Susan Conant's "All Shots, A Dog Lover's Mystery"

This was not the best read of the summer. I do appreciate all the information I did not previously know about malamutes, and learning that that breed and Alaskan huskies are not the same thing was of some interest.

There is lots of non-fiction information in this book for dog lovers.

As mysteries go, however, I found this one confusing. There were just too many Holly Winters in the book. That's all part of the plot. The heroine's name is Holly Winter, and there are two more Holly Winter characters involved. It seems like someone is trying to steal the heroine's identity until she finds out there are others with her name. I haven't gone back to verify this, but with all the Holly Winter characters running around (or lying in the morgue) it felt like the author was changing voices all the time. Perhaps that's what led to the confusion.

At any rate, I just couldn't get into this one, unlike some of her previous Dog Lover's Mystery titles. Perhaps the series is growing stale.

Conant also has a new series for cat lovers and another mystery series for "gourmet girls."

Liz Nichols

Patricia Cornwell's "Book of the Dead"

Cornwell is one of the most enduring and reliable mystery writers on the face of the earth. The fact that she has been a police forensics professional and knows that subject from the inside out gives readers a real picture into the procedure of finding a killer-- not the pretend picture that we get from the crime scene investigation shows on TV.

"Book of the Dead" does not disappoint. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, her niece, Lucy, and the other cast of characters that have surrounded this super CSI for years have their hands on the latest devices to detect composition and origins for grains of sand left on the victims' bodies and latent blood left at the crime scenes. Crime scenes in this book span the globe from Rome to Charleston, SC to Hilton Head where the reader gets to soak up a sense of place as well as a sense of character.

To add some additional drama to the book, there is trouble in the lives of Scarpetta and her cohorts. Secretary, Rose, is down with a mysterious persistent cough, Lucy is disappearing for days at a time, and Pete has a new girl friend who is definitely a bad influence. Scarpetta and Benton are alternatively hot and cold, though all is well with their relationship in the end.

The team has settled in to Charleston to run a private lab. Things are going well in terms of business. There are plenty of cities and counties around the world that need the expertise of Scarpetta's private forensic lab. The problem is that her team has not entirely settled in. Scarpetta is not entirely trusted by the natives either.

This is a great addition to Cornwell's list of Scarpetta forensic mysteries, and is sure to please Cornwell's fans.

Liz Nichols

"The Serpent's Tale" by Ariana Franklin

"The Serpent's Tale" is an absorbing historical mystery set it 12th century England around the story of Eleanor of Aquitaine's rebellion against her husband, Henry II. There are many accurate historical details in the book, and the Franklin has the social context of women in that society pegged right.

The heroine, Adelia Aquilar, is in secret a medical doctor who has been trained to forensic work, a "doctor of the dead" as she calls it. She was transplanted to England in the wake of Henry II's crusade, along with her Islamic servant, Mansur, who must pretend to be the doctor because of the low tolerance of women in professions during that time. If left on her own, she would have been considered a witch. Adelia's lover is one of Henry's knights, who has been rewarded for his loyalty with a bishopric- Rowley, Bishop of St. Albans. Together they have a baby girl.

The mystery revolves around finding the killer of Rosamund, Henry II's consort, and to determine if there is a tie between that murder and the death of a young lord who loses his life on his way to elope with a young woman who is being educated at the Godstow Convent.

Franklin does a masterful job of drawing interesting characterizations that are multi-dimensional. Even the villains are complex and worthy of consideration as to why they are the way they are. The details about how people lived in medieval times are accurate and interesting.

Two thumbs up for "The Serpent's Tale."

Liz Nichols

Goodbye to Bookwise

I am saddened that Bookwise has decided to merge into another company. What I found so attractive about Bookwise is it fed my passions for reading and writing all in one affiliate-based company. The writing aspect of Bookwise is also being pulled out and saved under a different company name. I will have to see if that will be worth joining stand-alone from the online book aspect.

I'm undecided about the new company. It seems more oriented to lifelong learning, similar to Success University, but it is more expensive than Success University. I have so many other opportunities for lifelong learning that I don't know that I want to pay almost $80 per month for the privilege of learning from Brian Tracy and the like. Been there; done that.

What I want to do is manage a great online bookstore. What I think I'll need to do is to focus this blog increasingly on Amazon.com, or on the independent bookseller site I also belong to.

I also plan to create another book review blog specifically on current mysteries. I'll give a shout out when I have that one up and running.

Liz Nichols

Janet Evanovich's "Fearless Fourteen"

It's another home run for crimestopper, Stephanie Plum, in the wacky "Fearless Fourteen." She manages to find Loretta, a kidnap victim and catches the kidnapper who is looking for information leading to a hidden robbery treasure. The kidnapper seems to be everywhere and able to stop every plan to circumvent his plan to recover the treasure. When Stephanie is able to figure out how the kidnapper is getting all his information, she easily unravels the mystery.

In the meantime, the plot takes a lot of twists and turns through the lives of a bunch of wacky characters, including a teen video addict nicknamed Zook and his gamer buddies, a stalker named Gary who makes weird predictions about the health and welfare of an aging country rock star who is visiting Trenton. All these extra characters make Stephanie and her male buddies, Morelli and Ranger, look pretty normal.

This may be the most inventive and wacky of all Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books and gets an A plus on my list of summer reads.

Liz Nichols