A Thanksgiving Sampler

Thank God we're talking about test driving,
not our own disastrous driving tests.

A friend and I have been tasting champagne this weekend, because that's what Hubby and I have been asked to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. After we methodically worked our way through several bottles, we felt festive enough to sample pumpkin pie coupled with various flavors of ice cream she had in her freezer. We agreed on the Veuve Clicquot Brut Yellow Label and concluded it's best to stick to a good vanilla.

The holiday season is full of figuring stuff out: the gift for your best friend, the guest list for your winter potluck, how to ship cookies to your far-flung kids. You also need to find some books to read to keep yourself sane. An excellent way to ensure a book matches what you're in the mood for is to stock up on a variety. Let's test drive some possibilities.

During the winter holidays, one hones one's cloak-and-dagger skills hiding gifts at home and diplomatic talents charming colleagues at the office party. Surely, this is the season for reading espionage.

Something British and cynical might hit the spot. Former BBC correspondent Adam Brookes has followed up his compelling Night Heron (Redhook/Hachette, 2014) with Spy Games (Redhook, September 2015). Freelance journalist Philip Mangan is a decent guy with more than his fair share of restlessness and curiosity. After a dabble into espionage necessitated his fleeing Beijing, Philip is in Addis Abba, investigating the Chinese presence in Ethiopia. Then three things happen: an MI6 asset dies in Hong Kong, Philip barely escapes a café bombing, and he is offered some classified Chinese military documents. Thus are Philip and Trish Patterson, his MI6 handler, drawn into a power struggle that is playing out primarily in Ethiopia; Oxford, England; and Chiang Mai, Thailand.

It's not necessary to read Night Heron first, but I'd suggest you do that simply for the pleasure of understanding exactly why MI6 isn't thrilled to find "Philip Mangan," "China" and "spy" again in the same equation, and why Philip is feeling a bit cross about it, too. At 437 pages, Spy Games could benefit from some tightening up; however, if you like an intricate plot woven with separate threads, colorful characters, and beautifully drawn exotic locations, this is for you.

If you're feeling in the mood for dueling American and Russian intelligence agencies, sex used as an espionage tool, and very sadistic villains (brace yourself), check out books written by an espionage insider, former CIA agent Jason Matthews. His writing feels very up close and personal in its focus on the characters' lives and personalities and their elaborate spycraft.

In 2013's Red Sparrow (Scribner), Matthews introduces the CIA's young hot-shot, Nate Nash, and the beautiful Russian agent, Dominika Egorova, whose job it is to get him to divulge the identity of a Russian traitor (see Sister Mary Murderous's review here). Dominika is a synesthete who perceives people surrounded by a colored aura; at the appearance of her black-haloed boss, former Lubyanka prison torturer Alexei Zyuganov, I pulled the covers over my head.

Dominika is back in Russia in Palace of Treason (Scribner, June 2015). She's climbing the ranks of the SVR, much to the chagrin of the scheming Zyuganov, and maneuvering to avoid exposure as she passes information to the Americans. Meanwhile, there's a mole at CIA headquarters passing secrets to the Russians, which creates a very pleasant symmetry (don't you think?), and jacks up the suspense. I was surprised and pleased to see Russian President Vladimir Putin appear as a minor character, as wily and enigmatic as we Westerners find him in real life. Palace of Treason can be read as a standalone, but you'll want to read Red Sparrow, too. One can never find enough good spy yarns––especially those with lovesick agents and recipes.

With all the demands of the holidays pressing, you might appreciate the comfort of an offbeat mystery with a strong sense of place, such as Tarquin Hall's Vish Puri series, featuring the Most Private Investigators Ltd. agency in Delhi, or Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana.

Vaseem Khan's quirky first book, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra (Redhook, September 2015), is the opening book of such a proposed series. Inspector Ashwin Chopra's heart condition has forced him into early retirement after more than three decades on the Mumbai police force. During his last day, Chopra learns of a young man who apparently drowned in a puddle. The Inspector is warned off opening an inquiry and returns home to find a baby elephant, Ganesha, bequeathed to him by his uncle.

