Book Review: The Big Grabowski by Carolyn J. Rose & Mike Nettleton
The Big Grabowski
Carolyn J. Rose & Mike Nettleton
Krill Press, 2009
ISBN 0982144334
Trade Paperback
This is one of the funniest mysteries I’ve ever read! It rates so high on my list of all-time favorite mysteries, any author will have to go a long way to displace The Big Grabowski. The first few pages had me thinking Mayberry RFD and Barney Fife !
The setting is Devil’s Harbor, a tourist town in Oregon where, according to Jennifer Daley, an employee at Neptune’s Grotto, nothing exciting ever happens and it’s the most boring town in Oregon. Jennifer is charged with counting the sea lions since the tourists have a right to know how many sea lions they’ll see for their money. Jennifer, however, is primarily interested in winning the Miss Whirligig contest and is day dreaming about her coronation dress and crown, as well as practicing her victory dance and her pose for the newspaper photo. Aside from her angst about the whiriligig contest, Jennifer worries about keeping her job so she can get her shoes out of lay- away.
It was when she finally got down to doing her job of counting sea lions that she saw something that was definitely not a bachelor bull; she knew this because she knows that sea lions don’t wear ties. The floater turns out to be Vincent Grabowski, an unscrupulous land developer whose work included leveling ridges for a development by bulldozing tons of earth into a creek during salmon migration. Too, Grabowski, aka Grab-Ass, has sampled more than his share of the women in Devil’s Harbor.
Following the discovery of the homicide, the reader meets character after character who will make you smile if not laugh out loud. Enter Sergeant Greg Erdman who is agonizing over how he would explain to Molly Donovan, a reporter, why he stood her up the evening before. Molly, the sleuth, left her job reporting the crime beat in Albuquerque, and moved to Devil’s Harbor when her father had a heart attack. Now she writes for the North Coast Flotsam where the most serious crimes are drunken fist fights and stealing from the cars of tourists while they are busy sightseeing. There is the not-so-grieving widow, Claire, and her boyfriend, Adam Quarles. Not to be forgotten is Icky Ferris, owner of Sweete Temptations Ice Cream Shop but also a producer of marijuana in his backyard garden. Also memorable is Henri Trevelle, a former professional hockey player, and his cat Margaret whom he calls a little slut since she goes “slumming in the alley like a common trollop”.
The list of interesting characters, most of whom had a motive to push The Big Grabowski off Perdition Point to swim with the sea lions, goes on and on. According to Molly, using the phone book for a suspect list would be a good starting point. I must admit that when I read a book with many characters, I tend to forget who is who which then forces me to refer back, but not so with this book. These characters are outstanding and unforgettable !
The Big Grabowski is entertaining and so much fun, I hated it to end. I give this book the highest rating !! I hope the authors are busy on a sequel or some other equally funny book. In conclusion…READ THIS BOOK – you won’t regret it!
Reviewed by Jean Tribull Harris, August 2010.
August 19, 2010
Tags: humor, mystery, Pacific Northwest Posted in: Full Reviews 
2 Comments
Do You Believe?
One day last week, my yard was full of toadstools and/or mushrooms; I never have known how to tell one from the other so it’s a good thing chefs and farmers do it for me.
These mushrooms were everywhere, I suppose brought out by the intermittent rains, excessive heat and high humidity we’ve been having lately. They were all sizes, ranging from a button to one of those dark things a foot across. Shapes and colors were varied, too, from the puffy creamy kind to the brownish-yellow type that looks kind of like a flattish dahlia.
Having so many of these on my own lawn brought to mind the few times in my life I’ve seen fairy rings. For anyone with even the slightest interest in woodland creatures such as fairies, elves and pixies, they bring a little catch of breath, a feeling that you just might be lucky enough to witness a wonderful thing. Seeing the ring, it’s easy to imagine a fairy sitting under a toadstool or lounging on top. Legend has it that a fairy ring rises when fairies, elves or pixies dance in a circle in the moonlight and we mortals can see it the next morning. It lasts for five days and, if you wait for the creatures to return to the ring before it disappears, you might be able to capture one. However, intruding on the creatures’ sacred place can bring a curse and bad luck, especially if you try—fruitlessly— to destroy it.
