The Holiday Collection - The Eclective

   2011; 142 pages.  New Authors? : For the most part, no.  Genres: Anthology; Christmas Fiction; Short Stories.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

   Nine talented indie authors were tasked with writing a short story with a  "December Holiday” theme.  For the most part that means Christmas, but it could also apply to Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and even the Winter Solstice.

 

    I doubt the authors were given any other guidelines.  The length of a short story is ill-defined, and here the longest one is just over 30 pages, while the shortest ones are a mere seven pages or so.  Two of the tales are written from the first-person point of view, the rest are in the third-person.  Each of the tales has at least one twist in it to keep the reader entertained.

 

    At 142 pages (so sez my Kindle), The Holiday Collection is a quick and easy read.  So if you’re looking for a bunch of fast-moving festive tales, this book may just be your cup of eggnog.

 

What’s To Like...

    The titles of the nine stories (and authors) in The Holiday Collection are:

  1.) St. Claws – Alan Nayes

  2.) Snow Whisperers – Lizzy Ford

  3.) Saving Grace – Julia Crane

  4.) O Christmas Cactus, O Christmas Cactus – M. Edward McNally

  5.) Fred’s Best Christmas – P.J. Jones

  6.) Fresh Snow – Talia Jager

  7.) Let’s Ride – Shéa MacLeod

  8.) A Very Shero Christmas – Jack Wallen

  9.) The Darkest Night – Heather Marie Adkins

 

    There’s a decent amount of variety to the tones of these stories, which was a welcome respite from the slew of Hallmark Christmas Movies my wife watches every December.  A couple of the tales have a somewhat “dark” tint to them, which in no way detracts from their holiday themes.  Among the others, one has a  romance theme, three felt “warm-&-fuzzy” to me, one left a lump in my throat, one was a innovative take-off of  A Christmas Carol, and one , believe it or not, was a sci-fi thriller.  My favorites were 2, 4, 5, and 9; but honestly, I enjoyed them all.  Your faves will almost certainly be different.

 

    You’ll meet some cross-dressers, empaths, talking snowmen, and a Jedi knight along the way.  You can help celebrate the Winter Solstice, see auras, and help thwart a “hit” that’s been put on Santa.  I only recall one music nod – to Katy Perry of all people.  There’s a brief author’s bio at the end of each story, and I liked those.  

 

    O Christmas Cactus, O Christmas Cactus resonated with me because it’s set in my present environs.  Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport (from which you get a lovely view of the harbor as you land) really is a rat’s maze to get out of.  And if the protagonist has trouble visualizing the famed Camelback Mountain nearby, he’ll have an even tougher time seeing the lesser-known “Monk of the Mountain” on the northern part of the camel’s head, who once a time, on a psychedelic night, turned his head and stared threateningly at me.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Blahniks (n., plural) : a high-end shoe brand.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  3.4/5 based on 32 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.70/5 based on 125 ratings and 11 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    He watched the big man open a refrig and pull out a cold beer and pop the top.

    “How’d you know my name?” Matt asked.

    “I know everybody that comes to St. Claws.  I’m the town’s founder.”

    “Whoopee-do.  Everybody?”

    “Yup.”  He poured a double shot from the Patron bottle.

    “My wife and boy?”

    “Jenny and Billy.”

    Matt eyed the man suspiciously.  “This is getting weird.  Where’s my tequila?”  (loc. 309)

 

    Garth Vader, Intergalactic Ambassador and Jedi Knight, walked up to them, carrying his tinfoil lightsaber in one hand and a carton of orange juice in the other.  Garth’s few strands of graying hair were gelled back and he’d even shaved his scraggly beard.

    Garth’s gaze swept over the room as patients quietly opened stockings and stuffed their faces with candy.  “I sense a change in The Force.”  (loc. 1086)

 Kindle Details…

    ANAICT, The Holiday Collective is always free at Amazon.  The Eclective has five other short story anthologies available for your Kindle, with the labels Celtic, Pride, the Apocalypse, Haunted, and Halloween.  All of those are likewise free right now.

