January Reading Round-Up

 

Today (Monday) is one of those days when it would seem everyone is beating a path to our door. While I'm waiting on various people to show up, what better time to share some of the books I've read?  Once again, these are shorter reviews. I've included links to Amazon US in the titles in case you'd like to learn more. 

 

Let's get started!

 

 

Against the Grain by Peter Lovesey

Review copy courtesy of Net Galley.

384 pages

Rating: A

 

My Thoughts: This finale of Lovesey's long-running series was a satisfying conclusion. Faced with a holiday in the country that he doesn't want, Peter Diamond tries everything in the book (including his elderly cat) to avoid going. Resistance is futile. Once there, he finds himself experiencing all sorts of country life as well as using a bit of what he calls the "Columbo Method of Detection" to help out a former colleague.

 

I was in just the right mood for this humorous excursion in the country to solve a nicely twisted mystery.

 
 

Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson

208 pages

Rating: A+

 

My Thoughts: A prequel to the Walt Longmire series, this was one of my Best Reads of 2024. Walt and his best friend, Henry Standing Bear, have returned from military service in Vietnam. Working for an oil company in the bitter cold of an Alaskan winter, they find themselves facing a ferocious polar bear, and the creature seems hell-bent on their destruction.

 

Tooth and Claw is a rip-roaring pageturner. Although Johnson has often thought of "thrillers as mysteries with lobotomies," he sure knows how to write one (minus the surgical procedure)! There's a feeling of dislocation for both Walt and Henry now that they're back in the U.S.  Johnson has his usual solid cast of characters as well as a blizzard where they and other members of the oil company crew have to take shelter on a ghost ship. If that's not enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, there's that polar bear. The creature would make anyone's blood run cold. It's terrifying, it's supernatural... and while it scared the pudding out of me, I still felt sorry for it. Now that's a combination of emotions that's almost impossible to pull off, but Johnson does it with aplomb.

A Flower in the Desert by Walter Satterthwait

336 pages

Rating: B+

My Thoughts: I first came to Walter Satterthwait's writing through Miss Lizzie, his historical mystery featuring Lizzie Borden. Soon thereafter, I found his Joshua Croft private investigator series set in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A Flower in the Desert is the third book.

The mystery about a movie star wanting to hire Croft to find his missing wife and daughter is solid. Joshua Croft reminds me of Todd Borg's Owen McKenna in that he, too, is willing to be in a relationship on the woman's terms, even if those terms are contrary to his own desires. Croft has an irreverent sense of humor that often gets him into difficulty (asking an extremely difficult motel clerk, "Were you ever in the Wehrmacht?")

The mysteries are good, the characters are good, and Satterthwait's poetic descriptions of Santa Fe and the surrounding area bring the landscape to life. The next book in the series is waiting for me patiently.

Red, Green or Murder by Steven F. Havill

283 pages

Rating: B+

 

My Thoughts: Steven Havill's long-running Posadas County series never disappoints. He brings a fictional county in southwestern New Mexico to life with a phenomenal cast headed by former Sheriff Bill Gastner. 

 

Gastner is now a livestock inspector. On the Torrance Ranch, he's counting a small herd of cattle and thinking ahead to lunch in town with an old friend. But a breeze kicks up, a horse spooks, and he's taking a badly injured cowboy in the back of his SUV to meet an ambulance. He's barely back in town when Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman asks for his help in investigating an unattended death. Gastner's friend had gone ahead and eaten lunch... and died of an apparent heart attack. But something's not right.

 

To make matters even worse, the herd of cattle Gastner counted is wandering down the highway with no sign of the cowpuncher or his boss's $40,000 truck and livestock trailer. 

The mysteries concerning the theft of the vehicles and the death of Gastner's friend are fast-paced and absorbing. That's nothing new for this series. And neither is the fact that Havill is a master at creating and nurturing a cast of characters that grows and changes. Insomniac Gastner is older, has health problems, and his role in the series has changed, but he's gathered around him people like Estelle Reyes-Guzman who have become his extended family. Their lives have been woven seamlessly into this series that deserves to be much better known than it is.

~

Have I caught up with my reviews? Nope. That just means that you'll be hearing from me again, doesn't it? Next week, I hope to tell you a bit about some of the books I'm looking forward to-- there's a bunch! I'd also like to put together a link round-up. We shall see. If everything goes to plan, Denis and I will be going to the Phoenix Zoo, so there will be photos from that to share as well. I just may have to blog more frequently, eh?