In the words of an old Scottish rhyme…
- He wha tills the fairies’ green
- Nae luck again shall hae :
- And he wha spills the fairies’ ring
- Betide him want and wae.
- For weirdless days and weary nights
- Are his till his deein’ day.
- But he wha gaes by the fairy ring,
- Nae dule nor pine shall see,
- And he wha cleans the fairy ring
- An easy death shall dee.
I can totally see Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men singing this <g>.
Do I believe? Well, maybe just a teensy little bit. For me, they fall into the category of things that COULD be true and, as far as I know, nobody has proven they don’t exist so why not believe?
Numerous works of literature include fairies and fairy rings, most famously, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Cicely Mary Barker is arguably the premier fairy artist and her collections, such as Flower Fairies of the Spring, have enchanted us for more than 85 years; today’s garden gnome is probably a relic of Victorian fantasy art. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes canon, famously fell for the fraudulent 1917 and 1920 fairy photographs made by two young Yorkshire girls and even wrote a book, The Coming of the Fairies, which touts the pictures as genuine proof of fairies’ existence. (Doyle may have created a highly intelligent detective but that doesn’t mean he himself was all that bright, does it?)
Who am I to decide whether or not pixies and elves and fairies exist? Tolkien and others of his ilk certainly managed to spin some pretty spectacular stories and I prefer to think they might have just had a little inside knowledge 
 Until someone convinces me one way or the other, I’ll just imagine this little guy hanging out among all my mushrooms and toadstools, waiting for somebody to tickle his belly.
August 18, 2010
Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller No Comments
Living Vicariously Through Books
Returning guest blogger, Kathleen Delaney, talks about why we read.
As you read this, I’m touring around Alaska. I’ve never been there before, and thought I’d better get up there before the glaciers melted and the polar bears became extinct. So, when my daughter-in-law asked me to come along with her, my daughter, and their two kids, I jumped at the chance. Her parents live there, I enjoy their company, and they were anxious to show our grandchildren and me the sights.
I’ve always been fascinated by Alaska. I’ve read a lot about it. Jack London’s tales, Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild, Sue Henry’s mysteries, they have all fired my imagination, especially about the Iditarod. I can picture myself standing on the end of my sled, swathed in furs, shouting “mush, mush” to my eager team of Malamutes, lunging into their harnesses as we fly over frozen rivers, through dense forest, across the open tundra. The reality, of course, is a little different. A 73 year old one legged woman who hates being cold and whose potential dog team consists of one elderly German Shepherd and an Italian Greyhound has little chance of winning the Iditarod. Or for that matter, even starting it. But it doesn’t really matter because, thanks to all those books, I’ve been there. And when I’m touring Danali in the safety of the tour bus, or listening to the glacier crack up from the security of the boat deck, I’ll be able to look beyond them to those wild places where the books have already taken me.
My mother wanted to go to England. All her life she was fascinated by English history and she had no problem relaying that fascination to my brother and me. I knew the names of Henry VIII’s wives before I knew all the states and could give you the complete genealogy of the Plantagenets better than most English school children.
Mother never made it to England. She was a rotten traveler, planning her return trip home before she’d ever left. But I don’t think it really mattered. She knew the bookseller at 18 Charing Cross Road well, had walked the campus of Oxford with Harriet Vane, had wandered the moors with Heathcliff and was almost a permanent resident of St Mary Mead. She met hundreds of interesting people in her untraveled lifetime and had no end of adventures she would have been horrified to consider in real life.
I think that’s one of the reasons we read, fiction at least. There are very few of us who will ever stumble over a dead body and find ourselves being chased by the murderer through dark alleys because we discovered his identity. We’re almost guaranteed not to find a cure for a strange virus that threatens to destroy the world before midnight. We’ll never follow a covered wagon across the mountains, or be attacked by Indians, or visit Japan in the 17th century. And I don’t think very many of us will become bounty hunters and get our cars blown up. Of course, you never know—.