Her boyfriend of two years had just given her the “it’s not you, it’s me … and my new girlfriend” speech, two days before Christmas.  (loc. 522)

    There’s not much to quibble about in The Holiday Collection.  Most of the stories have a small amount of cussing in them, which might come as a surprise for a Christmas-themed anthology.  One tale was cussword-free, while three others had more than fifteen instances apiece.  I don’t recall any R-rated stuff besides that.

 

    The editing was overall quite good, with most of the errors occurring in just one of the tales.  This makes me believe that each contributing author was responsible for his/her own proofreading.  Most anthologies have an editor-in-chief, and I wonder if that would have been helpful here.  One other author seemed to have trouble with the use of commas when dialogue is directed to a specified person; sometimes it was done correctly, sometimes not.

 

    All in all, The Holiday Collection was a short but pleasant read.  I’ve read other stories by most of these writers, and so the polished storytelling was not unexpected.  Kindle gives an estimated reading time of 2 hours and 48 minutes, although as usual, I broke that up into four or five nights to prolong the fun.

 

    8 Stars.  Sadly, it appears that The Eclective, aka The Indie Eclective has been mothballed.  They put out these six anthologies in 2011-12, but none since.  One of the authors, Heather Marie Adkins, put out three more anthologies, apparently all Wiccan-oriented, in 2016-18, but I don’t see any more of those after that.  I'm guessing that the career path of an independent author is a tough road to travel.

The Scavenger's Daughter - Mike McIntyre

   2010; 302 pages.  Full Title: The Scavenger’s Daughter – A Tyler West Mystery.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Serial Killer Thriller; Psychological Thriller; Hard-Boiled Mystery.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    It was a black-tie affair, and San Diego’s finest citizens have turned out in force for the fun, free food, and photo opportunities.  The occasion is the grand opening of the city’s Museum of Medieval History and its debut exhibit “Torture Instruments of the Dark Ages”.

 

    Even the mayor of San Diego, James Stanton, has shown up for the gala event.  Alas, he’s partaken liberally of the free alcoholic beverages being served, and has ended up getting caught in the arms of a woman who’s not his wife.  Even worse, it isn’t really a flesh-and-blood woman; it was something called an Iron Maiden, a medieval torture device which is one of the many displays at the museum.

 

    Somehow, Mayor Stanton triggered the hinged-door, got trapped inside, and died from multiple stab wounds courtesy of the Iron Maiden’s internal iron spikes and knives.  A tragic accident, but such things can happen when one goes wandering around, rip-snorting drunk.

 

    But local reporter Tyler West is not so sure it was an accident.  The museum’s director. Merrill Addison, assured him that the Iron Maiden’s killing mechanism had been disengaged prior to letting any of the guests into the building.  Safety First, and all that.  So perhaps this was murder most foul.

 

    Just so long as it isn’t the start of some mass murderer’s career.  Because everyone knows that serial killers are bad for business and tourism, two things that San Diego depends on.

 

What’s To Like...

    First things first: if you’re looking for something along the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey, The Scavenger’s Daughter is not your answer.  There’s nothing erotic about sawing off the top of a cranium, puncturing someone’s vertebrae while simultaneously crushing their trachea, or squishing somebody’s head until it implodes (as shown in the book cover above).  The Inquisitors were trying to extract a confession, not get their jollies off.

 

    Instead, the book is a well-researched essay on a wide variety of torture devices used back in the Middle Ages, especially during the Inquisition. The book’s title is a corruption of one name of one of these; it was originally called “Skevington’s Daughter”, named for the nobleman who invented it, and was used to compress the victim into the shape of a medicine ball, resulting first in cramps, then hemorrhaging, then death.  Surprisingly, there’s not a lot a gore in the story; Mike McIntyre presents the victim’s dread leading up to the torture and the finding of the body afterward, but not the actual killing.  Nonetheless, I wouldn’t call The Scavenger’s Daughter a cozy mystery.

 

    The book is written in the storytelling style: “so-and-so said this, then this happened, then the hero did this”.  There’s an astonishing small amount of cussing in the text; I counted just six instances in the first third of the book.  The story starts a bit slow, mostly because Mike McIntyre is setting the scene and giving Tyler West’s backstory.  Once that’s done, the pace picks up admirably, with lots of thrills-&-spills and an ever-growing body count.  The 120 chapters cover 302 pages, so you’re never far from a good place to stop.  The tale is told in both first-person and third-person POV’s – the former used whenever we’re tagging along with Tyler; the latter used whenever we’re following anyone else.

