Death on the Island

Finished July 12

Death on the Island by Lynne Marie Taylor

This historical mystery is set in Malta in the fall of 1880, a time when Malta was controlled by the British. The main character in this series, of which this is the second book, is Scottish Detective Inspector McQueen. He is in Malta to set up a detective division in the local police and train local officers in this aspect of police services. Recently a steamship travelling from India to Britain stopped here and one of the stewards was found to have cholera. The first class passengers were put into quarantine, on a small island near Valetta dedicated for this purpose called Manoel Island. When a dead man is found floating in the harbour, with a fatal knife wound, he is soon identified as Buchanan, one of the passengers who should have been in quarantine. McQueen and the police doctor go into quarantine to question the other passengers and because they were both exposed to the body. Buchanan was accompanying a Sikh prince who was raised in England back to England after he was refused entry to India. The prince is an obvious suspect here since he was unhappy with the circumstances. 

Marie Talti is the daughter of the owner of one of the two local papers, a weekly, and she works as both a journalist and editor, actively assisting her father. With limited resources, McQueen asks her to investigate the passengers and their backgrounds for him, and she agrees, hoping this will offer her paper an edge. 

This novel deals with difficult historical events, racial and ethnic prejudice, sexual predation, and gender roles. So there's a lot of interesting plot and characters, and I learned some history I wasn't aware of. 

I picked it up to meet a couple of reading challenges and am glad I did. 

Red: A Haida Manga

Finished April 6

Red: A Haida Manga told and illustrated by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

This creative book founded a new art form, combining traditional manga with Haida imagery. The story is a traditional Haida Gwaii folktale from the oral tradition. Red is an orphaned leader, a man blinded by revenge, leading to a tragic situation. 

When he was young, raiders attacked his village. Red escaped, but his sister Jaada did not. Red is angry and wants to exact revenge on the men who kidnapped his sister. He wants to find her and save her. But his anger doesn't allow for the feelings of anyone else affected by the situation, not his sister, not his people, no one. 

The art here is in full colour and hand-painted. Taken as a whole the panels create a Haida formline image thirteen feet long. A miniaturized version of this image is shown on the inside cover of the book. Really understanding this work and the art that depicts the story takes time to reflect, to think, to learn about the culture. The form is a key part of the story and neither can stand alone. 

Moving and thought-provoking. 

The Midnight Feast

Finished November 8

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

This suspense novel moves between present day and several years earlier in the summer of 2010, with the earlier portion mainly told through diary entries. Set in a coastal English town, the present day is the summer solstice, opening weekend of a luxury resort called The Manor. Besides the main building with its rooms, bar, and restaurant, there are seaside cottages and 'Woodland Hutches' which are small cabins nestled in the surrounding woods. The primary owner is Francesca Meadows who inherited the property from her grandmother. Secondary investors include her two older brothers, Hugo and Oscar. Francesca has also recently married Owen Dacre, the up-and-coming architect she hired for the project. Owen is still working on the newest addition, Treehouse rooms in the woods. 

Most of the staff aren't local, but there are a few. Eddie is one of them. He works as a dishwasher, but has his eye on a bartender position. His parents' nearby farm isn't doing well, and he has plans that don't include it. The locals aren't fans of what Francesca has plans, and talk of the local tales of The Birds that come for those who have done evil or for whom someone has asked for vengeance on has started to grow. Even Francesca's grandfather warned her to be wary of The Birds before his death. 

In the summer of 2010, we see Francesca and her brothers choosing favourites among the summer people and locals, inviting them to the manor, and having select parties. Alison, spending the summer at the local trailer park with her parents and grandparents, is the girl Francesca (known as Frankie back then) has chosen. It is her diary we read. But Alison also meets some locals, at the beach and at the trailer park, and they too become part of the story.

We know something happened back in 2010, something Alison needs closure about, but it is something only revealed later in the story. What we do know, is that the morning after the big Solstice event, the hotel is on fire, and at least one person is dead.

I found the plot compelling and the characters well-drawn. Dark and with lots of surprises. 

