Burned: a Regan Reilly Mystery by Carol Higgins Clark
So, I know I said yesterday’s book was a “thriller” but really had more to it than that. Well, this book is a “mystery” that is just the opposite. There are no lingering questions, nothing disturbing, just a simple mystery book, like many others. It’s “A Regan Reilly Mystery,” so I guess it’s just one in a line of them, and it is a pleasant diversion, just a little break from reality. I have a signed copy of this, as I stood in a (very long) line to get a signed book at the BEA from Mary Higgins Clark, the very famous mystery writer, and she was doing a joint signing with her daughter, who while not as famous as her mother, is pretty well known.
A quick aside: I was startled when I got to the front of the line and met them, at the amount of make-up they were both wearing. It was frankly a little scary, and I thought “this is a crowd of book people, no one cares, really, how you’ll photograph, they just like your books. It was just plain odd, and while I don;t know how old either woman is, I thought it was trying to make them look younger but instead aged them a lot. Just odd, have to say, made me a little sad for them.
Anyway, the book is a quick read, and you kind of have it figured out by at least halfway through, but there are a few mildly surprising moments. Many of the characters are predictable, or just cartoonish – “Jimmy” the shell museum man, whose speech and mannerisms are stilted of no discernible reason, “Glenn,” the snarky but always smiling hotel worker, the evil older twins, the newly enageed couple, the man-hungry gal, and even the “best friend who always needs rescuing,” but every ends as it should, and is almost too pat. Read it in a day, a pleasant little diversion, like candy – fun while you’re at it, but pretty formulaic and forgettable afterwards. Set in Hawaii, but that doesn’t seem to matter much, aside from token objects, you get the feeling it could have taken place almost anywhere with a beach. But I’m sure it sold a ton, anyway!
Snow Day!
We had an honest-to-goodness blizzard here over the last day and a half. Some people think blizzards just mean lots of snow, but it also needs to have high winds and low temperatures. Well, at the moment I cannot hear any wind gusting, but it has been pretty constant for the last day, and as the snow was all powder, there were marvelous fanciful shapes carved into the drifts, amazing, gravity-defying curves, and my front stairs had a pompadour that’d make Elvis jealous.
I love snow, the way it transforms the landscape, makes everything wild and clean again, and makes it easy to track the wild animals that live in, and go through our yard, although they are all now hunkered own for the evening. And in the time it took me to type this, the wind has picked back up again outside.
Funny, isn’t it, how as children we hope for snow days, and yet when we are adults, almost no one gets the day off, even if it’s blizzarding out!
A good night to stay inside and read a good book, don’t you think?