Havana Twist by Lia Matera

Protagonist: Willa Jansson
Setting: Cuba and Mexico City
Rating: 4.5
When attorney Willa Jansson's "superlefty" mom disappears in Cuba, Jansson sets out to find her, traveling back and forth between Havana and Mexico City. After several murders, former flame Homicide Lt. Don Surgelato joins her. I liked this book for several reasons: there's quite a bit of humor among the plot twists and turns (sort of like a Kinsey Millhone abroad) and because she depicts the Cuba of the 1990s with harsh accuracy. The hotel Willa stays at could have been the same one I once stayed at: one with a small, drab hotel room that reeked of mildew. Says Willa about a second trip to Havana: "I dreaded returning to Cuba, not because America had demonized it for forty years, but because of the scarcity and sadness hanging over it, swallowing up residents and tourists alike." This is the seventh and, as far as I can tell, the final Willa Jansson book in the series. It's a shame, because I would have liked to have read much more about Willa.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Protagonist: David Martin
Setting: Barcelona
Rating: 4.0

When The Shadow of the Wind came out a few years ago, I devoured the novel, discussed it with friends, recommended it to other book lovers. I was smitten. Comes now the sequel, The Angel's Game, the story of a writer (David Martin) who sells his soul -- quite literally -- for immortality. He's writing pulp fiction for a magazine and living in poverty when a publisher comes calling with a deal: write a book creating a new religion and David will no longer have to worry about money - or his terminal illness. This publisher, Andreas Corelli, wears a lapel pin of an angel, but it turns out he is quite the opposite.

The story had several elements that should have enthralled me: it is high gothic, as lyrical as The Shadow and featured the Semperes and the Cemetery of Lost Books from the first book. However, the story failed to capture me. I put it down several times to read other books -- always a bad sign that I'm bored with a book. I did, however, stick with it -- this is the writer of one of my favorite books, after all. And the book does pick up in the second half. Still, the story is far darker than The Shadow and relies on a great amount of "woo-woo," some of it just too hard to believe.

Yet, given the many faults I found with it, the story did eventually ensnare me. No, it's not a great book; it's one that lives in the shadow of Ruiz Zafon's first book. Still, a good read.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Protagonist: Flavia de Luce
Setting: Bishop’s Lacey, England, 1950s
Rating: 5.0

Flavia de Luce is a precocious 11-year-old chemist whiz who turns to detecting when her father is jailed for the murder of a man found in their garden. She was also the only one around when the man uttered his one dying word: “Vale.” This sets Flavia on a hunt for the truth, pigtails flying behind her as she zips through town on Gladys (her bicycle). The best part of this book are the eccentric characters which populate Bradley’s book (which includes Flavia’s two older sisters, who she is always tormenting – when they are not tormenting her). But there’s also a fine plot – involving a rare stamp stolen years ago and another death. And it turns out the man found dead in their garden was once a close school friend of her father’s, before they had a falling out. And so the plot thickens. This book utterly charmed me – and apparently others. At least two more books featuring Flavia are in the works.

River of Darkness by Rennie Airth

Protagonist: Scotland Yard Det. Insp. John Madden
Setting: English countryside
Rating: 5.0

This is the first of a trilogy, set in the years immediately after World War I, where both police and criminal have been affected by the war. Madden, whose wife and child died of influenza, carries the scars of wars, physically and emotionally. The criminal, a serial killer, also carries scars from long ago. Someone is killing entire families, but especially targeting the women, it seems. Madden and his team -- which includes Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair, young Detective Constable Billy Styles and, eventually, village bobby Will Stackpole -- methodically work to discover the identity of the killer and find him. This is as well done a police procedural as I've ever read, with the added layers of psychological mystery, wartime horrors and even romance for Madden. Before I'd ever finished it, I already had book two in hand.

Dying to Sin by Stephen Booth

Protagonists: Ben Cooper and Diane Fry
Setting: Pity Wood Farm, Peak District
Rating: 3.5

When construction workers uncover a skeleton at Pity Wood Farm, police are brought into the muddy, dilapidated farm to uncover the mystery of who this person is, as well. One of the farm's owners is dead, the other is an elderly man in a home, suffering from dementia. And the town, closed-mouthed to outsiders, isn't likely to offer up clues. Booth's series (this is the eighth) is very atmospheric, and this book doesn't disappoint in that regard. You can almost feel yourself mired in the mud along with police, or lost in the fog with Ben and Diane in one pivotal scene. However, I found the main characters' lives to have become, well, a bit dull in this book. Hopefully, that'll change in the next book.

The Last Refuge by Chris Knopf

Protagonist: Sam Acquillo
Setting: Southampton, N.Y.
Rating: 4.4
The last refuge refers to Sam Acquillo’s nine-tenths of an acre next to the Little Peconic Bay, where he’s retreated after suddenly (and violently) quitting his engineering job, and following his divorce. There he lives peacefully with his dog Eddie (named after Eddie van Halen), until his elderly next-door neighbor is found dead in a bathtub filled with water. No one seems to find it suspicious, except for Acquillo, who knew she didn’t like to take baths – only showers. He gets himself named as administrator of her estate, only to uncover shady real estate deals and possibly other past murders. Acquillo writes about the real Hamptons – not the glittery, celeb-filled one, but the one in which the have-nots struggle to make a living. This is an author I will continue reading (this is the first in a four-book series). Not only can Knopf write a great mystery, but he had great, oddball characters; sharp, witty dialogue; and a portrayal of the Hamptons as it really is.

Frank McCourt dies

A few years ago, shortly after Angela's Ashes was published, I went to a standing-room only event to hear Frank McCourt read from his book. I hadn't read the book yet and came away feeling he was a lovely man -- down-to-earth, warm and funny. Then I read the book, and it was one of the most moving stories I've read -- all the more powerful for being real. I'm saddened by his death, yet also heartened that late in life he was able to share a story, one that was embraced by so many people. While it revolved around an Irish family, the themes that ran through this story were universal. In fact, if I were asked to name 10 modern classics, Angela's Ashes would be at the top.

Murder in the Rue de Paradis by Cara Black

Protagonist: Aimee Leduc
Setting: Paris
Rating: 3.7

A reviewer once compared the Leduc series to Kinsey Millhone, and it's not too far off. While Aimee is much, much more fashionable (this being Paris, after all) and she has a sidekick to get her out of trouble, fans of Kinsey will probably also enjoy this series, which gets better with each book. In Murder in the Rue de Paradis, the eighth in the series, Aimee's on-and-off-again lover, Yves, returns to Paris and asks Aimee to marry him. She says yes, but after one night together, Yves is murdered. Although police are investigating, they're also hiding something from Aimee. As Aimee investigates, this becomes a story about Kurdish and Turkish politics, and a sleeper jihadist sleeper cell that is scheming an assassination. Black manages to pull all this off, along with a surprise twist at the end.

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

Protagonist: Sherlock Holmes
Setting: English countryside
Rating: 3.3

If you are expecting another neat Sherlock Holmes story, you may be very disappointed in this tale, which has very little detecting in it. We meet the great detective (always unnamed, just “the old man,” but undeniably Holmes) at the end of his life. Living alone in the English countryside and tending to his beehives, Holmes is lured out of his retirement after he meets a young boy, a survivor of the Nazi camps, and his parrot, who seems to have learned (and retained) some German codes. Soon, the parrot is missing and someone from the household in which they boy lives is dead. Holmes is more concerned with the parrot than the murder, promising the boy he’ll find his pet bird. But the story meanders, with Holmes just about stumbling on the one clue that leads him to the bird thief. He's not so much a great detective in this story, as another old man suffering from dizzy spells and heart problems. As wonderful as Chabon’s writing is -– and his prose is beautiful -– I hated to see the great detective portrayed this way, and the plot was just flat. My recommendation: read an original Arthur Conan Doyle story.

American Wife, The Senator's Wife

Two recent books have made me glad to not be married to a man in politics:


American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (audiobook)
Protagonist: Alice Lindgren
Setting: Wisconsin
Rating: 2.5

This was an audiobook I plodded through for a book club meeting, but I found myself gnashing my teeth through most of it. Loosely based on First Lady Laura Bush’s life, it tries to give us a glimpse into the feelings and motivations of a fictional first lady. Yet, it’s hard as a reader to get the image of Laura Bush (or George Bush, for that matter) out of one’s mind. I was too distracted by the attempt to fictionalize the life of a real-life person to enjoy the story. There were also too many parts that just dragged for me, and the ending disintegrated into a piece about the Iraq war. Even for those of us who aren’t right-wingers, this book was a big miss.


The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller (audiobook)
Protagonists: Delia Naughton and Meri Fowler
Setting: New England
Rating: 4.0
Here, in the hands of a master storyteller, is a more compelling story, or set of stories – that of Delia, an older woman, and the younger Meri, her neighbor. The book alternates between their stories, and we see how each struggles with marriage and independence. But the book’s focus really is on Delia Naughton, the more interesting of the characters. Married to Sen. Tom Naughton, she has been separated from him for years – Tom is unable to be faithful to his wife (and that reminds us of another real-life president). While she remains married to Tom, Delia lives in their family home and he lives in Washington. She and Tom have their occasional fling, but keep these secret from even their own children. When Tom has a stroke and is unable to care for himself, Delia brings him back to the family home to care for him. Finally, Delia has him to herself. But here the characters’ stories intersect for a powerful climax. Weeks after listening to this book, I'm still thinking of the characters -- always a sign of a good book.

Dancing With the Virgins by Stephen Booth

Protagonists: Ben Cooper and Diane Fry
Setting: Peak District, England
Rating: 4.0

In this second book in the series, Cooper and Fry investigate the death of a woman, and attacks on others, in a national park area, near the Stonehenge-like stones called the Nine Virgins. The book revolves around the investigation, of course, but much of it is also about the water-and-oil relationship between Cooper and Fry. While the book is a bit slow in some parts, the mystery does unravel in rather surprising ways. Booth is an underappreciated mystery writer, which is a shame, because he is really great at bringing his characters to life. He also writes about the haunting moors, the farms and even the slaughterhouses in the area with compelling details. This is a series I'd highly recommend.

Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith

Protagonist: Arkady Renko
Setting: Havana
Rating: 4.3
In this fourth book in the series, Moscow investigator Arkady Renko finds himself in a post-Soviet Havana, investigating the death of Russian spy Sergei Pribluda, found floating on an inner tube in Havana Bay. The Cubans insist it was a natural death; Renko, of course, disagrees. Renko has another reason to be in Cuba, one driven by personal reasons. Still reeling from a great tragedy, he tries suicide. But in the midst of killing himself, someone breaks into his apartment and tries to kill Renko. Instead, Renko kills the intruder with the needle he was going to use on himself. This doesn’t endear him any more to Cuban police, who really don’t want him there. But one policewoman, Det. Osorio, eventually comes to believe in Renko. Both are outsiders, in different ways, and make a perfect team. Not only does Cruz Smith deliver a powerful plot, but he captures the Cuban psyche and life under Communism in the “Special Period” perfectly.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

Protagonist: Jackson Brodie
Setting: Edinburgh
Rating: 3.5
When Will There Be Good News? is not your usual crime fiction book, and this seems to arouse strong feelings about it – whether you like it or not. Although the book is billed as one in the series starring Jackson Brodie, our supposed hero is this hapless person, amnesiac part of the time, who has a small role in solving the crime. Rather, the main crime solvers are Det. Chief Insp. Louise Monroe and teenaged orphan Reggie Chase. The characters are strong ones, but the story meanders and doesn’t pick up until halfway through the book. The other important character is Dr. Joanna Hunter. As a child, her mother and two siblings were killed; the killer is released from jail at about the same time that Hunter disappears. This is where our trio of protagonists, whose stories have been told separately, finally converge. Atkinson’s writing, and her wit, are wonderful. But if you want a linear, more traditional mystery, then you may be one of those readers who fall on the side of disliking it.

Interview with S.J. Bolton

Recently, I reviewed "Awakening," the second book by British author S.J. Bolton (see review two posts below). This book so intrigued me that I had to know more about the author.

Q. You’ve had interesting careers before this, as an actress and in PR. What drew you to writing novels?

A. Looking back, I realize I had all the ingredients that make up a writer, I just didn’t recognize them for what they were. I’ve always loved books and read avidly, the part of my job I enjoyed the most was the writing and I’ve always been one of those people who have a fantasy life running in parallel to the real one. It wasn’t until I was married with a baby on the way that I realized I might have a work of fiction in me. Once I started, it was like falling off a log! I loved it and knew that, published or not, it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my working life.

Q. Elsewhere, you’ve written that you wanted to write “spooky crime.” The supernatural does pop up in some mysteries, but you’ve really embraced it. What is it about the spooky that draws you?

A. Its very darkness; the sense that no rules apply; the expectation of a journey into the complete unknown from which there may be no return; complete escapism from the real world. All these things and many more. I’ve always loved stories of the supernatural but because I write in a very strict genre, I have two editors, one on either side of the Atlantic, who work very hard to keep me grounded in reality. Ultimately, there is nothing supernatural in my books; it just looks that way for a while.


