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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 16, 2017)
18 // COASTWEEKEND.COM BOOK SHELF // GLIMPSE // WILDLIFE // POP CULTURE // WORDS // Q&A // FOOD // FUN BOOKMONGER Find pregnant women, furry critters, deadly plots in murder mysteries By BARBARA LLOYD MCMICHAEL Some folks can gobble up murder mysteries for breakfast, lunch and dinner; so in their honor this week, we’re going to look at a couple of recent offerings in that genre. Seattle novelist and certified yoga therapist Tracy Weber launched her Downward Dog series in 2014 with “Murder Strikes a Pose.” Now the fourth installment, “A Fatal Twist,” has arrived in bookstores. Yoga instructor Kate Davidson is still running her yoga studio, living with her boyfriend Michael, and so- cializing her rescue German shepherd. But now she’s added a couple new layers to her busy life — fostering two puppies that were left on the doorstep of Michael’s pet shop, and training to become a doula in order to help her friend Rene, who is pregnant with twins. The fatal twist comes when Kate agrees to attend the opening of the new birthing center where Rene is scheduled to have her ba- bies. At the event, she runs into one of her yoga clients, Rachel, who is married to a fertility doctor at the center. But before the evening is over, Rachel is a widow and murder suspect No. 1. Kate, certain that her client could not possibly be a killer, is convinced that she must sleuth out the real murderer because the cops probably won’t bother to “A Fatal Twist” by Tracy Weber Midnight Ink, 312 pp., $14.99 “Expecting to Die” by Lisa Jackson Kensington, 470 pp., $9.99 look beyond their prime suspect. She prevails upon Rene to dog-sit her three challenging canines while she gallivants across the city, conducting an amateur investigation that becomes more convoluted than some of those extreme yoga poses you see on TV. When it comes to plot, author Weber may not al- ways succeed in getting you to suspend your disbelief. But her quirky characters ring true — particularly Kate, whose self-effacing humor, vegan lifestyle, cam- paign to democratize yoga, and soft spot for pooches make her someone you’d want to stay in touch with, book after book. This cozy mystery series is building its fan base on the strengths of her personality. Another writer of serial murder mysteries is Lisa Jackson. This uber-prolifi c Lake Oswego author has dozens of book credits; the most recent is “Expecting to Die,” the seventh book in her Montana-based Sele- na Alvarez/Regan Pescoli series. In Grizzly Falls, Detec- tive Pescoli is working right up to her due date. The mur- der of two teenaged girls in the woods outside of town is putting her on edge, particu- larly since her own teenaged daughter discovered one of the bodies — after being chased through the woods by what she described as a monster. The rumor mill has quickly turned this into a sasquatch sighting, and now a reality TV show is rolling into town. Jackson is an expert at plot complications, and they abound in “Expecting to Die.” In addition to murder, you’ll fi nd illicit affairs, teen pregnancies, a kidnapping and an ex-husband who’s a bum. It’s enough to make you want to throw in the towel on humanity. Or keep turning the pages, to fi nd out what comes next. The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com CHINOOK OBSERVER FILE PHOTO Clammers walk the beach during low tide. NW word nerd By RYAN HUME Tide [tīd] noun 1. The twice daily rise and fall of the sea due to pull of the sun and the moon. Each high and low tide lasts about 12 hours verb (archaic) 2. to drift, or ebb and fl ow, as in with the tide Origin: Enters English before 1121 from the Old English, tīd, which referred to a portion of time. Its original meaning in English was synonymous with the word “season,” as in a fi xed seg- ment of the year. The fi rst reference of the term being applied to the swell of the ocean is recorded in 1340. “More especially is this true of the tide lands, which form such a large and valuable percentage of Clatsop’s area. While the work of clearing from timber the land farther back is labo- rious and expensive — involving in some cases a cost of $100 dollars an acre — the dyking of the tide lands, though no less costly, insures at once an area of tillable soil convenient to market and capable of growing any cereal except Indian corn, and any root or grass known to man.” —Geo. B. Loring, U.S. Commissioner of Agriculture, “Clatsop County Tide Lands,” The Daily Astorian, Saturday, Aug. 9, 1884, P. 3 “It is claimed that on the tide lands at and above Knappa, cranber- ries can profi tably cultivated.” — “Clatsop’s Great Land Wealth,” The Daily Morning Astorian, Friday, Dec. 4, 1896, P. 1 “According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘tide’ originally meant ‘a portion, extent, or space of time; an age, a season, a time, a while’ and could also mean ‘a point in the duration of the day, month or year ... in reference to an action or repetition; occasion.’ You might recall those archaic words like ‘morrow-tide,’ ‘noontide’ or ‘eventide’ — now we call them morning, noon and evening, but back then ‘tide’ helped to distinguish a specifi c part of a day. This sense of the word is still with us, such as in the phrase ‘good tidings,’ which refers to a good event. Thus, in the adage ‘time and tide wait for no man,’ the two words were originally an alliterative reduplica- tion: synonyms that sounded good next to each other and emphasized the phrase’s meaning through repetition. The word ‘tide’ began to more exclusively mean ‘tide of the sea’ around 1500. This modern defi nition probably stems from the meaning ‘the time of high water’ or the space of time between low and high water. The meaning may have been borrowed from a similar Middle Low German word. Or the transference of sense could have gradually happened over the years, much like the changes wrought by an ebbing tide to a shoreline. It all goes to show that the message behind the words is real. Not even language is immune to the fl ow of time.” —Sedlak, Rebecca, “New in town: ‘Time and tide wait for no man,’” Coast Weekend, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2012, P. 3
