May Reads

It was great to be able to return to my old, trashy reading habits in May. I'd been a busy moocher the first few months of this year, but most of the books were sent to my parents house because the moochees did not wish to ship internationally. (Don't even get me started on this. I understand it can be costly and that's fine, but I think if you're not willing to send internationally, your mooching should be restricted to your own country.)

I'm not sure I could rank these four books, since they were all enjoyable and interesting reads. Plus, since three of the four were Laura Lippman books, they'd all end up tied for first place anyway. So, in alphabetical order, May Reads included:

Baltimore Blues - Laura Lippman - The first book in the Tess Monaghan series sees an underemployed, borderline slacker Tess accepting her first unofficial PI job - following a friend's fiancee to see if she is cheating. The book quickly develops into a multi-layered mystery after the fiancee's boss is murdered and the friend is arrested and charged with the murder. A good book, perhaps understandably not as well-written as subsequent books in the series, but still a good, solid mystery.

By a Spider's Thread - Laura Lippman - In the eighth book in the series, Tess is working on tracking down the missing family of a wealthy Orthodox Jewish businessman. A subtle and well-written page-turner. If pressed, I'd have rated it the best book I read this month.

In a Strange City - Laura Lippman - The sixth book, I found this to be one of the weakest in the series (though not the weakest, a dubious distinction I reserve for In Big Trouble). A complicated and juddering plot revolves around Edgar Allen Poe and a murder at his grave.

Obsession - Jonathan Kellerman - The twenty-first book in the Alex Delaware series finds everyone's favourite shrink/police consultant attempting to verify and then solve the mystery surrounding the garbled death-bed confession of a former patient's adoptive mother. My dad finds Kellerman annoying because of his habit of outlining Delaware's driving routes. (I hopped on the 207, but finding it impossibly snarled with traffic, I diverted to the weirdly named surface streets in Topanga canyon. Only a poorly imagined example.) I don't mind that. I find these books sort of the equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese - not as good as homemade, but a passable and moderately palatable substitute when nothing else is available.