Tag: mysteries

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 58: Grave Goods

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Cover for Grave GoodsBest Book of Week 12!

In the year 1154 a dying monk sees what he thinks is a vision of the burial of King Arthur after an earthquake at Glastonbury Abbey. He tells his nephew about it as he dies. Twenty years later when King Henry II is putting down a Welsh rebellion, the nephew, a Welsh bard, tells him the story hoping to save his own life. Henry sends a message to Glastonbury, which has just suffered a great fire, and the monks find a coffin buried in the described location that seems to contain the corpses of a man and a woman.

The penurious Henry would love to announce that they had found the bodies of Arthur and Guinever, because the resulting monies from pilgrimages would save him having to pay to rebuild the abbey. But how can he be sure someone won’t come to claim the bones belonging to his Uncle Tom and Aunt Gladys? By summoning his “mistress in the art of death,” Adelia Aguilar, he hopes to determine at least their antiquity.

Grave Goods is a novel in Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death series. Adelia Aguilar is a graduate of the School of Medicine in Salerno, at the time the only such facility that would accept women, and an expert on the causes of death. She arrived in England on a previous matter, but Henry has found her so valuable that he has never granted her a passport to leave the country. Since she is a woman, her word is not respected by most men, so she pretends she is a translator for her Arab servant Mansur, who pretends to be the doctor.

Henry’s soldiers find Adelia and take her away as she is travelling with her friend Lady Emma Wolvercote to Wells to claim Emma’s son’s property from his grandmother. But when she arrives in Glastonbury after meeting with Henry in Wales, Emma has disappeared. The monks give Adelia’s party an unfriendly greeting, and while she and Mansur are looking in a crypt to find samples to compare with the corpses, someone tries to bury them alive. Something is not right at the abbey, and Adelia is not best pleased to be saved by Rawley, the Bishop of St. Albans, her ex-lover.

I have been reading this series for awhile. At first, I wasn’t sure I bought the premise, but the books are rich with historical details and the forensics information available at the time, and Ariana is a likeable heroine. It’s not her or Rawley’s fault that he was made a bishop (he was a soldier when she met him), and the blending of romance and mystery works fairly well here, which is unusual. The romance is played down in favor of action and suspense. If you like a good historical mystery, you’ll probably enjoy these books.

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.

Day 54: Started Early, Took My Dog

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Cover for Started EarlyKate Atkinson’s mysteries featuring Jackson Brodie are always complex and carefully plotted. The somewhat hapless Brodie is a “semi-retired” private investigator who usually works in Edinburgh, but Started Early, Took My Dog takes him back to his home town of Leeds in Yorkshire.

Jackson Brodie is trying to locate the family of Hope McMasters, a woman who was adopted in the 1970’s at the age of two. In doing so, he has stumbled upon the story of an old crime–a prostitute was murdered and the child found with her disappeared.

Tracy Waterhouse, a retired detective who works as a security guard at a mall, was originally on that case and always worried about the child. On impulse, Tracy purchases another abused child from a junkie prostitute. When Jackson tries to find her to ask her about the old crime, she thinks he is after her for kidnapping and flees.

Two separate groups of people appear to be chasing Tracy–or maybe Jackson. And what does Tracy’s friend Barry know about the crime? And how is Tillie Squires, an old actress who is going senile, involved in everything? And then there’s the dog.

Atkinson’s mysteries are edgy and well written, as well as humorous. She spends more time on characterization than the usual mystery novel, creating interesting individuals. The novel changes between viewpoint and time to tell the complex, interweaved stories about identity.

Day 52: Winter’s Bone

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Cover for Winter's BoneI became interested in reading Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell after seeing the powerful, gritty movie. If anything, the book is grittier and more compelling.

Winter’s Bone is a grim, yet touching, sparsely written tale of a young girl’s attempt to save her home. Ree Dolly is a high school student who has been supporting her mentally ill mother and two younger brothers in an area of the Ozarks that except for some modern-day conveniences doesn’t seem like it could be much different from it was a hundred years ago or more. One day the sheriff arrives to tell her that her father put their house and property up as collateral for his bail, and that if he doesn’t make his court date in a week, the family will lose their home. To Ree, this would mean a loss of all hope.

Ree sets out to find her father, whom she hasn’t seen in several months. Although almost everyone she visits is related to her in some way, most of the men are meth cookers, and her quest among the Ozark hollows is fraught with danger. Some of the women are even scarier than the men. Ree begins to feel that there is some greater mystery–that others know where her father is and aren’t telling. Initially resistant to her efforts, her terrifying Uncle Teardrop finally decides out of family loyalty to help her.

Woodrell’s prose is both lyrical and spare. You are rooting for Ree, her honest, uncorrupted spirit in stark contrast to the endemic criminality of the community.

Day 50: Blacklands

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Cover for BlacklandsBest Book of Week 10!

Belinda Bauer was another of my discoveries last year as a new writer of dark, psychologically complex novels. Blacklands is not so much a mystery as a thriller.

Twelve-year-old Steven Lamb’s uncle Billy was murdered as a child by a serial killer, and his grandmother has never gotten over it. Steven’s Nan spends all day looking out the window for her son, whose body was never found. Everyone thinks Billy was murdered by pedophile Arnold Avery, who is serving a life sentence.

Steven decides he will find his uncle’s body and that will fix his family, so he has spent all of his spare time for three years digging up the moor near his house where Avery’s victims were found. Finally he realizes the task is hopeless.

Steven feels that he is so average that he has no talents, so he is pleased when his teacher tells him he writes a good letter. He decides that maybe if he writes to the murderer, Avery will tell him where he buried Uncle Billy.

When Avery realizes that the person who has been writing to him is a boy, he decides that the situation is too delicious and he must escape from prison. Of course, he is successful.

The barren moors of Exmoor are so vividly described that they are almost a character in this chilling, suspenseful novel. At times I wasn’t totally convinced by the depiction of the thinking of the serial killer, but for the most part I was absolutely riveted.

Day 47: Believing the Lie

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Cover for Believing the LieI have been a fan of Elizabeth George’s Detective Inspector Lynley and Detective Sergeant Havers series ever since I read A Great Deliverance, the first one. However, it seems to have gone astray ever since George killed off Lynley’s wife three or four books ago, and I came close to not picking up this one. With Believing the Lie, however, George is slowly returning to form. (Just as a side note, those of you who think you know the series from Masterpiece Mystery are sadly mistaken. I was thrilled to hear they were doing the series but really upset at how they combined books, changed endings to ones that were less effective, and so on.)

Lynley is asked by Assistant Commissioner (and slimy politician) David Hilliard to do him a favor and investigate whether a wealthy industrialist’s nephew died in an accident or was murdered. Of course, a lot is going on with the Fairclough family below the surface.

Since the investigation is unofficial, Lynley takes along his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, who are recurring characters in the series. Simon St. James is a forensic scientist of some note and Deborah is a world-class photographer. Although the nephew’s death has been ruled an accidental drowning, Simon finds some evidence to suggest otherwise.

In investigating Fairclough’s son Nicholas, Deborah becomes involved with his beautiful Argentinian wife, with whom she feels a sympathetic connection, while Lynley and Simon investigate the rest of the family. As family secrets are revealed, things begin to fall apart.

Meanwhile back at home, Havers gets more involved with her neighbor’s family. She has long cared about the little girl next door, Hadiyyah, and her handsome father Taymullah Azhar. Now Azhar’s estranged partner, Angela Upman, has returned to the family. Barbara wants to dislike her because of the pain she has caused her family, but Angela is nice and helps her improve her professional appearance, as she has been ordered to do by her new boss. However, Barbara thinks that something is going on.

I think what makes George’s books outstanding are her writing skills and her ability to create convincing characters. I have said before that I have dropped many series mystery novels, principally because I get tired of the secondary characters, who keep doing the same things over and over. George does a nice job of developing even the minor characters and making them interesting, instead of just using them as plot devices.

That being said, George seems determined to thrust Lynley into a series of romantic disasters. Maybe she should be following a dictum I have heard attributed to P. D. James that it’s not a good idea to mix the romance and detective genres. In the first book, Lynley was madly in love with Deborah as she was marrying Simon. In the second book, he suddenly realized he loved his old friend Helen. Then he spent several books chasing Helen, whom we all loved, and was happily married for one or two books until she was murdered. Since the last book he has been stupidly pursuing an affair with his alcoholic boss. As I said before, I think killing Helen was a big mistake, and judging from some of the comments on Amazon, others agree.

One more caveat to this book. Deborah is starting to have the secondary character problem I described above. She is so obsessed by her conception problems that she thinks she understands Bernard’s wife based upon finding one copy of a brochure in the house. Because she thinks she knows what’s going on, she ignores all evidence that things may not be as she thinks. This misunderstanding has tragic consequences. Deborah has been obsessing over her inability to have a child since the third or fourth book in a long series. I wish George would have her adopt a child and get it over with.

Day 46: The Winter Thief

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Cover for The Winter ThiefThe Winter Thief is the latest of Jenny White’s mysteries set in late 19th Century Istanbul about the investigations of the honest and hard-working Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha.

It is a freezing cold, wintery holiday in Istanbul when Vera Arti visits an Armenian publisher to try to convince him to publish The Communist Manifesto in Armenian. Disappointed in her attempts, she doesn’t notice when someone follows her home. When her husband Gabriel returns abruptly to their apartment and tells her they must leave immediately, she argues that she must pack her things. He leaves her to get a carriage for them, but while he is gone, she is taken by the Sultan’s new secret police.

In another part of the city there has been a bank robbery and next door a massive explosion at a café followed by a fire where many people are injured or killed. Kamil Pasha is helping out at the scene when he finds evidence that his brother-in-law Huseiyn might be one of the victims.

Gabriel Arti’s mission is to open a socialist commune in Armenia, and to do that he arranged to purchase a shipment of illegal guns and robbed the bank. His fears for his wife lead him to seek the help of an enigmatic but powerful acquaintance of Kamil Pasha’s who helped him arrange the gun shipment. At the man’s suggestion, Gabriel departs for Trabzon and the commune, leaving the other man to try to find his wife.

Although the Ottoman empire has traditionally been one that tolerates people of different religions and race, tensions are rising. Vahid, a vicious, sadistic, conniving commander of the Sultan’s new secret police has a plot to gain more power by making the Sultan believe that the Armenians are a threat to the empire and then providing himself an opportunity to end the threat. Vahid believes that Huseiyn might have been having an affair with the woman he intended to marry, who died in the fire. In his efforts to find Huseiyn and wreak his vengeance, he runs up against Kamil Pasha and his sister, who is frantically trying to find her husband. The next thing he knows, Kamil Pasha has been framed for the murder of a young Armenian girl.

As we follow the adventures of all those people, as well as Gabriel, the members of the commune, and others, the book begins to feel too disorganized and diffuse. My interest flagged a little. However, the threads of the story all come back together when the Sultan dispatches Kamil Pasha to the wilds of Armenia with a small troop of soldiers to find out whether the new settlement is a band of Armenian revolutionaries or a harmless socialist commune.

Day 44: The Dogs of Riga

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Cover for The Dogs of RigaHenning Mankell was my introduction to Swedish crime fiction. I usually enjoy his mysteries, but have not really liked his “more serious” novels. The Dogs of Riga is another of his mysteries featuring Inspector Kurt Wallender.

In a novel set earlier in time than his previous mysteries, Wallender travels to Latvia in the days before the dissolution of the Soviet Union to discover why Major Liepa, a Latvian police inspector who has been working on a case with him, is murdered as soon as he returns home. Wallender is bewildered by the politics and workings of the deeply depressed country. He soon figures out that the person arrested for the murder is innocent.

Wallender responds to the pleas for help by Liepa’s widow, Baipa Liepa, to continue his investigation further than the Latvian officials want him to. He encounters widespread governmental corruption and the realities of living in this grim regime. Readers of Mankell’s books have heard of Baipa Liepa, because she is the woman he loves in books that take place in a later timeframe.

Wallender is his usual depressed self, eating bad food and getting little sleep. The setting of urban Riga, though, is much more dark than Mankell’s usual setting of rural Sweden.

I enjoyed the book, although I thought that Wallender seemed strikingly naive at times. Mankell’s writing is sometimes a little awkward, although it is usually spare and transparent.

Day 41: Death Comes to Pemberley

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Cover for Death Comes to PemberleyDeath Comes to Pemberley is an unusual attempt by P.D. James, a mystery with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy and their family and friends as characters. P.D. James is, of course, the queen of the mystery novel, but I had to admit to some disappointment with this effort.

On the night before the Darcy’s annual ball, the Darcys, his sister Georgina, the Binghams, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and a suitor of Georgina’s have just finished dinner when a coach careers into the yard containing Lydia Wickham, who says that someone is trying to murder her husband. As you will remember from Pride and Prejudice, Lydia would have been ruined by Wickham had not Darcy paid him to marry her, so the family has been at outs.

The men all go off to find Wickham bending over the body of his friend Major Denny. Although the evidence seems to suggest that Wickham has murdered Denny, he insists that after an argument he left the coach containing the three of them, on their way to crash the Darcy’s ball, and didn’t know what happened to Denny.

Although James is a little more successful at capturing the style and time of an Austen novel than other modern writers who have used the Darcys as characters, she spends no time on character development at all, leaving this to the readers’ knowledge of Pride and Prejudice. Yet, at the same time, she unnecessarily, considering the novel is supposed to take place six years later, has characters rehash the events of the original. Although I cannot recall the details, I also have a note that the novel was repetitive.

I have generally avoided reading the plethora of new books riffing on the reinterest in Austen, but I was looking forward to this one because James is usually so good. Although not at all a bad book, I feel that this was not one of her better efforts.