June 1-7, 2014

The Triumph of Caesar by Steven Saylor - Gordianus the Finder is in his 60's now and pretty much retired from the finding business. Caesar's wife wants him to find out who is trying to kill her husband. Not the best in the series.

3 stars
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Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley - a wagon full of books pulls up in a farmyard and the heroine of the story buys it to keep her brother from buying it and taking off again. She feels she's due a little adventure of her own. This book was written in 1917 and the edition I read was re- released in 1948. It's interesting to read the introduction, which talks about bookselling. I thought it an amusing little book.

4 stars
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 The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley - the characters in the previous book are also in this but I don't find them quite as endearing. They now own a second hand bookshop and into it comes a young man trying to interest them in advertising their store. LOTS of talking about books and ideas, most of it in a monologue by Roger Mifflin. Written in 1918, quite a bit of the book doesn't hold up in current times.

2 stars
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Any Other Name by Craig Johnson - a Walt Longmire story. Walt is in another county looking into the suicide of a friend of Lucien's, his ex-boss. It turns into a missing women case and of course Walt is trudging through the snow. Sometimes his efforts seem super-human. Not one of the best plots, but the writing is still great.

If you only know Longmire from the tv show, the books are very different and not filled with all the political stuff of the show.

3 stars
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Some Danger Involved by Will Thomas - Thomas Lleweyn answers an ad with those words and finds himself working for Cyrus Barker, a private inquiry agent in Victorian England. In their first case together, they try to find who is inciting a pogrom against the Jews of London. There's an air of mystery surrounding Barker that I'm hoping will be explored in further books (5 more so far in the series). Also slyly humorous at times.
4 stars
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Murder at Cape Three Points by Kwei Quartey - Darko Dawson goes out of town again to investigate the murder of an oil executive and his wife. Another fascinating look at police work in Ghana. Lots of twists in this one and I always enjoy it when I don't have a clue who did it. The author has quite a different take on the national health system of Ghana than Wikipedia does.

4 stars
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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron -  Julian is introduced to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books by his father and while there finds a book titled The Shadow of the Wind. He becomes fascinated by the author and tries to find other books by him. He learns someone else is also looking for and destroying the books. The story begins in 1945 Barcelona when the city is reeling from the civil and world wars. A combo mystery/love story.

4 stars
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The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh - Lucy Dane is disturbed by the disappearance and then murder of a school friend. Then she finds something that makes her begin to investigate and this leads her to also try to find out why her mother disappeared so many years ago. Told from a variety of viewpoints that is ultimately distracting.

2 stars
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Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark - in 1810, Astor sent two separate parties to establish a fur trading post in the Northwest. One went overland and one went around South America on ship. The ship would pick up furs, sell them in China and then take Chinese goods to Europe, returning to America with a 2,500% profit. Things didn't quite turn out that way. Told in a fairly straightforward manner, although there are some suppositions about conversations that may have taken place.

3 stars