edited by Robin Agnew, Aunt Agatha’s, Ann Arbor, MI, www.auntagathas.com:
David Anthony, Something for Nothing (Algonquin tpo, $13.95), recommended by Bill Farley, Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Seattle, WA, www.seattlemystery.com:
Martin Anderson is a 44-year-old adolescent. He’s married to a good woman, father of two appealing kids, and owner of a business which buys and sells used private airplanes, and he’s a really nice guy, but he has never grown up. It’s 1974, and times are not as tough as in 2011, but surprisingly similar: oil is scarce and the economy is in the doldrums. Anderson Aircrafts is what we’d call today “under water.” Martin’s biggest problem, though, is that he’s an habitual liar – lying to himself as well as to everyone else. His idea of an explanation is to come up with a “cover story.” And as a liar himself, he suspects everyone else of lying, which complicates his life significantly. You would not believe the lengths he goes to when driven by infatuation with his neighbor’s wife.
When he’s offered big money to make a few quick flights to Mexico to pick up illicit drugs, what’s a guy who has never learned to make responsible decisions going to do? How else can he hold onto his upscale home, Cadillac, private boat, race horse (!), etc.?
In 300+ pages we get pretty deeply inside this guy’s head, and I think most readers will, like me, recognize some common decency in Martin, and a little residual adolescence in ourselves, and somehow hope for a happy ending here. We come to understand why Publishers Weekly calls Martin Anderson “the most lovable drug smuggler in ages.” A brilliant debut novel.
Thomas H. Cook, The Quest for Anna Klein (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hc, $27, recommended by Jamie Agnew, Aunt Agatha’s, Ann Arbor, MI, www.auntagathas.com:
Thomas Cook is one of my favorite authors, but when I tell people that their reaction is often who? He’s been nominated for the Edgar seven times in five different categories, won for best novel, and yet, perhaps because he doesn’t write a series, remains criminally underappreciated. To me, fine prose in an essential part of any really excellent book, and Cook is one of the greatest living stylists in any genre, but he also has mastery of the other essential elements like character, setting and a special gift for the unexpected plot twist that seems obvious only after its happened.
In many ways his latest book The Quest For Anna Klein has all the ingredients of an ultimate Cook book. He’s always been fascinated by the corrosive nature of evil, and what fallible humanity can do to combat it, often considered from the point of view of someone trying to come to terms with a tragic past, and here his characters are faced with the ultimate villain of our time, Adolph Hitler. His naive protagonist Thomas Danforth is slowly drawn into a plot to thwart and then kill the dictator, more by his fascination with the conspiracy’s mysterious, still center, Anna Klein, than by any great sense of idealism. Cook manages to maintain compelling suspense even though we know full well that Hitler only gets assassinated in Quentin Tarantino movies.
Adding to the depth and resonance is a structure Cook has used often, as evidenced in the titles of books like The Interrogation and The Last Talk With Lola Faye, that of a conversation between two unsympathetic people, a dialogue that slowly wipes clean the dark glass of the past. In this case the post 9/11 exigencies of the present are a factor too, as a now aged Danforth is interviewed in 2001 about the events of 1939 by the narrator Paul Crane, a rather callow young think tank member, who has called for a passionate, almost irrational response to the terrorist attack. Danforth methodically teases him, and the reader, into the much more complicated world of historical reality, where there’s more than one evil, many of them masquerading as good.
As usual Cook manages to stay a few steps ahead without sacrificing either verisimilitude or a final, sustained emotional wallop. The titular character Anna is revealed kaleidoscopically, from many angles, and the pursuit of her true nature animates the book, finally suggesting how hard it is to really know anyone at all, even someone we feel passionately about. In the end we are left to ponder the fruitlessness of blind revenge and the abiding vitality of that crazy thing called love.
But it would also be a tragedy if our increasingly shrinking literary world were to obscure or marginalize as talented an artist as Thomas Cook. His fans, many of them other writers, will definitely want to pick up a copy of The Quest For Anna Klein, as will any fan of well written mysteries.
Kwei Quartey, Children of the Street(Random House tpo, $15), recommended by Robin Agnew, Aunt Agatha’s, Ann Arbor, Mich., www.auntagathas.com:
I was knocked out by Quartey’s debut, Wife of the Gods, and I’m happy to report that this second novel is just as excellent. Quartey’s series character, Darko Dawson, is really a classic who seems as though he’s been solving mysteries “between the covers” for decades, not just two novels. He’s such a completely realized and compelling character that he’s a wonderful lynchpin for the books, though there is more to them even than Darko himself. Darko works for the CID in Ghana in the capitol city of Accra, where he lives with his wife and his son Hosiah, who suffers from a heart defect. There is surgery to cure it, but the Dawsons cannot afford it. Darko’s worry for his son is an underlying thread of anxiety that Quartey skillfully pulls through the novel.
