‘Dead Reckoning’ by Charlaine Harris

The most recent installment in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire series has been eagerly anticipated by fans. This is likely due in part to the fact that HBO’s True Blood, which is based on the series, has become incredibly popular. Most of our recurring characters are back as we expect them, many with problems that we’re already familiar with, some with new problems.

Sookie Stackhouse, of course, is at the center of it all. The book begins with disasters at the bar, conflicts with the new ruler of Louisiana, and Sookie’s boy problems. Loyal readers will probably feel comfortably familiar with the plot and setting, as nothing much changes. Unfortunately, there were instances in the book in which Harris attempts to throw in some new slang – like ‘twoey’ for the two-natured shape-shifters – the result is completely underwhelming. But this is minimal. Most will finish the book wondering what will be next for everyone’s favorite cocktail waitress.

“Sent down for indecent behavior”

Decline and Fall (PR6045 .A97 D4 1993), first published by Evelyn Waugh in 1928, is one of my favorite comic novels. The protagonist is Paul Pennyfeather, an earnest theology student at Oxford University, who has the bad fortune to get in the way of the annual meeting of a group of wealthy upper-class alumni. The upshot is that the drunken club members take Paul’s clothes, and so Paul must run naked through the college quadrangle. So naturally, Paul is expelled for indecent behavior and forced to take a job teaching classics, English, mathematics, French, German, and the pipe organ (though knowing nothing about German or the organ).

Fortunately for Lincoln College students, Llanabba Castle School is nothing like Lincoln. At Lincoln, for example, no student has gotten shot by an instructor, and the school butler—Lincoln doesn’t even have a school butler—isn’t pretending to be a member of Russian Royalty. Paul fights despair but eventually finds some pleasure in his work, even the organ-teaching part. He becomes engaged to the mother of one of his students. Sadly—well, sadly, a lot of things happen, and Paul ends up in prison, framed on human-trafficking charges. Will Paul get out of prison? Or will he end up murdered by a psychotic cell-mate? Will the student who was shot recover from his wounds? Is Paul's fiancée being faithful? These questions don’t sound like funny ones, but in the book, they really are.