This month’s selection by Lilian Braun Jackson is No. 25 in a 29-book series which, sadly, ended last year with the death of Ms. Braun at the age of 97.

She started The Cat Who… series in 1966, wrote three books and then took an 18-year hiatus before starting the series up again. 

Again, we’re involved in a mystery that isn’t so much a solving of a crime as watching people go through their daily lives and the whole thing fall to pieces around them.  Mr. Q doesn’t have an impact on the outcome – he’s just an observer.  He’s the one that people bring information to.  Joan thought Mr. Q was a lot like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.  He’s quite the village busybody, but with a rather deluxe twitchy moustache.  As for the cats, well, cats are weird.  Yum Yum is not a case solver and Koko seems to be demonstrating telepathic powers.  Can he read?  Why does he know when things happen in the middle of the night?  Who knows.  He’s a cat.

Most of the group said they would be interested in reading earlier stories in this series.  We understand that as Ms. Jackson got along in years, her work suffered, much to her fans’ dismay. We discussed how the series seemed to be weakening at the end and there was talk of how a ghost writer may have become involved, how the Amazon.com reviews were pretty scathing and the fact that the 30th in the series had been cancelled by the publisher.  Earlier books were said to be much more interesting, with more involvement of the cats and more mystery.

A lively discussion ensued about whether Pickaxe is really a true representation of northern Minnesota.  The restaurants seem pretty posh for a rather rural area, but one of our members had spent a significant amount of time where the series is supposedly set and we were advised that there was a lot of tourism.  Summertime boating and fishing, hunting in the fall, winter skiing and ice fishing and the weather was generally very pleasant, which attracted quite a lot of visitors.  And yes, the descriptions in the story were pretty true to life.  We found that intriguing.

As a mystery – eh.  As a cat story – eh.  As a character study – better.  There are definitely some strange and wonderful characters

Joan threw out a selection of books – the first in the Cat Who… series, a Sneaky Pie mystery, a Daisy Dalrymple mystery and the Maisie Dobbs that she wouldn’t let anyone take as she clutched it to her bosom.

The group also discussed a change in the 2012 reading line-up.  Margaret Truman is out and we’ve moved the true crime to July.  In March, we’ll welcome local author David Sundstrand to our meeting and we’ll discuss Shadows of Death, the second installment of his Desert Sky Mystery series.

There was also Boston Crème Pie (thanks, Nancy!) before we adjourned to go watch the Packers game.

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith is the tenth in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and while not a page-turner like books by Grisham or Child, it provides a mellow change from other, more frenetic mysteries. 

Sitting down with Precious Ramotswe is like sitting down to tea with a good friend.  There’s philosophy, there’s human foibles, there’s humor, there’s national pride and there’s love, a whole lot of love, be it for a little white van or for a country or for a man. 

The mysteries in this series are never ones concerning blood and guts, which makes for a nice break.  The mystery in this particular book concerns why a soccer team isn’t winning as it should.  Is someone throwing the games?

The other mysteries are about whether or not Mma Ramotswe will let her van go or whether Grace Makutsi will fight to keep her man.

We had a good turnout for our meeting and enjoyed treats and tea.  Diets and diabetes were tossed aside in favor of ginger snaps, sugar cookies and meringue decadence puffs.

A lively discussion about our book followed.  Some didn’t really enjoy it, finding the pace and story slow and boring, but others thought it was good and savored the author’s characters and settings. 

An discussion about the pronunciation of names and the formality of addressing other people followed.  Pam had heard an audio version of another in the series, so she was able to advise us that “Mma” is pronounced with a long-ish “m” sound.  “Rra” was a long-ish “r” sound.  Phuti Radiphuti was more “pootie”.  It’s rather amusing how when you’re reading to yourself, you just see a word and recognize it as being that, but then when you have to pronounce it during a book club discussion, your tongue stumbles all over it.  Setswana, Italian, Russian – they’re all a challenge!

We also talked about how Precious is not just a detective, but she’s also a Dear Abby-type of person, giving advice about how a situation should be handled, be it a woman with two or three “husbands” or a football team owner who doesn’t listen to anyone.

Pam had seen a show on “House Hunters” that had been set in Botswana and she said that it seemed to be very much as described in the book, with dirt streets and nothing terribly deluxe.  We talked about class differences and cultural differences and the British and the tribal influence.  Is Botswana a matriarchal society, or is it just the job of the women to nurture the generations and pass the stories on?

Precious was declared to be loyal, be it to a person or to a small white van and we loved the Violet Sephotho storyline. 

Our next book is “The Cat Who Brought Down the House” by Lillian Braun Jackson who died this past year.

I picked this book for our group to read because in the time since I last read it, however many years ago, the ending has always stuck with me.  Not necessarily the details of the ending, but the excitement of it.  And on this rereading, I found that the excitement was still there.  Whew!

The group enjoyed this book, even if it was dated.  Published in 1967, there’s none of that cell phone, internet stuff and we learned from one of our members that horses are still shipped by air. 

There was a big discussion about the place of romance in mystery stories.  Agatha Christie was against having a romantic subplot, but in Flying Finish, a love interest was crucial to Henry Grey’s development as a character.  Until he met Gabriela, he was a gray man, very one-dimensional, though his ability to juggle multiple aspects of his life without one area knowing about the other was pretty intriguing.  The romantic part of the story made Henry blossom and become more rounded, Gabriela giving him a reason to live whereas prior to that, he seemed to almost have a death wish.  Riding horses, flying planes, running away from the debutantes that his mother threw at him.

Billy was declared to be the most awful character, which was no surprise, seeing as how he was a sociopath and all.  But Yardman was equally bad, just because it wasn’t so obvious.

Pam found the beginning of the story slow going, but that could be because current mysteries have a much faster pace.  This was no Lee Child.

Then began the discussion of the relative intelligence of horses, llamas, cats and dogs which soon spiraled out of control.

I neglected to ask Pam for her picks but I would like to recommend Janet Evanovich’s new one, Explosive Eighteen.  It’s no Dick Francis but Stephanie Plum is always entertaining.

Next month, we’ll be having treats at our meeting.  Possibly something African?

Joan

Again, the group ventured to Italy for mystery and intrigue and again, some of our group didn’t enjoy the trip.

Terra-Cotta Dog was written by Andrea Camilleri and translated from the Italian.  The group was equally divided into those who didn’t enjoy the book and those who did.  Some people couldn’t get into the story and found it amazing that the dog in the title didn’t even make an appearance until half-way through. 

Others, however, thought the book was an interesting read and found the quirks and peculiarities of Montalbano, the main character, entertaining and the food descriptions drool-worthy.  Half the time we didn’t know what the dishes were in the Italian, but then the author went on to describe the dish and Montalbano’s enjoyment of the food and I know ended up spending most of my time hungry and wishing there were a good Sicilian restaurant in town

Montalbano was picked as the favorite character, but when the priest with the baby bottle was mentioned, it got us all talking about the strange and wonderful characters the author created.  When looking back on this story, it won’t necessarily be the mystery that is remembered, but the food and the guy with the baby bottle.

While entertaining to watch him at work as a police officer, this is really the story of Montalbano trying to solve a 50-year-old mystery in his off hours.  The internal office gyrations and the mafia case definitely become secondary to the freelance case.

Pam offered some more mysteries set in Italy– Involuntary Witness by Gianrico Carofiglio and Grace Brophy’s work, particularly A Deadly Paradise and Last Enemy.

Also, we’ve finalized next year’s list of books.  It’s posted on the right.

Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House is the sixth in the series by Stephanie Barron and while this is one of my favorite authors and a favorite series, this volume, in my opinion, is not her best.  Since I’ve read the others prior to this one, and I’m a bit of a Janeist, I know what’s going on in Jane’s life and what the premise for the series is.  However, in this book, things aren’t really explained as well as they could be.

But we do have a good mystery here, and some very interesting characters.  I liked the Bosun’s Mate and learning more about Jane’s brother and the naval set.  Jane’s mother becomes more annoying and querulous as the series goes on and the addition of Martha Lloyd to the household is quite welcome.

The titular “Prisoner of Wool House”, however, I felt to be kind of unnecessary to the plot beyond providing key plot points that might be better handled some other way.  And Jane having a sickroom crush on him was just plain silly.  She keeps doing that.  She has a thing for misunderstood gentlemen with eloquent hands.

