Review: 
No doubt there is far more one could say about this than "that's weird and cool." But that's all I've got. It was handed to me and it only takes a very short time to read, so I gobbled it up. Some of the scaled art was particularly intriguing.
Library copy
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1960171/why-art-eleanor-davis
Review:
Heartbreaking and Truly Terrifying.
I was sitting around the supper table with my family discussing theories about the Salem Witch Trials. The ergot theory was put forward, and I dismissed it, largely because of the scale: hundreds of people accused, tortured, and tried over more than a year, but also because the initial accusers would roll around on the floor in seeming fits but immediately recover, and none of them suffered anything like an actual injury during those supposed fits. Then the Spouse mentions that French town, you know...
I did not know. I had never previously heard of the book nor the incident it describes in well-researched, well-documented, and well-communicated detail. In August of 1951 some three hundred people in and around Pont-Saint-Esprit in Provence, France were poisoned. It was a horrible accident that killed five people,hospitalized more than a hundred, and caused many to suffer lasting debilitation.
As a medical mystery, it is enthralling. All the local GPs as well as the large number of treating physicians from the nearest largest cities agreed they were seeing an event out of history a mass poisoning due to ergot. They had to look in history books to get treatment ideas.
Then there's the legal mystery: who are what will be blamed and have to pay? The investigators had quickly found the suspect flour, but then there were years of examining the evidence. The police couldn't accept the ergot theory because the volatile alkaloids disappeared too quickly and too completely. There was literally no evidence. The legal wrangling that followed lasted a decade.
It's a fascinating book for those interested in medical or historical mysteries. Fuller is thorough in his recounting, but never boring. Since I didn't have Truly Terrifying, I took advantage of that black dust jacket for 
Library copy
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1960095/the-day-of-st-anthony-s-fire-john-grant-fuller-jr
Review:
This is my cover. I like it rather more.
One advantage of re-reading for Bingo: I get around to finally writing up books I loved once upon a time. These books are every bit as charming as I recall. Miss Melville, like Miss Marple and an infinite string of other Misses of a certain age, is overlooked and discounted, still. When artists keep ending up dead, she notices, she listens, she figures it out.
It's a little funny to me that I liked these so much as a college student. Now it makes sense: there aren't nearly enough middle-aged heroines around. And Miss Melville is always so polite, so well-brought-up, so pleasant that no one seems to notice how very clever she is.
While this would suit a number of squares, including Cozy Mysteries, I picked Amateur Sleuth, because a retired assassin and lauded professional painter amuses me as a sleuth. Also, I really love the word "sleuth"
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1960089/miss-melville-returns-evelyn-e-smith
because so much work! I only have ten minutes to read and I can't waste the time to go to another room to get whichever book I'm on. Gah! But I'm going to have a day off soon, when I will get to finish some of these, maybe.
But pretty card with called squares in red, and hardly anything read.
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1957373/too-many-books-in-mid-read
Review: 
The best I can figure is someone went through a random collection of scenes never used for other books because they weren't very good, shuffled them into a chronological order, and then typed it up with consistent names.
It's a mess, and none of the aspects rise above thoroughly mediocre: half-hearted Gothic, suspense, romance, travel, adventure, wish-fulfillment, etc. And a really surprising number of bastards or children who were legitimized by marriages between their mothers and people who were not their fathers.
Disappointingly, the Black Opal of the title is pure McGuffin, everyone ends up well off in a lovely home, the three possible love interests don't seem to interest the heroine much, and events are too random to even be coincidental. Of all the squares I considered using it for, it didn't really live up to any of them. I'm going with Gothic because it does have recognizable Gothic elements, even if they're not well-developed.
Nonetheless, it was an interesting read. It wasn't like the Victoria Holt books I read in the 70s, nor is it at all like contemporary romance or suspense. Although it lacked a real commitment to formula, it was very definitely written by someone who knew what would make an enjoyable read. Consider it a lesser work by a real pro. It certainly didn't put me off Holt: I have a couple more I'm considering.
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1954754/the-black-opal-victoria-holt
My copy has a hideous 80s bridesmaid dress and hairstyle look to it. Aith some unusual things going on with her neck and hands.This has to be one of the last books she published, and it's rather lacking in suspense: just so many plot twists.
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1952104/post
Review:
First: not enough hockey. Or at least, hockey makes a brief and violent appearance (of course!) but then it disappears. I'd have liked to see it mentioned again, if only to update whether it had any appeal of any kind ever again.
Second: both weirder and not as weird as I anticipated. The demons turn out to be ghosts but not in the way I'm used to thinking of them. The drug raids are very strange, but serve well as humorous anecdotes: unexpected details really go against stereotypes.
Third: see? my parenting isn't that bad. Actually, maybe it is that bad. Maybe there's a memoir coming about how weird it was to grow up with me.
Mostly I think my problem is I kind of expected it to be the stuff of sitcom, you know, zany. It's not zany. It's sad and distressing, which is really not how I had planned to focus my Halloween reading. Although to be fair, I suppose bad parenting really is horrific.
I can't wait to see what the next book is about, though.
Review:
This is an embarrassment of riches: so much so that I am immobilized in my decision-making capacity. I'll go with whatever anyone else tells me first.
This paeon to old school newspapers and journalists was touching, nostalgic, and also thrilling. The relentless hustle to put out a daily paper helps keep the suspense high in a story that stretches out a fair bit. The crimes, the business of reporting on crimes, and how little those two might intersect is a constant theme. Really I loved pretty much everything: Madeliine and Cleo, the many different types of mothers, civil rights and equal rights, the new hairstyles and clothes and fabrics of 1966. For all that is very much a crime story, it has a bit of everything except a Tracy Turnblad musical number. The Dickens comparison still feels somewhat apt.
The only other upside to having finished it (beyond the sheer pleasure of a good story well told) is that I am reluctant to start something else right away. In an effort to keep my buzz going and not bring it down on some other kind of book entirey maybe I will accomplish some of the things I was going to do in the first half of the day "as soon as I finish this chapter..."
Library copy
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1951787/lady-in-the-lake-laura-lippman
My progress is feeble. Silly jobs interfering with my reading time. It's really most unfortunate that the major database upgrade got delayed into this month.
Oh, well. At least I'm really enjoying my reading so far. Probably it's a good thing that I can't just race through The Lady in the Lake. This may be my favorite of Lippman's many fine stand-alones. The way she keeps following social interactions to give us yet another character and another tiny sliver of the big picture adds to both the suspense and the feeling of engagement. Also I'm really loving the world of daily newspapers in 1966, which is a lifetime ago for some of us. It's too realistic to feel Dickensian, but it has that kind of characters-from-all-classes aspect that one just doesn't see so much these days.
Original post: Defenestraethe.booklikes.com/post/1951493/tracking-post
