Murder and revival

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

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

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

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

Mary Gordon as Mrs Hudson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hurry up!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't know. Want to take bets?

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

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

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

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Paying attention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Struck by stages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mystery told through events

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Reverberations

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

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

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

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

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

Penny

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

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

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

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

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Telling

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

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

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

Yrsa

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

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

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

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

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The reason for the re-read

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

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

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

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

NAS Keflavik

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


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

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

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

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The other re-read

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arnaldur

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

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

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

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

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Embarrassing

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

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

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

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

Kaaberbøl and Friis

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

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

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

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

Re-reading time

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

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

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

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

Qiu

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

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

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

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

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

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Swedish red herrings

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

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

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

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

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

Eriksson

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

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

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

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

Have you read The Hand That Trembles?

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

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

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Reading and not reading

A friend's mother asked me once why I only read mysteries. My defensive response was that I read other things too. But I quickly realized that nearly every bit of fiction I read was a mystery of one kind or another. I did develop some answers to the question that revolved around the limited environment of most mysteries, not too many characters to keep track of, and endings that were pretty final.

But there's another thing.

Another friend's 14-year old daughter has been a reluctant reader. This fall she was assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird. The book looked pretty daunting and my friend volunteered to be the audience to whom her daughter could read the book. The ploy worked to get the reading started. One evening, after reading the second chapter to her mother, the young student asked, "Mom, can we read another chapter? I want to find out what happens next." What could make a mother's heart fly more at that moment? So, yes, they read another chapter.

That's another thing about mystery novels. Things happen. There are stories. Some stories unfold slowly, some quickly. Stories often take unexpected turns, but there are stories and things happen.

When my inferiority complex kicks in I think to myself, "I should read something besides mysteries. I should read some real literature." Last spring as I hung out at a Barnes and Nobel coffee shop a couple times a week, I looked at reviews and bought a couple books with good reviews that had been labeled (by reviewers) as real literature. One of them is even a finalist for a Man Booker Prize (winner to be announced on October 13).

In neither of these books did much happen. Well important things happened that seemed to be in parentheses. Lots of internal analysis was laid out in long passages. (I'm not big on long internal analysis.)

Viet Thanh Nguyen's book, The Sympathizer, had lots going for it. If I'd seen the plot summary, I probably would have approved it for publication. The main character was a Vietnamese man who had been an exchange student in the USA and then returned to his homeland. He was a Communist spy all along. He held a high level job in the retinue of a South Vietnamese general. In 1975, he escaped with the general, his family, and some of the retinue to southern California. (Think Nguyen Cao Ky.) The main character's spy job was to keep track of the general and his efforts to raise money and an army in Cambodia to fight the Communists in Vietnam.

When the spy accompanies the general back to Vietnam, he is captured by his Communist "colleagues," imprisoned, and tortured for questionable acts of disloyalty. The spy, a faithful and dedicated Communist, accepts his persecution because the Party imposed it.

That's about where I stopped reading the book. I don't understand the total abandonment of self. I wasn't enjoying what story there was. It wasn't a book for me.

Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen as another bit of literature I didn't like much. Obioma's book is on the list of finalists for the Man Booker Prize. Okay, one of the reasons I picked it up was because one of the reviewers said the Obioma wrote like Chinua Achebe, one of my all-time favorite authors. (Obioma and Achebe both come from the same ethnic group and the same part of Nigeria.)

The fishermen in Obioma's novel are brothers in a Nigerian village. Their father is a successful businessman who works in a nearby city during the week. The boys get into trouble and one of them gets a fortune from a local "village idiot" predicting his death. He dies shortly after.

The two older surviving brothers set out to get revenge. When they do, one of them is prosecuted and spends years in jail. The other runs off and hides. When the convicted brother comes home from prison, his brother comes out of hiding and comes home as well. Three hundred pages of very little happening. I'm not sure why I finished this one.

Thankfully, the last book on the pile was not literature. I bought it for $3.00 at the used book fair that raises money for the local hospital. It was a "cozy mystery" by Louise Penny. Well, almost a cozy. As in her other books, Penny's main character in Bury Your Dead is Chief Inspector Gamache and part of the setting is the little rural village of Three Pines, Quebec, while much of it is in Old Quebec City.
Penny tells four stories in this novel. One of the stories is sort of 400 years old, another is 60 years old, another is just over a year old, and one is only months old. The most recent story is told in PTSD flashbacks that Gamache is trying to recover from. The year-old story is told in conversations with friends and rethinking evidence that put a man in jail. That story has its tangled roots in World War II. The ancient story is somehow connected to a murder and to surreptitious excavations around the foundations of Old Quebec City buildings.

For a guy who is supposed to be recovering from PTSD and grievous wounds, Gamache is pretty driven. And he drives his dear friend and assistant Jean Guy Beauvoir, who is also recovering from psychological and physical wounds, to dangerous action.

For all the stories and all the characters in Penny's novel, I never lost track of the people or story lines. I can't say that much for other mysteries I've read. The stories kept unfolding. And I learned things about myself near the end of the book. Can't be much better literature than that for me.

Have you read any of these? What's your take on it (them)? What's your take on literature? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Philip Caputo's review of The Sympathizer in The New York Times
• Ron Charles' review of The Sympathizer in The Washington Post
• Fiammetta Rocco's review of The Fishermen in The New York Times
• Michael Schaub's review of The Fishermen at NPR
• Louise Penny's web site
• Anonymous review of Bury Your Dead at the Literary Corner Cafe
• Susan Flynn's review of Bury Your Dead at You Can Never Have Too Many Books
• B. Morrison's review of Bury Your Dead on his blog

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Big books from a small country

Jussi Adler-Olsen is touted on a cover of one his books as "Denmark's number one crime writer." I think that means he's the number one writer of crime fiction. He's part of the highly touted Nordic mystery writers group. Thank Stieg Larsson for getting publishers and many readers to pay attention. Well, there are others to thank as well. Many of them I've written about here since I'm part of the fan club. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greenland, and Iceland and all the little islands near them (even though some are parts of Scotland now). Of course, American audiences only get to see the really good ones, I presume.

Adler-Olsen

Adler-Olsen is very good. At least the two books of his I read in the past few months have been very good. They are both copyright 2014, though it's difficult to imagine them being produced simultaneously.

The primary characters in the books I've seen are Detective Carl Mørck, his assistant Assad and secretary Rose. Mørck is a "retired" cop who has been put in charge of Department Q, the section of the cop shop that deals with old, open cases. There are three people in Department Q. Like many detectives in the literary world, Mørck has been pushed into his position because he didn't play well with bureaucracy and protocol and hierarchy. It also gives the author more leeway in inventing story lines.

Adler-Olsen wrote both of these books by telling two stories: one from the past (that activates Department Q) and one from the present (which brings Mørck into conflict with the bosses who exiled him to the basement offices of Q).

The story from the past is told in a pretty straight forward way (although interrupted by chapters set in the present). But the story set in the present, because it involves learning about the story from the past relates the discovery of events from the past in chronologically reverse order (Mørck learns about the most recent things first).

While reading, I imagine Adler-Olsen with two time lines on his desk, one for each story. And he draws lines connecting things in the past with things in the present. That way he keeps clear what the people in the present know about the past, and he keeps things revealed about the past relevant to events in the present.

Hey, and not one word about present or past tenses, until now.

Both books are good and I enjoyed reading them. In Conspiracy of Faith, Department Q is assigned to investigate a message found in a bottle in the ocean near Greenland. The paper in the bottle leads everyone to think its origin is Denmark. The message is only partly readable, but it might imply a murder.

In the course of investigating the message from the bottle, Mørck uncovers more recent crimes that might be connected to the old one. And one of the clues is that they all involve tiny Christian cults that have tried to separate themselves from the evil world.

In The Purity of Vengeance, Department Q begins investigating new evidence in a 30-year disappearance. When Assad and Rose discover that a number of other people disappeared on same weekend three decades ago, and that a couple of the people on the fringes of several cases are still acting strangely, the hunt is on.

