We Reminisce about Reading in 2012 (Part 2)

Della Streetwise, Maltese Condor and Periphera are here to tell us about some of their favorite reads of the year. Get ready for your reading wish lists to grow even longer.

As I went through notes about my past year's reading (well, actually, scraps of paper I scribbled on and then threw in a box is as organized as I get), I realized I could replace these picks with many others I loved.

Sister Mary and Georgette, I too give Reginald Hill's The Woodcutter and Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker two thumbs up. Way up.

Nobody has to tell me twice to read a dark comedy. Israeli playwright Edna Mazya's novel Love Burns (reviewed here) is set in Haifa. Its narrator is a 48-year-old astrophysicist, Ilan Ben Nathan, who is obsessed with his young wife. His obsession and subsequent murder turn the book into a literary thriller so farcical I laughed out loud.

As I mentioned here, Edward Conlon's Red on Red follows the investigations of two NYPD detectives who had become partners five months earlier. Protagonist Nick Meehan is introspective and "Espo" Esposito is aggressive and likes fudging the rules, but they make a great team and their friendship grows. Conlon was an NYPD detective and his knowledge and sense of humor make Red on Red special.

I appreciated the originality of Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado. It starts with the discovery of a dead body in the Hudson River and turns into a story about two Filipino families over 150 years in a kaleidoscope of excerpts from many sources, including interviews, a noir story, blog posts and an omniscient narrator. As I wrote here, it also becomes an exercise in separating truth from fiction.

Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper was reviewed by Sister Mary here. If you have a taste for black comedy, I dare you to read her review and resist reading the book. It's about the bad hospital shift intern Peter Brown has after he and new patient Nick LoBrutto recognize each other from the days Peter was mafia hit man Pietro Brnwa. I just opened the sequel, Wild Thing: A Novel, and Peter/Pietro begins every bit as outraged and outrageous as in the original. If you believe a book never has too much energy or too many digressions or footnotes, this is an author for you.

When Jacob, the 14-year-old son of Newton, Massachusetts prosecutor Andy Barber and his wife Laurie, is accused of murdering classmate Ben Rifkin, the Barbers' lives turn upside down. Defending Jacob (mentioned here), by former prosecutor William Landay, is unsettling suspense and absorbing legal drama. Anyone would empathize with the Barbers. I like to think of this family when I ponder the question of nature versus nurture.

I re-read Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White before reading Lynn Shepherd's The Solitary House, so I could appreciate Shepherd's characters, who are taken from those books. Her plot concerns the activities of Charles Maddox, a Victorian London private detective. These three books are perfect for fireside reading.

A stolen calypso coral 1969 Ranchero. A road trip through the Mississippi Delta to get it back. Mean-eyed Mississippi crackers. Noir. Black comedy. Former cop, now repo man, Nick Reid's distinctive narrative voice. Yes, I'm talking about Ranchero by Rick Gavin, reviewed here. Georgette, on Tuesday you wrote about pulling an appealing character out of a book for a session under the mistletoe. I say, "Nick Reid, pucker up."

Arthur Scott moves his wife Celia and three children from the turmoil of 1960s Detroit back to the Kansas farm town where he grew up. Life is hardly idyllic, however, because there are tensions caused by memories of Arthur's murdered sister Eve, the abusive marriage of his other sister Ruth, whose husband once loved Eve, the recent disappearance of a girl who resembled Eve, the resemblance to Eve of Arthur and Celia's youngest daughter Eve-ee.... Is there really any need for me to go on? Lori Roy's well-crafted Bent Road has more than enough suspense and gothic creepiness to satisfy me.

I enjoyed Deon Meyer's powerful and complex thriller Trackers, as a critique of South African society and for the surprising way Meyer merges the three subplots involving the smuggling of two black rhinos, the Presidential Intelligence Agency and a private eye's missing husband investigation. I'll review this book soon.

I'll write about Michael Koryta's The Prophet in two weeks. A Kirkus reviewer called it "Friday Night Lights meets In Cold Blood." A story involving two brothers who became estranged when their sister was murdered and now face another catastrophe; it's both heart-breaking and sensational. That's enough for now.

