Once again, Maisie Dobbs

The last couple times I read a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear, I almost despaired of reading another really good one. One of the books I read was more a romance novel than a mystery. The other, unexpectedly, neglected lots of detail and reality. It's been a year, and I was tempted by nostalgia and picked up Elegy for Eddie from the new books shelf at the library.

I'm glad I did.

There is a noticeable lack of historical detail in this new book compared to the earlier ones. Maybe that's because the author has moved from London to Los Angeles. But, it might just seem that way because the coin-operated gas fire places and 1930's fashions are no longer such novelties to me. However, I complained about the reliability of Maisie Dobbs' 1930 MG. The reputation of those cars is/was that they practically required a ride-along mechanic or a driver skilled in small repairs. But until this book, Maisie never experienced a break down. This time the car broke down while parked behind the city home of her lover, who had to call in a mechanic to get it running again.

I really was unhappy with the romance of The Mapping of Love and Death. Well, this time Maisie's romantic relationship is still around, but Maisie is obviously doing some inner work to come to terms with her desires for independence, her desires for the man in her life, and the contradictions between her working class background and her elevation to high society. It wasn't just her smarts and skills, but the generosity of her former employer and her late mentor that brought her wealth and position. Part of the work Maisie has to do is figure out how to best use her good fortune to help people around her without becoming a benevolent dictator.

And the story around which this is told fits with Maisie's inner struggles. Working class people and newly rich industrialists are involved. A young man, Eddie, who we might now call an autistic savant dies in what appears to be an industrial accident. However, there are suspicions that the accident might have been part of the factory owner's struggle to keep unions out of his plant. Eddie had a way with horses and the costermoners (fruit and vegetable sellers who made the rounds of London neighborhoods) regularly called on him to deal with sickly and unruly horses. Since Maisie's dad was once a constermonger, a local group calls on Maisie to sort out the questions surrounding Eddie's death.

Ah, but the resistance to unionization might not be the real intrigue. Eddie, the savant, was also able to sketch things in great detail from seemingly casual glances. (See the story about Stephen Wiltshire.) What did Eddie see? And was all this connected to the death of a crusading journalist who bought Eddie drinks once in awhile? And why did the bully who was suspected in Eddie's death also kill himself? Or did he? And was the reporter's death an accident?

I thought it was a well-written, complex mystery. I also enjoyed the fact that Maisie Dobbs once again had an inner life that was interesting. In earlier books she struggled with PTSD from her years as a front line nurse in France. Now, she was working through more fortunate, but still difficult, changes in her life.

I'm glad I didn't let my disappointments of a couple earlier novels discourage me. If you're looking to begin reading about Maisie Dobbs, I do recommend starting with the earlier books. And you have my permission to skip the couple that preceeded Elegy for Eddie. (See the Wikipedia entry for Jacqueline Winspear to see the books and publications dates.)

Have you read Elegy for Eddie or another of Winspear's books? How did you react?

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

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• The author's web site
• Anonymous review at How Mysterious!
• Lesa's review at Lesa's Book Critiques

Jacqueline Winspear, speaks at Politics & Prose
Bookstore about Elegy for Eddie and writing

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Back to the Peak District

I picked up another of Stephen Booth's book at the Northfield Library. I'm glad I did.

The Dead Place is set, like Booth's other mysteries, in northern England's Peak District. Detective Constable Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry are, once again, primary characters. The highland moors and the frenemies status of the cops are important features in the plots and the progression of the stories.

Part of the Dark Peak District

Like the Navajo Nation in Tony Hillerman's masterful books, the northern, Dark Peak District is an overwhelming presence in Booth's stories. There are many isolated places and people, but there are many people around. That seems to me a necessity for a long series of books. Similarly, the people who live in the rural Peak District are "outsiders," like the Navajo. DC Cooper is a native and understands a lot about the locals and their culture, much like Navajo cops Leaphorn and Chee did on the rez.

I'll press the comparison a bit farther. Both Booth and Hillerman created interesting characters, plotted stories that held my interest, and told those stories well. Hillerman's stories were usually less complex than Booth's, and I liked them for that. Booth seems to revel in complicating stories and alternating between telling threads of them. I do like the way that Booth's telling brings all the disparate people and events together, but getting there is a bit frustrating at times.

(All this about how Booth's writing reminds me of Hillerman is also reminding me of how much I miss those novels about the people of the Navajo Nation. I might have to do some re-reading.)

Ah, but The Dead Place. DC Cooper and DS Fry begin by searching for a crime after a body is discovered in the moors. But, the person discovered died of natural causes and was supposedly cremated by a local funeral director. Then there are anonymous letters and phone calls hinting at other bodies and predicting murders. There are Booth's usual diversions and the development of the working relationship between the two main cops. The book kept me reading throughout, even when we hosted a couple of wonderful toddlers and their mother from California for a week. Maybe it was the distraction of the little ones, maybe it was the hangover from the awfulness of the previous book, or any number of other things, but I didn't think The Dead Place was as good as the earlier books by Booth that I'd read. But, it was enjoyable. I will look for another when I return to the library.

Have you read The Dead Place or another of Booth's mysteries? What did you think?

Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted.

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• The authlor's web site
• Karen's review at AustCrimeFiction
• Sleepy's review at Sleepy's Book Talk

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Pretty damn stupid

If you asked me about Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, I'd tell you it is pretty damn stupid.

