frumiousb

It may have been angel80 who recommended this. If she didn't, then I recommend it right back to her.

In this story, a traumatized attorney named Rebecka Martinsson returns to the area of her birth and finds herself caught up in another murder investigation. A polarizing female priest has been killed in a small Swedish town, and the police are unable to make headway in the case.

As with all good mysteries, Blood Spilt is as much an investigation of northern Swedish life as it is about the murder itself. What Larsson does really well is play with the ambivalence that Rebecka feels about the town and her roots, digging at the layers that separate her from the past. I was less impressed with the thread about the wolf. I found it too distracting, even though well executed.

Looking forward to reading more by Larsson in the future.

I wouldn't recommend this to someone who has never read PD James before. It isn't the strongest of her books in several respects. Additionally, James seems to be working purposefully with unease, missed connections, unclear futures and lack of meaning. I tend to think that someone who trusts and is familiar with her work will give her the slack to try those elements out as part of the mystery novel. However, they aren't the kinds of plot points that make for a satisfying novel, full of closure.

What do I mean by this? For example: Clues that feel significant, and that lead nowhere. Note that I don't mean red herrings-- I mean clues that literally lead nowhere. There are red herrings too, but there are also unexplored moments of the kind that normally mean something in detective books. Also, I think that there's something odd about the way that she handles Rhoda as a character. James puts us into her perspective and lets us have access to her as a living character for nearly 125 pages. Not bad by itself, but after that, Rhoda is left a cipher. Her death feels utterly disconnected from what we know of her life. It creates a jarring effect (and results in many of the thrown away clues that I mentioned earlier). She has her secrets as well. We're given glimpses of them, but they remain tantalizingly opaque.

There are also the issues with AD and his special investigations squad-- the looming dissolution of the unit hangs over the book. It feels as though James has as much desire to tie up the loose ends in her character's lives as much or even more than she wants the murder to be solved. Actually, the solution to the murder is neither simple nor clear-- I was left feeling frustrated myself and not quite smart enough to get what either James or AD were driving at. But it isn't, somehow, the main point of the novel either.

PD James has a lot of credit with me, and I enjoy her writing very much. That remains true in The Private Patient. Even a flawed James is better than much of what is out there on the market-- at least for this reader. This said, The Private Patient is an odd sideways kind of book, and its concerns are not typical for a mystery novel. If you want a typical mystery novel, look elsewhere. (And sometimes you really don't want to have to work to read a book.) If you want a typical James/Dalgliesh novel, look into her earlier work.

Hm. In a lot of ways, this was a really gripping book. I was actually travelling in Italy when I read it, and that made it especially appealing. The story of the Monster of Florence is reasonably well known, and this book is as much or more about Italian culture/the Italian legal system as it is about the serial killer itself.

The two of them raise a lot of points that resonate with other reading I have done about corruption in the Italian judiciary. So that was really interesting.

I found that I was a little bit less comfortable with the idea that these two well-known authors would actually name a living suspect. The ethics feel murky to me, regardless of the circumstances. I get why they did-- the structure of the book demands it. Still, trial-by-author does not feel wonderfully fair to me.

I rarely read true crime books, so I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but I felt the structure jumped around a bit as a result of the two authors. Particularly towards the end, it got a wee bit exhaustive for the average reader. But I think that's excusable, given the circumstances.

I'd certainly recommend this as an anecdotal example of corruption in the Italian legal system. It's also a reasonably enjoyable read. If it's for you, it may be just the thing.

This is my third book by Karin Fossum and my admiration for her work grows with every book that I read. It feels as though she is continually slicing up the mystery genre to find a new and unexpected way to explore the darker sides of people-- a fresh way to examine loss. In this novel, she uses a mad suspect, a murdered old woman, a hapless bank robber and the moody Inspector Sejer to paint her picture.

If I had to rank them, I'd say that Calling Out for You is still my favorite. I fought He Who Fears the Wolf just a little bit since I wasn't that interested in the interplay between Errki and his kidnapper. It wasn't bad, but it just didn't spark my sympathy and engagement as fully as the rest of the book.

