Kindred Crimes by Janet Dawson. My choice for September

The Friends of the Library Mystery Readers Group in Visalia decided to choose a new-to-you mystery for September, which meant the members could pick a new book by a favorite author, or a book by a new-to-you author.

I chose Kindred Crimes, Janet Dawson’s debut mystery. Kindred Crimes was nominated for Shamus, Anthony and Macavity Awards in 1991 and won St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America contest.

A simple missing person case turns out to be more complicated than San Francisco P.I., Jeri Howard, ever thought it would be. Jeri is hired by Richard Foster to find his missing wife, Renee. The woman left their son with his mother and disappeared. During the first few days of searching, Jeri learns that Renee isn’t the woman’s real name, but when she reports that to Richard, he fires her. Normally, that would be the end of it. Not for Jeri. She doesn’t like being fired and she doesn’t like leaving a case unfinished. It’s evident that Richard’s parents are pulling the strings, that they hate the missing woman, and believe she’s guilty of child abuse. Is it true? Jeri is all the more determined to find her.

Thus begins this fast paced mystery, leading the reader from one page to the next like a chicken following a line of corn kernels. Using the missing woman’s real name, Jeri probes into Renee’s family background and learns that years earlier the missing woman’s brother murdered their parents. He plead guilty and went to jail without any explanation.

Before long Jeri has located other family members and one of them, the aunt who raised Renee, hires Jeri to find her. The trail of bread crumbs (or corn kernels) leads to the brother, now out of jail, and a troubled younger sister, who seems to hold the key to the unfortunate family saga. Along the way, Jeri uncovers a blackmail scheme; gets beat up by a couple of thugs, and is shot at by a killer. When push comes to shove, Jeri Howard is a pretty tough lady and can handle herself well.

Even though I guessed the core of the mystery early on, I enjoyed this book because of the fast moving pace and the characters. In fact, I’ve already loaded the next in the series to my Kindle.

What I did on my summer vacation



Had lunch with friends Sylvia Ross and Carolyn Barbre after the Tulare-Kings Writers' meeting.



Went to San Luis Obispo for a Sisters in Crime book signing



Joined some sisters and a mister for a cool day at Mission Plaza in San Luis Obispo

A blog post with Marilyn Meredity

This weekend, Sunday, specifically, I'll be sashaying over to Marilyn Marilyn's blog at http://www.marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/ to tell all about my journey to publication. Check it out.

Friday, the 13th

Friday the 13th held no bad luck for me. After the article Carolyn Barbre wrote about me and my book in the Sun-Gazette, I spent most of Friday on the patio at the Wildflower Cafe in Exeter signing copies of my book, Lottie's Legacy. I had a chance to reconnect with folks I hadn't seen in a long time and catch up on the news in their lives. Made some new friends too. And several of my chums from our critique group came out in the mid-day sun to support me. I couldn't ask for more loyal friends. It was great day in spite of the fact that the ambient temperature reached 100°. There was a little breeze from the north, but by 2 pm I was ready for a shower.
Now I must get back to work on the next book.

Ray Bradbury and E-Books

My local newspaper featured an opinion piece by John Sweeney, editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware. In it he revealed that Ray Bradbury warned about books ‘in the air,’ and that he never would have allowed a digital version of “Fahrenheit 451” to be released if Simon & Schuster hadn’t told him that unless he agreed to it, they would no longer keep the book in print.

A number of authors have expressed concern about the impermanence of digital books because e-books can be removed, revised, and reloaded. In fact, they can be endlessly revised and perhaps even subjected to censorship. It doesn’t take much to imagination to envision various scenarios along that line.

Remember the big flap over Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and how it was altered for young readers? In the years to come, if your child’s text books and library books are all digital, think how much easier it will be for a publisher from sanitize such classics for the schools. The picture of our real history, warts and all, will be lost if that happens.

At this point, I must say that I embrace digital books. I have over a dozen books loaded in my Kindle. Just last week I uploaded my own book, Lottie’s Legacy, to Kindle, and I hope many people will enjoy my offering.

But I also have several shelves of books made of paper, some very old. I have my mother’s nursing textbook from 1915, where I’m able to read about medical and nursing practices of that time. In the future, if as predicted, brick and mortar libraries disappear, current books like that would be lost in a digital haze. Historians and genealogists constantly comb the world’s archives for authentic source material. Without libraries, will our history be lost?

Each new advance of science, technology and art comes with a hazard, whether it’s genetic engineering or e-books. It’s my opinion that we must consider the issue of digitalizing all written material carefully. The truth is, we need both types of books. That’s my opinion. What do you think?

Useful ASCII Character Codes

Ever notice when you using Word to write a document and you need a special letter or symbol, like a tilde ( ˜ ), word doesn't have it. That’s when an ASCII character comes in handy. I’ve listed some of the more commonly used ones below. To achieve these characters press & hold down Alt + the number listed, and the desired character will appear on your page.

’ = 0146           This reversed apostrophe is generally used to abbreviate a year as in ’80.

¢ = 0162

° = 0176          As in, it’s 93° today

ñ = 0241

é = 0233

¿ = 0191

æ = 0230

™ = 0153

£ = 0163          I hope these will be useful to someone.

Murder at the Library of Congress

I confess this is the first book of Margaret Truman’s books that I have read. I picked it because the Mystery Readers group I belong to decided that this month we would read a mystery with a famous person as a character or one that was written by a famous person.

This book, published in 1999, opens with a break-in and theft of an oil painting from a museum in Miami. A security guard is shot and killed. Two of the three burglars are picked up right away, but the painting is not recovered. Within hours it is on its way to LA where it is exchanged for money.

The scene then switches to New York, where the main protagonist, Annabel Reed-Smith, receives an assignment to write an article for the magazine, Civilization, about the search for the diaries of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the friend and sailing companion of Christopher Columbus. The mysterious diaries, if ever found, would be very valuable, especially to the Library of Congress. She has two months to research and write the article.

Annabel takes the reader to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and we are introduced to the important characters and the workings of the Hispanic and Portuguese reading room. She soon learns that the leading expert on the subject she’s researching is a man who is despised by almost everyone who comes in contact with him. He is pompous, mean-spirited and vicious. The man, Michele Paul, is murdered (of course). That sets everyone in the department on edge because only a limited number of people have access to the reading room where he is found dead. It must be an inside job.

An aggressive TV reporter, Lucianne Huston, is sent from Miami to DC to cover the story and immediately unearths information about the disappearance eight years earlier of another Las Casas researcher. She keeps the pot stirred by hounding people with questions,  piecing the facts together and reporting what she learns on the TV news. Her boss tells her to follow the money and she does. She uncovers a tax evasion scheme of a very wealthy man who is connected to the Library of Congress.

The search for the truth takes the reader from Miami to Washington, DC to Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to DC. The murders are solved, corruption is uncovered and justice is served. I won’t reveal if the diaries are found, or if the painting in the original scene was important. You might want to check that out for yourself.

This book is a fast read, reasonably well written and interesting to anyone, like me, who doesn’t know much about the Library of Congress. I checked the reader reviews after I finished the book, and most gave the book three stars. Some of her other books got rave reviews, so I would read another.

Margaret Truman-Daniel was a prolific author. She began her writing career in the mid-fifties with a book about her father. Her mystery series began in 1980, and she wrote a book a year until she died in 2008 at the age of 83. Her last book was published in 2012, though probably not completed by her.