The Best Recent Crime Novels--review roundup The only one I've read is The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths, which kept me uncertain the entire time. I didn't know whodunnit until the end. Suspense and great literary allusions and an eerie Gothic vibe throughout.
9 Ways of Looking at Sherlock. Beyond helping us feel better about our own status as outsiders, Sherlock is also a figure that brings the whole mystery community together. Conan Doyle’s work has been appreciated by generations of crime and mystery fans, in a variety of ways specific to those generations and universal to fans through time. We decided, as the year draws to a close, to gather a variety of these interpretations of Sherlock together, to showcase the vast breadth of Sherlockian fandom.
As a fan of any good Sherlock pastiche and of several of the authors of the various essays, I'm all over these. :)
Adding to the Espionage Canon. Recommended fiction and nonfiction for the espionage genre. I read and enjoyed Leo Marks' Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 several years ago and recently saw a reference to Marks in a biography of the SOE agent Odette Sansom. Leo Marks' father owned 84 Charing Cross Road, the bookshop made famous by Helene Hanff.
Debris Line is the latest in Matthew Fitzsimmons' adventures of Gibson Vaughn. I loved The Short Drop and was entertained by Poison Feather, Cold Harbor, and Debris Line, but the first book was definitely the best in this thriller series.
Debris Line finds Gibson Vaughn, Jenn, Hendricks, and George in a small coastal village in Portugal. Their host? A drug smuggler who owes George a favor and is willing to harbor the fugitives for a time.
Then a drug shipment is hijacked. Not taken, but threatened with destruction, and Vaughn and his team must repay the privilege of having enjoyed the kingpin's sanctuary. Or else.
Fast-paced with twists and betrayals and a new protagonist/antagonist? hacker group responsible for the heist. The spokesperson has a great deal of knowledge about Vaughn. Whoever these people are, we can expect to hear more about them in the next book.
Read in July. Blog review scheduled for Nov. 1.
NetGalley/Thomas & Mercer
Thriller/Suspense. Nov. 13, 2018.
Stella Rimington's latest espionage thriller Moscow Sleepers kept me engaged throughout.
Dame Stella Rimington, DCB is a British author and former Director General of MI5, a position she held from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment. Wikipedia
I've read one other book by Rimington and was pleased that I enjoyed this one as well. The story begins in Vermont with a dying university professor in a hospice. When a visitor finally arrives, the nurse notifies the FBI, as she has been instructed to do.
From Vermont, to London, to Brussels and Berlin, to a school in rural England--the plot involves the unraveling of the importance of the dying Vermont academic to a conspiracy involving immigrant children and computer hacking. Liz Carlyle is back on the job with MI5.
As a result of Stella Rimington's nearly 30 years of experience with MI5, her plots have a realistic feel. Rimington's work is more concerned with putting together puzzle pieces than the more violent works of other espionage writers. I enjoyed the puzzle and the characters.
Read in August. Blog review scheduled for Nov. 1.
NetGalley/Bloomsbury USA
Espionage/Mystery. Nov. 13, 2018.
Ben MacIntyre has a new book: The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, and I want it.
The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.
Another MacIntyre book from the Cold War period is A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. This one has on my mind since recently reading Kate Atkinson's Transcription. I want to read both The Spy and the Traitor and A Spy Among Friends because MacIntyre writes nonfiction so well.
I've enjoyed a couple of Ben MacIntyre's nonfiction books about WWII. My favorite was Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. What a great film this one would make!
From my review: Maybe the reason the entire plan reads something like a novel is that so many of the individuals involved in one way or another were already novelists or became novelists. While truth is often stranger than fiction, it helps if those who conceive and construct such a complicated plan have the imagination of fiction writers. I lost count of how many writers were involved from start to finish. The most famous, although his role was small, was Ian Fleming. No wonder the Bond stories were so popular, Fleming had all the experience one might need with espionage, double-thinking, and dreaming up ways to confuse or mislead the enemy.
Reading about Ian Fleming's role in Operation Mincemeat eventually led me to read The Man with the Golden Typewriter. What a pleasure to read the correspondence between Fleming and people like Evelyn Waugh, Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, and Raymond Chandler.
The letters were all interesting in so many ways. Reading each one was a pleasure, and my opinion of Ian Fleming rose as I read the book. He was not just the author of sensational novels, but a former Naval Intelligence officer, a friend of some of the most talented authors of the day, and a charming and witty correspondent.
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Kate Atkinson's Transcription is a strange little book. Although the novel opens in 1950, we are quickly thrust back to 1940, when eighteen-year-old Juliet begins working for a branch of MI5. She is idealistic, but aware that she doesn't always meet her own standards.
She has recently lost her mother, and a sense of abandonment is part of her personality. She is also young and longing for romance and excitement.
Her job as a transcriptionist, however, is boring, but when she does have the opportunity to become more involved, Juliet realizes there is still plenty of dull mixed in with the tension and danger.
Most of the book is slow and anything but a thriller, and Atkinson probably did this on purpose. There is sly humor throughout, especially the kind of bitter/sweet/amusing sections with Juliet imagining the possibility of romance with the wrong man.
When the war is over, Juliet moves on with her life and by 1950 is a radio producer with the BBC. She discovers that the past is not always past.
An overarching theme of deception, duplicity, and the masks people wear permeates the novel. Some of the references are obvious, some made me curious about different applications, but I was not expecting one central duplicity. In the concluding chapters, the suspense mounts (finally), and traitors are revealed.
I admit that I found a majority of the novel slow and despite the fact that the slow pace is intentional and despite the many amusing and witty comments and scenarios, I felt myself wading through three quarters of the book waiting for...something. But that something arrived, and the conclusion and the Author's Note which follows made everything worthwhile.
Transcription is a curious book. It is not a thriller, as you might expect, but it is book that ambushed me at the end and one I can't quit thinking about.
Read in August. Blog review scheduled for Sept. 9.
NetGalley/Little, Brown, and Company
Historical Fiction/Espionage. Sept. 25, 2018. Print length: 352 pages.
Vivian, happily married mother of four, is a Russian analyst with the CIA. Her assignment to uncover the leaders of a Russian sleeper cell becomes something else entirely when she finally accesses the computer of a suspected Russian operative...and finds pictures of five members of a sleeper cell.
Her thrilling sense of success is shattered when she realizes one of the pictures is that of her husband Matt. Instead of immediately notifying her superior, Viv, stunned and disbelieving, hesitates.
Need to Know is a tense and frightening account of a dilemma no one could really expect. Loyalty to country or family? Whom to trust?
I did not know what to expect from this novel, but I could not stop turning the pages. And the end? Whoa.
"Karen Cleveland spent eight years as a CIA analyst, the last six in counterterrorism. She has master’s degrees from Trinity College Dublin, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar, and from Harvard University. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two young kids."
This is not an action thriller. There is no Jason Bourne. Need to Know is an espionage novel of another type entirely, yet my heart was in my mouth as I struggled through each tension-laden page.
Read in Oct.; blog review scheduled for Jan. 8, 2018.
NetGalley/Random House/Ballentine
Espionage/Suspense. Jan. 23, 2018. Print length: 304 pages.
A Kind of Grief by A.D. Scott is set in the Scottish Highlands in the late 1950's during the Cold War. I read the first in this series in 2010 and enjoyed it. Although I thought I would continue with the series, it didn't happen (best laid plans "gang aft agley" -- thank you, Robert Burns), and Scott's latest offering is the sixth book featuring Joanne Ross.
So...I have missed the four books in between, and thus was unfamiliar with some important events that are referred to in this one. Maybe that is part of the reason I wasn't as taken with this book as I was with first one, but I also found the style a bit off-putting and don't remember feeling that way when reading A Small Death in the Great Glen.
What I did like is the connection to the Cambridge Five. (I read A Kind of Grief in May, but am scheduling the review for September. In May, I also read 3 fiction and 1 nonfiction books about espionage during WWII and later during the Cold War, so there was a nice fit in subject matter which also included watching Granite Flats, a Netflix series that also had the espionage and Cold War angle. None of this reading/watching was deliberate, and I love it when happenstance creates a synchronicity in subject matter and/or characters.)
I also love the setting. The highlands fascinate me in fiction and fact, and the late 1950's are
so removed from our current global inter-connectedness and our technology. The differences between the 1950's and 2015 are almost Brigadoon-ish.
Would I read more in the series? Yes, but I intend to check with the library to see if they have the second in the series. I would like to catch up on at least some of what I've missed.
Read in May; Blog post scheduled for Sept. 30, 2015.
NetGalley/Atria Books
Mystery. Oct. 6, 2015. Print version: 368 pages.
No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary
I read and reviewed Someone Else's Skin last year and was impressed with the first in a new series featuring DI Marnie Rome. Sarah Hilary's writing and her ability to turn a textbook domestic abuse case on its head kept me riveted from beginning to end.
