Review of Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs delivers an interesting and entertaining mystery in this 11th entry in the Temperance Brennan series.

During the course of this story, Tempe is residing in Charlotte, North Carolina, dividing her time between teaching at the university and doing forensics for the local authorities. Reichs as usual describes the geography and history of the city, but I could have used a few more sensory details to help ground me in Tempe's reality. Scenes unfolded at a variety of settings, including her lab, her home, a strip mall on the wrong side of town, a Wiccan bonfire, and a riverside body dump site, but all seem oddly remote.

Review of The Spellman Files and Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Sometime early this year I read Lisa Lutz's Curse of the Spellmans, thinking that it was the first in the series. It's not, and because there are some references back to "previous documents" in the later books, I recommend that you read them in the correct order, which is:

1. The Spellman Files

2. The Curse of the Spellmans

3. Revenge of the Spellmans

The Spellmans are a San Francisco-based family who run their own Private Investigation business. They spend as much time investigating each others' secrets -- and trying to protect their own private lives from each others' prying -- as they do investigating outsiders.

Review of Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

I read a number of mysteries in October, and Among the Mad was the standout. 

In this sixth Maisie Dobbs mystery, the psychologist and sleuth -- and the rest of London -- is still dealing with the aftermath of WWI. Although the tale is historical, set in London as 1931 draws to a close, its disabled soldiers, disgruntled workforce, and depressed populace resonate with today's world.

Maisie is drawn into working with the police on a high-profile case that could jeopardize tens or even hundreds of people if they can't catch the culprits in time. At the same time, she must help her assistant, Billy, deal with his wife's hospitalization and caring for his children. I really enjoyed seeing more of Billy's life, although the situation was heart-wrenching. I also loved Maisie's new sense of self-confidence as an accomplished career woman, and liked seeing her lighten up a little bit.

I've never been to London, and I can't say that Winspear's version of the city sets me on fire to visit it -- she paints a bleak cityscape inhabited by a downtrodden people, caught between the horrifying memories of WWI and the gathering clouds of WWII. But the setting is superbly crafted and had me shivering even on Indian Summer days.

I find the Maisie Dobbs series a bit uneven, but this is one of its stronger books, highly recommended.

Oregon Coast Aquarium Exceeds Expectations

I’ve been a member of the Monterey Bay Aquarium for more than 20 years now, which means that I’m often disappointed when I visit other aquaria. Perhaps they don’t have a very good variety of critters on display; or their tanks may seem too small and barren for their inmates; or their displays may be jazzy but lacking in educational value.

I’d heard good things about the aquarium in Newport, but as I walked through the doors of the Oregon Coast Aquarium and paid my $14.95 admission, I tried to keep my expectations low. They’re a much smaller operation, I kept reminding myself. They haven’t been in business as long. They don’t have the endowments that the Monterey Bay Aquarium has. Don’t expect miracles.

The woman who sold me my ticket said that the sea otter feeding would be in 15 minutes, and the sea lion feeding 30 minutes after that, and pointed me towards their enclosures. I went out into a courtyard and wandered around with my mouth hanging open, delighted by the naturalistic setting the aquarium’s builders had created. 

Eureka, CA: A Tour Aboard Madaket

One of the highlights of our day in Eureka was an afternoon tour on a 99 year-old wooden motor boat called the Madaket. She’s been beautifully maintained, and has a gorgeous cabin with, the captain proudly pointed out, the smallest fully-equipped bar licensed in the state of California.

The crew are very proud of the boat and the captain recounted a bit of her history  as we chugged up and down the channels of the bay. Madaket was originally used as a ferry to move workers to lumber camps, saw mills, and other work places in the decades before the bridges were built. She carried some 1500 people a day; to put that in perspective for us, the captain pointed out that there were only about 15 on our tour, although she is licensed to carry 45 at a time. Our uncrowded tour gave me plenty of elbow room for taking photos!

A Stroll Through Ferndale, CA

Heading north up 101 to explore the far northern California and southern-central Oregon coasts, we took a slight detour to look at Ferndale. It turned out to be a photographer's delight.

Ferndale is a tiny community that looks like it’s still largely driven by agriculture. Plowed fields and fenced ranch land stretch from the highway to infinity, and one of the biggest welcome signs at the edge of town is sponsored by the 4-H club.

The town is known probably the world over for its amazing Victorian gingerbread buildings. The main street is lined with beautifully crafted storefronts, lovingly painted to show off the beautiful wooden adornments framing every window, every door, every corner.

Multi-story houses, some converted into B&Bs, dot the surrounding streets. Walking the quiet streets is a real feast for the eyes. Although this style of decoration is a bit too elaborate for my taste, I really had fun taking photos of these amazing buildings. I couldn’t help but be touched and impressed by the time, love, and attention to craftsmanship lavished upon them by not only their original builders but also the owners and craftsmen who have maintained and restored them.

As we strolled through the historic downtown, taking photos, admiring the architecture, and popping in and out of galleries and shops, I kept thinking of a new show I’ve been watching on SyFy, Warehouse 13. Ferndale seems exactly the kind of setting for the “bag and tag” team to find an artifact with supernatural powers...

Here's a link to a facebook album of a few of my photos.

Review of The Price of Silence by Kate Wilhelm

I was a teenage science fiction addict when I first encountered Kate Wilhelm’s work in the form of her classic “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.” A few years ago I was delighted to stumble across her mystery series featuring attorney Barbara Holloway. When I started packing for my current trip (I’m writing this in a motel in Coos Bay, OR), I hit the library to search out fiction set in Oregon, and was reminded that some of Wilhelm’s work fits the bill.

The Price of Silence is a mystery, but not part of the Barbara Holloway series. It’s the story of Todd Fielding, a young female journalist trying to support herself and her graduate student husband, Barney, who is trying to finish his studies in Corvallis, Oregon. Hard up for work in a down economy and with a dwindling array of newspapers, Todd takes a job in a small, remote town (““Where the hell is Brindle, Oregon?” she muttered, opening the envelope’ (which contains an invitation to a job interview).)

