Trust by Hernan Diaz

Riverhead Books, 416 pages, $28

This is not a murder mystery, but there are certainly mysterious machinations afoot.

The reader involvement starts with the title. Trust? Should the reader trust Hernan Diaz, a potentially unreliable author? Hmm.

I enjoyed “In the Distance,” another book by Diaz. It contained many diversions, all of which were inventive. So, inventive was my default expectation for Diaz’ new work. I entrusted him to fulfill this mission, and I was not disappointed.

There are major divisions: four stories, at first glance. The first story is about a man of great financial means who means to make more financial means, etc. In the meantime, his wife is going mad. The second story is about a man of financial means who means to make more financial means, etc. He has hired a secretary to help him write a book. I will omit descriptions of the last two works. This is the bottom line. Should you trust the narrative of the first book? the second book? the third? the fourth? What if they are mutually exclusive? Which one is worthy of your trust?

What is magnificent about “Trust’ is how Diaz concocts the stories. His writing, his description of the financial world — granted, I am not qualified to judge if it is an accurate rendering of the times and the possibilities of manipulation — his depiction of the gradations of madness, his drawing out the agony of his victims are brilliant.

I have to admit to a growing dissatisfaction with literary gimmicks, but I still make exceptions for books that impress me. For instance, I loved “The Cloud Atlas,” which rested on a gimmick. As did “The Cloud Atlas,” “Trust” impressed me.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

W. W. Norton, 288 pages, $27.95

This is not a mystery.

It is one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read. Richard Powers, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Overstory,” has created another wonderment that embraces the entire world (and beyond). “The Overstory” and “Bewilderment” bring us closer to the wonders of nature, but also closer to the certainty we will lose them if we continue on our carbon dioxide-spewing path.

It’s a story for our times, written in order to avoid what is around the corner. It is also a story of love and bewilderment.

The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

Harper Voyager, 576 pages, $17.99 (c2017)

This is not a mystery.

I admit a weakness for stories with genies. A recent favorite genie book didn’t even have an actual genie in it! “The City of Brass” is based on middle eastern tales of the djinn, or Daeva, as they are known in this book, 

Eighteenth-century Cairo is pretty much our eighteenth-century Cairo. Where it veers into the fanciful begins with the supernatural healing powers of a young ragamuffin girl who tells “healing” fortunes. She is about eighteen or nineteen, does not remember her family, and lives by her (sometimes criminal) wits. One day the girl, Nahri, accidentallyconjures something bigger than she can handle. The menace she conjures is an “ifrit,” or evil spirit. What also is conjured -- but to help her this time -- is an unexpected and equally menacing Daeva, Dara, who saves Nahri’s life.

From that point on Nahri’s story alternates with (Prince) Ali’s. Ali Qahtani belongs to the magical realm that exists behind a veil regular people cannot cross. His tribe members are the peacekeepers between the “superior” Daevas and the shafit, the descendants of Daeva-human couplings. There are other Daeva tribes and other magical beings, some of whom are hostile to everyone else.

Dara is a Daeva who was exiled from the main Daeva city of Daevabad about a thousand years back. His sad story is slowly revealed. His family are the ancestral guardians of Nahri’s ancestral family; in other words, Dara is Nahri’s guardian. Although Dara has been exiled from Daevabad, he risks re-entering the city as an escort for Nahri, to return her to her rightful place as the last of her once-powerful family.

S. A. Chakraborty has created a complex history of the magical world and its inhabitants. The main characters are trying to reshape the magical world to accommodate their interests and beliefs. It makes for a story that is very “human” at its base. 

“The City of Brass” is the first in a trilogy. The other titles are “The Kingdom of Copper” and “The Empire of Gold.”

P.S. There is a flying carpet.

Bobby March Will Live Forever by Alan Parks

World Noir, 320 pages, $17 (c2021)

“Bobby March Will Live Forever” is the third in the Harry McCoy books by Scottish writer Alan Parks. I guiltily admit I did not read the first two but just jumped right into the third. I don’t think my comprehension suffered for that. Alan Parks is a good writer who can paint a large swathe of pertinent information efficiently and cohesively.

The story is set in the 1970s and is soaked in the music and dark vibe of a very noirish Glasgow.