No Other Darkness is just as good, just as suspenseful, and once again, just as thoughtful as it takes a deeper look at family dynamics. (Oh, it is difficult to review this one without spoilers.)
OK -- DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake are investigating a case involving the bodies of two children found in an underground bunker. Who are they? How long have they been there? Why were they never reported missing?
The plot twists and turns with psychological insights that challenge the assumptions of both the investigators and the reader. Complex, involved, and well-written-- I couldn't put it down.
Hilary continues to develop the back-stories of both Marnie and Noah, especially in connection to Marnie's difficulties dealing with the murders of her own parents by their fourteen-year-old foster son.
This is crime fiction at its best. She's up there with Jane Casey, for me.
Read in July. Blog review scheduled for Aug. 5.
NetGalley/Penguin Group
Mystery/Crime/Police Procedural. Aug. 18, 2015. Print version: 416 pages.
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Your Turn, Mr. Moto by John P. Marquand
"The thrilling 1st installment in Pulitzer Prize–winning author John P. Marquand's classic espionage series featuring Imperial Japan's most skillful spy."
Marquand won the Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley in 1938, which is why I decided to read this. He wrote literary fiction, crime fiction, and the Mr. Moto spy novels with great success. The Mr. Moto novels are similar to pulp fiction and inspired eight films featuring Peter Lorre in the 1930's.
- Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937)
- Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937)
- Mr. Moto's Gamble (1937)
- Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938)
- Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938)
- Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939)
- Danger Island (1939)
- Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939)
Unfortunately, the novel felt dated, had awkward dialogue, little action, and a stultifying conclusion. The most interesting thing about the novel is the early interest in the imperial power and ambitions of Japan. First published in 1935, the novel has an interesting perspective, especially so many years before Pearl Harbor.
Read in July. Blog review scheduled for Aug. 5.
NetGalley/Open Road Media
Spy/Espionage/Historic Fiction. 1935; 2015. Print version: 281 pages.
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Corridors of the Night by Anne Perry
The back-story of the Monk series involves William Monk and the carriage accident ten years previously that left him with no memory of his past and Hester Latterly, who had recently returned from the Crimea where she was a nurse with Florence Nightengale. Although the books can easily be read as stand-alones, they are easier to understand if you begin with the first one The Face of a Stranger. It isn't necessary to have read all of them, but the first one gives some important background information. You can get The William Monk Mysteries: The First Three Novels as an e-book at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Perry's novels are well-researched and well-written, and she evokes Victorian London in social atmosphere and mood. Her characters, including secondary characters, all have depth and personality. The plots usually have complex moral and ethical situations that Perry does not present in terms of black and white; instead, she makes the reader aware of the ambiguity of characters and events and leaves the reader to deal with the ethical questions. Sometimes this can be a bit off-putting.
Corridors of the Night deals with medical experimentation. How does science and medicine advance without experimenting? What is the price of coming up with a new approach that might save, in the long run, millions of lives? What are the moral obligations?
Hamilton Rand is experimenting with blood transfusions and has found that the blood of three siblings, young children, works when the blood of other donors does not. He does not, however, know why the blood of these three children can be successfully transfused, while the blood from other donors causes the patient's death. His goal is worthy. His methods, however, have ethical considerations that do not bother him in the least.
Read in July. Blog review scheduled for Aug. 5.
NetGalley/Random House/Ballantine
Historic Mystery. Sept. 5, 2015. Print version: 288 pages.
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The Kill (a Maeve Kerrigan novel) by Jane Casey
I read this one in June after reading the 6th book in the Maeve Kerrigan series and realizing I'd missed the 5th book. As usual, Jane Casey delivers a tightly plotted police procedural while continuing to add depth to her characters. She is currently my favorite crime writer, and Maeve and the irascible Josh Derwent are two of my favorite characters.
When a policeman is murdered in puzzling circumstances, Maeve and Derwent are on the case, but with a more personal touch than usual--after all, the man was one of their own. What they never could have expected is that this is only the first murder of someone who is specifically targeting the police. If they can find the motive, it may lead them to killer.
Maeve is a great character, but the misogynistic, politically incorrect Derwent provides the perfect foil and gives the series its piquant spice. Casey does a fantastic job of making each novel complete in itself while subtly adding dimension not only to the main characters, but to the secondary characters as well. The subplots that are woven from the first novel onward and the intricate relationships of the characters keep me immersed in the world Casey has created.
Purchased.
Crime/Police Procedural. 2014. 464 pages.
