Book Reviews

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.

One of the advertising blurbs on the back cover of this book describes McCall Smith’s novels as gentle and that describes the Ladies #1 Detective Agency series to a T. Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi are contacted by an American lawyer who wants to bequeath a sum of money to a very kind guide at one of Botswana’s safari clubs. The only thing he knows about the man in question is that he works at a club with the name of an animal or a bird in it, and acted as a guide for an American lady who is now late (even the term for having died is gentle). Not much to go on! But Mma Ramotswe is not deterred, she will see what she can do. It is nice to be delivering good news to someone, rather than the usual fare of husbands cheating on wives and vice versa. Grace Makutsi is engaged to be married but when her fiance suffers an accident the #1 Aunty tries to block her from seeing her betrothed. And succeeds until friends intervene on her behalf.

If ever you want to read a ‘gentle’ book about these ladies whose detective agency in is Gabarone, Botswana, try any of this series. It will gladden your heart.

My first novel by this author. Very entertaining! Olive Kitteridge, a widow, is a retired school teacher in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine. The book starts out with Olive, a grandmother by now, going to a baby shower for her friend’s daughter. I do find it hard to believe that Olive has never been to a baby shower before, or have any idea of what happens at one. Events conspire to get her out of an embarrassing situation. We’ll leave it at that.

Olive seems to be entirely lacking in social skills. Maybe living in small town America has something to do with it. Her son Christopher lives in New York City with his wife, her two children and Olive’s grandson, their first child. Olive longs to be close to her family but doesn’t seem to have the skills to make this happen. She has not met her grandson, but she has met a man, the widower Jack Kennison who retired to Crosby with his recently deceased wife Betsy some years ago. Jack taught history at Harvard but he loves Olive’s lack of social skills. Olive says exactly what she thinks. Jack suggests to Olive that the reason she has not met her grandson is that she has not asked her son and family to visit. She replies that they don’t need an invitation, but when the two decide to marry, she does invite them, now with a second baby for the weekend. She plans to tell them just before they leave, and have Jack come over to meet them. The best laid plans can go awry when dealing with the dysfunctional! As the story proceeds, Olive’s honesty about her feelings is remarkable and illustrative of a journey we all may take, if we live long enough.

Really enjoyed this book, and will definitely read more of Ms. Strout’s work

My first novel by this author was an historical one, very good, about Cicero. The narrator was his slave Tiro, who developed a type of shorthand so that he could record his masters’ speeches. So I was surprised to find that Mr. Harris’ new novel takes place in the future. It isn’t a very bright future though. This story takes place in England several hundred years hence, after ‘Armageddon’, the name given to the collapse of civilization as we know it today, which happens around 2025, as best I can decipher. All that is left of our current day civilization is glass, plastic bits and useless cell phones. A great deal is made of the fact that many of these devices show the emblem of an apple with a bite taken out of it. The church has seized power again. People who did not starve sought the stone churches built before the industrial age because they were the only shelter available. Civilization seems to be stuck somewhere around the dark ages. Father Christopher Fairfax begins his journey on horseback to a small village in Wessex, where Pastor Lacy, a resident of thirty years, has just died. His purpose is to perform the funeral and return to the Bishop at Exeter but heavy rains cause a mudslide across the road and Fairfax is forced to remain in the village overnight. During the period between the first and second sleep (before electricity, most humans slept in two periods each night, with a period of wakefulness in between), Fairfax discovers that Pastor Lacy has heretical books on the study of the ancients. All curiosity regarding the lives of those who brought on the Apocalypse and their way of life is strictly forbidden by the church. Not only was Lacy searching for knowledge of the ancients, the author of some of the books, Dr. Shadwell, had received a letter from the old pastor and was in town at the time of Lacy’s death. Christopher becomes involved in the search for what the pastor had discovered regarding the ancients.

A very interesting perspective on how precarious our dependence on technology has become.

Published 2019, 354 pages

Finnie and Paddy have won the proverbial lottery when Paddy is invited to become partner in a law firm, and Finnie lands a job in the same village as a full time deacon. It seems too good to be true….

The couple has been married for a year when their fortunes take a drastic turn for the better, or so they think. Finnie keeps having wisps of doubts, trying to figure out how they’ve landed in such a cush setting. It’s hard to say too much about the story without giving away the plot. But early on, it turns out the couple has not been honest with each from the beginning. Both of them had lived in Canada for a time, but they never met there. However it was a connection when they first started dating that made them think they had something in common. From now on, whenever I hear that phrase my alarm bells will be going off.

The partnership’s location is a village called Simmerton, a place so dark it barely sees light on a cloudless day. It settles into a narrow valley between pine trees growing so thick it’s impossible to walk through them. The law firm consists of a married couple, Lovatt and Tuft Dudgeon, older lawyers who want Paddy to take on much of the work, and a couple of assistants. Maybe they want to retire, or just take it easy for a while in their golden years. Finnie’s deacon work will have a lot to do with a non-profit adoption agency the Dudgeons set up after Lovatt’s first wife and their two children died in a fire at the big house. It turns out Paddy himself is adopted so that most likely played into their choice for new partner.

Soon after they move into their new cottage Paddy and Finn and invited for dinner at the big house, although the real big house was the one that burned to the ground, and the Dudgeons live in a much smaller cottage on the property. As they walk up the drive that night Finnie is sure she sees someone stalking in the trees, but Paddy calms her fears. Just another barn owl or rabbit bustling about. But the dinner turns out to make a critical point in both of their lives and what comes after is anything but lucky.