Meg Perry's Blog, page 25

What I’m reading now: The Girl on the Train

Wow. Ever sit down with a new book, thinking, “I’ll read the first few chapters, then I’ll go do [fill in the blank]” and then you end up not moving for four hours because the book is just that good? It happened to me on Saturday. We’d gotten a copy of The Girl on the Train at the library and I’d heard good things about it, so I checked it out to read. The writer’s name is Paula Hawkins, and this was her first novel – so you never know, right?

Wow. (I think I said that already.) The girl on the train is Rachel, a woman who’s lost her husband and her job due to her alcoholism. She continues to ride the train into London every day, because she’s afraid to tell her roommate that she’s unemployed. As the train passes through the suburbs it slows and often stops at a crossing, and Rachel has the chance to watch a couple in their back garden. She gives them names and imagines an idyllic life for them, transferring what she wishes she still had with her husband to the couple.

Then one day she sees something she shouldn’t have. Or does she? She’s an alcoholic, she has blackouts, she’s an unreliable witness. She goes to the police, but doesn’t think they believe her. She decides to take matters into her own hands – and the consequences are severe.

This is a terrific psychological thriller – not psychological horror, like Stephen King or Dean Koontz can be, but an entirely believable story about entirely believable people whose lives disintegrate in entirely believable ways. I could not put it down. There’s not a word wasted in this book. Hawkins was a journalist first, I believe (and may still be), which probably accounts for that.

In case you can’t tell, I highly recommend The Girl on the Train!

Launched is scrubbed for now

I went back and forth on the title for this post – Failure to Launch was my other choice, but I decided that “scrubbed” came closer to my meaning.

I’m fortunate to live a little more than an hour’s drive from the Kennedy Space Center. I can see rocket launches from my front yard. When the space shuttle was still flying, I tried to watch as many launches as I could, holding my breath until the solid rocket boosters separated. On a clear day, or at night, you could see that happen; the boosters looked like two small stars floating away from the shuttle as they separated and fell to the ocean.

By Thomas Fawls (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

I only drove to KSC once to see a launch up close. A friend and I got up before dawn and drove down – it was a morning launch. We got situated, surrounded by an excited crowd – and the time came and went for the launch. A couple of minutes later, someone with a radio got the word – the launch had scrubbed with nine seconds to go.

Aauuggghh!!! So close!

I never went back. I settled for watching from my front yard, knowing that if the launch scrubbed I hadn’t wasted nearly an entire day.

Anyway…

The next book in the Jamie Brodie Mysteries series is Avenged to Death, out this fall, then Played to Death, out (I hope) by the end of the year. The book after Played was going to be Launched to Death. The premise was that Pete’s brother Steve would invite Pete and Jamie to view a rocket launch, since he had worked on the rocket or payload somehow. The launch would maybe get scrubbed, maybe not, but there would be a body found near the pad.

Originally I was going to base the book here, bring the boys to Florida, so I could set a story on my home turf. Then I decided that wouldn’t work logistically – the launch would have to be in California, at Vandenberg AFB. Then a whole host of other issues appeared. What the story was turning into was a good twisty mystery, but there was no emotional component to it. I talked it over several times with my writing group pals, and we finally decided to scrub Launched.

That’s not to say that the Launched window has completely closed. I love the plot ideas that we came up with, and if I can think of a way to use them later, I’m going to. But I just wasn’t feeling it – and if I was going to have this book out by next spring, I was going to have to start feeling it pretty quickly.

So the book after Played to Death will be Filmed to Death, which got pushed back a couple of times in the sequence, but is now just begging to be written. My intention is to still have it published by next spring, which coincidentally will be when the book actually takes place. I haven’t pulled that off before. :)

What I’m reading now: The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Cafe

The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Cafe is the latest in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, by Alexander McCall Smith. I’ve loved these books from the beginning – they are cozy mysteries, yet entirely unique. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is owned by Precious Ramotswe, a “traditionally built” (I LOVE that phrase!) lady in Botswana. She employs Grace Makutsi, who has risen from secretary to partner. In this book, Mma Makutsi has decided to open a restaurant, the Handsome Man’s Deluxe Cafe, which will cater to the elite of their town. Naturally she runs into difficulties. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe is dealing with the mystery of the book – a woman has turned up in town claiming to have amnesia, and the agency has been hired to uncover her identity.

