Mystery Week – Confessions of a Serial Killer

Yes, I am a serial killer.  Of computers, anyway.  So once again I have a new computer.  And once again I am jumping thru hoops trying to locate all my favorites because my other laptop died before all the ‘favorites’ could be transferred.  SIGH!  The worst is getting the damn login page for this blog.  And once again I have only myself to blame.  SCREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Laptops are not meant to be dropped.  And I dropped mine twice.  Once it just slid off my lap and crashed into a large antique trunk – the trunk won.  The other time I caught my foot in a wire and yanked the thing so hard I wrecked two ports.  We won’t discuss the replacement keyboard I had to have installed because books – hard covers – toppled onto the open computer and broke off several keys.  Yes, yes, I know.  Laptops are not meant to sustain such abuse and if I went wireless it would be better, except for the book thing,  but using cables is more secure.  And faster.

In my defense, I killed several desktops at work as well, so it’s not just my absent-mindedness or clumsiness to blame.  Apparently, I have an issue with computers in general.  The one that lasted the longest was my very first desktop with 10 meg hard drive.  Yup, the whole thing worked of something exponentially smaller than simple game software today.  And I ran Lotus and a word processing package and a drawing package.  Somewhere along the way, the company standardized to Microsoft and Office.  The computers suicided at am alarming rate.  Or that was my story at work.  Since I went out on my own, the death rates have gone up.  Not unreasonable given the fact laptops are generally more fragile than desktops, and more easily abused.

With all these computer deaths haunting me, it’s somehow appropriate that I read 3 books featuring assassins.  In fairness, they did not go around killing computers – though the old Acer I was using was about to have a fatal accident at my hands due to my sheer frustration with it.  No, the assassins killed people, mostly BAD people.  Like John Cusack’s Martin Blank in Grosse Pointe Blank, ‘If I show up at your door, you know what brought me there’ kind of thing.

Well, I do enjoy good assassin books.  I read the Mitch Rapp, Gabriel Allon, John Rain, even the amusing Bombay Assassin books, so I enjoy the genre regardless.  I guess I feel a certain kinship with them, even though I only kill computers.  So here are some books reviews – and there were some hits and some minor misses.  (Pun intended.)

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The Enemy by Tom Wood (formerly Tom Hinselwood) is book 2 in the Victor the assassin series.  Book one was The Killer, later retitled and republished as The Hunter with the author’s name shortened to Tom Wood.  The publisher delayed book two until after the re-release of book one with the title and name change.  FINALLY, they published book 2 with the now new author name, and the paperback hit the shelves this month.  So if you read book one a few years back, as I did, that’s why book 2 took so long.  It wasn’t the author’s fault.

At the end of The Killer (The Hunter), Victor ends up under the control of a top ranking CIA spook.  In book 2, he’s carrying out some hits as directed by his handler.  Like book one, you have several stories moving at the same time.  First is the action thriller story of Victor and his hits as controlled by his handler at the CIA.  Next is the twists and turns of double and triple dealing with the CIA and Victor’s handling of his his handler.

The story opens with Victor killing an assassin paid to take out an Russian arms dealer, Kasakov.  His handler sends him to pick up explosive material from a specific source so the material will then be traced back to person they want implicated in the assassination Victor will perform.  And things start going wrong.  And people start dying.  Including children.  Victor has a rule – no children.

As Victor moves from kill to kill on arms dealers, he runs across Mossad.  An Arab arms dealer does not die at Victor’s hands, but he and his whole family do die, in a bloody, horrifying way.  Finally, Victor is sent to kill the arms dealer he saved at the beginning.  But he finds himself in the crosshairs of another team.  He kills two and captures the third.  The trail loops back to the two men who blackmailed him into working for the CIA.  And just when you think things are settle, the book ends with the Mossad after Victor.

While no John Rain, Victor is an interesting character.  Wood does not have Eisler’s skill with prose or his first person style that draws you into the character, but he speeds things along with lots of plot twists and turns and Victor remains true to character, even though taking him out of character.  As an action thriller, it’s a good read and a worthy follow-up to the first book.  This book was purchased from Amazon for $8.99.

The Enemy gets a B- (3.8*) from me and a suggested read for fans of Mitch Rapp and John Rain stories.

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Now this assassin is not only female, it’s a story played for laughs by Jana Deleon.  Ms Deleon is author of a number of books set in various small towns in Louisiana, including her Mudbug series.  She used to write for now defunct Dorchester, but this series was done on Amazon’s self-publishing platform, CreateSpace.

Fortune Redding kills an Arab arms dealer when he buys an 11 year old girl for sex.  Good thing she was teetering around in those spike heeled shoes!  Escaping across the desert in a skimpy dress with a rifle barely bothered her.  Learning she had $10 million dollar bounty on her head and leak in the top levels of the CIA that fingered her – yeah, that was an issue.  But finding out she was being sent to a tiny town in Louisiana named Sinful to hide in plain sight as her boss’s niece, Sandy-Sue Morrow, a librarian and former beauty queen?  That shook her to the her core.  Still, Fortune should be able to inventory and pack a house over the summer while the real Sandy-Sue gets to jet-set around Europe at her uncle’s expense.

Her first day in Sinful, she insults the Deputy Sheriff, finds a little old lady at Marge’s house laying in wait, and has Marge’s ancient bloodhound dig up a human bone that washes in on the bayou tide in her back yard.  And she thought she’d be bored!  First the handsome deputy thinks she had something to do with the bone, then suspicion falls on Marie, the wife of a missing man and a friend of Ida Belle and Gertie – and of Sandy-Sue’s late Aunt Marge.

Fear not, the heads of the Sinful Ladies Society, AKA The Geritol Mafia, have things well in hand – even if it is only 7AM on Sunday morning.  Gertie has no intention of waiting for another person to snatch up Sandy-Sue Morrow for Sunday services.  There was a war to be won, and she might not know it, but Sandy-Sue was the newest recruit.  And Fortune proves herself when she wins the Sunday banana pudding dash – a weekly event where the Sinful Ladies Society and God’s Wives, their arch competition, for run to the local restaurant for dibbs on Francine’s much longed for banana pudding.  It was only made Sunday’s and only in small amounts and strictly first come, first serve.

While her old friend Marge’s great-niece isn’t exactly what she expected, the differences are all to good as far as Gertie is concerned.  Of course Gertie and Ida Belle aren’t exactly helpless old ladies either, despite their appearance.  A fact brought home when Ida Belle shoots a gator in the small kill zone as it runs to snatch Gertie.  That impressed the hell out of Fortune.  What scared her was Carter LeBlanc, the thirty-something deputy sheriff who kept catching her in various states of undress doing legally questionable things.

The hunt for the killer of Harvey Chicoron seems to center around his wife, Marie.  And it’s not just the law that wants Marie, so does Melvin Blanchard, Harvey’s nearest relative and a former guest of the state’s penal system.   But where ever Marie is, she’s not where Ida Belle and Gertie expected her to be.  They way they pull an all too willing Fortune into their plots is fun and Fortune’s first person narrative is engaging with laugh out loud moments.

Louisiana Longshot reminds me of a 1930′s screwball comedy mystery.  It was funny, interesting, with good, if slightly well worn characters.  What Fortune lacks in depth, she makes up for in wisecracks.  It scores a solid B (4*) from me as a humorous mystery.  You do have to read carefully to pick up the clues about who committed the murder, but the story is a lot more about Fortune and the Sinful Ladies Society.  If you’ve read and liked the Bombay Assassin series by Leslie Langtry or Agnes and the Hit Man by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, you’ll enjoy this one.  Recommended for those who enjoy off-beat humorous mysteries.  This book was purchased from Amazon for $10.79.

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Yup. After reading book one in the Miss Fortune series, I immediate picked up the recently released book, Lethal Bayou Beauty.  This picks up the day after the real killers of Harvey Chicoron are found out.  Once again Gertie and Ida Belle get Fortune out of bed.  This time for a disaster of epic proportions.  The GW’s, the Sinful Ladies Society arch rivals, pulled strings and got their proposal accepted for the main attraction at the Sinful fair – a beauty pageant for children in the surrounding area.  But it gets worse.  The old woman Fortune beat to the banana pudding runs the GW’s and her daughter is coming back to Sinful.  Pansy Arceneaux was supposedly trying for an acting career in Hollywood and, as a former beauty queen herself, will be GW’s representative to help the pageant.  They’ll be expecting Fortune to the SLS’s representative.  Fortune asks, “Can’t I just kill her?”  Alas, that isn’t a viable option – even though someone DOES kill Pansy after a disastrous first meeting and the next day attempt at making scruffy girls into pageant entries.  (Seriously, Fortune is soooo not suited for this.)  Suspicion falls on Fortune – so Ida Belle and Gertie take it on themselves to hunt the real killer with Fortune.

Once again, a farce worthy of Gracie Allen ensues.  New Orleans puts in a very brief appearance, but most of the action stays in Sinful.  Fortune manages to make a friend that isn’t on Social Security – Ally, the 20-something waitress from Francine’s.  Ally really likes Fortune and is grateful to have someone near her own age to talk with.  Sinful is kind of short young single females and males, both of whom tend to leave for places with more than 300 people.

Pansy Arceneaux was a less than savory person and she was foolish enough to keep a record of all her doings in a journal.  Thing is, Ally knows where it is, she just needs a way into Celia Arceneaux’s house.  As Celia’s niece, she uses her ‘good Christian’ excuse to help Celia.  The ‘girls’ already know Pansy owed the IRS huge back taxes for her ‘imputed income’.  They also know she was no actress, she was a call girl in California.  And she slept with most of the men in town, including the married ones.   She even took pictures.  Pansy was a murder victim waiting to happen – because she had one other bad habit ………… blackmail.

Once again, the book covers only a few days and manages to cram in a ton of action and laughs.  The clues are subtle, especially with the broad humor that is Ms Deleon style.  We do get some glimpses into Fortune’s childhood and what drove her to her profession.  There is also something else, Fortune thinking about options to her career choice – a small, but important epiphany.

Lethal Bayou Beauty scores another B (4*) rating with me, its short comings out weighed by the entertainment value.  As above, recommended for those looking for romp, not a serious action thriller.  The book was purchased from Amazon for $10.01.

