2009 - The Year in Books

okay, I lied...forgot my complete list of books read for the year

2010-01-02T15:11:00.000-05:00

The complete list of books read in 2009:

January - First Books in Mystery Series (*)
1. From Doon With Death, by Ruth Rendell*
2. Birth Marks, by Sarah Dunant*
3. Turnstone, by Graham Hurley*
4. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
5. The Weight of Water, by Anita Shreve
6. Death of A Gossip, by MC Beaton*
7. Not a Creature Was Stirring, by Jane Haddam*
8. Bloodless Shadow, by Victoria Blake*
9. Mortal Mischief, by Frank Tallis*
10. Raven: The Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones and his People, by Tim Reiterman
11. Knots and Crosses, by Ian Rankin*
12. Drood, by Dan Simmons
13. The Camel Club, by David Baldacci*
14. The Collectors, by David Baldacci
15. The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village, by Thomas Robisheaux

- February 2009 - Honoring African-American Authors (*)
16. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Charles Dickens
17. Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History, by Wallace Terry *
18. The Conjure Woman, by Charles W. Chesnutt*
19. The Book of Absinthe: A Cultural History, by Phil Baker
20. The Darling, by Russell Banks
21. Soul on Ice, by Eldridge Cleaver*
22. If He Hollers Let Him Go, by Chester Himes*
23. The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbo
24. Bertram of Butter Cross, by Jeffrey Barlough
25. The Street, by Ann Petry *
26. A Bleeding of Innocents, by Jo Bannister
27. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, by John M. Barry
28. The Seance, by John Harwood
29. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington *
30. Song Yet Sung, by James McBride *
31. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
32. A Beautiful Blue Death, by Charles Finch

-March 2009 - Random Nonfiction (*)
33. The Vanishing, by Tim Krabbe
34. Nemesis, by Jo Nesbo
35. Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam, by Pope Brock*
36. The Dogs of Riga, by Henning Mankell
37. My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming*
38. Panama Fever, by Matthew Parker*
39. The Mexican Mafia, by Tony Rafael*
40. The Dark Lantern, by Gerri Brightwell
41. Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews, by Sir David Frost with Bob Zelnick*
42. Hag's Nook, by John Dickson Carr

-April 2009- Locked Room Mysteries and Other Impossible Crimes (*)

43. The Mad Hatter Mystery, by John Dickson Carr
44. The Eight of Swords, by John Dickson Carr
45. The Mystery of the Yellow Room, by Gaston Leroux*
46. The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen*
47. The Moonflower, by Beverley Nichols*
48. The Layton Court Mystery, by Anthony Berkeley*
49. The Blind Barber, by John Dickson Carr
50. Death-Watch, by John Dickson Carr
51. The Three Coffins, by John Dickson Carr*
52. The Footprints on the Ceiling, by Clawton Rawson*
53. Diagnosis: Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, by Edward D. Hoch*
54. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, by Soji Shimada*
55. The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, (ed.) Mike Ashley
56. The Big Bow Mystery, by Israel Zangwill
57. The Crimes of Paris, by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler (thanks, Librarything ER!)

- May 2009 -
Books With Names in the Title*
58. Dante's Numbers, by David Hewson*
59. Emma Brown, by Clare Boylan*
60. The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette, by R.T. Raichev*
61. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon, by Julie Phillips*
62. The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
63. Annie's Ghosts, by Steve Luxenberg*
64. The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters
65. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao*
66. Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear*
67. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
68. The Walking People, by Mary Beth Keane
69. Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee, by Chloe Hooper
70. Cemetery Dance, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

June - I'm Enery the Eighth I am, Enery the Eighth I am I am * ... (I miss the Tudors on Showtime, so I'll read about them)
71. The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery, by Enrique Joven
72. The Doomsday Key, by James Rollins
73. The Pilgrimage of Grace, by Geoffrey Moorhouse*
74. The Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia Fraser *
75. The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care, by John Dittmer
76. High: Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler, by Brian O'Dea
76. Dissolution: A Novel of Tudor England, by CJ Sansom*
77. Fragment, by Warren Fahy
78. Charisma, by Jo Bannister
79. Henry VIII, Man and Monarch, Susan Doran (ed.)
80. A Taste for Burning, by Jo Bannister
81. Enoch's Portal, by A.W. Hill

July: Chillin' by the pool with old friends: revisiting favorite authors and characters (aka: the calm before the August/September Booker longlist storm)*

82. The Last Days of Madame Rey, by A.W. Hill*
83. Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie*
84. The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underground and the American Dream, by Patrick Radden Keefe
85. Nightmare's Disciple, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.*
86. Red to Black, by Alex Dryden
87. Mind's Eye, by Hakan Nesser*
88. Voices, by Arnaldur Indridason*
89. The White Lioness, by Henning Mankell
90. The Man Who Smiled, Henning Mankell
91. Sidetracked, by Henning Mankell
92. Hosts, by F. Paul Wilson
93. The Haunted Air, by F. Paul Wilson
94. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall
95. Between the Assassinations, by Aravind Adiga
96. Seventy-Seven Clocks, by Christopher Fowler
97. The Ten-Second Staircase, by Christopher Fowler
98. White Corridor, by Christopher Fowler

August & September 2009 -- The Booker Prize Longlist*
99. Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin*
100. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel* (my choice this year, but I never win)
101. Me Cheeta, by James Lever*
102. The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson
103. Dark Specter, by Michael Dibdin
104. The Water's Lovely, by Ruth Rendell
105. Detective Inspector Huss, by Helene Tursten
106. Summertime, by J.M. Coetzee*
107. Heliopolis, by James Scudamore*
108. The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt*
109. The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds*
110. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
111. The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer*
112. Love and Summer, by William Trevor*

October - Relieving my Overtaxed and Tired Brain -- absolutely no topic!
113. Wicked (a reread, book group)
114. Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon (audio)
115. Stardust, by Joseph Kanon (thanks, Amazon Vine!)
116. The Fifth Woman, by Henning Mankell
117. Sun and Shadow, by Ake Edwardson
118. Dirty Little Angels, by Chris Tusa (thank you!)
119. The Draining Lake, by Arnaldur Indridason
120. The White Mary, by Kira Salak (thanks, Librarything!)
121. Flashforward, by Robert J. Sawyer
122. Monstrocity, by Jeffrey Thomas
123. Not Untrue and Not Unkind, by Ed O'Loughlin
124. Son of a Witch (audiobook)

November - Madness and Mayhem in the UK, alpha by detective, A-M

125. The Wychford Murders, by Paula Gosling (Luke Abbott)*
126. Gallows View, by Peter Robinson (Alan Banks)*
127. Mr. Shivers, by Robert Jackson Bennett (thanks, Amazon Vine!)
128. The Shimmer, by David Morrell
129. Black Dog, by Stephen Booth (Ben Cooper)*
130. Dover One, by Joyce Porter (Wilfred Dover)*
131. Evans Above, by Rhys Bowen (Evan Evans)*
132. A Death for Adonis, by E.X. Giroux (Robby Forsythe)*
133. A Shilling for Candles, by Josephine Tey (Alan Grant)*
134. The Mysterious Commission, by Michael Innes (Charles Honeybath)*
135. Oxford Exit, by Veronica Stallwood (Kate Ivory)*
136. Ritual Murder, by S.T. Haymon (Ben Jurnet)*
137. The Chalon Heads, by Barry Maitland (Kolla and Brock)*
138. The Judas Pair, by Jonathan Gash (Lovejoy)*
139. The Plague Court Murders, by Carter Dickson (Sir Henry Merrivale)*
140. Winnie and Wolf, by A.N Wilson

December: Madness and Mayhem in the UK, alpha by detective, N-Z (and actually, I only made it to Y...it was the length of Under the Dome that threw me off by my one book!)

141. The Cruel Stars of the Night, by Kjell Eriksson
142. Constable on the Hill, by Nick Rhea (Constable Nick)*
143. Snow Angels, by James Thompson (Thanks, Amazon Vine!)
144. Garnethill, by Denise Mina (Maureen O'Donnell)*
145. The Merchant's House, by Kate Ellis (Wesley Peterson)*
146. Death in the Morning, by Sheila Radley (Douglas Quantrill)*
147. Heresy, by S.J. Parrish (Thanks to Bookbrowse.com first impressions program)
148. Hide and Seek, by Ian Rankin (Inspector John Rebus)*
149. Funeral Music, by Morag Joss (Sarah Selkirk)*
150. The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
151. A Silent Witness, by R. Austin Freeman (Dr. Thorndyke)*
152. The Governess, by Evelyn Hervey (Harriet Unwin)*
153. A Good Weekend for Murder, by Jennifer Jordan (Barry and Dee Vaughan)*
154. Little Face, by Sophie Hannah (Detective Simon Waterhouse)*
155. Cat's Cradle, by Clare Curzon (Supt. Mike Yeadings)*
156. Under the Dome, by Stephen King

last post of 2009 - and a happy new year to everyone.

2009-12-31T20:01:00.000-05:00

Well, this is it, the last post. It's only 7:40 here on the east coast, but I'm off to a party and something tells me that I won't feel much like reading after midnight. So -- this year I read 156 books and 2 tied for favorites: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel and The Glass Room, by Simon Mawrer. I bought and swapped for countless numbers of books, discovered several wonderful new authors, and started to make a dent in my tbr pile, especially downstairs in the British reading room.

Now I'm ready for next year, with my goal of 160 books in mind, so let's see if it's possible. My thanks to everyone who commented with constructive things to say.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a goodnight.

Under the Dome, by Stephen King

2009-12-31T15:39:00.000-05:00

Without going into plot details, Under the Dome was not one of my favorite King books. That honor goes to books like The Stand, The Shining, Salem's Lot, and especially his Gunslinger series. Even without comparing it to his earlier works, Under the Dome was just okay, and dare I say it, a bit tedious.

The book was for me a commentary on human nature under inconceivable conditions and proof of the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The characters were well developed, the plot well constructed (in a science fiction-ish sort of way) and King created an atmosphere of incredible tension and suspense, but only up to a point. First, the story was not worth the 1000+ pages, but my biggest complaint about this book was the ending, which really killed the book for me. I felt let down and cheated after sticking it out until the last page. I also feel compelled to note that the ending (without giving away anything) reminded me a little of Dr. Seuss' book Horton Hears a Who. I honestly felt that King could have done so much more with this book and was disappointed.

However, considering all of the 4 and 5 ratings this book has garnered, it might be that I was expecting too much. So I'd say try it, but personally, I'm not sure it's really worth the long read.

*Cat's Cradle, by Clare Curzon (Mike Yeadings)

2009-12-31T14:56:00.000-05:00

In this, the seventh installment of Clare Curzon's Mike Yeadings series, the Thames Valley police are called in to investigate the death of Lorely Pelling. Miss Pelling lived a reclusive life on property that belonged to her family, all dead now, collected cats, grew her own vegetables, and had sold off some of the family's land in order to live that way. The police immediately wonder if a stray shot from an earlier teens party (where the kids were practicing shooting) at the nearby home of the Welch family may have been the cause of her death, but other clues come to light that suggest it was foul play. Mike Yeadings, a Detective Superintendent, and his team are in charge of the investigation, and must get to the bottom of Miss Pelling's murder, but unwilling witnesses, too many suspects and some red herrings aren't going to make it easy for them.

This is my first Mike Yeadings novel, because the first few are very rare and hard to come by (and I don't buy ex-library editions). Normally I prefer to start at the beginning of a series, but this time due to unavailability, this is where I began. I don't know what I've missed as far as character development, but I like Yeadings as a character and will definitely be reading more of Curzon's work. The ending of this novel seems a bit strange, considering it was originally written in 1991 (I won't say why in case someone plans to read this) but otherwise, the book was good, the mystery was solid and I liked it.

*Little Face, by Sophie Hannah (Detective Simon Waterhouse)

2009-12-31T14:17:00.000-05:00

finally...I'm reaching the end at W... and considering there's no X, two more to go before my mini-challenge is complete for December.

I was expecting a lot more out of this one considering the teasing and tantalizing blurbs on the back of the book.

The story is told via the use of different narratives, one of them being from the point of view of Alice Fancourt, who has just come home with her new baby Florence. Alice and her husband David, Florence and David's young son from a previous marriage all live at the home of David's mother, Vivienne Fancourt, where Vivienne rules the roost in her lavish house called The Elms. As the story opens, Alice has left the house for a while for the first time since she delivered Florence via C-section. When she returns, she checks in on the baby and lo and behold, it's not Florence. Her husband, David, thinks that Alice is a bit disturbed and probably suffering from a case of postpartum depression, and swears that the baby is definitely Florence. But Alice thinks that a mother definitely knows her own baby -- and calls in the police. Enter Simon Waterhouse and his DS Charlie Zailer. There's absolutely no proof that Florence isn't Florence, so there's really no case, but things change when just a week later the baby and Alice go missing...and Waterhouse begins to take a second and more serious look at what's really going on here.

I was definitely quite hooked on the story up until the end when I thought it all fell apart. However, I can't explain without giving away the show so I'll let it go. Let's just say that I wasn't disappointed in the ending, as were many people for reasons I won't get into here, but the way it was just sort of thrust at me made it feel rushed and contrived. I think more of that particular plotline needed to be developed up to that point to have it all make more sense. It's also definitely a book demanding reader participation.

Overall, it's a decent read, and I would recommend it for people who like suspense novels.

*A Good Weekend for Murder, by Jennifer Jordan (Barry and Dee Vaughan)

2009-12-31T13:16:00.000-05:00

A Good Weekend for Murder is the first installment in a series featuring Barry Vaughan, a history teacher and British crime fiction writer, and his wife, Dee. I chose this book because I have a deep-seated fondness for English country home murders, and because it's the first in a British mystery series. The story centers around another crime novelist, Charles Wild, who has managed to make enough enemies, all with reasons to kill him. He is murdered at his lavish country house, but with so many suspects, the police are going to have a very difficult time making sense of it all. Enter the Vaughans, who have also been invited to the party and who take up amateur sleuthing in an effort to get to the bottom of the murder.

Up until the murder, the story is quite good, largely because Charles Wild is such a great bad guy and the author spends a lot of time setting the scene for him to be a person most likely to die because of his nasty personality. But once the murder occurs and the police step in, it's like the author kind of ran out steam and couldn't figure out where the story was going. The Vaughans, as a detective duo who reconjure themselves as Nick and Nora Charles, aren't so great as characters, but the real problem is the plotting and the pacing. The end comes as a rush, and it seemed that the announcement of the killer was more of an afterthought than the purpose of the mystery. I'm willing to let this slide and go on to the next in the series because it's a series opener, but hard-core mystery readers may be a bit disappointed overall.

I'd recommend it with caution, because it's a bit unsatisfying. The unraveling of the murder plot is a bit ho-hum and I'd probably guess that it's more oriented to cozy readers rather than more serious mystery readers like myself.

*The Governess, by Evelyn Hervey (Miss Harriet Unwin)

2009-12-31T11:54:00.000-05:00

To be very blunt, the only reason I chose to read this novel is that it had a detective whose last name started with the letter U. And to be even more blunt, it was terrible.

Miss Harriet Unwin is the featured sleuth in this novel, which is the first in a series of three mysteries written by HRF Keating in his guise as Evelyn Hervey. Had I written this novel, I would have disguised my identity as well.

In a nutshell, the story is as follows: Miss Harriet Unwin is a governess in a Victorian home, where three generations of the same family live together. The family name is Thackerton, made wealthy by their invention of a steam process for making hats. Mr. Thackerton senior is soon found stabbed to death in his library, and suspicion falls on the governess. Of course, she's innocent, but threatened with arrest or worse (being turned out of the household to face a life of poverty), she feels that she must clear her name. The police sergeant is a major bumbler, but soon Harriet finds herself out of the loop of suspects. But wait...after a second murder, her fortunes change yet again...but with an entire house filled with suspects, the road to clearing herself is an uphill one.

Sounds good, right? And it really could have been, had it been written well. I have a fondness for Victorian settings as well as governesses, so I was looking forward to this one, but as things progressed, I had to force myself to finish this one. The characters are all flat, the solution is anything but satisfactory, and comes out of nowhere at the end of the novel. I couldn't feel even the slightest amount of pity for the heroine, which is really sad.

Perhaps this one is more for people who enjoy cozy mysteries set in historical time periods, but serious mystery readers might want to skip this one.

*A Silent Witness, by R. Austin Freeman (Dr. Thorndyke)

2009-12-31T11:20:00.000-05:00

I am a huge fan of this series of mysteries, all written during the Golden Age of Mystery writing.

A Silent Witness is Freeman's fourth full-length novel featuring Dr. Thorndyke, a barrister, doctor, and all-around solver of intriguing mysteries. In this installment, the action centers on one Dr Humphrey Jardine, who is the narrator of the story, and who himself is the focus of several strange events that happen to him just after he has finished medical school and begins his career as a physician. Jardine's troubles begin with a casual walk in Hampstead Heath (London), where he comes across the body of a man and runs to fetch the police, only to come back and find that the dead man has disappeared. The police can find no trace that the man was ever there, so Jardine takes it upon himself to examine the scene for clues. His findings lead him into a very strange adventure which can only be solved with the technical expertise of Dr. Thorndyke, but not before Jardine finds his life in danger, and not just once.

There is a lot going on in this novel, but the strands all come together quite nicely and offer a mystery that will have you scratching your head. Nothing is as it seems here, so the mystery element starts off strong and continues to keep the reader scratching his or her head throughout the book.

If you like old-fashioned mystery stories, the Dr. Thorndyke series is a good one. The verbiage is somewhat archaic for modern readers, but character and plot development are both nicely done. You could read this one as a stand alone, but it's better if you start with the first book and read them in order to better understand the thinking process of Dr. Thorndyke.

Overall, nicely done and another worthy addition to my British reading room library.

The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

2009-12-31T10:41:00.000-05:00

After a two-week Christmas vacation hiatus, I'm back to my book journal, and my first entry (off topic, but in my library and needing to be read) is The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. A brief glimpse at Amazon gave this book a 4/5 overall rating, but as usual, the tide is going the opposite direction from my feelings about this book.

I actually started reading this book at night while traveling on an airplane and had to put it down after the first few chapters because it gave me a case of the willies. The story begins with the discovery of a plane which had landed at JFK with all aboard dead, not something that I wanted to be reading up in the air. After I got home and picked it up again, the willies disappeared and disappointment set in.

The Strain has its moments, but if you've read any vampire novels at all, you've read this book. Not only are there replays of several vampire books (especially Matheson's I Am Legend, but also They Thirst by McCammon, Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Brian Lumley's fabulous Necroscope and more) but if you've read any of the Repairman Jack series or the Adversary cycle of F. Paul Wilson (especially elements of The Keep), you will recognize basic character and plot elements in the story. In short, this has all been done before, which is very sad, because basically reading a rerun tended to make the book much less suspenseful, and I have to say that I accurately predicted the end which most likely leads to the action in book two. I haven't really had a good horror novel in my hands lately, and had been hoping to allow myself a good scare, but alas, it was not to be with this book. I really wanted to like it, but I did not.

However, as noted above, the overall rating everywhere seems to be a 4/5, so maybe I'm just more demanding in what I'm searching for in a horror novel. I'd recommend it to readers of vampire horror fiction, with the caveat that if you've read some of the best books in the genre, be prepared for a rehash mishmash.

*Funeral Music, by Morag Joss (Sara Selkirk)

2009-12-14T16:45:00.002-05:00

Considering that this was supposed to have been a mystery, well, you could have fooled me. Set in Bath, England, and first in a series to feature cellist Sara Selkirk, and as the series opens, Sara has all but given up her playing in public, due to a past trauma in her life. However, convinced by a dear friend to play with him at a local museum benefit, things begin to look up for her career. I wish I could say that this is just the backstory to a good mystery, but that's just not the case. In fact, the mystery, such as it is, is really kind of a sideline to Sara's story.

As it happens, she happens to discover the body of Matthew Sawyer, museum director, dead in an ancient spring at the city's famous Roman baths. And because for some reason everyone wants to confide in her, including DCI Andrew Poole (to whom she also gives cello lessons), she begins to link the pieces of the murder puzzle together.

Although there's a crime, and although there are plenty of suspects, the mystery itself is a bit disjointed, easy to solve, and really takes a back seat to the life of Sara Selkirk. So this book probably sits more comfortably in the cozy genre. I understand that the author's job in the first book of any series is to introduce his or her main characters, but I heard many good things about Morag Joss and I was so surprised at how this book turned out.

Overall...it could have been much more in depth and much more of a mystery than it was. I think I'd recommend it to readers of cozy mysteries, but not for those who like more hard-core crime novels.

*Hide and Seek, by Ian Rankin (Inspector John Rebus)

2009-12-12T15:23:00.003-05:00

I can't really remember when I read the series opener of the Rebus series, but it was some time back. I do remember Rebus being a puzzle (and you just have to wonder if perhaps there's some reason the author gave him this name) of a character, and he still is.

Hide and Seek is #2 in the series featuring Inspector John Rebus. In this installment, John Rebus is called in to investigate the death of a drug addict in a dilapidated flat in one of the worst parts of Edinburgh. He notices a lot of strange things right away, and shares his findings his fellow officers who do not seem to care. It's just another OD. The victim's girlfriend, however, says that the last thing he said was "Hide..." and that "they" murdered him. Rebus' investigation takes him into both the seamy side of Edinburgh as well as its social heights.

