Brighton by Michael Harvey/The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt

Brighton by Michael Harvey is a wonderful novel.  It's very true that if you like Dennis Lehane you'll like this novel.  It's not just that it's set in Boston but that it also features a pretty clear-eyed view of the tensions inherent in the urban scene.

This novel is very suspenseful and in part, that's because the author carefully offers tidbits of information as you go along but also because there is a major plot twist at the end of novel which I didn't anticipate.  There were no red herrings, however, which I appreciate.  Michael Harvey's use of street slang and highly poetic metaphor side-by-side delighted me.  It's so fun, and somewhat unusual, to be surprised by excellence and beauty in prose style.

The Whites is a wonderful novel.  I read Brighton and The Whites back to back and as much as I enjoyed Brighton I loved The Whites even more.  It's hard for me to figure out why.  Part of it may be just that there was so much going on in The Whites: the protagonist has his dementia-burdened father at home, a man who slips in and out of the present but is capable of dispensing wisdom, intimidating his son, and helping his son out of a big, big jam regardless.  His friends from the force are all so interesting as individuals.  There's a lot of details about how we live now.

In both novels there are elements that strain credulity but to me that is more than counterbalanced by the richness of characterizations, the excellence with which the plot has been structured, and the realistic view of urban life.

The Granchester Mysteries: Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Temptation by James Runcie

A friend gave me these books for my birthday.  I feel very fortunate - I love them!  I guess what I like about them is that each books is made up of several novellas, so they are very easy to read in one sitting, something I really appreciate as a busy person.

Runcie, the son a former Archbishop of Canterbury, is well versed in the political as well as practical aspects of church administration and drops just enough authentic details about that world to give the stories a realistic grounding that appeals to the practical side of my nature.

On the other hand, because of his role as a clergyman, Runcie's hero, Sidney Chambers, is able to know people from every strata of society, from his charwoman to a Brit of African descent who owns a club in Soho.  I suppose Runcie would have been wonderful company for Jane Austen, or vice versa.

Last, but far from least, in the books Sidney Chambers wrestles quite a bit with how Chritianity prescribes behavior. He wrestles with his own feelings, and with what expectations to have of others. It's more explicit in the book.

In this book, Sidney is married to Hildegard, and in one of the stories they go to visit Hildegard's family in East Germany. This story is dark and while it's very much like the village mystery in that everyone knows each other and that the buried secrets of the past emerge, the change in setting makes it feel quite different.

I personally think the covers are delightful, too.

All the characters from the TV series are here:  Amanda, Mrs. McGuire, Leonard, Hildegard, Sidney's sister and his club-owning brother-in-law.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWit

I really enjoyed this novel.  It's a quick, easy read, and it has a happy ending.  I also thought that Mr. deWit's prose style was exemplary, and I thought it beautiful. 

It is a great book for reading on a bus, train or airplane - you can read for the rollicking action, or slow down, take your time and appreciate the prose.

It is, however, a very violent novel. 

I would definitely recommend this for you if you are a fan of Quentin Tarantino's movies.

It is the tale, set in the American West around the time of the California Gold Rush (1848) of two (arguably) psychopathic brothers (Charlie and Eli) who are paid killers.  Eli and Charlie are very close, but very different.  As the novel progresses, Eli demands, and gets, a reckoning.  After I'd finished it and considered its ending, I had to admit that it reminded me of Voltaire's Candide.  And, now as I consider the high amount of absurdity in the story, I have to say that it reminds me of Beckett, too.  That erudite Mr. deWit! I think I should probably suggest that Mr. deWit stop showing off his prodigious gifts, as they make the rest of us look bad.  But until he does, enjoy.

Billy Boyle: a World War II Mystery by James R. Benn

This title is the first in the series about an Army investigator by James R. Benn.

Really enjoyed it, although I thought the prose style was a little creaky, featuring a few too many adjectives in its description.  Blind Goddess, a later novel in the series, has a prose style I really enjoyed with more economy in its description.

