false 17 98 98 true 5795183 read 0 true 738377 currently-reading 0 true 738376 to-read 4 false 1063506 diane http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/80322743 to: Hardball (Hardcover) by Sara Paretsky
V.I Warshawski endures injury hostility, virtual refugee status to solve a mystery, this one reaching back in the racially-charged 1960s Chicago. Sara Paretsky's V.I. is, as usual, an admirable feminist, as is Paretsky, by the way, and her knowledge of the bad guys of both the past and the present play a role in the initial mystery of the book. Paretsky uses faceless Homeland Security thugs to further the plot line, and more impressive to me is her citing of the School of the Americas as a training ground for many of those thugs.

The disappearance of a young black man immediately after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s visit to Chicago in the '60s is the initial impetus for V.I.'s quest. Trying to find out what happened to this man then opens the door to a the mystery of a murder for which another young black man spent years in jail and to a potentially career-destroying political scandal. Along the way, readers encounter nuns who are working on behalf of illegal immigrants, former black activists now trying to stay out of the way of the authorities, and a cute musician who has just moved into V.I.'s building. Lotty, Mr. Contreras,and the dogs are there to provide aid and comfort.

V.I has to encounter some ugly truths about her own family history, but not so many ugly truths that they besmirch the family pride.

V.I is growing older. I'm trying to remember if she was always written as such a prissy, pedantic character. In fact, many of the characters border on caricature, including Petra, V.I.'s young, gabby niece. I kept wanting to say, "Pull it back a notch. We get the idea." And surely even such a naive young woman as Petra is wouldn't be so daft as to spill some very dangerous beans at a huge politcal gala. But maybe that's what texting young women do nowadays.

Even so, I still have a soft spot in my heart for V.I. and her goodness and her smarts as she outwits the bad guys once again. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78782473 to: The Fifth Woman (Wallander #6) by Henning Mankell
Reading two Kurt Wallander/Henning Mankell books in a row--in the middle of a sometimes grey November--is almost enough to put a person into a permanent funk. The Fifth Woman, however, is an interesting study in obsession, both Wallander's and the person responsible for the serial killing of men who have brutalized women at one time or another. A nice addition to the cast of characters, Ann Hoglund, new to the Ystand police force, adds some lightness to balance Wallander's heaviness. Also, in this book, Mankell reveals more of Wallander's nature, a nature that suits the work he has to do as a cop.

His investigative work seems to be his raison d'etre. When anything resembling a personal life intrudes, he loses his balance. Yet, there's hope. At the end of book, after he's tucked in all the loose ends of the investigation, he goes in search of a dog. Life may be good for him after all--if he can tolerate it. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78781571 to: The Man Who Smiled (Wallander #4) by Henning Mankell
The Man Who Smiled begins promising enough, with a murder disguised to look like an accident on a dark Swedish highway. Then we move to Kurt Wallander, brooding on a Jutland beach, trying to decide whether to quit the Ystand police department after he has killed a man in self defense. Of course, we know he won't quit, and he manages to get deeper and deeper into a murder investigation that soon turns into a gruesome investigation of a world-wide organ theft operation.

The problem with the book starts with the knowledge of the identity of the perpetrator of the crimes, a bit of information the reader has, but not the cops. All that's left is for the plot to unravel itself as Wallander figures out who he should be after and then figures out a way to go after him. As the book winds down, the action becomes more James Bondish than Kurt Wallander-ish and finally ends with a bang that's more like a whimper.

Given all that, though, it's reassuring that Wallander, while still brooding, will remain on the force, where he turns up in the next book in the series. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76032410 to: A Necessary End (Inspector Banks, #3) by Peter Robinson
This book, A Necessary End, is aptly titled. It is the third book in the Inspector Banks Mystery series, a time when Alan Banks is still happily married and living with his family in their Yorkshire home. However, his wife and kids are conveniently out of town during the couple of weeks the action of this book takes place, so Banks can go home, listen to his music, and guzzle his scotch in peace after a hard day of sleuthing.

The deaths of two characters act as bookends to the plot, with the second death neatly wrapping up the mystery of the first. These deaths don't seem to have any relationship to each other, but Banks thinks there is more to the killing of a policeman during an anti-nuke demonstration tham appears on the surface. When he starts looking into the lives and backgrounds of the disparate people living in a commune, he finds parallels between the two deaths that his less diplomatic, more go-for-the-kill colleague Dirty Dick Burgess has missed, partly because he's too involved in getting a married barmaid into bed.

