Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan

Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore

2012-03-05T18:34:00.000-06:00

While on holiday in Florida two weeks ago Sharon and I visited the Murder on Beach Mystery Bookstore in Delray Beach between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. It is tucked into a nice little strip mall downtown on Pineapple Grove Way in the arts district.

We visited on a sun drenched Florida February Sunday afternoon. If ever there was the perfect bookstore to visit before heading to the beach it is Murder on the Beach.

On walking in there are a series of bookshelves filled with Florida mysteries. Most of the time, I have to search bookstores for local mysteries. At Murder on the Beach the number of Florida mystery choices were overwhelming. On their website which is http://www.murderonthebeach.com/ they list and have connections to 65 Florida mystery authors!

Turning to the staff that Sunday, she recommended Off the Chart by James W. Hall and Sanibel Flats by Randy Wayne White. Not having read either author I bought both books.

In mystery bookstores I look for authors not easy to find in the big block bookstores.

I found a new print of what I believe is Helen Tursten’s initial book in the Irene Huss series, Night Rounds.

Having seen many bloggers write positive reviews of Andrea Camilleri’s series featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano I was able to get The Shape of the Water.

In the middle of the bookstore are a pair of inviting armchairs Sharon confirmed were most comfortable while I browsed for books. I wished I could have had the time to sit down for an hour or two and look at books.

Almost next door is a café where a reader can start reading their new books while enjoying outside something to eat and drink.

As with every mystery bookstore I have visited make sure you give yourself enough time to go through the huge selection of mysteries. It was tough limiting myself to 4 books.

On their website they set out that they will arrange an audience interactive, Murder Mystery Party, from groups of 20 – 500. I did not have time to discuss the Mystery Nights. They sounded like fun.

Drop in to Murder on the Beach if you are in south Florida. You will not be disappointed.

The Dragon Man by Gary Disher

2012-03-03T13:54:00.000-06:00

The Dragon Man by Gary Disher (1999) – The first Hal Challis mystery is set in the Peninsula on the edge of Melbourne at Christmas time. It is hot and dry and young women are being sexually assaulted and killed.

Detective Inspector Challis has few clues. The killer wears latex and does not leave his vehicle to dump the bodies. The victims have no connections. No one has seen anything.

Uncommon tire treads are a slender lead. As the only real clue the police make a major effort to track down sales of these tires.

Within the local police station few of the officers are looking forward to the holiday. Strained or broken relationships have left them with more dread than joy of the year’s greatest family celebration.

The solitary life of Challis is punctuated by calls from his wife in jail. She has been imprisoned for attempting, with her lover, to murder him. The calls are as sad as any I have read in fiction.

Christmas arrives in the midst of the investigation. It proves a difficult day for the police and their families. It is a blue Christmas on the Peninsula.

Aggravating the police and frightening the public are a series of letters from the killer to the local newspaper mocking the police investigation.

While police resources are concentrated on finding the killer they must still deal with the continuing local crimes.

Unlike most crime fiction involving the police there are multiple detailed police characters. Sgt. Ellen Destry, Sgt. Kees Van Alphen, Const. Scobie Sutton, Const. Pam Murphy and Const. John Tankard all have extensive roles in the book. The police station comes alive through their portrayals. Each of them has significant personal issues.

With the investigation stalling pressure builds upon the police. Superintendent, Mark McQuarrie, more skilled at detecting political currents than solving crimes, presses for results.

Challis keeps his men and women searching but clues remain elusive. When the break comes the book builds to a dramatic conclusion.

The Dragon Man, written over a decade ago, is an impressive debut mystery. I appreciate Kerrie from her blog, Mysteries in Paradise, and Bernadette at her blog, Reactions to Reading, for their recommendations of Disher.

Disher does an excellent job of the setting on the Peninsula. The semi-rural area adjacent to the big city has a varied population of working class people and the well-to-do. All are coping with the draining heat of Christmas in

Australia

. Just as Canadian writers know real cold Disher convincingly writes about real heat. (Feb. 22/12)

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton

2012-03-01T19:40:00.001-06:00

14. - 477.) T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton – (WARNING - The following review may contain spoilers for some readers. I do not consider the review to have spoilers but it has information a reader might find too revealing of the plot.) The20^th Kinsey Milhone mystery is not one of the best. It is hard towrite a great mystery about subtle elder abuse. The villain, a nurse with falsecredentials and name, is so evil and her great lump of a son, Tiny, acaricature. Kinsey’s neighbour, Gus Vronsky, has fallen and needs assistance.The situation is a challenge as Gus is a cranky old man with no relatives inCalifornia. Kinsey shames his niece, Melanie, into coming to California. Afterstabilizing the situation Melanie hires a nurse, Solona Rojas, to care for Gus.In the meantime Kinsey is investigating a curious accident in which veryserious injuries have occurred in a low speed crash. She diligently goesthrough the tedium of searching for a missing witness. In a contrast to some ofthe mysteries the relationship with landlord, Henry Pitts, his brother Williamand restauranteur Rosie is an important part of the plot. Almost immediatelySolona starts isolating Gus from his neighbours. It is cleverly done andillustrates the difficulty of discovering elder abuse. It is not a classic murdermystery. The pace picks up and accelerates to a great finish. I think it washard to like the book because the villains were so evil, deceitful and cruel.It was good but not great. Paperback by choice. (Apr. 5/09)

Removing Indigenous Children from their Families in Crime Fiction

2012-02-28T22:36:00.002-06:00

Banner Photograph for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

In I’ll See You in My Dreams by William Deverell a significant issue involves what happened with the victim, Dermot Mulligan, when he was principal of an Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan during the 1940’s.

The book touches upon the problems caused by the education of generations of Canadian Indians in residential schools. Thousands of Indian children, as young as 6 years of age, were taken from their families on their home reserves to attend these schools. At some schools they would get to go home at Christmas. At other schools they would be there from September to June.

The schools were part of the Federal Government’s attempt to assimilate Canadian Indians through education and taking away their culture. At the schools children were punished for using their native language or following any traditional cultural practices. Discipline was harsh. They would remain in the residential schools for up to 12 years.

There were major problems with physical and sexual abuse. There have been generational problems as the children who, essentially grew up without parents and other family, became adults and had their own children.

In recent years the issues of residential schools are being addressed through a Federal Government compensation system and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is currently holding hearings across

Canada

I have represented Indians pursuing compensation. They consider themselves survivors of residential schools. It is a wrenching experience to listen to strong, physically powerful, men break down in your office recounting experiences some had not even told their families.

At the same time I have also represented individuals who worked in residential schools against whom abuse allegations have been made. While they face no legal or financial consequences it is also difficult to hear persons emotionally stating they are facing false accusations.

The residential schools deeply scarred generations of Canadian Indians.

Australia

has its own issues with the removal of thousands of aboriginal children, now called the stolen children, from their families. At the Creative Spirits website it states:

The stolen children were raised on missions or by foster

parents. They were totally cut off from their Aboriginality.

They were severely punished when caught talking their

Aboriginal language. Some children never learned anything

traditional and received little or no education. Instead the

girls were trained to be domestic servants, the boys to be

stockmen.

In Arthur Upfield’s book The Will of the Tribe he talks about two educated aboriginal people, Tessa and the Captain. While educated they neither fit into white nor aboriginal society.

Denmark

had a policy in place from the 1940’s to take Greenlander children to

Denmark

to live in boarding schools from as early as 10 years of age. In Peter Hoeg’s book Smilla’s Sense of Snow the lead character, Smilla Jesperson, is one of those children and the victim, Isaiah, another.

Smilla talks of the dislocation for the Greenlanders removed from their semi-nomadic life on the land to urban

Denmark

. Many found themselves isolated neither accepted by Danes or native Greenlanders. They struggle to find a place in society. I described Smilla as a misfit in

Denmark

In contrast is the experience of Jimmy Perez in Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. Children as young as 12 would be brought to Lerwick from the smaller Shetland Islands to live in a hostel so they could attend school. Perez from the more distant Fair Isle, could not go home for weekends. While required to move away for school at a young age there is not the same cultural dislocation as with indigeneous children.

I do recognize the impact on a person leaving home to go to school. I left home to attend boarding school when I was 15. It was the hardest year of my life going to live at a school where I did not know anyone. Yet my experience was mainly positive as I adjusted and matured. There was none of the abuse of Indian residential schools.

In Canada, Australia and Denmark each nation sought to eliminate the cultural identity and assimilate their aboriginal or indigenous people. The results were devastating to each country’s indigenous peoples with the effects continuing into the future. Australia described it best as “stolen generations”.

I’ll See You in My Dreams by William Deverell

2012-02-26T23:16:00.000-06:00

I’ll See You in My Dreams by William Deverell – Arthur Beauchamp is back in a murder trial. The publication of a biography of Beauchamp by Wentworth Chance has prompted Beauchamp, now in his mid-70’s, to reflect on his first murder trial 50 years ago in 1962. At 25 he was assigned to represent a young Indian, Gabriel Swift, from the Squamish Band near Vancouver who has been accused of murdering his employer, University of British Columbia professor Dermot Mulligan.

As Louise Penny did in Bury Your Dead, Deverell is working with three plots. Unlike the Penny book they all deal with the same subject.

In the book, Deverell is simultaneously writing Beauchamp’s current reflections on the old trial, excerpts from the somewhat pompous biography and Beauchamp’s experiences five decades earlier in representing Swift. He does it very well.

Beauchamp is initially challenged because Dermot had been a mentor and hero when Beauchamp was a student at UBC a few years earlier. There is an underlying issue on what happened when Dermot was principal of an Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan two decades earlier. My next post will discuss, through a look at crime fiction in several countries, the terrible problems arising from how indigenous people were educated in past generations.

What is most striking in the book is the relationship between Beauchamp and Swift. His client is a very bright man, mainly self-educated, who speaks several languages and is a Communist.

To the RCMP of the day he is a lippy Indian. He does not fit their stereotype image of what is a good Indian. The same attitude was set out by Arthur Upfield in The Will of the Tribe.

Ordinarily the lack of a body would be a major challenge for the Crown prosecutor but there is significant circumstantial evidence of murder. Beauchamp is convinced his client is being framed.

Adding to the challenge of defending Swift is the charge of capital murder. If Swift is convicted he will be hung. (The trial, set in the early 1960’s, takes place near the end of the capital murder charge in Canada.)

Beauchamp is weighed down by the consequences of losing the trial. He forms a close bond with his client and can hardly bear to think about him being executed.

Beauchamp faces a dilemma constantly encountered by defence counsel but at its most intense in capital cases (death penalty cases in the U.S.). Should he attempt to reach a plea agreement that will save his client’s life but send a man, he is sure is innocent to jail?

Eighty years ago Saskatchewan’s most prominent criminal lawyer, John Diefenbaker, was representing a young man charged with capital murder. It appeared that his client could have pled guilty to manslaughter because of drunkenness. Diefenbaker, confident of an acquittal, urged a trial. He was wrong. His client was convicted and hung.

The issue of whether to plead guilty was the subject of another Canadian mystery last year, The Guilty Plea by Robert Rotenberg. No longer was the client’s life at stake but the hard decision of whether to make a deal was well explored.

Compounding the situation is Beauchamp’s age. I was also a young lawyer at 25 doing some criminal defence work. I was not ready for a murder trial. Beauchamp is equally unready.

In defending someone the decision whether to recommend a guilty plea is often the most important decision to be made by defence counsel.

While the subject matter is very serious Deverell has not abandoned the comedic touch so evident in the previous Arthur Beauchamp legal mystery, Snow Job. The young Beauchamp has a sexual fetish I have not encountered in crime fiction.

I also appreciated the interactions between the lawyers. They are more sophisticated than the totally adversarial descriptions of many legal mysteries.

It is a book that made me grateful on many levels we no longer have capital murder in Canada.

Deverell has provided a wonderful picture of a lawyer in his mid-20’s and his mid-70’s. (Feb. 12/12)

The Drop by Michael Connelly

2012-02-24T21:09:00.002-06:00

(7. – 639.) The Drop by Michael Connelly – Harry Bosch is back in the Open – Unsolved Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. The regular hours of this section probing distant murders suits his life as the single parent of Maddie, his 15 year old daughter.

In a wonderful opening Connelly describes the monthly distribution of cases with cold hits as Christmas. Each of the detectives is excited and filled with anticipation as envelopes are handed out where some new analysis of old evidence from an unsolved case has produced a hit on the identity of the offender.

Bosch and his partner, David Chu, get a present. They are assigned to investigate an old homicide where a blood smear has been identified.

Before they can start on the case Bosch is contacted by the Chief of Police to handle the investigation of the death of George Irving, a lawyer / lobbyist / fixer in City politics. He has fallen to his death from the top floor of the Chateau Marmont Hotel. Was it accident or murder or suicide?

Bosch is surprised to have been given the case because he has had a confrontational relationship with the deceased’s father, Irvin Irving, who is a former policeman and current L.A. city councillor with a consistent record of animosity towards the department of which he had long been a member. Bosch is truly startled when he learns Irvin has insisted that Bosch lead the investigation. Knowing only one way to investigate the death – to find the truth - Bosch demands and receives assurances from the Chief and Irvin that no specific result is required from his investigation.

Still the investigation is fraught with high jingo (top level internal police politics) as Bosch starts probing into the murky professional life led by George.

At the same time Bosch is putting some time into the investigation of the cold case searching into the heart of darkness of a young man who has become a predator himself after being profoundly emotionally scarred by the killer. An uncomfortable philosopher, Bosch, is forced to look at what makes a person evil.

A new love interest arises in Dr. Hannah Stone, a psychologist whose professional and personal life is consumed by the question of what causes evil.

If either Bosch or Stone were Christian they would consider the Devil can turn people evil. Are there angels and demons competing for the soul?

Connelly skillfully crafts another excellent mystery with plausible but unexpected twists.

I was left alittle uneasy by the picture of the killer in the cold case. The killer is a total monster. It is hard to conceive how this person had managed to even reach adulthood. The character is so extreme.

Bosch does have a philosophical principle guiding his investigations – everybody counts or nobody counts. Connelly challenges Bosch on whether he will live out his philosophy.

Always in the background is the DROP – Deferred Retirement Option Plan. Bosch is trying to maximize the length of his career within the Department. No matter his skill the end of his career is being defined by the police bureaucracy.

At home life is almost too good with Maddie. While I did not have a daughter I was the parent of two boys. The teenage years of my sons were good years but there were challenges and occasional conflicts. I doubt parenting a 15 year old girl is as smooth as portrayed in the book. At the same time I am glad she is normal teenager not filled with angst.

It is a good book. I am glad Connelly kept Mickey Haller out of the book. I find his books function better with Bosch and Haller apart. (Feb. 5/12)

Bush Dweller – Essays in Memory of Father James Gray, OSB edited by Donald Ward (Part II)

2012-02-22T08:35:00.000-06:00

On Monday I began my review of Bush Dweller – Essays in Memory of Father James Gray, OSB edited by Donald Ward, a collection of short essays remembering Father James. I start the second part of the review with personal memories of him.

Forty-one years ago I was a first year university student at St. Peter’s. Father James was my English professor. At 18 I was too young to appreciate the depth of his knowledge. Father James was devoted to and a master of words – the Word of God, the words of great writers and poets, the meditations of monks and mystics. I was old enough to understand his love of fine writing.

I had already spent 3 years in high school at St. Peter’s where my English teachers expected far more than simple summarization of what we had read. As set out by contributor, Dennis Gruending, Father James continued the process in university challenging us to delve into the novels, short stories, poetry and plays we read during the year. As with the best teachers, he wanted us to think about what we were reading and be not afraid to express those thoughts.

