No.	Date	Author	Title	Rating	Comments
1	1/1/99	Crombie, Deborah	Dreaming of the Bones .	78	Duncan Kincaid #5.  British police detective working the murder of a poetess in Cambridge. Award winner. The literary atmosphere and personal relationships take a while to develop, but when I finally got interested, the story became a very satisfying experience.
2	1/2/99	Scottoline, Lisa	Rough Justice .	35	Tape, abridged. A wildly improbable story full of unbelievable actions by unlikely characters without any logic to their actions. I hope this is a bad abridgement, because if the book is the same, it's awful.
3	1/3/99	Pomidor, Bill	Mind Over Murder	74	Cal and Plato Marley #5. (I've skipped 3 and 4. Rats.) Amusing, clever story set at Christmas time. I find Cal (the wife)'s irresponsible behavior while being stalked highly unbelievable, but the story's fun anyway.
4	1/4/99	Kellerman, Faye	Serpent's Tooth	72	Tape, abridged. Latest (#10) in the  Decker/Lazarus series about an LA police detective. Better than I expected. OK to listen to, but not really worth my time to read.
5	1/4/99	Woods, Stuart	Swimming to Catalina	45	Tape, abridged. A thoroughly stupid story about  Stone Barrington (the character's idiotic name lets you know what kind of book it's going to be) embroiled in an unlikely Hollywood kidnapping. Wooden writing, silly plot, strictly hackwork.
6	1/5/99	Cook, Thomas H.	The Chatham School Affair	88	Edgar winner 1996. Excellent atmosphere piece where the details of the traumatic event are revealed little by little as the protagonist--a teenager involved peripherally--tells the story of what happened in his past. Very compelling. Fine 1920's feeling as well. This is literature.
7	1/5/99	Taylor, Kathleen	Hotel South Dakota	40	Tory Bauer #2.  Did not hold my interest; I gave up after 45 or 50 pages. It has all the elements of a fun read--small town, quirky characters--but it just didn't do it for me.
8	1/7/99	Kellerman, Jonathan	The Web	65	Tape, abridged.  Alex Delaware #10 . Somewhat boring recounting of an unbelievable, unlikely story involving wartime military genetic testing in the South Pacific. Kellerman did it as well as could be done, given the stupid story line. Probably his worst that I've read.
9	1/11/99	Lippmann, Laura	Charm City	76	Tess Monaghan #2.  Moderately amusing, moderately well written, somewhat far-fetched crime. Nice stuff about Baltimore and the newspaper business. Award winner (PB Original)
10	1/13/99	McCafferty, Barbara Taylor & Herald, Beverly Taylor	Double Exposure	76	Tatum Twins #2.  Lightweight but clever and fun story about identical twins and a mystery involving other twins, written by twins. Ulp, I'm seeing double. I liked the book.
11	1/15/99	Dawson, Janet	Till the Old Men Die	77	Jeri Howard #2 (1993). A story about Filipino-Americans involving criminal doings in the past haunting the next generation. Jeri is a no-nonsense, careful, ethical investigator who plugs away at a problem logically until she finds the solution. This is a fine book, not exciting, but eminently satisfying.
12	1/18/99	Lehane, Dennis	Darkness, Take My Hand	70	Kenzie & Gennaro #2. Excellent writing, terrifying, gripping story of evil arch-criminal butchers, but too evil, too dark, too down for any nice person to read. Brrr.
13	1/21/99	McGarrity, Michael	Tularosa	70	Kevin Kerney #1. New Mexico ex-cop tracks down AWOL godson. Pretty good writing, but shows beginner's flaws here and there (gratuitous brief POV shifts). Nice description of the country. Degenerates at end to bad guy overpowers good guy who is overpowered by another bad guy who is overpowered by another good guy, etc. Too TV-ish for me. Nevertheless, it shows promise and I want to read more about Kevin Kerney.
14	2/1/99	Lund, Gerald N.	The Work and the Glory #2:	79	Audio tape, unabridged. Over 20 hours of reading. There are problems with the reading voice, but the material is magnificent and the joy of listening to this day in and day out is considerable. I am intimately involved with the Steed family. Great book.
15	2/1/99	Lanier, Virginia	The House on Bloodhound Lane	79	Jo Beth Siddon #2. Another fine story, this time better controlled with more attention to one main plot line and one major subplot. There are flaws in the writing, but who cares? It's just plain fun to read this. Highly recommended.
16	2/3/99	Benjamin, Carol Lea	The Dog Who Knew Too Much	61	Rachel Alexander #2. Not very interesting. The dogs are strictly window dressing. Plot was unlikely--can you imagine a PI basically living the victim's life for several weeks hoping to blunder into some clue as to what happened? I can't.
