South of Evil, by Brian Dunford

9781794434288
287 pp
paperback



The blurb starts like this:
"Special Agent Walter Curtis finds drug dealers by the trail of money they leave. He followed the money and found a vicious cartel operating in secret across the border. But no one believes him."

Curtis is an agent with the IRS and he has really messed up as the book begins.  He had the perfect case nearly in hand, along with the arrest of a very powerful player named Edouardo Mendes.  He could have put away much bigger fish,  but  Curtis didn't quite fully do his homework and  the case he'd been working for years went completely south.  He's lost the respect of other agents who spent time and energy on the case, and his reputation is shot.    All is not completely lost though -- he can still make a case against his prisoner on related counts, and Mendes will still spend time behind bars.   Curtis knows that Mendes is the kind of man "who would be terrified of one night in prison," and he has a vision of Mendes granting him an interview and Curtis walking away with "seized assets, intelligence, and confessions," that would fix the mess in which Curtis now finds himself with his botched case.  Instead, Mendes offers up the story of three million dollars buried in the desert.  Together with his friend Marc Virgil, a Boston cop whose career is currently on the skids, Curtis decides to go into Mexico and find the money, which was, as the back-cover blurb relates, "hidden by a long dead drug lord."  But things aren't going to be that easy, and soon the two find themselves with targets on their backs as they make their way through the harsh Mexican desert.

 While I'm not a regular reader of thrillers by any stretch (more on that below),  I am interested in what motivates people in books, and the author has obviously put a lot of work into building backstories and focusing on why his characters do what they do, and given that this is his first novel, he did it rather well.   As he noted in an interview, most of the people in this book have "serious moral flaws" that cause them to make "terrible decisions," and around that idea is where I kept my own focus, like I do in pretty much all of the books I read.    He also said that the people who make these really bad choices are  more interesting than characters who make good ones, and I found that to be the case here as well.    For example, Curtis has been "ridiculed" and "put out to pasture," after having "bet everything" and lost. He worked very hard and diligently on his case  and he is truly desperate to get the chance to prove he wasn't wrong and that he is "not a joke." His friend Virgil  has had a long career that went south after a "bad" shooting so basically he has nothing to lose.  And then there's the one cop in this book in a small station in Mexico who believes in his job and who joined the force for a reason -- he does what is morally right but in the end finds no reward for  his actions, in fact, quite the opposite.  The storylines of each of these people (and others) intersect eventually both present and past,  and reveal more than  a few unexpected surprises before coming to a downright twisty ending.

I was sort of hesitant about reading South of Evil since I don't as a rule do thriller novels with nonstop action.  The author was so nice though that I couldn't say no even though I did warn him that thrillers weren't my thing, and I have to say that it was a bit too much on the violent side for my taste.  If it is possible to cringe while reading, I think I did that, so  I'm probably not quite the intended audience for this book since it's  more likely to be enjoyed by people who prefer action-packed thrillers as opposed to  someone like me who prefers a gentler mode of crime writing.* I'm well aware that any book about a cartel will likely come complete with bent cops and hit men and that they're not going to be sitting around discussing the weather or good books over tea and cookies, so this is a me thing and not the fault of the author.  Currently this book has a 4-plus star reader rating on both Goodreads and Amazon, so evidently there are a number of people who regularly enjoy this type of story who find it a very good read. 




personal ps/ to the author:  Thanks so much, apologies for taking forever, and finally,  the line at Franklin's can be about three to four hours on a good day, and you still have to hope that they haven't run out of food before you make it to the door.  But it's worth it.


*
And staying in tune with my more mild crime-reading preferences, and in contrast with the author's choice of narco skull for his cover, my choice of (henna) narco-style tattoo in May in Puerto Vallarta  drifted toward a skull with hearts for eyes and a hair ribbon.

a thriller with serious bite: The Monsoon Ghost Image, by Tom Vater

Kindle Version,

October 2018

Crime Wave Press

I would like to thank Henry at Crime Wave Press for my copy of this book.    I didn't use it, because silly me, I failed to see the pdf file he'd included in the email he sent, so I bought a kindle version  But thanks all the same.   

http://crimewavepress.com/index.php

Aside from having a cool logo, Crime Wave Press 

"publishes a range of crime fiction -- from whodunits to Noir and Hardboiled, from historical mysteries to espionage thrillers, from literary crime to pulp fiction, from highly commercial page turners to marginal texts exploring the world's dark underbelly."

My first experience with this small indie press was, coincidentally, a book by the author of the book featured in today's post, Tom Vater.  The title was The Devil's Road to Kathmandu,  and it was a hell of a story that I remember not wanting to put down, so naturally I said yes when asked if I'd consider reading another one by the same writer.   This time around the action takes place in Thailand, and The Monsoon Ghost Image is the end of a trio of books featuring Detective Maier after The Cambodian Book of the Dead and The Man With the Golden Mind.   

Former war correspondent, after years in the field and the death of a friend from Cambodia, Maier no longer wants nothing at all to do with war.  He now (2002) works  in "Hamburg's most prestigious detective agency,"and as the story begins, his boss Sundermann hands him a strange case.  It seems that he has had a call from an Emilie Ritter, a woman whose famous photo journalist husband Martin Ritter is missing, presumed dead, with a funeral scheduled for the following Tuesday in Berlin.  Maier knows this already, but he gets a gut punch when Sundermann reveals that Ritter was seen in Bangkok just a couple of days earlier.  Emilie shows Maier and his partner Mikhail an email from someone with the enigmatic name of the "Wicked Witch of the East" confirming that Ritter is not only still alive, but is also "involved in the crime of the century."  Emilie needs to know whether Ritter is dead or alive, so Maier and Mikhail are off to Thailand to try and track him down.  They're there a month with no sign either way, the calm before the storm after which all hell breaks loose, centering around "the world's most wanted photograph, the 21st century's Zapruder document."

As with most thriller novels, while reading The Monsoon Ghost Image  on one level I'd advise a complete suspension of disbelief, as the story explodes into seriously crazy, over-the-top territory.  Our detective friends find themselves caught up in some of the most bizarre situations imaginable (and I'm not joking here).  The story outdarks dark  -- there are at least two psychopaths whose actions will likely keep readers on the edges of their chairs, and knowing who to trust becomes downright impossible through the many twists and turns taken by this story.   Having said that, let me also say that underneath this craziness runs an undeniable grain of truth -- in the war on terror, there are certain agencies that will go to any lengths to get results, all "authorized at the highest levels of the world's most open and egalitarian society."  In the process, sometimes the line between good guys and bad guys becomes unrecognizable, and things get worse as they attempt a cover up in an effort to ensure that  their dirty secrets will never be revealed. And then, of course, there are others who just want to exploit those secrets for their own gain -- in short, as someone notes in this book,  "it's about money."

