As I looked down the list of Nook books that were on sale yesterday at Barnes & Noble I saw three books that are on my to be read (TBR) shelves, so here are those mystery series first books!! Maybe I’ll get to them this year!!
1. The Monkey’s Raincoat – Elvis Cole and Joe Pike – Robert Crais – I have read many of the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike books and the stand alone Joe Pike books. Holmes had Watson, Bolitar has Win, Joe Pickett has Nate Romanowski and ELvis Cole has Joe Pike, his right-hand man who can always get that questionable job done! I really don’t know why I haven’t read this book yet. Actually, I haven’t read the last couple of Crais’ books. Maybe reading this book would be a great way to get back into this great mystery series!
2. Storm Front – Th Dresden Files – Jim Butcher – Sometimes I have a hard time getting into a fantasy series, I think I have picked this book up several times read a little and then put it down. I don’t really know why! I really enjoyed the TV show, so I know the books have to be better!! I see that there are only 8 books in the series, maybe this is the year of Harry……Dresden
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3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson – I have had the other two books in this series on my TBR shelf FOREVER and never found a copy of the first book, and never really looked for it in the library, probably one of those I’ll stay away because everyone has read th books!! This action has probably cost me three good reads!! So maybe it’s time!!!
Maybe what I’ll do is try to read one of the above three books each of the first three months of the year! That may be a great way to start the year!!
Today, I received an email from Barnes & Noble and they are having a Nook Book Sale on the first book of a series. I checked out the first books Mystery series that were on sale, and here are six books that started some of my favorite mystery series!
1.The Blessing Way – Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee – Tony Hillerman – Tony Hillerman wrote 18 Navajo Mysteries featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee and his daughter Anne Hillerman recently picked up the series and has written book 19!!
I stopped reading the series after book 14, not because I didn’t like the series but because I just started to read too many other mystery series. I always enjoyed the character of Jim Chee, who tried to walk in two worlds the modern and his ancestral Navajo and as a police officer that wasn’t always easy!!
It’s a great mystery series and The Blessing Way is a wonderful start to the series!
2.. The Surgeon – Rizzoli and Isles – Tess Gerritsen – This was a book that just blew m away when I read it. The suspense and the characters were both great. Using the Hoyt character for the TV show was a great way to start the series just like The Surgeon was a great way to start the literary series!!
3. Carved in Bone – Dr. Bill Brockton – Jefferson Bass
“Fantastic forensic detail and an engaging hero … an authoritative, compelling new voice to the forensic mystery.” — Jeff Abbott, USA Today bestselling author of PANIC
The above quote about says it all. The about this mystery series that is still going strong. Dr Bill Brockton is still a lovable hero and the forensic detail is still some of the best around, The series is now at Number 9 which is due out in June of 2015!!
4. Blindsighted– Grant County – Karin Slaughter – The whole crew of characters of this series – Sara Linton pediatrician, county medical examiner, Chief Jeffrey Tolliver,and Detective Lena Adams are all introduced in this riveting novel. Blindsighted like The Surgeon just was great right from the start as was the series! The novel was a Barry Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2002) and a Macavity Award Nominee for Best First Mystery Novel (2002)
5. Deal Breaker– Myron Bolitar – Harlan Coben – while Harlan has had far more success with his stand-alone thrillers my first introduction to his writing was through sports agent extraordinaire Myron Bolitar’s mystery series. The stories and the characters were always well-developed and interesting, especially Myron’s best friend “Win” Lockwood who has saved Myron’s butt throughout the series!
Win was introduced in Deal Breaker. He was a 31 year-old bachelor working closely with Myron Bolitar, his best friend since college. Win is also very close to Esperanza Diaz, Myron’s assistant (and later business partner) whom he meets through Myron. Wikipedia says that Win can be best described as….
….an anti-hero, being very psychopathic in nature. In many of the books, Myron and Win debate the ethical nature of various actions, often Win’s.
6. The Suspect– Joseph O’Loughlin – Michael Robotham – I was thinking about my favorite lead characters from mystery series, that are not Private Eyes or Policemen and certainly psychologist Joe O’Laughlin is probably at the top of the list.
Joe is one of my favorite all-time characters making this mystery series one of my favorites. Like Lay’s chips if you try this book, you won’t want just one…. you’ll be back for more and more and you won’t be disappointed!!!
Milton “Bags” Jackson (January 1, 1923 – October 9, 1999)
For the longest time my favorite vibraphonist was Gary Burton and while he still may be my favorite, coming in a close second is Milt Jackson, who would have celebrated his 92nd birthday today! From Wikipedia:
Milton “Bags” Jackson (January 1, 1923 – October 9, 1999) was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his cool swinging solos as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet and his penchant for collaborating with several hard bop and post-bop players.
