Audiobook Review: True Detectives by Jonathan Kellerman

True Detectives is a Jonathan Kellerman book that barely mentions Alex Delaware, read by John Rubenstein and reviewed by Star Lawrence.

If you are expecting the usual Kellerman fare of a French bulldog-owning shrink and his gay detective friend Milo, bleeepppp…rewind. The True Detectives are half-brothers, one white and still on the force, the other black and now a PI.

Their fathers used to be squad car mates. When one is killed, the other marries the first one’s wife. Mom started out a little hoochy, then married rich. So no pathology to see there, keep on walking.

First introduced in Bones, Moses Reed, the white cop, is neat, orderly, humble and serious. His half-bro Aaron Fox is hip, drives a Porsche, and is a self-styled player. His friends and sources are dotted around “the business,” in LA, which is handy because the two are sort of informally teamed up on a missing persons case of a young college student, which soon leads to various DBs (dead bodies to the innocent), libidinous housewives, skeevy hookers and pimps and a missing infant presumed hideously disposed of.

The wisecracks keep coming and Kellerman’s endearing habit of describing in detail the clothes each person is wearing is intact, thank goodness.

True Detectives only leaves you with one question…Are these guys really detectives? For the longest time, they drive around in cars and mull the people and clues. All that mulling.

On the upside—Blanche the French bulldog is mentioned. She is straight-up cute.

Teen Poetry Contest Winners

The winners are:
1st place: Melissa Hultstrand with "Fear Not the Ground"
2nd place: Nesima Aberra with "Social Caterpillar"
3rd place: Maryam Shakir with "Life, Slacking, Drifting"
4th place: DeeDee Walker with "Sleep"
Congratulations!

New at the Library

Stay up to date with the library collection by viewing our Items Added Yesterday feature. Each weekday you can click on this feature to see what items were added to the library collection the previous day. To view this list just click on Search the Library Catalog on our homepage, then under New Items in the upper right-hand corner, click on More Information. You will see a link for Items Added Yesterday at the bottom of the left column.

Book Review: Helen Humphreys

Helen Humphreys is a Canadian poet and novelist who has an amazing eye for detail and for finding beauty in the mundane. I recently read two of her novels back-to-back and was grateful to have discovered such a lyrical writer whose World War II-set novels resonate with longing and loss.

Coventry mainly takes place on the night of November 14, 1940 when the English city of Coventry was nearly completely destroyed by German bombs. It follows the efforts of two women, Maeve and Harriet, to survive the bombing that devastated the city. There are periodic flashbacks to the First World War when Harriet lost her husband and Maeve conceived her son and how those experiences now impact how the women react to the current war and bombing.

The Lost Garden also takes place during World War II. Gwen Davis is 35, single and lonely. She is a gardener who works for the Royal Horticultural Society in London and is looking for an opportunity to leave the city she loves so she doesn’t have to witness its destruction by bombs. She gets that opportunity by joining the Women’s Land Army and going to Devon to plant potatoes on a neglected estate. Here she receives her first experiences with love and intense friendship, and ultimately, loss. Her discovery of a hidden, overgrown garden and the plants it contains is a perfect metaphor for her experiences and Humphreys’ descriptions of the gardens and flora on the estate match well with her descriptions of Gwen’s emotional landscape.

Both of these novels deal with love, but more intensely with loss and how people let it shape their lives.

As the author herself says “Every story is a story about death. But perhaps, if we are lucky, our story about death is also a story about love”.

- Anbolyn (Downtown)

Behavioral Science Made Readable

Behavioral science is a catch phrase that has been in the news lately. Several recent books have popularized these fascinating ideas being used to shape current administration policies. Titles include Freakonomics, The Wisdom of Crowds, Predictably Irrational, Nudge, and Animal Spirits.

Here are the concepts, boiled down to basics: it's hard for people to alter their behavior, even if it would be in their own best interests to do so. To change behavior, society has to:
· Make it clear
· Make it easy
· Make it popular
· Make it mandatory.

Try one of these books that help to explain why we crave chocolate instead of tofu!
-Lynne (Downtown)

Audiobook Review: Valley of Bones by Michael Gruber

Valley of Bones by Michael Gruber revisits Santeria-afflicted detective Jimmy Paz, read by Nick Sullivan and reviewed by Star Lawrence

You are talking with a rawboned Florida woman found in a Miami hotel room where an Arab has just been thrown out of a window and her face changes for a split second, her blue eyes turning black, then back to normal. Did you see that—or not?

If you’re Jimmy Paz, a devil-may-care (my stars, what an expression) detective, whose restaurateur mother is regularly “ridden” by Santeria “saints” and who tangled with a hideous witch doctor in Tropic of Night, you know this might not be good.

Turns out Emmylou has a checkered background, starting with child abuse and murder and ending running a backwater war over Sudanese oil in her capacity as a nun. The woman had such a boring life, it’s a wonder it made it to a book. But it does—in the form of four confessional notebooks she writes out for Paz to keep the devil from making her blurt out wrong information. Yes, he will do that.

Taking the notebooks from Emmylou one by one is her therapist, Lorna, a focused woman who is a hypchondriac and can’t bear to wear a bathing suit because she is convinced she is fat. But Paz likes what he sees anyway and flirtation leads to more flirtation. Will Paz give up his University of Girls, the institution that seems to flourish between sheets, but which he credits for teaching him all the beguiling poetry he seems to know?

Lorna is not big on the University of Girls, but she is also busy trying to stay alive as “The G,” various mercenaries, a rich order of nuns, a former police partner of Paz’s who has found the Lord, a schizzy homeless person, and various other folks scamper around at the devil’s behest. Or is it God’s idea, all this? Emmylou thinks so.

How does it end? You know how to find out. But you may not look people in the eye for a while. You wouldn’t want to see anything weird, would you? And then not see it?

Masterpiece Mystery

This Sunday new episodes of Masterpiece Mystery begin on PBS. The season starts with a new series based on the Kurt Wallander mysteries set in Sweden and starring Kenneth Branagh. Old favorites are also included with new episodes of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot on the schedule. See the schedule below:

May 10, 17, 31 - Wallander

June 21-28 - Poirot

July 5 - 26 - Miss Marple

August 30 - September 20 - Inspector Lewis