Hypothermia, by Arnaldur Indridason

Harvill Secker/Random House

ISBN: 9781846552625

There's a subtle elegance to this particular story, considering it's a novel of crime fiction. There are no raging maniacs with axes hanging about, no serial killers, and no serious threats to the people of Reykjavik. In fact, there seems to be a lull in crime as this story opens, and Erlendur has some time to go back to some very cold cases. While pondering the ones that got away unanswered, he becomes involved with a new case, that of a woman who was found hanging in her vacation home. There are no signs to indicate anything other than suicide, but her friend Karen isn't so sure. Karen brings Erlendur a cassette tape of the dead woman's previous session with a medium and gets his attention. Working on his own, with no official police involvement, Erlendur works to find out why this woman took her own life. In a brief phone chat with Sigurdur Oli, when Erlendur notes that he wants to know "why she committed suicide,"  Erlendur explains why:

[Sigurdur Oli asks] " 'What's it to you?'

'Nothing,' Erlendur said. 'Absolutely nothing.'

'I thought you were only interested in missing-person cases.'

'Suicide is a missing-person case too,' Erlendur said and hung up on him."

Given Erlendur's background with the brother who was lost in a blinding snowstorm, his interest in the lost is no surprise.  And it's no surprise that he identifies with the ones left behind, for example, the grieving father who has checked in with Erlendur every year since his son vanished. For this man, time is running out because he's dying, and Erlendur wants him to go with answers. There's another missing persons case Erlendur goes back to as well -- that of a young woman who vanished one day, car and all. But it's the suicide that takes most of his time, as he gets into the head of the dead woman, just trying to figure out why.

Hypothermia is an excellent novel, and will give you pause to consider the nature of grieving and loss as you follow Erlendur throughout. Probably more than any of the previous novels in the series, place is itself a character, especially the cold and  lonely lakes of Iceland.  I loved this book and cannot recommend it highly enough.

Arctic Chill, by Arnaldur Indridason

ISBN: 9780099542322
Vintage UK

Here we are at book five of six featuring Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson, and I couldn't stand the suspense of waiting for #6 in the Reykjavik Murder Mystery series (Hypothermia) to come out in the US so I bought it from the UK. But then I wonder how long I'm going to have to wait for the next one. Oh well. This series is worth it completely.

As usual, Indridason delivers another good story here...not just a good mystery, but his insights into Iceland as a place and into its problems add to the entire series as a whole.

Just a brief synopsis first: During a very cold Icelandic winter, a young boy, the son of a Thai immigrant and her Icelandic husband, is found dead in front of his apartment building, with his body stuck to its own pool of blood. To make matters worse, it seems that his older brother is missing. As Erlendur and his team (Sigurdur Oli & Elinborg) start to work on the case, several theories present themselves -- was it a crime based on racism? Or was it the work of a pedophile known to be back in the area? Or, even worse, did the missing brother have anything to do with the young boy's death? While all of this is going on, Erlendur is also battling with the case of a woman who disappeared -- and both cases are bringing back his memories of his lost brother.

As anyone who reads Scandinavian crime fiction knows, these authors incorporate their own commentary (via plotline) about current social issues & problems in their respective countries. One of the themes prevalent in this novel is that of the problems of immigration in Iceland, which Indridason handles very skillfully.  It's not just a question of how native Icelanders feel about immigration, but he also reveals the problems faced by immigrants who go there - for example lack of language skills that hinder their ability to fully become members of Icelandic society, and the fact that families bring older children into the country who tend to have problems fitting in with the rest of their peer groups because they feel out of place. Indridason shows the feelings on both sides of the issue, treating the subject with a great deal of fairness toward each.

As always, Indridason's writing, his sense of place, his character development and his ability to create well-constructed plots are all in top form here. However, while  I understand that Erlendur's missing brother is one of those dark parts of his life that make him tick and make him who he is, and explains why he's fascinated with missing persons cases, and that this case of the two brothers reminds him of his own sad past, I feel I must point out that regular readers of this series already know all of this. Is the author maybe throwing this in for people who haven't yet read these books?

