School Days by Robert B. Parker

School Days by Robert B. Parker
304 pages
Published October 2006 by Penguin Group
Source: my parents

Lily Ellsworth, wealthy matriarch and devoted grandmother, has hired Spenser, private detective, to prove her grandson, Jared Clark, innocent in a recent school shooting.  No one else, however, seems to think the boy is innocent, not even his own parents.  In fact, no one else, including Jared himself, seems to want to fight the charge at all despite the fact that there is no physical proof that Jared was involved, only the word of the one boy that was caught still in the school.

For Spenser, the question soon becomes not "if" Jared was involved in the shooting that killed seven people but "why." Why would a boy that had never caused any trouble suddenly decide to start shooting classmates? Where would the two boys have gotten the guns and the experience to shoot so accurately? And why is Jared so willing to go to prison without a fight?

This is the 33rd Spenser novel Parker wrote and it didn't take long to figure out how Spenser came to be so popular with readers.  He's walking testosterone with an eye for the ladies but faithful to his beloved.  He's a well-read tough guy. Spenser has a charm that's irresistible for men and women alike.  The case of Jared Clark is interesting with some surprising twists and turns, but this book is really all about Spenser. It's fast-paced, dialogue heavy with plenty of action and I couldn't put it down.

My parents are big fans of Parker's books, both his Spenser books and his westerns, so I've got no shortage of his books to choose from next and I'm looking forward to it!

Update: My dad wrote to remind me that Parker's books were not limited to the Spenser series or the westerns. The man was prolific!

Not only Spenser and the westerns;  there’s also the Sheriff Jesse Stone books (which CBS has turned into such excellent TV movies with Tom Selleck as Jesse) and those featuring female detective Sonny Randle (who sometimes collaborates with Spenser).  The westerns are my favorites, but I enjoy them all.

Mystery March - Cream Puff Murder by Joanne Fluke

Cream Puff Murder by Joanne Fluke
333 pages
Published February 2009 by Kensington Publishing
Source: borrowed this one from a friend


Bakery owner Hannah Swensen's mother is publishing a book and Hannah needs to be able to fit into a Regency dress for the book launch so her sister convinces her to begin dieting and exercising with her at the local mall's health club.  Even though Hannah is used to waking up early and hitting the ground running, she's not used to hitting the treadmill running and she's not enjoying it a bit. Finding the body of the town hussy dead in the jacuzzi one morning doesn't help matters.  Neither does the fact that her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Detective Mike Kingston, has been pulled off the case because of his "relationship" with the deceased.  When her brother-in-law and other sister's boyfriend are also pulled from the case for the same reason, the three women team up to solve the mystery.  Hannah's other on-again, off-again boyfriend, Norman, also pitches in to help, as do Hannah and Norman's mothers. With most of the women in town bearing a grudge against the deceased for her flirting ways or meanness as a fitness instructor and a slew of potential jilted lovers, there are a lot of suspects to rule out and not a lot of clues.

I've heard great things about the Hannah Swensen mysteries and Joanne Fluke so when my coworker offered me this book for for what I've designated as Mystery March, I was quick to say "yes."  This is Fluke's 11th cozy mystery feature Hannah and it's obvious right from the beginning that Fluke is working hard to bring first time readers up to speed with the cast of characters in Lake Eden, Minnesota.  The problem for me was that there were just too many characters and it took a lot of pages to finally get to the point where a story could really build.  Not that Fluke wasted any time in letting the reader know who the murder victim was going to be in this book.  Already on page three, the reader knows that village vamp, Ronni Ward is going to get hers.  But it's not until page 119 that Hannah finally finds Ronni's body. 

Much is made throughout the book of Hannah's cat, Moishe and the gift of a multi-day feeder she receives for him.  At first I was just getting annoyed with all this talk about the cat and how much he was eating .Once Mike suggested that Hannah put in a surveillance camera to try to figure out what was happening to all of the food that was disappearing in hours, not days, it became obvious that the camera was going to become key to solving the mystery.  But even understanding why the story line had been included didn't stop me from feeling like it had taken up entirely too many pages.

There is also a lot of discussion about the baked goods that Hannah and her shop are creating.  The details were distracting from the story for me but the good news is that recipes for all of these goodies are included in the book.  So even though I finished the book quickly, it's not going to be back in my co-worker's hands until I have time to copy down several of them!

The House On Tradd Street by Karen White

The House On Tradd Street by Karen White
352 pages
Published November 2008 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

An old man practical realtor Melanie Middleton recently met has died and left her his old house on Tradd Street, along with a dog, a housekeeper and several ghosts. And a mystery that the old man asks her to solve in the letter he has left for her.

Melanie doesn't want the house nor the obligation to live in it for a year. To make matters worse, she's going to have to deal with Jack Trenholm, the handsome writer of unsolved historical mystery books and her father, Colonel James Middleton, an alcoholic who has been appointed the executor of the funds to restore the house. Toss in a quirky friend who just happens to specialize in historic home restoration, a hippy client who offers to help, a team of repairmen and builders and yet another handsome man, Marc Longo, whose grandfather also happens to be involved in the mystery.

I posed the question on Goodreads, "Is there a genre for romance/mystery books?" It was intended as something of a rhetorical question. I thought I was making it up just because it seems to fit this book. Turns out that, apparently, there is such a genre! At any rate, this book did read a bit like a romance novel to me. Two handsome men for the woman to choose from. One of them happens to bring out the cranky in Melanie at the same time as she is attracted to him. You know how this type of book reads. White does make watching Jack and Melanie spar great fun.

