The good thing about being married is that you share things with your spouse. The bad thing is that the sharing sometimes means that you share being sick. I spent most of the week down with a sinus infection, and then I was generous and gave it to my husband.
The good thing (there was one) about the sinus infection was that I spent a lot of time reading. The bad thing is that I have a ton of reviews to write, because sitting at a keyboard and leaning forward hurt like hell. And made my nose run.
Speaking of “real life”, I’ve just become a member of the American Library Association Notable Books Council. Which does just what it sounds, pick the “notable books” of the year. It means I’ll be reading more literary fiction and nonfiction this year, which should be interesting. There’s also a bit of secrecy to the whole thing, since we’re not allowed to say which books are even being considered. So don’t ask!
There’s another StoryBundle available, and this time it’s a “Truly Epic Fantasy Bundle”. It says so right there on the label. I got it for the Rusch and Gaiman books, but it looks like an awesome combination of stories all around.
I can never resist a good epic fantasy, or even the promise of one–so they had me at “Truly Epic”. But seriously, if you love reading genre, get on StoryBundle’s mailing list. They put together some fantastic batches of books, not just fantasy, but they’ve done romance, horror, thrillers, science fiction and even an entire Doctor Who bundle.
The great thing about participating in two blog hops two Saturdays in a row is the amount of traffic that they generate–I hope some of the people who tuned in for the hops are sticking around to see what else is going on!
The bad thing is that my Stacking the Shelves post really stacks up!
And of course there were some events that added to the stack! This is my first Stacking the Shelves since ALA Midwinter, and I wasn’t totally able to resist the ARCs in the Exhibit Hall.
Closer to home, representatives from Random Penguin came to my library for a Book Buzz. That’s an event where the publishers bring ARCs to the library and talk up their books. They brought some terrific books, and I also got some ARCs from NetGalley and Edelweiss based on what they said.
Last but definitely not least, there is a new book bundler on the Interwebs; Bookbale. Their current bundle (good until the end of February) is a science fiction bundle with 8 books for $10. I bought it for the Kristine Kathryn Rusch title, but several of the others look interesting as well. And the price is fantastic.
When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette “Bambi” Gottschalk at a Valentine’s Dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative-if not all legal-businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi’s comfortable world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes.
Though Bambi has no idea where her husband-or all of his money-might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie. When Julie disappears ten years to the day that Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she’s left to join her old lover-until her remains are eventually found in a secluded wooded park.
Now, twenty-six years after Julie went missing, Roberto “Sandy” Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her murder. What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealously, resentment, greed, and longing stretching over three decades that connects five intriguing women: a faithful wife, a dead mistress, and three very different daughters. And at the center is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten by the five women who loved him: the enigmatic Felix Brewer.
Somewhere between the secrets and lies connecting past and present, Sandy will find the truth. And when he does, no one will ever be the same.
My Review:
I haven’t read any of Laura Lippman’s previous books, because I didn’t want to start a series seven books in. But lots of people have recommended her Tess Monaghan series, and if it’s anywhere near as good as After I’m Gone, now I know why.
After I’m Gone is both a mystery and a character study. It really starts with a cold case, and then flashes back to the circumstances that set the whole chain of events off, and back to the murder being investigated.
This one has lots of interesting layers, and that’s what kept me glued to the book.
In 1976, Felix Brewer disappears, leaving behind a wife and three daughters. And a mistress. Although Felix has never been found, his disappearance isn’t the cold case–it just sets up the events.
Everybody knows that Felix disappeared so that he wouldn’t end up in jail on a federal gambling charge. He was guilty as sin.
But by 2012, Felix’ whereabouts have become secondary. Either he’s very old or he’s very dead, wherever he is.
However, his mistress, Julie Saxony, was murdered in 1986, and there is no statute of limitations on murder. Her murder is the cold case, because one retired cop turned consultant is haunted by her face.
In the present, the point of view is Roberto “Sandy” Sanchez, an ex-cop who helps the Baltimore Police Department close old cases. (He reminds me a lot of the cold case squad in the British police mystery series, New Tricks, except that Sandy is one-man band, not a squad.)