Harry McCoy is a cop, a rare honest cop, with asterisks. *He knows the Glasgow criminal underworld very well. *Some of his best buddies are bad guys who sell drugs, have girlfriends who are prostitutes, and, yes, kill people. Mostly Harry cannot be bought. And that’s good enough to make him an exceedingly honest cop in a very corrupt section of the criminal affairs department of the Glasgow police.

As the story begins, Harry has been sidelined by his mortal enemy Bernie Raeburn, who has unfortunately become his boss. Even though he is the brightest bulb by far, Harry has to poke around with minor pencil-pushing cases instead of the higher profile ones he is usually gets. The big case of the moment involves the abduction of Laura Kelly, the teenage daughter of a working class couple. Despite a massive search, there are no clues. Is the girl dead? There hasn’t been a ransom demand. Even if there had been, Laura’s parents wouldn’t be able to pay it. Raeburn won’t let Harry anywhere near the case. 

Harry’s usual partner, Wattie, has been drafted by Raeburn to assist him with the case. Most of the department has been drafted to help with the case. Wattie drops crumbs Harry’s way, so Harry can appreciate the incompetence of his nemesis.

Meanwhile …

There are several story threads involving Harry’s criminal and near-criminal friends. His ex-girlfriend, Angela, is a little morally wavy and is heavily involved in the music scene. A minor celebrity, Bobby March, has returned for a gig in his hometown of Glasgow. Then he is found dead of a drug overdose. How does Angela figure into that scenario?

Then a friend, Stevie Cooper, a crime boss, has managed to get hooked on heroin. It imperils his stake in the criminal world by emphasizing his weakness. It is up to Harry to help wean him from his drug of choice. What else does Harry have to do since he has been sidelined?

Then Raeburn catches a young man, Laura Kelly’s boyfriend, and locks him up for abducting Laura, despite there being no body and no evidence. The public is baying for justice, and Raeburn is determined to cover himself in glory with a quick resolution.

All of these threads result in Harry being concussed, beaten, knifed, and kidnapped. It is a wonder Harry is still crawling by the end of the book. This is the thing about series books: The hero must survive. Harry survives. In the process the Glasgow underworld is thrown into upheaval.

For the record, there are some moments of lightness and romance, too, although I wouldn’t quite label what Harry experiences with the fancy name of “romance.”

“Bobby March” is impressive in what it accomplishes with its many storylines. It is easy to cheer for the increasingly battered Harry McCoy as the book erupts in the drama of the last third of the book.

Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

University of Nebraska Press, 320 pages, $21.95 (c2021)

This is a special book and it is a mystery, but the emphasis is on character development. And on setting. And on plot. It’s everything done well.

It won the 2022 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author.

If you have grown up in a small town, maybe this book will strike a particular resonance with you. Everybody is up in everybody else’s business. Everybody, it seems, gossips, even the most saintly sometimes. Not that Alma Costagan is saintly and she hates gossip.

Alma still sees herself as a Chicago girl. So what is this middle-aged woman with wrecked dreams of a large family doing in rural Nebraska, helping to run a farm? She married Clyle — that’s not a typo of “Clyde” — who wooed Alma at college and worked for IBM in Chicago. When Clyle’s widowed mother became ill, he and Alma shut down their lives in Chicago, temporarily they thought, to help with the family farm in Nebraska. Even after his mother died, Clyle was still drawn to the small-town life he had always treasured and the hard farm work in which he found satisfaction. Alma thought she could adjust. Fifteen years later, she is pretty tired of trying to adjust. Alma speaks her mind and, as an ex-social worker, tries to help others. Blunt and in-your-face.

Hal is the person Alma has silently chosen for her project. Because of a swimming accident that occurred when he was two — due to the negligence of his careless mother — Hal has a diminished intellect. Clyle and Alma have taken him under their wing. He helps with chores around their farm and when he was younger he slept in their house. They’ve been helping him mainstream, but that has its limits. On the outside, Hal seems normal, even somewhat attractive. Many a woman has flirted with him, only to be dismayed at his inability to maintain a social interaction. 

Peggy Ahern is a 17-year-old next-door neighbor of the Costagans. She is smart, pretty, popular, and testing life on the wild side in Gunthrum, Nebraska, the latter on the sly, of course. Her 12-year-old brother Milo, also smart, knows she sometimes disappears late at night to meet up with her friends to party. In contrast, Milo follows the rules, is a good friend, tries to fly beneath the radar. He is the quiet to his sister’s loud. Surprisingly, they are mostly friends. Here’s a snippet about them:

For a twelve-year-old nerd and a volleyball-playing cheerleader, they had more in common than others might expect, and a lot of their time was spent talking about the days they’d leave for college, their Podunk years in Gunthrum behind them.

We mostly view the book by hanging out with Alma and Milo, although sometimes we follow Clyle. it is through their interactions with each other and the town that we view the disappearance of teenage Peggy one cold night.

At first, no one can find Peggy. Her parents pretend she has run away in a youthful escapade. Milo half believes she has done just that, to begin her life in the bigger world, but she wouldn’t have left without telling him. It is Milo who first reckons with the fact that she is probably dead. To her family, other people mouth platitudes and wildly optimistic predictions for Peggy’s return.

Sheriff Peck Randolph has never had to deal with this kind of case before. He is a big and stolid presence in Gunthrum, and knows when to pull back and when to push the locals with their wrongdoing. It doesn’t help that Peggy’s family doesn’t alert his office until she has been gone awhile. 

Mistaking a flirty move by Peggy one day at a picnic, Hal develops a crush on Peggy. He is twenty but does not understand adult interactions. He is besotted, and this is what eventually gets him into trouble. Peggy is gone; Hal must be responsible. The town’s focus has almost unanimously focused on Hal. Big, hot-tempered (because he can’t understand some situations), and with a dimming bulb, Hal cannot understand why people suspect him. He doesn’t even understand that people suspect him! It doesn’t help that when asked what he was doing the night of Peggy’s disappearance, it turns out he was in the vicinity of where she was last seen. When Alma and Clyle ask if he hit Peggy with his truck, Hal hems and haws and says he doesn’t think so.

That is the mystery in a nutshell. But the book is about so much more.

Using Peggy’s disappearance as a vehicle, author Erin Flanagan explores the dynamics of small town justice. People are guilty until proven innocent. Past behavior haunts families for generations. Alma now despises the people she once fraternized with when she first arrived. She no longer wants to bake “the best” brownies, drink herself into a lost weekend at other people’s homes, play kissy-face with other men, or attend their sanctimonious churches. Everything would be more tolerable if she had been able to bring any one of her miscarried babies to birth. As we meet her, she is filling in this void with driving the school bus and mother-henning Hal. But her sharp tongue has turned people away from her and even her husband, once loyal, kind, and loving to her, has gone silent around her. What has she lost and does she want it back? Here’s a bit about their disintegrating marriage, “The list of what one person would never understand about another went on and on.” As Alma becomes more frantic in her desire to protect Hal, and then Milo, she draws her emotions in tight and trusts no one.

Poor Milo, who has not done anything wrong, is caught up in his family’s storm. With difficult parents and unwanted sympathy from the community, Milo feels under siege. Another kid says, 

‘You don’t know-know because you’re twelve.’

Milo hated when people used that as an excuse. it was like people saying you’re a boy or from rural Nebraska. What did that have to do with anything?

Peggy’s disappearance coincides with the important family event of Milo’s confirmation at the Lutheran Church:

[Milo] thought about all the words he’d memorized for his confirmation, the oath he’d taken to God. Was that just another lie everyone told so they could get up in the morning? Were all these people who thought nothing bad could happen just fooling themselves?

What a fraught picture Flanagan paints of a community in crisis! There is a lot of finger-pointing and ill-based anger as the community fractures. Flanagan paints this so well. She tackles the thoughts of a 12-year-old and a middle-aged woman equally well. I almost thought Flanagan wasn’t going to solve the mystery. Other books have left things hanging, because, well, sometimes that’s real life.

MBTB star!

The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Negendra

Pegasus Crime, 304 pages, $26.95

Murder is an act most foul, and its portrayal in crime stories can be quite graphic. In 1920s India, there was overcrowding, shantytowns, beggars, a sense that life was cheap for a certain percentage of the population. There’s nothing sweet about the act at the center of a murder mystery or the problems emblematic of British-controlled India of that time period. The days of the Raj were not happy ones for the colonized, even if they were of a high caste or well-placed family. There was bigotry, racism, misogyny, religious persecution. Given all of that, “The Bangalore Detectives Club” is sweet.

It’s not as though all of the problems above are glossed over, either. Author Harini Negendra does the almost impossible task of including all those elements without making her story heavily laden with bitterness. Negendra does that with the use of her light and optimistic main characters.

Kaveri has just moved to Bangalore from her town to live with her husband, Ramu. They have been married for three years, but only started to live together after Kaveri reached a certain age. Fortunately, Ramu is a good husband with modern ideas, honed by his years in London as a student. It’s that kind of book. Kaveri cannot cook, so that is one of the wifely duties she undertakes to improve. But that’s not why you are reading the book — although the food sounds delicious (recipes follow in an appendix). When murder intrudes, her educated, mathematical, Sherlock-loving brain revs up. Sometimes accompanied by a grandmotherly type from next door with not enough to do (Uma aunty), she decides to solve the murder of a pimp, whose body was found on the grounds of the Century Club, where Kaveri and Ramu were having a fancy dinner with other doctors.

To be fair, there is a personal element to her involvement. The main suspect is her milkman. He would bring his cow to Kaveri’s house, milk it there, and sell the milk to Kaveri. When Manju suddenly stops showing up and his younger brother, Venu, takes over, the plot thickens. What has happened to the reliable Manju who was supporting his family with the cow’s milk and work as a helper at the hospital. Surprisingly, he has shown up as a waiter at the Century Club dinner, and Kaveri is dying to talk to him. She doesn’t get the chance because she witnesses confrontations on the lawn between Manju and a beautiful woman and between the beautiful woman and the pimp. Then Manju disappears.

Soon after, Manju’s long-suffering, pregnant wife is hit over the head and lapses into a coma. Then one of the doctors suffers the same fate. What is going on?

Flavored with both the British and Indian — I think most of the Indians are Hindi — points of view, Negendra gives us a good, gentle look at the clash of cultures.

Kaveri is young, smart, and intrepid. Caste or social status does not bother her. She socializes with the British upper class and comforts a prostitute. Because of her husband’s open mind, she learns how to drive a car, cook with her husband, and sift clues together. It doesn’t hurt that the investigation’s police detective, Ismail, is open minded as well! Ramu and Ismail give her access to clues, listen to her reasoning, and have her back.

This was quite enjoyable.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

Atria Books, 432 pages, $27.99

What did I like about this book? Some of the gimmicks. What did I not like about this book? The rest of the gimmicks.

Ostensibly, when you have many voices vying for attention, it’s great if they sound different. Mostly the characters in “The Appeal” were indistinguishable. That shows up especially because of the format of the story. It is an epistolary work; that is, you read a lot of emails, some phone texts, and a few letters, and an occasional legal memo. I guess the voice of Martin Hayward of the manor born sounds a little more sophisticated than that of Issy Beck, a shy nurse. I’m talking tone here, not content. In terms of content the various characters reveal very different aspects of themselves and the mystery.

What exactly is the mystery? It takes a really long time, but someone does die. And there are criminal irregularities. And there are criminous characters. And there is at least one killer. And there are characters who may not be real. And there are diseases du jour. There’s a lot in the mix.

The basic plot revolves around the cast and crew of a tiny local drama society, The Fairview Players, in a small town in England. Some of those players are also connected to the local medical community, the other group around which the story revolves.

The Hayward family is the local aristocracy and they run the Players and appear in the center of the drama that starts the story rolling. Martin Hayward is the patriarch. He is also the director of the Players’ productions. He has announced he cannot continue with the current production because his granddaughter, two-year-old Poppy, has a rare type of brain cancer and his whole family — most of whom are vital members of the cast and crew — must circle their wagons to help her. Everything is thrown into chaos, especially for Issy. The Players group is everything to her, balancing her aggravating, unsatisfying nursing job. She would do anything to help the Players continue.

Martin announces he needs a lot of money to pay for a special American treatment that is in its preliminary stages. Sarah-Jane MacDonald is the local soccer mom. Not literally. She is just the one who can organize your sock drawers or your fundraising dinner. Also, let’s put on a play! The small group of Players dreams of many ways to eke money out of the local crowd. Maybe it will get wider press. Yay!

Samantha Greenwood and her husband, Kel, have just moved to the town. They are both nurses and they meet Issy. Issy immediately adopts Sam as her new best friend and gets Sam and Kel involved in the Players.

Hmm. Let’s throw some intrigue into this. The doctor handling Poppy’s cancer protocol and arranging for the experimental treatment is Dr. Tish Bhatoa. How odd that it turns out Sam knows Dr. Bhatoa from work they both did in Africa, where Kel and Sam lived for many years until moving to the little English town. There is some friction between the two, which, of course, is not explained for a long time.

Let’s add one more layer to make it even more complicated. All the emails, texts, etc., are materials belonging to Roderick Tanner, QC. He has forwarded them to some assistants, Femi and Charlotte. They are to review the materials without knowing the outcome of the story or the disposition of the characters, and give their opinion on what strikes the wrong notes. Seriously? It’s a flimsy pretext, but okay, I’ll climb on board. Every once in a while, we get a text exchange between Femi and Charlotte reviewing the documents, i.e., let us hit you over the head with what has been covered so far.

Roderick Tanner, QC, doesn’t really count. He appears as a relic to advance the story. From the start, he knows who was murdered and who was arrested for the murder. What he wants to know is did the right person get caught? He wants Femi and Charlotte to construct the case out of something close to thin air. Not all the parties to the events are represented by the emails, texts, etc. Some are noticeably absent. We never see anything from Sam, for instance. Stay calm and carry on.

“The Appeal” refers both to the fundraising and to the overlying court case.

The story is enticing enough that I read all 432 pages, but I’m telling you, the book should have been made a little leaner and meaner. I dodged and wove my way around the gimmicks. Kudos to the author for coming up with something original. I finished it. I want an award.

A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton, aka S. J. Bolton

Minotaur Books, 448 pages, $21.99 (paperback)  (c2014)

I have a tremendous (tremendous!) number of books waiting to be read. Every once in a while I grab something from down deep in the pile, resist the siren call of newer titles, and dig in. “A Dark and Twisted Tide” is what I plucked out of the grab bag and it actually made it to the finish line.* That’s because it had a couple of elements I couldn’t resist.

First, the heroine of the story, Lacey Flint, recreationally swims in the Thames. How clean is that river, really? How clean was it in 2014, when the book as issued. There is even a warning at the end by the author: “Please do NOT swim in the tidal Thames. Lacey Flint is a fictional character and a reckless one at that. The Thames is deep, fast, and dangerous.” Ooo, doggie! That is enough to get me started.

In addition, as if I needed more incentive, the part of the Thames where Lacey swims and lives (on a houseboat) is haunted by stories of “The Mermaid.” She is spoken of in whispers, and seemingly, just by one who has seen her to another who has seen her. If you know, you know. Lacey has seen her. Maybe.

“A Dark and Twisted Tide” is actually Bolton’s fourth Lacey Flint novel. I read it without having read the others (or, more accurately, having remembered if I had read any other), and it did not disappoint. Lacey has demoted herself to the river patrol unit of the police from a being detective with the crime squad. Her boyfriend is in the wind and may have delved a little too deeply into the underworld in which he is supposedly undercover. Her ex-boss still thinks highly of her and doesn’t mind when a series of dead bodies brings Lacey back to an association with her department.

The dead bodies are all of young women of Middle Eastern descent. They are bizarrely wrapped like mummies in linen sheets, drowned in the Thames, and weighted down to live forever in the depths below. Except a couple corpses pop up to pique Lacey’s curiosity. What is an officer to do when a corpse literally bobs up in front of you while you are navigating the waters?

Are the women victims of a human smuggling operation? a sex ring? a racist serial killer? to assuage family honor? All the clichéd reasons of why there are dead Middle Eastern women float to the top along with the corpses.

There’s enough tension, sideways glances, and personal revelation to make a solid story.

* As an aside, this book has been in my pile since it was an ARC in 2014!

Edgar Award Nominees

The Edgar Awards will be presented on April 28. See the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards webpage: https://edgarawards.com for the complete list of nominees in the various categories.

These are the nominees we have reviewed so far. Most of them are nominated for the Best Novel of 2021.

Venice Sketchbook, by Rhys Bowen (https://mbtb-books.blogspot.com/.../the-venice-sketchbook...

Five Decembers, by James Kestrel (https://mbtb-books.blogspot.com/.../five-decembers-by...)

