Review of Flesh & Blood

Book #23.Flesh and Blood, by Patricia Cornwell. Unabridged audio.

I consider myself a big fan of Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels. I started reading them I (and Cornwell and Scarpetta) lived in Richmond, Virginia. We have all moved to other towns since then, but I continue to read the novels, and generally to enjoy them. I reviewed the novels immediately preceding this one here and here.

Kay and her FBI husband Benton are headed out to vacation, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. The oddity of the situation is compounded when a high school music teacher with a history of antagonizing Scarpetta is killed five minutes away.

When other people connected to Scarpetta and the case are killed, the team realizes that they have a serial sniper on their hands. Scarpetta’s niece Lucy is implicated in the killings, but that is all part of the mystery.

The solution to the mystery involves a person from much earlier in the series, who although presumed dead, obviously survived. As a comic book reader, I am used to the concept of “if you don’t see the body, you can’t be sure the person is dead.” It was a surprising reveal, no doubt, but made sense in the context of both the series and the novel. And the absolute ending of the novel demonstrates character growth for Scarpetta, Lucy, and others, while also setting up future books in the series. This mix of plot moments and character moments is a strength of the novel, and makes this a very enjoyable read.

This is the first Scarpetta novel I’ve listened to you that was not narrated by Kate Reading. Lorelai King does a fine job, but I confess that it took me until halfway through to be disappointed every time I started a listening session and remembered that Reading was not doing the voice work.

Source: public library

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Just do the following:

Grab your current read.

Open to a random page.

Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

From Page 93 of  The Queen of Katwe, by Tim Crothers.

"I learned that chess is a lot like my life," Phiona says. "If you make smart moves you can stay away from danger, but you know any bad decision could be your last. When I first started playing, I lost so many games before the boys convinced me to act more like a girl and play with calm and patience."

This Week in Reading

BOOKS: 
Rumours of Glory (hc), by Bruce Cockburn, pages 330 – 422.
Flesh & Blood (ua), by Patricia Cornwell, pages 106 – 287.
Left Behind: The Kids, books 33 & 34, (pb), by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, with Chris Fabry.

COMICS:
Animal Man 12 – 19
Deathlok 3
Justice League International 13
Our Fighting Forces 145
Spectacular Spider-Man Annual 13
Superman: The Man of Steel 37
Swamp Thing 12, 17
Ultraman Negative 1
Vibe 1 – 10

Review of Wonder Woman, volumes 4 & 5

Wonder Woman, Volume 4: War & Volume 5: Flesh, by Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang and Goran Sudžuka. Collecting issues 19-29, and 23.2. 

This volume continues the story of the fight for the throne of Olympus, which is empty in Zeus’ still-unexplained absence. The prior volumes of the title were reviewed here and here and here. This ongoing story is one of the standouts of DC Comics’ “New 52” initiative.

There is a lot of good stuff going on in these volumes. Apollo has taken the throne, and his first duty seems to be torturing his enemies, a plan which in the long run does not work out. Hera has been de-powered, learning what it is to be mortal. Orion of the New Gods appears again in these issues, and this time he is closer to being an ally of Diana than he was in the prior volume. His look is particularly striking, and I enjoy how the Boom-Tube effect is portrayed. And Wonder Woman fights a bear. And there’s a minotaur.

In a dramatic confrontation, Wonder Woman defeats Mars, ending the war that he was bringing to Earth. Unfortunately, this left her in the role as God of War, a position she takes only reluctantly. She then spends most of these issues ignoring her duties, continuing to guard Zola’s (and Zeus’) baby, which she has been doing since issue #1. But by the end of the volume, Olympus has fallen, and Wonder Woman realizes that she needs to take up Mars’ mantle and become The God of War.

Azzarello’s take on Wonder Woman has been refreshing and consistently enjoyable. I know that his time on the title is coming to an end, and I certainly hope that he is able to craft an ending to this story as strong as what he has given us thus far.

Source: public library

Adapting Holmes: The Newspaper Strips #2

Sherlock Holmes: The Newspaper Strips: Book #2, by Edith Meiser and Frank Giacoia.