But in books, there is no limit to where we can go and who we can meet. Isn’t it wonderful?
Of course, we don’t read exclusively to have adventures, although they’re fun. We read primarily because of the people we meet. Think about it. The people you’ve met through reading, the ones you’ll never forget. Next time we’ll talk about them.
But now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to catch an airplane and I have this book—.
August 17, 2010
Posted in: Guest Blogs 5 Comments
Book Review: The Master of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche
The Master of Jalna
Mazo de la Roche
Pan Books, Ltd., 1954 (first published in 1933)
ISBN 0330202626
Mass Market
Also available as a trade paperback re-issue from XYZ Publishing
The Master of Jalna is the fourth by publication date, tenth by story chronology, of 16 novels spanning a hundred years from 1854 to 1954. Known as the Whiteoak Chronicles or the Jalna series, they told the saga of a Canadian family and Jalna, the family manor. The books are usually listed chronologically by story line rather than by date of publication but each can be read independently. I first read the whole series in my 20′s and then picked up half of them on a book trip my daughter Annie and I took in 2005 to the world’s biggest collection of bookstores, Hay-on-Wye in Wales.
In this entry in the series, Renny Whiteoak, owner of Jalna, must take over where Grandmother Adeline left off, carrying on the family traditions. His daughter, Adeline, has inherited her namesake’s red hair and strong-willed ways and raising her is a challenge for Renny and his wife, Alayne. Along the way, Renny develops a love for Claire, his best friend’s widow, and must also deal with a financial crisis that threatens the family estate.
Mazo de la Roche published Jalna, the first book in the series, in 1927 and achieved instant fame and fortune at the age of 48. Interestingly, the book first appeared in an American magazine, Atlantic Monthly, where it won a $10,000 award, rather than in a Canadian publication. She went on to write 15 more books in the series and all were bestsellers. A movie version of Jalna was released in the 1930′s and there was a later CBC television series. The house in Ontario believed to be the inspiration for Jalna is maintained by a museum association.
Something about the Whiteoak Chronicles has stayed with me all these years and I was delighted to find so many of them on our trip. Re-reading them has not been a disappointment and I’m just as invested in this family’s saga as I was back then. I’m looking forward to tracking down the volumes I don’t have.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, August 2010.
August 16, 2010
Tags: Canada, family saga, general fiction, historical fiction Posted in: My Reviews No Comments
The Torturous Path to Smaller Bills
Like everybody else these days—or, at least, everybody who isn’t in the upper strata financially—I’ve been looking for ways to cut some expenses. My income isn’t going to get any bigger so reducing what I spend is my only hope. That, of course, means getting rid of some of the little extras since most of my bills are of the must-pay variety, pesky things like utilities, credit cards, home equity line, health insurance. My health insurance is far and away the biggest hit since it’s an individual policy but, having had open heart surgery several years ago and having family history of some scary stuff, I’m not about to let that go.
So, the other day, I started thinking about what I can do without. I can reduce some of my lawn care costs but not really till early next spring.  I can cancel my Netflix subscription but that’ll only save me $14.69 a month. Since Annie moved to St. Augustine three weeks ago, I’ll certainly see a reduction in movie and dinner spending—we did a lot of both. That’ll also save a little bit on gas.
Groceries? Not so much I can do there. I’m not a big food shopper and most things I get are not overly expensive except I demand Charmin and Reese’s peanut butter—you just can’t go cheap on some things, right? Still, I suppose I could have resisted the temptation to buy the teeny jar of gourmet mustard I saw yesterday. Sheesh, it was $1.19 for a 1.4 ounce jar but, hey, I’m really into mustard. What can I say?
Sidebar: We Richmonders have not yet gotten over the loss of our beloved local grocery chain several months ago when a big, mean conglomerate bought it and we can’t resist nitpicking about all the ways Ukrop’s used to make our food lives so heavenly. Here’s the weird thing, though—the new chain is less high-end so is a bit cheaper but some of their shelf selections are pretty strange. They carry this expensive gourmet mustard but not Beanie Weenies! What’s with that?
