Marilyn's Mystery Reads

The brooding mountains of West Virginia hang over the small town of Acker’s Gap. And so do poverty, ill health, and lack of education.  It’s a tough place to live, but attorney Bell Elkins has returned home from a more affluent life in Washington, D.C. to “give back” to her community.

Bell, short for Belfa, had a hard childhood in Acker’s Gap.  Her mother deserted the family when Bell was six, leaving Bell’s older sister Shirley to cope with grinding poverty and their drunken, abusive father.  Bell doesn’t talk about her sister any more, hasn’t seen her in nearly thirty years, and Bell’s daughter Carla wonders what the mystery is.

The drug problem in the state, and particularly in small towns such as Acker’s Gap, is growing fast. Spurred by lack of employment and poor educational opportunities, prescription drugs have made big inroads into the town, bringing increased crime to its citizens.  Still, the whole town is shocked when a trio of elderly men, sitting over their morning coffee at the Salty Dawg fast-food restaurant, is gunned down in front of the other diners.  And Bell’s daughter, Carla, is a witness to the carnage.

There are three narratives in A Killing in the Hills. The prologue and much of the story is told by Bell.  The first chapter is told by Carla, an unhappy sixteen-year-old, who is sitting at the Salty Dawg when a gunman comes in and shoots the three men.  In the seconds it takes before the shooter runs away, Carla catches a glimpse of his face, a “piggy face” that stirs a memory.  The third narrator is Charlie Sowards, the hired gun, whose dismal life has led him to murder for hire at the behest of a powerful figure.  And the next victim, Charlie is told, will be Bell.

Bell Elkins is a complex protagonist. She grew up in a life of grinding poverty and abuse, married her high school sweetheart, went to college and law school, had a child, and was headed for a comfortable life in the nation’s capital.  But she felt compelled to return to her hometown and offer what she could to the community.  Her husband, by that time a very successful lawyer-turned-lobbyist, wanted no part of the life he’d gladly left behind, so Bell returned home with her young daughter and carved out a life as a single mother and prosecuting attorney.

The influx of prescription drugs into the state and more specifically her community has strengthened Bell’s resolve to stay in Acker’s Gap despite the hand-to-mouth life she’s living.  But with the downturn in the state’s never-robust economy, there’s less and less money available for criminal investigation and fewer people on Bell’s staff.  Bell’s closest friends, sheriff Nick Fogelsong and Ruthie and Tom Cox, help out as much as they can, but between the demands of a never-ending workday and a rebellious teenage daughter, Bell’s life seems to be in a downward spiral.

Julia Keller has perfectly captured life in this small town, a place with almost no resources and a population with few opportunities.  Her portrait of young people who either drop out of school or finish high school only to find that the best jobs in their hometown are flipping burgers is a searing one.   Sketches of children who are undersized because of lack of food or are missing teeth because they’ve never seen a dentist will make readers wonder if this is America or a third world country.

Julia Keller’s first book is an absolute winner. You can read more about her at her web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

October 6, 2012

I must confess that I totally missed the brouhaha in the media about RJ Ellory reviewing his own book. When I read about it in the October 1/8 double issue of Newsweek, I was stunned.

It appears that Ellory, a well-respected mystery writer, had been posting positive reviews of his own works on various sites while simultaneously writing negative reviews about other authors’ works. Jeremy Duns, a writer of spy fiction, alerted his followers on Twitter to this deception, which Ellory has now admitted and for which he has apologized.

But why, you might say, would Ellory do this?  The author of more than a dozen thrillers, awarded prizes by prestigious groups, what would make him write a review calling his own work a “modern masterpiece” while trashing the works of Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham?

As news of Ellory’s trickery spread, dozens of well-known mystery writers decried the practice of “sock puppetry,” defined as writing reviews under pseudonyms. Linwood Barclay, Lee Child, and Laura Lippman (all reviewed on this blog) were among those who quickly condemned the practice; in fact, it would seem incredible for any reputable author to say or believe otherwise.

But “sock puppetry” does bring up another facet of deception, although a much less egregious one.  I’ve chosen many books in libraries and bookstores, as I’m sure you have too, based on the quotes on the front and back covers from writers I admire, only to be surprised and disappointed by the quality of the book in question.

There’s obviously room for disagreement among readers on whether a book is first-rate, second-rate, or even third-rate, but I wonder how much pressure is put on a well-known author to praise another writer’s novel, even if he/she thinks it’s not worthy.  Especially if the writer requesting the endorsement is a friend, what is the proper, ethical response?  The book has already been written, so no input will improve it.  It’s a conundrum similar to having a friend ask you if you like her new outfit/his new car/the movie that was produced by her brother.  What should you say?

