British Royal Excitement

Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

New York; Bantam Books [2012]

978-0-553-59362-4; $15.00

In the Prologue, Ms. MacNeal sets the stage, with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Lisbon, meeting with Walther Schellenberg, personal aide to Heinrich Himmler.  The couple had just gotten “banished” to Bermuda by Churchill, and they are none too happy.  Their love was condemned by the Royal Family, for not only was Wallis Simpson a two-time American divorcée, but she was also a close personal friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop’s, Foreign Minister of Germany.  In fact, there were rumors that they had slept together.

Germany hopes to put the former King Edward VII back on the throne of Great Britain, along with his disapproved-of-wife, who had never even been given the title of Her Royal Highness. This would, of course, give Germany an easy road to conquering the resolute little island.

The scene then moves to Bletchley Park, a manor house about 50 miles northwest of London, the home of the Government Code and Cipher School.  The Poles had passed a reconstructed Enigma machine, used by the Germans, on to the British. Alan Turing and others were learning to use it and working on finding the right configuration to decode Nazi secret messages.

A young woman who works there, Victoria Keeley, and a young codebreaker named Benjamin Batey have a date. Batey, a proverbial nerd, can hardly believe his good luck, and is not paying attention to what is going on when she vamps him and takes away a decrypted message.  After a brief sojourn in her rooms, she kicks him out and makes a phone call, saying she has something for her “darling” to see, and that she’s coming to London.  She checks into the fashionable Claridge Hotel in Mayfair.  She puts the decrypt on the bed, and goes to take a bath.  There she is shot between the eyes, and the decrypt disappears.

Head of MI-5 Peter Frain goes to see his “go-to” guy at Bletchley, Edmund Hope, who is trying to suss out the traitorous person rumored to be working there.  Perhaps there is a connection?

Meanwhile, our heroine, Maggie Hope is falling into the mud of the obstacle course at “Camp Spook,” somewhere in Scotland. When she had been Churchill’s secretary, she’d never thought of being a spy. But here she is, a member of MI-5, the British secret service.  But she fails her training – she just not athletic enough to be dropped behind enemy lines, although she is fluent in both French and German, excellent at math, and a whiz at codebreaking.  She is sent back to Peter Frain in London for another assignment.  Just before leaving the camp, she gets word that the man she loves, John Sterling, an RAF pilot, has been shot down behind enemy lines:  missing, presumed dead.

Her new job is to be ostensibly a math tutor for Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, but she is really there to keep watch on the Princess, to see that nothing happens to her, the heir apparent to the British throne, and to spy out what she can.  The Royal Family has decided to stay in England, and they are staying at Windsor, out of the direct flightpath of the Blitz.

Although Maggie is not happy to be in such a secondary “women’s work” sort of role, she rallies when she learns that a German, called Commandant Hess, is receiving radio transmissions sent from Windsor by an unknown.  She takes the position and meets her handler, Hugh Thompson, a pleasant and capable, and very good-looking, young man. 

Maggie’s flatmate and former colleague at No. 10 Downing Street, the gay secretary to Mr. Churchill, David Greene, agrees to chauffeur Maggie to Windsor.  She is greeted by Ainslie, the Royal Butler, who takes her to meet the Princesses Elizabeth, aged 14, and Margaret, aged 8, and their staff.  The end of the tour is at her rooms in the Victoria Tower – with the toilet and bath on the roof.  (Castles weren’t built with indoor plumbing, don’t you know?)  With the ominous “We dress for dinner,” Ainslie leaves Maggie to unpack.

The castle is so cold, and Maggie has so few clothes, she puts on a wool dress, and her coat, and goes downstairs.  Then she realizes that she doesn’t know where the Octagon Room is, where dinner will be served.  After walking what feels like miles and miles, she sees an apparition in the distance.

It turns out not to be an apparition, but a wounded war veteran of the RAF, Gregory Strathcliffe, who is currently serving at Windsor as an Equerry to the King.  He takes her to the room.  She enters and is rebuked for being late and for not dressing up.  She has witty response, which takes the rebuke aback.  The Gregory enters, says that, because they are late, they should go out.  Maggie agrees, causing the rebuke to be discomfited.

They go to a pub in town, where Maggie gets to meet 3 ladies-in-waiting, all recently returned from London, where they stayed at Claridge’s.  It wasn’t  a particularly pleasant stay, since there were air raids and bombs and not enough clothing rations to buy anything decent.  Maggie mentions that she’d read in the paper about a suicide there, and the young women agree that that wasn’t fun, either, will all of the police running around.  When one of the ladies gets ill as a reaction to the food, Maggie follows her to the Ladies’, learning that she is having morning sickness, and went to the city to see a doctor.  She is, indeed, pregnant, and no one else knows.  Her name is Lady Lily Howell.

The next day, Maggie is talking to Crawfie, Miss Marian Crawford, who is the governess to the two Princesses,  when the Princesses burst in with awful news.  They were out riding with Lady Lily and one of the grooms.  Lady Lily went on ahead, and fell off her horse!  When they came up, Margaret didn’t see her, but Elizabeth did – she had no head!  Yes, they say, it is most horribly true, and it must be, for the police come and interview everyone. Later, Maggie goes to see the detective in charge, and tells him about Lady Lily being pregnant.

But why was Lily killed?  Maggie goes to check and finds the place where the wire was attached that decapitated her.  She also goes to check in Maggie’s rooms, and discovers some books gone.  She finds them with the housekeeper, and takes a copy of The Phantom of the Opera with Lily’s bookplate in it.  When she sits down in her room to look at it, she discovers something under the endpapers: a decryption of a message from a German U-boat commander. It was dated the day that Lily and the others were at Claridge’s – the day the woman was shot in her bath.  What was Lily involved with?

Princess Elizabeth is not impressed with having to learn math, until Maggie tells her about Mary, Queen of Scots and Sir Anthony Babington, who communicated in code based on the frequency of letters in the message, and how Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, broke the code.  Elizabeth becomes very interested, and creates her own code.  She plans on trying it out with the man she’s sweet on, Prince Philip of Greece, who is now in the Royal Navy.  The Princesses also teach Maggie about the dungeons in the basement, and the secret passage out of the castle.

On another front, Maggie’s handler is changed from Hugh to a fellow named Nevins.  Hugh predicts that will not be a Good Thing, and he is right.  Nevins meets openly with Maggie, who tells him off for being so unprofessional.  He tells her he doesn’t take orders from women, and does not give her the information that she had asked Hugh to get for her, and which hugh has passed on to Nevins.  Maggie is revolted by Nevins’ condescension and patronizing attitude.

She is vindicated in her opinion of Nevins when Gregory asked her who the man was she’d been seen with.  She begins to work with the Princesses on the show they are to put on for Christmas, a version of Sleeping Beauty, and she works on the sets with Gregory.  They also play Sardines, a hide-and-seek game, and Gregory makes a pass at her, which she rebuffs, saying that she likes him, but “not in that way.” Then she breaks into Gregory’s office and films Lady Lily’s file.

Meeting with Nevins again, he orders her to give him the film, and calls her “Darling.” She tells him he was seen with her and she was asked about it.  She says Frain will not get the film unless it is picked up by Hugh.  When Nevins says that Hugh is a nobody, she tells him that Hugh is a better agent than he is, for he – Nevins – is all ego and no integrity.  Nevins calls her a bitch.

Determined to solve the murder of Lady Lily, Maggie goes back to the scene of the crime.  There she sees the Royal Falconer with his birds at the top of the Castle, and she convinces him to tell her what he saw.  He doesn’t want to tell, but finally does:  it was Mr. Tooke, the head gardener.  He was still angry at the Royal Family for having his German-born wife taken away to a camp, where she died.  Lady Lily didn’t have to go to a camp, and she was German, too.  Maggie reports this to the detective in charge.

Maggie had wanted to meet with her father, have dinner, and have her father explain to her the many secrets that seemed to swirl around her family, but her father stood her up.  Instead he sent her a book belonging to her mother – a volume of Grimm’s fairytales.  When she is with Princess Elizabeth, the Princess sneezes, and spills tea on the book.  She is ever so sorry, but Maggie then sees what she has not seen before:  little pinpricks above certain letters.  There is code in this book!

Maggie meets with Hugh and tells him about all she has learned.  They skate together while talking – she has been exercising all the time she has been at Windsor, and is much stronger now than when she was such a failure at Camp Spook.  Hugh agrees to get her father’s MI-5 file, which he does. That, plus the code in the Grimm’s adds up to some disappointing things.

