The Baker Street Letters (Baker Street Mystery, #1)

The Baker Street Letters
by Michael Robertson
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780312538125
Series: Baker Street Mystery #1
Publication Date: January 1, 2009
Pages: 288
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

First in a spectacular new series about two brother lawyers who lease offices on London's Baker Street--and begin receiving mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes

In Los Angeles, a geological surveyor maps out a proposed subway route—and then goes missing. His eight-year-old daughter in her desperation turns to the one person she thinks might help—she writes a letter to Sherlock Holmes.

That letter creates an uproar at 221b Baker Street, which now houses the law offices of attorney and man about town Reggie Heath and his hapless brother Nigel. Instead of filing the letter like he's supposed to, Nigel decides to investigate. Soon he's flying off to L.A., inconsiderately leaving a very dead body on the floor in his office. Big brother Reggie follows Nigel to California, as does Reggie's sometime lover, Laura – a quick-witted stage actress who's captured the hearts of both brothers.

When Nigel is arrested, Reggie must use all his wits to solve a case that Sherlock Holmes would have savored, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans will adore.

An impulse grab at my library, I had no idea what to suspect from this book – I was unfamiliar with the author and series, but the premise sounded like potential fun: legal chambers at 221B Baker street are obliged, by the terms of their lease, to open, read and answer letters written to Sherlock Holmes.

The book turned out to be well-written and fast-paced, though it lagged a bit in the middle for me. The plot was interesting and well-constructed, although grand in a way that, at the risk of generalising, seems to be SOP for male authors. It was good, and I enjoyed it, but this is not the kind of mystery where the reader really gets to participate; this is a traditional mystery with pretensions of thriller-ism.

In the Real World, I tend to find men more relatable then women, so I suppose in the karmic balance of things, it’s natural that I’m the exact opposite in the Book World. In Book World, I prefer my authors to be female, as – again, at the risk of generalisation – they have voices that I find most relatable, as well as an ability to write characters and their relationships in a way that hooks me. There are exceptions on both sides, of course, but this isn’t one of them: while it’s a good story with a great setup and a lively style, the characters failed to click with me. I liked them, but they didn’t feel natural, and I’m completely dismissing the “romantic” element. Laura is great, but her connections to the main character and his brother feels wooden, at best. Luckily, that chemistry, or the lack of it, is irrelevant to the story and easy to ignore.

There are at least 4-5 more books in this series, and I have the 3rd one checked out – my library didn’t have the second one. I may read it before the due date, but I’m going to put it aside for now; this feels like a series I could enjoy periodically but never binge on.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022, for the Amateur Sleuth square. It takes place mostly in Los Angeles, so it would also work for the Golden State Nightmares square.

The Last Graduate (Scholomance, #2)

The Last Graduate
by Naomi Novik
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781529100891
Series: Scholomance #2
Publication Date: September 28, 2021
Pages: 388
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Del Ray Books

At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year--and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules . . .

While the story remains a good one, the tendency to natter continues. Randomly flipping to a page, there’s a few lines of dialog at the top of page 202, and then nothing but introspection and inner-dialog until page 208. That’s a random page, so it’s not a rarity, and it happened at least once in the middle of not only a scene, but a conversation; by the time I got to the character’s response I had totally forgotten there was a ‘scene in play’ and I had to flip pages and pages back to figure out what the character was responding to.

I dinged the story itself 1/2 star from the first one because it’s meh. Not quite as good as the first, although El’s attitude improved exponentially. She also gets a mouse familiar who is loaded with sass, but neither is enough to pull the story up.

Though I’m damning with faint praise, the last one in the trilogy is out later this month and I’m willing to reserve it at the library to see how the story ends. I’ll probably skip anything else by the author though.

I read this because it was sitting on my coffee table; it isn’t readily fitting any available squares on my Halloween Bingo card, so I’ll leave off shoe-horning it in somewhere unless I need it later (I might, for Country House Mystery and a Wild Card usage).

A Stitch in Time

A Stitch in Time
by Kelley Armstrong
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781989046210
Publication Date: March 1, 2021
Pages: 322
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Self-published

Thorne Manor has always been haunted…and it has always haunted Bronwyn Dale. As a young girl, Bronwyn could pass through a time slip in her great-aunt’s house, where she visited William Thorne, a boy her own age, born two centuries earlier. After a family tragedy, the house was shuttered and Bronwyn was convinced that William existed only in her imagination.

Now, twenty years later Bronwyn inherits Thorne Manor. And when she returns, William is waiting.

William Thorne is no longer the boy she remembers. He’s a difficult and tempestuous man, his own life marred by tragedy and a scandal that had him retreating to self-imposed exile in his beloved moors. He’s also none too pleased with Bronwyn for abandoning him all those years ago.

As their friendship rekindles and sparks into something more, Bronwyn must also deal with ghosts in the present version of the house. Soon she realizes they are linked to William and the secret scandal that drove him back to Thorne Manor. To build a future, Bronwyn must confront the past.

Tannat recently read this, and it has ghosts – and most importantly, cats, that feature prominently enough in the story line to make the story qualify for the Black Cat square in Bingo, so I snagged an ebook copy from my library.

It’s an easy read, well written, and totally not my jam. Ghosts or no ghosts (and there are ghosts) this is a straight up romance, with really nothing else to interfere with that romance – even the Victorian age murders didn’t detract from, or distract me from, all the love and devotion. The cats, ember and Pandora, were the stars of the show though. That they were calicos just made it even better.

While I found the story to be ‘meh’ – that’s a personal taste; to my friends that enjoy the romance genre, this is a story that might be worth checking out.

As I mentioned at the start, I needed a book for my Black Cat square for Halloween Bingo 2022, and this fits the bill perfectly, so thanks go to Tannat for saving me a lot of angst and a wild card. 🙂

A Deadly Education (Scholomance, #1)

A Deadly Education
by Naomi Novik
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781529100877
Series: Scholomance #1
Publication Date: March 4, 2021
Pages: 320
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Random House

Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered.

There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal. Once you're inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate or you die.

El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the school's many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions - never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.

Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students, too. So El is trying her hardest not to use it . . . that is, unless she has no other choice.

Let me get this out of the way right up front: the amount of introspective, meandering, narrative in this book is crippling. There is a 12 page scene devoted to El just walking the length of the book stacks in the school library. Granted, it’s a magical library, and part of the point in this scene is the schools way of stretching space when it wants to, so this scene is effective at making the reader feel the interminable-ness of El’s trip to the end of the row to see what’s attacking the other kids, but while she had the benefit of adrenaline, I was just bored after 6 pages of it. And there are several further instances of the narrative just wandering away from the main subject or banging on way too long about one thing or another.

And El is … well, someone needs to tell El to pull her head out of her own ass. She’s rude – unspeakably rude – to people who don’t deserve it, and then bemoans in all her endless inner dialogs about how much she just wants friends, to be liked. The prophecy, in my opinion, isn’t convincing enough a reason for her to act like such a bitch.

Saying all that, it’s a heck of a good story. If I was irritated while reading it, it was because the Scholomance construct, how the school works, and the other characters were so fascinating, and I felt like the eternal inner-narrative and El’s occasionally appalling rudeness got in the way of the greater story. When I wasn’t drowning in El’s attitude, I was having a rollicking good time with everything else.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022 and while it’s a perfect fit for Dark Academia, I’ve already read for that square, so I’m going to use it instead for Murder & Mayhem by the Book. Much of the action takes place in the school library, and El finds a spell book that becomes important to her and her friends in the second half of the book.

A Spear Of Summer Grass

A Spear Of Summer Grass
by Deanna Raybourn
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780778314394
Publication Date: May 1, 2013
Pages: 373
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Harlequin

Paris, 1923

The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even amongst Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather’s savannah manor house until gossip subsides.

Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. As mistress of this wasted estate, Delilah falls into the decadent pleasures of society.

Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming—yet fleeting and often cheap.

Amidst the wonders—and dangers—of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for—and what she can no longer live without.

Don’t believe the stories you have heard about me.

I have never killed anyone, and I have never stolen another woman’s husband. Oh, if I find one lying around unattended, I might climb on, but I never took one that didn’t want taking.

And I never meant to go to Africa.

So many random thoughts; I picked this up at the library purely on the strength of Deanna Raybourn and my enjoyment of her other novels. I knew it wasn’t a mystery, but I grabbed it anyway because it was set in Africa, and I really enjoy Raybourn’s writing; the dry wit, the sass.

The only thing this novel had in common with her Julia Grey / Veronica Speedwell novels is the male love interest; it’s safe to say Raybourn has a type, and she sticks with it. Brisbane, Stoker and Ryder could all be the same character with different hair styles. As for the rest of the story, it’s utterly different from anything else of hers I’ve read.

A Spear Of Summer Grass starts off slowly – so very slowly – and its plot is tenuous, at best, for the first … 70% of the book? For that first 2/3, it was a 3 star read and that was because Raybourn captured the romance of interwar Africa (Kenya, specifically) perfectly for a reader whose chance at experiencing it herself has been postponed. The main character, Delilah, is not a typical Raybourn heroine. She looks like it on the outside, as she does what she pleases and apologises to no one, but it’s not coming from a core of strength; Delilah’s core is pretty amoral when it comes to sex. She’s Phryne Fisher without a purpose. Eventually, the reader learns where this comes from, but Raybourn makes the reader work for it.

