Eye of Cat - Roger Zelazny

   1982; 235 pages.  New Author? : Mostly.  Genres : Native American Mythology; Science Fiction; Navajo Culture.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    The master galactic beast hunter, Billy Blackhorse Singer, has just been offered a job: stop an Stragean assassin who’s on her way to Earth to kill the UN Secretary General.

 

    It sounds easy enough, but this extraterrestrial has some enhancements that will help her in her mission.  Most importantly, she’s a shapeshifter.

 

    Hmmm.  That presents a challenge for Billy.  Humans can’t shapeshift.  He needs a partner who can do that, and remembers capturing an alien creature long ago that showed some shapeshifting tendencies, but no signs of being sentient.  Still, it’s in a cage down at the ILI (Interstellar Life Institute) in nearby San Diego, so why not go check it out?

 

    It'd be great if the beast turns out to be a sentient shapeshifter, but if so, I wonder what other hidden talents it might have.  And what it would take to get it to team up with Billy.

 

What’s To Like...

    Roger Zelazny is the author of several Science Fiction series, but ANAICT Eye of Cat is a standalone tale.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Billy successfully recruits the caged creature, who he dubs “Cat”, and who turns out to be both a shapeshifter and a telepath.  But its price for joining up with Billy is a stunner: in addition to being freed from its present cage-in-a-zoo situation, it wants a chance for revenge.  He wants one week to chase down and attempt to kill his erstwhile captor.  Billy.

 

    The main plot thread is a prolonged chase scene: first Billy and Cat contending with the assassin; then with Cat stalking Billy.  It isn’t easy avoiding a stalker who can effortlessly read every thought in your head.  Billy gets some help from a panel of human mentalists, but frankly, they are of limited value.

 

    There is a second, more subtle plot thread which I found to be more intriguing.  Billy is a Navajo, but he has “left the Blessed Way”, meaning he lives and thinks like a white man, and has forgotten his Navajo gods and legends.  It was fascinating to watch him gradually revert to his heritage.

 

    Most of the tale is set in Dinetah, the “Land of the Navajos” located in the Four Corners area of the western US.  Roger Zelazny incorporates a bunch of Navajo words into the text, and I really enjoyed that.  The story takes place in the near future, with strange things such as “float cars”, “Porta-phones”, and “Trip Boxes”.  Yeah, I know, we have Porta-phones now (we call them cell phones), but Eye of Cat was written in 1982.  And those Trip Boxes enable users to teleport, reminding me muchly of the TARDIS in the Doctor Who series.

 

    The ending is not particularly twisty, but suitably resolves the main plot threads.  The storylines are tied up, Billy gets reacquainted with his Navajo roots, and his soul finally finds peace.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 35 ratings and 20 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.64*/5, based on 1,763 ratings and 76 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Chindi (n.) : a spirit, usually malevolent; a ghost.

Others: Yetaalii (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    He thought of the old man’s words and the things of which they reminded him—of the sky creatures and water creatures, of the beings of cloud, mist, rain, pollen and corn which had figured so prominently in his childhood imagination—here in the season when the snakes and the thunder still slept.

    It had been a long while since he had considered his problems in the old terms.  A chindi . . . Real or of the mind—what difference?  Something malicious at his back.  Yes, another way of looking at things . . .   (loc. 245)

 

    “This beast can read thoughts.”

    “So it reads that there’s someone up ahead waiting to kill it.  Doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know that.  And if it keeps following, that’s what could happen.”

    “It can change shape.”

    “It’s still got to move in order to make progress.  That makes it a target.  Billy’s armed now.  It won’t have it as easy as you seem to think.”

    “Then why’d you decide to come?”

    “I don’t like to see any outsider chasing Navajos on our land.”  (loc. 2225)

 

Kindle Details…

    I bought Eye of Cat as part of a two-book bundle of Roger Zelazny sci-fi tales.  The other book is Isle of the Dead.  It appears Amazon no longer offers this bundle in e-book format; but you can buy the paperback version for a mere $59.99.  No, that is not a typo.  Eye of Cat as an unbundled e-book is presently not available at Amazon.

 

“You have been in the minds of too many Californians.  They’re full of pop psychology.”  (loc. 1478)

    There’s just a modicum of profanity in Eye of Cat; I counted only three in the first quarter of the book, all of them variations of damn.  The cussword choices get a bit more varied later on, even including an f-bomb, but on the whole, the expletives remained sparse.

 

    There were a number of typos, but most of these were spacing issues: Hewas, Hehad, Itis, Idropped, and theoldman.  I suspect these slip-ups arose during the e-book bundling conversion stage, and therefore I don't blame the author, who passed away in 1995. 

