5. Night Hunter by E. D. Ward

#1 Harry Circus - ME State Trooper
read on my iPhone
2017, Piscatuqua Press
208 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery/Police Procedural
Finished 1/9/18
Goodreads rating: 3.5 - 2 ratings
My rating:  2
Setting: Downeast "Berryville," Maine, 1980's?

First line/s:  "The beat-up old Jeep Wagoneer labored to climb the hill that led to what the locals called 'The Bog' in the small town of Berryville, Maine."

My comments:  I was quite excited to read of this murder mystery set in Downeast Maine, but it was riddled with problems.  I DID like the story, and although it was written in a choppy, weird manner, I didn't really mind that part.  It was different, almost set out like an outline but the real "writing" never happened.  There were so many things for me to dislike.  In no particular order:  I never got a sense of where Downeast this took place.  There were mentions of Machias, and driving to Augusta and Bangor.  Yes, the blueberry bogs, but nothing to give me a picture of the setting.  Disappointing.  There was nowhere near enough information about each of the "main" characters.  Pat and Marge were completely fascinating, and I would have read a book about just them.  But.....how old were they?  Other than their standard outfits, what did they look like?  They had no income and lived on poached meat, but how did they buy all the rifle shells, beer, and tobacco?  Very exasperating:  every character, when speaking to another (and there was a lot of dialogue) said the other person's name.  Every time.  Constantly.  Ugh! And now to Harry Circus himself.  That is a HORRIBLE surname for a protagonist.  HORRIBLE!  We actually know very little about him.  He is obsessed with keeping his wife, Annie, happy, and is overly lovey dovey with her.  Too much of that, yuck.  Unneeded.  How old are they? They were friends with the murdered banker?  How?  Were they close in age?  He loves to drive fast.  He has a bit of compassion in him, but is frequently unkind to others, especially his subordinates.  He drinks a lot of coffee, as does everyone we encounter in this book. 

All in all, this book is a good outline for a better book.  A first attempt outline.  I'm surprised that it actually has been printed in book and Kindle format.  There's a second installment already available, Across the Singing Bridge.  I actually think I'm going to read it to see if Marge and Pat return.  It has no reviews on Goodreads.  None.  What am I in for?

Goodreads synopsis: E.D. Ward’s first novel in the Harry Circus mystery series is a story of unforgettable suspense from the dramatic opening to the bloody finish. In rural Down East Maine, a seasoned State Trooper, Harry Circus, is driven to solve the most gruesome murder he’s ever investigated. The body of Lester Sawyer, local banker and good friend of Harry’s, is found disemboweled and partially skinned on the remote blueberry barrens, north of the small town of Berryville. 
Tension mounts as Harry, with the help of his counterpart, Constable Ralph Bailey, follows the scent of the murderer to the brutal end where he discovers the long-kept secret of a mother and daughter.  NOTE FROM MUDDY PUDDLE:  This last line is not at all correct!

SHORT STORIES - Triple Time - Anne Sanow

Drue Heniz Literature Prize 2009
2009 University of Pittsburgh Press

151 pgs.

Adult Fiction - 1980's Saudi Arabia

Finished

Goodreads rating: 3.87

My rating:    (5) Awesome  (4) Loved it  (3) Liked it   (2) It was okay  (1) Yuck

TPPL found it in Sedona

1st story:  "Pioneer" pgs. 1 -19
     A nine-year-old has accompanied his construction-worker dad and pregnant mom to a hot, boring village in the Saudi desert where they will spend at least two years.  It's still summer, he has nothing to do (their possessions have not yet arrived), and none of his family is happy.  The baby arrives - early.  The story gives a feel for this hot, depressing place with little going for it and seems somewhat pointless other than that.