Overall, another good one by Indridason, whose entire Erlendur series is highly intelligent, making him one of those authors whose works I just can't wait to get my hands on. My advice: read them in order because these characters are not static and unchanging, but rather they are dynamic and becoming more human with every installment. Recommended to people who like Scandinavian crime fiction as well as mystery readers who want intelligence in their crime.

Shattered, by Richard Neely

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

1991 (reissue)

0679734988

originally published as 

The Plastic Nightmare

1969

Shattered is a work of noir fiction that begins when Dan Marriott awakes in a hospital. His wife, Judith, is by his side, and he learns that he and Judith had been in a catastrophic car accident.  Judith was thrown clear, but Dan wasn't so lucky. Most of the bones in his body were broken, his face was totally disfigured, and worse yet, he has no memory of who he is. After a series of plastic surgeries, he is ready to leave the hospital and to try to piece together his life. Judith takes him home and begins filling him in on their past life together, but little things Dan finds and remarks people make cause him to realize that something is just not right -- and after a few very strange occurrences, he finds it even more imperative to get to the truth. To say more would wreck the story.

Let's just say that this isn't the best piece of noir I've ever read, nor is it the worst. The plot is a good one, and I never guessed the ending (definitely a nice twist) but everything seems to happen so quickly. There's not a lot of time to really get into the characters, and while the story keeps you reading, it would have been better if it had been a bit more in depth.  However, I liked it well enough to pick up another book by this author -- The Walter Syndrome, highly recommended by several Neely fans.

I'd recommend it to readers of noir fiction.

sidebar: the movie based on this book is on IFC Friday night (4/16) 8:45 pm.  From all accounts it's not so hot, but I plan on watching it anyway.

Asia Hand, by Christopher G. Moore

Asia Hand, by Christopher G. Moore
0802170730
Grove Press/Black Cat
July 2010

Having stumbled upon this series of novels completely by accident with a random choice of The Risk of Infidelity Index while on vacation last month, I fell in deep like with the main character of this series of books, Vincent Calvino, and wanted more. So my thanks go to Grove Press for sending me an ARC of Asia Hand, which will be published in the US in July of this year. And of course, I have to thank the author, Christopher G. Moore, who I think took pity on me after I offered to lobby in person to have more of his books published here to satisfy my Calvino cravings. After reading Risk of Infidelity Index (9) and now Asia Hand (2), I finally got around to buying the first book in the series Spirit House. As I noted in an earlier post, this is a huge deal because I am currently under a self-imposed book-buying moratorium (to deal with the nagging guilt eating at me to read more of what I already own) until the end of this month. But Calvino is worth the added sense of guilt in breaking my promise to myself. Sigh. Oh well, I digress as usual.

Asia Hand is a well-crafted piece of modern noir fiction set in Bangkok, the home of ex-pat and ex-New Yorker Vincent Calvino. Calvino makes his living as a private investigator, and he finds himself embroiled in a crime that starts with the death of one his American friends, Hutton.  Hutton is a young free-lance cameraman, a loser who doesn't get much work thrown his way, so when he is offered the chance to work on a movie at the border of Thailand and Burma, he jumps at it.  Soon afterwards, Hutton is found dead in a lake at Lumpini Park. There is only a single clue left at the scene:  a necklace made of several amulets. Calvino is summoned by his friend Pratt (Col. Prachai Chongwatana, a high-ranking police official fond of quoting Shakespeare), and thus begins his investigation into Hutton's death which  leads him down some dark alleyways and closer to home than he ever thought possible.

The crime is well plotted, intricate and intelligent, weaving up and down different paths that all ultimately converge into a clever solution.  However, what makes this book work is Moore's insights into the interactions between ex-pats/ foreigners (farangs) in Thailand and the Thai people -- not just at the level of officialdom, but also down at street level with the bargirls. There are also several funny moments in this book, especially in the chapter with the explanations of the differences between first and third shifters. I must admit that I laughed out loud reading this part.