A very expressive player, Jackson differentiated himself from other vibraphonists in his attention to variations on harmonics and rhythm. He was particularly fond of the twelve-bar blues at slow tempos. He preferred to set the vibraphone’s oscillator to a low 3.3 revolutions per second (as opposed to Lionel Hampton’s speed of 10 revolutions per second) for a more subtle vibrato. On occasion, Jackson would also sing and play piano professionally.Complete Biography
Milt Jackson, like most jazz musicians started playing music early, in his case it was guitar at 7! By age 11, he switched to piano, a few years later he moved on to vibes. His professional career started when Dizzy Gillespie aksed him to join his sextet and later when Gillespie formed his big band Jackson was asked to join the band. As a result of the time he spent with Gillespie, Jackson became an in demand musician. In 1948-1949, he worked with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Howard McGhee, and the Woody Herman Orchestra.
After 1949, Jackson recorded with a quartet comprised of John Lewis, Percy Heath, and Kenny Clarke (1952), which soon became a regular group called the Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ). From the formation of MJQ through 1974 Jackson recorded both as a leader recording with the likes of: Miles Davis and/or Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane, and Ray Charles, and MJQ Milt Jackson left the MJQ in 1974 and recorded solely as a leader for seven years before returning to the Quartet in 1981
I have several Milt Jackson albums in my music library now and I hope to keep the number rising, because there’s a lot of them out there! In honor of Milt’s birthday I’m listening now toBags Meets Wesrecorded in 1961, and produced by Orrin Keepnews. On the album, Jackson and Montgomery are joined with pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Philly Joe Jones.
From AllMusic:
Although Jackson and Montgomery prove what lyrical ballad players they could be on the standard “Stairway to the Stars,” ballads aren’t a high priority on this album. Instead, the improvisers put more of their energy into the blues — and the 12-bar format serves them well on “Sam Sack,” “Blue Roz,” and “S.K.J.” Equally strong are hard-swinging versions of Montgomery’s “Jingles” and Benny Golson’s “Stablemates.” Read More
Maybe later today, I’ll give Bags & Trane, a listen.That album teams Milt Jackson with John Coltrane. For me, it doesn’t get much better than these two albums!!
So here’s some morning music from Milt Jackson, Art Farmer and Benny Colson as they perform “Bags Grove” with a special guest Toots Thielemans, probably one of the greatest harmonica players of all time! I confess I know little about Toots, most of the harp players know play the blues – so I think there will be some Toots Thielemans being played tomorrow. So take some time and listen to the music on this video because it’s awesome! What a way to start a new year!! Happy Birthday, Milt Jackson…..
Inside the Citadel in the ancient city of Ruin resides a select group of monks charged with protecting the Sacrament, along with thousands of ancient texts discovered over the millennium. The nature of the Sacrament is known only to a select few of those monks – the Sancti. But when Brother Samuel is initiated into the Sancti, and discovers what the Sacrament is, he decides can not live with that knowledge or continue to belong to the Sancti. He makes a harrowing and torturous climb to the top of the Citadel, where he stands for hours in a pose symbolic of the Tau, the symbol of the Sancti, before plunging to his death. So begins Sanctus, first book of the Ruin trilogy from British author Simon Toyne. The questions left unanswered are: Why did he do it? What did he see that lead him to take his own life?
I picked up Sanctus in Dollar General for $3.00 because it looked like the type of book that I enjoy, one that combines history with action and while the historic aspects of the story are somewhat fictional the action and the characters more than make up for it. The key character in the book is newspaper reporter Liv Adamson, who is the identical twin of Brother Samuel. Actually, they were the first conjoined twins to be different sexes. The story revolves around Liv’s attempt to discover the why of Samuel’s death. Liv hadn’t seen her brother in eight years and assumed was dead! Of course, the Sancti want no one to know the secret of the Sacrament, and will do anything to stop Liv’s search, while others including members of an ancient rival religious sect of the Sancti want to help!
Sanctus is rather lengthy 578 pages, but the writing is crisp, and the characters and action kept me turning the pages quickly, particularly through the second half of the book, once I knew all the players!
