The Boys in the Boat

My book group read this while I was in Italy but friend, Anne Zald, had sent it to me and I still wanted to read it. Wow! What a compelling account that made it hard to put down, even though I already knew how it ended. This is an arcing narrative leading to the University of Washington's 8 man crew going to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and, against all odds, winning the gold medal.
Along the way we follow mainly one of the ultimate crew members, Joe Rantz, who came from a tumultuous childhood. Often living in poverty, abandoned by his father and family several times, he nevertheless had the determination to survive, scrape together a living, and put himself through 4 years of engineering school at the UW. And he married his high school sweetheart and raised a family. Really a remarkable man. But then they all were. The training schedule endured by these young men was simply torturous and author, Daniel James Brown, makes the reader feel every freezing, painful, exhilarating moment of those times. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Great story, very competent writing, and inspirational.

A Darker Shade of Magic

Set in London, or in several of them to be more precise, this book by V.E. Schwab is about MAGIC. Kell is one of only two Antari alive who can transport between the worlds of Red, White, and Grey London. Black London may still exist but the doors have all been locked and the access keys destroyed--or at least that was what was supposed to happen. When Magic took a dark turn and began to control people, the other worlds of Red, White, and Grey London isolated Black London to protect themselves. In the intervening centuries, Grey London has stagnated with little trace of magic to be found. Mad King George is on the throne. White London is ruled by whoever can wrest the power of the throne for themselves. At the time the book is set, the rulers are siblings Athos and Astrid Dane, scheming and cruel tyrants who have enslaved their population. Only in Red London, Kell's home, do magic and the people happily co-exist and thrive. But someone has found a talisman from Black London and tricks Kell into bringing it into Red London, opening the doors to attack.
Kell appears to be outmaneuvered and overpowered in trying to get the talisman back to Black London before more harm is done; however, a clever girl thief from Gray London, Lila Bard, returns the favor of Kell saving her life by rescuing him several times over. All Lila ever wanted was to own her own ship and sail the world. Now she has more adventures than she could have wished for or imagined, but she does not hesitate. Together, they might just save the worlds. 
This book reminds me of two others I have read. UnLunDun by China Mieville, also deals with different versions of London that exist in parallel universes. A good read I reviewed years ago for the children's literature database (attached below if you're interested). The other, more recent, is the book in Patricia Briggs' "Sianim" series called When Demons Walk--I have a blog post for this one. This also involves a woman thief who comes to the aid of a magician.

Review of UnLunDun: Twelve-year-old Deeba never imagined where she would end up the night she accompanied her best friend, Zanna, into the basement of the housing complex. But things had been getting stranger and stranger for her friend, with wild animals bowing to her, total strangers greeting her with reverence, and her name showing up in bridge graffiti. With the turn of a wheel Zanna and Deeba are transported to a fantastical world made up of all the things that are broken or discarded by the inhabitants of their former hometown, London; it is the shadow city, unLondon, where none of the rules of their previous lives apply. Animate milk cartons become pets, specially trained rubbish bins are soldiers, double-decker buses fly, words become creatures, and people dress in clothes made from the pages of books. Your best friends may not be fully human, like half-ghost-half-boy Hemi. Although Zanna is the Chosen One described in the prophecy book, the Smog has stolen her memory and it is left to Deeba to save unLondon from being taken over by evil forces. In his first young adult novel, Mieville creates a wildly imaginative setting and story on a par with Terry Pratchett s Discworld series. This hefty work has a serious message about pollution and the mindset of disposability, but it s also a good adventure--with intrepid young male and female protagonists--that will appeal to fantasy fans of both genders. 2007, Del Rey/Ballantine Books/Random House, $17.95. Ages 12 to 18.
(PUBLISHER: Ballantine Books (New York:), PUBLISHED: 2007.)

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

This debut novel by Helen Simonson is next up for my book group and, although I did not feel totally engrossed in the book, I did come to feel a certain fondness for Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), a widower living in the village of Edgecome St. Mary in Sussex. The major has been living alone for several years now; his ambitious and mostly unlikable adult son, Christopher, is in "The City" as an investment banker and seems to think his father is not worth his time. Nevertheless, he and his new American girlfriend, are renting a cottage near the Major to keep an eye on him.
Major Pettigrew's younger brother, Bertie, dies unexpectedly, and he is dealing not only with this new grief, but distress that the mate to a valuable Churchill shotgun may not be returned to him by the widow. The matched set were divided between the two sons when the father died; at the time the father stipulated, verbally, that the guns should be reunited when one or the other of the brothers died. Major Pettigrew wants the gun because it confers prestige, and because he always felt, deep down, that as the oldest son it was rightfully his. On the other hand, Christopher and Bertie's family want to sell the guns to get the money.
Major Pettigrew is comforted in his grief by an unlikely outsider, the widow of a Pakistani shop owner in the village, Mrs. Jasmina Ali. She is smart, beautiful, a good business person, and loves literature. They become friends and would like to become something more. But the village and Ernest's family and friends look down on her because of her color, her religion and her social class. She is sucked back into her brother's family, and even though her husband left the shop to her, it appears it will go to his nephew instead, if the family has its way.
Major Pettigrew has a sharp wit but is on the verge of giving up when sensible Grace--the suitable choice of partner for him--encourages him NOT to settle but to pursue his passion. He drives north, helps Jasmina escape, and in the end, even rescues the seemingly cold-hearted nephew. All ends happily after all.

X

The latest in the Sue Grafton alphabet series. I have read and enjoyed (and own) "A" through "W" so was happy to dive into this. The brevity of the title gives an inkling of the serious nature of the story...usually the titles have a sub-title, e.g., W is for Wasted. Not only is there a worse than usual bad guy, but Kinsey must come to terms with her own prejudices and misjudgements of former acquaintance and work colleague Pete Wolinsky, who was recently murdered. Then there is the elderly couple who have moved in next door and seem to be taking advantage of Henry's good nature--they turn out to be practiced con artists. Kinsey sets out to catch them cheating in a way that will get them into jail. She takes on one of Pete's old cases to make amends to his memory and to his widow, and in the process crosses swords with a violent stalker of women. She also gets dragged into an enraged divorcee's efforts to get even with her philandering husband by stealing some art.
This felt like a rich and satisfying read. Grafton always has a bit more to offer than, for example, Janet Evanovich, in terms of moral quandries and complex characters. I would put her on the spectrum somewhere between Evanovich and Sara Paretsky--some quirky fun, but also serious issues.

The Marriage of Opposites

This is the newest of Alice Hoffman's novels, which tells the story of Rachel Pomié, the woman who was to become the mother of Impressionist painter Camille Pizzarro. She grew up in a Jewish family on the island of St. Thomas, when it was still a territory of Denmark (early 1800's). The Jews had been driven from one place to another and so could not be blamed for feeling that this sanctuary under Danish rule was precarious and that should do their best not to draw any undue or negative attention to themselves. This led to a strictly proscribed life, however. Women had no rights, children should obey their parents and follow in their parents' footsteps whenever possible, and no one must marry outside their religion, much less outside their race.
This is a tale filled with forbidden loves. When Rachel's infant brother dies of a fever, her mother takes in a baby boy and raises him as her son and favored child. Only much later do we learn who Aaron really is. Aaron and Rachel's best friend, Jestine, fall in love but are forbidden to marry because Jestine is the daughter of the Pomié's African maid, Adelle. Before Aaron is sent away to France to work in the family business there, Jestine becomes pregnant. When Aaron eventually returns with a French wife, they kidnap his daughter and Jestine does not see her again for decades.
Rachel is married off to a much older man, a widower with three children, to help her father's business ( shipping and trading) stay solvent. She never comes to love Monsieur Petit, but he is kind and they have several children together before he dies in his 50's. A handsome young nephew,  Frédéric Pizzarro, comes from Paris to run the family business, and now Rachel falls passionately in love. Of course she is forbidden to marry because he is family, but they nevertheless become lovers and eventually have children together, including Jacob Abraham Camille. They continue to petition their community for acceptance of their marriage, which comes only much later, after years of social exile that profoundly affect the family. 
There is a  lot of story here, but perhaps more compelling is the abundance of character and atmosphere. Rachel dreams of escaping St. Thomas and going to Paris and both of these locales are described in evocative images. The prose is lush and wraps you in feelings, place and dreams. You understand what it feels like to be constrained by custom and to yearn for more--and then to carry those constraints with you even after you have escaped. I have read other books by Hoffman, and, although I am not a big fan of magical realism, this one really got under my skin.
More reviews: Kirkus, NPR, The New York Times 

Working Stiff

The sub-title of this book by Dr. Judy Melinek and her husband T.J. Mitchell is "Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner." I read a blurb about this book in a book catalog and, rather than buy it, I checked it out of the library and found it sufficiently engrossing to read the whole thing. Although she started a surgery residency after completing medical school, Melinek soon came to believe that the conditions of the residency threatened the health of both patients and residents and she switched to forensic pathology. She did her residency at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York City. This is considered one of the very best residency programs in the field and she felt it offered her the opportunity to continually learn more about the human body and how it functions or fails to function.
She tells a series of vignettes about the cases she work on, including discussions of various ways that the families of the deceased deal with their deaths. Homicides were not a large percentage of her cases, but she did help convict a number of killers through thorough work and documentation. On the other hand, she felt some people got away with murder because assumptions were made about the victims' life styles or because the police were unwilling to investigate.  Since her father committed suicide when she was a teen, she felt a particular empathy with the families in those cases. She even had a stalker--a mother who could not accept that her son had died of a drug overdose and wanted the death certificate change to indicate his death was due to accident or homicide.
Melinek was in the middle of her residency when 9/11 occurred and she documents in detail what the process was like to deal with the remains of nearly 3,000 victims. Within a month of that disaster, a plane crash in Queens killed almost 300 people, further straining an already overloaded system. She speaks highly of the professionalism, expertise and compassion of her co-workers.
A really interesting read, presented in a sympathetic and totally non-sensationalistic manner. Technical terminology is usually explained pretty clearly. Appeals to our morbid fascination with death. Reviews available from The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Kirkus.  

The Job

This is another installment in the "Fox and O'Hare" series by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg.  Master thief Nicolas Fox, having finally been caught by FBI special agent Kate O'Hare, is now more or less working with the FBI to stop other bad guys. When a series of museums thefts seem to lead right back to Fox, Kate is brought in to track him down--again. But she doesn't think he would be so careless as to leave fingerprints or let his face be caught on a security monitor and he, in fact, denies being the thief. Clearly someone wants his attention, however, and when Kate catches the actual thief, a former accomplice of Fox's, they decide to go after the man she was trying to trap, the man who murdered her brother. Menendez is also the head of a major global drug ring; the problem is, no one knows what he looks like since he had extensive plastic surgery, so an elaborate trap is laid, targeted to his known weaknesses. An elaborate scam is conceived and carried out to make Menendez think a couple of clever but resource poor archaeologists have discovered the sunken wreck of the Santa Isabela, which carried hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold. Kate gets to spend time as a hostage with Menendez' sadistic bodyguard girlfriend while Fox and crew take Menendez on a make-believe ride to the site of the wreck--all accomplished with virtual reality and special effects. Light and entertaining reading when you just want something fun--there is a fair amount of sexual banter between Fox and O'Hare. Evanovich is a very competent writer and the characters are engaging. O'Hare is a strong female protagonist.

The Light of the World

This book by Elizabeth Alexander was one I read because I thought my friend, Joan* had recommended it. Turns out she told me she could NOT read it. But it was too late. I cried and I sighed and my heart broke and soared. It is a book about loss, specifically the death of her husband from a heart attack when he was barely 50 years old. He was a refugee from the wars in Eritrea, but embraced life with a fervor that perhaps sought to balance out the trauma he had endured.
So it is also a book about love and living life to the fullest. Not many of us will have a love or a marriage like Elizabeth and Ficre, but if we have loved at all, then we know that loss is the inevitable flip side of the coin. Whether or not this is a loss you have experienced personally, much will resonate as she describes her --and her sons'-- struggle to cope with life after Ficre.
Alexander is a poetry professor at Yale so it is not surprising that her writing is rich in sensory image, emotion and recollection. She read one of her poems at Obama's 2009 inauguration. Well worth reading. Much more comprehensive review here from the NYTimes and this much briefer but touching one from Kirkus.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

This review in The Guardian by Caspar Henderson does a wonderful job of contextualizing (literarily) and summarizing the Pulitzer Prize-winning (2015, General Non-fiction) piece of science writing by Elizabeth Kolbert--better than I could ever do. There have been five major extinctions in the history of planet earth and Kolbert documents the evidence that bolsters the assertion that human beings are the cause of the sixth. A major extinction is an "an event in which a significant proportion of life is eliminated in a geologically insignificant amount of time" (see The Guardian) whether the cause is a catastrophic event like the asteroid which wiped out 75% of the planet's life forms in a matter of weeks or the human-caused acidification of the oceans, deforestation, and warming of the atmosphere in the last few decades.
Kolbert travels to numerous places around the world to observe and question those scientists doing work in the study of various animal and plant extinctions today, thus offering the reader a rigorous and first hand look at the extent of damage caused and the irreversible effects of our rapidly burgeoning, increasingly mobile population. She provides an overview of history in the big sense--beyond human habitation--to put this in perspective. Which makes the rapid rate of extinctions occurring today, at one and the same time just another cycle in the big picture, and also a tragic tale of loss and destruction that will inevitably lead to a very different world in the near future.
She reports; she does not lecture or advise for she does not see that as her role. Often compelling, sometimes an effort, it is a sobering read but well worth the effort. Several online interviews with Kolbert are available including this one in the NYTimes.

The Visitors

I am woefully behind on posting books that I have read, but need to get this one back to the library pronto so will start here. This is the BBC (Biblioholics Book Club) selection for December by Sally Beauman (journalist and author of Rebecca's Tale). It is a historical novel for the most part, although part of it is also set in more contemporary times. The major historical focus of the book is the period around the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1923. Just prior to that, our narrator, Lucy, is taken as a young girl to Egypt by a governess, following the death of her mother. She herself is still recovering from the typhoid fever that was fatal to her mother. There she meets Frances, daughter of the American archaeologist Herbert Winlock, and, though somewhat younger than Lucy, the girls form a deep friendship that lasts until Frances's untimely death in her early 20's from TB.
This is a very detailed and gritty portrayal of the major players working in the Valley of the Kings in that decade, notably Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon from England and the archaeologsits from the Met in New York. There were rumors of some shady activities surrounding the opening of Tut's tomb and these were later borne out by documentary evidence in letters and diaries.
The other significant settings and events are a few chapters detailing the death of Frances who disappeared from Lucy's life for a couple of years while she was secreted away in Saranac Lake, NY, a haven for those suffering from TB. The cold clean air was thought to be restorative and shortly before she dies, she contacts Lucy and asks her to come. People hid the fact that someone had TB since it was contagious and carried social stigma. Lucy was able to reconnect with her friend for her few last weeks.
Then there is the contemporary setting of Lucy's house in London, where she is recalling all these events at the prompting of Mr. Fong, who is making a documentary about the discovery of Tut's tomb. Lucy is now in her 90's. She is still friends with one other woman she met as a girl in Egypt, Rose. Rose's younger brother Peter briefly became Lucy's lover at the beginning of WWII before he he was killed, and their baby died. So there are a lot of ghosts in Lucy's life.
The settings are colorfully portrayed and Beauman has scoured historical documents to make the historical people and events as accurate as possible. However, I find Lucy to be a less than compelling character and the book felt slow at times. Nevertheless, I learned a lot--about the discovery of Tut's tomb and the role of Lake Saranac--and that is always satisfying.
See this somewhat more cogent and pointed review in The Guardian or this one from Kirkus. 

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

This account of the Dust Bowl epoch in the southern great plains by Timothy Egan certainly does make clear what a horrendous loss of lives and property occurred in the "dirty thirties." Tim Egan recently gave an "Author! Author!" talk here in Bend (through our public library) to discuss his book about Edward Curtis. Because his talk was focused on that book, he did not answer questions about his other works. I recently read and posted on Breaking Blue, another historical narrative.
I grew up in Oklahoma until I was 15 so had certainly heard about the Dust Bowl and the migration of "Okies" to California. Egan attempted to personalize these events by interviewing survivors, drawing from diaries, newspaper accounts, and government documentation. The scale of the disaster, caused largely by human behavior really was staggering--millions of tons of dust was blown away. In the process, people died of "dust pneumonia," lost their crops, livestock, land, and way of life. Egan does a good job of painting the plains as the home of bison and Indians, with grasslands that held down the dirt for thousands of years of human habitation. But then came the wholesale slaughter of the bison to deprive the natives of their food source, followed by ranchers who fenced the land, and finally--fatally--by farmers who tore up the grass to plant wheat. So that when the drought came, as they historically always do, and the crops died, there was nothing holding the earth in place. Even when people could get small crops to grow, the hordes of grasshoppers ate everything down to the ground.
The facts and figures are consistently astounding. And a few characters emerge as memorable. But largely I found this book tried to do too much, talk to too many people, and portray too many stories to make it a compelling read. It felt choppy and slow, with frequent shifts in the locale and time frame of the narrative. Egan may well have had his journalistic reasons for such choices, but I have not enjoyed reading his books, unlike those of Erik Larson, who does basically the same genre. Nevertheless, Egan won a National Book Award (2006) for this tome, so it's just my opinion. More detail and positive reviews at Kirkus and the New York Times.

The Fifth Witness

I really like this series by Michael Connelly featuring itinerant lawyer, Mickey Haller (aka The Lincoln Lawyer). Fifth Witness is the 4th major book for this character series--there are posts for 4 other books in the series (Lincoln Lawyer, The Brass Verdict,  The Reversal, The Gods of Guilt). Crime has been slow during the Great Recession (as it came to be known) and Mickey has put himself in the business of helping those whose homes are being foreclosed. There are plenty of clients, some more legitimately victims than others, and then there is Lisa. She is always inserting herself in Mickey's efforts to keep the bank from foreclosing on the house where she is living with her son. When the head of the mortgage department at the bank is murdered, Lisa is arrested. Mickey is convinced that she is being railroaded by the police department, and also that the whole thing may have been a set up by the CEO of the company that contracts with the bank to do foreclosures. It appears he has ties to organized crime and does not want that disclosed in an upcoming merger with a public company that will bring him millions of dollars. There is the usual push to get his client off with whatever strategies work--discrediting witnesses, creating a "straw man" to put reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors, and always trying to stay at least one step ahead of the prosecution. Mickey and ex-wife Maggie continue to dance an approach-avoidance two-step that is complicated by their mutual love for teenage daughter., Hayley. Maggie, as a prosecutor for the county, still considers Mickey's tactics reprehensible. Even his new associate, fresh out of a department store law program, has her doubts. But Mickey wears his blinders so he can live with himself and defend his clients to the best of his ability. In this case, the enemies may be much closer than he thinks.

The Screaming Staircase

Now there's a title that makes you want to run right out and read the book, right?! This is another fun YA book from Jonathan Stroud. I read the Bartimaeus Trilogy a long time back so when I saw this new series--Lockwood & Co-- in e-book format, I grabbed it.
The Problems have come to England--an excess of ghosts of varying levels of malevolence generally causing the shape of life to change. No one goes out after dark--except the children who are still able to sense the ghosts by sound or sight. They are on the defensive front line and Lucy Carlyle, having left her small village agency which just lost 3 agents, has come to London and joined Lockwood & Co. This is London's smallest ghost fighting group--only Lockwood, George, and now Lucy--and the only one without an adult supervisor. They are getting on OK until they accidentally burn down a house while fighting a surprisingly strong ghost. They are being sued and stand to lose the entire business until a new client makes them an offer they can't refuse.
But the murder they uncovered in the fire-related haunting has sinister ties to this new client, whose motives may not be simply to rid his country estate of terrifying spirits. These books are just a kick to read if you enjoy YA and the supernatural. Dive in, and don't forget your rapier, salt bombs and chains to keep the ghosts from getting too close! The e-book also provided a glossary of ghost types and the weapons used to fight them :-)

Ming Tea Murder

I really love this "Tea Shop Mystery" series by Laura Childs. They are like English cozies set in modern day Charleston, S. Carolina. Childs does such a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of the city, which operates in many ways like a village with gossip and deceit and...of course, murder most foul. This time  the murder occurs at the museum where Theodosia's boyfriend Max is the Publicity Director. It is an invitation only gala to celebrate the museum's purchase of a genuine Chinese tea house from Shanghai, which was purchased in large part through the donations of one particular board member, Roger Webster. He is also the murder victim. In between trying to solve the murder and run her tea shop, Theo is also running in a 5K with her mixed breed dog, Earl Grey, taking over the chairwoman's duties a big Halloween party in the historic district to help out the victim's widow, Charlotte, and setting up a booth at the charity craft market to help out the local service dog organization. Oh, yes and tea shop is hosting several themed "tea's" to celebrate the Halloween holidays and a funeral luncheon.
To complicate matters even more, Max gets fired from his job--the sleazy museum director needs a scapegoat, apparently. On the other hand, perhaps those who seem to be in Max's camp aren't exactly to be trusted either.
Lots of tasty meals are served up at Indigo Tea Shop, all accompanied by tasty tea's, with recipes offered at the end of the book. These books are such a treat on so many levels, and there are a hefty number of them to choose from...this is the 16th in the series! See also my posts on Blood Orange Brewing and Oolong Dead.

Two for Sorrow

This is actually the 3rd in the Josephine Tey series by Nicola Upson, but our library let me down by not having the 2nd in the series, Angel with Two Faces. I am having a bit of a time trying to figure out how to use my iPad mini to write and post this blog, but here goes. BTW there is already a post for the first book by Upson, An Expert in Murder.
Josephine is back in London staying quietly at her professional women's club, The Cowdray, while she does research for a new book based on the true life criminals Amelia Sach and Annie Walters. Nicola Upson has done her research on the crimes and has her writer protagonist do the same.  There are a few "draft" chapters of the book interspersed with chapters in which the characters are developed and the plot moved forward. In the book,  Josephine is able to actually interview some people who were involved in various ways with the two women before they were executed in 1903 and, it turns out, she actually went to school with the daughter of Amelia Sach without having known it at the time. In fact, the book relies perhaps a bit too much on several of the characters having connections to the crime Josephine is writing about and so bringing the old crimes and the new ones together. People have changed their identities to protect themselves from the harassment that followed publicity about the murders of babies and the eventual double hanging of the two women. And there are some other surprises about who people really are.
Friend Archie gets involved initially because there have been some minor thefts and some poison pen letters sent to members of the Cowdray Club. But then, one of the seamstresses working for the Motley sisters is murdered in a most gruesome fashion and the message sent by the method suggests she was talking too much. She had also been a former petty thief jailed at the same place the baby farmers had been imprisoned, Holloway Gaol. The Motley sisters have agreed to outfit the Board of the Cowdray Club for a benefit gala so they move into the club to complete the final work, having been barred from the site of the murder, their work rooms.
There are developments along a romantic line as well. Marta resurfaces with a surprising revelation and Archie is pushed into saying things that also rock the boat for Josephine. The characters in these books are complex and there are not necessarily happy endings or tidy solutions to the problems presented by messy human relationships. But they are very well wrought, capturing the essence of post WWI London, and I will undoubtedly finish out the series.

Breaking Blue

Author Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and has also written several prize-winning non-fiction books, as well as several works of fiction. He will be the first author to visit Bend as part of the library's "Author! Author!" series. Here he provides a narrative account of an investigation into the oldest open murder case in the state of Washington, that of Newport town marshall George Conniff, which took place in 1935. The current Sheriff of Pend Oreille county, Tony Bamonte, while writing a history of the county's law enforcement for his master's thesis, uncovers evidence about Conniff's murder by black-market butter thieves that suggests Spokane policemen were involved, and covered up for the killers.
When Bamonte sought their help with his investigation into the cold case, Spokane PD were non-responsive and uncooperative; they wanted nothing to do with a "do-gooder" cop who is willing to go against the brotherhood (even though he was investigating the death of a law enforcement officer) and bring bad publicity to the Spokane police department in the process. But Tony is dogged and tracks down the few remaining witnesses, the murderer himself, and--amazingly--the lethal weapon, which had been thrown into the Spokane River over 50 years ago. His obsession brings closure to the children of George Conniff, even though he fails to get an indictment against the murderer, former Spokane detective Clyde Ralstin. However, it costs him his marriage of 25 years, and his job.
Evocative descriptions of Depression-era Spokane and eastern Washington, and of the dying towns of more current day eastern Washington as the mining, timber, and cement industries fade away.  This is true crime clothed in a readable story that fleshes out characters, motives and settings. If you enjoy the work of Erik Larson, are a true crime aficionado and/ or are a local history buff, you will enjoy this book. Additional reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, New York Times.

The Interior

This is the 2nd of the "Red Princess" mystery series by author Lisa See, who will be coming to Bend as part of the Deschutes Public Library "Author! Author!" program. See also my blog on the first book in the series, Flower Net. Hulan is pregnant with David's child but keeping it secret from everyone in China, or so she thinks, and she is finding continual excuses not to join David in LA. She is continuing her work at the Ministry of Public Security but the cases have become routine and boring. She receives a letter from a woman who worked with her on the Red Soil Farm in the interior when Hulan was a teen and full of revolutionary fervor. Ling Suchee's daughter, Miaoshan, has died, apparently having hung herself. Suchee is sure this is murder and asks Hulan to investigate; after taking a leave from work and going to the poor farm of Suchee, Hulan is inclined to agree. She cannot get the authorities to investigate further, so she decides to go undercover at the nearby factory of American toy manufacturer, Knight International, where Miaoshan had worked.
She calls David as she is leaving Beijing and asks if he can find out anything about Knight International and David taps a former colleague at Phillips, MacKenzie & Stout. Keith seems nervous about David's questions; apparently he has been handling the purchase of Knight International for one of the law firm's major corporate clients, Tartan Industries. As they are walking out of the restaurant after dinner, shots are fired at David and Keith is run down by a car and killed. David assumes he was the target of another Triad attempt to kill him, and that Keith was an innocent victim, but the reverse turns out to be the case. David's old law firm asks him to come back and handle their Chinese clients, including finishing the purchase process for Knight/ Tartan. This would allow David to be with Hulan and he jumps at the chance.
Hulan uncovers horrendous working conditions in the factory, well hidden from the owner and any visitors. Children are working assembly jobs, dangerous machinery regularly causes injuries (Hulan herself is injured her first day on the line), and--if gossip is to be believed--those who are seriously injured disappear permanently. Still the women (all the factory assembly and packing jobs are held by females) put up with it because it is the only way to earn money and, therefore, any independence in this poor rural area of the country.
As David and Hulan eventually join forces, a 2nd murder near Suchee's farm occurs and now Hulan believes the two young people's deaths are not connected to the factory after all. But David is sure murder, bribery and other crimes have happened there, and he is determined to bring the perpetrators to justice. It very nearly costs them both their lives, as a fire, set by the killers, consumes the factory. This book raises disturbing questions about our own country's hypocrisy around labor abuses in China, politically at home, and on the ground in China. As before, a fascinating picture of modern China struggling to free itself from years of bloody and repressive history and take its place in the modern world.

Heresy: An Historical Thriller

This historical mystery by S. J. Parris (nom de plume of Stephanie Merritt) is based on the life of Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher who left his life as a Dominican monk and fled the Inquisition, who wanted to question him for his views on the structure of the universe. He followed the ideas of Copernicus that the earth was NOT the center of the universe, but rather moved around the sun; further, Bruno believed that the sun was only one of many such possible universes.
In this novel, Bruno has worked his way through Europe and come under the patronage of the French king, Henri III. Having arrived in London in 1583 as a guest of the French ambassador, he is on his way to Oxford for a philosophical "disputation," when he is solicited by Walsingham, Elizabeth's head of security, to become a spy. Walsingham seeks to root out plots against the queen by the Catholics and feels that Bruno, as a former Catholic, can get close to those who continue to practice "the old religion" in secret. Oxford is supposedly a hotbed of such activities and indeed that is the case, as Bruno eventually discovers. He is treated with suspicion as a foreigner, and with outright disdain for his philosophical views by his hosts at Lincoln College. When one of the college Fellows is attacked by a starved hunting dog in a locked garden, Bruno would pursue an inquiry into murder. But the college rector, Underhill, dependent upon the continued patronage of the Earl of Leicester and others for survival, will protect the college's reputation at any cost. Someone slips a description of a martyr's demise under Bruno's door, suggesting the death was indeed murder, but Bruno is thwarted by the administrators of the college. It is not until a 2nd murder of a college Fellow occurs, again in a manner mirroring the death of a famous martyr, that the Rector seeks Bruno's help. By the time one of the students is murdered, Bruno has had his own life threatened and gathered enough information to send his conclusions to his friend, the poet Philip Sidney (nephew of the Earl), and set off to rescue two young people he feels are next on the list of the murderer. But he finds surprises instead of victims and he himself is captured again and look set to meet his end.
There are some fairly graphic descriptions of the torturous deaths of those captured and convicted of crimes, so this is not for the faint of heart. The cruelty of man, acting on behalf of their religious beliefs, always leaves me shaking my head. But then, people can be cruel for any number of reasons.
The book well captures the flavor of the times, when constant intrigue and violence surrounded the struggle for the English throne. The plot moves along and Parris has drawn reasonably complex characters. This is the first of what is, so far, a series of 4 books with Bruno as protagonist. Presumably they cannot continue for an indefinite time as he was burned at the stake by the Inquisition in 1600.

An Expert in Murder

I originally encountered this author, Nicola Upson, in a book catalog and--for a change--decided to check it out from the library instead of buying it. But I may change my mind as I quite like this initial outing and there are several more in the series. In the world between the wars (WWI and WWII) life is getting back to normal in London, and the protagonist, ostensibly the popular author Josephine Tey, has been surprised by the success of the stage production based on her story of Richard II. On the train to London from Scotland, Tey is gently accosted by a fan of the play, Elspeth Simmons, and Tey is charmed by the young woman's enthusiasm and lack of pretensions. Elspeth has recently found love, someone who shares her passion for the theatre, and he has tickets for the best seats in the house during this final week of performances. When Elspeth is brutally murdered, clues left at the scene suggest to Scotland Yard's Inspector Archie Penrose that perhaps Josephine herself was the intended target. When a 2nd murder occurs within two days, this time of the play's producer, Archie is sure that the play is the key. However, the real solution comes only from learning about the victims--one a total innocent and the other, a keeper of secrets--and how the past has carried forward to the present. This is a complex but tightly plotted storyline with scads of colorful characters associated with the theatre world of London's West End. Josephine is friends with the costumers for the play, the Motleys, and is staying in their flat just across the road from the New Theatre, where "Richard of Bordeaux" is being performed. The somewhat cynical and very practical Archie is cousin to these successful and flamboyant sisters. Josephine has also become friends with the leading actress and so is familiar with the other performers, who have secrets and rivalries that drive their relationships and behavior. If you like historical mysteries and have any interest in the theatre, this is an easy one to recommend. The credibility of Upson's description of this world is bolstered by her interviews of actual cast members, including Sir John Gielgud. Written in a style reminiscent of writers from Britain's "Golden Age" --Christie, Marsh, Sayers.  A more in-depth review is here from The Guardian. A bit of history about the "real" Josephine Tey, a pseudonym for Elizabeth Mackintosh, is provided by Upson here.

Nightbird

Alice Hoffman writes books for tweens as well as for older ages, and this one has themes of magic,  friendship,  loyalty, and even a bit of suspense--enough to engage the adult reader as well as any teen. I love the opening quote on the book jacket because it feels so true in my own life. "Just when you think you know what's going to happen next, the world surprises you."
In the tiny town of Sidwell, set in the Berkshires, there are rumors of a monster that flies. Twig (formally known as Teresa Jane) Fowler fears these rumors because they are based on a very well-kept secret...the existence of a brother who has wings. Two hundred years ago, a love affair had tragically gone wrong, and the men in the Fowler family (hmmm, was there a pun intended here??) have been cursed ever since to have wings. Now the former home of the jilted lover, Mourning Dover Cottage --just across the orchard from Twig's home-- is being renovated and re-occupied by descendants of the very witch who cursed them. Daughter Julia wants to be friends, and of course Twig initially resists as she has resisted all contact with outsiders, in order to protect her brother James. But then Julia's older sister, Agate, sees James fly at night and they meet and fall in love. Is the tragedy to be re-enacted or can Julia and Twig find a way to end the curse? Even if they can reverse the spell, can James ever be content to be earth-bound now that he has soared with the birds?
This story has several side stories connected to various characters, which are all woven into a seamless whole with lots of intrigue and lovely settings. There is the town archivist, Miss Larch, who is Twig's source of information and solace. There is the ornithologist friend of Miss Larch, who is studying the rare black saw-whet owls that reside in the woods around Sidwell. There is the mysterious graffiti artist leaving messages around town descrying the possible destruction of those woods. Of course there is Twig and Jame's tragic mother who makes the world's best apple pie from the unique pink apples that grow only in Sidwell. There is a mysterious thief who takes everything from brea to quilts. There is a new owner of the local newspaper who might be Twig's supporter and seems to take an interest in Twig's mom. And then there is the absent father, left behind in New York, with no explanation offered. Lovely review in the New York Times offers more detail.

Flower Net

Author Lisa See will be coming to Bend to do a talk as part of the Deschutes Public Libraries' "Author! Author!" series this coming year, so I decided to read some of her books. I picked this particular book because it was a mystery and had been a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery and a NYT Notable Book.
Two former lovers, David Stark, now an Assistant U.S. Attorney in LA, and Liu Hulan, now with the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing, are brought together, ostensibly to solve two murders. One victim is the son of the U.S. Ambassador to China; his body has been found in a lake by ice skaters. Hulan is put on the case and then abruptly taken off. She is shocked by the Ambassador's insistence that it was an accident and his refusal to let the case be pursued. The other murder victim is the son of a powerful Chinese business tycoon, who is found in the water tanks of a freighter bringing illegal Chinese immigrants to the U.S. David is first invited to Beijing to help Hulan and then they return to LA as the money trail leads there. But all around them potential witnesses and colleagues are dying in horrific fashion--clearly sending a warning. When they return once again to Beijing, this time without an official invitation, it quickly becomes apparent that someone or some ones are also trying to kill them.
David and Hulan had gone to law school together and lived together and worked at the same law firm, and then she suddenly returned to China and cut off all contact with David. Hulan is the daughter of the now Assistant Ministter of Public Security. Moreover, she is descended from a line of royal entertainers. She and her family endured the Cultural Revolution. At one point she was sent away to the United States to attend school. Her father was imprisoned and her mother disappeared, only to return years later as a physically and mentally broken person. Hulan's boss at the Ministry is Zai, an old family friend. Or is he? Through most of the book, we know Hulan has a secret that she cannot share with David, for fear it will change his view of her forever and for the worse.
A well written mystery enriched by details of the settings in China and the obvious knowledge of history and customs. I would be happy to read subsequent installments in this series, the "Red Princess" mysteries (The Interior and Dragon Bones).

The Girl on the Train

This book by Paula Hawkins has received so much press that I am not sure what I can add to it. A contemporary English setting for a story similar to Gone Girl, it involves several women narrators whose lives all center--at various times-- on a small bedroom community outside London and whose lives have all intersected with one man that you would never suspect, making him the obvious culprit. He is a successful sociopath, enjoying life to the fullest...working at a job, but making time for affairs with other women even as he maintains the facade of being happily married and raising a family.
The dramatic tension really centers on Rachel, now divorced for two years from Tom Watson, a man she was wildly in love with but could not have children with. The inability to conceive drove her into depression and further into drinking...to the point where she started having blackouts. Tom in the meanwhile is having an affair with Anna, an estate agent. Once he is divorced from Rachel, Tom and Anna marry and soon thereafter, Evie is born.
Rachel has rented a room from an old friend in a slightly more distant commuter community and the train she takes into London every day goes right past the back garden of her old home, where Tom and Anna still live. She takes the train every day even though she long ago got fired from her public relations job for coming to work drunk and being abusive of clients. Her landlord/ friend does not know this because Rachel hasn't told anyone. The train always slows at a crossing near her old home and so she spies on Tom and Anna and on a couple a few doors down, who she imagines to have the perfect life...she makes up names for them (Jess and Jason) and projects her fantasies for a perfect marriage onto them. Then one day, she sees the woman at this house kissing another man and she is devastated to have the fantasy destroyed. Shortly thereafter she learns that Jess, who is really named Megan, has disappeared. She eventually tells the police about having seen Megan with another man, but her credibility is tainted by her drinking and her erratic behavior, which has included stalking her ex-husband and his family. When the police don't seem to take her seriously, she decides to directly contact the husband of the missing woman.
We follow this story through the narratives of Rachel, Megan and Anna, moving back and forth in time over about a year. I had to occasionally refer back to the chapter heading to keep the dates sorted. As Megan's disappearance and then her apparent abduction and murder are revealed, Rachel begins to remember bits and pieces of the night she went back to her old street ...the night that Megan disappeared.  It was all I could do not to skip to the end and find out who did it. But you will have guessed it by now, right? Tightly and believably plotted. Rachel is the perfect anti-hero for whom you both despair and cheer.

Martin Marten

After going to hear Brian Doyle at the Paulina Springs Bookstore in Sisters a week or so back, my interest in reading his work was re-energized. He was so passionate, funny, compassionate, and wise that when we walked out of the bookstore, my husband, who is not a big reader, said, "I want to read everything he has ever written." I was very favorably impressed with The Grail, his year-long humorous and informative examination of wine-making in Oregon, and also liked Mink River.
The adjectives I used to describe Mink River would apply equally as well here (see my blog post linked above). It seems to be his style to tell the story(ies) from many perspectives, including those of the animals who spend time near humans, and to emphasize the inter-connectedness of all beings in a place. The place is the west side of Mt. Hood, or Wy-east as is was known by First Peoples, near a small hamlet of ZigZag (which Doyle claims bears no relation to the real town of that name).
Martin is a marten, met at birth and followed until he is almost 2 years old. He develops a particular curiosity about a human he sees running through the woods--that would be 14-almost-15-year old Dave, who will be attending ZigZag High School and running on the track team for much of the time we encounter him. There are a handful of other beings--two- and four-footed--who play significant roles: Martin's mom and siblings and a mate; Dave's parents and his "Cadillac" of a sister, Maria; Ms. Ginny Moss, who runs a general store; the trapper, Richard Douglas who is in love with Ms. Moss; Moon, Dave's friend and whose parents are never home; Mr. Shapiro, one of Dave's teachers; Emma Jackson, who works with Dave's mom at the Lodge; the Unabled Lady, who gives Maria a finch; Edwin, Mr. Douglas' horse; Mr. Shapiro's dog who has not yet named himself; Louis, the largest elk on Wy'east, as far as anyone knows; Cosmas, the daredevil bicyclist in the orange jumpsuit.
There are several love stories that run throughout the tale: that between Ms. Moss and Mr. Douglas; that between Dave's parents; that between Emma and a waitress at the Lodge; that between Dave and Cadence. And then there is the fascination that Dave and Martin have for each other; Martin races through the treetops alongside Dave when he runs in the woods every day. And then, one day, they meet face to face on the top of a rock pillar--maybe an accident, maybe it's fate--and watch the sunset together. And the reader will love every one of these characters.
Another luscious, literary meal to savor from Mr. Doyle.

Day Shift

This is the 2nd installation in Charlaine Harris' new series set in Midnight, Texas. Almost no one who lives in this tiny crossroads town is what they appear to be, and most of the apparently normal folks seem to have a past they would rather keep hidden (see my post on Midnight Crossroad). This time we learn more about the true natures of Chuy and Joe, the gay owners of the nail salon / antique store and about the ancient and laconic Reverend, who turns out to have some connections with a character from the Sookie Stackhouse series. It won't be a spoiler to say that there is a good reason that a small boy is left in the care of the  Reverend; both are members of a very rare and powerful supernatural species.
When phone psychic Manfred Bernardo goes to Dallas for a weekend of face-to-face readings with clients, he is surprised to see the mysterious Olivia there in the same hotel. He is NOT surprised when the couple she is seen dining with that evening turn up dead of an apparent murder-suicide the next morning. He is further rudely surprised when an elderly woman for whom he is doing a reading suddenly dies. At first he is suspected of her death, and then, when the evidence does not support that, he is suspected of stealing her jewels -- a charge brought by the woman's crazy son. Manfred turns to Olivia to help him find the jewels in a way that won't incriminate him, so he can get back to work.      
Surprising to everyone in town is the fact that some major corporation has bought up the derelict 3-story hotel building and refurbished it to be a residence hotel for long-term travelers working at the nearby Internet company headquarters and as transitional housing for seniors. On further investigation, however, it appears that these seniors have no living relatives and have been brought to Midnight from a rundown retirement home in Las Vegas. This particular apple cart gets upset when (a) a relative of one of the seniors (who forgot he had a grandson) shows up, and (b) when Olivia and Manfred enlist the other seniors in their plan to try and find the jewels. The newly found grandson, Barry Howowitz, really does not want to be anywhere in the state of Texas because of an old disagreement with the vampires in Dallas and is desperately trying to figure out what to do with his grandfather. In the meantime, the small boy--who has now been adopted by the whole town-- is growing at an alarming rate and a crisis is approaching that leaves everyone in Midnight fearfully locked in their homes as the full moon rises.
As always, these fanciful tales are great fun to read as the characters continue to develop and you are left wanting to know more about them and what's going to happen next.

Survival Lessons

This short book by Alice Hoffman was written subsequent to her diagnosis with breast cancer. She wanted to share what she found most helpful when coping with this constellation of events in her life. The chapter titles are as follows:
Choose Your Heroes: someone past or present "who can teach yo what you need to know, a guide through the darkness" (p.1). Hers was Anne Frank, who was "able to keep her spirit strong even in the most brutal of times" (p. 1). But she also admired family members (mother, grandmother, sister-in-law) and friends who had dealt with adversity and survived.
Choose to Enjoy Yourself: "Start by eating chocolate" (p.11). I'm on board with that!
Choose Your Friends: she wisely notes that one may be surprised which friends stay and which new ones arrive. "If people aren't there for you now, when you really need them, they never will be, and it's time to move on. You'll be amazed by how many new friends you have in the after. They'll be the ones who aren't afraid of sorryow, who know we can't avoid it. The best we can do is face it together" (p. 21).
Choose Whose Advice You Take: "...listen to my grandmother when she says you only live once. As far as we know" (p. 25).
Choose Your Relatives: "...you can choose the people you'll spend time with...Some want to do too much, some too little. But some are just right...Only answer the phone when you want to..." (p. 27). She says when we are afraid of dying that what we need is to know we are loved.
Choose How You Spend Your Time: "Watch every old movie you've always wanted to see...Two more words that need no explanation: Johnny Depp" (p. 31). Yes! "Don't forget books...Reisit the stories you loved as a child..." (p. 32). "Here was my life raft. A book" (p. 35). I'm definitely on board with that.
Choose to Plan for the Future: "Write your troubles on a slip of paper and burn it. Now make a list of what you want to do next year" (p.36).
Choose to Love Who You Are: "Don't judge yourself harshly. Don't listen to people who do" (p. 42). She talks about the baldness that accompanies chemotherapy.
Choose to Accept Sorrow: She talks about what she learned from reading Viktor Frankl's (survivor of a concentration camp) Man's Search for Meaning. There are circumstances we cannot escape or control. "We are responsible for how we respond to situations we cannot control" (p. 44). She found that choosing to help others made her own problems more bearable.
Choose to Dream: Plan something you have always wanted to do.
Choose Something New: Those things you wanted to do but were afraid you might fail, or things you have been putting off. Be prepared to keep going if you fail, because "failure is the only way to become better at something" (p. 52). She thinks all writers should try knitting a hat before they take up writing, so they learn the importance of revision.
Choose to Give In to Yourself: "Take a nap whenever you want to....Go and don't feel guilty" (p. 59). Look out the window, listen to music, get a dog.
Choose to Make Things Beautiful: Work if that is what satisfies you or "take out crayons, glitter, a camera, a notebook. Take a deep breath, then begin" (p.64).
Choose to Tell Your Own Story: Choose who to tell and how much. Don't lose touch with those closest to you because you are afraid they won't understand.
Choose to Forgive: "Don't hold grudges; it takes up too much energy" (p. 69). Say goodbye, apologize, or forgive.
Choose to Claim Your Past: Re-connect with people from your past. Re-collect old stories and photos. Make a journal.
Choose to Be Yourself: Indulge your wishes and passions.
Choose to Share: "Talk to a stranger. Join a support group...Even if it's not your style...the act of sharing changes you" (p.75).
Choose Love: The people you love are going through this with you. Try to see through their defense mechanisms and stay with them. "My expectations of what I wanted in a man I learned from a dog: loyalty and kindness" (p. 81).
Choose the Evidence: "Write it down...Make a list of what all you have loved in this unfair and beautiful world" (p. 82). Someday your problem won't be the main character in your novel.

I was initially disappointed in this book. I expected more. But there are genuine nuggets of wisdom here, and it may be just the right amount for someone struggling with a serious issue in their life.

The Rosie Project

This has been a wildly popular book by Graeme Simsion--you see it in every bookstore right now and it has received lots of positive reviews (e.g., The Guardian,  NPR, The Washington Post). It was a light enjoyable read about an Australian genetics professor, Don Tillman, who  happens to be on the autism spectrum.  Obviously highly functional, he nevertheless is subject to living a well-ordered life with few disruptions and plenty of repetitive routines to cut down on the potential overload to his brain. He can never seem to make it past his first date with women. When he decides that he wants to get married, he initially approaches it in a dispassionate and systematic fashion (The Wife Project), formulating a questionnaire that will screen for unacceptable behaviors, characteristics and attitudes. No smoking, no drinking, must be punctual...well it's a long list of criteria, sure to rule out 99.99% of women in the world. Then, through a manipulation by his co-worker Gene, he encounters Rosie, who is clearly NOT a suitable partner, and decides to help her find her biological father,  at which point his life takes on nearly overwhelming roller coaster intensity. At the same time, he is trying to save the marriage of his best--make that only--friends, Claudia and Gene (psychology professor and Casanova who is trying to bed a woman from every country in the world). This is an entertaining book, but the conclusion is foregone and somewhat unbelievable. I share the concerns voiced by this review in The Telegraph, and the character inconsistencies noted in this review. I suggest that anyone who wants a more realistic picture of adult Asperger's syndrome read Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark, which, although it has elements of science fiction, is based on her own experiences living with an Asperger's son. Nevertheless, The Rosie Project is on stage and soon to be made into a movie, so those who loved it will have more opportunities to partake.
Post Script: Finally, after a recent book group meeting where we discussed this boo, I figured out what irritated me so much about the Rosie Project. One of the group members shared her experience raising a child who has Asperger's, and this crystallized for me how I did not like the somewhat light and flippant way that Asperger's was handled in the book. I think it is easy to get the impression that "oh, this is an inconvenience that I have to make all these accommodations in my life (limit stimuli, focus on routine, etc.) to just get by."  My impression that this is what people take away from the book was reinforced by reading reviews and by reading the summary of the upcoming movie, i.e., brilliant guy who just has not been able to get a 2nd date. AAGGGHHH  It so clearly is not a comic matter to raise a child or live as an individual with Asperger's or any level of autism, and I resent the fact that Simsion has, in my view, trivialized the reality of this. If Don had been a more realistic and consistent character, introducing this topic with humor would certainly have been a way to make people aware of the difficulties faced by this population. As it stands, he is a caricature, and therefore has done a disservice to general understanding. Suggesting that "love can conquer all" is about as realistic as attributing this neurological disorder to bad parenting, as was done in the not too distant past.

1222

This is the 2nd book I have read by Norwegian author Anne Holt; see my post for What Never Happens, also. Apparently she has written 7 previous novels in this, the Hanne Wilhelmsen series (see Wikipedia , etc. for lists of her other novels). Given that in this book Hanne is in a wheelchair from a bullet that severed her spine several years earlier, I feel compelled to do some back tracking in my reading. Apparently Holt has worked as a police officer and a lawyer so she has a good grasp of the procedural details that come to bear in this case.
A freak blizzard has derailed the train to Oslo with 269 people on board. The conductor is killed, but the rest are rescued through the valiant efforts of a handful of staff from a nearby mountain resort hotel and brought to stay there until help can come from the outside. The blizzard continues with screaming winds and feet of snow, promising some significant delay before that happens. People start to die--a baby who was injured in the wreck, an elderly man from a heart attack, death from a gun shot wound and stabbling with an icycle take out two more-- and Hanne can't help but take charge, in a roundabout way, to try and determine who the killer is. She is reluctant at first, having secluded herself from virtually all friends, family, former colleagues, and society in general for the intervening years since she was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. But two of the hotel staff and an interesting dwarf doctor named Magnus Streng bring her onboard and assist with her inquiries. There are so many complex interpersonal dynamics going on in this book that I could not begin to do them justice.
For example, there was an extra train car added just before departure that has been kept totally separate from the others and the passengers have also been sequestered in a separate wing of the hotel with guards posted to keep people out. Hanne tries to befriend what is apparently a runaway boy in his late teens, but his response is mixed--first adversarial, then more accepting, and then once more cutting her off. The young Goth-character woman he takes up with will play a significant role in the story. Berit, the hotel manager, emerges from her somewhat mild-mannered initial presentation to become a force to be reckoned with. We hear indirectly about Hanne's partner, their daughter, and her housekeeper. The storm itself is a character here and we feel its threat and challenge to life. This is largely a story of Hanne starting to re-engage, in a very limited way, with the world and particularly with the job that was both highly stressful and intensely satisfying.
So far, I have found Holt's work to be very well-written with complex, well-developed characters. Hanne will not strike you as particularly likable, but certainly compelling. If you are at all a fan of Scandinavian mysteries, check out Holt. ( and if anyone can find a home page for this author, send me the link!)

