The Flavia de Luce Series by Alan Bradley

Sanctified cyanide
Super-quick arsenic
Higgledy-piggledy
Into the soup.
Put out the mourning lamps
Call for the coffin clamps
Teach them to trifle with
Flavia de Luce!

-The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag 

I had intended to write one entry for each book of the Flavia de Luce series--there are five so far--but it didn't work out quite like that. I love these books, so much so that it was impossible to stop after just one and record my thoughts. I went from one book right to the next with virtually no interruption, so eventually it seemed better to just tackle the series in one post, as my thoughts about the different plots would be bound to get a bit muddled. Here goes.

Flavia de Luce is a girl of nearly eleven living with her family in the small English town of Bishop's Lacey in 1950. She is an unusual child--fiercely smart, with a particular love for chemistry, and no real interest in maintaining the sort of propriety that a girl of age at that time would be expected to do. She runs wild through the village, accompanied only by her bicycle, Gladys, which formerly belonged to her long-lost mother.

Flavia's mother, Harriet, casts a long shadow over her life, though Flavia herself has no memory of her. Harriet left on a mountaineering expedition when Flavia was just one, never to return. Flavia's father retreated from the world after his wife's disappearance, seeking refuge in his collection of postage stamps. Her sisters, Ophelia and Daphne (or, as Flavia calls them, Feely and Daffy), torture Flavia with their accounts of her supposed early life, telling her she was a changeling, for example, or that she made Harriet miserable.

It's no wonder, then, that Flavia is so independent. And perhaps it should be no surprise that when she stumbles upon a dying man in her garden in the first book of the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, she's far from terrified. In fact, she's fascinated, and sets about to solve the mystery of his death.

She's a dab hand at it too, and over the course of the series, she acquires quite a reputation for being involved whenever the game is afoot.  Flavia combines her keen sense of hearing--inherited from her mother--with her knowledge of chemistry and her sheer moxie to get to the bottom of things. It is nothing short of a delight to read along as she puzzles out each case.

I am absolutely in awe of Alan Bradley, who has such a sure hand in guiding this series. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was his first novel, and he created such a beautiful character in Flavia as well as such a fully realized world in Bishop's Lacey. Even if there were no mysteries, I think I would enjoy following Flavia as she rode around on Gladys and visited Denwyn Richardson or Miss Cool, or the Puddock sisters. The clever mysteries--never overly convoluted, which seems like an absolute rarity in the genre at this point--do make it all the sweeter, though.

The most recent book in the series, Speaking from Among the Bones, ends with a bit of a cliffhanger. I will be waiting most impatiently, I must admit, until I can next return to Bishop's Lacey and follow the further adventures of Flavia, her family, and the rest of the village.

Up next: How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

PS: While looking for an image for this post, I stumbled upon this promotional video for the series: http://vimeo.com/12758978. It makes me even more excited for the eventual adaptation. (Good luck to whoever has to cast Flavia!)

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

The devil was eating beignets, fastidiously, when the businessman walked up to the outside table.

-Dead Ever After 

With Dead Ever After, we bid adieu to Miss Sookie Stackhouse, telepath and waitress extraordinaire. Quite a lot has happened to Sookie in the two-year period Charlaine Harris's novels covers. She's known love and death (probably more of the latter than the former, sadly). She's become acquainted with all sorts of fantastic creatures, for better or worse. She's gotten at least a little suntanning in.

Dead Ever After begins with Sookie trying to navigate the tricky politics surrounding her relationship  with Eric, and things only get more dire when she's accused of murder. There's a fair amount of reaching back to the earlier books, particularly in terms of the familiar characters who pop up all over the place. It's definitely not a novel one could pick up without having read the other 12--or at least I couldn't see that being a particularly enjoyable experience.

The story is undeniably over-stuffed, and I'm not sure I love the direction that Charlaine Harris decided to go in with regard to Sookie's love life, though it's not implausible. I don't think it will stand up as one of the best books of the series, but, that having been said, I still enjoyed spending time in Sookie's company.* There's something so comfortable and cozy about Charlaine Harris's books, despite the mayhem that inevitably ensues, and I think a lot of it is just Sookie. I'll probably read Harris's follow-up on the other characters of Bon Temps, which is to be published this fall, and perhaps I'll try one of her other series as well. For now, though, I still have close to fifteen unread books on my shelves, so I  won't be picking up anything new.** At least we still have the weird and wild True Blood.

Up next: Continuing with fantasy, A Discovery of Witches.

*I would be curious to go back through my posts and see how many times I've said that.

**Unless it looks really good. Or I've wanted to read it for a long time. Or, or, or...

Broken Harbor by Tana French

Richie closed the door behind us. He stayed beside it, sheaf of pointless paper hanging forgotten from one hand, eyes skittery as a corner boy's. That was what he looked like: some malnourished scumbag hunched against a graffitied wall, standing lookout for small-time dealers in exchange for a fix. I had been beginning to think of this man as my partner. His skinny shoulders braced against mine had begun to feel like something that belonged. The feeling had been a good one, a warm one. Both of us made me sick.

-Broken Harbor

Let's try this again, shall we?

So, I've missed a bit. (A year is a bit, yes? A long bit, but still.) I tackled Proust for the first time, finally conquered Team of Rivals, and enjoyed books by Mary Roach, Jo Nesbø, and Gillian Flynn. I will probably never get around to writing about any of them, and that's okay, I think. Fresh start.

It's fitting to start back with Tana French, a perennial favorite of mine. Broken Harbor follows Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, another member of the Dublin Murder Squad. Mick has shown up in previous books by French, though I must confess he didn't make much of an impression on me. Still, I think you're bound to remember a nickname like Scorcher.