Until that class I had thought of Huck Finn as an entertaining Disney movie. That winter I came to appreciate the richness of the relationship between Huck and Jim.

Gulliver’s Travels had been a comic book fantasy. It shifted to a sophisticated satire upon the society of its time.

Reading Lord of the Flies pushed me to look into my adolescent heart and consider whether savagery lurked there merely waiting opportunity.

I did not maintain a personal relationship with Father James after that year. We would occasionally see and greet each other at College events. He became a bush dweller after I left St. Peter’s.

It was during those years from 1972 to 2002 while he was living his solitary life that he formed relationships with most of the contributors to the book.

It was striking to read in so many essays how the relationships concluded in the last days of his life. A majority of the essayists wrote of special memories from his closing days when all, especially Father James, knew the end was near.

Many reached out for a final connection. All knew he did not dread death. He had told writer Anne Strachan:

I asked if he was afraid. He responded that for him, death held no fear. “Strange, in monasteries,” he wrote, “death seems more ‘comforting’ than ‘sorrowing’ …. Knowing God’s loving forgiveness, why should we fear death? Dying itself may be less than pleasant, but how else is one to ‘make the crossing over’ to a better condition of life?!”

How many people have such a group of friends seeking to ease final days and to share a few more moments of conversation? Father James, a contemplative monk, was a remarkable man to bring forth such love.

Two years ago a slender volume, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, had a profound impact upon me as I dealt with cancer treatment. This winter Bush Dweller has equally moved me. It is a book to savour and a life to reflect upon as I rush into another day.

This summer when I sit upon my deck I will think of Father James. I resolve to become a little closer to the birds of my yard. (Feb. 9/12)

http://mysteriesandmore.blogspot.com/2012/02/bush-dweller-essays-in-memory-of-father_22.html

Bush Dweller – Essays in Memory of Father James Gray, OSB edited by Donald Ward (Part I)

2012-02-20T18:45:00.000-06:00

Father James feeding a chickadee

(8. – 640.) Bush Dweller – Essays in Memory of Father James Gray, OSB edited by Donald Ward – In his introduction Don presents an indelible image of Father James standing in the bush at St. Peter’s Abbey in rural Saskatchewan with arms outstretched as chickadees he had befriended flutter around and land upon his hands to eat freshly shelled peanuts.

How many of us take the time to let birds know us, to stand quietly, wait patiently, allow trust to come? In a world where life moves at a frantic pace, who slows their existence to become intimate with the birds around us? I have come to treasure summer mornings on the deck eating breakfast with birds chirping and singing in the trees of my backyard. Yet I have but a passing acquaintance with them compared to the relationship developed by Father James.

For 30 years of his life he lived in a small house in the bush of the abbey. He spent those 10,000 days and nights connecting with God and with people. While he retreated from the community he remained a vital part of the monastery. He taught first year university English, he made weekly visits to the nursing home in Humboldt, he celebrated the Eucharist with his fellow Benedictine monks. Most of all he welcomed friends to Marantha (Come Lord Jesus), his home in the bush. He was a solitary rather than a hermit.

In this slender volume 21 of his friends – writers, poets, singers, teachers, administrators, priests and bishops – eloquently describe their individual relationships with Father James for each had a special personal connection with him. I know almost half of the contributors and they are a diverse collection of persons.

A chickadee eating nuts at St. Peter's

They recount powerful conversations over years, even decades of visits. Just as Father James took the time to build relationships with the birds he developed friendships with his visitors. He had the gift of creating close personal relationships. Where he drew the chickadees to him outside with peanuts he used tea, and sometimes single malt Scotch, inside to nurture his human friends.

These friends write of his skill in assisting them on their spiritual journeys less through direction than by questions and encouraging prayer and reflection.

Jeanine Loran, a teacher, said:

His instruction centred on stillness and breath, allowing the spirit of Jesus Christ to rest in the heart of my being. His mantra was “Abba” as the breath came in, and “Jesus” (pronounced as in French) as the breath was released. No matter what difficulty or joy, I was experiencing, the solution was always the same: rest in Christ. Be still and let God be within you.

He saw inside poet Jane Munro:

I felt he saw and celebrated my soul – encouraged me to become fully myself – and hoped that I might live a soul-based life.

Trevor Herriot, a prairie naturalist and writer, spoke of receiving inspiration:

Funny how going off into the woods teaches us how to recognize and welcome angels. I swear that was a big part of what Father James learned and then tried to pass on to those who arrived at the doorstep of Maranatha. Go to your dwelling place, your “cell” in the woods of your lonely soul, where God has sown the seeds of your great promise into the darkness. Wait there for the Lord who always comes in disguise.

It is no surprise many traveled hundreds of kilometres each year to visit Father James.

(On Wednesday I will conclude the review by recounting personal memories of Father James and discussing how the contributors dealt with his dying days.)

The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

2012-02-17T22:25:00.003-06:00

15. - 478.) The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer – A wonderful spy thriller. I was grabbed on the opening page when Tourist (CIA black operative) Milo Weaver fails to commit suicide when he does not rise into the fire of an attempted assassination by the Tiger. The plot roared forward the next day, September 11, 2001, when he is shot trying to arrest a rogue agent. The book carries on 6 years later with Milo pursuing the Tiger. In the intervening years he has gained a lovely wife, Tina, and a precocious 7 year old stepdaughter, Stephanie. (Milo is my first spy hero with a real family. He also has secrets with regard to his parents.) After he encounters the Tiger the plot races forward. The action is credible rather than the cartoonish action of Hollywood today. Milo does function in world of absolute ruthlessness and treachery. The cover says George Clooney has optioned the story. It could be a great movie. The writing is crisp and the characters remarkably diverse. I can hardly wait for Steinhauer’s next book. Hardcover. (Apr. 14/09)

Questions and Answers with Deon Meyer (Trackers)

2012-02-15T20:05:00.002-06:00

After reading Trackers by Deon Meyers and posting my review I had an interesting comment from Maxine of the excellent Petrona blog. She asked:

"I love your list of 'trackers'! I wonder if the author had something like this before he started writing, and determined to include one of each in his novel?"

Her comment prompted me to email Deon. He graciously answered that question and a few more. My questions and Deon’s answers in bold are in the following email I received from him:

Hi Bill:

Thanks for the privilege. Here goes:

1.) In my review I set out 26 different types of tracking that take place in Trackers. Did you plan to feature so many different ways of tracking in the book? If you did I would appreciate knowing how many methods of tracking you inserted as I am curious as to how close I came to finding all of them. (Maxine from the book blog Petrona inspired this question through a comment on my review of the book.)

I wish I was clever enough to do that much detailed planning. My intention was much more modest: to simply draw an analogy between animal tracking and habits, and the human equivalents. My source (Louis Liebenberg’s ‘The Art of Tracking’) was so rich in material that it did the rest on its own.

2.) I thought Trackers was a perfect title. Who chose the title and how was it selected?

The original Afrikaans title was ‘Spoor’, which, in its narrowest sense, means ‘track’. But the influence of African environment on my mother tongue (and the close interaction with that environment by the first speakers of the language) gives the word a deeper, wider meaning for which there is not English equivalent. Because I have three English publishers (

Canada

and

USA

), the translated title is a collaborative decision between all of us. ‘Trackers’ was the closest we could come to the original.

3.) Were you / are you a tracker in rural and/or urban South Africa?

I grew up on the edge of a small town on the high veldt of the North West Province, and spent a lot of time in my youth in the bush, hunting and fishing, so I know the basics of animal tracking. And aren’t we all trackers in the urban jungle, even if it is only to hunt down a bargain … ?

4.) In P.D. James’ book Talking About Detective Fiction she said her books start with a location. In my review I summarized her approach:

She said a setting will be in the inspiration. She gave the example of standing on the North Sea coast and looking to the south and seeing a nuclear power plant. The book grew from that location.

Could you tell me how you start a book?

I start book development with a story idea, or a curiosity about something, and each book’s origin is very different. With Trackers, it was my fascination with the dictatorship of the genre’s traditional structure, and the interesting links between organised crime and terrorism. Setting is almost incidental at first.

5.) Do you have a length of book set in your mind when you start to write? If not, when in the process do you determine length?

I don’t determine the length at all (or think or worry about it much) – each story has its own length, to be revealed in the writing process.

6.) There are quite a few South Africans of Afrikaner descent living in Saskatchewan. My family doctor grew up in Namibia and took his medical training in South Africa. Might Lemmer and Emma ever travel as far as Saskatchewan on an adventure involving former South African residents?

You never know, although I doubt it. South Africa is such a dynamic, dramatic and dynamic backdrop, and it has become part of what my brand as an author represents …

Best wishes

Deon Meyer

I appreciate Deon’s thoughtful answers and look forward to reading more thrillers from this superb author.

Thoughts on Questions and Answers with Jill Edmondson (The Lies Have It)

2012-02-13T18:16:00.000-06:00

On Thursday I posted my review of The Lies Have It. On Saturday I put up Questions and Answers with the author, Jill Edmondson. Tonight I conclude a long weekend with Jill with some thoughts on the Questions and Answers.

****

Jill spoke of the actual group, Northbound Leather, being the inspiration for her fictional group, Bound for Glory. I looked up their website and it is explicit, especially on the items offered for sale. There was an ad for the coming 22^nd Annual Fetish Night. It spoke of attendees being required to adhere to a strict fetish dress code. I did not research what is fetish dress code.

****

The image of the male party goer keeping his credit card in his skimpy red underwear has caused me to reflect. As a guy, I cannot help thinking it would not be comfortable walking around with that angular card tucked in the underwear unless it was not as crowded in there as normal. Once again I have chosen not to conduct personal research.

****

I hope Derek becomes a significant character in the series. In fiction, as in real life, I believe everyone needs a good personal lawyer. Now sleeping with your personal lawyer is best left in fiction.

****

I actually hope Sasha will not start carrying a gun. It is uncommon in Canada to own a handgun and rare to carry a handgun. Our laws are very restrictive on handguns. It is a U.S. tradition for hard boiled detectives to carry handguns. In real life far more Americans have handguns than Canadians. I think Sasha can be just as tough without a gun. I also believe authors have a strong tendency to have bullets fly if their sleuth carries a gun or guns.

****

As for Sasha being in her 30’s I hope she ages in the series. Sue Grafton’s detective, Kinsey Milhone, has remained effectively the same age through the course of 21 books. It works alright but I prefer Gail Bowen’s approach with Joanne Kilbourn. Her sleuth has aged over the 20 years of the series. A maturing or aging character feels more real to me. As well I like the new opportunities for different relationships provided by an aging character.

****

It was interesting how real life events with the current mayor, Rob Ford, and a former mayoral candidate, Rob Ford, inspired Jill so that she could complete the book. I am going to be looking forward to what current political events in Toronto ultimately appear in the series.

****

When I posted the review I forgot to set out it will be my 8^th book read in the Canadian Reading Challenge at the Book Mine Set blog. I have 5 more to go before July 1, Canada Day, to complete the Challenge.

Questions and Answers with Jill Edmondson (The Lies Have It)

2012-02-11T17:18:00.000-06:00

On Thursday I posted my review of The Lies Have It, the latest book in the Sasha Jackson series, by Jill Edmondson. As with her previous books in the series Jill agreed to answer some questions. Be
prepared, Jill, like Sasha, always lets you know what she is thinking. Monday I will conclude this series of posts involving The Lies Have It with some thoughts on the following Questions and Answers.

****

1.)   Knowing your desire to be accurate in your books I am interested in what research, especially whether you undertook personal non-academic research, into the S & M fetish scene? Sasha appeared quite uncomfortable.

That stuff is ALL true (even the red undies & the credit card!!) from back in the days (1998-2000) when I worked at The Pilot! Sidenotes: I think I told you previously that Dead Light District (aka The Hooker Book) was spawned by a paper I did when I was doing my MA. The essay was on human rights & the sex trade... the research that didn’t make it into the essay morphed into a novel.    Book 4 (Frisky Business) was inspired by Chapter 2 from “Empire of Illusion” by Chris Hedges. Damn good book (even if it is a bit of a polemic). Ch. 2 (about women working in the porn industry – among other things) will make you spit bullets. I’ll need to do more research for that.

2.)   As stated in the review I loved the name of “Bound for Glory” for the group sponsoring the fetish party. How did you come up with the name?

The real fetish group who held BDSM parties at The Pilot is called Northbound Leather – so I just twisted it around a bit. (Didn’t want to get sued... although maybe they’d have liked the publicity!)

3.)   In your real life experience as a bartender did you have a comparable experience to Sasha giving a free drink to a guy rather than handle his credit card which had been nestled inside “his skimpy red underwear”? It was a vivid visual image in the book. I well remember your cucumber story from our previous Questions and Answers.

I wasn’t the one serving Mr. Red Undies; my friend Jennifer (in the book Jessica) served him. She had nightmares for months about the warm card ;-)

Sidenote: A few weeks later, I knew Mr. Red Undies would be coming to The Pilot for lunch. On my way to work, I detoured to a kinky sex toys store on Yonge and bought a pair of edible undies for him (red cherry, of course). I handed the package to him in front of his lunchmates & everyone laughed their heads off!

4.)   For selfish reasons I am glad to see that a lawyer, Derek, is Sasha’s love interest having progressed from her lust interest. Might a future book, as Gail Bowen has done in the Joanne Kilbourn series, have Derek work with Sasha in solving mysteries? (I was surprised to read a Toronto lawyer can find his way to Timmins.)

I like having Derek help, but am unsure (for now) of how involved he’ll be... I’ll (or Sasha will) really need his help in Book 5. But I must finish #4 first!

5.)   Is Sasha ever going to start carrying a gun on the mean streets of Toronto?

Not immediately, but I guess at some point – to remain credible – I’ll have to work that in to the books.

6.)   Why did you choose to have Sasha in her 30’s?

Sasha is loosely based on me (or the me I wish I was!!!) and I was early 30s when I first started to toy with writing.   Making her any younger would not have given me room for her to have a backstory (music biz) plus I think a 20-something PI would not be as credible, and wouldn’t have the touches of wry cynicism Sasha has.   As for why didn’t I make her older: Simple. I was writing my own age and hadn’t experienced my forties yet (yikes, am I really now in my forties??? Damn, where did the time go?)

7.)   Have you made changes in how you write the series between the first and third books?

Well, now, this is interesting... Book 3 (Lies) was actually Book 1, but I kept getting stuck! I started it in 2005 and for the next 5+ years it was about 30,000 words. Tey again, shelve it. Try again. Shelve it. Couldn’t figure out what to do with it until the last municipal election. Mayoral election & Rob Ford (donut snarfing troglodyte) and Rocco Rossi (build a tunnel downtown) gave me the inspiration I needed to wrap up the plot J But... because books 1 & 2 had come out already, I had to finesse things. For example, in the earlier/original versions of Lies, there was no Derek, but since he’d been introduced in Dead Light District, I had to write him in to book 3.

The links below to various blogposts (none of which is very long to read) tell you a bit more if you are interested.

http://jilledmondson.blogspot.com/2011/06/scene-of-crime-sort-of-part-1.html

http://jilledmondson.blogspot.com/2011/06/scene-of-crime-sort-of-part-2.html

http://jilledmondson.blogspot.com/2011/06/scene-of-crime-sort-of-part-3.html

http://jilledmondson.blogspot.com/2011/05/book-one-is-actually-book-three.html

The Lies Have It by Jill Edmondson

2012-02-09T19:26:00.004-06:00

(6. – 638.) The Lies Have It by Jill Edmondson – In her 3^rd mystery Sasha Jackson is in fine form roaming Toronto by public transit, taxi and foot. She is a rare North American sleuth in failing to drive around the city.

The book immediately grabbed my attention with Sasha tending bar in the private meeting room of the Pilot Tavern for an S & M party sponsored by the group, Bound for Glory. It is a wonderfully apt name for a gathering of role playing fetishists.

At the party there was a remarkable diversity of fetishes among the guests. The description of a party goer playing nurse in a micro mini and a “cute little nurse’s cap with a red cross on it” brought back vivid personal memories of a tour, 15 years ago, down Church Street (the heart of gay Toronto) led by a gay friend. Helping him conduct the tour was a 6’ gay man, with perfect makeup, and lovely curling lavender hair down to his waist wearing a bright white nurse’s uniform and equally cute cap. Being on Church Street we drew less attention than you might expect for our group.

I like finding a connection to characters and activities in books I read. It increases my enjoyment of the reading. While I have walked Church Street I openly acknowledge I have no relationship with the S & M role playing described by Jill. The world of domination and bondage is far beyond my life experiences.

Returning to the book, Ian, big, burly and bearded, is the host and organizer of the party. His party attire is limited to a “black leather ‘kilt’ and black lace-up boots”. After he is found dead the next morning, still in his party clothes, Sasha enters deeper into the kinky world of S & M to find the killer.

When his lover, Mimi the sculptor by day / Minerva the dominatrix by night, is interviewed Jill creates a perfect tabloid headline – “I Gave Ian His Last Whipping”.

Most S & M participants lead dual lives. Ian is a leather clad weekend submissive and a finishing carpenter with a young daughter by week. Through the book Sasha weaves her way through the two worlds of Ian’s life.

While investigating the murder Sasha has another case searching for a runaway teenage girl. It is a gritty dangerous life on the street.

Sasha continues her quirky life. What other hardboiled, 30 something detective, still lives at home with her father and brother? I was glad to see her relationship with a downtown lawyer, Derek, is proceeding nicely.

In the book Jill deals with three different lifestyles outside mainstream society - the fetishists, young homeless street people and Sasha, the tough talking solo private detective.

I did figure out the killer rather quickly. Still the plot was strong enough to sustain the story. With Jill's steady progression as a writer I expect a stronger mystery in the next book.

I really enjoy Sasha’s conversations. In her directness and wit I was reminded of the Spenser books. Robert B. Parker created sharp interesting dialogue. Sasha remains a caustic observer of the world but her hardest edges, especially with regard to swearing, are alittle less sharp. Sasha is an intriguing character. I found myself reading swiftly through The Lies Have It in the same way I move rapidly through a Spenser mystery.

With each book an improvement on the book before I think the 4^th in the series could be a break out book for Sasha. Edmondson has found her mystery voice. (Jan. 31/12)

(On Saturday I will be posting Questions and Answers with Jill. She is as lively the second time as she was the first set of Questions and Answers from 2011. I will finish the trio of posts involving Jill on Monday with my thoughts on the Questions and Answers.)

Trackers by Deon Meyer

2012-02-07T19:57:00.001-06:00

(5. – 637.) Trackers by DeonMeyer – It is not often that a title perfectly describes a book. It is evenmore impressive when it can be done in a single word. Prior to reading thisSouth African thriller I thought of the word, trackers, in the context of trackinganimals or humans in the wilderness as done so well in the Bony mysteries ofArthur Upfield.

Trackers moves far beyond tracking in the wild places of SouthAfrica. It expands the meaning to people and machinestracking in every conceivable way. Befitting a land that is rapidly beingurbanized most of the tracking takes place in the huge metropolitan area ofCapetown.

There is the traditional tracking ofwild animals in the African bush.

There is the tracking of vehiclesacross the vast spaces of South Africa by keeping them in sight.

There is tracking of vehicles inrural areas by anticipating which, of only a few possible roads, could be used.

Moving into the contemporary urbanenvironment there is tracking done by teams of cars following cars.

There is tracking of vehicles bytransmitters placed upon them.

There is tracking on foot in thecity where visual contact must be maintained for little to no spoor is left bysomeone walking the paved streets of modern cities.

There is tracking of people by oldfashioned observation from nearby buildings.

There is tracking of telephones withelectronic intercepts.

There is tracking through talkingwith friends and enemies.

There is tracking through sleepingwith a source and listening to pillow talk.

There is tracking through informantswithin organizations.

There is tracking through computerssearching the world wide web.

There is tracking through thesatellites continually orbiting the earth.

There is tracking through readingnewspapers and magazines for information on those being tracked.

There is tracking through searchinggovernment records.

There is tracking through breakinginto buildings.

There is tracking through searchingdesks and computers.

There is tracking through the mindwith skilful questions and brutal demands for knowledge.

There is tracking through thesharing, often reluctantly, of information between powerful organizations.

There is tracking through carefulexamination of financial records.

There is tracking through thesources of funds in bank accounts.

There is tracking through hiddenmicrophones.

There is tracking through the closedcircuit cameras that inhabit every city.

There is tracking through theexamination of personal public records.

There is tracking through the studyof bodies.

There is tracking throughexamination of wallets, clothing and other personal items.

Within the book everyone is trackingsomebody.

Among the characters are Lemmer andEmma from Blood Safari. Lemmer is an important character but he does notdominate the book. Lemmer is a professional tracker of men and women.

At the heart of the story is MillaStrachan, a 40 year old housewife from the Capetown suburb of Durbanville.Leaving a loveless marriage she sets out on a new life that takes her placesbeyond her imagination. She becomes an unexpected modern tracker.

Meyer has lyrical descriptionswithin the book such as Milla’s diary entries on tracking:

Leaving tracks, creating some impression on the surface ofthis earth, is a way of saying ‘I was here’. Something to give meaning to thisfleeting existence ….. How do you leave a track, a trail, a spoor? …. Is thatwhy I want to write a book, my only (last!) chance to leave something tangible,a small scrap of evidence that I was here?

We all want to leave tracks forthose that come behind us. Blogs are a 2012 spoor to be tracked through thevirtual world of the internet. We leave electronic marks so our reader trackerscan come to know us.

It is a spectacular book. Iunderstand why it has been an award winner. There is significant but notoverwhelming violence. Unlike Blood Safari I never felt preached at bythe author. Once again I appreciate Jose Ignacio at his blog, The Game’s Afoot,and Bernadette at her blog, Reactions to Reading, for recommending thebook. I will read more of Deon Meyer. (Jan. 26/12)

The 47th Samurai by Stephen Hunter

2012-02-05T18:35:00.001-06:00

16. - 479.) The 47^th Samurai by Stephen Hunter – The book opens with Sgt. Earl Swagger attacking a Japanese bunker during the battle for Iwo Jima in which he kills Captain Hideki Yano. 60 years later their sons, Bob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano, meet and Yano asks Swagger to search for his father’s sword. A search spanning

America

turns up the sword and Swagger returns it to Yano in a moving meeting. Swagger was a sniper warrior in

Vietnam

who appreciates the commitment of soldiers at war. When Yano’s family is murdered Swagger sets out to avenge his friend’s death and recover the sword. In classic American thriller style Swagger immerses himself in Japanese sword culture learning how to fight with a sword through kendo. The demands of Japanese martial arts, a combination of athletics and philosophy, are familiar from my study of judo but I had never appreciated the importance of the sword in Japanese culture and history. The conclusion is credibly bloody. The final battle has a fantastic ending that I never forsaw. The book should be able to be a great movie. I was reminded of Clavell’s Shogun with a European becoming Japanese and playing a role in Japanese conflicts. Hunter is a skilled thriller writer. The Swagger history continues its bloody saga. Excellent. Hardcover or paperback. (May 2/09)

Police in Totalitarian States in Crime Fiction (Part II)

2012-02-03T19:26:00.000-06:00

Tonight I put up my second post on the police in totalitarian states. In my previous post I looked to mysteries from the 1930’s through the 1970’s in Germany, the U.S.S.R. and Argentina. This post moves into the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Arkady Renko, in Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith, is investigating a triple murder in Moscow in 1981. It is near the end of Communist rule but the U.S.S.R. remains under the fierce grip of the Communist Party.

Renko does not shy away when the investigation strays into officialdom even at significant personal cost. Finding corruption in high places he is dismissed from the police. He is forced into working at menial jobs and eventually finds himself working at cutting up fish on a factory ship in the Bering Sea as far from Moscow as it is physically possible to be in the U.S.S.R. While on the ship he solves a crime in the book Polar Star.

How many police are willing to lose their job to solve a crime?

Everyone appreciates individuals whose personal integrity is so strong they would give up their work to avoid compromising their honour but few take such action. The personal and family costs are so high from such personal sacrifice. We do not hear of mass resignations of police in totalitarian states in real life.

In Red Square by Edward Topol and Fridrikh Neznansky, set a year or two after Gorky Park, the investigator, Igor Shamrayev, is asked by Leonid Brezhnev to investigate the death of Brezhnev’s brother-in-law. He is given a letter from Brezhnev, the head of the Soviet Union, that gives him unlimited authority in the investigation. After determining there was murder done Shamrayev starts delving into the murky world of the Brezhnevs. There is an elite in the workers paradise. Numerous members of the family have done very well through corruption in the supposedly socialist economy.

What happens to the policeman when there are no checks on his authority in an investigation?

When used to capture criminals everyone is happy but the potential for corrupt actions is immense. It is inevitable that such power will be abused when there are no checks on the exercise of the power.

Most recently, in A Case of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong, Inspector Chen is given comparable authority to Shamrayev when he is made the Emperor’s Special Envoy with an Imperial Sword. (It is an interesting title to be given in a Communist country.) As stated in my review it gives him the right, in an emergency, to search and arrest without warrant. He is tasked in the book with investigating a high profile anti-corruption case in the Communist China of the 1990’s. While given special power he must tread carefully as he navigates between the different groups wielding power in the Party and government.

In Death of a Red Heroine Chen is called on to investigate the death of a young woman who is famous in China as a “model worker”. Her death has significant political consequences.

In both books Chen must deal most delicately with the high cadre comrade children because of their special status in Communist China.

How is a police officer to investigate crime when he, while serving one bureaucracy, must be careful not to offend high ranking civil servants in other ministries?

The life of the police in dictatorships is complicated as they must continually deal with political issues while solving crime.

After my first post I received numerous comments setting out several other mysteries involving the police in dictatorships. If you have not read those comments I encourage readers to go back to my previous post to see some excellent suggestions for crime fiction reading.

Police in Totalitarian States in Crime Fiction (Part I)

2012-02-01T21:18:00.000-06:00

On Monday I posted a review of Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo. The book caused me to think about the problems faced by police working in totalitarian states. In this post and Friday’s post I will be discussing books involving police officers in dictatorships moving from the 1930’s through the 1990’s.

In The Good German by Joseph Kanon one of the primary characters is a policeman who has been an officer during the Nazi rule before and during World War II. Through those years he has hunted criminals for a criminal regime. Is he a good German by chasing criminals for an evil cruel government? Another character, to stay alive, was a greifer, a Jew who found Jews hiding in Berlin.

Should a police officer serve a totalitarian state?

In Mark Mazower’s book, Hitler’s Empire – How the Nazis Ruled Europe the writer sets out how the existing police services before Nazi rule continued as police under the Nazis. While I am sure most dealt with ordinary crimes on occasion in Western Europe and, regularly in Eastern Europe, the regular police were involved in rounding up Jews. It was frightening to Child 44 read how many Eastern European police participated in the Holocaust.

by Tom Rob Smith is set in the U.S.S.R. in the early 1950’s where the nation is still caught up in the iron grip of Stalin. Secret Police officer, Leo Demidov, is shaken when he realizes that he is chasing a veterinarian who has sought to escape Russia when the veterinarian realizes he is under investigation for anyone the subject of a secret police investigation will be found guilty. Demidov suddenly perceives that many of the people he has pursued are not enemies of the state seeking to do harm to the U.S.S.R. Later he is in a Kafkaesque situation where the party line requires he not search for a serial killer of children because the socialist paradise could not have a serial killer. The police have been finding “undesirable” members of the nation guilty of the murders rather than acknowledge there is a serial killer.

What happens to a police officer when the suspect is always guilty and only certain people are criminals?

The officer is no longer an investigator solving crime in such circumstances. He or she has become a mere agent for the state disposing of unwanted or troublesome citizens. There is no objective search for criminals causing harm.

Needle in a Haystack is set in the late 1970’s in Argentina where the Junta is the governing dictatorship. The detective, Perro, is called to a crime scene where there are three bodies. Two of them are young people whose faces have been mutilated by multiple shots to the head. The third victim is a middle aged man who has been shot once in the stomach.

His investigation is immediately limited by the victims. He can investigate the murder of the middle aged man but only if it does not involve the other victims. The two young people have been killed by government death squads and the Junta prevents the police from investigating deaths it has caused.

What happens when the officer only investigates crimes not involving the state?

Respect for police and the Rule of Law is diminished when the police must close their eyes to vicious premeditated murder. Who could have confidence in the police in Argentina to investigate crime?

On Friday I will put up a post continuing the analysis through the 1980’s in the U.S.S.R. and Communist China in the 1990’s.

Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo

2012-01-30T18:29:00.001-06:00

(4. - 637.) Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo – In the late 1970’s the Junta rules

Argentina

. The military is ruthlessly seeking out young Communist revolutionaries who are intent on overthrowing the government. Every night Falcon cars roll up to homes and soldiers take away suspected subversives. Most become the disappeared.

Superintendent Lascano, known as “Perro” (the Dog), is a weary veteran police officer. Deeply depressed by the unexpected death of his beloved Marisa, he drags himself into work each day. Her ghost haunts his night. I thought of Carl Mørck at the start of The Keepers of Lost Causes.

Major Giribaldi is a military officer in command of units who make young Argentines disappear. His home life is complicated because Maisabe, his wife, cannot conceive a child.

Amancio is a man accustomed by birth to a privileged life but the family money is gone and he has a demanding young wife of the highest maintenance.

When Lascano is sent to investigate three bodies dumped by a river he is intrigued by the body of an older man that was not one of the disappeared. He can instantly determine the difference as the two disappeared have their faces disfigured by multiple shots when executed. The third has died from a single shot to the abdomen.

Lascano pursues an investigation into the death of the older man. The police have been ordered not to investigate the deaths of any disappeared they might come across in Buenos Aires.

Gradually the paths of Lascano, Amancio and Giribaldi intersect in the course of the investigation. It is a time of incredible tension in Argentina. No one knows who the death squads will come for next by day and by night.

Mallo extensively develops the personalities of the characters. Each man is a real vivid person. Each is struggling with a relationship with a woman.

The book is unusual in putting sequences of conversation between two people in a long paragraph with the speakers, not continually identified, alternating statements, mostly 1 or 2 sentences at a time. Mallo also writes powerful moving descriptions. The following conversation between two women is an illustration of both aspects of the writing:

What does it feel like to be pregnant? Have you ever held a live bird in your hand? It’s like that, only in your blood.

Even though there is a simmering undercurrent of violence in Buenos Aires Mallo’s skill makes it a surprise when the blood starts flowing. I have tired of high body counts in American thrillers but it feels right in a book set in the time of the junta. I now have a sense of the constant dread that Argentines lived with during that vicious time.

