A Deadly Act

 This is a great mystery series that I have just discovered.  I will go back now and read all the earlier novels in this series.  Adam Lapid is a retired Hungarian Jewish detective who now after the Holocaust immigrates to Palestine/Israel.  He is living there in 1950 and working as a private detective.  His past gives him a hardboiled tough exterior.  He takes on the cold case of a actress murdered in a graveyard.  As he tries to find the killer who has roamed free for five years, he finds that one death may lead to another.. he must protect his own life as he sticks his hand the nest and uncovers a hand full of trouble.

The Maid

 The Maid by Nita Prose is listed as a novel, but it is also very much a mystery novel.

Prose is writing this novel from the perspective of Molly Gray, best known as Molly Maid.

She works very hard cleaning rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel.  Moly Maid is twenty five years old, but she is also an unusual young lady, who struggles with understanding the cues and social interactions that other people take for granted.  She sees the world in black and white and sometimes  misses thee nuanced  shades of grey.  Having grown up with her Gran, she is trying now to move on after Gran's death.  She is trying to negotiate the daily life of going to work, cleaning her apartment, making the rent and understanding those around  her.  

She is happiest when she is wearing her crisp clean uniform, pushing her cleaning cart full of clean sheets, towels, miniature soaps, shampoos and little individually wrapped chocolates to leave on pillows. She takes her job  seriously and she takes the directions of the manager at face value and literally.

When she tries to befriend the Rodney, bartender at the Regency and tries to help Juan Manuel, the  dishwasher in the kitchen, her cleaning skills are put to the test and her honesty is questioned.

The Man Who Loved His Wife

 The Man Who Loved His Wife is a book of short stories written by Jennifer Ann Moses.  Short stories are a little harder to write than a novel.  The author must capture the reader’s attention quickly, keep their attention while building the plot of the story, then reach a conclusion in a limited amount of time and pages.  Enticing the reader, making them feel emotions for the characters and stay engaged with the storyline is something that Moses does very well throughout this book.

Each of the stories uses a dark comedic style to show the real lives of Jewish people living in many locations; New Jersey, Israel and the southern United States.  Stories of immigrants and survivors. The stories grab the reader, pulling them into the character’s lives and end leaving the reader with an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty of what happens next in the protagonist's life.  Adolescent love, marriage and infidelity, true love are all scrutinized.  Jewish rituals and customs are explored through stories of funerals and sitting shiva.

The Ladies of the Secret Circus

 Constance Sayers has a terrific imagination that she shares with the reader in her book, The Ladies of the Secret Circus.  This is the  story of Lara Barnes who on her wedding day is left alone at the alter.   She and Todd have had a long romance which is finally about to culminate in marriage when her fails to show up at the church.  Lara does not believe he is gone of his own volition.

Her mother, Audrey is supportive but seems to have her own secrets she is guarding, as she tries to protect her daughter.  Ben Archer, the police chief is very supportive and helpful to Lara as she decides to investigate the disappearance of her fiancé .

Tied to this modern day family is the history of a magical circus that only appears to special people in Paris back in the 1925.  Sayers paints a beautiful picture of artistic, social cafe scene in Paris at night. With descriptions of the nightlife and the artists who live there and paint the beautiful women.

The Secret Circus is magical and full of illusions.  Sometimes places and experiences that are so fantastic that could bring a person to the edge of evil.  Could the Circus of such fantastical beauty and magnificence be connected to the world of evil?  

So wonderfully presented that the beauty and the grotesque come to life and seem real.  

Wrongfully Infused

 Living in the make believe world with Gemma and her best friend, Cassie, running a tea shop in in her tiny Oxfordshire village in England you can forget all the crazy stuff happening here in the real world.  

Gemma returns to her tea shop, Little Stables to find the clientele has been lured away by a new Tea Bar on the other side of town.  Gemma and her best friend are going to eat at the new location to see what the fuss is all about and of course find their best customers, the 4 elderly ladies, the Old Biddies, there.  Gemma has dinner with her parents and explains the problem to them and her mother gives her some good advice to improve her own tea shop to attract the people back to her cafe. 

Gemma is busy baking the best scones in the Cotswolds and trying to keep her relationship moving forward with her rediscovered first love, Devlin, who is up for a promotion to Detective Inspector.   Her mother is expanding her interests and helping people coming to live in England from other countries learn the customs and language.  She is also learning their customs and enjoying some of the new ways of eating and living.

Then her mother introduces her to her newest friend, who is the mother of the woman with the offending Tea Bar.  There has to be a crime committed and of course Gemma is one of the accused.  Of course if she is a suspect in the death she must defend herself.  Thus begins the trail of characters Gemma interviews to find out who could have really murdered the Tea Bar owner, to clear her own name.  Also because Gemma realizes even when her boyfriend, Devlin asks her to stay out the case because it could affect his upcoming promotion, Gemma cannot stop hunting for the killer.

Another fun entertaining light mystery.  So cozy that I spent the day on the couch through a snow storm reading this novel.  Also it takes you away form the news and the CoVid pandemic we are living through.  There is not one mention of illness or masks.  Here you can forget that those are a part of our world today.

Disclosure: A review copy of this book was sent to me by the author. All of the above opinions are my own.    

The Vixen

 I was looking forward to reading this book, but  in the end I was a little disappointed.  Though again after the conversation about it with my book discussion group, I felt it was worth the read.

An interesting novel ...but disappointing.  I was hoping for more of a story about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  This is a story  of a young man who is trying to establish himself int he world of publishing.  He is very naive and is easily taken advantage of in the hard boiled world of publishing at a time when there were still three martini lunches, men dominated the business and it was an all boys network.  

Simon the narrator of this book and the new man at the publishing company that wants to publish a bodice ripper about Ethel Rosenberg, has to figure out whether to stand up for his beliefs or follow the  direction of his boss and defile the good name of Ethel Rosenberg.  

Francine Prose grew up knowing that her mother went to  high school with Ethel Rosenberg, so her protagonist, Simon has a similar connection to the Rosenbergs.  

He is haunted for the entire novel by Ethel's last words, sent to her lawyer, " Ethel said in her letter, you will see that our name will be kept bright and unsullied by lies. "

So when Simon is offered a job  at a publishing company he jumps at the job.  Then he is asked to copyedit a novel loosely about Ethel that sullies her name.  Simon is torn between keeping his job  and acting like the men he meets on the job or being loyal to what he images his mother would want and also to Ethel.

This is a coming of age story. Simon is a learning how the world works and how women can use their sexuality to take advantage of you .  How men use power to get what they want.  

All in all an interesting novel but not a favorite of mine.  Much of  the plot seems very far fetched and a bit unrealistic.  

The Lincoln Highway

Amor Towles is being praised for this new novel.  So unlike his previous novels, this plot takes us back in US history to the 1950s, a simpler time, but still a time of heartache for so many young men coming of age. 

This novel explores the lives of three young men who come from very different walks of life and different places in the United States.  We get to know each of the characters telling their story as they travel from Nebraska to New York.  They and others share what has led each of them to end up in Salina, a work farm for troubled boys.   

Emmett, who grew up in Nebraska, was at Salina for involuntary manslaughter after a boy was killed in a fight.  His father has died after years of being an unsuccessful farmer and loosing his property to the bank.  As Emmett and his younger brother Billy are about to leave and start a new life, Wooly, son of an aristocrat and Duchess, son  of a vaudevillian , two boys who were at Salina with Emmett show up unexpectedly and detour Emmett and Billy to New York.  Wooly and Duchess are are on the run, having snuck out of Salina before their time is up.  

This is the story of misadventures and coming of age, self discovery and learning along the way to be a better person in order to succeed.

The writing style in this novel is perfection.  The descriptions and the character development are very well done. Maybe it is the perfect writing... but I was on edge the entire time I was reading this novel.  I had a pit in my stomach, worried that something terrible would happen to Emmett and Billy, who I really wanted to succeed from the very beginning.  So along the way,  there were many times where I thought I would just put the book down and not continue to make myself so uncomfortable.  But in the end the writing and story kept me engaged and I had to read all the way to the end.