Death on the River Walk, by Carolyn Hart (1999)

Carolyn Hart's heroine in this series of mysteries is Henrie O, doubtless a takeoff on the famous author of short stories with a twist, O. Henry.

Death on the River Walk, by Carolyn Hart (1999)

Backmatter:
Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-reporter Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins no longer chases hot stories all over the world, but murderous mysteries seem to find her. This time, a frantic phone call from an old and dear friend on the other side of the world sends Henrie O rushing to the fabled city of San Antion, (Texas) to check out the baffling disappearance of her friend's devoted granddaughter, Iris Chavez. Iris, employed at the Tesoros Gallery on SAn Antonio's famous River Walk, has suddenly dropped from sight without a word.

Soon Henrie O discovers that amidst the exquisite objects in the prestigious gallery and among the family members is hidden a dark secret--one Henrie O must uncover if she is to find Iris. Late one dark night on the River Walk, Henrie O sees a sprawled body...and realizes that treachery and disgrace lurk in the shadows of an old and respected business...and death awaits anyone daring to uncover the truth.

Opening paragraph

I glanced at the computer printout that rested on the passenger seat of the rental car, a casual picture of a grandmother and granddaughter, arms linked, faces aglow with laughter and love. The bright photograph had been scanned into a computer half a world awayand the resulting crisp picture that had issued from my daughter's computer was one of the small miracles that no one remarks in today's technological wonderland. The grandmother, Gina Wilson, was one of my oldest friends, a shining memory from the happiest years of my life. The granddaughter, Iris Chavez, was a child I'd come to know because she spent so much of her growing up time with Gina. Iris was near in age to my own granddaughter, Diana.

From Wikipedia:
Hart's Henrie O mysteries feature 70-something retired newswoman, Henrie O'Dwyer Collins, as she travels the country and the world, solving crimes that seem to follow her as she travels. Henrie gets by on her grit, tenacity, and sensible shoes.

Dead Man's Island (1993)
Scandal in Fair Haven (1994)
Death in Lovers' Lane (1997)
Death in Paradise (1998)
Death on the River Walk (1999)
Resort to Murder (2001)
Set Sail for Murder (2007)

Louisiana Hotshot, by Julie Smith (2001)

Louisiana Hotshot, by Julie Smith (2001)

If you're looking for mysteries that take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, check out the Talba Wallis/Baroness Pontalba series.

Here's the info from the jacket:

Edgar Award winner Julie Smith returns to the bewitching streets of New Orleans with the smartest, sassiest, hippest street detective ever-the Baroness Pontalba.

Meet the snazziest P.I. in the land. Not by accident does she roam America's jazziest city, New Orleans. By day she is Talba Wallis, smart, sassy, ebony, and a fledgling detective. By night she is the Baroness Pontalba, poet laureate of the city's smoky rooms, matron saint of her town's exotic and multi-colored cafe society.

Goaded into a day gig by her pushy mom, she finds herself employed by Eddie Valentino, a crusty old detective who thinks he doesn't like anyone young, female or black. He also doesn't realize his life is unravelling.

Taking up the slack, Talba is plunged into a world of fame, money and power run amok, hunting a man who seduces teenage black girls and may be making them disappear.

At the same time she is haunted by disturbing near-memories, but the more she pursues them, the more the roadblocks go up. Her forgotten past only emerges when violence enters her life-but not, she learns, for the first time.

Abut the author
Julie Smith is a former reporter and tbhe author of 15 mystery novels. New Orleans Mourning, the first in the Skip Langdon series, won the Edgar for best novel. Ms. Smith lives in the Faubourg Marigny section of New Orleans.

http://www.juiliesmithauthor.com

Liberty Falling, by Nevada Barr (1999)

Liberty Falling, by Nevada Barr, was published in 1999.

Each of Barr's books takes place in some national park... on this occasion, the park is the Ellis Island National Monument - the island on which stands the Statue of Liberty, and the buildings that greeted legal immigrants during the 1920s.

Anna's sister, Molly, is deathly ill in a New York hospital, and Anna Pigeon has come to be with her, and in her spare time, to keep her sanity, she explores Liberty Island, and, as usual, comes across murder...and this time, a plot that could change America forever.

Here's the list of Nevada Barr books and the National Parks in which they take place:

Track of the Cat --Guadalupe Mountains National Park --1993
A Superior Death --Isle Royale National Park --1994
Ill Wind --Mesa Verde --National Park --1995
Firestorm --Lassen Volcanic National Park --1996
Endangered Species --Cumberland Island National Seashore --1997
Blind Descent --Carlsbad Caverns National Park --1998
Liberty Falling --Statue of Liberty National Monument --1999
Deep South --Natchez Trace Parkway --2000
Blood Lure -- Glacier National Park --2001
Hunting Season --Natchez Trace Parkway --February 2002
Flashback --Dry Tortugas National Park --February 2003
High Country --Yosemite National Park --February 2004
Hard Truth --Rocky Mountain National Park --March 2005
Winter Study --Isle Royale National Park --April 2008
Borderline --Big Bend National Park --April 2009
Burn New Orleans --Jazz National Historical Park August 2010

Octagon House, by Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1937)

(McElroy House in San Francisco, 1861)

Phoebe Atwood Taylor, writing in the 1930s and 1940s, is the creator of the "hayseed" sleuth, or the "codfish Sherlock," Asey Mayo. Asey does most of his sleuthing on Cape Cod.

What is an Octagon House?

Octagon houses were a unique house style briefly popular in the 1850s in the United States and Canada. They are characterised by an octagonal (eight-sided) plan, and often feature a flat roof and a veranda all round. Their unusual shape and appearance, quite different from the ornate pitched-roof houses typical of the period, can generally be traced to the influence of one man, amateur architect and lifestyle pundit Orson Squire Fowler. Although there are other octagonal houses worldwide, the term octagon house usually refers specifically to octagonal houses built in North America during this period, and up to the turn of the century.

Octagon House was written in 1937 and is the 11th book in the series. The book has some interesting features. The first chapter starts out in the new WPA library - one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's ideas to help Americans out of the Depression was to create work - the Works Project Administration or WPA, and one of these was to paint murals in post offices across the land.

The lead character has spent all her life hunting for ambergris (a whale discharge that was much used in making perfumes and was extremely valuable). When she finally finds some..enough to make her fortune, it is so waterlogged that she can't lift it out of the surf. Along comes her hated sister, who agrees to help her...for a price.



Asey Mayo books
The Cape Cod Mystery - 1931
Death Lights a Candle - 1932
The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players - 1933
The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern - 1934
Sandbar Sinister - 1934
Deathblow Hill - 1935
The Tinkling Symbol - 1935
The Crimson Patch - 1936
Out of Order - 1936
Figure Away - 1937
Octagon House - 1937
The Annulet of Gilt - 1938
Banbury Bog - 1938
Spring Harrowing - 1939
The Criminal C.O.D. - 1940
The Deadly Sunshade - 1940
The Perennial Boarder - 1941
The Six Iron Spiders - 1942
Three Plots for Asey Mayo (novelets) - 1942
Going, Going, Gone - 1943
Proof of the Pudding - 1943
The Asey Mayo Trio (novelets) - 1946
Punch with Care - 1946
Diplomatic Corpse - 1951

The Ironclad Alibi, by Michael Kilian (2002)

The Ironclad Alibi, by Michael Kilian, is a Harrison Raines Civil War mystery. It was published by Berkley Prime Crime in 2002.

Harrison Raines appears in the following mysteries:
A Killing at Ball's Bluff
Murder at Mabassas
A Grave at Glorieta

Here's the backmatter for The Ironclad Alibi

U.S. Federal Agent Harrison Raines' latest mission is to investigate "The Monster" - the Confederate Navy's first ironclad ship - in his old home town of Richmond, Virginia. Through a chance encounter with his first love, Bella Mills, Harry learns that her husband is in charge of the ship's restoration. But when Bella is murdered, Harry's friend, ex-slave Caesar Augustus, is arrested for the crime. Now Harry must find the real killer, rescue Caesar, and inform the Union about the new Confederate menace.

Caduceus

I've got a college-level education - in some topics - but it's all self-education. I've never been to lectures to hear how various words are pronounced, so I've always pronounced them my own way.

So I'm listening to my favorite book recording artist, Robin Bailey, reading Catherine Aird's A Late Phoenix, and he pronounces the word Caduceaus as Cad-u-say-us.

I'd always thought it was pronounced Cuh-doo-she-us, or even cuh-doo-shus.

Of course the Brits do pronounce some words differently than we do... alumin-ee-um instead of uh-loom-inum, shedule instead of skedule, and so on.

Dated Death With Dr. Thorndyke Part 3

Road of Setts


Road of cobblestones


Continuing with The Mystery of 31 New Inn (available for free as a Kindle book):

"The vibrations of the carriage, with its hard springs and iron-tired wheels, registered accurately and plainly the character of the roadway. The harsh rattle of granite setts, the soft bumpiness of macadam, the smooth rumble of wood pavement, the jarring and swerving of crossed tram-lines, all were easily recognizable and together sketched the general features of the neighborhood through which I was passing."

granite setts - A sett, usually the plural setts and in some places called a Belgian block,[1], often incorrectly called "cobblestone", is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used originally for paving roads,[2] today a decorative stone paving used in landscape architecture.[3][4] A sett is distinct from a cobblestone by being quarried or shaped to a regular form, whereas a cobblestone is generally naturally occurring

macadam - Macadam is a type of road construction pioneered by the Scotsman John Loudon McAdam in around 1820. The method simplified what had been considered state-of-the-art at that point. Single sized aggregate layers of stone with a coating of binder as a cementing agent are mixed in an open-structured macadam.


Macadam road

wood pavement - Brick, cobblestone, sett, and wood plank pavements were once common in urban areas throughout the world, but fell out of fashion in most countries, due to the high cost of labor required to lay and maintain them, and are typically only kept for historical or aesthetic reasons

tram lines - Tramways with tramcars (British English) or street railways with streetcars (American English) were common throughout the industrialised world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but they had disappeared from most British, Canadian, French and U.S. cities by the mid-20th century



iron-tired wheels - [edit] Iron tires
The earliest tires were bands of iron (later steel), placed on wooden wheels, used on carts and wagons. The tire would be heated in a forge fire, placed over the wheel and quenched, causing the metal to contract and fit tightly on the wheel. A skilled worker, known as a wheelwright, carried out this work. The outer ring served to "tie" the wheel segments together for use, providing also a wear-resistant surface to the perimeter of the wheel. The word "tire" thus emerged as a variant spelling to refer to the metal bands used to tie wheels.

[edit] Rubber tires
The first practical pneumatic tire was made by John Boyd Dunlop, a Scot, in 1887 for his son's bicycle, in an effort to prevent the headaches his son had while riding on rough roads (Dunlop's patent was later declared invalid because of prior art by fellow Scot Robert William Thomson). Dunlop is credited with "realizing rubber could withstand the wear and tear of being a tire while retaining its resilience".[4]

Pneumatic tires are made of a flexible elastomer material, such as rubber, with reinforcing materials such as fabric and wire. Tire companies were first started in the early 20th century, and grew in tandem with the auto industry.