“The Pot Thief who Studied Escoffier” is the fourth crime novel in a series by J. Michael Orenduff. The book is officially debuting at the Left Coast Crime Conference in Santa Fe starting yesterday. Mr. Orenduff was nice enough to give me an Advance Reader Copy of the book.

This book, and the whole series, features Hubert Schuze, a pottery shop owner who both lives and works in the Old Town section of Albuquerque. Schuze is a little bit of a renegade. He kind of has an attitude about laws that he doesn’t like such as prohibitions about against digging up antiquities on public lands. He also doesn’t really trust the authorities too much so when he is accused of crimes such as murder he takes a very active role in proving his innocence.

This time Hubert gets himself involved in a new Austrian themed restaurant starting up in Santa Fe. He starts out as an artisan making ceramic chargers but ends up hip deep in the management and cooking after the restaurants shaky start. Oh yes, he is the chief suspect in two murders so while taking care of the restaurant he is also solving the murders.

In the meantime he heads back to Albuquerque to have happy hour with his friend Susannah to discuss life, restaurant management, crime solving, and various other matters. Schuze doesn’t really conduct his life or solve murders in a linear, logical, stepwise fashion. Things just kind swirl and eddy as he covers this and that but eventually he figures everything out.

This book is marinated in New Mexican flavor from start to finish. It is all about the journey and not so much the destination. It is a leisurely, pleasant, and intelligent read. Orenduff has a smooth writing style that makes it all go down easy.

I give it four stars out of five. You don’t need to have read the other three in the series for this one to be a good read.

Check out the Series Website.

“Damage” is a San Francisco based detective novel by John Lescroart. It features newly elected District Attorney, former defense attorney, Wes Farrell, and Abe Glitsky. Farrell doesn’t even get his furniture in his office when he has to deal with a crime spree spread by the son of a rich and  powerful San Francisco newspaper family who it happened were big contributors to his campaign.

Farrell has his hands full trying to deal with the situation while dealing with complicated San Franciso politics.

I found the political angle to be quite distracting while reading the book and never quite got into it. What kept me going though was uncertainties about who the bad guys really are and even then, did the bad guys do all the bad stuff? Maybe not?

I give the book 2.5 stars out of five. I mean it is worth reading but I’m glad I got it at the library instead of downloading on the Kindle. I’m intrigued enough though that I’ll be looking for more Lescroart books.

The Red Garden is about the town of Blackwell in the mountains of western Massachusetts, founded in 1750. The town was originally called Bearsville. It sits on the banks of the Eel River so called because of the many eels that live in the river.

The book starts out at the town’s founding up until the present day. If you are believer in the power of place and that places can affect people for good or worse and that family traits can survive hundreds of years then this is the book for you. Ms. Hoffman displays her magical touch that submerges the reader in the story and can make the reader aware of magic in their own life. This book has lots of magic: the mysterious red garden of the title, the eels in the river, the bears in the woods, and the mountains outside of town.

This is a great book I give it five stars out of five. Go get it and read it. I found my copy at the library. My tax dollars at work.

“An East End Murder” is a short story mystery set in London, England in 1865 featuring the detective Charles Lennox. He is a high class kind of guy who is solving the murder of Phil Jigg, a low class guy. So we follow Lennox, the gentleman, as he interacts with street people in rough neighborhoods familiar with Jigg.

I found the period stuff quite interesting but the basic story was less than compelling. I give the book two stars out of five. Interesting to a degree but I am not led to try another of this series.

“Bird Cloud” is a non-fiction book by Ms. Proulx that concerns itself with a section (640 acres) of land that she purchased in Wyoming and the house (named “Bird Cloud”) that she built on the property. She covers everything in this book. She speculates on the American Indians who lived on and moved through the property and the chain of title once the white man got his hands on it. She spends a good deal of time on the design of the house, both what she wanted, and what she ended up with, the construction and the many problems that entailed. She also writes at length about the various birds (including both bald and golden eagles), elk, deer, coyotes, mountain lions, and fish that she sees. She also finds time to talk about her ancestry and all the places she lived as a child, and some of the houses she lived in as a child.

So, this is quite a book. I found it fascinating. She is the author of my favorite short story of all time, “Brokeback Mountain.” Her writing is very direct, spare, and opinionated. She is also full of herself, which is fine. Writing a book (or writing a blog!) is a very egocentric activity. I mean you have to believe somebody out there wants to hear what you have to say.

I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5, which means that it is a good read. Its short at 234 pages so I got it at the library.

I just finished Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. It is about a company of very grown up teenage Marines the northern part of South Vietnam in 1969 led by a brand new college grad lieutenant Waino Mellas. These Marines engage in some very horrific battles under some unnecessary deprivation. I say unnecessary because they were deprived of food and water by screwups by their officers behind the lines. These same officers were served great food by Filipino stewards complete with fine whiskey and wine while they discussed why Bravo company was not moving very quickly through the jungle.

I found myself getting very angry with senior officers who were putting Mellas’ platoon in danger and depriving them of food, water, ammunition, and medical supplies and who refused to evacuate their wounded and dead.

Marlantes himself is a much decorated Marine Lieutenant during the Vietnam War. This novel took him 30 years to write through multiple drafts and revisions. Here is an interview where he discusses the process of writing it.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I give it five stars out of five.

Marlantes worked hard on this book and the results show. His characters are very real. Yes, they are are heroes but they are scared crapless heroes who do what they are terrified of doing and face down their fears. The writing is wonderful, it is the kind of book where the print on the page disappears, the book disappears, and I’m not aware of reading but I’m tearing off 200 page chunks with no sense of the passage of time.

Get this book, read it.

I just finished this book. I couldn’t resist it. It is set in Old Town Albuquerque and involves ancient indian pottery, the University of New Mexico, and murder. I used to live in Albuquerque, got my first degree at UNM, and love Old Town. It is the mixture of the cheesy and the nice. Very very old adobe buildings, nice restaurants, lots of alleys and old streets. New Mexico has a charm to it that never leaves you.

The book is about an Old Town pottery shop owner, Hubert Schuze, who has been known to go dig up pots illegally. He doesn’t much apologize for it. He is a laid back guy who has a wide variety of friends and enjoys life. He is accused of murder so he has to take matters into his own hands.

Orenduff is a natural storyteller. This is one of those books where the writing is so smooth and the story so compelling that you stay up till midnight and then get surprised when you look at the clock.

Hey, and it is on Amazon Kindle for less than $6.

I give this book 3.5 stars out of five. This is the first of a series and I’m going to read the rest.

I just finished Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell. This is another of her series of Kay Scarpetta books. Kay Scarpetta is a medical examiner who solves murders. In this one she has to solve a puzzler of a murder quickly under difficult circumstances.

She is at Dover Air Force Base to begin with doing autopsies on the bodies of soldiers killed over seas. She is like a reserve officer. She gets word from the Cambridge Forensic Center, her home office that she has been away from for months, that it appears that a murder victim may not have been dead when he was brought in. Oops, so she has to leave Dover and get back to Cambridge quickly to check out what was going on.

She gets there and finds out that all sorts of crap has been going on in her absence. Her assistant, Fielding, hasn’t been taking care of business. She ends up playing catch up on everything, meanwhile she has to figure out what is going on with the murder. And where in the heck is the assistant, how come the military is there nosing around.

This isn’t a linear detective novel. The process of solving the murder goes here, there, and everywhere, but it is very intriguing and compelling. I loved this book. It was a totally satisfying read.

I give it four stars out of five. I got my copy at the library!