The only good thing about a blog with only a handful of followers is that I pretty much know each one personally! So that's how I know that at least two of my "fans" are beekeepers. (Jeff: meet Scott! Scott, meet Jeff! Jeff: join the blog!) See, if I had hundreds of fans, this blog wouldn't be nearly so friendly!
You might be wondering why I have this bee in my bonnet. I just received two books by Laurie R. King, who writes a series of mysteries about Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes. Beekeeping makes an appearance in both The Language of Bees (Bantam; $15; paperback) and The God of the Hive (Bantam; $25). One warning, though: although both have bee-related titles, and a disappearing hive figures in at least the first of the two, murder--not beekeeping--is the major focus of both books. I haven't read either book, but I have read Laurie R. King in the distant past. Her books are satisfying and well-crafted.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Still Midnight, by Denise Mina (Little, Brown; $24.99)
Two masked men enter the well-kept home of the Anwar family, just back from Ramadan prayers at the mosque. The men demand to see "Bob," and when none of the Anwars know who they mean, grab Aamir Anwar, the patriarch of the family, demanding two million pounds for his release and saying the kidnapping was payback for Afghanistan. In the melee, the hapless losers accidentally shoot the hand off of the Anwars' teenaged daughter.
Glaswegian detective Alex Morrow, who rubs virtually everyone the wrong way, should get the high profile case. But it is instead assigned to DS Bannerman, a suck-up colleague with shoddy police skills but excellent skills at self-promotion. Each of Bannerman's missed clues and mishandled interrogations reduce the chances of recovering Mr. Anwar alive. When it becomes obvious that the case is a nearly unsolvable mess, Bannerman takes sick leave, forcing Morrow to soldier on alone and solve the case. Alex's job is made more difficult by family ties she would prefer her police department colleagues not know about.
Denise Mina's latest includes the elements we've come to expect from this excellent writer: a gritty portrayal of Glasgow, an unlikable woman who forces others to take her seriously, and a great plot with a satisfying ending. I've liked her books since first reading her Garnethill trilogy, but a warning: these books are not for those who shrink from really graphic, vulgar language. She freely throws around a word that starts with "c" that is about the last taboo, at least in the US.
Glaswegian detective Alex Morrow, who rubs virtually everyone the wrong way, should get the high profile case. But it is instead assigned to DS Bannerman, a suck-up colleague with shoddy police skills but excellent skills at self-promotion. Each of Bannerman's missed clues and mishandled interrogations reduce the chances of recovering Mr. Anwar alive. When it becomes obvious that the case is a nearly unsolvable mess, Bannerman takes sick leave, forcing Morrow to soldier on alone and solve the case. Alex's job is made more difficult by family ties she would prefer her police department colleagues not know about.
Denise Mina's latest includes the elements we've come to expect from this excellent writer: a gritty portrayal of Glasgow, an unlikable woman who forces others to take her seriously, and a great plot with a satisfying ending. I've liked her books since first reading her Garnethill trilogy, but a warning: these books are not for those who shrink from really graphic, vulgar language. She freely throws around a word that starts with "c" that is about the last taboo, at least in the US.
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