Then it is Christmas, and the Princesses get to do their show.  Everyone is there, including Frain and Hugh, Churchill and his secretary, David Greene, Gregory, who has become even more prickly, but does show an interest in David, and all of the Royal Household.

This is capped off by a kidnapping of several people; the escape of several spies; the meeting of a U-boat, off the coast of England; several good guys being wounded; and a daring rescue at sea.  This last bit seems to be – as far as I know – out of the canon of World War II British experiences, but it has been built up to in a very exciting, and seemingly true-to-history way.

MacNeal has done extensive research on MI-5, Bletchley Park, and Windsor and the people who live there, as proven by her lengthy historical note. So much rings true.  It’s an exciting and plausible mystery, with a plucky heroine and excellently-drawn secondary figures.  Highly recommended. ~lss-r

_______

My book.



Crazy Happenings in a Crazy House



Peril in Paperback [by] Kate Carlisle

[New York]; Obsidian [2012]

978-0-451-23762-0; $7.99

Bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright has been invited to the quirky Lake Tahoe home of the aunt of one of her friends down the hall in her San Francisco apartment building, Suzie Stein. The aunt, Grace Crawford, has made a name, and a fortune, in the computer games industry, and her home shows her creative ingenuity, complete with secret passages, trapdoors, and arrays of gaming paraphernalia, such as a life-sized mouse cage that can be tripped to fall over one passing through the room.  Holograms appear to change the geography of the house, too – and Grace loves to confound some of her guests, especially those of the stuffy variety.

Grace also has a huge library, full of books, both simple modern paperbacks and genuine rare books.  Brooklyn has been invited as a friend of the family for the big 50^th birthday party Grace is giving herself, but also for her book-binding expertise, since Grace has decided to spruce up her library – having it cataloged and restored.  She has also hired an archivist named Nathan to assist in this project.

The guests are a varied lot.  Besides Brooklyn and Nathan, Suzie and her Lesbian partner, Vinnie, there are Grace’s brother Harrison, his wife Madge, and a niece, Kiki, who is daughter of the third Crawford sibling, who is not at the party.  There is Grace’s friend Ruth, who lives on the grounds, and her lawyer, Stephen Fowler.  There are the colleagues that she has worked with – her former partner Peter Brinker and his wife, Sybil, now the CFO, and Marko Huntley and Bella Santangelo, two game designers.  Lastly (but by no means least), Grace’s housekeeper and general factotum, Merrilee, is included in the general festivities.

After the first big dinner, Grace announces that she has finished her first novel, and everyone in the room is in it.  There are reactions from total joy to consternation amongst the crowd.  Each person is given a copy.  Brooklyn takes her copy back to her room and enjoys reading it.

But others must not have enjoyed the book so much, for things start to happen.  First, Bella dies; then Grace’s maid nearly is killed when the balcony outside Grace’s room collapses; someone pushes Kiki down the main staircase; Ruth behaves oddly; someone sends Brooklyn a dead blackbird in a shoebox; Lawyer Fowler disappears; a baby arrives at the house; Merrilee chucks a baseball at her employer; the corporate thief who nearly destroyed Grace and Peter’s company years ago is revealed; and the killer is apprehended.

Brooklyn’s friend Gabriel shows up just after the first diasaster, and helps her sleuth for clues.  In the last couple of scenes, Derek, Brooklyn’s main squeeze, arrives to help, too.  He is a member of British Intelligence, and was out-of-the-country for a while, and when Brooklyn, who had hoped he would be at the houseparty, tries to call him after she gets to the party, and a woman answers his phone, indicating that she had claims on the owner of the phone.  It has bothered Brooklyn all the time she has been at the house, and Derek apologizes to her.  Others in the party make their pairings known, and one person become unpaired, which is one of the best things that could have happened.  A nice, neat package of explanations turns up at the end, as should always happen at a houseparty, after the killer is revealed.  An excellent cozy with a spunky heroine.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

_______

My book.

