Mystery lovers!

It's not too late to vote for the Best Mystery Novel of 2012!

Here's the slate:

The Lost Ones - Ace Atkins
The Diva Digs Up the Dirt - Krista Davis
The Gods of Gotham - Lyndsay Faye
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Potboiler - Jesse Kellerman
Sunset - Al Lamanda
Live By Night - Dennis Lehane
A Fatal Winter - G.M. Malliet
The Buzzard Table - Margaret Maron
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosely
The Beautiful Mystery - Louise Penny
The Other Woman - Hank Phillippi Ryan

These are the books nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel or an Agatha Award for Best Novel.  Don't care for this selection?  You can write in your favorite.

Cast your ballot at the Newport Library, or by replying to this blog post.

We'll announce the winners for the Best Mystery Novel of 2012 on Monday, May 6.

Blunt Impact by Lisa Black

Once again I’m charmed by jumping into a series midstream—in this case, the Theresa MacLean series by Lisa Black. Blunt Impact is book number five, but it stands alone just fine, and makes a good recommendation for its predecessors.

Theresa MacLean is a forensic detective in Cleveland, Ohio, working out of the Medical Examiner’s Office. She sometimes works with her homicide cop cousin, Frank Patrick. In Blunt Impact, they are summoned to the construction site of a controversial new prison facility, where a body has been found after an apparent fall.

The body is that of female construction worker, and the initial assumption is that her death was a suicide. When Theresa discovers the woman’s eleven-year-old daughter hiding behind a dumpster with blood on her clothes, she knows she has a witness both determined and fragile. The daughter insists her mother was pushed, and Theresa and Frank soon find themselves in a maze of motives and more murder, spiced up by fraud, protesters, and the dead woman's refusal to reveal the identity of her child's father.

Romance isn’t a dominant thread in the story, but it does make an appearance. Subplots include an unrequited crush between Frank and his partner Angela, and the plight of a homely prosecutor with a heart of gold.

 When I picked this up, I was merely hoping for a competent mystery, and found that it’s better than that. Although police procedurals are somewhat formulaic by nature, Black’s characters are unique, her voice distinctive, and the setting vivid enough to twist my stomach with a fear of heights.

The series in order:
Takeover
Evidence of Murder
Trail of Blood
Defensive Wounds
Blunt Impact

A Free Man Of Color by Barbara Hambly

New Orleans, early 1830’s. The Americans have taken over from the French and an entirely new social dynamic is being formed. Before the arrival of the General Jackson and the “Kaintucks”, whites, creoles, quadroons, octaroons and all the varieties of colors and nationalities coexisted in an intricate dance of class hierarchy and only moderately restricted social interaction.

But now, any person of color is just as liable to be hijacked off the streets and sold into slavery. And as the eponymous Free Man of Color, Benjamin January must walk a fine line. After the devastating death of his wife in Paris, January returns from France where he’d finished medical school and played classical piano. But New Orleans is not the same place he remembers. The cultured and educated January is forced to learn his place: stooping, bending and shuffling like any black man is now expected to do.

So when the voluptuous mixed-race courtesan Angelique Crozat is murdered during a Mardi Gras ball, the new white authorities would rather pin the crime on a black man than the prime suspect, the bumbling son of a well-connected plantation owner. And Benjamin January was the last person to see the ravishing but notoriously fickle Angelique alive.

Or was he?

Author Barbara Hambly paints a vivid picture of early nineteenth century New Orleans with all of its richness and slightly dangerous social climate. Her mastery of setting and character more than makes up for the rather tumble-down ending. But then, I hardly ever read a mystery for the whodunit.

You can reserve Barbara Hambly’s A Free Man of Color here.

A girl and her wolf

After escaping from an abusive relationship, Ceiridwen Terrill adopted a female wolfdog puppy she named Inyo. She wanted a wolf/dog mix in part for protection from the abusive guy. But more than that, she wanted a wolfdog because she’d heard they were independent, aloof, still partly wild. Terrill wanted to imbibe a little of that spirit for herself: she would become a free, unfettered creature, only giving love where it was truly deserved.

Turns out, Terrill's reasons for wanting a wolfdog were all the wrong ones.

Terrill’s memoir, Part Wild: Caught Between the Worlds of Wolves and Dogs, is extremely informative about wolves, dogs, the differences between the two, and the serious challenges faced by people who try to live with wolves as companions.

It’s also an honest and intimate memoir of Terrill’s mistakes. And she makes a lot of mistakes: with men, with the law, and most of all, with Inyo.