Wilhelm does a nice job of setting the scene. “On the left, a mammoth greenhouse seemed ridiculously out of place considering the temperature was 101. A motel, a gas station with a small convenience store attached, a Safeway...Another store, general merchandise, a tourist-type souvenir store, another motel with a cafe, a rock shop...It looked like a move set waiting for the actors.” Then after a few more turns of the car’s steering wheel, “Brindle had turned into a real village with houses and yards, green things growing, a restaurant, a few people going on about their business.”

Not all is well in this tiny hamlet, as Todd soon discovers when she goes to work for a feisty 80-year-old publisher named Ruth Ann Colonna. Ruth Ann has lived in Brindle all her life, and has memories of helping her father paste up The Brindle Times when she was just a child. Her son Johnny is the managing editor, and proves more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to collecting and printing real news.

A few weeks after Todd arrives in town, a young teenage girl vanishes on the walk to the school bus one morning. Todd is amazed and then incensed at how sanguine local law enforcement, the powers that be, and the community in general are about the girl’s disappearance. When a postcard arrives a week after she vanishes, everyone but the girl’s frantic mother writes her off as a runaway. Probing further, Todd discovers a pattern of girls gone missing over the last two decades, and begins publishing articles about her research in the weekly newspaper. Everyone except Ruth Ann views this as stirring up needless trouble, and Todd soon finds her life threatened.

I loved the characters in this book, and think Wilhelm captures the setting nicely -- I could smell the desert in the scenes where Todd and Barney are exploring the back country. I could have done without the supernatural aspect that came into play, I found the premise that an entire small town would shrug off the disappearances of five teenage girls a little hard to swallow, and I knew the identity of the villain about half-way through the book. But all those negatives didn’t detract from the unfolding of the story, which was logical and well-written and peopled by characters I genuinely cared about.

Review of The Ice House by Minette Walters

I’ve read and enjoyed a number of Minette Walters’ mysteries over the last fifteen years or so. I just finished The Ice House, her debut novel published in 1992, and I’m glad it wasn’t the first of her works that I encountered, because I might have skipped her later books, and that would have been a shame. 

Walters has a way of getting into the creepy psyche of her stories’ bad guys in a fashion that is almost too deep and intimate for my comfort. In this first novel, the twisted emotional and moral fabric of the cops investigating the crime was almost too difficult to stomach.

When a body is discovered in the ice house on the grounds of an English manor, it stirs up reinvestigation of a ten-year-old disappearance. The man who vanished was a scoundrel and a criminal, but his presumed murder turned the narrow-minded villagers against his wife, Phoebe Maybury. She has maintained her innocence and reinforced her isolation with the help of Anne Cattrell and Diana Goode, old friends who moved into the manor with her shortly after her husband vanished. All three of them have things to hide, even from each other and their now-grown children. 

The two primary investigators, an inspector and his sergeant, are more deceitful and vindictive than the criminals they are trying to catch. They have a bizarre relationship that swings without warning between gruff fondness and antagonism.

Walters uses shifting third-person viewpoint to good effect, telling parts of the story from the vantage points of each of the cops, each of the women, and a few key witnesses. She does a masterful job of revealing just enough information in each scene to keep the reader turning the page.

Eighty-five percent of the action takes place in the manor house and its grounds, a setting drawn with loving detail. The big house has been divided into three separate flats for the three women sharing it. The characters’ distinctive personalities and careers --horticulturalist, interior designer, and writer--are reflected nicely in their natural habitats, and the reader gets a real taste of the isolation in which they live from spending so much time on the manor grounds. The sights, scents, and sounds of the houses and the pub where the cops encounter various suspects and witnesses also come right off the page.

I found the corrupted cops disturbing and the unfounded animosity of the villagers shocking, but was most deeply unhinged by the way Maybury, Cattrell and Goode all rolled over and accepted their victimization without fighting back. The Ice House was a good mystery with a logical solution and a satisfying ending. It will please readers who are already fans of Minette Walters, but I wouldn’t recommend it as the first of her books to try.

Review of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Precocious 11-year-old narrator Flavia de Luce is the highlight of this crime novel, the first in a series intended for adults, although middle-grade readers might also enjoy it. Ignored by her family and the adults around her, she takes solace in chemistry, spending hours in her glassware-filled laboratory at the top of her family’s mansion in the English countryside. When she stumbles upon a corpse in the garden, she sets herself the task of finding the murderer -- or at least saving her father, even if he is guilty, from going to prison for the crime.

I finished this book largely because I found Flavia’s voice so enjoyable. The setting was a disappointment in that the descriptions lacked the telling details that make you feel like you’re right there. I often had a hard time remembering whether the story unfolded in 1950s England, or some decades earlier.  

Most scenes had a sketchy, dreamy quality that failed to transport me into our heroine’s reality; the only moments when I felt like I was with Flavia were when she was visiting her dead mother’s mothballed car in the estate’s carriage house, and when she was in the defunct garage that had been pressed into use by the village library for storing overflow materials. 

I had a hard time picturing a lake with an island you could wade to, and never had a good picture in my mind of what the rooms of Flavia’s house looked like, or even whether the manor was well-maintained or going to seed. 

I figured out early on who the murderer was, also a disappointment. Flavia’s unravelling of her father’s secrets during the course of the investigation was interesting but not terribly compelling. 

Unfortunately I found the depictions of all of the other characters, with the exception of the inspector Flavia butts heads with, mere caricatures. Although I never really did understand the inspector’s quote that gave the book its title, I liked the way their relationship grew, and hope that the inspector will become something of a mentor for Flavia in future adventures.

In spite of all my criticisms, I look forward to Flavia’s next adventure, because her voice is so unique and her perspective on life so enjoyable.

Review of Winter Study by Nevada Barr

This 2008 installment in the adventures of National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon combines Nevada Barr’s signature nature writing with thrilling action and chilling psychological suspense.

