The Plot

This book by Jean Hanff Korelitz received such good reviews, but after the first half of the book, I was just bored. I almost gave up! But instead I went back and re-read the reviews, trying to figure out why I picked it up in the first place. I figured out one surprise a few chapters before the reveal. But the conclusion left me flat-footed.  From Library Journal: "Korelitz...questions the world of publishing in this latest novel. Jake Finch Bonner, a once promising youngish writer, has been reduced to taking a short-term teaching gig at a third-rate, low-residency MFA program in Vermont. During a one-on-one meeting with an arrogant student, Jake hears the student's incredible idea for a plot. When, several years later, he learns that the student has died, Jake decides to tell the story himself. He hits the best-seller lists with Crib, excerpts of which appear as a book within this book. But then emails and tweets from an anonymous sender accuse him of stealing the plot and threaten to expose him."

Publishers Weekly: "Jacob Finch Bonner, the hapless protagonist of this ingeniously twisty novel...Deep character development, an impressively thick tapestry of intertwining story lines, and a candid glimpse into the publishing business make this a page-turner of the highest order. Korelitz deserves acclaim for her own perfect plot."  Can't say I agree with the "page-turner" assessment.

And Kirkus closes their rave review: "Korelitz... knows how to blend suspense with complex character studies, falls a little short on the character end here; Jake is a sympathetic but slightly bland protagonist, and Anna has the only other fully developed personality. No one will care as the story hurtles toward the creepy climax, in the best tradition of Patricia Highsmith and other chroniclers of the human psyche’s darkest depths. Gripping and thoroughly unsettling." I would say that the book plods rather than "hurtles" but decide for yourself.

Mother-Daughter Murder Night

The title of this book by Nina Simon refers to a tradition, held by single mom Beth and teen daughter Jack, to sit down and watch a mystery show on TV every Thursday night. They live on Elkhorn Slough just off the coast of central California. Beth's mother, Lana, a formidable and well-respected commercial real estate broker in Los Angeles, was so appalled when Beth got pregnant at age 17 that they parted ways and now only see each other on Jewish high holidays. Beth has managed to support herself and Jack, becoming a geriatric nurse, while Jack is a child of the water, who paddles out into the slough every morning before going to school. She is so skilled and knowledgeable that she has become the youngest certified kayaking guide at the Kayak Shack nearby, taking groups of tourists and nature lovers on tours of the slough on weekends.

When Lana is unexpectedly diagnosed with metastasizing cancer, she requires extended treatment and care. And so, the two strong and wildly different women are forced to share Beth's tiny 2-bedroom house for months while Jack is turfed to sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room.  On one of Jack's morning tours, a father and son drift away from the group and discover a dead body floating in the mud flats. Of course Jack is traumatized by this and things go from bad to worse when a belligerent and bullying detective initially targets Jack as the likeliest suspect in what turns out to be a murder. Lana decides--to keep from dying of boredom and to protect her granddaughter--that she will figure out who the real killer is.

I wholeheartedly agree with Library Journal's glowing review: Simon's dazzling debut delivers everything a mystery fan could crave, including a realistically nuanced cast of characters, a vividly evoked coastal California setting, writing imbued with a deliciously desiccated sense of wit, and a perfectly plotted murder with enough red herrings deftly dropped in to confound the most experienced mystery reader. ...Insightful and frequently funny analysis of family dynamics wrapped up in a cleverly crafted cozy crime novel." Booklist concludes, " On the cozy side, this debut mystery is woven around family rifts and redemption, and will leave readers with warm fuzzies." Publishers Weekly concurs: "Simon stocks her layered plot with plausibly motivated suspects and convincing red herrings, but it’s her indomitable female characters and their nuanced relationships that give this mystery its spark. Readers will be delighted." Likewise, Kirkus praises, "Simon knows how to build an intriguing plot with lots of suspects, plenty of red herrings, and a handful of jaw-clenching attacks on the Rubicons designed to stop their investigation. Nancy Drew meets Columbo in this feisty-female–driven whodunit."

Piranesi

I enjoyed Susanna Clarke's earlier massive and award-winning tome, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and so I wanted to read this well-reviewed newer book; this was my 2nd try and I did finish it. It is difficult to describe and the cruelty of The Other character is distressing. Piranesi himself is charming and engaging, if clearly naive/deluded. Here is the plot summary from the book jacket.

"Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known." 

