I picked this week’s graphic because it’s been hotter in England than we’re used to, upwards of thirty degrees centigrade, and it suddenly feels that cities are not places you’d visit unless you had to. It’s being reported as a heat wave, but I suspect it’s our new normal and I know we’re not set up to deal with it.
Fortunately, I’m retired, so I can avoid the midday heat and enjoy the hot evenings. Of course, I’m still escaping into books, although it’s too warm to wear headphones for long, so I’m pulling ebooks to the top of my reading pile.
Anyway, here’s what I read and bought in this hot week and what I’m planning to read next week.
This week, I had fun with the latest DI Adams book, yet another Elizabeth Moon Science Fiction book, and a lighthearted July 4th short story from Stephen King. Weike Wang’s short story wasn’t fun, but it did get under my skin.
DI Adams has faced down Folk, fae, and feral geese, but waking in a ditch on the Yorkshire moors, unarmed and uncaffeinated, is a new low. Worse still, her duck is missing.
And so is Dandy.
But that’s just the beginning. She’s not here by chance, and neither are the others wandering the moors. No, they’ve been put here for a reason, and if they can’t escape the estate before sunrise, they’re never going to.
Gingerbread villages, Yorkshire alligators, and haunted, statue-riddled woods would be challenge enough. But as the moon rises, the hunt rides out, and behind it something ancient stirs.
This was a darker-than-average DI Adams novel. This time, she isn’t investigating a crime; she’s a victim of one. The action scenes worked well, but at times it felt like Adams was wandering fairly aimlessly through a videogame. The mystery about what was going on and the tension about what Adams could do about it (if anything) worked well for the first half of the book, but then started to wear thin. The ending was dramatic but felt a little too easy. To take this series further, I think Kim Watt is going to have to reveal what it is that makes Adams so special, and Adams is going to have to stop treating magic as an aberration and start to understand it as a threat and a tool.
A salt-of-the-earth Maine native recounts how a friendly annual summer fireworks show rivalry with his neighbour across the lake gradually spirals out of control…with explosive results.
I spent a pleasant hour and a bit on July 4th listening to Tim Sample narrate Stephen King’s ‘Drunken Fireworks’ (2015). It’s a well-crafted story that, as well as making me smile, provided me with a master class in how to reveal a person’s character just by sharing how they tell a story. Tim Sample’s narration added to the fun, capturing the monologue of the main character (who is a Maine Character) perfectly.
My review is HERE
To become a doctor someday, every student must complete a certain number of hours in clinical research, volunteering, and shadowing. There are algorithms to this stuff, to building the perfect résumé for admission to the perfect doctoral program. With this goal in mind, a young pre-med student earns a coveted role in a study about diet and its effects on the human heart, replacing another Asian-American woman from the same school and on a similar college track. The doctor in charge – a middle-aged woman who’d built her career at some of the most elite medical institutions in the country – is erratic and overbearing at first, but her quirks and habits become clearer as the time goes on. Faced with the stark realities of the doctor’s life within and outside of the lab, the student must take stock of her ambitions and her own place in the world.
Reading Weike Wang’s short story, ’Shadowing’ (2020) was hard work. It’s an anxious tale about anxious, unhappy people who are pretending to be happy and successful, exemplars of the roles they’re filling. It was unsettling to read because there was a dissonance between the storytelling style and the content of the story; a dissonance that echoed the dissonance between the polished perfection of the look-how-interesting-and-unique-I-am resumé the protagonist is dutifully polishing and her experience of the life she’s leading. It was a story that had me constantly searching for its meaning, which, again, echoed the protagonist’s mostly unspoken questioning of her own choices.
My review is HERE
Fleet Lieutenant Esmay Suiza never wanted to become a hero. After a traumatic, war torn childhood and years of being plagued by nightmares, she is content to spend her years with the Fleet following orders and staying under the radar. Even after she finds herself the leader in a fierce battle against a treasonous captain, and the center of a subsequent military trial, Suiza wants nothing more than to return to the ranks.
