I am finishing "The Case of the Reluctant Witness"  by Erle Stanley Gardner.  I love these Perry Mason novels and have acquired almost all of them over the years.  I am going to try to read them all again this year.

I read 124 books in 2017 ~ my goal for 2018 is 130

Happy New Year everyone!

I finished a paranormal book Chaos Choreography by Seanan Mcquire first off for 2018. I am now starting a HF Roseblood by Paul Doherty. 

Happy New Year everyone!

Haven't posted lately but then I haven't been reading much lately until the last week. I have been reading the posts though.

Finished these in the last week: 
The Skeleton Paints a Picture by Leigh Perry,  So happy to read about Sid again.
Nearly Departed in Deadwood by Ann Charles. Wasn't too impressed with this one and started not to even finish it.  I have several others on Kindle but probably won't read them.
The Uccello Connection (Genevieve Lenard Book 10) by Estelle Ryan.  I really like this series.

Have started Not a Creature Was Purring by Krista Davis but only about 25 pages into it.

Just started Portrait of a Spy, in the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva. Various European cities are experiencing Islamic terrorist attacked. I really enjoy this series. Gabriel has worked for Mossad, but his real vocation is art restoration. In this book, Gabriel's contact, Isherwood, who owns an art gallery has lucked onto a hitherto unknown painting by Titian. Haven't got the part that takes place at Covent Garden, but this will be my My Fair Lady book for the mystery/thriller challenge.

I finished listening to The Plot is Murder by V.M. Burns yesterday. I enjoyed listening to it but not sure that I would have liked reading it. Don't know if anyone has read it but the MC is opening a book store where a murder occurs. She is also writing a historical cozy mystery. The book switches through out between the current murder and the book she is writing which is similar the current events.

Yesterday was quite eventful. I took my car in to a local automotive shop in a very rural area where I had not been before. When I got there, the guys were apparently all out to lunch and the chain link fence was closed and locked. I backed up my car a bit and then was pulling forward on to the shoulder so my rear end wouldn't be hanging out in the road. I couldn't see over the hood that there was a culvert under the shop's driveway. I drove into the ditch. I tried to reverse but my wheels just spun. When I got out of the car I saw that my back wheel was over a foot above the driveway. I called AAA and was standing outside getting very cold. The temperature was in the 20s and I was swearing a turtleneck shirt and my sweats. As I was waiting for the Arizona Auto Club to connect me with their South Carolina club, an SUV pulled up with an older couple who invited me in out of the cold. We introduced ourselves and it turns out that the driver knows my sister-in-law. He was also the former minister of the Methodist church just a couple blocks up the street from my house. Small world! AAA towed me out of the ditch and I left my car at the shop. The kind folks who took pity on me and gave me a ride home. 

About an hour after they dropped me off it started to snow, and continued for three and a half hours. I don't know exactly how much fell at my house, but I've tried to attach a photo taken from my front door after it stopped. It still hasn't all melted, even though it went up to sunny and 39 this afternoon. Going to go down to 20 again overnight, so there will probably still be some on the ground tomorrow. This is NOT what I expected in South Carolina. I had mentioned to my brother that I should get a small bag of sand to put on my back steps. I could probably be seriously injured if I fell, and would have a very hard time getting up, if I could stand. He pooh-poohed the idea. Hope to get my car back tomorrow ... after the snow is gone.
 

That snow storm is hitting us today, we've been under blizzard warnings all day.  It's hard to get an accurate measurement of how much snow has fallen because it is blowing and drifting around so much, but I think we have a good foot on the ground.

I am reading "Enigma"  by Catherine Coulter, the newest in her  FBI thriller series.  The problem with her books is that once you start you don't want to put it down!  I should finish it by tonight.

There is a good mystery going on in New England with the Patriots football team just now. stay tunes more to come.

Charles, IMHO there is no truth to this story.  They don't play together, they retire together.  I hope I'm right. 

Finished "Enigma" this morning, just couldn't keep my eyes open long enough last night.  Super good.  Now I'm on to "The Case of the Lazy Lover" which is a complete misnomer of a title.

