Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit (Kopp Sisters, #4)

Miss Kopp Just Won't QuitMiss Kopp Just Won't Quit
by Amy Stewart
Rating: ★★★★
Series: Kopp Sisters #4
Publication Date: September 11, 2018
Pages: 309
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

While transporting a woman to an insane asylum, Deputy Kopp discovers something deeply troubling about her story. Before she can investigate, another inmate breaks free and tries to escape.

In both cases, Constance runs instinctively toward justice. But 1916 is a high-stakes US election year, and any move she makes could jeopardize Sheriff Heath’s future — and her own. Constance’s controversial career makes her the target of political attacks.


I always enjoy these books; they’re soothing reads in many ways, as Stewart doesn’t try to over dramatise or create more suspense than history dictates.  (This series is based on the real events and life of Constance Kopp.)  This 4th instalment surrounds the election for Sheriff, a pivotal point for Constance, because the sitting sheriff – the one that was bold enough to hire a woman – has hit his term limit and can run.

It’s a bittersweet story with an interesting ending.  I look forward to finding out how the Kopp sisters fare.

 

Content copied from: http://jenn.booklikes.com/post/2800337/miss-kopp-just-won-t-quit-kopp-sisters-4.

Why Shoot a Butler?

Why Shoot a Butler?Why Shoot a Butler?
by Georgette Heyer
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 0434328499
Publication Date: August 11, 1979
Pages: 262
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Heinemann : London

Every family has secrets, but now they are turning deadly...

On a dark night, along a lonely country road, barrister Frank Amberley stops to help a young lady in distress and discovers a sports car with a corpse behind the wheel. The girl protests her innocence and Amberley believes her--at least until he gets drawn into the mystery and the evidence incriminating Shirley Brown begins to add up.

Why Shoot a Butler? is an English country-house murder with a twist. In this beloved classic by Georgette Heyer, the butler is the victim, every clue complicates the puzzle, and the bumbling police are well-meaning but completely baffled. Fortunately, amateur sleuth Amberley is as brilliant as he is arrogant as he ferrets out the desperate killer--even though this time he's not sure he wants toknow the truth...


An accidental re-read, but an enjoyable one.  As I started reading it, I remembered my frustration the first time around with the slow, purposefully vague start, but once into it, I enjoyed the banter and the mystery again – and had no recollection as to whodunnit.

 

Content retrieved from: http://jenn.booklikes.com/post/2634313/why-shoot-a-butler.

Cotillion

CotillionCotillion
by Georgette Heyer
Rating: ★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1952
Pages: 345
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Heinemann

I was in the mood for a light read and while I was perusing my TBR piles, boxes, and shelves, I came across this and remembered that Lillelara had recently read it and enjoyed it.

I definitely enjoyed The Grand Sophy better, but this one got me through without complaint.  I struggled to really feel invested in the story or any of the characters though; it seemed to missing just that little bit of depth – or else my reading slump had dulled my reading sense, rendering everything a bit duller.  Given Heyer’s hit and miss record, either is possible.  Or perhaps a bit of both:  the final scene at Rattray’s rectory perked me right up; in that moment, the characters popped to life for me and I cared about what happened next.

I haven’t read even close to Heyer’s entire backlist, but I’d firmly place this midway on a scale of those I’ve read so far.

Penny for Your Secrets (Verity Kent, #3)

Penny for Your SecretsPenny for Your Secrets
by Anna Lee Huber
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 1496713192
Series: Verity Kent #3
Publication Date: October 29, 2019
Pages: 326
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Kensington

Each time after reading the first two books, I told myself I wasn’t going to read the next one, because I really dislike the way she setup the characters.  To explain more would be a plot spoiler for book 1, sorry.  But yet, I keep on picking up the next book and reading it.

Characters’ lives aside, Anna Lee Huber writes a good mystery.  The plots are generally intricate and mostly avoid the trite or well-worn paths of the genre.  This one was no different, except that it’s setting up a multi book arc with a nemesis, and I’m pretty wishy-washy about nemeses.  I also got a little bit tired of the constant references to Verity’s spy career during the war.  I suspect this is a Kensington editorial thing as it’s the type of over-reference I find a lot in their books, making me wonder if they underestimate their readers’ abilities to reading comprehension.

Generally an enjoyable read, but once again, I find myself thinking I might not buy the next one, though of course, I probably will anyway.

An Artless Demise (Lady Darby, #7)

An Artless DemiseAn Artless Demise
by Anna Lee Huber
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451491367
Series: A Lady Darby Mystery #7
Publication Date: April 2, 2019
Pages: 372
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery

I thoroughly enjoy this series, and I enjoyed this one too, but I think it might be the one I liked least.

