It’s a Mystery: Breakheart Hill, by Thomas Cook

First love
Breakheart Hill, narrated by a now middle aged man, is the story of his first love. Ben Wade falls hard for the new girl in town, Kelli Troy, but is too shy to assert himself to her. Ben’s best friend counsels him to make a move, but to no avail. Kelli [...]

Thriller: The Last Cato, by Matilde Asensi

Precious relics, fragments of the True Cross, are being stolen from churches across Europe and Asia. The  body of one of the suspects, covered in cryptic tattoos, is found. The Vatican assembles a team, to track down the thieves and recover that relics.  Ottavia is a Catholic nun who is a renowned paleographer; Farag is [...]

Historical Horror Fiction: The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

Long before DaVinci Code, Turn of the Screw was generating all sorts of controversy. The haunting of two Victorian era children by their former governess and servant is one of literature’s first genuine gothic chillers. Since its publication 1898, all sorts of interpretationshave been applied to this ambiguous puzzler. Are [...]

It’s a Mystery: Fractured, by Karin Slaughter

Every parent’s nightmare
Fractured, a story about a murder/kidnapping/sex abuse case, is a police procedural concerned primarily with the relationship between the two detectives assigned to the horrific crime. Will Trent, a loner who was raised in an orphanage with the father of one of the victims. Faith Mitchell, the 30-something mother of a college [...]

Thriller: Rusty Nail, by J. A. Konrath

Rusty Nail is my first foray into the world of  Lt. Jack (short for Jaqueline) Daniels, a forty-something police detective who cares about her job. She recently nabbed the uber-sadistic Gingerbread Man serial killer, but some recent developments are giving Jack a sense of deja-vu. Someone is delivering horrific snuff videos to her door, complete [...]

Thriller: Hush, By Anne Frazier

Madonna murderer
Author Anne Frazier has another persona, that of romance writer Theresa Weir, who produced such novels as Some Kind of Magic in the ’90’s.  If Hush is a fair example, her more recent venture into the crime/suspense genre  be considered a mixed success. Frazier has introduced a variation on the character of killer who [...]

2009 Art History Reading Challenge – Finito!

Last night I finished the last of my 6 books for this challenge, The Thief of Venice. Challenge met! Enjoyed each of these selections.
Originally published November 25, 2008:
The Art History Reading Challenge: read at least 6 books about art in 2009. These can be either fiction or nonfiction, and can span every genre from historical fiction [...]

It’s a Mystery: A Likeness in Stone, by Julia Wallis Martin

Water and stone
A twenty year old cold case heats up quickly when a recreational diver discovers the victim’s skeleton, in the closet of a submerged house in a geographically isolated reservoir. The detective who reluctantly closed the case, DCI Driver, knows who killed the victim, but failed at the time to turn up sufficient [...]

It’s a Mystery: Hour Game, by David Baldacci

Hour Game serves as my intro to the work of David Baldacci, and it hasn’t tempted me to try any others of his titles. The 150-plus Amazon reviews of this particular novel are divided into two camps, those who loved it and those who had problems with it, and I’m afraid I fall into the [...]

It’s a Mystery: Secret Admirer, by Patricia McDonald

Laura, the lovely young widow suspected of murdering her husband, Jimmy. Their angelic little boy and the hateful mother in law. The shyster family lawyer and his bimbo wife, Candy. The rich, hunky, too good to be true stranger who emerges from Laura’s past, into the picture perfect NJ town where everybody knows your [...]