Gone with a Handsomer Man

Teeny Templeton did the unthinkable—she decided her life was heading in exactly the direction she always wanted. She was about to get married to a wonderful, wealthy Charleston man and, being a former pastry chef, she was making her own wedding cake and leaving her less-than-wonderful youth behind. What more could any girl want?

Probably she would want to NOT come across her fiance, Bing, playing badminton…naked…with a pair of equally naked females.  On top of that outrage, he takes out a restraining order against her for throwing peaches at him. So, there she is, stranded in a strange town with no job, no money, no home to go back to and only Bing’s stepmother, Dora, to give her support.

Crushed, heartbroken, Teeny thinks things can’t possibly get worse but then her fiance is found dead and all roads of suspicion are pointing her way.  Her collection of poisonous family recipes won’t help if the cops find it and it seems that one of those badminton players has designs on the mansion Dora has loaned Teeny. Bing’s peculiar sister shows up demanding his money and Dora wants to paint everything pink. It will take an obnoxious private eye and an ex-boyfriend to get Teeny out of the mess she’s in before things spiral completely out of control—or can they?

Gone with a Handsomer Man has all the elements of a terrific Southern mystery—skullduggery, a loveable dog, romance, a dotty stepmother, a cranky P.I., old money charm and sleaze and plenty of misdirection. This is West‘s first mystery after several acclaimed works of Southern fiction and a delightful one it is. Reader Marguerite Gavin adds to the pleasure with her perfect intonations of different Southern accents and I’m looking forward with great anticipation to next April’s A Teeny Bit of Trouble.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, October 2011.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Remy Chandler isn’t your normal, run-of-the-mill Boston PI.  He’s got another side to him, a side most people don’t get to see.  Usually that’s a good thing.  If you get to see the other side of Remy, it usually means bad things: you are dying and he wants to offer comfort, you have seriously irritated the man and he needs a lot of strength to handle you, or he loves you.  Remy’s other side is that of an angel, the angel Remiel of the host Seraphim.  Remiel’s power is not something to mess with, since it taps into the power of the Almighty, and we know what S/He can do when he’s ticked off.

Remy is working a missing persons case for a woman.  She and her husband brought their child Zoë to Boston in hopes of finding some treatment for her autism.  Zoë has an unusual talent: her pictures seem to depict future events.  Zoë’s mother is convinced that her husband had kidnapped Zoë for nefarious purposes.  Apparently in their misspent youth, they joined a cult and promised their child to the god Dagon, to serve as his human form.  They reneged and Dagon is not happy.  Has Zoë’s father changed his mind about their decision?

Also hunting Zoë is a woman who can get pretty much anyone to do whatever she wants – she is the original Delilah, back again.  She believes Zoë holds the key to her happiness and she is willing to do some pretty unpleasant things to get happy.  Delilah is being pursued by Samson (yeah, that Samson) and his numerous offspring; they want to kill her.  And Dagon is looking for her as well.  The field is pretty crowded, and most of these people have no scruples at all.

This is Sniegoski’s third book in the series.  I’ve listened to the second book (Dancing on the Head of a Pin) and enjoyed that one as well.  Sniegoski’s Almighty is VERY Old Testament.  Remy doesn’t always understand why the Almighty does what s/he does (and that s/he is totally ME – not Sniegoski), and still he believes it’s all for the best in the very long run.  Remy’s world has nothing of fairies, elves, trolls, and the like; it’s all Heaven and Hell and the denizens of both.

Both books are read by Luke Daniels.  Once in a great while, a character will sound vaguely like another character, but not often enough for it to be a problem.  I think his characterization of Marlowe is superb; Marlowe is Chandler’s dog.  Other than that, Daniels does a good job; I’d listen to him reading other works any time.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, May 2011.

Sylvester, Or the Wicked Uncle

Abridged audio version read by Richard Armitage
Naxos Audiobooks, 2009
9789626349250
Sample

Silence fell. Miss Marlow sat gazing abstractedly at a Buhl cabinet; and his grace of Salford, unaccustomed to such treatment, eyed her in gathering resentment. He was much inclined to pick up the newspaper again, and was only deterred from doing so by the reflection that disgust at her want of conduct was no excuse for lowering his own standard of good manners. He said in the voice of one trying to set a bashful schoolgirl at her ease: ‘Your father tells me, Miss Marlow, that you are a notable horsewoman.’

