19. The Crime at Black Dudley

by Margaret Allingham
Rated 4 Stars
From Library

SUMMARY:
A house-party with a glittering guest list. An imposing country estate with endless shadowy staircases and unused rooms. The breathless period between the two world wars. It’s the ideal setting for the classic English murder mystery, and bringing it to perfection is the introduction—in a supporting role for the first and last time—of Albert Campion, the consummate (if compulsively quipping) Gentleman Sleuth. The guests take some time to be grateful for Campion’s presence; he is a bit peculiar, and they have more than enough distractions, what with various complicated love affairs, a curious ritual involving a jeweled dagger, and a deadly game of hide-and-seek. But the savvy reader will be singing hosannas from Campion’s first appearance, knowing that it marks the beginning of one of the most intelligent and delightful series in the history of crime fiction.

18. Alfred the Great: the man who made England

By: Justin Pollard

Rated 5 Stars

From: Library

I was as looking for a biography of Alfred The Great that would come as close as possible to give some feel for what the real man must have been like. The man behind the legend so to speak. This book is an intriguing interpretation of what documents have survived and is probably as near as anyone is likely to come to capturing the essence of who he was as a person.

Between Cornwell's sour take and Joan Wolf's highly romantized one I wanted to know if any one had taken a scholarly approach. The really funny thing is that each one used the same sources and all three had the documented events spot on. It was when they started interpreting them that they all took off in different directions. A lesson to us all in how history can be spun without telling even a single lie.

The author is very straightforward in pointing out that the only real evidence that has survived consists of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, some charters (which Pollard reminds us more often that not have a good likelihood of having been forged), some of Alfred's own writings and translations and Asser's biography of Alfred on which he has relied heavily. Nevertheless Pollard has produced a very well written book that is not only credible (at least to me) but one that is so readable it's hard to put down. This is an author I will follow

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:
Alfred was England's first king, and his rule spanned troubled times. As his shores sat under constant threat from Viking marauders, his life was similarly imperiled by conspiracies in his own court. He was an extraordinary character—a soldier, scholar, and statesman like no other in English history—and out of adversity he forged a new kind of nation. Justin Pollard's enthralling account strips back centuries of myth to reveal the individual behind the legend. He offers a radical new interpretation of what inspired Alfred to create England and how it has colored the nation's history to the present day.

Campion, The Complete First Series - VIDEO

Based on books by Margery Allingham

Rated 3.5

From: Library

Episode 1: Look to the Lady  Rated 3.5 stars

I had insomnia last night so in the wee hours of this morning I popped the first DVD in my lap top and started watching Campion: the complete first season. I've only watched the first episode so far "Look to the Lady" and for me there is something about it that has really put me off.  All the regular spectacular things the BBC does so well are there.  Beautifully filmed, marvelous settings and costumes but still for me, no cigar.


Episode 2,  Police at the Funeral"   Rated 4 stars

This was a well plotted mystery with a surprise twist at the end.  Campion didn't act quite as silly in this on as he did the last but the episode was still very badly cast.  They could have saved the episode by going over the top far enough to qualify as satire but they couldn't even pull that off.  Only Uncle William came off as a character I could believe in.  I hope whoever directed this has given up directing  and is doing something in another field that they are better suited for.

  OVERVIEW:

At first it hit me as a down market version of Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter but when I looked at publishing dates Sayer's first LPW book Whose Body was published in 1923 and Campion makes his first appearance in Allingham's books in 1929.  Too small a gap.  I think it must be the casting. 

The only thing I like about his side kick Lugg is his London East End accent.  That particular accent always cracks me up.  Other than that he is straight out of The Three Stooges.  The actor who plays Campion strikes me as someone who is trying way to hard to be clever.

I'll finish watching but so far will have to give it about a 3.5 rating, the filming, sets and costumes keeping it from being a DNF.

Sharpe's Company - VIDEO

Rated 5 stars
From Netflix


This is the most exciting so far.  I had to watch it twice because the first time I got distracted trying to remember what I had seen Maj. Windham (Clive Francis) in before and then after some major stewing I finally remembered that I had seen him in Strong Poison, another BBC production.


Then there was Sgt. Hakeswill (Pete Postlewaite) who reminded me so much of the very villainous indian Magua (Wes Studi) in The Last of the Mohicans.  I had to put the video on pause and go check and make sure they were not the same person.  Then I had lost the thread of the story and had to start the video over.  *g*


PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:
Sharpe discovers that he is a father and desperately attempts to rescue his spanish lover teresa and their daughter from the enemy.

Sharpe and his men are fighting not only the French in this tale but an evil and devious sergeant as well who has some history with Sharpe.The battle and action scenes are top notch again and the characters are grand and heroic. The settings and costumes make it all very colorful and real.

The actors again do a great job with Sean Bean, Asumpta Serna and Daragh O'Malley giving us wonderful heroic performances. Special mention has to go to Pete Postlethwaite who delivers a scenery chewing performance as the evil Sergeant Hakeswill. Marvelous!

17. Daughter of Time

By Josephine Tey
Rated 5 stars
Audio book

I have read this book before but I am finding out that listening is an entirely different experience.  It's become very clear this month that I read way too fast and do a lot of skimming.  By listening I am picking up on many nuances that zipped right past me.  For one thing the parallels in the story of how Richard III became such a villain by manipulation of events or out right lies for political gains and how the political pundits operate today is startling.  When you think about it, politicians have been devious and largely corrupt and the general public largely gullible probably since the first humans roamed the earth.

PRODUCT INFORMATION:

Josephine Tey is often referred to as the mystery writer for people who don't like mysteries. Her skills at character development and mood setting, and her tendency to focus on themes not usually touched upon by mystery writers, have earned her a vast and appreciative audience. In Daughter of Time, Tey focuses on the legend of Richard III, the evil hunchback of British history accused of murdering his young nephews. While at a London hospital recuperating from a fall, Inspector Alan Grant becomes fascinated by a portrait of King Richard. A student of human faces, Grant cannot believe that the man in the picture would kill his own nephews. With an American researcher's help, Grant delves into his country's history to discover just what kind of man Richard Plantagenet was and who really killed the little princes

Sharpe's Eagle - VIDEO

Rated 5 stars

Video

Excellently done. This really is a quality series. And I'm not quite as put out about the kissy face stuff since it has started to make a little more sense. Love interest I can handle. Wandering Lothario I really could not as I think it would cheapen a series of this type. Just MO.

Product Description

Sharpe commands a band of war-hardened riflemen behind enemy lines. Determined to capture the french mascot a carved eagle which is carried into combat sharpe brings to the screen the continued action danger and romance that surround the british officer & his chosen men

16. The Burning Land

By Bernard Cornwell
Rated 4.9 stars
From Library
Audio Book

I loved this book but it sure was bloody.  I also have my ongoing whine about Cornwell's vision of Alfred but this is, after all a book of fiction so he is perfectly entitled to portray him any way he pleases even when he is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Alfred, who was the only English king in history to have "The Great" tacked on to his name could not have achieved what he did if he was the sour, uncharismatic  religious zealot Cornwall portrays.   My other complaint is that the reader consistently mispronounced Uther's side kick Finan's name wrong  Since that's my surname it jarred ever time he mispronounced it.

But these are minor quibbles.  Bernard Cornwall is a wonderful story teller and I have been solidly hooked on this series since 2004 when book one, The Last kingdom came out.  These books are must reads for me.


PRODUCT INFORMATION:

In a clash of heroes, the kingdom is born.
At the end of the ninth century, King Alfred of Wessex is in ill health; his heir, an untested youth. His enemy, the Danes, having failed to conquer Wessex, now see their chance for victory. Led by the sword of savage warrior Harald Bloodhair, the Viking hordes attack. But Uhtred, Alfred's reluctant warlord, proves his worth, outwitting Harald and handing the Vikings one of their greatest defeats.

For Uhtred, the sweetness of victory is soon overshadowed by tragedy. Breaking with Alfred, he joins the Vikings, swearing never again to serve the Saxon king. Instead, he will reclaim his ancestral fortress on the Northumbrian coast. Allied with his old friend Ragnar—and his old foe Haesten—he aims to invade and conquer Wessex itself.

Yet fate has different plans. The Danes of East Anglia and the Vikings of Northumbria are plotting the conquest of all Britain. When Alfred's daughter pleads with Uhtred for help, he cannot refuse her request. In a desperate gamble, he takes command of a demoralized Mercian army, leading them in an unforgettable battle on a blood-soaked field beside the Thames.

In The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell, "the reigning king of historical fiction" (USA Today), delivers a rousing saga of Anglo-Saxon England—an irresistible new chapter in his thrilling Saxon Tales, the epic story of the birth of England and the legendary king who made it possible.

6-14 Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes Mysteries

Laurie King
Rated (see Below
From Library

In preparation for the new book coming out in April, The God of the Hive, and also because it required little to no concentration I spent most of this month listening/dozing through these. I am so grateful for my wonderful library system for having all of these in unabridged audio format.

6. The Beekeeper's Apprentice (1994) 5 stars

Sherlock Holmes takes on a young, female apprentice in this delightful and well-wrought addition to the master detective's casework. In the early years of WW I, 15-year-old American Mary Russell encounters Holmes, retired in Sussex Downs where Conan Doyle left him raising bees. Mary, an orphan rebelling against her guardian aunt's strictures, impresses the sleuth with her intelligence and acumen. Holmes initiates her into the mysteries of detection, allowing her to participate in a few cases when she comes home from her studies at Oxford.

