Summer Preview 2014: Part Two

Ah, summer! The smells of freshly-mown grass, flowers in bloom, suntan lotion and salt air; the sounds of birds chirping, katydids tattling, the quickening afternoon breeze rustling through the leaves. And, as Georgette just told us, the varied flavors of ice cream. Aren't those the perfect sounds, scents and tastes to put you in the mood for some World War II and Cold War books?

Huh? Alright, alright, you're right. Summer doesn't particularly cry out "go read some late-20th-century hot/cold war stuff." But isn't that just because winter, spring, summer or fall, it's always a good time to dive into those books? Luckily, there are several lined up to take to the hammock or porch glider, along with your choice of cool beverage and/or bowl of ice cream. (Make mine a Gin and Tonic with Maine's Back River Gin or a bowl of Gelato Fiasco's Sweet Resurgam gelato––burnt-sugar almond gelato with chunks of semi-sweet chocolate and swirls of salted caramel.)

I'm starting with Alan Furst's latest, Midnight in Europe (Random House, June 10, 2014). Before World War II began in earnest, there was a dress rehearsal in Spain, as Francisco Franco's Fascist forces on the right, aided by Nazi Germany, battled the leftist Republic, aided by the Soviet Union. In Furst's story, Cristián Ferrar, a Spaniard who works at the Paris and New York offices of the prestigious Coudert Brothers international law firm, is recruited to help the Republic by smuggling arms to them. Ferrar will enlist the help of anyone willing, from the politically committed to the mercenary, high society to laborers. The thing about Furst is that he can make this kind of thing so gripping, even though we already know how it turns out.

The rise of the Nazi Party presented a special challenge to the United States because it was home to so many ethnic Germans. Many German-Americans were proud and excited about Hitler and the Nazi Party, feeling that they rescued Germany from the Great Depression and restored the
pride Germans had lost after its defeat in World War I. As soon as the Nazis gained power in 1933, they encouraged the founding of pro-Nazi organizations among German Americans.

The German American Bund held mass rallies against the FDR administration, communism, organized labor and the boycotts of German goods that followed Germany's adoption of anti-Jewish laws. There was even a movie theater in New York on 96th Street that showed Nazi propaganda newsreels from 1933 right up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Knowing this, it's not surprising to learn that Nazi Germany had willing spies in the US, including the Queens, New York man who stole the blueprints for the technologically advanced Norden bombsight and turned them over to Germany in 1937.

Peter Duffy focuses on the nonfiction story of German American spies in Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring (Scribner, July 22, 2014). After reading that whole title, which probably ought to have a spoiler alert tag, you might feel you hardly need to read the book, but I think I will. I'd like to know more about William G. Sebold, the man approached by the Nazis to spy for them, but who contacted the FBI and offered himself as a double agent. And I'm especially interested to read about the agents he caught and learn about their motivations. I wonder how all this will compare to that classic of anti-Nazi movie propaganda, Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), with Edward G. Robinson playing a G-man up against the Bund.

One of the early shocks of World War II was how quickly Germany overran France, including Paris, the City of Light. In Susan Vreeland's Lisette's List (Random House, August 26, 2014), Lisette Roux is crushed when she must give up her art studies in Paris and move to Provence to care for her husband's father, Pascal. But there, she finds that Pascal, a pigment seller and frame-maker, has more to teach her. In his youth, Pascal knew several of the Impressionists, and has his own small collection of paintings. Lisette's husband is called up for military service and, as the Nazis tighten their grip on Vichy France, Lisette learns more about art, and humanity under pressure, than she would have in her Paris studies.

I've always been fascinated by reading about spies, especially deep undercover agents who appear to live normal lives in one country, all the while acting as agents for another country they may not see for long years, if ever. What must it be like never to be able to truly reveal yourself to the people you work and live with? What kind of mind does it take to commit to working for a political concept, while living every day in a political society contrary to that concept?

In 1999, The Times of London electrified its readership by revealing that Melita Norwood, a retired civil servant, had acted as a secret KGB agent for over 40 years, passing the Soviets information relating to nuclear weapons that she gleaned from her job at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. Though the British secret services were more than suspicious of Mrs. Norwood, she was left alone for years to avoid exposing other espionage investigations.

