MBTB's Mystery Book Blog

Crocodile on the Sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters

2012-01-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

Barbara Mertz, writing as Elizabeth Peters (inspired by her children, Elizabeth and Peter), began her Amelia Peabody series in 1975 with this book. River in the Sky, the 19th book in the series, was published in 2010. There are readers who began reading the series when the first book came out and still eagerly look forward to the next entry. And Amelia Peabody still draws new readers today. That's not a surprise.

After receiving a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago, Mertz raised a family instead of taking off for archaeological digs. The character of Amelia Peabody grew out of Mertz's love of Egypt. She began to live vicariously through Amelia, who was a 32-year-old woman in 1884 in Crocodile on the Sandbank. Amelia traveled to Egypt, fell in love with and married Radcliffe Emerson, an archaeologist. The characters age throughout the series. Amelia and Emerson, as she refers to him, raise their son, Ramses, who grows up, marries an Egyptian woman, Nefret, and has a child of his own. Ramses has his own adventures and intrigues in World War I. Eventually the series wends its way to the early 1920s. The Peabody-Emerson family lives a rich fictional life, and their trials and triumphs have won countless accolades and awards for their creator.

Despite having read and enjoyed several of the episodes, I had never read the first book. It was time to remedy that.

Obviously, there were some things that were not a surprise to me. This is the book in which Amelia and Emerson meet, and knowing that they wind up married didn't disturb my enjoyment of the will-they-or-won't-they subplot. It was fun to see Peters give them their cat-and-mouse relationship without resorting to cute and trite descriptions and dialogue.

And speaking of vicarious … it was tremendous fun to visit an Egypt in which there were still hidden treasures to be discovered and the legendary Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo to stay in, to float down the Nile, and to see Cairo's pyramids surrounded by desert sands, not suburban housing.

Here is the story in a nutshell. Amelia inherits money. In 1884 England, she makes a decision to indulge her desire to travel and her love of Egyptology, which is more than just the current fad to her. On her trip of discovery, she rescues Evelyn, a destitute and disgraced English gentlewoman, who becomes her friend and travel companion. The two women meet the brothers Emerson who are involved in a dig to uncover an ancient, royal tomb. And away they go, replete with mummies who walk at midnight, curses, cobras, chaste romance, and nefarious villains.

Become beguiled by this charming story. Share it with everyone, because it is multi-generationally friendly. It is the ultimate escape.

Barbara Mertz celebrated her 83rd birthday last September. Here's to many more!

In Search of the Rose Notes, by Emily Arsenault ($14.99)

2012-01-22T00:06:00.000-08:00

After 16-year-old Rose Banks disappears one day, the children she leaves behind are shaken. Nora and Charlotte are the 11-year-olds she babysat, and eventually the emotions churned up by Rose's disappearance affect their friendship and they part ways. Sixteen years later, a skeleton is recovered. Nora hears about it and returns to her small hometown, to Charlotte and her other childhood acquaintances, to determine what the discovery means to her and the others.

This is not a thriller. There are no shoot-em-ups, wild chase scenes, or crazed murderers roaming the street. There's a lot of introspection and reflection, and there are secrets. Emily Arsenault's book moves slowly as the layers of assumption and mistrust are peeled away. There is a resolution. I was afraid there might not be one, as Nora seesawed between not wanting to know what happened to Rose and needing to clear her conscience from believing that there was something she should have done to save Rose.

It was more confusing than elucidating, but Arsenault intersperses her present-time tale with a flashback of young Nora and Charlotte pouring over the Time-Life series on the supernatural. They and Rose experiment on themselves and have discussions of what the various alleged phenomena might mean. In fact, Nora is discovered to have some sort of psychic "talent," but that wasn't specifically developed, except perhaps in an oblique way. After Rose disappears, the books take on a different meaning. Charlotte plays psychic detective by using the various techniques mentioned in the books to find out what happened to her.

Maybe the girls are supposed to be comforted by thinking that if Rose is dead, she still has a "presence" somewhere or that Rose can still communicate what really happened to her. Or, worse yet, maybe there's a supernatural explanation. Rose believes in aliens, it turns out, and perhaps she has been kidnapped by one.

All in all, In Search of the Rose Notes is a thoughtful book and distinguishes itself favorably from what seems like an onslaught off recent books involving young women with suppressed or forgotten memories from their childhood.

Deep Sky, by Patrick Lee ($7.99)

2012-01-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

I admit to being hampered by not having read the first two books in Patrick Lee's "Breach" trilogy, The Breach and Ghost Country, but Lee explains enough that I wasn't asea when I started Deep Sky.

A breach in time and space has been opened, and a secret, independent organization, Tangent, monitors it. Odd technology erupts from the wormhole every once in a while, technology pretty far removed from what scientists on Earth are capable of producing. There's a suit that can make a person invisible, a tiny cube that allows the user to journey back in time to a memory and to live during that memory's moment, and doodads like that. That's enough to give the idea that this book may not a typical political thriller, although it starts with the President of the United States being killed by a missile while giving a televised speech.

Travis Chase and Paige Campbell are two members of Tangent, and they soon figure out that whoever killed the president is gunning for Tangent next.

The rest of the book is a cat-and-mouse game between Chase, Campbell, their allies and the shadowy bad guys. The breach is at the heart of the matter, however, so that the ultimate goal is to find out what it is. Why is Tangent protecting it and why do the bad guys want to gain control over it?

Deep Sky was exciting and peculiar. It's plot-driven and doesn't pretend to be anything else, except at the end. Enjoy it for what it is: political thriller and sci-fi in one neat package.

Turn of Mind, by Alice LaPlante (hardcover, $24

2012-01-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

Alice LaPlante's portrayal of a mind deteriorating from dementia sounds disturbingly accurate. I was so caught up in Dr. Jennifer White's mental time-traveling that I almost forgot there was a murder mystery involved.

Although Jennifer lives in her own home with a caregiver, it doesn't take a lot for her to sneak out and get into trouble. So it is possible that Jennifer could have killed her neighbor and best friend, the high-handed and moralistic Amanda. It is especially suspicious that four of Amanda's fingers were surgically removed. And Dr. Jennifer White is a surgeon.

The narrative viewpoint shifts a lot, starting with Jennifer's thoughts while sitting in a police station and on to journal entries, both by her and others. In the end it's a jumble of narratives in second person present, first person present and an intimate third person. Because of Jennifer's shifting mental time frame, we learn about her life in non-linear bits and pieces. It's never too confusing, however, as LaPlante does build to a climactic, cleansing scene.

The best part of LaPlante's writing covers the worst nightmare of someone beginning the unforgiving route of Alzheimer's. Incredibly, LaPlante is able to inform us of outsiders' reactions to Jennifer, while never leaving Jennifer's often muddled viewpoint. Before the onset of dementia, Jennifer was competent and cool, both as a surgeon and as a person. In fact, those elements still define her. Look, no tears, she often comments. As she deteriorates more rapidly, the questions become will the emotional barriers finally crack, will she have one final moment of clarity, will Amanda's murderer be discovered?

Quite a stunning piece of writing and a moving depiction of a disarranged mind.

The Night Eternal, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (hardcover, $26.99)

2012-01-11T17:03:00.000-08:00

This is the final book in Del Toro and Hogan's vampire trilogy, which includes The Strain and The Fall. The Strain was one scary book! The airplane scene that begins that book made me glad I wasn't watching a movie version, because I would have been hiding behind my bag of popcorn for at least a couple of days. The Fall, the second book, had the hardest task. The gasp of being caught off guard was gone after the first book. Naturally, there was no resolution at its end -- only sadness. I liked it for its thoughtful (yet action-packed) presentation.

In other words, my expectations were high.

The Night Eternal starts with a world off kilter and without hope. It has been two years since "The Master" and his vampire army took over the world. The skies are unrelentingly dark except for a few minutes every day. Our main characters are CDC epidemiologist Ephraim Goodweather, ratcatcher Vasiliy Fet, CDC doctor Nora Martinez, gangbanger Gus, Eph's ex-wife and current vampire Kelly, Eph's son Zack, and one-of-a-kind vampire Mr. Quinlan. Yes, one of the vampires is a hero. (We hope.)

Had everything been compressed into one book, this portion would not have taken that long. We wouldn't have had to immerse ourselves in the dread, despair, darkness, and damnation that makes up 99.99 percent of the book. I was ready for the book to end way before it actually did. No offense to the writing skills of Del Toro and Hogan. In fact, it is because of the skill of the authors in finding new ways to terrorize their heroes that I couldn't wait to get to the end. (Put them out of their collective misery!)

Enough with the fighting and whooshing of silver swords. Enough with the "book-hurling vampires." Really. Enough with the book-hurling vampires. Enough with Loved Ones and Dear Ones. Enough with machine gun ack-acking. And especially with the what-ev-er with Gus' madre.

So there were rough spots. (According to me.)

In fact I really liked this series (and loved The Strain), despite the schizo writing (gangbanger street talk followed by highfalutin religious philosophy). I take that back. I enjoyed the schizo writing, actually. After all, there are two authors, and it was a tale that drew from both the modern world and ages long since gone.

I'm not sure everything in the final scenes was necessary. I found Eph a little repetitive in the end, but he was a flawed hero in the best tradition. Fet proved to be my own Odyssean hero: going from ratcatcher to demolition specialist in order to make his way home. Mr. Quinlan was a great addition to the team because his background and nature were unknown.

Once having started the journey with The Strain, it was impossible not to want to read The Night Eternal.

Practical Jean, by Trevor Cole ($13.99)

2012-01-06T19:53:00.000-08:00

(Part way through this review, I decided that you would learn a major plot device if you read this. If you want to be totally surprised by this unusual book, read the book first. And don't read the description on the back either.)

This unusual book begins with the narrator obliquely letting us know that something has happened, and it has to do with Jean and Jean's friends. The prologue ends with, "And here in Kotemee, all anyone can say now is, 'Thank God I was never a good friend of Jean Vale Horemarsh.'" Then the story backtracks to what began it all: Jean's mother's painful, lingering death.

The book's ironic and subdued tone reminds me so much of the television shows "Desperate Housewives," "Pushing Daisies," "Six Feet Under" and "Twin Peaks." Like them, Practical Jean is an odd dramedy, a term that some media wit coined to indicate both comedic and dramatic aspects. (As Jean might say, "Isn't that a sweet phrase?") There's a wink to the audience that includes them in the joke. Irony leaks through every crack in this book.

Back to Jean's mother's death. Jean and her mother had a difficult relationship, but it was up to Jean to take care of her mother during her last few months of life. Afterwards, Jean knew that she didn't want anyone she loved to die the way her mother did: unhappy, in pain, old, disabled, with regrets. So she sets out to find out what would make her best girlfriends happy. She would do whatever it took to make them happy. Then she would kill them.

Jean is insane but her motivation has a certain logic. Wouldn't you want someone you loved to be happy? Trevor Cole smartly inserts flashbacks to Jean's childhood and teenage years. They provide a pathos that contrasts with and will carry the reader through the bizarre plans Jean makes.

Drama, comedy, pathos, told with an ironic voice. If the book isn't speaking to you within the first 20 pages, give up because it only gets weirder.

Here are a few quotes to help you decide whether you want to read this book:

On finding Jean's inspiration: "…[A] pre-idea, a vague and smoky intuition, was beginning to form in Jean's mind, gather and condensing into something potentially powerful, potentially great, like a mob massing before a riot."

On her husband Milt: "In both hands she took the heavy cheeks of his face, felt the smooth, shaved skin against her palms, and steered his head toward her the way she might move a roast of beef, looking for the best place to carve."

At a town gathering: "…[T]he two women were forced to wade through children like Mennonites through fields of flax."

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins ($8.99)

2012-01-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

Scholastic Press brought Harry Potter to the U.S. and probably raised its caché and stock price in the process. Once again, Scholastic has a blockbuster series which is appropriate for teen and adult readers. It begins with The Hunger Games, a story set in the future when life in the U.S. has been altered by another civil war.

Most parts of the country have been turned into "districts" with specialties. The ruling class lives somewhere in the Rockies in the Capitol. Katniss Everdeen, the 16-year-old heroine, lives in "District 12," an impoverished, hard luck community, dependent on coal mining, somewhere in Appalachia. (So what's changed, you ask.) Her district has a fence around it, stepping outside of which is punishable by death. But because her miner father is dead and her mother and sister would starve otherwise, Katniss has learned to hunt in the woods outside the compound. Very few in Katniss' community escape the hounding poverty, so people turn a blind eye to her activities. She finds food for her family and to sell in the black market.

In a ritual designed to never let the other districts forget who the boss is, the Capitol requires tributes. (Very ancient Rome and, as we later find out, many of the Capitol people have ancient Roman-sounding names.) It would be hard to pay a tribute if it were just money or coal but far easier than what the Capitol wants. Each year one girl and one boy between 12 and 18 are chosen to be sent to the Capitol to take part in The Hunger Games. Like a ramped-up "Survivor" game, with death as the loser's punishment, the children compete to be the last one standing.

Katniss' sister's name is drawn as the girl tribute. Gentle Prim wouldn't survive a minute, so Katniss volunteers. In a "reaping" ceremony televised throughout the country, people witness Katniss' first sacrifice. She is joined by Peeta, a boy she doesn't know very well but who saved her from starving when she was younger and whose kindness she has never forgotten. And now he is one of the 23 kids she must outlive.

All the tributes are transported to the arena, an area designed to accommodate the game. Like the TV show "Survivor," the arena changes each year, and this year it is a wooded area, not unlike what Katniss is used to. Maybe she has a chance after all, she thinks.

Collins manages to accomplish a lot in an exciting, moving, well-paced 374 pages. She gives us a look at a community in dire straits, a Capitol in which most of its citizens are pampered and morally corrupt, and a clever and heart-breaking "game" of survival among children who should be getting tattoos, sassing their parents, and listening to indecipherable music instead of trying to kill each other.

Collins has given us unforgettable side characters: from alcoholic and barely articulate Haymitch, the last winner District 12 had thirty years ago, who becomes Katniss and Peeta's mentor, to Cinna, Katniss' stylist from the Capitol. Yes, stylist. The Hunger Game is a televised event which spawns betting and promotions. It's a big deal in the Capitol and the contestants better look good and they better die well, too.

I am longing for the next book in the series, Catching Fire, and may move it way up to the top of a toppling pile of must-reads.

The Jaguar, by T. Jefferson Parker (hardcover, $26.95) (due out 1/10/12)

2012-01-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

T. Jefferson Parker's Charlie Hood series now deals with the violent world of the drug cartels, with their sadistically bent code of honor. Money brings only evil in its wake, and Parker tells the story of once-lovely parts of Mexico that are given over to gangs and gang feuds.

Parker's writing in this series is more poetic, channeling the soul, perhaps, of his younger protagonist, Bradley Jones. Bradley was a bright but criminal teenager when Charlie, a sheriff's deputy, first met him through his mother, Charlie's lover. Over the years, although Charlie has tried to help him, Bradley has gone his own twisted way and is now a member of a vicious drug cartel out of Mexico. And Bradley, too, is a sheriff's deputy. Both Charlie and Bradley mix with the federal ATF agents, tough and independent-minded people for whom there is no border, only crime.

Bradley has found his one true love, Erin. She is expecting their first child when a rival ganglord kidnaps Erin for ransom. Bradley enlists Charlie's help to get her back from deep in the jungles of Mexico. Whatever their differences, whatever their lack of trust in each other, they are united in wanting Erin back. Up until this point Erin and Charlie had no firm idea that Bradley is as deeply involved on the other side of the law as he is.

This is an unusual book for Parker, although he has dealt with the unknowable before. There's more of an ethereal, philosophical air to it. The ending showcases the steps Parker has taken outside the box. This odd book can't quite be categorized as a simple mystery or thriller. It should be remembered that Bradley's mother kept the head of one of her ancestors in a jar of alcohol. That sets the stage quite well, actually.

In Mayan mythology, the jaguar is sometimes the night sun, god of the underworld. Who is the jaguar in this story? Is he the psychopathic kidnapper, Benjamin Armenta, a man who has both lost and gained by violence? Or is he the mysterious Mike Finnegan, someone Charlie views as a devil and Bradley sees as his savior? It will help to read the other books in this series. Bradley's background becomes a little clearer, as does the reason that Charlie is searching for Mike. However, this book is capable of standing alone.

Parker has stated (http://tinyurl.com/7v252re) that he is planning to write six Charlie Parker books. I can see where this one, number five, is heralding the denouement of the series. It will be interesting to see how much over the edge Parker goes to bring his series to a conclusion, if that is his intention.

The Baker Street Letters, by Michael Robertson ($13.99)

2012-01-01T22:50:00.000-08:00

Love the premise. Reggie Heath, a lawyer in London leases a building. His good-hearted but odd brother, Nigel, does penance by working for him. One of Nigel's jobs is to answer mail of a peculiar sort. Reggie's too much of a high-powered lawyer and man-on-the-way-up to realize just what sort of historical building he has leased. If there were in fact a 221-B Baker Street, legendary home of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, it would be somewhere in Reggie's building. Stipulated in the lease Reggie carelessly signed was a provision that all mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes must be answered. It is Nigel's duty to fill out and mail back the appropriate form. No personal contact of any sort should be made with the writers.

Nigel tries to tell Reggie about a letter they have received and how it's imperative that they do something about it. Reggie is dismissive, Nigel does a bunk to L.A., where the letter-writer lives, Reggie's girlfriend, Laura, is aloof, the body of Reggie's nasty clerk is found in Nigel's office, another body is discovered in L.A., and Nigel is suspected of murder on two continents.

Nigel barely appears in the book, which is a pity because he appears to be the more interesting of the two brothers. Perhaps the second book, The Brothers of Baker Street, fulfills the promise of such a creative idea, but this one meanders a bit and spends far too much time in Los Angeles. Also, there's an unnecessary complication with the vaguely characterized girlfriend. Sherlock Holmes means England, not Beverly Hills!

However, here's another pat on the author's back for another great idea: The letter in question was written 20 years ago by a young girl worried about her father. Nigel has received another letter from the now-grown woman wanting the original enclosures back. This was such a sweet idea that a young girl would write to her hero, Sherlock Holmes, to request his help. Robertson definitely is worth another look.

Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George (hardcover, $28.95) (due date 1/10/12)

2011-12-31T22:02:00.000-08:00

Believing the Lie is so long and takes so long to finish, rife as it is with plot and setting details and character descriptions, that it felt like a member of the family had died when I finally finished it. It had had breakfast and lunch with me for so many days that I now have forgotten what I used to do while eating before this 624-page guest came to stay.

Lynley and Haver have their own personal turmoils to contend with while solving a crime in the far-off Lake District. The Lake District, where Peter Rabbit frolicked and daffodils grow in great abundance in Spring. The Lake District, where the body of the presumed heir to a bathroom fixtures fortune has been found in the family boathouse, expired by way of drowning.

It's a tortured path that brings Lynley to the victim's family estate incognito. He co-opts Havers into performing her own brand of subterfuge to get research past acting superintendent Isabelle Ardery, the bane of Havers' existence and Lynley's erstwhile lover, because no one must know that Lynley is in the Lake District. Sorry. That's a little too contrived. Nevertheless, there sits Lynley, far from the madding crowd of London.

Even more contrived is the involvement of Simon St. James, forensic scientist, and his wife, Deborah St. James. Deborah, although she is a photographer and not a law enforcement officer, plays a part in the deception to discover who might want Ian Caldwell dead. Deborah's part of the book takes a good fourth, and her part makes for a sad tale in the end.

Apart from the ongoing soap opera involving George's standard players, there are three distinct mysteries that George sets before us. Who killed Ian Caldwell? Who is the mysterious Argentinian wife of the victim's cousin? What is Ian's young son's terrible secret?

It's hard to swallow all the stories George creates; some are more sympathetic than others and some are too outrageous. Each of the non-recurring characters is the carrier of his or her own salvation or destruction, and heavy lie the heads with that burden. At this stage in her series, Believing the Lie is neither the best nor the worst of her stories. George always gets an A+ for effort. I admit to a heavily tilted prejudice in favor of the stories with Barbara Havers over the other main characters, and the more Barbara the better. That being said, I really enjoyed the fourth of the book that was Barbara's and less the fourth that was Deborah's.

The Whisperer, by Donato Carrisi (hardcover, $25.99) (due 1/5/12)

2011-12-22T01:12:00.000-08:00

Foreign authors are only as good as their translators let them be, and conversely, translators are only as good as the material they have to translate. I've read translated books with an awkward rhythm to them and wondered who was to blame.

The best translated book I've read recently, The Boy in the Suitcase, had a co-author who was fluent in English. I think that must have had an impact on the translation, as she, it turns out, was the translator. If only that were possible for all books. An author's art is not just the story being told but the way it's told. Look at how many English translations of the Iliad and Dante's Inferno there are by translators/poets fighting to get both the intent, meter, and beauty just right. I'm currently also reading Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery and trying to linger over every paragraph -- and what a lot of paragraphs there are! His translator is fabulous, as is the original work, I'm sure.

It's hard to stand in comparison to Umberto Eco, and Carrisi does and doesn't succeed. Both books are full of details served up as side dishes. Eco's side dish is a rich, opinionated history lesson; Carrisi's is "CSI"-like detail. Eco wants to seduce you; Carrisi is simply thorough. In any event, the translation is good but there's still a definite otherness and a vague tediousness to the writing.

Although Carrisi is Italian, it is not clear exactly where his story is set. The characters have last names like Stern, Gavila, Rosa, Boris, Roche, Vasquez, Bermann, Rockford, and first names like Sarah, Debby, Anneke, Sabine, Mila, Goran, Alexander, an international hodgepodge. I could imagine Sweden just as easily as I could France. (However, I think I can rule out the whole continents of Africa, Asia, and Antarctica.)

In an interview conducted in Italian by Raffaello Ferrante for Mangialibri (http://www.mangialibri.com/node/4255) and translated awkwardly by Google, Carrisi says that evil can be anywhere. The multiracial and multicultural society of the "no land" he depicts in the book is actually the society he hopes Italy will become one day.

Dr. Goran Gavila, a civilian criminologist working with the police, and Mila Vasquez, a police officer specializing in crimes against children, are the main characters. They have been banded together with others to catch the person or persons who have kidnapped and possibly killed six young girls. Both Goran and Mila have tragedies in their own lives, and both are seeking some comfort or distance from their personal problems by solving crimes. Each is intuitive. But the similarity ends there. Goran has the respect of the other team members, while Mila is a twitchy, indecipherable outsider.

Surprises start popping up as this lengthy novel begins to wind up. As the team discovers the bodies of the missing girls, each taken and killed by a different man, the team suspects that there's a mastermind behind the killers, a "whisperer" who controls their movements. But is that an illusion fed by intuition and psychic mumbo-jumbo? Hard evidence proves evasive.

While the book does seem overly long, it is a good thriller with an unexpected and stunning ending, and Mila is a strangely captivating character. In the same aforementioned interview, Carrisi mentions that he learned from the great masters of the genre: Dan Brown and Jeffery Deaver! He certainly has matched or exceeded them in cleverness.

