PAINTED LADY by Peter Abresch, Copyright 2003. I tried hard on this one because the jacket cover labeled it as an Elderhostel Mystery. I’m 86. Years ago I did an Elderhostel. Maybe I’d want to try another. The book striking me as an ad for Elderhostel helped turn me off on it
I stopped in the middle of the second or third chapter. It seemed to be written by the numbers from some book or books Peter has on how to write mystery novels. The main characters, a husband and wife, I found uninteresting. Their conversation, designed to be humorous as well as sexy, I found dull. Far too predictable. Nuf said.
THE RAINALDI QUARTET by Paul Adam, Copyright 2007. A page turner. I zipped through its 312 pages in a day and I’m not a fast reader. The cover says music lovers, lovers of Italy, and Donna Leon are likely to like this book. I don’t know who Donna Leon is.
I learned a lot from this book. One hero is a luthier, a violin maker and repairman. The other is the local police chief. A side effect of their solving the murder of a friend of theirs, one of their regular weekly string quartet, was my learning much of the history of violins, who the famous makers were like Stradivari, Amati, etc. I found the ins and outs of the high priced violin market fascinating. How one becomes a featured soloist, as a under 20 very appealing girl demonstrated also held me for page after page. My cousin Scott, who is a conductor and featured pianist would probably enjoy this book.
THE FAN by Peter Abrahams, Copyright 1995. Don’t bother with this one unless your love of baseball and mysteries is so strong you can ignore what I found to be very poor writing. I stopped in the second chapter.