Passing Time
I just finished reading Dating Can Be Murder a Samantha Shaw Mystery by Jennifer Apodaca recommended by another mystery reader that knows I enjoy Evanovich. If you like the spunky gal genre of mystery you'll like this. It is not of the same quality as Janet Evanovich, or the early Sue Grafton, or even Sara Paretsky, but it was a decent read. It had its moments as they say, and those women who read romances will find it to their liking. A soccer mom who discovers her dead husband was a rat, and his past is going to threaten both her and her family creates the tension and is the catalyst for her personal transformation. Most of the characters were just fair, but a dog named Ali was dynamite. Why read a book like this. It passes the time like a mindless television program and without the ads, and besides I learned the rules to a game called Bunko. I give it a two on a 1-5 scale but that may be stretching it. Well now that is out of the way I can get back to Updikes Seek My Face. All the war talk, alerts, and nasty politics are wearing me out.
Comments
Have you ever read any of the Aaron Elkins mysteries? Sort of a less bloody Kathy Reichs. For sheer entertainment though I like Elizabeth Peters.
I've read several of Aaron Elkins books. Curses, Old Bones, Icy Clutches, A Deceptive Clarity and one he wrote with Charlotte (his wife?) It's been quite sometime since I've read anything by him. When you read mystery writers being as they are formula writers for the most part. They tend to run out of ideas and start repeating themselves. It helps to have strong interesting characters, but most don't accomplish that particularly well. I hadn't heard of Kathy Reichs, and though I've heard of Elizabeth Peters I can't remember reading anything by her ah something else to add to the list.
Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, as well as for the Laboratorie des Sciences Judiciaires et de Medicine Legale for the province of Quebec. She draws on her work experience to write her novels, and of course her protagonist Dr. Temperance Brennan is also a forensic anthropologist for those same two organizations.
Her first book was Deja Dead and it won the Ellis award for best first novel in '97. Her second novel is Death du Jour,1999 and while not a sequelk to the first does take place at a later date and references events in the first so it is advisable to read them in sequence.
Elizabeth Peters is just pure enjoyment - well maybe I enjoy her because I havea love of archaeology in general and egyptology in particular. She has written a whole series of novels surrounding the escapades of an english family of archaeologists excavating in Egypt around the turn of the century. Her novels follow the growth aned aging of the family focusing on Amelia Peabody, her husband Emerson "Lord of Curses" Peabody, their son Ramses and their adopted daughter Nefret. The plots are somewhat predictable but as Elizabeth Peters has a Phd in Egyptology there is a tremendous amount of ancient history being revealed and you do get a good look at what excabating was like in the early 1900's as well as some of te personalities involved. Peters is in her 80's now and probably won't write very many more. There are about 13 novels in this series and around another 20, not all dealing with Egypt but all with an historical/archaelogical atmosphere.
I should have mentioned trhat the reason I love the Peters' series so much is because of the characters not the plots - you get completely wrapped up in their lives and keep going on to the next book to see what will happen to them :-)