Browsing Area Books for July 2013--Whodunits

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs. Call Number: PS3568.E476345S65 2010.

          Reich’s 13^th book starring Temperance Brennan has the forensic anthropologist trying to unravel a mystery concerning James Lowery, a man recently drowned in a bizarre fashion in Quebec.  But Lowery died 40 years before, in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. And in Hawaii to reanalyze the old remains, Brennan finds yet a third body identified as Lowery. It’s obvious something sinister is at work, but what?

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane. Call Number: PS3562.E426M66 2010.

          Twelve years earlier, police investigators Kenzie and Gennaro had tracked Amanda McReady down when she’d vanished at the age of four, taking her from a loving couple who’d gone to prison and returning her to a drunken, neglectful mother because that was the law.  Now, haunted by the wrongness of that act, the duo once again tracks Amanda’s steps, a hunt that takes them to identity thieves, ruthless Russian mobsters, meth addicts and a priceless religious icon.

 

Mad River by John Sandford. Call Number: PS3569.A516M33 2012.

          Virgil flowers is back in his sixth story, this time chasing three teenaged thrill killers who are rampaging through southern Minnesota, shooting  a woman during a robbery, then killing a man for his car. And after that, they can’t seem to get enough.  But Virgil can’t quite make the pieces fit and as the dragnet tightens around the killers, he knows there’s more to the story.  But he never sees how it’s going to end.

White Heat by M.J. McGrath. Call Number: PR6113.C4775W55 2011.

          McGrath’s first book features Edie Kiglatuk, an Inuit woman living on the top of the world. Guiding two men on an alleged hunting expedition, she realizes they are looking for something besides ducks. Then one of the men is shot and killed.  Anxious to avoid the authorities, the elders on Ellesmere Island call it an accident.  But Edie knows better.  And when her nephew kills himself because of something to do with the murder, Edie takes matters into her own hands.

 

 

 

 

 

Library Videos for July 2013--Private Eyes

Private Eye, Starring Jeong-min Hwang, Dal-su Oh, Deok-Hwan

 Ryu and Ji-won Uhm. Directed by Dae-Min Park.

Call Number: PN1995.9.F67P75 2012.

   A Korean import that shows their directors have been paying

attention to American noir.  In the 1900 Korean empire, Hong-Jin

Ho is a private eye barely surviving on money made by spying on

cheating spouses.  Then a rich man’s son is found murdered in

the woods and Hong-Jin is hired to find the culprit.  With the help

of a medical student, he uncovers a far more complex crime than

it seems. Film noir meets an Asian Sherlock Holmes.

 

The Zero Effect, starring Bill Pullman, Ben Stiller, Ryan O’Neal and Kim Dickens.  Directed by Jake Kasdan.  Call Number: PN1995.9.D4Z47 1998.

     Daryl Zero is a brilliant detective who can’t function in the real world.  Steve Arlo is hired to be his leg man and gofer, dealing with people Zero can’t talk to—which is everybody.  When Daryl is hired to find a millionaire’s missing keys, it leads to a lot of unexpected complications for him—like love.

 

 

 

The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Directed by Howard Hawks.   Call Number: PN1995.9.D4B56 2000.

   A Faulkner screenplay from a Raymond Chandler script revolves around legendary detective Philip Marlowe, trying to save a family’s name from the indiscretions of the youngest sister.  The plot takes a lot of watching, but the characters and atmosphere carry everyone along through the murky world of blackmail, pornography, gamblers and murder.  And of course, whenever Bacall and Bogart are on the screen the dialog and sexual tension sizzle.

 

 

The Girl by the Lake, starring Toni Servillo, Valeria Golino, Fabrizio Gifuni.

Directed by Andrea Molaioli. Call Number: PN1995.9.D4G57 2010.

     Called to a small Northern Italian village, Inspector Giovanni Sanzio investigates the murder of a beautiful young girl, and uncovers many of the secrets of the town in the process of recreating her last day.  It’s a place of great beauty, but beneath the idyllic setting, there are many things people are trying to keep hidden—and the Inspector is one of them.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, April 15, 2013.

Shock Wave by John Sandford. Library Call Number: PS3569.A516S54 2011.
          They’re building a PyeMart in the small river town of Butternut Falls, Minnesota and many people are unhappy about it.  Environmentalists say the run-off from the parking lot and the building site will pollute the pristine river, the local merchants see themselves being put out of business by the megastore. So when a bomb goes off at the trailer of the construction site’s foreman, killing him,  the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension calls in their ace investigator, Virgil Flowers, canceling his vacation and telling him to find out who’s responsible.     
       Three weeks earlier, a bomb had gone off at PyeMart’s executive headquarters, narrowly missing the company’s Executive Board and killing a worker. No one can figure out how the bomb was even placed in the penthouse meeting room.
          Arriving in Butternut Falls, Flowers has to contend with a lot of suspects, the high-powered President of PyeMart, his Executive Secretary, unhelpful city officials and residents, and some truly strange individuals. Before it’s over he will lose his boat and (perhaps worse) nearly his life.
          In Sandford’s books, sometimes you know the bad guy, sometimes it’s a mystery.  This is one of the truly good mysteries in his series of nearly forty books.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, January 28, 2013.

A Dark Anatomy by Robin Blake.  Library Call Number:PR6102.L347D37 2012.

         Coroner Titus Cragg is called from breakfast by a servant boy from Garlick Hall-- home of the prestigious county squire—with ghastly news.  The squire’s wife, Dolores Brockletower, has been found in the woods with her throat savagely slashed.  So begins an English mystery in the time of King George II.  Relying on wits and the help of his friend, the learned doctor Luke Fidelis, Cragg needs to quickly unravel the roots of the murder.  Was it the work of anatomists, who ply their trade illegally?  Could it have been the result of those jealous of the squire, or the lady, or those in line to inherit the land and Hall of the Brockletowers? Was it, as some of the common people believe, an act of Woodoo?  For Dolores was not of English lands, being a West Indies planter’s daughter brought home by the squire in his sailing days. 
          An historical mystery with lots of the flavor of the age, Blake’s book is a surprising juxtaposition of the old and new and the result is a satisfying jump into the 18^th century.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, September 10, 2012.

 

The Holy Thief by William Ryan.  Library Call Number: PR6118.Y37H65 2010.

          In 1936 Moscow, Captain Alexei Korolev of the Moscow Militia must investigate the mutilation killing of a young American nun in a deconsecrated church.  Because the woman is a foreigner, the case attracts the attention of the NKVD—Stalin’s dreaded secret police—and soon Korolev finds himself reluctantly patnered with an NKVD investigator named Colonel Gregorin.  Stalin has begun the great purges and one denunciation from any source can lead a person to be disappeared to a gulag, never to return.  It’s a bad time to be an honest cop in a city full of politics, intrigue and suspicion. 
          A well-reviewed first novel, with similarities to the best of Martin Cruz Smith's more contemporary Russian Inspector, Arkady Renko, or Philip Kerr's German Bernie Guenther.

Browsing Area Books for July--Scandinavian Noir

  The Leopard by Jo Nesbø. Translated by Don Bartlett. Library Call Number: PT8951.24.E83 P3613 2012.
          Swedish Chief Inspector Harry Hole made a reputation for himself in capturing the serial killer called the Snowman, but now there is a new killer in the streets of Oslo. Called back from hiding in Hong Kong’s opium dens to see his dying father, he reluctantly agrees to investigate the murders of two young women.  It’s then the Inspector finds himself once again immersed in the evil he was trying so hard to forget.

The Keeper of Lost Causes, by Jussi Adler-Olsen. Translated by Lisa Hartford.  Library Call Number: PT8176.1.D54K8513 2011.

 Carl Mørck is the only detective of three who survives a shooting; he blames himself for the deaths of the others.  He never pulled his weapon.  So he’s surprised to be promoted on his return to the force, put in charge of Section Q, the cold case files of the force.  The department has a staff of one, with offices in the basement.  Perhaps his superiors think he’ll be out of the way; if so, they’ve underestimated Mørck, who begins looking into the deaths of several young women and the five year-old disappearance of a politician, whose death may not be all that certain.

Copenhagen Noir, edited by Bo Tao Michaëlis. Translated by Mark Kline. Library Call Number: PT8024.E5C67 2011.
   For those who like their crime in smaller chunks, Michaëlis collects 14 stories of the best Danish crime writers into a book said by one reader to have a “…grim, uncomfortable power.”

     The disaffected, the greedy, the angry all show up here, with the stark noirish backgrounds of Denmark interchangeable with the dark seams of Los Angeles, Chicago or New York.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, April 23, 2012.

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs.  Library Call Number: PS3568.E476345 S65 2010.

A book series growing in popularity among mystery fans and a hit series on the Fox network, the Bones books and programs feature a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan.

From the publisher’s description:  “John Lowery was declared dead in 1968--the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called to the scene of a drowning in Quebec. The victim appears to have died while in the midst of a bizarre sexual practice. The corpse is later identified as John Lowery. But how could Lowery have died twice? Taking the remains to JPAC in Hawaii for reanalysis, Tempe is joined by her colleague and ex-lover Detective Andrew Ryan (how "ex" is he?) and by her daughter, recovering from her own tragic loss. Soon another set of remains is located, with Lowery's dog tags tangled among them. Three bodies--all identified as Lowery.”

