Mr. Wong Goes West

 by Nury Vittachi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mr. Wong has been expanding his Feng Shui practice by setting propitious meeting places up that will be helpful in smoothing business transactions. He is hired usually by the person who wants a certain deal to be resolved in their favor.  When one such meeting goes awry Mr. Wong is left holding the bag and in debt to a big time local gangster belonging to the Chinese mafia in Singapore.



Meanwhile his young Australian assistant Joyce has accept a plum of a job for him which will take them both to Hong Kong. He has been asked by associate of the British Royal family to do Feng Shui on a big new air jet which will be used for business conferences while in flight. It is a unique craft with the setup of a small town with bed rooms, movie sections and even a small store as well as large conference rooms. When he is done he is supposed to go on it to England and work on Buckingham Palace to help control some of the misfortunes that have been happening to the royal family.

Before he can begin his work on the plane a murder takes place on board. As this intrepid duo of Wong and McQuinnie  begins their work which now involves a murder investigation this begin to go awry. MR. Wong predicted there would be trouble and as a serious of events unfold which could lead to short lives for all on board and now the reader waits for Mr. Wong to pull salvation out of a hat!

Vittachi's books are always very well done and they include interesting plots unlike others and wonderful characters which all give the reader a smile.

Mr. Churchill's Secretary

 by Susan Elia MacNeal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maggie Hope is an English girl who was orphaned at a young age. She was sent to an aunt in New England and was raised there. Maggie is an intrepid young woman who is a math whiz and is taking a relatively unprecedented step in going for her doctorate in mathematics at a prestigious university. When she is bequeathed her grandmothers house in London she planned on making a quick trip across the pond to sell it and get back to her life. The house proves hard to sell and Maggie keeps it open by renting rooms and gets herself a job.

One day an American friend whom she knew in college and who also lodges with her tells her about a secretarial job at 10 Downing Street with the then Prime Minister Mr. Churchill. This kind of a job  won't use any of Maggie's talents but she takes it anyway.

In the next few months Maggie begins to learn that there are mysteries about her past as well as plenty of mysterious things going on at work. WWII has begun and Britain has joined they fray. The problems confronting England are the rapid advancement of the Germans on one front that has all worried about invasion, while on the other hand the IRA is stepping up it's terroristic activities in order to help out the Germans.

The story is intricate, fascinating and well done. There are plenty of small details that MacNeal includes about the daily life that added to the ambience. For instance in getting London ready for a possible invasion all the dogs were sent to the countryside or euthanized for the fear that barking would alert the invading forces to the presence of the the citizens. Just imagining the attention to the small problems the British aside from rationing, blackout curtains and fear gave the story depth.

Postcards From The Dead

Postcards from the Dead, by Laura Childs, evokes some of these memories with her scrapbooking series that takes place in the French Quarter.

Carmela Bertrand finds herself packed into an elegant, but aging, suite in a New Orleans French Quarter hotel. She is the owner of Memory Mine, a scrapbooking shop located on a nearby street. There is an excited buzz among all the people crowded into this room, because the countdown for Mardi Gras is on and the denizens of New Orleans are all shaking off their shackles and getting ready to "laissez les bon temps rouler." Outside, the sound of a passing parade is deafening.

Carmela is approaching her thirties, and is making a life for herself after a divorce from a husband who is one of the NOLA elite. In her married days, Carmela lived in a large house in the famed, beautiful Garden District. Now she has a small apartment, with a faithful mutt to keep her company and loyal friends who care for her. She is present at this gathering because she is one of several people who is to be interviewed by a not-so-friendly newscaster, Kimber Breeze.

Carmela is waiting her turn with Kimber, who is out on a balcony that overlooks one of the many parades filling the street in the days leading up to Shrove Tuesday. Carmela is talking to one of the cameramen, who is having trouble eliciting a response from Kimber. Carmela dashes out to the balcony to confront a gruesome sight. Drunken revelers? No, much worse, and she is too late to help Kimber. The potential witnesses find every way out of the room, as well as out of the hotel, and leave Carmela and her friend Ava to talk to the police.

Early the next morning, on top of the newspaper at her door, Carmela finds a postcard that seemingly comes from Kimber. Carmela is a little freaked out when she later gets another that has been left on her desk at the shop. Someone knows where she lives and works, and though she feels threatened, Carmela can't really convince herself she should report this.

There are those who think the police are all right in their place, and Carmela is one of them––as a matter of fact, she dates a homicide detective. But when it comes to sleuthing, the amateur seems to have the edge, since she is closer to real clues, the background information, and the gossip that may contain the key to a murder. Detective Babcock of the NOPD, as a professional investigator, not to mention as Carmela's boyfriend, takes the stance that Carmela should stick to her own job. But Carmela does have an entrée into some of the exclusive social venues where some of the key suspects will be present.

