Just as the holiday cheer is in full swing, a man is poisoned, sending the community into a tailspin. The list of suspects, Verlaque and Bonnet quickly discover, almost fills the church itself, from the visiting vendors at the Christmas fair to the victim’s unhappy wife and his disgruntled business partner. In A Noël Killing, with the help of an ever-watchful young woman named France, the pair must solve the murder while the spirit of the season attempts to warm Verlaque’s stubborn heart.
In general, this series has been excellent in every way, but this one wasn’t its strongest entry.
The narrative meandered. A lot. It took several chapters to get a grip on what was going on, and who was doing what to whom. There’s a slow build up to the crime, which I don’t mind, but because everything else was slow too, it was a battle to keep my attention on the book.
Once things did start moving, they felt scattered and disorganised, though this improved quite a bit as the story progressed. Still, of the books I’ve read this month, this is the one I’m struggling most to remember anything about. It wasn’t unpleasant or badly written, it just wasn’t a strong plot and it lacked the usual strong writing, or perhaps strong editing.
I’m happy to blame it on Covid and hope that the next one measures up to the first 7.
Bowen’s homage to Rebecca, this entry might or might not be a disappointment to those who have read du Maurier’s classic – I’ve never read it myself, so the plot here was new to me, though I could appreciate the allusions and the tip of the hat to the gothic atmosphere.
The story, homage or not, is well-written enough that I don’t think fans of the series will be disappointed. It’s not her absolute best (The Twelve Clues of Christmas, imo) but it’s well-plotted and the characters are well drawn. Darcy has little page time, as usual, but we get a lot more of Belinda and her background, which I enjoyed. Queenie makes a thankfully brief appearance, but otherwise it’s a whole new cast of characters in the wilds of Cornwall, in what ends up to be a delightfully crazy plot.
Eventually though, I’m going to have to cave and read Rebecca.
Grab your tickets for Cajun Country Live!, the pickers' and crooners' answer to the legendary New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Maggie Crozat, proprietor of the Crozat Plantation B&B, plans to be in the cheering section when her friend Gaynell Bourgeois takes the stage with her band, Gaynell and the Gator Girls.
The festival's headliner, native daughter Tammy Barker, rocketed to stardom on a TV singing competition. She has the voice of an angel...and the personality of a devilish diva. But Maggie learns that this tiny terror carries a grudge against Gaynell. She's already sabotaged the Gator Girls' JazzFest audition. When a member of Tammy's entourage is murdered at the festival, Tammy makes sure Gaynell is number one on the suspect list.
Gaynell has plenty of company on that list--including every one of Tammy's musicians. Posing as a groupie, Maggie infiltrates Tammy's band and will have to hit all the right notes to clear her friend's name.
Not bad; I think Crooked Lane Publishers could do better with a tighter editing process, but the plotting was excellent. The characters weren’t engaging as past entries of the series, but I’m not sure I can say why. Generally, a relatively solid entry in a better than average series.
Once MT found me again, we strolled back to the Cave House and got extraordinarily lucky: we stumbled across another Lyrebird, out in the open, this time in the middle of a courtship display for a female he was pursuing. I got a ton of pictures and a few videos.
Superb Lyrebird
I’ve noticed that picture quality on the post itself isn’t great (though if you click on the photos they look better), so I’m hoping the video quality will be better. I’m posting two: a 15 second video which has clear footage of the Lyrebird performing his ‘dance’, and the second one is a 1 minute video, where the Lyrebird is more obscured by the bush, but his mimicry is more varied and towards the end he mimics a laughing Kookaburra so accurately, he sets off the local Kookaburras.
I’m also including a clip of Lyrebird song, because the audio on the videos isn’t great; the clip will give you a better idea of how varied lyrebird songs are, and it’s much clearer.
Sound clip of Lyrebird:
The other huge ‘get’ for me came the next morning, when we were out on our final walk before heading back to Melbourne. We were just coming down off the trail near the campgrounds when we heard a strange sounding ruckus coming from the scrubs in a very small gully below. When we snuck down to investigate we found a male Satin Bowerbird.
Satin Bowerbird – Male
Satin Bowerbird – Female, seen earlier in the trip
The thing that sets Bowerbirds apart from other pretty birds is that they build bowers – small but elaborate displays used to woo a female, and each bowerbird species has an affinity for a certain color, and will collect objects of that color for their bowers. Satin Bowerbirds prefer blue, and will collect blue bits and bobs and arrange them just so around their bower, all to attract a female. When the female arrives, he does his own elaborate dance in hopes that she’ll select him as a mate.
I’ve seen male Satin Bowerbirds from a distance before, and on this trip I’d seen several females, but I’ve always wanted to see the bower and figured my odds of stumbling across one were close to nil, because it’s not like they’d build them on a hiking path. But as I was angling to get a good shot of this male bowerbird, I looked down the gully and there it was!!! His bower! I sent MT off and hunkered down, hoping to catch him working on it, and after several attempts I succeeded:
Satin Bowerbird – Male, in his bower.
