Pecking up tips: the plot chickens
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Desert Star by Michael Connelly, Allen & Unwin, $36.99 .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Although I always enjoyed a good crime story I never really enjoyed American authors until I stumbled upon The Lincoln Lawyer. I still think it is one of the top crime stories, but it led me to Michael Connelly and the marvellous Harry Bosch.
By the time lockdown happened I had read probably most of the Harry Bosch series but our bright spot was his televised series which he directed. Titus Welliver playing Harry Bosch was such a perfect portrayal, just as I always imagined Harry Bosch would be.
Desert Star once again incorporates Renee Bollard and brings Harry Bosch out of retirement. Renee, an LAPD detective has been asked to set up a cold case unit. Funding for that has come via councillor Jake Peatman who lost his sister in a violent rape and murder.
The perpetrator has never been found.
The staff has been selected for Renee, but she insists on being able to bring in Bosch as a volunteer.
Renee has had rather an up and down relationship with Harry previously. While respecting his talent and dedication she is not sure of some of his methods. He is an old timer and does not let such things as protocol get in his way of tracking down criminals. When Bosch retired he was deep in a cold case which he was not happy about giving up.
At first Renee has trouble keeping Bosch on the Peatman murder instead of going off on his own case. Their funding depends on bringing the Peatman case to a conclusion.
Bosch gets involved with both cases and they prove to be a good working team to the annoyance of the other staff members who apart from the legal person appear to have their own issues.
It is a detective story and to continue on would spoil the story. Just another Michael Connelly page turner which keeps you glued until the conclusion which made me feel a little sad. — Margaret Reilly ndrea Graves scratches below the surface of chicken keeping and shares her chicken-whispering secrets. Using her knowledge from a doctorate in animal behaviour science, as well as her practical experience with keeping chickens, she has developed an approach to keeping happy, healthy chickens that aligns with their primal instincts.
We talk to her about her latest book:
What inspired you to write
I kept noticing that lots of people don’t know where to start when it comes to keeping chickens. I’d felt like that, too, once I’d made the decision to get some: how big should the coop be? What features does it need? What should be on the floor? Then I had a “Doh!” moment when I realised that I knew exactly where to find studies that show how thick chickens prefer their perches to be, what shape, how important it is to line the nest box with soft stuff, and many other things — most of which I think people used to provide for their chickens as a matter of course, but we’ve lost a lot of knowledge as we’ve moved to large food systems. The research I’d been involved with at university used experiments to “ask” chickens what they want, and it was aimed at making life better for commercially farmed chickens, but it was just as relevant for backyard chickens. So I put it all into practice. Since then I’ve seen many chicken set-ups that frankly do not cut the mustard, not because people don’t love their chickens but just because they haven’t quite understood the mind of a chicken.
How did you become interested in chickens? At university I became increasingly interested in the study of animal behaviour. I did doctoral research on chickens because that’s what my supervisor worked on, otherwise I could have worked on the behaviour of any animal
(for my Master’s degree I studied and fell in love with New Zealand dotterels, but I can’t keep them!). I spent three years studying chickens in a small facility the zoology department ran, and I also spent some time on commercial farms of broiler (meat) chickens and their parents, the broiler breeders. As a species they fascinated me, especially the retired experimental chickens that a university staff member rehomed, because they were able to live outside and behave more naturally.
Why should people keep chickens? People should only keep chickens if they have a deep urge to do so. You have to be committed enough to still ensure they’ve got water and food even when it’s raining and you’re exhausted, and to find them some greens to eat, and to enrich their environment so they’re not horribly bored. I think the best thing about them is that they are real animals that you can truly be with. I remember a Princeton-educated biologist who was originally a bit sniffy about my backyard chickens. Then one day his eyes were wide with excitement as he told me he’d recently got chickens and had realised they were actually real birds, except you get to be with them whenever you want! It was a revelation for him.
Plus there are more obvious reasons to keep them: they eat food scraps, give you eggs and fertiliser for the garden, and provide a connection with nature. Some are very beautiful.
Is it easy is it to keep chickens happy? It’s pretty easy, but only if you know what you’re doing — and it’s more about understanding what chickens need and want rather than having a list of rules. The smaller the land area you can give them, the more tricks you need up your sleeve, but it’s totally possible on a small urban section. The sad thing is that hens will generally lay eggs whether or not their needs are being met, so it’s quite possible to keep them in a cage and assume they don’t care. Evidence from animal welfare science makes it absolutely clear that every creature with a spinal cord suffers when it feels pain, fear, hunger, thirst or boredom, and they all hate being crammed in and resting on their own faeces. They also have speciesspecific needs — for example, chickens need a private place to lay eggs, a perch to sleep on and loose stuff on the ground to search through. Who is the book written for? It’s for people who want to keep chickens and also for people who already do so and want some fresh ideas.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow By Gabrielle Zevin, Penguin Random House, $48 .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Gaming is so not my thing — giant waste of time, unlike reading books — so I thought this novel about gaming might be tedious.
It was marvellous! It’s a book about love, in all its versions, but young author Zevin has packed it into a very modern setting. She’s already a bestseller with The Storied Life of A. J. Fikrey.
Two youngsters meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister who has cancer, the other is recovering from a serious car crash. Eight years later they get together to build games.
The bits about game development are surprising rather than boring. The characters, with all their awkwardness and youth, are beautifully developed. There’s pathos, hilarity, failure, success and dealing with lifelong disability.
A great package and a really good read. But I still don’t want to start gaming.
— Linda Thompson