Visions in Death by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

In this exciting mystery featuring Lieutenant Eve Dallas, her partner Detective Peabody, and her husband Roarke, a sadistic killer is on the loose in the New York of 2059.  In central park, near the castle, on a rock at the bottom of a hill, a woman is found naked with a bright red bow around her neck and her eyes cut out.  She has been severely beaten, raped, and then strangled.  This will not be the only woman to be found this way in different parks around the city.

For those who read this series, they will be happy to know that Peabody gets them a really sleek car from the car pool, something Eve has never been able to do, perhaps due to her habit of wrecking cars.  Also, McNab fixes her computer temporarily and promises to build her a new one if she promises not to hit or kick it.  Those who read this series are also aware of the severe abuse Dallas went through as a child.  When a licensed psychic comes in with information only she and the killer know, she finds it hard to doubt her, especially when she comes recommended by Louise as a close friend, a doctor who is a friend of her and Roarke's.  When she goes to Louise to check out the psychic, she has to go to Dochas (Gaelic for hope), a woman's shelter Roarke built that is run by Louise.  Dallas barely makes it out emotionally.  Between what she saw there and the killings, her nightmares return full force.

Soon, Dallas and Peabody find out the connection between the women is that they have long light brown hair and are into knitting,  crocheting, and crafts.  They believe he haunts craft stores, stalking women to find his victim.  From a shoe imprint and help from the psychic, they believe the killer to be very tall and extremely strong and probably works out in a "real gym".  They also theorize that he probably practiced on other women and finds matches in the missing persons' files.  The psychic agrees to go under hypnosis to reveal details she believes she is blocking.

The third victim is slightly off than the others.  She wasn't into crafts but went with her sister when she shopped at the stores.  Her hair is also slightly off.  There's something that Dallas feels is wrong about this one.

Toward the end, be prepared to have the rug pulled out from you.  I was completely shocked and unprepared for what happens.  It will leave you tearing through pages to get to the end.  Overall, this was a fabulous book.  I really enjoy this series, but this one stands out from the rest.  I've never been so surprised before.  You don't have to read the other books to read this one, but I highly recommend reading them because they are really good.  This book is a must read.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Death-J-D-Robb/dp/0749957395/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478871868&sr=8-1&keywords=visions+in+death

Unslut: A Diary And a Memoir by Emily Lindin

Emily Lindin (not her real name), is the founder of The Unslut Project, an online community where survivors of sexual bullying and "slut shaming" can share their stories, and where girls who are currently suffering can find support.  This book is her diary from her middle school years where she was branded a slut, was bullied and bullied others herself.  In the margins of the book, she has written comments that either explains what a particular passage meant or to make sarcastic comments about some of the stupid things she says in her diary.

She starts the book with a list of the people (whose names have all been changed, of course) who appear in the diary and a brief explanation of who they are.  The diaries themselves begin on November 21, 1997, and end on June 15, 2000.  This is the dawn of the internet age, but it is still the time of kids using landline phones to communicate and passing notes in school.  However, as the book progresses, AOL Instant Messenger rears it's ugly head and the kids start to experiment with the horrible things they can do with it.

Emily's main love interest is Zach, with whom she dates on and off with during middle school. In sixth grade, he would break up with her and then get back together with her as if it were a game.  As school dances whether or not they kissed was determined by the other kids around them who would egg them on to do it whether they wanted to or not.  After they had been dating a long while (on and off, depending on the day) they were at his friend Matt's house and begin making out when Zach put his hand down her pants.  This was considered third base.  And of course, he told people about it, which branded Emily a slut for the rest of her school years.

It also didn't help that Emily began developing "boobs" in fifth grade and that she was growing into a large pair during a time when most girls were still flat chested.  And once labeled a slut, it meant that guys could touch her inappropriately without her permission, such as slapping her on the ass, or one time during the summer before seventh grade a group of them wanted to strip her and throw her into the pool, but she refused and they relented for some reason. But as they were leaving, one of them puts his arm around her and cops several feels of her breast and she told him weakly to not do it, but she didn't want to be too forceful so as not to hurt his feelings. At this time she was dating another boy, who, when this hit the school crowd making her reputation worse, broke up with her even though she explained what happened. She also blames herself and comes to believe what others are telling her: that she is a slut.

At this time it is the dawn of the internet and people are getting those free AOL disks in the mail and kids are starting to explore with AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and go into chat rooms and talk with each other.  It's considered more fun and easier than the phone because you can always blame something bad you said on a sibling.  It's also the dawn of cyber stalking.  Emily finds herself being attacked by someone whose screen name is DieEmilyLindin what says things like "why haven't you killed yourself yet, you stupid slut?" Before this time home was a safe haven to escape the crap you went through at school and now that was bing violated in a way that couldn't be punished.