If you asked my why I read most of it, I'd tell you I am pretty damn stupid.

The trouble is that I suspect the authors would be delighted with that description of the book and me.

Take two guys. One of whom spent years writing humorous newspaper columns. That's a way of saying he was two (or three) clicks short of funny. (That was my stupid attempt at being as humorous as Dave Barry.) The other guy wrote for Saturday Night Live, Gary Shandling's Show, Monk, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. (That's my second attempt as being as humorous as Dave Barry.)

Don't get it? Neither do I. And it makes more sense than the book.

I think what happened is that these two guys had too much to drink one night and challenged each other to collaborating on a book. Somebody wrote the first chapter with a humorous cliff hanger ending and passed it to the other guy. The other guy wrote a second chapter building on the humorousness of the first and ended it with a humorous cliff hanger, and passed it back to the first guy for the next chapter. Both of them were intent on stumping the other with their chapter non-endings and stupid developments.

Much of the humorousness reminded me of absurd things my 6th-grade buddy and I would make up after reading a new issue of Mad Magazine (25¢ Cheap). Pretty damn stupid.

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Television and published fiction, 2

The other TV series that became a favorite in our household in the past couple years was Bones. The series was created by Hart Hanson and based very loosley on a character created by Kathy Reichs.

Reichs is a forensic anthropologist who works in North Carolina and Canada. When she's not identifying bodies and causes of death, she writes mystery/adventure novels featuring a forensic anthropologist named Temperance (Tempe) Brennan. Brennan, coincidently, works in North Carolina and Canada. Just to complete the circle (as is done on Castle), the Brennan character on television writes mystery/adventure novels in her spare time featuring a forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs.

 Convoluted enough?

Emily Deschanel (TV's Temperance Brennan) and Kathy Reichs

We sort of discovered Bones a couple years ago, and liked it well enough that we have now used our Netflix subscription to watch all the seasons we missed. That led me to Déja Dead, Kathy Reichs' first novel. Mostly I was curious about the translation from printed pages to episodic television.

1. Any similarites between Reichs' main character and the title character of Hart's TV series (except for the name and occupation) is purely coincidental. I find the television character -- annoying know-it-all, Asperger-like robot, and all -- much more interesting.
2. The television series is better written.
3. There is a virtual absence of humor in Reichs' book. The humor on the tube is one of the big attractions for me.
4. Reichs' character is a loner. She's always assuming responsibilities that are not hers and venturing out on her own to do things she believes no one else can or will do. As a result, she's frequently in danger and in trouble with her bosses and colleagues. Since I never developed any sympathies with the character, I keep thinking about how stupid she was. (She reminds me of Sara Paretsky's and Sue Grafton's heroes. I often thought they were pretty stupid too. That's the main reason I don't read those authors' books any more.)
5. The book is full of procedural detail that seem to come right out of textbooks used by physical anthropologists or medical examiners. (Hint: it's dull.)

So, now I've seen the origin of the television series. Hart Hanson must get nearly all the credit. Kathy Reichs is still involved as a technical advisor with the title of a producer.

I won't be going back to another of Reichs' books. Will you?

Have you read Déja Dead or another of Kathy Reichs' books? How did you react? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

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• The author's web site
• Colette Engel's review at bookreporter
• Dr. Amy Rogers' review at Science Thrillers
• Anonymous review at The Crime Scene

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Fiction and TV

I'm sort of embarrassed by how much TV I watch. It's a default activity even more common than trolling the Internet. One attraction is that it is so passive, although it's not as passive as it was when there were only half a dozen channels available. (I won't go on about remembering when two broadcasters in Minneapolis/St. Paul shared one channel. That was really ancient times, i.e. before 1955.)

The permanent residents of this house have become fans of a couple television series that remind us of the screwball comedies starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The "remind" is crucial because neither Bones nor Castle is a full-fledged screwball comedy, but they do feature couples, ambiguous relationships, and adequately snappy dialogue. Close enough for network TV.

Both also have links to novels. Temperance Brennan, the main character in Bones, is based on the protagonist of Kathy Reichs crime novels. And the Brennan character is a successful mystery writer, as well as an irritating polymath. Things are more complicated in Castle.

Andrew Marlowe

Andrew Marlowe is the creator and producer of Castle, the television series. One of the main characters in that series is Richard Castle, a writer of mystery and romance novels. But, if you look in a book store or at Amazon, you'll find that Hyperion has published four crime/mystery novels featuring the main characters of the television series, Kate Beckett, a New York City detective and Richard Castle, author. The televison series characters in those books are called Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook. And just to cement the illusion, actor Nathan Fillon, who plays Richard Castle on TV is pictured on the back cover as Richard Castle, the author of the Nikki Heat books.

I get seriously confused if I try to keep this all straight when watching television. It's worse when reading one of "Richard Castle's" books. But that's what I did. I read Naked Heat by "Richard Castle." (Online speculation about who actually writes these books is rampant. The best one I read suggests that creator Andrew Marlowe is the writer. He credits his wife in the acknowledgements as "co-conspirator." And Marlowe gets writing credit for 79 of 81 episodes.)

 Naked Heat reads like a book-length treatment of an episode of the series. There are the requisite snappy lines once in awhile. There are the murders, the suspects, the bad guys, and the red herrings. The relationship between Heat and Rook is not as ambiguous as the one between Beckett and Castle. The ambiguity is reduced in ways you might expect the Castle character to write it.

