Black-Eyed Susans Giveaway; My Very First!

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The giveaway is over, and we have a winner! Sherry Garboden will hear from me shortly, and the book will be sent directly from Random House-Ballantine. Thanks to those that entered.

seattlebookmama's avatarSeattle Book Mama

I am pumped about this! I was contacted by a rep from Net Galley and offered a copy of Ballantine’s hot new mystery for a blog giveaway, which I have not done before. I hope a lot of people will enter. If you’d like to be included in the drawing, which will occur at the end of this week in a totally random manner, please go down to the bottom of the page where it says “Leave a Reply”. Type in your name (or a pseudonym for now if you prefer) and an e-mail address where I can reach you. If you win, I will send a message to your e-mail, and at that point you need to give me a real name and snail mail address, which will be released only to the Net Galley rep.

I promise not to use your e-mail address for anything else. Actually, I…

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Trust No One, by Paul Cleave *****

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trustnooneMany times my daughter has come upon me reading a book and asked, “How is it?” And almost every time I have said, “I don’t know. I haven’t read the end yet.” This is completely true for this one. And oh my my my, what an ending. No, stop worrying, I have no intention of giving away anything.

But I will thank Net Galley and Atria Books. I appreciate the opportunity to read a free DRC in exchange for this honest review.

You can purchase this book Tuesday, August 4, or you could save the hassle and order it now.

Above all…you don’t want to forget. If you forget this, you might be forgetting other things, too. That’s a slippery slope that nobody wants to slide down.

Jerry is just 49 years old, and he has Alzheimer’s. After the diagnosis, he starts a journal, partially with the idea of recording all the things he doesn’t want to forget so that he can come back and find them later. But fate has other ideas for our protagonist, and for his nom de plume, Henry Cutter–a cute play on the actual author’s name…or is it his pen name?

As we find ourselves gradually creeping down that long dark tunnel with poor Jerry, the journal becomes more and more confused. Is he a killer? If so, how many people has he killed? Why can’t he remember doing any of it?

But then, he can’t remember much of anything these days…

Trust No One is a brilliantly paced, tautly written piece of psychological fiction, and it is proof that, contrary to the old saying, not all stories have already been written. And the title answers his question, a very good question: who can he trust?

The problem here is that someone in Jerry’s position has to be able to trust someone. And as the plot moves further along, the reader can’t help wondering whether all of the characters in the story actually exist.

Those searching for an absorbing vacation read—or even one to curl up with at home, hunkered under the air conditioner or fan on a dog-hot day—can’t really ask for anything better than this. Cleave gives the reader every possible frisson in this impossibly complex, yet strangely accessible novel.

Highly recommended.

Being Nixon: A Man Divided, by Evan Thomas ****

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beingnixonSuddenly, everyone is writing Nixon biographies; it’s a Watergate junkie’s dream come true! Here Thomas does his best to take us inside Nixon’s skin and tell us what motivated some of the decidedly strange things he did. It makes for highly engaging reading. 3.75 stars get rounded up to 4, along with my thanks to Net Galley and Random House for the DRC. This book is available for sale now.

When I signed on for this galley, I imagined that perhaps Thomas had a background in psychology or psychiatry and was going to take a stab at diagnosing a mental illness that might explain what in the world Nixon was thinking when he did the things he did; if he’d had different meds, would things have shaken out differently? But that isn’t what this book is about. Instead, it is a glimpse at Nixon’s life, including his early childhood and adolescence, postulating that childhood experiences may have shaped the politician Nixon became.

To this, I will admit that I said, “Psssh. Right. Whatever.”

Because it’s a plain and simple fact that many presidents had lives that were scarred by events as bad or worse than what Nixon experienced, and most of them still managed to do their jobs without coming within a hair’s breadth of impeachment. So I don’t buy that theory.

Nevertheless, there are so many interesting tidbits and stories in this memoir that even if the reader doesn’t buy the overall thesis, it’s a compelling read. The conversational narrative kept me rolling along, and every time I found an opinion I thought was baloney, I made a note of it and kept going. I would have continued reading even if I didn’t have an obligation to the publisher, because it really is fascinating stuff.

Imagine, for instance, a solitary candidate with a love for classical music, sitting all by himself in his hotel suite, with the 1812 Overture blasting away, with his arms furiously directing an unseen orchestra. Just one aide saw this, and Thomas ferreted the incident out and presented it here. I doubt you’ll find these tidbits anywhere else!

