Spring Preview 2015: Part Seven

Reykjavik

Is it feed a fever and starve a cold? Well, if the adage fits, I have a few good ways to feed a cabin fever, starting with a tale from the top of the world.

Inspector Erlendur has always been a gloomy Gus; right from the day he was presented in Jar City, the first book in Arnaldur Indriðason's Icelandic series. His personality seemed to reflect the winters of the Arctic Circle. Those who have experienced the polar vortex of '14 and the polar vortex redux of '15 would know that this explained a lot. But you couldn't help but like him, because he was also a sensible, dogged detective who tended to solve his cases. One of his endearing characteristics was his compassion, and the seeds of this lay deep in his past, stemming form the day he lost he brother in a blizzard when their palms were wrenched apart.

The most recent novel in the series, Strange Shores, was to be Erlendur's final story, but Indriðason has been able to bring us a few tales, which take place early in the career of Erlendur Sveinsson. In all the books I’ve read in this series, this is the first time I have been aware of his last name. Although not the first prequel in print, Reykjavik Nights (Minotaur, April 21) is the first one translated.

As a young cop, Erlendur goes on routine patrol in all the seedy parts of town and becomes acquainted with a tramp named Hannibal. Hannibal dies, supposedly of natural causes, but which Erlender begins to investigate on own his time. In the course of this sleuthing, he realizes his desire to be a detective. He finds connections to another death, that of a young woman. The story takes place in 1974, during a time when Reykjavik is gearing up for the festival celebrating the 1100th anniversary of the settlement of Iceland. I am waiting eagerly for a chance to meet the young, hopefully less somber Erlendur.

There's not a more pleasant place on the East Coast to spend the summer than eastern Long Island. Christopher Bollen sets his second novel, Orient (Harper, May 5,) on a small historic town on the Island's north fork.

Orient, as the town is called, was once a quiet place, whose local flavor is now changing, with the influx of moneyed Manhattanites both arty and crafty. Not one of these types is another newcomer, Mills Chivern, a young loner who has blown in from the west and made himself at home. Toward the end of the summer, a local man is found dead in the open water at the same time that a humongous bloated animal corpse is found on the beach. It is presumed to be a product of a nearby research lab. Because he feels he has to save his own skin, Mills joins Beth, an Orient native, to find the killer as the bodies pile up. I am imagining Jaws vs. The Amityville Horror, and if you are looking for thrills, this one seems to be a good bet.

And now, for a bit of fun, try Josh Cook's An Exaggerated Murder (Melville House, March 3).

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes)

Trike Augustine is a PI who feels his deductive skills may rival the great Holmes, but they don't seem to be any help in the case of a missing moneybags. For one thing, the clues are pathetically obscure. What can you intuit about a dead pig in the living room? It might help if Trike's two Watsons––Max, the former FBI agent, and Lola, the artist––had a clue between them. This book is touted to be funny, but I'll reserve judgment.

Josh Cook is a writer from Boston who works in a bookstore while he writes. From this clue, I deduce that I just might like this book, whether it's funny or not.

In Spider Woman’s Daughter (Harper, 2014), Anne Hillerman breathed new life into her father Tony Hillerman's wonderful characters, Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee, and fleshed out Bernadette ("Bernie") Manualito, who became Chee's love interest as they solved crimes in Navajo Territory.

In Rock with Wings (Harper, May 5), Anne Hillerman continues the series and, by focusing on Officer Manuelito, who is now married to Chee, she tells the story from a female point of view. Bernadette, like many women, plays a dual role; taking care of family, which also includes an aging mother and a troublesome younger sister, while trying to do her job, which at the present seems to be a collection of unrelated incidents.

Chee is working on his own set of crimes. Even though he has retired, Joe Leaphorn still plays a role, because he is the guru to whom the younger police officers turn to help them make sense of what clues they find in their search for the answers.

Hillerman père et Hillerman fille both bring more to the story than just the facts, ma'am, and I look forward to spending some time with this book.

The action takes place near the Rock with Wings, as the Navajo call the Shiprock Monument in New Mexico in the center of the Navajo Reservation. It is a monument of special meaning to the Diné, as the Navajo refer to their people. Hillerman takes the reader to a place with grand vistas and she does my cabin fever good.

Over the years, Salvo Montalbano has had a good angel on one shoulder, reminding him of the right thing to do, and its opposite number on the other shoulder, tempting and teasing. In all the years I've been reading about Andrea Camilleri's police detective, the good angel has won out––except for a flirt with infidelity in Camilleri's last book, Angelica’s Smile (Penguin, 2014). His self-control is beginning to slip again in his latest, Game of Mirrors (translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli; Penguin, March 31).

Rescuing his neighbor from a car that needed CPR, Salvo becomes intrigued with Liliana Lombardo and he finds that his rift with longtime girlfriend, Livia, is giving him a little leeway for romantic dalliance. Some bombing of local warehouses is keeping him occupied and, while looking into the motives for the bombings (because nothing is ever simple in Sicily), Montalbano wants to listen to his bad angel. But he is a wily character himself and, as he closes in on the criminals, Liliana disappears.

Then it's a case of cerca donna (cherchez la femme). These books are a lot of fun and I am glad to say that there are at least four more waiting in the wings for translation.

Jimmy Perez of the Shetland Island police, and his colleague, Sandy Wilson, are also out cherchez-ing la femme in Ann Cleeves's latest, Thin Air (Minotour, May 5).

In northern Scotland, there is a peculiar phenomenon near the time of the summer solstice that the Shetlanders call the summer dim. It is into this strange, almost hallucinogenic light of the midnight sun, that a young woman, Eleanor, walks out and disappears into thin air.

Eleanor is one of a group of young people who were friends at university and who have come to Unst, the northernmost of the Shetland Isles. They have taken a holiday cottage and plan to stay for a week, while two of their group celebrate their marriage with local hamefarin dance. Eleanor seemingly sends a text telling her friends not to look for. But, of course, they do––and find her body in a pool of water, looking posed.

Ann Cleeves looks deep into the souls of both the characters visiting and the protagonists investigating, and also into the hearts and minds of the native islanders, making this book quite a feast. A nice way  to keep from starving for reading material in the cold.

All Those Daughters

From the very first book in Tony Hillerman's Navaho series featuring Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee, The Blessing Way, I was hooked. Each and every story in the series is a gem. When his daughter wrote her own book to add some sparkle to the series, it seemed appropriate to focus on a female perspective. This made me consider all sorts of daughters, and I might be writing about a few of them over the next few weeks.

Spider Woman’s Daughter (October 1, Harper/HarperCollins), by Anne Hillerman

Monday morning at the Navajo Inn has been a favorite meeting place for the Navajo police, going back to when Joe Leaphorn was just a young detective and making his reputation as someone with a sharp mind. These meetings had become brainstorming sessions for unsolved cases, which segued into routine matters of budget and staffing. Joe was talking about a woman who hadn’t shown up for a meeting, when Captain Howard Largo called the meeting to order. Despite the fact that Leaphorn was retired from the police force and working as a PI, he was welcome to stay. Largo also incorporated a young officer on a rotating basis each week, and this week it was Officer Bernadette "Bernie" Manuelito. She had been on the force for several years and had been married to Jim Chee for two of these. She was honored to drive the hour it took to get to Santa Fe.

After the meeting, Bernie is looking out the window while making a call from her cellphone when she sees a slight person wearing a hoodie approach Leaphorn and appear to shoot him in the head. She is powerless to stop the attack. The shooter then jumps in a pickup and drives off. After Bernie gives the only eyewitness statement, she is told to stay out of the way of the investigation. When the dust settles, Bernie’s job is to contact Joe’s family and friends.

Naturally, the first place to look is at Joe’s present cases and perhaps at old grudges. Revenge is not a Navajo attribute, but many Navajo have changed, so the field is wide open.

In the Navajo mythology, Spider Woman is the Holy Person who taught the Navajo to weave and gave the Hero Twins the weapons they needed to find their father, the Sun, and to rid the world of monsters. In this world, sometimes there are very messy situations with many threads, and those women who straighten everything out may be called Spider Woman’s Daughter. That is the role Bernie Manuelito plays in this mystery. She is the kind of person who notices details that others miss: a silver bracelet with hearts on it, doodles with triangles that have deeper meaning, misplaced pottery that others overlook, patterns and reflections.

I don’t think that Manuelito will replace Leaphorn and Chee, but she is a great addition. The same goes for Anne Hillerman. Her dad Tony Hillerman’s books are there for us to reread any time, but now we have the pleasure of reading hers. Fortunately, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

The Headhunter’s Daughter (2011, Morrow), by Tamar Myers, tells the tale of another kind of daughter. This one lived between two worlds.

The gravel pits that were the residua of deep excavations along the great Kasai and Tshikapa rivers left by the Europeans digging for diamonds in the Congo were known to be haunted by a Belgian woman who had drowned in them. One day in the years after World War II, a boy of the Bashilele tribe came here to fulfill a ritual that would allow him to become a man. He had to take a human life and, along with it, the head of the person he killed. The skull would be used as his mug, with which to drink his palm wine for the rest of his life. Despite this, his people were not cannibals and they looked down on those river tribes who were.

What the boy found at the river looked like a beast eating a child, since he had never seen a perambulator before. When he heard the sound of a truck coming––another unfamiliar sound––he grabbed the unusual-looking child and ran for miles back to his hidden village, taking the child to his mother and dying, clutching his chest, before he can explain anything. About 13 years later, rumors come to the ears of the Belgian authorities of a white girl living with a tribe of headhunters deep in the jungle. Captain Pierre Jardin of the local Belgian police has asked two women to accompany him to the interior. One is a local newly-arrived American missionary from South Carolina, Amanda Brown, whose native name is Ugly Eyes, and a woman who works for her, known as Cripple. In this part of the world, names always mean something. As a matter of fact, the local people think that names with no meaning are foolish.

The once-little baby is now going through puberty, and is the daughter of the Chief Headhunter. She too is known as Ugly Eyes because of the odd color of here eyes, but she, like all the other women, has been made attractive by having been scarified on her face and back and having had her front teeth removed. No one knows how these customs got started, but it is well ingrained despite the fact that they all bemoan their loss when it comes time to eat. The Chief Headhunter thinks it might be a good thing for his daughter to spend time with the people known as the Breakers of Rocks, because they are everywhere and are now in power, but the Headhunter continues to be amazed how such a primitive and ignorant people had managed to subjugate his own.

What happens to both of the Ugly Eyes will have you on the edge of your seat. Cripple, whose early life was chronicled in The Witch Doctor’s Wife (2009, Avon), is always the voice of reason. One of her take-home lessons is: "Life is very simple if you don’t think it too much. Act first from the stomach, and then see what the head has to say."

This is an engrossing story of many layers. There is, at first, the mystery of the kidnapping of a baby ensconced in what at first seems to be a satire on cultural differences and overt and covert racism. But then one is intrigued to find out that Tamar Myers grew up in the Belgian Congo and was raised alongside a tribe of headhunters, the Bashilele. Much of what she describes of the life of the different tribes, including the Belgians and the missionaries, is true to life.

Myers adds a postscript to the story, as she tells the tale of her ancestor, Joseph Hochstetler, who was captured by the Delaware Indians during the French and Indian War. Surviving records tell the story that he was ritually scrubbed in the river by the women and told that he was now part of their tribe, flesh of their flesh, bone of their bone and that his white blood had been washed away. He was 10 years old at the time. When he was released nine years later, he did not want to leave his new family and he visited them often. One is not just the color of one's skin; one is the color of one's heart.

There is also an old movie, The Light in the Forest, with this theme. In 1764, when a peace treaty between the Delawares and the British requires that all captives be returned to their families, Johnny Butler (a very young James MacArthur of Hawaii Five-O's "Book 'em, Danno!" fame) is forced to return, but the injustice he sees sends him back to the wilds. And you can see Fess Parker in this film as well. I thinks it's only available on VHS.