 

    The Scavenger’s Daughter is set in San Diego, where the author lives, so there’s a nice “feel” to the various places Tyler visits.  I liked the nod to the late great Border’s Books and chuckled at the brief comment about Sedona, Arizona, in my home state, being the “touchy-feely capital of the Southwest”.  The San Diego library system gets some nice ink, I presume the sites cited are all real branches of it.  And I’ve never heard of the “green flash” that sometimes occurs on the San Diego shore, but I presume it is a real phenomenon.

 

    The ending is suitably exciting.  There aren’t really any plot twists, but the action more than compensates for that.  All the plot threads all get tied up, so you’re not forced to read a “Part Two” to finish the tale.  The Scavenger’s Daughter is a standalone novel, and I don’t see that Mike McIntyre ever developed this into a series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 135 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.78/5 based on 374 ratings and 42 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    I questioned the stunned guests while Mel took photos of the mayor in the cruel embrace of the Iron Maiden.  I urged her to also shoot some pictures from more discreet angles.

    “Remember the Wheaties test,” I said.

    The Wheaties test is the standard editors use to pick photos.  If a picture is likely to make Mom, Dad or Little Johnny blow their Wheaties at the breakfast table, it doesn’t run.  (loc. 357)

 

    He returned to the paint department, known in the HomeMart vernacular as the paint pod.  His entire job consisted of mixing paint, eight hours a day, five days a week.  He didn’t actually mix the paint.  A computerized machine did.  He merely entered a color code on a keypad, and the tints were automatically dispensed.  It was so easy, a monkey could do it.  No, he thought, if a monkey could do it, HomeMart would make smaller aprons.  (loc. 2883)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Scavenger’s Daughter sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  Mike McIntyre has another five e-books for you, priced at either $3.99 or $4.99, but they are all non-fiction travelogues.  ANAICT, the author has not written any more fiction books.

 

“Don’t go all contrite on me now (…) I liked you better as a careless cad.”  (loc. 824)

    The writing is good, the storytelling is good, the character development is good, so there’s really only one thing to quibble about in The Scavenger’s Daughter: the mystery-solving.

 

    Simply put, the clues that enable Tyler to figure out whodunit, where his torture chamber is located, how to rescue a damsel-in-distress, and why the police are barking up the wrong tree are of the “oh come on now” ilk.  A couple spoiler-free examples:

    the freshly-dug grave that the police somehow overlook,

    the obscure “fingers” clue hastily thought up by one of the victims and later deciphered by Tyler, leading to a breakthrough in the case,

    the cold engine (how did he anticipate the need for this?), and

    the twin vans with identical license plates (wouldn’t it be better to different plates on them?).

 

    That’s about all there is to grouse about.  If you can put your sleuthing brain cells on freeze while reading this story, you’ll find this to be an entertaining and educational read.  You might even learn a thing or three about the horrors that thousands of people underwent during the Inquisition after being accused of being heretics, witches, gypsies, or other miscreants.

 

    7½ Stars.   FWIW, my favorite character in the story was “the Billboard Bandit”.  If Mike McIntyre ever does pen a sequel to The Scavenger’s Daughter, I certainly hope this guy gets developed into a recurring figure.

Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola - Kinky Friedman

   1993; 256 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre: Crime Mystery; Snarky Mystery; Amateur Detectives.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    It sounded like an easy favor to carry out, especially since the person asking it was the father of Kinky's longtime friend, Tom Baker, whose recent passing was the occasion for the wake that Kinky finds himself attending today.

 

    Tom had been working on a movie at the time of his death – a documentary about Elvis impersonators.  Tom’s dad wasn’t sure whether the project had been completed, but he did know that it was now missing, and he’d like Kinky to see if he could locate and retrieve it.

 

    Most likely Tom had set it down somewhere, and now it’s just a matter of finding where that is, picking it up, and delivering it to Tom’s father.  It’s the least Kinky could do to on behalf of the Bakerman.