The Square of Revenge

Finished August 8

The Square of Revenge by Pieter Aspe, translated by Brian Doyle

This novel takes place in Bruges, Belgium, and begins with an unusual crime. When a longstanding jewellery store owned by Ludovic Degroof is robbed, the police and owners are surprised and shocked to find that nothing was actually stolen. Instead, the jewels have been dissolved in jars of aqua regia, an acid. The intruders also left behind a scrap of paper with a strange square drawn on it. 

Inspector Van In is in charge of the case, but his superiors start getting involved almost right away, wanting to keep the crime out of the news. He soon finds himself teaming up with a new assistant district attorney, Hannelore Martens, and the two begin looking at the Degroof family more closely. 

Notes with this unusual square are found on letters sent to family members, and when one of Degroof's grandchildren is kidnapped and another destructive act is part of the price the kidnappers are demanding, their focus on the patriarch of the family grows more intense. 

There has been a lot of planning put into the crimes here, and the trails that Van In and Martens follow as they put together clues aren't easy to follow, sometimes leading to what looks like a dead end. 

This is a slow-moving mystery, with the intelligence of the two central figures standing out, and an attraction between them adding to the suspense. This is the first book in a series that looks promising. 

A Talent for Murder

Finished August 5

A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson

This is the third book in the Henry Kimball series, but they can be read as standalones. Here, one of the main characters is Martha Ratliff. Martha works as a librarian in Maine and recently met and married a salesman who she connected with, Alan. Alan travels a lot for work, which means that Martha still gets time alone, which she also enjoys. When she sees a blood streak on the back of one of his shirts just after a conference, she begins to question how well she knows her husband. She does some research into the last few cities he visited and sees a disturbing pattern of unsolved cases of murdered women. 

Not wanting to directly accuse him in case she is wrong and this accusation creates a rift in their marriage if it isn't true, she reaches out to a college friend who once helped her get out of a controlling relationship. Her friend is Lily Kintner, who is also a key figure in this series. 

Lily can see why Martha is concerned and offers to meet Alan and get some insight into him, and what he might be up to. But when Lily goes to the town his current conference is in, she finds something much more concerning and with ties to the past. When more deaths begin to happen, Lily reaches out to Henry for assistance. 

This is a twisty and disturbing tale of a psychopath and criminal urges that tie in with revenge. It was hard to put down and has many plotpoints that I didn't foresee. A great read. 

Three Hours in Paris

Finished June 14

Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black

This novel is set during World War II, and begins in June 1940 with Kate Rees, a ranch woman from Oregon who is also a prize-winning marksman, is in Paris in an unoccupied apartment across from Montmartre, waiting to shoot Hitler. After a couple of chapters, we go back to the fall of 1939, where we learn that Kate is married to a Welsh man. They and their young daughter are living where he is stationed in the Orkney Islands. She works at a munitions factory as a tester, shooting rifles to ensure they work as they should. Her marksman skills get noticed and the government offers her a job, but she isn't interested. When an enemy bombing mission kills her husband and daughter, she initially gets lost in her grief, but by early June, she finds herself wanting to do what she can to defeat the man who took her family from her. So she calls the number of the man who made the previous offer to her. and finds herself offered a different job, this one top secret, and she must sign the Official Secrets Act before being told anything about it. 

Because of the timeliness of her mission, she is given a very sped up version of the usual training. One of her lessons emphasizes the acronym RADA, which stands for Read the Situation, Assess possible outcomes, Decide on options; Act on your decision. This is something she returns to repeatedly while on mission. 

When Kate misses and kills another man she finds herself on the run, and unknown to her, one of the reasons she is on this mission is because someone is compromised and the team she is associated with in France has had several members discovered and killed. As she follows what clues she has and makes the way around the city looking for help to get back to England, she must rely on her intuition and quick thinking. She also begins to suspect that she was never meant to succeed, and think about what that means. 

