Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and Fun Historical Mystery w/ Twists Galore
Review: This is the second Fremont Jones mystery I've read. I ended up sitting in my bath after it got cold because I had to finish. The book starts out with the great earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco. In the uproar after the quake, Fremont has to track down all kinds of threads of several mysteries. I like Day's ability to keep a multilevel plot going, and the realism of her characters. The only problem is at the very end she ties together all the plots and it just doesn't quite work. However, over all this book is wonderful I'd highly reccomend it.
Rating:
Summary: Though a mystery, more of an historical character study
Review: This is the second Fremont Jones story I've read and I've found both books to be finely drawn character studies. Jones rebels against turn-of-the-century expectations for women, how they should dress, conduct themselves, subjugate their aspirations and rights to their husbands (Gawd! Are we twenty-first century husbands lucky or what?). As a result she never intends to marry, embarks on her own business, lives independently, all as a young twenty-something. In Fire and Fog, having to deal with the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake, along with sinister sub-plots that surround her, she is remarkably resilient and tough, qualities I admire in anyone, women and men. Nonetheless, she is not so tough as to be unreasonably fearless, longing from time-to-time for the help from women and men she has encountered, especially Meiling Li and Michael Archer, and to some extent, Nurse Bartlett. This makes her all the more human and sympathetic a character. If I had a teeny problem with the narrative, it was that, if she was going to make friends with a car, a Maxwell yet, I wanted to know more about the car! I am a man after all and we like cars, often imbuing them with human qualities ourselves, as she did. Also, I thought the denouement was inexplicably one paragraph long, not that tight editing is a bad thing. It just seemed that after such detail about the characters, the earthquake, the ensuing fire, (and less the car) it was surprising to find out the identity and motives of the villain or villainess in a few lines near the end of the book. A somewhat unsatisfying discovery. I guess it was like buying all the equipment for a mountain climb, carefully assembling it, studiously putting it on and checking all of the ties, and ropes, and straps, then climbing in a helicopter for a ride to the top. No, I didn't guess who the evil doer was, but perhaps that's because I let myself be led by the identity of villain or villianess in her first book. I can see how someone else though might be able to ascertain the identity earlier than I did. Consistently well-written, though periodically poorly edited (Spell-Check isn't good enough!)I read it quickly. But you have to understand me: I get cranky if I don't have a book going.
Rating: 
Summary: Readers are invited to the Fremont Jones website
Review: You are invited to visit my website, The Strange Web of Fremont Jones, at http://members.aol.com/dianneday
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