A few more books read

Retirement Homes are Murder, by Mike Befeler. I thought this might be a book based on Alzheimer's, but it really isn't. The premise is that a 70+ guy who has just moved into a retirement home can't remember anything that happened in the last five years or so once he goes to sleep. He gets involved in a trying to solve a murder and has to reset his memory every morning. It's a clever premise and this light diversion is well done. A quick read, but fun. Set in Hawaii, and it does have a good sense of place.

I'm Not Scared, by Niccolo Ammaniti. The book opens with a sense of foreboding associated with corn fields. Told from the perspective of the son of incompetent kidnappers, it has a tone of dislocation as the 10 year old main character, Michele, finds the kidnapped boy and figures out what's happening from overhearing the adults. Although the story line is frightening and the author seems to be trying for a sense of menace, the book wasn't totally convincing as the "thriller" it claims to be.

The Double Bind, by Chris Bohjalian. The writing was nothing special, but it was not intrusive to the story. The story, connecting an assaulted woman with the homeless and with The Great Gatsby, was very complex and the twists and turns really kept me reading. Big twist at the end still has me thinking; I'm not sure the author played fair about that.

Tuxedo Park Mystery

I just finished another cozy mystery...this time set in Tuxedo Park: Dying for Mercy, by Mary Jane Clark. It was fun to be able to see so many of the locations in my mind as I was reading, and to imagine which real places the author was referring to with fabricated names. This was a mystery that had to be set in Tuxedo Park, or a place like it (are there any other places like it?). The story was plot-driven, and Tuxedo Park was as much a character as any of the people were. While the writing was pedestrian, it didn't get in the way of the story, a requirement for something non-literary like this. All in all, it was an enjoyable afternoon's read.

Cozy Mysteries

In preparation for a trip to Colorado Springs for my grandmother's 100th birthday party, I decided to read some mysteries set in that town. It seems as though all those mysteries were cozy, leading to other cozies as well. So in the last month, I've read a few of these non-literary mysteries. Those set smack in Colorado Springs were Throw Darts at a Cheesecake by Denise Dietz and A Real Basket Case by Beth Groundwater. The former is set in a diet club and the latter in a health club, and both really could have been anywhere. Glancing references to places in Colorado Springs were all that set these books there -- the sense of place was decidely lacking in both books. A book with a little more sense of place, although that place is a fictional town outside of the Springs, is Irrational Numbers by Robert Spiller. At least this one felt like it was "out west," and I have to admit I was partial to the math teacher sleuth. Another cozy set in Colorado was really a romance novel, once again one with such a generic setting that it could have been anywhere: A Dying Art by Nageeb Davis. This one had an art teacher as the sleuth and, of course, she fell in love with the policeman just as the diet group leader in Dietz's book did. One more cozy I read during this binge of mediocre mysteries was L. C. Hayden's Why
Casey Had to Die. That one made my list because of a geocaching connection, and indeed, at around page 200 there was a geocache involved. The improbable turns of events in this book brought it down a couple of notches, though. At this point, I'm really looking forward to reading something with a little more depth.