Author Archives: Joan

book review

Book Review: Hunter’s Rules

First, a full disclosure: I have read every book Val Penny has written. The reason is easy. I enjoy the characters she has created, especially the smart and oh-so likable DI Hunter Wilson, and the trouble she gives them. That is certainly true of Hunter’s Rules, the sixth in this series set in Edinburgh, Scotland, which begins with a shocker of a scene.

During a romantic night out, DI Hunter Wilson and Dr. Meera Sharma find a woman lying in a hotel’s elevator, bleeding and with her eyes removed. This is not the first time a woman has been found this way, but unlike the previous victims, she is alive. And that helps Hunter and crack his team of investigators in their hunt for the perpetuator in this fast-moving read.

But Val throws in an interesting twist to the plot: making Hunter a suspect. Loyal readers will know — or hope — he is not guilty, but he has to not only solve this horrendous crime, but prove his innocence.

Val cleverly lets readers into the perp’s head with italicized excerpts throughout — just enough so we know he’s a madman but not enough to figure out who he was.

Also, the victim’s positive attitude as she recovers from her unimaginable injuries is a moving and original storyline.

By the way Val Penny is an American author living in SW Scotland. Her novels are published by SpellBound Books Ltd.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to the next in the DI Hunter Wilson Crime Series. Get cracking, Val.

Here’s the link to buy Hunter’s Rules:

For UK readers:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D7ZPBJDX

For US readers: https://www.amazon.com/Hunter-Rules-Wilson-thriller-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0D7ZPBJDX

Want to learn more about Val Penny? Here’s the link to her website: https://www.valpenny.com

By the way, this review is part of the Reading Between the Lines Blog Tour. No compensation is involved.

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Adventrue

Riding Rosalita

We called her Rosalita—a vintage VW camper van we bought for $800 and drove from Boston to Mexico. Hank and I were newly in love in the mid-seventies and ready for adventure with my daughter, Sarah. Rosalita would take us there.

In the state of Guerrero, Hank, bored from highway driving, turned onto a road that appeared to be a shortcut to where we were heading. Soon we were on a dusty trip with no certain destination in a foreign country. We didn’t pass homes. We didn’t see people. Finally, though, we came to a sign. Hank put Rosalita in reverse to read it, but the right back tire slid off the road’s shoulder. He couldn’t do anything as the van toppled slowly onto its side into a brush-filled gully. Thankfully, we were unhurt as the van didn’t have seatbelts.

Our plan was for Hank to hike seven kilometers back to the highway to find a garage with a wrecker, while Sarah, then two, and I waited. But just then, a bus rumbled toward us filled with local folk and livestock, and decorated with plastic flowers and statues of Jesus and Mary. The driver hung out the open window after he stopped the bus. His passengers gawked at the gringo family who had overturned their van. The driver motioned for Hank to climb onboard. I told him to go. Who knew when another bus would pass again? I gave him my straw hat and most of our cash.

After the bus left, I searched inside the van for a blanket, papers, food, and water. Sarah and I found a shady spot beneath a tree, but we weren’t alone for long. People came down a path, presumably from the village whose name was on the sign. They talked rapidly and gestured in Spanish. Even with my infantile knowledge of the language, I understood that Sarah and I were in danger. Men with big hats and guns—banditos—would come after dark. They would take everything we had. I must gather our valuables and hide. Now, I was scared.

It couldn’t have been 20 minutes when a dump truck, heavy with chrome and a fringe of pompoms circling the windshield, barreled from the direction we had come, its air brakes hissing as it stopped. Two men jumped from the truck’s bed with axes. The driver, their patrón—dark-haired and all-muscle, and a gut beneath his t-shirt—dismounted with Hank, who smiled and looked a little silly in my straw hat with the flat, wide brim I had bought in France. The bus driver, bless him, had stopped the truck to explain we needed help.

The patrón began barking orders to his men who chopped down two trees and stuck them beneath the van. Using the trees as levers, and a tow from the chain on the truck, they pried Rosalita upright and pulled her forward until her tires were on the road. I cheered.

The only damage was a cracked mirror. Oil was still in the crankcase. The patrón acted as if nothing extraordinary had happened as he pocketed the cash Hank offered. He went his way with his men. We, too, were on the road, trying to get out before dark, crossing two streams and stopping once to clean the dust choking Rosalita’s air-cooled engine. (Later, an inspired Hank painted Rosalita’s name in gold across her front white bumper.)

We drove to the ocean and eventually to San Cristóbal de las Casas, where we rented a house. That’s a vintage postcard above of the town in Chiapas I never mailed to a friend. Alas, we didn’t own a camera then.