The plot concerns Allied plans for an invasion of Norway.  It won't surprise you to hear that I didn't know any of the details of the invasion of Norway.  I had, however, heard of the "Bus," the fishing boats that ran back and forth from Scotland to Norway during the war.  I heard it about when I watched Shetland, a BBC TV series based on the novels by Ann Cleeves,

Billy's backstory is part of the charm of this novel.  He's a guy who's really never been out of his own backyard, Boston's neighborhoods:  Beacon Hill, North End, South Boston, and he finds himself catapulted into Eisenhower's command.

I read this with a book group and they loved it.  

A Good Family by Erik Fassnacht

I really enjoyed this book.  It took me longer to read than my average book, I think because I read so many mystery books that are written for plot development and in which characterization and psychological insight is often sacrificed.  I think I had to slow down for these carefully etched portraits of ordinary people.  But I found myself sneaking glances at the book at times when I was doing other things, thinking:  gee, do I have to do this right now?  I wonder what's happening in the story.. It wouldn't hurt anything if I read it right now, would it?

Fassnacht is not shy about dropping brand names:  NPR, Chicago magazine, 7-Up, New Balance, TrendStar.  I haven't read so many brand names since I read Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie.

When Barkley, the main protagonist of the novel, arrives at a school for his first day of work as a teacher, he looks down at his New Balance shoes.  I found myself wondering, "Is this significant?  Is this cool?  (Or does it just mean that real teachers wear real comfortable shoes?)"  I looked down at my own New Balance shoes and wondered, very briefly, if they made me cool.  I decided that any shoe with a velcro fastener can't be considered cool.

Many places in Chicagoland are mentioned in this novel, like Diversey Harbor.  I found myself thinking, if you don't know Diversey Harbor, how will you picture this place?

Fassnacht's portrait of Barkley's transition into a professional as he takes his first teaching job and deals with students, both the challenging and the troubled kind, bosses, and office politics generally, is really quite stirring. He experiments, responds to changing conditions and finds his footing. Teaching is a kind of performance, after all.

Nevertheless, the combination of familiar situations and locations, and yes, brand names, lends the novel a wonderful, intimate air of immediacy. I think that this is one of the many ways to tell a story that will resonate with readers.


 

A Question of Honor by Charles Todd (A Bess Crawford mystery)

I have to admit that I was interested in reading this novel both because of its plot, which seemed intriguing, but even more because I loved the cover, which shows The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, India.  The Golden Temple doesn't really figure in the story, however.

Charles Todd is a mother-son writing team and they write historical fiction mysteries.  They write two series, the Bess Crawford series and the Ian Rutledge series.  I had already read the Ian Rutledge novel A Fine Summer's Day.  (I can hardly believe it, but this novel is the 17th in the series, and there's a new Ian Rutledge novel out now, No Shred of Evidence.)

Bess Crawford is a nurse serving in the First World War.  She grew up in India, where her father was a regimental colonel.  The early part of the novel recounts events from her childhood in India and I found that part very interesting and enjoyable.

As an adult, she is serving at a field hospital when a stuck truck is pushed out of the mud one night by a group of men, one of whom she thinks she recognizes as a man who served under her father and who disappeared the same day police came to arrest him for murders in both England and India, forever conferring an air of scandal on the regiment Bess's father commands.

The back story of the murders in England, as Bess uncovers the mystery, is fascinating.  I found myself feeling dissatisfied with the motive for the murder and wondered if other readers would feel disappointed as well.

City of Women by David R. Gillham

City of Women is set in Berlin; it opens in 1943, in a movie theater.  Berliners are facing food and other shortages, their men at away at war, neighbors turn in each other to the authorities and an atmosphere of distrust prevails. Sigrid is lonely, harried by her mother-in-law, and meets a strange man at the cinema with whom she starts an affair.  She also meets a young woman who comes to her for aid when the police come into the cinema looking for people with false papers.  These chance encounters change her life irrevocably.

City of Women has elements that remind me of other novels. Like the Paris Architect, the first 100 pages are incredibly suspenseful, and as in both The Nightingale and Paris Architect, apolitical and war-weary individuals nevertheless become engaged in the resistance. Essentially, these individuals come to the point where they say, no more, and their concern for friends, lovers, and strangers overwhelms their sense of self-preservation.

It's partly a novel about female friendship and how that is tested by extreme situations like war.  Over the course of the novel, everything deteriorates.  Danger comes closer for everyone.

Charles Finch, the Chicago-based author of a the Charles Lenox series (an amateur detective in Victorian London), wrote a lovely and thoughtful review of this novel for USA Today.  Here's the link:  http://usat.ly/1Qcy8WL

I think most readers who enjoyed The Nightingale and the Paris Architect will enjoy City of Women as well.  I do think that the sex here is portrayed in a less delicate way that in those other novels, in part because here it's a really important mover in the plot and the changes that Sigrid undergoes.

Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

I've struggled to figure out what to say about this novel.  It's interesting to me because it is about old age and "end of life" issues.  That's not a super popular topic for novels.

I enjoyed the novel because I found that Jill McCorkle used details and voices for her characters that made them seem authentic and alive to me.  I liked her writing style.

Finally, I greatly admired the fact that McCorkle portrayed real drama in the lives of nursing home residents and showed that in this stage of life the inner life continues to be passionate and interesting.

There is a murder in this novel, but this novel is not a mystery and the murder is not solved.  To me, the brutality and tragedy of this murder seemed like an alarming departure in tone from the rest of the novel.

I read this book with a book group and some (not all) were offended by its portrait of aging.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

I loved this novel about several generations of a family that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I recognized the themes that I've seen in other Anne Tyler novels: the longing for closeness, disappointments and grievances, rejections and frustrations.

There were several things I really loved here.  One was the legacy of the past represented by the story of how Abby's in-laws met and married, and the seemingly random nature of both this marriage and Abby's own. One was the decades-long conflict between the emotionally withholding, frequently absent and commitment-phobic son and his increasingly perplexed mother, a conflict finally dissolved by grief.

Another thing I loved was Tyler's language, and the way she told the story.  While the novel's not short, it seemed to me to be a novel written in a style with great economy and realism.

This novel really spoke to me, although she was revisiting themes she has explored before.  The tension between the past and the present, the coexistence of love and exasperation, the constant rub of disappointed idealism and how the passage of time alters our passions and perceptions, feels authentic and familiar.

The other novels I've read by Anne Tyler were her first, If Tomorrow Ever Comes, The Accidental Tourist, and The Breathing Lessons, which featured a parental anxiety like Abby's.

Children of the Revolution by Peter Robinson

This is a novel in the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson, a Yorkshire-born Canadian crime writer.  I'd read a good review and I thought I might enjoy it.

Inspector Banks is called to the scene of a suspicious death.  A man in his sixties has been found on an old railway right-of-way that has been converted into a paved walk.  The embankment is steep enough, and the site far enough away from the nearest village, that the place seems strangely isolated and is mostly frequently by dogwalkers.

The deceased, Gavin Miller, is a disgraced college professor who had fallen on hard times.  And he has 5,000 pounds in his pocket when he's found.

The occasion of Miller's dismissal on sexual misconduct charges produces three suspects; a former student is another; and finally, the circle Miller knew as an undergraduate at the University of Essex provide another two. The character Miller, like the author himself, travels to Canada for his master's degree.

Banks is divorced and spends a lot of his free time at home, listening to jazz and pop while sipping Laphraoig and listening to the rain on his conservatory roof. Loving Van Morrison - and wondering what a Veedon Fleece is - comes up twice in the novel, as well as references to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and other bands of the '60's and '70s.

I found the opening somewhat clunky and prosaic - both the pace at which the tale was told and the character of Inspector Banks himself. (Inspector Banks is refreshingly normal, strategizing ways to get home without driving after going to the pub, for instance.)  Yet I quickly fell under the spell, which is saying quite a lot, I think. I recall that when I read Harlan Coben's Six Years, the unpacking of the mystery - and the many road trips, between New England and Virginia, if I remember correctly - seemed a bit tedious. (I suppose the TV equivalent is folks getting in or out of their cars.)

SoHo Sins by Richard Vine

There's so much to say about this novel I hardly know where to begin.

First, it's published by by the Hard Case Crime imprint of Titan Books, self-described as one that "brings you the best in hard-boiled crime fiction, from lost pulp classics to new work by today's most powerful writers, all in handsome and affordable editions.  The yellow ribbon represents your assurance of quality" (from the back cover).

These crime paperbacks always have the kind of covers used for cheap crime pulp fiction from the 50's and 60's and I know I'd always wanted to read one since I saw a Lawrence Block novel perhaps a year ago.  When I came across this ARC copy of Soho Sins, I was a goner.  In fact, this cover has a Marilynesque woman in a red dress sitting on the ground in alley, gazed upon by a man wearing a fedora and a brown overcoat - right next to a garbage can.

The story is set in the past - in the eighties or nineties. Jack is a gallery owner and art dealer, and an owner of several buildings in Soho, in New York City, as the real estate market there heated up.

He recalls a wealthy couple he knew, and his gratitude to them for befriending him, "taking him up," after his wife had died. What they shared was a passion for art, and this is backdrop for this murder noir.

The wife is killed; the husband immediately confesses. But it's not that simple: while he'd always strayed, at the time of his wife's death, he'd been seeing a beautiful young artist for several years and his wife was planning divorce. The other wrinkle, more profound, is that the husband, Phillip, has a degenerative brain disease that is robbing him of his memory.

There are other suspects: There's Phillip's first wife, living in the suburbs and trying to continue her career as an artist while raising their now twelve-year-old daughter. She's never quite gotten over her ex-husband.

There's the wife's shady performance artist lover, young and good-looking but involved in underworld business ventures, with members of the Italian mafia and Chinese gangs.

Then there's the cabal:  the circle of executives at Phillip's tech company that have a lot to lose as Phillip deteriorates and something to gain from his wife's death.

Phillip's lawyer hires a private eye who's an old friend of Jack's and who insists that Jack use his access to the art world, and Phillip, to help him with his inquiries - all the while making sardonic remarks about the ill-gotten gains of Jack's wealthy clients.

About 75% of the way into the novel, when I realized that the shady boyfriend's illegal doings were pornography I thought about bailing on the novel. (I did ask myself what it was that I expected, after all, when I picked up a crime paperback with a pulp fiction cover.) I decided to stick with it and was rewarded with another couple of major twists to the plot, all the way to the last pages.  Whew!

Richard Vine is the nom-de-plume of this debut novel author, an editor of a fine art magazine.

The story reminded me a little of Bonjour Tristresse, although this was far more shocking.  If tales of domestic crises are too tame for your beach reading. this jaw-dropping, totally not-in-the-best-of-taste roller coast ride might be the perfect vacation read for you.

The Revenant/The Hateful Eight

It surprises me that two Western movies were nominated for Academy Awards this year.

I loved the cinematography of The Hateful Eight; it made a great impression on me and is a large part of why I enjoyed the film.  I think the acting was wonderful, too.

The Revenant was also very beautifully photographed, and the locations in which it was shot were spectacular.

Both films were terrifically entertaining, perfect summer movies.  The Revenant was based on a true story, but after reading a few articles on the Internet, I concluced that the only overlap between the movie and reality is that fur trapper Hugh Glass really was horribly mauled by a grizzly and really did survive, was abandoned by his companions, and subsequently recovered enough to walk into camp 80 miles away.

I wonder if, in our age of anxiety, it is more comforting to look backward than to look forward.

The dictionary definition of revenant, by the way, is one who returns from the dead or long absence.

Heirs and Graces by Rhys Bowen

I enjoyed this book, and was impressed by how closely it seemed to hew to the Agatha Christie formula:  plenty of suspects, class tension between the local constabulary and the suspects, a drawing room unmasking of the murderer.  I also thought it was well-written and nicely paced.  It's part of the Royal Spyness series, and there was a little expositionary background offered to help folks who hadn't read the rest of the series to be introduced to all of the returning characters.

In this series, the detective is a duke's daughter who is 35th to the throne, and the murder takes place at a aristocratic home in rural Surrey, complete with fox hunt, so it did feel like very much like something that a Downton Abbey fan might enjoy.

I read it with a book group and several folks described it as fluff.  I found myself wondering why that was, exactly, when to me, the book seemed like such a classic Agatha Christie-type mystery.

I'm not sure but I'd guess that tastes have changed, and Agatha Christie-type mysteries seem tame compard to today's suspense thrillers.

Also, this particular book had a surprising ending, one that I didn't at all anticipate, but it perhaps just didn't have the bite and menace that Christie mysteries have.