When we were kids, back in the pre-cell phone era, summertime was looked forward to all winter. School let out and we were finally free to spend our time any way we wanted, as long as we didn't hang around the house all day. As a matter of fact, we were kicked out of the house and told to go outside and play. Since all the neighborhood kids' mothers did the same thing, we would, together, find ways to fill our summer days.
We had baseball games and creek jumping competitions. We would double-dare each other to cross the creek and sneak into the backyard of the haunted house and steal the blackberries that grew there every year. We would get sick on unripened crab apples and name the garter snakes that were plentiful in the back yards. And sometimes we could get our moms to pack us sandwiches and fruit and with a jar of water we would hike the creek. It was an adventure for us, to see what lay ahead around that bend. Once we ended up in the middle of a rail yard where we were caught by the railroad security officers who called our parents to pick us up.
And for those families like ours, with five children, who could not afford summer camp, there was the summer vacation bible school offered through the local Lutheran Church. Every morning for two weeks, we were delivered to the church for four hours of indoctrination education. Being summer, the education consisted mostly of crafts and art projects, with some Bible stories thrown in and served up with milk and cookies. It was summertime and the church women who ran the project knew that children's minds were difficult to focus on any heavy topics when the weather called for them to play.
There is a part of me that has never grown out of that unfocused, summertime lethargy. I don't want to think. I want to goof off, spend time at the pool, fix light suppers on the grill and enjoy a chilled white wine. And when I read, I want the book to be as light and refreshing as a very dry champagne.
If you want to follow me beyond that twisted orange creek-like object I have collected a few titles for your summertime pleasure.
Cocaine Blues
by Kerry Greenwood
Published by Poisoned Pen Press
April 18th 2007 (first published 1989)
175 pages
I have no idea why this book languished for so long on my TBR list. It has been there forever, or at least since it was suggested by someone in the comments of an R&BLers diary. It perfectly quenches that summertime thirst for a champagne cocktail. Set in the Jazz Age of the 1920s, Phryne Fisher is a fully liberated, independently wealthy woman who sets her own agenda which includes a very stylish wardrobe and a bed she fills as she sees fit. She arrives in Australia from England to investigate the unexplained illness of the married daughter of a dinner partner and his wife. They suspect poisoning by the daughter's husband.
Arriving in Australia, with a Scottish doctor and friend, Elizabeth MacMillan, she quickly finds herself with more than she had bargained on. Preventing a young woman, Dot, from murdering her ex-employer with a kitchen knife, she quickly hires her as a personal maid/executive assistant. And takes her shopping. Dot is a wonderful foil for some of Phryne's more outrageous behavior, but accepts it all with a remarkable aplomb. Back alley abortion and the cocaine trade enter the picture, as does a Russian dancer named Sasha, and a pair of socialist taxi drivers. And yes, there is still the mystery of the possibly poisoned bride to look into.
I believe there are now twenty books in the series and Australian TV, ABC1, has made into a television series currently in its second season. The first season is available in the States on Netflix and at Amazon.
From an interview with Kerry Greenwood:
6. Why did you want Phryne to be such a clotheshorse and a siren - unusual for a detective?
Don't know. She isnt anyone's clothes horse, if by that you mean the person who wears the clothes and has no other personality. She likes fashion and the fashions of the time suit her perfectly. And I love designing her gowns...
But Phryne is a hero, just like James Bond or the Saint, but with fewer product endorsements and a better class of lovers. I decided to try a female hero and made her as free as a male hero, to see what she would do. Mind you, at that time I only thought there would be two books.
Phryne Fisher.com
Dying for a Daiquiri
By Cindy Sample
Published by CreateSpace
September 28th 2013
264 pages
Nominated for a Lefty this year, and losing to the next book, Dying for a Daiquiri is number three in Cindy Sample's series featuring Laurel McKay, a divorced mother of two.
When Laurel McKay attends a Hawaiian wedding, her vacation soon becomes deadlier than the calorie count in her daiquiri.
Her post-wedding holiday upends after a beautiful hula dancer is found dead on the rocks below Daiquiri Dave’s, the oceanfront restaurant owned by Laurel’s brother and sister-in-law.
When a family member is arrested for the murder, Laurel is plunged into a mystery where exotic Big Island locations––a coffee plantation, black sand beaches and a volcano—reveal their deadly side. And where is her dishy on-again/off-again boyfriend detective when she needs him?
Laurel zip-lines and four-wheels her way through the island paradise unearthing hidden secrets. Will ingenuity and pluck be enough? Or will this hula be her last?
The Good Cop
By Brad Parks
Published by Minotaur Books
March 5th 2013
336 pages
This was the winner of this year's Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery Novel. It is the fourth in the Carter Ross series, about a newspaper reporter in New Jersey. Woken from a deep sleep to investigate a story on the death of a police officer, Carter Ross heads out to talk to the widow. After his first conversation with her he is pulled off the story which his boss, and former girlfriend, tells him was a suicide and as such, is not a story the newspaper is going to cover.
Naturally, that does not satisfy Ross who does not believe that a man planning a trip to Disney World with his wife and children is likely to commit suicide at the police station, so he continues to investigate the murder on his own. In the course of that investigation, he comes across some pretty bizarre characters including the intern who smuggles him into the morgue, and eventually stumbles across a gun running scheme that involves the very same police department that declared the cop a suicide.
Although it is the fourth in the series, it is the first one that I read and I had no problem picking up on the action.
An Embarrassment of Corpses: An Oliver Swithin Mystery #1
By Alan Beechey
Published by Poisoned Pen Press
May 6th 2014
250 pages
In May of this year, Poisoned Pen Press brought out this paperback edition of the first novel of the Oliver Swithin series that began in 1997. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like perfect summertime reading
Scotland Yard is hunting the worst kind of serial killer—one with a sense of humor.
When children’s book author Oliver Swithin, reluctant creator of the notorious “Finsbury the Ferret,” finds an old friend’s body floating in a Trafalgar Square fountain, he can’t convince the police to treat the death as a murder.
But then more corpses turn up daily—on a tube station platform, in a botanical gardens hothouse, even in the middle of Piccadilly Circus—each murdered in an increasingly bizarre manner. It seems that a serial killer is at play, using London’s landscape as his game board.
Oliver joins his uncle, Detective Superintendent Tim Mallard, in a race to uncover the pattern behind the growing number of deaths. But even if they solve the murderer’s puzzle, will it help them identify the next victim before the killer strikes again? And will Oliver ever reveal his secret passion for Mallard’s assistant, the forbidding Detective Sergeant Effie Strongitharm?
And what does any of this have to do with a battery-operated ferret, the works of Lewis Carroll, the great London Scorpion Scare, the episode of the nude Macbeth, and Underwood Tooth, the world’s leading expert on being ignored?
Poisoned Pen Press
Double Whammy
by Gretchen Archer
Published by Henery Press
May 14th 2013
306 pages
Another one I haven't read. Yet.
Davis Way thinks she’s hit the jackpot when she lands a job as the fifth wheel on an elite security team at the fabulous Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. But once there, she runs straight into her ex-ex husband, a rigged slot machine, her evil twin, and a trail of dead bodies. Davis learns the truth and it does not set her free—in fact, it lands her in the pokey.
Buried under a mistaken identity, unable to seek help from her family, her hot streak runs cold until her landlord Bradley Cole steps in. Make that her landlord, lawyer, and love interest. With his help, Davis must win this high stakes game before her luck runs out.
Of the others that I have read, Intelligence, a Novel of the CIA, by Susan Hassler, is less frothy than some of the cozies, but it is filled with a darkly morbid humor. I wrote about it some weeks back and the diary can be found at the link in the title.
A little lighter, with southern charm and humor is Lowcountry Bribe, by C. Hope Clark. One of two books featuring a County Manager for the USDA, Carolina Slade, I wrote about it last winter. That diary can also be found by clicking on the title.
