78. Spectre Black by J. Carson Black

Cyril Landry #3
listened on Audible
2015 Thomas & Mercer
304 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished August 11, 2018
Goodreads rating:  3.71 - 317 ratings
My rating:  3.5
Setting: contemporary southern New Mexico

First line/s:  "Jolie Burke heard something.

My comments:  This third entry into the Cyril Landry saga is set in southern New Mexico and involves Jolie Burke, who Landry has partnered with in books one and two  They are taking on a disrupt sheriff, sheriff's department, and local rich guy/bud guy, his schizophrenic, bipolar son and just-plain-nuts FBI agent daughter.  There are definitely shades of the ridiculous - painting vehicles with some sort of stealth paint that makes them invisible as they roar down the road - but it suits the purposes of the story.  Cyril's seemingly unending cash flow and friends in the right places, along with his military prowess serve him well - there would be no story without any of it!  It's certainly entertaining, once you suspend too much questioning.

Goodreads synopsis:  When homicide detective Jolie Burke awakens to intruders in the dark of night, she’s forced to flee. Jolie’s nobody’s victim, but she cannot fight this faceless enemy alone. She reaches out to Cyril Landry, the ex–Navy SEAL who is long on special-ops skills and short on patience. He suffers no fools—ever. But when Landry rolls into Branch, New Mexico, Jolie is gone, and there’s nothing waiting for him but trouble.
          As Landry hunts for Jolie, he becomes immersed in a quagmire of corruption—a toxic brew of graft, homicide, and the ominous shape of something much bigger. Framed for murder and dodging a sexy FBI agent and a suspicious sheriff, Landry finds himself pitted against a psychopath with secrets even blacker than his sinister sports car. Now Landry’s on a double-barreled mission: reach Jolie before the killers do and dig up some dirt on his enemies before they get the chance to dig his grave.

MOVIE - Hell or High Water

R (1:42)

Limited release 8/12/16

Viewed Sunday morning, (a great time to see a movie!) 9/11/16 at Park Place

RT Critic: 98   Audience:  90
Critic's Consensus:   Hell or High Water offers a solidly crafted, well-acted Western heist thriller that eschews mindless gunplay in favor of confident pacing and full-bodied characters.

Cag:  I'm going to go all out and give this a 6/Awesome, this was a wow movie, one that I won't forget.  Chris Pine (not one of my previous faves) was SO good, as was Ben Foster, who played his brother.  They made it seem real. And I'll take Jeff Bridges playing any part any day....

Directed by David Mackenzie

Film 44

Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Jeff Bridges

My comments:  This was a terrific movie.  Incredible acting from all four of the major players.  Intriguing, gut-wrenching storyline.  West Texas/Oklahoma/New Mexican real towns (I just traveled through some of them, so I know they're depicted completely correctly).  Humor.  Love.  Family ties.  Conservatism vs. Liberalism.  Big guy vs. Little guy.  Rich vs. poor.  Powerful and powerless.  Overwhelming sadness and jubilant yeeha moments.  Everything done right....

IMBd Summary:  Two brothers -- Toby, a straight-living, divorced father trying to make a better life for his sons; and Tanner, a short-tempered ex-con with a loose trigger finger -- come together to rob branch after branch of the bank that is foreclosing on their family land. The hold-ups are part of a last-ditch scheme to take back a future that powerful forces beyond their control have stolen from under their feet. Vengeance seems to be theirs until they find themselves in the crosshairs of a relentless, foul-mouthed Texas Ranger looking for one last triumph on the eve of his retirement. As the brothers plot a final bank heist to complete their plan, a showdown looms at the crossroads where the last honest law man and a pair of brothers with nothing to live for except family collide.

MOVIE - Paul

What a riot!
Released 3-18-11 (Wide)
R (for language) (1:40)
Wed. 3-20-11 at El Con with Sheila and Ronnie
RT:  71  cag:  82
Director:  Greg Mottola

I saw the trailer for this and it  looked funny, reminded me of ET.  Well, I think it was supposed to!  I fell in love with Paul.  His persona, his humor, his voice (go, Seth Rogen!), his demeanor.  It was a fun story with lots of humor and all sorts of references to other movies.  You'd probably have to watch it a second time to catch them all.

Two very nice guys from England have made their first trip across the pond to attend Comicon in San Diego and take a road trip to see places where UFOs have been sighted across the southwest.  They've rented an RV and can't believe their lifelong dream has come true.  And of course, as comedic movies go, they run from one situation to another.  But it's when they literally crash into Paul that their real adventure begins.  They add a one-eyed God-fearing beauty to their entourage.  We also watch  a solemn FBI agent (Jason Bateman, who never cracks a smile...how can he do that?), two bumbling agents, and their female boss who are close on Paul's tail. 

SNL players left and right, Jane Lynch (!), Sigourney Weaver, Blythe Danner, Steven Spielberg....surprise after delightful surprise.  This was an especially fun movie.  And I really do have a crush on Paul...

8. At Ease With the Dead - Walter Satterthwaite

Joshua Croft #2
University of New Mexico Press, 1990
paper $9.95
237 pgs.
Rating: 5

A very fine mystery, taking place in Santa Fe, NM; El Paso, TX, and Navajo country, Arizona and New Mexico. Joshua Croft is a private investigator who functioned without cellphones or the internet, since the book was written over 20 years ago. Really well crafted, an interesting suspenseful tale.

Joshua Craft and Rita Mondragon run the Mondragon Investigation Agency together, although Joshua does all the "legwork." Rita's in a wheel chair and never....ever....leaves her house on the side of a mountain overlooking Santa Fe. The story begins with Joshua Meeting a wise old Navajo man named Daniel Begay while camping and fishing in northeastern New Mexico. They bond. And awhile later, Begay comes to him with a 65-year old mystery that is almost all dead ends, since almost everyone that could answer any questions is either dead or in their 80's. But Joshua proceeds, meeting fascinating people in El Paso and seeing first hand the trepidation that Navajos have for non-Navajos.

There's fighting and killing, with a little detail that's uncomfortable, but not enough to stop me from giving this a top-notch rating. I didn't read the first in the series, but I've ordered the second and can't wait to receive it.

Georgia Rises - Kathryn Lasky

A Day in the Life of Georgia O'Keeffe
Illustrated by Ora Eitan
Melanie Kroupa Books, FSG, 2009
$16.95
Rating: 3.5
32 pages
Endpapers: 11 squares of illustrations of Georgia O'Keeffe in various daily activities - mainly outdoors.

This book is, indeed, about a ficticious day in the life of Georgia O'Keeffe when she was in her 70"s, living alone at her home in the New Mexican desert. She lived simply, waiting for the light to change, enjoying the joy of natural color and flowers and the shine of light on the bones she picked up in the desert.

Kathryn Lasky researched this (she calls it historical fiction) by reading many of O'Keeffe's letters and visiting Abiqui, O'Keeffe's home in the New Mexican desert. Her writing is eloquent and tells the story of O'Keeffe's life, her activities, her thinking, quite perfectly. I can so see it.

I wasn't enamored of the illustrations, although the cover was eye-catching and they do grow on me more and more as I look at them. The cream colored pages give the book a soft desert-y glow, but either the font type or color made it very difficult for me to read. And the page of gray font in the lavender sky seems almost invisible. Granted, I'm blind as a bat - but I'm reading this sitting in a sharply-lit library.....

This is a very nice addition to my collection of Georgia O'Keeffee picture books.

An interesting author's note and list of resources is included.

49. Serpent Gate - Michael McGarrity

Kevin Kerney #3
Audio read by George Guidall
Recorded Books
Unabridged 6 cassettes/8.5 hrs.
314 pgs.
1998
Rating: 4

Two entirely different stories wrap themselves around each other and Kevin Kerney, who has been given the rank of Deputy Chief of the State Police, is clever enough to solve them both. His old nemesis, Mexican Enrique deLeon, whom he butted heads with in the first book, has masterminded a huge art theft from the governor's office. And Kerney is back and forth between Santa Fe and Mountainair, where he has solved the murder of a police officer. During that investigation he met mentally disabled Robert Cordova, and both stories "end" during a blizzard at Serpent Gate. We know there's more to come, too, because before the book closes we get a glimpse of deLeon on his yacht plotting revenge.....and of Kerney waiting for the outcome of a trial to find out if the woman he arrested in Mountainair will be acquitted. - thus allowed to enter his personal life.

I'm so glad I went to Santa Fe last Thanksgiving, because I have foggy pictures in my brain about the setting. Now I want to go back. And this time, I want to take a closer look at Truth or Consequences and Socorro, with side trips to some of the places mentioned so far in these three great novels. Looking forward to the fourth.

