Perhaps it is because I have been snowbound for a week. Or, perhaps it is because of my marathon uncluttering project, but the title The Solace of Open Spaces appealed to me right away.
The book contains a series of personal essays written by Gretel Ehrlich during her sojourn in Wyoming - a state that certainly has its share of open spaces.
She originally went to Wyoming in 1976 to film a documentary on the life of its sheepherders. While there, her lover and partner in the project died. She tried to outrun her grief for two years - first living in Santa Fe and then just moving restlessly about. She finally went back to Wyoming to live on a ranch at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains and that was when these essays - they began as journal entries - were written.
In lyrical prose she covers Wyoming's harsh topography and weather. She rides her horse every day to the tiny post office. She helps with birthing and shearing and all sorts of sheep related tasks. She regales the reader with stories of the cowboys, sheepherders, ranchers, hermits, and hoarders she meets. There are also elk, antelope, eagles, and bobcats. Definitely an eclectic mix of inhabitants and ones you will most likely not meet in your urban neighborhood.
There are twelve essays in the book. The one titled From a Sheepherder's Notebook is dreamy and poetic, covering her three days on horseback herding sheep from one feeding ground to another. She's a tougher woman than I am!
Here are two images from that essay that struck me:
About her sheep charges that cluster together and defiantly refuse to move in the heat: ...their heads knitted together into a wool umbrella.
and
As her friend drives away: Dust rises like an evening gown behind his truck.
Ms. Ehrlich has another book of personal essays The Islands, The Universe, Home. You can be sure it is on my list to be read.
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Je suis triste. I read this morning about the death of author Peter Mayle. He is probably most famous for A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence about his experiences relocating from London to the south of France. I have quite a few of his books on my shelves. I especially enjoyed his later crime caper novels as I do so love a humorous tale. I relished his writing style, his sense of humor, and the smattering of French phrases throughout his books. I have a feeling I will be rereading Mr. Mayle very soon. Au revoir, mon ami.
Who doesn't want to be The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules? I certainly don't want my epitaph to read She Always Followed Directions, so a book about a group of pensioners who break out of their austere-to-the-bone retirement home and take up a life of crime had a certain appeal.
The action takes place in modern Stockholm where Martha, Christina, Anna-Greta, Brains, and Rake are all longtime friends and sang together as members of a choral group, The Vocal Chord. When they first moved into Diamond House Retirement Home the food was delicious, there were plenty of outings, and everyone was happy. But then the director Ingmar Mattson and Nurse Barbara (who soon became his mistress) started rationing the number of cups of coffee the residents could have in a day, took away the pastries, and began handing out little red pills that made them all lethargic.
Martha has had enough. She proposes that they quit taking those little red pills and start building up their physical stamina in the gym (they had to sneak in as even that was off limits now). Then, under her leadership, the gang — The League of Pensioners — comes up with a plan to rob the rich to help out the elderly.
This involves much planning, quite a few twists and turns, a couple of first-time-to-crime mistakes, more than a few glasses of champagne, a trip to Helsinki, and eventually prison terms for all which lead to only more adventures in crime.
This tale should be a movie. It is sort of Ocean's Eleven meets The Golden Girls. I can see Judi Dench as the ringleader with Betty White and Cloris Leachman as the other two females. Robert Duvall and Michael Caine would be perfect as Brains and Rake.
I enjoyed this madcap caper but will have to say that it ran on a bit long (400 pages). As it is translated from the original Swedish, its prose doesn't exactly wax poetic. Something always gets lost in translation. But the chapters are short, the action moves along, and the characters ring true.
Besides the fun that the author has writing her characters in and out of crime caper corners, she also takes a stab at the attitudes toward and treatment of older citizens.
There are two more in this series by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg: The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again finds the gang in Las Vegas, and The Little Old Lady Behaving Badly takes the group to sunny St. Tropez.
Believe me, if I ever decide to take up a life of crime, this series will serve as my procedure manual.
I am quite a fan of Peter Mayle's tales of Provence. I have read several of his stand alone novels but he also has a crime caper series. The first is The Vintage Caper which has to do with the theft of millions of dollars' worth of wine. (I wrote about it here.)
Somehow I missed the next two of the series featuring freelance investigator Sam Levitt, but I just finished the most current one, The Diamond Caper. This adventure finds Sam and his amoureuse Elena Morales buying and fixing up a house in Marseille with its sweeping view of the Mediterranean. At the same time, Sam - along with the police - is curious to know who has been stealing millions of euros' worth of diamonds from the houses of the rich and famous along the Riviera Coast. So, while Elena is busy choosing kitchen appliances and terrace tiles, Sam comes up with a plan to catch a thief.
It's all great fun and Mr. Mayle as always does a stellar job of immersing the reader in Living the Good (French) Life. Scenes of beautiful people in fashionable clothes enjoying gourmet meals, fine wines, lavish parties, and boules all follow one after the other.
The one unsettling note was that some of the action took place in Nice and the Promenade des Anglais was often mentioned. It was a painful reminder of the killing of 84 people last month in the Bastille Day terrorist attack.
That aside, I enjoy traveling along with Mr. Mayle and now will catch up with Sam and read the two books in the series that I missed: The Marseille Caper and The Corsican Caper.
Vive la France!
As I am a big fan of the comic crime caper, I am always happy to find a new series that has intriguing puzzles and makes me laugh. I took a chance on the O'Hare and Fox series written by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldman and I am glad I did.
Kate O'Hare is an FBI special agent and ex-SEAL. She is tough. She lives on fast food and considers her Glock to be a fashion accessory. Nick Fox is an international thief and con man. He is charming. He prefers caviar and champagne and dresses in sartorial splendor.
In The Heist we learn that O'Hare has been hot on the trail of Fox for years and through an entertaining set of circumstances catches him. To her dismay her superiors give him the option of going to jail or working with O'Hare and the FBI to catch high-profile criminals - art thieves, Wall Street crooks, and others of that nefarious ilk.
Guess which option he chooses...
Along the way we get to meet all sorts of wacky characters of dubious repute - but with special skills - that Fox calls on to help in conning the criminals. Often, O'Hare's father - a retired Special Forces operative - is pulled in to supply a grenade launcher or two.
The capers sometimes unfold in foreign locales - so far I have visited Shanghai, Indonesia, Berlin, Scotland, the Greek islands, and Montreal.
Ms. Evanovich, as you probably already know, writes the "numbered" Stephanie Plum series. Mr. Goldberg works in television and wrote for Monk, the series starring Tony Shalhoub as the obsessive-compulsive detective, and wrote fifteen of the Monk mystery books.
I have gobbled up the first two books in the series, The Heist and The Chase. There are two more, The Job and The Scam with The Pursuit scheduled to be published in June.
These tales contain all the elements that make for the best bedtime reading ever - witty writing, characters that are having a good time, and clever plots. Best of all, there is no graphic violence to upset my sweet dreams.
Have you stumbled on a new-to-you series that you enjoy? Don't you love it when that happens!
