The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

The Gist: Oslo police detective Harry Hole investigates the disappearances of several women that have occurred over a number of years. All of the cases have a few things in common: the missing women are all mothers; each disappearance occurs during Norway’s first snowfall of the winter season; and a freshly built snowman is left in the wake of each disappearance. Meanwhile, Harry mulls over an anonymous letter he received earlier about the impending return of The Snowman. Could these disappearances be the work of Norway’s first serial killer?

Status: Read cover to cover.

Summer Escapism: A (The best! In addition to an addictive mystery, you’re treated to a chilly Nordic winter. That’s one way to beat the heat.)

Strength of Writing: A (Nesbo pulls you in and doesn’t let go until you finish. He’s a master at this kind of writing.)

Stimulation of the Little Grey Cells: B. (A crime thriller that doesn’t make you think isn’t really worth much. Nesbo keeps you guessing.)

Social Relevance: C (Good novels always have something to say about the nature of human existence. Readers are treated to some interesting stats about a couple of human diseases, as well as the promiscuous behaviors of the naked ape.)

General Reaction: A corker of a good read! Nesbo is being promoted as the “next Stieg Larsson,” and it’s easy to get on board this description. Harry Hole is a likable protagonist; flawed, obsessed, and a master sleuth. He struggles with alcohol. His relationships with the beautiful Rakel and her son Oleg are achingly relevant to the main plot line. There are red herrings galore in this book, but Nesbo makes them work. And there are some gruesome scenes; but if you like your crime thrillers served up bloody, then here’s your ticket!

Watch the book trailer for The Snowman.

Check out other Nordic Crime Thrillers.

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit, Volumes One through Four, story and art by Motoro Mase

The Gist: My friend Sadie wrote a review of Volume One on her now defunct Extremely Graphic blog. I’ll let her give you the gist: “In Ikigami: the Ultimate Limit, the government has developed a vaccine that can protect the population from every single known disease.   However, to keep the citizens’ appreciation for life, a small percentage of vaccines kill the child before he or she turns 25.  A day before their death, a man delivers an ikigami or death card to the victim.  Fujimoto delivers these cards.” Yep, that sums it up rather well. Each volume contains two stories about a character who receives an Ikigami, and shows us what happens during their last day on Earth. An overarching storyline concerns Fujimoto’s discomfort over his job as messenger of death.

Status: I’ve read the first four volumes of this series

Strength of Writing: Volumes One and Three get a B; Volumes Two and Four get a C (Volume One is rated highly because of the originality of the idea and the explanation of how the Ikigami program works. Volume Three has the two best stories so far in the collection.)

Strength of Art: A (If you like Manga art, which I do.)

Stimulation of the Little Grey Cells: C (What would you do if you were told you had 24 hours to live? Would you do what the characters do? Yeah, there’s a bit of stimulation and neural activity.)

Social Relevance: ummm… OK, I’ll give it a C-

General Reaction: While reading about the reaction of people who receive their death notices is interesting (the stories in Volume Three really are very good), I am more interested in Fujimoto’s growing distrust of the Ikigami program. The introduction of psychoanalyst Dr. Kobo, Mr. Fujimoto’s attraction to her, and my suspicion that she may be working against the Ikigami program despite appearances, are intriguing.  But this overarching plot needs to develop faster. If it never does, or if it’s ultimately disappointing, I could end up rating the series a fail. Will I keep reading? Yeah, probably.

Read Ikigami online for free!

Wonder if we’ll get to see the Ikigami movie here in the USA?

OK, folks, now it’s your turn. What are you reading this summer?

It’s 110 in the shade! You need something to cool your body and your head!

Nordic Noir Book Club is just the ticket. I just finished reading Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman (review to come later this week), and I have to tell you that one of the things I enjoyed most about the book was its cold, icy setting. Summer really is the perfect time to pick up a mystery from the Nordic countries. Brrrr! Happy reading!