And finally, another series that I am in the middle of and thoroughly enjoying, is one written by Sarah Caudwell, involving a group of young London barristers and their mentor/friend Hillary Tamar. There are four books in the series, written between 1981 and ending with the death of the author in 2000. I'm not going to go into any details here because this series deserves a diary of its own.
Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981)
The Shortest Way to Hades (1984)
The Sirens Sang of Murder (1989)
The Sibyl in Her Grave (2000)
Thank you, Youfraitta, for suggesting this series. They are intriguing on more than one level.
Just this morning I happened to stumble upon an online video from Meet the Press with Bob Schieffer and felt the need to add it, especially since my list is short on thrillers. The segment was
"Mystery Writers Discuss Their Favorite Summer Reads" and it was broadcast this past Sunday. The video features Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Sandra Brown, David Ignatius and Karin Slaughter. It is must see TV for mystery/thriller readers. And I would love to embed it here, but it keeps pulling to the left of the screen so you will have to go to CBS to view it. Who knew that Schieffer wrote songs?
One of the books that was mentioned, and that I thought might make a worthy addition to this list, is FaceOff, a collection of short stories written by members of the International Thriller Writers. A fairly new organization, formed in 2004, (possibly because the Edgars don't do an adequate job of representing them. No, not really.) that holds an annual Thriller Fest in New York. This year's meeting is scheduled to begin tomorrow, July 8 and run through the 12th at the New York City Grand Hyatt. The recipients of the Thriller Awards will be announce on the 12th and will be included in my next MMM diary.
Short story anthologies make great summertime reading for those of us too lethargic (nice word for lazy, isn't it?) to make it through an entire novel. They also serve to introduce us to new writers and characters. This anthology is a little different, because each short story teams up two characters by two different authors in a single story. So Jack Reacher and Nick Heller both appear in "Good and Valuable Consideration," by Lee Child and Joseph Finder. Written by members of the International Thriller Writers, all sales go to benefit the organization.
FaceOff
Edited by David Baldacci
Published by Simon & Schuster
June 3rd 2014
384 pages
Edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci and including stories by Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, and more, this one-of-a-kind anthology pulls together the most beloved characters from the best and most popular thriller series today. Worlds collide!
In an unprecedented collaboration, twenty-three of the world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed thriller writers have paired their series characters—such as Harry Bosch, Jack Reacher, and Lincoln Rhyme—in an eleven-story anthology curated by the International Thriller Writers (ITW). All of the contributors to FaceOff are ITW members and the stories feature these dynamic duos:
· Harry Bosch vs. Patrick Kenzie in “Red Eye,” by Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane
· John Rebus vs. Roy Grace in “In the Nick of Time,” by Ian Rankin and Peter James
· Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy vs. Aloysius Pendergast in “Gaslighted,” by R.L. Stine, Douglas Preston, and Lincoln Child
· Malachai Samuels vs. D.D. Warren in “The Laughing Buddha,” by M.J. Rose and Lisa Gardner
· Paul Madriani vs. Alexandra Cooper in “Surfing the Panther,” by Steve Martini and Linda Fairstein
· Lincoln Rhyme vs. Lucas Davenport in “Rhymes With Prey,” by Jeffery Deaver and John Sandford
· Michael Quinn vs. Repairman Jack in “Infernal Night,” by Heather Graham and F. Paul Wilson
· Sean Reilly vs. Glen Garber in “Pit Stop,” by Raymond Khoury and Linwood Barclay
· Wyatt Hunt vs. Joe Trona in “Silent Hunt,” by John Lescroart and T. Jefferson Parker
· Cotton Malone vs. Gray Pierce in “The Devil’s Bones,” by Steve Berry and James Rollins
· Jack Reacher vs. Nick Heller in “Good and Valuable Consideration,” by Lee Child and Joseph Finder
So sit back and prepare for a rollicking ride as your favorite characters go head-to-head with some worthy opponents in FaceOff—it’s a thrill-a-minute read.
Simon & Schuster
So, what are you reading this summer? Got anything good you want to share?