Running on Dali Time

Yesterday began a week of Dali Time at my house. That's what my husband and I call our kids' obsession with time since Daylight Saving Time ended and we set the clocks back an hour on Sunday morning. I cannot say, "Lunch is at 1:00," without their response, "You mean Now Time or Real Time?" as if we're time traveling, or any moment the hands on the clock will spring forward again. They heatedly debate what time it really is until my head spins. This is when I'd take refuge in a book, but if the book is anything like some I've read recently, time doesn't stay put there either.

The past collides with the present through memories and visions in The Fire Witness, a riveting and spooky thriller by Lars Kepler (translated from Swedish by Laura A. Wideburg), published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in July 2013.

The crime scene at a home for troubled girls in Sundsvall, Sweden, is disturbing. A ward nurse and teenage resident were bludgeoned to death. The bloody weapon is found under Vicky Bennett's pillow, but Vicky has vanished into the forest, only to reappear and steal a car with a young child asleep in the backseat. The case is closed when the empty car turns up in the river. But Stockholm Detective Inspector Joona Linna doesn't believe Vicky and little Dante are dead and he isn't convinced of Vicky's guilt. No one trusts Linna's instincts, because he's still off-kilter from an internal affairs investigation and worries about his family's safety. Then he receives a call from medium Flora Hansen, who insists this time her visions are real.

Time, logic and and identity shift  in César Aira's The Hare (translated by Nick Caistor), published in July 2013 by New Directions.

Nineteenth-century British naturalist/explorer Tom Clarke is in the Argentine pampas, searching for the mythical leaping and flying Legibrerian hare. Accompanying him are a gaucho with plans of his own and a 15-year-old boy. Their mission is interrupted when Cafulcura, leader of the Mapuche tribe, disappears and Clarke assumes the role of detective responsible for finding him. An all-out tribal war ensues.

That makes too much sense to convey the tangle of subplots, the sense of improvisation and strange conversations in which the meaning of words changes as they are spoken. Despite the wild and woolly disorder, it ties together in a meaningful way. You'll want to read this if you have an appetite for imaginative and absurd Victorian adventure.

After a decade of quietly observing the ravages of time, a guard at London's National Gallery becomes restless with her stalled life.

In Chloe Aridjis's hypnotic modern Gothic, Asunder (September 2013, Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Marie is the 33-year-old guard. Her great-grandfather was also a museum guard there and his inability to stop suffragette Mary Richardson's vandalism of Velàzquez’s Rokeby Venus haunted him and weighs on Marie. Almost as quiet as her work is her life outside the museum, hanging out with her roommate and creating tiny landscapes inside eggshells. A trip to Paris with her poet friend Daniel tears her life asunder.

The asides, such as the explanation of why varnish on painted canvas forms a network of cracks ("craquelure"), are fascinating. The beauty of the writing about the effects of time invites margin notes and underlining. This is a book I'll remember.

Let's leap four decades into the future with a U.S. President from our past, and then travel back in time to the '60s.

It's 2055 in Philip E. Baruth's satire/sci fi/thriller The X President. Several bills signed by then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s have now resulted in decades of global Tobacco Wars. The war isn't going well for our country, and the National Security Council has the answer. Surprisingly, it isn't drones or spying on Americans, our enemies and our friends. They want to time travel to 1995 and undo those Clinton decisions. To this end, they kidnap Sal Hayden, the official biographer of now 109-year-old "BC" (it's due to bionics, not veganism) and send Sal back to 1963 to find the 16-year-old "yBC." Accompanying Sal are NSC operatives code-named "George" (Stephanopoulos), "James" (Carville) and "Virginia" (yes, she's beautiful). It's kinda silly but who doesn't like (a) time travel, (b) satire/thrillers and (c) BC? (Hey, if you can't say anything nice....)

I often correct my kids' manners with that reminder, and now that reminds me. It might be time for my kids to go to bed. That is, if it's really their bed time.

Redonkulus Reads

It's impossible to keep up with slang. What I'd call "cool," my kids call "hot." But whether I use "outtasight" or "da bomb" to describe the books below, I recommend them for a winter night's reading.

