Tag: crime fiction

Day 95: The Girl Who Played with Fire

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Cover for The Girl Who Played with FireThe Girl Who Played with Fire is the second in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy. As the transitional book between the first and third, it is not quite up to the level of the first book; however, it is still exciting. The first time I read it, I was riveted, but on my reread, I noticed a few occasions where the writing was more journalistic than desirable. Nevertheless, it is still a real thriller and absolutely essential to read if you are going to finish the trilogy.

Lisbeth Salander’s visit to her evil guardian upon her return from her travels abroad creates a conspiracy against her. Her guardian is tired of toeing the line and decides to have her killed.

Mikael Blomqvist is soon investigating a crime, too. He has been working with a freelance journalist, Dag Svensson, to publish a piece on sex trafficking. When he stops by one evening, he finds Svensson and his girlfriend, Mia Johansson, recently shot dead.

As the investigation proceeds, Salander’s guardian is also murdered, and the police discover links to the murders of Svensson and Johansson. Lisbeth Salander finds she is being framed for all the murders, despite her never having met Svensson or Johansson.

Blomqvist is convinced that Salander is innocent. With Salander hiding out and following the leads from her side, Blomqvist tries to figure out who Svensson may have been investigating that resulted in his murder.

Day 90: As the Crow Flies

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Cover for As the Crow FliesIn honor of the premiere of “Longmire,” the new TV series on A&E starting this Sunday and based on Craig Johnson’s mystery series, today I’m reviewing his latest book, As the Crow Flies. Johnson’s series features Walt Longmire, the sheriff of fictional Absaroka County in Wyoming. The highlights of the series are likable characters and difficult puzzles and a sense of the modern American West as almost a character in the novels.

Walt and his best friend Henry Standing Bear are in Montana at the Cheyenne reservation trying to make the final arrangements for Walt’s daughter’s wedding. Although Henry reserved the site at Crazy Head Spring where Cady wants to be married several months earlier, the librarian on the reservation wants it for a Cheyenne language immersion class, and she is not to be denied. Walt and Henry manage to alienate the new Tribal Police Chief, Lolo Long, at first sight as they are on their way to Painted Warrior cliff to see if it will be a good alternate site for the wedding. While they are taking pictures to send Cady, they see a woman and her baby fall from the cliff above them. The woman dies, but the baby lives, and Walt and Henry rush it to the reservation clinic. On the way, Chief Long tries to arrest them.

Things look suspiciously like murder. Chief Long is belligerant and has already made some law-enforcement errors, but after Walt makes a few cogent observations about her job performance and helps her keep her jurisdiction from the FBI, she asks him to teach her to be a police chief.

Although it looks at first as if the girl’s abusive boyfriend may be guilty, Walt is not so sure. After a red truck tries to run him down along the road, he traces the truck to a different suspect. Walt is torn between helping Chief Long with her police work and working Cady’s to-do list.

As well as the cast of recurring characters you expect from a Johnson novel and some interesting new ones, As the Crow Flies continues the hint of Indian mysticism that has appeared here and there in the series,  including a peyote ceremony and a conversation with the deceased Virgil White Buffalo (who I miss). Its taste of Cheyenne culture gives it an added dimension.

Day 87: Bangkok Haunts

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Cover of Bangkok HauntsBangkok Haunts is unlike any mystery I have ever read.  I heard about the series by John Burdett and wanted to try it but think perhaps it might have been best to start with the first one. (Bangkok Haunts is the third.) I had an ambivalent reaction to it but am willing to try reading another one.

Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a devout Buddhist detective who tries to remain relatively straight in what is, according to one of the characters in the book, the world’s most corrupt police force. I say relatively because his mother is the proprietor of a brothel, where he helps out. He also keeps being pulled into the illegal schemes of his powerful boss, police captain Vikom.

A vicious snuff film is sent to Sonchai anonymously. He is horrified to see that the victim is Damrong, a prostitute with whom he was obsessed until she left him. Damrong’s ghost begins haunting him at night, even though he is living happily with his pregnant girlfriend. Sonchai is determined to bring Damrong’s murderers and those involved in the film to justice, even though Vikom is more interested in blackmail.

The novel’s Byzantine plot involves sorcery, Buddhist monks, an elite gentlemen’s club, Cambodian thugs, and some seriously disturbed individuals. For such dark material, the first person narration is oddly light in tone. However, the atmosphere and insights into Thai beliefs, modern life, and customs are rich and fascinating.