Still, I'd recommend everything that I have read by her to date.

This was my first book by Jan Burke. I bought it to read as an airplane book, and it served that purpose admirably. On the good side, Irene Kelly is a sympathetic detective figure-- I liked her a lot, despite the fact that the book leaned heavily on knowing her background already. There's also some really decent writing going on here-- so that's promising for the future.

On the less good side-- Kidnapped doesn't know if it wants to be a thriller or a mystery. Although it has a lot of the earmarks of a cozy (semi professional detective, adorable dogs, small town eccentric characters) there is no mystery for the reader-- and it is more the detective who is plotted against the set-up which we already know. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I found it a little bit unsatisfying in this case.

The aspect that made me really hesitate had to do with the motivation of the bad guys. It's rather a big set-up with motivations in the Fletcher family that are really rather murky to me. The motivations, as presented, were quite unsatisfying-- with a nod to the structural issue in the paragraph before this one, it seemed to me as though we didn't know if we had a consiparacy or a whodunnit-- and neither did the characters themselves.

I'll keep an eye out for more Burke, but I have the idea that this was not a good place to begin.

*conversation with self*

(self puts down book-- "sexist jerk!" she mumbles.)
self2 lifts an eyebrow. "aren't you overreacting to a light-hearted genre spoof?", she asks.
(self sulks. "he has the conveniently groin-sized femme fatale stripped and spanked publicly when she tries to kill him. Jerk. That never happened in the Travis McGee novels.")
self2 looks up "parody" in the dictionary. She then looks up "genre conventions" and "hard boiled detectives"
(self: sexist!)
self2: parody!

I dunno. I'll say that it *may* be a serious guy book and that it *may* be aimed at your average teenage boy and leave it at that. I'll also admit that I *may* be lacking in a sense of humor and that I *may* occasionally let my buttons get pushed by this kind of genre foray.

The "spanking uppity chicks" issue aside, there were some genuine moments of cleverness and entertainment in this Cook novel. thisc0rrosion lent it to me after I confessed that I simply choked on the Black Band books. He thought that it might be something by Cook more up my alley. And that's true. I like hard-boiled detectives a lot, and I do enjoy seeing the genre turned on its head within fantasy or science fiction. So some definitely good points here. If this is your thing, then you may find that it is really your thing.

For me, I didn't find it more than sort of entertaining. I missed any feeling for nuance-- more Micky Spillane than Raymond Chandler. I'll grant you that I might be expecting too much from a genre half-parody, but there you go.

I was curious to see that this book seems to have inspired quite a few mixed reviews. Which in turn inspires me to cover a few warning points for the potential reader:

1.
It isn't the most fast-paced of mysteries. The story knits together several quite divergent themes and it requires quite a bit of back story to accomplish its task. I enjoyed it, but if you prefer your thrillers/mysteries taut or want all your information revealed through dialogue, then this is most likely not the book for you.

2.
One of the themes that Larsson develops clearly has to do with sexuality, power imbalance, and violence. Personally, I think that he treats the subject very well. Some good things-- women over 35 have charisma, and a sex life, and attract lovers. A wonderful change from the persistent trope that matches the hero in his late 40s with the super scientist/astronaut/top academic who just happens to be a permanent 32.

There are also relationships depicted between younger women (early 20s) and older men. Unusually for me, I appreciated the way that this is handled. Particularly with the character of Lisbeth Salander you see the power imbalances and problems that these relationships can bring. It's also very hard to disconnect the "good" relationship that she has with an older man from the abusive ones that she experiences. I think that the tension is deliberate, and very smart. This said, there are images here that could be read in a variety of ways and that could potentially be triggering for a reader. Some scenes are quite explicit, and very disturbing.

3.
This is a book in translation, and that always loses something. Reg Keeland seems to have done a good job (at least a Swedish friend of mine thinks so) but there is a kind of inevitable flattening of dialogue that is difficult to avoid. It will read differently than a book by a native English writer.

*****

I really enjoyed the book and am looking forward to both reading the sequel and seeing the film. It kept me well entranced for several days. I'd recommend it-- bearing the caveats above in mind.