He's baaaaack! Yes, hallelujah, Ian Rankin had mercy upon us. After retiring Edinburgh cop John Rebus in 2007's Exit Music, Rankin brings him back in 2012's Standing in Another Man's Grave.

U.S. cover of book published in 2013
by Little, Brown and Company

Rebus is still an ex-cop, although he's working as a civilian for the Serious Crime Review Unit of the Lothian and Borders Police when he fields Nina Hazlitt's call. Her daughter, Sally, disappeared on New Year's Eve in 1999 and Nina is convinced that it was only the first in a connected series of disappearances by young women who were traveling on the A9 through the Scottish Highlands. Brigid Young in 2002. Zoe Beddows in 2008. Nina hasn't been able to persuade any cops of her theory but Rebus tacks up a map of the A9 onto his wall at home and starts to sniff around. Researching these cold cases leads him to Edinburgh's CID. There he hooks up with his protégé, DS Siobhan Clarke, to investigate the three-day disappearance of 15-year-old Annette McKie, who got on a bus to Inverness for a party and hasn't been seen since. Her last message was a photo transmitted from her mobile phone.

It's not the same Edinburgh police department Rebus retired from. New DCI James Page doesn't understand Rebus's references to Led Zeppelin, and there's a young cop who sits at her computer all day, doing research and interacting with online social communities. Other things haven't changed. Rebus still drinks and smokes too much. He effortlessly gets on his superiors' nerves and mostly ignores their instructions. He remains a subject of interest to Malcolm Fox in Complaints, the internal affairs division. Fox (yes, Rankin's new series protagonist, a straight arrow completely unlike Rebus, appears in this book) says there is no longer room in the police force for even one maverick who bends the rules while breaking cases. Fox distrusts Rebus and his socializing with retired criminal bigwig Big Ger Cafferty, whose life Rebus once saved, and other career criminals connected with the McKie case. Rebus, feeling like vinyl in a digital age, climbs in his old Audi and hits the A9 to chase down leads, while dodging the press and his bosses.

If having Rebus back in unofficial harness isn't, like whoa, enough, the force's mandatory retirement age has changed and he can apply for reinstatement. Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch can unretire, so why not Rebus? There's only one sticking point. Rebus may need to lose a few pounds to pass the physical fitness test. After this atmospheric book, in which little is what it seems, more Rebus would be too coolish for words.

Rod Bradbury translated from the Swedish
and Hyperion published it in 2012

Like the poor women in Rankin's book, Allan Karlsson doesn't plan to disappear in Jonas Jonasson's amusing debut, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. He's never been one to ponder things too long, so almost before he knows it, he's slipping away from the Old Folks' Home in Malmköping, Sweden, and the birthday party about to take place in his honor. Allan decides he "could die some other time, in some other place." He ignores the beckoning of the shop where he buys his vodka and shuffles off to the bus station.

There, a long-haired punk whose big suitcase on wheels won't fit into the small restroom with him asks Allan to watch it while he relieves himself. The restroom door has no sooner swung closed before Allan's bus appears. So Allan "surprised himself by making what--you have to admit--was a decision that said 'yes' to life." He gets onto the bus with the suitcase and asks the driver how far a fifty-crown note will take him.

Allan is not the old coot the enraged punk/criminal who owns the money-filled suitcase assumes he is. He was once a famous demolitions expert who offered his explosive services to world leaders of all stripes, from Franco to Mao to Stalin to Truman. Allan not only hobnobbed with the powerful, he himself affected world events. Jonasson weaves stories of Allan's colorful past into his present adventure, in which he and his unconventional new friends are pursued by both police and criminals. Jonasson's droll writing and quirky characters are perfect for a satire about aging, crime, police investigations and the making of history. It's sweet sauce for topping off a very long day.

Playing the Game of Life

It only makes sense that people who love crosswords would also love crime fiction. And that those addicted to games of strategy enjoy stories of detection. I really like books in which the characters themselves are involved in these games. It's a little like reading a novel in which there's another novel––characters playing games in mystery fiction create a Russian nesting doll of following clues or manipulating an outcome. If a naïve player is swept into a larger game of life and death––or assassination, as in the case of two characters below––goody, goody gumdrops.