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You can’t throw a stick in the mystery section without hitting either a paranormal cozy or one with a food fetish.  I figure we’re running out of niches for authors.  We have caterers, chefs, bakers, chocolate makers, party planners, cookie bakers, wine and cheese people ……. jeeze.  Lucy Burdette made her entry into the genre with Key West based Haley Snow, food critic for Key Zest online magazine.  One of the not so nice things to do is write a bad review and Haley just wrote her first one.  When she arrives at work, local restaurant owner and politician Sam Rizzoli is in her Boss Wally’s office yelling about her review of his latest restaurant Just Off Duval.  He’s mad as a hornet and storms out threatening Wally and Key Zest.  But the day isn’t over and Haley is about to run into his again – on the set of Topped Chef, a competition for the next TV chef personality.

Turns out the whole TV thing is as awful as Haley thought.  She and one other woman, Toby Davidson author of a book on how baking helped her cope with the grief of losing her husband, are all but steam rollered by Rizzoli and Chef Adam Boyd, the chef owner of a highly respected and very expensive restaurant.  Toby is reserved and looks as uncomfortable as Haley feels.  Their opinions are belittled by by both Rizzoli and Boyd.  Picking the three finalists was done with plenty of put downs for them both.  Haley heads back to the houseboat she shares with the elderly Miss Gloria and their cats.  Tonight she has a date with the handsome Detective Nathan Bransford.

Haley sits in the restaurant waiting for Nathan, and he keeps calling saying he’ll be there.  But the crime scene is taking a lot of time and Haley eats alone.  Taking his steak and dessert to him on the pier lets her curiosity get fed, and hopefully will be appreciated by a hungry detective.  But the only thing Nathan is is mad she shows up.  So much for romance.  But she learns one thing, the dead man is Sam Rizzoli.

As with the previous books in the series, Haley shows an amazing lack of common sense at times, but at least they were few and far between here.  She does learn a lot about Rizzoli, none of it flattering.  Rizzoli had only one real interest, Rizzoli.  He had affairs with people of both sexes and ignored their marital as well as his own.  As a councilman he was only interested in things that would help further his own ambitions and bring him more money.  The suspect list was pretty much everyone who knew him.  And it’s quite little Toby who thinks something is wrong with Topped Chef - and one of the contestants is certain the fix was in from the beginning.  Then Toby gets shot at and wounded and Haley jumps off the pier to pull her to safety.

The resolution is interesting and Topped Chef, book 3 in this series, is the first one I actually enjoyed.  Yes, I still have some issues with Haley and her bad judgement, but here at least she displayed better judgement and more intelligence than in past.  Perhaps the best part was where she told Bransford to hit the road when he made excuses about his ex-wife.  Much better than mooning after that idiot lawyer Chad.  The writing is good, and the spirit of Key West with its good and bad sides come through.

Topped Chef get a C+ to B- (3.5-3.7*) rating largely because I still have issues with Haley.  The plotting and pacing was much better for a cozy.  The jaunts into emotional angst kept to a minimum.  The Randy Thompson character, a cross-dressing bartender and down home style chef contestant was good.  I hope we see him again from time to time.  I’d just be happier if Haley grew up more and showed more of a level head and less emotional nonsense over things.  She handled Bransford well at the end, but her reaction to his wife was kind over the top for someone she wasn’t really involved with yet.  How does she get so emotionally invested in near strangers?

Topped Chef was purchased from Amazon for $7.19.

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That Old Flame of Mine combines new and old with lead character Stella Griffin, a Chicago firefighter filing a temp job as Chief of a small volunteer department in rural Sweet Pepper, TN.  Stella caught her detective boyfriend in the sack with her friend and punched his lights out.  (Yes, I liked her immediately.)  That’s the new.  The old is the ghost of the former Sweet Pepper chief, Eric Gamlyn, that haunts the cabin the town supplied her for her stay.

Stella Griffin came to Sweet Pepper as a way to fill time while on recovering from getting injured at a fire – and trying to avoid suspension for punching out her detective boyfriend when she caught him screwing her best friend.  Arriving on a restored vintage Harley she gets pulled over for speeding.  The deputy looks at her like she’s a ghost and calls her ‘Abigail’, then literally runs away and takes off.  Weird introduction to the area, but at least he skipped the ticket.

Two months later, after a lot of hard training with local volunteers, they tackle a real fire set in an old barn while the town is there to watch them work.  The trial goes decently for a first try, but holding onto a hose under pressure takes skill and muscle and neither are developed quickly.  But Victoria ‘Tory’ Lambert takes exception to the harsh comments from some councilmen about how well the volunteers did.  One thing Tory wants is to have this fire department a success.  She lost her first husband in a fire and has a deathly fear of them.

Turns out her fear was justified.  Later that day Stella pulls Tory’s body out of the back of her closet as Tory’s beautiful old house burns down around her.  Tory is dead and Stella is convinced that fire was NOT accidental.  Stella finds herself at odds with an insurance investigator as he seems all to anxious to call this homeowner carelessness and an electrical short setting off kerosene lamps.  She’s convinced the fire was anything but accidental and Tory was murdered.

But surprises just keep coming.  Stella is run off the road and wakes up in a strange house with an old man watching her.  He claims he’s her grandfather.  Turns out, he is.  He’s also the local power broker, the richest man in town.  And his stepson is one sleazy guy.  But the shocks are not over.  Turns out all those strange things at her cabin have nothing to do with electrical shorts, the place really is haunted, by Eric Gamblyn, the man who built it, started the volunteer fire department and died in a silo fire years ago.  And now he’s talking to her.

That Old Flame of Mine is part cozy, part Ghost and Mrs Muir.  Stella is a good strong lead character, not another fashionista or bubble brain.  I found her very likable.  The cast has a full compliment of odd and unpleasant, along with the good folks.  The mystery is interesting and woven neatly into small town life.  The first book by J.J. Cook and first in the series.  It gets a B (4*) from me for solid writing, plotting, and pacing.  I enjoyed both the mystery and the characters that populated the story.

This book was sent to me by a fellow member of PaperBackSwap.

The Never Ending Story of Amazon

Start up companies are business soap operas.  The emotional highs, and tearful demise happen every day.  From the day Jeff Bezos started Amazon, its profit margins have been the subject of questions.  For years there were no profits, just huge losses, yet each time Amazon provided quarterly figures, the stock would jump.  Those were the good old days before ‘back to basics’ investing took the glow off start-ups and began asking, “Where’s the money?” It’s why people question new stock offerings so closely now – excluding that FaceBook debacle.

Amazon saves a lot of money by not having brick and mortar stores, but it has got a lot of warehouses in different states and employs over 20,000 to 70,000 people in their 40 US based fulfillment centers, depending on the season.  Actually, their order fulfillment operations are considered a benchmark against which others are measured.  Unfortunately, it also has a remarkably inefficient way of warehousing, picking, and packing orders.  It’s not unusual for me to order 3 books and get them from 3 different locations in 3 separate packages.  Now this is not pre-orders, this is in print books, often the same genre.  I questioned how they could make money even with the deep discounts small package carries offer large volume shippers and this week, I read an article about just that – Amazon Prime’s free 2 day shipping.

Amazon Prime isn’t cheap at $80/year, but you get free movies, cloud computing, can borrow a Kindle book a month free, and the biggie – free shipping.  Buy 40 print books a year, and that’s cheap when you consider other companies charge $3.50 for the first book and $1.95 or more for each additional book.  Now, as a PBS (PaperBack Swap) member, I ship a LOT of books via media mail so I know how much shipping that little mystery mmpb can be.  And how cheap that heavy box of hardcovers is by comparison.  A small cozy mystery between 250 and 350 pages will run under $3 first class and about the same media mail.  That 10 pound box of hardcovers will run about $6 media mail for 5 hefty books.  Parcel post would be about twice that or more.  Yes, you have the cost of the shipping envelopes or corrugate cartons and wrapping the books in plastic to protect from water hazards, but we’re talking under $0.50 in materials, so shipping one little mmpb is a break even and shipping those hardcovers you make a profit on the shipping costs.

Check the freight costs for UPS or Fed Ex and you’ll faint.  So yeah, I get Amazon’s switch to FedEx Smartpost, an efficient compromise between small package at door delivery and using the postal service that probably saved them millions.  But what it isn’t saving is their pick-pack operation and the number of packages shipped.  So they use bubble envelopes for a small number of shipments, but the majority are in corrugate cartons shrink wrapped to a corrugate pad.  One book per box.  I cringe on a big release day when I find myself with 10-15 individual boxes 80-90% with 1 lone book.  As a customer, I love the efficiency of release day delivery.  As a package engineer, I shudder at the waste and shipping cost for mmpb’s.

Apparently, I’m not the only one wondering how the hell Amazon can make money off of their Prime customers, stock analysts have been looking at their profits and think the stock is over-valued.  I’m no market guru, but when profit margins are 7-8%, the REAL cost of Prime memberships has to be questioned.  One analyst opined that Amazon would NEVER improve their profits margins as long as they kept the Prime program as it stands!  But changing it is a risk, especially when Books-A-Million is offering the same free shipping for $20/year.  So Amazon is looking at options of getting that cost under control – the reason behind the recent switch to FedEx Smartpost and the new locker system.  Smartpost is a compromise, one Amazon knows will result in delivery delays since the last mile is managed by the USPS, not a small package carrier.  The post office has cut staffing to the bone, so the surges on major release dates really strains facilities in many locations, including where I live.  Combine that with temporary summer or Christmas holiday help and you have chaos.  I already have to check my mail because I get so many mis-delivered first class items and parcels.  If it’s an immediate neighbor, I’ll walk it over, but if it’s on another street in the complex, I take back to the PO and they can find the proper owner. In five years of UPS delivery, I think one package went astray.  So Amazon has already traded down on the service ladder to get some cost efficiency.

The locker system is a whole different animal.  Now they are pushing the cost for the ‘last mile’ of delivery onto the customer under the guise of ‘pick it up today!’  Yup, makes sense for me to waste my time and gas running heaven knows where to go to some soulless locker and get my order.  But by pushing the cost of that last leg onto the customer, Amazon would save big time.  The lock system is still in process and its success is not a given.  People order books to avoid the hassle of going to the store, but driving to a locker really isn’t any different – and could be very inconvenient, especially during bad weather.  So this program is not a sure bet for success.

One of the options that Amazon seems loathe to consider is a more efficient is multiple order consolidation - combining  multiple orders from one customer into a single order for new releases.  The vast majority of my pre-orders are mystery and paranormal/UF in a mix that’s 70% mmpb and the rest split between trade and hard cover.  Now books with the same release date might enter Amazon’s sales catalog at different times, so I might 5 – 8 orders with product being released the same day.  It is rare indeed for these orders to be combined in a single box, but common for one order to arrive in multiple parts on the same day in some cases partly by UPS and partly by FedEx Smartpost!  Now anyone who has walked a warehouse knows how complex shelf placement gets, but instead of placing items by demand – obviously new releases will have a demand surge – they place them randomly by space.  There are people on bikes that pedal to the far end of warehouses to fetch goods.  Orders bounce from one facility to another based on inventory.  And that’s how I end up with over a dozen individual boxes from 4 different states on a major release date.  The cost of that is huge.

That’s also the reason Amazon is looking at a neutral stock rating, and some analysts are rating it ‘sell’ because they think it’s over-priced at $258/share.

Does this mean Amazon’s customer base is not growing?  Maybe.  Or maybe it’s just slowing as they saturate a market already crowded by electronic devices, holding back of their Fire tablet.  Certainly the number of prints books sold will be down as ebooks bite into that market more each year and the new generation of readers get more and more dependent on electronics for their entertainment.  And ebooks are VERY attractive since the goods are delivered wirelessly, take up only computer space, and there’s no packing or shipping involved.  I expect the profit margins are better for both publishers and sellers – but not authors.  What I did find surprising is the small drop in profit despite the attractively priced Fire tablet and overall increase in ebook sales ve print books.  Are shipping costs growing faster than they can be contained by the growth in ebooks?  Given fuel costs, that’s very likely.  That was reflected in a quarter percent or more drop in profits.  Something that really gnaws on some investment types, despite all the innovation and new toys, Amazon’s profits have flatlined.

Does this mean the days of Amazon Prime are numbered?  Or does it mean the annual cost will go up?  Or a change in service to USPS media mail, delaying the books arrival?  Amazon owns The Book Depository in the UK.  I buy there since they carry British authors hard to find in any US store, especially thriller, mystery, and espionage.  I do get free shipping, but it comes international ground.  I see some of those titles on Amazon – with 1 to 3 weeks delivery dates, meaning they source from Book Depository.  Is this something Amazon would consider in their US operations for Prime?  Or maybe just free shipping with standard ground delivery, 2-5 days with no guarantee of release date delivery?  Interesting questions, but so far, Amazon has offered few answers.  I have to assume the ‘price point roulette’ they’re playing with mmpb’s is one way to up profits.  But the loss of 4-for-3 still is inhibiting my buying fairly dramatically.  Maybe that’s the intent.  Push more customers to consider ebooks.  Of course, there will always be the risk of losing business, but is it PROFITABLE business?  Maybe customers like me who prefer print books are no great loss to Amazon’s bottom line.  Investing gurus seem to believe that Prime is the albatross around Amazon’s neck.  That’s not something they can ignore.

All this makes me wonder about the future of print books in general.  Libraries have cut way back on purchases as they deal with budget cuts and increase their ebook inventory.  It saves purchase costs, manhours, and space – all reductions in overhead.   Another interesting development is the quick sellout of copies of some books.  Now Amazon has to be the single largest retailer of books in the US, if not the world, but are they reducing their order quantities based on pre-release sales and allowing the books to go out of stock?  It happens more often then you might think.  It is a boon to used book sellers who can ask staggering prices for a print book.  Is this another cost containment move?  It seems so to me.  Or maybe small press publishers just don’t have the willingness to risk print overruns.  Neither do some larger ones.

Regardless, Amazon will need to improve their margins to get a ‘Buy’ recommendation on their stock.  It will be interesting to see how the next year or two plays out for Amazon Prime and their profit margins.  Who knew selling books could be a soap opera?

A Book Addict Cleans Out and Some Short Reviews

There is a price to pay when you have a book buying habit – periodically, you must sort them out and get rid of them.  This is usually something I do once a year, but in 2011 I broke my wrist and even after therapy, it remains weak, then last year I was running between doctors and oral surgeons all the time and just didn’t care.  Well I had to care when the chimney came due for cleaning and the stacks of books blocked access.  So the epic began.  Sorting and packing books to be given away.

I have a very civic minded neighbor that works at a food pantry one day a week and though not especially religious, donates to various church rummage sales and FOL sales in various towns.  So she takes EVERYTHING!  Now I admit, the majority of the books are hard cover, and 99% are like new, so she gets quality books, even in the paperbacks – trade and mass market.  I had a huge stack that filled her trunk and some left over.  The next week I gave her more, then more and now I have 5 large boxes for her (the kind that holds about 12 reams of copy paper) ready and hopefully the last, except for a few cases of MMPB’s.  I cleaned out older books from the ‘keeper’ shelves and replaced them with new stuff and stacked masses of TBR then donated in front.  I resorted and reboxed all the swap books I had already read, shipped more to various PBS friends and generally ‘de-booked’ the place.  To say it was overdue is vast understatement.  I was ready for a starring role on HOARDERS.  I had visions of my brother cursing my dead body and ordering a second dumpster for all the junk.  Now, while certainly not yet ‘clean’ the place actually has space.  Empty space.  Room.

The best part, my neighbor is delighted to be able to share all my cast-off books and keeps asking if I have more and drops empty boxes at my door for me to fill.  Well, my shoulders and wrists are very unhappy, but I kept filling them and supplying them and everyone who loves books comes looking the day’s ‘catch’.  In return, I get space.  Now we all know that space will get taken up by more books, but for right now, I’ll just admire it and plot clearing out the mmpb’s next.

I decline to discuss the stacks of TBR that are piled over 2 feet high around my antique trunk.  They go nowhere till I read them and the vast majority are wish listed on PBS.  Still, in the middle of this massive undertaking – and yes, the chimney was cleaned by a very nice young man with no fear heights (unlike me) – I had two large deliveries from Amazon of new released and the first delivery from Books-a-Million (BAM).  And books from various PBS swaps.  My post office loves me.  Oh yes, I also managed to win a reading contest.  Though I didn’t read as many books as usual, I qualified in both Mystery and Paranormal.  What did I win?  Why a $10 gift certificate from Amazon for …… MORE BOOKS!  Walt Longmire and I have 2 dates this week.  heheheheheheheh

So, all you ebook readers, go ahead and gloat.  You’ll never have to get dirty and do the heavy lifting – but you’ll also never have the pleasure of re-homing books to those who might not be able to afford them.  Libraries are strapped for cash, so maybe they will help in a small way there, and with the folks at the food pantry can find a little entertainment for free.  If some church makes a little money, fine by me.

So here are some short reviews of books that got read toward the end of the contest that lasted about 5 weeks.  And most seemed destined to annoy me one way or another.

Shelly Laurenston brings us her latest ‘Pride’ series installment Wolf With Benefits featuring the middle brother in the ‘Reed Boys’ Ricky Lee Reed.  His two brothers, Reece Lee Reed and Rory Lee Reed have played supporting roles in her other books, but Ricky Lee Reed hasn’t so his kicking this off was a bit of a surprise.  And the female lead in the 28 year old daughter of renowned violinist, jackal, and best friend of Irene Conridge Van Holtz (When He was Bad), Jackie Jean-Louis Parker.

Basically, thanks to the skills she developed handing demanding prodigies, her younger brothers and sisters, Toni lucks into a job with the Carnivores and ends up getting sent to Siberia to negotiate a contract with the Russian bears.  Ricky Lee Reed is sent to act as her security and Barinov, a bear-tiger hybrid born in Chicago is their ground help.  Ricky Lee gets Novikov to handle the scheduling for the three middle children who are complete narcissists – and some of the most annoying, charmless characters Laurenston every created.  Now all this takes up 70% of the book thanks to the half dozen side stories going on.

While many characters from the current series show up here, Dee Ann Smith, Jess Ward Smith, Ulrich Van Holtz, Bo ‘ The Maurauder’ Novikov, Blayne,  Cella Malone, and others, Laurenston also added several interesting new characters – the most fascinating of whom is Olivia – a honey badger, a photographer and Toni’s best friend.  Now she was a classic Laurenston female.

I did enjoy the book, even read it twice, and there were some wonderful moments, but the romance part was very weak and the overall lack of a straight forward story line made it something of a jumbled mess. Unfortunately, the self-centered whining of the demands of Toni’s younger brothers and sisters, and her mother Jackie’s careless assumption that Toni would take care of them, was source of serious irritation.  Then the ‘romance’ didn’t get off the ground until the last 20% of the book.  Way too much time was spent on the setup trying to give Toni some character.  The end result was a plot that’s unfocused till the end.  A large part of this was due to Laurenston’s efforts to make her Toni character seem more than she is,  and she still came off weak.  Easy going Ricky Lee Reed was fine, but the lack of the usual strong female lead may have been the author’s problem in getting this book to gel.  She kept bringing in the strong females from other books to make up for it, and that went down way to many plot dead ends.

Wolf With Benefits had its moments, but overall, was a below average effort by Laurenston.  My grade is C (3*) and a recommendation that only series die hards pay for the book.  My copy was $8.38 on Amazon way back in July 2012.  That was all it was worth.  Get it used or from the library.

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Kitty Rocks the House is another example of a story line that took a turn that didn’t work for me.  Kitty is back in Denver and she and husband Ben are looking for a house, one that will work for her pack.  But Kitty seems unsure of so much through this book, her issues with selecting a house became be a metaphor for her life, which seemed adrift.  You cannot go to London and issue a ringing call to arms against the Dux Valorem and come home and be a virtual doormat to a new wolf of suspicious character, and allow Cormac and his resident spirit to wreck havoc.  On top of that, Rick suddenly seems more like a priest than a Master vampire.  One becomes a Master only with a certain level of ruthless cunning that’s suddenly absent.  He gets involved with his catholic roots instead.  Now there’s an irony for you.

A Catholic priest seeks out Kitty to gain an introduction to Rick.  The priest is himself a vampire and is part of a sect within the church engaged in a battle of which ‘The Long Game’ is part.  He wants Rick on his team.  I have to tell you, religious angst and vampires are not a good mix and this spirit in Cormac has way too much control and is getting obnoxious.  The Cormac we knew is basically gone.  Ben is little better than bit player – again, and Kitty, a supposed Alpha, is as strong as a limp noodle, showing none of the leadership qualities she’s showed before.  Waffling and uncertain, she seems like a candidate for Beta, or maybe an Omega wolf.

