In Ebony and Spica: Two Birds in My Life, Janet Doolaege tells about a blackbird and a starling who were rescued as fledglings and spent long and happy lives as part of her household. It might seem like there wouldn’t be much of a story here, but the author’s keen observations and skillful description make this brief memoir an entertaining read.

The writing abounds with vivid imagery and information about birds, the kind of knowledge that comes only through close observation:

An aggressive blackbird looks very different from an aggressive starling. Ebony in an angry mood would look like a horizontal missile, all feathers on his head flat and his beak pointed forwards. . . . An enraged starling, on the other hand, is a vertical challenger with crown feathers sticking straight up.

Bird lovers will enjoy the antics of these feathered sweethearts, who worm their way into the hearts of Doolaege and her husband. The latter occasionally loses patience with Spica’s dinner-table incursions. My husband and I share our home with a budgie, so I know how birds can take over a household and how annoying they can sometimes be. I had quite a few moments of recognition while reading Ebony and Spica.

Some think of birds as neglible creatures. Anyone who has lived with them knows they’re intelligent and sensitive. but even bird lovers might not think of starlings and blackbirds as beautiful. Doolaege reveals their beauty—Ebony “with a fine gold ring around each large black eye” and Spica “with his feathers slightly puffed out like miniature cockle shells.”

The story of the birds inevitably allows readers into the author’s daily life. I enjoyed visiting a world not fraught with melodrama or darkened by disaster, a world where people with ordinary problems find contentment in their day-to-day experiences. The author adopted Ebony and Spica because they would have perished otherwise, but she concludes that birds cannot live a full life among human beings. I understand her arguments but think a bird, wild or domesticated, could meet a far worse fate than life in a French farmhouse with other birds, cared for and loved by compassionate human beings.

The Fourth Season is the fourth and final book in a mystery quartet by award-winning Australian author Dorothy Johnson. (The others are The Trojan Dog, The White Tower, and Eden.) I read the book with the disadvantage of not having read the earlier ones, so I knew nothing about the protagonist, Sandra Mahoney. She lives a complicated life with two children, an ex-husband, a live-in partner, and a fraught friendship with a police detective. She also has a reputation as a cyber-security expert. Of course Sandra’s history comes to bear on events in The Fourth Season.

The story centers on two murders: a student killed and dumped in a lake and a scuba diver killed and dumped in a public swimming pool near Sandra’s house. Sandra takes an interest in the first murder because her partner, Ivan, was in love with the student, Laila Fanshaw. He becomes an immediate suspect. It doesn’t help that he turns uncommunicative and selfish, staying out all night and neglecting their young daughter, who adores him. Then a stranger, Don Fletcher, phones Sandra and offers her money to investigate the case. Also a suspect, he wants the real murderer caught. Sandra has qualms but needs the money. She takes the case.

She discovers Laila’s passionate interest in environmental causes—in particular protecting the waters around Australia from exploitation by oil companies—and the passion that her beauty and energy aroused in those who knew her. Ivan isn’t the only one who fell for Laila. Various suspects emerge, including a prominent politician. Sandra’s snooping results in her being followed. After the scuba diver’s body is found, a phone call to the police places her car near the swimming pool. It becomes more and more obvious that Sandra and her children could be in danger.

Johnson writes polished prose and constructs a solid plot with masterful pacing. The story held my interest even though Sandra’s investigation consists mostly of her talking with the various people involved, and some of the conversations end without her learning much of anything. The most action-packed scene that she instigates is sneaking into Laila’s house to steal evidence. Much of the story concerns Sandra’s relationships with her children, with Ivan, and with Detective Sergeant Brook. The complex lives of these characters are as compelling as the murder mystery.

Sandra’s first-person narrative shows her intelligence and perceptiveness. She reads people well and knows how to draw information from them. But the narrative point of view keeps her on the periphery of the action. Lacking authority and tied by domestic responsibility, Sandra can go only so far. She must depend on Brook for crucial information that he isn’t always willing to share. She has a vital stake in the outcome, but the story’s climactic event unfolds many miles away from her. All she can do is wring her hands and hope things work out.

I would have preferred a protagonist more at the center of the action. Despite Sandra’s intelligence, I wondered why Don Fletcher comes to her and why the killer feels so threatened by her. She seems like an unprepossessing woman. The earlier novels probably establish Sandra as a formidable investigator, but in The Fourth Season she comes across as a gifted amateur snoop. At times I felt I was reading a cozy without the coziness.

But in the end, the problem isn’t this beautifully executed novel but my expectations. I want a story with pulse-pounding action centered on the protagonist, and Johnson isn’t a writer who sacrifices realism to deliver cheap thrills.

M. M. McVey’s novella The Trashcan Opera Society tells the story of the doomed love between Jordan, a onetime attorney who lives on the streets of Los Angeles, and Hannah, an aging stripper. The two meet when Jordan inadvertently saves Hannah from a violent patron by vomiting on the man.

McVey’s omniscient point of view keeps its distance from the characters and describes their world in a tone that manages to be both clinical and poetic. The narrative voice put me off at first. Occasionally it seems stilted or strained, but it’s the right voice for a story that blends harsh realism with operatic melodrama.

The characters are complex and unpredictable and very human. Not many homeless guys have premium season tickets to the opera. Not many strippers have the insight to their circumstances that I see in Hannah. I came to care about these two lovers who accept their hopelessness with such grace.

The author has a talent for description. Often I was impressed by the vivid detailing of scenes, but now and then I became impatient and wished the story would move faster. Take this  paragraph describing a chair in which Hannah is about to sit.

There was an old government gray chair resting in front of Donny’s desk that served as a resting place for the few visitors ever invited into his office. One spring, under the right side of the chair’s cushion was broken, forcing anyone sitting in the chair to tilt their body to the other side. The arm rest on the left side was worn through in most places. The exposed padding was gray with years of sweat and body oils. The remaining leather was slick as a saddle horn from a dime store mechanical pony.

I know exactly how Hannah feels sitting in that chair, but the knowledge serves no dramatic purpose. The chair merely reinforces the impression made by quite a few other paragraphs of description spread throughout the story: the joint where Hannah strips is a real dive.

In general McVey repeats too much. Readers are told over and over about Jordan vomiting on the man who attacked Hannah and about Jordan’s education and intelligence. I learn so much about Jordan so quickly that later revelations about him lose much of their impact.

My biggest disappointment with The Trashcan Opera Society is the sloppiness of the copyediting. Indie books usually contain more mistakes than books by commercial and small presses, and nobody is perfect, but this novella is closer to a workshop draft than a polished revision. It contains numerous errors and inconsistencies in punctuation and usage. Obvious errors have escaped correction. Several times its is used in place of the contraction it’s. Hannah has “taught stomach and leg muscles.” Lightening is used in a context where lightning seems to be intended, and discrete in a context that calls for discreet.

I encountered too many passages that made me want to reach for a red pen. Here’s one example:

The eyes acquire signs of aging early in a dancer’s career. It is due to  . . . the hard squinting to see if the paper money being waived before their body is a ten dollar or a one dollar bill.

If you see nothing wrong with the above passage, ignore my criticisms. As I wrote in a post last year, errors bother some readers more than others. If you see the errors and want to read The Trashcan Opera Society anyway, treat them like Jordan’s outward appearance. Overlook the scruffiness and you’ll find a moving story and characters worth knowing.

I found plenty to admire about Melinda Field’s novel True. In polished prose the author creates a world of memorable characters and a lavishly described rural Northwest American setting. She knows and loves horses. The novel’s title is taken from one character’s description of horses as “true to their ancestral memory, their environment, their instincts, and their herd.”

The same might be said of the Yee Haw Sisterhood, the band of women at the center of the story. They know where they come from. Their lives are rooted in isolated Green Valley, California. They trust one another, and all of them eventually come to trust their deepest feelings.

The story opens with teenager Cat in Phoenix, Arizona. With her mother in prison she has nowhere to go except to her grandmother in Green Valley. Cat is less than thrilled by her new home, where she feels very much an outsider. After her arrival, the point of view switches to the various members of the sisterhood as they gather for one of their regular camping trips into the mountains. All are strong women who endure loneliness, loss, or in one case an abusive marriage, without whining.

Emma, a nurse and midwife, receives more narrative attention than the others. If the novel has a single protagonist, it is Emma. After several teenage boys drug and rape Cat and her grandmother dies, Emma takes her in. The novel chronicles Emma’s struggles to help Cat survive the aftermath of the rape, to care for a dying friend, and to gather the courage to rekindle a romance with the man she loved long ago. Interspersed with these conflicts are the stories of the other women in the Yee Haw Sisterhood. By the end of the novel, I felt as though I knew these women like friends.

As much as I enjoyed True, I think many readers will find it slow going. The lush and sometime purplish description will make some impatient. And the storytelling is flawed. None of the many plot lines dominates enough to give the novel a strong dramatic core. Events don’t build to a climax. They simply unfold. The subplot involving a woman with dementia seems extraneous. It has thematic resonance but does nothing to further the action. The novel doesn’t need the extra weight.

Another subplot fizzles in a frustrating way. Just as Cat faces a serious threat, the story switches to the mother of one of the sisterhood and then to Emma’s romance. When it finally comes back to Cat, the threat is resolved in a couple of sentences of dialogue.

If you crave action and suspense, look elsewhere. But if you love stories with vivid settings and strong female characters, True delivers.

Kirsten Mortensen’s Loose Dogs is a wonderful novel, full of comedy without ignoring life’s sadness and cruelty. The characters are deftly drawn. The author gives them individuality even when they’re recognizable types. The story unfolds at a satisfying pace that kept me reading from start to finish.

