Book Reviews

What a sweet little book this is. Perestroika is a thoroughbred filly called Paras for short. She has just won a race, and with it a ‘purse’. When her trainer accidentally leaves her stall open Paras takes her purse (she has just won it, after all) and heads out simply because she is curious. This curiosity leads her further and further away from the stable near the track in search of grass and other edibles. A homeless German short-haired dog named Frida comes across the horse and befriends her. Friday used to have an owner, a homeless musician who passed away the year before, but Frida has learned to act as though she belongs to someone, and depends on the kindness of strangers for food. The two pair up and are befriended by a raven named Raoul, who is very intelligent, just ask him, and finally by a young boy who lives with his great-grandmama in an old house with a sheltered courtyard.

The story is of course so highly unlikely that you can’t really believe it, but somehow I wanted to! Very sweet, the animals, who talk of course are entertaining, but the people who interact with them also warmed my heart. Looking out for other tales to read by this author.

Joyce, a retired nurse, is a newcomer to the club, after the founder, and ex-investigator, Penny, is no longer active. They meet on at the retirement center where the four of them live, Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Roy and their name derives from the fact that the only slot left for holding their meetings was on Thursday. One interesting thing about this book is that you have the narrative but you also have Joyce putting in a chapter now and then by way of a journal. However she writes in her journal as though she were talking to a friend so she’ll say something like, I never thought of it that way, did you? Odd to be asked a question by a narrator in a book.

Good story about a greedy developer who wants to dig up the old nun’s cemetery and replace it with more housing for the elderly. This is all very upscale and very successful so far. But several people, some residents of the current development and some outsiders lead a protest when he tries to sneak in the heavy equipment and begin work. During the stand off he drops dead. The murder club goes to work, sometimes overstepping their bounds with the local police but Elizabeth knows how to work things out, always to her benefit.

The heroine of the story, Marta Nederman, was part of the Polish resistance during WWII. She suffers brutal interrogation at a Nazi concentration camp before being rescued by an American soldier, Paul, as the war ends. Barely alive, she is sent to a camp just outside Salzburg to recover. There she meets Paul again and the two are able to spend some time together, enough in fact, for her to get pregnant. When a friend’s visa becomes available the head nurse urges her to take the visa and get to London. Marta’s family is gone, she can’t go back to Poland, and by now she and Paul have plans to marry and live in America. She goes on to London, but Paul’s plane crashes and he is killed before they can marry. Marta finds work at the Embassy and marries a diplomat there, but it is a marriage of convenience for there is no love between them. However, when her past becomes known she is asked to go under cover to root out a spy within the service. What begins as a few days of travel becomes much more of an adventure than she dared dream possible.

This is my first novel by this author but will most likely not be my last. Charlie Parker, a former detective from New York, has gone on a mission to find the man who murdered his wife and daughter. In order to find him he has asked friends in law enforcement to send him information regarding ritualized killings they come across. Some of these lead him to Cargill, Arkansas, where police chief Griffin has a second teenage girl’s murder to solve. Or possibly a third. Parker starts out by angering Griffin who puts him in jail overnight but then realizes he’s made a mistake. Parker leaves town but then decides to return, providing outside eyes for a series of crimes that have been hushed up by the sheriff’s department over the last several years. Enter William Jefferson Clinton, newly elected president of the US, who is pulling all the strings he can to raise up Arkansas out of poverty. The Cade family, one of whom is the deputy sheriff, owns most of the land worth anything, and is looking to profit from new industry all but set to sign on the dotted line. News of young girls, even if African American being murdered will send that industry to Texas just as sure as the world. Parker doubts this killer is the same one he is looking for, but stays anyway. Good thing he does, for a lot of reasons.

I grew up in the Deep South during the civil rights movement so I am well acquainted with racism. Ms. Wetmore’s tale about a young Latino girl in Odessa, TX during the mid 70’s when oil was booming in the area exposes racism of another kind. Gloria Ramirez gets into the pickup of a young white man, Dale Strickland, on Saturday night, admittedly hoping to have some fun. He drives her out to an oil patch, rapes her and plans to frighten her into silence or kill her but she escapes by walking to a farmhouse while he is passed out in the truck. Gloria’s arrival at the farm of Mary Rose Whitehead creates a crisis within her family that spreads throughout the town. Mary Rose has a daughter already and is seven months pregnant. She takes Gloria in and hides her when she sees Dale’s pickup truck coming up the road. All this is a story in itself but what happens afterwards, Mary Rose’s terror that the same thing will happen to her own daughter, living out in the fields with her husband out tending their cattle for what is almost every waking moment, her move into town, the friends and enemies she makes as they await the trial. Gloria’s mother is deported before she is reunited with her daughter, and her Uncle Victor takes Gloria away from town to heal from her ordeal.

Good story, highly recommended.

Meg Langslow’s job as coordinator for the Helping Hands in small town Virginia leads the team to assist Harvey the Hoarder with his cluttered house. Harvey is about to be evicted due to complaints by his nosy neighbors, and some second cousins who seem very interested in his house, but don’t care anything about Harvey. The poor man ends up murdered just as Helping Hands has started to make a dent on his decades long practice of saving every item that crosses his path. In this close-knit community Meg digs into the room full of papers Harvey kept as well as some online hoarder help groups.

Reading this book makes me wish that societies functioned as well as they do in Ms. Andrew’s world. The Helping Hands is an interfaith organization that helps with anything their neighbors might need, building a handicap ramp, finishing a quilt, de-cluttering a house, putting in a security system, all with just a phone call or text saying it needs doing. In my experience the real world doesn’t work that way so much, but it’s nice to imagine.

I am so glad to have found this author of lighthearted mysteries. With the state of the world being what it is I think we all can use some escape to a brighter side of life, even with murder in the equation.