Jane Austen at Home

 Lucy Worsley admits to being a Janite, so her biography of Austen is written from a fan's perspective. Worsley is also from the "warts and all" school of historians, so she's not afraid to delve into the family feuds and societal divisions that made up Jane's family. Quiet, observant, acid-penned Jane then crafted her narrow worlds into six near perfect novels.

The Austens were near-gentry; her clergyman father associated with those above him socially but her mother had to be hands on in the garden and dairy. Children were not seen as sentimentally as a generation or two later and all eight siblings were sent out for a few years and her disabled brother (he most likely had epilepsy) never returned.

Jane also grew up in a world of extended families with great differences in wealth and status. Her mother's brother married up, but never shared his wealth (as the Gardiners appear to, or were expected to by Mrs. Bennett) thanks to a parsimonious wife scandalously accused of shoplifting. One of Jane's brothers, Edward, was adopted by childless relations and settled in as a lord of the manor. Two brothers made their fortune (like Admiral Croft, Captain Wentworth, and William Price) in the Royal Navy, and James Austen succeeded his father s rector of Stevenson. Then there was Henry, who both rose and fell as a private banker who eventually went bankrupt. Married to his cousin Eliza, the scandalous widow of a French nobleman and the illegitimate daughter of Mr. Austen's sister Philadelphia, he was Jane's literary agent and supporter but also a bit of schemer and a partial model for Henry Crawford. As unmarried women, Jane's and Cassandra's fates rose and fell with those of their brothers, depending on Edward's grace and favor lodge (in unofficial exchange for child care) after their father had died.

What about her writing? Worsley disagrees with the theory the Jane only wrote when she had a "home" in Stevenson and Chwton. While she wrote the first drafts of three novels before her father gave up Stevenson and three after being published in 1811, it's likely that she was revising and rewriting the manuscripts that would become Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice while moving among rental lodgings in Bath and Southampton. We don't realize that because of class and era. Jane was a Georgian, product of an era where woman's work was necessary. Her first biographers were her brother Edward's wealthy and Victorain descendants who felt that seeing Dear Aunt Jane as a professional would be insulting.

Worsley also explores Jane's romantic life. She had one known thwarted romance and turned down one proposal. Jane Austen at Home mentions another potential suitor, an associate of Henry Austen's who never got up the nerve to ask, and a few unnamed men with whom she danced and flirted. In the end, Jane chose a career and a life among women, living with her mother and sister and with sisters by choice like Martha Lloyd (who lived with the Austen women as sort of a regency Golden Girls) and the Biggs sisters (one widowed, one thrown out by her brother, Jane's almost-fiance). Creativity or childbirths -one of the few women able to make that choice. To be honest, it probably wasn't entirely hers because she was dowry less in an era with a war-created shortage of eligible men. But unlike Marianne Dashwood and (at least in my opinion) Emma Woodhouse, she never had to settle.

Death and the Chapman

When Kate Sedley completed her series with The Christmas Wassail, I decided it was time to return to the start of the series. Roger changed quite a bit over the 12 or 13 year timeline of his books. In December 1483, Roger Chapman is married with four children with Bristol as his home base and a reputation for aiding Richard III. That's a far cry from 19-year-old Roger Carverson who recently left Glastonbury Abbey knowing that monastic life wasn't for him. That Roger is bright and curious but somewhat naive. Naive, but tall and handsome and it's his attractiveness that brings him to the attention of Alderman Weaver's housekeeper/cousin and to Lady Mallory's servant Bess. Relatives of both Alderman Weaver and Lady Mallory disappeared from the same street in London and both want Roger to find out what happened, which he does. 28 years after my first reading, I'd forgotten this main mystery in favor of the subplot which brings Roger in contact with the Duke of Gloucester and his spymaster, Timothy Plummer. While chasing a false lead in the disappearances, Roger finds out where Anne Neville had been hidden in an attempt to prevent her marriage to Richard. I have hundreds of books (read and unread) on my shelves, but I'm going to make time to revisit Roger's travels.

