Book Review: Whip Smart by Kit Brennan

Title: Whip Smart: Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards by Kit Brennan
Published January 1, 2012; Astor + Blue Editions
Genre: historical mystery

About the main character: The historical Lola Montez was a famous Spanish dancer born in Ireland in 1818 as Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert. She first called herself Lola Montez in 1843 when she performed in London. A success throughout Europe, she acquired fame, notoriety, as well as famous lovers. She was said to always carry a whip with her and used it for protection. 

Whip Smart is a clever mystery that uses the historical Lola as a main character. It weaves the mystery plot into parts of Lola's real life - her Irish background, an elopement and failed marriage, her life in India, her training in Spain as a dancer, her dalliances, even her trademark Spider dance.

My take: The novel is written with a lot of humor that plays up the daring and sensuous Lola. The book combines a bit of erotica with a smart mystery plot. I think it's the first in what will be a great series. The title Whip Smart is also a good way to describe the book.
 
Book description: In London, in 1842, 22-year-old Eliza Gilbert/Lola Montez  is offered a trip to Spain to act as a spy for the exiled Spanish queen, Maria Cristina. In Madrid, her secret task is to seduce two figures at court in order to disgrace and distract them, but she falls in love with her accomplice, General Diego de Léon. When the plot is exposed, Diego is captured, and Lola is forced to flee on horseback to France, with a dangerous group of Loyalists in pursuit. (publisher's description).

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC of the book.

Mailbox Monday: February 11, 2013

Welcome to Mailbox Monday where you can share what books came to house in the last week! This week’s Mailbox is hosted by Unabridged Chick.

I was delighted to receive these last week: Click on the titles for book details.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Asia: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid, an ARC from Riverhead Books

Release date: March 5, 2013

Telling the Bees by Peggy Hesketh, an ARC from Putnam Adult

Release date: March 7, 2013

Temple of a Thousand Faces by John Shors, from the Penguin Group
Publication date: February 5, 2013; NAL Group

Tell us, what books came in your mailbox last week?

Sunday Salon: Happy Lunar New Year

Welcome to the Sunday Salon!

Courtesy of China Highlights.com

Happy Chinese New Year of the Water Snake, or Happy Spring Festival as China celebrates fifteen days of the new lunar year.

We're having fun today with Chinese foods. We made sticky-rice cakes yesterday, a simple recipe with rice flour, brown sugar, and dried fruit, steamed - a traditional new year's food. We also plan to have jiaozi , Chinese dumplings stuffed with ground pork, chopped green onions, and vegetables. We bought a bag of these at the Asian market as it's too complicated to make them on short notice. And of course, we will have oodles of noodles, symbols of longevity!

I think all the Chinese restaurants will be closed today, at least in the U.S., (I can't tell about Canada) so although it's a Sunday, it's probably not a day to try to get any Chinese food that you don't make yourself!

I posted a review of The Aviator's Wife, a novel that I found very satisfying - good storytelling, historical information and insight into what the intimate and personal lives of Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh must have been like. It's on the NY Times bestseller list too.

I also reviewed a crime novel set in Brazil, Perfect Hatred, the sixth of the Chief Inspector Mario Silva mystery series by Leighton Gage. It tells a lot about politics and corruption in Brazil and relationships with nearby countries. Pick up the series, especially if you plan on going to Rio for the 2016 Olympics, but I don't think it will scare you away from going!

My reading tastes have broadened slightly and I am now reading more YA fantasy, in addition to general women's fiction. I have started The Farm by Emily McKay, about a girl trying to escape a death camp or farm prison, a futuristic novel. I haven't read far enough as yet to describe the novel as dystopic. It certainly doesn't seem to be anyone's paradise, except for the predators'.

I'm also reading a jaunty novel, Whip Smart by Kit Brennan, for a book tour. The book is based on the real life adventures of 19th century Lola Montez. set in France, England, and Spain. It's a galloping romp so far!

My cup of coffee with a mix of almond and soy milk added is heating up. Better get to it! Have a great Sunday, everyone, whether you plan on reading or eating, or both.

Featured Book: Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage

Title: Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage
Release date: February 19, 2013; Soho Crime
Genre: police procedural, mystery set in Brazil

About the book: Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team have a heavy work load with several high-profile cases. First, a suicide bombing that was apparently the work of a militant Islamist group. Then, a gubernatorial candidate is assassinated in broad daylight at a campaign rally. Could the cases be related? To complicate Silva's investigation, a criminal with a very bad grudge against the Chief Inspector has been released from prison and is plotting ugly revenge. (publisher)

This teaser to me shows the focus of this novel set in Brazil:
"I've been explaining that to our Maximum Leader for the last ten minutes, Silva said, "but he isn't having it. It appears Pontes owes the incumbent governor a favor....
"So it's just politics and favoritism," Hector snapped.
"Just politics and favoritism," Silva agreed.

(ch. 4, from an advance uncopyedited edition; final copy may differ)

Local politics in Brazil involving corruption, a complex relationship with the neighboring country of Paraguay, and the possibility of a terrorist threat in Brazil and on its borders fuel the plot of this political mystery. Though I found the many Brazilian names hard to keep track of at the beginning, the novel soon evened out for me into a suspenseful police procedural that ties together the disparate events and people introduced in the first few chapters.

I would recommend the book to those interested in Brazil and South America and to seasoned mystery lovers.

Thanks to the author for sending an advance review copy.

Book Review: The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

Title: The Aviator's Wife: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin
Published January 15, 2013; Delacorte Press
Genre: historical fiction
Rating: 5/5

About the book: an historical novel about the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife and copilot, Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

"Certainly, despite his accomplishments, his busy schedule, Charles was never content.  The other morning, I happened to glimpse him as he left for work.... And I felt uneasy watching him leave, wondering for the first time, if today was the day he would decide to jump into a plane and fly away from me for good."(ch. 9, Advance Reader's Edition). 

The novel portrays Anne Morrow Lindbergh as a woman who willingly came second to her husband, the famous aviator who gained fame when he flew solo from New York to Paris on the now famous monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, in May 1927.  Charles carefully molded her life after their marriage, and made her into an aviatrix who became his copilot on numerous subsequent flights. He even insisted she leave her infant son Charlie to accompany him on a six month flying trip around the world, a compromise she reluctantly made.

Things changed for the famous couple after the kidnapping and murder of their first son. The couple moved to England to avoid the scrutiny of the press and the country, and Charles demanded that Anne never speak about the baby Charlie, not even to the five children they had afterwards.

Charles Lindberg is portrayed in the book as driven - a perfectionist, an almost obsessive compulsive man, in my thinking. With an eye always to the future, he hardly had time to spend with his children as they were growing up, leaving it up to Anne as he flew around the world in many capacities including being a flying consultant. Anne is seen as a woman searching for herself while raising her children alone. Charles encouraged her to write, which she did, and she helped him polish his memoir of his famous first flight, The Spirit of St. Louis, a book which won him a Pulitzer Prize and which was also made into a popular film. She also wrote her now famous book, Gift from the Sea.

When does a hero stop being a hero, the book made me wonder. The novel goes into the controversial wartime period when Charles's speeches seemed to support Hitler and the Nazis. He redeemed himself after the war, and became once again busy, being asked by the likes of Henry Ford and Pan Am to lend them his technical expertise. But this book is about Anne Morrow Lindberg, how she saw her life with Charles Lindbergh, the kidnapping of their son, her up and down life with her famous husband, and how she finally came into her own, toward the end of Charles's life.

The historical details are there in the book, but the feelings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh are a portrayal based on her diaries, letters, and books. Anne comes across as a very real person that you get to know intimately in the book. I think this novel is a stunning achievement as historical fiction. I recommend it for those interested in the Lindberghs and in American historical fiction.

Thanks to the publisher for an Advance Reader's Edition of this book. 

Author Khanh Ha, guest post

Welcome to Khanh Ha, author of the historical novel Flesh (Black Heron Press, 2012) set in early 20th century Vietnam. He gives us the background and inspiration for his book and the family history that impels this story.  He also discusses his upcoming and second novel.
Flesh

The Ideas and Inspiration Behind It

by Khanh Ha

Flesh, is set in Tonkin (now northern Vietnam) at the turn of the 20th century. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who witnesses the execution, by beheading of his father, a notorious bandit and sets out to recover his father’s head, and then finds the man who betrayed his father to the authorities.

A coming-of-age story of brutal self-awakening and also a tender love story, takes the reader into places, both dark and wonderful, in the human condition where allies are not always your friends, true love hurts, and your worst enemy can bring you the most solace. As its author, I was asked what inspired me to write about this specific subject.

There was an image formed in my mind after I read a book called War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin, which was written by a French military doctor. In one chapter he depicted an execution by capital punishment. The scene took place on a wasteland outside Hanoi. This bandit was beheaded for his crime while the onlookers, some being his relatives with children, watched in muted fascination and horror. While reading it, I imagined a boy—his son—was witnessing the decapitation of his father by the hand of the executioner. I pictured him and his mother as they collected the body without the head which the government would display at the entrance of the village his father had looted. I thought what if the boy later set out to steal the head so he could give his father an honorable burial. What if he got his hand on the executioner’s sabre and used it to kill the man who betrayed his father for a large bounty. However, it really started with a story within my family.  My mom told me that my grandfather was one of the last mandarins of the Hue Court, circa 1930.

At that time the Vietnamese communists were coming into power. They condemned any person a traitor, who worked either for the French or the Hue Court. So my grandpa was a traitor in their eye. One day news came to him that a communist gathering was to be held in one of the remote villages from Hue. He set out to that village with some of his bodyguards to punish the communists. Unfortunately, news leaked out about his trip. He was ambushed on the road—his bodyguards were killed—and he was beheaded. The communists threw his body into a river.

My grandma hired a witch doctor to look for his headless body. Eventually the witch doctor found it. They were able to identify his body based on the ivory name tablet in his tunic. My grandma hired someone to make a fake head out of a coconut shell wrapped in gilded paper and buried my grandpa on the Ngu Binh Mountain. The beheading of grandpa surfaced again while I was reading the decapitation scene in War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin.

I spend much, much time in researching before I write. I’m a perfectionist and the harshest critic of myself. I have to know everything about what I’m going to write—well, sort of—before I ever pen the first word. Indeed much research was done before I felt dead sure about writing it.

More than once I was asked if I’m currently busy with a work-in-progress.

Yes, I’m about done with my next novel. But I rarely talk about what I’m working on. It may sound like a hard-line stance. But well, I can give you a harmless description. When I was still a struggling young writer, I came across a very old Vietnamese magazine article written about a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Hue. He was already dead the year the story was published, circa 1966. Two years before I was born. A sketchy story whose facts were gleaned from the eunuch’s adopted daughter, that ended with a small halftone photograph of her portrait. I put the article away. But I couldn’t put the story away, even months after. It dawned on me then that it wasn’t the story.

It was the face in the photograph. I traveled to Hue, Vietnam in the summer of 1991. I was 23. I went with her image in the photograph and when I finally met her, the eunuch’s daughter, that image hadn’t changed. She was someone like a forbidden love to a young man half her age. The first time she gave me a glimpse of her past from her spotted memory, it was in a sugarcane field where two decades earlier, her lover—a young American—had died in her arms.

Thanks to the author for this very interesting post. For reviews of his book, visit Virtual Author Book Tours.

About the book:  
The title refers to temptation-the temptation of the flesh. But it refers equally to the obligations of kinship, the connections between us and those to whom we are related, even if we would choose not to be. 

Khanh Ha was born in Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. During his teen years, he began writing short stories, which won him several awards in the Vietnamese adolescent magazines. He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. FLESH (Black Heron Press, June 2012) is his first novel (literary fiction).

Visit the author at: http://www.authorkhanhha.com

Thanks to Teddy Rose at Virtual Author Book Tours for this guest post by the author.

To see my July 26, 2012 comments on the book, visit my Review.

Book Teaser/First Paragraph: TARGETS OF REVENGE by Jeffrey S. Stephens

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB; choose sentences at random from your current read. Identify author and title for readers. 

First Chapter,  First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea.

Over Lago de Maracaibo, Venezuela

Jordan Sandor was strapped into the small cockpit of the BSG-29 glider. The C-47 twin engine that had been rigged to draw him up into the moonless night began its run down the tarmac. There was an abrupt tug as the towrope was yanked taut, then Sandor felt a second more violent jerk as he was lifted into the air. (ch. 1)

What do you think of the opening sentences of Targets of Revenge, a Jordan Sandor thriller? Does the tease make you want to read on?

Publisher's description:CIA Agent Jordan Sandor is on the hunt for the cold-blooded sociopath known as Adina, whose indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people, including Sandor’s close friend, represents man at his worst.