White builds the romance around the mystery and the very complicated relationships that Melanie has with her family. With so many characters and so much back story, it took a while to really get to the meat of the mystery. White does let the reader in on the clues as they are found and I wasn't altogether surprised by the ending because of it but I wasn't disappointed by it either.

There were times when I felt that the book got repetitive and some of the things that happened felt predictable to me. But White keeps the story moving along and she paints a lovely picture of the house and the city of Charleston.

Dar, at Peeking Between the Pages, really loved the book. You can find her review here. Up next for me it White's "The Girl on Legare Street" which is the next book in this series.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
400 pages
Published 2008 by Little, Brown, and Company

When she was six-years-old, Joanna witnessed the brutal murders of her mother, sister and baby brother. Thirty years later, the man who was convicted of the crime is being released from jail. Joanna is now married, a mother and a doctor with a 16-year-old nanny named Reggie, who has had more bad luck than good in her life. Reggie has recently been orphaned and has a brother who is a criminal menace in her life.
When Joanna goes missing, Reggie seems to be the only person who believes that something terrible has happened. Joanna's husband steadfastly maintains that Joanna has left to visit an ailing aunt, but her car is still in the garage, Reggie finds the baby's favorite blanket in the yard, and Joanna is not answering her phone.

Meanwhile, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe has her plate full. She is obsessed with locating David Needler, a man who murdered several of his family members, and protecting his remaining family. Louise is also investigating an arson case involving a company owned by Joanna's husband. To say she is distracted when Reggie approaches Louise with her concerns would be an understatement.

Detective Jackson Brodie is dealing with his own issues when he finds himself on the wrong train. Which really turns out to be the wrong train when it hits a car on the tracks and derails, leaving Brodie badly injured, with someone else's i.d., and with a case of amnesia. Reggie, who is staying in a nearby home, hears the accident and saves Brodie's life then won't leave him alone.

Atkinson explores a lot of themes in this book. There are a lot of marriages that she explores and none of them makes much of a case for ever getting married. Memory is also a big theme in this book and Atkinson does a fine job of exploring the different ways that people deal with memories. Despite this being Atkinson's third novel featuring Jackson Brodie, he is really not the star of this show. The female characters in this book are the strongest characters, all of whom are survivors dealing in their own ways.

The critics loved this one. I can't say that I felt the same. This is both a mystery and a book about relationships. I felt a little bit like each distracted from the other. And I felt like there was just too much going on in this book; had the Needler family been left out of the story, it would have flowed more smoothly for me. But I was also listening to this one, rather than reading it and I have wondered, since I listened to it, if that made a difference in my appreciation of this book. Atkinson does write terrific characters and the ending completely took me by surprise. Both of those are excellent things in a book. And more than enough to make me want to pick up one of the Atkinson books in Mount TBR.

Death Of A Village: A Hamish MacBeth Mystery by M. C. Beaton

Death of a Village: A Hamish MacBeth Mystery by M. C. Beaton
272 pages
Published January 2004 by Grand Central Publishing

Hamish MacBeth is a constable in the small Scottish Highland village of Lochdubh. He's content there and does everything in his power to avoid being transferred. He's got a reputation as a maverick and his immediate superior would like him to move on, in no small part because MacBeth keeps showing him up. In this book, MacBeth first solves an insurance fraud scheme and then, with help from a neighbor, the killings for profit of nursing home patients. But the big case in this book is that of the mysterious goings on in the village of Storye. The people suddenly aren't talking to anyone, they've taken to attending church at all hours, and strange things are happening in the village.

M. C. Beaton has been recommended to me often, both the Hamish MacBeth series and Beaton's other series featuring Agatha Raisins. So I was excited to find this on audio in my library. Turns out that Beaton makes a great book to listen to while I work. This one, at least, is mystery lite. There are not a lot of clues dropped that you have to pay attention to, not a lot of depth in general. But the characters do come alive, as does the countryside. I'll definitely look for more works by Beaton, particularly on audio.

What The Dead Know by Laura Lippman

What The Dead Know by Laura Lippman
400 pages
Published February 2008 by Harper Collins Publishing

Thirty years ago two teenage sisters disappeared from a shopping mall and their bodies were never found. Now a disoriented woman, involved in a car accident, claims to be one of the Bethany sisters. But after that admission she clams up. Where has she been and why hasn't she made contact sooner? And what happened to the other sister? There's no evidence to support her claim and every lead she gives the cop investigating her claim leads to a dead end. Eventually details begin to come out involving a beloved detective, years of sexual abuse and the murder of the other sister. But when the girls' now elderly mother comes to town, a terrible truth is revealed.

This story skips back and forth in time and Lippman does a wonderful job of it, never losing the thread of the current investigation while exploring the background. The Bethanys are an odd family; the parents relationship is strained and the girls' upbringing causes two very different reactions from them resulting in a very believable relationship between them. The disappearance of the girls results in the breakup of the parents marriage, as they each deal with the situation in different ways. There are a lot of characters in the book, including the police detective that originally investigated the disappearance, a social worker who takes in the mysterious woman, and the detective now trying to unravel the mystery. Lippman does a fine job of fleshing out all of these characters. This will keep you guessing until the last chapter but it does take a while to wrap up. More Lippman is definitely in my future.