The Anatomist's Secret: A Mystery Dealing With 19th Century Medicine

It wasn't too long ago that I posted my review of The Spiritualist by Noah Alexander, a mystery novelette in the Maya series taking place in British India. You can find that review here.  Now here I am reviewing The Anatomist's Secret, another mystery in which Maya is the detective.  I normally don't read two books in the same series so close together because for me there's the risk of being less engaged by a book that is too similar to one that I'd read recently. I like variety.  I brought this danger up in the context of my discussion about reading WWII novels in another August review.  

By the way, I have posted a record number of reviews this month.   I haven't posted eight reviews in one month in the entire history of this blog.  I hope that my readers don't expect me to maintain this level of frequency. That's unlikely to happen.

The reason why I felt I had to review this book now is because I'm reviewing it for Story Origin. I should have considered that this would pose difficulties for me before I accepted the author's invitation to obtain a review copy through Story Origin. I discovered some time ago that Story Origin has a time limit, and I have commitments in September that would prevent me from shoehorning very many books into my schedule during that month.  So it had to be in August.  Well then,  I'd better get back to my review of The Anatomist's Secret.  

 

                                                       

 

This is a book with a complex plot, surprises and a great deal of suspense.  I thought that the plot aspect of this mystery was very well handled.   I also learned a great deal about how those studying human anatomy obtained cadavers (dead bodies) during the 19th century. On the other hand, I did have some problems with The Anatomist's Secret.

Maya remains concerned that Henry Camleman, her employer at the Bombay Detective Agency, won't allow her to be a detective.  She's actually the administrative assistant.  So she avoids the problem by making sure that the client in this case doesn't get an opportunity to speak to Mr. Camleman.   This is a clever tactic, but I hope it doesn't get repeated in the next book.  I think it could be a breach of professional ethics to do this type of end run around your boss.  Surely there has to be a point where Henry Camleman comes to accept Maya as a detective.

There's another thing that I'd rather not see in a book that appeared in this one.  I debated including a trigger warning, but I doubt it's the sort of thing that would actually trigger someone. It's just repugnant.  A trigger warning is always a spoiler, and I try not to have what I'd consider to be major spoilers in my reviews. Let's just say that this book earned an "ugh" rating for disgusting content.

I generally don't mention errors when they are typos, but there's something about vocabulary misuse that really stands out for me.  This means that the word doesn't mean what the author intends.  There are three incidents of vocabulary misuse. Two of them are a misuse of "mirth".  Since it occurred twice in a similar context,  I'm wondering if this is a common means of avoiding an expletive among those who speak British English.  In American English the common euphemism for that expletive would be "sugar".  I couldn't find "mirth" as a euphemism when I ran a search.

If it occurs to you that I'm being hypercritical in these comments, I want you to know that this isn't my intention.  I always love books that give me research opportunities.  I had one while reading The Anatomist's Secret when Maya mentions being interested in bicycles.  That sent me to the Wikipedia article on the history of bicycles. Maya comments that bicycles were dangerous, and they really were at that time.  According to that Wikipedia article, African American inventor Isaac R. Johnson re-designed the bicycle to be safer and more comfortable in 1889.  Johnson's version is still in use today. If you would like to know more about Isaac R. Johnson, and his bicycle re-design see this article. 

I'd give this book a grade of B+.  It's a pretty good mystery with some very interesting historical material.

                                              

 

 

 

Fowl Murder: A Mystery in Contemporary Kenya

 I had reviewed Grevy Danger, a novella by Victoria Tait, on Goodreads. It's only available to subscribers of Victoria Tait's newsletter.  I very much liked the Kenya setting, and protagonist Rose Hardie's involvement with animals.  Rose is a veterinary paraprofessional, and strongly believes in the conservation of threatened wild species.  In Grevy Danger, this theme is very much front and center because the plot opens with a census of a rare type of zebra.   I was sure I would be interested in other books in this series.  So I applied for an advance reader copy of Tusk Justice, the upcoming second novel dealing with Rose Hardie's investigations in Kenya.  Victoria Tait wanted me to have read the first novel,  Fowl Murder, which I had purchased, but hadn't yet read due to my review commitments.  I told her that I would read Fowl Murder before Tusk Justice, and that's exactly what I did. 

