H. F. Heard:
A Taste of Honey
Julian Symons, ed.:
Verdict of 13: A Detection Club Anthology
21 November 2001
What I should be reading right now is Harry Potter and the Stone of Transatlantic Name Shift, having just seen the movie. But no. I'm in a mystery mode at the moment.
A Taste of Honey is a short mystery novel where a misanthrope assists a fellow resident of his village (whose true identity may be familiar to all mystery readers) in solving the murder of a beekeeper's wife. Reasonably interesting, and reasonably creepy, and a good read in spite of the fact that the narrator isn't very likeable.
Britain's Detection Club, a group of mystery writers, has occasionally published anthologyies of members' work. I inherited Verdict of 13: A Detection Club Anthology from my late uncle, and it's a very interesting collection. Stories of particular interest include P.D. James's "Great-Aunt Allie's Flypapers," Peter Dickinson's SF-mystery crossover "Who Killed the Cat?" (chilling and creepy), and Ngaio Marsh's "Morepork" (if anyone ever does an ornithologist's mystery compilation, this should go in it).
David S. Evans and J. Derral Mulholland:
Big and Bright
Tanya Huff:
The Fire's Stone
9 November 2001
It's a sad statement on me that I work for a publisher, and I've read maybe five of the books we publish. Well, now it's six (except that this one's out of print, but hey....)
Big and Bright: A History of the McDonald Observatory is, as the subtitle says, a history of the early years of the McDonald Observatory in west Texas. Initially funded by the estate of William Johnson McDonald, an amateur astronomy fan, the observatory was run by a joint agreement between the University of Texas and the University of Chicago.
It's a reasonably interesting book. I occasionally found the writing a bit dry -- I'm not into astronomy myself beyond basic naked-eye stargazing, so some of the digressions made me wish for a glossary. But there are enough interesting incidents to keep the story itself interesting -- a disputed will (as a Rice University alum, this automatically piques my interest), struggles with getting people to live in a remote area of west Texas, the personality quirks of various astronomers and staff. (Regarding the second, though, I was struck by the fact that in the early days, the board of directors wanted to hire a married man to run the observatory as they felt the isolation would be too much for a bachelor. So it's too much for a man who's going to be spending most of his waking hours on research, but not for a woman who's going to have only the house and their children to occupy her? Says something about the thought processes....)
Recently I reread Tanya Huff's The Fire's Stone. This was a book that I checked out of the library several years ago in spite of the fact that it was shelved among a bunch of cheesy-looking romance paperbacks -- the title grabbed me, and hey, it's the library; if I don't like the book, it just means I've spent a little reading time and burned a few calories hauling the thing around.
Well, this turned out to be another of my lucky library finds. The characters are fun, the story is a delight, and the magic system is interesting. I love the occasional tiny cultural notes, like Aaron's pointing out that people are encouraged to name their kids after newborn princes and princesses, and Prince Darvish wondering what the life of the blind beggar named Darvish is like. The only part that doesn't work that well for me is something about the tone; characters are too, hmm, self-aware? That's not quite it, but approaching it. The characters read themselves or read each other too well to be believable; it's something that I generally get irritated by. This book, though, is fun enough that it doesn't bother me so much.