Finley Public Library

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December 31, 2014

How are you feeling?  How about that parade?  Did you get enough football?  Did you have enough food?  Now we all have to wait another year for all that to happen again--well, if you don't count the Super Bowl!  Or did you read books instead?  That's what I did and they were good!  And here's about the two books I read over Christmas!

Coffin Knows the Answer by Gwendoline Butler.  (PB)  John Coffin series #34.  Butler began this series in 1956 and ended it, it seems, with this book--#34, written in 2002.  Coffin has risen through the ranks and is now the Commander, but still likes to be out on the streets on the beat.  Several books ago he married a well known star of the stage in Great Britain.  In this book she seems to be the reason for the crimes--they all seem connected to her and Coffin drives his staff and himself to stop the murders before the killer makes Coffin's wife the next victim.  Very police procedural--very British.  This reader wasn't sure who the culprit was until the last pages.

Jane's House by Robert Kimmel Smith.  (HC/LP)  Most of Smith's books are children's books.  This is one of two "adult" books he wrote.  Jane Klein has died and left her husband and children in a very bad place--a very un-Jane-like thing to do.  Paul Klein cannot seem to keep up with all the things Jane did in the house, for the children, for him.  But then she was nearly perfect.  The neighbors, Jane's mother and Paul and the children agree.  He scrambles at work trying to keep up as well.  And then everything seems to fall into place.  The family slides into the new "Jane" plan as does work.  Things are going so well at work, in fact, that Paul's company needs to hire an ad agency to promote their new line.  While searching for an agency he finds Ruth, someone new to love.  He marries her and brings her home, but neither Paul nor the children are "cured" of Jane.  Poor Ruth doesn't stand a chance.  The problem is that he thinks they are cured; one wonders while reading if they ever will be.
 
 
 
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