Mick is called up to investigate a grisly case in the once-booming housing development of Brianstown. A family has been attacked, with definite fatalities. It's a high-profile case, a chance of redemption for Mick, who botched an investigation a few years earlier. It also (in classic French fashion) forces Mick to confront a painful time from his past, back when Brianstown was a seaside holiday spot called Broken Harbor.

The case was a bit of a toughie for me--I don't love reading about murdered children, funnily enough--but overall I found Broken Harbor to be more satisfying than Faithful Place. It's sad, to be sure. If there's one thing I've learned about Tana French books, it's that a happy ending is relative. Her detectives may solve their cases, but it's always at a grievous cost. Her books are fantastically written, perfectly paced, and deeply sad. Quite a recommendation, I know.

Up next: Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. Go big or go home, yeah?

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house.

-Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter*

A girl disappears in small-town Mississippi. Suspicion falls, unsurprisingly, on the last person known to have seen her, but there's not enough evidence to try a case. The years go by--decades, even--and the trail runs cold. Then there's another disappearance.

What are the odds, someone notes, of the two cases being unrelated? With no other leads, the police are suspicious of Larry Ott, the town loner--and the chief person of interest in the older case. Things get more complicated when Larry is rushed to the hospital, the victim of a gunshot wound. With Larry in a coma, it's difficult to tell if the wound was self-inflicted or not. While Larry lingers in unconsciousness, the police are forced to wait.

One officer's wait is particularly grueling. His name is Silas Jones, and, once upon a time, he and Larry Ott were friends. It's not a fact he advertises, considering the low regard in which Larry is held in town, but it does color his feelings about the case. He wrestles with his feelings as he waits awkwardly at Larry's bedside.

The reader waits as well, but there's plenty to keep you occupied until you finally learn the particulars of Larry's shooting. The narrative shifts between past and present, between Larry and Silas, and slowly we work out how things turned out as they did. While it's not hard to figure out the perpetrator of the present-day crime, it's still interesting to see the details filled in--and the cold case draws the reader in quite well. All in all, it's pretty riveting, and I admire the way Franklin was able to tie things up.

It's impressive to me that the most striking part of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is the characterization. Both Larry and Silas are well-realized and believable, sympathetic and flawed. While I was undoubtedly absorbed in the book because I wanted to know the resolution to the cases, I also became more and more deeply invested in Larry and Silas as the story went on. I would definitely be interested in reading more by Tom Franklin.

Up next: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

*I was totally unaware that this mnemonic device was regional. I don't normally think of myself as Southern in any way, but I've long enjoyed this trick for spelling Mississippi.

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

"We're cold cases, Dave. We don't process fresh inquiries." Karen rolled her eyes at Phil, smirking at her obvious frustration.

"It's not exactly fresh, Inspector. This guy went missing twenty-two years ago."

Karen straightened up in her chair. "Twenty-two years ago? And they've only just got round to reporting it?"

"That's right. So does that make it cold, or what?"

Technically, Karen knew Cruickshank should refer the woman to CID. But she'd always been a sucker for anything that made people shake their heads in bemused disbelief. Long shots were what got her juices flowing. Following that instinct had brought her two promotions in three years, leap-frogging peers and making colleagues uneasy. "Send her up, Dave. I'll have a word with her."

-A Darker Domain 

Karen Pirie is a detective in the cold cases department in Fife, Scotland, and in A Darker Domain, she takes charge of two unusual cases. One, illustrated in the passage above--a missing persons case, twenty-two years later--is too intriguing to pass up, and she takes it on without her boss's knowledge. The second is the reopening of a high-profile case from around the same time--the murder of heiress Catriona Maclennan Grant and the disappearance of her son, Adam. Catriona's father, Brodie Grant, still blames the police for botching the case so many years before, and Karen has her work cut out for her, juggling that investigation with the one that's off the books.

I'd never read a Val McDermid book before, but I understand that she's a respected mystery writer, and I can see why. I quickly became pretty absorbed in the two cases, both of which were trickily well plotted. McDermid did a nice job of giving the reader just enough to puzzle over without telegraphing things too much or withholding too much vital information. The ending was realistic, I suppose, but quite cynical and a little abrupt. I wished it could have been a little happier.

I would definitely be interested in reading more by McDermid. I just watched the first episode of Wire in the Blood recently, based on her series of books, and it was quite good. I have more than a few unread mysteries to go, though, so it might be a while.

Up next: Needed a change of pace from all the mayhem--the perfect time for Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman

It isn't his fault. He wants to be sober. He strung together two years this time, chastened by the incident at his younger daughter's first birthday party. And he managed to stay sober even after Lori kicked him out last month. But the fact is, he has been faking it for months, stalling out where he always stalls out on the twelve steps, undermined by all that poking, poking, poking, that insistence on truth, on coming clean. Making amends. Sobriety--real sobriety, as opposed to the collection of sober days Gordon sometimes manages to put together--wants to much from him.

-The Most Dangerous Thing

 Five kids--Gwen, Mickey, Tim, Sean, and Go-Go--share a few idyllic months exploring the woods around their hometown in Maryland. Then something terrible happens, so terrible that it splinters the group permanently.

Decades pass. There are marriages, divorces, children. Then Go-Go dies in a car accident, possibly a suicide.  Go-Go had led a troubled life since that one awful night, and his death dredges up the memories that group (and their parents) had worked so hard to forget. Once Gwen, in particular, decides to start unraveling the story of that long-ago night, she discovers some things that rock her understanding of the past.