MOVIE - Sunshine Cleaning

Loved it - a lot
Viewed: Monday, April 27 at El Con
Rotten Tomato: 71% Mine: 95%
EW: B- Mine: A (Its beginning to appear that I disagree with EW a lot)
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Released: 3-13-09
R (1:42)
Directed by Christine Jeffs (she also directed Little Miss Sunshine)
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Steve Zahn, Alan Arkin

Rose Norkowski (Amy Adams) has an eight-year old son, low self-esteem, a bumbling screw-up sister (Emily Blunt), a dad who tries all sorts of get-rich-quick schemes (Alan Arkin), and a mom who committed suicide when she and Nora were young. Add to that an affair with her now-married high school boyfriend (Steve Zahn) and a cleaning job that brings in very little income, plop it all in the middle of Albuquerque, NM, and you have the basis for this movie. There were so many layers to peel through, and I loved every one of them. The relationship between the two sisters was really the crux of the whole movie, and Adams and Blunt did mighty magnificent jobs. Such acting!

Zahn's character is a cop, and while investigating a suicide he hears how much the cleaning company charges for bloody, smelly, yucky clean-ups. He convinces Rose to try her hand at this sort of clean up and removal. The gross jobs they get are part funny, part very serious, and Rose and Nora get better and better at it until Nora screws up once again and burns down one of their jobs. Without insurance, they are sunk.

Clever, happy ending. Cute kid. A new love interest -a really interesting one. Layers and layers. Totally enjoyable, real characters with a great storyline. A new favorite.

Hey, this is my 250th post since I started blogging in August. Pretty cool.

Napi Goes to the Mountain - Antonio Ramirez

Illustrator: Domi (wife of the author)
Translator: Elisa Amado
Rating: 4
Published 2006
Endpapers: Brown and white scene of nesting storks

The illustrations are water colors - browns with tie-dye-like slashes of color on main characters and the object being highlighted in the text. Faces are Picasso-y in a way. Very interesting!

The story is a dream-like quest story, deeply involving nature. When the father of a young Mazateca girl named Napi doesn't come home one day, she and her brother decide to find him. On their quest they become deer and can talk to other animals. It's not as hokey as it sounds - it's really quet a nice tor. It ends:

My mother walked over as soon as she saw us.
"Napi, did you go to school today?" she asked.
"No, Naa," I answered truthfully
Because even though, I never tell lies.

A great story to discuss!

9. Mexican Hat - Michael McGarrity

For: Adults
Published: 1997
300 pgs.
Rating: 4
Finished: Feb. 6, 2009

This is the second in Michael McGarrity's series about Kevin Kerney, and unemployed inquisitive ex-cop in rural New Mexico. This story has a different setting than Tulerosa, it takes place in southern New Mexico, in the Silver City area, with one foray into Green Valley, just south of Tucson (which is always fun).

This time Kerney's taken a seasonal job as a forest ranger. He stumbles across some mysterious animal shootings, which look like possible smuggling jobs, and then a murder. Teaming up with game warden Jim Stiles and cat-and-mousing with the new assistant DA Karen Cox, they all work together to solve what turns out to be two sets of inter-realted crimes. Karen's elderly father, Edgar, and his twin brother, Eugene have not spoken in 60 years - and this, of course, is the center of the mystery. It was a good one, but some parts were slow and the introduction of the local militia needed more foreshadowing.

I'm looking forward to the next installment, Serpent Gate, to see where it takes place and what new characters it introduces.

4. Tularosa - Michael McGarrity

For: Adults
Published: 1996
1st in a series
304 pgs.
Rating: 4/5
Finished: Jan. 8, 2009

I don't know why I didn't say this book was a 5 - I really enjoyed the plot and setting, I couldn't wait to read more, it didn't leave any questions or holes, and I totally look forward to the next installment. It was that good. But I can't quite do it...
I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was that I traveled through New Mexico during Thanksgiving break, and could visualize the setting very well. I can also take a weekend trip to check out some of the places - I've always wanted to go to White Sands National Monument, which is where half the story takes place.

Kevin Kerney used to be a cop - a good one, a smart one, but was almost killed, and his injuries were major and long lasting. He retired as chief of detectives of the Santa Fe police department and became somewhat of a hermit, taking care of a ranch out in the boonies surrounding Santa Fe. When his ex-partner and ex-friend comes to him and asks him to find his missing son, he does - the young man is his godson. Sammy Yazzi is in the army, stationed and working at the White Sands area, and has been missing for six weeks. The story unfolds, clue by clue. Kerney has made many law enforcemenet contacts through the years, which comes in handy. He ends up spending time on the army post, working with Captain Sara Brannon, smart, clever - and still in the picture at the end of the book. The story includes army artifacts from the 19th century, stolen and hidden by Apaches, and trips in and out of Juarez, Mexico through El Paso (I was in El Paso this summer, so I can picture this, too!)

Lots of descriptions of the high desert. A really good read.