The First Rule of Ten : A Tenzing Norbu Mystery by Gay Hendricks, Tinker Lindsay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Tenzing Norbu is the product of a romance between a young American woman and a Tibetan monk. He spent his early formative years in Paris with his mother who died young. He then went to a a monastery in India where his after lived. He was completely  immersed in the the Buddhist teachings until late teenage years when his naturally rebellious personality finally made it increasingly difficult to stay on this past.The efforts of an intuitive monk set him one a path to teach Buddhism in Los Angeles where he realized that the kind of order that he wanted to belong to was law and order. Thus he became a part of the LAPD.

Once he asked his father why people die and the answer he received was that they died in order to learn how to live. Tenzing "Ten" after many years on the force decides to try to lives a private citizen helping others thus he becomes a PI.

The badge is barely cooling in his drawer when his first case chooses him rather than the other way around. A desperate woman comes to house in Topanga Canyon fleeing from a cult and mutters dire warnings about people dying. She leaves and Ten is not sure what to make of her but he finds out the next day that she has been brutally murdered.


Tenzing uncovers a machiavellian plot involving many criminal elements and lawyers. It boils down to a case of murders for either love or lucre. Filthy lucre is most likely the driving force.

Tenzing approaches the case as he does his life, trying to understand himself and his own feelings and motives for what he is involved with. It really works for him making this an interesting story with a complex character who is very likable. I am not exactly clear on the ins and outs of the first rule of Ten but I am very eager to read THE SECOND RULE OF TEN.

COOKING THE BOOKS

Cooking The Books by Kerry Greenwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is summer in Melbourne, Australia and baker Corinna Chapman has closed her shop, Earthly Delights for a few weeks in order to have a vacation. That surely wouldn't work in my neck of the woods but it is a detail that reminds the reader that there are other exciting and different places in the world.


Amidst the hot northern wind that the Aussie's have no name for but many others do, like mistral, khamsin, sirocco or Santa Ana's mischief and mayhem is bound to occur because tempers get hot, people are uncomfortable and emotions are stirred. A Chinese friend of Corinna's calls it Dragon's Breath which is very apt.

Flinders Street Station

Corinna is a little bored with her vacation and helps an old school friend out by helping her in her job as a caterer for a new TV soap about a wedding planner. Some funny and some not so funny things are happening on the set and Corinna is on the spot to help her partner Daniel, a PI who has been asked to find the culprits who are behind the pranks. Daniel is also working on another case of stolen bonds so the days and nights are filled with mysteries. There are several other sub-plots that keeps the reader alert.

Parliament House, Melbourne

In the case of the bonds the duo are following clues based on nursery rhymes and other literary references. It is this that gives this book a lift because I always like a variety of mental stimulations. I had known that many nursery rhymes had meanings reflecting the times in which they were born but I got a lovely mini-education about the rhymes. Just my cup of tea or cupcake as the case may be. Following the clues I used Google images to see what Corinna and Daniel were visiting and this further enhanced my enjoyment of this book.

THE BLACK CAMEL

The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

THE BLACK CAMEL         by Earl Derr Biggers


'Death is the black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate.' This is the quote used by Charlie Chan minutes after he is called to investigate the murder of Shelah Fane a Hollywood actress who has just arrived in the Hawaiian Islands to wrap up a movie that had been begun in Tahiti. She had hoped to have some time to recuperate once filming was done. Shelah was quite famous for her work and appearance but these were on the cusp of a downhill slope, something that actresses in the movie business always feared when the little lines on the face became more obvious.

This is a very high profile case for Inspector Chan of the Honolulu police and he proceeds warily among many possible suspects. One man a mysterious crystal gazer or fortune teller known as Tarneverro is well known among the Hollywood set and a close personal friend of Miss Fane is very eager to help in the solving of this murder and Charlie accepts this philosophically with help from another wise saying: ‘the bird chooses the tree, not the tree the bird.’


Most of Charlie Chan’s approach relates to basic philosophy of what will be will be. Life is predestined and so there is no use worrying about things not easily controlled such as the weather, one’s weight, and other facts of life. But he has no intention of behaving like the crane, which waited for the sea to disappear and leave him dry fish to eat, starves to death. Thus he proceeds and in his quiet intuitive way knows he can find the murderer.

