Book Reviews
HIT ME by Lawrence Block: Book Review
It can’t be easy to make a hired killer, an assassin, a sympathetic character to the reader. But Lawrence Block has been doing it for more than twenty years.
Hit Me is a collection of several short stories following Keller, now known as Nicholas Edwards. He and his wife Julia have relocated from New York to New Orleans with their toddler daughter Jenny, and Keller thought he was out of the killing business permanently.
In the first story he gets a call from Dot, the woman who gives Keller his assignments, asking about his interest in going to Dallas to eliminate a man. Dot, like Keller, thought she had retired from the business, but when she reentered it she phoned Keller to find out if he too has had a change of heart. It seems he has, as his formerly flourishing rehab business in the Crescent City has slowed considerably due to the economic downturn. In addition, Keller has been planning on traveling to Dallas to attend a stamp collecting auction. When Dot hears this she calls the coincidence “the hand of Providence.” Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.
Hit Me takes Keller all over, from New Orleans to Dallas to New York City to an ocean liner in the Caribbean to Denver to Cheyenne and finally Buffalo. It seems that the business of killing people is as remunerative as always, especially for a man who knows his work.
Of course, Keller’s victims are always unpleasant people, although it may be a stretch to say that they all need to be killed. But a man has to do what a man has to do, doesn’t he?
In the third story in the book, “Keller at Sea,” Keller’s wife Julia becomes an accomplice in her husband’s line of work. She has obviously suspected something about what he does when he’s away from home, and now it has become clear to her. But as she tells him, “I know what you do, and I don’t entirely know how I feel about it, but I don’t seem to mind. I honestly don’t.” Keller obviously picked the right woman to marry. And help him she does.
Lawrence Block is an incredibly prolific author. Although he has written only four previous novels featuring Keller, he is the author of eighteen Matt Scudder novels, ten Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries, eight Evan Tanner books, four featuring Chip Harrison, plus stand-alone novels, short stories, books for writers, and a memoir. And that’s not the complete list of his works.
I read in a recent article that Mr. Block is contemplating retiring from the writing profession. Let’s hope he, like his protagonist Keller, has a change of heart.
Spending the day with a hit man may seem like a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure it is. Lawrence Block’s writing grabs you and doesn’t let you go. You certainly wouldn’t want to meet Keller on a professional basis, but in a book he’s fascinating.
You can find out more about him at this web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
TRUST YOUR EYES by Linwood Barclay: Book Review
Linwood Barclay has done it again, creating a fascinating novel that’s nearly impossible to put down. Actually, Trust Your Eyes is impossible to put down, as is every other Barclay book I’ve read.
Ray Kilbride has returned home to upper New York State after the death of his father, in part to determine what’s best for his younger brother. Thomas is a high-functioning schizophrenic, obsessed with mapping all the streets in the world; he’s convinced that there will be a catastrophe in which all maps will be destroyed.
When, not if, he believes that will happen, Thomas will be the only one in the world who has the knowledge that the maps had held. He’s been “in contact” with the CIA and former President Bill Clinton and has assured them of his abilities and cooperation in this matter. In order to concentrate on this, Thomas has hardly left his house in several years. He leaves his room only to have three quick meals a day and then returns to continue his memorization project.
One day, while on the web’s Whirl360 site, Thomas sees what looks like a person’s head wrapped in a plastic bag. For as long as he looks at the window where the head is, it doesn’t move. Could he possibly be seeing a murder taking place?
In Linwood Barclay’s adept hands, this is the main thread of the mystery but not the only one. Allison Fitch, a young woman working as a waitress in lower Manhattan, is having money troubles. Her salary isn’t big enough to cover her part of the rent for the apartment she shares or for all the clothes she buys, so she’s always doing a little creative financing. At first it’s innocent enough, if not very nice, as she spins a story to her mother in order to get her mother to send her a thousand dollars. But it turns dangerous when she decides to turn to blackmail to get sufficient funds to finally pay all her debts.
And then there are the political figures, killers-for-hire, and FBI agents coming to the Kilbrides’ house to talk to Thomas about his frequent e-mails to the CIA. If you think this won’t all hang together to make a fantastic thriller, you obviously don’t know Linwood Barclay.
The characters in Trust Your Eyes are totally believable, as is the plot. Sometimes the most seemingly innocent or innocuous decisions have grave consequences. If Ray Kilbride hadn’t come home to straighten out his father’s affairs and decide about his brother’s future, he wouldn’t have seen the Whirl360 web site and gone to Manhattan to investigate what his brother thought was a murder. If Allison Fitch hadn’t turned the television on at a particular moment, the blackmail plot would never have entered her mind. And if Nicole had won the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics instead of the silver, she might not have become a professional assassin.
Linwood Barclay is a master of his craft. You can read more about him at this web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.