I honestly don’t know where Carrie Vaughn is taking this series, and after these last three books, I’m not sure I care.  Kitty Rocks the House did not live up to its title and certainly made me wonder why I continue to waste time and money on this series.  My score is D+ to C- (2.5*) and a strong suggestion you wait for used bookstore to have copies, or get a loaner.  It is not worth the price.  My copy was $5.99 on the now defunct Amazon 4-for-3 program.

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Ella Barrick is a pen name for author Laura DiSilvero.  This third books in the series had huge promise, folding in a plot of a TV dance show featuring B-list celebrities.  But dedicating time to the show, while hoping it would bring in more customers, also causes problems with her regular classes.  But all of that seems minor with the show’s co-creator and producer gets murdered.

Stacy Graysin is struggling to make a go of her dance studio and figures the exposure on a national TV show will boost her profile.  That is until her Argentine business partner informs her, the aunt from whom she inherited the beautiful Alexandria brownstone failed to pay her property taxes for some years, leaving her with a tax bill of over $100,000.  Anatoly, her gay Russian dance partner in professional competitions, is a reluctant participant in the show and ends up with towering black female ‘action’ star ex-con and martial arts expert has his partner.  She gets a has been child star trying to jump start his career and mommy issues.  When the female half of the production team is murdered, the show goes on, but Stacy gets involved asking questions.

Here’s the rub.  All cozies rely on an amateur being nosy about a death.  Recent books in the genre take this trait to absurd lengths.  In the earlier books, it seemed within reason, but approaching drug dealers and asking questions?  hummmmm  No, that doesn’t work for me.  Not her best work.  (I keep saying that.  Am I getting picky or the plots really getting irritating?)

Anyway, The Homicide Hustle gets a C+ (3.3*) from me and a ‘buy only if it’s a deal and you love the series’ recommendation   I got it new from Amazon for $5.99 and that was all it was worth.  Truthfully, MORE than it was worth.

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This must be the month when series lead characters self-destruct.  Jenn McKinlay’s cupcake series has been one of the most reliable – until Going, Going, Ganache.  It starts out strongly with partners Mel and Angie posing for pictures for Southwest Style magazine – a real coup for their business.  Arch rival Olivia spoils things for them and a cupcake free-for-all ensues.  Super rich magazine owner Ian Hannigan demands recompense in the form of ‘team building exercises’ – Mel and Angie will teach his people how to make cupcakes which will then be sold at a charity event.  Even Ian himself shows up!

NOTE: SPOILER ALERT BELOW

After a rough first day with the group, things get better – until Mel finds one of her students dead out behind her bakery.  The mystery part of this book worked well, as it usually does.  But two things spoiled the whole book – and possibly the series for me.  Mel became a walking cliche when she breaks up with sort-of fiance because she has some kind of childhood hang up?  Seriously?  The woman is 30-something and even recognizes her issue and STILL breaks with Angie’s oldest brother? This isn’t going to wreck her relationship with her best friend?  And Detective Mendoza is a good guy, but he’s chasing a woman already in a serious relationship?  And best bud and silent partner is suddenly incommunicado?  To be worthy of Angie he must ‘make it on his own’ and not as part of the business his father built to worthy of her?  OMG – is this an episode of Jerry Springer?

For all it’s good points, the over use of a female lead who can’t decide between 2 different guys has become the most overworked cliche in modern cozies and I blame Janet Evonavich and her endless Ranger-Steph-Morelli plot line.  Come on, is there no originality out there?  That’s the damn default setting?  Triangles?  GAH!  Talk about stepping in it!

The vast majority of Going, Going, Ganache is a solid B (4*), told with Ms McKinley’s usual verve and fast pacing.  It all gets spoiled by Mel’s self-induced psycho-drama, the early onset mid-life crisis, and the whole stupid done-to-death budding love triangle.  That dropped the book to a C- (2.8*).  It also put the series on Code Red.  One more excursion into this ridiculous teenage angst in your 30′s and it will be toast.

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CODA

Books play a big part of my life, but even when I want to beat an author over the head for huge misstep, it’s nothing compared to real life.  Never was that more apparent than on 9-11, and in a reminder drama played out in Boston last week.  It is a sad day when once again innocent bystanders are maimed and killed by people who can only express themselves in crudest possible way – by attacking, not those responsible for their perceived plight (whatever that was), but by going after people who did nothing but come to see loved ones race.

Most of us are children of immigrants.  Some further back, some more recent.  My grandparents were all born in Europe and came here quite legally.  My late sister-in-law was English and the only member of her family to come to the US.   We all know and work with people who have come to the US in hopes of finding a better life.  An Albanian friend, now a naturalized American citizen, and a Muslim, is horrified by these things.  He watched his own country torn apart by religious strife and is forever grateful that he and his family could come here and prosper.  As a father of 3 young daughters, how does he explain this?

Then a plant explodes in Texas and ricin laced letters get sent to a senator and the president.  An MIT policeman is shot and a city goes into lockdown.  It was a week of shock upon shock.

Every day, people behave like idiots.  They do amazingly stupid things.  Text and drive, drink and drive, get into rages over minor things.  Some struggle to survive, others prey on the weak.  And some plant bombs.  And everyday, people run TOWARD an explosion to help.  Volunteer firemen walk into burning buildings looking for survivors, only to become a causality.   As fast as well meaning people set up funds to help victims of the tragedies,  so do the con men.  Two sides, the best and the worst of humanity.  It can be discouraging.

Patton Oswalt offered this surprisingly astute observation - ”The good outnumber you, and we always will.”  To the good out there – live well, and they lose every time.  To the victims of both disasters and their families – my heartfelt condolences and most sincere hope that your lives will normalize and you can continue to see the good in people.

Books on Order – and not from Amazon

It was inevitable – carved into Amazon’s ‘catch me if can’ pricing game.  I am slowly beginning to move orders from Amazon to BAM (Books-a-Million).  Along with my $20 membership fee – which means free shipping – I got $10 off on any order of $50 or more.  I did what any sane person would do and moved books from Amazon pre-order to BAM.  Then I got a $20 off coupon for $100 or more order and did it again!  This time, mostly pre-order hardcover books and trade paperback.  Today BAM had a 4 hour flash sale with ALL MMPB’s at 30% off.  Yup, two MORE paperbacks moved from Amazon to BAM!

What does this mean?  It means that I have become an aggressive comparison shopper for my books.  Before, the convenience of Amazon’s system, with the 4-for-3 program might not have been the BEST deal, but it was easy to keep everything in one place and make sure I at least got a GOOD deal.  Now, they drive me nuts with their pricing games.  I ordered 3 books on Amazon:

1 of: One Lucky Vampire: An Argeneau Novel, Lynsay Sands  PRICE: $4.98
1 of: Hunter’s Heart: An Alpha Pack Novel, J.D. Tyler PRICE: $4.69
1 of: The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo, Kerrelyn Sparks PRICE: $4.88

Look at those 3 books on Amazon today and all are $7.99.  Next week they might be $7.19 or $6.88 or some damn thing.  That order stays with Amazon.  But other books, well, what can I say.  I’m getting better pricing on BAM’s site.  Todays books averaged below $5.60, which is less than the 4-for-3 pricing at Amazon.  Normally, it wouldn’t be enough, but with the looming addition of sales tax and the lower price at BAM, the playing field has not just leveled off, it’s tipped to BAM on mass market.

For hardcover and trade paperbacks, Amazon remains very competitive, usually a few cents cheaper or more, not enough to bother about.  But mass markets?  Now that is a different story.  I haven’t been with BAM long enough to know how well they treat customers, but it couldn’t be much worse than Amazon’s horrifying maze of overseas ‘help center’ personnel.  Plus, I can easily drive to the local store and get things fixed fast.  And not with a guy calling himself ‘Alice’.

There is NO question that Amazon had the BEST search feature, the best ‘recommended books’ links, and the best site layout. All huge pluses.  But getting customers annoyed?  Bad decision.  I go to Amazon, use all their resources – then shop the best price – which is sometimes Amazon, and sometimes not.  A year ago I could not have imagined myself doing this.  Now, it’s like Amazon challenged me, and I’ve taken up the challenge and started looking at pricing.  And why not?  ”The Most Customer-centric” company in the world, isn’t anymore.  So if Amazon wants to play games with its customers, I’ll play – and screw customer loyalty, something they had for years.  Phffffit!  Gone.

For that $20 a year, I get the same free shipping Amazon offers and the same ‘ship to arrive by release date’ service.  And since Amazon moved to FedEx Smartpost, well, that’s another advantage they gave up.  BAM uses it, so what’s the difference?  Again, the advantage was theirs and Amazon gave it up.

I’m certain my little personal war has zero impact on a company like Amazon, but it reminds me of the Ebay hubris that has been their undoing.  A place that I hunted and bid and bought from for years and I barely visit the website.  Why?  The smaller players on which Ebay built its business got screwed.  Well, guess what, they screwed the buyers too because they drove away the very sellers I usually bought from.  Half.com, their used book site, is about the only place I bother with.  Again and again, companies, especially tech based ones, lose sight of what customers want.  And slowly, the business morphs into something the original people who made the company a success leave.  I’ve seen this with other online sites – Trip Advisor being one.

In 2004 I took a trip to Costa Rica with a friend and her 2 teen daughters (now college graduates and working).  I used Trip Advisor and its forums to help me find hotels and restaurants and places to see.  The content was driven by travelers, not chamber of commerce or travel companies.  Now – Trip Advisor is owned by the same folks who own Hotels.com and Expedia.  It’s chock full of advertising, has Traveler Articles that have been rewritten till all those little warning that are so damn helpful have gone.  Now restaurants, small businesses, and B&B’s BUY reviews to get their ratings up.  And TA’s vaunted algorithm that supposedly detects these fake reviews, fails.  It’s so rampant, you can’t come CLOSE to relying on them.  Now a competitor is starting up with VERIFIED reviews, like Amazon’s ‘Verified purchase’ logo, where there is PROOF the person stayed or ate or visited the attraction!  Chowhound and Yelp! give them some competition, but like Amazon, they remain the big dog on the block.  It’s like those Harriet Klauser reviews on Amazon, don’t believe it unless you can see a pattern of long use by the reviewer.  And ‘one and done’ should be ignored – and allow me to just say, I am a former Destination Expert so I feel I can speak to these issues.  And I’m ‘former’ because of the rampant commercialism.  And the site moderators are not only capacious and arbitrary, but dumb as a stump too – and I think I just insulted the stump.

