Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Catching up on My Reading

Everything That's Yours is Mine by Sandra Scoppetone
I thought this was a great story by Scoppetone (I have read the first of her fifties detective series). This is a story about a PI in New York, who is also a lesbian, who is hired to investigate a rape. The twist is her client is killed fairly quickly after she meets her, so she is left to figure out whether the rape and murder are connected and if any of the victim's family members are telling the truth. The other interesting piece is that this story, while written as a contemporary is not a bit of a historical since it takes place in the early nineties when the internet was mostly a bunch of bulletin boards and since the main character had resisted the computer age, there are bits as she learns about computers and modems that are a trip back to when computers all had green screens and people didn't carry cell phones. The story is great, and the characters, and their relationships, are well written.
Grade: B

Pleasure For Pleasure by Eloisa James
Fourth of the Essex sisters series, and highly enjoyable. The series can be read out of order, but there are a few references to how the elder sisters met, and to some prior insults that the heroine (who believes erroneously that she is fat) had received, but they are explained well enough. Eloisa James has restored my faith in historicals, which I had mostly given up after reading characters roll their eyes and say, "Whatever" while wearing a corset. As with many of James' stories, the characters get married due to circumstances and then have to come to the various realizations that allow them to confess and/or realize their feelings. This is not to say that the story was formulaic, but perhaps follows a familiar pattern.
Grade: B