Tag Archives: Mystery

May 19, 2013 · 10:31 am

The Likeness by Tana French

LikenessIn the second installment of Tana French‘s Dublin Murder Squad series, Cassie Maddox hasn’t quite recovered from Operation Vestal of In the Woods, the series’ debut. While she gained a caring, supportive, all-around good guy lover, she lost her partner who was also her very best friend. She’s given up the murder squad for now, and is working somewhat under the radar in Domestic Violence.

And then a young woman named Lexie Madison is found stabbed to death in an abandoned stone cottage. The problem is, Lexie Madison shouldn’t exist. Cassie and her former Undercover boss, Frank Mackey, invented everything about her – name, family, life story – for an assignment for Cassie years back. But that’s still not the most freakish detail: this ersatz Lexie is also Cassie’s doppelgänger.

Determined to solve this multi-layered mystery, Frank wheedles Cassie into returning to Undercover and literally bring Lexie back to life. Coached and wired, Cassie moves into the mansion outside Dublin where Lexie lived an insulated, rather halcyon life with four roommates, all graduate students at nearby Trinity College. Living, laughing, sharing everyday life with perhaps her own murderer, Cassie’s struggle to remain detached and objective gets ever more challenging.

Likeness is most obviously a murderous thriller, although it rises far above typical genre fiction with deeply psychological observations of the fluidity of identity. Lexie Madison tosses identities aside, while Cassie willingly sublimates her own – far beyond the call of career duty. Her tough exterior hides her lifelong fragility: her parents’ sudden death at a young age, her loving but distant aunt and uncle who never managed to make her feel like a permanent member of their family, the ever-temporary quality of her rented, anonymous living spaces, her loss of the most constant person in her life, her limited relationships, all collude to make Cassie vulnerable to the lure of intimacy, of permanence with her new housemates. Her loss of objectivity is almost expected, as her resistance to the inviting sense of belonging lessens meal by meal, tear after tear, day by day.

For those of you who choose to take murder on the run, Heather O’Neill is just the right energetic narrator, with only a small misstep when she attempts a faulty Australian accent. She’s able to take what might be yawn-inducing on the page – I strongly suspect the minutest details of the ongoing exchanges of five roommates would prove flat in print – and ratchet the tempo just enough to discard the burnt toast while keeping the ears tuned to Cassie’s never-stopping reactions. You might solve the whodunit before Cassie does, but the how and why will keep the story firmly stuck in the ears, long after the guilty admits all.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2008

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April 25, 2013 · 7:54 am

Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup

Six SuspectsFirst word of advice: read the page. Don’t bother sticking this novel in your ears: narrator Lyndam Gregory’s uneven cadences and random slurring will guarantee you won’t get through the 17.5 hours of listening, not to mention his grating attempt at Texas twang might cause unwanted murderous thoughts, as well.

Vicky Rai – playboy, entrepreneur, murderer – is dead. No one is particularly upset: “He was the poster boy for sleaze.” And yet, because of the elevated lives of the rich and famous – “Not all deaths are equal. There’s a caste system even in murder” – Rai’s death is headline news. He was shot in his own farmhouse just outside Delhi, while celebrating his latest undeserved acquittal.

The eponymous six suspects are found on site, each with a possible murder weapon: a formerly high-ranking government official who thinks he’s Gandhi; Bollywood’s most beloved actress who longs to hear from her estranged family more than any devoted fan; an unworldly “tribal” young man desperate to recover a sacred stone; a former cell phone thief who uncovers a fortune in a dustbin; a dirty politician who happens to be Rai’s father; and a Texan who thinks he’s about to get married to the mail-order bride of his dreams. Murder and mayhem indeed!

Six Suspects is Vikas Swarup‘s follow-up to his bestselling debut, Q & A, which morphed into the international film sensation, Slumdog Millionaire [as almost always, the book is even better!]. While an enhancing blend of ironic satire and grim reality illuminated Q & A, Swarup isn’t quite able to pull off the same success here. The back-and-forth from near-screwball comedy to the corrupt tragedy of excessive violence and the power-elite’s dismissive lawlessness, is more disturbingly jarring than it is potentially thought-provoking. The narrative ultimately feels forced at best, confused and contrived at worst.