Calvino's character is well fleshed out, considering that this is only book two of the series. While he's a very no-nonsense kind of detective, and will stick to a problem like a pit bull, he also has a heart.  Calvino lives by a set of laws (for example, this one: "Whenever someone says 'you must believe me,' the chances are greater than 50 percent he's lying through his teeth.") and he has been in Thailand long enough to understand the way things work there even though life in Bangkok is filled with contradictions.

What I've read of the series is great and beats the pants off of most crime fiction sitting on the shelves of my local bookstore. It's also very different from a lot of what's out there which is definitely a plus.  If you like noir fiction, or if you enjoy intelligent crime fiction set in an exotic locale, you might want to try this one when it's released. You also have the side benefit of learning something about Thailand its people, culture and politics from someone who lives there.  This author can write and he does it well.  I will say that if you have a problem with alternative names for human body parts or with the use of 4-letter words in books, you may not want to pick this one up. Nothing cutesy here...just down and dirty gritty crime in a steamy climate.

and now...let's get those other books published here!

Fox Evil, by Minette Walters

Fox Evil is the ninth book by this author, and it won the CWA Gold Dagger award in 2003.


At the root of this mystery is the question of who killed Ailsa Lockyer-Fox. Set in the small village of Shenstead in Dorset, Fox Evil attempts to sort it all out.  Ailsa was found by her husband James outside their home in the freezing cold weather, wearing only a nightgown. Obviously, she hadn't intended on staying outside for any length of time. To add to the mystery, bloodstains were also found, but Ailsa had no visible wounds which would have caused them. To further whet the reader's appetite for clues, the door going back into the house was locked, and her husband James, seemingly slept on while the murder and mayhem were occurring. The coroner's report cleared James of any wrongdoing. So who killed Ailsa?

Fox Evil is rather cluttered, suffering from too much going on all at the same time. First, James gets his solicitor to track down his long-lost and grown-up granddaughter, Lizzie's daughter from a fling she had some time back, having been adopted when she was a baby. Then there's a matter of a vicious campaign of anonymous callers, accusing James of horrible things. Not to mention the band of travellers who decide to make a certain stretch of woodland their home and their leader, who goes by the name of Fox.  Add into that a mix of neighbors with their own petty problems,  and pretty soon you need a scorecard to keep track of it all.

My preference in mystery novels is for a book in which there are enough suspects who all have really good motives to kill someone, a few really good red herrings that might lead me down the wrong path, and a wowser of a revelation at the end. And although I generally like Minette Walters' writing (The Ice House, The Scold's Bridle and The Breaker  were absolute gems), there was just way too much happening here.  Of course, this book got many 5-star reviews, so it might just be me. I'd recommend it to people who have already read books by this author, but it's definitely not one of my personal favorites.

The Executor, by Jesse Kellerman

 

First, my thanks to Putnam publishers for sending me this book.

The Executor is very different, very slow paced right up until the end where the action kicks into gear, and more of a character-driven novel rather than plot. The main character, Joseph Geist is a career student who came from a dysfunctional family. He's taken too long to produce any results from his PhD research in Philosophy and the powers that be at Harvard have had enough. His girlfriend, whose family doesn't like Joseph anyway, kicks him out of their apartment. He's on the edge of broke, with nothing to show for his life. Looking for work, he comes across an ad that reads "Conversationalist Wanted," posted by an enigmatic and elderly woman named Alma, herself (many years ago) a philosophy student during her life in Austria. He takes the job, and Alma offers him part of her apartment as living space. The situation seems fine until Alma's bad-boy nephew Eric enters the scene. Eric is Alma's only relative, and on his visits she doles out money that never seems to last, as he is usually back for more within short spaces of time. Joseph takes an instant dislike to Eric; whether it's because he's jealous of him or because he sees through him right away is difficult to understand.  Joseph goes for a brief visit home to honor the anniversary of his brother's death, and returns to a nightmare.

Joseph is an interesting character. He's a man of extreme inaction for most of the story, so it's interesting watching the story progress to the point where he feels he must finally take an active role in his life. Growing up, he was passive, unable to do anything when his father was abusive to his brother, and he watched his mother fade as a person, standing by and letting his father control the entire family. The anniversary of his brother's death, and the realization that nothing had changed over the years he'd been away, seemed to spark some sort of latent anger that rose to the surface when his new situation came under threat. Yet, given all of that, Joseph remains a largely unsympathetic character, one for whom it's difficult to feel any pity at times.