The book is the first in a trilogy. I will be looking for the next in the series. I thank fellow blogger, Jose Ignacio, at the Game’s Afoot for recommending Mallo. (Jan. 18/12)

Resisting Hitler’s Empire

2012-01-28T18:17:00.000-06:00

In my last post I reviewed Hitler’sEmpire. Part of my interestin reading the book came from my experiences, during the past year, with a pairof Western European families about their actions when under the Nazi occupation.

The first example took place incentral Denmark. A Danish lady said that her parents took in a young Jewishgirl from Germany and hid her on their farm despite the risks of deportation toconcentration camps if they had been discovered. There was no ideological basisto their action. They did not know her. They were not active politically. Shewas a girl in danger and they made her part of their family to save her life.Later in the war she made her way to Sweden with Danish Jews. Eventually sheemigrated to the U.S. She was the only member of her family to survive theHolocaust.

Mazower talks about Danishresistance being so low key that as of 1943 not a single German soldierstationed in Germany had even been attacked. Instead, I think of this family,resisting German goals to exterminate the Jews of Europe. In Eastern Europethere was far greater military resistance to the Germans but also far greaterlocal co-operation in the Nazi campaign to eradicate Jews.

The second story involved a youngDutch woman, just out of high school in 1940, working for the local telephonecompany. She was recruited by the resistance to alter the birthdates onidentity documents of young men to save them from being taken to German for slavelabour. On one occasion she was almost forced into hiding when a young manwhose document she had altered was taken into custody. During the last winterof the war, forced to wear a winter coat to work because there was no heat, herchilled hands botched the alteration of a document and she had a nervousbreakdown as she worried about the consequences for that young man. Sherecovered and, on the day the Canadians were to take over her town, she walkedto work at the request of the resistance despite German warnings anyone foundin public would be shot. Over 65 years later she still regretted not trying tohide a Jewish girl earlier in the war she knew who was subsequently killed in aconcentration camp. The Dutch woman I met never fired a gun or set a bomb butshe resisted resolutely the occupation of her country.

Mazower sets out that the resistancein Western Europe had no impact on the Wehrmacht or Germany’s economy. Danishproduce flowed smoothly into German. Dutch manufactured goods were supplied tothe Reich until the Netherlands was invaded by the Allies. The book discusseshow often politicians, civil servants, police and industrialists co-operated,even collaborated, with the Nazis in keeping the Nazi war machine operatingthrough the war. It outlines how the Holocaust was aided by ordinary citizens.

Yet Mazower does recognize there wasresistance by average people when he stated:

“Yet it will not do to reducethe resistance to a question of military accounting. For most of those involvedit was a question of pride, and a demonstration that the rule by force had notsucceeded in crushing the spirit of freedom.”

Hundredsof thousands of Europeans were killed or deported to concentration camps forparticipating in different forms of resistance to Nazi rule.

The Danish farm family and the Dutchlady acted against two of the worst Nazi programs – the genocide of the Jewsand the slave labour deportations. They quietly defied the Nazis. Theirhumanity was not extinguished by occupation. They did what was right. Theirbravery is striking.

Since hearing their stories andreading Mazower’s book I wonder what I would have done during such anoccupation. I hope I would have been like the Danish family and the Dutch lady.After hearing the Dutch lady’s story at our local Rotary club I wrote a letter,signed by all the club members, expressing our thanks for her actions and ouradmiration for what one woman could do when faced with an occupying army.

Hitler’s Empire – How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower

2012-01-26T20:56:00.000-06:00

(3. – 635.) Hitler’s Empire – How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower– A comprehensive examination of Nazi actions behind the lines during and aftertheir conquest of Western Europe and far into Eastern Europe. From politicsthrough administration through industry through agriculture through movements,often forced, of people through distribution of food Mazower examines Nazirule.
He starts well prior to WW II. Therewas ethnic cleansing in both Germany and Poland after WW I with activepersecution on both sides of the border.

The Germans sought to increase thenumber of Germans in border areas while forcing out Poles. There was asystematic effort in the newly created Poland to push Germans out of theirproperties and marginalize and make life difficult for them. Hundreds ofthousands of Germans left Poland. Yet they did not swell the eastern Germanpopulation for hundreds of thousands of Germans also moved to western Germanyfrom eastern Germany.

            When the Nazis came to power inPoland and vast areas of Eastern Europe through conquest a far more ruthlessand comprehensive plan was enacted in the East with regard to the Slavs.
            It did not matter what the economicconsequences were for Germany. For Nazi leadership the War in the East was aracial war. Jews were to be eliminated. Almost 2 million Russian prisoners ofwar were allowed to die of starvation or disease. The remaining Slavs wereeffectively to become German slaves. It was a brutal and horrific approach.
            Once in power there were efforts toGermanize populations. As part of the process the Reich brought back 800,000ethnic Germans from German speaking areas outside Germany.
            The process of Germanization beganin the Czech Republic. It did not happen as quickly as the Nazis anticipated.Even the amphibians (individuals with Czech and German parents) were slow tochoose to become German.
            In Poland there was a far morecoercive program to Germanize the area. Over 600,000 farms were seized fromPolish farmers in the Warthegau, one of the areas of western Poland annexed byGermany, and some 500,000 ethnic Germans settled in the area.
            Still there were far too few clearlyGerman people to populate the areas taken in the East. Hundreds of thousands ofpartially German Poles were identified as eligible to be re-Germanized to moveforward in the goal of Germanization. Only when attempts at colonizationfurther east descended into chaos and fierce resistance did efforts toGermanize lands cease during the war.
            It was chilling to read the plans toGermanize huge areas in Eastern Europe when the war was over. It was clear tothose residing under German occupation that the Holocaust against the Jewsmight very well be extended to them.
            Germany was not alone in ethniccleansing during WW II. Its Allies eagerly expelled hundreds of thousands ofpeople both from their existing territory and acquired lands. In support ofMagyarization thousands of Serbs and Romanians were forced from Hungary. Pursuingthe dream of Greater Bulgaria saw Bulgaria send thousands of Greeks out ofnorthern Greece. Romania pushed some Ukrainians from the southern Ukraine andmade a major effort to rid Romania of gypsies.
            In their racial war the genocide ofthe Jews was the primary goal of the Nazis. In killing Jews they most successfulin the East. In Poland and the U.S.S.R. they killed the vast majority of Jews. FromWestern Europe they sent many thousands of Jews east but were somewhat restrictedby governments making the issue of Jewish deportation a matter of nationalsovereignty. The Reich’s Allies (Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) alsolimited their co-operation.
            Overall, Nazi governance wasdysfunctional. Within the Reich there were Hitler’s personally appointedGauleiters, a new form of aristocracy. They were his local equivalent followinghis personal approach to governance. Trying to carry out their regulargovernment functions were the existing civil servants. Competing with bothcivil administrations was the ever expanding SS. There were no cabinet meetingsof German ministers after 1938.
            In Western Europe the Nazis madehuge demands on the occupied lands for manufactured goods and food. Only Denmark, which had not resisted Germaninvasion, was treated differently. At the same time Goring was thwarted inseizing control of Western European companies by the German industrialestablishment working with their counterparts in Belgium, the Netherlands andFrance.
            The Nazis made sure Germans were fedbetter than any other Europeans. In the West rations were tolerable. In theEast most were on the edge of starvation.
            The Rule of Law creates stability.Hitler despised laws and lawyers. A revolutionary at heart he considered thelaw to whatever he decreed.
            Before reading the book I had notunderstood the depths of German exploitation, cruelty and murderous actions inthe lands east of Germany after conquest. I better see the reasons for the furyof the Russian onslaught on Germany.

While the Nazis recruited thousandsof young men in Western Europe eager to fight the Bolsheviks the racialpolicies of the party prevented it from gaining the hundreds of thousands ofsoldiers it could have gained from Poland, Belorussia, the Ukraine and theBaltic states. Only when defeat was looming did they bring Slavs into theirarmies.

They could have had importantadditional allies join the war such as Spain and the Muslims of the Middle Eastbut Hitler would not commit to sharing conquered lands with them.

Opposition to the Germans was mutedexcept in the East where Nazi oppression left the Poles and Russians withlittle to lose by armed resistance. In Western Europe it took the brutal drivesfor workers being sent to the Reich to provoke real resistance. Even thenattacks were limited.

The Nazis could have relieved theirshortage of workers without dragooning foreign workers by bringing largenumbers into the industrial work force as occurred in England, Canada and theU.S. While not discussed by Mazower, ideological considerations favouredkeeping women in the home. Once again the Nazis rigid emphasis on itsprinciples meant chronic worker shortages persisted and opposition grewquickly.

In dealing with opposition the Naziadoption of vicious reprisals, killing large numbers of civilians, in responseto attacks maintained a sullen peace in Western Europe. There were no “heartsand minds” campaigns by the Nazis. Violent responses to resistance actionsgradually produced stronger resistance groups.

Mazower sets out the consequencesfor Germany losing the war. As the Allies smashed into Germany there were 4.8million German deaths in the last 9 months of the war against 2.8 German deadin the first 4 ½ years of WW II.

When the war ended the nations ofEastern Europe, led by the Soviet Union, conducted the largest ethnic cleansingin European history forcing millions of Germans west out of their countries.These Slavic nations, having seen how the Nazis exploited the presence ofethnic German minorities and how these Germans acted during the war, weredetermined to ensure there would never be future ethnic German enclaves intheir countries.

Mazower’sfar reaching look at Nazi rule in Europe emphasized to me, probably more thanany other book, how Hitler’s concepts of German national superiority and the racialsuperiority of Western Europeans and hatred of the Jews governed, not merelyguided, his empire. As Ian Keegan demonstrated in his biography of Hitler alldecisions flowed from Hitler. Even when his principles were contrary to thebest interests of Germany economically or militarily or politically Hitlernever wavered. Had the Reich won WW II Europe would have been a grim continentwith all decisions made for the benefit of Germany. Europe would have been usedto serve Germany.

Itis an excellent work of history. Mazower skillfully explains what happened inEurope behind the front lines. (Jan. 15/12)

(On Saturday Iwill discuss the actions of two European families I have met with regard to theissue of resistance to Nazi occupation.)

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

2012-01-24T20:44:00.002-06:00

19. - 482.) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – The first 250 pages about life for the poor in Bombay and rural India was interesting. Gradually Mistry cast a spell for the characters were so credible that you became an invisible observer of their lives. The lives of the untouchable rural tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash, the urban tailor, Dina, and the hill student, Macek, intertwine as they struggle to simply stay alive in Bombay. I was shocked to learn how badly the untouchables and poor of India were treated in the mid-1970’s. I thought it might have been a modern Kim (review number 194) but there is none of Kim’s romantic roaming. The perseverance Mistry’s characters show against overwhelming odds is inspiring and humbling. I found myself reading faster and faster as I had to know what happened next in their lives. Mistry neither exaggerates nor makes overt social commentary. His descriptions are adequate but neither flamboyant nor overdone. His narrative was so powerful at times I almost cried. He lets the story lead us to reflect on the cruelty of castes and the absolute corruption through the nation. Ajit had always told me India was very corrupt. I had always assumed he might have overstated the situation. I now believe he understated. How lucky I am to be born in Canada. I can understand the praise showered on the novel. It is one of the few novels that I will think about for a long time. With 807 pages I think the process of dividing into two volumes from a generation ago was a good idea. The movie Australia was a grand movie saga. A Fine Balance is a grand tale on paper. (May 25/09)

The Will of the Tribe by Arthur Upfield (1962)

2012-01-22T16:11:00.000-06:00

2. – 634.) The Will of the Tribe by Arthur Upfield (1962) – Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte is in the remote reaches of northwest Australia in the vicinity of the Kimberley Mountains. He has been called to investigate the death of an unidentified white man found in the centre of Lucifer’s Couch, a crater formed from a meteorite crashing into the earth. (In real life it is the Wolf Creek Meteorite Crater. An aerial photo of the crater and a photo of the wall of the crater are included in this post.)

Unlike other Bony investigations the authorities are less interested in finding the killer than in determining how this man reached the area unnoticed. Thus the book is a most unusual twist on the locked room mystery. Here the body is found in the middle of a room consisting of thousands of square miles of territory. How did he get there? He had to travel hundreds of miles to reach the crater. A horse or a vehicle would have drawn attention. A plane would have had to fly from an airport. It is impossible to see a white man travelling the vast spaces on foot without ample supplies.

Bony settles in at the Deep Creek cattle station with Kurt and Rose Brentner and their two daughters, Hilda and Rosie. Among those working at the station are Tessa and Captain, members of the local aborigine tribe who have been educated and given responsible positions at the station.

The book, one of the last Bony books, is the most challenging of the Bony mysteries I have read because of its treatment of the aborigine characters.

The white characters definitely consider themselves superior. While no longer acceptable by the early 1960’s, the book makes clear it was not long before that time that it was acceptable for a white man to thrash an aborigine he considered disobedient.

The attitudes, particularly of the white people, felt accurate to me. I can well remember as a child in Canada 50 years ago the way Indian people were generally looked down upon by white society.

The aborigines of the area are divided into three groups. The wild blacks are some distance away in the desert. The station blacks are dependent on the station while living in their own camp. The educated aborigines, Tessa and the Captain, live at the station.

It is an era of transition. The lifestyle of the wild blacks is gradually being eroded. Official Australia would like to see the aborigines assimilated into the white population. The same approach was in place in Canada at that time. For decades it was our Federal Government’s policy to assimilate the Indian peoples of Canada with white Canadians.

Yet the book is far subtler than the surface portrayal of white discrimination and condescension. Bony, half white and half aborigine, has strong opinions on such matters as inter-racial marriage, aborigine connections with tribe and education of aborigines. How should the aborigines adjust to the vast white population that has taken over their continent? Should they assimilate? Should they seek to remain distinct? I found myself thinking more about the questions of culture and race than the mystery.

While I became involved in the societal issues raised the book is focused on solving a “locked room” mystery. For the vast open spaces needed to create the “locked room” it could only have been set in Australia or Canada or Russia or Antarctica.

The book is tied to the countryside and the people of Australia. Bony makes good use of his tracking skill and ability to question white and aborigine witnesses.

It is a good mystery which left me thinking not only about the treatment of indigenous people 50 years ago but how the same issues are being addressed today. (Jan. 5/12)

Thoughts on Questions and Answers with David Rotenberg

2012-01-20T20:01:00.000-06:00

Making the hero a Canadian rather than an American when part of the story is set in the United States is so uncommon I do not think I have read another mystery with a comparable hero. Had he not already had a successful series I expect David would have been pushed hard to make Decker an American.

Decker displays a trait common to Canadians. He is knowledgeable about America. Canadians normally do not find the converse true. To take a simple example where almost all Canadians can identify the American President, there is a much smaller percentage of Americans able to name Canada’s Prime Minister.

I agree with David’s statement that Canadians are outsiders to the United States. I go further to state that we could hardly be a sovereign land if we were not outsiders to America.

****

On Decker being a thriller hero substituting brain power for brawn and weapons I admire David’s decision. In his latest book, Junkyard Dogs, Craig Johnson has his hero, Sheriff Walt Longmire, actually physically challenged by the accumulation of his injuries. It was uncommon enough fictional recognition of the consequences of repeated injuries for me to take note.

It is hard for me to recall another thriller hero who “understands the diminishing returns of violence”. It is tiring to read of fictional heroes being battered about and then swiftly rising again to smite the bad guy. At times I think there is evolving a new rule for thrillers that it cannot be a thriller without a massive body count.

****

At the core of what makes the book interesting is the presence of the synasthetes. It is intriguing to read of individuals with exceptional, almost unworldly talents. Daniel Tammet is an amazing individual with special gifts in mathematics and languages. Seeing numbers in colours, shapes and sizes is beyond my comprehension. Learning conversational Icelandic in a week is even more amazing. His website is optimnen.com.uk.

