Cozy fans seem to love the series cast and following their lives from book to book but that doesn’t usually hook me. MURDER AND MAMON: Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery #4 by Mia P. Manansala is an exception: I really enjoyed watching the Filipina-American protagonist and her sprawling family more than I cared about following the mystery. Not that the mystery — a visiting relative gets murdered, harassers target the protagonist’s family’s laundromats — was bad, it’s just that the family turned out captivating. I’ll try another in the series eventually.
Alex Robinson’s BOX OFFICE POISON might have worked if I’d bought a copy and read it in small doses, but that wasn’t an option with a library copy. And at 600+ pages, the 1990s stories of a circle of 20something friends wasn’t compelling enough to keep me readn gmore than half way through the book .
HELLBOY AND THE BPRD: The Secret of Chesbro House by Mike Mignola and various collaborators is an excellent collection in which Hellboy battles a cyclops, a couple of haunted houses and a ghostly street in Budapest. Good, fun horror and monsters.
BATMAN ’66 MEETS STEED AND MRS. PEEL by Ian Edginton and Matthew Dow Smith is the kind of crossover that used to be confined to fan-fiction, not that I’m complaining. When British businesswoman Michaela Gough (the name will be a dead giveaway to a lot of Avengers fans — it certainly was to me) visits Bruce Wayne, Gotham City is suddenly under attack by the unstoppable robot Cybernauts. Steed and Mrs. Peel (for obvious reasons the comic didn’t go with the Avengers name) have defeated them before — but when the robot are backed up by Lord Ffog and Mr. Freeze? Good thing there’s a couple of Yanks who can team up with them, eh? This isn’t a perfect mashup — the Avengers style is quite distinctive and doesn’t fit smoothly with the Adam West show — but it’s a very fun one nonetheless.
#SFWApro. All rights to image remain with current holder. And for those who celebrate, have a Merry Christmas Eve, y’all.
