The White Lioness: Henning Mankell

 

The White Lioness is the third book in the acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. Henning Mankell is a Swedish author. The book is set mostly in Sweden but there are also sections of the book set in South Africa. It was originally published in Swedish in January 1993; it was translated into English by Laurie Thompson in 1998. This book was written in the years prior to the official end of Apartheid in 1994.

The story begins with the execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife. The police investigation reveals that the victim was being stalked by an admirer, but he has an airtight alibi. As the investigation continues, the police eventually discover the first stage of an assassination plot to kill a high official in South Africa. The man who is running the operation to train an assassin in Sweden is a ruthless ex-KGB agent, who will stop at nothing to have a successful end to his assignment.

My Thoughts:

The focus on Apartheid leads to a very complex story that sometimes loses its focus. But the inclusion of that subject was one of the reasons I liked the book. I was interested to learn about Apartheid at the time this book was written. I had read historical mysteries set in South Africa in the 1950s and in the 1970s, but this story shows the attitudes and efforts to move forward in abolishing Apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s.

Kurt Wallander is a police inspector in Ystad following up on just one part of the investigation. As the case continues, he gets pulled into it deeper and deeper. At one point he goes off the rails, taking things into his own hands without letting others on the team know what he is doing.

I like that elements of Wallander's home life and family relationships are included. He is divorced. His father is elderly and lives alone; Wallander and he have always had a difficult relationship. Now his father is planning on getting married and Wallander disapproves. His daughter, who is working in Stockholm, gets drawn into the action, and although I don't care for mysteries where family members are put in danger, this subplot does provide some of the best scenes.

This is not an easy story to read, not only because of the complex plot but also because there is so much ruthless violence. Nevertheless I gave it 5 stars and I understand more and more why the novels in the Wallander books have been so well received.

Short Story Wednesday: "A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus II

 

"A Father's Story"

In some ways this story sneaks up on you. The man telling the story is in his fifties and he talks about his previous life with his wife and four children, and his life now, after his wife left and took the children. Twelve years after she left, the children are grown although his youngest, a daughter, is only twenty and still visits him once a year and meets her old friends in the area. All of a sudden the story switches to a traumatic event that happened when his daughter visited, and tells about that event and how it has affected his life and hers since then. Religion and morality play a big part in this story. Of course, family relationships also have a role.

I liked the story, although I could not fully relate to it. I love the author's writing, and how he tells the story.

This story is collected in Selected Stories of Andre Dubus, originally published in 1988. There are 23 stories by Andre Dubus II (1936–1999) in this book. Not to be confused with his son, Andre Dubus III, who is also a writer of novels and short stories.

I first learned about this author at Patricia Abbott's blog in these posts on two other stories... "Leslie in California" and "The Winter Father." 

I tried to find any book of the author's short stories at last year's book sale but failed. This year, I was lucky and found this book on the last day. 

This was my first experience reading anything by that author. I will be reading more stories from this collection.

Annual Book Sale 2024: My Son's Books

 

At the Planned Parenthood book sale that we attend every year, my son usually concentrates on the science fiction and fantasy books, plus graphic novels. He often finds one or two books for me in that area, by authors I especially like.

This year we only went to the sale in the last few days, because my husband and I had Covid when the sale began. 

Here I am featuring six of the books he purchased this year, and you will notice that a number of them are cross-genre, with a mystery element.

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

First published October 2022

Science Fiction / Mystery

From the back of the book:

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

 But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board….

The Undetectables by Courtney Smith

First published September 2023

Fantasy / Mystery & Thriller

From the description at Penguin Random House:

Be gay, solve crime, take naps—A witty and quirky fantasy murder mystery in a folkloric world of witches, faeries, vampires, trolls and ghosts, for fans of Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and T. J. Klune’s Under the Whispering Door.

A magical serial killer is stalking the Occult town of Wrackton...

Enter the Undetectables, a detective agency run by three witches and a ghost in a cat costume (don’t ask). They are hired to investigate the murders, but with their only case so far left unsolved, will they be up to the task?

 

Catchpenny by Charlie Huston

First published April 2024

Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Fiction / Suspense & Thriller

From the description at Penguin Random House:

A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

“I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.” —Stephen King

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

First published February 2020

Paranormal fantasy / Mystery

From the author's website:

In a world that's lost its magic, a former soldier turned PI solves cases for the fantasy creatures whose lives he ruined in an imaginative debut fantasy by Black Sails actor Luke Arnold.

