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Author: Jenny Hamilton

Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.20: Mystery Tropes, a Mystery Novel, and a Game to Herald the Spring

Please forgive the delay in getting this podcast to you! We had some technical difficulties after recording the podcast, and there was some concern that this podcast was LOST FOREVER. Happily — because we have a special guest star, friend of the podcast Ashley!! — the podcast was able to be recovered, and we present it to you now. Ashley and the Jennys talk about tropes in mystery novels that we hate and love; we review J. Robert Janes’s mystery novel Mirage; and we play a game, composed by Whiskey Jenny, about flowers in book titles. You can listen to…

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The Anxiety of Kalix the Werewolf, Martin Millar

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review. Scottish werewolf Kalix MacRinnalch is trying to make her life better. She’s taking remedial classes at a nearby college and trying to cut back on the violence she does to others and herself. But her plans for self-improvement are interrupted when the Guild of Werewolf Hunters — abetted in their work by Fire Queen Malveria’s deadly enemy — begins to hunt down and murder the members of the werewolf clans. And the werewolves are all: Well, to start with, I am in favor…

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Review: 26a, Diana Evans

Okay, it’s official. I have never, not ever, encountered a Nigerian or Nigerian-descended author who has never written about twins. If you have, drop a note in the comments. Twins are permanent residents of the Nigerian imagination. I like this fact. (In case you are not a podcast listener, Nigerians also have more twins. Than anyone else! We don’t know why, but it’s true, and it remains true even when IVF and other such things increase rates of multiple births in many Western countries.) 26a is about a family of four girls, daughters of a British father and a Nigerian…

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Review: Who Could That Be at This Hour?, Lemony Snicket

There was something I was always very good at, however, and that was teaching myself not to be frightened while frightening things are going on. It is difficult to do this, but I had learned. It is simply a matter of putting one’s fear aside, like the vegetable on the plate you don’t want to touch until all of your rice and chicken are gone, and getting frightened later, when one is out of danger. Sometimes I imagine I will be frightened for the rest of my life because of all the fear I put aside during my time in…

24 Comments

Review: The Body Hunters, Sonia Shah

Somebody recommended The Body Hunters when I reviewed Bad Pharma earlier this year, and I’m pleased that I was able to get and read it so soon! The author, an investigative journalist, here examines the ethics of biomedical research — specifically, of American drug companies outsourcing clinical trials to companies with laxer ethical requirements than the US and large populations of sick patients to run tests on. It’s a fairly widespread practice that only gets wider-spread with each passing year. I am an inveterate note-checker in my nonfiction. I already sort of was to begin with, and then I read…

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A podcast day with no podcast

Whiskey Jenny and I extend our sincere apologies: Here it is podcast day, and we have no podcast to give you. We are experiencing technical difficulties, and we greatly fear that our most recent podcast was swallowed up by a malfunctioning computer. It was a really good one. Whiskey Jenny made up a game, and we had a special guest star in to talk with us about mysteries. We are pretty sad, but we haven’t given up hope that we’ll recover that podcast and be able to share it with you soon.

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The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara

OH MY GOD Y’ALL, THIS BOOK. Don’t let me get your expectations up so high that you can’t enjoy it but like, OH MY GOD THIS BOOK, there are not an adequate number of words in my brain box to describe my feelings about this book right here. The People in the Trees is startling. Not startling in a plot way, but startling in the way that was like I had never read a book before and was reading my very first one right now. The People in the Trees admittedly hits a lot of sweet spots for me: a…

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Review: How to Save a Life, Sara Zarr

Did I ever review Once Was Lost? A peek back at my archives tells me that not only did I not review it, I went into a great big rant about how tired I was of reading about g. d. missing white girls. (STILL SUPER TRUE.) Well, look, you wouldn’t necessarily know it to look at my blog archives, but I am a big fan of Sara Zarr’s, and it is all on the strength of the book she published in 2008, Sweethearts. Sweethearts is about a weird kid who reinvents herself and then does not know how to feel…

18 Comments

A Beautiful Place to Die, Malla Nunn

Fwoo. This was dark. Which I guess is what I should have expected from a murder mystery that takes places in a small town in apartheid South Africa. The beginning: British police detective Emmanuel Cooper comes to investigate the murder of an Afrikaner police captain in the small town of Jacob’s Rest. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a murder mystery where the victim is male. This probably happens more often than it seems to me to happen. I don’t read that many murder mysteries, partly because it always seems to be women getting killed, and I get tired of…

27 Comments