Smoke and Mirrors, the second book in Elly Griffiths series featuring DI Stephens, and actor/magician Max Mephisto, is set in Brighton about a year after the events in the Zig Zag Girl, during the winter of 1951. Max and the Great Diablo are performing in a pantomime in town. These type of pantomimes seem to be a very British thing. It's a theater play that involves music, topical jokes, and slapstick comedy, and in this case magic, and is based on a fairy tale or nursery story. They are usually produced around Christmas, I'm not sure why.
When two young children go missing, and are later found dead in a snowbank surrounded by candies, DI Edgar Stephens, and his officers, Emma Holmes and Bob Willis, are tasked to investigate. With a frightened community demanding that the killer be found, and little evidence to go on, Stephens turns to his old friend Max for information after drawing a possible link to...
I finished Doctored Evidence about a week ago- I'm a little behind on posting. The thing is, when I sat down to think about it, I remembered how unlikeable the victim was and really how good it was for the neighbor to come forward with her evidence that the maid, now dead too, was not guilty. What is took me a while to remember though was the killer's identity.
I liked the basic plot - Brunetti sets out to clear the Romanian maid's name and find the real killer. It's the kind of thing he would do. I like Venice, the food and the characters as usual. I didn't care for the seven deadly sins conversations and obviously the mystery itself was not memorable. It had a lot to do with money and blackmail. Eh, maybe I've just read too many of hers lately....
The Montalbano series is not one I read/listen to in order. When I'm between books and one is available at the library I pick it up, which is how I ended up listening to The Overnight Kidnapper. It's pretty typical for the series.
We have some random, brief kidnappings that Montalbano is looking into, along with an arson, but, in true mystery book style, it's all connected and much more serious than it seems at first, when it turns into a murder investigation.
Montalbano is his usual self, amusing and charming in his own way. I think the narrator does a good job with him. We've got the usual sidekicks and I love the way his housekeeper/cook, Adelina, deals with a break-in without losing track of her pasta. I guess I just like the feel of these books, the characters, the setting, the food.
The actual mystery in this one was fine, if a little odd. Who kidnaps a woman for just an...
I don't read the Commissario Guido Brunetti series in order. I jump around depending on what's available at the library. The series is currently at 28, so Willful Behavior is toward the middle.
Paola, Guido's wife, brings the case to his attention. One of her students has a question about receiving a pardon for her dead grandfather. She doesn't provide many clues, just enough to make Brunetti curious. And then she ends up dead, killed.
This time the mystery involves events from World War II and Guido talks to his father-in-law and some friends about their experiences during the war and stories they've heard.
The most interesting part of the story for me was the history of Italy during World War II. I honestly don't know much about Italy during that time period. World War II tends to come up in European mysteries much more than American ones, for obvious reason, but I still find it rather fascinating. Mussolini led Italy...
I'm officially done with the James Bond books. I enjoy the movies, but the books are just too incredibly chauvinistic and sexist. Usually I can take books for when they were written, but when characters say things like, "All women want to be swept off their feet. In their dreams they long to be slung over a man's shoulder and taken into a cave and raped." or when one scene is literally naked gypsy women fighting to the death over a man. Rape was never okay, not then, not now. Our Bond girl, Tatiana, is gullible and too sweet and beautiful and Fleming actually has her ask Bond, "You won't let me get so fat that I am no use for making love? You will have to be careful, or I shall eat all day long and sleep. You will beat me if I eat too much?"
I want to say at least the plot was good, but I'm not entirely...
