Books: The Bullet That Missed (The Thursday Murder Club #3) By Richard Osman (2022)

 

“The crime-fighting quartet of the Coopers Chase Retirement Village take on an ex-KGB colonel, several TV icons, a murderous money launderer, and more as they rush to catch the latest killer. Joyce suggests that the gang investigate the death of Bethany Waites, a local TV presenter whose car was pushed off a cliff several years prior. Bethany had been investigating a tax fraud operation worth over £10 million and had told colleagues she was close to revealing the mastermind behind it all. Now the Thursday Murder Club wants to know: Who killed Bethany? What happened to the £10 million? And why, since they started their investigation, have their two prime suspects in Bethany’s disappearance turned up dead?”

So far, the strongest of three, The Bullet that Missed moves at a swift pace, with exciting revelations as the tale builds. Then there is the mysterious man everyone is calling The Viking who wants Elizabeth to kill an old KGB agent, or he’ll kill Joyce. Then there is Ibraham trying to puzzle out what happened in the prison (a murder of another inmate) where Drug Queen Connie Johnson is awaiting trial for the actions in the last book.

The humor is still there, and Joyce remains funniest, somewhat daffy, eccentric character who is, of course, sometimes the cleverest of the lot. And she usually gets the best jokes, like this, “I have been Googling but there's not much there. I got so desperate I even used Bing but the results were the same if a bit slower”, and it made me laugh aloud. Still, Elizabeth remains the heart and soul of this series (and remains a hoot herself), a cunning woman who possess some brilliant talents and friends. Nothing seems to ruffle her feathers, with the exception of knowing that her husband Stephen’s time is growing shorter, as he begins to sense that there is finally something wrong with him.

Yes, it’s a cozy mystery the British have excelled with for more than a century, but it’s fun and very charming. And as I grow older, it’s also fun to read tales that feature positive age representations –this series celebrates the intelligence, ingenuity, resourcefulness and savvy that only comes with a life fully lived. Also, I learned a lot about cryptocurrency.

Books: The Jennifer Morgue (The Laundry Files #2) By Charles Stross (2010)

“In 1975, the CIA used Howard Hughes's Glomar Explorer in a bungled attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in order to access the "Gravedust" unit, an occult device that allows communication with the dead. Now a ruthless billionaire intends to try again, even if by doing so he awakens the Great Old Ones, who thwarted the earlier expedition. It's up to Bob Howard and a collection of British eccentrics even Monty Python would consider odd to stop the bad guy and save the world, while getting receipts for all expenditures or else face the most dreaded menace of all: the Laundry's own auditors. Howard is sent abroad with Ramona Random, an operative of the Black Chamber and a member of BLUE HADES, to defeat Ellis Billington's plan to steal and use the Gravedust unit on DEEP SEVEN. BLUE HADES has an interest in preventing this. Ellis has relocated to the Caribbean island of Saint Martin and put it under an occult enchantment which ensures only people who fit a particular stereotype can enter the island safely.”

The Jennifer Morgue is the second collection of stories by Charles Stross featuring Bob Howard, containing the title novel, a short story called Pimpf, and an essay titled The Golden Age of Spying. And yes, as much as the first book played out like an old school spy novel, ala Len Dieghton, this one is a full blown homage to James Bond, with secret island bases, gadgets, monologue prone mad men out to remake the world and beautiful women.

And for those who want to keep with this series, the Black Chamber is an American cryptanalysis agency, which was officially disbanded in 1929, but then secretly re-tasked with occult intelligence duties sometime later. The Black Chamber is basically the US equivalent of The Laundry. "Black Chamber" itself is the designation the Laundry has given to the organization: its internal name is Operational Phenomenology Agency (OPA). Meanwhile, The Deep Ones is the code name for an ancient civilization living under the oceans. They are powerful but pose no immediate threat to the human population so long as humanity does not intrude on their territory, which is defined by a treaty. They have a long-standing issue with Deep Seven, are known as The Chthoians, a race of “polymorphous, occupy areas of the upper crust near the Polar Regions.”