Walk the streets of Sunder City and meet Fetch, his magical clients, and a darkly imagined world perfect for readers of Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The first installment of an effortlessly readable series that could be the illegitimate love child of Terry Pratchett and Dashiell Hammett.

Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs

First published August 2011

Horror / Mystery & Thriller / Supernatural

From the back of the book:

A Memphis DJ hires recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram to find Ramblin' John Hastur, a mysterious bluesman whose dark, driving music — broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station — is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.

A bootlegged snippet of Hastur's strange, brooding tune fills Bull with an inexplicably murderous rage. Driven to find the song's mysterious singer, Bull hears rumors that the bluesman sold his soul to the Devil. But as Bull follows Hastur's trail into the eerie backwoods of Arkansas, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell . . .

All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

Published September 2011 by Tor Publishing Group

Steampunk / Young Adult

From the description at Open Road Media:

A comedic Steampunk sensation inspired by both Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, All Men of Genius follows Violet Adams as she disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry to Victorian London's most prestigious scientific academy, and once there, encounters blackmail, mystery, and love.

Violet Adams wants to attend Illyria College, a widely renowned school for the most brilliant up-and-coming scientific minds, founded by the late Duke Illyria, the greatest scientist of the Victorian Age. The school is run by his son, Ernest, who has held to his father's policy that the small, exclusive college remain male-only. Violet sees her opportunity when her father departs for America. She disguises herself as her twin brother, Ashton, and gains entry.

Classics Club Spin #39, October 2024

 

The latest Classics Club Spin has been announced. To join in, I choose twenty books from my classics list. On Sunday, October 20, the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The goal is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by December 18, 2024.

So, here is my list of 20 books for the spin...

1. Edna Ferber – Show Boat
2. Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr.Ripley (1955)
3. Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
4. Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
5. William Shakespeare – Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
6. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818)
7. John Steinbeck – Cannery Row (1945)
8. William Thackeray – Vanity Fair (1848)
9. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
10. Virginia Woolf – Flush (1933)
11. Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958)
12. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
13. Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre (1847) 
14. Anne Brontë – Agnes Grey (1847)
15. Albert Camus – The Stranger (1942)
16. Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
17. John Meade Falkner – The Nebuly Coat (1903)
18. Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
19. Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana (1958)
20. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

This list is almost the same as last month. I replaced my last spin book, which I completed, with The Nebuly Coat. I am currently reading The Wind in the Willows, so I replaced that one with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I will be happy with any book from the list. The two books I would most like to be selected are A Wrinkle in Time by L'Engle and Cannery Row by Steinbeck. There are some that I expect to be challenging reads, such as Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare or Vanity Fair by Thackeray or The Talented Mr.Ripley by Highsmith. 

Short Story Wednesday: Shadow Voices, ed. by John Connolly

 

The subtitle for this volume of short stories is "300 years of Irish Genre Fiction, A History in Stories." The first story is from 1729, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. The last story is from 2019, "The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams" by Maura McHugh.

My husband and I bought this book because we both like short stories and we thought there would be stories that would appeal to both of us in this book. We bought the eBook edition because it is a great price and it is a very large book, at over 1000 pages. Connolly's introduction is very good, very informative. And he has provided lengthy introductions for each author and the story included for that author.

This is a difficult book to describe, so I am going to use the overview at Connolly's web site: 

Lemuel Gulliver, Dracula, Narnia — the history of Irish fiction is a history of genre fiction: horror, romantic fiction, science fiction, crime writing, and more. Irish writers have produced pioneering tales of detection, terrifying ghost stories, and ground-breaking women’s popular literature. In a single volume, John Connolly presents the history of Irish genre writing and uses it to explore how we think about fiction itself.

Deeply researched and passionately argued, SHADOW VOICES takes the lives of more than sixty writers — by turns tragic, amusing, and adventurous, but always extraordinary — and sets them alongside the stories they have written to create a new way of looking at genre and literature, both Irish and beyond. Here are vampires and monsters, murderers and cannibals. Here are female criminal masterminds and dogged detectives, star-crossed lovers and vengeful spouses.

I read three stories from the book. None of those stories were my usual reading, but they were all good stories. 