Midnight Crossroad

This is the first of a new series by Charlaine Harris, set in Midnight, Texas--a wide spot on the road to Davy, Marthasville and points beyond. There are only a handful of surviving businesses: the nail salon/ antique gallery, the gas-n-go convenience store, a small diner, a pawn shop, and a new age/magic store. Manfred Bernardo is the new kid in town, a sometimes genuine psychic who runs a largely con-based online psychic hotline. He is coming to realize that everyone in town has either secrets and/or strange talents. Manfred is renting his house from Bobo Winthrop, who owns/ runs Midnight Pawn. Any of you who have read one of my favorite series (Lily Bard) by Harris about Shakespeare, Arkansas (e.g., Shakespeare's Counselor), will recognize that name. Bobo has run away from a moneyed family in Shakespeare, but also from the shame of having a white supremacist grandfather who stole a lot of arms from the sporting goods store run by Bobo's father. Every white supremacy group in the U.S. thinks that Bobo knows the whereabouts of this weapons stash, so he is hiding out from them, too. Bobo lives upstairs from the pawn shop and he also has two tenants in the basesment: the mysterious Olivia, who travels a lot and has something going on with Lemuel, Bobo's other tenant who is--apparently--a variety of vampire.  Turns out the woman who runs the magic shop, Fiji, is in fact a real witch with powers, and has a cat who talks. The two guys who run the nail salon/ antique store are gay. The Lovells have the convenience store and Mr. Lovell keeps an exceptionally tight leash on daughter Creek and son Connor; Manfred isn't sure why Lovell is keeping a low profile, but he would love to get to know the enigmatic Creek a lot better.
The action is set in motion when the body of Bobo's former girlfriend, Aubrey, is discovered in the riverbed at the first and only annual town picnic. The sheriff's suspicions fall on Bobo of course, but both Olivia and Fiji have lied to give him an alibi. It turns out that Aubrey had ties to the white supremacy group from Marthasville, who had discovered where Bobo lives and sent Aubrey to get information on the weapons stash. When that fails, they send people in to bug the pawn shop, then to attack Bobo, and are starting to cause all kinds of trouble, some of which is dealt with and some of which is precipitated by Lemuel and Olivia. Then Fiji is kidnapped. She escapes through her own devices but the rescue party has arrived, reluctantly guided by Mr. Snuggles, the cat. The real culprit in all this, however, came as a total surprise to me.  Harris drops hints about other dark powers on the prowl throughout the story--e.g., Lemuel runs the pawn shop at night and has a "select" group of customers. This looks to be great fun as there is still lots to learn about the inhabitants of Midnight.

The Keeper of Secrets

This historical mystery by Judith Cutler is the first of a series featuring a newly ordained parson, Tobias Campion, who has taken a parish under the benefice of a rich distant cousin, Lady Elham.  He quikly manages to offend his patroness when he is moved to preach against the abuses of the poor by the landed gentry, even though he has recently come from just this group. This is considered a Regency period novel, post-Victorian, when some things are beginning to change in England but women are still largely subservient and the class system is still in full control, to the detriment of anyone not born to family wealth or a trade.
It is an odd collection of parishoners in Moreton St. Jude and Campion is floundering somewhat until he is befriended by Lady Elham's head housekeeper, Mrs. Beckles, and by the local doctor, Edmund Hansard. Mrs. Beckles finds Campion a competent housekeeper and serving girl and Campion also has the support of boyhood friend and now groom, Jem.
Much of the early story revolves around a convoluted situation in which Campion, Jem and a local man, Matthew, are all in love with Lizzie, Lady Elham's maid. Campion has rescued her from the unwelcome attentions of a friend of the Elham's son, and earned the young, soon-to-be Lord Elham's animosity for his pains.  Then a series of attacks, deaths, and disappearances create a building sense of apprehension in Campion. He is attacked by someone in the woods and left for dead. A local man, poaching for desperately needed food for his family, is caught in a "man-trap" and dies as a result of his injuries. The lord of the manor ostensibly drowns, leaving Campion's cousin a widow, and the violent and sadistic younger Elham in charge. Lady Elham and her son, however, respond to the death by largely vacating the premises for their other houses and estates and, as a result, the contested Lizzie is also absent, leaving the three men heart-broken. When Lizzie subsequenly goes missing and is finally found murdered in Campion's woods, Hansard and Campion set out to find the perpetrator of the murder, and, believing Lady Elham to have been deceived and unaware of Lizzie's death, to track her down and inform her of events.
The secrets they uncover are shocking and, although you may have suspected early on that Lord Elham had some help into the next world, the complexity of the motivations for murder will still be a surprise.  You can read Judith Cutler's own summary here.

Flight from Berlin

This historical novel set during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin is the first novel from David John. It revolves around fictionalized versions of real people including:

• Eleanor Holm (Eleanor Emerson character) who was on the US swim team but was thrown off by Avery Brundage for partying too hard on the ship journey to Europe. Some of the story line surrounding Eleanor ( a main character) is true, some is not, and John gives that information in notes following the text.
• Helene Mayer (Hannah Liebermann) was the only "non-Aryan" athlete who competed for Germany (fencing). Much of the suspense in the story is generated by this fictionalized account of what happened to her during and after the Olympics.
• Avery Brundage as himself, head of the American Olympic Committee and later the U.S. member and then president of the IOC, in spite of his pro-Nazi and probably anti-Semitic views and behaviors.
• Martha Dodd as herself, the daughter of Ambassador William E. Dodd (see my blog on In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson). 
• Dr. Hugo Eckener as himself, the moving force behind the giant zeppelins, Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg. 
• Several actual Olympic athletes, journalists and high-profile personalities who attended the games, and several prominent members of the Nazi Party.

The protagonist, Richard Denham, is a German-based British journalist who has already received several warnings from the Nazi Party to start shedding a more favorable light on their activities or he might just disappear. He is nevertheless determined to reveal the games as a grand cover-up of the brutality and persecution that is rapidly escalating in Germany. When Eleanor is kicked off the Olympic team and is taken in by the cadre of international journalists, she and Richard team up in a deadly game of cat and mouse as they try to find a secret file that will discredit Hitler in the eyes of the world, and to help Hannah, the German Jewish fencer, and her family escape imprisonment and possible death at the hands of the Reich.
All the things you want in good historical fiction are here: well-developed characters, well-written and compelling storyline, notes on the background research. Recommended, especially in combination with Larson's non-fiction account of an overlapping time period in Berlin.