#BookReview Buffalo Jump Blues by Keith McCafferty

Buffalo Jump Blues by Keith McCafferty
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the fifth novel in the Sean Stranahan mystery series, Montana's favorite fly fisherman-detective tackles a case of lost love, murder, and wildlife politics

In the wake of Fourth of July fireworks in Montana’s Madison Valley, Hyalite County sheriff Martha Ettinger and Deputy Sheriff Harold Little Feather investigate a horrific scene at the Palisades cliffs, where a herd of bison have fallen to their deaths. Victims of blind panic caused by the pyrotechnics, or a ritualistic hunting practice dating back thousands of years? The person who would know is beyond asking, an Indian man found dead among the bison, his leg pierced by an arrow.

Farther up the valley, fly fisherman, painter, and sometime private detective Sean Stranahan has been hired by the beautiful Ida Evening Star, a Chippewa Cree woman who moonlights as a mermaid at the Trout Tails Bar & Grill, to find her old flame, John Running Boy. The cases seem unrelated—until Sean’s search leads him right to the brink of the buffalo jump. With unforgettable characters and written with his signature grace and wry humor, Buffalo Jump Blues weaves a gripping tale of murder, wildlife politics, and lost love.

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My first reaction when I started to read this book was puzzlement. Not over the story, but that Martha and Harold Little Feather seemed to be an item (again). I kept thinking, but what about Sean? What about the ending in the last book? Then, it was all cleared up and explained. Sigh, humans, that they never learn. 

As for the story about the mass death of the bisons that was a gruesome scene to read about. I'm not a big fan of death of animals in books and reading about Harold walking around the dying animals and being the one that had to kill the ones that were still alive was horrible. It was an interesting case, although it felt like it took some time for the story to really get interesting when it came to this storyline.

There are two side stories in this book, the death of the man found after the buffalo jump that Martha and Harold have to deal with and Sean Stranahan being hired to search for man by a woman that moonlights as a mermaid at a bar. I found both stories interesting and yes there is a connection between the cases. Then, there is all the circus concerning a young bison calf that part I actually enjoyed the most to read about. And, because of that I really loved the ending of the book!

Buffalo Jump Blues is a good book, not as captivating as the previous, but still a good book!

#Wishlist August: Rejected on NetGalley

We have all been there, well if you are a member on NetGalley, if not well, just imagine being a member of a site where you can request books to review. And, then you get an email and instead of an approve email do you get one like this: Sorry, you're not worthy, this book is too good for you. You may request another title, but we will in all likelihood reject you again muhahaha! No, I'm just kidding, the email doesn't say that, but trust me it feels often like a knife in your heart...

So, this month's wishlist is 5 title that I recently been declined for over at NetGalley!

The unforgettable story of Alexander Pushkin’s beautiful wife, Natalya, a woman much admired at Court, and how she became reviled as the villain of St. Petersburg.

At the age of sixteen, Natalya Goncharova is stunningly beautiful and intellectually curious. But while she finds joy in French translations and a history of Russian poetry, her family is more concerned with her marriage prospects. It is only fitting that during the Christmas of 1828 at her first public ball in her hometown of Moscow she attracts the romantic attention of Russia’s most lauded rebel poet: Alexander Pushkin.

Enchanted at first sight, Natalya is already a devoted reader of Alexander’s serialized novel in verse, Evgeny Onegin. The most recently published chapter ends in a duel, and she is dying to learn what happens next. Finding herself deeply attracted to Alexander’s intensity and joie de vivre, Natalya hopes to see him again as soon as possible.

What follows is a courtship and later marriage full of equal parts passion and domestic bliss but also destructive jealousies. When vicious court gossip leads to Alexander dying from injuries earned defending his honor as well as Natalya’s in a duel, Natalya finds herself reviled for her alleged role in his death. With beautiful writing and understanding, Jennifer Laam, and her compelling new novel, The Lost Season of Love and Snow, help Natalya tell her side of the story—the story of her greatest love and her inner struggle to create a fulfilling life despite the dangerous intrigues of a glamorous imperial Court.

From New York Times bestselling author, Lauren Willig, comes this scandalous novel set in the Gilded Age, full of family secrets, affairs, and murder.

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he’s the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairytale romance in London, they have three-year-old twins on whom they dote, and he’s recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and named it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay’s sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to try to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?

A fascinating novel of the friendship and creative partnership between two of Hollywood’s earliest female legends—screenwriter Frances Marion and superstar Mary Pickford—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife

It is 1914, and twenty-five-year-old Frances Marion has left her (second) husband and her Northern California home for the lure of Los Angeles, where she is determined to live independently as an artist. But the word on everyone’s lips these days is “flickers”—the silent moving pictures enthralling theatergoers. Turn any corner in this burgeoning town and you’ll find made-up actors running around, as a movie camera captures it all.

In this fledgling industry, Frances finds her true calling: writing stories for this wondrous new medium. She also makes the acquaintance of actress Mary Pickford, whose signature golden curls and lively spirit have given her the title of America’s Sweetheart. The two ambitious young women hit it off instantly, their kinship fomented by their mutual fever to create, to move audiences to a frenzy, to start a revolution.

But their ambitions are challenged both by the men around them and the limitations imposed on their gender—and their astronomical success could come at a price. As Mary, the world’s highest paid and most beloved actress, struggles to live her life under the spotlight, she also wonders if it is possible to find love, even with the dashing actor Douglas Fairbanks. Frances, too, longs to share her life with someone. As in any good Hollywood story, dramas will play out, personalities will clash, and even the deepest friendships might be shattered.

With cameos from such notables as Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Rudolph Valentino, and Lillian Gish, The Girls in the Picture is, at its heart, a story of friendship and forgiveness. Melanie Benjamin perfectly captures the dawn of a glittering new era—its myths and icons, its possibilities and potential, and its seduction and heartbreak.

The sixth novel in the acclaimed Sean Stranahan mystery series—featuring Montana’s favorite private detective. Buffalo Jump Blues, fifth in the series, is now available.
A story of lost treasure, Cold Hearted River begins with the death of a woman, stranded in a spring snowstorm, who in desperation climbs into a bear’s den. When Sheriff Martha Ettinger, reunited with once-again lover Sean Stranahan, investigates, she finds a fly wallet in a pannier of the dead woman's horse, the leather engraved with the initials EH. Only a few days before, Patrick Willoughby, the president of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club, had been approached by a man selling fishing gear that he claims once belonged to Ernest Hemingway. A coincidence? Sean doesn't think so, and he soon finds himself on the trail of a missing steamer trunk rumored to contain not only the famous writer's valuable fly fishing gear, but priceless samples of his unpublished work.

The investigation will take Sean through extraordinary chapters in Hemingway's life. Inspired by a true story, Cold Hearted River is a thrilling adventure, moving from Montana to Michigan, where a woman grapples with the secrets in her heart, to a cabin in Wyoming under the Froze To Death Plateau, and finally to the ruins in Havana, where an old man struggles to complete his life's mission one true sentence at a time.

American-born spy and code-breaker extraordinaire Maggie Hope secretly navigates Nazi-occupied France to find two brave women during the darkest days of World War II in the latest novel in this New York Times bestselling series—“a treat for WWII buffs and mystery lovers alike.” (Booklist, on The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent)
Maggie Hope has come a long way since serving as a typist for Winston Churchill. Now she’s working undercover for the Special Operations Executive in the elegant but eerily silent city of Paris, where SS officers prowl the streets in their Mercedes and the Ritz is draped with swastika banners. Walking among the enemy is tense and terrifying, and even though she’s disguised in chic Chanel, Maggie can’t help longing for home.

But her missions come first. Maggie’s half sister, Elise, has disappeared after being saved from a concentration camp, and Maggie is desperate to find her—that is, if Elise even wants to be found. Equally urgent, Churchill is planning the Allied invasion of France, and SOE agent Erica Calvert has been captured, the whereabouts of her vital research regarding Normandy unknown. Maggie must risk her life to penetrate powerful circles and employ all her talents for deception and spycraft to root out a traitor, find her sister, and locate the reports crucial to planning D-Day in a deadly game of wits with the Nazi intelligence elite.

Erin at Flashlight Commentary

Stephanie at Layered Pages

Heather at The Maiden's Court
Holly at 2 Kids and Tired Books
Colleen at A Literary Vacation

#BookReview Dead Man's Fancy by Keith McCafferty

Dead Man's Fancy by Keith McCafferty
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wolves howl as a riderless horse returns at sunset to the Culpepper Dude Ranch in the Madison Valley. The missing woman, Nanika Martinelli, is better known as the Fly Fishing Venus, a red-haired river guide who lures clients the way dry flies draw trout.

As Sheriff Martha Ettinger follows hoof tracks in the snow, she finds one of the men who has fallen under the temptress’s spell impaled on the antler tine of a giant bull elk, a kill that’s been claimed by a wolf pack. An accident? If not, is the killer human or animal? With painter, fly fisherman, and sometimes private detective Sean Stranahan’s help, Ettinger will follow clues that point to an animal rights group called the Clan of the Three-Clawed Wolf and to their svengali master, whose eyes blaze with pagan fire.

In their most dangerous adventure yet, Stranahan and Ettinger find themselves in the crossfire of wolf lovers, wolf haters, and a sister bent on revenge, and on the trail of an alpha male gone terribly wrong.

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I turned to the Sean Stranahan series when I ran out of Longmire books to read. I love reading modern western books and Sheriff Martha Ettinger has, together with Sean Sean Stranahan, become favorite characters of mine.

In this book is Martha Ettinger trying to find a woman that has gone missing. Nanika Martinelli, the missing woman's horse showed up without any rider and Martha follows the tracks in the snow, but instead of finding the woman does she stumble over a dead man impaled on the antler tine of a bull elk. And elk that seems to have been killed by wolves. Is this an accident or is it murder? Sean Stranahan, on the other hand, is contacted by the sister of Nanika Martinelli, to find Nanika. Could both cases, the missing woman, and the dead man, have some connections? But why would anyone want to kill the man and where is Nanika?

Dead Man's Fancy is a good book, not a favorite book of mine in this series, but I liked reading it. Sean and Martha have a lot of chemistry (right from the first book was that noticeable) and since I have read the book after this was I looking forward to reading about them taking their relationship to the next step.

However, this is not a romance novel, so it's not a dominant storyline. The murder case and the missing woman case are interesting. I did suspect the ending of the missing woman case. There were hints throughout the book that made me suspect things that were revealed at the end. Still, I found the ending good.

The pacing of the book was now and then a bit slow, too slow for my liking. Hence, the rating. However, I do recommend this series, and the next book in the series, Crazy Mountain is fabulous.  

Cover Crush: Cold Hearted River by Keith McCafferty

For new visitors do I want to explain that Cover Crush is something that my friend Erin over at Flashlight Commentary came up with and I adopted the idea together with some other friends. And, now we try to put up a Cover Crush every week. You can check below my pick of the week for their choices this week!

Viking (Penguin Publishing Group)

FRONTLIST | On Sale Date: July 4, 2017

ISBN 9780525429609, 0525429603

Hardcover | 320 pages

Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural

The sixth novel in the acclaimed Sean Stranahan mystery series

Sheriff Martha Ettinger reunites with once-again lover and sometime private detective Sean Stranahan to investigate the death of a woman who was stranded in a spring snowstorm. When a fly wallet is found in a pannier on the saddle of the woman’s horse, the leather engraved with the initials EH, Stranahan shows the wallet to Patrick Willoughby, the president of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club. Only a few days before, Willoughby was approached by a man selling fishing gear that had belonged to a famous outdoorsman and writer. All the clues point to an obsession with Ernest Hemingway, and Sean soon finds himself on the trail of a missing steamer trunk rumored to contain not only the writer’s valuable fly fishing gear, but perhaps even priceless samples of his unpublished work.

The investigation leads Sean into the salacious world of Chinese traditional medicines, and through one extraordinary chapter in Hemingway’s life to another. From a trout river in Michigan where a woman grapples with the cold in her hands and heart, to the ruins of Havana, and finally, to a cabin in Wyoming under the Froze To Death Plateau, Keith McCafferty’s latest novel in the Sean Stranahan mystery series is a thrilling tale.

Some thoughts about the cover:

This cover follows the same trail as the previous books, and I love the strong colors and the artwork. 

Check out what my friends have picked for Cover Crush's this week:

Flashlight Commentary

2 Kids and Tired Books

Layered Pages

The Maidens Court

A Literary Vacation

#BookReview The Gray Ghost Murders by Keith McCafferty

The Gray Ghost Murders by Keith McCafferty
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Fourteen months after moving to Montana, fly fisherman, painter, and sometime private detective Sean Stranahan is still sleeping in his office-cum-art-studio, but he’s no longer a newcomer. He now knows the rivers and has a new sweetheart, Martinique. And when the bear-ravaged remains of two men are found on Sphinx Mountain, Sheriff Martha Ettinger once more turns to Stranahan for help in solving what smells like murder. Meanwhile, he’s also been hired by a group of eccentric fishermen to find their valuable, and possibly stolen, Gray Ghost fly. Could the theft be connected to the gray ghosts haunting the mountain? To find out, Stranahan will cross paths, and arms, with some of the most powerful people in the Madison Valley.

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I was delighted to discover The Sean Stranahan series when I ran out of Longmire books to read. (Check up Craig Johnsons Longmire books, they are great). Sean Stranahan moved to Montana after a failed marriage and he is now a painter, fly fisherman and private investigator. In the first book, The Royal Wulff Murders did he help out Martha Ettinger with a case and they have an easy-going relationship with banter and quite a lot of chemistry between them. Unfortunately, they are also seeing other people, but that doesn't stop the sparks between them.

I do like these kinds of books. There is just something about Montana, the mountains, sheriffs and strange crimes that just floats my boat. As I wrote above did I start to read this series when I didn't have more Longmire books to read, and I recommend this series to Longmire fans. For one thing, Keith McCafferty has created some really good characters. Sean Stranahan is great, and I love that it's a female Sheriff in charge and Martha Ettinger is one hell of a woman. They make a great team!

The story in this book is good, and the dead body case took an interesting turn when the circumstances for the deaths were revealed, although I was not surprised when it came to whom was involved in it. Well, I did not figure out the whole plot, there were still some tings that happened that I didn't see coming. Still it was an interesting case. The missing fly case felt a little like a second case, not that important and not that big a mystery. Still, it served it purpose in the end.

I did, however, feel that the book becomes a bit slow now and then in the middle, but it picked up speed towards the end and it ended on a high note. There was, however, one part of the book that really got to me and that was Sean and his new "girlfriend" dealing with her dying cat. I have a serious problem reading and watching anything that deals with animals getting hurt or dies. But, at the same time, it dealt with really beautiful in this book because the cat was really loved.