The Copper Bracelet by Various Authors

Authors: (In order of chapter written) Jeffery Deaver, Gayle Lynds, David Hewson, Jim Fusilli, John Gilstrap, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, David Corbett, Linda Barnes, Jenny Siler, David Liss, P.J. Parrish, Brett Battles, Lee Child, Jon Land, James Phelan, Narrator: Alfred Molina, Publisher: Audible Inc and International Thriller Writers Inc [2009], Length: 8hrs 38 minutes

This book features the same band of war-criminal hunting ‘Volunteers’ who first appeared in The Chopin Manuscript, which, like this one, featured chapters written by different thriller writers. In the opening sequence Harold Middleton, leader of the Volunteers, and key members of his crew are nearly the victims of a hired assassin but, of course, they turn the tables and instead begin to learn that the copper bracelet which the assassin was wearing is far more than a piece of jewellery. The team must track down someone known as The Scorpion and prevent the world exploding into a new world war when a conflict between India and Pakistan is orchestrated by some nefarious types.

If Frederick Forsythe had written a season of 24 it would, I imagine, have turned out a bit like this book. It’s full of global politics, double-crossing assassins and the implausible high-tech gadgetry that a decent thriller must have. But, probably because each one is written by a different author all trying to leave their mark, the chapters each have their own story arc and cliff-hanger endings so it’s even more action packed than an average thriller. There are undoubtedly more twists and turns in the overall plot than would be the case if the story was written by a single author but it holds together well and there are surprisingly few loose ends left over. It’s not a particularly thought-provoking story but it didn’t lose my attention once.

As tends to be the way with thrillers the characters aren’t particularly well-developed, partly because they’re busy leaping out of the way of thermobaric bombs and partly because there are so darned many of them (that’s probably another side-effect of the multiple authorship). However the notion of a group of people tracking down the world’s war criminals is more clearly defined in this book and some of them were quite engaging in their brief appearances.

As he did with the first book Alfred Molina narrates brilliantly, taking the numerous characters of multiple nationalities in his stride. As someone who is a real fan of audio books I am pleased to see this audio only experiment continue. It’s quite clear the authors have fun collaborating as a change from their solo pursuits and I can’t imagine too many listeners wouldn’t experience a similar sense of fun with this classic roller-coaster of a thriller.

Publish or Perish, Margot Kinberg

Eloquent Books [2008], ISBN: 978-1-60693-747-1, Length: 211 pages

Nick Merrill is a graduate student at Tilton University where he is also a tutor and software developer. He’s popular with his students, is juggling sexual relationships with two women and looks like being successful in both an academic and commercial sense with his new software. Unfortunately for Nick, Tilton University is a hotbed of insecure, ruthless and desperate people, any of whom could have it in for him. His two love interests find out about each other, his fellow graduate student is incensed when Nick receives an award she believes is due to her and his academic mentor might just be taking credit for Nick’s hard work in a last-ditch effort to obtain tenured status.

I have read Margot Kinberg’s excellent blog for a while now and one of the things that is crystal clear is that she is a fan of classic crime fiction, in particular the work of Agatha Christie. It probably won’t come as any surprise then that this book reminded me in some ways of those great Christie tales in which readers are introduced to the victim and all the potential suspects before a murder takes place. It didn’t really strike me until I re-read a couple of Christie novels this year that this particular style of introducing people doesn’t happen much anymore but when done well, as it is here, it’s an excellent way to draw readers quickly into the story because you ‘know’ the victim and are invested in finding out which of these people you’ve met is a killer. In procedurals and even in most ‘cosy’ mysteries someone stumbles across the body of an unknown person and only meets the suspects after the murder has occurred which means you never see the characters behaving ‘normally’. Introducing them all before the death gives a different, more intimate, perspective that I find I really enjoy.

There’s a full cast of interesting characters here including Joel Williams who is a former policeman turned Professor at the University whose classes are observed by Nick as part of his work as a research assistant. When there is a murder, and then another one, Williams uses his contacts at the police station to learn what’s happening with the investigation and uses his own skills and access to University personnel and students to assist the police with the case. Even some of his students get in on the act in a quite delightful thread although they soon decide that murder investigation is a little more dangerous than what they’ve seen on TV.