In the Shadow of Vesuvius

 In the Shadow of Vesuvius brings Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily, along with her childhood friends Ivy Brandon and Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge, to an archaeological dig in 1901 Pompeii. As so often happens, they come across a much more recently deceased body and find that most of the archeological expedition (including a brother and sister team - she's the archaeologist and he's an artist who draws the uncovered artifacts - the head archaeologist, and the man financing it) are hiding secrets. Another more personal secret turns up as well, in the form of Emily's husband Colin's previously unknown daughter. Fighting jealousy and the feelings of inadequacy Colin's late lover induced in her years ago, Emily eventually uncovers the truth, and saves herself with the aid of a knife carried by the young woman poet whose life in Pompeii shortly before Vesuvius destroyed the city.

In a Dark House

 Sometimes, a mystery novel has too much plot. That's my opinion of Deborah Crombie's In a Dark House but I still found it entertaining. The book starts with a young firefighter chatting with her colleague before they're called out on an arson fire. You can feel their friendship and romantic potential, so it's not a surprise when he dies during the fire. He's not the only casualty - there's a woman's body on the ground floor - and Duncan Kincaid leads the police investigation. Meanwhile, Duncan's cousin, a Cambridge based vicar who's covering for one of her colleagues, asks Gemma James to come along on a welfare check of one of her parishoners. Fanny Liu is a former nurse now disabled by Guillaume-Beret and her flatmate, who also helps her with daily activities has disappeared. There's also a missing child case and a murder connected to the battered women's shelter adjacent to the fire site, and all plots end up being at least loosely connected. It's not the best mystery I've read, but Crombie's characters are engaging and feel like real people and each individual solution is well supported. In a Dark House is a bit too convoluted to be a good mystery but it works as a novel.

Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System

 I loved Quincy. I still do - one advantage of working from home has been the chance to watch it over lunch. 70s fashion, Quincy jumping up on his soapbox - and scientific crime investigation. It turns out that most techniques (even fingerprints) range from "more art than science" to "totally false." Entertaining, but ineffective at best, and putting the wrong people behind bars (or into the execution chamber) all too often.

M. Chris Fabricant, an attorney with the Innocence Project, details the convictions and exonerations of three men in Junk Science. All three were convicted on the basis of bite marks. They're inherently unreliable evidence (as any older sibling of a biter can tell you, two bites from the same person are not identical, let alone distinctive), and one particular "expert" invented a method of "finding" bite marks to match to previously identified suspects. Beyond the injustice done to these three men, there's the fact that in at least one case, the actual criminal committed additional serious crimes while the scapegoat was in prison.

While his stories were interesting, Fabricant could have used a better editor. He jumps between cases, adding in personal information about his case preparations, without much warning and without an index that would let the reader refresh their memory about the details of each case. Junk Science is worth reading if you're interested in the subject, but likely too frustrating to get through if you're not.

The Case of the Reincarnated Client

 Hardboiled mysteries focus on the dark side. What non-mystery readers don't appreciate is that even lightweight mysteries and procedurals have dark threads. After all, they're focused on a crime, often murder. My favorite Christie, Sparkling Cyanide doesn't just include multiple murders but the whole plot would not exist if not for women barely out of their teens marrying rich men over 30. Tarquin Hall's Vish Puri novels are generally on the lighter side but the Delhi-based detective has dealt with serious issues before. The main plot The Case of the Reincarnated Client is by far his darkest.

Puri reluctantly gives in to Mummy-ji's nagging and takes on the case of a woman who claims to be the reincarnation of one of the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. This sends Puri back into that violent time and explores mattes of prejudice, police corruption, abandoned widows, and domestic abuse. It's a case where we see that solving the crime will have a minimal effect at best on those who were harmed.

The subplots, fortunately, lighten up the novel. There's Puri's other case - he'd done a background check on a prospective groom who turns out to be a prodigious snorer, so loud his new wife can't sleep with him - and the administrative chaos brought about by the November, 2016 demonetization. And there's the destruction of Puri's beloved Ambassador and the desire of everyone around him - his driver Handbrake, his wife Rumpi, and Mummy-Ji - for him to finally replace the not-as-reliable-as-he-claims, past-its-prime sedan with something that has power steering and heated seats. A thread which resolves on the last page, along with Puri's reluctance to accept that his younger daughter wants to make a love match.