The mystery in this one is pretty thin, but that’s okay. These books are entirely driven by the characters, and my enjoyment of them is based on the fact that I care about these folks and want to see what happens next in their lives. If you like cozy mysteries and are tired of the cats-in-bookstores trope, you should try these books.

The soundtrack for Talked to Death

This was a tough one. There aren’t that many songs about library conferences. Who’d have thought? :) But I put together a list that I thought matched up with some of the scenes in the book. CAUTION: Spoiler alert!!!

 

On the Road Again – Willie Nelson: As Jamie and Liz are driving

Shouting in the Library – Popple: When Creighton is arguing in the lobby as Pete and Jamie go to dinner

Something to Talk About – Bonnie Raitt: When Pete and Jamie shower together before bed

Jive Talkin – Bee Gees: When Pete is telling Jamie that the police want them to sit in on the questioning

Librarian – Haunted Love: When Avery Roth is telling the police about Creighton and Renee Jubelirer

Low Budget – The Kinks: When Grant Schaeffer is talking about cuts to the library’s databases at the reception

Sympathy for the Devil – Rolling Stones: When we first see Haywood Kern on Jamie’s laptop

Getting Away With Murder – Papa Roach: When Autumn reports on the sidewalk conversation she overheard

Dirty Work – Steely Dan: As Kern is being led from his home by Detective Rinaldi

Everybody’s Talkin’ – Harry Nilsson: When Rinaldi is telling Pete and Jamie about Amanda and Gwen

What I’m reading: Flesh and Blood by Patricia Cornwell

Flesh and Blood is the latest book by Patricia Cornwell featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. Kay and her husband, FBI agent and profiler Benton Wesley, are about to leave for a much-needed vacation when a murder happens a half-mile from their house. Things get complicated very quickly; I’m through Chapter 38 (of 48) and they still haven’t made it out of town because the bodies keep piling up.

There is no one who weaves complicated threads of plot together more skillfully than Cornwell. It’s the reason I still read her books. As I’ve been reading, though, I am reminded of why I don’t rush to read these books as soon as they’re released, as I do with other authors. The atmosphere in her books is unrelentingly bleak. No one ever laughs. Two of the main characters, police detective Pete Marino and Kay’s niece Lucy, “genius hacker millionaire sociopath etc.,” have to be two of the most unlikable main characters in any long mystery series. In real life, someone would have shot Marino after he mouthed off to them one too many times, or he would be in jail himself for his anger management issues. Lucy is one of the most improbable characters ever, in what is supposed to be a reality-based world. In real life, she’d be in jail too.

In this book, Kay is beginning to suspect that Lucy is the killer. One can only hope.

My other objection is that none of these characters seem to change or grow. The span of the series covers several years now, and the personalities of all the protagonists are pretty much the same as they’ve always been. No new insights have been gained, in spite of Kay’s continuous self-examination. It’s tiresome.

But if you like a well-written, tight, complex mystery plot, Cornwell is your woman.

If you’re new to the Kay Scarpetta series, I’d recommend beginning with the first book, so you’ll understand how the characters came to be where they are.

Do you want to know what characters look like?

For some of the characters I write, I have a very clear picture of their looks in my head. For some, I don’t know what they look like until I see a picture of them. Obviously I feel as if I know these characters well! But for some of them, their looks were still a little foggy to me.

Over the weekend I put together a gallery of pictures on Pinterest, after searching on Google Images for people that I thought resembled the characters. There’s a link to it now, in the comments below. (I tried to make it a widget over to the side, and couldn’t get it to work.) IF AND ONLY IF you want to know what I think the characters look like, you can click on the link. If you’d rather keep your own image in your mind, DON’T LOOK!  :D

Happy birthday, Jamie Brodie!

Oddly enough, the time span of a Jamie Brodie book has never included Jamie’s birthday, which is May 17. In the Jamie universe, he’s turning 35 today, and he’s in between the events of Avenged to Death (the next book to come) and Played to Death.

What would Jamie do on his birthday? I think he would have spent yesterday, Saturday, hiking with Pete and whatever other friends were able to come, then the gang would gather at Ali and Mel’s house for a cookout-style birthday party. Today, Sunday, he’d go to Oceanside to celebrate with the family. His dad would make shrimp and grits, his favorite meal, and Val would bake a couple of pies rather than a cake. There would be presents – mostly books – then Pete and Jamie would go home for their own private celebration.