Redemption on the Highway



Blues Highway Blues by Eyre Price

[Las Vegas, NV]; Thomas & Mercer [2012]

978-1612183534; $11.95

Daniel Erickson has lost his way in more ways than one.  His wife has divorced him for their son’s former girlfriend’s brother, taking him to the cleaners financially.  He is estranged from his son, Zack, a wannabe musician, and his career in the music business in on a precarious downhill slide.  His gorgeous house above the ocean in Malibu is on the market.  And he’s attempted suicide unsuccessfully.  As we meet him, he is being dangled over the edge of a penthouse balcony 65 stories up in Las Vegas by the large economy sized enforcer of a Russian Mafioso, who is demanding he pay up.

He realizes that he still has a cool million stashed in his Malibu home safe, along with a handgun.  He could take out the big thug, Moog, and the little thug, Rabidoso, in the same sweep and be home free, still with the cash, and able to keep himself from the all-seeing eyes of Filat Preezrakevich.  No problem.  He offers cash to the greedy Russian, and the need for him to stay alive to get it – because the safe is voice-activated.  The Russian gives him 24 hours to get to Malibu and return, and off they go.  It is not a pleasant drive.  The 2 bad guys bicker a lot, and Rabidoso keeps mentally honing his knife – he is obviously a little crazy.

When they get to Malibu, Daniel discovers a shock awaiting him.  The safe is empty – except for the Ruger he’d locked away as suicide prevention, and a jewel case holding a CD by an unknown band called Dockery Plantation. He’s too slow on the uptake to get the gun out, but he does take the CD and jump off of his balcony, where he rolls and rolls on down to the Pacific Coast Highway.  There he causes a snarl in traffic and hijacks a man’s Lotus, which he drives to his ex-wife’s house, where he talks to his ex and her live-in boy toy, Randy.  He borrows their Kia, since Randy needs the Escalade and Connie needs the Jag.  He takes off, to find out where his money has gone and why he was left with “The Blues Highway Blues,” which he has listened to on the way over.

He doesn’t know it, but the two bad guys are just a few steps behind him.  When they get to Connie’s, she’s gone and only Randy is there.  They assume that Randy is Daniel’s kid, and, when Moog goes out to get food, Rapidoso kills him gruesomely and playfully.  They decide to follow Daniel and see where he is going.

Daniel realizes that the song is sending him to find answers. There is no satisfaction at Graceland, and he realizes that the first place to look is the legendary crossroads, where Robert Johnson was supposed to have sold his soul.  This sends him to Highway 61, the Blues Highway, which connects the Mississippi Delta with the greater world of Memphis, Nashville, and Chicago.  The name of the musical group is the name of the place Charlie Patton called home.  The crossroads is close by, where Daniel gets the next installment of the song from a strange character, who just happens by and calls himself Mr. Atibon. He joins Daniel in his drive to New Orleans.  There they encounter Moog and Rapidoso, but manage to get away.  They also have a conversation about “Today music,” which turns out to be a major learning for Daniel, although he doesn’t know it yet.

Next stop: Memphis, then Nashville, and then Chicago.  Daniel has adventures on his, while the other two are trying to find him.  On the south side of Chicago, they run into each other, quite literally, while Daniel is escaping the law, which is just one step behind him after Memphis.  Together they visit Detroit and Cleveland.  The next destination is Philadelphia, where Daniel is separated from the other two and meets a former punk rocker. Then he goes to New York, where he sees a photo of the complete band Dockery Plantation, and he recognizes one of the players.  They have one more concert, in Seattle. He has to get to Seattle.

Redemption happens in Seattle, until Moog and Rapidoso show up.  Their arrival creates several fights, including one in which Moog puts down the Mexican, whom they leave there.  They return to see  the Russian in Vegas. Daniel has acquired some money to repay him, but he still wants his pound of flesh.  He has enforcers from the New Orleans motorcycle gang, who are delighted to mix it up with our guys, as they have been doing ever since the Crescent City.  Rapidoso, left for dead, comes in with Zack, whom he is looking forward to taking apart.  But Daniel has learned lessons on the road. He imparts them to all, but the only one who understands is Moog, who has had some epiphanies of his own.  The bad guys are killed.  Zack gets away.  The Feds, who have been tracking them, get to pick up the pieces, and Daniel and Moog start a beautiful relationship.  In the Blues Highway Blues lies redemption. A most surprising book.  Highly recommended. ~lss-r

__________

Library book.

