Tag: suspense

Day 115: Dark Places

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Cover for Dark PlacesHappy Independence Day!

I just got a notice from Amazon that the latest Gillian Flynn book is finally shipping, so in celebration, I thought I’d post a review of a previous Flynn book. Gillian Flynn writes great, dark mysteries about women who have been severely damaged.

In Dark Places, Libby Day is the only surviving victim of a famous crime. When she was seven years old, her entire family was murdered, supposedly by her 15-year-old brother Ben. She survived by climbing out the bedroom window and hiding in the snow.

As an adult, she has been subsisting on the fringes of society, supported by donations made after the crime, sales of family memorabilia, and money from a book deal. But now she is almost completely broke and embittered, with no friends and her only relative serving a life sentence in prison. Although she is an unlikable character, a liar and manipulator, you somehow end up completely identifying with her.

The bizarre Kill Club contacts her. They are a group of amateur true crime buffs, and they want to hire her to investigate the murders. Most of them believe that the seven-year-old Libby lied in her testimony years ago and that Ben was wrongly convicted.

The true story of the murder is told partially in flashbacks, from the points of view of Libby’s mother and her brother Ben. As usual with Flynn, I found this book to be dark, enthralling, and perceptive.

Day 104: The Death of Sweet Mister

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Cover for The Death of Sweet MisterAnother of Daniel Woodrell’s Ozark mysteries, The Death of Sweet Mister is grittier and more pessimistic than the previous Woodrell mystery I read, Winter’s Bone, and that is saying something.

The novel is set in the 1960’s. Shug Atkins is a lonely, overweight 13-year-old boy. His mother, Glenda, is a beautiful, promiscuous drunk who is married to Red, a brutal drug dealer who beats both of them and forces Shug to help steal drugs from sick people. Only Shug’s mother loves him and calls him Sweet Mister.

Glenda meets Jimmy Vin Pearce, a city man with a bright green Thunderbird who works as a cook in an upscale restaurant. The two begin sneaking around together with only Shug as witness. Eventually, Glenda decides to run away with him.

The novel is about the death of innocence, as Shug tries to cope with the demands of covering up his mother’s misdeeds and trying to reconcile his feelings about stealing from the helpless. As always with Woodrell, the book is beautifully and sparingly written. Your heart sinks as you follow Shug’s story.

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 68: The Lace Reader

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Cover for The Lace ReaderFrom the very beginning of The Lace Reader, the main character tells us she is a liar. The first time I read this book, I paid attention to that comment, but I could not detect any lies and eventually I forgot about that statement. As it turns out, Towner is not really lying, but Brunonia Barry’s novel is an outstanding example of the use of an unreliable narrator, and a haunting story.

Towner Whitney has not been home to Salem, Massachusetts, for 17 years, ever since her twin sister Lyndley committed suicide and she herself had a breakdown and was institutionalized. Now her brother calls asking her to return home because her great-aunt Eva has disappeared.

Towner’s female relatives are all unusual. She comes from a family of lace readers–people who can read the future in a piece of lace–and although she refuses to read, she is clairvoyant and can read people’s minds. These abilities, which she rejects, make her feel unstable, especially since she has gaps in her memory from electro-shock therapy. Towner’s mother May never leaves the island where she harbors abused women and teaches them how to make lace, and her aunt Emma has brain damage from a history of abuse by her husband Cal.

In Salem again, Towner waits for news of Eva. She learns that one of the police officers, Rafferty, is sure that Cal had something to do with Eva’s disappearance as he has been threatening her and other members of her family.

Salem itself is almost a character with its witch-based tourist industry, and now Cal has formed a group of religious cultists who call themselves Calvinists and who taunt the witches and threaten them with damnation. It’s a bad place for Towner to be, and she is just deciding to leave again when Eva’s body turns up.

The Lace Reader is a wonderful book, layered with secrets, an exploration in the difference between perception and reality. With an atmospheric setting, characters to care about, and a compelling plot, the book is a real page-turner. The last few paragraphs made me re-evaluate everything I had read.

