Murders most foul

After reading about Montana at the beginning of the 20th century, I picked up a book about southern California at the beginning of the 21st century. That hundred years might have been the least of the differences between the two books.

First Bird Loomis and then Gary Sankary recommended Thomas Perry's books, and I've read a bunch of them. (Search for Perry in the search box at the top left.) No series of books centered on a few stock characters in Perry's bibliography; the books stand alone and the characters are unique (except for the "Jane Whitefield series" which I haven't come across yet).

Fidelity is one of the books I bought on my most recent Sunday afternoon expedition to a bookstore.

While Dancing at the Rascal Fair was an antique Western romance, Fidelity is a murder mystery thriller. Doig writes about people's lives over a 30 years span; Perry writes about events during a week (with some narrative flashbacks); the tensions in the story of last century Montana came from the ongoing nature of relationships while the tensions in the southern California story come from the murderous intent of a couple of the characters.

The only internal dialogues and reflections indulged in by Perry's characters are directly connected to the mysteries and the dangers. Doig's main narrator was often thinking about meaning and self as well as destiny. There is some progression in the emotions of the threatened widow of the first murder victim in Fidelity, but it seems to come without anguish. Would a woman still in shock at her husband's murder, who just found out about his long term affair, really approach her husband's mistress with an "I dont' care about that, I care about this..." attitude? Ah, well, even if it's unlikely, Perry tells a good story -- and remember, I'm a story guy.

The story begins with an ambush murder. It continues with sinister and horrific threats against the dead guy's widow, and the circle of horror expands from there. The characters and their back stories are lightly drawn, but it doesn't matter. It's an adventure story and well told.

I liked reading Fidelity. Now, I'll have to go looking for a Jane Whitefield mystery and see how Perry handles a series.

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

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• Thomas Perry's web site
  
• Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times
  
• Kirkus Review on Fidelity

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Dancing in Big Sky Country

Every year the Northfield Hospital Auxiliary holds a used book sale as a fundraiser. We look forward to it as a way to offload books we don't want to host any longer. This year I went to the book sale to purchase some children's books for a granddaughter who will be visiting in June.

I came home with more than just kid lit. I already had several books from my Sunday expedition to the book store, then I got some birthday books from my favorite family book pusher, and now I have more on the short shelf of books to read.

I did start reading another of the books from the pre-April 15 purchase, but I haven't finished it yet. It's one of those books that's taking a long time to read. When I headed off on a road trip to visit another granddaughter, I grabbed one of the book sale books as well as the tape of the French philosophical novel (see previous entry here).

So, while in the quiet times between play dates with the kid, I began reading Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig. The earlier Doig books I've read have been interesting and entertaining to one degree or another.

Dancing... was published in 1987, and was Doig's third novel. It's set in the northwestern Montana country where he grew up. His love of the country is as obvious as Hillerman's love of the desert southwest. Right away, I have more in common with Doig. However, while Doig likes the east slope prairies, I'd rather be in the mountains themselves. I'm not trying to make a living there though. Doig's people are.

The book is a western romance, starring a pair of young Scotsmen who came to America in the late 1880s. They would have been about the same age as my great-grandparents who came to Minnesota from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. (Well, okay, some of my great grandparents weren't immigrants.) As a little kid, I knew two of those great grands, and as I read Dancing..., I kept trying to think of my ancient worthies. Didn't work. Doig's characters seemed entirely too human, normal, and modern.

The Hancock homestead, July 23, 1910, photo by Walter Lubken, a Bureau of Reclamation photographer (from Wikimedia Commons). Original source

My great grands were near and over 90 years old when I remember them. They were dependent upon my grandmother. They didn't get out. I'd have to work my imagination to the bone to see them as young, vital, and passionate. Even the old great grandfather who bragged about riding a horse to Yellowstone and back as a 21-year-old was probably only telling stories to his grand and great grandchildren.

The worthy ancients of Doig's imagination are human, normal, and modern. And they are young, vital, and passionate. And they're stars of a soap opera. The two heroes arrive in Montana with nothing but the name of an uncle. That part I get. One of my great grands arrived from Denmark with nothing but a name. (Unlike the Scotsmen, he didn't speak English.)

The Scotsmen homesteaded land in foothills of the Rockies. They became sheep farmers and members of a rural community of sheep farmers. They struggled to make a living; they fell in love, wisely and unwisely; they raised families; helped each other; and hurt each other. The ups and downs of life.

Doig adds some drama to the telling and his narrator adds some reflection and analysis. Sometimes that gets in the way of the story. (Remember, I'm a story guy.) Sometimes that reflection is thoughtful and descriptive. It makes me slow down in my reading. There are big sections of this book where I had to read slowly and carefully and pay attention to more than just the verbs.

I enjoyed the book. I'm glad I have a couple more books by Doig on my short shelf (I found three at the book sale). However, I think I'll read other things before I read another. I'll probably even go back to the book I didn't take on the road trip to visit my granddaughter.

Meanwhile, I think Dancing at the Rascal Fair is a good book. Have you read it? Did you like it?

Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Ivan Doig's web site
• Links to 175 reviews at Good Reads
• Dan Webster's review at Spokesman Review

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The return of the philosophical rodent

About two and a half years ago, Dan Conrad wrote on Facebook, that The Elegance of the Hedgehog was the best book he'd read in 2008. He didn't write to tell us why, but I picked up his comment here and quoted a review from The Washington Post.


I don't recall that Dan ever explained his preference, but did mention the book by Muriel Barbery a time or two in conversations since.

So, I was heading off for a visit to a granddaughter. That meant 10-11 hours on the road. As usual when facing a road trip, I visited the Northfield library. When I saw the CD version of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I checked it out. I listened to half of it on the way to Jim, Ange, and Jaime's. I listened to some of the rest on the way home.

I know why Dan liked this book. The author is a professor of philosophy. The book is full of philosophy. Ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and metaphysics. There's very little plot. In fact, one English marketer noted that the book wouldn't do well in the UK because people there want plot more than anything else.

I'm a plot fan too. So I had trouble with the book. I don't think I could have read it. For me the philosophical processes of analyzing alternatives and meaning are tedious. I do understand why and how such cogitation can be appealing. It's just not appealing to me. While driving down the road, I could let the philosophical verbiage go in one ear and out the other. When I listened to the last two CDs at home, I kept falling asleep.