But, an episode of Castle lasts 43 minutes. The book is nearly 300 pages. Things move slowly in the book. Discussions among the detectives are much more interesting when they quickly take place on screen than when they drag out in print. Quick cuts between scenes on TV work better than blind transitions on the printed page. This plot might work well as an episode on TV. Maybe it has, because I haven't watched all 81 episodes.  

Naked Heat was entertaining if not engrossing. I don't think I'll go looking for the other "Richard Castle" books. I will probably watch new episodes on TV, although I expect there aren't many left. As the Castle-Beckett relationship becomes less ambiguous on the television screen, one element of the tension that holds things together (or apart, if you prefer) will disappear. And so will the television series.

 I'm sure I'll find something else to watch (if not read).

Have you read Naked Heat or another of "Richard Castle's" books?  

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

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Scott D. Parker's review on his blog.

The publisher's YouTube promo for Naked Heat

        

The television cast and writer at Comic Con 2010. 

       

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Unnatural forces

C. J. Box and friend

Our family book pusher visited again and dropped another book in my lap. It was C. J. Box's latest, Force of Nature. I have really enjoyed reading some of Box's books and others I have decided not to even begin. Old Charles James Box knows how to write adventure and action and the tension and fear that lead up to scenes of murder and mayhem. I've learned not to read them in the late evening, when I usually read. Even if the action is all on the pages and in my head, the adrenaline hits my bloodstream and keeps me awake.

Force of Nature is no exception, but it wasn't threatening enough to keep me from reading it in a few afternoons. The main characters are the usual cast: Wyoming game ranger Joe Pickett and his family and mysterious recluse Nate Romanowski. It's set in fictional Twelve Sleep county of northern Wyoming (probably near the real towns of Worland and Ten Sleep, about half way between Yellowstone National Park and the Black Hills of South Dakota). There are beautiful, rugged mountains, dry prairies, and small streams. There would be a lot for a game ranger to do, so I don't think a ranger would have time to mess around with things the local sheriff or the FBI would take charge of. Joe Pickett finds the time, especially when his friend Nate is involved. No wonder he's often in hot water with his penny-pinching Wyoming bosses.

Nate's up to his neck in this story. He's a former Army special forces guy who was involved in black ops. He deals with his PTSD by living off the grid and acting as a law unto himself. One of his former commanders is trying to cover up things that only Nate knew about and organizes a private "little" strike force to eliminate Nate (and use anything Nate cares about, like Joe Pickett and his family, to do it). Collateral damage is pretty extensive.

So, the "good" guy has to be paranoid and fend off every unexpected attack, warn friends to "get out of Dodge" until the heat is off, and not run out of ammunition. He does this ruthlessly and without regret. After all, he can't go to the authorities for help since they are the ones out to get him.

The story is well told. I'm glad I was reading during afternoons.

There are fewer of those pesky improbabilities than Box sometimes drops into his stories. There are more awful bloody scenes than suspenseful build up scenes, and I can skim the gory stuff more easily than I can skim the fear-inducing tension.

I liked reading this one. Box is a great story teller. The back story of Nate Romanowski is about what I expected it would be, but the capabilities of the "bad" guys' strike force stretch my imagination. (A couple times I thought of The Bourne Identity. It's the only one of those movies I've seen, and the action in Force of Nature reminded me of the chases and gun fights in that Bourne movie. That was also a reminder that the forces at work in this story are anything but forces of nature.)

What did you think of Force of Nature? Or of C. J. Box's other books? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted.

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• The author's web site
• Leslie Doran's review at The Denver Post
• An anonymous review at Petrona
• Luanne's review at A Bookworm's World

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Back to the moors

I was comfortable picking up another book by Stephen Booth at the Northfield Public Library. I checked it out at the same time I checked out Kate Atkinson's Emotionally Weird. I've had mixed experiences with Atkinson's books and Booth was, I thought, a sure thing.

Peak District National Park

I was right. Set in the highland moors of England's Peak District, like Booth's earlier books, the story is contained and limited. The Peak District National Park is an area of pasture land, farming, old mines, and mountains. It's lightly populated and carved into many valleys. Booth made me think of Appalachia when he described the place and the isolated people who live in those valleys. But the area is near major cities of Manchester and Sheffield and millions of visitors show up in good weather. The stories in Blind to the Bones are set in late fall/early winter, so there are few tourists to muck up the stories.

And there are stories. That's one of the things I like about Booth's books. There's a story about a university student, missing for two years, and her parents who stubbornly maintain that their daughter is merely missing and likely to walk in their door at any moment. Then there's the very recent murder of a local man who had been one of the missing girl's housemates. Oh, and there is the rash of burglaries at remote farms and ramshackle villages. And I can't neglect to mention the cult-like extended family, whose repertoire of ways to get along with outsiders is very limited.

The glue that ties all these things and Booth's other books together is the cast of the local constabulary. The main people are Detective Sergeant Diane Fry and Detective Ben Cooper. As usual they are engaged in an enigmatic power struggle while working "together." There's enough individual character development to keep me interested, but not so much as to engage my soap-opera early warning alarms.  

A Peak District mountain top

 Booth does a good job of telling the stories, describing the scenery, and maintaining the characters to keep me reading. His descriptions of the hills, mountains, moors, and pastures led me, while reading the book, to check out the area with Google Earth. What I saw online is what Booth describes. I even found the Street View photo of the entrance of an abandoned railway tunnel Booth refers to. Gradually (perhaps too gradually this time) he weaves the various stories together. The resolutions are a bit too neat and tidy by my lights, but there will be other mysteries to solve for these characters in my future.

I liked reading Blind to the Bones. I could get attached to this series of books and these characters in the way I got attached to Tony Hillerman's mysteries. I've only read four so far. According to his web site, there are twice that many waiting for me.

 Have you read Blind to the Bones or another of Stephen Booth's other books? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

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• The author's web site
• Andi Shechter's review at Reviewing the Evidence
• B. Morrison's review at her web site

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Secretly pleased

Tatiana de Rosnay's name appeared on my to-read list. I don't know how, but it was probably because somebody recommended her best seller, Sarah's Key. When we stopped at the Amery (WI) library on the way to Sidetrack, I didn't find Sarah's Key, but I did find de Rosnay's newer book, A Secret Kept.

I really liked reading this book.

de Rosnay grew up in the US and the UK (her degree from the University of East Anglia was in English literature) and lives in Paris. There's no translator listed in the book, so I assume that de Rosnay translated her French book, Boomerang, herself. The language is very American and very descriptive. In fact, her descriptions -- of people, emotions, clothing, rooms, houses, and Parisian neighborhoods are very suggestive. They often brought realistic images to my mind. In fact, de Rosnay's adeptness in describing relationships is part of what makes this novel work:

I see Pauline appear over her [his daughter's] shoulder. Her best friend since they were small. Except that Pauline now looks like a twenty-year-old. A minute ago she was a scraggy little thing. Now it is impossible not to notice her full bosom and womanly hips. I don't hug her they way I used to when she was a kid. In fact, I don't even kiss her on the cheek. We sort of wave at each other from a polite distance.

The story in the book is about family and family secrets. The narrator is a forty-something son of an old, rich Parisian family. His sister is important as are his children and some of their friends. But the story is really about a huge family secret involving the narrator's mother, who died 30 years before the setting of the story, and about the hard work required for a group of people to be family.

de Rosnay theatrically weaves the stories of past and present, of generations and places, of habits and family "rules" into a book I didn't want to put down and didn't want to end. Every character in the stories is respected by de Rosnay, even the ones I didn't think deserved it. Neither suffering nor happiness was denied characters. In the end, that made the book better. So did the fact that not every loose end was tied up and not every story was complete when the book ended. If this were a television soap opera, there would be many story lines to follow in the future.

The book jacket says that de Rosnay has written ten novels. Only two have been published in the USA. There are probably more novels to come to America. I will look for Sarah's Key and for future books with Tatiana de Rosnay's name on the covers.

Have you read A Secret Kept? Tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it by sending us a note.

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• The author's web site
• The author's Facebook page
• Kate Ayers review at Book Reporter
• Jocelyn McClurg's review at USA Today

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Comically weird

I am really lucky. If I'd read Kate Atkinson's first novel before reading her mysteries, I might never have had the great pleasure of meeting Jackson Brodie and getting involved in the messy realities of his fictional life. That first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

That book didn't win any awards from me. I couldn't get through it.

But I really enjoyed reading the four mysteries she wrote. And I enjoyed the BBC rendition of a couple of them. I enjoyed them so much, that I picked up her third book when I was last at the library. It is Emotionally Weird, A Comic Novel.

Okay, I'll give it the comic label. There are some funny bits. Not many, but some. While reading the first half of it, I was reminded of what I've heard about Seinfeld. You have to understand, I've seen bits of Seinfeld, but never a whole half hour's worth. I've chuckled at some bits, but not many. I've heard it said that it was a situation comedy about nothing. As a very casual observer, I'll buy that. And Emotionally Weird, A Comic Novel is also about nothing -- at least in the first half that I read.

The narrator's boy friend epitomizes the book for me. She said in an early chapter:

I shut the door and went back to bed and the warm, slack body of Bob with whom I lived in urban squalor in a festering tenement attic in Paton's Lane...

Bob, known by some as "Magic Bob,"... was in fact an unmagic Essex boy Ilford born and bred...

Like me, Bob was a student at Dundee University... He seldom handed in an essay and considered it a point of honour never to go to a lecture and instead lived the slow life of a nocturnal sloth, smoking dope, watching television and listening to Led Zeppelin...

Bob's sense of humour... had been developed the Goons and honed by The Monkees. Bob's screen hero was Mickey Dolenz...

Bob was an unreconstructed kind of person... he had a complete lack of interest in anything that involved a sustained attention span... He was prone to the usual obsessions and delusions of boys his age -- the Klingons, for example, were as real for Bob as the French or the Germans, more real certainly than, say, Luxemburgers...

In the first half of the book, Bob is easily the most distinct character. If you read the quote above, you got a good taste of Atkinson's humor. And, for me, the description of Bob could be a description of the book.

Now, I can't assert that with any assurance because I didn't read the whole book -- just the first half. By page 200, I was tired of reading about an unmagic group of people who lived slow lives of nocturnal sloths. As much as I appreciate some science fiction fantasy and the craziness of The Monkees, I would rather have watched a Seinfeld marathon than finish the book about nothing.

Any chance that you have read Emotionally Weird, A Comic Novel? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.

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Other reviews (there are distinct differences of opinion here)

• Stephanie Zacharek's review in the New York Times
• Steph's [an obvioulsly different Steph] review at Steph & Tony Investigate
• Greg Villepique's review at Salon.com
• Theresa's review at Shelf Love

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Living history

Forty-some years ago I had to do a quick study of a culture I'd never heard of: the Kalahari Bushman. That hunting and gathering culture was to be the "stand in" for prehistoric, stone age hunter-gatherers in a World Studies course I was to teach.

The ethnography of anthropologist Richard Lee and the teaching materials developed Malcolm Carr Collier and her team from the American Anthropological Society were wonderful. The Bushmen became the first unit of study for the course I taught for twenty years.

Over the years since then, the Bushman or San culture has come to my attention now and again as one of those quickly vanishing ways of life. Governments have tried to fence them in and get them to be farmers. Those plans were very difficult to fulfill since the people are independent and used to moving from place to place every few weeks and since the Kalahari is a great sandy desert.

Michael Stanley (Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) have used the Bushmen and their dying culture as a central feature in their latest Detective Kubu mystery, Death of the Mantis. Kubu, if you've forgotten, is a huge man with a huge appetite who, when he's not eating, is Assistant Superintendent of Detectives David (Kubu) Bengu in Botswana.

A number of suspicious deaths in the Kalahari bring Kubu into contact with a Bushman friend he'd gone to elementary school with. The deaths also cause Kubu to deal with a policeman who is convinced that Bushmen are amoral, lesser beings capable of any evil deed. Kubu, with an educated Bushman friend, sees himself above such prejudice.



As police procedures go, the big city cops in Botswana are as sophisticated and well-equipped as those in American cities. The small town cops, not so much. (Sound familiar?) With helicopters, GPS units, bullet proof vests, desert-ready four-wheel-drive Land Rovers, and satellite phones, they pursue the bad guys.

All the equipment doesn't keep them safe or guarantee they'll find the bad guys -- especially when there are at least a couple kinds of bad guys. But it all makes a very good story -- especially when mixed together with the desperation of people whose culture is dying before their eyes.

Once again, the Michael Stanley men have written an intriguing and entertaining story. Add to that the cultural insights offered by two South Africans with remarkable appreciation for the people and the landscapes of southern Africa. This is the third Detective Kubu novel. If you haven't read the others, Death of the Mantis is a good place to start, but you might want to begin witht the first book in the series, A Carrion Death.

 Have you read Death of the Mantis or another of Michael Stanley's books? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.

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• The publisher's web site
• Forty-sevem reviews and 116 ratings at Good Reads
• Beth's review at Murder by Type
• Karen's review at AustCrime

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What a waste

I should be taking notes about how books get to my "to read" list. Books achieve standing because a someone familiar recommends them, because I're read an approving review, or because I've enjoyed reading another book by an author.

There was this mysterious entry on the list: A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley. I don't know how it got on my list, but somehow my system failed me.

On the other hand, maybe it's good for me to read a book I don't like once in awhile as a contrast to books I like.

This novel is subtitled, "A Flavia de Luce Novel." Flavia de Luce is a precocious eleven-year-old who solves crimes. She's as obnoxious as the Sheldon Cooper ("I know everything.") character on television's The Big Bang Theory, but without comic double takes. She's as carelessly daring as [Sue Grafton's series heroine] but without a gun.

The setting is a run down country house in post-WWII rural Britain. A widower with three daughters whose most prominent characteristic seems to be his ability to write articles for a stamp collectors' magazine. Flavia is the youngest of the three daughters. The role of the older two seems to be confined to tormenting their younger sister.

There are clever thieves abroad in the countryside. A gypsy woman is murdered and her niece is attacked. Although the local police seem to be on scene and investigating, the pre-adolescent Flavia is the only one really able to identify suspects and locate clues.

Who reads this stuff? It's not Harry Potter fantasy. It's thin treacle poured over gruel. Literate eleven-year-olds aren't about to dive into the small type and dense text. Young readers aren't going to pick up this 400-page book about their little sister. Teenagers or young adults aren't going to spend time reading a book with no vampires or zombies. It's certainly not for adults like me. It's not a romance. The plot is inventive, but in my mind it's wasted on the characters and the setting. The writing is descriptive of both setting and action, but I never cared about either. Or the characters.

So why did I read it? That's a good question. If I'd bought it, I'd be sending it back to the author with a request for a refund. I read it because the weekend was rainy and windy. Television reception was awful and there really wasn't anything to watch. I'd finished two other books. I plowed on thoughtlessly. What a waste. I should have re-read the old Zane Grey that's on the shelf at the lake.

Do you have some thoughts about A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley? Write and tell this little bit of the world -- especially if you found reasons to like it. It is part of a series. Somebody must like them.

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• Nicki's review at Fyrefly's Book Blog
• Helen's review at She Reads Novels
• Swapna Krishna's review at S. Krishna's Books

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Damaged People (very damaged)

Dan Conrad mentioned that The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis was a compelling and well-written book.

Since he mentioned it, I added it to my to-read list and then, there it was, in the new book section of the library.

The book is set in Denmark and written by two Danes.

My paternal grandmother was Danish -- first generation born in the USA. I've always thought of Denmark as a mostly rural place with lots of small farms. Oh, there's Tivoli, wonderful pastries, open-faced sandwiches, Elsinore, the Louisiana Museum, Roskilde, the Little Mermaid, and lots of great domestic design. I've been there twice and those are some of the highlights of my visits. Those and the times I have been stopped on the streets of Copenhagen by tourists asking for directions.

I tend to overlook things like the Vikings -- merchants, seafarers, marauders, pillagers, invaders, and thieves. And that Norway for a long time was part of Denmark. And the World War II collaborators and the neo-Nazi Hells Angles motorcycle clubs and the anti-immigrant riots.

Denmark is a lot more complicated than my stereotypes. This book is full of more variety. Many varieties of damaged people. Somehow, damaged people aren't in my mental pictures of Denmark either. But, every character in the book is damaged -- some more damaged than others.

The main character is a nurse who is so damaged she can only function when she's ignoring her own family and rescuing someone else. She's the one who finds a three-year-old boy in a suitcase in a left luggage locker in Copenhagen's main train station. The boy is alive, but obviously damaged. The boy's mother (far away in Lithuania) is also damaged. Even the major evil people in the book are damaged.

It's a complicated story and a mystery-adventure, but it's not a police procedural. Most, but not all, of the characters do contact the police at appropriate times, but the police work goes on in the background. The stories include one about a mother trying desperately to find a kidnapped son, another about a rescuer trying to protect and learn the identity of a three-year-old who doesn't speak her language, and another about kidnappers trying to retrieve their hostage and get the ransom they've demanded. There are other stories and they do all come together at the end of the book.

This book almost wins a Heart of Gold award for improbabilities, but it's so well written and plotted that I didn't notice how large the stretches of reality were until I'd finished and begun reflecting on the book.

The book jacket says the authors' series has been translated into 9 languages. Series, eh? I did often feel that there were untold backstories and this book is probably not the first of the series.

This is one that kept me reading all through a rainy day at the lake. It's a bit frightening and suspenseful, but it is, as Dan said, well-written. I recommend it.

Anyone else read The Boy in the Suitcase? Or another in the series by Kaaberbøl and Friis? Write and tell us how you reacted to it (them).

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• Richard Lipez's review in The Washington Post


• An anonymous Australian's review at Reactions to Reading


• Sharon's review at The Mystery Librarian


• Michelle Wiener's review in the Chicago Sun-Times

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Reading Kate Atkinson at the lake

When last at the library, I picked up the "Jackson Brodie" mystery that I hadn't read yet. It was One Good Turn. It was actually the second of four books by Kate Atkinson, but I read them out of order. That's okay, they stand alone pretty well.

I had really liked the other three: Case Histories, When Will There Be Good News, and Started Early, Took My Dog. In addition, the BBC made a great mini-series of several stories from the books.

 Most of the stories in One Good Turn were not in the television series. That made reading it even more fun. If my memory is working, this book was as good as the first one and better than the last. There is also more humor, and some of the one-liners are very good.

I'd read about 50 pages when I remembered that Atkinson begins her books with lots of little episodes (not quite short stories) about lots of characters. The fact that I got that far into the book before getting confused about who was who means that I was paying better attention or Atkinson did a better job of distinguishing characters and events.

I read most of this while at the little cabin called Sidetrack on a tiny lake in northern Wisconsin. Between gardening, watching the eagles, feeding the hummingbirds, watching it rain a lot, and worrying about the severe thunderstorm warnings, I had time for reading (and napping). I even stayed up until midnight as I was trying to finish it. It also helped that the weather made TV reception ugly.

Jackson Brodie is still an interesting character. Atkinson still delves into her characters and does a great job of telling me what they're feeling and doing. And she still weaves a bunch of disparate events and people in a unified story by the end of the book.

The stories in this book take place in Edinburgh during its Fringe Festival. Jackson keeps running afowl of the local police and crime scenes. Oh, and he's being chased by a hit man working for a local Tom Petters-like crook. (Details about Tom Petters are available at Wikipedia for non-Minnesotans.) As a matter of fact it's that enforcer who is one of the things that links the novel's characters together.

 I didn't finish the book until I returned home, but I really liked reading it.

Have you read One Good Turn or other books by Atkinson? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought about it (them).

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• The author's web site
• Liesl Schillinger's review in The New York Times
• Justine Jordan's review in The Guardian (UK)
• Scott Simon's interview of Kate Atkinson on NPR

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Change (and not in coins)

When I stopped at the Amery (WI) Area Public Library on Friday, I had to get a new library card. Like so much of life, things were changing there. What hadn't changed was the friendly greeting I got from the librarian who has recognized me over and over again during my infrequent visits. I'm not sure she remembers my name the way Hubert Humphrey did the second time I met him, but she knows I'm one of the summer people.

I spent some time checking my e-mail and looking at the available books. What I found is one that Chip Hauss has been urging me to read for years: When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong. 

The author, a Chinese poet, has lived in the USA since 1989. He earned an M.A. and a PhD in comparative literature in the states. He's also written mystery fiction.

While When Red is Black is a police procedural set in Shanghai, the book is really about social, political, and economic change in China during the 1990s. The title gives that away if you're more aware than I was about the labels people were given during the Cultural Revolution. Of course, during that time, to be labeled "red" meant you were political hero. To be labeled "black" was the ultimate of political incorrectness. That designation led to humiliation, persecution, imprisonment, and death. In the 1990s, the labels persisted, but the meanings had switched. Heroes of the Cultural Revolution were obstacles to the achievements of the Four Modernizations and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (otherwise known as crony capitalism).