And Only to Deceive, by Tasha Alexander ($13.95) (c2005)

2011-12-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

Portland author Bill Cameron has been telling me for years (years!) to read Tasha Alexander. I'm not a vociferous historical mystery reader, so I generally need all the hints I can get. But still, it took me a while before I picked up this first book in her series.

And I'm glad I did. It was a proper little Victorian mystery.

Emily, widow of Philip, the Viscount Ashton, is young, rich, and nearing the end of her two-year period of mourning. Her husband succumbed to an illness while on a hunt for an elephant in Africa. But don't cry for her, Argentina. She didn't love him anyway and the austerity of mourning chafes her. She married Philip to get away from her nagging, interfering mother.

But surprise of surprises, Emily finds herself getting to know her husband, posthumously, through his journals and falling in love with him. She finds that he was a patron of the British Museum, a smart and educated world traveler, and someone who loved her deeply. Oh, dear.

Then Emily discovers that someone had been stealing artifacts from the museum and replacing them with excellent copies. It appears that that someone was her husband. And maybe he's not dead after all.

Helped or hindered by a couple of hopeful suitors, giddy aristocratic girlfriends, and a wise and eccentric Frenchwoman, Emily prepares to both find her husband and solve the mystery of the missing artifacts.

What I enjoyed most of all was Alexander's light touch. Some authors create a character more suitable for contemporary times rather than the conservative and repressive society of Victorian times. Alexander allows Emily to be progressive but within self-imposed bounds. Emily explores and expands bit by little bit. She worries that the husband she now loves will be appalled by her independence.

All the characters, good and bad, fictional and real (e.g., Renoir), male and female, make you want to turn the page and read more.

P.S. Tasha Alexander's series is not just for the female of the species. Ask Bill Cameron!

2011 Year's Best Paperback Books

2011-12-06T09:58:00.001-08:00

We've chosen our favorite books of 2011. Go to http://www.mbtb.com/home/favorites-of-2011 and find out what they were!

Mr. Kill, by Martin Limón (hardcover, $25)

2011-12-06T09:53:00.001-08:00

Over the prior six books Martin Limón has written in his series, he has taken Army Criminal Investigations Division detectives George Sueño and Ernie Bascom through some physically punishing times in 1970s South Korea. Add Mr. Kill to the list. Bascom especially has a way with his fists and uses them when words don't accomplish what he wants. Sueño, the narrator of the stories, has a more intellectual approach to crime solving, but he, too, can come out swinging.

Mr. Kill is the closest Americans can get to pronouncing Mr. [G/K]il Kwon-up, a heroic and almost mythical detective for the Korean National Police. He exhibits talents learned from both the new and old worlds. He's a tae-kwon-do expert who also knows calligraphy and history. His office is in a modern police station, and his officers use 1970s-modern techniques. There wasn't enough of Mr. Kill in the book, in my opinion. He was such a fascinating character that I'm hoping Limón has more in store for him.

Sueño and Bascom determine that an American G.I. is raping Korean women on trains. They are not interested in covering up on behalf of the U.S. government, which immediately puts them at a disadvantage in terms of cooperation. Luckily they're bull-headed and heavy-fisted. They are not above bending the law themselves to suit their purpose. And their purpose is to catch the rapist.

On the other hand, while not immediately sanctioning this more important case, the military puts Sueño and Bascom in charge of escorting women country and western singers who are on a USO tour. Someone has been stealing pieces of clothing and equipment. A boot here, a bra there.

The C.I.D. detectives must balance working on these cases, and find time to sleep somewhere in their busy days and nights.

What Limón does really well is return us to a time and country that we never knew while it was happening. G.I.s have been stationed in South Korea since the Korean War in the 1950s. The complications resulting from a clash of cultures, a not-so-hidden American feeling of superiority, and the tense military situation between North and South Koreas provide the unique background of Limón's books.

Slash and Burn, by Colin Cotterill (hardcover, $25)(due 12/6/11)

2011-11-30T14:30:00.001-08:00

Colin Cotterill's books starring Dr. Siri Paiboun have been among our most recommended at the store. Dr. Siri is a coroner in 1970s Communist Laos. Actually, Dr. Siri is Laos' ONLY coroner. He gets into plenty of political and criminal hot water because of his irreverent attitude and acute observations, some of which are not of this world. It sometimes helps and sometimes hurts that he can see ghosts. One particular soul who haunts Siri is an ancient Hmong shaman. The books have humor and warmth, they speak about a time and locale that are beyond the personal knowledge of most of Cotterill's readers, and they also incorporate serious political and cultural issues that affected Southeast Asia at the time.

So it was with great sadness that I read the announcement that this would be the last Dr. Siri book.

Slash and Burn is not as brilliant as Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, its immediate predecessor, but it constitutes a fond enough farewell to Siri.

A MIA U.S. helicopter pilot who worked for Air America (now widely accepted as a CiA/drug-running outfit) is the subject of a search by a joint U.S./Lao group. Ten years after his helicopter crashed, there is evidence that he might still be alive. Dr. Siri is roped into being a member of the team. He, in turn, ropes his wife, morgue colleagues, and best friend into accompanying him. The flamboyant, psychic, and cross-dressing Auntie Bpoo sneaks aboard. She claims she's there to prevent Siri's death, which she has foreseen on her psychic channel.

After a helicopter trip into the remote area where the investigation will begin, after truck rides in which no rut or pothole is left unfelt, after figuring out how the U.S. and Laotian sides will communicate, and especially after a murder occurs, Siri and his gang realize this will be a real busman's holiday.

Goodbye to the intuitive and wise Dr. Siri. Goodbye to his gun-toting, ex-rebel, noodle-making wife Daeng. Goodbye to competent Nurse Dtui and her macho police officer husband Phosy. Goodbye to sweet, mentally challenged morgue attendent Geung. Goodbye to sarcastic former politico Civilai. Goodbye to Ugly, the dog Siri discovers and adopts in this book; we hardly knew ye. Goodbye, even, to weasley Judge Haeng, Siri's incompetent nemesis. But it's not goodbye to Colin Cotterill.

Recently released Killed at the Whim of a Hat was Cotterill's first non-Siri book. It, too, is a winner and has the same lovely blend of humor and seriousness. Nevertheless, we can all have a group hug and together shuffle over to the Kleenex box.*

* A pop culture reference to the last scene in the last episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," still one of the funniest sad scenes ever.

Murder in the 11th House, by Mitchell Scott Lewis ($14.95)

2011-11-28T22:22:00.001-08:00

There are many interesting things about this book, including an unusual astrologer/detective and his crusading lawyer daughter. However, there's also a disconcerting mixture of mostly polite talk with a lot of incongruous heavy-duty swearing. David Lowell, the astrologer, is a beer connoisseur à la Nero Wolfe, prickly personality, gentleman, and aikido black belt. His daughter's client is quick-tempered Joanna "Johnny" Colbert, a foul-mouthed bartender accused of murdering a judge.

Reasons to keep reading: Johnny has a gambling problem, so there's an interesting and sobering aside on the mechanics of gambling addiction. I quite enjoyed the fact that Lowell is wealthy, and he made his money in the stock market by using astrology. There are spots of humor, especially with Lowell's secretary, and they were good touches.

Things that make you close your eyes: Johnny develops a crush on the much older and more sophisticated Lowell, and there's an awkward moment or two as his daughter, Melinda, seems to sanction it. Although the book is written in the third person, the only character who is fleshed out is Lowell. It's classic amateur sleuthing meets political thriller meets My Fair Lady, and the mishmash is dizzying.

There's a lot of potential for turning this into an interesting series. Had Johnny's swearing not been so graphically portrayed, the story would have been smoother and better defined. Or, conversely, maybe everyone else should have been harder-boiled.

The Clairvoyant Countess, by Dorothy Gilman ($6.99) (c1975)

2011-11-28T22:16:00.001-08:00

With books toppling over on my nightstand and bookshelves, why did I grab this book? I know I'd read it years ago, but I didn't remember anything about it. Dorothy Gilman and Rex Stout are my "comfort food" authors. Their stories raise my spirits and entertain me. It's a guilty pleasure to which I succumbed.

Dorothy Gilman is better known for her Mrs. Pollifax stories, but she's written quite a few stand-alones for adults and children. Mrs. P is the calm center in her stories, and in The Clairvoyant Countess, it's Madame Karitska, a psychic, who holds the center together.

The book contains a series of vignettes, starring Madame Karitska and her reluctant believer, Lt. Pruden of the Trafton, New Jersey, police. She can tell the future, see the dead, find missing objects and people, and always lands on her feet.

This work is a little dated, referring to hippies and modest gang activity in an urban setting. There's an innocence attached to how Lt. Pruden begins to rely on the psychic and in how Madame Karitska's flamboyant background is portrayed.

In the end, it's just good fun, with interesting characters in simpler times.

Interview of Gary McKinney at Murder by the Book - 11/19/11

2011-11-22T11:03:00.001-08:00

Washington author Gary McKinney stopped by one rainy afternoon to talk about his new book, Darkness Bids the Dead Goodbye (Kearney Street Books, $14.95).

Before he uttered a word about his book, Gary strapped on a guitar and sang a Grateful Dead song.* This was a "grate" introduction to his series hero who is a Deadhead. Gavin Pruitt is also the sheriff of a small town, a soon-to-be grandfather, and a soon-to-be father. What in Gary's background could have produced such a meld of stories?

Gary has a Masters in Creative Writing and played music professionally for several years. That's the short answer.

The long answer involves much of Gary's background story. How is Pruitt like him? Gary, too, grew up in an area much like what Sheriff Pruitt patrols. Pruitt's Grateful Dead and sensory deprivation tank interests are Gary's as well, but Pruitt is more intense and has a temper. Gary "wouldn't personally be good at" what Pruitt does. And Pruitt is starting over with his life (e.g., his child-in-waiting), and Gary contentedly isn't.

Was Gary one of the bad boys in town while growing up? No, more of a "geek-wuss," he says, laughing. In fact, he found it difficult to write the part of the killer. It "creeped me out," he says. About his town while he was growing up, Gary says, "It wasn't art and literature; it was beer and fights."

Gary's gentleness has infused Sheriff Pruitt with an optimism that is at odds with his job dealing with the evil that people can do to themselves and others. Pruitt "expects the worst but hopes for the best," Gary says.

Gary's evident sense of humor inserts itself into his books. He "wants the reader to get a few chuckles." It is a balance of humor and seriousness that he hopes will engage his audience. He says, "There should be a little bit of everything!"

That's why he may have brought back Angela, whom he had "fallen in love with as a character." Her outrageous behavior in Slipknot, the first book in his series, was too good to leave out of the second. Moving her next door to the sheriff lightened the more serious main story of a brutal murder.

How did Gary make his female characters believable? The rest of the members of his writer's group is all women. They have kept him on a realistic course. "He's a feminist-humanist," shouted a friend who had joined the get together. Good credentials.

The world of Sheriff Pruitt seems so far away from the life of Gary McKinney. How does he manage the technical details of his story? He has his stories vetted by a member of the Bellingham PD and by his friend, fellow author Robert Lopresti.

Gary works to keep his books real. He says that he has learned "what not to put in." Because the sheriff's town and the sheriff's character are so clear to him, it's "almost impossible" not to have the story be visual. (That will help if Hollywood ever comes knocking!)

There are some funny things from Gary and his wife's lives that he can still draw from. If you spot a muscular red Mustang car in one of his books, it's because his wife's parents owned one. Both Gary and Karen gave credible impressions of teenage girls flirting with the machine, only to be eventually surprised (and disappointed) to see Karen's mother at the wheel!

Next up for Gary is some research into hunting, because that's what Sheriff Pruitt is going to have to know for his next adventure. Gary is working to keep Pruitt from becoming jaded. No chance of that.

*Gary played three songs, each of which told a story. Ergo, Gary is a storyteller no matter what his venue.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, by Alan Bradley ($15)

2011-11-21T15:57:00.001-08:00

Although Alan Bradley has just released #4 in the series, here I am just finishing #2. On the one hand, I am pleased to have two more to look forward to; and on the other hand, I'm anxious to get caught up. Especially since the two remaining have such cool names: A Red Herring Without Mustard and I Am Half-Sick of Shadows.

Speaking of cool names, the 11-year-old heroine is named Flavia de Luce. Her family is blue-blooded, her home is a mansion in rural England, and she is for all intents and purposes alone in the world. Yes, she has a father, but he's distant, shell-shocked, on the verge of losing his holdings. Yes, Flavia has two older sisters, but they take every opportunity to let her know that she's a pest, not wanted, and being shipped off to a Home at the earliest opportunity. Flavia's hobby is creating poisons in her home laboratory.

It is 1950, which the author lets the reader figure out from a couple of hints in the first few pages. (Sorry if I've spoiled your fun.) Flavia meets a famous puppeteer and his assistant when their van breaks down in her small village of Bishop's Lacey. When Rupert Porson, the puppeteer, dies, Flavia succeeds in figuring out, à la Sherlock Holmes, that it was murder. Flavia tracks down Rupert's connection to the little village, which then opens up the field as far as murder suspects go.

Flavia is charming, eccentric, and knowledgeable beyond her years. Yet she is still an 11-year-old child, and her heart yearns for her dead mother, kindness from others, and a grace that is missing from her life.

Although it's a grown-up murder with grown-up reasons and repercussions, the narrator is refreshingly young. She deals with the difficulties in her life as best she can.

An interview of Dana Haynes - 11/17/11

2011-11-19T09:37:00.001-08:00

Portland author Dana Haynes stopped by Murder by the Book to discuss himself and his new book, Breaking Point, the follow-up to the successful Crashers.

The downside of becoming better known and in demand by the media is that one's name isn't always spelled right. Dana Haynes has morphed into "Dana Hayes" in Connecticut and the dreaded "Donna Hines" in Italy. It turns out he is all for getting his name out there, no matter what the form.

Speaking of the Italian language release of his book, when Haynes first received a copy, he didn't realize what it was and thought he had suffered a stroke because he couldn't read the words. He has since become relaxed enough to enjoy the Italian trailer for his book, despite being a little disconcerted by the Italian villain's maniacal laugh sounding strangely like Kermit the Frog's.

It's easy to be entertained by Haynes' easy-going demeanor and self-deprecating humor. In fact, he jumped up and unabashedly re-created the "happy dance" he did when he heard his publisher wanted two further books about Daria Gibron, his Lisbeth Salander-like character in his series. But humor is not what his books are about.

Both Crashers and Breaking Point are stories about the laborious and detailed forensic work done by National Transportation Safety Board crash teams – "CSI" for airplanes. Haynes' background as a journalist gave him the discipline to do the required research to factually represent what goes on at an airplane crash site investigation. He takes great pains to point out, however, that real crash investigations go on for months, even years, whereas his stories are resolved within days.

Humor does manage to sneak in sometimes as a way to segue between the complicated technical scenes, the crazy killer scenes, and the human interplay. Tommy Tomzak especially is a good old Texas boy with a wry sense of the absurd.

Haynes acknowledges that creating the huge number of protagonists and antagonists in his books was a "dumb way to write." He says, "No one would have done it intentionally," but that's what these over-the-top disaster books needed. There are many people with their own little area of expertise who comprise a real-life crash team, and Haynes' fictional team mirrors that. The characters' names and curricula vitae written on butcher block paper taped to kitchen cabinets helps keep things straight, especially when viewed with a morning cup of coffee.

One of his more fascinating characters is Kiki Duvall. She has an acute sense of hearing and an uncanny intuition when things don't sound right. For instance, she notices nuances in accents and speech patterns that escape the rest of us, and can tell where someone is from, à la Henry Higgins. Haynes refers to Jonathan Harr's "The Crash Detectives," a 1996 The New Yorker article, the inspiration for Haynes' books. In the article, Harr mentions an investigator who could determine amazing details of a crash by listening to ticking sounds on a recording. Duvall is modeled after that investigator.

In an interesting aside, Haynes says that he has read of examiners being able to determine what was showing on the flight deck monitors at the time of the crash by what the break pattern is on the light bulbs. Hot bulbs break differently than cold bulbs. That's an example of the material yet to be mined for his future books. Not that Haynes has trouble writing. His years as a journalist taught him how to write copiously under pressure. As any reporter knows, there's "no writer's block, just unemployment."

Of course, Haynes vets his books before they're published, but there is inevitable scrutiny by people who know about crashes – and some who think they know about crashes. The kind of plane that crashes in Breaking Point is a figment of Haynes' imagination. Nevertheless, one reader insisted that Haynes did not depict the plane accurately. "But I invented the damn thing," he says, shaking his head. He acknowledges that he does use literary license in some cases – not the least of which is the aforementioned foreshortening of the investigative timeframe.

Haynes was published by Bantam when he was 21-year-old, along with literary contemporaries Sue Grafton and Robert Crais. Unlike Grafton and Crais, he was dropped after a run of three books. A lengthy dryspell followed, although Haynes wrote the entire time. He got his hopes up when a publisher showed interest in an older rendition of Crashers, that book about terrorists in New York and a plane crash. His timing was awful, however, as this was shortly before 9/11. Obscurity followed again. After knowing the ups and downs of being an author, Haynes is enjoying each minute now. He works at tweeting, blogging, and whatever else his publisher wants. "If they wanted me to do sock puppets, I'd do it," he says.

Breaking Point, by Dana Haynes (hardcover, $24.99)

2011-11-19T09:32:00.001-08:00

Dana Haynes' first book, Crashers -- the nickname used for the National Transportation Safety Board's team of investigators of airplane crashes -- brought a quirky but brilliant group of individuals together for an investigation in Portland. We met pathologist Tommy Tomzak, sharp-eared Kiki Duvall, and pilot Isaiah Grey, the core of that crash team. This time around, they are passengers in the plane that crashes in a forest in Montana. Turnabout is not fair play.

Haynes informs us that it is not unusual for real-life crash teams to have different configurations each time. Members are drawn from experts all over the country, depending on who is closest and available, and Haynes' fictional team is no exception. New faces with new talents pop up to help. However, Peter Kim, the pain-in-the-heinie from Crashers, is the Investigator in Charge this time. Gulp.

Further hindering the dream team is the fact that tiny-but-tough Susan Tanaka is on a rare vacation, so she isn't in charge of enabling the investigation either on-site or in D.C. By-the-book Peter as the IIC is missing the elusive creative factor needed to solve the mystery of the crash. It's a good thing the NTSB survivors -- ostracized by Kim -- form an unauthorized shadow team.

FBI agent Ray Calabrese and mysterious ex-Israeli agent Daria Gibron are also back and join our heroes.

A silver-haired mercenary, nicknamed Calendar, caused the crash. One can only think that his benign-sounding name represents the clock ticking and time running out. Will the forest fire started by the plane crash destroy all the evidence? Why was Calendar hired to destroy the plane? Will the primary go-team stumble on the truth? Will the shadow go-team find Calendar before he kills them? Are Calendar's days numbered?

The combination of main team, shadow team, double-crossers, and double-double-crossers puts a lot of players up front, but Haynes does an outstanding job sorting them out.

This is a page-turner that will put a blister on your finger.

Buyer's Remorse, by Lori L. Lake (paperback, $19.95)

2011-11-14T11:27:00.001-08:00

Lori Lake is a seasoned writer and teacher, and her ability to create an interesting story is apparent in Buyer's Remorse. Her writing shows impeccable plotting and research.

Leona "Leo" Reese is a 33-year-old police patrol sergeant who has been sidelined temporarily, at least she hopes it's temporary. She's failed a shooting qualification test and has been reassigned as an investigator to the Department of Human Services, the state's watchdog many institutions, including independent living facilities. When an older woman suffering from Alzheimer's is murdered in such a facility, Leo finds herself back in the police business.

At the same time, other aspects of Leo's life are in a whirl. Her partner Daria is a criminal defense attorney. With Leo's unwanted work reassignment and Daria's long hours preparing for an important trial, there's a lot of stress at home. Add to the mix the blinding headaches that Leo has been getting, the reason, it turns out, that Leo has failed her shooting test. It's almost a blessing that Leo can focus on the murder and less on what has been happening to her personally. "'Welcome to the International House of Zombies,'" Daria says at one point.

Eleanor Sinclair doesn't see the blessing in the situation, however. It is her partner, Callie, who has been murdered. Although Eleanor is capable of living independently outside of a facility, she retired from teaching high school and took a room at the Rivers' Edge Apartments, which "is nowhere near any rivers or edges," to be close to her companion of 40 years. Who would want to kill a retired high school cook with no money to speak of?

It is easy to be drawn to the characters of Leo and Eleanor as they struggle through both their personal problems and catching Callie's killer. They are both independent women with a large capacity for empathy, no doubt the reason both were good at and satisfied with their jobs.

Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny ($14.99) (c2010)

2011-11-13T12:41:00.001-08:00

Louise Penny gets better and better. Bury Your Dead still is infused with Penny's signature quiet style and subtle movements, but she again has added more depth to her characters and plot. Only one of her three storylines takes place in the quirky village of Three Pines, although there is some intertwining.

At the end of her prior novel, The Brutal Telling, one of the resident eccentric characters of Three Pines has been imprisoned for murder. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, our thoughtful and cast-against-type hero -- he is often described as resembling a professor more than a police chief -- has reconsidered whether the prisoner (pardon my cagey reluctance to name the prisoner in case some of you may not have read the book) in fact is guilty. He sends Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his second-in-command, to surreptitiously investigate. Since Three Pines is a small village, there's not much that can occur surreptitiously, but Beauvoir attempts to stick out less like a sort thumb than a numb pinkie as he revisits the residents he not-so-secretly considers irritating and provocative. Once again, he looks over the life, such as it was, of "The Hermit," the murder victim, and what relationships he may have had with the townspeople.

Why isn't Gamache himself reviewing the case? He is in Quebec City visiting his mentor, retired detective Émile Comeau, and recovering from physical and psychological wounds received in a police action gone wrong. (Jean-Guy also was a victim of the same action and he uses his recovery as an excuse to visit Three Pines.) The mysterious case that devastated Gamache is slowly revealed throughout the book. One of his young detectives, Paul Morin, had been kidnapped and his captors were threatening to kill him if Gamache and his remaining team could not locate his whereabouts. This story slips in and out of the other narratives without warning. One minute you are reading about the Three Pines investigation, then suddenly you realize you are listening to the inner ruminations of Beauvoir about that case.

The third story is about the death of Augustin Renaud in Quebec City. Although Gamache is on leave and Comeau is retired, they both become involved in helping to solve his murder. Renaud was a true eccentric, a Quixote trying to find the burial site of Quebec's founder and leading light, Samuel de Champlain. (It is a true story that Champlain's final resting place is unknown.) In Penny's fictional universe, Renaud, a Francophone (French-speaking Quebec resident), is found dead in the sub-basement of the Historical and Literary Society's Library, the bastion of the Anglophones (English-speaking) in the tight inner world of Quebec City. This allows Penny to give us an interesting aside on separatist issues. It competes satisfyingly with Penny's interesting asides on Quebec's history and community activities. Mystery and travelogue in one!

We meet many new characters who are associated with the Lit and His, as it is known. It is run by the English -- so-called because they speak English, even though they may also speak French fluently and have families who've resided in Quebec for generations. During his leave, Gamache has been using the library to research a historical question that has interested him, so he is virtually on-site when the murder occurs. His familiarity with the Lit and His people gives him a special insight into the difficult relationship they had with Renaud.

