Massachusetts Books

For all you P.I. readers who haven't discovered Healy, give him a chance. Read one, want them all.

This is a great book if you are looking for information on the signers of the Mayflower Compact. It has some history on each of the people that signed the Compact. I found the information on the persons I needed to help me work on my family genealogy. This book would also make a nice addition to any classroom studying the people that came over on the Mayflower.

Thousands of visitors annually visit America's first and best example of a rural cemetery. Mount Auburn Cemetery was consecrated in 1831. It came about as a practical, down-to-earth (no pun intended) solution to a pressing problem. Boston simply had no more room left in which to bury its dead citizens. A group of business men decided it was a good idea to develop a new burial ground well outside the city limits, but close enough for people to easily visit and pray for their departed family members. It was also suggested that the new burial ground should be a pleasant place to visit and where the living could be assured that the departed were residing in a pleasant and peaceful environment. It was decided to enlist the Horticultural Society to help achieve this new concept in rural burial grounds. Since Mount Auburn was the first such cemetery in the United States it was a forerunner of not only rural burying grounds but many landscaped, public parks within city limits. Central Park in New York City was one such result of this new beautiful park concept.
If one doesn't have the patience or interest in reading the rather dry 1861 annual report-like "History of Mount Auburn Cemetery" by Jacob Bigelow, the President of the Corporation and one of the founders of that National Landmark, this is the award-winning coffee table book for you. It's lavishly illustrated with colorful prints as well as photographs and is meticulously researched and well written. More importantly, it's interesting to read. The history of Mount Auburn is fascinating and for those who have actually visited the peaceful location, it will refresh many of their personal memories. In the 19th Century more visitors came to see Mount Auburn than went to see Niagara Falls. It was, and still is, world famous as a "City of the Dead."
The reader won't be disappointed with this volume. It's a publishing gem.

I'm currently working my way through all of the Sarah Kelling mysteries, and this one was no different, being equally enjoyable.

In this book, we're revisit old friends, the Billingsgates. We've met up with them in the Convivial Codfish mystery. This time, they were robbed. The burglar took two Rolls Royces from a locked room, along with the very "Kelling" Aunt Bodicea Kelling. Only Sarah and Max Bittersohn can solve this mystery, and do so in such an interesting, enjoyable way...well, excluding the murders anyway.

We also get to visit other characters from the Convivial Codfish, like the Dorks, the Tolbathys, Cousin Lionel of the hyena pack, and even his mother, Aunt Appie. Needless to say, this is an pleasant and swiftly read story. By the time you realize you've gotten to the middle, you'll already be 3/4 of the way done. Hope you enjoy!

First!

No vacation home coffee table would be complete without this book. Buy it new so no coffee table will ever have to endure the sorrow of being estranged from their copy.

Asey Mayo is working full bore, full time at the Porter Factory making tanks. He gets a two day vacation and comes home to Cape Cod and a mulititude of changes. There's a mob in his house having First Aid lessons, the women are all wearing slacks including his cousin Jenny who doesn't have the figure for them.
Once they all depart and he gets inside, he finds a body in his buttery. The victim, a man who is not in the military because of a heart condition, has been bashed with an iron frypan, the spider of the title. All of the suspects have bought one of these spiders as a birthday gift for the victim.
As with all of Atwood Taylor's mysteries, it's a good story with clues and complications but because she is using life as it was at the time as part of her plot, the story is more frantic, faster-paced and the characters don't have the depth of those in the earlier works.
My parents mentioned food & gas rationing and shortages of that period, but they never participated in all the war related activities of this book, the practicing for disasters, bandage making, Red Cross work or spotting. It was never clear to me if it was ships or planes that they were trying to spot. So possibly that was exaggerated for the story, or maybe it really was like that on Cape Cod. In any event, it made for lots of complications for Asey's detecting and a lively read for me sixty years later.

David Kent was an amateur actor and as a child actor took part in Orson Wells radio show War of the Worlds that scared listeners of a Martian invasion. He was a consumate Borden Scholar and insisted in writing only true facts. His book "40 Whacks" is a classic. David died before publication of his book and play. The book is a hardcover limited edition.

Gilberto Conchas and Louie Rodriguez's SMALL SCHOOLS AND URBAN YOUTH: USING THE POWER OF SCHOOL CULTURE TO ENGAGE STUDENTS is an excellent survey of the cultural and structural features of small schools in two major urban cities. This narrowed focus allows for an analysis of school culture and student involvement on a macroscopic level, creating a fine sociological investigation suitable for both education and sociology libraries.

The Smithsonian Natural Guides are my new bibles for travel. Who really cares about those guides for motels, restaurants and cheesy attractions anyhow? These guides take one to the real America behind (and often above) the tourist traps!

Finch and Wallen team up to the best of their expertise with splendid descriptive writing and photography (the latter always a trademark of this series!). Cape Cod, The Berkshires, the Connecticut and Rhode Island Coasts as well as other areas of natural interest are brought right to the reader and make you want to go there immediately and see what you've just read about.

Jeremiah Healy is a most unusual author of detective novels, being a graduate of Harvard Law School and a professor of law. You might think that this would mean that his novels would be dominated by legal nuance. Although Healy can provide this complexity as well as anyone (and this plays a role in the resolution of So Like Sleep), he keeps it in perspective.

John Francis Cuddy is Healy's detective. He has lost his wife, but still talks to her in the cemetery. This is a man of many dimensions. I know it sounds weird, but it works.

In this story, Cuddy finds a mystery replete with frame-ups, misdirection, and people exploiting others. He finds a way to unearth the whole sick plot, but then finds that it doesn't work legally. Justice is done anyway.

If you haven't read any of the Cuddy stories by Healy, this is a good one to start with. The best idea though is to read The Staked Goat and Blunt Darts, the first two novels in the series first. I suspect that you will become as addicted to these novels as I am.