Quote:
Originally Posted by cromag
Once again, I found myself mostly reading short stories. One that I really liked turns out to be a "good news, bad news" story. I had Persia Walkers' In Asbury Park, Someone Lies Waiting. I really enjoyed this story! It's a ghost story that takes place in October and is set in Asbury Park, NJ. I know Asbury Park pretty well -- and, if nothing else, you probably know it as Bruce Springsteen's home town.
The bad news is: this story seems to be no longer available as a stand-alone short story. The good news is that it is available as part of a four story anthology over at Amazon as part of Dark Tales: Four Ghastly Tales of Ghostly Murder. As a single this cost me $0.99 -- the four story collection currently costs $3.99 -- so, if the other three stories are as good as this one was, it's a bargain!
Next, I read Dead Madonna, by Victoria Houston. I like the Loon Lake mysteries, and this was an especially good one. I'd say it's tied with the first book in the series, Dead Angler, as my favorite. Interestingly, this ebook had some odd formatting errors. Nothing terrible -- once I read through a couple they became "invisible" -- but the other books in the series don't have them. This book came from Kobo and the others came from Barnes & Noble and Amazon, so maybe it's specific to Kobo.
I've now started Dead Hot Shot, the 9th in the series. It's also from Kobo and has the same formatting problems. But, formatting problems aside, this also is pretty good! |
Dead Hot Shot was another very good story marred by formatting errors. The most frequent error that I encountered was paragraphs splitting in two for no apparent reason. The only two ebooks in the Loon Lake Mysteries series that I've seen with these formatting errors were from Kobo, so I'll go back to buying from Amazon and I'll see if the errors are still a problem or if they really are specific to Kobo. I do like the series!
As always, I read a few short stories to fill in minor gaps in my time. One collection I read was The Tommy Two Shoes Mysteries: From Mountains to More, by Thomas Beck. Most of these stories were mysteries that did not involve death or mayhem, which is always nice for a change. The protagonist is a recently retired cop living in Pittsburgh in a cheap apartment. His descriptions of other characters are terse and very cop-like -- he gives the character's height, weight, distinguishing characteristics, etc. And, he gets cryptic clues from the ghost of his uncle. Lightweight stuff, mostly. but I liked them! Available at Smashwords -- it seems to be self-published -- and the retailers they supply, and at Amazon.
Then I read The Shoeless Kid by Marcelle Dubé, the first volume in her Mendenhall Mysteries series. The protagonist is the new Chief of Police at a mid-sized town in Manitoba, Canada. She is new to the job -- a job that everyone expected to go to the man who is now her Deputy Chief. Very well written -- I liked it so much that I immediately bought (and read) the second book in the series: The Tuxedoed Man.
This series is
mostly available at Smashwords, etc., and Amazon. For some reason the first book is not available at Smashwords. I'll be picking up the remaining books in the series.
And now ... I'm not really sure what I'm going to read next.