To reach the denouement – expertly unexpected as it is – requires perhaps too great a commitment at almost 500 pages of whodunit. As unique and surprising (some might say preposterous) as specific story details might be – spirit possession in drag, a hijra with a heart of gold, a blind Bopal gas disaster poster child-now-adult, and so much more – the novel’s multi-layered plot never quite emerges from its derivative shadow: think Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap (still playing since 1952 in London’s West End, making it the longest running play in modern history!), or perhaps even that dastardly boardgame Clue.

I confess that some sort of blind loyalty to Q & A kept me turning the pages, as well as the thought I was ‘earning’ the right to read Swarup’s third title, The Accidental Apprentice, which recently pubbed across the oceans, although a Stateside release date remains unknown. Yes, just that potential was enough to get me through, albeit not without the occasional grumbling.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009 (United States)

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April 18, 2013 · 4:16 pm

Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber

OriginHapa Jordanian American Diana Abu-Jaber established herself with her first three titles – novels Arabian Jazz and Crescent, and memoir The Language of Baklava – as a lauded, award-winning Arab American literary voice. She leaves her own origins off the page in this chilling psychological thriller – her first, but most likely not her last. With little resemblance to formulaic pulp mysteries, Origin – so aptly titled – is a multi-layered kōan about the challenges, and sometimes the impossibility, of knowing one’s own self.

Lena Dawson works as a fingerprint specialist in an upstate New York forensics lab. For someone who chose the job because the employer provided training, Lena turns out to be rather gifted in her work. When an understandably distraught mother who has just lost her infant – allegedly to SIDS – storms into the office, Lena is pulled into a horrifying tangle of dead babies, empty cribs, and virtually no clues. The grieving mother remembers Lena’s last unintentionally high-profile case during which Lena unmasked the murderer by seeing into all the places where no one else was looking.

Separated from a cheating husband, surrounded by less-than-trustworthy colleagues, finding companionship either with her psychologically challenged neighbor or in the wee hours with the employees at the local bakery, Lena is anything but ‘normal.’ Fostered, but never legally adopted by the only parents she knows, Lena’s fragile psyche harbors vague memories of her original mother who she believes was not human – she was apparently raised by apes. Her mysterious origins are somehow linked to the growing number of small lifeless bodies; the alarming body count rules out SIDS, and suddenly the serial killer’s next victim just might be Lena.

Although the non-human babyhood never proves convincing, to Abu-Jaber’s credit, that Lena believes in her shocking origins is wholly conceivable. That detail aside, Origin intertwines multiple, disparate strands – desperate relationships, challenges of adoption, identity formation, the science of forensics, the layered legal system – and pulls together quite the nerve-wracking, unexpectedly twisted, smartly resolved (albeit not too neatly) thriller. For those of you who choose to go audible, narrator Elisabeth S. Rogers reads with just enough nervous breathlessness to keep you guessing (often wrongly) with each new discovery. Get ready to shiver …!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2007

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April 14, 2013 · 11:44 am

In the Woods by Tana French

In the WoodsOkay, so Tana French‘s website says that she won the coveted Oscar-for-mysteries Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 2007, but if you check the actual Edgars site which has an ‘I’ve never see this anywhere else, but every award site should have one!’-database, that page says In the Woods won in 2008. I think that might be just about the only detail French got wrong with her debut.

Even if you’re a seasoned mystery lover – and I fully admit I’m not – let me warn you that this one is a tough one, most importantly because it has to do with children. A mind can go rampant, too, given repetitive headlines screaming about little kids’ suffering – and believe me, everyone’s a suspect here because everyone is suspect, especially when the protagonist tells you on the second page, “What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this – two things: I crave truth. And I lie.”

Rob Ryan is the only person left in the world with a story “that nobody but [he] will ever be able to tell.” At age 12, he lost his two best friends somewhere in the woods near their home. Rob – who then went by his first name Adam – was found alone, up against a tree, standing in blood-soaked shoes. He was near-catatonic, went silent for two weeks, and lost any memory of what happened.

Twenty years later, Rob is a murder detective (oh, the irony!) in Dublin, partnered with spunky, fearless Cassie Maddox, one of the few women on the squad. He reinvented himself years ago, lost is small-town Irish accent, dresses with a poshness he can’t exactly afford, and gives the impression of being anything but local: “… nobody is likely to link up Detective Rob and his English accent with little Adam Ryan from Knocknaree.” And then a 12-year-old turns up dead outside Dublin … in the same woods from which Rob emerged very much scathed. Rob and Cassie return to those woods – now an active archaeological site (oh, the irony!) – to dig through clues for young Katy Devlin’s murder … and in the process take a shattering, unavoidable run through a deeply buried past of hidden horrors.