The mystery is solid, and the message the reader is left with is no surprise, but I'm still not sure that Rankin (at this juncture -- I haven't read any others but the first in the series) has a handle on exactly who he wants Rebus to become characterwise. His personal life is a bit of a mystery and he dislikes interacting with other policemen unless he feels an absolute need, And although this book is listed as a police procedural, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I also have to note that the ending was a bit rushed and a little unsatisfying.

Overall the book was good -- I love the way Rankin writes, and Rebus is so enigmatic that I have to keep reading the series to see what happens with his character. Definitely recommended for readers of UK crime fiction.

Heresy, by SJ Parris

2009-12-12T10:13:00.005-05:00

My thanks to Bookbrowse.com for the opportunity to read an advance reading copy of this book.

This book has not actually been released yet, but you will be able to buy (or borrow) it in February, 2010.

Heresy is a medieval whodunit, with the star of the show being (Filippo) Giordano Bruno, the Italian heretic who escaped the Inquisition in Italy, spent time in France, then moved on to Elizabethan England, where supposedly he became a spy for the crown. It is at this juncture that the story begins in earnest, with Bruno being sent by Walsingham to Oxford to look for papist plots against the throne. Bruno is happy to be there, because he will be able to search for a missing alchemical text written by Hermes Trimegistus. As he settles in to Lincoln College, one of the Oxford number is murdered in a most brutal way, and although the killer tried to make the death look accidental, Bruno realizes that it was definitely murder. After a second murder is committed, Bruno picks up a pattern, but must sift through cryptic clues and learn who to trust in this most delicate time of religious turmoil to get to the solution of the crimes.

The author's writing is good, but I must say, as far as the staging of the crimes, I had flashbacks to Eco's Name of the Rose and David Hewson's Season of the Dead (both excellent books) while reading this book. There are a lot of elements in this book that will keep Parris' readers going: cryptic messages and codes, forbidden texts, spies, religious debate and even a bit of romance are all part of the story. It moves rather slow, with a lot of historical detail & debate thrown in. It is at the last part of the book where the action picks up, the story unravels and where all is made known that I couldn't put the book down.

My understanding is that this is the first of a planned series, and hopefully the author will flesh out the ongoing characters a bit more. However, I liked this book enough to try the next one whenever it comes out. I'd recommend it to people who like CJ Sansom's Tudor era-based books, and to people who like historical mysteries in general, and people interested in the history of religion in England and Europe during the Tudor period.

*Death in the Morning, by Sheila Radley (Chief Inspector Quantrill)

2009-12-11T09:06:00.004-05:00

Somewhere back in the far-distant past I bought a bunch of books by this author that still look brand spanking new, even though they were published in the 1970s, still in their original dust jackets. But for those who decide they're interested in seeking out some of these older British mystery novels, Felony and Mayhem Press, which one can find here , has many of Radley's books in nice new covers. I buy a lot of F & M books, and they're quite worth owning. What I really enjoy about F&M is that a lot of old titles are resurfacing -- and it's always been my contention that old books should receive as much of a reader's attention as the latest ones -- you never know what you're going to find.

One more word about the title of this book. Death in the Morning was written in 1978, and was published as Death and the Maiden. This happens a lot -- you know, where titles are switched between the country in which they're written and the US. The reason I bring it up is I think the original title works much better. As an aside, there's also a book called Death and the Maiden, written in 1947 by Gladys Mitchell, who wrote the Mrs. Bradley mysteries (it's like #21 in the series or so).

but I digress -- now to Death in the Morning.

This is a mystery series opener, introducing Chief Inspector Douglas Quantrill who lives in a small village in Suffolk called Breckham Market. His right-hand man is DS Tait, who got his job by way of "graduate entry..., special police training and ... accelerated promotion," (8) and who feels he must prove himself to his fellow policemen. Quantrill has been working on the case of a young girl who went missing some months back, but his attention is turned to the disappearance of young Mary Gedge, who was soon to be going off to Cambridge. By all accounts, she hadn't run away, had a good family life, etc. etc., so wasn't the type to likely end up in any trouble. While Quantrill and Tait are questioning the locals for info on Mary, she is found dead in a pond, laying there like Ophelia in all of her death glory. A missing person case now becomes a suspicious death, and it is up to Quantrill to find the killer.

The core mystery here is good but even though there are plenty of suspects and a few red herrings, it's a bit predictable and easy to figure out. Normally this sounds the death knell for me as far as continuing the series, but what saves this is Radley's writing. Quantrill is an interesting person as well. Police work is in his blood, and comes before family (much to his wife's dismay), yet Radley makes him into a human being. Hopefully he becomes a bit more fleshed out as the series progresses. And then there's Tait -- one of those eager and ambitious souls who wants to prove himself and continue his quick rise up the ladder -- he's a character to watch in the next few books.

Overall, this was an okay read. It's not quite a cozy, and not so much a dyed-in-the-wool police procedural, so it's a bit hard to define genre-wise. Readers who enjoy their murders set in the shadow of the quiet English village will like this one. It moves slow and there's not a lot of action, but it's well written.

#2 in the series is The Chief Inspector's Daughter.

*The Merchant's House, by Kate Ellis (DS Wesley Peterson)

2009-12-08T11:12:00.002-05:00

and now, another first in series, The Merchant's House, by Kate Ellis.

The Merchant’s House is the first installment in a mystery series by Kate Ellis. The action takes place in the town of Tradmouth, Devon, and the main character is DS Wesley Peterson. In the first novel, Wesley and his team have to solve the case of a missing two year old boy who was out in his fenced yard and disappeared. To add to their burden, the police are also called in to investigate the brutal murder of a young woman. And not only is Wesley tied up with these two difficult cases, but his wife is having some personal issues that are making his life a bit miserable.

Parallel to all of this action, Wesley is also friends with Neil Watson, an archaeologist who is excavating a house that used to belong to a merchant from the 17th century. Neil and his group discover the skeletons of a woman and a newborn. The story of that particular mystery is told in little snippets at the beginning of each chapter, and at some point, the past begins to mirror the present. It seems that little has changed over the past 400 years.

This is a series opener which hits the ground running, and is a pretty decent starter. I didn't feel that the author fleshed out her main character (Wesley) enough so that the reader really got to know him here, but (and this is why I enjoy reading series books in order) I expect that as the series progresses so will her characters. The mystery is a good one, the suspects are plentiful, and I liked the parallel lines of the past and present stories. This is definitely a series with which I will continue. This book I would cross between a police procedural and a cozy -- while not really in the cutesy realm of cozy, it's not as tough or gritty on the police end as what I would normally consider a procedural.

Overall -- a good beginning and on with the show with The Armada Boy.

*Garnethill, by Denise Mina (Maureen O'Donnell)

2009-12-07T16:20:00.005-05:00

Garnethill is a good example of a first novel in series that works and works well.

The main character in this story is a young woman, Maureen O'Donnell. Set in Glasgow, Scotland, the back story finds Maureen in a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown (for reasons explained but which I will not go into here), and as this story opens, she's home again, with a job and in an affair with a married therapist named Douglas. Maureen didn't know he was married until just recently, and has decided to break it off. Off with a friend she goes for a few drinks, comes home blotto and passes out in her bed. The next morning, however, she wakes up, and finds Douglas dead, sitting tied to a chair with his throat slit from one end to the other. After a panic attack, Maureen calls the police, but it becomes painfully obvious to her that they think she's the killer. So in order to clear her name, she needs to find out why Douglas was murdered, why it happened in her apartment, and becomes embroiled in a situation where her very life is at stake. And, as if all of this isn't enough, she's got an extremely dysfunctional family to deal with, some of whom think she's probably guilty.

Normally, I'm not a reader of stories involving dysfunctional families, but this one really works. Although the subject matter is serious, the author's characterizations are nearly perfect, and at times I found myself actually laughing out loud. It's a very well-balanced book, a very good mystery, and I loved Maureen O'Donnell. I've already bought Exile, the second book because this one was so good. It's not really a hard-boiled crime novel, nor is it a police procedural, and it's not a cozy by any stretch of the imagination. However, it is well worth the reading time, and I can highly recommend it.

I rarely say this about a first novel in series, but I loved this book!

Snow Angels, by James Thompson

2009-12-07T14:58:00.004-05:00

First, my thanks to Amazon Vine for allowing me to have an advance copy of this book. I happen to be a huge fan of Scandinavian crime fiction, so I've been eagerly awaiting the release of this book. I was drawn in by the author's ability to set the tone of the bleakness of life above the Arctic Circle in Finland, where it's dark and cold and to pass the time, people have little to do other than drink. The atmosphere was so well laid out for the reader that for a time you can imagine yourself there.

The mystery itself begins with the death of a young B-movie star, an immigrant from Somalia, who is not only killed, but severely mutilated. As Inspector Kari Vaara begins his investigation, he begins to realize that the case is taking him in directions involving his personal life, digging up old feelings and parts of his life that he'd much rather forget, and perhaps even putting his career on the line.

The core mystery is a good one, and there are surprisingly plenty of suspects in this small rural town, but the story gets sidetracked by way too many coincidences that are a bit hard to swallow. The melodrama of Vaara's personal life also tends to detract from the mystery, as does his whiny wife Kate. I never really bonded with Vaara as a character that I really cared about. Also, many of the supporting characters who figure into the mystery aren't as well developed as they probably should have been for the outcome to make more sense. I'll give him this much ... I didn't see the end coming, which for me is always a good sign.

To be really honest, Snow Angels has a bit less depth than much of the Scandinavian crime fiction I read, but I'll chalk that up to the fact that it's Thompson's first mystery novel. Overall, considering that fact, the book is not too bad, and I would probably read Thompson's next one when it's published. I don't know that I'd recommend it to readers who are say, Henning Mankell fans (definitely not in that league), but I'd recommend it to mystery readers in general.

*Constable on the Hill, by Nicholas Rhea (Constable Nick)

2009-12-04T09:16:00.002-05:00

Okay, okay, I know Nick is not a last name, but as noted earlier, I couldn't find a British detective whose last name started with N. So you do what you can.

To be really blunt, this is not my normal reading fare, but I loved it. It's the story of a British policeman who moves to the village of Aidensfield in North Yorkshire to take the job as constable there and the immediate environs. It's a small village where everyone knows everyone, and although you wouldn't find (or at least, at the time of the writing of this book, at least) a lot of big-city type crime there, the author notes that there was enough going on to keep him quite busy. For example, take the case of the roaming pony; you might also enjoy the case of the woman wandering the streets naked; then there's the time Constable Nick staked out a pack of Canadian timber wolves at the train station.

What I liked most about this book was that it focused on people rather than events, and that Nick used his knowledge of the individuals involved in the pursuit of justice rather than just coming down hard with the full force of the letter of the law, with which he doesn't always agree. He even notes that

"Keen socialists are attempting to remove that valuable exercise of discretion from the policeman's armoury -- it will be a sad day when it has gone. When it does go, the feared police state will have arrived when all rules will be obeyed, down to the last cruel letter of the law. Human policemen will no longer exist." (29)

Nick (and his sergeant) really epitomize the meaning of "human policemen," and that's what makes this book special, along with the multiple personalities that populate this novel.

I would highly recommend this book, and I do believe I'll read more of the "Constable" series -- maybe even pick up the first episode of "Heartbeat," the British tv series based on Rhea's books. Constable on the Hill is a joy for everyone who likes small-town life or likes to read more upbeat kind of stories that often come from the heart.

The Cruel Stars of the Night, by Kjell Eriksson

2009-12-03T12:03:00.004-05:00

In this, Eriksson’s second book to be translated into English, we once again meet up with Ann Lindell and her team from the Uppsala police department’s Violent Crimes division. If you're not familiar with Eriksson's previous work (The Princess of Burundi), then you need to know that this series of books is set in Sweden. imho, the best crime writers in the world come out of the Scandinavian countries, although the UK runs a very close second.

In Cruel Stars of the Night, Lindell and the team are called in to investigate the seemingly motiveless deaths of three elderly men, all very quiet, all living alone. The police, in the search for anything which might lead them to a killer, try to fathom why these men were killed and what tied their lives together. Lindell gets the idea that perhaps she should make the examination broader, and begins comes up with a man who turned up missing around the same area some time back. It seems that a Laura Hindersten had turned in a missing person report when her father, a professor with a love of Petrarch, went missing. Laura’s story interweaves with that of the police investigation, and the combination of the two lead to an incredible read.

I love the way Eriksson writes and I love the slow and methodical pacing of this novel, even though many readers complained that it was too slow for their liking. Nowhere does Eriksson promise anyone a fast-paced thriller, and I personally believe that the beauty of Scandinavian crime writing in general is that it unfolds slowly. The exception is, perhaps, Stieg Larsson's books (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Girl Who Played With Fire) which are so appealing to American audiences because they are fast-paced and never a dull moment-type reads. Anyway, back to Eriksson: I liked the characters and I liked the dual plotline. What I didn’t like was that the author allowed his main character, Lindell, to make a really stupid mistake that I don’t think was in keeping with the police side of her character, in order to build to a bit of a hair-raising climax. This error, especially for a writer of Eriksson’s caliber, would normally be (for me) an unforgiveable lapse, but the rest of it was so good that I could overlook it, once I got past my initial annoyance. I can definitely recommend Cruel Stars of the Night to those who enjoy a really good police procedural, and to those who also enjoy psychological suspense. It’s also a bit more gritty than the lighthearted books cozy readers tend to enjoy, so I probably wouldn’t recommend it for that crowd. This author is also definitely a must for those who are exploring the realm of Scandinavian crime fiction.

December -- Murder and Mayhem in the UK, alpha by detective, parte deux: n-z

2009-12-03T11:51:00.002-05:00

It's the end of the year -- how fitting to end it this way! In November, I read 13 books all having to do with crime in the UK, and did it alphabetically by detective name. This month I'm finishing this up, started from N and going to Z. This is not as easy as it sounds. The planning pitfalls:

1. I couldn't find a British detective or policeman with a last name starting with N. If anyone knows of any, PLEASE let me know immediately! As it is, I'm cheating, using a first name -- my writer is Nicholas Rhea, lovingly known as Constable Nick. So I have to use first names. This is the problem with Z as well.

2. No X. Maybe I should write a series with a British detective who's known as X. The closest I came was X-Cars, but that's a television series, not a series of novels. Sad. I could have used that.

3. T: Well, I had more than enough candidates for the letter T -- seems to be a very popular initial for detective last names. arrgh. First none, now too many.

4. When I did my research, I wanted to buy every book I came across, and as it was, I managed to add money to my AMEX card I wasn't counting on putting on there.

So. that's it. My first entry for December isn't even a British book; I'd started Kjell Eriksson's Cruel Stars of the Night at the end of November and finally got back to it this morning.

Winnie and Wolf, by A.N. Wilson

2009-11-29T21:52:00.002-05:00

My thanks to Librarything's Early Reviewer program for allowing me the opportunity to read this book. It was on the Booker Prize longlist some time ago but it was one that I never was able to get to.

I do have to agree with some of the reviewers of this book about the dangers involved in trying to humanize someone that the world knows was totally evil. I mean, yeah, okay, a lot of times people with a crappy childhood or teenage trauma are more likely to turn out bad, but Hitler went beyond bad to downright evil. It was really weird that the author tried to put a human face on him, because well, I guess I never have really seen him as being human.

I do have to admit to finishing this book in one sitting. I liked it, didn't love it, although there was something about it that really intrigued me and kept me reading. What I did like was its warning about the folly of a person's (or put in much wider perspective, a nation's) admiration for charismatic individuals leading to blindness, gullibility, and outright denial of said charismatic individual's ulterior motives and nefarious methodology. This is a topic that is current and should be heeded.

For this purpose, the author weaves a tale around the relationship between the daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner (Winifred Wagner, married to Siegfried Wagner) and Adolph Hitler, known to Wagner's children as Uncle Wolf. The narrator, a secretary in the Wagner household in Beyreuth, relates how Winnifred became smitten with Hitler, and how after her husband's death, became sexually involved with him. Even after such events as Krystallnacht, the Night of the Long Knives, the harassment of ordinary people by Hitler Youth brownshirt thugs, etc., Winnifred is still so taken by Hitler that she absolutely refuses to see the truth about him and his policies. Wilson notes through his narrator, Mr. N___, that it wasn't just Winifred -- many intellectual and well-educated Germans at the time were happy with the results of Hitler's economic programs (less unemployment, an economy that was starting to pick up), and had believed that harsh, authoritarian policies as a short-term solution were what Germany needed in the aftermath of the reparations demanded by the Treaty of Versailles and in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The belief was that after the economy was flourishing again, the need for such rigid measures would disappear. Yeah, uh-huh. Right. Hitler swept in, played on feelings of German nationalism, and bolstered it with the use of the mythology behind Wagner's operas, following all of that up with his understanding of crowd psychology, also noted by Mr. N___. Fascinating stuff.

But there are a couple of putoffs in this book. First of all, I'm not a huge opera fan and have never really pictured Wagner as a likely candidate for my own personal historical study, so the amount of history and personal quirks about the famous composer thrown in by the author made it feel sometimes like I was getting lectured. However, to be fair, I think that through the narrator, the author was trying to show that even though Wagner was fascinated with the Germanic mythologies and philosophers like Schopenhauer, what he loved most was music and dogs -- and probably would not have approved of Hitler's hijacking of his work. It seems to me that it was not Richard Wagner so much as Winifred Wagner who made this possible. Second, I didn't think the author needed to resort to Hitler and Winnifred Wagner having a "love child" as the basis of the story, although from what I have read, this was definitely a rumor that actually took on some credence in many circles. There's really no point to it, except to use it as a device around which the narrator tells the story. Third -- this is Hitler we're talking about here and a man who planned genocide on such an epic scale had no soul -- maybe a desire not to lose loyal followers and their friends in the upper echelons of the social world, but that's probably about it.

I didn't much care for any of the characters in the book except for maybe Friedelind Wagner, the daughter who couldn't take any more of "Uncle Wolf" and his raving and decided to leave Germany. You can't help but wonder if she was just as disgusted with her mother.

This is a book that is definitely not for mainstream readers -- there's so much history and information in here that it can be a little tedious at times. I think if you're a reader interested in the rise of National Socialism, or the perils of blind acceptance of someone who is touted as being a savior, then you might like it.

*The Plague Court Murders, by Carter Dickson (Sir Henry Merrivale)

2009-11-28T08:57:00.003-05:00

My edition:

Library of Crime Classics,
International Polygonics
(1558820620)

And today I come to the end of my self-appointed task, which was to read thirteen books featuring murder & mayhem in the UK, alphabetically by detective. I did it! Yay!

The final entry under this topic is The Plague Court Murders, by Carter Dickson. I bought mine used, from Amazon, and although it's just a normal, mass-market paperback, it did not come cheap. So if you're even considering this one (and you will, if you are a dyed-in-the-wool impossible crimes fan), start scouring those used book stores now.

now to the book:
The Plague Court Murders is the first in a series featuring Sir Henry Merrivale, noted expert on crime, barrister, physician and all around smart guy when it comes to solving the unsolvable. Carter Dickson is one of the pseudonyms of Golden-Age mystery writer John Dickson Carr, and this book definitely falls within at category. The reader is presented with an impossible crime, with several suspects and a number of red herrings. In the introduction to this edition, it is noted that Carr was a fan of the great Houdini, as well as spiritualism and haunted-house stories; he combined elements of all three in putting together this story.

As it begins, a Mr. Dean Halliday is explaining to Ken Blake that his family home, called Plague Court, is supposedly haunted, and he invites Blake and another friend, Inspector Masters, to go with him that very night to attend a seance. Masters is interested because the seance will be handled by Roger Darworth, who is a subject under surveillance by the police, along with his medium, Joseph. But during the seance something goes terribly wrong, and Darworth, who is alone, and locked in to a small stone building on the property, ends up murdered. The police are totally baffled by this impossible crime, and turn to Sir Henry Merrivale (often called "Mycroft" as a joke) for help.

Like a lot of Carr's work, this one is a bit long, and the prose a bit stilted and sometimes archaic. The language may try the patience of modern mystery readers (it was written in the 1930s), and also, we don't really meet Sir Henry until late in the game. The story just kind of drags until after Darworth's murder, when it begins only then to pick up some speed. And, while the core mystery is well plotted, I wasn't overwhelmed by the solution. I will say that it was fun watching things unravel, and I was definitely wrong in my choice of murderer.

As noted, modern mystery readers may be a bit put off by the language and the slowness of the story at times, but those readers who are fans of books written during the Golden Age of Mystery will probably enjoy it.

*The Judas Pair, by Jonathan Gash (Lovejoy)

2009-11-25T08:09:00.003-05:00

Another one I read in one sitting, and the first installment in the Lovejoy series.

The Judas Pair is the name of a set of flintlock dueling weapons that are like the holy grail of the antique gun world. Lovejoy, a somewhat shady antiques dealer with a penchant for the ladies, is hired to find them by the brother of a man who claimed he owned the Judas Pair, but then was murdered. When the police went to examine the crime scene, the guns were nowhere to be found. Lovejoy sets out to find the weapons (if they exist), but it soon becomes obvious that someone else is interested as well, and will use any means possible to have the entire set.

