November Books

    Hi everyone. It's time once again for my monthly book post.  Overall, it was a good month with lots of mystery and suspense although 2 books on my list seemed to take the whole month to get through. However they were worth the time to read. 😏

     My first book for November was the latest Louise Penny novel and the 19th Inspector Gamache mystery. This book takes you back to Three Pines and also to Montreal, Ottawa, France, Rome, Blanc Sablon, and  even on a rather terrorizing airplane ride further north into the Province of Quebec.

     The Grey Wolf is another good story in this series.  I'm not sure the head of the Surrete Homocide Division would be working on a case  of ecoterrorism in Montreal, but I just went with it  because Penny does a good job of tying it into a murder that almost takes out Armand Gamache too. And we get to go back to Three Pines and spend time with all of the lovely characters Penny created. Besides those wonderful characters, there are evil, dirty politicians and corrupt Surete police employees as well some not so scrupulous church clergy too. 

     Louise Penny writes such a good mystery that this book kept me riveted to it so I was able to finish it in a couple of days.   There's an Easter egg at the end. This book wraps up, but doesn't. The very end of the book mentions the next book in the series will be out in 2025. I shall be waiting impatiently for that one.

    My next book is a biography about an influential woman you may not recognize. Chasing Beauty is the biography of one of Boston's late 19th to turn of-the-20th century art collectors, Isabella Stewart Gardner. When she built her Venetian Style palace on the Fens of Boston, Stewart filled it with art, architectural pieces and a courtyard garden in the middle. And then, years before she died, she opened it as a museum so people could enjoy her collections. 

   This was a well done and interesting biography. Bella (as she liked to be called when she was young) was the only child of her parents to survive into mature age. She was born in New York City, but formed a close friendship as a teenager with one of the "young ladies" from a large  Boston family named Gardner. Her friend had a brother, Jack (John) Gardner, who became her husband. Isabella and Jack lost their only child at very young age, and after some very tough years, Mrs. Gardener found her "purpose" in life while on a doctor prescribed trip. The trip was prescribed to help Isabella get over the profound depression and its subsequent illness of losing her child. Her purpose was to collect beautiful, interesting things including art.

    Isabella, who was an adult was also known as Mrs. Jack, didn't quite fit in with the ladies of Boston since she was a bit eccentric for the times (although nothing compared to now). However, art collecting filled  her life. She traveled extensively, and I really enjoyed reading about those journeys  as well as about the travel journals that she created. She became friends with some talented painters, authors and other influential people during her life. She even had her portrait done by John Singer Sargent and James McNeil Whistler, 2 famous American painters. The portrait of her on the cover of the book was done by Swedish painter Anders Zorn.

    This was  not the quickest read  for me because I kept stopping to look up what some of the mentioned paintings actually looked like or to find out more about some of the people mentioned.  I really enjoyed this book and learning not only about this woman and her life, but also about life around the turn of the 20th century in Boston and the bigger world.

   I haven't visited the Isabell Stewart Gardener  museum since 2016, but now I really want to go back. If you're interested, here are my posts from 2016 with some photos related to this book: post 1, post 2 , and post 3, but I highly recommend if you ever get to Boston that you visit Stewart-Garden's home and museum.

     While I was reading about Isabella Stewart Gardner, I also read this book from 1993, Mrs. deWinter. It is (as you can see on the cover)  a modern sequel to a classic. I was interested in reading it because Susan Hill also writes the Simon Serailler mysteries that is an excellent  series. I was curious to try some earlier and other writings by the author.

     If you haven't read or don't remember the 1938 novel by Daphe du Maurier, here's a very brief synopsis of Rebecca: Max deWinter's first wife, Rebecca has died. The main character (who is never named but who  tells us this story) is in her 20's, and Max is in his early 40's. Since Max is now a widower, they become attached and get married. Max takes his new bride back to his home in Cornwall (England) called Manderly. At Manderly there is a housekeeper who was very attached to Max's first wife, and she makes the new wife's life difficult and uncomfortable.  To keep this brief and not give away the whole story for those who haven't read this novel but someday might, the book focuses not only around the new wife's struggles to feel comfortable, but also around the question of Rebecca. Did she really die in a boating accident and was she really the saint that some people thought she was?

   In this sequel,  the story continues and is also told by the same unnamed wife. She and Max have been living and traveling around Europe for 10 years, but they come back to Cornwall for the funeral of Max's sister. Of course, there is a lot of concern about Rebbeca's death after all this time, even though there was an original inquest and even though the narrator and Max spent so much time abroad. The narrator also wants to move back to England. When they do, that is when the story picks up and gets quite suspenseful. Although I'm not sure the ending is the way I would have ended it, it is rather dramatic and fits the novel.

    Susan Hill is a very good writer, and she captured both the feel and tone of the original Rebecca novel perfectly. And she did  continue the story successfully. If you've read and liked Rebecca and haven't read this sequel, it might be something you'd enjoy.

   The other recent release I read last month was the newest mystery series by Richard Osman called We Solve Murders. Although I wondered at first if I would like these new characters as much as I like the characters from the Thursday Murder Club series, I did.

   This time we have Steve Wheeler, retired, a widower. He's a man who doesn't want to go too far out of his routine, but  he does do  a bit of investigative work on the side. Then you have his daughter-in-law, Amy. She's married to Adam, Steve's  son, who is a part of the second half of the story. Amy is one tough lady, and she works in the people protection business. She's in South Carolina, protecting a famous author named Rosie D'Antonio who's had a serious death threat from a Russian oligarch. The  big problem is the firm Any works for has some internal issues going on, and some social media influencers are dying, one very close to where Amy is located.