Anyone who has read the earlier books in the series will readily agree that Lady Darby has had an unarguably difficult and painful past.  Her first husband, a famous anatomist, forced her to attend his human dissections to draw the illustrations required for his planned masterwork on the human anatomy.  When her part was revealed upon his death, she was vilified and run out of London. Now she’s back, in love, married, and pregnant, and her timing is awful; burkers have been caught attempting to sell the body of a dead boy to anatomists, and it’s obvious he did not meet his end naturally.  Then the nobs start getting killed in the streets of Mayfair and everyone is looking at Lady Darby again.

It’s a great story, but unfortunately, Kiera’s wallowing just a bit.  Not as much as your average historical heroine cliche, but more than what I’d expect from this strong and talented character.  Call it a justifiable response to the equivalent of PTSD, but she became a victim, and it was a bit disappointing, given all the adventures she’s had.  Usually, this wouldn’t be as big of a stand out as it is this time, but the murderer was obvious to me from the start, so I had nothing to distract me from Kiera’s sudden-onset mousiness.  She gets her mojo back in the end, so that’s something.

In spite of my nit-picking, it was still an enjoyable read overall, and I look forward to the next one.

Death Comes to Bath (Kurland St. Mary Mystery, #6)

Death Comes to BathDeath Comes to Bath
by Catherine Lloyd
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781496702128
Series: Kurland St. Mary Mystery #6
Publication Date: December 18, 2018
Pages: 266
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Kensington

This has been a reliable series from the start.  Death Comes to Bath is not the strongest in the series in terms of mystery plotting or main character development, but the atmosphere, setting and secondary character development balance the scales.

After a serious setback in Sir Robert Kurland’s post-war recovery, Lady (Lucy) Kurland packs up and drags him to Bath for 3 months for the restorative water cure, dragging her sister along in the hopes that she will find a suitable man to marry.  Sir Robert makes fast friends with their cantankerous neighbour and when he ends up dead, Robert and Lucy take it upon themselves to discover who, in one of the most disastrous families that ever was, might have committed the crime.

The outrageous dysfunction of the murdered man’s family almost lends an air of frivolity to the story, but not really.  The plotting of the murder itself was semi-predictable; the murderer wasn’t a shocking revelation, though it wasn’t at all telegraphed. A few extra points go to the author for the plot twist that I only cottoned on to a few pages before it was revealed to the characters.

The character development between Lucy and Robert was sadly predictable, although also historically accurate, so no fault goes to the author.  What was far more interesting to me is the continued exploration of Lucy’s sister Anna’s reluctance to marry because she doesn’t want kids.  Historically accurate or not, I find her small story line compelling and it filled the gaps nicely for me when the story threatened to become stale.  (It’s possible I mixed metaphors there?)

MT and I spent an all-too-short overnighter in Bath a few years ago, and all it’s done is whet my appetite for the city.  The area of Bath this story covers is small, and almost cliched with its mentions of the Pump Room, but I still ate it up with a spoon.

Death Comes to Bath is a light and charming way to spend a few hours, and I will happily anticipate a 7th adventure.

A Brush with Shadows (Lady Darby, #6)

A Brush with ShadowsA Brush with Shadows
by Anna Lee Huber
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780399587221
Series: A Lady Darby Mystery #6
Publication Date: March 6, 2018
Pages: 375
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime

I’ll put it out there: the recent books don’t have the edginess that the first few books had, and this one had Gage’s tragic past laid somewhat thickly on the ground, but I still thoroughly enjoy them.  I can imagine once you marry off your protagonist it becomes difficult to defy conventions quite so easily; some tropes become unavoidable.

Still, the characters continue to please, and Huber did fitting justice to the Dartmoor moors; Gage’s tragi-angst wasn’t the only thing thick on the ground:  thick fog, heavy mist, unrelenting rain, a formidable dark, gloomy manor, and a hint of the supernatural – the moors wouldn’t be the moors without them and they were all here in spades.

The mystery was pretty darn good too.  Was a crime committed?  Is the heir playing his usual games?  Why is everybody hiding everything?  In the end, crimes were definitely committed and while the murderer came out of nowhere for me, in spite of the name occurring to me in relation to a tangential plot element, I don’t feel like it was a cheat on the part of the author.  I can’t say she necessarily played fair in the strictest sense of the word, but I don’t feel like she pulled any rabbits out her hat either.

I’m a fan, and I’ll eagerly buy her next one.

This book will work for the Kill Your Darlings cards for Victim: Easy Rawlings and Victim: Ariadne Oliver.  Not sure which I’ll use it for yet though.

A Treacherous Curse (Veronica Speedwell, #3)

A Treacherous CurseA Treacherous Curse
by Deanna Raybourn
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451476173
Series: Veronica Speedwell Mystery #3
Publication Date: January 16, 2018
Pages: 308
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Berkley

I love Veronica Speedwell.  Her character is almost everything I admire in a person, with the exceptions of her penchants for collecting butterflies, necessitating her killing them, and her need to verbalise her sexual liberty.  This isn’t hypocrisy on my part; I think it’s distasteful when men make their sexual needs topics of casual conversation, and it’s no less so when a woman does it.  Boundaries.  Good fences make good neighbours and all that.