Several of the reviews of Sanctus, I read at Goodreads.com were negative because the readers felt that Toyne did not develop the city or the people of Ruin realistically enough. The reviewers felt the setting could be any city or police force in the US or the world. Again, I thought the action and characters more than made up for any lack of geographic “sense of place”. I did feel that the descriptions and feel for the Citadel, the mountain fortress of the Sancti, was well done. I had a feel for the dark library that housed thousands of historic documents and the spectral images of the monks that worked within the library
Bottom Line: I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will move on quickly to the second book in the trilogy – The Key. I think that if you enjoy the books of Dan Brown and Chris Kuzneski you’ll enjoy Sanctus.
A few weeks ago, my daughter Elizabeth went to Target and when she checked out the cashier, an older gentleman, asked her for identification, since she was using her family team member discount card. After he checked the name, she thought he said “Karn, my mother’s maiden name was Karn”. When she came home and told us what he said, my wife and I couldn’t figure out the family connection. With not many Karn’s around the area, we knew he had to be related, but there was no one that we knew of who could be his mother! We needed to find out!!
The only way it would work is if he actually said that his grandmother’s maiden name was Karn! In that case his grandmother was probably Emma Karn, my grandfather’s sister. Emma married Fred Neuman and they lived on Creek Road in Delran. They were actually the next-door neighbors of my long-time boss Wayne Lippincott! Emma and Fred had three children two duaghters and one son, Fred. Since the name of the cashier was Fred, it was a good bet that the above case was true!! Fred and I often talk at the check out and he calls me “Young fella” telling him once that I’m old too, he said – but not as old as me and he is right, I’m ten years his junior!
Anyway a few days later, I went into the store and sure enough when we talked he said that he had told my daughter his grandmother’s maiden name was Karn, and she was Emma Rose Neuman!!
It’s really cool to connect with that side of my father’s family, because I never knew them. My grandfather, born in 1898, was the youngest of the five children of Henry and Pauline Karn. The oldest child Harry was born in 1888, followed by Emma born in 1890, Anna in 1891, and Charles in 1894. I don’t remember any of them well, including my grandfather who died in 1953. Of that side of his family my father was the closest to the children of Charles – Gloria and Charles. I do believe that we also visited Anna and my mother amd father were friendly with her daughters. But we were estranged from Harry and his children as well as Fred and Emma. One of causes of the estrangement between the family and Harry, I believe was, that my grandmother would not let Harry in to see my grandfather after one of his heart attacks. Another cause involved Fred and Emma, I always heard the story that the family was mad at them because they got money from the PSE&G easement that went across the family land on Creek Road. Ha – it’s many times about the money!
Anyway, I am looking forward to sitting down with Fred after the holidays and talking about his family. I hope that he can identify folks in some of the family pictures that I have as I don’t even know what Emma looks like!! Bottom line it’s a small world!
Harry Dolan’s Very Bad Men is the second book in the David Loogan series, Dolan’s follow-up to Bad Things Happen about which Stephen King said….. “Great F****ing Book Man, I was totally hooked” I am in total agreement with the great Mr. King’s assessment of Bad Things Happen and I feel the same way about Very Bad Men!!
In Harry Dolan’s Very Bad Men, David Loogan and Elizabeth Waishkey have settled down to a simple life after the tumultuous events in Bad Things Happen, until one day when David, as editor of Gray Streets magazine receives a manuscript that begins “ I killed Henry Kormoran”. Not long after David receives the manuscript, Detective Waishkey is assigned to a new murder case – Henry Kormoran, and once again it appears that David and Elizabeth are on the trail of a psychotic killer. This time the killer is targeting members of a gang that attempted to rob the Great Lakes Bank seventeen years prior! During the attempted robbery Terry Dawtrey shot Sheriff Harlan Spencer, leaving Spencer paralyzed. Now, Spencer’s daughter Callie is running for the Senate and the current killings are dredging up old memories about the robbery that may upset Callie’s campaign, especially with investigative reporter Lucy Navarro on the case for the tabloid The National Current! The question becomes who and why is somebody targeting these men after such a long time.??? Is it Callie and her campaign, was she involved in the robbery? Or is it someone else??
Thoughts About Very Bad Men
Harry Dolan once again delivers a top-notch, intricately plotted mystery. While the setting is the present day, the writing creates a feel similar to one that one gets when reading Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. Does anyone else see Humphrey Bogart playing David Loogan!
The characters are vivid and the twists and turns of the plot keep the reader guessing and, at least for me, quickly turning the pages!!
Grade A+
Bottomiine:
A series that, while it is still in its infancy, is getting better with each book, and I can’t wait to move on to the next installment The Last Dead Girl..
