Dec 14-20, 2014

Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin - a long, but interesting, book about Bob Hope. I only knew him from his tv specials so I found this very informative. The author seems fairly impartial.

3 stars
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3:10 a m by Nick Pirog - Henry Bins is back, the man who is only awake one hour a day, at 3 am. His missing for 30 years mother is tangled up with the CIA. Improbable plot (his cat seems as smart as he is), but it's interesting seeing how he lives his life an hour at a time. This is a to be continued book.

2 stars
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Black Coffee by Agatha Christie - this was not actually written as a book by AC. She wrote it as a play and it was adapted by Charles Osborne. For some reason he left the stage directions in which totally gives away the murderer.

2 stars
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The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie - another stage play adapted by Charles Osborne. A stranger goes to a house looking for help after his car has gone into a ditch and finds a man dead. The man's wife is standing in the shadows with a gun in her hand. Lots of false trails and twists.

3 stars
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In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon edited by Laurie King and Leslie Klinger - a collection of short stories. My favorites were the one told by Silver Blaze, the horse from a Holmes story, and the one written as a social media telling of the Hound.

3 stars
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3:21 am by Nick Pirog - Henry Bins is back and he's going on vacation to Alaska in the summer to see the sun for the first time in his life. Can't say anymore without spoiling it, but this book made me mad. We were promised something at the end of the second book and this delivered in only a very roundabout way. I don't know if I'll read the fourth book, coming out next March, or not.

2 stars
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Summer of the Dead by Julia Keller - bad things just keep happening in Acker's Gap. Now it looks like a serial killer is on the loose. And Bell Atkins is not getting along with her sister, recently released from prison.

3 stars