17	2/4/99	Dew, Shari L.	Gordon B. Hinckley	82	Audio tape, abridged and read by Bruce Lindsay. What a joyous, inspiring experience it is to listen to the life of this wonderful religious leader. Masterfully written and read. Highest recommendation possible.
18	2/6/99	Braun, Lilian Jackson	The Cat Who Saw Stars	70	The Cat Who series #22.  Reading it is like visiting your grandmother's place. Everything is old, familiar, comfortable, and inviting. The experience is pleasant. But it ain't a mystery. Yeah, there's a murder or two, but no detection. Qwill wanders about aimlessly and eventually someone tells him what happened. Where's the suspense? And the little "extra" tagged on at the end is downright silly.
19		Lund, Gerald N.	The Work and the Glory #3		Unabridged tape.
20	2/12/99	Squire, Elizabeth Daniels	Whose Death Is It, Anyway?	65	Peaches Dann #4. I almost didn't finish it. The suspense is uneven. There's nothing structurally wrong with the plot except that I just didn't find it interesting. The character, Peaches Dann, whose memory is poor and has written a book about living without a decent memory, has been engaging in earlier books. Here, she seemed merely tiresome.
21	2/15/99	Dawson, Janet	Kindred Crimes	78	Jeri Howard #1.  Fine book, interesting characters, nicely wrought plot. Jeri is unspectacular but competent, moving inexorably to the conclusion in a highly satisfying way. It's logical, believable, and satisfying. Rec'd 3 Best First Novel nominations.
22	2/20/99	Connelly, Michael	The Black Echo	81	Harry Bosch #1.  Totally fascinating, immensely satisfying book. I see why Connelly gets award nominations right and left. I enjoyed the uniqueness of the crimes involved and the careful, step-by-step process of finding the solution. The characters are interesting and the action is well-paced. This is a winner, big-time.
23	2/25/99	Stabenow, Dana	Breakup	77	Kate Shugak #7.  I burned out on Shugak a while back, but decided to come back for a try after a couple of years off. This one starts out with a ton of humorous events that are really enjoyable and continues through a series of what-else-could-go-wrong events to a nice climax. The only problem here is that, amusing as all this is, there's hardly any mystery to it. If you like Kate and Alaska, however, you won't mind the lack of detection.
24	2/28/99	O'Kane, Leslie	Play Dead	76	Allie Babcock #1. In this new series, a Boulder, Colorado, woman opens a practice as a dog psychologist. One of her first cases is a dog traumatized by seeing its owner murdered. Amusing, light-hearted, and facile, this was a lot of fun to read, its unlikely premise notwithstanding.
25	3/2/99	King, Laurie R.	The Moor	77	Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes #4.  Slower to develop, full of dark but interesting Moor atmosphere, and lacking some of the sharp edge of previous titles, this is nevertheless an enjoyable outing.
26	3/7/99	Burke, Jan	Hocus	82	Irene Kelly #5. . Wonderful intricate unusual story. Fascinating characters. One of my favorite books of the year.
27	3/13/99	Fitzwater, Judy	Dying to Get Even	74	Jennifer Marsh #2. Minor but well-written story about helping prove her eccentric old lady friend didn't do in her eccentric ex-husband. Fun.
28	3/14/99	McGarrity, Michael	Mexican Hat	77	Kevin Kerney #2.  Better than #1; he kept the plot-twisting at the end to a minimum and delivered a well-written, tight story in which the New Mexico landscape plays an important part. There's still some new author POV-shift awkwardness, but he's getting the hang of it.
29	3/17/99	Massey, Sujata	The Salaryman's Wife	78	Rei Shimura #1.  A Japanese-American girl is trying to make it in Tokyo as a real Japanese person. She gets involved in a murder and her efforts to help a new friend reveal all sorts of interesting stuff about the Japanese mindset and culture. Nominated for a bunch of first novel awards, it deserves the acclaim. Fascinating.
30	3/22/99	Lawrence, Martha	Murder in Scorpio	77	Elizabeth Chase #1.  I did not expect to enjoy a book that expects you to take its psychic, astrology-believing protagonist seriously. Surprise! I like this story. I like the pragmatic attitude Elizabeth has about her psychic "gift." The writing is excellent: tight, crisp, elegant. Its multiple first-novel award nominations were well earned.
