Vanished in Vallarta: A Bradford Fairfax Murder Mystery by Jeffrey Round

Vanished in Vallarta: A Bradford Fairfax Murder Mystery by Jeffrey Round
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A weak entry in the series.
Unlike his Dan Sharp series, this Bradford Faixfax series has always been a stretch from reality. The mysterious agent tied to a postal box in a super-secret organization without a name. This book stretches credulity further and for me it was too far, it stretched until it broke. In addition to the Bond-lite we have past lives, karma, spiritual quests and a 2 page dream sequence with coffins and snakes. When Zach starts talking about sending messages telepathically my eyes were firmly rolled back in my head.
Looking back on my reviews of the other two books in the series, I see lines I highlighted that bothered me, and the trend continues with this book. A list of artists Bradford would never ever listen to, including Abba and Madonna, but the song “Tell Him” features prominently in the book? At a night club, a doorman is cherry picking guests: “There is no fascist like a minority fascist, Brad noted, recalling sadly how the majority of Hitler’s elite had been gay.” Comparing a bouncer to Hitler and stating the unprovable as fact. Nice.
My review of the first in the series noted engaging characters like Ruby and Cinder. There’s none in this book. We have literally a drunken Indian and a couple that doesn’t speak English. Also this book doesn’t have the series’ trademark cover art, but it can be mostly forgiven with handsome photos of a young Round himself.
I also noted on page 160, “The audience looked overheard” should say overhead.
I think I’m done with this series. At a scant 234 pages the book felt too long. The plot meanders too far, covering for the fact that it doesn’t really exist. I just finished the book and I still don’t know what it was about. Kidnap Céline Dion plot? Double agents? Bank robbery? Is there a point?
The moments I appreciated most were the scenes set at the Blue Chairs and the tours of the PV area. I went once and loved it, will be going back soon. I wanted more of this, less spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

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Hold Me Now by Stephen Gauer

Hold Me Now by Stephen Gauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book. It took a while to get going for me but once it did, about 75% in, I loved it.
The story is told from the perspective of a straight father and his gay son has been recently murdered. A few times the father's perspective reminded me of my own father.
Many angles were covered in this book, mostly told from the father's perspective. I disliked how everyone referred to the main character as Brenner, not sure if this was his first or last name but it sounded overly formal. Also loads and loads, pun intended, of straight sex in this book which I wasn't expecting. It ended up being a unique perspective as I wasn't sure a gay man could write so convincingly from a straight man's perspective, so who wrote this book and what was the intended audience? These questions held me up for most of the first 2/3 of the book.
There's a section where the father is thinking of the murderer in prison and wanting him to have more time to reflect on his crime. The book says: "Or did that assume a level of introspection and intelligence that would have prevented [him] from killing Daniel in the first place?" Which is an excellent question and once the focus shifted away slightly from the father I was able to get much more into the book.
The book left me focusing on the system of punishment we have, what we expect the punishment to do, why these crimes are committed, and although it left more questions than answers, I appreciated having these thought provoking issues to reflect on.

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Pumpkin Eater: A Dan Sharp Mystery by Jeffrey Round

Pumpkin Eater: A Dan Sharp Mystery by Jeffrey Round
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A good addition to the series, I liked it better than the original, Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery.

Dan Sharp is in a better mood this time around, less old crank hitting the bottle and more likable detective/father. He's also less down about the city he lives in, Toronto, and these were my only two complaints about the last book.

The story reads well and it is nice to step back into this character's life. The mystery is a little too straightforward and then suddenly a little too convoluted. One person called by two names then becomes two people, then becomes three? Not sure how that happens. I think my math skills are a little off.

I liked hearing more about Ked, he seemed more real to me this time and I didn't get that he wasn't white last time for some reason. Ethnic diversity is also always good.

I also really liked the use of the Toronto Islands setting, I liked this more than the thousand islands setting previously.

I had a couple questions. I thought the preview at the end of Lake for this book indicated the initial warehouse fire was back in time, I seem to remember 2008. I haven't double checked but I remember thinking "Oh good, he gets to stay in Toronto as we're going back in time" and assuming he was moving to Vancouver as indicated at the end of the last book. Anyway, what happened to that as suddenly we're in the present.

Also the preview at the end of this book for the next book, The Jade Butterfly: A Dan Sharp Mystery doesn't mention Dan Sharp or any of the characters we know. I thought that maybe wasn't the best excerpt to use.

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Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this. A short travelogue of life in North Korea for a foreigner in 2003. Well drawn, the graphic novel is the perfect medium for this story, I enjoyed all of it.

I like to travel and I doubt I will get to North Korea, or would want to. I appreciated the outsiders perspective, it felt like I was there experiencing these things. The author wrote well and welcomed people into the story. I am not very familiar with communist regimes in practice and this was a great introduction.

Lots of great tidbits like only one floor of the 47 story hotel has power, the ones with the foreigners on it. The only place in downtown you will see lights at night are the lights illuminating the statues of the Great Leader. Indoctrination messages are painted on the sides of mountains. And the work week in North Korea is six days per week, with "volunteer" time on the seventh day. "Volunteer" activities include things like sweeping a highway or painting a bridge.

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No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I am going to buck the trend of four and five star reviews here and give it a one. Another reviewer said of this book that it made her sorry she learned to read, and I take the point, but for me this book is like the anti-reading. It sucked the life out of me, it sucked me dry, and took a pleasurable escapist pastime like reading and made it dirty and violent and negative. This is the book that made me watch more TV.
I read this for a book club and the book is dripping with violence. The Road was a great book because it so vividly portrayed its post-apocalyptic world but this book doesn’t have that. It has dialogue and violence, and not really much else. The violence would turn your stomach if you processed every word of it. I read every word of the book, but I didn’t process every word. There was too much.
After the barrage of violence we meet the Sheriff, part of the old men, old school mentality who doesn’t understand how the South of yesterday has become people with green hair and bones through their noses walking down the street. He’s trying to solve the crime, but which crime? I suppose the missing money, or is it the murders, or is it the disappearing guns? This is intertwined with killers talking with their victims at length about philosophy before shooting them in the head. It’s just not anything I need in my life. I suppose if I were younger the violence would bother me less, but the writing is good and has a level of sophistication that I don’t think my younger self would have been able to appreciate, so I’m left wondering who it’s for. Who are all the five star reviewers?
I will agree the book is written well and the author presents it in a uniquely stylized way which is always a plus when reading. But if you can’t get past the bad people, does anyone in this book have a conscience?, and the violence, then what’s the point? The book takes you down, and mires you so deeply in the muck you can’t see your way out. In the end, as the book says:
“There wouldn’t be no point to it. There ain’t no point to it. Not to any of it.”

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My Caribbean Cruise 2014

Starr Lyte by Blaise Bulot

Starr Lyte by Blaise Bulot
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Starr Lyte is a drag queen who can't read or write and lives in the ghetto of New Orleans. She frequently spouts profound wisdom, such as:

"Different strokes for different folks.
If all of us liked the same thing
Some of us would be awful lonely,
and the rest of us would be awfully sore"

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I'm wavering between three and four stars, I feel like four is what I wanted to give it, but three better reflects my experience.

Starr is charming, her cast of friends is wonderful to read about and you'll really enjoy spending a day in the life with her and her wild outlandish stories. It's subsequent days where the charm wanes a little. Several chapters are written in poor folk southern drawl, some of which just can't be understood, all written phonetically. It starts off being cute and a reminder of the down home south, but does begin to grate. All the chapters, most just a page or so, are in the same format, with a short vignette into Starr's life or one of her friend's lives, and while interesting, it does get repetitive.

I liked that this was a small press, I liked that it was by a gay author of colour, which is rare, I liked that it was set in the south, I liked that it was about drag queens. I just wanted to like it all a bit more.

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