Best Reads of 2014: Part Two

2014 has been a good year for reading. It began with an extra-long serving of miserable winter weather, which kept me inside with a book in hand, followed by one of those cruel Aprils that T. S. Eliot beautifully described, and the showers for the flowers were also best avoided by hiding in a good story. But whom am I kidding? I don't need an excuse to read, whatever the weather.

I reviewed many of my highly valued reads after I read them; books like The Fairy Gunmother by Daniel Pennac, I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni, One Last Hit by Nathan Walpow and The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith.

Here are some more of my most memorable reading choices.

Top Mystery Reads

This Private Plot, by Alan Beechey (Poisoned Press, May 2014), is the third in the Oliver Swithin mystery series. Oliver is a nice fellow who is not always the brightest bulb on a string of lights. He writes children's books about a sneaky ferret, but wants to take a break and compile a book of trivia. In pursuit of the trivial, he comes across a murder, which he intends to solve. The story is perfectly balanced with wit, literary references, and plenty of humor and loose ends. I did a little happy dance when this book was finally published.

Joyland, by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime, 2013), is a wonderful tale about the summer a young college student traveled to the South to live and work at an amusement park. It has got everything––some love and loss, some coming-of-age, a bit of mystery and a nice spoonful of Stephen King horror. Nobody does it better.

Treasure Hunt, by Andrea Camilleri (Penguin, 2013), starts as a barrage of bullets rains down on a piazza. Salvo Montalbano is hailed as a hero as he clambers up a ladder to discover that the snipers are an elderly pair of siblings who have been going slightly nuts for decades. Montalbano has a double-barrel case going on as he searches for the answer both to the riddle of what happened to the treasure found in the shooters' apartment and to a slightly more sinister treasure hunt created by a malevolent secret admirer.

The Death of Friends (Putnam Adult, 1996) is a Henry Rios mystery by Michael Nava. It's the fifth in a series featuring Rios, a lawyer working in Los Angeles. While mourning for a close friend and lover who is succumbing to AIDS, he takes on the case of the murder of a friend and judge who was deep in the closet. Rios is a wonder, both a complex and very likable character. Maybe it would be more specific to say a very admirable character. This series is way too short!

The Glass Room, the fifth book in the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, 2012), was short-listed for the Specsavers Bestseller Dagger. Author S. J. Bolton put it well when she said this story has all the elements of a Golden Age Mystery––a windswept landscape, isolated country house, disparate people thrown together, crime scenes mimicking their fictional counterparts and a plot liberally strewn with blind alleys, red herrings and misdirection.


Top Non-Mystery Fiction Reads

Charming Billy, by Alice McDermott (FSG, 1997), is a beautifully told story about a man who led the sad life of unrelenting alcoholism, only redeemed by the fact that so many people loved him.

The Final Solution, by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, 2004), is literary rather than crime fiction. It features a once-famous octogenerian detective who is caring for a nine-year-old child, who is mute since he escaped from Nazi Germany. This is a short book, but I found it a gem of a story. It was brilliant, faceted and valuable.

Mike and Psmith (Penguin, 1998; first published 1909) and Psmith in the City (first published 1910), by P. G. Wodehouse, gave me the most laughs I had all year. Mike Jackson is a serious cricketer whose father has pulled him from public school because of his abysmal grades and has installed at a local high school where he meets one Rupert Eustace Psmith. The P is silent, as in Psychotic and Pterodactyl. This pair has riotous adventures and both end up working at a city bank after graduation where Psmith's genius for understanding and manipulation comes to fruition.

I can't imagine how I missed the talents of Robertson Davies after so many years of haunting bookstores and libraries. There is no explaining it. Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors. I began with The Deptford Trilogy. Davies is my best find in years.

The first in the series is Fifth Business (Penguin, 2002; first published 1970). Davies defines fifth business as "Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business."

Fifth business in this case is Dunstable Ramsay, a history professor with a wooden leg and many interests in mythology, magic and the lives of saints. The story begins with a badly thrown snowball that defines the lives of the five people involved in the incident.

