I read the first 3 books in the Inspector Gamache series.

Then gave up.

This is book #15 in the series and it’s far better than the first three.

Though the book should have been shorter, the plot is superb.

Gamache has a tough time determining the murderer.

The air is unbearably tense as Armand Gamache returns to the Surete du Quebec for his first day of work since being demoted from its command to head of homicide.

Amid blistering personal social media attacks, Gamache sets out on his first assignment.

He has been tasked with finding a missing woman, but while he leads the search for Vivienne Godin, Three Pines itself is threatened when the river breaks its banks, and a province-wide emergency is declared.

Seems I’d better continue reading Penny. The more recent Gamache books.

Windigo Island is the first of Krueger’s books to look at prostitution, child prostitution, of Native Americans.

One thing I like about Krueger’s books is insight into First Nations culture. It’s mostly positive.

This book, however, was hard to read.

When the body of a teenage Ojibwe girl washes up on the shore of an island in Lake Superior, the residents of the nearby Bad Bluff reservation whisper that it was the work of a deadly mythical beast, the Windigo, or a vengeful spirit called Michi Peshu.

Such stories have been told by the Ojibwe people for generations, but they don’t explain how the girl and her friend, Mariah Arceneaux, disappeared a year ago. At the request of the Arceneaux family, private investigator Cork O’Connor takes on the case. …

williamkentkrueger.com

Last Girl Ghosted is another of the recently popular sub-genres of PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS by female authors featuring mostly female characters.

This one didn’t really work for me.

She met him through a dating app. An intriguing picture on a screen, a date at a downtown bar. What she thought might be just a quick hookup quickly became much more. She fell for him—hard. It happens sometimes, a powerful connection with a perfect stranger takes you by surprise. Could it be love?

But then, just as things were getting real, he stood her up. Then he disappeared—profiles deleted, phone disconnected. She was ghosted.

Maybe it was her fault. She shared too much, too fast. But isn’t that always what women think—that they’re the ones to blame? Soon she learns there were others. Girls who thought they were in love. Girls who later went missing. She had been looking for a connection, but now she’s looking for answers. Chasing a digital trail into his dark past—and hers—she finds herself on a dangerous hunt. And she’s not sure whether she’s the predator—or the prey.

The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) features the murder of an American heiress, taking place on Le Train Bleu. 

The plot is typically complex and interesting for Christie. Yet I found Hercule Poirot surprisingly slow in revealing the murderer.

Some say it was the author’s least favourite story.

Murder on the Orient Express (1934) is better.

Quite good.

… the typewriter itself is a problem. Paul swears it’s possessed and types by itself at night. But only Paul can hear the noise coming from downstairs; Charlotte doesn’t hear a thing. And she worries he’s going off the rails.

Paul believes the typewriter is somehow connected to the murderer he discovered nearly a year ago. The killer had made his victims type apologies to him before ending their lives. Has another sick twist of fate entwined his life with the killer—could this be the same machine?  …

linwoodbarclay.com

This book kept me going.

Fascinating plot:

• Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in dead Nordic languages
• her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed in Greenland freezes to death — apparently suicide
• at the same time, a young girl frozen in a glacier thaws out somehow alive, speaking a language no one understands
• Val is called in to see if she can communicate with the impossibly alive girl
• she has a lot of fears to overcome — what used to be called pantophobia (fear of everything)

Quite a few creatures can be frozen solid, and revive when warmed. A creature called a Tardigrade or “water bear” can be frozen to -359C.

But this is the first human.

I recommend this book.

related – Erica Ferencik – The Story Behind the Story of Girl in Ice

I’ve been working my way through the books of Peter May.

In the Enzo Files series, half-Scottish, half-Italian Enzo MacLeod lives in lives in Toulouse, working as a university professor. Then decides to solve some of the great cold case murders in French history.

Book #1 is Dry Bones. (Also published as Extraordinary People.)

Next up is The Critic, much better in my opinion. Especially if you like wine. 🍷

The body of Gil Petty, America’s most celebrated wine critic, is found strung up in a French Gaillac vineyard, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Divine Bottle and pickled in wine.

For forensic expert Enzo Macleod, the key to this unsolved murder lies in decoding Petty’s mysterious reviews, which could make or break a vineyard’s reputation. …

In the 3rd book — Backlight Blue — one of the cold case murders decides he should take out Enzo before he starts investigating the case from 19 years earlier.

Enzo is not the most likeable hero. But he certainly gets the women. 😀

In book #4 — Freeze Frame — Enzo heads for the tiny island of Ile de Groix off the coast of Brittany.

He wants to solve the cold case murder of tropical disease specialist and entomologist Adam Killian in his study.

The crime scene was left completely undisturbed for two decades as the victim said he left a clue to his murderer. Killian was dying of cancer when he was killed.

To complicate things, his sometime lover, Charlotte, arrives — with an important announcement.

During a blizzard one bitter winter night, just days before Christmas, the car belonging to the wife of a retired local judge is discovered abandoned on a rural county road in Tamarack County. After days of fruitless searching, there is little hope that she’ll be found alive, if she’s found at all.

Cork O’Connor, the ex-sheriff of Tamarack County, notices small things about the woman’s disappearance that disturb him. When the beloved pet dog of a friend is brutally killed and beheaded, he begins to see a startling pattern in these and other recent dark occurrences in the area. And after his own son is brutally attacked and nearly killed, Cork understands that someone is spinning a deadly web in Tamarack County. At its center is a murder more than twenty years old, for which an innocent man may have been convicted. Cork remembers the case only too well. He was the deputy in charge of the investigation that sent the man to prison.

williamkentkrueger.com