Lovejoy may not be a perfect human being, but he's witty and philosophizes throughout the novel, often to the point of making me laugh out loud. Considering that this is the first book of a rather lengthy series, Gash has done a really nice job of fleshing out his character and making him real enough for people to either really like or really hate, which is really rare in a series opener. As far as the story, the mystery isn't all that hard to guess, but I think it's really secondary here to the character of Lovejoy himself.

There have been several reviews that speak against Lovejoy's treatment of women, and I agree that this is definitely a downside to his character, but actually you'll probably find more domestic abuse in one of Oprah's book club selections.

Not a cozy, not a police procedural, The Judas Pair is still a really good read. I'd recommend it to readers of British crime fiction, or to those who've seen the series on television and want to read the original source.

*The Chalon Heads, by Barry Maitland (Detectives Kolla and Brock)

2009-11-23T08:28:00.003-05:00

I actually meant to pick up the third book of the series (All My Enemies), as I'd read the first two some time ago (and by some time, I mean years and years), but I started reading this one and was too far into it by the time I'd realized my error. So Chalon Heads it was. Then I realized I'd totally forgotten the first two so decided maybe I should start at the very beginning (The Marx Sisters) , but once again, time was not on my side -- I still have two more books on my list to read, plus a book from Librarything Early Reviewer's Program (Winnie and Wolf) before the end of the month, which is just like a week away. So once again Chalon Heads won out. But it was okay -- if I missed anything I really didn't notice, and I plan to return to the first three anyway. Personally, I'm so stuck in my rut of having to read books in series order that it did pain me a bit, but I found that it was easy to get over at least one of my multiple neuroses and just get on with it.

The Chalon Heads is the fourth installment of the series featuring DCI Brock and his partner, Kathy Kolla. As the book opens, Brock and Kolla are called to speak with Sammy Starling, a career criminal who some years earlier had been arrested, but turned the tables on the police force by handing them some dirty policemen. Now Starling wants Brock's help because his wife, Eva (much younger than Starling) has, it seems, been abducted, and the kidnappers want Sammy to buy a very valuable Chalon Head stamp at an upcoming auction, rather than money, as the price of Eva's return. Brock & his fellow officers agree to help, but something goes terribly wrong in the process, leading to Brock's ouster from the case. It will be up to Kolla to take the lead in the investigation, but too many people are keeping secrets that they do not wish to reveal, making her job a most difficult one. Add to that a number of suspects, all with axes to grind -- and you have a mystery novel that will keep you reading.

As a police procedural, it's good, but the further into the investigation the principals get, the more complicated the story becomes, making it a bit difficult at times to keep up. The overall story is well done, and there's a solid mystery here with an ending that I didn't see coming.

I would certainly recommend this novel to readers of British mysteries and police procedurals. If you're a cozy reader, this might be a bit dark but at the same time, it's not as gritty as more hard-core police procedurals I've read, falling somewhere nicely in the middle.

Overall -- not bad, and it's on to the next Kolla and Brock mystery novel.

*Ritual Murder, by S.T. Haymon (DCI Ben Jurnet)

2009-11-17T16:07:00.004-05:00

another oldie, but still a goodie. I've been collecting these books since I was 12, so I never know what I'm going to pull off of my shelves. Actually, I don't really even know what's on my shelves, so a lot of times, it's like Christmas.

Detective Inspector Ben Jurnet, in Norfolk, is sent to Angleby Cathedral to investigate some graffiti written on one of the Cathedral walls. At the cathedral, a well-known media-loving professor is leading an excavation of the tomb of Little St. Ulf, a child who was killed and horribly mutilated in the middle ages, at which time his death was blamed on the Jews of the town. After gathering evidence and information on potential suspects for the vandalization of the Cathedral walls, Jurnet is shortly called back to the Cathedral to investigate a murder. It seems that one of the choirboys was found at the archaeological site, and his body mutilated after the fashion of Little St. Jurnet, who is studying for his conversion to Judaism (for the sake of marriage), must get to the bottom of the crime quickly, but with so many suspects, it's not going to be easy. There are other problems as well, as anti-Semitism begins to rear its ugly head in Angleby.

There is an abundance of suspects, lots of red herrings, and the core mystery is really well written. I like Jurnet's character, but I think the author gets a bit carried away at times in sharing his inner demons with her readers -- here's yet another detective whose angst is a bit off-putting at times. However, Haymon's comments about the nature of modern crime and criminals are also pertinent to today, although this book was written over 20 years ago. It is a cross between a police procedural and a cozy, leaning more toward the procedural side of British mystery, so I'd recommend it to both cozy readers and to fans of British mystery in general.

Overall -- a good mystery with a main character somewhat overly weighted down by his own problems. I'll definitely be revisiting Inspector Jurnet in the future.

*Oxford Exit, by Veronica Stallwood (Kate Ivory)

2009-11-17T10:46:00.003-05:00

Oxford Exit is the second in the series featuring novelist Kate Ivory.

This isn't your standard cut-and-dried whodunit, because here Stallwood uses two narratives to tell the story. There is Kate's story -- she's trying to write her newest novel with a lot of interruptions, and she's asked by her friend Andrew to take on the task of tracking down some suspected thefts from some newly-computerized Oxford libraries. While Andrew is telling her about some of the library's problems, his girlfriend Isabel tells Kate the story of one her friends, coincidentally a graduate student in library science, who was killed some time back. The two cases get Kate's detective juices flowing. At the same time, Stallwood introduces the readers to the somewhat rather warped jottings of a creative writing student that interweave throughout the novel and often parallel the action that's taking place in Kate's world and which could place unknowing Kate in a lot of danger.

The alternating narratives work here, and work well. Although the writing student's narrative warns the reader not to take everything at face value, you know that you're looking into a very sick mind. I enjoyed that aspect of the book, and I enjoyed the unmasking of the killer. Kate Ivory's side of things was good, but often just a little cutesy for my taste in mysteries. I think this book might be better suited for cozy mystery readers than for more serious readers (like me), but overall it was okay. I was actually wrong in my choice of murderer so that's always a positive thing. I'd recommend it primarily to cozy readers who want something more on the criminal side, because even though the criminal's viewpoint was well done, the rest was kind of so-so.

I do have more books on my shelves by this author, and will eventually read them all, but I've definitely read better.

*The Mysterious Commission, by Michael Innes (Charles Honeybath)

2009-11-15T13:26:00.004-05:00

Here I am, up to the letter H in my quest to read novels about a smattering of detectives from the UK in a-z order. Actually, n-z is next month, so I guess a-m is more accurate. Anyway, I've had this book sitting here for a while and decided to give it a try. I was soooo happy with it!

Michael Innes is a prolific writer and his most prolific detective was John Appleby. His first book featuring Appleby was written in 1936; the first Charles Honeybath book (this one) was written in 1974. So not only does he have a prolific pen, but Innes has longevity in the field. It shows.

Renowned portrait painter Charles Honeybath receives a request from a man who wants him to paint someone about whom he will give no information. Calling him Mr. X, the man says only that the person in mind is a bit insane, and that Mr. X's famous family (how they are famous he won't say) would like to have their relative's portrait made. He tells Honeybath that he has exactly two weeks to paint the picture, and that it must be done at Mr. X's place of residence. Honeybath is somewhat intrigued, and then he is taken away in the dark of night to his new temporary lodgings, where for the next two weeks he remains under some rather bizarre conditions. When he is dismissed, he finds himself under suspicion from the police -- it seems that during his absence, the bank next door to Honeybath's studio had been robbed. Honeybath must not only clear his name, but he wants to get to retrieve the portrait he'd painted, which he considers one of his best works.

This book is quite good. The writing is excellent and the story is strange enough to hold the reader's attention throughout. I read it in one sitting -- it gripped me from the beginning and never let up. Honeybath is an interesting character, well executed and believable. The end is a little rushed but otherwise this was a really good read. Definitely recommendable to readers of British mystery.

*A Shilling for Candles, by Josephine Tey (Inspector Alan Grant, Scotland Yard)

2009-11-14T08:46:00.002-05:00

Tey is a writer from mystery's Golden Age and in general, writes wonderful novels. Her novel, Brat Farrar, is one of my favorites, as is Daughter of Time, a classic in its own right. DOT is also an Alan Grant novel, while Farrar is a nonseries book. Both are simply outstanding. But while Shilling for Candles was entertaining, it's not up to the standards of either of the two books I just mentioned.

This is the second Alan Grant book I've read and I didn't read them in order, more's the pity for me.

An actress, Christine Clay, has taken a cottage near the ocean to hide out for a while. She is joined by a total stranger to her, Robert Tisdall, who was also looking to get away from life for a while. One morning, Christine turns up dead, drowned in the sea, and Inspector Alan Grant from the Yard is called in by the local constables. He has his eye on Tisdall for doing the crime for various reasons, but his case is solidified when Clay's will is read and Tisdall comes into an inheritance. Hmm. But Grant's got a niggling doubt -- and so sets out to investigate anyone who may have had it in for Christine...and finds that there are more than a few people who would have liked to have seen her dead.

The characters are entertaining but the book is just average. Perhaps this is because it's only the second book of the series. The mystery is good and solid, and there are a number of suspects and red herrings that are thrown out for the reader's consideration, but some of the plot lines seemed a bit confusing at times. The end, truthfully, I saw coming from a long way out so that was sort of off putting. However, many people really enjoyed this one, so it's one you'll have to try yourself. I'd recommend it to fans of Tey, or to fans of Golden-Age mystery, or to readers of British mystery in general.

Overall -- not bad; not one of my favorites by this author but still a fine read.

Oh frabjous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-11-12T09:51:00.006-05:00

I just found out that my review of The Shimmer by David Morrell won review of the week at book army and I'm getting "a pile of top titles" sent to my house within 30 days. Hooray! I knew this hobby of mine would come in handy some day! Go over and check out the site. It's awesome.

*A Death for Adonis, by E.X. Giroux (Robby Forsyth)

2009-11-12T09:34:00.003-05:00

....an oldie, but a goodie.

I LOVE books about murders that occurred in the past, and I love mysteries set in British country houses. This book has both elements, and the combination of the two makes for one of the better books I've read this year.

Rarely do you come upon a mystery series first novel that is as good as this one. In many ways, this book was flawlessly executed and I read this in one sitting because it was good enough that I did not want to put it down.

The story hinges on a brutal murder that had occurred in 1944. Well-known artist Sebastian Calvert was found in his studio holding the dismembered corpse of the mode for his statue of Adonis, David Mersey. It snapped his brain and sent him into a mental hospital, although he was tried and convicted of the murder. Now, 25 years later, Calvert's daughter Elizabeth (who did not grow up with him, living with an uncle instead), comes to Robert (Robby) Forsythe, to persuade him to look into the case and see if there's any way possible Calvert wasn't guilty, because she doesn't want her father's shadow following her into a new relationship. Robby, who used to be an up-and-coming barrister in London until a scandal forced him into a life of seclusion, and his faithful friend and secretary Sandy dive into the case. They discover that perhaps there's more to the story than what's on the surface.

The writing is excellent; the story will keep you glued, and truly this was an incredible mystery. In parts it reminded me of the writing of Barbara Vine (whose works I admire), and I plan to continue the series. Robby's character isn't as well fleshed out as it could have been, but this is just a first novel, so I'll expect more as the series progresses. Highly recommended, especially to readers who enjoy a good, old-fashioned murder mystery in the British country house setting.

*Evans Above, by Rhys Bowen (Constable Evan Evans)

2009-11-12T08:58:00.003-05:00

Evans Above is a cozy mystery, a genre I do not often read. I just can't deal with all of the "cute" characters and the cutesy tone...if there's going to be murder, then it should be somewhat serious. That's why this book was a bit different: at the heart of this book is a decent mystery story, with multiple suspects, red herrings, and a pretty good solution.

Evan Evans, often known as Evans-the-Law so as to distinguish him from Evans-the-Post or Evans-the-Meat (it's Wales...Evans is a popular name), is the policeman in the small village of Llanfair, in the Snowdonia area (known in Wales as Eryri). As the story begins, he's called upon by the owner of a chalet on the mountain to look into a missing mountain hiker, but by the time Evans gets around to getting up to the mountain to check it out, he's investigating the hiker's death. puts it off One evening he is called up to the mountain to investigate a hiker's death. He's immediately suspicious, but his superiors cannot help him out because they're all involved in a child molestation case.
When another man is killed, again on the mountain, Evans knows he must solve it on his own.

Very light in tone, it was a good read. I liked the main character. I'm really not very at home with cozy mysteries, although I read them from time to time, and this is one of the better series starters I've come across in that genre. Readers of cozy mysteries will like it; readers of more edgy & serious mystery readers will find it a little light. I'd recommend it to cozy readers or those who like their mystery on the lighter side.

and...I've seen this compared to the series featuring Hamish Macbeth by MC Beaton...not even close. I've read the series opener to that one and wasn't impressed. At all. And I'm still debating on whether or not to finish that series.

*Dover One, by Joyce Porter (DCI Wilfred Dover)

2009-11-11T08:50:00.003-05:00

I bought this some time back at a yard sale, thinking "okay, it's British, I'll give it a try." And there it sat, all those years, unread on my British reading room bookshelf. Now I'm wondering how many other little gems I have that are just sitting there waiting to be read. This was a true find...and I'm definitely going to follow up with more of the series.

A young girl goes missing, and the local constabulary soon realizes they should probably call in the Yard. It's just their luck that the Yard sends Wilfred Dover, along with Sgt. MacGregor, to their aid. When he arrives at the scene of the crime, he's faced with an assortment of rather eccentric people (and some who are just plainly weird) who, as it turns out, all had a reason to do away with the girl. He deduces that she didn't leave of her own accord, and is either being held as a kidnap victim or worse, she is dead. Normally the wheels of Scotland Yard detection would begin turning in this case, but Dover would much rather have a nap.

This is a rather comic sort of mystery -- Dover is an obnoxious man who relies on luck and the work of others to solve cases rather than his own efforts. He's a slob -- one of the characters watched in horror as dandruff flaked off of his head. He loves to eat, has been known to put away the pint or two, and his detection skills leave a lot to be desired.

While some of the characters come off as being a bit over the top, this novel works and it works well. Dover is a person with absolutely zero redeeming qualities, but you can't help but like him. The book was written before political correctness entered the picture, so the author allows her characters to speak their minds. It's entirely different than anything I've ever read, and it's a treasure. I hope the rest of the series is as good as this series opener.

Die-hard fans of serious British mysteries might find this book a little out there and silly, but there is actually a good mystery at the core of this novel. There are a wealth of suspects, some red herrings, and the solution is satisfying. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who reads British mysteries -- but beware: it stands police procedurals on their heads. If you're looking for something entirely different, you have to give this one a try.

*Black Dog, by Stephen Booth (DC Ben Cooper)

2009-11-10T08:30:00.003-05:00

I read this novel sometime earlier, probably when it first came out, and I was actually planning to read his Dancing With the Virgins, but realized I'd totally forgotten what had happened in Black Dog. Since it was driving me crazy, I put down Booth's second novel and reread his first.

Considering that Black Dog is Stephen Booth's first novel, and that it's a mystery series opener, it's really quite good.

As the book opens, Ben Cooper of the Edendale police (in the Peak District of England) is involved in the case of a missing teenaged girl, Laura Vernon. According to her parents, she was a wonderful child, interested in school and horses, and would never just up and run away. The police force is giving its all on this case, but the body is actually discovered by an elderly man, Harry Dickinson, and his dog, Jess, while out on a walk. He's interviewed by the police, but Cooper realizes that Dickinson's not telling everything he knows. But he's not the only one keeping secrets. It seems that many people in the small town of Edendale are keeping mum, hindering the investigation at every turn.

For a first novel in series, it's well done. The author goes to great lengths to introduce Ben Cooper, who is the son of a local police legend, and who lives at the family home, helping his brother take care of his ailing mother. Ben is also gearing up for promotion to sergeant, but Cooper joins the ranks of other UK angst-ridden detectives who carry an immense amount of emotional damage. He's also met his match in a new DC, Diane Fry (a very unlikable character), who is ambitious and has no scruples when it comes to getting what she wants. She has it in for Ben almost immediately, and their complex relationship is examined as the story progresses.

The book is a bit longer than it needed to be and while the end will catch you by surprise, it's a bit contrived. However, considering that it is the author's first book, I was impressed.

I'd definitely recommend it to fans of British police procedurals; cozy readers may find it a bit more complex than what they're used to reading. Overall -- a good start to a series which I plan to explore further.

The Shimmer, by David Morrell

2009-11-06T10:47:00.003-05:00

Actually, I read this book in October and forgot to post it with that group of books. Oh well.

There's just no way a person can pigeonhole this book. It's a novel that's a blend of sci-fi, fantasy, suspense and action-packed thriller. Personally, I think it defies categorization, unless you lump it into one of my favorite categories -- escape reading.

In an afterward following the novel, David Morrell explains that he used the true-life, strange-light phenomenon in Marfa, TX as his inspiration, moving them to the fictional town of Rostov, TX in his book. As the novel opens, Dan Page, a police officer in Santa Fe, is trying to unwind by flying his small plane, but unwittingly becomes involved in a high-speed chase on the ground that doesn't end well. He returns home to share his day with his wife Tori, but she's nowhere to be found. Tori has gone off to visit her mother, 800 miles away, by car. Dan alerts authorities along the way to keep a lookout for her car, and she turns up in the tiny little town of Rostov, where he eventually finds her staring out over the desert at some mysterious lights in a viewing area where other people are waiting for the lights as well. Dan doesn't understand, but people who can see the lights are mesmerized by them. In the midst of a gathering crowd, one crazed man begins a wild shooting spree to make people stop looking at the lights. This is where the action begins, and it doesn't let up from there.

It's a fun read, although sometimes the characters are bit larger than life and maybe just a wee bit stereotypical, but then again, this book isn't purporting to be great literature. If you want something just a little different, and if you can suspend your disbelief for a while, you might enjoy this one. This is more for people who like action-type thrillers, a genre that is not my cup of tea in the larger sense of things, but this one was fun.

Mr. Shivers, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Amazon Vine)

2009-11-06T10:40:00.003-05:00

First, my thanks to the Amazon Vine Program for this book. I stayed up deep into the night finishing it and couldn't sleep for some time afterwards thinking about what I'd just read. Mr. Shivers offers something different from most of what's out there in fantasy and horror books right now -- there's no tired old formula here.

Considering that this is the author's debut novel, it is actually quite good -- so much so that I read it in one sitting.

Marcus Connelly is on the road during America's Great Depression, hanging with hobos and migrant families in search of the next job up the road. Marcus isn't after a job, though -- he's after the man who killed his daughter back in Memphis, a person that many call Mr. Shivers or the scarred man. He comes across others who had dealings with and who are also seeking Mr. Shivers, and links up with some of them, traveling westward through the devastation of the dust bowl on his quest.

The author does an amazing job of using his prose to paint an atmosphere that is bleak, dark and desperate. He is able to portray these qualities not only in terms of the landscape and the times, but also within the haunted psyches of the main characters.

Mr. Shivers may disappoint people who are looking for the next great horror novel, because it's more cerebral rather than hackle raising. It may also disappoint people who want to read it for its historical slant. Although it is set in the midst of the Great Depression and does manage to capture the tragic consequences and the horror of the time, it's more of a dark fantasy with supernatural components. It's also a book that demands reader participation.

Overall, it's a good book by an author whose writing often reminded me of that of Cormac McCarthy. If you like dark fantasy it will keep you reading until the end. I can definitely recommend it.

*Gallows View, by Peter Robinson (Inspector Alan Banks)

2009-11-05T08:03:00.002-05:00

Another one I've had sitting on my shelf for eons. So much better than the previous one (Wychford Murders), even though both are series openers, Robinson is a much stronger writer and doesn't bog it all down with clunky romance, dialog or characterization. This one I liked.

Gallows View is an okay introduction to the British mystery series featuring Inspector Alan Banks, who lives and works in Eastvale, Yorkshire. As the novel begins, the local police are trying to find a peeper who is frightening some of the town's women. As if that's not enough, an elderly woman living alone has been killed, and there are a series of unsolved break-ins. Banks, who has moved to Yorkshire to get away from the high-stress levels of police work and of life in general in London, takes the lead on all of these cases -- which may or may not be linked together.

As with most first novels in a mystery series, Banks' character isn't as well developed right away as it will hopefully be in the next ones. I expect this, though; it's very rare that a character comes fully fleshed out in a series opener. However, the crime plotting is solid, and the way Robinson writes his story leaves readers guessing until the end.

I can recommend Gallows View. If you like British mystery, or if you're looking for a solid police procedural (with some personal touches) and you haven't tried this series yet, it would be worth your while to do so. It's not on the cozy end of mystery novels, but it's not really hardcore either. Overall -- a good read, and I'll definitely be coming back to this author.

*The Wychford Murders, by Paula Gosling (DCI Luke Abbott)

2009-11-04T10:40:00.004-05:00

good grief. My first foray into murder and mayhem in the UK for the month and it's a disappointment.

First in what seems to be only a two-book mystery series featuring Inspector Luke Abbott, The Wychford Murders just didn't do it for me.
It seems that a cleaning woman has been found with her throat slashed on a towpath along the Purle River in Wychford. DCI Luke Abbott is called in to investigate this horrible murder. However, while he's busy with this case, there are two more murders that he must turn his attention to, and he a) must decide whether the small town is dealing with a serial killer -- and b ) must catch the killer before anyone else dies. But things are not always as they seem, as Abbott quickly learns, making his job incredibly tough.

