British Mysteries on DVD

I have recently finished two new British Mystery series on DVD. The first one is Death in Paradise (Season 1) and it stars Ben Miller (Primeval, Johnny English) as the pent-up and proper Detective Inspector Richard Poole. DI Poole has been sent from Scotland Yard to the Caribbean Island of Saint Marie to solve the murder of a fellow police officer. he encounters an island full of colorful characters and a police station manned by an equally raucous crew. Paired with DI Poole is Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey (Sara Martins). Where Poole is up-tight and a little OCD; Camille is laid back and free-spirited. Needless to say, these two but horns at almost every turn, but Camille and her mother, Catherine, take every opportunity to try to get the DI to relax. Adding to Poole's headaches are Officer Dwayne Myers (Danny John-Jules) and Fidel Best (Gary Carr). Dwayne just wants to revel in the island that he loves so much. Fidel is a about to be a new father and while quite competent, he is a little on the green side when it comes to police work, but he is more than willing to learn. This eight episode season is full of character driven stories without all the blood and gore of grittier police shows and it is peppered with enough humor to keep it light and watchable.

The second set of British mysteries I've watched recently is called Scott & Bailey (Season 1). It stars Lesley Sharp (The Full Monty, Cranford) as Detective Constable Janet Scott and Suranne Jones (Coronation Street) as Detective Constable Rachel Bailey. This show is more serious and drama driven than the other series discussed here. DC Scott is the sensible, family-oriented detective. She is kind, intelligent and a by-the-book copper. DC Bailey is a single woman with a penchant for the wrong men. She, too, is intelligent and good at her job, but she is more likely to bend the rules than her partner. These two ladies are best friends as well as partners. They may not always see eye-to-eye, but when things get hairy they have each other's backs. This series doesn't have a lot of gore either, even though the cases are more gritty and urban than Death in Paradise. This is definitely a buddy-cop show and well worth watching.

Getting Old Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

A new addition to our collection is the latest in the 'Geezer-Lit' mysteries, Nursing Homes are Murder by Mike Befeler (number six of the series).

Octogenarian sleuth Paul Jacobson is back again.  This time, he's in Hawaii and asked for help by Detective Chun, who needs someone undercover to help investigate a sexual assault at a nursing home.  Things take a turn when the assault victim becomes a murder victim.

Jacobson has to cope with short-term memory loss as well as with some of the eccentric residents of the Pacific Vista Nursing Home, including wheelchair racers and one with a taste for soap.  It's a well-paced mix of humor, danger and mystery as Jacobson tries to put a stop to a killer before the killer puts a stop to him.

Longmire - Season 2

Walt Longmire gets a heap of trouble in the second season of the popular series on the A&E Network. First of all, he is in the midst of a heated re-election campaign against one of his own deputies--namely, Branch Connelly. Second, his daughter takes off for a few weeks without letting anyone know where she's going. Turns out that after she finds out that her mother was killed by a meth addict and not from cancer like her father told her, she goes to Denver to see what the police there know about the case. Third, we learn that Deputy Victoria "Vic" Moretti left Philadelphia under a dark cloud not of her making and it seems the cloud has found her. Then all hell breaks loose! I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just say that this is a wonderful television series that runs during the summer months on A&E and is based on a series of books by Craig Johnson. There is no mistaking that this is a modern-day western--complete with horses, cowboy hats, rodeos, and cattle rustlers. I thoroughly enjoy the characters and the actors who play them. Robert Taylor, an Aussie import, does a fine job of portraying the rough, intelligent, and caring Sheriff of Absaroka County. Lou Diamond Phillips--still as handsome as ever--plays Longmire's longtime and long suffering best friend, Henry Standing Bear. The first season was more of a way to introduce the characters; the second season goes deeper into their relationships and their pasts. While the television show is not exactly like the books by Craig Johnson, I think that it captures the spirit of Johnson's characters and of the people and places in Wyoming that are so lovingly drawn in the books.  The library owns both Season 1 and 2 of the show and it may be checked out in the audio-visual department.

Cast of Longmire (A&E Network)

"If Something Happens To Me"

A recent addition to our collection is the true story of the disappearance of Susan Powell, twenty-eight year old wife and mother of two young boys, in December 2009 and the eventual murder of her two sons at the hands of her husband/their father and his suicide in February 2012.


The authors have covered the story by making use of emails that were sent by Susan to friends and family, notes left behind, the police files (which were released last year when the case was closed) and interviews with friends, neighbors and family members.


Despite the case being closed, Susan Powell is currently still missing.  A chilling tale best read with the doors locked and the lights on.

Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

It is only fitting that my last blog entry for this blog, hosted by the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library, be about a book that astounded me with it's lyrical beauty.   A friend of mine loaned me Gargoyle,  by Andrew Davidson, a few months ago and while I initially was interested in the story, I was distracted by other books and put it down.  I recently took a trip and discovered that the library has Gargoyle on CD, so I jumped at the chance to check it out and

finish it!  The story is simply stunning.  The book opens with the story of the narrator, who is visually beautiful by morally blank, as he is driving along a dark road and becomes distracted by what appears to be a group of arrows.  He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over most of his body.  He wakes in a hospital and suffers treatments until a somewhat unhinged gargoyle sculptress, Marianne Engel, appears at his bedside and insists they were lovers in medieval Germany.  She then spins the tale of their past life-intertwined with other tales of lovers--in a beautiful, twisting, tale of love and life.  He is eventually released into her care and they attempt to have a life together. The writing is beautiful and the story is intense as is the descriptions of burn victim treatments.  I believe you'll be as entranced as I was with this bookl, whether you check out the library's hardback copy or listen to the audio version.

A Cozy Library Mystery

     Author Miranda James continues her Cat in the Stacks Mysteries with the fifth book --The Silence of the Library. Charlie Harris, a kind and warm semi-retired librarian, and his large Maine Coon cat, Diesel spend their time working at the local college library as well as the public library of Athena, Mississippi. Unfortunately, Charlie always seems to get caught up in nefarious goings-on in this small Southern town. This time, Charlie is helping Teresa, the director of the public library, organize an event centered around children's detective stories for National Library Week. Fortunately for them, the centenary novelist Electra Barnes Cartwright--creator of the beloved Veronica Thane series--is a local resident. Charlie and Teresa convince Mrs. Cartwright to appear at their event. They don't realize, however, that inviting such a beloved writer to the event will bring out all manner of unstable individuals. When Carrie Taylor--a blogger and longtime fan of Mrs. Cartwright's work--agrees to bring some of her own memorabilia to be displayed in the library, she turns up dead. Why would anyone want to kill such a pleasant and innocuous woman? Could it be because she owned a rare version of the very first Veronica Thane book? Charlie is caught up in the matter, much to the chagrin of Deputy Kanesha Berry. On top of the murder, someone has broken into the hotel rooms of a couple of book collectors who have turned up for the event and Mrs. Cartwright's literary agent seems to have gone missing. Charlie and Diesel work their way through the clues and the list of suspects to give Kanesha a helping hand--whether she wants it or not! The ending will surprise many and the little twist is quite refreshing. I highly recommend this series for fans of cozy mysteries. If you would like to check out any of the other Cat in the Stacks Mysteries by Miranda James, they are:

1.  Murder Past Due
2.  Classified As Murder
3.  File M for Murder
4.  Out of Circulation
5.  The Silence of the Library

The Big Book of Baby Quilts!

The library just received a gorgeous new quilting book!  The Big Book of Baby Quilts published by The Patchwork Place contains 87 cute and cuddly baby quilt patterns with patterns, color photos and easy to follow directions.  The patterns range from easy to hard, and from traditional to abstract patterns.  The full-color photographs make creating the quilts an easy process, and the detailed directions make it easy to figure how many different fabrics you need to buy and the amount of each fabric you need.  The book includes quilts that are pieced and appliqued and many different quilting techniques are explained in the book too.  This book would be a great read for any quilter, as the quilt patterns can be used for baby quilts and/or modified to make bigger quilts.  This book is currently housed on our new nonfiction book shelves and can be checked out for a three week period. 

Take a Stroll Through the Pines

Blake Crouch has written an unnerving novel titled the Pines.  Wayward Pines, Idaho is a quintessential small town in America, or so it seems on the surface.  Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke visits the town in search of two missing federal agents but is sidelined by an auto accident when he arrives.  He wakes up at the edge of town with amnesia, a killer headache and soon realizes that this "little corner of paradise" is not what it seems.  Although the townspeople are friendly and act "normal," little cracks in their facades begin to appear.  Ethan has no ID or cell phone and is thwarted whenever he tries to contact his family or his Secret Service boss.  As Ethan continues to drag up more questions than answers, he realizes that he

may never leave this creepy town alive!  Blake Crouch was a fan of the television shows Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure and The X-Files and he wrote Pines in order to create something that made him feel the way Twin Peaks did-- a story about a small town in the middle of nowhere that is beautiful on the outside but with a pitch-black underbelly.  Blake Crouch was born in North Carolina in 1978 and earned his undergraduate degrees in English and Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published his first two novels within five years of graduation.  He has since published eight novels, many novellas and short stories and three novels cowritten with J. A. Konrath, Fully Loaded, Run,  and Stirred.  He currently lives in Durango, Colorado.

Philomena

I like to watch as many Academy Award Nominated films that I can every year, and I was just able to view Philomena, which was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Original Score and Best Adapted Screenplay in 2013.  Judi Dench and Steve Coogan star in this wonderful story about Philomena Lee, an Irish mother who conceived a child out of wedlock and unwillingly gave him up for adoption.  Almost fifty years after his birth, Philomena meets Martin

Sixsmith, a former BBC reporter looking for his next big break, With a few clues in hand, they set off on a journey to find Philomena's long lost son---a journey that takes them from the Abbey in Ireland where Philomena lived and had the baby, then to America and back again.  Based on the 2009 book by Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, the movie is a wonderful story about an unlikely friendship full of humor and warmth.  The movie is rated PG-13 and contains special features such as "A Conversation with Judi Dench," "The Real Philomena Lee," a "Q & A with Steve Coogan," and "Feature Commentary with Steve Coogan and Screenwriter Jeff Pope."  The library has The Lost Child of Philomena Lee in both book and audio format.

Last Vegas

I recently watched a really fun movie that I checked out on DVD from the library.  Last Vegas stars Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline.  Best friends since childhood, the four "older gentlemen" decide to fly to Las Vegas to celebrate Billy's (Michael Douglas') marriage to his long-time, 32-year-old girlfriend.  Billy is the group's sworn bachelor and the group promises to stop acting their ages and relive their glory days in Vegas before the big wedding.  When they arrive, they realize that the decades have changed them and Sin City and they test the boundaries of their friendship as they take Vegas by storm.  The movie is a hilarious exploration of life and what it means to grow old gracefully.  The movie is rated PG-13  and contains special features such as filmmaker commentary and stories about "The Flatbush Four."