The main characters are a Chief Inspector and a Detective charged by their political boss with finding out who killed a dissident (Red) writer and avoiding any bad publicity for the Party and the state. The political boss, whom Chief Inspector Chen might someday succeed, is more interested in a problemless resolution than justice. Chen and Detective Yu have other priorities. In the meantime, the two honest, patriotic, and hardworking cops are tempted by the changes going on around them and confronted with the political changes they see.

Chief Inspector Chen gets a commission from a successful real estate developer with mob connections to translate a proposal for American investors. Detective Yu has a real apartment he'd been assigned to taken away by the bureaucrats at the last minute. Chen begins benefiting from his connection with cheap appliances and an alluring young "little secretary." Yu's wife completes her month-long accounting job in a week and contemplates ways of making money in the other three weeks. The bankrupt state enterprise that Chen's mother worked for suddenly finds money to pay for her hospital bills. And Chen comes into possession of a manuscript by a talented "black" author who died during the Cultural Revolution.

The problem with the book is that even for me, who is interested in the history, the changes, and the politics, the telling of the story plods on ever so slowly. Ironically (?) one of the books discussed in the story is frequently criticized for including too much detail and "inside baseball" trivia. Guess what? When Red is Black includes too much detail and trivia. It seemed to me that every character was given the chance to ruminate about his or her actions and then go on to act. It just took too long to tell the story, even with the considerations of change in China.

So, don't expect a rip-roaring adventure. Not only is there reflection and detail, there's also lots of poetry -- well, just lines of poetry most of the time, but the Chinese characters seem to have memorized hundreds of poems and regularly find appropriate circumstances for quoting old poetry. What should I have expected when the author is a poet?

If you're interested in a change of pace mystery or in China or in cultural/political change or in ways people deal with massive change and if you're patient, this book might be one you'll like.

When you've read it, you can write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong.

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• Virginia's review at Divine Caroline
• Zoltaire's review in the Seattle Post Intelligencer
• Maxim Jakubowski's review in The Guardian (UK)

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Dead woman talking

As usual, I approached the fiction section of the Northfield Public Library with my reading list in hand. The list is alphabetical by author, so I intentionally look at things that are not at the top or bottom. No sense favoring Sarah Andrews over Qiu Xiaolong.

What I came across first was Åsa Larsson's Until Thy Wrath Be Past. A cop and a prosecuting attorney in a remote place in northern Sweden are starring characters. They both have histories (some of it told in earlier books) and they're both interesting and attractive characters. The Swedish author is a former attorney, so I assume she knows what she's talking about when it comes to the law and order part of things and her references to Scandinavian mythology.

However, I'm not so sure about other things. The book opens with a woman narrating her own murder. Almost the next thing I recall is that the dead woman appears to the prosecutor in a dream, offering important information about the crime. Give me a break! Give me Sherlock Holmes!

Last time I read a book narrated by a dead person, it was pretty awful. It was a best seller for quite awhile, but I was not a fan. So, I was put off by the beginning of Larsson's book, but I kept reading.

I discover that I can skip the supernatural messages (that thankfully are in italics) and still follow the investigation and the characters. The story really revolves around an old woman and her middle aged sons. There are links to Swedish cooperation with occupying Nazis during World War II, a Steinbeck-like pair of brothers, and an extreme case of school yard bullying that didn't stop at the school yard fence.

Except for the unnecessary messages from beyond the grave, it's an integrated story that's well-told. You might even like the voice of the dead helping to narrate things. Oh, and one of the murderers is set up as a figure like the Biblical Job. Well, I can see how Larsson frames that, but I really thought that a key element of the story of Job was that his suffering was unearned. The suffering shlub in this story is anything but innocent.

Well, if I can ignore voice of a dead woman and resist insisting on a more accurate Biblical analogy, I liked reading the book. I'd like to suggest that an unintentional witness, unknown to either the criminals or the police would be a better vehicle for moving the story along or adding details than the ghostly whispers of a dead woman. A dead woman who is ushered off this earthly stage at the end of the book by the equally dead spirit of her grandmother.

So, have you read Until Thy Wrath Be Past? Did you like it? How did you react to the spirits? How did you react to the plot and the story telling? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted.

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• An unsigned review at Scandinavian Crime Fiction
• Another unsigned review at Reactions to Reading
• Barry Forshaw's review of Until Thy Wrath Be Past and The Hidden Child in The Independent

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Psychotherapy in a sweat lodge

When Dan Conrad said he was reading Vermillion Drift by William Kent Krueger, I asked him to let me know how he liked it. He did.
 
One: I was pretty sure he'd like the book. Krueger is a very good story teller.

Two: Krueger is such a good story teller that when sets out to write about suspense and danger, he can keep me from sleeping.

When I wrote about Thunder Bay three years ago, I noted that there were "frightening moments" and murders. The action in Boundary Waters kept me reading through a bunch of implausibilites a few months later. Nearly a year later, I almost didn't make it through Mercy Falls, but I was up at the lake and could get by without much sleep that night.

A few months ago, I noticed a review of one of Krueger's new books that was set in the wilderness of the northern border of Minnesota. It seemed to involve the main character and his daughter, stranded by a huge storm and hunted by someone evil. I said to myself, "No thanks."