"The Man in the Bell" (1821) by William Maginn

This is a very brief story and as such I don't want to tell too much about. A young man is a bell ringer for his church. He relates the events when he got trapped in the belfry when his friends start ringing the bell. Well written.

"The Witching Hour" (1884) Margaret Wolfe Hungerford 

Hungerford was a prolific writer of romantic fiction, both novels and short stories. This story is part ghost story, part romance. Three servants have left the employment of the Vernon family. The latest to leave is the cook. The servants have all been scared by an apparition walking around upstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Vernon have a beautiful daughter, Dolores, who is engaged to Frank Harley, who is staying at the Vernon's home. He volunteers to stay up late that night and see if he can view the ghost and solve the problem. 

"Fly Away Tiger, Fly Away Thumb" (1953) Brian Moore 

The introduction to this story was especially interesting because Connolly explored Brian Moore's life, especially in relation to his writing and gave me lots of recommendations for books to look for. Moore was born in Ireland but later emigrated to Canada. Connolly notes that, in this story, Moore drew on his experiences in Naples during World War II.

The story is very strange, and tells of a magician who is abducted by a gang of outlaws, who demand a huge ransom to return him to his band of performers. He does escape of course. The story has some gruesome aspects, but it was entertaining.

I look forward to trying more stories from this book. I will try more of the earlier stories and some of the stories from contemporary authors.

Books Read in August 2024

There is one advantage to looking back on my August reading six weeks later. I was very glad to see that most of the crime fiction I read was from older books, published between 1925 and 1978. 

Here are the books I read in August...

Nonfiction / Letters

The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters (2007) by Charlotte Mosley  (Editor)

I enjoyed reading this very much, even though it was 800 plus pages long and took me over a year to finish. In some ways it was like a social history of the UK, covering the effects that different times had on the Mitford sisters. Most of the letters seem to have been between Deborah, Diana, and Nancy, but Deborah also kept in touch with Jessica, who moved to the US, became a US citizen, and lived a very different life from her sisters. Although each letter was clearly identified as to who was writing and who was the recipient, plus date written and location of the letter writer, they were not an easy read because the sisters always used nicknames when writing to and referring to the others. I would only recommend this to those who are very interested in the Mitford family; the letters allow the reader to see a different side of them that doesn't come through in the biographies. 

Science Fiction / Time Travel

A Symphony of Echoes (2013) by Jodi Taylor

This is the second book in a time-travel series. The main protagonists are historians or technical people who provide support for the historians. They all work for St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research. This book was a very fast-paced adventure. It strains one's ability to suspend disbelief at times, but it moves so fast that you hardly notice. The characters are engaging but there are a lot of them to keep track of. The story is a combination of hopping around in history, and the adventures that come along with that, and a good bit of humor and some romance. 

Crime Fiction

Birdcage (1978) by Victor Canning

This is the fifth book in a very loose series about the Birdcage group, a covert British intelligence agency. I love this series, even though the books are often very dark. See my review.

The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (1925) by Maurice Dekobra

This is a fun and sometimes entertaining espionage story from 1925, but it did not work well for me. It seemed much more like an adventure story with some political intrigue. See my review.

A Great Reckoning (2016) by Louise Penny

This book is the 12th in the Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny. I enjoyed it immensely. See my review. 

The Lady in the Lake (1943) by Raymond Chandler

This is the 4th book in the Philip Marlowe series. My favorite thing about reading Chandler's books is his beautiful prose. See my review.

Curtains for Three (1950) by Rex Stout

This book in the Nero Wolfe series consists of three novellas: "Disguise for Murder", "Bullet for One", and "The Gun with Wings". See posts on these here and here.

The Case of the Late Pig (1937) by Margery Allingham

This is the 8th book in the Albert Campion series. It is unusual for this series because it is told in 1st person narration by Campion. It is very short at 148 pages and I got confused with all the characters at times, but I enjoyed it still. Allingham is one of my favorite Golden Age authors; I put her at the same level as Agatha Christie although their writing style is entirely different. 

Currently reading

I am now reading Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton, published in 2013. This is the first book in the Joe Wilderness series. I think others in the series are set in the 1960s, but so far this book has focused on Berlin and other parts of Germany at the time World War II ended.

The three photos at the top and bottom of this post are from years ago (2011 and 2012) when we visited the Santa Barbara Zoo, the grounds of the Natural History Museum, and Rocky Nook Park. Click on the images for best viewing quality.