In addition, few other biographers have managed any insights into what went on in the Nixon residence. I often wondered about Pat, Tricia, and Julie. When he showed up to home, did he storm in and turn the coffee table over? Get quietly drunk? Blame his family for all his ills? Drawing heavily on the memoirs written by family members that I am unlikely to ever read, Thomas gives us a little voyeuristic peek behind the curtains, and I found it intriguing indeed.

When it comes to Watergate, Thomas holds Nixon responsible for what he did, for the greater part, but I rolled my eyes at the repeated claim that if he hadn’t been too shy to socialize with the staff, with the Washington socialites who invited him to dinners, and so forth, maybe he would not have become so isolated…if his childhood hadn’t been so poor, and if his father hadn’t kept him home from his Yale scholarship because there was no money for dorm fees…if…if…if…

I felt much more certain that the author’s research, which is mostly done via secondary sources and the Nixon family’s memoirs, including heavy use of Nixon’s own (RN), was based on fact when he dealt directly with Nixon’s personal life. Although various quotes by the Watergate conspirators were interesting, some are more believable than others. I found one fact in this bio that directly conflicts with that of biographer Tim Weiner, and it has to do with the choice of Spiro Agnew as a running mate. Thomas cites reasons personal and political; Weiner documents that the choice was bought and paid for by Greek financial interests. Here, I believe Weiner. It’s just one directly conflicting fact, but when I found it, just as a humble reviewer rather than as a researcher, it called other things into question, which is where ¼ star fell off this review.

The author thanks a number of people in his after-notes. I always read those, because you can pick up little things lost elsewhere. He especially thanks the man that told him to beware the various items found in the prodigious memoirs by “that old thespian”, Richard Nixon, who was a student actor before he went into politics. It was strong advice.

In perusing this biography, I realized two things. The first is that the reason Nixon had so little domestic policy, and the reason the country moved so smoothly without him during the tortuous period prior to his departure, is because he didn’t have much of a tool kit to start with. The author notes that although Nixon has gained a sinister reputation as an evil, sneaking genius, in fact there were areas in which he really wasn’t all that smart, and this was one of them. He focused on three things: foreign policy, in which he was better equipped to carry out the wishes of the bourgeoisie than most presidents have been; running for office again and when that was done, honing his legacy, about which enough has been said; and of course, revenge, revenge, revenge.

The second thing I realized is that the reason he was virtually cast out of office in a situation in which other presidents might have been able to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, had to do with the fact that he believed himself, as US president, to be more powerful than the ruling bourgeoisie. He misjudged the relationship of power between himself and those that rule us quietly, usually in an unseen way. In attempting to yank the broadcasting license of CBS as part of a personal vendetta against the owner of the Washington Post, he took on a sector of the ruling rich, and he made of himself an object lesson.

By my count, this was my twelfth Nixon biography, though I may have read and forgot about some others. It’s neither the best nor the worst, but for those fascinated with Nixon’s rise and fall, and with Watergate, it should go on the to-read list. It’s just too good to miss!

The Eight, by Katherine Neville****

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theeight Katherine Neville is one of those people that does everything well. She’s been a model, a computer wiz, a photographer, and she’s also an impressive author. I was lucky enough to read this first in the series since Open Road Integrated Media has just re- published it digitally. Thank you to them, and to Net Galley, for permitting me a free copy in exchange for my review. This book was released Tuesday, and is for sale now.

Our protagonist, Cat Velis, lives in New York; the time is 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War. Cat lives in New York City and works for Con Edison. Since she has refused to do something illegal for her boss, who is engaged in some sidelines back-scratching with a client, she is being shipped off to Algeria. Before she can pack, however, a fortune teller warns her that she is in great danger. She scoffs, but less than a week and two corpses later, her irritation has turned to fear. She calls in her mentor, a mysterious man that seems to travel Gandalf-like, practically appearing in thin air. He comes and talks to her in much the same way as the fortune teller did, but he also tells her that she has to go to Algeria and fulfill her destiny.

