HOW TO TRAIN A DRAGON




Cressida Cowell


Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third is part of a group of  Viking boys of the Island of Berk, who is going through a coming of age ritual. This invokes catching a dragon which will be with you for many years into the future and then training it. Failure to accomplish either of these will result in exile banishment and worse- humiliation. Hiccup is the sons of the chief of the tribe and and has an even greater burden since he is small and gets picked on quite a bit.

Toothless

None the less he captures his dragon heroically but it turns out to be a very small dragon who hasn't any teeth . Naturally he is named Toothless. One of the things that distinguishes Hiccup from the others is that unbeknownst to many he can speak Dragonese. He has studied about Dragons for a long time and he knows a bit about them.

Fireworm.

One of the other boys, graphically named Snotlout has captured a Monstrous Nightmare dragon who is fierce indeed and he has named him Fireworm. Usually only sons of chiefs are allowed to have such fearsome dragons and Hiccup feels compelled to challenge Snotlout for the ownership of the beast. This small battle is put off until the dragons are tamed and trained.


On the day of the results of the training of the dragons  there is also a competition between similar aged boys and their dragons who come from the Meathead Islands. Before the competition gets going their is an awesome storm which results in bringing up some life from the bottom of the sea. Now the entire community is endangered.. Thus begins the heroic misadventures of Hiccup the Viking. This is a very enticing story about unlikely heroes and just as unlikely ales in an unpredictable world.

sea dragon

            THE SUGAR QUEEN

SARAH ADDISON ALLEN

When Josie Cirrini was a young girl she was a terror, she made scenes wherever she went and though she is now grown, she is still remembered for her past. Now Josie has remade herself into the quiet mouse of a woman, old before her years, a virtual slave to her mother on an effort to atone for the misery Josie put her through all those years ago.

She has a secret little world that she has created in the back of a closet in her bedroom. Here she keeps romance novels and lovely stashes of junk food to give her the nice feelings that take the place of the affection she will never get from her mother.

One day she opens her closet door to find a local girl Della Lee, several years older than Josie herself. She is ensconced in the midst of the books and food and seems to be settling in for a while. She says that she has left her abusive boyfriend and is on her way north, but before she goes she wants to help Josie with the problems of her life.

One of the things that Della Lee is going to work on is to get Josie more independent of her mother and another is to help her with her love life. Josie has been in love with Adam the mail carrier for three years now, but has kept this secret well. But first Della Lee asks Josie to go to the courthouse where there is a small grill run by Chloe Finley, and to bring her a grilled tomatoes and three cheese sandwich.

So it begins, Josie is forced out of her comfort zone and begins to flap her wings just a little. It is hard to evaluate just how much control Josie’s mother has on her and what her mother’s real motivations are. This story is just that, a story about a bird who gets nudged out of her nest and had to interact and survive in a new and dangerous place. This new place though has so many things to offer like friendship and love.

This is the second Allen novel I have read. The first, GARDEN SPELLS was just as magical. This author is a real treat. I want to take her books and go hide out in a quiet place with my stash of good things to eat and read more of her stories..

BROKEN ENGLISH

P.L. Gaus

A trend that I have noticed lately is the large number of readers I encounter who are into stories based on the Amish culture. What I have discovered is that people are intrigued by the combination of the known and the unknown.

Readers like the fact that they can most likely rely on these books not to be filled with gore or blue language. They usually can expect not to run into graphic violence or sexual behavior. The Amish culture is a mystery to most of the readers as well. None of the readers I have questioned has any desire to be Amish; they just admire what they think they know.

In BROKEN ENGLISH by P. L. Gaus we have a book that falls into the murder mystery genre. It is the second in a series billed as  ‘an Amish country mystery’.

Jesse Sands after serving a sentence of 25 years in a New Jersey prison was released and he quickly headed west, across Pennsylvania and West Virginia towards Ohio. Behind him he left a wide swath of murder and destruction as he exacts a harsh measure of revenge on every innocent who helps him. On a rainy night in Millersburg he looks for shelter and for something to steal since he is running out of money. He is surprised by a young woman who has the opportunity to dial 911 before she is shot and killed by Sands. Sands is accosted outside the house as he leaves and is arrested.

Later the girl’s father David Hawkins asked to see the prisoner and his wish is granted. He has come to forgive Sands in the Amish way. After Hawkins tells Sands that he forgives him Sands whispers something that makes Hawkins go berserk and he tries to throttle the murderer but he is restrained. But he takes down the deputy who took him in and then he leaves. Now no one can find him.