And then, unexpectedly for Amy, someone tried to capture and almost kill her. When she and Rosie  escape, they hit the road, but they need Steve's help. They're not just going to run and hide, but they are going to figure out what is going on and end the string of deaths for social media wanna-be influencers. Plus they can't let Amy get killed either.

This book has the same “feel” as Osman's other series, but at the same time, a very different vibe. It's a fast paced story, told through many different characters. I enjoyed it. It was a fast  and lively read. I'm still attached to the characters from the first book, maybe a little more than I am to these characters (a though just a little more), but if there's a book 2, I will definitely read it.

     My first listen for November was book 3 in the Heathcliff Lennox mystery series. The Curse of Braeburn Castle is set in October of 1921 at a primitive Scottish castle.   Healthcliff Lennox is a World War 1 fighter pilot who, at the war's end, has time on his hands. He ends up helping the police, and in this volume, he receives a telegram from the now retired Inspector  Swift asking him to come help look into some matters he is dealing with.

      Those matters include a skeleton with a gold crown on its head that was found in the wall of the castle's keep. Then the skeleton's head along with crown go missing. The rumors are that the skeleton belonged to Black Dougal, but some people feel it was the body of the Ancient King of the Isles. Both of these characters are explained in the book. There were also some repaired steps that suddenly were no longer safe, as well as some other bodies found around the castle grounds. 

      Plus there's Halloween, Vikings, a beautiful woman who's caught Lennox's eye and Scottish clans. What more could you want from an enjoyable cozy style mystery? 

      Sam Dewhurt-Phillips, the narrator, is great in these books. Plus this is a well written and  quite a fun series. Lennox never travels without his somewhat grumpy butler Greggs, his dog Mrs. Fogg, and this time his cat, Mr. Tubbs,  stows away in his trunk so we get the whole gang at the castle.  I need to get back to read more of these, because there's getting to be several volumes. You don't have to read these first few in order, but as this is book 3, I can't say whether that's true for the whole series. 

      

     After finishing Heathcliff Lennox number 3, I then listened to this novella by Wilkie Collins. Mrs. Zant and the Ghost was not what I expected. In a very good way. I thought I had the story figured out only to realize I had gone in a totally different direction from what the story ended up being. 👍

    Wilkie Collins was a writter who published in the 1800's. He was a contemporary of Charles Dickens, and a  pioneering author of mystery fiction. In this story, Mrs. Zant is a young window; her husband died shortly after their marriage. There are some subtle hints that it was foul play, but the innocent Mrs. Zant needed a man to help with the situation. I will say that even though Mrs. Zant was a stereotypical Victorian woman, there was a strong and smart housekeeper character who ended up playing an important role.  I enjoyed this story. It felt like a modern mystery story in many ways, including the writing style,  except for Mrs. Zant, but then even today there are women who need a man to help them get through things.

 

     This book, A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson, took no time to get into.  What would you do if you suspected your husband was a serial killer? 

     Martha was jinxed in high school by a girl saying she would never find love. Many years later while she works as a librarian she meets a man named  Alan, and they eventually get married. Her new husband is a salesman. He sells quirky items at teacher conventions, like math T shirts that say "Math Teachers aren't mean, but they're definitely above average."  Her husband travels a lot for these conventions, and after one in Colorado, he comes home with a blood stain on his sleeve. Martha is now suspicious, and does some research only to find there were timely deaths in places where he'd been working at conventions.  She decides that if he is a killer, she had better find that out before she becomes a victim. 

     Martha contacts an old friend named Lily, and together they work to find out if Alan is indeed a murderer. But nothing is ever straightforward and simple in life, and when an old boyfriend of Martha's shows up, things get even more twisty and complicated.

      I really enjoyed how this book was set in New England; in fact it was set in Portsmouth. New Hampshire and Kittery, Maine, right in my "general" neighborhood. If only the narrator could pronounce my hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts correctly. 😏 I also didn't realize this was book 3 of a series, but it definitely can stand on it's own. I've added the first 2 books to my to read list. The narrators of this book (there were 3) did a great job also. Overall, this was a fun and hard to put down story full of  lots of surprising twists and turns. 

     Peter Swanson is also the author of 8 Perfect Murders that I read a few years back and  enjoyed also. 

     After the Peter Swanson book I listened to the next Heathcliff Lennox mystery, #4 in the series, Death in Damascus. I wanted something not too long, fast paced and light because it was right before Thanksgiving, and I knew if I didn't finish the book before the holiday, I wouldn't get back to it for a few days.

      This time retired Inspector Swift shows up at Lennox's home telling him that Pertcy, the woman Lennox met in Scotland and that Lennox has fallen in love with, needs their help.  She's an archaeologist, and Percy's ex-fiance is imprisoned in Damascus as a British spy in a French controlled country. The French aren't interested in letting him free, but because he is a spy, he needs to be rescued before he spills state secrets.

      When they arrive at their hotel in Damascus, there is an American film company making a movie there. This series is set in the time after World War I, and this particular book is set in late 1921 . The Sheik starring Rudolph Valentino has caused many copy cat movies  like the one being filmed at Lennox's hotel. However, once Inspector Swift and Lennox arrive, they witness a murder on the set while filming is going on. And they discover there are more spies that just the man they originally went to rescue.

      Plus you get a bit of an Indiana Jones part to the story too.

    As I said in the other Heathcliff Lennox book review above, this is a fun series to listen too. It's well written, a little bit quirky, and Lennox makes me smile with his antics. This story did pick up with book 3 ended.  I am also very glad at least Mr. Fog, Lennox's cocker spaniel, was able to make it into this book too. 

  November was a good reading month, even though I wished I had gotten through a couple more books. Once again if you have any recommendations, please  mention them. My to-read list is long, but I have no problems making it even longer. Grin. 😏