By: Agatha Christie
Year: 1939
Genre: Mystery

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Elinor Carlisle is standing on trial for murder. The young Mary Gerrard—who worked for Elinor’s wealthy aunt—has been found dead and the only one with apparent motive and means is Elinor. Ah, but anyone who has read an Agatha Christie novel knows that what seems to be the truth isn’t always the obvious choice. Except when it is.

This is a great mystery. Of the many Christie books I’ve read, I haven’t read one quite like this. The novel bounces back-and-forth in time. Before the murder when Elinor and her fiancé visit their Aunt Laura (don’t worry, they’re not blood cousins) afraid she is being scammed for her money. After when Elinor is standing trial. Immediately after the murder. After Elinor is arrested and Poirot is brought in. Christie weaves this back-and-forth seamlessly without losing the point of the story or the thread of murder. The end was a surprise. As always, when I read a Christie novel, I see that she left clues for everyone to see, I just didn’t put them together until the end. I love when a book surprises me.

This was my second foray into a Hercule Poirot novel (of whom I’ve never been terribly fond). I really liked this story (much more than the first Poirot book I read). Poirot came into the case not sure of Elinor’s innocence. He agrees to the job with the understanding of his employer that if he finds out Elinor is guilty, he will not lie.

When Christie is at her best, she is a compelling author. This is a very compelling novel. “Sad Cypress” gives readers a glimpse into the life of the wealthy (Elinor lives in London, her aunt lives in the English countryside in a grand manor) in the 1930s. While other period pieces tend to, um, irritate me (I’m trying to read “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” but those rich English folk are just so whiney and entitled. The best part of that book? The zombies. I wish the zombies would eat everyone especially Elizabeth), I thought this was an interesting glimpse into it’s period. And it didn’t need zombies to make it better.

So, yes, I recommend you read this book. Heck, I recommend you read just about any Agatha Christie novel. She was such an amazing writer and wrote books that should still be clamored for today (like zombies looking for brains. Geeze, once I get zombies on the brain, well, uh, yeah…nevermind).

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

By: Charlaine Harris
Year: 2009
Genre: Mystery

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Harper Connelly can sense dead people. She can find them and then tell you the cause of death. She has been able to do this since the age of 15 when she was struck by lightning. What else is she to do but to offer her services around the country to help find bodies. Many people believe she is a fraud, but after her last case involving serial killers, law enforcement has a cautious belief in Harper’s abilities.

In “Grave Secret,” Harper is hired by a rich woman looking to find out the cause of her father’s death as a lark. So Harper travels with her brother (who is really her step brother. And that matters because they have now started sleeping together). But this job brings them close to the town they grew up in and all of the baggage that brings with it.

See, Harper and her siblings and step-siblings grew up with addict parents and barely survived those years. It culminated when Harper’s older sister disappeared. Try as they might, the kids couldn’t cover up their living situation after the disappearance and the children were all split up into foster and family care.

In the midst of a mystery that puts Harper and her brother Tolliver in danger and gets several other people killed, Tolliver’s dad gets out of jail and wants to make amends with his sons. Or does he? Harper doesn’t believe a word out of his mouth and hopes Tolliver doesn’t as well. All of these seemingly unrelated events come together in an ending I didn’t see coming (which is a hard thing to do!).

Charlaine Harris is also the vampire of the Southern Vampire series (Sookie Stackhouse, the basis for HBO’s “True Blood”). The Harper Connelly books are written in a more serious tone than the Sookie Stackhouse books and she does it well. In comparing the last two books by Harris, I believe this is the better book. It is well written and character driven. While Harper has supernatural abilities, Harris doesn’t rely on those abilities to move the story along, though her ability does play an important role in this story. Unlike the Sookie books, Harris isn’t balancing the weight of the mythology she has created, which seems to be a stumbling block with so many authors who have well-established characters (Yes, I’m talking to you Janet Evanovich and Patricia Cornwell and even Harris with her Sookie books). Harris obviously feels less constrained with this novel and that makes it a great read.