Goodreads book summary:  For Jill, a young American living in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, life is in “a holding pattern” of long days in a restrictive place-“sandlocked nowhere,” as another expat calls it.  Others don't know how to leave, and try to adopt the country as their own.  And to those who were born there, the changes seem to come at warp speed: Thurayya, the daughter of a Bedouin chief, later finds herself living in a Riyadh high-rise where, she says, there are “worlds wound together with years.”
           The characters in the linked stories in Triple Time are living an uneasy mesh of two divergent cultures, in a place where tradition and progress are continually in flux. These are tales of confliction-of old and new, rich and poor, sexual repression and personal freedom. We experience a barren yet strangely beautiful landscape jolted by sleek glass apartment towers and opulent fountains. On the fringes of urbanity, Bedouins traverse the desert in search of the next watering hole.
           Beneath a surface of cultural upheaval, the stories hold deeper, more personal meanings. They tell of yearnings-for a time lost, for a homeland, for belonging, and for love. Anne Sanow reveals much about the culture, psyche, and essence of life in modern Saudi Arabia, where Saudis struggle to keep their traditions and foreigners muddle through in search of a quick buck or a last chance at making a life for themselves in a world that is quickly running out of hiding places.

70. U is for Undertow - Sue Grafton

#21 Kinsey Milhone, Santa Teresa, CA

Audio read by Judy Kaye

11 unabridged cds  (14;00)

2009 Random House

403 pgs.

Genre/Audience

Finished 11/16/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.88

My rating:    4 - It was very good

Acquired PBS

1988 Southern California with flashbacks in the story to 1967

1st sentence/s:  April 6, 1988:  "When the past rises up and declares itself.  Afterward, a sequence of events seems inevitable, but only because cause and effect have been aligned in advance.  It's like a pattern of dominoes arranged upright on a tabletop."

My comments:  I got a good start on this about a year ago and for some reason never finished it. Listened to much of it on my trip back and forth to San Diego this weekend and it certainly helped wile away the hours-on-the-road.  Much like Eric Conger becoming the voice of Virgil Flowers, Judy Kaye has definitely become the voice of Kinsey Milhone for me - almost like having company as I drove.  Good story, very Kinsey Milhone.

Goodreads book summary:       It's April 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth birthday, and she's alone in her office catching up on paperwork when a young man arrives unannounced. He has a preppy air about him and looks as if he'd be carded if he tried to buy a beer, but Michael Sutton is twenty-seven, an unemployed college dropout. More than two decades ago, a four-year-old girl disappeared, and a recent newspaper story about her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her lonely burial and could identify the killers if he saw them again. He wants Kinsey's help in locating the grave and finding the men. It's way more than a long shot, but he's persistent and willing to pay cash up front. Reluctantly, Kinsey agrees to give him one day of her time.
          But it isn't long before she discovers Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth. In essence, he's the boy who cried wolf. Is his story true, or simply one more in a long line of fabrications?
          Moving effortlessly between the 1980s and the 1960s, and changing points of view as Kinsey pursues witnesses whose accounts often clash, Grafton builds multiple subplots and memorable characters. Gradually we see how everything connects in this twisting, complex, surprise-filled thriller. And as always, at the beating heart of her fiction is Kinsey Millhone, a sharp-tongued, observant loner who never forgets that under the thin veneer of civility is a roiling dark side to the soul.

55. Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

2013 St. Martin's Press

328 pgs.

YA CRF

Finished 12-14-2013

Goodreads Rating: 4.22 (37,330 ratings)

My Rating: Great Story (4) 

TPPL

Setting: 1980s Omaha, Nebraska

1^st sentence/s: "XTC was no good for drowning out the morons at the back of the bus. Park pressed his headphones into his ears."

My comments:  Even though there were very NON-sweet things going on in this book, the love story between Eleanor and Park was incredibly sweet. I particularly enjoyed the way the story slipped back and forth from each of the protagonist's point-of-view, but only spent short sections in this manner, not long ones.  I was dreading the ending, but Rowell handled it perfectly.  Excellent story.

Goodreads Review:  Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.