For Mystery Readers

Thanks you for your recommendations from yesterday's piece. I've noted them on my Amazon wish list for now.

But here's one from me.

Sometimes on FB, I see an ad for a Kindle book. Because they know my habits, it is usually a British mystery that I've never heard of, and it's usually for the first book in a series at a bargain price.

For 99¢ or whatever it happens to be, I sometimes click and buy because I don't have much to lose.

In most cases I am interested enough to finish the books although they can get draggy by times.

Most recently I downloaded a Brock and Poole mystery by A.G. Barnett and found that I quite liked it.

Poole is a young. detective newly assigned to work with the older but hardly older cop, Brock, in a lovely English town called Bexford.

I found the characters interesting, and they brought enough background dynamics into the storyline to raise interest beyond the current plot. It was an interest that could be threaded into new installments and indeed it was as I found out when I ordered the other two available novels.

I liked the stories well enough to read one a day for three days and would read the next if it were published, for the background plot will continue although the most recent case in When the Party Died concluded.

Mind you, I don't know at what prices I would continue the series. If the next Kindle edition were the price that I would pay for a major author like Elizabeth George, for example, I would probably pass. But for $3 or $4, I found the series to be a pretty good bang for the buck. And that's all that these novels will cost, close to $4 on Amazon Canada and $3 in the USA.

One reservation is that the prose can seem a little plodding at times although I, obviously, didn't find it to be a major problem. There are also some odd turns of phrase. For example: someone can be stood in the corner rather than standing in the corner. But perhaps that is an acceptable localism. Regardless, once again, I wasn't overly bothered.

What I think I am saying is that Barnett may not be the best writer of prose, but I do like the characters and the plots well enough. From a body in a freshly opened grave to a body in totem pole, I found the premises and resolutions interesting.

I certainly doesn't require a big investment to find out if you would or would not like Brock and Poole if you are interested in this genre and looking for a new read.

Amazon USA
Amazon Canada

Remembering What I Had Forgotten

I like reading, but I sometimes find myself lacking in the subject matter that I prefer: mysteries, particularly of the British sort. However, although one of them is not British, I have recently read two mysteries, but gasp! horror of horrors, they were both audio books.

I say it that way, with a gasp!, because I know there are some who would never consider reading a book that way. I get that to some degree, but when I try it I find that I like it.

The first of the two books in question is Louise Penny's most recent Chief Inspector Gamache mystery, Kingdom of the Blind, which set in that wonderful, mythical hamlet of Three Pines in Quebec. The second is Ian Rankin's latest Rebus novel, In a House of Lies, which takes place in Scotland.

I don't want to actually review them here, but I found Kingdom of the Blind very good and In a House of Lies acceptable. Penny's series is unique and well worth reading IMHO. It's good enough to rival the best British mysteries, also IMHO.

Although I have already written the four paragraphs above (come on, they were short!) that really isn't the point of this post. I do understand, however, that there is usually little point to any of my posts. But once again, I am digressing.

What I wanted to get to is memory or lack of same and how a decent sleep might spark it.

I have the Kindle app on my iPad, and sometimes I will see an ad for a  book from an author that I don't yet know that I can nab cheaply (I mean nab the book not the author). Such titles may just sit there, lonely and forlorn, for a time until I get around to them.

So it was that I checked my list last night (which won't actually be last night when you read this) and decided to give Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz a try.

Kindle informed me that I had begun the book at some point in the past, but I decided to start over since I couldn't remember it at the time. The more I read, the more it was familiar to me, and I realized that I had read more of the book than Kindle had recorded. It was getting late, so I shut the device down and went to bed.

When I awoke this morning, I realized that I remembered the whole thing or at least the basic plot outline. In point of fact, I already knew who had dunnit. Just to double check, I scanned a few more chapters which confirmed that I was treading on familiar ground, and really, who wants to read a whodunnit when one already knows whodunnit?*

So that's it: a pretty well pointless post, which reveals that I can be a bit of a forgetful dunce but that a night's sleep can help even the most forgetful of dunces.

PS: Believe it or not, the next book that I opened on my Kindle app was also déjà vu (Yes, Yogi, all over again). I realized that I had also read it or at least much of it although my memory isn't as clear about how it all worked out. So I deleted that too and am currently working through another from the backlist. This one I knew I had begun at one time but only just begun, so I will keep going with it although it's not exactly lighting me up.

*I confess that I might someday want to re-read a whodunnit if the book was really good and was read it a long time ago. For example, I have been considering re-reading some of Elizabeth George's Lynley series, having read the earliest tome three long decades ago.

Buppa's Ruffles

Sue tracked down the video of Danica calling my stubble, ruffles.

It's not long, and it is extremely cute. Trust me on this one.

Amma and Buppa Get Mugged

When Danica was little, this is what she said for grandma and grandpa: Amma and Buppa. In truth, we probably liked the names so much that we seized on them right away, and we have been Amma and Buppa ever since.

But surely there were no other Ammas and Buppas: Amma sometimes, but Buppa was seemingly unheard of. (BTW, there's nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition.)

Except . . .  Except Shauna saw someone in our own town, our own little town, advertising Amma and Buppa mugs a little before Christmas. So she surprised us with them on Christmas morning. She had us open them simultaneously, and we are, at this moment, both drinking our morning coffee from said mugs.

Buppa [buhp-uh] Special grandpa to Danica and Jonathan. Has been known to have ruffles.

Amma [am-uh] Grandma extraordinaire to Danica and Jonathan. Often found with Rhonda.

Buppa's Ruffles comes from a time when Danica was very young and brushing my hair, and she called my short hair, on a pattern-bald head, ruffles.

Meanwhile, Amma often invokes the help of  Rhonda, when flustered.

New Years Day

New Years Day didn't turn out quite as expected.

I had been planning to take some photographs of the town's New Years Levee, which is a free, open skate at the arena. They do this every year, and I was going to shoot it this year because it is the beginning of our 200th Anniversary, and I am to be one of the volunteer, event photographers.

Life being what it is, I awoke with a bit of a sore throat on the 31st, but it hasn't turned into much, thank goodness. But as I was sitting at the computer paying bills and getting financial tracking in order for the new year (I do a spreadsheet by year), I thought to myself, "I think I'm feeling a little bit dizzy."

Apparently, dizziness has been a symptom of recent flu, but I thought it had run its course a month ago, for I hadn't heard any recent reports. Apparently, it lasts for a long time once it strikes, so I hope my symptoms are coincidental. I have been spared flues and colds for the most part for the past few years, so maybe it's my turn.

I want to put you minds at rest that it, the dizziness, certainly was not from a NY Eve hangover since I didn't even imbibe in one drop of alcohol. I had meant to, but I never got around to it. Pity.

The long and short of it is that I didn't attend the Levee, but faithful Bob did, so the photography was in good hands.

What I did do was watch quite a lot of tv since, with a bit of a spinning noggin, I wasn't keen on settling down to a book.

New Years Eve with an Old Friend

New Years Eve turned out to be quiet, nostalgic and satisfying.

Our tv supper (yes, with just the two of us, this is how we do supper) turned out to be a visit with Inspector Morse.

As we tuned into Britbox, the documentary, The Last Morse, came on the screen, so we clicked on it.

Although we have seen all Morse episodes, we had never seen this doc that was made way back in 2000 to go along with the very last of the 33 Morse episodes which ran from from 1987 to 2000.

We love this series with the somewhat curmudgeonly Morse and his likable partner, Lewis, to the point where we, somewhat in jest and somewhat not, tend to judge all series against this one. "It's not Morse," is commonly repeated refrain in this house when a new series is found wanting.

After that trip down Memory Lane, we tuned into the very first episode, The Dead of Jericho and loved it all over again. Perhaps we will watch the other 32 episodes again and perhaps not. We shall see.

There have been two spin-off series. Lewis ran from 2006 to 2015 and coincidentally also ended up with 33 episodes. It was also a very fine series, and we never said, "It's not Morse." We do want to watch all these again but can only find the initial episode, the pilot, on Britbox.

The other spin-off  is Endeavour which features a young Morse in the 1960s. From 2012 to present there have been 5 series with a total of 23 episodes if one includes the pilot. A 6th series will hit the airwaves in 2019. Since we no longer  get live tv, we are, regrettably, a little behind with this show.

That a tv series that began in 1987 has two successful spin-offs says quite a lot in my opinion. I have often felt that Inspector Hathaway (Lewis's sidekick) could be a very good spin-off from Lewis, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards as they say.

Dippity Do Dah

It's January 01 2019, and some Canadians do this ↓.

Can you imagine?

Here is some information for the Polar Bear Dip in Perth, a nearby town.

It's all for a good cause, and if I were 50 years younger , , , well who's to know.

Summer dips are best though.