Hamilton, our erstwhile bookstore cat, has just given me some future savings. He lives with friends now but I pay his food and vet expenses. He had a blood sugar curve done last week and he’s doing so well with his diabetes (yay!) that his daily insulin regimen has been reduced from two shots to one. That means the insulin and the needles will last twice as long.
Find a cheaper trash collector? Nah, at less than $36 a month, the one I have is probably pretty much on the mark.
Real estate and property taxes? Yeah, moving right along…
Cheaper cat food? Perish the thought. If I did that, their delicate digestive systems would be sharing the barf everywhere. Uh uh, not doing that.
Sidebar #2: Back to the grocery store…I was there one night about a week ago and it looked like a Canada Geese convention was going on. They were all over the parking lot and not about to make way for silly cars.
Buy fewer books? You’re joking, right? And don’t you even breathe the word “ebooks”. They may be dirt cheap but they’re just not my cuppa tea.
The cellphone is a real drain at about $82 a month and I might actually be able to cut that by almost half if I go on a limited minutes plan or even a pre-paid plan. That’ll require signing another contract which I don’t want to do but have no good reason for saying so. I’ve had a mobile phone in one form or another for probably 20 years starting with a bag phone and, in all that time, the only reason the name of the company has changed multiple times is because they kept getting bought. So, no, I doubt I’ll get an irresistible urge to bolt hence no need to fear a contract. I will have to shell out for a new phone, though. Hmm…guess I’d better go visit the phone store to find out more.
Internet access? Sorry, I like my FIOS coverage and speed and don’t wanna give it up.
And that brings me to the last possibility, my TV plan. No matter how I look at it, the only savings I can find is $17 if I give up HBO. That’s a given after the current True Blood season is over in September since I don’t watch anything else on there. Beyond that, I’d have to give up my DVRs ($26) which is a really scary thought since I always have at least 40 hours on there and rarely erase anything without watching it. And I could drop cable and go with local channels only. NO!!! What would I do without TNT and USA and Syfy and A&E and Bravo (OK, it’s cheesy but I’m a fan) and Lifetime and Discovery and History and BBC America and Investigation Discovery??
This cost-cutting venture is just not going the way I planned. How do people do it?
August 15, 2010
Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller No Comments
Book Review: Mama Gets Hitched
Mama Gets Hitched
Deborah Sharp
Midnight Ink, July 2010
ISBN 0738719226
Trade Paperback
Mama is marrying Sally. Sally is a nice Italian man from New York or some such Yankee place. Mama is planning the wedding of the decade, no matter that this is not her first, or even fourth, trip down the aisle. Mace and her sisters will be wearing something out of GWTW, complete with hoops and parasols.
Sally’s family has started to arrive, the prime example being C’Ndee Ciancio, Sal’s cousin-in-law from his first marriage. C’Ndee is now Mama’s wedding planner, which does take a load off Mace’s shoulders.
Mama and the girls take a detour into detecting when the caterer, Ronnie Hodges, is murdered. It doesn’t help Mace’s peace of mind when she has to deal with detective Carlos Martinez; this man turns her brains to mush.
There are plenty of suspects, lots of gossip and innuendo floating around town, and enough out-of-towners to divert everyone’s attention. Fans of Mama and her family have another adventure on their hands. This is one wedding you won’t want to miss.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, July 2010.
August 14, 2010
Tags: cozy, mystery Posted in: Full Reviews No Comments
Einstein’s Tongue–Some Darn Good Shakespeare!
I mentioned something a ways back about poetry in writing. Although I’m rather too lazy right now to dig any of it up from the early blog post, I’m not really looking to expand on it at all. That would be why I didn’t name this blog Verse x of 1000000 (what ever number is coming up next; again, too lazy). Actually, this here is to give you some of my old poetry. It’s very… I’m trying to think of a proper word for them. Goofy kind of works, but not so much. Well, at least I don’t think so. But I’m just trying to defend myself. Here they are, a few haiku of mine from years passed.