No One Will Miss Her, by Kat Rosenfield (https://mbtb-books.blogspot.com/.../no-one-will-miss-her...

Never Saw Me Coming, by Vera Kurian (https://mbtb-books.blogspot.com/.../never-saw-me-coming...)

Suburban Dicks, by Fabian Nicieza (https://mbtb-books.blogspot.com/.../suburban-dicks-by...)

Razorblade Tears, by S. A. Cosby (https://mbtb-books.blogspot.com/.../razorblade-tears-by-s...)

Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby

Flatiron Books, 336 pages, $17.99 (c2021)

This has been nominated for an Edgar Award.

S. A. Cosby’s most widely known books, “Blacktop Wasteland” and this book, “Razorblade Tears,” weren’t published until the author was in his 40s. His success is due to his perseverance and his outstanding writing.

“Razorblade Tears” is grim and compelling. After each chapter was finished, I gulped and gasped as if there weren’t enough air. I don’t find the word “propulsive” attractive except when referring to jet fuel, but were I to use that word I would use it for this book. Cosby knows how to keep his audience reading.

What Buddy Lee and Ike have in common: They are both fathers and grandfathers. They have both served time in prison. Life pitched them down and it has been hard to claw their way up. They are disgusted that their sons were gay. Their sons are dead.

What Buddy Lee and Ike don’t have in common: Buddy Lee is white and Ike is Black. Buddy Lee is unemployed, lives in a trailer, and consumes a lot of beer. Ike has built up a successful lawn care business during the fifteen years he has been out of prison.

Derek, Buddy Lee’s son, was married to Isiah, Ike’s son. Neither of their fathers attended the wedding or would talk to their sons in any meaningful way. Derek and Isiah’s daughter, Arriana, is three. After Derek and Isiah were recently murdered, Ike and his wife, Mya, took over raising her. 

Too late, Ike is trying to come to terms with his son's homosexuality and the fact that he no longer has an opportunity to tell him he loves him, something that went unsaid for a long time. Buddy Lee and his wife parted ways years ago. She remarried someone who is racist and homophobic. She’s no great shakes herself in the area of tolerance. Buddy Lee is no saint and despised his son's “choice,” but between Ike and Buddy Lee, Buddy Lee is the one who is opening his heart.

Buddy Lee thinks he needs to atone for his past thinking by finding his son’s killer. He goads Ike into helping. It is a partnership forged in hell. Buddy Lee is racist and keeps putting his foot into his mouth around Ike. Ike hates Buddy Lee. The partnership starts off rocky and for every step forward, there are a couple of steps back. Of the two of them, Ike is the one who is built to intimidate. His old street name was “Riot.” He has killed before and is fighting with his better self to bring himself to kill again. It’s a short battle.

It’s a lesson in cutting to the chase when Buddy Lee and Ike begin to do some investigation. Grrr. Crack. Smash. Shake, shake, shake. They slowly build on the information they “acquire.” One clue is getting to a woman, Tangerine, who may be the reason the young men were killed. More grr-ing, cracking, smashing, and shaking ensue.

While grim and violent, the book is not without some dark humor, mostly provided by Buddy Lee. Here’s Buddy when two men are giving him a beating:

The first monster that approached him had a mustache so full it was like a cat had taken up residence on his upper lip. The other grizzly bear was so cockeyed Buddy Lee figured he could see around a corner without turning his damn head.

Buddy Lee went at them like a windmill on legs. He swung on Cockeyed while he kicked a Cat Stache. 

 

Even though it is 2021 book, here is an MBTB star! I think it counts that I’ve had the book since 2021!

Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

Gallery/Scout Press, 304 pages, $27.99

Portland has stuttered on the axis and turned back towards winter. After surviving an April snowstorm (quelle horreur!), of course I picked up a book about death in the Arctic! It made my piddling 30+ degree weather seem absolutely balmy.

Val Chesterfield is a professor and linguist. She has a working knowledge of some rare languages, one of which is West Greenlandic. It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, when she is asked by Professor Wyatt Speeks to see if she can communicate with a girl about eight years old who was dug out from inside a glacier, thawed, and brought back to life. Say, what?

