Becoming Mrs. Mulberry

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry by Jackie French is the tale of an Australian woman, Agnes Glock, who wanted to be a doctor and went to Scotland to study. The story begins in Australia in 1924. The Great War wreaked havoc on the world, and remotely affected citizens didn’t like it. They did all they could to avoid seeing the injured and maimed, despite the sacrifices made.

One of the injured was Douglas Mulberry, who suffered through several horrific events in the war, including being buried under a pile of dead bodies. He was from a wealthy Australian family who now appears to be eager to bury him again under a label of insanity in order to acquire control of the family fortune. Douglas’s sister, Hortense Louise Victoria Mulberry or Mulberry Puddin’ does not want that to happen because she loves her brother, and from a personal point of view, her own income would be cut off by their uncle once he declared Douglas insane and gained control of the Mulberry fortune. Puddin’ convinces Agnes to marry Douglas, and she rescues him, marries him, and takes him back to Australia. Agnes does not easily fill the role of a wealthy society woman. She is too kind and thoughtful, so instead of becoming the Mrs. Mulberry society expects her to be, she builds her own version of the role.

Jackie French is an excellent writer. Her scenic and food descriptions are exceptional. There are a lot of unusual animals in Australia that do a lot of unusual things. French connects nature to the characters harmoniously.

The plot clearly shows Agnes struggling with her new role and her new resources, but the characters develop more effectively than the story itself. There is the ongoing conflict with her trying to settle into her role, but the sub-story drama rises and sets too quickly, with not quite enough color to fully develop.

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry is an interesting travelog of post-Great War Australia and a good read.

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is based on an interesting premise: the internal thoughts of a giant Pacific octopus called Marcellus who is held - more or less - in captivity in a West Coast aquarium. Marcellus is not only bright; he is wise, able to reason, solve puzzles, and understand the history of humans by reading their fingerprints and appreciating human nature.
After Marcellus introduces himself to the reader, the stories of two disparate people in different places begins - one an older woman, Tova Sullivan, who cleans and maintains the aquarium and a young man, Cameron Cassmore, in California who is fumbling with the direction of his life as a part-time musician and professional reprobate. Three interesting and fun storylines that seem impossible to bring together. And yet …
Cameron finds a photo and a class ring and concludes that it is a picture of his father, a rich real estate developer in Washington. He sets off to claim what he believes will be his inheritance.
There are several unlikely coincidences that make the story work, but the humor and original premise are enough to push the reader through what Coleridge called, “the willing suspension of disbelief”. Van Pelt leaves clues to how the pieces will all fit together, guided by the wisdom of Marcellus.
The tale is told in the present tense, which I usually find disturbing, but the style of the writing buries well enough to make it disappear and have the events feel more immediate. The telling also rocks back and forth between the various story lines which fits that structure well.
There are pleasant side notes that add color like Cameron’s lost luggage that travels internationally on its own, the priceless T-shirt that Tova uses to clean a kitchen, and the cat that wanders into her life. The story is enriched by some tragic elements, such as Tova's lost son and Cameron’s desperate search for his father.
It is a well-written first novel that adds light to a cruel world.
The movie version starring Sally Field is due out on Netflix early in 2026

The Phantom Tollbooth - Norman Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is a classic writer’s play on words and concepts, youth, time, and perception. And Jules Feiffer’s illustrations bring out the best.

Milo is a bored boy who lives a privileged life in a city. He has lots of toys and games and books, and it is too much trouble for him to do any of them. Wherever he is, he wants to be somewhere else.

But one day he comes home from school and finds a large surprise box in his room with a note that identifies it as a tollbooth - some assembly required. It comes with a map, coins for the toll, and signs to set up, warning him to slow down as he approaches the toll. And since he has nothing he would rather do, he gets in his little electric car, deposits his toll, and passes the booth driving magically into Expectations where he is greeted by the Whether Man. Milo drives on to meet an array of interesting characters where the logic of words conflicts with the logic of numbers, people begin their lives at the height they will end up reaching and grow down to the ground, and sunrises and sunsets are works of art. All these experiences teach Milo - and the reader - to look at life a little more carefully and with a little more pleasure.

It is an enjoyable story for anyone who enjoys thinking.

Churchill's Secret Messenger

Churchill’s Secret Messenger by Alan Hlad is the story of the life and experiences of Rose Teasdale, who begins the book as a typist in Room 60 of Winston Churchill’s underground Cabinet War Rooms in February 1941 on the 159th day of bombing Britain. She is a capable typist and fluent in both English and French, which she speaks like a native because of her French mother’s family. Her brother has been shot down in his Spitfire over the Channel. And one day while she is busy typing, a bomb totals her mother and father’s shop, killing both of them. Churchill sends Rose a personal note sympathizing for her losses.

Some days later, she is brought into Churchill’s private quarters to serve as a substitute interpreter when Churchill is negotiating with General De Gaulle and Commandant Martel. Recognizing her linguistic skills, Churchill has her sent to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Hlad inserts the second narrative point of view with a young Jewish man in Paris called Lazare Aron, who lives in restrained circumstances with his parents as the Nazis terrorize the once beautiful, creative city. Because of an accident, Lazare’s hand was crushed, so he wears a wooden prosthetic, which prevented him from being able to join the French army. He turns his hatred of the occupying army by joining forces with the French Resistance. Rose and Lazare meet and fall in love when she is parachuted into France.

They experienced horrible things that made me wish that the war would end so that the pain and suffering would stop. Hlad’s writing is skillful in inflicting that sort of empathetic anguish. There is a great deal of inner dialog, wondering, wishing, and hoping. And there is much that is repeated, which caused me to skip passages I had seen before.

It is a strong, well-written, and well-researched uncomfortable read.

Atomic City Girls - Janet Beard

Janet Beard’s The Atomic City Girls offers a poignant exploration of one of WWII’s lesser-known chapters: the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the young women—nicknamed “Calutron Girls”—who sat behind dials and meters, unaware they were helping build the atomic bomb. The novel follows four narrators—countryside newcomer June Walker, her ambitious roommate Cici, Jewish physicist Sam Cantor, and African‑American laborer Joe Brewer—whose personal trajectories intertwine amid wartime secrecy and moral ambiguity.

Beard skillfully sets the scene of a rapidly constructed community, structured by class, race, and gender hierarchies. Through Joe’s perspective, the novel addresses segregation, prison‑line housing, and under‑recognition, offering one of its strongest and most unsentimental narratives. Meanwhile, June’s arc—from naïve farm girl to someone confronting the weight of complicity—captures the emotional heart of the story. Her romance with Sam begins as escapism, but later becomes a complicated vehicle for truth and hurt, especially as he struggles with guilt and addiction.

That said, the structure is somewhat scattered and the characters underdeveloped. The action switches between stories and points of view too often to get invested in any line. The danger of revelation and punishment is dropped, and the ending wraps up all the stories neatly and artificially.

Despite its promise, the plot leans into soap‑opera dynamics and romance more than the industrial or ethical centrality implied by the title. Still, Beard’s inclusion of period photographs adds immediacy, even if some may find them distracting.

The Atomic City Girls is rich with potential—a historically grounded setting and morally resonant themes—yet it often settles for surface drama over depth. It’s a warm, approachable read, but those hoping for intricate character arcs or deeper insight into Oak Ridge’s secret bureaucracy may feel shortchanged.

Mr. Standfast - John Buchan

John Buchan is most famous for his novel The Thirty-nine Steps which has been adapted for film and television. Mr. Standfast follows the exploits of the same protagonist, Richard Hannay a Scottish engineer, general, and adventurer. He is serving as a general at the beginning of the book, but gets pulled away for a top-secret mission, taking on the undercover role of a pacifist in order to uncover a diabolical, shape-shifting spy. Hannay chases this elusive character all over Scotland and back down into England and finally ends up heading for Switzerland.

