This is a list of the books I read during the calendar year 2010, in the order in which I completed them. Some of them were started during 2009, or possibly even earlier. This post covers the list through my notes for April 2010, meaning books finished in January-April 2010, and books started in January-April 2010, which were completed in the calendar year 2010. This excludes books begun in 2010, but which were completed in 2011.
As you will see, there are novels, histories, biographies, and books on an assortment of topics. There are sixteen books in this list covering four months of literary activity. I have made no attempt to sort or group these books in any particular fashion.
Michael Cox. The Meaning of Night. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2006. 703 pages. ISBN 978-0-393-33034.2. Read 22 September 2009-27 January 2010.
Michael Jecks. The Malice of Unnatural Death. Great Britain: Headline, 2006. xiv + 399 pages.
Henning Mankell. Faceless Killers. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2003. 280 pages. Read 15-18 January 2010.
Sean Williams. Cenotaxis. Austin, TX: MonkeyBrain Books, 2007. 111 pages. Read 15-21 January 2010.
Jay Lake. Escapement. New York: Tor Books, 2008. 384 pages. Read 29 January-12 February 2010.
Stephen Jones. The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead. New York: Metro Books, 2009. ix + 518 pages. Read 12 February-4 March 2010.
David Drake, Eric Flint, and Jim Baen. The World Turned Upside Down. New York: Baen Books, 2004. 743 pages. Read 17-27 February 2010.
Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946. New York: Library of America, 1995, 2001. xxiii + 874 pages. Read 20 February-14 April 2010.
N. A. M. Rodger. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. 445 pages. Index. Read 5 March-24 April 2010.
Matthew Hughes. Majestrum. San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007. 247 pages. Read 9-16 March 2010.
Robert Asprey. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: Basic Books, 2000. xxi + 580 pages. ISBN 0-465-04879-x. $37.50. Read 17 March-8 August 2010.
Robert L. Casey. Journey to the High Southwest: A Traveler's Guide to Santa Fe and the Four Corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Eighth edition. Guilford, CT: Insider's Guide, 2007. xix + 561 pages. Index. Read 13 April-30 September 2010.
Halka Chronic. Roadside Geology of Arizona. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1983. xix + 321 pages. ISBN 978-0-87842-147-3. $18.00. Glossary. Index. Read 16 April-25 May 2010.
Bernice Brode. Tales of Los Alamos: Life on the Mesa 1943-1945. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997. 165 pages. Glossary. Glossary of Names. Index of Names. About the Author. Read 17 April-8 May 2010.
David Weber. By Heresies Distressed. 2009. 492 pages. Characters. Glossary. Read 22 April-5 May 2010.
Jo Nesbo. Nemesis. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Harper, 2008. 474 pages. Read 22 April-31 July 2010.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label detective fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label detective fiction. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Listening to Taking the Fifth by J. A. Jance
J. A. Jance. Taking the Fifth. Read by Gene Engene. Spokane, WA: Books in Motion, 1993.
The longer we live, the more we learn. From my library catalog listing, I have learned that J. A. Jance's first name is Judith. The first of her main characters I came across, the heroine of Shoot/Don't Shoot, is named Joanna Brady. The protagonist of the last two Jance novels I've heard is J. P. Beaumont.
J. P. Beaumont, "My friends call me Beau," is a homicide detective on the Seattle police force. I was born in Seattle, and, though I haven't spent a lot of time there, I find that I enjoy running across familiar placenames. This novel starts with a murder near the Pike Place Market. It alludes to Queen Anne Hill, Bellevue, and Boeing Field. If you're not from Seattle, or don't know the place, it provides some of the value of a travel book along with your murder mystery.