I was dependent on the zoom lens, of course, but you can see the bits of blue he has strewn around, and the beginnings of a bower there in the center. Not David Attenborough quality, but it’s 100% more bower bird bower than I thought I’d ever get to see. 😀
On that successful note, we packed it up and headed home. It was Christmas Eve and we hoped we’d be able to find a small chicken to roast for dinner and pretend it was a turkey. We stopped in Sale, Victoria for fuel and I found an open butcher shop that had two fresh turkeys left – hurrah! So we ended up with Christmas dinner after all, if not the large family celebrations we had planned.
So, we’ve arrived at Cave House, and I’ve gone back out to explore a little before it gets dark. The grounds of the park really are amazing, and though the bushfires destroyed parts of the reserve, (the cabins they normally rent out were damaged, and the caves themselves had to be inspected for heat stress damage) which only reopened the week before our arrival, the main grounds of the park were blessedly spared. Our wetter-than-normal spring and summer this year has also meant an abundance of birds and wildlife.
Musk Lorikeet in a Wild Cherry Plum tree.
The real exploration started the next morning – early, but not bright, as it was raining again. But I was determined. I was not the only one, as I was greeted by a small but very drenched mob of kangaroos just outside our gate:
Moving along towards the back of the park, I heard a Superb Lyrebird singing off to my left. Lyrebirds are extraordinary for three things: their tails, which are extravagant; their shyness, which is legendary; and their songs, which are long, complex and up to 80% mimicry of other songbirds’ calls. A lyrebird will riff off other bird calls for minutes at a time, stringing them together one after the other, interspersed with their own sounds.
Before, I’ve only ever seen Lyrebirds’ tails, as they hare off into the underbrush – they can’t fly well but they’re roadrunner fast. On this trip, I’d already seen two in all their feathers, rambling around the underbrush (where it was dark enough to guarantee bad pictures). This rainy morning, I thought I’d just find a dry spot under a tree and listen to the morning aria, and ended up close enough to see him on a tree branch, seemingly singing for his own enjoyment. When he was finished, he hopped off and scurried away, and I continued on up the hiking path. That Lyrebird was not only fast, but seemed to have the same idea I did, because I came around the bend and there he was:
Superb Lyrebird
Superb Lyrebird – exiting, pursued by bear
Our gentle morning shower was quickly deteriorating into a proper rain and I moved on at a fast clip, and met MT at the end of the path (he’d started out after I did), where we spotted another Lyrebird out in the open, scratching away for breakfast on the forest floor. We headed back to Caves House to dry off and head off for more exploring.
Our morning was a bust, a place called Lakes Entrance. Lovely if you’re wanting the beach on a hot day, I’m guessing, but very touristy and soulless otherwise. We had a great breakfast and a nice half hour in the local bookshop, where we each walked out with a few books.
We cut our losses and headed back, our destination Little Creek Falls in the Alpine National Park. Siri got us there, but overshot us past the falls, taking us around the mountain on a dirt road with no guardrails, but once we turned back around, we stopped first at Little Falls Gorge, the deepest gorge in Australia, (the picture at the top of these posts is the gorge) and then eventually found the falls, which weren’t falls so much as cascades. And very much worth the effort.
Rose Hyacinth Orchid
Rufous Whistler
Little River Falls
Australian Water Dragon
Australian Water Dragon
Alpine National Park
Rock Wallaby
We saw a few birds, but more exciting was the rock wallabies and the Australian Water Dragons – there were 4 or 5 of them sunning themselves on the rocks, each about 3ft/1m long. They scattered when they heard us, save this one, who was not going to give up his sunny spot for mere humans.
Our return was via another route, as we were aiming for another waterfall just outside Buchan, and while our drive was gorgeous and often hilarious – the road took us through several cow pastures, where the calves found us fascinating, running up to the car to get a good look at us – the falls were a complete bust. We’re assuming post-bushfire signage was incorrectly placed because there were no falls at the end of the trail. A prime example of the journey being better than the destination.
Once back, I walked around our reserve again, and caught several more birds on camera, all completely new to me, and some more kangaroo antics:
Sacred Kingfisher
Sacred Kingfisher
Fan-tailed Cuckoo
Olive-backed Oriole
Joey and Mom
Sentinal ‘roos
Center and quarterback?
Two more things worth mentioning happened – one that evening and one the next morning, but this post is long and it’s crashed once, so I’ll put them in one final – I promise! – post.
When last I left off, MT and I had just left Mallacoota to head towards home, rather than the Christmas with family we’d planned. We’d decided to take the long, long way home, with two nights back at the Buchan Caves Reserve, in the original owners’ home, Caves House. On our way back to Buchan, we were going to make a few stops along the way, to places Finding Australian Birds – the best bird book I’ve ever found – recommended.
