Requirements: Must be happy, easy to read, thoroughly engaging, and quite clean.
In no particular order.
1) The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall. Vish Puri, owner and operator of Most Private Investigators, Ltd., knows a few things for certain: violent crime is rising in a Delhi transformed by Western influences; someone is trying to kill him; the only honest lawyer in town is being framed for murdering a servant girl who wasn’t murdered at all; and women cannot be detectives. Hall’s lush descriptions of Delhi enchant the reader; his intricate, masterful weaving of his main plot and several perfectly complementary subplots keep the reader quite happily ensconced in the deceptions and dangers of modern India. Beware the Punjabi curse words; the glossary of Punjabi words at the back is very helpful except when the word in question is an f-bomb, Punjabi-style. Enjoy that amusing syntax of the Indian characters’ English; the quirky dynamic between mother, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter in Puri’s home; and Puri’s aptly descriptive nicknames for his employees, such as “Torchlight” and “Facecream.” Possibly one of the all-around-best mysteries I’ve ever read. Five stars.
2) Roverandom by J. R. R. Tolkien. After a puppy named Rover is separated from his little boy at an English beach, an evil wizard transforms Rover into a stuffed animal! Rover travels to the moon and to the depths of the ocean searching for a good wizard to turn him back into a real dog so he can go home to his little boy. Adorable, brilliant, and short. Children’s books aren’t written like this anymore. Five stars.
3) Flabbergasted by Ray Blackston. A contemporary Christian chick-lit novel….except that it’s told from a male, Texan stock-broker’s perspective, which makes the genre’s many clichés funny all over again. Ridiculously funny. In one of the novel’s early highlights, the South Carolina church’s single’s group goes on a beach retreat. The guys, sprawled over their two-small cabin’s floor trying to sleep, get buzzed by mosquitoes. In the middle of the night, one particularly brilliant young man decides it’s a good idea to grab the insect repellant and spray it in the air at the bugs. It succeeds and the mosquitoes vanish. But the next morning, the guys awake to blue spray paint all over them, their stuff, and the rented cabin’s interior. Joy comes with the morning. Four stars.
4) Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino save the world again from Neo-Nazis who are using Atlantean artifacts to destroy the world, much like the original Nazis did with Judeo-Christian relics in Indiana Jones. Keep in mind that Pitt and Giordino pre-date Jones—they’ve been defeating evil villains who plan to use ancient artifacts to destroy the world since the 1960s, while Indy’s only been in action since 1980! A fun, fun, fun novel, my personal favorite of the series. It’s also one of the cleaner of the Dirk Pitt novels…and the one in which Giordino gets the girl! Four stars.
5) The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. Ok, so I don’t know what a “determined chin” looks like, but I do know that Tuppence, the girl who sports said chin, is one of Agatha’s most fun female sleuths. She and her partner (turned fiancé turned husband), Tommy, completely out of work in the declining British economy in 1922, decide to put an ad in the Times: two young adventurers, willing to do anything and go anywhere, provided it’s reasonable and the pay is good. You can imagine the rest. Four stars.
6) The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Precious Ramotswe is rather happy with being a “traditionally built” woman in her upper thirties, the daughter of one of the best men in Botswana, and the sensible, resourceful owner of the only private detective agency in Botswana. As a mystery novel, McCall Smith’s work is an oddity, is it is more character-driven than plot-driven. Like real-life private and police detectives, Mma Ramotswe works several diverse cases at once and sometimes none at all, allowing the main plot to be structured around the ebb and flow of a quiet life on the edge of the Kalahari desert. McCall Smith’s descriptions of Africa and its people are intoxicating in their simple beauty. The novel feels effortless in spite of its perfect characterizations and atmosphere; I often wondered about McCall Smith’s editing process and wished that I could replicate it. A delightful novel whose delightful characters will bring you back for more. I’ve read four of its sequels so far. Five stars.
7) Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. Not the greatest mystery Peters has ever written, but the highly amusing first book in a riveting saga that takes three generations of the Emerson clan from 1870s through the horrors (and antics) of World War I espionage to the 1930s. Peters’ intelligent, self-reliant, strong-willed, and yet very Victorian Amelia Peabody is one of the best female narrative voices I’ve read (better than Agatha Christie’s Anne Beddingfield); Amelia and the bellicose Radcliffe Emerson’s repartee at times rises almost to the height of that of Beatrice and Benedict. Peters’ prose is magnificent; through the course of the novel, the reader will learn a great deal about Egyptology, archeology in general, British Egypt, and Victorian society. Five stars.
8) Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan. Twelve-year-old Perseus Jackson—afflicted by ADD, dyslexia, mean bullies, a crippled best friend, and a concatenation of very strange events that make him think he’s gone mad— just wants to live an ordinary life with his adored mother, but the Fates clearly have other plans. Percy discovers he’s the son of Poseidon, the Greek sea-god, and that nearly god, demigod, or monster wants to kill him for something he didn’t do. Oh, and his very existence is a mistake, which helps a Jr. Higher’s self esteem a lot. But throughout Percy’s adventures/misadventures, he makes some great friends, learns some mean swordplay, and learns how to sacrifice his own desires to help others. Greek mythology in modern America. So much fun. And it just gets better. Four stars.
9) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling. On orphaned Harry Potter’s eleventh birthday, a huge, bumbling, and endearing man named Hagrid tells Harry his true identity: he’s a wizard! Moreover, his parents, a wizard and witch, did not die in a car accident, but were murdered by the most powerful and wicked wizard of the 20th century. Hagrid takes Harry along for a joyous, wonder-ful romp through a magical London and to the now legendary Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rowling’s first novel’s plot is basic Hero’s Journey stuff; the “mystery” Harry and his new best friends Ron and Hermione must solve is a bit elementary. But Rowling’s skilled ensconcing of important clues to events later in the series even in the first installment would make Charles Dickens proud. Also noteworthy, an Ivy League grad student just published her successful doctoral thesis…proving that Harry and Ron wouldn’t have even survived The Sorcerer’s Stone without Hermione. Tons of fun and surprisingly profound; don’t miss it. Four stars.
10) The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. Have not yet read this novel; it’s next on my own list! Turning from the Botswana he grew to know so well during regular trips to the country as an adult, McCall Smith now writes about his native Edinburgh, Scotland; its quirky inhabitants; their various amusing foibles… and occasionally violent actions against their fellow human beings.
See you at the beach!
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