Weeding the shelves July 23rd

I've accomplished removing four books from my pile. I cheated a bit by returning two books unread but the goal is to diminish the pile so I figure it counts. One of the books has been around quite awhile in the pile and I wish I had picked it up sooner. A dead man out of mind/Kate Charles explores a series of deaths in a "high catholic" Church of England church. Suspects abound and the reasons why the suspects might commit murder are valid and keep the reader guessing. I enjoyed entering the world of the Church of England as well as meeting our sleuths Lucy Kingsley and David Middletown-Brown. Since the book is older and, as an American, I tend to think of the C of E as very similar to the Episcopal church so some of the issues seemed a little dated to me including the opposition to women priests; a subplot of a man who is probably hiding his homosexuality by being married to a woman; and a 14 yr old who is disturbed by her aunt living with a man. I also felt that I would have understood the characters of Lucy and David better if I had started at the beginning of the series. David had had an affair with someone in the church and I was unsure as to why he stopped seeing this man and started seeing Lucy. This kept pulling me out of the current story. Overall the I did enjoy the mystery and when I can resume hitting the library stacks I intend to check out some of the other titles in the series.

The Crime Writer - a review

As promised my first review of my read or weed em pile The opening scene of The Crime Writer by Greg Hurwitz opens with a bang. Drew Danner wakes up in a hospital bed to “a haze of face, too close for casual”. Two policemen are waiting for him to become conscious. Turns out these officers think he killed his ex-girlfriend as they found his unconscious body slumped over hers. There is only one problem, Danner had a tumor which caused him to black out so he has no memory of whether he really killed his ex or not. He is convicted of her murder but is released due to insanity of the time of the murder (that pesky tumor). He returns home only to find odd things happening - the first night he is home he awakens to find his patio sliding glass door open and bloody footprints which turn out to be his as he has cut his toe, or so he assumes, with the same type of knife used to kill his girlfriend. Since he is not sure whether he is sane or not he decides to look into the murder as if he were writing one of his own thrillers. He doesn't get very far along before another woman is found murdered in a manner very similar to the first murder and he is again arrested. However, due to his previous nocturnal activities he had filmed himself sleeping and the police must release him from custody.Drew determines to investigate this new murder as well. What I liked about this book is that Drew does think he might have killed his ex girlfriend and is terrified by this knowledge. I also liked the conceit of "writing" his own murder mystery and got a kick out of the pages marked up by his editor. His descriptions of Los Angeles and the types of people who live there are also fabulous. Here is just one example as Drew is waiting to see an actor friend in a club “they gain position in the scrum by working in concert, like raptors, with the friends they’ll only be too eager to drop once they book their first pilot.” Drew has a lot of people help him in his investigation, including his editor, a cop and forensic specialist, his AA sponsor and a young Latino kid. The AA sponsor, who is African American and the Latino kid sometimes veer awfully close into stereotype sidekick territory and I would have liked to see their characters fleshed out more. I was willing to overlook this problem though and just go along for the ride as Drew tries to solve his own mystery. Recommended with the caveat that this is more of a mystery than a thriller.