The first was Cape Conran Coastal Park, and when my phone’s GPS spit out the directions, I thought Siri was nuts; she told us to turn right on “Old Coastal Road” which was a 28km dirt road. MT was more willing to believe, or maybe he just wanted an excuse to go off-road. Those 28km took us through some of the most remote, often teeth-rattling, dry eucalypt forest I’ve ever seen, and when it was finally over we got a short reprieve on a paved back-road through gorgeous rainforest. Then, back onto more desolate dirt roads that took us to the coast, and here the road was lined with banksias and touted a flock of Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos – who are un-paralleled at hiding behind tree limbs.
Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo
Old man banksia
Once we parked though, I started thinking this might have been a whole lot of off-roading adventure for very little result. Not a lot of bird action and not a lot of area to walk or hike, just the road in. Then I heard MT off in the distance shouting for me to ‘come towards the camping area as fast as you can’. I figured he’d either spotted a koala or injured himself. Instead it was something totally different that made our long drive out to the middle of nowhere absolutely worth it.
When I found MT, he was standing less than 3 meters away from a very large lace monitor, or goanna. It took me a moment to spot it because I thought it was a fallen tree limb, but once it moved, I took several hundred photos of it because it was magnificent.
Lace Monitor
Tree Goanna
I am really terrible at estimating size, but MT is pretty accurate. I knew this guy was almost as long as I am tall, and MT agreed. At about 5.5 feet long, this tree monitor comes close to the maximum size for his species, which is the second-largest monitor in Australia. He was amazing, and quite sanguine about me standing there taking a bazillion photos of him.
When we finally gave him some peace, we turned the corner and found this little guy:
and the dichotomy made me laugh. Then I found out he’s a Jacky Dragon and it seems even more amusing.
We left Cape Conran soon thereafter and after a few more back dirt roads, came to Cabbage Palm Tree Creek Preserve, a mouthful for what was a tiny gem of rainforest tucked away far from civilisation. It only took 20 minutes to walk the entire pocket, and it was a true rainforest, with intermittent rain and a burbling creek running through it. We spotted Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos hiding in the canopy, and assorted honeyeaters, silvereyes and a new one for me, rufous fantails in the understory.
Rufous Fantail
It was all so beautiful, I had to walk through it twice, rain or no rain. After that, we toyed with another stop, but started worrying about getting back to Buchan in time to check-in. This ended up being a good call because we got there at 3.45 and they’d shut at 3.00. More luck for us that MT found a park ranger still around and she got us the keys to the Caves House. Where I promptly dumped my stuff and headed back out to explore.
In my first post, I left off at MT and I arriving in Mallacoota, discovering we could no longer go into New South Wales for Christmas as planned. The next morning, we considered our options; I certainly didn’t want to just turn around and go back home. MT was amenable to finding someplace between Mallacoota and home to stay, and it seemed to me there was no place better than where we’d just been – Buchan Caves Reserve. Buchan’s population is about 385, so accommodation options are limited, to say the least. Luck was with us in this regard, as the Caves House on the park grounds was available and I quickly snatched it up for two nights.
Plans sufficiently re-arranged, we went off to explore Mallacoota, where birds were everywhere. Almost all of them new to me.
White-headed Pigeon
Golden Whistler
Bell Miner
Scarlet Honeyeater
Eastern Spinebill
Black-faced Monarch
Musk Lorikeet
Satin Bowerbird – Female, seen earlier in the trip
Musk Lorikeet – drenched
This was the good news. The less-than-good news is that the national park that surrounds Mallacoota and reaches into New South Wales still has a way to go in terms of bushfire recovery. While I was impressed with how quickly all the Eucalyptus trees had greened themselves back up, looking like furry sticks reaching into the sky, the underbrush was still devastated, and the walking paths were largely closed, still awaiting their turn for repairs. A large part of the coastal ecosystem is tea-tree scrub, and it doesn’t grow back after a fire, so the coast line will likely take decades before it looks healthy again. But still, eerily beautiful.
When our two nights in Mallacoota were over, we packed up the car again, and instead of heading north as originally planned we turned back around and headed back to Buchan Caves Preserve, and in a lot of ways, this was where our holiday got adventurous.
Looking at my posts, the last time I was around was the 11th of December, with a week of work to go before the Christmas holidays started. That last week is a write-off; it was insanely busy with boring details not worth remembering, never mind mentioning.
The weekend of the 18th though, we were both free, and packing up the car for a Christmas adventure; we were taking three days to drive up to northern New South Wales to spend Christmas with MT’s brother and his family, stopping along the way at a few National Parks and a place called Berkelouw’s Book Barn, to go crazy on the new and used books. We left at the crack of dawn Sunday looking only slightly like the Beverly Hillbillies, and really looking forward to every part of the trip.
