The Correspondent by Virginia Evans – Book

From a Google Image Search – Amazon

Sybil Van Antwerp rarely leaves her home these days. She runs errands, goes for walks, goes to garden club meetings and tends her flower garden. She clerked for many years for a well-known judge. People always ask her why she was content to be a clerk to a great man, when she could have been great in her own right. She always reminds them that when she grew up women did not have all the options available to them now.

Sybil writes. She corresponds. She writes letters on the stationery she has used for decades. Sybil writes letters to friends, to favorite authors, to her best friend, Rosalie, to her brother Bruce, her son Felix (and her dead son Gilbert), to her daughter Fiona, and even to her ex-husband Daan. Rosalie and Sybil always end their letters to each other by telling what book they are reading. She has written to Joan Didion and Ann Patchett and has no compunctions about sending off missives to famous people. Guilt is an undercurrent in her letters, but, of course, guilt is an undercurrent in all our lives if we are older than twenty-five.

Sybil knows that she will soon be blind, which may be a reason she stays so close to home. She knows her property is desirable as it has a water view and is close to DC. She writes all her letters while she can still while sitting at a window that faces the water. She hasn’t told even some of her family members about the condition that will most certainly end in blindness.

The universe is a mysterious place. Just when you’re enjoying your daily routine, your rut, your hamster wheel, the universe sets things in motion that will bring change to your life. Sybil doesn’t shift gears easily but, in the end, there is information and there are people that get her out of her rut and allow her to embrace the very things that will make her life fuller.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a novel that consists completely of letters sent and received by Sybil. This cannot have been an easy novel to write and, unless it is based on real correspondence, required planning, consistency, a list of characters, and a coordinated timeline. Perhaps Virginia Evans will inspire you to become a correspondent, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter because the novel is well done and doesn’t make any demands on you to become a writer of letters.

The Widow by John Grisham – Book

From a Google Image Search – Penguin Random House

John Grisham has been a very prolific writer. I haven’t read all his books, but I remember reading The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Client, each in one gulp. You know the experience; you are so engrossed in reading that you forget to eat, and you stay up way too late. So, I check back in with John Grisham now and then and then wander off in other directions until I find myself picking up a new book he has written. He writes from the world of courts and lawyers for a legal adventure that reminds me of all the corruption humans are heir to, and all the ways good laws, good judges and good lawyers can set things right. The Widow, Grisham’s newest book tells just such a story.

Simon Latch is a small-town lawyer. He handles “bankruptcies, drunk driving charges, delinquent child support payments, foreclosures, nickel-and-dime car wrecks, suspicious slip-and-falls, dubious disability claims” and occasionally, estate work – updated last will and testaments. He is bored with it all and is finding excitement in sport’s gambling at Chub’s Pub, getting himself in a bit of debt, but still under control. He and his wife have three children but there is no love left between them. His blah life perks up when Eleanor Barnett (Nettie), an 85-year-old widow walks into his law office.

Nettie wants Simon to write a new will. She doesn’t trust Wally Thackerman who wrote the last one. Wally did plan to steal a good chunk of Nettie’s net worth, even though no one could pin down whether she was rich at all. She mentioned Coca Cola stock and Walmart stock worth about 16 million.

Greed is one of mankind’s seven deadly sins and it can afflict any of us. Wally was greedy and unethical. Simon silently vowed to keep his greed in check and keep his work on the right side of the law. He did keep the will secret from his secretary; he did meet his client for lunches so they could try ethnic foods. He was responsible for her love of a certain ginger cookie which led to Simon’s arrest for murder. Was he guilty?

Enjoy the book to find out about Nettie’s bad driving and what happens to Simon. See if you like Raymond Lassiter as well as I did and add to your schema on poisons (thallium, in particular). Warning: you might stay up all night.

Flesh by David Szalay – Book

From a Google Image Search – Simon and Schuster

David Szalay’s main character Istvan, in his Booker Prize (2025) winning book, Flesh, is an exploration of “contemporary masculinity” according to Esquire. Esquire also describes the writer’s style as spare. Okay. If you read the book, you might be tempted to count the number of times the response “okay” appears in the dialogue. It could be argued that English is not Istvan’s first language, he is Hungarian, one of the most difficult languages to learn, we are told.

Istvan’s vapidity does not seem to be related to being Hungarian, however. He is not the only character to respond with just the one word “okay”. Perhaps his lack of verbal content reflects the emptiness of his mind, or his soul. And perhaps other characters copy his laconic way of speaking.