Rooted in Lovecraftian overtones and Stross’ love for Ian Fleming’s James Bond, this book fits nicely into the same sort style that Tim Powers has done for decades. It’s not a diss, more to prove that writers can have similar themes and ideas and still present it in an entertaining fashion. And I adore Stross’ continued in-joke about how PowerPoint is really a tool of the occult.

Like the first book, I did not get every nerd reference in this book –especially the computer ones. I’m assuming Stross knows what he’s talking about, when he goes on describing things –if only because programmers who read his work will call him out on it. But it’s still a fun book with absurd ideas, snarky humor, and good pacing.

Books: My Brother's Keeper by Tim Powers (2023)

“When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England. But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat. In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.”

 

I do have a love/hate relationship with the works of Tim Powers. I’ve still not read most of his canon, but I do like him. My issues stem from his tendency to world build so (and with little explanations) much that they interfere with his narrative flow. So it’s several chapters and maybe a hundred plus pages before the meat of the story really begins. His latest novel, My Brother’s Keeper, another in his period pieces of hidden history novels (Hide Me Among the Graves, Anubis Gate to name a few), does not so much suffer from that issue. Then again, maybe I am starting to get used his style. Over the decades, Powers has established a disturbingly, creepy world of the occult, a sort of alternate hidden world of gods. He’s dealt with vampires, ghosts, and other inhuman horrors, and now adds werewolves. So here, Powers jumps with both feet directly into this hidden world from chapter one. Not a huge fan of the werewolves to begin with, but an interesting choice to go with.

 

Like a few of his other books I’ve read, the plot does get little weird as it goes on, making it less a typical gothic horror tale readers might expect. Also note, by using the Brontë’s, it may also bewilder people who adore the work of Emily, Charlotte, Anne and their writer father Patrick. Because My Brother’s Keeper is not in any way a historical take of their lives, nor is it a reworking of their writings, or even written in their style, but a fun tale to read during the Halloween season about family curses, monsters buried under church slabs, supernatural beasts, ghosts, and a very good dog called Keeper.

Books: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport by Paulette Kennedy (2024)

 

"The first day of autumn brought the fever, and with the fever came the voices."

"Missouri, 1955. Loretta Davenport has led an isolated life as a young mother and a wife to Pete, an ambitious assistant professor at a Bible college. They’re the picture of domestic tranquillity—until a local girl is murdered and Loretta begins receiving messages from beyond. Pete dismisses them as delusions of a fevered female imagination. Loretta knows they’re real—and frightening. Defying Pete’s demands, Loretta finds an encouraging supporter in parapsychologist Dr. Curtis Hansen. He sees a woman with a rare gift, more blessing than curse. With Dr. Hansen’s help, Loretta’s life opens up to an empowering new purpose. But for Pete, the God-fearing image he’s worked so hard to cultivate is under threat. No longer in control of his dutiful wife, he sees the Devil at work. As Loretta’s powers grow stronger and the pleading spirits beckon, Pete is determined to deliver his wife from evil. To solve the mysteries of the dead, Loretta must first save herself."

Ultimately, for me, The Devil and Mrs. Davenport by Paulette Kennedy misses what first drew me to the book – the idea of ghosts and the dead communicating with the living. Instead, Kennedy borrows heavily from Stephen King, as Loretta is seemly a collection of his magical kids. She’s Carrie White, she’s Danny Torrance, she’s The Dead Zone’s Johnny Smith –with a little bit of IT and every small town with it’s dark underbelly.

Then there is the fact that Kennedy uses the lens of 2024 to look back at 1955. Now I’m not saying people like ‘Retta or her abusive husband did not exist then, but we get a classroom lesson of how much women were prisoners of their marriage – the only thing they could obtain back then. And Pete, oh irredeemable Pete, is much like my grandfather was –but without the religious overtones. He too forbade my grandmother from learning to drive, and when she “got out of line”, she learned to shut up. For me, it’s sad to know that I think my grandmother only learned to live in the decade between his death and hers. Only ten years of her eighty-six on the planet were given to doing what she wanted to do, with her own ideas and opinions.