Transposed with this story is a tale that takes place around the time of the French Revolution. The Montglane Abbey is closing its doors because of the Bill of Seizure. Buried beneath its floor for centuries was a legendary chess set whose worth is beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Composed of huge gems, gold, and silver, it is all the more valuable for a formula that its individual parts, when put together, have etched on their undersides. Is it a secret weapon? Is it a supernatural curse that is activated when the pieces are together? The Abbess only knows that she must separate the pieces and get them out of France, along with herself. She takes herself to Russia, to her closest friend, who is Catherine the Great. From there, the parallel story to Cat’s unfurls itself. Eventually the two part of the story come together.

Here’s a clip of the author discussing her novel, and the life experiences that shaped it:

This is ordinarily not the sort of historical fiction that attracts me; there are really well-developed, highly sympathetic royal characters, and then there are the savage, dirty masses. It grates. While it’s true that the French working class and peasantry really did tear royals from their splendid carriages and either kill them on the spot or take them off to the Jacobins to be killed later, Neville paints the royals in such an idealized fashion that the reader, if not already informed, might wonder indeed just why the masses would do such a thing? Unless, of course, it’s in their inferior DNA. I ground my teeth and read on.

Add a reference to the Freemasons and the number 666, and I was ready to hurl my kindle across the room! But I had an obligation to the publisher, and so I persevered, and I am glad I did, because what Neville does with the plot is quite cunning. If one were going to chart the book into a grid, it would correlate with the grid that is part of the story itself. And if this makes no sense whatsoever to you, all I can tell you is that you have to read the book and watch closely. Watch for the patterns; this is actually slick as hell! And so in the end, I was glad I had seen it through. Though maybe more famous people are worked into one novel than is natural, the elegance of the plot itself (and the chess detail), rather than historical veracity or character development, is what sustains this substantial work.

The reader’s understanding of this hyper-literate story will be aided by knowledge of chess. In fact, I found myself taking a few notes, though I haven’t played in years! Those unschooled in chess can also enjoy the book, but I do not recommend this book to anyone for whom English is not the mother tongue. The vocabulary and historical references will be so much work for you that you won’t enjoy it.

But I did.

Recommended to those that appreciate symmetry and precision in a novel.

Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War, by James Curran ***-****

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unholyfuryAll of a sudden, everybody is writing a book about or featuring Richard Nixon. Having grown up during the Watergate era, I voraciously attack anything and everything apart from the most blatant apologists’ work. This title, in which Nixon’s relationship with the government of Australia and in particular, Gough Whitlam, who became Australian prime minister during the Nixon administration, is examined, seemed like a good diversion from what I usually read. Like many Americans, I tend to focus too exclusively on matters having to do with the USA. It probably has to do with the size of the country and consequently, the sheer weight of available material on matters closest to home. But I knew next to nothing about Australia’s government, apart from their participation as an Allied force in World War II and their status as a friendly government to the US and Britain, so I dove in.

Thank you to Net Galley and Melbourne University Press for the galley, which I received free in exchange for an honest review.

Between the title’s subheading and the book’s cover, which shows Gough speaking and Nixon looking furious, one might almost conclude that the two nations were on the brink of a shooting war with one another. Not so, not so. Yet the antagonism that sprung up between the two nations during a time when both had outspoken and sometimes abrasive leaders is unquestionable. There were two primary realms of disagreement that went beyond mere personality issues. One was the role of Australia in relation to the USA, and the other was the future of Asia in relation to both countries and in general.

Before reading Curran’s biography, I had never thought of Australia as an Asian nation. I sort of considered them to be out there adrift, all by themselves, being kept company just by New Zealand the Pacific Islands. I am aware that they are on the opposite side of the equator from where I am, and so when it’s summer here, it’s winter there. That, cowboy boots, kangaroos, and an unfortunate record for treating indigenous people fairly, one which the US shares, about sum up my knowledge base.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know the capital was Canberra.

Nixon was mostly not focused on Australia, and that, it seems, was a part of the problem. Menzies had preceded Whitlam as prime minister, and he too was an old hand who thought largely in Cold War terms. Nixon and Menzies had been fond of one another. But when elections were held and the beleaguered President Lyndon Johnson was due to leave Washington, he told Australia’s representatives, who were opposed to the US intervention in Vietnam, that they “might have one or two problems” with Mr. Nixon. It was a very droll understatement.

First, Nixon was outraged that a nation that looked to the US for security and aid would dare publicly criticize its role in Vietnam, and then—worse—in Cambodia. He regarded the Australians as a satellite that ought to be grateful and not bite the hand, etc.

