Harper Audio – Page 5 – Carol's Notebook

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

October 5, 2021November 12, 2021 by Carol2 Comments

I know to trust Agatha Christie, but her international thriller-type books are not my favorite. So, when Cat Among the Pigeons started out with a revolution in Ramat, I was a bit worried. Prince Ali Yusef is preparing to leave the country, but before he does, he entrusts his good friend with a fortune in jewels, asking that they be gotten to England and to the man who will know what to do with them. The jewels end up at a Meadowbank, a prestigious girls school, along with several people on their trail, and this is the kind of setting I like. It's a closed group of people, the students and the staff. Soon, the phys ed teacher is killed. The killer has to be at the school, but the investigation doesn't progress well, and two more people end up dead. Eventually (over 2/3 into the book), Poirot takes on the case. Poirot doesn't do much investigating here. A bit of talking...

Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

July 28, 2021July 28, 2021 by Carol6 Comments

Murder at the Vicarage was a reread for me, but I didn't actually remember anything about it. This is the first book featuring Miss Marple and is set entirely in St Mary Mead, a small town where not much happens, and the ladies of the town know everyone's business and routinely gossip about it. Leonard Clement, the vicar, returns to his home one evening to find the body of Colonel Protheroe in the study. Protheroe was not well-liked in town and there are several people who may have wanted him dead. Clement is our narrator. We have a police detective who is a bit, not bumbling but oversure of himself. And we have Miss Marple who sees a lot and has a good sense of human nature. It's Miss Marple of course who solves the case, along with help from the vicar. The mystery itself was good. We've got plenty of suspects, fair clues, and decent red herrings. The villagers are...

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...

Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie

October 26, 2018 by Carol6 Comments

I love the title Sparkling Cyanide. Christie's titles don't tend to be particularly noticeable, but Sparkling Cyanide stands out. It captures clearly the method of murder - cyanide in the champagne, and it's a bit glamorous. Rosemarie died a year ago, presumably suicide. She was a beautiful woman, but her death benefitted several people. Her husband, George, truly loved her, in spite of her affairs, and has come to believe that she was actually murdered. Any one who was at the dinner the night she died could have done it - her lover or his scorned wife, her sister Iris who stands to inherit, the husband's trusted secretary, or a rather shady "friend" who, a year later is making moves on Iris. George organizes a second dinner party, with the same people, hoping to force a confession. It all goes terribly wrong when George is killed too. Colonel Race, a friend of George's, helps in the investigation. He doesn't actually do much, but he is on...

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

August 4, 2017April 14, 2025 by Carol4 Comments

I should have loved Magpie Murders. It's definitely a book for mystery readers. Not only does it have two well-plotted mysteries, it has some great quotes about the nature of mysteries and reading. “You must know that feeling when it's raining outside and the heating's on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book. You read and you read and you feel the pages slipping through your fingers until suddenly there are fewer in your right hand than there are in your left and you want to slow down but you still hurtle on towards a conclusion you can hardly bear to discover.” “As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists & turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.” The set up is great, a novel within a novel, both murder...

Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris

February 3, 2016May 24, 2016 by Carol3 Comments

Phoenix Rising was fun, but not quite good enough to hold my attention the whole time - like I found myself at the gym watching the captions on HGTV instead of listening to the story. I think it's a problem with the attitude of the book. It's steampunk. Books is an archivist; Braun is kind of a female James Bond. They embark on solving a mystery that drove one of their colleagues literally insane. There are huge mechamen and an enemy intent on destroying England maybe - not sure. There's an orgy and an escape from the dungeon. It's absurd and would be amusing, if it felt like the story knew how silly it was, instead it seems to take itself seriously. Now, I listened to the audio, so I don't know if that's just the way the narration seemed and I would have found the whole think more tongue in cheek had I been reading it in print. I like...