Emily finds herself in a position of wondering if a guy is going out with her because of her boobs or her reputation as a slut or if he's interested in her.  Sadly, it's usually the first two. Of course, the dating rituals are so bizarre to me. I didn't date in middle school and the guys I dated in high school didn't go to my school.  These kids break up and get together though the help of a friend. They could be going together and have never said anything to each other ever. Then there are the hierarchy of friends and trying to get in with the popular ones even if it means throwing another friend under the bus. Her best friend Melanie (even today) seems to have one role to her at this point and that is to listen to all her problems and fix them.  There are times when she treats even her terribly.   And don't think she wouldn't call another girl a slut because she does and at one point in her diary she calls one guy a pervert, which could be considered the male version of a slut. Of course, once a girl who had been dating her boyfriend for a month and supposedly gave him a handjob got labeled a slut. Emily reached out to this girl who had been ignoring her for over a month now in sympathy because she didn't consider her a slut since she was in  love and in a long term relationship.  Emily never once thought to consider if the rumor was true.  They also have these passive-aggressive fights that are more for something to do to bring on some drama in their lives. Rarely would a real fight break out.

This book shows how easy it is to destroy a reputation and a life with one word. There are many times in the book when Emily considers committing suicide because she can't find a way out of this situation she's in.  It also shows how easy it is to manipulate someone into doing something as some of the girls and boys in this book show they are capable of doing, which is a real mind screw.  Even Emily wishes she herself was capable of manipulating boys, into doing what we have no idea, though.  When Emily makes it to high school she meets a really nice guy and they start dating and they date throughout high school and her slut designation disappears and she becomes known for other, more important things.  But this doesn't happen for everybody.  She was lucky. Which is why she started up the Unslut project to help the girls who really need it so they can navigate the treacherous waters of schools. She says today it has gotten worse than when she was a teen due to the internet, twitter, texting, and stuff like that. People do not feel connected to what they say and therefore feel no responsibility for their words and the damage they do.  It's easier to stalk and slut shame and there's nowhere to hide from it anymore. But there is help.

Self-Harm or Self-Injury: http://m.kidsheatlth.org/teen/your_mind/mental_health/cutting
                                          http://wwwadolescentselfinjuryfoundation.com
Sexual Health: http://www.scarleteen.com
                         http://sexetc.org
                         http://www.youtube.com/user/sexplanations
                         http://www.teensource.org
Crisis Help For Bullying:  800-273-8255 or text ANSWER to 839863
                                           http://crisiscallcenter.orghttp://crisiscallcenter.org
                                           http://girlsguidetoendbullying.org
Suicide Prevention: http://twloha.com
                                 http://www.thetrevorproject.org 866-4-U-TREVOR (488-7386)
                                  http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org 1-800-273-TALK

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/UnSlut-Memoir-Ms-Emily-Lindin/dp/1942186002/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478707302&sr=8-1&keywords=unslut

A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly

I first read this book over ten years ago and now that I have discovered Hambly's other series, the Abigail Adams series under the name Barbara Hamilton, I decided to go back and read this series as I remember enjoying it very well.  I am glad I did.

First off, this book takes place in 1833, in the special demi-monde of New Orleans where to call a man of mixed race black would be an insult, whereas he would rather be called colored, unlike today.  In this world, a child born with one black and one white parent, is a mulatto.  A child born between a mulatto and a black, is a griffe, or sambo; quadroon for the child of a mulatto and a white; octoroon for  a quadroon's baby by a full white; musterfino or mameloque for an octoroon's child by a full white.  Creole's had their own hierarchy too and words to categorize each other.  When a white man, be he French or Creole, takes a mistress, he goes to Blue Ribbon Balls to seek an arrangement with the  mother of the mixed-race free young woman.  The mistress, or placee, in many cases, had more say in their lives than the wives of the  men who were signing legal documents that would dictate how much money she would receive, servants, a house, care for any children produced from this union, and many more.  A wife was the property of her husband and had no say in any of his affairs and was forced to pretend that he did not have a mistress.

Enter into this society, Benjamin Janvier, whose mother was a mulatto and father a black.  He, his older sister Olympe, and his mother were bought and freed by a doctor when he was young.  The doctor saw to his schooling and piano lessons as he had an aptitude for it.  He became interested in being a doctor and the only place that would take him in to study was in Paris.  After he graduated, he practiced for three years at a hospital, but gave it up, since he would never have the money to open his own shop.  He went back to playing piano and met an Algerian dressmaker and married her.   When she died, he could not stand to be in Paris anymore, so after being away for seventeen years, in a country that treated him better than his own, a country where he was allowed to look any man in the eye without fear of consequence, he moves back to New Orleans and finds that things have changed.  The Americans have arrived and are slowly taking over.  He now has to carry his free papers with him at all times, and even then, can be kidnapped into slavery.  Those in New Orleans think the uncouth Americans do not even know how to get a proper mistress, in that they just take a slave and when they are done with her, put her back in the fields. 

This book takes place during the Mardi Gras season, which lasts around a week of celebrations and balls.  The Blue Ribbon Ball, with the placees in it would be next door to the Theatre Ball, with the wives and family, so the men could come and go to each as he pleased.  Janvier is playing piano at the Blue Ribbon Ball, when he meets his old piano student, Madeline, who is now the widow of Arnauld Trepagier.  Trepagier, gave away some of her jewelry, clothes, and slaves to his mistress Angelique Crozat.  She is there to try to get her jewelry back, because the house and land is leveraged to the hilt and she is about to lose everything if she can not pay the bank.  Janvier agrees to give Angelique a message, if Madeline will please go home, before she is spotted and her reputation ruined.