As a policeman, Chopra was an incorruptible officer who prided himself on treating everyone equally. So he can't get the screams of the dead youth's mother––that her family is too poor for his death to be adequately investigated––out of his head. Chopra decides to look into it on his own. He must keep this a secret, because his wife, Poppy, would object, and he doesn't want his former police colleagues thinking he's one of those unfortunate people who have no life outside work. Chopra balances caring for little Ganesha, whose abilities are not entirely realistic, with a criminal investigation that takes him through various Mumbai neighborhoods. This allows the reader to glimpse a fascinating city through the eyes of a man who loves it, even though he regrets some aspects of its modernization. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra is a little too consciously charming for my taste, but I wanted to tell you about it because many readers love it for its charm, and you might, too.

Tomorrow we'll look at a few more holiday reads.

Review of M. J. Carter's The Strangler Vine

The Strangler Vine by M. J. Carter

I was intrigued and tantalized by The Strangler Vine, by M. J. Carter (G.P. Putnam's Sons, March 2015), which is on the long list for the 2015 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award. The reason it caught my eye is that I have been a fan for a long time of grand sweeping sagas that take place long ago in faraway lands.

M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions was my first taste of Indian history in the days of the British Raj. The title refers to a vision of the mighty Himalayas as seen from a distance. This is a romantic tale of exciting adventures in a backdrop that spans almost the entire Indian subcontinent during a time of great unrest. This was in the late 1850s, just after the Sepoy rebellion.

The conflict began as a mutiny of Indian soldiers against the East India Company's army and it led to the final dissolution of the East India Company and to the British reorganization of the army, the financial system and the administration of India. Rumors that the British were out to destroy the religions of the Indian people was the spark that ignited what turned into a blaze of death and destruction.

Ashok Pelham Martin, a boy born in India of British parents, masquerades as a native until he is grown, and then joins the military. He falls in love with a princess and conspires to save her from certain death.

Kaye, who was born in India and spent much of her early life there, tells her stories with authority. Her father, grandfather, brother, and husband all served the British Raj. Another of her novels, Shadow of the Moon, is about a young British heiress who returns to India and meets her protector, a British military man, who tries to help her during the tumultuous war times of World War II, when the empire is about to topple. Kaye, who followed the drum during her marriage, also has a series of murder mysteries in locations such as Kenya, Cyprus, Berlin, and Kashmir. These are all places she lived in for a while.

If you want to lose yourself in another time and place, you couldn't do better than taking a dip into Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. This I did long before it became a television mini-series.

Beginning with The Jewel in the Crown, Scott tells the story of the final years of the British Raj in India. The epic begins in the year 1942, around the time Mahatma Gandhi was calling for the British to cede this particular part of the British Empire, the jewel in the crown as Queen Victoria called it, back to the Indians. These novels look at the many facets of life in India from the points of view of all the players: the British, the Hindus, the Muslims and the Anglo-indians. It is a fascinating series with a wealth of ambience and history.

Carter's The Strangler Vine takes place almost a century before in 1837, during the days when the British East India Company was at the peak of its power. It leads up to the time of the first rebellion of the Indian soldiers.

The East India Company was formed as early as the 1600s in order to promote trade with the East. Over the next two centuries, it built up its own private army and began to rule and control large parts of India. The company gained power and wealth by levying taxes and by creating a monopoly in the opium trade with China.

The narrator of The Strangler Vine is young William Avery, an ensign in the East India military. He has recently come from England to Calcutta and is fiercely homesick on the one hand and getting himself into a life of dissolution and debt on the other. He is quite naïve, believing everything he is told about the great East India Company, despite the evidence of his eyes. He is actually rather thick and very judgmental.

One of his strong points is a love of reading. His favorite author is Xavier Mountstuart, who had been living in and writing about India for some years. Mountstuart's most recent work is raising a lot of official eyebrows, as it suggests that certain important people in the company are leading disgraceful lives. His work in progress is about the cult of the murderous Thugees, ritual mass murderers who worship the Goddess Kali, she of the many arms and necklace of heads around her neck.

The problem is that Mountstuart has disappeared. The military authorities have asked a certain Jeremiah Blake, a former member of the army who has gone native and who shows little respect for the powers that be, to find him. Avery is promoted to Lieutenant and told to accompany Blake and to keep an eye on him. They travel as rapidly as possible to the heart of northern India, where the author was last seen.

Once there, they find a conspiracy of silence. Blake, who is a polyglot as well as a master of disguise, speaks several Indian dialects as well as Persian, so he is able to gather information from all quarters.  He can sense the discontent and the anxiety of the locals and the distrust of the East India Company wallahs, who want the farmers to grow opium and indigo when the fear of famine is all too real. Avery, on the other hand, speaks nothing but English and is oblivious. He is more concerned about Blake's drive to complete his mission in the face of the disapproval of the territories' military commanders.

It becomes clear that Blake, Avery and their small group of five are in danger and the only way to survive is to trust each other. But unless the scales fall from Avery's eyes, they are doomed.

Okay, so more than once I wanted to smack Avery upside his head or shake some horse sense into him. Some critics have suggested that there is a Sherlock/Watson partnership going on here. But Watson was never this slow to see the obvious.

The title of this novel refers to a vine, which grows in among the trees and chokes the life out of them. It is a metaphor in this case for the way the British East India Company infiltrated a country and tried to obliterate customs, religions and behaviors they considered uncivilized by choking them off.

This is a gripping story––no pun intended.  The tension slowly grows and I experienced a desire for the smugly self-righteous to be taken down several pegs. Knowing the  historical outcomes doesn't take away from the drama, dread and fear as it builds to an exciting climax. I read that there is another installment of the Blake and Avery adventures due out this year, so Ill be looking for it.

Feeling Quizzical?

How would you like to win a book by Vikas Swarup? Don't say "who?," because if you saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire, you know Swarup's work. The movie was based on Swarup's debut 2006 novel, Q&A, and tells the tale of Ram, a lowly waiter who becomes the biggest-ever winner on an Indian quiz show. But Ram is accused of cheating––on no evidence whatever––and is banged up in jail awaiting trial. That gives him the chance to tell the colorful story of his life to his lawyer.

Swarup's next novel, Six Suspects, is a very nontraditional murder mystery. Vivek ("Vicky") Rai is the playboy son of the gangster-turned-politician Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Vicky is used to being able to do exactly as he pleases, and he uses his money and his father's position to get away with any crime he chooses to commit, including murder. At a party he throws to celebrate his acquittal in a case in which he murdered a young woman in front of dozens of witnesses, the lights go out and Vicky is shot dead. Six of the guests are found to have guns, and it remains only to determine which one was used to shoot the fatal bullet straight through Vicky's body.

Means and opportunity are the same for the suspects, so Swarup spends most of the book delving into the lives of each of the suspects and compellingly showing how each came to have an excellent motive for plugging Vicky. Just as in Q&A, wildly improbable events occur for good and ill, and they bring each character to Vicky Rai's party on that fateful night.

Swarup's books depict India at a critical time in its social history. The class/caste system is still in place, but it's threatened by entertainment and tech cultures that can elevate someone far beyond his or her class. Corruption is rampant, and there are vast chasms between rich and poor. The cities are ridiculously dense, with shantytowns and skyscrapers practically rubbing shoulders. Swarup uses different characters in each story so that he can expose the dizzying diversity of life in modern India.

In Swarup's most recent book, The Accidental Apprentice, he gives us a twist on those television shows giving striving young businesspeople a chance to latch on to an opportunity with some big company or mogul. Swarup's protagonist, Sapna Sinha, works at an electronics store in Delhi and, like so many of his characters, is downtrodden but determined to make a success of life. Out of nowhere, one of India's most powerful CEOs approaches Sapna and offers to make her his successor––provided that she can pass his seven tests of life. Sapna's handling of each of the tests makes its own short story and illuminates yet another slice of Indian life.

Courtesy of our friends at Minotaur Books, we have available one copy of The Accidental Apprentice and a signed copy of Six Suspects. We'd like to give them away to our readers, but you'll have to work for them. Like Ram in Q&A, you'll have to take a quiz. Instead of being jailed, the winner will get to pick one of these two books. The runner-up will receive the other book.

The quiz will test your mystery knowledge. Check in here tomorrow at 10:00am EDT to see the quiz and complete rules for entry.

Note: Portions of the description of Six Suspects appear in my review on Amazon, under my username there.

Review of Robert Wilson's Capital Punishment: A Thriller

Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson

Kidnapping. That terrible word calls to mind a dizzying variety of true and fictional crimes. There's legendary Helen of Troy, whose beauty inspired her abduction and the Trojan War. Robert Louis Stevenson's David Balfour, young heir to the House of Shaws, kidnapped and cast away by his Uncle Ebenezer, in an effort to defraud him. Heiress Patty Hearst and former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, snatched by left-wing extremists to trade for imprisoned comrades. Charles Lindbergh's baby, carried away to be ransomed for money. Elizabeth Smart, abducted by a pedophile. While the crime is kidnapping, the motive varies.

When the 25-year-old daughter of Mumbai billionaire Frank D'Cruz is kidnapped off a London street in Robert Wilson's Capital Punishment, wouldn't you think the motive is money? That may not be the case. A kidnapper's calm, distorted voice on Alyshia's mobile phone toys with Alyshia D'Cruz's mother, Isabel Marks. There's no ransom demand. Neither the police nor the press must become involved. Isabel is the only person allowed to communicate with the kidnapper. She is to tell ex-husband Frank that Alyshia's return will not involve "a bit of good old Asian haggling" and that he must take the kidnapping more seriously than if it were a mere money-making endeavor.

A Mumbai crowd

Though Frank loves his dazzlingly smart and beautiful daughter, it's hard to tell what he makes of Alyshia's abduction. He won't say why they became estranged during her stay in Mumbai or why she moved back to London nine months earlier. Frank was an Indian gangster and charismatic Bollywood actor before he became an industrial tycoon. He's paranoid, enigmatic and always acting. His ruthlessness has made many enemies and his gangster ties have plugged him into international networks of espionage, criminals and terrorists. Frank hires Charles Boxer, a "freelance kidnap consultant" working for a private security company, to advise him and Isabel.

Boxer served in the Gulf War, and afterward, normal life seemed monotonous and dull. He became a homicide detective, but that work was "historical." Boxer found he needed to be part of situations, like kidnappings, where "life really matters." Psychologically, this work helps fill the dark hole at his center, formed in childhood when his father disappeared. It's not all therapeutic, however. Boxer's professional code of ethics has already become morally flexible, and now he finds himself attracted to Isabel. It's ironic that while Boxer travels the globe freeing rich men's children, he and his Ghanaian ex-homicide partner, Mercy Danquah, are afraid that they're losing their own 17-year-old daughter, angry and rebellious Amy.

The complex relationship between Amy and her parents, who split up but remain good friends and professional colleagues, is an example of the complicated professional and personal relationships maintained on all sides of the kidnapping. This is one of the most complex and sophisticated thrillers in my recent memory. It deals with themes of corruption, counterterrorism, distribution of wealth, loyalty and morality. Over 400 pages, it zigzags between multiple settings in London, Pakistan and India and a huge cast of colorful characters. We bounce between the London kidnappers and Alyshia, those competing to muscle in on the kidnapping, others who want to take advantage of the kidnapping for their own purposes, and people poring over evidence to identify the kidnappers and bring Alyshia home.

Writer Wilson handles all this extremely well. In the beginning, I jotted down names and notes, but before long I learned I didn't need to do this. I simply paid attention. Characters became clear through repeated appearances or short IDs such as "Simon Deacon of MI6." The only problem I found with the many multidimensional characters is that my brain was often more engaged than my heart. I wasn't always emotionally connected to the good guys, some of whom are almost as bad as the bad guys.

No matter what my feelings, Wilson's witty descriptions and writing kept me entertained. One poor MI6 agent found himself captured in India and transported like a sack of potatoes in a rickshaw shortly after eating food that disagreed with him, "as his fear multiplied the horrors of his guts." Later, he was pressed down onto a sofa and "the hood came off with a flourish, as if he was the main dish at a restaurant with ideas above its station." I'm thrilled that this thought-provoking and diverting book, published in 2013 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is the first of a new series.

Sandilands in India

Stories that take place at the interface of cultures have always fascinated me. Not in the drama of big desperate events like wars, but in the curious frictions of everyday living where very different lifestyles and values collide. Barbara Cleverly has set the first four mysteries of her series in post-World War I India during the last hectic days of the Raj, when the British lived with increasing unease and prewar formality in little enclaves like blisters on the seething subcontinent.

In The Last Kashmiri Rose, Commander Joe Sandilands of the Yard, gentleman and war hero, has been seconded to Calcutta for six months to teach a course in the new science of forensic detection. He frankly can’t wait to get home to the fog and chill of London. But on the morning he is to take ship, the Governor-General asks him to investigate a curious series of apparently unrelated deaths–all of memsahibs, all in March, all on the same small station over a number of years. An oppressively lush tropical setting, plucky (if terrified) wives, suave and impenetrable natives, and damned and doomed romances enliven this very well crafted fair-play mystery, which manages a few twists right to the very end. Has Joe left anything of himself in this remote place? He–and we–may never know.

Ragtime in Simla finds Joe traveling to the resort city and summer capital of the British Raj in the cool foothills of the Himalayas, as the guest of Governor-General George Jardine, for a well-earned vacation.

When the genial opera singer with whom Joe shares the Governor’s open limousine is moved by a particularly lovely view he asks the driver to stop, stands up, and sings a beautiful aria. In mid-note, he is shot dead by a bullet from a high-powered rifle! Joe later learns that another victim, brother of a fascinating and powerful Simla businesswoman, had been shot in the same location the previous year. Once again, Cleverly has set a twisted story and vivid characters in a complex environment, this time of the rich commerce that funded the Raj and the sumptuous depravity of its death throes.

Joe is visiting an old friend, commander of a remote hill fort on the Afghan border in The Damascened Blade when the Governor-General snags his services again, this time to babysit a spoiled and bored American heiress who wants to see "the real India." Impatient as I am with both unjustifiably arrogant and TSTL (too stupid to live) characters, I was prepared to detest Lily Coblenz.

Joe's friend Jamie hosts a vivid set of characters at a welcoming dinner: his newly arrived pregnant wife, Betsy; Joe and Lily; Grace, a British woman doctor so respected by the Afghans that she is being escorted by a Pashan prince Zeman and his aide Iskandar to treat the Amir of all Afghanistan; a brash British lord eager to make trade agreements; and two officials with conflicting opinions on what is needed in the region.

Both Betsy and Zeman, the Afghan Prince, become ill in the night. Betsy is treated by Grace and recovers, but Zeman, possibly on his way to get help, is found dead at the bottom of the marble staircase with a large dent in his head. He and Betsy had been the only people to eat from a particular dish, a bird that might have eaten poisoned bait. Was his death murder or mishap?

Mayhem, kidnapping and the real threat of war on the border ensue in this story of revenge served cold, Pashan style. Lily, very far from TSTL, is caught up in the kidnapping, and proves of invaluable help to Joe in both the recovery of the kidnapped lord and the solution to the puzzle.

The last Sandilands mystery set in India, The Palace Tiger, takes place while Joe accompanies a grand hunt for a man-eating tiger that has been terrorizing the protectorate of Rainipur.

The maharajah is dying and his oldest son and heir has recently died in curious circumstances. His second son greets the visitors with a display of aerial acrobatics that ends in fiery tragedy. Only the third son, an illegitimate 12-year-old boy, is left. In this book Cleverly includes not just one, but three strong women: an Indian maharini, an American wing-walker married to the maharajah's second son, and the wife of a British official, all with conflicting interests and the drive to make things happen.

Cleverly has a preference for strong women, which is carried into subsequent books to the point of becoming formulaic. I would have preferred to see more development of the sexy and slightly mysterious Joe, but the combination of memorable women, exotic locales, and strong plots make these first books outstanding.