Missive #407

A rumor campaign threatens to thwart London barrister Leo Davies’s hope of election to that rarefied strata of the British legal hierarchy, the Queen’s Counsel. The rumors are based on truth, for Leo’s sex life is hardly conventional. In a typical mystery novel, such a scenario would lead to blackmail or murder…or both. But Caro Fraser’s new novel is neither typical nor a mystery. All of the drama in this character study of a fascinating protagonist comes from Leo’s interior struggle with issues of sex, love, class, and ambition. The real mystery is how erroneously this book has been cast as a legal thriller.This is certainly not a legal thriller. I was tempted to give up on it when about half way through but almost never give up on a book. It is the second book in a series and ends on a note that makes you want to read the next book. I’ll be doing that and hope for the best. Advised that the best way to scotch the rumors is to take a wife, Leo becomes involved with Rachel Dean, a beautiful and emotionally rigid solicitor who has good reason to be so guarded. That Leo’s close friend Anthony also covets Rachel might initially strike readers as an unnecessary diversion, but Fraser brilliantly uses the men’s relationship to illuminate Leo’s complicated sexual nature, which is enacted in his courtship of Rachel and his almost inadvertent wakening of her sexual passion. “There’s too much fear in you,” Leo says when Anthony charges him with using Rachel to further his own ambitions. “Don’t you remember? Or don’t you want to remember? There are things you don’t want to confront–things about Rachel that you’ll never understand. You’re empty. You’re devoid of anything that could help her, because you’ve never been to that part of yourself where you find out things, the best and the worst. But you’re young. You’ll learn.” Leo’s journey through the tortuous landscape of his own mental inferno makes for compelling reading in a sophisticated and engrossing novel. — Book promo @ goodreads.com

Not a lot happening here. I went to town yesterday and had breakfast at the Mornings café. From there it was a stop at Safeway for groceries and the to the laundromat and back to the Campground. I have contacted the VA Patient Advocate in Tucson and will be going to see her next Tuesday to see if I can get my identity verified with signin.gov or id.me so I will still be able to access MYHealthVet and Social Security.

The weather guessers have been forecasting freezing lows for the past five days and only one of them has been freezing. They have the same forecast through this weekend and then a week of above freezing lows are in their forecast. I don’t trust them; I have my basement heater plugged in.