High Octane Heat

Hot Seat [by] Simon Wood

[Sutton, Surrey] Crème de la Crime [2012]

978-1-78029-023-2 ; $28.95

Aidy Westlake is a racecar driver.  He’s Pit Lane magazine’s Young Driver of the Year, which has earned him a drive in the European Saloon Car Championship with Ragged Racing, one of the top racing outfits.  He is very excited.

However, his excitement lessens as he continues to get targeted for various offenses.  He discovers a mechanic from a rival team, dying from a cut throat, next to the Ragged Racing transporter, when he, awestruck by his new fame, goes over to see his name on the back of the truck.  He tries to save the young man’s life, and is picked up by the police and questioned for several hours.

Then he is picked up by the man’s brother, a former loan shark, who has not forgotten his nasty ways.  He questions Aidy relentlessy, with pain and threats against his grandfather Steve, who has a classic car restoring business, and who virtually raised Aidy since his car racing father and mother died.

Later, on his way back from a race in Europe, he is nabbed by British Customs, which plants drugs in his car.  The major officer of that outfit wants Aidy to help him investigate and bring to justice his boss, Rags Ragsdale, who is surely cheating Customs, since he seems to be operating rather lavishly on nothing more than a shoestring.

And lastly, an angry woman accuses him of smashing her car when he ran her off the road on the Motorway, even though, in the actual incident, he did not touch her car at all.

With his racing career at stake, since, if any of these threats pan out, he could lose his license and his driving career would be over, Aidy pursues his racing with a heavy heart, and his concentration not of the best, until, with his best friend Dylan and his grandfather’s help, he is able to confront the villains and pass them off to law enforcement.  High octane thrills all the way, with an especially exciting grand finale! Recommended.~ lss-r

 ___________

Library book.



A Very Funny Town in a Pickle

Some Like it Hawk [by] Donna Andrews

New York; Minotaur Books [2012]

978-1-250-00750-6; $24.99

Caerphilly, Virginia has a new claim to fame as “the Town That Mortgaged Its Jail.” First Progressive Financial (FPF) – known to the townspeople as “the Evil Lender,” has foreclosed on all of the town’s public buildings and all of the employees have evacuated, save one.  The Town Clerk, Phineas Throckmorton, has barricaded himself in the Courthouse basement, guarding the archives.

Most of the town’s inhabitants – the notable exceptions being members of the family named Pruitt (which includes the previous mayor, who absconded with town funds) – are in on the secret of the pre-Civil War tunnel that runs under the town square to the basement of the Courthouse.  This tunnel is the way Mr. Throckmorton has been provisioned for the year he has been barricaded.

The town has had a celebration of itself all summer long: performances at the bandstand, right over the tunnel, have included cloggers; a local metal band called Rancid Dread; high-heeled Morris Dancers called Molly in Chains; Irish step-dancers; a calypso band; a polka band; and a dramatic production of the history of the United States (with special emphasis on the wars) – all loud enough to cover the activity in the tunnel.  When she is not demonstrating her blacksmithing skills for the visitors, Meg Langslow is often the guard at the outer door of the tunnel.  The town artisans are demonstrating their skills and selling their wares around the square.  The local churches are feeding the visitors, and the town is trying desperately to raise enough money to replace the funds “borrowed” by ex-mayor George Pruitt.

The Evil Lender is also considering taking over the property belonging to Meg and her husband and her parents in order to build a golf course  and country club, as well as condo complexes.  Meg has finally gotten her house in order and they have built the library of their dreams – although it is currently housing the town’s public library, also foreclosed upon.

Reporters come to cover the festival and the town situation.  The current mayor invites Meg to go along with him and the reporter and her camera-man to see the abandoned Courthouse and his visit with Mr. Throckmorton. Each month he visits to convince the Town Clerk to leave his post in an effort to impress the Evil Lender’s minions, most particularly the security service, referred to by the locals as “the Flying Monkeys.”

But then shots ring out in the basement and the group runs downstairs to discover a woman sprawled on the floor, shot in the throat.  She was a Vice-President at FRF named Colleen Brown.  The only clue seems to be the murder weapon, found by one of the Flying Moneys, between the barricade built by the Evil Lender and the one built by Mr. Throckmorton.  Automatically Mr. Throckmorton is suspe4cted, but he has an alibi – sort of – they just can’t talk about it, because it will reveal the tunnel.

