by Peter Lovesey
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Bob, a widower with a teenaged daughter, joins a writers’ circle and immediately gets caught up in a murder investigation.
I must have heard about this book from some glowing book review, and I wish I still had the review to compare with my experience reading this book, because the book was not at all what I expected.
There are some amusing bits, but almost all of the book takes place through dialogue. I would have liked hearing more about Bob and his daughter, and this book was almost a bit too fast-paced. I also found it unbelievable that a newcomer like Bob would have been caught up so quickly in all the murders. I still enjoyed the book, but it didn’t impress me enough to bother tracking down other books by the same author.
I’ll be totally honest here and admit that if I had a chance to do things over again, I would not have gotten three dogs. (Sorry, Flacko!)
When the dogs outnumber the humans in the household, you run into trouble. It’s hard to give each dog enough individual attention, and it’s nearly impossible to walk 3 dogs by yourself. I still have a scar on my arm from the time when I tried to open the screen door while holding all three dog leashes, and Mina bolted outside, yelling and happily chasing after a squirrel she’d spotted. She dragged my arm against the door handle, and after I’d walked the dogs down the street, I noticed I was dripping blood.
We initially got three dogs because after a year of living with Paco and Pedro, I suddenly decided we needed a little girl. I dragged Chris to the shelter, and there we found our Mina Bean. Sadly, Miss de Mina apparently didn’t get the memo about which parent chose her, and even now greatly prefers Chris to myself.
Then Pedro died. Two dogs were surprisingly much easier to care for than three dogs, but every time I looked at Paco and Mina, all I saw was the empty space where a third dog should be. And so we eventually adopted Flacko.
Flacko is…well, Flacko is insane. He came to us with his own unique set of issues. The Rules of the Flacko are as follows:
- You do not pick up the Flacko unless he is standing on his hind legs and obviously wants to be picked up.
- You do not try to put on his harness or collar. If you persist, you should also hold some yummy scrumptious delicious food in the other hand.
- You do not leave the Flacko. If you do so, you will be subjected to repeated scratchings on the door, numerous escape attempts, and incessant whining.
- You do not talk about the Flacko. (Oops.)
Unlike Paco, whose issues stem from being raised by ignorant and naive first-time dog owners (us), Flacko’s issues seem to come from having abusive owners (not us) and being abandoned on the streets of New Jersey, and then having to be in foster care for some time. Whatever the reasons, Flacko is a highly nervous dog, and really only seems comfortable when he’s snuggled into the lap (all right, the crotch, if you want to get specific) under a blanket.
With three dogs and two humans, sometimes it’s hard to keep track of who’s where. One of our houses had the furnace and water heater located in a short hallway that led between the family room and the garage. We once accidentally closed Paco into that hallway, and didn’t realize it until we got home a couple of hours later. We found Paco dancing happily at our arrival, and two other quite angry dogs on the other side of the door to the family room wondering who had been hiding in the furnace hallway the whole time.
I don’t remember if we had put down the laminate tile in the hallway by that time, or if the floor was still cold cement, but I can never forget the sight of one of Chris’s slippers in the hallway, squashed down flat in a perfectly Paco-shaped oval where Mr. Paco had lain in an attempt to get comfortable until someone finally came to release him.
Since that time, I’ve made it a habit to frequently count the dogs and make sure they’re all accounted for. What makes my job harder is that the dogs don’t seem to mind when we forget them somewhere, and often they don’t bother to bark or whine to let us know where they are. I can’t count the number of times Chris or I have gone into the basement for something, walked up upstairs, shut the basement door, and then realized Mina was missing. When we open the basement door, little Mina is usually standing on the top step, wagging her tail, before she scampers past us into the house.
Mina is the dog most frequently left in the wrong place, as she’s a dawdler. When we take the dogs outside to do their business, the other two almost always run back inside before she’s ready.
Now that it’s winter, we go out the door to the garage and then out the door from the garage to the back yard. One of us always has to stand guard to watch for coyotes while the dogs are outside. After the boys finish and go back inside, we stand outside shivering while Mina pokes around the shrubbery, sniffs a few rocks, and maybe condescends to poop. Eventually she wanders back into the garage and we can lock the back door and go into the main part of the house.
Several times now we’ve come back inside, started to settle down, and then realized that one of the dogs didn’t make it back inside. One time after Chris had taken the dogs outside, I noticed Mina was missing. I walked around the entire house calling for her and checking under every blanket. Then it occurred to me to try the garage door. Of course Mina was standing in the garage, just waiting. Apparently she had felt no need to bark or respond to my calls, as she had such confidence that her presence wouldn’t be missed for too long.
This morning Chris took the dogs out as usual. I didn’t see Mina at all, but Flacko and Paco ran around me while I brushed my teeth. After a while, though, I didn’t see Flacko either.
“Have you seen Flacko?” I yelled to Chris. Chris was about to leave for work, and I was still putting my lunch together for the day.
“He’s probably just under a blanket,” he said.
“I haven’t seen Mina, either,” I mentioned.
“I’m sure she’s back in bed.”
“Are you sure all of them came back inside after you took them out?” I said.
“Yes, positive! Gotta go now, bye!!”
I went downstairs and put my lunch into my work bag. I was about to leave when I remembered I had forgotten to email a document from my laptop to myself. I had just finished emailing myself and shutting down the computer when I heard a strange, scrabbling noise.
I assumed it was Mina, getting into some kind of food. With her background in street living, Mina has frequently stolen food off our dinner plates during the rare moments when we leave dinner unguarded. On one memorable occasion, we returned home to find that she had pulled a container of Pupperoni Naw Somes off a counter, wrestled the lid off the container, and eaten approximately 4 Naw Somes. Given that the normal serving size we gave the dogs was about 1/6 of a Naw Some, it was no wonder that she threw them all up later in the day.
I had been ready to leave for work, but now I headed upstairs to see what was going on. I didn’t see any dogs in the kitchen, so I thought maybe something had dropped on the floor and made a weird noise. I didn’t see anything out of place. I checked the blankets in the living room just in case a dog had crept away with some kind of forbidden treat, but there was no one on that level at all.
I went upstairs where Paco was sitting on the futon, cleaning his ears with his paws. I found Mina on a puff bed, her butt hanging out of a blanket, but no Flacko. I lifted all the blankets and moved all the beds, but still couldn’t find Flacko.
As I walked out of the dog room, my eyes fell upon the bathroom door. The bathroom door which I had carefully shut after brushing my teeth, to prevent the dogs from going into the room while we were at work. The bathroom door which, I remembered now, led to the room where Flacko had followed me in when I brushed my teeth.
I opened the door and Flacko ran out.
“I’m so sorry, buddy,” I told him. I offered him a salmon treat, but he was so demoralized by his experience that he only sniffed it and then ran downstairs. Just to be fair, I gave Paco a tiny treat, and popped another treat under the blanket which currently held Mina’s bum.
Flacko ran back into the room and I offered him the treat again. This time he took it, but he ran away with it before I could lock him somewhere again.
At least Flacko knew enough to kick up a fuss when he was locked up. If it had been Mina or Paco in there, they would have quietly stayed there all day until someone happened to open that door to find them trying to nap on a package of paper towels.
by Janette Oke
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Marty sees her children grow up and get married.
Although these are Christian romances, I still enjoy them because of the “Little House on the Prairie” vibe. The “Love Comes Softly” series focuses on Marty, a young pioneer woman who travels out west with her husband. When he dies suddenly, she meets and eventually marries Clark, and their life together and the lives of their children are explored in the series. This is the second book in the series, and I still love the descriptions of food.
by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Alice has a new boyfriend, takes a church class on sex, and turns sixteen.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t have re-read this book so soon, but I got it as a Christmas gift and I had nothing else to read while at my in-laws’ house. The first time I read this, I was left with the feeling of not having enjoyed it as much as the previous Alice books, and now that I’ve re-read it, I definitely don’t like it as much as the other books.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of this book includes Sam, Alice’s new boyfriend. Sam was tolerable in small doses in previous books, but now he just becomes completely irritating–not just to us, but apparently to Alice as well.
by Steve Brown and Beth Taylor
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Steve Brown, creator of Charlee Bear Treats for dogs and Steve’s Real Food, describes how a fresh food diet can benefit dogs.