 

    But then an ex-girlfriend of Kinky’s disappears, followed by an associate of Tom Baker being murdered.  The police suspect both are connected to that missing film, and because both of them left notes with Kinky’s name and telephone number on them, he finds the cops suddenly viewing him as being a “person of interest”.

 

    Which means it’s time to assemble the "Village Irregulars", a small group of Kinky’s closest associates, and do some sleuthing.

 

What’s To Like...

    Kinky Friedman is both the author and the protagonist in Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that setup before.  The tale is told in the first-person POV (Kinky's, of course), and is at times snarky, at times edgy, at times self-deprecating, and at all times charmingly witty.  The writing style reminded me of Robert Crais, if you’ve read any of his crime mystery novels.

 

    The story is set in New York City, with Kinky and his companions traveling from one borough to another, trying to figure out why someone would think a movie showing clips of a bunch of Elvis impersonators is worth killing for and where it might be presently residing.  I liked the character development of the Village Irregulars: each one is quirkily unique.  Kinky-the-protagonist is a fascinating character as well; it has to be a challenge to write oneself into a novel.

 

    The book’s title gets referenced twice, once as the only English words an indigenous and isolated jungle tribe learned to recognize, and once in a note left at the very end of the story.  The music nods were fantastic: Elvis (naturally), Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Phil Ochs, Jim Morrison, Mike Bloomfield (wow!), and Mojo Nixon (double wow!).  Wavy Gravy (who?) and Don Imus also get nods, the latter being mentioned on the Acknowledgements page at the book’s beginning.

 

    I liked the phrase “cuddlaribus interruptus”, learned the coded meaning of “MIT! MIT!”, and what it means to take a “Waylon Jennings Bus Shower”.  That last phrase resonated because my wife was once given a personal tour of Waylon’s tour bus.  The slang term “blower” for the telephone was new to me, and it was enlightening to learn that St. Dymphna really is the patron saint of the insane.

 

    The ending is logical in a “Sherlock Holmesian” sort of way.  Kinky lays out the string of clues along the way that both we both missed.  He and the police have two completely different theories as to the solutions to the crimes, and that was also quite Holmesian.  The Epilogue is both brief yet poignant.  It has nothing to do with the storyline itself, but left a lump in my throat.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Stultifying (adj.) : tending to stifle enthusiasm, initiative, or freedom of action.

Others: Goniffing (v., Yiddish)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  3.9/5 based on 34 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.75/5 based on 1,321 ratings and 88 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “A snuff film,” I said, “is an illegal, amoral actual cinematic documentation of a person getting croaked.  An actor has to be really desperate to take the job.  There are, of course, no sequels.”

    “Jesus,” said Judy.  “Have you ever seen one?”

    “No, but I’ve seen a lot of performances that made me wish the movie was a snuff film.”  (pg. 166)

 

    When I stumbled out of the loft that morning they were waiting for me in the hallway.  If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could say I was taken by surprise.  If you wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt, you could say I’d known for some time it would happen.  I just hadn’t realized it would be now.  Now is always a bit sudden, as General Custer remarked to the captain of the Titanic when he passed by in the night on cloud eight and a half.  (pg. 231)

 

I have always believed that if you drink enough instant decaf you will cease to exist.  (pg. 161)

    There are a few quibbles, but no show-stoppers.  First of all, the 256-page length of the book is misleading, because 20 or so of them are blank “filler” following chapters that end on an odd-numbered page.  The chapters are already short – 47 of them cover those 256 pages – so those empty pages shorten the book even further.

 

    Also, Kinky Friedman is a multi-talented singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician (he received 12.6% of the vote when he ran for governor of Texas in 2006), and former columnist (for the magazine "Texas Monthly"), and if you’ve never read or listened to him, you should be aware that his output in any of those roles is usually edgy, filled with cussing, and often politically incorrect.  If Allen Ginsberg offends you, Kinky probably will too.

 

    Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola was my introduction to Kinky Friedman’s literary works and I found his storytelling to be straightforward and amusing, with the mystery-solving aspect being surprisingly well-crafted.  Most of the negative reviews appear to be readers disliking the author’s non-PC writing tone, but that probably just means the readers were new to the Kinkster's style.  I’ve listened to Kinky’s music; it is edgy as well.  I expected the same from Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola, and was not disappointed.