However, that in no way excuses those authors who decide to praise their own books under false names while savaging other novels.  It’s a deplorable practice, and kudos to Jeremy Duns and others for revealing it.  Let’s hope to see the end of this sooner rather than later.

Marilyn

Willie Mays Black’s life is a little precarious these days. The newspaper he’s been at for most of his professional life is cutting jobs right and left; he has three broken marriages behind him; his relationship with his college-age daughter is minimal at best; he needs a roommate to help pay his rent; and now he’s following a story that is beginning to remind him of the worst mistake he ever made in his journalistic career.

Willie gets to the scene of a brutal murder just as the police do.  There’s a body dangling from a tree, the body of a Virginia Commonwealth University student who has been missing for four days. Gruesome as that discovery is, it’s even worse when the corpse is turned around and everyone sees that the girl’s head is missing.

The police make a quick arrest, a thirty-two-year-old man named Martin Fell who had been dating the dead woman, Isabel Ducharme.  Witnesses saw an argument between the two at a bar, then Isabel walking out alone, shortly followed by Martin.  When it’s discovered that Martin was accused years ago in an assault case, the matter seems open-and-shut.

Then Willie’s number-three ex-wife, Kate, contacts him and tells him that she’s the attorney for Martin and that Martin’s mother wants to see Willie.  The reporter is less than enthused.  And when the mother tells Kate and Willie that her son was with her at the time the murder was committed, Willie thinks to himself, “You’re his mother.  Of course you don’t believe your darling boy chopped a girl’s head off.”  But when Louisa Fell tells him the time her son came to her house that night, Willie realizes that it would have been nearly impossible for him to have murdered Isabel.  Of course, that assumes that Louisa is telling the truth, but it’s enough to make Willie determined to look into the matter.

Willie is an intriguing character. He’s so full of faults it’s a bit hard to know where to begin.  An admitted adulterer, a heavy smoker, a man who can drink to the point of blackouts, a mostly absent father.  It seems as if any reader would be put off by these character traits.  On the other hand, Willie’s a stand-up guy.  He’ll pull himself out of bed in order to rescue his mother’s boyfriend from the roof he’s climbed onto; he’ll insist on writing newspaper stories about Isabel’s murder in his own way, aware that one false step will send him to the unemployment line.

He’s surrounded by other interesting people.  There’s his mother, Peggy, who is still smoking weed day and night; her live-in boyfriend, Les, a former minor league baseball player who is showing the beginnings of dementia; the editor and the publisher of the Richmond paper Willie writes for, both of whom are seemingly more concerned with the paper’s bottom line than with its contents; and Willie’s three former wives.

Oregon Hill is the neighborhood in Richmond where Willie grew up. It’s a place that hasn’t changed much, if at all, in the more than forty years since his birth to a marijuana-addled seventeen-year-old girl.  His mother still lives there, but also still in the neighborhood is David Junior Shiflett.  A bully as a boy, he is now the detective who arrested Martin Fell and who still strikes fear into Willie’s heart.

Howard Owen is an established novelist and short story writer.   He’s written the sequel to Oregon Hill, due out next year, and I’m already eager to read it.

You can read more about Howard Owen at his web site.

In 2008, the city of New Orleans was still reeling from the hurricane that had savaged it three years before. Homes and businesses were devastated, especially in the poorest districts, most particularly the Ninth Ward.  Nola Cespedes, a new reporter on the Times-Picayune, is all too familiar with the problems that the city had faced even before the storm hit.

Brought up by a single mother who emigrated from Cuba and earned her living cleaning the homes of rich white people, Nola has lifted herself out of childhood poverty on the strength of her brains and her mother’s love and belief in her.  But Nola has hidden her past even from her three closest friends, and, it turns out, even from herself.

Nola’s opportunity to break out of the Living and Lagniappe section of the newspaper comes when she’s given an assignment to interview men convicted of sexual crimes.  Over eight hundred men are on the streets of the city–rapists, child molesters, sexual perverts–and Nola’s editor wants her to follow up. She doesn’t want the story, but she has no choice.  And the subject becomes unfortunately current when a young woman is abducted in broad daylight, as was another woman in the city who was found raped and killed.

After reviewing the files of dozens of convicted abusers, Nola decides to interview five of them, although in the end only four of them agree to meet her.  With her stomach churning, Nola tries to find out what makes one man rape and cut, another beat his victims before raping them, a church pastor abuse thirty-two of his parishioners, an elementary school principal rape his female students, and a wealthy New Orleans resident of impeccable heritage force himself on his household help.

In addition, Nola decides to speak to several of the victims of abuse and tell their stories to the paper’s readers.