It is an elaborate and detailed chase - some of which is dramatic and some of which is slow moving. A number of elements of the tale are connected to previous events and previous characters making it challenging to follow along without taking notes. The story is linked closely to events in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a 1678 Christian allegory. Mr. Standfast is the last pilgrim met by Christiana whom she finds kneeling on the ground and praying “in thanks for having been delivered from the temptation of Madam Bubble”. The Pilgrim’s Progress is used as a code book for passing information, hence the title of this novel.

The time frame of the novel is a bit indeterminate. It was published in 1919 but there is a conspicuous absence of Americans when Hannay returns to the front. Americans entered the war in April of 1917, but Hannay’s beleaguered battalion is relieved by French troops.

This book was appreciated in its time and is interesting from the standpoint of the machinations behind the battles that is far less common than portrayals of face-to-face battles. I didn’t find this book to live up to the promise of the Thirty-nine Steps.

Street - AD Metcalf

Street by A.D. Metcalfe is an extraordinary novel. It’s the story of 12 year-old Johnny Alvarez who runs away from his abusive home in Miami, gets on a bus, goes to New York, and thrives. Johnny is remarkably adept at survival, parking his few belongs in a tree, spending his first night in Central Park, and then establishing himself in a rundown building in Washington Heights. Johnny’s gang builds and gathers momentum as he makes use of his wits and his language skills.

He does have a problem, however. He was so badly abused by his brother in Miami that he periodically blacks out and loses control sort of like the Hulk. It is a gritty, emotionally resonant coming-of-age story, but it is also a a coming-to-terms story as Johnny struggles to get his internal monster under control.

This must have been a challenging book to write just from the standpoint of seeing the world through the eyes of a twelve-year old boy. People do rise to the challenge and behave beyond their maturity, but Johnny is exceptional. There is no youth in him or his world. What sets this novel apart is its psychological depth. Johnny’s internal struggles—particularly the trauma inflicted by his sadistic older brother—are portrayed with raw honesty. The narrative doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of adolescence, but it also offers moments of levity and camaraderie that make Johnny’s journey feel authentic and human 

Metcalfe blends gritty realism with emotional nuance, creating a story that is both harrowing and hopeful. The prose is sharp, the pacing brisk, and the characters vividly drawn. If you're drawn to stories of resilience, urban survival, and the complexities of youth, Street is a compelling and thought-provoking read.

The Rope - Nevada Barr

Published in 2012, The Rope is the 17th Anna Pigeon novel from Nevada Barr. It is the first Nevada Barr novel that I have read, it purports to be the beginning of the Anna Pigeon stories. “It all begins here”, it says on the cover. It’s an interesting beginning.

It's 1995. The story begins at a marina called ‘Dangling Rope’ at the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area with National Park Service personnel hanging around at the end of a work-day. Anna Pigeon is missing from the scene and the reason why she is missing is a mystery. She is mentioned as an odd woman wearing black and saying little.

Anna appears in Chapter 2 at the bottom of a naturally carved ‘solution hole’ in the rocks, naked and with no memory in her fuzz encrusted brain of how she got there, how long she’s been there, or exactly where ‘there’ is. Barr keeps Anna there longer than most readers would feel comfortable with as Anna struggles to figure out her situation and how to escape from it. She cleverly makes use of every option that the situation offers.

Gradually the reader is made aware of Anna’s backstory as Barr shifts the point of view in and out of Anna’s brain as well as the brains of other park employees.

The park employee characters described in the opening chapter are not consistent throughout the rest of the book. A number of traumatic and potentially deadly episodes are strung together to keep the story moving. Barr does a wonderful job of describing the incredible landscapes around Lake Powell and the mysteries of the history of the land that existed before it was all flooded by the creation of the Glen Canyon Dam.

The Rope is a skillful and entertaining tale in the spirit of Paul Doiron and William Kent Krueger.

James - Percival Everett

The foundation of this book derives from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Jim was a slave associated with both Tom and Huckleberry Finn. This book portrays Jim’s life from his point of view - a runaway slave seeking for a way to find his freedom around 1861.

The story begins with Jim chopping wood, stashing a bit away under his mistress’s porch to warm his family’s cabin. He learns that his mistress intends to see him down the river, taking him away from his family. Jim escapes by swimming to a nearby island and his life unravels from there. The book consists of a series of events as Jim moves down and back up the river, from community to community. Everett constructs each event to show the inhumanity showered upon slaves as well as the attitude of the slave toward their ignorant white masters from the slaves use of slave language to having a black man wear black face to sing in a minstrel show.

The story thrives on the irony of the events and situations. The lack of humanity is more than disturbing. A slave is lynched for stealing the stub of a pencil when slaves were not expected to read or write. As Jim transforms to James, his relationship with Huckleberry is clarified.

It is a small world, but some of the interactions seemed contrived - unreal twists of fate. But the book is certainly well written and provides a unique perspective on life.

Code of Arms - Jack Slater

This book confused me. In the early pages, I was pretty sure that it was AI generated. If there is any official way to determine if that is true, I don’t know what it is. Whatever system was used, no obvious typos jumped out at me. That in itself may be indicative of the hand of AI. Interestingly, Amazon lists the publisher as the date of publication.

This is a long shoot-em-up novel. There is a mysterious woman who is subjected to a mysterious beginning in the prologue of the book. When Gideon Ryker appears, he is fighting from his life even though he doesn’t remember who is or how he got into a French Foreign Legion retirement community. It turns out that there is a secret massive conspiracy organization (who Slater claims he based on the people behind Jeffrey Epstein) who wants desperately to silence Ryker – although it wasn’t clear to me why they want to do that. There isn’t much depth to the characters, but there is a lot of bloodshed. Slater seems to have a thorough knowledge of weaponry.

It is written well enough that I read it through. He does a decent job of explaining how Ryker gets from point A to point B, picking up money and clothing and weapons as he goes. And Ryker does seem to have a heart, taking pity on an old man who’s car he steals.

This sort of tale would appeal to readers of Lee Child stories, but Jack Reacher has a greater depth of character than Gideon Ryker.

The Disappeared - C.J. Box

Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming. Like a good protagonist, life isn’t all ‘skittles and beer’ for him. But this book doesn’t begin with Joe Pickett. It begins in the small burg of Encampment, Wyoming where nasty things seem to be going on around the sawmill sawdust burner. It begins with the story of Wylie Frye who is tending to the burner, feeding it sawdust with a bucket loader and checking out messages on his cell phone. The story begins when a truck hits a dog and old Carol Schmidt catches the license plate.

When Joe Pickett enters the story he is waiting for the new governor’s Citation jet at the Saddlestring Municipal Airport. He is met by the governor’s manager who sends him off in a completely unexpected direction to find a missing British PR mogul who has disappeared without a trace. And from there the story marches on through the blinding snow of a Wyoming winter.

There are twenty-six books in the Joe Pickett series and this one was number twenty, published in 2018. Box pushes them out at a rate of one per year. I like the fact that this book stands on its own. Without knowing the details, it makes sense that the story is connected to the preceding Joe Pickett stories, but you don’t have to read them to get to this one.

Joe is a likeable, comfortable, clean living protagonist. He leaves his ugly work to his buddy Nate Romanowski who isn’t adverse to using a frozen trout as a club. Box portrays his characters smoothly and cleanly and the frigid air of the Wyoming winter is abundantly clear and very cold. He reflects the character of his villain through the eyes of a needy side-kick so there isn’t a great deal of depth to him.

But that’s not what the story is about. The story is about Joe Pickett and his family, a dedicated public servant getting his job done despite the barriers of the bureaucracy and the world. And in this book, his job is finding the missing woman. And the reader knows from the beginning that he won’t stop until he gets that done.

The Black Wolf - Samantha Raymer

The Legend of Moonglade - Book One

In a world where everyone has a living spirit animal to accompany them through their lives and bestow them with special powers, superstition prohibits association with just one animal: a black wolf. Zuri, the protagonist of this tale, is a member of the Wolf Clan and when it comes time for a wolf to select her, a black wolf pup chooses her. And so the clan condemns her to growing up as an outcast.