Last Christmas, I received a present of the first 2 collected volumes of the Sherlock Holmes newspaper strips, which ran for 2½ years in the mid-1950s.

Like the first volume (reviewed here), Book #2 contains a mix of adapted Doyle stories and original cases. We start with a mystery involving a stage magician, “The Secrets of the Great Orlando,” which included some interesting new information about Holmes’ past. We then get to a classic story, “A Scandal in Bohemia.” This was supposed to be in Book #1, according to the back cover of that volume. I found no similar editing mistakes in this volume.

We then get an adequate original (“Maggie Harewood, Murderess”), followed by a very good adaptation of one of my favorite Doyle stories (“The Red-Headed League”) and another pretty good classic tale (“The Greek Interpreter”). I am curious as to how these particular stories were selected, as well as the process for including original tales, but none of the additional material, which is otherwise strong, included this information. 

There are a few interesting things to note about the credits. By the time the stories at the end of this volume were appearing, it is likely that Frank Giacoia was not actually prenciling the strip. Though his name remained, the art was probably being done by a combination of Mike Sekowsky, Gil Kane, and perhaps Joe Giella. All of these artists are professionals, and I was unable to note the places in the chronology were the art chores changed. The basic style and character models remained consistent throughout.

The exact opposite was true of the writing credit. I have seen no evidence that Edith Meiser ever stopped penning the scripts, but her name is removed from the strip by the time of “The Red-Headed League.”

The only other oddity in the stories was the complete lack of a strip (replaced by a black rectangle in the collection for the sake of continuity) on Friday, March 4, 1955.

Source: A Christmas gift from Ron Sadowski, from the excellent podcast Dinner 4 Geeks.

This Week in Reading

BOOKS: 
Rumours of Glory (hc), by Bruce Cockburn, pages 268 – 330.
Lois Lane: Fallout (hc), by Gwenda Bond, COMPLETED. Reviewed here.
Wish You Were Here (ua), by Rita Mae Brown & Sneakie Pie Brown, COMPLETED. Reviewed here.
Flesh & Blood (ua), by Patricia Cornwell, pages 1 - 106.


COMICS:
Aquaman 17 – 19, 21 – 25
Challengers of the Fantastic
Convergence Action Comics 2
Convergence Detective Comics 2
Convergence Justice Society of America 2
Convergence Plastic Man & the Freedom Fighters 2
Convergence Shazam 2
Convergence World’s Finest 2
Hawkworld, Book 2
Impossible Man Summer Vacation Spectacular
Ultraman 1 – 3
Walking Dead 115 – 120
Wonder Woman 23.2, 24 – 29

Review of Wish You Were Here

Book #20: Wish You Were Here, by Rita Mae Brown and Sneakie Pie Brown. Unabridged audio.

When I first decided to start reading this series, it was about 10 books old, and the first four were not available on audio. Every year or so, I check and no, these older novels have never showed up at my public library in audio form. Until now. As of a few months ago, three of the four early novels are now available, so I scooped up the first one and gave it a listen.

I have read more than twenty books in this series, so reading the first one was an off experiences. Characters were in different places (sometimes literally) and in different relationships. Sheriff Shaw and Officer Cooper are new in their positions, for example, as this book starts. So it was interesting to see how over the course of the series, they have become integrated into the main cast of Crozet locals.

The plot involved shipping things through the mail, as well as incriminating postcards, so Harry’s job at the Post Office was custom-made for this, her first murder mystery. I give Brown credit for finding mail-related crimes for the first dozen or so books in the series, but changing Harry’s job circumstances gives her the freedom to stumble into a larger range of crimes. In retrospect, that was a wise authorial choice.

And the key aspect of the series was present right here from the start, and that is how Harry’s animals think and act. They can communicate to each other, and we get their dialogue, although the dumb humans jut hear barking and hissing. The animals “insights” about human nature and behavior add levity to the otherwise tense and suspenseful mysteries.

This novel was obviously not written as a prequel, but it helped me to think of it that way, having so many future books from the series. I enjoyed this book, and am looking forward to picking up more of these early novels.

Source: public library