As with all of Robinson's books, atmosphere plays a large role in the events of the story. In his later books, Robinson uses the atmosphere to better effect, but the dark, cold, gloomy Yorkshire spring works to underscore the isolation of the characters as they grapple with their demons. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74838953 to: Plum Spooky (A Stephanie Plum Between the Numbers/Holiday Novel, #4) by Janet Evanovich
Reading a Stephanie Plum novel is like eating a Snicker's candy bar. I don't often give in to the temptation to buy one when I'm checking out at the grocery store, but when I do I revel in the sweetness. It's easy to spot the holes in the lame plot of Plum Spooky and it's even easier to scoff at the bigger-than-life stereotypical characters, but who cares? I found myself laughing out loud at such characters as Elmer, the fire-farter, who manages to burn up his pants and the chair he is sitting on when he accepts Grandma Mazur's invitation to dinner at Stephanie's parents' house. This dinner scene is one of many set pieces in this novel and as always, it's a scene of laugh-out-loud chaos.

Despite all the flaws in this book, Stephanie still manages to show her grit as she goes after the bail jumpers with Lulu. These are women who know how to take care of themselves while they down a dozen donuts for strength. It's a good thing Stephanie uses a lot of energy in fighting the bad guys. Otherwise, she would probably weigh 400 pounds. What a fantasy--eating all the donuts--or Snickers--you want and still have guys with names like Diesel and Ranger hitting on you. I could live with that.

]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74838621 to: Donkey Gospel: Poems (Paperback) by Tony Hoagland
Tony Hoagland's poems are full of surprises and perversity, and surprising perversity. This is a good book to read before I sit down to write. Even though he's writing from a man's perspective and a man's history, what he does with that perspective and history is universal. This is a book to keep on hand to reread. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73850226 to: Jar City: A Reykjavik Thriller (Erlendur Sveinsson, #3) by Arnaldur Indriðason
This is another of those mysteries set in the cold north, this time Iceland. Is there a rule that says these men of the frozen north must be brooding, depressive, middle-aged, and divorced? The main character of this book, Erlunder,is a father of two problem children, both of whom add to his angst. It is an irony that the mystery of this story is not so much who committed the crime, but the family mysteries that motivated the crime. Those family mysteries relate to rape, genetic guilt, and loss.

In order to solve the crime that opens the book, Erlunder must also solve the mystery of the familly affected by the crime. Erlunder also gets called up to solve the mystery of a disappearing bride, a subplot that involves his daughter, but adds nothing to the main plot.

However, the setting of the novel, Iceland, with its ethnically interrelated population, adds a necessary element to the mystery. It's hard to visualize such a plot working in the diverse melting pot of America. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/47419832 Ed's review of The Day of the Locust
by Nathanael West

I read TDOTL years ago too. It was quite an adventure, as was Miss Lonelyhearts. Nathaniel West died much too soon. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73202707 to: Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #3) by Alexander McCall Smith
I've been reading the books in this series backwards, not on purpose, but because I first was introduced to The No. 1 Ladies Detectives when I found one of the later books at a local bookstore. Maybe the fact that I know the future of these characters affects my attitude toward the earlier books, but I found this book, the third in the series, to be weak in a variety of ways. The plot is jerrymandered together, with several disparate elements brought into play. Part of the reason for this is that McCall Smith seems to want to develop the Mma Makutsi character, so he has to develop a concurrent subplot to give her character something to do.

Another bothersome aspect of the book is that there is no conclusion to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's situation. In fact, his presence is extraneous to the plot.

The reader must accept that Botswana is not America and that women and men have "traditional" roles in the African culture. However, it's bothersome to hear Precious Ramotswe voice her methods of manipulation of the men in her life. Also, some of the moral imperatives are stifling, given what we find in American culture.

Still, there's a delight in reading about characters who also see the positive side of life and never let the circumstances of their situations get them down. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72323970 to: Italian Shoes: A Novel (Hardcover) by Henning Mankell
The Boston Globe calls Henning Mankell the "master of atmosphere." This sense of atmosphere is what keeps me reading his Kurt Wallander mysteries, set in Sweden. This book, Italian Shoes, is not a Kurt Wallander mystery; however, it contains many of the elements of the Wallander series: a wounded main character who is lost in his own past failings; a landscape as cold and barren as the main character's life; and a parade of secondary characters as eccentric as they are deeply developed. Also, the book, while not a traditional mystery, gets at the mystery of why a man would hide himself away on an ice-locked island and how he manages to shake himself out of his isolation.

This main character, Fredrik Welin, is not one bit likable. He even kicks his beloved dog on occasion and leaves his old, ailing cat out in the cold. But he is interesting. As the revelations about his past life unfold with each new character's appearance, the plot becomes deeper and more engrossing.

Welin's story cannot have a happy ending, but it does have a resolution that leaves him open to life and what it has to offer. ]]>