The Innocent

Ian McEwan receives uniformly rave reviews and this is the first book of his I have read, one written about mid-span of his career to date (1990). Set in Berlin in the depth of the Cold War (1955), the main character, 25-year old Leonard Marnham, is a British civil servant recruited to facilitate work on a joint venture between the Americans and the Brits. They are building a tunnel under the east-west Berlin border to eavesdrop on Russian communications--ostensibly a real event. Leonard is naive in almost every imaginable way.  He is awkward around both the Americans, who are somewhat stereotypically portrayed as brash, over-confident bullies, and around the German woman who picks him up in a night club and seduces him. He falls in love with and eventually becomes engaged to Maria, and their relationship eventually leads to a dramatic and deadly confrontation with her abusive and drunken ex-husband. Desperate to save himself and Maria, Leonard engages in his own personal act of espionage. In spite of being well-crafted, I didn't ever really come to care for or about any of the characters, and felt as cold about the story as the bitter winter the characters must endure.

Seventeen and Eighteen

I was a little put off by Janet Evanovich's Sizzling Sixteen, feeling it lacked some of the zany energy that her books usually have. But she seems to have regained her footing in Smokin' Seventeen and Explosive Eighteen. In Seventeen, Stephanie's mom is once again trying to set her up with a future mate since neither Morelli nor Ranger seem likely to make the commitment to marriage. While the burned out bail bonds office--temporarily replaced by Mooner's bus--is under construction, dead bodies start showing up in shallow graves on the construction site. The killer is apparently making this personal for Stephanie. Meanwhile, Morelli's grandmother puts the Vordo spell on Stephanie with wild results. Eighteen opens with Stephanie returning from a vacation in Hawaii one day ahead of both Ranger and Morelli--but no one is talking about what happened. Eventually we learn why she has a white tan line on her left hand ring finger, but it takes longer to find out why the photograph that mysteriously appeared in her purse on the flight back is bringing strangers out of the woodwork to threaten Stephanie if she doesn't return it. Except that she doesn't have it anymore. Cars and buses are destroyed, Lula takes a love potion by accident and falls in love with one of their more unsavory FTA's, and their investigations result in a lot of roosters being loosed on Trenton.

Agnes and the Hit Man

I have SO lost track of what I have been reading. I haven't posted since August and yet I am NEVER without at least 2-3 books going. I have been doing a lot of review books for Library Journal Express Reviews and for the Children's Literature Database, but I'm sure I've been doing some personal reading in there somewhere. I listen to books on CD going and coming from work and those rarely find their way into the blog. Anyway, things have been stressful at home recently with health and other issues so when I finished my last batch of books for CLCD I dove into pure escapist fare. Agnes and the Hit Man, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, is a bit like Stephanie Plum meets Goldie Schwartz (or Janet Evanovich meets Diane Mott Davidson if you want author names).  Agnes is a bit of an entrepreneur, currently partnered with and afianced to Taylor, a man who turns out to be (a) already  married, (b) trying to steal her house and business, and (c) murdered with a meat fork. Agnes, who writes the food column "Cranky Agnes" does have some issues with anger management, but who wouldn't in her situation. Agnes was essentially an orphan growing up until she met Lisa Livia at boarding school and was unofficially adopted into her home for holidays and summers. She seems to attract lying cheating men, Taylor being just the latest. She has moved back to this somewhat idyllic spot on the Blood River in S. Carolina and bought the house of her childhood summers from Lisa Livia's mother, Brenda. Oh, but wait a minute, Brenda is the one who married Taylor and is trying to ruin her granddaughter's wedding, upon which Agnes' keeping the house depends. If you think that's complicated, it's only just the start. A pseudo-uncle, Joey, is concerned about Agnes' safety and has called his pseudo-nephew, Shane, to come back and protect Agnes. Shane kills people for a living. He works for the U.S. government. He's very good at his job, and it's a good thing, because a string of unsavory characters show up trying to kill Agnes or kidnap her bloodhound Rhett--she's not exactly sure which. Predictably, Agnes and Shane get involved. Unpredictably, we find out lots of family secrets about Shane and who he really is. This is a fun read, highly recommended for anyone wanting to get away from it all. Great characters!

Heartless

This fourth installment in the "Parasol Protectorate" series by Gail Carriger is another romp through an alternate Victorian England, where vampires, werewolves, and ghosts are all accepted parts of society, if not always cheerfully welcomed by regular mortals. Lady Maccon, a preternatural having no soul, is wife to Lord Maccon (a werewolf) and part of Victoria's secret council. She is also 8 months pregnant, which significantly interferes with her ability to get around as nimbly as she would like. The potential capabilities of the child she is carrying to threaten werewolves and vampires alike have made Alexia Maccon the target of numerous murder attempts and she is just getting tired of it all. A truce has finally been reached wherein the child will be raised by the flamboyant vampire, Lord Akeldama. Lord and Lady Maccon move into the house next door to facilite the arrangement. But in the meantime, there appears to be a threat to the Queen and a ghost on the verge of disintegration apparently holds the key to finding out more. Alexia's tedious sister has moved in with her and Lord Maccon and taken to wearing very sensible clothing--among other strange behaviors. Madame Lafoux has come up with an even more outrageous invention and the plot line is wild and fast-paced as always. This tongue in cheek series never fails to entertain me and make me laugh out loud.

Dragon's Lair

Sharon Kay Penman writes historical novels and medieval mysteries and I learned about her from my friend Darcy MacPherson. She does her research and offers an author's note to indicate where her fiction has deviated from the historical facts as currently known. Her medieval mysteries center around Justin deQuincy, the illegitimate son of the Bishop of  Chester, Awbrey deQuincy, who has only grudgingly admitted paternity to Justin and denies it to the rest of the world. Justin has become--through luck he admits--the Queen's Man, the Queen in this case being Eleanor. In this third installment of the series, the Queen  is trying to gather an exorbitant ransom to gain the release of her favored son, Richard, from prison in Germany. Her other son, John, aspires to the throne and so seeks to prevent Richard's return. The ransom demanded of Wales has, according to a letter received by the Queen, gone missing in a murder/robbery and she is sending Justin to find and recover it. Ransom is not being paid in money but in silver and other valuables as well as bags of Cistercian wool. Justin finds that the robbery is not the work of a rebel seeking to overthrow the Welsh throne as the current Kind of Wales, Davydd, asserts, but it will take both cleverness and luck to find out who is really behind it and to find the missing ransom. Characters are well-developed, political intrigues are abundant, and the setting will draw you in carry you along. I am wishing now I had read the first book, The Queen's Man, more recently.

I Want to be Left Behind

Brenda Peterson is a nature writer primarily, but this is a memoir of her life being raised by devout Southern Baptists who are part of the 47% of Americans ( according to her with no source cited for the figure) who believe in the Rapture. Her father worked for the US Forest Service and she was raised largely in and around national forests and grew to have a deep and abiding love for nature and the flora and fauna and waters and mountains that comprise it. She was the only one in her family who simply couldn't accept the idea of leaving the earth behind as an end goal, and her family always thought her ideas were definitely weird. This is her collection of memories of family get togethers and conversations that dealt with these conflicting philosophies.
Ms Peterson lives in Seattle, one of the most "unchurched" major cities in the US...no wonder I felt so at home there! For the remainder of us who don't believe in this version of the end of our days, and for myself who doesn't buy into organized religion of any stripe, this was a fairly painless way to learn a bit more about the devoutly religious. I know I should read the bible, but not sure I ever will, even though each chapter of this book opens with a scripture citation which made me wonder what I would find there. I finished the book because I wanted to understand how she reconciled these divergent forces in her life. I guess I would say that she accepts her family and values them for what is good in them, without buying into their beliefs. She is encouraged by the fact that the generation that comes after her (nieces and nephews) seem more attached to this earth and to trying to do good things here, rather than ignoring the problems as she fears many "true believers" do. The subtitle of the book is "Finding the Rapture Here on Earth" and that is the predominant thread in her personal belief system--that this earth and everything on it, is part of any divine spirit, and deserves our full attention to preserve it as best we can. A quote I loved that she included went something like this..."Extinction is not good stewardship." Indeed.

Thunderstruck

I ran across this older work by Erik Larson on the sale table at Oregon State when I stopped by the campus to catch up with friends and former colleagues in July. Having just finished In the Garden of Beasts, I snatched it up and, although it was not as compelling to me as either Garden or Devil in the White City, it was nevertheless a trademark example of Larson's style, wherein he weaves together two lines of history--a murder and the development of wireless communication by Marconi. I would be fascinated to know how he decides exactly which two historical threads to pull on for any particular book, but as always, he has done extensive research and documented the accounts with plenty of primary source material addressed in chapter notes and the bibliography. I would agree with the NYTimes Book Review that this is not Larson's most successful effort, and that the story dragged at times. Marconi emerges as a much more complexly drawn character than does the supposedly mild-mannered homeopath, Dr. Crippen, who murdered his wife in spectacular fashion. I never considered not finishing the book, but it wouldn't be high on my recommended list unless the personalities and politics surrounding the development of wireless intrigue you.

In the Garden of Beasts

I have been raving about this newest book by Erik Larson to anyone who would listen. Having been favorably impressed by Larson's Devil in the White City when I read it a couple  years ago, I was easily persuaded by the NYTimes Book Review to hunt this book down. Focused around the 4-year term of historian William Dodd as American Ambassador to Berlin, the story of Hitler's rise to power takes on an immediate and horrifying reality. Larson has once again done a yeoman's job of research and includes excerpts from secondary and primary sources including memoirs, state documents, and even film footage and architectural blueprints. Bits and pieces of this documentation are woven into the narrative and the whole moves along so fast you can't believe it when you're done. There are abundant notes and an extensive bibliography at the end for library nerds like me. Of course all is clearer in hind sight, but the cavalier attitude of many high level politicians in the U. S. when Dodd tried to warn about Hitler is truly repulsive. They wanted Dodd out of the post because he refused to make nice after it became clear to him what Hitler really intended. Their primary concern was getting repayment of loans made by U.S. bankers to the German government, and they didn't seem to care at all about the blatant violation of civil rights in Germany. This chronologically organized and very personal perspective of the years from 1933-1937 also makes clear how Hitler succeeded in terrifying the German populace and disempowering German Jewish citizens a step at a time. Some of the parallels to more current events are unavoidably clear.

Sixkill

It is with renewed sadness at the death of Robert Parker that I read this last book he wrote in the Spenser series. The dialog is always one of the main draws for me and this book just reminds me how much I enjoy the conversations between his characters. Spenser is asked by Quirk to look into the death of a young woman who appears to have died while having sex with movie star Jumbo Nelson. Everyone wants to hang the death on Jumbo--the press, the family, even the studio--because Jumbo is a thoroughly unlikable guy. But Quirk isn't so sure that justice would be served with this verdict and Spenser agrees to help, especially when he finds out that Rita Fiore, who is perpetually trying to seduce him, has been hired to defend Jumbo. But Spenser's unstoppable smart mouth pisses off Jumbo and he fires them both. That won't stop Spenser of course, because he's doing this for Quirk. Spenser knocks out Jumbo's bodyguard, a native American named Zebulon Sixkill, and so Jumbo fires him, too. Spenser takes Zee on as a project, teaching him how to box and maybe how to get off the dope and booze.  The pair become the target of some people who don't want Spenser to look into the matter any further, but the bad guys are never any match for Spenser and his new backup man. Hawk is missing from this one, supposedly off in Asia somewhere, but a number of other familiar and slightly shady allies show up in the course of the investigation, and of course Susan and Pearl are present and accounted for. Zee has a sly sense of humor based on his native ancestry and seems to serve as a conversational stand-in for Hawk. We get glimpses into episodes of his past through entries interspersed  between chapters--a different device for revealing character than I have seen in Parker's book previously. A righteous installment in the Spenser series, if a little bittersweet.

Long Gone

If any of you are James Lee Burke fans, you will recognize the author of this book--Alafair Burke--his daughter. Her first name is also the name of the young adopted child in the Dave Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke. Alafair Burke has apparently been at this a while, having written six other books with a series protagonist named Ellie Hatcher, none of which I have read.
Alice Humphrey is trying to make it on her own, without relying on the reputation or largesse of her famous movie actor father and mother. Victim of the economic downturn, she has been jobless and struggling for several months when a chance meeting at an art gallery presents her with the offer to run a small gallery--a dream come true. The owner wishes to remain anonymous and the gallery must have a showing of one artist's work--for whom the own is apparently a patron and/or lover-- for a short few weeks and then Alice is free to run the gallery as she sees fit. The artist's works, however, generate a huge controversy & protest on the part of some conservative religious fanatics, but Alice is determined to stay the course. That is until she comes to work one morning to find the gallery stripped and the intermediary of the original job offer, Drew Campbell, dead on the floor. All efforts to establish the legitimacy of the gallery seem to hit dead ends and Alice quickly becomes the main suspect for the murder. In the process of trying to find the gallery's owner, Alice uncovers some dark secrets from her family's past. Still, Alice has friends and family trying to help her get to the bottom of things--or perhaps they have an agenda of their own.

The Savage Garden

I am woefully behind on posting about this summer's reading and so I am just jumping in with the 3rd Mark Mills book I read, The Savage Garden. Set in Tuscany, about 8 years after WWII (do you detect a certain partiality for the era by Mr. Mills??), a graduate student in art history at Cambridge is offered (ordered?) by his major professor to undertake a special summer project. He is to go to Italy for 2 weeks and research and write up the memorial garden at the Villa Docci as the basis for his thesis. Built nearly 400 years ago--30 years after the untimely death of his much younger wife--the garden is a memorial from Lord Docci, the bereaved husband. But as Adam begins to investigate the anomalies in the garden statuary and layout, he is troubled by what he finds and begins to think the death may have been murder, and the garden not so much a tribute as a series of clues. At the same time, Adam is intrigued by the current Docci family and the villa itself, which preserves the details of another tragic death. The current Signora Docci's son was shot on the third floor by occupying Nazis, just as Italy was being liberated by the allies. The entire floor of the villa was sealed off by her dead husband with strict instructions that it remain that way in perpetuity. Adam begins to feel he is being manipulated in his investigations, by the spirit of the dead nobleman's wife, and by the present day Docci family.
The characters and relationships in this book are more fully developed than in The Information Officer, the bits of history around collaborators and partisans provide political context, and the setting is evoked with careful detail. I was engaged throughout, and as surprised as Adam by the twist at the end.

The Information Officer

Ah well, the usual consequence of turning me on to a new author (Mark Mills) and turning me loose in Powell's bookstore has happened. I bought the two books he previously published (prior to Amagansett) and devoured them both. The Information Officer is set in Malta during WWII with the major players being British soldiers/aviators--along with one American "liaison" officer. Having also just bought and read Erik Larson's non-fiction account of Berlin from 1933-37 (In the Garden of Beasts), I was in a  receptive frame of mind for this historically based murder mystery. Mills claims, through his main character  British Army Information Officer Max Chadwick, that more bombs were dropped on Malta in a few months than on all of London in the Blitz. Wikipedia claims (and other sources back this) that "Between 20 March and 28 April 1942, the Germans flew 11,819 sorties against the island and dropped 6,557 tons of bombs (3,150 tons on Valletta)"--Valletta being the main city and main harbor. Mills has done his historical research. Suffice to say that the residents of Malta experienced death and destruction on a daily basis, so it's no wonder that the deaths of a few dance hall girls might go unnoticed amid the carnage, especially as they have been artfully disguised to look like collateral damage from the bombings. That is until the local military doctor/surgeon (Freddie Lambert) brings the latest victim to the attention of Max, along with "evidence" that the murderer is a British submariner. Our protagonist is torn between wanting to keep up morale through his positive spins on information, and bringing the matter to the attention of the authorities. He finally decides to do the latter, but in secret, through local contacts. It is only when his own lover disappears, along with the local detective who had been investigating the deaths, that the case gets really personal for Max. Meanwhile, interspersed throughout the commentary, are excerpts from the killer's journal which range from the original impetus for his first kill to the latter entries where he gloats at getting away with the murders and wanting to up the challenge for himself. We also learn that he is spying and sowing disinformation on behalf of the Germans. The identity of the killer is a surprise, partly due to the fact that few of the characters are fully developed, and I found the novel is more evocative (of time and place and social manners) than satisfying. I would still recommend it, and it spurred me on to read another novel by Mill, The Savage Garden.

Amagansett

I was reminded of John Dunning's Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime when I read Mark Mills' period mystery set on the south fork of Long Island right after WWII ( Also published under the title The Whaleboat House). Place is richly drawn and the history of the area and the cultures are well-researched and handed out in digestible chunks. Son of a Basque fisherman, Conrad Labarde, immigrated to this country when a child, and continues the tradition of fishing for a living. When the book opens, his catch includes the body of a beautiful and wealthy young woman, who we eventually learn was Conrad's love and lover. So we are introduced to the class wars that prevail between the rich (the "summer people") and...just about everyone else, but especially the locals.  Although the death is apparently a drowning in treacherous currents, both Conrad and the Deputy Chief of police, Tom Hollis, find it odd that the woman, Lillian Wallace, was wearing pearl earrings for her swim. Independently, they undertake to find out who killed her and why. Hollis is hampered by being new to the area and by having a lazy and corrupt boss; he must undertake the investigation without really seeming to, and without ruffling the feathers of her wealthy family, who we come to suspect pretty quickly are involved in Lillian's death. Conrad is hampered by being a local who had a secret and unacceptable affair with a wealthy woman, and by a past that haunts him. His war experience involved working behind enemy lines in a special forces unit, so he is not your ordinary fisherman, and eventually he stages the drama that will reveal those responsible for the murder. There are many additional characters of note who are also well-developed and intriguing: Conrad's fishing partner Rollo Kemp, Hollis' friend and local photographer Abel, Hollis's love interest Mary,  the wealthy Wallaces and their "fix-it" man, and the local fishing family scions. You will not regret reading this book--in fact, I'm tempted to sit down and read it again! Fortunately, Mills already has 3 other books published, so I may read those first ;-)

The Darling

I have not read any other novels by Russel Banks, so I wasn't going on reputation; either my pal Anne Zald or I picked this up at ALA Midwinter and it rose to the top of my reading pile this summer. It was challenging to start but eventually so compelling that I had to finish. It is set largely in Liberia between 1975 and 1991, with some portions set in New England prior to that, and in upstate New York 10 years after that period. The plot is incredibly complicated, but revolves mainly around Hannah Musgrave, who was raised by a liberal white family, and left medical school to become a political radical. Her activities resulted in her having to go underground and assume a new name, and eventually events required her to leave the country--or so she thought. Because of her medical training, she was always able to find low level lab work and eventually she ended up in Liberia, when Tolbert is president, and marries a minor government minister, Woodrow Sundiata. She bears him three sons and becomes the opposite of what she been heretofore; where she was outspoken, opinionated and independent, now she is nearly silent and directionless. Some of this is no doubt due to finding herself part of a tiny minority of whites in a country ruled by one corrupt government after another. The CIA, Russia and anyone else interested in the diamonds and other resources of this tiny West African nation are constantly bribing and pulling strings and the ordinary people as always suffer; while those at the top become abusive in their power. Tolbert is assassinated in 1980 and succeeded by Samuel Doe, who is in turn murdered by Charles Taylor's rebels 10 years later. (I found a brief chronology here.) Although her husband survives the first coup, he does not survive the 2nd and we know early on in the book that he is dead. We also know that she abandoned her sons and a sanctuary she had created for chimps, and came back to America to buy and run a farm in the Adirondacks. What we don't know initially is why and how these things happened and that is what keeps you coming back. I was reminded of the award winning movie, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about a group of women who finally put a stop to the killing under Taylor's regime. The incredible cruelty and violence --to men, women, children and animals--simply sets me back on my heels. The NYT Review describes the protagonist in this way, "Banks takes the risk of evoking the kind of woman whose love for animals is more passionate than her love for humans -- including her children. But he succeeds in making Hannah sympathetic, if not always likable." I couldn't agree more.

Portraits of Creative Aging

As I approach my 60th birthday and hopefully a not-too-distant retirement from my current job, I can't help but wonder, "What comes next?" This book by Joan Kadri Zald (the sociologist aunt of my colleague Anne Zald) is a collection of interviews with people who have retired and gone on to new careers, expanded interests and hobbies, and/or social activism. They inspire the reader with multiple examples of finding tremendous satisfaction in service to others, pursuing previously unfulfilled passions, or finding new directions altogether.  She sought to represent elders from ages 60-90's, of various cultures/ethnicities and geographic bases. A concluding chapter pulls together her observations about what characteristics these folks have in common: "passion and commitment...for the activities in which they were engaged" (p.221), meaningful and important endeavors that added "excitement and zest to their lives" (p.221). There were also some necessary preconditions: financial security, freedom from a full-time caregiving role, social connections, maintenance of cognitive and physical functioning. Their paths and undertakings are diverse and there is a lot here to chew on...I recommend it for all my fellow agers.

The Midnight Palace

Another YA novel from Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Midnight Palace did not engage me to the degree that The Prince of Mists or Shadow of the Wind did. As always, Zafón does an excellent job of capturing and conveying atmosphere and setting, this time of Calcutta, India in 1932. But the characters are not as well developed or engaging, and the plot feels more labored with a Star Wars revelation of paternity in the end that was somewhat predictable and not very satisfying. The protagonists are all just turning 16 years old, a time when they must leave the haven of St. Patrick's orphanage; these seven (6 boys and a girl) have bonded as friends and formed a secret club they call the Chowbar Society that meets periodically in an abandoned mansion--their "midnight palace." The leader of this group, Ben, is reunited with his heretofore unknown twin sister when their grandmother, Aryami Bose, returns to warn Father Carter that Ben is in danger from a mysterious man who wants to kill the twins. This threat, which began with the murder of the twins' parents, was the reason the infant Ben was left at the orphanage and Aryami fled with the other twin, Sheere, in 1916. Sheere is made an honorary member of the Chowbar Society and the group agrees to help the twins get to the bottom of the mystery and defeat the evil man who seems able to materialize at will in his quest to destroy them. The story is told as a sort of memoir by one of the original group of orphans, and closes in modern times with a post-scripted update on the fate of the other members of the Chowbar Society.

Born Under a Lucky Moon

First novel by Dana Precious who lives in L.A. but was born in North Muskegon, MI, the major setting of this book. Jeannie  is one of 4 girls and 1 boy in the Thompson family. Told from her perspective, the story moves back and forth between one very eventful year in her family's life, 1986, and her current life 20 years later. It's almost impossible to imagine a house with 5 women and only one bathroom, but that seems to be the least of their problems. This family has over the top things happen to them along with all the ordinary challenges and joys of living. When grandma's nursing home has to close for 2 months to renovate, they do not hesitate to take her in...even though she is prone to running out of the house without clothes, and finally, in her deteriorated mental state, tries to blow up the house by jimmying a gas line. It's a little hard to believe that children raised in such a loving and supportive family nevertheless seem to pick really bad marriage partners and live such out of control lives. But I could not walk away from the book, simply because I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and kept hoping things would end well--which they did. There are some--in my opinion--laugh-out-loud scenes, like that of Jeannie's dad trying to rescue a squirrel who has gotten his head trapped in the supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder. The major characters are reasonably well-developed, especially Jeannie, her mom and dad, and the sense of small town place is palpable. Definitely an enjoyably read.

Her Fearful Symmetry

I keep meaning to read The Time Traveler's Wife, or go see the movie, but neither of these has happened. Nevertheless, I jumped into another book by that book's author, Audrey Niffenegger, and am now re-motivated to find TTW. Her Fearful Symmetry is an intriguing ghost story, filled with dysfunctional but mostly sympathetic characters, set in London in contemporary times. It opens with the loss of a love. Robert Fanshaw is writing the penultimate history of a nearby and venerable cemetary, Highgate, where lie buried some eminent remains, e.g., Karl Marx and Michael Faraday. His older lover, Elspeth Noblin, dies of cancer, but eventually finds that her spirit is still alive and aware and trapped in her old flat, one floor below Robert's. On the top floor of the building lives Martin, who has also been abandoned by a very much alive but fed up wife who can no longer cope with the restrictions imposed by her husband's obsessive compulsive disorder. Elspeth has left a peculiar bequest. Her flat and estate is to go to twin nieces, Valentina and Julia, who she has never met. The conditions of the will are that they must live in the flat for one year before disposing of her estate, and they must never allow their parents into the flat. Their mother was Elspeth's estranged twin. Until this time, the twins have never ventured very far from their home in a posh suburb of Illinois, except for a couple of abortive attempts at college. The plot thickens as the twins arrive and begin to grow apart, Elspeth finds she can make her presence known in increasingly obvious ways, Robert begins to fall in love with Valentina who is perhaps not really Elspeth's niece, Julia befriends Max and starts slipping him drugs, and a wild kitten is temporarily tamed before its spirit is stolen. The plot is ingenious  and you won't know all the intricate twists until the end.

Bamboo and Blood

James Church (pseudonym) is, according to the Christian Science Monitor, "one of the most respected analysts of North Korea in the Western intelligence community, with extensive experience both inside and outside that country." It is the little details of daily life in one of the most isolated and secretive countries in the world that bring his stories such richness.
Inspector O, James Church's North Korean protagonist, has gone back in time -- making this a prequel of sorts to his other novels in this series (Corpse in the Koryo and Hidden Moon). All the essential elements are there: clues that aren't supposed to be followed, cases that aren't supposed to be solved, intricate maneuvers and manipulations aplenty. Set during the famine years of the 90's in North Korea, people talk about loved ones starving to death with seeming resignation. There simply is no food--and that is the driver behind what turns out to be intricate attempts to buy, bribe or blackmail other countries into giving North Korea food. It strains credulity to someone raised in an ostensibly democratic society like the United States that Inspector O does not seriously consider defecting when he is given ample motive and opportunity. He is the most dogged of investigators following each thread until he can weave them into whole cloth, in spite of people kidnapping and even trying to kill him. As a reader, I am drawn in with him, never giving up on trying to figure out how everything is connected, even though the odds are against a solution.
Reviews from Publishers Weekly,  Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus are all uniformly laudatory.

Reading for the NYRA

Although I haven't posted much here lately, it was because I was swamped with reading books for the Nevada Young Readers Award--NYRA (we were working from the 2012 reading list). Lots of grown ups (mostly librarians) read books nominated by kids in different age categories and then have a video conference to narrow down the nominees to about 6-8 in each bracket for final voting. I read in two categories--though not all of them in any category--the final nominees haven't been posted yet. Most of them I could definitely leave rather than take, but these are my personal favorites of those I read:
Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Palacco. Young Readers level with beautiful colored drawings. Wonderful autobiographical portrayal of special needs kids and one truly inspirational teacher.
Two books by Peg Kehret, Runaway Twin and Stolen Children. Middle readers with positive girl role models. The latter was my preferred book, but there was a good dog character in the former.
The Clone Codes by the McKissacks. Also middle reader set 160 years in the future when clones are discriminated against and treated as non-human, much as slaves were in earlier times. A little heavy handed on the didactic message, but still an interesting read.

The Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow (also the illustrator). Middle Reader. This is definitely one of the best books I  read—very funny and with a genuine sense of the voice, dialog, perspective of two 5^th grade girls trying to figure out how to be popular before they move to junior high next year. Done as a collaborative journal, complete with passed notes, drawings that vary in quality depending on the artist, and unique handwriting for the two main characters. They learn a lot about friendship. I love Julie’s observation about their attempts to become popular, “Just because you are next to a tomato doesn’t make you a tomato.”

The Lost Children by Carolyn Cohagan. Middle Reader. Tend to agree with Kirkus Reviews that this is rough with missing transitions, but also has a lot of promise. The opening line is great, “ Josephine Russing owned 387 pairs of gloves.” The ending is contrived and confusing. But the heroine is brave and loyal and those are good things. 

The Immortal Fire by Anne Ursu. Middle Reader. Snarky and tongue in cheek narration make this romping adventure to save the world from mythical creatures gone bad pretty enjoyable. Similar to Percy Jackson’s books but with a MUCH more jaded view of the Greek gods who are depicted as a bunch of spoiled brats. Strong teen characters, a little confusing about who is supposed to be the lead character. Both Charlotte and cousin Zee (Zachary) –aged 13, eighth graders--at times feel they are responsible for what appears to be the impending destruction of the world or the end of humanity—or both.

