Mystery In The Adonis Valley

The setting for this mystery novel is mysterious in its own right. The Adonis Valley is near to Beirut in the Lebanon and had a collection of crumbling palaces and buildings at the time of the writing of the novel. The Middle East as it is described is not recognizable anymore to us today. It's like a romantic fairy tale, but then it was real. What we have now is decades of proxy wars between the superpowers destroying small countries.

Mystery On Corfu

Corfu has always been the pet theory for Shakespeare aficionados as the setting for the Tempest. There is very little to go by to come up with this theory. The bard was famous for taking a loan from any story he came across. Having certain names crop up in the play and on the island is no great clue. And fiction is fiction, there should be no earthly realm to be found.

Mystery On Crete

Two brothers, one young, the other very young, get stranded on Crete after a meeting with the wrong kind of Cretans. Their boating companion and guide finds the older by chance and gets them to a lonely shepherd's hut. Water is near, but food is a problem. With one of them wounded, they get stuck there. And the younger has disappeared in a landscape full of lonely buildings and hiding places.

Mystery At Hadrian's Wall

As with all of Mary Stewart's mystery novels, the setting is as important as the protagonists. The story she spins this time is perfectly suited to misty Northumberland. The bluffs and double bluffs find a perfect expression in the Roman border situation, which isn't one anymore, but still is a major divider of mainland Britain. If you haven't yet been there, this book should give you the impetus to do so.

Mystery on Lake Geneva

For once, this mystery book by Mary Stewart doesn't act as a travel guide extraordinaire at the same time. The story is too contained within the space of private properties, with good reason. Of Stewart's mystery books I have read, this one is the darkest and most obscure visible in title and storyline both. But follow me to Lake Geneva's French side to have a good look around.

High School Gay Romance

Presenting High School life in any form is fraught with danger; either authors presume too much knowledge about how its social mechanisms work or they lose themselves in the interactions that have little or nothing to do with the story they are telling. This book falls into the first category; and that's not the worst of its shortcomings

Apprentice Meets God

The fifth and final book of the Belgariad series brings the story to a satisfactory climax. Both Garion and Ce'Nedra are exceedingly busy in bringing everything to pass as stipulated by the prophecy. Probably they needn't have bothered, the prophecy and its counterpart moved everyone around like so many chess pieces.

Sorcerer Apprentice No More

In the fourth book of the Belgariad series, the apprentice arrives at his destination. The worst kept secret (at least for the reader) is being revealed to all the world. And all the world means the universe and everything. While the previous books were dominated by a group interaction, this book now changes tack to a more stationary and divisive lifestyle. This can go only so far, though.