Dear Reader: Please think of this as a work in progress. I have not done a blog before so basically I do not know what I am doing. However, I did buy Blogging for Dummies, which looks like it may eventually help.
Summer Reading, part two, consists of the mysteries I read for the Lincoln City Libraries summer reading program. I shall probably list them in order of most favorite to least favorite.
Rosa (Crown, 2005) by Jonathan Rabb is a perfect example of why we need libraries. This title appears to be unavailable in anything but expensive out-of-print versions and this is just wrong. Publishers take note. It is a fabulous historical mystery of the death and disappearance of Rosa Luxemberg, a famous socialist, of pre-World War I Berlin. And it is a trilogy. I have the second volume, Shadow and Light in a FSG Picador paperback, which is near the top of my stack to read. It jumps to 1927 Berlin and once again employs real historical characters like Fritz Lang. The third volume, The Second Son, is out in hardback (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; February 2011).
You will find as we go along that historical novels and mysteries are my favorites, particularly British. Heresy: An Historical Thriller by S. J. Parris (a pseudonym) (Doubleday, 2010) is British but employs a defrocked Italian monk, Giordano Bruno, as a detective. He, also, is based on a real life character and happens to be befriended by the poet and courtier, Sir Philip Sidney, which lands him an uncover job in Oxford with Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's Spymaster. He combines his search for a rare manuscript with his spy duties for Walsingham. And, for me happy news: it is the first in a series. I have the second one, Prophecy (Doubleday, 2011) sitting here starting me in the face.
Instruments of Darkness (Viking, 2009)by Imogen Robertson is 18th century England and brings together an interesting detective duo, the famous anatomist and recluse, Garbriel Crowther and the plucky wife of a Naval Officer, Mrs. Harriet Westerman. The two combine to solve a mystery of the Thornleigh Hall family. Side note: In all the reading I do, I seem to encounter an inordinate amount of plucky women. It makes me wonder why it took so long for women to get the vote. Anyway, there are two other titles by the author, Anatomy of a Murder, which may come before Instruments of Darkness and Island of Bones, which may come after Instruments of Darkness. It is hard to tell but I plan on reading them both.
Enough for now: more mysteries next time.
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