This is the fourth of J. A. Jance's J. P. Beaumont series, but it's obvious that Beau has led an active life. He lives in a penthouse condominium purchased with an inheritance from his second wife. He drives a Porsche 928 which he somehow acquired from a woman featured in a previous book. (Gene Engene, who reads the book for Books in Motion, pronounces that "porsh," as a drunk might say "porch." We cognoscenti know that it is "por-shuh," after the late, great designer of the Volkswagen and the Tiger tank.) His partner is hospitalized, recovering from an accident suffering (one supposes) in the previous book. And Beau drinks McNaughton's whiskey, which, I happen to know, is going to get him in trouble later.
Based on this book and Failure to Appear I'd say that Ms. Jance has an interest in the theater. In this case, the first victim is a stagehand at the Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle. When the stagehand's roommate also turns up dead, Beau starts to suspect something. While checking out the theater, he arranges a dinner date with the star, Jasmine Day. He's impressed by her stage costume of long, blond hair, a cobalt blue dress, and matching Cole Haan shoes. So impressed that he ends up taking her home with him. Then he finds a witness who says that the murder was committed by a woman with long, blond hair, a long dress, and blue stiletto-heeled shoes. Uh-oh!
Taking the Fifth develops into a tale of disguise and deception, involving huge shipments of cocaine, a DEA agent with enough money to fly his own plane, and Beau nearly having his head knocked off by his lady friend. The scene in which Beau is on one end of a telephone line, with a terrified woman whose house is being invaded on the other end, is quite effective. This is, like most mystery novels, popcorn fiction. Or, one might say, Chinese dinner fiction: an hour after reading it you're hungry again. But Beau Beaumont is a reasonably appealing character, and the plot has enough twists and turns to hold one's interest.
The longer we live, the more we learn. From my library catalog listing, I have learned that J. A. Jance's first name is Judith. The first of her main characters I came across, the heroine of Shoot/Don't Shoot, is named Joanna Brady. The protagonist of the last two Jance novels I've heard is J. P. Beaumont.
J. P. Beaumont, "My friends call me Beau," is a homicide detective on the Seattle police force. I was born in Seattle, and, though I haven't spent a lot of time there, I find that I enjoy running across familiar placenames. This novel starts with a murder near the Pike Place Market. It alludes to Queen Anne Hill, Bellevue, and Boeing Field. If you're not from Seattle, or don't know the place, it provides some of the value of a travel book along with your murder mystery.
This is the fourth of J. A. Jance's J. P. Beaumont series, but it's obvious that Beau has led an active life. He lives in a penthouse condominium purchased with an inheritance from his second wife. He drives a Porsche 928 which he somehow acquired from a woman featured in a previous book. (Gene Engene, who reads the book for Books in Motion, pronounces that "porsh," as a drunk might say "porch." We cognoscenti know that it is "por-shuh," after the late, great designer of the Volkswagen and the Tiger tank.) His partner is hospitalized, recovering from an accident suffering (one supposes) in the previous book. And Beau drinks McNaughton's whiskey, which, I happen to know, is going to get him in trouble later.
Based on this book and Failure to Appear I'd say that Ms. Jance has an interest in the theater. In this case, the first victim is a stagehand at the Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle. When the stagehand's roommate also turns up dead, Beau starts to suspect something. While checking out the theater, he arranges a dinner date with the star, Jasmine Day. He's impressed by her stage costume of long, blond hair, a cobalt blue dress, and matching Cole Haan shoes. So impressed that he ends up taking her home with him. Then he finds a witness who says that the murder was committed by a woman with long, blond hair, a long dress, and blue stiletto-heeled shoes. Uh-oh!
Taking the Fifth develops into a tale of disguise and deception, involving huge shipments of cocaine, a DEA agent with enough money to fly his own plane, and Beau nearly having his head knocked off by his lady friend. The scene in which Beau is on one end of a telephone line, with a terrified woman whose house is being invaded on the other end, is quite effective. This is, like most mystery novels, popcorn fiction. Or, one might say, Chinese dinner fiction: an hour after reading it you're hungry again. But Beau Beaumont is a reasonably appealing character, and the plot has enough twists and turns to hold one's interest.
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