In Karen Engelmann's The Stockholm Octavo, Emil Larsson, a young sekretaire in Stockholm's Office of Customs and Excise, is such a player. He's somewhat oblivious and self-satisfied. His job involves uncovering smugglers and inspecting suspicious cargoes on the docks. In his off hours, he drinks and plays cards with people of all stations. This is helpful professionally, but it offends his supervisor. He insists Emil be married by midsummer or he'll be fired. Despite his best efforts, Emil cannot find a suitable woman; however, Mrs. Sofia Sparrow, seer and host of an exclusive gaming salon, envisions a golden path leading to love and connection in his future.

This future will be guided by the eight cards Mrs. Sparrow lays out for Emil from her special deck of Octavo. The cards represent eight people. It isn't easy to identify these folks, but once Emil does, he may manipulate an event's outcome by "pushing" the eight. It is "destiny, partnering with free will." Needless to say, Emil is determined to complete his Octavo.

When Mrs. Sparrow takes possession of a gorgeous folding fan, more than Emil's personal future is revealed in the cards. For years, a beautiful and ruthless baroness, known to everyone as The Uzanne, has directed the flow of information in any given room with her fan. It's the perfect tool for a woman who wishes to participate in political games usually reserved for powerful men. Mrs. Sparrow, a strong supporter and friend of King Gustav III, sees Gustav's fate bound to the myths surrounding the famous fan and the cards of the Octavo.

Karen Engelmann makes the subject of hand fans engrossing. Her website has information about them.

I don't often think of books as delicious, but that is a fitting description for The Stockholm Octavo, Engelmann's historical fiction debut, published in 2012 by HarperCollins. Her game of Octavo and 1791 Stockholm are fascinating. It's a stratified society, with all classes coming to a boil as revolution sweeps Europe. Stockholm's lower classes are struggling to survive the winter. The police are corrupt and cannot be trusted. Ambitious upper-class women use every weapon society allows them as they connive for power, traditionally through marriage or social connections. Their dresses are amazing testaments to their privilege and the tailors' skills; their fans take many hours of practice to wield skillfully.

Gustav III

There is little opportunity for upward mobility. Several young commoners––apothecary Johanna Bloom and Anna Maria, an army widow whose beauty leads people to call her "the Plum"––attempt to climb above their original stations. A French designer of hand fans who fled the French Revolution discovers how difficult it is for outsiders to establish a business in Stockholm, where connections are everything.

Even while he plots to rescue the French royal family, Gustav gives unprecedented privileges to commoners, and some members of the nobility are outraged. The King's efforts at modernizing Sweden and his government make them believe Sweden is going to the dogs. A group called the Patriots has formed to oppose Gustav, and his brother, Duke Karl, would like to replace him on the throne.

This is the Stockholm in which Emil moves to identify his Octavo's eight, and, through them, to fulfill his, and Gustav's, destiny. It is perfect bed or bathtub reading. Afterward, a nonfiction book about King Gustav III may be in the cards.

Gustav's juicy life was the subject of a Swedish mini-series in 2001

If you play chess, you may know what a zugzwang is. As Ronan Bennett's Zugzwang tells us, the word is derived from the German Zug (move) and Zwang (compulsion, obligation). In chess, it means that a player has been reduced to "a state of utter helplessness." He is obliged to move, but each move only worsens his position.

Of course, the condition of zugzwang isn't restricted to chess players, as narrator Otto Spethmann, a St. Petersburg psychoanalyst with "no time for political affairs," will discover during the course of this book.

The psychoanalytic couch

It's March 1914. The German ambassador complains about the close relationship between the French and the English, and the naval ties between Russia and England. In the newspaper's opinion, it is not a question of if there will be war, but when. St. Petersburg citizens are talking about this; violent collisions between police and striking factory workers; police arrests of Jews, who are rumored to be planning a massacre of the city's residents; the arrival of the world's chess masters, including Capablanca and Lasker, for a tournament in which the winner will meet the tsar and tsarina; the crimes of Berek Medem; and the murder of newspaper editor Gulko.

Dr. Spethmann is widowed and has a beloved, but headstrong daughter, Catherine, in college. He is a chess player, and the board in his office reflects moves in a long-distance game he is playing with his friend Kopelzon, a famous Polish violinist. Spethmann sees a variety of patients for psychoanalysis. They include society matron Anna Petrovna Ziatdinov, who is troubled by nightmares that seem to stem from a trip she took to Kazan with her father when she was a teenager; Avrom Chilowicz Rosental, a chess savant from a Polish ghetto, who was referred by Kopelzon, in the hopes that Avrom will recover from his nervous collapse and win the upcoming chess tournament; and Gregory Petrov, an exhausted revolutionary overwhelmed by unhappiness.

All is going well for Spethmann––in fact, he is falling in love with Anna (yes, this is a no-no for our good doctor, but the smokin' sex scenes drive away regrets he might have)––until Mintimer Sergeyevich Lychev, a police detective, drops in to question him about the murder of Yastrebov. Lychev brushes off Spethmann's protests that he has no idea who Yastrebov is. Colonel Maximilian Gan, head of the secret police (Okhrana), is interested not only in Yastrebov, but in Spethmann's patients, Lychev warns. "I can understand you wanting to think this has nothing to do with you, Spethmann," Lychev says. "You would like it to be a game, the kind that children play and when they get frightened all they have to do is say I don't want to play any more. But this game is different and, like it or not, you are involved now. There is no way to stop other than to win or lose."

This chess set is based on the French invasion of Russia in 1812.
For more rare and exotic sets, see the book Chess Masterpieces.

A psychoanalyst, "who understands that what lies on the surface is never the full story," is a good guide to the struggles between the tsar's loyalists, Okhrana/the police, and the Party's revolutionaries in St. Petersburg shortly before World War I. The guide is made even better by his understanding of chess. As Spethmann states, "In chess it is easy to be panicked by a complicated position and the aggressive manoeuvring of an opponent. What is needed always is a cool eye and a clear head. Calculate. Calculate concrete variations. What do I do if my opponent does this? What do I do if he does that?" Spethmann will need plenty of calculating to maneuver between his opponents' head-spinning moves. Machiavelli could have taken lessons from some of these Russians.

This Soviet chess set from early 1900s features capitalists and proletariat

Zugzwang was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury. If you play chess, you'll enjoy the pictures of Spethmann's chess board that reflect the moves he and Kopelzon make in their game, but you don't need to play chess to relish this captivating book that questions what a man must do when he finally cannot look away.

Tsar Nicholas II with his family in 1914

Change You Can Count On

I love the end of the year. It's a time of looking back and remembering. A time of looking forward and planning. My own immediate plan includes listing resolutions for the New Year. Stop procrastinating, learn Italian, improve my cooking, reorganize the basement. Right now, change for me is only a list on a piece of paper. Changes for characters in two books I've recently read result from crime. Other changes these characters face are cultural shifts and relocation.

As Arne Dahl's 2011 book, Misterioso, begins, two Swedish industrial titans are killed. We readers know that the murderer likes to work to the accompaniment of music. Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin doesn't know this but crime scene similarities make him suspect a serial killer. Hultin, of Stockholm's National Criminal Police, learned lessons from the unsuccessful investigation of Olof Palme's assassination. This investigation will be conducted by an A-Unit of highly skilled young cops gathered from all over Sweden. They include "a pale Finn, a blackhead [a Swede of Spanish ancestry], a west coaster, a fifth columnist, a Goliath meat mountain, and a media hero."

The media hero is Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm, who resolved a hostage situation at a Huddinge immigration office by wounding the Albanian hostage taker. Unfortunately, Hjelm isn't a hero to his lonely wife or to the internal affairs officers investigating the shooting. The IA officers ask him to look into his heart and answer questions about why he broke the rules. When he joins the A-Unit, Hjelm is feeling empty and estranged from his family and society. Sweden is changing. Today's crimes don't happen in an Agatha Christie world but in a day of "postindustrial capitalism, Eastern European mafia, and the collapse of Sweden's financial regulatory system in the 1990s." Hjelm and his new colleagues clash as they probe the business connections, leisure activities and social lives of the murdered men and try to identify a pattern that will point to the next victim. On their way to discovering the killer, they change as they learn more about each other and themselves.