7. A Monstrous Regiment of Women (1995) 4.5 stars

Mary Russell's adventures as a student of the famous detective continue. A series of murders claims members of a strange suffrage organization's wealthy young female volunteers, and Mary, with Holmes in the background, investigates, little knowing what danger she personally faces.

8. A Letter of Mary (1996) 4.5 stars

Sherlock Holmes and his scholarly companion Mary Russell are caught up in an exciting mystery when an archaeologist leaves them with a treasured find, a papyrus supposedly written by Mary Magdalene. When the archaeoligist winds up dead and someone attempts to make off with the artifact, Holmes and Russel become embroiled in a rollicking story filled with political intrigue and highbrow sleuthing.

9. The Moor (1998) 3.5 stars

The Moor, fourth in the series, Holmes and Russell are summoned to Devonshire to solve a tin miner's mysterious death. Lonely Dartmoor provides plenty of opportunities for King to both relate the haunting legends of that part of the world and offer some amusing revisions to one of Holmes's most famous cases, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

10. O Jerusalem (1999) 4 stars

It's 1918. Nineteen-year-old Mary and her fiftysomething mentor are forced to flee England to escape a deadly adversary. Sherlock's well-connected brother Mycroft sends them to Palestine to do some international sleuthing. Here, a series of murders threatens the fragile peace.

11. Justice Hall (2002) 5+ stars

A lost heir, murder most foul, and the unexpected return of two old friends start Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes--spouses and intellectual equals--on an investigation that takes them from the trenches of World War I France to the heights of English society. In this sixth entry in Laurie King's award-winning series, fans will find the Baker Street sleuth mellowed by age and marriage yet still in possession of his deductive abilities and acerbic wit, and, in Mary Russell, a surprisingly apt companion for the legendary detective.

12. The Game (2004) 5 stars

The seventh Mary Russell adventure (after 2002's Justice Hall) may well be the best King has yet devised for her strong-willed heroine. It's 1924, and Kimball O'Hara, the "Kim" of the famous Rudyard Kipling novel, has disappeared. Fearing some kind of geopolitical crisis in the making, Mycroft Holmes sends his brother and Mary to India to uncover what happened.

13. Locked Rooms (2005) 4.5 stars

set in San Francisco in 1924, Russell undertakes a far more personal investigation. Since she began her journey back to her hometown—ostensibly to deal with her father's estate—Russell has been tormented by strange dreams, one of which involves the "locked rooms" of the title, and the sight of her San Francisco childhood home opens a flood of memories and emotions, most of which she's loathe to allow into her über-rational mind. When someone takes a shot at her, Holmes enlists the help of Pinkerton agent Dashiell Hammett and Russell tries to unlock her past, in particular the "accident" that killed her family and left her an orphan in 1914.

14. The Language of Bees 4.5 stars

For Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solve--the unexplained disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes’s beloved hives.

But the anticipated sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a galling memory from her husband’s past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, when the promising surrealist painter had been charged with--and exonerated from--murder. Now the talented and troubled young man was enlisting their help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and child.

15. The Lace Reader

By: Brunonia Barry
Rated 4 stars
From: Library
AUDIO BOOK


Tis is not a book I would have picked up on my own but I'm glad I did. It was a good, if puzzling read. Kathleen and Justine, a couple of long time DDers asked me if I had read this book because they had a question. Well, now that I have read the book I have the same question. I have a wild guess but I'm not sure if its right.


A friend on anorher list wrote this: "There were many times that I wanted to put this book down, the middle bogs down with such boring repetitiveness I was beginning to wonder what the author was thinking. Then the last 100 or so pages hits you with such force you can’t get through the book fast enough. Great story with a stunning conclusion that has you spinning and thinking back to the clues that you missed.
For me this book wouldn't have worked as an audio. The ending is confusing and you have to go back and reread parts to make sure you are on track."


I agree with her completely.

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: Brunonia Barry dreamt she saw a prophecy in a piece of lace, a vision so potent she spun it into a novel. The Lace Reader retains the strange magic of a vivid dream, though Barry's portrayal of modern-day Salem, Massachusetts--with its fascinating cast of eccentrics--is reportedly spot-on. Some of its stranger residents include generations of Whitney women, with a gift for seeing the future in the lace they make. Towner Whitney, back to Salem from self-imposed exile on the West Coast, has plans for recuperation that evaporate with her great-aunt Eva's mysterious drowning. Fighting fear from a traumatic adolescence she can barely remember, Towner digs in for answers. But questions compound with the disappearance of a young woman under the thrall of a local fire-and-brimstone preacher, whose history of violence against Whitney women makes the situation personal for Towner. Her role in cop John Rafferty's investigation sparks a tentative romance. And as they scramble to avert disaster, the past that had slipped through the gaps in Towner's memory explodes into the present with a violence that capsizes her concept of truth. Readers will look back at the story in a new light, picking out the clues in this complex, lovely piece of work. --Mari Malcolm --This text refers to theHardcover edition.