I did not buy at all the subplot about Sonchai’s FBI friend Kimberley Jones, who becomes obsessed with his assistant Lek. Lek is saving up for a sex-change operation, but Kimberley falls madly in love with him and keeps calling Sonchai to talk about how wrong the operation would be and to demand he talk Lek out of it. I can’t imagine that a woman who has fought her way into the FBI would be this susceptible and irrational–and unprofessional.

This novel is not for everyone, but I definitely think the unusual series is worth another look.

Day 85: Spider Bones

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Cover for Spider BonesFor years I have been enjoying Kathy Reichs’s series featuring the forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Brennan alternates between working in Montreal and Charlotte, North Carolina, but I usually prefer the books that take place in Montreal. In Spider Bones, she goes farther afield.

A corpse from an autoerotic episode that is found in a lake in Quebec seems to be John Lowery of North Carolina, but John Lowery supposedly died 40 years earlier in Vietnam. Brennan’s investigation takes her to Hawaii to work with an old friend at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. She brings along her daughter as well as her on-again off-again lover Ryan and his daughter.

When Tempe is asked to help with the remains from an apparent shark attack and to identify some other bones from the Vietnam War, her life becomes endangered, as well has those of her companions.

I enjoyed this novel, but my interest in the series is winding down as the books depart more from the original set-up and become more like thrillers. I think the absorbing parts of these series are her descriptions of Brennan’s work and of the culture of Montreal. Also, the Bones TV series was a severe disappointment, as it bears little relationship to the books.

Day 74: A Caribbean Mystery

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Cover for A Caribbean MysteryAgatha Christie is one of the best mystery writers of the so-called Golden Age of mystery writing because she so skillfully sketches believable characters and plots. Although many of the Golden Age mysteries concentrate on perplexing puzzles such as figuring out railway timetables, Christie was much more interested in the personality of the murderer and his or her motivations.

A Caribbean Mystery begins after Miss Marple has suffered a serious bout of pneumonia. Her affectionate nephew Raymond has arranged a vacation for her on an island in the Caribbean, where she can recover. But of course her vacation isn’t as restful as her nephew had hoped.

She is only half listening to boring Major Palgrave when he offers to show her the snapshot of  a murderer, but just then he sees something and quickly begins chatting about something else. That night he is found dead, apparently of a heart attack.

Miss Marple is having grave doubts about that heart attack when the chambermaid reports that before his death the Major Palgrave did not have the heart medication found in his room. Shortly thereafter, she is found stabbed to death.

Miss Marple begins sizing up her suspects. Molly Kendal, owner of the hotel with her husband Tim, has been behaving oddly, having nightmares and reporting blackouts and feelings of paranoia. Years ago, Greg Dyson’s wife died and he married her cousin Lucky within a month. Colonel Hillingdon and his wife Evelyn appear close, but are they really? And are they as friendly with the Dysons as they seem to be? The elderly and wealthy Mr. Rafiel is too feeble to be a murderer, but his secretary Esther Walters is secretive and Miss Marple spots his attendant Jackson skulking around.

As usual, Christie does a deft job of quickly limning believable characters and a complex mixture of motives and red herrings in a brief novel that is fun to read. I spotted the killer quickly but still enjoyed the book.

Day 72: The Indian Bride

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Cover for The Indian BrideI previously read one book by Karin Fossum and felt neutral about it, but then I read The Indian Bride. I was extremely touched and involved by this Norwegian small-town mystery.

A naive and uncomplicated bachelor farmer, Gunder Jomann, sees a picture of an Indian woman in a book and decides to go to India to find a wife. This journey is a daunting prospect for a man who has hardly ever left his small town of Elvestad, but he is determined. The story of his journey is brief but touching. He is successful and returns home to prepare for the arrival of his new wife, Poona, while she settles her affairs in India.

Just as he is leaving for the airport to pick Poona up, Gunder gets a call from the hospital. His beloved sister has been in a terrible accident. From the hospital, he calls the local taxi driver and asks him to pick up Poona, but the driver misses her at the airport. The next day Poona’s body is found in a field near Gunder’s house.

Inspector Konrad Sejer and his partner Jacob Skarre are assigned to solve the crime. Most crime novels since Sherlock Holmes deal with solving puzzles posed by clever criminals, but this novel is unusual in reflecting the type of crime that is probably more often dealt with by the police, random violence by people who are not professional criminals and not particularly clever. Some of the suspects are a local café owner, a muscle-bound young man, and an attention-seeking teenager. In a strange way, the focus of the novel reflects a more innocent world, which is exactly how I felt when reading about Gunder and Poona’s romance. I kept hoping the body would turn out to be that of some other Indian woman, not Poona.

The setting is rich, the characters are complex, the puzzle is interesting. I find Inspector Sejer not as well developed as some of his suspects, but perhaps I just need to read more Fossum.

Day 69: The Information Officer

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Cover for The Information OfficerI really enjoyed Mark Mills’s book Amagansett from a few years ago and liked The Savage Garden. However, I did not find his third book, The Information Officer, as satisfying.

It is World War II during the siege of Malta. The British are trying to get their Spitfires to Malta to defend it, but in the meantime the strategic island is being heavily bombed. Major Max Chadwick’s job as information officer is to deliver updates to the local newspaper that are as positive as possible and figure out what is truth and what fiction.

Max’s good friend Freddy comes to him with information that someone is murdering Maltese dance hall girls, and there is evidence that the murderer is a British submariner. Freddy, a doctor, has already raised the problem with the high command and gotten nowhere, so Max decides to investigate. In the meantime, the murderer is plotting his moves.

The novel was interesting enough, with good descriptions of Malta and a fairly involving plot. However, I did not grow to care very much about the characters. I figured out the murderer, although not his motive, fairly easily.

Day 62: Interred with Their Bones

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Cover for Interred with their BonesInterred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell is excellent fun, the first of a literary mystery series. Kate Stanley is directing a production of Hamlet at the Globe when her estranged mentor, Rosalind Howard, a Harvard professor of Shakepeare, gives her a small box and hints that she has made an important discovery. Later that night after a fire at the Globe, Kate finds Roz dead in her office. The box turns out to contain a Victorian mourning brooch decorated with flowers associated with Ophelia.

Kate teams up with her friend, the renowned actor Sir Henry Lee, determined to solve the mystery of Roz’s discovery. She begins to believe that she is searching for the manuscript of a play called Cardenno that was produced in 1613 and that may be the same as a play with a similar name registered in 1653 but never published by William Shakespeare and John Beaumont. In her pursuit of the truth, she keeps running into Ben Pearl, a security expert, and another man who says he is related to Rosalind.

The book is a cross between traditional mystery and thriller with an admittedly ridiculous plot. Kate travels from London to Harvard to Utah and then to Spain and Washington, D.C., running down clues in a sort of parody of The Da Vinci Code. Lots of bodies pile up, and we hear about most of the crackpot theories about Shakespeare that have been vaunted over the years. The story is full of literary allusions, action-packed, witty, and fun to read. I guessed part of the mystery as soon as one character appeared, but I was too interested in the plot and characters for that to be disappointing.

Day 60: Mind’s Eye

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Cover for Mind's EyeMind’s Eye is the first of the Inspector Van Veteren series by Swedish mystery writer Håkan Nesser, although it is the third published in English. Mostly a police procedural, the book also is somewhat of a psychological thriller.

A woman is drowned in her bath tub and her husband, Janek Mitter, is on trial for her murder, but Inspector Van Veteren is not quite sure the police got it right. Mitter, whose only alibi is that he was asleep and who cannot remember what happened that night, is found guilty and incarcerated in a mental hospital.

One night when Mitter is not given his drugs, he remembers someone in his house the night of the murder and trieds to call Van Veteren. He also sends a note to that person. That night he is murdered. Now Van Veteren thinks the police need to start over by examining the woman’s past.

The book was interesting enough, and I am ready to read more about Van Veteren. I was able to guess the solution–although not the exact identity of the murderer–well before the end, but the book kept my attention.

Day 56: The Redbreast

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cover for RedbreastThe Redbreast by Norwegian mystery writer Jo Nesbø starts out with Detective Harry Hole embarrasing his government by shooting an unidentified secret service officer during the American president’s visit. Naturally, he is “promoted” to a political office and assigned to investigate neo-Nazi activities in Norway.

He begins tracking Sverre Olsen, a neo-Nazi who recently escaped prosecution on a technicality. But that investigation is derailed when he comes upon evidence that someone has purchased an extremely powerful, rare rifle and may be planning an assassination attempt. At the same time, someone is killing old men who fought on the Eastern Front for the Germans in World War II, believing that they would prevent their country from being annexed by the Soviet Union.

In her attempts to help Harry with the investigation of who bought the gun, his ex-partner Ellen is murdered.

The novel was interesting and complex, with the story from WWII interleaved with that of Harry’s investigation. However, I didn’t find Harry very developed as a character. This lack of character development may be because this is the seventh Harry Hole book, but I believe that series books must find a way to balance the demands of new readers without being too repetitive for readers following the series. One way is to make sure that the main characters always seem like real people. That said, I may try reading some others to see if I get to like Nesbø’s work more.