Stockholm

Misterioso is the first of 11 novels in Arne Dahl's Intercrime series. It's the only one so far to be translated from Swedish into English. Other than including too many confusing street names, Dahl's writing style is clear. Tiina Nunnally's translation is smooth. The plot involves a challenging crime and good detective work, but most of all I liked the A-Unit detectives. Hjelm, whom we know best, is a little alienated and confused, but he's on the sweet end of the lone-wolf spectrum of fictional detectives. He doesn't drink, brawl, beat up suspects, chase skirts or break rules for the hell of it. He's more like Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander (subtract 90% of Wallander's gloom) than Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole (subtract 100% of Harry's alcohol abuse and 85% of his crazy derring-do). Arto Södestedt, the A-Unit's pale Finn, is a particularly interesting guy, a defense attorney before he became a cop. He decries the new capitalists of nonproductive business ventures, "money-movers whose wealth benefits no one but themselves, either in the form of job creation or tax receipts." In addition to social commentary, there's also some enjoyable commentary about America's fascination with serial killers. This is a great book and reading the next Intercrime book to come out in English will go on my list of New Year's resolutions.

Rick Gavin's Ranchero is the first book in a series, was published in 2011 and contains a main character who's feeling like a duck at a chicken fight. Other than these similarities with Misterioso, they're as different as a waltz and a kick in the pants.

Here's how Ranchero begins:

I met Percy Dwayne Dubois after a fashion at his Indianola house. I'd come to collect his television and was explaining to his wife that they'd gone three months delinquent on their rent-to-own installments. He eased up behind me––I heard the joists complain––to offer commentary with a shovel.

The narrator who's been clobbered is repo man Nick Reid, former deputy sheriff in the eastern Virginia uplands. He spent most of his time there sorting out the same couple of dozen people. When their children came of age to be sorted out too, Nick decided he hadn't done a speck of good and needed to leave. He moved to the Mississippi Delta, where the terrain was about as far from the Virginia "hillbilly hollows" as he could get.

The Delta is famous for its blues music and rich agricultural land. It was farmed by back-breaking hand labor, first by slaves and then by anybody the planters could entice to the property. Their hiring resulted in a population, culture and cuisine that are ethnically diverse in a way that the South in general isn't. Today, a planter can run a large soybean or corn operation with a few tractor drivers and combine operators. The towns are still standing but many people have left. Life for those remaining in the Delta demands "sweet-tea existentialism, a view of the world narcotic at bottom and sugared over with courtliness."

Moseying back to our narrator, Nick, who's lucky he isn't dead. The Duboises (pronounced DEW-boys) are notorious cracker trash and Percy Dwayne's wife Sissy is a Vardaman, "whose folk had migrated to the Delta because the folks back home in Kentucky weren't malicious enough to suit them." Sissy and Percy Dwayne grab their baby and drive away in a pristine calypso coral 1969 Ranchero. This is the Ranchero Nick's landlady had insisted he borrow when his car broke down. Nick had promised to return it without a scratch. He recruits his best friend Desmond and they hit the road to get the car back.

This is an absolute joyride of a book. It's full of unexpected twists and turns, black humor, sharp social commentary and unique characters. Here are four to give you an idea: Nick's boss K-Lo, a hot-tempered Lebanese rental shop owner whose prized possession is a stuffed catamount he likes to brag he killed himself (neglecting to mention he hit it with his car); Nick's best friend Desmond, who can't fit behind the wheel of his Geo until he shoves the driver's seat far back off the rails to make "a kind of fainting couch"; Nick's landlady Pearl, a "relentless insister by disposition," with a son in New Orleans who lurked "just out of insisting range"; and a cop named Dale, "a musclehead who appeared to live on supplements and Skoal" and liked to beat up civilians. I'll leave you the fun of discovering the other backwoods characters Nick and Desmond encounter.