The novel takes place on Isle Royale National Park, an island in Lake Superior, in the dead of winter. Anna is flown into the snowbound park, which is closed to tourists during the winter months, to join a group of scientists studying the three packs of gray wolves that make ISRO their home. Homeland Security considers ISRO a potential path for smugglers and terrorists and is threatening to shut down the decades-long research project by opening the park to tourists year-round. Before that happens, Anna hopes to learn something about wolf management, a challenge her home park in Colorado will soon be facing. Instead she ends up investigating the suspicious death of a researcher, who herself was investigating the suspicious death of a wolf.

Book Review: Fox Evil by Minette Walters

Accomplished writer Minette Walters does her usual magic act in Fox Evil, bringing complex, three-dimensional characters to life in this psychological thriller’s pages.

At either end of the mystery is an isolated old man, retired Colonel James Lockyer-Fox, and his now-grown biological granddaughter, Captain Nancy Smith, who was long ago put up for adoption. Caught in the middle is the Colonel’s lawyer, Mark Ankerton, who is tasked with bringing Smith back into the family.

It turns out that Smith, whose character and features echo those of both her grandfather and his deceased wife, doesn’t really care about being a long-lost heiress. She’s more than happy with the family who adopted her, who are well-to-do themselves, as Ankerton realizes while he waits to meet her in the Smith sitting room. “A nineteenth century map on the wall above the fireplace showed Lower Croft and Coomb Croft as two distinct entities, while a more recent map next to it showed the two within a single boundary, renamed Coomb Farm.”

Farms, land owners, tenants, and property rights are recurring themes in the story, which deals with long-buried secrets, shame and blame, loyalty, and gossip. The Colonel hopes to leave his estate to Smith, largely cutting out her biological mother and uncle. The gossip mongers who have cruelly isolated the Colonel since his wife’s suspicious death live on parts of the farm that he’s already had to sell off to pay his wastrel children’s bad debts. The man and his property are both being neglected by his elderly servants, who live in a “tied cottage” on the property and cannot be evicted and replaced with younger workers. And now travelers are camped on adjoining land, intending to take over “waste property” and put down roots.

The action takes place in Devon, largely on the Colonel’s estate, which Walters describes deftly. “He opened the door on to a walled courtyard and ushered Nancy through...Weeds grew in profusion between the cobbles, and the terra-cotta tubs contained only the brittle skeletons of long-dead plants...They emerged onto an an expanse of parkland...Frost still lay in pockets under the shrubs and tress that formed an avenue facing south, but the bright winter sun had warmed it to a glistening dew on the sweep of grass that sloped away and gave an unrestricted view of Shenstead Valley and the sea beyond.”

The travelers are led by a man calling himself Fox Evil. His name hints at a connection to the Colonel, and he knows far more detail about the area and its inhabitants than a stranger should. He runs his band of travelers like a military group, even down to insisting they all wear black scarves and balaclavas when they face the locals. He alternately neglects and terrifies his own young son, Wolfie, and when some of his fellow travelers begin to balk at his treatment of both Wolfie and themselves, he ratchets up the fear with razor and hammer he carries in his pockets.

Walters does a great job of moving between points of view and raising tensions as she peels away layer after layer of the lies and deceptions from which her characters have woven their lives. 

While the story is compelling, and its setting is beautiful, I can't say it's set me on fire to go and explore Devon in reality, just in case its inhabitants are all as deceptive, angry and vindictive as most of this story's characters.

Book Review: The Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan

This ninth book in the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery series is told from Private Investigator Lydia’s point of view, and is centered in her Chinatown community. The story has all the elements I’ve grown accustomed to from S.J. Rozan: wonderful characterization, interesting twists in a compelling plot, and evocative scene-setting.

A surprise element was a fascinating historical component to the mystery. Using letters and many interviews with “old Chinese men,” as a tea-bloated Lydia refers to them affectionately, Rozan deftly tells the history of tens of thousands of Jews who escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Shanghai at the outset of World War II. Letters written by 18-year-old refugee Rosalie Gilder bring to life her flight from Europe aboard a steamer bound for Shanghai, the ups and downs of life in a Shanghai ghetto, and the drama of forging new family bonds against a backdrop of war and oppression.

The letters and history are woven in among scenes and events in Lydia’s private and professional life, and the quaint mystery of a valuable long-lost jewel takes on urgency when it becomes the key to the murder of one of Lydia’s colleagues. Lydia’s unique voice is strengthened by her warring impatience with and appreciation for her own cultural background. 

With help from her on-again, off-again partner Bill Smith, Lydia unravels the mysteries within mysteries and brings several wrongdoers to justice. During the investigation, Lydia scorns herself for getting so involved and caring so much about these people whose lives were in the past. I sympathized with her reading Rosalie’s letters late into the night, eagerly reaching for the next one to find out what happened next, since I was doing the same, neglecting sleep and chores in favor of devouring chapter after chapter of The Shanghai Moon, wanting to know what happened with both Rosalie and Lydia.

Through Lydia, Rozan brings to life contemporary New York: Chinatown bustling with people and redolent of noodles and exotic tea, the Diamond District full of couples gazing at engagement rings, suburbs with their small houses set in neat yards. Through Rosalie and her descendants, she brings to life the Shanghai of decades past, from walled gardens and plush restaurants to stinking wharves and crowded ghettoes. And as their stories intertwine, Rozan, Lydia, and the reader explore themes of separation and togetherness, family and belonging, cross-cultural relationships, and deception.

This story’s only real shortcoming for me -- and it’s a minor one -- was a lack of imminent peril; even when one of the bad guys is shoving a gun into Lydia’s face, the conversation is so civilized that I couldn’t bring myself to fear for Lydia’s welfare. Nevertheless, this latest installment in the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery series is a wonderfully complex novel that leaves the reader wanting more.

A Visit with Lucy: Part 3

After learning far more about Ethiopia than I knew I wanted to know, I reached an “interactive” gallery devoted to Lucy. It began with a recreation of the gully where Lucy’s remains were uncovered, and led you through a series of stations that explored the anatomical features that made Lucy so special.