I found this book almost impossible to put down, as I had to know what happened to Kate. There is a man of Paris on the endpapers that shows all the key places that Kate either thinks of going to or actually visits. The pace is fast and the minor characters intriguing in their own ways. One of the characters that we see a lot of is a German police officer that is assigned with finding the would-be assassin and capturing her. Part of the novel is from his viewpoint, and we see that he has his own struggles as well. Excellent plot, with a character that I really cared about. 

The Crows of Pearblossom

Finished January 1

The Crows of Pearblossom by Aldous Huxley, illustrations by Barbara Cooney

This is the only children's story of Huxley to survive. He told stories to his niece, but after a fire most were lost. This one survived because the neighbours mentioned in the story had a copy of it. It was originally written in 1944, but the copy I read was from 1967.

I was visiting my mother-in-law and she had just received it from an order she'd placed. 

The crow mother lays an egg every day and later goes off to do her shopping. The egg is always gone when she returns and she can't figure it out until she returns early one day and sees a rattlesnake, who lives at the bottom of the tree she is nesting in, swallowing her egg. She is terribly upset and tells her partner when he returns, that she wants him to go down and kill the snake. 

Instead, he goes off to his friend Owl and they work out a plan, that goes off very well. with the snake immobilized and unable to eat any more of Mrs. Crow's eggs. 

Sometimes the Wolf

Finished July 16

Sometimes the Wolf by Urban Waite

This dark novel is set in the northwest U.S., and centers around deputy sheriff Bobby Drake. Twelve years previous to the events in the novel, Bobby's father Patrick had been sheriff. Bobby had been away at university. Bobby's mother had been ill, and Patrick had taken to some illegal acts for money. He was caught and convicted, and is now coming out of jail. 

Bobby has agreed, reluctantly, to take his father in for a short time until he gets on his feet. Bobby's wife Sheri is agreeable to it as well. They will give him the room they had prepared for another purpose, which has a single bed in it. 

Bobby has been working with the local wildlife office with a situation involving a local wolf. The wolf has had some interactions with local farmers and has been blamed for some without solid proof, and the wildlife officer Ellie is planning to capture and tag the wolf so that they can track it and be aware of its whereabouts. 

Patrick seems a little wary once out, thinking that other cars are following them, or that people are watching them, and Bobby has put it down as part of the experience of getting out of prison, and not being used to the freedom and open space that now exists for him. 

Bobby also holds a lot of resentment towards his father. He quit university, came home, sold some of the land to save the house, and now lives in that house with his own wife, and works for his father's old deputy, who is now sheriff. 

Soon after his release, men from his past do appear in Patrick's life, and Bobby and Sheri are at risk. The federal agent who has been on Patrick's case from the beginning has also reappeared, and his presence raises other questions. 

This is a dark story, of fathers and sons, of guilt and the weight of it on those close to us, and of revenge. It is a fast-paced story with lots of action and suspense. 

The Dangerous Hour

Finished August 17

The Dangerous Hour by Marcia Muller

This is part of the Sharon McCone series, fairly far along, and she is celebrating a planned expansion for her agency when things start going bad. One of her agents in training is accused of stealing a client's credit card and purchasing items online with it. The client also files a complaint against the agency, meaning that Sharon's license could be in jeopardy. As she complies with investigators, she also researches old cases to see who might have a grudge against her and be capable of this kind of planned attack. 

Sharon is also mulling over a question her longtime partner Hy has posed to her.

This book has a fast-moving plot, with lots going on in terms of clues that Sharon and her investigators follow up on, both near and far. 

I also liked the storylines around helping people improve their circumstances through training and other social resources. 

A Sea of Troubles

Finished August 4

A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon

This story takes place mostly in Pellestrina, with a helpful map at the front of the book giving the reader who is less familiar with Venice a sense of where it is in relation to the rest of the city. The community here is a close-knit one of clam fisherman, most of them having lived there for generations and when a boat explodes and two bodies are found on board, the police find it hard to learn anything about the men and the situation, beyond what they can see themselves. Inspector Brunetti is on the case and he, as he often does, asks the department secretary Signorina Elettra, what she can find out. 

