1921 in Gilda Carr’s Manhattan involves a thirteen mile fence that runs down Broadway. East of the fence, things continue basically as they were. West of the fence is an overgrown wasteland that is at odds with and disallows modern technology. Thousands of people have disappeared in the Westside, and now the people who remain are thieves, bootleggers, murderers, artists, writers, drunks and the people who are too poor to leave. Gilda lives on the Westside.
In W.M. Akers’ Westside, Gilda is a detective, who solves ‘tiny mysteries’ as she calls them. What starts out as a usual tiny mystery for the wealthy Mrs. Copeland tracking down a white leather glove becomes the mystery of why Mr. Copeland is on the wrong side of town, murdered on a Westside pier. Which she wants no part of. That’s way too big for her. Her father, murdered years ago, was a cop, then a private eye, who solved big crimes. And who was eventually killed for what he stumbled upon. Gilda is not a solver of big crimes, she is a solver of small mysteries. The tiny questions that nag us to death and keep us up at night, not murders.
Still, she finds herself tracking down the details of Mr. Copeland’s death in the swampy Westside world of corruption, bootlegging, smuggling. Now Gilda finds herself on the verge of solving his murder and saving the city, even if she doesn’t want to be the person who does any of that.
I liked Westside. It had a very Neil Gaiman Neverwhere feel setting wise, and I very much enjoyed the whiskey, jazz, and the wild west feel of a wild New York City. Gilda herself is a compelling protagonist who distracts herself from her grief with the small mysteries she solves to make a living. The mystery is interesting but the pace was a little off in some places. I have already read the second Westside novel and have the third to dig into as well. I’m looking forward to it.
Category Archives: fiction
Westside: A Gilda Carr Tiny Mystery
Black Coffee
Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee was her first play and launched her another part of her writing career as a playwright. The premise of the story is that a scientist discovers a secret formula he was working on for explosives has been stolen. He calls in Hercule Poirot, but as Poirot, his friend and sidekick Captain Hastings, and Inspector Japp arrive, the scientist is murdered.
The play was, with the consent of the Christie estate, turned into a novel in 1998 by Charles Osborne (a writer and a classical music composer and critic). This is the version I listened to in 2020 (and the first of several Christie mysteries I read in 2020). I enjoyed this story very much, in spite of the fact that Christie didn’t actually write it in its novel form. It was more or less a locked room mystery and those are some of my favorites, plus, I enjoy Hercule Poirot a lot. I learned another fun poison, and of course read all about it.
When I saw this was the adaptation of a play I wasn’t sure what to expect. I would assume that it would be easier to go from a play to a novel under the premise that adding is easier than subtracting, but I don’t rightly know. That said, Christie always created an atmosphere that I enjoyed and wasn’t sure Osborne would be able to duplicate it, but he did a good job. I enjoyed the story tremendously and I even thought I’d solved it! But I got it wrong, haha.
It wasn’t my favorite Christie mystery but it was very enjoyable and I hope to see the stage play some day.
The Girl Who Lived Twice
The Girl Who Lived Twice is the sixth book in the Millennium saga, originally started by Stieg Larsson and continued by David Lagercrantz. This was the last book by Lagercrantz.
In some ways this book picks up where the last one left off, with Lisbeth Salander looking to find her twin sister, Camilla, who is the head of an international crime syndicate. Mikael Blomkvist is once again in a creative slump because nothing interesting is happening – until a man turns up dead under suspicious circumstances with Blomkvist’s phone number in his pocket.
With Salander’s help, as well as another the help of another journalist named Catrin Lindas, Blomkvist begins to unravel the tangled nest of wires that connects an Everest guide to the Swedish Minister of Defense, and Salander continues to chase her sister, first to Russia and then back to Sweden, ultimately cornering Camilla when Camilla goes after Blomkvist.
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this book – it was decent enough and I liked it. Salander and Blomkvist are still a dynamic pair and Salander is still fascinating, but the stories themselves are becoming less compelling with time. I loved The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when I first read it back in 2012(ish). Since then, the stories have gone downhill. I couldn’t say why. There was less violence in this book than the previous couple, but that is not a sticking point for me. I disliked how gory the books had become. Maybe I just don’t like Lagercrantz’s stories as much as Larsson’s. Either way, when I read/listened to this book, I was pretty glad that this was the end of the series. At the time, it was the end of the series.
But the publishing company has contracted another trilogy with Swedish writer Karin Smirnoff. The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons will be released in the English translation on August 29, 2023. I am, of course, going to read/listen to it. Hopefully, Smirnoff will be able to capture some of Larsson’s original magic.
