AHML Staff Choices

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Set in Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden (and some of the surrounding suburban area) – Detective Inspector Irene Huss and the other members on the police squad with her are faced with the triple murder of an elderly pastor, and his wife, and their son.  Is it the work of a “satanic cult” – or is there some personal issue that has caused someone to do this?

As they investigate, and learn more about the “victims” – they find that evil is not obvious to the casual observer – and that it takes many forms.  Sometimes the “devil within” is invisible, transparent – like a pane of glass . . .

The characters are described simply, yet evocatively – and the reader has a sense of who they are, apart from their roles on the crime solving unit.  This book provided a lot of lively discussion when we talked about it in the Mystery Book Group.

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Here’s something you don’t see very often – a story narrated by – DEATH.  DEATH is not evil, or cruel.  He doesn’t really even get any pleasure from his work.  He is, however – necessary.  And in Europe during the 1940’s, he is very tired.  His one vice – if you could call it that – is that he is fascinated by people.  He wants to know what motivates them, what moves them – but mainly – he wants to know how one species can embody examples of the highest, greatest good, and the lowest, most despicable evil.

In this book, he tells us the events that take place during 4 years in the life of Liesel – a young German girl sent by her (Communist – and therefore “doomed”) mother to live with an “acceptable” family on the outskirts of Munich.  Three times in the space of a few years, Liesel is present when someone dies.  You could say she “comes face-to-face with death.”  OR from the opposite point of view, there are three times when DEATH comes face-to-face with her.

Liesel steals her first book at the graveyard when her six-year-old brother is being buried – apparently one of the young groundskeepers has dropped it.  Even though she is nine years old, she doesn’t know how to read.  Her recurring nightmares resulting from her brother’s death bring her foster father into her room – where – to calm her fears, he begins to teach her to read.  It doesn’t matter to her at all that this first, stolen book is “The Grave Diggers Manual”.  Her initial, slow attempts to read quickly turn into a fierce appetite for books and words, and ideas, knowledge, and understanding – and  with understanding comes questions.  Questions about why the world is the way it is – and how can it be fixed.  With no money of her own – her only recourse is to steal books whenever she can.  As she struggles to understand the world she lives in, she writes the story of her own life in a journal – a diary of sorts – and calls it “The Book Thief”.  And like “The Grave Diggers Manual” – it too falls to the ground, unintentionally discarded at a scene of death and sorrow – where our narrator finds it – and treasures it for many years.

In some ways it’s a “coming of age” story, it also has historical aspects, and it’s a story of survival.  Anyone with a family had hostages to the prevailing climate of political compliance.  If you wanted to keep your poverty-level-subsistence job – you saluted along with the rest of them, kept your opinions to yourself, and your mouth shut.  Not to do so was to starve, and your family along with you.  From our vantage point 70 years into the future – it seems easy to look at life there, and wonder “How could they let that happen?”  But “that” was happening to “them” too – and righteous indignation and the freedom to resist was not a luxury available to the working class citizens.

This highly acclaimed, (extremely) well written, award winning book is “technically” young adult literature – but don’t be fooled.  There is more than enough here for adult readers to enjoy – and use for book discussion.

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For me “summer reading” means “light, fun” books – nothing suitable for book club discussions – that are perfect for “beach” or “back yard” reading.  Which is exactly where I devoured (yes, devoured) the three books in Julie Kenner’s series about Kate Connell, “Demon Hunting Soccer Mom”.  Orphaned as a child, Kate grew up in a Catholic orphanage in Rome, and was recruited as a teen-ager to study the art and strategy of demon hunting (and eradication.)  Twenty years later, retired from the demon biz, and living in a quiet, California coastal town with her second husband, 2 kids and a cat – she abruptly becomes “un-retired” when a demon comes knocking at her door.  (Well – technically – it came crashing through her picture window.)  Each book in this (short) series finds Kate more and more committed to the life she thought she’d left behind.  The books are well written (in a humorous light way) and once started – read very quickly.  Imagine “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” meets “Desperate Housewives”; sit back and prepare to be entertained.

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Two very different women, who would probably not become friends under “normal circumstances”, find themselves sharing a duplex.  It is a very high-end duplex – but one can never escape the reality that there is someone living just on the other side of the common wall.  This has been the Naughton’s home for almost all of the nearly 50 years they have been married.  Their three children are adults, and Tom and Delia have “lived apart” (though never divorced) for a very long time, but somehow Delia cannot bring herself to completely let go of the place she thinks of as “home.”  Nathan and Meri are newlyweds, and this is their first “house”.  It’s a little out of their price range, but once Nathan learns that the Senator he has long admired would be their immediate neighbor (and it would be a terrific investment, after all) - they find a way to nake it work.  As Meri’s first pregnancy progresses, she feels that she is somehow losing her self identity.  Delia senses that Meri wants (even needs) something from her – but she’s not sure she has the generosity of spirit to provide whatever it is Meri seems to require. 

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This is the third book in the “Figure Skating Mystery” series featuring Bex Levy.  Bex is a researcher for the skating competition broadcasts on the “24/7” sports TV network.  It is her job to have any/all possible information about every aspect of the sport and the competitors available to the “on air” commentators during an event.  It has also become her job to solve the various crimes that crop up along the way.  As you can imagine, the “over-the-top” personalities in the figure skating universe lend themselves equally to be victim, suspect, or murderer.  The author has actually worked as a skating researcher, so the details of a training/competition environment are (unusually) accurate.  (Something I found refreshing and enjoyable in a “skating novel”.)  And I laughed out loud more than once at the dry, witty humor.

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During the “Summer of Freedom” (1964) in Tupelo, Mississippi there are stirrings of the growing civil rights movement.  Though growing up in a single-parent home with a paralyzed, polio-stricken mother has matured 13-year-old Diana Dunn in many ways, she cannot completely understand why a group of “northern trouble makers” are trying to change the status quo.  Her perception is that everyone – black and white – is content and accepting of life as it has always been, and that “prejudice” and “inequality” doesn’t exist in her world.  During this eventful summer, she learns that the inability to accept “differences” is all around her – and it is not just limited to skin color.

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This was the selection for the Library’s “Mystery Book Discussion Group” – and I was the leader!  So I pretty much HAD to read it!!  But I’m SO glad I did!  At first glance, the body of an elderly man, found dead in his basement apartment seems like a “typical Icelandic murder” – “squalid, pointless and committed without any attempt to hide it, change the clues or conceal the evidence.”  But then, the discovery of a hidden photograph of an unknown gravestone sends Erlendur and his team in the direction of a truth larger than they could have anticipated.  The story unfolds thoughtfully and slowly – but the slowness is deceptive.  There are useful nuggets of information in every seemingly futile interview, stakeout, computer search, and review of old case files.  The characters are so well developed – with just enough illumination of their personal lives and concerns – that the reader develops a genuine affection for them.  This is the first title in the “Reykjavik Thriller Series”.  The Library also has the next two titles – “Silence of the Grave” and “Voices”.  This book (”Jar City”) is also in multiple copies for book clubs to borrow – and by the way – we had a really good discussion, and our book group LOVED it!  

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An “accident man” is a highly specialized kind of killer.  He painstakingly plans each event to look like an accident – nothing more – nothing less.  “Accidents” are not scrutinized or investigated in the same way that “murders” are – but even so, Samuel Carver has managed to survive in a very dangerous line of work.  He’s very good at what he does, but he’s also adamant about “taking out” “non-targets”.  During preparations for an “accident” which will “neutralize” an arms dealer working with international terrorists, he realizes the the “target” will be accompanied by a “lady friend”.  He calls the anonymous “control” who brokers his “business appointments” to voice his objection.  He is told that anyone – male or female – consorting with this death merchant deserves whatever they get.  Reluctantly, Carver agrees.  But the target is not an arms dealer.  There is no arms dealer – but there is an “accident”.  (Too late he learns the truth.)  His controller doesn’t actually know who ordered this particular job.  His name is not really Carver.  And someone has been hired to kill HIM after the successful completion of his assignment.  This is the kind of fast-paced, action-packed adventure that might appeal to those who enjoy Clive Cussler, Nelson DeMille, and Stuart Woods.  I, for one, am hoping they make a big, splashy, special-effects extravaganza of a movie out of this one.

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Set primarily in two different time periods, this is the story of a house – the grandest, most impressive mansion in the small Wisconsin town of Pine Rapids. Built by lumber magnate Knute Mickelson in the mid 1800s, it is given to his son John as a wedding gift in 1898 when John brings his new bride Wilma home. Even before she put her foot in the door, Wilma was already having second thoughts about her choice to leave college and her music studies to marry John, and spend the rest of her life in this small out-of-the-way town (where she instinctively knew she would never “fit in”.) Even the births of her four children did not inspire her to embrace her domestic role. She really only warmed to one of her children – Chase, her second oldest son. Though she sometimes found comfort in her music, Wilma never seemed happy with the life she had chosen.

Fifty years later – another new bride arrives in Pine Rapids. All young Dolly Magnuson ever wanted was to be married to Bryan, the man she fell in love (at first sight) with on the eve of World War II. Following all the directives in the women’s magazines regarding “wifely duties”, Dolly throws herself wholeheartedly into her career as a stay-at-home wife – even going so far as to join the local women’s quilting club. In spite of their best efforts, she and Bryan cannot seem to have children – something that causes Dolly a certain amount of guilt and depression. To relieve these feelings, and unbeknownst to anyone, she sets herself the challenge of cleaning up the old Mickelson house which has fallen into neglect and disrepair. She also becomes obsessed with the family who once lived there – if only to discover how anyone could let such a beautiful home go so far downhill.

The time frame encompasses both World War I and World War II – and the inhabitants of Pine Rapids are not untouched by history. Yet most of their life-changing events take place right there in town, as the characters make seemingly unimportant choices that set circumstances in motion that reverberate for generations.

A side note or two – this book was recommended to me by my mother – who RARELY reads a WHOLE book unless it has something to do with figure skating. The Mickelson family in the story has a summer cottage in the fictional town of “Stone Harbor” – a place that really seems to be one of the small towns on the “Green Bay side” of Door County – a place where my family has history since the 1860s. As it turns out, the author of this book lived and worked for a time in the town where my mom now lives. Ms. Baker, in her capacity as a docent and researcher with the Ephraim Foundation compiled a number of pages of history of the town – which, among other things, included the story of the suicide of one of our family members many, many years ago. Imagine my mom’s surprise to find a brief reference to this incident in this book!

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Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille (Playaway)
This audio version was my first experience with a “playaway” book. Except for the fact that the diagram/operating instructions on the packaging seemed to apply to a different model of this product – and the on/off feature was not adequately explained (so that I had to insert 2 additional new batteries in order to hear the whole thing) – I really enjoyed the convenience of this gizmo. DeMille consistently delivers a suspenseful, action-packed thriller. Former Police Detective John Corey is back – this time with a Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force. The obvious target of his unit would seem to be international groups of one type or another – but when a collegue and friend disappears while investigating an upstate New York hunting compound – the focus turns to domestic terrorism. As he and his FBI agent wife put the pieces together – it becomes obvious that they are in a race against the clock TO SAVE THE WORLD!!!! (Do the stakes get any bigger than that?)