As a matter of fact, Memory Mine is extremely busy as N'awlins is a party town––particularly during this season of celebration. All kinds of ideas for place cards, invitations, and table decorations are being brought to the shop, to be produced in the traditional Mardi Gras colors. These are purple for justice, gold for power and green for faith. I must admit that listening to the descriptions of the stock in this store, including all kinds of exotic papers, unusual stamps and many other little bits, stirred my creative juices––such as they are.

What I liked about Carmela was that she is very down to earth; not quirky at all. She dresses conservatively and behaves much like most 20-something women. Although she runs a shop, she is able to pursue her investigation without distractions like frenetically trying to run errands, do housework and shop. Descriptions of sidetracks like these exhaust me as a reader.

She does have some lively friends and co-workers, who provide the quirk and there were a few times when I thought that with friends like these, who needs enemies? But they do provide a balance, for, as Ava ripostes when Carmela tells her she worries too much: "sometimes you don’t worry enough."

My main concern with Carmela is that once she went into the Café du Monde and came out with coffee but no beignets! She redeemed herself another time by buying some but ate only one. This suggests a woman with great control. This is a woman to emulate, but I probably won't the next time I visit the Café du Monde.

Childs presents The City That Care Forgot in a very inviting way. I was drawn to the characters and would like to read more about them. I will be reading the omnibus that introduces these protagonists in the near future. Maybe there I'll learn Babcock's first name.

The Murder on the Links

The Murder on the Links is the second of Christie's Poirot  series and from it a better picture of what this Belgian detective is like. The thing that struck me was that he might be a precursor to the man known in the current day as Mr. Adrian Monk. Hercule Poirot comes into a room and immediately looks around and if he can he will begin to straighten up  the pictures on the wall, align edges of things out of place and generally look for what is out of order. This is basically the method to his madness as the saying goes.

Poirot's second characteristic is that he leaves forensic details to others because he can't waste time on clues like cigarette butts or blades of grass because frankly he knows nothing about them and he refuses to make himself look ridiculous moving his nose across the ground like a hound dog. Leave that for the dogs he says.

Poirot gets a frantic letter from France where a Mr. Renauld is in fear for his life. Despite leaving immediately with his friend Captain Hastings, he arrives too late.  Renauld has been found in an open grave on a golf course wearing an overcoat  which is too large for him over his underwear. The corpse has a look of absolute amazement and terror. Poirot makes the fantastic statement that he could see by the victims face that he was stabbed in the back.

There are many entangled threads involving several mysterious characters that Poirot teases out in a delicate fashion all the while poor Captain Hasting is totally lost at sea. He is a lot more that a day late and a dollar short. It made me wonder just why Poirot puts up with him. A young French detective named Giraud is on the case. He is apparently the best thing to be had in Paris. He is a young rapidly rising star in fact. His method is that of investigating the little clues of spent cigarettes, footprints and the like. He barely hides his contempt for Poirot when Hercule refuses to jump to conclusions. Naturally Poirot has the last laugh while the Frenchman rushes back to Paris  with a little less luster on his star.

I like the early Poirot books the best because as yet you don't get tired of the little grey cells comments.

The Eye of Jade

Private detectives are banned in China but Mei Wang, who once had a stable job in the Ministry of Public Security thought that there was a need for the services she could provide. In Beijing there many small crimes that the police will not involve themselves with and in the new millennium divorce is becoming more common place so Mei could find independence as a business woman. All she had to do was market herself as an Information Consultant.

One of Mei Wang's earliest memories is of her life in a labor camp with her father who was an intellectual condemned for his idealism to hard labor for the rest of his life. One day her mother came and got her and bore her away on a bus while she waved goodbye to her father, not realizing that she would never see him again.



Then she lived a hard scrabble life with her mother Ling Bai who struggled to put food on the table for Mei and her younger sister Lu. After the end of the Cultural Revolution Ling Bai was able to get a permanent job and the family's situation improved..  Mei Wang went to University after which she got a job and an apartment that went with it  at the Ministry of Public Security, a higher echelon of the police department akin to Scotland Yard.

She became disillusioned with her work at the MPS and left their although her family was aghast at her decision to leave the security off a government job and all the perks that went with it. Her mother's position was that she was throwing away her future because what mattered in China was not money but power. None the less  Mei liked her independence and she determined not to brood about the past.

One day a Mr. Chen Jitian made an appointment to see her. She knew him better as Uncle Chen a great friend of her mother over the years. He came to see her and told a story that began in the winter of 1968 when the country was being terrorized by the Red Guard. These roving bands of "patriots ' including homes, stores and even museums from which they destroyed the relics and burned everything by building great bonfires and feeding them with all the artwork, documents and records.