All things change and nothing changes quite like internet based businesses.  They come, they dominate, they dwindle.  Amazon hasn’t meet a real contender, but then I’m sure Microsoft believed they never would either.  So did Yahoo.  Amazon will change, and keep changing, until, like Ebay, one day they look around and realize a big chunk of their core business and the customers it brought in are gone, baby, gone.  The moment you send customers looking for cheaper alternatives, you’ve lost.  Ask Barnes and Nobel.  Ask Borders.  Oh, wait, Borders Books is gone and B&N is closing stores all over the place.  But BAM, now they can laugh all the way to the bank with what USED to be Amazon’s money!

Amazon Buys GoodReads

I’m not that active on GoodReads, not like a lot of folks.  I am however, a member and have been for sometime.  I was depressed and slightly disgusted to see Amazon has bought the company for an undisclosed price.  See the Forbes article here.

GoodReads was a haven for hardcore reads of all stripe, whatever your genre, from smut (Romantica, chick porn, whatever), to mystery, to paranormal, to fantasy, to romance, to non-fiction of all kinds.  There were groups that discussed books, reviews by readers, author chats – hey, nothing better than authors talking about writing.

I’m over my smut cycle, with a few exceptions, in large part due to the recent concentration on male/male, and BDSM, neither of which do anything for me.  So, I’m mostly sticking with mysteries, UF, paranormal, and the occasional romance – usually of the paranormal type.

I’m also giving BAM! a shot, but that’s a separate post.  Since everything there is pre-order, we’ll see how it works out.  In the meantime, I have to wonder if Amazon will once again force ALL buying links to their website now that they own GoodReads.  Seriously, Amazon is starting to really get on my nerves.  the volatile pricing games – buy in advance and pray we discount before it comes – and their arrogant domination of all things books is grating.  Yes, I respect the vision of Jeff Bezos, but I am a great believer in a healthy competitive market.  Publishers owned it for decades, holding booksellers by the short and curlies, now Amazon is doing that to the publishers and they hate the shoe being on the other foot.  But who will grab Amazon by the corporate gonads and twist?  If nothing else, it’s proving once again, single company domination is NOT healthy for the consumer.

Urban Fantasy Week

Why is it that many Urban Fantasy (UF) books are released around the same time?  Maybe it’s just the series I read run in bunches.  Anyway, this seemed like my week for UF.  Some good, some WTF moments, and some leaving me wanting more.

Maybe I should take a moment and explain just what good urban fantasy (UF) is – and isn’t.  Look it up in Wikipedia and it will tell you it’s ‘define by place’, namely an urban setting.  To me, it’s a little broader than that, but yeah, setting come into play.  Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series is usually considered a perfect example of UF, yet he uses true fantasy worlds in addition to urban setting through his series.  Usually the territory of science fiction writers, and occasionally cross-over mystery writers, the surge in women readers has lead to a kind of subset to the typically noir UF.  It’s romance writers and lighter fantasy writers that are now pushing the sales in UF.  And that translates into a style that is less Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder and more Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles – and maybe a bit of Janet Evanovich’s Steph Plum thrown in.  Tough women, but female leads and with a more romance, or at least emotional turmoil – and often using the two guy choice plot device – tiresome, but frequent.

So I have 3 UF’s and a paranormal romance for you this week.

Black City by Christina Henry is the the fifth book in the Black Wings series with lead character Madeline Black, former Agent of Death, escort of the newly departed to the doors that lead to the afterlife.  She is also many time great-granddaughter of Lucifer, widow of Gabriel, mother-to-be, and budding slayer of evil.  She’s high on the hit list of Tatiana, Queen of the Fairies, because she publicly diminished Oberon her king.  She also in the Agency’s hit list, even though they stripped her of her wings, because she’s causing havoc.  And what Maddy is turning into has her guardian gargoyle concerned she’s headed for ‘the darkside’ of her power.

Maddy destroyed Azazel, her father, and thought she destroyed his experiments, vampires that had been given the blood of angels so they could walk in the sun.  But suddenly thousands of vamps storm into Chicago in broad daylight laying waste to the human population in downtown.  The Agency refuses to intercede, they only escort the spirits of the dead, they won’t stop the slaughter even though they have the means.  Maddy does all she can, but it’s not enough.  Then Therion, King of the Vampires offers the humans a deal, he’ll call off the killing if they hand over Maddy Black.

Now Maddy has another enemy to run from, all the damn bounty hunters out to get her.  And all the while dealing with her ever cunning grandfather Lucifer and the capricious Puck.  In getting through yet another attempt by Tatiana to kill her, by capturing J.B. her former boss, a Fairy king and someone who loves her, she also reveals to Tatiana’s son his true father – the same father that Nathaniel has.  And discovers how and why Lucifer has been a ‘naughty, naughty boy.’  And the price he extracts from Maddy for his aid.

For a fairly short book, Christina Henry packs in a lot of story, mostly about how ambiguous good and evil, right and wrong, can be, while continuing to grow Maddy’s powers.  Entertaining to be sure, with a huge cast of characters, but lacking the power, depth, and detail of really great UF.

Black City was purchased from Amazon for $6.00 with the 4-for-3 discount.  My score is B- (3.8*) and recommended for fans of the series.  Since all books in this series are short, try buying them used or borrow them.  A good series, fast, easy reads, and entertaining without the kind of rich complexity that Jim Butcher or other UF authors have.  It is, however, sufficiently original and well dome to worth the time and effort to find and read the whole series.  Books should be read in order as each ends with a ‘cliffhanger’.  Fans of Kitty Norville and Cassie Palmer will enjoy this one.

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Next up is Dead Letter Day by Eileen Rendahl, which unlike the earlier books in the Messenger series, was released in the more reasonably priced MMPB size.  Good thing too, because this was a strange read.  It isn’t often you read a UF book that leaves you wondering if there will be recipes in the back, like many cozies have.

Paul, the boyfriend of Melina’s friend, Meredith, and kind of the cool ‘uncle’ she never had who helped her get used to the whole world of Arcanes for she was a messenger, has gone missing.  Meredith is beside herself with worry and even Mel is concerned.  Concerned enough she approaches the pack Alpha, Chuck, to ask if he knew anything.  Werewolves were not generally a friendly bunch, but she Chuck got along.  Like many Arcanes, he was very long lived, so that meant moving himself and his pack to a new location every 10-20 years.  They were coming due for that move.  Paul was important, but whether he would move or stay with Meredith, remained a question.  Beyond that, Chuck was worried – especially about the strange reports of werewolves in a kind of half shift that real werewolves never had.  They had been seen by ‘Danes, mundanes being the word used for those with no arcane ability.

Mel’s boyfriend, Ted Goodnight, is a cop in the Sacramento police department and being the good guy he is, he helps Mel question the people who reported the sightings.  No question, something very strange was out there and it had bitten a cop who was now in a psych ward obviously half infected.  Mel ends up back with Chuck telling him the not so good news, because the werewolves would to get the guy out before the next full moon, just in case.  In investigating Paul’s cabin with a helpful werewolf, she finds a strange silver web mounted between two sicks set like trap in the word behind his house.  No one knows what the hell it is or who could have made it – though it was obviously meant to hurt or disable a werewolf.

Now all this sounds good, except through it all, is woven a major plot line involving Mel being pregnant and mother/daughter relationships, and the meaning of family – the whole teary eyed thing.  Even the solution is all about mother and children -in a twisted, disturbed way.  Honestly, at times the whole feel of the book was not UF, but paranormal cozy.  And one more family meal and I would have been screaming.  Half way through I was pretty fed up and to be honest, the plot involving the missing Paul and who was involved was obvious.

Dead Letter Day was kind of tedious and dull after a decent start.  The whole storyline felt less like it was evolving characters and plots than it was changing tracks altogether, and not in any good way.  This was never a strong series, but this entry was weak and very predictable.

My grade for Dead Letter Day is C- (2.8*) and not recommended for anyone but die hard fans.  I paid $6.01 in the Amazon 4-for-3 pre-order pricing and I consider it a waste of money.  If you must, try for used copy or borrow it from a friend.  This series might just have a fork stuck in it – it’s toast.

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From the bad to really good with the second installment of the Sentinels Of New Orleans, River Road, by new author Suzanne Johnson.  Her mature and well developed writing style is no doubt the result of her long background in editing and publishing periodicals.  But what I like the best is her characters.  Book 1, Royal Street, introduced Drusilla Jaco, DJ, a wizard of the Green Congress with some elven blood – and the daughter of a man she always thought her mentor, not her father, Gerry.  With his death in the final battle in the Beyond, DJ became the only wizard Sentinel in New Orleans.  It was a big job made bigger by the fact that Katrina, Rita and Gerry had combined to tear down many of the boundaries between this world and the Beyond.

Book two picks up the story three years later.  New Orleans is recovering, but still has vast areas of nothing but ruins.  And lot of trouble with things that are crossing the Boundary - and one of them is the charming and handsome pirate, Jean Lafitte.  DJ owes him big time, having promised almost anything for help during the Katrina crisis, and now he’s called her.  With some dread, DJ goes to Lafitte’s suite at the Monteleone hotel and learns he needs her Sentimental skills to resolve a problem between mer-clans in Plaquemines Parish.  He is in business with the Delachaise clan who are having trouble with another merclan who just came into the area.  Like the Delachaises, the Villiers have no love of wizards, but someone or something is poisoning the water and before a clan war starts, someone has to figure out what’s going on – and that someone is DJ.  He also wants to cash in on her extravagant promises – Jean Lafitte wants a dinner date with her.  Now all she has to do is tell her co-sentinel, FBI agent and shifter, Alex Warin.

DJ and Alex have kept a professional distance for the last 3 years.  Not only is he co-sentinel, he makes more money and isn’t even a wizard, two facts that chafe DJ no end.  And there’s the little fact that he and Lafitte get on like oil and water – and they can’t even kill each other.  What Ms Johnson delightfully refers to as a ‘homicidal stand-off’.

The visit to Plaquemines includes a stolen Corvette (Lafitte’s work, of course), a tense and difficult meeting with the heads of the two clans over lunch – mers apparently have prodigious appetites for seafood – and an excursion to the area with the contaminated water – where Villiers is waiting with a shotgun and a very dead body.  Now DJ has angry mer clans giving her just days to figure out what’s going on with the water, she also has two dead Green Congress wizards, both killed with knives.  And a date with a pirate.  And one with Alex’s cousin Jake, a Afghan war vet who got caught in the battle in Beyond and turned loupe garou – a notoriously unstable type of werewolf, who’s taking her to dinner and the a performance by a famous Cajun musician.  Oh, and a date with Alex where she has to pretend to have been his girlfriend for the last 3 years – and she has to meet his formidable mother.  Life was easier when she had no social life.