Major publishers do give out ARC (advanced reader copy) galleys. And we hop on them like ants on honey. I have a whole suitcase full and had to take my clothes back in a carryon. Unlike those conferences where employees are wined and dined by big vendors, with megastars singing their latest album we’re lucky to get a bagel, or tiny egg rollup with coffee and occasionally fruit. And when meetings start as early as 7:00 I dare say we deserve every morsel.

Travel was the usual pain, nothing notably nightmarish. I read Tamar Myers’ Nightmare in Shining Armor on the way down. One of her Den of Antiquity mysteries, starring Abby Timberlake. It’s Southern cozy fiction and good airfare.

A Halloween pary gone awry, a dead body in a suit of armor, knowledgeable antique dealers, and Southern dialogue and charm provide a fun read.  Picked this one up at the Metropolitan Library System book sale for $0.50. 

Looks like Tamar has some new ones out, set in Africa, starting with  The Witch Doctor’s Wife (2009) and a 2011, Headhunter’s Daughter. Fans of McCall Smith should enjoy these. She also has a slew of Pennsylvania-Dutch with Recipes mysteries.  I know I’ve tasted a few of those.  

Picked up an ARC of G. M. Malliet’s Wicked Autumn for the ride home. Have 100 pages left, but finding it quite good. Features Max Tudor, local Anglican priest and former MI5 agent solving the mysterious demise of the town’s tyrannical leader of the local Women’s Institute. (Think U.S. Junior League wives)

So I’m home and ready to read, and with the temperature rising daily, it sounds like a good plan.

Let me start by saying Larsson gives up any pretense of presenting a mystery in Hornet’s Nest. The first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, had a strong mystery plot, which also served to introduce us to the oddity that is protagonist Lisbeth Salander. The second work, The Girl Who Played With Fire, had a mystery that opened more doors to help the reader understand why Lisbeth is the way she is. With Hornet’s Nest, Larsson kicks those doors down.

While the book lacks a mystery, it’s still a thriller. Like the previous books, it takes a while for Larsson to set the pieces in motion; but once he does, you’re off on a wild ride. Larsson introduces the other players who have conspired to make Lisbeth’s life hell on earth. The thrill comes from seeing how Lisbeth and the advocates around her apply their ingenuity, determination, and bravery to see justice win over corruption. Those advocates also include, of course, star journalist Mikael Blomkvist (or as an angry Lisbeth refers to him, Mikael F***ing Blomkvist).

It’s a pleasure to see Lisbeth prevail, and a pleasure to see our strange girl patch up her relationship with Blomkvist. The stage seemed to be set for the next seven books in Larsson’s planned 10-part series: Lisbeth and Mikael forming an odd couple that would solve mysteries and bring down misogynist thugs and corrupt politicians and businessmen. Two misfits against the evil in the world.

Alas, we may never get to see another book, just when the doors have been kicked open. Swedish law may prevent anyone putting pen to paper to try to see Larsson’s grand work completed. We will also never meet Lisbeth’s twin. Nor will we delve more into the problem of violence against women, perhaps the true theme of these works. But we still have these three books which make a very satisfying package. (Or am I wrong about this being the end?)

What is it about Lisbeth? These books are monsters, breaking sales records all over the world. Yes, they start slow but they soon become can’t-put-’em-down books. Our heroine lacks any sense of social graces. She’s rude, vindictive and unable to relate to most of the world. Does she have Asperger’s Syndrome? Perhaps. Yet, we understand why Lisbeth could be the way she is, because she has lost all trust in the world due to the extraordinary abuse she suffered.

Tiny in stature, she is an intellectual giant with a photographic memory and superhuman computer skills. Readers are amazed at her ability to snatch victory from overwhelming defeat. We root for Lisbeth, because we believe every human being has the right to be in control of her life and to live free. Perhaps that’s the simple reason I love the Girl.

• This correspondent has some ideas on why we love the girl.