Happy New Year!!!  "She is alive!!"  Has been a busy time.  Mary P. I see you are moved --- hurrah for you!!!  I am stil in the 3-house stage of my life.  Beginning to move into the larger one here in Tulsa this week.  Hope to have the other 2 on the market by February 1st and have set June 1 as my goal to have them sold.  Sooner would be lovely of course.

I have actually read a couple of books of late that I could recommend:  "The Radium Girls", Kate Moore and "Marriage Can Be Murder", Emma Jameson.  Radium Girls is actually a true story and one of which I knew nothing.  I was not yet born when it all began and too young to know anything of it later. I also believe much of it was covered up.  Marriage Can Be Murder is the first installment in what is now a 2-book series.  You all know I am not a great cozy fan and I believe this is definitely a cozy, but very well done and, in my mind, no so simplistic as most.  I have read many, many more books but these two were worth mention.

Joy and all the northerner's, I was so envious of your storm!!!  Not in downtown Boston however.  I used to love the snow.  Mary, do not let your brother convince you not to have some sand/salt/ice melt, etc. for your steps.  It may only happen once every 10 years, but a fall could last a lifetime.  A small bag of ice cream salt would not be too onerous to store!!!

I am reading for Good Reads author of the month one of the Cozy Mystery Groups The Question of the Missing Head by E.J. Copperman

It has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while now. It is actually very good. The main character Samuel has Asperger's Syndrome.  It is worked into the story line very well and not glossed over. Makes a nice change from some of our ditzy main characters in many of the cozies today. I have put the next couple on my WL.

Alice

Just finished Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand crime writer and theatre director, who wrote many mysteries beginning in 1933.   Love these vintage mysteries and this one was not easy to solve.  The murderer was not someone I suspected at all.  Not sure about the motive but it was a good, good, read.  Next is an Agatha oldie titled At Bertram's Hotel.

I'm reading Winter House by Carol O'Connell, featuring Kathy Mallory, a police detective who is described as a sociopath. If you've seen the Sherlock television series with Benedict Cumberbatch you know what's meant. Still, she's loved by her detective partner Riker, her business partner Charles Butler, and an assortment of other regulars. O'Connell writes with biting wit about Mallory. When she's found asleep in his desk chair, the chief medical examiner thinks to himself, "Well, this put a lie to Detective Riker's theory that she slept hanging by her heels like a bat." When she woke up, "Her eyes snapped open in the mechanical fashion of a doll--or a robot.... This leant credence to his own theory that she had an on-off switch." The back cover of the book describes it as a cross between a modern gothic and a police procedural. Certainly, the characters who live in Winter House, where the dead body of a supposed burglar is found, are a pretty gothic group. To call them a dysfunctional family is downright insulting to the term. O'Connell is a master of character. I've enjoyed all her books, and in this one she's at the top of her game.

REK,

I was just looking at a couple of Ngaio Marsh books I have and not read. Do the books need to be read in order do you think. I know there are many in the series and the two I have are in the middle of the series.

Alice

Alice - I like that series by E.J. Copperman.  Have read all except the latest which I haven't gotten yet.

I started reading Oath of Honor (first in a new series) by Lynette Eason yesterday. I enjoy reading her books.

Alice, I don't think that the Ngaio Marsh books need to be read in order.  Each seems to be a stand alone mystery.

Alice, I agree with REK that you can read the books without reading in order, but there is a background story involved which you might want to see from the beginning. 

Just finished "Kill them With Cayenne" the second book in the spice shop mysteries by Gail Oust.  I was able to pick out the murderer by 3/4 through which is unusual for me, usually I am clueless.  (My DH would tell you the same) 

I'm now reading another Perry Mason book, "The Case of the Shapely Shadow."

Becky, I can pack up some of our snow and send it out to you if you like.  Actually we've lost quite a bit of snow over the last couple days ~ it has been in the 40's so a lot of melting going on.  Yesterday we had very thick fog, and that took away a lot of it as well.  The temperatures have fallen below freezing today so of course every thing that melted will now freeze. 

Read Pacific Vortex by Clive Cussler for the Mystery/Thriller Challenge. It's the first in the series featuring Dirk Pitt, the lead character in Cussler's Sahara, which was made into a movie starring Matthew McConnaughy. The plot revolves around an area of the Pacific Ocean called the Pacific Vortex, which has gained the reputation of being another Bermuda Triangle. A number of ships have disappeared under strange circumstances, most recently the US Navy's brand new nuclear submarine that was on its shakedown cruise. This isn't the usual kind of mystery I read, and the first few chapters didn't really grab me. However, it got more interesting as I continued to read, and then I didn't want to put it down. Cussler has done ship salvage for a living and his knowledge of ships gives credibility to much of the action.

Actually the very first Dirk Pitt story came out in 1973 --- "The Mediterranean Caper".  Perhaps this one from 1982 is a prequel, but I did not think prequels were so popular back then.  I just know I was reading Dirk Pitt in the 70s!!  Maybe it was written in the 70s but only published in 1982 --- a mystery.  At some point after reading many of them I gave up, "Inca Gold" I think was the last one I read.  I never got caught up with the NUMA series. 

Reading The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber for the King and I category of the Mystery/Thriller Challenge. The book's MC is Chaz.  Gruber writes well, but the story gets off to somewhat of a slow start with a lot more retrospective on relationships with his family of origin and his former wives. But about 60 pages in it starts to get really interesting. Chaz is an artist, and a good one. His really good work he does for the love of painting, but he instead does free lance illustration work for magazines for a living. Drives everyone who knows him crazy, especially his ex-wife. He does five portraits of female celebrities - Kate Winslet, Madonna, etc. - in the styles of various famous artists for Vanity Fair, which pays him a "kill fee" when it decides not to publish. Then he gets involved in a drug study, a drug that's supposed to enhance creativity. Suddenly he channeling the artist Diego Velasquez at the court of Carlos II of Spain. 

Becky, you're right about the Dirk Pitt book. I remember reading that, though it was published in the 80s, it was written much earlier. 

I am greatly enjoying the newest Dr. Siri book   The Rat Cathers' Olympics by Colin Cotterill.. This series is excellent and this book is one of the best. The humor is sharp and wonderfu. Characters just keep getting better. I highly recommend it.

I'm reading "Kilt at the Highland Games" by Kaitlyn Dunnet and enjoying it very much.  Dunnett's real name is Kathy Lynn Emerson, of the very good, 'Face Down' series.  The first is 'Face Down in the Marrow Pie.'  Anyway, she lives in Maine and in this book she mentions several things that are really in Maine, such as 'The Beach To Beacon' marathon, held every year in Cape Elizibeth.  They begin  at a state park beach and they end at the the Maine Lighthouse at Fort Williams. Each year money is donated to a non-profit group.  I mention it because it seems so streamlined right in the novel.  You've probably read books where an author from one of your own states and who doesn't live there, just throughs a few things in the book.  I guess it goes to the voice of the novel.

finished reading an Agatha Christie mystery titled At Bertram's Hotel, a most enjoyable little read.  So many wonderful characters are featured including the intuititve inspector Davies; Miss Marple with her unique powers of observation; Elvira Blake, a spoiled little rich girls who lies and dares to do whatever she want to accomplish her goals; her mother, Bess Sedgwick, a woman who lives her life at the height of risk; a wonderfully absent minded clergyman named Canon Pennyfather.  A great train robbery is committed and solved at the closing of the novel and a murder committed by an unsuspecting culprit.  That, too, is unraveled by the inspector with the help of Miss Marple whose keen observations help pull it all togther.  Good, good read.

You know, I've read many, many of Agatha Christie's novels, but I don't think I have ever read that one. I'll have to check it out.

The Galton Case by Ross MacDonald. quick read. started early this morning and finished already. lots of misdirection. You think you know something. It changes and then changes back to what you thought originally. fun read.