Outside of work, there’s a lot going on in Nola’s private life.  She meets weekly for dinner with her three closest friends.  But in Nola’s mind, each one of them has things she doesn’t have and has never had–a fiancee, wealthy parents, a homeland she can return to.  Nola believes that if her friends knew the truth about her–her poverty-stricken past, her budget-crunching present–they would pity her, and with that she cannot and will not deal.  So she goes along, pretending. As she puts it to herself, “You silence the parts of yourself that point out how privileged they are, or else they make you feel sordid, small, ashamed.”

Joy Castro has written a fascinating novel about the sexual abuse that is sadly a too-common story. The feeling that no one can be trusted–not clergy or teachers or family members–is all too real in today’s word, just as it is in Hell or High Water.  The author brings that reality home to her readers skillfully, but she also tells the story of a young woman trying to face down her fears and anxieties while continuing with her own life.  The characters in this novel are realistic and compelling.  Some are charming, whom you would like for friends; others are depraved, whom you hope you would never encounter.

You can read more about Joy Castro at her web site.

If you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned mystery, you need look no further than Blood in the Water, the latest in the Gregor Demarkian series.

There’s a lot of back story that I’m not familiar with, as this is the first of Jane Haddam’s novels I’ve read.  But it’s safe to say that Gregor is a former FBI agent, is middle-aged, and married to his second wife, his first wife having died some time earlier.

Gregor is a now a consultant to individuals and police departments. In Blood in the Water, he is asked to investigate a case that had seemed open-and-shut to the small town police department of Pineville Station, Pennsylvania.  Within Pineville Station’s borders is the upscale, gated community of Waldorf Pines.  It’s a rather pretentious place, where the residents live behind security booths and in front of security cameras.  They are not the really rich but more the upwardly striving upper-middle-class, and although the Pines boasts mega-mansions, a golf course, a club house, and a heated pool, there’s more surface than substance to many of the amenities.

Martha Heydrich, a universally disliked resident of the Pines, has disappeared, along with another resident, Michael Platte, with whom she’s been rumored to be having an affair.  But almost immediately following their disappearance, two bodies are discovered in the pool house, which has been closed for repairs for some weeks.  Michael’s body is floating in the pool, while in another room a body burned beyond recognition is found. The chief of police jumps to the conclusion that the burned body is Martha, and he arrests her husband Arthur for the double murder.  When the DNA results come back, it’s revealed that the second body is that of a man.  So Arthur is released from jail.  That’s when Gregor is called by the police to consult.

But there is still plenty of mystery in Waldorf Pines. Why are two women, definitely of the true upper crust and Philadelphia’s Main Line, living in this village under aliases?  Why is the Pines’ manager, Horace Wingard, so afraid of any scandal touching his domain?  Where is the husband of Fanny Bullman, a man who hasn’t been seen since before the two bodies were found?

Gregor Demarkian is an interesting character.  He lives on a street in Philadelphia that could almost be a village in Armenia, with neighbors who have known each other for years, if not decades.  Although I’m not familiar with the supporting characters, it’s obvious that each one has a history with Gregor and that their eccentricities and foibles carry on from book to book.  There’s the neighbor who brings Gregor food because his wife doesn’t cook for him, the priest, and the recently deceased George, whose passing at age 100 has put Gregor into a melancholy mood that threatens to become an existential crisis.

Blood in the Water is definitely unusual in contemporary mystery novels.  It’s not dark or bloody or violent.  It’s a well-told story about the secrets that people keep and how those secrets affect their lives and the lives of those around them.

You can read more about Jane Haddam at her web page.

How Like an Angel was written in 1962, exactly fifty years ago. It’s a true classic.

Joe Quinn, licensed Nevada private detective/security guard, has been cleaned out at the Reno gambling tables and has grabbed a ride back to California with a friend.  The friend, in a hurry to get home, leaves him at the side of the road some forty-five miles from San Felice, Joe’s destination.  The friend tells him that there’s a religious community just up the road that will give him food and drink and shelter for the night, so without any other resource to fall back on Joe takes his advice.

The Tower is a community of twenty-seven people, including three children, that is headed by The Master. The members have renounced all worldly goods–telephones, television, regular clothes–the better to get to heaven; it is their belief that wearing wool robes, going barefoot, and bathing no more than weekly in cold water will assure them a place in Paradise.  Even their given names have been left behind–now they are known as Sister Blessing, Brother Tongue, Brother Crown, and Brother Light of the Infinite, for example.

During his overnight stay, Joe is approached by Sister Blessing, who acts as the nurse and manager of The Tower.  She appears kind and concerned about Joe’s physical and emotional well-being, and when she learns that he is a detective she asks him to do a job for her.  She emphasizes that this is against the rules of the community, and she pays him with money secreted from the others that her son sends her every Christmas.