As mentioned, reviews are uniformly positive.  From Library Journal: "Clarke's ... deftly written new novel is the diary of the main character...Clarke creates an immersive world that readers can almost believe exists." Booklist concludes their review with "in this spellbinding, occult puzzle of a fable, one begins to wonder if perhaps the reverence, kindness, and gratitude practiced by Clarke's enchanting and resilient hero aren't all the wisdom one truly needs."  Kirkus offers these closing remarks: "At the foundation of this story is an idea at least as old as Chaucer: Our world was once filled with magic, but the magic has drained away. Clarke imagines where all that magic goes when it leaves our world and what it would be like to be trapped in that place. Piranesi is a naif, and there’s much that readers understand before he does. But readers who accompany him as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world. Weird and haunting and excellent."

And here are details offered in Publishers Weekly review. "Clarke wraps a twisty mystery inside a metaphysical fantasy in her extraordinary new novel... The story unfolds as journal entries written by the eponymous narrator, who, along with an enigmatic master known as the Other...inhabits the House, a vast, labyrinthine structure of statue-adorned halls and vestibules. So immense is the House that its many parts support their own internal climates, all of which Piranesi vividly describes... Meanwhile, the Other is pursuing the “Great and Secret Knowledge” of the ancients. After the Other worriedly asks Piranesi if he’s seen in the house a person they refer to as 16, Piranesi’s curiosity is piqued, and all the more so after the Other instructs him to hide. In their discussions about 16, it becomes increasingly clear the Other is gaslighting Piranesi about his memory, their relationship, and the reality they share. With great subtlety, Clarke gradually elaborates an explanatory backstory to her tale’s events and reveals sinister occult machinations that build to a crescendo of genuine horror. This superbly told tale is sure to be recognized as one of the year’s most inventive novels."

Cold Storage

This work of speculative fictionby Michael C. Grumley is set 2046 after the United States as we know it has suffered The Collapse. In the Prologue, a man is taken into the Himalayas by a couple of guides who discovered a large metal structure in the ice. Upon verifying their story, the client murders both guides. The main story has to do with a mortal game of cat and mouse as one side is trying to revive and protect a man who has been cryogenically frozen, while the other side wants him back to learn things about how the process affected him. But as the book expands, we are introduced to the group of nine people who are planning to freeze themselves and be revived when medicine has advanced sufficiently to keep them alive much longer than normal. Obscene amounts of wealth and the technology and security resources that that wealth can buy definitely give them the upper hand. 

Publishers Weekly offers this review: Grumley's riveting sequel to Deep Freeze successfully steers the series into full-tilt sci-fi madness. After dying in a freak bus accident, U.S. Army veteran John Reiff was revived as part of a covert research program ...Twenty-three years later, Reiff has been frozen again and stored in a cabin in Utah. His body is removed from storage by a group of his apparent allies...They've retrieved Reiff because he's become a subject of interest for a shadowy group of power brokers called "The Nine," whose members want to know if Reiff's freezing had any adverse effects. If not, they plan to freeze themselves to survive a mysterious event. Once Reiff's rescuers bring him back to life, they learn he may be connected to a bizarre discovery involving space travel, which carries massive implications for the future of the planet. Grumley tosses a lot of balls in the air, but he juggles them all nimbly, keeping the plot's many surprises well concealed without sacrificing pace. Blake Crouch fans will love this."

A Man Named Doll

Happy Doll actually. Originally kind of a joke between his mother and father, but since Hank's (the name he goes by) mother died in childbirth, his father put that name on the birth certificate in honor of her. Of course his father never called him that--usually calling him Hapless or other derogatory names.  This book is the first of 3 in Jonathan Ames' "Happy Doll" series and I plan to read them all. There is nothing slick about this character. He's former LAPD and former Navy MP, and has a bit of a hero complex--always jumping in to help the underdog. He works as a private eye, but since business has slowed he also works security at a massage parlor. And that is where he kills his first person. Things rapidly go downhill from there. 

Publishers Weekly calls this "an exceptional series launch" and goes on to praise "assured plotting, superb local color, and excellent prose. Readers will happily root for Doll, a good detective and a decent human, in this often funny and grisly outing." Booklist--which got a couple of key details wrong in their review-- offers this positive conclusion: "Ames delivers an old-school L.A. crime novel that evokes Chandler with maybe an aftertaste of Bukowski. Readers expecting action won't be let down, and the sparkling yet unpretentious language gives the whole an extra kick. Recommend to noir fans, action fans, anyone who likes a good read." The New York Times calls this book "the first in a dark new private detective series that’s a tightly coiled double helix of offbeat humor and unflinching violence." And they continue, "There will be excised body parts, kidnappings, coerced surgeries, stolen cash, people tossed off balconies, fists rammed into Adam’s apples. Wherever Hank Doll goes, no matter how strange the trip, I’ll definitely follow."

The Star-Revue offers "A Man Named Doll is an affectionate, playful tribute to the hardboiled detective genre. Set in the present day...its story is narrated by Happy in short, staccato sentences ... and contains all of the noir genre’s classic elements: the fiercely independent investigator; a beautiful, mysterious woman; bad guys; an urban location; a complex plot; and existential underpinnings—whatever case Happy happens to be investigating, what concerns him most deeply is the meaning of life."

Murder by Degrees

This debut novel by Ritu Mukerji was nominated for a couple of prestigious mystery awards and I agree that it is a fine plot, setting and cast of characters. Set after the Civil War in Philadelphia as the city is becoming a powerhouse of industry, our protagonist is a woman doctor when women in medicine still faced enormous headwinds from the field. Dr. Lydia Weston is a professor and practicing clinician at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. When a young woman patient, Anna Ward goes missing and a body identified as Anna is pulled from the Schuylkill River, Lydia becomes involved in the investigation of her death. Not only must Lydia prove herself to skeptical male doctors, but also to the police who share in the sentiment that women are not fit to practice medicine, much less help solve what turns out to be a murder.

The Library Journal asserts "On the surface, this debut by Mukerji, herself a medical doctor, appears to be a mystery about the death of a working-class servant, but it's much more, as it examines women's rights, social conditions, and medicine in Philadelphia just a decade after the Civil War."  Booklist praises "Lydia assist[s] police officers Volcker and Davies with their investigation, discovering unsavory events in some of Philadelphia's wealthy families. Lydia herself is in danger as a result. This well-researched, historical-mystery debut by a practicing physician will appeal to readers who enjoy strong female characters and graphic clinical details." 

Publishers Weekly also recommends the book. "Mukerji’s taut plotting and vivid depiction of the era’s medical practices and social customs will leave readers eager for a second installment." Kirkus compares Mukerji's writing favorably to other well know writers. "Mukerji, like Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, pulls the reader into fascinating and richly detailed forensic autopsies and blesses Weston with the instincts and determination to carry out a murder investigation as effectively as—or even better than—the police. This well-constructed narrative will also be appealing to literature lovers as Lydia finds solace in reading Tennyson, Browning, and Wordsworth. Mukerji writes with the assurance of a more seasoned novelist, and armchair sleuths can hope this is the beginning of a substantive new series. Like Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, Lydia is a strong and indomitable woman who transcends her circumstances to become her true self and a crusader for social justice. This atmospheric novel heralds the arrival of a talented new writer and an unforgettable heroine."

Havoc

This novel by Christopher Bollen has received numerous glowing reviews such as this one from Publishers Weekly: An octogenarian Wisconsin widow faces off against an eight-year-old troublemaker in this first-rate tale of psychological suspense from Bollen (The Lost Americans). At the height of the Covid lockdown, the garrulous Maggie Burkhardt basks in her self-appointed role as social director for the guests at the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel in Luxor, Egypt--that is, until the arrival of young Otto Seeber and his mother. Though the scrawny, bespectacled Otto looks innocent, Maggie soon learns there's more to the boy than meets the eye. When Otto spies Maggie sneaking out of another guest's room, he offers to trade his silence for her agreement to upgrade him and his mother from the hotel's worst room to a $900-a-night luxury suite. So begins a dangerous chess match between the unlikely adversaries, each of whom is refreshingly drawn against type. As the mayhem mounts and the plot careens toward a genuinely shocking climax, Maggie's reliability as a narrator comes into doubt. Enriching the narrative with an evocative sense of atmosphere and playful riffs on The Bad Seed and Agatha Christie, Bollen serves up a nasty treat. It's a bracing ode to bad behavior." 

And Kirkus has this to say: "Thelma meets The Bad Seed meets The White Lotus in this Covid-19-era tale of an elderly American woman's murderous obsession with a troubled young boy at an Egyptian hotel. The 81-year-old Maggie Burkhardt left her home in Wisconsin six years ago following the deaths of her husband and daughter. Moving from hotel to hotel, she spent five years in the Alps, where she perfected her unseemly skill at insinuating herself into people's lives to cause the breakup of what she deems bad marriages. "I liberate people who don’t know they’re stuck," says the widow, whose methods include planting false evidence of infidelities and relating false rumors. After both partners in one targeted marriage die—the wife by strangling, the husband by suicide—and suspicions point Maggie's way, she escapes to Luxor and picks up where she left off....Bollen takes the art of the unreliable, self-deluded narrator to new heights. Did Maggie really have a happy marriage? Did her family really die? ... But it's still a wicked delight. A devious and deranged thriller."

The LA Times offers : "Maggie believes herself to be unrivaled in her ability to wreak havoc via an insinuation here or a planted item of lingerie there, but in Otto she’s met her match, and before long, their vicious cat-and-mouse game turns lethal. It’s a tit for tat in which one act of violence is met with another more outrageous. And the contest over which of them will break first has the effect of emboldening Otto but destabilizing Maggie, whose daily exercise routine, anti-anxiety meds and carefully constructed exterior had thus far saved her from unraveling." And continues, "Bollen can be counted on to choreograph taut, nail-biting scenes and deliver richly atmospheric descriptive passages that immediately bring a person or place to vivid life....Yet for all his panache, I wish this author had been kinder to his protagonist, who leaves little room for sympathy or understanding. There is a twist at the very end that hints at why Maggie is so haunted by her memories that she may have lost her grip on reality. It’s a devilish denouement that marks Bollen as a thriller master, even as he edges into the macabre." 

The NYT calls the book "a deliciously nasty tale of resentment and revenge...set in a once-fashionable hotel in Luxor, Egypt, where 81-year-old Maggie Burkhardt has grandly taken up residence during the pandemic. Her insatiable need to meddle in the lives of others, often without their knowledge, has already forced her to make exits from 18 previous hotels over five years.Listening to her describe her strange habits and her wacky opinions of other people is great, wicked fun. The arrival of another guest — a horrid boy of 8 with his own warped perspective and relish of mayhem — threatens to destroy Maggie’s carefully-constructed spider web of intrigue. Bollen writes with wit and style about an increasingly unhinged battle of wills between two unlikely, and formidable, opponents."

But although the book is extremely well written, as several reviewers have noted above, I found it incredibly distressing in the cruelty of acts by the two main characters, and the outcome was tragic and heart-breaking. 

The Paris Novel

This second novel from food renowned critic Ruth Reichl was strongly recommended by a good friend and I, in turn, passed on that recommendation to my book group which is now our choice for the February meeting. Library Journal offers a reasonably accurate summary of the plot line:

"Stella and her mother Celia have long been estranged. In a last, dying effort to control Stella's life, Celia wills her daughter money that can only be spent on a trip to Paris. Stella is reluctant but needs a break from her regimented New York City existence. Arriving in Paris, she lives frugally, visiting all the tourist sights until, on impulse, she stops in a vintage dress shop with a Dior creation in the window. The shop owner convinces her to buy the dress and wear it while visiting a small museum and dining in an excellent restaurant. Stella follows these instructions and meets Jules, an elderly art expert who shows her another side of Paris, opening her mind to new possibilities. She sees Manet's controversial painting Olympia and learns that the model, Victorine-Louise Meurent, was also a painter. Deep research helps Stella find and purchase a painting by Meurent, all while tracking down her own long-missing father and discovering a love of food. Reichl...creates... a search for family and self that incorporates fashion, art, and food in a setting known for all three. ...This multi-layered story will appeal to those who love food, Paris, and a happy ending."

Publishers Weekly calls it "a delectable story" and "a feast for the senses." While Kirkus offers a mixed review, which is more in line with my personal reaction to the book.

"A stiff, lonely young woman takes a life-changing trip to Paris.After suffering a miserable childhood at the hands of her narcissistic mother, Stella St. Vincent is surprised to receive an envelope labeled “For My Daughter” after Celia’s death in 1983. In it is a piece of paper that says 'Go to Paris'; the money to pay for the trip will only be released after it’s booked. This is just the beginning of a silly story with a wildly overcaffeinated plot and characters that are not even close to real people, foremost among them an annoying protagonist who can’t stop shooting herself in the foot even as she miraculously finds her tribe and discovers her extraordinary gifts for eating and cooking. Though she lacks the instincts of a fiction writer, Reichl fills her second novel with the high-flying writing about food, wine, places, and clothes that have made her nonfiction work a well-deserved success. In fact, according to an author’s note, this book grew out of her editor’s request that she expand a chapter from her memoir about trying on a little black dress in Paris. Unfortunately, a few too many ingredients have been added, including a search for a forgotten 19th-century woman painter; appearances by culinary figures like Marc Meneau and Jean Troisgros and literary figures like John Ashbery, James Baldwin, and Allen Ginsberg; a nasty Mr. Darcy–style love interest; and the search for Stella’s father, whom she either does or doesn’t want to find depending on the page. But the food writing is almost worth the price of admission, ranging from the horrific to the euphoric. ...A somewhat ridiculous novel, nicely marbled with fine food and travel writing."