Inyo grows from a charmingly precocious puppy into a powerful adult: beautiful, intelligent, independent, and impossible.  Inyo fails obedience classes, escapes constantly, and terrifies neighbors.  Terrill lies to animal control, conceals evidence of destroyed property, gets evicted, and almost ends up homeless.  Eventually, things get violent. Loving a wild creature who simply cannot adapt to a human’s world, and saddled with a charming husband who is not as much help as he could be (to say the least), Terrill’s options dwindle.

Terrill now teaches at Concordia College in Portland, and Part Wild, her first book, was nominated for an Oregon Book Award. I enjoyed the intelligent and well-informed discussion of exactly why wolfdogs (who are, after all, very closely related to dogs) so rarely make good companion animals.

Even more than that, I loved the way the author fearlessly exposes her own bad judgement and desperation, humanizing what could be a dry subject. I shook my head over Terrill’s mistakes, but my heart went out to her, too.

Part Wild is a terrific book. I recommend it if you love dogs, or if you've ever found yourself in a trap of your own making.

Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh

When the starship Phoenix malfunctions in deep space, the human colonists discover that the closest habitable planet is already taken by the atevi. Standing eight feet tall, the atevi are a race of intimidating humanoids so utterly “alien” that no peaceful coexistence is possible. Lacking any understanding of friendship and incapable of feeling love, the atevi know only man’chi, a concept akin to mafia-style loyalty and obligation.

Exiled to Mospheira, a large, remote island on the atevi world, the human population sends out a single individual to act as paidhi, or diplomat, to keep the peace. When C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series opens, Bren Cameron is paidhi. Trained since birth in the impossibly complex culture and language of the atevi, Bren must navigate this socio-political minefield, both to insure his own personal safety as well as the well-being of all the humans on Mospheira.

Described by some as anthropological science fiction, Foreigner is a fascinating study of how two essentially confrontational societies somehow manage to co-exist. In addition to those almost insurmountable physical, emotional and psychological differences, the atevi are obsessed with numerology, manners, and, of all things, flower arranging.

Oh, and did I mention they have an extremely quick temper and possess a social class devoted to state-sanctioned assassination? 

The fourteenth book in the series, Protector, was published this year, and at least two more  are in the works. If you are a fan of thoughtful science fiction, where ideas are at least as important as far-out alien technology, you may find C.J, Cherryh’s Foreigner series to be a terrific read. And you can reserve the first book, Foreigner, here.

Do you like mysteries? Come vote for the best!

The following twelve books have been nominated for either an Edgar Award or an Agatha Award for the best mystery novel of 2012:


The Lost Ones - Ace Atkins
The Diva Digs Up the Dirt - Krista Davis
The Gods of Gotham - Lyndsay Faye
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Potboiler - Jesse Kellerman
Sunset - Al Lamanda
Live By Night - Dennis Lehane
A Fatal Winter - G.M. Malliet
The Buzzard Table - Margaret Maron
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosely
The Beautiful Mystery - Louise Penny
The Other Woman - Hank Phillippi Ryan

The Edgar Award for best novel will be awarded by the Mystery Writers of America on May 12; the Agatha will be awarded by Malice Domestic on May 4.

But why should they have all the fun? Come to the library and vote for one of these books (or write in your favorite) for best mystery of 2012.

We'll announce our own winner on May 6.

Introducing our new Library Board members

Newport Mayor Sandy Roumagoux and the City Council recently appointed Debora Chandler and Autumn Belloni to serve on the Newport Public Library Board.

Debora, a freelance writer and editor, is new to Newport. While living in Portland, she volunteered for seven years with Oregon’s SMART reading program. In addition to many years in software development, she has worked as a preschool teacher, a director of religious education, a day care center director, and an administrator for an HIV service agency. She served briefly as assistant to the director of the SOU library and, while in graduate school, worked as a cataloger at Northwestern University library. Her hobby is choral singing. An avid reader and lifelong learner, she is delighted to give back to the community by serving the library.

Autumn graduated from the University of Oregon in 2005 with a master’s degree in Communication Disorders and Sciences. She spent one collegiate year living and studying in Spain and thus earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish Literature. She worked for several years as a speech-language pathologist for 4J and Lincoln County School Districts. Autumn is now employed with Linn, Benton, Lincoln Educational Service District working with children birth through five years of age to improve their communication and feeding skills. A family person, Autumn enjoys playing games, being outdoors, crafting, and traveling with her husband and two young children. In her free time, Autumn volunteers in her children’s classrooms and enjoys reading and discussing a variety of literature with her book club.

Debora and Autumn join fellow Board Members Sharon Beardsley, Chip Norman, and Carol Ruggeri in guiding library policy and assisting with fundraising.