She ends up going beyond her usual computer research and calling contacts and goes out to Pellestrina to visit a cousin, something she has done before, but this time putting herself in potential danger should anyone there connect her to the investigation. 

Brunetti finds himself worried about her in a more personal way than he is comfortable with and Paola, his wife, notice that as well. 

The bodies in the boat Squallus are a father and son, Guilio and Marco Bottin, Marco, and while Guilio seems to have an history of violence and disagreements, Marco is well liked. 

Because of the need to travel a distance by boat to the community, we see more of a boat pilot for the police, Montisi, and he plays an important role. Vianello is the detective assisting Brunetti and we also see him more fully in this story. 

This is a case that reaches into the past, but also is about families and small communities. 

Another important aspect of the story is the sea itself and how weather can change how it behaves so quickly and change outcomes. 

And, as always in Leon's books, there is food, both good and no so good. 

A great addition to the series. 

map provided

Lucky Red

Finished June 29

Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens

This western focuses on a young woman, Bridget, as she deals with the realities of the American West. The year is 1877, and sixteen-year-old Bridget lives with her father, who often disappears for long periods and tends to go through what money they get quickly. She's learned to handle his moods, and when he announces that he's sold their place and they are going west, she adjusts quickly. But soon after leaving their rustic home, her father is bit by a snake while sleeping and Bridget is unable to save him. She takes their few possessions and continues on, on her own, finding herself in Dodge City. Bridget soon goes through her money there and finds herself, a pretty redhead, invited to join a female-run brothel, the Buffalo Queen. 

Not bothered by the sexual expectations of the job, she appreciates the food and shelter and the personal earnings she can accumulate. 

Bridget learns from the other women there, and begins to make friends of a sort, particularly with one woman who is more educated that most. As Bridget learns her place in the society of the town, and how to manage the men she services, she also finds herself unable to see herself in a more domestic role. She enjoys the environment she works in, until things change with her naive actions, the feelings of one man who wants more from her than she feels able to give, and her decidedly unprofessional interest in Spartan Lee, a female gunslinger who comes to town. 

This is a coming of age tale in an unusual manner, where Bridget learns about trust and betrayal, and the harsh reality of the world. 

A great read that builds slowly to faster action near the end. 

This Poison Will Remain

Finished June 25

This Poison Will Remain by Fred Vargas, translated by Siân Reynolds

This is the 11th book in the Commissaire Adamsberg series. Here Adamsberg is summoned back from Iceland for a case and is soon missing his son who stayed on there. He is at first dealing the case that recalled him, a hit and run death of a woman that has some subtlety to it, but that is dealt with fairly quickly. During that case, he has become aware both through the attention one of his staff, Voisenet, to some deaths due to a spider, one that is not typically deadly. This captures his attention, and he begins to gather information on the deaths himself. 

He also begins to realize that one of his own men is actively working against him, and applies himself to that puzzle. 

The spider case is quite interesting, and one that takes him from Paris to the south of France, where the deaths have occurred. He looks for links between the victims, and finds an interesting name that links the spider to some of the victims. As he looks deeper, he discovers other deaths that seem suspect when the link between the victims is known. He soon realizes that the group of men who are potential victims is narrowing with each death, and he puts some effort into protecting those remaining. 

He encounters and begins to consult with an amateur spider specialist, and finds her to be very helpful as the case progresses. 

As usual with this series, the unusual mental connections that questions that Adamsberg comes up with really make the story and are key to the plot. The side stories here, from the initial case, to the attempted betrayal of one his men, to the crime against another staff member, and to his own buried childhood memories all link through a common theme. 

This is a book that I read in small pieces as Vargas always leads me to go down other rabbit holes from her use of connections, quotations, and analogies. 

I also liked the appearance of one of the characters from a different, although linked series, Mathias from The Three Evangelists and a new connection to a character I love from Adamsberg's team. 

Always an educational read, this was also an interesting set of puzzles. 

A Silent Death

Finished March 20

A Silent Death by Peter May

This standalone thriller is set around a Scottish police officer, John Mackenzie. Mackenzie has always wanted to be a police officer because his father was one. Not that he really knew his father, who died when he was a child. Mackenzie is a man who is highly intelligent, always curious, and is unflinchingly direct. It is this last characteristic that has caused him the most trouble. It has caused him to be separated from his wife, with her having custody of their two young children, and has caused him to leave his job at the Met. 

As the book opens, he is just starting a new job at the National Crime Agency and is given the task of going to Spain to pick up a prisoner, Jack Cleland. Cleland has been a wanted man for some time, intelligent and wealthy before venturing into the world of international drug crime. His arrest in Spain was a bit of a fluke and opens the book. Cleland has declared vengeance against Christina Sanchez, one of the police officers who arrested him, and is a very dangerous man.

Christina has been fighting her superiors for some time, trying to get the respect and cases that her skills and abilities would normally get her, if she wasn't a woman. She took the assignment that netted Cleland as a favour to a fellow officer, and she soon finds that it was one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

Christina has a beloved aunt, Ana, that she and her sister visit regularly. Ana is deaf and blind, both disabilities affecting her as a young woman. Technology has opened her world to some extent, but she is still often trapped by her limited senses. 

As Cleland escapes custody and looks for ways to exact his revenge on Christina, her family, including Ana, come into his plan. Mackenzie's skills make him a good investigator to assist in the hunt for Cleland, but his personality also means that his choices don't always lead him to make good decisions. 

The setting is a big part of the story, The town of Marvina, on the Costa del Sol, is a small enough place to navigate, with lots to interest tourists. As Mackenzie walks through the town and drives to locations in the nearby hills, we get a real sense of the landscape and the economic reality of the people who live there. 

A fascinating read, with an interesting and complex character at the centre of action. There is lots going on here and the story held my interest until the end. 

An Unkindness of Magicians

Finished August 15

An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard

I really enjoyed Kat Howard's Roses and Rot, and was eager to read this one. The opening scene of a magician performing an impressive bit of magic sets the scene and we gradually learn of the circumstances of this performance and the magician community that lives and operates in New York City. They call it the Unseen World and try to be as invisible as possible to the regular citizens of the city. 

The magician at the beginning is a woman named Sydney, and she has great powers, has come from a dark part of their world, and has strong feelings about the system that put her in the life she has lived until now. 

Sydney's story is gradually revealed, as are the stories of other magicians that she comes into contact with. For a few decades a system has been in place of pooling magic, but it has required sacrifices from all of the families part of the Unseen World and the dark nature of this has influenced many of them. Each House has its family, and the House itself has a consciousness and a power. Every once in a while there is a Turning where a House has made a challenge to take the place at the head of the community. One has been announced, and Sydney has answered an ad to be a champion for one of the Houses. In her case it is a new House, from a magician who has come from outside the Unseen World, but has been around for a few years. As the challenges escalate from proofs of magical ability to fights to the death, Sydney puts in place her own secret plan, one that will change the Unseen World completely. 

Sydney is a very interesting character, as is Laurent, the magician she becomes contracted to. The other champions have secrets, as do many of the heads of the Houses. Some of these are more evil than others, but all have consequences. 

I like the world that Howard has created here, and the depth of many of the key characters, which are complex and interesting. I'd love to see more of this world, but also of any others that she creates. 

Elevator Pitch

Finished June 29

Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay

This novel makes you look at elevators in a completely different way. In New York City, an elevator falls and all occupants are killed. It was a nice touch to have one of them doing an actual elevator pitch at the time. When a second elevator accident kills too, questions start arising about what is happening, and what caused the falls. 

Barbara Matheson is a reporter for a New York City paper. She covers mostly politics and business, and lately she's been writing a lot about the mayor, Richard Wilson Headley. .She calls out behaviour that  she considers sketchy, even if it is "how things get done." In this case it is the awarding of a construction contract to a firm owned by a big political donor. As she enters the story, she is at city hall with a crowd of reporters, hoping to ask questions. And she definitely gets a reaction. Along with the mayor are a few of his staff, including his twenty-five-year-old son, Glover. Glover and Richard have a not-always-smooth relationship, but Glover is bright in a techie way and helpful in certain areas. 

