Maria Yovanovitch, y'all. Maria Effin' Yovanovitch. When the annals of this nonsensical but devastating four year attack on the Republic are written, her name will figure in letters of gold. Unlike Gym Jordan, Milk Dud and the Elise woman whose name I am too lazy to google.

Highly entertaining. The wit is in full evidence ( did you ever think traveling with Herodotus could be boring?) Corby does, and the result is plentiful laughs along with a mystery that holds up if does not challenge. The usual enormous amount of historical information deftly inserted into the book, along with scenes of surprising sobriety. Usually Corby has been content to land jokes. No quarrel with that, but when he does decide to get serious, well, it opens up some brilliant insights into the mind of a Golden Age Athenian. Highly recommend.

The worst thing about life since the Emperor Tang seized power is the sheer force of negative emotion that courses through me every single goddam day. There is nothing that can set me off faster than being around people who I know voted for him or even worse, recognize him as some kind of "necessary evil."

Another cheerful entry in this mystery series. Nico and Diotima investigate the household of the Athenian hero/exiled traitor Themistocles in the city of Magnesia, where he rules as a satrap of the Persian Great King. Corby has a sharp eye for what made ancient Greek civilization great <i>and</i> peculiar, coupled with a witty style. This time out the mystery is actually puzzling as well, so The Ionia Sanction delivers the goods in that department as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Q2srbfUPU


Oh my God!

Who Killed the Fonz? by Henry Boice

A one-sit wonder, which is what I call a book I start and finish in a couple of hours. Who Killed the Fonz carefully navigates the shoals of fan fiction and actually manages to be about something. It probably helps if you were a fan of Happy Days (I wasn't, but had no problem with all of the major references --- though I am sure I missed plenty as that will enhance the nostalgia factor). But the story of Richard Cunningham coming back to Milwaukee as a middle-aged man discontented with his life more than makes up for (1) the utter lack of mystery and (2) the mildly lame sitcom elements with Potsie and Ralph at the climax of the story. It is a very sweet read without being cloying.

Honest Doubt (A Kate Fansler Mystery #13) 
by

Amanda Cross,

Carolyn G. Heilbrun

Simon Donoghue's review

liked it

A delayed pleasure. I haven't read this because I wanted one more Kate Fansler mystery before lights out. Alas, Kate is a peripheral character in some ways, but central in ways that don't add up. Heilbrun went out on a sour note with the academic community within which she functioned. The themes in this book pick up on others that run throughout the Fansler ouevre, but with a twist. The protagonist is a fat --- her incessant word, not mine --- female private investigator who tools around on a motorcycle. Woody, as she is known, is sent to Kate about a case involving an academic homicide.

And we're off. Woody is presented as an academic naif, despite the fact that she has attended college and law school, which seems like a lot of higher education for someone who doesn't understand the concept of a core curriculum. Woody looks into the murder of the Chair of the English Department at Clifton College, a small liberal arts college in New Jersey. I myself work at a small liberal arts college in North Carolina. And no one, but no one, uses the language Heilbrun puts into the mouths of the Clifton professors. As long as the stories were told from Kate's point of view, Heilbrun's style made sense. It was like Woody Allen's concept of New York City dwellers' conversation. Something to which one could aspire. But Woody blows it. She wants us to believe that she finds academics odd when she herself uses the word "chap." This is a pet word of Heilbrun's; her characters have always called each other that, and the reader thinks, "oh, well, somewhere there are bunch of WASPS who do that." (I seriously doubt it.) But to have your narrator mocking the oppressor --- because Heilbrun clearly used her swansong to settle accounts with the patriarchy --- while talking just like them? The reader is constantly jarred out of the story. And that isn't hard to do, because there really isn't one. That fact is underscored so hard by the "solution" to the "mystery" that I wound up slamming the book shut with unnecessary violence.

But Kate does float through the story, acting much as she always has, and there is a final glimpse of Banny and Reed. Read it for that.