The Likeness by Tana French

I have read all the books in this series and enjoyed them all.  I wasn't able to read them in order but I did start with In The Woods, which is the 1st book in the series.  It's been dubbed the Dublin Murder Squad series although the author states that Ireland has no murder squad, that's her creation.  Tana French is a relatively new author but she's got a real flare for this genre.  I think her plots are creative but even more impressive are her characters.  The Likeness, even more than the others, is packed with characters that are very fleshed out and nuanced. The story line here, briefly, is that Cassie Maddox, a female detective we know from In The Woods is brought back as the main character because she is a double for the young murder victim.  The murder victim has also been living under an alias that was developed for one of Cassie's undercover jobs.  Spooky!  As Cassie is sent in undercover again to find out what happened to our victim, we're introduced to a whole household of finely drawn characters as well as a finely drawn locale.  The writing is definitely superior to what one might typically find in a mystery and I find the commentary on contemporary Ireland interesting although I have no way of knowing if any of it's true. I recommend all the books which are, in order, In The Woods, Faithful Place, The Likeness, and Broken Harbor.  I just finished Broken Harbor and  I had a hard time putting it down.

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie Macdonald

Again, I'm squeaking in the chunkster category at 508 pages and again this is a book I just picked up at the library sale. Also, again, this book has an interesting locale, in this case, Cape Breton.  The story is a multi-generational one which involves a mixture of  Scottish, Lebanese, and black family members. It covers a couple of generations, and includes WWI, Prohibition, the Depression, and the Harlem Renaissance. At the center of the novel is a very, very, very dysfunctional family which is hiding its dysfunctional secrets.  The is a book in Oprah's Club, so I'm assuming it was very popular because Oprah can make or break a book. There is some good and witty writing  and the main female characters all have a certain pluckiness about them that I enjoyed but overall I found the book just a bit on the dark side and it kind of got me down as I continued to read.  I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading Fall On Your Knees but it did remind me of A Thousand Acres if any of you are familiar with that book.

The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook

The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook
I just picked this up at the library sale.  It just barely squeaks in the chunkster category at 451 pages.  It's a little bit of historical fiction,  Southwest literature, and mystery all wrapped in to one.  It's a multi-generational story beginning with Bassie, Meg's grandmother, and Meg going to New Mexico to follow up on a new find at an archaeological site with which Bassie's family is intimately involved.  Bassie's life work as an anthropologist has been to edit and publish her mother's (Meg's great-grandmother's) diaries of early settler life at the Pecos Pueblo. During the dig, ostensibly for the bones of Hannah's dog (Hannah being the author of the diaries) a human corpse is found which turns out to be Hannah's husband, Elliott Bass.  He is a well-known railroad surveyor, responsible for laying thousands of miles of track in the American west and Mexico.  This creates quite a mystery as Elliott was always thought to have disappeared in Mexico and his body never found.  It also creates a crisis for both Bassie and Meg and Bassie subsequently dies leaving the real mystery to be unravelled by Meg.  Hannah's diaries are interspersed with the present day so the two time periods are interwoven.  There's many other facets to the story and a good deal of family dynamics but I will leave that to the readers to uncover for themselves.  I found the book entertaining and the mystery draws the reader in an keeps them turning the pages.  I also found the location and history of the southwest interesting.  Overall, a good read but not especially difficult.

Chunkster Challenge

Since I'm so late in signing up, I'll just go for the 4 book option. My first book will be The Hunchback of Notre Dame since I intended to read it anyway. Thanks, Kya

Book Review- Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

This is a fascinating read. Krakauer has done a great job of inter-weaving the story of a murder with an exploration of the Mormon church, past and present. He's done an astounding amount of research and the writing keeps the story moving quickly. The purpose of the book is to examine the murder of a woman and her infant daughter in 1984. But to do that he's had to go back into the beginnings of the Mormon religion (which is shrouded in mystery) as well as the subsequent story of how the Mormons came to be as they are today. Along the way he reveals the seeds of Mormon fundamentalism and the tragedy of the practice of polygamy. I was familiar with some of the story from previous reading but this is in more depth. Highly recommended, particularly since we have a Mormon running for president this year.

2011 Book List

• The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
• Red Mutiny by Neal Bascomb
• The Girl In The Blue Beret by Bobbie Ann Mason
• The Death Of An Irish Sinner by Bartholomew Gill
• Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid
• Solar by Ian McEwan
• Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
• Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell
• The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell
• The Torment of Others by Val McDermid
• One Step Behind by Henning Mankell
• When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman
• The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
• The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
• The Art Thief by Noah Charney
• the princess of burundi by Kjell Eriksson
• Falls The Shadow by Sharon Kay Penman
• Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
• Long Lost by Harlan Coben
• The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory
• Heretic by Bernard Cornwell
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Widdershins by Charles De Lint
• Over-Diagnosed Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz, and Dr Steven Woloshin
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
• In The Woods by Tana French
• The Crown of Columbus by Louise Erdrich & Michael Dorris
• Faithful Place by Tara French
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• The Axe and the Oath by Robert Fossier
• A Widow for One Year by John Irving
• Sacred Treasure The Cairo Genizah by Rabbi Mark Glickman
• Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin
• Tutankhamun- The Untold Story by Thomas Hoving
• Captive Queen by Alison Weir
• The widow's tale by Margaret Frazier
• Nightshade by P.C. Doherty
• The Magician's Death by P.C. Doherty
• The demon archer by P.C. Doherty
• The Waxman Murders by P.C. Doherty
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• Bury Me Standing (The Gypsies and Their Journey) by Isabel Fonseca
• The Fascination of Evil by Florian Zeller
• The Darkest Red by Viviane Moore
• The Inugami Clan by Seishi Yokomizo
• Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
• Pursuit by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
• A Window in Copacabana by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
• Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings by Amy Kelly
• Mistress of the Monarchy by Alison Weir
• My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
• The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell
• Complications by Atul Gawande
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 James Ellroy, editor
• The Lost Dogs by Jim Gorant
• The Blindness of the Heart by Julia Franck
• The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Anatomy of Evil by Michael H. Stone, MD
• Total 61 Books