Tuesday Book Reviews

 

4-star review of Cleopatra’s Dagger by Carole Lawrence

Elizabeth is a newspaperwoman in late 19^th Century New York City, although she comes from a wealthy family. She goes from covering society stories to being a crime reporter after witnessing a murder and then finding a body where ground is being prepared for installation of the title monument behind the Museum of Natural History, but that’s really the last we read about Cleopatra’s Dagger. The author did her research on conditions during the time of the story, and it shows. There are interesting characters that could be filled out even more. The writing is smooth making for a quick read. Most of the tension is left to the imagination of the reader, but I understand how hard it is to write dangerous situations for a protagonist.

 

Tuesday Book Reviews

Five-star review of My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood

 

Actually a long short story, The Evil Mother is about a child’s belief and interpretation of what her mother has told her. Do we consider our mothers’ warnings as coming from a concerned parent or a witch? Do our mothers try to scare us into complying with their demands? If your answer to these questions was ever yes, you’ll be able to relate to the narrator. And when do we become our mothers?

Tuesday Book Review on Wednesday

 

Four-star review of Murder at the Mortuary by Lee Strauss

 This is the fifth in the Ginger Gold series about an heiress in 1920’s London. Intrepid Lady Gold is on her first official case with help from her pathology student friend Haley, who discovered the first body in the mortuary without an identification tag. With Chief Inspector Basil Reed trying to make a go again with his estranged wife, she can’t rely on him. There are enough suspects who could have removed the tags from the first and succeeding bodies. Throw in a connection to the Mafia and a horse-breeding farm, as well as several interesting characters, and there’s enough of a plot and plot twists for this not-so-cozy historical murder mystery. And through it all we see instances of Ginger’s generosity and also examples of the attitudes, fashion and ambience of the time period.