The challenge at the dry wash full of pebbles and cobbles and boulders was to spot the four “obvious” (to a trained fossil hunter!) fossils that lay exposed amid the geologic rubble. I spotted one of the four bone fragments immediately, and wondered if that was the magical bone that had caught Johanson’s eye, too. After some study, I decided I could see two more, but the fourth eluded me until I hit the “I give up!” button and spotlights hit all four specimens. None of the visitors around me managed to spot more than three, either.

At another station, a human (or hominid -- they are so similar!) skeleton had been drawn on a table, and the challenge was to place jumbled bones (casts, of course) in the right spots. Yet other matching games involved trying to figure out which complete bones were represented by fossilized fragments.

Lucy, although fully grown, was about the size of a contemporary six-year-old girl. Several of the exhibits compared her features to a chimpanzee’s and a human’s, to show how she fit into the winding, wobbly, rather dotted evolutionary line that connects us.

At one station, three skulls -- chimp, Lucy, and human -- were attached via their foramens magnum (the hole in the base through which the spinal cord passes) to the tops of what looked like two-liter plastic soda bottles. The bottles were filled with blue water, marked with lines showing cubic centimeters (cc), and mounted so that they could be turned upside down. When you flipped one over, the skull hung down and blue water poured into the brain case, and you could see by the bottle’s marks how many cc’s it took to fill the brain case. The chimpanzee and Lucy were remarkably close, about 400 ccs each, while the human skull’s brain volume was around 1250 ccs. Up until Lucy’s discovery and analysis, scientists believed that brain volume had increased before walking upright -- bipedalism -- took root. This was one of the major theories of human origin that Lucy’s remains shifted.

Another station invited you to examine the pelvises of a female chimp, Lucy, and a female human. They were mounted to the wall, but on a ball-joint, so that you could really move them around and look at them from different angles. The signs pointed out differences between the chimp and Lucy (and similarities between her and the human) that made it clear that she was bipedal. They also pointed out birth canal similarities the between the chimp and Lucy (and differences between her and the human) that indicated that her offspring would indeed be small-brained as compared to a human.

Still other stations explored the differences and similarities among the knee joints, teeth, and posture of the three species.

From the interactive exhibit room, a long ramp led up to Lucy’s chamber. Every fifteen feet or so, the skull of one of our hominid ancestors stood on a pedestal: Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy’s species), Australopithecus robustus, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Neanderthal man, and finally Homo sapiens. They were just beautiful, and I kept going back and forth, comparing and contrasting. Just before the entry to Lucy’s room was a five-minute video interview of Johanson, and I made myself sit through it before I let myself go into the final darkened chamber, where Lucy herself lay.

The room was circular, and all around was a mural showing fleshed-out hominids in their probable environments. They carried babies, peered from behind bushes, snatched big flying insects out of the sky -- one even seemed to be wrestling a crocodile, which I found a bit jarring. From the explanatory text, I gathered that the latest thinking is that bipedalism began not in the grasslands, where it might give the advantage of seeing over the tall grass, but rather in the forest, where it granted better mobility.

To the right of the entry stood a glass case showing casts of Lucy’s bones put together as though she was standing upright. A mirror at the back of the case let you compare your body to her gracile and incomplete skeleton. The audio presentation for that display talked about how amazing it was that nearly forty percent of her skeleton was recovered, and how even more fortunate that there was enough to “mirror” her left and right sides’ missing pieces: how her lower right leg bone could be used to create a mirror image to take the place of the missing left lower leg bone, while the left upper could be used to complete the right, and so on.

On the other side of the room another upright case surrounded an “artist’s reconstruction” of a fleshed-out Lucy. Diminutive and sporting thumb-like big toes (her feet looked closer to chimps than humans -- they only ever found two toe bones), she was depicted covered with sparse but coarse hair, short and reddish-brown. The hair covered her entire body except for her face, chest, stomach, and the palms of her hands. Her exposed dark skin had the shiny, leathery look of a chimp’s, and her soulful brown eyes were surrounded by crinkles, which made me think she must have smiled a lot.

Finally I let myself approach the glass-shrouded table in the center of the room, where Lucy’s bones -- the actual fossils recovered from that hot and dusty gully in Ethiopia a lifetime ago -- were laid out in their familiar resting conformation. There are only about 30 bones, represented in whole or in part(s), and it was fascinating to see the hairline cracks where they hundreds of pieces had been fitted together to make them. In the short video introduction Johanson had said that most of those pieces had been partially encased in sandstone matrix, all of which had to be carefully removed before they even knew the true shape of each little fragment.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune to be standing there gazing upon Lucy’s actual bones. I went back and forth between the displays in her chamber, comparing every inch of bone to the fleshed-out mannequin, then backtracked down the ramp to look again at each ancestral skull, and then returned to Lucy’s chamber to marvel at her all over again. All told I spent three hours in the exhibit, and only left when I realized I was in danger of missing the IMAX film I had a ticket for!

The article that alerted me to Lucy’s presence in Seattle went on to say that other museums that had been planning to show Lucy’s Legacy were backing out of the deal in droves, afraid they, like the Seattle museum, would lose money on the show, which is very expensive to host. It’s a shame, and a wonder to me, that Lucy didn’t have a better showing. It will be a loss to us all if she has to go back to her vault in Ethiopia before her five-year planned tour of the US expires.

A Visit with Lucy: Part 2 (Ethiopia)

For the first hour at least, I wended my way through several galleries that explored the culture and history of Ethiopia. I am ashamed to say that my concept of Ethiopia until I encountered that exhibit yesterday was of a barren land inhabited by starving people -- ideas planted by my parents’ frequent refrain of “There are children starving in Ethiopia” whenever I left food on my plate, and reinforced by photo and video images of the famine of 1984-85.

In Lucy’s Legacy, I learned that Ethiopia is the only African nation never to be colonized by Europeans. I admired cultural artifacts -- spears, water carriers, drums, stringed instruments -- that were both beautiful and useful. I discovered that Jews, Muslims, and Christians have coexisted relatively peacefully for centuries, and saw rooms full of boldly colored religious icons, elaborate carved and metal-work crosses, and religious texts.

Photos and models showed amazing churches hewn out of solid rock, and reproductions of colorful murals told both religious and historical stories. The exhibit included an audio tour delivered via a remote-control-like device which you used by punching in numbers and holding it up to your ear. One of the artists whose work was on display explained that it was customary for paintings of people to have slightly large eyes to show their purity of heart. People show face-on were good and innocent, while wrong-doers or those with dark hearts or suspect motives were shown in profile. A mural showing the 1896 Battle of Adwa, during which Ethiopia managed to fend off Italy’s attempt to colonize it, was a wonderful example of these traits, with nearly all the Italian ranks shown in profile, and the virtuous Ethiopians defending their territory shown full-face.

I learned just a little about Haile Salassie, the last Emporer of Ethiopia, who was deposed in 1974 -- the very year that Lucy was discovered. His rule began in 1930, and he brought Ethiopia into the United Nations. He was a vocal proponent of racial equality, and his work was so admired in Jamaica that Bob Marley named his music and movement “Rastafarian” after the last Emporer, whose birth name was Ras Tafari.

Before entering the galleries, I had planned to blow through the Ethiopian culture and history portion of the exhibit quickly, assuming that they wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as the science and romance of Lucy herself. But the folks who designed the exhibit outmaneuvered me. Between their carefully chosen artifacts, the artful way in which they displayed them, and the written and audio descriptions of what they were and how they fit into the complex and colorful puzzle of Ethiopia, they drew me in and made me care.

A Visit with Lucy: Part 1

Just a few weeks ago, as we were finalizing our plans for our Pacific Northwest road trip, an article about the traveling Lucy’s Legacy exhibit popped up on the web. Lucy is the Australopithecus afarensis that anthropologist Donald Johanson and his colleagues discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. Her 3.2 million year old skeletal remains changed some fundamental ideas about humanity’s antiquity, and her story -- told in Lucy: The Beginnings of Human Kind, by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey -- fascinated me as a teenager and got me interested in writing about science.

The article said that the Lucy exhibit was appearing at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, and that although the show had nearly run its course -- it ends this coming weekend, March 8, 2009 -- only about 60,000 of the anticipated 250,000 visitors had come to see it.

On Monday, March 2, I became one of those lucky few. I arrived at Seattle Center via the monorail, which started handily close to my hotel, an hour before my 11 a.m. entry time for the special exhibit. I used the electronic kiosk at the entry to print my pre-ordered and pre-paid tickets (for the showing of the IMAX film The Mystery of the Nile as well as the Lucy’s Legacy exhibit), then wandered through the museum’s nice but far-from-earth-shattering dinosaur exhibit. At the appointed time I presented myself at the special exhibit’s entry, and spent the next three hours immersed in Lucy’s Legacy.

Beyond Napping: A Visit with the Elephant Seals

After living in Northern California for more than 20 years now, I’ve had the great fortune to explore many miles of its coastline. While all of it is beautiful, some stretches of Pacific oceanfront draw me back again and again. Año Nuevo State Reserve, just 55 miles south of San Francisco and 20 miles north of Santa Cruz, is one of those places.

Nestled between the staircase steps of marine terraces forming the Santa Cruz mountains in the east and surf-kissed sandy dunes and beaches in the west, the landscape on it’s own is spectacular. But it’s the bountiful wildlife that elevates this beautiful spot to an animal lover’s mecca.

Climbing out of the car in the Visitor’s Center (VC) parking lot, you first sense the presence of wild animals in the distant sound of a bull elephant seal’s challenging roar. Meant to put would-be competitors in their place and advertise the beachmaster’s virility to nearby female Northern elephant seals, the sound creaks and ratchets like the putt-putt of a poorly-tuned outboard motor engine echoing through a giant cave.

Inside the VC you check in for your guided tour (the only way to see the seals from December 15th through March 31st) or your visitor’s permit (available for self-guided tours the remainder of the year). Then you can explore the wonderful books and stuffed animals offered in the store, and work your way through the VC exhibits, which explore the fascinating lives and evolutionary adaptations of the Northern elephant seal.

The VC’s well-designed and informative exhibits discuss the lifecycle of the elephant seals, which start out as 70 pound newborns, weigh around 200 pounds by the time they are a month old, and eventually grow into 1800 pound females and 3000 pound males. The exhibits include photos that show beaches packed with massive light-brown bodies that at first glance look like driftwood logs. But it can’t really prepare you for the sight, sounds, and smells you experience out in the field when you crest the dunes overlooking the beaches where hundreds of Northern elephant seals are giving birth, nursing their young, and breeding next year’s crop of pups.

In past years I’ve taken the tour on typical cold-and-damp or downright soggy January and February days. This year I was in short sleeves, slathered with sunblock, and was able to see and photograph more detail than I’ve observed in the past.

Among the volunteers, researchers, rangers, and other habitual seal-watchers who visit the reserve frequently, the elephant seals have a reputation for being more active on cooler, overcast days, so I was concerned that the cloudless skies and warm breeze on February 1, 2009 might actually work against us. 

But as soon as we topped the first ridge in the dunes field, the cacaphony of roaring males, bleating pups, and exasperated females assaulted my ears. In the distance, a pair of subadult males reared up and smashed their chests against each other, fighting for supremacy. A scattering of what looked like driftwood logs closer to me sent up fountains of dry sand to cover their backs, and my eyes finally perceived dozens upon dozens upon dozens of prone elephant seals.