Jennie Rooney's Red Joan (Europa Editions/Penguin Group (USA), July 1, 2014) is fiction, but inspired by the Melita Norwood story. Frankly, Mrs. Norwood seems to have been a deadly dull woman, so fiction was definitely the way to go. Rooney's Joan Stanley is a loving mother and grandmother, with typical middle-class hobbies like art and ballroom dancing, until the afternoon that MI-5 comes to question her. Rather than focus on the techniques of espionage agents, Rooney delves into those questions of psychology and motivation. Going back from her current interrogation to her recruitment as a spy when she was a young woman, Joan's motivations are gradually unveiled.

William Nicholson's Reckless (Simon and Schuster, August 12, 2014) is another British take on the Cold War years, featuring a mix of fictional and real characters. Our protagonist, the fictional Rupert Blundell, is a young man at the end of World War II, who has lost a chance at love. In 1962, Blundell is an advisor to the very real Lord Mountbatten who, you might remember, was a key figure in British government and very close to Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Prince Charles before Mountbatten was killed by IRA assassins.

Of course, 1962 is a critical year in Cold War history, as it culminates in the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world teetered on the edge of nuclear oblivion. In the UK, Conservative Party member Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister, and his Secretary of State for War was John Profumo, now remembered chiefly for the "Profumo Affair" scandal that contributed to bringing down the Macmillan government in 1964. But in 1962, the public is unaware of Profumo's affair with 19-year-old Christine Keeler, a would-be model and casual prostitute who runs with a louche set that includes a Soviet naval attaché.

Christine Keeler at the height of the scandal

In addition to following Blundell's life during these tumultuous times, we are also introduced to the 18-year-old Pamela, who moves to London and throws herself into a social life with the society types who slummed it with that same set in London, but spent weekends at Cliveden, the Astors' country estate. What will happen to Pamela? Will her story follow that of the heroine of Samuel Richardson's 18th-century Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded? Or is she destined for a more cynically contemporary version of what happens when a young girl meets up with rich and powerful men? Maybe she'll be more like Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, whose Wikipedia entry makes for engrossing and entertaining reading. I'm looking forward to finding out all about Reckless's Pamela and Rupert Blundell.

For the spy-obsessed, few topics are more enthralling than the Cambridge Spy Ring, a group of four, five or maybe more students recruited from Cambridge University in the 1930s to spy for the Soviet Union. Cambridge had long been a talent-spotting pool for the British government and intelligence agencies, and proved to be an equally valuable source for Soviet intelligence. Harold Adrian Russell ("Kim") Philby is the most famous member of the Cambridge Spy Ring. He had a long career in British intelligence and, when he was stationed for several years in Washington, DC, he worked closely with the Director of the CIA, James J. Angleton.

Despite suspicions about him, especially when evidence strongly suggested that his tip-off allowed two other members of the Ring to flee to the Soviet Union in 1951, Philby continued to work for British intelligence, formally and informally, for over a decade. Finally, the defection to the US of a highly-placed KGB official made things too hot for Philby and he fled to the USSR, where it is said he lived a fairly unhappy life, marinating in booze, for another quarter century.

There have been loads of books and articles about Philby, including Robert Littell's excellent 2012 novel, Young Philby. Despite the wealth of material already available, I was excited to hear that Ben Macintyre is coming out with his own book, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (Random House, July 29, 2014). Macintyre is best known for his previous books about World War II, Agent ZigZag, Operation Mincemeat and Operation Double Cross. These books focus on little-known and usually eccentric figures who made a key difference in wartime espionage. Though Macintyre is now turning his sights to a much better-known figure, it looks like he'll be looking at it from his usual more personal angle.

In A Spy Among Friends, Macintyre looks at Philby through the prism of his friendship with Nicholas Elliott, someone he went to school with, served with in World War II and worked with in British intelligence. Like CIA chief Angleton, Elliott never knew until it was far too late that his friendship with Philby had been betrayed over and over, and everything he'd ever told Philby about his intelligence work was relayed to the Soviets. I'm hearing a lot of enthusiastic buzz about the book, with some calling it as exciting as a fictional thriller, and others noting its psychological insights and inherent critique of the British social system that traditionally fed its intelligence services.

I wonder if I'll be ready after that to read a very different Cold War story; one set in Dresden, East Germany, in that final decade before the Wall came down and the two Germanies were reunited. Uwe Tellkamp's The Tower won the German Book Prize in 2008 and is finally becoming available in English (translated from the German by Michael Mitchell, Viking, July 3, 2014).

When I think of the German Democratic Republic, I think of gray and cold; not anything summery. Oh, wait, I thought of something. If you need to tone up for swimsuit season, you can do some weight-training reps with this book, since it clocks in at 1,008 pages!

Tellkamp, who was born in 1968 and grew up in Dresden, brings his own experiences to bear in this story of a soldier, surgeon, nurse and publisher in this tumultuous time. Tellkamp did his mandatory military service as a tank commander, but he was thrown into prison when he refused to break up a political demonstration in 1989. Because he was labelled "politically unreliable," he was unable to pursue his university studies and plans to become a physician until after the GDR collapsed. This is a panoramic depiction of the complexities and compromises of life in that dying regime. It sounds a little crazy to say I'm looking forward to reading it, but I am––though probably in e-book form.

If you're a fellow fan of espionage or World War II/Cold War books, it looks like we have some reading treats ahead of us this summer. And if you're not a fan, I still have some good news: we'll be moving on to other sub-genres in our other preview posts.

Summer Preview 2014: Part One

Photo credit: Damon Dahlen, Huffington Post

Remember that childhood summer chant: I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream? Well, we all yell for good books, too. In fact, some of us Material Witnesses became so excited looking at books to be published this summer, we need more than one post to tell you about them. I'm going to begin our Read Me Deadly previews today by showing you some books that look very fun and suggesting ice cream to go along with them (see note at the bottom).

Before we get down to it, I want to check that we all know how to eat ice cream tidily while we're reading. People, this means out of a bowl with a reasonably sized spoon. You want to ensure that any suspense comes courtesy of your book's author—not via the drip of ice cream that threatens to splat on the pages. To this end, please see the pictures below. These ice cream-eating techniques are anathema near a book:

No

God, no

No

Okay! Let's begin. I can barely control myself, waiting for June 10th, the publication date for Susan Jane Gilman's book of historical fiction, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group). We initially meet 75-year-old Lillian Maria Dinello, the rich and ruthless ice cream entrepreneur who prefers knocking back a stiff drink to eating her own product, when she's in trouble for tax evasion. Writer Gilman takes us back to 1913, when young Malka Treynovsky immigrates to New York City with her Russian parents. Malka is abandoned months later, after being crippled in an accident, and is then adopted by the Italian ices peddler, Salvatore Dinello, whose horse-cart ran over her. The Jewish Malka is renamed Lillian and raised a Catholic. When things sour with her adopted family, Lillian and her new husband build a rival business that becomes the Dunkle's Famous Ice Cream empire.

Just about any ice cream would go well with this witty, rags-to-riches story set against a backdrop of events from 20th-century American history. An obvious choice is Rocky Road by Häagen Dazs. New York's Lower East Side, home of the Dinellos, isn't Brooklyn, but we chocoholics won't quibble with Steve's BLKYN Blackout, a "milk chocolate ice cream swirled with chocolate stout cake and dark chocolate pudding" and absolutely delicious. Or, you can pay tribute to the Italian Dinellos and the Treynovskys' trip across the Atlantic Ocean with Talenti's Sea Salt Caramel gelato. Its sea salt caramel base is unusually velvety and is studded with tiny caramel-filled truffles.

Peruvian writer Gustavo Faverón Patriau's The Antiquarian (translated from the Spanish by Joseph Mulligan) (Black Cat/Grove Press, June 3, 2014) is a book I'm really looking forward to, and maybe you should too, if you're a fan of exceptionally beautiful writing and the haunting, dark nature of works by Poe and Roberto Bolaño that investigate identity, madness, and guilt. The book is set in an unnamed South American country and is narrated by a psycholinguist, Gustavo (yes, he shares the author's first name). Gustavo receives a call from Daniel, a close friend and antique books lover, whom Gustavo hasn't seen for several years. Daniel is now confined to a mental hospital after murdering his fiancée and attempting suicide, and he tells Gustavo he wants to confess how and why he did it. Thus begins Daniel's bizarre tale, a digressive narrative filled with fables and dreams—and Gustavo's stint at playing detective.

A simple but oh-so-lovely Graeter's Vanilla (the whole vanilla bean is used) frees your brain to concentrate on what Daniel divulges. Or fortify yourself with small bites of the rich cheesecake taste of Jeni's Goat Cheese with Red Cherries ice cream.

Here's one I can't let pass, because (1) it's the first in a new crime fiction series featuring a former war correspondent who's now working the crime beat in Washington, DC, where wrongdoing isn't confined to the lowest economic class, (2) the author is veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent Neely Tucker, and (3) it's garnering rave reviews. The Ways of the Dead (Viking Adult/Penguin Group (USA), June 12, 2014) is based on the 1990s' Princeton Place murders. Reporter Sully Carter tackles the murder of a white girl in a predominantly black neighborhood. The victim is Sarah Reese, 15-year-old daughter of a federal judge with whom Sully already has a less-than-cordial relationship, and Sully's bosses are skeptical that he is competent to investigate. Word is that author Tucker has an ear for inner-city dialogue and a gift for inventive plotting. Fans of Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, and George V. Higgins, take note.

Since too many Washington, DC politicians take the low road, we'll take High Road's Peanut Butter Brittle. Unrepentant chocolate lovers, pick up Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie.

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." These heartbreaking words begin Pushcart Prize-winner Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You (The Penguin Press HC/Penguin Group (USA), June 26, 2014), a first novel that's less a genre mystery than a literary novel reviewers are comparing to firsts by Ha Jin, Chang-rae Lee, and Chimamanda Adichie. Ng's teenage Lydia is the middle child of James Lee, a Harvard-educated son of Chinese immigrants, and his wife, Marilyn Walker, a blue-eyed Virginian who met James when she was a premed at Radcliffe in the 1960s. Marilyn abandoned her career plans to stay home in small-town Ohio to raise children Nathan, Lydia, and Hannah. Marilyn wants Lydia to be a doctor; James wants her to be happy and popular. When Lydia is found mysteriously drowned at a nearby lake in 1977, the already strained Lee family is shattered. This book contains exquisitely rendered characterization and an insightful examination of a family suffering the unbearable loss of a child they may not have known very well.

Any occasion is good for coconut ice cream, and Salt & Straw's Toasted Coconut with cracked sesame toffee and boysenberry ginger jam is excellent. Or honor Ohio, the Buckeye State, with Graeter's extremely dense ice cream, Buckeye Blitz, which has a chocolate-peanut butter base, peanut butter cookie dough pieces, and dark chocolate chips.

Even if I didn't have a thing for Russian novels, I'd want to open the blinds on the beautifully dreamy cover of Andrei Bitov's The Symmetry Teacher (translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 8, 2014). Postmodernist Bitov likes playing mind games with his readers, as did Italo Calvino, and this Russian nesting doll of a book should be a real doozy. We see confirmation of this very quickly, since "The Teacher of Symmetry: A Novel-Echo," appears on a second title page. This secondary novel is supposedly composed of eight chapters, written by an Englishman (A. Tired-Boffin), and features a writer protagonist named Urbino Vanoski and themes of obsession. It was published in 1937. Bitov remembers translating Tired-Boffin's novel into Russian, although he can't find evidence of the novel's existence anywhere, and therefore he can only tell us what he remembers about it. He's hardly a reliable narrator. Literary jokes, "physics-defying deaths," and "mysterious doorbells" abound; even space aliens make an appearance. Oh boy!

Obviously, this book is a candidate for reading with Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked ice cream. Another possibility is Humphry Slocombe's Russian Imperial Stout ice cream, which I haven't had the opportunity (or the nerve) to try. Another good companion for a monkeying-around read: banana ice cream such as Phin & Phebes Banana Whama.

There are Italian police procedurals, noir, and featherweight romantic mysteries. Then there is the series by Marco Malvaldi, set in a coastal Tuscany town outside of Pisa, and featuring a quartet of geezers (in Sister's Mary's words), who like to hang out in Massimo Viviani's Bar Lume, playing cards and gossiping about what's going on in town. Game for Five, the first book, is told from the 30-ish Massimo's point of view. He is drawn into a murder when he helps a drunk customer report a dead woman in a garbage barrel to the police. It's a warm, lively, and funny read. Now, in Three-Card Monte (translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis) (Europa Editions/Penguin Group (USA), August 6, 2014), the ironic Massimo is once again obliged to investigate a homicide, aided by the passionate advice of his regulars.

The book's cover looks like it's been steeped in a vat of raspberries. Choose a raspberry gelato or pick among some of these: Capogiro Gelato Artisans' Fico D'India (Red), made from cactus or prickly pears and tasting like watermelon; Nocciola Piemontese, a hazelnut gelato; and Uva Verde, made from green grapes. There's Graeter's Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip ice cream or Dr. Bob's Strawberries with Sour Cream and Brown Sugar. After hanging out in a bar, perfect hair of the dog (relatively speaking): Humphry Slocombe's Secret Breakfast, with its mix of vanilla ice cream with caramelized cornflakes and a dollop of Jim Beam.

After reading Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland, I'm ready for another novel that looks at the dynamics of an Indian family and their experience with tragedy and assimilation. In Mira Jacob's darkly comic The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing (Random House, July 1, 2014), Amina Eapen, a single woman in her 30s, is working as a wedding photographer in Seattle when her mother, Kamala, calls. Kamala and her surgeon husband, Thomas, emigrated from India to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1960s. This was after Amina's older brother, Akhil, was born, but before Amina's birth. Kamala and Thomas have never been happy in New Mexico; they become even more unhappy when Akhil dies in his senior year of high school. Now, Kamala tells Amina, "Your father is acting very strange." Amina returns to New Mexico and the problems presented by her mother, father, and her old lover.

Reviews of Jacob's book cite mouthwatering descriptions of Kamala's cooking, so be sure you have Neemo's Rajbhog ice cream already on hand. It's flavored with saffron, cardamom, almonds, cashews, and pistachios. Show you take the book's title seriously by eating the New Orleans Ice Cream Co.'s Café au Lait & Beignets ice cream, which tastes of cold brewed coffee and the toasty flavor of scalded milk. It's filled with real beignet pieces and finished with a sugary swirl. Plenty of coffee to perk up any sleepwalker and sugar for dancing energy.

I've always been intrigued by very elaborate doll houses. There's something eerie about them; their tiny little inhabitants look as if any minute, they'll actually begin living their tiny little lives. A mysterious cabinet-sized replica of a 1686 Amsterdam house is at the center of Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist (Ecco/HarperCollins). Johannes Brandt, a wealthy 39-year-old Dutch merchant trader, presents it to his 18-year-old bride, Nella Oortman, to keep her happy while he's away from home. Then, she has only his sister, Marin, to keep her company. The marriage between Johannes and Nella was arranged, and Marin makes Nella feel as welcome as the plague.

Nella hires a miniaturist to help her furnish and populate the cabinet house, and it soon presents as many secrets as it unlocks in Nella's new life. The book is very well researched, and its unusual characters, plot, and fascinating Dutch Golden-Age setting are causing a big stir. It's recommended for fans of Sarah Waters.

The Miniaturist is due out August 26th, shortly before Labor Day. I'm going to grab it then and save it for a winter read. I'll pair it with Blue Bell's Gingerbread House ice cream, a special winter holiday offering that combines cinnamon ice cream with gingerbread pieces, sprinkles, miniature marshmallows and a swirl of vanilla icing. If you can't wait until winter and want to read it during the fall, Blue Bell's Dutch Chocolate ice cream would be great.

We have many more upcoming summer books to show you. Stay tuned for tomorrow, when Sister Mary Murderous takes the stage. Any bets she will have at least one upcoming WWII book to tell us about?

Note: I hope you have great ice cream available locally (I gnash my teeth when I read about companies such as Gelato Fiasco, whose products aren't available here in California or through mail order) or make it yourself (more about this at another time!). If you're curious about the ice cream mentioned above, click on the following website links for information about flavors, locators, and orders by mail: Steve's Ice Cream, Talenti Gelato and Sorbetto, Graeter's Irresistible Ice Cream, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, Phin & Phebes Ice Cream, High Road Craft Ice Cream & Sorbet, New Orleans Ice Cream Co., Blue Bell Ice Cream, Neemo's Ice Cream, Dr. Bob's HandCrafted Ice Cream, Capogiro Gelato Artisans, Humphry Slocombe, and Salt & Straw.

There are too many wonderful ice cream flavors—and artisanal and super-premium ice cream companies making them—to mention in this post. We Material Witnesses would love to hear about your favorites.

Hot Summer Reads 2013 (Part 2)

Here are Georgette Spelvin and Della Streetwise with more summer reading suggestions. You didn't think we were finished stuffing your beach bags and stacking books by your patio chair on Friday, did you?

In hot weather, a brain can get cranky and finicky. A good reading choice will either soothe a crabby psyche or say yah boo sucks to this nonsense and jump-start a heat-exhausted mind with something unusually thought-provoking or exciting. The latter choice is akin to eating very spicy food when you're already sweating.

Combining these approaches works well when you're stuck inside a sweltering house, and there's no air conditioning. Stand in front of an open refrigerator while holding an action thriller or police procedural in one hand; grasp and quickly fan the fridge door with your other hand.

Alternatively, cool yourself by stepping into the bone-rattling cold of a western Ukrainian winter with Dan Smith's taut, disturbing thriller, The Child Thief, published on June 1 by Pegasus Crime. It's sorta what you'd get if you popped David Benioff's City of Thieves, Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, and the Brothers Grimm into the blender and served it all over ice.

It's December 1930 when the book begins, and Stalin's authorities, accompanied by soldiers, are fanning across Ukraine. The villagers of Vyriv are very afraid. That's why the sight of a staggering stranger, hauling a sled, menaces hunters Luka Mikhailovich Sidorov and his 17-year-old twin sons, Viktor and Petro.

Despite his sons' misgivings, Luka, our narrator, insists they carry the near-dead stranger back to Vyriv. Once there, the sled's mysterious and horrifying cargo upsets the already nervous villagers. In the ensuing melee, Luka's young niece Dariya disappears. Promising his daughter he'll bring Dariya back, Luka sets out the next morning with Viktor, Petro, and Dariya's father, following man-sized tracks in the snow. As the men brave deadly cold, they hunt the child thief ahead of them and worry about the village awaiting discovery behind them. This worry remains when the tables are turned, the hunted becomes the hunter, and they run into Stalin's men. You cannot help but root for Luka, his loyal sons, and comrades. Their humanity is inextinguishable, even in the cruel icebox of Stalin's Ukraine.

This book contains brutality against adults and some gruesome elements involving children. Despite these issues, I'm glad I read it. Smith has crafted a beautifully poetic and hugely tense thriller, populated by unforgettable characters, in The Child Thief.

After leaving the unrelenting Ukrainian winter, I was ready for another book, albeit something much lighter. I gulped when I read the Robert Louis Stevenson quotation in the preface: "Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences." But 20 pages in, I was saying aloud, "Thanks, Hank, I needed this." Hank is Hank Phillippi Ryan, and her multiple-award-winning career in investigative reporting and experience with political campaigns are put to use in The Other Woman, published in 2012 by Tor. It's coming out in paperback tomorrow, July 2nd, perfect timing for tucking into a beach or airline carry-on bag.

It's one of those books that lets you relax while the point of view shifts from one character to the next, and you only gradually see where everyone fits into the plot. Ryan skillfully ties together a political campaign, a series of deaths, and personal betrayals through the investigations of her two main characters, investigative reporter Jane Ryland and Boston PD Detective Jake Brogan.

The sweetness of Jake and Jane's near-romance, the All-hands-on-deck! approach to the political and personal shenanigans, and writer Ryan's spin-the-bottle pointers to an "other woman" made me smile as I sat in the shade, sipping a vodka collins. This is the first in a new series, with the next, The Wrong Girl, due on September 10th.

A quick note before we move to books I hope to read. I loved Ghostman, Roger Hobbs's incredibly original and gritty debut (Knopf, February 2013), featuring fixer Jack Delton, who has 48 hours in which to clean up a botched Atlantic City casino heist. I'll tell you more about this book soon.

I like Tom Piccirilli's noir, in which he contrasts and compares ideas about right and wrong, honor, and redemption in law -breaking and -abiding folks. (Don't you love the incongruity of a professional killer in Pulp Fiction, who insists that a colleague say "please" and complains about someone who has purposefully scratched his car?)

Last year, I read Piccirilli's series first, The Last Kind Words (discussed here). It introduces a memorable clan of grifters, the Rands, whose traditions include stealing and giving their children names of dog breeds. Until the events described in this book, they had prided themselves on never crossing a line to commit crimes of violence. In the second of the series, The Last Whisper in the Dark (Bantam, due July 9), Collie Rand is dead, and his brother Terrier ("Terry"), is deeply unhappy and attempting to go straight.

A couple of debut novels involving life after death are intriguing me:

The first is Ofir Touché Gafla's debut, The World of the End, translated from the Hebrew by Mitch Ginsburg, and published last week by Tor. Publishers Weekly calls it "part romance, part mystery, and part science fantasy." Its protagonist is Ben Mendelssohn, an epilogist whom writers hire to compose suitable endings to their books. When he loses his beloved wife, Marian, in "an aeronautical event," Ben decides the right ending to their life together requires him to join her in the Other World. It's a very elaborate and confusing place, which forces Ben to hire an afterlife investigator, the Mad Hop, to help him find Marian.

The second book, The Returned (Harlequin MIRA, due August 27), by poet Jason Mott, generated tremendous buzz at the recent Book Expo America and has received rave reviews from the four major review sources.

The tale involves people ("the Returned") who suddenly, without explanation, reappear on earth after death; they are the same age at which they died. The practical issues alone are mind-boggling, but I'm interested in the more poignant issues of mixed feelings resulting from these reappearances, and what people will decide to do about them.

I'm also excited about reading books by two authors whose previous books I loved:

The Way the Crow Flies (HarperCollins, 2003) is by Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald, who also wrote Fall on Your Knees. It's a story about the destructive nature of secrets.

Members of the McCarthy family of Ontario, Canada, are happy until 1962, when Jack, a member of the RCAF, takes on the top-secret job of protecting a Soviet defector, a scientist en route to the U.S. to work for the space program. The highly moral Jack discovers that the scientist is an ex-Nazi. Meanwhile, the 8-year-old Madeleine keeps secret the molestation by a teacher at her school. Their secrets create a moral dilemma with devastating consequences when one of Madeleine's friends is murdered.

I've been looking forward to Marisha Pessl's next book since 2006, when I read her debut murder mystery, Specialty Topics in Calamity Physics.

On August 20, Pessl's Night Film will be published by Random House. It involves New York reporter Scott McGrath's investigation of the apparent suicide of Ashley Cordova, daughter of notorious "night film" director, Stanislas Cordova. Assisting McGrath are Holmesian "irregulars" Nora and Hopper.

Pessl uses crime as a springboard to tackle larger social issues, and her writing is very creative. Night Film should be very fun.


My family travels a lot on weekends during the summer. Road trips mean cramped space, so my husband and I share more books than usual. Traditional mysteries stay home. Satire, sci-fi, police procedurals and nonfiction go. Before I tell you about books back on my shelves, I'll show you what I'm taking and tell you why.

I knew Martin Clark's The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) was a go when I read the first page and came to this:

On the morning that Evers got his first glimpse of the albino mystery, he'd been walking into the sun, scraping down the sidewalk, burping up squalls of alcohol and two-in-the-morning microwave lasagna. He had just passed by a can of garbage spilled in an alley when he thought he heard someone say his name. Evers was dizzy, the sun was sharp and combative, and he was trying hard to get to his office, so he didn't stop moving right away.

"Judge Wheeling? Sir?"

That's North Carolina Judge Evers Wheeling's introduction to car saleswoman Ruth Esther, who offers him a bribe if he'll find her brother not guilty. Of course, Evers does and then he joins a motley gang on what sounds like a trip down the rabbit's hole to Utah, on the trail of a fortune hidden by Esther's father.

Author Clark is a circuit court judge in Virginia. His legal expertise, combined with eccentric characters and vivid writing, make this black comic caper a book I can't wait to read.

My husband and I are both fans of nautical historical fiction. The Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower Saga. James McGee's Rapscallion: A Regency Crime Thriller (Pegasus Crime, May 15), set onboard a floating prison, is irresistible.

Napoleon is at war with England in this third Matthew Hawkwood book. At the request of London's Home Secretary, Bow Street Runner Hawkwood disguises himself as an American captured fighting for the French and goes undercover to discover how prisoners of war are escaping from the Rapacious.

No matter how sticky and uncomfortable we are in the car, we must compare favorably to those poor souls imprisoned in "gut-wrenching conditions." And this series is of the rip-roaring adventure variety. Perfect for summer.

Who didn't love the movie In Bruges? There's no way I'll miss Pieter Aspe's English-language debut, The Square of Revenge, published last month by Pegasus Crime. World-weary Bruges DI Pieter Van In pairs with gorgeous prosecutor Hannelore Martens to investigate an unusual jewelry store robbery. The gems weren't taken, but dumped into a tank of aqua regis, an acid so strong the gold melted. The criminals left behind a letter containing a cryptic clue. Strangely, Ludovic Degroof, store proprietor, seems more interested in covering up the crime than having it solved.

I'm always pleased to find a European crime series newly translated into English. Especially one like this, with an interesting protagonist. A lighthearted Belgian mystery, full of banter. What could be better?

Benjamin Black's Holy Orders: A Quirke Novel won't be released by Holt until August 20th but that will be in time for an end of summer trip over Labor Day.

After playing a supporting role to Inspector Hackett in last year's Vengeance, Dublin pathologist Quirke returns with a case that's personal. The dead body of Jimmy Minor, a friend of Quirke's daughter Phoebe, is found floating in a canal. Hackett and Quirke must discover what story journalist Minor was working on at the time of his death.

I suspect this isn't the best book for people unfamiliar with Black's series to begin reading. Christine Falls introduces the laconic and heavy-drinking Quirke. I like this series for its moody atmosphere, 1950s Dublin setting and the beauty of Black's prose. Black is the pen name of Booker Award winner John Banville.

I love Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole and dread the day the series ends. At least I didn't have to worry about that when I opened The Redeemer (translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett), sixth in the nine-book series and re-released in the United States by Knopf in May.

The unreported rape of an unidentified girl by an unidentified boy at a Salvation Army summer camp begins a book in which the lines between right and wrong are blurred and guilt is a matter of degrees. There isn't a character who isn't looking for a form of redemption, including Nesbø's deeply flawed protagonist.

It's Christmas time in Oslo 12 years later, and Harry is investigating a drug-related death when Salvation Army volunteer Robert Karlsen is shot on the street. The Croatian hit man almost immediately realizes he's killed the wrong man, but by then Harry is on the case. Luckily for Harry, a snowstorm prevents the killer from leaving town, but he's as determined to make good on his mistake as Harry is to hunt him down. Nesbø goes into the killer's history and head to such an extent we can empathize with him. And Harry is Harry. What more does one need to say?

This is one of Nesbø's most richly detailed and intricately plotted books and not the best place to begin. I'd suggest beginning with The Redbreast or Nemesis.

Unlike my good friend Georgette, I feel cooler when I share my beach blanket with characters in a hot or humid setting. Hot. Humid. Mississippi.

When Ace Atkins' The Broken Places (Putnam, May 30) begins, Esau and Bones are breaking out of Parchman Prison, bound for a small town in northeast Mississippi. Already in residence is their old comrade-in-crime, Jericho native Jamey Dixon, pardoned after being convicted of killing his wife. Claiming he found Jesus at Parchman, Jamey is preaching out of a barn and romancing Caddy Colson, sister of former Army Ranger and current sheriff Quinn Colson.

Jericho is already dynamite awaiting detonation when the escaped cons arrive to accuse Jamey of cheating them out of the loot from an armored car robbery. Locals, who've never trusted Jamey, are talking vengeance. It's a perfect trifecta of trouble for Quinn when a tornado blows into town.

Ace Atkins fans already know the pleasures of reading his atmospheric Deep South books. High-wire tension, syrupy-drawling dialogue, characters you can smell and scenery you can clearly see. Quinn is an appealing character, much like Lee Child's Jack Reacher. This is the third book in the series and it's as good as the first two. No need to begin with the first, The Ranger.

We wish we could go on forever, telling you about books we'd like to put under your noses, but we need to stop somewhere. You might want one of these for your next summer read (publication date in parentheses).

Jussi Adler-Olsen: A Conspiracy of Faith (June 5) (translated from the Danish)

Lauren Beukes: The Shining Girls (June 4)

Jim Crace: Harvest (February 13)

A. S. A. Harrison: The Silent Wife (June 25)

Stephen King: Joyland (June 4)

Rachel Kushner: The Flamethrowers (April 2)

Elizabeth Silver: The Execution of Noa P. Singleton (June 11)

Carsten Stroud: The Homecoming (July 16)