The world of Akaidia has been divided into clans: Wolf Clan, Serpent Clan, Panther Clan, and Hawk Clan. After the Choosing, the black wolf is expelled from the clan and Zuri is shunned, chosen only for the most menial of tasks. But one day outside of the camp, when Zuri is fourteen, the black wolf finds her and they communicate telepathically. When the clan discovers this relationship, she is chased out to the edge of the cliff that hangs over the ocean. Zuri has to choose whether to stay where she is to be killed by the clan or leap off the cliff to what seems like certain death.

Ms. Raymer handles such cliff hangers with skill. She has created the world that has self-destructed under the influence of an evil power that has divided all the people, separated them into warring clans, and spread them apart while the source of the ultimate evil is trapped but growing ever stronger. Ms. Raymer has populated the world with wise teenagers who use their knowledge and the power of their animals to thrive together despite the blindness of the majority of adults.

This is the first novel for this talented thirteen-year-old author. It is an extraordinary start to what promises to be an exceptional artistic ride. It expresses mature writing skills generated from extensive reading, immersion in the world of fantastic tales, determination, and joy in the journey.

In The Woods - Tana French

Tana French published this book in 2007 as the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. It appears to be her first published novel. I have found that writing is often strange in first novels, so having been introduced to her through The Searcher which she published in 2020, I wanted to see how she had begun. And this was quite a beginning.

French wrote the book in the first person voice of the male narrator, who is a Dublin murder detective whose name varies between Rob Ryan and Adam Ryan. He tells the reader, “What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this - two things: I crave truth. And I lie.”

There are two primary story lines: the first is of three young people playing in the summer sun who take off into the woods next to their housing development outside of Dublin, as they have done many times before. Only this time two of them disappear, and the third one (who turns out to be Adam Ryan) is found clutching a tree with someone else’s blood in his shoes. The second story line is Rob (Adam) returning to the housing development ten years later to investigate the murder of a young girl who is found on top of an ancient sacrificial stone. A highway is about to be built through the ancient site and some people don’t want that to happen.

There are lots of threads of emotional entanglements and distress. Adam has changed his name to Rob in order to avoid curious questions about the events ten years earlier.

Tana French’s writing is as rich as a death-by-chocolate cake. The psychological aspects of this book are disturbing, and the pace seemed slow as lead after lead came to a dead end. But by the time I finished the book, I understood it had to be written the way it was written in order to build the troubled natures of the characters. It clearly fits into the police mystery/psychological genres, and I will keep it on my reference shelf just for the way French handles the suspect interviews.

I will also keep it on my reference shelf for the truly most evil character I have ever met in a work of fiction. Another reviewer compared this book to Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which had also occurred to me as I was reading it. I wonder if Tana French had to turn away from that character who seems a bit thinly developed compared to others in the novel. To truly develop that character would have meant getting inside it and truly seeing the world through its eyes. (I am avoiding the defining the gender of the character to avoid spoiling the story.)

Getting inside the head of a truly evil character is scary as hell.

This is not a quick read, but this is another five star novel from Tana French.

Still Life - Louise Penny

I wonder how anyone can be an unbiased, professional critic. Each of us has a style or genre that pleases us and it is sometimes hard to get beyond that. I do like detective stories. And that’s what this is: a modern day detective story set in Canada. It introduces Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team of investigators. The Canadian setting is interesting itself. So many detective stories are set in England, Ireland, the United States. For a country that is so close, they have their own issues. French Canadians are almost a different country themselves and that brings another layer of issues into this story.

Louise Penny is an excellent writer. She has the ability to carefully craft scenes and characters that are worthy of mentorship. There are passages in this book that I will go back to to study how to do it.

She has chosen a unique murder weapon—a bow and arrow. In most towns, that would severely limit the number of suspects, but in the town of Three Pines, it appears many inhabitants are proficient with archery and the town is close to the Quebec woods, where hunting is common. There is a town fascination with both archery and art.

And there are a lot of odd people in the town as well, which complicates discerning the motive.