I think I liked The Purity of Vengeance better, but that might be because I read that one second and had figured out the method in Adler-Olsen's writing. In any case, I liked reading both books -- well, as much as I can enjoy reading about awful crimes committed by awful people. I haven't yet resolved that one. Have you?

Have you read any of Adler-Olsen's books? How did you like them? Write (Reading@SideTrack.org). Tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.

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• Author's web site
• Andrew Caffrey's review in The Boston Globe
• Mary Ann Grossman's review in Scandinavian Crime Fiction
• Joe Goer's review at Tzer Island
• Anonymous' review in The Drowning Machine

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J. A. Jance,J. A. Jance

I'm sitting in front of the lake in the little cabin called Sidetrack. Pardon me if I get distracted because the lake's eagles are flying around and doing a little fishing at dusk. Bald eagles nearly ceased to exist in my lifetime. I grew up thinking I'd never see one. But they're back. Right outside my window here and even along the Cannon River in Northfield and around the urban lakes in Minneapolis. Human behavior can make a difference.

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I don't pick up a book by J. A. Jance for great literature. Of course, I rarely pick up a book because it's supposed to be great, or even good literature. That stuff is hard to read. I think I do enough hard work.

If I don't want good literature, what do I want? I want an engaging story that doesn't confuse me -- so it's got to be clearly told. I want to read about primary characters who are interesting and straight forward. The characters can have internal conflicts and self doubts. He, she, or they can suffer from the slings and arrows of forturne, but I don't want to read a story about duplicitous or smarmy people.

Jance

J. A. Jance tells stories well. Her characters are well defined, if not deeply etched in her pages. Her stories are appropriately complex without being unbelievable. (However, several of her characters, like other authors' characters and several TV mystery "stars" are conveniently very wealthy. That wealth makes it possible to "buy" ways out of inconvenient roadblocks, like cross-country or international travel, the need to make a living, or distribution of Franklins for information.

Well, I picked up two books by J. A. Jance in the past several months. Once was a paperback that cost $10.00. The other was a hardback that cost half that. (The second one was in a big bin in the grocery store.)

In the first, Second Watch, I got to check up on the knee replacements that detective J. P. Beaumont got. He's hobbling around pretty well, but his pain-killer-induced dreams seem to be leading him toward finding a killer in a 30-year-old case that was Beaumont's first homicide case. Because of his medications and his handicaps, Mel Soames is a vital part of the case. (I've forgotten whether Mel is J. P.'s latest wife or just his partner. Jance books are forgettable.)

Together, they probe into old open murder cases and new ones that seem to have connections to the things in J. P.'s dreams and his memories of events in Vietnam in the early '70s. It's all sort of believable -- except perhaps for J. P.'s undefined wealth. I remember little fo the details of the story. I remember feeling, "That was pretty good" when I finished.

The other book was Moving Target. The characters in this one are Ali Reynolds and her long-time "butler/caretaker/private secretary" Leland Brooks (guess which of them is unreasonably rich), and Ali's fiancé, B. Simpson. Oh, and a bunch of Leland's friends and relatives from his days as a subject of the queen 50 years ago.

B. gets involved in finding whomever tried to kill a young hacker who had taken down his school district's network. He got help in protecting the young miscreant from Sister Anselm, a taser-carrying nun who was a friend of Ali. Off in the UK, Ali got involved in sorting out the suspicious deaths in a rich family known to Leland. The trails of these deaths went back a couple generations. Both stories were engaging, and inspite of their complexity were not confusing. I recall liking this one better than the previous one.

According to list in Moving Target, J. A. Jance has written 50 books. You've probably read one or more along the way. What did you think of it (them)? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Author's home page
• Betty's review at Mysterious Review
• Theodore Feit's review at Spinetingler Magazine
• Elise Cooper's review at Blackfive
• Anonymous' review at BookMonster

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Hillerman reprise

Eight months ago, I picked up a paperback by Anne Hillerman at Half Price Books. Anne Hillerman is the daughter of Tony Hillerman of Navajo mystery fame. She took possession of several of her father's characters for her own attempt at mystery writing.

Okay, I wanted to read more about Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, but did I want to read what the daughter of their creator wrote? In hard cover or at full price, probably not. This was a chance I was willing to take. Glad I did.

But it took awhile for me to read the book. I put it in the glove box of the Miata. I put the Miata in storage last October. I tried to get it out a couple weeks ago, but there was this flat tire. When I got the repaired tire back on the car Saturday, I discovered the battery was dead. Even after I borrowed a car and jumper cables, the battery would not hold a charge. But I did find the book.

Anne Hillerman

It is Spider Woman's Daughter, and it's told mostly by Bernadette (Bernie) Manuelito, the daughter and granddaughter of Navajo weavers, Navajo police officer, and wife of Jim Chee.  There is a much more feminine perspective in this story telling compared to the stories Tony Hillerman told. There are a lot of references to the spider women (weavers) in Bernie's family. There are a lot more female characters.

Anne Hillerman follows her father's model by extolling the beauty of the desert while describing some of the long drives through the reservation and to nearby cities. She stays true to his characters, although Joe Leaphorn is unconcious in a hospital bed during most of the story. (Spoiler Alert: It's really not nice to nearly kill off your father's original hero in the first chapter of your book.) She weaves a good story and a complex mystery that takes place partly on and partly off the reservation. So local cops, the FBI, and the Navajo police are involved.

I had the feeling several times that sections of the book were originally longer than the published version and that the editor guided the author in slimming down the size of the novel. Those "abbreviations" didn't always help, but it was a 360-page paperback.

On the other hand, some of the pivotal action scenes seemed to go on and on and on. It happens on TV mysteries and in some books, but do evil doers ever take time to explain what they're doing and why to their victims? If it were me, I'd pull the trigger, start the fire, crash the car and get out. Explanations? Who needs them? Oh, readers or viewers who didn't get the message from the story! Seems like a deficit of story telling rather than overly loquacious villians.

Okay, I liked Spider Woman's Daughter. Maybe not as much as most of Tony Hillerman's books. But, it's been a long time since I read one of those and not all of his books were equally good.

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• The author's web site
   
• Carolyn Haley's review at The New York Journal of Books


• Anne Hillerman continues the Leaphorn and Chee tradition in The Sante Fe New Mexican

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Revisiting a long-admired author

Long ago, just after Bill Clinton had been elected president, he called Walter Mosley one of his favorite authors.

I remember thinking, "Walter who?" Then I went out and got a copy of Devil in a Blue Dress. I was hooked and read many more of his books. Then Mosley spoiled me in 1997 by writing Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. It was so good, I nearly stopped reading Mosely's books. He's written over 30 books since '97. I've probably read three or four.

Half Price Books had a Mosley book on the shelf for $5.00. That's less than the cost of a paperback these days. I went for it. The book is All I Did Was Shoot My Man, A Leonid McGill Mystery.

The book jacket touts this as "a tale about what it means to be a family." Family has been a vital part of all the Mosely books I've read and Leonid McGill's family is diverse, troubled, and loosely bound. The woman who hires him, a private detective, to answer some old questions is part of a family that includes her late husband, the man she may have shot.

Mosley

Like the other Mosley main characters I've read about, McGill is nearly overwhelmed by the events and troubles his family gets involved in. It's difficult for me to imagine how this guy functions from day to day. Somehow, in Mosley's story telling, McGill does function and survive, although not always happily.

My imagination may not be adequate to understand everything in the story. After all, I'm an old white guy from small town Minnesota. Mosley could pull the wool over my eyes without half trying as he writes about New York City and the former small time "fixer" that McGill is. But somehow I trust Mosley's perceptions and story telling. This was a good story well told. Check it out at a library near you (or ask for my copy).

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• The author's web site

• "In 'Shoot My Man,' Mosley Tells Tale Of Atonement," an interview on NPR

• James H. Burnett III's review in the Boston Globe

• Review in The Independent: All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley...

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Ignore this

Seriously, ignore this. Not the book. Ignore my review.

The book is Reginald Hill's The Woodcutter.

It's been so long since I read it, I have only the vaguest memories of the story. I read the reviews and still don't recall much of the plot.

I remember enough to be convinced that I read it. I can't even remember where the recommendation came from. I must have had one because I bought the book at Half Price Books. It must have been on a list I had. Where did that list come from?

If I finished this 500-page tome, it must have been readable. Was it great? I don't know. I think I'll go with Marilyn Stasio's comment (see below) that it's a grand fairy tale. Heroic figure who rises from

Hill

obscurity, achieves three major quests, wins the hand of the princess, fathers a wonderful daughter, loses everything (including an eye), sits for years in prison, and then has the opportunity for revenge... 

If you read it, or have read it, please add to this. Maybe I'll not put it in the box for the used book sale and re-read it if you think it's worth it.

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• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times
• Muriel Dobbin's review in The Washington Times
• David Connett's review in The Sunday Express
• Reginald Hill obituary in The Guardian

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Another solution to a "used up" character

Henning Mankell has written nearly a dozen crime novels featuring Swedish detective Kurt Wallander. Wallander fits the stereotype of crime novel detectives. But Mankell added some spark that made his character stand out.

In The Troubled Man, Mankell announces the end of Wallander's "public" life. "After that," Mankell writes, "there is nothing more. The story of Kurt Wallander is finished, once and for all."

But before that last line, before he is swallowed up by the shadow of forgetfulness, Wallander works to resolve one more mystery. This one involves the disappearance of his daughter's father-in-law-to-be. The older man had been a commander in the Swedish navy who had been involved in a bit of international intrigue involving a Russian submarine trapped in a Swedish fjord. Well, everyone assumed it was a Russian submarine and no one would talk about how or why it had escaped identification and capture.

Of course it's more complicated than that. The wife of the commander also disappeared. Long ago, she had been a refugee from East Germany. Or, at least everyone thought she was a refugee. Had she been a spy? Was there a larger meaning to the papers found on her body? And how does this affect Wallander's daughter and new granddaughter?

Oh, and was this somehow related to the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986?

Mankell

Mankell adds so many distant and political aspects to the mix, that it's hard to imagine Wallander finding any firm answers. Probably only Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander could have figured it all out and played vigilante to punish the evil doers.

Mankell is a master at story telling and character creation. He's also a master at putting one character out to pasture. I don't think I've read all the Wallander novels, though I've seen quite a few television versions. I might have to go through plot summaries and find the ones I haven't read yet.

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• The author's home page
• Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times
• Brian Oliver's review in The Guardian
• Kenneth Turan's review in The Los Angeles Times
• James Urgquart's review in The Independent

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Long time coming

It's not just that it took me months to get around to writing about this. The first recommendation I had about this was a decade ago.

Ten years ago, Bird Loomis wrote about enjoying Ian Rankin's mysteries featuring John Rebus. Last summer I finally read an Ian Rankin book, but John Rebus was nowhere to be found in it. It seems the old guy had retired and a new main character, Malcolm Fox appeared.

Well, we can't have that. Conan Doyle had to bring Holmes back from the dead. Like Harry Bosch and Carl Morck, Rebus returns as a civilian to a cold case group (in Edinburgh it's called "Serious Crime Review"). The book is called, Standing in Another Man's Grave.

Rankin and his book

Rebus retired, but he has no life outside of detection or drinking or smoking. His chance to keep investigating is the only real possibility for him.

He gets a call from a woman whose daughter disappeared back in 1999. The woman says her daughter's disappearance must be related to the disappearance of several young women in the same vicinity in recent years. It's just the kind of case Rebus can't stay away from. Even though it brings him to the edge of a grave.

It also gets him in touch with Rankin's new character Malcolm Fox. Fox runs the complaints department and knows Rebus' reputation and hates it. Can he get rid of Rebus? Can Rebus drive around Scotland enough to wear out his vintage Saab? Will a gangster, on whose toes Rebus stepped, push Rebus into another man's grave? After the retirement age is raised, can Rebus get back on the force? Does it matter that the title is a mis-hearing of a song title, "Standing in Another Man's Rain"?

The story is well told. I enjoyed reading it. I think it's time for me to haunt Half Priced Books and look for some of Rankin's older books. What a fine prospect.

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• The author's web site
• Alison Flood's review in The Guardian.
• Mark Lawson's review in The Guardian.
• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times

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