Book Bingo: February 2026

I am doing the book bingo set up by kingstoken. More information here: https://kingstoken.dreamwidth.org/122578.html



I'm attempting to fill each square with a different author so only 4 squares at the moment.

B-3: Figures Without Facial Features on the Cover: A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin. The next-to-final book in the Inspector Rebus mystery series. Rebus is a Scottish detective with every single cop stereotype present. The plot starts off with a domestic violence case involving a cop and leads to police corruption and, in the end, Rebus attempting to murder his archnemesis crime boss.
B-4: Pet/Animal Companion: And to All a Good Bite by David Rosenfelt. This is in the Andy Carpenter mystery series. He's a defense lawyer who also runs a dog shelter in Patterson, New Jersey. The plot involves a case, a client falsely accused of a crime, and art forgery and a dog named Rebus. Full of quirky characters. Audiobook narrated by Grover Gardener.
G-2: Author You've Never Read Before: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. In the romantasy genre. A sheltered librarian has to flee a capital city in revolution with contraband spell books. She flees with a sentient, talking plant to her home island. Audiobook narrated by Caitlin Davis
O-5: Job/Profession in the Title: The Secret Hangman by Peter Lovesey. This is a Peter Diamond mystery, a police detective in Bath (UK). The case involves couples being hanged. Diamond is a widower who starts dating again. Audiobook narrated by Simon Prebble.

February LOVE-fest: Day 20 & 21: Infatuation & Maternal Love

( 1-19 )

20. infatuation
21. maternal love
22. obsession
23. agape
24. love of animals
25. unconditional love
26. forbidden love
27. ecstasy
28. the beloved

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Here is a snippet from At Bertram's Hotel which inspired the double drabble below with the theme of infatuation and the second part ties into Nemesis and the theme of maternal love.

...Jane Marple, that pink and white eager young girl...Such a silly girl in many ways...now who was that very unsuitable young man whose name—oh dear, she couldn’t even remember it now! How wise her mother had been to nip that friendship so firmly in the bud. She had come across him years later—and really he was quite dreadful! At the time she had cried herself to sleep for at least a week!

Nowadays, of course—she considered nowadays...These poor young things. Some of them had mothers, but never mothers who seemed to be any good— mothers who were quite incapable of protecting their daughters from silly affairs, illegitimate babies, and early and unfortunate marriages. It was all very sad.

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Day 20: Infatuation


Title: Mother's Wisdom
Fandom: Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
Rating: Gen
Length: 200
Summary: Jane Marple bumps into a crush years after.

( Read more... )

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Day 21: Maternal Love

So for this I am doing my All of Agatha review of Nemesis. So this is the last Miss Marple novel written (though Sleeping Murder would be published later, it was written in the 1940's and put in a vault), published in 1971.

Nemesis is a brilliant story with so much lovely foreshadowing and character exposition and misdirection. And it also evokes a nauseating amount of cringe and revulsion for the modern reader.

So the plot is that Miss Marple gets a vague assignment from Mister Rafiel (the rich man of A Caribbean Mystery) after that man's death and she goes on a tour of homes and gardens and eventually works out that Mister Rafiel's no-good son who is in prison for killing his girlfriend didn't actually kill her. The plot is very well done, and it has many great elements, foreshadowing with the use of plants, harkening back to Miss Marples earlier cases, interesting characters including the lawyers who think this is all crackers and the best lesbian duo in canon after Hinch and Murgatroyd of A Murder is Announced (Cook and Barrow, the women hired to protect Miss Marple). So many wonderful things and I love the story.

But...

Agatha Christie is the very LAST person in the world you want to get love advice from, ANY kind of advice for ANY kind of love. And she has definite opinions about what a 'real mother' is. Adopted mothers are not real. And adopted mother love can never match biological mother love and is, in fact, twisted and warped and deserves punishment (and is punishing). But then (as in the quote above) she says that the problem of 'modern' girls is that their mothers are no good. She has a lot of very old lady 'get off my lawn' ideas about young people and their sexual behavior.

And she has extremely warped ideas about marriage, why people should get married, the expectation of infidelity, roles of husband and wives. There are two sections that proffer undiluted rape apology. Really, I was beginning to think she was getting worse as she got older but then I remember The Man in the Brown Suit and decided she had always been like that.

But...

it's a great plot and Miss Marple saves the day and wins 20,000 pounds and probably enjoys the partridge she buys with her winnings very much.