Sister Blessing’s request is that Joe go into Chicote, a nearby town, and find a man named Patrick O’Gorman. He’s not a friend or relative, she assures Joe, and she doesn’t want Joe to contact him in any way.   Whether O’Gorman is in Chicote or not, she tells Joe to “come back here and tell me about it, me and only me.”

Joe is only slightly interested, but he’s broke and doesn’t have any other job offers.  So he gets a ride to San Felice in the community’s truck the next morning and starts asking questions.  And early on he discovers that Patrick O’Gorman has been missing and presumed dead for five years.

The novel takes a number of twists and turns, and circles back on itself again, but every detour has a reason and every red herring is perfectly contrived.  About ten pages from the end of the book I realized what had happened in the past and what was about to happen, and I was blown away.  The plot is so skillful and well thought out that it made me want to start reading How Like an Angel over again to see if I could have/should have figured out the ending sooner.

Margaret Millar lived from 1915 to 1994; she was the wife of Kenneth Millar, better known to mystery fans as Ross Macdonald.  Imagine having that couple to your house for drinks and dinner!

1732 was a terrible winter in Leeds, England. Ice and snow covered the streets, and people died every day due to the extreme weather, lack of food, and lack of heat.  It was indeed cold and cruel, especially for the poor.

In Chris Nickson’s second novel in the Richard Nottingham series, the constable is grieving for his beloved older daughter who died of a fever a few weeks before the book opens.  And now the constable must face more deaths, these not due to weather or illness but murder.

Leeds in the 1700s is a city made wealthy by the wool trade, and the mayor and the Corporation that run the city want its citizens, or at least its wealthy and worthy ones, to feel safe and protected.  But when John Sedgwick, the constable’s deputy, finds a corpse in the road, the period of relative tranquility is over.  Upon closer examination, the body of successful wool merchant Sam Graves has not only been stabbed but skinned, his back unprotected by its natural covering.

Shortly afterwards, constable Nottingham receives a package.  In it is a book entitled Journal of a Wronged Man in Four Volumes, and as Nottingham reads it he comes to realize that its binding is the skin of the murdered man. The journal’s author tells of being badly treated years ago by Graves, who was his employer; he was transported to the West Indies for seven years for the crime of stealing from Graves, his attempt at revenge for what he viewed as low wages for a man of his skills.  Since this volume states that it is the first of four, it is up to Nottingham to figure out who the other three potential victims are and to protect them.

In addition to the desperate hunt for Sam Graves’ killer, Nottingham has another murder on his hands.  This is the murder of Issac the Jew, the only one of his religion in the city.  Nottingham quickly learns that two brothers are the guilty ones, but their father is a powerful man in the city’s Corporation who has managed to get many previous charges against his sons dismissed.

The characters in Cold Cruel Winter are strongly drawn. The constable and his deputy, the teenage boy who works for them, the two arrogant Henderson brothers, the city’s pimp whose offered help makes Nottingham nervous, all these come across to the reader as real people.  And reading the twisted words in the journal gives one an insight into what has warped its author into the killer that he is.

The city of Leeds, too, comes alive in Cold Cruel Winter.  One is taken back to a time when, for the poor, illumination meant a single candle, heat was perhaps some coal dust, and clothing was little more than rags.  It was a cruel time indeed.

The Library Journal chose this novel as one of 2011’s best. It’s easy to see why.

You can read more about Chris Nickson at his web site.

A great novelist is like a magician with words. He or she can make you care deeply about the characters in a book, even though you know that these characters aren’t real.  You’re made to laugh, cry, sympathize with or despise the people in books, even when your mind is telling you it’s “just a story.”

Leonard Rosen’s fiction debut, All Cry Chaos, is an amazing novel. It brings together the worlds of mass murderers, mathematical geniuses, combative indigenous protestors, Interpol detectives, and Christian believers in the End of Days, and all these worlds fit together perfectly.  That’s quite a talent.

Henri Poincare is an inspector with Interpol.  Two years before the opening of this novel he was the man who brought Stipo Banovic, a Bosnian convicted of murdering seventy-seven Muslim men and boys during the ethnic wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, to justice.  In the years after that conflict Stipo had evaded arrest, married, and fathered two children.  When Henri visits him in prison, Stipo threatens him and his family.  “You will walk in my shoes,” he tells the inspector.

Henri has been assigned to a new case, a bombing in Amsterdam. A single room in a hotel was blown up, and the only victim was an American mathematician from Harvard, James Fenster.  There are two strange things about the explosion.  First is the fact that only this single room was damaged, lifted from its surroundings as if by a giant hand; second is the fact that the propellant was rocket fuel, an unusual ingredient in the making of a bomb when there are other ingredients that are more easily obtainable.

