Just one evil act: A Lynley Novel (2014) by Elizabeth George

Originally published Friday, October 11, 2013 at 5:09 AM with thanks to Moira MacDonald of The Seattle Times

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We get hooked on a mystery series for the comfort of the familiar, for time spent with characters we’ve come to know and love, for the reassuring feeling that our detective-hero will somehow make things turn out right. And we want the characters to grow and change, but not too much. (For those who, like me, are eagerly following Sue Grafton’s journey through the alphabet: nobody out there is hoping Kinsey moves out of Henry’s rental apartment and buys her own place, right?)

So fans should be reassured to hear that Elizabeth George’s “Just One Evil Act,” (Dutton, 723 pp., $29.95) the 18th novel in the Whidbey Island author’s excellent Inspector Lynley series, keeps things mostly to the status quo. After dramatically killing off a main character in “With No One as Witness,” George has perhaps rightly guessed that readers can only handle so much change, and so “Just One Evil Act” unfolds along familiar lines.

Little Hadiyyah Upman, daughter of Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers’ neighbor and friend Taymullah Azhar, has been kidnapped (for the second time in her eventful life, poor kid; she was previously snatched in “Deception on His Mind”). Detective Inspector Lynley counsels prudence; Havers, in her usual fashion, plunges headlong into the case with little regard for rules and protocol; and a complex tale spins out, rushing us from London to Italy and back again.

George, an American who lives in the Pacific Northwest, has an uncanny ear for dialogue (and Britishisms); you hear the characters in your head long after putting the book down. And the voice you hear most strongly here is one of her most beloved characters: Havers, the disheveled, lonely sergeant whose inclination to let her heart rule her head takes her to dangerous places. Those of us who’ve devoured the Lynley mysteries know that she’s long been in love with Azhar (without the books ever really having to say it) and adores Hadiyyah — so this case is just the right one for her to run off the rails.

And she does, gloriously, in her collection of high-top trainers and ratty T-shirts (my favorite slogan “No Toads Need to Pucker Up”), trademark smart-ass repartee, habitual nutritional chaos, and utterly endearing loyalty. Might she cross paths again some day with the charming Italian Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco, who thinks she has an “extraordinarily lovely smile?” Let’s hope. Longtime readers may wonder if Havers will ever be allowed to learn from her mistakes (really, does she think a game of tit-for-tat with a sleazy tabloid reporter could possibly turn out well?), but she’s, as always, a delight to spend time with.

Meanwhile, the noble Lynley (we’re reminded that he dresses “in an elegantly rumpled and casual manner that suggested mounds of money and self-confidence”) continues to slowly heal from his wife’s death; Acting Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery remains prickly and yet intriguing; Detective Sergeant Winston Nkata makes a tantalizingly brief appearance, as if just waving hello to readers; a host of other characters in London and Italy join the narrative; and mysterious British foods, such as a “bacon butty” (guess who eats it?), are consumed. It’s a pleasure no less enjoyable for being familiar; you finish the book longing for the next installment to arrive swiftly, so as to hear Lynley and Havers’ voices again.

Daddy's gone a hunting (2013) by Mary Higgins Clark

In her latest novel Mary Higgins Clark, the beloved, bestselling "Queen of Suspense," exposes a dark secret from a family's past that threatens the lives of two sisters, Kate and Hannah Connelly, when the family-owned furniture firm in Long Island City, founded by their grandfather and famous for its fine reproductions of antiques, explodes into flames in the middle of the night, leveling the buildings to the ground, including the museum where priceless antiques have been on permanent display for years.

The ashes reveal a startling and grisly discovery, and provoke a host of suspicions and questions. Was the explosion deliberately set? What was Kate—tall, gorgeous, blond, a CPA for one of the biggest accounting firms in the country, and sister of a rising fashion designer—doing in the museum when it burst into flames? Why was Gus, a retired and disgruntled craftsman, with her at that time of night? What if someone isn't who he claims to be?

Now Gus is dead, and Kate lies in the hospital badly injured and in a coma, so neither can tell what drew them there, or what the tragedy may have to do with the hunt for a young woman missing for many years, nor can they warn that somebody may be covering his tracks, willing to kill to save himself . . .