Keeping our voices low in spite of our enthusiasm, we followed our guide through the dunes, checking in all directions for seals -- they move around quite a bit, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act requires that observations be done from a distance which does not disturb the animal or change its natural behavior, quite aside from the fact that they have sharp teeth and short tempers. We stopped at half-a-dozen spots with good views of the rookery, and were able to observe behavior beyond napping, (which was the prevalent activity on most of my previous visits), including:

• Subadult males displaying at each other and “practice-fighting,” smashing chest shields together and swiping at each other with sharp canines. (You can tell subadult males by their noses, which have begun to elongate but haven’t yet grown into the full “elephant trunk” appearance they’ll have if they reach maturity.)
  
• Pups nuzzling moms to request a nipple, and moms either rolling over to grant the request, or barking peevishly and moving away a little. The mother’s milk is about 55% fat, and pups grow from 70 pounds to more than 200 pounds in about 28 days drinking it! We saw some females barking at other adults that were getting alarmingly close to their pups, and others barking gently at their pups to solidify the mother-pup bond.
  
  
• Adult males roaring challenges to each other, and a few times saw them engaged in some chest-bashing, and heard reports that there had been a couple of “good fights” (meaning the males were well-matched, and the bashing and slashing went on for several minutes, resulting in some minor bloodshed) earlier in the day.
  
  
• Bull males accosting females, but the females dodged all of the mating attempts that I saw.
  
  
• Both youngsters and adults scratching themselves with their amazingly dextrous front fins, and throwing up fountains of sand to cover their backs. After decades of observation, researchers still don’t know if covering themselves with sand helps keep the elephant seals cool, or reduces itching caused by insects, or acts as a sunblock, or what.
  
  
• Dozens of gulls and ravens (no vultures, although our guide said they usually could be seen circling overhead) flapping and hopping amidst the huge marine mammals, beady eyes on the lookout for the first signs of a birth in progress. (The birds will swoop in and carry off the very nutritious afterbirth.) We did not, alas, see an actual birth, although some of the pups we observed were obviously just a few hours old.
  

Most surprising of all, we saw a coyote down on one of the beaches, walking nonchalantly amongst all the enormous pinnipeds, many of which could have crushed it in the blink of an eye. Although coyotes are common in the reserve, that was the first time our guide had seen one walking around among the elephant seals, and speculated that it must, like the birds, be scavenging for afterbirths and the remains of dead seals.

Although the elephant seals only breed during the first few months of they year, you’ll see various factions of the population on the beach during other seasons, resting and molting in between months-long feeding forays out to sea. For more information, visit http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=523.

Book Review: The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly

One of the best things about “traveling by fiction” is that I can experience a different time as well as an unfamiliar place through a story’s setting. Barbara Cleverly’s first mystery in the Inspector Joe Sandilands series is an evocative introduction to the India of 1922. 

Sandilands, a dashing survivor of the trenches of World War I France,  is a Scotland Yard Inspector on loan to the government of Calcutta. He is just about to escape from what he considers a hellish country when he is dispatched to investigate the latest in a string of mysterious deaths on a British army outpost.

The victims have all been wives of British officers, all dying under strange circumstances in the month of March. The murders are strung out so much over time -- the serial murderer apparently interrupted by the advent of World War I, among other things -- that the first thing Sandilands must establish is that they were, indeed, murders. This he does with the able assistance of the woman who drew him into the mystery and Naurung, an extremely engaging and capable young native Indian police officer who becomes the Inspector’s sidekick.

The book held some disappointments and frustrations for me. I wanted a glossary to define unfamiliar terms that were used without explanation, such as “nabob.” The secondary and tertiary characters tended towards caricatures, to the extent that I had a hard time keeping the bereaved husbands straight. I was also disappointed at how easily Sandilands was manipulated by the young woman who drew him into the mystery. And I never completely bought his change of heart from a desperate desire to head home to England at the story’s opening to a growing emotional attachment to India by the end of it.

In spite of these flaws, the story kept me engaged, in large part because of the descriptions of the exotic location and the mores of a fascinating era.

About halfway through the story, Sandilands travels to Calcutta in search of the husband of one of the victims. “Initially, brass plates discreetly announced the presence of banks, insurance companies, the Calcutta office of internationally known trading houses, engineers, architects, and solicitors. But soon the brass plates got smaller as the number increased. Brass plates gave way to cards. The number of bell pushes multiplied. Names appeared on upper windows, front doors stood open. Kites circled the damp air and crows pecked crumbling cornices.”

Later he explores the countryside on horseback. “Topping a jungle-clad ridge, their road turned downwards towards a village presided over by a rhythmically creaking water wheel, turning and turning and lifting buckets to send a flush of water down the many irrigation channels. Thirty or so mud-walled houses with thatched roofs huddled companionably together, set out to no obvious plan and with no eye for drainage or ventilation as far as Joe could make out, but scattered, it seemed, haphazardly about a central square in which stood a venerable peepul tree. In the windless day spires of smoke rose from many households, bringing with them the sharp smell of dung fires and cooking.”

I’m glad I read the entire story, because the end was unexpected but logical and satisfying, hinging on the brilliant motivation of the seemingly unlikely killer.

Book Review: Lie Down with the Devil by Linda Barnes

I enjoyed Linda Barnes’ early Carlotta Carlyle mysteries, but haven’t followed the series in recent years. Having finished Lie Down with the Devil, the 12th mystery featuring the Boston-based Private Investigator, I can’t wait to go back and read the ones I missed.

Carlotta’s at her best in this book: smart, courageous, and persistent. Her actions are gutsy, but measured rather than incautious. The action moves from downtown Boston to a shooting range on the Harbor Islands to a pastoral mental health institute to Cape Cod. Barnes’ deft descriptions bring these settings to life in a way that makes you feel you are right beside Carlotta as she teases apart and clears away layers of mystery.

Early in the story, Carlotta tracks her long-time friend Mooney to the Boston Police Department’s firing range on Moon Island. “Pulling into a space in the level gravel lot, I opened the cab door and sniffed an unexpectedly salty breeze. Living in Cambridge, the way I do, you can almost forget the proximity of the Atlantic. I inhaled the sea air gratefully. There’s something cleansing about the ocean, all that green water licking the shore, endless and timeless, soothing and hypnotizing...” Her relationship with Mooney, who is her former boss, proves both a help and a distraction as her newest case unfolds.