BLOOD MONEY by James Grippando: Book Review
Jack Swyteck is the attorney for the trial of the twenty-first century in James Grippando’s latest thriller, Blood Money. The story, which is similar to a spectacular trial that was recently in the headlines, has twists that will keep the reader turning the pages of the novel faster and faster until the ending is reached.
Sydney Bennett is on trial for her life for the murder of her daughter Emma, two years old at the time of her disappearance. As the prosecution tells it, Sydney liked life in the fast lane, and her young daughter was cramping her style. After her daughter disappeared from their home, Sydney was photographed drinking and bar-hopping and apparently showing no sorrow. Then, three years later, Emma’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in the Everglades.
Although a time and even a cause of death were never discovered due to the length of time between the child’s disappearance and the discovery of her body, public opinion agrees that Sydney is guilty. When the book opens, on the day the verdict is to be delivered, hundreds of protestors are outside the courthouse with signs demanding “Justice for Emma,” by which they mean the death penalty for Sydney.
But when the verdict is announced, virtually everyone is stunned–Not Guilty. And then chaos ensues.
Leading the media frenzy surrounding the arrest and trial is Faith Corso, a former prosecutor and current personality on the BNN network. Throughout the trial Faith has demonized Sydney, giving her the now-famous nickname of Shot Mom (for the whiskey shots she was photographed drinking after Emma’s disappearance).
It’s easy to hate Sydney, given the severity of the crime she’s accused of, her posturing in court, and her refusal to say anything more to her lawyer than that she’s innocent. And when she realizes that she and Jack are not on the same page regarding her future–she sees herself giving interviews at one hundred thousand dollars per and perhaps being the subject of a television movie as well–they come to a parting of the ways. His injunction that Sydney needs to keep a low profile seems to fall on deaf ears.
The picture gets even bleaker. Jack has arranged for Sydney to leave the Miami-Dade Women’s Correction Center under cover of night, trying to avoid the large crowd that is camped in front of the prison. Egged on by one of BNN’s reporters, the crowd is hostile and dangerous, waiting for Sydney’s release. Shouting “no blood money” over and over, the people are whipping themselves into a fever when one of them believes she has spotted Sydney walking out the jail’s door. The crowd surges over the woman and knocks her to the ground. But when the people are forcibly disbursed by the police, it’s discovered that the woman is not Sydney Bennett but a younger woman who looks much like her, and Sydney is nowhere to be seen.
Many of the novel’s most unpleasant characters, unfortunately, are totally believable. Sydney, even years after her daughter’s death, expresses nothing that could charitably be called maternal instinct; her only thoughts are how best to promote herself and earn big money. Her father is a bully who refuses to allow his wife to speak to Jack. Faith Corso is a media star whose only interest appears to be the story, regardless of whether the story is factual or not. And the head of the BNN network will literally stop at nothing to boost the ratings of his programs.
Blood Money is the tenth novel in James Grippando’s Jack Swyteck series. You can read more about the author at this web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
HUSH MONEY by Chuck Greaves: Book Review
Hush Money/Hush Puppy–it’s the second word that makes all the difference.
Hush Puppy is the name of a champion horse belonging to Sydney Everett, a rich but crude widow who owns horses but doesn’t ride them. When Jack MacTaggart, a recent addition to the very white-shoe Los Angeles law firm of Henley & Hargrove, is asked to take over the insurance case involving the death of Mrs. Everett’s horse, Hush Puppy, he asks, “Why me? I don’t know a fetlock from a half nelson.” The reason is that the firm’s attorney who usually handles Mrs. Everett’s business is out of the country, so Jack has to hoof it over (forgive the pun) to the Fielding Riding Club to get the story.
Sydney Everett is the personification of the gauche, nouveau riche trophy wife/widow who is on the prowl for a replacement for her late husband. Avoiding Sydney’s obvious interest in him, Jack learns from the riding club’s veterinarian, George Wells, that Hush Puppy died of cardiac failure of an unknown cause; it is later discovered that the cause of the heart failure is a virus that poisoned the animal.
Jack is working on another case as well. His client, a low-income working man named Victor Tazerian, has leukemia that is currently in remission. A proven treatment has been denied by Victor’s insurance carrier on the grounds that Victor is healthy at the moment. However, when (and it’s a when, not an if) his cancer returns, the treatment will not work. Jack’s job is to convince the insurance company to pay for the treatment when Victor is healthy so it can be available when he gets ill again. So far, the venerable Hartford Allied Insurance Company has not agreed to do this. But Jack has always enjoyed a good fight.