The Darkest Evening

This 9th installment in Ann Cleeves' "Vera Stanhope" series includes a lot of information about Vera's background since the murder occurs on the grounds of the Stanhope estate, the property of her dead father's older brother, which is now inhabited by his widow, daughter and son-in-law. This is a part of Vera's family that she only sees for weddings and funerals. Vera's father, Hector, was the black sheep of the family and on the few occasions that they visited, "the family had been unfailingly polite. That branch of the clan used politeness as a weapon of mass destruction." I'd love to have had a map of the estate with its tenant farms and tied cottages. 

Caught in a blizzard while driving home one night, DI Stanhope misses a turn  and comes across a car on the side of the road with the driver's door still open and a toddler in the back seat. She assumes the driver has gone looking for help after sliding off the road so she leaves a note, takes the little boy, and starts looking for the nearest signs of life and cell reception. That just happens to be the Stanhope home, Brockburn, where her father grew up. Inside, the son-in-law is entertaining potential donors for a theatre start-up. When the body of a young woman--the abandoned car's driver-- is shortly discovered by a tenant farmer coming to retrieve his daughters who are filling in as wait staff, Vera realizes that she has a murder on her hands. "...a second murder spurs Vera and her team to investigate a tangled web of family connections and buried secrets'" (Kirkus). "Vera... comes to realize that the 'whole case... was about families, about what held them together and what ripped them apart" (Publishers Weekly).

As is to be expected, the characters are well-developed, the settings rich and the plot twisty with a number of red herrings thrown in. Still, Publishers Weekly concludes, "This fair-play mystery brims with fully developed suspects and motives that are hidden in plain sight. Skillful misdirection masks the killer's identity. This page-turner is must reading for fans as well as newcomers." Kirkus likewise closes their review with "Fans will enjoy matching wits with Cleeves’ eccentric sleuth right up to the dangerous surprise in her denouement." Highly recommended

Death at the Sanatorium

After having read one of Ragnar Jonasson's early entries in his "Dark Iceland" series (Snowblind), I decided to read his newest book, also set in Iceland but in Reykjavik rather than the far north of the country. 

Kirkus offers this review: "The retro title introduces a valentine to Golden Age whodunits relocated to Iceland. Helgi Reykdal, a graduate student in criminology at an English university, has returned to Iceland. Last summer he interned with Reykjavík’s criminal investigation department, and there’s a job waiting for him there if he wants it. But he’s torn by his conflicting desires to return to the U.K. and to appease Bergthóra, the ...live-in girlfriend who wants him to stay. An additional inducement arrives with the possibility of writing his dissertation on the deaths a generation ago of a nurse and doctor at a sanitorium in the provincial northern town of Akureyri. When both Tinna Einarsdóttir, the nurse who discovered both bodies, and Sverrir Eggertsson, the police investigator who allegedly solved the case back in 1983 by arresting what even he came to admit was the wrong suspect, summarily refuse to talk to him, his interest is naturally piqued. The circle of possible killers is tiny—Tinna herself, along with her colleague Elísabet, ambitious Dr. Thorri Thorsteinsson, and Broddi the caretaker—and in the course of Helgi’s investigation, one of them obligingly narrows it even further by killing one of the others. Inspired by his reading of classic mysteries with similar settings... Helgi digs into the archives and questions the people who are willing to talk to him. The story, which toggles back and forth between 1983 and 2012, generates considerable suspense from a remarkably limited cast of characters living and dead. Clever, absorbing, and no more uplifting than you’d expect from this master of Icelandic noir." 

Publishers Weekly opens their review with "Jónasson follows up Reykjavik with a meticulously plotted whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie..." and concludes "With scrupulously fair-play plotting, Helgi’s tumultuous relationship with his live-in girlfriend as an emotional anchor, and a worthy payoff, this is another winner from Jónasson. Readers will be rapt."