Barbara also has a difficult relationship with her child, daughter Arla. Barbara got pregnant when she was young and when the father wanted nothing to do with it, she considered her options. Her parents offered to take on the raising of Arla, and there was no secret that Arla was her daughter, but more recently, after her parents died, there have been tense discussions between the two women. 

Meanwhile, police have found a body, badly beaten and with an attempt to disguise the identity of the victim. As they research his identity and look for why this man was killed, one of them, Jerry Bourque is also dealing with PTSD and guilt from a recent case. 

There is also a group of people in the middle states of the U.S., who have organized their resentment at those on the coast and have acted out their frustrations in violent ways. A couple of them, including the head of the organization are in New York City, and questions arise about the ties to some of the accidents happening there. 

Conversations between a boy and his mother in a different font are interspersed through the story and only make sense as things are revealed near the end. 

I liked how all these storylines wove in and out of each other in a natural way, and not all the clues lead somewhere. 

As I said at the beginning, I also like how Barclay makes you think about ordinary, everyday things in a different way. This is something he does in many of his books, both the standalones like this one and The Accident, and many of the Promise Falls series. His characters are ordinary people who did things that you and I do, and then some of them get caught up in situations beyond what they could ever have expected. Even though this is a long book, it's a quick and satisfying read. 

Survivor

Finished April 20

The Survivor by Gregg Hurwitz

This suspense thriller begins with a man standing on the ledge of a high-rise in Los Angeles. He is there because he plans to kill himself, but while he's out there the bank inside is robbed. Nate Overbay, the man on the ledge has rushed in to save people before, but he is haunted by a time he didn't rush in, and his best friend did, and died for it. 

When he looks in and makes a connection with a dying bank employee and realizes more people will die if the men robbing the bank aren't stopped, he looks for a chance and finds one. He stops the robbery, and prevents more deaths, but he becomes known to the man behind the crime, and that is a dangerous place to be. 

For he is Pavlo, a powerful Ukrainian gangster, a man the cops would like to catch but haven't been able to pin anything on, and when he finds Nate, he gives him a task and a deadline, and Nate's teenage daughter Cielle's life is in the balance. The men that Pavlo works with are dangerous and violent and Nate is fighting his own body. 

Nate's PTSD from his time in the military has estranged him from his wife and daughter, but now he is back in their lives, trying to protect them from the attention he has brought on himself. He doesn't know who he can trust, and he has his own demons to deal with. 

But when he discovers the reality behind his task, he wants to find a way to do the right thing and still save his family. 

Nate survived childhood loss, losing his best friend, and his family, but this will be the biggest test of survival for him yet. This is an edge of the seat read, hard to put down and with lots of action and violence. It also has moment of love, intimacy, and truth. 

Starlight

Finished October 1
Starlight by Richard Wagamese

This novel was left unfinished when Wagamese died in 2017. Starlight is the last name of one of the main characters in the book, Frank Starlight. The book opens with him as a young man at the funeral of the man who raised him. He intends to leave the remote farm and explore the world, but as he gets to the main road, he stops and considers and turns around for home.
The book then jumps ahead a few years. Frank has found a passion in photography, growing close to the wild animals that share his area of the world and finding a way to share intense moments of their being through his photography. He lives a bachelor life on the farm, with his hired man Eugene Roth. They both work hard, keeping the farm and woodlot in good form and raising cattle.
Emmy Strong has had a tough life and her choices haven't always been good ones. Lately she's been living with Jeff Cadotte, a man who treats her as a possession he can do with as he will. As her part of the book begins, he and one of his friends Anderson are sleeping off a drunken night gambling. She aims to take some money from him, his truck and leave to escape what she fears will by the end of her. She also fears for her daughter Winnie, now nine, as she sees how Cadotte is starting to look at her. Her departure doesn't go well, and she is now on the run, and Cadotte is a man who believes strong in revenge and retribution, not recognizing it is his actions that have led to hers.
When Emmy's journey leads her to the town near Frank's farm, and she takes one chance too many, they enter each other's lives in an interesting way, Frank remembering the man that took him in when he didn't know how to live his life.
This is a story about how important our connection to nature is, how we can use nature to connect to our truest selves and find our way in life. It is also a love story on many levels. Frank is a very peaceful man, a man who knows his world, but is still uncomfortable with the fame his photographs have brought him. This is definitely a book that offers comfort, and the editors have offered some insight into the ending that Wagamese intended for this story.