 

                                       

                

The case in Fowl Murder seemed tied to another one in which Rose herself was accused of having shot a poacher forty years ago.  That earlier case and the way she feels about it illuminates Rose's character.   Rose's understanding of that poacher shooting changes over the course of the narrative, and that process transformed the way I viewed Rose as well.  This book represented a pivotal point in the protagonist's character development.  I can now see why Victoria Tait thought I needed to read it before Tusk Justice. 

Another character who grew in my estimation as I read this book was Aisha Onyango, a dear friend of Rose, and an attorney who had defended Rose in the poacher shooting case.  Aisha was the murder victim in Fowl Murder.  Through the investigation of Aisha's death, Rose comes to realize who her friend had been and her dedication to justice.

I also learned about Kenya's history through reading this book.  I had heard about the Mau Mau Revolt, but I knew nothing about it.  There was a mention in  Fowl Murder of the reparations issued by the UK to Kenyans who had been tortured by the British authorities during this revolt.  I was interested in how the reparations had come about.  So I located an article on the subject in the UK Guardian newspaper here .  Readers who want to know more can read it. 

Although I found the resolution of the murder case predictable, I was impressed by certain characters, their relationships and Victoria Tait's portrayal of Kenyan culture. So I look forward to continuing with this series by reading Tusk Justice.

 

                                                   

                                 

Notes of Love and War: Female Music Critic Discovers Spies During WWII

After reading Becoming Lady Washington by Betty Bolté and reviewing it favorably on this blog here,  I was inclined to accept a gift copy of her current novel, Notes of Love and War from publicist Wiley Saichek via Amazon.  I don't want to be deluged with WWII novels.  I know WWII is the most popular period for historical fiction, but reading about similar events repeatedly blunts the impact of a book.  So I look for WWII novels with aspects that are unusual, or which are of particular interest to me.  In the case of Notes of Love and War, it was the music aspect.  I  am fascinated by books centering on musicians or people who are part of the music world like Audrey Harper who was a music critic for a Baltimore newspaper during WWII. Both Audrey and the newspaper were fictional which gives historical fiction authors more freedom than when they are dealing with real historical personages.  I wanted to see what happens when Betty Bolté has that freedom.

                                                             

I was glad to see the feminist aspect of this book.  During WWII many women were allowed to take jobs for which they normally wouldn't even be considered because the men who had filled those positions were fighting against Nazi Germany or Fascist Japan.  Some of these women didn't consider these jobs as temporary.  They expected to continue working after the war.  Audrey was one of them.  As far as she was concerned, she was "the real music critic".  She had a college degree that qualified her, and connections in the local music world.   Audrey was continually trying to convince her editor that she belonged in her job. I think that the means she used to discover a Nazi spy plot proved her knowledge of music.  I was rooting for Audrey the entire time that I was reading Notes of Love and War.

The romance aspect involved internal conflict for Audrey.  She knew she loved him, but he was assuming that she wanted to be a housewife.  Since Bolté  made it obvious to readers that she wanted to continue working in her profession, I didn't want to see her give it up.  For me, finding out whether Audrey's romance would work out well for her was as suspenseful as the espionage.

I was interested to learn from the Author's Note that the spying incident was loosely based on an actual event.   I think I found it online, but I don't want to link to it because the commonalities between what happened in history and what happened in the novel would be spoilers.  Bolté created fictional spies and developed a fictional plan for them.  I want readers to discover for themselves how Audrey sought to stop them and how it all resolved.

Notes of Love and War was a well-written historical novel that I would recommend to those who want to see a feminist perspective on a woman's life showing the balancing act  of career, family and marriage during WWII in addition to an exciting spy plot.

                                             

                              

 

 

 

 

 

                             

 

Puerto Rico's Problems Starkly Shown in #4 of a Feminist Vigilante Series

Side Chick Nation is the second book I've read by Puerto Rican author Aya de León.  I read Uptown Thief  last month.  I loved protagonist Marisol Rivera and her  band of female vigilantes.  I knew I wanted to read another book in the series, and the one that called to me was Side Chick Nation.  It's the first novel taking place during Hurricane Maria and its aftermath.  I thought it would be powerful and authentic, and I was absolutely right.

The books in Aya de León's Justice Hustler series are categorized in different ways.  Her publisher says they are romantic suspense.  De León  calls them feminist heist novels.  I would place them in  the feminist vigilante category which is broader and shows their commonality with other books I've been reading lately like Sinister Sisterhood which I reviewed on Flying High Reviews  here .  