Also distracting Carlotta is the mystery surrounding her runaway fiance, mobster Sam Gianelli. She misses him and wants to help him, but also resents being kept in the dark about his “situation.” At one point she considers “borrowing” his Jaguar, but “The Jag would have been a lousy tail car. Too conspicuous, I told myself, scrunched behind the wheel of another aged Ford cab. The bucket seat in Sam’s car would have put me instantly to sleep, and the heating unit that kept it toasty under your butt, who needed it? The musky smell would have made me nostalgic and I didn’t need that either. The Spartan chill of Gloria’s cabs would keep me alert...”

Even as she takes on the new case, Carlotta realizes her judgement is not entirely trustworthy, because she is angst-ridden over the still unfolding recovery of her “little sister” Paolina. Recently retrieved by Carlotta from a kidnapper, the teenager is in a mental health institution for her own safety, and refuses to speak to Carlotta. The private investigator’s distraction with Paolina and her daily check-in calls become a factor in the story when Carlotta takes a few missteps.

In pursuit of the true identity of a client who lied to her, Carlotta finds herself parked in a run-down part of Boston. “Two overturned plastic chairs decorated the weedy yard of a two-family with peeling beige paint. The adjoining house was green with unfortunate yellow trim. The high, narrow structures, too close to the street and too close to each other, had stingy lawns and forbidding chain-link fences.”

Later, on the run from both the good guys and the bad, she holes up in a shack on Cape Cod. “There were two main rooms, one up, one down, connected by a contraption that was more ladder than staircase. The room on the bottom level had a tiny bathroom in a curtained alcove. The top room had a galley kitchen against a narrow wall, a child-sized refrigerator, a two-burner stove.”

The pace starts out a bit slow due to the intertwining threads of the case at hand and Carlotta’s multiple distractions, but it soon picks up. The reader learns more about Carlotta’s past, and by the time the story ends and all the loose threads are tied up, has great hopes for Carlotta’s future.

Wright's Lake: Moonrise, Perseids, and Lasers

My husband Morgan Conrad's photo of the moon rising over Wright's Lake in August 2008.

While camping at Wright’s Lake, we saw several night sky shows, natural and man-made.

Tuesday morning everyone except Ellie piled out of our tents at 4 am and went down to the pier to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. The display was not quite as spectacular as last year -- I think the best viewing would have been a couple hours earlier, but the moon was too high and bright this year -- but we saw about 20 meteors while we stood around for 45 minutes or so. Several of them were quite spectacular and left a glowing trail in the sky, but most were quick and faint.

Tuesday night we noticed bizarre green lights flashing all over the lake surface from our campfire, so the kids and I abandoned our s’mores (temporarily) to investigate. 

There was an extended family from another campsite down on the pier, and the uncle had two bright green lasers he was using to make a light show. He told us they were very dangerous -- he bought them in China, because it is illegal to sell (but not buy!) them here in the U.S. He claimed they are so bright that they can burn your eye and cause blindness in 1/100th of a second! 

He then showed us how he can point out astronomical features in the night sky -- he pointed out Jupiter, and showed us Andromeda -- and then did another short laser show, flashing the lasers over the surface of the lake (wonder how many blind fish are in there now?) and up into the sky. It was really neat, although not quite as amazing as the Perseids.

Wright’s Lake: A Kayak is Just a Big Dog Toy

During our week of camping at Wright's Lake, Boomer fell in love with our inflatable kayak. 

When we got back from our swim across the lake, Ellie and I took the kayak out and encountered Alison and Ron finishing up their hike around the lake with both dogs. Boomer wanted desperately to get into the water, so I told Ron to let him go. He flung himself off the pier and momentarily disappeared, came up spluttering, and made a beeline for us in the kayak. He then proceeded to swim around and around us as we paddled along the shore, trying to get him to go back to the shallows where he could stand and catch his breath. 

Several times he scrabbled against the gunwale or bow with his front paws, so we decided he must want to come up in the boat with us. I couldn’t lift his 70-pound bulk from above, but Morgan waded out and heaved him in. 

Boomer sat in the center position, butt on one gunwale and front paws on the other, and let us paddle him around for a few minutes. Then he launched himself off the kayak into the water with a big splash, rocking the boat so much that water slopped into it. He continued to chase after us, trying to climb in, and we finally had to have Morgan drag him away on his leash before Ellie and I could paddle off on a tour of the entire lake!

The next day we had the foresight to put Boomer in his PFD (also known as a doggie lifevest) before bringing him down to the lake. He once again chased us all over in the kayak, and rode with us several times. He seemed to stay a little longer with each ride, as though he was getting more comfortable with it, and he learned to jump in more gracefully, so he didn’t threaten to capsize us.

Later in the day we encountered another family with a couple of inflatable rafts and canoes, and Boomer swam over to try to climb up and ride around with them.

Wright's Lake August 10-17, 2008

About an hour west of South Lake Tahoe off Hwy 50, Wright’s Lake is nestled in a depression high in the Sierra mountains. We arrived late on August 10th with our friends Alison, Ellie, Ron, and Sam following closely in their own gear-crammed vehicle. (Their dog Aztec kept our dog Boomer company in our back seat on the drive up from the San Francisco Bay Area.) 

Warm and shallow, Wright’s Lake is surrounded by primitive camp sites and long-lease cabins and cottages that have no electricity. No motors are allowed on the lake, and there are no RV hookups, so it’s a splendidly quiet spot. The ground is covered with a thick cushion of evergreen needles, and every step you take releases a wonderful scent into the dry mountain air. Nearly every camp site seems to have a dog, and they are as welcome as humans to swim and hike around the lake.  The lake itself is small and can be easily hiked around in an hour.