Elizabeth of York

 I didn't realize how long it had been since I'd read one of Alison Weir's biographies. While I've read a few since starting this blog, that coincided with her move to historical fiction which I've devoured. As with her biographies of Mary Boleyn and Katherine Swynford, Weir has to work around the relative lack of sources directly related to Henry VII's Queen. Women didn't appear in most historical records and it was Elizabeth's daughters-in-law and granddaughters who were literate and in most cases highly educated so we don't have Elizabeth's letters or diaries.

Elizabeth was the oldest of the Duke of York's ten children, one of seven sisters who could expect to be married off to secure alliances. Instead, she spent several years in sanctuary while her father and uncles fought what was later named the Wars of the Roses, eventually seeing her uncle Richard usurp the throne and most likely order the murder of her two brothers. Growing up under those circumstances, it makes sense that Elizabeth would be politically savvy, and Weir presents evidence that marriages to both a pre-invasion Henry Tudor and to a post-usurpation Richard III were considered. The alleged alliance with her uncle could be why Elizabeth's marriage to Henry was delayed - he wanted to make sure that the woman he was marrying to legitimize his claim to the throne was not allied to his vanquished opponent.

Beyond the political intrigue in which she appeared to play a role by not committing until it was necessary, Elizabeth's life was ordinary for a woman of her status. She supported charities, was known to be devout, and delivered seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood and one of whom became Henry VIII, before dying in childbirth at age 39, most likely attempting to produce another "spare." As with many of Weir's biographies, I found Elizabeth of York an interesting view into the life of the Tudor court.

The End of White Christian America

The End of White Christian America feels like a policy paper, which isn't surprising since its written by a think tank leader.  It's a good primer on the rise of fundamentalism as general protestantism declined and backs everything up with graphs and charts. It was interesting, but there's really not much to say about it.

Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight

 There's not much to say about Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight. Stephanie Plum was never deep and Janet Evanovich has been churning out amusing but surface mysteries for the past decade plus. This time, Steph is joined by Diesel, the semi-supernatural hunter who (literally) popped into the holiday themed between-the-numbers books. They're both hunting for a hacker named Oswald Wednesday who, in turn, is killing off the Baked Potatoes, a local (mostly white-hat) hacker group. Take a scene of Grandma Mazur at a funeral. Add in Lula having hairdresser problems after encountering a bat, an appearance by Uncle Sandor's baby-blue Buick, Baked Potatoes in protective custody at Rangeman, and Stephanie's mother discoverer the zen of knitting. Tie the threads together with an action rescue, and you've got a middling Plum. Entertaining enough to make me eager for the next installment but not particularly memorable.

Peril at End House

All the clues were there, and I really should have noticed the most important one. Agatha Christie didn't cheat, she just made it look like she did. Peril at End House starts with Nick Buckley stumbling across Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings just as (another) attempt is made on her life. She's brushed them all off, but Poirot is anxious that someone is trying to kill her to inherit the ramshackle End House, illogical as that seems. He asks her to invite her cousin Maggie to visit for a few days and when Maggie dies, was it a case of mistaken identity? And who killed her - a potential inheritor or one of Nick's questionable friends? I'd somehow skipped Peril at End House in favor of an nth reading of one of my favorites, and I'm glad. Nearly 40 years after first reading Christie, she can still surprise me.

Vanity Dies Hard

 I shouldn't be so surprised that the first half or so of Ruth Rendell's novels feel so old. Vanity Dies Hard was written 56 years ago, putting it only a year or two closer to today than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was when I read it in high school. But by the time I discovered her, Agatha Christie was dead and Rendell was only halfway through her career when I picked up her first Barbara Vine novel 30 years ago.

Rendell was a psychological novelist, with motivations more important at times than the actual mystery. But science and society evolve, making Vanity Dies Hard hard to review today. The plot is simple - wealthy but drab Alice Whittaker married a younger man at 37, and after her friend disappears, she believes she's being poisoned by someone. Well, it doesn't take a detective to discover why a 37-year-old newlywed might suddenly feel "unwell" so despite Rendell's talent for creepiness, I never though Alice was truly in danger. I was intrigued by the fate of her glamorous friend Nesta, though, but less so than I was by questions about the framework. Why was Andrew Fleming essentially forced to quit his job and join the family firm when he married Alice? Why was Alice's first assumption poison and not pregnancy? How desperately dull life was for affluent women for whom there was no expectation of even becoming educated just for the sake of knowledge. And how accurate is this portrayal of mid-1960s small town England?