Hidden Moon

Second in the "Inspector O" series by pseudonymous author James Church, we are once again immersed in the Kafka-esque unreality of life in North Korea. A bank robbery--perhaps the first ever in the city of Pyongyang--leaves both O and his new boss Min guessing whether anyone really wants it solved. Everytime O pursues a clue, bodies disappear from the morgue, doors of ministries are shut in his face, suspects turn up dead or disappear. Then he starts disappearing. For days at a time he is taken and questioned in a dark room and beaten when the interrogators don't like the answers. Is this supposed to dissuade him from solving the robbery or "encourage" him to speed up his investigation. As with the first book, there is rampant mistrust and suspicion between government agencies and between representatives of government agencies and the rest of the populace. This book continues the amazing insights into a very secretive country that began with A Corpse in the Koryo. And Inspector O picks up where he left off in educating the reader about the particular qualities of wood--"there's a certain smugness to walnut that you can feel," whereas "acacia knew how to mind its own business and let a person think," chestnut is "very self-possessed wood," while persimmon is "very complicated. Difficult to understand." Who knew?! Thanks Anne for the loan!

Corpse in the Koryo

North Korean police Inspector O is in the unlovely position of being asked to investigate events that no one really wants the answers to. Much like Sonchai Jitpleecheep in Jon Burdett's books, or Shan Tao Yun in Eliot Pattison's series, there is danger is looking too closely when other government agencies want to keep things hidden. The book moves us back and forth between the interview room where Inspector O is being interrogated by an  intelligence agent from the West and the portrayal of the events he is recalling. In the cat and mouse game, it is never entirely clear who is on his side and who is manipulating him for their own benefit. We learn relatively early that his boss has died as has another government official of interest to his interrogator, so Inspector O seems freed to reveal what he knows. But he has been cagey so long, it's hard to stop. He has also not given up altogether on his country, in spite of the terrible abuses of power and rampant corruption. Although orthodox religion is never mentioned as a means of coping as it is with Buddhist protagonist Jitpleecheep, Inspector O does seem to rely on a connection with nature--specifically wood--instilled by his grandfather, to ground him when all else falls apart. I plan on reading the sequels, especially if I can entice my friend Anne--who turned me on to this book--to loan me her copies :-)

The Cobra

Frederick Forsyth burst onto the espionage and thriller scene with The Day of the Jackal in the early 70's and has consistently produced primarily clandestine operations best sellers in the ensuing years. The Cobra is his newest and, I found, somewhat disappointing novel. But then, perhaps that's the point. The writing, the details, the plot are not disappointing--just the outcome. There is no happy ending here. If the president of the United States gave you unlimited power and a virtually unlimited budget, could you stop the traffic in cocaine? That's the question posed to retired CIA operative, Paul Devereux, who was nicknamed The Cobra for his less than diplomatic dealings with people. After careful study, he agrees that he could, and through careful preparation, he proceeds to disrupt the flow of cocaine and turn the enemy inward to consume itself. But innocent people do die as the gangs begin to war with one another in response to diminishing drug supplies and strategically placed disinformation. And the United States would rather that kind of thing happened somewhere else, so Devereux is called off before the cocaine industry can completely self-destruct. It's fascinating to watch the man's mind work its way through what would be required. He does his research and keeps you reading as the machinations of his plan are revealed. The ending is probably realistic, even if the premise of the story stretches credibility--but I still wish it had turned out differently.

Bury Your Dead

The most recent of Louise Penny's "Inspector Gamache" series shows her in fine form and Inspector Gamache at a low point. We catch up with him in Quebec City just as winter Carnaval is getting underway. You can feel the sub-zero temperatures reaching right down to your bones. He has come to stay with his former chief and mentor, while he ostensibly does some early historical research at a local English library. But the reality is that he is recovering from a Surete operation that went wrong in ways Gamache feels responsible for...we only gradually learn the outlines of that story. Meanwhile, Jean Guy, also recovering from physical wounds, is sent by Gamache to Three Pines to re-open the previous case (The Brutal Telling ). Three Pines bistro and B & B owner Gabri sends daily letters to Gamache asking this vexing question, if his partner Olivier had really killed the old man in the cabin, why would he move the body where it could be found. Gamache, too, has wrestled with this inconsistency since sending Olivier to prison. Meanwhile, in Quebec City, the body of a well-known local figure is found in the basement of the Literary and Historical society where Gamache has been researching, and he is asked by the staff and by the local police to lend a hand. We begin to see the dimensions of a long-standing animosity between the English and the French in this tale, as it colors everything about how the case is being handled and publicized. Penny does a masterful job of revealing the three stories in parallel and developing the relationships between her characters with even more richness, so that I can hardly wait to see what will come next. Having discovered Penny when she was already four novels into her series, I could indulge myself on a regular basis; not sure how I will endure having to wait for her to actually write another book.

Grave Surprise

Although I have friends who really like the Sookie Stackhouse series ( the basis of the "True Blood" TV series I think) by Charlaine Harris, I haven't read them, but since I was familiar with her name, I grabbed this audiobook from another series of hers. The protagonist, Harper Connelly, was struck by lightning as a teen and has, ever since, been able to "read" the dead. That is, when in proximity to a dead body, she knows who it is (was) and what killed him/her. She is a "consultant" of sorts, often brought in to find the missing or known dead. Accompanied by her brother and manager, Tolivar Lang, she is now in Memphis to do a demonstration of her abilities for a college class on the paranormal. While "reading" a very old graveyard, she encounters a new body; in fact, it is the body of a young girl she was brought to Nashville to search for the previous year and never found. Needless to say, that connection places Harper and her brother high on the police's list of persons of interest. The premise behind this particular protagonist's talents are somewhat unusual and the aftereffects of her experience and subsequent dealings with people's skepticism are dealt with matter of factly, although it is clear what an emotional price she pays. Competently written with well-developed characters and setting, I would definitely seek out more of this series to find out how Harper and Tolivar are getting along.

