 by Carol4 Comments

Hawthorne has been called in by the police again to help solve a murder, and of course, he convinces Horowitz to join him. After all, Horowitz needs to write two more stories featuring Hawthorne. The Sentence Is Death is the second in the series and honestly, I liked the whole author as a character thing more enjoyable this time around. The first time around I found it almost clever for clever's sake, but in this one it was amusing, seeing how people reacted to him, or not, knowing he was an author. I don't really have much to say about this one. It's a good traditional mystery, kind of a take on Sherlock and Watson, with Hawthorne as Sherlock, putting together the clues. He's not entirely likable, definitely not politically correct, and a bit abrasive. He keeps his theories to himself right up until the end. And Horowitz is our bumbling Watson, never getting the clues quite right, asking the wrong...

Everything Below the Waist by Jennifer Block

August 1, 2019August 1, 2019 by Carol4 Comments

Everything Below the Waist by Jennifer Block was eye-opening. In the last few years, I've gone out of my way to see women doctors, they make me more comfortable and I feel like they listen better, but to be honest, I hadn't really thought beyond that. Block's focus is on women's reproductive health specifically, but she does talk about how doctors and the medical establishment treat women both now and historically. Female reproductive health covers a range of sub-topics, and Block laid out the facts thoroughly and specifically, citing studies from numerous medical journals. Covered here is routine gynecologic care, hormonal birth control, infertility treatment, abortion, pregnancy, and childbirth. Most women will find something in these pages they can relate to. Maybe in a good way, a birth that went well or having a skilled surgeon. Maybe it's being bullied by a doctor or given unnecessary tests. Maybe it's not being given all the information about whatever the pharmaceutical companies are...

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

July 23, 2019August 1, 2019 by Carol8 Comments

Some authors manage to pack more atmosphere and tension and characters into less than 200 pages than others ever manage to, even in books twice as long. Lindsay has done just that in Picnic at Hanging Rock. Girls at a boarding school go out for a picnic, as the title states, at Hanging Rock. Hanging Rock is a former volcano in central Victoria, Australia. The setting plays a huge part in the story, casts its shadow over the whole book. Hanging Rock After lunch, four of the girls go climbing in the rocks, followed eventually by one of the teachers. One of the girls runs back to the picnic area in terror, but with no memory of what happened. The rest of the girls and the teacher are never seen again. The rest of the story tells us what happens after. The ripples from the disappearances fan out, bringing terrible endings for some people and happily ever afters for others. There are a...

Taking Out the Trash by Tristi Pinkston

July 16, 2019July 17, 2019 by Carol4 Comments

Taking Out the Trash is a cozy mystery that's trying to be funny, but fell flat for me. Estelle is a middle-aged housewife with an accountant husband, an adult son, and a quirky best friend, Vera. The cops find a Senator's body in her garbage can and her son, who has an internship in Washington, quickly comes under suspicion. Of course, Estelle and Vera have to investigate; they can't have Andrew convicted of the murder. I like that Estelle and her husband are a stable, loving couple, but I tend to prefer my heroines with a bit less lying to their husbands/having their husbands treat them like they can't take care of themselves. Granted, maybe she can't, she does end up in a couple of dangerous situations, but still, that's standard cozy behavior. And I wish she could have kept the hair color that made her feel so pretty. She also seemed a bit older than her early-60s to me,...

99 Percent Kill by Doug Richardson

July 11, 2019July 11, 2019 by Carol2 Comments

In 99 Percent Kill, Lucky Dey has to find the missing/runaway daughter of a Wisconsin millionaire; a tough enough job in LA, where a pretty young girl is a target for all kind of nasty stuff, made even tougher by the father who insists on riding along. I liked Lucky a bit better this time around than I did in the first of the series, Blood Money. He's still tough, but he's not as mean. He's still single-minded, but this time it comes off as a good thing, an asset. He's also addicted to painkillers. He's one of those characters who has a chip on his shoulder and a black cloud over his head. I think I'd like to see him working as an actual cop one of these days. 99 Percent Kill is action-packed, not surprising when the author started as a screenwriter, but it gives us moments to breathe, essential when most of what we're reading is disturbing and violent....