The Abandoned Book Pile

In March, I abandoned many books by favorite mystery authors. I am not sure if the problem is with them or with me. Three of the books were the latest in a series and one was the first in the series by an author I am crazy about. 

I whipped bookmarks out almost as quickly as I slipped them between the pages.

I mentioned this to a fellow reader I ran into at the library and he said he quit following many series for this same reason. The author seems to run out of steam.  Or perhaps, suggested a newspaper editor friend, it is the editing...or lack of.

In any case, here were my discards for the month:

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill - This is the ninth in the series about the crotchety coroner in 1970s Laos. There were some pricks of violence that weren't in the other ones and I felt for sure that those foreshadowed scenes I didn't want to read.

A Fatal Winter by G.M. Malliet - This is the second handsome vicar Max Tudor mystery. Maybe I am just over vicars or prefer the ones in the Barbara Pym novels.

Speaking From Among the Bones by Alan Bradley - The fifth in the series about young detective Flavia de Luce. The story jumped from scene to scene with such rapidity that I lost sight of the real mystery.

One of Us is Wrong by Donald Westlake (writing as Samuel Holt) - Westlake wrote a series of four books very anonymously after he was already a successful author to see if his works would be popular if his authorship wasn't known. His publisher was the only other one in on the plan. After book three, though, somehow the truth came out. For that reason, Westlake lost interest in continuing the series about a television detective star who gets involved in real murders. On the other hand, I lost interest in reading this first book in that series. I will stick with his stories starring the hapless professional burglar John Dortmunder.

Have you had a similar experience? What series or authors have you given up on?

Speaking From Among the Bones by Alan Bradley

At the bottom of page 226 in Speaking From Among the Bones (2013), author Alan Bradley has his amateur sleuth Flavia de Luce wonder to herself:

What was she going on about? There was nothing remotely amusing about what she had said. In fact, it made no sense at all.

In this instance, Flavia is referring to a recent conversation with Mrs. Mullett, the cook and housekeeper of Buckworth, the slowly moldering English country house that Flavia, her father, and her two sisters live in.

But those words actually struck me as a pretty fair assessment of this fifth and latest adventure of the now 12-year-old detective and lover of poisons.

It is as if Mr. Bradley put this book together after doing some timed writing exercises: Flavia in her chemical laboratory; Flavia in the church graveyard; Flavia among the church's organ pipes; Flavia in the crypt; Flavia in the kitchen talking with her father.

She flits from here to there around the town of Bishop's Lacey and environs on her bicycle Gladys. She gives too many boring chemistry lessons to the reader. She somehow ends up with a laying hen that she now keeps in her bedroom. 

And none of these actions move the plot along.

Every scene races by and rarely do any of them really hang together or add to the solution of the mystery...who killed Mr. Collicutt the church organist?

Actually, by page 226 I had even forgotten that there had been a murder so rarely was it mentioned.

So I am afraid that even though I am a tad bit more than halfway through the book, I will pull my bookmark and send Flavia de Luce back to the library. Maybe the next reader can make some sense of it. 

Three Prayers and a Murder Mystery

I received notice from the library that two books I had on reserve have arrived: 

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott.

I am crazy about Anne Lamott. I think her book on writing, Bird by Bird, is one of my favorites and I have often recommended it to others. She is so honest and funny. This is her newest - on faith, not on writing - and is a slight book at just over 100 pages. 

Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley

This is the newest mystery starring young amateur detective Flavia de Luce. Flavia and her widowed father and two older sisters live in a decaying mansion in England in the 1950s. Flavia has a penchant for poisons and chemical experiments in her deceased uncle's laboratory on the top floor of the house. She tracks down murderers on her trusty bicycle which doesn't seem to slow her down one bit. A fun series.

A Simple Task Completed

It took me a while, but I finally got around to listing (see the tab at the top of the page) the titles of all the books I read in 2011. I remember some with great fondness (2011). 

During the review I checked to see if some of the authors had new books out. I was happy to see that Tarquin Hall has another mystery starring the portly Vish Puri, a crime solving private detective in Dehli. It has the irrepressible title of The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken. This is the third in the series featuring Mr. Puri and his undercover operatives and I have it on my reserve list at the library.

I also discovered that Alan Bradley, author of the Flavia de Luce mysteries, has a fifth book in his series coming out in January 2013: Speaking From Among the Bones.  It too is now on my reserve list.

If you are not yet acquainted with Flavia, she is an 11-year-old girl living with her widowed father and two older sisters in a somewhat decaying country house in England in 1950. She spends most of her time cooking up poisons and other potions in the abandoned chemistry lab at the top of the house. That is when she is not pedaling around the countryside on her bicycle and solving murders. A delight.

I am also putting Alan Bennett's An Uncommon Reader on my list to re-read. It is the novella featuring The Queen and her discovery of the joys of books and reading. It will be saved to be read in an afternoon over a cup of Earl Grey tea.