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Vacation Report, Part 4
Feb. 29th, 2024 01:10 pmBooks read
So two of the books I read on the cruise had a common theme – amateur detectives. I didn’t know that when I bought them nor when I selected them for the cruise. (I picked them for the cruise because they were both trade paperbacks and thus physically lighter.)
Grave Reservations stars a 30-something woman based in Seattle who has an inconsistent psychic ability and is trying to start a travel agency. In Chapter 1, she prevents a police detective from getting on a plane that crashes on takeoff, thus potentially saving his life. He then asks her to help with a cold case, and things get interesting.
A Death in Door County is set in Door County Wisconsin which is why I bought the book. It starts with a man in a boat being killed by a cyprid lake monster, which was not a promising start for me. The book did, however, grow on me. Here our amateur detective is a 30-something woman who owns and runs a store that sells a combination of books and weird artifacts. Unlike the 30-something of Grave Reservations, she’s in very good shape financially.
Both stories have several other commonalities. First, both women have tragedies in their past, which in Grave plays a key role in the book. Second, they are both Book 1 in a new series for the author. Third, the stories both have a strong sense of place. Priest, although from Florida originally, is a long-time resident of Seattle and it shows. I don’t know where Ryan hangs her hat, but clearly she’s been to Door County and uses some real history in constructing her book.
I read three other books during this trip, if you include the weekend I got back. First was The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. It’s a very British book, and action takes place on an isolated hunting lodge in Scotland. It was a very nice thriller, although I had a heck of a time remembering the title. The last books I read were Shards of Honor and Barrayar, two books in the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois Bujold McMaster. Of interest to me was how Sergeant Bothari, seen as a hero by Miles, was really a mentally-ill man who was being protected by the elder Vorkosigans.
So two of the books I read on the cruise had a common theme – amateur detectives. I didn’t know that when I bought them nor when I selected them for the cruise. (I picked them for the cruise because they were both trade paperbacks and thus physically lighter.)
Grave Reservations stars a 30-something woman based in Seattle who has an inconsistent psychic ability and is trying to start a travel agency. In Chapter 1, she prevents a police detective from getting on a plane that crashes on takeoff, thus potentially saving his life. He then asks her to help with a cold case, and things get interesting.
A Death in Door County is set in Door County Wisconsin which is why I bought the book. It starts with a man in a boat being killed by a cyprid lake monster, which was not a promising start for me. The book did, however, grow on me. Here our amateur detective is a 30-something woman who owns and runs a store that sells a combination of books and weird artifacts. Unlike the 30-something of Grave Reservations, she’s in very good shape financially.
Both stories have several other commonalities. First, both women have tragedies in their past, which in Grave plays a key role in the book. Second, they are both Book 1 in a new series for the author. Third, the stories both have a strong sense of place. Priest, although from Florida originally, is a long-time resident of Seattle and it shows. I don’t know where Ryan hangs her hat, but clearly she’s been to Door County and uses some real history in constructing her book.
I read three other books during this trip, if you include the weekend I got back. First was The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. It’s a very British book, and action takes place on an isolated hunting lodge in Scotland. It was a very nice thriller, although I had a heck of a time remembering the title. The last books I read were Shards of Honor and Barrayar, two books in the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois Bujold McMaster. Of interest to me was how Sergeant Bothari, seen as a hero by Miles, was really a mentally-ill man who was being protected by the elder Vorkosigans.