Armchair Travels

It's not been a particularly wonderful winter here in Anvilcloudia. Mostly, it has been cold and/or windy, gray and/or rainy (sometimes with freezing rain). There have been a few nice snowfalls but, generally speaking, the subsequent weather was not very good or at least not for very long, which made enjoying the pretty aftermath a little problematic. So, we've been a bit more housebound than we would like.

However, last week, I lucked into three good novels, the page-turning type that draw you in and carry you right along and away. Without straying from my recliner, I have been to Yorkshire (with a sidetrip to Estonia), Northern Quebec and Washington State.

I was with Inspector Banks in Yorkshire and Estonia, helping to solve a mystery involving illegal immigrants and, of course, a murder. Peter Robinson writes a good mystery involving Inspector Banks and his aide Annie Chabot. He generally seems to follow police procedure more authentically than most mystery writers, and Watching the Dark is no exception. Sidenote: we have recently found a few Inspector Banks episodes on TV, and they seem to be very well done.

Then I accompanied Inspector Gamache to a monastery in Northern Quebec. The mythical monastery was a most interesting setting as was the plot involving Gregorian chants. There were two main layers of mystery: one being the requisite murder, and the second having to do with the chants themselves. I might even be moved to write a separate post on Louise Penny and this Beautiful Mystery. Not sure.

My third getaway to Washington was in the form of a Young Adult fiction by Elizabeth George. I didn't know it was YA when I asked the library to reserve it for me, thinking it might be another Lynley mystery, but I wasn't disappointed in the story. It was about a teenage girl who has some sort of ESP. She hears others' thoughts as fragmented whispers. When she overhears a whisper about a murder, she is forced to flee for safety. It will be a trilogy in the end, but part one, The Edge of Nowhere, came to a satisfactory conclusion for me.

They were all consumed over the course of a few days, so I am somewhat bleary-eyed, but I sure enjoyed my armchair travels. I didn't have to pack and the getting there was not at all tedious or tiring.