Shadow Family

by Miyuki Miyabe (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter; Kodansha International 2001; original Japanese edition published by Shueisha as R. P. G., also in 2001)

This murder mystery has been on my To Read list forever–well, for several years, anyway. If I remember correctly, I put it there after reading a good review of it in the Washington Post. Probably in the interim, I decided to stay away from murder mysteries. At 72, I’m feeling an eventual end to my days and figure there are other things to read about. I don’t want to spend the time I have left reading about people killing one another. But since I finally had the book in hand, I read it. It was pretty good, not dissimilar from English language murder mysteries/police fiction. I was a bit confused by the numerous characters: the police officers Ishizu, Takegami, Fuchigami, Shimojima, Tokunaga, Nakamoto (who directs the investigation from his sickbed, though we never actually meet him), and more; the Tokoroda family Ryosuke (the father and the murder victim), his wife Harue and daughter Kazumi; the “shadow family” Yoshie Mita, aka “Mom”, “daughter” Ritsuko/Kazumi and “son” Minoru; and a few others, such as Naoko Imai (another murder victim), Miss A (the first suspect), and Tatsuya Ishiguro (Kazumi Tokoroda’s boyfriend). When company employee Ryosuke Tokoroda turns up dead of multiple stab wounds, the police investigate, and they soon discover that Mr. Tokoroda had a pretend online family in addition to his real family. But who would have wanted to kill him and the college student he was having an affair with? Third Squad Desk Chief Fusao Nakamoto sets an elaborate trap for the killer, which is carried out by Takegami, Tokunaga, Officer Chikako Ishizu, Officer Fuchigami, and a few others. The trap has the desired result, though the reader is kept guessing until the end.

How to Raise an Elephant

by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon 2020)

In this continuation of the saga of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi confront several challenges to their detection skills. Charlie, the hapless part-time mechanic/assistant detective, has acquired (sort of) a baby elephant, which must be protected and prevented from causing havoc and injury in his uncle’s neighborhood. A distant cousin of Mma Ramotswe, Blessing Mompati, wants Precious to give money so that her cousin can get a hip replacement, but the two lady detectives are suspicious of Blessing and the man, Tefo, who claims to need the operation. And Precious and her husband, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, have new neighbors, but it seems there is trouble between the woman and her husband. As usual, everything works out for the best, and all the problems are eventually solved in Mma Ramotswe’s inimitable way. The dialog between Mma Ramotswe, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, Mma Makutsi, Fanwell and Charlie, and Mma Potokwane is delightful. The conversation keeps veering off track, making me laugh out loud. McCall Smith has done it again!

afrika

afrika afrika

afrika afrika afrika

afrika afrika

afrika

The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead Books [Penguin Group] 2015)

I saw the 2016 movie which this psychological thriller is based on, but I remember none of it (it must not have been memorable). The movie is set in the New York City area, but the novel is set in the London suburbs. Like The Mother-in-Law, the story is told in chapters alternately narrated by Rachel, a divorced, unemployed alcoholic; Megan, whom Rachel watches on her terrace from the train she takes into London, who disappears one night and is later found murdered; and Anna, Rachel’s husband’s new wife. Rachel and Anna’s chapters cover incidents in July, August, and September, 2013; Megan’s chapters begin a year earlier and end on July 13, 2013, a week after Rachel’s first chapter. I found the thoughts and actions of all the characters disturbing. Rachel is constantly making excuses for her drinking, her obsession with Megan and her husband Scott, losing her job, behaving badly toward her endlessly forgiving roommate, her blackouts. Megan describes predatory behavior toward men. You wouldn’t want either of these women as friends! Anna is no prize either. The reader is kept guessing (but suspicious) as to who the killer is until very near the end, and then does not know if someone else will die at the murderer’s hand. I won’t give away ending! If you like this sort of whodunit, you will like this book.