The reference to the inspiration for the movie, Rainman, was to Ken Peek. His photographic memory allowed him to recall the contents of at least 12,000 books! Since he started memorizing just before he was 2 years old he was averaging 217 books a year for the remaining 56 years of his life. How many bloggers can even remember all the books they read a year ago? Decker is more socially adept than most synasthetes.

****

For non-Canadian readers CSIS is the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Certainly they could use a truth teller as much as America’s NSA.

****

On David’s simple answer that his hero has a family because he is a father and he has a son is logical. I am sure most thriller writers are parents yet their heroes infrequently have families.

As evident by recent posts I have long been interested in the issue of sleuths and families especially the increase in characters with families. David puts the reasoning in favour of families at its most direct. Everyone has a family.

****

I enjoy sagas. Stieg Larsson’s trilogy was great partly because of the ongoing story lines through the three books. While not expressed to be a set Louise Penny’s most recent books in the Inspector Gamache series are close to being a saga with the ongoing plots.

Questions and Answers with David Rotenberg

2012-01-18T18:03:00.000-06:00

On Monday I posted my review of The Placebo Effect by David Roteberg. Today I join the blogger tour for the book. I thank David for his frank and interesting answers. I invite readers to check out further stops on the blogger tour through the links at Simon & Schuster. My Questions and Answers with David are:

1.) Why a Canadian action hero in a book that bounces between Canada and the United States? My reading experience would generally have the hero an American if the series was even partially placed in the United States.

Having the lead character as a Canadian allows a perspective on America that often Americans don’t have. I lived in the United States for many years. My wife is a Puerto Rican American. Both of my kids are dual citizens. One lives in the States; the other has the knee jerk hatred of America that is pretty common here.

Our relationship with the elephant down there is pretty darned important for us to understand past the knee jerk stuff. Hence, start in Toronto and work south. I was born and raised in Toronto, although I left for 15 years I’ve been back for 22, and this is the first I’ve been able to write about Toronto. Although, to be honest, it’s more about the Junction than Toronto.

Your insight is true, and there are times that publishers want to push for American Heroes. Decker’s an outsider, we as Canadians are outsiders to the world’s most powerful entity, crumbling as it may be.

2.) I have been reading a number of new thriller series this year including Michael Harvey’s Third Rail and Noah Boyd’s The Bricklayer. Both feature strong powerful physically aggressive characters with Boyd’s sleuth, Steve Vail, also being a thoughtful analytical hero. Decker Roberts lacks both brawn and skill with weapons. Why was Decker created with his mind his primary resource?

Partially because he’s an outsider. Partially because I’ve got pretty sick of cops and sleuths altogether. How many times can a guy be hit on the back of the head and get back up on his feet and continue? Talk to Mr. Crosby about hits to the head.

Decker in fact doesn’t like police officers of NSA people. He’s a loner who’s used his head to keep ahead of the inherent violence all around him. He’s not a weakling or a coward; he just sees and understands the diminishing returns of violence.

Yeah, we created drone planes to attack terrorist sites-and lots of folks are cheering this-but-surely the bad guys will eventually get hold of that access to violence. Then where will anyone be safe?

3.) Where does your interest in synaesthetes come from?

I’ve always written about people with special abilities, the five Zhong Fong novels are about a man with exceptional talent in a world where special talents are not honored. When I directed the first Canadian play in the People’s Republic of China the first thing the Artistic Director of that theatre said to me was, “You must remember that you can always be replaced”-a fine hello, how was your flight!

Synesthesia simply gives and access to the ‘other.’ There is a lot of material on synesthesia; some of the most interesting is actually the documentary on Mr. Tammet and his extraordinary abilities. There is also a gentleman called the human camera, you can find YouTube stuff on both, and BBC documentaries. As well Mr. Tammet has an interesting book.

Rainman was based loosely on the man who Mr. Tammet thought of as his spiritual father-he passed away a few years back.

4.) In doing a little research on synaesthetes I found only references to individuals who have such traits as seeing colors when they view letters. Is there a source on the net for particulars of synaesthetes such as Decker with the gift of divining the truth?

See above

5.) Is there a reason why the Canadian government, especially CSIS, was not seeking out Decker to enhance our country’s security by using his talents to assess truth telling?

I’ve tinkered with this, but there are only so many enemies for Decker. The collusion of CSIS with the NSA is hinted as in the chapter at Pearson airport. Thanks, this might be a worthwhile place for me to put some thought.

6.) It is rare for a thriller hero to have children let alone a child, Seth, with a difficult relationship with the hero. What took you to giving Decker an adult child in a real relationship with his father?

I’m a father, I have a son.

7.) The book had a significant number of unresolved issues such as the future of Seth. The book is described as the first in the Junction Chronicles. Is the book intended to be read as part of a set of books with individual book plots set within an overall plot fully unfolding over a series of books in the same way Stieg Larsson created the Millennium Trilogy?

Yes

If so, why did you write a multi-book plot?

The baseball season is a multi-plot book. Tolstoy is a multi-plot book. All the major HBO series are multi-plot books. Just seemed the right time to write something that people would look forward to year after year.

(My review of The Placebo Effect was posted Monday. On Friday I will post thoughts on Questions and Answers with David.)

The Placebo Effect by David Rotenberg

2012-01-16T18:05:00.004-06:00

62.– 623.) The Placebo Effect by DavidRotenberg – Decker Roberts is asynaesthete. His innate gift is the ability to tell if someone is telling thetruth. When he hears a statement he can close his eyes and the patterns hesees tell him if the statement is true. It is a gift sought after in thebusiness world and he is well paid to see and listen to job applicants. Histalent works best when he can see the speaker.

Deckeris a resident of the Junction area of west Central Toronto. When notdetermining the truth he is a film / theatre director and acting teacher. Helives with considerable personal sorrow. His wife has died of ALS. He isestranged from his 19 year old son, Seth.

Anothersynasethete, Michael Shedloski, has a gift for balancing items creating uniquesculptures from ordinary items. His gift extends to determining the ratios thatprovide balance in many other circumstances.

Cincinnatipharmaceutical manufacturer, Henry-Clay Yolles, is struggling with the cost ofproduction of a new anti-depressant, Calatrex. He hires Shedloski to work out anew ratio between placebo and active drug. When Shedloski provides an increasedratio that makes the drug feasible he is dumped by Yolles.

Yollesis interested in calling on Decker’s truth telling talent. A resentfulShedloski publicly protests his dismissal and decides to warn Decker thatYolles will take advantage of him.

InWashington D.C., the National Security Agency (NSA), is very interested inDecker as a means of evaluating information from those who threaten America.Yslan (pronounced “island” without the “d”) Hicks, studying synasethetes, iscarefully observing Decker. The NSA becomes ever more involved as it wants toprotect a potential asset.

Narrowlyescaping death when his house burns down Decker initially does not even realizeit was attempted murder. After realizing someone is trying to kill him Deckersearches for his attacker. The pace accelerates as Decker is both pursued andpursuer. The book is at its best following Decker in his quest. There is astartling twist with regard to his son, Seth.

Thereare touches of the supernatural throughout the book. I am not found of thesupernatural in thrillers or mysteries but it t never becomes dominant in thebook.

Deckeris a unique hero. I had never heard of synaesthetes before reading the book.Ordinary synaesthetes have a crossing of senses such as seeing letters of thealphabet in colours.

Thebook is unusual in the plot shifting back and forth between cities in theUnited States and Toronto. Few mysteries and thrillers move between thecountries.

Itis the first book in The Junction Chronicles. There are lots of unexploredthreads to the lives of the primary characters. I enjoyed the book. I did findit disjointed at times. It is a thrillerseeking to meet the challenge of balancing action in the mind and physicalaction. I have high hopes for the second book in the series.
        The Placebo Effect is my 7th book of 13 to be read in the 5th Canadian Book Challenge. I have now reached the Lac Mistassini level.
        (The Placebo Effect is being published on February 7, 2012. I am following this review on Wednesday with Questions and Answers with David as part of the Simon & Schuster blogger tour for the book. I will conclude the trio of posts on Friday with my thoughts on David's answers.)

Sledge Patrol by David Howarth

2012-01-15T00:01:00.002-06:00

21. - 484.) Sledge Patrol by David Howarth – WhenGermany took possession of Denmark in WW II to “protect” the country from theAllies there was no declaration of war. Greenland’s governor, Eske Brun,believing it was in Greenland’s best interests not to submit to Germanyeffectively made Greenland independent. The north east coast of Greenland isone of the most isolated areas of the world. With weather reports are useful forshipping Brun wanted to know if Germany was establishing a weather station. Using a handful of hunters (more trappers) based in Eskimoness he sent out sledge (dogsled) patrols up and down the coast. To provide military status incase of capture he formed the Greenland Army which had 9 members. In the latesummer of 1942 Germany did send a ship to set up a weather station on thecoast. Unintentionally they set up their station on an island just over 60miles from Eskimoness. When they were discovered in early 1943 the Germanssuccessfully attacked Eskimoness and its 3 defenders. In an epic journey the Greenland commander,Ib Poulsen, walked 230 miles in winter weather in 11 days wearing improvised shoes made from sacking.(He was able to move from hunting hut to hunting hut as he made his way south.)As the Germans and Danes sledge up and down the coast a Dane is killed. What isremarkable is the regret each side felt in war coming to the Arctic. Howarthportrays Greenland as a starkly beautiful land and the hunting life in the Arcticto be a wonderful way to live. The climate forces harmony on its inhabitants. Waris a strange and foolish concept and an unwanted intrusion. The Eskimos areterrified as they have no experience of war. They cannot understand it. TheGerman commander, Ritter, is a reluctant warrior as he has lived the huntinglife in Spitzbergen. In one of the most isolated areas on earth WW II hadits most intimate conflict between the Greenland Army and 19 Germans. It is anepic story of survival in a weather hostile land. (June 3/09) (Most interesting of 2009)

Burnt Out by Nelson Brunanski

2012-01-12T20:45:00.002-06:00

Burnt Out by Nelson Brunanski – The third Bart Bartkowski mystery is the best in the series of small town Saskatchewan mysteries.

After a successful spring season and a short break Bart is getting ready to return to his fly-in fishing lodge to get it cleaned up. Back home Crooked Lake (the town of Wakaw in real life) is getting ready to celebrate its 100^th anniversary.

Dominating the Saskatchewan summer is a heat wave that has left the whole province tinder dry. Up north forest fires are being ignited after every thunderstorm.

After flying his float plane up to the lodge Bart and trusted employee, Charlie McKenzie, make a good start on the cleanup. That night Bart suddenly awakes to find the camp in flames. While a water bomber contains the fire the lodge is totally destroyed. While examining the devastation Bart stumbles over a charred body.

RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) investigators fly in to deal with the murder and what was clearly arson. Close attention is paid to Bart.

The consequences of the fire are multiplied for there was no fire insurance. Bart, to save high premium costs, had discontinued insurance coverage a year ago. His wife, Rosie, is crushed as she contemplates them looking at starting over again.

Trying to figure out what to do with the destroyed camp Bart is approached by a mining company, Uranium Inc., which wants to buy out Bart’s lease.

Adding spice to the mystery is the return of Janine Kincaid to Crooked Lake. A few years younger than Bart, she had gone unnoticed by him while in high school. Now a stunning single woman she makes very clear her interest in Bart.

Crooked Lake celebrates the centenary in classic small town fashion. Rosie contributes her design skills to the float being put in the parade by the Junction Stop, a local gas station.

Within the book there are legal proceedings that grate upon me as a lawyer. They do not take place in the right court, they proceed in a manner different from our Criminal Code and they have a decision that would not occur in Canada. I wish authors set out legal procedures accurately. The drama of the story does not have to be compromised by accuracy. When errors are made it makes wonder about the other research done by the author.

I did appreciate the skilled legal assistance needed was provided by a Saskatchewan lawyer residing outside Saskatoon or Regina.

The book has a deft little twist. Several names of people or places in the book are plays on real life names. You would have to be familiar with Wakaw to pick out these names.

In previous reviews of Crooked Lake and Frost Bite I had expressed admiration for the faithful picture of rural Saskatchewan but regretted the quality of the mystery. This time the mystery matches the portrayal of Saskatchewan. I was not fond of the ending but the series has improved dramatically. As always the cover is striking and will jump out in a bookstore. I look forward to the 4^th in the series. My 2012 reading is off to a fine start.
The book is the 6^th book I have read in the 5^th Annual Canadian Book Challenge hosted at the Book Mine Set blog. I have reached the Williston Lake level. My goal is to read 13 books to reach the highest level of the Challenge. (Jan. 1/12)

Best Mystery Books of 2011 from Reviewers and Bloggers Around the World

2012-01-10T22:47:00.000-06:00

Kerrie Smith at her superb blog, Mysteries in Paradise, undertook to gather together lists of favourite mysteries of 2011 from around the world. She advises she had 35 contributors with 364 different books listed. (The books did not have to be first published in 2011.)

There were 7 books that were mentioned 5 or more times:

1.) Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (7)

2.) The Keeper of Lost Causes (also published as Mercy) (7)

3.) The End of Everything by Megan Abbott (6)

4.) A Trick of the Light by Louis Penny (5)

5.) Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson (5)

6.) Field Gray by Philip Kerr (5)

7.) The End of Wasp Season by Denise Mina (5)

Of the top 7 I have read and reviewed The Keeper of Lost Causes and A Trick of the Light. In my 2011 Bill’s Best of Fiction I included The Keeper of Lost Causes which had tied for 3^rd.

Of the 13 titles mentioned on 3-4 lists I had read and reviewed The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly.

There were 26 books on 2 lists. From that group my reading and reviews included:

1.) Bury Your Dead and The Brutal Telling. Both books are by Louise Penny;

2.) The Sherlockian by Graham Moore; and,

3.) The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell.

With Bury Your Dead and The Sherlockian both on my Bill’s Best of Fiction I had 4 of the top 46 on my list. (I did manage not to look at any other lists until I had picked my favourites.)

What I noticed most about the compilation of lists by Kerrie was that Louise Penny is the only Canadian author and the only author to have 3 different books mentioned on 2 or more lists.

It was a remarkable year for Louise. Inspector Gamache has become the best known Canadian sleuth and has achieved international stardom.

I chose Bury Your Dead as my favourite fiction of 2011. It has probably won more crime fiction awards than any other Canadian mystery. Published in 2010 most of the awards came that year. The awards include:

1.) The 2011 Nero Award;
2.) The Macavity Award for Best Crime Novel in the US;
3.) The Anthony Award for Best Crime Novel in the

;
4.) The Agatha for Best Novel at this year's Malice Domestic;

5.) The Arthur Ellis for Best Crime Novel in

Canada

;
6.) The Dilys Award in the

, as the book the mystery bookstores most liked to sell in 2010;
7.) American Library Association has named BURY YOUR DEAD the Best Mystery of 2010.
8.) AudioFile named BURY YOUR DEAD as the Best Mystery of 2010.
9.) The Canadian Booksellers Association named it their top hand sell of the year.

The Litigators by John Grisham

2012-01-08T17:45:00.001-06:00

(71. – 632.) The Litigators by John Grisham – Finley and Figg is a two man law firm eking out a slender existence on the streets of southwest Chicago. Harvard graduate, David Zinc, is toiling day and night on bonds for the 600 plus firm of Rogan Rothberg.