                               

 The portrait of Puerto Rico provided in Side Chick Nation makes me feel that this particular book in the Justice Hustler series should be called contemporary fiction rather than romance.  Romance is a major element in the book, but the Puerto Rico content defined the book for me and lent it significance.  

This is not to say that a romance novel can't be significant.  Some romance novels have dealt with important issues.  In fact, Side Chick Nation does engage with how women in the sex industry are viewed which is probably a major focus in the entire Justice Hustler series since the protagonists have had various degrees of involvement in the sex industry.  It also addresses the issue of how women who aren't in primary relationships are exploited.   These women are referred to as "side chicks".

Yet what is unique to this novel is the way the personal becomes political with regard to Puerto Rico.  It expands the definition of "side chick" to make it a metaphor for the relationship of Puerto Rico to the United States.  Statehood would place Puerto Rico in a primary relationship, but Puerto Rico is a territory.  As a territory, the United States should protect Puerto Rico from exploitation, but instead a particular U.S. law has facilitated exploitation of Puerto Rico. I wasn't aware of this law until I read Side Chick Nation.  

The Jones Act of 1920 signed into law by Woodrow Wilson mandates that anything transported to U.S. ports, which includes Puerto Rico, must be shipped on vessels made in the U.S. which are owned and operated by U.S. citizens.  This has kept Puerto Ricans poor and debt ridden because they can't get cheap goods, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the Jones Act prevented other countries from shipping them aid.  (When it came to aid from neighboring Cuba, there was also the problem of the U.S. Cuba embargo.) I found out from Wikipedia here   that John McCain and fellow Republican Mike Lee tried to repeal the Jones Act with their Open America's Waters Act that never passed for a variety of reasons mentioned in the Wikipedia article.  After reading about it, I would agree with those who think that Puerto Rico should be permanently exempt from the Jones Act.

Climate change caused Hurricane Maria along with other major disasters that the U.S. has faced.  This issue is only briefly addressed in Side Chick Nation, but it's made clear that it's an urgent one for Puerto Rico just as it is for the entire world.

Getting back to the romance, I would like to discuss the central character and her relationships.

 Protagonist Dulce Garcia had managed to get herself away from an abusive pimp, but she'd been in the sex industry so long that she didn't know how to have a relationship with a man that wasn't transactional.  This becomes problematic when she meets a man who genuinely cares about her.  My only problem with Uptown Thief  was the romance which I felt wasn't viable.  This relationship was moving.  The man she met ended up nourishing her self-esteem and gave her a sense of purpose. He was a wonderful character.

Marisol Rivera, and a few of the other women who engaged in vigilante justice in Uptown Thief , did play a role in Side Chick Nation.  There was a heist, and it was one of the many highlights in this book.

I intend to give Side Chick Nation five stars when I post a review on Goodreads.  In my book journal where I use school grades, I gave the novel A for amazing!

 

                                

 

The Spiritualist: A Test Case For A Female PI In British India

In 1878 Maya is an administrative assistant at the Bombay Detective Agency who has been focused on her ambition to become a detective, and now she thinks she's finally got her chance.  I got my opportunity to receive a review copy  of The Spiritualist by Noah Alexander from Story Origin after the author approved me.  I posted my last review for Story Origin a year ago. It was a review of a highly unusual epic fantasy called The Sands of Eppla by Janeal Falor.  You can find it here.  My review of this prequel to a historical mystery series is below.

 

                              

Readers may not realize this, but Maya was somewhat ahead of the curve  in her administrative assistant position.  In the 1870's administrative assistants/secretaries were usually men. So Maya's boss, Henry Camleman, probably felt he was being avant-garde in hiring a woman to perform secretarial tasks.  Being asked to imagine that a woman could be a detective was probably beyond his capacity.

I thought there were a couple of shout outs to other fictional female detectives in The Spiritualist.  Like Sara Gran's mystery protagonist, Claire DeWitt, Maya relies on a handbook.  It's also mentioned that Maya's roommate is named Maisie.  This could be a reference to Jacqueline Winspear's detective, Maisie Dobbs.  

As her first case, Maya is asked to help Camleman win a bet.  His friend, Mortemius Chinew, a paranormal researcher, had a longstanding bet with Camleman, that he could prove the existence of spirits.  Camleman had bet that Chinew couldn't prove that.   Chinew claimed that there was a spirit at his new home.   Camleman sent Maya. Maya shows herself to be an intelligent and determined investigator.