Step by step, in a novel of dazzling suspense and excitement, Mary Higgins Clark once again demonstrates the mastery of her craft that has made her books international bestsellers for years. She presents the reader with a perplexing mystery, a puzzling question of identity, and a fascinating cast of characters—one of whom may just be a ruthless killer . . .

Minister without portfolio (20 ) by Michael Winter

Nothing makes me swoon like a good title, so let it be said right off the top: Michael Winter’s fifth novel has a very, very good title. Recognizable but intriguing, it can rattle around the reader’s mind for a long time without giving away all of its secrets. In this case, however, the title quickly becomes too much of a good thing. As an abstract concept, “minister without portfolio” is an apt description of Henry Hayward, an aimless Newfoundlander who wanders off to the war in Afghanistan to get over a bad breakup, witnesses a friend get killed, and then spends the rest of the book trying to make sense of life back home.

Instead, Winter awkwardly puts the phrase in the mouth of more than one character, none of whom pull it off. “Let’s be outlaws,” says Tender, Henry’s soon-to-be deceased childhood friend, early on. “Except for Henry – he’s our minister without portfolio.” Henry asks what that means. Tender’s reply: “You’re not committed to anything but you got a hand in everywhere.” Nobody would say such a thing. It has simply been parachuted in to make a thematic point.

As it happens, the two engines that fuel Henry’s restlessness – his relationship falling apart, and his traumatic stint in Afghanistan – make up only a brief opening segment of the novel. The vast majority of our time is spent back in Newfoundland, where Henry begins a new romance with Tender’s former spouse Martha, which is triply complicated by the fact that Henry may be responsible for his friend getting killed in the first place. The pair also embark on a mission (really, more of a fool’s errand) of figuring out who is the rightful owner of an abandoned house that Henry wants to restore and move into.

There are some vivid scenes. The rigmarole of running a business in small-town Newfoundland is captured with wit and love, as is the patchwork bureaucracy. When Henry asks a bank teller where he might find a justice of the peace, the woman yells over to her coworker, “Is Linda still doing that?” And just as Winter has made use of his real life in past books – the protagonist of his first novel, This All Happened, struggled to piece together notes for a book that would, four years later, become Winter’s own The Big Why – the new novel also pulls from life: in this case, the author’s accidental fall into an industrial garbage incinerator in 2006. Genuine horror overtakes him as the reality of his situation becomes clear. “His lungs felt warm,” Winter writes. “A new shock. He wasn’t going to burn to death: he was cooking.” (He is later rescued, as was Winter himself, by two men who just so happened to be standing nearby.)

But the novel as a whole is unfocused and opaque, in large part due to what seems like an error in perspective. Winter creates a sizeable cast of characters, only to then stick us with by far the least interesting one among them. Henry rarely displays any outward signs of heartache or mourning, and Winter’s staccato prose doesn’t let us get very far inside his head. So if his supposedly traumatic experience overseas doesn’t inform the rest of the book, why couldn’t he instead be given the far more compelling personality of, say, the neighbour who’s lost both of his hands in a pipe-fitting accident – and who is so stubborn and/or stoic that, after spilling a bag of nails in a hardware store, he spends the next half an hour using his hooks to pick them up, one at a time?

A more obvious contender for protagonist is Martha, Tender’s former spouse, who soon reveals herself to be pregnant with Tender’s child. There are so many opportunities to plumb around at this all-too-real intersection of grief and new life. Instead, Winter keeps us on the outside, in the process missing his chance to justify some pretty hard-to-read behaviour. At one point Henry recoils while they’re having sex, saying he felt as though Tender were nearby. “But Tender is in the bed with us,” Martha replies. “We’ve said that. He will always be there. Is that something we can live with?”

If that’s meant to be a demonstration of her inner strength of character, we need to see more. Ditto if it’s meant to show her self-delusion. The more likely scenario, unfortunately, is neither: Winter has Martha say this not to illustrate anything at all about her, but to have something about Henry’s own guilt parroted back at him. The real victim ends up having to comfort the sad-sack male hero. It’s a depressing image, but not in the way Winter intends.