It gets more complicated when DJ performs a ritual that would be frowned on to get the water problem solved.  And it gets even worse when the boss for the North American wizards shows up and rather hesitantly informs her the elves know she has a staff, the one she named ‘Charlie’, made by their elders – and it isn’t some ordinary staff.  But it has ‘chosen’ her and can only be used by her, at least as long as she lives.  Isn’t that just dandy news?

Ms Johnson weaves her tale with a sure hand, and despite a few minor flaws, this story was so readable I could not put it down.  In fact, I went back re-read the book, not something I do often.  Her humor, characters, atmosphere, world building, and plot combine to make a highly recommended read.  Besides, I think I have a crush on Jean Lafitte.

River Road gets a rare A- (4.5*) from me.  As a series, Sentinels of New Orleans gets a strong recommended read for any UF fan, especially those who liked early Sookie Stackhouse and Harry Dresden.  I bought the book through an Amazon re-seller as new for $10.00 for the hardcover.  Trade paperback will be published June 25 and is currently discount priced at $10.19.  My copy is destined for my keeper shelf, next to Jim Butcher’s books.

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Well, from one extreme to another – the next book is Immortal Ever After, #18 in the Argeneau Vampire series by Lynsay Sands.  What can said about this book?  Really good beginning. ………… hummm……… OK that’s about it.  Thereafter, the operative word is ‘trite’, maybe ‘boring’.  Yes people, he suddenly tastes food and likes it a lot!  A rogue is out to get her back.  She thinks vamps aren’t real.  Can he convince her they’re ‘lifemates’?  If it all sounds familiar, it should.  Different villain  same story.

That’s it.  As boring as most Regency romances, and filled with past characters who make brief appearances, mostly for no apparent reason other than the author wanted them there.  A plot as predictable as sunrise and characters that lacked, well, character.

OK, before the Argeneau vampire lovers come and try to stake, allow me to say that I re-read Single White Vampire just before I read  Immortal Ever After.    No comparison.   Yes, there are some highly contrived plot elements in SWV, but it’s the characters that stand out.  Valerie and Anders are just variations on her past 3 books.  Valerie had a lot of potential, but frankly, 10 years in a relationship and never getting a commitment?  Seriously, what sane woman would do that?  Especially an educated and apparently independent woman she is portrayed as?  Anders just is not a strong character.  he rather bland.  That true of far too many of Ms Sands males lead.  Lucern, Lucian, and Victor stood out the most for me.   The Accidental Vampire was fluff but fun and really lively and entertaining.

Valerie is captured and held in a tiny cage in the basement of an old house.  Six other women are there as well.  Once a day food is given them.  After the first week she realizes the food is drugged and dumps it rather than eat it.  Then her day to be ‘chose’ rolls around and plays drugged until she can attack the henchman she nickname Igor.  Despite years of martial arts training, it isn’t til she drives a broken piece of wood into his heart that she can escape.  She calls 911 for help and leaves the line open when she hears the ‘master’ drive into the garage.  Weak from blood loss and lack of food, she climbs out the window and manages to crawl to a bush.  That’s where Anders finds her.

Enforcers monitor police calls and immediately went to house.  They got there after the police, but wiped their memories and sent them away.  In addition to the six women in the basement, one already dead and the other dying later, they found a pile of dead bodies, all female.  They had a rogue, and a bad one.

The one thing missing was ‘Igor’.  Apparently he too was a vampire and saved by his ‘master’.  The rogue had chosen his victims carefully, women with no families or local friends to miss them.  It’s how he stayed hidden for so long.  But he wants Valerie back.  She’s ‘his’.  Apparently, he’s not only a rogue, he’s also an egomaniac and not real bright.  The fact that Valerie gets captured again does speak well for the Argeneau’s or her.  Actually, everyone was acting dumb.  It must have been contagious.

There are several plot disconnects, like a ‘Renaissance portrait’ and the guy was a WWI soldier who was accidentally turned.  And frankly, not a lot of excitement, mostly just dull to ‘meh’.

Immortal Ever After  was weak entry in an uneven series and profoundly missable, so save your money.  Not recommended despite the high rating on Amazon.  My grade is D (1.8*) and let me tell you, I don’t do that often.  If you need an Argeneau fix, go read The Accidental Vampire.  This was another Amazon purchase under now gone 4-for-3 program and about $6.oo.  $5.90 more than it was worth.  Unless you are a die hard fan, and willing to tolerate drivel, skip it.

Amazon’s Newest Marketing Ploy – Random Discounts

Well, I guess we know what is taking the place of Amazon’s 4-for-3, a bizarre and apparently random pattern of discounts, mostly on mass market paperbacks (MMPB).  There are a few trade books affected, but they seem few and far between.

In the past week I reviewed my open orders on Amazon and cancelled those books that weren’t high on my want list.  Time to strip down this insanely large TBR pile.  Why?  I noticed some of the 4-for-3 discounts on pre-order were getting odd discounts that made 1 book cheap and the others more expensive.  Thing is, the others weren’t that high on my book lust list.

In perusing books I found prices within a genre and general release date priced anywhere from full list to as little as $4.69 for a $7.99 book.  I bought 3 in the $4-5 range.  Some in the low $6 range – a little more than the 4-for-3 rate, and ignored those with 5-10% discounts.  Was there are consistency in the rate, % off off?  None at all.

Go take a look.  There are some great buys, but what this means and how long will the hold the price. who knows?  It’s always been a crap shoot on the trade sizes, but now MMPB seems to be kind of a big hit or complete miss.  I honestly don’t know what to make of it all.  Books that were full price last week have 15% to 39% discounts this week, others have 3% to 10%, many none at all.  Are we expected to order and hope the Amazon ‘lowest price’ guarantee will mean we get a bargain by the time the book is published?  I’m not sure I like that whole ‘blind faith’ thing.  Or do we constantly check our wishlists to see if discounts are happening on titles we want?

Oh, as an added twist – there are also deep discounts on Kindle ebooks too, some as low as $2.99 on $7.99 list and $4.62 print price books in pre-order!!!!!!!!  I find the whole thing confusing.  I feel like it’s some game that I don’t have the rule book for – and truthfully, it’s a bit of a turn off.  Yeah, I’ll take advantage for a 30% or more discount on MMPBs, who wouldn’t?  But to be honest, I think I’d like a consistent policy on discounts over random ones that come and go.  And I sure don’t have enough faith in Amazon’s continuing the deep discounts to pre-order a large number of books and sit around hoping they get the benefit of a price cut somewhere along the way.

So I guess it’s time for me to watch, wait and snag some great buys as they pop up on the site.  And wonder how long THIS marketing ploy will last.

An Interesting Note on Kindle e-Books

I saw this do a fly-by earlier this week in some news outlet.  Amazon has filed a patent for creating a kind ‘used e-book’ market for their Kindle e-books.  See the article here.

I find it interesting that unlike most digital content, Amazon NEVER surrenders their rights to your ebooks.  I can sell or give away almost anything under digital material, especially games and movies, but NOT Kindle books.  Oh, you can ‘loan’ them out thru an an Amazon controlled system, but you can’t give them away.  Now if I buy a book and find I don’t care for it, I can pass it on to my neighbor who like that kind of thing, or ship it and let my brother and SIL who decide if they like it, or just give it to Goodwill for sale. But not Kindle e-books.  I can’t ‘give’ it away.  I certainly can’t sell.  The only thing I can do is ‘loan’ it for 2 weeks to someone with a Kindle or Kindle PC/mac/phone app.

OK, I guess I can see some of that, at least about the selling, but why can’t I give it away?  No, my brother and SIL have no interest in e-readers or laptops and like me, find print books easier on the eyes, but I guess it’s the principle of the thing.  You don’t really ‘own’ an Amazon Kindle e-book, you acquire a long term lease where all the rights are theirs and you ………… well, no, you don’t really have any.  You bought the right to read the book, you didn’t really buy the ‘book’, the content itself like you would buy a software package.  It’s kind of like a museum, you can see it, but you’ll never really own it.  And they CAN take it away.

So, let’s see if Amazon sets up a ‘used’ e-book marketplace for Kindle books and then let’s see how many takers there are.  Amazon is getting as good as a soap opera – we just need a JR Ewing to make it really interesting!

More New Authors and Some Well Established Ones

One of the good things about playing in games on PBS (PaperBack Swap) is the chance to ask a person you know what they think of a new author and/or series.  Many adult paranormal romance type authors actually write something between romance and UF – like Chloe Neill with her Chicagoland Vampire series.   That concept has become more and more the territory staked out by this new generation of paranormal writers.  For me, it’s like the difference between a Michael Connelly book and Janet Evonovich, both are mysteries, but very different.  Unfortunately, no new genre title has come along to go with this new style, so I’ll stick with UF for now.  One recent swap I played in was called Unusual Suspects – and the requirement was the lead character NOT be a vampire of any type of shifter, the two most popular ‘species’ – always excluding Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, Wizard for Hire.

I won a set of books (you only get to pick one) from someone who has very similar reading habits and favorite authors as I do.  I don’t read as much historical fiction as she does.  So I requested a book I had never heard of but that looked quite interesting, providing it wasn’t ‘a sucky read’.  She assured me she enjoyed it a lot and it arrived about the same time as House Rules by Chloe Neill.  Yeah, I read House Rules first, but then I read not one but 2 books by new authors.

The upside, I really liked both books.  The downside, the next book in BOTH series will be released in HARDCOVER!  Now getting a new author and series off the ground in this crowed field isn’t easy.  Why publishers immediately jump to hardcovers is beyond me.  They’re doing it in cozies, they’ve always done with action thrillers and hardcore mysteries, and now they’re bumping up trade paperbacks to hardcovers.  Why?  Greed.  They want to milk fans.  Kind of the reverse logic to Barry Eisler releasing his self-published The Detachment as a cheap e-book 6 months before releasing a print edition in trade paperback.  I find the whole thing really annoying – and expensive!  Both books were published by TOR, so beware their trade sized first in series.  If it works out, they’ll do their level best to leech more money out of you to read the rest!