I'm totally psyched to learn that Beluga, the second in Gavin's series, was published last month by Minotaur. Books by Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey and Joe R. Lansdale (his Hap Collins and Leonard Pine series) share some similarities in southern noir and comic flavor but Nick's narrative voice is unique. Beluga goes on my resolutions list, too. Now, if only all my resolutions were this fun and easy, I'd be a new woman in 2013.

Hot August Nights

There is something in the air at this time of year that brings back memories of getting ready for school. It doesn't really matter how far in the distant past my own school days were. I still find myself looking at pens and pencils when I am in the store. I usually pick up a few. Schools begin in late August in my town, with the student athletes starting a few weeks earlier than that. There is a certain buzz in the atmosphere, no matter how hot and muggy it is. How unlike those cities and countries that go into slowdown for the entire month of August! It is a good idea that is probably rejuvenating, soothing the spirit for a winter ahead.

One of the Winters that come to mind is Erik Winter of Sweden. He has a story that takes place in one of the warmest summers in his neck of the woods. In The Shadow Woman by Åke Edwardson, Winter is winding up his summer vacation, and he has traded in his designer suits and modish look for cutoffs and unstyled hair to match the very hot weather that will go down in people's memories and will make it easier to recall what they were doing at that time of the year. Eric himself has a few other reasons that make him cut his vacation short. One of his investigating team has been viciously attacked in racially-motivated violence, and this has driven him to uncharacteristic violence himself. Secondly, a young unknown woman's body has been found dumped at the edge of a lake and he feels an unusual connection to her. Lastly, his longtime girlfriend has given him an ultimatum and told him to grow up and show some maturity. A cut to the quick for Sweden's youngest-ever Chief Inspector.

A massive drug war between biker gangs is ripping through Scandinavia. It is late August and the annual Gotenburg party is in full swing. The heat is exacerbated by the ethnic discord stirred by the nativist gangs. Sweden has its problems with immigrants. Winter call these unfortunates Space refugees. They are those who journey from country to country, without ever being allowed into any of the paradises. But the problem is closer to home, in that Aneta Djanali, who was attacked, was born in Sweden and considers herself Swedish––but does not look Swedish.

There are few clues about the body in the lake, and the story shifts gently from one point of view to another and from one place and time to another. So it is with insight and determination that the police finally get a grip on the case of the body in the lake and bring the murder to a satisfying conclusion.

This is the second of Edwardson's books, although it is one of the more recently translated. This is an early Erik Winter, just settling into his job as Chief Inspector. It is somewhat of a departure, because there is a small, mystical element as Winter has significant dreams in this book, which is something that is not repeated much in future books. There is also a little more of a hint about his relationship with his family.

Like many fictional detectives, Winter has musical preferences; in this case, jazz. However, after visiting London on a previous case, he was turned onto a group called The Clash, which he listened to throughout the book. But he does shave and get back into his designer suits, although we don't know whether he has become mature enough for girl friend Angela.

Italy is well known to be somewhat somnolent in August, as the Italians have the very good sense to bow before the onslaught of heat. It is only the tourist industry that sees no ebb of industry. A new author to me is Marco Vichi. In his Death in August, it is August 1963, in Florence, Italy, and Inspector Bordelli of the Florentine police is one of the few stragglers who has not left the steaming city for a countryside visit. Bordelli heads to his office early, because he hasn’t slept well due to the heat. Despite this sign of efficiency his superior, Dr. Inziponi, starts the day by calling him on the carpet to complain about his usual weakness, which Inzipone describes as a very peculiar sense of justice. By this, he means the way Bordelli may catch thieves, but if he feels that they have committed crimes forced upon them by hunger and poverty, he tends to release them before they can be called to court.

Inzipone also has a case for Inspector Bordelli. An old woman has been found in her apartment, dead from a severe asthma attack. At first glance, it appears a natural death, but by the bedside lays her bottle of medicine, untouched. Bordelli is not concerned so much by whodunnit, since he as he is pretty sure of the identities of the perpetrators. Instead, Death in August is more of a how- and whydunnit––and how to catch the murderers. This he accomplishes while enduring the heat he variously describes as relentless, unremitting, pervasive, suffocating, humid and made more miserable by mosquitoes. I almost got heatstroke while reading the story.