The Mother-in-Law

by Sally Hepworth (St. Martin’s, 2019)

This is the story of Lucy and her mother-in-law, Diana, who dies under mysterious circumstances; of Ollie, Lucy’s husband and Diana’s illegitimate son; of Tom, the husband Diana loves surprisingly much; of Nettie, Ollie’s barren sister, and her husband Patrick. It is mostly narrated by Lucy and Diana, each with her own chapters, sometimes labeled the present and at other times labeled the past. Motherless Lucy hoped to forge a close and loving relationship with her mother-in-law, but Diana seems distant and unfriendly from the beginning. However, when we read Diana’s point of view, we come to understand her difficulties with human relationships, her motivations and her fears. She doesn’t actually dislike Lucy as much as Lucy thinks she does. And even though she does things that drive Lucy crazy and make her furious, reading Diana’s thoughts help the reader understand why she acts as she does. Lucy and Diana’s relationship undergoes a major transformation over the course of the novel.

Diana’s death apparently by her own hand and the disposition of her and Tom’s estate raise a lot of questions, and the reader suspects first one and then another character of foul play before Hepworth reveals who the murderer really is.

The story is set in Melbourne.

Blanche on the Lam (Blanche White Series #1)

by Barbara Neely (narrated by Lisa Marie Pitts) (originally published by St. Martin’s, 1992)

I used to love mysteries and detective novels, but I’ve kind of gotten away from those genres in the past few years. Life is beginning to look too short to read about people killing one another. But I was intrigued by the Blanche White series, as the sleuth is a “traditionally built” African American woman who works as a domestic–an ideal position for observing one’s employers’ behavior. I put a hold on the first in the series on Libby, and only later realized that I had inadvertently reserved an audiobook. So Blanche on the Lam was my first experience with an audiobook from Libby. I was pleasantly surprised. The technology was seamless and intuitive. The book sync’ed accurately between my tablet and my phone, so it didn’t matter which I listened to it on. If I didn’t hear something or my mind wandered, I could rewind a little bit with a simple left-to-right swipe on the “cover” and listen again. If I was listening to the book in bed, I could set it to turn itself off in 30 minutes. If I had wanted to, I could have speeded up the narration up to twice as fast (but I didn’t want to). My only complaint is that “View Title Details” did not yield pub date or publisher; I had to google those, and I still don’t know who published the narrated version.

The story is set in small town North Carolina, where Blanche is from, where her mother still lives, and where Blanche has brought her sister’s children after the death of her sister. She is free-lancing as a domestic worker but finds herself in court on a charge of bouncing checks. She is shocked when the judge sentences her to time in jail and takes advantage of an escape opportunity, then takes a job with a rich white family to lie low until she can leave the state. Her employers include Miz Grace, Grace’s husband Everett, her aunt Emmeline, and her cousin Mumsfield, who has Down’s Syndrome. Except for Mumsfield, nobody is quite what they seem; three people die in suspicious circumstances, and Blanche finds herself being pursued by a homicidal maniac. But all’s well that ends well (except for the ones who got murdered).

I enjoyed Blanche’s perspective for a change and appreciated her musings on white and black people. And I liked her earthiness. I’m not sure if I will seek out the three sequels (life being as short as it is), but in case I decide to, they are: #2: Blanche Among the Talented Tenth; 3: Blanche Cleans Up; and #4: Blanche Passes Go.

Favorite quotation: She tugged her panties into a more comfortable relationship with her crotch. (Now who among us hasn’t had to do that on occasion?)

Catching up with Mma Ramotswe

I used to listen to the audio books of Alexander McCall Smith’s delicious No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series every year as they came out. Somehow, retirement got in the way; even before I retired in 2015, I started taking the bus to work and reading books instead of listening to them. So I somehow forgot about Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and all the rest. But now I have Libby! Libby (for Mac devices look here)is a new (for me, anyway) app I can use to borrow e-books from my public library. I got a lesson from one of the librarians last week, and when I got home, j had the idea to check for new No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency titles. There are six–one for each year that I missed. So while I wait for Birds, Beasts, and Relatives by Gerald Durrell, I am catching up with Mma Ramotswe and friends.

The first one I got was The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (2013). In it, Mma Makutsi has a baby, and Mma Ramotswe is forced to acknowledge just how much she depends on her secretary turned assistant detective turned associate detective. As that story unfolds, the agency deals with two new cases: a contested inheritance and a case of intimidation. Meanwhile, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is persuaded that he should help his wife more at home–that he should be a more “modern” husband. To this end, he attempts to mash raw potatoes and other interesting recipes, and Precious needs to be very diplomatic. (Nov. 11)

The second one was The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe (2014). That what Mma Makutsi decides to call her new restaurant. Uncharacteristically, she allows herself to be duped by some shady characters and ends up with a chef who can’t cook and a waitstaff who delight in being rude to the customers. Her nemesis, Violet Sephotho, then writes a scathing review of the new restaurant (but probably anyone else would have written a similarly poor review because the restaurant was really a disaster), but Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane manage to sort everything out in the final chapter. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is forced to let Charlie, the eternal apprentice, go due to a shrinking workload, and Mma Ramotswe feels obligated to offer him a job with the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, even though she can’t afford it, either. Of course, Charlie and Mma Makutsi are constantly in each other’s faces as Charlie becomes first an apprentice detective, then an assistant secretary, then a clerk and finally again a secretary at the agency. And Mma Ramotswe handles an intriguing case about an Indian woman with amnesia. (Nov. 14)

Number 3 in my catch-up series of Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books is The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (2015). In this one, Mma Ramotswe is pressured by Mma Makutsi to take a vacation, which she has never done before. Reluctantly, she gives up the reins of the agency to Mma Makutsi (despite her misgivings), who will be assisted by ex-mechanic apprentice Charlie (who has been laid off by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and subsequently hired by Mma Ramotswe) and by Mr. Polopetsi, the former pharmacist and now part-time chemistry teacher who used to assist the ladies in their work and who comes back to volunteer his services while Mma Ramotswe is away. But Mma Ramotswe is unsuited to vacations. She feels at loose ends and is tormented by the desire to know what is going on at the agency without her. When Mr. Polopetsi secretly consults her about a difficult case he claims Mma Makutsi has foisted off on him, Mma Ramotswe has the excuse she needed to get back in the game, but it must be done delicately, so as not to insult the famously prickly Mma Makutsi. In the end, Mma Makutsi proves to be more capable than Mma Ramotswe perhaps realized. Along the way, Mma Ramotswe rescues a little boy trapped in an abusive home and manages to reunite him with his mother, as well as to settle him at the Orphan Farm with Mms Potokwane. (Nov. 23)

Precious and Grace (2016) shines a light on the changing relationship between Mma Precious Ramotswe, owner and founder of the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and her partner (formerly secretary, then assistant detective), Grace Makutsi. Mild-mannered Precious seeks to avoid conflict (although we know from previous novels that she is not afraid to confront troublemakers and even to threaten them in order to force them to do the right thing), while Grace seems to thrive on it, and she has a dangerous habit of speaking her mind before she thinks through all the possible consequences. Precious keeps an open mind while Grace tends to leap to conclusions and has a hard time admitting that she might be wrong. These differences show up as they try to help a Canadian woman named Susan locate her former nanny, Rosie, and the house where her family lived in Gaborone. After an announcement in the newspaper brings not one but many women claiming to be the Rosie who took care of Susan, Grace assumes that they are all liars, while Precious is inclined to believe the first one.  Precious and Grace make plans to attend a dinner honoring Botswana’s Woman of the Year, with Grace’s longtime enemy, Violet Sepotho, in contention for the honor. Meanwhile, Mr. Polopetsi has gotten himself into hot water by investing in a pyramid scheme, leaving Precious to sort it out, and Fanwell runs over a stray dog, which decides to adopt him. Fanwell cannot take the dog to the place where he lives with his uncle’s family in very close quarters, and Precious tries to figure out a solution, while Grace insists that dogs do not have souls, so it doesn’t really matter what happens to the dog. The most challenging case is that of Susan and Rosie, which turns out to be not as it first appeared, the grateful adult child returning to thank the beloved nanny. But in the end, the dog finds a home; Mr Polopetsi makes amends to those he has cluelessly swindled and even finds the perfect part-time job in the police crime lab; and Susan makes her peace with the past. Moreover, Grace finds herself able to see Violet Sepotho’s triumph in a new light, thanks to Precious’ gentle reasoning.