Angelique, against social mores for one whose lover has just died two months ago, shows up at the ball flirting with all the men, but especially trying to make Galen Peralta jealous.  After Janvier delivers his message, Peralta storms into the room and shuts the door on them.  Janvier goes back to playing piano.  His other sister, Dominique, or Minou, the daughter of his mother and the doctor, has been looking for Angelique for a while for the entertainment section they will be doing.  She sends Janvier to look for her.  When Janvier finds her, she is stuffed in a coat closet, her neck devoid of jewelry, and strangled.  The manager of the building the ball is taking place in does not want to call the police, but while examining the body, Janvier sends a note to his sister to call the police.  A Lieutenant Shaw, a backwoods Kentuck arrives to investigate.  As Angelique was a citizen of the town, they are obliged to investigate.  At first there is a fuss about questioning the rich men, who are costumed and do not want their identities known, but Minou provides the identities for Shaw.

Then, the police suddenly drop the matter, until Angelique's mother, whose lover is a high placed man in New Orleans, insists on having the matter solved, the police become interested again.  Unfortunately for Janvier, people remember seeing him going up to speak with Angelique but not seeing anyone after him.  The police are quite happy to pin this murder on a colored man, rather than a white one and set out to do just that.  Janvier finds himself hiding from the police and trying to seek out the truth, with some help from Shaw, who does not believe he did it, but will arrest him if he has no choice.  From the swamps of the country to the dark alleys where voodoo is practiced, this mystery takes many twists and turns, as Janvier finds that some people are not telling him the whole truth about that night.  The ending will come to a very climatic climax when Janvier tries to prevent a killer from killing again and keeping his head out of the noose.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Color-Benjamin-January-Book/dp/0553575260/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478540648&sr=1-1&keywords=free+man+of+color

Fool Moon: Book Two of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

This book picks up a few months after the book Storm Front and Harry Dresden is not doing so well. He is barely making ends meet, mostly because his biggest client--the Special Investigations Unit of the Chicago police--haven't been calling much lately to give him work and Murphy, the head of the unit, is still not speaking to him at all after he made the mistake of shutting her out to protect her from an evil wizard.  Dresden can be a bit overly chivalrous. Murphy, though only five foot high, can very much take care of herself, especially if she has been given the knowledge she needs to do so.  Now, the trust between them is broken.

Kim, a college kid Dresden has been helping to learn how to use her magical abilities, comes to him with a drawing of three circles, wanting him to explain them to her as an "intellectual exercise". He reluctantly gives her the very basic information about the circles, but tells her emphatically that she has no business messing with this as it is way beyond her skills and dangerous. Kim leaves when Murphy shows up and tells him she needs him to come look at something.  It seems there is a lot she hasn't been telling him, like how IA has been breathing down her neck, looking for a way to take her down, and him with her if they could, which is why she has kept her distance.

The crime scene is in the county and technically  not in her jurisdiction, but she tells him that she is working on similar cases that have happened in the city and has permission to be there. What is left of the mangled body is that of crime lord Marcone's bodyguard.  Dresden pockets a piece of glass with blood on it from someone who crashed through the window.  This is when the Feds show up, who it seems are the ones really in charge of the serial murders. Things get heated and Agent Benn goes at Murphy, who blocks her, so Benn grabs her gun to take a shot at her and Dresden grabs Murphy and tackles her. Murphy tells the cops who come to investigate that it was an accident and makes no charges.  She can't afford to make waves.

Back at her car, Murphy tells him the whole story. Every month, around the full moon, several people have been brutally murdered. It started out with petty criminals, then one night it was a little old lady walking home one night (Yes, "Werewolves of London" by the late-great Warren Zevon does start to go through my head at this point. ("Little old lady got mutilated late last night/Werewolves of London again") I wonder if Butcher put that in intentionally?).  She called in the FBI early on because they have a better lab and there was hair left at the scene and other forensic evidence to be examined. It didn't occur to her that it could be supernatural until later. Harry sadly tells her that he knows zilch on werewolves, but he can find out and give her a report the next day. On the way back to his place, they are tailed by a woman.

Harry remembers the piece of glass with the blood on it and realizes that if he does not use it now before the blood dries, he cannot track it back to the person. He promised to not keep anything from Murphy, but there's no time. With his compass, he makes his circle and says the words and follows the arrow, which leads to an abandoned department store. Inside is a group of college nerds, who call themselves Alphas, and are some sort of wolf.  Then the woman who had been tailing him and Murphy comes in to tell them they need to leave because she was tailed. When the lights go out, Dresden goes forward to follow them, hoping to get a license plate number off a car, or something for Murphy, when something furry knocks him down at the knees. He hits it with his blasting rod, which it sends flying, then the creature disappears.  Dresden heads for the backdoor and runs right into Murphy.  She's ready to believe that these are the killers, but Harry's not so sure. The kids came off as totally harmless and the creature who attacked him could have easily killed him but chose not to.  He urges her to hold off on going after them and she agrees, for now.