Still, Loretta comes off as a woman who, like Calare Randall in the Outland series, somehow transported back in time so she can point out all the inequalities of women were forced into. It’s an education, I guess, but one most people probably already knew.

And poor Pete, who is immediately seen as the villain (might’ve had a Las Vegas sign hanging above his head that Kennedy constantly wants the reader to know). Pete is a teacher’s assistant at a Bible college trying to achieve tenure and when Loretta tells Pete of her dreams, the voice that led her to tell the police where the body of Darcy Hayes would be found, he is horrified (and a reminder of why I don’t believe in this stuff):

“Voices? You didn’t tell me you were hearing voices.” Pete stared at her, his eyes widening. He sat up, fumbled on the nightstand for his glasses. “That’s not prophecy. Or of a God. It’s delusional, Loretta.  You’ve heard people give a word of prophecy in church. If it’s real prophecy from the Holy Spirit, it’s always given in tongues first, and then an interpreter translates for the congregation, It’s for the edification of the faith. What you’re talking about…is…well. It’s not the same thing. At all.”

So yeah, as early as page twenty-one, I knew how this was going to end. And there is no real devil, with the exception of Loretta’s husband. Metaphors, catch them.

 

Books: Slow Horses By Mick Herron (2010)

“Slough House is where MI5 agents are sent when they've royally screwed up, with the hope that those agents will take the hint and resign from the service. Slow Horses, as they are called, are led by the reject of all MI5 rejects, Jackson Lamb, a slobbish, lazy has-been with dark secrets in his past. When Lamb is asked to run an errand for Regent's Park, he sends River Cartwright on his first out-of-the-office job since he landed in Slough House eight months earlier. How can rummaging through the trash bags of a washed up journalist link with the video of the hooded man waiting to be beheaded?”

 

So, I’m a bit of a slow horse to this series (sweet, Jebus, another series), which currently contains eight novels, a number of novella’s, and an Apple+ TV adaptation now in its fourth series (and already picked up for a fifth). Its recent multiple Emmy nominations sparked an interest in me, so I decided to find used versions (which was hard, but not altogether that difficult) of the first three.

 

I found this thriller about spies for MI5 who screw up, but instead of being fired, are sent to Slough House to do meaningless, paper pushing work to be darkly fun. I did struggle with at the start. Its age-old problem with series books because, like many TV pilots, the ensemble cast of characters, led by one Jackson Lamb (played by Gary Oldman on the show version), must be introduced. Each of them has their own issues and their own secrets (which made it confusing at first, as it became hard differentiate each character). Again, this is the first book in a series, so I do expect some slowness, as I worked my way through those character introductions in the first few chapters.

 

Slow Horses really is a new style of spy thriller, it being sharply witty and well plotted than others of this genre. It is not for fans of Le Carre’s hero of George Smiley (who Oldman has played before), but the dollops of dry British humor does make it fun. Also, this is no James Bond (though he and Moneypenny get name dropped) or Jason Bourne action series, with, girls, glitz, glamour, and gadgets. It’s firmly set in modern times with people more like Q than anything else.

 

The plot, although not breakneck like you'd expect from other novels in the genre, is well paced towards the middle part of the book and then the book really starts to fly.

 

Slow Horses does dance between serious drama, dark humor, and satire of the genre. So it’s not an outright comedy, but I could call it a variation of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for people who like morbid, twisty humor and spy thrillers. It also carries a bit of DNA from those old Cold War spy novels from decades ago, along a few modern British writers who are doing variations on a theme, including the supernatural tales of both Ben Aaronovitch and Charles Stross.

 

Finally, since I’m not up to date on British politics, I assume author Mick Herron based some of his characters on a few real-life politicians.