James Fenster was working on the chaos theory.  According to Margaret Rouse, editorial director of Whatis.com, chaos theory is the study of nonlinear dynamics, in which seemingly random events are actually predictable from simple deterministic equations.   Please don’t ask me more than that, but apparently everything in the universe is related.  And this has huge implications in our world where economics, mathematics, science, and business all intersect.

When Henri first interviews Madeleine Rainier, who is also staying in Amsterdam, she tells him that she and James were engaged but the engagement was broken off a few weeks earlier; she refuses to say by whom.  The next day Henri discovers that Madeleine, who was named in James’ will as next-of-kin, has already cremated his body, and when he returns to her hotel to question her further, he finds she has left with no forwarding address.

At the same time, two other events of major importance are happening in Amsterdam. The World Trade Organization is meeting in the city and security is at an all-time high.  The head of the Indigenous Liberation Front, Eduardo Quito, has brought thousands of followers to confront the WTO leaders.  A brilliant economist and academician, his political and human rights movement hopes to force the rich nations of the world to share their wealth.

Also in Amsterdam are the Rapturians, an evangelical Christian cult that is counting the weeks to the End of Days. In their philosophy, Jesus will return when the world is in complete chaos.   They are working to bring that time closer, orchestrating murders and bombings around the world.

All Cry Chaos brings these disparate characters and groups together, plus others.  Leonard Rosen makes us care about them, even perhaps understand them, from Henri to the most minor characters. He even makes the reader care about the chaos theory.

You can read more about Leonard Rosen at his web site.

Wouldn’t we all like to know a girl like Flavia de Luce?

A Red Herring Without Mustard is the third novel in this series.  Flavia, a delightfully precocious eleven year old, lives in the  English countryside with her family in the 1950s, although given their lifestyle the book could have been set thirty years earlier.  Besides Flavia, the de Luce family consists of her father and her two older sisters, Ophelia (Feely) and Daphne (Daffy).  Harriet, the mother of the girls, died in a climbing accident in Tibet when Flavia was a toddler.

The de Luces live at Buckshaw, a magnificent estate, with a cook and a gardener/butler as staff.  However, due to ruinous taxes and the death of Harriet who died without leaving a will, the family’s resources are severely strained and the father may have to sell his beloved stamp collection (horrors) to pay the bills.  It appears to me that the father does nothing but buy stamps and admire them, and the three girls don’t seem to go to school, but I may have missed something that explained this in an earlier novel.

Feely and Daffy are incredibly mean to Flavia, who thus spends much of her time either cleverly paying them back with even more outrageous tricks or else hiding away in her chemistry laboratory in the east wing of the mansion.

The novel opens with Flavia having her fortune told by a Gypsy woman, Fenella Faa, at the church’s annual fair. When the fortune teller tells Flavia that she “sees” a woman on a mountain who is trying to come home, Flavia is certain that the woman the Gypsy sees is Harriet.  Frightened, she upsets a candle on the table in the Gypsy’s tent, starting a fire that destroys the tent.  Feeling guilty, Flavia allows Fenella to bring her horse and caravan to the Buckshaw estate for one night, deep in the woods so that Favia’s father won’t see it.

The next morning Flavia stops by to see Fenella and is horrified to find the woman covered with blood and barely breathing.  She runs to town and brings a doctor back with her to the encampment, and Fenella is taken to the local hospital.  Who could have done such a terrible thing?  No one even knew the Gypsy and her caravan were there.

Although the local police are immediately brought into the case, Flavia is certain she can solve the mystery on her own. Hasn’t she already helped solve two previous crimes?  And, after all, it was she who invited the woman to stay in the woods of the estate.  Guilt, responsibility, and curiosity combine to make Flavia believe that it’s up to her to find the person who brutalized Fenella and left her for dead.

The curious title of the novel is taken from a 16th-century book entitled A Looking Glasse, for London and Englande:  “…a cup of ale without a wench, why, alas, ’tis like an egg without salt or a red herring without mustard.”  Flavia is definitely the spice in this series, with just enough sugar in her mix to make her someone each reader will want to follow in future novels.  She will capture your interest and your heart.

You can read more about Alan Bradley at his web site.

Talk about your dysfunctional families. The Rand family could be the “poster children” for this term.  The grifting, stealing men in the family go back four generations, but the novel focuses on the last three.  There’s the grandfather, Old Shep, living in the family home and suffering from dementia; the father, Pinsch, trying to hold the family together; his two brothers, Mal and Grey, both fearful that they too are losing their memories and skills; Pinsch’s older son, Collie, who is a week away from being executed for killing eight people; and the book’s protagonist, Terry, the younger son, who ran from the family five years ago and has just returned.

