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My comfort reads are Sherlock Holmes pastiches. My sense, which may or may not be correct, is that Nicholas Myer opened the floodgates to these in the 1970s with The Seven Percent Solution. It got a lot of attention back when it was written. It appears that these are Myers's comfortable spaces as well. In The Return of the Pharaoh he gives Dr. Watson's wife tuberculosis, a face mask, and an excuse to travel to Egypt. Hijinx ensue, involving pyramids, Howard Carter, and of course, Sherlock Holmes. Myers doesn't capture the essence of Holmes as well as others; for my money, Lyndsay Faye is the best at that. This is partly because he's removed the pair from Baker Street and London. He's competent enough, though, and wandering around the Valley of Kings with the two of them was enjoyable and entertaining.

I read the first book in this series and liked it well enough to pick this one up. It's a very conventional Victorian-era mystery, which is to say, very upper-class and very white. The setting is the Oxford of that era, which is agreeable enough. The mystery itself is a little convoluted and unlikely for my taste. The protagonist is engaging and likely to move through interesting parts of society in London in future books. I'll pick up the next one.

This is the sixteenth in the October Daye urban fantasy series by Seanan McGuire. She's been building this rich, interesting series and illuminating its various nooks and crannies for quite some time. As a result, each new entry in the series (which arrive like clockwork every fall) works as much like a very enjoyable visit with old friends as it does like a book. The downside of that is that there's only so far she can go -- we want to recognize those old friends after all. But, she does a good job of keeping her characters growing and changing and, as a result, interesting. As expected, a very enjoyable read.

This series imagines Billy Boyle, Boston copy and nephew(ish) of Dwight Eisenhower on Ike's staff looking into crimes ranging from murder to smuggling and espionage. Billy's been through North Africa, Scilly, Italy, England, and Ireland as part of his assignment. Ably assisted by Lieutenant Piotr Kazimierez of the Polish Army in Exile, Bill and Kaz travel to the Solomon Islands to investigate the murder of one of the indigenous coast watchers. Complicating things is that the prime suspect is a young PT boat caption, Jack Kennedy. Benn's research is always top-notch, and he does a great job of using his novels to shine a lot on some less well-known parts of World War II.