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Tag Archives: pacific northwest
The Good Rain / Timothy Egan
19 January 2008 – 9:26 pm
Timothy Egan won the 2006 National Book Award for Non-Fiction last year for his book The Worst Hard Time. I was working at Barnes and Noble at the time, and it was good news to us because Egan is a local. We figured there would be even more interest. One of our customers wanted The Good Rain also by Timothy Egan to give as a gift. He thought it was better and more appropriate than the previously mentioned The Worst Hard Time. (…)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven: Anniversary Ed. / Sherman Alexie
3 January 2008 – 1:43 pm
It’s kind of surprising that I’ve never read anything by Sherman Alexie, given that he’s pretty close to what Seattle has for a literary star. Plus, isn’t The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven the best title you’ve heard for a book in ages? Please come up with something better that isn’t a Philip K. Dick work.
This collection of short stories is set primarily on the Spokane Indian Reservation. (…)
Walla Walla Suite / Anne Argula
8 July 2007 – 8:22 pm
Anne Argula’s Walla Walla Suite doesn’t come out until September, so for now the best most folks will be able to do is pre-order this mystery. Cities like Boston, New York, and Los Angeles get far more mysteries set in their environs. But Seattle seems to be up and coming: G. M. Ford, J. A. Jance, Curt Colbert, and now Anne Argula. And Anne Argula is definitely a better writer than our most famous writer of Seattle-based mysteries, J. A. Jance. (…)
Cannery Village / K. Mack Campbell
31 May 2007 – 7:14 pm
Last fall I took a short cruise up to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. As I am wont to do, I picked up a book in one of the tourist traps on local history. In this case, it was K. Mack Campbell’s Cannery Village. It’s supposed to be a history of British Columbia’s outlying salmon canneries. Campbell ran the Fisheries Association of Canada, the national trade association of the fishing industry, and prior to that he ran the equivalent organization in British Columbia. (…)
Long Time Gone / J. A. Jance
24 September 2006 – 11:26 pm
First, before I say anything about the book itself, I want to spend a paragraph commenting on the Premium Plus book size that a few of the book publishers are beginning to use. HarperCollins and its imprint Avon Books are testing it, starting with Long Time Gone. I have two conflicting desires here. I like reading this format a bit better than the regular mass market paperback size. Not because the type is easier to read, though the book claims that. (…)
Legends, Liars, and Lawbreakers / Valerie Green
12 January 2006 – 10:56 pm
Nice quick reading, Legends, Liars, and Lawbreakers is short histories of eight of Washington State’s early criminals and one crime-fighting priest. Most of them turn out to be pretty mundane, such as James William Byrd. He murdered three men over unpaid wages. But the story really covers Esther Bowers, a local violinist who played for convicts at the Walla Walla pen. So Byrd made her two nice boxes. End of the story. (…)
Trial by Fury / J. A. Jance
14 October 2005 – 12:38 am
Bubblegum mystery. Trial by Fury, is the third in the J. P. Beaumont mystery series based in Seattle. Like a lot of mystery stories, this one depends on some huge coincidences. I dislike that. But overall, it’s cheap easy fun reading. Neither great nor awful.
The general plot this time is that Beaumont and his partner Peters are put on the case of a black man whose body is discovered in a trash bin near Seattle Center after the state basketball championships. (…)
Frequencies / Joshua Ortega
11 September 2005 – 8:15 am
Joshua Ortega self-published this book a few years ago, though there’s now another edition published by someone that is not himself. I found it in a stack at Elliott Bay books and bought it on impulse (like I do most my books). It took me a long time to read it. He wrote the book in some sort of future made up l33t-speak, so it’s really hard to tell what’s going on. Mr. Ortega seems like a nice guy. (…)
Injustice for All / J. A. Jance
5 September 2005 – 6:14 pm
Injustice for All is the second book in J. A. Jance’s J. P. Beaumont mystery series. It’s a few months after Until Proven Guilty and Beaumont is taking a vacation in the San Juan Islands. Anne Corley is still on his mind. The book opens when Beaumont hears a scream. He rushes to the beach to find a woman pulling a man’s lifeless body from the water. The woman is Ginger Watkins, a member of the state parole commission. (…)
Until Proven Guilty / J. A. Jance
5 September 2005 – 2:35 pm
Seems like every city in the U.S. has it’s own mystery/cop series. J. A. Jance got the be the writer for Seattle’s series, starring J. P. Beaumont, an alcoholic homicide cop who comes into a bit of money. Until Proven Guilty, the first book in her series tells the story of how Beaumont comes into the money. Beaumont gets a case investigating the murder of a child. Beaumont fingers the wrong suspect, and a vigilante kills him. (…)
