Book review Cristina Dodd THUS WITH A KISS I DIE

 

Romeo and Juliet do not die in the tomb. Friar Lawrence wakes them up and they live a lovely life in “Fair Verona” where they spawn a passel of kids. The oldest one, named Rosilind or Rosie, has a love affair going with a handsome young swain named Lysander. On Midsummer’s Eve,of course, Rosie’s affair with Lysander is truncated by Prince Escalus, who has taken advantage of the darkness to impersonate Lysander.  Rosie must now marry him as her virginity has been compromised. At a celebratory dinner in the Prince’s palace, she starts hearing voices. She escapes to the top of a tower, where she runs into, of all things, the Prince’s father’s ghost. The ghost tells her he will get her Lysander back, but only if she can find out who murdered him. We are now dealing with way too much Ham; let for me. The genre is dreadful corn and it deserves to be left on the shelf while waiting for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to arrive.    

.5 out of 5 

Review Dark Tide Rising by Anne Perry

 Review of Anne Perry’s Dark Tide Rising

Anne Perry wrote over 100 novels, most of which are in the Crime Fiction genre. She died in 2023. Dark Tide Rising, featuring Thames River Police detective William Monk and his wife Hester, was the last of 18 Monk novels, all of which are set in Victorian London.    

In this one, a wealthy Englishman asks Monk to protect him as he delivers a ransom payment to the kidnappers of his wife. The handover goes south in the treacherous mud tidal flats of the Thames River, and the kidnapped wife is viciously killed. Since Monk’s wife had been involved in a kidnapping in an earlier book, this murder becomes even more personal to the detective.  Did someone under his command betray the plans to deliver the ransom?  Will the revealing of old secrets destroy valued friendships?  Additional deaths tie the plot into more complicated knots.     

Perry writes with practiced authority about 19th-century London. Along with the dark and sinister atmosphere of the Thames River at night, she includes a thematic undercurrent of commentary on the position of women in the era. It is the inclusion of these elements that gives the book a deeper texture than the average detective novel.

I can easily give it a good solid 4 out of 5

Book Review of Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley

 

Having enjoyed Ms Keasley’s recent historical romance titled The King’s Messenger, I found a 2001 title at the Marion Library titled Season of Storms. It is based on some cues from the life of the 19th-century poet, Gabriel D’Annunzio, but is turned into a full-fledged gothic novel.  The heroine is a young English actress named Celia Sands and the London theatre background was what attracted me over the other older titles available.     

Celia has little confidence in herself or her talent, but is young and ready to both make her professional mark and to find a relationship. The kicker is she has the same name as an early 20th-century woman named Celia Sands who vanished on the night of the premiere of a play written in her honor by her lover, an Italian poet and nobleman named Galazzo D’Ascanio. The play that night was never performed, and now, two generations later, the show is to be done in an outdoor theatre on the grounds of the D’Ascanio estate. The modern Ms. Sands has some trepidations, but finally accepts the lead role. Although there is no particular reason to do it, the play’s company is required to travel to the Italian estate to rehearse. This puts all the actors in the old manor house on the grounds. It has a faded splendor along with lots of dark, twisting, and creepy corridors.    

Their host is Alessandro D’Ascanio, the original poet’s grandson.  He is young and mysterious.   Even though he has a love interest living in another building on the estate, Celia finds herself attracted to him. Several other romantic entanglements in the company plus a lot of rain, add to into the rocky rehearsal schedule.

To top it off, paranormal occurrences seem to be taking place. Celia is the most affected since a friend back in London had already given her a scary Tarot Card reading before she left for Italy.  Now, she finds herself billeted in the bedroom of the original Celia, whose portrait hangs ominously “with newly haunted eyes,” right over her bed. Needless to say, she gets a lot of bad dreams. If that is not enough, a decision is made to delve further into the psychological background of the original situation by scheduling a séance to reach the soul of the first Celia. That goes amuck, and ends with a not-so “Blithe Spirit” claiming that Celia did not vanish just before the opening night of her play, but was murdered.

Having directed over 100 plays in my life, I must admit that this is a new research tool for theatre companies. Kearsley’s lush descriptive style matches well with the gothic ambiance she is trying to create and true love is ultimately found. Unfortunately, the girdle of coincidence was stretched far beyond its snapping point and believability in the theatrical details as well as the general plot just plain disappeared.      

I give it a 2.5  out of 5.

 

Brief Review of CENTRAL PARK WEST by James Comey

 

James Comey writes with authority about the FBI, legal procedures, the Justice Department, and the Manhattan location of this novel. The courtroom scenes are rock solid, but overall, the tale seems pretty standard.  A star witness with mob connections puts the defense of a wife accused of the murder of her husband (a former governor) in jeopardy.  A young lawyer with a passion and an old hand who can think and operate just barely inside of the law, ultimately untangle the mess in a cat-and-mouse game of secret assassins and disguises.

One problem might be that young, crusading, truth-seeking,  lawyers seem to be antiques out of the past right now. They have been replaced by morally reprehensible political lackeys. I guess one should be happy to find someone writing about the good old days, but I’m afraid they are not going to return anytime soon. I keep wishing for Perry Mason and Paul Drake, and all I get is Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.  

I give it a 3 out of 5

review of JAMES by Percival Everett

 

James by Percival Everett

Several people in our book group at Grand Living recommended this book, including my wife. It is a quick and enjoyable read, especially if you remember a little bit of your reading of Huckleberry Finn a long time ago.  James re-imagines that book with Jim as the main character. He becomes a James who develops into a man of intelligence and courage as he struggles to search out the meaning of friendship, how to become a father to Huck, and how to find his wife and family, who have been sold off to another owner after he has been declared a runaway.

Jim finds the world he needs to become “James” by sneaking into Judge Thatcher’s office and learning to read by studying the books he found there. The power of the word is made clear. As he says, “If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them.”  The impact of this was completely subversive.  The dialect of the original is deftly satirized so that as Jim finds his voice, he learns to speak “white” when necessary, which confounds most of the whites he encounters.

 Whole chapters are chock-full of sardonic humor, as when Huck and Jim meet a Minstrel company and end up with Jim being blacked up to impersonate a white man who is impersonating a black man. A bit later on, Jim teams up with a light-colored negro to work a wild confidence game. The light-skinned negro impersonates a white man and sells Jim as a slave. As soon as the money is collected, Jim promptly escapes. One memorable quote comes to mind here.  “After being cruel, the most notable white attribute was gullibility.”

The good humor and satire never allow you to escape the physical and sexual violence that accompanied slavery. The rope and whip are never far away. Virtually every black back carries the scars of bloody stripes and the rape of a black woman by her owner is given a terrifying  treatment.  Throughout the book, you are encouraged to think about what it means to be a slave and how not having freedom can destroy the soul of both the free and the enslaved. It is a fascinating companion to the original classic.

I give it a 5 out of 5.

 

  

Review: The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley

Kearsley, Susanna  THE KING’S MESSENGER

I wish to report today a truly happy discovery. It is an enchanting novel by Susanna Kearsley titled The King’s Messenger.  If you like historical fiction, it is based on an office that dates far back into English history. Andrew Logan is a fictional King’s Messenger during the reign of James 1^st of England or James VI of Scotland in the early 1600’s and he is a deeply thoughtful, and complex character with a dark secret. He is assigned to find and bring, Sir David Moray, a real historical figure, to London from Scotland to be interrogated and probably executed by the King or some of his scheming accolytes. A fictional scrivener is assigned to accompany Andrew and because he is not in good health, his daughter (also a fictional character) goes along. A young fictional stableboy named completes the traveling group and the interplay amongst them makes for a true love poem.

The book is fiction, but it delves deeply into a true historical mystery—the fate of the young Crown Prince Henry, son of James 1st and his Queen Anna. Did he die an early and natural death by disease or was he poisoned by the King and and/or his minions. Each new twist draws you deeper and deeper into the characters and their connection to the scheming going on above their station. I was taken especially by an overnight stop made by the group that was set inside one of the old mile forts on Hadrian’s Wall.

 

From the author: History is composed mostly of “people of name.”  Authors try to give significance to the “none else” of name by creating memorable people with complex, even heroic lives who never made the history books. This novel is full of them.

Sir David fond of quoting Marcus Aurelius   “We have but a little time upon this earth. If we do not take the chances we are given, they will go and we will go and not return.”

Definitely a 5 out of 5 

 

Handler, David The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again

This is what I would call a summer throw-a-way. Handler has written a slew of these books and their unifying feature is a lovable basset hound named Lulu who is always on hand with an important clue to help solve the mystery.  I sense that this is the one that tells you the author is running out of new ideas, so he returns to the time when he got the dog and when he returns to his old hometown that he swore he would never return to.

We get a little dose of soft-porn to keep the cozy mystery folks at bay. It comes along with the improbable plot that our hero Stuart Hoag has just leaped out of 13 years away from home trying to become a writer. Finally, his big book materializes, and money and fame come to him along with the passionate attention of a six-foot-tall blond actress who is more famous than he is.

Why does he go home again? Well, the librarian back in his old hometown was one of the few women who treated him well when he was growing up. She has been murdered at her desk and Mr. Hoag “Hoagie” decides to return for her funeral with his puppy and new squeeze. Soon, he is involved with the task of finding the killer and that means involvement with all the low life created by the Hoag family’s now defunct business that poisoned all the water in the town and shot the cancer rate through the roof.  Handler tries to write with humor, but to give you an idea of the level of it, all I need to do is mention that there is a running joke about the town’s current police chief who was called “Peter the Beater” by Hoagie and his old school pals. Nuff said.  Check this one out only if you are desperate.

I give it a 1.5 out of 5