Gough Whitlam took office with an eye toward creating a more independent Australia. He considered Australia very unlikely to be in danger of external attack for ten or fifteen years at least, and was aghast at Uncle Sam’s ugly doings in Indochina. He was looking for distance, and Nixon, under enough pressure from enemies without getting it from friends, erupted. Eventually Richard Nixon played a dangerous bluff on Moscow by recalling nuclear missiles from nearby Fiji, which involved the use of Australian terrain, without actually notifying the Australians. Visions of a mushroom cloud on home soil didn’t do much to endear President Nixon or the American government to Australians, needless to say.

Whereas Nixon was convinced that communist hoards would continue to advance across Asia unless Vietnam was forced to adopt a parliamentary democracy, Australia felt that it was time for the super powers to quit telling smaller nations what to do and abide by home rule in whatever form its citizens chose.

Though no actual shooting war was ever threatened or contemplated, the US did examine alternate places for its bases—a $5 billion dollar investment in 1970’s dollars—and at one point, Australian dock workers voted not to unload goods from US ships. In turn, US dock workers placed a moratorium on Australian trade, which left a good deal of beef rotting near the dock for days on end. And sometimes, with breathtaking rapidity, trade wars can in fact lead to shooting wars. It wasn’t going to happen this time, though; the USA already had its plate full.

It probably is telling of my own ethnocentrism that I had difficulty focusing on the lengthy passages leading up to the conflict. There’s a fair amount of detail regarding Australian politics that novices like me may find it hard to plow through. On the other hand, the author should have known that communists would never use the term “Vietcong”, which was a pejorative. Vietnamese freedom fighters are referred to as members of the National Liberation Force.

Even if the reader gives in and skims those bits of political nuance that will suit some interest levels but not others, there is a great deal of entertaining dialogue and detail in the meaty center of this work to make it worth reading.

Giveaway: Black-Eyed Susans, by Julia Heaberlin

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BlackEyedSusansThis giveaway ends Friday, July 31 at midnight! Thank you to my sponsors for permitting me to extend the deadline. Hot new psychological thriller won’t go for sale until August 21, but thanks to Net Galley and Ballantine, you have a shot at your very own advance copy! If you live in the continental USA and have a snail mail address to give me if you should win, then you are eligible.

This is my first giveaway ever, and I began it on the review page, but so far only 5 people have expressed interest, and only one has left the contact information necessary for me to notify the winner. That means that by entering your contact info–which I will not use for any other purpose but to notify you that you’ve won and get your address to the sponsors–you have an outstanding chance of winning. Just a few days, people! Come on in!

Black-Eyed Susans Giveaway; My Very First!

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I am pumped about this! I was contacted by a rep from Net Galley and offered a copy of Ballantine’s hot new mystery for a blog giveaway, which I have not done before. I hope a lot of people will enter. If you’d like to be included in the drawing, which will occur at the end of this week in a totally random manner, please go down to the bottom of the page where it says “Leave a Reply”. Type in your name (or a pseudonym for now if you prefer) and an e-mail address where I can reach you. If you win, I will send a message to your e-mail, and at that point you need to give me a real name and snail mail address, which will be released only to the Net Galley rep.

I promise not to use your e-mail address for anything else. Actually, I don’t have an e-mail list to sell, and I don’t have anyone to sell it to. But if someone pops up and offers me great riches, I will turn them down…I promise!

This page will dominate my blog for the whole week. As a refresher, here’s the review again, and the attention-getting cover:

BlackEyedSusansTessa is the sole survivor of a group of young women who were left for dead in a mass grave, which was then planted with flowers. The Black-Eyed Susans became a metaphor for the trauma she experienced. This thriller, Heaberlin’s first following a highly respected career in journalism, is a great read with a few problems, most of which have to do with trying to cram too many details into a single novel. It was looking like 3.5 stars to me until it passed the halfway mark; then it hit its stride. Ultimately, the eloquent manner in which issues surrounding the death penalty were braided into the narrative won the final .5 star from this reviewer. And at this point, I have an obligation to tell you I read the book free, and to say thank you to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the DRC. The book will be available to the public August 11.

