I've been waiting for this day. In a kind of S&M literary way.

And then I kept waiting for it to be revealed that she wasn't really dead because HELLO UNRELIABLE NARRATORS except Maddie was way more reliable so goddammit.

I really really loved the breaking of my brain as I tried to figure out whether I'd missed any hints that Anna Engel was NOT evil and was in fact working with Julie the whole time but no because HELLO UNRELIABLE NARRATOR.

I tried to write a review.

I've been reading several mysteries that I'm finding via BookBub. Being as I am cheap when it comes to ebooks, I've been getting the freebies. Some of these, though, are part of multi-book series, which may not mean much in these days of small e-publishers.

Is 1st-person POV the usual one for mysteries anymore? It's very tricky to pull off. I'm seeing a disturbing trend in 1st person, female protagonist mysteries where her love life takes up nearly as much space as the mystery. I want to read a mystery with an engaging investigator. I don't want her babbling over drinks with her best friend over her latest guy and getting interrupted every now and then by the need to investigate why that body showed up. I want a fully realized character, and characters have love lives, generally. Maybe my approach to relationships is different from most women--and I've had this approach for years, it's not a new development.

And maybe it's age. The characters have boyfriends but the relationships are new. It's been decades since I could relate to that sort of world. I'd like to find some where the character has a stable relationship that she trusts, but then some people might feel the book loses a lot of the drama. I lost my taste for soap opera-esque "does he love me, does he not" drama after college.

I want a mystery, not Sex in the City

I got a .99 ebook about a werewolf hero and one woman posed a question to another (the heroine), who would be in close contact with the werewolf hero: what do you do when he starts humping your leg?

(I figured it should go here or in Bitches ... and it IS about a book)

One of my freebie mysteries is shaping up well. 1st POV, male viewpoint character, he's a local pastor who was almost a cop and is chaplain to the local police. The basic info on the murder is presented in a conversation with the local police chief full of snark and intelligence. So far so good.

Superior Justice by Tom Hilpert, first in a series.

Set in Minnesota

what do you do when he starts humping your leg?

A firm no and spritz him with the water bottle.

Rub his nose in it! No wait..that's for a different behavior...

And Superior Justice disappointed me. It turned into a character piece with interruptions for murder, and the scenes of the pastor counseling people tended to go on a little long. Being as he's a Lutheran Reverend, of course it would be a Christian-centered viewpoint. But then I noticed the character focusing on women dressed in "a mannish button-down shirt" or having "mannishly short hair." And the final straw, the several pages where a psychologist whose practiced attempted to "cure" gays explained how he went about it and the pastor being interested and not challenging any of it.

I started skipping pages at that point, and then he turned into Steven Segal after he was framed for murder, and, well.

Witty dialogue and erudite characters can't make up for everything.

I am now reading Clockwork Scarab, a steampunk story about the hitherto unknown younger sister of Bram Stoker, who turns out to be the equivalent of Buffy, and the hitherto unknown niece of Sherlock Holmes, daughter of Mycroft, which is very funny after seeing Game of Shadows, are recruited by Irene Adler to find out who is killing young aristocratic women. Ridiculous on the face of it, but it's being matter of fact about a steampunk world with the Fae in it, and, by the way, we've got an accidental time traveler from the modern world who seems to be coping surprisingly well in a world where he's surprised to find out Sherlock Holmes is real and where he can distract pursuers with his iPhone.

Miss Stoker is reluctantly admitting that Miss Holmes is quite bright and clever, and Miss Holmes is grudgingly impressed at how well Miss Stoker kicks butt. Miss Stoker is surprised to discover Miss Holmes dislikes dark underground places, and Miss Holmes is baffled at why Miss Stoker freezes at the sight of blood, given her vocation. As Miss Stoker says, "Vampires don't bleed."

They're both trying to live up to their families' reputations, and it's at least competently written.

RIP Zilpha Keatly Snyder.

The police are baffled, the management's frantic, the watchmen will not stay,

All the scientific investigators gave up and went away,

And they all pretend that they can't be certain, for no one wants to say,

that the ghosts, little ghosts who lost their childhood

Have been sent to Alcott's to play.

-The Fishbowl Song

I just finished Gone Girl. Holy shit.

I'm really not sure how to feel about the fact that my parents know the author's parents.