This Case is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova is set in a world where vampires and weres came out during the Viet Nam war and both are exclusively male groups.  The Álfar are the beautiful ones – Fae.  They are attracted to acting where their glamour and unnatural beauty draws legions of adoring fans, something they love.  Vamps lean more toward law, and were to finance and things like protection and Spec Ops for hire.  Only the Álfar have females and propagate the usual way.  There are NO female weres or vamps.  Weres can still father children, normal human ones.  Not so vamps.  So if you’re born female and human, you’re out of luck in the whole ‘becoming immortal’ category – and the status that goes with it.  Being female also closes a lot of doors in firms run by vamps and weres – and those were the most successful ones.  This group of long lived supernaturals are referred to as The Powers, or by the slang word, ‘spooks’ – widely considered insulting.

Linnet Ellery was fostered in a vamp household and came third in her class at Harvard Law, but it was her connections to one of the partners at Ishmael, McGillary, and Gold that got her a job as an associate.  Too bad ‘Shade’ Ishmael is the only one who likes her.  Gold and McGillary want her gone.  The Ellery’s might be an old, well established, and well to do New England family with an ancestor who sat in the Continental Congress and signed the Deceleration of Independence, but she was nothing but a female who took a slot in one of the top two ‘White-fang’ law firms that was usually reserved for a male who stood a chance of making partner – and being turned.  Not only that, she was assigned to a long time lawyer who had only 1 real case, Chip Westin.  His first words to her, “This case is gonna kill me.”  He’s short, bald, out of shape, and at a career dead-end with a case representing the worst clients possible – the greedy and vindictive ex-wife of a human turned were who established a security and protection firm that is now worth close to a billion dollars.  Too bad he started his business after their divorce AND left a will leaving it to his ‘natural’ child, a man he turned were Deegan, who now runs the company.  Standing in her way is a Supreme Court ruling that supports ‘made’ children rights over natural children.  It’s been going on for 17 years, and the bitter window will not let it go.

Witnesses are dying of old age, people’s memories are failing, and Chip is stuck with once again taking this to court against a well funded corporation that has the largest private army in the world.  So not only is Linnet stuck with Chip, she’s stuck with a no-win case.  Chip has Linnet going through files, re-reading everything.  But he’s been getting mysterious phone calls and after an all-nighter he says thinks he’s finally found something, something that matters.  Just as she tries to get him to the elevators, they get attacked by a werewolf.  In a stroke of luck, Linnet falls and the wolf chasing her slides on the floor, through open elevator doors and down the shaft.  Chip, however, is dead.  Then she’s attacked again, at home, and again manages to kill a werewolf.  Her luck is more than just luck.

The firm PI is a changeling, a Áflar baby left in exchange for a human one.  John is as gorgeous as all Áflar, but is as grounded as any human thanks to his parents.  A former cop, he starts helping Linnet re-investigate the old case.  He’s also very attracted to her – and she to him, but then, he’s Áflar, so women tend to fall all over him.

The characters are well defined, the story flows well, and the world building is solid – that unique UF blend of the familiar and fantasy working very well together.  I have pre-ordered the next book in the series, despite it being a hardcover.

This Case is Gonna Kill Me was acquired thru an online book swapping site at no cost.  Trade is available at $11-$12 new and the mass market paperback will be available in July at $7.99.  Is it worth the price?  The MMPB, absolutely.   The trade size, I suggest buying used.  My rating is B+ (4.1*) and recommended.

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Next up is Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson with Book 1 in the Sentinels of New Orleans.  Set in New Orleans as Katrina approaches, it captures the city and it’s devastation, while spinning a tale about about those things that exist beyond the Boundaries that the Sentinels guard.  With the evacuation orders, Drusilla Jaco AKA DJ, evacuates, reluctantly leaving behind her mentor and substitute father, Gerald St. Simon.  Back in Alabama with her grandmother she watches as Katrina unleashes her fury on the Gulf coast – and the winds and rain get the better of New Orlean’s levee system.

Then Gerald goes missing.  Fearing he’s dead, DJ heads back into the city with fake credentials and finds nothing at his house except mud and transport circle of ash.  The Borders were shredded by the storm and Others were crossing over into New Orleans.  The Council of Wizards were working to reestablish the boundaries between the worlds, but something was working against them, and it had something to do with a series of ritual murders taking place – mostly National Guardsmen.  DJ is a Green Wizard, one the specializes in potions, not a powerful Red like Gerald, so the Council sends her unasked for help.

Among those coming thru the rifts in the boundaries is none other than Jean Lafitte, an ‘undead’ being who keeps getting back into New Orleans.  Now ‘undead’ here is not vampires, though they too were banished during the Wizard Wars in the 1970′s.  The ‘undead’ are the people from the past who ‘live’ in Old Orleans in eternal night.  They live because people remember them.  Obviously, Lafitte is well remembered well enough that he can ‘live’ in the modern world, not just Beyond.  And being a pirate, he keeps finding ways back.  She’d sent him back to Old Orleans just before Katrina.  Now he’s back and Alex shoots him.  Now the ‘undead’ don’t really die, but after a shotgun blast to the chest, he would be awhile recovering the strength to return – most likely mad as hell when he did.  Talk about getting off on the wrong foot.  Then to find out that not only isn’t Alex a wizard, he’s a ‘co-sentinel’, well, that really frosted DJ.  Yeah, she was young, and as a Green, not that powerful, but she didn’t need some gun happy alpha male bossing her around and ‘protecting’ her!  The fact he was also FBI meant they could get an inside track on the murders.

Then, a month after Katrina, the city is hit by a second storm, Hurricane Rita, tearing apart even more of the boundaries.  One of the legends to crossover is none other than Louis Armstrong, ‘Pops’.  Rather than send him back, DJ gets him a job at Jake Warin’s bar, Alex’s cousin, playing live, and tries using him as an informant about other undead and what’s going on with these murders.  Then she finally discovers that Gerry really has done the unthinkable, gone into Old Orleans to help a voodoo god gain power to destroy the boundaries and allow free passage between the two worlds.

Voodoo, music, pirates, and murder combine to make an interesting and very readable story, made even better by DJ’s wit and humor.  DJ’s growing pains and slow but sure blossoming of her power and self assurance is rocked time and again.  Yet it never went for cheap sentiment.  Royal Street was a book that surprised and entertained me and honestly deserves more attention than it’s getting.  I got so involved, I stayed up till I was done.  Then went and bought a discounted hardcover copy on book 2 in the series, River Road, unwilling to wait for the release of the trade paperback.  Like the previous book, this one was obtained through Paperback Swap, new author’s best friend!  Like all first books, it had flaws, mostly with building and maintaining suspense of the plot.  Many of the elements were easy to anticipate, even in the big climax.  But in all honesty, it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment.  My grade is B+ (4.2*).  The trade paperback is currently selling between $11-12 at discount.  I’d suggest buying used, but I did enjoy it $10 worth.

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Third in this line up is the latest installment of Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires series, House Rules.  Previously, in Biting Cold, Merit, Sentinel for Chicago’s Cadogan House and house Master Ethan Sullivan finally got together.  His undead life fully free from the dark magic wielded by Merit’s best friend turned rogue mage, Mallory, now doing ‘time’ in a werewolf kitchen, forbidden to use magic.

Now Cadogan must deal with their decision to the Grand Presidium, the official vampire governing body.  The silence from the GP is deafening.  One thing Ethan was sure of, they were up to something.  The contracts between the house and the GP had no surprises, but upon a deeper look, his fussy librarian and researcher found additional agreements referenced in the primary contract – and that gives the GP most of the wealth of Cadogan House.

On top of that, the new Chicago mayor wants all vamps and weres to register.  And vamps are being killed – in gruesome ways.  The Red Guard is hunting for the perps, while a security consultant works with Cadogan to make sure their House will be secure once they break from the GP.  To really put things in overdrive, the mayor appoints the vamp and were hunter, McKetrick, to the office of Ombudsman, the position formerly help by Merit’s grandfather.  But her grandfather, Jeff the young were with a crush on Merit and a way with the river nymphs, and Catcher, another mage and Malloy’s boyfriend are still working with him trying to keep a lid on Chicago’s supernaturals calm and the mayor keeps making things worse.

With a three prong threat, from the city, from a vamp killer, and devious GP, Merit and Ethan work to keep the house together and city from going in flames – and find a way to keep the GP from causing complete financial ruin to Cadogan House.

While a good, quick read, House Rules lacks the interest and full tilt energy of the earlier books.  The best I could do is B- to c+ (3.5*) for this entry.  Is House Rules worth the $10.20 I paid for it from an online bookseller?  Only if you’re a fan.  But if you don’t need it right now, wait a bit and buy a used copy.

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For a change of pace, I read Murder on the Half Shelf by Lorna Barrett, the most recent Booktown mystery featuring mystery bookstore owner Trisha Miles and her cookbook author sister Angelica.  In a recent Chamber of Commerce meeting, Angelica was one of the winners of a one night stay at the town of Stoneham, New Hampshire’s newest business, and bed and breakfast.  Of course, Angelica is in a snit with Bob, her on again, off again, boyfriend and head of the Chamber – and the person who fully expected to be spending this night with her.  So Tricia finds herself playing porter to Angelica as they enter the B&B.  Their hostess Pippa is less than thrilled to find Tricia and not Bob with Angelica and somewhat ungraciously show them to the master suite on the third floor.  A man, who makes a quick appearance, sees Tricia and turns and ran out must be the missing husband.

With her usual blithe disregard for rules, Angelica has smuggled in her dog Sarge and asks Tricia to walk him before they leave for a quick dinner in town.  After bickering, Tricia caves for the sake of her stomach and sneaks into the yard with Sarge.  Like all dogs, he finds something……. it’s Pippa with her head caved in.  Tricia is getting quite the reputation for finding bodies – this being her 4th in 3 years.

Hours pass with police and questions – and no food, then finally, Pippa’s missing husband puts in an appearance – and Tricia knows why he ran.  His name isn’t Joe Comfort, it’s Henry Tyler, a one hit wonder in the mystery world and her old boyfriend who supposedly ‘died’ in a boating accident 20 years ago.  Now she a serious suspect and her sort of boyfriend Grant, the new town Chief starts pulling away.  They’d been down this commitment road with him before.  The excuse is sort of valid, but She’s fed up.