In The Manticore (Penguin, 2006; first published 1972), the stories of these individuals continues. It is told by David Staunton, the son of Boy Staunton, as he tries to discover who killed his father.

Fortunately for me Davies has written several series, which will entertain me as well as enrich me in the years to come.


Top YA Reads

Paper Towns by John Green (Dutton, 2008) is a change from dark dystopian societies and post-apocalyptic scenarios. It led me to read several other John Green books.

The Giver by Lois Lowry (HMH Books, 1993) is about a futuristic society that has refined itself into a utopia by eliminating pain and pleasure as well as individuality. This is a great springboard for spirited discussion if you are around kids who would actually read a book!

The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick, 2001) is haunting, poignant and heart wrenching. The story is a short but powerful tale about rising out of despair.

I Didn’t Kill Your Cat by R. Stim (2011). This was one of those books I read because the cover caught my eye. I loved heroine Frankie Jackson, who must solve the case of a murdered cat and clear her own name. There is a wonderful cast of characters who live on houseboats in the Sausalito area.


Top Audio Listening

The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony (Thomas Dunne, 2009) is a fascinating story about how South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony accepted a herd of "rogue" elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in South Africa and kept them from being annihilated. Anthony says: "This is their story. They taught me that all life forms are important to each other in our common quest for happiness and survival. That there is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind." The narration by Simon Vance won the 2014 Audie Award for Biography/Memoir.

When the author of this book passed away, the elephants he interacted with for many years instinctively walked many, many miles to come and visit him at the place near where he died.

We're Making a List and Checking It Twice

No matter what winter holiday you're shopping for, it can be difficult to find the right gift for a special someone. Here at Read Me Deadly, we're debating books to give a noir films-loving spouse, a 14-year-old niece who loves historical fiction, and our mystery-loving friends like you.

Crowd of Motivated Shoppers Outside Book Store

To escape hordes of grimly determined shoppers like those pictured, you might order online. Please don't forget to support independent bookstores. You can find one devoted to mysteries and thrillers by checking the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. Here are a few suggestions from the Material Witnesses:  Powell's Books (free shipping in U.S. with no minimum purchase and guaranteed arrival by December 24 (offer ends at noon Pacific time, December 13th); will ship worldwide), Book Depository (free shipping worldwide), Fantastic Literature Limited, Murder by the Book, Seattle Mystery Bookshop, M Is For Mystery, Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Partners & Crime, the Rue Morgue Press, Felony and Mayhem, and the Mysterious Bookshop. We'd love to hear your favorite source for books in the comments section below this blog post.

Here are some book ideas from Sister Mary Murderous and Georgette Spelvin.  Check back for more suggestions during the next several weeks because we'll be posting more.

It's hard to find books for our friends who read a lot of mysteries. But I have a few lesser-known gems that just might suit.

Jonathan Coe is a British novelist whose nine books are all very different, but are generally politically oriented and satirical. The first book of his I read was The Winshaw Legacy: or, What a Carve Up! This unusual book is almost indescribable. It's a pastiche of detective story, farce, gothic and savage satire of Thatcherism. Weird, huh? This story of the old, powerful, corrupt and bizarre Winshaw family plays out from 1940 to 1990 and is one heck of a roller-coaster ride. I'd recommend it to somebody like Georgette, who enjoys non-linear storytelling.

Do you know somebody who enjoys watching House on television, or who is a fan of Hugh Laurie's from his many appearances in British television programs like Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder? Impress that person by presenting him or her with Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller. In this entertaining spoof of espionage fiction, Thomas Lang, a freelance operative, is so morally offended when he is offered an assassination job, that he decides to warn the would-be victim. Not surprisingly, complications ensue. This is a book not just for Hugh Laurie fans, but for anybody who enjoys a British sense of humor. Here's just a tiny indication of the kind of writing I'm talking about: "'Vodka martini,' I said. 'Incredibly dry. Powdered, if you've got it.'"

I'm not at all sure why Don Winslow isn't better known. Over the past 20 years, he's written 13 mysteries, most of them PI novels set in California or New York. My introduction to him was his A Cool Breeze on the Underground, the first in his Neal Carey series and a finalist for both Edgar and Shamus awards. Neal is a grad student in English literature at Columbia when the story begins, but his back story is that he was a kid from the streets who was informally adopted by a one-armed dwarf named Joe Graham. Graham works for Friends of the Family, which is not a charity, but a mysterious organization that protects the interests of clients of a bank in Providence, Rhode Island. Over the years, Graham taught Neal a lot about sleuthing, and now Graham calls on Neal to find a client's teenage daughter, who has run away to London. I'd give this book to anybody who likes quirky characters, snappy patter and hard-boiled mystery stories.

I've been warily eying my fellow Material Witnesses since August, when Sister Mary Murderous reminded us of the passage of time. At the end of the year, she said, it will be time to compose lists of our favorite books read in 2011. I detest list-making in general because it's foreign to my disorganized nature, and favorite-books lists specifically because, as Annie Proulx says, "Lists, unless grocery shopping lists, are truly a reductio ad absurdum." I dearly love reading other people's lists, however. You're probably wondering why I'm bringing this up now, but there is a reason: Della Streetwise is reading The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, edited by J. Peder Zane, and when I saw that, I hurried to buy it.

I love it. Yes, many of the books listed aren't a surprise, but this is still a book well worth owning, or you can check it out of the library. There's a section describing the books listed that is wonderful reading. There are lists of top ten fantasy and science fiction (in Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson, "after a nuclear war devastates the planet, residents of what had been the Florida Keys try to rebuild their lives and communities in a landscape where shards from the obliterated past–religious stories, Jimi Hendrix records, parking decks–remain but are barely understood"); comic works (Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse includes "perhaps the funniest scene in the Wodehouse canon–Gussie Fink-Nottle's drunken speech at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School–this madcap farce once again finds Bertie Wooster and his brilliant manservant Jeeves working to point Cupid's arrows toward other hearts." Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward is "a gay and witty farce about death. The sublime silliness begins when a writer holds a séance to research his novel on a murderous fake psychic. Who should appear but his first wife, dead these six years and none too happy about wife number two."). By American authors (if someone you know over age 12 hasn't yet read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, there's his or her gift), by Russian authors (The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is a complex book that would make a great gift for your satire-loving friends who like brain food), by British authors, etc. Given her love of straightening drawers and making lists, Zane's The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books would be a good gift for lawyer Sister Mary Murderous or other readers who are intimidatingly well-organized brainiacs but otherwise wonderful people.

The Top Ten's top ten mysteries and thrillers include some fine gift ideas. Before you gift-wrap John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for your espionage-loving friend, include a note inside the front cover inviting him or her to see the just-released movie of the same name starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. If movie night is drizzling rain, so you can wear a rumpled raincoat and pull the brim of your hat down, all the better. Sneak home after the movie (take a roundabout route if you're driving and look in the rear-view mirror a lot). Once home, serve hot tea and homemade English shortbread cookies or a hot toddy or hot buttered rum and dry biscuits. Our British readers will have to help me in refining these plans, or tell me what to do next. Maybe change into ratty bathrobes and retire to the library for a polite discussion about whether the book, new movie, or BBC production starring Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley is the best? You could also discuss le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the other George Smiley books, which are among the best espionage books ever written.

Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain also appears on the top ten mysteries list. It is about a woman "with two fatal flaws–an attraction to weak men and blind devotion to her monstrously selfish daughter Veda. These weaknesses join to form a perfect storm of betrayal and murder in this hard-boiled tale" set in Depression-era California, where you can smell the heat and watch people's dreams disappear. This book would make a classic hard-boiled fan happy. Watch Joan Crawford as Mildred and Ann Blyth as the vicious Veda in the 1945 Michael Curtiz movie based on the book. Eat plenty of popcorn and wash it down with that American classic, Coke.

We hope you're enjoying plenty of cheer as you prepare for the holidays. We'd love to hear about your suggestions for bookstores and gift books for people on your list. What are you reading now, and are you going to treat yourself to a new book for the holidays?