A couple of rereads rounded out the year of 2010, "Four to Score" by Janet Evanovich and "A Little House Primer" by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Both were good in different ways. Evanovich is of course fun, that's one of my favorite Stephanie Plum books, with the introduction of Sally Sweet and Stephanie and Joe finally getting together. The Little House book is a collection of short articles and stories written by Laura and Rose.
"Dracula, My Love" by Syrie James was a nicely done retelling of Bram Stoker's classic from Mina Harker's point of view. I really enjoyed how well she stayed true to the original story while fleshing out the characters in a way Stoker would never have imagined.
And the last book of 2010, bringing my yearly count to 165, was "The Murders of Richard III" by Elizabeth Peters. I've never read any of her mysteries, but I've wanted to. This one was good, and sort of reminded me of an Agatha Christie type of plot: a group dedicated to restoring Richard III's good name meets for a weekend long house party full of discussions and authentic costumes. One by one the guests start being attacked, not killed but just attacked, in the same order as King Richard's supposed victims. And best of all--a librarian figures the whole thing out! Yay librarians!!
"Eye of the Crow" is a children's mystery by Shane Peacock about the young Sherlock Holmes that my friend Shelly wrote about and I thought it sounded really interesting. I thought Peacock did an excellent job of keeping the character of the famous sleuth and the story was very complex, I really can't imagine a child younger than 12 understanding or enjoying it very much. It put me in the mood for some more Holmes, so I turned to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and reread "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", which contains some of my favorite Holmes stories, like the Speckled Band and the Red Headed League.
Giles Tremlett's new biography on Catherine of Aragon was brilliant and shining and showed just how courageous and brave Queen Catherine was. He sort of made me feel sorry for King Henry for being such a dunce as to just throw away such an amazing woman, proving that men were just as stupid 500 years ago as they are now :)
And finally, "What the Night Knows", Dean Koontz's latest. I really enjoyed this one, it seemed to recall Koontz of his old, golden days, when he wrote books like "Watchers" and "The Bad Place". It was a ghost story featuring a lovely, perfect family who is haunted by the specter brought by their father's guilt for his family's murder when he was 14. The ending was sort of a letdown, and if it had been a Stephen King book at least one of the three perfect kids would have died, but it's Dean Koontz so everyone lived happily ever after, but the ending didn't spoil the rest of the story.
