Command Performance

Finished July 23

Command Performance by Jean Echenoz, translated by Mark Polizzotti

This novel is quite different from anything else I've read. It's ironic and reads like a send-up of mystery suspense with a central character who is not very bright and rather inept, but doesn't realize his own limitations. It also has a literary style of writing in many respects, and that comes through in this translation from the French. 

The main character is Gerard Fulmard, a man who used to be a flight attendant, but something (we aren't told what) happened that made him lose his job. Now unemployed, he decides to try his hand a being a private detective, and gets hired by an obscure political party that is in the midst of infighting about their future direction and choice of leadership. 

The book opens with a piece of a satellite landing on the grocery store in Gerard's neighbourhood, followed by a kidnapping related to the political party previously mentioned. As Gerard is drawn in to the dynamics, it is unclear whether he is to be an information source or a fall guy. 

With cliché phrases flung in to add to the style, this book surprises and entertains. 

Echenoz is one of France's most respected contemporary writers, and is known for his plot twists and distinctive voice. Definitely a great read. 

Sex, Lies and Sensibility

Finished July 17

Sex, Lies and Sensibility by Nikki Payne

I ordered this book because I loved her earlier book Pride and Protest so much. This one didn't flow as well as that did and there were some minor editing issues. Payne is a good writer, and I will definitely read more from her. 

Nora was an excellent track and field athlete, competing and winning at the college level, until she did a very stupid thing and allowed her boyfriend to make a sex tape of them. Her father was angry at her after that, and she'd got a job to support herself. She'd lost her track scholarship, and didn't finish college. She also took refuge in watching HGTV endlessly to avoid fixing her own life. 

Now her father has died and she has arrived at his funeral. As she is ushered to a private room, she discovers that her mother was her father's mistress, and that he had a wife and stepdaughter. She, Shenora, and her sister Mary-Anne (Yanne) and their mother Diane don't have ownership to their home or any of her father's other assets. What they have been left in the will is a unmaintained house and property in Maine called Barton Cove. The property is in foreclosure and the full outstanding loan is required to be repaid by Labor Day of the next year. If they can pay off the amount due in time, they get access to an Estate Improvement fund in the seven figure range. 

Yanne and Nora decide to take on the estate and find unexpected partners in a native run tour group who is headed up by Ennis Freeman (Bear). As Nora puts her HGTV learned skills to work with the help of Bear's local contacts and Yanne expands her baking repertoire, the two find themselves becoming part of the community, and learning about local environmental issues and other politics. 

I liked the bringing together of two racial groups here, the black women and the indigenous community. I also enjoyed that Bear knows of Nora for her athletic prowess, not the embarrassing video and values her in ways she hadn't expected. 

This is a loose retelling of Sense and Sensibility, but brings in modern day issues and realistic plotlines. A fun read. 

The Scarlet Papers

Finished July 16

The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson

This spy thriller is very intriguing. The main character, Max Archer is an intelligence historian at the London School of Economics. He's published a couple of books, but they are in no way bestsellers, and he is barely making a living as an associate professor. His wife has left him for an investment banker and although they struggled with fertility, she is now pregnant with her new partner's child. 

When he gets an invitation to meet with a legendary retired spymaster called Scarlet King, he is very interested, but also very wary. Max had applied to MI6 himself years before, but had not been accepted. So his choice of subject as an historian is personal. There are no known pictures of Scarlet, and her background information is sparse. She was active for decades during the Cold War, and getting information from her would be a ticket to a promotion and would help him write the next book he is contracted for but is facing writer's block on. But it would also be a violation of the Official Secrets Act. 

He has questions about her motive and her reasons for choosing him for this information and the timing of her request to meet. The spycraft connected to their meeting logistics is complex and intriguing, and the information that he is given as teasers is explosive. Before he knows just what he's got himself into, he is already a subject of interest to the authorities and when the situation gets him on the verge of arrest, he finds himself on the run, not knowing who to trust. 

There is an extensive bibliography to this novel, showing the research that Richardson did in terms of coming up with the plot. This attention to detail is part of what makes this a great novel, but the writing style and character development are also key. From Max and Scarlet to the MI5 agent on his trail, we see the thought processes, the choices made, and the way each choice impacted the situation. Highly recommended. 

The Marriage Hearse

Finished July 13

The Marriage Hearse by Kate Ellis

This is the tenth book in the series featuring DI Wesley Peterson. Here the book opens with a crime scene, where we see a young woman, dead and in a state of undress, be staged for a misdirection as to her death. We then jump to a wedding scene, at the registry office. The registrar is Joyce Barnes, a middle-aged motherly woman who notices an unusual emotion in the bride's eyes, fear. The reader is moved again, to a different wedding scene, opulent and formal in a church, where things are not going well. The bride, Kirsten Harbourn, is late, and her father finally appears, but instead of walking her down the aisle, he is alone and announces that she is dead, murdered. 

This is one of the cases that Wesley is now engaged in, as they endeavour to discover who killed the bride-to-be and why. The situation is a little unusual, with the bride preparing for the wedding on her own, instead of with friends and female family members, and this raises the question of whether she had planned on meeting anyone during this time.

Kirsten worked as a secretary at a local ESL school where European students came to board and learn the language. Wesley and his team take a look at the situation there, as some people close to Kirsten have mentioned that something odd was going on there, and that she may have endangered herself if she discovered something. 

When a local man with a metal detector investigates a field with permission from the farm owners, he finds jewelry, but also human remains. The police are called in and Wesley calls Neil as the bones look as if they've been there for some time. As he learns more, Neil is determined to solve the riddle of who this woman was, and enlists the help of an archivist friend. 