Q. Your first book, Sacrifice, has been short-listed for several prizes. Writing this novel, did you have any idea of the impact it would have?

A. All the time I was writing Sacrifice I had no idea it would even get published. Technically, I felt the book was shaping up well but I knew the story might prove too fantastic, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, to be taken seriously by the publishing world. Luckily for me, it was, but even now that it’s been published in several countries, the reaction has been mixed and extreme. For every person who’s loved it, another has hated it.

Q. You’ve written two books with a third one almost finished. They all have very different settings and plots. How do you come up with the ideas for them?

A. My ideas come from the people and places around me. Sacrifice was born out of my own experience of wanting to have a child and finding it difficult to conceive. Awakening was inspired by the village I live in now and by its residents – both human and reptilian. My third book is set in a remote town in the Pennine hills in the north of England, the place were I grew up. I find myself inspired by landscapes frequently. For a small island, Great Britain has a remarkably diverse and beautiful topography and I love to imagine the dark undercurrent beneath the idyllic surface.

Q. I’m always interested in how writers create characters. Are any of them based on people you know?

A. All of them. That’s not to say people will necessarily recognize themselves. Sometimes it’s just a hairstyle or a mannerism that makes it into print. I don’t worry too much about developing characters at the outset. I have a very vague idea about them – age, appearance, occupation. Then I concentrate on telling the story and let the characters develop themselves through their behaviour and their reaction to events.

Q. In Awakening, you’ve created a damaged yet strong protagonist, Clara. Long after I put the book down, I kept thinking of her – and wondering what would happen next to her. Any chance you’ll ever bring her back, or are you done with the characters once you finish a book?

A. I’d love to see Clara again. She is easily my favourite heroine so far. Her job, though, is very specific, so I will need to come up with a mystery that, somehow, revolves around wild animals. Nothing immediately springs to mind but maybe one day.

Q. Can you give us a peek into your third book – what is it about?

A. Folklore meets forensics on the bleak and remote Pennine Moors. A charismatic young Anglican priest is on the verge of falling in love with a beautiful children’s psychiatrist, when the remains of several young children are found on land close to the church. The resulting events test his faith to its limits and threaten everyone he cares about.

Q. Who are your favorite current authors?

A. Stephen King is, and probably will remain, my favourite contemporary author. He combines the most formidable imagination with a real gift for language. So many books can wind me up for so many reasons but when I open a King novel, I feel myself breathing a deep sigh of relief. I know I’m in the presence of a master. Other authors I love include Joanne Harris, JK Rowling, Thomas Harris, Dan Brown and Tess Gerritsen. New writers that I think have immense talent include Ariana Franklin, Simon Beckett, Nick Stone and Tom Cain.

Shatter by Michael Robotham

Protagonist: Joe O’Loughlin
Setting: West Country
Rating: 5.0


There is a moment when all hope disappears, all pride is gone, all expectation, all faith, all desire. I own that moment. It belongs to me. That’s when I hear the sound. The sound of a mind breaking.

It’s not a loud crack like when bones shatter or a spine fractures or a skull collapses. And it’s not something soft and wet like a heart breaking. It’s a sound that makes you wonder how much pain a person can endure; a sound that shatters memories and lets the past leak into the present; a sound so high that only the hounds of hell can hear it.

Can you hear it? Someone is curled up in a tiny ball crying softly into an endless night.

Joe O’Loughlin, who we met in Robotham’s first book, The Suspect, is back, this time teaching college psychology as his Parkinson’s disease gains on him. He’s asked by police to help talk down a woman who is perched on the Clifton Suspension Bridge, naked except for her Jimmy Choo shoes and with the word “slut” written across her stomach in lipstick. Even stranger, she’s talking into a cell phone. O’Loughlin is unable to save her; she jumps to her death. A few days later, her business partner is found dead, also naked, hanging from a tree in a park.

Why would these women kill themselves, seemingly on the orders of a person on the other end of their cell phones? With police, and the help of friend Vincent Ruiz, a retired chief inspector, O’Loughlin figures out the how, then the why and finally the who. From there, it’s a cat-and-mouse game with one of the most chilling villains I’ve come across lately. This is a man who has come mentally unhinged, and there’s no reasoning with him. The book’s title refers to the killer’s M.O.: he “shatters” the psyche of his victims. After O’Loughlin is able to prevent a third murder, the villain strikes close to home. At this point, the tension is so high that, as a reader, I wasn’t able to come up for breath until the end.

I knew Robotham was a good writer, but after his last book, The Night Ferry, I was a bit disappointed. This book has put him back on my list of must-read crime writers. Shatter is far and away his best. If you listen to audiobooks, then I further recommend “reading” it in that form. The narrator, Sean Barrett, only enhances the story. There’s one point where O’Loughlin and the villain are having a rapid-fire conversation; Barrett modulates the voices enough that you always know who is speaking.

This book gets a perfect score from me. In fact, it’s the best book I’ve read so far this year.

Awakening by S.J. Bolton

Protagonist: Clara Benning
Setting: Dorset
Rating: 3.5
Clara, a 30-year-old veterinarian, has become a reclusive in a quiet, rural town. Half of her face has been disfigured (although how and to what extent remains a mystery for awhile), and so Clara tries to have minimal contact with the world – the human world, at least. All that changes when snakes, some deadly, start showing up in villagers’ homes, killing one man. Clara is the only expert on snakes in the village, and she’s soon thrust into the middle of the crisis. When she becomes a suspect after several other deaths, Clara has to prove she’s innocent. Normally, a book about snakes would not have attracted me at all, but I found this a compelling read. I was drawn to Clara, so much that I kept wondering how her life would turn out after I finished the book (from what I gather, unfortunately, this appears to be a standalone). Awakening is due out in bookstores in June.

The Black Tower by P.D. James

Protagonist: Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh
Setting: Toynton Grange, Dorset
Rating: 3.5
Recovering from an illness, Dalgliesh receives a letter from a family friend, Father Baddeley, imploring him to visit. By the time Dalgliesh is able to travel to Toynton Grange, a home for those with physical disabilities, Baddeley has died. But there’s been another suspicious death, so Dalgliesh lingers for a few days. There follows more deaths, an attempt on the life of Toynton Grange’s owner and questions about Father Baddeley’s death. This is a classic closed community mystery – not James’ best, but certainly not disappointing. It is the fifth in her series.

Strip Jack by Ian Rankin

Protagonist: Insp. John Rebus
Setting: Edinburgh
Rating: 3.3
When MP Gregor Jack is caught in a brothel, Rebus is sympathetic, suspecting the government official was set up. When he visits Jack’s home, he finds a nervous man – and not only because of the press coverage. Jack’s wife, who likes to indulge in sex and drug parties, is missing. Soon after, she’s found dead – and there are plenty of suspects. This is the fourth in the Rebus series. As always, Rankin brings us memorable characters and sharp dialogue.

The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

Protagonists: Vince Teague, Dave Bowie and Stephanie McCann
Setting: Maine island of Moose-Lookit
Rating: 3.5

(Warning: Contains a spoiler). Stephanie McCann is a young intern at The Weekly Islander, run by Vince Teague and Dave Bowie, who have been at the newspaper forever. One day, they share the story about the Colorado Kid with her – a man, at first unknown, is found on the beach without identification. He is eventually identified (he was from Colorado), but his abrupt disappearance from work, only to show up later that day in Maine, is a mystery. Teague and Bowie have taught McCann that a good feature story always has “a beginning, a middle and an end.” This novel, however, only gives the reader a beginning and a middle – no end at all, since the mystery is never solved.

While I enjoyed the story during its telling (narrator Jeffrey DeMunn did a great job of capturing the Maine accents and Stephen King can tell a story), the ending left me feeling frustrated, a bit cheated. I’d recommend this only on audiobook, which is how I experienced it, and only after warning people that this book, billed as a mystery and the first entry in the Hard Case Crime series, is not a traditional whodunnit by any stretch. Also, this is most definitely a case of not judging a book by its cover -- this is a most deceiving cover.

The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martinez

Protagonist: Luciana
Setting: Buenos Aires
Rating: 3.5
Luciana, who worked as a transcriber for two authors as a young woman, calls one of them up 10 years later (our unnamed narrator) with a tale of how the other author, Kloster, is slowly killing off her family and friends. She feels he is doing it as revenge for the death of his daughter, of which he somehow blames Luciana. But the deaths all seem accidental or unrelated to Kloster. Is Luciana going mad, or is there something behind her story? Book kept me hooked, but fell flat -- very flat -- with the ending.