‘Does he?’ she responded. ‘Well, he told us that you showed him the way with the Heythrop.’

He glanced quickly down at her, but decided, after an instant, that this remark sprang from inanity. ‘I imagine I need not tell you that I did no such thing!’

‘Oh, no! I am very sure you did not,’ she said.

He almost jumped; and being now convinced that this seeming gaucherie was deliberate began to feel as much interested as he was ruffled. Perhaps there was rather more to this little provincial than he had supposed, though why she should utter malicious remarks he was at a loss to understand.

At first glance, Sylvester is not the usual sort of book I like. I’m not a fan of romance novels, the Regency period holds no historical interest for me, and Georgette Heyer’s punctuation style, with its excess of dashes and exclamation marks and inadequate use of commas, drives me crazy. In fact, having been subjected to numerous recommendations of her work, I attempted to read Cotillion a couple of years ago and barely made it beyond the first chapter.

I am a fan of the British actor Richard Armitage, however, and he happens to have narrated abridged audiobooks of three Heyer works, among them Sylvester. After comparing synopses of the three novels, I settled on Sylvester, and downloaded it from iTunes.

Was I instantly hooked? No, not really. I enjoyed it, to be sure, but it was more the appeal of Armitage’s voice than the story itself that had me listening to it over and over. In time I purchased the audiobook of Venetia, also read by Armitage, and though I enjoyed that one as well, I kept going back to Sylvester. Curious to see what had been cut from the original, I checked Sylvester out of the local library.

That’s what finally hooked me. The idiosyncratic punctuation is as annoying as ever, but I was able to look past it and enjoy the lively and frequently humorous budding romance between Sylvester, the arrogant duke of Salford, and Phoebe Marlow, whose quick pen and quicker tongue get her into more trouble than she can handle.

Sylvester is a young, handsome, wealthy, and very eligible bachelor who has decided that the time has come to choose a wife. When his godmother hears of this, she contrives to arrange a meeting between Sylvester and her granddaughter, Phoebe Marlow. Sylvester and Phoebe had already met, however, and neither had been left with a good impression of the other; Sylvester found Phoebe utterly forgettable, whereas Phoebe, piqued by Sylvester’s apparent arrogance, was inspired to write a pseudonymous novel whose villain she modeled on him.

Dreading the thought of a marriage proposal from Sylvester, Phoebe persuades her friend Tom Orde to help her flee to London in the midst of a snowstorm. An unfortunate accident maroons them at a wayside inn, however, where they are discovered by none other than Sylvester, himself fleeing Phoebe’s dreadful family. Sylvester cannot help taking pity on them, and soon the enforced togetherness has both Sylvester and Phoebe re-assessing their opinions about each other.

Just as things seem to be heating up between them, however, Phoebe’s book is published, and though her name is not attached to it she is quickly revealed to be the author of the scathing satire. Then Phoebe finds herself an unwitting accomplice when Sylvester’s young nephew is kidnapped, and once more Sylvester must come to her rescue.

A romance novel wouldn’t be a romance novel without the payoff, the happily-ever-after ending, and Sylvester is no exception; there’s no real doubt that Sylvester and Phoebe will find a way to put their differences behind them and confess their true feelings for each other by the end of the book. Sylvester’s appeal for me, therefore, comes from elsewhere. Anyone who reads this blog regularly probably won’t be surprised to learn that what appeals to me the most are the main characters themselves, particularly as they are revealed through the eyes of the other. For all his cold aloofness, Sylvester is shown to be a man of deep sensitivity and compassion, who does not hesitate to aid Tom and Phoebe when Tom’s leg is broken during Phoebe’s escape attempt. I thoroughly enjoyed observing Phoebe’s gradual reconsideration of her first impression of Sylvester as she gets to know him better:

[I]t could not be denied that [Sylvester] was a delightful companion; and one, moreover, with whom it was not necessary to mind one’s tongue. His sense of humour, too, was lively: often if a fatuous remark were uttered, or someone behaved in a fashion so typical as to be ludicrous, Phoebe would look instinctively towards him, knowing that he must be sharing her amusement. It was strange how the dullest party could be enjoyed because there was one person present whose eyes could be met for the fraction of a second, in wordless appreciation of a joke unshared by others: almost as strange as the insipidity of parties at which that person was not present. Oh, no! Miss Marlow, though fully alive to his arrogance, his selfishness, and his detestable vanity had no intention—no immediate intention—of repulsing Sylvester.