3-5, Amelia Peabody Mysteries

The Mummy Case
Amelia and Emerson bring their young son Ramses along in Egypt in 1894. Denied permission to dig at the lovely pyramids of Dashoor, they are assigned to the decrepit mounds of rubble that pass for the pyramids of Mazghunah. Nothing in this barren stretch of land seems of interest until an illegal antiquities dealer gets killed. Before long, mummy cases start appearing and disappearing, and a second murder complicates the mystery. When it becomes clear that a Master Criminal is behind these goings on, Amelia starts digging -- for facts.

The Curse of the Pharaohs
Published 1981 It's 1892, and Amelia and Emerson, who is now her husband, are back in England raising their young son Ramses, when they are approached by a damsel in distress. Lady Baskerville's husband, Sir Henry, has died after uncovering what may have been royal tomb in Luxor. Amid rumors of a curse haunting all those involved with the dig, Amelia and Emerson proceed to Egypt and begin to suspect that Sir Henry did not die a natural death. The accidents plaguing the dig appear to be caused by a sinister human element, not a pharaoh's curse.

Crocodile on the Sandbank
Published 1975 Set in 1884, this is the first installment in what has become a beloved bestselling series. At thirty-two, strong-willed Amelia Peabody, a self-proclaimed spinster, decides to use her ample inheritance to indulge her passion, Egyptology. On her way to Egypt, Amelia encounters a young woman named Evelyn Barton-Forbes. The two become fast friends and travel on together, encountering mysteries, missing mummies, and Radcliffe Emerson, a dashing and opinionated archaeologist who doesn't need a woman's help -- or so he thinks.

Sharpe's Rifles - VIDEO

Rated 4.5
From Netflix

I just finished watching the first episode. EXCELLENT. However I have a few comments. Lots of swashing and buckling, some violence - this about war after all-but not none of it was the in-your-face kind. Little bits of very funny dry humor popped in when you were least expecting it. The acting and filmography was really, really good. Sean Bean couldn't have been better

BUT

I hated that they threw in Sharpe and the Spanish girl playing kissy face and then when they starting rolling around in the hay with her half dressed that pretty much tore it for me. Have you ever rolled around in the hay? I have had a passing acquaintances with hay lofts in my life when and the last thing you would do in one was take half your clothes off and roll around in it. Hay is very scratchy. They just tossed that in and it didn't add a thing to the story except make the ending a little silly. Luckily it was at the very end so it didn't distract from the story. 

Other than that I have no complaints. Oh wait, I forgot. The French Army hats. I can't imagine any one designing such a stupid looking hat at any time in history. I thought the French were supposed to have a sense of style. Obviously that is not always the case.


PRUDUCT DESCRIPTION:


Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean), a maverick British army officer fighting against Napoleon in 19th century Spain. In Sharpe's Rifles, the first movie of the series, Sharpe saves Sir Arthur Wellesley's life and is promoted to lieutenant. But when he's put in charge of a company that doesn't respect him, his dangerous mission behind enemy lines could be compromised.

1. We Are the Ship : The Story of Negro League Baseball

By: Kadir Nelson
Rated 5 Stars
From Library
Recommended on Bookflurries


I just finished my first book this month. Granted it was only 88 pages long and that includes the index and endnotes and about half the pages were pictures but I was really starting to get worried. I'm am sure that it's the medication I am taking that's making so hard for me to focus but maybe I'm starting to adjust to it. It was very interesting. Thanks Connie. Like many of the good books I read anymore I found out about it on Bookflurries.

PUBLISHERS DESCRIPTION.

"We are the ship; all else the sea."-Rube Foster, founder of the Negro National League

The story of Negro League baseball is the story of gifted athletes and determined owners; of racial discrimination and international sportsmanship; of fortunes won and lost; of triumphs and defeats on and off the field. It is a perfect mirror for the social and political history of black America in the first half of the twentieth century. But most of all, the story of the Negro Leagues is about hundreds of unsung heroes who overcame segregation, hatred, terrible conditions, and low pay to do the one thing they loved more than anything else in the world: play ball. Using an "Everyman" player as his narrator, Kadir Nelson tells the story of Negro League baseball from its beginnings in the 1920s through its decline after Jackie Robinson crossed over to the majors in 1947. The voice is so authentic, you will feel as if you are sitting on dusty bleachers listening intently to the memories of a man who has known the great ballplayers of that time and shared their experiences. But what makes this book so outstanding are the dozens of full-page and double-page oil paintings-breathtaking in their perspectives, rich in emotion, and created with understanding and affection for these lost heroes of our national game.