I enjoyed Alibi by Accident and Verona is quite a main character. Keep that in mind because the book itself had some issues for me. She's a private detective, or a private dick as she refers to herself in a kind of running joke, in Calgary. Her new client, Miami, knows her very rich husband is about to divorce her and wants Verona to get proof that he's cheating on her so she can cash in on her share of the billions. Then, the husband ends up dead, murdered in a hotel in Greece, and Miami becomes a chief suspect, even though she was thousands of miles away, so Verona is off to Greece to find another focus for the police's attention.
I was not prepared for the language in this one. I should have been, just look at the first word of the blurb, but there were too many f-words when they just weren't needed. I was also not...
Paul is invited to travel with Xéra, his good friend of fifteen years, on board a private yacht as they travel from England to the Caribbean. The trip is part pleasure, a celebration of her recent wedding, and part work - she wants Paul to write her biography and they plan to work on it together on board. The trip starts out poorly when Paul's clothes are dropped in the water and his cabin located in the crew area. Xéra seems tense, which only increases when her priceless necklace, a present from her new husband, is stolen. And the other members of the trip, family and friends of the husband, are self-centered, unlikeable people.
I like Paul, I really do, which is why it annoys me that so many bad things happen to him here. I guess I should really list them, because that would probably ruin half of the plot, but it's a bit over the top. It's almost like...
I loved A Night in the Lonesome October. It's the late 1800s and a group of strangers have gathered in a village outside of London for The Game. We know them, of course: Jack (the Ripper), Larry Talbot (The Wolfman), the Great Detective (Sherlock Holmes), the Count (Dracula), the Good Doctor (Frankenstein) and others, along with their familiars. Our narrator is Snuff, Jack's mathematically-inclined dog, who is a very good boy. There are 31 chapters, one for each day in October, but I listened to most of it on a long car ride.
We are dumped right in the middle of the action and left to kind of figure stuff out on our own. It's a light, fun book, but chockful of literary and cultural references and amazing dialogue. It's clever and funny and the characters, including the critters, are so well drawn. And the showdown at the end is fabulous. I will say i should have boned up on...
I am torn about History Lessons; some things I loved, a lot I didn't. Our main character is history professor, Daphne Ouverture, who is trying to solve the murder of another professor, Sam Taylor. Sam's text to her the night of his death was strange, as is the fact that one of her books is missing. It all must be connected to his death and she needs to find out how.
I want to love Daphne. She's smart and tough and I appreciated her thoughts on race and feminism and society. I didn't like the way she instantly smitten with Rowan, the police consultant/bookstore owner. I didn't like how unsure she seemed of herself in the beginning, especially after we meet her family and see how she deals with some situations later on in the book.
I love the language in the book and the literary and historical references. You could make a whole reading list based on this one. I...
This one might have been my favorite of the series so far. Not because of the plot necessarily - Pleiti is helping a friend who is concerned about potential threats to her cousin who is up for a promotion at another university- but because of the language and the Holmes/Watson vibes, both of which are so much more noticeable in this installment. I will say that this does work as a stand-alone although one of the major events from the first is referenced and carries some importance.
The series is set on Jupiter, which was settled after Earth's atmosphere became uninhabitable. Pleiti is a professor in the classics department, studying what life was like on earth in the hopes of eventually returning, which makes a nice contrast with the modernists she meets, who are more interested in studying the now and how people and animals are adapting. But people are still people, with jealousies and secrets, which means people like...
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is the second novella featuring Mossa and Pleiti. We've colonized Jupiter, "Giant," but are still working towards one day returning to Earth. Mossa, our investigator, is on a missing persons case that takes her to Veldageld where Pleiti lives and works. She of course asks Pleiti for help, since it is one of the university students who seems to have disappeared. I can't decide how I feel about Mossa and Pleiti's relationship. Pleiti spends so much time picking over every little comment or decision Mossa makes that it get annoying. I like them together and I like how they have different strengths and abilities - I just want Pleiti to communicate better and be a little less insecure. I feel like that's what I always want in romances and why I don't usually read them. At least here the main focus is on the mystery and not their relationship.
The mystery is put together well and I...