Thomas Marriottis an award-winning and chart-topping jazz trumpeter from Seattle, Washington. Marriott is an eight-time Golden Ear Award recipient. The Golden Ear Awards celebrate contributions and achievements in Seattle Jazz. In addition to his Golden Ear Award Marriott won the prestigious Carmine Caruso Jazz Trumpet Competition in 1999.
Marriott’s jazz career started, when after winning the Carmine Caruso competition, he headed EAST! In New York City, he joined Maynard Ferguson‘s Big Bop Nouveau Band. Marriott completed three world tours with Ferguson’s band and Ferguson has called Marriott “a truly great jazz trumpet player”!
Over the course of his career, Thomas Marriott has played on more than 100 recordings with musicians of all genres and styles including: Rosemary Clooney, Joe Locke, The Tito Puente Orchestra, Brian Lynch, The Chico O’Farrill Orchestra, Eric Reed, Les Brown and the Band of Renown, Kenny Kirkland, Charlie Hunter, Ritchie “Alto Madness” Cole, and many others.
Marriott’s career as a leader started in 2005 with the release of Individuation, hehas released a total of eight albums.
Individuation– released on Origin Records, and was named one of the top 10 jazz records of 2005 by WBEZ radio, Chicago.
Both Sides of the Fence – released in2007 received over 3300 spins nationally, and rose into the top ten on jazz radio.
Crazy: The Music of Willie Nelson released in early 2008 received wide critical acclaim.
“This album [Crazy: The Music Of Willie Nelson] is a kick in the pants!”- Jazz Times Magazine
Flexiconreleased in 2009 climbed to number 10 on the national jazz radio airplay charts.
East-West Trumpet Summit released in 2010 saw Marriott collaborating with trumpeter Ray Vega. That album made it all the way to number one on the national radio airplay charts and stayed, in the Top Ten for 10 weeks and was also featured on NPR’s “Morning Edit”
Constraints & Liberations– 2011
Thomas Marriott’s fifth CD as a leader marks a substantial departure from his earlier efforts. Not only does he focus exclusively on originals for this session, but his approach to the trumpet has moved away from a forceful pop style to a more reserved yet emotional techniqueRead more
Human Spirit – 2012
This is a rare album that showcases all of the players at their highest levels, in both solo formats and intertwined…… This is the key to the album — the mix of styles and spotlighted abilities created by a set of top-flight players in their primes working together. More at AllMusic
Here’s what some folks have to say about the music of Thomas Marriott….
“Tom Marriott is a very accomplished young trumpet player. Recent hangs with Tom have reminded me of how much I enjoy his playing.” –Brian Lynch
“Thomas Marriott presents a musical vibe that is contagious and pleasing, brimming with creative imagination, technical fluency, and a deep respect for the jazz tradition.” – Jim Ketch, International Trumpet Guild Journal
In addition to his own work, Marriott has produced albums for a number of artists including saxophonist Hadley Caliman and trumpeter Ray Vega. He has also served on the Board of Governors of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences and the Board of Directors of Earshot Jazz. Since his return to Seattle in 2004 he has been the featured trumpet soloist with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. Thomas Marriott is like many jazz artists and I don’t think he ever sleeps!!
The collective talents of Matt Jorgensen, Tom Marriott, Ryan Burns and Mark Taylor come together as Human Spirit, currently on Origin Records. The four jazz greats perform a Tom Marriott original, “Reversal of Fortune”
Today Jazz Piano great McCoy Tyner celebrates his 76 th birthday, Happy Birthday, McCoy. So let’s celebrate his birthday by exploring the music of this great jazz pianist McCoy Tyner! From his biography at Facebook,
It is not an overstatement to say that modern jazz has been shaped by the music of McCoy Tyner. His blues-based piano style, replete with sophisticated chords and an explosively percussive left hand has transcended conventional styles to become one of the most identifiable sounds in improvised music. His harmonic contributions and dramatic rhythmic devices form the vocabulary of a majority of jazz pianists.
Here’s some background about McCoy from Wikipedia:
Alfred McCoy Tyner was born on December 11, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, He wad the oldest of three children and encouraged to study piano by his mother. On his website Tyner writes that he was given the choice y his mother to take singing or piano lessons and he was glad that he chose the piano!! Read More
The only McCoy Tyner album I have in my library is a cassette of his 1968 release Expansions. At AllMusic Scott Yanow writes about Expansions...
