1. What are you currently reading? X by Sue Grafton. Cracking open this volume made me sad. With Sue's recent passing and her daughter's announcement that Z is for Zero will never be finished and "as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet ends at Y," my time with series heroine Kinsey Milhone is limited to this one and Y is for Yesterday, which I got for Christmas.
Anyway, X promises to be a rather complicated volume, with different stories intersecting. So far there's an art heist and a missing parolee. Grafton is successful at creating a sense of foreboding. I'm not far into it (Kinsey is just now having her glass of wine with Henry), but I've already read things like, "I read until midnight, still thinking life was swell," and "I ask myself even now if I should have picked up the truth faster than I did."
2. What did you recently finish reading?A Christmas Return by Anne Perry. I thought this would be a holiday mystery, but it's not. We know whodunnit all along, we just don't know if he'll get away with it.
Set in the 1890s, this is the story of Mariah Ellis. This wealthy, crusty
and rather lonely grandmother takes a Christmas trip to avenge the murder of a man she deeply admired, to protect the reputation of his widow, and to stop a very, very bad man.
It's also about tough decisions, missed opportunities and regret. It was more serious, and less Christmas-y, than I expected (though there was a lovely, memorable passage about a tabletop nativity that touched me). Still, I'm glad I met Mariah Ellis and am grateful for the time I spent with her.
3. What will you read next? Maybe another mystery? Or a biography. My TBR pile is stacked high with both.
