{"id":7774,"date":"2019-02-13T06:37:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T11:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7774"},"modified":"2019-02-13T06:38:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T11:38:23","slug":"30-second-book-reviews-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7774","title":{"rendered":"30-Second Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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****The Death of Mrs. Westaway<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Ruth Ware \u2013 It was a big house, with big grounds, supervised by a noisy tiding of magpies. Harriet Westaway, barely eking a living as a psychic advisor on the Brighton Pier, receives a letter from faraway Penzance inviting her to the funeral and will-reading of her grandmother, the wealthy Hester Westaway. Trouble is, her grandparents are all dead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curiosity wins out and she shows up for the event. What starts as something she could explain as a misunderstanding draws her in deeper and deeper, and the search for her real family takes off. Liked it. The Death of Mrs. Westaway<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

****The Bolivian Sailor <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Donald Dewey \u2013 Sometimes a book arrives unexpectedly in the mailbox, or \u201cover the transom,\u201d as publishers used to say, as this one did. To my delight, there were many things to like about this book. Poor P.I. Paul Finley finds himself enmeshed in a deadly plot when a Bolivian seaman is murdered in a seedy motel. He keeps his sense of humor, though, if not his part-time gig teaching a college course in Practical Problems in Law Enforcement. Alas, quite a few of those problems are playing out in front of him. Fun! The Bolivian Sailor<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***Low Down Dirty Vote<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Mysti Berry \u2013 A timely collection of eleven crime and mystery stories on the theme of fighting voter suppression. Women, blacks, the elderly\u2014in these stories, various groups are discouraged from voting because of presumptions about how they\u2019ll cast their ballots. Most unexpected and amusing use of the vote appeared in Catronia McPherson\u2019s tale about the comeuppance of a man in a crowded commuter train. Good job, all! Low Down Dirty Vote<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***A Deadly Indifference<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Marshall Jevons \u2013 Harvard economics professor Henry Spearman travels to Cambridge, England, to help a friend wanting to buy the former home of economist Alfred Marshall and establish a foundation there. Marshall may be dear to some economic theorists, including Spearman, but the university faculty is dominated by leftists opposing Marshall\u2019s legacy. Soon, intellectual sparring is replaced by violence and murder. Spearman engagingly calls on economics theory (sometimes a lot of it) to explain these events. Secondary characters, not required to trot out their supply-and-demand curves, are nicely drawn too. A Deadly Indifference<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magpie photo: AdinaVoicu, creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

****The Death of Mrs. Westaway By Ruth Ware \u2013 It was a big house, with big grounds, supervised by a noisy tiding of magpies. Harriet Westaway, barely eking a living as a psychic advisor on the Brighton Pier, receives a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"30-Second Book Reviews - four crime books for every taste, from gothic to political to one perfect for you economists.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1335,52,54,40,3,268,126,120,66],"tags":[1511,1513,1512,1510],"class_list":["post-7774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-politics","category-reading-2","category-short-story","category-suspense","tag-donald-dewey","tag-marshall-jevons","tag-mysti-berry","tag-ruth-ware"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/magpie.jpg?fit=271%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-21o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7774"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7777,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774\/revisions\/7777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}