Note anything about the names that the men have?  They are all shortened versions of dogs’ names; it’s a family tradition.  There’s Shepherd, Pinscher, Malamute, Greyhound, Collie, and Terrier.  Says something about the family’s mindset, doesn’t it?

Oh, yes, there are two women in the story–the mother and the younger sister in the family.  The sister’s name is Dale, short for Airedale, I assume.  And the Rands have a dog–his name is John F. Kennedy.

The reason Terry has come home after five years out west is due to a phone call from his sister, saying that their brother Collie has asked for him.  Although Terry and Collie have always had a difficult relationship, bonds are very strong in the family, so Terry goes to the prison to see what Collie wants.  Collie, who admitted his guilt in seven of the murders, has always denied that he killed the eighth victim, a young woman who was killed on the same night he went on his murder spree.

Terry wants to know what difference it makes if his brother is given the needle for eight murders instead of the seven he admitted to, and Collie says that several similar murders have taken place while he’s been in prison. Other young, pretty, brunette women have been murdered, and he thinks he should do something to stop the killings.  He’s told the police, but they don’t believe his denial of the eighth murder and don’t accept that these other murders are anything but coincidences.  After all, murders of young, pretty women aren’t rare.

Dale is fifteen and on the verge of falling into a life of crime.  As if it’s not bad enough that larceny runs in her veins, she’s involved with a young hoodlum who works for the head of the town’s criminal enterprise.  He’s planning to rob a jewelry store and has been foolish enough to ask Terry to join his gang, a move that alerted Terry to the path his sister may be on.

The only character in the Rand family who seems to be “straight” is the mother; exactly why she married into the family, knowing what she knew about them, is difficult to fathom.  She appears loving and kind, and it’s hard to understand how she’s been able to stay that way after some thirty years of living in the same house with her husband, his two brothers, and their father, criminals all.  But then there’s no accounting for love, is there?

The Last Kind Words is a wonderful novel, with fascinating characters and a plot that will keep you reading until the last page.  I know there is another Rand family book in the works; I hope Tom Piccirilli writes quickly.

You can read more about Tom Piccirilli at his web site.

August 3, 2012

Sometimes it’s painful to revisit old friends.

I’ve been listening to Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming, on my car’s cd player this week.  I was a big fan of the James Bond books and films; I believe I’ve either read or seen all of them. They were light and fluffy, utterly unrealistic, what we’d call today a “beach read,” and lots of fun.   A couple of weeks ago I took Goldfinger out of my local library to enjoy while I was driving.

Well, it turned out enjoying was the wrong word.  I have been absolutely taken aback by some of the words coming out of the mouths of James Bond and other characters.  They express emotions that are anti-Semitic, anti-woman, anti-homosexual, and racist. Given the totally unappealing looks of Auric Goldfinger, Bond’s contact at the venerable Bank of England thought that of course “he was a Jew,” although it turns out he isn’t.  In Bond’s view, woman have become masculine and assertive, men have become passive and quiescent, and both have become “pansies” since World War II, much to the detriment of society.

And Bond’s view of Japanese and Koreans cannot be printed here; it’s an incredibly stereotypical, negative portrait.

It’s hard to know whether Fleming’s views were truly those he believed or those he thought would resonate most closely with his reading public.  Vast sections of the book were changed in the movie, which came out five years after the book was published.  It must have been obvious to the producers that the depiction of Bond as a racist and mysogynist would not go over well with an international audience.

Either way, whether it was Fleming whose views were accurately displayed in the book or Bond’s, it’s disturbing to see such animosity when reading a book that is supposed to provide entertainment. I’d like to think that this book would not have been publishable now, whether because no reputable author would espouse those beliefs or because he/she knew they would greatly diminish readership.  Let’s hope I’m right.

Marilyn

In today’s down economy, a group of four college graduates don’t want to settle for low-paying, entry-level jobs. No, they have dreams, and the dreams require money.  So these enterprising friends decide on a Five Year Plan, an “easy” way to make big bucks–they’ll stage a series of abductions across the country, ask the families for an amount of money that is easy for the families to access overnight, release the abducted person, and then be on their way to another state, another job, with no one looking for them.  No one gets hurt, either physically or financially, except for the overnight scare of being kidnapped.  After a few such jobs, they can divide the loot, split up (except for one of the men and his girlfriend), and live the lives they desire.  Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?  And it is.

In Owen Laukkanen’s debut novel, The Professionals, all goes well for a time, thanks in part to meticulous planning on the part of the group’s leader, Arthur Pender. But when one of the abductions doesn’t work out, they quickly decide to abduct another man in the same city.  After all, they’d driven to Detroit to do a job, and they want to do one.  So they don’t do their homework, and everything goes wrong.  The man they kidnap is the son-in-law of a mob boss, and when one of the gang gets panicked and kills the man, things quickly fall apart.  And then they just keep getting worse.

Kirk Stevens of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Carla Windermere of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are working together to find the people responsible for these kidnappings. Kirk is brought into the investigation because a previous abduction, a non-violent one, took place in Minneapolis; when it becomes obvious that the case is bigger than this one crime, the FBI is brought in.

Together they make a very good pairing.  Kirk is an experienced veteran, formerly on the Minneapolis police force, and Carla is a lawyer who is relatively new to the F.B.I.  The case, which to Kirk had seemed easy at first, veers almost out-of-control as the four kidnappers flee from state to state one step ahead of the investigators.   And the gang of four find themselves deeper and deeper into trouble.

The Professionals is a terrific novel for any writer, new or established. It is peopled by fascinating characters, nearly all of whom have a claim on your sympathy.  And when four kidnappers and a mob killer can be made sympathetic, for at least part of the time, the author has done an incredible job.

Set in Minnesota at the beginning of the novel, Kirk Stevens remarks several times that there’s not too much crime there.  For the sake of Owen Laukkanen’s readers, I hope he’s wrong. I’m looking forward to the next novel in the series featuring Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere, and I hope it’s not too far off.

You can read more about Owen Laukkanen at his web site.

Iceland–a country with a lot of differences from the United States. Police do not carry guns, and there are no handguns in the country; citizens are listed in the phone directory under their first names; most sons have the last name of their father with the addition of “son”–Teddy Douglasson; most daughters are given the last name of their mother with the Icelandic addition of “daughter”–Lyla Suzannedottir (Teddy and Lyla being siblings with the same parents); women keep their original last names after marriage.

Although Magnus Jonson (his American name) knows some of these customs, he’s still feeling a bit off-kilter when he returns to the land of his birth after twenty years in the United States. Actually, Magnus Jonson isn’t even his real name.  His real name is Magnus Ragnarsson, since he was the son of Ragnar.  But the American bureaucracy couldn’t cope with this when they realized that his father’s name was Ragnar Jonsson and his mother’s name was Margret Hallgrimsdottir–his name should be one of those.  So, in desperation, Magnus took Jonson as his last name; sometimes, he thought, it’s just not worth the battle.  But upon his return to Iceland, he introduces himself as Magnus Ragnarsson, and the people he meets nod approvingly.

As the novel opens, Magnus is a police detective in Boston who is supposed to testify against three crooked colleagues in his department in a drug-related arrest.  There have been two attempts on his life, generally thought to be related to his upcoming testimony. So his supervisor tells him that, in response to a request from the Reykjavik police department for the loan of an experienced homicide detective, Magnus will be going to Iceland until the trial begins. The fact that Magnus speaks Icelandic is definitely an added bonus.  Against his will, but understanding the necessity for his transfer, Magnus leaves his adopted home and heads north.

Although crime is rare in Iceland and murder even rarer, there was a murder just days before Magnus arrived in Reykjavik.  A university professor was killed at his summer home, and investigation shows that the reason for his death points to his involvement with an ancient Icelandic saga that has been offered for sale.  The saga has been handed down from father to eldest son in a family for generations.   Now, due to the economic downturn that has hit Iceland hard, Ingileif Asgrimsdottir, the daughter of this family, has reluctantly decided to sell the saga; the professor was very interested in buying it.  Her decision brings new deaths and reopens investigations into old ones.

In addition to the saga itself, there is another very important and nearly priceless artifact involved.  The family lore is that there is a gold ring that, like the saga, has been passed down from generation to generation, a ring that has unequaled power.  It is similar to the gold ring in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and there is correspondence from the author of those books, J. R. R. Tolkien, to an ancestor of Ingileif’s.   Her father fell to his death searching for the ring, and she wants no part of it.  But it seems as if someone else does.

The plot and characters in this novel are outstanding, and the unusual locale simply adds to the pleasure of reading this book.

Where the Shadows Lie is the first of Michael Ridpath’s Icelandic crime novels.  Although it was published in 2010, I just discovered it this month.  His second in the “Fire and Ice” series was published as 66 Degrees abroad but may be found under the title Far North in the United States.

You can read more about Michael Ridpath at his web page.

Winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Best First Crime Novel Award for 2011, A Simple Murder is a simply wonderful book.