Although I didn’t map it out, I think she lost track of the passage of time. The detective was supposed to go away for a week and a memorial service was to be held a week out, and yet the murder only happened a week ago. I find it particularly irritating in TV shows when stars seem to travel places at the speed of light for international investigations. Maybe I was wrong and I should go back and reread the time frame.

She also introduced and developed a police character with seemingly no purpose other than to provide a reflection on the character of the chief inspector. That character’s story was developed and then abruptly dropped. Maybe she brings this character back in future books, but shouldn’t a book stand on its own - unless it is obviously part of a series?

But the other issue I had with this book is the uncontrolled fluttering of the point of view. I understand the omniscient third person, but I don’t believe I have read a book where the point of view shifts in single paragraphs. It makes me uncomfortable not know whose head I am in from sentence to sentence.

But there you go. It’s a matter of opinion and obviously many people like Louise Penny’s storytelling just the way it is.

The Enchanter's Counsel - Thalib Razi

I feel out of my element writing this review. I rarely read fantasy stories except from JRR Tolkien, Cindy Young-Turner, J. K. Rowling, or C. S. Lewis. I am also not Muslim and only have the passing familiarity that I gained from my comparative religion classes in college many years ago.

I do know something about good writing, strong plot and character development, climate change, world conflict, and fun. This novel has all of those. Mr. Razi has created a complicated and detailed world that manifests itself as a flat coin rather than a sphere. The protagonist, Mizan al-Wasati, is an olive-green skinned goblin with large ears. At the beginning of the novel, Mizan has just completed his higher education and is beginning his journey back home on his flying carpet, which is not functioning properly. Mizan is going home with an education but not a job, so his future starts out working in his family’s diner, which is not where his education should have placed him. But it sounds pretty normal even among humans.

History is extremely important in Mizan’s world and the inhabitants appear to live with all of it almost all the way back to the earliest days. And there are conflicts among the various races—elves and goblins and dwarfs. And there are conflicts about where they live and why they live where they do. All of those issues compel life on the Coin to continue on as it is, even if it means destroying it.

This is a complex novel. It is not a Harry Potter mood, but subjects that are pertinent to today’s world of humans. There are many levels conjured from Mr. Razi’s mind and experience of Muslim, Sri Lankan American, son, husband, father, engineer, singer-songwriter, fantasy novelist. I occasionally got lost, but it was a story I didn’t mind getting lost in.

Motive - Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman has written a lot of books. And that’s a good thing because he writes very well. There are many writers who write a lot of books and probably shouldn’t. I confess that this is the only book of his that I have read and centers around two characters that he uses a lot. But this book stands on its own.

The story is interesting, with layer upon layer of plot with a series of seemingly senseless murders. And there seems to be a pile of motives, but all the murders are tied together by the sex of the victim accompanied by a table for two with untouched food.

The structure is intriguing. The book is written from the viewpoint of Alex Delaware who is a psychologist advising a homicide lieutenant in the guise of Milo Sturgis whom Kellerman describes as, “wearing a dust-colored windbreaker and brown poly pants from another era, his olive vinyl attache dangling from one massive paw. Pale, pockmarked, paunchy, black hair limp and in need of trimming, he sagged like a rhino who’d lost out to the alpha male.” Kellerman’s descriptions are outstanding throughout the book, created with the ease of a master. His dialog tags are flawless with just enough information for the reader to keep on track but not so much as to interrupt the flow with unnecessary descriptive words.

His descriptive skill is enough to put this book on my keeper/reference shelf, books I use when I’m trying to study how it should be done. It joins Walker Percy, Ken Follett, Tana French, and Herman Hesse. I can clearly envision the character that Kellerman describes this way: “He had a soft voice designed for apology, bloodshot brown eyes, a face blanketed with two days of spotty gray beard and some sort of accent, probably Northern European. His left arm was ink from knuckles to above his biceps. The right one was clear. Plenty of pinholes in both ears, but no jewelry in evidence.” His writing makes descriptions like this seem easy.

