Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident

This book series for young adults by Eoin Colfer is an absolute hoot. The Arctic Incident is book 2 in the series and you will seriously struggle with some of the relationships between characters if you haven't read the first book, just called Artemis Fowl. In that book, 12-year old Fowl, a criminal mastermind, decides to go after the gold of the fairies, but has to outwit Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon (Lower Elements Police Reconnaisance) Unit. In this book, the fairies and the "Mud People" (i.e., humans) have to team up to solve a crime that involves smuggling batteries from the upper world to the lower world. If Artemis can help them track down the source of the batteries, which are being used to power now outlawed weapons in the lower world, then they might use some fairy magic to help Artemis find and rescue his father, who he has reason to believe is still alive. If you enjoy a little supernatural flavor and some tongue in cheek humor, you can't go wrong with these books.

Death of a Maid

My dear great aunt in Caldwell was kind enough to let us borrow some audio books on her account for the drive to Bend and then on home to LV. I love listening to the Hamish Macbeth books by M.C. Beaton because the readers have such wonderful accents. This one had a good plot dealing with, not surprisingly, a cleaning woman--Mrs. Gillespie-- who nobody liked but kept employing nevertheless, until someone hit her over the head with her own mop bucket. Her husband was joyous and immediately went into remission from his cancer. Her daughter was reunited with a husband after a divorce which her mother had precipitated. Hamish is pursuing leads and hunches, joined occasionally by former flame Elspeth who has come home for a visit. At the same time he is trying to avoid anyone figuring out that he is the one making progress, because to be noticed means potentially to be promoted, which would mean leaving his beloved Lochdubh. The suspects are thick on the ground for it turns out that not only was she an unpleasant woman, but she was also a nosy person who used what she found to blackmail her clients. Hamish remains resolutely a bachelor even though at one point he goes out and buys Elspeth an engagement ring. Poor Elspeth, having despaired of Hamish ever asking, accepts a marriage proposal from a fellow reporter who jilts her at the altar. Hamish's cat and dog, Lugs and Sonsie play a central role in Hamish's life and always add a quirky element to the tales of this quirky anti-hero. There is a rather distracting side plot in this book, after the main murder is solved, involving a crime lord trying to have Hamish killed. Of course Hamish turns this to advantage, too, capturing the criminal and several of his henchmen--but giving the credit to another inspector from Inverness. A fun listen/read as are all the books inthis series.

Undone

I've not followed Karin Slaughter's work though her name comes up often in the realm of police procedurals/crime fiction and she has a lot of fans. The characters of Undone are quirky and interesting: two agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Will and Faith, both come from bad childhoods. Will is dyslexic and Sara had a kid while still a kid herself. They apparently appeared in a number of her other books (e.g., Fractured). In this one, Faith passes out inexplicably and is taken to the hospital where we encounter another character from a different Slaughter book (Faithless), the on call emergency doctor Sara Linton. Sara is a widow; her dead husband was a cop, and she is damaged goods. In fact, they all are, but more endearing for all of that.  Faith, it turns out, is pregnant and going into full-blown diabetes and she's having a hard time with both diagnoses. The three are brought back together when a horribly tortured woman is brought into the emergency room and it starts to look like she's only one in a string of victims. Personally, I had a hard time with all the grisly details of the torture, although told from a forensic perspective rather than from the serial killer's, they were off-putting. Enter with caution.

Two by Harlan Coben

Coben is a solid mystery writer with tricky plots and a regular cast of characters that reappear in many of his books. So it felt like a lucky find to run across one of his paperbacks in the trading library at the resort on Crete. The Woods revolves around a cold case involving 4 teenagers who disappeared into the area surrounding a co-ed summer camp and presumably all died. Except two of them were never found. One of the missing ones was  the sister of our protagonist, Paul Copeland, who also happens to be the county prosecutor in Essex County, NJ . Old memories are stirred up when a murdered man with Paul's card in his pockets, is tentatively identified by Paul as the other missing teen from that night long ago. Does that mean his sister could also be alive?  And did we mention that Paul had been one of the counselors in charge at the camp the night the murders and disappearances took place, and that he hasn't seen or heard from the girl he sneaked off with that night in all these years, until now?    

Long Lost is one I listened to on our travels to and from Bend a couple weeks ago. Myron Bolitar, sports agent (and a regular fixture of many Coben novels) gets a 5 am wake-up call from a long-lost love, Teresa Collins, inviting him to Paris for a few fun filled days, “'Think about it,” she went on. “The City of Lights. We could make love all night long'...What’s wrong, Terese?'... 'Nothing’s wrong.  I want to spend a romantic, sensual, fantasy-filled weekend with you in Paris.'Another swallow. 'I haven’t heard from you in, what, seven years?" But indeed something is very wrong. Her husband is missing and eventually turns up--dead. Events start to make it look like the daughter she thought died years ago in a car wreck might not be dead. But it's oh so much more complicated than this. It's all about a plot to grow terrorists who can go anywhere because they look just like...well, read it and find out.
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The King Must Die

An oldie but goodie by Mary Renault and another gift from my sis-in-law in honor of our Greece trip. It does give you a whole other perspective on viewing ruins that are thousands of years old to think of people actually living, loving, working in those places. For those of you not familiar, this is Renault's version of the Theseus legend. Was he the son of the god Poseidon? or of mortal king Aigeus and priestess Aithra. The story goes that Theseus was sent to Crete as part of Athens tribute--usually 7 girls and 7 boys--which was paid to avoid having Crete attack them. The youths were sent to the "Bull Court" where they "danced" with the bulls and usually didn't live very long, although they often lived well. The frescoes recovered from Knossos show the bull dancers. In the legend, Theseus manages to navigate the labyrinth and defeat the minotaur--half man, half bull--and sail home. But he forgets to change the colors of his sails to white. When his father the king spies the returning ships with dark sails, he despairs at his lost son and throws himself down the cliff to his death. In Renault's version, Theseus has already become a king in his own right by the time he volunteers to become part of Athen's tribute. He finds the Cretans have fallen away from the gods and become bored and irreverent, hence their eventual demise is inevitable. Knossos, once a city of 100,000 people according to historians, was in fact wiped out, perhaps by a tidal wave resulting from a cataclysmic volcanic explosion on Thera, followed by invasion by the Myceneans. There is no agreed upon explanation for the decline of a robust civilization that lasted for over 1600 years.

The Skull Mantra

My lovely sis-in-law had recommended this book and it was well worth the read. Written by Eliot Pattison, the story is set in Tibet after the Communists took over, a fairly uncommon setting for a mystery. We are introduced to the prisoners of a labor camp, mostly monks and other dissidents, but also a few Chinese communists who just didn't have the right brand of politics. Former inspector Shan Tao Yun apparently made the mistake of going after one too many corrupt officials and is now building roads under the worst physical conditions--cold, hunger, occasional torture, and ongoing physical and psychological brutality by the guards. But then the laborers discover the headless body of a well-dressed Chinese who turns out to be a high ranking official, and now the former inspector is brought out of forced retirement to unofficially investigate and write a quick report that will leave local officials in the clear. Much of the detail involves the practitioners and beliefs of Buddhism which make for fascinating reading--and apparently there are several more books in this series once you're hooked as I was.

A Venetian Reckoning/ Death and Judgement

Along with all the wonderful historical info and daily activity notes lost with my travel journal was a record of my vacation reading...but will do my best to reconstruct at least some of them. This book was found in the hand-me-down library at the last place we stayed on Crete and it turned out to be quite a treat. Apparently the 4th installment of a series by Donna Leon about police Commissario Guido Brunetti, it was originally published under the title Death and Judgement. The basic plot line involves investigating the murders of several highly prominent businessmen, who turn out to have a decidedly dark side to their business dealings--trafficking in prostitutes and worse. The story line is intriguing, the characterization of the protagonist and his family are engaging and the description of the city (Venice) is yummy snacking for armchair travellers.

Charlie M

Brian Freemantle has written a whole series of books about Charlie Muffin, who really dislikes being called Charles. I'd never heard of them, and can't honestly remember now how I found out about the series, but it sounded like he'd found a winning formula so thought I'd check it out by reading the first one. Set during the Cold War, Charlie is a spy--a leftover from a previous regime that apparently had some embarrassing events which resulted in a new Director and a wholesale housecleaning of the staff. Charlie cultivates a rumpled, even shabby appearance, but is still the most knowledgable agent they have. His ruthlessly ambitious and probably sociopathic new boss, Cuthbertson, sets Charlie up to get captured while crossing from East Berlin. Charlie, ever a  survivor, outwits the treachery, although a man Charlie was trying to help escape to the West gets killed in his place. His new boss also attempts to diminish the importance of Charlie's recent capture of a major Russian spymaster operating in Great Britain, but this backfires, so Cuthbertson is forced to keep Charlie on staff. He does manage to shove Charlie into a former broom closet of an office and is threatening a demotion. Now a major player in the KGB is making noises about defecting, and after Cuthbertson's still wet-behind-the-ears agents get killed or captured, Charlie is brought in to save the play. I was caught totally unawares by the plot twist in this first novel of the series and I'm definitely curious to see where things go from here.

The Prince of Mist

A year or so ago, I read and wrote a post on The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I just finished reading a translation of his first book, which was written specifically for young adults and I'm copying the review I wrote for Children's Literature database.
When Max and Alicia’s father decides they must move from the city to a small coastal town in England to be safer from the war (WWII), the family is less than excited. Thirteen year old Max, our narrator, is distraught at leaving behind friends and familiar places, and older sister Alicia withdraws even more into herself. The suspense begins the moment they arrive at the village train station when a large cat adopts their younger sister Irina and then seems to be keeping an eye on the family once they move into their new beach house. The house and grounds also seem to be watching and maneuvering family members in mysterious way. While exploring town, Max becomes acquainted with Roland, a young man who will be going off to war in the fall. Roland introduces Max to diving in the bay and shows him a wrecked ship, the Orpheus. Once Alicia and Roland meet, a tentative romance is begun, but events really begin to spin out of control when Irina is rushed to the hospital after an apparently accidental fall down the stairs. Alicia, Roland and Max all discover that they are being haunted by the same images of a malevolent clown—in their dreams, in a statue that seems to move in the overgrown garden, and even on some old family movies discovered in the garden shed. Roland’s adoptive grandfather, the self-appointed lighthouse keeper Victor Kray, reveals under pressure the story of his escape from the wrecked ship. Kray had been in pursuit of an evil man named Cain who was responsible for the death of a childhood friend, and originally believed Cain had died in the shipwreck, but now he’s not so sure. Cain, also known as the Prince of Mist, has come back to reclaim a promised prize, the firstborn child of the beach house’s former owner. Supposedly the child, Jacob, drowned when he was seven years old, but Max discovers from viewing the old films that Jacob is in fact Roland, who Kray has been attempting to hide and protect for over 10 years. This is a quick reading suspenseful story from beginning to end, with a believably brave young male narrator who will appeal to boy readers.
The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Translated by Lucia Graves)
BIBLIO: 2010 (originally published in Spanish, 1992), Little. Brown and Company/Hachette Book Group. Ages 13 to18, $17.99.

The Girl Who Played with Fire

Perhaps even more compelling than the first book, or maybe more compelling because of the first book, Stieg Larsson's 2nd entry in the Millenium trilogy focuses largely on Lisbeth Salander who early on becomes the focus of a manhunt in a triple murder investigation. The complicated background that has created this socially phobic but uniquely brilliant character is revealed and boy is this a doozy of a twisty plot--imagine your most nightmarish conspiracy theory if you were the target. And then imagine you were just 12 years old when it all started. But if you liked the first book, you will love this one. Lisbeth eventually has some very powerful people on her side, which is amazing given how little she is able to offer in the way of normal personal relationships. Salander engineers several major changes in her life, and the book leaves us knowing there are more changes on the way for these characters .
Perhaps even more amazing than reading the book was finding out that the Swedish film version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was playing on the other side of town and we got to see it this weekend. The cast was absolutely superb and they didn't pull any punches on some of the more gut-wrenching scenes from the book. Of course no movie can ever develop the complexity of relationships and events that comprise a good novel, but they did an outstanding job of capturing the essence. They even corrected one of my minor gripes about the book--the disappearance from the storyline of the police detective originally assigned to the Harriet Vanger case. There is some foreshadowing of the 2nd novel in the movie, but you will want to see this if you possibly can no matter how many of the books in this trilogy you have or haven't read. Two members of our group knew nothing about the books and were still enthralled.

Thanks to my friend Wendy Starkweather for the lead to this lengthy article in the New York Time Magazine to a lengthy bio piece on Larsson and the controversy surrounding his literary heritage.