When he gets home, Harry goes down into his basement where he works and wakes up Bob, the centuries-old spirit, who has worked with many wizards and knows a lot but is a pain in the ass, who lives in a skull.  Bob explains that there is more than one type of werewolf.  The classic werewolf is a human being who uses magic to turn himself into one. Of course, this is the only magic they are able to do. They can be put down just like regular wolves. Transmogrification is when someone else turns you into a werewolf and it will destroy their personality and self and is highly illegal. The hexenwolf is someone who has made a deal with a demon or powerful sorcerer. They give you a wolf belt that holds on to your spirit, you say some magic words and then you turn into a wolf.  "A huge wolf with human-level intelligence and animal level ferocity."  "A lycanthrope is a natural channel for a spirit of rage. A lycanthrope turns into a beast, but only inside his head. The spirit takes over...They also tend to be very resistant to pain or injury, sickness; they heal rapidly".  These wolves are born, not created.  Then there is the loup-garou, the worst of the worst. When the moon is full they become monsters and slaughter everything in sight until the sun rises. The only thing that can stop them is a weapon made of inherited silver.   No one has seen one of those since the 16th century France.

When he goes to the station to drop off the file for Murphy, he runs into Susan, the woman he has been kinda seeing for several months now. Dresden has trust issues with women after he was betrayed by one year ago, and he just cannot seem to be able to move past that.  Susan is a brilliant journalist for a tabloid who is determined to get the truth out there. He also runs into Agent Denton, the lead FBI agent on the case, who warns him not to go into Murphy's office right now because IA is in there.  Murphy likes Denton because he has a reputation as a solid cop, even if he is a non-believer. Most cops are.  So Dresden gives him the file to give to Murphy and calls her to make sure she got it. Agent Harris catches him before he leaves to let him know that Denton wants him to check out the Streetwolves, a tough gang causing lots of trouble, who could be the culprit.

Of course, this gang turns out to be a group of lycanthropes, who are a bit crazy. He has just stumbled onto their turf and really ticked them off.  The leader, Parker, is getting old and is now barely able to control them.  The group starts to chant and as they do, the energy in the garage grows stronger. Dresden does what he has to to get out of there and away, but he knows that Parker will be after him, because he threatened his authority of the pack and for Parker to keep his position he will have to kill Dresden.  So, this is just one more thing to worry about.  And worse, it seems that the Streetwolves had nothing to do with the killings, so he went there for nothing.

That night, Marcone shows up and offers Dresden a job as bodyguard, because he seems to believe that he will be the next one to be killed. Dresden refuses, of course, but Marcone does offer up the name Harley MacFinn and the Northwest Passage Project as something he should look into.  Bob struck out using the local sources of fairies and spirits, so Harry was forced to go to the underworld for answers and summons a demon. Chauncey is the one he has been using and he not only offers the answers to his questions about MacFinn and the Northwest Passage Project but also information that could save his life and others. The price, though is one of his names.  Names are very valuable and you do not want anyone to know your full name because they can use it against you. A demon can do nothing itself with your name, but there are others who can.  He agrees to the deal.  MacFinn comes from a long line that started in Ireland who was cursed by St. Patrick to turn into a "ravaging beast" every full moon and would be passed down from generation to generation, never to end.  MacFinn is a loup-garou who is trying to buy up lots of land in the Rockies to donate to the government and remain untouched. James Harding was one of the businessmen who strongly opposed him and had come into town last month to meet with him, but was killed by the serial killer before the could meet.  Marcone, his business partner, inherits the business they had together, which gives him a motive for the murders and also a reason to be worried about being next to die.

Just as the demon gives him MacFinn's address and he sends it on it's way he gets a call from Murphy to come to that very address because someone has been brutally murdered there.  The body is that of Kim.  MacFinn had a silver circle in a vault in the apartment, but it had been destroyed by someone and Kim, who likely met MacFinn through her environmental activities, tried to help him with the very circles she had asked Harry about. She had not been strong enough and did not have enough information, perhaps, to hold the circle and keep MacFinn in it and he escaped and killed her.  Dresden blames himself, of course, but the worst surprise is when Murphy pulls out Kim's drawing she had left at the restaurant and is beyond angry, because she believes that he has been involved in the whole thing from the beginning and has been lying to her. She slaps cuffs on him, takes his wizard gear, socks him on the jaw, and he is put into a cop car. He is too upset to put up a protest.  While sitting there, he does realize that there is no way MacFinn killed all of those people, especially the people last month or the one the other night, because the moon was not full.  

