Another fun mystery involving crochet. What I especially liked about this one: there was a "what happened to" section where the characters' lives were extended to the future (and, yes, the bad one went to jail and the rest lived happily ever after). As a thriller aficionado, I sure do need these "happy" mysteries every now and then!
Not only does Nesbo continue to craft ingenious plots and complicated killers, he also invents a particularly wicked means of death. The Leopold Ball does serve to remind us of the horrors inflicted on the Congolese by King Leopold of Belgium.
An especially fun read for yours truly because the murder victim is a travel writer -- but he was killed because of an illegal side-gig, not because he wrote a negative story on a destination. Whew! That, and the Delacorte family saga is kicked up a notch.
If you're headed to West Texas -- including Lubbock -- the Overton Hotel and Resort (right next to the Texas Tech campus) is a great place to stay.
Although it's the third novel in Jo Nesbo's series about Harry Hole, this is the first one translated into English. ("Did you know that every year 60 per cent of all hedge sparrows die?" Yikes!)
A stand-alone novel about a "fixer" in Oslo, Norway. And, yes, "fixing" means targeting killing upon demand. (Who knew that "snow sucked up the blood as it fell, drawing it in under the surface, hiding it, as if it had some sort of use for it." Shiver!)
More knitting fun (this time with looms -- which help Casey tackle the killer. It's always fun to have a murder victim who deserves killing.
Another yarn retreat mystery. Interesting how the author manages to have a murder victim who's not sympathetic yet has ties to recurring characters in the series. Besides, descriptions of the Monterey Peninsula do indeed make me want to visit that part of California.
Such fun! Murder and intrigue in a (fictional) small town on California's Monterrey Peninsula. Convenient that one of the amateur sleuth's love-interests is a cop, but this isn't a psychological thriller like the Scandinavian authors write.
And, we're off again! Giving Molly a detective kit was a stroke of genius. It'll no doubt turn up in subsequent books in this crochet-mad series.
Yeah, I'm "hooked" on this series. A new method of homicide this time: carbon monoxide poisoning. But it seems as though Sheila is conquering her anxiety attacks and Adele is actually getting married. It's sorta like a soap opera.
Comfortable elegance -- not an oxymoron when you're ensconced in your Carleton Varney-designed room in the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. The only sounds out your window? Horses' hooves and birdsong. Here's a review of my step back in time.
Shanghai, with a population of 25 million, is a rather frenetic place. This luxury hotel is set in a quiet neighborhood of techie companies, but you can get anywhere in the city via the Metro. Here's my review of the Renaissance Shanghai Caohejing Hotel, a Marriott property in China.
Another "fun" murder mystery set in the San Fernando Valley of LA. This series just might make me take up my crochet hook again.
This is the third Harry Hole thriller. I've been to Oslo, but I really want to go back to checkout the topography of his mysteries. That ski jump sure holds a central pivot in his mental map of the Norwegian capital.
A word to the wise: read the Harry Hole series in chronological order. It's not that the author neglects to bring anachronistic readers up to date, it's that the plot suffers when there are so many "aha! that's where that came from" moments. In this tale, Hole once again has to dig himself out of the "hole" he created with his binge drinking. (Why do heroes always have such flaws? Makes them more interesting, perhaps?)