Dead Land

 Every time I read one of Sara Paretsky's I wonder if it will be the last. VI Warshawski has been around for 40 years and at least two age-retcons, but I still look forward to her appearances. In Dead Land, VI is once again dragged into the mystery by her goddaughter Bernie. On an ice hockey scholarship in Chicago, Bernie is supporting herself over the summer by coaching youth sports and VI is supporting her when she attends a local committee meeting where Bernie's charges are receiving an award. The main agenda item is redeveloping the beach along Lake Michigan and when a low-level staffer (and Bernie's sort-of boyfriend) gets flustered and drops some papers, it leads the two women into VI's speciality, corrupt politics. This ties in with a second plot involving a socially conscious musician who's been homeless and emotionally fragile since her husband's politically motivated murder. The two plots developed along parallel tracks and while they connected at the end, this is one of Paretsky's less satisfying books. Mediocre Warshawsky is still entertaining and thrilling, though, and I'm happy to see that there's a new book coming out next month.

The Monogram Murders

 The Monogram Murders marks the return of Hercule Poirot. No, he hasn't been reimagined or resurrected or brought into the 20th Century. The Christie estate authorized Sophie Hannah to write new Poirot novels set during his classic inter-war period. The first one finds him "vacationing" in a boarding house within site of his flat and near a small restaurant which serves magnificent coffee. It's while waiting for his new friend (and fellow resident of Mrs. Blanch Unsworth's house), police detective Edward Catchpool, that Poirot first encounters Jennie Hobbs. She's nervous, and lets it slip that she fears for her life, which of course catches Poirot's attention. Meanwhile, Catchpool is investigating three murders at a nearby hotel where each of the victims was found with a monogrammed cuff link in their mouth. The crime was a bit contrived, but Hannah captures the Christie feel and I'm ready to binge the next three books. I'd also like to see this adapted for TV - in part because I saw Rupert Grint in every scene with Catchpool.

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War

 In a bit of irony, I read a Mary Roach book I could potentially read in the quiet car when I'm working from home. Roach's speciality is the absurd side of science, but the framework of Grunt, warfare, tones down the giggles. Gulp discussed intestinal distress; Grunt features a sniper who's experienced diarrhea while on a mission. The life and death implications lead to a more subdued tone. Roach still focuses on the absurd, but approaches the subtopics slightly more clinically.

That's not to say there's no room for humor. The chapter on heat stress (deadly and underestimated) features a series of endurance experiments undergone by Mary and a young Marine and conducted by a medical officer...who happens to be the Marine's mother...and who embarrasses him by "momming" him in front of his colleagues. The chapter on clothing (which must be durable, stain resistant, flame retardant, warm in cold environments and cool in hot environments - and cheap) starts with a scientist throwing condiments at swatches. And of course, the chapter on stink bombs (featuring a custom made stink called Who Me?) has plenty of gross-out humor. 

But there's no humor in battlefield simulations where amputee actors strap on fake wounds an bags of simulated blood so field medics can practice with special effects artillery exploding around them. Or in the surgical science of penile reconstruction. Noise and sleep deprivation threaten soldiers' and sailors's ability to function, and the "push through it" attitude most have doesn't help.

With less humor, I focused on how much of this research will, as emergency medicine did, eventually reach the civilian world. Using maggots to debride wounds already has (I did my Medical Devices paper on leeches on the incorrect assumption that the photos in the medical articles would be less gross than those related to maggots). The stakes are lower for us, but dealing with background sounds and circadian rhythm disruptors could make life easier and more pleasant for everyone as well as cutting down on automobile and industrial accidents. As someone who leans pacifistic, I'm not comfortable with military matters but Grunt was, like all of Roach's books, fascinating and enlightening.

Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind

I'm still trying to understand how the religious right came to embrace everything I was taught that Jesus was against. Ill treatment of others (particularly the needy), violence, and power for power's sake. Sarah Posner covers much of the same ground as Kristin DuMez's Jesus and John Wayne which in turn builds on Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God. Posner is a reporter and takes a different track than the two historians, looking less at history and including anti-democratic movements in Brazil and Eastern Europe to show how our current political climate is not unique. 

If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home

If Walls Could Talk is ostensibly the book of the series, and I expected it to be essentially the script to Lucy Worsley's TV series of the same name. Instead, Worsley uses the framework of the show to peek into the lives of ordinary people. The bedroom isn't just for sleep but also for sex (and childbirth, breastfeeding, and STDs), praying, and death. The bathroom leads to discussions of hygiene in general, plus makeup and plumbing. The living room is where we relax but also have to deal with housework (and formerly servants). Finally, the kitchen gives her a reason to discuss food fads and alcohol, as well as the political implications of menu choices. If I weren't working from home, this would be the perfect commute book - interesting but in short bites so I wouldn't get so engrossed I risk missing my stop.

A Sleeping Lie

There's a four year gap between the publication of Shake Hands Forever and A Sleeping Lie but the England of 1979 in which Inspector Wexford lives feels further in the past. Wexford's older daughter Sylvia has left her husband over her desire to start a career, and that (along with the fact that she'd married at 18) feels like it belongs to the early rather than late 70s. As does her return home after the purchase of a dishwasher.

Wexford's domestic life ends up providing him with the lightbulb moment that solves the murder of Rhoda Comfrey. Miss Comfrey was stabbed to death after visiting her hospitalized father, but there's no proof of her existence other than her corpse. Or of the novelist whose wallet she's inexplicably carrying. Moving between London and Kingsmarkham, Wexford and DI Mike Burden try to flesh out the life of a woman who all but disappeared after winning a football pool and to trace a man who was apparently born in his 20s. After an embarrassing (but amusing) mistake, Wexford's actress daughter Sheila unwittingly provides the final piece of information Wexford needs.

Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait

Ask the average person about Anne of Cleves, and you'll  probably hear "Oh, yeah, she was the ugly one." Allegedly Hans Holbein's portrait of Anne was much more attractive than the real woman and Henry fell in love with the fantasy. Alison Weir turns that around in the fourth of her Six Tudor Queens novels. Anna might be described as plain and the portrait was painted from her most flattering angle, but it's Henry who doesn't live up expectations. Anna fell in love with a vision of a vibrant king and instead finds an obese and ailing man who appears much older than his 48 years. Henry was disappointed as well, but in other ways. Kleve was a serious and sedate court with plenty of scholarship and no dancing or games. Unlike the Tudor court, the daughters of Kleve were only taught to read and manage households, so Anna spoke little English and had little to say about music or literature.

Henry was unable to consummate their marriage (probably due to ill health), but they have an affectionate relationship, dining together and playing card games. When Henry's eye roves towards Anna's lady in waiting Catherine Howard, Anna's only potential reason to regret relinquishing her position is the possibility that Kleve would lose Henry's protection. Once that's negotiated, she gracefully steps aside and becomes the King's Sister, taking precedence over all women at court barring the Queen and growing close to Henry's daughter Mary. The historical record covering Anna's post-consort years is sparse, so Weir fills in what we know (she tended to overspend her income) with what we can assume (battles with scheming courtiers). She also gives Anna a romance, but one which depends on a trope (an early seduction by a man with greater power) which feels even more uncomfortable now than it would have a few years ago. That aside, Anna of Kleve was an enjoyable emersion into the heroine's life.

A Covert Affair

 The cover of A Covert Affair isn't quite accurate. It highlights Julia and Paul Child who are supporting characters to this mid-20th Century espionage case. The main character is Jane Foster, a colleague of theirs in the OSS who was later accused, along with her husband, of spying for the Soviets. Jane, like Julia, was from an affluent California family; unlike the future French Chef she was artistic, confident, and outgoing. Jane comes across as engaging but not particularly reliable while serving in the OSS, and after the war, when her friends learn of her secret marriage to George Zlatovski, she drops all contact with her former colleagues. The Childs eventually reconnect with her while stationed in Paris, and when the Zlatovskis were accused of spying, Paul Child was questioned about his potential involvement.