I'm not sure about the order of the books in Noah Alexander's Maya Mysteries following this prequel which is called Book 1. To add to the confusion,  The Murderer of Cardim and The Anatomist's Secret are also both labeled Book 1.    Maya herself might look for clues in the description of each book that would clarify the issue, but I would just read the one I preferred.  You really can't go wrong.  Any novel in which Maya is the protagonist is sure to be worth reading.

                                     

 

                                

                    

 

 

 

The Day Lincoln Lost: Blog Tour and Review For An Alternate History Novel

                      

THE DAY LINCOLN LOST

An inventive historical thriller that re-imagines the tumultuous presidential election of 1860, capturing the people desperately trying to hold the nation together—and those trying to crack it apart.

Abby Kelley Foster arrived in Springfield, Illinois, with the fate of the nation on her mind. Her fame as an abolitionist speaker had spread west and she knew that her first speech in the city would make headlines. One of the residents reading those headlines would be none other than the likely next president of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln, lawyer and presidential candidate, knew his chances of winning were good. All he had to do was stay above the fray of the slavery debate and appear the voice of reason until the people cast their votes. The last thing he needed was a fiery abolitionist appearing in town. When her speech sparks violence, leading to her arrest and a high-profile trial, he suspects that his political rivals have conspired against him.

President James Buchanan is one such rival. As his term ends and his political power crumbles, he gathers his advisers at the White House to make one last move that might derail Lincoln’s campaign, steal the election and throw America into chaos.

A fascinating historical novel and fast-paced political thriller of a nation on the cusp of civil war, The Day Lincoln Lost offers an unexpected window into one of the most consequential elections in our country’s history. 

 Goodreads description

                                         

              

                                          

MY REVIEW

I received a review copy of The Day Lincoln Lost from the publisher via Net Galley when I signed up for this blog tour.  The Day Lincoln Lost is the second alternate history I've read by Charles Rosenberg.  The first was The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington which I reviewed here .  Both books have titles which set up expectations of truly terrible events that happened in their respective alternate timelines.  I feel that The Day Lincoln Lost didn't depart as much from established history as Rosenberg's earlier book. Yet it's still definitely alternate history.  As an aficionado of alternate history, I was delighted to find another example of the genre that is well-researched and plausible.

Another aspect of this novel that I really liked  is the strong female characters.  My favorite was the real Quaker abolitionist speaker Abby Kelley Foster. See her Wikipedia article for some information about her actual life at Abby Kelley .  Below is a public access image of Abby Kelley Foster from that Wikipedia article.

                             

The  forthrightness and alternative lifestyle of this Quaker woman activist as portrayed in The Day Lincoln Lost, reminded me of the 18th century Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay who pioneered the tactics of radical abolitionists in colonial America.  See my review of Marcus Rediker's biography, The Fearless Benjamin Lay here.  If Benjamin Lay could have time traveled to the 19th century, he probably would have considered Abby Kelley Foster a kindred spirit.

My readers will want to know about the characterization of Abraham Lincoln in Rosenberg's book.  You should know that I'm not a huge fan of Lincoln.  It seems to me that he was a pragmatic politician, and that he didn't intend to be the President who emancipated the slaves.  See my review of the alternate history novel The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln here .  I think that Charles Rosenberg shows us a Lincoln who could be pragmatic, but he also cared about justice and about the United States of America remaining intact.  In this novel, Lincoln was a complex figure who was neither a saint nor a cynic, but somewhere in between.

A nuanced protagonist like this Lincoln is what makes The Day That Lincoln Lost an intriguing book.  I recommend it to other readers who enjoy wandering into the rabbit holes of what if in alternate history.  I also found it quite relevant to be immersed in reading about a crucial turning point for democracy in America while living through another  such crisis.

 

                                 Charles Rosenberg 

                                Photo by Deborah Geffner

 

     

                                               

                            

Song For A Lost Kingdom #3: The Last Book of a Time Travel, Music and Jacobites Science Fantasy Trilogy

I have reviewed the first two books in the Song For A Lost Kingdom (SFLK)  trilogy by Canadian author Steve Moretti.  The first novel's review is posted here and the second novel's review is  here. I am now reviewing an ARC of the third SFLK book which I received for free from the author.  The current publication date for book #3 is August 15, 2020.