The core of the novel concerns the street children of Accra - there are (according to Quartey, and I have no reason to doubt him) - 60,000 children living on the streets of Accra. When they start turning up dead, the cases, by the second or third body appear to be linked, though Darko’s boss allows his nephew, who works under Dawson, to head on a wild goose chase as far as the possible culprit is concerned. It’s a good sidebar as it’s a way for the book to highlight the workings of the Ghanian police force, as well as one of Darko’s weaknesses. The story of the street children is heartbreaking, and Quartey spares us no horrible detail as we learn about 13 year old girls forced to work as prostitutes, young boys who stake out a piece of sidewalk to sleep on while taking turns keeping watch, and the difficulty that all of the children have finding any kind of work or something to eat. Though it’s lightly touched on, much of the western world’s electronic garbage turns up in Africa, and one of the things the kids do for money is strip computer wires for the copper inside. Of course burning the outer part of the wire is toxic, and there’s a cloud of black smoke hanging over the garbage dump where they scrounge for electronics.
The plight of the boys only makes the parade of teen-aged corpses more heartbreaking. I admire any writer who can take a tired trope like the serial killer novel and make it absolutely fresh, which is the case here. Quartey is also a pure mystery writer with an obvious love for the genre - he makes use of red herrings, clues and tricky characters that succeed in fooling the reader. I was very surprised by the killer’s identity, even though there was a clue in the narrative. So this is a serial killer book, yes, but it’s not a thriller, it’s a mystery. Darko’s heart carries you through the story and enriches your reading experience. I shed a tear on the last page and you probably will too, and like me, you’ll probably be looking forward to the next book already. More, please, Dr. Quartey!
Peter Spiegelman, Thick as Thieves (Random House hc, $24.95 - signed copies available), recommended by Sue Wilder, Murder on the Beach, Delray Beach, FL, www.murderonthebeach.com:
Ex-CIA agent Carr is recruited by Deke to join his gang of thieves. The gang specializes in high end robberies of cash and highly liquid items and is planning the ultimate heist. The target is Curtis Prager, a money launderer for organized crime who operates out of the Cayman Islands. The reward will be millions of dollars.
During the initial planning stages, Deke is killed, possibly the victim of a setup. Carr assumes leadership of the group, but the participants’ loyalties are divided and trust is in short supply. Carr realizes that Valerie, a gang member and sometimes relationship, may be a traitor. In fact, all of the gang members have their own agendas that threaten to undermine the plan.
The plot is meticulous and tracks the characters between Miami and the Caymans. Shifting points of view effectively reveal the character’s motives. Mr. Spiegelman’s financial and computer software background make the story credible. The action is non-stop and filled with snappy dialogue.
Thick as Thieves takes the reader along on the heist. The reward is a well-written suspenseful ride with a good twist at the end. ENJOY IT.
Michael Wiley, A Bad Night's Sleep (Minotaur hc, $24.99 - signed copies available), recommended by Barbara Tom, Murder by the Book, Portland, OR, www.mbtb.com:
Chicago P.I. Joe Kozmarski's story is a throwback to classic tough-guy private eye novels. Kozmarski is hard-drinking and hard-headed. It's him versus the world. With a little help from a couple of requisite women-who-love-the-bad-boys.
How low did Joe go? He was a police detective, and considering the number of corrupt cops in this book, he wasn't so bad. But he messed up because he had (and has) a problem with alcohol and drugs, so he was out of the police. He also feels responsible for the serious injury of a cop, one of his few friends from the old days.
Although he is innocent and, in fact, tried to prevent good cops from being shot by bad cops, Joe was held in isolation in jail for killing a cop and his name is mud. His only recourse is to play all sides against each other: the desperate police department, the gang using their credentials as police officers to commit illegal acts, and the warring neighborhood gangs.
Michael Wiley has won and been nominated for major awards, so it's astounding that his books have not been turned into paperbacks. As a matter of fact, his first two books in the series, The Last Striptease and The Bad Kitty Lounge, are difficult to come by. Such is the puzzling state of publishing today.
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