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Dead Simple (Roy Grace book 1)
Dead Simple (Roy Grace book 1)
Peter James | 2006 | Crime
8
8.6 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
66 of 235
Book
Dead Simple ( Roy Grace 1)
By Peter James
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It was meant to be a harmless stag night prank. A few hours later four of his best friends are dead, and Michael Harrison has disappeared. With only three days to the wedding, Detective Superintendent Grace - a man haunted by the shadow of his own missing wife - is contacted by Michael's beautiful, distraught fiancee, Ashley Harper. Grace discovers that the one man who ought to know Michael Harrison's whereabouts is saying nothing. But then he has a lot to gain - more than anyone realizes. For one man's disaster is another man's fortune ...

I really enjoyed this and didn’t take long at all! A gritty crime and a few bits that had me feeling claustrophobic! Grace is an easy character to like too!
It may have been a bit to easy to work out the who done it though.
  
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Holly Johnson recommended HQ by Roy Harper in Music (curated)

 
HQ by Roy Harper
HQ by Roy Harper
1975 | Folk, Pop, Rock, Singer-Songwriter
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Roy was about the same time. The Old Grey Whistle Test was on later than Top Of The Pops, and you had to be a bit older to stay up late and get away with it. I got my first sighting of Jobriath on there. I don't know if I saw a flash of Klaus Nomi on there too, and of course David doing 'Queen Bitch', Roxy doing 'Ladytron', and the New York Dolls was quite a moment for some people. It was via Genesis doing 'I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)' from Selling England By The Pound, that I became interested slightly in that longer haired world. I didn't go for Pink Floyd; I thought there was something not quite right about hippies, and you were either a hippie or not a hippie. Somehow, I heard the track 'Hallucinating Light' by Roy Harper, and was amazed by the quality of his voice. And of course, he had Chris Spedding playing guitar - David Gilmour plays guitar on the album also - but Chris had a sort of slightly Roxy Music edge to him as well. It is just a great album. 'The Game (Parts 1-5)' is a brilliant song sequence and it just appealed to me, as a perfect artistic statement. None of my other friends got into it, it was almost a guilty pleasure, but there was nothing to be guilty about because it was just a great record. The track where he has the colliery band - 'When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease' - is beautiful. It's hard not to shed a tear - it's a lovely song. He also had connections with Led Zeppelin, who I wasn't interested in at all, but a lot of people only know him because he sung on one of their tracks, but for me he was something outside of that."

Source
  
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Ian Anderson recommended Swingin' Machine by Mose Allison in Music (curated)

 
Swingin' Machine by Mose Allison
Swingin' Machine by Mose Allison
1963 | Jazz
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Many of our generation of white, British, middle-class musicians who went to art college all knew about Mose Allison from ‘Parchman Farm’ and one or two other songs in the early Sixties that had been done by British R&B bands. So I knew a little bit about him but I suppose like many people, assumed he was a black guy. He turned out to be a Mississippi white guy with pasty legs and an obvious understanding of jazz and its traditions. He did most of his work in a piano trio with a bass player and a drummer, and he sang in this very laconic and down-home way. I wouldn’t say his songs never touched on romantic lyrics but they were often about stuff. About real life – that’s what gave him credibility and a high level of authenticity, because you knew this wasn’t a guy making it up, this was a guy who had lived the things he sang about. I, like many people of my generation, was struck by his work. The Who recorded at least one of his songs. I expect today there are a few younger musicians who will know about Mose Allison in the same way they will know about Roy Harper."

Source
  
I received an uncorrected proof of a true-crime book about female serial killers by Tori Telfer called Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History to peruse and review on Goodreads and Amazon. The book won’t released until October 10, 2017, by Harper Perennial, and I am so thrilled to be one of the few who get to read it first.

Some of the murderers/murderesses have been discussed on My Favorite Murder by Georgia and Karen but some are brand new to me.

From the back cover:
When you think of serial killers throughout history the names that come to mind are ones like Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy but what about Tilly Klimek, Moulay Hassen and Kate Bender? The narrative we’re comfortable with is the one where women are the victims of violent crime, not the perpetrators, in fact, serial killers are thought to be so universally, overwhelmingly male that in 1998, FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood infamously declared in a homicide conference that, “There are no female serial killers.”

Lady Killers, based on the popular online series that appeared on Jezebel and The Hairpin, disputes that claim and offers 14 gruesome examples as evidence. Though largely forgotten by history, female serial killers such as Erzsebet Bathory, Nannie Doss, Mary Ann Cotton, and Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova rival their male counterparts and cunning, cruelty, and appetite for destruction.

Each chapter explores the crimes and history of a different subject and then proceeds to unpack her legacy and her portrayal in the media, as well as the stereotypes and sexist clichés that inevitably surround her. The first book to examine female serial killers through a feminist lens with a witty and dryly humorous tone lady killers dismisses explanations (she was hormonal, she did it for love, a man made her do it) and tired tropes (she was a femme fatale, a black widow, a witch) delving into the complex reality of a female aggression and predation. Featuring 14 illustrations from Dame Darcy, Lady Killers is a blood curdling, insightful, and irresistible journey into the heart of darkness.

Tori Telfer is a full-time freelance writer whose work has appeared in Salon, Vice, Jezebel, The Hairpin, Good Magazine, Bustle, barnesandnoble.com, Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart nominee and the recipient of the Edwin L. Shuman Fiction Award. She has written, directed, and produced independent plays on both Chicago and Los Angeles.

The author’s official website is http://www.toridotgov.com.
The illustrator’s website is http://www.damedarcy.com

Table of Contents
The Blood Countess: Erzsebet Bathory
The Giggling Grandma: Nannie Doss
The Worst Woman on Earth: Lizzie Halliday
Devil in the Shape of a Saint: Elizabeth Ridgeway
Vipers: Raya and Sakina
The Wretched Woman: Mary Ann Cotton
The Tormentor: Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova
Iceberg Anna: Anna Marie Hahn
The Nightingale: Oum-El-Hassen
High Priestess of the Bluebeard Clique: Tillie Klimek
Sorceress of Kilkenny: Alice Kyteler
Beautiful Throat Cutter: Kate Bender
The Angel Makers of Nagyrev
Queen of Poisoners: Marie-Madeleine, the Marquis de Brinvilliers

It looked as if The Angel Makers of Nagyrev wasn’t included in the texts, though it is listed in the contents and notes. However, they are on the pages following the chapter and heading Beautiful Throat Cutter. I had mistakenly thought it wasn't included before. Hopefully, that oversight and will be corrected in the final copy. There were a few punctuation errors in the book and I had intended to leave them in the copy above but allowed Grammarly to correct them without thinking. But that's why they pay the editors the big bucks.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to delve deep in this book and read my little Murderino heart out. I am nearly through the book and will update with a review once I have completed it.

#SSDGM
#Stay Sexy Don't Get Murdered

#myfavoritemurder #murderino #toritelfer #harperperennial #harpercollins #damedarcy
#books #bookstagram #mfmpodcast #georgiahardstark #karenkilgariff #serialkiller #truecrime #murder #killers #ladykiller #ladykillers #serialkillers