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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