Apr 19 2018
Q: Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did A Breath After Drowning evolve? A: I was haunted by the image of a mother abandoning her daughter in the waiting room of a psychiatric hospital—silver crosses draped around the young girl’s neck and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/19/an-interview-with-alice-blanchard-author-of-a-breath-after-drowning/
Apr 10 2018
Kate Wolf is a psychiatrist specializing in at-risk adolescents. She has a great boyfriend whom she loves almost as much as she loves her job, but her family history has made it so she has massive intimacy issues. Her father is a family physician and someone she’s always striven to emulate, but their relationship is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/10/a-breath-after-drowning-by-alice-blanchard/
Mar 25 2018
I need more Slough House books. You guys don’t understand: I need them (she says, tapping her veins.) It’s so unfair that Book 5, London Rules, isn’t out yet in the US. ANYWAY, with Spook Street, the Slough House series has officially become my favorite spy series. Aside from being smart and topical, these novels …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/25/spook-street-slough-house-4-by-mick-herron/
Feb 25 2018
Wonderful heroine, great setting, intriguing (but not super clever) mystery. I loved all the attention to period detail (even if my copy had some really weird lapses between the use of “thee” and “you”) and especially enjoyed the blunt way in which pregnancy and delivery are treated. As this book is set in 1800s Massachusetts …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/25/delivering-the-truth-a-quaker-midwife-mystery-1-by-edith-maxwell/
Feb 14 2018
Oh my God, I finished all these books by the 13th! *collapses into oozing puddle before picking up her next work assignment.* I freaking love Mick Herron, and I’m not sure if there are very many authors I could have binged under such time pressures and still come out wanting more of. I love the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/14/real-tigers-slough-house-3-by-mick-herron/
Feb 12 2018
Good tho, to a certain extent, I enjoyed Slow Horses better because that one was undoubtedly a win for our agents. This one… well, it’s complicated. See, an old spy is found dead on a bus he didn’t have a ticket for, and no one seems to care except Jackson Lamb, who worked with the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/12/dead-lions-slough-house-2-by-mick-herron/
Feb 11 2018
A surprisingly unsentimental view of life in Victorian England, far removed from romance and riches. Our heroine, Enola Holmes, does start out moneyed, after a fashion: she lives on her ancestral estate with her mother, but Nancy Springer is quick to point out that the women aren’t rich in their own right, as all their …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/11/the-case-of-the-missing-marquess-enola-holmes-1-by-nancy-springer/
Feb 09 2018
It’s a bit weird coming to this book after reading the author’s excellent, bleak Nobody Walks. At about the halfway mark of Slow Horses, I felt an uneasy stirring of familiarity, much like I had upon reading Agatha Christie’s The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd after her excellent, bleak Endless Night. While the plot twist in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/09/slow-horses-slough-house-1-by-mick-herron/
Jan 08 2018
Why, yes, I borrowed this in anticipation of the movie, and while I never got around to watching the latter (and likely never will,) I can safely say that it’s much smarter than those insipid trailers. Also, oddly, I kept picturing Daniel Craig as Harry Hole instead of Michael Fassbender, who is just too darn …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/08/the-snowman-harry-hole-7-by-jo-nesbo/
Dec 22 2017
Time for some short takes, to mostly clear the desk for the coming year. The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest. In the fourth of her five Clockwork Century novels, Priest takes a stab at telling her story mostly from the point of view of an unsympathetic narrator. Rector Sherman is an addict, hooked on the “sap,” …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/22/wrapping-up-2/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire