The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester

Stephenie Meyer called this “the oddest/sweetest mix of Little House on the Prairie and X-men.” I couldn’t have put it better.

Piper McCloud is a straight-up farm girl, full of corn, potatoes and sweet innocence. But ever since she floated - rather than fell - off her diaper changing table, she has been kept on the farm, kept secret. When her ability is made known to the small town she lives in, the news spread like wildfire.

She lands in a top secret, underground government facility under the watch of Dr. Hellion. There, Piper discovers all sorts of plants, animals, and people with special abilities. Happy at first, she soon learns that something is very wrong. With the help of super-genius Conrad, Piper must find a way to save everyone: mild-tempered Violet who grows or shrinks depending on her emotional state, Daisy whose strength is unmatched by mano or machine, Jasper whose power is unknown, twins Nalen and Ahmed who can control weather, to name a few.

This is a book with simple themes expressed elegantly. It has a delightful mix of action (my co-worker and I agree, this would make a terrific movie), character development, joy and sorrow. I would recommend it to a fourth or tenth grader, a high-level or reluctant reader.

The Man in the Brown Suit/The Secret of Chimneys

Title: The Man in the Brown Suit/The Secret of Chimneys

Author: Agatha Christie

Publication Year: 1924, 1925

Pages: 232 each

Genre: Mystery

Count for Year: 6, 7

How I discovered

I have joined Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise with her Agatha Christie Reading Challenge and these are the third and fourth books that Christie wrote and third and fourth in that challenge. Like the last ones, I don’t believe I have read this one previously.

The setup

How odd, Anne Beddingfeld thought, that the stranger caught her eye, recoiled in horror, and fell to his death on the rails of Hyde Park Underground Station. Odder still was a doctor in a brown suit who pronounced him dead and vanished into the crowd. But what really aroused Anne’s suspicion was when she learned of the doctor’s link to the murder of a famous ballerina, a fortune in hidden diamonds, and a crime-lord embroiled in blackmail. And most frightening of all was the attempt made on Anne’s own life. But she is unable to resist the lure of an isolated mansion that could hold the solution to the bizarre mystery–even if she becomes the next victim…

The Man in the Brown Suit, synopsis from Barnes & Noble

A bit of adventure and quick cash is all that good-natured drifter Anthony Cade is looking for when he accepts a messenger job from an old friend. It sounds so simple: deliver the provocative memoirs of a recently deceased Eurpoean count to a London publisher. But the parcel holds more than scandalous royal secrets. It contains a stash of letters that suggest blackmail and lead to the murder of a stranger who’s been shadowing Anthony’s every move. Discovering the dead man’s identity means retracing his steps to the rambling estate of Chimneys where darker secrets, and deadlier threats, await anyone who dares to enter.

The Secret of Chimneys, synopsis from Barnes & Noble

I’ve read both of these within the last few weeks and since they were similar in nature, dealing with international espionage, I decided to include a review of both together here.

In The Man in the Brown Suit, Christie introduces to yet another character, Anne Beddingfield, daughter of a recently deceased archaelogist, and in The Secret of Chimneys, she introduces us to another detective, Superintendent Battle.

Like Tommy and Tuppence previously, the characters here and the story are on the lighter side and unlike later Hercule Poirot cases that I remember reading are dealt with in a less serious manner. Beddingfield compares herself early on in The Man in The Brown Suit to a fictional “The Perils of Pamela,” which sounds similar to “The Perils of Pauline,” a 1914 serial, and I believe it is in this spirit that this novel should be taken.

It reminded me forcibly of Episode III in “The Perils of Pamela.” How often had I not sat in the sixpenny seats, eating a twopenny bar of milk chocolate and yearning for similar things to happen to me. Well, they had happened with a vengeance. And somehow it was nearly as amusing as I had imagined. But in real life, there was absolutely no guarantee that Anna the Adventuress might not terminate abruptly at the end of any Episode.

Also readers of Christie’s previous works also are reintroduced to the theme of adventure as in Tommy and Tuppence.

In The Secret of Chimneys, Christie establishes the light tone of the novel even after a murder occurs with the first two detectives on the scene:

“It is, Johnson. One of his lordship’s guests, a foreign gentleman, discovered shot. Open window, and footprints outside.”

“I’m sorry, it were a foreigner,” said Johnson with some regret.

It made the murder seem less real. Foreigners, Johnson felt, were liable to be shot.

While both of these novels are on the lighter side, I believe the second one succeeds a little bit more than the first one. Perhaps I think in the first one, the story, with all its expected red herrings as Christie is apt to do, is just too unbelievable and also perhaps too romantic for my taste. The second one, The Secret of Chimneys, meanwhile, while silly at times, seems to me to be more believable within the context of the novel. It’s not that it’s not silly, but it is easier for at least this reader to go along with the story than in the first one. Also in the first one, Beddingfield splits time in telling the story with Sir Eustace Pedler, another character, and doesn’t work for me. I guess I’m old school like that and want one perspective — at least in my Agatha Christie mysteries and at least as she is just starting out and isn’t a seasoned writer as she would become.