BUT, did you notice that I finished listening to the whole book? When I awoke and found that I'd slept through a track, I went back and listened to what I'd missed. Why? None of the tedious philosophizing was imperious or pompous. None of it was trivial. In fact, it was all tied to the "reality" Barbery created in the book. There were far too many big issues raised for me to keep track of. I think I could have spent a month with this book if I was of a mind to think through all the ideas she raised. But, I'm a plot fan.

AND, the three main characters are just amazing. There's a middle-aged Parisian concierge in an upscale condo building. She acts like the dumb country bumpkin the residents expect her to be. But in her back room she's reading Kant and Tolstoy, listening to Purcell and Mahler, and studying 17th century Dutch still life paintings. In her spare time, she's seen all the arty films of Yasujiro Ozu.

There's a friendless 11-year-old resident of the building, who is equally bright and forced to keep that quality under cover to satisfy her bourgeoise family. (She gets to narrate a third of the book through her journals.)

And then there's the new guy in the building. He's a rich Japanese businessman who, while being a successful importer, is also a secret intellectual, whose tastes in art and philosophy match those of his new concierge.

And then there's the ending. Eleven year old Paloma says, "I learned 'never.' It's awful!"

Have you read The Elegance of the Hedgehog? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it. Or, if you read it, don't forget to tell us about your experience.

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• Caryn James' review in The New York Times
• Michael Dirda's review in The Washington Post
• Why The Elegance of the Hedgehog Is For Grownups by Delia Lloyd in Huffpost Living
• Viv Groskop's review in The Guardian

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Your choices are the book, the recording, the Kindle version, or the French film on DVD.

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Reading in Antarctica 80 years ago

In 1928, Admiral Richard Byrd led a scientific expedition to Antarctica. His chief scientist and second in command was geologist Larry Gould. Gould did real science and confirmed that Antarctica was geologically similar to the other continents.

When the Byrd explorers returned to the US in 1932, they were famous heroes and many of them went on speaking tours around the country. Gould also wrote a book about the expedition titled Cold.

Gould went on to become a geology professor and president of my alma mater, Carleton College. The college has kept the book in print for decades. (Used copies are still available at Amazon.com and ebay.) Then last fall, Northfield's Cannon River flooded. The basement of the college's West Gym filled with water. The swimming pool's pumps and the building's HVAC system had to be replaced. And the remaining copies of Cold became sponges.

My talented wife now has the job of editing the text for the next edition of Cold. She reports that it's well-written and interesting. And, luckily, the 50+ photographs in the book are available for republishing in the national archives.

In the process of editing, she found these amazing discussions of reading in Antarctica over 80 years ago. (What was Jean Christophe, by the way?)

[Reading during the "winter night"]

I believe the most important single source of recreation that made the time pass easily was our library of some 3,000 volumes.

When we were looking forward toward the winter night all of us anticipated great times with the books, but few of us, I think, had such ambitious projects as did one man who came to me one day early in the winter and said: “Larry, do you know what I am going to do during this winter night?” Of course I hadn't the slightest idea.

“Well,” he said, “I am going to learn aerial surveying and navigation and read the Encyclopedia Britannica through.”

It seemed a fairly ambitious program to me, but I didn't want to discourage the man so I assured him that if he carried out the project he would certainly achieve the essentials of a liberal education. His literary aspirations were rather short lived. He did start with volume I, letter A of the encyclopedia and got as far as “ammonium tetrachloride.” I saw him throw the book down with a look of disgust and asked him what was the matter.

“The stuff in that d--- book is no good for an aviator,” he replied.

Commander Byrd had charged me with the responsibility of collecting the library as part of our preparations back in New York. I asked him what sort of books he especially liked to read. His reply indicated considerable catholicity of taste: “Dickens, detective stories, and philosophy.”

And of all the various classes of reading matter that were represented detective stories were the most widely read, with accounts of other polar expeditions making a close second. The most widely read single book of all was W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions. Donn Byrne and Joseph Lincoln were more exhaustively read than any other two authors -- Mark Twain came next. We had a complete set of Kipling's works which was scarcely touched. As for myself, had the winter night given me opportunity for no other reading than Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe and Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga in its entirety I should still have considered it well spent. To me these are two works of this day that will live if any do. Jean Christophe is the most satisfying work of art with which I have ever come face to face...


[Reading while returning from the Queen Maud Mountains, a three-month geology expedition by dog sled that encompassed a total of 1,525 miles .]


We were in such excellent physical condition from the hard work of the summer that we travelled along with great ease, especially as compared with the hard work that had accompanied our southward trek. But the dogs were showing the effects of the gruelling summer's work and we had to be careful for their sake, and, purely on their account, we decided to limit ourselves to 23 miles per day. Some days when the surface made sledging easy for them we made good this distance within six or seven hours, nevertheless we forced ourselves not to get impatient but stopped and made camp…

There is much more variety in a polar night than there is in a polar day, and besides, one can create light when he tires of the darkness. But there was no way for us to induce even semi-darkness...

I don't know just what I should have done with all my free time had it not been for the few books that we had brought along with us. Each man had been allowed one book and ordinarily I should have brought Browning with me, but I had been reading him off and on all winter and elected to bring a thin paper edition of Shakespeare, complete in one volume. I regaled myself with Hamlet and Macbeth and King Lear and Love's Labor Lost and The Passionate Pilgrim, trying to fall asleep. When the day's journey had been particularly easy we would have supper over and be finished with the work for the day, ofttimes as early as 6 o'clock. I would crawl into my bag and lie there and read until 12 o'clock or later before going to sleep.

But I ran out of Shakespeare. One doesn't realize how much reading he can cover when he has five to seven hours per day without any kind of interruption. It had never before occurred to me that one of the real advantages and benefits of an Antarctic Expedition would be the opportunity to read Shakespeare in his entirety. I have never appreciated all the tragedy of Lear quite so much as I did in this reading of it out in the midst of the Ross Shelf Ice.

Mike Thorne had brought along W. H. Hudson's Purple Land and though I had read it but a few weeks previously, I read it again with the delight I always find in Hudson's exquisite prose. Eddie Goodale had brought a volume of English poetry which I devoured and in which I was glad to find one of my great favorites by Browning, "The Bishop Orders His Tomb." O'Brien had a big thick volume containing H. G. Wells short stories. I read this too, and it would have afforded me no end of satisfaction to have dropped this volume down the deepest crevasse I could find, but O'Brien objected strongly. He had borrowed the book from Russell Owen who wanted it returned...