I am not normally a reader of thrillers, and while this one is, as I said, way over the top, I actually got caught up in it because I had to know what happened next.  Each time I thought things couldn't get any worse, they did, and it was a hair-raising ride to the finish.  It is not at all for the squeamish (I found myself reading quickly through some of the many gruesome scenes, the equivalent of covering my eyes while watching the same on television), and it is not for people who freak out over the use of profanity or violence.  In the end though, what made this book work well for me was a) the focus on that underlying grain of truth mentioned above combined with the author's out-there imagination  in telling that story (!)   and b) the author's depiction of Maier as a man who through it all tries to retain his humanity while others lose theirs by the wayside.  Throw in the exotic locations throughout Thailand and well, it becomes the stuff of a tv miniseries I would definitely watch.

I'd read anything written by Tom Vater -- his mind works in strange and mysterious ways, a quality I genuinely appreciate in the crime fiction universe. 

Dead Girl Walking, by Christopher Brookmyre

9780802123640
Atlantic Monthly/Grove Atlantic, 2015
377 p

hardcover (from the publisher -- thank you!)

"What happens on tour, stays on tour." 

Finally - a thriller that works!  That's a big deal coming from me since I am not normally a thriller person, but this one I liked.  To be sure, it has its over-the-top moments but on the whole, I couldn't put this book down -- the story is that good.

Sadly, I haven't read any of the previous five Jack Parlabane series novels (I own the first one, and now it's coming down off the shelf into the soon-to-read tbr pile) because when Dead Girl Walking starts, Jack has lost everything. So it was a little rocky for me at first not knowing his history, but it didn't take long until I was up to speed.  Jack is married, but now separated with little to no hope of reconciliation; he is also a journalist, but now discredited, "a disgraced and disparaged hack nobody in the business would go near again." So when Mairi, the younger sister of one of his friends asks him to look into the disappearance of her client, a rock star named Heike Gunn who seems to have gone missing and bring her home, he takes her up on it.

There are two alternating narratives at play in this novel, one that follows Jack and the other belonging to Monica, who has just joined Heike's band Savage Earth Heart as a fiddle player.  Monica's narrative is presented as a blog written while on tour; it details not only her experiences in the music business but also her growing but very complicated relationship with Heike.  It also underscores the importance of the meaning of a piece of advice she's given:  "what happens on tour, stays on tour."  The technique works very nicely -- while the reader is busy with Monica's story, Jack and his friend Mairi follow in her foosteps knowing pretty much nothing about what's actually happened to try to get to the truth of what happened to Heike.

Aside from the story itself, one of the best things that the author does in this novel happens in Berlin. There the reader is introduced to the city's ghost stations, a very haunting but real phenomenon, part of Berlin's history. As I discovered, these are a series of closed-down stations where trains would slow down but never stopped,  where

"Armed guards from East Germany stood in the dimly-lit stations and before the trains entered East Berlin a loudspeaker announcement was made: "Last station in West Berlin." -- (see link above).

Aside from historical interest, the author links these ghost stations to Heike's inner self -- very well done.

While, as I said, there are a few over-the-top moments, Dead Girl Walking doesn't work along the lines of what seems to pass for thriller novels these days.  First of all, it's extremely coherent.  It is well plotted -- one thing I object to in most thriller stories these days is that authors want to go very big and add everything but the kitchen sink -- that doesn't happen here. Also, aside from the Balkan criminals, the characters don't come across as stereotypical, another problem with more than a few thriller novels these days.  And thank god there is no kick-ass, badass, gun-toting female heroine here; au contraire, considering that a man wrote this, for the most part, he writes the women very well.

Dead Girl Walking was a pleasant surprise -- I do not enjoy thriller novels, but this was a good one.

**
since I have a hardcover copy, if anyone in the US would like my ARC copy, let me know and I'll mail it to you!

when revenge is needed, call The House of Wolfe -- by James Carlos Blake

9780802122469
Mysterious Press, 2015
248 pp

hardcover, thanks to Mysterious Press

The Wolfes are a "tolerant, liberty-loving bunch," a prosperous family whose interests include shrimp boats, a realty company, and a law firm.  They also believe that "there are certain natural rights that transcend statute law," and the right to self-defense is at the top of their list.  From their point of view, the Wolfes see it this way:

"...any law that denies you the means to defend yourself against others armed with those same means is an unjust law and undeserving of compliance, albeit compliance makes you a criminal by definition."

Viva la frontier justice. To ensure that people have the means to defend themselves, they also have a lucrative gun-running business, a part of their "shade trade" of illegal enterprises.  The family organization is split between Texas and Mexico City; the home of the Mexican side of their family (known as Los Jaguaros),  and the two come together in this book when one of the American cousins is kidnapped as part of a 10-person wedding party in Mexico City.  An ambitious leader of a small Mexico City gang wants to be recognized for his evil talents, so he demands a ransom of five million dollars from the parents of the bride and the groom. He figures this will put him on the map with the Zetas, the infamous cartel -- maybe he can buy his way into their favor with part of the money. Kidnapping the Wolfe girl was, unbeknownst to him,  pretty stupid on his part because both sides of the family are coming to get her back. The gang leader has no clue what he's in for.

Macho and manly are the words that ran through my head while I was reading this briskly-paced revenge-thriller told from multiple points of view -- yes, that's a bit sexist, but it's the truth. One of ours has been taken -- screw the cops, we'll go get her ourselves. The Wolfes certainly have the resources to do it, and the family takes care of its own. In fact, House of the Wolfe is part of an entire family saga (which I haven't read) that goes back in time while exploring the family history.  There are two women who feature prominently in this novel -- both are kickass Lisbeth Salander types, likely there to draw female readership -- but the people with the biggest roles are definitely the men, and overall it's a book that I think will draw way more male readers than female.

As far as thrillers go, anyone who loves them will find House of Wolfe irresistible. It's filled with action:  kidnapping, daring escape attempts, chases, explosions,  lots of gunplay, death in fiery pits, feral dogs, even torture -- everything a diehard thriller reader could possibly want.  It speaks to the need to be self-sufficient and to have enough money to buy your way into positions of power and control -- in that sense, both bad guys and "good" guys have the same goal, the "good" ones having achieved it long ago.  And to his credit, the author had one major storyline and didn't go off the rails (unlike so many authors do) trying to incorporate everything under the sun in this book.

Here's another case for me where book does not match reader -- I'm just not a thriller person.   I thought by the description of the novel that it was going to focus on Mexican cartels along the border (a topic that interests me), since its subtitle is "A Border Noir." The cartels that work along the border are sort of sidelined except in terms of one man's ambition to get a foot in the Zeta door, and with the exception of the first chapter, the action takes place in Mexico City, which is nowhere near the border. Nor is this book what I'd call noir.  When all is said and done, it comes down to a story of family justice -- and it's  a showcase for mega amounts of violence.

for the thriller minded: Cane and Abe, by James Grippando

9780062295392
Harper, 2015
356 pp

advanced reader copy - thanks!