The characters in Hush Money are terrific. Jack is street-wise, not exactly a perfect fit for his law firm. The stable master he meets at the Fielding Riding Club, Tara Flynn, is an attractive, outgoing young woman; she’s not shy about telling Jack her opinion of everyone in the club, her bosses included. Russ Dinsmoor, Jack’s mentor and a highly respected attorney in the California legal community, is uneasy about Jack’s deep research into Hush Puppy’s death. Sydney Everett, Jack’s client, has a secret in her past that is impacting everything about the case. And the senior partner in Jack’s firm, Morris Henley, and his son Jared are unlikeable in the extreme. The former is an overbearing, arrogant man who thinks his every word must be obeyed, while the latter much prefers roaming the world to doing actual work at the law firm.
Chuck Greaves was an attorney in Los Angeles for twenty-five years, and the novel is filled with fascinating pieces of legal lore. He obviously knows the ins-and-outs of the court system, and his writing makes it all accessible to his readers. And his character Jack MacTaggart is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.
You can read more about him at this web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
THE ROYAL WULFF MURDERS by Keith McCafferty: Book Review
I’ve never been fly fishing, or any other type of fishing to be honest. But after reading The Royal Wulff Murders, I might just try it.
The book opens on the beautiful Madison River, a body of water that is reputed to have the best trout fishing in Montana. Rainbow Sam, a grizzly river fishing guide, is there with a client when the client’s line hooks not a coveted rainbow trout but a bloated corpse.
Sheriff Martha Ettinger is trying to put a name to the body; at first the death appears to have been a tragic accident. Then the autopsy results show that the victim’s lungs had algae and certain microscopic bugs that are found only in lakes, not rivers. There’s no good explanation for that finding other than murder.
Sean Stranahan is a newcomer to Bridger, Montana. He left Boston, his ex-wife, and a minor career as a private investigator in an attempt to find a new, more satisfying life. Sean’s dream is to support himself as an painter, but since the artistic life isn’t always the most economically feasible, he put “Private Investigations” in small letters on his office door as well as the more hopeful “Blue Ribbon Watercolors” in larger letters.
But, as luck would have it, the small lettering brought in a client, his first. Sean had seen Vareda Lafayette when she was performing at a local club and was very much attracted by her striking looks and her way with the American songbook. Perhaps that was what made Sean agree to her very unusual request–to find a specific spot on the Madison where her father fished the day before he died and then to cast his ashes there. Vareda tells Sean that he’ll know the spot because her father always marked the trout he caught in a certain way before returning them to the water. Sean is doubtful about the possibility of his finding the right spot and catching a fish so marked, but he agrees to try.
Oh, yes, Vareda tells him, as she prepares to leave his office. There’s one more thing. If you see my brother on the river, tell him I said hello and ask him to call me.
Crucial to the novel’s plot is the fact that the rivers of Montana are threatened by the whirling disease, which originated in Germany. In America, trout are vulnerable and dying in large numbers. The disease causes malformations in the trout’s skeleton as well as neurological damage and makes the fish whirl instead of swim in a normal way, making it easier for larger fish to catch them. When Vareda tells Sean that her missing brother last worked in a fish hatchery where he thought something suspicious was going on, Sean begins to connect the dots.
Keith McCafferty is an award-winning journalist, and The Royal Wulff Murders is the first in a series featuring Sean Stranahan. The author’s love of Montana, its rivers, and fly fishing is evident throughout the novel. As the Survival and Outdoor Skills editor of Field and Stream, he is a man with a great deal of knowledge about the outdoors and how to live in it, enjoy it, and preserve it for future generations.
You can read more about Keith McCafferty at his web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
BOOKS TO DIE FOR by John Connolly and Declan Burke: Book Review
My favorite mystery book store, Mainely Murders in Kennebunk, Maine, puts out a terrific monthly newsletter. One of the books Paula and Ann highlighted for February sounded fascinating, so I ordered it. The book’s subtitle, The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, says it all.
The book begins with The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1841) and ends with The Perk by Mark Gimenez (2008). There are names familiar to all mystery lovers: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith; and names not so well known or totally unknown (to me, at least): Robert Wilson, Peter Temple, Perihan Magden. There are books from England, France, Italy, South Africa, Switzerland, and of course the United States.
What makes this anthology so interesting to me is that rather than the novels being the choices of only the two editors, Connolly and Burke went to 119 contemporary mystery authors, asking each to choose a mystery that had had a great influence on him or her. Those writers chose books ranging from the expected (Linda Barnes wrote about The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle) to the unexpected (Liza Marklund wrote about The Ghost of Blackwood Hall by Carolyn Keene).
Also interesting to me are which books were chosen and which were not. I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan, but the two books picked for this anthology, Murder on the Orient Express and Endless Night, would never have made my list; I much prefer The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None/aka Ten Little Indians. In addition, Raymond Chandler leaves me cold, yet his Farewell, My Lovely and The Little Sister are on the list.