David Hawkins was once a highly trained soldier who was trained to kill by the U. S. Military. In order to gain some measure of tranquility he contacted an Amish friend of his and did what was necessary to join the Amish community. He has been among the Plain people for seven years when this tragedy struck him. A basic part of the Amish belief is that vengeance belongs to God and He will deal with it in time. Everybody is afraid that David has cracked and reverted to his old ways, but David’s closest friends have grim faith that he is still abiding by the Amish pacifist ways.

In a few days another murder takes place and a reporter who had been looking into David Hawkins’s background is found shot in the head. Now the Sheriff is confident that David Hawkins has reverted to the military killer that he once was. A wide spread man hunt for the man is ordered. Professor Michael Brandon of the local college and Pastor Caleb Troyer who are usually the sheriff’s allies feel that there is more to this story and they begin to build a very different case.

Paul Louis Gaus lives in Wooster, Ohio a few miles north of Holmes County, where the world’s largest and most varied settlement of Amish and Mennonite people are found. His knowledge of the ‘Plain People’ comes from exploring narrow blacktop roads and gravel lanes of the communities that live close to the ‘English’ non -Amish people. 

We all known from current events that a community make seek to preserve a way of life but that sometimes evil people and evil deeds break down the walls of any way of life. So murder mysteries and crime stories revolving around a reclusive pacifist sect or culture are bound to be written, read and enjoyed for many different reasons. Human frailty spares no one and that is the grist to fiction writing.

CORDUROY MANSIONS

ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

In this book Smith leaves the Edinburg of Scotland Street and creates the world of Corduroy Mansions. Set in Pimlico, a trendy part of London this is a four-storey building built in the early twentieth century. It was designed in an era when people still talked to one another and all the occupants of the Corduroy flats seemed to enjoy conversing with their neighbors.

On the top floor live William who is a wine merchant, and his son Eddie who was still finding himself, in his early twenties. William had hoped that one day Eddie would move out and get a life instead of hanging around the flat talking in newspaper headlines, which were frequently deriding.   When his father bought a new pair of shoes Eddie would say things like ‘Man Buys Sad Shoes.’

On the second floor are four girls who share the flat. There is Dee, who works for a health food store, Carolyn who is getting her Master’s in Fine Arts and works at Sotheby’s. Jenny is the personal assistant of an oleaginous MP called Oedipus Snark who is disliked by most that get to know him including his own mother. Lastly, Jo from Australia fills out the roster.

The ground floor is  inhabited by Mr. Wickramsinghe; an accountant who is quiet and well dressed but not known well by the others residents of the building.

Marcia

The story opens with William working on a variety of stratagems to get Eddie into his own apartment. He decides to become the part owner of a dog, unusually named Freddie de la Hay. Eddie hates dogs and claims to be allergic to them. Another plot involves possibly having a woman move in with him, preferably one that Eddie can’t stand like Marcia.

Beatrice Snark

As the inhabitants of Corduroy Mansions become known to us it is hard not to become fond of them. They each have quirks that allow Smith to enlarge on the themes of present day conundrums. He has Beatrice Snark the mother of the MP considering writing a book on “The Eyes-Closed Society.” It would be about the way bad behavior in others is increasingly forcing people to pretend that parts of reality did not exist. The theme was that as we become burdened by distressing information such as global warming, growing material need, problems in government, the temptation to turn away becomes greater and greater.

When mentioning wine-merchant William’s beautiful new shoes he reminds us that the pride we had in childhood when we got something new to wear, never really goes away. It is small gems like this sprinkled throughout the entire book that make this book an experience and a heart-warming one at that.

Corduroy Mansions started as a literary experiment,  a serialized on-line book for all to read, much to the horror of some publishers. Quality fiction? Free? On the World Wide Web? This was Alexander McCall Smith's first online novel published in serial form by the Telegraph.  As with most things on the internet, the Telegraph’s digital novel has changed and grown organically over the three years that it has been running. Increasingly, and remarkably, the novel has learnt to march in line with that ever-changing thing that might be best described by the nebulous phrase, an “online community”. These stories are also available in book form, and so far there are three. This one, THE DOG WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and A CONSPIRACY OF FRIENDS.

NOT UNTIL A HOT JANUARY

M. J. Adamson

It is a bitter cold January in New York and New York Police Lt. Balthazar Marten was being bored to icicles at his desk job that has kept him working and his mind partially off his personal problems. Balthazar would never totally recuperate from the bomb blast almost a year ago that killed his wife and ruined his leg. Now he had a new assignment that he really wished would pass him by, but that was not to be. He was headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico where he was to help with the problems a new casino was having with organized crime.