As Kinberg is herself an Associate Professor at an American University I can only presume that she has depicted the environment well which means it must be a scary place to work! It reminded me of those small town mysteries I enjoy so much where all the characters are connected in some way and seemingly all have at least one secret the want kept hidden. I would recommend the book to anyone who wants a light, well-written mystery without a lot of blood and violence and lots of good old-fashioned plot threads to unravel.

Full Disclosure: I won a copy of this book in a ‘name a character’ competition at the author’s website

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, Stieg Larsson

MacLehose Press, 2009. Translated from Swedish by Reg Keeland. Originally published in Sweden in 2007. Author Stieg Larsson died in 2004 at the age of 50.
ISBN 978-1-906694-16-6
I read my copy on my Kindle.

The story opens with Lisbeth Salander's admission to Emergency at the Salengrenska hospital in Goteborg with a gunshot wound to the head. At the same time a second patient, her father, is to be admitted with severe axe wounds.
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, the third in the Millenium trilogy, is a close sequel to the second in the series, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE.

In fact, if you haven't read FIRE, and even the first, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, then I think little of HORNET'S NEST will make sense. The explanations for what is happening in HORNET'S NEST are firmly rooted in both the previous novels, but most definitely in FIRE.

Lisbeth Salander's fight to prove the charges against her are wrong results in the unveiling of a conspiracy that has existed for a decade and a half, where the rights of a 12 year old girl were sacrificed for "the good of the state."

In the face of so many other excellent reviews and commentaries on HORNET'S NEST such as those you'll find on Reactions for Reading, DJs krimiblog, Euro Crime, Crime Scraps, Detectives Beyond Borders, and Mack Captures Crime, just to name a few, I'm struggling here to say anything original.

For me, Larsson's women's rights agenda was stronger in this novel than in the other two. Right from the beginning we have an image of Salander as some sort of warrior. The opening paragraphs tell us about the six hundred women who served in the American Civil War, and then later we are reminded of the Amazons, and then the women's army that existed among the Fon of Dahomey. It is hard not to see Advokat Annika Giannini, Salander's lawyer in this role too. She turns out to be a courtroom lion whom the proecutors severely underestimate.
The other theme that comes through strong and clear is the power of the press to make or break a government, and even more the role/duty of a journalist to seacrh out the truth.

But enough, I'm not going to tell you more, otherwise I'll reveal too much.

The criticism others have made of the earlier two books is that they were still in need of some editing, that they were too long. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST is in reality no shorter. In fact it probably could have done with tighter editing, but I really came to accept that as Larsson's style. He just had to make sure that the reader has all the required detail to get the right picture. For me the last section which ties the ends off was just a little too long. But that was probably because I was anxious to finish. According to my records it took me 12 days to read, rather than the 4 days or so I usually allow.

As I remarked the other day, HORNET'S NEST has made it into my top 10 books published in 2009, but it won't make it into my final top 10 read in the year.

My rating: 4.6

My other reviews:
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (rated 4.8)
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (rated 4.7)

Too Close to Home

Orion Books [2009], ISBN 978-1-4091-0209-0, 466 pages

Teenager Derek Cutter has a plan. He’ll hide in his next door neighbour and best friend Adam Langley’s house when Adam and his parents go on holidays. Then Derek will have a venue for hooking up with his girlfriend Penny. Things go awry when the Langley family returns home only an hour after leaving but while Derek is trying to work out how to sneak out without being discovered the entire Langley family is killed by intruders. The next morning Derek’s parents, Jim and Ellen, are shocked to learn of their neighbours’ fate and Derek says nothing about what he saw or heard the previous night. However, Jim Cutter learns some things that make him wonder if the Langley family were killed mistakenly.

I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye earlier this year and what grabbed me most were the thoughtful depictions of a couple’s individual and joint struggles in a time of crisis for their family. In Too Close to Home the characters were not nearly as engaging. Jim Cutter, whose point of view occupies most of the book, is superficial and he didn’t seem to react authentically to much of what was going on in his life. His response to people he didn’t like (punching them) was juvenile and became dull (he did it four times that I can recall) and overall I was bored by him. I never bought Ellen’s character at all but I can’t really say why without giving away spoilers but I think she waited far too long in terms of the internal logic of the story to share her secret with her husband. The only person who I really thought was depicted well was their teenage son Derek but he wasn’t enough of a pivotal role to hold the book together for me.

I also struggled to maintain interest in the plot. It seemed to take forever to get going and, aside from a few minor surprises, was quite predictable. The killer was obvious to me at the moment of their introduction and, even though it had three twists too many, the end of the convoluted plagiarism thread was easy to forecast. There seemed to me to be too many ideas jammed into this one story and so nothing really got explored terribly deeply and the fact that one thread was a very (very) long and obvious red herring didn’t really work.

The book is not terrible. But, as is the way of things, if something grabs my heart in some way I forgive its flaws and when something doesn’t grab me I do admit to becoming overly picky. For tangible and intangible reasons this book just didn’t grab me and so I’ve undoubtedly gotten hot under the collar about things that don’t really matter. However if you haven’t tried Linwood Barclay yet I’d recommend No Time For Goodbye.

Sworn to Silence, Linda Castillo

MacMillan Audio [2009], 11hrs 43mins

One night in the middle of winter a body is discovered in the snow in a small town of Painters Mill, Ohio. The woman appears to have been brutally murdered in a way that reminds everyone of a series of murders which took place in the area 16 years previously. The one person who doesn’t believe the same killer, named the Slaughterhouse Killer at the time, is active again is the town’s Police Chief Kate Burkholder. She shares a secret with two other people about that previous string of murders which makes her almost positive it’s a different killer. Accordingly she points the current investigation in other directions but the town’s other officials bring in outside help to ensure that the investigation focuses on any links to the Slaughterhouse Killer case.

The most engaging aspect of this book for me is the character of Kate Burkholder and the aspects of town life that are depicted through her. The area is home to an Amish community, of which Kate was a member until she was 18, and there is some unrest between the other townspeople and the Amish. Although Kate is no longer Amish her brother and sister are still in the community and overall she respects the Amish community even though she chose not to join it. She is a focal point for relationships between the town’s two divergent cultures and I am a sucker for stories which feature religions different to the one I was brought up with. Kate also struggles for much of the book with the knowledge that her secret may be forcing her to take actions which are not in the best interests of solving the case and I thought this complex issue was portrayed very realistically.

Overall the story was well paced: not screaming along at thriller pace but nor did it plod. There were several minor climax points before the ending and I didn't lose my attention once. As well as being intrigued by Kate, my interest was held by an array of minor characters, mainly working in the police station. The seeds of a series were most obvious with this introduction of an engaging cast although I can't envisage endless storylines in this setting.

I did struggle with other parts of the book. I found the burgeoning relationship between Kate and one of the external investigators brought in to help, John Tomasetti, too predictable and a bit soppy. However this probably won't bother most readers who can't be as unromantic as me. There were also a few plot points I found stretching my credibility metre. At one point for example someone is framed as the perpetrator of the murders and I just could not buy that everyone but Kate was so gullible as to accept the most unlikely killer. However my real issue was with the overly graphic depictions of the violence visited upon the victims of the killer (because of course one body is never enough). It really didn't add anything to the story to have several paragraphs of bodily mutilations described for each victim and, rarely for me, I wished I was reading rather than listening so I could skip those bits.

Sworn to Silence offers a really solid story, some engaging characters and an interesting setting (although perhaps I got extra enjoyment because each mention of the wintry snow made me forget, momentarily, our unseasonal heatwave). However I'd like to see the next book avoid the overly gruesome violence.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The book is very well narrated by Katherine McInerney and the audible version that I bought has a nice bonus in the form of an interview with the author. It’s an interview by the publisher so it’s not exactly hard-hitting but does provide an opportunity for Castillo to talk about her research methodologies (she has completed two lots of civilian police training among many other activities) and she gives some good background to the book. Unfortunately she wasn’t asked about the value of the detailed and gruesome depictions of the violent mutilations of the victims and whether or not she thought the book could have been just as good without them.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Beautiful Place to die, Malla Nunn

Pan Macmillan 2008, ISBN 978-1-405-03877-5, 397pages

In the early 1950’s in the small South African town of Jacob’s Rest the police captain, Willem Pretorius, is found brutally murdered. When Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate he struggles against the backdrop of the newly instituted racial segregation laws (apartheid) . Pretorius’ Afrikaner family want quick vengeance: they distrust Cooper who is English and assume it is the black community or coloureds who have killed their patriarch. At the same time the Security Police descend on the town and work on the theory that Pretorius was killed by a communist or other political activist and they soon sideline Cooper from their investigation.

Of the many striking things about this book the one that is likely to stay with me longest is the unflichingly honest picture it paints of the time and place in which it is set. So many engrossing details of both the political and physical setting are provided that I easily felt myself in the town of Jacob’s Rest with its roads for whites and its kaffir paths and its segregated Sunday church services with potluck dinners. I felt awkward and angry as the realities of the segregation laws were demonstrated through the story playing out but despite my discomfort I found myself unwilling to leave the place even for a moment and read the entire book in a single sitting.

On top of the setting the book has stunning characters. Cooper struggles with nightmares from his days in the trenches during the war and regularly argues with the voice of his former Sergeant Major. Although white he is distrusted by the powerful Afrikaners but also finds it hard to be accepted by the myriad second class citizens although, ultimately, it is a myriad collection of these people, including captain Pretorius’ Zulu ‘brother’ Constable Samuel Shabalala, who help him with his investigation. But it’s not only the sympathetic characters who are brilliantly depicted: Lieutenant Piet Lapping of the Special Branch is one of the most loathsome men you’ll find in crime fiction, all the more so because he’s entirely believable.

Of course none of this would be worth much if the book didn’t also tell a gripping story and there’s a real old-fashioned whodunnit here. In trying to uncover who killed Willem Pretorius Cooper uncovers a series of crimes that have been left unsolved because the victims weren’t white and also learns of Pretorius’ own moral lapses. He races to find what these events may have had to do with Pretorius’ death as he tries to salvage his own career from being ruined by the Special Branch.

This is yet another book that has everything I look for in my crime fiction and had me alternating between indignant mutterings under my breath, heart-in-my-mouth fear and more than a few tears.

Don't Look Back, Karin Fossum

Harcourt Books 2002, ISBN 978-0-015-603136-3, 295 pages

In a small Norwegian village the near-naked body of a teenage girl is found at the lake. Once they identify her as Annie Holland Inspector Konrad Sejer and Officer Jacob Skarre learn that everyone liked the athletic young girl who babysat for most of the village's children although many people mention the change in her behaviour some months before her death. Having precious little in the way of evidence they have to determine whether it was just a normal part of growing up or whether there an event in her life that may have had something to do with her death.

I've had this book in my TBR pile for over a year and it may have continued to languish there among all the others but for this week's crime fiction alphabet post by Maxine at Petrona. What struck me particularly was a quote from Fossum about being interested in "'the good guy who does something evil' rather than the bogeyman." Although I have read my share of rampaging serial killer books I generally don't find them as satisfying as those that explore the circumstances and motivations behind ordinary people reaching some kind of breaking point and so was keen to get stuck into the first Inspector Sejer book translated into English.

I knew absolutely nothing about the story when I started reading (I deliberately didn't look at the blurb) and was hooked by the twist in the opening. As the book started I thought it was going to be about one sort of crime and just as I geared myself up for that it turned into something completely different. From then on the story was pieced together like an intricate jigsaw with many pieces needing to be turned this way and that before slotting into place to help reveal the whole picture. Without car chases or guns blazing the story managed to be suspense-filled and captivating from beginning to end as Sejer and Skarre teased out important details about village life from its inhabitants

Fossum builds up her characters in a similar way as she does the plot: slowly revealing their secrets, pasts and fears over the course of the book. As you'd expect with the main characters we develop a fairly clear picture of Sejer and Skarre over the course of the novel but the minor characters too are equally well depicted, even if only in one aspect of their lives. Annie's father's conversation with the man in charge of the crematorium is one of the most beautiful depictions of a grieving father I have read.

Don't Look Back has all the things I love most in crime fiction: interesting, believable characters, a puzzle-like plot, a setting I can get lost in and a tangible credibility that sometime somewhere that exact scenario has played itself out in reality. Or will one day.