 

    A variety of literary tropes are sprinkled throughout the text, including flashbacks, deliberately garbled paragraphs and what I presume were newspaper headlines.  I found them to be more distracting than enlightening.  Your take may be different.  In any event, they became sparser as the book progressed.

 

    Overall, I thought Eye of Cat was an ambitious effort by Roger Zelazny that unfortunately falls a bit flat.  I enjoyed the Native American cultural aspects of the book, but the action scenes, although present, were few and far between.  Fortunately, Roger Zelazny’s writing skills do a good job of overshadowing the overly lengthy storyline.  The relatively mediocre Goodreads rating, listed above, reflects this.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  There’s a brief but heartwarming “Dedication” at the beginning of the book that simply reads “For Joe Leaphorn, Jimmy Chee, and Tony Hillerman”.  If you know who these three are, and like their tales, you’ll enjoy Eye of Cat.

Coffee Tea or Me? - Donald Bain

   1967; 311 pages.  Full Title:  Coffee, Tea or Me?: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Aviation Novel; Women Biographies; Memoirs.  Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    Are you tired of being a poor midwestern girl, stuck in one place?  Do you yearn to travel all over the world, every day?  Would you like to meet suitors on a daily basis?  Could someone show you how to tell which ones are truly eligible and which are already married?  What if you could occasionally meet and talk to some celebrities where you work?

 

    Does nightly partying with your fellow workers sound like it would be fun?  Maybe even have a couple of them as roommates sharing an apartment in some big city.  Wouldn’t it be great if someone was willing to pay you for having such experiences?

 

    Trudy Baker would be happy to tell you how to accomplish this.  She’s already living such a dream.  It’s called being a stewardess.

 

    And of course, she'll also alert you to some of the downsides to this career.

 

What’s To Like...

    There’s no overarching storyline in Coffee Tea or Me?, instead it’s 23 vignettes about various aspects of a stewardess’s life.  The text is written in the first-person POV, Trudy’s.  Some are autobiographical, Trudy is born and raised in Amarillo, Texas, yearns to see the world, and enrolls in a “stewardess school” where she is taught the ways and means of flying the friendly skies.  She also meets Rachel there, who becomes her best friend.

 

    A lot of the chapters give tips and insights about being a happy, outgoing, successful stewardess.  Trudy shares ways to deal with lusty aircraft captains, drunks, womanizers, and hyperactive kids, both the prodigies and the brats.  You’ll learn how male passengers stack up by profession and nationality, and where's the best place to stay with fellow aircraft personnel when you have a layover in various cities.  You’ll even be taught “stewardess lingo”.

 

    Coffee Tea or Me? was written in 1967, the year before I took my first flight, and it was fun to see how things have changed since then.  Back then, there was a 2-drink limit for passengers, although in-flight smoking was allowed.  If you forgot to get a pack of cigarettes at the airport, you could buy a mini-pack from the stewardess.  In-flight meals were standard fare and there was no assigned seating, so you had to tell the stewardess your name during preflight, so she could ascertain that you didn’t sneak on board.  And here's a couple non-flight things that are mentioned which have since disappeared: stationery stores, cigarette commercials, and girdles.

 

    The two final chapters form a sort of ending for the book.  Trudy has developed into a topnotch stewardess, but has become burnt out in the process.  The airline she works for arranges for her to see a shrink, with whom Trudy gets into competition to determine who will be analyzed and who will be asking the questions.  The title of the last chapter is: ”We’ll Give It One More Year. Okay?”, which gives a hint as to things close out.  Wikipedia indicates there are three more sequels to this book, which I never knew, and a TV movie, which I vaguely recall.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Popliteal (adj.) : relating to the hollow at the back of the knee.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 252 ratings and 80 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.28*/5, based on 1,395 ratings and 167 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Ladies and gentlemen, I am truly sorry.  Truly sorry.  In my haste to be . . . to be . . . to be gangrenous . . . Uh, gangre . . .  to give each and every one you gathered here today gift, I violated the sacrilege . . . a sacred by-laws of this wonderful airline, and these wonderful girls here present.  So. If you will be so kind and present, please put all those li’l bottles away and don’t drink not even a tiny weeny drop ‘til we come to our departure . . . ah, destination.”  (pg. 195)

 

    Gravely lacking any background, academic or practical, in the arts of humanities, engineers will try to make chit-chat about the aircraft’s performance characteristics or outer space or why the ball always comes down after it goes up.  It’s best to feign ignorance if you’re interested; engineers hate anyone to know anything about their sphere of knowledge.

