THE LABYRINTH MAKERS

   by  Anthony Price

This story brings back the days of the Cold War about 25 years after end of WWII. The main protagonist is Dr David Audley who is an expert on the Middle East but who is called to use his admirable sleuthing capabilities in a case of a fighter pilot believed lost at sea who is actually found at the bottom an accidentally  drained lake. The plane, a Dakota was last seen in late 1945, making it's last run.  Only  the earthly remains of the pilot Johnnie Steerforth were found in the skeleton of the  aircraft. Along with this were found several boxes of pieces of concrete, pretty much unchanged. The other three members of the crew and a passenger had bailed out before the doomed aircraft found it's watery grave. 


For some reason the Russians have been looking for any information on Dakota airplanes for all the years of the past quarter century. It is apparent that the boxes of cement in the cargo hold are substitutes for something. The intriguing question is what is it  that the Russians are still looking for that  would be of importance after so long? The answer may lie in clues pointing to the abandoned airfield that was home base to the pilot Johnnie.


David Audley  always looks behind the obvious and even the not so obvious and he soon has an idea of what the the mystery is. But he feels out of his depth after having been a desk bound mentalist for  donkey's ages. He has also to discover why he has been chosen for this task when he is more of an expert on the areas of Israel and Lebanon. The answers to the questions must be found quickly before more people die, perhaps David himself is in danger.


This is an excellent tale. It has a taste of spies, the sixties, a hint of romance and murder as well as a bit of a history lesson. I am looking forward to reading more about David Audley and his adventures.

Queen Lucia

Queen Lucia




By E.F. Benson





 This  is delicious satire of the pretensions and foibles of provincial middle-class life in Britain in the 1920s and '30s. Still, given Benson's droll send-ups of the bitter battles waged by matrons desperate to live out their fantastical versions of upper-class elegance and wit, and Benson's shrewd readings of the ways in which our longings can make us both bizarre and sometimes appealing. ( From Kirkus reviews) . I could not put it in better words.


Mrs. Emmeline Lucas of Riseholm loves her little town, and revels in her role as the Queen Bee in all matters of culture, entertaining and of appropriate behavior. Lucia life is full of little oddities as she pretends to speak Italian by sprinkling here everyday speech with caros, arrivederci's and calling her husband Peppino. She talks of trips to the Riviera as if she was actually going there.


What a shock it is to Lucia when a truly cultured woman, an opera singer of renown moves to her town and slowly Lucia is being exposed in a humorous fashion and with plenty of spite.


What makes Lucia a queen if that she is like a weeble who wobbles but does not fall down. You must admire her even though you may not like her.



The series contains:
Queen Lucia
Lucia in London
Miss Mapp
Mapp and Lucia
Lucia's Progress/The Worshipful Lucia
Trouble for Lucia

Arizona Dreams

              Arizona Dreams


                     by Jon Talton


David Mapstone is a former history professor who is now a deputy working for the Phoenix,  Arizona  police department and is making a reputation for himself by solving cold forgotten cases. Most of these have a historical basis and Mapstone uses his extensive knowledge of Arizona history as well as geography to good effect.


For decades people have looked at Arizona and in this case Phoenix and it's environs as a dream location. The building boom had gone on unchecked as people moved to the area for the warm climate and the beauty of the desert until Phoenix has become the fifth largest city in the USA.

Phoenix is a city of culture, art, crime aplenty and lots of suburbs. What Phoenix does not have is water, the elixir of life. While there is only about 7 inches of rain a year there are a few aquifers. Most of the water is from dammed  streams  and piped in from other places. These days in order to develop an area you must prove that there is a water supply. The scope of the development is ARIZONA DREAMS is the planned building of 45,000 homes. The land is there, the money is available providing the water is more than an illusion.


Mapstone is led to a body in the desert, a body in a casino as well as a body in his own historic neighborhood. The methods of the deaths are unusual. Two of the victims were killed by an ice pick .   It is Mapstone's keen insight into ways of the fast-buck city that will hold the key to the solution of these crimes.


Talton paints such a picture of an Arizona and a Phoenix that is gone forever that I get nostalgic and I rue the fact that I didn't live there when. But his art is such that the dream of Arizona creeps through and I wouldn't mind going there now.