For those reasons, I give The Man in the Brown Suit a 3 out of 5, but The Secret of Chimneys a 4 out of 5. If you have to choose between reading one or the other, my opinion is to go with the latter, especially if you want to add to your Agatha Christie collection.

My rating system: 

5- Classic, must read

4- Worth owning a copy

3- Worth picking up at library

2- Worth skimming at the bookstore

1- Worth being a doorstop

Book Review: Now That You Are Back

Now That You Are Back

Now That You Are Back

By Richard Beeston

Depression is one of those things I struggle to understand. It affects so many people, but it is so hard to recognise what’s going on, to know what to do. I’ve dealt with people struggling with depression, but have never really known how to help. Sure I can listen to them and say nice things, but that’s where I get stuck. If you’ve ever been in that situation, or have had a loved one suffer from depression, you really should read Now That You Are Back.

Now That You Are Back is the story of Richard Beeston and his wife Alison. Alison had long been suffering from depression and related symptoms. It grew worse and worse until Alison was staying in a private hospital with a team of medical professionals trying to bring her back from the edge. The book deals with their struggle to understand what was going on and their reliance on God as their lives turned out differently than planned.

This book is a great resource. Not just for people struggling with depression or caring for a loved one who is struggling. It is a great resource for everyone. It helped me gain a greater understanding of what to look out for, the signs that someone needs help. As a pastor, this is good knowledge to have when I’m looking out for the people God has entrusted to my care. It gives concrete, practical suggestions on how to love and care for people with depression. Now I feel I can take the next step and actually do something useful to help. The book is also packed with places to go for more information.

Now That You Are Back is a easy read. At 80 pages, I knocked it over in an afternoon. And I’m glad I did. Not only did I learn a lot, but I came to love and care for a Christian brother and sister that I have never met. Read this book for yourself, you’ll be thankful you did.

BOOK REVIEW: The Killing Floor by Lee Child

Jack Reacher is an Army brat raised with his older brother on bases around the world. Schooled at West Point, and a following career in Army, his whole life is intimately tied to the service. In the service and became a first rate investigator in the MP’s, among other things. Now a retired major, thanks to the huge military downsizing in the ‘90’s, and free of the of the regimentation that has been there his whole life. Now he finds comfort moving around at will. Under the radar suits him just fine. No hometown, no family ties, other than a very distant relationship with his Secret Service bother whom he hasn’t seen in years, he’s truly free. But that’s about to change.

The Killing Floor, Lee Child’s first book, opens in machine gun style:

“I was arrested at Eno’s Diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.”

As Reacher moves from the local jail, to a nite in a prison holding cell, to release next morning, his size and capacity for violence save his life and that of another man with him. Despite every effort, Reacher is still a curious man. He looks at things differently. The very frightened man in the cell with Reacher tells him just a little bit of information. Reacher refuses to be drawn. When they are both released, Reacher’s alibi confirmed, Reacher is planning to leave town. The lovely deputy changes his mind in the usual way. He also resents the people trying to force him out. Despite realizing there is something profoundly wrong in Margrave, despite the plea for help from the wife of the man he protected in prison, despite his attraction to a female deputy, he does not want to get involved. Then the Sheriff and his wife are murdered in a very gruesome fashion and Reacher decides to lend a hand.

When Reacher learns the second dead body found the day of the original murder is his older brother, all bets are off and vengeance is on the menu. What the hell was the head of a Secret Service department doing in Margrave, Georgia alone at night? What would draw him there? With the help of the deputy and an FBI agent, and information from a colleague of his brother, Reacher begins unraveling a tale of greed, the kind of greed that makes an entire town look the other way. The Sheriff and his wife meet a gruesome end. The body count climbs rather high in this book, so does the tension as the plot twists and turns again and again. The ending is had one last twist I did not see coming. A very satisfying read for action-thriller fans.

The Killing Floor is an innovative, violent and complex novel that is surprisingly long for an action thriller. The body count at the end of the book is astonishing, but the plot never slows down. Unlike wise cracking PI’s or characters like Dirk Pitt, there is no banter to lighten the noir atmosphere of the book. Yet it lacks the truly dark noir edge you’ll find in books by Andrew Vachss or Dennis Lehane.

Reacher is a man comfortable in his own skin, an odd mix of sudden, casual violence and questioning intellect. A loner in a room full of people, a natural observer of human interaction, an analyzer of information. He does not see himself as some kind of wandering paladin, righting the many wrongs of the world. He’d rather not get involved in other people’s problems, but deals with whatever comes his way in a brutal, efficient fashion. There is an amoral edge to Reacher’s violence. He operates on his own code and is little given to remorse. Many will find these character traits and the compounding coincidences that build the story stretch the believability a bit much, but for me, it remained a very enjoyable ride.