I can’t decide what is the best part of Books to Die For; whether it reminds me of books I’d read but really would like to re-read (The Steam Pig by James McClure) or books I’d never heard of but sound terrific (The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis). Either way, thanks to Paula and Ann for alerting me to Books to Die For. Check out their website (http://www.mainelymurders.com) for everything you want to know about mysteries and sign up for their free monthly newsletter.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
THE YARD by Alex Grecian: Book Review
Before we get too nostalgic about the “good old days,” perhaps we should reflect for a moment about Victorian England. No child labor laws meant that children as young as five worked twelve hour days as chimney sweeps and in coal mines, to name just two perilous fields. Boys were stuffed up chimneys to sweep out the accumulated coal dust; boys and girls spent their working days in the narrow alleys of pitch black mines, waiting to open and close the doors for the coal-laden trolleys. And girls as young as ten were “tweenies,” maids in well-to-do households who got up before daybreak to light the fireplaces. Plus there were the “workhouses,” but the less said about them, the better.
It’s the year 1889 in London, in the latter part of Queen Victoria’s reign. Scotland Yard is trying to recover from the horrific murders committed by the man known as Jack the Ripper. Morale at the Yard is low, and the public’s opinion of the Yard is even lower. The new commissioner of police, Sir Edward Bradford, is determined to modernize the force and bring respect back to the institution.
The Yard opens with the discovery of a corpse inside a steamer trunk found in a London railway station. The body is that of Inspector Christian Little, his eyelids and lips sewn shut, and the officers standing by the body are naturally horrified. The newest detective on the force, Detective Inspector Walter Day, is given the assignment of bringing the killer to justice. And Dr. Bernard Kingsley, a surgeon who has been giving of his time and knowledge in an effort to bring new forensic practices to Scotland Yard, is joining the effort.
Two lowly constables in the already stretched police force are looking into another crime, one officer reluctantly and one whose background makes the case a personal crusade. Nevil Hammersmith, remembering only too well his own upbringing as a child laborer, is horrified when he finds a boy’s corpse stuffed inside a chimney in a doctor’s house. “You must stop thinking of this body as a boy. This is a laborer….Nobody cares about this body, and it is not our job to take up lost cases,” one of Nevil’s superiors tells him. But Nevil persists in his efforts to find who left the young boy wedged up the chimney and didn’t care enough to return to get him out before he baked to death.
What struck me most in reading The Yard is how Alex Grecian, a first-time novelist, made each character stand out. Between the police in the newly formed Murder Squad, the two prostitutes still reeling from the unsolved Jack the Ripper attacks, the forward-thinking doctor and his young daughter who is his assistant, and the force’s official tailor, there are more than a couple of dozen characters to keep track of. By his skillful writing, the author makes that an easy and pleasurable task. I found that I cared about or was fascinated by each one of them. The Yard is a masterful debut.
You can read more about Alex Grecian at this web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
THE LAST KASHMIRI ROSE by Barbara Cleverly: Book Review
The Last Kashmiri Rose is a terrific mix of multiple murders, sexual tension, and exotic atmosphere. It’s a cozy read that holds your interest to the end.
It’s 1922, four years after the end of the Great War, and Commander Joseph Sandilands of Scotland Yard is on his way home from India. He’d been assigned to Calcutta for six months to help the Bengal Police and is more than anxious to return to London. But on the day before he is to leave, a formal request comes to him from the acting governor of Bengal to come to his office at once.
The governor’s niece, Nancy Drummond, is there waiting for Joe. She brings photographs of the bloody corpse of her close friend, Peggy Somersham, who was found a week earlier in her bath with her wrists cut. Nancy insists that Peggy was happy in India, happy in her new marriage, and would have had no reason to kill herself. Nancy, who had been a nurse during the War, thinks it would have been nearly impossible for Peggy to have cut her own wrists the way they were cut.
Even stranger, according to Nancy, is that in addition to Peggy, four other officers’ wives in the Greys regiment have died in various types of accidents over a period of years, each during the month of March. One was killed in a fire, one thrown from a horse, one bitten by a snake, one drowned while crossing a river in a boat, and now Peggy has been found dead. Those are too many bodies for Nancy to believe that they all were accidents, and she wants Joe Sandilands to investigate before he returns home.
The area’s police superintendent clearly believes Peggy’s death was a suicide, and he’s obviously annoyed that Joe has been called in. He’s not eager to offer much help, but he does assign an Indian officer, Naurung Singh, to assist. That’s as far as he’ll go because he believes that simply telling the other officers’ wives “not to worry their pretty little heads” about this case is all the attention it deserves.
But Naurung agrees with Nancy that the deaths of these five women are not accidents, and Joe starts looking into the case. And it doesn’t hurt that his interest in the charming, vivacious Nancy Drummond, wife of the Collector of Panikhat (a title that meant administrator and revenue officer in the former British Civil Service) is returned.
Pre-independent India is a fascinating place. The Last Kashmiri Rose takes us to a place that no longer exists and will never exist again. The British were the rulers, the natives the servants. The army officers and civil servants and their families lived an almost fairy tale life. The men paraded daily in their uniforms, the women visited each other and did small charitable deeds for the villagers while their food was prepared and served, their clothing washed and ironed, their children looked after, and their household details taken care of without their noticing. Whether you think this was good or bad might depend on whether you envision yourself as a British civil servant or an Indian house servant.
Regardless of one’s opinion, the novel makes this life alive again. The Last Kashmiri Rose is the first in the Joe Sandilands series; there are nine others. But the first novel is a great place to start.
You can read more about Barbara Cleverly at this web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY by Louise Penny: Book Review
One might imagine that a Catholic monastery, hidden for hundreds of years in the remote Quebec wilderness, would be the last place to look for a murder. But at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loupes (among the wolves), that is exactly what you would find.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his assistant Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surete de Quebec are called to the monastery following the death of its proctor, Frere Mathieu. The proctor was struck down in the abbot’s private garden and was found there by a fellow monk. And although the community of Saint Gilbert has taken a vow of silence and willingly removed itself from the world, its abbot, Dom Philippe, has called the Surete to investigate this murder.
Saint Gilbert’s has recently become world famous for its recording of Gregorian chants. Throughout its history, chapters in the Saint Gilbert’s order have practiced near-total silence except for their chanting of prayers several times a day. A year ago a recording was made of several of these chants and released to the families and friends of the monks.
What then happened was a modern-day phenomenon–suddenly the recording was being heard all over the world and thousands of copies of the CD were sold. What followed, of course, was an avalanche of unwanted visitors to the remote abbey–news helicopters, visitors from other religious groups, pilgrims–all wanting to meet the monks who had unwittingly given this gift to the wider world.
That avalanche set the scene for the major rift that has split the abbey–those monks, led by the abbot, who want to continue the order’s self-imposed exile and refuse to consider making another recording, and those led by the proctor, who see the recording and its attendant wealth as a gift from God that should be repeated. The tension comes to a boil when Mathieu is murdered and the community is further divided.
Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Bouvier are dealing with their own personal problems as well as those in the abbey. A recent police maneuver that Gamache headed went terribly wrong, resulting in the death of four policemen. In a situation similar to the world-wide interest in the abbey’s Gregorian chants, a video of the raid and its horrific aftermath that was made solely for the Surete was released and went viral.
In that raid, Jean-Guy was badly wounded and became dependent on painkillers. Although he has been off them for three months at the time the novel opens, it is obvious that his mental health is still fragile. In addition, he and Annie, Gamache’s daughter, are in love and planning to announce their engagement, but Jean-Guy is fearful of Annie’s parents’ reaction, afraid that they won’t welcome him into their family.
There is a great deal of backstory in The Beautiful Mystery, both in terms of the history of the persecution of the monks of the Saint Gilbert order, going back to the Inquisition, and Gamache’s tenure in the Surete. All the characters are well drawn, and the author’s obvious love of music, to which she refers in the acknowledgements, comes across throughout the book. The only thing that would have made this book even better would have been the inclusion of a CD of Gregorian chants. Lacking that, the next best option is going to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MbDqc3x97k to hear chanting for yourself.
Louise Penny has written another intriguing chapter in the lives of Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Bouvier, this one with much personal pain suffered by the two men. The story is deeper and more heartfelt than many others in the genre and not one the reader will easily forget.
You can read more about Louise Penny at her web site.
Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.
THE ABSENT ONE by Jussi Adler-Olsen: Book Review
These Scandinavian authors certainly know how to freeze their readers’ blood.
Carl Morck has been exiled to Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold case office. And exiled is the right word, because Department Q is in the police department’s basement, far from the bustle of others doing their work. However, it’s also far from the higher-ups who might be tempted to oversee Carl’s work, and Carl, ever the loner, likes that just fine.
Due to Carl’s outstanding work in a previous cold case, he’s greeted as a returning hero by his colleagues after his three-week vacation. His Iraqui assistant, Assad, is delighted to see him, but Carl still isn’t sure how he feels about Assad. He is sure, however, how he feels about his new secretary, Rose, a police recruit who failed her driver’s test and thus must make do with being a secretary rather than a detective; he’s sure he’s going to take the first opportunity to get her transferred out of his department.
Immediately after Carl’s return to work, a file appears on his desk that contains reports of a double murder that took place in 1987, twenty-five years ago. A brother and sister were brutally killed in their parents’ vacation home. There are two strange features about the case: a man confessed nine years afterward to the killings and has been in prison ever since, and no one will admit to putting the folder in Department Q’s files.
Although there was no discernible motive, a group of students at a local boarding school were suspected of the murders and with involvement in other incidents as well. There were five males and one female in the group, all of whom except one came from extremely wealthy homes. The man who confessed to the crimes is Bjarne Thogersen, the only one of the group who came from modest means.
When it came time for the trial, the other students’ fathers were very visible in court, with their high-paid attorneys, and no charges were ever filed against their sons. Now grown men themselves, the former students have surpassed their own fathers in the accumulation of wealth: Ditlev Fram, now owner of, among other things, a string of medical facilities specializing in plastic surgery to the rich and famous; Torsten Florin, clothing designer; Ulrik Dyboll, financial wizard; and the late Kristian Wolf, killed by an accidental self-inflicted wound while hunting. The lone woman, Kirsten-Marie Lassen, has disappeared and hasn’t been seen in years.
Intrigued by the fact that the file on this double killing seems to have come out of nowhere, Carl begins an investigation, spurred on by the fact that the father of the brother and sister killed was a policeman, Henning Jorgensen. Immediately after seeing his children’s mutilated bodies, Henning went home and turned his gun on himself. Now there is only the mother left, and her mind and body have been unhinged by this triple tragedy.
The characters in The Absent One are wonderfully drawn. Carl Morck is a man who wants to be left alone to pursue his cases, but naturally departmental politics interfere. Assad is learning the ropes as an “assistant assistant detective,” but I’m sure I’m not the only reader who thinks there’s more to this recent immigrant than meets the eye. And when Rose is introduced, she of the dyed jet-black hair and braying laugh, we know there will be fireworks between her and Carl.
You can read more about Jussi Adler-Olsen at his web site.
BLUE MONDAY by Nicci French: Book Review
“Wow” is the only word with which to begin a review of Blue Monday. It expresses my thoughts about every part of the novel–the plot, the characters, the setting.
Two sisters are walking home from school in 1987. The nine-year-old girl wants to get to the neighborhood candy store quickly and is annoyed that the younger one, age five, is loitering and holding her back. Finally, the older girl’s desire for candy gets too strong, and she runs ahead to start looking at the display cases and choosing her treats. And then, two minutes later when she looks around, her sister is gone.
Skip ahead to the present and meet Frieda Klein, a well-regarded, thirty-something psychiatrist. A new patient is brought to Frieda at the clinic where she works. Alan Dekker had originally been referred to another psychiatrist, but that referral didn’t work out well. It went so badly, in fact, that Alan is thinking of making an official complaint. Thus the patient is brought to Frieda in hopes she can work with him and possibly dissuade him from reporting the first doctor.
Alan at first seems to be in the middle of a mid-life crisis, although he’s a bit young for that, but it gradually comes out that he’s having a type of panic attack. He and his wife want children, but lately he has been unable to perform sexually and refuses to consider adoption. He wants a child of his own, he says, both to his wife and Frieda.
He’s been dreaming about this child and describes the child and his dream in detail: it will be a boy, five years old, with red hair like his, and he’s teaching him to play football. He admits to Frieda that he’s had similar attacks and dreams in the past, when he was in his early twenties, but that time his dreams involved a young girl. Alan doesn’t know why he’s having these attacks and dreams again, more than twenty years later, but they are definitely impacting his life and his relationship with his wife.
And then, several days after Alan discusses his dream with Frieda, a five-year-old boy is snatched from in front of his school in an almost exact repeat of the abduction of the five-year-old girl twenty-two years earlier. And Frieda isn’t sure what to make of Alan and his dream.
This powerful novel is the first in a series featuring Frieda Klein. We’re given little information about her. She’s single, never been married, and for some reason is estranged from her birth family. Her only contact with relatives is with her neurotic sister-in-law Olivia whose husband, Frieda’s brother, has left her for a much younger woman, and her niece Chloe who has been cutting herself for years.
Blue Monday is a powerful novel, one that will have your heart racing. All the characters have deep layers, some of which are peeled off one by one, but there are always some remaining. The ending has multiple surprises, but they all make sense.
Nicci French is the pseudonym of Sean French and Nicci Gerrard, an English husband and wife writing team. The second book in the Frieda Klein series has just been released in the United States, and you may be sure I’ll be reading it before the year ends.
You can read more about the Nicci French collaboration on their web site.
You can see my entire blog at: http://www.marilynsreads.com
KINGS OF MIDNIGHT by Wallace Stroby: Book Review
What starts off perfectly for Crissa Stone as the last in a series of ATM robberies ends with her two partners shooting each other to death. Not exactly the way Crissa had hoped it would end.
In Kings of Midnight, Crissa is the brains behind a number of successful robberies. Forced to run after the murders, she now needs a way to launder the stolen money, all $340,00 of it. So she goes to an old friend, Jimmy Peaches, a former mobster now living in a nursing home, to ask for his help.
