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One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I’m going to do this series a disservice and just babble on here at the current stopping point, instead of talking about each book individually. Even though the individual books are trying a lot of different and interesting things with structure, usually successfully.



I read these in one sustained gulp through a work slump and summer insomnia. And I kept thinking confusedly “but I don’t like this sort of thing!” as I lunged desperately for the next book.



“This sort of thing” being improbable series mystery with manufactured tension of the criminal and sexual sort and no soul. And I’m right, I don’t like that sort of thing.



This is something else entirely. It’s contemporary fiction about two people who discover, beneath their age difference and the part where she’s a priest and he’s an atheist and their differing politics, that they are . . . you know. The big cheese. “The other half of me.” Except he’s married. And how they deal with that, while trying so hard to be ethical because that’s who they are, not just because they’re supposed to behave a certain way. And how they try to hold on to the amazing thing they’ve found. And how they fail. And how they deal.



And spreading out from them, it’s about their entire town – her church and his police force – about a dozen marriages, and griefs, and mistakes, and how everyone is connected to everyone else, and just . . . stuff.



She has a tendency to lean towards “issue” books. This most recent book is about returning Iraq veterans, and there’s a bit of ‘and your issue is drug addiction, and your issue is anger management, and your issue is your newly acquired disability.’ Except it’s also a book about help. About someone who has to this point been defined by what she most often says, “how can I help?” And how hard it is for her to be able to say, “now I need.” Simple stuff, prettily but simply written, and yet. Apparently I like this sort of thing.



Oh, and there’s a murder mystery in each one but you know. Whatever.





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In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Hey, I liked this! I don’t like many traditional mysteries. Though to be fair, I don’t actually like this mystery qua mystery.



He’s the police chief of a tiny, upstate New York town. She’s a former army pilot turned Episcopal priest. (She’s improbable in that way that makes a character seem more real, instead of less, if you know what I mean). They solve crime, yeah, whatever. But mostly they have this slow-blooming connection. This book is about them becoming friends in this wonderful, organic, completely believable way. They are sexually neutralized to each other – he’s married and she’s a priest – so they come together free from most of the usual romance bullshit. Just two interesting, conflicted, smart, ethical people who don’t notice that they’re falling until it’s way too late.



Really nice.





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