Sylvester, for his part, while Phoebe’s flight from his anticipated proposal merely wounds his ego, he is cut to the bone when he discovers how she satirized him in her novel after he has started to develop feelings for her. The girl he once dismissed as a mere country dab, dowdy and unmemorable, soon becomes his pet “Sparrow,” and he finds himself smitten with her quick tongue, lively humor, and generous heart; as his mother observes:

[A]lthough Sylvester had said that Phoebe was not beautiful she had not expected to find her a thin slip of a girl, with a brown complexion and nothing to recommend her but a pair of speaking grey eyes. If Sylvester, who knew his own worth, and had coolly made out a list of the qualities he considered indispensable in his bride, had decided that only this girl would satisfy him, he had fallen more deeply in love than his mother had thought possible.

In addition to the principals, many of the supporting characters are likewise appealing and contributed to my thorough enjoyment of this book. Of particular delight is the comically foppish Sir Nugent Fotherby:

Beside Sylvester’s quiet elegance… Sir Nugent presented all the appearance of a coxcomb. He was a tall man, rather willowy in build, by no means unhandsome, but so tightly laced-in at the waist, so exaggeratedly padded at the shoulders, that he looked a little ridiculous. From the striking hat set rakishly on his Corinthian crop… to his gleaming boots, everything he wore seemed to have been chosen for the purpose of making him look conspicuous.

Sir Nugent seeks to marry Sylvester’s widowed sister-in-law and become stepfather to his young nephew, but he is no match for a mischievous and stubborn six-year-old. The comical scenes between Sir Nugent and Edmund are among my favorites in the whole book, highlighting Heyer’s flair for comedy. Phoebe and Sylvester’s verbal sparring is great fun to read (and listen to!), but the encounters between Sir Nugent and Edmund reveal a more visual style of comedy. It’s a pity that Sylvester has never been filmed, because I have no doubt the entire interlude in France would be hilarious to watch.

Two characters appear in name only, but their influence is nonetheless unmistakable. Verena Marlow, Phoebe’s mother, and Sylvester’s twin brother Henry, both died before the events in Sylvester (Verena when Phoebe only an infant), yet Phoebe and Sylvester owe much of their respective characters and personalities to them. Phoebe’s tomboyish, forthright nature (as well as her reputation as a formidable horsewoman), which get her into so much trouble, are traits inherited from her mother, who happens to have been a dear friend of Sylvester’s mother. As for Henry Rayne, Phoebe comes to realize that his sudden death caused Sylvester, as his mother says, to “liv[e] in some desolate Polar region,” which contributed to the apparent arrogance she initially finds so detestable.

Finally, I have to express my appreciation for Heyer’s gentle touch with the burgeoning romance between Phoebe and Sylvester. I tend to like love stories where the principals fall in love almost despite themselves, or where the realization sneaks up on them without their knowing it. When Sylvester proposes to Phoebe at last, even though the whole book has been leading up to that moment, it’s almost as much of a surprise to the reader as it is to him. When he subsequently blurts out that he never meant to propose in the first place, even while sharing Phoebe’s indignation it’s hard not to sympathize with Sylvester at the same time. As his mother remarks, falling in love with Phoebe has clearly unhinged him:

‘I daresay you had no intention of reducing him to this sad state, but I feel you ought, in common charity, to allow him at least to explain himself. Very likely it would settle his mind, and it won’t do for Salford to become addle-brained, you know! Do but consider the consternation of the Family, my dear!’

I’m still not a fan of romance novels, and find the Regency period as uninteresting as ever, and I’m in no rush to read any more of Heyer’s work. That said, however, Sylvester is now probably one of my favorite “comfort read” books.

As for the audiobook, apart from the incentive of Armitage’s reading (does there need to be any other?), the abridgement unfortunately omits many of the more comical elements from the latter third of the book, after Edmund’s kidnapping, and so Sir Nugent’s role is greatly reduced. In addition there are some nuances of character, Sylvester’s in particular, that have been trimmed. I did not really miss these omissions until after I had read the complete book, however, as the plot remains largely intact, but it was discovering them that made me enjoy Sylvester even more. Armitage is a wonderful narrator, and does an excellent job modulating his voice to bring each character to life. It is certainly worth the investment if you’re a fan of audiobooks, and I hope Armitage can be persuaded to do more, once he’s finished filming The Hobbit.