The Research Vessel Laurence M. Gould was commissioned in 1995 and is chartered by the National Science Foundation for use in the oceans between Chile and Antarctica.

The RV Gould at Ross Station, Antarctica.

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Sunday, the library is closed

Already we suffer from reduced public spending. The Northfield library used to be open on Sunday afternoons in the winter. No more.

So, when I came home on Saturday wtih a book I'd already read and didn't want to reread, I was stuck.

What it meant was a 35-mile ride to the nearest bookstore. It was a nice Sunday afternoon. Driving the Prius meant I used less than 2 gallons of gas for the round trip. Still, it was a luxury I would think more than twice about after writing checks today for income taxes. (Tom Paxton, at the time of the first auto industry bail out, wrote a song, "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler." Later he updated the song to "I am Changing My Name to Fannie Mae.") Today, I want to change my name to GE. I don't want any of its billions in profits. I just want to avoid paying taxes on my income like it did.

Back in the halcyon days before I saw our tax returns, I made the drive to the bookstore and came home with several books. One of the was A Test of Wills, that I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Another was Last Rituals by Yrsa. Yrsa is another of the Icelanders who usually do without a family name. When publishers outside of Iceland demand a second name, she gets her revenge by saying, "I'm Yrsa Sigurðardóttir." (Go ahead try and write or type that one.) It's so difficult that her publisher transliterates her name into Yrsa Sigurdardóttir.

Enough about Icelandic names.

The cover of the book says that Last Rituals is "A Novel of Suspense." An unnamed USA Today reviewer was more accurate when describing the book as a "fascinating and deliciously creepy mystery." The closest to suspense I could identify was what was wrong with the main character's teen age son or how long would it take for the divorced Icelandic lawyer, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir (Þóra Guðmundsdóttir) to get into bed with the gorgeous German guy who was directing the investigation.

No suspense, but definitely creepy. And sort of fascinating. The story is strung out like a trail of breadcrumbs behind Hansel and Gretel. One thing leads to another and another. Sometimes the trail is a dead end, but if you haven't eaten the breadcrumbs, it's possible to get back to the main route.

Yrsa writes well and translator Bernard Scudder does a great job of putting things into casual and correct English. Thóra and the German factotum talk to each other and to the people involved in a grisly murder. The dialogue moves the plot along very well (I've noted that before; for me it's usually much better than straight story telling most of the time.)

The victim was the son of a wealthy German family researching Medieval witch burnings in Iceland. His death seems as symbolic and horrifying as the persecutions he was studying. Matthew, a representative of the German family, needs help understanding Iclandic and Iceland. Thóra is an attorney who could use the generous fee offered by the family. Besides, she's a quick study and smart. The local police are on the fringe of things, but pretty much quit investigating when they're satisfied that their suspect is guilty.

So, no suspense. If there was any suspense, it happened in the back story. Lots of creepyness. Not very delicious. But it's a well-told story. Several of the characters are interesting. Ysra has written a couple more novels about Thóra, and I'll be looking for them in the library. (Buying books is on hold for awhile.)

Have you read Last Rituals or another of Yrsa's novels? Did you like it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Yrsa's Facebook page
  
• The publisher's web page
  
• Maxine Clarke's review at EuroCrime
  
• Karen Russel's review at How Mysterious!

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Goodluck and bad luck

The early returns from Nigeria point to the reelection of President Goodluck Jonathan. It seems a good time to write about Goodluck Tinubu.

Tinubu is the title character (and victim) in Michael Stanley's book The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu. After reading A Carrion Death at the beginning of last year, I was looking forward to reading another book by the writing team who go by the name of Michael Stanley. But in the blur of daily life, I forgot.

Then blogging friend Gary Sankary reminded me that there was another "Detective Kubu mystery." So, I looked for it on my next trip to the Northfield Library.

The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu is a big book. It has about twice as many pages (460+) as most of the mysteries I read. Then again, there are two authors. The main character is Botswanan detective David "Kubu" Bengu. (Kubu is the name for hippo. The detective resembles a hippo in girth as well as in determination.)

If you're not familiar with a bit African history, you'll have to learn about apartheid, Southern Rhodesia, Zimbabwe and its war for independence, and the proximity of Botswana to South African and Zimbabwe. It also helps to know a little about the terrors of present-day Zimbabwe.

You see, George Tinubu got his name Goodluck when he survived a murder during the hostilities between the white settler government of Southern Rhodesia and the independence fighters. However, the authorities listed him as dead because they found his identity papers with his fingerprints on them. Goodluck Tinubu went on to become a school teacher in Botswana. Many years later, he was killed in a tourist camp in northern Botswana near the border with Zimbabwe.

The local police don't seem able to make much headway in solving the murder because there are so many likely suspects and so many possible motives. So Detective Kubu Bengu is called in from the capital.

The story is set up well in the opening chapters, and it's well-told through conversations and bits of inner dialogue. I enjoyed reading the first half of the book and was thoroughly immersed in the story.

Then the book got better! The story telling never seemed to falter. Michael and Stanley write short snappy chapters and manage the information flow very well. There are partial escapes from the hunt for a murderer or murderers when Kubu gets home for weekends with his wife and his parents. But his wife gets more involved than expected when she's kidnapped -- seemingly by Tinubu's murderers who think Kubu has a briefcase full of cash that's gone missing.

Kubu ventures across the border into Zimbabwe to interview Goodluck Tinubu's mentor, the headmaster of a closed Zimbabwean school. He almost catches one of the bad guys by draining most of the gas from an outboard motor. He figures out that the past had caught up with several of the people at the tourist camp where Tinubu was killed.

But all that's told in a great story. And, if you need your stereotypes of Africa shattered, there's no better place for that to happen in a story set in Botswana.

I recommend it for many reasons.

Have you read The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The publisher's web page
  
• A reading by Michael and Stanley
  
• A review by Bernadette Inoz at Reactions to Reading
  
• Julie Kramer's review at the big Thrill Archives

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Swedish crime novel

And here's another view of Sweden to fracture your stereotypes (well, at least the stereotypes of the descendants of Swedish immigrants in Minnesota). Leif GW Persson’s novel also jostled the images of reviewer Katherine Powers, writing in The Boston Post. Persson's description of Sweden's police and intelligence organizations give credence to the cabals in Stieg Larsson's series of "The Girl Who..." stories. Powers also adds a reference to Arnaldur's Arctic Chill, something I read and wrote about just over a year ago.

From Nordic climes, come chilling thrillers

[H]ere before me is Leif GW Persson’s Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End: The Story of a Crime, unquestionably the best Swedish crime novel I’ve read so far.

In it, Persson takes up the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a crime that has never been solved. Aside from that event, the specific goings-on, as well as the characters, motives, involvements, and actions are fictional, but they are also completely believable. The novel consists of two chronologies and a fraught history. Sweden’s geo-political predicament is the backdrop, especially the years that spanned the end of World War II as it segued into the Cold War up to the mid-1950s. In Sweden this was the time during which “wherever you turned you only saw the Russian bear with his mighty paws, ready to deliver the final embrace.’’...

But be warned: This is a novel to read with your cerebral capacity at its highest setting and with, perhaps, a little notebook at your side. Most of the book’s characters are members of the Stockholm police force or of the country’s security organizations. They are numerous, and their names and official titles are nothing but trouble...

The Swedish security organization in place here is made up of a number of bodies: a central organization... a smaller “external group,’’ camouflaged as a management consulting firm established for the purpose of pursuing the most secret operations; a special “threat group,’’... and a further group, whose task is to spy on everyone else in the organization....

As I'll explain at a later date, my dance card for reading is pretty full right now, but I'm going to keep Persson's book on my waiting list.

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Rereading again

Awhile ago I had to look at my notes here to figure out whether I had already read the latest Arnaldur novel I'd started. (I hadn't.)

When I went to the library to return that book, I checked out a James Lee Burke novel (good recommendations and good memories). I'd only read two pages when I began to suspect I'd read it before. By page three I was sure. I read the back cover and was even more sure. It was Swan Peak. If I'd written about it, it was in the old newsletter. I couldn't find any record of my reactions online. I remembered it enough to decide not to re-read it.

It was Sunday. The library was closed. The closest open bookstore was 30+ miles away. Off I went.

I bought a couple birthday presents and four books for myself.

The first one I sat down to read when I got home was A Test of Wills by Charles Todd. Before long, I realized I'd read it before, too. I looked back on what I said about it a year ago. It was okay, except I felt cheated at the end.

I decided to read it again, in part because I remembered so little of the plot.

I read it. It was okay. I felt cheated at the end. (Red herrings are one thing, but magical resolutions are something totally different. And unwelcome to me.)

Did you read A Test of Wills? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

For me it's on to new and unread books.

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The NYT reviewer speaketh

Marilyn Stasio, writing in The New York Times really likes the final Wallander novel by Henning Mankell, but she's not so enthusiastic about Jacqueline Winspear's new Maisie Dobbs mystery.

She does recommend a second Michael Robertson mystery about the brothers Heath, who rent an office for their law firm on London's Baker Street in exchange for answering letters sent to Sherlock Holmes. The first book was The Baker Street Letters. The new one is The Brothers of Baker Street. Hmmm...

New Botswana mystery?

Gary Sankary asks, "Any word on when the next Detective Kubu book might come out?"

Great question and good reminder. He and I read A Carrion Death and liked it.

There was a hint about a new mystery featuring Detective Kubu in Botswana.

At the Detective Kubu web site, there are three books listed: A Carrion Death, The Second Death of Goodluck Tunubu, and Death of the Mantis. I guess we missed the invitation to the publication party.

I am planning to go to the library today. Anything else I should look for?

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More cold mystery from Iceland

So, when I returned books to the library, I scanned the "new fiction" shelves as usual. Just in case.

What I found was an oversized paperback of Arnaldur's latest, "Reykjavík Murder Mystery," Hypothermia. (It's a British publication with all the extra vowels.) It was pretty good and the last half was better than the first half.

In fact, I read to about page 60 and then went online to search this blog. Things just seemed very familiar, and I wasn't sure I had hadn't read this book already. But, no, I hadn't read Hypothermia. The main character, the setting (Iceland), the prose, and the pacing all seemed very familiar. In fact, a couple of the "cold cases" in this book were mentioned in earlier books.

When things seem that familiar and the pace of the story telling is a slow march, I have trouble getting enthusiastic about reading. I'd read a chapter and put the book down. The next day, I'd read another chapter. However, things picked up in the last half of the book.

Arnaldur's main character, Erlendur, is off on his own in this story. Things are slow at the Rekjavík cop shop. Erlendur is doing paperwork on a suicide and taking a last look at a couple 30-year old cold cases left over from early in his career. He's motivated, in part, because the father of a young man who went missing without a trace back then is dying.

Of course things get complicated. Details of the suicide don't add up. A guy retires from a career in Denmark and comes home to Iceland. Guess who he used to know. Erlendur is still haunted by the death of his little brother in a blizzard that almost killed both of them. His adult daughter is pushing him and his ex-wife to sit down and talk to each other (something they haven't done for 20 years). There are hints of ghosts and words of mediums.

Nearly all of that is in the second half of the book. And that's worth reading. I don't know how well the second half would stand up without introduction, but I'd guess you could skim the first 120 pages.

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Now, there's the issue of counterparts. Dan Conrad noted that Charles Todd's Bess Crawford character (first created in 2009) is strikingly similar to Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs. The first Maisie Dobbs novel was published in 2003. Both women were nurses during World War I and both are independent women who get involved in solving mysteries in London after the war. I haven't gotten around to reading a Bess Crawford story yet, but here's another pair to draw to.

In 1991, Henning Mankell wrote the first Kurt Wallander novel. The Swedish detective has become incredibly well-known. The eleventh (and last) novel is about to come out. There have been television series produced in Sweden and Britain featuring Wallander. And there's a Swedish movie.

Wallander is a morose and phlegmatic man, whose wife left him and whose daughter worries him (in several senses of that verb). He's a passionate detective whose life is centered on finding the facts and explanations behind awful events. He lives in a neglected apartment and doesn't take care of himself.

Arnaldur's Erlandur first showed up in 1997. He's a morose detective, haunted by his past and anxious to explain tragedies and atrocities he confronts as an Icelandic detective. He abandonded his wife and two children long ago and has no clue about finding closure with those people. He lives in a neglected apartment and doesn't take very good care of himself. Books about Erlandur have been published in 26 countries, but none have been made in to television shows or movies. And Erlandur's putative apartment building is not a tourist destination like Kurt Wallander's.

Oh, and Arnaldur is Icelandic and doesn't use a family name. In the UK and the US, his books list him as Arnaldur Indriðason. I guess you can't be an author in the English-speaking world with only one name unless you were a 19th century short story writer or you've established yourself as a performer.

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• Northern exposure, an interview with Arnaldur by The Guardian's Nicholas Wroe.
  
• Jane Jakeman's review at The Independent
  
• Maxine Clarke's review at Euro Crime
  
• A review at Mysteries in Paradise
  

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Wait for it

Henning Mankell: the last Wallander

Forget the 40 plays, the Gaza flotilla arrest and the good work in Africa, what Henning Mankell is really famous for is the anguished detective he created 22 years ago. Now, with the final Wallander novel published this week, he tells Jon Henley why he is happy to say farewell

That's it then; the end. Twenty-two years after his first appearance and more than a decade since the one everybody - even his creator - had assumed would be his last, Inspector Kurt Wallander is working his last case.

The lugubrious, all too human but ultimately decent Swedish cop with the never-ending health problems and the terrible family life has sold 30m books in 45 different languages. This will be a sad day for a lot of people.

But not, on balance, for Henning Mankell. "Hand on heart," he says, "I thought I'd written his last adventure a long time ago. I don't even particularly like the man. We have certain things in common: we enjoy the same kind of music, we have a similarly conscientious approach to work. We wouldn't be enemies if we knew each other, but he wouldn't be a close friend. He's not someone I'd invite to dinner."...

"When you reach your 60s, you realise certain things," he says. "First, that you've lived well over half your life. Second, that you've pretty much made all your really big decisions; people very rarely change direction after that. And that leads you to look back. It's quite a . . . scary moment. So I asked: am I afraid of anything? I'm not afraid of dying. Nor of pain; we can control most pain these days. But there is one thing I'm scared of."

The thing Mankell is scared of is the reason this is Wallander's last case, so obviously I'm not going to tell you what it is. But thinking about that, and about the whole business of looking back on a life, and the idea of Wallander realising how all along he had been so resolutely non-political, then wondering what might happen if you confronted him with perhaps the biggest political scandal in Sweden's postwar history – thinking about all those things, Mankell says, "I began to think I really might have a story for Wallander. One last one."...

Crime writing, he came to realise, was not – as everyone had always told him – a literary genre that was invented by Poe or Hammett or even by Shakespeare. "It was around in classical drama," he says. "Even then, we were holding up a mirror to crime to observe society. Look at Medea: a woman murders her kids because she's jealous of her husband. If that's not a crime story, I don't know what is. And if the ancient Greeks had had a police force, you can be damn sure a detective inspector would have had a part in Medea. Society and its contradictions become clear when you write about crime."

Wallander took off almost instantly in Scandinavia, and nearly as fast in continental Europe. Britain, after a slower start, is catching up, carried on a wave of Scandi-crime enthusiasm that also features the likes of Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbø and Detective Sarah Lund. Wallander, though, retains a special appeal. What is it?

Partly, Mankell reckons, that he has never instrumentalised the detective. "Everything has always started from a big question, not from within Wallander," he says. "I did sometimes use him, of course. But I never held him between my fingers and looked at him and said: So, what can I find out with you today? I'd written three novels with him before I realised this was . . . like a cello, that I could play."

It's also important that Wallander is real. "No one could imagine James Bond stopping to inject himself with insulin," Mankell says. "That's because James Bond isn't real. So it's important that Wallander has diabetes, he's ill, his ideas progress, he has relationship problems. He changes, like we all do." It helps, too, that he thinks: "It's challenging to have him enter a room and think for 10 pages. But that's what I'm interested in – how he reads facts, traces, situations. Running around and shooting people is easy. And it isn't normal. Normally you solve problems by thinking."...

But now Wallander has reached the end of his road. Would Mankell, prolific and hugely successful for over 40 years, be happy for the rumpled detective to be his greatest legacy? He thinks. "I believe," he says, "the most important thing you do in your life, you may not even know what it is. It may be that one day you sat down on a bench to comfort someone who is crying. That could be the most important thing you ever do. So no, I would like to be thought of as a good, and quite generous man, who tried to make life a little better for others through what he did. And the things he wrote."...

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Whew!

After slogging through the muck of the rough draft of Mark Twain's autobiography and then working, soporifically, through David Brin's universe of multiple sentients, I was worried I'd never get back to really enthusiastic reading. During the fortnights with Twain's book, I avoided reading. I did crossword puzzles. I played solitaire. I watched TV. I mindlessly surfed the web. I didn't want to go back to that book. During the fortnight with Brin, I kept falling asleep. I was on airplanes and I did come down with a blue ribbon of a head cold, but nonetheless, I kept falling asleep with the book in my hands.

Before I left for California, I not only checked out a book from the library, I also bought one from the best seller rack. Usually, reading a couple books in a week would be no big deal -- even when around little granddaughters. But I never got J. A. Jance's Trial by Fire out of the backpack during the trip.

Yesterday, after writing about my reading experiences with Twain and Brin, I got the book out and began reading.

Yipee! I can still read enthusiastically.

I know, it's mindless eye candy. Jance is an entertainer. She creates identifiable characters. She writes realistic dialogue so the characters talk to each other. Her characters aren't terribly deep, but the main ones were parts of earlier books, so there's background. They react in understandable ways within the realm of what's expected of people. She tells stories that are paced well. All these things are distinct contrasts to the books I most recently read.

I was half way through the book before I put it down last night. This afternoon I finished it. The good guys won again, with some suffering. The bad guys got their due. The scene was set for another story about some of the same characters. I enjoyed the experience. Just like I've enjoyed most of the other Jance books I've read. (She's written 40 so far -- a regular Mickey Spilllane. I don't know how many I've read.)

Trial by Fire considers the ways in which people react to fortune, good and bad. It's not profound, but it's got half a dozen telling anecdotes to relate. If I really wanted to think about it, I could ponder human nature, personality, and fate. But I only got as far as agreeing with the protagonist that I'm damn lucky and very grateful for it. Not everybody is as lucky and some who are aren't grateful. "So it goes," to quote another of my favorite authors.

Trial by Fire is an "Ali Reynolds Mystery." It's good entertainment. Try it out. Or try out something else by Jance. All the ones I've read have been worth the time I spent with them.

Or write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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Not just in Botswana

If you search for Bess Crawford or Maisie Dobbs on this blog, you'll find recommendations for books about post-World War I women who were private detectives. You won't find a review of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency because I only listened to an audio version of the series' first book. But women as private detectives does seem to be a theme (or a meme).

Be aware that this theme is not made up of whole cloth. Here's a 1911 ad from Chicago (posted at BoingBoing by Scott Edelman):

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Pioneers? Us?

My blogger friend Sank made of list of his 10 best for 2010. He recommended Death Benefits by Thomas Perry. It was a book I liked. Sank also like the Nick Adams stories by Hemingway and Ken Follett's World Without End. I like things those authors have written, too.

He recommended Sundiver by David Brin. He liked the themes of rebellion and adaptability and acceptance.

When I recently flew to California, I took along the Northfield Library's copy of Sundiver.

I tried reading it on the flight to Denver, during my layover there, and on the flight to Oakland. So many characters, such confusion, so few events. I got some good naps on those flights.

While not playing with granddaughters in California, I tried reading the book before sleep. It did put me to sleep.

After I got home, I struggled to read the rest of the book. Somewhere around page 150 of a 340-page book some things began happening. By then I'd skimmed enough to be confused and unable to distinguish one character from another, except for a couple. I had trouble making sense of descriptions of settings and events. Besides, I no longer cared about any of the characters -- even the protagonist.

Interesting ideas, yes. Well written, no. Interesting technologies, yes. Enthralling plot, no.

Of course, that's just one guy's opinions. A guy who got suckered by a century-old dead guy.

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• Tomorrow Happens, David Brin's website
• Eoghann Irving's review of Sundiver in Solar Flare
• Reviews at BookLore
• Aristeidis' review at Fantasy Report Universe

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Sucker!

It was more than 50 years ago when I first read the story about Tom Sawyer and the fence Aunt Polly tried to make him paint. My reaction then, and when I read Tom Sawyer to young David a few years ago, was that Hannibal, Missouri must have been full of dumb, gullible, backwoods boobs.

Then Mark Twain, 100 years dead, proved me to be a dumb, gullible, backwoods boob, too. He sold me a copy of his so-called autobiography.

I was excited to read Twain's autobiography, and he sold it well. I bought a copy during the week of its release. "Don't publish this until I've been dead for 100 years," he said. The purpose was to allow him to say what he really thought without earning the enmity of the people he wrote about.

Well, old guy, nobody cares about or even knows most of the people you wrote about. Even your good buddy General/President Grant is pretty much forgotten, except as a notorious drunk.

Twain might have begun doing an autobiography. Some of the opening chapters are about his family and the childhood he heard about, but was too young to remember. He quickly became bored with that. A few years later, he started again. The second time, he decided to write about what he was interested in and change topics whenever his interests change. Sometimes his interests waned in the middle of a story. Okay, most of the stories weren't interesting to start with.

Every once in awhile, Twain told a good one. In that way he resembled my blogger friend Sank. Twain would tell an amusing anecdote with some insightful commentary. Sank does it more often than Twain did. Those moments were why I kept reading (actually skimming). I kept at that skimming for over a month. Toward the end of the book, Twain goes on quite awhile about his daughter Susy, who died at age 24. It was touching and the man's pain was palpable. The book is 736 pages. Well, there are 276 pages of notes and index, but the few gems don't make the other 460 pages worth the effort. Twain needed an editor.

Oh, but there was a whole team of editors. Editors from the University of California. Instead of editing, they collected every little word Twain wrote with the note "autobiography" appended to it and put them all in this book. Well not all. They promise more volumes. Oh, goody.

I find myself in agreement with Garrison Keillor. He reviewed this book for the New York Times. If you want a more complete or informed consideration, read it. Skip the book.

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• Wikipedia on the autobiography
• The Autobiography of Mark Twain – a review by Tim Adams in The Guardian.
• Mark Twain's Amazing Embargo, a review by Craig Fehrman at Slate.com

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Usually, I put a link here so you can easily buy a copy of the book. No link this time. Go the library, check out a collection of Twain's short stories and read those.

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A Charles Tood novel and a Maisie Dobbs alert

Dan Conrad wrote from Minneapolis:

I get these "Author Alerts" from the Hennepin County Library when they order books from authors I've specified. This morning I got one announcing the purchase of Lesson in Secrets : A Maisie Dobbs Novel, by Jacqueline Winspear -- so I can pass it on to you and to get the Northfield Libray cracking--if they haven't already ordered it.

On that note, I just finished An Impartial Witness, the second Bess Crawford novel by Charles Todd. It is very nearly as interesting as the first in the series, Duty to the Dead. Of course Bess Crawford is a shameless rip-off of Maisie Dobbs -- but the novels have, I think, their own merits nonetheless: less psychological depth and angst and a bit more sleuthing and more of a "how the hell is she gonna get out of this one" climax.

Thanks for writing, Dan. I'm still hung up on Mark Twain's autobiography and trying (like the despot in Egypt) to find a graceful way out. I skim pages of pitiful prose and then, every once in awhile, run into a remarkable bit (like Twain's elegy to his daughter Susy, who died unexpectedly at age 24 while Twain was in England).

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An alternate list of the best of 2010

I'm mired in Mark Twain's sort of autobiography. I'm only about half way through and the wonderfulnesses are random and few and far between. If you want a preview of my thoughts (that I'll put together when I've finished the book or quit trying to read it) look at Garrison Keillor's review in the New York Times. In the meantime, here's a great list of the best of 2010. (I recommended one of the books on his list, and one of the 2010 books I liked was one he wrote about -- Gary writes about a lot more than what he reads, and his blog, Old and in the Way is worth reading on a regular basis.)

Okay, we're recommending each other, but Gary Sankary's list of his best reading of 2010 is worth looking at.

Best of 2010- Written Word

That time of year for Sank to start thinking about the best of 2010. Why? Why not. Oh, and as you’ll figure out pretty damned fast, it’s not books that came out in 2010, it’s books I read in 2010, and that matters. In this space anyway.

As many of you know, I’m a serious media hound. I consume a boatload of music, video and books. Well, I think it’s a boatload. When it comes to music it certainly is. When it comes to books, Mrs S kicks my butt, but I’m trying to get better and spend more time reading.