    Occasionally, an engineer will have the brains to realize that a stewardess isn’t interested in all that mechanical routine.  This type of individual will say something like, “Have you read Moby Dick lately?”  You’ve got to give him credit for trying.  (pg. 255)

 

You can always recognize a captain from the calluses on his finger from pushing the call button for coffee.  (pg. 97)

    There is a moderate amount of cussing in Coffee Tea or Me?, mostly involving the word “damn”.  We’d yawn at this nowadays, yet I think it was pretty edgy for a lighthearted novel from the 1960s.  Each chapter opens with a sparse sketch, and some of those had nudity in them, but nothing that I’d label “erotic”.

 

    There are a fair number of typos, but keep in mind that this is long before we had computers with MS-Word and Spellchecker to catch such things.  At one point the “couch section” of the plane was mentioned.  At first I thought this was a typo for “coach section”, but now I’m thinking that some first-class sections of a plane back then were equipped with couches.

 

    Chapters 10 deals with homosexual passengers.  Trudy describes them as “fay”, “queer”, “faggy”, and “perverts”.  The term “gay” apparently had yet to be used, and it’s nice to see how far we’ve come since then.

 

    Coffee Tea Or Me? was a light-hearted, quick-&-easy read for me, bringing back memories of airline amenities and hospitality in an era that's long gone.  I have fond memories of flying back in those days, which were my college years and in which I was usually flying stand-by.  Alas, a lot of the experiences recounted in the book are probably make-believe.  See the next section for the aftermath.

 

    6 Stars.  Coffee Tea Or Me? readers received a shock in 2002 when a writer, Donald Bain, revealed that he actually wrote the book.  Bain worked in public relations for American Airlines at the time.  Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones were made-up names, and two Eastern Airlines stewardesses were hired to pose as them on book promotion tours.  Wikipedia says that one of them ended up legally changing her name to the one Don Bain used in the book.  The Wiki article is well worth reading.

A Dragon, A Gargoyle, and A Faery Walk into a Pub - Lisa Barry & Nicole Dragonbeck

    2024; 299 pages.  Book 1 (out of 4) in the “Dragon and Gargoyle” series.  New Author(s)? : Yes and Yes.  Genres : Adventure Fantasy; Dragons & Mythical Creatures Fantasy; Witches.  Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    Meet Detective Aiden Moss.  Director Warren is mighty proud to have him on the Dublin, Ireland police force.  Moss always obeys department rules and regulations.  He loves to write up reports.  He happens to also be a dragon.

 

    Meet Aiden’s partner, Detective Torloch “Loch” Doyle.  He has a short temper and a sharp tongue.  Director Warren frequently has to write him up for breaking department rules and regulations.  He hates to write up reports.  He happens to also be a gargoyle.

 

    You might wonder how well these two dissimilar agents get along with each other.  They have their moments of mutual irritation, but they’ve made things work.  For several centuries.  It helps that they have a mutual source of annoyance.

 

    Meet Rudy.  He's a youthful faerie blessed with the magical gift of being able to materialize out of thin air.  Much to the mutual annoyance of Moss and Doyle.

 

What’s To Like...

    If you like your fantasy novels to have a bountiful selection of magical creatures, you’re going to love A Dragon, A Gargoyle, and A Faery Walk into a Pub.  Besides the three mentioned in the title, you’ll crosspaths with leprechauns, harpies, vampires, minotaurs, witches, sirens, something called a púca, and a bunch more.  There’s even a crossword puzzle-loving ogre.

 

    The storyline starts out straightforward.  There’s a new drug in town which has mind-numbing side effects.  Literally.  Victims of the drug smell of magic (well, actually of coriander) and our heroes are charged with tracking down its source.  Things quickly get a lot more complicated with powerful forces determined to thwart the efforts of our detective duo, no matter what.

 

    The use of profanity is refreshingly sparse; I only noted 8 instances in the first third of the book.  In most cases where a cussword is called for, a “milder variant” was used, including shite, feck, arse, bollox, and biatch, and as such, I didn't count those as cussing.  I thought this was a great innovation, which could be used by any authors writing lighthearted stories.

 

    The tale is told in the third-person POV, alternating between Aiden and Loch, with one exception.  That might sound confusing, but I thought it worked quite well here.  The world-building and character development were both done well, and the pacing was brisk, without any slow spots in the storytelling.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Púca (n.) : a mischievous spirit, often depicted as a shape-shifting creature.

Others: Skeevy; (adj.); Craic (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.3*/5, based on 84 ratings and 10 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.13*/5, based on 82 ratings and 11 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Our clothes were stolen.”

    Claudine looked at them in shock.  “Stolen?”

    “Yep.  One minute they were there, when we came back they were gone,” Torloch shrugged, then smirked “I guess someone wanted a free show.”

    Claudine did not appear amused.  “Guys, that’s bad.  Really, really bad.”

    “Why?  Torloch looked confused.  “It’s just a pair of jeans.”