Diamond Head

Charlie Chan has eleven children and in this book we are introduced to his oldest son, Henry, his oldest daughter, Rose and the next in line Evelyn. We also meet little Barry who was born while he was helping the SFPD during his recent adventures in California in BEHIND THAT CURTAIN.

Cooking With Fernet Branca

Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had put off reading this book thinking that it would be a book similar to others about people buying houses in Tuscany or France and making food and drinking wine. I was wrong. I found it to be hilarious and wonderful.

Cypress Grove

Cypress Grove by James Sallis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a wonderful book. The author has the elements of the story come together like partners in a tango. Deep emotions held in control as the music of life swirls around and the past and the present are brought together in a satisfying climax. Already the next in the Turner series is in the mail, I look forward to it.

Turner, the central character is an ex-cop, ex- con who has moved to the small town near Memphis after retiring from his career as a therapist. When murder comes to Turner's hideaway Sheriff Lonnie Bates needs Turner to help him solve the crime because Turner had a great track record for solving homicides.

I did not know it but the three books in this series were available in an omnibus, the cost of which is  now is not in my range.

Black Land, White Land: A Mr. Fortune Novel by Henry Christopher Bailey


The title to this novel was very intriguing giving the impression of meaning one thing, but in reality meaning another. It is taken from the saying "Black land, white land, always at strife". It came from an area of the British Isles where the dark loam rich fertile ground is cheek and jowl next to white chalky dirt fit for nothing but sheep. There has always been fierce competition to own the more productive black land.


This is the second of H. C. Bailey's Mr. Fortune novels and is felt by some to be his best case. Mr. Fortune is asked to look at some bones recently found when a chunk of chalk fell off one of the white cliffs. The man who unearthed them was hoping that Mr. Fortune would substantiate his theory of the existence of giants in days of yore. Instead Mr. Fortune reveals the bones to be that of an elephant mixed in with newer bones, those of a young man  that had been in the earth for about ten years. Reggie Fortune sets the town police on their ears as he knows who the victim must be and he accuses the investigators of not investigating the disappearance of this man because they were afraid to reveal the culprits who might be responsible.

  I found myself wishing the prose was more black and white. Mr. Fortune speaks in a convoluted confounding fashion that was difficult to understand at times.Sometimes he is given to grandiloquent statements like "Everything meant something and nothing meant anything."


These words express my feelings to a T.

Over The Gate

By Miss Read



 This book, the fifth in the Fairacre series is a story pulled together by the school year and a group of anecdotes that several of the characters tell to Miss Read as they reminisce and teach her more about the area she calls home.

Miss Read, the village school mistress has been doing the same thing now for several years and while she still enjoys her job and the children, she wonders if it is time to move on and get out of her rut. The thought of another teacher taking her place is what makes her accept the fact that desperately miserable winters are not enough to chase her away.

Miss Read creates an idyllic world where even a stranger at one's door is more of an adventure than a threat of home invasion. Her description of the bucolic surrounding sent me to google on several occasions to find out what feverfew, cowslip and thrushes look like. These pleasures in the smallest of plants and animals that inhabit a country lane, all of which have individuality is lovely.


Sadly when I take a walk in a rural setting I can put a name to nothing but the most common of plants like yarrow, Queen Anne's lace and dandelions.

Gently Does It

by Alan Hunter

This is the first of the George Gently series that was begun in 1955. Gently is a Scotland Yard police inspector from the East Anglia section of England who eventually becomes a Chief Superintendent. This case begins while Gently is on vacation and he gets involved in the murder of a mean old man.

 The local police force regret asking him to help because  he won't let them settle for the easiest to catch and most likely suspect. Gently quietly but surely teases out the truth from a tangle of lies while eating one pepper met cream after another.

What these confections are exactly is unclear, but if he consumes several an hour I wonder that he has any teeth left in his head. Gently is portrayed as a large man who is past worrying about calories. Perhaps Hunter never realized at the time of Gently's debut that he would go on to feature in forty six Gently mysteries the last of which was published i 199. Hunter died in 2005.





There was also a BBC series featuring George Gently and it was after seeing an episode that I dug out my old Gentlys and picked up the birth of Gently.

