....and why am I still having trouble typing 2006????
#3: Rose by Martin Cruz Smith. I think I had this on my list of "to reads" from a time when I asked for book suggestions for my book club. Rose didn't make it to the Inkblots list, but it landed on my own personal list. I found it on the clearance rack at Half Price Books, so it came home with me.
Rose is a mystery of a sort--the story of mining engineer John Blair,
in England after an extended stay in Africa. He has been brought to Wigan, a coal-mining town, by Bishop Hannay. The bishop wants Blair to find John Maypole, his curate who has gone missings. Oh, and Maypole was the Bishop's daughter's fiance. Twists and turns abound, and people are not what, or who, they seem.
Smith does a good job of describing location and the coal mining industry of the novel's time. It made me claustrophobic to think about it. And it made me grateful to live in a physically easier time and place. I think it's easy for us to forget how hard the physical labor of living was.
On a scale of 5 stars, I'd give this one a 3 1/2 star rating.