 

    7½ Stars.  Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola apparently is part of a whole series of detective novels by Kinky Friedman, featuring a fictionalized version of himself as the central amateur sleuth.  I don’t recall seeing any of his books ever being offered at discount prices at Amazon, which means I need to hit the local used-book stores as soon as this pandemic is over.

Boy's Life - Robert McCammon

   1991 (although it was first copyrighted back in 1983); 611 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Horror; Fantasy; Coming-of-Age.  Laurels: World Fantasy Award – Best Novel (winner, 1992); Bram Stoker Award – Best Novel (winner, 1991).  Overall Rating : 10*/10.

 

    Robert R. McCammon’s Boy’s Life.  Wikipedia notes: “It is considered by readers and critics as his best novel”, and I gotta say there’s sufficient evidence to support that claim.

 

    It won the Bram Stoker Award, which is given by the Horror Writers Association, for Best Novel in 1991.  And yes, there are beasts and ghosts and things that go bump in the night, and some that even go bump in the daytime, in Boy’s Life.  But this is not primarily a horror story.

 

    It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1992.  And yes, there are some magic moments, some timely spellcasting, and some aerial acrobatics reminiscent of the movie ET.  But this is not primarily a fantasy tale.

 

    Rather, I’d call Boy’s Life a coming-of-age novel.  The main character, Cory Mackenson, is a 12-year-old boy when the book opens, and grows to be a 13-year-old adult by the book's end.  Alas, 600-page coming-of-age books often get tedious along the way.

 

    Which is why the Horror and Fantasy elements make this such a fantastic book.

 

What’s To Like...

    Boy’s Life is set in the fictional small town of Zephyr, Alabama in 1964 and chronicles the strange goings-on there through the first-person POV of our protagonist, 12-year-old Cory, who’s actually writing all this in (his) present-day 1991.  Robert McCammon divides the story into four “seasonal” parts, plus an epilogue:

    a.) The Shades of Spring  (0%-22%)

    b.) A Summer of Devils and Angels  (22%-46%)

    c.) Burning Autumn  (46%-74%)

    d.) Winter’s Cold Truth  (74%-97%)

    e.) Zephyr as It is  (97%-99%)

 

    The primary storyline concerns Cory and his dad witnessing a car plunging into nearby Saxon Lake with a dead man at the wheel.  Cory’s father, Tom, becomes haunted by the brutal image of the corpse, and we tag along with Cory as he tries to solve the macabre mystery murder, all the while experiencing the life of a "tween-ager" hanging out with his friends and enjoying the “magic” that kids can see in life even when adults cannot.

 

    I loved the “feel” of life in America during the early 1960’s.  Cory was born in 1952; I was born two years earlier.  Zephyr is a little bitty place out in the boondocks of Alabama; I spent the first ten years of my life in a zero-traffic-light podunk town in Pennsylvania that had a total population of just over 200.  So, Boy’s Life resonated strongly with me.

 

    It was fun to go sleuthing alongside Cory: we both got fooled by a red herring or two; and when clues did unfold, they were often more mystifying than enlightening and occasionally spawned secondary plotlines.  But it was just as much of a blast to relive the life of a 12-year-old again by activities such as:

    playing sandlot baseball with friends,

    dealing with eccentric family members and boring social occasions,

    meeting a beautiful girl who doesn't flick boogers at you,

    collecting Civil War bubble-gum cards (I had some of those!),

    going to the movie theater to watch The Three Stooges.

 

    The storytelling is superb, and I was in awe of Robert McCammon’s ability to seamlessly blend Fantasy, Horror, Mystery-Solving, and Coming-of-Age genres.  I liked the “worry pebbles”, agreed with Cory’s opinion about wasps, and was saddened by how the evolution of the milk-delivery system impacted his dad.  I enjoyed meeting both “The Lady” and “Lucifer” (who's a monkey, not a demon).  The story of “Carl and Rebel” left a lump in my throat and I could relate to Cory's bicycle dying.

