The Wind is Not a River

This 2nd novel from Brian Payton tells the story of a much under-reported side of America's involvement in WWII. When the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and then invaded the islands of Kiska and Attu in the Alaskan chain of Aleutian islands, the U.S. military kicked out all the reporters, evacuated the natives to warehouse camps on the mainland, and destroyed their villages so the Japanese could not use them. They then proceeded to try and bomb the Japanese off the islands. The government did not want the general population to know we had been invaded. This was the only theatre of WWII fought on U.S. soil.  National Geographic journalist John Easley has defied the ban by taking his recently dead brother's identity papers from the Canadian Air Force and hitching a ride on a bomber, which was then shot down near Attu. The story is told alternately by John, who is trying to evade capture by the Japanese, starvation, and freezing to death, and by his wife Helen, who leaves her ailing father in Seattle and resolves to find John by joining a USO troupe going to Alaska. The story is absolutely compelling, beautifully and heart-breakingly told from both their points of view. Not a happy ending, but a totally believable one.
For a quick summary of why the book is titled as it is, see the last paragraph of this review in the NYT.  Also a very thoughtful review in the Chicago Tribune.

Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Although this novel by Mishka Ben-David is subtitled "A Thriller," I did not find it to be so. Originally written in Hebrew, perhaps it is the translation process that has rendered this narrative so stilted, or it could be that the preponderance of the first 150 pages of the book is much more about the past and present emotional struggles of the Mossad operative protagonist, now stationed in St. Petersburg and involved in a forbidden affair with a Russian woman. We spend chapters learning about the years he and his first wife spent trying to conceive a child and when she gave up, so did I. the author's bona fides are impressive as he has advanced degrees in literature and served as a senior Mossad agent. Maybe if I had stayed with the book a bit longer, but life is too short and the world too full of good books.  However, don't just rely on my take, as the book received a positive review from Publishers Weekly, and there is an interview (pre-this book publication) on Reuters. 

Scaredy Cat

This is a 2nd novel from Mark Billingham featuring London DI Tom Thorne--there are over a dozen in the series!! When two women are both found strangled on the same day, a serial killer is assumed. But when these murders are tied to two earlier stabbings that took place on the same day but several miles apart, it appears  there may be more than one killer at work. Each time a pair of victims turns up, one is dispatched in a much more macabre fashion than the other. We find out the back story of a man who was both protected and terrorized by a psychopath starting in grade school and this same person, now an adult, has come back to run and ruin his life again. When the "puppet" botches one of his assigned murders, he turns himself into the police, who decide to keep this news out of the press in hopes of flushing out the more dangerous killer. But there are some problems beginning to emerge on Thorne's team that will play out in fatal fashion. Tightly written, but difficult to hook into the characters. Not a repeat author for me, although I am going to check out the Sky TV series that is based on this book (reviewed by the NYT). Favorably reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and numerous British papers including The Guardian.

Hell's Gate

A first novel by Bill Schutt, a research zoologist, whose non-fiction account of blood-feeding animals, Dark Banquet, was highly acclaimed. He is writing with J.R. Finch, perhaps a ghost writer? At any rate we can take it that Schutt knows his stuff about bats, and they play a big part in this WWII era thriller about a secret Axis submarine that has traveled to inland Brazil with an unknown agenda.  Turns out that it's a Japanese sub of enormous proportions carrying German rocket scientists, but we don't know that until a bit later in the book. Capt. R. J. MacCready, a military scientist cum adventurer, is ordered into the interior to find out what they are up to. Along the way, however, he encounters another mystery. Shadowy creatures are hunting him using some kind of mind control. OK, the creatures are giant vampire bats, once thought extinct, but which have apparently lived in a hidden pocket of Brazil until disturbed by the incursion of submarines and soldiers, so now they are out hunting humans. And they have indeed evolved to use their sonar capabilities to selectively target areas of the brain and lull their human prey into not fleeing. To top it off, they are the host to a bacteria that causes the bite victim to rapidly bleed out--handy for the vampires and fatal to the humans. The nasty German and Japanese scientists, once they discover the bats, want to capture them and isolate the bacteria for germ warfare. There is a bit of fact and a lot of fiction in this read, which is reasonably well-written in spite of the far-fetched plot. Pure cotton candy. I would not go out of my way to read the planned sequel but wouldn't turn it down in a pinch either.  Kirkus--one of my "go to" sources for book reviews, liked the book, as did The Washington Post.

First Grave on the Right

I was so taken with the book I just finished by Darynda Jones, the Dirt on Ninth Grave, that I ordered this first book in the series, which I devoured in 3 days. Again, a little too much bodice ripping for an  unreserved rave, but still such fun characters and outrageous premise (supernatural), that I will undoubtedly read the whole series. Charley Davidson is a PI in Albuquerque, NM, who works as a consultant to the Albuquerque, PD. She has special skills that help her detective Uncle Bob (and previously her father when he was a cop) solve the unsolvable crimes. She is the Grim Reaper, but not in a bad way. She is a shining beacon to those who have died but not passed beyond because they have unresolved issues--like being murdered. They come to her to pass along messages to their loved ones, to get justice, and eventually, to use her as a portal to "the light." She first saw The Big Bad--what we stereotypically think of as the Grim Reaper (tall, dark, hooded, no face visible, carrying a big scythe) on the day she was born, and she has been able to interact with dead people ever since. Her mother died giving birth, but told Charley in her passing that she was happy to give up her life for Charley's. Her dad eventually came to believe in Charley's special abilities, but her step-mother never did, and made her life a misery as a result. We get all the background on Charley as she reluctantly reveals herself to best friend, employee, and neighbor, Cookie. Both Cookie and Charley are addicted to coffee and hot men. Charley is a smart ass and I always find that appealing in a female protagonist. She is being stalked by someone tall, dark, and not always visible, who visits her in her dreams. She is beginning to think it is a man she met in high school, Reyes Farrow, but it turns out he's in a coma in a prison hospital. Apparently he has some special skills as well. You will love Charley's cast of deceased hangers on: Mr. Wong who stands in the corner of her living room with his face turned to the wall, her Great Aunt 'Lil who always makes coffee but not really, and 13 year old gang-banger Angel, who is Charley's one and only investigator.  

Death Sits Down to Dinner

This is the 2nd in the "Lady Montfort" series by Tessa Arlen, set in pre-WWI London and England. Compared by reviewers to Downton Abbey with a bit of murder mystery thrown in. Definitely provides the "upstairs-downstairs" perspectives of class-based society at that time.  Lady Montfort and her husband are invited to a dinner in honor of Winston Churchill's birthday, even though they personally do not like the man. At the story's point in time, he is First Lord of the Admiralty and very verbose about England's need to prepare for a potential war with Germany. The hostess, Lady Hermione Kingsley, is founder of the largest charity for orphans in England, the Chimney Sweep Boys. The board chairman, remains alone in the dining room after dinner in response to a note passed to him by one of Lady Kingsley's footmen. He never leaves the table, having ended up with a knife in his chest. Lady Montfort and her most proper but nevertheless intrepid housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, are determined to find the killer, even though the government, and certainly Lady Kingsley, want to hush up the whole affair. There are motives aplenty for murdering the self-important gentleman--thwarted love, financial shenanigans at the charity--but this is a big red herring. I won't spoil it, but you will be surprised by "who done it" and why. Enjoyable read for those who like mysteries with a historical setting, involving actual historical persons, in this case including: Winston Churchill, Lady Cunard (yes that Cunard), Sir Thomas Beecham, opera star Nellie Melba, and dancer/choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.

The Dirt on Ninth Grave

A numbered series by Darynda Jones, which I will now need to go back and read, starting with First Grave on the Right. The series is based on the character, Charley Davidson, who is a part-time sleuth who can see dead people and parallel worlds. However,  you would not know about Charley if you started with this book because Charley woke up in an alley behind a diner several weeks ago with no memory of who she is and now goes by the name Jane Doerr. She is waiting tables part-time in the diner and her fellow waitress is Cookie, who keeps calling her Charley for some inexplicable reason. Also there are a bunch of diner "regulars" who seem to have taken a special interest in her, including the hot body Reyes Farrow, who is the target of all the local female lust in the town of Sleepy Hollow (yes, THAT Sleepy Hollow). Because "Janey" can see other worlds, she knows that Reyes is not altogether human--she sees an aura of flames and smoke around him, Also, she can see a demon sleeping curled inside one of her favorite customers, Mr. P., who is usually accompanied by the ghost of a dead stripper. Mr. P.  doesn't know about all the company he keeps of course, so Janey is worried about him. Then she has more things to worry about when she begins to suspect that the owner of the antique store next door, Mr. Vandenberg, and his family have been taken hostage by terrorists. But how to get help for them without endangering them further? And then there is the local police officer, Ian, who thinks Janey is his girlfriend, even though she has not encouraged him. As the book goes on, it emerges he is stalking her in a major and scary way. So Janey has friends and enemies--living and dead--and she is afraid to tell anyone what she can see that nobody else can. This was a real romp, and although I don't have much patience for the bodice ripper style of description that pops up periodically, Janey is an enjoyable character, and I found myself as anxious as she was to find out who--and what--she really is.

Truth

This is a very gritty police procedural set in Melbourne, Australia by Peter Temple, as a sequel to the award winning The Broken Shore. This book also took several literary prizes. There are obviously some references to the earlier work, but it can be read as a stand-alone. The protagonist, Inspector Stephen Villani, is head of Melbourne's Homicide Division, but nevertheless refuses to take a hands-off managerial role. Instead he gets down and rolls around in every investigation which causes him to be a bit more invested in finding solutions, even when political powers-that-be encourage him to let things go. There are several grisly, and seemingly unrelated murders--a prostitute, a couple of drug dealers--that everyone seems to want tucked away as soon as possible. Preferably without involving several high level government officials and prominent business men.  There are a couple of side stories going on as well. Villani's marriage has already deteriorated into a coldly hostile detente situation when his youngest daughter, who he is sure is not actually his child, goes missing in the company of a drug dealer. Meanwhile, his father's home and surrounding acreage, planted in hundreds of trees by Villani when he was a youth, is in the path of a raging fire and his dad won't leave.  Villani is being unwillingly groomed for a higher position, getting advice from several directions including the police hierarchy and local politicians. Villani is ready to walk away from it all because he has become so cynical and discouraged about the crime and depravity of the city. This probably NOT a book you want to read if you are thinking of visiting Melbourne anytime soon. Well-written but very dark, a la the Scandinavian crime fiction I blogged about earlier.
Temple  has also written the "Jack Irish" series, which was made into a TV mini-series. I could not find an author home page, but the Wikipedia entry has a list of awards and novels written. A review from The Guardian is here, and a slightly more enthusiastic endorsement from The Huffington Post.
 

Cracked Spine

This Scottish Bookshop Mystery (hopefully the first in a series) by Paige Shelton was just a delightful read if you like cozies. Not that Edinburgh really qualifies as the small town that is usually the setting for such mysteries, but the sense of community and knowing everyone else's business is here is good measure. Budget cuts have unexpectedly ended Delaney Nichols' job as an archivist at a museum in Wichita, Kansas, when she sees an ad for "a keenly intelligent investigator to assist us in our search for things thought lost" at a rare book and manuscript shop in Scotland. After an hour-long conversation with the owner, Edwin, MacAlister, who is impressed with her experience working in preservation of historical objects, she is offered the job and never looks back.
The shop, known as The Cracked Spine, is in the heart of old Edinburgh and Delaney is delighted to find "Delaney's: The World's Smallest Pub" just a few doors away. She is taken under the wing of a friendly cab driver and his wife who just happen to have a small cottage to rent. Delaney's fellow employees at the shop are 19-year old Hamlet, a college student who also acts in local theatre, and Rosie, an older woman who is constantly accompanied by her small dog, Hector. Before Delaney even has time to figure out what her job will be, the situation is shattered by the murder of Edwin's sister, Jenny, who was also holding a valuable Shakespeare folio for him. Delaney is not content to stand by while the police solve the mystery, and her inquisitiveness might just get her killed....well of course it doesn't. There is also a love interest in the owner of the aforementioned pub, Tom, who has dreamy blue eyes and looks great in a kilt.
You don't get a hint of what's happening until the very end and it was an act of will to put the book down at night. Her use of some Scottish brogue in the language of her characters is entertaining, and her love of Edinburgh and the Scottish people shine through. For those of you who share that fondness, you will find this a wonderful diversion. Shelton has written quite a few books and other series. I really hope she continues this one. Apparently, there is an element of the supernatural in her "Farmers' Market" and "Country Cooking School" series, and there is lots of room for ghosts in Scotland!

The Carrier

Like the other medical/scientific mystery I just blogged about, Fertile Ground, this book by Ben Mezrich is a little tighter and more readable than previous books I have read by him. Our protagonist, Jack Collier, is a PhD student at Harvard on a personal quest to find a cure for cancer, and thus save his girlfriend who is dying. When he apparently succeeds by altering a flesh-eating bacteria to target cancer cells, he is elated. Then his world turns upside down as he is betrayed by his advisor and mentor who has framed Jack for plagiarism and made it appear that Jack's research is his own. Jack steals his samples from the lab and takes off in search of his girlfriend, unaware that the bacteria was altered by his advisor and is now a terrifying plague that Jack can transfer to people just by touching them. The FBI is after Jack. One agent wants to kill him, the other wants to understand what is going on with this terrible germ and with the man who created it. If you like Robin Cook mysteries, this one will appeal to you.