I like the slow pace of Kellerman's writing here and I think his work shows a high level of intelligence. However, I had to actually go back to a point in the novel and reread it where it switched from the very slow, steady pace to where all of a sudden there's a rush of action and things move extremely fast, because the switch was distracting and seemed so out of character for Joseph that I was actually taken aback. It was a "huh" moment.  After the steady build up getting to know and understand Joseph, the end was really rushed. That's my only major complaint about this book.  A lot of times I think that authors pad way too much and probably could have deleted the fluff to stay with the heart of their stories, but for a change, it seems that this novel was too short. I'm sure Kellerman has his reasons for ending the book quickly, but it was a bit out of step with the rest of the story. 

If you are expecting a novel along the lines of something written by Jonathan or Faye Kellerman, this one doesn't even come close. I've read my fair share of both of their books and they're okay for a quick read. But Jesse Kellerman's style is very different, not a series book, not in the cozy realm, and there's no quick-witted detective or psychologists.  I'm not saying this as a negative, but it wouldn't be fair to lump parents and son in the same category of writing styles. This book is very intense, intelligent and it reminded me a little of Andrew Wilson's book The Lying Tongue in that you sense all the way through the story that something horrible is going to happen and you have no choice but to watch it play out. I probably would recommend it to readers who want something just a notch above ordinary suspense novels. It's not a mystery, but rather a suspenseful study into one man's mind.

ps/I'd love to share this ARC; if you want it, just be the first person to email me and I'll send it out when I return from Philadelphia next week. My only condition is that you must promise that you'll write a review before the book's release date.

The Risk of Infidelity Index, by Christopher G. Moore

On to the third of my cruise reads. Actually, I picked this one up from the ship's library due to my constant fear of running out of books while on vacation. I have read about this series, but this is the first time I've picked up one of this author's novels. I liked it and first thing today I ordered my own copy, and scoped out the other books in the series.

The main character in this book, set in Bangkok, is Vincent Calvino, an ex-pat New Yorker who runs his private eye business out of an office in the same building as a massage parlor. He's just finished a huge surveillance gig, gathering evidence for an attorney who asked him to get the goods on a major drug piracy operation. Everything is looking up, except that Vincent broke one of his cardinal rules: get the money up front. His failure to do so causes him severe problems when the client dies of a heart attack in a toilet. To make matters even worse, he stumbles onto the body of one of the girls from the massage parlor at her place of business, attracting the attention of the local police who don't trust him anyway. As if this isn't bad enough, in order to make ends meet he does two things: first, he tries to put pressure on associates of the dead client (and the bad guys on whom he dug up the evidence)  in order to get paid, and he agrees to take a job for a group of women who put stock in a book called "The Risk of Infidelity Index." This book lists Bangkok as the number one spot in the world where husbands will be unfaithful, and his job is to find evidence that the husbands are cheating.  Neither one of these options, as it turns out, are ideal, and get our man Calvino into a world of trouble.

Moore has developed some great characters here, including Calvino himself, Calvino's good friend Colonel Pratt, a local high-ranking policeman who has a knack for spewing Shakespeare in appropriate moments, an Italian chef who gives cooking lessons to the cheated-on spouses but can't speak Italian, an associate of the dead attorney who has an eidetic memory and stands on principle, and even the bad guy, who is one nasty piece of work.  But it's not just the characters that make the book -- Bangkok itself becomes so real you can feel the steam from the humidity.  Moore is an awesome and talented writer, and it's a shame that not many more of his works are available here. This book is actually #9 in the series, so I do believe I've probably come into the series a bit too late, and I'm sure I've missed something. But that's okay. This book holds it own as far as I'm concerned.

I would recommend it to people who enjoy crime fiction, and to those who want something different from the norm in their reading. It's an engrossing story and it's well plotted, and should appeal to people who are more inclined toward noir with an exotic twist. Overall...a good find, considering I picked it totally out of thin air.