Oscar Finley and Wally Figg pretentiously call themselves a boutique firm. They are actually street lawyers ready to take on the legal needs of all who enter the office. The daily mix of their practice is my life as a lawyer. I equally work on the problems of people not corporations or governments. Fortunately, I am not literally chasing ambulances as Finley and Figg anxiously listen for ambulance sirens nearing their office.

Zinc is exhausted by the hours demanded by his firm. Almost all his waking hours are consumed reviewing documents from international bond transactions. He is too tired to conceive a child with his wife. About to enter the office one morning about 7:30, his usual arrival time, he snaps and successfully dives for the descending elevator. After a long day of drinking he ends up at the office of Finley and Figg and asks for a job. The bemused partners decide to give Zinc a chance, principally because he is willing to work for little money.

Figg, perpetually seeking a case to take them to the big time, is a master of cheap advertising. He is known for being the first lawyer in Chicago to advertise on bingo cards.

Figg manages to snag a case concerning a cholesterol drug, Krayoxx, manufactured by Varrick Labs, a pharmaceutical well sued for problems with other drugs. Reading of court actions being commenced in Florida with regard to Krayoxx, Figg conducts a desperate search around Chicago for other clients with potential claims over Krayoxx.

Having assembled several clients Figg is given the opportunity to join with nationally known mass tort lawyers to go after Varrick. Figg is in the big time. He is totally unready for this level of litigation.

I can remember what it was like 20 years ago when my small firm joined national litigation over Canadians infected with HIV and Hepatitis C through our blood system. Unlike Figg we appropriately managed our participation in billion dollar litigation.

Grisham’s distaste for the mass tort bar is once again evident in the book. I understand his dislike of some of their tactics but I believe his disdain is over-stated. There is no way individual plaintiffs can seek redress for wrongs done by drug companies and governments. Only through class actions of hundreds, if not thousands, of plaintiffs with the lawyers taking their fees on a contingency basis is there the prospect of proper compensation.

Zinc follows a wild ride through the process of a major claim against a pharmaceutical. Finley & Figg desperately want a settlement that will provide them some financial security for the first time in their careers.

To the amazement of his former colleagues and the consternation of his parents and in-laws Zinc loves working with people. He finds it, as I do, interesting dealing with all the varied legal problems encountered by people.

As the action proceeds in Chicago Varrick follows an unconventional defensive strategy. It allows the case to proceed on a Federal Court judge’s “rocket docket” towards trial. They will not contest every application, do not make discovery of every document difficult, do not launch every possible motion to delay the process. Having been involved in several national Canadian class actions I have never seen a defendant adopt the same strategy. One reason is that the Canadian actions have all involved claimants in numerous provinces joined in one action and the defendants cannot pick the weakest case to defend in court.

Finley & Figg are ill-prepared novices in a high stakes world. When the court actions involve money of 9 or even 10 digits you need to be well resourced and well prepared.

Once again Grisham creates interesting lawyers who are credible lawyers and places them in a contemporary legal case. No author has better litigators. (Dec. 29/11)

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

2012-01-06T20:40:00.001-06:00

Tonight I am putting up a post of a review written in 2008 when I first encountered Maisie Dobbs. It was my favourite work of fiction that year.

****

22. - 432.) Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear – A wonderful new character. Last year it was Walt Longmire. This year it is Maisie Dobbs. A jacket blurb likened Winspear to Alexander McCall-Smith’s books. It is an apt comparison. At its core the book is a mystery. It is not a great mystery. It is a great book. Maisie is far more than a detective as she seeks to restore the well being of her clients. From modest origins she reaches university at the start of WW I with the aid of Lady Rowan and Lord Julian. Her mentor, Maurice Blanche, is a wonderful wise man with abundant aphorisms. Maisie’s intelligence and humanity are striking. Her time as a nurse near the trenches and relationship with war surgeon, Dr. Simon Lynch, is a tender look at a couple in the midst of an overwhelming war. The story unfolds in 1929 as Maisie goes out on her own. The term detective agency is far too narrow a description of her services. Her adoption of a person’s posture to determine what they are feeling is unique. I longed for her to meet and ease the tormented Ian Rutledge of Charles Todd. I loved the New York Times comment “be prepared to be astonished”. Excellent. Hardcover or paperback by choice. (May 31/08) (Best fiction of 2008.)

Bill's Best of 2011

2012-01-04T20:30:00.001-06:00

The choices reflect the year when the books wereread by me. They are not always the year the book was published.

FICTION –

1.) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (569.) – The best in the Inspector Gamache series. Thehaunting story was a multiple award winner.

2.) Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg (562.) – A great debut legal mystery set inToronto.

3.)The Keeper of Lost Causes by JussiAdler-Olsen (620.) – A wonderful start to the series of Danish detective, Carl Mørck.

3.)The Sherlockian by Graham Moore(572.) – The book moves between Arthur Conan Doyle and a current Sherlockian

NON- FICTION

1.)The Cinderella Armyby Terry Copp (596.) – The Canadian Army in WW II is given gritty difficult tasks afterNormandy.

2.)Simon Wiesenthal by Tom Segev (563.) –A comprehensive biography of the renown Nazi hunter

3.)He Left Them Laughing when He Said Good-bye by Grant MacEwan (589.) – An intriguing look at the early Calgarylawyer, Paddy Nolan

MOSTINTERESTING

1.)Prairie Hardball by Alison Gordon (588.)– My favourite Saskatchewan mystery featuring Saskatchewan women who played inthe All American Girls Professional Baseball League and the SaskatchewanBaseball Hall of Fame.

2.)Cake in the Hat Box by Arthur Upfield(574.) – I have come to enjoy the mysteries of Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte inrural Australia from the 1930’s through the 1960’s. This is the first book I read in the series. Over the year I read two more Bony mysteries.

3.)The Judas Window by John Dickson Carrwriting as Dickson Carter (629.) – A superb locked room mystery with aprecisely logical solution.

3.)The Mystery of the Moonlight Murderby Roderick Benns (615.) – Future Canadian Prime Minister, John G. Diefenbaker,at 12 years of age solving a rural Saskatchewan mystery in 1908. I would haveloved to have had this book when I was 12 years old.

The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell

2012-01-02T14:17:00.002-06:00

70. – 631.) The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell – The last Kurt Wallander mystery is filled with surprises starting with Wallander’s family.

His daughter, Linda, finds a partner, Hans von Enke, gets pregnant and has a child. I am not sure who is more surprised – Wallander or myself the reader. To think of the reserved, often moody Wallander, as a grandfather challenges me. He is a caring grandfather. A granddaughter adds a dimension to his life he had not expected though he is unable to share the joy he feels with his colleagues.

At the same time he finally takes action on his long held yearning for a place of his own in the countryside and buys a home a short distance from Ystad.

Having reached 60 years of age Wallander is reflective, even brooding, about his life and uncomfortable about his future. Since I am 59 I can relate to Wallander thinking about the long past and shorter future. He has little optimism about his senior years. He dwells on the negatives of growing old even considering himself old at 60. He ages on the pages.

In 2008 Wallander reluctantly travels to Stockholm for the 75^th birthday party of Håkan von Ende, the father of Hans, who is a retired Swedish naval officer. During the formal event Håkan draws Wallander into a windowless room for a private conversation.

Håkan, who had been a submarine commander, wants to talk about his frustrations over events twenty-eight years earlier in 1980 with regard to the discovery of a foreign submarine in Swedish waters. The navy has long suspected Russian submarines of violating Swedish waters and had a sub cornered when suddenly an order directs the navy to take no action. Despite extensive research Håkan has never been able to determine what happened. Wallander cannot determine why Håkan reveals his concerns to him. Wallander leaves the party with little more understanding than Håkan is a troubled man.

When Håkan disappears a few months later Wallander is both personally drawn to investigate and pushed by Linda to find out what has happened to Håkan.

Unlike his other mysteries Wallander does not investigate the disappearance as part of a police team. While liaising with Ytterberg, the officer in charge, it is essentially a solo quest by Wallander.

Information comes slowly and is found with difficulty. Wallander, a most logical man, finds it hard that the information is not fitting together. Linda occasionally provides insight and it is clear they would be an interesting mystery duo. They have a loving, if sometimes prickly, relationship.

During the book individuals and events from earlier in Wallander’s life become part of the story. There is a drawing together of his life. Wallander is almost overwhelmed by his personal issues.

Yet the book does not come together as well as other Wallander mysteries. There is evidence that is not followed to a conclusion and evidence for which there is no resolution. As the book reached its conclusion the ending did not feel right and was not convincing.

Where Before the Frost was a great book which was one of my Best of 2009 The Troubled Man left me discouraged as the ending of the series. It clearly demonstrated Mankell wanted to be done with Wallander. I wish Before the Frost had been the last Wallander mystery or Mankell changes his mind and writes a better finish to the series. Mankell could have had Wallander solving more mysteries while establishing a relationship with his grandchild. I acknowledge that I regret seeing the series of great sleuths come to a conclusion. I prefer to see them end with the death of their creator. (Dec. 27/11)

Saskatchewan Mystery Authors Explain their Sleuths with Families

2011-12-30T22:32:00.001-06:00

This post concludes a series of posts discussing the role of families in mysteries. Almost all Saskatchewan mysteries have strong family involvement. My last post Saskatchewan Sleuths with Families sets out the varied families. I asked several Saskatchewan mystery authors why their sleuths had families. Anthony Bidulka, Nelson Brunanski and Gail Bowen graciously provided me with the following thoughts.

****

From Anthony Bidulka, author of the Russell Quant series:

Hi Bill,

This is an interesting topic. One I must admit I hadn't thought about before now. And maybe that is your answer right there. For certain writers - Saskatchewan writers? - family is such a major part of our lives, that to write about a main character who does not have family in his life, would be like writing about a Saskatchewan detective who doesn't own a winter coat (interesting idea though... but I digress.) It is second nature to us.

I wonder if the fact you've seen an upshot of the family centric mysteries post 1990 is related to the growth of mystery genres in that time, and the popularity of the shall we say, less than traditional mystery. Whereas the noir and procedural thrillers are still successful, there has come to be more room for the type of book I write, which I often refer to as 'traditional with a twist', which allows for a little less mystery, and a little more character development. With that, in Saskatchewan at least, and I'd guess elsewhere too, family involvement (entanglement) quickly comes to the forefront.

Thanks for the thought-provoking question, Bill. I'll be interested to see what your collection of sleuth-creators has to say.

To you, and all you hold dear, have a splendid Christmas season.

Best

Anthony

****

From Nelson Brunanski, author of the Bart Bartkowski series:

Hello Bill

Thanks for your interest in my Small-town Saskatchewan Mysteries.

My reasons for including family:

1) The family provides plenty of drama for sub-plots, to which average people can relate.

2) Families are involved in the mysteries by virtue of the protagonist's (amateur sleuth) involvement and therefore suffer the same perils.

3) My murder mysteries rely on character, customs and the social fabric as much as on the crime itself. Families naturally provide links to these subjects.

4) Families thrive in small-towns and provide a real context for story telling, evoking prairie values as well as idiosyncratic attitudes.

5) I draw on my experience growing up in small-town Saskatchewan where family ties are strong and everybody knows everybody else's business.

6) Characters without families (or characters who are new to the town) provide an opportunity to draw comparisons and bring unorthodox points of view to the stories.

I hope this helps,

All the best

Nelson

****

From Gail Bowen, author of the Joanne Kilbourn – Shreeve series:

Here you go, Bill. Happy 2012!

Gail Bowen – Blog entry on Saskatchewan crime fiction and the fact that our protagonists have and love their families and domestic circumstances.

The question Bill Selnes raises is a good one. Certainly the protagonists of crime fiction in

England

and the

U.S.

tend to be lone wolves, fighting the institutions that they believe corrupt others and themselves. Not surprisingly, the first institution these protagonists reject is family. These protagonists trust nothing and no one and that includes those to whom they are tied by blood and history.

A second reason why many crime writers separate protagonists from their domestic circumstances is pragmatic. For all of us family is the most complex and formative relationship in our lives. And for many crime writers this is a good and sufficient reason to cut their protagonist loose from the web of relationships that link protagonists to their families. Simply put, for writers whose fiction is plot driven, families are a distraction that keeps them from the real business of their work: developing plot.

But Bill Selnes’ question centres on the fact that when it comes to families and domestic circumstances, Saskatchewan writers of crime fiction tend to deviate from the ‘norm.’ I’m certain the reasons for this deviation are many and varied, but I can offer one that is true of my work.

This summer a reader approached me at the Farmers’ Market and told me that she and a friend had posed a general question about fiction writers than intrigued them. Here’s their question: “If you could live in the fictional world that you have created, would you?” My answer was that I do live in the fictional world that I’ve created. Mine is a world that centres on the people close to me. Nothing matters to me more than my husband, my children, my grandchildren, my friends and my community.

Alastair MacLeod says that ‘writers write about what worries them’. What worries me is anything that threatens the safety or the happiness of the people I love. I believe this is a universal fear, but certainly it is a fear that is shared by the people to whom I’m closest, and they are largely Saskatchewan people.

I’ve always believed that Joanne Kilbourn-Shreve is a very Saskatchewan protagonist. She is driven by her love for those around her but she is also driven by her awareness of the inequities of her world. Like J.S. Woodworth, Joanne believes that “What we desire for ourselves we wish for all. To this end, may we take our share in the world’s work and the world’s struggles.” In Kaleidoscope, the 13^th novel in the JK-S series, Joanne commits herself even more fully to the world’s work and the world’s struggles.

As someone who taught fiction (International,

U.K.

and American) I’ve been tantalized by the question of a writer who has ‘created’ a world. Would they wish to live there?”

****

Thank you to each of Anthony, Gail and Nelson. Each of you has given me more to think about with regard to sleuths with families.

Saskatchewan Sleuths with Families

2011-12-29T00:53:00.000-06:00

I have been discussing the role of families in mystery fiction. In this post I will discuss several of the Saskatchewan Sleuths with Families alphabetically by author. The earliest post in this series was Sleuths without Families setting out the basis of my opinion that most sleuths before the 1990’s did not have families. My second post was Sleuths with Families providing a survey of 41 mystery sleuths I have read since 2000.

The most recent Saskatchewan mystery is The Mystery of the Moonlight Murder by Roderick Benns. It is a young adult mystery set in rural Saskatchewan in 1908 featuring a young John George Diefenbaker, a future Canadian Prime Minister. John, 12 years old, lives with his parents, William and Mary, and his brother, Elmer, on the family homestead. Through the adventure Elmer is his constant companion.

Anthony Bidulka has an excellent series featuring Russell Quant, a gay Saskatoon private detective who is a former police officer. While Russell lives alone his mother, Kay, is an important part of his life often coming into the city from the farm to spend time with Russell. While Russell loves her hearty Ukrainian cooking he frets over the impact on his waistline. One of the funniest moments in my recent mystery reading history was Russell finding out that he and his mother have independently bought the same model of Mazda van known thereafter as the “Babamobile”. His troubled and hard living sister, Joanne, has also appeared in the series. Russell and his mother have a strong loving relationship.

The dean of Saskatchewan mystery writers is Gail Bowen. Her character, Joanne Kilbourn, has been in 12 different mysteries. When the series starts she is recently widowed and the mother of a teenage daughter, Mieka, just leaving for university and teenage sons, Peter and Angus. During the 20 years of the series the children have matured and grandchildren have arrived. A girl was adopted. There have been passionate love interests. Finally, Regina lawyer, Zack Shreeve, came into her life. They fall in love and marry. They have challenges but are committed to their marriage. It is striking that Zack is a paraplegic. I have not read another series where the sleuth marries a paraplegic who becomes an important character in the series. I have come to look forward to the next developments in the lives of Joanne’s families as much as the mysteries.