There is an okay mystery at the heart of this book, but I think that the author threw in way too much on the romance side for this to work well. Abbott is reunited with an old girlfriend, Jennifer and sparks ignite, but I felt that this whole love interest thing cheapened the story a bit and slowed down the crime solving. Also -- some of the characters were so overdrawn as to appear stereotypical and I found this a bit off-putting.

I don't mind a love interest in a crime novel as long as it's kept in the background, but if you like British murder mysteries (and actually, this one is written by an American author) that are a bit heavy on the romance, then you'll probably enjoy this one. I probably won't be coming back to this author myself, because I prefer something a bit edgier, but then again, a lot of people thought this was a very good book.

and finally, November -- Murder and Mayhem in the UK, alphabetically by detective, part I

2009-11-02T10:42:00.005-05:00

In choosing this month's topic, I decided that I really do need to get going on my gigantic collection of mystery novels from the UK. I have tons I haven't read and I keep buying them so I'm focusing on those for the moment. I'm doing it in alphabetical order by detective so hopefully I'll get a good mix. November's reads will be a-m (I'm counting on getting through at least that part of the alphabet), continuing with the rest in December.

This should be interesting...now on to murder.

(still for October) *Monstrocity, by Jeffrey Thomas

2009-11-02T10:13:00.003-05:00

...or, Cthuhlu comes to Punktown. What a wild book! I'm a huge fan of Jeffrey Thomas as well as of HP Lovecraft's original creation (Cthulhu) and the imaginations of Lovecraft's followers.

I have to admit that this is really my first Punktown-based novel, but that situation will be rectified here shortly. Punktown is really Paxton, a city on the world called Oasis. Several peoples call Punktown home: for example, there are the Tikkihottos, the Kalians and the indigenous Chooms. There are human beings who live there as well. The action begins as Chris Ruby and his girlfriend Gaby are at his home, and for fun they decide to light candles in eight corners while Gaby plays a recording of a summoning spell from the Necronomicon, the evil book of secrets that should not be played with lightly. Soon afterwards, Gaby disengages from life and Chris and Chris wants to know why. His quest takes him down dangerous paths, where he discovers that there are things best left alone in the world, and that sadly, not everyone feels that way, opting rather to delight in the forces of evil.

I loved this book! Thomas gives Punktown its own life and breath so much so that you can actually visualize it. The characters are colorful, interesting and real in the context of this world; the dialog is natural. The writing is excellent and I absolutely cannot wait to read the rest of the Punktown books. I don't think you need to have read the previous ones because the author does a great job of setting the scene. You may wish to have some familiarity with the works of HP Lovecraft for this to make some sense, but again, the author incorporates Lovecraft so well that you don't absolutely need to be a Lovecraft fan to enjoy it.

Overall -- an awesome and fun read; recommended definitely for Lovecraft aficionados and for people who enjoy a good blend of fantasy and horror together in one space.

(still for October) *Not Untrue and Not Unkind, by Ed O'Loughlin

2009-11-02T08:03:00.006-05:00

Not Untrue and Not Unkind is one of the books which made it to the Booker Prize longlist for 2009 that I missed reading earlier this year. Strangely enough, it's also the second book about journalists in Africa I read this month, the first being The White Mary. No question -- Not Untrue and Not Unkind comes out way on top. But let's add some perspective here. My guess would be that White Mary will be liked more by general and more mainstream readers while O'Loughlin's book will be reserved for people who like their fiction a bit edgier with more grit.

Owen Simmons is selected to take over after the death of his editor, Cartwright. As he begins to go through Cartwright's folders, he discovers a photo of Owen's friends and colleagues taken during his time in Africa as a correspondent during the 1990s. As he studies the photo, it takes him back to those days, reopening wounds that he'd rather not remember, some of which, in fact, he's mentally disengaged from. In Not Untrue and Not Unkind we follow events of Simmons' past in Africa as he reflects backwards in time, interspersed with events of the present.

But the story isn't really about events per se in Africa, although Simmons was there (for example, at the end of the Rwandan genocide in the Congo) when things were really still very hot; rather, it's about the relationship among a group of journalists in Simmons' circle. These people are not glitzy media stars but professional and freelance reporters and photographers out there to scoop the next story. For the most part, these people tend to be callous and shallow, often living and working in emotional disconnect from their surroundings. There is always an undercurrent of tension among the group with feelings often left unspoken and thus not dealt with, especially with Simmons, who can't seem to admit his feelings even to himself and who sometimes has trouble trying to make sense of things. On the whole, they're not likable characters that you can actually warm up to at any point in the story.

The author saves any kind of emotional high note until the end, so you really do have to read through the entire story to make sense of it all. It's slow going until you get there, but well worth the read. I was surprised to discover that Not Untrue and Not Unkind was his first novel because for the most part, the writing is not something you'd expect from a debut.

I recommend it with a few cautions: it's very slow, and you're not going to get any real insights into the whys of the horrors or atrocities of the wars in Africa even though some of the scenes are a bit stomach churning; it's also character, rather than action driven, and the slow pace may also be a turnoff for some readers. Overall, though, I liked it and thought it well worth the time I put into it.

(still for October) *Flashforward, by Robert J. Sawyer

2009-11-01T11:51:00.004-05:00

Yeah yeah, I started the series on television, and then when the credits said it was loosely based on Sawyer's novel, I decided to read the book. Haven't been back to the series yet since the first episode (all on TiVo), but I expect it's nothing like the book. I hope that people who watch it on television don't give this book negative reviews (since the series is a loose adaptation, not a faithful reconstruction) because it's not a bad book at all.

Set in 2009, Sawyer takes as his premise that in the midst of ordinary life one day everyone on the planet loses consciousness for a few minutes and wakes up knowing his or her future in the year 2030. For some it is a good thing, but not for all. As scientists puzzle over what caused the flashforward (as the phenomenon came to be known), others are trying their best to deal with their futures that haven't yet occurred.

Sawyer offers his readers the opportunity to enter the debate over destiny vs. free will, having his characters enter into philosophical discourse as well as lectures on certain concepts of quantum physics, the nature of God, and reality.

There are really only two negatives about my experience with this book. First, the characters are a bit cardboardish and ultimately forgettable. I liked them as scientists but when they were in their own personal lives they were a bit flat. Second, the ending of the book (which I won't give away) didn't seem to fit for some reason.

Overall, the story itself was a good one, although at times it became a bit dense while trying to slog through the science. I think that people who enjoy more technical (hard) science fiction will really like this one. If you're not up on the discussion of Schrodinger's Cat, you may want to spend some time reading about it before you start this book. I spent a long time trying to figure it out, since I was not blessed with a brain that does science. Others who may be interested in the philosophy behind the story (free will vs. an immutable destiny) will also enjoy it. I can definitely recommend it.

The White Mary, by Kira Salak

2009-10-22T15:21:00.003-04:00

My thanks to Library Thing's Early Reviewer Program for sending me this book. Truthfully, I didn't know what to expect, but the blurb caught my eye and I entered my hat into the ring to read this one. Let's just say this isn't my general cup of tea in novel preference, but it was actually pretty good, considering that this is the author's first attempt at a novel.

The White Mary has an intriguing premise. The main character, Marika Vecera, returns to her home in Boston after a hellish journalistic assignment in the Congo. Unable to get past her experiences there, Marika has withdrawn, pulling away from her boyfriend Seb when he tries to explain to her that talking about what happened would only be beneficial to her and to them as a couple. Marika has always been able to internalize her feelings and to detach herself mentally from what's she's seen during her career, and doesn't want help from anyone, especially from Seb. But when she discovers that her iconic idol, Robert Lewis, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, has committed suicide, Marika decides that she wants to write a book about Lewis. While she is gathering information and writing, she discovers that a missionary working in the wilds of Papua New Guinea has seen a man that he swears is Lewis and decides that she needs to go in search of him.

For me, the best parts of the book were the scenes of Marika's time in New Guinea -- in the journey through the wilds and in the villages of the local natives. The scenes in the Congo and the story of Lewis in East Timor were raw and gritty, and very much worth the read. As far as characters, my favorite was Tobo, Marika's guide and the shaman of a local village in New Guinea. Salak's portrayal of Newlove, the missionary was also well done, even though he was a totally unlikeable character. The main characters were all a bit larger than life and I wasn't really impressed with any of them. Seb didn't come off as realistic (a bit too good to be true), and Marika's psychological issues made her at times not very likeable and I never really came away with the feeling that I'd bonded with her as a person. The dialogue was often stilted and unrealistic, especially between Marika and Seb. But Salak's novel tackles some important issues: how far can a person internalize pain and suffering without losing himself or herself, and at what point does one accept that sometimes no matter what you do, there's nothing you can do.

I liked the book, didn't love it, but the writing was overall quite good, so much so that I'm planning to pick up some of Salak's nonfiction works. It's hard to believe that this is her first novel, and although this book was kind of overdramatic for me, it has received rave reviews elsewhere so it's something you'll just have to read it and judge for yourself.

*The Draining Lake, by Arnaldur Indridason

2009-10-20T07:56:00.003-04:00

It's happened again; The Draining Lake is listed as Indridason's fourth Erlendur Sveinsson mystery, but it's actually the 6th. The two have yet to be translated into English (but their titles are Sons of Dust and Silent Kill. So I have to list this as # 6 in the series, even though it's commonly viewed as #4. Personally, I didn't love this book as much as the previous three I've read, but it's still quite good.

The story behind Erlendur's Draining Lake investigation begins not with the discovery of bones in a lake bed, but in the 1950s in Leipzig. At that time it was part of the GDR, and students were being recruited to come to the university there to study. Some Icelandic socialist students were part of the recruitment effort -- but many discovered that there was a catch to their free education once they had been there for a while. Flashforward to the present, where a hydrologist examining a lake bed finds bones half buried there and calls police. As it turns out, the body was tied down with an old Soviet listening device, starting Erlendur and his team on an investigation that will take them back to the Cold War years. With very few clues to go on, including the identity of the dead man, Erlendur and his team have their work cut out for them. In the meantime, there's a few hitches in Erlendur's life: seriously drug-addicted daughter Eva Lind has runaway again, and while he's busy worrying about her, his long-estranged son Sindri shows up.

Indridason's writing is excellent, as always, and the fleshed-out back story of the students' years in Leipzig is a nice glimpse into the pitfalls of overzealous idealism. Erlendur is a character who has since the outset of this series been portrayed as very human, with real-life problems that don't seem to ever be resolved. The author is able to inject a bit of wry humor into his writing which is often dark and depressing -- there are no warm fuzzies or nice touchy-feely happy endings where everyone goes home happy and satisfied in this series. If that's what you're looking for, then pass on these novels.
The Draining Lake is not my favorite of Indridason's novels, but it was still a great read. He continues to follow his pattern of the past's connection to the present, which is one of my favorite motifs in a mystery novel. The book is well written, and my only criticism is that at times things seemed to move very slow. But I still very highly recommend not only this book, but the entire series. You'll want to start with the first book in translation, Jar City, and make your way through all of the books before coming to this one if you want the best reading experience. People who enjoy Scandinavian crime novels will want to read this one, as will people looking for a good mystery novel in general.

now .... do I buy the newest one or wait for it to come out in paper?

*Dirty Little Angels, by Chris Tusa

2009-10-19T13:38:00.002-04:00

New Orleans' down side of town provides the backdrop for this very short novel, which focuses on the lives of an incredibly dysfunctional family, the Trosclairs. Mom is suffering through major depression, dad lost his job and now spends the bulk of his time in a pool hall drinking. There are two teenaged children: Hailey and Cyrus, who themselves have incredible problems: Cyrus hangs out with a very bad crowd, and Hailey hears buzzing in her head. The family is on the brink of getting thrown out of the family home by Mom's brother, who only cares about the dollar signs in front of his eyes. It's not pretty. The book focuses on Hailey for the most part, and her attempts to cope with various situations that her family life brings upon her. She also has to contend with her brother, whose involvement with some pretty sketchy and shady characters is putting him in danger either with the law or with the bad guys themselves.

There are very few novels like this; it is dark and disturbing and harsh. There's very little in the way of redemption here, so if you want all's well at the end kind of a story, skip this one. I have only a couple of issues with this novel. First: I would love to have seen the characters more fully fleshed out. For example, Hailey as a central focus would have been much more realistic if I had known her a little bit better, and for that to have happened, maybe her family needed more fleshing out as well. Second: I wasn't quite sure what readership the author was trying reach. At times I thought maybe it was geared to older teen readers, but at others I wondered if he was going more for like a 20-something type audience. On the plus side, the prose is very simplistic, making it more believable from the perspective of a young, teen-aged girl.The action moves quickly so there's never a drag. If I had to give this one a label, I might be inclined toward "modern southern gothic," if there is such a thing.

Overall, I think it was quite good, but I'm not sure which audience I'd recommend it to. I hope the author continues to write, keeping it simple, but offering more in the way of characterizations. It is realistic and believable, which is a good thing. Considering that this is the author's first novel, I'd venture to say that he has some good things yet to come forth.

*Sun and Shadow, by Ake Edwardson

2009-10-19T10:30:00.005-04:00

Well, I made this incredibly huge mistake here. In my zeal to find another series set in Scandinavian countries, I came across Death Angels by Edward Akeson at my local Barnes and Noble store. On the back blurb it stated that it was the debut novel featuring Inspector Erik Winter in Sweden; so I bought it. Always one to get my ducks in a line series wise, I consulted probably my favorite website, fantasticfiction.com, to make sure the series order was correct and that I was indeed diving into another series at its outset. Lo and behold, Fantastic Fiction says that Death Angels was #4, and that Sun and Shadow was #1. So I read it, and I must admit that I felt like I was swimming a little upstream in the life of Inspector Erik Winter. So today, when I realized I have to post this in my book journal here, I was tooling around for more info about the author and realized that Fantastic Fiction only went by the translation date for series order, not the actual books themselves. Thus it turns out Sun and Shadow is actually #3 and Death Angels is actually #1. Memo to self: check as thoroughly as possible and believe the blurb when it says it's a debut.

But now that I've read it, I'll go ahead and review it -- but it's going to be a bit off for me internally because it's out of order and I have this thing about reading series novels as they come out timewise.

Sun and Shadow rolls out month by month, and begins in the months just prior to the new millenium. Set in Goteborg, Sweden, the action begins to heat up with the discovery of a truly grizzly double murder that leads Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter and his team into a very dark place. The only clue left behind is a tape of some bizarre kind of metal music, and Winter knows that he and his team are going to be lucky to solve this gruesome crime. That's the basic story, but there's a lot more to this book than just stopping a murderer.

Edwardson's novel (3rd in the series) is more of a character study. As the pressures mount, the author allows the readers inside the heads of the main characters -- not just the policemen but others involved in the story as well. By providing an inside look into individual mindsets and psyches, the author creates a bit of suspense -- the police investigation interweaves with these personal psychological insights so that there are a number of potential suspects by the time the end comes. This technique slowed down the reading a bit, but when all is said and done, it made the book a bit more interesting.

Overall, the book is quite good but I do think by having missed the first two in chronological order I may have missed some of my own insights into Winter's character. I would recommend it to readers who like Scandinavian crime novels and may not be aware of this author. I now have the four books in translation, so I'll be visiting back with Detective Chief Inspector Winter quite shortly.

*The Fifth Woman, by Henning Mankell

2009-10-19T10:24:00.003-04:00

Inspector Wallander is back again, and it's a strange one. I really like Wallander, and I like Mankell even more. He is fully in command of his craft and it shows. I keep asking the question of why American mystery writers cannot write like this -- so in depth, with realistic characters and intriguing plots. The best thing about Mankell's work is that when you finish, you want more. Unlike some series where I'm iffy about finishing, I absolutely cannot wait to get into the next installment of Wallander. And then there are the non-Wallanders I haven't even got to yet.

anyway, here's my take on this one:

In this the 6th book of the Wallander series, our hero has just returned to Ystad from Rome with his ailing father as the story opens, and it seems he is just in time to get to work on an incredibly brutal crime. A man is found impaled on sharpened sticks in a pit. As usual in a Mankell novel, this is just the tip of the iceberg and the beginning of a number of cruel and torturous murders. While Wallander's style is to thoroughly examine every aspect of these crimes, there is a move afoot among some of the public to form a citizens' militia, making the job of the police even harder and putting them under a great deal of pressure to catch the murderer. But these are no ordinary crimes and their perpetrator no ordinary murderer -- and Wallander and his team have their work cut out for them.

Mankell's excellent writing will keep you reading until the end. In his hands, Wallander becomes quite real, and you can clearly see that he is a flawed but steady individual, an excellent investigator and a workaholic, who is always pushing his team to work harder. Mankell's plotting is exquisite and believable, and the author manages to capture the nuances of a disgruntled public and a Sweden that is changing rapidly and not always for the better.

The Wallander series overall is excellent; one of the best out there. I would highly recommend this book (as well as the series) to anyone who enjoys great crime writing in general and Scandinavian mystery novels in particular. Do not let this book be your introduction to Kurt Wallander -- defintely start with the first one in the series and read them in order.

*Stardust, by Joseph Kanon

2009-10-07T09:18:00.002-04:00

My thanks to the Amazon Vine Program for sending me this book.

The entire time I was reading this I felt as if I was watching a black and white film noir. Ben Collier arrives in Hollywood to work on a film for the US Army and to try to piece together what happened to his brother Danny, who supposedly jumped off of the balcony at his rented apartment. Everyone thinks it's a suicide except Ben, and he aims to prove it. But the further he gets into his investigations, the more he realizes that maybe he didn't know his brother very well at all. As he delves into his brother's death, he becomes caught up in some pretty nasty business, none the least of which is a zealous congressman who's trying to sort out who's red and who's not, and eventually Ben comes to realize that there are others who wish he'd just let things lie.

Kanon has succeeded in evoking the post World War II Hollywood era very well. The big studios are in their heydays, movie stars are making their way to the top, and underneath the glamor lies the seamy underbelly of Los Angeles. However, I found parts of this book quite tedious with a few scenes that probably could have been omitted to make the story much tighter and to make it flow a lot better. Many of the characters came off as flat with no personality and this also detracted from my enjoyment of this novel.

I would recommend it to people interested in the time period, and to those interested in McCarthy-type politics and how they affected people in Hollywood. Overall -- a good read, but rather long and often confusing.

and the winner is (drum roll, please)

2009-10-06T19:37:00.001-04:00

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which was my favorite of all of the Booker Prize longlist/shortlist books this year. I actually picked a winner!!!!!!!!! Yay!

relieving my overtaxed brain

2009-10-05T11:17:00.006-04:00

Each year October brings the need for clearing my head from the previous two months of trying to speed through the Booker Prize longlist. I don't want to read anything to which I have to seriously give any great amount of thought. Plus, I've been buying and storing books over the last couple of months that really need to be read or my constant state of guilt over the huge numbers of unread books on my shelves will become even greater. Therefore, what follows this month is just a mish-mosh of whatever. It's time. My brain is a bit overtaxed right now.

*Love and Summer, by William Trevor

2009-10-05T11:06:00.003-04:00

William Trevor happens to be one of my favorite authors, and there's a good reason why. He is a master at capturing what it means to be human in any given situation, and his writing is exquisite. He doesn't let up in his newest novel, Love and Summer.

Love and Summer is very short, but you will definitely find yourself thinking about it after you've finished it.

The book is set in a small Irish town called Rathmoye, and the action takes place in one summer, when a stranger, Florian Kilderry, comes to town and catches the eye of a local woman, Ellie Dillahan. Ellie was raised by nuns, and sent to her husband's farm as a housekeeper when she was old enough to go to work. Dillahan suffered an incredible tragedy; then later, married Ellie more for the sake of having someone around to help him on the farm. Kilderry has lived in the shadow of his parents' greatness all of his life, and with their deaths, has decided to leave Ireland for good to start a new life. Ellie and Florian begin a love affair, and Ellie begins planning for a new life as well. But alas.

Love and Summer is a novel about love and pain; it is also a story about loneliness and loss. It is told in a very muted and understated tone, and one of the joys of this novel is the author's ability to deliver mundane details about life in a small town without it ever becoming boring. His characterizations are excellent -- there's Miss Connulty, who runs a B&B with her brother and who understands firsthand Ellie's predicament; there's Orpen Wren, who served as the keeper of a family library on an estate which has long since burned to the ground, and who has seen enough in his lifetime to make him become a bit unhinged, and there's Dillihan, the farmer and Ellie's husband, who remains largely mute about his own tragedy. The lives of these characters tend to parallel the main story, each in their own way, and reflect a great deal of the emotional turmoil of the main characters.

Love and Summer is a fine novel, and continues Trevor's tradition of excellence in writing. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has previously read anything by this author. At the end of the day, it becomes much more than a story about love and loss -- and it is well worth reading for the author's understanding of the frailty of human relationships.

*The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer

2009-10-05T10:07:00.005-04:00

My goal had been to get through all of the Booker Longlist by the end of September, but sadly, I wasn't around much of this month to read all of the books. We had a severe illness in the family over much of this month, which ended in death just this past weekend, and I was away from home sitting beside a hospital bed most of the month of September.

However, I did manage to finish the shortlist, just in time for the winner of the Booker Prize to be announced tomorrow (10/06), and I did manage to get a lot of the entire longlist finished. So let's see how I did.

Books finished:
1. (longlist) - Me Cheeta, by James Lever
2. (longlist) - Love and Summer, by William Trevor
3. (longlist) - Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin
4. (longlist) - Heliopolis, by James Scudamore
5. (shortlist) - The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt
6. (shortlist) - The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds
7. (shortlist) - The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters
8. (shortlist) - Summertime, by J.M. Coetzee
9. (shortlist) - Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel - and -
10. (shortlist) - The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer

so, I missed three books in my two-month project, but the good news is that they're here waiting to be read.

My vote for the prize at the end of the shortlist reading: Wolf Hall. I must say, however, that all of the shortlisted books were quite good this year -- the judges were spot on with their picks.

So here's what I thought of The Glass Room, which turned out to be excellent.

The home commissioned by automobile maker Victor Landauer and his wife Liesel in 1929 has as a focal point The Glass Room. It is a house built by Modernist architect Rainer Von Abt, who follows Victor's insistence that the house reflect something new rather than continue the tradition of the old, ornamental style that was prevalent among the European wealthy of the time. It sits above a town on a hill in Czechoslovakia, with spectacular views, and it offered "the most remarkable experience of modern living," a theme that runs throughout the novel and throughout time. The story (without going into much plot detail here) follows the lives of the Landauers while they are both in and away from the house, having to leave Czechoslovakia because of the Nazi occupation and Hitler's actions against the Jews. While times change, the house and the Glass Room remain, serving as vehicles through which history plays out through several regimes -- the Nazis, the Soviets, and then through the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The writing is excellent -- and although the Landauer's story depends a lot on coincidence (which normally I don't like to see in a novel), here it actually works. Mawer's characterizations are wonderful, and the house itself stands as probably the most important character in the novel. The author also has this incredible sense of place and time that make the story real, believable, and well worth reading.

It's definitely a book full of symbolism and observations, but in the interest of not wanting to spoil things for other readers, I'll merely note that there are a myriad of places on the internet where you can read more in depth about this book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants an outstanding read, and I must say, this is one of the best of the Booker Prize nominees this year. People who enjoy good historical fiction will definitely want to read this as well. The Glass Room is truly an amazing book.

The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

2009-09-29T07:36:00.003-04:00

Let me just say this. I liked The Da Vinci Code at the time, because it offered something new. I liked Angels and Demons (although I must say, it had probably one of the most improbable scenes ever), so I was quite happy to know that Dan Brown had decided to grace his fans with a third novel, The Lost Symbol. I was one of those people who had it delivered to the house from Amazon on its release day, and I had pre-ordered it the moment the book had a title. Anticipation, anticipation, anticipation. But.

By now, anyone who has read Brown's previous works knows Robert Langdon, who is back for his third round of esoteric adventure. Ostensibly in Washington DC for a speaking engagement, he finds out that he's actually been lured there under false pretenses and that the person who supposedly invited him there has been kidnapped, and his hand has been left on the floor of the Capitol rotunda. Langdon feels he has no choice but to get involved, and finds himself battling not only his friend's captor, but the CIA as well. Hmm. The captor wants something that Langdon has, which will supposedly lead him to a secret pyramid in which lies the heart of the "Ancient Mysteries." There's a catch: the CIA doesn't want Langdon to cooperate and tries to thwart him at every turn. Langdon, accompanied by the kidnap victim's scientist sister, goes on a merry chase around DC in an effort to save his friend. So far, nothing new here in the Dan Brown formula.
He chases around for about the first 300 or so pages, throwing around a lot of esoteric knowledge and taking the reader on a tour of Washington DC's mystical architecture, then things settle down a bit so we get some back story to help understand and to put things in perspective before things begin to heat up once more.

I'll give him this much: Brown manages to throw a lot of arcane and esoteric knowledge and theory out there (which I always find interesting even if I know a lot of it is just too unreal) and there is a definite plot twist I didn't see coming. The short chapters act as mini-cliffhangers that made me want to continue reading until I could hear Langdon say something along the lines of "aha! this all makes sense," which he does many times throughout the novel.

On the other hand, his writing is often repetitive, tedious, and clunky. Characterization is obviously not his strong point, so frankly, I didn't care about the players involved. But for me, the worst part was that after spending so much time on this book, I felt like I was robbed at the end. Normally I can suspend disbelief, sit back and relax and enjoy books like this if the end pays off, making it worth the ride, but not this time.

I didn't particularly care that much for it, but this book has already sold in the millions of copies, so it all works out for the author, and there are many people who've reviewed the book and absolutely loved it. So for that reason, I'd say that although I can't personally recommend it, people who are Dan Brown fans might want to give it a try and judge it for themselves.

*The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds

2009-09-25T14:43:00.002-04:00

To be really honest, before I read this book, I'd never heard of the poet John Clare, so I wasn't sure who this person was. But truthfully, this book floored me. It's another one of those where you have to take some time to think about it after you've read it.

Set across seven seasons, beginning in 1840, The Quickening Maze is a novel about imprisonment – and how the characters involved each try to escape it. In Epping Forest, outside of London, Dr. Matthew Allen runs High Beach Asylum, where one of his most notable patients is John Clare, the “peasant poet”, who has descended into insanity and is plagued by a loss of his own identity (often believing he’s someone else, for example, Lord Byron). In a 2004 review of Jonathan Bate’s biography about John Clare, Edward Hirsch notes that “Clare's poetry intimately chronicles a world that was rapidly disappearing, that was systematically divided up into rectangular plots of land, fenced off and restricted, enclosed.” Clare lives in the past, with his dreams of getting out of the confines of the asylum, back to nature and to his past, where he was the most happiest. But it’s not just Clare who feels imprisoned in Epping Forest. Dr. Allen, a former debtor, has been facing the fact that he needs more money, and comes up with the idea of enlisting investors for an invention that will hopefully put more money in his coffers and solve all of his money problems. There’s also Allen’s daughter Hannah, who thinks she’s in love with poet Alfred Tennyson, whose brother is spending time at the asylum for melancholy. Hannah dreams of falling in love, marrying, and leaving her current life and escaping, as did her sister who married and hasn’t looked back. There’s Margaret, who suffers from religious delusions, looking for help from above to escape her own brutal treatment.

The book is rather short, but don’t let that fool you. Foulds is an amazing writer and his characters are all rather well drawn down to the smallest detail. His writing is sparse, but he manages to leave the reader with pictures of people who have become lost. It doesn't need to be any longer -- for its size, the book is very intense. I’ve never read anything by this author before, but I will be looking for more in the future. This is a wonderful book, and I would highly recommend it, but maybe not to readers of general or mainstream fiction.

*The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt

2009-09-22T16:24:00.004-04:00

I have one book left (The Glass Room) and I will have completed the shortlist. That leaves the following on the long list to read:

- Wilderness
- Not Untrue and Not Unkind
- Love and Summer
- How to Paint a Dead Man

...all of which are sitting here waiting to be read. It's been a terrible last few weeks with a family emergency on the horizon, leading to the lethargy of personal depression that makes me not feel like reading. But I am hoping to finish at least the shortlist prior to the announcement of the winner, and I'll keep plugging away at the rest until they're done. So far my favorite is Wolf Hall, followed by Summertime.

Here's what I thought about The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt, who wrote one of my favorite novels of all time -- Possession. If you haven't read that one, don't miss it...it's a great book.

At 600 + pages, The Children's Book is not easy to encapsulate in a short review. The action takes place between 1895 and ends in 1919. The main character is Olive Wellwood, married to Humphry, and they live a somewhat Bohemian lifestyle and espouse Fabian idealistic beliefs. They raise their children to be children -- to run free in the forest, ride bicycles, holding a totally different view than the "children are meant to be seen, not heard" mentality of the Victorian era. The Wellwoods hold Midsummer's Eve parties in which the children act in plays -- and they live a somewhat idyllic life that includes other family members and acquaintances: Olive’s sister, Violet, Humphry's brother Basil, his wife and children Griselda and Charles Wellwood, a gifted ceramicist Benedict Fludd who is locked in some kind of mental hell, Fludd's children Imogen, Pomona and Geraint, Fludd’s apprentice, Philip, Philip’s sister Elsie, and their friend Prosper Cain and his children, Florence and Julian. Olive is an author of children's fantasy stories, obviously born out of her life as a child, and besides writing for the general public, Olive writes a book for each of her children which grow as her children grow. Life seems perfect, but underneath there are secrets that are revealed and secrets that are kept, some of which lead this new generation to question who they are and where they are going, and to question their parents' expectations of them. It is also a novel in which the author brings vividly to life the social and political changes of the period and where the characters find themselves within the scope of the events and the isms of the time.

The Children's Book is very well written and it is a book you will be thinking about long after you've finished it. The main characters are well drawn. The sense of place and time stands out as a character of its own as history plays itself out and events occur quickly and on a grand scale. The author's ability to capture this small slice of time and the winds of change (and at the end, the horrors of trench warfare) is what makes this book an incredible read.

Personally, I liked this book and was rather caught up throughout the story, but I did feel that the end was a bit rushed, as if Byatt had to come up with an ending rather quickly. However, I would definitely recommend the book to people interested not only in excellent writing, but in Britain from the end of the Victorian period through the end of WWI. Overall, a fine reading experience.

*Heliopolis, by James Scudamore

2009-09-09T13:16:00.003-04:00

This is (counting The Little Stranger which I read when it first came out) book #6 on the Booker Prize Longlist that I've finished. I'm now at the halfway mark and am currently reading The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds.

Set in modern-day Sao Paulo, Brazil, Heliopolis is the story of Ludo Dos Santos, the son of a woman who serves as a cook to a wealthy family, the Carnicellis. The Carnicellis own a farm which they use for weekend getaways and other family functions, as well as business dealings. It is there that Ludo lives. He was actually born into a 'favela' (a kind of shantytown area for squatters in the city)with no father at hand, Ludo and his mother became the pet project of Rebecca Carnicelli, who's out to save the world. On the farm, Ludo gets to see the Carnicelli's daughter Melissa, and they grow up very close. At some point, Rebecca and her husband, Ze, decide to adopt Ludo and take him into the city, where he lives in a walled compound with its own security force. As the novel opens, Ludo is now in his late 20s, works for an ad agency and is lust with his adoptive sister Melissa, who is now married. Heliopolis examines, from Ludo's point of view, the personal feelings of alienation in both the rich and poor worlds of the city, as he is a part of both, struggling with his own sense of identity. It also takes a look at inherent tensions of both groups on their own.

This is a novel rich in sights, sounds, and smells and one which is very well written. The character of Ludo is very well drawn (although I must confess that not many of the others really stand out except for the cleaning lady), the plot development is good and the story moves along well with no stalls.

The book is quite good and I can definitely recommend it. Scudamore is a writer I will definitely read more from -- his descriptive abilities and his portrayal of the contrast between rich and poor are the highlights of his writing.

*Summertime, by J.M. Coetzee

2009-09-08T12:23:00.004-04:00

first: the aside. I just received notice today that this book was one of those chosen for the Booker Prize shortlist along with the following other books:

The Children's Book by A S Byatt

The Quickening Maze by Adam Fould

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

I'm currently reading Heliopolis, by James Scudamore, which did not make it, but I will continue to finish it and then read the rest of the longlist. So far, I'd vote for Wolf Hall (see earlier review) -- a novel rich in scope and full of wonderful prose -- to win the prize, but it is a rare year indeed that I actually pick the choice of the judges.

I don't want to even tell you how much I spent on these books, especially from the UK, but so far, it's been worth every penny. And a note: if you buy them from the UK (the ones that haven't been released in the US yet), it's often cheaper than buying them used from the US. Even with the currency conversion, it's still a better deal. The folks at Amazon UK know me almost as well as the Amazon US people know me. For example, at the time I wanted to buy it, Heliopolis was on sale used at Amazon for $49 (I haven't checked prices recently so I hope they've come down a bit now), but with currency conversion, I got a copy from the UK for about $20 including postage. Just a thought. Anyway, August and September tend to be my favorite months of the year because I get to read so many awesome books, and Summertime is no exception.

The premise of Summertime is that award-winning writer John Coetzee is dead, and someone named Vincent is writing a book about his life in the 1970s. Vincent has decided to interview several women purportedly close to Coetzee, wanting to know what he was like, if there were any sordid details to be had, etc. etc. The book, he says, will be written in the women's own words and they will have the final say in what he actually publishes. But this is not the case; for example, we know that the John Coetzee's cousin Margot's story has been embellished because Vincent lets us know that at the beginning. He makes additions and omissions, going with what he thinks the public wants to know about the subject of his biography. In reality, of course, Vincent is really only an invented character in a novel, interviewing other invented characters in a novel, so what we're really looking at here is Coetzee telling a story, ostensibly about himself, through several fictional intermediaries. And considering that in the book John Coetzee is dead, well, you certainly don't know which details are true and which are not. He is presented as being a rather cold fish, hopeless with women, misunderstood, a failure, and someone with his head in the past. And then there is his gloomy outlook on life -- dark enough that he actually spent some writing a list of 'Ways of Doing Away with Oneself'. With this background, truly, it seems that all Coetzee has left with which to redeem himself and his life is his writing. But it's the writing itself that is not discussed in Vincent's book in any great detail, even though Coetzee is the recipient of a Nobel Prize for Literature.

It seems to me (and I'm not a professional critic, just a reader) that the nature of truth is often elusive and more importantly, it's often subjective, especially in the case of a biography. If there's any real way to know the truth about Coetzee, it's through his writing and everything else is really secondary. Writers of his caliber should be remembered for their art rather than for any of their foibles or follies, and not through the eyes of others who quite possibly really didn't understand them. Since we don't know where the truth ends and begins in this book, it's the real Coetzee's overall talent and his art that we have to come back to in the long run.

Summertime is a wonderful book that will leave you thinking about it long after you've put it down. I can most highly recommend it as a very well-written and thought provoking novel.

*

2009-09-08T12:15:00.001-04:00

Detective Inspector Huss, by Helene Tursten

2009-09-08T10:24:00.003-04:00

Considering that this is the first entry in a series featuring the title character, it is amazing. I can only imagine that the others (which I have not yet read) are just as good if the debut was this well done.

As the story opens, a man falls off of his balcony to his death. It turns out to be someone of note, one Richard von Knecht, who was well known in the world of finance. Detective Irene Huss, along with her team, is called in to solve the case and discovers that all is not as it seems. There's something going on in the background that no one wants to talk about -- the family, friends, business associates -- are all keeping quiet. But Irene knows it's there and that whatever secrets these people are hiding will be what ultimately will crack the case, and continues determinedly to get to the bottom of things. But it's not always easy -- she has two teen children who have their own issues, a husband, and she tries to keep things equal on the homefront. The people she works with also have their problems, and trying to stay ahead of all of these things is what makes her an awesome character. Also, she's actually the first detective in Scandinavian fiction (that I've read so far) who isn't living on the edge of the darkness throughout the story, even though she could be.

Very well written, although I'm sure the character will become much more fleshed out as the series unfolds, I can definitely recommend this book to readers of Scandinavian crime fiction, and to mystery readers in general. It is a police procedural with a personal touch, but not as folksy cutesy as cozy novels, so I'm not sure that cozy readers would enjoy this one. Overall though, a great start to a series.

The Water's Lovely, by Ruth Rendell

2009-09-08T09:59:00.004-04:00

Normally, I really enjoy the works of Ruth Rendell, but to be perfectly honest, this one wasn't even worthy of her. Rarely do I finish a book and say "that was awful," but this one did it.

Not one of Rendell's best, The Water's Lovely is really the story of the relationship between sisters. Ismay, the elder sister, knows a secret about the other sister, Heather, that has had life-changing consequences, including driving their mother Beatrix a bit insane. Now Heather has a serious boyfriend to whom she becomes engaged, and Ismay wonders if she should share that secret with him so that he knows what kind of wife he's getting. Meanwhile, Ismay runs into some serious obstacles of her own, and between the two sisters, their choices have an effect on all of the other characters in the novel.

As noted, it's not my favorite Rendell work, and it's more of a character study than a mystery. I did not find a single character that I liked in this book. There are several subplots in this book, and at times the dialog was a bit inane. The real mystery here is how I manage to finish it. I think if you're a fan of Ruth Rendell fan you might want to give it a go, but it's eminently skippable among her books.

Dark Specter, by Michael Dibdin

2009-09-08T09:11:00.002-04:00

Dark Specter begins with the murder of a family in Seattle. But it soon becomes apparent to the detective in charge that the murder is only one is a series of murders that have occurred all over the United States. All seem random, all seem motiveless, but that is definitely not the case. The murder investigations parallel the story of a man who, in his college years, belonged to a group of druggie friends who would spend hours philosophizing about the world, politics, God, etc etc. Now that man is an adult, with wife and child, and his story sadly becomes intertwined with the plotline of the random murders, as he becomes involved with members of a strange cult who make their home and base of operations on a small island off the coast of Washington.

I have really enjoyed many of Dibdin's other books, but this one just didn't thrill me. The overall plot was good, and the theme was one worth exploring: a civilization in which people have become so alienated that they're willing to listen to the ravings of a madman that they take as gospel truth, and who will do anything in the name of God -- or at least their understanding of the concept as laid down by the person who styles himself as God. This is a story that has become all too common and I'm always intrigued as to what it is that brings people to this point. But in Dark Specter, the story just didn't deliver. There were suspenseful parts, but at some point, a key part of the story became very obvious and I knew exactly what was going to happen -- and I was basically at the midpoint of the story. Arrghh. So for me, it was just a matter of waiting for the story to play out.

I'd recommend it, but with reservations, to people interested in cults or to readers of suspense.

d

2009-09-08T09:10:00.000-04:00

The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson

2009-09-08T08:25:00.001-04:00

This book is the second of three in Larsson's series featuring Lisbeth Salander, the young woman who has her own sense of morality and acts on it accordingly. As this book opens, we find young Lisbeth in the Caribbean after the events of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Meanwhile, the erstwhile reporter Kalle Blomkvist and the team at Millennium are sitting on top of a goldmine of a story. With the help of a woman who is finishing her PhD thesis and that of her husband, who is writing a book based on her findings, Blomkvist is ready to publicly uncover a scandal in which some high-ranking officials are involved in sex trafficking from Russia and other parts of eastern Europe into Sweden. Eventually Lisbeth returns home, and goes into hiding. After a triple homicide, the police become interested in finding her (as does Blomkvist) because the clues at the murder scenes lead directly back to her. At this point, Blomkvist, who is absolutely convinced that Lisbeth is innocent, begins his own investigation, working from a different starting point than that of the police.

I love Lisbeth's character -- she refuses to be a victim even though her life is on the line. She's a take-charge kind of person, apologizing to no one, and she is definitely an example of someone whose past has created her present. She's a heroine unlike any other you'll find in crime writing -- very flawed, dark, unafraid, with a sense of morality that she acts on even if it goes against the social grain. There are very few people in her life whom she trusts, and definitely has no love for official institutions. The book is fast paced, with never a dull moment, and is a solid sequel to Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I would definitely recommend that anyone thinking about this book start with Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, because there are a number of references in the 2nd book that you won't understand if you don't, and because once things start unraveling, you need to have the background of events from the first book, especially with the relationship between Lisbeth and Blomkvist.

Girl Who Played With Fire leaves some things hanging, which I'm sure will be picked up in the upcoming third book (hopefully, since it's the last one). I would recommend it to anyone who wants a good, solid mystery novel and who doesn't mind that the characters are all a bit flawed. Not a cozy mystery at all, so if that's what you're looking for, skip it. Otherwise, sit back and try to clear your day because you won't want to put this one down. Fans of Scandinavian crime novels will absolutely not be disappointed.

Booker longlistus interruptus ....vacation

2009-09-08T08:21:00.002-04:00

Well, I did manage to get one Booker longlist book read during the 2-week vacation (Summertime...review coming) but mostly I read a lot of crime novels -- perfect for long days lounging on the balcony of a cruise ship in the Caribbean sun. So I'll add those first, then back to the topic at hand.

*Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin

2009-08-23T11:47:00.001-04:00

Simply put, Brooklyn is a novel about the meaning of the concept of home. For Toibin's main chararacter, Eilis, home begins in Ireland, where a series of incidents prompts her mother and sister to send her to America, where she ends up in Brooklyn. Eilis doesn't even want to go...her home is in Ireland, in the small house where she lives with her family, where she is a nobody in the big scheme of things. But be that as it may, Eilis soon finds herself in the Big Apple, where she has to learn to adapt and to find herself in a city where she's also a nobody in the grand scheme of things, but one in which she has the opportunity for betterment. But the true test for Eilis comes when she's recalled to Ireland...and she finds herself saddled with a difficult choice to make.

The struggle for identity fits well in the context of immigration, and Toibin has written a wonderful story here. His prose is much understated, yet brings across the point well. There is a lot of quiet humor in this book, and the characters are all well portrayed, as is the overriding sense of place -- both mentally and physically -- among the people in the novel.

I can definitely recommend it to people who have either read Toibin's work or to people who are looking for a book that will make you think. It's a small book, less than 300 pages, but its size belies its content.

*Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood, by Cheeta (really by James Lever)

2009-08-23T10:52:00.001-04:00

Normally, the thought of reading a book told from the point of view of an animal sends me running, and to be very truthful, I probably would have skipped on this one as well had it not been placed on the Booker Prize Longlist this year. What a mistake that would have been -- actually, more of a shame.

