catching up on reviews, part I: Don't Look Back, by Karin Fossum

0156031361
Harvest Book/Harcourt
295 pp.

Don’t Look Back is the second novel in the Inspector Sejer series behind Eve’s Eye (Evas øye), which has not yet been published in English.  Whether or not I missed anything because I  do not read Norwegian is not a big deal;  I still enjoyed Don’t Look Back . I’ll just consider it the first in the series for now.
 
This novel is a police procedural set in a small village in Norway.  As the story opens, Inspector Konrad Sejer is called out when a small child goes missing.  While investigating that case, the naked body of a teenaged girl named Annie Holland is discovered at the edge of the lake.  Sejer takes that case and brings along his colleague, Skarre.  As the two of them interview the locals  to find out more about the victim, they cannot seem to find any reason at all for anyone to have wanted to kill this girl. She was well liked by everyone.  The only thing Sejer has to go on is that Annie had recently seemed to have become very withdrawn, but hadn’t told anyone why.  Sejer and Skarre will have to dig deeper and deeper until they come up with an answer to why Annie died.

Fossum’s writing is very simple and uncomplicated, without a lot of inner monologues  and angst from the main character.  She is quite good at developing an atmosphere of suspicion and anxiety, setting the tone for the overall investigation, and keeps you reading with prose like this, the answer to a question posed by Sejer to Annie's mother:

There's supposed to be a sea serpent in the fjord here. It's a legend, a story from the old days. If you're out rowing and hear a splashing sound behind your boat, that's the sea serpent rising from the depths. You should never look back, just be careful to keep on rowing. If you pretend to ignore it and leave it in peace, everything will be fine, but if you look back into its eyes, it will pull you down into the great darkness." (49)

The characters are all believable, especially Sejer, who is a grandfather, recently a widower, but someone you know will do the job and stay on it like a pit bull until the case is over.  The plot is straightforward, and the focus is always on the investigation without the author straying off or getting sidetracked, and she throws in a few red herrings along the way to keep the reader guessing.  While the book moves at a very good pace, the story is never hurried and the investigation and solution were both realistic, and I never saw the end coming,  which is a plus because I often do.

Fans of police procedurals, Scandinavian crime fiction and crime fiction in general will like this book.  I have all of the other Inspector Sejer novels lined up, ready to read, so that must tell you something.

 fiction from Norway

It's Monday! What am I reading?

It feels like it's been forever since I participated in this fun event, hosted by Sheila (thank you ever so much!) at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

So let's get started.  First: I have a book giveaway going for The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbo.  Click here if you're interested. 

This past week I finished the following:

Don't Look Back, by Karin Fossum (not reviewed yet)
Lost City Radio, by Daniel Alarcon (also not reviewed)
Fever Dream, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (the newest Agent Pendergast novel for those of you who follow the series)
Blackout, by Connie Willis 
The Murder Farm, by Andrea Schenkel

I'm currently reading The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk.

For this week:
Tomorrow I should be receiving my pre-ordered copy of Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson so I'll definitely read that, plus I'm planning to read The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas.  After that, who knows?

In the words of Simon and Garfunkel:

Gee but it's great to be back home, home is where I want to be. I've been on the road so long my friend...

Happy reading.

for all of you Scandinavian fiction buffs -- book giveaway: The Devil's Star, by Jo Nesbo (sticky post -- new posts below)

To celebrate my return home after three weeks, I am giving away a copy of The Devil's Star, by Jo Nesbo.  I received a copy from the publisher while I was away, but I already own this book so this one needs a new home.

All you have to do to receive this book is to leave a comment on this post with your email address or a link to your blog by May 26th. That's it.

...and so sorry! Only US entries, please...this book is really huge!

The Murder Farm, by Andrea Maria Schenkel

9781847247650
Quercus
181 pp.
Translated from German by Anthea Bell

The Murder Farm begins with a few introductory words from an unnamed narrator:

I spent the first summer after the end of the war with distant relations in the country.

During those weeks, that village seemed to me an island of peace.  One of the last places to have survived intact after the great storm that we had just weathered.

 Years later, when life had gone back to normal and that summer was only a happy memory, I read about the same village in the paper.

 My village had become the home of 'the murder farm' and I couldn't get the story out of my mind.