That's why I wanted to know what Dan thought of Vermillion Drift. Dan was right that most of the murder, mayhem, and threat happened half a century before the primary story. As a retrospective, the resolutions of the old mysteries were less frightening. The main character does have to resolve some issues involving repressed memories and the childhood loss of his father, but those didn't keep me awake at night. I was especially impressed by B. Morrison's observation (in her blog linked below) that the absence of physical threats and danger allowed Krueger to focus on emotional conflicts and their resolutions.

It's a very well-told story. The bits and pieces fit together and the only improbabilities involve the aged Native American "witch," who is a long-time friend and father figure to the main character. I can live with that. I really liked reading Krueger's story telling in this book.

I discovered I missed another of his books along the way. It's referenced in Vermillion Drift. In that unnamed book, the main character's wife (an important part of the earlier books) is killed in a plane crash, and the widowed main character becomes prey as he searches for the wilderness site of the crash. I doubt I'll go back and read that one.

Have you read Vermillion Drift? Have you another of Krueger's books to recommend? Or recommend that we avoid? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

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• The author's web site
• An unsigned reveiw at Rhapsody in Books
• Another unsigned review at The Mystery Starts Here
• B. Morrison's review on her blog

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Surreal fiction

René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter, has entertained me for years. I always said he was my favorite Belgian surrealist. (Salvador Dalí is my favorite Spanish surrealist.)

Other surrealists have entertained me as well. Bertolt Brecht would probably have denied it, but he was a surrealist in my mind.

And what's all this early 20th century art history about?

In my vague memories of past reading, I recall being entertained by a mystery about a couple of Amsterdam detectives. The memory might even be real. It might be surreal.

In any case when I found Janwillem van de Wetering's mystery The Mind-Murders on the library shelf, I picked it up in hopes of being entertained once again. 

Well, this mystery is indeed about two Amsterdam detectives, Henk Grijpstra and Rinus de Gier. However, this novel seems to be at attempt at comedy and surrealism. It begins when Adjutant Grijpstra orders his sergeant de Gier to take off his clothes and jump into the unhealthy water of one of Amsterdam's canals and rescue a man who is beating off another rescuer with a crutch. It goes downhill from there.

That scene is comedic, but not funny. I didn't find anything else funny in the half of the book I read. Most of what I read was suffused with surrealism. The actions of the main characters and their thinking seems based in some alternative universe. They spent an inordinate amount of time in a bistro that appears normal, but is anything but.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. I know there are days when the Marx Brothers are hilarious and other days when they are as dumb as the Three Stooges.

But maybe this book is just as dumb as the Three Stooges.

Do you remember reading The Mind-Murders? Or something else by van de Wetering? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought. Or you could tell us who your favorite surrealist is. Or whether the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges are ever funny to you.

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• van de Wetering's obituary from The Guardian
• Retrospective from The New Netherland Institute
• Ratings and reviews from GoodReads

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Stories almost as old as I am

The stories told in the latest Stephen Booth mystery I read begin with the crash of an RAF bomber near the end of World War II. As you might expect, over the decades, the stories spread out like a river flowing into a large delta. Six men died in the crash, one survived, and one went missing. Sixty years later, descendants of three of those men are involved in more deaths and more mystery around the mountain where the plane crashed.

It didn't take me long to get back to another Stephen Booth book. That's in part because I enjoyed reading the two earlier books and in part because the mysteries in the library are arranged alphabetically. This one is Blood on the Tongue.

Once again, I appreciated Booth's ability to portray characters in print in ways that make them seem more than imaginary place holders. Ben Cooper, native of the English Peak District is the central character once again. And I learned more about him and his life in this book. The rising star of the constabulary, Diane Fry is also a main figure, and she becomes more enigmatic as I learned more about her. She seemed to me to be jealous of Cooper's ease with the people and places he'd grown up with. She also seemed more determined to undermine his strengths. He seemed to be baffled by her and yet to seek understanding. It's certainly not the way I'd respond to her enmity. Ah, but the tension is part of what kept me interested in the book.

If the 1945 plane crash was the ultimate beginning, one of the episodes in this book begins when the granddaughter of the plane's pilot receives her grandfather's medal, mailed anonymously from the village nearest the crash site. Another episode involves the body of a long-dead infant almost buried under part of the plane's wreckage. There are three other tales told in this book.

At the beginning, it seems that all of them are related. However, the relationships are indirect and tenuous. The resolutions are not all clear cut and neatly done. To me it seems more like real life than the crisp packages that some mystery writers wrap up in their final chapters.

For me, Booth did it again: created and described characters that were interesting and believable; told stories that were intriguing; and connected them in realistic ways. I'm hesitant to go on to book four in his series because Ben Cooper has a weakness in evaluating women and he keeps seeing redeeming qualities in the nasty piece of work who is his superviser. I don't want to see her redeemed. I don't even want Cooper to save her life if she's threatened.

Have any of you read Blood on the Tongue or another of Stephen Booth's "crime novels? What did you think about it or them? Or how did you feel about it or them? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

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• The author's web page
• Interview with Stephen Booth in January magazine
• Twenty-five reviews and 282 ratings at GoodReads
• Lourdes' review at Lost in Books

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The book was published in 2002. It's available for a free download if you search for online.

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