31	3/25/99	McClendon, Lise	The Bluejay Shaman	70	Alix Thorssen #1.  Takes place in Montana. There are some first-novel infelicities here, but McClendon has wonderful phrases and images here that more than make up for them. She has a nice feel for the West. Story is OK.
32	3/28/99	Hill, Reginald	On Beulah Height	81	Dalziel and Pascoe #16. Highly, highly recommended by at least 40 DorothyL readers. Not my normal type of book (British police procedural), but this is a fine story indeed. Fascinating details of Mid-Yorkshire country life. The speech patterns are wonderful to hear. Characterization, atmosphere, puzzle, fine detective work: it's all here. (I even checked this one out of the library!)
33	3/30/99	Westlake, Donald	The Ax	77	A sobering story in which a 2-years unemployed middle manager systematically (and logically) sets about to murder other job-seekers who might be hired ahead of him for a job whose holder he also plans to kill. What's scary is that you can (almost) identify with this desperate man.
34	4/1/99	Matthews, Alex	Secret Shadow	72	Cassidy McCabe #1.  A therapist's patient commits suicide--or was it murder? I enjoyed Cassidy's real-life uncertainties and fears and identified with her independent streak. There's a romance element that borders on being tiresome for a male reader, but it's not too bad.
35	4/3/99	Brewer, Steve	Baby Face	72	Bubba Mabry #2. Bubba Mabry #2. I shouldn't start with #2, but the others are not available just now. Bubba's a strange bird, living in a mtel room the muck and mire of the crime district of Albuquerque. He's not quite competent and has justifiably little self-confidence. He's supposed to be funny, but it doesn't quite work for me. I like my PI's a little more in charge of their lives and their cases; I find it hard to indentify with Bubba.
36	4/4/99	McClendon, Lise	Painted Truth	77	Alix Thorssen #2. Now, this is more like it. None of the infelicities and uncertainties of #1 survive. Lise has her voice and talent well in control in this very enjoyable adventure set in Jackson Hole and the fictional town of Star Valley, Wyoming (even if she blows a few details involving the real towns in Star Valley.)
37	4/8/99	Crombie, Deborah	A Share in Death	74	Duncan Kincaid #1. An interesting first novel (by a Texan!) about a Scotland Yard homicide detective on holiday at a Yorkshire timeshare condo. The writing is good, the characters are likeable, but the story itself is rather ho-hum. It's worth reading because the series becomes quite good. (See book #1 above).
38	4/10/99	Hill, Reginald	Blood Sympathy	75	Joe Sixsmith #1. Sixsmith is a black lathe operator turned PI after being laid off.  He's rather simple, but it's fun to blunder around with him as he solves several related cases almost by accident.
39	4/13/99	Hill, Reginald	An Advancement of Learning	74	Dalziel and Pascoe #2, from 1971.  A 5-year old corpse turns up, followed by more murders in a small university.  Good, solid mystery writing.  It's fun to watch Pascoe meet up again with the woman he will marry in a subsequent book.
40	4/16/99	Harris, Charlaine	Three Bedrooms, One Corpse	N/A	Aurora Teagarden #3. Abandoned after 66 pages; it did not hold my interest.
41	4/21/99	Hill, Reginald	Underworld	77	Dalziel and Pascoe #10  (1988). Heavily political at first. I almost gave it up, but I stuck with it because when these guys get around to the actual detecting, they're dynamite. As usual, it's a great story, with the overtones and textures of good literature. If I understood British class conflict and labor unrest better, I'd really have loved it. Even so, it was a fine experience.
42	4/23/99	Bowen, Rhys	Evans Above	78	Constable Evan Evans #1.  A delightful, pastoral tale set in an idyllic Welsh village involving an engaging young constable. Pleasant characters, a satisfying puzzle, and you get to learn more about Wales.  What more could you ask?
43	4/25/99	Havill, Steven F.	Heartshot	78	Undersheriff Bill Gastner #1.   Sixty-ish veteran small town New Mexico cop struggles with accidental deaths of teenagers and others while tracking down the source of a kilo of cocaine.  Excellent writing, sympathetic characters, and an interesting set of circumstances add up to a fine book.
44	4/26/99	Pronzini, Bill	Sentinels	78	Nameless Detective #23.   Another first-class installment in this superb series.  Nameless is the quintessential private eye.  But watch for the last line in this one; it's a killer.  (Don't cheat and look ahead!)
45	4/28/99	Berenson, Laurien	Hair of the Dog	N/A	Melanie Travers #4. Murder on the dog show circuit  So far I've tried 2 or 3 other dog-show related books without being able to stand them.  I made it about 100 pages into this one before I found myself longing to read something else.  I think my problem is that I simply can't convince myself that dogs are as important as the people in these  books think they are.  The writing is good; I just don't like the subject.