                   Excursion to Tindari

                                                               Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Camilleri is always fun to read and in this volume there are some hilarious passages. But the Montalbano stories are not froth, they have a depth to them that lifts them far out of the ordinary. That's why I read them from start to finish every so often.

 Two  unusual events take place at the same block of apartments.  In one case there is a point blank shooting of a young man and the disappearance of an elderly couple. The similarities between the two situations are the location, the timing and the fact that none of the twenty some occupants knows these people very well. The elderly couple are basically hermits and grouches who never exchange an ordinary word with anyone.  The young man is best known for the nightly bedroom wall symphonies that his neighbor says is driving her to sin.

Montalbano aggressively pursues both cases but cannot prevent sad events that are to come.

There is no one more wily than Montalbano when it comes to outsmarting criminals , mafiosi or his superiors who try to rein him in. 

The descriptions of the area which is a town in Sicily, of his home near the ocean and especially of his adventures in eating. How about some risotto in squid sauce?  Most of the things he eats are in the seafood category which is appropriate since he lives on an island.  There is no author to compare with the view into Montalbano's head and he ponders, debates with himself and comes to wonderful conclusions.

Dead Reckoning

By Charlaine Harris

In this mystery, the eleventh adventure of Sookie Stackhouse we find Sookie with two fae roommates her cousin Claude and Dermot, seemingly happy in her relationship with Eric.

But with her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Sookie suspects it to be the action of a supe (supernatural), but her attention is divided she is becoming suspicious of everybody’s behavior and she thinks she is being manipulated by her cousins for reasons of their own, by Eric since she finds that he knows more about her than she realizes. This of course contradicts facts that were revealed in Book 7, ALTOGETHER DEAD when Eric asks about her family because he is in total ignorance of her past

She discovers that her lover Eric Northman and his "child" Pam are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, Sookie is drawn into the plot-which is much more complicated than she knows.

In this book you find a Sookie you don’t recognize, an Alcide who has been replaced by an alien he acts so out of character and other slightly mutated personalities. Sookie has a very strong asset and that is her telepathy. She barely uses it in the book and she actually wants to rid herself of it.

The question has been asked as to whether Harris is trying to make her characters more like the ones on True Blood the TV series. I hope not because in the series the women and the South especially are dumbed down and weakened. Sookie saves the vamps in Dallas in the books but acts late and inadequately in the series and there are many more similar incidents.

She lives in a rundown dilapidated house that looks like it hasn’t had upkeep in fifty years. Tara’s character has been changed from a businesswoman to one who is TSTL. Too many of the characters live in rundown trailers as if southerners in Louisiana are all redneck and poor. I have not watched this series in about a year so I may be way off.

All in all the way is being paved to change Sookie's romantic life yet again and for no good reason that is apparent.

If there are indeed two more books I hope the real Sookie and Alcide reappear.

Friends in High Places

By Donna Leon.

One lovely Saturday in spring while lolling on his sofa and reading about ancient Persia, Guido Brunetti a Commissario of the Venice police gets a visit from a bureaucrat in charge of finding and recording changes made to historical buildings. The Brunetti’s apartment appears not exist according to the paperwork and this is just the first conundrum to be solved in this ninth mystery of the strong excellent series by Leon.

 A few months later Brunetti gets a call from this same man Franco Rossi. He is asking for help but before he can make his problem known he is found dead in such a way to suggest an accident. Brunetti knows better.

A side story is the problem with the drug scene that is now appearing and involves Brunetti’s boss’s son. Brunetti knows that if this boy should be punished, but he is aware that he would be signing his death warrant if   he proceeds to investigate, as he wants to.

Brunetti asks himself and his wife to speculate on how they have both changed since they were young college students when they were liberal and wanted to change the world. Now they are both increasingly disillusioned about how they adapt to the way things are and always have been in Venice.

This book is worth reading because of the strong writing of the highest order, and the way the lives of Brunetti, his wife and children are a part of the plot itself. All of us as we live in this world have to compromise and to do it and do the next right thing is the challenge. Brunetti does this well.