Wesley's archeologist friend Neil Watson is in charge of a dig at local Tradington Hall, where discoveries have been minimal to this point. 

On the personal side, Wesley's sister Maritia is about to get married to the new vicar of Belsham, and the couple and friends, including the best man who is visiting from London, are working on the vicarage which has been neglected for some time. Meanwhile, she is staying with Wesley and his wife Pam and their kids, and been helpful with the kids as well. 

The local theatre group is putting on a play, newly discovered, but dating back to the late 1500s. The playwright, Ralph Strong, was born locally, and went to London to further his prospects as an actor and playwright. This is the only one of his plays to survive, and is titled The Fair Wife of Padua. Each chapter is introduced with either lines or programme notes from the play, and we begin to see how it aligns with different parts of the many plotlines. 

I always enjoy the way the various plotlines link in Ellis's books and how there is an historical story that has things in common with the current day crime. 

This was an engrossing read that I finished quickly. 

Sunrise by the Sea

Finished July 11

Sunrise by the Sea by Jenny Colgan

This novel, set on an island in Cornwall, is both a romance and a story of personal growth for the female character, commonly known as women's fiction. It is the fourth book in the Little Beach Street Bakery series, but the first one I've read in the series. 

This one focuses on a young woman, Marisa Rossi, who works as a registrar. Both of her parents were Italians who moved to England, and she spent many summers in Italy with her maternal grandparents, connecting strongly with her grandfather. He has recently died, and she isn't taking it well, retreating into herself, working from home as much as possible, and even avoiding her very social roommate. 

When he decides to move in with friends, he makes arrangements for her to rent a guest cabin on a nearby island, Mount Polbearne. His uncle owns them, but with no paved road and a cool summer, the cabins haven't been renting.

With some assistance, Marisa manages the move, and finds that the Russian-born school piano teacher lives in the adjoining cabin, and does all the lessons at home. He also plays aggressive sounding music late into the night. She wears noise-cancelling headphones as she works, but finds the late night playing disturbing enough to put a note under his door. 

As she follows her therapist's guidance to move gradually out of the depressive situation, she also attempts to be more friendly with her neighbour and finds herself making both unexpected local friends with the bakery owner, and forging a new close relationship with a distant relative. 

This is a book about feelings and community, about coping with things in life that are difficult, and about healing in our own individual ways. It's also about being open to new experiences, and shows the way that smaller communities have a strength that shows under strain. 

A very enjoyable read. 

A Short Walk Through a Wide World

Finished July 9

A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke

This fantasy adventure book follows French native Aubry Tourvel, as she is forced to leave her home in Paris at the age of nine and keep moving. At nine she finds a puzzle ball that seems attracted to her after a neighbour passes away. She and her older sisters make a wish at an unusual well they find near them, but she can't bear to give up the ball. Soon after, she begins to bleed and convulse. Her parents take her to the doctor, but her symptoms disappear on the way there, only to reappear as she nears home again. She flees, and her family follows at first, but soon her father and sisters return home, and her and her mother keep moving. The strange malady will only let her rest a few days in one place before reappearing. 

When Aubry realizes that her situation has put a strain on family finances, she determines to go alone and leaves her mother in the night, gradually learning skills to survive. 

When we first meet her she is in her forties and in a village in Siam when her malady hits. An New Zealand family travelling by riverboat rescue her and she tells her story to them, and so also to the reader. We also see her thoughts as she chooses what to leave out along the way, the things that are truly difficult or shocking, but we see how she makes her way and also the secret doors that appear when she most needs them. 

Aubry has travelled through deserts, across mountains, and around the world more than once. When she finds herself up against severe weather, or other dire circumstances, a door will be there, in the middle of nowhere, a door that she can open and find herself in a vast underground library. She is always drawn in by the books there, books that are told in pictures, stories from every time and place, about every subject. These stories add to her knowledge and help her understand the world she must navigate through. It is a life that is lonely at times, but one that also opens her to new friendships, new languages, and new experiences. 

This is a story of adventure, of courage and resilience, of risks and rewards, unexpected friendships, and even love along the way. 

I found this book thoroughly engaging and hard to put down. This is a debut novel that is a definite winner. 

Last Resort

Finished June 9

Last Resort by Jill Sanders

This is the first book in a series following the Grayton family, a closeknit family made up of children rescued from bad homes. The main character here is the youngest child, Cassandra (Cassey) who is in her mid-twenties for the main story. We see her backstory of joining the family, and then her beginning to owning the Boardwalk Bar and Grill, in a building that was family owned and had previously been run by her aunt Karen, but sat empty for a few years. We see her family chipping in and fixing up the building, which also has a small apartment where Cassey lives. 

This is all in a small beachside community called Surf Breeze on the Florida Gulf coast. As the main part of the book begins, the county has recently stopped running shuttle buses from the larger tourist town of Emerald Beach to Surf Breeze and it is hurting the businesses there. It seems to be a ploy to get the owners of businesses on the boardwalk to sell to a large hotel in Emerald Beach, called Crystal Shores. When Luke, the son of the owner of Crystal Shores is sent to talk to Cassey about selling he finds that he has met his match, and he begins to question his father's tactics and methods of doing business. The chemistry between Cassey and Luke is fast-acting and they become intimate quickly, but that doesn't necessarily equal a relationship. This was an interesting look at a strong woman posing more of a challenge than anticipated, and the respect that she is due for making her business work well. Cassey's siblings are part of the story, except for a sister who disappeared of her own volition a few years ago, and I can already see that there are stories that will develop for each one of them. A fun summer read.