 

    There were also some serious topics touched upon in Boy’s Life.  The preacher’s raving about a demonic Beach Boys’ song (Go ahead, guess which one.  We’ll list it in the comments.) may seem silly at first, but I’ve seen frenzied fundamentalists burning records, and listened to dire warnings of how backward-masking rock-&-roll songs can turn you into a devil-worshipper.  And though the author is born and raised in Alabama, this book makes it clear what he thinks of segregation, the KKK, and burning crosses.

 

    The ending is filled with tension and suitably exciting, even though you know Cory will survive because, well, he’s writing this book.  All the plot threads are tied up, and even the escaped freak-show beast gets its fitting reward.  I guessed the “whydunit” correctly, although I was off as on the “whodunit” angle.  I found that trying to solve the various mysteries before Cory does is an exercise in futility; but keeping your eyes peeled for clues popping up is much more productive.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 1,779 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.36/5 based on 26,619 ratings and 2,964 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    We all start out knowing magic.  We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us.  We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand.  But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls.  We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out.  We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible.  Told to act our age.  Told to grow up, for God’s sake.  (loc. 59)

 

    I left Rocket to wait there, and I walked up the hill among the moon-splashed tombstones.  (…)  The white dead people lay on one side, the black dead people on the other.  It made sense that people who could not eat in the same café, swim in the same public pool, or shop in the same stores would not be happy being dead and buried within sight of each other.  Which made me want to ask Reverend Lovoy sometime if the Lady and the Moon Man would be going to the same heaven as Davy Ray.  If black people occupied the same heaven as white people, what was the point of eating in different cafes here on earth?  (loc. 7538)

 

Kindle Details…

    At the moment, you can pick up Boy’s Life for $11.99 at Amazon, although the author periodically offers it at a generous discount.  Robert McCammon has several other e-novels available at Amazon, ranging in price from $5.99 to $15.99, plus a couple of short stories for under $2 each.

 

The need to hear stories, or live lives other than our own for even the briefest moment, is the key to the magic that was born in our bones.  (loc. 533)

    It’s difficult to find anything to nitpick about in Boy’s Life.  There’s a fair amount of cussing throughout the book, but that's to be expected for this kind of tale.  There’s a slew of characters to meet and greet.  Some of them are important, others strut briefly across the stage and then are gone, never to return.  It might’ve been nice to have a “Cast of Characters” section at the front for reference, but I keep my own notes anyway, so this didn’t hinder me.  And finally, since Robert McCammon is a recognized top-tier Horror genre author, if you’re wanting the book to scare you poopless or gross you out, you might be disappointed.

 

    But I pick at nits.  For me, Boy’s Life was a fantastic novel, covering multiple genres, without any slow spots (it was an event-filled year for Cory), and with a perfect blend of excitement, drama, eeriness, and mystery-solving.  I’ve yet to any of Robert McCammon’s "genuine" Horror tales, but a couple of them are on my bookshelf, so I have no excuse not to read one of them in the near future.

 

    10 Stars.   A friend recommended Boy’s Life to me, citing it as being Robert McCammon at his best.  I took that as a challenge since I’ve read the first couple books of his Matthew Corbett series and given them all 9*/10 ratings.  It turns out my friend was right.

A Curious Beginning - Deanna Raybourn

2015, 337 pages. New Author? : Yes. Book 1 (out of 6) in the "Veronica Speedwell mysteries" series. Genres: Murder-Mystery; Historical Mystery; Victorian England. Overall Rating : 8*/10.

Veronica Speedwell has reached a conclusion: it's time to move on. She's just left the funeral for Aunt Nell, with whom she'd always had a tepid relationship, but who had served as her sole guardian these last three years, ever since Aunt Lucy, her other guardian, passed away.

Veronica's only in her 20's, but has already traveled throughout the world in search of all sorts of bugs, and specializing in butterflies. She is a leading lepidopterist, and has published papers on her finds, albeit under the ambiguous name of "V. Speedwell". This is after all 1887 London, and women are expected to have children, not careers.

So with the little bit of money she's tucked away, young Veronica is poised to venture out into the world on her own. No need for any companions, all she needs to do is make a quick stop at Aunt Nell's cottage for a few items of clothing and other traveling gear.