Ostensibly written by Cheeta the chimpanzee, bosom companion to Tarzan vis-a-vis the series of movies first produced by MGM then by RKO, the book reads like a Hollywood memoir of debauchery and hedonism among the big stars of the 30s 40s and 50s. But there's so much more between the covers than a pseudo-tell all.

Me Cheeta is an ode to Johnny Weissmuller, the best friend Cheeta ever had. It's a look at the downside of the world of stardom and celebrity -- even for animals -- once the box office numbers start falling. It delves into the world of animal cruelty in the name of show business and laboratory research. It's an examination of civilization using the action in the series of Tarzan movies as a starting point. At times it's laugh-out-loud funny, and yet there's a sense of poignancy throughout the book that makes the reader stop and think about the cruelties that humans can inflict upon each other (not to mention animals).

I can't really do this book justice in a short review, but it is one of those stories where after you read it, you'll be thinking about it for a while. Very well written, Me Cheeta is refreshing and fun, and I can definitely very highly recommend it.

*Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

2009-08-23T09:42:00.004-04:00

Well, here it is the 23rd of August and I haven't posted at all. Actually, I haven't been home much and when I have, I've had company.

So far I've read four of the 13 longlisted books for the Booker Prize, and by far Wolf Hall has to be my favorite. But this is only the first third of the list, so who knows?

I have to say that I love all things Tudor, and Wolf Hall is no exception, but it is exceptional. In most of the novels about Henry VIII's England, Cromwell plays a role, but he's never been the main character. Writers most often leave the famous wives of Henry VIII (divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived) to play that role. And although on the wonderful TV series The Tudors on Showtime, Cromwell plays a major role, it's all about his life at court. In reality, not a lot is known about this person, but Hilary Mantel has woven her tale not only around Cromwell, but through him.

In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel takes a slice of Tudor history and allows the reader to view it through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell,. who rose through life from his origins as the son of a blacksmith to become the chief minister of King Henry VIII. From his humble origins, he manages to become an important advisor to the ill-fated Cardinal Wolsey, who, as everyone knows, started his downhill slide because of his inability to provide Henry VIII with a Church-sanctioned divorce from Katherine of Aragon. It is, ironically, Wolsey's fall that begins Cromwell's rise. Cromwell survives by his own maxim: "inch by inch forward. Never mind if he calls you an eel or a worm or a snake. Head down, don't provoke him." (4) His fortune is on the ascendant, throughout the story, but as everyone also knows, fortune is fleeting, and especially in this time, largely at the whim of the king.

Mantel gives Cromwell, who is often vilified in many Tudor history accounts, a human face. While he's busy rewriting life at court to suit his majesty and most often, to suit himself and his own desires for reform, Cromwell also is shown to be a family man and a man with a heart who cares about those less fortunate than himself. Cromwell's present is largely defined through his past, and it is through Cromwell's eyes that the reader watches the Tudor world unfold.

Mantel's characterization is excellent -- Anne Boleyn comes off as a cold, calculating queen wanna-be who will stop at nothing to get her way. Mary Boleyn, the queen's former mistress, is a bit Ophelia-like, capturing Cromwell's sympathy. Mantel's Henry (via Cromwell) is a monarch more concerned about the lack of an heir rather than the tyrant or the woman chaser that many books make him out to be. The side players are also well characterized: aside from Cromwell's family and friends, the various dukes, courtiers, and people of the French Court become very human, often with the veneer of royalty and nobility stripped off to reveal crudity, greed, ambition jealousy and fear. Even some of the "common" people, the subjects of Henry VIII, are portrayed here.

Wolf Hall is simply a masterpiece. Even though it comes in at about 651 pages, it goes quickly as the reader gets caught up in the world Mantel so eloquently creates. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Henry VIII and that time period. Readers looking for something along the lines of "The Other Boleyn Girl" won't find it here...this is fiction at its finest.

August: The Booker Prize Longlist

2009-08-04T10:50:00.003-04:00

Every year I read as many books as I can buy from the Booker Prize Longlist. I read them through the end of September (the prize is announced in October) and make my own speculations as to which ones will end up on the shortlist. I have very seldom been too way off, but sometimes the choices of the judges tend to amaze me. But...I'm just an amateur reader, unskilled like the judges, I guess.

Here's the list in full:

AS Byatt - The Children's Book

JM Coetzee - Summertime

Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze

Sarah Hall - How to paint a dead man

Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness

James Lever - Me Cheeta

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall

Simon Mawer - The Glass Room

Ed O'Loughlin - Not Untrue & Not Unkind

James Scudamore - Heliopolis

Colm Toibin - Brooklyn

William Trevor - Love and Summer

Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

Up to this point, I've read Brooklyn (review to follow shortly) and The Little Stranger (see my review at some earlier point this year -- I liked it); I'm currently reading Wolf Hall, which is set during the time of Henry VIII in Tudor England (and so far LOVING it).

I will eventually buy all the books (I generally have to get them from the UK, so I'm a bit grateful that the pounds/dollars exchange rate has gone down a bit), but so far I've purchased the following:

Brooklyn The Little Stranger Wolf Hall The Children's Book Me Cheeta

So there won't be a lot of entries coming up, really...except for books I've promised to review (they're still here...I haven't forgotten) and books that when I need a break I'll turn to for fun and mind clearance.

* (from July) White Corridor, by Christopher Fowler

2009-08-04T10:44:00.002-04:00

White Corridor is installment number five in the Bryant and May series (aka the Peculiar Crimes Unit series). In this book, the author has given his readers two mainstay elements of classic mystery -- the locked-room murder (in which a member of the PCU is killed in a most impossible fashion so that suspicion points to the others) -- and weather so incredibly bad that it prevents our heroes Bryant and May from having any hope of returning to London to help with this crime. It wouldn't be so bad, but once again, someone is scheming to close down the PCU -- so the other members of the team have to solve the crime themselves and quickly. It doesn't mean that our favorite detectives are just sitting bundled up in the car waiting for the storm to pass...they also get involved when a truck driver is killed during the standstill traffic produced by the storm.

What I liked about this book was precisely that we get to see the team at work without Bryant and May, but I just didn't think it was as good as the previous four. Normally I can't wait to dive right in...this time I could actually put the book down and do other things instead of sticking to it like glue. Dont' get me wrong...it's still quite good, quite quirky and the author's writing is great as always, but it just seemed to me that something was lacking here that is found in the other books leading up to this one series order-wise.

I definitely recommend it to people who are following the series, and to people who want something rather different in their reading (you'll definitely find it in this set of books). Don't by any means start with this one or you'll lose a lot of backstory and character development from the others. Overall...a good read and a nice way to pass a few hours on a summer's day.

* (from July) The Ten-Second Staircase, by Christopher Fowler

2009-08-04T10:42:00.001-04:00

Fourth in this rather bizarre mystery series, Ten Second Staircase finds our somewhat rather unorthodox detectives Bryant and May facing the possible end of the Peculiar Crimes Unit (now with a new member -- May's agoraphobic granddaughter April) just when they become involved in a series of improbable and impossible crimes -- you know, the ones just up their alley. This time, they are faced with a villain they call The Highwayman, because an eyewitness to the murder of an artist saw a man dressed in cape, tricorn hat and black boots sitting on a stallion -- fresh out of the poem by Alfred Noyes. After the highwayman is seen at several other improbable murders, the PCU has to use all of the resources at hand to catch the killer, which its members hope will keep the unit afloat.

While this is a rather fun mystery which keeps the reader guessing until the end, it's also a bit of a commentary on the nature of crime, criminals and the current state of police forces everywhere. The writing is, as usual, quite good, the quirky characterizations are excellent, and the plot is improbable (but yet compelling) enough to keep readers trying to guess the outcome.

Definitely a book for mystery readers who enjoy a bit of zaniness and improbability along with a well-plotted central mystery. If you're a hard-core mystery reader, this may seem a bit silly, but it is most definitely worth the time it takes to read. But do not start with this one if you're considering this series...the books should definitely be read in order because of the character development and because of events which are referred to that have occurred in the PCU's past. Overall -- a fun read and an awesome series.

* (from July) Seventy-Seven Clocks, by Christopher Fowler

2009-08-04T10:38:00.003-04:00

Christopher Fowler writes this incredible series of books known as the Peculiar Crimes Unit series with his two detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May. If you haven't heard of them, and you're looking for something refreshingly different, go get a copy of the first one, Full Dark House. I promise you'll end up buying the second one. They're that good.

I've read four books in this series now, and this one wasn't my favorite, although it is still quite good. In this, the 3rd installment of the Bryant and May mysteries (of the Peculiar Crimes Unit), the two detectives and the others of the PCU are faced with the fact that someone is out to get the Whitstable family and is killing them off by incredibly deadly means, starting off with the death of Peter Whitstable, who, dressed in Edwardian clothing, decides to deface a painting on loan to the National Gallery. As more members of the family are murdered, the detectives realize that someone has a vendetta against the entire family -- and even the family's attorney, who becomes a victim of snakebite after a visit to the restroom of the Ritz. But when Bryant and May question the family as to what they know, or as to who might be wanting to take them out one by one, nobody is talking. What they are doing is screaming that the police are doing nothing, and they are threatening to sue unless they get some protection. But even then, Bryant and May find it incredibly difficult dealing with this very peculiar family. When they finally work out what's happening, the solution is probably one of the strangest they've ever encountered.

Once again, the writing is good, the characters are drawn really well (the Whitstables are so well done that you'll hate them all). Fowler's look at London's history is downright amazing (a lot of knowledge there) and as always, Bryant and May are their quirky selves. The problem here is that the solution is very clunky, complicated and difficult to understand ... I had to go back and reread it not just once but a couple of times until it made sense. But the getting there was most of the fun. Definitely recommended to people considering whether or not to continue in the series, and recommended to mystery readers who want something different. Don't start here, though... do begin with the first book.

* (from July) The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall

2009-08-04T10:36:00.002-04:00

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is #2 in the series featuring Inspector Martin Beck. It's his vacation time, and his family has taken a cottage on an island off the coast of Sweden. But only a day into vacation time, he's recalled to work for an important case. It seems that the foreign office is concerned about a missing journalist, Alf Matsson, who was last seen in Budapest. While Beck's not clear as to why the foreign office should be so concerned, he takes on the case, starting in Matsson's last-known location. But other than where he was last seen, he really has no clue as to how he's going to find the missing man. He has to solve the case on the fly -- but his questions attract the attention of the police and people who knew Matsson, and he can't decide which group to trust.

To be honest, I liked the previous book (Roseanna) better, but this one was also good, not so much for the mystery, but because of the character of Martin Beck. At times he seems like a bit of a bumbler, but he's very smart, catching criminals off guard with his innate cleverness. There are a few humorous moments as well, and the scenes with his wife are really enjoyable. I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who is considering continuing in the series, or to anyone who enjoys a good mystery which is a cut above the normal stuff out there on the shelves. The Scandinavians can definitely write -- they are fast becoming my favorite group of mystery writers.

Overall -- enough of a good read to make me want to continue the series.

* (from July) The Haunted Air, by F. Paul Wilson

2009-08-04T10:34:00.002-04:00

A bit on the more classic spooky side, The Haunted Air is installment #6 in the Repairman Jack series, and while it's a bit different than the others, it's still a great read. For anyone who's not aware of Repairman Jack, think about the old television show called "The Equalizer," add in a bit of HP Lovecraft and you're pretty much there. He's a man who lays low, under the radar, and wants to keep it that way. But you definitely want him on your side. In this episode, Jack makes the acquaintance of two brothers who are psychics (or at least claim to be), and is drawn into the world of psychic phenomena, the occult and the Otherness (a force which is his sworn enemy) all rolled into one. This is much like the classic haunted house slash ghost story, but with a few twists unique to Jack.

Repairman Jack is one of my favorite good guys, and this series has never let me down. If you want a fun read, you may wish to try this book -- but I would definitely not start the series here. It's a great book for escape reading -- nothing serious, nothing profound, not great literature. It's a bit of fast-action horror, verging into occult territory, along with a side trip through pulp. I would recommend this book to anyone who is reading the series and to others who may be thinking about it. Horror fans who like it light may also enjoy this one.

* (from July) Hosts, by F. Paul Wilson

2009-08-04T10:31:00.002-04:00

Another series in the realm of horror/fantasy is this one featuring Repairman Jack. He's an awesome hero and all around good guy.

I love Repairman Jack. If there was such a person in this world, you'd really want to have him on your side. In the world of fantasy, horror and often verging into pulp, this entire series is just fun.

In this installment, Jack, who prefers to remain anonymous, has his work cut out for him. After an incident on the subway, a New York tabloid reporter wants to find him and draw him out of hiding. This thread continues throughout the book and ultimately is interwoven with the main story -- in which Jack's new client turns out to be his long-estranged sister. Without much detail, Jack is drawn into the world of a strange group of people, all of whom are patients of a certain doctor whose treatment has altered their brains. I won't say any more; suffice it to say that Jack is under a deadline to stop a nefarious plot (is there really any other kind in the sci-fi, horror world?) and you can feel the tension heating up as the time grows nearer and Jack must once again save the world.

Hosts is the type of book that you absolutely have to read as escape fiction, or at least just for the sheer fun of it all. Once you start it, it's hard to put down and trust me, you'll get through it quickly because it's a page turner.

My advice on reading the Repairman Jack series -- start from the beginning and do not miss a single one in order -- http://booksnbytes.com/authors/wilson...

Anyone who likes a bit of horror fiction with some dark humor would like these books.

* (from July) Sidetracked, by Henning Mankell

2009-08-04T10:28:00.003-04:00

another winner from Mankell:

#5 in the Kurt Wallander series, it is time for our favorite detective to take a much-needed vacation. However, summer fun has to be put on hold as Wallander is called out to a farm where a girl has been loitering in the fields. As he goes out to talk to her, she pours gasoline all over herself and lights a match. Not long afterwards, there's a murder in which the former Minister of Justice has his skull sliced in two by an axe. And if those were the only two crimes, maybe Wallander could go have some fun, but alas, it is not to be, as the body count goes higher.

We know who the killer is not far into the story, but that's okay. The real story is about Wallander and his team trying to figure out the connections between all of the victims -- and how Wallander gets a bit "sidetracked" along the way for various reasons, not all having to do with the crime, preventing him at times from seeing obvious connections that may have helped him solve the crimes earlier, possibly saving lives. The story is more about the toll that the crimes take on Wallander and on the rest of the team.

As always, Mankell writes superbly -- the characterizations are excellent, the inner turmoil of Wallander is so palpable you could reach out and touch it.

I would definitely recommend this one. If you're following the series in order, you're going to want to continue; if you've perhaps seen the PBS production and are thinking of reading this one, do so, but do not make it the first Wallander you read. You will miss way too much in terms of Wallander's character development. I'd definitely recommend it for readers of Scandanavian mysteries and for those who perhaps want something a bit beyond what's new on the shelves today.

* (from July) The Man Who Smiled, by Henning Mankell

2009-08-04T10:25:00.002-04:00

Henning Mankell is a very talented writer, one whose works I truly enjoy. I can read straight through one of his books in a couple of hours because I get sucked right in. If you're looking for a new and very good writer in the mystery genre, I would highly suggest Mankell. And try to find the PBS productions of a few of his novels with Kenneth Branagh -- they are outstanding. But I do digress.

The Man Who Smiled is number four in the Wallander series, picking up some time after Wallander's experiences in book 3, The White Lioness. As book four opens, Wallander is still on sick leave, and has made the decision during a period of incredibly intense depression that he will not be continuing on in his career as a policeman. But all of that changes when a friend seeks him out to ask him for help regarding the case of his father's death. The police had ruled it a car accident, but the friend is convinced that it was not. Wallander tells him that the police are most likely correct -- but then his friend is also mysteriously killed. This prompts Wallander to return to the job to find out what lays behind the deaths of father and son ... and uncovers much more than he bargained for.

While the plot will keep you turning pages and provide you with more than a few tense moments, what really made this book stand out was the character of Kurt Wallander. For the first time, really, since I started this series, I really got an insight into how Wallander thinks and what makes him a great cop. Mankell's characterization of Wallander is absolutely stunning, making him much more human in this book as compared to all of the other ones. It was absolutely amazing to be allowed into Wallander's thought processes -- I think Wallander became very real for me in this book for the first time in the series. When a character can become that real, it's definitely a sign that his or her creator is a top-notch writer.

The author does not only offer up a first-rate criminal and first-rate policemen here; he also raises several questions about the future of police forces, about the decline of the whole basis of the modern Swedish state as the profits of corruption become more entrenched, and about issues of morality & the true nature of justice in a world where crime is constantly changing and the police and justice system are trying to adapt. These questions are not relevant just to Sweden, but everywhere.

A bit on the gloomy side, this is not a book for readers looking for a lighthearted crime novel. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a superb reading experience, but I suggest starting with book one, Faceless Killers, and continuing the books in series order. Mankell is an excellent writer, definitely not to be missed.

* (from July) The Last Days of Madame Rey, by A.W. Hill

2009-08-04T10:21:00.002-04:00

I really enjoyed the first book in this series (Enoch's Portal) but this one I did not care for very much. The Stephan Raszer series (of which this is number two, followed by Nowhere-Land) features a kind of occult detective who hires himself out at a very high price to people needing his specialized services. In this book, he is hired by a wealthy man to find his son, who has fallen in with a very wrong crowd of neo-nazis taking up residence on Mt. Shasta in California. Like all other occult detective novels, there is a nefarious world-wide domination plot involved, in which Raszer becomes involved. His investigations take him across the world and depend largely on mysterious writings left by a fortuneteller whose specialty is tarot.

While I typically enjoy this kind of pulpy occult detective stuff, this one was just way too over the top with all of the usual Neo-Nazi cliches. The first book, Enoch's Portal, was so much better (also over the top, but what do you expect in an occult detective story), and I have hopes for Nowhere-Land. But this one...I don't think I'll be recommending it.

finishing up July

2009-08-04T10:13:00.002-04:00

July is normally the month I read books just for fun, because my August and September are mostly limited to reading the Booker Prize longlist. I've been away for some time now, and need to catch up with my book journal here. The next few entries are all from July.

Between the Assassinations, by Aravind Adiga (Amazon Vine)

2009-07-21T11:50:00.002-04:00

My thanks to the Amazon Vine Program for sending me this book.

One of the reviewers on Amazon.com gave this book a rating of two stars, largely because of the negativity throughout the stories, and because there are other authors on India whose books reflect more "hopeful, less complicit politics" (by a reviewer who chooses to remain anonymous). Well, let's talk for a moment, and pardon me, because I have to go back to my book group's discussion (of all things) of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

At that book group meeting we had a very lively discussion, with everyone having a lot to contribute. I noted that one of the things I don't like about books like Tree Grows in Brooklyn (even though I really enjoyed it -- don't get me wrong) is that as readers, we are left with the impression that there is hope for everyone who lives in the slums, that things always change for the better, and that if you just hang on, it can happen to you. But if you go look at my review of Ann Petry's The Street (back in February of this year), or if you read the book, you realize that there are some situations in which people who want and maybe deserve that slice of the dream are just not going to get it -- no matter what. My thinking is this ... that sometimes fiction has to portray life as it is. My book group did not agree .... the members said that there's always hope in every situation. But as I noted in my review of Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I think readers tend to enjoy books more when hope exists, rather than in Ann Petry's work where there is none, even though The Street is a great book. Not that that's a bad thing, but sometimes I think writers have a responsibility to portray life in a more realistic vein now and then. Now, don't go thinking that I'm a nattering nabob of negativity, because I'm not. I am the eternal optimist in my real life, but I am savvy enough to know that sometimes reality isn't the rosy picture that we often get at the end of a novel.

Now let's look at Between the Assassinations. Talk about a bleak outlook on life -- this book is not destined to make the list of bestselling books that leave you with warm fuzzies.

The title of "Between the Assassinations" refers to the seven-year period between 1984 -- when Indira Gandhi was assassinated -- and 1991 when her son Rajiv was also killed. Set in India, the book captures a cross-spectrum view of life in a town called Kittur, where the characters include a drug addict's chldren who have to beg to keep up their father's habit; a 29 year old furniture delivery man who realizes that this is his life; a servant to a wealthy man who has no control over her own life; factory owners and workers; a student who explodes a bomb at his school in protest of caste distinction; a boy whose one ambition is to become a bus conductor, along with many more. The book is set up so that each story fits into a fake guidebook for tourists who might wish to visit Kittur.

Between the Assassinations looks at class and caste, poverty, corruption, politics, moral bankruptcy, and the overpowering awareness by many that change is not coming around any too soon. It is a sad but touching book, one that haunts you for a while after you've finished it.

The tourist guidebook setting works well -- the reader sees the city of Kittur as it could and should be, but once you get into the individual stories, the reader gets into the reality and hopelessness of the situation of many of the people who live there. Some of the stories work very well, but there are some that kind of wind down and just get strange so that you're left on your own to figure out what's just happened and why. This is definitely a book demanding reader participation.

The reader is left to decide whether or not there is hope for the characters in this book, and for India overall. Some of the characters realize that their situation is untenable and have hope for the future, while some (such as the servant, Jayamma) hope that the next life in the cycle of reincarnation will be better. Some know that this is it, and that they are locked in to their lives due to their station in life. Some struggle with their demons while trying to maintain the basic element of humanity and morality in their lives. In the meantime, life goes on, at least until someone comes up with a solution.