 

                                 

Like the previous volumes,  music and Jacobites are strong focuses in this novel. Yet the central dilemma of the plot in the third book is displacement in time.  Female protagonists Adeena  and Katharine  are unable to return  to the time periods where they belong.  It will seem to the reader that this is much more of a problem for 18th century Katharine Carnegie who is totally baffled by the 21st century.  Yet as the story line hurtles towards its climax, there are urgent family reasons why Adeena Stuart should return from the 18th century to 21st century Canada. 

Both women have inner conflicts that are well-portrayed.   Steve Moretti ably ramps up the turmoil in their lives.  It seemed as if every plot element and each relationship reached a state of crisis over the course of the narrative.

Another thematic strand from the earlier books, is the continuing 21st century attempt to find a scientific explanation for what has been happening to Adeena.  In Book 2 Adeena's mother Jacqueline fastens on epigenetics as the field that will hold the key to Adeena's  strange experiences.  In Book 3 Jacqueline has developed another theory also based in the riddle of DNA. 

 I continued to believe that this wasn't a problem that science could solve. For me, the connection between Adeena and Katharine was woven  across time by the power of music.  While DNA may have played a role in their finding each other,  it was their love of a special musical instrument that really bound them together. 

The resolution was a bittersweet one.  It was both heartrending and cathartic.  It also seemed inevitable.   This is what needed to happen to set everything right.  As I've been saying in my reviews of each SFLK book,  this isn't Outlander.  Happily ever after takes a very different form for Adeena and Katharine than it would for Gabaldon's protagonists, Jamie and Claire.   In the end of the SFLK trilogy, there is loss but there is also rebirth.  This strikes the chord of truth for me.  It's what happens in so many real lives.   I was satisfied by SFLK #3.  I will never forget the music at the heart of these novels, but I am ready to move on to Steve Moretti's next project.

                                   

 

 

 

 

 

Pelosi: A Biography of Nancy Pelosi Focusing On Women Having A Seat At The Table

The publisher distributed copies of Pelosi by Molly Ball to members of a feminist group on Goodreads who are discussing it this month.  I'm late to the discussion though I read the book early because my computer died in late July and I only got a new one on August 3rd.  At that point I had to work on a blog tour review first, and put writing about Pelosi aside.  Better late with this review than never. I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Net Galley.

                              

                                

 

When someone writes a political biography, particularly in these partisan times, we need to be wary of bias.  I feel that Molly Ball is inclined to portray Nancy Pelosi in a positive light, though she doesn't omit controversies and discusses the reasons why Pelosi has opponents among progressives. 

 

As a Bay Area resident, I knew that the  very progressive San Francisco Bay Guardian has always endorsed a primary opponent of Nancy Pelosi every time she has run, but I didn't know why.  I learned from Ball's biography that Pelosi had made certain that a former military base in San Francisco become a park rather than allowing it to be converted into public housing.  San Francisco community activists and San Francisco politicians were all opposed to Pelosi's decision at the time.  In retrospect, I feel that this was a serious error on Pelosi's part.   It didn't do any lasting damage to Pelosi's career, but I think it did do lasting damage to San Francisco's racial and economic diversity.    

 

 I was interested in Ball's claim that the approval of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice despite the accusation of sexual harassment leveled by Anita Hill, led to the election of a record number of women in 1992.  This wasn't something that I noticed at the time.  I suspected that the improvement in women's representation was much more modest than what occurred in 2018. So I examined the Congressional election results for 1992 on Wikipedia.  I found four new woman Senators including both California Senators.  California became the first state to be represented in the Senate by two women. This was the year that Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer first became Senators.    I also counted 22 new woman members of the House of Representatives.  These are indeed noteworthy results even though that record was smashed in 2018, the election soon after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice under similar circumstances.

 

The phrase about women having a "seat at the table" in the title of this review comes from a passage in Pelosi's memoir, Know Your Power which Ball quotes in her end notes.  Pelosi tells us in that memoir that she envisioned suffragettes and others in American history who had worked for the cause of women saying about her becoming the Speaker of the House that "At last we have a seat at the table." 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that Pelosi has had a feminist impact.  I didn't really need to read Ball's biography to be persuaded on that point.  What surprised me in this book was Pelosi's long period of hesitation about running for office.  It seems to me that Nancy Pelosi had to grow into the feminist role that she eventually played.  Looking back on how much Pelosi has accomplished for women through the pages of Molly Ball's biography felt very worthwhile to me.  It will be a strong candidate for the best biography I read in 2020.