But these are very minor niggles.  Everything else about Veronica is excellent and Stoker doesn’t suck either.  Raybourn has found that perfect balance of rawness, gentility, intelligence, anger, and grace in her hero (although I have to say, what’s up with the eye patch? Is that really considered sexy?  I see one and have to resist the urge to pull it and watch it snap back).  The dialog between the two of them is snappy and sometimes electric.  There’s no doubt as to where these two are headed, but Raybourn is taking her time sending them there, and doing it well enough that I, for one, feel no impatience for them to get on with it already.

The mystery plot is the only thing that held this book back a bit for me.  It succeeded in terms of leaving me guessing until the very end, but honestly it was so convoluted that I stopped trying to figure it out about halfway through and just focused on the characters until the end.  That’s not necessarily a criticism; this is a strong book just on the merits of being an engrossing work of historical fiction.  But my enjoyment came from the story first, with the mystery an afterthought.

Sadly, I’m going to have to wait an entire year for the fourth book.  But I’ll be looking forward to it with anticipation.

Death Comes to the School (Kurland St. Mary Mystery, #4)

Death Comes To The SchoolDeath Comes To The School
by Catherine Lloyd
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781496702081
Series: Kurland St. Mary Mystery #5
Publication Date: November 28, 2017
Pages: 273
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Kensington

I caught a cold a few weeks ago that I thought I’d kicked to the curb after only 4 days, only to have it come raging back a week later in the form of a cough that will. not. die.  I’ve sounded like a barking seal for the last 8 days and yesterday, to add insult to injury, I got a skull cracking headache, too, leaving me feeling like every time I coughed I was going to end up like those people in the X-files, whose brains exploded out their ears.

So even though I have 3 other books currently going, I needed something very easy on both my brain and my eyes.  Death Comes to the School was a perfect fit with it’s on-the-large-side-of-average typeface and it’s very familiar backdrop and characters.  It allowed me to forget for a time about the icepack wrapped around my head and the cough lozenges that have stained my tongue purple (black elderberry).

The story starts off 3 years after the last book;  why don’t authors of series do this more often?  It makes everything that happens so much more believable; rather than have a village of death, you’re backdrop is just a village where normal stuff happens.  Anyway, the murder happens fairly quickly, to a school teacher nobody liked, and it happens rather oddly, with a hat pin in her neck and a pen in her eye.  From this point, the author has a bit of fun twisting the character stereotypes of the time around and using them to her advantage.  The mystery plotting of the book is really very good, although the motivation tie-in at the end was a tad weak.

The character angst though, I could have done without.  I really like Robert and Lucy, both individually and together but this book … this book turn them into cardboard cliches, all because Lucy has yet to produce an heir.  This is an historically accurate issue; childbirth was a treacherous business and entailments created situations where entire villages depended on one poor woman to produce a son.  I get that.  But the whole emotional miscommunication thing that bogged down this story was stupid; for two characters that talked and argued about everything incessantly in the first three books, the whole “doesn’t she want me?” “he doesn’t desire me anymore, I’m a failure” let’s-not-talk thing was just annoying.

There was more to like than not, though, and as a nice bonus, the book takes place during Christmas, so it was seasonal too!  This has been a solid series so far and I’m already looking forward to the next one, which will undoubtably continue to revolve around heirs and spares, but hopefully without all the silly angst.

Book themes for St. Martin’s Day: Read a book set  before the age of electricity.

 

 

Secrets in the Mist

Secrets in the MistSecrets in the Mist
by Anna Lee Huber
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780997939620
Series: Gothic Myths #1
Publication Date: October 25, 2016
Pages: 378
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Brightstone Media

2021 Update:  I actually enjoyed this more the second time around, enough to give it a 4 star rating over the original 3.

——–

Hmm… how to sum up my thoughts about this book?  Mostly, it needed a harsher editor.

I’m a huge fan of Anna Lee Huber’s Lady Darby series, and the writing in this is equally as good, but it’s just too long.  The story dragged for at least the first half of the book, and as Ella is a poster child for co-dependency, a situation that was played to the hilt, the reading was tedious at the start.

Once it got going though, the reading became much easier, even at times, exciting.  Huber never goes for the fantastical and cliched plotting choices, but still weaves an impressive story.  The ending felt a bit abrupt, but I can’t say that’s a fair call; I think I tried to anticipate how the end would happen, and being completely wrong is what felt abrupt.

I’m not sorry to have read it – it was a good story (and a good romance) – but it \ could have been a more amazing story with tighter editing.

This was my Free Friday Read for BLopoly and it was 378 pages.