Books2

Aug 14. THE REAPER by P Lovesley. An Anglican priest becomes a serial killer. He robs the church funds and if anyone--like the bishop--becomes suspicious, he is dispatched forthwith. In his off day he pilots a luxury yacht moored in a yacht Basin in the south of England. Likes to keep the population down.
Aug 21. THE VAULT by P Lovesey. Digging in the Vault under the Pump Room of Bath yields a human hand encased in concrete. Inspector Diamond investigates the twenty year old crime, which involves a writing box owned by Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and forgeries of paintings attributed to William Blake. An interesting story for lovers of art and artists.
Aug 30. UNEASY RELATIONS by A Elkins. Action set on the Rock of Gibraltar, where the bone doctor Gideon Oliver attends an anthropologist's convention on the relations between humans and Neanderthals. A famous discovery of a mixed human-Neanderthal burial on the Rock turns out to be a hoax. Meanwhile, a few humans bite the dust.
Sept 12. MURDER IN MONMARTRE by Howard Engel. Hemingway and his friends cavort about Paris in the twenties. Someone steals Hemingway's first manuscript. Ultimately, it is purloined by Laura Duclos, a beautiful, promiscuous member of the group, who desperately needs money to feed her heroin habit. She obtains her cash by blackmailing the men of the group, including the original thief of the manuscript. Not a good idea; he does her in.
Nov 4. THE CASTLE by Kafka--film by Michael Haneke. Once again, K wanders around the Castle, trying to convince someone that he is the new land surveyor. No officials accept his letter of apointment, but all the working women outside the castle welcome his presence and seduce him. When he finally meets the secretary of the man who hired him, the explanation for the castle runaround is byzantine and impenetrable. A metaphor for life: running about in a useless expenditure of energy. Unfortunately, the lot of most people.
Nov 23. DEATH NOTES by Ruth Rendell. Beautifully crafted Inspector Wexford mystery about the death of a world famous flutist. (Read 2 years ago, to my chagrin)
Nov 30. SPEAKER OF MANDARIN by RR. Introductory chapters set in China, where the principal characters are introduced. Mostly a red herring. Plot involves a murdered wife, like several other Rendell books. Insp. Wexford wins out in the end.
Dec 1. SHAKE HANDS FOREVER by RR. Another murdered wife, but this time the woman is switched, so that the actual victim is the cleaning woman. Beautifully organized, but the description of a crime that would not be possible today, because of DNA analysis.
Dec 29. SECRET OF THE GREAT PYRAMID by Bob Brier. How was the great pyramid of Egypt built? More precisely, how did the workmen raise the huge blocks hundreds of feet up to the top? A straight external ramp was the first guess, but engineers realized thatit would be too large and require more fill in work than the pyramid itself. This book says that the ramp was spiral and located inside the pyramid.
.Dec 30. LUCK AND THE IRISH by RF Foster, a brief history from 1970. Chronicals the implosion of the Catholic Church, the growth of feminism, the revolution in sexual attitudes, and the proliferation of scandals in both the church and politics.
Dec 31. THE SILVER SWAN by Benjamin Black, a pseudonym for John Banville. A spellbinding novel by Banville. Quirke, a Dublin pathologist is asked by a former acquaintence not to perform an autopcy on his wife, who was found ostencibly drowned. Quirke decides to investigate, leading to a series of murders among people both near and far from him. A page turner. Recommended.