Svetlana's Reads and Views

  The Sunday Post The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly or for a monthly wrap up. See rules here:  Sunday Post Meme #48 Last Week. Books! Books! Books! This week...nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Much to mine amazement and part disappointment (I am still awaiting Daniel Abrahams' BLADE OF DREAM...) I got about six or so books last week. This week, well it feel as if the number will be at zero so to speak. The week was kind of good; I had a good date (I hope he did too!) with a guy eleven years my junior (eerily we are very similar) and I also met up with another guy and watched an old Bollywood movie titled Sholay. (Well half of it honestly) I have also been trying to find a childhood movie I watched at about seven or eight years of age, ...

  Name of Book: Trouble Author: Katja Ivar ISBN: 978-1-913394-77-6 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press Part of a Series: Hella Mauzer series  Type of book: Finland, 1953, past, secrets, spying, letters, looking beyond the surface, relationships, domestic abuse, decisions,  Year it was published: 2023  Summary: The third in the Hella Mauzer mystery series. Set in Finland, early summer 1953. Hella Mauzer the first-ever woman Inspector in the Helsinki Homicide Unit has been fired and is now a reluctant private investigator.  Hella has been asked by the police to do a background check on Johannes Heikkinen, a senior member of the Finnish secret services. Heikkinen has a complicated a child dead just weeks after birth and a wife who died in the fire that destroyed their house a few years later. Background checks are not exactly the type of job Hella was hoping for, but she accepts it on the condition that she is given access to the files concerning the roadside death of he...

  Name of Book: Deep as Death Author: Katja Ivar ISBN: 978-1-912242-30-6 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press  Part of a Series: Hella Mauzer Detective Mysteries (Prequel Evil Things, sequel Trouble)  Type of book: Finland, 1953, mystery, prostitutes, gender roles, murders, relationships, secrets, past, history, Helsinki, detective, police  Year it was published: 2020 Summary: Hella Mauzer was the first-ever woman Inspector in the Helsinki Homicide Unit. But she's been fired despite solving her first murder case.  This is Helsinki, March 1953. An unusually long and cold winter, everywhere frozen sea, ice-covered lakes and rivers. In a port city flooded with refugees, who cares if a young woman goes missing? An up-and-coming inspector who views this as an opportunity to advance his career. A heartbroken PI with a score to settle. They have yet to discover one thing: the most dangerous lies are those we tell ourselves.  It all begins when Nellie, a prostitute workin...

  Name of Book: Evil Things  Author: Katja Ivar  ISBN: 978-1-912242-09-2 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press Part of a Series: Hella Mauzer crime trilogy  Type of book: 1952, Finland, Soviet Union, wars, mystery, government, Police, gender roles, secrets, inspecting, border,  Year it was published: 2019 Summary: Hella Mauzer, the first female Helsinki murder squad detective, is dispatched to a remote Lapland village near the Soviet border by her chauvinistic boss to investigate an old man’s disappearance. Embittered by the death of her entire immediate family during WWII and her recent breakup with her married lover, the 30ish, stiletto-tongued Hella tries to behave professionally like a man, but she defies male authority by using her instinct for detecting half-truths and her compassion for the weak to try to solve what initially appears to be a minor missing person case. With the discovery of the body of a Soviet doctor, it mushrooms into something much more complex...

 The Sunday Post The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly or for a monthly wrap up. See rules here:  Sunday Post Meme #47 Another week without books So another week has passed without me getting books. I do hope this coming week will be a bit different but we will see. Socially wise I had a pretty good weekend, but yeah, the heat part is pretty brutal. How soon will the heat go away? My son enjoyed the Cub Scouts meeting where he got to learn quite some interesting stuff, although unfortunately a boy he hopes to be good friends with didn't greet him back. I also went back to half price books, but yeah, crazy expensive prices in my opinion. (I wanted THISTLEFOOT by Genna Rose Netherscott, but come on, 13 dollars!) I did buy a Garfield Bo...

  Name of Book: The Basel Killings (Hunkeler macht Sachen) Author: Hansjorg Schneider (Mike Mitchell translator) ISBN: 978-1-913394-54-7 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press  Part of a Series: Inspector Hunkeler (5th book, SILVER PEBBLES is first)  Type of book: Mystery, social justice, hidden misdeeds, Travelers aka Romani aka gypsies, 1990s or 2000s? tackling classicism and bureaucracy, Switzerland, Europe, France, Germany, Basel, murder, government coverup, autumn, secrets  Year it was published: 2021 (2004 originally)  Summary: It is the end of October, the city of Basel is grey and wet. It could be December. It is just after midnight when Police Inspector Peter Hunkeler, on his way home and slightly worse for wear, spots old man Hardy sitting on a bench under a street light. He wants to smoke a cigarette with him, but the usually very loquacious Hardy is silent―his throat a gaping wound. Turns out he was first strangled, then his left earlobe slit, his diamond stu...