    “Intimate items—items that have touched your skin—can be used in spells.  Tracking spells, binding spells, concealing spells,” Claudine counted them off on her fingers.  “Love spells.”

    “That last one doesn’t sound too bad,” Torloch said.  (loc. 1193)

 

    “If any of this turns out to be intentionally misleading, we’ll come back and find you,” Torloch said as he skimmed the names.  “And if you aren’t here, we’ll hunt you down, and drag you by the ears out of whatever hole you’re hiding in.”

    “What my partner means to say is thank you for your assistance, we’ll be in touch if we need anything further,” Aiden said, grabbing the gargoyle’s arm and wheeling him away.

    “No, his partner didn’t mean to say any of that,” Torloch protested.  “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

    “I have to put words in your mouth, otherwise there’s too much room for your feet,” Aiden muttered back as they made their way to the door.  (loc. 1632)

 

Kindle Details…

    A Dragon, A Gargoyle, and A Faery Walk into a Pub sells for $4.99 right now at Amazon, as do the other three books in the series.  There are also several “holiday-themed” novellas related to, but not part of this series, all in the $0.99-$2.99 price range, plus one full-length Halloween-themed entry for $4.99.

 

“You do realize going to a pub and going to a pub to work are two very different things?”  (loc. 187)

    There a couple of things to quibble about.  First of all, typos abound.  A lot of them were punctuation slip-ups, plus things like diving/divining and this/his.  I was perplexed by several spelling inconsistencies, such as malarky/malarkey, fairie/faery, and Brennan/McBrennan.  These all fell into the “either way is correct category; but not both ways”.  Perhaps this is an inherent drawback of multiple authors, although good editing should catch these.

 

    The biggest issue was a ploy used in the ending, which I've never run into before.  There’s a whole chapter missing; and it’s the all-important climactic one.  At first I thought it was my faulty memory, from reading too late at night and all that.  Then I thought that somehow the printers and/or the conversion formatting process had waylaid it.

 

    But no, in the extras at the end of the book, an offer is made: “Want to know what really happened when Aiden torched the pub?  Click here to get the bonus chapter and jump onto our email list!”  Really?!

    I thought that closing with a cliffhanger ending was as low as one could get.  I stand corrected.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point a Latin phrase “in sanguine, vires et veritas” pops up.  The translation for it is: “strength and truth are in the blood”.  I suck at Latin.  Thank goodness for Google.

Dance of the Winnebagos - Ann Charles

   2011; 366 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Book 1 (out of 6) in the “Jackrabbit Junction Humorous Mystery” series.  Genres : Romantic Mystery; Humorous Fiction; Beach Read.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Claire Morgan is about to experience the longest month of her life.

 

    She’s agreed to stay with her grandfather, Harley “Gramps” Ford for the entire month of April.  In an RV park somewhere in Arizona, in some podunk town called Jackrabbit Junction, mostly filled with retirees.  Where gray-haired geezers get their biggest daily thrills by watching blue-haired geezerettes sashay up and down the street.

 

    33-year-old Claire would love to meet some handsome guy her age, as she’s currently unattached.  But none seem to live in Jackrabbit Junction, to no one's surprise.  Oh well, it’s only for a month and come May, she can return to North Dakota having done her familial duty.

 

    You don’t know it, Claire, but Jackrabbit Junction holds some deadly secrets, just waiting to be dug up.  And we know just the dog who will do the digging.

 

What’s To Like...

    Dance of the Winnebagos is the opening volume in Ann Charles’s 6-book “Jackrabbit Junction Humorous Mysteries” series.  The series’ title notwithstanding, I highly recommend you read this book when you’re in the mood for a Romantic Mystery tale.  More on that in a bit.

 

    The story is set in the copper-mining area of southern Arizona, with Tucson being the nearby big city.  That resonated with me, since I reside in Arizona, and once upon a time, the company I worked for supplied a number of chemical products to the copper mines.

 

    The Mystery angle starts right away.  Gramps’s beagle, Henry, digs up a bone while nosing around in an old mine, and Claire recognizes it as a human femur.  Questions arise immediately.  How old is it?  Where’s the rest of the skeleton?  Will this affect the value of the mine, which belongs to Ruby, a current Jackrabbit Junction resident, and who is contemplating selling it for some much-needed debt relief.

 

    That’s a very promising start, but it takes a back seat to the Romance angle.  Mac Garner, nephew to the mine’s owner and all-around hunk, shows up to help his aunt determine the maximum worth of her two mines.

 

    Claire and Mac meet, gets the hots for each other, and a series of misunderstandings and misadventures give rise to the Humorous angle.  If you like Hallmark Romance movies, you’ll love this plot thread; there’s even a precocious little girl that every Hallmark movie has.  Supplemental humor comes in the form of Chester and Manuel, two of Gramps’s Euchre-playing (and women-chasing) buddies.