Now, in the present some of these artifacts are surfacing, in particular an ancient ceremonial bowl. It appears that someone had stolen some things before everything was destroyed.  Now the bowl had been sold to an antique dealer. Uncle Chen is looking for a jade seal  belonging to a long ago Chinese ruler that he thinks was taken from a museum at the same time as the bowl. He asks Mei to find it for him.

The first thing Mei does is find search for the person who sold the bowl, but when she finds him he has  just been murdered. Interestingly, although she has discovered a dead body she is never interviewed by the authorities. But now the game is afoot and Mei backtracks through recent history to find the connections that will lead her to the stolen artifacts as well as to a new understanding of her own past. The era of the cultural revolution was filled with death, destruction and secrets.

Mei is very enterprising and energetic as she pursues the Jade object through the years but she is very conflicted about what she also discovers about her own past life. It takes an illness in a loved one for her to try to reconnect some of the fractured pictures of what really happened to her family.
This is a very interesting book that is the start of a series and I recommend it to all who like stories with a backdrop of history and a fascinating locale.

The Hollow Hills

Merlin believes that his main purpose in life is to help bring into the world and then bring into power a man who can truly unite Britain. He is convinced that this purpose is why he has been given his magical powers from God in the first place. This is the basic story of THE HOLLOW HILLS.  The great warriors, Ambrosius, Merlin's father and Uther Pendragon, his uncle have paved the way for a new era and Arthur, Uther's son steps up with all the qualities appropriate for a great leader .

Mary Stewart makes it all seem so real, as if it were truly a history of the past that she is reciting. I am enjoying this series tremendously.

Tintagel Castle, Cornwall

The story tells of Arthur's birth at Tintagel Castle on a cold Christmas eve and how Merlin took him from his mother Igraine and hid him in plain sight elsewhere in England. Uther did not want the child around and had great expectations of having other male heirs. He already had one daughter, Morgous from another of his paramours and he and his new wife were young and healthy. Tintagel is a real place and remnants of it exist today.

Merlin knew that Arthur had many other enemies, others who had pretensions to the throne and who wouldn't hesitate at infanticide.Once he feels the child is safe Merlin began to travel to throw people off scent by keeping a low profile. He visited countries like Egypt and some in the far east where he learned a great deal about medicine and other esoteric subjects.

By the time Arthur was fourteen much had changed. Uther had no other male heirs, just a daughter Morgause who was illegitimate, and  Morgana and so the king called for Merlin to bring him his son. The story of the sword in the stone as told by Stewart is intricate and compelling as the readers follows this well known story written by and enthralling story teller.

The next in the series is The Last Enchantment and I am looking forward to it.

The Moonspinners

by Mary Stewart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was happy to be able to enjoy this book again after reading it first almost half a century ago. It has stood the test of time pretty well. I was tickled to read little passages that were so important to many of us young girls at the time, particularly the author reinforcing the idea that women were not to be considered weak, helpless and good for nothing much.

It was a battle for the heroine of the book Nicola Ferris to be taken seriously on the one hand, while on the other she was able to accomplish quite a bit just because she was underestimated as a woman! After coming across an injured man she goes looking for his brother who is possible a hostage held in secret and thus she explores the area and it's small buildings.

I was not as impressed by the romance as I was on the initial reading. Nicola seemed a bit gullible and she wore her heart on her sleeve after meeting a poor sick and injured individual, Mark who was far from his best. Not that we were given much detail about Mark's character.


Nicola was living an adventurous life because she had left her home country England and was working in a very minor capacity at the British Embassy in Athens. She travels to different parts of Greece when ever she gets so time off. Now in the spring she takes a trip to Crete where she is going to meet up with an aunt of hers who is also travelling in the area. She has made reservations in a new small hotel in a little town on the coast. Stewart draws a very nice picture of the location emphasizing the wildlife and the and the flowers. Here swift references to Google images helped me get a better idea what was being described.

I will look forward to reading one or two more of these stories!

The Crystal Cave

 by Mary Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story if the first of four books dealing with the legends of Merlin, King Arthur and Camelot.

Brittany

Ambrosius and Uther are the sons of a British king who has been defeated and they have fled across the channel to an area called Less Britain (Brittany?) to regroup and gain strength. Years ago Ambrosius  had a secret liaison with the daughter of the King of Wales, Niniane. But he left her when he fled, not knowing she was pregnant. The son that was born to Niniane was named Myriddn Emrys , but he was known as Merlin.

 Despite his mother's rank he was nonetheless a bastard and looked down upon. He mother refused to name her lover despite torture and Merlin was not looked on with his Grandfather's favor even though royal bastards are plentiful in those times and there was another that he grew up with whom his grandfather did favor.

