Save Me from Dangerous Men

I really liked the protagonist of this book by S.A. Lelchuk. Nikki Griffin loves books and owns a used book store in Oakland. She lets her competent manager, Jess, run it most of the time, however, because she is also passionate about saving women who are being abused by men. She doesn't just try to help the women stand up for themselves, she makes it her personal mission to teach these men what is feels like to be hurt and helpless so they won't do it again. She takes on what appears to be a regular PI job following an employee of a high tech company that makes baby monitors. The company CEO is afraid the employee is selling company secrets. Well, sort of. Nikki gets suspicious of the job when she sees her target, Karen, being followed and confronted by some threatening men. It turns out to be anything but an ordinary job when Karen is murdered right before she was going to meet Nikki and reveal all she knew about what the company is actually doing. Now it's Nikki who is in the cross-hairs. In the meantime, she has met a nice guy, Ethan, and she would really like to have a normal relationship, but an attempted mugging while they are on a date reveals Nikki's darker side and he's not sure he wants any part of her. We gradually learn about Nikki's traumatic history that drove her to become the avenger that she is. I would totally read any sequel to this debut novel. Several reviewers have likened Nikki to a cross between Jack Reacher and Lisbeth Salander. If you like and recognize those protagonists, you will certainly root for Nikki. There is a comprehensive summary of the plot in The Washington Post. Kirkus offers a positive review as does Publishers Weekly as does USA Today.

The Last

This is a post-apocolyptic novel by Hanna Jameson that revolves around a group of people stuck in a remote Swiss hotel when most of the rest of the civilized world disappears in nuclear attacks. Told from the perspective of Jon Keller, an historian who was attending a conference at the hotel when social media posts began coming in that Washington had been attacked, and then London and then...well it was hard after that to get news. Jon was so upset that he threw his phone across the room, cutting himself off from further communication with his wife and two daughters.  He has decided to write down everything that happens in the hotel as a sort of final historical text, just in case someone, someday, reads it.
Some hotel guests of course immediately jumped in their cars and fled, thinking they would somehow be able to get home, back to loved ones. Others, realizing that there would probably be no flights, and that it would be equally if not more dangerous to head into Zurich, stayed put. So we get to know the various people who stayed. Some kill themselves almost immediately. Others are more tenacious. There are 3 remaining children, two belonging to a Japanese-German couple, and the third is an infant, orphaned by the suicide of her mother, but taken in by that same couple.  The hotel's head of security, Dylan, becomes the de-facto leader of the group. They are fortunate to have in this international mix a doctor and one of the hotel's chefs. There are rifles to shoot deer--the hotel attracted hunters--if they can find any alive. Jon, Dylan, and Nathan, the hotel's former bartender, form an alliance to keep things in order. They are the ones to discover, when checking the water tanks on the roof, the body of a young girl. Jon becomes obsessed with finding out who killed her. People try to maintain a veneer of civilization although it occasionally breaks down. Fear keeps them in place although they do make one foray to a grocery store in a suburb an hour away looking for food and medication. There Jon comes face to face with two former colleagues who try to kill the group from the hotel. With winter approaching, they must again venture out, but this scouting party does not return. So Jon and Rob, an English student, go looking for them, are attacked but survive, and then discover there are still people living in the city. There are a lot of red herrings in the story--a haunted history of the hotel, Jon's gradually returning memories of the first couple days, etc. and some wild things thrown in at the end. Although slow to start, it was intriguing to watch the dynamics, wonder who was sane and who was losing it. Kirkus and Publishers Weekly agree it is a compelling read marred only slightly by the rather bizarre ending.

My Sister, the Serial Killer

This somewhat tongue-in-cheek novel by Nigerian author Oyinkan Braithwaite is really more about sisterly dynamics than it is about serial murder."One sister is a nurse. The other is a murderer." (NYT)
Ayoola is the favored daughter, the golden child of perfect looks and perfect temperament, according to their mother. Korede is the older sister, practical, smart and always charged with looking after her younger sister. Now that their father is dead (murdered?) the sisters live with their mother in the family estate that they cannot afford. Korede is a nurse at St. Peter's Hospital in Lagos and it is only there, in her job, that she gets any credit. Recognized for her competence and compassion, she'll soon be appointed as head nurse. Most of her colleagues are slackers, but Korede takes her job very seriously, especially because she has been secretly in love with Dr. Tade Otumu for several years and she keeps hoping he will finally figure out that they should be together.
When Ayoola calls on Korede for the 3rd time to help clean up one of her messes, i.e., a dead boyfriend, who she admits killing but totally in self-defense, Korede begins to realize that something is seriously askew in her sister. Still she cleans the scene, disposes of the body, and keeps quiet about what she knows--except to confide in a hospital patient who has been in a coma for several months. He is like her therapist--someone to talk to who does not judge. On impulse, Ayoola comes to visit Korede at work to invite her out to lunch. There she meets the kind and handsome Dr. Tade and he is smitten, later asking Korede for Ayoola's phone number. Talk about fraught love triangles! Now what will Korede do, protect her little sister or the love of her life? Darkly humorous, well written with vivid characters and setting. You get an accessible tour of urban life in Nigeria. A quick and engaging read. Rave reviews aplenty: New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post,  and Kirkus, plus a short interview with Scott Simon on NPR.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

This atmospheric mystery by Tom Franklin was this month's pick (June, 2019) for my mystery book group. This is Franklin's 3rd novel, which received the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 2011 for best crime novel. While some reviewers have called his prose "luminous" (Booklist), I found it evocative, so effectively creating a mood of sweltering, suffocating, ennui and apathy, that you almost start to sweat. If you never wanted to live in the rural deep South, like me, this would remind you of why. The Washington Post notes that this book "makes a haunting demonstration of Faulkner's claim that 'the past is never dead. It's not even past.'"
As a boy, Larry Ott is too nerdy, too interested in books (especially horror stories) and snakes to be the son his father wants. These characteristics don't make him popular at school either in 1970's Chabot, Mississippi. The southern way they teach children to spell the name of the state and the river  is "M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-humpback letter-humpback letter-I Really!?) When a black woman and her son move into a primitive cabin on the Ott's land, Larry connects with the boy, Silas, teaching him how to hunt and fish. At school, they barely acknowledge each other, both because black and white do not mix, but also because Silas has gained some stature as the school's star baseball player and Larry is still so uncool. When a popular girl in school asks Larry on a date for the drive-in movies, he is thrilled; only it turns out that she just wants a ride to meet her real boyfriend. Larry, ever accommodating, drops her off at a designated point along the highway and goes on to the movies, pretending Cindy is with him. When he goes back to pick her up, she never shows. In fact, she disappears, and the fact that she had a "date" with Larry that night makes him the prime suspect, even though there is no concrete evidence and no body. Larry and his family are ostracized by the community, driving his father to an early death, his mother into a care home and Larry into the military, where he becomes a mechanic. When he comes home, he takes over his father's old automotive repair shop, but the small town has a long memory and "scary Larry" never get a customer.  He is forced to sell off chunk's of his father's land to the big timber company to make ends meet. Silas went away to college and returns 20 years later to be the town's only policeman. When a 2nd girl goes missing, Larry again becomes the focus of attention, and someone shoots him. Not only does Silas find the dead girl buried in the old cabin where he lived with his mother, but only he knows that Larry was not responsible for Cindy's disappearance decades ago. What he reveals to prove Larry's innocence is going to bring his life down around his ears. It's a heartbreaking book in many ways, but so well written that it's hard to put down, and there is a glimmer of hope in the end.
Not everyone was enamored of this book as the reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly demonstrate. Others, such as the Washington Post, the Guardian, and this interview from NPR are very positive.

When We Left Cuba

Like her previous book about Cuba, Next Year in Havana, Chanel Cleeton's sequel deals with the overthrow of Batista, the rise to power of Fidel Castro and the situation for those who subsequently fled. At the center of the story, once again, is the Perez family; although, this time we follow Beatriz, the one who was considered the wildest of the 4 sisters, the one who chafed most at the life intended for her as a wife and mother. She was also the twin of Alejandro, who was murdered by the revolutionary forces when they drove out Batista, even though he was a student revolutionary himself. It was intended as an unambiguous message that the revolutionaries were coming for her family, whose wealth had been built on a generations-long sugar empire. All that Beatriz wants now is to get revenge on Fidel Castro, the man she believes murdered her brother.  So when her brother's best friend, Eduardo, comes to her with a proposition to meet with someone from the CIA, who also wants Castro gone, 22-year old Beatriz becomes a spy. First, she is sent to New York City when Castro comes to address the United Nations. He is a known womanizer, and Beatriz is, by general agreement, a beautiful woman. She attends a dinner, is introduced, and he appears interested, asking her to sit beside him on the podium. But eventually, she cannot follow through with any sort of liaison and returns home to Palm Beach.  She is then tasked with infiltrateing a local group of Communists/ Castro supporters.  Meanwhile, Beatriz has fallen in love with a Senator and would-be president from a politically powerful family who are closely aligned with the Kennedys. He is already engaged, but they are irresistibly attracted to one another and eventually begin an affair. Any plans to get Beatriz close enough to Castro to assassinate him are derailed when there is a fatally flawed attempt to oust Castro by exiled Cubans at the Bay of Pigs. Then Russia ship nuclear missiles to Cuba, precipitating a barricade by the U.S., which is eventually successful in deterring delivery. Finally Beatriz gets her chance. But she has also been betrayed by members of the small Communist cell she was monitoring, two brothers who are Castro's spies in the exiled Cuban community. Her cover blown, Beatriz is still considered useful and spends the rest of her life as an asset of the CIA. She and her lover have been apart all the intervening years; he married, had a family, and stayed in politics. When his wife dies, he comes back to find the woman he loved most in the world. Once again, this is a revealing look at a turbulent time in Cuba's history as well as in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S. The U.S. does not come off looking like the good guys in either book, but neither does Castro. One's sympathies are exclusively for the people exiled from the country they love, ever hopeful to return home.
Glowing reviews from The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

This relatively short book (208 pages) by Neil DeGrass Tyson is nevertheless chock full of facts and stories about people who contributed to the historical development of astrophysics as well as about the history, present, and future of the universe itself. The first chapter is an uphill climb, covering the first few minutes (as scientists are able to conjecture) of the birth of the universe. The reading gets a little less dense and intimidating after that and we find out about how the elements came to be, the theories that helped explain the size, shape and behavior of the cosmos, and the things that remain mysteries such as dark matter and dark energy. One has to admire Tyson for his mission to make science accessible to the lay reader and thereby to help create a better informed voting public. This book is designed to pique one's interest and hopefully motivate readers to learn more about Tyson's passion for the cosmic perspective and what it has to offer the human race. My book group that the last chapter, "Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective," was the best part of the book. After being inspired as a 9-year old by the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, he went on to become its current director! Kirkus provides a rave review; Time magazine offers an interview. The NY Journal of Books also praises his ability to make big topics easily digestible.