(read in January)

According to the back-cover blurb, Cane and Abe is Grippando's twenty-second novel since his debut back in 1994.  He has a set of series novels featuring Jack Swytek (which I confess I've never read) as well as a few standalone thrillers.  Cane and Abe is his newest nonseries book and it is set in Florida where rightly so, the author depicts big sugar as a major villain in this novel.  Big sugar has ruined waterways, has recently sent runoff into the ocean here, has killed wildlife and spoiled the environment big time. Frankly, as he depicts in this novel, I'm afraid that this industry does have the power to line the pockets of some of the officials in the state capital, and sadly, no one in any kind of position of power in this state seems to care enough to do anything. So -- when I read that this book was going to be in some part involved with big sugar, I was eager to read it since I am definitely NOT an advocate of the industry.  

While the book does move a bit among   power wielders in the industry, it turns out that the sugar industry is not the biggest focus here, but it does play a background role in the search for a serial killer whose trademark and killing method "harken back" to the industry's past. That's one plot line. Plot line number two centers around main character Abe Beckham, whose first wife has passed away and who is currently married to wife number two, an old flame named Angelina. Abe is asked by the state attorney's office to take part in the investigation of a body discovered in the Everglades that may be the work of the still-uncaught serial killer. He teams up with an FBI agent named Victoria Santos, and in the middle of their hunt for the murderer, Angelina goes missing.  He is frantic with worry that she may just be the latest victim, but in plot line number three, Santos decides that Angelina's disappearance may not be related -- and Abe finds himself under suspicion, leading to plot line number four in which he works to clear himself. 

The story, for me, was best when suspicion falls on Abe and no one believes him when he says he had absolutely nothing to do with Angelina's disappearance. There is evidence (explained away during the course of this plot line) that points in the opposite direction, and he really goes a little crazy trying to get himself out of this mess. He's also got Santos (who, by the way, I couldn't stand) to deal with -- a colleague who for some reason goes off the deep end on the ball-busting side trying to make a case against Beckman.  On the other hand, bringing all of the storylines together leads to a very rushed and sloppy last few chapters that just didn't work. First of all, I figured out the Angelina angle way early on in the game; second, after such a long buildup, the actual ending came rushing out a little too quickly.  However, I will say that the last page  left a bit of a shiver running up my spine as I realized the implications for Beckham's future.  

I'm just not a big thriller reader, so really, this book didn't really grab me all that much. Billed as a "spellbinding new novel of suspense," I found it to be neither all that spellbinding nor suspenseful. It's like been there, seen that, nothing highly original here. And really, when someone writes 22 books in 21 years, well, think about it -- there's no way the output is going to fall on the literary side of crime writing.  On the other hand, my husband, who is very much into thrillers of all sorts absolutely loved it,  with the exception of the ending.  And from what I can see now looking at reader reviews and ratings, there are many other people who think like he did -- it's getting some 4 and 5-star ratings and readers are enjoying it immensely.  

Bottom line -- thriller readers or regular readers of the author's work  (if my husband is any judge) will  love it.  

*****

I read this book for TLC book tours, and there are still plenty of opinions to come after mine. The schedule for this book can be found here.  Many thanks to Lisa for thinking of me!

for the action-packed set: Windy City Blues, by Marc Krulewitch

9780804177214
Alibi, 2015

kindle ed.

(I did receive a copy of the book, but as happens often, I  ended up not being able to find it when needed so I ended up buying my copy)

Windy City Blues is the second novel in a series to feature Jules Landau, a Chicago private eye with a family history he'd much rather forget -- a take on the PI subgenre that I personally haven't encountered up until now.  The action begins in a short chapter with the murder of a parking officer, Bagrat Gelashvili, aka Jack. Jack is killed in his own neighborhood, but the homicide detectives in charge of the investigation  don't seem to care very much about getting serious about why Jack's dead. A week later, a concerned citizen visits the office of PI Jules Landau, and wants to pay him to find out who did it. He didn't know Jack, but he lives in the neighborhood where Jack met his end.  Remembering the Boston Marathon bombing and how deeply it affected him, he wants Jules to find out who did it so that the case does not stay unsolved -- he is also thinking about how the lives of his children, three year-old twins, who will "never be the same" after seeing the ambulance, police cars and the crowd. He needs to know "why a life was extinguished so close to where my children, my neighbors, and I lay our heads to sleep."  Jules, whose father wasn't particularly happy about the last murder case his son took on, is definitely interested, because the previous murder case he'd solved had made him feel that "he never felt more alive" while investigating it.  Needless to say (or we wouldn't be here right now, right?) Jules takes the case, but he has no idea what he's actually in for. As it turns out, the murder of the parking officer is just the first step down a long path that will take him places he never would have believed.

The story takes a twisty path before it gets to the end. If you can imagine a flow chart  looking something like this:

with the murder of the parking officer as the central event, that's what Landau eventually runs up against. In fact, he uses a flow chart to help himself make connections throughout the story; a necessity because every time he uncovers one clue, it leads to several others. This central mystery of who killed Jack and why is intriguing, the writing style is gritty, and the plot kept me interested -- to a point. I enjoy mystery novels where the facts are revealed slowly, little by little, and that is definitely the case here.  There are also a couple of built-in red herrings that sent my thinking in odd directions before getting back to business.

Now here come the niggles. The first obstacle is the good citizen who comes to Jules'  office and starts the ball rolling.   I mean seriously.  Most people would be irate and upset about a murder happening in his or her neighborhood, but probably not enough to spend a ton of money to hire a PI to do the job of the police, even if the police aren't doing their jobs. That is simply not realistic; it is simply not human nature.  Another thing:  Windy City Blues is the second in a series to feature Jules Landau -- and there's a lot in here about his father and  his dying mentor Frownie, as well as his previous murder case. A mention or two here and there about Landau's past might have been enough to get all of this down for someone who hasn't read this second book, whereas there are full chapters devoted especially to Frownie that totally interrupted the flow of the rest of the story.  I've read plenty of series novels in my life, and I've seen this kind of thing done so that it doesn't take up so much space and reader attention while still getting the point across.  Third:  I appreciated Jules' little "updates" each time he learns something new and is trying to make connections, because things start getting a little confusing as the scope of the bad guys grows in ever-widening circles.

 I'm not exactly sure just how to characterize this novel -- when all is said and done, it's like an action-packed  private eye/conspiracy/mob/corruption/crime thriller/murder mystery with a little bit of love interest added in. This becomes problematic at the end  because combining so many elements lends itself toward the entire story simultaneously coming together and falling apart as you're turning the final pages. It also finishes with that Hollywood/TV-style big flourish that  seems to be de rigeur  these days, which is, I suppose,  what readers want, but definitely not my style.

So, while I enjoyed the mystery component, Jules, and getting to the solution of the murder, there were a number of  distractions along the way and I thought the set up and ending were both too over the top to be believable. But hey - there are plenty of people who love that sort of thing, AND there are plenty of people who started with the first book in the series and continued on, so I guess that's why this book is getting some pretty good 4 and 5 star reviews.