Read with immense control by Steven Crossley, the audible version is a chilling thrill and highly recommended. Who to trust, which lies to believe, are never quite clear … and while you might figure out whodunit before book’s end, that won’t stop you from reading eagerly to the final page. Just remember, some things can never be known … especially when you’re at the mercy of a liar.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2007

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March 26, 2013 · 9:27 am

21st Century Boys (vol. 2) by Naoki Urasawa, with the cooperation of Takashi Nagasaki, English adaptation by Akemi Wegmüller

21st Century Boys 2So why is it that all good things are supposed to come to an end? I’d be perfectly happy with another 20 more volumes. Really, is that too much to ask?

With an enormously huffy sigh of resignation, I moaningly offer a final post for Naoki Urasawa’s 20th-into-21st Century Boys. Yup, this is it. Really. The series stops here.

The Friend might be dead, but total annihilation still looms. Kenji’s gone virtual, searching for desperate answers by confronting his own 20th-century-boy past in order to find the anti-proton bomb detonator and prevent the latest threat to world destruction. Meanwhile, Kanna is out in the real world trying to find the same remote control, even as less-than-cooperative representatives of the supposed-to-be-peacekeeping UN Forces think she’s the “devil’s daughter” and impede her any way they can. While everyone is on high-octane search mode, the Giant Robot suddenly starts moving … ready to initiate Armageddon one last time. Be warned: “All kinds of stuff up the road for you, kid …”

I only wish that meant more Urasawa ‘stuff’ for me, sniff-sniff. First Monster, then Pluto, and now 20th-21st Century Boys. All finished! Withdrawal starts now. I guess I can always line up all 18 + 8 + 24 volumes, respectively, and have my own in-denial-mangafest … maybe facing the endings get easier the 16th time around or so?

Oh, Naoki Urasawa – wherefore art thou my next series?

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013 (United States)
21 SEIKI SHONEN © Naoki Urasawa/Studio Nuts
Original Japanese edition published by Shogakukan Inc.

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February 15, 2013 · 9:13 am

Message to Adolf (Part 2) by Osamu Tezuka, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian

Message to Adolf 2Official word of warning: this is NOT your kiddies’ manga. Both in subject matter and graphics, Message is definitely for mature audiences. So if you have younger ones in the house, be careful not to leave the book lying around. The “godfather of manga” has plenty of other titles for the young ‘uns … his iconic Astro Boy, in spite of darker undertones parents might recognize, is a great place for the kiddies to get to know manga-godpapa.

But back to Adolf: not to keep telling you what to do – but I definitely need to here … make sure you read Part 1 of this two-volume epic work before venturing forth. To start in the middle is not recommended: if nothing else, check out the orange cover for Part 1, then compare it to this pink cover here: der Führer is degenerating before your eyes, and you’re going to need to know why before you open Part 2.

Der Führer – who we clearly know to be evil incarnate – is only one of the three Adolfs in the midst of losing his humanity. Part 2 begins with Adolf Kaufmann still able to agonize over his murderous spree: “In a few years, I’ll probably be like the SS or Gestapo, able to kill Jews without batting an eye … no, with a smirk on my face!” he writes in a letter marred by tears and sweat that he will never be able to send to his Japanese mother. Holding on to what conscience he has left – and smitten for the first time in his life – he risks his own safety to send a young Jewish girl, Elisa, to Kobe, Japan, in the care of his childhood (Jewish) best friend, Adolf Kamil.

Kaufmann is handpicked by the Führer himself to be his ”Apprentice Secretary.” He rises rapidly through the ranks of the SD [the Nazi intelligence agency, Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers]; his blind loyalty gives him chilling, murderous efficiency. Meanwhile, in Japan, Kamil and his mother welcome Elisa, who becomes an integral part of their shrunken family. In spite of grave danger, Kamil and Ms. Ogi keep working to disperse the secret documents that could possibly destroy Hitler, out to the rest of the world.

Even after Hitler falls (you won’t find the the version the school books taught you here), Kaufmann and Kamil’s battles continue, moving through Europe, Japan, and finally to the Middle East. Even the end of a world war can’t sever their gruesome bond. Lies, betrayal, vengeance, rape, suicide, murder, all drive up the body count – and through it all, the indestructible Sohei Toge continues to record the tragedy: “This is the story of three men named Adolf,” the epics ends – just as it began, “They each followed a different course in their lives, but they were bound together by one thread of destiny. Now that the last Adolf lies dead, I present this tale to our descendants.”

And so the story starts again, rising from the ashes of a faraway graveyard. Dare we hope that somehow, history will not repeat itself again … and again and again …?

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

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December 17, 2012 · 10:14 am

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Round House“Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. No, I said, Columbus made a mistake. The Indians are in India.” Presented as humor during a community festival, the deep irony remains striking throughout Louise Erdrich’s award-winning, bestselling books that explore Native American identity and experiences, caught between tribal traditions and a labyrinthine non-Native system that continues to elide Native citizens of civil rights.

Justice is at the heart of Erdrich’s latest, The Round House, this year’s National Book Award winner. The second title in a planned trilogy that began with The Plague of Doves, (2009 Pulitzer finalist), House undoubtedly succeeds as a stand-alone volume. That said, characters in House and Plague overlap and intertwine, and reading the titles sequentially amplifies the experience of both. Small phrases in House such as “A local historian had dredged that up and proved it,” would not have nearly the significance (“rough justice,” an unfinished love story) without the back-story revealed in Plague. [If you choose the audible route, although Gary Farmer reads evenly and admirably, to have Peter Francis James continue his narrating from Plague would surely have resulted in an even more resonating recitation.]

In House, Erdrich narrows her focus on one of Plague‘s four narrators, Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a man of the law whose wife has been gravely violated. When Geraldine Coutts’ errand to retrieve a file from her office one Sunday has her still missing by the afternoon, the good judge and his son decide to go looking for her: “Women don’t realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits,” observes 13-year-old Joe, also called “Oops” as he was a “surprise” in the late-in-life marriage of his parents. “Our pulse is set to theirs, and as always on a weekend afternoon, we were waiting for my mother to start us ticking away on the evening. And so, you see, her absence stopped time.”

After borrowing a relative’s car to search around town, father and son finally find Geraldine in their own driveway, her hands still clutching the steering wheel. Her withdrawal into a silent, isolated world of her own will shatter the small family. Joe’s determination to somehow heal his mother – fueled and abetted by his (teenage-boy, testosterone-driven) best friends – recognizes no limits. Twins separated at birth, a drowned doll full of wet bills, a priest who gives out Dune in addition to the good book, a Romeo-and-Juliet-like separation, all come together as young Joe works to restore his shattered family.

Like its teenage narrator, Round House moves urgently, rarely pausing for breath. Once begun, the story barrels toward the conclusion, shocking and reassuring both. Grab hold: don’t miss this phenomenal ride.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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December 16, 2012 · 9:32 am

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (vol. 13) by Eiji Otsuka, art by Housui Yamazaki, translated by Toshifumi Yoshida, edited by Carl Gustav Horn

Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 13For someone who eschews horror films, I sure am addicted to (certain) scary manga. Devoted groupie that I am for the Kurosagi team, I just hope the series isn’t ending anytime soon! For anyone new to the series, rather than starting at (unlucky) #13, might I suggest catching up by clicking here.

In this latest volume, psychic Kuro Karatsu and hacker Ao Sasaki return from a beach vacation (yes, together, but it’s definitely not what you – or the fellow Deliverers – think!). They’re immediately summoned to the morgue because it’s quickly filling with lifeless male bodies that each happen to be wearing matching cartoon-character caps. The corpses have suddenly stopped talking to Karatsu, so dowser Makoto Numata and channeler Yuji Yata (and his alien sock puppet Kereellis) need to help Karatsu find a mysterious schoolgirl whose powers are literally out of this world.

Sasaki takes the stand in the next adventure, playing lay judge in a murder case. As the body count goes up, she has only the late poet Arthur Rimbaud and a handful of colored pencils to provide answers from beyond. In the volume’s final undertaking (couldn’t resist), the three male Deliverers (plus alien Kereellis) are hired to clear an overgrown urban park, but what should have been an afternoon of menial labor turns into quite the nightmare ceremony.