Alas, when she opens the door, she discovers the house has been ransacked. Drawers opened and emptied, pillows and mattresses slashed open. Someone has been looking for something. And that someone is still in the cottage, a huge broad-shouldered brute who has mayhem on his mind.

Okay, so maybe just for this moment, Veronica could use a companion.

What’s To Like...

A Curious Beginning is the opening novel in a six-book series (the Wikipedia information is outdated, only listing four books) by Deanna Raybourn featuring our fledgling and feminist sleuth Veronica Speedwell and her curmudgeonly cohort Mr. Stoker. I liked that Veronica's daytime job is a lepidopterist ("butterfly collector"), lately it seems like every adventure novel I read has a hero who's an archaeologist. Mr. Stoker is a taxidermist, and that's a refreshingly different career as well.

The story is told in the first-person POV (Veronica's), and is set entirely in the greater London area. The chapters are relatively short - 29 of them covering 337 pages. There's only a sprinkling of cussing: I counted only six instances in the first third of the book, and I don't recall any other R-rated stuff, so this almost qualifies as a cozy mystery.

The writing is both witty and polished. Both Stoker and Veronica are experts at repartee, and it was fun to listen to them verbally spar with each other. The Victorian setting felt authentic to me, and I was impressed by how "British-sounding" the text was since the author is American.

It is obvious that the book was well-researched. I learned what a "rebenque fight" was, got introduced to a Greek philosopher named Xenocrates, had to wiki an artist named Cabanel (who is cited twice in the story) and his painting "Fallen Angel", and enjoyed the mention of "penny dreadfuls". On a personal note, I loved that the pet dog was named "Huxley"; we once had a dog with that name.

The ending is good, being clever, suitably exciting, and with a nice twist in the epilogue portion of the last chapter. The primary plot threads - the "murder" and "mystery" angles - are resolved nicely, but other things, such as a the fate of the main baddie, are left open, perhaps to pop up again in subsequent tales.

Kewlest New Word ...

Belvedere (n.) : a small house or structure, sometimes with one side open, designed to give a beautiful view.

Others: Hob (n.); Snug (n.).

Ratings…

Amazon: 4.4/5 based on 1,119 ratings.

Goodreads: 3.95/5 based on 24,315 ratings and 3,739 reviews.

Excerpts...

"You are Lord Rosemorran?"

He blinked several times, as if trying to recall something. "Rosemorran? Oh yes. That's me. I say, have we met?"

"I am afraid not. My name is Veronica Speedwell, and I am trespassing."

"Trespassing? How very original. We do get the odd vagrant creeping about the place from time to time, but never a woman, at least not a clean woman with good vowels who could spot a lord at five paces. Any particular reason for trespassing here?" (pg. 224)

"I am not going to Ireland."

"Why not?"

"Have you been to Ireland? The climate is appalling. Nothing but mist."

"What is your objection to mist?"

I regarded him with the same disdain with which I had beheld my first Turkish toilet. "It is gloomy. Butterflies like the sun. Ireland is for the moth people."

"You are a lepidopterist," he said repressively. "You are not supposed to discriminate against moths." (pg. 249)

"Australia is full of unsuitable people - you will fit in beautifully." (pg. 4838)

It's hard to find things in A Curious Beginning to nitpick about. News of the murder doesn't arrive until the end of chapter six, and even then our two heroes don't really start to investigate it for another hundred pages or so. The list of possible suspects is pretty short, but keep in mind the tale is more about solving the whole mystery than just the murder portion.  

The time spent in the traveling circus seemed tad bit tangential; I didn't feel like it moved the storyline forward, In fairness though, it served to recount how Stoker and Veronica endeavored to develop a working relationship with one another. I thought the riddle - "BOLOXST" - seemed pathetically easy to solve, but then was chagrined to find my "solution" was erroneous.

8 Stars. I found A Curious Beginning to be a great combination of historical fiction and murder-mystery, two of my favorite genres, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Book 4 of the series, A Dangerous Collaboration, is on my Kindle, and I'm looking forward to reading more about Veronica and Stoker's adventures.