Goal !! Leighton Gage

This review is from: A Vine in the Blood: A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation (Hardcover)
"Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood" (Ezekiel 19:10)

The blood-red tint of bougainvilleas is the main concern of an unusual color-blind gardener named Luca Vas when he arrives at the São Paolo home of Juraci Santos.
Tico "The Artist" Santos is the principal striker for the Brazilian team, which has been favored to win the FIFA Fútbol World Cup, which is being hosted by Brazil and is slated to start in three weeks. Whereas for many fútbol lovers, the game is their main love, for The Artist, elite though he may be, his mother is more important.

Fútbol is better known to us as soccer, but the rest of the world prefers the original name because it is a game matching balls and feet. I was fascinated by the little tidbit Gage dropped in the story that the English brought the game to Brazil. It took off in such a way that the prophetic words of Ezekiel can equally be rephrased to say, "Fútbol is like a vine in the blood" because it takes hold of a fan to the point of mania. Thus, there is a national push to get this crime solved as quickly as possible. Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his crack team from the federal police are summoned to São Paulo and the game is afoot.

It is immediately obvious that there is a long list of people who might want to keep The Artist off the field.
I was caught up in the fútbol fever within a few pages of opening the book. Leighton Gage paces this interesting, exciting story just like the build-up to a big game. . Inspector Mario Silva's mandate is clear: he is to find Juraci Santos alive and before the World Cup begins. All of Brazil is depending on it. He has 13 days.

Murder mysteries are my main reading and it is always exciting to find a novel that takes me to an interesting locale and that is an original, exotic and stimulating story. The finale of this complex tale was not what I expected, but it made sense. This is the fifth of the Mario Silva series. As it has progressed, the characters and their personal lives are being fleshed out, which adds to the story without diluting the action. Though part of a series, this book can be read as a standalone because it is complete within itself.

MISS DIMPLE DISAPPEARS

By Mignon Ballard

This is a snapshot of an era and a place that evokes a feeling of déjà vu because it is so well done that as you read you feel like you were alive in 1942 and living in Elderberry, Georgia.

The story begins during the second week of November when people’s thoughts are turning toward Thanksgiving. It will be a different holiday than those of the past for so many reasons it is hard to list them. This is the first major family holiday since America entered the war. Most of the young men, sons and husbands will be away from home. They are in training or even in peril and they are all missing home as much as their folks. The windows of many homes have a blue star flashing out the message that an inhabitant is off in the fray. Some homes have the golden star in their windows memorializing those who have already lost their lives.

 Because the nation is geared up for war efforts there have been many changes on the home front. People are learning to do with out sugar, butter, coffee, and things made with rubber such as the prosaic women’s foundation garments, decent automobile tires, gasoline and nylons. The citizenry have given up their metal hangers, have been trying to ease their children into the idea that Santa won’t be bringing bicycles this year, and trying to have an appearance of normalcy. Elderberrians do a good job of this, but having their family members in danger as well as lonely makes for a melancholy at holiday time. This town reaches out to the service men who are in their town for leave or passing through.

In a pull together effort the people of the town try not to complain about the substitutions like Postum for the coffee, honey or saccharine for sugar and an unappealing margarine with a blob of food coloring. The ladies wear rayon’s instead of nylons and such innocent items as balloons are a thing of the past. For thanksgiving dinner deserts may be sparse and hens are substituted for turkey. But it is the company that counts.

Miss Dimple Kilpatrick a first grade teacher disappears one morning while on her usual walk and this mystery just simmers a bit because the mysterious death of the school custodian is also the talk of the town. In a community effort different individuals try to find clues and even though Miss Dimple has left several the people of Elderberry are so accustomed to safety that they are blind to the possibility of danger. This is the only part of the book that is a little hard to believe in, but even as it is today the people are tired, discouraged and busied by their daily lives and have little ways to investigate mysteries.

Initially it seems that there are two many characters to keep straight, but eventually the reader gets to know the personalities behind the names and begins to feel at home in Elderberry. I have known people like this. I only wonder if we have changed as a society to such an extent that we would not be willing to give up such personal items as hangers and our pots and pans. Are there enough of us who know how to cook using substitutions to make meals enjoyable or even palatable since we have grown up with ready made.

This is a good read for the early days of November so that we can be grateful for what we take for granted. It also helps us to remember that today we also have service men away for the Thanksgiving holiday who are not any different from the soldiers of 1942 and they are also homesick and experiencing a very different type of turkey dinner.