In her January 26th newsletter, the Poisoned Pen Bookstore’s Barbara Peters wrote, “For 2024, eschewing politics and agendas, our focus is on books and experiences that are entertaining and informative — stories that will be a respite and a refuge from cultural and political wars.” To that agenda may I add a hearty “Hear, hear!”…
Rerunning my Goodreads review of John Sandford’s Escape Clause here… Any book that begins with Virgil Flowers skinny dipping in a swimming hole works for me. Add in two catnapped Amur tigers, immigrant workers being exploited in a pickle factory, a homicidal animal rights activist, Frankie the farmer girlfriend who is, reluctantly I say it,…
Read more Letty and the Peace-Makers is the name of my next band.
Join me tonight at 7pm at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale for the launch of Theft of an Idol, the third Eye of Isis novel! Middle Sea sensation Herminia has vanished just before the curtain rises on a controversial production of Lysistrata. The last person to see her alive has been most foully murdered.…
...Younger sons cannot marry where they like.”
...“Is this,” thought Elizabeth, “meant for me?”
# Permanent link to A Paean or a Lament?
True story: Guy walks into the Poisoned Pen Bookstore. He’d left his book on a plane. He couldn’t remember the title. He couldn’t remember the author. He couldn’t remember what the book was about. He could remember that the cover was red. And Barbara Peters? Found it for him. If anybody knows the provenance of…
Read more “It’s blue! Or maybe green. Red, I remember, it was red!”
On six occasions, his enemies had tried shooting him; twice, they'd attempted poison (once using a samosa laced with arsenic); and during the Case of the Pundit with Twelve Toes, a hired thug had tried to force Puri's car over the edge of a hairpin bend on the road to Gulmarg.
# Permanent link to “Saala, maaderchod!”*
The most ingenious attempt had been orchestrated by a cunning murderer (a naturalist by profession) working in Assam's Kaziranga Park, who had secretly sprayed Puri's clothes with a pheromone that attracted one-horned rhinos.
The closest anyone had come (not including the three rhinos, who could move surprisingly quickly) had been a criminal hijra who had pushed a pile of bricks off the top of a building into an alley in Varanasi where Puri had been walking.