Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Spinning in Her Grave: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery

By Molly MacRae.

"We can't have people thinking we run a den of mohair and murderers." -Ardis

I haven't read any other books in this series before (this is book 3), but I will say this is about the most lively starting book about knitters I've read. Kath has apparently taken over her grandmother's yarn shop after a career in historical textiles. I gather that once she moved in, she was able to see the yarn shop's resident ghost, Geneva, who nobody else can see. This one's also done in first person, which I found more lively, so yay there. Also, the plot involves a silly re-enactment going on about the "Blue Plum Piglet War" and the big controversy is that actual guns will be involved. However, an annoying petty criminal lady named Reva Louise "accidentally" (or not) gets shot and someone might have snuck upstairs into the shop to aim at her, so Kath investigates. Nobody seems to have liked the woman much and she's kind of a jerk, so....yeah.

I liked Kath's voice and I liked the setup with Geneva the ghost and how Kath is trying to figure out Geneva's history. Ardis is also fun. I liked their knitting group name. However, the mystery itself wasn't the most ah, difficult ever. 

Also, here's something I don't get: if you are dating one fellow (Joe Dunbar) and you can't stand his brother the cop--and you even call him "Clod" because you think he's such a moron who can't detect--why on earth, when he develops romantic interest in you, would you agree to go on a date with him? And then actually go on a date with him? If you can't stand him? And are dating his brother? I truly do not get why Kath, who makes her antipathy for the man clear, would do that. What the hell, lady?

So...three stars overall, I guess. I thought it was going to be better than it was, sigh. 

The Broken Window

By Jeffery Deaver.

I only read this series off and on, but it features a quadriplegic former cop named Lincoln Rhyme and his detective partner/girlfriend Amelia Sachs investigating crimes. He uses the technology and she does the ah, leg work. 

Anyway: Lincoln has been long estranged from his cousin Arthur even before his accident--they used to be like brothers until well, I won't spoil it--but then Arthur gets framed for a robbery/murder and it's such a good frameup he could go to jail for life if he fought it. Arthur's wife Judy asks Lincoln for help and Lincoln soon discovers a few other cases of framing like this, which leads him to finding out all about data mining and how certain companies literally know every single damn thing about you now. And what happens if someone working at a company like that decides to fuck with your life? Ruin your credit, make it look like you're a cheater, make you lose your house and job, and there's nothing you can do about it. And when this unsub (known lazily as "522" for the date the case came in) captures a cop and finds out the name of everyone involved in the case, he can now go after all of them.

Suffice it to say that this book is very well done and super creepy and you will want to drink yourself to death after reading it for the horrible implications you can do nothing about. 

Four stars. 

Trouble Never Sleeps

By Stephanie Tromly.

Previous book here. 

Looks like this series ends here, and if it does, it's a good stopping place. I am happy. I found this book yesterday and have been reading out lines and giggling to all within the last 24 hours (and just sold a friend on looking for the series). 

"Are you going to be okay?"

Digby shrugs. "I don't know...but at least my problems are about to change." He smiles. "And change is good." 

This book starts about right where the last book left off, with crazy teen party shenanigans, drug tests, bad guys, and the need for an information heist. Finally, Digby's getting close to finding out what happened to his sister Sally. In other news, Zoe finally got into the snooty private school they're always talking about...and oh, yeah, Digby and Zoe are more or less together, finally, causing her mom to freak that Zoe's going to get pregnant. Zoe, however, is freaked enough to break up any romantic moments by solving a case.  That is slightly irritating, but...oh well. 

I don't feel like writing more, but here's Quote Corner! 

Quote Corner:

• "Felix, do you have a bus pass? Or some kind of credit card?" Felix handed me a museum membership pass. "You know how to do that?" "How hard can it be?" It had looked easy enough when I'd watched Digby do it, so the sound of Felix's card snapping in half surprised me. "Um, do you have another one?"
• "What would 'being together' even mean for a guy like him?" "I get to carry the bail money? I'm his steady alibi?" -Sloane and Zoe on dating Digby.
• Felix has a badass moment. "There's a reason I write all your code for you."
• "Pulling off a heist is number five on my bucket list." -Felix
• "You have a big, beautiful brain, Zoe. Don't use it to make yourself miserable." -Zoe's mom
• "Stealing from the police...that's interesting pillow talk, Princeton. But weirdly, I like it... You know, I've always thought subpoena was a sexy word...." Digby does pillow talk. 
• "Did you really just call me your 'special lady friend'?" -Zoe, who actually is fine with that
• After Zoe points out she pays every time when they go out: "And how un-feminist is it to get hung up on who paid?" -Digby
• "Hello, Digby. Welcome to dinner. I made your favorite. Food." -Zoe's mom.
• "Zoe said we weren't allowed to talk and I was starting to think I'd have to sit here just listening to you all masticating for the rest of the night."
  "She told me not to talk too. I can't tell if she was worried about me offending you or you offending me."
  "Zoe? Which is it?"
  "You're both equally offensive." -Zoe's mom, Digby, Zoe.
• Why did Zoe's mom marry Zoe's dad? "Because he took me on an all-expenses paid trip to Turks and Caicos but he wouldn't pay hotel shop prices for condoms."
• "Austin was very hot... But he used to pronounce cojones "cow-jones" and he used to say 'yous guys,' so I knew it was doomed." -Zoe's mom
• "It's not like I chose the hard-knock life, Miss Finn. The hard-knock life chose me." -Digby
• When the football team hits Digby up for some help with some surprise drug tests: "You don't want money, right? Wait. Do you want money?"
  I recognized the look on Digby's face. "Nope. It's going to be a lot weirder than that."
  "I want a human sacrifice."
  "For example."
  Someone in the back said, "You can have my brother. No one's going to miss that idiot."
  "I bet my mom would even pay you to get my dad out of the picture," another player said.

  "I need someone here to die on social media. And it has to be a big death." -Digby. 

   "I got video of my girlfriend getting out of her skinny jeans.," one player said. "I mean, her body be banging' but no one looks good getting out of those..."

  "I have video of me hooking up with my cousin over spring break." 

• "I was thinking the other day about why exactly we all keep getting involved with Digby and his insane capers. ... And I remembered some PSA about telling your teacher if you found out your friend was using drugs. 'Friends take responsibility for friends,' it said. I don't think this is what the PSA writers had in mind but it feels like the right explanation." -Felix
• "I told them to double the mileage on their runs for the next month to sweat that crap out faster." "That won't work. Their bodies won't metabolize the drugs any faster." "I know that and you know that but those guys don't know that. But now they can run eight miles a day and meditate on why they should just say no to drugs." -Henry and Felix.
• "Felix, you straight-up defibbed a dude with a gun. In the face. What can still scare you after you've done that?" -Zoe
• "I said 'Don't do it' but you thought I meant 'Attack the armed and dangerous criminal?'" When I nodded, Digby said, "Wow. I have driven you crazy." 

Favorite moments: 

• Digby reads Zoe's diary and... "yes. Yes. yes. A thousand times, yes." 
• Some dudes who have been watching Digby and Zoe going on about how they have enjoyed watching their soap opera. "Finally." "But you two are a soap opera. You can't blame us for getting caught up." 
• Digby inadvertently saying something very bad (see spoiler space). 
• New Car Smell (makes sense in context, I won't spoil)

I'll do a bit of spoiler cut discussion and Quote Corner below....

Anyway, four stars and this was delightful. 

Sleepless Beauty

By E.M. Tippetts.

Previous book here.

Chloe finally gives birth to daughter Bethany in this book. And within a week of birth, solves a murder. I have neither given birth nor solved any crimes (the author mentions being a mom so we know she's done at least one of these things) so I don't know how well a lady's brain would be functioning through exhaustion and mom panic attacks to solve a crime. I did kind of wonder. Chloe manages to pull it off, though. I did find it kind of hilarious that while Chloe is giving birth, her husband is all, "Oh, they found a body at our shoot and someone told me not to tell you." You would think that Chloe would be utterly preoccupied, and she kind of is, but she also manages to dedicate a fair amount of time to privately investigating this random dead body situation.

I should mention that Jason is shooting the pilot for a TV series filming in Albuquerque, and it features Lizzie Warner, a character featured in a spinoff book to the series, A Safe Space, which I have not read. Chloe's mom is Lizzie's assistant/surrogate mom. Lizzie's book was (as far as I can tell) dedicated to getting her together with her boyfriend Devon, and now Devon's turned up as a reasonable suspect in the murder because he was in the vicinity at the time. Chloe's interested in the case and also trying to figure out if Devon is a bad guy or not. There's reasons to think he's a good guy--and he doesn't sound violent like Chloe's used to. Buuuuut there's the evidence and a bit of Devon's past history that make Chloe kinda go "yellow light" rather than red or green here. I have not read Lizzie's book, but I reasonably assume that those who have already know Devon didn't do it and are just waiting for him to be exonerated. 

The mystery is more about exonerating Devon than it is the mystery. Who was the dead girl? I have no idea. Who the hell were the folks that actually killed her? I have no idea but it involves a motorcycle gang and wrong tires.. Why? I have no idea. Sadly, knowing next to nothing about this murder made the case rather weak. Who cares about the dead girl, we just care that Lizzie had a boyfriend. On the other hand, I can also agree with the arguments made in this book that Chloe does have good people sense, knows how to make friends with enemies and folks who feel hostile toward her, knows how to very safely advise Devon and others on how to investigate, not taint evidence, not influence your interview with the cops, etc.

A lot of book time is dedicated to introducing Yolanda, a grad school classmate of Chloe's who is now an anthropologist working in the same area as the film location. Yolanda married Chloe's ex Jon (do I remember Jon? No), and Jon has fallen on hard times and become paralyzed, so they are struggling and poor and Yolanda is clearly resentful of Chloe and her perfect life. Chloe is clearly thinking, "yeah, sure, this looks great from the outside but it ain't perfect, also I grew up poor and my brother shot and stalked me," and kinda walks a thin line in how to deal with the resentment without rehashing the same issues we hear about a lot in the books. She manages it, which is good.

In the end, Chloe's brother-in-law Steve suggests that she and Brad the former paparazzo start a private investigator business and investigate things for his firm, which sounds like a good idea.

I think I am starting to feel some fatigue about this series a bit. I feel like there are a lot of people going on and on about how great Chloe is. The mysteries are getting weaker. I am feeling kinda eh here. Three stars. 

A Dark and Stormy Knit

By Anne Canadeo.

This is a knitting mystery solving series, I believe this is book four. Maggie Messina owns a yarn shop and has a college-attending assistant named Phoebe. One morning Maggie sees a bunch of cat heads covering the parking meters in town, and is accosted by the local media wanting a quote on who she thinks did it. Maggie reasonably assumes it was done by the "Knit Kats," an anonymous group of yarn bombers who use their art to make political points. Maggie gets a weird taunting phone call from a Kat that night, but she's inclined to blow it off.

Phoebe has a friend named Charlotte who's having some yarn-involving exhibits in a gallery show. When the knit shop folks go to see it, they're surprised by all the drama. Charlotte's crazy abusive ex Quentin shows up and Charlotte ends up running out in fear. When Phoebe goes over to Charlotte's apartment later to see if she can find her, she finds a dead body, wrapped in yarn. Does that yarn mean that the Knit Kats are also killers, or just being framed? 

Turns out Charlotte was in a crazy mess of a situation, involving a job, who's she's dating, the art department and its feuding professors, and just all kinds of a mess. What a tangle, huh? Phoebe herself is suspected of being involved (this is more her mystery than Maggie's, I think, down to who solves it), but manages to figure out the case. 

I'm not sure what else to say here, it was pleasant enough. I did like the use of yarn and that Phoebe figures out who did it. Maggie doesn't do a whole lot beyond be supportive, but that works. I don't know how memorable I'd think this is in the long run, though. So...three stars. 

Publish and Perish

By Phillipa Bornikova.

Previous book here. Excerpt here. 

This book picks up right after the last one. In the first few chapters, we find out that (a) Jolly's been beaten up to prevent him from answering any questions Linnet might have about her weird ability to have ridiculous accidents happen to any supernatural  who attacks her, (b) there's a female vampire and those aren't supposed to exist, (c) David's in love with Linnet, which causes her to (d) immediately quit her job so as to make that problem worse, and (e) oh hey, since it looks like supernaturals can't attack Linnet, why not just bust into Fey and get John freed?

