King: The Art of Detection

Er, long time no post. I guess I should just quit apologizing. We've moved, and I'm now blogging from my new home in the mountain south! We love it here so far.

I'm in the middle of several books, and am therefore not finishing any of them quickly. I may also have to resort to posting less-than-positive reviews. I suppose it was inevitable that I would have to quit only posting about books I really liked.

I did enjoy the Art of Detection. I've read King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, and like them (except for the most recent, which is why I didn't blog about it). I hadn't read any of the Martinelli books before this one, and I enjoyed it. Kate Martinelli is fun--a good, solid cop of the sort I like reading about. The bonus for this book is the inclusion of a "mysterious" typescript story that (readers of King's other series know) is written by Sherlock Holmes from the Mary Russell books. It's a mystery-within-a-mystery, and I have a taste for layered texts. The book moves along well, and the secondary characters, including a Sherlock Holmes fan club / re-enactment society is well done. King makes a nod to her real-life friend Leslie Klinger's New Annotate Sherlock Holmes (short stories and novels), a recommendation that I enthusiastically second for anyone who enjoys the Holmes stories.

Who needs to eat more vegetables? Yeah, me, too. I saw Giada making this on the Food network the other day, and tried it out. It's really good:

Tomato Vegetable Casserole

Let me know what you think! And a shout-out to any of my students who found this blog by poking around on my course blogs.