The resolutions to all three cases are stunning. Penny eases us into her story and gradually steps up the tension, until she ties up the ends with a bang and whump.

MBTB has awarded a star to Bury Your Dead.

The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbøl & Agnete Friis (hardcover, $24)

2011-11-10T13:15:00.001-08:00

Yes, this book is about a boy in a suitcase.

Denmark has entered the race for the next golden book to come out of Scandinavia. There's not a dysfunctional detective in sight in this thriller. Rather, our heroine is a dysfunctional nurse. She wants to save the world -- the reason becomes a little clearer as the book progresses -- and fate gives her the opportunity to include one little boy stuffed in a suitcase.

As is so prevalent these days, the book begins with several storylines which, we hope, will eventually untangle into one story. Sigita, a young mother in Lithuania, awakens in a hospital with a broken arm. She is told that she was massively drunk and fell down the stairs, and her little boy is with her ex-husband. But, wait! Sigita is a sober, responsible person and her son is not with her ex-husband. Back in Copenhagen, Nina Borg, the dysfunctional nurse, is currently working in a Red Cross center with illegal immigrants. She gets a desperate call from an old friend, who eventually asks Nina to retrieve a suitcase from a locker.

So we assume that the boy Nina finds in the suitcase in Copenhagen is probably the little boy Sigita is missing in Lithuania. But why is he in Denmark? Nina does not call the police for help. It was hard to swallow her reasoning. (The boy is an illegal immigrant and he might be put into "the system" and never heard from again.) Nevertheless, she soldiers on and tries to find out the child's identity herself. Beginning with her friend Karin, the woman who sent her on the quest, seems like the best place to start. It puts the problem at a different level when Nina finds Karin murdered.

Sigita is having her own problem in getting people to believe that her son is really missing. It's her background story that is the most touching and interesting in the book.

In order to enjoy the book and find the ending clever, you must accept that one of the characters is capable of extreme heartlessness. However, if you've accepted that it was okay that Nina didn't call the police, then, hey, you'll have no problem with this. In the end, I did find the book enjoyable and the ending clever. A big part of why I found the book readable was the competent translation. The story was smooth without awkward phrasing. So here's to one of the authors who translated her own story, Lene Kaaberbøl.

1222, by Anne Holt (hardcover, $25) (due 12/11)

2011-11-10T08:42:00.001-08:00

I knew I would like this book when our at-first anonymous narrator, confined to a wheelchair and injured in a train accident, is attended by a dwarf physician. Anne Holt writes, "His voice was surprisingly deep. I had expected some kind of helium voice, as if he were an entertainer at a children's party."

This is the eighth Hanne Wilhelmsen story but the first to be translated into English from Norwegian. It really doesn't matter that we haven't read the other seven, a statement I don't make too often because usually, especially this far into a series, our understanding is contingent on some preceding adventure. Holt slowly introduces Hanne, a retired police detective, and this teasing introduction actually serves the story well.

A once-in-a-hundred-years snowstorm derails a train and traps 268 people, including Hanne, in an out-of-the-way hotel, Finse 1222. They are rats in a maze with no foreseeable reward. Although the snow does its best to quickly bury the hotel, it is not quite quick enough to totally bury the body of a murdered "guest" before it is discovered. The victim is a "televangelist," who is well known to many of the other detainees.

Holt's selection of unorthodox characters to populate the hotel is captivating. Each one of the highlighted people encapsulates a mini-mystery.

Kari Thue, "the woman with a voice as sharp as the parting in her thin hair," is an aggressive television personality, one who has some deep-seated racial prejudices, currently aimed like laser beams at two putative Muslims trapped with everyone else. In a display of pack mentality, she draws similarly narrow-minded people to her, and they stridently demand the impossible.

Adrian, a fifteen-year-old boy, is someone Hanne wants to protect, but he falls under the sway of black-clad, Goth-visaged Veronica.

Magnus Treng, the dwarf physician, Berit Tverre, the hotel manager who must rise to the occasion and organize the storm's hostages, and Geir Rugholmen, the man who appears to be a backwoodsman but is actually a lawyer, are the people upon whom Hanne relies.

Hanne is less a movable character than a stationary narrator. Her handicap limits her to the lobby of the hotel. Although she is still familiar with police procedure, she is reluctant to investigate. The police are coming soon; they will solve the crime easily, she thinks. As the storm rages on far longer than expected, we watch death after death occur, with no discernible movement on Hanne's part to figure out why. Holt builds this tension to an excruciating point. Several times I silently willed Hanne to metaphorically leap up and frisk people, search rooms, haul them in one by one to be interrogated. So "Law and Order"-ish of me, so American, so wrong. Even though we see things through Hanne's first-person narrative, we are never privy to her real thoughts, a clever device, as it turns out.

In the end we learn that this reluctance is what now defines Hanne. After she was shot and paralyzed, she entered some sort of purgatorial waiting room:

I thought I had swapped one life for another. After these days at Finse, it struck me that I had actually swapped a vital, ambitious life for an existence in waiting.

Clever Holt serves up a little existential drama along with a murder mystery.

There's a subplot that swirls around occasionally. A mysterious extra car was added onto the train. Rumor has it that it is a royal carriage. Indeed, the occupants of the last car are surreptitiously bundled into the hotel and hidden from sight. There are armed bodyguards, even.

If you need a reference point, then Lord of the Flies meets And Then There Were None, perhaps. Holt and translator Marlaine Delargy present an interesting and well-written book, one that truly can stand alone, despite being the eighth in a series.

Call Me Princess, by Sara Blaedel (hardcover, $25)

2011-11-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

This is the second book in Sara Blaedel's series starring Assistant Detective Louise Rick of the Copenhagen police but the first one to be translated into English.

It's a plainly written book, heavy on police procedures. "Law and Order," Danish style, with swearing. Louise is a pretty smart cookie about everything except her personal life. She is on the trail of a particularly nasty serial rapist. We meet her team of detectives, and they fill the requisite spots: sympathetic, collegial, brutish, alpha dog, confused. Her clueless boyfriend and self-absorbed best friend round out the main characters.

The plot is okay and I like how Blaedel worked the title into the story, but the writing and/or translation is a little stilted. I always want to love the Scandinavians, but sometimes it's hard to feel the love.

The Edinburgh Dead, by Brian Ruckley ($14.99)

2011-11-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

Caution: Although I don't truly give anything away -- until the section marked "Spoiler" -- if you want to be surprised by Edinburgh Dead, don't read this review until after you've read the book.

One advantage to reading advanced reading copies is that there's no dustjacket summary to give away the plot. There were suspicions of what the book would eventually turn out to emphasize, but until the first full-blown genre-defining scene a third of the way through the book, I thought it would be a tiger of another stripe.

Brian Ruckley does an impressive job creating both suspenseful literary atmosphere and a historical sense of what Edinburgh was like during the early 1800s. He describes the violence of the times as well as transmits a subtle sense of the underlying menace that is the eventual subject of the book.

It isn't until a third way into the book that what has been hinted at finally is voiced, and not until half-way through the book that we get a real scene. To Ruckley's credit, he doesn't make it campy but keeps his voice relatively restrained and historical, not hysterical or histrionic.

Our hero Quire, an Edinburgh police officer, is interesting because he is bendable but not bent. He tries to stay away from his prostitute girlfriend. He tries to play the game at work. He doesn't manage either very successfully.

What Quire does do is get involved with the "resurrectionists," grave robbers who supply dead bodies to the medical schools and anatomists. Soon he spots anomalies, people who aren't what they should be, people who aren't where they should be.

If you've read this review so far but haven't actually read the book, here is a second chance to stop. Following this are some real spoilers. Really, read the book (but not the dustjacket). It's good.

SPOILER ALERT

So. Zombies. In many ways this book set in 1800s Edinburgh was scarier and more thrilling than a book set in contemporary times with its flamethrowers, ninja sticks, cellphones, nuclear weapons, and stainless steel swords. Shades of Boris Karloff, the zombie gravedigger and zombie dogs were chilling.

Despite several close calls, Quire manages to evade true peril. Even when he confronts the various villains, he has the upper hand and is never captured. One part of me said, "Whew," and another said, why not? Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed this "speculative fiction," as Ruckley has branded it. To me, it was less speculative fiction than a supernatural period piece.

end

One Man, One Murder, by Jakob Arjouni ($14.95)(c1991, re-released 2011)

2011-10-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

This is a story with a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, dissolute, wise-ass, world-weary private eye, in the best American tradition à la Raymond Chandler. However, the author, Jakob Arjouni, is German. Kemal Kayankaya, the aforementioned dissolute p.i., is a German citizen of Turkish descent. Otherwise, not so different. There are the requisite dissipated denizens of the underworld: women of ill-repute, pugnacious mobsters, and cement block-shaped henchmen. Tossed in are corruption, betrayal, snappy dialogue, and a missing dame. See, not so different.

How colorful is this? Kemal Kayankaya must find Sri Dao Rakdee for his client, Manuel Weidenbusch. It's a veritable United Nations. Even the asides are multicultural. At one point, some of the characters are watching a tennis match with American John McEnroe playing a "taciturn Swede."

Here's a taste of the tough guy talk:

The joint was packed. Clouds of smoke hung under the ceiling, and the waiters' faces glistened with sweat. I made my way to the bar. Ignoring the instant angry chatter of the woman working the beer tap I opened the door marked Office and saw Schlumpi, the man I didn't know, and Slibulsky.

A plain man wants the woman of his dreams returned to him. She's apparently a Thai hooker, however, and disappears in the process of trying to extend her visa. While investigating at the brothel and engaging in badinage with some odd fellows, Kayankaya runs into an old friend who is working for a member of the mob. Does the mob have anything to do with the woman's disappearance? Or was she merely toying with Kayankaya's client and done a runner with his money? The various stories twist about but manage to be resolved all of a piece at the end.

Arjouni's writing is spritely, sarcastic, and funny. Kayankaya has Attitude to spare and a probable death-wish, a good combination.

I must give the translator, Anselm Hollo, a standing "o" for a wonderful, flowing narrative. (It wasn't originally written in English? Really?)

Hell and Gone, by Duane Swierczynski ($14.99) (due 10/31/11)

2011-10-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

This is the second in a projected three-book series about Charlie Hardie. I'm hoping there will in fact be a third book (Point and Shoot, projected release date 3/12), because there was a lot of hanging by the fingernails from a cliff at the end of this one.

Fun and Games was the first book. To my loss I have not read this, but Swierczynski encapsulates the first book's action very well, as in: therewasashootoutoverthepeoplehewassupposedtoprotectandanactressgotkilledbutCharliewasinnocent,gotshotandkidnappedoutofthehospital.

Charlie is a tough guy, apparently too tough to put under with an ordinary amount of anesthesia. He unexpectedly wakes up to bizarre scenes: in an ambulance after he's been shot or finding he’s stuck on a life-support system in the trunk of a car. The next thing he knows he has (mostly) recovered somehow and is now handcuffed to a chair. His arch-nemesis, a female assassin, is telling him he is the new "warden" of a facility where they keep "monsters."

Stop.

You probably have the (correct) impression that this is not a normal book of crime fiction. It's very visual in a ka-bam, pow-y sort of way, but there are also a lot of nods to old-time pulp fiction. Swierczynski hits his readers between their eyes with his fast movements. For example, the book starts this way:

During the past fifteen minutes Charlie Hardie had been nearly drowned, shot in his left arm, shot in the side of his head, and almost shot in the face at point-blank range.

Now he was sprawled out on a damp suburban lawn handcuffed to a crazy secret-assassin lady who liked to sunbathe topless. He figured things could only go up from here.

The quotes Swierczynski adds before each chapter warrant a book report all by themselves. A lot of them are from incarceration fiction and movies: from "Papillon" to "Cool Hand Luke" to the campy "Shock Corridor." Toss in a sprinkling from cult classics, books and movies also featuring man vs. The Man.

Reference Kafka, Sarte (also quoted), or any other existential dude you want, add kick-ass action, gnarly and grotesque dudes and dudettes who could be good or bad or both or actors, and shake everything up thoroughly until you are verging on a headache, and serve.

My best advice is to stop saying "What?" every few minutes as you read the book. Go with the flow, enjoy the staccato ride, and wait in sweaty and grimy anticipation for Point and Shoot.

The Revisionists, by Thomas Mullen (hardcover, $25.99)

2011-10-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

This is an odd mixture of sinister world politics, sci-fi, and people grappling with their own personal tragedies. The personal tragedies impinge upon, however unlikely, world politics. The mixture was intriguing. But then Thomas Mullen, author of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, is an intriguing writer.

Also, anyone who can write, "spooged through the clump that had agglutinated around the spout," also wins my vote for the Gotta-Read-More-of-This award.

The time is now. Zed, aka Troy Jones, claims to be from the future, an agent sent back in time to ensure that the "hags," provocateurs from his time, don't tamper with events in the past. "The integrity of history must be preserved," is the mantra of his department. He is here to prevent interference with the forces that produce an apocalyptic world catastrophe. That's right. He's a government agent sent here to PREVENT anyone from stopping the catastrophe.

Leo Hastings is a former CIA-agent who is now working for a private information-gathering enterprise. He accidentally meets an Indonesian woman, Sari, who is working for a South Korean diplomat. His prior assignment was in Jakarta, so he understands Sari's language and culture. He discovers that through her he might learn some high-level nasty stuff about the South Koreans that will reinstate him in the graces of the Big Boys.

Tasha Wilson is a corporate attorney who is beginning to sour on her duties. She's also trying to unravel the truth behind the death of her brother, a soldier stationed in the Middle East. She is caught between governmental forces when she uncovers a moral atrocity committed by one of her firm's clients. She eventually meets the other main characters, and it is the story behind the confluence of their tribulations that is both odd and wonderful.

The main thoughts that this thoughtful book brings out are: Do the ends justify the means? How does one do "The Right Thing"? And, as Tasha wonders, "Where was the gray area between ignorance and obsession?"

Zed tells us his cover identity is that of a real "contemp," Troy Jones, a man whose life closely approximates Zed's. Both have lost a wife and child. Both have something to hide and discover. Tasha and Leo also understand loss. The three of them stumble across each other's paths and wind up questioning the underlying "truth" of their assignments and lives. Leo's mysterious client, Tasha's mysterious friend T.J., Zed's ambiguous future agency swirl the moral dilemma into a froth.

Zed has been winking in and out of so many different times that he says, "Now. I barely know what the word means anymore." However, he remains the ultimate loyal, disciplined machine, killing hags to save the "perfect" time. Even though Leo has been cut loose by the Agency, he feels loyalty to his country. He asks of the people who would question it, "Didn't they realize how much better this was than any other country, any other system, any other way of life?" Tasha's two acts of rebellion are to leak to a newspaper that one of her firm's clients potentially sacrificed soldiers' lives to save some money and to question the military's explanation of her brother's death.

Although a lot of the book sounds like a spy story, with battling agencies and underground insurrectionists, it's ultimately a philosophical and political challenge to the reader. How much governmental bending of the rules in the name of (what may be a false) freedom are we willing to allow? How much is too much until we can't turn away any longer? Are we, the people, in charge of our government and our own destinies in name only? If we are paranoid, could there be a good reason for it?

Most people in Mullen's world are apathetic or ignorant at best. The governments in his world might be amoral, weak, and selfish, but we don't know whether they are or not for quite a while as we wait for his protagonists to sort out their lives and finally expose the answer.

The movie, "The Adjustment Bureau," and Orwell's 1984 are distant cousins of this book. There is a moral to this tale, and there is hope, as well.

The Ranger, by Ace Atkins (hardcover, $25.95)

2011-10-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

Ace Atkins has been around for a while. He wrote the Nick Travers series, about an ex-football player who knows about the blues. He also recently was picked to continue Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. A big high-five to him for that honor, and it is well-deserved because Atkins can keep an audience entertained.

The Ranger is neither a Travers nor a Spenser book. It feels like the start of a new series. In which case, I'd say Atkins' plate is falling-over-the-edges full.

Quinn Colson has returned to the small southern town where he grew up. His uncle, the sheriff, has died. Quinn is shocked to learn that his uncle's death has been declared a suicide. With prodding by deputy Lillie Virgil, a friend he hasn't seen for years, Quinn is determined to find out if he had been murdered instead.

Quinn has been in the Army since he was 18. He is 29 now, has seen quite a bit of action, is a member of the elite Ranger unit, and has many psychological skeletons buried in Tibbehah County, Mississippi. Although he is on a short leave from being an instructor at an Army base, he vows he will not leave town until he has unraveled what caused his uncle's death.

Former friends and acquaintances come out of the woodwork to either help or hinder his investigation. Old hurts are revisited; old lives mourned as new lives move on. What Quinn finds is that his sleepy valley has been hijacked by some unsavory characters.

Quinn turned his back on the town years ago, so what right does he have to stir things up now, some people wonder. He makes people move way outside their comfort zones. His ultimate contradiction is that he is a trained killer who thinks of killing only as a last resort. It would have been a way shorter book if he just had taken care of the bad guys when he had the chance. But that's not what Quinn Colson and Ace Atkins are about.

There were times that I grunted in disgust as one of his characters did something really stupid. I had to remind myself that real people do stupid things, and, once again, it would have been a much shorter book had I been allowed to choose my own adventure, as it were. I weathered the attack on the cows, dog, barns, trailers, low-lifes, high-lifes, a pregnant woman, and assorted bozos and yahoos. The end result was that I would like to see another Quinn Colson adventure. (Maybe with fewer than the cast of thousands in this book.)

Calling Mr. King, by Ronald De Feo ($14.95)

2011-10-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

This book is somewhat of a one-trick pony. It would have made a fabulous short story with a Saki-like ending, but instead it's a 291-page novel. Against the odds, I liked much of it.

When the phone rings for "Peter Chilton" and the voice on the other end asks for "Mr. King," it means the man, who is neither Peter Chilton nor Mr. King, must go to work. He is a hitman and an excellent one to boot.

One day, Peter becomes distracted while waiting for his mark to arrive. He begins to notice buildings -- in fact, eventually becoming quite enamored with Georgian architecture in England. Horror of horrors, soon he messes up a hit. His employers place him on hiatus in New York. At first resentful, Peter soon begins to relax and haunts bookstores, picking up weighty works on architecture. He begins to notice people, other than the ones he has been hired to kill. His world begins to tilt and he dreams of retiring from the business. But how to extract himself. And, anyway, can he ever really be a normal guy?

It's not the story that fascinated me but the intensity of Peter's interest in architecture and art. De Feo gives us short lessons in what-is-what and it's fascinating, especially when he describes Gaudi's art when Peter is sent to Barcelona.

Art appreciation disguised as a mystery? Why not?

Daniel Woodrell: An Interview (10/9/11)

2011-10-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

(This interview contains spoilers.)

Daniel Woodrell, the author of The Bayou Trilogy, Winter's Bone, and Tomato Red, among others, made a special trip to the store last night to sign books and to let us ask him questions. That was especially grand because he had been up since the wee hours of the morning to fly into Portland and appear at Portland's literary convention, Wordstock.

I didn't have a taping device going because it was an informal meeting, so his remarks are paraphrased for the most part. All his answers were considered, articulate, and courteous. (He hestitated to tell a mildly risqué joke, rephrasing it instead. When cajoled to tell the whole thing, he paused, looked at author Johnny Shaw, one of our guests, seemed to gain accord, and let it fly.)

Thanks to the movie version of Winter's Bone, released in 2010, he has become better known. Of course, he has been writing for 35 years, so commercial success has been a long time coming. He has always had critical success. Five of Woodrell's eight books have made the New York Times' best books of the year list.

I'm going to bypass an introduction to or summary of his works. I've reviewed the remarkable Winter's Bone elsewhere, and the Internet is full of reviews and comments about his works.

Reviewers often use the words bleak and dark to describe his books. What's up with that, he asks. He doesn't consider his works bleak. As a matter of fact, "Uncle," one of the short stories in his new book, The Outlaw Album, is downright hilarious, he says. But only to those who know Ozark folklore and humor, apparently. When he has read the story to audiences not familiar with that, he gets furrowed brows and grim faces. Woodrell was funny and good-humored last night, and it puts the lie to the thought that one is what one writes.

Eschewing genre classification of his works (noir, country noir, gothic, crime fiction, blah, blah), I asked him if he simply wrote about life and tragedy, with a focus on character. He has always said that character is his main consideration, and he reiterated it last night. On occasion, he has tried to write a different kind of book, lighter or more conventional in tone, for example, but in the end, he can't seem to do it. He has to be emotionally connected to his work, or the project bores him and remains unfinished.

What has made him the writer he is today? In his younger days, he read Mickey Spillane and John D. MacDonald. (Very impressive fact: John D. blurbed -- "Sly and powerful" -- Woodrell's first book!) "Chandler was too fancy when I was young," he said with a smile. He was a "library haunter" and rattled off a few of the books and authors he's liked over the years: Pissing in the Snow, by Vance Randolph; Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter; Charles Williams (Hell Hath No Fury); Swamp Sister, by Robert Edmund Alter.

He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop. What did he learn there? It wasn't about learning technique. It was about gaining self-confidence in his ability to write and being around other writers. His choice of occupation has not always gone down well with the members of his family. His grandfather said it was too bad Daniel didn't have a "real" job. Nevertheless, Woodrell is happy doing exactly what he wants to do.

What does he do better now than he did earlier? He used to throw everything into his books, he said, getting it all out on the page. Now he edits better, he's more focused, and he is better able to keep his ego out of the picture.

Some of his books are heavy in patois. Does it matter that readers may not understand what he's saying? "I can't worry about that," he said. The story must be true to what the characters say and do. He loves folk words like "coggly" and "brassle," and will use them without explanation or a glossary. (If you're curious, coggly means uneven and brassle is the sound branches make rubbing against each other.) He surrounds his dialogue with poetic narrative that gives a "visual" rendering of the scene. Other writers, like David Milch ("Deadwood") and George Pelecanos, didn't hesitate to do something similar.

Woodrell talked briefly about the choices he made at an early age. Although he had the opportunity to get into trouble as a teenager and several less-than-legal scenarios may have "crossed my mind," he chose to go with book "pages instead of rap sheets." He carried the essence of his young experience into shaping his characters, giving them a "talk back quality" when up against authority figures. "Rude democracy," he has termed it.

Especially in Winter's Bone, most of his female characters are very strong. The story revolves around 16-year-old Ree Dolly and her distant relatives, Thump Milton's wife and her sisters. How has he managed to write female characters so well? He laughed and said he ran things past his wife, who "parses" his work for inauthentic portrayals. Besides, he added, his mother was a strong woman, his grandmother was a strong woman, and his other grandmother "was a REALLY strong woman." Ree, he said, could have been a 16-year-old boy just as easily.

The ending of Winter's Bone was almost even more tragic. True tragedy would have dictated that the family feud be continued by Ree and her brothers. He debated with himself but finally deleted the line, "We're with Teardrop now," as uttered by Ree.