That's just the first few chapters of this book, which are mentioned on the back cover. From there, it gets even crazier. Most books might have the part where Linnet challenges the fairy queen (reminded me of An Enchantment of Ravens) been the endgame or focal point. Nope, no sooner is Linnet technically a fairy queen than she hands the work off to Parlan and worries about other things. John goes back to work investigating, but thanks to what his mother did to him, he has no feelings and is way too bluntly honest for social discourse to go well. Just asking a girl if she wants to fuck doesn't seem to be going well for him.

But...the actual main plot is that once Linnet gets another (smaller) job, she gets a client who wants to publish his research paper on a parasite that can only be incubated in human women that would destroy all vampires and werewolves if activated. Well, that explains the ban on female werewolves and vampires, anyway. The vampires will do anything to make sure that doesn't get published, of course. However, when Linnet starts to think that her ability to survive supernatural attacks might have something to do with this...I'll stop there, but the book definitely goes to a Holy Shit place, with at least one shockingly crazy thing going down. (I'll talk about that below the spoiler cut.)

The end of this book doesn't quite cliffhang and doesn't quite resolve, it's more of a "We'll follow up on this later," I suppose. I certainly hope the author's contract goes for another book, that's all I have to say. So, four stars.

Sins and Needles

By Monica Ferris.

I haven't read any of this series before, but I found this on a free table and I have a friend who likes this series, so what the heck. The amateur sleuth, Betsy, runs a needlecraft shop. All things considered, she doesn't seem to be in the plot much compared to everyone else, which is something you don't see much of. Anyway, two of Betsy's customers, local nurse Jan Henderson and visiting Texan Lucille Jones, have a very strong resemblance to each other.in looks and personality. Lucille is very hot to trot on making friends with Jan, basically because she found out she's adopted, spotted Jan at a medical convention and stole her hairbrush for DNA testing, and while supposedly you can't tell a sibling relationship from DNA testing (I did not know this), both women have the same genetic anomaly making them prone to miscarriages. Lucille would really like to get this suspicion of hers confirmed.

However: Jan has a rich, man hating, elderly great aunt who has made a point of only leaving (some of) her money to the female descendants of her sister. So far this leaves Jan and her mother Susan as the only ones to inherit, as her uncle Stewart and his three daughters are all left out of the will. This is extremely public knowledge. Added bonus there is that Stewart is one of those wheeler dealer dudes who's always trying to make some kind of deal and wasting other people's money and generally being scammy and everyone knows it. Another added bonus: Lucille's husband is a gambling addict.

So when Aunt Edyth turns up dead in bed with a tiny knitting needle dug into her neck, it looks like it's pointing to Jan or possibly Lucille. Jan seems pretty unlikely from the getgo, Lucille  does some shifty things so who knows, all the dudes who are featured in this more than briefly are shifty, and something's weird with Susan, who both denies that she has a secret daughter BUT is also acting weird as the story goes on. 

The story's fairly interesting, albeit it goes slowly, then really slowly, then finally kicks into gear at the end. I really don't think there needed to be what, a chapter and a half or so dedicated to the family going through all of Aunt Edyth's antiques in loving detail. Yeah, it's kind of a plot point, but it didn't need to drag on that long, it felt like antique porn.  There's a weird "treasure hunt" section at the end that is...kinda weird to say the least (see spoiler cut). I was curious as to whether or not Lucille was related or not but it took forever for anyone to get on finding this out. The plot itself is interesting but this was so slow going that it took me a few weeks to read this off and on. If one is a fan of the mystery solver Betsy, she's not the lead here, it's Jan. Betsy finally kicks in at the end, like everything else. The idea behind it isn't bad but the whole thing could have used some better execution.

I'm going to give this around two and a half stars. And I'll do some discussion below the spoiler cut.

The Case For Jamie

By Brittany Cavallaro.

Previous book here. Due to spoilage, this review needs to go below the spoiler cut. Four stars from me though.

Flamingo Fatale

By Jimmie Ruth Evans.

(Note: that's a pseudonym, but one that amuses me. Very fittingly Southern.)

According to the acknowledgments, the idea for this came from the author's agent saying, "Why hasn't anyone written a trailer park detective?" I absolutely agree with this sort of idea and premise and happily grabbed this one when I found it. My family has a thing for Southern humor. 