The Killing Floor is, overall, a compelling read. It has the same major flaw as much of the action thriller genre – improbable coincidence. In this instance, the biggest improbable coincidence is both Reacher brothers’ being in a small town in Georgia – and one of them is murdered the same night the other arrives. Most others would be spoilers if I mentioned them. Regardless, the book is a top notch read for the genre.

Lee Child has now written 13 Reacher novels and the last 4 entries have lost their creative edge and begun a rapid downhill slide. A new Reacher book is due out this year. After so many disappointments, I think I’ll wait to buy it.  Like most Reacher novels, this one sits on my ‘Keeper’ shelf.  I recently re-read it and found it has held up well for me.

My Grade: A-

Who would enjoy this book: Barry Eisler fans should enjoy the first 8 to 9 books, though Reach and John Rain have very different psychological makeups. Fans of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, earlier Jack Higgins and Kyle Mills’ Mark Beamon books should give this series a try.  The book would be rated PG-17 to NC-17 for the violence.

Book review 2

 The Singing: The Fourth Book of Pellinor by Alison Croggon

This book ends the Pellinor series by Alison Croggon. I thought she did a good job at ending the series. She creates a world that is believable and has you questioning whether or not this world did exist here *before* our history started. The bad guys are really, really bad. But the hero and heroine (especially the heroine) are characters who question and doubt their abilities in a believable way.

The outcome for a lot of it is predictable, if you’ve read tons of fantasy. (and I have) But the book still kept me on the edge of my seat while I was reading it.

She’s a very talented author and I hope to find more books from her in the near future. I will definitely recommend that my children read these books - as long as they are interested in fantasy.

Letters from Victorian Pioneers (or "It wasn't me Guv'nor, it was him")

When Governor La Trobe sailed home  for England on 6 May 1854, he carried with him a series of letters which he hoped to use when writing a history of the Port Phillip district in his retirement.  He had officially approached a number of the early pastoral pioneers and asked them a number of questions, and as you might expect, they answered his survey letter fairly promptly.  I’m not sure what the official letter said-  one of his respondents referred to a section that asked  “If preceded, accompanied or immediately followed, by whom and when, and the general state of the district around and in advance of me at that period.”  He obviously also specifically asked about encounters they had had with aborigines in their area, and their opinion of the future facing the aboriginal tribes.

Because they were responding to an official request with guiding questions, there is a sameness about their responses.  But there’s also quite a bit of similarity in their experiences as well, which is what I expected.  In fact, my impetus for reading this book was the suggestion in Robert Redfield’s book that people living in a small community often held a common biography.  Even though Redfield specifically states that his approach does not hold for frontier communities (which of course Port Phillip was), I was interested to see if the early pastoral settlers of Port Phillip could be said to have a common life story.

And yes, they could.  All his respondents were male, and many of them were young when they settled in Port Phillip- usually in their early to mid 20s.  Many of them came over from Van Diemens Land  from where they had initially emigrated (none admits to convict origins).  Many of them had brothers with them.  And they held in common sheep and cattle- hundreds and hundreds of them, trotting along, being slaughtered by marauding natives (and oh, what a heartbreaking, pointless, expensive loss of life that must have been), moving from run to run.  Some time ago I read Roger McDonald’s book  The Ballad of Desmond Kale, and was frustrated by the sheep-sheep-sheep  emphasis of it, but sheep-fever is amply demonstrated here too.  It’s not as exotic and alluring as gold, but the sheep-rush  obviously drove the early settlers of Port Phillip.

They all mention the 1840s depression- although one canny Scotsman seems to have escaped it because he had savings still in Van Diemens Land.  There are names of landholders that spring up again and again- obviously big stockholders held land in several districts.  Many of them moved from station to station.

Some of them were quite observant about the changes wrought on the land after settlement.  Several mentioned that it was very dry when the area was first opened up, and that the rainfall had  improved in the last few years of the 1840s, drawing later settlers to land that had seemed uninviting when the first settlers passed it initially.  One or two mentioned changes in the grasslands, and some were quite nostalgic for the beauty of the unsettled areas.

Most fascinating of all was the range of responses to the question about aborigines.   Most of them knew of “other people” who had gone on shooting reprisals- as perhaps might be expected when the Governor asked you such a question.  Several of them mentioned the Whyte brothers by name as being particularly responsible for aboriginal deaths, one respondent attributing 51 deaths to them compared with the official count of 30 aboriginal deaths.  A couple of respondents mentioned that they had shot aborigines in reprisal-  just one or two, mind you, and always because the aborigines started it first.   Another settler was named as responsible for several deaths, but he protested (too much?) his innocence. George Faithful of Wangaratta, however, reported quite openly his actions after suffering several attacks from surrounding natives:

At last, it so happened that I was the means of putting an end to this warfare.  Riding with two of my stockmen one day quietly along the banks of the river, we passed between the anabranch of the river itself by a narrow neck of land, and, after proceeding half a mile, we were all at once met by some hundreds of painted warriors with the most dreadful yells I had ever heard.  Had they sprung from the regions below we could have hardly been more taken by surprise.  Our horses bounded and neighed with fear- old brutes, which in other respects required an immense deal of persuasion in the way of spurs to make them go along.  Our first impulse was to retreat, but we found the narrow way blocked up by natives two and three deep, and we were at once saluted with a shower of spears.  My horse bounded and fell into an immense hole.  A spear just then passed over the pummel of my saddle.  This was the signal for a general onset.  The natives rushed on us like furies, with shouts and savage yells; it was no time for delay.  I ordered my men to take deliberate aim, and to fire only with certainty of destruction to the individual aimed at.  Unfortunately, the first shot from one of my men’s carbines did not take effect; in a moment we were surrounded on all sides by the savages boldly coming up to us.  It was my time now to endeavour to repel them.  I fired my double-barrel right and left, and two of the most forward fell; this stopped the impetuosity of their career.  I had time to reload, and the war thus continued from about ten o’clock in the morning until four in the afternoon.  We were slow to fire, and I trust and believe that many of the bravest of the savage warriors bit the dust.  (p. 220)

Several of the respondents noted that they had taken young aboriginal girls and boys to live with them, but that once they reached adulthood, their tribes came and took them away.   One settler commented that  he gave a baby back to its mother after he had taken it because the servant wasn’t prepared to look after it, and  seemed rather put out that she refused to give it to him a second time.  Several reported infanticide, especially where there was a white father and a black mother.  There were several allegations of cannibalism, although interestingly one settler reported that the aborigines thought that the whites were cannibals!

Where aboriginal deaths had occured, several claimed, it was because the blacks had become over-familiar.   White men didn’t take lubras, they claimed- the black men offered their wives to them freely.

Even amongst those who were most positive about the aborigines working for them on their stations, or their quickness and willingness to forgive, there was overall a deep sense that influenza, smallpox, VD or alcohol would decimate their numbers.  They all reported that there weren’t as many aborigines on their stations as there had been years earlier- strange that.

BOOK REVIEW: Tengu: The Mountain Goblin by John Donohue

Donohue is a professor at Albertus Magnus College and a well know author of articles for various martial arts publications. A 30 year veteran of martial arts training, he manages to spin his tales with a voice of authority while never substituting action for plot. While Barry Eisler is a better thriller writer, Donohue writes the martial arts equivalent of a ‘martial arts cozy’ or ‘amateur samurai’ if you will. J Donohue’s two previous books in this series are Sensei and Deshi and both are very worthwhile reads. Tengu is third in this series and a forth is underway.

If there is one recurring theme in the Burke novels it’s ‘A man born out of his time.’ Burke’s inner struggle, the need to find his way between the modern world and his dedication to, and comfort with, the ancient code of his Kendo training, is ever present. As is the always strained relationship with his sensei, Yamashita.

Martial artist Conner Burke is trying to deal with his current state of unemployment, having been let go from his teaching position by the little Long Island college that had been his nominal employer, while keeping himself busy by taking on more responsibilities at Yamashita-san’s dojo. The always complex relationship between Burke and Yamashita seems to have taken an even odder turn. Burke seems to be consciously avoiding what the sensei is trying to convey to him.

In the Philippines a graduate student is kidnapped. Spec Ops warriors are sent on a mission with Philippine soldiers to raid a terrorist camp. As usual, it is through Sensei Yamashita that Burke gets pulled into the action. An old enemy of Yamashita is training and using terrorists to draw the old warrior into one last battle. Burke, with homicide cop brother Mike and his partner Art, they make yet another foray into danger together, this time half way around the world in the Philippines.

Like Eisler, Donohue uses the first person to good effect, but the plotting is less complex and certainly Burke is not the world weary killer that Rain is. But he has killed and knows that he’ll do what he must. No, Donohue is not in Eisler’s league when it comes to thrillers, but he has, however, constructed a complete, believable person in Burke and all three of his books are worth reading.

My Grade: B-

Who would enjoy this book: Donohue’s novels don’t fit neatly into any blanket genre. Not wise-guy PI like Spenser or Elvis Cole, not hard case John Rain or Jack Reacher, not Steven Segal fans either – but maybe a little of each. Though an imperfect fit I’d say fans of Doc Ford novels by Randy Wayne White, Thorn novels by James W Hall or Steven Hamilton’s Alex McKnight novels should be happy.