Vigilante by Kerry Wilkinson - someone is ridding the streets of the bad guys and Jessica Daniels new boss seems almost glad someone is doing the job of the police. But forensics show the killer is a man already in prison. While I enjoyed the plot the writing left something to be desired and the editing was atrocious. Enough to influence how the book flowed. And the conclusion was absurd.
2 stars
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Saffire by Sigmund Brouwer - James Holt has been asked to travel to the Panama Zone where the canal is under construction. He is wanted to do a special job for the man in charge but he doesn't know what that is. He becomes acquainted with a girl his daughter's age and is concerned about her well being. I found the book confusing and boring. I never understood exactly what Holt was expected to do anymore than he did.
1 star
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The Velveteen Daughter: A Novel by Laurel Davis Huber - a fictionalized account, very much researched, of Margery Williams Bianco and her daughter Pamela. Margery was the author of The Velveteen Rabbit, but before that Pamela was a child prodigy artist. Pablo Picasso was impressed by her and she became the darling of Europe and the USA. But it came at quite a cost to her mental health. The story is told from the viewpoint of both women. I very much liked the writing style even though it usually irritates me.
5 stars
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Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie - this starts off very promising. A somewhat jaded diplomat is approached in the airport by a young woman who says she needs his passport to get to London or she may be killed. His complying leads him into a situation where he's not sure what's going on. And neither do we. The rest of the book turns into a repetitive discourse on the woes of the world. On and on with not much else going on. IMO, Christie's spy novels are not her best and this one is just plain awful. Her editor needed to take a much firmer hand. She was 80 when she wrote this.
1 star
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The Child by Fiona Barton - when the body of an infant is found at a building site, Angela is sure it's her baby who was stolen from the maternity ward many years ago. Kate, a reporter, is interested in the story as a human interest story. And Emma and Jude are interested for their own reasons as well. Told from all four viewpoints. There is a twist near the end I should have seen coming but didn't.
3 stars
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Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie - a spy thriller written 25 years before Passenger to Frankfurt and somewhat of a precursor to that novel. Scientists around the globe are disappearing and it's unknown whether they are going knowingly or not. A despondent woman is recruited to impersonate one of the scientist's wives in the hope she can discover what's happening. At least there is a plot to this although it was rather dry.
2 stars
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The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce - Frank owns a record shop in a rundown part of town. He has the uncanny ability to look at people and know what kind of music they need, even if they don't. There's a set of quirky characters living and working on his same street and they make a strange community. And the Ilsa Brauchmann appears and throws everything into a tizzy. An exploration of music and how it makes us feel. I have a lot of listening to do now. I like books that make me look things up. If not for the occasional language, which I found jarring in an otherwise lyrical book, this would have been 5 stars.
4.5 stars
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Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell and Craig Sanborn - this memoir covers the 10 years following Bruce's first book. It includes some of his flops as well as Burn Notice and Ash vs Evil Dead. I didn't find it as witty as the previous book but there are some interesting stories about producing a movie in a foreign country.
2 stars
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Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce - in 1940 London, Emmy Lake has just been hired as a Junior at a newspaper company and her head is full of becoming a Woman War Correspondent and Doing Brave Things. But in a comedy of errors it seems she's really been hired to be a secretary to Mrs. Bird, an advice columnist for a not very popular woman's magazine. I loved everything about this book. Partly because I've always admired the British people during the Blitz. I really enjoyed the humor and the author's Use of Capitals. A second book is being written and I really hope it's about these characters.
5 stars
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Silent Rain by Karin Salvalaggio - a prominent author and his artistic wife are dead in an arson fire that devastated their home, full of expensive artwork, in college town Bolton, Montana. State detective Macy Greeley is called to investigate and finds that quite a few people had reason to wish the man dead. And one of them is Grace, former victim and trying to keep her life private. I found this one blah.
2 stars
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