series

Series Redux: Lady Sherlock

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It’s been two years since the eighth Lady Sherlock book but this week book 9, The Vanished Sister has come out. In the interim Sherry Thomas has written a contemporary thriller called The Librarians (which I still haven’t read) but she’s now come back to her series about Charlotte Holmes. I’ve written a Series I Love post about this series before, but as a reminder, the set up here is that Sherlock Holmes is the alter-ego of Charlotte Holmes in order to circumvent the restrictions of being female in Victorian England. And because it’s inspired by the original books there are lots of nods back to those books.

The last couple of books have become increasingly interlinked as Charlotte investigates Moriarty’s network – and when I read book eight a few weeks back I wished I’d re-read book seven first to remind me of how everything was left in that because there was so much building on the previous book(s) – but looking at the early reviews of The Vanished Sister it looks like it might be more standalone, which would be a really good thing. The blurb says that Charlotte and co are on holiday in Devon when Mrs Watson’s estranged sister Mrs Carstairs invites her to a house party and then disappears. A body is found, but Mr Carstairs insists that the body cannot be his wife – despite the fact that it matches her physical description. So what has happened? Why did Mrs Carstairs want a reconciliation? Who is the real Mrs Carstairs and was she actually trying to get the attention of Sherlock Holmes all along?

My interest in this book has increased at the idea that it is a standalone, but (and here’s my little moan) but don’t expect me to read this any time soon because I suspect this is going to be really hard to get hold of in the UK in paperback. As you can see from the photo, I’ve been buying the paperbacks since book three and I would like to carry on doing that – not least because the kindle prices for this series are often higher than my kindle purchase limit. But when I read book eight I realised that it wasn’t a US import like the others, but a print on demand version of the US book. You can’t tell from looking at the spine – but from the top you can see the paper is different and when you’re reading it it’s heavier and generally just less comfortable to read than a normal paperback. And I find that really annoying. As of time of writing, Amazon has separate pages (ie not linked editions) for the Kindle and paperback versions of this book and wants more than £30 for the paperback which suggests there’s something weird going on. So I’m moderating my expectations for if (ever) I will be able to get hold of an actual copy of this one. But if you’re in the US that’s not going to be a problem for you. And if you haven’t tried the series before, you may be able to start with this one without being as lost as you would have been if you started with the previous one.

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

Out this Week: Clover Lake book 3

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Take A Chance, Sasha Sinclair has filmmaker Sasha trying to make the documentary film her late parents dreamed of – about the life of Alice Bishop. Alice’s descendant Margot doesn’t want to be making the film, even though her family’s businesses really need the boost it could give them, but as she spends more time with Sasha… I know it’s the first of the month today and so it probably should be the stats post, but given that the first in this series, Dream On, Ramona Riley, was BotW back in June when I mentioned that a third book was on the way, it’s only fair that I circle back around today and say that this came out on Tuesday. I’m looking forward to reading this when I can get my hands on it – maybe this is the excuse I need to head to a romance bookshop or Gay’s the Word in the near future?

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Mysteries set on boats 2

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Happy Wednesday everyone. I’ve already done one set of murders set on boats, but I’m back with even more this week. And I’m not ruling out a third post in the further – because there’s the latest Three Dahlias that I still haven’t read and I’m sure I can find some more…

Death on Lusitania by R L Graham*

Set on the Lusitania in 1915, if you’ve spent any time looking at maritime history around this time you’ll know that the omens are not good for the passengers on board the voyage from New York to Liverpool, but on board is Patrick Gallagher, who in charge of getting a disgraced diplomat back to Britain. Gallagher is a former sailor turned civil servant of a fairly specific type and when another passenger is found shot dead in a locked room, the captain asks him to investigate. He quickly uncovers a range of people who could have wanted the victim dead and the countdown is on until they enter the war zone. This is a carefully constructed mystery, that moved a bit slower than I wanted it too initially until all the twists and turns really started to kick in. The pace did pick up as the end approached, but the actual ending was over pretty quickly. I liked Patrick as a character though and I’m pleased to see that there is another book featuring him because there are definitely some lose ends left about him and his personal life.

Murder Below Deck by Orlando Murrin*

This is the second book about Paul Delamare, and after the murderous events of the first book he’s been inveigled into a trip on a super yacht to help a friend write her memoirs. Except that once he gets on board things start going wrong and all is definitely not quite what it seems. I really enjoyed Knife Skills for Beginners as you may remember and was really pleased to be back in Paul’s world again. A book set on a super yacht felt like it was something a bit different but I think this plot is more far-fetched (I can’t really say why because: spoilers) but it moves so quickly that you don’t really notice that until the end when you have time to think about it. It has got a large cast of pretty unlikeable characters outside of Paul and the claustrophobia of the limited communications on the yacht really adds to the tension. I enjoyed it and will happily read a third book if it should come along.

Murphy’s Law by Rhys Bowen

This is the first in Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy series and is a little bit of a cheat because the murder happens at Ellis Island just after Molly has got off the ship to New York, but a lot of the build up to it is on the ship. Molly is fleeing to America after committing murder in self defence. She’s also travelling under an assumed name and looking after children that aren’t hers, so being prime suspect in a murder investigation really isn’t what she needs. This also looks at the Tammany Hall corruption of the era as Molly tries to clear her name and keep her chance to stay in America. It’s a promising start to a series – I will read some more just as soon a as I get the to read pile down!

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: A Game of Cat and Killer

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Happy Tuesday everyone. After last week’s Japanese fiction Recommendsday it just so happens that I’ve got another Japanese novel in translation today – it’s actually a new release in English and it’s got a very different feel from the ones I mentioned last week…

Yoshitaro Katayama is not an ideal candidate to be a detective: he doesn’t like heights, he’s socially awkward and he’d rather not come into contact with dead bodies. But his father was detective and it was his dying wish for his son. And so here he is. One morning he’s offer the choice of looking at some gruesome crime scene photos of a murdered young woman or going to the college she was a student at to conduct investigations. He chooses the latter, but soon there are more bodies and he has acquired a cat which belonged to one of the victims. He’s not keen on having a pet, until she starts to show an unusual level of interest in the case…

Now I know there are a lot of cozy mysteries with cats (often talking cats) in them. This is not one of those. Katayama also has a sister that he lives with and worries a lot about, and an auntie who is trying to arrange him a marriage but this is not cozy. Do not be deceived. This is a serial killer mystery which happens to have a cat. The detective is a bit hapless but the crimes he is investigating are anything but.

This originally came out in the late 1970s and is the first in a long running series by Jiro Akagawa that has only just making it into English. Considering their age they felt surprisingly current – obviously there are no mobile phones or computers but apart from that they could have been now. Of course that could be down to the choices Haydn Trowell has made in the translation. The murders were a bit on the gruesome side for what I’m used to reading, but I am interested enough in what happens to detective Katayama next that I may pick up the next one when it comes out in a few months time.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out today in Kindle and Kobo and all the usual formats. I have no sense of how easy (or otherwise) this will be to get in hard copy, but it’s got physical copies listed so it may be possible

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 21 – September 27

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It was one theatre trip and a concert in the end – and a non-fiction book, which always takes me longer than fiction. And we’re hurtling towards the end of September too, which is terrifying. Hey ho, we will get there. A quieter week this week (I hope) with plenty of opportunities for reading.

Read:

Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanne Tesori

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers

Hollywood Whispers by Eileen Cope*

Baekjo Laundry Has a Neat Answer to All Your Problems by Lee Jae-in*

Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters

Get Over It, April Evans by Ashley Herring Blake

Safe Harbor by Nicola Yoon

Started:

The Final Problem by Arturo Perez-Reverte

A Game of Cat and Killer by Jiro Akagawa*

The Gentleman’s Book of Vice by Jess Everlee*

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Three books and one ebook. I couldn’t help myself – I went to five different bookshops…

Bonus picture: Biscuit Moomins in the window of a shop in Notting Hill.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Death Note

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I’ve got another theatre show for you this week – and because has already closed I feel like I can be honest about how I feel about it without feeling like I’m being mean or potentially stopping anyone from going to see it. Which I guess is a bit of a giveaway about what is coming, but let’s maintain the facade and I’ll start with the plot.

Death Note: The Musical is based on the manga (and anime of the same name) and is the story of Light Yagami, a high school student in Tokyo who finds a Death Note – a black notebook where anyone whose name is written into it will die 40 seconds later, from a heart attack unless otherwise specified. Light has strong views about justice and decides (pretty much instantly) that he’s going to use it to rid the world of criminals who he thinks have escaped justice. The number of people dropping dead soon attracts the attention of the police who bring in the mysterious detective L to try and track down who is responsible for the biggest murder spree Japan has ever seen. There are also side plots around the Shinigami who the death note belong to and also a pop star called Mira.

I’ve been hearing about this musical for years now – which is why I went to see it. It’s been circulating in various forms for more than a decade – initially in Japan and South Korea and the first English production of it was a very successful concert performance production in London a couple of years ago and there was a lot of buzz around this when the Barbican announced it. This was also my first Frank Wildhorn musical in a theatre, having been reading about his various shows for 20 years – ie before streaming was a thing so if you wanted to hear the music in question you needed to pay £20+ for a CD of something you had no idea whether you would like or not.*

I am not familiar with the source material but the original manga ran to 12 volumes – and the anime series to nearly 40 episodes – so I suspect that there has been a considerable amount of flattening out of the plot, characters and motivations of the story to get this down to 2 hours and 40 minutes including interval. Or at least I hope there has because I found it all very one dimensional and surface level. Everything happens very quickly and characters take no time to reflect on the whys and whats of their behaviour. Not only does Light decide to start his vigilante killing spree very fast, he soon has (apparently) no qualms about killing anyone who is trying to track him down and stop him. None of this is helped by the fact that the score is also almost entirely power ballads, which start big and end big and soon lost any impact on me because of the total lack of light and shade in the music.

That said, there were things that I did like (or at least appreciate). All the performers were giving it their all and working hard with what they were given to do. My favourite performance came from Telly Leung, who I thought was great as Ryuk, the shinigami who Light’s Death Note originally belonged too – eating up every scene he was in (as well as every apple that he came across) with an enormous and hilarious performance. I thought the ambition and scale of the sets was something to behold too – even if my extreme side seat meant I probably wasn’t getting the full effect of it.

And I realise that this is probably the most down I’ve been on a show I’ve written about here, maybe ever, but I promise I have seen worse – I just haven’t written about them. Also given the massively enthusiastic reception this got in the theatre, the way it’s been selling and most of the other reviews I am an outlier here. And it’s always interesting to be an outlier. Was the fact that I’d been to see Kimberley Akimbo the previous night and loved it a factor? Who can tell but the fact remains that I’ve humming the music from Kimberly and listening to that cast recording and I couldn’t remember a tune from Death Note by the time I’d got home from the theatre.

I will be absolutely fascinated to see if this show has a life beyond this 50 performance summer run at the Barbican. From what I could judge it was definitely not a theatre crowd the night that I was there and any show that can bring in fans of the source material *and* get a 4* review from the Guardian might potentially have another life. But this is going to need a big old theatre to do it in. Much as I hope that next summer’s production of Sunday in the Park with George happens, if it doesn’t (and it feels like at this point it might not happen) I can see this getting another outing in the Barbican to replace it.

Happy Sunday.

*and for perspective, £20 at that point was more than 5 times my hourly wage at my part time job.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Saucy Books 2

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It’s been more than a year since I originally went to Saucy Books in Notting Hill – and they’ve moved! They’re about three doors down from the original location but it’s much, much bigger.

Now I should say I don’t have loads of photos because I was having a delightful chat about books rather than doing anything else and so the pictures don’t do justice to the much bigger size. This is a built out section full of contemporary romance that’s basically the size of the original store!

This is the other side of it – as you can see there’s loads of books here that I’ve already read (among them Book Lovers, Husband Material, Star Shipped, The Bodyguard) as well as some that I still want to (Atmopshere, Father Material, And Then There Was You). There is also a huge section – easily the same size as this again of Romantasy and Romance-with-Dark-Covers. And it’s still got loads of space for events and signings – it’s clearly a much, much better space for a bookshop (given how much revenue can come from events) than the old one was.

I’m finishing with their cork board to vote for your favourite trope – I’m not going to tell you what I picked, but do tell me yours in the comments!

romance, series, Series I love

Romance Series: There’s Something About Marysburg

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Given that the new Willow Creek book came out yesterday, I thought it would make sense to do an if you like that try this type series post today, so I had a think and also took to trawling the “readers also liked” section of goodreads for each book. And a couple of authors kept coming up over and over again – one of which was Olivia Dade and it got me to thinking that although I’ve written about some of her books, one thing I haven’t done is write about her There’s Something About Marysburg series of small town romances.

We have three books here: Teach Me, 40-Love and Sweetest in the Gale. They’re linked together by the fact that they’re linked by the town’s High School. And basically the theme of this series could be: No Stupid Drama. There’s no high stakes/high adrenaline stuff here, just a group of slightly older (as in 30-something or 40 soemthing) characters finding love.

Teach Me is a lovely romance between a newly divorced Dad and the teacher whose world history class he’s unwittingly stolen. Rose has reasons why she doesn’t trust people and why she won’t let people in. Martin has issues around his self worth. But there’s no big misunderstanding that could (should?) be resolved by a simple conversation, it’s all about two people working out if they are right for each other beyond just chemistry, and then starting to negotiate life together. And it’s very, very romantic despite – Dade is proving you don’t necessarily need high stakes drama to make a satisfying romance.