It’s the right thing to do.

I even stopped driving into the office this year so I could ride the bus and, yes, enjoy even more time for reading.

So dear readers, here it is. Sank’s BEST OF 2010. First edition- the written word...

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Lots of reviews

The New York Times is going to publish its list of 100 notable books for 2010. You can get a head start on the list here. Each book on the list includes a link to a review from the NYT Book Review. One of them I've already recommended. The list is alphabetical.

100 Notable Books of 2010

FICTION & POETRY

• AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE. By David Goodwillie...
  
  
• ANGELOLOGY. By Danielle Trussoni...
  

and on and on...
Now, go out there and READ!

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Singing not whistling

When I saw the name Ivan Doig among the new books at the Northfield library, I had good memories of a couple of his books. When I looked them up, it turns out I've read four of his books in the last 3 years. When I checked out Work Song, I had no idea exactly what I was getting into, because while Doig's books tend to be historical fiction, they range widely in that pasture.

It turns out that Work Song is a sequel to the best of the books I read, The Whistling Season.

And, like The Whistling Season, this book is just a story about a few people. It's set in Butte, Montana just after World War I. It turns out that Butte in 1919 was a multi-ethnic city of 100,000. Copper mining was just beginning to wind down. The post-war red scare was in full swing as was union activity. The Golden Age of paternalistic mega-corporations was just past its prime.

Into this scene, the University of Chicago scholar, gambling huckster, wood splitter, and school master from the earlier book, Morris Morgan, appears. He says without offering any details that he spent the decade between the two stories in Tasmania. He's unclear about what drew him back to Montana. The Chicago gamblers, who chased him to the frontier, remember him, and he's promised not to go near the woman with whom he ran from Chicago.

Whatever plans he had are thwarted when the railroad loses his trunk and he arrives in Butte with a stachel of clothes and necessaries. He ends up, luckily for a classically educated big city guy, with a job in the Butte Public Library (he was found reading Caeser in Latin by the classically inclined head librarian). The story revolves around Morris, the landlady of his boarding house, two of his fellow boarders, one of his former students (who is teaching in Butte) and her fiance (a miners' union leader) and the suspicious corporate enforcers trying to identify Wobblies (see IWW).

Like The Whistling Season, this book is about the characters. Unfortunately, the characters in Work Song aren't as well-drawn as the ones I remember from The Whistling Season. But, it has been a bit over two years since I read it. There's a bit of suspense and adventure, but no big events. The times in which the book is set deserved a couple big events. But they're not in the story. The time and place are not evoked as vibrantly as Davis and Winspear drew ancient Rome and 1930s London. But it was a pleasure to read about fairly normal life. No murders. No huge improbabilities. Just some colorful characters bumbling through life like most of us do.

I recommend reading The Whistling Season and Work Song as a pair. Then, I recommend choosing some others of Doig's books and trying them out. Have you read Work Song? Have you read other books by Ivan Doig? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted to them.

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• Ivan Doig's web site
  
• Jonathan Yardley's review in The Washington Post
  
• Tim Rutten's review in The Los Angeles Times
  
• Joanna Hershon's review in The New York Times

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I've gotta stop reading like this

The last time I was at the Northfield library, I picked up a Lindsey Davis [right] mystery, Scandal Takes a Holiday. Over the past few years, I've read several of Davis' mysteries set in the ancient Roman empire and starring Marcus Didius Falco, "private investigator." I've enjoyed them.

Like Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs mysteries, Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mysteries, Tony Hillerman's mysteries, and... Well, like lots of mysteries, the setting in Davis' stories is an important as the characters and the plot. The settings are often one of my motives for reading a book.

Unlike the Maisie Dobbs mystery I read recently, I wasn't drawn into ancient Rome the way I was drawn into 1930's London. Davis does an incredible job of describing the place -- even down to its aromas. Maybe I was tired of reading about the buildings, meals, and smells of ancient Rome. This book seemed to be filled with too many of them.

There were lots of interactions among a large cast of characters, but they didn't hold my attention either. Not even the gangs of evil doers kept me interested. I was curious enough to read nearly every paragraph, but it wasn't easy to do.

When I read The Mapping of Love and Death a month or so ago, I could hardly wait to find time to read more. While reading Scandal Takes a Holiday, I kept looking for excuses to do something other than read. I even watched Castle.

I really liked some of the other Marcus Didius Falco stories. The one set in Londinium and another set on the German frontier were memorable. This one, not so much. I've often discovered that my reactions have more to do with me than with the book. Your results may vary.

So, if you've read Scandal Takes a Holiday or another of Lindsey Davis' books, tell us how you reacted.

Write and tell this little bit of the world.

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• Lindsey Davis web site
  
• Lindsey Davis' ten favorite books about ancient Rome
  
• A review of Scandal Takes a Holiday at Shots
  
• A review at Who Dunnit

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Another book I didn't really read

Masterpiece Mystery recently featured three stories featuring Kurt Wallander, the repressed and obsessive Swedish detective created by Henning Mankell. The Wallander mysteries are intriguing and Wallander as a character is too. I keep expecting him to break out and become a real person. Maybe I shouldn't.

I picked up Depths by Mankell at the Northfield library. I'd forgotten that Mankell has written things besides the Wallander mysteries. I didn't look too closely at the book. I should have.

The back of the book jacket might have given me a hint. There's a quote from a Swedish newspaper review: "Mankell's most ambitious literary work so far." For me, that kind of response is a warning.

Depths is not a mystery and Wallander is not a character.

It's the tale of a troubled and obsessive Swedish naval officer set in 1914 as a world war is about to begin. I can't critique much about this book, because I only read about a third of it. It's constructed with little chapters of one to a dozen paragraphs each. The book jacket biography says Mankell has written many plays. The tiny chapters are like tiny scenes from a movie. Or maybe they're like individual frames in one of those antique things called films. Each of those frames is a still picture. When you run them through a projector, you get the simulation of movement.

Practically nothing happens in most of the scenes in Depths. I kept reading expecting the scenes to add up to something. I don't understand the arithmetic of the book. Even when it seemed that something had happened, I couldn't understand what was going on. (Reminded me of calculus in fact.)