Then she’s promoted and sent to the deep space repair ship Koskiusko. Suiza once again finds herself in the heart of danger. The Bloodhorde, a violent group of barbarian warriors, has made plans to sabotage her ship and clear the path for a full invasion. Suiza is thrust into command, leading the revolt against the invaders before a second wave of brutality threatens the lives of her fellow soldiers.
So what do you do in the fourth novel of a science fiction series to keep everything fresh? Well, if you’re Elizabeth Moon, you push aside the main characters from the first three books and write an exciting and thoughtful novel focusing on a minor character who came to the rescue of Captain Serrano in the third book.
The result was unexpected and splendid. Military SF that went well beyond an obsession with weapons, warships and space battles. It has all those things, but they take second place to the development of the main character. Great tension combined with impressively realistc enviornments, physical and social, on and off ship.
The five books I bought this week come from around the world: an American woman writing about Sorrento, an American woman writing about Croatia, an English woman writing about Kazakhstan, Hong Kong and Mars, an Australian woman writing about a woman in her eighties who is suspected of murder and an Australian Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award winner kicking off his best-known police procedural series. I’m looking forward to all of them, even the one that sounds like a romance – I mean, it’s partly written from a dog’s point of view, so how romantic can it be? I’m going to Croatia in September, so I’ll be taking the corporate spy novel with me.
After years of dreams deferred, Josie Ballard’s life is about to change. She and her husband are off to Sorrento for a summer adventure, but on the eve of their departure, Josie discovers his infidelity. Devastated, she leaves her faithless husband, heading for the sun-drenched Italian coast. Alone, future unknown.
Five thousand miles away, Cicero, a rather snobbish terrier of indeterminate breeding, is likewise living an upturned life after his beloved human’s passing. Heartbroken, he wanders the wilds of Pompeii. When a flustered tourist with a kind smile appears in the ruins, clutching her tote bag and map, Cicero and Josie collide like the two lost souls they are.
In a series of turns as twisty as Sorrento’s streets, Cicero leads Josie to her second act: Hugo, a charming and somewhat contrary local bookseller. Against a backdrop of quaint villages, sun-dappled olive orchards, and the shimmering Mediterranean Sea, Hugo and Josie embark on a friendship that just might tiptoe into romance, with little Cicero to help them along the way—for dogs, he reasons, are nothing if not experts when it comes to love.
On the barren plains of the Kazakh Steppe, Alyssa Wright stands on the brink of the most ambitious space flight in history: a one-way mission to Mars. But when disaster strikes, she begins to uncover a conspiracy that threatens her life – and the lives of everyone on board.
In Hong Kong, a coder vanishes from his home, leaving nothing behind but a cryptic warning and his cat. Pursued by violent forces, his sister finds herself on the run, in possession of the one thing capable of saving him.
Amidst a dark vacuum of nothingness, as the Argo spaceship hurtles toward Mars, the crew realise that someone is sabotaging the mission from the inside. Every second brings them closer to catastrophe, and time is running out.
Across Earth and space, three stories collide in a breathless thriller that asks: what is the price of progress, and who must pay it?
A routine undercover assignment at a Milan fashion house for MorCo, the corporate behemoth whose owner has political aspirations, turns into something else for Finn Teller, corporate spy, when MorCo’s CEO hires her to investigate a train wreck in Croatia—scene of Finn’s most tragic professional failure and home to terrorists who are still out for revenge.
Finn’s boss assures her she’ll be in and out of the country before her old enemies know she’s there.
But things at MorCo aren’t as they seem, and before long the train crash is the least of her worries as Finn must win a race against the clock to stop the spread of a deadly African pandemic and escape with her life.
Eighty-one-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick lives a quiet life in the suburbs. Few would guess that Elsie, aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else’s business, harbours a secret she’s worked hard to bury.
Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick – once a little girl and now an old lady – has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.
When an elderly neighbour is found dead, no one suspects a thing – until they uncover Elsie’s true identity: Mad Mabel, the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder, more than sixty years ago.
