Book Review: The Goat Woman of Largo Bay by Gillian Royes

Title: The Goat Woman of Largo Bay by Gillian Royes
Paperback: 320 pages, Atria Books
Publication date: September 27, 2011

In a nutshell: Simone finds and retreats to a small uninhabited island off Largo Bay in northeastern Jamaica, returning after years of living in the U.S. The tiny island belongs to an American expatriate - Eric, who runs a bar on the mainland and who rents her his island although he worries about her safety there.

In the meantime, a mysterious foreign businessman nicknamed Man-O-War has hired local thugs to influence votes in the upcoming general election for a new government. The two plots connect when a serious threat to Simone develops. 

She tapped the gun once in her palm, held Eric's gaze, then glanced at Shad....

"This island belong to him, miss," Shad said in a low voice. "You're trespassing...."

"He should've had a sign," she said. The words were guttural but crisp - an American accent with some Jamaican underneath. (p. 19)

My comments: The main character is a mysterious, determined woman whose actions and unusual retreat to the island arouses suspicion and concern among the residents of Largo Bay, who wonder about her sanity. These include Eric and his bartender Shad. To protect the woman Simone, they call on local people including a medicine man who performs black magic or obeah.  I enjoyed seeing the Jamaican culture and its current economic and political situations woven into the plot. These, in addition to the characters, carried the novel, which did not have a complicated crime plot. It's the first in a new detective series. I rate the novel 3.75-4 out of 5.

Author: Gillian Royes was born in Kingston, Jamaica and lives in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She earned a doctorate in American Studies at Emory University, and is the author of Business is Good and Sexcess: The New Gender Rules at Work. The Goat Woman of Largo Bay is her first work of fiction.

© Harvee Lau 2011
I  received a complimentary copy of this novel for possible review.  

Teaser: The Last Word by Ellery Adams

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.


Title: The Last Word: A Books By the Bay Mystery
Publisher: Berkley; December 6, 2011

"Why does he scare you?" she asked very gently....

"He's got a secret. I can tell."

Olivia nodded. "He probably does. Most people have secrets, I think." (ch. 2)

Book description: Olivia Limoges and the Bayside Book Writers are excited about Oyster Bay's newest resident: bestselling novelist Nick Plumley. But when Olivia stops by Plumley's rental she finds he's been strangled. Her instincts tell her something from the past came back to haunt him, but she never expects the investigation could spell doom for one of her dearest friends...

Opening Sentences: Off With His Head by Ngaio Marsh

Beginning sentences: Over that part of England the Winter Solstice came down with a bitter antiphony of snow and frost. Trees, minutely articulate, shuddered in the north wind. By four o'clock in the afternoon the people of south Mardian were all indoors.

It was at four o'clock that a small dogged-looking car appeared on a rise above the village and began to sidle and curve down the frozen lane. Its driver, her vision distracted by wisps of grey hair escaping from a headscarf, peered through the fan-shaped clearing on her wind-screen. Her woolly paws clutched rather than commanded the wheel.

Comments: The atmospheric description of place and driver slowly builds up suspense. Marsh is known as a master of mysteries, and this one sounds good enough for me to borrow it from  relatives to take back on my long trip home.

Book description:

Pagan revelry and morris dancing in the middle of a very cold winter set the scene for one of Ngaio Marsh's most fascinating murder mysteries. When the pesky Anna Bunz arrives at Mardian to investigate the rare survival of folk-dancing still practised there, she quickly antagonizes the villagers. But Mrs Bunz is not the only source of friction -- two of the other enthusiasts are also spoiling for a fight. When the sword dancers' traditional mock beheading of the Winter Solstice becomes horribly real, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn finds himself faced with a case of great complexity and of gruesome proportions...(amazon)

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Title: Off With His Head by Ngaio Marsh
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Harper Collins Pb (August 21, 2000)

Book Review: Song of the Silk Road by Mingmei Yip

Title: Song of the Silk Road by Mingmei Yip
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Kensington; 1 edition (April 1, 2011)
Genre: contemporary fiction, travel
Rating: 4/5

In a nutshell: Lily Lin,  a graduate student in New York who grew up in Hong Kong, is offered three million dollars by an aunt she has never heard of. But first she must travel along China's famed Silk Road and across the desolate Taklamakan Desert--and carry out a series of strange and almost impossible tasks along the way.  Lily meets Alex, a young American also traveling across China who offers to accompany her on her journey and who falls in love with her.  The ending of the journey reveals huge surprises for Lily that change her perception of herself and her life as she knew it.

Comments: Lily is not always a likeable person as she is stubborn, could be seen as promiscuous, and uses very expressive language at times, but her six to eight month trip along the Silk Road is informative and entertaining, travel wise, and her unusual story has an interesting twist at the end that helps to set her on a firmer path.

© Harvee Lau 2011
This book is my personal copy.

Current Read: Mrs. Jeffries and the Mistletoe Mix-Up

I finished one of my Thanksgiving reads, will listen to the other this weekend, and picked up another book to read as well - a cute Victorian mystery where the help gets involved in their employer, the Inspector's, cases and get enough information to help solve the crime. Mrs. Jeffries is the inspector's housekeeper and runs a household of several who are willing to go out and snoop and question other maids, footmen, shopkeepers,  pub patrons, or anyone who will talk with them about the case.

Title: Mrs. Jeffries and the Mistletoe Mix-up by Emily Brightwell
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Berkley Hardcover (November 1, 2011)
Genre: Victorian mystery
Source: publisher

Book description: Under a bundle of mistletoe, art collector Daniel McCourt lies dead, a bloody sword next to his body. Inspector Witherspoon is determined to solve the case-preferably before the eggnog is ladled out on Christmas Eve-but of course he will require assistance from the always sharp-witted housekeeper, Mrs. Jeffries, who has a few of her own theories on why McCourt had to die by the sword.

Thanksgiving Reads

graphic courtesy of Dover Publications

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy the day and the weekend!

I've decided to armchair travel for my Thanksgiving reading, in between enjoying turkey and other goodies.

Title: River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, on a ship on the Bay of Bengal heading to Canton, China. Historical novel, 19 discs audio.

Title: Song of the Silk Road by Mingmei Yip, heading along the Silk Road in China. Contemporary novel, paperback.

Title: Skeleton Letters (A Scrapbooking Mystery) by Laura Childs, in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Which of the three trips would you take this holiday? And what will you be reading, if anything, over the busy Thanksgiving weekend?

Teaser: Labyrinth of Terror by Richard P. Wenzel

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"Isn't that a bit far-fetched, Rose? A bit histrionic of you to think that someone would deliberately try to hurt or kill patients at King's with a terrifying microbe? You've been reading too many sci-fi books." (ch. 2)

Book description: "Terror reigns when a string of post-op infections erupts in the sanitized halls of King s College Hospital in London. A trio of experts--microbiology Professor Chris Rose, Jake Evans, an American infectious disease specialist, and Elizabeth Foster, a senior agent with M15--soon realize that the offending organism is a weapon in a worldwide terrorist plot. The terrorists turn their focus on an upcoming medical-legal conference, hoping to infect hundreds and subsequently ravage the global community, as well as those very doctors who might be able to find a cure.

Author and physician Richard Wenzel takes us on a journey through Europe and the Middle East, unravels the science of infections, and opens a revealing window on the complex politics of medicine."

Title: Labyrinth of Terror by Richard P. Wenzel
Paperback, 202 pages
Published September 1, 2010 by Brandylane Publishers, Inc .
Genre: medical thriller, environmental thriller
 
I received a complimentary copy of this book for feature or review.