At the same time, another mob-connected guy, Benny Roth, has seen his carefully constructed life fall apart after he’s found by some wise guys who think he knows where millions of dollars from a twenty-year-old robbery can be found. Benny manages to escape, grab his girlfriend and a suitcase, and run. And, as the plot would have it, he runs to Jimmy Peaches.
Nobody in Kings of Midnight is blameless. Crissa has been a thief for years and now needs money to support her young daughter, who is living with Crissa’s cousin, and her lover, whom she is hoping will soon be released from prison. She’s willing to do almost anything to get the money she needs, but she knows she needs to be careful; there are bad guys after her. “Nothing’s ever easy, she thought. No matter how much you plan, allow for every contingency. Things go bad, and then you have to work twice as hard just to get back to where you started.” But Crissa’s determined to do what she has to do for her daughter and her lover.
Benny is in a similar situation. Many of the old mobsters are dead, and the ones who are alive want him to lead them to those millions. Benny needs to protect himself and his girlfriend, not an easy task. Although he was involved with gangsters when he was younger, Benny was never a killer, but right now he’s surrounded by men who are.
Wallace Stroby has written a thriller that has you cheering for the “bad guys,” hoping they don’t get caught by the police or killed by the really bad guys. It’s a tightrope act for an author, but Stroby handles it perfectly. His characters, flawed as they are, have enough humanity in them to touch us and make us like them. We know they are on the wrong side of the law and that they chose to be there, but we still want them to come out on top.
You can read more about Wallace Stroby at his web site.
TALKING TO THE DEAD by Harry Bingham: Book Review
Sometimes a book is so good that when you finish reading it you simply have to close your eyes and relish it for a moment. Talking to the Dead is one of those books.
This is the first mystery I’m blogging about that takes place in modern Wales; the only other Welsh book on my blog is One Corpse Too Many, one of the Brother Cadfael twelfth-century mysteries by the late Ellis Peters.
Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths is an honors graduate in philosophy from Cambridge University and a relatively new member of the Cardiff police force. She already has a bit of a reputation for unorthodox behavior–when a suspect made some inappropriate advances to her, she broke his kneecap and three of his fingers.
Two bodies are found in a shabby, seemingly abandoned house in the city. They are identified as Janet Mancini, a part-time prostitute with a drug habit, and her six-year-old daughter April. In the midst of the squalor the police come across a credit card belonging to Brendan Rattigan, a wealthy businessman who died in a plane crash several months before the book opens. What could this card be doing in Janet Mancini’s possession?
The narrative is in the first person, in Fiona’s voice. We know almost from the beginning there is something off, not quite right about her. She’s not able to show emotions, and only by viewing what those around her are showing is she able to approximate the appropriate ones–fear, happiness, surprise. And, to the best of her memory, she has never in her life cried. In fact, she doesn’t know what tears would feel like–would they be hot, would they hurt? She simply doesn’t know.
Fiona is sent with another officer to interview Cardiff’s prostitutes, hoping for a clue into Janet’s murder. The women are initially reluctant to speak, not having had good experiences with the police, but they open up to Fiona a bit more willingly after a second prostitute is murdered. They have to decide which is more frightening–talking to the police and hoping for protection or waiting for the killer to strike again.
Fiona is also investigating the case of a former police detective who will soon be on trial for embezzlement. She thinks there’s a connection between his case and the murders, but no one else seems to share her feelings. So she’s working overtime to follow her instincts and trying to connect the cases.
Fiona Griffiths is a remarkable character. She’s smart, intuitive, courageous. She’s trying to understand who she is, both personally and professionally, but she is plagued by frequent night terrors that she can’t explain, even to herself. There were two years in her mid-teens when she had a complete mental breakdown, and neither she nor the mental health professionals who tried to help were successful in figuring out the cause or causes.
Following Fiona as she tries to deal with the blank spots in her memory is an important part of the novel. When the book ends and the explanation given, I promise that you will not be unmoved.
The other characters in Talking to the Dead are wonderful too. Her superior officer, her colleague who might become something more, her loving parents are all beautifully and realistically drawn. This is a mystery but also a story of a young woman trying hard to find her place in the world. It’s a remarkable debut.
You can read more about Harry Bingham at his web site.
BUFFALO BILL’S DEAD NOW by Margaret Coel: Book Review
Who am I to argue with the late, great Tony Hillerman? He said “[Coel is] a master,” and I agree.
Buffalo Bill’s Dead Now, the latest in the Wind River series, again takes the reader to the home of the Arapaho Indians of Wyoming. The two protagonists in the series are Vicky Holden, an Indian lawyer with a strong sense of personal responsibility to her clients, and Father John O’Malley, a Catholic priest who has served at the St. Francis mission for ten years. As the story opens, the Arapaho Museum, located in the mission, is anticipating the arrival of priceless artifacts from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show of the 1890s. Black Heart, chief of the Araphoes and a valued member of the show, had a beautiful collection of Indian jewelry, clothing, and headdresses, some belonging to him and some to his father, who had fought in the Battle of Little Big Horn against General George Armstrong Custer.