Most people in our group didn’t really enjoy this book.  Some didn’t read it and some hadn’t finished it, but the general consensus, apart from yours truly who recommended it in the first place, was “Eh”. 

There were complaints about the language, which I must defend as being an integral part of the series, seeing as how it is told through Jane Austen’s diary entries and this is how she wrote.  In that regard, I think it’s pretty true to the original.  There was a discussion about the paper version vs. the Kindle version.  The electronic version was rather disappointing because of high number of spelling and punctuation typos in it.

Another complaint was pacing, which is also tied to Jane’s style.  The author spends a lot of time setting the scene, showing the reader what it was like in the early 1800s in the port of Southampton during the Napoleonic War.  As modern readers, however, we have gotten used to things moving along more quickly.  One of our members admitted to finding Wool House slow going, so she went off and read something more fast-paced before coming back to finish it.

There was also a complaint about it not being a mystery but rather just a regular novel.  I have to disagree with that seeing as how there are a couple of murders in the book that need to be solved, as well as the parentage of a Young Gentleman to be addressed. 

Pam’s Picks are Jane Austen-related and not necessarily mysteries – Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford and Killing Bridezilla by Laura Levine.

Also, if you’ve read Maisie Dobbs (Jacqueline Winspear) and Her Royal Spyness (Rhys Bowen), you might get a kick out this “interview” off of Amazon.  Scroll down a bit.

http://www.amazon.com/Naughty-Nice-Royal-Spyness-Mystery/dp/0425243494/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314762948&sr=8-1

Don’t you love the Brits?

Joan

Tilt A Whirl by Chris Grabenstein was our book for August. 

The author, through the narrator Danny, warned us that we may think we know what direction the story is going, but the ride always suddenly changes direction.

“But when I was a kid, I loved how the Tilt-A-Whirl could surprise you. How it spun you around one way and the next time you hit the exact same spot, it spun you around some way completely different . . . . You never knew what to expect next. . . . [My math] teacher called it ‘mind-jangling unpredictability’.” [p. 25]

He wasn’t kidding.  Just when you think you know what’s going on, you get thrown in a different direction.

We had a large group for the meeting, probably the biggest crowd I’ve seen since I started attending.  Which was great fun and made for some lively discussions.  Just about everyone liked the book and are eager to move on to the next in the series.  One of our members didn’t like it and I won’t tell you why because that would give away key details.  Another member found some of the police department aspects a little unbelievable, but the New Jersey location made for an interesting discussion about just where the little town of Sea Haven could be located.  We also talked about why the author made up a town instead of using an existing locale. 

The Code of Ceepak was a discussed at great length and when the group was asked who they would want to have dinner with, Ceepak was picked practically unanimously.  I chose Danny, though, because being a local boy, he seems to know all the best places to eat. 

Joan arrived with both a biography of the author and some book club questions off of the internet.

From the biography we learned that Chris Grabenstein is a former improvisational comedian who worked with Bruce Willis, he’s written six Ceepak mysteries (A Six Pack of Ceepak) and he’s written a childrens’ series.

The book club questions gave us some interesting things to talk about.  One particularly amusing one was:

“Throughout the book women are depicted in a variety of roles–including waitress, lawyer, lover, mother, daughter, police officer, forensics expert, friend. Do you feel the author’s treatment of women is fair and/or accurate? What message will the female reader glean from this book regarding the role of women in contemporary society? The male reader?”

“The role of women in contemporary society”.  Most of the group read this to be entertained, not to talk about contemporary society.

And we didn’t even discuss Bruce Springsteen’s music

We need to begin to commence to think about our list of books for 2012, so if you have something you’d like included, post a comment or send me an e-mail.  We’d like to finalize this by October.

Joan

Pam thought the details about the history, the visionaries of the era involved in the World’s Fair and the “perfect storm” of problems that arose were interesting.  She also found the Pinkerton detective work fascinating.  In an era without our technology and ease of movement across large areas, they did amazing work. 

Nancy continues to slog along, determined to finish.  She found all of the background, politics, design aspects and fundraising details about the fair to be a bit much, but is hopeful the “mystery” part of the story is better.

All you mystery readers out there, think about what you might want to read in 2012 and let us know!

Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron