Murder and revival

Nancy returned from the library recently with a recent Laurie R. King's Mary Russell novel, Murder of Mary Russell. I enthusiastically read the first four of King's novels about police sergeant Kate Marinelli. Great characters and stories. I enjoyed the first four or five of her Mary Russell novels as well. (A teen-aged acolyte of a middle aged Sherlock Holmes? She made it work. And even when, after a few years, the pair married, it worked.)

However, sometime after the 1997 A Letter of Mary, the books were less appealing to me. Maybe it was that A Letter of Mary was so good.

In any case, it's been at least 5 years since I read a Mary Russell novel. And this new one from the library came with good recommendations and it gave me a good excuse to set aside Thomas Perry's A String of Beads. I've read several of Perry's books, and this one, like at least one of the others was a deterrent to sleep. But I wasn't in the mood for one adventure and clever escape after another.

Murder of Mary Russell is a misleading title. In spite of a pool of blood, broken glassware, and Mary Russell's absence, she's not murdered. She's absent from the tale for awhile, but that's not the key.

Mary Gordon as Mrs Hudson

This book is about the background of Clara Hudson, Holmes' housekeeper since forever. It's a story that ranges from London to Australia, Australia to London, and back again a couple times. Thankfully it doesn't recount the voyages. No one should have to read about four months at sea to slow down an already slowly told story.

Things get better in the last third of the book, but reading most of it for me was as dreary as a winter day on the Sussex coast. Not that Mrs. Hudson's past wasn't colorful. She was a beggar, pickpocket, and foil for her father's cons. Quite successful for a time too. Right up until Sherlock Holmes tracked her down. Holmes and Mrs. Hudson were cornered by her father whereupon Clarissa Hudson killed her father and covered up the crime with Holmes' help.

She left England with her infant son for Australia with Holmes' help and returned to England a year of so later, without her son (left with her sister). It's that missing son who appears in the Holmes' house looking for his mother. His threats toward Mary Russell result in the blood on the floor and the absence of Mary Russell.

Enough said. It wasn't great. It fit my mood better than Thomas Perry's succession of deadly hide and seek.

If you like King's writing or are a fan of additions to the world of Sherlock Holmes, you might like Murder of Mary Russell. (library or Half Price books, anyone?) I do wish King would write more Martinelli mysteries.

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• King's web site
• Steven Donoghue's review in the Christian Science Monitor
• Barbara Clark's review at BookPage

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• Thomas Perry's web site
• Muriel Dobbin's review in the Washington Times
• Marilyn Brooks' review in Marilyn Reads Mysteries

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Hurry up!

As I walked into the Northfield library I discovered a new Jacqueline Winspear novel on a table by the staircase. A little note was taped to the cover, "Lucky You!"

It turns out that this was a recent addition to the collection that no one had reserved. I could check it out, but it wasn't renewable. Well, it was due yesterday and this evening I just finished it. I'm glad I spent the time and will gladly pay the fine when I return it tomorrow.

The book is A Dangerous Place. The dangerous place is Gibraltar in 1937.

Maisie Dobbs retreated to the mountains of India after the death of her husband and the loss of the child they had been expecting. She was overwhelmed with grief and could not face returning to England, her father, her in-laws, and all the familiar places she called home.

Finally on the way home, her ship docks in Gibraltar, and Maisie realizes she's not yet ready to face family and familiar. However, on one of her first evenings in Gibraltar, she stumbles on the body of a recently murdered man.

This Dobbs character that Winspear has created cannot resist asking questions about the death and the survivors. Once an investigator, always an investigator, I guess. However, Winspear does a fairly good, but not (to me)  totally convincing job of portraying this as a further attempt by Dobbs to evade confronting the horror of her sorrow.

Gibraltar is a dangerous place because the civil war is going on in Spain and because the isolated city is full of spies and police of all kinds. Some of the police are serving the interests of Dobbs' father-in-law and others are serving ambiguous masters.

Then there are the photographs taken by the man Dobbs found murdered. One of a German submarine and another of a German double agent. Oh, there's also weapons smuggling by some of the fishing fleet. Of course, Maisie Dobbs is close enough to be aware of all of it, though she's at a loss to put all the pieces together -- until the very end, of course.

Then Maisie meets two English nurses who are headed for a front-line nursing station (much like the one Maisie worked at in France in 1916-17). Guess who goes along. After a hectic day at the station and meeting a nun who practically runs the place herself, Maisie tells here police tail she's headed back to England. But instead she heads for the nun's nursing station in Spain. A couple months there working with the wounded, Maisie feels, will get her out of herself enough that she'll be able to return to England.

I don't know. Want to take bets?

Have you read A Dangerous Place? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reaction.

Now, I have to take this book back to the library. I was lucky.

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• The author's web site
• Nadia A.'s review at A Bookish Way of Life
• Robert Blanco's review at USA Today
• Renita Last's review at Jewish Book Council
• Bobbi Dumas' review at NPR

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Paying attention

If you've been paying attention to the sporadic things I write here, you know I've had a pile of books on my desk to write about. I managed to cut the pile in half and write about my current reading until I uncovered Åsa Larsson's The Second Deadly Sin. Well, you didn't know about that last bit since I haven't written about Larsson's book until now.

I picked up the book and looked at a fierce bear on the cover and tried to remember something about the book and my experience of reading it. Nothing. Had I really read the book? I must have, I told myself, or it wouldn't have gotten to the pile of books already read.

Okay, so I'll skim through the beginning and I'll remember. Nope. Okay, I'll read the first few chapters and it will come back to me. Nope, again. Had I read this book? So, I started over and read the book. It wasn't until I got to about page 350 (out of 375) that I remembered reading some of the book. If I'd paged my way through the book looking at the words, I hadn't read it. But there's a devastatingly awful scene near the end of the book involving a murderous assailant, a five-year-old child, a beloved dog, and a severely injured cop that I'll never forget, even if I forget where I read it. I won't forget again. I was paying attention this time.

Larsson tells at least three stories in this book. One of them is two or three generations back. Others are contemporary, one involving murder and another involving overreach by an overly ambitious detective. When I paid attention to the stories this time, I was able to keep track of the stories and understand most of the complex connections Larsson weaves among them.

The first half of the book seemed a bit slow. Maybe that was getting started and introducing all the characters and scenes (all in Sweden, by the way). The story telling in the second half of the book moved right along. I wondered how I could not have paid attention. Where was I? What was I preoccupied with? I have no clue. I wasn't paying attention.

I liked the book this time. I was paying attention this time. I remember admonishing my students to do more than "look at the words" when reading. I need to remind myself of the same thing.

Have you read The Second Deadly Sin by Åsa Larsson? Were you paying attention enough to tell us what you thought of it? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• Barry Forshaw's review in The Independent
• Sarah Ward's review at CrimePieces
• Åsa Larsson at Wikipedia

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Struck by stages

I made it to the newly enlarged library in town. It had been all but closed for a year or so. Books for younger readers were available at city hall, but most of the collection was in storage.

The place is very attractive. The entry is welcoming and light filled. There are still a lot of stairs, but if you're unable to climb, there's good elevator service to the top floor.

And there's one whole room for mysteries that used to be strung along several rows of tall shelves. I went in searching for a book to take to the cabin for reading during break times as we closed for the season.

Somewhere in the past, I read or heard about Peter Lovesey's mystery novels. His name and a list of his books made it on to my "to read" list. So I went looking for his books in the new "mysteries" room. Since I had no clues about good/better/best, I grabbed Stagestruck from the shelf.

I took it to the lake cabin and began reading it. I liked Lovesey's language and pacing. The setting is contemporary Bath (UK). Lovesey's featured character is Peter Diamond, chief inspector on the local police force. The plot revolves around a former pop star who was recruited to star in a production of I am a Camera. The nervous songster screams in agony as she makes her Act 1 entrance. Something in her stage make up has burned her skin.

Send in Diamond and crew. Just about the time they are figuring out what happened, the woman in charge of the "star's" make up falls from the backstage rigging. Then the makeup woman's colleague dies under even more mysterious circumstances. Lots for the police to sort out.

About that point in the book, the story telling bogged down. Diamond is distracted by a new assistant assigned to my my his boss. He's also distracted by undefined fears of being in the theater. The personnel of the theater are fearful and trying to help solve the murders while being mostly in the way. The narrative became deadly slow. I almost laid the book down and headed back to the library.

But I soldiered on. It turned out I wouldn't have missed much if I hadn't. It seems that British mysteries (and others?) whether in print or on BBC "Masterpiece Mysteries" end with long winded explanations of how the investigator figured things out and what logic led to the guilty party.

The final chapter of Stagestruck consisted of a strained "conversation" between inspector Diamond (center stage of the theater) and the evil bad guy (sort of hiding in one of the box seats). Diamond says things like "I know what you did and how you did it." The evil bad guy (EBG) says things like, "You're not so smart. You don't have any evidence." Diamond says, "Yes, I do." EBG says, "No you don't." This goes on until Diamond's assistant cop sneaks up behind the EBG and wrestles him into a waiting squad car after the inspector has clearly outlined his case. Next thing I read about is a party for one of the theater's old timers.

The beginning of the book was promising. The ending was deflating. What is the rule? Get to 90% of the story told by describing events and the last 10% told in a turgid way so no one misses how clever the author was in constructing the plot?

I might try reading another Lovesey mystery, but I won't guarantee that I'll finish another.

Have you read Stagestruck? What did you think of it? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The author's web site
• Brief reviews from GoodReads
• Anonymous review at MurderByType

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Mystery told through events

The last book by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir that I read was ponderous, mostly because the narrator told the story ponderously.

This new one, The Silence of the Sea, hooked me at the beginning and kept me going through the whole plot. It begins when a luxury yacht sails into the harbor in Reykjavik, Iceland. It had come from Spain. It crashes into a jetty in the harbor. No one is aboard the ship.

Well, what happened to the crew? And to the passengers? An Icelandic bank had repossessed the yacht. A banker who had gone to Spain to do the repossession paperwork was bringing his family (wife and two daughters) home on the yacht.

Yrsa tells the story through a series of flashbacks during the cruise. The flashbacks are mostly told from the banker's point of view, but there are other people's flashbacks too.

Meanwhile in Reykjavik, rumors circulate about a curse on the yacht and its owners. Lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdóttir is hired by the banker's father to sort out the legalities and liabilities. The closest thing to a living helper is a sailor who was supposed to be on the crew, but who broke a leg just before the ship sailed. He's actually less help than Thóra hoped for.

Oh, and then there's the problem of the boat's owner who has either gone missing or flown to Brazil to avoid bankruptcy. Well, that's what people thought until her body washes up on an Icelandic shore. And the owner's personal maid, has also disappeared. Then the partial body of one of the yacht's crew comes ashore in Iceland.

The story is nicely complicated and resolution seems as ghostly as the spirit that has been seen on the yacht.

Not to worry, Yrsa wraps the story up in an inventive and surprising way. It was a good book and a great antidote to the previous book (Someone to Watch Over Me).

Have you read The Silence of the Sea? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• Publisher's web site
• Brief reviews at GoodReads
• Brief reviews at Waterstones (UK)
• Nelson Appell's review at emissourian

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Reverberations

Just before running away to the north shore of Lake Superior, I read a glowing review of Louise Penny's new book A Great Reckoning. Then Dale Stahl told me he'd just read it and that it was good.

I was wandering the tourist village of Grand Marais and happened upon a book store. A real book store. It actually had a copy of A Great Reckoning. How could I resist? I had time to sit on the rocky beach, look at the big lake, and read.

In fact, I didn't read the book until I'd returned from the north woods and headed up to the tiny lake called Little Blake. So I watched the geese and a couple swans while reading at place called Sidetrack.

This is a book that has its roots firmly in the earlier books Penny has written. Ostensibly the book is about the continuing crusade of police Commander Armand Gamache to clean up the corruption in the Sûreté of Québec. This time he takes on the task of rooting out evil in the Sûreté Academy. His methodology is obtuse, but marginally understandable.

But then there's a suicide? or was it a murder? And four cadets in the Sûreté Academy. One
of whom stands out as an example of the old order and one as an example of the rejection or the old order. Oh, and there's a century-old map found among the old newspapers and magazines used in the original insulation of an old building that was renovated.

Penny

One of the players in all this is Gamache's old friend and colleague who was caught up in the clean-up regime of the Sûreté. The love/hate and trust/mistrust nature of the relationship fits into all this well.

If you've read The Nature of the Beast, you'll be on track to easily follow the details of this book. If not, you might have to pay attention to things inferred. Or you can read The Nature of the Beast. It's good.

Have you read A Great Reckoning? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

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• The publisher's web site
• Robert Croan's review in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette
• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times
• Maureen Corrigan's review in the Washington Post

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Telling

I want to reduce the pile of books on my desk. I want to write something about each of them. I just added another book to the pile. I keep thinking I have plenty of time. I keep procrastinating.

The book on the top of the pile if Someone to Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. It's a long book. Sigurdardottir told me lots of things. Some were interesting. Some were didactic. Buried in the telling is a mystery, but it was difficult to follow in the midst of all the telling. She told me about the suffering of handicapped people living in institutions. The primary mystery revolves around a young man with Down Syndrome who has been convicted of murder. Besides the question of whether or not he murdered people, there are legal and moral questions about his culpability. There are questions about the motivations of the man who hired Sigurdardottir's main character, lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottor to investigate the "crime."

Oh, and there are some supernatural elements in the story too. Are the spirits that appear to one of the characters "real" spirits or figments of her imagination?

Yrsa

And Gudmundsdottor's domestic scene becomes part of the book, though it has little to do with the main plot. It's wonderful that the lawyer has a boyfriend, that she can take in her son and his family, and that she can take in her parents. I'm not sure why those scenes and events are in the book.

It's a long book. Movement through the plot is slow. I had trouble keeping track of everyone and the chain of events. To me, this was not one of Sigurdardottir's best.

Have you read Someone to Watch Over Me? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• Publisher's web site
• Bernadette's review at Reactions to Reading
• E. A. Aymer's review at the Washington Independent Review of Books

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The reason for the re-read

When I saw Arnaldur Indridason's Into Oblivion at the library, I wanted to read it. A note on the inside flap said it was "a follow-up to the gritty prequel, Reykjavik Nights." It had been several years since I read that prequel and thought I'd reread it as an introduction to the new book.

The cover of Into Oblivion also calls the book "An Icelandic thriller."

Well, the two book are not thrillers by my account. They're Icelandic quizzicals. The last few chapters of Into Oblivion include some suspense and a bit of violence, but none of it is thrilling. But the rest of the book, like Reykjavik Nights plods along. They made me wonder if the long Icelandic nights left too much time for detailing minor plot points.

Inspector Erlander, the survivor of a childhood trauma that claimed his brother's life, is still in the irresistible clutches of mysterious disappearances. When a murder grasps his attention, an old case from his first years on the force also pulls him into a search for answers. Luckily, he has time to pursue the ancient case because he has help on the murder from a colleague and an American MP from the nearby US Army base.

NAS Keflavik

Arnaldur tries mixing in some Icelandic nationalism and economic dependence with the aggressive sovereignty of the American authorities in this story, but it's mostly flat background. I never got a real feeling for how big an issue this is in Icelandic politics. And, of course, when it comes to dealing with a tiny country like Iceland, the US can afford to say, "Take our money and leave us alone" (especially after the end of the Cold War).


I don't remember that books by Arnaldur that I read even longer ago (Jar City and The Draining Lake) were so plodding and unexciting. But my memory is faulty and I probably have different standards now. I seem to recall those novels had better and more complex plotting.

So, have you read Into Oblivion? What did you think of it? Was it different from earlier novels?  Write. and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• The publisher's web site
• Grant Nichol's review at Crime Watch
• Brief reviews at Good Reads
• Summary at Publishers Weekly
• Marilyn Brooks' review at Marilyn's Mystery Reads

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The other re-read

The other book I reread recently was Arnaldur Indridason's Reykjavik Nights. I knowingly set out to reread this one. It is a precursor to a new book by Arnaldur, Into Oblivion.

I figured it had been so long, I should read Reykjavik Nights to prepare me for the new book. I hope it was a good choice. I have just begun the new book and I'll let you know what I think of it soon.

Reykjavik Nights is about Erlander, a new policeman in Reykjavik. He gets to know (professionally) Hannibal, an alcoholic street person. When Hannibal is found dead, Erlander is curious about how the old man drowned. A respectable, middle class woman disappeared about the same time and her earring was found in Hannibal's crib.

Erlander, the book notes was rescued as a child from a blizzard. His brother was lost. This is Arnaldur's explanation for Erlander's fascination with missing people.

Erlander pursues, on his own time and initiative explanations for Hannibal's death and the disappearance of the  woman. As his boss says at one point, "You've broken almost all the rules for this investigation. Would you like to be a detective?"

He finds out what happened to the two unfortunates. Justice and harmony are restored to Reykjavik. And, if it wasn't for human failings, all would be right with Iceland. But more bad things happen.

Arnaldur

During this read, the story telling was pretty ponderous. Interesting characters and intriguing story. The new book has begun much like this one did. I'm looking forward to it. Iceland is an intriguing place, though most of the place and street names are not translated. I found myself trying to sound out unfamiliar letter combinations (and unfamiliar letters like the "eth" in Arnaldur's last name that gets published in English as a "d.")

It seems I never wrote about my first experience with this book. But I can't really think of more to write.

Have you read Reykjavik Nights? Write. Tell this tiny bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The publisher's web site
• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times
• Harvel Secker's review in Crime Fiction Lover
• Anna Creer's review in the Sydney Morning Herald

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Embarrassing

So I have this pile of book on the corner of my desk. I've read them all, but not written about them. That's not the embarrassing part. The embarrassing part is that the one of the top of the pile might need rereading before I write about it.

I look at the title, Invisible Murder and the authors Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis and I nearly draw blanks. I'm pretty sure that Kaaberbøl and Friis are names on my "to read" list. But the title??

The blurb on the back of the book rings some bells. Hungarian Roma squatting  in an abandoned Copenhagen garage. They're getting sick and dying. (That sounds like invisible death, but murder?)

The main "investigator" in this mystery is nurse Nina Borg, working for the Red Cross in a refugee program. There are Roma connections across Europe. There's a young Roma man who wants nothing more than his law degree, which a university professor won't approve because the man is a Roma. But there are people who want a buried canister and its

Kaaberbøl and Friis

radioactive contents that have been buried in the abandoned garage. Oh, and there is an active and violent anti-Muslim terrorist group.

This one will keep you fascinated and wondering; wondering especially about the motivations of nurse Borg and student Sandor. And if you wait a few months before thinking about it, you might be wondering why you don't remember details about the plot and action.

Have you read Invisible Murder. Write. Tell this little bit of the world how much you remember and what you thought of it.

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• Anonymous review at Mysterious Reviews
• Doreen Sheridan's review at Criminal Element
• Karen's review at EuroCrime
• Anonymous review at Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Re-reading time

I don't reread books often. There are too many unread books. Well, I just reread a couple.

I was in a hurry at the library and pulled Qiu Xiaolong's Enigma of China off the shelf. The author, a poet and mystery writer, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His name was familiar, but the title didn't ring a bell. His mysteries feature Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai police. Not only is Chen a rising star in the police force, he's also (at the time of this story) in line to become Communist Party chief in the police department.

After about 50 pages I realized I'd read the book. I looked it up. It was 3 years ago. I should have grabbed another of his dozen mysteries. Well, maybe.

It turns out this novel was a refresher on the power of guanxi. Simply translated as "connections," guanxi is a crucial element that makes government and politics work in China. Chen is in a job that brings him into contact with lots of people. He's a humanitarian who often gives people breaks or does favors for them. That creates guanxi connections (people own him). He also relies on guanxi connections he's made or people who remember his father (a scholar who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution) for information (he owes them). There's hardly a chapter in this book that doesn't illustrate one of Chen's relationships. Guanxi helps him learn how to slip by the censors on the Chinese Internet, get his mother into a hospital usually reserved for high party officials, learn what plans someone has for his career, and how to reserve a private room in a very high class restaurant. It also helps him resolve a particularly messy case.

Qiu

The novel is also a refresher course in poetry -- especially Chinese poetry. Qiu drops in references to or quotations of classic poetry or his own to help set the moods in scenes. It's good to remind me about the roles of poetry in communication.

The story seemed unreel very slowly. I don't recall feeling that when I first read it. My experiences with rereading things suggest that that kind of reaction is more a function of me as a reader than some quality of the book.

A good mystery. A good cultural introduction. It's worth reading at least once.

Have you read Enigma of China? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Publisher's web site
• Reviews at GoodReads
• Frank Lanfitt's review at NPR
• Doreen Sheridan's review at Criminal Element

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Does drama end when the ending is well-known?

We went to a movie theater last year. We saw The Martian. It was likely the only movie we saw in a theater in 2015. We liked the movie. Even though it was as detailed as it was unlikely. Good fiction.

A while later, I picked up the book because it had been written about after the success of the movie. The book got mostly good "reviews" from readers. And the realists (scientists) gave it good marks too. Andy Weir, the author, had done lots of homework. He did the math about orbits, oxygen capacity of a Mars lander, the reproduction rate of potatoes, and mpg of a Mars rover. Much of that detail didn't get into the movie (thankfully), but a lot of it is in the book. I'd have been okay with a forward from the author telling me he'd done the math and hadn't stretched the truth too much. The details in the book did get in the way of telling the story.

But it's a good book. I really enjoyed reading it even though I knew the ending. The suspense and drama of the adventure survived the publicity and the fact that I'd seen the movie. That's a marvel to me. Remember Apollo 13, the movie about the near disaster aboard the third spacecraft sent to land people on the moon? Those of us who paid attention to the near disaster knew what happened and how it all ended. But my recollection of the movie was of great suspense. Of course, that required an extreme version of the "suspension of disbelief." But the movie worked.

Reading The Martian required a similar suspension of disbelief after seeing the movie and "knowing" the extreme improbability of the plot. Nonetheless, the movie worked. I was hanging on to the book and rapidly turning pages in the sections where there was action.

It worked right up to the end. The ending might have been well researched, but it seemed a bit too improbable. It was right up there with the ending of Gravity that rescued Sandra Bullock's character. Of course she had extraordinary help from a ghost.

The Martian was a good book. I found myself getting bogged down in the technical explanations, but it's possible to skim through those sections. I'm glad I read it.

Have you read The Martian? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• Mixed reviews at GoodReads
• Samantha Steed's review for the UK's Armagh Planetarium
• Victoria Jaggard's review for the Smithsonian Magazine
• Tom Shippey's review in The Wall Street Journal
• Sarah Lewin's review of the book and the movie for Space.com

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Swedish red herrings

I have six books piled on the corner of my desk that I intend to write about. But this one had to go back to the library a couple days ago.

I made a quick stop at Northfield's library to grab a couple books for a weekend at Sidetrack. Without my "to read" list, I rather blindly walked through the mystery section. I grabbed Kjell Eriksson's The Hand That Trembles. (It was a quick stop, that's why I only got as far as Eriksson on the shelves.)

I'm pretty sure Eriksson isn't on my "to read" list, but he's Swedish, so he lives across only one national border from Norway. I took that as a recommendation. Both Swedes and Norwegians will take exception to my generalization. Eriksson even makes distinctions between people from Uppsala and people from the Swedish hinterlands north of there. (For Minnesotans, this is the place to insert an Iowa joke. For Iowans, it's the place to insert a Missouri joke, et cetera.)

As seems usual in Scandinavian novels, Eriksson tells several stories about murders and suicides. The roots of the stories go back to the Spanish Civil War, Cold War politics, and sex trafficking in Thailand.

I felt like I was reading forever to finish this book. In reality it only took eight days, and I had other things to do during that time. Some of the stories and characters were more engaging than others. I think Eriksson wanted to tell some stories and felt he had to tell others.

Eriksson

For instance, Eriksson doesn't use the title phrase "the hand that trembles" until he is two-thirds done telling his stories. The person whose hand trembles is a very interesting one, but only a minor character. I was unable to determine why that phrase made the title. But, if Eriksson wrote a book about her, I'd read it.

The detective who interviews the "trembler"  (more often than seems necessary) is also an interesting character. Those chapters read more fluidly than many of the others.

There are also more red herrings in the plots than I think are necessary. If Eriksson ditched the stories about the long-term feuds about the Spanish Civil War -- which have little or nothing to do with resolving a murder mystery -- the book wouldn't suffer (says me). But then the book might not be long enough for a Swedish winter.

You must also be tolerant of an off-kilter translation and "incomplete" editing. If you're more patient than I am, you might well enjoy all of this slow-motion tramp through rural Sweden, 1930's Spain, tourist trap Thailand, and even Bangalore, India.

Have you read The Hand That Trembles?

Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought about it.

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• Publisher's web site
• Kirkus Review
• Euro Crime review
• Wikipedia on Eriksson

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Lazy, bored, tired, old?

It's been nearly a year since I wrote here about anything I read.

Partly that's because reading got interrupted. I bought a book for my "Nook" to take on a family vacation to Wyoming. I figured I wouldn't have much time to read while in Jackson Hole and Yellowstone with children and grandchildren along. That was correct, but then about two-thirds of the way through a now-forgotten book, the reader stopped working. It turned out that the "book" I had was corrupted, but I never got to finish it. The Nook has been sitting on a shelf since.

A year before the vacation, I bought a used copy of a recommended Jo Nesbø book. Following the Scandinavian democratic socialist rules for mystery/thrillers, Nesbø was telling several stories at once. Set in different times and places with few overlapping characters (at least at the beginning), I found it very hard to keep track of things. I started the book several times. The last time I started it I tried taking notes inside the front cover so I could keep track of people and stories. It wasn't much help.

After vacation, I didn't go near it. [However, last fall we got hooked on a Norwegian television mini-series titled Okkupert (Occupied in English). While written by Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjaerg, the story was outlined by Jo Nesbø. Good for him. The series was intriguing and well done. It was available on Netflix and popular enough (in spite of the need for sub-titles) to get Norwegian television to order a second season (without subtitles for Norwegians). It's a cautionary tale about how a Western democracy could lose its democracy, that Americans should pay close attention to. (And the defenders of the democracy in the script are not the 2nd Amendment purist, anti-government backwoodsmen envisioned by the Tea Party or by Kevin Reynolds in Red Dawn.)]

When I did pick up a book to read, I did so in response to seeing an interview of Aasif Mandvion TV. He's best known as the Senior Muslim Correspondent for Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Some things he said in the interview (now forgotten by me) made this serious actor sound intriguing, so I bought his book: No Land's Man.

The title is apt. The book is about Mandvi's search for identity. He is culturally a Muslim, born in northern India. His family moved to Bradford, England when he was a child. Bradford is a West Yorkshire city that offered lots of jobs in its 19th century mills. Not so much any more. It's one of those areas that voted heavily for Brexit. Mandvi went to grammar school and then to a residential boy's school. Mandvi didn't fit in. He didn't know where he might fit in.

The search didn't get any easier in Tampa, Florida where his family moved when he was 16. It was his mother, sensing his unease, who suggested he take an acting class. That was how he found a "place" in a large suburban American high school dominated by jocks and white kids. He wrote, "I had been blown this way and that my entire life, wearing whatever identity I could in order to be accepted. Perhaps this was why I had chosen to become an actor. Seeking invisibility and notoriety at the same time is something actors understand. I was always jealous of those people that knew who they were."

From stories about his well-received one-man show on Broadway to his hiring by Jon Stewart to Brooke Shield's New Year's Eve party, Mandvi tells stories well. There's a sense of humor in them, but this is serious reflection. Some of us white natives wonder where we fit it, too. Not to the degree a dark skinned immigrant wonders, but the questions exist for me too.  I enjoyed this little book.

Have you read No Land's Man? How did you react to it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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Aasif Mandvi On Life As A 'No Land's Man' from Fresh Air

Thrity Umrigar's review in the Boston Globe

Dwight Garner's review in The New York Times