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I was intrigued by the description of this book. The setting: the Boston Public Library reading room. The plot: a locked-room mystery involving a group of people who are in the reading room when a woman is murdered in a nearby room; they hear her scream and want to solve the crime. On top of that (and the feature that I found most intriguing) the story takes place inside another story, as the author corresponds with a fan who becomes a stalker, a kind of metafiction. And writing itself becomes a major part of the story. (The fan also becomes a character in the story.)returnreturnIn the end it didn't totally work for me. The ongoing relationship with a pushy fan who has an exaggerated sense of importance seemed implausible though it did provide a layer of suspense. The mystery itself seemed a bit drawn out though the slowly revealed information about the key characters was fairly effective. There was something about the protagonist that grated on me as she pronounced on the writing craft. But it's a clever idea and no doubt will appeal to readers who enjoy new takes on the classic locked room mystery.

This sequel to Conviction takes the two unlikely partners in true-crime podcasting on another strange caper, in this case what happened to a YouTuber who disappeared after she broke into a vacant chateau and saw a casket there that holds a mysterious power. When it is discovered and goes up for auction, it causes fundamentalist Christians who believe it has enormous significance to gather in Paris for a mass demonstration in support of an American billionaire who wants to acquire it for his collection of religious artifacts. Anna and Fin are only focused on the missing YouTuber, but they are caught up in the drama around a man who plans to bid on the casket and has been abruptly saddled with a son he had never met before. returnreturnThough I felt this book lacked the passionate anger that fueled Conviction, it has Mina's trademark wry humor and fondly realized characters, especially those who are terribly flawed human beings yet deeply sympathetic, along with a bizarre globe-trotting chase for information. I have yet to encounter a book by Denise Mina that wasn't inventive and wonderfully written.

How appropriate to write a novel about the opening of the NHS just as the pandemic was straining it at the seams. The protagonist is a newly-trained "almoner" or medical social worker who sets up her practice with two physicians in Edinburgh. The story takes us on many of her field visits as she brings together medical care with human kindness and understanding of working class lives. There is also a mystery - a young girl is found dead on the premises of the home Helen and her husband have been provided, and she is the spitting image of the daughters of a nosy philanthropist who had taken Helen under her wing (but represents a pre-NHS approach to public welfare). All of this is told in a rich Scots narrative which can slow the reader down a bit puzzling over the unfamiliar words and phrases, though there is a glossary in the back. I felt it both slowed me down at times but also added a rich dimension to the story. returnreturnThere's something of an uneasy balance between the mystery and Helen's story (which, frankly, I found more interesting than the whodunnit) and the pacing is uneven as a result, with the mystery relatively underdeveloped or scattered. But the setting and subject matter and the exploration of what it takes to do social services well, with acceptance and understanding, was rewarding. Fans of Call the Midwife will be pleased.

Henri Koskinen is an actuary and treasures rational, mathematical thinking. So he's thrown into a new world when he inherits an adventure park (not an amusement park) from his much-less straight-laced brother. He certainly doesn't expect to have to defend his life from a violent mobster by wielding a part of a giant mechanical rabbit. returnreturnAs he takes over the business and gets to know the rag-tag staff he discovers discrepancies in the books. Somehow, his brother owes a great deal of money to people who charge an unusually high interest rate and enforce loan collection energetically. He balances keeping the mobsters at bay with developing a new money-making scheme while also falling for a staff member who paints beautiful murals on the walls of the park, awakening something in Henri that he has never experienced before. returnreturnIt's a humorous (and sometimes dark) caper in an unusual setting with a narrator who shouldn't be especially winning but somehow is. Tuomainen continues to tell stories that are off the beaten path - but worth the trip. returnreturnThe translation is excellent. I admit, I'm a bit gobsmacked that this is apparently the first in a trilogy. Not sure where it will go from here...

A young Vietnamese-Australian journalist returns home to Cabramatta after her brother has been murdered--stomped to death--in a crowded restaurant. She's shocked that the police seem to be making no progress and none of the witnesses saw a thing. She's new to journalism and finds asking hard questions difficult, but undertakes to find out who killed Denny, and why. returnreturnThere are two major themes in this novel. One has to do with Ky and her one-time friend Minnie, a girl from a dysfunctional home who was practically living with Ky's family until adolescence, when she let her curiosity lead her away from the constricted world of well-behaved Asian immigrants and into a group of kids who are breaking all the rules but seem to be enjoying themselves. Their falling out continues into adulthood, and to the moment in the restaurant when Denny was so violently killed. The other theme has to do with Cabramatta and its immigrant community, which has arrived with nothing but a lot of trauma and is going through a devastating heroin epidemic. Set in a real place, a suburb of Sydney with a large Vietnamese refugee population, Ky's and Minnie's choices illustrate just how difficult it is to make a future in a place that really doesn't want you. returnreturnHalfway through the novel, it felt unremittingly bleak, but the final chapters offered some valuable insight into the main characters and their troubled relationships, even offering an appreciation of the immigrant suburb that has a certain uniqueness and color. Though it's about a very specific (and real) time and place, American readers will see plenty of parallels to our wave of additions and gain insight into the difficult choices immigrant families face..

As the novel opens, it's early spring and Cash Blackbear is getting a ride across the flooded Red River Valley to meet with Sheriff Wheaton, her friend and former guardian, who needs her help identifying a native woman found dead. Cash is Ojibwe and can ask around the White Earth reservation to see what she can learn. Her inquiries lead her to a charismatic church out on the prairie led by a handsome pastor. There's something wrong, there. Cash sees a dark shadow lurking around the nearby cemetery where two graves raise questions. Another one of Wheaton's Ojibwe proteges names the dark shadow and takes her to a woman who can provide protective medicine. Clearly something bad is going on at that church and Cash is going to find out what it is. returnreturnI thoroughly enjoyed this mystery, the third in a series but the first I have read. Cash is an interesting figure, raised in abusive foster homes, straddling the White Earth and white communities as she plays pool, takes college classes, and drinks beer. The pacing is amiable and builds slowly to a dramatic resolution, tapering off afterward, keeping Cash's story well braided with the mystery plot. The style of writing is deceptively flat, like the landscape, but its matter-of-factness is never clumsy or inelegant. It fits Cash's straightforward character and pairs interestingly with the elements that are supernatural, but feel natural. I especially appreciated that the author doesn't pause to explain things to white folks; it's Cash's story, on her terms. I'm glad Soho is reissuing the previous books in the series and hope it will bring Rendon a larger audience.

A man, his new (and very young) wife, and two kids visit Australia from the states and impulsively pay to ride a ferry to a private island to satisfy the kids' desire to see koalas. While in a hurry to return to the ferry by their deadline, a woman crosses the road in front of them and is killed. It's all downhill for the family from there. returnreturnI'm one of those tiresome people who much prefer McKinty's earlier books, but I certainly don't begrudge him the need to earn a living, which his critically-acclaimed and excellent books weren't achieving. In his second thriller he shows he knows how to write a page-turner, with twists and turns, short sentences, short chapters, breathless action, and high stakes. Character development and plausibility are not all that important so long as the action is packed. returnreturnI wasn't entirely persuaded that Heather would be both such a poor judge of character and also so smart and resourceful. I didn't enjoy the most gruesome bits. I didn't buy that the unhappy visitors would know important information about the island that the long-term residents didn't. Also didn't like the dismissal of medications that are helpful, even essential, as if they're just a medical plot against thinking clearly. (That could have been set up in a way that would have worked, but it wasn't.) returnreturnWhat I liked: the times when extreme conditions turned into poetically expressed feelings about the self and the world, and the lightly-drawn link between present-day violence and the ways indigenous people had their land and lives stolen in the past. Some of the writing about the contrasting cultural understanding of the land was really great. And it didn't distract at all from the story's prime directive: move fast and keep it exciting. returnreturnIf what you want is a thriller, this does the job effectively enough. Especially if you're willing to suspend disbelief.

A black woman academic, burdened by an unsupportive department chair (who is more interested in fund raising than in her research) and a troubled marriage, grows worried when a graduate student goes missing and she begins to get weird letters. A man with white supremacist beliefs wants to meet her to discuss her research into Black history. When her beloved grandmother dies suddenly back in Alabama, she returns to a state she hasn't visited in years, alienated from her family who, she feels, resent her professional success. returnreturnWhat we know is that she will be kidnapped, and when. What we don't know is why, or what it all means, or how the white supremacist who continues to harass her justifies his interest in her work. returnreturnArriving in Alabama, she learns her grandmother led a group of women in tracking a series of missing women, which might include her graduate student. She resolves to carry on the work, and makes progress right up to the kidnapping. returnreturnThe author draws on two themes - the general lack of coverage of missing Black women and the persistence of white supremacy that would like to see a return to Jim Crow if not to the establishment of a white Christian nationalist state. He adds in a character who has an ambivalent attitude toward her southern home and is struggling to find her place in the world, a man who is leading a revival of late 19th-century terrorism in the southern states with the cultural trappings of white supremacist thought, and elements of a thriller, though without the singular focus on plot or with the satisfaction of a justice-triumphant resolution. returnreturnIt's an interesting story that is not entirely comfortable with the thriller genre and its expectations, but I found it far more thoughtful and interesting than thrillers that are clearly using our history of racial violence as a plot device and an easy way to set up good guys and villains.

Grady has a chance to shake up his life as a caretaker/handyman in Maine. He applies for a job in Hawaii, and gets it. Not sure he really wants to shake it up that much, he flies out nervously, meeting a woman on the airplane who he would like to see as soon as they are finished with their pandemic quarantine period. His boss turns out to be a wealthy and eccentric man who has rare birds in a aviary and endangered but very dangerous sea urchins in a tank. He's rarely at his luxurious house, but spends weeks at a remote site. returnreturnWhen the quarantine period is over, Grady gets to know a previous caretaker and her family and learns people have been disappearing from the island. One of them is the girl who he met on the plane. He also discovers a hidden sea cave where indigenous people have left petroglyphs carved into the rock, and where someone has defaced the site by jackhammering out one of the symbols, The land has some sort of traditional power that Grady is catching glimpses of, including the figure of a dog that stands on its hind legs and has a strange face. returnreturnI love this author's work, which kept me going even when I began to think I was reading a horror narrative (and I really don't like that genre). The pacing was uneven, dragging a bit in the first half before picking up pace as Grady picks up his courage and embarks on finding the missing girl - and finding out what has happened to so many missing people. In the end I found it an intriguing story, even with the creepy horror bits. I would like to read the author's acknowledgements since the use of Hawaiian words and mythology was pretty fascinating.

Rita Todacheene works for the Albuquerque police, the only job she could find where she could could use her talent for photography. She takes pictures of crime and accident scenes, which is complicated for a Navajo woman. Traditionally, if you're Dine, you don't want to spend time around dead people. But even before she began work as a forensic photographer, Rita spent time with the dead. Despite the best efforts of a traditional healer, she sees them, she talks to them, she tries to avoid those who wish her harm. returnreturnErma has other plans. She wants to know what happened to her, and won't let Rita rest until she knows who tossed her off that highway overpass to her death. Given her rage and persistence, and learning that she had a connection to a drug cartel, Rita concludes this is one of the bad ghosts, but the only way to stop her is to find enough evidence to persuade the police that it wasn't a suicide, that something bad is going on and it involves the police. returnreturnThis quest is interleaved with Rita's childhood and youth on the rez, her relationship with her grandmother and often-absent mother, and the cameras that formed her view of the world since she was five years old. returnreturnDon't let the paranormal aspects of the plot put you off. This is a beautifully told mystery that moves smartly and yet doesn't sacrifice character, setting, or narrative art for plot. Nor is the ghostly theme culturally appropriative. The author is a Dine filmmaker and she anchors everything in Navajo culture while briskly telling a dramatic tale. She also displays deep knowledge of the Albuquerque scene and police practice - as well as photography. returnreturnMy one criticism is the gruesomeness of the opening chapter, where we see the remains of Erma's body scattered across a highway through the lens of Rita's camera as she takes hundreds of forensic photos. I nearly put it down after a few pages because it was so gory, and that would have been a mistake. It wouldn't hurt to skip past it.

An art appraiser, disgraced for reasons unknown, has been sent by the government from London to Edinburgh to assess the authenticity of a painting which a wealthy family plans to give to a public art museum in exchange for a multi-million pound tax break. Oddly enough, the family keeps making it difficult for him to actually see the work in question. Meanwhile, an artist has been gruesomely murdered, and an old-school reporter for a broadsheet that is on the ropes is pursuing the story. returnreturnThomas Tallis, the art specialist (whose father also works for the government as a spook) is a troubled man who would like to be with his young son but keeps doing self-destructive things while leaving unanswered messages on his father's phone. The reader wants to grab him by the lapels and give him a good shake. Shona, the reporter (and her elderly father, retired from the paper and spending his days mucking in an allotment) is a grumpy, dogged, also somewhat self-destructive but much more appealing protagonist. There's a detective who is smart and interesting, but we're never let in on why he wears a lot of makeup. returnreturnI have mixed feelings about this book. The solution to the mystery is fairly obvious, the metaphors and descriptions are a bit of a muddle, but there are some striking aspects to the ways the story unfolds, the Edinburgh setting (the Goldenacre is a neighborhood of the city), and the cheering way that both main characters stand up for their professional judgment in spite of the obstacles in front of them. Three stars for the labored adjectives and descriptions and the imbalance of style over plot, four for Shona and the discussions of art when Tallis can be bothered.

This graphic "novel" is not fiction. It is a graphic version of a sociological ethnography of policing in France. The author embedded himself in police units that patrolled the ring suburbs of Paris that are home to largely minority populations. Americans will see great similarities in both the law enforcement practices (focused largely on harassing non-white youth and provoking unnecessary arrests and violence) and culture (apparently many of these bored cops admire the crooked cops portrayed on The Shield and model their swagger on it). Also, as in many American cities, police come from rural and white-suburban areas and bring to the job a host of prejudices and assumptions about the people they are supposed to serve and protect. returnreturnI often wish academic studies about social issues received a wider audience. This is a fascinating approach for distilling key findings to major themes and presenting them in a highly accessible and compelling way. I would love to see more "ethnographics" in future.

This novel is a kind of non-epic family non-saga that describes the life of Ragnar Johansson, born of simple, poor parents at the beginning of modern Sweden, when the state was beginning to design the "people's home." Ragnar is a rigid believer in the wisdom of state officials and of rules in general. This makes him a not very pleasant husband and father, and he is perpetually cranky about the slightest violation of what he thinks are proper norms. As he ages, the social welfare state begins to fray just as social norms loosen. His story is both a portrait of stifled conformism and lack of imagination and a history of sorts of the rise and unraveling of the Swedish folkhemmet. returnreturnAs an American, this novel is a bit of a puzzle. I would love to have some of the generous vision of the Swedish experiment in my life. In Ragnar's case, it appears to be stifling and feeds a sense of angry resistance to opening his mind. As a Minnesotan, I recognize some of the small minded conformity and adherence to rules that he embraces, but I found myself arguing with the story throughout that social welfare need not be tied to small-minded stiffness. returnreturnPerhaps, though, that's not what the author is saying; instead, by telling the story of one man and his family, we see their experience of a dramatic century for Swedish culture, from a highly-unequal and largely parochial society to an experiment in planning that produced much happier results than most such experiments, to a contemporary multicultural society that is far more European than parochial, leaving stick-in-the-mud Ragnar's head spinning. returnreturnThe translation of this dryly comic novel by Sarah Death is very good.