Of pianist McCoy Tyner’s seven Blue Note albums of the 1967-1970 period, Expansions is the most definitive. Tyner’s group (comprised of trumpeter Woody Shaw, altoist Gary Bartz, tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter on cello, bassist Herbie Lewis, and drummer Freddie Waits) is particularly strong, the compositions (four Tyner originals plus Calvin Massey’s “I Thought I’d Let You Know”) are challenging, and the musicians seem quite inspired by each other’s presence. The stimulating music falls between advanced hard bop and the avant-garde, pushing and pulling at the boundaries of modern mainstream jazz. More
Though I only have one McCoy Tyner album, I have heard his jazz piano through the years, particularly on the Coltrane albums that he played on. Tyner joined Coltrane’s group in 1960. From Wikipedia:
He appeared on the saxophonist’s popular recording of “My Favorite Things” for Atlantic Records. The Coltrane Quartet, which consisted of Coltrane on tenor sax, Tyner, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums, toured almost non-stop between 1961 and 1965 and recorded a number of classic albums, including Live at the Village Vanguard, Ballads, Live at Birdland, Crescent, A Love Supreme, and The John Coltrane Quartet Plays …, on the Impulse! label.
Tyner’s albums after leaving Coltrane’s group, are according to Wikipedia:
…often cited as examples of vital, innovative jazz from the 1970s that was neither fusion nor free jazz.Trident (1975) is notable for featuring Tyner on harpsichord (rarely heard in jazz) and celeste, in addition to his primary instrument, piano.
Tyner’s jazz piano style according to Wikipedia is…..
easily comparable to Coltrane’s maximalist style of saxophone.[1] Though a member of Coltrane’s group, he was never overshadowed by the saxophonist, but complemented and even inspired Coltrane’s open-minded approach.[1] Tyner is considered to be one of the most influential jazz pianists of the 20th century, an honor he earned both with Coltrane and in his years of performing following Coltrane’s death
I started to keep track of the books that I read in 1988. I kept record of themin A Book Lover’s Journal and wrote short blurbs about the books. Here is a list of the 54 books that I read in 1990. That’s the most books read of any year, since I’ve kept records! Reviewing the list, I see that it was the year I discovered William G Tapply’s Brady Coyne. After reading Dead Winter, the eighth book in the series, which was released in 1989, I quickly went back and read the prior seven books! Tapply wrote 20 more Brady Coyne novels of which I’ve read 16. Books #21 Shadow of Death and #25 One-Way Ticket are on my to be read bookshelves! Maybe it’s time to rediscover this great series! In 1990 the second most read series was the Mongo Mystery series from George C Chesbro. I read four books from this series. From Goodreads….
Dr. Robert Frederickson, or “Mongo” to his friends. He’s a former circus tumbler, black belt in karate, doctor of Criminology, and professor at a New York City university. And he’s quite an unusual fellow as well, not only because he’s a private investigator but also because he’s a dwarf…
The stories and the characters in this are terrific! Chesbro wrote 13 Mongo books of which I’ve read 12. The first seven books are probably my favorites. Here’s a link to a great synopsis of the work of George C Chesbro. Check it out and Chesbro’s work at Dangerousdwarf.com you won’t be disappointed!! Of course 1990’s reads also included some books by other favorites like James Lee Burke, Loren Estleman, Bill Pronzini, Tony Hillerman and Stuart Kaminsky. Here’s the complete list!
Title
Author
The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone (A Mongo Mystery, #6)
So while I haven’t finished any books in a little while that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been reading and out buying new books, much to the consternation of my better half. So what’s been happening. First I started to read the second book in the David Loogan series from Harry Dolan Very Bad Men,which I have checked out of the library. No, wait, first I started to read William Kent Krueger‘s latest Cork O’Connor book Windigo Island on the Kindle, thenVery Bad Men. Then to compound everything, I went to Dollar General where I saw Sanctus by Simon Toyne, which looked pretty interesting. From the cover: “Frightening, ruthless, and relentlessly entertaining” – Brad Meltzer“A cliffhanger ….. that aspires to towering heights” Kirkus Reviews So never being one to pass up a bargain book $3.00 for a $9.99 list book from 2011, I bought it and then started it. So now I am reading three books!! I am making progress in each one and right now, none of them have grabbed me to the point ,that I will only read that book!! Hopefully, one of them will!! Finally in the midst of all this, I went to the Dollar Tree the other night with my wife and much to her dismay I bought three more books! – At dollar each how can you go wrong!! The books are: Silent Screams – C.E. Lawrence The Coldest Fear – Rick Reed Delirious – Daniel Palmer Anyone have an opinion as to which of these I should read first?? Oh , the third Keye Street book from Amanda Kyle Williams is on my to be read shelf, checked out from the library!! Can you say too many books, not enough time!!! I wouldn’t want it any other way!! It’s time for me to crank up some jazz and get reading!!
Marriott
