I read 5 books last month…

It’s December 1 and the first Monday of the month.
That means this post is a list of the books I read in November.
There were five.

This is the seventh in a series about detective Carol Jordan and Tony Hill.  I have not read the other six and I think  if I had I would have not been so frustrated with this one.  I liked it…it’s a good story.  A serial killer is doing his thing and taunting Jordan and Hill.  They had put him in prison for life but somehow he has escaped maximum security. That part of the story is pretty straight forward mystery.  But there is a Carol and Tony back story that kept being alluded to that made me want to know more and how it was shaping this story.  It was a good book and I liked it but that one thing bugged me.

This was a fun fast read.  Diane Keaton, in all her eccentricities, seems like a normal person.  Someone it would be nice to know.  Lunch could turn into an adventure.  She talks about her kids like any mother does.  She tells funny stories about herself and acknowledges that she was never one to follow the crowd.  The bits about aging were so funny to me.  I guess because I could relate…even if I am not exactly eccentric…just a bit ditsy in my thinking.  It’s an easy afternoon read and women of a certain age will recognize themselves in the pages.

I have read a book or two by David Rosenfelt and really like his style.  There is lots of humor and realness to his characters.  Andy Carpenter is a lawyer that is unspeakably rich due to an early case and now he doesn’t have to work and doesn’t want to but gets pulled into legal battles because he likes people…for the most part…there are some he likes not much.  This time a good friend of his, police detective Pete Stanton, calls him for help.  Pete is being framed for the murder of an ex-con that Pete has mentored.  The murdered man has a young son and Pete asks Andy to take him in so he won’t go into the child welfare system.  Then Andy becomes Pete’s defense lawyer and surrogate dad to the boy.  The writing is quick-witted and sentimental.  I really liked the book.

I have read several Iris Johansen books and they are always good.  This one she wrote with her son, Roy, and is no exception.  Kendra Michaels was blind until a radical new surgery gave her sight.  Now she is a music therapist and is sometimes called on by the FBI and CIA to help solve the unsolvable.  This is because she has extraordinary power of observation with the ability to see what other people don’t.  Not in a mystical sense but more of an awareness of the ordinary misplaced.  She is called into a case that has a serial killer recreating murders that she solved in the past.  He is doing in a series of steps that will lead to his ultimate victim…her.  I really liked this book.  I could not put it down and the killer was a shock.  I had no clue…I thought I knew but I was so wrong.

Anne Rivers Siddons is a favorite author of mine.  She doesn’t write big splashy exciting novels.  Her books are about people you could know and love.  They are real and honest.  In this book the girls of August were four friends from the days when their husbands were in medical school.  Every August they went somewhere for a week of just the girls kind of stuff.  A few years ago one of them died and the weeks at the beach stopped.  But then the husband of the dead friend remarried and it is decided there will be another week for the girls of August…three of the original four and one newbie.  Each of them comes to the beach house with changes happening in their lives that the others don’t know about.  There is laughter and tempers flare, feelings are hurt and tears are shed.  As with all Siddons book there is a happy if somewhat bittersweet ending.  Worth reading.

So that’s it.