Ms Holmes Pretends: Need a Good Read!

With the grand help of sister Kelly, my novel Ms Holmes Pretends is now available for you to purchase, peruse, and enjoy! I know that teachers would love it, and I think lots of other people will, too.

The book follows a career teacher through one year in her life, the year that changes everything. Please give it a chance and spread the word!

The Troubled Man: Definitely Troubled

This was a book that I wanted to keep reading. I have read others in the series with Kurt Wallander as the main character, a kind of burnt-out police detective in Sweden. His character is very well-developed, and I get an excellent picture of him--albeit, I see Kenneth Branagh every time (because he played him in the BBC miniseries), but I am intrigued by old Wallander and his pessimistic wanderings through the case and his life.

However, this mystery/police-procedural left too many loose ends in the conclusion and an exceedingly bleak ending that was simply depressing. I didn't feel a sense of satisfaction when I finished it. I did finish it, though. So, it kept me interested. I kept wanting things to get better for him--I kept expecting that they would. I kept expecting him to walk off optimistically in the sunset with his dog. Oh well.

The Terracotta Dog

I'm currently halfway through this Italian police procedural by Andrea Camilleri. It is quirky and funny--which always makes me wonder when I'm reading a translation--how does that happen? The book has a lot of play on words in it, and it certainly translates to English, however the original was written.

I love books where the main character does his own thing while doing his job for the man. It's what I aim for in my own life. In books, the characters seem to get away with it better than I do though!

Translated in 2002, this is the 2nd novel in a series with the same Inspector, so I'm glad I found it and have more to look forward to.

Morgana on the Sparkly Rock

After the painting Morgan Le Fay by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys

Her hair is the color of the spots

on the leopard skin draped

across her like a sari.

Serpents and winged dragons

are dyed into a horizontal pattern

around the gold hem of her dress.

Once when I was a little girl

I took my mother’s 70’s green velvet

tablecloth, a pewter lamp shaped

like a genie’s and an old book

my grandmother had given to me

that was printed in 1893,

and I went into the woods

behind our house

                to do magic

                to be Morgan Le Fay.

I safety-pinned the tablecloth

around me like a cape

and I found the place where

the sparkly rock rose from the earth

like the sword from the stone.

My hair was dishwater blonde

and cut by my mother, so always

a bit crooked, my bangs

like the slanted edge of a pan flute.

This painting was in the big art book

in the living room bookshelf—

above the Ray Price, Jim Reeves,

and Roy Clark albums. It was wide

like an album.

I had looked at Morgan so much

the book automatically

fell open to her.

A cauldron blazes in the background,

the fire shadowed against

the brown wall, stark—like the artist

etched it with a nail.

The old book was called Little Lady Val.

On the cover was a picture

of a very proper young lady

with golden curls, her arm

firmly clasped by a boy in blue

showing her the way.

I stood on the sparkly rock

with these two women

and hurriedly—so I wouldn’t be caught—

I began to make my life.

 --Shaun Perkins

The Hypnotist by Lars Keppler

I didn't pay much attention to the cover of this book as I was reading it. It's only now that I'm pasting the picture on here that I realize that it's pretty gruesome. You'll have to read to see what made the blood splatter. (It's not as bad as it sounds . . . well, not really.) Anyway...suspenseful though it goes a bit crazy toward the end as many mysteries do. Why do authors always think we want a crazy-ass ending like in a blockbuster movie?

Best Thing: Equal number of male and female characters who are well-developed (though not always believably so)


Worst Thing: Unbelievable (but not so much that it makes you stop reading) . . . plus, I just saw a picture of the authors--a Swedish husband-wife team who look like models. Yuck.