Marten was well known for his recent work in a case known as the River Rat case in which a serial killer was tracked and caught.  He did speak a good college Spanish and had a partner in the past who had helped him with the language and was Puerto Rican himself. So the powers that be thought he was the right man for the job.

Before he even gets settled in his hotel room by the beautiful harbor he finds that he has been reassigned to new case of a possible serial killer of young women. This is considered by some a very un-Puerto Rican crime because the case as it began seemed very well planned and executed. On the island murders were usually spontaneous. As a matter of fact in San Juan they had two distinct homicide divisions. Homicide One where the killer was unknown, and these crimes were rare, and a larger Homicide Two for cases where the assailant was known soon after the murder, spouse or other family member for example.

 

Balthazar takes a look at all the files of three dead girls and tries to find the underlying pattern as he also tries to use his profiling skills such as they are. Some facts are clear, the killer had a military background . Fear has smothered the island and the media want to castigate the police for being incompetent.  He begins re-interviewing the friends and family members. Suddenly there are attempts on Marten’s own life and the tension increases on all involved.

Balthazar relies heavily on young Sixto Cardenas of the SJPD to help him navigate the unfamiliar culture and the beautiful, warm, exotic terrain.

 As the mystery evolves Adamson creates a very nice sense of place. The characters are well done, interesting and complex enough to make me want to read the next in the series which is A FEBRUARY FACE. These books were written in the 1980’s and are very hard to find.

A MINISTER’S GHOST

Philip DePoy

Fever Develin is an unusual man who left the Blue Mountain region of Georgian Appalachia years ago with only one person to see him off, Skidmore Needle who was his best friend.  Devilin now has a doctorate in cultural studies and has returned to his hometown to study and capture the music and folklore of the area.

One of the reasons he came back to Blue Mountain was that he realized that no matter where he lived he would still be in Blue Mountain. “Home wasn’t a place as much as a cellular memory, a collection of experiences that trail out behind you. “ When he came home Skidmore Needle was still his best friend, but was now the Sheriff. He had helped Skidmore solve a few cases but now they were having a problem. Skidmore was warning Fever to stay away from his latest investigation.

Two   lovely teen aged girls are coming home one night from a movie date and are killed by a train at a railroad crossing. They are Rory and Tess, the nieces of a close friend of Develin’s, Lucinda.  . Their car, a Volkswagen was apparently stalled on the tracks and the girls died instantly.

Lucinda asks Fever to investigate because it made no sense to her. They were alert active girls and even if their car was stuck on the tracks, she can see no reason why they didn’t just get out of the car and run out of the way. Fever begins to check things out despite opposition from the sheriff and he finds that the keys to the ignition were not in the car nor found at the scene. And the seat belts were still fastened. How could the girls not have heard the train, which screams several loud whistles before it approaches the railroad crossing?

This proceeds to be a very interesting story. We all know of people hit by the train at railroad crossings and we have had these same questions. Why would a car stall on the tracks, why didn’t the warning whistle suffice to alert the drivers and why didn’t the driver just get out or at least try?

Because there is always more to the story of course, but we will usually never know these answers. In this mystery a complication set of overlapping causes have one great effect as these two girls die, but here at least there were some answers.

The back story of live in a southern mountain area is well done. Develin discusses some funeral rites. In Blue Mountain funerals were social occasions as well as memorial services. Folks dressed up, everybody brought food to the fellowship hall. Genuine sympathy and goodwill were evident. Of course the dressing up was a declaration of economic status, the food a serious competition, but to Develin the sympathy wasn't particularly deep. That was not the case when children such as these were being buried.

 THE PAPER MOON

Andrea Camilleri

Inspector Salvo Montalbano has had to change his morning ritual. He used to lay in bed for ten minutes or so thinking of idiocies. It was the best time of the day. He would wonder what he was going to eat that day, or consider how to tell Livia his girlfriend that the new gift she gave him does not fit and other inconsequential matters. But lately he has become aware of his mortality and he figures that if one starts thinking about death at the crack of dawn by five o’clock one would either shoot oneself or jump into the sea with a rock tied around one's neck.  So now he just bounds out of bed.

One day when he gets to the office early as a result of his new routine, a woman, Michela Pardo comes in with the report that her dear brother Angelo Pardo has not been in touch and she is worried both for herself and her ailing mother. Naturally when he goes with her to the brother’s apartment it is to find him murdered. She is positive that the person responsible is  Angelo’s mistress, Elena Sclafai. By this time Montalbano has discovered that Michela has the most beautiful eyes, like a violet lake that a man could drown in. 