 

    The ending is a three-phase affair.  The main mystery storyline (whose femur is it) is resolved in Chapter 24; and the Romance and Money plot threads are dealt with in the next, and final, chapter.  “Extras” in the back of the book include “About the Author”, and “Five Fun Southwestern Facts about Ann Charles”, both of which I found fascinating to read.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 2,320 ratings and 717 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.95/5 based on 3,357 ratings and 473 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Are you some kind of freak who plays with dead animals?”

    While most of Claire’s family considered her to be a few cherries short of a fruitcake, that didn’t mean she had to take any crap from this kid.  She glared at the girl.  “Who are you?”

    “I’m Ruby’s kid.”

    That explained the hair and freckles.  “You have a name?”

    “Jessica, but my friends and family call me Jess.”  She batted her eyelashes and offered Claire a want-to-be-my-friend-too smile.  (. . .)

    “Thanks for the lemonade, Jessica.”  (pg. 23)

 

    Gramps shot Claire a frown.  “What did you do now?”

    “What?  I didn’t do anything.”  Claire made a last-ditch attempt at playing the ‘I’m-innocent-I-swear’ routine.

    “Child, I wasn’t born yesterday.  When I walked up here, you two were circling each other like a pair of hungry hyenas hovering over a hunk of raw meat.”

     Claire sighed.  “Couldn’t you compare me to a prettier animal?  A cat would be nice.  Maybe even a swan.  Do swans fight?”  (pg. 191)

 

Kindle Details…

    Dance of the Winnebagos sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  The rest of the other books in the series are in the $3.99-$6.99 price range.  Ann Charles has two other e-book series: a 14-volume Deadwood Humorous Mystery (prices range from $2.99 to $7.99); and a 4-volume Deadwood Undertaker (prices range from $4.99 to $6.99).

 

If she ever saw Mac Garner again, she was going to cram her underwear down his throat until he choked on them.  (pg. 351)

    There’s a lot of cussing in Dance of the Winnebagos.  I counted 30 instances in the first 10%, which felt excessive.  Sexual innuendos abound, but to be fair, there was only one "on-screen” roll-in-the-hay, and you can guess who that involved.

 

    There were quite a few typos, including lightening/lightning, chords/cords, queue/cue, florescent/fluorescent, and pouring/poring.  Those last two occurred three times each.  Another round of editing would be beneficial.

 

    Plot twists are sparse and Claire’s sussing out of the various mystery questions was more a matter of convenient luck than skillful sleuthing.  Character development was blah: you know from the start who the good guys and baddies are, and that never changes.  The Romance and Mystery angles were both predictable.

 

    The writing style felt like it needed another round of polishing.  A plethora of literary devices were overused, including excessive similes, music references, cartoons on Claire’s t-shirts, Claire's craving of cigarettes, amorous thoughts, and the precocious little girl sassing about her mom’s poor parenting skills.

 

    So, does that mean this was a terrible book?  Not at all.  Despite the technical quibbling, Claire and Mac’s investigations into the mysteries and each other kept me turning the pages.  Dance of the Winnebagos may not be a deep taleread, but it is an ideal beach/airport read and I plan on reading at least one more entry in this series to see whether the writing and storytelling improve.   And to see what else Henry digs up.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point the word “snogging” finds its way into the text.  This is one of my favorite “Britishisms” of all times.  Kudos to Ann Charles for using in this story!

Sunday The Rabbi Stayed Home - Harry Kemelman

    1966; 270 pages.  Book 3 (out of 12) in the “Rabbi Small Mystery” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime Mystery; Jewish Literature;  Amateur Sleuths.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    The members of the Barnard’s Crossing Temple are bickering again.

 

    The conservative faction, headed by Ben Gorfinkle, wants Rabbi David Small to publicly take a stand supporting book censorship and prayer in the schools; plus attacking the coddling of criminals and denouncing the Civil Rights protests.  And Gorfinkle is confident they have enough votes to make this temple policy.

 

    The progressive faction, headed by Meyer Paff, wants Rabbi Small to publicly take the opposite stand on all these issues.  They’re aware they don’t have enough votes for this, and therefore are prepared to break away and start their own temple, taking a lot of the present congregation, and hopefully Rabbi Small, with them.

 

    Although the Rabbi is sympathetic with the Meyer Paff’s group, he doesn’t want have the congregation split in two.  He’d prefer to do anything except be forced to choose one temple faction or the other.

 

    Like investigate a murder or two, perhaps?

 

What’s To Like...