• And here’s what I had to say about the first book a year ago. (Has it really been that long ago?)

Have your read Larssen? What did you think of the books?

Why do you love the Girl?

Then I was browsing around and found this interesting website from the National Book Foundation, 60 Years of the National Book Awards- 79 Fiction Winners. Click on the book jackets and it leads you to all kinds of information about each title. Very nicely done.

All this talk about book awards should whet your appetite for Young Bill’s next entry. (teaser)

I’m reading Angel Interrupted (A Dead Detective Mystery) by Chaz McGee right now.

 From the looks of the cover, you might think it ‘s a “cozy” but not so. The main character detective is dead, but  plays it very straight as he works his dead person tricks to get his partner a step up in crime solving. Detective Kevin Fahey wasn’t such a great guy before he found himself in this afterlife limbo. He’s trying to make up for his failings by helping out his parter Maggie Gunn, since she’s now stuck with a bummer of a new partner.

They’re both trying to find out who killed the nurse and who stole the little boy from across the street from her house. Are the crimes connected? Did the kidnapper just use the homicide drama as a diversion for childnapping? Chaz McGee has invented a very interesting crime fighter.   

This book was on my library new bookshelf, and I think now I’m going to have to find the first book in the series, Desolate Angel.

Also, just found out Chaz is really Katy Munger. Now I’ll have to try some of her other books,  the Casey Jones series looks really promising.

I was a big Agatha Christie fan during my junior high and high school years.

Now, the funny part of the story: I never finished reading it! Here’s what happened: Toward the end of a junior high math class—8th grade? 9th grade? I don’t remember—I’m talking to my good friend Kathy about the book, telling her how much I’m enjoying it.

She gets into a kidding mood. She has the book in her hands, and she tells me she’s going to reveal the killer. A playful argument ensues, and she says she’s just going to open the book to a back page and read a sentence. She does. And, honest to gosh, she reveals the murderer!

She is immediately apologetic, and I have to check to make sure she really has done what I think she’s done. A quick review of the page tells me that she has given away the perpetrator. Kathy was just kidding around, and she feels bad. I feel bad, because I really loved this book and it’s been ruined for me.

A whodunnit really is all about whodunnit. They’re not called mysteries for nothing. Luckily, this premature reveal didn’t stunt my new Christie obsession. Over the next few years, I devoured the novels of this incredibly prolific  “Queen of Crime.” Nope, I haven’t read them all, but still I present…

Young Bill Young’s Best of Agatha Christie

Best Hercule Poirot Mystery: Murder on the Orient Express. (Curiously, Murder in the Calais Coach was the U.S. title when I read it.) Ah, the little grey cells! Have they ever been employed so deliciously? Others will put their vote in for The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd or Death on the Nile, but they don’t even make my runners up list: The Clocks (a real brain twister for my then-young mind), There is a Tide (Taken at the Flood, U.K.) and Cat Among the Pidgeons.

Best Jane Marple Mystery: A Pocketful of Rye. I suspect Marple fans may find this an odd choice. Others would probably put forth my runners up: A Murder is Announced, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and What Mrs. McGuillicuddy Saw (4:50 from Paddington, U.K.). There is a sadness to A Pocketful of Rye that probably suits my sensibilities. Plus, I think it has one of the most eloquent endings of any Christie novel.

Stay Away From the Poirot mystery Hickory Dickory Death (Hickory Dickory Dock, U.K.), and the Marple mystery Murder by Mirrors (They Do It With Mirrors, U.K.). The Queen of Crime was simply not up to her usual standards in these instances.

Best of the Others:

• The Pale Horse (murder for hire with a delightful appearance by Christie character Ariadne Oliver)
• Crooked House (a precocious little girl is at the center of this whodunnit)
• By the Pricking of My Thumbs (sleuths Tommy and Tuppence solve a crime in their later years)
• Endless Night (probably the darkest Christie I’ve ever read)

About those big and small screen adaptations…

Best Hercule Poirot: David Suchet

Worst Hercule Poirot: Tony Randle (The Alphabet Murders, based on The ABC Murders)

Best Jane Marple: Joan Hickson

Worst Jane Marple: Margaret Rutherford (Not the actress’ fault. The fault lies with the movie creators who wanted to make Miss Marple a comic figure.)