I was a little concerned with the ending of the book. Without giving anything away, the last chapter consists of a, “several months later, this is what happened” synopsis. It seemed like Harris was tying up the story with a nice bow. This gives the impression that she is showing us the end of the story as a way to end the series. I hope this isn’t true—it will be a real loss if Harris gives up Harper Connelly. Here’s to hoping she doesn’t!

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

By: Mark Schweizer
Year: 2009
Genre: Mystery

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I love a good, silly book and this is a good, silly book.

The story follows Hayden Konig, the chief of police and the music director/organized at the local Episcopal church in a small town called St. Germaine, North Carolina. This is the seventh book in Schweizer’s “Liturgical Mystery” series. Each book, which is easily read on it’s own, has the author just tossing in side stories as they come to mind. Schweizer does this is such a fun way, that it doesn’t seem like things are just being added for humor.

In “Diva,” it’s early summer and residents are awaiting the grand opening of the newly built Episcopal church (which burned to the ground in the last book). When breaking ground, a box was found which residents assume is a time capsule and are going to open after worship on the first Sunday in the new building (it doesn’t contain what they expect it to). There is also a new “Christian Formation” director who had decided to have a Bible school with other congregations in town, a “new” Henry Purcell piece called “Elisha and the Bears” and a building that burns down when lightening (from God?) strikes it down during a protest. All of these events lead to plenty of motive for the murder of one of the town’s residents.

I found these books in the depth of the seminary bookstore (the one section that is fiction). They are so much fun, especially if you work in a church. The writing is crisp and light-hearted. The characters are quirky and the situations unrealistic. I lived in a small town, it was not this charming or irreverent. This is obviously an idealized view of the perfect small town. Enough tourist business to maintain the businesses but not so much that the town is world-weary. Everything is… perfect. Of course it’s not real life. It’s fiction and Schweizer has a lot of fun in this fictional world. I especially like the running gag through the series about finding someone to take on the children’s ministry (my future line of work). The church has bad luck finding ministry staff (both pastoral and educational). But the results are oh-so-funny.

One complaint I’ve had about the series is the editing. It seems like a small publishing house with editing not as sharp as it should be (but getting better as the series moves on). I understand extra words (changing a sentence mid-thought and forgetting to fix it) and bad punctuation getting through, but as a graphic designer, I know the very last step should be a final spell check and the error I found in this book would have been flagged by a spellcheck. That is something that I am willing to overlook, though, because these books are so much fun.

Oh, and I forgot the best part. The main character owns a typewriter and hat used by Raymond Chandler. He is sure those two items will help him write the perfect hard-boiled detective novel. Through “Diva” (and the other books) we are given his attempts at writing. They are fabulous in their badness!

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

By: Charlaine Harris
Year: 2009
Genre: Mystery

Amazon.com summary:

The Louisiana town of Bon Temps—along with the rest of the world—is about to be rocked with some big supernatural news: like the vampires before them, the Were people—humans with the ability to change into animals—are about to reveal themselves to humanity. Psychic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse is apprehensive about the revelation, given the way some people in the small town revile anyone with extraordinary powers, including Sookie herself. While the initial announcement seems to go over smoothly with most people, tragedy strikes when Sookie’s brother Jason’s estranged wife, a werepanther, is found murdered and nailed up on a cross. Jason is the prime suspect, but Sookie has even bigger problems to deal with when she learns that a vicious fairy prince is determined to kill her. Darker and more ominous than earlier entries in the series, Harris’ latest raises the stakes (pun intended) for lovable heroine Sookie and comes up a winner. With HBO’s True Blood, a series based on Sookie’s adventures, renewed for a second season, expect demand for this latest gripping installment. —Kristine Huntley

I waited for two months on the library waiting list for this one. I was almost ready to go out and buy it, but I’m trying really hard to leave my purchases to books that I must have. As much as I love Charlaine Harris, this was not a book that I wanted to spend money on the hard-cover version if I didn’t have to. Finally—finally—it came in for me!

If you’re read any of the Southern Vampire Books, you know what to expect from this one. Harris isn’t paving new fiction pathways, she isn’t curing cancer or creating characters who will change all of modernity. She writes fun fiction about the supernatural with a nice touch of humor.

