Crombie/ BWOD

Finished the Susanna Gregory last night, THE TARNISHED CHALICE. The whodunnit was who I was suspecting -- no one is an innocent bystander.

Currently reading next in series for me of Deborah Crombie, KISSED A SAD GOODBYE. This is 6th of 13 in series featuring Duncan Kincaid, a Scotland Yard superintendent, and Gemma James, a sergeant, in London. Here is a description from Amazon:

The body of a lovely young woman is found in London's fashionable Docklands area. She turns out to be Annabelle Hammond, the director of an old family firm of tea merchants. She was a woman of tremendous talent and sexual appetite, but also the kind of harsh and abrasive personality that provides plenty of motives for murder. The Hammond family is also historically linked to the self-made property developer Lewis Finch and his son, an activist dropout and street musician. The other suspects include a spineless boyfriend who works at the tea firm, a secretary too loyal to be true, and herrings of various shades of crimson. Kincaid and James have to solve it all, even as their own personal problems threaten to intrude.

It was published in 1998 and has 336 pages. Here's an excerpt of the first paragraphs:

He saw each note as it fell from his clarinet. Smooth, stretched, with a smokey luster that made him think of black pearls against a woman’s translucent white skin. If I Had You, it was called, an old tune with a slow, sweet melodic line. Had he ever played this one for her?

In the beginning she’d stood in the street as he played, watching him, swaying a little
with the music. He’d distrusted her power clothes and her Pre-Raphaelite face. But she’d intrigued him as well. As the months went by, he never knew when she would appear. There seemed no pattern to it, yet whenever he moved, she found him.

It had been a day like this, the first time he’d seen her, a hot summer day with the smell of rain on the threshold of perception. As evening fell, the shadows cooled the hot, still air and the crowds poured out onto the pavements like prisoners released. Restless, jostling, they were flushed with drink and summer’s licence, and he’d played a jazzy little riff on Summertime to suit their mood.

She stood apart, at the back of the crowd, watching him, and at last she turned away without tossing him even a cursory coin. She never paid him, in all the times after that; and she never spoke. It had been he, one night when she had come alone, who called her back as she turned away.

The author's website can be found at http://www.deborahcrombie.com/index.html.

TV night tonight: Chuck, Paranormal State and Castle. So no reading time for me. I didn't get much sleep last night in general but at 2:30 this morning Kona was back on our deck in the back yard. He's the chocolate lab kittykorner behind us who for some reason gets out of his own yard and roams at night but can't make it back to his own house, he comes to whine at ours in the middle of the night. So I took him home -- it had been raining so he was all wet -- and left a note in their mailbox.

Went clothes shopping today. I hate doing it until it's absolutely required and today was the day. I got a couple pairs of jeans (much needed) and dress pants and a couple spring/summer-weight tops. They love me there when I do finally show up because in making up for lost time, they make their daily sales goal. Hrumph. Next stop, I had to get groceries; then I walked Tug. The weather has turned cold again though not as bad as some places I've been hearing about (Gillette WY lotza snow). I couldn't get warm after our walk so I'm having a cup of tea now.

Today's Blog/Website of the day Lesa's Book Critiques at http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/. Chock-a-block full of good book stuff. With all these fantastic websites, do you see why you could spend hours on the Internet just completely enjoying yourself and making lists of good things to read?

And just because I think it's funny:

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster