When You See Me

I have not previously read anything by author Lisa Gardner, but this book was one that grabbed me so I read into the wee hours of the night. She has written several stand-along psychological thrillers and series; this is the newest featuring Boston PD detective D.D. Warren, but it actually involves protagonists from several other series. I didn't feel that I missed anything by not having read previous books. This story is told from several people's perspectives, but Gardner makes it clear at the beginning of each chapter who is speaking and it offers the reader the opportunity to understand each character better as well as seeing different aspects of and perspectives on the proceedings.
When some hikers stumble over a partially exposed skeleton in the norther hills of Georgia near the Appalachian Trail, the remains are quickly connected to a young woman missing for several years, and thought to fit the victim profile of a now deceased serial killer, Jacob Ness. The only woman to have escaped Ness is Flora Dane, who, along with a handsome and nerdy true crime tech wizard, is brought into the case by Warren. The FBI's coordinator, Kimberly Quincy, brings a small team to Georgia and then quickly discovers there are more bodies buried in the area. The big question is, are these all victims of Ness or is something else going on in the non-descript tourist town of Niche. When more bodies start falling among the town's population, it becomes clear that someone, who is very much alive, is warning people not to cooperate with the investigation or they will face the consequences. The final voice in the story is the young invisible victim of an earlier crime that killed her mother and stole her voice. Will she be able to get Warren or Flora or Quincy to see her before the monster comes?
Smart, well-researched, and great plotting! Review from Publishers Weekly here, plus The Daily Herald (Chicago) and The Columbus Dispatch.

American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI

Kate Winkler Dawson is a journalist and documentary producer. In her fascinating "Acknowledgments" section following the text, she says that, when she came across the name Edward Oscar Heinrich, who was referred to as "America's Sherlock Holmes" in an encyclopedia on crime, she couldn't resist. She tracked down his collection of documents and memorability at UC Berkeley, but was told that the collection was so large that they simply didn't have the staff to catalog it. She appealed the decision, noting that Heinrich was one of the most prolific and trend setting forensic scientists in American history. Head of the library's (Bancroft) archival processing, Lara Michaels, reviewed the collection again and agreed. She sought out numerous additional sources of information including two other collections at Berkeley, those of John Boynton Kaiser, close friend to Heinrich who supplied a continuous stream on the newest writings about anything forensic; and August Vollmer, who was key to establishing the earliest training programs in criminology. Following the acknowledgements are over 30 pages of "Notes" and a detailed index.
The story is told by means of examining several of the highest profile and sometimes most controversial cases in which Heinrich was involved. Dawson gives enough of Heinrich's youthful background to help the reader understand the driving forces in his adult life: his dedication to both his family and to his science. He was a remarkable polymath, making himself knowledgeable in blood spatter, fingerprints, handwriting analysis, geology, chemistry, pharmacy, and psychology. As she relates his detailed--in fact obsessive--process for approaching each case, it becomes clear how he brought all these perspectives to bear on understanding the victim, the perpetrator, the motive, and the method. He was truly a trail blazer--for better or worse--in legitimizing the use of many new techniques in attempting to solve and prosecute crimes.
Dawson concludes with a summary report from the National Academy of Sciences identifying the deficits in our current system of forensic labs across the United States.
Reviews from Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly, and an NPR interview with author Kate Dawson. 

Vanished Birds

This debut science fiction novel by Simon Jimenez is a slow mover and there were times when I almost walked away. But Kirkus claimed that, "in this gorgeous debut novel, love becomes a force that can shatter space and time." They go on to offer a better plot summary than I could do:  "We first see Nia Imani through the eyes of someone she is always leaving behind: Kaeda, a boy growing up on a backwater planet visited once every 15 years by offworlders who come to collect its harvests. Nia is the captain of a faster-than-light ship that travels through Pocket Space. While Kaeda lives a decade and a half, Nia spends just a few months traveling between various resource-producing worlds like his, shipping goods for the powerful Umbai Company. It’s not until a mysterious boy falls out of the sky on Kaeda’s planet that Nia begins to form a connection she’s not willing to walk away from."
There are three characters who provide the narrative: Fumiko Nakajima, a genius who will change the shape of space with her ideas and who is convinced that somewhere are people who can travel the universe in the blink of an eye; Nia Imani, the captain of a trading ship working for the Umbai corporation; and the boy, Ahro, who is a mystery to himself as well as to others, but who touches Nia's heart profoundly. Kirkus concludes by saying, "The best of what science fiction can be: a thought-provoking, heart-rending story about the choices that define our lives." So how could I not finish the book. Likewise, Publishers Weekly says of the book, "This extraordinary science fiction epic, which delves deep into the perils of failing to learn from one’s mistakes, is perfect for fans of big ideas and intimate reflections."

A Gentleman's Murder

This debut mystery by Christopher Huang is consciously styled on the works by Agatha Christie and others notables from the "Golden Age."  Set in 1920's London, narrator Eric Peterkin is a veteran of The Great War, and as such, is deserving of membership in the Britannia Club, a gentleman's club open only to those who served in the military. His ancestors on his father's side were founding members of the club and there have always been Peterkins amongst the members. More importantly to many people, however, including some club members, is that Eric is half Chinese, and therefore not to be entirely trusted. Eric's avocation is editing manuscripts for murder mysteries submitted for publication. His mind naturally leans towards puzzle solving. So when a brand new member of the Britannia club is found murdered, Eric is determined to find the killer and, based on his own strong sense of honor, carry out the last wishes of the  dead man, Albert Benson, who confided to Eric that he was seeking to right an old wrong. The ending makes it obvious that we can expect more Eric Peterkin mysteries to follow.
Huang offers a twisty plot, a whole cast of possible suspects, detailed scene setting (you can almost smell the coal-fire tainted fog), an indictment of social classism and of the treatment of war veterans. Publishers Weekly says "Huang’s plotting, characters, and atmosphere are all top-notch," and there is a glowing review from the New York Journal of Books.

In the Woods

I have had this inaugural outing by mystery/thriller writer Tana French in my library for ages and did not read it until now, prodded by my mystery book group's selection of it for this month's read. I had recently read The Trespasser, a later entry into her Dublin (Ireland) "Murder Squad" books, and found her writing to be exquisite and her characterizations, plotting, dialogue, and scene setting to be outstanding. She occasionally has overlap of characters from one book to another, but they are always told from a different character's perspective.
Here we meet Cassie Maddox and Rob Ryan, two of the youngest and newest detectives on the elite Murder Squad. Although originally paired with other partners, they have now been working together for several years, and have developed such a finely tuned tapestry of thought, talk, and action that their solve rate exceeds many of the more senior detectives. Ryan has a secret that only Cassie knows. He was one of three 12-year-old children who one summer day went into the woods near a somewhat remote housing estate, Knocknaree. He was found a day later, his shoes full of blood, scratches down his back, and absolutely no memory of what happened to his best friends, Jamie and Peter.  His family subsequently moved and sent him to boarding school where he grieved, then adapted, developed an English accent, stopped using his first name, and, after finishing school, wandered aimlessly through life until he decided to enter the police academy. Cassie has never told anyone her secrets, but Ryan is OK with that. They are, contrary to all expectations and gossip, not romantically involved, but they are best friends.
When a 12-year old girl is found murdered on an archaeological dig near the same housing estate where Ryan's childhood friends disappeared, he and Cassie take the case, agreeing not to reveal to their superior the potential conflict of interest.  But in spite of best efforts, they cannot find the killer, the evidence connecting this murder to the earlier disappearances is tissue thin, and, in spite of all Ryan's efforts, the memories still refuse to come. But he does begin to spiral down into a black hole, sucked into defending the sister of the victim against all Cassie's warnings. He ultimately does something that, worse than jeopardizing the case, threatens his relationship with Cassie. Even though he ultimately figures out who has killed the girl, there are so many negative repercussions of his behavior that his future with the Murder Squad is at an end... a tragic outcome.
Reviews available from The New York Times (brief), The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus (also brief), and that from The New Yorker places this book within the context of French's entire oeuvre.  

An Officer and a Spy

I have previously read Munich by Robert Harris and thought it very well done. He has written several books that range from alternative history to historical fiction to thrillers. This one focuses on the "Dreyfus Affair" that occurred in France in the 1890's...the "Belle Epoque" between the end of the Franco-Prussian war (when France lost Alsace & Lorraine) and the run-up to WWI.  Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French military was wrongly accused of being a spy, was summarily tried, publicly disgraced, and sent to Devil's Island as a solitary prisoner for several years.
The narrator of this work is George Picquart who was put in charge of the secret intelligence unit of the military shortly after Dreyfus' conviction. As he was familiarizing himself with the workings of a department and a job he never wanted to be a part of, he began to realize that the "evidence" against Dreyfus had been manufactured and that senior officers in the military were behind the conspiracy and subsequent coverup. At the same time, it became increasingly clear to Picquart that there was still someone spying for the Germans within the military. He risked his career and was even imprisoned for trying to exonerate Dreyfus and bring the real spy to justice. All the characters are historically accurate as is the timetable (over several years) of the affair.
The book is well-researched and, although a little slow at the beginning, will eventually engender the same outrage over the military's illegal and immoral behavior that the protagonist feels. The trial of Dreyfus inflamed an already pervasive anti-Semitic sentiment in the country. An insightful review from The New York Times provides the larger socio-political context that allowed this travesty of justice to occur. A glowing and detailed review from NPR, another from The Guardian. The Washington Post calls the book "mesmerizing."