In the House in the Dark of the Woods
I read Laird Hunt’s In the House in the Dark of the Woods in 2020 and I bought it because it was described as a horrifying psychological thriller and…I guess that’s true? I wasn’t horrified. It was a psychological thriller. I’m going to go ahead and say spoilers because the book only came out in 2018, but…eh.
I had a lot of problems with this book. First of all, it was extremely confusing. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I’m pretty bright. I was never a kid who had any trouble with “book learning” and if I’m really focused on something I’m interested in, I pick it up pretty quickly. I had to reread passages in this book over and over and over again to make sure I understood them correctly. I’ve read confusing books before, but this one was just loaded with stuff that left me scratching my head upon first reading.
It was even difficult to determine the setting at first, although that was one of the easier parts to figure out. The story is set in colonial New England, and basically, a woman goes berry picking in the woods and gets lost. She finds herself in the company of three other women – Captain Jane, Granny Someone, and Eliza, to whose cottage she keeps returning.
It also becomes clear throughout the book that the narrator, who is called Goody by the women she meets, is being beaten by her husband and her son is emotionally distant from her. It also becomes clear that she is trapped in a cycle of abuse that never ends. All the characters are. Fairy-folk are stand ins for Native Americans. Hope – personified by a golden blonde girl – comes and goes. The characters are trapped in some kind of surrealist game where they willingly abuse other people by someone who controls them.
The whole thing is imagery of fairy tales and folklore and even the Bible, but to me the book fell flat. Strangeness can be fun, but after awhile it gets tiring. If I have to work that hard just to figure out what’s going on, I can’t enjoy the story. And I don’t love the whole ‘abuse’ thing as an allegory or a metaphor or whatever it was. People seem really split on this book, with lots of people singing its praises and lots of others more in line with my way of thinking.
I’m sure In the House in the Dark of the Woods is a book for someone, but it’s not a book for me.
The Outsider
I was always going to read/listen to The Outsider. It was released in 2018, and I listened to it in 2020 during Covid, of course, but I had been on the waiting list at the library for much longer – I think three or four months. Anyway, I was always going to read The Outsider because Stephen King wrote the novel around Holly Gibney, probably my favorite of his female characters to date, and maybe favorite overall.
Holly is hired when what seems to be an open and shut case begins to get out of control. The raped and mutilated body of Frankie Peterson is found, and all signs point to Terry Maitland, a teacher and local Little League coach. Maitland claims innocence, as he was at a conference with other teachers at the time of the murder, but they find his fingerprints and DNA at the crime scene – however, they also find video of him and his fingerprints at the site of the conference, with the other teachers confirming his nearly constant presence.
Maitland is eventually murdered by Ollie Peterson, Frankie’s brother, who blames Maitland for his brother’s death and his mother’s resulting fatal heart attack. Ollie is shot and killed by police. Ralph Anderson, who ordered the public arrest of Maitland and blamed for the ensuing publicity circus, is put on leave. With his dying breaths, Maitland continues to insist he’s innocent.
Holly, who has become a private investigator since we last saw her in End of Watch, takes the case when she’s approached by the investigator hired by Maitland’s attorney. Things proceed from there, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes quote driving the story: Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The premise of the story is that a guy was in two places at once, and Holly knows that cannot be the case.
I enjoyed this book a lot although I saw some mixed reviews of it when I googled it briefly to refresh myself of some of the character names (I couldn’t remember Terry’s last name to save my life three years later). Once again, Stephen King sucked me into a story *so* fast. It took one chapter or less. His gift for this, at least in my case, is something I can only dream of.
I love that Holly has opened a detective agency. I love Holly. She is just as adorably quirky in this book and I found her just as endearing.
Of note: HBO made this novel into a show and I hated it because they ruined Holly. I remember seeing a lot of criticism at the time that people who disliked the TV version of Holly was because she was black and eyeroll. It wasn’t that she was black. It was that they took away all her charming quirks and just left her as someone who was socially awkward. I love that she’s a movie buff and that she bites her nails obsessively and that she’s very sweet and loyal once you get to know her. None of what made her wonderful came through in the adaptation. I was super glad when HBO decided not to pick up season 02.
Better Holly news! Stephen King is publishing another novel focused around Holly later this year, and I’m so excited that I’m tempted to preorder it.
Blood of Elves
This is less of a recap/review and more of a story of how I made a huge mistake. Okay, this mistake was actually compounded by several smaller mistakes.