Although Woodrell has received critical acclaim for his eight books, until Winter's Bone was made into a movie, he was a cult author with a small audience. Now at least he's a better known cult author. Although it has been a struggle to make ends meet at times, he has held true to his course. It is well-known that Woodrell lives in the Ozarks, in the area where he spent some of his childhood. After living in other places as an adult, he consciously chose to return home to the people and culture he loved, but it helped that houses were cheaper there. "I have a Ford Taurus, and I don't care who knows it," he declared.

His final thought: "If I weren't so lazy, I would have fourteen books, not eight."

Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell ($13.99)(c2006)

2011-10-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

Daniel Woodrell is one of those authors who was laboring in the shadow of obscurity. Because of the nature of his books -- tragedy and an unblinking look into the eye of darkness -- his books have had a narrow appeal. Until one of his books, Winter's Bone, was made into a movie. That garnered him a lot of attention in a short amount of time. He went from being an obscure cult author to being a better known cult author.

In the past, his books, especially Tomato Red, three early novels re-released together as The Bayou Trilogy, and Woe to Live On (also made into a movie, "Ride with the Devil"), received critical praise from major publications, but popular acclaim eluded him. Perhaps it would be naive to think that he is crafting a book each time to satisfy himself and not the masses. In actuality, he probably thought how nice it would be to be able to make a comfortable living from writing. It would be nice to combine one's passion and one's livelihood. From everything I've read about Woodrell, it appears that he has consciously pulled away from what people have told him he should do and done things his own way.

Winter's Bone, then, is the book that pulled him out of the shadows, and it is a glorious celebration of the power of words. Woodrell has turned an ear for patois and an ability to tell a story to touch the heart into deeply unsettling, yet satisfying, books.

Ree Dolly is a 16-year-old girl living in the Ozarks. Her father cooks meth, has gotten into trouble with the law, and has disappeared. If she does not find him, her home, which was placed as collateral for his bond, will be taken from her.Ree is taking care of two younger brothers and her crazy mother. She is the man and woman of the house. Much of Woodrell's initial description covers what Ree has to do to help her family survive. Snow and ice cover the ground, but she must chop the wood, shoot the squirrels, wash her mother's hair, and feed the dwindling supply of oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Now she must add detective to her list. She walks over snow-covered hills and on rutted dirt roads to ask distant family members questions that they don't want to hear, much less answer. Everyone tells her to give it up, but she doggedly pursues the one item on her agenda: survival of her immediate family. Family has a rather loose meaning here. There's no warm, cozy sentiment attached to that word. One of the characters says that "scared's not a bad way to be about [Thump Milton], neither….He's my own granpaw, been around him all my life, but I still try'n make damn sure I don't ever piss him off none." Of course, Thump Milton, Ree's distant relation, is who Ree feels she has to see to answer the question of what happened to her father.

It's not just the story that is compelling; Woodrell's words are poetry. This is from the first page:

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again. She stood tall in combat boots, scarce at the waist but plenty through the arms and shoulders, a body made for loping after needs.

The artistry of Woodrell's words carries readers through some rather gruesome bits.

If you must see the movie, read the book first. If you've already seen the movie, don't think you won't gain anything from reading the book.

The Visible Man, by Chuck Klosterman (hardcover, $25)

2011-10-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

If you strive to create order out of chaos, perhaps this book isn't for you. This is one of the quirkier books I've read this year, and it creates a polite version of chaos.

Y____ is a visible man; that is, he is human and you can see him. He chooses Victoria Vick (Vicki Vick?) to be his psychotherapist. He expects her to believe that he can put on a suit and become an invisible man.

Y____ claims that he cannot observe people as a visible man because that would change the actions and reactions of the person being observed. Heisenberg's principle. What better way to find out the true nature of man than by becoming a fly on the wall, or an invisible man?

Y____ claims to be a scientist whose eventual purpose was to "define reality … to make order out of chaos." Unfortunately, the goal becomes obscured as Y____ claims to have tampered with reality, with disastrous results. Does he feel guilty? Or is he worried because he doesn't feel guilt? Maybe it isn't guilt at all but Y___ knows that unless he tells somebody about his life, it doesn't exist.

The book is written from Victoria's viewpoint, with massive inserts of verbatim monologue by Y____. It's framed as a book Victoria is publishing about her unusual client. It's a psychological dialectic about whether observing people without their knowledge is blessed under the banner of science or morally wrong/criminal. Your mind needs to be open to enjoying 230 pages of that.

My jury is still out about this book. It's intriguing, unique, and vaguely unsatisfying at the end. There are no heroes; everyone is culpable. And that must be the lesson in reality.

Will Victoria become victorious? Will Y____ learn why?

About David Housewright -- a post by Carolyn Lane, co-owner of MBTB

2011-10-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

Because of how many mysteries I read, in thinking back over the past thirty years or so, I’ve been lucky to spot marvelous authors and their series debut books at the time they’ve first been published—Robert Crais and Monkey’s Raincoat come to mind, as well as Sue Grafton and that tatty book club hardcover of “A” Is for Alibi.

But on occasion I’ve missed a really good author until he or she is in full stride in their series—then, of course, I have to backtrack to the first book and work my way through to the end, generally enjoying each book as much as that first discovery. Years ago, it was John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee that I stumbled into around Pale Gray for Guilt; much to my chagrin, only a few years ago it was Lee Child and Reacher about five or six novels into their series.

Most times these have been private-eye series, a genre mainstay for decades, and their underlying attraction for me always has been innovative plotting. Yes, I love the characterizations of Elvis and Joe, Kinsey, Mallory, V.I., Spenser and Hawk, and all those Dick Francis characters who are really just one person under their camouflage. And, yes, setting can anchor a novel like no other element, even to the point of becoming a character itself in many a story.

Nevertheless, when I’m tired of schemes to blow up the world by next Tuesday or struggles to find yet one more monstrous serial killer—some themes are becoming so overused as to become trite—I love to read books by an writer with a refreshing take on crime and crime-fighting, up close and personal.

Such an author is David Housewright, whose Rushmore McKenzie series I’m currently enjoying. McKenzie is an ex-cop of now-independent means who lives in the St. Paul/Minneapolis metro area and occasionally does investigative favors for his friends. Housewright offers up plenty of information about McKenzie and his cohorts, and not only does he describe how the Twin Cities area looks and feels, but he also offers up enough social and political history to satisfy the inquiring reader.

Mostly, however, Housewright writes an interesting, impelling plot. Early in his series (and in paperback) are

Hard Ticket Home, about finding a possible bone marrow donor
Tin City, about a man whose bees are dying
Pretty Girl Gone, about an extortion attempt on a public official.

His more recent books have been published only in hardcover (but are available for rent at MBTB for only $5/week), and they are

Dead Boyfriends, about a woman whose boyfriends have short lives
Madman on a Drum, about a kidnapping aimed at McKenzie
Jelly’s Gold, about illicit gold maybe stashed away by an early 20th- century gangster
The Taking of Libbie, S.D., about a town taken to the cleaners by a charlatan
Highway 61, about a teenager who wants to help her no-good dad out of a jam.

Housewright also won an Edgar (Best First Novel) for Penance, the first of three Holland Taylor, P.I., books—those I had read as they were published, and they are very similar in tone to the McKenzie books. Housewright’s work also is featured in Twin Cities Noir.

Death of the Mantis ($14.99), by Michael Stanley; Children of the Street ($15), by Kwei Quartey

2011-10-04T00:08:00.000-07:00

Africa is a large continent, and it's hard for someone who doesn't know the countries to keep them straight. Many new authors (joining old-timers James McClure and Elsbeth Huxley) have been bringing us outstanding series set in several of the countries, and that should help us individuate them.

Let me pause for a second to say that country and culture are not synonymous. The national borders are artificial constructs, mainly determined by colonizing Europeans. There may be several tribes who occupy a country, some of whom have tribal boundaries that pass through more than one country. There are places that have kept some of the ways and governmental structures of the colonizing countries, even after the colonizers have gone, in a synthesis of European and tribal traditions. All this is recognized in some of the most innovative writing around today.

South Africa, Botswana, and Ghana are brought to life by Alexander McCall Smith, Malla Nunn, Jassy Mackenzie, Wessel Ebersohn, Michael Stanley, and Kwei Quartey. Suzanne Arruda and Henning Mankell (when he's not writing bleak mysteries set in Sweden) also have books set in Africa.

Michael Stanley's series is set in Botswana, and Kwei Quartey's in Ghana. Both authors deal with serious issues that affect these countries. In Stanley's case, it is the plight of the nomadic Bushman tribes, and in Quartey's it is the homeless children who live in poverty and without protection in the slums of Accra.

Death of the Mantis is the third in the series by authors Stanley Trollip and Michael Sears, writing under the pen name of Michael Stanley. Set in Botswana with a Batswana police detective, David "Kubu" -- which means hippopotamus, a reflection of his enormous girth -- Bengu, this series is not at all like McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe books. Although it is by no means a blood-and-guts series, there are dead bodies, coroner's reports, and police detection.

This time Bengu is asked by a Bushman friend from childhood, someone he hasn't seen in a while, to help two Bushman hunters who have been arrested for the murder of a park ranger. Stanley does a good job describing how endangered the wandering Bushman people are, with development and the concept of private property threatening to take away their rights to roam the Kalahari Desert at will. As with the Aboriginal people of Australia, the Bushman people are able to travel in what to us appears to be a featureless wasteland, without gadgets or maps. They, too, have sacred spots and rituals handed down from one generation to another.

It almost doesn't matter what the murder mystery is because the compelling story is about the Bushman people and their struggle to survive.

Kwei Quartey's Children of the Street may be hard for some people to read. Authors are often told, don't kill children or animals. But the unvarnished truth is that children die in unacceptable numbers in parts of Africa, and a lot of them live in squalor.

Darko Dawson is a police detective who loves his job and his family. He doesn't like to play the political games necessary to be in the police force, and he has a temper when he sees injustice. It takes all his ingenuity to help the Accra police focus on the right people when children from the slum areas are murdered. Could it be part of a ritual? Or is it business as usual in an area of town where the biggest bullies usually win?

Quartey's mystery is a vehicle for him to bring to our attention a difficult problem facing many poor nations. Children are homeless, starving, on their own, and living in filth. He gives them a small voice in his moving book.

We probably don't want to hear what either Stanley or Quartey tells us. It's hard to imagine the inequality that exists so far away. Although their books are works of fiction, they are based on real issues. Both authors tell their stories in different but equally compelling ways. They are well worth reading.

Murder of the Month ($12.95) and No Rest for the Wicked (hardcover, $25.95), by Elizabeth Main

2011-10-02T23:14:00.000-07:00

In the midst of the fourteen-thrills-a-minute and darkly brooding mysteries that abound these days, here is a gentle series centered on a bookstore in Central Oregon. In Murder of the Month, Jane Serrano has decided to work part-time in a bookstore after her husband dies. She must also deal with her difficult daughter, Bianca. The perfect solution seems to be to have Bianca join the bookstore's reading club. Unfortunately, when dead bodies appear and Bianca disappears, Jane might want to rethink her strategy. In No Rest for the Wicked, Jane's little town must be vying with Cabot Cove, Maine (home of Jessica Fletcher), for having its residents drop like proverbial flies. No matter, it's all in good fun.

Elizabeth Main draws on her knowledge as a former bookseller in Central Oregon for this series. She will be appearing at Murder by the Book on October 8, at 1:00 p.m. to talk about her book in an informal setting.

Starvation Lake, by Bryan Gruley, c2009 ($15)

2011-09-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

The lake areas of the Midwest seem so exotic to me. Yes, Oregon has lakes, too, but there are so many lakes and so many islands and so much of life revolves around those lakes and islands in the Midwest. William Kent Krueger and Steve Hamilton are the best known of the lake writers*, and now there's Bryan Gruley. Gruley is the Chicago bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, but he spent summers as a youth in an area not unlike Starvation Lake, the northern Michigan lake town of this book, and still maintains ties to that area.

Why do we need another lake writer? There is a definite sense of mystery associated with the deep, dark waters of a lake. The Scandinavian writers certainly know it. Karin Fossum and Arnaldur Indridason, for instance, used lakes to great effect in some of their books. The harsh winter season, in which things are frozen until the spring thaw, provides great metaphorical sustenance as well. Although, in my opinion, these books are best read on blazingly hot summer days, a good book is never out of order. Starvation Lake is a good book.

There are many plot elements that other writers have used before. There have been disgraced journalists -- anyone remember Stieg Larsson's Mikael Blomqvist? -- frozen lakes giving up their secrets, wise-cracking protagonists, sports talk, and villains with similar bad mojo. Gruley, however, puts it all together in a well-written package.

Gus Carpenter used to work for The Detroit Times, a big city, big-time newspaper. It takes a while before we know the reason he left The Times. All we really need to know up front is that he left with a cloud hanging over him. He returns to his hometown, Starvation Lake, Michigan, a town hanging on the edge of Starvation Lake, the lake. The story is set in 1998, when Gus is 34. (Why is it set in 1998? Would the book have shriveled to nothing if everyone had a cell phone and CCTV?) Gus has gone to work for the town newspaper, The Pilot, as its associate editor. It's a quiet town with quiet news, and usually the only news challenge Gus faces is navigating to his desk in the small office. Then everything Gus knows is upended over a period of a few days in February.

A snowmobile is uncovered at the edge of one of the lakes in the area. It belonged to the legendary kids' hockey coach, Jack Blackburn. A few years before, the town had mourned Jack's death in a snowmobile accident, although the snowmobile and his body were never found. Here's the snowmobile, but it's poking out of Walleye Lake. Everyone knows Jack drowned in Starvation Lake.

Gus was the goalie for Starvation Lake's high school hockey team, the one that almost won the state championship. If only Gus hadn't choked. Jack Blackburn was his respected coach. After that loss, Gus and Jack's relationship dwindled into nothingness until Gus moved on to college and his newspaper job. Since returning to Starvation Lake, Gus has had to relive that awful moment over again because the townspeople have never forgotten or forgiven. Because he's a glutton for punishment, or because he really loves the game, 34-year-old Gus plays in an adult league as a goalie.

When the snowmobile re-appears, Gus's life shifts into overdrive. As a newsman, he can't pass up on the drama of the bullet hole discovered in the snowmobile's body. As a hockey player, he needs to know what happened to his coach. As a former reporter for "The Detroit Times," he has some unfinished business in the form of a potential lawsuit over his last investigation. His mother, his best friend "Soup," his ex-girlfriend and current sheriff's deputy Darlene, and many of the town's citizens who stayed put while Gus left seem to be hiding secrets.

Gus is dealing with issues far beyond Journalism 101. He must determine what he owes to the public's right to know and what he owes to the people he has known and trusted all his life.

With the exception of the useless prologue, Starvation Lake intriguingly unravels a small town's secrets but also acknowledges the strength that comes from a small community.

* Although let us not forget the truly mysterious In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien.

Vermilion Drift, by William Kent Krueger ($15)(c2010)

2011-09-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

In ten books, William Kent Krueger has taken Cork O'Connor from his early days as a sheriff in fictional Tamarack County, Minnesota, to what he is now, a private investigator and a man who has seen his share of tragedies. The award-winning Iron Lake, the first in the series, was published in 1998, and last year's Vermilion Drift was the 10th. Cork has aged, his children have grown older, he has dealt with the blows and joys dealt him throughout the years.

In Vermilion Drift, the Department of Energy is reviewing whether an abandoned iron mine would be a good place to bury nuclear waste. As a result, several threats have been received by the parties involved. The Ojibwe/Anishinaabe people especially are concerned about the impact on reservation land. Cork has been hired to find out who has been sending threatening notes.

Then the sister of the mine owner disappears, and Cork is also hired to find her. Unknown to Cork, his cases are about to become very personal. Is Henry, Cork's Anishinaabe mentor, trying to help or hinder Cork's investigation?

There is a strong poetic style to Krueger's writing and a spiritual element to Cork that make Krueger's books different from a lot of other police officer/private eye series. Cork is center stage in the books, even while he is trying to solve someone else's problems.

Krueger constantly challenges himself to come up with stories that show Cork's personal growth and highlights the place of the Anishinaabe in a white-dominated society. He is always worth reading.

The Book of Lies, by Mary Horlock ($14.99)

2011-09-21T22:38:00.000-07:00

This book tells two stories, both set on the Isle of Guernsey. Guernsey, if you don't already know from either Elizabeth George's story, A Place of Hiding, or the surprising hit, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, was the only place in Great Britain that the Germans captured.

One is the story of Emile Rozier, who was a young child during WWII, and his quest to defend the reputation of his brother, Charles, who spent three years in a concentration camp, accused of spying on the Germans. Strange that a spy against the Germans would have to defend his reputation, eh? That's part of the fascinating aspect of this part of the book. Because so many of the people involved in the WWII story are dead, it is through transcripts and letters that we hear the story of how Charles found himself in the predicament which led to his imprisonment.

The other story is of Emile's teenage daughter, Catherine. From the start of her part of the book, she confesses to killing another teenager. Cat's tale begins a couple of years after her father's death, and she and her mother are still dealing with their loss. To make matters more miserable, although Cat is smart, she is also plain-looking, not popular, and awkward. When the rich and popular Nicolette befriends her, Cat finds herself caught by a force beyond her naive understanding. Of course, it is Nic whom Cat has killed. It takes the rest of the book to learn (sort of) why Cat killed Nic.

I suppose the danger with books that are two stories in one -- and so many of today's books are -- is that the reader might like one of the stories much more than the other. And I'm sorry to say that I enjoyed the WWII story a lot more. It's hard-hearted but I couldn't really maintain an interest in Cat's plight. She was a tough character to like and understand, as well.

Guernsey's war history is fascinating and sad. No doubt, as expressed in this book, the families are still feeling the repercussions of what happened then. Mary Horlock deftly tells that part of the tale in a sensitive manner. That story unfolds to an unexpected and creative conclusion, and it's this that makes the book worth reading.

Backpack, by Emily Barr (c2001)(out of print -- sorry)

2011-09-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

I saw Backpack poking out of the sale bin. Wait, I thought. I haven't read it yet. I always meant to read it. It's out of print and now it's probably headed out the door soon. So I grabbed it.

Tansy Harris is a spoiled, arrogant, superior, snobbish Londoner. She's young, has a great job at a newspaper, and jaunts about with her spoiled, arrogant, superior, snobbish Londoner boyfriend, Tom. What the world only sees a tiny glimpse of is that Tansy's mother is an alcoholic. She has made home life miserable for Tansy. Then Tansy's mother dies.

Suddenly Tansy is released from her burden. She and Tom plan to travel to Southeast Asia, lie on the beach, get tanned, eat great food. Then Tom, the rat, backs out of the trip and breaks up with her. Just to show him, Tansy goes ahead with her plans anyway.

Tansy's first day is in Ho Chi Minh City. She's wearing a stylish traveling outfit and turning up her nose at the smells and cacaphony. She's miserable and refuses to associate with the traveling backpackers (eww!) she meets. After she has had her fill of touring the requisite tourist spots, she realizes that she's lost and lonely. She gradually makes the acquaintance of several backpackers, who warmly receive her despite her snobbish attitude. And gradually, as she makes her way through Southeast Asia -- as a backpacker -- her old persona melts away and a more thoughtful Tansy appears.

This book hit the spot. Next to mysteries, I love reading travel books. This has thoroughly combined the best of both worlds. Emily Barr brings traveling through Southeast Asia to life. She packs details of the Asian cultures and the backpacking world into her story, so much so that the mystery is hard to spot.

The mystery is that someone is killing young blonde female backpackers. Tansy is a young blonde female backpacker. His -- because enough people have identified a potential suspect as male -- killing spree begins in India and travels, strangely enough, backwards through Tansy's projected travel route. Each victim is found with an object. Granted they are ordinary objects, but Tansy has a box back in England with these same objects. In a hallucinatory moment, Tansy imagines that she might be the killer, despite the fact that it would be physically impossible, say, to kill someone in India at lunch and make it back to Laos by dinner.

Tansy does feel a strange affinity to what is happening to the victims. Perhaps it is because she, too, has a secret, and maybe she feels she should be punished for it. It has been traveling heavily with her as psychological baggage. Thus, Tansy's voyage is also one of enlightenment and a search for a better version of herself, Tansy 2.0.

I'm sorry that this book is out of print, because it's quite wonderful. Barr is a very good travel writer, and the mystery is original. The book is going back in the bargain bin tomorrow, so on your mark, get set, go!

The Gentlemen's Hour, by Don Winslow (hardcover, $25)

2011-09-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Dude, this is a most excellent follow-up to The Dawn Patrol. Macking, even.

Returning to a lighter, more humorous style than the dark pieces he has been writing (e.g., Power of the Dog), Don Winslow brings us another story in the life of surf bum and private eye Boone Daniels.

Besides the Peter Pan-like boardriders, San Diego is home to Mexican drug cartels, real estate con men, American drug crazies, white supremacists, and lots of rich people. Boone tangles with the various groups when he is drafted to do investigative work for the attorneys defending a young man accused of murdering a surf legend, Kelly Kuhio. "K2" was an inspiration to many and a mentor to Boone, yet Boone is convinced that Corey Blasingame -- a spoiled, nasty little rich kid -- is innocent of murdering Kelly.

Complicating matters is another murder, this time it's the lover of the wife of another surfer. Boone had been hired by Dan Nichols to determine if his wife was having an affair. Soon after telling Dan the bad news, Boone learns that the lover has been murdered.

His involvement in the two murders puts Boone on the outs with the rest of the surfing community, including best friend and fellow surfer Johnny "Banzai" Kodani, the homicide detective in charge of both cases. Despite the alienation, Boone trudges forward, convinced that K2 himself would have urged Boone to trust his instincts.

"Gentlemen's Hour" refers to the second surf shift. Boone usually hangs out with the Dawn Patrol crew, the younger, more competitive surfers. The surfers of the Gentlemen's Hour are more laid back, older. When Boone is shunned by his own crew, he begins to hang with the older men, a sad endnote to Boone's surfing days, he thinks.

Don Winslow's story races along, but thankfully, it's not all about the plot. There are wonderfully eccentric characters, including a couple of the villains. I defy you not to enjoy the characterizations of Red Eddie, a good old, relocated Hawaiian boy who's the head of a dangerous mob, and his henchmen. Boone's reminiscences of Kelly carry the story into more tender, philosophical regions. The "Surfbonics" that the Dawn Patrol uses in their conversations is amusing and gives a good sense of community.

Finally, having grown up in Hawaii, I especially appreciated the surf talk and the rendering of Hawaiian pidgeon, both of which Winslow did very well.

Beast of Burden, by Ray Banks (hardcover, $25)

2011-09-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

British noir lives through the words of Ray Banks. It's got all the requisite elements of an outstanding crime novel: a flawed and complicated protagonist, Callum Innes, who alternates white and black hats; a plot that gives an overall sinking feeling the closer one gets to the end; and a nemesis, Iain "Donkey" Donkin, whose primitive reactions burst through, bypassing the red mist and other warning signs of impending eruption, until he regains his senses and wonders at the havoc he has caused.

Set in Manchester, we only view a slice of the underworld, a cage of dysfunctional police detectives, and a gathering of people who have spent time in a hell of one kind or another. Rationally, you know there's more to Manchester than corruption, greed, violence, and Sisyphean efforts to claw out of the criminal mire -- it would be the same as if New Jersey were only about "The Sopranos" -- but this way lies a good story.