Tessa is an adult, a single parent, and it’s been twenty years since her abduction and attempted murder. There are memories she tries to bury, and there are other niggling details that she can’t make sense of. In a writing style somewhat reminiscent of Jodi Picoult, Heaberlin flashes us back and forth from Tessa’s adolescent memories to the present, a life in which her sole objective at first is to protect her own teenage daughter, Charlie, whom she is afraid may pay the ultimate price. Because Tessa’s stalker has been planting Black-Eyed Susans in her yard and various other places, and she is scared half to death.
Strange, threatening packages appear in the mail. And her best friend Lydia disappeared mysteriously not long after the trial. There are so many shadows, so many possible threats out there that her inclination is to retreat into her artist’s studio, and into her home. Don’t rock the boat.

The problem is that an innocent man is about to become one more victim of Texas’s capital punishment. Her supposed attacker, the supposed killer of the other Susans, waits on death row…and the clock is ticking. She knows he didn’t do it, and she’s been holding out. Once she decides to testify to his innocence, will she be believed? Can she get there in time?

A tremendous amount of research went into teenage trauma and its possible affects, and the capital punishment process (and the process of its defense) in Texas. Heaberlin has done her homework; if anything, she may have done a little too much, or tried to incorporate too much of her work into one novel. Somewhere around the 37 percent mark, I found myself not mystified, but confused. What were all these references to the OJ Simpson trial doing here? Who the hell is Jo? Is Lydia dead, moved away, or what? The suspense fell away while I stopped reading in irritation to go back over the book and try to discern what I had missed or forgotten.

However, just before the halfway mark, the author found her stride and everything came together. From that point till ninety percent, I was riveted. Portions of the text approached the level of literary fiction. I found myself questioning my earlier complaints, and went back and reread the passages I had marked earlier to see whether I had just been distracted, or in a snarky frame of mind. But no, the inconsistency is really there.

The supernatural bits about the other Susans being in her head, talking beyond the grave, may have turned up in the author’s research as a possible outcome of trauma, but they felt extraneous to me, as if they had been shoe-horned into the text. If I had been her editor, I would have cut them.

I was not entirely happy with the ending, which felt a bit contrived, but I was so deeply satisfied by what I had read up to that point that I didn’t feel let down.

My advice to the reader is this: if you are opposed to the death penalty and love a good thriller, get a copy of this novel. I think you’ll find it as satisfying as I did. You may want to flag pages where you have questions with sticky notes, or mark it digitally if you read it that way; later on it will all make sense.

And whatever you do, remember: there are no millionaires on death row. Not in Texas, and not in any other state that has capital punishment in the USA.

The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961, by Irwin F. Gellman***

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thepresidentandtheapprenticeGellman’s biography covers Nixon’s tenure as Vice President of the USA under President Dwight Eisenhower; he covers the election campaign beforehand as well as the famous “Checkers Speech”. Thank you to Net Galley and Yale University Press for the DRC, which I took in exchange for an honest review.

It is a little bit hard to be sure about this work, because the galley I got was so rough that it was difficult to judge its fluency. I settled on 3 stars rather than 4 stars because I saw some issues with organization, small tidbits that only marginally bore mentioning showed up in multiple chapters.

That said, it’s a good resource for anyone looking to study the Eisenhower administration or Nixon’s early years in government. I learned some things I didn’t know, and I have read my share (and maybe your share too!) of Nixon-related literature. Gellman has done a great job with research, and even offers pictures of primary documents, such as Ike’s notes during Nixon’s famous speech, at the end of the book.

I learned that the USA of that time period was a much more innocent one than that which we live in now. The Checkers Speech is one good example: now it is regarding laughingly as a mawkish bit of theater, but what is not widely publicized anymore is that the American public was asked to respond as to whether he should stay on the ticket, and they flooded the Republican headquarters and media centers with letters that supported him 350 to 1.

Now that it is known that he used public dollars for personal gain as president, I had rather assumed he had done the same during the funding crisis in question, but actually, back then he was guilty of nothing. The donations that were made were a travel fund, because the Nixons didn’t have the money to travel around the country campaigning. Donors pitched in for their air fare, cab fare, and hotels. There was no law regarding campaign spending limits back then; no law was violated.

