I quit reading Patricia Cornwell because her writing kept getting darker and darker. However, she's a really good writer so I thought I'd give her another try with investigator Win Garano and Massachusetts DA Monique Lamont. Again, great writing but there's not one character in these books that I like.

It's so great to have authors and continuing characters that you know you can count on. Gideon Oliver, "The Skeleton Detective", by Aaron Elkins is one of those. It's also refreshing, because Gideon's personal life is good. He's married to a wonderful woman so the book can concentrate on the murder, or murders, and the bones on hand with a lot of information on growth factors, etc., without feeling like it needs more conflict in the form of his personal life. This latest is Skull Duggery, set in Mexico, and has a full roster of bones to identify.

Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow was wondrful-and sad. It's based on a true story of two brothers in NY who start out as very privileged kids in an upper-crust Fifth Ave home across from Central Park. They end up, very sadly, as home-bound, blind, paranoid, hoarders. This book is the biographical imagining of how that happened. Poignantly, beautifully written.

Another Linda Fairstein-The Bone Vault. I am enjoying her descriptions of how things work in the D.A.'s office of New York's sex crimes unit. She obviously writes from experience. However, I'm still having trouble with the depiction of her personal life.

Also, Cool in Tucson by Elizabeth Gunn. This series follows Tucson police detective Sarah Burke. She's smart and ambitious and I'm liking the character. I had read the next one in the series and read this one to fill in some gaps. Her personal life is difficult. She's divorced, her sister is an addicted single mother, her mom is getting older, and she loves her niece and worries about the best way to help and protect her from her mother.