    Sunday The Rabbi Stayed Home is a blend of three storylines.  One is an enlightening discussion of Jewish-vs.-Christian dogma; one is an insightful look at inter-congregational squabbling; one is Rabbi Small’s investigation into two local deaths that have suspicious circumstances.

 

    The temple squabbles receive the majority of the attention and I suspect it will be a recurring theme of this series, since Book 11 is titled The Day the Rabbi Resigned.  A new twist of it crops up here: Rabbi Small is becoming popular among the Jewish youths, and he’s now considering joining Hillel, the largest Jewish student organization worldwide, as a counselor.

 

    Harry Kemelman works a lot of Yiddish religious terms and phrases into the text, and I always like that.  Rabbi Small engages in a couple of discussions with a Roman Catholic priest at the local Newman Center (the Catholic equivalent of Hillel), which both Father Bennett and myself found thought-provoking.  Two of the topics were a.) the role of Faith and/or the lack of it, and b.) the importance of what we believe versus that which we do.

 

    The Rabbi’s investigations into the two deaths are suitably thorough despite the lack of clues.  Sunday The Rabbi Stayed Home was published in 1969, and I was not surprised to see marijuana (or “marihuana” as the author spells it) being a factor in the probes.  I winced at the repeated use of the word “Negro” here, then remembered it was the preferred term for blacks during that era.

 

    Things build to a so-so ending.  Rabbi Small figures out the “whodunit” by clever deductive reasoning.  Unfortunately, all the evidence is circumstantial, but help comes from an unexpected source.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 1,008 ratings and 83 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.84/5 based on 2,108 ratings and 163 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I made my money too late to change my habits.  My Laura is after me I should have my suits made to order.  ‘You’ve got it now; spend it.’  But I can’t.  I can’t get interested enough in clothes to bother.  When I play poker, I play penny ante, and I notice that I get as much fun out of winning ninety cents as I would if it were ninety dollars.  And Irving is just as sore at losing thirty-two cents.”

    “Thirty-seven cents.”  (loc. 8505)

 

    “I told him that I’d had a meeting with a majority of the board prior to our little talk and that we had decided that if he refused to go along, at the next a motion would be offered—and passed—calling for his resignation.”

    “You fired him?”

    He pursed his lips and canted his head to one side.  “Just about.”

    “Nothing personal, of course.”

    “I flatter myself that I handled it pretty well,” said Gorfinkle with a smirk.  (loc. 9562)

 

Kindle Details…

    Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home is priced at $8.99 at Amazon at present.  The other books in the series are in the $0.99-$7.99 range, with most of them costing $6.99.  I read this as part of an e-book bundle containing the first four volumes of the series, and which costs $17.99 right now.

 

“By God, you nice respectable people can blunder into a situation and foul it up to make the angels weep.”  (loc. 9572)

    There’s only a smattering of profanity in Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home.  I counted just nine instances in the first half of the book, and those were all of the “milder” ilk.  The pejorative version of “Negro” (the "N-word") was used once, but with a negative connotation.  Typos were scarce and mostly involved missing commas and periods.

 

    The portrayal of pot dealers back in 1969 was a bit skewed.  Trust me, I was a teenager back then, and although drug dealing could be hazardous in those days, that was only true if the drug quantities were large.  A couple of joints does not constitute a large quantity.  Methinks Harry Kemelman took the movie Reefer Madness too seriously.

 

    The biggest issue I have with Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home is the diminished role of the crime investigation.  The first murder doesn’t come until 58% Kindle, and Rabbi Small doesn’t start his investigation until 65% Kindle.  It’s almost like the crimes were just a slapdash add-on to the book's storyline.

 

    Overall, this was a so-so read for me, probably because I’m reading this series mostly for the crime mystery aspect, not the religious angles.  If you happen to be reading these Rabbi Small books for their spiritual messages, add a couple stars to my rating.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  Kudos for the brief mention of (Moses) Maimonides.  That was one kewl dude, centuries before his time.  If you don’t know anything about him, look him up in Wikipedia.

Unnatural Exposure - Patricia Cornwell

   1997; 367 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book #8 (out of 28) in the Kay Scarpetta series.  Genres : Serial Killer Thriller; Medical Thriller; Crime Fiction.  Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    It began as just a routine cadaver dismemberment case, a body unearthed at the local landfill.

 

    Well, okay, that wouldn’t seem very routine to you or me, but for Kay Scarpetta, the Chief Medical Examiner of Richmond, Virginia, it’s not her first mutilated corpse.

 

    Preliminary lab results offer only scant information.  The victim is female, and was old and emaciated.  A check of missing persons files doesn’t yield any likely matches.

 

    To make matters worse, Kay’s come down with some flu-like symptoms.  Probably picked it up while examining that corpse.  Oh well, she’ll take things easy the next couple days.  What’s the worst it can be?

