So  years ago, when I was 15, my friend and I visited her sister at college in DC. While waiting for everyone to get ready to go clubbing in Georgetown, I picked up a book, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, that either the friend’s sister or one of her roommates was reading for a class (I can’t remember which). Anyway, I was hooked and ended up purchasing the book so I could finish it when I was home. Since then I’ve probably read it two or three more times. I’m not sure what attracted me to it, the science fiction, the dystopian society, the hope for the future, the characters, the images, don’t know but it haunted me.

Death QualifiedFast forward 35 years and I’m on the hunt for new books to read and finally it occurs to me to see if Kate Wilhelm, the author of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang has written anything else. Head smack moment because it turns out the Kate Wilhelm is probably one of the most prolific authors of our times. Furthermore, she writes a mystery series, the Barbara Holloway series, and our library had them!  But they didn’t have the first one, Death Qualified, in Kindle form.

Being the cheap ass (nee idiot) that I am, I just didn’t go over to Amazon to purchase it. Instead I waited and finally my library got the kindle version which I signed up to take out immediately and got to read it this past week. Not going to lie, it didn’t grab me as her other book did, and took a while for me to get into it as the story focuses first on one person, then another, before you ever meet Barbara Holloway. Once there though, I was hooked and plowed through the story over the next few nights.

It’s not an easy read and even thirty six years after reading Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, I found some of the themes (e.g., what is utopia), carried in this book too. Plus there is a bit of science fiction that kicks into the story. Lastly, while a mystery is resolved, this book does not necessarily provide closure. Which is why I ran back to my library to take out the second book in the series only to find, all those Barbara Holloway books I’d seen at the library on Kindle last year, gone!  Oh well.  Looks like I’ll be getting the next book the old fashioned way, purchasing it.

So while not an easy cozy, I liked it and will continue on with the series, giving it three stars on the Goodread scale.