Furthermore, Wyatt was mentor to Val’s brother Andy, her twin. Andy’s recent death right outside the front door of Wyatt’s research facility in Tarramiut Station, Greenland, has haunted Val since it happened. “Remote” doesn’t adequately describe the facility. “Cold” doesn’t begin to describe it either. Andy froze to death. He shouldn’t have been out of the main station at night, all alone. This is background to explain why Val, a depressed person with crippling anxiety, even would think about accepting Wyatt’s invitation. Also, Val’s father, an old codger, thinks Wyatt murdered Andy. He bullies Val into accepting the offer.

With a full supply of pills and the hope that there is adequate liquor at the station, Val shakily ventures forth. The research station is only accessible by plane when the weather isn’t bad. That area of the world is getting to the end of the habitable season, so the daylight is rapidly dwindling, the temperature is dropping, and the window for flying in or out is closing.

Also dropping into the station are two young polar divers, a married couple, Nora and Rajeev Chandra-Revard. They are giggly, passionate, and looking forward to the challenge of exploring how climate change has affected Arctic waters. Raj doesn’t accept that Wyatt chipped out an “ice girl” and revived her. What’s the gimmick, he wonders.

Already at the station is Wyatt’s assistant, Jeanne, a mechanic, cook, bottle washer, mysterious mother earth figure. Val will be rooming with Jeanne for the seven weeks she is scheduled to be at the station. 

Wyatt is determined to understand what the young girl has to say. So far, she has been more like a child who was raised by wolves than someone ready to communicate with everyone.

Val realizes the immense task ahead of her when she thinks the girl has not vocalized any root words Val can associate with any known language. The girl takes to drawing, however, so there is that one advantage. But all she will draw are circles. Then she graduates to a bird of sorts. Val treats her like an English-as-a-second-language student, but the girl refuses to learn in a normal fashion. Val feels frustration but also an attraction to the mystery of the girl’s origin. Is it all an elaborate hoax?

Val treats everyone with suspicion. There is no doubt Andy froze to death. But why was he outside inadequately dressed? Andy wasn’t around when the ice girl was discovered, so it can’t be related to that, could it?

There is a weather phenomenon happening around the world. A sudden storm hits all kinds of communities with freezing winds. People are flash frozen and killed before they can react, a sort of hyper-piteraq, a Greenland katabatic wind. (You can look it up, too!) Weather chaos is the curse that keeps on giving.

There is no doubt in Val’s mind that something is amiss, but is it real or is it the product of Val’s disintegrating mental state?

“Girl in Ice” is a thrilling book with a lot of hooks to catch readers who like unusual twists. Sometimes, however, the book seems to take a step forward and two steps back, which mires the book a little. Mostly, though, it ran smoothly forward. The ending was appropriately shocking. And the underlying message of climate catastrophe on the horizon has not been lost.

When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry

Pantheon, 320 pages, $27.99

This is not a mystery, but it plays with the mystery and mysticism of Buddhism, specially Tibetan Buddhism.

Two young twin boys were released by their family to join the local monastery. All they had known to that point was their family's herding existence on the pastures of Mongolia. At the monastery they learn to be monks. One of them, Mun, is exalted to the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. Unlike other Buddhist sects, Tibetan Buddhists believe in the reincarnation of the special enlightened ones. Members of the Buddhist monasteries are sent out on quests to find the reincarnated holy one after his last incarnation dies. Mun is an incarnation. Although he is very young when he is exalted to his role, he nevertheless has more spiritual power than the other monks and is revered.

Mun's brother Chuluun, the narrator of the book, serves by Mun's side, although he is mostly just a regular monk. After Mun grows up, he suddenly casts off his robes and leaves the monastery, renouncing his vows. Chuluun is very lonely without him; the twins share the ability to sense each other's thoughts. Chuluun leaves for the faraway big city of Ulaanbaatar.

The Buddhist wheel turns on and another venerated figure dies. It is the mission of Chuluun to aid his mentor and other people with locating the reincarnated holy one. Because they pass through Ulaanbaatar, Chuluun asks his twin to accompany them. To Chuluun's surprise, Mun says yes.

There aren't a lot of landmarks to guide their journey throughout Mongolia, but these are no tourists venturing out to interview three young candidates spread far and wide. (And Mongolia is wide.) I love that the book is part travelogue.

