Paperback Archives – Carol's Notebook

A Curious Incident by Vicki Delany

August 16, 2023August 16, 2023 by Carol2 Comments

Gemma Doyle owns a Sherlock Holmes-themed bookshop, which I loved. As with most cozy mysteries, she often stumbles across the crimes in her small town, in this case West London on Cape Cod. She's also dating a police detective, Ryan Ashburn, which of cour leads to some tension. This time around, Gemma decides to help a young girl, Lauren, clear her mother of murder charges. The dead body of Anna, a well-known gardener, is found in the darkest part of the park. There were no witnesses and little evidence, but Anna and Sheila, Lauren's mom, had a major fight the morning of the murder. A Curious Incident is fun and the mystery is put together well. We have several suspects and Gemma does a good job putting the clues together. Gemma is a good character, observant, smart, and nice. Her friends add charm to the story and they all make me smile. ...

An English Garden Murder by Katie Gayle

June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 by CarolNo Comments

Newly-retired and newly-divorced London social worker Julia Bird has just moved to a village in the Cotswolds. Julia is working on making it her home - meeting new people, having a chicken coop built, getting a dog. No sooner has Julia hired local handyman Johnny Blunt and his grandson to tear down an old shed and build the chicken coop, than human remains are discovered under the shed's foundation. Julia is of course curious about the identity of the body and is pretty good at reading people's behaviors so starts asking questions. And then she discovers a second body, and she knows there's a killer still living in the town. The village is full of appropriately quirky people but there's a lot going on under the surface. Julia is a good lead character. She's kind of reinventing herself and finding her feet in her new situation. She even has a possible love interest. D.I. Hayley Gibson is in charge of...

The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado

June 21, 2023June 22, 2023 by Carol2 Comments

I don't read a lot of graphic novels. I get more caught up in the words and tend to ignore the images, which means I lose half of the experience. However, the art in The Low, Low Woods was definitely eye-catching, integral to the story, and kept me engaged. In a small, Pennsylvania mining town, the women lose chunks of their memory. Two teenage girls (one Latina, one Black, both queer) are on a quest to figure out what's going on. The reasons for the memory losses are at least partially predictable and horrifying. The Low, Low Woods deals with tough topics and doesn't shy away from the fact that survivors deal with trauma differently. It dealt with several themes which could have been explored more, but I truly liked Vee and El, who have been best friends since they were kids. The town is a hard place to live and a hard place to leave. ...

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda

February 10, 2023February 9, 2023 by CarolNo Comments

I enjoyed the collection of stories in Where the Wild Ladies Are. All of them are loosely based on traditional Japanese stories of yōkai, ghosts and monsters that figure prominently in the country's folklore. But Matsuda adapts them to a modern setting and gives them feminist themes that are very relevant in the present day. In the title story, a young man named Shigeru finds himself at loose ends after the suicide of his mother. He's looking for work but finds himself unequipped to search for a job while he feels so drained. "Shigeru felt barely capable of surviving a gentle wave lapping up on shore, let alone a turbulent sea. Between him and a sandcastle built by a kid with a plastic spade, Shigeru suspected he'd be the first to collapse." But he eventually lands a position on an assembly line at a mysterious company that connects the stories. And then odd things start happening. When he visits his mother's grave,...

The Holdout by Graham Moore

July 5, 2022July 5, 2022 by CarolNo Comments

The Holdout is my first "summer book" this year - a paperback that I can read while floating in the pool or sitting in my hammock. Entertaining and fun, but not one I'd be afraid to get a little water on. Thankfully, cause half of it got dunked on accident. Ten years ago, Maya was the lone holdout on a jury and convinced her fellow jurors to acquit a black teacher accused of murdering his white teenage student. According to the press and most people, they got it wrong. One of the other jurors, Rick, thinks they let a guilty man go free and blames Maya. Ten years later, the jury is reassembled for a documentary. Rick claims to have new evidence but is killed before he can share it. Maya is the prime suspect and feels the only option for her is to prove who the killer really is. The story alternates between the still unsolved 10-year-old case to the...

Maigret in Holland by Georges Simenon

June 7, 2022June 27, 2022 by Carol2 Comments

Maigret in Holland was perhaps not my best choice for my first Maigret read, but it was the only one the used bookstore in town had. Maigret is not in France here, he's been called to Holland where a French national is being detained under suspicion of murder. Maigret does not speak any Dutch, which slows his investigation some. He interviews the main characters in the story with varying degrees of success depending on their knowledge of the French language. The small town and characters are described well, wanting to keep their secrets and the status quo. Maigret is intelligent and observant. I'd like to read another when he is on his home turf. ...