Read Books This will provide a list of the books I've read with a brief review. Users are blocked, contact me for access. I welcome discussions, but I'm tired of spam.

Termination Dust is the second book in Sue Henry’s series on Jessie Arnold, set in Alaska.  This book is set in the Yukon.  Ok, so this isn’t Alaska.  When the book opens, Jim Hampton is kayaking in the Yukon River.  En route, he discovers a body and a few artifacts dating back to the 1890s.  Among these items is the diary of a gold miner heading for the Klondike gold rush and a few nuggets of gold.  Part of this book is uncovering the events of the miner and what became of his gold.

Next, Jim is attacked by two men in a zodiac, an inflatable motorized boat, who destroy his kayak and steal his gear.  Jim makes camp, but when he wakes, there are two policemen, a dead body, and most of his gear is back.  All the evidence points to Jim as the murderer, but he has no motive.

Termination dust is an Alaskan term for the first light dusting of snow on the mountains.  This is taken as a sign of the big snows to come.  Both stories see this moment come and pass.

Queen of the Night is a novel of suspense involving the murder of four people at a formal dinner on an indian reservation in the middle of nowhere. The book tells parallel stories set decades apart, and the stories of several separate individuals whose lives become intertwined.

This is the fourth Brandon Walker book. I hadn’t realized that when I started, or I would have preferred to start with the first. I can’t say if that would have made things clearer.

I thought the book got off to a slow start. The different characters were initially hard to keep apart, and there was nothing to tie the stories together. However, once the stories did connect, I found the pace of the book pick up distinctly and it became much more interesting.

The characters are interesting, if a little flat. Although the murder was unusual, it didn’t seem to matter. I thought some of the information came a bit easy, so I classify the book more as suspense than mystery. The book does provide some interesting insights into the Tohono O’odham tribe, its culture, and a little of its language.

The writing was good, but not great. It had a good flow and was easy to read. I did enjoy the book, but found it difficult to read prior to the murder.

He Shall Thunder in the Sky, by Elizabeth Peters

This is the twelfth book in the Amelia Peabody series. In this book, they return to Egypt for another excavation, but little of the book sees any archaeology work. World War I is raging, and events engulf our heros in intrigue and mystery. The Master Criminal is back, and has placed himself in the center of affairs.

As it goes with the series, this book is more about the characters than the events. The main characters continue in their unusual styles to entertain us. Ramses and Nefret are maturing in more ways than one, and insert themselves into the intrigue that surrounds them. As events play out, we learn new and unexpected events and histories of several characters, including the past of The Master Criminal.

This book was better than several of the preceeding ones and is worth the read. This book would stand on its own, except that the reader would lack a good understanding of the characters which provides most of the value of the book.