I've been reading books I bought in Maine. I read The Rubber Band by Rex Stout. I love Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. There's something comforting about knowing what to expect. I expect Wolfe to be in the orchid rooms at certain times, I expect Archie to be a smart ass, I expect Wolfe to drink lots of beer and eat good food. This book did not disappoint.
Then there was A Motor-Flight Through France by Edith Wharton. The title misled me. I thought she was going to be in an airplane. But a 'motor-flight' turned out to be a trip, trips, really, through France in a 'motor': a car. I suppose that this was almost equally as adventurous at the time, cars being very new. Wharton, it turns out, loved touring in an automobile. Her husband was with her and so was Henry James at times. Can you imagine those conversations?! Wharton knew a lot about architecture, especially of the churches and cathedrals they hunted for. She spends little time describing the people of the different regions they drove through and stayed in, though. I would have liked more of that. But she describes the buildings and landscapes in detail.
Then I read A Catherine Aird mystery called A Most Contagious Game. I can't remember much about it now except that I enjoyed it. Really, one day soon I'll be able to read a book, wait a week, and read it again, thinking it's a new book!
I also read McNally's Gamble by Lawrence Sanders. I like Archie McNally and the trouble he gets into. I found out something interesting when I read McNally's Chance a short while later. Lawrence Sanders only wrote the first seven of the McNally series. After he died in 1998, Vincent Lardo wrote another six of them. The problem was / is that the books are published with Sanders' name in big letters, leading readers, myself included, to think that Sanders had written them. Somewhere, I read that readers sued the publishers for deception of some sort and were reimbursed in some amount. Before I read this, I was thinking that McNally's Chance lacked something. Then I found out that it wasn't written by Sanders but by Lardo.
Several bloggers has posted good things about George Bellairs. I agree with them after reading Death in High Provence. I've been collecting his e-books, many of which are available at affordable prices. I like the fact that Inspector Littlejohn took his wife with him when he went to investigate the auto crash deaths in France of the brother and sister-in-law of a friend of his. There's a mysterious castle / estate that belongs to a man who has the village and everyone else nearby under his thumb. He's clearly the bad guy, or is he? Littlejohn finds out which. I'm going to follow Inspector
Littlejohn through more of his investigations.
I found another Kate Shugak mystery in Maine. They're usually exciting, the kind of book you can't put down. This one was not up to par, in my opinion. Enough said. I'll still try to find and read the few in the series I haven't read.
AND, I just finished Glass Houses, Louise Penny's latest Inspector Gamache book. This one is much grimmer than the others. Gamache is now head of the Surete and it looks like he's botching it. Crime is worse and the police don't seem to be able to do anything about it. Are they completely inept? The criminals are beginning to think so. There's also a creepy robed, hooded, masked figure, a 'cobrador', that stands silently on the green, freaking people out. Why is he there? The thing I find most disturbing is that Three Pines is at the center of the story, which begins with Gamache on trial for several crimes. It's a fascinating book with a spectacular ending. I don't know how she keeps on doing it, but Louise Penny does not disappoint me.
That's it for now. Books are my refuge, but sometime life gets in the way, bars the door to the other worlds I often prefer to inhabit.
