By Merrill Markoe


Gil is a laid-back guy. A handy-man with a perpetual live-in job at a ritzy Malibu summer house for a richer-than-anyone-needs-to be retired couple, Gil happily works on their unending reno projects with his pack of four adoptee dogs at his side. Sure, he isn’t rich and has commitment-phobia (his ex-wife took care of that), but with the owners always away, Gil and the dogs have a pretty easy life, where they answer to no one and where it is always “beer-thirty”. Until the owners announce their imminent return. So Gil and the dogs have to move into his flaky girlfriend’s tiny home with her dogs. Sara is a “dog communicator”, but according to Jimmy, she always gets it wrong, and Jimmy should know – he’s Gil’s dog. That’s right, along with all the other upheaval, Gil suddenly finds he can hear and talk to his dogs – any dogs – like they were human, except they never think or say what we think they’re thinking or saying, and that’s when it gets a bit chaotic for poor Gil. For instance, Jimmy’s sage advice to the other dogs is “nose down, eyes up” will get a dog anything he wants. Plus, after years of being told he’s a “good boy”, Jimmy has come to believe that he is a higher, hybrid creature, half-canine, half-human, and is devastated when he learns that he is all dog. He insists on meeting his birth-mom – who happens to live with the ex-wife – and then refuses to leave his new pack. Soon Gil is trapped with his overly-friendly ex-wife, her jealous new husband and the detective he hired to spy on her. Gil heads for the hills to escape the coming catastrophe, gets into more trouble (with women), and gladly heads back to get Jimmy after his ex-wife’s marriage implodes. Only once he arrives in Malibu, he is met with raging wildfires that are engulfing most of the coast – and the guesthouse where Jimmy was left. Full of canine-human insights, foul language and screwed-up relationships, Nose Down, Eyes Up is nevertheless a very funny and heart-warming book, sure to have any dog-owner looking at their companions in a whole new light. Click here to find Nose Down, Eyes Up in the SPL on-line catalogue.

By E. W. Hornung


Back when Sherlock Holmes was testing cigar ash and sampling liquid cocaine, he had a counter-part in the literary crime world, one A.J. Raffles. It would be Raffles’ cigarette ash that Holmes would be testing – Raffles is a burglar. Not a particularly smooth burglar – his schemes do not always go quite according to plan – but he is fairly successful none-the-less, making away with Australian gold bullion in one escapade, and in the next, brazenly out-burglaring some well-known thieves for a Dowager-Marchioness’s sapphires. With his own version of Dr. Watson at his side (the peculiarly nick-named Bunny who also narrates these tales), the pair insinuate themselves into high society by playing cricket with aplomb, hob-knobbing with lords and ladies, and often doing so right under the unsuspecting nose of Inspector MacKenzie of Scotland Yard. As much a master of disguise as Holmes, Raffles chooses their targets not only for financial gain (they tend to spend their ill-gotten gains rather quickly), but also for the challenge of the theft. Thus, they tangle with the brutish Rosenthall, an illicit diamond buyer, and undertake to re-steal a stolen and priceless work of art for the handsome sum of £4000 - and risk getting nothing if they fail. Written in 1899, in late Victorian style by the brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, reading Raffles is very much like stepping back through time to visit a much beloved but forgotten gem of a character, one who creates the types of crimes Holmes would solve. While the late 1890’s slang may be as mysterious as the liberal use of cricket lingo (some words used have completely different uses today!), these short, early adventure stories of the gentleman thief have great flair, and are first-rate reading for true mystery fans. Any association with the stylish Raffles Hotel in Singapore – also built in the 1890’s – I am sure is just a happy coincidence. Click here to reserve a copy of Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman in our on-line catalogue.

Fans of Joanne Harris and Alice Hoffman delight, here is a new author who combines Hoffman’s gift for atmosphere with Harris’ talent for characters and storytelling. The Lace Reader is set in modern day New England and centres on an estranged group of women. Sophya “Towner” Whitney has a troubled past and family from which she has tried to escape by moving to California. When she receives word that her beloved aunt Eva is missing, she returns home to Salem, Massachusetts, and to the strange family circle that has long been the source of unfathomable secrets. There Towner’s severed ties are re-threaded and old webs of lies are untangled, including the mysterious disappearance of her twin sister so many years ago. Reader beware: in this mystery-that-isn’t-a-mystery, not everything is as it seems – even Towner will tell you that. This is a haunting, evocative novel that will perfectly suit a windswept dark night.

August 22, 2008

By Rhys Bowen

The author of the Molly Murphy and Constable Evan Evans mystery series presents her newest Royal Spyness novel. Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie of Glen Garry and Rannoch (Georgie for short) may be thirty-fourth in line for the British throne, but England is still in a depression following the Great War and she’s still stone broke. Learning to fend for herself is a new experience, but as Georgie learns to do without, she also learns to do for others – she hires herself out as a maid. Her cousin, Queen Mary, has no idea that Georgie must now work for a living (she would not be amused) and gives her a different kind of task – playing chaperone for a visiting princess of Bavaria in hopes that the young royal will lure her son, the Prince of Wales, away from that dreadful American woman, Mrs. Simpson. However, the lively young princess is a Royal Handful, and her unbridled enthusiasm soon lands both ladies in a pot of hot water when they are accidentally linked to a murder, then to the Communist Party and then to more murders - not to mention getting in between Georgie and the dashing Darcy O’Mara. With her dear ex-copper grandfather acting as her butler (so the princess doesn’t think she is the pauper that she is), Georgie tries to untangle the murderous mess before she and the princess inadvertently cause another world war. Written with an almost chick-lit tone but set in Interwar-period England, A Royal Pain is a fun-to-read mystery of the “cozy” genre.