Nelson Brunanski grew up 85 km from Melfort. His series features Bart Bartkowski. He is happily married to Rosie and they have a pair of children, Stuart and Annie. They are an average family. In Frost Bite the family wrestles with the demands and stresses of a large rural Saskatchewan wedding. The description of Annie’s wedding and reception are vivid and accurate. The impact on the family of the diagnosis of Bart having prostate cancer reminded me of my own experience.

Anne M. Dooley has written one Saskatchewan mystery, A Plane Death. Her Saskatoon sleuth, Elie Meade, is also married with children.

Alison Gordon has written a series with Kate Henry as the sleuth. My last post is about Prairie Hardball, the mystery in which Kate returns to Saskatchewan for the induction of her mother, Helen, into the Saskatchewan Baseball of Fame because she had been one of the Saskatchewan women who travelled to the United States in the 1940’s and 1950’s to play professional baseball in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. Her husband, Andy, a Toronto police officer is making his first trip to Saskatchewan. Meeting her mother’s old teammates and friends gives Kate a new perspective on her mother.

Rob Harasmychuk wrote a unique mystery in The Joining of Dingo Radish. It is no surprise the title condenses the main character’s full name, Dingonaslav Marion Radashonovich. Dingo lives a small town in Saskatchewan with his brother, Pitch, who is mentally challenged and his sister, Marty, who is often involved in casual sexual relationships. With their parents dead Dingo is struggling to meet the needs of his family. It is infrequent to find a sleuth with a challenged sibling being a character.

I have thought often why almost all Saskatchewan mysteries have a strong family component. On Thursday, December 30 I shall provide comments I have obtained from Saskatchewan mystery writers.

Prairie Hardball by Alison Gordon

2011-12-26T15:22:00.004-06:00

27.– 588.) Prairie Hardball by AlisonGordon – I re-read my favourite Saskatchewan mystery as I was not writingreviews when I read it the first time. Ilove the book because it is set in rural Saskatchewan, has a baseball theme,focuses on the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame of which I am SecondVice-President and features the induction banquet for the Saskatchewan womenwho played in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League which Iattended in the mid-1990’s. Over half of the 50 plus Canadian women whoplayed in the league were from Saskatchewan. I examined every character in thebook carefully but none resemble me.

In the book, Kate Henry hasreturned to Saskatchewan to accompany her parents to Battleford where hermother, Helen Henry, will be one of the inductees. She had played severalseasons for the Racine Belles. Joining Kate is her partner, Andy Munro, aToronto police inspector on his first trip to Saskatchewan.

Gordon’s description of Kate’shometown, Indian Head, is a perfect portrayal of small town Saskatchewan. Shehas been a skilful observer of us.

At the banquet Virna Wilton createsa grand entrance by wearing her old uniform over 40 years after she last playedbaseball. (I can vividly recall the actual lady who wore her uniform to theinduction banquet. She looked great.)

The banquet was Saskatchewancharming. It is hard for me to distinguish real life memories from Gordon’sdescription. It was a nice evening honouring a group of women who had neverreceived the recognition due them.

In the book everyone is shocked whenVirna is murdered. Andy is asked to help the local RCMP. The nosy Kate demandsto know everything going on in the investigation. The probing of lives bringsout secrets that startle and even shock Kate. Life in the AAGPBL was morecomplex than she realized.

The book goes into some detail onthe AAGPL which existed from the early 1940’s to the mid-1950’s. The movie, A League of Their Own, with Madonna,Geena Davis and Tom Hanks was a Hollywood version of the league. It was notsensationalized as much as many Hollywood movies but Gordon’s description ofthe league is far more factual.

Within the book Helen was a womanprofessional baseball playing pioneer and Kate was a woman professionalbaseball sports writing pioneer. (In real life Gordon was the first womanjournalist to cover major league baseball in Canada.)

Those young woman who went Southfrom Saskatchewan to play baseball were an intrepid group leaving friends andfamily to play sports at a time when travel was limited and society offeredlittle support for women making any career let alone an athletic career. I metseveral of the actual players from Saskatchewan and wrote about them for thesports column I write in Melfort. They were as gracious and lively as the womendescribed by Gordon.

The mystery flows well. I know I amenjoying a book when the pages glide by and there is no consciousness of timepassing. It is the best ruralSaskatchewan mystery. (May 21/11)

Sleuths with Families

2011-12-22T22:28:00.001-06:00

Lastweek I wrote a post on Sleuths without Families setting forth my position thatit was uncommon for Sleuths to have families, especially spouses and children,before the 1990’s. Since the 1990’s I believe far more mysteries have sleuthswith families as important to the plots.

Toprovide some personal statistical analysis I reviewed the mysteries I have readand reviewed since January 1, 2000. From the 629 books, including fiction andnon-fiction, I settled on 41 series. In most of them I have read 2 or morebooks in the series. The series go back as far as Sherlock Holmes. Most areseries that had books in the 1990’s or more recently.

AsI am sure readers are aware statistics can tell many different stories dependingon how they are assembled and arranged. I certainly acknowledge my mystery readingis not done with the intent of putting together a scientifically reliablecross-section of the mystery world. As well I am trying not to write lengthyposts. If any reader wants a full list of the 41 sleuths and authors pleasesend me an email.

Overallthere were 21 sleuths with spouses and/or children as characters.Breaking it down further there were:

1.)11 sleuths with spouses and children;

2.)9 spouses with no spouse but with children; and,
3.)1 sleuth with a spouse but no children (William Monk and Hester).

Outof the 22 sleuths without spouses and/or children I made a further division:

1.)16 of the sleuths had no family involvement; and,

2.)6 of the sleuths had significant family involvement other than spouses orchildren.

Thelast group of 6 refers to such sleuths as Russell Quant created by AnthonyBidulka. The Saskatchewan gay detective has been engaged but never married.While having neither spouse nor children Anthony has made Russell’s mother animportant character in the series.

Therewere 7 series I was reading whose authors commenced writing them before the1990’s. Of these 7 sleuths there were 5 sleuths with neither spouses norchildren in the series. They were Adam Dagliesh, Sherlock Holmes, Spenser, NeroWolfe and Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte. Of the quintet I do not recall any of themhaving a significant role by other family members. Two of them, Travis McGeeand Rebus, had a child. I appreciate that while Spenser and Susan Silvermanwere definitely a couple I never saw in the books that they consideredthemselves as a common law couple. Arbitrarily I have placed Bony in thecategory of having neither spouse nor children because, though they existed, Ihave not seen them play any role in the books I have read in the series todate.

Ofthe 34 series starting in the 1990’s or later there were 17 sleuths withoutspouses and/or children. Adjusting the analysis to consider significant otherfamily characters it would be 11 sleuths without families.

Everystudy needs to define its terms. I describe sleuths with families as includingspouses, children and significant other family members. Based on my personalparameters:

1.)2 of the 7 sleuths earlier than the 1990’s were sleuths with families; and,

2.)23 of the 34 post-1990 sleuths were sleuths with families.

In6 days on December 28 I am going to write a further post about sleuths with familiesdevoted to Saskatchewan mysteries. Of that sub-genre 8 of the 10 authors,including all 3 series, have sleuths with families. As a bonus I will haveexplanations from some of the Saskatchewan authors on why they have sleuthswith families.

Another Man’s Moccasins by Craig Johnson

2011-12-20T22:21:00.001-06:00

22. – 485.) Another Man’s Moccasins by Craig Johnson– Sheriff Walt Longmire is back in Durant helping Cady recover from theinjuries she suffered in Philadelphia. The body of a young Vietnamese woman isfound just off the highway near the Hole-in-the-Wall. Longmire is exploring alarge nearby culvert when a pile of refuse explodes into a 7’ Crow Indian whois barely subdued by a collection of officers. Finding the woman with a photoof himself and a bar girl taken in Vietnam in early 1968 sends Longmireflashing back to his war. As he works on the puzzle of a Vietnamese woman, whocould not be a daughter, seeking him out 40 years later Longmire relives thewar where he was a Marine investigator investigating drug trafficking. InVietnam he endures intense trauma from which he has never truly recovered.Moving back and forth in time Longmire also occasionally finds himself in thespirit world. Ruby, his longtime administrative assistant, says he cares moreabout the dead than the living. I was surprised to read Longmire is a skilledpianist especially on popular favourites of the first half of the 20^thCentury. As noted in my last review the relationship of Longmire and HenryStanding Bear reminds of Spenser and Hawk. Each duo is a pair of big powerfulmen of different races accustomed to violence who have reached middle age.Longmire and Spenser share a classic stubborn integrity. They differ in thatStanding Bear, unlike Hawk, is a moral man. The mystery unfolds fairly but Inever saw the solution coming. It is a rare mystery that could combine parallelstories from Vietnam and Wyoming. Longmire reminds of the even more torturedmyster veterans of World War I – Ian Rutledge (Charles Todd), John Madden(Rennie Airth) and Maisie Dobbs (Jacqueline Winspear). Ninety years afterthe Great War Longmire bears the physical scars and suffers the emotionalturmoil of his war. I raced through the book eager to know what was on the nextpage. At their best Michael Connelly and Robert Crais are just as compelling. Ican hardly wait for my next chance to return to Absaroka County. Excellent.(June 6/09)

Publish or Perish by Margot Kinberg

2011-12-18T22:18:00.002-06:00

69.– 630.) Publish or Perish by MargotKinberg – Nick Merrill is a graduate student in the Department of EducationalStudies at Tilton University in Pennsylvania. He is making steady progress inhis program. He has developed some promising educational software called LearnIt!!! His promising academic career is enhanced when he wins the departmentalfellowship.

Personally life is more complicated.He has been carrying on an affair with Carrie Woods, a professor in his department,while also in an intimate relationship with Angel Shaftson.

Merrill’s personal and professionallives collide shortly after he gets the fellowship. After discovering theinterdepartmental relationship Rose Shelton, another graduate student, isconvinced the affair gave Merrill an unfair advantage in the fellowship process.Shaftson is equally angry when she learns of the affair.

Within the university Merrill isfacing conflict with his departmental supervisor, Connor Hadley, over Hadley’suse of the Learn It!!! software in support of his tenure application.

There is no shortage of suspectswhen Merrill is murdered.

Professor Joel Williams, a formerpolice officer, had known Merrill who had been observing his classes. Wanting tofind out what happened he starts making discreet inquiries around the campusand with former colleagues.

The investigation proceeds logically.It is a well plotted book that gave me insight into the turbulence of academia.The competition for place and advancement is fierce. It is a complex world.Trying to keep track of the roles within the department and the committees ischallenging. Not surprisingly, with the author a university professor, the bookis at its best inside the department.

At the same time the book lackeddrama for me. Everyone at the university is so earnest. All are efficient andgood at their jobs. Beyond the major conflicts setting up the suspects thingsgo so smoothly. There are no minor irritations or disagreements.

Itis an unusual investigation in the scrupulousness of all involved. Everyone atthe university is careful not to interfere with or bother the police.

Iwish I could have learned more about the characters. There is little informationon their backgrounds and motivations.

Margotkindly provided me with a copy of the book. I appreciate her sending it to me.Having read her blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, for almost a year Ican see her voice in the book. She also sent me the second book in the series, B-Very Flat. I am looking forward toreading and reviewing it in the new year. (Dec. 17/11)

Sleuths Without Families

2011-12-16T22:17:00.000-06:00

A week agoMargot Kinberg, in her blog Confessions of a Mystery Novelist (a wonderful blogwith daily meditations on the world of mysteries), wrote a post called From a Distance in which she discussed:

” Sleuths have to keep a certain amount ofdistance between themselves and others because it protects them from what theysee and sometimes have to do.”

She discussed a number of sleuths whoprefer to live alone. The post set me thinking about sleuths and families. I amgoing to be posting a trio of posts on the issue over the next 10 days.
Itis my observation that mystery series written before the 1990’s will generallyhave sleuths without families. Not only were they single the personalities ofseveral major sleuths were clearly suited to the single life.

TheSherlock Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle had a brother, Mycroft, but neitherspouse nor children. It is a challenge to see the demanding impatient imperiousHolmes being either a husband or a father.

Inthis generation Laurie R. King has written a different Holmes. He is entrancedby the brilliant young Mary Russell and eventually marries her. They shareadventures and solve mysteries jointly. More surprisingly Holmes finds he hasan adult son, Damian, and most surprisingly he has a granddaughter. The Holmesof King credibly displays paternal and grandparental affection.

Movingforward the sleuths of the Golden Age were usually without families and, ifthey had a spouse, rarely had children.

AsMargot points out Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot live alonewithout spouse or children. Each character, especially Poirot, lives a life inwhich a partner and children would cramp their lifestyle. It is hard to see thevain Poirot sharing his apartment with a wife.

P.D.James in Talking About Detective Fictionstates about writers from the Golden Age:

“Subsequentwriters tended to agree with Dorothy L. Sayers that their detectives shouldconcentrate their energy on clues and not on chasing attractive young women.”

On this side ofthe Atlantic Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin made it through over 40 years ofnovels and stories without getting married or having children. Once again thepersonalities were not conducive to matrimony. In particular, no woman wouldput up with the irascible Wolfe with his rigid routines.

In Australia,Arthur Upfield was writing the Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte mysteries over almostexactly the same time period as the Wolfe mysteries. He has a variation on thesingle theme. Bony has a wife and children but, in the mysteries I have read,Bony investigates and solves crimes far away from home. In the Bushman Comes Back he actually buys awife but does not keep her.

P.D. James,in Adam Dagliesh, created a remarkably likeable character. Yet, when startingher series almost 50 years ago in 1962, Dagliesh is without family. She said:

“So I decided tobegin with a less egregiously bizarre character and ruthlessly killed off wifeand newborn son in order to avoid involving myself in his emotional life, whichI felt would be difficult successfully to incorporate into the structure of theclassical detective story.”

However, 47 years later in The Private Patient Dagliesh becomesengaged to Emma. We shall see if the Baroness is as ruthless with Emma. I hopenot.

It is my proposition that it became commonin the last 20 years for the sleuths of crime fiction to have spouses andchildren. I shall have a post next week on the subject.

The Judas Window by John Dickson Carr writing as Carter Dickson (1938)

2011-12-14T19:32:00.000-06:00

68. – 628.) The Judas Window by John Dickson Carr writing as Carter Dickson (1938) – James Answell has come to London to meet his future father-in-law, Avory Hume. Uneasy about the interview he gingerly enters the office at the back of Hume’s house. The former banker has fortified the room. There are steel shutters on the two windows. The only door is heavy and tight fitting.

As they start their conversation Answell spins into unconsciousness after taking a drink from the whiskey and soda poured for him by Hume. When he awakes Hume is dead beside the desk an arrow driven 8 inches through his chest. The arrow had been part of a display on the wall behind the desk. Answell’s fingerprints are on the arrow and dust from the arrow on his hand. Hume had been an accomplished archer with the Woodmen of Kent.

Compounding Answell’s problems there is no sign that any whiskey and soda had been poured and, worst of all, the door has been locked from the inside with a stiff dead bolt.

No one is accepting Answell’s explanation that he was drugged and framed. He is soon in the dock at the Old Bailey facing a capital murder charge.

Answell insists Sir Henry Merrivale, K.C. (better known as H.M.) defend him though the veteran court warrior has not tried a case in 15 years. Merrivale could have been a prototype for Rumpole of the Bailey as portrayed by Leo McKern. Both are aging, aggressive, blustering, colourful barristers who enjoy a cigar.