This is when the woman with the Alphas, who is acutally Tera West, MacFinn's fiance, shows up at the police car to spring him because MacFinn still needs a wizard to hold him in a circle for as long as the moon remains full. He does't want to leave, but he knows that MacFinn could be a huge threat and he is the only one that can actually do anything about it, so he leaves with her, still handcuffed. As they make a run for it, he is shot in the shoulder. She patches him up and takes him into the woods to one of MacFinn's special hiding places where she thinks he'll be. They find him and before he agrees to help Dresden demands answers. It seems he was right about MacFinn not being the one who killed the people last month or the other night and that someone sneaked into his house last month and destroyed his circle, which means that someone knew what he was and was possibly trying to set him up.   MacFinn also tells him that he begged Kim to leave when he realized that she wouldn't be able to hold the circle, but she refused to leave. When Harry mentions the names of those in the Alphas, however, MacFinn has no idea who they are. And when he had tried to do a soul gaze with Tera he found that she had no soul. What kind of wolf is she and what is she up to? Dresden tells MacFinn they need to move now, because while MacFinn thinks the FBI does not believe in werewolves and will not come to this forest to look for him, Harry knows Murphy will and at that moment, they hear Murphy and her men approaching. They split up and agree to meet at a gas station nearby. When Harry gets there he calls Susan to give them a ride. Tera shows up and tells him that they got MacFinn and Murphy has taken him to holding at the Special Investigations Unit building.

Harry sneaks into his place to get his potion that will make him blend into the background, some clothes that look like a janitor's, and his wizard's staff. He manages to get into the holding cells part of the building, but its too late to put MacFinn into a circle. He has already changed and is killing the prisoners. Harry has never been more scared in his life.  He does what he can to keep the beast from coming forward, but gets knocked back against the wall by the door to the opening of the cells.  Expecing to die now, the door flies open and Murphy comes in shooting silver bullets made from earrings her aunt gave her. The beast is bleeding now and has moved into another room. Murphy will not accept his help, though, and sends him away with another cop. A group of cops go after the beast.  Harry is in shock, beat up, bitten, bleeding, and running low on magic. The new cop puts him in Murphy's office where Harry finds his magical things that Murphy took from him. He realizes how he can stop the beast but he needs a stuffed animal and the new cop gives him a snoopy dog.  Harry is determined to make this right. When he goes out, there are dead and wounded cops lying around everywhere. Then he sees Murphy get her arm broken. He uses his magic to send the beast flying backward through many buildings, but that doesn't put him down. So, he forms a circle made of blood from the beast with snoopy in the middle and binds it's mouth, eyes, ears, and body from doing harm. This will keep the beast from also doing anything as well. In the chaos, he limps out of there and Susan and Tera take him away.

By this time, though, Harry has figured the whole thing out, mostly. To try to save himself, he blows out his magic, so to speak, and it's gone. Maybe for good. He is beaten to a pulp, shot, bitten, generally put through hell multiple times in this book, but he gets up and keeps going because someone has to. That's what I love about him. He knows that someone has to stand between the evil and the good out there.  But what is a wizard without magic? How can he stop the bad guys and keep MacFinn from killing anyone else without it? He is so determined to fix this whole thing by himself, because he blames himself for the death of all those cops and for Kim's death. He's not, of course, but if you were in his position you would probably feel just as guilty too.  Can he trust Tera? What is her agenda? What is she? Will he ever get Murphy's trust back, if any of them survive this? What about Susan? All these questions and more are answered. This is definitely not your typical werewolf book, though, and that's a really good thing. I so enjoy this series and must now get my hands on the next one.

Quotes:

 Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 3)

 There’s more magic in a baby’s first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 86)

I didn’t want to believe that killing was deep inside of me. I didn’t want to think about the part of me that took a dark joy in gathering all the power it could and using it as I saw fit, everything else be damned. There was power to be had in hatred too, in anger and in lust, in selfishness and in pride. And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 86)

It’s all right to be afraid. You just don’t let it stop you from doing your job.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 94)

 Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 127)

I can’t be under arrest right now. I don’t have the time.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon  p 183)

 Instead, as my vision started to fade, I began to chant nonsense syllables in a low, musical refrain, focusing the energy I would need inside the circle I had closed around me. It wasn’t until later that I would realize that I was babbling a chant of “Ubriacha, Ubrius, ubium”, to the Peanuts theme music.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 192)

 I wanted to deal with my pursuers myself, to deal with my own mistake myself, and not to make an innocent bystander like Susan pay for it.  So I, uh, sort of threw myself out of the passenger seat of a moving car. Don’t look at me like that. I’m telling you, it made sense at the time.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 209)

 Okay, Harry, I told myself. Keep calm. Do not panic. All you need to do is to hold them here until the cops get here, and then you can bleed to death in peace. Or get a doctor. Whichever hurts less.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 215)

 There’s a point after which one cannot possibly continue doing complicated things like thinking and keeping one’s eyes open.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 220)

It figured someone else had been trying to kill me the whole while, and I hadn’t really noticed.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 253)

I know I don’t know a lot, compared to you. But I’m not stupid. I’ve got eyes. I see some things everyone else tries to pretend aren’t there. The vampire craze sweeping the nation. Why the hell shouldn’t there be some genuine vampires in it? Did you know that violent crimes have increased nearly forty percent in the last three years, Mr. Dresden? Murder alone has almost doubled, particularly in heavy urban areas and isolated rural areas. Abductions and disappearances have gone up nearly three hundred percent….I’m sort of a pessimist, Mr. Dresden. I think that people are almost too incompetent to hurt themselves so badly. I mean if criminals were trying, they couldn’t increase their production by three hundred percent. And I hear stories, read the tabloids sometimes.  So what if the supernatural world is making a comeback? What if that accounts for some of what is going on?... Somebody has to do something. I can. So I should.

--Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 263)

 I’m with the FBI. I don’t do anything that could be construed as funny, Mr. Dresden.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 297)

 It was eerie, the way he said the words—so matter-of-fact, calm, rational. There was no doubt in him, when he should have been afraid. Only fools and madmen know that kind of certainty. And I had already noted that he was no fool.

-Jim Butcher (Fool Moon p 299)

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Fool-Moon-Book-Dresden-Files/dp/0451458125/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478275715&sr=8-1&keywords=fool+moon

 

 

 

 

 

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

Caitlin Doughty grew up on the island of Oahu, on Hawai'i.  When she was eight years old she was at the mall competing in a Halloween costume contest, which she had just won first prize.  She went to the rail to look down on the first floor, thinking of how she was going to spend the money, and looking for her father, when she saw a young girl fall from the escalator and land with a thud on the ground, dead.  That thud sound would reverberate throughout her childhood in her head.  She began displaying signs of OCD in order to cope with the Post Traumatic Stress she was experiencing from the incident.  Eventually, the OCD went away, but the frightened girl, hiding under the covers at night, remained locked deep within herself.  After graduating with a degree in Medieval History, she made a momentous decision.  She decided to apply to mortuaries for a job in the hopes of coming to terms with her fear of death.  After an exhaustive search, she was taken in at Westwind Crematory and Burial as the person who operates the crematory machine.

This book explores not just how a crematory works, or an embalming table, or the picking up of bodies, or body parts, as the case may be (a woman with diabetes who lost her leg, asked for it to be cremated), but about a young woman exploring life by coming to terms with death and death practices and how our fear of death is warping our culture and calls for a better way of dealing with death.  There are many examples from other cultures, historical tidbits that are truly fascinating, and her own experiences working at the crematory.

The crematory takes a while to heat up in the morning, so adults are usually the ones to start the day.  Later, at the end of the day, if they have any babies (if the baby is born in utero, the hospital pays for a cremation) they go at the end of the day since it does not take much fire to transform them to ash.  In this job, you see it all.  They have one gentleman who is too large to fit the casket the family ordered for him.  Rather than charge the family extra (and explain why), Mike, the manager, has Caitlin stuff him into a casket, which amazingly they did.  Also, if you want one final viewing of your loved one before they are cremated, there is an additional fee.  This is for your own good.  It goes toward making your loved one look more human, than rotting corpse.  One such woman's mother had swelled after death and her daughter brought an old favorite dress her mother had worn when she was slimmer.  They had to use saran wrap on her arms and legs to get her into the dress, plus a few other cosmetic secrets to help her look better.

There are sometimes witness crematories, where the family and loved ones are there, such as in a Buddhist ritual, or a unique one.  At a Chinese ceremony, she had the misfortune to be wearing a red dress that day.  In the Chinese culture, red represents happiness.  She had no idea they were coming in that day, or she would have definitely dressed differently.  They gave her dirty looks and such, so she stayed as much in the background as she could.

Sometimes there is a death that gets to her.  She had cremated m89any babies, but one, a blonde one and a  half year old, whose hair she had to shave so her parents could have the hair, really affected her and she broke down in the crematory.  Sometimes a comedy of errors occurs, as when they had just gotten the crematory redone and she placed a rather large woman inside.  Something happened and her fat  began to ooze out of the door.  She and Mike grabbed buckets to collect it all.  It destroyed her outfit.

The longer she works there, she begins to feel that Americans are not facing death and preparing for it.  She comes up with a unique view of how to face this dark end with dignity and how to embrace life.  This journey she sets out on awakens her to a new worldview and a way to make the death business better.

*Note: Here are some things you should really consider doing now if you haven't already.
1. Make a will.  This is highly important.  If you don't want to go to a lawyer, there are websites that will do it for a cheap price.
2. Get life insurance. You do not want to leave your family paying for your death and debts after your death.
3. Make a decision about whether to get a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) and make a decision about whether you want to be hooked up to a machine for your survival.
4. Decide what you want to have happen to your remains after death and write them down.  There are more options than you can believe possible.  Read the book Corpse by the incredible author Mary Roach for ideas.  The entire book explores every possible option.

Quotes

Fearing death, I wanted to reclaim control over it.  I figured it had to play favorites; I just needed to make sure I was one of those favorites.

--Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Other Lessons from the Crematory p32)

The Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran said that suicide is the only right a person truly has.  Life can become unbearable in all respects, and “this world can take everything from us….but no one has the power to keep us from wiping ourselves out”.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Cioran, a man “obsessed with the worst”, died an insomniac and recluse in Paris.

-- Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Other Lessons from the Crematory p52)

Exposing a young child to the realities of love and death is far less dangerous than exposing the to the lie of the happy ending.  Children of the Disney princess era grew up with a whitewashed version of reality filled with animal sidekicks and unrealistic expectations.  Mythologist Joseph Campbell wisely tells us to scorn the happy ending, “for the world as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our hearts with the passing of the forms that we have loved”.

-- Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Other Lessons from the Crematory p144-5)

In many ways, women are death’s natural companions.  Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but also a death.  Samuel Beckett wrote that women “give birth astride of a grave”.  Mother Nature is indeed a real mother, creating and destroying in a constant loop.

-- Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Other Lessons from the Crematory p172)

The only thing that’s certain is that nothing ever is.

-- Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Other Lessons from the Crematory p198)

 

 

 

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Gets-Your-Eyes-Crematory/dp/0393351904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478093497&sr=8-1&keywords=smoke+gets+in+your+eyes

 

An Unsuitable Job For a Woman by P.D. James

Set in the early 70s, this mystery starts off with a suicide.  Cordelia Gray walks into the detective agency she and former cop, Bernie Pryde opened and found that he had slit his wrists and left everything to her, including his unregistered gun.  Even though the typist quits, and everyone keeps telling her that this is "an unsuitable job for a woman", she intends to make a go of it. 

Soon she receives a call from a famous scientist and conservationist Sir Ronald Callender's assistant Elizabeth Leaming.  Callender's son Mark has just committed suicide and he wants to know why.  There is no suspicion of anything other than suicide, but Callender wonders why Mark left school to work as a gardener at the Meachems.  Cordelia decides to stay in the cottage Mark was using when he worked for the Meachems. 

She soon can't help wondering if it really was a suicide.  There's a coffee mug on the table and a full pot of stew on the stove and most people drink their coffee after dinner, which suggests he had a visitor.  He also left a small patch of work undone in his garden, with the pitchfork just standing there as if waiting for him to come back.  When Cordelia goes to the police, they say they noticed the same things and suspected murder, but there was nothing to prove it.  He just put it down to something odd that suicides sometimes do. 

Cordelia goes to Cambridge to visit with Mark's friends, Hugo, Isobella, his girlfriend, and Sadie, his ex-girlfriend, and Sadie's new boyfriend, Davie.  She can tell they are hiding something, but she doesn't quite know what.  They claim to have an alibi for the evening: being at a theatrical performance.  But when Cordelia checks, she finds that Isobelle was not there.  What does she know and why are they protecting her?

Mark's mother's nanny gave him her prayer book on his twenty-first birthday, with the clue that both his parents were blood type A and Mark, being a B, is a son to only one of them, or neither of them.  Mark's mother died when he was nine months old and Callender, obsessed with his work at his home labs, never remarried.  Mark's mother's father was quite keen on there being a grandson to pass the family lineage down and left a trust for Mark for when he turned twenty-five.  Callender, inherited his wife's estate when she died and tried to give Mark money during college, but Mark just kept sending it  back.

Everyone describes Mark as being a kind and gentle person.  No one noticed any depression or anything wrong with him.  He was looking into the matter of who his parents might really be, but was probably unsuccessful. 

Cordelia feels that she is getting close to finding the killer and one night while outside of the cottage, someone grabs her and throws her into the well and replaces the lid.  Cordelia manages to climb out and is rescued by Mrs. Meechem.  Now, Cordelia lies in wait for the killer to come back and finish the job so she can catch him.  Its no surprise who tried to kill her, though, who might have killed Mark is very much a surprise.  And the ending is quite surprising with Cordelia being called before James's famous Commander Adam Dalgliesh, for inquiries into what she has been up to and what has happened and she must find a way to lie to this clever man, so that he doesn't find out the truth and cause harm to others. 

I have to confess I really liked Cordelia.  She is very intelligent, even though she was forbidden to go to college by a father who abandoned her until she was sixteen and then made her take care of him as he traveled around Europe spouting his Communist prose that no one buys.  She takes what Bernie has taught her, surprisingly, what he learned from Dalgliesh when he was a cop, and puts it to good use.  She keeps her head and thinks quickly in any situation.  Its sad that there is only one other book written about her by James.

Quotes

With her bag at her feet she sat down by the body.  She said a brief convent-taught prayer to the God she wasn’t sure existed for the soul which Bernie had never believed he possessed and waited quietly for the police.

--P.D. James (An Unsuitable Job For a Woman p 215)

Mavis reminded Cordelia of a librarian known to her in childhood who had secreted the new books under the counter in case they should be taken out and soiled.

--  P.D. James (An Unsuitable Job For a Woman p 218-9)

Perhaps it’s only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them.  We know that it’s too late then for them to do anything about it.

-- P.D. James (An Unsuitable Job For a Woman p 246)

…love was as destructive  as hate.

-- P.D. James (An Unsuitable Job For a Woman p 412)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Unsuitable-Woman-Cordelia-Gray-Mysteries/dp/0743219554/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477835833&sr=8-1&keywords=an+unsuitable+job+for+a+woman

 

The Devil In Silver by Victor LaValle

Pepper wasn't supposed to be committed to New Hyde Mental Hospital. He had only been trying to help out a woman he liked with her ex who was causing problems by talking to him, only it got out of hand and he ended up hitting the guy and three plainclothes cops happened by to intervene and he hit one of them too, not knowing he was a cop. So he was arrested. Not a first time in his forty-odd years. The cops, however, were at the end of their shift and wouldn't be paid overtime for processing him, so they had him committed instead and made him someone else's problem.  It wasn't the first time they had done this.  Dr. Arnad, the psychiatrist and head of the section of Northwest Hospital known as New Hyde, was not happy with this but accepted Pepper as an admin on a seventy-two-hour hold.  All Pepper needed to do was play nice for that time and he'd get out. But there's something about a psych ward that makes you a little bit crazy. The meds, Haldol and Lithium, he was forced to take three times a day that made him almost paralytically slow didn't help.

