Year End Tally

This year I read 191 books. 169 of those were mysteries, 20 were regular fiction, and 2 were non-fiction. Guess my preferences are clear….particularly since one of the two non-fiction works was a mystery of sorts (the book about the death of Poe, see below). Here’s to another great reading year.

December reads

The “A” books are marked with an *; the others would be “B’s.”

*Dana Stabenow, A Taint in the Blood

*Deborah Crombie, In a Dark House

*Reginald Hill, Good Morning, Midnight

Monica Ferris, Crewel Yule

Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, The Rule of Four

*Anita Shreve, Light on Snow

Amy Tan, The Book of Fates (essays)

*Barbara Hambly, A Free Man of Color

*John E. Walsh, Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

Barbara Hambly, Fever Season

David Handler, Bright Silver Star

*John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

Have to add this to the 2004 “best” list. Wow. Connolly is Irish, but his protagonist is an American named Charlie Parker. Although his parents weren’t jazz fans, he has always been called Bird. With that silliness aside, Connolly then gets down to business. Bird was a NYPD homicide detective until his wife and child were brutally murdered. Obsessed with finding the killer, he roams around for a bit, and comes back to NY only to get involved in a case as an unofficial investigator. He tracks down the guilty parties in that case, which also deals with the murder of children, and it leads him into a new line on the serial killer who took his family. The second half of the book deals with tracking down the killer, who is one of the creepiest serial killers I’ve seen in print. Very well written, with excellent character development.

Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

A fascinating look at the last months of Poe’s life. John Evangelist Walsh has done an excellent literary and historical investigation and has produced a theory about Poe’s tragic end that makes entire sense to me. A real page turner, this was much more intriguing that most literary scholarship!

Barbara Hambly, A Free Man of Color

For some reason, I finally decided to give this series a try. Set in New Orleans in 1833, the main character is Benjamin January, a free man of color who is a musician but also trained as a doctor in Paris. He has returned home to New Orleans after many years in Paris; his Moroccan wife died and he felt the need to get away from all the things that reminded him of her. The New Orleans he returns to is much different. Hambly provides a lot of really interesting detail about the society of this era, particularly in NO, and the changes that were leading up to the Civil War.

Looking back on 2004

One of my online book groups has already done the "best of 2004" lists. Some of them have also posted their "worst of" lists, what a tough crowd.
Here is my list of "wow" books from 2004 (ones I read in 2004, not all
were published in 2004):

Laura Lippman, Every Secret Thing
PD James, The Murder Room
Margaret Maron, Last Lessons of Summer
Diane Leslie, Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime
Robert Barnard, A Cry in the Dark
Reginald Hill, On Beulah Height
Lisa Scottoline, Killer Smile
Minette Walters, Disordered Minds
Karin Slaughter, Indelible
Judith Guest, The Tarnished Eye

These last 6 are, I guess my "double wow" books:
Jincy Willett, Winner of the National Book Award
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Michael Connelly, The Narrows
Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs
KJ Erickson, Alone at Night
SJ Rozan, Absent Friends

And I got back into and got caught up on two excellent series: Ian
Rankin's John Rebus series and Lee Child's Jack Reacher series.

All in all, a pretty good reading year. And there's always the possibility of some more goodies before the month ends.

Anita Shreve, Light on Snow

I could not put this book down. I started it and was on page 72 before I knew it. Nicky, our narrator, recalls the events of one December, around 1983, when she was 12 years old. She and her father lived in New Hampshire then, having fled New York after the car accident that took the lives of her mother and baby sister Clara. Living a quiet life in a desolate area, her father makes furniture and Nicky tries to adjust to their new life. One day, while taking a walk through the woods, they find an abandoned infant. A short time after, the mother of the abandoned baby, posing as someone who wants to buy a piece of furniture, comes to meet them, and after admitting her true identity, ends up trapped in their house for a few days during a snowstorm.

Shreve has some wonderful lines in this one. In one scene, Nicky sees that her father has brought out a photo of Clara, and Nicky reminisces about other photos that are not displayed, reminders of happier days and mundane events. In one, she notes, you could hear her father snoring (174). At another point, Nicky notes that her father has bought the supplies her grandmother will need to prepare the Christmas meal. Grammie, Nicky tells us, always "hits the ground cooking" (286).

The book veered toward melodrama at the end, not finishing as strongly as it might have, but it still was quite emotionally powerful. An excellent read.

Reginald Hill, Good Morning, Midnight

What a relief. After the ponderous Dialogues of the Dead, and the literally unreadable Death's Jest-Book - and I'm one who appreciated Arms and the Women, even as the successor to the masterpiece On Beulah Height - I find Hill is back in form with Good Morning, Midnight.

Pascoe is called to the scene of what appears to be a suicide...it's just that the man's father committed suicide ten years earlier, in the same place, in the same manner, with the same items left behind. Pascoe, Wield and Novello are thrown into a tricky investigation where there are many people, including one rather close to home, with things to hide.

Deborah Crombie, In a Dark House

The most recent in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series, one of my favorites. This one has a very complex plot, with several cases that may or may not be connected swirling around, including arson, murder, kidnapping and a battered women's shelter, an MP who's hiding something, an arsonist. There are few moments where the descriptive narrative is a bit strained but overall, definitely another strong entry in this series.

Dana Stabenow, A Taint in the Blood

The latest in the Kate Shugak series - Kate is hired by a woman who wants Kate to prove her mother is innocent of murder. The catch: the mother has been in prison for 30 years, having been convicted of the crime. Kate goes to Anchorage to investigate the case. Although Kate isn't sure she's getting anywhere, someone is noticing her progress and clearly doesn't want the case re-examined. Another good entry in this series, and for those keeping track of Kate's lovelife, we see an awful lot of Jim Chopin in this one.