When I look back at my 2012 memorable moments of reading, I am quite relieved that I don't have to rely on memory alone to bring these reads to mind. I keep a record of the books I have read as well as those I want to read on the Goodreads website. When my Amazon wish list reached gigantic proportions, I also left it to Goodreads to keep me from acquiring multiple copies of the same book.

For the past few years, I have come up with lists of each year's favorite books, and if there is one thing the lists have in common it is that there is a preponderance of books that have been around for a while. I also seem to favor books in a series, so that one builds on another. I can't seem to define what it is about any given book that hooks me, but if I am transported to another time and place, I am a willing traveler.

One of my favorites finds of the year was the Milt Kovac series, which began with The Man in the Green Chevy by Susan Rogers Cooper, published in 1988. Milt is a 40-something Chief Deputy in a small Oklahoma town, who pays as much attention to his heart as he does to his head––and this often causes him plenty of difficulties. My difficulties have been in finding some of the out-of-print books.

Cypress Grove, by James Sallis, was first seen in print almost 10 years ago. John Turner, the central character, is an ex-cop, ex-con, ex-therapist who has moved to the small town of Cypress Grove, near Memphis, after retiring from his career in the medical field. But since he has a great track record with solving murders, he is pulled into the investigation of a bizarre murder. This was a wonderful book. The author has the elements of the story come together like partners in a tango. Deep emotions held in control as the music of life swirls around and the past and the present are brought together in a satisfying climax.

I laughed until I ached when I read Cooking with Fernet Branca, by James Hamilton-Paterson. I had put off reading this book, thinking that it would be a book similar to others about people buying houses in Tuscany or France and making food and drinking wine. I was wrong. I found it to be hilarious and a pure delight.

I have already shared my appreciation of Leighton Gage's A Vine in the Blood (here) as well as Amagansett by Mark Mills (here) and Chris Grabenstein's Fun House (here). My most recent rave was about Carol O'Connell’s latest Mallory chronicle, The Chalk Girl (here).

Sister, I am eager to try Leonard Rosen's All Cry Chaos, which debuts Henri Poincaré and well as Gerald Jay's The Paris Directive. These books seem right up my alley.

Georgette, while I read Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X, I couldn't appreciate the subtleties, but I am eager to try the second in the series.

Della, it stands to reason that as different as we all are, our lists would include a wide variety of authors and styles and approaches to the criminal mind. If I look at mine, it always seems to favor the law-and-order type of detective fiction. But I am fascinated by your choice of Edna Mazya's novel Love Burns, which I have put on my Christmas list.

Subtle British humor is always a magnet for me as well, Peri, so your comments about Nick Harkaway's writing and Sister M's review of his book, Angelmaker, may lead me to include that book on 2013's best books list.

I'd love to be organized enough to remember and evaluate a year's worth of reading, but often can't remember what I read last week! Sister Mary Murderous suggested keeping a notebook and I tried several times; but my house eats notebooks like my dryer eats socks. Fortunately, recommendations come in so fast that I won't run out of reading matter anytime soon. Here are a few of this year's books, and some planned reading for 2013.

While Peter Robinson's Watching the Dark (to be released January 8, 2013) is a solid entry in his popular Alan Banks series, it didn't hold my breathless attention like many have. The story ties the contemporary murder of a police officer to the unsolved disappearance of a local girl vacationing in Estonia several years earlier. When both of these cases seem connected to D.I. Annie Cabbot's separate investigation into an illegal migrant worker scam, the story gets a little too busy for me.

Meeting old friends is wonderful, so I am slowly downloading electronic copies of many of them. Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise finds Lord Peter Wimsey going undercover at an advertising agency, earning £4 a week and hobnobbing with his fellow wage slaves around the office tea urn. In addition to his sleuthing skills, he turns out to have quite a gift for effective and outrageous marketing slogans.