 

    You’d be surprised, Kay.  Very, very surprised.

 

What’s To Like...

    Unnatural Exposure is my third read from Patricia Cornwell’s “Kay Scarpetta” medical thriller series.  Determining who the dismembered body belonged to is an important part of the storyline, but, as the book’s title indicates, this is more about a possible outbreak of a plague-like virus.  Is it deadly?  Where did it come from?  Do we take two aspirin and sweat it out, or are we all going to die?

 

    Being a chemist, I was fascinated by the lab scenes.  Yes, the analytical chemistry is medical in nature, but it was fun to watch Kay deduce things via laboratory procedures.  Being a medical examiner, Kay also has some knowledgeable and enlightening viewpoints about the details of Elvis’s death.

 

    The book was published in 1997 and it was fun to “relive” that era.  AOL is where you go to send an email.  One of the morgues is hoping to get an intranet computer system installed.  Cell phones are still in their infancy, so most people carry pagers.  A portable color scanner will cost you $500.  Zoom meetings don’t exist, but AOL chatrooms are a nice substitute.  And Kay’s first Virtual Reality experience was mindblowing.

 

     I enjoyed watching the bureaucratic (FBI, CDC, etc.) response to the *possibility* of a plague arising out of all this.  When you have only preliminary medical results, how do you balance prudent precautions with hysteria-inducing drastic measures?  Food for thought since the Covid virus still runs rampant in today’s world.

 

    The ending does tie up both the criminal plot thread (who put the corpse in the landfill) and the pathological one (where and why did the virus come from?).  It’s not particularly exciting, which is a plus for a medical thriller and a minus for a mystery tale.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 6,235 ratings and 461 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.07*/5, based on 61,231 ratings and 970 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Hinky (adj.) : nervous; jittery.

Others: Kerf (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    “I can’t believe this.”  I was only getting angrier.  “I have to release information to correct misinformation.  I can’t be put in this position, Marino.”

    “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of this and a whole lot more,” he promised.  “I don’t guess you know.”

    “Know what?”

    “Rumor has it that Ring’s been seeing Patty Denver.”

    “I thought she was married,” I said as I envisioned her from a few moments earlier.

    “She is,” he said.  (pg. 68)

 

    “Ma’am, this flight is overbooked.  We simply don’t have room.”

    “Here,” I said, showing her the paperwork.

    Her eyes scanned the red-bordered Declaration For Dangerous Goods, and froze halfway down a column where it was typed that I was transporting “Infectious substances affecting humans.”  She glanced nervously around the kitchen and moved me closer to the rest rooms.

    “Regulations require that only a trained person can handle dangerous goods like these,” I reasonably explained.  “So it has to stay with me.”

    “What is it?” she whispered, her eyes round.

    “Autopsy specimens.”  (pg. 247)

 

“I think the public has a right to know if there’s a psycho in their midst.”  (pg. 97)

    There’s a moderate amount of profanity in Unnatural Exposure; I noted 14 instances in the first 10% of the book.  They are all of the “milder” variety, but a couple of f-bombs show up later, as well as a roll-in-the-hay.  I only noticed one typo: PH/pH, but this will only bother you if you’re a scientist.

 

    The text contains lots of references to past books and cases in this series.  Indeed, the tale starts with Kay in Dublin, Ireland, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story.  To be fair though, this would not be bothersome if one is reading these books in chronological order.

 

    The book spends way too much time concentrating of Kay self-examining her life choices and having sharp words with anybody else foolish enough to render an opinion or offer advice to her on that.

 

    And as mentioned above, the ending is anticlimactic.  The key break in the landfill cadaver mystery felt arbitrary, and the whole rationale for the infectious assault seemed hard to believe.  For maximum enjoyment, it's probably best to ignore the crime-solving aspect, and just focus on the plague-stopping aspect.

 

    So read the books in this series in order, don’t try to solve the crime before Kay does, and for pete’s sake don’t try to tell Kay how to live her personal life.  The result will be an pleasant read and you’ll end up saying, “Well, at least it wasn’t Covid!”

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  Kay makes a business trip to Memphis, and checks in at the Peabody Hotel.  I’ve stayed there.  The book’s assertion that ducks are privileged guests there is completely accurate.  They even stage a daily “duck parade” there, during the noon hour IIRC.  If you’re ever in Memphis, be sure to check this out.

Mythology 101 - Jody Lynn Nye

   2014; 317 pages.  Book 1 (out of 4) in the “Mythology” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Humorous Fantasy; College Life; YA.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Midwestern University only has enough money to do one upgrade: a new library or a new Phys. Ed building, and the Student Council gets to choose which one!