Gone Tomorrow

This installment in Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series precedes the one I just read and wrote about, 61 Hours, and so I grabbed it off the sale table in Borders while in San Diego. Reacher's old anti-terrorism training kicks in while riding the subway in New York in the wee hours of the morning. A woman is clutching a bag, mumbling to herself and wearing a large down jacket even though it is the height of summer. She meets all the criteria for a suicide bomber. Unsure what to do, Reacher approaches and tries to talk to her, tells her he's a cop, and she pulls out--not a detonator switch but a loaded gun with which she proceeds to shoot herself. In the ensuing investigation, a lot of people--including federal types and some private muscle--want to rule the whole thing a suicide and most especially want Reacher to walk away. But too many anomalies are bugging Reacher about this case and he keeps digging, getting in way over his head with international terrorists and federal agents all trying to silence him. He uses astute deduction to track down the major players, and all his military training to try and stay alive.  I wouldn't hesitate to recommend these books as well written with good character and setting development and plots that will keep you guessing til the very end.

Necromancer

What's absolutely astounding about these books by Michael Scott is that nearly 400 pages covers only a couple days and you just can't believe that so much can happen in such a short time. Of course it helps that a LOT of things are going on simultaneously in other realms...This is the 4th in the series "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel" and the fate of the world as we know it is growing more dire by the hour. Evil forces appear to be getting the upper hand if for no other reason than Flamel has lost the diary pages that would allow him to remain immortal, and he is losing power as old age arrives at an accelerated pace--after all, he is several hundred years old. Twins Josh and Sophie try to go home again after the adventures of the first three novels, but it is not to be. Scathatch is missing as is Joan of Arc and Dr. Dee is finding a way to capitalize on Josh's mistrust of Flamel and bend Josh's growing powers to his dark ends. The action is non-stop, and the ending will leave you groaning for resolution--maybe in the next volume, The Warlock. Historical and mythological figures rub shoulders in these incredibly complicated casts of characters (think Machiavelli, Billy the Kid, the god Mars, and Prometheus just to name a few). You must read the previous books to have any idea what is going on here, but it will be an enjoyable task: The Alchemyst, The Magician, and The Sorceress.

Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code

I actually spent part of my Powell's holiday gift on this one because I was in the mood for something really entertaining and yet well-written. Eoin Colfer's protagonist, Artemis Fowl, is a teenage master criminal. Or at least he was in the two previous books (Artemis Fowl and AF: The Arctic Incident). But now that they fairies have helped rescue his father and brought him back to life in more ways than one, Fowl senior is rethinking his previous life of crime and wants his son to follow him in doing good deeds. Artemis wants to score just one more really BIG deal so there will be cushion in the family bank account before he goes straight, however. For once, both Artemis and his loyal bodyguard are outsmarted and outflanked. As they meet the highly shady business mogul, Jon Spiro, to negotiate the sale of a miniature supercomputer Artemis built using stolen fairy technology, Butler is mortally wounded and Spiro steals the computer. Fast thinking and a major dose of fairy magic might be able to save Butler, but the C-Cube computer in the wrong hands will concentrate power in ways too terrible to contemplate AND probably reveal the hidden world of the fairies. The LEPrecon want the computer and all Artemis' memories of the fairy world destroyed in exchange for helping Artemis save his friend--a high price to pay. And it's going to take the genius of Fowl plus the talents of fairies, dwarves and centaurs to pull off this heist.

Reading (and listening to) Elizabeth Peters

If you haven't read Peter's series starring archaeologists Amelia Peabody Emerson and husband Radcliff Emerson, you've missed a treat. There are nearly twenty of them and they are not only wildly entertaining adventure stories, but full of great factual information since Peters is a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. Set in Victorian era England and Egypt, you can follow them through from the initial meeting of Emerson and Peabody (Crocodile on the Sandbank) to their son being grown, married and with children of his own--well worth the effort to read them in order. Cool website with chronological listing of the series and character backgrounds is here.  Along with great settings, character development is wonderful--they are all extraordinarily feisty and endearing along with supplementary characters Ramses, "master criminal" Sethos, Evelyn & Walter Emerson, Gargery the butler, adopted daughter Nefret, and Bastet (a cat) typically rounding out the cast. The most recently consumed was Guardian of the Horizon (several published since this one) which involves an emissary from the Lost Oasis that was Nefret's home until she was rescued by the Emersons and adopted as their daughter. Now they are going back, ostensibly on another errand of mercy to help Tarek, the ruler of this secret place. But it is a trap and they will need to use all their tricks and talents to make good their escape. I really also enjoy listening to these books on CD as Barbara Rosenblatt does such an outstanding job with the voices of the character that you really forget it is only one person speaking all the dialog. I also recently dipped back into the Vicky Bliss series (The Laughter of Dead Kings) by Peters, with another indomitable female--an art historian-- as the .protagonist. These adventures are set in contemporary times, taking place largely in Europe and occasionally in Egypt. An overview of the series is provided in Wikipedia.

The Titian Committee

This is one of Iain Pear's art theft mysteries featuring Flavia de Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad and Jonathan Argyll, art dealer. A member of the Titian Committee, the only woman, is murdered in a public garden in Venice. Although murder is normally outside the realm of the Art Theft Squad, but the future of the department is at risk in the next budget cycle so Flavia's boss sends her help out in any way she can--hopefully without ruffling any feathers. That's pretty much impossible as the investigating detective takes umbrage at everything, especially Flavia being involved with his murder investigation. He foists her off by sending her to re-interview the other members of the committee. The committee is state sponsored and charged with locating, inventorying and authenticating all the works of the great painter Titian. Jonathan is supposed to be buying a small collection of relatively unimportant paintings from a Venetian marchesa, except that now her companion/secretary is asking him to get the works out of the country illegally instead of paying the relevant taxes and Jonathan has balked. Then the collection is apparently stolen and to top it off, the dead woman appears to have been very interested in one of the portraits in the collection. When two more members of the committee are dispatched, along with a former member, things go way beyond the local police force's convenient explanation of a mugging gone wrong. Working on separate lines of inquiry, Jonathan and Flavia uncover all the pieces that finally allow the puzzle to be solved. Once again Pears brings his extensive expertise on art and history together in a well-plotted tale that will keep you guessing til the end. See related review: "Italian Mysteries." I also highly recommend his other historical novels, such as Stone's Fall and An Instance of the Fingerpost.

The Graveyard Book

I have been wanting to read this YA book by Neil Gaiman for quite some time so it also went into the Powell's basket last weekend when I was on a sponsored shopping spree. A toddler is awakened by a noise downstairs and so clambers out of his crib, down the stairs, through the open front door, and up the hill to an historic graveyard. The cause of his disturbance is a murderer dispatching his parents and older sister and who is now hunting for him. As the child wanders into the locked graveyard he begins to see and hear things--ghosts--although he doesn't know that. Still the long dead take pity on the child and just as they are trying to decide what to do, the newly dead spirits of his parents appear and beseech them to protect the boy from the man seeking to kill him. The guardian Silas, neither dead nor alive, distracts the killer who has followed his keen sense of smell in pursuit of his prey and the dead meanwhile vote to let the Owens couple take the child on. Silas agrees to be the child's guardian until he is no longer needed for he can move back and forth between the world of the dead and that of the living in order to meet the boy's needs for food and clothing. And so begins the most unorthodox upbringing of Nobody Owens, who lives almost exclusively with the dead until he becomes a young man and decides he wants to go to school. In defending the victimized younger children at school, he becomes noticed and, as Silas has said many times, danger is waiting. The hunter befriends a friend of Bod's (short for Nobody) and finds where he has been hiding all these years. He is accompanied by other members of the Convocation who sanctioned the murder of Bod's family all those years ago. But Bod has learned some tricks that he can use to defend himself and the graveyard from these evil men, thus eliminating the imminent threat. Silas decides it is time for Bod to make his own life and sends him off to create his own adventures. This is a very endearing story that gives a new meaning to the phrase, "it takes a village to raise a child."

61 Hours

I haven't picked up a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child for quite some time but I bought this at Powell's a few days ago on a shopping spree fueled by a gift card from sis and brother-in-law Joan and Mickey. I won't try to explain Jack Reacher in detail if you haven't met him, but briefly he is ex-military, managed an elite unit of the military police and now lives an itinerant life free of belongings and personal attachments. He hitches a ride on a tour bus carrying a couple dozen elderly folk towards Mt. Rushmore on a Dakota's winter day when a patch of ice changes course for him. The bus is wrecked and the passenger's all become stranded in the small town of Bolton, SD, by a blizzard. The deputy sheriff first interrogates Reacher and then begins to use him in helping the town deal with protection of their only witness to a drug buy. She is a retired Oxford and Yale university librarian and Reacher befriends her as he joins in trying to protect her from a hit contracted by Mexican drug king pin, Plato.  The drug dealers are based at an abandoned Air Force facility outside of town and they are selling huge quantities of methamphetamine, so it is assumed that there must be some subterranean facilities that are being used as a lab. But then the gang up and leaves town, and an examination of the site reveals only a mysteriously locked small stone building. Reacher contacts his successor back in Virginia  to gather intel and begins a conversation he may want to pursue after this is all over. The brutal cold becomes a character in its own right and threatens to kill Reacher if someone else doesn't get there first. No one is to be trusted in this town because big money and very scarey people are calling the shots from Mexico. Although there's a hint early on that something is not as it seems, the ending will still surprise most readers. This is a tightly crafted and suspenseful tale well worth reading whether or not you are familiar with the series.

Resolution

This is the 2nd in a series by Robert Parker set in the Old West. I actually listened to the first--Appaloosa-- some months back on audiotape and was so taken with the quintessentially laconic dialog that I jumped at the chance to buy this off the sale table at B & N over Thanksgiving.  The books are wonderful to read, but also wonderful to hear read well, so take your choice. With Appaloosa, you can also watch the movie with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson if you want. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have been providing itinerant law man services for several years now, riding together and backing up one another when push comes to shove. Everett has made the ultimate sacrifice in Appaloosa ( a small town) to keep his friend Everett from having to break the law over his new lady friend's infidelity. Everett calls out the interloper, there is a gunfight that Everett wins, and he leaves town because he has broken the law and Virgil would feel honor bound to uphold it and take Everett in. Everett has moved on to the even tinier town of Resolution which has several saloons, but no mayor, town council or marshal. He signs on to be the peacekeeper in one of these saloons, run by a man named Wolfson, who not only has designs to take over the saloon across the street, but also the whole town and surrounding ranches, mines, lumber mill, etc. Just as things are starting to heat up, with competing hired guns brought in by the mine owner, Virgil surfaces with his own problems--he shot a man who left town with Vigil's lady friend Allie and then abandoned her in Texas. This provides the fodder for some thought-provoking conversations about the meaning of the law, justice, and friendship. Meanwhile. Cole and Hitch align themselves with two of the hired guns, Cato and Rose, when Wolfson decides they are not stepping smartly enough in response to his time line for taking over the town. All comes out as it should and Cole and Hitch head off to Texas to find Vigils's wayward woman. As with all Parker's books, the dialog establishes the characters and defines the relationships--which is true of life also if people only realized that.