 Rosalita rode high as we traveled to mountain villages, where the indigenous women doted on Sarah and sold us textiles. We left Mexico months later when we ran out of money and one night the federales made a sweep of the town, targeting foreigners. Ah, but Rosalita got us back home safely again.

A version of this story ran in Storied Wheels, a SOMOS Publication in Taos, New Mexico.

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Gardening

Knotweed Be Gone

Seven years ago we bought a charming bungalow built in 1900 and with it, unfortunately, a huge swarth of Japanese Knotweed. You can see how large in the photo above.

Knotweed, Reynoutria japonica, is an invasive and fast-growing weed from Asia that looks a little like bamboo but it ain’t. It grows quite tall and flowers, as we discovered the first year we lived here. It also doesn’t let much of anything else grow with it as its strong root system spreads horizontally. Thus, it can be destructive to building foundations. A little history: it was brought to the U.K. in the early 1800s before it came to the U.S.

I see knotweed growing along roads, rivers, well, lots of places. All the plant needs is a bit of disturbed soil and it takes root and spreads. That’s likely what happened when previous owners built an addition and garage in 1990, and just let the weed take over. Ugh. Thanks a lot.

Yes, I know beekeepers use the plant — my neighbor presented me with a bottle of knotweed honey as an amusing gift. The young stems allegedly taste like rhubarb. The same neighbor told me about a person who created flutes from the large dried stalks. I prefer to use the land for other purposes.

As I’m the person in our household that takes care of the land, I researched how to get rid of the damn stuff. So what are my options?

Learn to live with it. But, alas, knotweed is a greedy plant that wants to take over the world. 

Herbicide? No thanks. 

Cover with a tarp for five years? I tried that last year and gave up as the damn plants started spreading horizontally to escape. Besides, I don’t want to look at tarps on the ground that long.

Dig it up? Impossible to get every damn piece — knotweed doesn’t need much to grow — and besides where would I take the roots so they are not somebody else’s problem?

So, I am left with cutting the damn stuff. I figure if I keep doing it, knotweed will just give up. Or maybe I will.

I use an electric-powered weed whacker, a Stihl I’ve owned for many years that takes two electric cords, to cut the damn stuff down. (The cords are impractical but it’s what I have. We bought it when we lived in New Mexico and had different weeds to keep in control.) 

I began earlier this spring when the plants were about a foot tall. I wait about two weeks before the next cutting, which I accomplish in two days. In the photo above you can see my first day’s progress during this week’s cutting. I leave the ferns intact, and hope they will take over along with the grass seed I spread this spring. By the way, the lawn area is owned and maintained by the Catholic Church next door.

Even this blasted heat and humidity hasn’t stopped me. I dress appropriately, wear sunscreen, gloves, and a big hat, and get to work with my trusty machine. It’s a bit of a workout since the area is on a large hill, steeper near the house. Yesterday, I was soaking wet when I happily finished.

Unfortunately, the weed whacker is too noisy to listen to an audiobook. I tried. But I do a lot of thinking, some of it personal, most of it involves my writing. I believe I finally know who dunnit in the Isabel Long Mystery I am getting close to finishing. Throughout this series — Finding the Source is number eight — I solve the mystery along with my protagonist. 

And now, hopefully I will also solve the mystery about knotweed.

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Hilltown Postcards

Bad Neighbors

In my last Hilltown Postcard, I wrote about good neighbors. As promised, here is one about bad neighbors. The names have been changed for obvious reasons.

When we built our house and moved from one part of Worthington to another, we encountered a whole new group of neighbors. Just like in Ringville, we had good neighbors, many come to mind, but here we encountered a few bad ones. 

What constitutes a bad neighbor? Frankly, the things they do just make them unlikeable. It’s a good practice to just stay clear after you figure that out like the neighbor who went off the deep end.

George used to be a decent friend before he became our next-door neighbor. Like us, he bought a piece of land and built the house he owned. Hank even worked with him. But things went strange between us, really strange.

Once when Hank went to George’s house to borrow a tool, he claimed our kids were breaking into his house. He said they moved his furniture, but only enough that he would notice. George was certain it was happening because he stuck a blade of grass between the front door and jamb, and it was gone when he got home. Hank stormed home in disbelief.

Then one of our sons caught George glaring at him through the woods.

Hank went to see the town’s police chief, who told him George had complained about our kids many times, but he didn’t believe any of it. The problem was solved when he sold his house and good neighbors bought it.

As the former hilltown reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I covered a few neighborhood disputes brought to a town board to be resolved. Most often the dissent concerned barking and/or vicious dogs their owners didn’t properly restrain although there was a notorious hearing involving pigs I wrote about earlier.

