Highest bidder wins a character name in the next Kelli Stanley, Miranda Corbie, mystery!
THANK YOU Kelli!!!! Readers: Please keep Kelli in your hearts and prayers this holiday season. Both of her parents are very ill and she needs our support.
-
Drive Safe! Never Forget.
Genre: Mystery / Noir
(Miranda rocks!)
Rating: 4 WaterTowers
“City of Secrets” is an ARC sent to me by Kelli Stanley. It will be in stores Sept 13, 2011. Small caveat: You may know that I adore Kelli. I will try very hard to be objective.
Pandora Blake is dead. Stabbed with an ice pick, naked, with the word “kike” written in blood on her right breast.
It is opening day of the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island, San Francisco. Miranda Corbie, private detective, is on the scene.
After surviving “City of Dragons”, but, still feeling the effects of her close encounter with death, Miranda finds herself embroiled in another case that the police want to keep quiet, and they try to make sure Miranda is out of the picture.
Not an easy task….geeezzz, they should have learned that from the last time!
Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis are invading countries. Britain may fall. Anti-Jewish sentiment has reached San Fransisco and people are dying because of it.
Another body emerges…same MO.
Finding herself in an unusual situation, Miranda accepts an offer that allows her to continue her investigation even though she has major concerns about who she is helping.
I am not saying any more (except that Miranda is still mourning Johnny, Rick is a great friend, she still has the hots for Gonzales, she really needs to give up Chesterfields, she enjoys Old Taylor, carries her Browning, and someone new / old is about to enter her life). Whew… :-)
To find out more….you will have to wait until Sept 13th to pick up a copy of the book (or an electronic version) and read it for yourself.
I will tell you that this is an outstanding book. My mind was taken away to another time and place where the worries of the real world do not exist.
Kelli’s style of writing, again, took me awhile to get used to (curt, gritty), but, once I got into the rhythm (it did take 100 or 150 pages) the book flew by.
You will find yourself immersed in 1940 San Francisco: Market Street, the Ferry Building, Chinatown, the Embarcadero (see picture below of Carol and Kristen there in a happier time), etc. And you will learn a bit of world history: anti-semitism in the US, Hitler, eugenics, domestic terrorism, the rise of the Nazi’s in Europe (and in San Francisco), and, most fun for me, learning about the Golden Gate International Exposition and Gayway’s, “Artists and Models”, Billy Rose’s Aquacade, the healing waters in Calistoga (interesting parallel to “The Curse Maker”)…and so much more.
Damn…here I am back in the real world. Arrghh…
PS: I would like to publicly thank Kelli Stanley for everything she has done for ForCarol.com. Her generosity, friendship, and support during these tough times will always be remembered and appreciated.
Drive Safe! Never Forget.
Carol and Kristen at the Hyatt Embarcadero
Book Review
Genre: Mystery, Roman Noir (Engrossing historical mystery, History 101 for me )
Rating: 3.5 WaterTowers
“The Curse Maker” is an ARC sent to me by Kelli Stanley. It is due in stores Feb 1, 2011. For the sake of full disclosure….I love Kelli Stanley
Julius Alpinius Classicianus Favonianus (aka Arcturus), the Roman Governor’s Doctor and his wife Gwyna are on holiday at the famous hot water baths, Aquae Sulis (now Bath, England, UK).
Something was wrong with Gwyna, so a holiday at the spa is just what the Doctor ordered, even though Arcturus seems to be the only one who does not know what is wrong with his wife (he had just returned home from several months away).
Near the spa, curse-writer Rufus Bilbax floats in the water. Dead. Spotting something shiny in his mouth, Arcturus forces his mouth open to find a small piece of lead with the word Ultor (the Avenger) written on it.
Rufus was murdered, and it became Arcturus’s (and Gwyna’s) task to find the murderer.
Thus starts “The Curse Maker”.
As Arcturus embarks on his quest to find the murderer, he finds an ever increasing number of mysteries that could be related to the murders (oh, yeah, this is not the first), and struggles to make sense of all the information.
There is a lead mine outside of town that is supposedly haunted by a ghost, and has been closed. The mine becomes a lead for Arcturus and one day he sets out to take a look. When he arrives he discovers an active silver mine (yup…not lead), an emaciated beaten donkey, and some very tough individuals (not ghosts). He almost dies. Almost. In her great wisdom, Gwyna asked recently freed slave Draco to follow Arcturus to the mine. Draco saves Arcturus’s life (more than once).