And the narrator is correct: you won't get the story out of your mind any time soon. The Murder Farm  is one of those novels that once you begin reading you shouldn't plan to do anything else until it's over.

The book is set in the 1950s, after the end of World War II in Germany and the American occupation.  The central focus of the novel is the Danner family, who live on their isolated farm in the woods.When they are not seen for a few days, a few of the villagers go to the farm to check things out and find the entire family dead -- someone has taken a pickaxe and killed the entire family -- Mr. and Mrs. Danner, their daughter Barbara, her two small children, and a young maid who has just begun to work at the farm. Throughout this dark and gloomy book, the unnamed narrator mentioned above gathers the stories of the people who live and work in the village, and through their narratives  it becomes quite apparent that the family was not popular and not very well-liked. But there are some things that not even the narrator is privy to -- interspersed with the testimonies of the villagers are other third-party narratives which leave you to wonder a) how much you're reading is simply gossip and how much is the truth, and b) who might have wanted this entire family dead.

It is truly difficult to believe that this is Schenckel's first book.  The bleak tone of the novel is set at the beginning and although the prose is sparse, it only accentuates the air of gloom that follows through the entire novel. The Murder Farm offers a psychological portrait of a family living in isolation as well as a brief glimpse at how the war affected the people in the village. But what it offers most is a crime which is at once both  realistic and believable, making it all the more creepy the further you go into the story.

Very atmospheric and bleak, The Murder Farm is a very good read, one I would recommend without hesitation to any reader of crime fiction.  It will keep you turning pages until the very end.

Fiction from Germany

Fever Dream, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

9780446554961

Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group

May 2010

405 pp

Fever Dream falls under my own heading of "escape reading," meaning books that are highly improbable, fluffy or just something not serious for passing the time. I had another sleepless night last night and this book was handy.

Fever Dream  is the tenth book of the Agent Pendergast series. In this installment, Pendergast is visiting one of his many homes, this time in New Orleans, and comes across some evidence regarding his wife Helen's death twelve years earlier. As it turns out, the evidence suggests to Pendergast that his wife's demise was not accidental as he'd thought all of this time, but a deliberate and cold-blooded murder.  Pendergast realizes that he needs help and enlists the services of  Vincent D'Agosta, a lieutenant of the NYPD and past associate.  As he investigates why someone would want her killed, he begins to uncover things about Helen that he never knew, leading him to wonder just who was this woman he married. But as Pendergast and D'Agosta get close to the truth, there are those who don't want them to find it, and they find their lives in danger. 

Since the end of the so-called Diogenes trilogy (Brimstone, Dance of Death and The Book of the Dead), the quality of the Pendergast adventures has gone a bit downhill. Wheel of Darkness I could have done without, and Cemetery Dance was much better than its predecessor but still not the same old Pendergast. The same holds true for Fever Dream.  The descriptions of place are well written (there's one scene describing an abandoned family home that was downright creepy) and how the authors get Pendergast in and out of some very sticky spots are fun to read. However, Preston and Child seem to be stretching on this one (missing paintings, parrots, etc.,) and then there's Constance Green, Pendergast's ward, who has returned from Tibet.  Why she was even written into this story is a mystery unto itself --she plays absolutely no part of the investigation; she just takes up space.

While the book was overall a fun read and a good way to spend a few hours, I think the authors could have done much better. Maybe they should go back and reread their earlier Pendergast novels to find out why their readers got hooked on this character in the first place.  

I would recommend this novel for those already fans of Pendergast; don't make this one the first of the series that you read.  The authors are slowly getting back on the right track, but they're not there yet.  However, when the next book in the series is announced, I know I'll be right there, with my finger on the "preorder" button. For some reason I can't resist.

Blackout, by Connie Willis

9780553803198
Ballantine Books/Spectra
February 2010
491 pp

Two things before I get to the review:

First, let me skip all the way to the very last lines of the book (don't worry...no spoilers here):

 For the riveting conclusion to Blackout, be sure not to miss Connie Willis's All Clear. Coming from Spectra in Fall 2010.

 Yes, that's correct. When you get to the ending, pumped up on adrenaline because you just have to know how things come out, there's a sucker punch waiting for you -- to find out what happens and to see if the three main characters can resolve their dilemmas, you have to wait until October. So you might wish to fight the urge to read the book now and wait until you have both volumes safely in hand so as not to have to wait. I bought this book at the airport to read on the plane, and had no idea is was a two-parter, so imagine my surprise. However, as soon as I finished this one, I immediately preordered my copy of  the second book, All Clear, due out in October. Although this is perfectly timed for me,  other people may not be so happy for the wait. Oh well...what can you do?

