Tuesday Two-fer

Today I’m going to mention two books, both enjoyable.

The first is A GRAVE TALENT by Laurie R. King. It’s a straight mystery, and was a blog contest gift from Ann of Fractured Fiction. (Thanks, Ann!) Though it was strange to read something outside my comfort zone, it was a good read. The basic premise is that someone is murdering kids, and leaving their bodies along a Road in the San Francisco Bay Area. Everything points to an artist who lives on the Road and has a prior conviction of child murder… and part of the mystery part is the “did she do it, or not?” part.

(The Road is capitalized for a reason, but it’s too much to try to explain here.)

Part of the reason I liked this book was the depth to character. I’m not used to finding character depth in mysteries… though I suppose I mostly read more-fluff mysteries before. The kind where cats feature heavily. Another part I particularly liked was the setting. I have always enjoyed reading books that were set in my backyard, as it were. And this one was done very nicely. It’s obvious that the author has actually been to San Francisco, unlike some other books I’ve read.

Book two in the two-fer is THE COLOUR OF MAGIC by Terry Pratchett. I’m not quite done with this one yet, but I will be soon, so I thought I’d add it anyway.

This is the first Discworld book, and is quite amusing. At this point, I like SOURCERY better, and I think it’s because the world had a few books in which to develop by that point. However, the humour (British book, British spellings) is still very funny, and the characters are enjoyable.

I am definitely not done with this series.