****

I read this novel as part of a TLC book tour and it looks like I'm the end! If you'd like to see what a group other readers thought of this novel, you can find their reviews (which are pretty positive on the whole!) here. 

The White Van, by Patrick Hoffman

9780802123046
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2014
242 pp

hardcover - from the publisher, thank you!

Set on the streets of San Francisco, The White Van opens to something I've not yet seen in my crime-fiction reading history.  Sitting in a local bar in the city's Tenderloin district one night, a 31 year-old woman named Emily Rosario meets a Russian man who charms her with whiskey and the promise of crack. She allows him to take her to a South Side Ramada Inn, where after the crack pipe comes out, he tells her that he and his wife (who have another room in the same place) are in town to make some money.  With the promise of two hundred dollars a day, he adds that they'd like her help in their plans. Emily, who had been thinking about leaving her cheating bruiser of a boyfriend and needed the money to do so, agrees, and she's treated to more drugs, pills this time. In a drug-filled haze for several days, she finally is told what she needs to do -- nothing terrible, just a little case of "identity theft."   As it turns out though, still out of her head drugged out, she's put into a van with a few other Russian people, and they head to a bank.  She gets step-by-step instructions on what to do via an earpiece in her head, and told not to worry -- that someone on the inside is in on it.  But as in most sure things, something goes terribly wrong and it's not the Russians who get their hands on the money. 

Enter policeman Leo Elias, a member of the gang task force. His life is spiraling out of control due to gambling and some very poor financial choices he's made, and it's so bad that his house is being foreclosed on and he hasn't yet told his wife.  His idea is that since the bank hasn't yet recovered the stolen $800 thousand-plus dollars, maybe he can get his hands on it using good old-fashioned police work and solve his monetary problems that way; but again, things just don't go as planned, and things take a definite turn for the worse. In the meantime, he's not the only one looking for the money.

from sfgate.com

 What follows is pure action -- the stuff of thriller novels to be sure.  Sandwiched in between all of the drug sellers, drug addicts, crooked cops, mobsters, etc. are the backstories of the main players showing how they all came to be here and what's motivating them to do what they're doing.

If the point of this book is that sometimes the people who are supposed to protect you can be just as bad as the people they're supposed to protect you against, well, it came through loud and clear. Or maybe it's that people in desperate circumstances will do whatever it takes to get out of them.  Or maybe it's just a book about the turmoil of life on the streets of San Francisco.  I'm not exactly sure why, but I had zero connection to any of the characters in this book, where normally I can at least try to empathize with people drawn into circumstances beyond their control.

The White Van seems to be made for people who prefer plot-driven, nonstop action thrillers; I discovered after reading for a while that I'm just not the right audience for this book.  However, if you look at the reviews that have been posted about this novel, I seem to be in the minority of opinion  once again -- it's getting some good press and high marks from readers. I'd say if you're a big thriller reader, this might just be a book to look into.

for TLC book tours: The Summer of Long Knives, by Jim Snowden

9781620151532
booktrope, 2013
319 pp

paperback, sent by the publisher, thanks!

Another book by an indie publisher and author (who just happened to get his degree at University of Washington and lives in Seattle, the best city in America).  The premise of The Summer of Long Knives is a good one. It's 1936, and police Kommisar Rolf Wundt of Munich is ready to walk away from the Nazis and from Germany, taking his wife Klara with him. Wundt had earlier solved the case of the serial killer known as the Dresden Vampire, and he's a good cop. There's just one more case left for him to solve before he flees, that of a murdered little German girl found at a farmhouse belonging to the family Epp. But, just like in the real world, things do not always go as planned.

Even though Wundt and his team at the police department are on to a strong lead from photographic evidence they'd culled together, the case suddenly comes to a halt when the decision is made by higher powers to make Heydrick and Himmler  "the new lords and masters at KRIPO," effectively putting the SS in charge of German police forces. Under their watch, Jewish scapegoats are brought in for "questioning" in the case, then executed for the murder of the little girl. Wundt knows that these boys didn't do it, but with the SS in control, he's beaten, and what can he do? As he's getting ready to pack up and leave, he's going through some old files and comes across one from some years earlier that is linked to the little girl's murder, a file he'd never seen before, put there just for him.   Suddenly, his plans for leaving are put on hold as he realizes that he must solve this crime, not just for justice but for his own personal redemption. With the SS breathing down his neck, it's going to be difficult, and his investigation just may mean the end of his plans for freedom.

The author is on his game when he is focused on the crime segments of this novel as well as during his depictions of Wundt's frustration at the SS takeover of the criminal investigation agency of the police. The book starts out very nicely with the discovery of the body, leading to Wundt's investigation, and police work  that leads Wundt in a positive direction toward the possible identity of the little girl's killer.  When he turns to psychiatrist-wife Klara, who helps with profiling the killer, it's an added plus.  But around the crime, I had a lot of issues with the writing. Sometimes the SS people, most especially in their "interrogation" with the Jewish suspect in the girl's murder,  came across as truly stereotypical Nazis you might see on television. Then there are Wundt's inner musings. For example, there's one scene where Wundt is musing about Marlene Dietrich and her "magical reversal of power," her "indifference to men," and holding her up as the standard of German womanhood. Huh? Another example: on seeing his boss's naked torso at his raquet club, there's this:

"Rolf had never known just how much hair covered Helmut's body. Tufts of it sprouted from his nipples and their environs, and from the ridges of his shoulder blades, like swamp ferns. He'd need to have them waxed if he wanted to join the SS. From what Rolf had seen in the films, they had a smooth skin fetish." 

Huh?  These sorts of things pop up all throughout the novel (including a brief discourse on Bentham's panopticon which seems out of place), and to say that they're jarring is an understatement. The author also, from time to time, uses expressions that seem more at home in our current world than in Nazi Germany, pulling me out of the time frame.

Overall,  the author can write crime scenes well, and he's good at, as the back cover blurb notes, "telling stories about people who find that the rules they've lived by are turning against them." That theme comes through loud and clear in Summer of Long Knives.  However, I didn't really enjoy the periodic lapsing into moments I've noted above  that left me wondering about their relevance.  I read literary fiction all of the time so I get what he's trying to do here, but less would have been so much more in this novel, which started out so promisingly well. But once again, I'm probably being nitpicky --  I'm looking at reader reviews and they almost all seem to love this book, 4 & 5 stars pretty much across the board, making me realize just how tough of an audience I really am.

Once again, my thanks to the good people at TLC book tours, and if you'd like to read what other readers thought about this novel, you can follow them here.

for TLC book tours: Laura Lippman's After I'm Gone

9780062083418
William Morrow, 2014
331 pp

paperback, sent by the publisher  -- thanks!

After I'm Gone is the first book I've read by Laura Lippman, an author with eighteen published novels,  a collection of short stories, and one book scheduled to be published in February of 2015.  After I'm Gone is a standalone novel,  not part of her ongoing series, although  PI Tess Monaghan does make a very brief appearance in this book, albeit unconnected to the story at hand.  It is less a crime novel than a family saga, and when all is said and done, the novel reveals how a single moment of decision can have effects that continue to reverberate through time.