Find it here in the SPL catalogue.

Reviewed September 8, 2008

Are you a fan of authentic-feeling Western adventure or family sagas? Are you a fan of Larry McMurtry’s or Cormac McCarthy’s? This one won’t disappoint. Jack Todd’s latest effort is a beautifully written and painstakingly researched good ol’ fashioned yarn, so real you can feel the grit in your teeth.
At nearly 500 pages, this big book is well-stocked with danger, romance, drama and history: a bit of everything to captivate you during those long summer evenings.
Set in the American West just after the Civil War, the traveling Paint family and their various greenhorn kin evolve into courageous pioneers and cow folk, who both embrace and brace against the captivating, relentless prairie sky. The plot often pivots around real historical events – Wounded Knee, the dust-bowl depression, early century flu and tuberculosis epidemics. In another author’s hands, this might end up a dire and sad tale, but instead, Todd (inspired by his own family’s diaries and letters) creates a riveting, entertaining book.
You just can’t ask for a better summer read than this one. Saddle up!.

The lazy days of summer are upon us, and as you are heading off on vacation loaded with cottage country reading material, you might want to include this uplifting little novel full of humour and natural inspiration that could be taken straight out of the pages of Thoreau. Cassie Shaw has always felt dumb. Her teachers told her so, so she gave up on school. Her cheating-swindling husband told her so, and she believes him (but he gets what he deserves.) Cassie finds that the employment force has no room for a broke, uneducated widow; desperate, she lies on her resume and promptly lands a job as an assistant to a professor of animal behaviour. Always drawn to animals and nature, for the first time in her life Cassie finds that she wants to learn more. She begins to audit classes, discovers the true reason for her previous ‘dumbness’, and develops close relationships. But the secret of her false resume weighs heavily on her, and the more lies Cassie creates to conceal the truth, the closer the truth gets to the surface, threatening to destroy all that she has learned to love. Although it might sound it, A Version of the Truth is not your typical chick-lit novel, but should appeal to any fan of the genre.
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Meet Josey Cirrini, only daughter of Marco Cirrini, who rebuilt and brought prosperity to the North Carolinian town of Bald Slope. Being a quasi-royal has never fit Josey though – she quietly looks after her dominating, widowed mother and escapes by hiding in a secret closet, eating sweets and reveling in travel magazines or romance novels. To her dismay however, her private paradise is invaded by the brash Della Lee Baker, a woman as far removed from the society of the Cirrini’s as chocolate is from cheese. Hiding from a secret of her own, Della takes up residence in Josey’s closet, forcing her out into the world she dreams of but in which she never lives. In the real world Josey discovers Chloe Finley who makes the world’s best sandwiches, and is in dire need of a good friend. Through Chloe she also meets her not-so-secret crush Adam, the mailman and ex-extreme sporting participant. While Della pushes her to get closer to Adam, Josey tries to push Della away – or at least out of her closet. But Della’s presence harbingers a far greater mystery than any of them can at first intuit. From the author of Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen is a magical gem of a novel for a balmy summer evening.
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Newest in her ‘Napoleonic Spy’ series, Lauren Willig turns her attention to the arch-villain of her previous novels, the roguish Lord Vaughn. Lord Vaughn has, until now, been something of an enigma. He is one of the aristocratic set, but not particularly caught up in the national fervour that has everyone wondering the secret identities of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Pink Carnation and the Black Tulip. However, this may be because he actually knows the identities behind these shadowy figures – all except for the nefarious Black Tulip. The Pink Carnation seeks Lord Vaughn’s help in drawing out the Black Tulip, and he in turn ropes in a young acquaintance to help him. Mary Alsworthy (she whose sister accidentally made off with her fiancée in Willig’s last novel The Deception of the Emerald Ring), is more than happy to do a little spying, for the right price. Could it be that Lord Vaughn has met his match in the black-haired beauty? For those interested in the high romantic adventure of the Georgian period, this series is a delight.
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Jacqueline Winspear returns with a fifth novel starring the introspective heroine, Maisie Dobbs. Set in England in the years following the Great War, Maisie is a rarity. A former servant whose thirst and capacity for knowledge garnered the respect of her employers, Maisie rose above her station, studied with one of the finest minds in England, served as a nurse on the front lines in France, and survived the war, but not without scars both internal and external. Putting her studies to good use, Maisie opened her own investigative service, and uses her skills of perception and detection to solve some unusually complex problems. With each passing novel a little more of Maisie’s character is tantalizingly revealed, and in An Incomplete Revenge, we learn that Maisie’s powers of observation may have much deeper roots than were developed in her studies. As she investigates some petty crimes and arson in picturesque Kent, she discovers that a profound shadow of the Great War hangs over one village in particular, and Maisie acquires some unusual allies - with similar powers of observation – while attempting to solve their malaise. The Maisie Dobbs series will be enjoyed by those who like a great deal of atmosphere and reflection in their mysteries.