46	5/3/99	Hill, Reginald	A Clubbable Woman	71	Dalziel and Pascoe #1  (1970).  I'm reading through this series since I liked the later ones so much. This one is good enough to read if you're reading the series, but not good enough to read for its own sake, especially for an American. There's a lot here that goes right over my non-British head. Nevertheless, it's interesting to meet Dalziel and Pascoe at the start of Hill's chronicle of their careers.
47	5/5/99	Kaminsky, Stuart M.	Dancing in the Dark	75	Toby Peters #19  (1996).  A fun story about a Hollywood detective in the 40s. Peters helps Fred Astaire out of a pickle in this one. It's lightweight and pleasant. I'll be checking out the remainder of this series.
48	5/9/99	Myers, Tamar	Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth	77	Magdalena Yoder #1  (1994).  I was enchanted with the author's voice from the first page. Magdalena is a real find. She runs an Amish/Mennonite inn which leads to all sort of interesting and amusing situations. The murder mystery was only OK here, but that wasn't really important because the characters were so much fun. Definitely recommended. (And don't worry if you're fed up--so to speak--with cooking/recipe mysteries. There's no gourmet nonsense here.)
49	5/11/99	Pronzini, Bill	Illusions	80	Nameless Detective #24   (1997).  If you read Sentinels, the previous book, you'll want to read this one right away; it picks up from the stunning last sentence of that book and holds you by the throat until till the final page. This is lean, tough writing with a heart. Pronzini is at the height of his considerable powers in this excellent story.
50	5/15/99	Pentecost, Hugh	Murder in Luxury	71	Pierre Chambrun #16   (1981).  I'd read a Pierre Chambrun story years ago and liked it. The setup with Chambrun as the all-knowing, super-competent hotel manager could give us some great stories. This one sets up an impossible situation and then resolves it quite nicely, but it's strictly a workmanlike story.
51	5/18/99	Robinson, Peter	Innocent Graves	77	Alan Banks #8   (1996).  A fine police procedural story with some strong things to say about the fate of the wrongly accused. The police here seem a little less brilliant and a little more ploddingly pedestrian than is the case in many such novels, which makes it more realistic and gives us something to think about. I'm not sure, however, that it makes it as fun to read. Nevertheless, I'll be reading the rest of this series.
52	5/20/99	Pronzini, Bill	Blue Lonesome	79	Non-series novel.   (1995).  Pronzini just gets better and better. In this book, a nice, boring CPA finds excitement and a new life as he follows a compulsion to solve a crime no one wants him to solve in a small Nevada desert mining town. Since I'm a nice, boring CPA, this book had something to say to me. (For one thing, it made me even more appreciative for my wife and family, which give my life much more meaning than was available to the family-less hero of this book.) Highly recommended.
53	5/21/99	Myers, Tamar	Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Crime	78	Magdalena Yoder #2  (1995).  This book was so easy to read! I polished off 50 pages during the commercials and timeouts of an intense Jazz v. Portland playoff game and finished it the next day. If anything, this is even more fun than the previous book in the series. Magdalena is hilarious and this time the mystery is almost believable. I loved it.
54	5/22/99	Pronzini, Bill	Boobytrap	78	Nameless Detective #25  (1998).  Nameless tries to go on vacation, but will a tense case intrude? Of course. Tightly written, suspenseful, insightful, and satisfying, this book is one of the best of the year. Winner of the 1999 Shamus Award for best PI novel.
55	5/23/99	Hanson, Rick	Still Life	73	Adam McCleet #3  (1996).  This time McCleet is in New Mexico, where he gets involved in a murder involving the search for a mysterious alien thought to have been buried there in the 1860's. It's wildly funny, but not quite as over-the-top as previous titles (to my relief).
56	5/25/99	Ford, G. M.	Who In Hell Is Wanda Fuca?	78	Leo Waterman #1  (1995).  Seattle-based Leo Waterman is a fifty-ish PI who uses a squad of homeless buddies as his assistants as he investigates the disappearance of nutcase environmentalist heiress. It's fun, interesting, not overbearing in its environmental position, and different from anything you've ever read. I'm hot on the trail of the rest of this series--I can't wait to see Leo in action again.
57	5/26/99	Rankin, Ian	Knots and Crosses	77	John Rebus #1  (1987).  Rankin's first novel. Detective Sergeant John Rebus is involved in finding a serial killer. The case becomes intensely personal in a believable, inevitable way. This was my first hard-boiled Scottish police procedural. I liked it.