But something seems to be going on with the Evil Lender.  There are many more people around, including a private eye, who disappears.  Word also comes to the town that the ex-mayor is no longer in Mexico, where he had supposedly gone.  The townspeople get their very sweet revenge and the Evil Lender gets in real trouble.  And we readers are laughing our heads off through the entire tale.  If you haven’t read one of these mysteries, you are in for a treat! Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

_______

My book.





What Goes Around Comes Around

Trickster’s Point [by] William Kent Krueger

New York; ATRIA Books [2012]

978-4516-4567-5; $24.99

Cork O’Connor accompanied his boyhood friend, Jubal Little, on a bowhunt near the monolith called Trickster’s Point. There, Jubal was struck fatally by an arrow which looked suspiciously like one of Cork’s own making.  And Cork stayed with Jubal for 3 hours while he bled out and died before going for help.  Law enforcement couldn’t understand why, even though Cork explained that Jubal had asked him to remain.  Cork didn’t talk about what he and Jubal talked about.

Cork met Jubal when he was back in grade school and Jubal was the new kid in town.  Cork sometimes hung out with a sister and brother who were Ojibwe – Winona and Willie Crane.  Willie, who suffered from cerebral palsy, was an easy target for one of Aurora’s bullies, Donner Bigby.  That all changed the day Jubal arrived and beat up Donner.

Jubal was a larger-than-life kind of guy, even as a kid, and he captured the admiration of Cork O’Connor, the gratitude of Willie Crane, and the heart of Winona.  Since then, his fame grew.  He became a football player.  He married Camilla Jaeger and her family groomed him as a political candidate.  He was running for governor of Minnesota when he died.  His candidacy held within it the seeds of both health and destruction for the people of Tamarack County.  The other kids had changes in their lives, too.

Sam Winter Moon, who had been a good friend of Cork’s father, taught Winona, Jubal, and Cork how to bowhunt.  In fact, when Sam died, Cork made his arrows with the same fletching pattern as Sam’s.  Cork also went off to become a cop in Chicago and he married, too.

Henry Meloux, another friend of Cork’s family, an old shaman, saw Jubal and Winona as two halves of the same brokenness, and he encouraged them to heal each other, even encouraging their relationship after Jubal married.  Winona had had a vision that Jubal would go high upon a mountaintop, becoming an important man, and that he must do it alone, but that she was to help him to make it there.

Willie proceeded to make a brilliant name for himself as a nature photographer.  He learned to compensate for the clumsiness caused by his CP, and his pictures captured the pure essence – the soul, perhaps – of his subjects.  He and Winona created the Iron Lake Center for Native Art in Alouette, and Willie’s photos had a big place there.  Willie had also made a place for his equally awkward friend, Isaiah Broome, whom he had once saved from drowning, and then helped groom into a fine chainsaw artist.

In a later childhood incident, the bully Donner Bigby fell off the top of Trickster’s Point.  Jubal had climbed up there and looked down from the top as Cork looked up from below when Donner fell.  Cork strongly believed that Jubal had pushed him, but he never knew for sure.

An unknown man is found not far from the Point the day after the death of Jubal.  He seems to be a hunter, for he had good quality, but well-worn, equipment.  He’d been shot through the eye with an arrow similar to Cork’s.  The stranger is carrying a hunting rifle, and he looks to have been aiming it at where Cork and Jubal were when Jubal died.

How does this man fit in?  Who actually killed Jubal? Cork really wants to know, as his computers, guns and bows, and other so-called evidence is paraded from his home in the hands of cops who are his friends.  There are so many possibilities – some of them unthinkable.  Cork only knows that the reasons go back a long way into the history shared by the Cranes, Bigbys, Isaiah Broom, Cork, and Jubal.  But as he searches for answers, he is threatened by a bullet blowing through his windshield and lodging in his car seat, an arrow hitting the door of his paramour’s cabin, and a threat to him and his family if he ever mentions the name Rhiannon in public.  This is a name which appeared in his last conversation with Jubal, but he doesn’t know what it means.

Kent Krueger’s writing just gets better and better in this series which really delivers.  He gets to the centers of personalities in few words, and then just expands them into fully-realized people that you really do care about.  The lives of these characters are full and full of spiritual content.  The place they live, with its secrets and its legends, is a character in the books as well, shaping the people and their lives.  This is an awesome book.  Very highly recommended.~ lss-r

_______

My book.