In The Big Why, Winter gave us a similar story about building a home in a place where you may not be wanted – and in the painter Rockwell Kent, he gave us a more dynamic and sympathetic protagonist, to boot. Minister Without Portfolio covers much of the same territory, but much less convincingly.

Michael Hingston is the books columnist for the Edmonton Journal. His first novel, The Dilettantes, will be released by Freehand in September. Thanks for his review.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Aug. 30 2013,

At risk (1988) by Alice Hoffman

With this moving novel, Hoffman has written a story about a family attacked by tragedy, and has given it a larger relevance by confronting one of the most frightening issues of our times. The Farrells are a middle-class family living in a small New England town. Ivan Farrell is an astronomer, wife Polly a photographer, eight-year-old Charlie a budding biologist and 11-year-old Amanda a talented gymnast. Hoffman has few rivals in depicting domestic scenes: the bickering between siblings, the tension between spouses, and withal, the humor and love that holds families together. Suddenly the Farrells are singled out for grief. Amanda, who has been winning gymnastic meets despite a summer-long malaise, tests positive for AIDS, contracted some five years before when she was transfused with contaminated blood after an appendectomy. In unsensationalized detail, Hoffman depicts the effects of her illness. Too stunned, angry and anguished even to turn to each other, Polly and Ivan retreat into separate worlds. Charlie is abandoned by his best friend and shunned by his schoolmates. Amanda, an average adolescent who loves Madonna records, must come to grips with the process of dying. The hysterical reaction of some members of the community is a further blow. Hoffman's sensitive handling of this material is both matter of fact and heartbreaking. Ivan's friendship with a man he meets through the AIDS hotline, Polly's search for comfort with Amanda's pediatrician, Charlie's stoic bewilderment, Amanda's bond with a young woman who is a medium (the only evidence in this novel of Hoffman's characteristic feeling for the supernatural) are all beautifully portrayed.

Thanks to Goodreads

The diaries of Jane Somers (1984) by Doris Lessing

The Diaries of Jane Somers, first published pseudonymously and separately as The Diary of a Good Neighbour and If The Old Could, appear here in one volume for the first time under Doris Lessing's name, together with a new preface by the author. While marking a return to the most realistic subject matter of Doris Lessing's early fiction, they are also a provocative new departure.At the centre of both novels is attractive, intelligent magazine editor Jane Somers, whose wry perception informs and animates every page. Jane was an ambitious journalist concerned with success, clothes and comfort when her life changed. Her husband died, then her mother. Suddenly understanding her real inadequacy, Jane becomes deeply committed to the very old and deprived, making particular friends with one old woman, Maudie, whose life has been all struggle and poverty.
The contrast between these two lives produces the framework for a difficult growth towards self-knowledge. At the end of The Diary of a Good Neighbour the future is hinted at when Jill, a clever hard girl, as Jane once was, moves into her flat and takes over her life, Jane understands young people as little as she did so recently the old.
If the Old Could, Jane falls seriously in love for the first time in her life. By now, she is in her fifties. So is Richard Curtis, who loves her. Both are weighed down with responsibilities which are always preventing them from enjoying each other. But with whom is Jane really in love? Who really is she longing for if not her dead husband, whom she did not value at all when he was alive? This new lover is the old one in disguise, just as bright ambitious Jill is Jane when young. Jane seems surrounded - like the very old - by mirrors, by echoes.Who, then, in this gallery of mirrors is niece Kate, with whom Jane is landed by a process of emotional logic which she understands very well? This all-competent woman cannot begin to cope with the poor helpless Kate: they are opposites, extremes - or so it seems.

Thanks to www.dorislessing.org

The son (2014) by Jo Nesbo

Sonny Lofthus was a gifted 15-year-old pupil and star wrestler whose world was turned upside-down when his father, a much-admired police officer widely acknowledged as incorruptible, was found dead at home.  Alongside the corpse was a suicide note explaining that, he, in fact, was the notorious police department mole who had been feeding information  to Oslo's leading crime lord for years.  Sonny escaped his burning shame via heroin, and at 18, was thrown in prison for two murders.

But as “The Son” opens 12 years later, we discover that there’s something terribly rotten in Oslo’s Staten Maximum Security Prison. From the early pages of the new standalone novel by Jo Nesbo, author of the Harry Hole series, it quickly becomes clear that an extended network of highly placed officials are in on a scheme to use Sonny as a fall guy — over and over — for messy murders they and their cohorts would rather not be connected to. The homicide squad has his hands full with his job, a wife who desperately needs an eye operation, and a new protégée who is ambitious, impatient, and newly transferred from the drug squad.

Kefas is also nearing retirement and looking back with plenty of hindsight on a professional life that’s included a gambling addiction and several career shifts: He’s been a crime-scene technician — he’s a dab hand at assessing bullet trajectories — a tactical investigator (“I guess,” Kefas tells a colleague, “I became more interested in the why rather than the how.”), and endured a stint investigating fraud.

Nesbo is great at rapidly sketching the kind of juicy characters, peripheral or not, that propel an already fast-moving story forward at a pleasing pace. The supporting cast of “The Son” includes Arild Franck, a deeply unpleasant man and assistant prison governor who masterminded Staten’s blueprints — down to each and every fingerprint-operated lock — “with an emphasis on security and efficiency rather than comfort”; Johannes Halden, an older prisoner who loves reading and rereading “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and who’d only ever wanted to be a sea captain but had, long ago, fallen afoul of a Thai smuggling ring; Markus, a lonely, smart kid with bags of curiosity and a strategically placed telescope; and a wealthy homemaker who likes her life just so.

Nesbo’s writing style is visually arresting as always — an earlier standalone novel, “Headhunters,’’ was made into a cracking 2011 movie of the same name, and it’s worth noting that Warner Bros. acquired film rights to “The Son” in 2012 — and he mines real-world changes during the span of Sonny’s incarceration with obvious glee. Sonny makes his way outside prison with impeccable manners, a gentle demeanor, and often palpable bewilderment — he’s still used to a Discman and Internet cafes rather than MP3s and cellphones, to say nothing of having a resilient penchant for Marlboros and Depeche Mode.

Throughout the book, in fact, Nesbo remains as playful as ever. Alongside a story that features horrible baddies and their nasty ways — involving knives, eyelids, and Argentine mastiffs — there are cheeky references to “Men in Black,’’ “The Shining,’’ and Monty Python, as well as a surprisingly tender, taxi-cab conversation about true love. In a novel that’s both deadly serious and seriously sentimental, Nesbo ably rides the slimmest of lines between humanity’s uglier mug and unusual manners of redemption. (Daneet Steffens is a Journalist and book critic with The Boston Globe, May 14, 2014)

THE AUTHOR PHOTO BELOW

The collector (2014 ) by Nora Roberts

When professional house-sitter Lila Emerson witnesses a murder/suicide from her current apartment-sitting job, life as she knows it takes a dramatic turn. Suddenly, the woman with no permanent ties finds herself almost wishing for one. . . .

Artist Ashton Archer knows his brother isn’t capable of violence—against himself or others. He recruits Lila, the only eyewitness, to help him uncover what happened. Ash longs to paint her as intensely as he hungers to touch her. But their investigation draws them into a rarified circle where priceless antiques are bought, sold, gambled away, and stolen, where what you possess is who you are, and where what you desire becomes a deadly obsession.  (photo and text from Goodreads)

Through the Evil Days (2013) by Julia Spencer-Flemming

Through The Evil Days

http://www.juliaspencerfleming.com/through-the-evil-days.html

   New York Times bestseller Julia Spencer-Fleming returns with the eighth novel in her much-loved series: THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS. The eighth novel in the New York Times bestselling Clare Fergusson/Russ VanAlstyne series will be published on November 5, 2013.
   Friday, January 9th. A middle-of-the-night call wakes Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and her husband, Police Chief Russ van Alstyne: a farmhouse has erupted in flames, killing the couple sleeping indoors. A tragedy for the Adirondack mountain town of Millers Kill   
   But a darker, more evil current quickly emerges…