As always, do NOT skip the endnotes … how else will you find out about Indy (as in Indiana Jones)’s literacy challenges, that Ezekiel 4:12-13 reveals the food of the chosen people is not exactly manna (“sh*t sandwich,” anyone?), and so much more? We need to sooo appreciate the translation-into-English team for enlightening our Kurosagi experience every time! Thank you, thank you … and now may we have some more, please?!!!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

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December 9, 2012 · 2:44 pm

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Sharp ObjectsOMG. Think gruesome wreck you can’t turn away from and you probably won’t even get close to the horrors of Gillian Flynn‘s debut novel, which pubbed six years before her mega-breakout Gone Girl, which is currently turning up on new major ‘best-of’ lists daily. So freaked out am I with Objects (which, well-trained in rubbernecking, I listened to in less than a day during an endless swim meet weekend), that I must post the title now, in meager hopes of warding off nightmares tonight. In case you, too, choose the audible option, narrator Ann Marie Lee (who is embarrassingly incapable of a Scottish lilt) is indubitably gifted with creepazoid southern charm.

Camille Preaker’s two-year-old job with Chicago’s fourth largest paper, the Daily Post, has her busy with “consistently fall[ing] short of expectations.” Her editor thinks it might be “good” for her to go home to Wind Gap, Missouri – “‘[s]pitting distance from Tennessee and Arkansas’ … one of those crummy towns prone to misery” – and dig up what will hopefully become prizewinning coverage behind the murder of two young girls. Not wanting to further disappoint his faith in her, she heads south toward Dysfunction (capitalization intentional).

Arriving unannounced at the perfect Victorian mansion she hasn’t visited in eight years, Camille is hardly a welcome guest in her own childhood home. Mommy Dearest has no open arms for her eldest daughter, a reminder of the teenage folly no one ever dares talk about. Despite her three-decades-old marriage, even older money, and still-gorgeous looks (never mind the missing eyelashes), Camille’s mother (named Adora! – I kid you not!) is still mourning her would-have-been-perfect-if-she-had-only-lived-middle daughter, who just happened to pass away on Camille’s 13th birthday. Her youngest – precocious, spoiled, ominously 13, and named Amma (as in ‘mother’ in many languages, but also sounds like ‘I love’ in many others, egads!) – turns out to be the alpha mean girl everyone obeys, fears, and envies. And that’s just Camille’s own family! Once the town’s residents realize that Camille’s prodigal visit is not exactly social, she quickly becomes the local pariah … and yet some secrets just can’t stay hidden forever.

Are girls that carelessly treacherous? Are small town women who never leave really that desperate and manipulative? Is evil a contagious disease in these hothouse communities? Given all the death and destruction titles I read (poverty, oppression, deprivation, neverending war), my undeniable shock here makes me sound like Pollyanna, I realize … but I admit to being far more disturbed when inexplicable evil happens in environments of utter plenty.

Nightmares aside, you won’t be able to put this down (did I mention less than a day?). Flynn, who was the TV critic for Entertainment Weekly in another life, certainly figured out how to keep short attention spans transfixed. Get ready for twists and turns, thrusts and parries, all right in the gut … O-M-G.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2006

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September 28, 2012 · 10:10 am

20th Century Boys (vol. 22) by Naoki Urasawa, with the cooperation of Takashi Nagasaki, English adaptation by Akemi Wegmüller

Confession first: even though I’m posting after the fact, reading this was a little birthday present to myself. The older I get, oh how I loooovvvvve the manga that much more! Must be an age-escapist thing!

The Friend has shockingly confessed that he’s the mastermind behind the destruction of the world thus far, and he’s going to annihilate the rest in the next seven days. Hoping against all odds to stay alive, the survivors are hiding in their homes trying to escape the flying saucers with their fatal virus-inducing spray. Tokyo is suddenly, eerily quiet, but the underground revolutionaries have their own plans for survival – armed with vaccines, bad-buys-turned-good, another behemoth robot, the “emblem of justice” … and so much more.

Kanna knows the only safe place is Expo Park, and she’s planning an enormous music festival to draw everyone there. Getting the big name performers to show up is just gonna be a minor detail, right? In order to get the masses rocking (and evacuating), Konchi wires up what’s left of a radio tower, and suddenly, the city is humming, singing, shouting, revolution-ing to the latest version of “guta-lala … suda-lala” … which can only mean that the song’s originator is really back … “to settle things, once and for all.”

Got goosebumps?

Tidbit: Just to clarify, while this volume 22 is the final 20th Century Boys, the series has two more volumes under the fast-forward title of 21st Century Boys. Make sure to stay tuned. In the meantime, check out all the previous volumes of 20th Century Boys by clicking here.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)
20 SEIKI SHONEN © Naoki Urasawa/Studio Nuts
Original Japanese edition published by Shogakukan Inc.

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