65. To Play the Fool by Laurie R. King

Category: 50 Books

65. To Play the Fool by Laurie R. King

More crime novels? Yes, please!

I’ve been looking for a new (to me) author/series to get into because I enjoy a good series and it’s always nice to be able to recommend stuff to patrons at the library. Loads of people come in and say the same thing, “I’ve finished all the books in the Series Title by Author Name, what do you suggest?” and usually I’ve never read whatever series they’re talking about. I know, right? How is that possible?

So I read the first book in Iris Johansen’s Eve Duncan series. And I didn’t like it very much. But I thought I’d give book two a shot. I liked that one even less and didn’t even finish it. So anyway, I was straightening up some shelves in the fiction section, which is not my section (we’re all “in charge” of different sections, so when it gets slow we can go to our sections and read the shelves to make sure the books are in proper order. my god i’m on a ramble.), but the shelf was a wreck so I was putting it back together and I noticed it was a whole shelf of Laurie R. King books.

I look at the covers of the books and notice that some of them have on them, “a Kate Martinelli Mystery”. This is book nerd code for “series”. Sweet! And it also looks like she’s another series about some chick who works with Sherlock Holmes. I haven’t thought about Sherlock Holmes in a while, but I do remember having a book of Doyle’s Holmes mysteries when I was a kid. I loved that book. It was a blue paperback and I think it had been a birthday gift. I remember Sherlock Holmes being kind of a dick. (ha! pun not intended, but i’m totally intending it now. and also, why am i rambling? i’ve only had one cup of coffee.)

ANYWAY, forget all that because I checked out one of the Kate Martinelli mystery books. Of course, we didn’t have book one. So I read book two. Apparently a lot of stuff went down in book one and I really wish one of the libraries had it because it sounds like I missed out on a lot of goings on. In this one, book two, detective inspector Martinelli and her partner Hawkins (San Francisco PD) are to solve a mystery about the death of a homeless man. Their main suspect happens to be a much beloved, and learned, other homeless man who happens to be a Fool. And who also happens to only speak in quotations (from the Bible and Shakespeare).

I thought it was interesting because

1. The book made you think along with the detective. Especially the quotations. What is he quoting? What is he trying to say by using that quotation? Is the quotation itself the answer, or is it’s origin important too? that kind of thing.

2. I liked the fact that the mystery didn’t take place in one week. It was mentioned that she had other cases pending, and she worked on those. Made it seem more realistic, I guess.

3. I LOVED that no one was trying to kill her. Although that looks like that’s what happened in book one, from what I can glean from context clues. But it seems like in most mystery series the main character, detective, medical examiner, forensic investigator, whathaveyou, is always a target of murder. So I really enjoy it when an author sticks with the detective/hero solving a mystery  and managing to keep it interesting without making the protagonist(s) a constant target of attack. Do it in every other book if you must, just don’t… i mean… FORMULA is all I’m saying, Iris Johansen.

I’m going to read a couple more and also give her Sherlock Holmes series a shot too.

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