I got tired of the main character rowing off into the fog to stalk a woman who lived a solitary life on an island off the Swedish coast. She was as as helpless and hopeless as he was, and nothing made much sense. Maybe if I was Swedish and not American I'd understand more. (Depths was a best seller in Sweden.) Maybe if I could better recognize my own helplessnesses. It's really not worth the effort for me. I think it should have been a short story (or as Paul Binding suggested in his review - link below - a tragic folk ballad).

After struggling through about a third of the book (maybe only a quarter), I skipped to the end and read the last couple scenes. Evidently things had happened and there was an ending with cosmic justice (I guess). But if it took 400 pages to get there, I'm glad I didn't read all those pages to find out. Next time I'll make sure I'm checking out one of the Wallander books.

Have you read any of Mankell's books? Have you read Depths? How have you responded? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• Lucy Ellmann's overly-long and spot on review of Depths in the New York Times
  
• Ian Thompson's review in the Guardian (UK)
  
• Paul Binding's review in The Independent (UK)
  
• Myra Junyk's review from Curled Up

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First romance, now fantasy

Taking Bird Loomis' advice, I picked up a book by Thomas Perry. And then another and another. I liked them. One of the things I liked was that the characters were new to me in each book. There are times when it's a treat to follow characters through several novels. (See Tony Hillerman, Dana Stabenow, and Jacqueline Winspear.) But the novelty in Perry's books was refreshing.

I did notice in the dust jacket bios, that Perry was identified as the author of the Jane Whitefield novels. I was curious enough to look for one the last time I was in the Northfield library (celebrating the centennial of its Carnegie building). I picked out the oldest Jane Whitefield novel I could find and checked out Dance for the Dead, published in '96.

The book starts out like gangbusters. The first two chapters are great short stories. I was ready to read a series of short stories with little ligaments holding them together into a "novel." Turns out that the rest of the book is woven around those stories to create the novel. There are other short stories, but by the time I got involved in the book, I wasn't looking for them anymore.

This novel, like most of the other Perry novels, is a fantasy. Jane Whitefield is a magician, a superwoman, and smarter than any of the other bears. She's a Seneca woman from western New York who helps people disappear when they need to hide from bad people. It's a dangerous occupation, but she's the expert. Like Sherlock Holmes, she has people who help her in small, but essential ways. She always has enough money and another identity with documentation (even ones she can share with her clients). She always knows people she can go to. They're always home. She always wins the fights. She always is the survivor. No villain that Perry can invent can outwit her for long. She's heartless with the bad guys and motherly with victims. She probably does everything except shepherd people into heaven. The ones she sees out of this world are obviously going elsewhere.

I had to put on hold my desires for believability. There's practically nothing believable in the book. The action scenes are well done and suspenseful, as long as you forget that Jane Whitefield is coming out on top a the end. The plot is simple, but the telling is complex. That may be why I liked reading it.

Have you rad Dance for the Dead? Have you read any of the other Jane Whitefield novels? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• Publisher's web site for Thomas Perry's books
  
• An Australian bookworm's thoughts on the Jane Whitefield series of novels
  
• Robert Birnbaum's interview with Thomas Perry at identitytheory.com

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Romance

I've read several of Jacqueline Winspear's novels and really liked the atmosphere she creates. The novels are set in London during the early 1930s with World War I and the depression important for context. Well, not the depression so much, but the post-war experience of Winspear's main character, Maisie Dobbs, is vital. There are regular references to the depression, but Dobbs and her assistant are mostly observers. Dobbs is a private investigator and people wealthy enough to hire her haven't been hurt by the economic disaster very much. So, Maisy Dobbs and Billy Beale are gainfully employed.

It's Winspear's use of language and attention to detail that create the atmosphere of the 1930s. I can't swear that it's the 1930s atmosphere she creates, but it's definitely not a late 20th or early 21st century atmosphere. Words, phrases, and bits of material culture all contribute to a sense of another time. A romantic re-imagining of a time long past. (Maisie would have been about the same age as my grandparents.)

One of the reasons I have kept coming back to read more of Winspear's books is that they haven't strayed into romance novel territory. The stories focus on a mystery and the steps Maisie and Billy take to uncover the hidden facts. Maisie is a young, single woman and you might expect romance to be in the cards. But Winspear has created a woman who was a front-line nurse in France during World War I. She returned with traumatic stresses. The young doctor she loved and served with also came back from the war, but he was damaged much more severely. A head injury left him an invalid in a hospital for a dozen years after the war. Romance was on hold for Maisie.

But, a book or so ago, the injured doctor died. Maisie had a date or two and a serious suitor whom she turned down. In this book, The Mapping of Love and Death, romance blossoms.

But the romance is not just about Maisie and a new suitor or idealized memories of another time. Maisie is trying to find out what happened to a young American, a volunteer in the British forces during the war who went missing. In 1932, his body was found in France and, with it, a packet of love letters from an unnamed British nurse. The American parents want to identify the woman and learn more about their son's last days. (Of course it's more complicated than that because the post-mortem on the soldier's skeleton suggests he was murdered.) But there's the soldier's romance from 1915. There's a romantic image of a beautiful valley in California that the soldier visited before the war. There's an obvious romance still going on between the grieving American parents. There's are filial relationships between Maisie and her father and between Maisie and her dying mentor. And more. There is romance of one kind or another throughout the book. So, when Maisie is approached by a new suitor and she accepts his suit, it's not out of place. It does make me wonder how Maisie will continue her career if she marries into a proper upper-class family in London of the mid-1930s. Charity work, maybe. But investigative work for paying clients? I think not. The post-war, depression years were ones of great opportunity for women in Britain, but there were some things that proper women just didn't do.

In any case, in spite of all the romance and romance novel-like attributes in this book, I enjoyed it. It was a little day dream away from the fall of 2010 to an idealized time in early 20th century London. The characters are attractive. The story telling is well done and sometimes compelling. The most unbelievable thing is that Maisie's 1930 MG doesn't break down -- ever. The reputation those cars had doesn't support such reliability. Ah, escapism. Sometimes it's just the thing.

Have you escaped into a romantic past? How'd it go for you? Have you escaped into Jacqueline Winspear's London of 75+ years ago? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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Jacqueline Winspear's web site
Jacqueline Winspear talks about the book

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Perry's Death Benefits

Gary Sankary, wrote about Death Benefits by Thomas Perry. It's one I'd written about previously: More from a fox of an author.