When ev’rything fails
And the parrot starts spitting,
Interrogate him.
After your birthday
Look out for blue kangaroos.
The ice cream was theirs.
Parrots talk about
Wanting crackers and gold coins,
But they mean your brains.
An armadillo
Has taken the world’s ice cream.
I am now saddened.
The fox asks questions
So that when he sneaks around,
He can steal your food.
Now how was that for Shakespearian drama!
August 13, 2010
Posted in: Einstein's Tongue 3 Comments
Book Review: The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie
The Toughest Indian in the World
Sherman Alexie
Grove Press, 2001
ISBN 0802138004
Trade Paperback
“Are you an Indian?” he asked me.
Of course I was. (Jesus, my black hair hung down past my ass and I was dark as a pecan!) I’d grown up on my reservation with my tribe. I understood most of the Spokane language, though I’d always spoken it like a Jesuit priest. Hell, I’d been in three car wrecks! And most important, every member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians could tell you the exact place and time where I’d lost my virginity. Why? Because I’d told each and every one of them. I mean, I knew the real names, nicknames, and secret names of every dog that had lived on my reservation during the last twenty years.
“Yeah, I’m Indian,” I said.
—  from “One Good Man”
The Toughest Indian in the World is a collection of short stories by acclaimed author Sherman Alexie. A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, Alexie writes almost exclusively about Indians (Indians, not Native Americans), particularly those who are also all or part Spokane or Coeur d’Alene.
The stories in The Toughest Indian in the World are about identity and how it informs and guides relationships: about what it means to be an Indian, a man, a woman, a person, a Coeur d’Alene, a Spokane, a wife, a husband, a lover, a son, and many other labels people either find themselves tagged with or claim for themselves. “Assimilation,” the story that opens the collection, makes this examination of identity and its role in forming relationships explicit in its opening paragraph:
For the first time in her life, [Mary Lynn] wanted to go to bed with an Indian man only because he was Indian. She was a Coeur d’Alene Indian married to a white man; she was a wife who wanted to have sex with an indigenous stranger. She didn’t care about the stranger’s job or his hobbies…. She didn’t care if he was handsome or ugly, mostly because she wasn’t sure exactly what those terms meant anymore and how much relevance they truly had when it came to choosing sexual partners.
The narrator of the title story informs the reader that, because he is a Spokane Indian, he only picks up Indian hitchhikers, a habit he acquired from his father. “Dear John Wayne” records an interview between a white anthropologist and an elderly Indian woman who claims to have had an affair with John Wayne during filming of “The Searchers.” When the interviewer attempts to assert his erudition and authority she retorts:
For the last one hundred and eighteen years, I have lived in your world, your white world. In order to survive, to thrive, I have to be white for fifty-seven minutes of every hour.
Q: How about the other three minutes?
A: That, sir, is when I get to be Indian, and you have no idea, no concept, no possible way of knowing what happens in those three minutes.
Q: Then tell me. That’s what I’m here for.
A: Oh, no, no, no. Those three minutes belong to us. They are very secret. You’ve colonized Indian land but I am not about to let you colonize my heart and mind.
August 11, 2010
Tags: American Indian, anthology, ethnic, general fiction, short stories Posted in: Full Reviews 4 Comments
An Interview with Libby Fischer Hellmann
Libby Fischer Hellmann is the author of a number of mystery novels featuring characters Ellie Foreman and/or Georgia Davis and has participated in many short story anthologies. A transplant from Washington, D.C., Libby has lived in the Chicago area over thirty years. She has a Masters Degree in Film Production from New York University, and a BA in history from the U. of Pennsylvania. In 2005-2006 she was the National President of Sisters in Crime, a 3400 plus member organization committed to strengthening the voice of female mystery writers. She also blogs with “The Outfit Collective” at theoutfitcollective.com.
1. The Georgia Davis series is considerably darker than the Ellie Foreman series. Why did you decide to go in that direction?
