Wool Omnibus

Previously self-published e-books Wool, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4, and Wool 5, make up this 500+ page compilation by author Hugh Howey. It is no small undertaking to read; however, it was well worth it. After piddling slowly through the first book (originally a 40 page short story), I got a notice from the library that it was due and could not be renewed, so I read all day yesterday until 2:30 this morning to finish. In a post apocalyptic future, several thousand people are living in a cement silo that bores nearly 150 stories into the ground. Goods and information and bodies are all moved via a single spiral staircase. The various levels contain a handful of administrative offices (mayor, sheriff, deputies), a few cafeterias, clinics/nurseries, hydroponic farms, animal pens, fabrication facilities, IT, and in the lowest levels is "Mechanical" where are found the oil well, the mines, the generator, the pumps, and the people who maintain them. We open the story with a ritualized death by Cleaning. No one is allowed to say anything about the outside--wondering about it or voicing a desire to go there. The only view of the bleak and utterly desolate remains of earth (presumably) come from sensors that extend above the ground. Large screens on the top floor of the silo show this view in the cafeteria, and in the holding cell of the jail. Whenever someone is convicted of any crime, they are given wool pads, a suit to protect them from the toxic air, sent outside to clean the sensor lenses. In living memory, no one has ever returned from this task. the view of the sere brown hills, and the skeletal city remains in the distance is punctuated by the decomposing bodies of those sent out to clean. When a popular and long-standing sheriff volunteers to go "out," the Mayor and deputy sheriff seek a mechanic from the "down-deep" to replace him. Reluctant new sheriff Juliette is obsessed with finding out why Sheriff Holston voluntarily went outside to his death. Since it turns out that IT, not the popularly elected Mayor has secretly been running the whole show in the silo, they quickly determine that Juliette is a menace and must die. Before she is sentenced to clean, however, she figures out that IT has been engineering the deaths of people and through close friends in Mechanical she gets a suit that does not fail and walks out of view over the hills where she discovers another silo. This is a well-developed plot with interesting characters, and my only niggling complaint is that we are supposed to believe that it gets colder the further down you bore into the earth--probably not! Otherwise, the science seems realistic and the resolution is satisfying. Other post-apocalyptic novels I have enjoyed include The Postman (Brin), Into the Forest (Hegland), and A Gift Upon the Shore (Wren)--almost all set in the Pacific Northwest. Now there is something to ponder.

The Circle

I was intrigued by the NYT book review as well as a post on the Powell's Bookstore newsletter; here is another review from the NY Review of Books by Margaret Atwood.  This only slightly futuristic novel by Dave Eggers is--or should be--extremely unsettling. Given recent events surrounding the revelations of NSA electronic snooping, there are apparently still some powerful voices that can make themselves heard around intrusions on privacy. But I suspect that, as in this book, there are those who would say, "what's all the fuss?" Sick and tired of the dead-end job at the utility company, which was the only work she could find after college, Mae has called upon former roommate Annie--a few years older and now working for one of the hottest hi-tech companies in the world, The Circle. The Circle's founder came up with online services that simplified people's lives by consolidating all the various online activities in which they engaged and providing a single identity. No more lists of passwords to remember, now there is a single personal profile, "TruYou," which links you to shopping, financial services, health care, and more. But they are just getting started. And once Mae has drunk the kool-aid, she becomes their biggest advocate and their public face, a position she finds intoxicating--millions of viewers (for in the end she wears a camera around her neck nearly 24 x 7) who hang on her every word and product endorsement. She alienates her ex-boyfriend and her parents to the point where they cut off contact, but she rationalizes this by saying they are just not understanding the immense power and benefit of these social networking tools which make everyone's life fully knowable. Even Annie eventually opts out in her own way. There are so many ominous and somewhat obvious patterns that send up red flags, for example, the fact that politicians who refuse to become "transparent" always seem to end up being publicly disgraced by the revelation of some illegal or immoral online activity. There is a mystery man at the Circle Mae hooks up with for sex, but in spite of all the discovery tools at her command, she is unable to identify him. I was surprised to find out who he was, but perhaps you won't be. I kept reading 'til the end because I kept hoping Mae would come to her senses. Let me cut to the chase--she doesn't.

The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I

In spite of the rave reviews this series has garnered, I was not impressed. I would never peg myself as a Stephen King fan to start with, but I did like "The Green Mile" and the whole idea of a futuristic, sci-fi western intrigued me, so I gave it a shot. I read the newly revised edition of the first in a series of seven "Dark Tower" books. The present world the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, inhabits is a bleak one of deterioration, mutation, and despair. But when he was a boy, there was a civilization that sounds a bit Arthurian. He lived in a stone palace that was the center of culture. His father, also a gunslinger, was the ostensible ruler. Becoming a gunslinger bears similarity to becoming a knight--hard training under hard-handed masters. But gunslingers are esteemed in that world, just as knights were. Then the "world moved on" and the gunslinger is now on a quest to find "the man in black," who seems to be a sorcerer of some kind; for example, he can enchant a whole town into seeing the gunslinger as an evil spirit, so that he is forced to kill the entire population in self-defense. They sounded a miserable lot anyway, but YUCK. Then he finds a young boy in a deserted way station in the desert--no doubt another trap set by the man in black. And the gunslinger must betray this boy to his death in order to catch the man in black. It is all very grim, a little murky as to storyline, and, to my taste, somewhat boring. Don't think I will pursue the other 6 books in the series.

Cinder

It would be bad enough losing your shoe at the ball, but to lose your whole foot!--Now that would be seriously problematic. Marissa Meyer has written a futuristic version of Cinderella with a cyborg (human being augmented by mechanical/electrical parts) as her heroine, Linh Cinder of New Beijing. Set in a future after World War IV, the world has reassembled into 6 political units, with the Eastern Commonwealth being one of them. Cinder lives here with a nasty step-mother, two step-sisters, Pearl and Peony. Only Peony and the family droid, Iko, seem to have any affection for Cinder. Step-mother Adri blames Cinder for the death of her husband, who insisted they adopt Cinder after her life-saving surgery. But cyborgs are treated as 2nd class citizens on Earth, and in spite of Cinder's uncanny skills repairing anything mechanical or electrical--skills that provide the family's only income--Adri and Pearl are embarrassed about being associated with Cinder. Plans are underway to attend the annual palace ball when Peony contracts the plague that has been devastating the earth's population in recent years.  Cinder gets the blame for that as well, and Adri "volunteers" Cinder to be a subject for unfailingly fatal research on antidotes for the plague. But Cinder does NOT die, and a whole new set of problems now present themselves. Of course the parallel storyline is that the somewhat unorthodox Prince Kai has personally brought his royal droid to Cinder for repairs, claiming it is a matter of national security. The emperor has contracted the plague and if he dies, Kai will become Emperor. The Queen of Luna would very much like to get a foothold on earth through a marriage to Kai, but nobody on earth really wants that to happen. Then she offers a cure for the plague--the day after the Emperor dies. There is clearly a sequel(s) in the works, as Cinder warns Prince Kai of an imminent threat to his life, but forfeits her own freedom, and possibly her life, in the process.

The Paris Architect

Author Charles Belfoure is a real live architect so his perspective on German-occupied Paris during the early 1940's reflects his passion for the buildings and the structure of the city itself. Lucien, a struggling architect who sat out France's defense at the Maginot Line, which the Germans adroitly circumvented, does not consider himself to be a brave man or a fool. And only one or the other would choose to have anything to do with Jews at this point in time when the Gestapo are relentlessly hunting them down and shooting anyone who even lives in the same building as a Jew. When Manet, an aristocrat turned industrialist, comes to Lucien asking him to devise a hiding place that can't be found by the Gestapo, Lucien turns him down flat.  Manet, however, promises not only a sizable sum of money, but the opportunity to build his next big factory, which at this time in the war, would be providing armaments for the Germans. Lucien is a modernist, a fan of Gropius and the Bauhaus movement, hence much reviled in a city that reveres classic architecture. He agrees more out of a desire to get his big break and do something that will demonstrate his talent, although the money does allow him to buy scarce food on the black market. Swearing each time that it will be his last, Lucien continues to build cleverly disguised hiding places, outwitting the Gestapo, and so becoming their target. With his marriage already on the rocks, Lucien's wife leaves him, accusing him of being a collaborator--an architect who has sold his soul to the devil. His denial and revelation that he has been helping hide Jews only adds to her scorn. Even Lucien's beautiful mistress, Adele, has abandoned him in favor of a powerful member of the Gestapo who can get scarce fabrics to supply her fashion design business. Because of Lucien's activities, a Catholic priest who has been aiding Jewish children, brings a boy to him, ostensibly for a short time, but the priest is captured and disappears forever into Gestapo headquarters.  Lucien finds he likes being a surrogate father for Pierre. Bette, Adele's second in command, it turns out, is also hiding Jewish children, and when Lucien designs a hiding place in her apartment that saves their lives, she falls fully in love with him. As the noose draws tighter, Lucien's unlikely friendship with a German engineer buys him the resources to escape across the Swiss border with Bette and the 3 children. I thought the writing at times was a bit clunky, and the ending way too tidy, although goodness knows there was plenty of torture and violence prior to this. The book is most interesting for its portrayal of neighbor turning against neighbor when fear is expertly manipulated. There is a map in the front material so you can follow the action through the streets of Paris.

The Cuckoo's Calling

Robert Galbraith--apparently a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling--has written a private eye story with a somewhat curmudgeonly protagonist, Cormoran Strike. Cormoran is the illegitimate son of a famous rock star, for all the good it's done him. His mother died of a drug overdose and Cormoran isn't entirely sure it was accidental as ruled at the inquest. That might fuel his willingness to take on re-investigating the apparent suicide of mixed race beauty and super-model, Lula Landry, known as Cuckoo by one of her closest friends. Lula's brother, John Bristow (Lula was adopted into a wealthy family as a baby), hires Strike, ostensibly because he believes Lula was murdered. Strike is a veteran of the Afghan wars where he lost a leg. And now he has had a royal bust-up with on-again, off-again girlfriend, Charlotte, and is living on a camp cot in his rather dismal office. When a temporary receptionist shows up on Monday morning, Strike tries to send her away, but Robin has always secretly harbored a wish to be a PI and she won't leave, even though her fiancé is not happy about this assignment.
Strike sets out to interview anyone who knew Lula, which is often harder than it should be as people are hard to find or reluctant to talk. When one of Lula's stranger companions, a down and out young woman Lula once met in drug rehab, is found drowned in the Thames, Strike is more convinced than ever that Lula was murdered and now he has a good idea who the killer is. But convincing the police to take action before another murder occurs, especially after they have already ruled this a suicide, is an uphill battle, and Strike finally resorts to making himself the bait in a deadly game of cat and mouse. This is a sometimes slow moving book, and if you are expecting something like Harry Potter, you will surely be disappointed. But the characters are complex and competently drawn. The writing is visual and authentic and will certainly satisfy lovers of the genre who come with no preconceptions.

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Quite unlike me to read two non-fiction books in a row, but this book by Scott Anderson received excellent reviews, including in the NYT Sunday Book Review. It is a fascinating story about four players in the Middle Eastern theatre of WWI, although mostly focused on T.E. Lawrence. The others were: the American  William Yale (yes THAT Yale family) who was manipulating events to get oil concessions for Standard Oil; Aaron Aaronsohn, a Jewish agronomist, who occasionally worked for the Turkish government, but whose driving goal was a homeland for the Jews--to which end he set up a Jewish spy ring informing the British; and Kurt Prüfer, German spymaster. Lawrence is a particularly complex character and yet seemingly the only one of the four who had any significant degree of understanding of and empathy for the native peoples of the region. The countries involved in this war, and those who made the big decisions, are shown as largely either clueless, incompetent, egomaniacal, racist, classist, self-serving or all of the above. Working for British intelligence services in Cairo, Lawrence repeatedly tried to guide war efforts to maximize on resources on the ground, and minimize losses. He was continually ignored. Gallipoli is one astounding example of total and continuing military incompetence that cost nearly half a million lives. Finally Lawrence began ignoring orders more blatantly, revealing secret information to his Arab allies about the Entente's multiple acts of deceit. He worked with the Arab approach to fighting to eventually become one of the most devastating destructive forces against the Ottoman Empire and the Central Powers in that part of the world. By many of the higher ups in the British military and government, however, Lawrence was never seen as more than an insubordinate meddler. 

I actually had to return the book or face a fine but will recheck it to finish the last few chapters I missed. Whether or not you are a history buff, this book is worth reading to increase one's understanding of how the rest of the world (Europe, England, Russia, the U.S.) has been, for the last 100 years, mucking around with the Middle East . No wonder they distrust, dislike, and even hate us; we have never acted in their interest, only for our own. I consider it a gross oversight on Anderson's part not to have had any discussion of Gertrude Bell, who was also a major player in the Middle East around this time, and had dealings with Lawrence.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

David Quammen is a fine science writer and, in this book, has done absolutely heroic feats of research in order to discuss zoonotic diseases and the possibility of the next big outbreak or pandemic. Opportunity is the key. Many viruses and bacteria have evolved to live in their animal hosts without harm or mortal danger, but when humans push into the environments where these hosts live, they become opportunistic new hosts and the consequences are often not so benign.
Quammen provides both historical and current facts about many of the major outbreaks we have seen and heard so much about in the media (SARS, bird flu, etc). He interviews experts and often accompanies them into essentially "hot zones" where outbreaks are current or have recently occurred. For six years he traveled from Australia to China, to India, to Bangladesh, to many parts of Africa--all to talk to the people in the field trying to find out where these potential killers live and how they are passed to humans. In only one instance does this book, in my opinion, falter. He tells a possible but totally fictionalized tale about one fisherman to speculate on how the AIDS virus moved from remote African villages to more populous towns. What is most astounding in this section on HIV/AIDS is the current theory that the virus spread to pandemic levels because of well-intentioned, but unsanitary innoculation campaigns in the early to mid-1900's. Really a fascinating book and worth the read.

End Games

Anyone who watched the 3-episode BBC production of "Zen" starring Rufus Sewell will know why I felt compelled to grab this book from the shelf in a used book store. English born author Michael Dibdin wrote 11 novels starring Venetian detective Aurelio Zen and this was his last, published posthumously, as Dibdin died in 2007 in Seattle. Aurelio is that rare breed of detective who has not been corrupted by the system and seeks to find the guilty party, regardless of where it leads. His lack of political survival instinct means that, in this novel, he has been shunted off to serve as acting chief of police in the remote town of Calabria in southern Italy until the incumbent recovers from an accidental and self-imposed gunshot wound.
An American, who it turns out was actually born to a wealthy Calabrian family, is beheaded in gruesome fashion and the locals are keeping mute about what they know. Ostensibly an advance agent for a film company seeking a shooting locale, the dead man's murder was a mistake. The film company isn't really looking for good scenery but for buried treasure, and the deceased wasn't really the heir of the despised landowners. But everybody has something at stake and everyone is lying to Zen. He has to wade through distrust of the police, greed, and pure drug-fueled craziness to sort this one out.
The characters are superbly rendered, the setting is richly if unsentimentally placed at our feet, and the obstacles are all too believable. I feel inspired to revisit the BBC series and find the rest of the books to read.

Mink River

I won't pretend to be as talented as author Brian Doyle, but to give you a flavor of the book, I will alter my approach a bit. Lyrical. Tedious. Microscopic view. Unusual perspectives. Enticing. Provocative. Occasionally exhausting. Dense. Beautiful. Whimsical. Philosophical. Magical. Heartbreaking. Satisfying. Rich. Consume in small doses. Braided.
Characters primarily reflect either First Nations heritage (No Horses, Worried Man, Cedar, Maple Head) or Irish (Owen, Declan, Grace, Red Hugh). A coastal town in the Pacific Northwest where fishing and logging are in rapid decline. Every being has a story, including Moses the crow, whose caretaker, a nun, dies early on. Every being tells their own story, including the river. People are compassionate, evil, wise, a little mad, foolish--but ultimately engaging each and every one. The Department of Public Works is run by Cedar and Worried Man who have taken the department's role to new heights--now being concerned with the well-being of all people and places in the town. There are simply too many stories that weave in and out to try and summarize. So read it for yourself.

We have Always Lived in the Castle

Some time back, some person put arsenic in the sugar bowl at dinner and now the whole family is dead except for Uncle Julian, an invalid, who eats very little sugar; Constance, who eats no sugar; and Mary Katherine (aka Merricat), who was sent to her room without supper for misbehaving that fateful night. Constance was the one who was tried for the multiple murders, but she was not convicted. Now the three of them continue to live in the family home, shut away from the resentful and mean-spirited villagers except for Merricat's twice weekly trip to the grocery store. The other wealthy families--for they had money and live in a mansion--occasionally come to call, but otherwise, they are totally isolated. When Cousin Charles shows up, the balance--such as it is--is upset and things begin to go quickly awry. A fire is started by someone in the house, then the fire department puts it out. But the villagers take the opportunity to rampage through the house breaking everything they find. Uncle Julian dies of a heart attack in the melee. Only Constance and Merricat are left. What are they to do?  One of the survivors is the poisoner, but the two nevertheless vow to go on. A totally strange book by Shirley Jackson, who also wrote The Haunting of Hill House. Apparently this has also been performed on stage.

The Bookman's Tale

This novel by Charlie Lovett starts with a mystery and escalates into a thriller. Antiquarian book dealer Peter Byerly has recently lost his beloved wife Amanda to brain cancer. With her, it also feels he has lost his interest in everything else. The book alternates between three time periods and perspectives: the early history of a particular book, the Pandosto, which runs from Shakespeare's time up until present day England; the mid-1980's when Peter met Amanda at college and their subsequent five years of marriage, mostly in America; and present day (mid-1990's) in England. Peter wanders into a used book store and finds tucked into a book a watercolor painting that so eerily resembles his dead wife, he becomes obsessed with finding out who painted it and who the subject of the painting was. In the process he hooks up with Victorian art expert, Liz, and starts to uncover an elaborate plot fueled by generations of enmity between the two families, the Gardners and the Aldersons. At the heart of this story is a book, Pandosto, with margin notes that, if genuine, could settle once and for all whether or not Shakespeare was the real author of all those famous plays. Well written with a great storyline and well-developed characters. A little bit of supernatural in the form of Amanda's ghost keeping an eye on Peter. Well worth the read, especially for those interested in book collecting, Shakespeare, or English literary history in general. A good amount of research went into making this historically accurate--up to a point--which is all summarized in the "Author's Note" at the end.

In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods

I did not finish this book by Matt Bell. I would characterize it as magical realism, not a favorite genre of mine to start with, but again I was enticed by glowing reviews. There is too much despair, too little storyline for me here. The description is well crafted. A man and a woman marry, move away from their family and friends to an isolated plot of land. He builds a house and they try to start a family. But time after time, she miscarries. Eventually, her ability to sing things into existence is put to full use as she creates a child. But he knows of the deception--that this being is not the result of their physical union and he begins to destroy the natural world around them while she places a threatening 2nd moon in the sky above. You can read more extended reviews in the New York Times, and at NPR, among others.

How the Light Gets In

After the ending of The Beautiful Mystery, it was ALL I could do not to turn to the last page and see how this installment of the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny was going to turn out. But I resisted.  And she kept me on the edge of my seat (figuratively speaking since I mostly read in bed before going to sleep) the entire time, uncertain as to whether Gamache would emerge victorious or go down in flames. The situation looks dire. Francoeur has dismantled the homicide division that Gamache worked for decades to build and has installed every ne'er do well he can round up from the Surete to undermine Gamache's credibility and effectiveness. Although there is a murder mystery that threads through the book, involving the death of the last of a world famous set of quintuplets, the real story here has to do with what evil plot Francoeur is hatching and why it involves destroying both Gamache and Jean-Guy. A former member of Gamache's team, Yvette Nichol, makes a reappearance, and Isabel Lacoste helps hold the whole thing together as Gamache pursues a deadly strategy of deception and double-cross with Francoeur and his minions.  For me, much of the tension came from the apparent contrast between Gamache's integrity and honesty, and how such a person could possibly go up against people who are incredibly dishonest and destructive.
As with previous installments, the town of Three Pines with the attendant cast of characters--including Rosa the duck--provides not only a compelling setting but its own distinctive emotional color as events unfold. There's not a wasted word, not a superfluous character, and this one kept me up nights, drawn on by the lovely prose, the characters that you want to meet on the street, and the compulsion to find out what is going on. If you haven't read the previous books in the series, do yourself a favor and start from the beginning rather than diving in with this one. When I finished, it made me want to go back and re-read the whole series!

Blackout

This author, Connie Willis, has won several prestigious science fiction awards (Hugo, Nebula). So, her bona fides, along with a positive reviews from several sources including this lengthy one in the Washington Post, and an intriguing story line, persuaded me to dive into this incredibly overlong (500 pages) and tedious book. I have never worked so hard to get to such a disappointing ending. We begin in the year 2060, in Oxford, England, when time travel has been perfected and historians routinely travel back to various periods of time to make observations and do their research more directly than is possible through today's documentary methods. But we already have hints that things are starting to go awry as the schedules for several people are being re-arranged at the last minute, creating all sorts of problems with getting the historians properly prepared with background information, appropriate costuming, and even the relevant language skills for their assignment. Three characters, Eileen, Polly, and Mike, all end up in various parts of WWII-era Britain (London in the Blitz, the rescue of soldiers from Dunkirk, the countryside evacuation of children) unable to get back to present time. They eventually manage to track down one another in hopes that the others have an effective "drop" to return to Oxford, but there the story ends. It turns out that All Clear, the sequel, is really just the second half of the present book. Based on this review from The Guardian, I am unlikely to pursue another trudge through overly detailed and not very interesting day to day meanderings in order to find out if they make it back. While I love sci-fi and historical novels, this one left me mostly bored and tired.

The Art Forger

Based on the actual--still unsolved-- theft of several famous paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, which in fact included several by Degas, this is a fictionalized and romanticized account of what happens when one of the Degas paintings (a fictitious one) resurfaces. Claire Roth is a talented painter who has made the all too common mistake of falling for her famous and married art teacher, Isaac Cullion. Three years ago, when he was having a "painter's block" she painted a picture for him to help him meet a deadline for a viewing by an agent from MoMA. The picture she painted, fortunately or unfortunately, became the keystone for their accepting his work for a special showing and was ultimately purchased by them; yet he refused to admit that he hadn't painted it. When Isaac dumped Claire, she tried to set the record straight and became persona non grata in the art world; now no one will touch her work. She has become labelled as "The Great Pretender." She works making custom reproductions for a company called Reproductions.com and is a certified Degas specialist. When the owner of a famous Boston gallery comes to her with an offer for her own show at his gallery if she will make a copy of the missing Degas from the Gardner heist, she is eventually persuaded by his claim that he will return the original to the museum itself. As she works with the painting, though, she comes to realize that it is not a real Degas but a clever forgery that had been hanging in the Gardner all these years. No one is going to want to hear that, any more than the experts at MoMA wanted to hear that they had been fooled into buying a painting by a graduate student instead of the well-know professor. We see what we want to see. Author B.A. Shapiro has done detailed research that will tell you the nitty gritty details of how to forge a painting if you have the talent, as well as the struggles facing unknown artists.

Crazy Enough

We went to see a Pink Martini concert here in Bend recently. There has been such a glut of tell-all memoirs about people's miserable lives in the last few years and I really have no interest in reading them; I am generally not a consumer of celebrity gossip and not interested in their private lives.  But when this woman, Storm Large, had the temerity to step into the giant shoes of China Forbes as the lead vocalist for Pink Martini and, according to bandleader Thomas Loudermilk, save their bacon by learning 10 songs in 5 languages in 6 days, AND to do a one-woman show about her life and then write a bookabout herself that won an Oregon book award, well.... I admit my curiosity was piqued. BTW, she was amazing and I was totally won over with her renditions of Pink Martini's songs and totally entertained with her sassy banter and torchy presentations of their Latin numbers.
But maybe you don't want to read this book. Sometimes you just want to maintain the illusion, and after reading this book, that just is not possible. While you have to admire the tenacity and guts and talent that it took to overcome the incredibly destructive -- both active and passive--parents she had, one sort of wishes one didn't know how she almost destroyed herself in the process. I am not sure I can ever hear her sing again without being reminded of all the pain behind it, although she absolutely soars above that when she sings. She has in every way lived up to her name, larger than life, leaving detritus in her stormy wake. She doesn't think well of us in the audience generally, and you can't really blame her, given the experiences she has had, but it does change things. That sharp edge to her banter just takes on a different significance. But do go see her sing. She is magnificent!

Alif the Unseen

G. Willow Wilson--graphic novelist and author of Seattle Times "Best Book of the Year" The Butterfly Mosque--has here turned her hand to an intriguing combination of dualing computer programmers and supernatural beings (jinn, demons, marid and others). Set in an unnamed City of an unnamed country in the Middle East, this is a world strictly structured and controlled by a royal family with powerful censors who monitor every communication. Alif, the cover name for a person who helps anyone trying to hide from the government censors--collectively known as "The Hand"--has generally been successful in keeping his clients a step ahead of trouble and out of jail. Then one day his life begins to unravel. The woman he has secretly loved, slept with and married--Intisar--has told him she is promised to another by her father, and wishes no further contact. As revenge, he develops a program so that she cannot find him online. But "The Hand" intercepts and turns the unique identifying algorithm against Alif's clients. Suddenly, Alif is on the run and everyone who knows him is in danger from the secret police as well. The wild ride that Alif and his long-time childhood friend, Dina, begin will involve seeking help from not-quite humans, imprisonment and torture, and finally full-blown revolution. This book is very timely given events in the Middle East. This book has been compared to works by Neal Stephenson (see Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash) or Philip Pullman (e.g., Golden Compass) and certainly the creation of detailed alternate worlds merits that. But it is unique in its focus on the world shaped by this particular culture and set of beliefs.

Isaac's Storm

This is one of Erik Larson's first books and when he said at his author's talk here in Bend on June 20 (2013) that it was his wife's favorites (she is is initial editor for all his work), I was even more intrigued to read it--having already bought it in preparation for his appearance here. Personally, I did not think it superseded the other two of his which I really liked, Devil in the White City or In the Garden of Beasts (see also my post on Thunderstruck ).  He does a good job of describing the hubris of men who were the initial movers and shakers of the national weather bureau and who believed, falsely as it turns out, that they already knew a lot about how hurricanes behaved. They also had political agendas which kept them from paying attention to those who did know how hurricanes behaved, the Cubans, and therefore ignored available warnings that this was a storm to be reckoned with. A lot of people died needlessly as a result. Although Isaac Cline was the chief of the Galveston station at the time the 1900 hurricane wiped out much of the city, and Larson does rely on Cline's memoirs and scientific papers, I think the reader gets a less compelling picture of Isaac than might be expected from the title of the book. As with his other books, Larson has done his research on the meteorology,  the history of the weather bureau and relevant events and personalities-- providing extensive documentation which is all relegated to notes at the end of the book;  he writes his story with the heart of a novelist so the reader is swept along with the tide of the oncoming storm.

The Book of Illusions

A very smart and well-read friend of mine, Bob Nye, said that Paul Auster was one of his favorite authors because he was able to capture dialogue so well. This came up as part of a ranging conversation about books we had been reading, favorite authors, etc. So I checked into this Auster guy and turns out he has written LOTS of books and that our local public library had lots of them on the shelf. The Book of Illusions is about the disappearance of a silent film comedian, Hector Mann, in the late 1920's and about the academic, who, in contemporary times, took on a critical review of the comedies Mann made. David had recently lost his wife and sons in an airplane crash and was pretty certain he was going to drink himself to death; then one late night, in a drunken stupor, he happened to see a snippet of one of Mann's films on TV and it made him laugh--something he had not done in months and that he thought he would never do again. Having come into insurance money from the deaths of his family members--he was already on leave from his college teaching job--he undertook to find all the silent films Hector Mann ever made and eventually wrote a book about them. Some months after the book's publication, he receives a note in the mail, ostensibly from the wife of the same Hector Mann who was presumed dead all these years. Is it a hoax? There are stories within stories throughout this novel and indeed Auster is a master craftsman at writing. You will never fault him on style or structure and his prose is very readable. But these characters didn't move me in the sense of coming alive or evoking my sympathy or walking off the page. I may give another of Auster's books a try. He is a critically acclaimed author, after all, and I certainly respect my friend's opinion, so I should give him a second chance...not sure which one it should be, though...any recommendations?

Something Red

In spite of rave reviews in a number of sources, this novel by Douglas Nicholas never captured me in the sense of really compelling me to come back and find out what was going to happen next or wanting to know more about the characters. Set in medieval England, we join a small band of travelers, Maeve (aka Molly), her granddaughter Nemain, a adopted apprentice Hob, and Maeve's lover and ex-soldier Jack. Maeve is a healer who is always welcome along the route as her herbs and concoctions can ease pains and cure ills. Jack is strong beyond his appearance. Hob is an orphan taken in from a monastery by this small group. They travel with whatever others they encounter on the road--pilgrims, merchants, etc., but now some horrible beast seems to be dogging their path, killing indiscriminately. Maeve and Nemain also have some witch like powers to see beyond what is right in front of them and they know they are being stalked but can't tell by what. Fear has now become their constant companion. Little do they realize they have themselves already become bewitched and that what appears at first to be an impregnable shelter from the threat without has instead become a trap holding them all captive for the beast who is already within it's walls.  In spite of my lukewarm introduction, however, it was well-written prose with an abundance of historical detail, and for those who like the supernatural, a pleasant enough read.

Dead Ever After

This is it folks, the last of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. As I have said before, I love the characters in these books and thought the HBO TV series ("True Blood") based on them was just a terrible misrepresentation of characters--at least based on the 2 or 3 I could stand to make myself watch. I have actually "read" all 13 of these books, but mostly via audiobooks, which I highly recommend since the reader has a great southern accent! In this episode, Sookie gets unmarried from vampire lover, Eric, at the insistence of his new boss, the King of Louisiana. Eric was promised by his maker to the Queen of Oklahoma as a consort and is apparently pretty angry that Sookie did not use her magic wish, granted by her faerie kin, to release him from this contract. Rather she raised business partner, boss, and long-time friend Sam from the dead when he was killed in a big showdown between rogue werewolves and the established pack that occurred at the end Deadlocked. There seem to be several creatures out to get Sookie, and if they can't get her by framing her for murder, they may take a more direct route. But Sookie's friends turn out in force to stand up for her in court,  help find the real murderer, and protect her from dark forces. Pretty satisfying ending to the series, although I hate to see them all go, just as I hated to see the end of the Shakespeare series :-(

City of Shadows

I picked up this book by Ariana Franklin, because I had been so taken with her medieval mysteries (see Mistress of the Art of Death and The Serpent's Tale) and was surprised to find this set in 1920's and early 30's Berlin. The "White Russians" have fled the Bolshevik revolution, the Communists and the National Socialists are in a no-holds-barred fight for the hearts and minds of the German populace that is being slammed by exponential inflation as the Weimar Republic staggers to its knees, and Jews are--as always--being blamed for everything. The criminals and thugs are prospering either through illegal activity or through gang violence, and yet people still long to believe in fairy tales, like the one about one of the Romanov children having escaped the slaughter of the czar's family. So when Esther Solomonova's boss, "Prince Nick," a corrupt nightclub owner, decides to rescue a woman from an asylum and pass her off as Anastasia, Esther is roped into the helping the young woman. Her objections to the fraud become secondary, however, when people around the fake czarina begin to die. Once again, we see how fear and complacency allow evil to blossom as Germany heads for the horrors of WWII and the purge of anyone non-Aryan, and non-conforming. Still, in spite of the grim historic situation, there is a bit of romance and a fairy tale ending to this one, so dive in and enjoy Franklin's rich attention to historic detail and character development. You'll need to suspend your disbelief a bit, but then we all do that every day, don't we?

Death of a Kingfisher

One of the more recent installments in the Hamish Macbeth series from M.C. Beaton (2012 publication) finds Hamish still up to his usual tricks of solving the crimes while trying to stay under the radar--his goal being to avoid promotion, which might result in having to leave his cozy little town of Lochdubh. The murders seem to be a bit more bizarre (an elevator chair shot through the ceiling of an old hunting lodge) and grisly (someone's head cut off with a chain saw) than usual, but there are the more typical dirty tricks by Hamish's nemesis Blair, like hiding key pieces of evidence, and all the colorful characters we have come to know like the Currie sisters, Elspeth, and Angus Macdonald. The trouble seems to start when the town of Braikie hires an ambitious tourist director to promote a scenic plot of land called Buchan's Wood, which she promptly renames "Fairy Glen", and the tourists begin to flood in. But somebody apparently doesn't like this turn of events and hangs the iconic kingfisher bird whose image had adorned the promotional brochure, and then sabotages a bridge in the glen, causing several tourists to be injured. Hamish is torn between his attraction to the attractive tourist director, Mary, and his suspicion that she might be involved. And then there are the two strange grandchildren of the first murder victim, Charles and Olivia Palfour, who admit they wanted the old woman dead, but don't seem to have had the skills to pull off the murder. I think these books are better listened to than read because the usual reader, Graeme Malcolm, does a wonderful job with the pronunciation of local names and dialect, conveying the flavor of the place with even greater flair. These really are the perfect audiobooks for a car trip--entertaining but not so engrossing that you can't pay attention to where you're going--and we have listened to a lot of them over the years (e.g. Death of a Maid).

Wasp Factory

This first novel by Ian Banks got so many rave reviews that I put myself on the wait list at the library to get it, instead of just putting it on a list of books I would read later. BUT after 60+ pages, I am not going to finish it, even though it has been touted as "one of the top 100 novels of the century" by The Independent (result of a British poll) and "Brilliant...irresistible...compelling" by the New York Times. It is clear early on that this is a first person narrative by a pretty disturbed person and once he/she described using a home-made flame thrower to set a bunch of wild rabbits on fire, I was pretty much done. Although my curiosity was piqued about why someone turned out this way, it just wasn't worth it to me to spend the time in this twisted world. I also don't like to read/watch things like "Dexter" which is hugely popular, or "The Wire" but that's just me. The world is full of misery. Guess I have enough demons of my own that I don't need to seek out and become acquainted with anyone else's. Mr. Banks has written numerous other books, about half in the science fiction genre, perhaps they are not all so macabre. Moreover, I am a subscriber to  Nancy Pearl's "Rule of 50" which frees me of having to finish books I don't like after 50 pages (minus one page for each year my age exceeds 50). Too many books, too little time.

Shadow of Night

This sequel to A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness was equally compelling if somewhat slower moving at times. Again, I could hardly bear to put the book down at night and was constantly trying to steal a few minutes whenever I could to read a few pages while waiting for appointments or in between tasks at home. This richness of detail obviously delights this history professor author and she describes the food, the clothing, the architecture, the bad dental hygiene and more of 16th century Europe so vividly that you can almost imagine yourself there. Diana has timewalked herself and Matthew back to 1590's England in search of the elusive manuscript, Ashmole 782, that they think might hold the secrets of the origins of current day creatures--vampires, witches, and daemons. They are also hoping to find witches who can school Diana in her newly unbound powers which contemporary witches seem to find threatening; Diana soon finds out why. She is one of a very rare breed of "weavers," witches who can create spells by weaving them from the threads of the world, not just being limited to following the spells already created. For centuries weavers have been revered, but also feared, and were eventually hounded nearly out of existence. Her father was one. In this book, both Diana and Matthew have the opportunity to reunite with their now dead fathers. Danger comes not just other creatures but from treacherous friends, relatives and political powers as Diana tries to shift from being a historian to being a participant in history. I can hardly wait for the 3rd installment in this trilogy.

A Discovery of Witches

I have my friend Betsy Friedman to thank for beating me about the head -- uh I mean persuading me to read this book. It's the first book I've read in a long time where I had to force myself to put it down at night and turn out the lights to go to sleep. Rich, interesting settings and characters, including a house that communicates its wishes with groans and slamming doors, hides secrets until they need to be revealed, and spontaneously adds rooms when it's expecting guests. Obviously it is about witches, but also about vampires and daemons and how they have and have not gotten along--for centuries.  Author Deborah Harkness is a history professor at USC and has created two characters also steeped in history. The main witch character, Diana Bishop, is a historian of science, specifically interested in those who pursued alchemy. She has fought her witchy heritage all her life, believing both that it played a significant role in the brutal murder of her parents when she was aged seven, and that she needed to prove to herself that she could achieve academic credibility without using magic. And she largely succeeded at not using magic, until one day she calls up an old alchemical manuscript  from the stacks in Oxford's Bodleian Library and unwittingly unleashes pent-up floods of political maneuvering among the three groups of non-human creatures. An unlikely protector appears in the form of Matthew Clairmont--physician, professor, and ancient vampire, who has lived hundreds of years of history.  Their relationship may be the catalyst for an all-out creature war, or even an evolutionary tipping point. It becomes apparent to one and all that history and magical forces have been leading to this union for a very long time and yet there are those who will stop at nothing to make sure they do not survive together. I can hardly wait to read the sequel, Shadow of Night.

The Gods of Gotham

When a young boy's body is found in a waste bin with the front of his body crudely cut in a cross and several organs missing, the nascent NYPD, called "The Copper Stars" in 1845, are all hands on deck trying to find out why. This is a period of time when daily shiploads of starving Irish immigrants pour into a city that already has insufficient work and housing for them and the anti-Catholic sentiment is at burning point. Tim Wilde, younger brother of political wheeler dealer and now police captain Val Wilde, has reluctantly become one of the first crop of Copper Stars after an explosive fire burned his home, his decade-long savings, and part of his face. And it turns out he has a special talent--for observing things others miss--and that may make him especially useful at solving crimes rather than just preventing them, or so his new boss believes. On his way home from a particularly bad day, a small blood-soaked girl literally runs into Tim and instead of turning her in, he shelters her and finds that none of the blood is her own. Eventually he learns that she comes from a house that sells the services of children as well as women, and that several children have disappeared from there whenever a man in a black hooded cloak visits. With the help of unlikely allies, a mass grave of 19 children, probably all Irish, is found and it appears a serial killer is at work. A letter claiming responsibility for the murders is sent to the paper and threatens to stir the anti-immigration sentiment into a fiery riot, but the truth is much more complicated, as is the human heart. Great historical detail, vividly described and compelling characters all serve to make this an engrossing read. Several aspects of the ending definitely caught me by surprise.

Voodoo River

With a title like Voodoo River, it's little wonder that this "Elvis Cole" installment by Robert Crais is set in the bayous of Louisiana. Normally I like to read a series in order, but I picked up a few paper backs to take to New Zealand and got hooked again on Robert Crais, so am kind of reading whatever I have on hand (see earlier reviews of Free Fall and The Last Detective). This one goes back to the time when Elvis met Lucy, then an attorney in Baton Rouge. Elvis is supposed to be tracking down the birth parents of a TV star, who it turns out, is being blackmailed about her parentage. Said star doesn't tell Elvis that and he finds out the hard way by running head on into the blackmailer and some even worse bad guys who eventually kill the blackmailer; they are also running illegal immigrants into the country. There are some pretty colorful characters here, including a centenarian snapping turtle named Luther who can bite a 2 X 4 (that's a board) into splinters and you just know he's going to be bad news. Pike comes out from LA to make sure Elvis comes out the other end of a high risk double cross designed to round up the  coyotes at the top of the food chain and get the blackmail victims off the hook. Lucy crowns Elvis with the moniker "Studly DoRight" in this book, and we meet her son Ben, so a lot of the material for subsequent books gets its genesis here...good one to read if you want to dive into these--and they are well worth reading. As I said in earlier reviews, there is a lot of actual detecting that goes on in this series.

Borderline

The title of this Nevada Barr installment in the Anna Pigeon series speaks both to the book's location in Big Bend National Park on the border of Texas and Mexico, and to the state of mind of Anna Pigeon.  After she killed someone--in self-defense--in Isle Royale, he sense of man's inhumanity to man has taken on haunting dimensions and she feels she is perched on the edge of a bottomless void in her soul. Even the love of husband Paula doesn't seem to be enough right now. She is on administrative leave from the Park Service and, because being in nature is what usually grounds Anna, she and Paul have decided to go rafting down the Rio Grande to facilitate her recovery. But a flash flood, the harrowing rescue of a nearly drowned pregnant woman, and the political ambitions of a big city Texas mayor on the verge of losing her husband all combine in this fast moving story to challenge Anna in ways that will either push her over or bring her back from the brink of that abyss. As always, you get a wonderful sense of place; it's like getting to virtually visit the national parks by reading this series of books.  And of course Anna is a strong resourceful woman, maybe most of all when she's having a tough time. You can read Maureen Corrigan's more detailed plot summary and evaluations of Anna's character here.

The Map of Lost Memories

This book by Kim Fay has gotten quite a bit of very positive chatter and I was certainly curious to read it, since the protagonist was (a) a strong, independent woman,  (b) started out in Seattle, and (c) was about a part of the world I know nothing about (southeast Asia). Starting out in 1925, at the art and cultural museum on the campus of the University of Washington--renamed in this book as the Brooke (instead of the Burke)--Irene Blum has operated in the background for years helping to build the collections to levels of national and international recognition with special emphasis on southeast Asian work. Her special passion is Cambodia and the history of the Khmer empire, which rose to prominence and then essentially faded away to nothing. Irene's parents had spent time in southeast Asia, although she doesn't realize how much until late into the story, but she does find out upon her father's death that he possessed the diary of a missionary with information that may lead to critical records documenting the last great king of the Khmer empire. When Irene is passed over for the curator's position of the Brooke museum because she does not have a PhD, she decides to see out these mysterious copper scrolls and sets off on a dangerous adventure, financed by a lifelong friend of the family, who is also a serious collector of artifacts. Everyone who comes into this story has ulterior motives as Irene soon discovers, even those whom she thought she could trust most, and the relationships between the players turn out to be much more complex than she could ever have imagined. In spite of the author's ability to capture a sense of place with colorful description, her characters left me unengaged and I never really felt very deeply for any of them. I was fascinated with the idea of learning more about the Khmer empire, knowing virtually nothing about this culture, and yet over I was disappointed by this book. She does raise all the pertinent questions about the damage done to history and culture and memory by colonization of one people by another (or many others) but still this story felt flat to me. Clearly this is a minority opinion so I encourage you to form your own.

Rose

An oldie (1996) but goodie by Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park, Red Square and other Arkady Renko thrillers--not sure what compelled me to choose this from my sizable collection of unread paperbacks. It's late Victorian England, 1872, and the big landowners also owned the lives of the people on the land. Set in the mining town of Wigan in the Lancashire coal district, these are hard lives for the miners and their families, crammed 10 to a room, dozens sharing a privy, compensated a few shillings for the "accidental death" of a child at the mines, relieved by even greater acts of brutality like betting on fights between the strongest men trying to kick each other to death with nail studded wooden clogs.  Whereas the moral crusaders, the Temperance workers, and the mine and mill owners cast judgement, live in relative luxury, and stand  apart...with a couple of exceptions. The protagonist Blair, has been recalled in disgrace from his duties as mining engineer (for gold) on the west coast of Africa because he used ("stole") the money from the missionaries' Bible fund to pay his porters. His boss, Lord Hannay, who has owned the Hannay mines for hundreds of years, promises to sponsor his return to Africa if he will find the missing fianc

-->é of his daughter Charlotte Hannay. He was a penniless curate named Reverend John Maypole who seemed to have a passion for the local miners, including the "Pit Girls," the women who roll up their skirts, don men's pants, and sort the coal that is brought out of the mines. One in particular, Rose Molyneux, is apparently at the heart of this mystery. This is a fascinating historical novel on so many levels. The miners are a closed community and are not about to help Blair in his investigation, even though Blair was actually born in Wigan and has worked in a coal mine before becoming an engineer working for Hannay. There are shifting identities and so many secrets people are desperate to keep. The real reason for Blair being brought in is only gradually revealed. Rose is not who she originally appears to be, but finding this out may get Blair killed. Initially, all Blair wants to do is finish the job for Hannay and get back to his beloved Africa; he hates England. But he gradually gets sucked in, wanting to figure out what has happened to the missing man who cared so deeply about these people that it may have cost him his life. Smith compellingly creates the dark, oppressive atmosphere of the mining town, and even, in very brief glimpses, the world of Africa left behind. This author is a master craftsman and you will learn a lot about coal mining and the class system surrounding it and it will keep you guessing until the very end.

The Tipping Point

Maybe it's just because there have been so many books in recent years that have made similar points, but I just did not find this book by Malcolm Gladwell that revolutionary. He offered some interesting anecdotes and classifications with regard to how "epidemics" of ideas, trends, behaviors, etc. are promulgated. He identifies some key types of players in the process. There are those who are especially good at making connections between people ("Connectors"), those who love becoming experts and using that expertise to help others ("Mavens"), and those who can translate concepts meaningfully to the person in front of them ("Salesmen"). He discusses Hush Puppies, Sesame Street, teen suicide in Micronesia, teen smoking in the U.S., and in an Afterword to this paperback 2002 publication, the school shooting "epidemic" in the U.S. He makes a compelling case for context as a powerful force in determining behavior with his discussion of the radical decline in violent crime in NYC in the 1990's, citing twin studies, "broken window" theorists, and crime statistics. At times, the book feels a little disjointed--I'm not really sure where he wants us to go with him. The subtitle of the book is "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference"...the "tipping point" is defined as "that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, or spreads like wildfire" (back cover).  And he does offer various explanations and factors to consider in how that happens, what is required. What I came away with was a refocused attention on how media today can shape social phenomena that have become somewhat epidemic, like school shootings. I have perhaps slightly different questions about the precipitous rise in social behaviors like "cutting," or eating disorders, or autism, or ADHD. Any book that makes you think, I suppose, is laudable, I just didn't find this one to live up to all the hype I had heard. Perhaps some of Gladwell's other books?

Oolong Dead

What a totally cosy little mystery, except set in Savannah instead of some quaint English village! This is #10 in Laura Childs' "Tea Shop Mystery Series"http://www.laurachilds.com/teashop.php and Theodosia Browning (yeah, I did think the name was a bit over the top) is suddenly thrown from her steeplechaser when he shies from a jump. The problem turns out to be a dead body--the body of someone Theodosia has had words with, and also the sister of her ex-fiance. Not only is Theo thrown from her horse, but she is also thrown for a loop when the local homicide detective subtly asks for her help in looking into who might have wanted newly promoted TV anchor Abby Davis dead. There are plenty of suspects, the has-been anchor man beat out by Abby, the jilted husband...To top it off, the next day Abby's brother Jory shows up and says the family wants Theo to investigate as well. Theo runs the Indigo Tea Shop in Savannah, hence the name of the series, and apparently has a knack for solving crimes. If this book is any indicator, the series is a total romp and I will look for more when I am in the mood for something light. Plus they have yummy recipes in the back. And this has aroused a powerful urge in me to visit Savannah!.

Death in a Strange Country

I first encountered Donna Leon when I picked up one of her books in the lending library of the resort on Crete. She has written over 20 mysteries featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police, this being about the the 2nd in the series. A native of New Jersey, Ms. Leon has lived in Venice for 30 years and so has captured the flavor--the corrupt stink and the aching beauty--very well. This town of 60,000 attracts over 150,000 tourists a day, creating two incompatible worlds in a small area.  There is a also, in Leon's characters, a dichotomy between a sense of optimism and a sense of cynicism about what goes on in their country, those who choose to believe nothing bad is going on and those who are not the least bit surprised to find out, for example, that the government is in bed with big business and taking huge kickbacks to allow dumping of toxic waste in the countryside. When an American public health official from the military base in Vicenza turns up dead in a canal one morning, the higher ups want nothing more than to attribute it to a mugging. But as Brunetti pulls on the threads, the victim's lover, also a doctor at the American base, suddenly dies from a "drug overdose" -- supposedly a suicide--and Brunetti is now firmly convinced that these murders are connected. And he will quickly learn that there is absolutely nothing that he can do to bring the culprits to justice. Sometimes, however, fate has a way of twisting the tale of the devil himself. You can read a brief interview with Leon done by NPR's Sylvia Poggioli here.

Folsom Point

A first novel by R. P. Snow set in northern New Mexico (Abiquiu, El Rito, etc.), former home of our friend Joan Starr Ward, so a setting more familiar to her than me, but of interest nevertheless. Our protagonist is Abigail Romero, a thirty-something single woman who works as a private investigator of sorts and is apparently still on the rebound from a relationship with a sociopathic thief she helped send to jail. Little does she know she's in the sights of his younger brother, who wants revenge not only for losing his hero to New Mexico State Prison, but for Abigail spoiling the big score that was going to set them up for life. Posing as an amateur photographer, he convinces a student working on a dig at the Ghost Ranch (of Georgia O'Keefe fame) to help him steal some recently uncovered artifacts which might be of Folsom origin. The Ranch, in turn, enlists Abigail to try and find the missing artifacts. Our villain, Myron Galt as he calls himself, leaves Abigail tantalizing and vaguely threatening e-mail rhymes and clues lying around her property, none of which she takes seriously enough. Although Abigail recovers one spear point and comes tantalizing close to uncovering Galt, she is scheduled to leave on a pre-planned trip to Spain before a satisfactory ending is reached. Galt will have none of it, however, and kidnaps Abigail, then leaves her in an ancient and deep cistern high in the hills just as a thunderstorm approaches. The account of her ordeal is very realistic. Her eventual plan to catch up with Galt calls on some old friends as well as her own resourcefulness. Although the writing felt a bit awkward at times, the pacing was good and this was an intriguing plot idea with appeal beyond those who love this part of the country.

The Stone Monkey

This is the 4th installment in Jeffery Deaver's "Lincoln Rhyme" series --he has 3 other series, none of which I've dipped into. The first book in the series, The Bone Collector, as you may remember, was made into a movie with Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme, and Angelina Jolie as the cop he recruits to become his mobile forensic evidence collector, since he is now confined to a motorized wheelchair. This tale centers around a particularly vicious smuggler of illegal immigrants who just killed the last group of illegals he brought in. Known as "The Ghost" because there are no photos or fingerprints of him on file, he is being tracked by Rhyme in an attempt to stop him before any more people die. The Ghost scuttles the ship with his most recent "shipment" but a lone man and two families escape. Amelia rescues the man from drowning, apparently; he is wearing a stone pendant of the Monkey King. He claims to be a doctor who wants to help Amelia with her physical and emotional pain, or is he just using her for something more sinister?  It is up to Lincoln and Amelia to find the two missing families where they have hidden away in New York City before the Ghost does.  This one had a twist that surprised me, some soul searching on the part of the main characters, as well as Deaver's usual taut storyline.

Free Fall

The 4th of the Elvis Cole series finds Elvis, and therefore Pike, working for about $40 down and $10 a month on their usual $2,000 fee to figure out what is wrong with Jennifer Sheridan's high school sweetheart and now LAPD special task force cop, Mark Thurman. He's acting strange and she's sure he's in something over his head. When Cole's initial investigation turns up evidence--and a confession from Thurman--that he's having an affair, Jennifer refuses to believe it. And subsequent events prove that there is, in fact, a whole lot more going on.  That, for example, a "righteous" death involving the task force maybe wasn't so legitimate after all, and that the whole team is being blackmailed into aiding and abetting one of the worst gangs in the city to keep the evidence of their misdeed under wraps. Pike, as always, is the shadow that saves Elvis' butt when the chips are down, but they both come out looking like the good guys--not much richer but very noble. Mark Thurman isn't quite the white knight Jennifer fell in love with, but she does still love and believe in him, and we all want someone like that in our lives. I like that real detective work happens in these books by Crais and, although Pike is a little too scarey good at what he does to be true sometimes, you gotta love these guys.

Blue-Eyed Devil

This is the 4th in the Virgil Cole/ Everett Hitch series from Robert B. Parker (follows Appaloosa, Resolution, and Brimstone). I read this online while in New Zealand and although I enjoyed it, I don't feel it added anything new to my understanding of any of the characters, nor was the plot very original. Virgil and Everett have returned to the house Virgil built for Allie in Appaloosa and now they and Laurel are all temporarily living there. Laurel continues to be mute after her rescue from Indian kidnappers, with everyone except Virgil. Pony Flores, who also helped rescue Laurel, does reappear in this episode as do fellow gun slingers Cato and Rose, who are now "keeping the peace" in Resolution after Virgil and Everett's departure. Appaloosa is now being run by a man with big political ambitions, which require a lot of money and so he is extorting most of the saloon owners for protection. Of course Virgil can't abide that, so he and Everett take on the job of protecting the saloons, and then the whole town which a band of Indians decide to attack. So what is new is that Laurel leaves town with Pony after the "Indian troubles" are settled, Virgil becomes a land owner and immediately relinquishes the land, giving it to Laurel and Pony. The dialog is still humorously laconic. Everett is still correcting Virgil's vocabulary. Allie hasn't learned a damned thing and Virgil still loves her in spite of it. Good but not outstanding. There is one more book in the series--not written by Parker but by Robert Knott-- that I will probably still read, Iron Horse.

Bone Parade

This serial killer entry from Mark Nykanen is one I picked up in the book exchange at our last resort stay in Lake Wanaka. Hadn't heard of this person although he is apparently a much-awarded television and documentary investigative journalist. There were also good reviews from reputable sources like Booklist, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, so I persisted even after my initial disenchantment. But the only worthwhile part of the book was the detailed discussion of modern sculpture and the processes involved, particularly in bronze casting. The story is told from alternating points of view. One is a world-renowned sculptor, Ashley Stassler, who captures in astounding detail whole families that seem to be struggling in terrible agony. Not surprising since in fact he is the one causing the agony by kidnapping, imprisoning and then suffocating them in casting material which he uses as the molds for his sculptures. I found his description of the delight he takes in the process overwrought and fairly quickly quite tedious. The alternating chapters are offered by sculptor and university art teacher, Lauren Reed, who sends her prize sculpture student off to do an internship with Stassler and then decides to investigate when the student, Kerry, goes missing. Can't recommend this one and I have to kind of wonder about the mind that came up with such detailed musings on people's suffering.

The Broken Souls

Third in a series ("Carson Ryder") by Jack Kerley, this was an author I didn't know before reading this book. Apaprently this is the UK title; the American version is Garden of Vipers. There was a fairly limited selection in the book exchange at the resort, however, and I am out of paper books, though I still have some downloaded on my computer....that won't work on a 20 hour plane trip--the battery just won't stand up to that ;-)
Anyway, solid writing and interesting characters in this police procedural. Set in Mobile, Alabama, which is not a common setting. Detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus have been partners for many years and have their own arrangements for things. For example, when they are way out of town, Carson rides lying down in the back seat while Harry drives; Carson does some of his best thinking in this "safe" place--you'll have to read to find out why. But it's just an example of the nice little quirky details that are provided. This one had me fooled until very late in the book about who exactly did what, but then I allow myself to fairly easily suspend disbelief. What starts out looking like a serial killer hunt isn't that exactly, although several women are indeed murdered by the same person. I won't go looking for his earlier books, but I wouldn't hesitate to read more by this author.