Reviewed by Laura Taylor, February 2011, on Beyond the Blurb; reprinted here with permission.

An English professor named Wesley gets dumped by his girlfriend and is driven by despair to purchase a Kindle although he has never wanted one.  Strange things start to happen, beginning with the fact that it arrives by express mail although Wesley didn’t ask for that.  And the Kindle is pink (!).  Strangest of all, though, is the wide array of books available, books that were never written as far as Wesley knows.

Author Stephen King has always been in the vanguard of those trying new methods of delivering their work to the reader and this is another step, a novella originally available exclusively on the Amazon Kindle.  However, only someone who already owned a Kindle could read this paean to the device so I don’t get the point of the “exclusive”.

I’m a diehard King fan; he’s one of only a handful of authors that I buy in hardcover as soon as a book comes out and I also love most of the movies made from his books, no matter how really awful they may be.  Stories released only in audio format also are in my hands as soon as they’re released but, for the most part, they’re not among my favorites of King’s work.  Still, anybody who knows me realizes I’ll push his books whenever I can because I want others to enjoy his fine, if flawed, writing as much as I do.

I’m very sorry to have to say I don’t like this one.  The novella is pretty weak, with the premise that the professor’s very special Kindle can provide him with an incredible library of literary choices.  That theme dwindles and is replaced by futuristic news, then builds to what could be an exciting horror story, but he lets the denouement just sort of fade away.  I actually was shocked when I realized it was over because I thought there surely must be more.  Most of all, though, this is a blatant commercial for Amazon and the Kindle with constant product placement (I wonder if anyone has counted how many times the word “Kindle” is used).  As far as I can tell, there was no reason for this short story other than to pimp for Amazon.

This won’t cause me to lose my appreciation of Stephen King’s work but I would surely like to have my two hours back.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, March 2010.

Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper and her detective partners, Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, are involved in the case of the Silk Stocking serial rapist.  At the same time, workers have uncovered a body entombed behind a wall of a brownstone being torn down and Alex is drawn into the dark world of Edgar Allan Poe, who once lived in the house.  This particular body, that of a young woman, has apparently been behind the wall for 25 years but seems to have a connection to a more recent murder. During their investigation, the team begins to think these two murders might have some relationship to the Silk Stocking rapist, who has reappeared after four years of inactivity.

Rich in atmosphere, this novel takes us to the Bronx Botanical Gardens.  A wild landscape, it’s the perfect place for a deadly chase and the author writes about it in such a way as to make me want to see it someday.  The descriptions of this and other less-than-famous New York City landmarks are the heart of this entry in the Alex Cooper series and they overshadow a bit the actual mysteries but not too much.   Ms. Fairstein also offers a great deal of history of Poe which I thoroughly enjoyed.

A particular episode of the investigation involving Alex is particularly Poe-worthy and chilling (although an inexplicably dumb move on her part helps put her in the situation) but it is a tragic event at the end that elevates Ms. Fairstein.  Many mystery writers would never have the nerve to take such a step.

I listened to an abridged version but never felt there were scenes missing that were needed to carry the story.  Actress Blair Brown is a good narrator with enough intensity as well as restraint to seem as though she really is Alex Cooper.  I will be glad to try more books read by her.

Great cover, too!

Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, December 2009.

There have been countless reviews of this book, including synopses, so I’ll confine myself to my reactions rather than spitting out another synopsis.

Is Dan Brown a great writer?  No, but I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code (also read by Paul Michael) from the standpoint of action adventure (I’m also hooked by action adventure movies) and was willing and able to overlook its many literary and fact-based flaws.  I just thought it made a really good story and I read it with the intention of putting aside my nitpicking persona so I was pretty well pleased.

The Lost Symbol falls into the same vein but not quite as successfully.  Because of his fame, I suspect his publisher was not willing to step on toes and give it the full edit it needed and, as a result, the pace is too slow and the book is too long.  It’s not actually much longer than The Da Vinci Code—about 50 pages in print, the same number of CDs in audio—but it seems nearly endless at some points, particularly at the end.  I really felt the last CD could have been largely  dispensed with because Mr. Brown’s exposition just took much too long and I felt myself zoning out.  It was sort of like, “OK, get on with it, I don’t care this much”.

