Mistress of the Art of Death, Adelia Aguilar is back after a rousing debut. Now she's investigating the poisoning of King Henry II's mistress-which gets her in big trouble with the chief suspect, Eleanor of Aquitaine. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A couple of literary vagabonds taking it slow from Paris to Marseilles in 1982. YOU expect a French book to be quirky. There's Georges Perec's "Disparition" a 300-page novel without a single "e" in it (it's translated into English as "A Void," also "e"-less). There's Michel Houellebecq's "Elementary Particles," a talky book about a sex addict and his half brother, described in The New York Times as "deeply repugnant." And if you haven't read those two yet, don't bother: Pierre Bayard's "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read" suggests that the best approach to books might be to ignore them altogether. Surely France has its John Grishams and Danielle Steels, but when a French book shows up in this country, we expect it to be somewhat unusual. Though born in Belgium and raised in Argentina, Julio Cortázar lived and wrote in Paris from 1951 till his death in 1984, thus making "Autonauts of the Cosmoroute," though it was first published in Spanish, at least an honorary French book. As such, it begins in a refreshingly offbeat way: in 1982, Cortázar and wife, Carol Dunlop, took a car trip from Paris to Marseille. Normally, the drive would last around 10 hours, but Cortázar and Dunlop resolved never to leave the autoroute and to explore each of its 65 rest areas. Thus it took them 33 days to get from northern France to the Mediterranean, as they searched for the freeway's hidden side and tried to push the travel narrative to some new extreme. With a plan like that, readers know that they're either going on the ride of their lives or they're doomed to spend a lot of time in the back seat whining, "Are we there yet?" On the plus side, your driver is one of the masters of postmodernism, the Cortázar of "Hopscotch," the 155-chapter novel that can be read either linearly or "hopscotched" through, according to a scheme provided by the author. Film lovers know him for the short story that became Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up," but Cortázar also wrote a fanciful short story, "The Southern Thruway," about a traffic jam on an autoroute so congested that the jammees organize their own society. Jean-Luc Godard used it as the basis for his rather different film "Week End," in which the stranded motorists resort to cannibalism and murder. No such drama here. Cortázar doesn't seem terribly interested in the bloodier side of postmodernism. Instead, he prefers to look at the fuzzy reverse of society's tapestry, the seemingly patternless surface from which emerges not the reflection of the image on the front but a new image altogether. If one emerges, that is. The problem is that Cortázar and Dunlop seem to have decided to write a book about the journey, whether or not the journey had a book in it. As it turns out, the narrative they hope for never emerges, so they turn instead to cute effects, like "Tristram Shandy"-ish chapter titles ("Where the Patient Reader Shall Be Introduced to the Protagonists of the Expedition," and so on). With heavyhanded irony, they overuse the word "scientific" to the point of stultification, referring to their "scientific labor," "scientific observations" and "scientific speculations." This is amusing the first couple of times, but as scientists will tell you, their work often consists of waiting to see something that never materializes, which is the case here. When the travelers pretend to mistake playground equipment for torture racks and gallows, you want to say, "Oh, come off it." Julio Cortázar and the camper he and Carol Dunlop drove on their trip. The text is accompanied by photos that are both amateurish and too numerous, though one, a self-portrait by Dunlop in a hotel mirror in which she's wearing only a towel around her waist, suggests what the French call a délectable compagne. Indeed, Cortázar and Dunlop seem altogether too satisfied with each other's company. "Blue Highways," William Least Heat-Moon's account of his drive across backcountry America, owed much of its charm to his conversations with the eccentric, suspect and surprisingly ordinary citizens he encountered along the way. You'd think French rest stops packed with travelers from dozens of countries would yield at least a few interesting conversations, but other voyagers are seen as devoid of "intelligence" and "sensitivity," "simply idiots," and therefore not worth the authors' time. Those who bemoan the self-absorption of the postliterate generation will be happy to know that before the self-indulgent, amateurish blog there was the self-indulgent, amateurish log. "We understood that in our own way we'd performed an act of Zen," the book's last pages declare. The problem is that my Zen is just peachy; to me, your Zen is a snooze. The travelers themselves admit that while the end of a great expedition or heroic feat is an apotheosis like "the crowning with laurel of the ancients to the Olympic medal of our days," the end of their trip is "the opposite of an apotheosis." Some days, it's better to stay home. David Kirby's essay collection "Ultra-Talk: Johnny Cash, the Mafia, Shakespeare, Drum Music, St. Teresa of Avila and 17 Other Colossal Topics of Conversation" appeared in 2007.

Medieval forensic specialist Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar returns to action in the second installment in Franklin's historical series (Mistress of the Art of Death, 2007). The proto-feminist "doctor of death" has come a long way. As this enjoyable romp opens, Adelia has settled into life in the fens of East Anglia, practicing medicine and trying to raise her daughter. Her peace is disrupted by the arrival of a messenger with a royal mandate. King Henry II's favorite mistress, Rosamund, has been murdered, presumably with poisonous mushrooms, and his estranged wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, is the chief suspect--Eleanor recently escaped from Henry's clutches and is known to be both wildly jealous and also brewing rebellion. Before civil war can once again tear the country apart, Henry needs Adelia to uncover the truth about Rosamund's death. At first unwilling, but keen on avoiding war, she takes on the challenge and in the process uncovers yet another murder and numerous other foul acts, as well as some unexpected information about decaying human flesh. The careful clinician of the first book has become a passionate woman and worried mother, exoticism and novelty traded for a greater range of emotion. A warm, promising continuation of the series. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Set in 12th-century England, Franklin's mesmerizing second historical delivers on the promise of her first, Mistress of the Art of Death (2007). When Rosamund Clifford, Henry II's mistress, is poisoned, Dr. Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar must draw on her formidable forensic skills to try to uncover the killer. The prime suspect is Henry's estranged wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who once plotted to overthrow the king. Adelia reunites with Rowley Picot, now a bishop as well as the father of Adelia's child, and the two set out on a dangerous journey, during which they brave a blizzard and Eleanor's band of ruthless mercenaries. Franklin, the pen name of Diana Norman, brings medieval England to life, from the maze surrounding Rosamund's tower to the royal court's Christmas celebration, with ice skating on the frozen Thames. A colorful cast of characters, both good and evil, enhance a tale that will keep readers on edge until the final page. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved