There's no rapture for these crime fiction characters

I'm home from work with the flu. My coughing and sneezing are too much for my dogs, who have disappeared under the bed, leaving me alone to binge watch The Leftovers, whose characters live in a world after a Rapture-like event caused many people to vanish. I can't tell if I'm running a fever or if this TV series, based on Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name, is just downright weird. I'll see if I can collect my thoughts enough to tell you about a couple of books whose characters have their hands full sans a mass disappearance.

A man who's falling from his fifth-floor window windmills his way to the ground in the opening of Maurizio de Giovanni's The Bottom of Your Heart: Inferno for Commissario Ricciardi (translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar; Europa Editions, November 2015). It's a beautiful piece of descriptive writing in a book replete with lively descriptions of life in the sweltering summer of 1939 Italy under Mussolini. The point of view leaps among various short first-person narrations, but it focuses primarily on a third-person omniscient narrator's account of the investigation of Commissario Luigi Ricciardi and Brigadier Raffaele Maione into the death of Professor Tullio Iovine del Castello, chair of gynecology at a university hospital in Naples. There is no shortage of suspects if Dr. Iovine was pushed or thrown; the victim repeatedly flunked an old professional rival's son in his medical school classes, was having an extramarital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and had enraged a ferocious gangster who swore revenge.

The Botom of Your Heart is the seventh book in this series, and characters from previous books reappear. Ricciardi, who fears for his sanity and keeps himself aloof since "the Deed" that allows him to hear the final thoughts and to see the ghostly shades of people who have died by violence (see Maltese Condor's review here), is still single in his 30s and is living with his beloved tata, now in deteriorating health, and her niece, Nelide. The lonely Commissario also has the affections of Enrica, the shy teacher who lives with her family across the street; Livia Vezzi, a beautiful social butterfly and widow of Italy's most famous tenor; Dr. Modo, the irascible medical examiner; and, of course, his loyal and tireless Brigadier, whose own secrets make him particularly impatient with his informant, Bambinella, a transvestite prostitute. This entertaining series is for people who enjoy crime fiction with a literary bent, keeping track of an ensemble cast of characters, and an Italian setting that's brought to life by its characters' concerns and the author's vivid writing. A reader can begin anywhere in this series, but for the full backstory, start with the first book, I Will Have Vengeance: The Winter of Commissario Ricciardi.

The Italians in de Giovanni's series are natural philosophers. Even sassy private eye Kinsey Millhone is becoming more reflective in Sue Grafton's X (Marian Wood Books/Putnam, August 2015), the 24th book in the alphabet series set in the fictional town of Santa Teresa, California. Unlike other titles in the series (see my review of W Is for Wasted here), this "X" doesn't specifically stand for anything; however, one can find all sorts of Xs (symbolic and real), in the book: Teddy Xanakis, kisses, ex-husbands and wives, mistakes, the missing, a place locator, and unknowns.

In reading X, one gets the sense that things are beginning to wind up for Kinsey. The woman who trims her own hair with a fingernail scissors and has one dress hanging in her closet is financially secure, at least for a while; she can pick and choose her cases. Kinsey agrees to find an ex-con just released from prison only when Hallie Bettancourt says she was referred by one of Kinsey's friends, and Kinsey becomes involved in Pete Wolinsky's old case only when his widow, Ruthie, asks for help in locating financial records for an IRS audit. This isn't one of Grafton's strongest books; the plot feels somewhat contrived, and I was at times annoyed by Grafton's excessive attention to detail (Kinsey doesn't just make coffee, she turns on the machine, adds the coffee, watches the water heat...). Still, it's worthwhile to revisit Santa Teresa to see how one of mysterydom's most likable female sleuths is doing, and we won't have many more chances. Grafton does a great job of conveying what it's like to live on California's Central Coast; here, in 1989. Kinsey still goes to the library to look for old records and composes her case summaries on a Smith & Corona typewriter. She and her 89-year-old landlord and neighbor, Henry, are dealing with some new neighbors and the drought. (Was this timely reading!) In this 24th book, Kinsey seems less inclined to get into trouble, but when the searches for the ex-con and the financial records open cans of worms, she can't help but start digging. By the end, she's learned a thing or two and made her peace with the fact that justice isn't always cut-and-dried.

Review of Linwood Barclay's A Tap on the Window

A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay

Hear the words "Niagara Falls," and what comes to mind? A dizzying drop of thundering water and clouds of mist, sure. There's the famous vaudeville routine, during which the innocent mention of Niagara Falls triggers a maniac's memory of revenge and an attack that begins with his bellow, "Slowly I turned...step by step...inch by inch" (see Abbott and Costello's version here, and the Three Stooges, here). The 1953 movie Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten, inspired mobs of honeymooners to visit the Falls. Daredevils have gone over the Falls in barrels and teetered across high wires spanning the Niagara River gorge, although people swept over the Falls by accident or design face high odds against survival.

That's why a person "Mister" is threatening to throw into the Niagara River is panic-stricken in the conversation that opens Linwood Barclay's thriller, A Tap on the Window (New American Library/Penguin Group (USA), 2013). We don't know that person's fate before the scene shifts suddenly to the car containing our narrator, Cal Weaver, a middle-aged former cop who's now a private eye in Griffon, New York, a town of 8,000 about an hour from Buffalo. Of all people, Cal knows that picking up a teenage girl hitchhiking in the rain outside Patchett's Bar is a monumentally dumb thing to do. But he does it anyway, because when he opens the car window in response to her tap on the glass, she tells him she knew his son, Scott. Scott died when he fell off the roof of Ravelson Furniture two months earlier, and it has devastated Cal and his wife, Donna. Cal, determined to hear what Claire Sanders, the mayor's daughter, can tell him about Scott, lets her into his car.

Claire and Cal may as well have joined hands and jumped into the nearby Niagara River; this book's characters have about as much control over their fates as swimmers engulfed in the rapids near the Falls. Writer Barclay, a Canadian, often sets his thrillers on the American side of the border, and he isn't one to politely ignore American anxieties. Instead, he hoses his complex characters with them and turns their resulting behavior into a corkscrewing tale of suspense. We can even pity the victimizers, because they're also victims here. One story line—written in italics in short, separate chapters—involves what looks like an off-kilter private matter, before we understand how it meshes with the other story line Cal narrates about himself and small-town politics and life in Griffon.

The problems facing Griffon are familiar ones to Americans. While some Griffon citizens, including the mayor, believe the police go too far in their attempts to prevent crime (like spray painting a young graffiti artist's throat and knocking out a suspicious stranger's teeth), others believe a low crime rate justifies the means. Griffon deals with underage drinking by semi-tolerating it at Patchett's, because at least the bar's owner, Phyllis, is keeping a practiced eye on the teenagers there. Some parents can't be bothered to ride herd on their teenagers. They're too busy stealing from their employers, treating their employees shamefully, cheating on their spouses, worrying about what the neighbors will think, or simply watching TV. But well-meaning, concerned parents like the Weavers aren't perfect people either, and they aren't immune to problems and heartbreak. Griffon kids contribute their share to the wreckage of family happiness by abusing drugs and breaking the law, lying and keeping secrets, using their cellphones to send pictures of their privates, spending the night with a lover—you know, being screwed-up kids. In fact, messed-up relationships between parents and their kids are at the center of this thriller. Even the normal problems of communication between adults and teenagers spur the plot along.

This reminds me: we left Claire and Cal in the car. Cal gets nowhere in his conversation with Claire before she complains of an upset stomach and asks him to stop at Iggy's so she can use the restroom. When she doesn't return, Cal goes in to check on her, without success. He returns to the car and sees a young woman inside it. She resembles Claire, has the same hair, and is wearing the same clothes, but they haven't traveled far before Cal realizes she isn't Claire. He also realizes they are being followed. When he tells her he knows something screwy is going on, the not-Claire insists on getting out and disappears into the night. Unfortunately for Cal, he is now involved in the disappearances of two teenage girls, and neither his conscience nor the police (Cal has an adversarial relationship with his brother-in-law, the chief of police) will let him shrug it off. Before Cal is finished narrating this excellent thriller, we'll see lives play out and end—step by surprising step, inch by confounding inch—a stone's throw away from Niagara Falls.

Review of Sue Grafton's W Is for Wasted

W Is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

For me, reading a Sue Grafton alphabet series book is like slipping on a pair of comfortable old slippers. I live on the central California coast where the series is set (fictional Santa Teresa and ritzy Montebello are really Santa Barbara and pricey Montecito), and Grafton is meticulous when describing the area's lifestyles, geography, and history. I've known protagonist Kinsey Millhone, now in her late 30s, since A Is for Alibi was published in 1982. Obviously, Kinsey isn't aging as fast as I am.

Raised by a strict maiden aunt after her parents died in a car accident when she was five, Kinsey likes the stability of rules, although she often breaks them. She can be a smartass and lies easily. After a few years on the police force, she's now a private eye who's been married and divorced twice.

Kinsey is a cheapskate who cuts her own hair with a fingernail scissors and lives in scuffed boots and jeans unless something more formal is required; then, she drags out that one black dress hanging in her closet. After a bomb destroyed her old place, home is now a compact apartment fitted out like a ship's cabin, courtesy of her landlord, neighbor, and good friend, 88-year-old Henry Pitts. Henry, his older brother William, and William's Hungarian wife, Rosie, who runs her own restaurant (currently closed for fumigation), are like family to Kinsey. A few years ago, Kinsey was flabbergasted to learn her mother's relatives live in nearby Lompoc. Apparently, her wealthy grandmother was estranged from Kinsey's mother when she married Kinsey's dad; Kinsey is as eager to establish a close relationship with her mother's family as she is to walk across a minefield.

The joys and heartaches unique to family ties, the ways we damage ourselves by deceiving others, miscarriage of justice, the devastation of addiction, searching for meaning in a materialistic society, and contrasts between haves and have-nots are familiar themes in Grafton's series. In W Is for Wasted (September 2013, Putnam), these themes run through two narratives that ultimately connect two men, both dead at the book's beginning. Kinsey knew one of them: unscrupulous private detective Pete Wolinsky, shot late at night near the bird sanctuary.

Kinsey doesn't recognize the other man when a coroner's investigator asks her to view a corpse with no ID at the morgue. He was a homeless man found dead on a Santa Teresa beach. Such are the oddities of life, that a scrap of paper bearing the words "Millhone Investigations" found in a dead man's pocket makes Kinsey's life intersect with that of a morgue's John Doe. How the Kinsey who loves lying and snooping through a suspect's dresser drawers always feels compelled to do the right thing has always interested me. Somehow, she feels honor bound to find out who he is and why he needed a private investigator. Kinsey begins by tracking down his homeless companions, Pearl, Felix, and Dandy.

The character portraits of these Central Coast homeless are one of this book's strengths. And so is the look at Kinsey as she follows clues to a will, an old wrong, and new family connections before discovering the nature of the ties that bind her John Doe to private eye Pete Wolinsky.

It's sleuth work 1988 style, and it's comforting to see Kinsey still using index cards, a Smith-Corona typewriter, crisscross telephone directories (some decades-old telephone directories even include occupation and spouse's name for each listed address and phone number!), face-to-face interviews, pay phones, and folded paper maps. Narrator Kinsey is still witty and engaging, although somewhat more contemplative and subdued than usual. Dialogue, especially between squabbling family members, is terrific and sounds like something I'd actually overhear. There's a reunion atmosphere as familiar series names such as cops Jonah Robb and Con Dolan, attorney Lonnie Kingman, and private eye Morley Shine pop up. Kinsey's old beaus Cheney Phillips (does he ever drive anything but this year's red Mercedes?) and Robert Deitz make an appearance, and a Japanese bobtail joins the cast of characters.

It's enjoyable stuff, although some of the  connections between people stretch coincidence, and plot lines bringing old characters in feel manufactured, even if welcome. And, at 484 pages, it reminded me a bit of the old Hillary Waugh police procedural classic, 30 Manhattan East: A Case for Homicide North, in which the reader watches Det. Lt. Frank Sessions open the drawer of his desk, take out a pencil, sharpen it, chew the eraser, lean back in his chair.... In other words, there is much extraneous detail.

In any case, Grafton's alphabet books are popular for good reason: Kinsey is darned likable. I had fun seeing her and the regulars again and thinking about all the ways in which "W" is for wasted: wasted lives, wasted hopes, people who are "wasted" on drugs or killed. I'll be sorry when the alphabet ends.

Fantasy Politics: Review of Joseph Flynn's The President's Henchman

Fall is football season, and for many, fantasy football season. Participants study stats and games, carefully choose their players by whatever method is allowed and works for them, praying all the while to the gridiron gods and performing arcane personal rituals to choose and strengthen their players. At the end, their carefully nurtured teams reward the participants' hard work by playing opposing teams. I used to think politics worked kinda like that, but apparently not for the current Congressional lineup. Their infantile temper tantrums make a bar full of inebriated enthusiasts during the big game look like, well, rational grownups in comparison.

Author Joseph Flynn has put together a charming fantasy First Family team for us in his series of political thrillers featuring Jim McGill and his beautiful wife, President Patricia Grant. When Jim got his P.I. license after the election, the Secret Service changed his code name from "Valentine" to "Holmes." He couldn't imagine spending four or eight years in the White House cutting ribbons or offering cooking tips while Patricia did the heavy lifting for the country, and he had no interest in running the FBI or the CIA. With her complete approval and his 25 years experience as a cop, P.I. seemed a good fit for him.

It was a second marriage for both of them. After the then-Chicago cop had been shot and nearly killed, his first wife, Carolyn, felt that she couldn't cope with the stress, and they parted amicably. She had since remarried, but they remained friends and Jim saw his three kids often. He first met then-Representative Patricia Darden Grant (R-IL) when the life of her billionaire philanthropist husband Andrew was threatened by a radical religious group who wanted her vote on an extreme anti-abortion bill in Congress. She voted her conscience, and despite the best efforts of the police and FBI, the terrorists accomplished their threat. Within 12 hours, McGill had arrested Erna Godfrey, wife of fundamentalist preacher Burke Godfrey, and several others for the crime. Erna had been tried in federal court and was currently on death row in a federal facility.

McGill will accept only one member of the Secret Service and one White House driver as escorts, and chooses both very carefully. Young mixed-race agent Donald "Deke" Ky is his choice as bodyguard. Leo Levy, McGill's driver, is a good ol' Jewish boy from North Carolina, a veteran driver of the NASCAR circuit. Leo, while not willing to take a bullet for McGill (that's not his job, and besides, his mother would kill him if he got shot) helpfully offers to run over any shooter several times.

McGill rents himself a third floor office in a rehabbed building near Rock Creek Parkway and opens for business. After spending two weeks politely turning away lobbyists whose principals want to offer him five- or six-figure retainers "just in case" they ever require his services, he realizes he needs serious help, so places a call to his former police partner and family friend Margaret "Sweetie" Sweeney, an angelic looking ex-nun described as a cross between a Valkyrie and the Archangel Michael.

With Sweetie guarding his door, the crowds vanish and his first actual case appears. Chana Lochlan is the White House reporter for a Fox-type cable news service. She is receiving phone calls at her private number from a stalker who calls her "Gracie" and describes her body in intimate detail. She is sure she has never heard that voice before, and none of her lovers has ever called her by that name. He had opened their first conversation with the question "Do you remember the last time we made love?" Chana wants him caught and stopped, but is unwilling to go to the police––she reports the news, and doesn't want to make it. McGill accepts the case.

Meanwhile Patricia, a moderate Republican loathed by the extreme elements of both parties, has been handed a very hot political potato her first weeks in office. Carina Linberg, a colonel in the Air Force, has been accused of adultery with a married officer in the Navy. The Air Force is considering whether she should be tried for "conduct unbecoming an officer." Her married lover is the sole witness for the prosecution, and will not be charged. If found guilty, she could be dishonorably discharged and spend several years in Leavenworth. It has been assigned by the general to a very inexperienced lieutenant, in the obvious hope that he––and his results––could be controlled by his superiors. The President, in her position of Commander-in-Chief, takes direct charge of the investigation, assigning Lieutenant Welborn Yates an office in the White House for the duration and requiring him to report directly and exclusively to her.

The U.S. Congress or a barroom brawl?

Joseph Flynn is a seriously gifted storyteller with a wicked sense of humor, who leavens serious commentary and legal procedure with amusing and often outrageous incidents. McGill strolls around the city with only one Secret Service agent at his side and his car crawling a half block behind (wouldn't D.C. drivers just love that!) talking to anyone who stops him in the street. The President's Henchman is a huge tapestry of conflicting and interlocking interests that never stops moving; a feel-good story for America just when we badly need one.

It could have been ripped from the headlines, except that it doesn't go far enough in describing the intransigence and ninny-fication of our present Congress. Truth has outpaced even Mr. Flynn's fertile imagination there. For me, the saddest words in this book are the publisher's disclaimer: "This book is a work of fiction...Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental." That's a pity. Surely, we the people of these United States can, in sanity and good will, put together a pair of fantasy teams that can settle their disputes like competent adults within the framework of law to get our government working again! Go team, whichever side you're playing; let's not just sit on the sidelines, whining.

Review of Michael Koryta's The Silent Hour

The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta

The Silent Hour isn't one of those Michael Koryta gothic horrors or supernatural noirs that you read trembling under the bedcovers. Rather, it's the fourth book in his Lincoln Perry series, about a former Cleveland, Ohio police detective turned hardboiled private eye.

Lincoln, who narrates, is a skilled and relentless investigator. His partner in Perry and Pritchard Investigations, widowed ex-cop Joe Pritchard, has been in Florida for months, recovering from gunshot wounds and contemplating retirement. Lincoln is considering retirement too. He misses the companionship and advice of Joe, a naturally cautious man, who as a kid "probably did background checks on the neighbors before trick-or-treating at their houses." Money from a job Lincoln did for his ex-fiancée could remodel the gym he owns. He's tired of putting his girlfriend Amy in danger and hearing the security bar go across her apartment door as he leaves.

Is it, then, any wonder that when he receives a series of letters asking for help from convicted murderer Parker Harrison, Lincoln tosses them into the garbage? Months later, the persistent Harrison himself shows up at Lincoln's office. He doesn't want Lincoln to investigate the murder that sent him to prison, but the whereabouts of "kind, compassionate, beautiful" Alexandra Cantrell, who dreamed of helping released violent offenders reenter society. She and her husband Joshua developed a program that tried to connect parolees with nature at their special house in the woods, Whisper Ridge. Upon leaving prison, Harrison joined them there for a year. Then the Cantrells disappeared without a trace.

That was 12 years ago. Now, Harrison tells Lincoln, "I see you as a storyteller. You take something that's hidden from the world, and you bring it forward, give us answers to our questions, give us an ending. It's what you do, and you seem to be very good at it."

That's true. Lincoln takes the case and it isn't long before he's deeply disturbed. Carved beside the door at Whisper Ridge is a strange epitaph, "Whisper Ridge—Home to Dreams—November 6, 1992-April 27, 1996." He discovers that Joshua's skeleton was unearthed in Pennsylvania six months earlier, right before Harrison began writing him. In addition, one of the parolees died mysteriously shortly after leaving the Cantrells. It's clear that Harrison is not being open and honest. To make matters worse, Lincoln learns that Alexandra comes from a major Youngstown, Ohio mob family and her uncle, Dominic Sanabria, pays Lincoln an unwanted visit. Dominic states that he liked Joshua and says of the missing Alexandra, "Every family has their darling, and she is ours."

The dual nature of the characters makes Lincoln's investigation very challenging. Do-gooders Alexandra and Joshua have connections to the Sanabria mob. Although Harrison and the Cantrells' other parolees are murderers, they have stayed out of trouble since their release. How far can they be trusted? What about Dominic?

Lincoln wants nothing to do with an investigation that touches the Sanabria family. He continues, at the request of Pennsylvania cop Quinn Graham, working on Joshua's homicide, and Pittsburgh PI Ken Merriman, hired by Joshua's parents when he first disappeared 12 years earlier. Ken is reluctant to quit because he dreams of impressing his 14-year-old daughter. In some ways, Graham, Ken and other law enforcement officers interested in bringing down Dominic Sanabria are almost as troublesome for Lincoln as the criminals. They're jealous of their turf, hampered by a lack of resources and blinded by obsession. Lincoln can't entirely trust them either.

The case isn't solved before Joe's return from Florida, another murder and so many plot twists and double dealings that Lincoln's inquiries reminded me of a ball making its way through a pinball machine. It's no wonder Lincoln ponders his commitment to life as a PI.

The Silent Hour is an imaginative and beautifully constructed book about ambition and betrayal, broken dreams and new beginnings, and the crippling nature of obsession. Koryta obviously knows Cleveland. The prose is crisp but often lovely:

That night strips of coal-colored clouds skidded over a bright three-quarter moon, pushed by a spirited wind off the lake. I sat on the roof of my building and marveled at their speed, stared long enough that the lights and sounds of the street below faded and I was held by the rhythm of the clouds, by the vanishing and then resurfacing moon. If I looked long enough, it seemed I wasn't on the roof anymore, could instead be miles out at sea, nothing in sight but that moon and those clouds. 

Yeah, I'd had a bit to drink.

I cared about what happened to Koryta's complex characters. Lincoln, introduced in Tonight I Said Goodbye, is a classic shamus in the manner of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Since The Silent Hour was published in 2009, Koryta has written four stand-alone novels. I hope he'll give us another Lincoln Perry book soon.

The Ides of March

The Ides of March are upon us, to misquote the Bard, William Shakespeare. It was the time when one of the most famous murders of all time took place in Rome. On March 15 in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Senate. The Romans did not number days of a month in order from the first through the last day. Rather, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (5th or 7th, depending on the length of the month), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st) of the following month. The Ides occurred near the midpoint of the month, and in March it is the 15th.

Brutus, Cassius and others, urged on by as many as 60 conspirators, committed the dastardly deed.  Their motive was disillusionment over the path Rome was taking. Although Brutus was Caesar's close friend, he felt that Caesar had become a tyrant who was a danger to the Republic.

Disillusionment has been the driving force behind many a fictional hero as well. In The Eye of Jade, by Diane Wei Liang, we are introduced to Mei Wang, a PI in Beijing.

Private detectives are banned in China, but Mei Wang, who once had a stable job in the Ministry of Public Security, thought that there was a need for the services she could provide. In Beijing there are many small crimes that the police will not involve themselves with, and in the new millennium, divorce is becoming more commonplace; factors that allowed Mei to find independence as a businesswoman. All she had to do was market herself as an Information Consultant.

One of Mei Wang's earliest memories is of her life in a labor camp with her father, an intellectual and idealist condemned to hard labor for the rest of his life. One day, her mother came and took her away. She would never see her father again.

She lived a hardscrabble life with her mother, Ling Bai, who struggled to put food on the table for Mei and her younger sister, Lu. Later, Mei Wang went to university, after which she got a job––and an apartment that went with it––at the Ministry of Public Security, a higher echelon of the police department akin to Scotland Yard.

She became disillusioned with her work at the MPS and left there, although her family was aghast at her decision to leave the security of a government job and all the perks that went with it. Her mother felt she was throwing away her future; what mattered in China was not money, but power.

One day, a Mr. Chen Jitian made an appointment to see her. She knew him better as Uncle Chen, a great friend of her mother's. He told a story that began in the winter of 1968, when the Red Guard was terrorizing the country. These roving bands of "patriots" invaded homes and stores. They even ransacked museums, destroying relics and burning everything by building great bonfires and feeding them with all the artwork, documents and records.

Jade Seal

Now, in the present, some of these artifacts are surfacing. It appears that someone had stolen some things before everything was destroyed. Most notably, an ancient ceremonial bowl was found to have been sold to an antique dealer. Uncle Chen is looking for a jade seal he thinks was taken from a museum at the same time as the bowl and asks Mei to find it for him. When Mei finds the person who sold the bowl, she finds a dead body. Now the game is afoot, and Mei backtracks through recent history to find the connections that will lead her to the stolen artifacts––as well as to a new understanding of her own past.

Mei is enterprising and energetic as she pursues the jade seal's journey through the years, but she is conflicted about what she also discovers about her own past life. It takes an illness in a loved one for her to try to reconnect some of the fractured pictures of what really happened to her family.

This is an interesting book that is the start of a series, and I recommend it to all who like stories with a backdrop of history and a fascinating locale.

Donna Leon's Friends in High Places begins on a Saturday at this time of year. While lolling on his sofa and reading about ancient Persia, Guido Brunetti, a Commissario of the Venice police, gets a visit from a bureaucrat in charge of finding and recording changes made to historical buildings. The Brunetti apartment appears not to exist, according to the paperwork, and this is just the first conundrum to be solved in this ninth mystery of the excellent series by Leon.

A few months later, Brunetti receives a call from the same man, Franco Rossi. He is asking for help, but before he can make his problem known he is found dead in such as way to suggest an accident. Brunetti knows better.

A side story is the problem with the drug scene that is now appearing, and involves Brunetti's boss's son. Brunetti knows that this boy should be punished and wants to conduct a proper investigation, but he is aware that he would be signing his death warrant if he proceeds.

Brunetti asks himself and his wife to speculate on how they have both changed since they were young college students, when they were liberal and wanted to change the world. Now they are both increasingly disillusioned about how they adapt to the way things are and always have been in Venice.

This book is worth reading because of the strong writing of the highest order, and the way the lives of Brunetti, his wife and children are a part of the plot itself. All of us have to compromise to live in this world, and to do the next right thing is the challenge. Brunetti does this well.

Disillusion is not a stranger behind the Iron Curtain, and it walks hand in hand with Arkady Renko in Red Square, by Martin Cruz Smith.

Red Square is set in Russia in the year 1991. It is a sequel to Gorky Park and Polar Star and features Investigator Arkady Renko at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As the social and economic structures of the Soviet Union break down, Arkady Renko has been reinstated as an Investigator in the police force. He is trying to clear up a nest of illicit traders when his chief informant dies in a horrific fireball. At the late informer's flat, his fax machine keeps asking the apparently meaningless question, "Where is Red Square?"

The question does not pertain to a location, but to a painting by Kazimir Malevich, which has resurfaced on the black market after being lost since World War II.

Smith has created a remarkable character in his redoubtable Russian policeman Arkady Renko, the rejected son of a famous Russian military officer who became a brutal wartime hero of the Communist Party. Renko is a brilliant investigator with a skeptical and independent point of view. Having earlier sacrificed himself for his dissident lover, Irina Asanova, suffering imprisonment and exile for helping her escape, he returns to Moscow on the brink of political and social dissolution. It appears that corrupt officials and black marketers run the country, while organized crime has replaced the Party as the controlling force in Russian society.

Smith brings all of these elements together in this story, which covers two weeks in August 1991, a time leading up to the attempted coup of August 21, in which right-wing elements intended to wrest control from reformist President Mikhail Gorbachev. There is an informative backstory describing the history of the Chechens and their relationship with Russia. The suicide of Renko's father brings a personal note to the chronicle.

The trail of Renko's murder investigation leads both to the Russian mafia and to criminal connections in Munich. Renko has been listening to Radio Liberty on a borrowed radio and has heard Irina's voice. When circumstances seem to fit, he gets himself to Munich and finds Irina. Renko finds that his perceived duty to his homeland conflicts with his personal desires; that by solving the case (which has now cost the life of a fellow investigator), he may again lose Irina.

Although the plot of this detective novel is complex and carefully constructed, Smith's primary interest is in the character development of his subtle protagonist. Renko is a tormented hero, a man of conscience. Revenge for the death of his informant and for other deaths sits quietly on his mind as well. Smith's portrayal of Renko's navigation through a collapsing world is compelling and draws one into the empty stores of Moscow, the endless lines, and into the lives of the suffering Muscovites.

The biggest mystery to me is why this painting––of which there are apparently two versions––is worth five million dollars. Who can say what it is supposedly valued at today?

All those years ago, it is said that Caesar was handed a warning note as he entered the Senate that day but did not read it. After he entered the hall, Senators holding daggers surrounded Caesar. Casca struck the first blow, hitting Caesar in the neck and drawing blood. The other Senators all joined in, stabbing him repeatedly about the head. Brutus struck a low blow and wounded Caesar in the groin, and Caesar is said to have remarked in Greek, "You, too, my child?" For some reason, today the quote is delivered in Latin as "Et tu, Brute?"

In the end, no purpose was served and the Republic collapsed in civil war and the era of the Roman Empire began. Disillusionment indeed.

Note: I have reviewed or will post reviews of some of these books on Amazon, Goodreads and other sites under my user names there.

Review of Walter Mosley's All I Did Was Shoot My Man

All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

Today is a national holiday. We pay respect to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., the American clergyman and Nobel Peace Prize winner who advocated nonviolent civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. I wish he were alive today to see Barack Obama sworn in for his second term as United States President.

Walter Mosley
photo by David Burnett

I think about the course of the Civil Rights Movement when I read books by Walter Mosley, whose characters deal with racism. Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins series, set in Los Angeles, but he has several other excellent series, stand-alone books about crime, and other fiction. The Mosley book I read most recently is All I Did Was Shoot My Man, fourth in the Leonid McGill series. It was published in 2012 by Riverhead Books/Penguin Group (USA) and is a 2013 Edgar Award for Best Mystery finalist.

The childhood of book narrator Leonid Trotter McGill was disrupted when his anarchist father abandoned his New York City family to fight in a South American revolution. LT's mother died of a broken heart. His brother Nikita took to crime and is now in prison for robbery. LT, an ex-boxer, was once an expert in altering evidence to contaminate a criminal investigation. He planted evidence, changed phone records or forged documents to direct suspicion to an innocent party. Sometimes the people LT framed went to prison, but most often he created enough doubt for the district attorney to drop the case. He is now trying to give up his bent life and is working as a private investigator for his own agency. He has valuable resources in both criminal circles and law enforcement. Before last year, he even had his own Javert in the form of Carson Kitteridge, a cop whose mission was to bring LT, suspected of "everything from contract murder to armed robbery, from kidnapping to white slavery," to justice. Kitteridge still has his eye on LT and gives him a hard time, but he and his colleagues have finally backed off.

When All I Did Was Shoot My Man begins, LT is trying to help Zella Grisham, freshly released from prison. One day, Zella had gone home sick from work to find her boyfriend Harry Tangelo in bed with her best friend, Minnie Lesser. Zella grabbed a gun and shot Harry three times. Harry survived and the court would probably have been lenient had someone not called the police to suggest they check Zella's journal in her padlocked storage unit. In the unit was evidence linking her to the $58 million robbery of Wall Street's Rutgers Assurance Corporation. Zella insisted she knew nothing about the robbery. LT knows she's innocent because he'd been hired to plant the evidence. LT felt bad framing the pregnant Zella, so he subtly altered the false evidence. Eight years later, LT got a windfall from a grateful client and called attorney Breland Lewis to suggest the planted evidence be reexamined. As a result, Zella left prison.

Zella's freedom rekindles the robbery investigation by the police and Rutgers Assurance. LT becomes involved when Zella asks him to find the baby she gave up for adoption and to track down Harry so she can apologize. Although LT doesn't know who masterminded the robbery, he and his own family are threatened when people peripherally connected to the crime begin dying.

Mosley is a fine writer and storyteller who uses the backdrop of crime to examine his fully-realized characters. LT is compassionate and capable of self-scrutiny. His struggles with his temper and the past, and his attempts to do the right thing by others, are woven into his investigation. Even before this new danger, his family was unraveling. His wife has tried time and again to find another man so she can leave him. Currently, she drinks herself into a stupor. His oldest son, gentle Dimitri, has moved out to live with the dangerous Tatyana Baranovich. Daughter Shelly is dating a much older man. LT has talked his hip youngest son, Twill, into joining his detective agency, and sets him to work on an investigation involving a rich man's son who has fallen in with bad companions. A lover who left LT wants to return, and there's a chance his father didn't die in that South American revolution after all. There are many balls for LT to juggle in All I Did Was Shoot My Man.

On the day that we remember Martin Luther King, Jr., I wish we could say racism was a thing of the past. Unfortunately, we can't but I like what LT says about it:

I'm a twenty-first-century New Yorker and therefore have little time to contemplate race. It's not that racism doesn't exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It's just that I rarely worry about those things because there's a real world underneath all that nonsense; a world that demands my attention almost every moment of every day. 

Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done.

This book, with its complex story line and memorable characters, is a very satisfying read.