Round about that 70% mark it’s clear that this story comes closest to a coming of age story mixed with a romance, whose chemistry is also every bit like the chemistry between the characters in her other books. There are also some developments that really work towards ratcheting up the pace – and the reader’s interest. Some of the secondary bits and characters were clunky, but for that last third of the book, I was hooked; I was invested, and I was sorry to see it come to an end.

Would I recommend it? I don’t know. I’m glad I read it – it was beautifully written, well researched (even if some of her research came from funny sources), and ultimately it was a good story – but I think it’s one the reader has to be in the mood for more so than for most books.

I did NOT read this for Halloween Bingo, and it doesn’t fit any of the squares.

Crowbones re-read (World of the Others, #3)

Crowbones
by Anne Bishop
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780593337332
Series: The World of the Others #3
Publication Date: March 8, 2022
Pages: 368
Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Ace

I don’t typically re-review re-reads, but my first reading of Crowbones left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied; in spite of a returning cast of characters I loved, the story felt disjointed and scattered. I knew as soon as I finished I’d need to re-read it to be able to determine of it was the story, or it was just me.

I’m happy to say, it was just me. While my thoughts from the first review still stand overall, the story felt more cohesive and not at all disjoined the second time around. Some of this new found clarity is because it’s a re-read, of course; Bishop has a tendency to switch to the 3rd person POV of “them” without naming “them”. When this works well, it adds a bit of buildup to the story; if the author doesn’t nail it though, it can muddle things. This time around, I knew who all the “them”s were, and I knew who the mystery guest was, which just made everything jell nicely, making it easier to immerse myself in the world and the story.

I still think it’s a 4 star read: as much as I enjoyed it, it’s still not on par with the previous books, but it’s a 4+, rather than a 4-.

I’m going to use this for my Raven/Free Square on my Halloween Bingo 2022 card.

South of the Buttonwood Tree

South of the Buttonwood Tree
by Heather Webber
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250198563
Publication Date: July 21, 2020
Pages: 335
Genre: Fiction, Magical Realism
Publisher: Forge

Blue Bishop has a knack for finding lost things. While growing up in charming small-town Buttonwood, Alabama, she's happened across lost wallets, jewelry, pets, her wandering neighbor, and sometimes, trouble. No one is more surprised than Blue, however, when she comes across an abandoned newborn baby in the woods, just south of a very special buttonwood tree.

Sarah Grace Landreneau Fulton is at a crossroads. She has always tried so hard to do the right thing, but her own mother would disown her if she ever learned half of Sarah Grace's secrets.

The unexpected discovery of the newborn baby girl will alter Blue's and Sarah Grace's lives forever. Both women must fight for what they truly want in life and for who they love. In doing so, they uncover long-held secrets that reveal exactly who they really are--and what they're willing to sacrifice in the name of family.

Of all the Heather Webber books in the Magical Realism genre, this is the one I put off reading because it appears to centre on an abandoned newborn, which failed to appeal to me. It turns out that the newborn is really a catalyst for the rest of the story, one that ends up touching on a lot of themes like family, poverty, death and, of course, love. There are a couple of romances here but they’re so far on the back burner as to not even be on the stove.

The structure of the book is the typical for Webber of dual POVs, but there’s an added little bit at the start of each chapter from the POV of the judge that’s overseeing the custody case of the found infant. They’re rarely a page long, but each one is a conversation between the judge and someone from the community wanting to get their opinion of the custody case in the judge’s ear. I thought this was a successful device for letting the reader gain insight into the townsfolk of Buttonwood, good or bad, but it also allowed a tiny bit of wry humor into the story as the judge is often cornered in unexpected places and his patience is sorely tried.

All in all, I enjoyed it – better than I expected to. I love the magical realism of being able to find lost objects, or houses that talk to you, or trees that give advice on buttons.

I’m going to use this one for Halloween Bingo 2022 on the Genre: Supernatural square. It’s also a gimme for Magical Realism.

Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder

Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder
by T.A. Willberg
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781409196648
Series: Marion Lane #1
Publication Date: June 10, 2021
Pages: 320
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Hachette Books

They were a band of mysterious private detectives who lived beneath the streets of London in a labyrinth of twisted tunnels and ancient hallways, the entrance to which no one had ever found. The Inquirers were something of a myth, a whispered legend that may or may not exist, depending on whom you asked. They were like ghosts, some said, these sleuths who guarded the city...

