Reviews: "King of Ashes," "Every Man a Hero," and "How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder"

 These are three more books that I've been unable to remark on before now - ensuring that my fading memory of them makes it a bit unfair for me to try to do any kind of longish, detailed review of them. Now I'm hoping that these short-form reviews will be enough to give everyone a decent feel for the books.

I'm a big fan of S.A. Cosby's work, but because I thought Cosby's novel just previous to King of Ashes was his weakest effort to date, I was a little concerned that I would be disappointed by this one. Turns out that I shouldn't have worried; this is a good book. It's the story of three adult siblings who have led very different lives up to the date that their father is in a near-fatal auto accident. Now, the eldest returns to their Virginia hometown to help pick up the pieces of a family-run crematorium business that is about to go under because of the bad lifestyle choices made by another of the siblings. What better way to dispose of murder victims than controlling a crematorium? At least that's what one local gang decides, and stopping them is going to be tough. This is quite a crime thriller that the less squeamish readers out there will have some fun with. But be warned, it's very violent (as are most of Cosby's novels).

This 2019 memoir was co-written when Ray Lambert was 98 years old, but it is one of the better firsthand accounts of D-Day that I've come across. Lambert and his brother both were medics on D-Day and both were severely wounded during the fighting. That each of them survived the slaughter of that awful battle is somewhat of a miracle in itself. Lambert tells his personal story from the perspective of a medic as he experienced the fighting in North Africa, Sicily, and France. Mr. Lambert was well decorated the courage he displayed on D-Day, but he reminds the reader that everyone who hit the beaches that day was as much a hero as he was. I recommend this one for history buffs. 

Once upon a time, in Wyoming, there were twelve and thirteen-year-old East Indian sisters who decided that their Uncle Vinny deserved to die. (Because of his regular sexual abuse of the girls, many would probably agree with them.) So they start slipping antifreeze into his drinks over a series of weeks, hoping that will do the trick. How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder is very dark comedy with a twist at the end, and it left me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I appreciate the cleverness of the plot and how it uses magazine quiz interludes like the one entitled "Do You Have What It Takes to Kill?" in order to lighten the mood. On the other hand, the novel struck me as trying too hard to be clever at times, and the whole thing seemed to go on longer than the plot demanded it should. This is definitely, however, one coming-of-age story that fans of the genre will want to consider, especially as it explores the meaning of sisterhood and and the lengths almost anyone might go to in order to protect a loved one from the hands of a sexual predator.

This pretty much catches me up on past due reviews. I hope to spend a little more time reviewing Tim Sullivan's The Patient and Sonny Battar's The Daughters of Rosebud, one of my favorite reads of the year, soon.