As vice president, Nixon had more responsibilities, and occupied a position of greater trust, than most who occupied the same position. He was sent overseas, not only as a good will ambassador or ribbon cutter, but to do unpleasant, tricky things, like talking down the heads of state in South Korea and Taiwan. In addition, Ike never cared to do his own dirty work domestically, and so if someone needed to be officially taken apart, there was a good chance Nixon would be tapped for the job. He had an unstoppable work ethic and was unflinchingly loyal.

If Nixon’s vice presidency is of interest to you, get a copy of Gellman’s book. It goes up for sale in late November, so you can also consider it as a holiday gift if someone you know would appreciate it.

Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, by Michael G. Long ***-****

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peaceful neighborI confess I was intrigued by the title and description of this biography. Mr. Rogers came on television when I was entering adolescence, and so I didn’t watch it for myself. When I had children of my own, I tried to limit their time spent in front of TV, and so I tended to watch Sesame Street with them and then reach for the off button. But my son wanted to see Mr. Rogers, and I confess that although the magic escaped me—who wanted to watch this dull man with the puppet on his hand, seriously?—my son, who was three years old, thought differently. I watched the little smile play on his lips as Mister Rogers spoke to him, face straight into the camera. It made my kid feel better. And so I decided to plunge into this biography and see if I could figure out what made the show so appealing to little kids. I went all the way through a Master’s degree in education and came out still clueless, so why not? Thank you to Net Galley and Westminster John Knox Press for the DRC. The title was published in March and is available for purchase.

On the whole, I never did find the magic, but from an analytical standpoint, I could see where the work done by Fred Rogers was effective. He treated small people with respect. He was an expert in the psychology of very young children, and his show was crafted around gently, reassuringly addressing some issues that parents might not know how to talk to their children about. This is not to say that he had a superior attitude or spoke down to parents, when he acknowledged our presence, but I was a mom who had spent my entire pregnancy unemployed, sitting around the house reading books about pregnancy, childbirth, and the raising of young children, and I had no idea that my son had been afraid he might go down the drain after the bath was over. And I watched his little face light up when Mr. Rogers sat at the piano and sang, “You can never go down, never go down, never go down the drain!”

The first twenty percent or so of this biography deals with Rogers’ religious beliefs, and I nearly had to stick myself with a pin to stay awake through it. The guy was a pacifist, and so although he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, his belief system and his quiet, subdued manner was largely that of the Friends, or Quakers. So for those who have a strong interest in examining the intricate details of faith as it relates to war and children, this will be more absorbing than it was for me.

Just at about the point at which I had decided that grabbing the galley had been a mistake—seriously, 176 pages and I had only read twenty percent? It felt like forever—and gave myself permission to skim and review this thing, it became more interesting. And although I think the author very much overstates his case in calling Rogers “subversive”, I agree that he openly, if subtly and carefully, disagreed with Presidents Reagan and HW Bush about the wars in the Middle East, and before that, with the Vietnam War. He never carried a sign, our writer points out several times, but chose to work behind the scenes and to use his television show as a platform for peace.

“War isn’t nice.”

He was no radical; during the Civil Rights movement, rather than encourage integration, he held fundraisers to buy supplies for the African-American schools that were separate and entirely unequal, to try to level things out a little bit, one school district at a time. Good luck with that.

But the real gift that he gave to small children was that of absolute acceptance. Children were valuable no matter what they looked like. He acknowledged that we feel mad sometimes, and talked about ways to work out the mad without hurting anyone. He recognized that sometimes girls want to play with machines, and sometimes boys might like to hold a doll, to dress it and pretend to feed it. His was a gentle persona, and he let everyone know that men can also be nurturers. And when a company presumed to use his likeness on a tee shirt with a gun in his hand, he took their ass to court and made them not only stop selling those shirts, but destroy every last one they still had in their possession or for sale.

He also had blind spots. He was raised in a wealthy family—Mr. McFeely, the neighborhood postal character in the Make Believe neighborhood where Mr. Rogers filmed, was also the name of his grandfather, who built the family fortune. And at Christmas time, the staff of Mr. Rogers’s TV show each got a nice card with a note saying he had made a gift in their name to a charity; but one of the staffers pointed out to the author that some of them were paid very low salaries, and sure could have used the holiday bonus instead.

A documentary that was filmed about Fred Rogers was made with the understanding that the cameras must not show “the tasteful opulence of my home”.

Ahem.