Browsing Area Book of the Week, November 28, 2011

          The Ragged End of Nowhere, by Roy Chaney. Library Call Number: PS3603.H35726R34 2009.

          Bodo Hagen, late of the CIA, has come back home to Las Vegas after ten years.  His brother has been murdered.  Ronnie had just survived a stint in the Foreign Legion, only to be gunned down in the desert near Hoover Dam.  But Ronnie didn’t end his service empty-handed.  He had a relic from overseas in his possession—possibly a stolen artifact, certainly a valuable one.  The only question is who would kill Ronnie to get it?  Whoever it was, they’re about to find out that Ron Hagen wasn’t the only dangerous brother in the family. 

          Chaney’s strong first novel, winner of the Tony Hillerman prize for best Mystery in the modern American West, is a page-turner of a thriller, with a keen eye for Las Vegas and the sometimes shadowy denizens in its background.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, October 30, 2011.

Heaven’s Keep by William Kent Krueger. Library Call Number: PS3561.R766 H43 2009.

          St. Paul writer Kent Krueger has turned his Cork O’Connor mysteries into a top-tier series and he outdoes himself in Heaven’s Keep.  The story this time begins with O’Connor’s attorney wife, Jo, traveling west with clients when their charter plane flies into a blizzard and disappears in a wild part of the Wyoming Rockies. 
          Cork's frantic son convinces him to go west to find her, but a search in the rugged country in the winter is all but impossible. Months pass, and just as he is coming to terms with the death of his wife, the missing pilot’s wife comes to O’Connor with the stunning news that she doesn’t believe her husband was the man flying the plane, and that an investigator she’s hired to look into the crash has himself disappeared in Wyoming.  So begins a family odyssey, searching for the truth.  Who was flying the plane, was it truly an accident and—most importantly—what happened to the people on board?

Browsing Area Book of the Week, October 3, 2011.

Juliet by Anne Fortier. Library Call Number: PS360.O7487J85 2010.

Itinerant theater director Julie Jacobs is shocked when her beloved great-Aunt Rosa dies, leaving almost everything to Julie’s twin sister Janice.  Julie receives only a letter and a key—the letter tells her the lock for the key is in a safe-deposit box in Siena, Italy.  Traveling there, she discovers her roots go all the way back to the original Juliet of Shakespeare’s play. And that’s just the first part of a combined treasure hunt and love story that involves the modern-day Montagues and Capulets, numerous relics for clues, vendetta, danger, mystery and, of course, a love story worthy of the descendants of Giuletta. Publisher’s Weekly says, ”Readers enjoy the additional benefit of antique texts alternating with contemporary narratives, written in the language of modern romance and enlivened by brisk storytelling. Fortier navigates around false clues and twists, resulting in a dense, heavily plotted love story that reads like a Da Vinci Code for the smart modern woman.”

Browsing Area Book of the Week, April 25, 2011.

Bad Blood by John Sandford. Library Call number: PS3569.A516 B33 2010.      

          This novel features Flowers investigating a murder in southern Minnesota that looks, at first glance, fairly open and shut. A soybean farmer is found buried in the beans at a grain elevator. It doesn’t take long to see the accident was staged, and only a few hours more before the elevator employee, arrested on suspicion, is found murdered in his cell. His murder looks like the work of a sheriff’s deputy, a close friend of the farmer; when the deputy turns up dead at home, a third murder--this one made to look like suicide--Virgil has a trio to clear up. He finds they all seem to be tied to the recent, vicious rape and murder of a young girl from the area and to a strange religious cult.
          Sandford’s novels always move at a breakneck speed and this one will keep you up late, trying to fit in one more chapter in before sleep.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, February 28, 2011.

The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King.
Library Call Number: PS3561.I4813 G64 2010

     There are a great many people who have used Sherlock Holmes as the protagonist of their novels in the past 25 years, with various levels of success. King’s tenth book in a series succeeds for two reasons: Mary Russell, the wife of Sherlock Holmes, has the prominent role here, and the author is more interested in suspense than in trying to match the deductive plots of Arthur Conan Doyle.
     The story of international intrigue in post-World War I England pits a religious fanatic and his followers, who believe they can unleash psychic powers by human sacrifice, against Holmes and Russell. The heroes are on the run, Russell with a granddaughter and Holmes with his wounded son. Their only dependable ally, Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, has disappeared, and the odds seemed stacked against them. Though this is a sequel to The Language of Bees, it’s not necessary to read them in order; the plot is well-explained and previous events come out when they need to be explained, making this a page-turner by a proficient author, with an understanding of and empathy for her characters.