The police are asking questions. The media is circling. Has the past finally caught up with Mad Mabel? Or is it time for her to set the record straight?
Constable Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan detective, now hated and despised, he’s been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he’s found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his ‘backup’ is about to put a bullet in him.
He’s wrong on both counts. But Tiverton – with its stagnant economy, entrenched racism and rural isolation – has more crime than one constable can handle. And when the next call-out takes him to the body of a sixteen-year-old girl, it’s clear that whether or not Hirsch finds her killer, his past may well catch up with him.
I’d meant this week to be all about Science Fiction but then I stumbled across a Mystery Writers of America Presents short story collection edited by Lee Child and decided it would be perfect summer reading.
In our dangerous world, offenders cannot always be brought down by the justice system. They must be stopped by someone outside the law. Some call them vigilantes; others claim they are just another brand of criminal.
In Dennis Lehane’s “The Consumers”, a suburban woman hires a hit man to target her husband, who has committed a terrible crime.
In Karin Slaughter’s “The Unremarkable Heart”, a dying woman learns the truth about a dark family secret.
In Michael Connelly’s “A Fine Mist of Blood”, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch discovers a witness who will lead him to the doorstep of a hardened killer.
And in Lee Child’s “The Hollywood I Remember”, an assassin gets his long overdue comeuppance
This collection has some big names in it who I’m looking forward to reading but I’m also hoping to find writers who are new to me. I’ve only the first story and I’ve alreadyI added Twist Phelan’s ‘Fake’ to my TBR pile.
Halley Zwick is on the run.
Exposing an interplanetary conspiracy should have brought justice. Instead, it’s brought Halley a target on her back. With nowhere left to turn, she boards a relic of the past: Elysian Fields, a drifting crypt in deep space.
Once hailed as humanity’s answer to death itself, Elysian Fields was trillionaire Zale Winfield’s promise to Earth’s elite — cryo-sleep until medicine caught up with mortality. But that future never came, and the barge has floated dark and silent for over a century.
Or so Halley thought.
Shadows fall across corridors. Scratching claws echo in the vents. Something is crawling, slithering, waking. As Halley descends into the heart of the ship, paranoia blurs into terror. The Elysian dead may not be sleeping—and what woke them is hungry.
The mix of space ship Sci Fi and they-want-to-eat-me horror appeals to me. I tried S. A. Barnes’ ‘Dead Silence’ a few years ago and got bogged down when the pace slowed in the middle. ‘Cold Eternity’ is shorter,and it’s her latest novel, so I’m hoping I’ll have a better time with this one.
After proving herself in battle, Esmay Suiza is continuing her RSS Fleet training alongside her erstwhile love Barin when she meets Brun—the ebullient daughter of Lord Thornbuckle—who idolizes her as a reluctant hero. But Esmay cannot abide Brun’s highborn airs. And when their shared affection for Barin ignites a rivalry between them, Esmay is exiled to remote duty. Crushed by the rebuke of her friendship, Brun leaves the facility—and enters a nightmare.
For the enemies of civilization are on the move. The savage New Texas Militia, driven to spread their fanatical dogma, has been stealing the Familias government’s own weaponry to use against them. When Brun accidentally witnesses their depredations, her life is all but forfeit. Taken by the Militia, she is subjected to inhuman torment as Esmay is blamed for the disastrous situation and the galaxy prepares for inevitable conflict.
With the life of Brun and the dominance of the Familias Regnant both in peril, Esmay must go into action once again against a brutal, deranged enemy who would rather die than face defeat…
I’d meant to leave a week between ‘Once A Hero’, the fourth book in this series, and ‘Rules of Engagement’. Then I checked out the first chapter. Now I’m already 25% through. What can I say? Elizabeth Moon writes things that make reading fun.
Mike Finn's Fiction 
I’ve found the same problem with reading Elizabeth Moon – it makes me want to read more. I’m looking forward to getting back to her sci fi, but for now I’m loving her fantasy
LikeLiked by 1 person