the final chapter of the Öland Quartet : The Voices Beyond, by Johan Theorin

9780857520067 
Transworld Publishers/Doubleday, 2015
originally published as Rörgast
translated by Marlaine Delargy
462 pp

paperback

For now, it seems that if you live in America and you want to read this book, you'll have to order it from the UK like I did or sit patiently and wait for it to be published in this country.  The second choice wasn't even an option for me -- as soon as I'd heard it was available, I had to have it; it went on vacation with me where I read it stretched out in a long lounger chair from which I didn't move while reading.   I have really enjoyed all of the books in Theorin's Öland Quartet up to this point, and I have to say that for a final entry, The Voices Beyond is an absolute page turner.  Despite the fact that there are nearly five hundred pages in this book, the story moves very quickly, but what I loved about this book is that it moves back and forth in time, revealing that the past most definitely has a strong hold on the present.  And as always, Theorin here is a master of atmosphere that just doesn't quit.  If you have to end a series, this is definitely the way to do it.  

It's tough not to get sucked into the story from the beginning.  If you've followed Theorin's Öland Quartet series so far, you will definitely remember Gerlof Davidsson.  When Gerlof was young in 1930,  he was part of a group of people digging a grave in the churchyard for Edvard Kloss. Once the body was lowered into the grave and covered up, the small group of gravediggers hears noises coming from where they'd just put the coffin --  a series of knocks that Gerlof Davidsson never forgets over the course of his lifetime.  Flash forward to the present and we find Gerlof back on the island of Öland for the summer holidays, staying at his home with his grandchildren.  In the middle of one night when he is sleeping in his boathouse, he is awakened out of a sound sleep by pounding on the door where he discovers a young boy, Jonas Kloss, wet and terrified.  It seems that Jonas has had a horrific encounter on what he calls a "ghost ship," and has managed to escape.  Because of Gerlof's own past, he has no trouble believing Jonas' account, and after he calms him down a bit, Gerlof starts asking questions.  What Jonas tells him lands Gerlof smack in the middle of a mystery that will take the reader back in time, moving ever slowly into the present where the past still exists in some minds.  It is a dark story that gets darker as the book (and the Swedish summer) moves along, revealing not only a modern-day mystery but also the failed dreams of a young boy who gets caught up in a situation not of his own making.  

Unlike my usual cautionary self, I have nothing negative to say about this novel which (with apologies for the old cliché) kept me glued until I turned the last page.  It is a fine story, difficult to read at times because of the sheer cruelty and inhumanity that Theorin so deftly reveals here, but perfect for someone like me who is very much into the darker side of human nature.  Cozy readers or readers of tamer Scandinavian crime fiction beware -- this is an incredibly dark and at times bleak novel, nothing at all cutesy here. It's an example of Scandinavian crime at its best.   One more thing -- even though it's #4 in Theorin's quartet, it is very possible to read this book as a standalone, but my advice is to take each book in its order of publication and to not let this one be your introduction to the series: read Echoes from the Dead, The Darkest Room, The Quarry all before you tackle The Voices Beyond -- there is a lot of history here of some of the characters that you won't want to miss.  

Super book -- I'm just sorry that it isn't widely available in the US right now so that more crime fiction fans can read it.

back with Black: Even the Dead

 9781627790666
Henry Holt, 2015
287 pp

paperback (my ARC copy from LTER and the publishers -- thank you!)

Even the Dead is number seven in Black's (aka John Banville) Quirke series which begins with Christine Falls, one of my favorites in the entire series.  My guess is that Even the Dead just might be the last Quirke novel --  there is just something I gleaned from the story that makes me feel that way. If not, we'll say I'm wrong and call it a day, but to me it just has that last-of-series feeling.  This one is a bit more subdued than the other Quirke novels -- not nearly as dark in tone but still quite good.  And it is a must read for anyone who's been following this series.  

Set in  "mean and mendacious"  Dublin of the 1950s, a city where the small group behind the powers that be maintain control through a mix of religion, politics, and money, Even the Dead opens with a dead man on the pathologist's slab, being worked on by Dr. David Sinclair, Quirke's assistant and the guy Quirke's daughter Phoebe's been seeing for a while now.  Chief pathologist Quirke is not even at the hospital but rather convalescing from events that started in an earlier story.  The police are certain that the body belongs to a suicide, but Sinclair thinks otherwise and to be sure, he reluctantly calls his boss in for a consultation.  It is actually just what Quirke needs -- being back at work -- and he puts his recovery time aside and goes back to work.  The dead man, Leon Corless,  is the son of a very well-known Communist agitator (this is the 1950s, remember), and Quirke confirms Sinclair's findings that this was no mere accident and definitely not suicide.  While Quirke is getting back into his post-convalescent swing, Phoebe has an adventure of her own when she is contacted by a former classmate who confides to Phoebe that she is both pregnant and in very serious danger.  Phoebe barely remembers her, but sensing that the girl is completely in earnest, she hides her away at a family home.  When she returns later to check on her, the girl is gone, lock stock and barrel, leaving Phoebe feeling despondent:  after all, 

"A person had been given into her care, troubled and terrified, whom she had tried to help, and, somehow, she had failed."

 Phoebe turns to her father, who turns to his friend Inspector Hackett for help both on the Corless case and on the girl's disappearance -- and it isn't long until they discover that the two cases are quite possibly related.

As always in this series of novels, Black's writing is tip-top -- he has a way of not only creating a clever plot but also characters that manage to stay under my skin and make me impatient for the next installment, especially in the main character Quirke, who was driven by "an absence of a past," and who 

"... was aware of no great thirst in himself for justice and the righting of wrongs"

with

"...no illusions  that the world could be set to rights, at least not by him, who could not even set right his own life." 

However, as the story continues and Quirke's present crosses his past, things begin to change, leading to an extremely powerful ending I never saw coming.  

Even though (in my opinion)  Even the Dead is not as dark as its predecessors, there is still a deep,  underlying noirish current that runs throughout the story, which certainly kept me turning pages to see where Black was going to take things. I love this entire series and this newest book did not disappoint.  I would truly hate to see this series end, but as I said earlier, it's written so that it feels like it might just be the last -- here's hoping it's not.  

Who's going to like this book? Certainly readers who've followed the series in order up to now, and readers who enjoy the darker side of crime and characters without going to the darker extreme of true noir.   Cozy fans stay away -- there is nothing, I repeat, nothing even remotely cutesy or nice in this entire book.    Also, since much of this book strays into Quirke's past, it would be doing oneself a disservice to start the series with this novel -- each and every book should really be read in publication order.  

As long as Banville continues to write as Benjamin Black, I'll continue reading what has turned out to be one of my very favorite series of crime novels ever.   I hope I'm in for much, much more. 

vacation ahead -- back in two weeks

Ahhhhh.

 By this time next week we will be off snorkeling somewhere in the Caribbean for nearly two weeks, one of my favorite things to do in life.  We're doing a long cruise -- it's the only venue where business Larry is unreachable by phone (the roaming rates are absolutely ridiculous) so it's perfect.  Between snorkeling and sailing on Hobie Cats, we will be spending a lot of our time in the ocean -- I'm definitely a water baby.   The last time we went snorkeling was in drysuits in the Gulf of Alaska in snowy, freezing weather, and we had a blast -- well, at least I did.

When we're not physically in the ocean, we'll be laying out on our balcony (a very small fraction of which you can see here):

reading, enjoying foofy umbrella drinks, reading, relaxing and just having 12 days of ahhhhh.  When we go on cruises, which is not often, we pretty much keep to ourselves and spend most of our time just stretched out in the sun. I'll be taking tons of books, including Benjamin Black's newest Quirke series installment, Even the Dead, the newest Irene Huss series novel, The Treacherous Net, and Johan Theorin's The Voices Beyond among others.  When I get back, I'll have a new novel by Deon Meyer waiting for me (Icarus)  along with John Katzenbach's latest The Dead Student.  

see you in a couple of weeks --

in the spirit of the season -- Hallowe'en Party, by Agatha Christie

My edition of this book is the blue leatherette hardcover, the whole set of which  my very understanding and indulging spouse discovered in a consignment shop and bought for me some years back. But this cover is much more interesting than my plain one, and way more interesting than the original:

Having recently watched the excellent dramatization of this book on DVD (with David Suchet, of course, as Poirot and Zoe Wanamaker the absolutely perfect Ariadne Oliver), I figured I'd give Christie's Hallowe'en Party a go in book form.  After finishing it late yesterday afternoon, I found myself agreeing with a contemporary reviewer from the Toronto Daily Star who wrote that "Poirot seems weary and so does the book."  It was a bit disappointing in that I'm used to actually seeing Poirot's little gray cells at work, and here, while he does solve the mystery, it's just not the same as the older Poirot novels -- he does indeed seem incredibly tired. Poirot's less than lackluster self combined with several missed character opportunities made this book not as fun to read as I'd hoped.

The plot itself is an incredibly good one.  The wealthy Mrs. Rowena Drake, who has her fingers in every social, civic and church-related pie in her village, throws a Halloween party at her home for the "eleven-plus" group of kids.  Ariadne Oliver happens to be in the neighborhood, staying with her friend Mrs. Butler, and they both attend the party.  Mrs. Oliver is famous, of course, and one young girl (Joyce) tries to impress by telling her about the time she saw a murder happen.  Of course, she says, she didn't realize that it was a murder that she was seeing at the time, but now she realizes the truth of it.  Joyce, who has a penchant for story telling and making things up, is pooh-poohed by everyone at the party -- no one believes her and they make fun of her for making up something so outrageous.  But someone must have believed her, because when the party ends, Joyce is discovered head down in a tub filled with water meant for apple bobbing.  Poirot is visited the next day by a very shaken Ariadne Oliver, who tells him what happened. He latches on to Joyce's tale of murder, leading him to go to the scene of the crime.

Zoe Wanamaker (Ariadne Oliver) and David Suchet (Poirot) in "Halloween Party"

While the plot is good, I think Christie missed the boat on this one -- it most certainly isn't the best of Poirot and it isn't the best in terms of clues for the amateur armchair detective to follow. I just don't feel like she utilized those skills in this book that made her such an enduring mystery writer.    When it comes down to the who and the why, things seemed rather shaky and I found myself saying things like "but what about..?" more than once.  I hate plot holes, no matter who the writer is, and there are definitely a couple or three sinkhole-sized ones here.

So the long and short of it is great plot potential, but not so hot in the execution.  I suppose even Agatha Christie can have an off day, and it definitely shows in this one.

from the UK: Before It's Too Late, by Jane Isaac

9781910394618
Legend Press, 2015
282 pp

paperback (from publisher, thank you!)

I was well over the halfway mark in this novel when I realized something -- I hadn't seen any swearing, blatant sex or gratuitous violence anywhere.  Kudos to the author for that. Not that I mind swearing so much,  but I can do without extraneous sex and violence that does little or nothing for or gets in the way of the main story line.

Before It's Too Late is a police procedural on the lighter side. It's not light enough to fall under cozy but not nearly as dark as my normal fare, and much lighter in tone than most of what's out there on bookstore shelves as we speak.   There is an angsty main character, DI Will Jackman, who is still grief stricken after an accident that left his wife paralyzed and unable to function.  Jackman has a daughter Celia, a university student whose inner strength Jackman relies on at times when his fails.  He had moved his family to Stratford-upon-Avon when Celia was young, because it was a "pretty sleepy town when it came to serious crime,"  but at the moment,  the police are currently stumped over a missing person case that turned into murder.  Smarting over the lack of information in that case,  Jackman finds himself tasked with investigating another young woman gone missing -- a university student named Min Li, whose case becomes "high profile" with quick results expected.  Sadly, not much evidence has surfaced in this case either, except for some CCTV footage that may offer clues to her last sighting.  But here's the thing -- the reader knows where Min Li is -- her narrative runs through the book parallel to that of the investigation, while the bad guy gets some brief air time here with his story as well.   Jackman and his people have to find Min Li as quickly as possible and things become even more urgent when another university student goes missing.

It's a good book that will keep you turning pages to figure out the who; there are a couple of plot twists involved that make the armchair detective's work just a little bit harder.  The story isn't overwhelmed with Jackman's angst (a plus);  the author gives you just enough information about him to start fleshing him out as a character.  Isaac also reveals the nature of "political policing," as ego, ambition and well-placed friendships override one cop's need for solid detective work, which Jackman can't stand; another well-crafted part of this novel is the focus on the Chinese community and how interactions with outsiders actually work.  Very nicely done and very insightful.  The only thing I wasn't overly fond of was the kidnapped girl's narrative -- first and foremost, it's a bit too melodramatic for my taste and second, well, I can't really explain this one without spoiling things so I'll leave it for others to discover.

I'd say if you've got one foot out the cozy door and are looking to up your crime game without diving headfirst into gritty noir, Before It's Too Late is a fine transition from cutesy to criminal, with enough edginess to make it compelling reading.  I appreciate that Ms. Isaac didn't feel the need to add in all manner of extraneous stuff that many modern writers feel is necessary -- she proves that sometimes a good story can be had without trying to attract every possible audience by using all of the usual over-the-top creepy sex and violence that seems to be a mainstay these days.  It can be done, folks, and it's a refreshing change.

Again, my thanks to the publisher for my copy.

... and speaking of Agatha Christie, a new release of Murder on the Orient Express!!

look what just came in my mail!  It's a brand new facsimile edition put out by William Morrow, released today, even down to "The Crime Club notation on the side.  I LOVE this cover!  About this particular edition, the note on Amazon says the following:

"Reproducing the original typesetting and format of the first edition from the Christie family’s archive,Murder on the Orient Express Facsimile Edition also features the first hardcover edition’s actual cover art, which has been painstakingly restored to its original beauty."

Inside is also a lovely reproduction of the original: first, the title page,  

followed by a short blurb and a list of other works by Agatha Christie:

In case you're at all interested, here's the Amazon link (I get nothing if you click through).

Sad news: Henning Mankell: 1948 - 2015

Henning Mankell passed away today at the age of 67.  

One of my very favorite Scandinavian writers has passed away today, after battling cancer.  You can read about it here at BBC news for the full story.

Mankell, of course, authored the Wallander series, which I've been collecting and reading for years now.   He has long been one of my favorite crime writers , not just from Scandinavia but in crime fiction as a whole. Crime readers everywhere will mourn his passing -- he brought something new and completely different to the genre.  Today is a sad day.

requiescat in pace