Alas, it’s still 2020.
The day before we left, there was a COVID outbreak – a very small one – in the northern beaches of Sydney. We weren’t going anywhere near that part of NSW, but we got state border permits, to make things easy, and didn’t worry about it. By the time we got to our first stop on Sunday, 4 hours into the drive, the outbreak had grown significantly and moved further north, dangerously close to our final destination. Still we weren’t too worried, and we had a date that afternoon for some spelunking at Buchan Caves Reserve:
Afterwards, we explored some of the park around the caves, which is beautiful – I seriously fell in love with the place – took a few photos, and then headed towards our destination for the next two nights, Mallacoota, Victoria.
Black-naped Honeyeater Juvenile
Crimson Rosella
Crimson Rosella
News-hounds might recognise the name Mallacoota; it’s the town where, during the bushfires, thousands of residents were trapped on the shoreline for a few days before the Australian Navy went in and rescued them. Fortunately, the lodge we were booked at escaped the fire and both it and the grounds were beautiful:
Unfortunately for everybody, things in Sydney had gotten progressively worse, and during our first night, we received two text messages from the Victorian Department of Health, saying our permits had been revoked and anyone entering Victoria from New South Wales would be required to sit a 14 day hotel quarantine at personal expense.
And just like that, we had no Christmas plans. (to be continued)
Private investigators Liz Talbot and Nate Andrews thought they’d put Darius Baker’s troubles to rest—then his recently discovered son ropes him into a hemp farm investment with his college buddies. When a beloved Charleston professor—and potential investor—is murdered, Liz and Nate discover Darius keeps the PIs on speed dial.
A shocking number of people had reasons to want the genteel, bowtie wearing, tea-drinking professor dead. Was it one of his many girlfriends or a disgruntled student? Or perhaps Murray was killed because his failure to invest meant the hemp farm trio’s dreams were going up in smoke? Though Liz’s long-dead best friend, Colleen, warns her the stakes are far higher than Liz imagines, she is hellbent on finding the no-good killer among the bevy of suspects. But will the price of justice be more than Liz can bear?
Another solid entry in what’s been a very dependable, well-written series. The mystery itself was a little predictable, but I can’t be certain the author didn’t intend that, as the clues weren’t subtle; a story about PIs wouldn’t really work with subtle and still be fair to the readers.
There’s some character development in this one, as well as references to a previous plot that make this less than ideal as a standalone, and it’s wroth the time to start at the beginning with book 1.
A Woman of No Importance ISBN: 9781984842725 on 2019-04-09 Genres:History Pages: 834 Format:Audiobook
In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: “She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.”
The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill’s “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and–despite her prosthetic leg–helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.
Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day.
Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall–an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman’s fierce persistence helped win the war.
An outstanding story from start to finish. I listened to the audio and the narrator did an outstanding job, making an already riveting story one that I wanted to just sit and listen to, rather than serving as just a diversion while in traffic.
Virginia Hall, by any standard measure of time, accomplishment, daring, intelligence or bravery, was a heroine. Her gender makes no difference in this distinction, nor does her disability, but both render her accomplishments during WWII even more astounding.
Sonia Purnell does an excellent job chronicling the life of Hall, in spite of what she admits upfront was a daunting process of historical research in the face of archive fires, classified intelligence in multiple countries, and Hall’s own ingrained reticence to discuss her work or accept accolades for her contributions to ending the war. Her speculations as to what might have happened during gaps in primary sources seem few, and the writing makes those speculations clear. She also doesn’t just rely solely on chronicling Virginia’s life, but covers quite a bit of the story of the French Resistance, especially in Lyon, during the Vichy government, and the Nazi take-over leading up to the invasion of Normandy.
The history is at times romantic in true Bond style, terrifying, and heartbreaking. The details of Vichy and Nazi interrogating techniques is NOT for the feint of heart, and the post-war years for Virginia were a mixture of recognition of her talents and accomplishments, and a disgusting record of 50’s misogyny. I appreciated that the author made the effort to be accurate, not falling into the easy route of railing against all the discrimination and not giving time to those men in the intelligence and government sectors that stood up and gladly gave her the credit she earned and deserved. Purnell tries to be balanced, and I think she succeeds brilliantly, pointing out the CIA’s mistakes and their own efforts to take responsibility for them.
I’m thankful I found this book, and I’m thankful Purnell wrote it, giving men and women around the world another authentic role model and hero to look to. I can’t help but wonder, though, how Hall herself would view this fine work. I hope, in spite of her life-long secrecy and desire to remain unknown, she’d appreciate her life’s achievements as the valuable legacy they are to future generations.
A Noël Killing
The Last Mrs. Summers
Fatal Cajun Festival
Lowcountry Boondoggle
A Woman of No Importance 