Felix Brewer has done pretty well for himself -- he's a successful bookie who has a few other shady side businesses as well as a legitimate enterprise, a small coffee shop.  He is  married to Bambi, with whom he has three daughters, but Felix also has a few women on the side. One of these women is Julie Saxony, a stripper who goes by the moniker Juliet Romeo who is in love with Felix and hopes that someday he'll leave Bambi for her, even though Felix has always been up front about no divorce. In 1976, after Felix is convicted for his criminal activities, rather than face prison, he just takes off, without a word to his family. Ten years to the day after he leaves, Julie Saxony disappears, and it's assumed that she's gone off to be with Felix. However, some years later, her body is discovered in a park. While the publicity surrounding Julie's death dredges up the whole Felix story again, the killer is never found and the case just sort of goes nowhere.   Now, in the present, a cold-case consultant and retired detective named Roberto "Sandy" Sanchez picks up the cold trail, determined to solve the case. 

If this were the long and short of the story, I'd classify it solely as crime fiction, but as I noted, it's more of a long-term family drama. After I'm Gone actually examines the effects of Felix's disappearance from the points of view of the women in his life -- his wife, his daughters, and Julie Saxony, his mistress.  Character, rather than plot, drives this novel that spans several decades, and Sandy, through his investigation,  is there to tie things all together. The Brewer women limp by over the years,  with Bambi, who has literally gone from riches to rags, shored up emotionally and financially by the daughters and supported by close family friends. In the meantime,  Julie Saxony, who is strangely concerned with keeping tabs on Felix's family,  is determined to make something of herself, up until the day that someone kills her.

Considering that the word "thriller" is used in the back-cover blurb,  I  expected much more crimewise. While I'll admit that it was difficult not to become interested in their lives, I found that  there are a number of chapters where I had to question the relevance to what is going on overall in the bigger picture of the crime. And then there's Sandy, who's trying to solve the case but  really only gets only bit parts in this book as compared  to everyone else. Even when we're in a Sandy chapter, there's more about his self-perceived failures in life than his police work. This gets old really fast.  I liked Sandy and wanted to see more of him professionally, but that just wasn't the case.   I also figured out the who way before the police did, which is kind of sad, considering the possible number of suspects in this book.  

When all is said and done, I was drawn into the story, even though it's not nearly as edgy as the crime I normally read.  I liked the multiple points of view approach and the long span of time that really lets the reader get to know the characters.   I'd recommend it to people who enjoy crime writing  on the lighter side, and to people who are happiest reading character-,  rather than plot-driven novels. 

My thanks to TLC book tours for offering me a look into this novel.  This is a tour, so many bloggers have offered their take on this book, and you can find them all here. 

now here's something refreshingly different: The Devil's Road to Kathmandu, by Tom Vater

kindle copy
2012
Crime Wave Press
(also in paperback)

I'll be on this indie writer/indie press kick for a while since I have so many small-press books in my library, and some on my kindle (although I really don't prefer ebooks over real ones). First up is a book by author Tom Vater, who is not only a crime writer, but who also co-founded Crime Wave Press. As the little blurb at Crime Wave's website notes,

"Founded in 2012 by publisher Hans Kemp of Visionary World and writer Tom Vater, Crime Wave Press publishes a range of crime fiction - from whodunits to Noir and Hardboiled, from historical mysteries to espionage thrillers, from literary crime to pulp fiction, from highly commercial page turners to marginal texts exploring our planet's dark underbelly." 

Can we say right up my alley? So having heard about this small press, I decided to give The Devil's Road to Kathmandu a read, and now I'm planning on reading my way through this publishing company. Not all at once for sure, but their books will be worked into my regular crime fiction reads.

The Devil's Road to Kathmandu is divided into two different time periods, but moves easily back and forth across both; not an easy task for some writers, but here the author does it most assuredly.  In 1976, three British hippie friends Fred, Tim and Dan, make a plan to drive across Asia  to India  to buy drugs and then sell them again once they reach Nepal.  They buy a Bedford bus specifically for the trip; as Dan says to his friends, "We've got the opportunity to do something different with our lives."  They are pretty much stoned all of the time, pot, acid, opium, you name it they did it, but it's a great adventure.  In Ishafan, Iran,  the trio adds another traveler to the mix, Thierry, from France, whom they met at a nightclub called the Blue Parrot. It seems that Thierry owes some money to the wrong people and needs to make an escape.  He  joins the adventure as they make their way into Pakistan, which  turns out to be a nightmare, but the group makes it into India and finally into Nepal, where they decide to bank the drug money they've made.  Dan and Tim fly on home, Thierry decides to stay and wait for the woman he loves, and Fred just  disappears. Flash forward to 2000, and now Dan's son Robbie has gone on his own journey in the same area.  He meets up with his dad, who has returned to Kathmandu after all this time, drawn there by an email from the long-lost Fred who reminds him that the money's still there and he & Tim should come and get it. Unfortunately for all, it seems that their pasts have come back to haunt them.

There are plenty of unique, crazy and offbeat characters that fill this novel, and the author has a keen eye for detail.  The part of this story that took place in the Blue Parrot is one of my favorites, and is an excellent example of how the author sets a scene that sucks the reader right into the action. Using impressive descriptions, dialogue that's totally believable and creating such a realistic atmosphere that you feel like you're actually there along with the boys from the bus drinking it all in, he's created a world out of this nightclub that I hated to leave. And that's only one instance ... he does the same where ever the action is -- in Pakistan, India, and most especially in Kathmandu.  This is definitely not your average crime novel, which is a very good thing. Definitely and most highly recommended.

betrayal abounds in The Accident, by Chris Pavone

9780385348454
Crown Publishing, 2014
385 pp

hardcover from publisher, thanks!

The main focus of this novel is a  manuscript titled The Accident, which  if published threatens to take down the wide-ranging, worldwide empire of media mogul Charlie Wolfe. The anonymous author  has written a tell-all book that exposes a lot of egregious secrets about the rich and powerful, and the manuscript also churns up an incident in Wolfe's past that the author now decides to reveal.  Isabel Reed, who receives the manuscript with only an e-mail address as a contact, has to make a pretty hefty decision herself: should she make sure that this book gets published?  Should she pretend that she'd never read it or even received it? Or should she go the authorities, the news media itself, or even call the White House? Figuring that she can't be killed "in front of the whole world," if she goes public, she decides to hand the book off to an acquiring editor she knows would be the right person to see it through.  Unknown to Isabel, along with Wolfe, there's a CIA agent in Copenhagen who also doesn't want the book to be published; in fact, he doesn't want the manuscript to exist at all.  But as it turns out, the manuscript is already making its way into hands other than those belonging to  Isabel and her editor friend, as others see it as a perfect medium for saving or making their careers.  

At the heart of this novel it's all about betrayal, and trust me, there is a lot of duplicity and double-dealing going on all through this book.  Well beyond the anonymous author's exposé of Wolfe, there are people who see the manuscript as a way to elevate or launch their respective careers, there is one who sees its potential as not only a blockbuster but also a way to save a failing business, and there are other, more personal types of betrayals going on among some of the characters as well. This theme was well expressed, and the look behind the scenes at the publishing industry is quite interesting, especially the fact that it sometimes takes only a look at the first page to decide whether a book is worthy of continuing on to the second or not.  The author's bio page at his website reveals that he knows what he's talking about, since he spent nearly two decades working at a number of different publishing houses. And I do have to say that  I particularly enjoyed the piece-by-piece unraveling of one particular secret that isn't made known until the very end.   But let's face it: the trope of the anonymous manuscript that if made known will cause empires to crumble and secrets of the rich and powerful to be released is just not that original any more. Not only that, but the big secret that the anonymous author refers to in the title of his manuscript would be along the same lines as if someone had revealed that Steve Jobs had done something heinous  in his college years -- yeah, it's shocking, but that act alone wouldn't have brought down either Apple or Jobs, especially nowadays. In my head, I'm thinking that all of the other stuff that Wolfe was up to would have been far worse and better to focus on as the meat of the anonymous manuscript.  Bottom line here: while there is some suspense that kept me reading this novel, I've read better.  

I'm looking at reader criticism on another screen right now, and most people are saying that The Accident is not nearly as good as Pavone's The Expats, so I'll probably try to rotate that one into my reading schedule to see what I may have missed.  All in all, this one was just okay. 

from the "godfather of Australian crime" - Silent Kill, by Peter Corris

9781743316375
Allen and Unwin, 2014
255 pp

paperback - my copy from Shannon at IPG -- thanks!

"Problem simple, solution difficult." 

Not counting the short-story collections, author Peter Corris has written 33 series books  starring Cliff Hardy, eight of which ended up as finalists for the Ned Kelly award for best novel. It's a little embarrassing, but until I was asked to take a look at this book, I'd never heard of Peter Corris before. I also need to say that it is a bit daunting and a bit of a disadvantage to start with this latest book.  I have no clue, except for little peeks here and there, about Cliff Hardy's past or exactly who he is as a character. Normally I'd go back and read what I'd missed prior to writing about a later series novel, but this time, well, you know -- thirty-something freakin' books to catch up on is just a little much.

PI Cliff Hardy gets a visit from Jack Buchanan, "ex-commando, ex-stuntman, and actor." He's also someone Hardy hasn't seen in ten years.  He has an interesting proposition for Hardy, who as it turns out, needs the money -- business isn't so good, and Hardy needs something to occupy his time as his girlfriend has just left for Los Angeles and probably won't be coming back. Buchanan wants Hardy to serve as a bodyguard for a client of his named Rory O'Hara, who Hardy describes as a "firebrand."  O'Hara had worn a number of hats in his past, including student agitator,  "crusading journalist," an MP, and since inheriting a lot of money, he's become "self-funded righter of society's wrongs."  Lately he'd been a whistle blower on a big development backed by "shonky" financing, corrupt officials, and falsification of reports.  O'Hara had people on the inside gathering info for him, and he'd published his discoveries online. Now he's just coming out of the hospital after being the victim of a hit and run, and has a tour planned to talk about his plans to "clear up more" wrongdoing, and "reveal stuff about a big political shake-up."   Buchanan wants to make sure that his investment in O'Hara's tour remains sound -- and wants Cliff along to make sure nothing happens to O'Hara, since his whistle blowing has left  him with a lot of enemies.  Sounds simple, but things start to go wrong almost right away when a woman on the tour is found dead, putting Cliff out of a job. But wait. Her brother offers him a lot of money to find out who killed her and why. Starting with the group of people on the tour, Cliff soon begins to discover that there's much more here  than meets the eye - ultimately putting himself and a woman he's fallen for into a great deal of danger. As he moves across the country, he also realizes that someone is pulling a lot of strings -- but exactly who and why is what he has to find out.

Silent Kill  is not a difficult book to read, and Corris writes very simply.  I sort of felt sorry for the main character, because what I did manage to glean from the little bits of his past here is that he's not lucky in love, and he's just getting back to a good relationship with his daughter. He seems like a tough guy on the job, although  kind of woebegone in the personal zone.   The story takes a convoluted path but is easy to follow, plausible, and it becomes a hybrid mystery/thriller that kept me turning pages. Although the murderer is identified before the end of part one, and that piece of the mystery is over, there's still Hardy's "simple problem" to solve:  who was so worried about what O'Hara might do with his recent information  that they set a killer in his midst? Here things sort of move into thriller zone,  not my usual fare, but for those who enjoy them, there's plenty of high-powered action, conspiracies to sink your teeth into, and a solution that resonates with the times. All you have to do is pick up a newspaper to confirm what I'm saying.

Overall, it's always fun discovering a "new" author -- although Corris has been around a long time, he's a new blip on my international crime author radar that needs tracking.  I think I'd recommend Silent Kill to people who are intrigued with thrillers that lean toward the action-packed, political side - not my usual forte but I did enjoy the way the author writes and above all, I enjoyed meeting Cliff Hardy.

my many thanks again to Shannon at IPG, and I LOVE sharing the books I get with publishers, so if anyone in the US would like my copy, please let me know and it's yours.

pop this one into your beach bag this summer: Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King

9781476754451
Scribner, 2014
437 pp

hardcover


Let me just say this and get it out of the way: there is nothing in the supernatural realm occurring in this story,  but there is a monster here. He is neither a vampire, nor a ghost;  he is not the dark forces of evil dressed up in a clown costume. He's just a person. And he got away with a horrendous crime.

Detective William (Bill) Hodges has recently retired, and sits watching mindless television day after day, often with a gun in his lap and thoughts of suicide not too far off.   When he left the force, he left behind a few unsolved cases he'd been working on, but the one that haunts him most is that of the Mercedes Killer, so named because he drove a big Mercedes into a gigantic crowd of people waiting in line behind ropes for the opening of a job fair (promising 1,000 jobs)  on a foggy morning, killing several including a baby.   But Bill's ennui is about to be lifted -- he receives a letter from someone who says he's responsible, telling Bill that since he is such a big failure, he should just kill himself.  The letter writer, who just  a few pages later we're told is Brady Hartsfield (aka the "Mr. Mercedes" of the title),  tells Bill that he can communicate with him via a very private chat/social site called Under Debbie's Blue Umbrella, where the "perk," as he calls himself, has already set up Hodges with a user name.  Bill knows that he should probably turn the letter in to his old partner Pete, but he's intrigued -- and he wants to nail this guy.  Rather than inspiring Bill to eat his gun, the letter gets his blood flowing again, and he decides to take this bad guy on -- but on Bill's  terms.

The usual King touches that are the hallmark of his books are here as well. King's forte is evil people who blend in to the community, and he does this very well.  On the outside, Hartsfield seems pretty average, working two jobs, well liked by his customers at both. On the inside, though, he's a really sick guy, with a bizarre relationship with his mom, recurring killer headaches, and lives in his own little basement world where he is into books, movies, and games that glorify violence. When things don't go his way, watch out. King writes him so well that I was happy to get out of the Hartsfield scenes, especially at his home, but he just gets worse the farther along the story goes. Also, while in pretty  much every Stephen King novel you can expect  the ultimate showdown between good and evil, as he's taking you to that moment,  he doesn't lead the story down paths one might expect.  Under Debbie's Blue Umbrella, for example, doesn't turn out to be the typical device for offering clues via chats between the killer and the cop, and two deaths move things in very different ways than originally planned.   The way the author throws in a few game changers along the way keeps things just a little bit off balance, so that you have to sort of re-evaluate what you think is going to happen next.  

But aside from those Stephen King touches (and many others)  throughout the book, Mr. Mercedes has been done before. Here the reader finds very familiar territory:  there's the retired cop frustrated by the big case in his career that remains unsolved, the damaged bad guy working two menial jobs and  in a sick sort of love/hate relationship with his alcoholic  mother,  the Harvard-bound brainy and tech-savvy young sidekick helping the computer-ignorant cop, and of course, a romantic love interest.   There's no mystery here, really, since the "who" is given away very early on -- it's much more of a thriller where the race is on to stop the bad guy  before he can implement his next terrible plan, one that will make the Mercedes massacre look tame. 

 Mr. Mercedes is a good enough read for a lazy couple of  days in that  laying-on-the-beach kind of book-that-you-can-read quickly sort of way.  It's definitely a crime thriller with no supernatural elements involved, the perfect escape novel when you want something sort of mindless to read while you're relaxing in the summer sun. I'm afraid I didn't enjoy it as much as others seem to have, but  that's okay. I'm sure that even without my vote it will become a huge bestseller.

Black Chalk, by Christopher J. Yates

 9781846557286
Harvill Secker, 2013
343 pp

paperback

my copy via Independent Publisher's Group (thank you!)

"...it was never supposed to be that kind of game." 

Because I'm such a voracious reader, sometimes I feel like I've read every possible mystery/thriller/suspense plot line that ever existed. Not only did this one bring something different,  it also made me think of a way the author could follow up this novel with another one.  [Dear Mr. Yates: if you want to hear my idea, send me an email. I promise I won't sue if you choose to use it.]   Overall,  Black Chalk was a good enough read -- one with its flaws, for sure, but I'll talk about that later.  For a now -- a little peek.

Jolyon Johnson is a first year student at Pitt College, Oxford.  The first person to befriend him is Chad Mason, an American student at Oxford, also a newcomer and enrolled in a one-year program there. Soon they meet Jack "no P in Thomson", a history student,  and it isn't long until the three find themselves at the Freshers' Fair, an "event to showcase for the new students the diverse multitude of thrilling societies they could join ..." where "the nomenclature of each society invariably concluded with the word 'Soc.'   When Jolyon and Jack are ready to leave and go off to a pub, Chad takes them to the "Game Soc" stall.  There Chad makes a strange "proposition" for "an entirely original and inventive game," one which quickly grabs the attention of the three people manning the stall:

"Six people, a number of rounds, one each separated by a week. A game of consequences, consequences which must be performed to prevent elimination. These consequences take the form of psychological dares, challenges designed to test how much embarrassment and humiliation the players can stand. Throughout the rounds players who fail to perform their consequences are eliminated until only one is left standing."

 The game would be played in total secrecy, the consequences starting out as "humourous dares," and as the rounds progressed, the "consequences would become tougher." Nothing illegal or dangerous is involved. The winner would win money, which Chad hopes the Game Soc will  help them with.  The Game Soc. is in -- albeit with a few conditions.  Chad, Jack and Jolyon go about recruiting the other three members: Dee, who writes poetry;  Emilia, a psychology student, and Mark, "the cleverest person at Pitt," according to Jolyon. The group hangs out in Jolyon's room to drink and the play the game -- and everything goes along swimmingly, at least at first.  Flashing forward to the present, fourteen years later -- Jolyon is now in New York City, a veritable shut-in living in his apartment with all of the windows covered, having to rely on his own mnemonics system to remember what to do each day -- and for him, the final stages of the game that started so long ago are about to begin.

The novel is related via journal format, moving back and forth in time.  It is in part Jolyon's "confession," and just 76 pages into the book  he posits a question that will set the stage  for the entire story:

"... I must place in front of you a question. Because there are two opposites to consider and before my story is told you must judge me.

What am I? Murderer? Or innocent?"

This one question, of course, whetted my appetite for more.

Frankly speaking, I found the novel to be an okay read, one which, if  I had to summarize it in one sentence,  I'd call  a story of psychological/head game warfare among a group of  people who were once friends, with the author  focusing on how the consequences of the game had lasting effects that spilled over into the present -- a premise that I found very cool.  The modern-day scenes relating to Jolyon as a recluse were also good and got me interested in how he came to be that way; my attention was also grabbed by the element of the last days of the game being at hand. At that point I had no idea a) what the game entailed, b) what Jolyon may have done that prompted his "confession," and  c) why the end of the game might be cause for Jolyon to be so concerned. Frankly it was the getting there, the events of the past linked to the game that held the bulk of my interest.

I'm of two minds here. First, in some areas, this book proves that old axiom that less is more. As just one example, I think that the author spent way too much time on extraneous things like what the students were drinking on a particular night or what drugs they were taking, the philosophical discussions they had --  almost as if he had to convince his readers that these people were indeed college students and doing what college students normally do. Throwing in the poetry one of the students wrote also seemed a little too much. There are just too many details that detract from the a) main thrust and b) the initial dark and mysterious  atmosphere of the novel.  On the other hand, the opposite is also true -- in some areas, I was left hanging with a lot of unanswered questions, most especially re the Game Soc. It's this weird, shadowy group without which the game would have never come to pass, but  there's only a small bit of explanation as to who they are,  not enough to really explain their presence, or why they do this sort of thing (as in what's in it for them),  let alone their sustained interest some fourteen years later.  And then, after so much time invested in getting to the circumstances behind the initial enigmas presented in the first chapters,  when the final "showdown" came along, I found it to be on the anti-climactic side and the ending somewhat abrupt. Plus, when all is explained, the final reveal is sprinkled with a few cliché thriller elements on the side that I'd already figured out very early on.

What I see overall is a good, fresh premise, some intriguing questions central to the plot that are asked and answered, and what could have been a very dark and satisfying novel had the author been maybe a little more experienced in terms of writing. I also have to say that while maybe it fell short of my own personal expectations,  this is his first book and yes, he made some mistakes here, but I think if he tries again, he'll be much more aware of the pitfalls. I'd certainly give him another try.

and yes, Mr. Yates, I really meant it about the next idea for the book --

another indie: Border Field Blues, by Corey Lynn Fayman

9781477600023
Create Space, 2012
316 pp

paperback
my copy from the author - -thanks!

