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Book review

Still Life by Louise Penny

Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)Still Life by Louise Penny

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this read, with its compelling characters that maintained their flaws and foibles through a nicely complex plot. The scenery was well described, but the rich character development was what made the story.

This isn’t the first I have read of this series, but reading the books out of sequence is working for me. I think this is a tribute to how Louise Penny has maintained the characters and setting through this series.

Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team investigate a death in the very small village of Three Pines. The residents provide a closed environment so suitable for a murder investigation.

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Book review

Pirate King

Pirate King

by Laurie R King

read 26 May 2012

Mary Russell, Sherlock Homes’ wife, is inveigled into joining a film company producing a film of a film of the Pirates of Penzance. She chaperones a crew and a lot of young actresses to Portugal and to Morocco, in hopes of discovering what happened to the director’s previous assistant.

I got the impression that Laurie King might have read the same historical fiction about the corsairs of Salé as I had… (The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson) Considering how much historical fiction I trawl through, it was odd that this topic has not surfaced in my reading until these last few months – and now three times if you count Clive Cussler’s Corsair.

Book review

The Postmistress

The Postmistress
By Sarah Blake
Audio finished 14 May 2012

England is at war with Germany and the US is resisting it. A Doctor from a fictional town on Cape Cod goes to London to help out in the Blitz of World War II, and also to escape the town where his first death-in-childbirth has happened.
The postmistress is a strange spinster who falls for the local town defence man. She is all about order and procedure. She has a letter from the doctor to give to his wife if he dies. She breaks the rules and reads a letter that suggests he is dead but can’t bring herself to let down the wife.
A radio correspondent meets the doctor and sees him die in an accident with a taxi after an air raid. She takes a letter from him but following the horrors of the fleeing Jews she records in Vichy France, she visits the Cape but can’t bring herself to give the letter to the doctor’s pregnant widow who doesn’t know he is dead.
The story describes the effects of recording people’s stories, and how a story keeps existence going. Other themes include how people deal with secrets, the truth and the telling of it.