Murder List

Finished December 11
Murder List by Julie Garwood

This romantic suspense novel is part of a series, but I haven't read the others. The main character, Regan Hamilton Madison is the only daughter in a hotel-owning family. Her father died when she was young, and her mother was preoccupied, so she was mostly raised by her three older brothers, Aidan, Spencer, and Walker, who tend to be over-protective, although encouraging. She's smart and beautiful but hasn't had a lot of boyfriends, with the latest one dumped after revealing himself as after her money.
Her job in the family business has to do with the foundation, finding worthy causes to fund with the money earned by the hotels. Her two best friends date back to her kindergarten days, and one, Sophie, is a newspaper reporter with a loving, albeit criminal-minded father, and the other, Cordelia, a science teacher. Sophie is onto a potentially big story, looking into a pop psychologist who charms older women out of their money, and possibly more. Sophie suspects him of murder.
We also see the story unfold from the viewpoint of a killer, an unnamed man with a wife, Nina, in a wheelchair due to an accident. He is obsessed with Regan and determined to both kill her and somehow protect her as she aligns with his wife in his mind.
As the book begins, Regan and Cordelia agree to help Sophie look into the psychologist by attending one of his seminars. One of the activities during the seminar is to create a list of people in your life who'd be better off dead and then ritualistically burn it. Due to circumstances, Regan misses the burning portion of the exercise, and then is involved in a scary situation.
When people on her list start turning up dead, and someone threatens her more directly, she involves the police. But will they and her security team be able to stop someone as determined as the stalker behind the killings?
There is lots of suspense here, and some definite attraction between Regan and the police officer assigned to be her minder. A light, but engaging read.

Beyond Fate

Finished August 1
Beyond Fate: 2002 Massey Lectures by Margaret Visser

I thoroughly enjoyed this series of five lectures, which explored not only the idea of fate, but went far beyond that, touching on many other ideas including honour and goodness, guilt and shame, revenge and payment, forgiveness and trust. She uses examples from daily life and from history, and shows how the idea of fate has developed and changed over time. This is a series that really made me think about a lot of things including cultural differences.
I liked that each lecture fit my commute almost perfectly allowing me the time to think about the ideas presented before moving on to the next lecture.
There is insight and humour here and a lot of stuff to think about.

A Howl of Wolves

Finished January 21
A Howl of Wolves by Judith Flanders

This is the fourth book in the series featuring editor Samantha (Sam) Clair. Here it begins as she is out at a play that her upstairs neighbour Kay is in, along with Kay's six year old son Bim. With her is her boyfriend, Jake, a homicide detective. Kay and her husband Anthony are both actors, and rent the second floor of Samantha's house. On the third floor is reclusive Mr. Rudiger, an insightful man who has become a good friend. As the play unfolds, it first appears that someone is playing a practical joke, making up a prop figure to look like the director of the play.
But, as Jake realizes, and Samantha soon catches onto as the play ends, the prop has been replaced with a real man, and he is dead. Samantha helps Kay and Anthony out as the days go on, assisting with keeping an eye on Bim, both at the theatre and rehearsal space, and outside of them.
On the work front, Sam is dealing with an upcoming sales presentation, and angling for her author to get a key spot before the buyers. Luckily she has a good team on her side, with some good contacts.
I like this series for the humour included, with lines that make me laugh out loud.
I also like the plots, and how solving them often requires specialist knowledge, a good eye for details, and good contacts, all of which Sam has. I also like the secondary characters, from Samantha's lawyer mother Helena, to Jake, the other tenants of the house, and Sam's coworkers and friends.