Struggling to find a new store manager, and trying to help out Mr Everett  town lottery winner and benefactor, get his wife’s priorities straight, and solve a damn murder, again, Tricia finds Bob got bought off in the raffle for the free stays at the inn, the man running local nudist camp was being blackmailed, one of her fellow shop keepers orders from her store – convinced she chasing the woman’s husband, and her sister is part owner of the inn.  Oh yeah, she finds the killer too.

Lorna Barrett writes classic style cozies, small towns, limited suspect list, lots of small domestic/business issues fleshing out life, and she writes them well.  While I still find Angelica a grating personality, I am happy to see that Tricia demonstrates backbone, both with her old flame and Russ, her current one.  The who-done-it is better than usual and the why good too.

Murder on the Half Shelf was a good read with well drawn, if overly familiar characters, but is it worth the discount price of $15-16?  Nope.  This is a $7.99 that’s been published in the new small size paperback, even then it doesn’t quite reach 300 pages.   My grade is B- (3.8*) and a recommendation to get it from the library, buy used, or wait on the paperback.

Whither Goest Amazon?

Quo Vadis?  Translation: Whither goest thou?  A movie, a book and maybe the ultimate question for Amazon and its users.  Their business model was always evolving and now we’re about to see the next version.  One thing they always did better than any other online bookseller was how they structured and built their website.  No one matches them in that.  But over the years, other companies have bettered them in service and price.  For years I would search on Amazon, but buy at B&N online or in store.  I spent a lot of time in Borders too.  Now Borders is gone.  B&N stores aren’t what they used to be, and Amazon has turned into a full service online seller, a virtual bazaar, or souk, filled with small stores all under a common roof with what is one of the best search engines around.

But what was a company that sold itself on delivery at your door, the ultimate convenience, now morphing into?  They do charge and insanely expensive annual Prime membership – but it did buy a lot of free shipping.  Thing is, Amazon never tried to find a way to consolidate member orders for pre-release books ordered on different dates.  I might pre-order some books 10 months out, other 2 months, but they’d all have the same release date.  That meant I’d get 8-15 boxes of books – each holding just 1 book.  Then it was PILES of corrugate to recycle.  I am amazed at how fast the stuff piles up.  I swear it breeds when I’m not looking.

Then recently they were asking if I want to drive to a pick-up site and get my order.  HUH?  If I wanted to drive, I’d go to a store and buy books.  Not even 4-for-3 pricing would pay for the gas and tolls, and my time!  The nearest locker was 30+ miles from my house in the most densely populated county in the country.  Oh yeah, I’m REAL anxious to spend half my day running there!

But what if they push this locker system?  What will that mean?  I don’t just buy books for me, I buy them for friends, for book swap winners, for other family members in different states.  What about them?  Will they be driving to some ‘locker’ in a city they hate to get their book?  WHy drive to pick up books from Amazon?  I mean I can ALWAYS do that with B&N.  It’s a service they’ve had for YEARS.  Not exactly new or innovative, except Amazon will have them ready ‘same day’.  It that enough for me to get in my car and drive somewhere?  If I HAD TO HAVE IT RIGHT NOW, why not just walk into the nearest bookstore and buy it?  Is this really an option we need?  And if this is their new business model, and you request shipping, will they charge more?  Where does that leave us?

Well, here’s the thing, Amazon finished off the independent booksellers, except for a hardy few that concentrate on specific genres, like The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ, or places selling religious books, or ones on everything from yoga to witchcraft.  There are no corner bookstores any more that have the latest mysteries, thrillers, romance, fantasy, urban fantasy, or paranormal.  Hell, my town doesn’t have a USED book store!  Yeah, the food stores have a tiny selection of new paperbacks, mostly bodice rippers and best-selling mystery series and the latest fad diets.  Not exactly a decent choice.

According to the letters I got from Amazon’s Customer Service:

“While we’re planning a variety of special discounts and other promotional offers, I’m unable to share these details. I encourage you to check back in the next few weeks. Any special offers will be advertised throughout our website.“

So stay tuned.  Will the promotions center around this ‘locker’ system they’re setting up?  Will it be based on how many dollars you spend?  Or just more of their 5% off daily special, which aren’t very special?

More importantly, are we really stuck with Amazon?  Maybe not entirely, or at least not me.  I still have a decent B&N not too far from me and BAM! (Books-A-Million) with it’s automatic 10% discount about a half mile away from them.  Online, Half.com is usually a better value than Amazon for used books, especially if one seller has multiple titles you want, and Alibris and HPB (Half-priced-books) have similar websites composed of a collectives of independent used book sellers.  Warehouse stores, especially Costco, has books, mostly top sellers, same for Walmart, not that I use either.  The Book Depository in the UK has free shipping, though that often means long waits.  Great selection and good website, too.  As a member of paperback swap, I can also buy from the PBS store, though once again, it’s a game of patience.  That’s a LOT of stores to replace one seller – still, I HATE feeling trapped.

I look around an realize two things – 1) I’m a dinosaur.  I prefer print books to ebooks any day of the week, even though I own a Kindle – and 2) we are all responsible for never-ending cycle in evolution on retail sales.  We abandoned downtowns for shopping malls.  We walked away from the family hardware store for some home supply chains.  Local bakeries closed because of competition from supermarkets with store bakeries.  We left local bookstores for large book retailers with 10% off and instore cafes and reading chairs.  Then we left stores and began buying online from sellers who had no stores, just supply warehouses.  We could go online day and night and buy everything from curtains to underwear.  On the best sites, we’d know if the item was in stock or not.  We could book flights, hotels, vacation packages, then buy the luggage, clothes, specialty gear, travel books and maps and never set foot in a store – or even talk to a person.

The very rich have personal secretaries, we have the internet.  Thing is, when it all goes south, we also have no one to call for help.  No travel agent to work for hours to find what we need.  No local hardware store you can walk into and say, “Hi Mr Zinnzer, can you tell me what I need to fix this this?”  I haven’t had a REAL Danish in YEARS, and then, it was from a bakery in Paris.  My local baker had real butter Danish, fabulous plain white bread, even good cookies.  He was just blocks from my house.  The last ‘real’ bakery in the area, one of a very few independents, closed its doors in the last 2 years.  I walk down the main street of my home town and more than half the stores are empty.  Yeah, some of it is the economy.  They rest of it though …………… we did that to ourselves.  You want to know why you have to drive 10 miles to some neighboring town, walk half a mile in some huge store, try and find someone to help you buy 1 lousy gasket?  Look in the mirror.  That gasket that cost $1.05 in your local hardware store and “just $0.79!” in the big home supply place – plus $5.80 in gas and 90 minutes of your time.  You bragged about how cheap it was, how they ‘had everything’.  Everything except what we’ve come to value most, friendly service, ease of use, and ACCURATE information.  It saved time and was much lower stress, but we walked away for the big, bright, shiny new store with all the cool stuff – until we found out the reason it was so cheap is because it’s not the same thing despite the name and appearance.  Ask a good, honest plumber about faucets and water heaters from those chains and hear what he says.

Is what’s happening with Amazon really any different?  B&N, Waldenbooks, Borders all combined to put many independent book sellers out of business.  Then came Amazon and the local bookstores watched what was left of their market slowly fade away.  Then the very companies that put them out of business slowly collapsed under the pressure of Amazon, ebooks and internet shopping.  Like all big companies, they couldn’t move fast enough – even all these years later B&N hasn’t come close to Amazon’s website for ease of use, Walden’s and Border’s are g-o-n-e.  Publishers suddenly have to deal with established authors defecting to Create Space, the Amazon owned book writing/publishing platform.  The whole business of books has changed and print books are being supplanted by ebooks – a fact B&N ignored far too long.

This isn’t so much about the 4-for-3 promotion, it’s about customer expectations.  Amazon sold itself on business model that would not work long term.  I moved my buying to Amazon because they delivered 2 days for free with Prime and they offered the 4-for-3 on some MMPB’s.  Then all MMPB’s, with a very few exceptions.   But even I said it made no sense they way they shipped so many books as singles when I was getting 10+ books on the same day.   I work in a related field and KNEW profit couldn’t be enough to fully support the system and something had to give – and what gave was the major lure Amazon used to pull in customers for your print books, the pricing break of 4-for-3.  Yeah, the trade and hardcovers are often a bit cheaper than at other sellers, occasionally a LOT cheaper, they stream movies, many free for prime members, they offer free kindle books – and I’ve grabbed a few of those.  Amazon does have its positives, but when I look at my towering pile of books, 70% are mass market paperbacks, the backbone of publishing.  They fought tooth and nail to avoid the whole sales tax thing.  Now Jeff Bezos is suddenly doing an about face and saying EVERYONE should be paying it!!!!!  In some states it’s meaningless, where I live, it isn’t.  With the demise of 4-for-3, my cost won’t jump 25%, it will jump 25% PLUS 7% sales tax, for an astonishing 32% increase!  That translates into fewer books and/or finding another source.  Maybe both.  Because I know one thing, I can’t afford to spend another 32% a year on an already too large book budget!

So, where goes Amazon?  What will it look like in 18 months, 3 years, long term?  Will ‘lockers’ supplant shipping, even the less desirable FedEx Smartpost?  How big a part will play in my future book buying?  I’ll keep my Prime for another year, but after that ……… I want to know if I get my money’s worth.  I want a better idea if Amazon will be a company that fits my life.  I dropped my B&N membership because I stopped buying enough to make it pay.  If I move to BAM or Book Depository, how much will that impact the amount I spend at Amazon?  Enough to justify the continued $79/year?  Will that cost go up if you refuse lockers?  Get discounted if you say YES to lockers?  So many unknowns.  And Amazon holds its plans as secret as Apple did in the days of Steve Jobs.  As for me,  I know I will be exploring alternative sources, see how they work.  I’ll give Amazon time to make their next move, but honestly, I don’t see anything long term in favor of customers like me.  Then again, maybe I don’t fit their most desired customer profile, so I’m not the one they want to please.  The world does not revolve around me.

But a suggestion to the readers out there who have options – start looking around for good alternatives.  The signs are not good that Amazon will continue the print book business as we’ve known it.  If you read mostly ebooks, this won’t affect you, except maybe the sales tax.  I know this, my old eyes prefer print, or as a friend calls them, ‘dead tree books’.  LOL  Hey, I pass them on to be reused and eventually recycled.  Those books have long and productive lives.  I wonder if some new player will step up and take on the behemoth?  The certain thing in life is change.  So I’ll adapt.