Book Description
When twelve-year-old Emma Graham, a waitress at her mother's decaying resort hotel and now the youngest cub reporter in the history of La Porte's Conservative newspaper, discovers the crumbling shell of a fabulous hotel hidden in the woods near her small town of Spirit Lake, she never imagines that the mysteries it holds will bring her one step closer to solving a forty-year- old crime—and force a new transgression to light. The sumptuous Belle Rouen, with its ornate public rooms, two golf courses, and grand ballroom, was the place to be each Saturday night until it burned to the ground before Emma's birth. With a collection of singular characters helping her along, Emma is determined to discover the buried family secrets that lie just beyond the tree line in Cold Flat Junction, “where all mysteries,” says Emma, “begin and end.”
Highlighting Martha Grimes's extraordinary range and depth, Belle Ruin is a fitting follow-up to the acclaimed Hotel Paradise and Cold Flat Junction that will continue to enchant readers who avidly follow the adventures of intuitive, calculating, and irrepressible Emma Graham.
Customer Reviews:
Good Writing, Lifeless Plot.......2007-10-09
Martha Grimes has great gifts of characterization and rich, convincing dialogue. She is such a good writer it's a shame she wanders through Belle Ruin with a missing plot. She tells us she's got one, but the book has no narrative drive or suspense, and the solution is anti-climatic. She introduces distracting rafts of minor, insignificant characters in almost every scene, way more red herrings than six books would need. Her 12-year-old heroine, Emma, is excellent; and reminds a reader of Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. But there was just no tension or real story-telling in Belle Ruin. This reader also didn't buy the idea that a 12-year-old girl would be safe taking taxis and bouncing around the countryside alone even in the rural South, or even as long ago as the 1950's--as far as my memory extends. Abductions and murders of young girls even in the small-town and rural South are frequently in the news today, and have been since the 1950s. What kind of mother would allow it? Even if Emma tried to keep it a secret from her mother, small town gossip would soon inform the mother. Such a girl would just be bait for a sexual predator, and having her doing the things she does seems surreal because of it.
I must have fallen asleep.......2007-09-23
The next thing I knew I was at the end of the book and looking for more pages. The story just ends, like falling off a cliff and not landing. I loved Hotel Paradise and Cold Flat Junction, so was excited to know Emma was again up to her adolescent tricks in Belle Ruin. I still think the characters are delightful and fun, but Martha, I want a story WITH an ending. Please!
Belle Trash.......2007-09-23
If a writer has a contract with the reader...well, you know what I mean...it's not honored in this book which reads more like the writer has a contract on the reader.
Like other reviewers, I found little to like about Emma, even though she didn't seem real. The lack of any resolution was offensive. It might have been okay if the reader had been left with a choice of two endings, sort of "Lady or the Tiger" fashion. Instead, it's as if the writer simply forgot what the story was about.
But the real problem for me was the repeated destruction of verisimilitude, initially through the songs on the jukebox: Patsy Cline never recorded "Now and Then, There's a Fool Such As I;" Nobody referred to Patience and Prudence as "Patience and Pru," nor would "Tonight You Belong to Me" have appeared on a jukebox simultaneously with the Everly Brothers." It gets worse: A Three Musketeers bar does not have three different flavor layers - on and on. It's little stuff, I grant, but it demonstrates some truly careless writing which leads to the colossal error near the end where the night of the fire is actually confused by the writer with the night of the kidnapping.
In the past I've spent many happy hours with Martha Grimes books. This one about made up for all the rest.
Pretty good as an audio book.......2007-09-14
I was looking for something to listen to during my long commutes, and thought I'd give this book a try, as I had liked Martha Grimes earlier Jury mysteries.
The best thing about the audio version is the wonderful talent of the narrator, which helps some with the poorly edited prose. Near the end of the whole story Emma says something when she's trying to write along the lines of "that sounds good, I'm sure I'll be able to use it somewhere" and it seems that is the same approach is what Ms. Grimes did - and repeatedly. Do I really need the exact same description of Vera as many times as she put it in? or the waitresses? or any other times she lifted the exact same language sans editing and used it repeatedly and unnecessarily? Why would the hummers still be confused at the end of the third time performing of where to go (and said with the exact same wording as the first time they were confused)? The book could have used some serious editing.
