Bill’s Best of 2013 Fiction

It is starkly beautiful with a bright Saskatchewan sun shining off the hoarfrost on the trees. With nary a cloud in the sky the high was -27C and it is a good day to be inside thinking about the books I read in 2013. I read 58 books this year which was one more than 2012.

For my 14^th year I have compiled a list of Bill’s Best for the year. This post will cover Fiction. My next post will be on Non-Fiction and my personal category of Most Interesting.

For the first time in the 14 years Bill’s Best of Fiction involves a quartet of books that either are legal mysteries or feature lawyers.

My Best books are not necessarily written in 2013. They are from the books I read in 2013.

Bill’s Best of 2013 Fiction are:

1.) The Gifted by Gail Bowen – The 14^th book in the Joanne Kilbourn series becomes the first in the series to be chosen Bill’s Best of the year. Gail’s books have made the most appearances with four on my annual lists.

The Gifted is a remarkable book for the integration of multi-generation family issues into the mystery.

Joanne's 14 year old adopted daughter, Taylor, has become an accomplished painter. At the same time she is maturing and her tentative relationship with 19 year old Julian causes Joanne and her husband, Zack, considerable angst. The book further looks back to Taylor's biological mother at Taylor's age.

When murder occurs Zack, who had taken a year off from his law practice, is drawn back into a legal defence.

2.) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – The iconic novel was written 53 years ago. It is remarkable how fresh it remains for readers two generations later. In my review I regretted not reading the book earlier in my life. I have been reflecting on why I had not read the book. I think I was unduly influenced by the fame of the book. I doubted the book could be as good as it had been praised. It is an illogical approach to reading. I have tried to avoid reading books with pre-conceptions and my experience with To Kill a Mockingbird reinforces the need to let the book form my thoughts on its quality.

I loved Scout Finch, a girl of 6 at the start of To Kill a Mockingbird. She is a great character. Out of all the dozens of legal mysteries I have read I can recall only one other where a child was a primary character. Mark Sway, 11 years old, in The Client by John Gisham is a character both in the book and the movie I have not forgotten.

Millions of readers wished Lee would have written more books involving Scout and Atticus Finch. I think a great novel could have been set 30 years later in the mid-1960’s with Scout a young lawyer working with Atticus, old enough to be winding down his practice, to fight to integrate Alabama schools.

3.) Stranglehold by Robert Rotenberg – The fourth book in the series featuring Toronto lawyers, prosecutors, judges and journalists is the most complex without being complicated.

Prosecutor, Jennifer Raglan, is slain moments before an assignation with lover, Detective Ari Greene. In a decision that almost moved me to swear at the book Greene tries to keep his involvement with Raglan secret. His efforts are futile and he ends up charged with murder.

Rotenberg helped make the book memorable with one of the secondary characters. In most books, if a major character is cheating on their spouse the author portrays a spouse with a dark personality. In Stranglehold Raglan’s husband is a good and decent, though boring man. After her death, while not absolving her of the infidelity, he does not blacken her memory for their children. His integrity shows Greene is flawed in carrying on the affair. In the end it makes Greene a more credible character.

3.) Sycamore Row by John Grisham – Rural Mississippi in the late 1980’s is poor. While class and racial distinctions remain they are being blurred. The old families that have dominated Ford County life are fading as the current generation wastes inheritances. White power has cracked with the election and re-election of a black Sheriff.

Yet when a successful white businessman, in a handwritten will, leaves the bulk of his fortune to his black housekeeper the challenge to his will is as much a question of class and race as it is of testamentary capacity and undue influence.

In his lawyer, Jake Brigance, I can see the lawyer Grisham either was or more likely hoped to be when he was practising law in real life. Both Brigance and Grisham graduated from law at the University of Mississippi early in the 1980’s. Both practised law in Mississippi communities near Memphis. Neither worked for the local establishment – banks, insurance corporations and large corporations. Grisham, in Brigance, has created a lawyer to rival Atticus Finch.

Have I been unfair in choosing only books involving lawyers for Bill’s Best of 2013 Fiction? I plead that I have been objective while acknowledging that all readers have a degree of personal bias in their decisions on what is best.