   Clare and Russ's belated honeymoon at an isolated lakeside cabin is meant to give them time to adjust to Clare's unexpected pregnancy. Instead, they learn the dead couple had not been alone – their eight-year-old foster child, Mikayla, has disappeared from the wreckage without a trace. A recent transplant recipient, Mikayla will sicken and die without proper medication.
   With the police force overburdened, Officers Hadley Knox and Kevin Flynn must set aside their tangled emotions in order to work together. They have eight days to find Mikayla, after which no drugs will help. But as the weather darkens and an ice storm brews, they face a battle against the elements.
   At the lake, Clare and Russ discover the storm isn't the only mortal threat. As nature unleashes her fury, can anyone unpick the trail that leads to Mikayla before her days come to an end.

The midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich



At midnight, the dogs, cats, and rats rule Venice. The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo, the bridge that leads to the ghetto, trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables, rancid fat, and vermin. Shapeless matter, perhaps animal, floats to the surface of Rio di San Girolamo and hovers on its greasy waters. Through the mist rising from the canal the cries and grunts of for...more At midnight, the dogs, cats, and rats rule Venice. The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo, the bridge that leads to the ghetto, trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables, rancid fat, and vermin. Shapeless matter, perhaps animal, floats to the surface of Rio di San Girolamo and hovers on its greasy waters. Through the mist rising from the canal the cries and grunts of foraging pigs echo. Seeping refuse on the streets renders the pavement slick and the walking treacherous.

It was on such a night that the men came for Hannah. Hannah Levi is known throughout sixteenth-century Venice for her skill in midwifery. When a Christian count appears at Hannah's door in the Jewish ghetto imploring her to attend his labouring wife, who is nearing death, Hannah is forced to make a dangerous decision. Not only is it illegal for Jews to render medical treatment to Christians, it's also punishable by torture and death. Moreover, as her Rabbi angrily points out, if the mother or child should die, the entire ghetto population will be in peril.

But Hannah’s compassion for another woman’s misery overrides her concern for self-preservation. The Rabbi once forced her to withhold care from her shunned sister, Jessica, with terrible consequences. Hannah cannot turn away from a labouring woman again. Moreover, she cannot turn down the enormous fee offered by the Conte. Despite the Rabbi’s protests, she knows that this money can release her husband, Isaac, a merchant who was recently taken captive on Malta as a slave. There is nothing Hannah wants more than to see the handsome face of the loving man who married her despite her lack of dowry, and who continues to love her despite her barrenness. She must save Isaac.

Meanwhile, far away in Malta, Isaac is worried about Hannah’s safety, having heard tales of the terrifying plague ravaging Venice. But his own life is in terrible danger. He is auctioned as a slave to the head of the local convent, Sister Assunta, who is bent on converting him to Christianity. When he won’t give up his faith, he’s traded to the brutish lout Joseph, who is renowned for working his slaves to death. Isaac soon learns that Joseph is heartsick over a local beauty who won’t give him the time of day. Isaac uses his gifts of literacy and a poetic imagination—not to mention long-pent-up desire—to earn his day-to-day survival by penning love letters on behalf of his captor and a paying illiterate public.

Back in Venice, Hannah packs her “"birthing spoons”—secret rudimentary forceps she invented to help with difficult births—and sets off with the Conte and his treacherous brother. Can she save the mother? Can she save the baby, on whose tiny shoulders the Conte’s legacy rests? And can she also save herself, and Isaac, and their own hopes for a future, without endangering the lives of everyone in the ghetto?

The Midwife of Venice is a gripping historical page-turner, enthralling readers with its suspenseful action and vivid depiction of life in sixteenth-century Venice. Roberta Rich has created a wonderful heroine in Hannah Levi, a lioness who will fight for the survival of the man she loves, and the women and babies she is duty-bound to protect, carrying with her the best of humanity’s compassion and courage.

Bones of the lost by Kathy Reichs

Slower than most.  The two main plots seems disjointed to me.  Did not enjoy as much as others.  Did not like the way Tempe's daughter was placed in Afghanistan.  Too artificial.  The plot of the smuggling was weak.