Vote; Crosby, Crombie

I voted today. My absentee ballot was somehow not coming to my house I discovered after I called the election office to inquire why mine was late when they were mailed out early last week so I walked to the courthouse (it's just around the corner from where I work) and picked it up and filled it out and turned it in (because I know I sent in the form in August but theysay they didn't receive it so I'm not trusting the mail service right now). Whichever side anyone is on, please do what is constitutionally your right, have a voice and vote. It matters.

I finished THE CHARDONNAY CHARADE by Ellen Crosby last night. Even though sometimes the crime solving isn't the strongest element of a book, if the world that the author created is so interesting that I don't want to leave it, I count it as a good book. This is such a book. I liked the Virginia winery world that Crosby built and I sometimes wish I were more into wine while reading it.

Now I'm reading another book out from the library, ALL SHALL BE WELL by Deborah Crombie, second of twelve in her long-running series featuring Duncan Kincaid, a Scotland Yard superintendent, and Gemma James, a sergeant, in London, England. This was published in 1994 and has 243 pages. Here is a blurb about the book from Publisher's Weekly:

``Morphine coats the mind like peach fuzz,'' thinks Jasmine Dent, a 50-year-old spinster born in India who is dying in London of lung cancer. Her death resembles suicide but leaves her friend and neighbor from the flat above, Scotland Yard Supt. Duncan Kincaid, uneasy. The postmortem he orders reveals an overdose of morphine, prompting him and his sergeant, hot-tempered, copper-haired Gemma James, on a thorough investigation. Suspects include 30-ish, disheveled Meg Bellamy, a timid friend with whom Jasmine had considered suicide, and the downstairs neighbor known as the Major, a veteran of the Muslim-Hindu clashes in Calcutta in 1946 and an avid gardener with whom Jasmine had often sat ``like two old dogs in the sun.'' Others include Meg's stunningly handsome, bullying beau Roger, who urged that she help Jasmine end her life; Felicity Howarth, Jasmine's faithful home-care nurse who slaves to keep her brain-damaged son in an institution; and Jasmine's weak-willed brother Theo, owner of a village junk shop who has failed at every venture he's tried. Helped by Jasmine's journal and a visit to a mental hospital, the clues finally click into place to reveal the culprit. Meg makes a decision that promises hope for two people, while Gemma and Duncan, both unlucky in love, move closer to each other.

Here's the first two paragraphs:

Jasmine Dent let her head fall back on the pillow and closed her eyes. Morphine coats the mind like fuzz on a peach, she thought sleepily, and smiled a little at her metaphor. For a while she floated between sleeping and waking, aware of faint sounds drifting in through the open window, aware of the sunlight flwoing accross the foot of her bed, but unable to rouse herself.

Her earliest memories were of heat and dust, and the unseasonable warmth of the April afternoon conjured up smells and sounds that danced in her mind like long-forgotten wraiths. Jasmine wondered if the long, slow hours of her childhood lay buried somewhere in the cells of her brain, waiting to explode upon her consciousness with that particular lucidity attributed to the memories of the dying.

I've decided to read this series in order. I've neglected it for a very long time like so many other series and good authors. So much to catch up on but the good thing is that there will always be something for me to read. I'm not reliant upon new authors or the next new thing.

Looks like the library is still not moving on the new Penman histmyst -- it's been a week now people -- and the new Michael Connelly is scheduled to be delivered to me on the 20th. So a little chance to breathe and read some from the TBR pile.

I've got Fringe to watch tonight on TV. If you ever liked X-Files; this is the show for you.

Happy reading,
PK the Bookeemonster