Inspector Bordelli is a fiftyish bachelor who fears he may never meet the love of his life but, at the same time, he is rather happy he has not. He surrounds himself with great friends, many of whom he has met while doing his job. These are some partially-reformed thieves, a curmudgeonly police pathologist and, new to his circle, is a very eccentric inventor named Dante, who is the victim's brother.

Bordelli has the obligatory young sidekick, Piros, who is the son of a wartime compatriot. There are about four books in this series and the very excellent Stephen Sartarelli who also translates Andrea Camilleri's Salvo Montalbano books has recently translated them. Vichi spends quite a bit of time developing the atmosphere as well as creating a realistic setting and genuine characters. I have the next few books on order.

In Montalbano’s part of Italy, Vigata, Sicily, he too deals with the Italian custom of enjoying vacations in August. In Andrea Camilleri's August Heat, he is planning a vacation with his girlfriend Livia and some friends of hers. He has managed to rent a lovely villa for a very good price with good access to the beach.

Just as everyone is getting settled, and the only drawbacks are the heat and the other couple's complete brat of a son, Montalbano has the misfortune of finding a corpse in the basement. This puts the vacation on the back burner, and Livia, in disgust, departs with her friends to vacation elsewhere, leaving Salvo's calls unanswered. He is left to read in his spare time.

He sat outside until eleven o'clock, reading a good detective novel by two Swedish authors who were husband and wife, in which there wasn't a page without a ferocious and justified attack on social democracy and the government. In his mind Montalbano dedicated the book to all those who did not deign to read mystery novels because, in their opinion, they were "only entertaining puzzles."

Montalbano needs to be wily as well as dogged if he wants to find the murderer. He is both of these. And there is no rest for the man, as Camilleri puts it:

"Nowadays, if a man living in a civilized country (ha!) hears cannon blasts in his sleep, he will, of course, mistake them for thunderclaps, gun salutes on the feast day of the local patron saint, or furniture being moved by the slime-buckets living upstairs, and go right on sleeping soundly. But the ringing of the telephone, the triumphal march of the cell phone, or the doorbell, no: Those are all sounds of summons in response to which the civilized man (ha-ha!) has no choice but to surface from the depths of slumber and answer."

In this case, Montabano is vulnerable and alone although he is a thoroughly moral man who lets his guard down and makes decisions that will affect his life for ever. This is truly a cold case of sweat and tears. But Camilleri always writes stories that make a reader forget about the heat because they are far more than puzzles.

I intend to enjoy the rest of August, whatever the temperature, because the lazy swimming days that remain are too few. Reading a nice mystery while in the pool is a wonderful way to relax.

not recommended

recommended

Book Review of Jan Wallentin's Strindberg's Star

Strindberg's Star by Jan Wallentin, translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles

What is it about Scandinavians that give their crime fiction that certain flavor? The cohesiveness of their communities? A willingness to examine ugly facets of human nature in a matter-of-fact way? Their stoic acceptance of the cold? Whatever it is, we're lucky to see more of their books translated into English. One of the newest translations is Strindberg's Star by Jan Wallentin, a best seller in Sweden, France, and Germany. It's a genre-straddler that combines components of a thriller, adventure, and historical fiction with elements of the occult.

The book begins near Falun, Sweden, when a cave diver named Erik Hall takes a solo dive into a long-abandoned and flooded copper mine. There he discovers a corpse. While the body is shockingly well preserved, there are reasons to believe it has been dead for many years. And that's not the only mystery surrounding it: the hands are clutching an ankh, and there is strange writing in the cave.

Cave diving is extremely dangerous, but doesn't it look fun?

Erik's discovery becomes a media sensation. Word leaks out about the ankh and other odd findings. Erik meets Don Titelman during the filming of a TV program, and afterward, he pelts Don with phone invitations to come see him. There may be something Erik hasn't shared with journalists. He wants Don's help in interpreting his discoveries.