Bleak, yes, but very realistic in tone. Adiga's writing is excellent. I would recommend this book for people who do not mind a) having to put some thought and time into these stories and b) reading a book that leaves no room for warm and fuzzy feelings anywhere. Not all literature has to have a happy ending, because, well, in life sometimes there is no such thing.

*The White Lioness, by Henning Mankell

2009-07-19T11:11:00.004-04:00

I know I've said this before, but the mysteries coming out of the Scandinavian countries are excellent. Their authors are not only able to produce well-crafted and well-plotted mysteries, but can also do awesome dialog, make their characters incredibly real and they have a knack for not getting sidetracked. And Kurt Wallander is one of my favorite detectives. Some of Mankell's books have been translated to screen for PBS -- if you have a chance to see them, please do. The website is here .

The White Lioness is book number three in Mankell's series of crime novels featuring Ystad detective Kurt Wallander. I was really iffy on whether or not I would read this one, since it seemed more like a span-the-globe type of mystery, but I stuck with it and was happily rewarded.

The action begins when an estate agent goes out to look at a house for sale and loses her way on the road. Stopping to ask for directions at a farmhouse was the last thing she ever did. Called in to investigate her disappearance (and ultimately her death), Wallander and his team had no idea that their search for a killer would take them across the world to South Africa (the year is 1992), where a small cabal was planning a major assassination which its members hoped would set events in motion to stop the plans for disassembling the policy of apartheid in that country. This is one of those novels where you know who the killer is pretty much right away, and you're just watching to see how Wallander and his team figure it out.

Well written, The White Lioness takes place in two separate settings, but the story is very neatly tied together. The characters are realistically drawn -- especially the character of Konovalenko, who makes for an excellent bad guy. I liked this one much better than the previous series entry (Dogs of Riga). I'd definitely recommend this one to fans of Mankell, to those who like Scandinavian mysteries (which, in my mind, are simply excellent), and to those readers who want a mystery novel that is engrossing. Fans of police procedurals will enjoy this book and this series.

*Voices, by Arnaldur Indridason

2009-07-16T08:19:00.003-04:00

You know, I've come to realize something. My reading habits are vastly different than a majority of readers out there. Let's take this latest book as an example. Voices is a really dark and gloomy kind of book -- in fact, the entire series is morose at times. And I've only just finished book 3. God knows how bad it's going to get before the series is finished. The mystery gets solved, but it's not a feel-good kind of thing. I like books like this -- personally, while I'm not a morose kind of person at heart, I am sort of drawn to them. I haven't figured this out yet. Another series I really like is Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor series (having so far read the first five) although I've often said that reading this series of books is like being drawn to a train wreck -- you know that something bad's going to happen, but you can't make yourself look away. Maybe it's because the characters in these books seem the most real to me, making these books the most credible.

anyway...enough of inner reflection... and on to the main event:

This may be Indridason's best yet...it is simply outstanding. I thought the last one (Silence of the Grave) was excellent, but I liked this one even more. It is one of the darkest mysteries I've ever encountered and the time flew by as I was reading. I couldn't put it down. Most highly recommended -- for serious mystery readers and those who enjoy Scandinavian mysteries and haven't yet discovered this author. You may wish to read them in order, however.

Voices begins with the discovery of a dead ex-doorman in his basement room at the hotel where he used to work. It's Christmas time in Reykjavik, and the doorman has been found wearing a Santa suit (he was supposed to play St. Nick at a hotel Christmas party), the pants down around his ankles and stabbed through the heart. There is very little for the police to go by except for a condom found on the victim's penis. As he begins his investigation, Erlendur, along with his team Sigurdur Oli and detective Elinborg, realizes that there is no one who really knew the dead man at the hotel, even though he had worked there for years. Obviously this makes his job more difficult. He begins delving into the life of the doorman and his investigations lead him into the doorman's rather strange past -- but does it have anything to do with his death? That's what Erlendur must discover. There's also some strange happenings at the hotel, a case of severe child abuse, and Erlendur has his own daughter Eva Lind to contend with as well. And it's Christmas -- a depressing time for many people.

It's a police procedural but it's also a psychological look at what makes families tick & why family relationships are often the way they are. It's humorous in spots, but overall, this is a bit morose and dark. The mystery is solid and readers will not be disappointed. Highly recommended.

*Mind's Eye, by Hakan Nesser

2009-07-14T16:09:00.003-04:00

A bit of confusion here -- this book is actually the first of the series, but it was just recently published in the US. You can actually read them out of sequence, but I'm a believer in reading each series in order so I know as much as possible about the characters or previous events from other books as the series goes along.

Back in the world of Scandinavian mysteries again...what a great place to be. As much as I love the British writers, I REALLY love the Scandinavians. They write the best mysteries and I'm just really starting to collect these.

This is actually the first installment in the series featuring Inspector Van Veeteren, set in Sweden, and it is a good one. I really love Nesser's books, having read the first three in the series so far (Mind's Eye, Borkmann's Point, The Return). In this debut (and you'll never believe it's the first of a series, it's that good), Van Veeteren takes the case of Janek Mitter, who wakes up one morning after a night of heavy drinking to find his wife Eva in the bathtub, dead. The only suspect is Mitter himself, who absolutely cannot remember a thing. Van Veeteren finds himself wondering if indeed Mitter was the culprit, especially after Mitter is found murdered in a hospital for the mentally ill, where he was imprisoned after his trial. Van Veeteren knows that the only way to get to the bottom of these crimes is to find out all he can about their past lives -- especially Eva's.

This book is one more in the wonderful set of mysteries written by Nesser. His writing is so good that he will hook you in the first few pages and not let you go until the book is finished.

I can very highly recommend this one to others who enjoy Scandinavian crime fiction, and to those who have read Nesser's other books. Mystery readers who want something different than the usual stuff out there will also enjoy this book as well.

Red to Black, by Alex Dryden

2009-07-12T18:35:00.003-04:00

Actually, this wasn't really in my July lineup, but rather an ARC that was sent to me twice. Once, from a really nice man from Ecco Press (who published this book) who felt bad that my request for the galley copy came in too late so he sent me a PDF, and the other from the people at Amazon Vine where I had forgotten I'd actually requested a copy of this book. So my thanks to both for what turned out to be one of the most awesome reads of the summer. If you're on the fence about buying it when it's released, don't be. It's well worth the money you're going to pay for it. I liked it so much I'm buying a hardback copy when it comes out. I don't say that about many ARCs, just the best ones.

Some people have called this a love story with a spy thriller as a base; I don't think that's quite accurate. But if you want to read it as a love story, knock yourself out. But don't miss the core of what the author's saying here. And please, do yourself a favor, and give the subject matter some thought after you've finished it. Having said all of this, here's the review:

In Red to Black, Dryden (a pseudonym for security reasons!) has posited a plot so Machiavellian in scope that reading this book at times sent chills up and down my spine. Without a total rehash of the plot, the book follows a British MI-6 agent (Finn) who receives word from a spy deep within the government of Russian president Putin that there is a plan in the works that will make the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe look like child's play. Told mainly through the view of Anna (a KGB colonel whose mission is to find out what Finn knows and how he knows, but who falls in love with Finn), the story takes the reader into an exploration of the world of greed, capitalism and power grabbing.

Once I picked this book up, I could not put it down. Others have noted that they almost gave it up -- please don't! You'll miss a story just plausible enough to have you wondering if this could really happen. I thought the writing was good -- sparse enough so you're not bogged down in details but real enough to make it readable -- although I felt it probably could have been a bit shorter and we could have had less of Anna's internal conflicts. Also, the KGB didn't seem very smart at times even though they have networks upon networks of people and agents everywhere. But I think Dryden's got a winner here because a) the subject matter is pertinent to our modern world and b) it's simply a really good story. Recommended for people who enjoy good spy yarns, especially the old Cold War type novels.

*Nightmare's Disciple, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

2009-07-10T09:16:00.004-04:00

I am an avid collector of Call of Cthulhu fiction, a series from Chaosium publications. I also collect original Arkham House works, as well as those from Fedogan and Bremer and Weird Tales Library. These books are a blend of horror and fantasy, and are downright pulpy. The pulpier the better -- they are my guilty pleasure. Nightmare's Disciple is from C of C, #6018 (if you don't know about Cthulhu, you can find out more in HP Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales, ed. S.T. Joshi -- a fine place to start).

Normally I cannot get enough of this stuff, but this time, I couldn't wait to be finished with the book. A serial killer is loose in Schenectady; at first he preys only on prostitutes, but soon decides to take his victims from the general public. Detective Chris Stewart is on the case, but the police find it hard going -- there are no clues other than the killer's MO which is gruesome, to say the least. The killer leaves a letter, and it makes absolutely no sense to Stewart or anyone else until a teenager visiting one of Stewart's friends discovers that the letter is filled with references to HP Lovecraft and the mythos. Off he goes to find an expert and finds the owners of a store specializing in books of horror, among other things, and begins his education into the world of HP Lovecraft. But there is a timeline...the killer, like so many practitioners of the dark arts before him, plans to unleash a terrible evil upon the world.

So far so good, right? If the author had left it at that, this could have been an awesome novel...full of Lovecraft references and those of his followers and imitators, it could have been delightful to someone like myself who really enjoys this stuff. But the author chose to go off on so many tangents and throw in a lot of unnecessary fill that made the reading an ordeal. Some of the dialog was beyond pulpy, especially the scenes with the killer and his cousins in Innsmouth (if you know where that is, you're a mythos reader) --- even for a book you know is totally out there, this was just bad.

Having said all of this, there were actually a couple of things I liked about this book. First, it was fun to watch some of the characters discovering that Lovecraft (and those who contributed to the overall mythos) may not have just been writing fictional, pulpy occult stories but may have actually been speaking truth. Second, although it was often tedious to slog through, I had a good time making notes of the references the author throws out and running to the internet to look them up.

If you're a die-hard Mythos fan, and happen to have this in your collection, go ahead and read it, but otherwise, it's not one of the best entries in the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu fiction series. And whatever you do, do not make this your first foray into the world of HP Lovecraft or you may never go back.

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, by Patrick Radden Keefe (Amazon Vine)

2009-07-07T17:00:00.004-04:00

Thanks much to the people at Amazon Vine for making this available prior to its release. I would like to think it's going to be much read because of the topic, and I hope it will, but this may have a somewhat limited audience rather than be a star in the world of general readership where vampire romances dominate the world. -sigh-

According to the author, a "snakehead" is someone who charges a huge amount of money to "take people out of China and into other countries." This book focuses on one of these people, Sister Ping, who came to the US legally and then proceeded to cash in on every opportunity she could, including smuggling human beings into the country for millions in profit. It was the wreck of the ship Golden Venture near Rockaway NY in 1993 in which several people died that captured the attention of the Federal Government and set several officials on the trail of Sister Ping. But that's not the whole story here...it's also a look at the shifting policies of the Feds on legal and illegal immigration throughout our country's history as well as an examination of why law enforcement often has trouble getting a handle on this very big problem. Misinformation, lack of funding, a staggering amount of asylum requests (and the question of who will receive asylum and who will be deported), and often corruption on the part of some INS (now ICE) agents are all factors that the author examines in trying to understand why this woman was able to elude capture for nearly a decade; not to mention the closing of ranks within the Chinese communities in the US around someone they considered almost a saint.

The story of the Golden Venture is the focal point for examining wider and pertinent issues, and while the author examines the impact of human smuggling and illegal immigrants in this country, he also makes very clear that many people trying to get their chance at the American dream are willing to take the risks involved with illegal smuggling operations. Also, he makes the point when the Feds actually manage to capture someone like Sister Ping, there are other people waiting in the wings.

Overall, this was a good read. It seemed to go on a bit, and probably could have been somewhat condensed, but other than that, I liked it. People on both sides of the issue of illegal immigration will want to read this book.

*Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie

2009-07-02T19:07:00.004-04:00

It is SO hard for me to read these books and not picture David Suchet as Poirot. While the man is perfect in the role, I hear his voice in my head while I'm reading. Actually, now that I think about it, I can hear the voice of Captain Hastings (played by Hugh Fraser). Going all sidetracky here, I've seen Hugh Fraser in some other British dramas on PBS, and have had to remember he's not playing Hastings in whatever the show is. But...okay, moving right along...

In this episode, we find the friendly little Belgian detective spending his time rescuing cats and he's fed up. Along comes a letter from one M. Renaud in France, asking for Poirot's help because his life is in danger. Off rush Poirot and his friend and erstwhile sidekick, Captain Hastings. But it's too late...when they arrive at Renaud's villa, Renaud is already dead. While Poirot has no official standing there, he is allowed to help the police, and they'll need it: there are a number of suspects from which to choose. With his usual energy, Poirot has to work fast to prevent the wrong person from going to the guillotine.

This is installment #2 in the Poirot series, and it's easy to see that neither Poirot nor Hastings are in their fully developed selves yet. It's not one of her best but on the other hand, it's still early in the series. Originally written in 1923, the language is a bit stilted at times, and Poirot is a bit more long-winded than he will turn out to be later. A lot of this novel is based on coincidence, but you can sort of overlook it because it's interesting to see how Poirot uses zee little grey cells. However, a couple of plot twists will keep you guessing right up until the end so it's a good enough mystery and will keep readers turning pages.

Recommended definitely for Christie (and Poirot) fans; readers of golden-age mysteries will enjoy this and readers of British mysteries in general will probably have fun with it. Overall...an average story from a great writer. Of no great interest to anyone but myself (and probably Andy) I just bought the DVD at Amazon to watch next week. I always buy a movie if I read the book it comes from to see how it translates. Jeez -- I am a certified geek.

July: chillin' by the pool with some old friends

2009-06-30T18:50:00.003-04:00

Well, it's once again the end of the month and it's time to choose a new topic. This time of year is always tricky because a) it's warm outside and b) I like to be outside reading as often as possible. This picture is of my pool, and since I'm extremely fortunate enough to not have to work, that is often my reading room. I even have a long lounger chair for the pool with headrest and drinkholders so if I want to actually read in the pool, I can do that too. I think that's why I only stuck to four Tudor books in June... There's also a c): the Booker Prize longlist is posted at the end of July, so for the entire months of August and September I'm reading pretty much only the books on that list, however many they are ( I usually have to buy them from the UK, but that's all right). The point I'm trying to make here is that I need a reading break both before the longlist comes out and after I've read the books on said list. I've decided that this month, I'm going to revisit authors and characters I've enjoyed in the past and catch up with what's up with them. I see some Agatha Christie in my future, Tom Rob Smith, Repairman Jack, probably some Lovecraft (I haven't been around the Elder Gods for a long time), maybe some Sherlock Holmes, who knows? It's all about the calm before the Booker storm.

So I'll make a few mango daquiris and kick back on a few sunny afternoons (before the 3 pm rainshowers hit each day) and enjoy my old friends. This should be a productive reading month.

Enoch's Portal, by A.W. Hill

2009-06-29T12:01:00.001-04:00

I just finished rereading this book because I'm planning on reading his other two (The Last Days of Madame Rey and his new one, Nowhere Land) here very shortly.

Stephan Raszer (as he is so fond of telling people, the last name rhymes with laser) used to be an actor but after a physical and mental breakdown, now he is a private investigator. He doesn't take just any clients -- he specializes in those people who have lost family members to cults. And not just any cults, either. He calls himself a faith seeker and seeker of direct knowledge of the divine. His self-proclaimed MO: "to defrock the false, and the truth stands naked." (31) In this first installment of the series, Raszer is hired by a Hollywood producer whose wife has gone over to a bizarre cult known as The Temple of the Sun. He wants her back, she wants to stay gone so she can end her painful earthly life. The Temple's beliefs are based on smatterings of arcane knowledge: Enoch and alchemy (a la John Dee and Edward Kelley), the Dogon legend of the Nommo who supposedly hail from Sirius B, the worship of Isis, the Cathars, Bogomil Dualism -- the list goes on. Basically they believe that their adherents will be able to transcend time and space by taking a shortcut through Enoch's Portal, the place of energy between the sun and Sirius B. But, as in all good conspiracy-nut novels, the Temple of the Sun is a bit more than meets the eye. Raszer's investigations and attempts to locate the missing woman put him in constant jeopardy and lead him down some paths he doesn't necessarily want to take.

Enoch's Portal is a mix of conspiracy theory, fantasy, arcana, occult fiction and a detective story, and it's hard to put it under one category. The action is constant, never letting up until the last page is turned. It's a fun read for people who enjoy occult fantasies (such as myself). Sometimes the action is a bit over the top, and there is a LOT of arcane knowledge to be transmitted to the reader. So beware -- if you have no knowledge of the legends of John Dee and Edward Kelley, you may be a bit lost. Also, there are some scenes in Poland with Václav Havel that are a bit far-fetched and outright silly that seem a bit out of place here and really turned me off and set me skimming until the action got going again.

All in all, it's just a fun way to pass some time, nothing should be taken serious at all. It's escape reading at its finest, and I'm sure was never meant to present itself as fine literature. I like pulp, I like fantasy, and I like supernatural and occult fiction. I would recommend it to readers who like all of these categories wrapped up in one bundle.

A Taste for Burning, by Jo Bannister

2009-06-28T12:46:00.004-04:00

(from the tbr pile):

I guess I might as well admit to myself that reading another history of King Henry VIII on a sunny day is too much for me, so I went back to the tbr pile for something else. -sigh-

My last review of the Castlemere series was for Charisma, which I didn't care for very much. To quote Peter Griffin -- "you know what really grinds my gears?" I absolutely hate when I can guess the murderer from such a far distance from the end. Luckily, I have better news to report for A Taste for Burning.

Third in the Castlemere series, A Taste for Burning opens with two unexplained fires. At first glance, there may be a connection between them, but then a third, totally unrelated fire breaks out, and someone is dead. Now rather than just an arsonist, the police are looking for a murderer. But DCI Frank Shapiro is suddenly taken off the case when his boss reveals that Shapiro and the department are now being looked at for imprisoning an innocent man eight years earlier. It seems that evidence has surfaced that clears the man, and that Shapiro was the arresting officer at the time. Meanwhile, Sgt. Donovan and Inspector Graham have their hands full trying to underhandedly clear their boss and prevent another arson.

Much better than the previous two ( A Bleeding of Innocents and Charisma) Taste for Burning is a fine police procedural. The characters are coming along a bit and in this one, the solution is left until the end of the story. The action is a bit overdone, but still, Taste for Burning makes for a good story.

Recommended for those who like British mysteries; if you haven't read the first two,you may wish to go back and start there. People who enjoy police procedurals will perhaps like this one as well.

Overall, not bad and it's onto the next one.

*Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, (ed.) Susan Doran

2009-06-28T07:35:00.004-04:00

For what this book is, it's a beautiful volume, one anyone who's a Tudor history person would be pleased to have as part of his or her library. This is a catalog of an exhibition at the British Library to commemorate 500 years since Henry VIII took the throne. The exhibition was guest curated by David Starkey, who is well known if you're a PBS fan. Starkey hosted a series (and wrote a book) about the wives of Henry VIII, as well as another series about British royalty in general. If you haven't seen either of these series and are interested in British royal history, I highly recommend them.

The book is structured in ten parts -- Nine about distinct periods during about the life of the king, and then there is a section about Henry the bibliophile.

1. Young Henry 1491-1509 : about his birth, his lineages and his childhood

2. Venus and Mars 1509-1513 : Henry VII dies and Henry VIII marries Katherine of Aragon

3. Triumph of Peace 1514-1527: Henry VIII brings peace with France; Wolsey is powerful; Charles of Burgundy becomes Emperor Charles V;

4. The Turning Point 1527-29 - In these years Henry begins the long process of his annulment to his marriage with Katherine, begins to question the pope's authority and secures a promise from Anne Boleyn for marriage -- three events, which the author notes, whose repercussions would be felt until the end of the century.

5. The Royal Supremacy (1529-35): Henry makes it mandatory that he be recognized as head of the Church of England; annulment, Anne Boleyn's first pregnancy and birth of Elizabeth

6. The Crisis of 1536: Dissolution of monasteries begins; Henry is attracted to Jane Seymour, Anne Boleyn is arrested & beheaded; the Pilgrimage of Grace begins

7. The Making of a New Church (1536-40): Marriage to Jane Seymour; birth of male heir & death of Jane Seymour;

8. The Last Years (1539-47):
Integration of Wales and England; marriage to the last 3 wives; execution of Cromwell

9. Death, Will and Succession (1546-47): Death of Henry VIII; Edward Seymour becomes Lord Protector of King Edward

In each section, there is an article about what's going on in each period, as well as paintings, pictures of original documents and artifacts of the period.

This book is very well done, and if you're interested in Henry VIII, you'll probably enjoy it a great deal.

Charisma, by Jo Bannister

2009-06-25T12:17:00.003-04:00

(from the TBR pile):

Here I am again, doing what I do best...procrastinating. Once again, I'm feeling very guilty that I'm not reading Smith's history of good old King Henry but I felt like something light. And I feel even more guilty that I have tons of unread books waiting for me, so it's a coin toss.

I don't know if anyone else follows the Castlemere series, but Charisma is the second installment. It follows the series opener entitled A Bleeding of Innocents. It's a good enough series, better than some I've read, and if you're into this sort of thing it's like heads above books like the Hamish Macbeth series or Agatha Raisin or that sort of cozy-type thing. Charisma is a police procedural, second in this series and features DCI Shapiro, Inspector Liz Graham and Sgt. Cal Donovan. In this installment, the three have their hands full...it seems that someone is going around killing young women, there's an evangelical mission coming to town, and Donovan recognizes an old buddy from Ireland who is supposedly dead. All three storylines interweave to make an okay, average mystery.

Here's the rub: aarggh! This book has 251 pages in it and midway through I knew who did it. I even wrote it down on a piece of paper to make sure my theory was correct. I have several more books in this series so I feel compelled to finish them all; hopefully they won't all be this easy to figure out. If the next one is this bad, the rest are probably going to be donated...I have way too many books to spend time on the disappointing ones.

I'd recommend it to people who like police procedurals, British mysteries and mysteries in general.

Fragment, by Warren Fahy

2009-06-23T08:54:00.004-04:00

Yes, I know...I should be slogging through Lacey Baldwin Smith's book of Henry VIII in keeping with this month's reading focus, but I couldn't help it. This book has been sitting on my nightstand for like a month and I could no longer avoid picking it up. Let's see...it was like 9:30 pm when I started it and at about midnight I was wandering around downstairs looking for something tame to read because a) I was still wide awake and b) I had finished the book. It went really fast, because it's a page turner.

Before I start my review I have to be really honest and say that this is one of those books where you must just sit back and suspend your disbelief for the duration. Some of the book is a bit "cutesy" which normally signals the end of an author for me (I'm just not into cute in science fiction, or any fiction for that matter) but you know, considering the book as a whole, it's an awesome read. If you read it, don't judge it on whether or not it's believable...because frankly, that's not the point.

First and foremost, my thanks to Bantam Dell for sending me this book as an ARC.

What a wild ride of a book! The action begins on a ship, the Trident, which has been chartered by the producer of a reality show called SeaLife. It features a cast of young twenty-something scientists including Nell Duckworth, who wanted to be on the show in the hope of exploring the ecosystem of a mysterious island known as Henders Island out in the middle of the Pacific. She gets her wish as the ship picks up a distress signal from an EPIRB and the captain is asked to go to try to give assistance. All of this, of course, is being filmed. As they get to the island, the cast and a cameraman make their way up to the top, and, as the cameras are rolling, something awful and incredible happens. The footage that is viewed all around the world sparks an incredible controversy around whether or not the whole thing was a hoax. Our government, however, has to see for itself, and only days later Nell and a team of specially-picked scientists are landed on top of the island in vehicles and a lab specially built for NASA. What they discover could alter the course of our world as we know it. I will not, absolutely not, say anything more, because it will kill the suspense for anyone else who might want to read it.

There is a lot of nonstop action in this book, and once I started it, I literally could not put it down. The suspense keeps you going until the end. The characters are a bit stereotypical -- the producer, who doesn't care about anything else but getting the footage, the quirky scientist, the fame-grabbing, pop-culture, vengeful toad of a pseudo-scientist who knows if word gets out about the truth of the island it's all over for his career -- but it's the author's first novel so you can make allowances. Also, some of the dialogue gets a bit clunky at time, but trust me, you'll be so carried away by the action here that you won't mind. There is a lot of scientific jargon here, but it's easy to understand once you slow down and read carefully. I'm not a scientist, so I don't know if it's accurate, but I was more interested in the action anyway.

All in all, this is a fun read that raises some serious environmental issues. As noted, it is the author's first novel, and if he keeps writing like this, he will gain a lot of followers. I'd definitely recommend it to people who like science fiction, or to those who read books like Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.

*Dissolution: A Novel of Tudor England, by CJ Sansom

2009-06-22T08:38:00.003-04:00

I'm not a huge fan of historical mysteries set before the Victorian period in British history, although I do own quite a few. I bought this book in 2003, and it has been sitting quietly on one of my British reading room shelves for six years now, totally untouched. Until yesterday, when I decided I'd better get back to my self-imposed Tudor period reading.

Before I get to the heart of the matter, I will say that while it's not an absolute necessity, knowing some basic Tudor history would be quite helpful, especially where it concerns the reformation of the Church in England. If you scan down the page and find my review of Moorhouse's Pilgrimage of Grace, you'll get the bare bones of the action behind this mystery.

C.J. Sansom’s Dissolution is the first of a series of novels featuring Dr. Matthew Shardlake, who, in this episode is a lawyer whose boss is no one less than Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister. The action of Dissolution takes place just after The Pilgrimage of Grace rebellions have been put down and the main rebel leaders have been put to death. Part of the reason for this particular rebellion was the dissolution of several monasteries, a plan hit upon by Cromwell who supposedly saw this as a way to enrich not only the king's pockets, but his own and his relatives as well while he also happens to be reforming the church in England.

Cromwell had earlier sent a Commissioner to the Benedictine monastery at Scarnsea, but somehow he ends up dead and beheaded. Now Shardlake, along with his young assistant Mark Poer, is called upon to deal with the matter. After his arrival, things begin to heat up and more deaths occur. With a monastery full of suspects, Shardlake has his work cut out for him.

While this book made for a good series opener, and a fine look at a very small slice of Tudor history, I figured out the main whodunnit early on. Normally, this is when I bug out of a series -- I liked to be challenged. However, the Tudor period makes for interesting reading, and Sansom's writing is quite good, so I went ahead and bought the 2nd book. And I must confess to having a soft spot for books set in monasteries.

I'd recommend it to people who like historical fiction, and to people looking for something lighter to read about the Tudor period that rises above say, The Other Boleyn Girl. I know, I know, so many people loved that book, but let's just say I've read it, didn't care for it and think people can do much better.

High: Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler, by Brian O'Dea

2009-06-20T09:44:00.003-04:00

(Amazon Vine)

Told in alternating locations and times, High is the very personal story of Brian O'Dea, who was the son of a somewhat prominent family in Newfoundland who eventually became a very high-rolling international drug smuggler. It took the DEA a long time, but finally O'Dea was arrested and put into prison at Terminal Island near Long Beach, California. His story is one of many highs (literally) and then the lows of hitting bottom, losing everything, and then being put into the US Federal Prison system, where for many, hope is nonexistent.

High is funny at times, while being serious all of the time. O'Dea's writing style is real, giving his readers small punctuated glimpses into the drug trade, prison life, and the reality of often overblown sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders. He never shies away from admitting his mistakes, and gets a bit introspective at times while trying to just hang on and make it through another day. It also highlights the often absurd points about the US war on drugs, especially on the part of officials in other countries who supposedly have a stake in combating the trafficking of illegal substances. The only thing I didn't really like about this book was that it seemed too condensed -- I know there's more that's not being told.

The book is well written, and didn't come across as a "poor pitiful me" kind of story which it easily could have. Au contraire, it is more of a look at a man who screwed up, paid the price, and got himself out of the hole of his former existence. I'd recommend it to people who are interested in personal or inspirational memoirs, or people who are interested in reading about the drug trade.

slow month for reading...sigh

2009-06-17T17:27:00.002-04:00

It's getting tough right now to find time for reading. This is highly unusual with me, but there's been a lot going on. Plus the Tudor histories are really involved and take a lot more time to read than my usual bookfare.

bummer

The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care, by John Dittmer

2009-06-17T17:23:00.003-04:00

(book #75 for the year)

Superbly written (and I would expect nothing less from this author, who wrote one of my favorite histories of the civil rights movement, Local People), The Good Doctors examines the creation, role, activism and struggles of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which started as an organization to help out civil rights workers in the south during the early 1960s. The committee's statement of purpose:

"We are deeply concerned with the health needs of the socially deprived. It is our purpose to initiate activities to improve their health status and to provide professional support and assistance to organizations concerned with human rights." (62)

That is precisely what the members of this committee did, whether it be for civil rights workers in Mississippi or other places in the south, or to offer medical aid to those who marched in Selma (and other places where their struggles for basic civil rights turned violent). The Committee also worked tirelessly to gather evidence of racial discrimination in the cases of hospitals and medical officials who had taken federal funding but who were actively discriminating against African-Americans not only in the south, but in other parts of the country as well. Members were often attacked by law enforcement while they were in the Jim Crow-ruled American South, making their jobs even tougher but still they kept on with their work. The members set up health clinics and tried to get to the root of social injustice and help locals to gain some sense of self-empowerment. Members were there at Wounded Knee, at Alcatraz, at the Chicago Democratic Convention, at various anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and the list goes on. The Committee worked to try to get the message across to politicians, the AMA and other organizations that health care is not a privilege, but rather a human right, through their efforts to support a national health program.

The most impressive part of this book (not that the whole thing isn't great) was Dittmer's examination of how the MCHR went from its original conception to the "medical arm of the new left." From the Black Panthers on down to the Progressive Labor Party in the 1970s and beyond, Dittmer shows how national and local politics, infighting among factions in the local Committee chapters and at higher levels, and other factors changed the face of MCHR as the decades progressed. The changing face of Black activism, taking on a more "Black Nationalism" tone, the wave of ideologies of the revolutionary organizations and parties in the 70s also led to changes in the organization. Dittmer does an excellent job in examining these phenomenon.

Finally, not only does Dittmer vew the Committee as an entity, he goes on in some detail to examine the motivations and backgrounds of the founding members, and those who joined later, as well as the hard and often dangerous being work done by individual members out in the field, anywhere where racism & poverty often kept people in ignorance or prevented people from receiving decent health care.

I can't really do this book justice in a few short paragraphs, but it is simply excellent. Anyone with any interest in a more in-depth look at the Civil Rights Movement itself, or as it is connected to the history of medicine in the US should read this book. I highly recommend it.

thanks, Librarything Early Reviewers program!

*The Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia Fraser

2009-06-12T19:36:00.004-04:00

People who are interested in the wifestyle of Henry VIII and who want a bit more than say, The Other Boleyn Girl, might want to check out this book. It's history, and it's long, but there is a LOT in here. There's no bodice ripping, no "throbbing manhood" nor any other required romance-novel titillation factors...as Sgt. Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, it's "just the facts."

The Wives of Henry VIII is well written, very well researched and offers more information than you can possibly hope for about each of Henry's wives. More than half of the book covers Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, with the rest dedicated to the other four. But wait ...there's more...it's also a good examination of historical events, European court intrigue, the religious situation not only in England but elsewhere in Europe, and other people connected with the British court and beyond. Furthermore, Fraser ties it all up very neatly by examining in brief the lives of the queens that survived the death of Henry VIII, and poses the question at the end that gives the reader some food for thought: if Katherine of Aragon had delivered a healthy son, would there have been the same type of religious change in England?

I liked this book, but to be really frank, if I had written something like this as a grad student, my advisors would have told me to cut it back and organize it better. She is a bit overly wordy, and there are a lot of things that fit better under different sections other than where she placed them. Also, I have to wonder when historians purport to know the mind of their subjects, and there are several places where the author makes judgments based on what she thinks Henry VIII would have thought. This was a bit off-putting. Also, in some cases where she makes a statement that somebody said something or something was thought, there were no footnotes that I could reference. However, overall, there is a wealth of information here, and the woman has definitely done her homework. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has a serious interest in the topic and wants a good reference work. Hang in there...it's long, but it's worth it in the end.

*The Pilgrimage of Grace: The rebellion that shook Henry VIII's throne, by Geoffrey Moorhouse

2009-06-09T16:37:00.005-04:00

this is sooooo not what they showed on The Tudors! So if you're getting the bulk of your lessons in British history from that show (I love it, so don't get me wrong here), think again. But then again, the producers of the Tudors could do an entire series just on the Pilgrimage of Grace -- and it would be very interesting as well. I might be the only viewer, but that's okay.

On to this book:

Definitely not a book for readers wanting something quick, Pilgrimage of Grace is, nonetheless, an interesting look at events transpiring during the years 1536 to 1537 which could have seriously cost Henry VIII his reign. Commoners and gentry, along with some noblemen united in a series of uprisings against the policies of stripping the monasteries, but more because of Thomas Cromwell, with other prelates they considered as "heretical." There were other reasons as well, largely monetary and political in nature that caused angry mobs to join together to try to effect change. In most cases, the uprising grew as those who led the movement forced others into joining, until thousands of armed men stood against poorly-maintained, poorly paid and often sympathetic troops under the command of the officials sent to quash the rebellion. It was the job of different dukes to maintain order, and in this case, the work fell to the Duke of Norfolk and for the first, smaller rebellion in Lincolnshire, the Duke of Suffolk.

The author does an excellent job with primary sources, often noting the bias in many of the accounts of the time, depending on authorship. He has woven together an outstanding look at causes, events and effects of these uprisings, examining not only the changes in the church under Henry VIII, but economic and political factors as well. He portrays Henry VIII as a monarch with a penchant for revenge and a monstrous temperament. At the end of the book he poses the question of what would have happened had the rebels not stopped their activities when and where they did, offering food for further thought.

This is definitely not a book for general readership -- you pretty much have to decide you're in it for the long haul to finish it -- but it is a very well-written history of the time. I'd recommend it to people who enjoy a good history, and those who want to know more about the reign of Henry VIII. It didn't come across as dry to me, but all three of my majors were in the field of history & I love this stuff. Highly recommended.

The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery, by Enrique Joven

2009-06-03T09:09:00.003-04:00

(from Bookbrowse First Impressions -- thanks!)

The Book of God and Physics is a mystery, but don't expect an action-packed thriller here because in between the covers you get a lot of history. The author delves into the lives of Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Dr. John Dee (one of my favorite strange people of all time) , and others; and also examines the history of the Jesuits as well as astronomy, physics and alchemy. He also sets up a dialogue about science vs. religion. So, if you're looking for an easy read, you may want to skip this one, because there's a lot of fact, no rockem-sockem stuff, and the book in many ways demands reader participation.

The central character is Father Hector, a Spanish Jesuit priest who teaches high-school math and science. To relax, he's part of an online community where people get together and share theories about the Voynich Manuscript, which is a real document, which you can read about here: http://voynich.nu/s_intro.html They also offer up suggestions for cracking the "code" in order to decipher it, something that no one's been able to do since it was discovered. He has two good friends that he's met through this group. The school where he teaches is about to be sold and the Jesuits and the students evicted. The action really starts when grafitti is discovered on a wall -- written in the same "alphabet" as the Voynich Manuscript. It is then that Hector's interest becomes more than peaked, and he and his friends meet in person to try to solve the Voynich mystery. But to do this, they must turn to history, physics, astronomy, art, and other knowledge and theory, but every time the friends think they have a solution, there are even more questions that arise.

The historian in me loved this book, and the Voynich Manuscript is something I've been interested in for a long time. The question of science v. religion and how (if it is at all possible for some) to find a happy meeting ground is well posed here and will hopefully encourage readers to give it some thought. What I found kind of off-putting was the way that the author used one of Hector's high-school students as kind of a "front man" for presenting information. I also wonder if Joven (who is a physicist) focused so much on the book Heavenly Intrigue by Joshua and Anna-Lee Gilder (see at http://amazon.com/Heavenly-Intrigue-J...) as an embedded personal critique of that work.

Overall it is a very good book if you like a lot of history and fact in your mysteries. I wouldn't recommend it to people who like cozy mysteries, nor would I recommend it to people who want something with a lot of physical action going on. However, if you want a more challenging and intelligent read, then you'll probably enjoy this one.

The Doomsday Key, by James Rollins

2009-05-30T10:30:00.000-04:00

(Amazon Vine Program)

It's really tough for me to write about books that are out of my comfort zone. I'm not a huge fan of adventure/action thriller type books, and I rarely read them. I'm much more likely to read a mystery, biography, history, work of literary fiction, or to indulge in the guilty pleasure of a horror novel or two here and there. But the fact is, there are only a few authors in the rockem-sockem world of adventure thrillers whose works I will read, and James Rollins is one of them.

There is never a dull moment in this latest installment of the Sigma Force series. The action ranges from Africa to Rome, Norway, the British Isles and France and never lets up. It is another "ripping good yarn" for fans of Rollins and his superhero-like team of good guys, Sigma Force.

brief summary, no spoilers
Jason Gorman, the son of a US Senator, is in Africa working on the experimental farm project sponsored by his father. On the farm were fields of genetically-modified corn, and the experiment was successful. But out of nowhere, the Red Cross camp where he is staying is attacked and Jason is killed, but not before firing off an email to his father letting him know what's happening. Attached to that email -- research files. Because of the death of the senator's son, Sigma Force gets involved. But of course, there's always more... the death of a priest, an attack on Rachel's uncle in Rome, the death of a geneticist at Princeton...and everywhere, the same strange sign is branded into the victims. As Sigma uncovers each individual layer of the mystery of who is behind all of this and why, more mysteries pop up, eventually leading the team to look for their answers not in the present, but back in time to the Britain of the Domesday Book and beyond. There are twists and turns everywhere, and the action is nonstop.

Rollins takes known fact, some speculative/conspiracy theory and a lot of science and weaves it into his story. I most enjoyed the historical background of the book; beyond that, the book is high-level action and very fast paced, a cross between Indiana Jones movies, modern conspiracy fiction and a spy novel complete with a shadowy evil organization plotting against the good guys. This book, like the rest of the Sigma Force books, are fun escape reads, the kind where you have to sort of suspend your disbelief for the few hours it takes to get through it. I think that the reader is better served by starting with book one and making your way through the series, because there are parts where you'll want to know what came before.

I'm much more of a plot or character person than a reader of adventure/action fiction, so at times the shootouts, killings, bombings and seemed a bit overwhelming. Then again, that's what action/adventure readers look for with these books. I'd recommend it to those type of readers, and to people wondering if they should continue in the series. Overall -- just a bit of fun for a few hours, so sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Don't take it too seriously ...it's just fun. I don't read many of these types of books, but I can always depend on Rollins when I need some escape time. If he keeps writing them, I'll keep reading them.

June - I'm 'Enery the Eighth I am...'Enery the Eighth I am I am ..

2009-05-29T09:36:00.000-04:00

Alas and alack, The Tudors on Showtime is now finished for this season, meaning I have another year to go before I can see the stunning Jonathan Rhys-Meyers once again. He's not the only reason I watch it -- I love the intrigue as well -- but well, the man is freakin' gorgeous. So in June, I will be reading books about Henry VIII and that period of Tudor history. I've chosen both fiction and nonfiction, although I must say that finding decent fiction that has nothing to do with Anne Boleyn or her sister was tough. I read all the Boleyn stuff long ago and well, it just wasn't my cup of tea. Here's a sample of the lineup:

The Pilgrimage of Grace: The rebellion that shook Henry VIII's throne, by Geoffrey Moorhouse
Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty, by Lacey Baldwin Smith
Dissolution, by CJ Sansom
The Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia Fraser

and others.

as always, I'll still be plowing through the tbr pile and continuing to read and review the ARCs I get from Amazon Vine, Librarything Early Reviewers and BookBrowse First Impressions (thank you thank you thank you!) . And I have some books that I bought just for fun, including The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith and Darling Jim by Christian Moerk. I also hope to be able to catch up with Repairman Jack -- the last one I read was All the Rage and that was eons ago.

I'm currently reading James Rollins' Doomsday Key so expect a review this weekend. Now, it's time to go read.

Cemetery Dance, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

2009-05-28T22:05:00.000-04:00

(from the tbr pile)

I've decided that I'm going to designate this book as a "ripping good yarn" because, by golly, that's what it is. This is one of those books where you just have to say to yourself, okay, this is totally escape reading and it's so far-fetched that it can't possibly ever be true. Once you get past that hurdle, then you can do what the authors intended for you to do: sit back, relax, and have fun with it. If you can't do that, then move along, because this book is definitely not for you. Literary snobs need not apply.

I enjoy "ripping good yarns" (aka escape fiction) once in a while, especially from these two authors both together and independently. I especially enjoy the Agent Pendergast series, which I've been following since he first came out of Preston and Child's collective imaginations. He's an enigma and I like enigmas. I've read all of these stories; I've pre-ordered or bought each one as soon as I heard of its release, and I happen to like them. I am a Pendergast junkie, and I simply cannot get enough of this guy. But I digress.

I absolutely cannot tell you much, because of the plot twists in this book. To tell is to ruin. The book opens with the murder of an old friend from other books in the series (whose name I will not divulge here -- but if you're a Preston and Child follower, you'll be a bit sad). The identity of the murderer is not in doubt -- it was one Colin Fearing, who lived in the same building, and was caught on tape at the building at the time of the murder. Several people recognized him. The only problem is that Colin Fearing was dead at the time the murder was committed -- his body had been even been identified by a relative. So...enter Agent Pendergast, who was a very good friend to the murder victim, and another recurring character, Lt. Vince D'Agosta of the NYPD. What begins as a bizarre case of murder gets even more bizarre as the investigation takes our heroes into the bizarro world of religious animal sacrifice and voodoo. But when a second killing occurs at the hand of another dead person, it just gets very weird, and their efforts to find the killer puts Pendergast and his pals in a very dangerous situation where their very lives are at stake.

This book has it all...the supernatural, mystery, suspense...that is the hallmark of the writing of Preston and Child. There are plot twists that you won't see coming (or at least I didn't), and it's generally a very fun novel with quite a bit of action.

Yes, it's a bit unbelievable, and it's a bit over the top in some spots, but the authors managed to grab me from the start and I didn't stop until I was finished. I think you'd want to read the other Pendergast novels rather than making this your first foray into the minds of these two authors. This book was much better than the last one -- Wheel of Darkness -- and I hope there are many more Pendergast novels in their futures.

I'd recommend this book to people who enjoy fun escape fiction or to those who like a supernatural cast to their mysteries. These two authors are very good at their craft and now I'll just wait patiently until the next installment arrives. -sigh-