This is the fourth Cal Innes book and concludes the story arc that began with Saturday's Child. The prior books are difficult to get in the United States. It would be nice to have the complete story, but Beast of Burden packs a solid punch all by itself.

The first shock comes when we learn that Cal Innes has had a stroke. He walks with a limp, is physically fragile, and has difficulty speaking, and half his face droops. And he's not even thirty. He was involved in criminal activities, spent a couple of years in jail, and has been trying to go legit as a private investigator.

Cal is hounded by a neanderthal of a police detective, Iain Donkin. Donkin doesn't have a problem with his temper, but other people do. A dim light flicks on halfway through the book, as Donkin realizes that perhaps he needs to do detective work based on reasoning rather than by beating the stuffing out of people.

What brings these two together again -- prior occasions having taken place in the other books -- is the death of Mo Tiernan, the son of a Manchester criminal kingpin. Donkin is convinced that Cal murdered him. The narrative flips back and forth between Cal and Donkin, so we know Cal did not kill Mo. We meet characters who have obviously been important in the other books. In some ways, Beast of Burden is a retrospective journey of Cal's life in Manchester. Overhanging all Cal does is a sadness over the death of his brother from a drug overdose. The Tiernan family and Donkin have something to do with that, and the story is slowly revealed, although sometimes the thread is hard to find for someone who hasn't read the other books.

Beast of Burden wrangles Manchester street language into flowing form, so even a glossary-less reader can manage. (Here's a heads up, though: "Scouse" is someone from Liverpool.) In the best noir tradition, the darkness lifts occasionally and we can see a safe harbor ahead, only to have it snatched away in a mournful moment.

Bad Intentions, by Karin Fossum (hardcover, $24)

2011-09-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

This is the ninth book in the Inspector Konrad Sejer series, most of which have been translated into English from Norwegian, and it's a knockout.

Perhaps because it's so far along in the series, the book is less about Sejer and his partner Jacob Skarre as it is about crime and its psychological consequences. Like a modern-day Crime and Punishment, Karin Fossum's book ventures deeply into the effect of guilt. But what is causing the guilt?

The book opens with three young men spending some time in a cabin in the woods by a lake. They are childhood friends, but there is an inexplicable tension in their gathering.

"It was Friday the 13th of September. They went out into the dark night and fetched the oars from the shed.

"A narrow path led down to the shore of Dead Water."

And before long, one of them is dead.

Jon has jumped out of the rowboat and committed suicide. Instead of getting help, the other two, Axel and Reilly, row back to shore and pretend Jon slipped out at dawn while they were asleep and drowned himself. Inspectors Sejer and Skarre are sent to investigate, and they immediately realize something is wrong. Jon's body has been found too far out for him, a non-swimmer, to have died in the manner described by Axel and Reilly.

Why have Axel and Reilly lied? We know something is wrong, and it is Fossum's great ability to present us with a picture of guilt under pressure that creates such a tense and beautifully crafted story.

The translation by Charlotte Barslund seems especially well done. With Barslund's light hand, Fossum's words seem poetic and just right. For instance, when Sejer is interviewing the grieving mother of a teenage boy whose body has just been discovered, the Vietnamese woman is overcome and disappears behind some coats hanging on a wall:

"Having hidden behind the clothes for a while, she reappeared with an apologetic smile."

Such simplicity of tone, but so much is conveyed by both Fossum and Barslund.

The mother says to Sejer:

"'Can you find out what happened?' she said, and now her voice was urgent. 'Will you know if anyone killed or tortured him? Can you find out why his heart stopped beating, his young, strong heart? There has to be a reason,' she pressed on. 'Nothing happens without a reason.'"

Sejer promises (the "forbidden word") that he will find out what happened to her son because, he tells Skarre, she "wears slippers embroidered with dragons."

It's a powerful story of psychological disintegration, suspicion, and a yearning for redemption.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, by Sara Gran (hardcover, $24)

2011-09-19T10:46:00.000-07:00

Claire DeWitt is an original. She is a private investigator and her methods are unusual. Zen, drugs, "I Ching," herbs, alcohol, intuition, legwork, whatever it takes is what she uses to solve her mysteries. Each case is labeled in the best Nancy Drew fashion: for instance, "The Case of the Green Parrot." It is that case which brings Claire, now in her late thirties, back to New Orleans, the city where she learned how to be the best detective from mentor Constance Darling and Jacques Silette, author of Détection.

It was hard to know at first what path author Sara Gran would take with her story. Claire DeWitt was so out-there that it could have been just an ordinary woo-woo story, especially with the voodoo and mysticism that New Orleans brings to mind. Of course, New Orleans also brings to mind the devastation Hurricane Katrina brought to the people and buildings there. When Claire arrives back in NO years after Katrina, post-hurricane corruption, lawlessness, death, and debris still taint what was once a good-time city. Gran puts all of this, and more, into the mix to create one of the most unusual detective stories I've read in a while.

There are three main stories Gran wants to tell, but none of them are quite linear. Assistant District Attorney Vic Willing disappeared right after the flood. His nephew has hired Claire to find out what happened to him. In the process of working that case, Claire comes across how-it's-done now in NO, how the no-class refugees of the flood get along to survive. One of those survivors is a young man, Andray Fairview, who knew Vic. Andray is part of the drug-dealing, gun-toting baby gangs that litter NO with gunshots and bodies. The last story involves a childhood friend, Tracy, from Brooklyn, where Claire grew up. Tracy disappeared one afternoon, just as she, Claire, and Kelly, another friend, were on the verge of escaping their depressing and dysfunctional lives in Brooklyn.

Let me stop for a minute and talk about the characters' names. Is Claire DeWitt clear of wits? Is Andray Fairview brave and just? Is Constance Darling a constant and true presence? How about Tracy who disappeared without a trace? Let's not forget Vic Willing who may have been an unwilling victim. Are some of the names meant to be sarcastic? And what does Jacques Silette mean? Who knows? Perhaps Gran means that to be a mystery her readers must solve. Most of the rest of the characters have names like Mike, Mick, and Jack. They aren't throwaway characters, but they are just catalysts for the most part.

Gran dissolves a gut-wrenching depiction of New Orleans into a prescient dream into a flashback of Claire's youth in Brooklyn into Claire's life and resurrection with Constance. Each scene has its own song: from hard-edged and bleak to floaty and whimsical to mystical and exuberant. Even three-quarters of the way through the book, it was still hard to know where Gran would take us. A solution involving an extraterrestrial flying saucer would not have been out of the question.

Gran's affection for New Orleans lifts off the pages. She tells us about the Black Indians, plays "Iko Iko" in the background, mourns the passing of neighborhoods into yuppiedoms, and has Claire slurping margaritas until three in the morning. There's more to NO than just the Mardi Gras; Gran tells us to appreciate the cultural core that underlies that mostly tourist event.

Threading the book are excerpts from Jacques Silette's book, Détection, a manual for the investigation of mysteries. Copies of this obscure book pop up throughout the story. Here are some of Silette's thoughts on mystery and solution:

•"For the detective whose eyes have truly been opened ... the solution to every mystery is never more than inches away."

•"The detective and the client, the victim and the criminal -- all already know the solution to the mystery.

"They need only to remember it, and recognize it when it appears."

•"Those who try to grasp on to the mystery will never succeed ... Only those who let it slip their fingers will come to know it, and hear its secrets."

This is the manual and method that Constance uses to teach Claire how to be a detective. It would be splendid if it were real. When the story opens, Constance has been dead for some time. Claire immediately left New Orleans afterwards, and coming back to New Orleans now is a way of also coming to terms with her feelings for Constance. This is what Claire says about Constance:

"She taught me to read fingerprints like tea leaves and eyes like maps. She taught me how to smell trouble literally and figuratively. She sent me to lamas and tulkus, to swamis and psychics. Like most detectives, she kept a police scanner in the kitchen, and if we weren't busy we'd go to crime scenes and solve the crimes before the NOPD even showed up."

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is a strange mixture of noir and whimsey, but I quite liked being kept off balance. I would like to hear more Zen-like words of wisdom from Silette. I nominate Sara Gran for more tales of the art of metaphysical detection.

Dove Season, by Johnny Shaw ($13.95)

2011-09-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he'd be Johnny Shaw. Like "The Border Trilogy," this is a very American mystery, and not just a North American one. The action in this book takes place on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. The twin, but not identical, towns of Mexicali and Calexico straddle the border, one on each side. Traffic -- tourist and illegal -- wends its way back and forth between the towns, the former mostly by day and the latter mostly by night. If a young man grows up in California's Imperial Valley, chances are at one point or another he'll have crossed over to the Mexican side, home to several nasty delights and unregulated forbidden fruits. Besides Calexico, the Imperial Valley is populated by several small communities, mostly centered around the agricultural industry.

And that's where we find Jimmy Veeder, wayward son of Jack Veeder. Back in the Imperial Valley, just before the beginning of dove season.

Dove season once attracted movie stars from Hollywood. They'd come over, get drunk, shoot some doves, and pretend to be rugged outdoorsmen. Nowadays hunters still head to the fields, get drunk, shoot some doves, and play rugged outdoorsmen, although they may shine with lesser wattage than Hollywood movie stars.

Everything Jimmy ran away from as a young man is now again in place to haunt or challenge him. But this time Jack is terminally ill and in a care facility, and Jimmy has returned after a 12-year absence to be with him. Jack has a last wish: Find Yolanda. Yolanda, the hooker.

Using his dilapidated childhood home as a base, Jimmy seeks the help of his old buddy, Bobby Maves, to find Yolanda. Bobby grins his way through life. In his more sober moments, he's a farmer and an absentee father. Despite the years between meetings, Jimmy finds Bobby to be pretty much as he left him, a two-fisted party boy and scuffler. In fact, Jimmy and Bobby spend a lot of the book getting drunk and counting bruises.

In order to find Yolanda, Jimmy must reconnect with another person from his youth. Years ago, the older Jimmy read stories to the younger Tómas in his grandfather's bar across the street from Jimmy's home. Tómas now is a successful businessman, but his businesses are illegal on this side of the border and tolerated on the other.

Shaw does a great job of describing the conditions of a Mexico that depends on the U.S. for both its extralegal and illegal revenue. He does an equally skillful job with the California community. Everyone knows everyone else in a small place, and it doesn't matter if someone has been gone for twelve years either. Some secrets are kept better than others, but eventually some of those come to light, too. Will Jimmy survive the exposure of his family's secrets?

Dove Season is an entertaining mix of humor and grit. It's dark and violent, funny and outrageous, heart-warming and heart-rending. In a time when a lot of books are told in prologues, flashbacks and flashforwards, Shaw has chosen a straightforward path and it suits his story impeccably. He pays as much attention to the details as to the broader tale. In the end, just like dove season, everything changes but everything remains the same.

Dark Road to Darjeeling, by Deanna Raybourn ($14.95)(c2010)

2011-09-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

I'd say that Deanna Raybourn's Julia March/Grey/Brisbane series is like macaroni and cheese, like bread pudding or some other comfort food, but that makes it sound too bland. Maybe it's more like khichdi-kadhi -- an Indian comfort food -- sprinkled with curry. Exotic and a little spicy.

Lady Julia Grey has married the man of her dreams, the dark and dashing Brisbane. While still on their honeymoon, two of her nine siblings, Portia and Plum, intrude and demand that Julia and Brisbane accompany them to India.

Jane, Portia's former lover, suddenly married Freddy Cavendish, an heir to a tea estate. They decamped England to his family home near Darjeeling. Now Jane has been widowed and is expecting a baby. Further, she suspects that her husband was murdered. Since Brisbane is a professional inquiry agent (private detective to us 21st-centurians), his help especially is requested.

It is 1889, the British are still lords and overseers in many areas of India. The British social strata are as complex and rigid as the Indian caste system. Add the complicated personal lives of the March family to the mix, and the result is an intriguing and beguiling story set against a dramatic and lush background.

After lurching their way to Jane's plantation, the Marches discover that some of their distant relatives are also ensconced in the small edenic valley. They shared an unsettling adventure with cousins Emma and Lucy, and are not overly excited to re-make their acquaintance. Other British inhabitants of the valley include the Pennyfeathers (the passive Reverend P., his eccentric and artistic wife, and their uninhibited and eccentric children), an alcoholic doctor who is grieving the death of his wife, killed by a marauding tiger, and a mysterious older gentleman, nicknamed "The White Rajah," who has taken over the monastery on the hill. Although the valley may seem like Eden, there are mysteries and dramas in each household. The question is: What do any of them have to do with Freddy's death?

This could be solely an entertaining romance, but Raybourn sidesteps stereotypes and veers off the neat-and-tidy story path. In one of the more moving and satisfying scenes, Portia confronts Julia about her audacity in thinking she could be Brisbane's equal in the art of investigation, which is what Julia yearns to be. Up until the death of her first husband, Julia was a snooty, imperious, and dissatisfied aristocratic wife. Brisbane, on the other hand, although he is now rich and has an estate, grew up rough and learned to rely on his wits and ingenuity. He has paid a dear price for his knowledge.

Portia later further lectures Julia, the narrator:

'My dearest, we have every possible advantage of birth and wealth in this modern age. The blood of kings flows in our veins and our father's skill with money makes Croesus look like a beggar man. Our every whim has been attended to all of our lives by a loving family and a staff paid to treat us as if we were minor deities.'

'We are not so bad as all that,' I protested weakly.

'Of course we are. But we do try to think of others, and that is what saves us from being deplorable and weak of character.'

Raybourn also effortlessly places her readers in a different time and place. Her prose isn't forced. There aren't references, wink-wink, of what is to come in the future. And the story, the heart of the matter, satisfyingly attaches itself to us.

The Fall, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan ($9.99) (c2010)

2011-09-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

The second installment in del Toro and Hogan's trilogy is just as captivating as the first. Vampirism is not romantic or sexy in these books. It is more akin to a grotesque viral epidemic.

One of the heroes, Eph Goodweather, was an epidemiologist with the CDC. He sought to bring the truth to the world and was rewarded with a false accusation of murder, the loss of his job, and a spot on the FBI's most wanted list. His ex-wife became one of the "strigoi" -- the authors' preferred term for vampire -- in the first book, and her main goal is to find their son, Zach, and turn him into one as well.

Abraham Setrakian is an old man, one who first met the "Master," one of the prime vampires, in a concentration camp during World War II. He has made it his life's work to track down the Master and destroy him.

Vasiliy Fet was an exterminator of small vermin before the apocalpyse and he is still an exterminator, this time of the strigoi. He, Setrakian, and Eph have found each other, and form the core of the rebel group.

As the disease spreads throughout New York City, other characters have been added, including some gangbangers and a broken-down ex-wrestler/"B" movie star. The collapse of political, social, and protective structures is worldwide, but the main characters and the Master are dueling in the Big Apple.

This episode has more of the same as the first book, with a few choice hints dropped on how each side may defeat the other. A mysterious book must be found by the vampire hunters if humankind is to survive. It contains information on who the ancients -- of which the Master is one -- are and, with luck, how they may be defeated. Or so the story goes.

What I enjoy about these books are the nods to science and to a philosophy embracing the archetypes lying within the collective unconscious. Medicine AND voodoo. Although del Toro is a movie maker, with the help of Chuck Hogan*, perhaps, the book doesn't feel that it could go straight to screen without much effort. They are books first and budding screenplays second.

The book ends with a bleak, apocalpytic vision of the world, but with enough hope to ensure that we head straight for the third book the minute it is available!

------

* Hogan is known for his gritty crime dramas, and his touch can be seen in the development of scenes and characters in the tough neighborhoods of New York.

The Keeper of Lost Causes, by Jussi Adler-Olsen, translated by Tiina Nunnally (hardcover, $25.95)

2011-09-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

The more famous Scandinavian crime novels have come from Sweden and Norway, but with this entry Denmark shows it has a grittier side, too. This Danish thriller was exactly that, thrilling. People use the phrase "page-turner" far too often. But it applies in this case. Plan on putting everything else in your life on hold if you pick up this book.

Curmudgeonly police detective Carl Mørck was injured on the job. One of the other members of his team was killed and another drastically injured in the same incident. He now has survivor's issues to add to his general discontentment. After recovering from his injuries, he has been assigned to head the new "Department Q" to examine cold cases one last time, a putative promotion. In fact, it is solitary confinement. He heads to his new office in the basement. He wants to shut the door, prop his feet up on his desk, and smoke forbidden cigarette after cigarette. If only his office door weren't off its hinges and propped against the corridor wall.

There is no one else in Department Q, just Carl. Using creative blackmail, Carl finagles an assistant, someone who will make his coffee and tidy the non-existent case files. Hafez el-Assad, a Syrian immigrant who proves elusively cagier than everyone had thought, is whimsically assigned to Carl. He is not a police officer but a civilian with a prayer rug, savory smelling foreign delicacies, and an off-and-on vagueness.

Carl and Assad are quite the charming and eccentric couple.

Crime novels these days rely heavily on the intertwined storylines. This book also uses this gimmick, but how well Jussi Adler-Olsen handles it! Carl and Assad's trials and tribulations run as the main story in 2007. A separate story set in 2002 runs alongside, with a young female politician named Merete Lynggaard as the subject. Although she was under pressure from the many political issues the Danish Parliament had to juggle, her main concern was the guardianship of her brother Uffe, who was injured in a terrible car accident that killed their parents many years before. While traveling on a ferry with Uffe, Merete disappeared. Police determined that she either fell accidentally from the deck of the ferry or she was pushed. The case was put on the back burner after no leads could be found. Then it wends its way to Carl's desk in 2007.

Five years after the kidnapping, Carl is not motivated to find out what happened. He resents his "demotion," has panic attacks, has alienated almost everyone in his work and personal lives with his churlishness, and doesn't want to be bothered. However, he's still a good detective at heart. With providential legwork provided by Assad and fueled by the outrage Carl feels at how shoddily the case was processed the first time, clues slowly slip out and pieces begin to fit together about what really happened to Merete.

After almost 400 pages, the conclusion is stunning and satisfying.

Disciple of the Dog, by R. Scott Bakker (hardcover, $24.99)(c2010)

2011-08-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Diogenes was a philosopher, our mythic embodiment of a cynic. As the story goes, Diogenes held up a lantern in broad daylight. When asked what he was looking for, he apocryphally answered, "a human being" (sometimes translated as "an honest man'), which by his definition very few people were. His emblem was a dog (standing for a creature that acted naturally), and a statue of a dog was erected in his honor in Corinth. What does this have to do with the book?

Disciple (yes, that's his name) Manning is a low-rent private investigator. Bakker drops bits and pieces of Disciple's past throughout the book, just enough to intrigue, just enough to explain some of Disciple's weirdness. And Disciple Manning IS an odd duck. He has complete retention of everything he has heard, everything he has seen or done. He knows he is about to smoke his 99,999 cigarette, for instance. Cool sounding, huh? Except, apparently, if you are the one with the disorder. Would your head explode if it HAD to contain so many experiences? Would your psyche blow apart if it HAD to deal with the twins of triumph and disaster over and over and over again?

What the sum of his experiences has taught Disciple is, first of all, to be cynical about everyone. Is there an authentic human being among us, or are we merely cover-ups and shells, wallowing in repetition? Pretty heavy stuff for a mystery book, eh? Disciple also knows our "tells." He has seen pretty much every expression and knows what they mean. He can sit back later and re-process every scene and conversation, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. This is a compelling character with lots of flaws.

He is hired by a well-to-do couple to locate their daughter, who ran off to join a cult and is now missing. The cult is located in a small town, so we get to meet some of the inhabitants and get the general ambiance of a town on the verge of collapse. Decaying industrial structures remind everyone of what the town used to be. It is somewhere in that rotting landscape that Jennifer Bonjour -- Bakker has such interesting names for his characters -- took her last walk from a local bar back to the compound. And disappeared.

A local reporter, Molly, thinks this story could be her big break, and she joins forces with Disciple to investigate. They meet Xenophon Baars, the cult leader and a former college professor, a la Timothy Leary. They are embraced by the police chief, Caleb Nolen ("nolens" = Lat., not willing). They all play their parts in this stylish book, which is deliberately overly coarse at times, and violent or contemplative at others.

We hear the story from Disciple's point of view, apparently because his therapist has advised him to write his thoughts down in an attempt to purge their emotional lockgrip on him. Here is one of his musings on getting information from someone:

Now I know you like to think you're like me, but you're not. Not if you're reading this, you're not. If you met me, you would take the five, cough up your honor, and count your blessings. Nurse your wounded ego with a bag of Doritos or something.

Everyone but everyone knows that readers are pussies.

An analysis of his character:

Sasha Lang, that old philosopher girlfriend I told you about, once told me I was the kind of guy who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. That was January 20, 2001, another bad day, as it so happened. ... She understood that a cynic is just someone who believes nothing to better judge everything.

R. Scott Bakker gets lots of points: for writing style, for creative storytelling, for a quirky main character. In the end, what more could you want?

Morlock Night, by K. W. Jeter ($7.99)(c1979)

2011-08-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

To good or bad effect, there have been many contemporary authors who have taken the English language classics or their authors and involved them in adventures of their own making. To good or bad effect, other contemporary authors have taken up the dissemination of a new genre, "steampunk." For the most part, steampunk is set in Victorian England. Marvelous, outrageous, and elaborate fictional machines powered by steam are set in motion by these authors to clink and clank their way through (usually) stylish and original adventures.

It is pretty much accepted out there that K. W. Jeter is the father of steampunk, and Morlock Night is his baby.

Borrowing the elements of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, K. W. Jeter has taken the story way beyond where Wells left it. The precious time machine has been co-opted by the evil but not-very-bright Morlocks, with the help of the wizard Merdenne. Not content with ruling the world of the future, they have journeyed back to England in 1892 to begin their conquest. Only the legendary King Arthur can save the kingdom. He must be resurrected and a sundered Excalibur returned to him.

Dr. Ambrose, aka Merlin, has singled out the foppish, whiny Edwin Hocker, an aimless young man in London, to assist him in locating pieces of Excalibur to return to an ailing Arthur. Hocker is paired with Tafe, a young, tough-minded woman from the future. Together they travel down into the labyrinthine sewers of London to attack the Morlocks as they gather their forces.

This is definitely a book that "borrows" a classic book to great effect. Jeter does a good job capturing the language of Wells' book. Written in 1979, Morlock Night appears short by today's standards, but it still has a lot to say and says it well. From the eerie fog-shrouded meeting between Hocker and Dr. Ambrose to the eyebrow-raising denouement, it's a lot of fun.

It's good to see Morlock Night back in circulation.

The Bell Ringers, by Henry Porter ($14.95) (apa The Dying Light)

2011-08-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

An Orwellian future may be closer than you think. Henry Porter has set his "Big Brother" epic in the "near future," but it is not an unrecognizable future. There are no flying cars or robot maids. Rather there are CCTVs everywhere and additional government monitoring of cars, IDs, credit cards, phone calls, and computers, among other susceptible paraphernalia of our day-to-day life. The near future is here you say? So says Henry Porter through his fable set in a Great Britain controlled by a power-mad prime minister and the unscrupulous head of an international security firm.

