The Winner of the Brand New Copy of
Lust to Kill by Robert Scott is:
Barbara L. (pfkitty)
Congratulations! Your Book will be on the way to you soon!
Thank you to everyone who entered!
Posts Tagged ‘Book Suggestions’
Free Book Friday Winner!
Monday, March 4th, 2019Mystery Monday Review – The Case of the Careless Cupid
Monday, March 4th, 2019
The Case of the Careless Cupid by Erle Stanley Gardner
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
An affluent widow is in love with a wealthy widower. Although one of his nieces is sympathetic to the match, the other niece and her main-chancer boyfriend don’t want rich uncle to tie the knot. Insinuations that the widow murdered her first husband are bruited about, capturing the attention of the police and an insurance company that wants its dough back, plus all the money she made from investments on that dough. Ace lawyer Perry Mason is hired by the widow to defend her on the first-degree charge that she poisoned her husband with arsenic.
This 1968 outing, the 79th and third from the last of the series, has its problems, like more than couple of Mason novels written after 1960. The prose is mechanical. The characters tend to excessive explications, which is odd since Gardner usually handled dialogue more skillfully (he dictated the novels). The plot is not as intricate as usual. In fact, the ease with which we can identify the perps makes this border on an inverted mystery, which is highly unusual for Gardner.
On the positive side, Gardner, as is his wont, includes strong female characters. The widow is the kind of independent-minded, self-sufficient female Gardner respected. She’s an astute investor, turning a $100K into a half-million. She’s blunt: “I like what I like and not what I’m supposed to like because of mass rating. And I very much dislike the things I don’t like.” Gardner also features a real person, which is very uncharacteristic. The female pilot that takes Della and Perry to El Paso is Pinky Brier, the first woman to become a flight and aerobatics instructor in the early 1940s.
I’d still recommend it to Mason fans but also to readers looking for a quick uncomplicated read without subplots or extraneous detail. Perry springs into action numerous times. Watching him direct Paul Drake (his PI), his client, Della (his PA), and lead the cops on is always a kick. Gardner’s language is simple if stiff. The interesting legal issues and thinking keep the little grey cells engaged. The story has suspense and theatrics.
Free Book Friday – Lust to Kill
Friday, March 1st, 2019
Lust to Kill by Robert Scott
Driven By Rage
Sebastian Shaw was a walking time bomb. Office gossip, dirty dishes, the wrong look–anything could set him off. And once it did, nothing stopped the most terrifying killer Oregon police had ever met…
A Need To Kill
Only murder appeased Shaw’s fury. But he didn’t kill the people who offended him–they were the lucky ones. Instead, he hunted down innocent victims–men, women, teenage beauties–and unleashed his bloody urge to kill…to rape…to paint in blood.
A Murderer’s Boast
Finally, with the courageous testimony of a survivor, and high-tech CSI, Shaw was put behind bars for life. But the gruesome tale didn’t end there, as Shaw bragged about a dozen more murders he had never been charged with…
With 16 Pages of Shocking Photos
ISBN 9780786018864, Paperback
1 lucky member will win a brand-new copy.
To enter, simply leave a comment on this Blog post. You must be a PaperBackSwap member in good standing to win.
We will choose 1 winner at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.
You have until Sunday, March 3, 2019 at 12 noon EST, to leave a comment.
Good Luck to everyone!
Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!
Mystery Monday Review – Maigret’s Failure
Monday, February 25th, 2019
Maigret’s Failure by Georges Simenon
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
An obnoxious meat king, Ferdinand Fumal, has leaned on the Minister of the Interior to lean on our hero Maigret to help Fumal. Maigret meets Fumal and recognizes him as the bully, coward, and sneak back in his native village of Saint-Fiacre. Since Fumal claims he has received anonymous death threats, Maigret has to help the butcher baron, though it is clear to everybody that knows Fumal that, as they say in Texas, Fumal needs killing.
We get a glimpse of the social milieu wherein Maigret grew up (turn of the century rural France). Simenon gives us a portrait of an unsettled household – for all their money and comfortable stuff, Fumal’s domestic circle roils and churns in sinister ways. “Balzac without the length,” said Marcel Aymé of Simenon.
Free Book Friday Winner!
Sunday, February 24th, 2019
The Winner of the Brand New Copy of
American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus is:
Brenda H. (shackgirl)
Congratulations! Your Book will be on the way to you soon!
Thank you to everyone who entered!
Free Book Friday – American Ghost
Friday, February 22nd, 2019
American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus
The award-winning journalist and author of The Beekeeper’s Lament attempts to uncover the truth about her great-great-grandmother, Julia–whose ghost is said to haunt an elegant hotel in Santa Fe in this spellbinding exploration of myth, family history, and the American West. The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Vases of flowers appeared in new locations. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events: blankets ripped off while they slept, the room temperature plummeting, disembodied breathing, dancing balls of light. La Posada – “place of rest” had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. The room with the canopy bed had belonged to Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home’s original owner. She died in 1896, nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In American Ghost, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death, and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother Julia, from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband. American Ghost is a story of pioneer women and immigrants, ghost hunters and psychics, frontier fortitude and mental illness, imagination and lore. As she traces the strands of Julia’s life, Nordhaus uncovers a larger tale of how a true-life story becomes a ghost story and how difficult it can sometimes be to separate history and myth.
ISBN 9780062249203, Paperback
There are currently 12 members wishing for this book.
To enter, simply leave a comment on this Blog post. You must be a PaperBackSwap member in good standing to win.
We will choose 1 winner at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.
You have until Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 12 noon EST, to leave a comment.
Good Luck to everyone!
Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!
Free Book Friday Winner!
Sunday, February 17th, 2019
The Winner of the brand new copy of
Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal
by
Debra J. (homemakerdeb)
Congratulations! Your book will be on the way soon!
Thank you to everyone who entered!