Best Film Adaptation of a Christie work: Witness for the Prosecution. (This is also Christie’s best short story. There are differences, of course, between story and film, but they both work in their own way.)

By the way, I never read the final mysteries of Christie’s two most famous sleuths, the Marple mystery Sleeping Murder, and the Poirot novel Curtain. They were written decades earlier than their mid-70s release, and were not published until after Christie’s death. The author had them all ready to go, and it was a big news story that she had both of her creations die in their final tales. Perhaps it was fitting, but I preferred to keep the little Belgian detective and the busy-body spinster from St. Mary Mead alive and solving crimes in my mind. Much better that way, don’t you think?

Agatha Christie is timeless. Her talent is evident in her continuing popularity. Variety reports that she has sold four billion books! As befits such a true literary force, there are plenty of places in cyberspace to get your Christie fix. Visit agathachristie.com for much more information, or follow the Christie community on Facebook.

Now it’s your turn. Tell us what Christie book you loved. Or let us know what kinds of whodunnits you like to read.

What have you been reading these last dog days of summer?

Here’s what’s on my nightstand:

• Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable by Bruce Hood (Beyond culture and the handing down of beliefs, Hood thinks there is something inherent in our nature that makes us believe the unbelievable.)

• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (An adventure in an alternate world, where people really–I mean, *really*–value literature. What kind of drugs is this author taking?)

• The Great Fables Crossover by Bill Willingham. (Latest installment of maybe the best comic/graphic novel series ever!)

(If you’ve been following this blog, you may be interested to know that Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land is no longer on the nightstand!)

And what has been taking up Miss Kitty’s time?

• No Going Back by Lyndon Stacey (An ex-cop and his retired police dog solve a crime.)

• Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth (It’s about our relationship with food.)

• The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe (A modern-day woman discovers she has a connection to the Salem Witch Trials.)

Plus, Kitty says she’s so fed up with this weather she’s getting ready to read a Christmas romance: Scrooge and the Single Girl by Oklahoma’s own Christine Rimmer.

OK, now it’s your turn. What have you been reading this hot, hot season?

Hmmm… with all these titles, I wonder how many categories I should tag? Let’s see…

Good reading, pick any book in the series. Excellent plane fare.

Speaking of which, what else did I take along for plane reading, conference downtime reading, and not at work reading this last week.

First, I never take library books, Interlibrary Loan books or anything I worry about losing. Don’t need the stress.

So it was good I had a load of Metro book sale books, then I happened on the University of Utah Book Store and found remainders for $0.88. WOW! Two romances and three mysteries for about 5 bucks.  Loving it.

So I started with Sonnet of the Sphinx by Diana Killian. A Poetic Death Mystery (2006).  Light but intellectually interesting if you like riddles about romantic poets, lost letters, ship wrecks and newly dead bodies. Characters include Grace Hollister an American literary scholar in an unlikely relationship with Peter Fox, antiques dealer and ex-jewel thief. He’s spent some time in a Turkish prison and soon a one time ex-jailer turns up dead and Peter finds himself a suspect. Detective Inspector Drummond, did I mention very good looking Det. Inspector Drummond,  suspects both Hollister and Fox of not being completely honest with the police.

Then there is a very unlikeable librarian, and a new owner of the Mallow farm where the lost poem of Shelley may by residing and a host of clues from the past.

Second, Dead Serious by Susannah Stacey (pseud. of writing team Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey) . I remember Superintendent Bones from a previous book or maybe two. But of course can’t remember the other titles I’ve read. But this is a really good British crime series in the tradition of Dalgleish or Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks.  Charlotte  (Cha ) Bone’s daughter;   Grizel, second wife  and a host of townies  round out the cast of characters. Body count begins  with the corpse of an unsavory television personality found in the trunk of a car. And that is only the beginning of a holiday fete gone wrong.

Since I firmly believe Oklahoma is the center of the universe and all things  eventually come home.  I can’t help but point out  a *Reference to a band playing a tune from Oklahoma  during Biddinghurst’s  local festival while mayhem ensues. There’s a lot of bad stuff afoot in this small town. Miss Marple would have been unnerved by the activity of the local citizenry. And I’ll leave you with this note from the news media, “W hat exactly was going on in Biddinghurst?”

All in all a good week for quick reads, shopping, beautiful Utah weather, great eating out and a nice visit with my sister in law. And of course, my work conference wasn’t bad either.

My friend knows I read lots of sci-fi, and he hasn’t read very much in that genre. So he also asked what science fiction books I would recommend to a sci-fi newbie. I pretty much aced that part of the interrogation. Here’s what I recommended:

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Startide Rising and The Uplift War by David Brin

I’m calling it a list of five, since the second Simmons book completes the story that begins in Hyperion, and the Brin books take place during the same time period in his Uplift Universe.

So, tell me: what mysteries would you recommend to someone in the mood for a good whodunit?

Yes, I could look up the lists of award-winning mysteries, but I really want to know what you folks think. Come on mystery fans! I know you’re out there…

I’m not a librarian, but I play one in real life for my friend Ralph. Ralph is in the third age of life, and he’s embarked on a mission to re-read many of his favorite books and authors. Since I work in a library, guess who gets to do some of his Interlibrary Loan requests?

During the past year, I’ve borrowed books by George V. Higgins, Henry Kuttner, Lewis Padgett (the co-author pseudonym for Kuttner and his wife C. L. Moore), and illustrator/author Karen Wehrstein to help him in his quest. Most recently, he’s been rereading British novelist and mystery writer Nicolas Freeling.

Freeling was a popular, award-winning writer best known for his Van der Valk series, which was adapted for British television. His Henri Castang mysteries were not as celebrated, even though some critics believed them superior to the Van der Valk works. Freeling enraged his fans when he killed off Van Der Valk in 1972′s A Long Silence. The outrage over the loss of their favorite crime detective proved too much for his fans in Sweden and France, and both countries stopped publishing him.

But enough about Freeling. This post is really about how hard it is to find some of his books. I’m working down the list of Freeling’s two detective series so Ralph can read them in order, and so far I’ve struck out on finding two of the Castang novels: A Dressing of Diamonds and The Night Lords. They’re simply not out there on WorldCat to borrow through Interlibrary Loan.

Now I know that there is limited space on library shelves, that books are weeded due to disuse or bad condition, and that some books can’t be replaced because they are out of print. And, yes, the public is fickle and ever-changing. What’s popular today may be tomorrow’s cast-off. Still, it’s disappointing to find the works of a such a celebrated author disappearing from our library shelves and from publishers’ print schedules. Even a visit to amazon.co.uk reveals that many of Freeling’s works can only be purchased in used condition since they’re officially out of print in England.

A library colleague tells me it used to be hard to find books by Oklahoma’s own Jim Thompson. There wasn’t much demand for his dark pulp fiction, and his books were out of print. When a new appreciation for him emerged, some of his works were adapted to the screen (notably The Grifters, and After Dark, My Sweet), and he became even more popular than he was during his lifetime.

Traditional book defenders often praise the “permanence of print,” and deride the ephemeral quality of the digital world. But as book editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden writes in this enlightening post:

“We talk about immortal literature, but the vast majority of books are as mortal as we are.”

I wonder… will future generations come up with “no results” when they search for a John Grisham novel on WorldCat? Will they ponder the work of a forgotten author named Dan Brown? Will children still be reading Captain Underpants?

All is vanity.