Our heroine is Kate Lockhart, a brilliant lawyer who has left a government spy job for a job with a big firm in New York. She is called back to England when a good friend and former lover dies and leaves her his cottage, his fortune, and a mystery. David Eyam (The man who cried "I am," get it?) was the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and was ignominiously ejected from his post and bargained into a rural retirement. He somehow has circumvented the massive spy machinery in Great Britain and wound up in Cartegena, Colombia. A tourist's video recording captures his death in a terrorist bomb explosion.

Although she had lost touch with Eyam, Kate thinks she knows him well enough to sense more than meets the eye in his precipitous departure from government. And who is following her? Why is David's estate lawyer so nervous? What does the untypical I-must-be-dead-if-you're-reading-this letter from Eyam mean? Clues and puzzles start dropping like autumn leaves, and Kate is not sure which side of the ensuing controversy she is on.

There are no talking barnyard animals in this book, but this is the successor to "1984." Its premise is that under the guise of ensuring safety from Britain's (and America's) greatest unseen enemies, a purported democracy has placed enormous powers, including suspension of due process of the many, in the hands of a few.

This is a horror story scarier than anything Stephen King has written, because its scenarios seem possible.

An Ordinary Decent Criminal, by Michael Van Rooy ($14.99) (c2005)

2011-08-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

Now here's a refreshingly odd voice! Career criminal Montgomery Uller Haaviko has changed his name to Sam Parker, moved his young family to Winnipeg, and is trying to get a job in the straight world. As if.

As if the world would let him. Surely one of the points that Canadian author Michael Van Rooy makes is that it is difficult to go straight after being in prison for all sorts of crimes, large and small, and after using a young lifetime's worth of all sorts of nasty addictive substances.

As if it would be easy to break from thinking like a criminal, to not jones after those nasty substances, to have other people give you a break.

Monty/Sam is letting the past go, he is finding ways to deal with the anger that builds up inside him, and he knows if he screws up his wife, Claire, will take their baby, Fred, and he will never see them again. If he were lucky, she would leave him Renfield, their dog, and the mouse who lives in an aquarium.

Right off the bat, right after moving into their rented home in Winnipeg, burglars -- of all the nasty insults -- break into Sam's home at night. Using James Bond-like skills, he kills them all. Just in case, his naked wife has his back, armed with a baby and a bayonet.

Justified or not, excessive force or not, Sam now has a local mobster after him, and police sergeant Enzio Walsh thinks he has hit the criminal jackpot, never mind that Sam has done his time, shaken off all his drugs, and no longer associates with the criminal world. Now the new neighbors don't think too highly of him either. Pretty spectacular work for the first 24 hours.

"An Ordinary Decent Criminal" is a very clever, wry story of an unusual man. It's also a manual in how-to do many things criminal. (Don't try this at home!) I haven't heard such a compelling, unexpected voice since Josh Bazell's "Beat the Reaper." Van Rooy keeps the reader off balance; it is impossible to guess where he will take his story next. The author manages to craft a story that's always moving but that lauds the quiet moments in his protagonist's life. The story is often violent and tough, but has a graceful presence.

A Cursed Inheritance, by Kate Ellis (British ed.)

2011-08-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

This was a British, psychological, psycho killer book, with intertwined storylines and the requisite twist at the end. This is the first Kate Ellis I've read, and I think I missed the much-needed background on the relationships that the series' characters have with each other by reading a book so far into the series. Some of that stuff fell flat for me.

The description on the back cover says that this is a West Country crime novel that features "Wesley Peterson, one of Devon's first black detectives." Wesley studied archaeology at university, and he's a thinker when it comes to solving crime.

A client of a spa claims her jewels have been stolen. The body of an obscure true crime writer is found in the local river. Meanwhile in the U.S., two centuries-old skeletons have been disinterred, with musket balls signaling that the cause of death was by unnatural means. How do these relate to a decades-old murder of six people in a mansion?

This book is very readable, but I had a problem with Wesley. He realized that a couple of the people peripheral to the crimes might be in danger. He does nothing to protect them, except later wish he had done something to protect them. (Thus advancing the plot dramatically, however.) He has an awkward relationship with his wife that needs mending, doesn't see his two children much -- and one of them a baby -- and he passively-aggressively flirts with a co-worker and the widow of the murdered man. Maybe I'd feel more kindly towards him had I read the prior books.

The Good Thief's Guide to Paris, by Chris Ewan ($14.99)

2011-08-09T17:53:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. Chris Ewan and his books may be the literary equivalent of seeing a bunch of infinite selves in a couple of mirrors. Ewan's main character, Charlie Howard, is a thief who writes caper novels about a thief. Of course, very few people know that Charlie is a thief. His fence knows. And his literary agent, Victoria. And not too many people in-between. Charlie likes keeping his legal and extra-legal selves separated. He even submitted a false picture for his dust jacket.

Charlie is in Paris trying to write his next novel. Victoria may know that Charlie is a thief, but she does not know what he looks like. She thinks he is a suave, sophisticated world-traveler. What would make her think that? Why, the picture on his dust jacket, of course.

So, let's pause for a minute and ask what's the story with Chris Ewan? Have you seen his author's picture on his website? It screams suave, sophisticated world-traveler, if you ask me. And is Chris Ewan a burglar? Perhaps only his fence and literary agent know the answer.

What I do know is that this book is amusing, highly creative, and enjoyable reading. And instructive. There's even a lock-picking tutorial at the end.

In the book there are break-ins, a dead body, double-crosses and double-double-crosses, lots of Parisian atmosphere, and a charming protagonist.

The Dewey Decimal Systen, by Nathan Larson ($15.95)

2011-08-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

Although the basic premise may seem familiar ("Caveman's Valentine," Rosemary Aubert's Ellis Portal series, "Gun, with Occasional Music," "The Zero," and even "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"), Nathan Larson puts his own definite spin on it. Take a character with a psychological difficulty, in this case obsessive-compulsive disorder, place him in a time after another, but more disastrous, 9/11 in New York City, give him a memory shot full of holes, and make him a vet, probably physically and psychologically manipulated, not by the enemy but by the U.S. military. Bingo! You have "The Dewey Decimal System."

Of course, Dewey Decimal is not his real name. He doesn't or won't remember what his real name is. He talks sporadically of events in his lifetime, or they could be episodes implanted in his brain. He lives in the devastated New York Public Library and is working, compulsively, to organize the books. He is currently still on the 000s. But that's his passion. His livelihood is as muscle for a corrupt New York City D.A., in whatever form that occupation still exists.

There are still police and FBI agents, but they are warped shadows of what used to be. In this post-apocalyptic New York, decimated by both the bombs of 2/14 and a subsequent super-flu, the rules of play are written behind the scenes and under the table. Gangsters of every stripe, especially of Eastern European and Russian origin, run the game. It's hard to know where everyone's loyalties lie. And that is Dewey Decimal's world.

Nathan Larson's book is a rocket ride through this world. His hero is charming but ruthless, quirky with his own moral code. Dead bodies virtually fling themselves all over the pages of the book, mounting in increasing numbers as the book reaches its denouement. (Does Larson have Quentin Tarantino on his speed dial?)

Bring on the Purell (™). I'm ready for the next installment.

Wahoo Rhapsody, by Shaun Morey ($13.95)

2011-07-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

It's difficult to be a new author these days, and while Shaun Morey is not a "new" author, having written a nonfiction book about fishing, he and several other writers have had to be creative in getting their fiction published.

Amazon Encore, an imprint of mega-entity Amazon.com, is sending four authors to Murder by the Book on August 7. While their books are primarily being downloaded in digital format, the authors and Amazon Encore are committed to print versions as well. In another day and age -- actually, not too long ago -- Shaun and the others would have had no problem being published by one of the major book companies. In that not-so-long-ago age book publishers were many. Now they have all been joined into a small collection of super-corporations. Small imprints have popped up to handle the books the super-corps aren't looking at, but most of those imprints are struggling with name recognition and consistency of quality.

What Shaun has written is a goofy, clever, Carl Hiaasen-ish book. Francis Finch, a U.S. lawyer has sued God and won -- I won't spoil the surprise; you have to read the book to find out what that's about. To escape the faithful bent on revenge, Finch has moved to Mexico and changed his name to Atticus Fish. In order to save a friend, a fishing boat captain, and his crew from becoming victims of a drug lord, Atticus wends his way through various bizarre situations to save them. Even the bad guys are not without a sense of humor, or at least meet their end in darkly humorous ways.

Yay! to Amazon Encore for bringing "Wahoo Rhapsody" to our part of the print world, and yay! to Shaun for giving us a chuckle in a sometimes bleak and cloudy world.

My last words: If this review makes you want to read this book, do us a favor and order a print copy from Murder by the Book (books@mbtb.com). It is totally possible to support both MBTB and Amazon!

A Bad Night's Sleep, by Michael Wiley (hardcover, $24.99)

2011-07-24T19:40:00.000-07:00

Chicago P.I. Joe Kozmarski's story is a throwback to classic tough-guy private eye novels. Kozmarski is hard-drinking and hard-headed. It's him versus the world. With a little help from a couple of requisite women-who-love-the-bad-boys.

How low did Joe go? He was a police detective, and considering the number of corrupt cops in this book, he wasn't so bad. But he messed up because he had (and has) a problem with alcohol and drugs, so he was out of the police. He also feels responsible for the serious injury of a cop, one of his few friends from the old days.

Although he is innocent and, in fact, tried to prevent good cops from being shot by bad cops, Joe was held in isolation in jail for killing a cop and his name is mud. His only recourse is to play all sides against each other: the desperate police department, the gang using their credentials as police officers to commit illegal acts, and the warring neighborhood gangs.

Michael Wiley has won and been nominated for major awards, so it's astounding that his books have not been turned into paperbacks. As a matter of fact, his first two books in the series, "The Last Striptease" and "The Bad Kitty Lounge," are difficult to come by. Such is the puzzling state of publishing today.

Napoleon's Pyramid, by William Dietrich ($7.99)

2011-07-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

William Dietrich will be a guest of Murder by the Book on Thursday, July 21. That prompted me to read the first book in his Ethan Gage series, Napoleon's Pyramids. The book wasn't just fun to read -- featuring an Indiana Jones-type caper -- but the underlying history seemed sound. The story was complex and the characters were charming. Even the villains and crazy despots -- yes, I mean you, Napoleon -- were intriguing.

Ethan Gage is an American in Paris. It's the 1790s, however, and has nothing to do with Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly. Ethan was an assistant to Benjamin Franklin, famous in France and much admired. Erroneously thinking Ethan must channel Franklin's genius somehow, Napoleon has drafted Ethan to find the mythical, mystical source of power of the ancient Egyptians. We're talking pyramids, masonic signs, hieroglyphics, cults of Isis and Horus, and secret passageways. Having gotten into plenty of it's-not-my-fault-I-was-just-doing-what-comes-naturally trouble in Paris, Ethan hastens to accept Napoleon's offer and protection.

Accompanying Napoleon are his savants, the scientific geniuses of France, including mathematicians, geologists, geographers, chemists, and engineers. Napoleon is on a mission to become the Alexander the Great of his time. He will move through Egypt and onward to Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Empire. Genius or nutcase? Dietrich inserts his fictional character into real events, including maritime battles between the English and the French, and desert battles between the French and the ruling Mamelukes.

Dietrich even comes up with a little sidelight on some of mathematics' most famous puzzles and makes it interesting and relevant to his story.

Although Dietrich's scope is wide, he is up to the task of creating an entertaining and well-written story, without losing his readers in the historic minutiae.

Killed at the Whim of a Hat, by Colin Cotterill ($24.99)(release date-7/19/11)

2011-07-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

Here's another great book by Colin Cotterill, this one set in modern day Thailand. Cotterill keeps and expands upon the gentle humor he focused on 1970s Laos in his Siri Paiboun series. This time he aims it at the cultural eccentricities of rural Thailand.

Sounding more like a line from Mary Poppins' "Chim Chiminey" than the name of a former hotshot crime reporter for a Chiang Mai daily, Jimm Juree has relocated from the big city to a rural agricultural and seafaring backwater in southern Thailand. Her mother, Mair, supposedly diagnosed with the early stages of dementia, has sold their home and replanted daughter Juree, son Arny, and father Jah to the village of Maprao to run a resort on the beach. Which is not as exotic as it sounds. Run down is how it is, with carnivorous crabs, nosy neighbors, brown-outs, and dead bodies. Tired of gutting mackerel for the non-existent guests and her unappreciative family, Juree rejoices (quietly) at the dead bodies and the possibility of reporting these cases for her former employer.

By accident, palm tree farmer Old Mel has found a VW bus buried on his property. In the front seats are two skeletons. Since the local police force, with the exception of Lt. Chompu, an in-the-closet, nail-polish-wearing gay, is flummoxed and a more elaborate investigation is compromised by national political unrest, Juree becomes the best hope for a solution.

A fresher body is found at the local Buddhist monastery. A visiting investigating abbott is maliciously stabbed to death right on a highly visible part of the monastery's premises. The abbott was looking into a possible impropriety in the relationship between the monastery's abbott and a nun, a recent addition to the cloister. The murdered abbott was found wearing a strange orange hat.

No one is exempt from eccentricities. Even Sissi, Juree's sibling who stayed behind in Chiang Mai, has an odd story of her own. She began life as a he, found fame as a beauty queen, eloped with a suitor, returned to the bosom of her family a little older and wiser, and now is a first-class computer hacker.

Brother Arny is a buffed-up bodybuilder with a no tolerance for violence or confrontation. When Mair's dog is poisoned by someone in the village, Mair becomes suspiciously furtive, flitting around like a ninja in the night. Grandfather Jah used to be a traffic cop. He would have been more important, but his honesty doomed him to a minor position. He comes out of his stupor when Juree seeks his help to find and solve the clues.

It is this little family and the odd connections Juree makes in the course of following the two stories that provide the primary entertainment. In fact, the actual solution to one of the stories was a little shocking in contrast to the general tone of the rest of the book.

It's hard to give Cotterill his due without quoting some passages. His narrator is Juree:

We'd moved to a village surrounded by coconut groves called Maprao. That means 'coconut.' We're in the middle of a bay called Glang Ow, which means 'middle of the bay' and our nearest small town is at the mouth of a river. It's called Pak Nam. I probably don't need to translate that one for you.

And then:

'…I think it's good for [Mair] down here. She's crazy about her dogs and we've got the ocean right here and … you know.'

'Yeah.'

'Sissi?'

'Yeah?'

'I've got people dying down here.'

'Boredom?'

'No. Murder. …'

And lastly:

'Unbelievable,' [Chompu] said. 'You wouldn't believe how dull life was in Pak Nam before you lot arrived.'

I wondered at that moment whether he might be considering us suspects. Odd family turns up in town -- bodies everywhere. But I got the impression he wouldn't have minded that either.'

From start to unorthodox finish, this book was a joy.

P.S. Each chapter begins with a quote from a speech by George W. Bush. The title of the book derives from a "Bush-ism" in one of those speeches.

Think of a Number, by John Verdon ($7.99)

2011-07-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

On the way to reading something else, I was waylaid by this book. I'll just read a few pages, was the last thing I remember thinking. Remember the puzzles that caught your attention in The Da Vinci Code? This book has them as well: puzzles and clues you can actually follow and solve.

First person narrative, too much dialogue, or too little dialogue and lots of chase scenes seem to be the norm these days. Think of a Number is refreshing in its retro use of third person ruminations.

Dave Gurney is an unsuccessfully retired police detective. He has moved from fast-paced NYC to bucolic rural upstate New York. He and his wife, Madeleine, are seeking nature, peace, and quiet. But Dave is still driven by an inner need to exercise his powers of observation and deduction. He was a star at what he did: putting away serial killers. His restlessness is rooted in unresolved personal issues, and Dave is mentally running away as fast as he can from thinking about them.

Through it all, Madeleine has stuck with him, but her motives and thinking are murky. I never quite got a handle on her saintly, patient presence, or on her passive-aggressive goading of her husband. Although Dave is the expert -- his logic is noted ad nauseam -- it is Madeleine who provides insight into some of the puzzles.

Dave is contacted by Mark Mellery, an acquaintance from college, when he receives strange and unsettling letters. The first letter asks Mark to think of a number. A note enclosed with the letter correctly predicts the number Mark has chosen. How is that possible? Further communications are more intrusive, claiming inside knowledge of wrongs Mark has committed. Mark does not want to go to the police because of his current high profile in the community, so he asks Dave to find the prospective blackmailer.

Since I want you to be surprised, I'll stop there with the actual plot description. Think outside the box is my helpful hint.

John Verdon has crafted a reasonably well written, thoughtful thriller, proving all those descriptive words can still belong together.

Random Violence, by Jassy Mackenzie ($14)

2011-07-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

It's funny how books can still seem so foreign even when they are set in an English-speaking culture. Cultures have different rhythms to their speech, different shared understandings, different birth-of-the-nation stories. In this case it's modern day South Africa that's the setting, but the same could be said about the charming series by Louise Penny set in Quebec, Canada, or Denise Mina's black-as-noir Scotland. (And don't get me started on British mealtimes. What the heck is a "tiffen," anyway?)

British writing is more similar than different to our U.S. style, so those books are not so alien. Penny's Three Pines books move at a slower pace and refuse to be cowed by a "and then what happened" mentality, but it's still easy to relate to Penny's world. But South Africa is … different.

Beginning in the early 1970s, James McClure brought apartheid to our fictional doorstep while that extreme segregationist policy was still operating in South Africa. While his books were not banned there, they apparently were not beloved either. McClure's characters, Kramer and Zondi, were a black and white police partnership, with Kramer the putative leader of the pair. They were friends, or as friendly as they could be in an apartheid world.

Now a new generation of crime writers is trying to put apartheid and modern South Africa in focus. Malla Nunn wrote A Beautiful Place to Die, a wonderful and terrifying look at South Africa at the beginning of apartheid. Wessel Ebersohn's October Killings is from a young, modern black woman's point of view. And now we have Jassy Mackenzie's Random Violence.

Mackenzie's main character is Jade de Jong, a young white woman who exiled herself to England after the death of her police commissioner father. Now a decade later she has returned to Johannesburg. Unsuspected by her former friends and acquaintances, she has come to extract revenge on the man she holds responsible for her father's death. His prison sentence is up, and Jade wants to be there to welcome him.

While Jade is waiting, an old friend, David Patel, asks for her help on a case. He was an apprentice and admirer of her father, and is now a police detective. Jade is a private investigator in Great Britain, but I had to blink twice when she was so casually accepted by the police and public as an independent investigator. Are the Johannesburg police so understaffed? I also had difficulty with Jade's childhood/adult crush on David. It seemed vaguely juvenile. If you feel the same way, get over it, because there's so much to admire about this book.

The title, Random Violence, may be more ironic than actual. A woman is killed in what appears to be a random highjacking, a frequent occurrence in Johannesburg, which, from Mackenzie's point of view, has a wild west, frontier feel. Jade is assigned to figure out if the woman's husband had anything to do with it. Was her death at random or designed especially for her?

The tale moves to possible government corruption, a potential serial killer, and the changing mores of the new South Africa. Mackenzie handles the two plots well. She satisfactorily concludes the hijacking case and presents an astonishing resolution to Jade's father's case. I overcame my befuddlement with Jade's police involvement and her relationship with David, and the odd, un-American rhythm to Mackenzie’s writing, and found a thought-provoking book as a consequence.

The Anatomy of Ghosts, by Andrew Taylor (hardcover, $24.99)

2011-06-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

The last book I read by Andrew Taylor was his first, Caroline Minuscule, and that was about 25 years ago. I'm sorry I waited so long because he's good.

Set in fictional Jerusalem College, Cambridge, England, in 1786, Taylor has constructed a period piece that, yay!, isn't awkwardly styled or stuffed with lessons for the reader to learn.

John Holdsworth has suffered tragedy early in his life and finds himself almost penniless and friendless. Because of a book he has written, The Anatomy of Ghosts -- I know, a little too twee, perhaps -- he receives a commission to help a wealthy woman's son who thinks he has seen a ghost. John travels to Cambridge, and finds young Frank Oldershaw strapped down and tortured by a "modern" man of medicine. Effecting Frank's release, John attempts to cure him. "Quack, quack" Frank says in answer to many things, then dives into a nearby river. (That's about the only humorous thing in the book, and it's actually creepily humorous at that.)

The ghost Frank thought he saw was of the recently deceased wife of Philip Whichcote, a former student at Jerusalem and current head of one of the college's dining clubs with its underlying secret society. John Holdsworth receives help from Mr. and Mrs. Carbury, the Master of Jerusalem and his wife. There are a few other notable characters, but Taylor, thank goodness, keeps his dramatis personae at a manageable level. (In the old-fashioned way that I wish had never gone out of fashion, he lists the cast of characters.)

Holdsworth represents the scientific mind, intolerant of all ghosts and things that go bump in the night. At the same time, Taylor provides the requisite ghost-appropriate setting: misty gardens; winding and dim passages; things flitting at the edge of one's vision; gloom, disorder, tragedy, and pain hanging over all. Although he is not a college-educated man, Holdsworth fits into Jerusalem surprisingly well. Despite his tragic background, he provides a mostly neutral point from which to view the other characters and situations.

This is not modern Cambridge. As Taylor says in his afterword, "The eighteenth century was not a glorious period for English universities," and in only his second piece of humor in the entire book, he adds, "by and large they managed things better in Scotland." Instead of a look at the scholarly search for truth, this book is a look into the dysfunction of a society lanced by class consciousness, at a skewed morality propped up by a hail-fellow-well-met mentality.

I lied about there being no humor, so lastly, here's an example of that humor:

"Trust youth to turn an episode of drunken adultery into a three-volume novel and present it to you before breakfast."

and

"Holdsworth no longer wanted to laugh. For where in God's name was the humor in a weeping boy and a drowned woman? Or, for that matter, in a pair of Barbary slippers and a gilt button bearing the motto Sans souci?"

The Wreckage, by Michael Robotham ($24.99)

2011-06-13T01:24:00.000-07:00

Vincent Ruiz used to be a detective with the London police force. He is a private investigator but doesn't appear to be enthusiastic about it. As a matter of fact, very little seems to move him to enthusiasm, certainly not the upcoming wedding of his daughter, Miranda. Although "[t]he father of the bride just has to turn up, walk down the aisle, and hand his daughter over like she's part of a prisoner swap," Vincent manages to bungle his initial involvement in the wedding preparations. He meant to do things right, but hey, stuff happens.

Like playing good Samaritan to a young girl who proceeds to rob him of his late wife's jewelry, things Vincent had meant to give to Miranda before her wedding. Like the girl's boyfriend being brutally murdered. Like being stalked, bribed, and finding an international crisis on his doorstep. Stuff like that.

There are actually two more stories being told at the same time. One takes place in Baghdad and involves a freelance journalist, Luca*, and a UN auditor, Daniela. They meet, they fall in like, people try to kill them. Is it just what happens to people in Iraq, or have them stumbled on something more? The third story involves a mother-to-be whose husband is missing. Elizabeth North's husband works for her family's banking business in London. He's a bean counter and a steady, somewhat boring man. If he's so ordinary, then what has happened to him? Where is the notebook some suspicious types claim he has?