I started The House of Unexpected Sisters (2017) while I was not yet finished with Precious and Grace because I was listening to P&G on CD book (reveling in the unhurried narration of Lisette Lecat), which takes longer. When I read the text, I tend to rush through it, even though I try not to; it’s the same bad habit which renders me incapable of appreciating most poetry. Anyway, the main cases in Unexpected Sisters involve a woman dismissed from her job on false pretenses and Mma Ramotswe’s discovery of a hitherto unknown woman who shares her last name, which is quite rare. Underlying these story lines is the infamous Note Mokoti, former husband and abuser of Mma Ramotswe, back in Gaborone from South Africa for unknown reasons and causing Mma Ramotswe a great deal of concern. Of these, the most interesting is the mysterious Mingie Ramotswe, who (SPOILER ALERT!) turns out to be Mma Ramotswe’s half-sister, and due to a clerical error, Mma Ramotswe’s image of her “daddy” as a perfect human being is severely shaken. She rejects Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s attempts to help her as she struggles with renewed grief and loss. McCall Smith quietly includes the issue of same-sex marriage/partnership as a part of this story line. (Mma Ramotswe, of course, harbors no anti-gay prejudice.) The case of the fired sales clerk is resolved when Mma Ramotswe discovers that the boss has been straying with the vile Violet Sepotho and goes to talk to his wife; and she is spared having to confront Note Mokoti by the ever-helpful Mma Potokwane, who reports that he has turned over a new leaf and left Gaborone again.

I read The Colours of All the Cattle (2018) in three different formats. First I borrowed the e-book on Libby. Then I tried out a new technology called Playaway  from the library: a little plastic device about the size of an iPod holding one audiobook. The borrower provides earbuds and a AAA battery. The controls were simple and Lisette Lecat’s reading delightful as always, but unfortunately the device did not work as intended. It kept shutting down, and each time it did that, I had to restore my speed and volume settings. Then it stopped going back to the place it had stopped, requiring that I search over and over for my place in the book. Way more frustrating than I was prepared to deal with! Then I forgot I already had the e-book on my tablet, so I borrowed an old-fashioned book. I finished the book both ways. You can believe I will tell the library staff about my less-than-ideal experience with Playaway when I return it!

The story features three interwoven plots. One of these is the case of Dr. Marang, a kindly doctor from Mma Ramotswe’s home village of Mochudi, who was struck by a hit-and-run driver and badly injured, leading to many expenses for which he would like to be compensated. Mma Ramotswe is at first confounded by the seeming impossibility of finding the driver of a car the good doctor could only describe as “blue”, but with the assistance of Charlie, she is able to resolve the case satisfactorily. The second plot is the relationship between Charlie and a beautiful young lady named Queenie-Queenie, daughter of the owner of a large trucking business. Queenie-Queenie hides her family’s wealth and prestige from Charlie, but when he finds out, he becomes discouraged, believing that her family will never allow her to marry such a poor man without cattle for a bride-price. Perhaps the main story involves Mma Ramotswe’s adventure into local politics when she allows herself to be persuaded to run for a seat on the Gaborone City Council by Mma Potokwane, who opposes the construction of the Big Fun Hotel next to the cemetery where her mother is interred, and by Mma Makutsi, whose main goal is to ensure the defeat of Violet Sephotho, her longtime enemy, who is also running (or standing, as they say in Botswana) for the seat. Mma Ramotswe immediately regrets having agreed to stand for the Council and does her best to back out of her commitment, but in the end, she goes through with it (although she is incapable of voting for herself, which feels horribly immodest to her). Despite (or perhaps because of) an exceedingly modest campaign slogan (“I am not much, but I promise you I’ll do my best.”), she wins the election but is neatly rescued from actually having to serve on the Council once Mma Potokwane’s wish to stop the hotel construction has been fulfilled. That’s typical of the series: the solutions are invariably easy and neat. The first person you suspect is often the culprit, unlike in more traditional mysteries. (If I were a cataloguer in a library, I might not classify these as mysteries at all!) What makes the books so delightful is not how the crimes are solved or the mysteries untangled; it is what happens in between–the simple conversations between husbands and wives, or Mma Ramotswe’s thoughts as she seeks to escape from the world of politics she is suddenly thrust into. These make Botswana seem like a simpler place than the one we inhabit, even though it also has corrupt politicians, dishonest people, and schemers.

I’ve just discovered that there is a 2019 book in the series, but Libby can’t guarantee I will get it before 13 weeks, so I’m going to go ahead and publish this post!

 

Maigret’s First Case

by Georges Simenon (in English translation by Ros Schwartz, Penguin Classics 2016; originally published in French as La première enquête de Maigret in 1949)

This could be the first Maigret roman policier I have read in translation; or maybe not; if I had read another one, I don’t remember doing so. But I am pretty sure I have not read this one in any language. Jules Maigret is a twenty-something employee of the Saint-Georges district police station (secretary to the chief inspector), very young, totally inexperienced, in love with his nascent police career and full of ambition to rise in the ranks and eventually work at the Quai des Orfèvres (the police headquarters in Paris). The chief inspector assigns him his first case: a young flautist, walking down a fancy Paris street late one night, sees a young woman leaning out of a window and screaming for help, and hears a gunshot. What happened? Was anyone injured (other than the flautist, who tried to intervene and was beaten for his pains)?

Maigret sets to work, aided by the flautist, Justin Minard. His modus operandi is not very different from what would become his signature style later: immersion into the world where the crime was (or was not) committed, getting to know all the people involved, watching and waiting and taking notes and thinking. But at this stage of his life, he lacks confidence in himself and his gut feelings, and doors do not open for him, or people jump to do his bidding, as they will later. He even comes to suspect that the Chief Inspector, for whom he has enormous respect, does not wish the case to be resolved. . . .

It’s interested to read what is essentially a prequel to the other books. The story is set in a Paris where automobiles like the De Dion Bouton share the streets with horse-drawn carriages. Maigret is a slim young man, in contrast to his later heft. He has not been married long, but a youthful Mme. Maigret is as accommodating, understanding, and trusting as ever.

Favorite quote: “He hadn’t slept with his moustache net on and he had to straighten the tips with a hot curling iron.” Really, a moustache net? Who’d have thought?

Two by Simenon

Maigret au Picratt’s (English version: Maigret in Montmartre), 1950

Maigret en meublé (English version: Maigret Takes a Room/Maigret Rents a Room), 1951

(in Tout Simenon Vol. 5, Presses de la Cité 1988)

I was recently inspired to re-read Maigret au Picratt’s when I watched it on my local PBS station, starring Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean) as Maigret (likable, but not at all how one imagines Maigret while reading). I was pleased to find that it was in one of my four Tout Simenon volumes (it’s a 25-volume set, each of which has about ten novels and whodunits), so I immediately started to read. When I lived in France in the early 1970s,  I used to love reading Maigret mysteries, which for some reason were not difficult for me to understand (compared to the novels), and I read a lot of them. I guess there was a lot of repeated vocabulary from one to another. I don’t remember looking up words as I read, and all these years later, I can still read them without relying on a dictionary, but it was so easy to check a word on my phone (with a choice of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries!) that I sometimes opted to do that (mostly finding that the words meant what I had thought they did, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of Understanding Vocabulary in Context).

Maigret au Picratt’s follows Inspector Maigret as he investigates the murder of Arlette, a young stripper at a bar named Picratt’s. The night before she was killed, Arlette had gone to the neighborhood police station to report that she had overheard two men in Picratt’s talking about murdering a countess. They didn’t believe her until she herself was found strangled in her room. Maigret takes over the investigation from the long-suffering Inspector Lognon (who is used to ceding his authority to Maigret), but he is not fast enough to stop the killer from murdering the Countess von Farnheim in her apartment the following day. Then it’s all hands on deck to catch the killer before he strikes again. The countess was a drug addict, and the investigation takes Maigret into the seedy underground world of addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes,  and petty criminals. Maigret’s signature investigative style of immersing himself in the culture of the killer and victim is in evidence here, as well as in Maigret en meublé, which I also read because it followed immediately after Maigret au Picratt’s (both were written while Simenon was living in Connecticut, 1950-1955).

In this story, Inspector Janvier, one of the detectives who works very closely with Maigret, is shot while staking out a suspect in the Rue Lhomond, and Maigret becomes obsessed with finding the shooter. Since Madame Maigret is away from home, Maigret rents a furnished room in the building in front of which Janvier was shot, and he immerses himself in the life and people of the little street, chatting up the tenants and the young woman (la grosse fille, in the language of the day) who owns the building and knows more than she will reveal, the neighbors, the shopkeepers and the owner of the bar where he goes to eat and drink beer and white wine. (In doing so, Maigret absents himself from his other duties at the Police Judiciaire, other than checking in on the phone from time to time, but as always, his boss (le chef) seems okay with that.) Maigret becomes increasingly frustrated as his investigation turns up nothing, but eventually, he seems to figure out what must have happened, and then he sets about getting those involved to admit their guilt.

Written in the early 50s, these stories were probably set in the 40s. What strikes a modern reader is that in a time before cell phones, investigators on the street were very limited in their ability to communicate with their colleagues; if they were tailing a suspect, they would have to duck into a café or a bar to use a public telephone. To get from one place to another, they took taxis. Of course, there was no DNA evidence. There were no body cameras. But Maigret and his inspectors generally seem to respect the humanity of the people they are investigating and interviewing. I have no idea how accurate this depiction of the Paris police is!

Anyway, when I went to my local library recently, I checked the fiction and mystery shelves for Simenon’s books and was surprised to find only one Maigret mystery (Maigret’s First Case) and no novels. I checked it out, so soon I may be reading about Maigret in English. However, as usual, I borrowed more books than I can possibly read (four), and then I ordered Fear: Trump in the White House on my Kindle, so who knows if I will have a chance to get to it? 🙂

For a review of Pierre Assouline’s 1997 biography of Simenon, visit https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/10/reviews/970810.10bairlt.html. Hmmm. . . . not an admirable person. I much prefer Maigret!

For an interesting summary and discussion of Maigret en meublé on the website Maigret of the Month, try https://www.trussel.com/maig/mommeu.htm.

Spider Woman’s Daughter

by Anne Hillerman (Harper 2013; ISBN 978-0-06-227049-8)

Tony Hillerman’s daughter Anne has taken up the mantle of continuing her father’s Leaphorn and Chee  mystery series. I have only read a few of these, but someone gave me this one, and I liked it well enough, although I am not so enamored of mysteries as I once was. Joe Leaphorn himself is out of action in a hospital CCU after being shot in the head by an unknown assailant. It’s up to Jim Chee and his wife Bernie Manuelito, Leaphorn’s former colleagues, to solve the mystery. Of course, there are some tense moments when it looks as though the assailant will succeed in getting rid of them, but I don’t think I will spoil anyone’s reading experience to say that the assailant’s evil plot does not succeed.

Lots of information about Navajo rugs, Chaco pots, and the Navajo way of thinking. There’s an interesting side story concerning Bernie’s relationships with her ailing mother and younger sister.

The Silkworm

by Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling) (Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Co. 2014; ISBN 978-0-316-20687-7)

This is the second murder mystery featuring Cormoran Strike, private detective; I have not read the first one. I like murder mysteries and have read many; I count those of P. D. James and Ellis Peters among my favorites. Patricia Cornwell is too grisly for my taste, and this one by the author of Harry Potter is pretty grisly. Grisly, but not violent in the sense that Dick Francis’ novels are violent, where the protagonist always finds himself in near-fatal, extremely painful circumstances which he must endure in order to prevail. No, in The Silkworm, Cormoran Strike is never really in danger, and the most pain he suffers is when his prosthetic lower leg rubs his swollen stump. This is undoubtedly very painful, but not scary.

Anyway, Strike is a nice guy (like Francis’ protagonists, very likable), and his assistant Robin Ellacott is a nice person, in contrast to the majority of the characters in the novel. They are all part of the world of publishing: authors, editors, agents, publishers, and associated staff. In keeping with this theme, each chapter begins with a quotation from a 16th or 17th century British author, such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, John Webster, John Lyly, William Shakespeare and others. I wondered how the author selected them. Other than to show off her erudition, I don’t think they were necessary. I wonder if many readers actually notice them.

The book was long, about 450 pages. About 3/4 of the way through, it occurred to me that I was wasting my time. This is not to say the book didn’t hold my attention. It’s what I would classify as a “beach read”–literary fluff. There are so many more worthy things to read out there, including all seven Harry Potter books. I felt the same way about Rowling’s first adult novel. It was okay, even good, but not memorable in the way the Harry Potter books are. I hope that Rowling will keep writing until she finds that magical combination of character and plot that made Harry Potter so special.