Review of The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

 

Constance Haverhill is a wonderful main character—intelligent, loving, giving, perceptive, ambitious, gracious, and funny in turn. She has spent the First World War running her family’s farm in the absence of her brother. Out of a job when he comes home safely, she has taken a temporary position as a companion to an elderly family friend who is convalescing at an English seaside hotel after a bout with the Spanish flu. Her future seems to be as a governess or a bookkeeper—both bleak and not prime avenues to marriage. 

 Then she meets Poppy, a woman from the monied class, who had carried dispatches on a motorcycle during the war. She has marshalled a group of local single women who were also riders and formed a taxi service to carry people around the town in the sidecars of their cycles. Poppy’s brother, a fighter pilot, has returned from the front without a leg and is having major PTSD issues.

There you have it. A historical event populated by young marriageable women of all classes who have done work in formerly male occupations during a war and are now seeing their hard-won freedoms being ripped away.  Poppy launches another plan for her incapacitated brother to teach women to fly, and there you have the full and catchy title.  

Various characters are there to display the disparity between the British upper and lower classes. The contrast is eloquently covered. The women, whether spunky or pompous, are hard to see as motorcycle demons and potential pilots but they carry the story through multiple twists, and romances. Everything builds to an exciting climax in the air and on the matrimony field. The whole ambiance seems spot on. The richness and endearing qualities of her characters and the luscious beauty of her descriptions of the seaside and the countryside will capture you, I’m sure. 

I will close with a few of the sentences I marked to illustrate Simonson’s prose chops.  

An image--“Percival turned an alarming shade of purple, strangled somewhere between his scorn and his public politeness.”

A smell-- “Ah, next to fresh-baked bread, there’s nothing better than the smell of petrol in the morning.”

A view on marriage before and after the war--“One had to dance with a lot of frogs to find the rare prince. But now the tide has really gone out.”

A view on life in general as noted by our heroine--“To live for today, one must be reasonably financially assured of tomorrow.”

I give this book a fine 4.5 out of 5. Truly enjoyable read.

Review of Michael Connelly's THE WAITING

 

Michael Connelly’s 2024 Ballard and Bosch novel is titled THE WAITING. I’m still waiting for a somewhat better book. The jacket keeps trumpeting that this is “his best ever,” but I think it needed another trip to the editor. 

Renee Ballard was introduced to keep this long-running series from going belly up after the retirement of Harry Bosch. She is now the head of a Los Angeles cold case unit, and her team is working on a long-dormant case dubbed the “Pillowcase Murders.” Before we can get a real handle on that one, Renee’s gun and badge are stolen while she is surfing. Feeling her career would be over if she reports this embarrassing theft, she sets out to find the perp without telling her superiors. When that search starts looking like more than simple larceny, she goes to old friend Harry Bosch and ultimately the FBI as the simple case explodes into potential terrorist violence leaving both Harry and Renee exposed to both danger and political blowback.

Ballard then convinces her Captain to allow Harry Bosch’s daughter to join her cold case team. Maddie Bosch conveniently wants to be a detective but is now only a young patrolwoman. She also shows an ulterior motive when she uses the cold case files to solve the long-standing real-life “Black Dalhia” murders case. High-level political chicanery, unfortunately, keeps the current DA from pursuing her ideas. 

More twists and turns arrive with Ballard, once again not following strict police procedure as she goes on her own to nail the “Pillowcase” murder suspect.  At the end, all the plots seem a bit too strained, particularly the bit about the safety of Ballard’s mother in the huge fires on Maui. The connection here seemed more of a tease for the next book. 

The taut police lingo and suspenseful chapter closings are still there, but this is not top-form Connelly.

I give it a 3 out of 5.

New Book Read--Death at the White Hart

 

Chris Chibnall has made a name for himself as the creator of the long-running murder mystery Broadchurch on TV.  Death at the White Hart appears to be his first detective novel. We are again in a small coastal British town that seems more outwardly normal than it is. Our main sleuth Nicola Bridge grew up there and has returned from a good career in Liverpool to make a better family life. Of course, the outward calm of the town turns out to be false, and shortly after her arrival, Nicola and her young assistant are faced with a macabre murder. The victim is displayed on a backcountry road, sitting in a chair with antlers glued to his head. The backstory is fueled by competition between the town’s two pubs, and your guess as to the real murderer is as good as mine. A pleasant read that introduces a fine detective duo that could produce another long-running series.

4 out of 5  

 

Book Review of Winds From Further West by Andrew McCall Smith

 

The Winds from Further West

I have just finished Alexander McCall Smith’s latest standalone novel.  It’s called The Winds from Further West. Neil, the main character, is a medical researcher, a doctor, and a professor. His job is placed in jeopardy when he is accused of a politically incorrect statement by a student. His good friend James, a gay man, pushes him to stand up and fight, but Neil resists making a scene and ultimately resigns his position and moves west from Edinburgh to the isolated Scottish island of Mull. There, among people who live off the sea and the land, he begins to ponder a new life.  

 I cannot stop thinking that the title pushes us further west than the Hebrides. Those winds may be coming from all the way across the ocean. Neil’s predicament mirrors any number of experienced professionals who have been caught up in Trump’s meatgrinder. Down with diversity, equity, and inclusion and up with moving the disagreeables to holding pens before deportation.

Neil learns quickly from his superiors that the new world of schooling says, “We are not here to educate young people. We are here to participate in the process of discovery that the students themselves will initiate and control.” Neil wants neither to be baited into a phony apology for his non-existent sin, nor to mount a spirited personal defense. He senses that this kind of egalitarianism might work with morality or aesthetics, but for the basic laws of science, reasonable certainty ought to win the field. With no room left for tolerance of those who refuse to buckle under, he heads for a slower-paced contemplative tune-up.     

Our hero is thoughtful and likable, while Henrietta, his administrative boss, is mealy-mouthed and vile. But never fear. As we start to sort things out, our author Smith returns to his time-tested philosophy. You can get lost things back with a little love. You can accept that people can be flawed, but not necessarily wicked.  You can be confident that ruthless academic administrators and business tycoons are not the total wave of the future? Ultimately, extremes are short-lived and “temporary” in the vast scheme of things. Life, as always, is riddled with compromises that may need courage to address. if you can just commit yourself to doing “small acts of kindness” now and again, everything will be easier for you and others.

McCall Smith writes with such humor, love of nature, and gentle insight that you can easily forget that his work is underpinned by an impressive depth. I still find his African books his best, but this contemporary foray is well worth picking up.  

4.5 out of 5

 

Theatre Review--PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES

 

 

 What can you say when a theatre production melds with the audience perfectly? This afternoon’s viewing of PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES at the Amana Colony’s Fine Arts Center reminded me of how much I love live theatre and how much I admire a director and a group of actors who can captivate a full house of appreciative viewers on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

If you look at the set picture above, you can see what we saw upon entering the house. The show is unabashedly down-home country and the scene design is full of memory-jogging properties from a time now gone. There are no apologies offered for singing songs about  grease monkeys and waitresses who inhabit the Double Cup diner. As a matter of fact, a good share of the audience may have had a cup of coffee at a similar business in their own hometown this morning.

Repartee from the audience was encouraged and responded to by the supple cast members.  From the leads to the drummer, they all came through as the kind of good, hard-working, fun-loving, droll, and sassy men and women who served the nation’s highways before small towns were bypassed by the interstates. All of this went a long way toward building a fully satisfying texture for this actor and audience-centered production.

I also admired the choice to hew to the first off-Broadway performance and use standing and handheld mikes rather than individual glued-in-place lavaliers. This helped set the period as well as keeping the lyrics crystal clear and the instrumentation under good control. There was not need to add glitzy modern pulsating high-colored lighting effects. The ungelled instruments kept the production palette as subdued and real as the set, props, and costumes.  

Superior vocals were provided by Layton White and Deb Kennedy while Jeff Roush’s folksy patter and multiple guitar changes held everything together.  Tim Fees’ voice didn’t have the range of some others, but when he showed his skill with the harmonica and accordion as well as the keyboard, I was sold on his understated personality as the somewhat shy and unassuming guy who must always have been a part of the workers at any truck stop. it seemed to reinforce the sense that you didn’t need two tons of computer equipment, flashy tech effects, and gaudy costumes to set the perfect intimate tone for this show.

The topper came when the cast, in true community theatre tradition, trooped out to the lobby after the curtain call to mingle with the audience.  This was theatre as it was meant to be—full of heart, appealing to all ages, expertly designed, and performed with gusto. I will be in the audience for the group's next performance of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple in late September.   

                                                          Y’all Come Now!!

Short review of Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva

 

 Silva, Daniel Portrait of a Spy

This is an early Silva from 2001. It’s a paperback and can be found in the 3^rd floor Grand Living library. Gabriel Allon, master Israeli spy, is trying to concentrate on his art restoration skills when bombings in major European cities threaten the Western alliances and the Arab world. After a close call in London’s Covent Garden, he comes up with a master plan that unites the intelligence services of the Brits, Israelis, and Americans. It involves recruiting a Middle Eastern woman whose father was assassinated by Allon when the woman was a young girl, but who may be able to approach the evil mastermind behind the bombs. There are several levels of deception in several different countries. It is fast moving and gripping right up to the violent ending.  

Book review Cristina Dodd THUS WITH A KISS I DIE

 

Romeo and Juliet do not die in the tomb. Friar Lawrence wakes them up and they live a lovely life in “Fair Verona” where they spawn a passel of kids. The oldest one, named Rosilind or Rosie, has a love affair going with a handsome young swain named Lysander. On Midsummer’s Eve,of course, Rosie’s affair with Lysander is truncated by Prince Escalus, who has taken advantage of the darkness to impersonate Lysander.  Rosie must now marry him as her virginity has been compromised. At a celebratory dinner in the Prince’s palace, she starts hearing voices. She escapes to the top of a tower, where she runs into, of all things, the Prince’s father’s ghost. The ghost tells her he will get her Lysander back, but only if she can find out who murdered him. We are now dealing with way too much Ham; let for me. The genre is dreadful corn and it deserves to be left on the shelf while waiting for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to arrive.    

.5 out of 5