The Library Book

Part history, part mystery, part paean to libraries, this book by Susan Orlean is a fascinating read for those of us who love books and libraries.  Orlean was a long-time lover of libraries from the time she was a child and shared a ritual weekly visit to her local library in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with her mother.  On her website, she says of that time, "The very air in the library seemed charged with possibility and imagination; books seem to have their own almost human vitality." But she fell away as an adult, becoming more of a book buyer than a book borrower and forgot "how magical libraries are." She only reconnected with that buried passion when she began taking her own son to the library.
"On April 29, 1986, the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles caught fire and burned. Nobody died, though 50 firefighters were injured and more than a million books were damaged" (New York Times). No one ever really proved that the library fire was set, although a man, wannabe actor Harry Peak, was accused. But at the time (1986) the place was a firetrap, with poor wiring and books stacked everywhere, including in the stairwells. The NYT review goes on to say, "At any rate, the 1986 fire inside the Central Library, and the subsequent, inconclusive investigation of it, turn out to be a MacGuffin, a trick for luring the reader into a subject into which the reader never imagined he’d be lured: the history and present life of the Los Angeles Central Library. Much of the book consists of its author wandering around a library building, watching and listening to the people inside it." So not only is this a history of the library but also of the people who made it what it is today. It was often chauvinistic--women were not originally allowed in the reading room (it opened in 1873), but by 1885, it was run by women. But then the library board fired a perfectly competent woman director and hired Charles Lummis, a flamboyant journalist, adventurer, and self-promoter, who knew nothing of libraries, to be its director. Orlean offers a larger context to her story as well, providing a historical overview of book and library burning over the centuries. "The Nazis alone destroyed an estimated hundred million books during their twelve years in power."
Some of my favorite passages from the book have more to do with the importance of books in our lives. She notes that "in Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone dies is to say his or her library has burned....Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual's consciousness is a collection of memories we've cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived. It is something that no one else can entirely share, one that burns down and disappears when we die." She reminds us that some cultures, such as Judaism ("the people of the book") consider books sacred. "Destroying a culture's books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived."
If you care about libraries, you'll find this a rewarding read.

Review from The New York Times is very detailed. Additional glowing reviews from The National Book Review, The Guardian,  The Washington Post, and Kirkus.

Long Bright River

This novel by Liz Moore has two sisters at its core. One is a cop in Philadelphia and the other is an addict and prostitute in the same city. Raised by a perpetually angry grandmother after the death of their addicted mother and abandonment by their father, the girls were once so close that they could finish each other's sentences. But now, older sister Mickey is a patrol cop in the neighborhood where her sister turns tricks in order to get high. They haven't really spoken in years although Mickey tries to keep an eye out for younger sister Kacey. When Mickey gets a call about an unidentified body--female, same age as Kacey--she races to the scene. It's not Kacey, but Mickey starts hunting for her sister and finds out that no one has seen her in several months. As more bodies of young woman start appearing, Mickey's efforts to find her sister intensify and lead her to cross the line from professional to personal. When Mickey gets a lead from her sister's best friend on the streets that the serial killer may be a policeman, Mickey doesn't know who to trust.  When she's not working her demanding rotating shifts, she is a single mom, trying to raise a child without support from her family and relying on flaky babysitters.
The novel is gritty and atmospheric, creating a clear picture of Mickey's love-hate relationship with the working class neighborhood she patrols, Kensington. We also get inside her personal connections to those affected by the opioid epidemic that has been ravaging the country for the last several years.  Mickey is a sympathetic character in spite of her faults and occasionally impulsive and potentially reckless decisions.
A more detailed summary of the plot is provided at the New York Times. Maureen Corrigan calls this twisty crime novel "extraordinary" in her Washington Post review. The Guardian calls it a "family drama, history and social commentary wrapped up in the compelling format of a police procedural" and offers a bit of history on the author's research process.