With in a short time of finding and questioning Elena it appears that her story is entirely credible. She has an alibi and she too is like a beautiful shark and he is the bait. She insists that she had not seen Angelo recently because she was breaking up with him. He was a doctor who had lost his license and was now a drug representative, he travelled a lot and there were other people who could have wanted him dead.

At this same time there have been several deaths from drug over doses, one of which is that of an important Senator. It appears that these latest drugs have been tainted in some way. And the Narcotics squad suddenly descends on Vigata.  The Vigata police are under pressure. Montalbano sees it this way. The Senator’s death has been cleaned up for the media and he is supposed to have died from natural causes. If this is the case who ever sold him drugs are not responsible for his death. It is also more than likely it will come out that who ever sold the Senator his drugs, sold them also to many of the Senator’s playmates. In all a big mess.

 

Montalbano knows that when the dealers are arrested and the possibility of well-known names hitting the airwaves occurs to those in power, the police will be criticized for not proceeding more cautiously. He recommends to his subordinate that in keeping with tradition, after arresting the drug dealer it would be advisable not to turn him over to the judge immediately, but to hold onto him for a few days then transfer him to jail. This way others will have had time to get organized and then the accused will be served good coffee in prison and he will no longer be able to supply the list of his clients. And they will all live happily ever after.

In the drug case he lets his subordinate Mimi Augello take the lead while he tries to figure out which of the bewitching women is trying to tell him that the moon is made of paper in such a way that he is swallowing it hook, line and sinker. Drug deaths, drug reps and murder do suggest a link between the two cases. Montalbano is wily enough to see through the murk to find a killer.

Forget about your Machiavelli, shelve your ART OF WAR by Sun Tzu and put aside any other tomes you have on strategy and get conversant with Andrea Camilleri’s series about Sicilian policeman Inspector Salvo Montalbano. What he doesn’t know about stratagems probably is not worth knowing. That he remains honest and incorruptible while swimming with the sharks and villains is the icing on the cake. The stories are always so plausible and told with such humor that each book can make your day.

PETRIFIED

Barbara Nadel

One steamy hot mid summer morning in the ancient city on the Bosporus once known as Constantinople the crossroads of the world, but now better known as Istanbul the police are called to the scene of the death of any old woman who died days before.  The unusual aspect of the situation was that at the scene was a beautiful young man, also dead who appeared quite alive because he had wide-open violet eyes that were made of glass. The mystery deepened when the police pathologist determined that this body, as well preserved as it was had actually crossed over more than fifty years before.  It appeared also that both of the inhabitants of this apartment came originally from Argentina.

While this puzzle is being unraveled Inspector Cetin Ikmen has been called to the case of the disappearance of young twins who are the offspring of a famous artist, or infamous artist according to some who thing that talent should play some role in the production of art. Many people however thoroughly appreciate the shock and crudity value of the works of the now wealthy Melih Akdeniz and so there are reasons to suspect that the children could have been kidnapped. Ikmen knows that the stories he has been told about the last known activities of the youngsters are just that, stories.

Inspector Mehmet Suleyman is working on a separate case trying to bring down the head of the local Russian mafia Valery Rostov who is trying just as hard to bring him down. Mehmet has involved himself with a junkie prostitute Masha who can get him information on Rostov’s activities especially regarding the movement of drugs. He is a bit attracted to her even though he considers her just a pawn in his hands. What he is really afraid of is that he is the game piece being manipulated in the crime lord’s chess game.

There have always been gangsters in the city and this would not change. But after the Soviet Union disintegrated there seemed to be a flood of totally immoral people into the streets who did not restrict themselves to just one or two illegal businesses. As Suleyman gets close to Rostov he does find one possible weakness, one that is totally incomprehensible to him and one which many of the wealthy Russians share. It is in this that the thread tying all three investigations together, the disappearance of the children, and the beautifully dead Argentine boy.

Barbara Nadel cuts to the heart of what are some of the very different cultural beliefs in people of different religions. Since people do have to live together these issues are understood and tolerated. Every so often however these differences seem indeed bizarre, especially when some things are taken to the extreme. It is a repeat in a way, of the old question. What is art? In PETRIFIED one man’s art is another man’s horror.

Gunshot Road

Gunshot Road

Adrian Hyland

This is a story of many things, of murder, of hate, of greed and of violence all told over the haunting music of the outback, deep in the heart of Australia. It begins when Emily Tempest is part of a Young Man’s Time ceremony where she is joining with the women of the group in their song.