The evidence against Answell is straightforward and devastating. Merrivale is facing a set of facts that would have called out for a guilty plea was not the gallows the punishment.

The examination and cross-examination of witnesses are very well handled. The rules of evidence are followed. I was surprised to read that while Carr was the son of a lawyer he was not a lawyer. Few non-lawyer authors are as skilled as Carr in knowing what can actually be said in examination, cross-examination, re-examination and argument.

Merrivale’s defence is predicated on the room having a Judas Window but the only windows are locked and shuttered. (In England a Judas Window is a type of prison cell window where guards can see a prisoner without being seen by the inmate.) Dickson has created a locked room which would challenge any defence counsel not a mystery writer. As a mystery reader I certainly saw no solution.

After careful investigation Merrivale challenges pieces of evidence. An alternative to Answell stabbing Hume with the arrow is offered. Yet how will Merrivale show the murder took place within the locked room without Answell committing the crime?

By the end of the book Carr has provided a plausible explanation and solution that could have been determined by a reader who is rigorously logical in reviewing the evidence. As with many solutions it requires elimination of what is impossible and then a determination of how what is not impossible could have been done. I neither came close to figuring out how the murder was done nor the identity of the killer.

Through blogging I have become more interested in Golden Age mysteries. I enjoyed Carr’s book Death Turns the Tables. It was a good book. The Judas Window is a great book. Sergio in his blog Tipping My Fedora had an excellent review of The Judas Window that prompted me to look for it in bookstores. His review includes interesting information from other sources about the book. As noted in a previous post J.D. at Sleuth of Baker Street in Toronto found a copy for me. It is a fine hardcover 2^nd edition from 1938. I am going to look for more Sir Henry mysteries.

I liked the cover at the top of the post which was on my copy and features a diagram of the locked room. On the other hand the cover here at the bottom of the post would be the one to get my attention in a bookstore. (Dec. 13/11)

Bad Debts by Peter Temple (1996)

2011-12-12T23:05:00.000-06:00

23. – 486.) Bad Debts by Peter Temple (1996) – J.D. Singh has raved about Temple’s books. I enjoyed the first, Iron Rose, I read but did not find it great. I decided to try his Jack Irish series with the first written in the mid-1990’s. Irish is a middle aged widowed barely practicing lawyer who makes his living working with a betting group who set up horse races (honestly finding an under-recognized horse and priming it for the right race) and searching out and collecting from debtors for which the law has no solution. He is a tough guy lawyer! (I cannot think of another.) I wanted him to be great. He is an intriguing character. His avocation is making furniture. In the great tradition of tough guys around the world he is troubled when a former client, Danny McKillop, seeks his help but misses him and then is murdered. Irish starts poking around on the death of the client and whether he was rightly convicted of vehicular homicide and sent to prison almost 20 years when Irish was functioning poorly after the murder of his wife. Irish finds himself drawn into the murky world of government land transactions. The young woman allegedly killed by McKillop was an activist against the closure of some questionable low rent housing. As Irish begins to unravel the mystery the schemers push back violently. Bodies start piling up around Irish. He finds love with journalist, Linda Hillier. Irish has a strong moral code in the manner of Spenser. Irish’s Melbourne is a hard town with its full share of bad guys and corruption. I found the book very good but not great. I have an ongoing prejudice against high body counts in a mystery. I want to read the next to see how his life develops which is always a good sign for a mystery series. Paperback by choice. (June 10/09)

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

2011-12-10T19:41:00.001-06:00

67. – 627.) Raven Black by Ann Cleeves – The Shetland Islands had been a distant place for me somewhere north of Scotland until I read Raven Black. As with the best mysteries I now have a sense of those far away islands.

It is mid-winter in the Shetlands. Snow has blanketed the islands. It is cold. On New Year’s Eve Catherine Ross and Sally Henry, 16 year old girls, drop in on Magnus Tait, a senior living a reclusive lifestyle. It is a minor adventure for the girls to enter his home. While Tait is a simple man he has a disquieting reputation. Having grown up in rural Saskatchewan I am familiar with each person acquiring a reputation in the community.

Shortly after Catherine is found slain in the snow near Tait’s home. The description of the lovely young woman lying on the brilliant white snow with the killing red scarf around her throat “the fringe spread out like blood” was a cold striking image.

Community suspicion is focused on Tait just as it had 8 years previously when Catriona Bruce had disappeared. While never charged the islanders have remained suspicious of Tait.

Detective Jimmy Perez starts the investigation and is immediately joined by a team sent from Inverness led by Roy Taylor. The investigation concentrates on Tait but Perez is skeptical.

The Shetlands were a closed community which has been forced open by the oil boom. There is continuing tension between the generational islanders and the incomers who have recently arrived on the islands.

Though an incomer, Catherine, had fitted more easily into Anderson high school than the islander, Sally. I found it interesting that the parents of both girls feature prominently in the plot.

Fran Hunter is an incomer who has married and separated from the charismatic islander, Duncan Hunter. She is trying to adapt to island life with her daughter, Cassie.

Perez has grown up on the even more distant Fair Isle. (Can there be a more romantic name for a place?) Over 20 years later he is still affected by having to leave the island and go to Lerwick to live in a hostel when he was 12 to attend school. I went away to a boarding school when I was 15. I can relate to the loneliness and difficulty fitting in for a shy boy gone away from family and farm for schooling. It may be a challenge for those who have grown up in cities but I did not find life on the farm more isolating than my subsequent residences in urban places.

As winter and the investigation progress the focus of island life is on the annual celebration of their Norse heritage, Up Helly Aa. It is the most important winter event.

It took me some time to get involved in the book but I was glad I kept going as I became more and more intrigued by the characters. The conclusion was a breathtaking rush.

I know I shall return to the Shetlands for more of the series. Excellent. (Dec. 10/11)

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child

2011-12-08T19:41:00.000-06:00

66. – 626.) Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child – For no specific reason I had not read a Jack Reacher thriller until I picked up Bad Luck and Trouble for $2.00 at a used bookstore in North Vancouver two weeks ago. It is excellent escapist fiction.

Reacher is aimlessly wandering the Pacific Northwest when he finds an unexpected deposit in his bank account. Frances Neagley, a former comrade with the special investigators unit of the U.S. Army Military Police, has reached out to Reacher in a unique way. The amount of the deposit is the number of a military code that an officer needs urgent assistance.

The members of the unit have a special bond that remains strong 10 years after they had left the Army. Their connection is so powerful that a member will instantly go to another member in need.

Reacher immediately leaves for Los Angeles. When he arrives he learns another member of the unit, Calvin Frantz, has been murdered. He has been thrown out of a helicopter.

Reacher and Neagley soon determine other members of their 8 person team are missing. At the same time they are joined by other members of the unit. The survivors are determined to track down Frantz’s killers.

It is hard to find a starting point. Frantz had been living a simple life. What could he have uncovered that would cause him to call on his fellow investigators and then send killers after him and other members of the unit? Reacher’s current team finds some evidence overlooked by the police and the killers and follow the trail towards the killers. The special investigators are relentless.

In their investigations past and present they operate by a basic violent code - don’t mess with the special investigators. Old Testament justice is at the core of their code.

As they investigate I was puzzled for a long time why the killers did not pursue Reacher and his colleagues with consistent aggression. Child has a simple but clever reason that I did not foresee.

In Reacher I cannot recall another character so unencumbered by material goods. Determined to travel with no more than his folding toothbrush he will own but a single shirt so he will not start accumulating property.

While Reacher operates by a stern morality of retribution for wrongs done he is amoral in acquiring money. He has no moral qualms about stealing money from drug dealers and then spending the drug money for his personal needs.

Child is a smooth thriller writer. The pages flow swiftly. I know I will read more Jack Reacher adventures. (Dec. 6/11)

Anthem for Doomed Youth

2011-12-06T19:47:00.005-06:00

64.– 624.) Anthem for Doomed Youthedited by Lyn Macdonald -In my last post I listed four series of mysteries I have read where each sleuth is a veteran of World War I whose post-war life remains deeply affected by their service in the war.

In the midst of the dreadful carnage of that war moving poetry was written by the young men who fought. Anthem for Doomed Youth is an anthology of the war poetry starting with the optimistic poems of men on their way to war, continuing with the experiences of battle and ending with the thoughts of those who had survived the conflict. Their eloquence resonates across the decades.

Rupert Brooke’s poem The Soldier is one of the best remembered:

If I should die, think only this of me:

         That there’s some corner of a
         foreign field
    That is for ever England. There shall be
    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
  A dust whom England bore, shaped,
                                     made aware,
               Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
            A body of England’s, breathing English air,
               Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

               A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
                  Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England
                  given;
            Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
               And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
                  In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The last stanza of The Machine-Gun by John Hobson evokes the feeling upon the battlefield:

Here do I lie,

                        Hidden by grass and flowers,
            With my machine-gun,
           Ghost of modern war.
           The sun floats high,

The moon through deep blue hours,

I watch with my machine-gun

At Death’s grim door.

Wilfred Owen was one of the poet soldiers who addressed the horror of the war. In Dulce et Decorum Est he talked about a gas attack. In the last verse he speaks about a soldier wounded by the gas and states there is no glory in dying for your country:

If in some smothering

dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon we flung

him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Came gurgling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

For Canadians the poem In Flanders Fields by John McRae is our national poem of remembrance. Every child in Canada for over 90 years has read the poem. Most of us memorized it at school. On November 11, Remembrance Day, it is recited in every community across Canada:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place, and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead, Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up the quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Of the poets almost half died during the war. Considering the brilliance of their poetry it is certain the world lost many great writers during World War I.

It is a book of great imagery and powerful emotions. A reader is prompted to reflect on life and death and sacrifice and courage and waste.

Four Post World War I Mystery series

2011-12-04T17:56:00.000-06:00

I have been looking at the different series of authors I read, more specifically series featuring historical sleuths. It was striking to me that I enjoy several series set just after World War I but none set in the equivalent time period after World War II.

I do not know why I have only read post World War I series. I do believe there was a more powerful sense of waste after that war which is reflected in each series. There were better reasons for fighting World War II.

The closest series involving World War II are the novels of Alan Furst but the books I have read by Furst either take place either before the war or early in the war.

Going by alphabetical order the post World War I series are:

1.) The Rennie Airth series with Inspector Madden;

2.) The Charles Todd series of Inspector Rutledge

and Hamish McLeod;

3.) The Charles Todd new series with nurse Bess

Crawford as the sleuth; and,

4.) The Jacqueline Winspear series with the

enigmatic Maisie Dobbs.

Each series is set in England and the sleuth had participated in the Great War and had been profoundly affected by the experience. The feelings of loss were intense for veterans of the First World War. The percentage of loss of life among the combatants was greater in World War I.

Possibly readers of the blog can suggest mystery series whose sleuths are World War II veterans similarly influenced by their war service.

Of the series quartet my favourite series has been the Inspector Rutledge series, especially the early books. The first time I read Hamish speaking to Rutledge inside his head a chill shivered down my spine.

Two of the books in different series have been Bill’s Best of the Year in Fiction. In 2001 it was Airth’s book The River of Darkness. In 2008 Maisie Dobbs was my favourite.

The generation that fought World War I was more literate than the soldiers who fought the remaining wars of the 20^th Century. What other war had as many poets on the front lines? Much of the most powerful war poetry ever written came out of World War I.

In my next post on Tuesday I will review Anthem for Doomed Youth, an anthology of poetry from World War I. Wilfrid Gibson’s poem, Lament, from that anthology captures the post-war mood of the sleuths featured in the above four series:

We who are left, how shall we look again

Happily on the sun or feel the rain,

Without remembering how they who went

Ungrudgingly, and spent

Their all for us, loved too the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings –

But we, how shall we turn to little things,

And listen to the birds and winds and streams

Made holy by their dreams,

Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney

2011-12-02T23:00:00.000-06:00

24. - 487.) Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney (actual name of the author is Graham Joyce) – What a strange book. I do not know whether Heaney is the name of the actual author for he is the narrator. An administrator in Youth Affairs in English government in London Heaney is a connesieur of demons. He opens the book with the bold statement that there are 1,567 different known demons. They lurk around people afflicted with them. Heaney started dealing with demons in university. He can now spot them. As he roams London amidst the demons he forges old books with two companions. They justify their forgeries by good works. He gives the profits to a homeless refuge. Heaney, divorced with teenage and adult children, finds his solitary existence invaded by the beautiful Yasmin who pursues him. All his decisions are affected by the demons he sees around him. A select few can also see the demons. It is neither mystery nor thriller. It is neither supernatural nor horror. I have never read a book like it. I cannot say I really liked it. I was glad I read it. There is an understanding of the human condition through a unique lens. It will hard for me not to think we are surrounded by demons. It did seem odd to me that he does not see angels if he sees demons. In almost aside he describes angels as a form of demons. It does not make sense to me. If demons exist angels exist. It is curious that his demons have no origins. There is no reference to a religious connection. They just exist. If it were a series I would not read another. (June 20/09)

The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd

2011-11-30T22:54:00.000-06:00

64. – 624.) The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd – This thriller came highly recommended by J.D. and Marian at the Sleuth of Baker Street bookstore. I was not disappointed.

Steve Vail is contentedly working as a bricklayer in Chicago. He had been an FBI agent for a few years specializing in tracking people. He left the Bureau because of his aversion to structure, authority, supervision, reporting, teamwork, official procedures and praise. It is a wonder he lasted any number of years. Vail is the classic lone American law man.

The book opens with a flourish. Caught in a bank robbery Vail deftly disarms both bank robbers and tosses them through the bank’s windows before disappearing as the customers and staff stream out of the bank.

At the same time the FBI is confronted by a group of extortionists, the Rubaco Pentad, who have made the FBI the target of their extortion. They are requiring the Bureau pay them! After receiving the first demand for $1,000,000 the Bureau, following standard protocols, attempts a fake drop but is outwitted by a fiendishly clever drop plan at an abandoned naval prison.

The Pentad ups the ante and the consequences and demands $2,000,000. When the agent designated to make the delivery and the money both go missing the FBI is almost paralyzed.

Desperate for a solution before the story becomes public and facing another demand the Bureau reaches out to Vail to find the disappeared agent and money. In Los Angeles Vail works with Kate Bannon, Deputy Assistant Director on the search.

In the investigation Vail encounters situations that are dangerous puzzles. Boyd has created enough clever traps for several books. There is even an excellent contemporary locked room mystery within the plot. Boyd’s skill in devising traps reminds me of Jeffery Deaver.

Not surprisingly the agency’s bureaucracy is very unhappy with a renegade leading the investigation but their reliance on procedure has them continually led astray by the distractions and misleading clues left by the Pentad. While they flail about Vail is relying on his ability to think more than his brawn. It was a pleasure to see the hero’s mind challenged in a thriller.

I read through the book eager to see the next devious trap unraveled. The cleverness of the Pentad brought to mind some of the early Harry Bosch mysteries of Michael Connelly.

My only lament is a regret I sometimes experience in Deaver books. The twists are unpredictable and well done but there is one too many of them.

Boyd has created the most promising thriller series in years. It is the second thriller I have read this year featuring a Chicago hero. Michael Harvey created a high octane thriller in The Third Rail. Harvey’s book raced along with the hero, Michael Kelly, having no time for reflection. Boyd’s book is a better book as he emphasizes thought amidst the action. (Curiously both Harvey and Boyd have the FBI blundering about ponderously investigating the crimes.) The Bricklayer has great visual images. It will be an excellent movie if Hollywood will trust Boyd’s skill in plotting. (Nov. 28/11)