58	5/28/99	Hanson, Rick	Splitting Heirs	72	Adam McCleet #4  (1987).  I enjoyed this funny story up till the end, where I thought the author failed to play fair with us, making it a disappointing entry in this fun series.
59	6/1/99	Hill, Reginald	A Pinch of Snuff	77	Dalziel and Pascoe #5  (1978).  Three investigations come together in the end of Dalziel and Pascoe's story. Hill is really hitting his stride with this fifth in the series.
60	6/5/99	Evanovich, Janet	Three to Get Deadly	80	Stephanie Plum #3  (1997).  This fresh, witty series is immensely popular, with good reason. The books just keep getting better and better, with the story lines more convincing and the situations funnier and funnier. You will like this book.
61	6/5/99	Dobyns, Stephen	Saratoga Longshot	N/A	Charlie Bradshaw #1  (1976).  I'd read several positive reviews of later entries in this series, so I thought I'd try to start from the beginning. The book, badly dated, didn't hold my interest after about 40 pages, so I gave it up. I may try one of the recent ones, however. Reviews can't be wrong, can they?
62	6/6/99	Westlake, Donald	Adios, Sheherazade (sp?)	70	Non-series title. (1970).  Billed as a serious comedy, this is the sad story of a young man who somehow finds himself writing one sex book a month to make a living. After 28 months, he can no longer do it. We read the rambling thoughts he types as he tries to write the current month's book. He's trapped; if he can't write the books, he has no income and no skills and no job.... We follow his slide into oblivion as he loses his family, friends, etc. It's grim. There are lessons here about letting life's circumstances determine your fate rather your taking control. Westlake is brilliant, but I'm not sure this book is an experience I wanted to have.
63	6/6/99	Wodehouse, P.G.	French Leave	76	Non-series title.   (1959).  After the descent into hopelessness with Westlake (above), it was time for a bit of froth. No one whips up a better bit of enjoyable froth than the master, P.G. Wodehouse himself. Three sisters come into a modest inheritance, and make off for France to vacation and perhaps locate a rich husband or two. The master blends in a down-at-his-heels French nobleman, a handsome but penniless count, rich Americans, a blustery police commissaire, and lots of mistaken impressions to create a pleasant couple of hours of reading.
64	6/14/99	Fowler, Earlene	Dove in the Window	78	Benni Harper #5  (1998).  Fowler is maturing as a writer; this book explores some emotional territory while giving us the normal excellent mystery story. I like Benni and her family; it's satisfying to spend some time with them.
65	6/18/99	Myers, Tamar	No Use Crying Over Spilled Milk	78	Magdalena Yoder #3  (1996).  This is a wonderful series. Magdalena is off to the funeral of a murdered Amish relative in Ohio, where she (of course) solves the mystery, but not until she's had plenty of fun exploring this new Amish community and its unusual denizens. This is funny stuff.
66	6/20/99	McGarrity, Michael	Serpent Gate	77	Kevin Kerney #3  (1998).  Kerney has come up in the world, taking a job as the second-in-command of the New Mexico State Police, at least temporarily. His adventures in solving two apparently unrelated cases make a fine story. McGarrity is improving with each book. This one kept me up late into the night--I just had to finish it.
67	6/25/99	Connelly, Michael	Black Ice	80	Harry Bosch #2  (1993). My goodness, this Connelly guy can really write. What an intense, nail-biting experience. The plot twists are clever and the writing is superb. Harry Bosch is a fascinatingly different kind of guy-I didn't really think I was going to like him at all, but in spite of his rough ways, I like him a lot. Highly, highly recommended.
68	6/27/99	Sanders, Lawrence	McNally's Secret	74	Archie McNally #1  (1992).  First in a series about an easy-going, rich Florida dilettante who still lives with his parents. He does investigative work for his father's law firm. Sanders' masterful use of the language provides a funny-often hilarious-story. Somehow, however, adventures among the idle rich don't really appeal to me. I may try another in the series...don't know yet.
69	6/29/99	Hathaway, Robin	The Doctor Digs a Grave	76	Dr. Andrew Fenimore #1  (1998).  This is an odd one, involving a cardiac surgeon who is also a private investigator on the side. How likely is that? He stumbles onto a buried Native American murder victim and follows through to solve the murder. I like his sidekick--a black teenage homeboy with a soft heart. It's very cozy, not particularly believable, but fun.

Would you like to see similar information on my reading for the second half of 1999? Click here for 1999's July through December Reading List.

Would you like to see similar information on my 1998 reading? Click here for 1998's Reading List.

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