40-Love was a Book of the week back in 2020 and was the first of this series I read (yes I read them out of order as per usual) and that’s about Tess, a feisty assistant principal and Lucas a flirty Swedish tennis pro almost fifteen years younger than her. They start a romance while she’s on holiday at the resort that he works at while he’s coming to terms with the premature end of his career on the pro-tour. But can the two of them breakdown their defences to find out if it could be more than just a holiday fling? I’m not usually an age gap romance person, but Lucas’s years on the tennis tour make him more sensible and mature than your normal late-twentysomething. As I said back then the conflict here entirely about is whether they’re going to work together when they get to know each other and get beyond the (just) the chemistry. Funny, flirty and sexy.

And finally Sweetest in the Gale is three linked novella length romances set in Marysburgh – two in the school, one with an ex-teacher – and three different tropes. There’s a widowed teacher, an opposites attract and a marriage of convenience/friends to lovers. There’s something bittersweet in all of them and I really enjoyed them. So if you want something slightly lower profile than Dade’s Spoiler Alert series, with some small town vibes tht you also get from the Renn Faire books, then these might be your jam.

These are at the pricier end of the Kindle and Kobo range as I write this, but that’s probably the easiest way to find them as I don’t think i’ve ever seen them in stores. But if you do want cheaper Olivia Dade options The Spoiler Alert series and former BotW At First Spite are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment.

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

Out This Week: Final Renn Faire book

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At this point my love of Jen DeLuca and especially of her Willow Creek/Rennaissance Faire series is well known, so this post should not be a shock to you. A fifth (and final) book in the series has arrived and taking us back full circle to where we started, our heroine this time is Caitlin, who was the teenage instigator of Emily’s involvement in the Renn Faire in Well Met, the daughter of April, the heroine of Well Matched. In Well Versed, Caitlin is now 24 and back at the faire for the summer because she’s unemployed and back at home. This is a second chance romance – because our hero is Alex, who is the reason she fell out of love with the faire when he broke her heart years ago. I am so here for this and I can’t wait to read it!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Japanese Novels in Translation

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Happy Wednesday! I’ve said that it’s feeling autumnal and there’s something about autumn that makes these three Japanese novels feel really apt. I’ve said they’re in translation which is a bit of a “well obviously” because I haven’t been hiding a secret talent for Japanese, but there’s a definitely a bit of a vibe about this sort of Japanese novel too – it’s sort of cozy and low stakes and reflective. And that is what I want in back to school season, even though it’s a long time since school!

Tsubaki Stationery Store by Ito Ogawa*

Hatoko has recently returned to Kamakura to take over her grandmother’s stationery store and scribe business. As a child Hatoko rebelled against the expectation that she would become a scribe and the atrict training that was required and ran away (sort of) as soon as she was old enough. But now she is back, she starts to find her place in the community as she writes various correspondence for the locals and she starts to uncover the secrets of her grandmother as the seasons of her first year running the shop gently pass. This is really lovely. Hatoko gets into a sort of flow state when she’s writing and reading about her process is very soothing too. I could really imagine her neighbourhood, the people that she helps, the friends she makes and the food she eats. There are no bad consequences from her letters to worry about and it has a real gentle rhythm about it that is sort of hypnotic.

The Cat Who Saved The Library by Sosuki Natsukawa*

This is the sequel to former BotW The Cat Who Saved Books and Tiger the Cat is back and saving more books. This time our human is 13-year-old Nanami who has asthma and spends more time with books than she does with other children.

Nanami had a peculiar habit of reading multiple books at once, yet still feeling the need to reach for new ones. There were always so many books she wanted to read, far more than she could keep up with.

I mean I think we know that this is basically me. I have such a huge pile of books to read and so many on the go at once and yet I still find myself standing in front of the to-read bookshelf trying to find something I want to read next. Anyway. Nanami notices that books are disappearing from the library where she spends a lot of her free time and finds herself helping a talking cat to save the books from forces of darkness. I enjoyed this as much as I did the first one – and was delighted to see some of the characters from that first book reappear here. And of course there are plenty of parallels with what is going on in the book and with books being banned in real life.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa*

I often find Japanese fiction slightly more melancholic than I want it to be, but I pretty much always enjoy it anyway. This is one of those. The central character is Takako who goes to stay in the flat above her uncle Satoru’s bookshop after her boyfriend tells her he is marrying someone else. What happens then is a discovery of shared community, making of new friends, a new found love of reading and a greater understanding of love. It’s short but it’s very readable, although I preferred the first section that is about Takako, her uncle and the community around the bookshop to the second part which has the return of Satoru’s long disappeared wife. This has got a sequel out now, which I’ve seen in bigger bookshops.

And that’s your lot for this week – enjoy!