Elly Griffiths: The Chalk Pit
This is a wonderful outing from Elly Griffiths. I enjoyed the last one, The Woman in Blue, very much, but my daughter pointed out after she read it that it was “transitional.” I asked her exactly what did that mean, and she explained the characters were all in transition, neither here nor there for that particular installment. Thinking about it, I agreed with her completely, and this one – where the characters seem to have found landing spots for the moment – feels like a stronger book.
Steve Hamilton’s Exit Strategy, the second book in his Nick Mason series, begins with the kind of slam-bang bravura action sequence that we’ve come to expect before the credits in a James Bond or Bourne movie. Nick must infiltrate a heavily guarded eighty-two-story building, elude or incapacitate at least a dozen Federal Marshals, eliminate a prospective witness and then escape before the big explosion. Adding to the degree of difficulty is Nick’s reluctance to kill innocent people.
The second novel in Candace Robb’s Kate Clifford series finds the feisty Kate dealing with her mother moving in next door, bringing along with her some “beguines” or women who live a religious life but not in a convent. They devoted themselves to charitable work. Kate is wary of her Mother’s newfound earnest faith and of her mother in general, and with good reason, as Robb teases out more of Kate’s family backstory throughout the book.