A Deeper Sleep (2007) the 15th installment in the award-winning Kate Shugak mystery series.

One of the best I’ve read, so far, though the ending is a bit disappointing.

Plot Summary

• The Acquittal: Private investigator Kate Shugak and State Trooper Jim Chopin work with the Anchorage District Attorney to convict Louis Deem for murdering his wife. 
• A History of Impunity: Deem has a long history of evading the law and has never been convicted of a crime. 
• The Verdict: Despite overwhelming belief in his guilt, the jury returns a “not guilty” verdict, setting Deem free to terrorize the local Park community.
• Fresh Blood: A few weeks later, a suspected robbery leaves two more people dead, pointing suspicion directly back to Deem. 
• High Stakes: Kate and Jim’s relentless pursuit of justice threatens to tear their relationship apart while a killer closes in on them

Alexander McCall Smith is best known for his heartwarming The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series set in Botswana, following Precious Ramotswe. 

That first book was published 1998.

Mma Ramotswe starts up her detective agency using the inheritance from her father to move to the capital city, Gaborone, to buy a house for herself and an office for her new business.

She feels a detective needs to know about people more than anything to solve problems for them. The novels are as much about the adventures and foibles of different characters as they are about solving mysteries. 

In this book, the primary over-arching plotline involves Thobiso, an eleven-year-old boy who has gone missing from his village. His father fears the boy was kidnapped by witch doctors (medicine men) to be sacrificed for ritual mutimedicine. 

Mma Ramotswe takes the case to heart. Her investigation leads her to the home of a suspicious local doctor and his wife. Near their property, she discovers a car containing a charm bag made of bone—a sign of witchcraft.

Mma Ramotswe bravely confronts the doctor’s wife, eventually tracking the boy to a secluded cattle post. She successfully rescues Thobiso and reunites him with his overjoyed family.

I enjoy listening to the audio book reader Kobna Holdbrook-Smith — but the story lines of these books are rambling. Don’t pick up this book for the plot.

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch is the fourth urban fantasy novel in the bestselling Rivers of London series.

Peter Grant is a character you have to like ➙ a Police Constable and apprentice wizard.

There is a lot of British humour in the books, as well.

The Plot: PC Peter Grant investigates a string of bizarre occurrences, including a mutilated body in Crawley, a town planner who mysteriously falls under a tube train, and a stolen magical grimoire.

The clues eventually lead Peter and his fellow apprentice, Lesley May, to go undercover at “Skygarden”—a fictional, eccentric Brutalist housing estate in Elephant and Castle. 

The Threats: Peter suspects that Robert Weil, a serial killer possibly working with the mysterious villain known as the Faceless Man, is behind the chaos.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (2026) ultimately did not win me over.

On the other hand, I got through a fantasy book. Rare for me.

The plot is interesting.

When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy, and naked in a gutter, it doesn’t take her long to recognize Kair Toren, a city she knows intimately from the pages of the famously unfinished dark fantasy series she’s been obsessively reading and re-reading while waiting years for the final novel.

Her only tools for navigating this gritty world of rival warlords, magic, and mayhem? Her encyclopedic knowledge of the plot, the setting, and the characters’ ambitions and fates. But while she quickly discovers she cannot be killed (though many will try!), the same cannot be said for the living, breathing characters she’s coming to love—a motley band that includes a former lady’s maid, a deadly assassin, various outrageous magical creatures, and a dangerously appealing soldier.

BUT too much time is wasted world building. The story too complicated.

I won’t be reading the planned sequels.

Dumb.

I’m normally disappointed that Louise Penny books aren’t better — but this was particularly bad.

GREAT PREMISE:

The story follows Alice Li, a first-generation Chinese-American former food blogger, and her mother, Vivien Li, a legendary Tiananmen Square dissident turned world-renowned human rights activist. 

When synchronized security and fire alarms go off globally, triggering worldwide panic, the cyber signal is traced back to China. Vivien and Alice are urgently summoned to the Oval Office to help the U.S. government decode China’s intentions. What follows is a high-stakes, international race against time stretching from Washington, D.C. and Ohio to Hong Kong. To stop a global catastrophe …

But the plot itself is as absurd as any international conspiracy thriller I can recall.

Dumb.

I did enjoy insights into Chinese culture and politics provided by Mellissa Fung.