Paige Newbury, the narrator and protagonist, works as an animal control officer in Rochester, New York. She seems content with her life, but then she receives a ring in the mail—not a diamond engagement ring, just gaudy costume jewelry that her erstwhile boyfriend, Gil Rudman, picked up at a flea market. Paige takes the ring as a sign that Gil, who left a while ago to pursue his career as an artist, is coming back to her.

She doesn’t want Gil to think she’s been waiting around for his return, even though she has, so she enlists the help of an acquaintance to pose as her boyfriend. Larry Crawford is a slick attorney and an accomplished player. He’s attracted to Paige and only too happy to help out with her scheme.

At this point I almost lost respect for Paige. The fake-boyfriend routine is such a stupid move, bound to end badly. And she obviously lacks the panache to bring it off. But Paige is a kind person. She sacrifices a meal at an expensive restaurant (courtesy of Larry) to catch a loose pit bull whose wounds suggest he’s been used for dogfighting. She worries about what will become of the pit. When a callous owner abandons her pregnant dog, Paige takes Lady in and sets about finding homes for the puppies. How could you not like and respect someone like that?

Many of Paige’s observations about the world and herself are laugh-out-loud funny. She thinks of romance as “the Prozac nature has slipped in our drink” to make life bearable.”  She has intelligent and wit. Even though she’s not glamorous, it’s altogether believable that Gil would come back to her and Larry would chase after her.

The plot of LOOSE DOGS turns on the romantic triangle, but I enjoyed the subplots just as much, especially Paige’s efforts to find and stop a dogfighting operation. Animal welfare is clearly an issue that matters to Mortensen. She donates some of the profits from the book to pit bull rescue.

Unlike many of the stories I enjoy, Loose Dogs has no foul language and no graphic sex or violence. Like its protagonist, it has humor, intelligence, and a good heart.

My cousin Deon doesn’t email often, so when a message from her lands in my mailbox, I open it with curiosity. Some time ago Deon wrote to recommend a book. Knowing I read about serial killers, she thought I might enjoy David Rose’s The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice. The stocking strangler was active in Columbus, Georgia, in the late 1970s. His victims were elderly, well-to-do white women, all from the same wealthy neighborhood. Deon lived in Columbus at that time and witnessed the city’s fear and outrage at the brutal crimes.

I had read very little about the crimes or Carleton Gary, the African-American man convicted of committing them. I leafed through a number of books and found brief references to Gary in Robert K. Ressler’s WHOEVER FIGHTS MONSTERS and John Douglas’s MIND HUNTER. Ressler and Douglas mention Gary only in passing. Both note that he was convicted, and both divulge a bit of the evidence against him. Neither seems interested in examining Gary’s psychology the way they examine other serial killers. For one reason or another, they appear to find him and his crimes uninteresting. Possibly I internalized this attitude; I wasn’t especially eager to read about the stocking stranglings. But I found the book on Amazon—on sale!—and decided to give it a chance.

I’m glad I did. The Big Eddy Club is an excellent piece of journalism. It is not, however, a serial killer book in the usual sense. Rose isn’t interested in analyzing the crime scenes or probing the mind of the killer. Instead he raises the question of whether Carleton Gary actually is the killer. Rose places the crimes, the hunt for the perpetrator, and the trial of the accused in the context of the place where they happened: Columbus, Georgia. He presents a history of racism in the area going back to the end of the Civil War. He gives accounts of lynching and other violence inflicted on African Americans, acts even more savage than the crimes committed by the stocking strangler, and makes the point that no white person had ever been sentenced for killing a black person in Columbus.

The Big Eddy Club of the title is a venerable private club for socially prominent folks in Columbus. Many of the strangler’s victims belonged to the club or moved in the same social circles as its members, as did the trial judge, the appeals judges, and the prosecutors involved in Gary’s trial. Rose presents it as a bastion of traditional Southern values and a symbol of institutionalized racism. Only recently the club admitted its first African-American member, one sign that things are finally beginning to change in Columbus.

Excellent as it is, The Big Eddy Club makes difficult reading—not because the subject is tedious or the book poorly written. Rose recounts so many past and present injustices against African-Americans, piled one upon another and culminating in Gary’s trial, where the prosecution withholds evidence from the defense and lies to the jury, and where the judge is blatantly biased against the defendant and makes no attempt to disguise his feelings or be fair. It was making me furious. When I reached the account of the judge’s refusing the defense any financial resources then booting them from a courthouse office for failing to pay a long-distance phone bill, I put The Big Eddy Club  aside. Not until weeks later did I pick it up again and push on to the inevitable conclusion. After years of appeals, new exculpatory evidence, and blatant evidence of the prosecution’s wrongdoing, Carlton Gary is still on death row.

If you’re shocked or baffled by the contempt expressed by many African-Americans for our system of justice, read this book.

Note: This review was published a few years ago just as I was beginning to blog and not many people were reading it. I want to spotlight the book again. It truly is worth reading.