I also had a hard time with Emma's character at times - mean to an old lady, not nice to many many people, and yet people seem to like her. I found the attempt to catch a different time interesting and sometimes succesful.
I do like the variety of characters (although in this book there certainly are more charicatures than characters), the at time lyrical descriptions, and some of the humor. The premise of the "mystery" is rather weak, but on the other hand it is believable as something Emma would latch onto and worry and wonder about until she has (or thinks she has) it solved.
I had not read (or heard) the two previous books with Emma, and while this did mean that I was not in the "know" at the beginning of listening to this, don't worry, Ms. Grimes repeats things enough that you can catch up.
Unappealing characters, boring story.......2007-06-12
I've read other Martha Grimes books and enjoyed them somewhat, and I suffered through the first two "Emma Graham" books (don't ask me why I read the first one, not to mention the second, because I really don't know -- maybe temporary insanity), so I thought (very much against my better judgement) that I'd give Belle Ruin a try. I found Emma Graham annoying in the first two books, but in this latest she seems to have gone into self-absorbed brat overdrive. Perhaps it is that I'm older now myself, but I just couldn't stand her mean-spirited antics or her constant griping about how horrible everyone was (except herself, of course; she seems to think she's just wonderful). Then again, considering the group of freaks and creeps (for the most part) with whom she comes into contact, maybe she's not all wrong to be so nasty about everyone.
Another problem I have with the book is that, besides being extremely irritating, the Emma Graham character is often unbelievable. So many of her musings seem not to be those of a twelve-year-old, no matter how supposedly precocious she is, but those of an older woman pretending to write as a twelve-year-old.
There are other things that get on my last nerve about this book. If it's supposed to be set in New York (at least, I think that's where it's supposed to be), then why the heck is it so unrelentingly Southern gothic? All the "quirky" characters, including icky Emma, just seem really strained to me, and not at all believable. For that matter, the plot (what there is of it) is contrived and drawn-out and, frankly, just downright boring. All this girl does is get driven around in taxis, visit diners and go to the houses of strangers to lie her way into finding out "clues" to her big mystery, torment an elderly hotel guest every chance she gets, argue with people and think horrible things about them, and in general just make a nuisance of her rotten self.
If you like stories about pretentious, annoying, mean-spirited young people who think they are "writers," you might enjoy this one. Otherwise, don't bother.
Book Description
"Cara Black books are good companions, and Murder in the Bastille especially so. Fine characters, good suspense, but, best of all, they are transcendentally, seductively, irresistibly French. If you can't go, these will do fine. Or, better, go and bring them with you."-Alan Furst
"Charming. . . . Aimee is one of those blithe spirits who can walk you through the city's historical streets and byways with their eyes closed."-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
"Paris is one of my favorite cities in all the world; Black's books are a fine way to revisit it."-
New Orleans Times-Picayune
"Black's fourth is her best yet, with complex, appealing characters, a crisp, well-paced mystery, and a setting like no other."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Aimee Leduc is all dressed up in her new Chinese silk jacket, supposedly an "exclusive," for dinner with a difficult client at an elegant restaurant in the Bastille district. She is chagrined to see that the woman seated at the very next table is wearing an identical jacket. When the woman leaves her cell phone on the table, Aimee follows her to return it and is attacked in the shadowy Passage Boule Blanche. When she regains consciousness, Aimee finds that she is blind. Nevertheless, she is told she is lucky; the woman she was following was found in the next passage, murdered.
Aimee is determined to identify her attacker. Was he actually a serial killer targeting showy blondes as the police insist? Was he really after the other woman? Or was Aimee his intended victim?
Cara Black lives in San Francisco with her husband, a bookseller, and her son. She is the author of Murder in Belleville and Murder in the Marais, published by Soho Press. Murder in the Sentier was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and has been nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Novel.
Customer Reviews:
Great characters and ambiance.......2004-07-08
Black just keeps getting better and better, and "Murder in the Bastille" is her best Aimee Leduc mystery yet. Aimee's blindness has given her a depth that only comes throught trial and experience and Black has adroitly handled her heroine's inner growth. The independence that Aimee has shown in the previous books here takes on an edgy sadness that fills in her character and really brings her to life. Her partner, Rene, too, comes into his own in this 4th book of the series.