Various configurations of our party -- me, Morgan, and Ellie; me, Morgan, and Sam; me, Ellie, and Sam; me, Ellie, and Boomer (who again and again jumped out after 90 seconds, then insisted on being hoisted back aboard); Ellie and Sam; Ron and Sam; Ron and Ellie; Ron and Ellie and Sam; Ron and Alison; Ellie and Alison; me and Morgan; and each of us alone -- spent time in our two-person inflatable kayak at all hours. 

One day Sam and I swam across the lake while Morgan and Ellie paddled alongside for safety. Then Sam rode back, perched like an Indian Chief on the bow of the kayak. 

Alison had never been kayaking before, so she asked her 10-year-old daughter Ellie, who had a whole week of kayak camp earlier in the summer, to take her out on a tour of the lake. Before they left shore, I supervised while Ellie gave Alison some instructions on how to handle the paddle. They had a fun time and Alison said that Ellie was a thoughtful and excellent tour guide and kayaking instructor.

Although from the kayak we saw fish lurking on the bottom and leaping out to snag bugs morning, noon, and night, our human fisherfolk had no luck with their fishing poles.

A pair of osprey living nearby had better luck -- or better skills. Several of us witnessed an osprey catching a fish: folding wings and plummeting to the lake's surface, snagging the prey with strong talons, and lifting it out of the water with strong wing beats. The osprey flew right overhead once, giving us a magnificent view of its straining wings and the fish held so carefully fore-and-aft, still wiggling in an attempt to break free.

Ducks, squirrels, and chipmunks were abundant, and a lone bald eagle often sat on a snag overlooking the lake or soared above. When we hiked to Dark Lake, Boomer flushed a mule deer buck with an impressive rack. One night just at sunset I went down to the edge of the lake and was mesmerized by a dozen or so bats swooping out of the trees to catch insects buzzing just above the surface of the lake. I sat and watched for half-an-hour, listening to the soft flap of bat wings and marveling at the flying mammals' aerobatic ability; again and again they dove and veered and skimmed and I just didn't see how they could keep from plunging into the lake. 

Another evening I took the kayak out just before sunset and was half-way down the lake when a screeching ruckus drew my attention. Looking up, I saw an osprey in hot pursuit of the bald eagle. The osprey, which was far smaller than the eagle, flew above and behind, diving at the eagle repeatedly and screeching. I sat back in the kayak and stared in open-mouthed wonder until long after the eagle had vanished into the trees on the far side of the lake and the osprey had winged its way home.

Happy New Year

I took a break from Wish You Were Here while traveling in the summer of 2008 and never really got back into the groove of posting regularly.

Well, new year, new year's resolution: POST MORE FREQUENTLY! And I will try to keep my posts shorter, too!

Book Review: First the Dead by Tim Downs

The third book chronicling the adventures of forensic entomologist Dr. Nick Polchak, First the Dead is set in New Orleans during and just after Hurricane Katrina. Author Tim Downs draws a convincing portrait of the devastated city and the tireless rescue workers braving horrifying conditions to bring in the last the survivors of the storm.

Polchak and his friend Jerry Kibbee are part of a team that usually arrives in the wake of a disaster to process and identify the dead. Deployed to a small town outside New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina hits, the team is told in no uncertain terms that they must set aside their usual work and spend the first few days of Katrina’s aftermath in rescue work: “first the living” is to be their temporary new mantra.

Polchak, a brilliant and driven scientist, believes that someone is using the flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward to hide a series of murders. He is convinced that all forensic evidence of these murders will be lost before his team can recover it. With the help of his easy-going friend Jerry and J.T., a young African-American boy they rescue from roof on their first day in the Lower Ninth Ward, Polchak sets out to find and preserve the evidence. He soon finds himself the target of the killer.

Downs’ descriptions of the destruction wrought by Katrina are compelling. On the first day the Lower Ninth Ward is nearly deserted as Polchak steers his small boat down inundated streets and alleys. Families too large to fit into his craft choose to stay on their griddle-hot roofs rather than risk being separated. His boat gets hung up in tree branches.

At one point Polchak makes use of a flooded hospital lab. “In the doorway he stopped and looked back. The scene was utterly surreal: a medical laboratory half filled with water and a fishing boat floating in the center. Beyond the boat was a window with no glass; outside the window was an endless black lake.”

The search for J.T.’s father takes them to the Superdome, which is being used as an emergency shelter. “...the air reeked of sweat, and feces, and rotting food. The stench was nauseating...The noise was nearly deafening, and the buses only made it worse.”

At one point Polchak is trapped in a flooded house. “The lukewarm water was choked with particulate matter swirling around him like leaves on a windy day; he clutched at the largest pieces and felt nothing but clumps of soggy cardboard and waterlogged wood.”

Downs also does a great job of showcasing the chaos endured by the rescue workers in the first days after the storm. He immerses the reader in the military-issue “meals ready to eat” that the hungry J.T. devours. Polchak and his sidekicks sleep in an air-conditioned morgue truck to escape the oppressive heat and humidity. They scrounge rides in emergency supply trucks and hide their rescue boat to keep it safe from thieves and looters. Cell phones don’t work, patients die in the upper floors of hospitals because their life-support machines have no power, and nobody seems to be in charge.

It’s this lack of leadership that compels Polchak to reject the idea of “first the living,” and it’s this same vacuum that lets him get away with his renegade behavior. Like many brilliant scientist characters, Polchak comes off as a cold, distant wise-cracker. His few moments of warmth are short-lived, and he’s not a character who I want to spend a lot of time with.

Another character in the book, psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Woodbridge, was sometimes Polchak’s foe and sometimes his friend, sometimes his superior and sometimes his partner. Although there was the hint of a romantic relationship there, I found myself wondering why any woman as together as Woodbridge would bother with someone as maddening as Polchak.

What made this book a success for me were the challenges Polchak had to overcome to keep his investigation going and his genial entourage. I didn’t ultimately care very much about what happened to Polchak or his precious evidence; but I did want to follow the stories of easy-going Jerry and bright and courageous young J.T.

This is the third book in a series, and given my reluctance to spend time with the main character, I’m uncertain if I’ll go back to explore the first two.