Another thing that bothered me was the use of the word “orientate”.  This happened twice so it wasn’t a typo and there’s no excuse for it.  The word is “orient” and, if Mr. Brown doesn’t know that, a good copy editor should have caught it.  I hate the word to the point where it brought me to a screeching halt both times.  (Two other pet peeves are “conversate” instead of the correct “converse” and “irregardless” instead of the proper “regardless” but those don’t appear in this book, thank heavens.)

Above all, the one thing that really didn’t work was near the end when the bad guy is revealed.  The victim, who has been physically and psychologically tortured, suffers a final enormous mental and emotional shock, one that would send most of us to counseling, but within just a few minutes, he is actually chuckling and is totally focused on the exposition mentioned above in which he essentially explains everything to Robert Langdon.   I kept expecting to hear that he had pretty much gone off the deep end because of the trauma but, nope, that didn’t happen.  Completely unbelievable.

There are some positive notes here, though.  The reader, Paul Michael (same as for The Da Vinci Code), is good and I never lost my attention because of him—he made Robert Langdon sound “real”, so to speak.  I’ll be looking for more audio books read by him.

The story revolves around Freemasonry and its secretiveness and takes place in locations of Washington, DC, that are intriguing.  I want to go see for myself if the things that are highlighted at these locations are real.  I’m also very curious as to whether the Freemasonry secrets “revealed” by Mr. Brown are completely made up or whether they have some basis in truth but I suspect I’ll never know since the members of this organization do keep things to themselves.  It was refreshing, though, that Mr. Brown did not make Freemasonry an evil entity swirling with conspiracies, a ploy that is much too common.

Finally, there is one episode in which I found myself thinking Robert and Katherine are incredibly stupid but, as it turned out, this was one of those times when the author’s cleverness became evident.   Much of the reading public may turn up their collective noses at Dan Brown’s books but it’s hard to deny that he does tell a good story.  At the end of the  day, that’s really what I want more than anything.

Recommended with some reservations.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, December 2009.

All is well in the small community of Black Mountain, NC, and retired army colonel John Matherson, now a history professor at the local college, is raising his two daughters alone after the death of his wife several years earlier.   Living in this town is just what one would expect–peaceful, calm, generally somewhat like Mayberry–and John is content if not completely happy.  One second, all is as it should be and the next, nothing electrical or electronic is working.  Within hours, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong and, eventually, the probability that at least this part of the US has suffered an electromagnetic pulse attack is clear.

One Second After

It’s not so easy to imagine the consequences of such an attack when we’re accustomed to the idea of a full nuclear or biochemical event but John and his family and friends find out soon enough how dependent they are on things that no longer work–all but the oldest cars, landline and cell phones, radios, refrigeration, pacemakers, water filtration, sewage treatment, etc.–and how soon a town can run out of necessities such as food and drugs.  Along with the horrors, though, the town has flashes of honor and even humor and the reader struggles with them through the first year after the attack.

Is this a beautifully written book?  No, and while I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic themes, One Second After is not one of the best and there certainly are numerous flaws.  For one thing, the author certainly has an agenda but that is true of nearly every post-apocalyptic novel I can think of, whether it be anti-nuclear, anti-big government, etc.   However, it’s a gripping, chilling story that I will listen to again, primarily because of the possibility of such an event really happening and the fact that we have done nothing to prevent it.  The author does a good job of showing how quickly society can lose its way when faced with long-term disaster–imagine a nationwide Katrina–and, while some characters are not fleshed out enough, I did care about the primary players and about the town.  Other reviewers who have panned the book have pointed out some grammatical issues in the text but I did not find that to be distracting, most likely because such things are not as obvious in an audio edition.  One negative review stated, “The reader doesn’t actually see it happen.”  The very nature of an EMP attack means there is nothing to see, no mushroom cloud or destroyed buildings or bodies so I can’t imagine what that reviewer expected to “see”.

Recommended.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, December 2009.

The Last Oracle

I wanted to like this book—I really appreciate Rollins’ work in general—but I’ll have to try again.  I chose the audiobook version and the narrator kept losing me to the point I’d have to rewind way too often.  I was listening to it in the car, which I do all the time, and I finally decided the problem is not the story but Peter Jay Fernandez’s voice.  It’s the kind of voice that frequently drops in volume and playing it in the car when I had to pay attention to the road made it difficult to really listen.

No rating at this time—I’m going to try it again in the office where I can concentrate.