This is one of those times when coming in in the middle of the series is an advantage. I have read other reviews of this book that claim that the characters are tired and overused. Maybe that is a flaw, but to me, as a rookie reader of Alex Delaware stories, the characters were shiny and new. People are people. They grow and they change, but inherently they are the same familiar souls. In some series - particularly on television - the writers use the characters’ personal lives to freshen up their stories. I like my friends the way they are and respect them for what they know and do. I don’t want them to be different, but perhaps characters in thrillers need to be regularly thrilling.

So if you enjoy good writing and a good tale, give Kellerman a read. I don’t know if all his Alex Delaware books are this good, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Deadly Deeds - Neal Sanders

I can't blame you for thinking that I enjoy reading books by Neal Sanders, because I do. I enjoy his writing, and I enjoy his stories. And if I had an estate that was worth worrying about, I think I would hire him to organize it. This is one of those books where the plots pile on top of other plots and you have to wonder how the author is going to untangle them and bring the story back together. That's the thing about life: it's not just one simple plot like they write for TV scripts where the entire case has been researched, brought to trial, and adjudicated in forty-five minutes or less. Life is a complicated but integrated system, no matter how much we try to screw it up.

Deadly Deeds is part of Sanders' Garden Club Gang series. One of the members dies in a very expensive nursing home/retirement community under, what appears to be, natural circumstances. But the Gang has its doubts.

This investigation is layered on top of a previous investigation involving the gang bringing down a crooked car dealer.

And that, in turn, is remotely entangled with an investigation at a fairground.

Since the retirement community houses very wealthy clients, those clients tend to have valuable possessions, including valuable paintings. When they die, the families believe that the sale of those paintings will generate a substantial financial return and are shocked when the painting turns out to be false. Although this element of the story is certainly feasible, the speed and the skill of the forger is a bit of a stretch.

In some serial stories, one has to have read the previous books to understand what is going on, but Sanders does a masterful job of providing enough backstory information to provide depth to the characters while allowing the present story to carry its own narrative.

As I said before, I enjoy reading Neal Sanders' books.

Best You - Keith Yocum

Keith Yocum is a fellow Cape Codder, and I have had the pleasure to read a number of his books. This one clearly parallels his opening sentence: “Many strange things in life cannot be explained.” This is a kind and gentle book and quite different from his others. For example, what appears to be a dead body in this story, is not dead.

Phillip Preston is a 36-year-old assistant bank manager who lives in a small seaside town and owns a boat. His wife has left him for his best friend. Until the opening event of this story, he is living a well-ordered, predictable, unimaginative life. He doesn’t have ambitions for major improvements in his future - perhaps just something akin to annual cost of living increases if he keeps his head down and does his job faithfully.

His personality is similar to that of William Wilmer in Robert Lawson’s Mr. Wilmer and Anthony Burgess’s (author of A Clockwork Orange) Ambrose in The Eve of Saint Venus, two of my best-book-shelf books. Mr. Wilmer is a mild mannered twenty-nine year old who learns on his twenty-ninth birthday that he can talk to animals.

Ambrose, in Burgess’s book, is a young mechanical engineer who is so nervous about getting married that he practices by putting the ring on the finger of the statue of Venus and the statue promptly closes her hand, making it impossible to remove the ring. Ambrose has effectively married the statue.

In Best You, what happens to Phillip Preston is as unreal as talking to animals or marrying a statue. Perhaps the protagonists in these tales need to be simple, decent people so that what happens to them is a sharp contrast to their every day lives. Perhaps the character has to be simple in order to accept the “willing suspension of disbelief” and to allow that to transfer to the reader.

Frankly, I didn’t want to like the book because I didn’t like the title. It’s simple. It’s not witty, ironic, or clever. I shouldn’t admit that because, as they say, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (or its title). But when I got to the end of the book, the title made sense and it fits.

Often a clever and simple premise is difficult to pull off. Difficulties arise that are unexplainable when referencing real life. People can’t actually talk to animals. Statues don’t actually move. And Phillip Preston in Best You can’t relate to what he experiences any more than the reader can. It is a challenge for the author to pull it off without sounding silly or ‘unrealistic’.

Yocum gets close to losing it at times, but is skillfully able to pull it back on track. This is a book worth reading.