 

    For academically-inclined Keith Doyle, a member of the council, the choice is easy.  Renovate the library.  After all, the reason people go to college is to get an education, not to exercise.  Needless to say, there are a bunch of athletically-inclined students who feel otherwise.  But Keith is pretty sure his side has the votes for an upgrade of old Gillington library.

 

    One thing does surprise him – the stance of his dormmate Carl.  Carl’s not here on an athletic scholarship so why’s he campaigning so strongly for the new gymnasium option?

 

    Even more strange, Carl’s making it sound like the vote’s a matter of life and death.

 

What’s To Like...

    The book’s cover gives you a good idea of what the situation is in Mythology 101.  Gillington Library’s problem is not bats in the belfry; it’s elves in the basement.  They’ve been there for a long time (by Big Folk standards), and via a lot of stealth and magic, they’ve remained undetected.  A few of the human students are aware of them, though, and Keith soon becomes of those.

 

    Renovating will doubtless lead to the discovery of the Little Folk, and the main plotline of Mythology 101 is Keith pondering what he can do about that.  Other plot threads include Keith presently flunking his Sociology class, and in desperate need of some tutoring.  To boot, he’s residing in a men’s dormitory, which means dealing with other male egos, occasionally having his dorm room trashed, and almost zero social contact with female students.

 

    Indeed, the “feel” to college life here rang true.  I spent two years in dorms in my college career, and Keith’s issues brought back old memories.  I liked the setting of Midwestern University, it's located somewhere in Illinois, and I suspect Jody Lynn Nye used Northwestern University as her model for Midwestern.  Dorm life involves getting along with RA’s (“Resident Advisers”), eating very blah food in the cafeteria, and trying to not flunk out of school.

 

    The resolution of the elves-in-the-basement was logical and straightforward.  I wouldn’t call it twisty, but have to admit Keith’s solution to the problem was not what I was expecting.  Book Two, Mythology Abroad, awaits me on my Kindle.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 915 ratings and 206 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.76*/5, based on 1,097 ratings and 101 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Geas (n.) : an obligation or prohibition magically imposed on someone (Irish folklore).

 

Excerpts...

    “I wouldn’t call a C a failure,” Keith said, jumping forward to open the door for her and following her out into the brisk October air.  Leaves swirled away from their feet as they dashed across the narrow streets toward McInroe Hall.  “I’m a B man myself.  I do get A’s but I don’t expect 'em.  If you’re not in the front line you don’t get shot as often.”  (pg. 9)

 

    “So what’s wrong with using nails?”  Not that he could see any in the construction.

    “They rust.  They bend.  Also, we tend to be a wee bit sensitive to having too much metal around.”

    “I heard that cold iron dispels magic,” Keith said teasingly.  “Maybe that’s why you don’t use it.”

    “And maybe the effect is more like heavy metal poisoning, Keith Doyle.  Call it an allergy.  Don’t look for foolish explanations unless no others suffice.  There’s plenty of common sense to go around.  Even you could find some.”

    “I believe in magic,” Keith said softly.  (pg. 81)

 

Kindle Details…

    Mythology 101 sells for $7.99 right now at Amazon, as do the other three books in the series.  Jody Lynn Nye has several other Fantasy e-book series for your reading pleasure, most of which are priced at $6.99 per e-book.  She has collaborated with an impressive list of fellow authors, including Robert Asprin and Anne McCaffrey.

 

“The trouble with you is that you have a basically honest heart.”  (pg. 86)

    The cussing is very light: just seven instances in the first 20%, none of which were f-bombs.  There is a hint of Romance, but no adult situations, the norm for males living in dorms.  It will be interesting to see how Keith’s love life plays out in subsequent books.

 

    There were a couple of typos – stationary/stationery, Crazy/crazy, and lighting/lightning – but not enough to be distracting.

 

    The bigger issue for me was the storytelling.  It’s hard to imagine a tale with elves intermixing with college students being boring and slow-paced, but that’s what happened.  The negative reviews at Amazon and Goodreads show that others felt the same way and you’d think when you have elven magic at your disposal, tying up the various plot threads would be exciting.  It wasn’t.

 

    But things are looking up.  The ratings for the books in this series are:

Book 1 (Mythology 101): Amazon 4.2; Goodreads 3.76.

Book 2 (Mythology Abroad): Amazon 4.6; Goodreads 4.02.

Book 3 (Higher Mythology): Amazon 4.5; Goodreads 4.04.

Book 4 (Advanced Mythology): Amazon 4.7; Goodreads 4.22.

 

    Methinks this series is going to get better as I work my way through it.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Symbols get mentioned twice in Mythology 101.  I was born and raised in that area.  It’s good to see our hex signs are still remembered.