But what is "When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East" really about? (In her biography, Quan Barry says she was born in Saigon and was raised in Boston.) Her "story" is about the nature of Buddhism. Through Chuluun, she tells of the obstacles mortals must overcome to attain enlightenment. The primary tenet of Buddhism is all life is about suffering and the end of suffering. To participate in this cycle, is to rid oneself of desire. What are young men like Chuluun and Mun about but desire?

Barry has created tranquility and anxiety in her book. She asks the right questions. And you will love the character of Little Bat.

The Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen

Lake Union Publishing, 411 pages, $14.95 (c2021)

“The Venice Sketchbook” has been nominated for an Edgar Award.

Wartime romance. Venice. Art. What more do you need? The end.

Well, maybe a little more description.

Rhys Bowen — of Evan Evans and Molly Murphy fame — has channeled Mary Stewart and given her readers a novel of love and danger set before and during World War II.

Juliet Browning has left her drab, repetitive life in England to study art for one year in Venice. Although she is slightly older than her fellow art students, she still manages to form friendships and have a good time. Her joy is enhanced by meeting again a dark-haired, dashing Venetian, a count, no less, named Leo. She had met him a few years before when an elderly aunt took her to Italy for a cultural tour. They only had a day or so at the time, but it was love at first sight and for the ages. Of course. Then they meet again years later. Juliet is an adult and Leo is attractive.

The story switches often to a story told by Caroline Grant, another Englishwoman, but one whose time is now. Her great-aunt Lettie has died and left her enough money to travel to Venice to scatter her ashes. Among Aunt Lettie’s few possessions are art sketches. They are quite good and Caroline is amazed to find that her aunt had such a passion. There are also some keys.

Good fortune follows Caroline in her quest to find out more of her aunt’s life in Venice and she manages to discover what the keys open. They open the past.

Caroline, too, manages to find a dark and attractive stranger, Luca, to help her in her quest. One of the keys fits a small apartment at the top of a building belonging to Luca’s family. It turns out the apartment belongs to Aunt Lettie and, therefore, now belongs to Caroline.

Juliet’s story is told by her in bits and pieces. She has come to love Venice. So she stays for one reason or another even after Hitler begins attacking countries. Even after Italy enters the war.

Rhys Bowen is a good storyteller. She creates tension without inducing panic and fear in her readers. In her writing, she tries to show her basic belief that most humans are very good. It’s a sweet, melancholy story.

The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz

Ace, 496 pages, $17

This is not a murder mystery, although there may be one or two murders revealed at the very end.

"The Impossible Us" is about Bee and Nick and their romance. Remember Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail”? Remember Patricia Highsmith’s “Strangers on a Train”? Remember “Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse”? Rrrrr. That’s the sound of the tumbler tumbling all those ideas and mixing them up. Ta-dah! “The Impossible Us.”

Nick is a writer who has failed to publish a good book. He has resorted to ghostwriting and editing other people’s manuscripts. (A note: Personally, I think this is a highly honorable and difficult profession, but “The Impossible Us” seems to belittle it. It’s fiction. What can I say?) His last client, a rich posh person, has neglected to pay Nick for his recent, arduous work. So Nick fires off an irate (but caustically funny) email demanding money. The email goes astray and lands in Bee’s mailbox.

Bee has failed at a relationship (boo, hiss, Nate!) and her job keeps her indoors refashioning wedding gowns for disappointed brides. (“How about an asymmetrical jacket with a peplum?”) Until she gets Nick’s funny — to her — email, her days are dull and she has mostly neglected her social life.

You know how this is going to go, don’t you? Nick and Bee meet cute, are attracted cute, and — what’s the next step? They don’t know what the other looks like, so their attraction is based on their text exchanges. They are both good at writing their thoughts out, and soon become fluent and unselfconscious about their happiness and misery.

That takes us through quite a bit of the book. Finally it was time for the meet cute. And that takes up the rest of the book.

I am reluctant to tell you what that part of the book is about, because it’s Sarah Lotz’ secret weapon. I’ll say this: The problems Nick and Bee encounter are different, quirky, and daunting. 

Patricia Highsmith gets lots of mention. There is probably at least one murder. But that is not the focus of the book. I read one other Lotz book and she crafts a twisty plot effortlessly.

I loved this book. (Also, the "Mandela Effect" reference.)