Book Review: Maids of Misfortune

Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

By M. Louisa Locke

This book and I got off to a rough start. I loved the title. I loved the premise. I love San Francisco, and I love historical/period mysteries and strong female leads. Seems like we should have been a match made in heaven.  

Annie Fuller is a young widow living in San Francisco in 1879. Her late husband had squandered her fortune before committing suicide a few years earlier. She owns and manages a boarding house to make ends meet, and also supplements her income as Madame Sibyl, a well-known clairvoyant. 

When one of Annie’s clients is found dead, all signs point to suicide, but Annie isn’t so sure that that’s the case, and she winds up doing some amateur sleuthing to try to determine what really happened. She butts heads with Nate Dawson, the deceased’s family lawyer who is also trying to learn the truth, and to her horror, begins to fall for him.  

This book does have a few entertaining moments, and the historical detail is apparent throughout, but the flow of the story was too slow for my personal taste, and I came perilously close to giving up on it more than once. I can be stubborn, however, and so kept on reading, in hopes that something interesting would happen.  

While I do appreciate details, especially in a period mystery, it felt to me like there were far too many details that were not relevant to the story. I didn’t like Annie for most of the book, although the flirtation between Annie and Nate was kind of sweet, and I must doff my cap to Nate’s investigative skills.  

I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this book, but the ending of the mystery itself was nicely done, and I could just picture the scene in my head where the tables were turned on the killer and the killer was incapacitated in time for the police to arrive.




All opinions are my own. No compensation was received for this review.

When You Thought I Wasn't Looking

Came across this lovely poem by Mary Rita Schilke Korazan that I thought you might enjoy. It's a message every adult should read because children are watching you and doing as you do, not as you say.

When You Thought I Wasn't Looking

When you thought I wasn't looking,

I saw you hang my first painting on the refrigerator,

and I wanted to paint another one.

When you thought I wasn't looking, 

I saw you feed a stray cat,

and I thought it was good to be kind to animals.

When you thought I wasn't looking,

I saw you make my favorite cake for me,

and I knew that little things are special things.

When you thought I wasn't looking,

I heard you say a prayer,

and I believed that there was a God to talk to.

When you thought I wasn't looking,

I felt you kiss me goodnight,

and I felt loved.

When you thought I wasn't looking, 

I saw tears come from your eyes,

and I learned that sometimes things hurt,

but it's alright to cry.

When you thought I wasn't looking,

I saw that you cared,

and I wanted to be everything that I could be.

When you thought I wasn't looking,

I looked....

and I wanted to say thanks for all the things 

I saw when you thought I wasn't looking. 

Different Drummers

I came across this excerpt from David Keirsey's book, Please Understand Me II, in an old email today and thought I would share it with you. 

These words resonate pretty strongly with me at the moment as I try to understand the beat of another's drummer and they similarly try to understand the beat of mine. It can get pretty hairy sometimes because we can both be stubborn, but there are lessons in the words below that I will endeavor to take to heart in my less stubborn moments. 

Different Drummers

If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.
Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.
Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.
I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.


I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right -- for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences.


Amen.

How Dogs Think vs. How Cats Think

A bit of pet humor for you today

Soooo true....

Give Everyone An A: The Art of Possibility

In recent weeks I have been employing a little trick I learned from the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, Benjamin Zander with great success. In his book, The Art of Possibility, Mr. Zander takes a decidedly positive approach to personal and business relationships and, among many other lessons, asks you to give everyone you meet an A right off the bat. They don't have to earn it, you just give it to them with your whole heart, and see what magic unfolds. 

It has been some time since I read the book, but the lesson of giving everyone an A has stuck with me and proven extremely helpful with a difficult working relationship. I will read the book again and write a more in-depth review a bit later, but in the meantime, here is a video I found on YouTube to whet your appetite. He is a delightful man and I hope you will be moved to learn more about him and his work.

Benjamin Zander - Giving An A

Book Review: Waking the Dead

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!

Heather Graham's latest book is a well-crafted tale of a murderous painting by a talented, but minor artist named Henry Sebastian Hubert. 

During what was referred to as the Year Without a Summer in 1816, Hubert rented an ancient Swiss castle with a dark and sinister past. Among those joining him for a time were Lord Byron, Claire (Lord Byron's former mistress), John Polidori, and Mary Shelley. Lord Byron and company challenge Hubert to join them in their madness to create the penultimate ghost story. Hubert would paint his ghost story, while the others would craft their stories in words. 

The painting that results from that challenge, Ghosts in the Mind, is a masterpiece study in perception and deception. The characters appear to be one thing, and then another, more sinister scene is perceived, leaving the viewer decidedly unsettled and fearful. The painting then begins its infamous and murderous history. Hubert is found dead in the castle, in front of his painting, an apparent suicide. 

The painting passes to his widow in England, who has no love of it and orders it to be wrapped up and stored away where it lay quiet until her death. Upon her death the painting begins to change hands and mysterious deaths follow wherever it goes. 

Modern day New Orleans: the painting is purchased by a very wealthy widow. Almost as soon as it arrives, nearly an entire family is butchered with no sign of the killers left behind. Private Detective Michael Quinn is called in by his former partner in the New Orleans Police Department to assist him with this especially baffling case. 

Before long, Quinn's girlfriend, Danni Cafferty, who owns a curio shop and is no stranger to the paranormal, begins to assist Quinn with the case, along with occasional help from a Voodoo priestess, a Roman Catholic priest, and Billie and Bo Ray, and, of course, their fiercely protective, perceptive, and loyal dog, Wolf. 

As the body count rises, their investigations take them through the troubled and deadly history of the painting, to a modern day direct descendant of the artist, and even back to the castle itself to try to unravel the secrets of the painting and what really happened that summer in 1816.

Overall I really enjoyed the book. The author did a fine job of building suspense around the painting. I haven't decided whether it's good or bad in this case, but I was able to figure out part of the ending before the actual ending, with still a bit of a surprise waiting for me at the very end. Heather Graham fans should enjoy this latest body of work. 

All opinions are my own; no compensation was received for this review.