books
reference
about
A trip to the library here, a bookstore visit there, it's no mystery when 4 mysteries appear in my pile of books stacked up for review. With one exception, each of these books was good all the way through and offered a new view of today's world, a tale told by a veteran mystery writer, loaded for bear and out for vengeance.
Sarah did a great job her first time out (she's not a veteran mystery writer). The protagonist, suckered by a forged Shakespeare letter and a Harvard babe, is a rube. The babe pays his way to London and they kick around town. They kick around any Shakespeare venue they find. They may even have discovered some new venues: you make the call. At moments, he doubts the whole Shakespeare story. In the end, she dumps him. I can't believe I read the whole thing, but I wouldn't dream of faulting a so-carefully-researched tome on one of my favorite topics, albeit not from this perspective.
Absolute Friends [buy at amazon] . by John Le Carre
When the Cold War is over, what happens to spies? They keep on spying, don't they? With the way facts are made to fit Iraq, it probably comes as no surprise that spies could be killed in service of the same story. Then, the story belongs to the living.
That's the conclusion at the end of this carefully crafted historical thriller, but it takes a long way to get there. Pakistan, London, Berlin, somewhere in Eastern Europe, and then back to Germany. The sad part? Spies don't tell their wives what's going on. They just limp along as lames, no one the wiser as to the true value of their fearful endeavors. The happy part? There isn't one. John Le Carre? Hasn't lost the touch. Definitely worth reading for a caring depiction of the radical '60s/'70s.
Voodoo River [buy at amazon] . by Robert Crais
Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye, heads to Louisiana in a well-researched and well-told regional novel. Louisiana is well-known for its food, and Elvis explores it well. Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and a small Delta town provide the setting for an adopted-daughter family discovery, with a mixture of illegal-alien smuggling, murder, and movie star avoidance of tabloid coverage thrown in. When Elvis falls for the local lawyer covering the case for the well-known movie star, well... read it yourself. Unlike Blacklist (next), it became too exciting to continue reading, which made it take 4 days to finish. Interesting concept: a page-turner in which the dramatic tension becomes so intense that you have to stop turning pages for a couple of hours. Robert Crais has the gift, and he has written a half-dozen other books.
Blacklist [buy at amazon] . by Sarah Paretzky
A post-9/11 private eye novel, worth reading for that fact alone. VI Warshawski goes up against the FBI and Homeland Security birds. If you know Chicago you'll probaby like this, too. It delves as deeply as it might into the Black (now African-American) communist dance experience in Chicago. A pretty interesting scene that no one knows much about. Otherwise wouldn't I have known too? Unfortunately I got lost in the last half of the story, as the entangled family story became far too tangled up for me to remember, follow, or care much about. Read the first three-quarters anyway, it's a paradigm of detective stories in the age of after-Ashcroft.
If you like what you read, click here to sign up for our mailing list and we'll notify you when we post new book reviews
all text and images
© Copyright 1997-2003 George D. Girton.
All Rights Reserved.