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

I don’t need to say it, but John Steinbeck’s writing is masterful. It’s like engaging in a master class in writing. He does break all the rules, and I’m only saying this because it’s how it feels: this book was written by the seat of his pants. It seems to be the work of a pantser from a construction point of view. I didn’t get the sense that there was a great deal of planning in the structure. One idea flows into another and then loops back and weaves together.

Woven throughout are what appear to be autobiographical references. Right from the opening paragraphs he writes in the first person. And then in the fifth chapter he writes about “Olive, my mother.” I have not done the research to know whether or not he actually was writing about his family or if it was just another author’s conceit of bringing reality to the fiction. So the words wander from fiction to apparent reality.

I wanted to read a tale of a truly evil person, but I got the sense that Steinbeck might have been a bit afraid of Cathy Ames. To achieve the true nature of a character, the author has to bring the persona into themselves. Cathy is evil. She starts killing with her parents in childhood and she kills a number of other people throughout the novel, but it seemed to me that Steinbeck didn’t like writing about her. She is a necessary component to the plot, but Lee, Adam Trask’s servant/companion is more developed, substantive, and powerful.

Steinbeck provides a masterful appreciation of the the mistreatment of Chinese immigrants embodied in Lee’s character - right from his shifting Pidgin/English form of speech to the shaving of his pigtail to the remarkable wisdom of his philosophy of life.

Looking for the traditional protagonist/antagonist conflict is a challenge in this book. Once again, Steinbeck breaks the rules. Who is the protagonist in this story? Adam Trask seems to shoulder the role, carrying through from beginning to end. But I can also say that Adam or his soul is the antagonist as well, the element that he is fighting against.

There are a myriad of sub-scenes and character portrayals that paint the colors around the story but do not always impact the movement of the plot.

Steinbeck’s dialog structure is also unique. It is abrupt with few tags to smooth out the changes and it occasionally seems almost innocent or childish in structure which gives it unusual immediacy.

East of Eden is obviously a classic and one that will move to my ‘best books’ shelf as soon as I buy a paper copy.

Write Away - Elizabeth George

Learning to write is an extended process. At one point, early in the process, you recognize that you can put symbols (letters) on paper that reflect what you are thinking or saying. What seems to be very simple now, was difficult at the beginning.

And that’s just the start. When we get past the, “See Jane run” lines, we get into much more complex things. At some point the beauty of the words working together creates an image that you can finally say, “That’s pretty good!” I remember an old Peanuts cartoon when Snoopy has a dictionary, and he says, “Now I have all the words. I just have to put them together.”

Elizabeth George is an excellent writer of fiction, and like many excellent writers she tries to pass her knowledge of the craft along to others. That’s what she did in Write Away. By the time I found this book I had already self-published a novel, Recalculating Truth. I thought it was pretty good, but I knew I had more to learn.

Like all writers, George has a specific process that works for her. (She has written 21 Inspector Lynley novels now.) Her stories are set in England but she lives in Seattle, Washington. She spends a great deal of time surveying the sites of each book, and she describes and illustrates that process in Write Away. In fact, she moves through the entire process of book creation from the Overview, through the Basics, the Technique, the Process, and finally examples.

The primary idea that I extracted from this is right from the title of her first chapter: Story is Character. That’s the kind of book I want to write. People have characters and those characters interact to make the story. In Chapter 19 she includes a Character Prompt Sheet that I have pulled into the writing software I use, Scrivener, which helps me to define the characters in the story. This includes their age, height, weight, build, but also enemies, best friend, ambition in life, political leaning, and hobbies. It also includes a pathological maneuver - what would the character do under stress? When the character is at the moment of stress they perform some sort of personal ritual like tucking hair behind an ear, straightening out their glasses, twisting their body away.

I found this book very helpful in fundamental ways of helping me to develop my own process. George includes excerpts from her “Journal of a Novel” that reflects her nervousness and fear in the process. I found this book more useful than her second book on writing, Mastering the Process, which seemed padded with her book excerpts and more personally related information.

I would definitely recommend Write Away, however, as a great starting point.