First -- epic-proportion sized apologies to the author & to his publicist for taking nearly a month to get this done,  but sadly, I haven't had a whole lot of time because we remodeled our upstairs & I swear, it was just like moving in from scratch.  But now we're all put together in time for the holidays, and it's back to reading business as usual. Finally! Word to the wise: if you're going to completely redo your home, think twice.

First, let me say this: I have no idea why this book hasn't been picked up by a regular  publisher -- it's certainly good enough.  This author can put together a good mystery that keeps you intrigued to the last page.  The novel has a good noir tone to it, along with some funny moments, quirky characters and a twisty story. Border Field Blues is the second book in a series starting with Black's Beach Shuffle, which I thought I would read before this one but didn't get to. But I'll definitely pick up a copy now, and my understanding is that there is a third novel in the works.

Rolly Waters, guitarist, former band member, and now PI living in San Diego (my favorite city in CA),  has been asked by his friend Max to look into who might be behind an act of destruction that left a Least Tern preserve near the border  in shambles. Rolly is just a good guy whose circumstances haven't always been so great -- not a hardboiled kind of PI at all.  As a cast of strange characters starts to become interested in what he's doing, he soon realizes that he's probably in way over his head as the case leads to not one, but possibly several murders.  A CD left behind at the scene is one of the few clues he has, leading him to a bizarre woman who encourages voyeurs, a young guy who drives a hearse and has a skeleton pin pierced through his septum, a crazy guy in scrubs who has a thing about scalpels and some overly gung-ho members of the AFA, a sort of vigilante group that patrols the border with paint guns.   The further he goes, the more he is warned off -- but he owes it to Max to find out what happened at the bird preserve so for him, quitting is not an option.  Border Field Blues starts in the past, and it is to the past that Rolly will have to turn to figure out exactly what's going on here.

Aside from the few distracting typos, the only niggle I have is that sometimes the characters, although meant to be quirky, come off as a little too larger than life.  The border guy, Nuge, for example, sounds like he was pulled right out of a movie.  Otherwise, I really liked this one -- very unpredictable and twisty, number one; number two, the main character is very credible and realistic -- the hapless good guy who is just doing his job and gets sucked into something well beyond what he's been hired to do, and number three -- the setting is done so well --  I used to hike there, up past Monument Mesa, and the author's description of the whole area is spot on.  If you forget the typos, this book is also much more polished in tone than the work of a lot of  indie crime authors I've read, which made me wonder after finishing it why he hasn't been picked up by a more mainstream publisher. It's also funny at times, enough to break the tension here and there.

I want to address a point made by some other reviewers about this book re the video game.  Some people have said it was murky, or left unexplained -- but I don't think these people read the story closely enough to get why the author included it.  It fits, and fits well considering the character involved. I didn't find any loose ends in this book.

At the end of the day, the book 1) kept me reading to get to the root of what was going on, 2) had a good and twisty mystery with a satisfying conclusion, and 3) had a more polished  tone than many crime novels I've read that have come from the big-name publishers.   Cozy readers -- probably not for you. Hardboiled or really dark noir fans -- probably a bit on the lighter side of what you normally read.  For me it had enough edginess, grit and crime to make it intriguing, mixed with odd characters that certainly kept things very lively.

again...my apologies for taking forever!

*Tomorrow City, by Kirk Kjeldsen

9789881554215
Signal 8 Press, 2013
200 pp

paper
copy from publisher -- thank you!

My thanks to Pinky at Signal 8 Press for my copy, and apologies for waiting so long to get to it.  I've been trying to get through the books that are shortlisted for this year's  CWA International Dagger before tackling anything else, so a very heartfelt apology to you, Pinky (the same  to Ben Winters and to  the wonderful people at Soho -- I'll be reading all of your books before the month is out).

The past catches up to ex-con Brendan Lavin, who gets out of prison and tries to reinvent himself in order to avoid going back.  Brendan owns a bakery which isn't doing too well, but still he hangs in there. He's come to a low point --  there's enough money to pay one bill out of many, and he has no money for fun things.  While he's struggling, he receives a visit from his girlfriend's cousin,  one of his old partners in crime. Brendan went down for the last job they pulled, kept his mouth shut and in return they took care of him. Once free, Brendan had no desire to be around them -- but now his past is looking at him in the face.  The cousin, Tommy, offers him a job with his old crew, which Brendan turns down flat -- but when he can't pay the increased rent the landlord demands, he has second thoughts and goes back to the old life and his former cohorts in crime. The job gets botched pretty badly, with Tommy ending up dead and desperate, Brendan decides to make a clean getaway and start over somewhere else. China is about as remote as he can think of, so he steals a passport and makes his way to a new place and a new life.  Things go well for several years  -- he has started over with a new name, has a family and has built up a good business, but eventually, Brendan's past manages to catch up to him, threatening him and his new life.

Kjeldsen has written a good story with a main character you can't help but feel sorry for, even though he's done some pretty bad things in his time.  Brendan's mom was a heroin addict, his dad bailed, he hooked up with the wrong people and went to prison for his crimes, but at the same time, he is determined to make something of himself and turn his life around. You can actively sense the frustration and the feeling of utter hopelessness that pressures him into becoming a criminal again; later, his conscience and his pulled-apart self  often comes to him in the form of dead Tommy.  Yet there's also the Brendan who's later become an active dad, and who will do anything for his family, especially when the situation gets pretty dire. Kjeldsen, who lives there,  obviously loves Shanghai and has a great deal of insight into its character -- he evokes the city as a place of both past, present and future, a "disparate" city that all comes together "into one unified and dynamic system, inseparable, and complementary parts of a whole...".   Here Shanghai hits all ends of the spectrum -- between migrants with their wooden carts on one hand and "rich Westerners and locals in gleaming new Maseratis and Bentleys,"  on the other; with gated communities and "luxury penthouses" juxtaposed against the "corrugated metal shacks" and shelters made of old shipping containers.  There's also a lot of action in this book -- but here's the thing -- all of that action and emotional buildup throughout the novel comes to a really quick ending that reads more like a chronological account than a continuing story.  It's like there's a series of events that buzz by so quickly that it's almost a "then this happened, then this happened, then this happened," kind of thing, with very little to flesh out events, not really keeping in line with the way the rest of the book read.   Normally I get upset when authors use a lot of extraneous verbiage to pad out their stories; here I wanted more.  I think if the author had added more of Brendan's post-Shanghai experiences into the mix, keeping in tune with his storytelling skills up to that point, it would have been much better, finishing off with more of a bang.   One more thing -- the Chinese word "nai nai" (奶奶)  refers to the paternal grandmother, and when Brendan talks about his daughter's Chinese grandmother, he uses that term. Just a little thing, really, but it grated.

Considering it's a first effort, it's a really good one but in this case, less is definitely not more. Recommended.  I hope Mr. Kjeldsen does well and that he starts another book!