Second, I liked this book -- didn't love it, but I have been a huge fan of Connie Willis for years since I read Doomsday, her first Oxford time-travel novel.


The year is 2060, and at Oxford a time travel project allows history graduate students to go back to a specific time and place to further supplement their learning experience. By this time, these historians are able to have specific and essential knowledge of the period implanted for immediate use, and then off they go into the Net, which leaves them at a specific place at a specific time, and this spot becomes "the drop" through which they can return to Oxford either at the end of their time or when they need additional information or props for the period.  There's also a safety net: if something goes wrong (which it's not supposed to because of the rules of time travel), the drop serves as a portal through which a "retrieval team" can effect a rescue if necessary. As the story opens, a handful of historians are preparing to go back in time to the World War II era -- Merope (who uses the name Eileen) is studying the evacuation of children from the cities to the countryside, Polly is going to London during the Blitz, and Michael is off to Dover to witness the rescue of soldiers from Dunkirk. But all is not well at Oxford, it seems -- drop schedules are being changed and no one understands why, no one can get in touch with the elusive Dunworthy, the head of the program -- things are in a word, chaotic. But eventually, each student gets to their appointed place and time, but it's not long until things begin to go wrong -- most notably, with Michael.  He is not supposed to actually be at Dunkirk, but is shanghaied into going there -- and things happen that make him wonder if he has actually changed the course of history.  Each of the historians have his/her own stories, and the author alternates the action among the three.

Willis obviously spent hours upon hours upon hours researching this part of Britain's history.  In fact, she notes in her acknowledgments that one group she had to thank was

...the marvelous group of ladies at the Imperial War Museum...women, who it turned out, had been rescue workers and ambulance drivers and air-raid wardens during the Blitz, and who told me story after story that proved invaluable to the book and to my understanding of the bravery, determination, and humor of the British people as they faced down Hitler.

 She has turned those interviews, along with the rest of her incredible research, into a portrait of life in 1940s Britain that is rich in detail as well as interesting to read from an historical point of view, so much so that at times you may forget you're reading a novel about time travel. Aside from the history of it all, the narrative is often funny, lifting the reader out of the darkness of war-time Britain for a short period of time.  The characters, for the most part, are well drawn and the author is also able to build suspense throughout the novel to create an interesting mystery that keeps you reading until the end for the solution (but as I noted above, the revelations must wait until October). 

While the story is compelling and unputdownable,  Blackout does have some minor niggling distractions, such as storylines or scenes that tend to drone on when they could have been shortened (for example, in Eileen's time at the manor with two rambunctious children) with no loss to the overall story itself. There's also nearly an entire chapter in which one of the characters tours St. Paul's cathedral, which survived the Blitz due to the diligent efforts of many, which also could have been gone with no problem in terms of plot or even character development. Finally, there's the cliffhanger ending: this may be my fault, for not knowing beforehand that the book came as a two-volume set, but when you've read 491 pages, and the last words let you know that there's no resolution for a few months, that's just wrong. 

On the whole, Blackout is quite good for what it is, and is a reading experience that should be enjoyed by fans of speculative fiction, time travel, historical fiction (if you don't mind some sci-fi to go along with it), and fans of Connie Willis' previous works.  Don't expect fine literature, but it's a great book for a few hours of relaxing entertainment.

The Informer, by Craig Nova

9780307236937

Shaye Areheart Books

2010

A few posts ago I commented on the general lack of respect on the part of people who will go to a bookstore, order a coffee & a chocolate chip cookie and then proceed to leave evidence of their presence on the pages of a brand new book. As noted, I had the misfortune of discovering this nasty habit while at my local B&N, when I went to buy a copy of The Informer, by Craig Nova. If you don't want to go back & read the post, the long and short of it is that there was only one copy available in the store, and not only were there chocolate fingerprints on it, but the first page had been torn as well making it totally unbuyable. Aaargh. Shortly after I made that post, a knight in shining armor in the form of Mr. Stephen Will, a publicist at The Hendra Agency, took pity on my plight and offered me a copy. So...to Mr. Stephen Will I offer my most hearty thanks.

