It's Monday What are You Reading?

This past week I managed to finish two books, in spite of the reno going on in my basement, we are no where near finished.  Maus and this is where my troubles begin, meh!  I committed to reading a graphic novel at least twice a year and that was the reason I chose this one.  It's the second book of author Spieglman a prize winner.  I can't say this is the best  story about the Holocaust I've read, but I do understand why it won a BIG prize.  It would be a story (true) that readers of graphic novels would and could manage.  I'm not a big fan of this genre, but it certainly has it's place in the literary world, not sure where but...I found the first book a little more interesting.  I sure hope my son's don't feel about me the way this son felt about his father.  And I did find this very stereotypical as far as character development.  It didn't make me love Artie, or Vladek because of the stereo type, and it didn't really tell the whole story, so once again ... Prize winner?  It's short, as a matter of fact I read the whole thing while having my hair done.  So I'm sure this is one of the reasons it would appeal to a younger reader.

And the other book I finished was Five Little Pigs, previously released as Murder in Retrospect.  Well you know I love Agatha, but this one in particular kept me guessing, maybe I'm losing my Poirot mojo, but I seriously didn't know who did it until he layed it out on the table, so to speak.  I don't know if Agatha was drawing on her experience of a "tolerant " wife or wheather this was purely fiction, but I'm sure I couldn't be so tolerant.  Anyway, I did like this one, took me a little longer to read, for no apparent reason.  The story of a gifted painter, and his women and guess what someone murders him.  And the little grey cells begin to work.  

What's in a Name... After Her

I've just finished reading this thriller.  A GOOD one.   While the product description will give you the particulars of this book, I truly enjoyed the story line for the relationships in the seemingly "disfunctional" family.  I'm not sure it was disfunctional, just different.  I would have a hard time believing that children are so unattended but, they must have been.  The mother in this story is almost not, yet the father, who is really a deadbeat dad is the hero.  I would have thought that with all the murders happening in the area, something more significant would have happened, but then again, this is fiction.  Having lived for a very long time with a police officer, I understand the "not home"ness of the dad, they just aren't there, or at least ours wasn't.  Things do consume them, even after they retire.  It's not like Blue Bloods at all, they are hardly ever at the table together,  I want to know how they all get the time off together, and I don't believe they get called to go either, you work your shift, and overtime.  But, I suspect if the truth were told it would make for a boring program.  I love Tom Selleck, but have not been able to get into this series, it's just too fake for me.  O.k. getting back to the book.  Good read, thrilling, but I found the conclusion a little out there, like the author couldn't tie things up so she just did.  I would have thought the extensive police investigation would have uncovered the evidence of the rusty vehicle, but then again maybe I've watched too many CSI programs.  I liked this book, I didn't love it, and I won't rush out to read another by this author, if one crosses my path... love the sisters and their dedication to each other, and Gina was just too convenient. But a good story nonetheless, not great, but good.

Product Description

The New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and The Good Daughters returns with a haunting novel of sisterhood, sacrifice, and suspense.
I was always looking for excitement, until I found some . . .
Summer, 1979. A dry, hot Northern California school vacation stretches before Rachel and her younger sister, Patty—the daughters of a larger-than-life, irresistibly handsome (and chronically unfaithful) detective father and the mother whose heart he broke.
When we first meet her, Patty is eleven—a gangly kid who loves basketball and dogs and would do anything for her older sister, Rachel. Rachel is obsessed with making up stories and believes she possesses the gift of knowing what's in the minds of people around her. She has visions, whether she wants to or not. Left to their own devices, the sisters spend their days studying record jackets, concocting elaborate fantasies about the mysterious neighbor who moved in down the street, and playing dangerous games on the mountain that looms behind their house.
When young women start turning up dead on the mountain, the girls' father is put in charge of finding the murderer known as the "Sunset Strangler." Watching her father's life slowly unravel as months pass and more women are killed, Rachel embarks on her most dangerous game yet . . . using herself as bait to catch the killer. But rather than cracking the case, the consequences of Rachel's actions will destroy her father's career and alter forever the lives of everyone she loves.
Thirty years later, still haunted by the belief that the killer remains at large, Rachel constructs a new strategy to smoke out the Sunset Strangler and vindicate her father—a plan that unexpectedly unearths a long-buried family secret.
Loosely inspired by the Trailside Killer case that terrorized Marin County, California, in the late 1970s, After Her is part thriller, part love story. Maynard has created a poignant, suspenseful, and painfully real family saga that traces a young girl's first explorations of sexuality, the loss of innocence, the bond shared by sisters, and the tender but damaged relationship between a girl and her father that endures even beyond the grave.