He must be handsome because women seem to like him, especially women with older husbands. His first sexual experience happens with a middle-aged neighbor woman when he is fifteen. It ends badly (an understatement). He does not seem to carry around a burden of guilt. After subsequently serving in the Hungarian army, Istvan goes to England. He works as a bouncer until he has the good fortune to meet a mentor (male) who hires him to serve as a driver for wealthy families. As his bank account gets healthier, he leaves his mentor’s company, and he becomes a permanent driver for Helen, Karl and Thomas. His life gets more complex, but his feelings are as opaque as ever and the dialogue is still monosyllabic.

The author allows us to know some of the inner workings of Helen’s mind and some of the details of her married life, but no insight into Istvan’s mind. Helen’s son Thomas assigns nefarious motives to Istvan, but Istvan seems to be unworried about whether his actions might be considered immoral and criminal. It all just happens. (Okay.) Istvan accepts Thomas’ hostility, perhaps remembering his own sullen behavior from his younger days. He makes a few feeble attempts to connect with Thomas, but he lacks any real motivation.

It’s not easy to write a book so lacking in emotional depth and to make it a great read. One day, Istvan may become one of those classic characters who we refer to as if he’s a real person. He is so passive that when he could be accused of murder, or theft he shakes it off, he doesn’t own that any repercussions of his actions might rebound on him. The way he handles grief also exposes a coolness bordering on coldness. I get what Szalay has done. At least I think I get it. After all I am just a girl.

King’s Ransom by Janet Evanovich – Book

Gabriela Rose is the newest Janet Evanovich main character. She pursues stolen art, jewelry, and other insured items as a recovery agent. Gabriela began her career in The Recovery Agent and is now entertaining us in the second novel, King’s Ransom. Perhaps you’re familiar with Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books which are laugh-out-loud, share-with-friends-and -family fun, and as tasty as any amuse bouche in the world of fiction. Gabriela is just as fearless as Stephanie, although she inhabits a more sophisticated world. But, like Stephanie, Gabriela does not forget her old friends.

In the first chapter we find her working for an insurance company to recover jewelry. Since husband and wife are involved in a contentious divorce she decides to look close to home, the home the husband now occupies. She waits until the husband holds a public event at the house. While everyone is distracted, she rappels into a well on the husband’s property.

“She kicked around and felt something solid under her foot. Her heart skipped a beat. She put her hand into the muck and pulled out a plastic ziplock gallon freezer bag filled with jewelry.”…

“What’s going on? Luis called down. Everything okay?”

…

“In less than a minute she was out of the well with the bag tucked into her tights.”

“What were you in a previous life?” Luis asked. “Marine commando? Where’d you learn to climb like that?”

She peels off her muddy clothes and is left in her La Perla underwear. The peacock did it.

This is exactly the dashing way that Gabriela goes about solving high stakes crimes for the rewards insurance companies pay. There are references to The Thomas Crowne Affair (two of my favorite movies). Gabriela finds she has some unusual, and less-than-welcome, participants in her newest endeavor, the one that involves a “king’s ransom”.

When she arrives home from the jewelry case (home is an apartment in Soho, NYC) she finds her ex-husband, Rafer Jones singing in her shower and his cousin Harley Patch passed out on her sofa. There are proper embellishments offered which I will let you read for yourself. This is where the real fun begins. These three have been friends since school days and Rafer has been Gabriela’s ex for long enough that they can relate by sarcasm (and the familiarity of old friends) rather than anger. Rafer and Harley have not been trained to investigate thefts for insurance companies, but this case is personal. Their lack of training gets them, Gabriela included, in one pickle after another.

Harley has been working for a bank which is starting to look a bit shady. Now he’s being blamed for crimes he did not commit. And for some reason people are getting shot (double tap style). Several valuable items have been stolen including the Rosetta Stone, but the most valuable one of all is a gold coffin of a newly unearthed Egyptian king, King Tut’s brother.

Would Gabriela be better off without these two? Indubitably. But what fun would that be. And then there is Ahmed El Ghaly, who Gabriela doesn’t quite trust.

Evanovich’s books are perfect to snuggle down with on a quiet weekend or a snow day. She always knows how to combine the genres of thriller and comedy in delicious ways. A bit of sexual attraction adds to the fun without being overly graphic. I believe I have read almost every one of her books, although I may have missed one or two because I got distracted by politics. Sometimes reading should be fun.