Murder by the Book’s 2014 Stars Awarded by Barbara Tom, one of the
former owners of MBTB.
Ghost
Month ($26.95) by Ed Lin: Ed Lin has given his readers a
Taiwan vivid with scents, tastes, and clashing politics and culture. Jing-nan,
Lin’s protagonist, explains, “We have twenty-three million people, the same
population as Texas, packed on an island slightly bigger than Maryland.” Ghost Month
is a book with a great sense of place, a good story, interesting characters,
and a tender heart. North of Boston
($16.00) by Elisabeth Elo: Elisabeth Elo is a
kick-ass author, and she has created a kick-ass character. I wondered at first
why she had given her main character, Pirio Kasparov, a super-human
characteristic. Pirio can endure for hours in extremely cold water that would
kill an ordinary person within a few minutes. Elo does a great job with her
heroes and villains. She puts Pirio in jeopardy to show off how mentally tough
she is. She discourses on perfume, the fishing industry, and 10-year-old boys
and makes them all interesting. And finally, she finds a use for Pirio’s
extreme talent, and not in a science-fiction-y way. Plaster
City ($14.95) by Johnny
Shaw:
Shaw
has a way with words when describing the hot, arid, isolated area where most of
the action takes place, and in describing the people, both law-abiding and
criminal (and those who are a little of both), who live in those areas as well.
There is a lot of action — hey, it’s a Johnny Shaw book — but some of the best
moments are the quiet ones, especially the last few pages of the book. It is
the path down which Shaw takes his characters that reveals his true writer’s
mettle, and it is awesome. Standing
in Another Man’s Grave ($15.00) by Ian Rankin: Standing in Another
Man’s Grave is Scottish author Ian
Rankin’s twentieth book in his John Rebus series set in Edinburgh. That’s an
impressive number in and of itself, but what is more spectacular is how good
Rankin’s stories still are. Standing flows with humor, good
pacing, interesting characters, and an obvious love of his home country. The
Gods of Guilt ($10.00) by Michael Connelly: How
low can Mickey Haller go? His daughter won’t talk to him, his wife is in DA
purgatory (for having supported his candidacy), he has an office to support
(granted his “office” is in the vacant part of a building in foreclosure), and
his staff of Lorna (his office manager and also an ex-wife), Cisco
(investigator and Lorna’s husband), Earl (the driver of the famous Lincoln Town
Car), and Jennifer (the hankering-to-get-going new associate) needs direction
and paychecks. Add a major crime and stir. The Last Policeman
($14.95) by Ben H. Winters: When The Last Policeman opens, an
asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, and there’s no Bruce Willis
counterpart to save mankind. Clever and beguiling, heartrending and darkly
humorous at times and despite what I originally thought in 2012 when glancing
at the back cover description, this is not a sci-fi novel. Sure, it has an
apocalyptic premise, but this story is about human nature, about how hearts
break and are healed, about how people can rise or fall when faced with the
ultimate crisis. The Last Policeman won Ben H. Winters the Edgar Award for Best
Original Paperback in 2012. The
Reckoning ($26.95 ) by Rennie Airth: British author Rennie
Airth has taken his time releasing the books in his John Madden series. The
critically praised River of Darkness,
the first in the series, came out in 1999 and it has been five years between The Reckoning and the third book in the
series, The Dead of Winter. Airth’s
characters have also traveled through time, moving from Britain after World War
I to right after World War II, the time period of The Reckoning. Airth’s tales hinge on how some of the young men and
women who went off to fight a righteous war came back with a horrifying
knowledge of what they and others were capable.
Wolf
in White Van ($24.00) by: John Darnielle: This is a psychological
mystery, not a criminal one. And it blew my socks off! Apparently it blew the
socks off the nominating members of the National Book Award committee as well.
It has been longlisted for this year’s fiction award. Sean Phillips suffered a
debilitating injury at the age of 17. Wolf
in White Van flicks between flashbacks of the time surrounding the
disabling event and Sean’s life many years later. It’s not just the
snaking plot that is compelling; the writing is grade-A-quirky.
Barbara’s complete reviews of each title can
be found on the MBTB’s Mystery Book
Blog:
This year’s winner of the most awards given to
a single author is William Kent Krueger for Ordinary
Grace ($16.00). Kent (as he is known
to his friends and family) is best known for his award winning series featuring
Cork O’Connor, a sheriff in upstate Minnesota. Ordinary Grace is a departure for the author, it is a story set
in the 1960s centering around 13 year old Frank Drum and his family. Now
middle-aged, Frank looks back to a time in his life when things appeared
simpler and a summer where everything changed for his family and his small
town. The events of that summer, including the mysterious death of his friend
Bobby, make for a a fascinating coming-of-age story. When asked what prompted him to set aside his series and write a
standalone set in the 1960s, Krueger said: “This was a story that, when it came
to me, I couldn’t ignore. It was that simple. I’d been wanting for
some time to do a piece of writing that would allow me to revisit the past, to
evoke a time that was important in my own life. I also wanted to write
something that would allow me to explore the whole question of the spiritual
journey, something that’s always been very important to me. When the
character of Frank Drum, the minister’s son and the story’s narrator, formed
fully in my thinking, Ordinary Grace seemed to drop out of heaven
right into my lap. It was so compelling that it haunted me constantly
until I finally put it to paper. In some ways, Ordinary Grace was
problematic. It wasn’t a contracted manuscript. In fact, I wasn’t
sure it would be the kind of book my publisher would even want.”
In closing, a few titles that I read and enjoyed this past year:
The
Secret Place ($27.95) by Tana French: Irish to the core, her
setting and characters make for a compelling read. She never ceases to surprise
me with her twisty plots. The
Silkworm ($28.00) by Robert Galbraith: The second in a
series featuring the deeply flawed and extremely likeable Cormoran Strike. (pssst,
Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling!) This Dark
Road to Mercy ($14.99) by Wiley Cash: I do like a good mystery
set in the South. This story of two young sisters and their troubled father
grabbed me from the first page. |
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