Above all, what do these stories have to do with each other? As readers, we assume that they are indeed related, but it isn't until two-thirds of the way into the book that the characters in the three stories begin to stumble over each other and the stories seek their mutual conclusion. After they collide, the spotlight remains on Vincent, about whom Robotham writes: "He's an intelligent man but not a complicated one." His intelligence, too, is sometimes undercut by his uppercut. He's aided about halfway through the book by psychologist Joe O'Loughlin, the main or equal character in other Robotham books.

In an afterword, Robotham explains that the idea for his book is based upon real events. My reaction: scary. I will forbear discussing what brings the stories together. Robotham does too good a job drawing everything out for me to tip his hand prematurely.

Robotham delivers the kind of complexity I like. Kate Atkinson does the same thing. They develop separate story lines that ultimately converge. The stories are usually so divergent, it's a healthy challenge to the authors to bring them together at the end, and both handle the challenge exceptionally well.

I could give you many more examples of Robotham's energetic writing or his humor, but that would involve quoting pretty much the whole book. Big fan here, can you guess?

* This is the amusing first line of the story: "The most important lesson Luca Terracini ever learned about being a foreign correspondent was to tell a story through the eyes of someone else. The second most important lesson was how to make spaghetti marinara with a can of tuna and a packet of Ramen noodles."

Hell Is Empty, by Craig Johnson (hardcover, $25.95)

2011-06-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

Man vs. nature. Man vs. man. Man vs. himself. It's all there. Especially the nature part.

Remember the last part of Cold Dish, the first book in Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series? In which Walt -- wait, not Walt, make that "Crazy Walt" -- Crazy Walt heads up into the mountains after a bad guy? In which there is much suffering on Walt's part and he sees "things"? This time, instead of just a small portion of the book devoted to Walt heading up into the mountains after a bad guy, Craig Johnson has devoted the whole book to that plot.

Read Dante's Inferno before you read Hell Is Empty. At least read the CliffsNotes version. Johnson not so subtly draws parallels to that story. Instead of Dante's trip from the dark woods down into the circles of hell, Walt journeys up from the forest into the cold reaches of the hell he finds in the mountains. There are even Wyoming versions of Beatrice and Virgil.

The whole gang you've come to know and love -- Vic, The Bear, The Basque, Ruby, Cady -- is there but just in flashes, because it's all about Walt and the mountain and the man he's after.

Briefly, a prisoner, Reynaud Shade (hello!), escapes during a transport exchange in a fairly remote area of Wyoming. Shade is a bad, bad man who sees "The Old Ones" and claims he knows Walt does too. Taking hostages, Shade heads up a mountain. Taking a soggy sandwich and a cell phone that doesn't work, Walt heads up after him. A monster of a blizzard and an incongruous forest fire are impediments. Hypothermia and concussion are nuisances. Through it all, Walt is steadfast and determined to make a final showdown on the mountain.

Boy howdy, it's a page turner. It's also graced with Johnson's humorous turn of phrase, even in the most dire of circumstances, and a sweetness as Johnson shows us the strength and determination of the heart.

Robopocalpyse, by Daniel H. Wilson (hardcover, $25) (due 6/7)

2011-06-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

Robo=robot, pocalypse=apocalpyse. Ooooh, yeah! This is doomsday with gadgets and more fun than a barrel full of nanomonkeys!

In the not-too-distant future, Robs, or robots, are everywhere. The human-shaped ones are domestics, the others run vehicles, are toys, manufacture products, and serve the military. Until they aren't and they don't. One day a malevolent awareness develops in an experimental artificial intelligence project. Archos names itself, takes on the visual and auditory persona of a little boy, gets really upset, and then tries to eradicate all human life. Because robots have an underlying worldwide communications network, Archos has no problem reprogramming them all. Cars begin running over people, domestics sweep out their human owners along with the trash, toys turn to the dark side, and machines designed to help the military begin to destroy it instead.

In the best cinematic fashion, we have human heroes and heroines who overcome extreme odds to save humanity. There's also an unexpected alliance between humans and free-thinking robots.

We learn in the first chapter that the human-robot war is over and that the humans appear to have won. The rest of the book is a flashback presented in stories told or re-told by Cormac "Bright Boy" Wallace, a human. About six or seven other characters appear in these stories, and we follow their progress over a couple of years.

This is a fast-moving story with lots of action, with plentiful information given about robotics by Daniel H. Wilson, a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, according to his biography. Not surprisingly, the story apparently will be turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg! Wilson is the literary grandchild of Isaac Asimov, but with a lot more booms and bangs.

Zoo Station, by David Downing ($14)(c2007)

2011-05-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

In 1939 Berlin, World War II has not yet begun, but Europe is on the edge of madness. Hitler and his Nazis are terrorizing the Jews and other "imperfect" groups. Their influence is felt not just in Germany but also in Poland and Czechoslovakia. It is almost January 1, 1939, and Hitler has been in power for about five years when the book opens. Within a few months, Germany will invade Poland, and Great Britain will begin its war with Germany. Kristallnacht, the destruction of Jewish homes and businesses, the beating of Jewish people, the theft of Jewish property, is only a couple of months old. It is into this setting that David Downing places his protagonist, British journalist John Russell.

Russell will not leave Berlin, although he easily could. In better times, he met and married Ilsa, a German woman, and they have a son, Paul. Russell is determined to stay in Paul's life, although he and Ilsa have divorced. Russell's girlfriend, actress Effi Koenen, is another anchor to Berlin.

Russell does mostly freelance work for various publications, so it is not unusual for him to be approached by an organization that wishes to hire his writing skills. However, it is the Russians who want a series of articles, for which they will pay well. Although his impecunious existence is a burden, Russell hesitates, but then he acquiesces, not without stipulations. He will most emphatically not be a spy for them. He will not be a spy for Great Britain or the U.S. either. Germany? Nein. It would be a less interesting book if eventually Russell didn't find himself tossed about by all these secretive forces.

Jews line up daily at the British embassy, and the line stretches further each day. As a way to supplement his income, Russell teaches Germans to speak English. As a result of a reference from a friend, he teaches the daughters of a Jewish family and gets to know the family well. They are trying desperately to emigrate, but before they can get anywhere, the father, a doctor, is accused of a crime. The 18-year-old son is on the run. The daughters and the mother cannot get visas. Russell could simply shake his head, sympathize, and go on with his work. Times are tough for everyone. Despite the danger to himself, however, Russell knows he cannot avoid the inevitable. His conscience says that he must do what he can to save this family, save himself, avenge the mysterious death of a colleague, and try to stay in Berlin with Paul and Effi.

It's a tall order.

David Downing describes a complex situation with clarity and without over-explaining the mutable geography and politics of the time. The story does not lose pacing as it focuses on the many groups affected by Hitler's march to war. Sometimes with just a single sentence, Downing can capture the essence of an issue. His smart and ironic observations are thought-provoking and entertaining. For instance:

"The film had been made on the sort of budget which would feed a small country, but was mercifully devoid of consciousness-raising pretensions. The consciousness-lowering effect was presumably accidental."

Downing has written three more books, all named after train/subway stations. In fact, the important Zoo Station stop in Berlin represents the turning point in the journeys of Russell and others.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin ($14.99)

2011-05-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

Here is a mystery, birthed in the languid, humid cauldron of the South, and set free by quick and sensitive writing. Tom Franklin was nominated for an Edgar award for this book, and it says something about the excellent competition this past year that Franklin did not win. (The winner was The Lock Artist, an excellent novel by Steve Hamilton, also awarded an MBTB star!)

"Crooked letter, crooked letter" is part of the chant that children use to learn how to spell Mississippi. It is to Chabot, a small Mississippi town, that Silas "32" (for his high school baseball team number) Jones returns after wandering the world and trying to escape his impoverished Southern roots. He is now the constable of that tiny company town. The owner of the mill that supports the town and pays 32's salary is bereft because his daughter is missing. This eerily mirrors a crime committed years ago when 32 and his friend Larry Ott were 17. Larry was the prime suspect in the disappearance of a classmate, his neighbor Cindy Walker. A body was never found, so Larry was never charged. Now Larry and 32 are both 41 years old, and Larry has been living a hermit's life, shunned by the community, but tied to it nevertheless because of his incapacitated mother. Even before Cindy disappeared, Larry and 32's friendship had begun to fracture, fostered in part by Larry's cold and callous father and Larry's overly protective mother. It also didn't help that 32 is black and Larry is white. Perhaps we like to think that such things don't matter anymore, but Franklin is here to tell us differently.

Despite Larry's attempts to contact him after his return, 32 is reluctant to communicate with Larry. It turns out that it isn't just because he's a constable and Larry is once again a suspect in a disappearance and presumed murder. In a style reminiscent of another fine writer of Southern-inflected mysteries, Thomas L. Cook, Franklin slowly reveals Larry and 32's true story. Franklin's pace is a little swifter than Cook's; where Cook is molasses, Franklin is maple syrup.

Is this where I admit that about halfway through the book, I skimmed the ending? I felt it enhanced my reading of the rest of the book, but I certainly wouldn't recommend this approach. What it did give me was a respect for the way Franklin led his story to its conclusion.

For Franklin's intriguing main characters, his spot-on side characters, and heart-breaking story, I have awarded this book an MBTB star!

Truth, by Peter Temple ($16)(c2009)

2011-05-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

This is the third Peter Temple book I've read. I gave the other two stars (for books I really, really like). This one doesn't get a star. I didn't even understand it half the time. And I'm not just talking about the Australianese.

The main character here is Stephen Villani, head of the homicide department somewhere in Australia, but it's really an ensemble piece, and that is part of the problem. There are millions of characters. One of them is Joe Cashin, hero of The Broken Shore, and another is Jack Irish, who stars in a bunch of books that haven't made it to the U.S. yet. But they play very tiny parts, cameos really. There are Bikerts, Dove, Finucane, Singleton (or Singo), Kiely, Lizzie, Webber, Gillam, Colby, Anna, Bob, Corin, Laurie, Luke, Mack, Orong, Barry, and those are just the police and family members. This doesn't even touch on the people involved in the two main cases of which Villani takes control. Either Temple assumes you've read his other books and his characters need no introduction, or it's a singularly annoying gimmick to just toss his readers into the muddle of people. Ha, ha, ha, he might be saying, sink or swim.

Even though I got the gist of the two cases -- a young woman is found naked and dead in the bathroom of an upscale condominium, and two gangsters are found tortured and dead -- it was a convoluted path through potential political and police malfeasance to solve them both. In his equally convoluted personal life, Stephen is having a rocky time with his wife, one of his daughters runs away, his farmer father refuses to leave his holding when a massive fire threatens it, and his reporter girlfriend is the the worst-kept secret around. Is it all worth the agita, both for him and for us?

Temple has a way with words, and it's still true in Truth. However, sometimes he seems to shake them up in a bucket, pluck a few out and throw them away for the challenge, and then plop what's left on the page. He was clearest and most moving when telling about Stephen's family, especially in stories of his father's stubbornness in the midst of his plight and his guilt over his daughter Lizzie.

I wish I had time to re-read this book. Having come through it once, I now know who (most of) the characters are. I do so want to enjoy it.

County Line, by Bill Cameron ($15.95) (due 6/1/11)

2011-05-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

Ruby Jane Whittaker, both as the eccentric coffee shop owner in Portland and especially as a young girl from a crazy family in Ohio, sparkles on the page. Something terrible happened when Ruby Jane was a teenager in a rural community in Ohio. That something terrible has been nipping at her heels all these years, and now it has taken a big bite. That Ruby Jane should have turned into the self-confident business woman in Portland is a miracle. That the past is now haunting her is a deadly burden.

Skin Kadash is a retired cop in Portland. When he allows himself to think about it, he realizes he is in love with Ruby Jane. When she disappears and he finds the dead body of a bum in her bathtub, he heads off to find her. And save her. He knows above all else that he must save her, but he doesn't know from what.

Skin reconnects with Ruby's old boyfriend, Pete, in California, and we're guessing that Pete still has feelings for Ruby. Ruby's estranged brother, Jimmie, lives in San Francisco, not too far from Pete. Perhaps he knows where Ruby is, because Pete doesn't. Soon there's another dead body.

The trail finally leads back to Preble County, Ohio. The first-person, present tense, present time narrative that begins Bill Cameron's book segues into Ruby Jane's tale of when she was a teenager. That third-person narrative splits into several different time frames, all within a year. There are flashbacks within the flashback, but Cameron does a great job drawing us closer to the terrible event that shattered Ruby's family and dispersed its members. The final section of the book brings us back to the present time and Skin's story.

Cameron has written a thriller that makes you want to turn the page faster and faster. He has also written a sensitive story about a young girl from a dysfunctional family who has more troubles than someone her age should have. Cameron's writing easily and poetically handles the transition from Skin's story to Ruby's, from then to now. This is a story that will linger.

The Bayou Trilogy, by Daniel Woodrell ($16)

2011-05-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

The Bayou Trilogy is a compilation of three works by Daniel Woodrell, published between 1986 and 1992: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do.

Set in Louisiana bayou country -- reeking of atmosphere, tawdriness, two-bit criminals, and hardasses -- Woodrell doesn't so much write a novel as produce an epic poem. For instance, Woodrell describes where Detective Rene Shade lives:

"In the aspiring self-mythology of Saint Bruno, a town that liked to refer to itself as a baby Chicago, there were grapevine Roykos and street-corner Sandburgs who found odd connections between the Windy City on the Lake and the Wheezing Town on the River."

And, again, in one of the best opening lines of a fourth chapter ever:

"The spiteful heat of summer turned sullen reached Voltaire Street early. Sun-faded blinds flapped up on dusty front windows as "Closed" signs were flipped and brown-bag lunches were stashed beneath countertops by optimists seeking coolness for their tuna fish. Delivery men, customers, and owners had gotten the message that the bad sun sent out and slowed to lessen the punishment that any hint of speed would draw. Summer was the mean season along the river, the air thick as syrup, and the sky a lowdown fog that held in the torture."

Rene Shade is the central character. We also meet his wildly different family members, morally ambiguous fellow lawmen, and criminals of varying mindsets and intellect who cross his path.

This is Louisiana noir at its best, complete with cajun and Southern patois. At times, however, Woodrell's pages are logy with words. One forgets the beginning of the thought by the time of its completion. Nevertheless, this is stylish writing. As a matter of fact, it drips and sweats style. His narrative moves with an undulating rhythm. Words pile up and then fall on you. It almost doesn't matter what the hell the story is about. Almost.

The Drowning River, by Christobel Kent (hardcover, $24.99) (c2009)

2011-05-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

Florence has known centuries of intrigue and dark deeds. Home of the infamous Medici family, Machiavelli, and Dante. Cradle of Renaissance art. Alluring, mysterious, and inspirational. In this case, Christobel Kent has been inspired to create a novel that inserts us foreigners into everyday Florentine life. Kent has designed a puzzle that uses art, the River Arno, the flood of 1966, and a police detective forced into retirement.

Iris March is a young art student from England, via the south of France. She has been given a place to stay and tuition to an art class in order to be the companion/watchdog to another young woman, Veronica "Ronnie" Hutton. Sure enough, Ronnie doesn't show up for art class one day. It isn't long before her disappearance is attributed to more than just youthful folly and indolence.

In another part of the city, Sandro Cellini begins his new career as a private detective. It was not long ago that he was an official police detective and he mourns his premature departure from the ranks -- caused by compassion, not dereliction. His wife Luisa supports and nags him into continuing on his new path. As he waits, clientless, in his new office for something to happen, something does. As he gazes out his window to the street below, he sees a young woman, excitedly hurrying along. Sandro pulls back in embarrassment when she looks up and sees him watching.

Sandro soon has more to keep his mind occupied, however, when his first client shows up. Lucia is a widow whose husband, an elderly man with Alzheimer's, was recently found drowned in the River Arno, a suicide. Claudio would never have left her, she insists. There is foul play, surely.

It certainly seems inevitable that these stories will intersect at some point. And, indeed, through a convoluted but intriguing set of circumstances, Sandro becomes acquainted with Iris as she searches for her roommate. We meet people from Sandro's past and present lives, Iris' feckless fellow art students, the proprietors of the art school, and interesting residents of Florence.

Throughout the book, the rain falls in ever-increasing amounts. There is a danger that a flood like the one in 1966 threatens the city and its irreplaceable art again. The clock ticks and the river rises as Sandro, Luisa, and Iris work to solve the mysteries of Claudio and Ronnie. Evviva, Firenze!

P.S. Despite the thousands of people who roam the streets of Florence, of course, the young woman passing Sandro's window was ... Ronnie.

Death of a Cozy Writer, by G. M. Malliet ($13.95)

2011-05-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

WWAD? What would Agatha do? She'd probably write something very similar if she were writing today. But G. M. Malliet has pumped her version with more acerbity and humor, not to mention a few choice swear words that Dame Agatha would find a little outré.

This is a classic locked room mystery.

Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk is a nouveau riche, revolting, wealthy mystery novelist. He is roundly hated or disliked by almost everyone. Did I mention that he is wealthy? Money keeps family coming around, and his adult sons and daughter, and their significant others have gathered at the manor house for a wedding.

Chloe, the former Lady Beauclerk-Fisk, ran away as fast as she could when the children were still young. Adrian took a while but there is a new Lady Beauclerk-Fisk on the horizon. She is Violet Mildenhall, widow of the late Lord Winthrop, who died under mysterious circumstances. And so the stage is set.

It is a particularly nasty game that Adrian plays, revolving his children in and out of his will at whim. As a result, none of his children are steady, stable, or normal. All love has been lost in this family, although there may be brief tenderness between some of the siblings.

When the first murder occurs, the unbroken snow outside means that the killer resides within the hall. Detective Inspector St. Just and Sergeant Fear (whose phone ring is "Jingle Bells") are the aptly named forces of justice and judgment, and it is their duty to sort out the many motives and relationships of the manor's inhabitants.

This is a well-written, witty, and clever nod to the mysteries of the Golden Age, while at the same time retaining a contemporary tone.

The October Killings, by Wessel Ebersohn (hardcover, $24.99)

2011-04-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Africa is a prime setting for mysteries these days. The books run the gamut from the pleasant and meandering Precious Ramotswe books by Alexander McCall Smith to The October Killings, a jangling look at what has become of South Africa in the days after the rejection of the apartheid government.

South African author Malla Nunn has a series (A Beautiful Place to Die and Let the Dead Lie) set at the dawn of apartheid. She deals with what happens to a white man of conscience in a country that demands loyalty to an immoral cause. In contrast but also in complement to Nunn's series, Wessel Ebersohn deals with present day South Africa, where institutionalized racism has been abolished but where there are still many problems stemming from that apartheid past.

Abigail Bukula is a 35-year-old black woman, a minor official in the Justice Department, and she, too, is a person of conscience. When an Afrikaaner ex-soldier of the apartheid regime comes to her for help, she gives it. Leon Lourens saved her life twenty years ago when the house in Lesotho in which she was staying was raided by the South African military. Abigail was captured, but on October 22, she and her fellow prisoners were freed in a rebel countermove. The circumstances of this event and the genesis of Abigail and Leon's unlikely relationship are slowly unveiled throughout the book.

Leon is frightened because other soldiers from the regiment that attacked the house in Lesotho are dying on October 22, one each year, and someone associated with that night is responsible. She has not seen Leon since the raid, but she has not forgotten her debt to him. When she and her angst-filled secretary, Johanna, do further research, they realize that the problem is larger than they thought.

Abigail stumbles across prison psychologist Yudel Gordon, who formerly worked under the apartheid government, was released because he was white, then reinstated when his progressive rehabilitation theories prove useful. There are many people like Yudel who were tools of the apartheid government but who tried their best to co-exist with everyone in a stratified world. Eventually acceding to Abigail's request for help, Yudel's primary aid comes in the form of Sherlock Holmes-like observations and intuitive insights into the psyche of the man who is ritually killing the ex-soldiers in October.

Ebersohn has created a thriller with a serial killer. But unlike other authors of the oh-so-many thriller/serial killer books out today, he has also created characters with heart and a hard-won thoughtfulness of who they are. Abigail and Yudel have fragile places in the new world, but their consciences overcome their fear of losing that precarious and precious safety. Ebersohn has done a great job fleshing out other intriguing characters: Robert Mokoapi, Abigail's husband and man-on-the-way-up in the television news business; Freek Jordaan, a police commissioner and Yudel's friend; Rosa, Yudel's wife; and Van Jaarsveld, the head of Leon's regiment the night of the raid.

Ebersohn's work provides a poignant look at a South Africa still fractured but healing. Read together with Malla Nunn's books, they provide a fascinating fictional one-two punch to apartheid. More importantly, while The October Killings is definitely a political statement of life post-apartheid, it is more a story of the connections people make with each other, one human to another.

The Janus Stone, by Elly Griffiths (hardcover, $26)

2011-04-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Dr. Ruth Galloway, a forensic anthropologist in England, finds a storyline worthy of her in this second book in Elly Griffiths' series. The Crossing Places, the first book to feature Ruth, was well written but lacked a tightly worked ending. Griffiths has remedied that with this commendable follow-up.

Ruth is a slightly overweight, out of shape academic. Because of circumstances depicted in the first book, Ruth is now slightly overweight, out of shape, and pregnant. Since there is no possibility of winding up with the father of her child, she chooses to ignore her pregnancy at first, concentrating instead on winding up her school year and discerning whether a modern crime has been committed when a child's bones are discovered at a construction site.

Among the fine characters that populate this book are Harry Nelson, the police detective she met in the first book; her friend Cathbad, a Druid/amateur archaeologist/sensitive soul; and Shona, her irrepressible BFF. They are each given their own strong personalities and we say, "Yay!"

Griffiths draws an atmospheric picture of the area around Norfolk, with its heavy mists and lonely stretches. In addition to the main mystery of the victim's identity is a sedimentary mystery, which gives Griffiths a chance to gently educate us in the archaeology and history of an ancient land that has seen many changes.

Humor is not a main ingredient in this book, but there is some and it is well placed. From the slapstick (DCI Nelson accusing himself of being unsophisticated: "'You know how thick I am. I don't even eat yoghurt because it's got culture in it.'") to the gently acerbic ("Eventually a teenage boy masquerading as a doctor appears, examines her head and tells her she can go home."), Griffiths gives us a smile just before she encases us in darkness. And there is darkness. This is not a tidy Agatha Christie drawing room mystery, but rather one that uncovers the sordid and grotesque nature of a hidden black heart.

Griffiths' dialogue, her pacing, and her humorous and human touches, especially concerning Ruth's pregnancy, are spot on.

Phoenix Rising, by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris ($7.99)(release date: 4/26/11)

2011-04-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

Oh, what fun! Steampunk, great characters, a rousing adventure! That's this book in a nutshell.

Eliza Braun and Wellington Books are agents of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, Britain's hidden asset in the war against the unseemly in Victorian London. The fact that Eliza and "Welly," as Eliza not-so-fondly calls Books, are both agents of the Ministry is the only thing they have in common. Eliza is a "colonist" from New Zealand and therefore subject to the slings and arrows of the purist upper-classes of England. Welly is one of those upper-class toffs. Eliza makes spectacular appearances, loaded with dynamite, guns, knives, and moxie. Welly is the quiet and methodical head of the Ministry Archives in the leaky basement of the secret Ministry building. You can see already where this is going, can't you?