I’ve read several negative reviews of this book. Complaints of plot holes, character flaws and inaccuracies in regards to previous books are floating around the Internet. Perhaps. This story was a little jumpy and the writing wasn’t the best I’ve seen from Harris. But I’m also not one of those fans that seems to have a mental timeline of when everything happened and who did it. I’m realizing the real (little-bit-crazy) die-hard fans are the ones who didn’t like this book. I guess it doesn’t bother me too much if the never-seen-sibling of a tertiary character is misnamed in passing. I was a little disappointed in the direction Harris is taking protagonist Sookie. The series is becoming darker and not quite as light-hearted as before and that is obviously taking it’s toll on Sookie. It will be interesting to see where Harris takes this.

I really like this series and look forward with anticipation for each new book. Of course I suggest it (and others by this author except for her “Aurora Teagarden” mysteries which I think are forced and badly written), and of course I suggest reading from the beginning.

As an aside, let me talk about the HBO series “True Blood” which is based on this series of books. I have watched season two and am now going back to watch season one through Netflix. When I first watched this, my husband watched me as I yelled at the T.V., “That’s now what happens!” Every time. I finally realized I can’t look at the show and the books the same. The show is not bad (lots of sex and violence), it’s just not the same as the books. The books are more of a jumping-off point and should be looked at only that.

And for what it matters, even before watching “True Blood” on HBO, I’ve been Team Eric since the beginning!

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

By: Patricia Cornwell
Year: 2009
Genre: Mystery

Amazon.com summary:

Bestseller Cornwell’s solid 17th thriller to feature Dr. Kay Scarpetta (after Scarpetta) finds Scarpetta—who’s the senior forensic analyst for CNN—probing the murder of a Central Park jogger as well as looking into the disappearance of Hannah Starr, a wealthy financial planner. Quizzed on-air about previously undisclosed details of the perplexing Starr case, Scarpetta realizes that the tentacles of the case reach further than she imagined. Her niece, forensic computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, has her own reasons for digging into Starr’s disappearance, along with Lucy’s girlfriend, New York County ADA Jaime Berger. NYPD Det. Pete Marino, another series staple, is also in the loop as a member of Berger’s task force. But it’s the dark past of Scarpetta’s psychologist husband, Benton Wesley—particularly his presumed death in Point of Origin and shocking reappearance five years later in Blow Fly—that binds the disparate pieces together and make this one of Cornwell’s stronger recent efforts.

Yeah, I’ll admit it, I actually paid for this book. No, I didn’t purchase it, I paid $3 at the library to get a bestseller ahead of everyone else. Have you read any of Patricia Cornwell’s books before? If not, I truly suggest you pick up her first few novels first. I believe that I have read all of Cornwell’s books and anxiously await each new release. She is a compelling author who moves her characters along in “real time” over the years. They are flawed (and more so through the years) and she writes into those flaws.

The last book, “Scarpetta,” was a big disappointment for me. While I’m a big fan, with each novel Cornwell becomes a little more conceited about her protaganist. In “Scarpetta” each character was so whiny, self-involved and holier-than-thou that I found myself wondering if I would feel bad if someone died and even hoping they did. Cornwell moved past that situation in “The Scarpetta Factor.”

The most interesting part of this novel was not the mystery itself (though that was very topical for today’s audiences), but the dealings with the time when Benton Wesley was presumed dead between several novels. Apparently Scarpetta and Wesley have never dealt with that time (and other issues) which finally come to a head in this novel. It was compelling and engrossing writing.

While I thought this was a great book (and a redeeming step for Cornwell, in my opinion), I would not recommend it as an introduction to the wide-world of Scarpetta. There is too much in this story that relies on what happened in previous novels (including “Scarpetta”) and you should have that background to really appreciate what a well-written story “The Scarpetta Factor” really is.

So, this is a great book, and if you’ve read other Scarpetta books you will like this. If you’re new to Cornwell, read one of her first novels instead (”Postmortem” was great).

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars