Death by Bubble Tea is the first in a series featuring Yale Yere and her cousin, Celine. Yale is not thrilled that Celine is in town for a visit and is even less excited when her father suggests the two of them work together at his restaurant's food stand at the night market in their neighborhood. The evening surprisingly goes well, until Yale finds a dead body on her way home. The young woman is lying next to one of the distinctive glasses that Yale and Celine served their drinks in, so the police view them as suspects. Of course, Yale and Celine decide they need to do some snooping around and find the cops better people to be interested in.
I really wanted to like this book, but I found Yale annoying. She doesn't have a cell phone. She doesn't drive because of her mother's death. She doesn't seem to have any friends and she's given up cooking. Celine, who...
The Justice of Kings is a compelling mix of fantasy, mystery and legal thriller. The novel follows Sir Konrad Vonvalt, an itinerant Justice of the Empire of the Wolf. His job, and life's purpose, is to fairly uphold the empire's laws and mete out justice as appropriate. He is accompanied by his taskman and friend, former soldier Dubine Bressinger, and his clerk, Helena Sedanka, a 19 year old woman who was essentially rescued by Vonvalt from a life on the streets. The three travel to Galen’s Vale where Vonvalt takes on an investigation into the murder of a noblewoman, but the case has Empire-wide ramifications.
The story is told through the first-person perspective of Helena. We’re hearing, since I listened to the audiobook, Helena’s recounting of the past, which worked well. It showed us Vonvalt's actions and his reasoning as he discusses things with Helena, but also lets us know that he's not infallible, that Helena can't always agree with him. Vonvalt protects...
I was looking for a book set in Cuba when I ran across Death Comes in Through the Kitchen. It sounded like one I would enjoy - an interesting setting, an interesting main character, and Cuban food. I ended up being disappointed.
Matt arrives in Havana to meet his Cuban fiancée, Yarmila, hopefully get married and persuade her to return with him to the States. Things go down hill immediately when he finds Yarmila dead in her apartment He becomes a suspect in her murder and the authorities believe he may be an American spy.
We see most of the story from Matt's viewpint.. He's pretty clueless really, about Yarmila's death, but also about life in Cuba. We also get to see the case, and Cuba, from Detective Martinez's point of view. She's in charge of the official investigation, but she's not getting much cooperation from the other people involved. And finally, we have El Padrino, a former police officer turned...
Murder at Mallowan Hall takes us to the fictionalized home of author Agatha Christie and her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. I will admit to being a huge Christie fan, which is why this series caught my eye.
Our amateur sleuth is the housekeeper, Phyllida Bright, who is extremely competent at her job. She is the one who finds the body in the library. The murdered man was an uninvited guest at the Mallowans' house party, and Phyllida questions whether local police are capable of solving the crime. So, between serving the demanding guests and managing the nervous staff, she starts investigating on her own.
I thoroughly enjoyed the characters in this one - not the guests, but the staff. Phyllida is shrewd and charming. The butler has his own views on the way things should be run, but has her back when push comes to shove. The chauffeur is a good foil for Phyllida - irreverent, mysterious, always getting...
I have loved everything I've read by Claire North, so I'm not sure why it took me so long to pick up Ithaca. Maybe the mythology/ Ancient Greece setting just didn't grab my attention and seemed so different from the others I've read by North. But I ended up loving it.
It has been seventeen years since Odysseus left to fight in the Trojan War, leaving Penelope and their son, Telemachus, behind in Ithaca. Penelope is left to fend for herself and her son and to run the kingdom with the help of her advisors, men who of course think they are both more competent and powerful than Penelope. They're wrong. Penelope is intelligent and cunning and she and her maids wield their power subtly and behind the scenes.
Hera, goddess of women, marriage and childbirth, is our narrator and is perfect for the part. She's sarcastic and funny and allows us to see all that's going on, but from her own...
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a true crime classic and I don't know why it's taken me so long to read it. I will say it reads more like a novel than non-fiction, in part because the author inserts a fictionalized version of himself meeting the people of Savannah long before he actually arrived in town. He gives us a front-row seat to the characters and events leading up to the day Jim Williams shoots Danny Hansford and what follows.
The first third or so of the book is meandering in a good way. We meet some of the people of the city, from the old money folks to the "upstarts," from pianists to drag queens. Some characters are so over the top that knowing they were true is fun. We also learn some of the history of the place and the historical figures associated with it.
After the death (murder?) of Hansford, we see how old rivalries,...