There were some very strong aspects to this novel. I liked that Laura Lippman took what could have been a fairly conventional premise for a mystery and made it infinitely more interesting by exploring multiple points of view, both in the past and present. I especially thought it was a smart move to include the viewpoints of the parents, which certainly made the story more complicated and interesting. Ultimately, I'm not sure that I totally bought the story's resolution, but I appreciated the exploration of the misunderstandings and mistakes that can lay the ground for tragedy. 

Up next: Continuing with the mystery trend, A Darker Domain by Val McDermid.

The Snowman by Jo Nesbø

The snow in the yard reflected enough light for him to make out the snowman down below. It looked alone. Someone should have given it a cap and scarf. And maybe a broomstick to hold. At that moment the moon slid from behind a cloud. The black row of teeth came into view. And the eyes. Jonas automatically sucked in his breath and recoiled two steps. The pebble-eyes were gleaming. And they were not staring into the house. They were looking up. Up here. Jonas drew the curtains and crept back into bed.

-The Snowman 

I was so excited to read the next Harry Hole novel--until I realized it wasn't the next Harry Hole novel. I was still happy to read The Snowman, to be sure, but it did take a little bit of the shine off when I realized that somehow The Redeemer had been lost in the shuffle. I'm still not sure why The Redeemer is so unavailable, but I'll get a hold of it somehow--when I'm in London this summer, if nothing else, though it might be hard to wait until then!

Leaving the mysterious publication order aside, The Snowman was another satisfying outing from Jo Nesbø. This time around, Harry's extensive knowledge of serial killers is put to good use when he finds himself on the trail of a criminal who kills women--all mothers--who have cheated on their husbands. The killer is as cold as his icy moniker would suggest, and the crimes are bloodier and more disturbing than I recall from previous Harry Hole stories. Unsurprisingly, the denouement is mind-boggling. I find it quite curious that this is the first Harry Hole story slated to be adapted for film--by Martin Scorsese, no less-- as I simply cannot imagine actually seeing the end of the story on screen. That's not to say it wasn't gripping--it absolutely was--but it also got pretty ludicrous.

Obviously, I'm on board for more Harry Hole books. I was quite keen to keep reading at the end of The Snowman, particularly seeing how badly Harry had been shaken by this case. I'll have to be in suspense a bit longer, though, I suppose, since I do want to read The Redeemer before moving on.

Up next: I was hungry for more mystery, so I went with Laura Lippman's The Most Dangerous Thing.

The Complaints by Ian Rankin

He had wound his window down. He could smell and hear the sea. There wasn't another soul about. He wondered: did it bother him that the world wasn't entirely fair? That justice was seldom sufficient? There would always be people ready to pocket a wad of banknotes in exchange for a favor. There would always be people who played the system and wrung out every penny. Some people--lots of people--would keep getting away with it.

"But you're not one of them," he told himself.

-The Complaints 

If you'd given me the passage above out of context, I would have sworn up and down that it sounded like the musings of one Kurt Wallander. Malcolm Fox, the protagonist of The Complaints, is not quite the iconic detective Wallander is, but you can see why he's interesting company for the length of a book.

Fox is a cop working for (wait for it) the Complaints, the department that checks up on cases of possible corruption within the police force. It's not a terribly well-liked branch, as you might imagine. Fox's latest case is a troubling one: he's assigned to look in on a rising star in the force who's suspected of an interest in child pornography. Things get more complicated when that same detective, Jamie Breck, begins investigating the apparent murder of Fox's sister's no-good boyfriend. But in case that wasn't complicated enough, the whole thing spirals into a massive case of corruption that has apparently swept up Fox and Breck in its wake, and the two of them must team up to try and get to the bottom of things.

I must admit, I'm not wild about police corruption as a driving plot line. It's not terribly compelling to me, and I often find it hard to follow, as I did here. I had painful flashbacks to trying to decipher Red Riding Trilogy, which combined police corruption with jumps in time and unintelligible Yorkshire accents. Fox, as I mentioned, is a pretty good detective, but not really charismatic enough that I'd need to follow any further adventures, were Rankin to begin writing them. I enjoyed the Edinburgh setting, but I can't say it was a real page turner. I don't want to undersell the story--Rankin is clearly a talented writer--but a week after having finished The Complaints, not that much has stuck with me.

Up next: Tried starting the latest Blue Bloods book, but I'm having a hard time getting sucked in. So for now I've put that down in favor of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff

What Joe did not know was that I had come here this past May in search of a quieter existence with fewer reminders of Hannah, a victim of last year's General Slocum steamship tragedy. I was not alone in my grief; nearly every family in my Lower East Side neighborhood had lost someone that awful day--June 15, 1904. For almost a full year following Hannah's death, she haunted me, particularly in cases where other young women met tragic, violent ends. I had planned to marry Hannah and build a life with her--but I had no desire to live with a ghost.

-In the Shadow of Gotham 

With that passage, narrator Simon Ziele lays out a fair chunk of the premise of In The Shadow of Gotham. Ziele, a detective, had hoped to escape those tragic young women after leaving the city for the small town of Dobson, New York. But homicide is not confined to the island of Manhattan, of course, and Ziele is soon brought in on a case just as brutal as any he handled in the city. Sarah Wingate, a graduate student in mathematics, is killed at her aunt's home, and the police are left with a horrifying crime scene and very little in the way of leads. That is until a Columbia University criminologist named Alistair Sinclair shows up and insists that he knows exactly who the killer is: the subject of his own research, a man named Michael Fromley. Unable to ignore the evidence Sinclair puts before him, Ziele sets off to track down Fromley, using both psychological research and good old-fashioned detective know-how to aid him along the way.

I enjoyed the setting of the novel, and Ziele was a likeable enough detective. I wouldn't say the mystery itself was particularly compelling--though, again, setting it at the turn of century in New York City helps a lot. I was more put off by a certain clunkiness in the exposition. On the whole, Pinkoff did a nice job of pacing the story, which kept me absorbed despite not being particularly captivated by the plot. So it was all the more glaring when characters' dialogue was suddenly laden with exposition so forced as to take me out of the story entirely. It's very similar to the problem I had with The Night Villa--I'm not quite sure why an author would think so little of her readers to believe that they wouldn't look up a reference they didn't understand. At the worst, they'd just move past it and perhaps not get the full import of what a character was saying, but I'd prefer taking that risk than having my characters reduced to speaking in completely unbelievable ways. I guess it turns out that that might be a particular pet peeve of mine--it just seems so easy to avoid.* I have the sequel to In the Shadow of Gotham sitting on my shelf, but I can't say I'm terribly inclined to pick it up at the moment.

Up next: Still catching up! Need to write up Dark World  by Zak Bagans.
 
*What makes this all the more annoying is that the General Slocum disaster--to which most of Pintoff's exposition refers--is not particularly obscure. In fact, it's one of the worst disasters in New York history. I'd certainly heard of it before, although that could be because I felt it important to read up on potentially haunted places in the vicinity of New York City. While I would not categorize it as common knowledge, I would think that the General Slocum would be familiar to a fair amount of readers inclined to read historical fiction, and the rest can easily look it up.

The Minotaur by Barbara Vine

She seemed to be considering whether to say more, then impulsively said, "There's madness in the family." The expression was old-fashioned then if not yet politically incorrect, but she repeated it. "Yes, madness in the family." When people say this, phrasing it in various ways, they always sound pleased about this particular genetic inheritance. Cancer or arthritis "in the family" is spoken of quite differently.

-The Minotaur

The Minotaur by Barbara Vine--pseudonym for acclaimed crime writer Ruth Rendell--is not a murder mystery, per se. There's a fair amount of mystery and a bit of murder, but it's more in the style of Gothic literature: lots of semi-deranged characters haunting their decaying manor home and one poor interloper struggling to make sense of it all.

The interloper is Kerstin Kvist, hired by the eccentric Cosway family to care for John, the middle-aged son who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. When Kerstin arrives, she's somewhat perplexed by what she needs to do: John is so sedated by the strong medication that he takes that he is easily managed by his mother and sisters. As she gets to know the family, she begins to realize that their relationship with John is a complicated one and, alarmingly, he doesn't seem to need the sedatives his family insists that he takes. In fact, although John does seem to have his issues, Kerstin doubts that he's schizophrenic at all--but why treat him as if he is? Kerstin tries to protect John while she figures that out, but in the meantime finds herself drawn into another family tragedy.

The story is set in the 1960s, but told from older Kerstin's perspective as she looks back decades later. The word for John's true condition, for instance--Asperger's syndrome--was something she didn't hear until long after her time as his aide ended. Structuring a novel in this way can be a useful device for an author, although in this case I felt that Vine relied a little too heavily on it--rather too many hints about how certain objects/people/events would influence the course of the mysterious tragedy for my taste.

The strongest parts of the book were those that involved John and the protective love that Kerstin develops for him. The rest of the Cosway family is not terribly likable--matriarch Julia is pretty easy to loathe, actually--so I found myself less involved in the parts of the story that were more about them. John, though remote by nature, is still much easier to warm to--more human than anyone around him, Kerstin excepted. Although The Minotaur is a fictional account, it's sad to think that so many people like John really have been misunderstood and in some cases mistreated, especially before people became aware of autism. I imagine that aspect of the book, if nothing else, will stick with me.

Up next: It's finally happening! A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

"Boys will be boys," he heard Kitty Winfield murmur as the two women walked away.

Men didn't deserve women.

"We don't deserve them," he said to Ian Winfield as they rolled their way to the bar.

"Oh God no," he said. "They're far superior to us. Wouldn't want to be one, though."

-Started Early, Took My Dog 

So, first off, the big news is this:

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jackson Brodie, as portrayed by Jason Isaacs in the new BBC adaptation of Case Histories. I must say, my imagination has done me a great disservice in never conjuring up Jason Isaacs as Jackson prior to now, because it's pretty brilliant casting. Here's the trailer, in case you might need to watch it a million times before the show airs on PBS (starting October 16th!).  (The Johnny Cash is a great detail. Jackson would approve).

So I read Started Early, Took My Dog with that casting in mind, which was just the cherry on top of another wonderful book by Kate Atkinson. In this latest installment, Jackson has left Edinburgh for his old stomping ground of Yorkshire. He's attempting to trace the origins of a client in New Zealand whose birth and subsequent adoption, some thirty-odd years earlier, were accompanied by a telling lack of legitimate documentation. Atkinson also weaves in the story of Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police superintendent who makes a very rash decision in a mall parking lot and whose experience as a rookie in a murder case in 1975 may tie her to Jackson's client. Atkinson jumps back and forth and time to tell these stories as well as to explore the 1975 case and the corruption in the Yorkshire police department at that time that caused so much unnecessary heartache.

Atkinson is brilliant. I really don't know what else to say. I can't imagine having the talent to bring these stories together; it seems like magic to me. When I was looking over my review of When Will There Be Good News?, I noted that at that point I considered it to be my favorite in the series, but its position may have just been usurped. I think I'd like to go back and read from the beginning again, actually, because at this point I've lost track of some things about Jackson (forgot he was from Yorkshire, for one) and just because it is an excellent set of stories. I loved Tracy, and I relished contemplating the moral quandary that came of her actions--always nice when a book makes you think, isn't it? I did miss Louise, though, and I am hoping she'll be back in a future book.Whatever turn Jackson's life takes next, I'm looking forward to reading about it.

Up next: Back to Little Dorrit, which finally seems to be picking up the pace a bit.

Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

He was not the first person to ask me that. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me, that I hadn't felt the need to rush over to Monroe to watch guys take off their clothes.

"No. I've seen Claude naked. I've never come over to watch him do his thing professionally. I hear he's good."

"He's naked? At your house?"

"Modesty is not one of Claude's priorities," I said.

-Dead Reckoning 


I forgot to remark upon it in my last post, but I've now been writing this blog for 2 years. It's been such a pleasant exercise for me--my only regret is that I didn't start it sooner. Some 150 posts later, one character in particular has writ herself large on this blog: Sookie Stackhouse.

Dead Reckoning is the 12th book in Charlaine Harris's series* and thus the 12th Sookie Stackhouse book I've read in the last two years. I'm pleased to say that it is yet another great installment. As always, Sookie has quite a lot on her plate. She's troubled by a mysterious strain in the relationship between Eric and Pam, which she knows bodes ill. She's still being pursued by the decidedly murderous Sandra Pelt. Even her decision to clean out her attic has ramifications that could dramatically change her life. She deals with vampires, werewolves, shifters, witches, faeries, demons, and, oh yeah, an elf. Just another day in the life of Sookie Stackhouse.

While the plot overall is pretty enjoyable, I'm particularly pleased with the developments in Sookie's romantic life. (Not to mention terribly curious to see how it continues!) Between that and the rumblings in the world of the fae (which I imagine will figure largely in the next book), Harris leaves us in quite a bit of suspense at the end of the story. As usual, I can't wait for more, but I guess for now I'll have to content myself with waiting for the next season of True Blood.

Up next: Back to Young Romantics--you just have to drop everything for a new Sookie Stackhouse, am I right?

*including the book of short stories

Payment in Blood by Elizabeth George

They were at the table, with the items from Joy Sinclair's shoulder bag spread out before them. The tape recorder was playing yet another time, Joy's voice rising and falling with the broken messages that Barbara had long ago memorised. Hearing it now, she realised that the recording had begun to take on the quality of a recurring nightmare, and Lynley the quality of a man obsessed. His were not quantum leaps of intuition in which the misty image of crime-motive-perpetrator took recognizable shape. Rather, they bore the appearance of contrivance, of an attempt to find and assess guilt where only by the wildest stretching of the imagination could it possibly exist. For the first time in that endless harrowing day, Barbara began to feel uneasy. In the long months of their partnership, she had come to realise that, for all his exterior gloss and sophistication, for all his trappings of upper-class splendour that she so mightily despised, Lynley was still the finest DI she had ever worked with. Yet Barbara knew intuitively that the case he was building now was wrong, founded on sand. She sat down and reached restlessly for the book of matches from Joy Sinclair's bag, brooding upon it.

-Payment in Blood 

It's interesting reading the Lynley books having already made my way through a substantial part of the television series. I've been enjoying the show quite a lot, which means that I've come into the books with fairly high expectations. In the case of Payment in Blood, the story wasn't quite as engaging as I would have hoped.

In Payment in Blood, Lynley and Havers are assigned to a case in Scotland, quite a bit outside the usual purview of the Metropolitan Police.  A playwright has been murdered while on retreat with the cast about to stage a production of her latest work; circumstances indicate that she was almost certainly killed by one of them. Among the guests of the house, to Lynley's dismay, is his great friend Lady Helen Clyde, invited to stay by the play's director. While Helen is never a suspect, her presence wreaks havoc on Lynley's detective work, as his newly awoken jealousy provokes him to narrow his field of suspects far too hastily. As Havers notes in the excerpt above, he's not seeing the case clearly, but unfortunately her objections to his line of inquiry fall on deaf ears.

As George tells the story, it becomes more and more convoluted, involving a large pool of suspects that even I, having already seen the televised adaptation, had trouble keeping track of. The story goes on to encompass a 15-year-old case of suicide and involvement from MI-5--one of which, perhaps, would have been enough to keep the reader guessing, as there were already plenty of motives to pick from. (The television adaptation streamlined the case substantially, and neither subplot was used.) 

The trouble with having so much plot and so many characters, I found, was that I felt I didn't get to spend much time getting to know either Lynley or Havers any better. I like both characters enough that I felt rather disappointed to be taken away from their inner thoughts so often. I'm still interested in continuing to read the series, so I'm hoping this was more of an aberration than a trend for future stories.

Up next: Already pretty far into Furious Love, a juicy account of the love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George

She left the room and stalked down the corridor towards the lift. Was there anyone in all of New Scotland Yard whom she hated more than she hated Lynley? He was a miraculous combination of every single thing she thoroughly despised: educated at Eton, a first in history at Oxford, a public school voice, and a bloody family tree that had its roots somewhere just this side of the Battle of Hastings. Upper class. Bright. And so damnably charming that she couldn't understand why every criminal in the city simply didn't surrender to accommodate him.

-A Great Deliverance 

These are the thoughts of DS Barbara Havers, of late a uniformed cop working for the Metropolitan Police. Havers has the chops to make it as a detective, but her difficult personality has won her few friends in the department. When her superior officer assigns her to a thorny murder case in Yorkshire, she might have been pleased to have another shot--except for the fact that he partners her up with DI Thomas Lynley. Havers, as you may have gleaned from the passage above, has no love lost for Lynley. She considers the assignment to be a form of punishment, a cruel joke--why else would you pair up the working-class Havers with Lynley, better known in some circles as the eighth earl of Asherford?

Yes, Havers has a wee bit of a chip on her shoulder when it comes to class. And while everything she thinks about Lynley in the passage I quoted is true enough, it quickly becomes clear that there's much more to him than meets the eye. A Great Deliverance is as much a story of the two detectives groping toward a working relationship as it is the story of the (rather lurid) case that they've joined forces to investigate.

I first became acquainted with Lynley and Havers by watching the Masterpiece Mystery adaptations of Elizabeth George's stories starring Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small--I'm currently in the middle of the third season. I was immediately charmed by Lynley--as Havers notes, it's difficult not to be--and I was quite fond of his prickly partner from the outset as well.  I feel as though the television adaptation honed this story well--I could have done without some of the more histrionic moments in the book, or the oddly two-dimensional ugly American character*. Still, I read the book in two days, which certainly reflects how caught up I became in the story. One thing I particularly enjoyed was the chance to get a window into the thoughts of both Lynley and Havers, which gave me some new insight into how they viewed one another at the start of their partnership. I would be lying if I pretended I was anything else but hugely invested in seeing how that relationship develops on the page, as it certainly has been pretty engrossing on screen.

On the whole, it was a good read, and it was refreshing to have a book that I became so absorbed in after a pretty uneven run of books in the last few months. I'll definitely be seeking out the next book in the series.

Up next: Getting back to Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes, which I'm about halfway through.

*Particularly considering that George herself is American.

The Pyramid by Henning Mankell

In the beginning, everything was just a fog.

Or perhaps it was like a thick-flowing sea where all was white and silent. The landscape of death. It was also the first thought that came to Kurt Wallander as he slowly began rising back to the surface. That he was already dead. He had reached twenty-one years of age, no more. A young policeman, barely an adult. And then a stranger had rushed up to him with a knife and he had not had time to throw himself out of harm's way.

Afterward there was only the white fog. And the silence. 

-The Pyramid 

When readers first met Kurt Wallander in Faceless Killers, he was already middle-aged and divorced, well on his way to becoming the sad sack that we know and love. Glimpses of his past have always been interesting, but few and far between. With The Pyramid, a collection of short stories by Henning Mankell, we finally get a better look at how Wallander became the detective and the man that he is.

In the first story, which I excerpted above, Wallander is still a beat cop in the very early stages of honing his instincts when he stumbles upon his first homicide investigation. By the last, he's within a month of embarking upon the Faceless Killers case. Needless to say, there's a lot that goes on in the meantime. As a pretty big fan of the series, I found it utterly absorbing to watch the way he grew, both as a person and as a detective. He makes mistakes--big mistakes, potentially fatal mistakes--and both learns and doesn't learn from them. I think that by reading these stories, I really began to appreciate the continuity in Mankell's work. Both Wallander's flaws and strengths were apparent pretty early on, and it's neat to see the way Mankell returns to and builds upon them, especially given what we already know of Wallander from the novels. I am more eager than ever to read the novels that I've missed so far.

I particularly found the evolution of Wallander's relationship with his father fascinating. In seeing the progression of his father's dementia from Wallander's point of view, we share his anger and frustration, but also his fears. This is captured especially well in the title story, in which Wallander's father fulfills the dream of a lifetime in going to Egypt, which has unexpected ramifications in Wallander's life as well as in the development of his case. I think I will be more tuned in to their relationship as I continue to read the series based on what I now know of their history. 

Interestingly, despite the fact that the events in this book proceed all other Wallander stories chronologically, I think it is best enjoyed after having at least one of the novels. This is not meant to be an introduction to the character; it's more of a reflection, with themes that will most resonate with readers who are already familiar with the series. I do think Mankell perhaps went a little heavy on emphasizing the Swedish anxiety theme--which he also makes a note about in the forward--but I can't actually disagree with him as to its importance to the character and the series. I could have probably done with one fewer pointed aside from Wallander or another character on the subject, though. That having been said, I enjoyed this book thoroughly and accordingly raced through it pretty darn fast. I have a lot of books in the lineup now, but surely another Wallander book will have to pop up in the near future.

Up next: Finally tracked down Dracula, which has been an interesting reread so far.

Faithful Place by Tana French

I had spent my whole life growing around a scar shaped like Rosie Daly's absence. The thought of that lump of scar tissue vanishing had sent me so light-headed and off balance that I ended up doing gobsmackingly moronic things like getting hammered with my siblings, a concept that just two days earlier would have sent me running screaming for the hills. I felt it would be a good idea to get my bearings back before I did something dumb enough to end in amputation.

-Faithful Place

Readers first met Frank Mackey in Tana French's novel The Likeness, where he was introduced as an Undercover detective and former mentor of our heroine, Cassie Maddox. In Faithful Place, the story becomes Frank's when he's called back to his childhood home in inner-city Dublin, a place he long ago fled. The reason he returns? A forlorn blue suitcase, shoved up the chimney in an abandoned house more than twenty years earlier, only recently rediscovered. It once belonged to Frank's first love, Rosie Daly.

After dating secretly for months, they decided to run off together, Frank and Rosie, away from the hardscrabble Faithful Place. Frank waited hours on the night they were supposed to meet, eventually finding an unaddressed note from Rosie in which she said she'd gone to England. Frank assumed it was for him, that she'd decided to leave on her own. He didn't go home, though. He went ahead, not to return to Faithful Place until the suitcase brought him back. He'd never thought that Rosie might have met a bad end. It's a shattering idea.

Frank begins sniffing around the old neighborhood, asking the questions he'd never thought to ask: who might have known he was dating Rosie? Who could have seen her that night? He can't be part of an official investigation, of course. But he's soon drawn back into the rhythm of Faithful Place, where every resident knows exactly what's going on in every other home and is pleased as punch to keep that information from the pigs. His own home is worse: his brothers and sisters never got out, his alcoholic father still has everyone walking on eggshells.

It's a pretty grim situation for Frank, but very well realized by Tana French.  Her characters, from Frank's sharp Ma to his sly brother Shay to a chavvy old friend of Rosie's, are vividly drawn. I think her writing is up to the caliber she's maintained in previous books, certainly. All the same, I found Faithful Place slightly less satisfying than I did In The Woods or The Likeness. Partly, to be fair, because I hoped for an update on Cassie and/or Rob when none was forthcoming; that was a bit disappointing. However, I wasn't entirely happy with the resolution to the mystery. I can't put my finger on it exactly, I just didn't care for it. I'm still quite curious to see what French tackles next, though. This book only came out in July, so I suppose I'm in for a bit of a wait. (Still hoping for a book from Sam's point of view!)

Up next: The Guinea Pig Diaries, a collection of essays by A.J. Jacobs, who has written two excellent non-fiction books, The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically.

Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

I love spring for all the obvious reasons. I love the flowers blooming (which happens early here in Louisiana); I love the birds twittering; I love the squirrels scampering across my yard.

I love the sound of werewolves howling in the distance.

No, just kidding.

-Dead in the Family

I'm finally caught up with the Sookie Stackhouse series. It's been a good ride, so I'm a little sad things are at an end (for now). Luckily, Dead in the Family is just as enjoyable as any of the previous books in the series.

I was a little overwhelmed at the start of the story, I'll admit, since it had been a few months since I finished the previous book (and I've been watching True Blood, so my time line is all mixed up). Suddenly I found myself inundated with names—particularly those of fairies—which it sometimes took me a minute to place. After a few short chapters that served as a refresher in Sookie-ology, though, the story ran smoothly.

So let's see, what's Our Sookie up to? Well, for one thing, she's still dealing with the aftermath of the Fae War, which left her injured and in mourning. Although the fairies supposedly left the human world at the close of battle, it seems that a few were left behind—and at least one of them has no love lost for Sookie. She's still getting used to the commitment she made—albeit unknowingly—to Eric. And since that's not enough to deal with, the Weres come back to the forefront in a big way. Hello, Alcide! Although his halo's been tarnished a bit, I still like having him around.

Speaking of Alcide, I do wonder where Charlaine Harris is going to go with Sookie's men/supernaturals. I like Eric, but I liked him better in small doses, in all honesty. He adds more spark when he's there for a couple of intense scenes than when he's lecturing Sookie on vampire politics. Bill is probably still my favorite, despite his past behavior. Even though he didn't get too much face time in Dead in the Family, he shared in a couple of the most powerful moments of the book. (I especially liked the subplot with the family bible). I'll be very curious to see what the next story brings.

Up next: Eat, Pray, Love, which I am enjoying way more than I expected.

The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbø

She half turned without seeing him and wrinkled her nose as if there was a potent smell coming from somewhere, which was a possibility Harry could not completely exclude. She asked the checkout girl for a pack of 20 Prince Mild cigarettes.

'Thought you were trying to give them up.'

Vibeke turned round in surprise, scrutinised him and gave him three different smiles. The first one, fleeting, automatic. Then one of recognition. Then, after she had paid, one of curiosity.

'And you're going to have a party, I see.'

She put her purchases into a plastic bag.

'Something like that,' Harry mumbled, reciprocating her smile.

-The Devil's Star

Harry Hole is in a bad way. As we saw in The Redbreast and Nemesis, Harry's struggle with his demons is unending. By the beginning of The Devil's Star, Harry has given up the fight.

We don't know why at first, but the result couldn't be clearer: we meet Harry in the midst of an epic bender. His supervisor kindly put him on leave four weeks earlier, when Harry just stopped showing up for work. But a police officer can't be on leave indefinitely, and he's finally called in to a crime scene. A woman has been murdered; her index finger ritualistically severed. Harry's partnered up with Tom Waaler, whom he loathes. It comes as no surprise that things get off to a rocky start.

'One of the officers at the crime scene threatened to write a report on you. He says you were visibly intoxicated when you arrived [...] Were you intoxicated, Harry?'

'Of course I wasn't, boss.'

'Are you absolutely positive you're telling me the truth right now, Harry?'

'Are you absolutely positive that you want to know?'

Harry heard Møller's groan at the other end.

Soon enough, a woman has disappeared, and it isn't long before the two cases are connected. As usual, Nesbø has engineered a remarkably clever mystery that requires a serious amount of effort to untangle. The Devil's Star is complex without becoming overly convoluted; Nesbø seems to have become somewhat more judicious with his twists. (I did have a bit of trouble picturing some of the logistics of the gruesome climax. Perhaps that was just a self-preservation instinct.) Overall, I consider it the strongest of Nesbø's novels to date.

Aside from his crackerjack plots, Nesbø's greatest strength as an author is the shape he gives to the damaged, driven Harry*. There is no romanticizing of Harry's problems here—Nesbø never shies away from showing exactly how low Harry can fall. I was wincing at points, because at his core Harry is wonderful—smart, resourceful, caring, funny—and as a reader I can't help but hope for better for him. Harry's behavior, in this book more than any other, has realistic and potentially far-reaching consequences. I am very interested to see where things lie at the start of the next book, The Redeemer. I'm not sure when it will be out in the US, but I see that it's already available in paperback from amazon.co.uk. Oh, so tempting....

Up next: I'm picking up The Botany of Desire again. Good so far, but I can't exactly call it a page-turner.

*And all of his characters, really. I'm consistently impressed to how much depth he gives to characters who might only be around for a few pages.

A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris

"Have you ever seen It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?"

I stopped in my tracks. "Sure," I said. "Have you?'

"Oh, yes," Pam said calmly. "Many times." She gave me a minute to absorb that. "Eric is like that on Dracula Night."

-A Touch of Dead

A Touch of Dead is a small collection of short stories by Charlaine Harris, all centered around her most famous heroine, Sookie Stackhouse. These stories fill in gaps in Harris's novels, providing us with background information and some important plot detail, along with a fair amount of fluff.

There are only five stories, which makes this quite a quick read. In "Fairy Dust," we learn more about the fairy siblings Claude and Claudine as Sookie is brought in to investigate their triplet Claudette's death. "Dracula Night," which I quoted from above, describes Fangtasia's annual celebration of Dracula's birth. The third story of the collection, "One Word Answer," was the most interesting one in terms of its impact on Sookie. In my review of Definitely Dead, I wondered if there was a story that dealt with Sookie learning of the death of her cousin, Hadley, as well as her introduction to Queen Sophie-Ann Leclerq. "One Word Answer" is that story.

"Lucky" gives Sookie a chance to team up with her witchy roommate Amelia to solve a mystery, and "Gift Wrap" details an interesting Christmastime adventure for Sookie. Both stories are amusing, and the latter provides more insight into the supernatural world—for us, though interestingly not for Sookie.

In general, the stories are diverting, and worth reading for a Sookie Stackhouse fan—particularly "One Word Answer." I think it would probably be best to read them in between the novels in the order they were written —Harris indicates the proper sequence in her introduction—but I assume most readers, like me, will read these stories after finishing the rest of the series (save one, in my case). In any case, they're enjoyable, but I didn't get quite the satisfaction I've gotten from the novels, probably because there simply isn't so much space for dramatic arcs or character development in this format. Still, it was a pleasant way to spend an hour or so.

Up next: I think The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan, but that could change.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

"Since the schoolyard," Naehring said, "I would bet neither of you has ever walked away from physical conflict. That's not to suggest you enjoyed it, only that retreat wasn't something you considered an option. Yes?"

Teddy looked over at Chuck. Chuck gave him a small smile, slightly abashed.

Chuck said, "Wasn't raised to run, Doc."

"Ah, yes—raised. And who did raise you?"

"Bears," Teddy said.

-Shutter Island

I saw the film adaptation of Shutter Island back in February. I was reeled in by the moody, atmospheric ads that promised a satisfying level of creepiness. I read some mixed reviews, most of which took the trouble to note a plot twist. No particulars, just that there was one.

I love plot twists. I think they're dandy. I just don't like knowing about plot twists. I think it spoils half the fun. If you go into a movie, or a book, knowing there will be a twist, it's only natural to speculate on what it could be—and in many cases you'll uncover it. No fun.*

So I walked into the movie with a fair idea of where it was going to go, which I thought made it a weaker film than it could have been, but I mostly enjoyed it all the same. And obviously I then began reading the book with a fairly thorough grounding in the plot, though I'd forgotten some of the particulars in the intervening months. I was hoping that in reading the book, I'd clarify some of the more ambiguous points in the film and gain a better understanding of the characters' motivations. On both points, the book was very helpful. It's also a pretty absorbing read.

The plot, you say? Oh yes, there's plenty of that. Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, are federal marshals assigned to an unusual case on Shutter Island, a psychiatric institution for the criminally insane. A woman named Rachel Solando has disappeared without a trace, which is quite a feat in a place crawling with guards and orderlies. As the marshals investigate the case, they run into more and more peculiarities, all the while battling the effects of a developing hurricane that has cut them off from the outside world.

Poor Teddy. I probably thought that a thousand times while reading. Chuck doesn't have a great time of it either, but Teddy is different. Not only is he our protagonist, Teddy is also a man with a Past. The kind of past that you wouldn't wish on anyone. The kind of past you just can't get past, as it were. He's enormously sympathetic, even though his own behavior is not beyond reproach—far from it. You just want things to start going right for him. That's not really how this kind of book works, though. Poor Teddy.

Poor Teddy, indeed.

In the film, Teddy was played by Leonardo DiCaprio, whom I couldn't help but picture while reading the book. His acting in Shutter Island is among his best work, and I think he was the best part of the film as well. His Teddy was both devastated and utterly devastating, which made the end of the film (quite true to the book) hit even harder. Shout-out to Mark Ruffalo as well for his flawless portrayal of Chuck, whom I also pictured quite clearly when I read. On the whole, it was a visually striking film, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that I relied on Scorcese's vision of the island while reading.

All in all, fairly entertaining, and if you've seen (and enjoyed) the film I'd definitely recommend it, just to help you tie up any loose ends.

Up next: Kraken by China Miéville, which I'm very excited about!

*In fact, I certainly wouldn't mention the twist in Shutter Island unless I were sure that it was already a pretty widely known idea among people who keep up with that sort of thing. (A Google search of "Shutter Island" and "twist" returns almost 300,000 results.)