The plot of "Bastille" is smooth and the considerable action connects readily. As always, Paris itself is a character, and the dark dreams and gritty contemporary reality of the city are as rich and delicious as an espress on a rainy day. Escape to Paris as easily as opening the cover.
Leduc Est Formidable!.......2004-03-31
Murder in the Bastille is my first Aimee Leduc mystery, but it won't be my last. Not only do the backstreet Paris scenes ring true, so do the complex relationships. Readers who bring a little something to the book themselves will enjoy it more than dullards who look for simplistic answers with every loose thread neatly snipped. Cara Black's in media res approach makes me want to go backwards and forwards in this intelligent series. Highly recommended.
Aimee Leduc Storms the Bastille.......2004-01-21
This is my first Aimee Leduc novel, and I am happy to say that it came as a pleasant surprise. On my previous visit to Paris (in 1999), I was startled to see tough paratroopers armed with automatic rifles at the Chatelet-Les Halles metro station patrolling the platforms and corridors. Paris is no longer the city of Maurice Chevalier, or even Georges Simenon: What we have here is a rougher and edgier city with a compact tourist core surrounded by miles of slumlike banlieus along the edges.
Cara Black's flics barely have the time to deal with murder, when other events like terror-driven explosions and a horrible TGV accident in the station. Rumanian thugs in cheap exercise suits abound, selling their muscle to developers and with an eye on the main chance, whatever it may be. The Bastille area, site of a notorious castle/prison torn down in 1789, is now dominated by the huge Opera Bastille. The local neighborhood, however, is being forcibly torn down and redeveloped.
In walks private investigator Aimee Leduc. In the first few pages of MURDER IN THE BASTILLE, she is brutally attacked in an alley and blinded as a result of a damaged artery. For most of the novel, she can see nothing around her. The onus for the investigation falls on her dwarfish partner Rene, with occasional help en passant from overburdened police officers who knew her father on the force.
I look forward to reading the other novels in the series.
booooooring.......2003-10-10
lots of misdirection and confusion with no conclusion.
stock characters left undeveloped.
paris-o-philes might like the scenery.
Ever more fascinating.......2003-10-05
With each Aimee Leduc novel, Cara Black gets better--ever more deft and graceful at storytelling and characterization, while still giving us the intensity of Paris. At the very start of this book, Aimee is attacked and blinded. The police suggest she was the victim of a serial killer. But was she? Aimee struggles to navigate in the world of the blind while considering several unfolding crimes. Among the wonderful things about this book is the emergence of her partner Rene from prop sidekick status--it is Rene who acts to uncover crucial evidence, and Black's portrait of him is powerful and poignant. The action takes place in a Paris that is not a tourist fantasy but a tough metropolis. As ever, no other writer today gives us Paris like this. Black remains that rarity--a marvelous storyteller who believes readers have a brain.
Product Description
5 Titles By Joe Dever and John Grant Legends of Lone Wolf Series (1-5) : 1. Eclipse of the Kai 2. The Dark Door Opens 3. The Tides of Treachery 4. The Sword of the Sun 5. Hunting Wolf. five mmpb books.
Book Description
The Atlas of Musculoskeletal Anatomy is the complete reference guide for students and practitioners of anatomy, massage, physical therapy, chiropractics, medicine, and physiotherapy. Designed for use in conjunction with The Concise Book of Muscles, the book includes detailed color illustrations of every skeletal muscle, joint, and bone in the body, including main anatomical features. Written in clear, accessible prose, the book offers a wealth of knowledge to the lay reader, the aficionado, or the practitioner.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent.......2005-12-06
I am just finishing up a semester of undergraduate nursing/pre-OT anatomy and found this book to be an excellent resource, especially for the muscles. For most muscle groups Jarmey has an illustration of each individual muscle along with its relationship to neighboring muscles. This was very helpful in preparing for the lab practical (got an A!). I purchased this book and not Jarmey's Concise Guide to Muscles because the Concise Guide did not cover all muscles I was required to know.
This book exudes quality.......2004-12-16
I have recently acquired the Atlas of Musculo-Skeletal Anatomy as a teaching aid and reference book. I have a number of such books, but this one stands out from the crowd. The clarity of information, both visual and textual, is outstanding. There are very few anatomy books that I would consider a good bedtime reading, but this is one of them (actually, the only one!).
