Trail of the Spellmans, Lisa Lutz

After a ‘disappearance’ of two years that inquisitive family business Spellman Investigations is back and if Izzy doesn’t back away from a certain ‘chinese wall’ she could find herself out of a job. But first she’s got to find out why her mum Olivia is having someone else summarize her bookclub books and falling asleep in class while trying to learn Russian. Why Albert Spellman is muttering about ETAs. Her sister Rae has been kicked out of brother David’s house and is currently residing in a tree on the Berkeley campus. Coincidentally David’s daughter Sydney is say ‘banana’-a lot. 

Izzy has her own problems apart from a plethora of cases that seem to be falling on her shoulders, boyfriend Henry Stone wants everything she doesn't-marriage followed by children. And Izzy’s got a new drinking pal-Henry’s mother Gertrude. This is all building up to a Spellman family thanksgiving that starts at Category 1 and ends up as a full-blown Category 4. The Spellmans are back and better than ever.

The pleasures of completion.

 Wow, did a whole bunch of things yesterday morning that didn't involve reading or writing. Including breakfast out, a double circuit of the park and a ton of housework (not fun but it has to be done) Then I settled in for an afternoon working on T'ball and suddenly it hit me, the beginning still sucks (mightily) So I'm busy fixing that today. I also found the time to read and comment on a bunch of blogs that I've let slip.

Done!

Yesterday, I completed the re-write by re-reading and printing out. Today I got my teeth into Broken Harbour, the new Tana French book. I think this could be her best yet.

No Mark Upon Her, Deborah Crombie

Did Olympic hopeful Rebecca Meredith drown by accident or was it murder? 

Superintendent Duncan Kincaid soon learns that ‘Becca was a high flyer in the Metropolitan police force and his bosses want this case put to bed before the media crawl all over it.  There’s even a convenient ex husband with no alibi but Kincaid doesn’t like to have his investigation second guessed and with the help of his wife-Inspector Jones-and members of Project Sapphire he uncovers multiple motives for murder and a suspect who could end his career; and it seems that not all ‘Becca’s secrets died with her.

Revisions Revisited

The Rollover revisions have been taking up a lot of my time recently and I hope to have it completed this week which means that I turned it around in a month. I am still reading though, two books which are getting a fair bit of press are Mr G by Alan Lightman and The Fear Index by Robert Harris. I loved them both but never saw the arcs.

Budapest Noir, Vilmos Kondor

Greed and selfishness lie at the heart of this atmospheric tale. Pre-war Budapest is keeping crime reporter Zig Gordon in stories so when he gets a call to a crime scene in the red light district it doesn't bother him -at first. The circumstances however do. A Jewish prayer book is a strange thing for a supposed prostitute to have and the other item she was carrying is even more perplexing. The crime reporter wastes no time in tapping sources to get a story. He’s blocked at every turn by some very powerful people but that just makes him keep digging...

(N.B published end of Jan)

Two arcs and plot shuffle

Two arcs on the go at the moment The Professionals which despite its Swedish sounding author is set in the US and Niceville also set in the US (the deep south to be exact) and I am loving them both. Now though, working on another rewrite of Rollover and this one only needs about 6 or 7 adjustments but two of them are big enough to cause ripples throughout the rest of the book so this morning I'm playing plot jigsaw, take an event which is too close to the end and make it historical and nearer the beginning, wish me luck!