The first mistake was watching The Witcher on Netflix. I got through the first season in 2019 when it came out, because a bunch of fantasy nerds were excited about it, since the series is beloved by a lot of people. I didn’t like the TV show that much, and I love all sorts of fantasy. I also don’t find Henry Cavill a particularly compelling actor but that’s just my personal preference. I have considered several times returning to the series on Netflix, but just can’t really talk myself into it.
I was let down by the show. Andrzej Sapkowski’s series was very popular though, so I thought maybe the book would be better. Which leads me to mistake #2. For whatever reason, I was told Blood of Elves was Book 1. I was lied to. It is Book 3. Soooo. I listened to Book 3 on audiobook and was entirely lost the whole time.
The story might have been compelling, but it was hard to tell because I had no idea what was happening. This was not one of my cozy mysteries where I could read them out of order and still have a pretty decent idea of what was going on. I was going to go back and maybe try with Book 1, but never got around to it. So that’s mistake #3 – I let myself lose interest before going back to read/listen to the first part of the story.
Like I said, the series is beloved by a lot of people, particularly in Poland where Sapkowki’s from and still resides. I googled him and he looks like Santa Claus without a beard, so I’d love to support him in anyway because he’s clearly tirelessly making toys for small children in December. I should go back to them. I just…haven’t yet.
Hollow Kingdom
When I got onto the Hollow Kingdom waitlist at the library, it was a really long wait. Like several months. It was a fairly new zombie apocalypse book at the time AND it was early during covid, so again, a long wait.
In this 2019 release from Kira Jane Buxton, we follow pet crow ST and pet dog Dennis on their journey as more and more humans become zombies. ST, who always identified more as a human than a crow, and Dennis, a bloodhound, who lost their owner to the zombie virus set out to save other former pets from the Hollows – what the animals call humans because they are no longer connected to the environment. With humanity on the brink of extinction, pets are their legacy.
It sounds very compelling, right? I didn’t hate the book. In fact, I found it very funny (and very upsetting) in some parts. The main characters were pretty great and the secondary characters were interesting. The problem with the book – which follows our non-human heroes on their quest to save animals from zombie-afied humans – was that it mostly lacked a plot. It was a lot of wondering around in the woods and things happening but with nothing really tying the events together.
There’s apparently a sequel that came out last year or the year before called Feral Creatures. I knew when the book ended there’d be another because of where they left off at the end of the first book. I might check it out. The characters are engaging and maybe the next one will be better now that the world is built and they’ve set up for more of a plot.
Maisie Dobbs
So, if you take a look through my lists of books during my more recent reading challenge years, you may notice I like a lot of series – particularly mysteries, particularly cozy mysteries. I listen to a lot of audiobooks at work while I’m fighting for my life in Excel and I love when I can go from one to the next.
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear was an exception. We meet Maisie, who is pressed into service at thirteen when her mother dies and she needs to work to help support her family. She becomes a maid for the wealthy Compton family and the lady of the house catches Maisie indulging her love of reading in the family’s private library. *clutches pearls* But instead of kicking her to the curb, the lady sends Maisie to be tutored by a friend of the family named Maurice Blanche. Blanche, a gifted but discreet investigator, takes Maisie into his tutelage and he teachers her about science, psychology, and pretty much anything else Maisie will try learning. She tries everything.
Maisie is accepted into Cambridge University but her plans are put on hold when World War I breaks out. Maise becomes a nurse and falls in love with a young man, another service member. What happens to him is part of what Maise must deal with throughout the rest of the novel.
After the war, Maisie resumes her studies with Blanche, now more in an investigative capacity and she eventually opens her own investigation service when he retires. When the Comptons’ son signs his family’s fortune over to The Retreat – a home for war veterans – Maisie must get to the bottom of what’s happening at the veterans home while confronting her own traumas from the war.
The story didn’t hook me, but I don’t mean to disparage it. Winspear’s historical mystery was extremely well researched – some of the most delightful details came from Winspear’s knowledge of the time period, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was good, but for whatever reason it didn’t suck me in enough to want to continue with the series. It doesn’t make sense to me really, because it had so many elements I enjoy. An interesting female protagonist, a setting I’m not entirely familiar with (England circa World War I), and intriguing mystery. I still might try another one to see if it the series gets more interesting after we got past setting up Maisie as a character.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11 PM. Over the course of eight days, the protagonist wakes up in the body of a new inhabitant of Blackheath House with a new chance to prevent the murder. If he fails to discover the murderer by 11 PM, the cycle repeats again. He puts information together over the course of the eight days, and if he doesn’t solve the crime in eight days, he will wake up where he was at the start (of the novel) with his memory wiped. Our protagonist cannot leave the Blackheath House until he solves the murder.
Stuart Turton’s The 71/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was probably my favorite novel of 2020. It was a compelling mystery and I really liked the format of repeating the same day over and over from different points of view. I’m a big Agatha Christie fan, and this felt very much like an Agatha Christie mystery, with clues scattered through many of the chapters. I did originally consume this book as an audiobook so I only remember some of the clues but after I gifted the book to my uncle as a birthday gift, he assured me that there were a lot of clues about.
Other things I liked were the setting – I love a good Locked Room mystery and that’s essentially what this was – and I loved loved LOVED that there was a Plague Doctor running around. I always liked the whole Plague Doctor mask/concept/backstory of what a plague doctor was in general, and then I picked up this book during the Covid lockdown.
I won’t spoil the ending, but it was pretty unsettling in the sense that it pointed to something extremely dystopian or sort of like a supernatural explanation (a no-no in mysteries). Aside from the sort of bizarre explanation for what was going on though, I loved this story. I found the ending so-so and I still loved it so much it was still probably my favorite book of 2020. 10/10 would recommend.
2020: The Year of Agatha Raisin
I originally read an Agatha Raisin book in the first half of 2019, not realizing it was part of a much larger series. I listened to the entire Agatha Raisin series on audiobook in 2020. It was the early stages of the pandemic, I was working from home for the first time, and I decided to go back to this, as I enjoyed the book I’d listened to the previous year, and in 2020, I listened to all 30 books available at the time on audiobook.
I loved them.
Agatha Raisin is a successful, middle aged PR executive who sells her PR company to retire to the Cotswolds and tries to fit into village life. She joins the ladies’ society and helps her friend, Margaret Bloxby, the Vicar’s wife, run charities and ends up solving a murder in every book. She eventually opens her own detective agency.
I love Agatha. She’s sarcastic and dark and frustrated with the stupidity of the world and its double standards, and I love her for it. She’s tough but she is occasionally vulnerable and she has a softer side that makes her human and not just obnoxious. I also love when she sticks her foot in her mouth! It happens fairly often.
In the first book she’s 53, but this is one of those series where the characters don’t age much. She’s still in her 50s thirty plus books later. As with many series, Agatha’s rely on a rich supporting cast, including James Lacey and Charles Fraith, her romantic interests, who never fail to crack me up. She also hires a teenager, named Toni, who is quite beautiful and young and very capable at her job. Agatha sees a bit of herself in Toni and they have a very mother-daughter relationship, which is also very relatable and funny.
I was sad to learn that the author of the series, MC Beaton, passed away in 2019, but thrilled to learn that she had found someone else to continue the series after she passed. She was in her 80s and I believe she was ill, so she worked ahead of time to find someone. It’s only been a couple of books, but the transition has been smooth (in my opinion, anyway). The thirty-third installment of the series is due out next month.
The Cotswolds are also a feature of the story. I’ve never been, but I always wanted to visit, and they sound quite charming. Village life is a feature, as many of Agatha’s friends are people in the village and most of her cases take place in the Cotswolds.
Overall, I found the series funny and enjoyable and I am very glad it’s being continued by another author.
Titles currently available are:
- Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death (1992)
- Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet (1993)
- Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener (1994)
- Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley (1995)
- Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage (1996)
- Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist (1997)
- Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death (1998)
- Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham (1999)
- Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden (1999)
- Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam (2000)
- Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell (2001)
- Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came (2002)
- Agatha Raisin and the Case of the Curious Curate (2003)
- Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House (2003)
- Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance (2004)
- The Perfect Paragon: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2005)
- Love, Lies and Liquor: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2006)
- Kissing Christmas Goodbye: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2007)
- A Spoonful of Poison: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2008)
- There Goes the Bride: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2009)
- The Busy Body: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2010)
- As the Pig Turns: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2011)
- Hiss and Hers: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2012)
- Something Borrowed, Someone Dead: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2013)
- The Blood of an Englishman: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2014)
- Dishing the Dirt: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2015)
- Pushing Up Daisies: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2016)
- The Witches’ Tree: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2017)
- The Dead Ringer: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2018)
- Beating About the Bush: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2019)
- Hot to Trot: An Agatha Raisin mystery (2020)
- Down the Hatch: An Agatha Raisin mystery (October 2021)
words in scarlet ink 