Noshing on Dutch

Just a little midnight nibble from The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter 

(now available for pre-order).

 One thing Sherlock Holmes knows how to do is wait. But you won't have to much longer.

You don't have this one yet?

 "You don't have it yet? That is perverse! Don't tell anybody you don't own The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle!

....it's gonna be alright."

(paraphrasing Barry from High Fidelity)

Robertson Davies

"Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command.”

Review: Stone Cold Dead

 Let's just say it right off: a pretty teen-age girl is a target. It's true today in the era of
#metoo, and it was true in the early sixties, when the Ellie Stone mystery series is set. Maybe even truer when the girl has a bit of mischief in her. And nobody knows that better than Ellie herself, who, as she learns more and more about the missing girl, Darlene Hicks, sees herself in the child, realizing that there but for the grace of God she might have gone.

   But where has the girl gone? Has she run off with a boyfriend? Or has she come to some harm? Is she alive or dead? There are certainly enough suspects, from a lecherous teacher to an insanely jealous boyfriend, to her own stepfather. Elle, an investigative reporter has promised Darlene's mother to find out the truth, is plunged into danger from all sides, not to mention sabotage from her own co-workers.

     It's hard to believe that a series set in the sixties is a period piece, but Ziskin brings that era alive, with a heroine who's always a fish out of water as a "girl reporter". I can't remember how many books there are in this award-winning series (this is the 3rd) but I look forward to reading them all.