Modern symbols

Don is Jewish, a one-time physician who became a Lund University professor of history with an expertise in the Nazis' use of mythology and symbolism. He was traumatized as a child by what he heard about concentration camps. Knowing thine enemy isn't enough for him, however, so he beefs up his mental defenses with a shoulder bag stuffed with an astonishing array of pills. The tiptoeing approach of an unpleasant emotion or difficult situation makes Don slip his hand into the bag.

An ankh

Don's acquaintance with Erik ends badly, and Don is wrongfully accused of a crime. He and an attorney sent to represent him, the attractive Eva Strand, are kidnapped and held by Germans. The two captives listen to a tale about an inconceivably strange device and its history, which includes real-life figures such as Nils Strindberg, a photographer who perished in an 1897 hot-air balloon expedition to the Arctic. Don is threatened with dire consequences if he doesn't give them what they want. Eva and Don manage to escape, and the story becomes their transcontinental quest to elude capture, while attempting to solve difficult clues that could lead them to some missing artifacts with unusual powers.

Wallentin was very ambitious with this debut novel. It's an information-packed and complex plot that involves the Nazis and figures from mythology, set in multiple locations over a century's time, and populated by both real and fictional characters. Let's take a look at the results.

Likable hero and dastardly villain

Problems first. The book's main problem is its lack of appealing fictional characters. Don, the protagonist, is only 43 years old; yet, he's a grey-faced physical and psychological wreck. If he's not actually unconscious, count on him to be upping or downing himself with fistfuls of drugs. It's a bit hard to root for Don and Eva, who's plucky enough, but whom we don't really know.

Another problem is the way in which the plot's requirements are met with coincidence and convenience. Don just so happens to pick up a certain object. Luckily, he has a reclusive sister who's a hacker. Eva does something she should have known better than to do.

Nils Strindberg was
only 25 when he died

At 464 pages, the book could use some trimming. Despite these flaws, I still liked the book.

Here's why:

Wallentin, a journalist, knows how to research and write, and Rachel Willson-Broyles provides a smooth translation. The settings are cinematic, and some of them are downright spooky: the flooded copper mine, the cemetery in Ypres, and the Arctic. The physical isolation is exacerbated by cold and darkness or wind and rain or snow. The intrinsic suspense is heightened by the characters' vulnerability. They're stubborn or unduly optimistic; inappropriately dressed, ill-equipped or exhausted.

Tyne Cot cemetery on the Ypres Salient, Belgium

While the amount of historical information keeps this plot from the quick pacing of a Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, this book is not meant to be a simple page-turner. Wallentin utilizes real characters and events in weaving his fictional plot, and he infuses it with the supernatural as do writers such as John Connolly and Dan Simmons. The mythology and literary clues are intriguing, and the properties of the artifacts, both physical and theoretical, are fascinating. Wallentin's book has similarities to Jules Verne's classic science fiction, but it's also similar to Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's literary thriller, The Rule of Four, and books by Francis Clifford and Lionel Davidson because it poses moral questions. Strindberg's Star is an original book that stretches the imagination and exercises the brain.

Ultimately, this book is about the double-edged quality of scientific discoveries and the nature of responsibility and guilt. Science has been used to both benefit and purposefully harm humankind, often at the hands of the same people. Should researchers be held responsible for their discoveries, and CEOs for the use of the products based on this research? There are important questions about the morality and wisdom of certain scientific explorations. There's a reason Wallentin makes the source of scientific knowledge a particular symbolic place. The actions of some, who feel no guilt, can leave unbearable burdens of guilt for others who aren't remotely responsible. A moment's actions can lead to a life of feeling guilty. Just how responsible are these characters for their fate?

I'll be thinking about Strindberg's Star. Despite its flaws, it's a timely and worthwhile read. Take it to the beach. The plot's action slows at times so Wallentin can provide fascinating historical background, yet the imaginative plot will keep readers turning these pages. I'll look forward to what Wallentin comes up with next.

Note: I received a free digital galley of Strindberg's Star from Viking Press. The book was published last month. August Strindberg was on Viking's early list of authors, and I wonder what he'd say upon seeing himself, his acquaintance Sven Hedin, and his young relative Nils in this Viking publication.