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.