A Bookish Day

This is the blog I was too tired to write last night. Honestly, how can I be tired after a day of doing not much? The truth is I was reading a mystery I didn’t want to put down, and that sort of speaks for my day yesterday. It was bookish. So as you read, pretend it is last night.

After the heavy go of reading about Churchill and WWII I really longed for a good cozy (not cute!) in whose pages I could get lost. Thanks to Susan Van Kirk for A Death at Tippitt Pond. I did indeed get lost in the world of this novel and was reluctant to stop turning digital pages. The plot is not new: a young woman (in this case, forty-seven, not so young) finds out she was adopted as an infant and has now inherited a fortune from her biological family. The story opens with her having traveled from NYC to the mansion in the small, Illinois town where, apparently, she was born. And, no surprise—she is attracted to the single-again chief of police. Before you yawn and say, “Been there, read that,” let me tell you that Van Kirk takes these familiar elements and creates a compelling mystery. Did Beth Russell’s biological father really kill her mother that summer day at Tippitt Pond all those years ago? Why does someone keep breaking into the house, and how do they get in? Why is a stranger watching her house from the woods across the street?

Beth Russell, an independent researcher, is just insecure enough that you like her. Yet she’s bright and holds her own in a town where most people want her to go back to NYC. Other characters are equally believable, from Kyle the police chief, to the senator who looks to me like the bad guy. I haven’t finished this book yet, but I did stay up way too late last night reading it.

And I’m on the trail of a mysterious cookbook that a friend told me about. Catherine Morro, daughter of a TCU prof, herself a student until eye strain forced her to quit, apparently was known for chicken sandwiches which she sold from a now-disappeared local pharmacy. Here’s the strange part: in 1980, University Christian Church published a collection of her recipes. That’s my church, but so far, I haven’t found anyone who knows anything about it. And a church publishing an individual’s cookbook? I can imagine a collection of recipes from women in the congregation, but not one cook. I’m partly curious because Morro apparently made congealed salads, so popular in the day, by cooking in a water bath instead of using gelatin as I do. Thanks to Anne Kane for putting me on this trail.

And, finally, a nice find yesterday—a woman I knew several years ago as an administrator at TCU has retired from academic life and is writing a private investigator series of mysteries set in Harlem. I wrote her a note, she wrote back, and we exchanged a few emails, friended each other on Facebook. I hope to keep in touch with Delia Pitts. Check out her Ross Agency Mysteries. Brand new title is The Prince and the Pauper in Harlem.

Discovering Delia (does that sound like a book  title?) gave me a stray thought for these quarantine days. Maybe I should check in on Kelly O’Connell and see how she and Mike, Keisha and the girls are handling the pandemic. (That’s for you, Elaine Williams Gray!)

A blessed Palm Sunday to everyone.