I haven’t done a reading post since March, but I have them written up. As I have such a hefty backlog I will catch up in a non-chronological order, so I have read several books by the same author I will do those books in the same post, even if I didn’t read them that way.

Mark Mills The Savage Garden It’s the 50’s and a young Englishman is invited to do an inventory of a small Italian garden from the early 16th century. He is well-received by the elderly lady who owns the manor house the garden belongs to and is soon entangled in two mysteries. There is some oddities in the architecture of the garden, which seems to point toward an ancient murder. And there is a more modern mystery concerning the death of the hostess son, shot by the German in the last days of the war. It’s a well-written book and I enjoyed it on this re-read too, even if I knew the answers.

Dan Waddell The Blood Detective, Blood Atonement, Blood Underground and Blood Reckoning Apparently genealogical crime novel is a genre on its own- who knew? At least I didn’t until I stumbled over the Blood Detective. Murder victims start turning up marked with an odd letter/number combination. It turns out the markings has to do with genealogy and the investigating police seek help from a professional genealogist. The writing is engaging and the main characters; the young genealogist and the middle age police officer in charge, are interesting enough. Interesting enough to read the other books. Book two concerns the murder of women and the abduction of their teenage daughters, and the third revisit a murder from the early 1990 when an old man is beaten to death by children. Now the children are adults and free- and someone is killing them. Blood Underground is a novella about a closed of subway station.

Jonathan Kellerman Night Moves I’ve kept reading the latest Jonathan Kellerman out of habit, sometimes wondering why I still do it. I think I have my answer now. I read this one in April, and even when I read the blurb on Amazon I can’t recall what it was about… I don’t think I will read the next Kellerman.

Lois McMaster Bujold The Flowers of Vashnoi After several fantasy novellas about Penric and his demon, Bujold revisits the Vorkosigan. This novella is set a couple of years after Miles’ wedding, and the main character is his wife; Ekaterin. The infamous butterbugs from A Civil Campaign have been adapted to clean up nuclear waste, and they are tried out in the wasteland that was once the city of Vashnoi. The problem is that the bugs are disappearing, and someone actually seems to live in the contaminated area. I always enjoy Bujold, and this was no exception.