I'm still not sure I actually enjoyed Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife, but this brooding gothic story has stuck in my mind. When wealthy widower Ralph Truitt advertises in a St. Louis newspaper for "a reliable wife," Catherine Land, who has been living hand-to-mouth on her wits and beauty, jumps at the offer. While I didn't like any of the characters very much, the suspense ratchets up satisfactorily in the isolation of the bitter Wisconsin winter to a surprisingly upbeat ending.

Based on Sister MM's rave review and Georgette's and Della's enthusiastic endorsements, Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker is at the top of my Christmas wishlist. I had read the author's short story Edie Investigates (which can be purchased inexpensively wherever you buy ebooks) and enjoyed it very much. It packed a lot of understated British humor into a few pages of MI-5 misadventures. Like his father John le Carré, Harkaway has a somewhat cynical view of the renowned British spy agencies.

Della calls Rick Gavin's Ranchero "An absolute joyride of a book." The protagonist is a repo man, a timely reminder for those of us who usually go overboard with Christmas gifts. Georgette has also tempted me with Peach, the entity that occupies Dex's cell phone in Ruth Rendell's The St. Zita Society. My name for the entity that lives in my cell phone isn't printable on a family blog. And since I will be moving to Amish country within the next year, I had better read up on what's amiss with them from MC's post. If I don't get these books as gifts, I'll likely treat myself to them.

Books from my TBR pile include Craig Russell's Brother Grimm, in which a serial murderer uses his victims to explore the darker side of fairy tales. (This one may be too bloody for me; we'll see.) My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk is set in 16th-century Istanbul and narrated by a murdered blasphemous corpse, a European-style illustrator (realistic depiction of living things is forbidden in Islam). This New York Times Notable Book is described as "Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle...Boxes within boxes." To be saved for bleak, stormy days when I can't get out. And Born on a Blue Day is the memoir of Daniel Tammet, a synesthetic savant who also suffers (or is gifted with?) Asberger's. He perceives numbers as colors and shapes, and manipulates them instantaneously in his head. Differently-wired brains fascinate me and this one, written from the inside, should be more interesting for a layman than a psychological study. These should keep me occupied through, say, July? Happy holidays, all!

We Reminisce about Reading in 2012 (Part 1)

It's that time of year again, when we like to reminisce about our reading over the year. Not necessarily books published during this year, but books that we read and enjoyed this year. We have so much to talk about that we have to split up into two parts. Today Sister Mary Murderous and Georgette Spelvin will go at it, and tomorrow Della Streetwise, Periphera and Maltese Condor will take the stage.

Georgette practically breaks out in hives at the thought of compiling a list of best reads of the year. If I'd read as many books as she does––and the wild variety––the notion of a top-10 list would be overwhelming for me, too. Fortunately, all of us, including Georgette, are willing to talk about––without ranking––some books we enjoyed this year and would recommend for you or your gift-giving this season.

Regular readers of Read Me Deadly will not be surprised to hear that my top recommendation to all and sundry is Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker. (In fact, some may be rolling their eyes at my raving about the book yet again.) This is a book that somehow manages to be old-fashioned and ultra-modern at the same time. It's a big, sprawling pulp adventure, with lashings of comedy, techno-punk attitude and even a bit of a love story. It fizzes with energy and ideas, just on the edge of going completely out of control. And the writing is so gorgeous that I kept repeating whole paragraphs just to continue enjoying the flavor. My full review can be found here.

Flipping through my notebook of books I've read this year, I found that several of my favorite authors came through with new books that wowed me. In Christopher Fowler's case, there were two. Because of the vagaries of publishing, the two latest books in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series became available on audio in the US within a couple of months of each other. Both The Memory of Blood (reviewed here) and Bryant & May and the Invisible Code (reviewed here) had unusual plots and the eccentric Arthur Bryant at his comic best.

Philip Kerr delivered a bit of a change-up in his latest Bernie Gunther book, Prague Fatale (reviewed here). Unlike the last couple of books in the series, this one doesn't jump back and forth in time. This latest takes place in 1943, with Bernie being made an offer he can't refuse by Reinhard Heydrich, a/k/a Hitler's Hangman. Bernie has to spend time at Heydrich's new home in Prague––confiscated from a (formerly) wealthy Jewish family––and help solve a mystery. This turns into even more of a conundrum when one of Heydrich's adjutants is killed in a locked room.