Everything about this book exudes quality: what it says; how it says it; what it shows; how it shows it; the paper; and the cover. Truly a work of art and inspiration. Also, I found the extra information on body mechanics a welcome bonus.
Book Description
Flammarion presents its series of informative, richly illustrated guides, covering lifestyle and cultural topics. Find out everything you want to know about your favorite subject in one handy volume.
• Unique thematic treatment with extensive use of key words and cross-referencing
• Over 70 alphabetically organized bite-sized entries in every title
• Attractive slimline format
• 100 color illustrations
• Summaries of key facts and dates in easy-reference tables
• Exclusive buyer's guide or list of useful addresses to find out more
Book Description
This book presents vintage, often whimsical, and one-of-a-kind wooden figurine carvings by ANRI, the world-renowned company founded in 1912 in the Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy. Among the more than 2,500 carvings featured are bottle stoppers, bottle openers and corkscrews, bar sets, calendars, letter openers, bookends, humidors, ashtrays, lighters, cigarette boxes, pipe rests, salt and pepper sets, pepper mills, napkin rings, timers, toothpick holders, brushes, salt and serving spoons, spoon and key racks, door knockers, and figurines, including monks and characters from novels by Charles Dickens. Collectors with a wide range of interests will be delighted with the amazing number of woodcarvings shown. This book will amuse and inspire todays woodcarvers and collectors, novices and experienced devotees alike.
Customer Reviews:
Carving Inspiration.......2004-04-27
This book is written for collectors but as a woodcarver, I appreciate the history of woodcarving that is a part of this book. The book is filled with great color photos of carvings done over many years. On the downside, it cost me more money because after reading it, I ended up going to ebay and bidding on several anri carvings. I did note than a number of the carvings for sale were being sold by the books author.
Book Description
In this beautiful collection of 50 of the best patterns to come from the famous Rowan design company, you'll find luxurious garments from such designers as Kaffe Fassett, Annabel Fox, Kim Hargreaves, Jean Moss, Amanda Griffiths, Louisa Harding, and more. The Rowan photography is superlative, the step-by-step instructions are clear and easy to follow. An essential addition to any knitter's design library!
Book Description
This treasury of floor plans, elevations, and details of suburban residences is an endless source of inspiration for artists, architects, and historians alike. Eighty-one detailed illustrations capture the elaborate beauty of Victorian-era cornices, staircases, gables, verandas, doors, dormers, and more. A bonus section offers construction guidelines for masons, bricklayers, and carpenters.
Average customer rating:
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James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonne (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis)
Margaret F. MacDonald
Manufacturer: Paul Mellon Center BA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Whistler, James McNeill
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Pastel
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| Arts & Photography
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Drawing
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ASIN: 0300059876 |
Average customer rating:
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Architectural Drawings of the Regency Period, 1790-1837
Giles Worsley
Manufacturer: The American Institute of Architects Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1558350446 |
Product Description
A look at the past of the architecture profession from the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Regency period was one of the great ages of architectural draftsmanship. Freed from the constraints of Palladianism, architects drew and painted perspectives of great beauty. However, these highly finished perspectives were only one example of the draftsmanship of the period. Surviving sketch designs, presentaion drawings, full-scale working drawings, and record drawings give us a full picture of the architect at every stage of his work. The drawings chosen to illustrate this beautiful volume are intended to give a representative account of the architecture of the Regency period, from the grandest public building to the most humble terraced house, from the work of the most famous architects to that of the least known; from the most beautiful perspectives to the simplest survey plan. Architects represented include James Wyatt, Sir John Soane, John Nash, A. W. N. Pugin, and Charles Barry. An essay on architecture and the architectural profession during the Regency period introduces the drawings.
Books:
- Bloodstream
- Bookends: A Novel
- Brazen Virtue
- Broken Dishes (Benni Harper Mysteries)
- Charon's Landing (Philip Mercer)
- Chasing Destiny
- Complete Conditioning For Tennis
- Dale Brown's Dreamland: Satan's Tail (Dreamland (Harper Paperback))
- Dearest Dorothy, Who Would Have Ever Thought?! (Dearest Dorothy)
- Death of an Expert Witness (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries)
Books Index
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