London, 1958:

Elaborately disguised and hidden deep beneath the city's streets lies the world of Miss Brickett's, a secret detective agency, training and housing the mysterious Inquirers. From traversing deceptive escape rooms full of baited traps and hidden dangers, to engineering almost magical mechanical gadgets, apprentice detectives at Miss Brickett's undergo rigorous training to equip them with the skills and knowledge they will need to solve the mysteries that confound London's police force.

But nothing can prepare 23-year-old apprentice Marion Lane for what happens after the arrest of her friend and mentor Frank on suspicion of murder: he has tasks Marion with clearing his name and saving his life. Her investigation will place Marion and her friends in great peril as they venture into the forbidden maze of uncharted tunnels that surround Miss Brickett's.

Being discovered out of bounds means immediate dismissal, but that is the least of Marion's problems when she discovered that the tunnels contain more than just secrets...

Meh. Brilliant idea but mediocre execution. I wanted to like it, and the really cool premise of the underground detective agency kept me reading when it felt like a slog, but unfortunately, the characters, while all likeable, failed to click with each other; there was no spark.

In better hands this would have been an amazingly fun book and start of a great series. I don’t regret reading it, but I don’t regret getting from the library either. There’s at least one more, but I can’t say I’m at all curious about it.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022’s Darkest London square – it’s a perfect fit for it.

Blood and Moonlight

Blood and Moonlight
by Erin Beaty
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: June 28, 2022
Pages: 442
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Farrar Straus and Giroux

Rising above the city of Collis is the holy Sanctum. And watching over its spires is Catrin, an orphan girl with unique skills―for she alone can spot the building’s flaws in construction before they turn deadly.

But when Catrin witnesses a murderer escaping the scene of his crime, she’s pulled into a dangerous chain of events where the only certainty is that the killer will strike again. Assigned to investigate is the mysterious and brilliant Simon, whose insights into the mind of a predator are frighteningly accurate.

As the grisly crimes continue, Catrin finds herself caught between killer and detective while hiding her own secret―a supernatural sight granted by the moon, destined to make her an outcast, and the only thing that might save her and those she loves from becoming the next victims...

Thanks to Whisky in the Jar for putting this book on my radar. I finished it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The characters make this a YA murder mystery with a side of romance, but the plot has some dark and disturbing elements that are touched upon (sexual violence/incest) that put it at the older end of YA. The setting is supposed to be, I think, medieval, but it worked better for me to imagine it as an alternate reality, thereby making anachronisms less anachronistic. This was easy to do as the city/country names have little to no similarity to real ones, and the religious system is based entirely on the sun and moon.

Mental illness is a very prominent theme in the story and though I have no first, or even second-hand experience with it myself, the inclusion in the story didn’t feel disrespectful or heavy-handed. The moon magic was interesting and felt like a fresh take on magic systems; the mystery plotting was a little clunky, possibly over-complicated, but overall it kept the story moving along.

In general, I thought it was a good read and if the author were to make a series out of it (could easily go either way) I’d read the next one happily.

The Study of Secrets (Lila Maclean Academic Mystery, #5)

The Study of Secrets
by Cynthia Kuhn
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781635116151
Series: Lila Maclean Academic Mystery #5
Publication Date: May 1, 2020
Pages: 225
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Henery Press

There could be nowhere more fitting for English professor Lila Maclean to spend her sabbatical than the whimsical Callahan House with its enchanting towers, cozy nooks, and charming library. Unfortunately, it also features a body in the study. The murder on the estate sets the town buzzing. Wild rumors are fueled by a gossipy blogger who delights in speculation, and further crimes only intensify the whispers and suspicions. A newly discovered manuscript, however, appears to expose startling facts beneath the fictions. When Lila steps in to sort the truth from the lies, it may cost her everything, as someone wants to make dead certain that their secrets stay hidden.

This series started out strong, as a great cozy without the cutesy vibe, with strong writing and clever mysteries. I think, though, with number 5, I’m done. The author broke one of my personal cardinal rules by creating character relationships and dynamics that I like, and then breaking them up and shuffling them about, and then doing it in a manner that was clumsy and awkward.

The mystery plotting was complex enough, but tried to be too clever, so that by the end it felt like a Ginsu knife commercial: But wait! There’s More!. Had the author – or the editor – pared it down just a bit, it might have offered a more suspenseful ending.

It wasn’t a bad mystery, or story; it just wasn’t great and certainly didn’t match the caliber of the earlier books. While it might be a blip, the relationship shuffle has left me uninterested in finding out.

I read this because it showed up in my mail but it fits Amateur Sleuth, Cozy Mystery and Home for the Horrordays as it takes place in the days preceding, and including Christmas. So I’m using it for Home for the Horrordays.