Merlin grew up keeping secrets, hiding in the shadows and eventually met his destiny in the form of an old man who taught him medicine, botany and many other things. The old man lived in a cave that had a secret compartment filled with crystals. It was here that Merlin had his first visions and he knew that God had plans for him.  These were the times when paganism and Christianity existed side by side,and while Merlin believed there were many gods in and around the earth he knew that there was one God supreme and it was this God that was to use him an an instrument.

Thus begins the story of Merlin the magician. Mary Stewart grabs hold of the reader and takes them back to the days when Britain was overrun by Saxons, many small kingdoms with their leaders always warring to gain more territory. The tale is exciting and engrossing. I have already started The Hollow Hills which is the following book.

Watership Down

 by Richard Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Somehow I thought this book was sci fi. It turned out to be the trials and tribulations of rabbits . It was mildly enjoyable.

A group of rabbits decide to leave their commune because it was becoming dangerous. One little bunny had a premonition that death was coming and he and his brother lead a splinter group on a difficult sojourn looking foe a new home.

When they at last found a place far enough from highways and men who held burning sticks in their mouth and drove dangerous machines they began to settle down. They realized next that what their community lacked was females.

Out they went again looking for some sabine rabbits and found a cult in which all the members lived dreadfully circumscribed lives. They encourages some feisty does to join them in an escape.

They  reached home safely but were afraid their days were numbered as the cult, which was quite militaristic would seek revenge. They mustered their defenses and against all odds good triumphed over evil and the peaceful rabbit community could now relax and proliferate.

The September Society

 by Charles Finch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This mystery begins in India with some murders that are cold, calculated and cruel in that there appears to be no motive for them. The story slips to to Oxford, England about two decades later in 1866 when an anxious, perhaps overly doting mother comes to thirty-something amateur detective Charles Lenox because her son, George Payson who was studying at Lincoln College, part of Oxford University, has mysteriously disappeared.

Lenox takes the case and realizes that he welcomes a nostalgic trip to revisit his own college days at that same University.

Lincoln College

He arrives at the young man's empty room and immediately sees a pattern that suggests a message has been left. There is an murdered animal, a sip of paper with a code, various red artifacts scattered on the floor in a seemingly random pattern  and a mysterious calling card of an unknown entity 'The September Society".


The hunt has just begun when a body identified as Payson's and the police become involved and for reasons unclear to me immediately welcome Lenox as part of the team. Really! The next problem is that Payson's best friend has disappeared as well also leaving the calling card of the September Society.

One of the most interesting part of the book is the inclusion of the University of Oxford's history. Oxford is made up of about twenty constituent colleges each a small mini university with it's own library, chapel, dining hall, professors and buildings. These different colleges were founded at different times. Lincoln College was founded by the Bishop of Lincoln in 1427.

John Wesley

A notable graduate was John Wesley, the religious reformer. A joke had been made about Wesley when he was there in  the 1720's and he was called a Methodist because of his dull methodical ways.


 Oxford itself was the brainchild of a cleric who had a few students that met in some small room looking for intellectual stimulation. This was in 1090 AD and before another century died away Oxford was recognised as the greatest institution of higher education in the world. By the 1400's Oxford began to have the look and feel of a great university.


The story moves along at a moderate pace and aside from Lenox's obsession with his unrequited love for Lady Jane who he has known since childhood, the plotting is intricate and the tale is entertaining. I enjoyed it.

 by Lucy Cores
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Toni Ney, once a ballet dancer herself is now earning her daily bread as an exercise expert and reviewing ballet part time for a local newspaper. The same day in the early forties that her soldier boyfriend Eric Skeets comes home on furlough Tony is off to the Civic Opera to review a ballet that is intended to take New York by storm. The premier danseur is Russian Vova Izlomin who is a poor example of a human being but makes up for this by the artistry of his dancing. Just lately returning to the dancing scene, he has been in seclusion after a severe schizophrenic break down. The ballet is intended to show him at his very best, reconditioned in top form.

The beginning of the ballet goes off beautifully and the audience is appropriately awed, but suddenly the main attraction had disappeared. he is found later hanging from some ropes high up back stage. You can describe the rats warren of a multistory back stage to me a million times and I will never quite get a picture of what they are talking about. I always envision a ship's deck with spars, ropes, hooks and pulleys all over the place.

Thus the story unfolds. Did the dancer crack yet again, or did a jealous rival or doting wife do him in? Inspector Anthony Torrent of the NYPD needs Toni's help to understand the nuances of the behind the scenes life at a ballet theater. Toni enjoys helping him out because she has a good eye for detail and she loves the excitement of the hunt. She also has a roving eye that has lit on a handsome wealthy tomcat of a man who is on his third marriage and who is also looking for a new fancy. This is one part of the story that disappoints because it shows that Toni's judgement is lacking.

The story has an intricate finale much like any ballet and well worth the read. I am sorry the series is so short. There is a beautiful Rue Morgue edition that Goodreads doesn't show so don't judge by the no picture icon.