They meet when Eliza is sent to rescue Welly from a prison in Antarctica where the nefarious House of Usher has taken him. With guns blazing, dynamite blasting (Eliza) and puzzle-solving (Welly), they work as a team to escape the dungeon. And that's only chapter one. And it has little to do with the current story, except to introduce the characters to each other.

Back at the ranch: For past and present sins, Eliza is demoted to be Welly's assistant in the Archives. Their boss, Doctor Sound, probably has an ulterior motive, of course, but it's not apparent, nor does it have a logical basis; it just gets the story going. And here is the story. Eliza's former partner, Harrison Thorne, has been committed to Bedlam. He went bonkers after handling a case on his own. While cleaning up the Archives, Eliza stumbles across Harry's notes from that case. After a poignant visit to Harry and more investigation, Eliza and Welly learn of the secret Phoenix Society. With much prodding from Eliza and trepidation from Welly, they surreptitiously begin reconnaissance on their own. They eventually land in the belly of the beast, so to speak, and more blasting and shooting and puzzle-solving ensue. What's there not to like?

There are side mysteries which are introduced but not solved in this first book in a projected series. Why was Welly kidnapped? What is the House of Usher? Why are two characters named Barnabus and Angelique Collins, also character names in the cult series, "Dark Shadows"? Why is one of the other agents named Bruce Campbell, the name of a cult movie actor? Methinks there are a lot of in-jokes in this book. Where does Doctor Sound go when he slips through the hidden door in the basement? What will become of the Ministry Seven, street urchins whom Eliza and Harry used in much the same fashion as Sherlock used the Baker Street Irregulars.

Before everyone runs out and gets a copy for their preadolescent steampunks, know that adult sexual talk and games are a part of the action.

Steampunk, anyone?

The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton ($14.99)

2011-04-09T22:41:00.000-07:00

I didn't get much sleep last night, because The Lock Artist was compulsively fascinating. The premise of a mute teenager who is a genius at cracking locks and safes was too good a story gimmick. Hamilton has a wicked sense of timing and knows how to draw the reader forward, slowly and torturously, towards the solutions to the mysteries he has created.

Mike was traumatized as a young boy, but what happened isn't revealed until towards the end of the book. In the meantime, we learn that he lived with old Uncle Lito after the tragedy, that he managed to get into small-time trouble as a teenager, which led to big-time trouble, and that he is writing his story from prison. Throughout all of this, he has remained mute, a silent witness to human deficiencies and defects. Hamilton teases out these various storylines with excruciating slowness, but it's never annoying -- it only leads to hyperventilation on the part of the reader.

Although Mike is ostracized in school because he doesn't speak and he is haunted by the traumatizing incident in his past, he isn't bitter, just wary. He is alone a lot of the time and lonely, and finds a strange sort of psychic relief in opening padlocks and locked doors. He finally graduates to safes, but it isn't clear how this comes about until much later in the book. One of the attractions of this book is Hamilton's description of the intricate art of lock and safe breaking. Who knew that this esoteric topic could be so hypnotic?

Mike is a sweet and sympathetic character. His girlfriend, Amelia, is sweet and perceptive. The safecracking gimmick is mesmerizing, and Hamilton does a great job drawing the various threads together in the end.

The Cruel Stars of the Night, by Kjell Eriksson ($13.95)(c2007)

2011-04-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

(This review contains a spoiler, of sorts. Not a tremendously serious one and not one that the reader can't see coming a mile off, but if you like to go at your books with no preconceived notions, give this review a pass. And since you're not going to read this review, let me tell you what the bottom line is: If you haven't read any other Kjell Eriksson book, read The Princess of Burundi first. Perhaps it delineates the characters better. Then you can head into this one knowing who everyone is.)

This is another one of those novels that can't be read without having read the previous ones in the series. I was at sea with all the police personnel introduced willy-nilly and mostly lacking descriptors. Ann Lindell was clearly the main character in this book. She is one of the homicide detectives in Uppsala, Sweden. But who the heck are Ola Haver, Sammy Nilsson, Charles Morgansson, Beatrice Andersson, Allan Fredricksson, Eskil Ryde, Asa Lantz-Andersson, and Ottoson? I managed to pick the following out: Ryde and Morgansson are with forensics. Eventually Ottoson emerges as everyone else's boss (Lieutenant, Captain, Chief, Sarge, first name?). Jonsson and Martensson pop up a couple of times. They are technicians, and we don't really get to know anything about them, so you can safely let them slip from your thoughts. Yes, I could go back and read the book again and take better notes. But that's not going to happen. Besides, the play's the thing.

Two 70-ish men clearly have been murdered. They both seem to have led innocent, productive lives, and there's no link between them. Another 70-ish man is missing. His daughter appears more and more fraught and frantic throughout the book, but is it because her father is missing or because she is glad he is missing? Although for a long time their story is presented separately from the other two cases, the reader must hazard a guess that eventually there must be a connection, otherwise the juxtaposition of the stories would be aimless. Is there a serial killer ranging the countryside looking for old men to bash on the head? Is the professor another victim?

Although the story follows a few of the detectives as they track down clues and live their lives, it is to Ann Lindell that Kjell Eriksson returns over and over. She is a 30-something, single mother. Her preschooler is her heart's delight, but it is difficult to balance the stressful and demanding work of a detective with that of a mother. Eriksson sympathetically presents her dilemma.

It really wasn't until about three-fourths of the way in the book, when Ann is trying to find some way to link the cases, that it finally starts to move along. It is at this point, too, that we realize that Laura, the professor's daughter, is hauling some serious psychological luggage. The police procedural part -- once I gave up trying to figure out how all the detectives related to each other, what they looked like, how old they were, etc. -- was interesting, especially when one of the detectives has a brainstorm, involving Queen Silvia, about why the old men were killed.

Let's summarize. Characters were confusing. Ann's story was good. Book lagged until the last fourth, but that part was good. Interesting side bits. Probably would have enjoyed it more had I read The Princess of Burundi first.

The Fifth Witness, by Michael Connelly (hardcover, $27.99)

2011-03-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

I liked everything about this book, including the surprising explanation of the title. Michael Connelly, I never tire of saying, is one of the best storytellers around. He meticulously populates his stories with details but doesn't drown out the main story with them. In this case, Connelly has returned to the adventures of Mickey Haller, the "Lincoln Lawyer." When last we saw Mickey he had done a turn as a special prosecutor at the behest of his half-brother, Harry Bosch, star of Connelly's most famous series. Now Mickey's back is to the wall because criminal defense work has dried up, and he mostly represents people who are fighting foreclosure. In these days of economic depression and the fall-out of unscrupulous mortgage lending, the potential for clients is sadly large.

Lisa Trammel began as a foreclosure client, one whose case Mickey is on the verge of winning, when she is charged with the murder of a man whose bank held her loan. Connelly has crafted a tale that races along despite lingering over a fair amount of foundation-building as Mickey layers his case. And, of course, Connelly flourishes several aces he has kept up Mickey's sleeve.

What tips the scales in his favor as best character in a Connelly series over Harry Bosch or Terry McCaleb is Mickey's rapscallion charm. It is why his two ex-wives still think fondly of him. It is why he can get away with outrageous stunts in the courtroom. His antics anger judges, opposing counsel, and the same two ex-wives who stick by him. Connelly has created a character who is both larger-than-life and down-to-earth. Mickey is humbled by his teenage daughter, by his past as an addict, and by his search for a better self.

For this fourth book in the series, Mickey still uses the traveling office in his chauffeured Lincoln Continental, but he actually rents a real office for this case. Sadly, this may herald the downhill road for an aging avenger.

The Fifth Witness is clever. It's exciting even in the wordy courtroom scenes. (Although Stieg Larsson has my vote for best courtroom scene ever.) It's provocative in setting such a contemporary issue before us.

And, yes, there is a reference to Matthew McConaughey starring in a movie about a lawyer.

Satori, by Don Winslow, based on characters by Trevanian (hardcover, $24.99)

2011-03-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

Trevanian's enigmatic and compelling book, Shibumi (the state of effortless perfection), came out in 1979. His protagonist, Nicholai Hel, was a Caucasian man with an Asian turn of mind. Because of family circumstances, Nicholai was raised by a Japanese military man, General Kishikawa. Kishikawa taught young Nicholai to play the game of Go. In fact, he taught Nicholai that life and the problems it brings could be viewed as a giant Go game. Combining Go-strategy, his martial arts skills and discipline, a knowledge of many languages, and a superior intellect, Nicholai was a force to be reckoned with. He was also an assassin.

Almost thirty years later, along comes respected thriller novelist Don Winslow to give us the prequel to Shibumi. Satori is a higher level of awareness, a moment of perfect clarity, and the book Satori defines the moment when young Nicholai Hel finds his true place in the world.

In 1951 Japan, Nicholai Hel has just been released from prison. Put there and tortured by Americans, Hel is not inclined to be sympathetic to any proposal they may have for him. Because Hel has such an extraordinary combination of talents, the CIA would like him to assassinate a high-level Soviet spy in China. His reward will be freedom. The 26-year-old Hel takes up the offer. It is especially sweet when Hel realizes the target is Voroshinen, the man who cast aside Hel's mother and stole his family's fortune. A few characters are introduced in Satori who eventually show up in Shibumi, so it is well worthwhile to track down a copy of Shibumi and read that next.

I must say that Shibumi was definitely Trevanian's book, as Satori is definitely Winslow's. Winslow is well regarded for the hard-edged thrillers he writes, mostly about drug trafficking and corruption in Southern California and Mexico. However, before those thrillers, he wrote one of my favorite series with a sweet and smart hero, Neal Carey. In my opinion, written with Winslow's pen, young Nicholai Hel owes some of his personality to young Neal Carey. There is a sweetness and a hopefulness to Hel that not even assassination assignments and torture can allay. Winslow depicts Hel's Buddhist philosophy fairly well, but Trevanian's portrayal reached more mystical and esoteric levels. Anyhow, I enjoyed this follow-up, and anything that brings attention to a masterpiece like Shibumi has my vote.

Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson (hardcover, $24.99)

2011-03-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Kate Atkinson's characters are often either victims or beneficiaries of kismet or deus ex machina. Bad guys get what's coming to them but in unexpected ways, and good guys are saved in unexpected ways. This characterizes Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books, and it is what makes her readers say, "Get outta here," in astonishment at some point in the book.

Let's talk about Jackson Brodie, the former police detective and current private investigator. It is his series, but in name only. He barely appears in one of the previous books in the series -- Case Histories, One Good Turn, and When Will There Be Good News? -- and his story is only one of the many tangled tales in the other books. Atkinson's gimmick is to create many stories that intersect at a later point -- in an unexpected way, of course.

Story #1: Tracy Waterhouse, just retired from the police force and now head of security at a shopping mall, rescues and then impetuously buys a young child from her abuser. With no family of her own, Tracy realizes that she has been aching for someone to love, and three- or four-year-old Courtney seems to be the cure.

Story #2: Jackson Brodie has been hired by Hope McMaster, a woman in New Zealand who was adopted in England when she was a very young child. The time has come to find out her true story. Jackson finds a link to the death of a prostitute right around the time Hope was adopted. Tracy Waterhouse, her ex-police partner, a social worker, and a former newspaper reporter all have pieces to the puzzle that Jackson must solve, but it's a comedy of missed opportunities for him to get in touch with these people, especially the women, or perhaps there's a subtle conspiracy involved.

Story #3: Tilly Squires is an elderly actress who is taking big steps into the world of dementia. She accidentally shoplifts, unintentionally cooks her roommate's dinner at three in the morning, and forgets she's in front of the camera when filming her part in a popular TV show. During some downtime, Tilly wanders into Tracy's mall and witnesses Courtney's mistreatment and subsequent rescue by Tracy. And sort of remembers it. Mirroring Tilly's awareness, her story drifts in and out of the book's narrative. There are amusing and sad stories of Tilly's past life and her current predicament, but there seems to be little correlation to what else is going on with Jackson, et al. It is easy to wonder what her story has to do with the others. However, references to her TV show pop up every now and then in the other stories, which is quite amusing.

In the background is the convoluted, ongoing story of Jackson's relationships with his ex-wives, girlfriends, and children.

Atkinson mixes humor with darkness, sadness with glee. She wends her dulcet way to her Shakespearean ending in which identities are revealed, mistakes are rectified, and karma swings its gavel to bless all with what they deserve.

Julia Spencer-Fleming: An Interview

2011-03-10T18:43:00.000-08:00

We welcome author Julia Spencer-Fleming as a guest to our blog! Beginning with the award-winning In the Bleak Midwinter, Julia has had a string of books that are popular with our customers -- and us! She has graciously agreed to answer some of our questions:

mbtb: One Was a Soldier is your seventh book. Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to write a series and that Clare and Russ's evolving relationship would be a central plot point?

Julia: I didn’t know I was writing a series from the very beginning, no. When I started In the Bleak Midwinter, I didn’t know much more about the publishing industry than I could find in Writer’s Digest. (It was the end of the century, and there wasn’t the Internet treasure-trove of information on books and writing we have today.) I did want to write a book that would linger in the reader’s mind, whether that meant rushing out to buy the next novel or simply thinking about the characters wistfully.

I don’t know if Russ and Clare’s relationship is the central plot point. Their story question is a very simple one: will these two decent people find an ethical way to be together? Or will they be forced to part? They are at the heart of the novels, though, because we read for characters, not for plot.

mbtb: On your website, you describe your series as “novels of faith and murder.” How are your books received in the religious community?

Julia: Very well, thank God! I’ve had nothing but positive feedback from clergy and clerical families. That’s not to say I don’t make mistakes - the books are sprinkled with ecclesiastical errors. (The hardest part of researching, I have found, is knowing that you DON’T know something that you think you know. If that makes sense.) I think what the religious community responds to is the portrayal of a cleric who is authentically human. Lay people invest such a staggering amount of symbolism into the clerics around them: they’re better and more holy than anyone, or deluded, or dangerously hypocritical.

The Rev. Clare Fergusson in a thirty-something woman doing a difficult job, often with inadequate support from the folks around her. She makes mistakes, she has self-doubts, she tries very hard to love her neighbors, but she doesn’t always like them very much. In fact, the highest praise I get isn’t from the religious community - they already know the reality of their lives - but from readers who are areligious. It’s enormously gratifying to get an email from someone saying, “I’m not a believer, but knowing Clare helps me understand what it’s like from the inside.” Which ultimately is the job of fiction. To enable the reader to experience another person’s reality from the inside.

mbtb: Do you think small towns are as accepting in real life as the Millers Kill you portray in your series?

Julia: Is Millers Kill accepting? (You can’t see it on the page, but I’m laughing here.) Between the gossip, and the people saying, “But this is the way we’ve always done it!” and the feuding neighbors and the economic struggles - yes, I’d say small towns are as accepting as Millers Kill. I live in a very small town in Southern Maine, and some of my scenes - I’m thinking of the contentious town meeting in A Fountain Filled With Blood are ripped from the headlines, as it were.

mbtb: The supporting characters all play strong roles in your novels. How did you
create the community of Millers Kill from scratch?

Julia: Can I get away with saying I don’t know? There were certain roles to be filled once I had cast my protagonists as a new young priest and the home-town chief of police. Clare had to have a vestry, and parishioners, and of course, a church secretary. Russ needed officers and a dispatcher and old friends and family. I know the essential nature and some of the background of all the supporting cast, but I try to leave enough space to flesh them out and introduce new plot elements as necessary.

I tend to be thinking about one to two books ahead as I work, so I can weave in threads ready to be pulled in the next novel. For instance, in Out of the Deep I Cry, Russ broke his leg, necessitating a doctor’s care. The physician, George Stillman, turned out to be the third doctor of that name; his grandfather’s diaries provided important information in the cold case Russ was working. We meet him again briefly in I Shall Not Want, caring for an illegal migrant worker with a broken arm. He tells Clare he, like her, is in the Guard. Now in One Was A Soldier, he’s a major viewpoint character, returned from Iraq with a traumatic brain injury. Did I know where he would wind up when I was writing Out of the Deep I Cry? Nope. I just needed a doctor. The rest of it just grew like Topsy.

mbtb: Here in the Pacific Northwest, local crime writers often use our rainy weather to add atmosphere. What attracted you to the cold, snowy climate of Upstate New York as a setting?

Julia: Failure to appreciate that if I set a mystery series in Hawai’i, I could take a yearly tax-deductible trip there for “research.”

No, actually, that’s where I’m from. My family settled the area I write about in the 1720s, and we’ve been there ever since, too foolish or too stubborn to relocate to better weather and decent farmland. As a writer, I love the idea of extreme weather. Blizzards, ice storms, impassible roads, roaring spring floods; bring it on. In Millers Kill, NY, it’s not just the bad guys you have to worry about. The climate can kill you, as well.

With Clare¹s background as an Army helicopter pilot and her position as an Episcopalian priest, you must do a lot of background research. What¹s your process?

Julia: As I said, the hard part is realizing I don’t know as much as I think I do! I research like most other writers, I suppose. I get information at libraries and historical societies. I have people I can call up with questions: a priest and a police chief and a gun guy and a doctor. And of course, I use the Internet a great deal. The greatest gift Google has given writers is time. If I have a quick question: “What’s the nearest maximum security prison to Washington County?” “What time does the sun go down on this date?” Boom, it’s right there. I can check it and keep on writing.

I did a great deal more research on One Was A Soldier than I usually do, because I felt it was so important to get it right. So along with the usual research mix, I talked with several veterans at length, and I spent a long time reading books, articles and military blogs. With this war, you don’t have to wait for Walter Cronkite to update you. You can get the raw feed in soldiers’ own words, online and updated daily. It’s amazing.

mbtb: For books like "One Was a Soldier," which deals with returning veterans, and A Fountain Filled with Blood, which dealt with homophobia, are you drawn to a particular topic or timely current event or do the plots naturally leadthere?

Julia: I start with an issue or event that I’m interested in. Then, of course, it has to fit into the confines of Millers Kill. I’m fascinated by epidemics and epidemiology, for instance, but how would that translate into a small-town contemporary crime fiction setting? Everybody in the police department gets the flu? Not really a starting point for a riveting tale. However, I’ve been deeply interested in what happens to veterans returning home after one, two three tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. So many of the men and women serving are in the Guard, and they don’t come back to Army bases, they come back to little home towns, just like Millers Kill. That’s a story I can tell.

Julia Spencer-Fleming is the Agatha and Anthony-award-winning author of the upcoming One Was A Soldier, the seventh Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery. You can find her on Facebook, on Twitter, and at her Reader Space.

Sweetheart ($14.99) & Night Season (hardcover, $24.95), by Chelsea Cain

2011-03-09T07:42:00.000-08:00

Chelsea Cain came to the store last night for a signing. I re-read Sweetheart, the second book in the series, to get me in the mood. Night Season is her fourth and latest in the Archie Sheridan/Susan Ward series.

There's no villain quite like Gretchen Lowell in the mystery world. She's clever, manipulative, and, for the moment, Chelsea Cain is keeping her past under wraps. Gretchen is also vicious and sociopathic. She will flick out a heart, suck out a brain, slice a throat, or otherwise maim, mutilate, then murder a man, woman, or child without a second thought. She is police detective Archie Sheridan's obsession, and apparently he is hers.

Although Chelsea Cain ladles on the gruesome details, there's a stylishness and verve to how she does it. With reporter Susan Ward, Chelsea finds an outlet for her humor. Susan's eccentric, hippie mother, Bliss, also provides respite.

Having said all things in praise of the ultimate villain, Gretchen has only a small part in Night Season. (I've only read the first thirty pages, so this is mostly a book signing report.) One of the things Chelsea does so well is to make the city of Portland one of the characters in her book. She names real places and real events. For those of us who live here, there's a gasp of recognition when she delivers a dramatic scene or dead body at a local spot. Night Season takes the real Vanport Flood of 1948 and a fictional, contemporary flood (but one that's based on a recent overflowing of the banks of the Willamette River, which bisects the city), and weaves a mystery from them. Although Gretchen is absent, there's still an outlet for the ghoulish with a morgue scene or two, as evidenced by Chelsea's reading.

I've seen Chelsea talk several times -- she's a Portland resident -- and I am always entranced and entertained. She has great comedic timing and the inclusionary grace of an extroverted hostess. She decorates some of her autographs with stick-on gems and laughs readily with fans waiting patiently in long lines.

Authors are often asked about autobiographical elements in their fictional stories. I'd say that the only thing Chelsea shares with Gretchen Lowell is creative thinking. The rest … not so much.

Naming the Bones, by Louise Welsh ($14.95)

2011-03-02T10:27:00.000-08:00

There's not much action -- in a mystery/thriller sense -- until the very end, but British author Louise Welsh gives us a good dose of suspense throughout the book. There's a sustained note of dread overlying her tale of a young-ish academic whose projected biography of a long-dead poet is at a standstill.

Professor Murray Watson has the job he has always wanted in Glasgow, Scotland, but he remains discontented. His frustration has led him into a dead-end affair with a fellow academic, who also happens to be married to the head of his department. His brother, Jack, is an artist, and when Murray attends Jack's opening exhibition for his current work, he discovers that Jack has used a family tragedy as his inspiration. Although he's angry at his lover for dumping him, at his brother for exposing his family's low point, at each block in the road to discovering more about poet Archie Lunan, instead of throwing in the towel on all counts, Murray doggedly seeks to pull in the threads of Archie's life. Of course, he has to accomplish this around frequent drinking bouts.

When he was still a young man, having achieved some success with a book of poetry in the 1970s, Archie sailed onto a stormy sea one night and was never seen again. Murray's prize interview would be with Archie's former girlfriend, Christie Graves, who lives on a remote Scottish island, but she's not interested in talking with him. In the process of conducting his research, Murray brings to light some hidden relationships and mysteries but, with the exception of Archie, there's nary a dead body in sight. Then Murray learns that another researcher, who was looking into suicidal patterns, died in a car accident on the little island where Christie lives. Unlike Murray, he had managed somehow to secure an interview with Christie.

Was Archie murdered? Was the other researcher murdered after uncovering something unsavory? At the risk of his life, should Murray pursue an interview with Christie? In his academic world, who are his friends and who are his enemies? In the end, we discover that nothing is as it first seemed, and this is where Welsh excels. She slowly teases out the real story of a poet and his group of friends, and the madness that sometimes grips people when joy should be there instead.

Louise Welsh tells a finely twisted tale, creates a stunningly ominous setting, and makes Murray Watson a sympathetic and very human character.

The Informationist, by Taylor Stevens (hardcover, $23) (due 3/11)

2011-02-22T11:56:00.001-08:00

I am withdrawing my original post. The following comments are correct, it was too vitriolic. Just because I didn't like a book doesn't give me the right to be so "snarky." It was not the book for me, in any event.

Random House is welcome to directly contact me should it find one of my reviews offensive. I am open-minded to legitimate discussion. My apologies to Random House for any discomfort I've caused it.