This is a strange but entertaining entry into the Grijpstra & De Gier mystery novels (sometimes called the Amsterdam Cops series). Ostensibly investigating the murder of a much disliked pimp, our detectives are led into much deeper waters. The streetbird of the title can stand for many things-- a misplaced vulture, local prostitutes, and perhaps even something stranger than the rest.

This book succeeds remarkably well because of the way that explores not only the personality of the two title characters but also the mind of the Commissaris. He takes the role of the wiser and more balanced investigator where Grijpstra and De Gier are somehow more exaggeratedly themselves than in the other books of the series. I was less enchanted with the character and magic of Uncle Wisi. But he and his vulture and his magic do function very well to cast the web of enchantment over the city to make it into something stranger than workaday Amsterdam.

The ending is a little bit stretched, but having made it that far with interest and enjoyment, I was willing to buy it. Others may not be so tolerant.

Solid series entry-- typical van de Wetering, if such a thing exists.

Reading through some of the online reviews of The Glass Key, I'm a little bit surprised by all the contradictory readings. Hammett supposedly considered it his favorite among his own novels. I liked it-- a lot, even. It isn't my favorite-- I think that honor still belongs to Red Harvest. But I don't consider it (as many apparently do) one of his minor works either.

There is a very nice quality of remove to this work. We learn next to nothing about the past of the characters (perhaps why some readers find it difficult to connect with the work?). Instead, their actions speak for themselves and the implication certainly is that the events of the book represent a fatal intersection of oft repeated actions. "You are what you do," is what Hammett seems to be insisting here. I personally find this kind of noir writing much more compelling when it sticks to the surface in this way-- gives it an air of fatality and sadness that would only be undermined by too much backstory. He doesn't give us much hope for his bleak city. Only Beaumont seems to have any feeling for nostalgia, and that is undermined by his gambling nature-- his casual lack of ethics.

It's an uncomfortable book, I'll give you that. Hammett keeps the reader back from any feeling of resolution, even when we learn the "truth". For me, it neatly foreshadows a film like Chinatown. The system of corruption in the world of The Glass Key isn't something that can be defeated by anything as trivial as a redemptive character arc. Hammett is telling us something about the world-- the hope will have to come from somewhere else.

Wonderful, really.

When I was about half way through this book, my chief reaction was pleasant surprise. "This is very nearly," I thought to myself, "a return to form". Sure, it wasn't as strong as the earliest books in the series, but it also did not make me feel as though I had wasted my 9.99 worth of airplane reading. There were other recent Kellerman books, particularly in the Delaware series, that made me quite sorry that I had bought them.

I think that the biggest problem with the book is its general paleness and nearly instant forgetability. While sitting down to write this, I really had to struggle to remember what the darned thing had been about in the first place.

So, not bad. I hope this signals something like fresh hope for Alex Delaware and his companions. It is not all that good either, though-- only glows next to some of the more recent stinkers in the series.

There was plenty to like about this book-- not the least of which is Rankin apparently making fun of the idea that all murders these days have to be puffed up into conspiracies, but it still isn't the strongest in the series. Why not? The pacing is a little bit odd-- I found it difficult to hold attention and I always give attention to Rebus books. Also possibly a few too many red herrings. Readers new to Rebus should not begin here-- don't think that it is really representative.

This book is interesting for fans, of course, as it may be the last Rebus book. (I confess that I have my doubts because of a hint or two dropped in the story.) I kind of hope not myself, but we'll see.

I think that this may be the last Peter James detective novel that I attempt to read. Although his work gets quite good reviews from fans, I don't find them to be my cup of tea. This is my second attempt at a Roy Grace book, and the second time that I've wound up disappointed.

It *was* reasonably entertaining. I often found the prose awkward, but that's not so unusual in detective novels. Unfortunately, I found the plot sadly predictable, and that's much more difficult for me to forgive. James is a reasonable hand at character, which is the only reason that I'm wavering on giving up on his books. Can anyone recommend a Roy Grace book by him that they really like?