'You could imagine those great song cycles rolling across country, taking their shape from what they encountered scraps of language, minerals and dreams, a hawk’s flight, a feather’s fall, the flash of a meteorite.'

Emily Tempest is just back from training and is to start as Aboriginal Community Police Officer for her outback township Bluebush. This will be an odd job for Emily for although she is well educated, intelligent and part of the community she has always resisted authority herself. But she has a sense of the rhythms of her people and can see below the surface of the obvious problems of alcohol, prejudice, poverty and now drugs. One of her problems will be her new boss who is new to the territory and is a by the book  kind of man named Sergeant Cockburn.

 

Before her first day is over there is the murder of an old geologist who was getting a little crazy and an old friend of his is arrested. Knowing the men Emily can’t accept the pat verdict that the rest of the force is eager to swallow to settle the case. The old man, Doc as he was known had been surveying the Fuego Desert. He had traversed it from east to west and mapped it completely including ranges, ridges glaciers and water fields.

Emily convinces Sergeant Cockburn to let her take a trip out there. Along with her, against regulations she takes along people who know the area well. She meets one old man called Eli Windmill. The specific area that she is headed to is Eli’s dreaming. It is called Dingo Springs and Eli called it a fire-dreaming place.

Windmill is blind but when the party gets to Dingo springs Eli knows something is terribly wrong. Other members of the mob also can sense some thing wrong and they leave immediately. The difficulty is this is all too vague for Emily to bring to Cockburn. Now however there are attempts being made on Emily’s life and the violence escalates. Emily’s wits are all that help her because she has a tendency to tackle everything on her own. 

Adrian Hyland began writing about Emily Tempest in his first book of the series called MOONLIGHT DOWNS. She grew up half in the Aboriginal world and half in the white. Her language is colourful and peppered with words that start with f. She is a fascinating character and it is through her dialogue  and internal monologues that the reader gets a sure taste of the beauty and the ugliness of the outback. When things are good, they are very, very good, but when they are bad they are horrid. But as Emily says, she and her people are above all else survivors.

The Devil and the Dolce Vita

THE DEVIL AND THE DOLCE VITA

Timothy Holme

Commisario Achille Peroni is still feeling that he is nothing more than a museum attendant in the beautiful streets and canals of northern Venice. His southern Neapolitan blood is running cold as the clammy Italian winter looms.  But he is called across the bay to a beach resort area with pretensions of grandeur where a lovely American singer Kehzia Michaelis has disappeared. With one look at her picture Peroni falls in love and he begins the search with a sense of desperation.

Like many young people she lived in a tent on the beach and she sang nightly in a bar called the Dolce Vita.  She was known to sit at times with an older gentleman who always drank the addictive pernod and more recently was seen with a younger man working with orphans and studying for the priesthood.

 

Peroni follows each and every clue assiduously and meets the older gentleman who is a wealthy Venetian  Signore Fabrizio de Sanctis.  Signore de Sanctis says he has not seen  Kehzia for twelve days and that she was just a friend and he can give no further information. But he does invite Peroni to a dinner party at his house and he advises him very strongly to attend because there will be someone there who wants to meet him and will be of great importance to him.

Achille Peroni grew up in the gutters of Napoli and had always had somewhat of a dual personality. One part is the ragged urchin who had to survive the mean streets and the other is the subsequent Dottore of law that is upright and honest and who is the main personality presented to the world. Every so often these two aspects of his ego have conversations with each other in trying to determine which way he should behave in certain situation. His main guiding force has always been Saint Janarius the patron saint of Naples who when appealed to has saved Peroni’s life on more than one occasion.

 

Achille decides to attend this dinner and is drawn into a world of power, decadence and Satanists. The two sides of his personality really have something to argue about now. The powerful want him to call off the search for the girl. Here are the horns of the dilemma for any upright cop. Peroni’s life is at stake once again in more ways than one.

Achille Peroni has come to a crossroads and the way Timothy Holme handles the progress of the case of the missing singer and the “Valentino” of the Italian police is imaginative, entertaining as well as very exciting. We all know the way we want a hero to behave and we understand that our heroes are human so it takes a craftsman to make the outcome convincingly real.


This is the third on this series featuring Achille Peroni. They were written in the eighties. It is a short series written on the 1980's but I did not come across it at that time. There are two more books, THE ASSISI MURDERS and AT THE LAKE OF SUDDEN DEATH. The author Timothy Holme died in 1987.