I found the first half of the book, covering the war years, surprisingly uninvolving and unfocused. The second half, which shows the Childs' romance and marriage and the start of Julia's culinary career in parallel with the investigation of Jane Foster Zlatovski engrossing. Better editing and pacing would have resulted in a better book. 

Blood on the Strand

 Years ago I was in an online discussion of book series. I like reading in order, and if at all possible start with book #1. Someone else said she usually starts with the third book because by then the author has a good idea of where they want to go. Maybe Susanna Gregory's third Thomas Chaloner book will grab me in a way the first two didn't. Blood on the Strand starts out with a man being murdered as he walks home from a dinner meeting, but the complex plot ties in stolen cadavers, double-crossing fellow agents, public autopsies, and shifting personal alliances. Maybe it's because I read it in small snatches, but I never felt attached to the characters or overly concerned about their fates. With Susanna Gregory ending her Matthew Bartholomew series, I'd hoped that the Chaloner books would replace them. I have one more so I haven't given up yet.

Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women

The Mutual Admiration Society was a group of friends with literary aspirations who entered Sommerville College before World War I and were later among the first women to earn full degrees from Oxford. Shaped by the Great War and their upper-middle to upper class backgrounds, they went on to push the expectations laid out for their lives without quite breaking them. Sayers is the best known now, both as the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey and as a scholar and translator, and I suspect Mo Moulton focused on her because of this. For the most influential, however, I'd choose Charis Frankenburg, who became a midwife and wrote books on birth control and childrearing, before becoming one of the first female magistrates in the UK. Other MAS members became academics, playwrights, and secondary school teachers while maintaining ties of varying strengths to their old friends. Moulton's book gives us a glimpse into their lives, but stayed a bit too much on the surface. I'd prefer a deeper look into the individual women but this serves as a good primer on their cohort.

Appointment With Death

 You do see, don't you, that she has to be killed?

Those words drift though Hercule Poirot's window as he's traveling in the Middle East. We (and he) don't know this, but the words were part of a conversation between Raymond and Carol Boynton and aimed at their stepmother. Mrs. Boynton the second wife of a rich man, and has completely cowed her three stepchildren and made her daughter Genevra appear to be mentally unstable. The only person who appears able to stand up to her is daughter-in-law, Lennox's wife Nadine. We first see Mrs. Boynton through the eyes of two doctors, newly qualified Sarah King and prominent psychologist Dr. Gerard, and as they analyze the family we know Mrs. Boynton will not live past page 75 and that everyone around her will have a different motive for killing her. This is Agatha Christie, though, and she's got some surprises up her sleeve. The murderer is *not* one of the obvious subjects, but there are just enough clues scattered across the narrative so that the solution doesn't come across as a cheat. Christie even supplies us with a happy ending.

Dead Souls

 Dead Souls is dark, even for Ian Rankin, with several plots which connect in unexpected ways. It begins with a policeman's suicide and quickly moves on to Rebus's botched attempt to catch someone who's been poisoning animals at the zoo. Botched because Rebus sees a released sex offender and chases after him. His unauthorized investigation into the parolee leads him to an old case involving sexual abuse at a reformatory, which may or may not involve a murderer returned from Montana where he's been released on a technicality. And in his spare time, Rebus is investigating the disappearance of his high school girlfriend's 20-something son and worrying about his daughter, still unable to walk after the accident in The Hanging Garden. It's a lot, and as usual Rankin doesn't give anyone an unqualified happy ending, but it's also interesting, believable, and well written. Just not something to read in January when we need a bit of a lift.

The Christmas Wassail

 It's Christmas 1483 and people are beginning to wonder where Richard's nephews are. Roger the Chapman, occasional investigator for the King tries to ignore the rumors (and the implications that he's in the King's service). Sedley's last novel returns Roger to non political matters when he comes across the corpse of a thoroughly unpleasant man who happens to be both the head of a squabbling family and one of Bristol's leaders. When another prominent man dies violently, Roger takes up the task of solving they mystery, all while celebrating the holiday and taking his children to see the visiting troupe of mummers who have a secret past. The novel ends with Roger leaving on another trip to sell his wares, and with me ready to re-read his first adventure because I'm going to miss him.