Author: whatmeread

Day 279: The Serpent’s Tale

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Cover for The Serpent's TaleIn the first of the Mistress of the Art of Death series (minor spoilers ahead), Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, a medieval pathologist, solved a series of murders for the English King Henry II and fell in love with one of his soldiers, Rowley Picot. She declined his marriage proposal because he expected to be rewarded a baronetcy as a result of their success and she knew that as a baronet’s wife she would not be allowed to pursue her medical profession. As a more humble citizen she has a lot more freedom. So, they parted and, to his horror, he was made the Bishop of St. Albans.

In this second book, taking place almost two years later, Rowley fetches her for another mission. She is bubbling over with resentment because she has borne him a daughter, Ally, whom he has not acknowledged.

Rowley is on what he hopes is a preemptive mission. Using poison mushrooms, someone has attempted to murder Rosamund the Fair, Henry II’s mistress, and blame it on his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In an effort to avoid civil war, Rowley wants Adelia to help him figure out who ordered the attempt before Henry hears of it.

But Adelia has bad news for him. The basket of mushrooms he brought to show her contains nightcaps, and Adelia explains that Rosamund may seem to have improved, but she is already dead.

In a frozen winter landscape, Adelia and Rowley travel first to a convent and then to the fantastic Wormwood Tower to investigate the crime, where Rosamund’s body lies protected by a labyrinth and an insane lady’s maid.

Franklin’s series is well written and carefully researched. Although she admits to taking a few liberties with historical characters in this book, for the most part it is historically based on Eleanor’s revolt against Henry in favor of her oldest son.

Franklin sets up a vivid backdrop in the icy English landscape, which plays more than an incidental part in the plot. In addition, she has the ability to make us care about Adelia and Ally, Rowley, Mansur, and Glytha, the main recurring characters. It is with sadness that I heard not long ago of Franklin’s death, and I regret that there are only four books in this series.

Day 278: Gentlemen of the Road

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Cover for Gentlemen of the RoadGentlemen of the Road is like a boy’s adventure story for adults. Before 1000 AD, Zelikman and Amram are two adventurers travelling in the Caucasus Mountains. They make money by faking fights to be wagered on. Zelikman is a thin, gawky physician from Regensburg who has broken with his family, while Amram is a giant of an ex-soldier looking for his daughter, who was stolen from his village.

An old man hires the men to escort an unwilling young boy named Filaq to his grandfather. The boy’s father was a bek in Khazaria, a legendary Jewish country on the Caspian Sea, when he was murdered by a rival. The boy wants to return to take his revenge, but the rival is having his entire family murdered and enslaved. Filaq eventually persuades Zelikman and Amram to return to Khazaria and help him retake his father’s position.

Chabon originally published this novel as a serial in the New York Times Magazine, ending each chapter with a cliffhanger. He obviously had a great time writing it and it is lots of fun to read, with colorful characters, exotic settings, and deeds of derring-do.

Day 277: The Ice Princess

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Cover for The Ice PrincessOn his weekly check of a weekend home in the fishing village of Fjällbacka, an old man discovers the furnace off and the house ice cold. In the bathtub, he finds the frozen and bloody body of the owner, Alex Wijkner, an apparent suicide. He goes for help to the first person he meets, Erica Falck, a writer on a brisk morning walk before beginning work on her book and her parents’ estate. Erica is shocked to find Alex, who was her best friend at school before she seemed to draw away from everyone and then left town with her parents.

The police soon find that the death was actually a murder. Erica is drawn into the investigation when Alex’s parents ask her to write a tribute piece about Alex. As she finds out more, Erica begins writing a book about her life.

Certainly Alex has some secrets. She was pregnant, although her business partner believes that Alex and her husband Henrik had not been intimate for some time. The partner further claims that Alex had been visiting Fjällbacka on weekends to meet someone.

As Erica pokes around in Alex’s life, she meets an old school friend, Patrik Hedström, a policeman on the case. Patrik has always had a crush on Erica, and now she begins to notice what a nice man he is. Not exactly working together, they both investigate Alex’s death.

I’m not sure why I liked this novel as much as I did. Alex’s biggest secret was obvious to me from the first, although it proved to be more complicated than I imagined. The actual reason for the murder I found unlikely. The writing is on the mediocre side, although it is difficult to tell whether this is due to the translation. Certainly, there are crudities–not just literal ones like unnecessary references to bladder infections and snot, but in behaviors that are almost on the slapstick side. A lot of forehead slapping goes on, although I have actually never seen anyone slap his or her forehead.

Nevertheless, I liked this novel. It makes much more of an attempt at characterization than many other Swedish mysteries I’ve read recently, which are all much more police procedurals. The main characters are likeable, and the novel is lively. The mystery is just complicated enough to have a few surprises. I believe that The Ice Princess is Läckberg’s first book, so maybe her writing will become more polished, or the translations better, as I continue reading.

Day 276: The Best of Friends

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Cover for The Best of FriendsJoanna Trollope writes contemporary novels about real people with realistic problems who live in small British towns and villages. It is one pleasure of reading her that she seldom presents you with a trite ending with all the loose ends tied in a pretty package.

Gina Sitchell and Laurence Wood have been friends since school but were never romantically involved. Their relationship was one that Hilary made sure she understood before agreeing to marry Laurence. Around the time of their marriage, Gina came home to Whittingbourne from living in France and soon married Fergus Bedford, an antiques dealer, and Gina and Hilary became fast friends. Now, twenty years later, Laurence and Hilary run a thriving hotel in the historical Bee House and have three boys. Gina and Fergus live with their only daughter Sophy in a home that Fergus has lovingly restored.

The marriage dynamic of Gina and Fergus has always been to argue, loudly and often. To Gina, nothing has changed, so perhaps that is why she is so shocked and overcome when Fergus coldly informs her that he is leaving her, has indeed been waiting for Sophy to get older before he did so. Then he takes exactly half of the furniture and goes.

Gina is so devastated that she imposes herself on Laurence and Hilary, leaving 16-year-old Sophy in limbo between her own, now unfamiliar home and her grandmother Vi’s tiny apartment. Sophy, who adores her father, is heartbroken and furious.

Between the diverse tasks of managing the hotel and raising three teenage boys and the burden of Gina’s presence, Hilary, first sympathetic, grows tired of the toll Gina’s drama is taking on her household. When Laurence isn’t working as the hotel chef, he seems to be spending all his time comforting Gina. Little does Hilary suspect that her own family life will soon be disrupted by Laurence’s discovery that he loves Gina.

Trollope creates fully realized characters in the two couples but also in their children, and in Vi and her aged suitor. Not all of them are likeable, but they are all convincingly human. I felt sorry for Gina at first, but my sympathy was soon evaporated by her self-centeredness and willingness to wreak havoc with her friend’s family. Fergus seems almost heartless at first, but we soon grow to understand him a little better. None of Trollope’s characters are bad, just people with ordinary complicated personalities who see things from their own points of view.

Trollope creates a story that you want to see resolved but never takes shortcuts to provide a typical happy ending, in fact seldom invents plots for which there could be one. Her novels are for adults, and they deftly explore the complexities and confusions of being human.

Day 275: A Dead Man in Athens

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Cover for A Dead Man in AthensThe “Dead Man” series sounds interesting because of the exotic locales (Athens, Istanbul, Trieste, Tangier, Malta) and the time it is set (pre-World War I), but it proves a bit light for me. I like mysteries that are funny or have an edge, but my idea of humor doesn’t match that of many writers. This book was called “effortlessly funny,” but its humor escaped me. A Dead Man in Athens is the third in the series, and I still don’t know why the books are always named “dead man” here or there, except as possibly a suggestion of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Dead Man in Deptford. Otherwise, believe me, there is no comparison.

Sandor Seymour, a multi-lingual Scotland Yard detective, is sent out to Athens by the Foreign Office because someone has poisoned the cat of the Ottoman sultan living in exile there. The Foreign Office fears someone may be practicing for an attempt on the sultan.

Seymour soon believes that the poisoning may be simply domestic in nature, but the Foreign Office is sure it has something to do with war brewing in the Balkans. Then someone poisons the British engineer hired by the Greeks to take care of Blériot machines, early airplanes that the engineer feels could be useful to the Greeks for reconnaissance during the war.

The novel has many characters, but few are more than narrowly drawn. The mystery is not very complicated, and the absurdity of investigating the death of a cat doesn’t really carry the novel, as far as humor goes.

Day 274: Red Water

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Cover for Red WaterBest Book of the Week!
I read this book on the recommendation of friend Dave Palmer. Thanks, Dave!

In Red Water Judith Freeman has accomplished something difficult–created characters whose beliefs I have no sympathy for, and who I’m not sure I even like, and made me want to read about them.

The novel is about the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, when 120 Arkansas emigrants on their way to California were slaughtered in southwestern Utah. This event is one for which the Church of Latter-Day Saints has never to this day admitted responsibility. In particular, this novel is about John D. Lee, the Mormon bishop who was eventually hanged for his part in the event, from the points of view of three of his wives.

Red Water begins with Lee’s execution in 1877, as Emma Lee looks back at her conversion to the religion in England, journey to Utah, and acceptance of Lee as a husband. Although he is twice her age and she will be his eighth wife, he is charismatic and commanding, and she marries for love.

Once she arrives in southwestern Utah, a barren and harsh landscape, she begins to hear things that disturb her. The initial version she is told of the massacre is that the settlers were slaughtered by Indians. But Lee has their stock in with his, and the settlement has a room stuffed with men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing, some of it badly stained. Other versions of the story come out, ones that point the finger partially, or wholly, at the Mormon men, some alleging her husband was a leader. But Emma feels she must trust her husband.

Emma finds she has other hardships. She is not Lee’s eighth but seventeenth wife, although the other nine have left him. There is jealousy among some of the remaining wives. Lee’s families are so far-flung that Emma often goes days without seeing him. The land is bleak and unforgiving, and the work is hard. But Emma decides to face every hardship cheerfully.

Ann is Lee’s child bride, married to him at the age of 13 shortly after his marriage to Emma. Her narrative begins after Lee’s death as well, when she has long been separated from the family. On a pursuit of a horse thief from Idaho to southern Utah, she finds herself back in Lee’s old territory and reflects upon her life with him.

Ann marries Lee to keep her mother, who has lost faith and criticized the Mormons, under Lee’s protection. Despite their age difference, she is also attracted to him. After an initial rough start with Emma, the two became the closest of friends.

However, by the time Brigham Young sends Lee away from the southern settlements that he helped found and banishes him from the order as a scapegoat for the massacre, Ann has made some disillusioning discoveries and decides that Lee’s driving forces are greed and the pursuit of power. She leaves the family to wander on her own, often dressed as a boy.

Once Lee is thrown off by the Mormons, Emma and Rachel keep faith with him, but only Rachel willingly shares his prison. Her narrative is the last. As an old, bitter woman, she fights to survive in a remote area of northern Arizona where Lee has sent her.

This novel is fascinating for the details of the characters’ beliefs and the hard lives that they must live in settling these wild parts of the country. I also find fascinating the ability of men to rationalize as the will of god whatever foul or greedy things they want to do. Freeman’s portrayal of her characters, however, is amazingly unjudgmental and perceptive.

On a side note, for those who are interested in this subject, an excellent nonfiction source about modern fundamentalists, whose beliefs and rationalizations are strikingly similar to those depicted in this novel, is Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.

Day 273: Sun and Shadow

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Cover for Sun and ShadowTwo people are murdered in their apartments and their heads exchanged. Erik Winter and his team try to figure out what this means, fearing that a serial killer is at work. At the same time, Erik tries to cope with his father dying in Spain and his girlfriend’s pregnancy.

Edwardson, as with other Scandinavian mystery writers, tends to depict police work more as a grind than as food for a thriller. In this case, suspense was generated because, from almost the beginning, I was convinced the murderer would kidnap Erik’s girlfriend.

The novel was also clever enough to trick me. I was sure that the murderer was a certain character, but the book made me think that the killer was another person. It turned out I was right all along.

If you are interested in a slower-moving mystery that grows organically and is probably more realistic than our American mysteries/thrillers, you may enjoy reading Ǻke Edwardson.

Day 272: Moby Dick or, The Whale

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Cover for Moby DickThose who know me well will be surprised to see me reviewing this book, because one of my stories is of my horror, when first trying to read it, to find an entire chapter about one rope. At that point, Moby Dick became the first book I ever stopped reading. However, I got interested in trying it again by listening to the Moby Dick Big Read. I listened to the beginning chapters and finally picked up a copy to finish it.

The plot, of course, is about the sailor Ishmael, who decides to go whaling for the first time, the people he meets, and his experiences–and about the obsession of his captain, Ahab, to kill the whale that took his leg.

Moby Dick is not for everyone. The novel is not simply an adventure tale about whaling but also a dissertation on whaling history, a series of philosophical essays, an explication on types of whales, on the different parts of a whale, on pieces of whaling equipment (hence, the chapter on the rope), even a musing on the color white.

The novel also has a sort of schizophrenic narration, starting out as first-person limited from the point of view of Ishmael, but then at other times taking the point of view of Ahab. The writing style rips back and forth from simple story telling to a kind of heightened, bombastic oratory. Characters do not so much speak as give speeches.

The novel is immense, but it is meant to be immense–the way Melville saw America and its possibilities. I have over the years read different interpretations of this work (the whale as a symbol of evil, etc.), but one that strikes a chord with me is that it is a reflection on some of the American political ideas of the time, particularly Manifest Destiny. While seeming to admire the grandiosity of such ideas, Melville is, with one whaling story, also warning of their possible effects and ramifications.

I can see why some academics have devoted their careers to this work, because it can be endlessly examined and interpreted. I finished reading it this time, but I can frankly admit that it is still a bit too much for me and is probably better suited for someone who is more contemplative in his or her reading.

Day 271: The Abyssinian Proof

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Cover for The Abyssinian ProofIn 19th century Istanbul, the magistrate Kamil Pasha  is assigned to find out who is stealing valuable relics throughout the city and selling them to London. He is instructed to find the relics and bring them back to where they belong. One of the relics is contained in a reliquary that has been guarded since the last days of the Byzantine Empire by a sect of Abyssinian descent called the Melisites. The relic is called the Proof of God.

Kamil is an upright and dedicated civil servant. While he is investigating, he learns about the history and beliefs of an odd group of people, the descendents of Abyssinian slaves who live in an abandoned cistern and are part of the city’s underworld.

In pursuit of the relic thieves and in investigation of some apparently related murders, we follow Kamil through the subterranean passages under Istanbul.

Kamil is also attracted to Elia, a refugee artist who lives in his sister’s house. Elia has suffered terribly, though, and is not really prepared to pursue more than friendship.

As with Barbara Nadel’s more modern Turkish mysteries, I find novels set in this exotic locale interesting, and the history presented in The Abyssinian Proof is fascinating. Sometimes, I wish that Kamil Pasha wasn’t quite such a serious man, however.