Although this book has many footnotes, it does not come off as a scientific book. The first third of the book consists of anecdotes from holistic vets about how some diseased dog came in and got better once it was put on a fresh food diet. The rest of the book talks about why fresh food is better than kibble, with no mention of canned food, but remains surprisingly vague about the specifics of what balance of food would work well for dogs. Granted, there aren’t many studies on this, but I was expecting something a little more comprehensive, like along the lines of Dr. Pitcairn’s Guide to Natural Health.
This book made me more determined to eventually move my dogs over to a fresh diet, but it didn’t really instruct me on how to do it.
by Augusten Burroughs
ONE LINE SUMMARY: The author stops drinking.
At this point, it has become clear that Augusten Burroughs had a horrific childhood, and it has also become clear that I will read everything he has written and will ever write. In this memoir, Burroughs tracks his attempts to quit drinking while maintaining his advertising career and dealing with a sick friend.
Although I cried while I read this, there’s something ultimately uplifting and honest about Burroughs’s writing. He’s able to see the humor in his life where most people wouldn’t expect any, and he also doesn’t hesitate from showing himself fully, bad faults and all. He is a terrific writer.
by Ann Brashares
ONE LINE SUMMARY: When four best friends spend their fifteenth summer apart, they take turns wearing a pair of magical pants that fit all of them.
I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did. I only read this because two actresses/characters I like, Alexis Bledel from Gilmore Girls and Amber Tamblyn from Joan of Arcadia were in the movie of this book. I didn’t see the movie, but I made a mental note to check out the book when it finally came back into the library.
I thought the idea of magical pants kind of corny, but the author doesn’t belabor the whole magical idea, and the fact that the pants fit four very different bodies is mostly accepted pretty quickly by the girls (and me).
I liked this book, but I will admit I cried during it. I’ll still be reading the next book in the series, though.
by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Inspector Slider investigates the death of a woman while making a radical change to his life.
This is the first in a series, and I only picked it up because, like False Profits, I had seen the latest book in the series on the browsing rack at the library. Unlike False Profits, though, I actually enjoyed this a great deal.
This is a well-plotted mystery that wraps up nicely but leaves you wanting to hear more about Inspector Slider’s personal life. There are some odd quirks in the book, though, that vary from what I had expected of a typical British procedural.
I didn’t get a clear picture of Inspector Slider, but I’m hoping his personality will become more clear with future books. This series shows promise so far, and I will definitely be looking for the next book in the series.
Ever since we added a garage to our house, Chris and I (and especially Chris) rarely use our front door. Usually I use it only to get the mail in the afternoons, but yesterday night as I pulled into our driveway, I noticed that our screen door looked slightly ajar.
Sometimes delivery people leave packages between the screen door and our front door, so after I parked the car in the garage I went upstairs to check the door.
Our screen door has been broken for a while now, so when I opened the front door, I realized it was ajar only because, well, it was busted.
But there was still a package on our front step, just outside the screen door.
The package was from Hope’s Country Fresh Cookies and had no return address on it, other than the Hope’s Cookies logo and address. The address was one in King of Prussia, where my sister-in-law lives, so I assumed the package was from her.
I put the package on the floor for a minute. Flacko came running up to the box and sniffed it.
“Don’t pee on it,” I warned him.
“Chris! We got a package!” I yelled. I tried to pull off the packing tape, but it was on too tight. “Come open it!”
Chris came upstairs and looked at the package.
“Is it from your sister?” I asked. “It’s from King of Prussia.”
“I don’t think she would mail us something,” he said, as he used a knife to cut through the tape. “I mean, we’ll be seeing her this weekend, so she would have just given it to us then.”