I liked this book -- it appeals to the part of me that loves intelligence in the written word. As a work of historical fiction, it is very well written.

The Informer is set in Berlin at the end of Germany's Weimar Republic (1918-1933) and Germany's politics are fractured among the lines of three main political groups: the Communists, the various right-wing groups (including but not limited to the Nazis), and the prevailing Socialist government. On the streets these divisions often play out as brawls and skirmishes between rival factions, each with its gang of thugs, and this fracture continues on up into city and governmental bureaucracies where thuggery is more or less official yet clandestine.  Everything is played according to where one's loyalties lie.

Without going into the plot, at the center of this well-written novel is Gaelle, the disfigured 22 year old prostitute and "The Informer" of the story.  Gaelle is protected as well as pimped out by Felix, a 16 year old boy who lives on the streets with his ears to the ground. She often supplements their earnings by selling secrets she learns from clients, which works well for the two of them until she happens upon some intelligence regarding a man who works at the Soviet Embassy and spies on the Red Front for the Brownshirts. While all of this is happening, Armina Treffen,  a police officer in Inspectorate A (a division of the kriminalpolizei  that investigates homicide),  is seeking a serial killer who is stalking young women in the Tiergarten park area. Armina is a professional and cares about  her work, but she has her own personal issues which are compounded by the politics of her boss Ritter, which hamper her work on the case.

The Informer is not your average "Berlin noir" type of novel like Jonathan Rabb's series (beginning with Rosa),  nor is it like Kerr's Berlin novels, both of which are both more plot driven. It is more character driven, with its atmosphere of place and time acting as the headliner. From the very beginning, the book draws you into the  "malice" (the author's word) pervading the streets and the very air, not to mention the uncertainty of what is to come. In this sense, the suspense aspect of the novel permeates throughout -- not so much as an aspect of the novel's plotline, but in terms of  the future of the German people. There are several scenes in which the author offers a brief foreshadowing of the future -- a line of people at the local vet having their dogs killed as a solution to their inability to feed their pets because of the high rate of inflation, and the description of Armina going daily by the children from the "special" school -- both send a shiver up the reader's spine because we know exactly what these scenes allude to in only a matter of a few years hence.

The dustjacket blurb calls the book a "literary thriller," but the scales tip heavily in favor of the literary side, and to label this book merely a "thriller" is really to cheapen it. This is my first novel by this author, but definitely not the last.  Highly recommended.

Totally off topic: The end of an era -- goodbye Law and Order

r.i.p.

Today I received an email about how to reset my Twitter account password and panicked because I hadn't asked to reset it. So I figured someone's trying to get into it (for the life of me I don't know why because I barely use it and then only for book-related things) and went to see if I made any postings I didn't know about in case I had been hacked (which I didn't). However, I was scanning down the tweets I've missed in the last couple of days and someone from Living Social (where I use Visual Bookshelf from Facebook) posted that Law and Order was being canceled. I'm like "WHAT??????????" and clicked on the link for the New York Times that the person left. Imagine my surprise when I found out that this was not just another rumor, but the truth.

Many people wrote in to the NYT  (myself included) to bemoan L&O's fate, and I read one comment there that said  "get a grip...it's just a tv show." While that may be the case, and while the loss of one long-running show may not change how the Earth spins on its axis or make me want to jump out of a window or something, it's still one of my favorites and I'm not alone in that category.

Let me just say that this is definitely the end of an era, not just for Law and Order, but for me as well. I can honestly with no hesitation whatsoever say that there is absolutely nothing left for me to watch on any of the big three original networks. Now that L&O is going away, there won't be a need to look at the on-screen directory to see what's on the regular network channels; it's only cable channels and PBS that will be on in the house when I'm ready to sit down for some television watching. I feel like something of a certain quality and intelligence has been taken away and I'm a wee bit sad -- after all of the many years of watching this show, I'm going to miss it. And to the powers that be at NBC....I have just one question: what were you thinking???????????

Goodbye, Jack McCoy and the DA's staff; see you later, Lt. Van Buren and all of New York's finest working with you -- it's been a pleasure.  You will all be missed. To the actors who played all of these people throughout the years...you rock. Thank you. To everyone connected with producing the show, well, you was robbed by the network.