Eleanor Kuhns takes the reader to post-Revolutionary War Maine, where former soldier William Rees had been a farmer living with his wife Deborah and their young son David. Following Deborah’s death several years before the novel opens, William left his son and his farm in the care of his sister Caroline and her husband with the understanding that the farm and its livestock were to remain as is and that they would take care of David as if he were one of their own children.  On his visit to the farm after a year’s absence, William is stunned to learn that thirteen-year-old David has left the farm and gone to the nearby Shaker community and that many of the farm animals have been sold.

The Shakers, also called the United Society of Believers, were a group founded in the 1770s in England who came to America to live in communities where they could freely practice their beliefs. Known for their simple lifestyle, celibacy, and care of orphans, the Shakers lived in enclaves outside cities and towns, but their unique way of life sometimes led to persecution and hostility from their neighbors.  Thus William rushes to the Shaker village to make certain his son is there willingly and is safe.

William has became an itinerant weaver in recent years, traveling the northern states and plying his trade.  But his freedom has cost him the closeness he would have liked with his son; indeed, when he first sees David the youth wants nothing to do with him.

Assured by an angry and distant David that it was his choice to enter the community, although as yet he has not signed the Covenant to become a full member, William spends the night at a nearby farm and is stunned when approached by the town’s sheriff the following morning and placed under arrest for the murder of a young Shaker woman, Sister Chastity.

The next day, following the farmer’s statement that William had indeed spent the night in his barn and could not possibly have returned to the Shakers and committed a murder, William is released.  But then he is asked by Elder White, co-leader of the Shakers, to return to the community and help them find the murderer.  When William questions the Elder as to how and why he’s been chosen to do this, White replies that William’s son David has told the Elder that William has solved several murders since his release from the Continental army.  Heartened by this show of respect and possible affection by his son, William accepts the commission and returns to Durham to find the culprit.

The young woman who was killed left a prosperous husband to join the Shakers, although some in the community questioned her commitment to them and to the two young children she brought with her.  Was there another reason, other than Sister Chastity’s alleged interest in the Shaker faith, that brought her to Durham?

And Lydia Jane Farrell, an attractive woman who lives just outside the Society in a home provided by the Shakers, is another enigma; what is keeping her there?  William is faced with many secrets, both within the Shaker community and without.

Eleanor Kuhns’ debut novel is a fascinating read, both because of the time period in which she has set the book and the interesting characters she has created.

You can read more about her at this web site.

A deceased multi-millionaire, his unappealing family, a possible illegitimate child–these are the main ingredients in The Codicil, Tom Topor’s fascinating study of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

Matt Marshall was a self-made man who became wealthy due to his brains, charm, and business acumen.  He had a beautiful wife, three grown children, and seats on the boards of charities, museums, and hospitals around the country.  But he also had a secret, one which he shared with no one in the over twenty-five years since the war ended.  He believed he had fathered a child with a young Vietnamese woman when he was overseas, while his wife and first-born child were in the United States.

The novel opens as the attorneys for the Marshall family hire Adam Bruno, lawyer turned private investigator, to look into the validity of the will’s codicil made by Marshall three months before his unexpected death; the will itself had been made years before. In the codicil, Matt Marshall stated that while he was in the army in Vietnam, in 1971, he was told that he was the father of a child being carried by a young Vietnamese woman.  Due to the upheavals at the end of the war, the two were separated and never reunited.

Marshall couldn’t find out for certain if the woman, whom he had nicknamed Cricket, gave birth to the child, and he was unable to find out her location or situation after the war.  In the codicil Matthew commanded his family to continue to search for Cricket and/or her child, should there be one.  If a child is found, that child is entitled to half of his estate, and should any of the will’s other recipients challenge this in any way, they would be automatically disinherited.   Quite a codicil.

The very, very wealthy Marshall family, all politeness on the surface, is definitely upset by the fact that they may have to share their father’s $105 million estate with this Asian-American child, assuming that he/she exists.  Although Adam is hired to find the mother and child, it is obvious to him that the Marshalls don’t want to believe in the child’s existence. Or, if Adam discovers there is such a child, the Marshalls don’t want that child found. And really, who can blame them?

New people are introduced throughout the book, men who were with Marshall during the war and four years after it ended when he returned to Vietnam for a final search for Cricket.  Where they are twenty-five years after the war speaks to the horrors they endured, or sometimes caused.  As we know, the men who were “in country” returned to the United States to find a public that was often hostile and/or embarrassed–those who were hostile felt the returning soldiers were “baby-killers”; those who were embarrassed were furious that we had lost the war and the country.

The Codicil is gripping up to and including its final page. But a word of warning–this is not a novel for the faint-of-heart.  There is a lot of profanity, and there are graphic descriptions of wartime atrocities committed by both sides.  It’s a book that brings the pain of the Vietnam War back again.

Tom Topor is the author of several screenplays.  You can read more about him at this web site.