I can think of two dog situations in our new neighborhood, including one mutt that made it risky to walk along that part of the road in case the animal was loose. I recall a neighbor on a walk once flagged down a car and jumped inside for a ride home when that awful dog got loose.

Another neighbor had a Doberman Pinscher he didn’t tie up and we didn’t trust, with good reason it turned out, because the dog turned on the daughter. The man shot the dog, then left the body in the woods because the ground was too frozen to bury it. Wild animals picked the carcass clean. I recognized the tufts of fur when our dog dragged the bones to our yard. Anyway, the man moved away soon after that happened.

I recall a few incidents that get your head shaking when what a person does in private goes public. Ranking as the absolute worst was the creep who got arrested for watching his teenage daughter while she showered. 

One time, we heard loud banging coming from a neighbor’s house. An ousted husband was repeatedly smashing the front end of his pickup against the door of a newly built garage. The cops were called.

Then there was the teenager who stole his mother’s car and crashed it in another part of town — an accident that badly injured him.

In another incident, a neighbor hooked up with the wrong people, thankfully very briefly.

One night Hank and I had finished watching the film, “Pulp Fiction,” when a state trooper knocked at the door and asked to use our phone since cell service was nearly nil in those days. It didn’t take much to get the trooper to say two men had gotten into a fight, and one guy, who happened to be a new friend of our neighbor Sandy, stabbed his buddy through the throat. The man had fled to the woods, and he was calling in dogs to find him. He would likely be going back to prison. He hadn’t been out that long. I believe he and Sandy might have been pen pals.

I thought for a moment I should tell the state trooper I was a reporter for the local newspaper, but I didn’t. I would instead pass the story to another reporter. The police dogs found the stabber hiding beneath the floorboards of a shed, and he was sentenced later to seven years after admitting in court he intended to kill his friend.

Sandy turned into a model neighbor, except for an occasional barking fit by one of her dogs, but they were harmless. Last I knew, she had a beautiful garden and worked hard at it.

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Hilltown Postcards

Good Neighbors

It’s been a little while but here’s a Hilltown Postcard.

It can be a game of chance when you live close enough to people that you can see their house. That certainly was the case when we moved to Worthington. We had good neighbors, bad neighbors and those who kept to themselves, except for a wave of the hand and a hello. And, of course, people came and went. Today I will write about a few good neighbors, specifically the ones we had in the Ringville section of town.

This was our second attempt at country living. I wrote about the first, in the middle of nowhere in central New Hampshire. We lasted less than a year even with helpful neighbors who took pity on the city folk with two kids renting a cabin for $35 a month that had no running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing, and only a woodstove for heat.

But when we moved from Boston to Worthington, Hank and I were in it for the long haul. By luck and help from newfound friends, we rented a crappy little house on a curve along Route 112 in Ringville. 

The first neighbor we met was Charlie Baker, who lived across the road from us in a farmhouse that had an open barn, a very large field, and a river behind it. The house was very close to the road, which was likely widened when it became a state highway. Our mailboxes were side-by-side, and both easy victims of a snowplow’s blade each winter.

Charlie was a friendly man who lived there with his young son, Chuck. His first piece of advice: We should keep the shades down or curtains closed when we undressed in the front bedroom because he could see us from across the road. Thanks, Charlie.

Over the years, Charlie let others use his land, in particular its grass for hay and to raise hogs for slaughtering. (I recall looking out the window to see a freshly killed hog hanging upside down from a tractor’s raised plow.) The land was also a bit of a playground for our kids. That was okay with Charlie.

It was a happy day when the Lippert family moved next door because our kids had playmates their ages. Alex was a doctor at the town’s health center. Regina also worked in the medical field. When the Lipperts were away, our kids would make sure the chickens were in their coop at night so they weren’t slaughtered by raccoons — a lesson our neighbors learned — and then let out in the morning. I consider the Lipperts, who like us moved away, friends still.

On the other side of our house were the Stroms, who also had children the same age as ours. Hank ended up driving Pat to the hospital when she went into labor with her daughter and Steve hadn’t made it home from work by then. When work was being done on their house because of a fire, we ran an electric cord from our house to theirs. In exchange, Steve plowed our driveway. 

I fondly remember visits to Marian Sanderson, the oldest person in our village. I don’t recall how it started, but the kids who weren’t school age and I went together. They didn’t mind since she always served them something sweet. I enjoyed listening to her stories about the town. She was also a big Red Sox fan, if I recall correctly. Unfortunately, one night she was injured when she fell and had to live with her daughter. I treasure the needlepoint piece she created that I used for a pillow I still have. 

Those were a few of our good neighbors in Worthington. Stay tuned for the bad ones. 

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