The writer does a fine job of analyzing where Fred Rogers stood on all of the key issues of the day before his rather sudden death due to stomach cancer. If this man was important to you, or if you have an interest in the connection between social justice and religion, or children’s television shows, this might be a great book for you. If you are not interested in religion, you may want to skim through the first chapters and get to the meatier parts.

Either way, Fred would’ve liked you exactly as you are now.

X, by Sue Grafton *****

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xBefore I review this title, I have a plea: can we just make the alphabet a teensy bit longer? Because I don’t think I am ready for this series to end, and it’s getting perilously close. But meanwhile, thank you to Net Galley and Putnam-Penguin Publishers for the free DRC, an unexpected treat, especially since it was such a clean galley. The title goes up for sale August 25, but you can order it in advance, too.

As often happens, our story isn’t just about one mystery. There’s an official investigation that goes bad; an unofficial investigation that goes worse; and then there’s a big pile of trouble that drops itself into the neighborhood where Kinsey and Henry (who is ten percent Kinsey’s landlord and ninety percent her surrogate father) live. As always, taut suspense is intermingled brilliantly with silly, naughty, impulsive things that Kinsey Millhone, our intrepid but mischievous detective, dreams up.

This past year saw Grafton inducted as a Grand Master by her fellow mystery writers, and it really should have happened sooner. The level of writing she practices spills over the standard detective story genre and at times approaches literary fiction.

In this story, Kinsey is concerned about the drought in California, and the issue is deftly interwoven into the plot without ever becoming preachy or slowing the pace. Like everything else Grafton writes, it’s well executed.

And here’s my own confession: I love this book so hard that I deliberately slowed down how much of it I read each day. I could have had this review to you last week, but every time I noted that I’d gone 10 or 15 percent further in, I took it away from myself and forced myself to go read a different galley for awhile, sort of like Mary Ingalls making her Christmas candy last as long as possible. But now it’s finished, and the only thing left to do is tell you that it’s every bit as good as what you have come to expect. And if you are new to the series…well okay, I guess if you are new to the series, you are either really young, or you’ve been in a coma for the last twenty years. Welcome to the world of the living; here is your book. And although it can stand on its own just fine if you read it without reading the A-W mysteries, it’s even better if you read them in order.

I can remember my first Kinsey Millhone story. I found C is for Corpse in a train station shop, and soon afterward found myself in bed, recovering from whiplash. (People really do get whiplash; mine was from a car wreck, not a train wreck.) I was mostly okay as long as I kept my head on the pillow and did not try to move my neck—so ideal for reading a paperback. Once I was up and at ‘em, I hunted down the A and B titles, and from then forward, I read the series in order. And over the years and many installments, Kinsey has evolved from the super-hardboiled detective she was in the first book (which was already really strong) to a more developed character. Because when you have a longstanding series, you really can’t have one episode after another in which your protagonist gets whacked over the head or grabbed from behind, hogtied and tossed into the trunk of a car. People start to roll their eyes if you do too much of that shit, but then you have to find another way to maintain their interest level. Grafton does this by combining some really tricky, interesting problems (and yes, some danger) with a lot of character development.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to assign faces of people I know or have seen to characters in books. It helps me run the book as a mental movie if they have a face and a voice. Since Grafton has said in interviews that she sees Kinsey as a sort of younger, skinnier alter ego, I have created an imaginary Kinsey who looks like a cross between younger-Grafton and Stephanie Zimbalist (actor who played a TV detective many years ago). But when she opens her mouth to crack wise, I hear the voice of Roseanne Barr. So go figure!

So here we are. I am more than twenty years older than when I first met Kinsey; since then, I’ve gone back to school, had a career, had another child and raised her, adopted another child and raised him, and retired from teaching. Through it all, Kinsey has remained a wonderful constant, perhaps the adult version of having Grandma come to visit. Oh boy, she’s here! Or, oh boy, she’s coming back! And frankly, I am just not ready to let go. If you’ve been following the series for a long time too, you may feel the same.

The good news is the present. Right now, there’s this wonderful detective novel that you can order up, and you can float away to Santa Teresa. What an awesome vacation read. Even if it rains wherever you are going, you could have a terrific time curled up on a bed just reading this. In fact, you don’t really even have to go anywhere. Turn your phone off; get your favorite beverage and maybe some munchies; and reserve a time to just wallow and enjoy. Because when it comes to a riveting novel that is also, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, I just don’t see where you will find anything better.