There’s something comfortable about the familiar. Everybody has that favorite television series, movie series, or book series to which they like to return. You know and like the characters, and you’re familiar with the creator’s storytelling style. It may even be like having a conversation with an old friend. Over the last year, I’ve read a few books in series that I’ve enjoyed.
What if Abraham Lincoln and his longtime friend Joshua Speed solved mysteries in their days as young law partners in Illinois? Jonathan Putnam, a nationally renowned lawyer and a Lincoln scholar, writes books that imagine exactly that. A House Divided is the fourth in the series. Inspired by actual events and lots of historical research, House Divided has Lincoln and Speed attempting to save their client from being convicted of murder and finding themselves mixed up in a great financial mystery. In the process, they find their friendship shaken by the appearance of a headstrong and forward-thinking young woman named Mary Todd. A House Divided is just as entertaining and interesting as the previous three entries in the series.
The Council of Twelve is the seventh book in a fictional series written by Oliver Potzsch. Potzsch wrote the first in the series, The Hangman’s Daughter, after he discovered that his family history included a long line of city executioners. That discovery led him into deep research of the lives of medieval and Renaissance-era executioners, and he found that the job was often hereditary, and, while the job of torturing and executing prisoners was considered essential, the executioners and their families lived in a very unique social position. On one hand, they were seen as unclean and unfit to live amongst the population, but, on the other hand, they were often sought out for their knowledge of healing and medicine. In The Council of Twelve, the hangman Jakob and his family travel to Munich for a meeting of the hangmen’s guild. In Munich, the family discovers that a number of young women have died under mysterious circumstances, and they set out to discover why. As in the previous six books, the mystery is intriguing, the story is entertaining, and it’s fun to see the family member grow and develop. For history lovers, there is also so much great historical detail about the time and place that you can almost picture the streets.
When Tony Hillerman died in 2008, many of his fans were afraid they had read the last of Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman had written 18 contemporary mystery novels starring Leaphorn and Chee that were full of the history, the legends, and the flavor of the Southwest and of Navajo and Pueblo culture. No need to worry though; Hillerman’s daughter, Anne Hillerman, picked up the pen and continued where her father left off. So far, she has written three Leaphorn and Chee novels, and they stand up to her father’s work.
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