Peter Robinson took a break from his Alan Banks series with Before the Poison, something of a supernatural mystery, in which the protagonist, a recently widowed music composer, feels compelled to solve the mystery of a murder that took place decades earlier in the old house he buys in Yorkshire.

Sadly, Reginald Hill died in 2012. I read his The Woodcutter, in which up-from-his-bootstraps entrepreneur Wolf Hadda has his entire perfect life snatched from him when he is framed and thrown in prison. Abandoned by friends and family, Hadda works hard and stealthily to find out who is behind his ruination––and to craft an appropriate revenge. I wouldn't have thought Reginald Hill could out-do his Dalziel and Pascoe novels, but this is a brilliant, dark fairy tale, filled with humor and depth. You couldn't ask for a better farewell novel.

I was disappointed in Jo Nesbø's eighth book in the Harry Hole series, The Leopard, because the plot was so long and convoluted, but more so because of the absolutely grotesque level of violence. I picked up the ninth book, Phantom, with some trepidation, but it turned out to be completely different. Harry returns to Oslo––but not to the police force––to investigate a drug-related death. But the book is at least as much about Harry's personal relationships, which always seem to cause him more pain than pleasure.

Alan Furst's espionage novels have never gripped me before, even though normally I devour World War II-era spy stuff. But Mission to Paris completely drew me in, with its dark tale of an American movie director on assignment in France who becomes entangled in attempts to prevent the looming war.

I was delighted to read three debut mysteries this year that are reported to be the starts of new series. Leonard Rosen's All Cry Chaos introduces Henri Poincaré, the great grandson of the famous French mathematician, who is an aging detective with Interpol. Poincaré is one of the most sympathetic protagonists I've met, and the plot is an unusual and intelligent international thriller.

Another older French detective is the protagonist of Gerald Jay's The Paris Directive (reviewed here). Inspector Mazarelle is a substantial, middle-aged man with a luxuriant mustache, who enjoys his pipe, good wine and food, and women. He has moved from Paris to his (now-dead) wife's home village in the Dordogne and is finding it a little dull––until a serial-killer case falls into his lap.

As I wrote here recently, David Mark's Dark Winter introduces us to an appealing new protagonist, Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. Set in the decaying Yorkshire port city of Hull, this is an atmospheric police procedural that would be reminiscent of Scandinavian crime fiction if McAvoy had substance-abuse problems or a messier personal life.

Sister Mary, I don't "practically break out in hives" when asked to compile a list of favorite reads. I gnash my teeth, tear my hair, and run shrieking from the room. The mental picture of you calmly and methodically flipping through the notebook you keep about your reading reminds me that such a notebook must go onto my list of New Year's resolutions. For the fourth year now. My favorite books vary from one day to the next, depending on my mood and what I'm thinking about. I can, however, point to a variety of crime fiction I enjoyed this year, so here goes.

First, I want to agree with some of your assessments. Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker is a spectacular book. Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May are always entertaining, and The Memory of Blood is particularly good. I miss Reginald Hill, but The Woodcutter is a fitting finale. I haven't read Jo Nesbø's The Leopard; isn't it strange that his Phantom, despite its heartbreak, is such an exhilarating read? I'll be writing more about it in a few weeks.

It's always exciting to read a great series debut, and Canadian writer Owen Laukkanen's 2012 book, The Professionals, is one of them. Four recent college grads embark on a five-year plan of high-volume, low-ransom kidnappings to fund a retirement in the Maldives. I love plots involving unforeseen screw-ups that snowball into disasters. Minnesota cop Kirk Stevens and FBI agent Carla Windermere have a nice chemistry. (I reviewed it here.)

