Fiction: “Death at Bishop’s Keep” by Robin Paige

See? I told you I wouldn’t finish Little Women first. Although it was touch-and-go there with managing to finish this book to begin with.

Not that it was bad; it wasn’t. It wasn’t great, either, but I didn’t not want to finish it. It’s just … it was hard gathering up the energy and inclination.

Fiction: “Dead Until Dark” by Charlaine Harris

And now I come to my first post-vacation book: Dead Until Dark, the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. You may also know this as “The First Season of HBO’s hit series True Blood,” starring Anna Paquin and apparently the hottest guy this side of Chuck Bass. Now, I haven’t watched True Blood, but I do intend to – someday, when I’ve gone through the hundred and eleventy billion titles on my Netflix queue ahead of True Blood. But it’s supposed to be a fun, vampire-filled romp.

The story is narrated by Sookie Stackhouse, a sweet, blonde, telepathic waitress in the little Louisiana town of Bon Temps, and her night starts looking up when she gets a vampire as a customer. See, in this alternate universe, vampires have ‘come out,’ so to speak, through the invention of synthetic blood – this allows them to survive without resorting to feeding on and/or killing humans. She is intrigued by Bill the Vampire, mostly because she can’t hear his thoughts.

The main mystery involves a serial killer – someone is killing waitresses at Merlotte’s (the bar Sookie works at), and all signs point to Sookie’s brother Jason. She and Bill try to both investigate as well as keep out of trouble. Meanwhile, Sookie and Bill fall in love, so Sookie also has to deal with falling in love with a vampire, someone who, for all intents and purposes, is “dead until dark” (yeah, that’s a quote. I can’t cite it, because my sister is currently devouring this and the next book in the series, Living Dead in Dallas).

Anyway. It’s a cute, light read – fluff, really. A couple of action scenes, a couple of vamp-sucking scenes, but nothing as gross as any of the vampire scenes in any Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel. There’s a couple of fun in-jokes that I’m not going to reveal here, but I think that what I’m most happy about is that, while the vampires do have a synthetic blood to drink, they are actual. vampires. After reading the tripe that is Twilight, and the total guilty pleasure that is The Vampire Diaries (the show on CW, not the books, yeah, kill me when that happens), it is so awesome to have vampires that can’t go out during daylight, that drink blood, that bite humans, that don’t fucking sparkle, I just … *happy place with vampires*

Grade for Dead Until Dark: 3 stars

Fiction: “A Monstrous Regiment of Women” by Laurie R. King

So hey. I’ve been busy, okay? I’ve actually got two reviews stored up because a) I couldn’t figure out how to write them, and b) I was busy with work and class and other stuff that I haven’t found the time to update. Which is really sad. So. This is the first of the two reviews that I’m behind on. I’m currently reading another mystery and Little Women, so we’ll see which one I finish first. (Hint: it won’t be Little Women.)

A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. King: The Second Mary Russell novel.

This is the last book I read while I was on vacation. I nearly read the entire thing on the flight from Vegas, but I kept putting it down because I wanted to savor it.

The story picks up three or so years after the end of Beekeeper’s Apprentice; Mary Russell has now come to her majority – she has kicked her aunt out of her house, reclaimed possession of her inheritance, and is looking forward to rekindling her friendship with Holmes as a true adult. The budding relationship between Holmes and Russell is the B-plot, if you will, of the story – will it remain platonic?

The main story is thusly: Russell runs into an old acquaintance from Oxford, Veronica “Ronnie” Beaconsfield, after being rudely rebuffed by Holmes. Ronnie draws her into a society for women, led by a charismatic woman who intrigues Russell. Russell is easily made a member of Margery Childe’s inner circle, and they begin a dialogue about the early Hebrew bible. But then Russell learns that a few members have died in the past year, all giving a good portion of their assets to the Order upon their death, she begins to investigate – without the help of Holmes.

The story barrels along – it is a bit slower in the middle than Beekeeper’s was, but it is still satisfying. The climax is even more horrific for Russell based on her past -

I don’t want to get into details, because I heartily enjoyed this book, and I don’t want to ruin anyone else’s enjoyment. Read Beekeeper’s first, but I highly recommend having this one on your to-be-read pile for immediately after.

Grade for A Monstrous Regiment of Women: 5 stars

Fiction: “From Potter’s Field” by Patricia Cornwell

Half-way to Vegas, I continued my streaks of returning to previously-read authors and masochism by reading From Potter’s Field, the sixth Kay Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell. It was weird – I was going to bring Kathy Reich’s Fatal Voyage, but decided against it because a) the mystery involved a plane crash, and I’m sorry, but that was too creepy to be reading on a plane, and b) I read Postmortem flying west to visit Emily a couple of years ago, and when I have to travel on a cross-country flight, I get the urge to read Patricia Cornwell.

Kay Scarpetta is the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia. She also consults with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (and look, I don’t know what’s with this particular branch of the Bureau and me and why I continually read books involving it; nor can I explain why I can read Kay Scarpetta and Gregor Demarkian and who-knows-what-else concerning the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, but I can’t get into Criminal Minds, in spite of the occasional appearance by Xander from Buffy). She is not married and does not have children. She has colleagues and co-workers, but she doesn’t really have friends.

Kay Scarpetta is an arrogant ice queen with a severe superiority complex. It is not an endearing quality. I’m not sure whether it’s Ms. Cornwell’s personality coming through like a Mary Sue or what, but there are moments where you just roll your eyes heavenward and keep reading, because holy god your mother is snoring loud enough to wake the dead and your iPod’s sleep playlist doesn’t soothe if you’re listening to it at full volume, so you may as well keep reading this tripe until it puts you to sleep or the sun comes up, whichever comes first (or maybe I’m projecting).

Fiction: “A Great Day for the Deadly” by Jane Haddam

I  went on vacation earlier this month. The best part of vacations that include cross-country plane trips? I can totally read three books in a week, which is unheard of in what I like to call ‘normal time.’

I began my vacation by finishing the fifth book in one of my favorite series, the Gregor Demarkian Holiday series by Jane Haddam. Gregor is an Armenian-American retired FBI agent who helped create the Bureau’s Behavioral Sciences Department (which sounds like a precursor or a synonym for Criminal Minds‘s BAU). He lives on Cavanaugh Street in Philadelphia, and in almost every other novel in the series, that plays a role as a B-plot for Gregor – as it’s his childhood home that has lately seen a resurgence, his crazy neighbors are actually friends he went to school with, and his interactions with them are very rounded and sweet. In this novel, however (with the sole exception of the Epilogue), Gregor is working a case by himself outside of Philadelphia with little interaction with his friends.