When the show was touring in Berlin at the end of the nineteenth century, the most valuable items in the show were either hidden by someone in the show to protect them or stolen. At any rate, although Black Heart and the rest of Buffalo Bill’s troupe returned home, the artifacts never did. And to this day, various families on the Wind River rez are still fighting over what happened to Black Heart’s legacy.
The memorabilia had been donated to the museum by Trevor Platt, a newcomer to the area, who approached Father John about the items. Trevor arranged for them to be shipped from Berlin, where they were found when an old building was about to be demolished, more than one hundred years after their disappearance. Trevor told Father John that he bought the antiques in order to return them to the heirs for display in the museum. But during the brief time between the cartons’ arrival at the small local airport in Wyoming and their delivery to the mission’s museum the following day, the cartons had been unpacked, the items removed, and the cartons resealed.
An interesting sidelight to the main story is the divergence of views concerning the Indians who traveled with Buffalo Bill to Europe. Some Americans, including the Secretary of Indian Affairs, thought the show celebrated the “savage” life the Indians had lived before white settlers went west to “civilize” them, and these people were instigating for the Indians to be forced to leave the show and returned to their various reservations. Others realized that the show was the Indians’ best opportunity to earn a living and to display at least some part of their culture to the wider world.
While trying to find the missing treasures, Vicky and Father John become ever more aware of their attraction to each other, and adding fuel to that particular fire is the return of Vicky’s former law partner and lover, Adam Lone Eagle, to town. He wants to rekindle both his romance with Vicky and their law partnership, but Vicky isn’t sure about either one.
I found it fascinating to learn about the Arapahos, both those in the present day and those who lived in the nineteenth century. All of them came alive for me, even those who had been dead over a hundred years, thanks to the skill of Margaret Coel.
Margaret Coel has added another winning entry to the Wind River series. You can read more about her at her web site.
THE LAST POLICEMAN by Ben H. Winters: Book Review
It’s Concord, New Hampshire, in the very near future. But, unfortunately, there’s not much future left.
Hank Palace, less than two years on the Concord police force, is about the only person there who still believes it’s important to do the job. The issue is that in less than six months the earth will be hit by a giant asteroid, an upcoming event that has people leaving their homes, jobs, spouses, and often killing themselves rather than waiting for the collision. According to the scientists, at least half of the world’s population will die when the asteroid hits, bringing with it earthquakes and tsunamis. Kind of the end of the world as we know it.
Concord seems to be a “hanger town,” with people hanging themselves in any available space by any available means. So no one is surprised when a report comes in from a quasi-McDonald’s (nearly all the real ones have closed) that there’s a man hanging in the men’s bathroom. Hank is the only one who thinks it’s possible that the man was murdered rather than having killed himself.
The assistant district attorney assigned to oversee the case and Hank’s fellow detectives all believe it’s suicide, and even if it’s not, what difference could it make when everyone will be dead in just a few short months. But to Hank, newly promoted to the detective section and idealistic, it does make a difference, and he receives reluctant permission to investigate Peter Anthony Zell’s death.
Both Peter’s boss, Theodore Gompers, and his co-worker, Naomi Eddes, describe Peter as a loner, a hard worker, someone who kept to himself and seemed the same as always when he left work on the night of his death. The elderly security guard in the office building says that a red truck picked Peter up that night, a truck the guard had never seen before.
In addition to Zell’s co-workers, Hank also interviews J. T. Toussaint, a childhood friend of Zell’s. Toussaint tells Hank that he and Zell had been close friends for years. Then he completely lost touch with Zell when the latter went off to college and Toussaint remained in Concord doing construction jobs. He tells Hank that Zell called him up a few months ago, out of the clear blue sky, and they’d been getting together ever since. He admits picking Zell up the night of his death, but he knows no more than that. They had a couple of drinks, went to a movie, and then parted ways. He says he never saw his friend again.
It’s Hank Palace’s youth and naivete that keep him on the job. He can’t believe that finding out the truth about Peter Zell’s death isn’t important, and just as important is bringing the murderer, if there is one, to justice. The fact that “justice” may end in six months isn’t important to him; he’s got a job to do and he’ll do it until the end.
The Last Policeman is a wonderful mystery, of course, and an excellent character study as well. If you knew that the Earth would be destroyed in the very near future, what would you do? Do you have a bucket list, or would you remain with your family, in your job, until the very end? By the way the men and women in the novel react, their characters, foibles, and emotions are revealed. Some react the way the reader is led to expect, and some surprise one totally.
You can read more about Ben H. Winters at his web site.