Back in town….the list of suspects continues to grow as does the list of dead.
Among the people he suspects of some kind of wrongdoing, although he does not know what wrong-doing for which-person, are: Aquae Sulis’s Doctor, Philo. Philo takes an immediate liking to Gwyna, and Arcturus immediately dislikes Philo, Bathmaster Octavio, temptress Sulpicia and her boyfriend Vitellius, necromancer Faro, good for nothing Sestius, and town leaders Grattius and Secundus (and his evil wife, Materna, and beautiful, and loose, daughter Secunda).
Whew.
Does Arcturus find the murderer? What is wrong with Gwyna? Why does Philo like Gwyna so much? How does each suspect fit into the mystery or mysteries? Does the donkey survive? Well, you are just going to have to go to the bookstore on Feb 1, 2011 and buy the book to find out, ’cause I ain’t gonna tell ya. :-)
A black hole in my education is history. With “The Curse Maker” Kelli Stanley has provided me with a first course in Roman history in England, and also with a bit of Latin. Luckily for the latter there is a glossary of terms which I referred to constantly throughout the book (this slowed my slow reading even more, but, was very educational).
Pick up a copy of “The Curse Maker” for an engrossing mystery with an incredible cast of characters and vivid settings in and around Aquae Sulis. I will now try (it is out of print, but, may be back in paper and ebook form) to go back to read the first book in this series “Nox Dormienda” (yeah, I broke rule #23…read no book out of order).
This is funny…. I had a hard time adjusting my brain to the time period….I found myself urging Arcturus to call (ya know, via cell phone) for help, or employ CSI methods to solve the crimes….DUH…this happened around 40 AD.
Genre: Mystery (Miranda rocks!)
Rating: 3.5 WaterTowers
This was an ARC sent to me by Kelli Stanley. It will be in stores in Feb 2010.
Miranda Corbie, troubled, chain-smoking, ex-escort, Spanish War nurse, part-time Worlds Fair employee, PI, was walking home during the Chinese New Year celebration when a nearly dead Eddie Takahashi crossed her path.
He died with her by his side. In 1940 San Francisco….a Japanese young man dies in Chinatown and no one cares. Not the Chamber, not the police.
Miranda cares.
Wanting to find Eddie’s murderer, Miranda starts digging for clues. But there are those who do not want her to keep looking. The police for one. And two people in a mysterious green Olds for another.
Taking on a new case, one that pays, to find the missing daughter of a recently deceased Pickwick Hotel guest, Phyllis Winters, Miranda continues her investigation into Eddie’s death.
As she learns more….the two cases start to merge. The Pickwick death turns out to be murder and Miranda knows more about who might be involved than is safe. Not good. The people in the green Olds have new orders–kill Miranda–and they almost succeed.
Injured, limping, face battered and swollen, Miranda continues her investigation, a little more carefully now, and with the help (well sort of) of police detective Gonzales.
What Miranda ultimately finds reaches far beyond what anyone can imagine. You are going to have to read “City of Dragons” to learn more.
1940 San Francisco is a much different place than we now know. Miranda is a “broad” making it on her own in a world where political correctness does not exist and prejudices, of all kinds, abound. Melding of Chinese, Japanese, and Italian cultures, San Francisco history, with old fashioned male and female roles, make “City of Dragons” tremendously entertaining reading.
It took me awhile to become comfortable with Kelli Stanley’s writing style (which is, hmmmm, I suppose “terse” might explain it best). But once past that, I found myself transported back to the sometimes seedy back streets of San Francisco, fedora on my head helping Miranda find her man (and urging her to quit smoking).
This is the first in a series with Miranda Corbie as the main character. As such, the details of her life are given to the reader in small doses. We know she lost a lover, Johnny, in 1937, and that she is very troubled because of that loss. We know she was a nurse in the Spanish War…in Spain.
“She found him there. But it wasn’t him. It was someone who looked like him, but already didn’t smell like him. Someone who had been too close to a shell. Too close. To the front. Too close. To the cause. Too close. To her.
Johnny.”
We briefly meet Miranda’s estranged father and learn a bit about her childhood, but, again, not much. Needless to say…. I’m looking forward to the next book where I hope to learn more.
If you love a good mystery, a bit of history, and San Francisco (who doesn’t) go to the bookstore in February 2010 and pick up a copy of “City of Dragons”…you will love it!
