THE GHOST AND THE FEMME FATALE
Alice Kimberly
Book 4 of the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries. Read on the recommendation of
Michelle (will lend it to you next time we meet). First read of 2009(!).
Widow
Pen McClure's bookshop is haunted by the ghost of Private Investigator
Jack Shepard, who was murdered there more than half a century ago.
Together they investigate and solve crimes in a small town in Rhode
Island, as in this installment when guests of the town's Film Noir
Festival get killed off one by one.
This was an easy read, like
reading a young adult or a romance novel, but I found it just okay. I
probably would have appreciated it more had I started from Book 1
(sadly, books in the series are unavailable at BookMooch and difficult
to chance upon at BookSale). I like the chemistry between main
characters Pen and Jack, and the dream travel back to Jack's world of
1940's Manhattan. However, the mystery is just your average
run-of-the-mill mystery in which the clue that ties all clues together
is revealed only at the end so the reader can't really guess whodunit
(unless she's paranoid and suspects everyone).
I wouldn't mind reading more from this series, but I'm not exactly scrambling to get my hands on them ASAP.
Rating:
THE HISTORIAN
Elizabeth Kostova
“The Historian” begins with a young girl who discovers a book and
several letters hidden in her father’s library, and inadvertently
triggers a journey into the past and the continuation of the
centuries-old search for Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula.
Although
the novel has lost some of its intensity for me on the second reading, I
am still struck by how well Elizabeth Kostova has created an atmosphere
of suspense laced with danger. She makes you want to look behind your
back, and the unlit corners of your room and the dark alleys on the
streets too, to see if anyone is watching. She paints vivid descriptions
of the places she takes you to, as well – exotic Istanbul, the
forbidding mountains of Romania…
I also like how Kostova portrays
vampires as terrible creatures, and their victims suspended between
life and death; not the glamorous creatures popularized by Anne Rice and
the like. The movement away from the Dracula of pop culture – with his
slicked-back hair, black cape with high collar, fangs dripping with
blood – is also refreshing.
We in the present, who are fascinated
with history because our experience of it is vicarious, only read about
in books and seen on film, are reminded that what we now consider
history was once real for the people who lived it. And Kostova shows us
how it feels when history comes alive, as her characters experience
firsthand.
Ultimately, however, I feel that this is a story about
loss. The narrator loses her mother as a young child; Paul, the
narrator’s father, loses his mentor and friend; Professor Rossi loses
someone dear to him, and even loses the memory of that loss. Kostova
lets each character reclaim what has been lost, but only briefly. So
which is more painful, the first loss or the second?
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” – Pablo Neruda
Rating:
Book 4 of the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries. Read on the recommendation of
Michelle (will lend it to you next time we meet). First read of 2009(!).