It starts off simply. He wants to make a phone call and Coffee, his roommate is using both phones and is on hold with both of them.  The two get into an argument and when Coffee spits on him Pepper slams into him, which is what the orderly, Scotch Tape (Pepper's name for him) sees and which earns him the rest of the day in his room.  The next day is family visitation day and when the nurse is opening the door to let in Loochie's family he sees an opportunity to escape and barrels into her brother and knocks her mother aside. Loochie won't stand for this and the nineteen-year-old little dynamo jumps him and knocks him down and starts beating on him. This earns him a shot of a sedative plus upping of his meds. When he finally comes down from all this, a month has passed. He's beginning to wonder if he's ever going to get out of there by their rules.

Dorry the emissary of the ward showed him around when he first arrived, as she does all patients since she's been there the longest.  She is one of the first patients New Hyde ever had.  Northwest 1 is for intake; Northwest 2 is for male sleeping quarters; Northwest 3 is for female sleeping quarters; Northwest 5 is the lounge. And Northwest 4 is off limits and he'll soon know why.  Dorry tries to take care of everybody.  She sees them all as her children.

 One night Pepper is visited by a strange half-man-half-beast that came down from the ceiling and tries to kill him. When he screams and eventually someone comes to see what's wrong he goes away.  The creature had white eyes with red veins in them and a bison head with hooves for feet.  He looks exactly like what you'd think the Devil would look like.  During book club when he mentions that he's seen the Devil, Coffee, Dorry, and Loochie all meet up with him later over dinner to discuss with him what they can do about it.  But he wants nothing to do with any plans because he feels he is not like them. He isn't crazy and maybe he just imagined what he saw.  Then the Devil pays another visit to him breaking his ribs with his hoof and nearly crushing his sternum and he changes his mind.

The four of them work together to come up with a plan on how to get into Northwest 4 where the Devil is housed. Coffee plans on trying one more phone call that night to try to reach "the big boss" (the President) to help them with their problem. Dorry hopes to talk to him. And Loochie and Pepper plan on taking it down if necessary.  When he's released, he comes charging and Loochie jumps on it's back and pull on its horns. Coffee is trying to make a phone call at the nurse's station (they've locked up the nurse and orderly). Dorry is just standing there staring, while Pepper ends up tackling its legs. Then everything seemed to wrong all at once with horrible consequences.  Those who survive will have to pay a price for what they did. And things will be different for all of those on the ward after this incident.

But this won't be the last time they will try to take down the Devil or the last time Pepper tries to find a way out of there.  The question is will they succeed in killing the thing that has been tormenting and killing off patients for years or will it kill them all off before they can. Will any of them escape from this place and find their freedom or are they all chained there forever by a broken system?

Quotes

He was just caught somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. That place where monsters really exist.

-Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver p 59)

 You don’t want to be awake when your rib cage breaks. When your rib cage breaks you want to be passed out. But somehow, Pepper hadn’t. It didn’t hurt. He’d already gone into shock, which is the human body’s last line of defense. Your body loves you too much to let you really feel trauma like that. So it wasn’t pain that made the breaking rib cage such a terror for Pepper. It was a sound.  

-Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver p 106)

At nineteen, the world seems so simple. This is because nineteen-year-olds have it almost completely wrong.

-Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver p 306)

 That’s the funny thing. Men always want to die for something. For someone. I can see the appeal. You do it once and it’s done. No more worrying, not knowing, about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I know you all think it sounds brave, but I’ll tell you something even braver. To struggle and fight for the ones you love today. And then do it all over again the next day. Every day. For your whole life. It’s not as romantic., I admit. But it takes a lot of courage to live for someone too.

-Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver p 343)

Pepper always marveled at this kind of man. Who calculated his value based on some mystery math. Simple addition would assess this man a dud but Louis was using calculus plus.

-Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver p 344)

That’s when he came to realize that it can be honorable to stand alone, arguing for a righteous cause. But sometimes “taking a stance” becomes confused with “just being an asshole.”

-Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver p 377)

Van Gogh viewed his work as a kind of “love letter” to humanity. He hoped to be a great artist, but not simply to bring praise upon himself, his talent. (Though that would’ve been nice, dammit.) He hoped to reflect the world’s own glory, with love. An artistic impulse, but one not exclusive to artists. For instance, Coffee. For instance, Dorry. And now, Pepper. The aspiration is so rarely rewarded, or even understood, that most people don’t even try. But wherever it’s found, whenever it’s displayed, it’s an act of genius.

-Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver p 406)

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Silver-Novel-Victor-LaValle/dp/0812982258/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477928188&sr=1-1&keywords=devil+in+silver