After an action-packed book, an intricate game of cat and mouse makes a good change of pace. In Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X, a brilliant mathematician engineers the cover-up of a murder committed by his neighbor and then parries Tokyo detective Kusanagi, who consults with his chess partner, physics professor Manabu Yukawa. The second series book, Salvation of a Saint, offers Kusanagi and Yukawa the problem of how a wife, threatened with divorce by her husband, used arsenic to poison him during her absence. It is sophisticated books like these that make me wish for faster English translations.

I turn to certain subjects again and again in my reading. I'm not referring to sieges or the postapocalypse now; this time it's memory and identity. Before I Go to Sleep, by S. J. Watson, takes an amnesiac into a nightmare of paranoia. Christine Lucas is 47 years old. Every morning, she wakes up with the expectation of seeing her 20-something-year-old face in the bathroom mirror. At the urging of her doctor, she begins to keep a journal, and she realizes she doesn't trust her husband, Ben.

In Paul Doiron's The Poacher's Son, Maine game warden Mike Bowditch believes he has few delusions about his brawling, poaching father, Jack, but he doesn't believe Jack is capable of a double murder, despite what others think. While increasing tension unmercifully, Doiron examines the vulnerabilities of trust, familial bonds, tradition, and forest inhabitants' lives. He also does a wonderful job of portraying a life in the outdoors. Who doesn't dream of living in Maine? I'll be reading this series. (For review, see here.)

Offbeat novels call to me; however, what one reviewer finds delightful, I might find annoying. Or vice versa. Mat Johnson's Pym: A Novel is a sci fi-fantasy-adventure-satire genre bender. In this book, Chris Jaynes is denied tenure because he won't perform certain duties as professor of African-American studies. He becomes obsessed with the idea that Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is crucial to understanding race in America, and he fields a motley expedition to Antarctica. The book, which was entertaining, then becomes more than weirdly funny.

Sometimes colorful characters in exotic settings are just the ticket. Timothy Hallinan's The Fear Artist, fifth in the Poke Rafferty series set in Bangkok, contains witty and stylish writing. Poke runs up against Haskell Murphy, formerly involved with the United States' infamous Phoenix Program, designed to fight terror with terror in Vietnam. Seeking help, Poke calls on a Who's Who of oddballs, including his tough-as-nails, 17-year-old half-sister Ming Li, and Vladimir, an ex-KGB agent who schemes and talks like Boris Badenov of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon fame. (See here for review.)

Jess Walter is always a good bet for a good book. Citizen Vince involves a man in the witness-protection program in Spokane, Washington. The Zero opens with the awakening of a cop who has shot himself in the head after 9/11. For 2012's Beautiful Ruins, Walter turns to Italy and Hollywood for a stunning novel about a missing Hollywood starlet, set over five decades. I love the characters, especially Pasquale Tursi, proprietor of the Hotel Adequate View in Porto Vergogna, Italy.

Borgia family heir Duke Valentino of Romagna, his father Pope Alexander VI, Leonardo da Vinci, and the young Niccolò Machiavelli feature in Michael Ennis's The Malice of Fortune; Renaissance historical fiction about a serial killer and the intrigue behind Machiavelli's The Prince. It oozes atmosphere and history; sometimes it's heavy going, but who can resist these Italians? Fans of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, take note.

I like books about memories that haunt like ghosts. Irish writer Tana French writes beautifully detailed psychological suspense and lets her ensemble of Dublin murder-squad detectives take turns in the spotlight. In 2012's fourth series book, Broken Harbor, Det. Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy and his rookie partner, Det. Richie Curran, investigate a crime that left Jenny Spain near death and her husband Patrick and their two young children dead.

All devotees of doorstopper lit take heed; this one is 1,150+ pages. Hungarian Péter Nádas took 15 years to write Parallel Stories, and, man, he makes you feel it as he begins with a snow-covered corpse on a Berlin park bench in 1989, and then explodes into stories and thoughts that wander all over Europe from before, during, and after World War II. At its core, it's a story of three men who shared the occupation of Communist spy––Hans von Wolkenstein, Ágost Lippay Lehr, and Andras Rott. For fans of Proust, Mann, and Tolstoy, this is a mind-blowing read.