Sandy knows that everything in Julie’s murder has to hinge on Felix Brewer’s long-ago disappearance. Even though Julie had a successful restaurant, the most important thing in her life was that she was Felix’ girl.
So who wanted her dead? And why? In his investigation, Sandy goes back over the old ground, and interviews everyone left alive who knew Felix or Julie. His questions revolve around whether Julie was in touch with Felix, and whether any of the other women abandoned by Felix, his wife, his daughters, still wanted to see her dead for the old betrayal.
Sandy’s mantra in every cold case is that “the name is in the file”. There are 800 pages of names in this particular file, but he’s right that one of them is the culprit. Figuring out who, and more importantly why, tears apart the world of every single person that Felix left behind.
Escape Rating A-: Even though After I’m Gone is definitely a mystery, the story is all about diving into the motives and the history of the various personalities. Even though the “whodunnit” is important, it’s figuring out the why that’s so fascinating.
Because it’s all tied up in the people.
Even though Felix’ disappearance is what links all the characters, the story is all about his wife and daughters; who they became, how they survived, the way that Felix’ disappearance and the subsequent collapse of the family finances, ruled their lives. They are all still Felix’ girls, even though Felix is long gone.
No one really moves on from the catastrophe; not his friends, and certainly not his family. Blaming his mistress for everything that goes wrong is all part of the family coping mechanism. But with the discovery of her death, they are forced to change some of that story. Julie clearly didn’t join Felix wherever he is; she’s been dead almost as long as he’s been gone.
So what happened? All the women in Felix’ life had motives for killing the mistress, but the more Sandy delves into events, the less sense that seems to make. Sandy’s dogged determination to discover the truth upsets a lot of applecarts.
And Sandy’s own story is worth following as well. He’s every bit as interesting to the reader as all the characters in Felix’ drama. Sandy’s own story is revealed through the course of the investigation, and the reader can’t help but feel for him, in the same way that he feels for the women he’s investigating.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Sandy as the investigator again.
One quibble about the book; it uses a lot of flashbacks, from 1959 to 1976 to 1986 to 2012 and back again, over and over as the layers of the case are revealed. It was occasionally a bit confusing trying to figure out which part of the timeline the narrative was in, but it all came together beautifully in the end.
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.
It’s warmed up a bit in Seattle, but on Wednesday no one cared about the temperature. 700,000 people lined the streets downtown for the Seahawks’ welcome home parade. The library faces the parade route, so we had a marvelous (and warm) view of the whole thing. What a blast!
Format read: ebook provided by Edelweiss Formats available: Hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook Genre: mystery, historical mystery Series: Inspector Ian Rutledge #16 Length: 336 pages Publisher: William Morrow Date Released: January 21, 2014 Purchasing Info:Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository
A dangerous case with ties leading back to the battlefields of World War I dredges up dark memories for Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge in Hunting Shadows, a gripping and atmospheric historical mystery set in 1920s England, from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd.
A society wedding at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire becomes a crime scene when a man is murdered. After another body is found, the baffled local constabulary turns to Scotland Yard. Though the second crime had a witness, her description of the killer is so strange its unbelievable.
Despite his experience, Inspector Ian Rutledge has few answers of his own. The victims are so different that there is no rhyme or reason to their deaths. Nothing logically seems to connect them—except the killer. As the investigation widens, a clear suspect emerges. But for Rutledge, the facts still don’t add up, leaving him to question his own judgment.
In going over the details of the case, Rutledge is reminded of a dark episode he witnessed in the war. While the memory could lead him to the truth, it also raises a prickly dilemma. To stop a murderer, will the ethical detective choose to follow the letter—or the spirit—of the law?
My Review:
Hunting Shadows is a fascinating mystery that combines a search for “whodunnit” along with a surprisingly twisty trail leading to “why did they do it”. The struggle in this story is to make sense out of two crimes that seemingly don’t, until they suddenly, and chillingly, do.
This story starts out as a seemingly traditional mystery; we see the crime, but don’t know who the perpetrator is. It looks like the mystery will be the hunt for the killer. But it’s not that simple. He strikes again, and the second victim seems to have no relationship to the first. Except in the mind of whoever shot them both, using the tools and the training of a military sniper.
The combined crimes stump the local constabulary, and Inspector Ian Rutledge is called from Scotland Yard to Cambridgeshire. He arrives and promptly gets lost in both a meteorological and a metaphorical fog.
There are plenty of reasons why someone might want the first victim dead. Captain Hutchinson was a man who did his best to ingratiate himself with the most important people in any room. His problem was that he was just a touch obvious and his charm wore thin on close acquaintance.
It’s even possible to find a motive for the murder of Herbert Smith, the local Tory candidate for Parliament. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone who reasonably, or even unreasonably, wanted them both dead.
Especially not someone with sniper training. That points to a motive left over from the war, and that particular dish of revenge has gone very cold by the time this story takes place in 1920.
Investigation determines that Smith and Hutchinson did not serve together, and they don’t even seem to have known anyone who served with both of them.
But the war and its aftermath are still all too present. Every household lost too many of its young men. Even for those who survived, like Rutledge, the war altered their lives irrevocably. Rutledge manages to successfully investigate murder, sometimes in spite of and sometimes because of the PTSD that he still endures.
In this case, he is under pressure to find the killer quickly. His superiors want a fast result for the murder of a candidate for MP. But when Rutledge finally has a suspect who fits the crimes, he can’t make himself believe that the (relatively) easy solution is the correct one.
His slightly unorthodox methods, combined with intelligence and utterly dogged persistence, finally reach the guilty party.
Escape Rating A-: This series is a marvelous addition to the growing amount of historical fiction and mysteries that cover the World War I and post-war period. For anyone who has fallen in love with this era because of Downton Abbey, the Rutledge series provides a fresh perspective into the post-war life of a much bigger cross-section of people.
Rutledge survived his war, but his shell-shock makes the war an experience that he will carry with him forever. Through him we can see the changes that the war made on the people who served, and through his investigations, the impact on those left behind.
This is a mystery for those who want to see the details of the investigation, but also how the investigator uses his intuition and knowledge to determine the truth. There are no forensic miracles in Rutledge’s 1920, he solves his case with brains and a LOT of legwork.
We follow, and we see everything he sees, both about the case and about life in the Fen country at a time when the old customs were breaking down, but had not yet broken.
Even though Hunting Shadows is the 16th book in this series, it is also a great place to start following Inspector Rutledge’s cases. This is a mystery to savor, and I’m glad there are lots more to read.
~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~
The publisher has generously offered 3 hardcover copies of Hunting Shadows in this giveaway! This giveaway is open to the US and Canada. To enter just fill out the Rafflecopter. a Rafflecopter giveaway
To read an excerpt from the first chapter, check below the fold.
Last weekend, I resisted the impulse to buy books at RustyCon. However, I am being tempted again.
This weekend is the American Library Association Midwinter Conference, otherwise known as ARC-city. There will be ARCs everywhere I look, and all just waiting to jump into my bag. Free for the taking.
Of course, then I have to carry the things around the conference until I get back to my hotel. By the fourth (fifth, sixth?) book, the lead weight encumbers decision making. Too much of a good thing can be very heavy!
I really hope that more publishers are getting on board with the idea of offering NetGalley or Edelweiss eARCs!
As this posts, I am at RustyCon, hopefully resisting the temptation to buy more books in the Dealer’s Room.
But the spring book previews have resulted in a few NetGalleys finding their way to my iPad. Binge-watching Call the Midwife and Longmire account for some of the library borrowing. Who ever said that television watching keeps people from reading?
This is shaping up to be the perfect weekend to stay in and read, although it almost wasn’t. Everything started beeping in the middle of the night; we had a power failure and all the Uninterruptible Power Supplies started fweeping that their power had been interrupted!
It’s a wet, chilly gloomy January day in Seattle. Since we have light after all, it looks like a great day for curling up with a good book.
It’s Always Been You by Jessica Scott (ebook) ENDS 3/10
Blog Recap:
Coming Next Week:
Current Giveaways:
Coming Next Week:
Closer to home, representatives from Random Penguin came to my library for a Book Buzz. That’s an event where the publishers bring ARCs to the library and talk up their books. They brought some terrific books, and I also got some ARCs from NetGalley and Edelweiss based on what they said.