He got the box open, and styrofoam peanuts and red and green confetti spilled out when he reached inside for the tin of cookies. While Chris picked up the packing material, I examined the card on the tin.
“Happy Holidays to you and the doggies,” I read. “Thanks for putting up with our crazy family and having us over; hope this comes in handy at the next poker game! Best wishes for the New Year.”
There was no signature.
“Must be your family,” I said. “Maybe your aunt? I mean, your family’s crazy, right?”
“Nah, I think it’s one of your cousins,” Chris said.
“It couldn’t be; we never exchange gifts unless we see each other.”
“Got to be,” Chris said firmly.
One lone styrofoam peanut fell out on the floor. Flacko, who’d been circling our feet anxiously, pounced on the peanut. It must have smelled good from the cookies, because he tried to run away with it so he could eat it privately. But since we generally don’t like to let our dogs eat styrofoam, I grabbed it from him before he could get more than a few steps away.
While Flacko gave me a dirty look, I dialed my cousin Terry’s phone number. “If they did give it to us, Terry will know,” I said. “She’s the responsible one.”
Terry’s cell phone usually had no service, but today I was in luck. After about five rings, she picked up the phone.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hey, Terry, it’s Jane. Did you send us cookies, because we got some and they don’t say who they’re from.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
“Maybe your parents did?” I wondered.
She hesitated, and then said dubiously, “I don’t think my parents know how to order cookies online.”
“See, it’s not them,” I hissed at Chris.
“But maybe it’s Diana,” Terry continued. “She does stuff on her own, you know.”
“All right, I’ll try her,” I said. “Thanks, Terry.”
I hung up and called Diana. Due to the strike in New York, and a recent web post of hers that had mentioned it now took her an hour and a half to go 3 miles, I wasn’t expecting her to answer her cell phone, and she didn’t. So I left her a message about the cookies (”did you give us cookies? If yes, then thank you. If not, ignore this message”).
Diana called back later, after I’d consumed three cookies, all delicious.
She confirmed that she did indeed send us cookies, and was surprised that her name wasn’t on the card at all. I thanked her profusely and she said, “Are the cookies any good? Because I ordered them Sunday, and the website was…”
“Sucky?” I asked.
“Just not very professional,” she said.
“The cookies taste homemade,” I said. “They were a little frozen from being outside all day, but still yummy. I’m just glad I found them, and that they didn’t spend all night outside!”
It occurred to me later that I could microwave the cookies to heat them up a little bit, but I was too busy - too busy dipping my hand in the tin of cookies.
Some people might say that 6 cookies in 2 days is too many (or “2 many,” if some people are Prince), but Diana would say, “If you’re not sick, keep going.” And so I did.
by Patricia Smiley
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Tucker Sinclair, a financial analyst, nearly loses her job when she is framed for a business deal gone wrong and her client is found dead.
I got this book from the library because there were glowing quotes on the cover from Janet Evanovich and Elizabeth George, both mystery authors I enjoy. Well, I don’t think Elizabeth George read this at all, and I think I know why Janet Evanovich likes this: It is almost exactly the same as Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books, but less interesting and less funny.
Take your heroine, add sassy African-American sidekick, sprinkle in an overly sensitive possibly gay man, and add one hot detective/potential boyfriend. The difference is that in this book, there is no sense of why the heroine and her African-American sidekick are even friends, as they spend perhaps 20 minutes in each other’s company, and the overly sensitive gay man barely shows up at all, like a neat idea that just couldn’t be worked into the plot. The hot detective approaches Sinclair in a way that comes off as sexually harassing rather than sexy, and Tucker’s job is, frankly, deadly dull.
Although this book was published before The Undomestic Goddess, it has a very similar plot: Heroine nearly loses her job due to a boss who appears to be on her side, but isn’t. I had figured out “whodunnit” by the first appearance of the boss, and did not really enjoy the rest of the plot.
Strangely, though, the writing in this book actually seems pretty good. It’s just that the lack of an interesting job and the characterization that assumes we care more than we’re shown makes it hard for me to want to pick up the next book in this series.
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