In an amateur sleuth series, it becomes more difficult with each book to find a credible reason for that sleuth to get involved in a murder investigation. By the fourth Ellie Foreman book, A SHOT TO DIE FOR, I was turning backflips trying to find a reason for her to be involved. So, part of my decision to switch gears was to feature a character whose job was to investigate – no questions asked. I’m not a police officer, and didn’t think I could write one, so the default choice was a P.I. Happily, Georgia Davis had already been introduced in A PICTURE OF GUILT, and I knew after her appearance in AN IMAGE OF DEATH that she would one day be the protagonist of her own book. I just had to wait for the right story. That story was EASY INNOCENCE.
As far as dark is concerned, Georgia is very different than Ellie. While Ellie would love to go to lunch with you and tell you everything and more about her life, Georgia doesn’t want you to know her well. She’s distant (although vulnerable), and has more baggage than Ellie. She’s also tougher and has more skills. Given her personality, the darkness seemed appropriate.
2. Was it difficult to write both series protagonists into Doubleback?
Not at all. I loved it. Whenever I got bored with one, the other came to my rescue. I had a great time!
3. Will Georgia and Ellie continue together in the next book or will they go to their separate corners again?
I’m now working on the third Georgia book, and Ellie does show up for a few chapters, but she’s not a “co-protagonist” as in DOUBLEBACK.
4. The cover on Easy Innocence is much darker (in content) than the one on Doubleback and the Ellie Foreman covers. How important do you think the cover is in attracting the “right” reader, the one who will enjoy a particular book?
I think it’s critically important. As soon as I saw the image for EASY INNOCENCE, I knew it had to be the cover. Curiously, the publisher wasn’t convinced, and I had to beg. I’m glad we went with it. I’ve had a lot of comments about it.
5. Which of your books was the most difficult to write emotionally?
Interesting question. They are all difficult in their own way. EASY INNOCENCE was perhaps the most personal, so in that context, it was difficult. However, my emotional state was fragile when I wrote A SHOT TO DIE FOR. I was in the middle of a divorce, my kids were acting out, and I wasn’t sure what was coming next. So from that perspective, SHOT was probably the most difficult book to write.
August 10, 2010
Posted in: Guest Blogs 7 Comments
Book Review: The Birth of Blue Satan by Patricia Wynn
The Birth of Blue Satan
Patricia Wynn
Pemberley Press, 2001
ISBN 0970272707
Hardcover–also available in Trade Paperback
Gideon Viscount St. Mars, son of the Earl of Hawkhurst, is a somewhat reluctant part of the aristocratic social world of George I’s London. Being members of the Tory party makes him and his father, the Earl of Hawkhurst, anathema to the king, who has been convinced by the Whigs that Tories are loyal to the Pretender. Gideon, though, is in love with the
daughter of a Whig and can be found at many of the social events where the business of arranging marriages takes place.
Suddenly, Gideon finds himself accused of a heinous murder and cast out of Society. No one but a few loyal servants will help him and he withdraws into the shady world of criminals, determined to find a way to clear his name and regain his position — and Isabella, the woman he loves.
There is, however, one other person from his past who believes in him. Mrs. Kean, an impoverished relation of Isabella, provides his only means of learning what is happening with the investigation of his alleged crime and with his inheritance and Isabella.
Patricia Wynn has brought 1715 England to life through exacting research and a command of the English language that makes this book a joy to read. The story, which evokes thoughts of Jane Austen and the BrontĂ«s, is uniquely Ms. Wynn’s, and she has created a lively plot and appealing characters. Even many of those characters who are not so likable are memorable and the reader can’t help caring a bit for them. The mystery of who really committed the crime and how Gideon will save himself is well-crafted and Ms. Wynn left this reader eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. Although it was early in the year when I read it, The Birth of Blue Satan was on my list of the Best of 2001.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, 2001. Slightly revised 2010.
Review first published on murderexpress.net in 2001.
August 9, 2010
Tags: historical, mystery Posted in: My Reviews No Comments
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