- Face Down Upon an Herbal by Kathy Lynn Emerson. This book I kept seeing every time I went looking for more Gideon Oliver books by Aaron Elkins. The title kept catching my eye, so I finally signed it out. It was okay. Pretty good, even. I liked that the author managed to create believable strong female characters in Elizabethan England. The herb detail was pretty cool, too. There was one thing that bothered me right in the early chapters though. The author made the first murder into a scene, in which the murderer is referred to as "the one he was waiting for" or "the one he'd come to meet" or something like that. Talk about witholding information. I hate that! Plus, I didn't think there was anything in that scene that couldn't have very easily been worked in elsewhere (except the author thumbing their nose at the reader and saying nyah nyah, I know who the culprit is an you only get to see a hazy silhouette and hear an electronically altered voice until the end). Um. Anyway, it was irritating and marred the story much more than one annoying scene should have. To be fair, the rest of the book was pretty good, and I'll probably read more about these characters if I happen across any books at the library.
One more library novel, then it'll probably be William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties. I'm in that sort of mood.
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