Stalking Charlie Fox

“If you stay involved with Sean Meyer you will end up killing again,” my father said. “and next time, Charlotte, you might not get away with it.”
Charlie Fox’s father in Road Kill.

Yes, I am still reading and following the adventures of my favourite heroine Charlie Fox.  I have somehow got them out of order, but as I have already said, each novel stands alone and one doesn’t have to have read any of the others in the series.

In Road Kill we find Charlie involved with a group of bikers who are really so innocent that they get themselves involved with an unscrupulous gang of thieves.

Charlie is taking time out to sort out her life and her feelings for her boss, Sean Meyer..  She is refurbishing her parents’ cottage and instead of overseeing the refurbishment is doing much of the hard work herself.    Into this scene comes a friend to advise that a really close friend has been seriously injured in a motor cycle accident and a second person has died.

Leaving the demolition  work unfinished she rushes  to Clare her friend’s side and is relieved to find that the dead man is not Clare’s partner  but some other  man.  Jacob, Clare’s partner is away in Ireland on a buying tour for his business.  Stories about the accident flow around; there is bad feeling towards Charlie from the biking group and when Charlie is brutally attacked  by Jacob’s ex-wife and her strongman thug things begin to get out of hand.

Clare is very vague and secretive about what she was doing with this other man and how she came to be riding with him on his motorbike instead of riding her own beloved bike.   Gossip has Jacob’s son involved with Clare (surprising  to Charlie given how close Clare and Jacob are) and Charlie decides to investigate further.  She learns that there is to be a trip to Ireland for the motorcycle group and is determined to become part of the trip, partly because Clare and Jacob have asked her to look after Jacob’s son, but also because nobody will or can give them a straight answer as to why the trip has to go ahead even after the tragedy.   After proving herself capable of riding and keeping up with them, she is allowed to join them.  Sean is also allowed to go along after he proves to the group that he would be a good person to have along.

I won’t go into more detail as it would spoil the story for any one else but it is well written (of course) and has a good plot, with our heroine (is there a better word for this) coming up trumps once again.

Needless to say, this novel is full of motorcycles (both Zoe and Charlie’s favoured form of transport), guns, shooting, good guys and plenty of bad guys; innocents abroad who really should not be allowed out on their own, murder, mayhem and some good love scenes between Charlie and Sean.  I wonder where this relationship is going.

So as you can see a jolly good read and again, one that I recommend.

Click on the image to go to Zoe Sharp;s home page

And I still have the next two books in the series sitting patiently waiting for me to get to them.  So look out for more on this feisty woman, her lover and her exploits.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience:
this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain

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I Spy

As with most of my friends of my age I find that I now need to wear my glasses from almost the time I get up in the morning until I go to sleep.  The one notable exception is my elder sister who , while needing glasses in her early years now no longer even needs her specs for reading.  How fair is that?

And now I notice that each of my children, and their spouses, need glasses for reading.

So with my glasses on am I seeing any more clearly?  Looking around my world I see that there is still strife and war; still hungry children; still abused children and still homeless people.

But today, we didn’t need our glasses on to see the pod of Orca whales spotted in Wellington harbour; they were swimming about 100 metres off shore this afternoon.

Orca whales in Wellington Harbour

Earlier reports had them on the other side of the harbour.  A local man, with a friend visiting from Hawaii spotted the pod .  Apparently they followed the pod for about 90 minutes.  He also said dolphins were playing with the Orcas and they could be seen diving alongside the whales.

According to the Department of Conservation  Orcas come into the Wellington Harbour several times a year.  We are told the whales could have been following the coast line of the North Island and followed it into the harbour.  Or they could be taking shelter from turbulent conditions in open sea.

We are also told by DOC that while commonly called ”killer whales”, Orcas are actually large dolphins.

But we obviously didn’t have our glasses on when some shady deals were being made.  The Serious Fraud Office has revealed it is investigating another failed finance company over alleged related party deals.

SFO chief executive Adam Feeley this afternoon said a probe had begun into the affairs of NZF Group, including commercial and residential loan provider NZF Money that collapsed in July last year owing debenture holders $16.4 million.

How many more of these finance companies are going to be in the spotlight in the coming months.  And how many people have lost or will lose their retirement funds having invested in these companies.

And I shall need my spectacles to see the upcoming movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  We have seen the trailer for this movie every time we have been to the cinema recently and I am really looking forward to it.

The blurb tells us the story follows a group of British retirees who decide to “outsource” their retirement to less expensive and seemingly exotic India. Enticed by advertisements for the newly restored Marigold Hotel and bolstered with visions of a life of leisure, they arrive to find the palace a shell of its former self. Though the new environment is less luxurious than imagined, they are forever transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past.

So what else do I see through these spectacles?

I visited the library today and picked up a couple of books by a writer new to me, Charles Finch.  My elder sister told me about him a weeks or so ago and then today I read this post from Marie at My Life, Such as It is.  I now have both this book September Society and the earlier one in the series A Beautiful Blue Death to read.

So now I am off to bed with a cup of coffee to read about the antics and adventures of this “Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer”, Charles Lennox.  I hope the stories are as interesting as I am led to believe by Marie and my sister, Christine.

“The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn’t detect.” Mark Twain.

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• In Wellington Today (growingyoungereachday.wordpress.com)
• What animal group does the orca (killer whale) belong to? (greenanswers.com)
• Hugging an Orca…a killer whale! (mermaidhotline.wordpress.com)
• What “man’s best friend” has to say… (mermaidhotline.wordpress.com)