But...this book to me was more about the sadness than anything else. Our heroine, Wanda Neil Culpepper, was married to a bad dude, Bobby Ray. She had three kids with him, two of which sadly took after him. TJ is absent at the start of the book, presumably doing some time and being a (politely hinted at) racist. Miranda's a shiftless and not real bright teen mom and odds are high TJ would object to his nephew. Only 14 year old Juliet takes after her mama and might actually do something with her life. Wanda Neil literally works all night long until the wee small hours of the morning working two jobs to keep two kids and a baby in a trailer park. I felt so sad for her. Girl deserves better. 

One night ol' Bobby Ray drops by flashing money around, Wanda Neil tells him to get out and then she goes off to work for the night. When she comes back, she finds Bobby Ray's body in the woods, run through with one of her flamingos, thus putting her off cute pink lawn ornaments for life.  Oh yeah, and her girls have been tied up and interrogated by bad guys. Unfortunately for Wanda Neil, despite Bobby Ray's shiftless ways, he has a lot of loyal friends who I guess somehow haven't been betrayed by Bobby Ray at any point in time for them to turn on him. Like one of her bosses. Like the sheriff. And her ex mother in law literally beats her up in the parking lot after work. All of these people are convinced that Wanda Neil did him in even though OBVIOUSLY SHE HAS AN ALIBI BECAUSE SHE WAS AT WORK ALL NIGHT, FOLKS. So poor Wanda Neil, with the assistance of her loyal gun toting best friend Maylene (and that gun is needed a lot), has to figure out where's the missing money (because of course there is missing money everyone wants) and whodunit before she or someone in her family gets framed for the murder. 

I felt so bad for Wanda Neil and the shit she has to put up with just to barely keep what's left of her family afloat, knowing all the while that one of them is likely to do something stupid again to make it worse. I figured this was going to be a funnier book than it was, but mostly I just felt so sad for her. When TJ shows up and somehow he's miraculously not a trashy racist asshole any more with no explanation to his reformation, I was so happy for her in that for once someone didn't suck and something good had happened. Though uh, more plot complications came in from there.

I dunno if I can say it's much of a detective mystery? I don't think Wanda Neil ever solved the case, she just stumbled into the endgame. One character who's been helpful turns out to be a turncoat and one character who's been nothing but unhelpful suddenly switches sides, which made me go WHAAAAAAAT WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?  As for the requisite "love interest" because all the books gotta have one these days, not much happens here with that. We're introduced to Juliet's teacher (hm, might be some ethical dilemmas there in dating as long as she's his student?) who's also a true crime writer, but he's barely in the book and doesn't get to do much. You'd think someone like this might be useful to have around when you are an amateur detective. There's also one very last minute kiss from someone out of  bloody nowhere that made me go WHAAAAAAAAAT as much as Wanda Neil must have been doing. I don't even get that. So the ending's a bit rough.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it but it made me feel sad, and could use a bit more explanation and foreshadowing on the plot twist surprises so it wasn't so much WHERE DID THIS COME FROM? So, three stars.

(Also, am a bit mystified that this book "comes with recipes from the Kountry Kitchen" when Wanda Neil is by her own admissions not all that into cooking....I guess it's marketing.)

Spellman Six: The Next Generation

By Lisa Lutz.

Previous book here.

I put off reading this book because I heard it was generally depressing and the end of the series and kind of a fizzle. But I finally got it and I generally disagree with that assessment, though I can certainly see where it comes from. I guess I'll have to take this below the spoiler cut, sigh. Yeah, there's some sad things, but overall I enjoyed the book and was still having fun reading it. So...I guess three and a half stars. Maybe this is not the book to read if you are going through some emotional drama about exes moving on, but other than that it's a pretty good conclusion to things, for now. 

I also read Isabel Spellman's Guide to Etiquette: What is Wrong with You People but overall don't think I can quite recommend it. The joke you'd think you'd be reading is that Isabel, the Queen of Uncouth, is writing an etiquette guide, but most of it boils down to common sense things like "you're gonna have to deal with noisy kids on a plane" and "please flush the toilet, I can't believe I have to say that." The only chapter that really went as I'd expect from Isabel was the chapter in which she apologized for the time when she was a bridesmaid. Otherwise this is....an etiquette guide for normal behavior, not anything particularly funny most of the time. Oh well.