Total Books: 5 Total Pages: 1640 Longest: 385 Shortest: 286
Genres: 3 (Biography – 1, Fiction – 1, Mystery – 3)
Their Shadows Deep by Peter Golden
Their Shadows Deep is an interesting fictional take on the murder of a CIA operative being investigated by his ex-cop wife who suspects there is more to the story and a connection to JFK’s presidential campaign.
Golden’s well-researched background on the Kennedy’s, along with the culture and politics of the time, leads to an intriguing plot involving many characters, historical and fictional. It seems like it should have been a more gripping story, but it really wasn’t for me and took me longer to finish than it should have.
Belsay by LJ Ross
Belsay is the latest (23rd) DCI Ryan novel by LJ Ross.
I love all the characters in this series – they feel like old friends, even the relatively new characters like DC Charlie. You are intermittently glad to be around them and thoroughly frustrated with them, too! Yet, like most friends, you continue to learn more about them, what drives them, their strengths as well as their weaknesses. One of the other things I love most about the Ryan series is the setting in beautiful Northumberland and its apparently endless number of ye olde English manors and castles where murder seems to abound!
Belsay is a “country house…built in the early nineteenth century in Greek-revival style” where the Northumbria Police Constabulary is holding its annual Christmas dinner. The last place you’d expect a murder to occur is in the middle of a dinner for detectives and yet that is literally (and I don’t mean that figuratively) what happens. A murder. In the middle. Of dinner. For the Constabulary.
Ryan and team (Frank, Denise, Jack, Melanie, Charlie, and all the auxiliaries) are immediately at work, instead of enjoying a nice evening together. What follows is yet another page turner that I finished in a day…and can’t wait for #24!
The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse by Frances Welsh
In January, I read the historical fiction novel, A Queen’s Game (see Note 62). So, this month I followed that up with this biography of the daughters of Queen Victoria’s second daughter Alice, who married Louis IV, the Duke of Hesse and by Rhine.
I was hoping this would help me get all the actual historical figures straight in my head, but I think it’s impossible! You need to actually see all the familial relationships in a European monarchy family tree!
The Princesses Hesse were Victoria, Elizabeth, Irene, and Alix. They became respectively: Princess Louis of Battenberg later Victoria Mountbatten (Marchioness of Milford Haven), Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia, Princess Henry of Prussia, and Alexandra Feodorovna – the last Empress of Russia. Their brothers, Ernest Louis and Friedrich, also figure prominently in the book along with seemingly every other aunt, uncle, and cousin in a position of power in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries! After all, Queen Victoria became known as the “grandmother of Europe”!
At any rate, it was an informative and ultimately sad historical retrospective on the relationship between England, Germany, and Russia due to these marriages and leading up to Bolshevik Revolution, WWI and even WWII.
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
My nephew and his wife gave me an Amazon gift card for Christmas, so I used it to get several books in series that aren’t available in my Kindle Unlimited subscription. How the Light Gets In is the 9th Chief Inspector Gamache novel by Penny. I read #7 and #8 last March, so it’s been a while, but just like the DCI Ryan series, Penny’s characters feel like renewing old friendships.
This is another beautifully written novel, picking up where #8 (A Beautiful Mystery – one of my favorite books of the past few years) left off with Gamache increasingly alienated and deserted by his former colleagues as he searches for the source of corruption within the department. Called to investigate the disappearance of Three Pine resident Myrna’s friend, he contemplates his future while utilizing the isolation of Three Pines to both his professional and personal advantage.
The Long Way Home by Louise Penny
Number 10 in the Gamache series finds the Chief Inspector and his wife retired to Three Pines where he has found a peace from the events of the past few years.
When local resident and artist friend Clara asks for his help in locating her artist husband Peter, Gamache can’t refuse to lend his expertise in the search. Due to Peter’s jealousy of Clara’s rise an artist exceeding his acclaim, they agreed to a year apart with Peter to return in exactly a year for them to see where they stood. Of course, he doesn’t show up on the appointed date and after waiting several more weeks, Clara finally approaches Gamache for help/advice.
As they follow Peter’s trail after he left Three Pines, more mysteries arise to be solved. Like real life, actions have consequences, but can redemption always be found? I like to think so, and in the books I’ve read in this series, I think Louise Penny does too.
I expect I will continue with this series sooner rather than later…
Until next time, read what pleases you!
Notes By Nancy 
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