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 40: The Damage Done

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Cover for The Damage DoneIn The Damage Done by Hilary Davidson, Lily Moore comes home to New York from Spain when the police call her to tell her that her sister Claudia was found dead in the bathtub on the anniversary of their mother’s suicide. In an effort to support Claudia, but unable to deal with her lifestyle of drug addiction, Lily has been paying the rent on her own apartment so that her sister would have a place to live. Lily hasn’t seen her sister for three months, since she came home to visit a supposedly drug-free Claudia only to find her strung out. Since then, Claudia has not returned any of her calls.

When Lily goes to the morgue to identify the body, she realizes that the dead woman bears only a superficial resemblance to her sister, which makes the circumstances of her death–the supposed suicide on the date of their mother’s suicide–doubly suspicious. Lily realizes that Claudia has been missing for months, and that the other woman has stolen Claudia’s identity. She is determined to find her sister even as the police decide that Claudia is a suspect in the unknown woman’s death.

Davidson has written a capable, fast-moving mystery that keeps your attention. The characters are interesting, and readers will like Lily and her affectionate gay friend Jesse. I guessed one part of the puzzle fairly early in the book, but the solution was more complicated than I thought. The writing could have used another edit, but I don’t think editors actually edit books anymore. Overall, though, the book was enjoyable and fun to read.

Day 32: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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Cover for The Girl with the Dragon TattooBest Book of Week 7!

Maybe everyone has read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. But if you are one of the few who have not, you are missing an exciting thriller.

Editor and writer Mikael Blomkvist has just lost a libel case brought by a billionaire industrialist named Wennerström concerning Blomkvist’s allegations of corruption. Blomkvist has been sentenced to three months in prison. He had carefully checked his facts but then one of his witnesses recanted. In order to separate his magazine, Millenium, from this problem, he resigns.

After he gets out of jail, he is approached for a job by Henrik Vanger, the retired head of Vanger Corporation. Vanger wants Blomkvist to find out what happened to his great-niece Harriet, who disappeared off the family’s private island 36 years earlier during a day when the island was cut off from the mainland by an accident blocking the only bridge. He is afraid that some member of his family murdered her. He yearly receives a pressed flower on his niece’s birthday and believes the killer is expressing remorse through this means.

Although Blomkvist is initially reluctant, he eventually accepts the job and goes to live on the island. When he decides he needs a research assistant, Vanger’s lawyer connects him with Lisbeth Salander, a child-sized woman who dresses in a goth style and has a dragon tattoo.

Salander is a computer genius with a difficult past. When she was a teenager, she was institutionalized and is still under the care of a legal guardian, who controls her money and can have her institutionalized at any time. She is hostile and uncommunicative, and few people have bothered to try to get to know her. After her guardian has a stroke, he is replaced by Nils Bjurman, who uses his position to sexually abuse her.

Bjurman has seriously misjudged Salander, however, and she takes care of this problem in one of the most satisfying scenes of the novel.

As Blomkvist and Salander investigate Harriet Vanger’s disappearance, they begin to believe that they may be on the track of a serial killer. Ultimately, Blomkvist finds himself in grave danger.

With a complex, interesting plot, an engaging hero and formidable heroine, a slew of interesting characters, and a sense of Swedish politics and law, you will lap up this book and go looking for the next one. Larsson was an activist with strong feelings about violence against women, a theme in all of his books.

Day 23: The Dead Lie Down

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Cover for The Dead Lie DownBest Book of Week 5!

Sophie Hannah is another writer of dark mysteries who I discovered during the past year. The Dead Lie Down was the first of her books that I read, not the first in the series. Be careful if you buy her books as some of them have two titles, depending upon whether you buy the British or the American version. I have bought two copies of the same book by mistake.

Ruth did something bad in the past but was punished far out of proportion to her crime. She is still trying to recover some confidence and self-esteem when she meets Aidan, a picture framer. The night they get engaged, they make a pact to tell each other everything and forgive each other their secrets, with no questions asked. But Ruth is shocked when Aidan confesses he strangled a woman named Mary Trelease years ago. She is even more confused when she realizes that she has met Mary Trelease and she is alive.

Ruth takes her case to Sergeant Charlie Zailer, a recently disgraced police officer, who dismisses it. At the same time, Aidan confesses to Charlie’s fiancé, DC Simon Waterhouse. After further consideration, both of them decide to investigate further, because they feel a sense of dread.

The Dead Lie Down is a compelling novel with a tangled plot. Sophie Hannah follows a convention in her novels of alternating the narrative between a usually victimized character (in this case Ruth) and the police officers. She indicates this alternation by changing the form of the dates that head each chapter. This confused me at first because for every other chapter she was using the European form of putting the day before the month, and I thought the chapters that took place in early March were actually flashbacks to January and February. Just something to keep in mind when you are reading Hannah.

I have found that Hannah’s novels are deliciously dark and always difficult to figure out, even though by now I know the pattern that someone is being deeply deceived. The trick is to figure out who and how. Her police officers are seriously flawed and have a difficult relationship. A bit of narrative that I have had difficulty following is the story of their romance, which is, however, just incidental to the novels. In other respects the books are stand-alone and do not have to be read in order.

Sophie Hannah is another find for those who like edgy, complex mysteries with a touch of the gothic thriller.

Day Sixteen: Sharp Objects

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Cover for Sharp ObjectsI love dark mysteries with an edge. Two of my discoveries from last year  for this type of novel are Gillian Flynn and Belinda Bauer. My book journal for Gillian Flynn’s first book, Sharp Objects, starts out with “What a terrific book!”

Camille Preaker works for a Chicago newspaper, which sends her to her home town of Wind Gap, MO, because a young girl was murdered and another one has disappeared. Camille reluctantly returns to the home town she has avoided for eight years. Institutionalized for self-mutilation as a young girl, she has learned to resist cutting words into her body and now writes them on with a pen. But as she begins investigating her family problems and her disturbed childhood as well as the murder, she awakens her own demons.

Camille’s mother has never paid much attention to her, although she plays the doting mother outside of the home. Camille’s sister Marianne, who was loved by both Camille and her mother, died when she was young. Now Camille has a much younger stepsister, Amma, a 13-year-old who behaves like an angel at home but is a terrible bully outside the home, hanging out with a bunch of mean girls.

As Camille interviews her old friends and acquaintances, her leads all seem to be turning into dead ends, but the reader’s sense of horror grows. Discovering more of the truth about the murder and her own family, she begins spinning out of control and has difficulty resisting the urge to cut herself again.

Flynn’s writing is fast-paced and efficiently builds suspense. This book is a real page-turner.

Day Ten: Before I Go to Sleep

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Cover for Before I Go to SleepBest Book of Week 2!

Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson is a stunningly creepy novel that successfully creates a sense of growing dread. It is not really a traditional mystery, more like a slow-starting but absorbing thriller.

Every morning Christine awakens not knowing who the man in her bed is and thinking she should be younger, sometimes twenty years younger, sometimes a lot younger than that. Every morning her husband Ben has to explain who he is, show her pictures of their life together, and explain that years before she had a traumatic brain injury that causes her to forget everything when she goes to sleep at night.

A neurologist calls her each day to explain he has been treating her without her husband’s knowledge and reminds her to take out her journal and read it. As she reads and keeps her journal every day, she begins to remember a few things by herself, and she finds her husband is telling lies. She remembers having a baby, but he says they never had children. She has specific memories of a good friend who he claims moved away to Australia, but she finds out she didn’t. Her husband always has good explanations for these lies, but more and more things begin to disturb Christine.

Should she trust her husband or not? Is she falling back into the paranoia that has been a symptom of her illness? And how exactly was she injured in the first place?