A wonderful weekend, if you ask me. :D

What I’m reading: The Ladies of Llangollen

The river Dee flowing through Llangollen, Wales (my own photo)

In the summer of 2008 I made my second trip to the UK – two weeks in Wales. We began in the southern part of the country then moved north. On our next-to-last day in the country, we spent a couple of nights in Llangollen, a beautiful little town in northeast Wales on the river Dee.

One of the attractions there, not far from town, was Plas Newydd, a house now kept as a museum to its two most famous occupants – the Ladies of Llangollen. I didn’t get much of the story on that trip as we were running out of time, but determined that I’d learn more some day.

Last week I finally got around to doing that! The book is titled The Ladies of Llangollen: A Study in Romantic Friendship, by Elizabeth Mavor, published in 1971. There have been several books written about the Ladies, but this is the definitive one, as it is the best-researched and taken from the Ladies’ own letters and diaries.

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were born in Ireland in the mid-1700s, both in less-than-auspicious circumstances. Eleanor was the third daughter of a family with a title but little money, and a younger brother that would inherit everything; Sarah was orphaned at a young age and raised by various family members. They met when Sarah was still a teenager and Eleanor was nearly thirty – they were 13 years apart in age. They became close friends almost immediately and, over time, created a plan to “retire” from society. Both of them were educated and forward-thinking for the time, and neither cared to live the restricted lives available to women at the time. So they decided to run away.

The first time they left, they were caught and returned to their respective homes. Sarah took to her bed and refused to eat, becoming nearly delirious; Eleanor’s family made arrangements to send her to a convent, but Sarah’s family begged Eleanor’s to reconsider. Making a long story short, finally the two were allowed to leave together. They moved to Wales and rented a small cottage outside of Llangollen, then a very small town, and developed a “system” by which they would live, consisting of gardening, improving their home, and reading to each other in the evenings.

Richard James Lane [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

They became celebrities of a sort, mostly because of their unusual living arrangements. At the time there were rumors that they were lesbians, of course, but no one dared confront them directly about it. There was a concept in the early 1800s known as “romantic friendship,” where it was considered acceptable for two women to be very close friends and refer to each other in terms usually reserved for romantic partners. Sarah and Eleanor referred to each other as “my love,” “the beloved of my soul,” “the delight of my heart,” “the joy of my life,” “my tender, sweet love.” Mavor, the author, suggests that their words were either “the only permissible expression of a yet more intimate relationship; or as the unconscious expression of the desire for such a relationship.” (p. 105)

Were they lesbians? As Jamie Brodie said in Stoned to Death, “It seems likely, doesn’t it? But there’s no proof.” The Ladies shared a bed for nearly fifty years. But naturally they never wrote about anything “improper.” All we have is the language that they used to refer to each other.

It’s a fascinating story. I had to get the book through interlibrary loan, but there may be used copies of it out there that you could find. I definitely recommend it.

Talked to Death is here!

Finally! :D��http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X882CW0

Librarians gone wild! It���s a typical state library association conference – presentations, networking, receptions, drinking, strangers appearing in Pete and Jamie���s room in the middle of the night��� What���s atypical is murder. A lot of people hated library director Hugo Creighton, most of them librarians. Can Jamie help the police solve Creighton���s murder before the conference ends and the suspects go home?

Includes a BONUS short story – “Hearts”

Encountered to Death now available on Smashwords!

I’ve uploaded Talked to Death to Amazon, and it should be available later tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, Encountered to Death, Jamie Brodie Mystery #5, is available NOW through Smashwords! Here’s the link:��https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/540878

Jamie Brodie Mystery #5

It seems Jamie Brodie can’t go anywhere anymore without a body turning up. Jamie and his boyfriend Pete Ferguson are taking a week of vacation to visit Pete’s brother Steve in Alamogordo, New Mexico. They arrive to find that Alamogordo has been invaded – by fans of a TV show called Alien Visitors. The host of the show, Dixon Gill, was found dead in the lobby of Steve’s building. Gill’s fans believe he was killed by the FBI because he was about to reveal the truth about the government’s cover-up of alien visitations. Jamie and Pete know that’s not true. But who did kill Gill? The director of his show? A competitor on the same network? An angry commenter on Gill’s blog? A shadowy anti-government group? Or one of his ex-wives? The deeper Jamie probes into Gill’s past, the more potential suspects he finds.

The truth is out there – but can Jamie uncover it?