Diving into the Wreck: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

This book is in the science fiction genre, and the diving referred to in the title is diving into wrecked space ships, not ships at the bottom of an ocean. Which might be obvious if you can get a close enough look at the cover. My son loaned me this book and encouraged me to read it, and I am so glad that he did.

The protagonist in this story is a woman who makes her living diving into derelict ships out in space. She is always referred to as Boss. No other name is ever given. She is a loner; she knows a lots of people who work in the same business as she does, and she works with crew members who have skills in diving or technology. But she seems to have no real friends. Boss has had a hard life and has developed a hard shell over her emotions because of it.

Sometimes she goes on salvage operations to bring in some money, but her real love is history and she likes to study the ships. She also takes out groups of tourists to give them the experience of wreck diving in space. One day, when Boss is returning from a salvage mission, she sees a blip on her ship's sensors that leads to a strange ship – a ship that is obviously ancient and possibly very, very dangerous. 

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, Boss hires a crew to dive into the ancient ship and find out what is there. She has suspicions that this is a ship that came from earth and could be dangerous, but she does not tell her crew this. She wanted to get verification from them without prejudicing them beforehand. However, once they arrive at the abandoned ship, some of the crew are angry that they were not warned, and one woman, Squishy, is scared so badly that she wants them to abandon the dive and return home. During one of the dives, a crew member has to be abandoned in the ship. That incident is the beginning of more adventures related to the ancient ship. 

My thoughts:

I liked the writing style. It was spare, and there was a lot of dialog at times. But the pace was good and it kept me interested. The first two parts of the book were first published as novellas previously but changes were made for this publication. Each of the three parts is about a separate expedition (although they all tie in to the discovery of the ancient ship); for me the transitions between the three parts worked well. And I liked that I could stop easily between each one. 

The characterization is good, but since the story is first person narration from Boss's point of view, we only know what she thinks and feels. Several of the secondary characters that work on Boss's crews are portrayed in depth; there is a good depiction of an old cynical military man later in the story. 

The world building is done well. The story is set far into the future, in the Enterran Empire. The planet Boss lives on is Hector Prime, which is on the edge of the empire, near the Nine Planets Alliance. Boss is a citizen of the Enterran Empire, but her sympathies lie with the Nine Planets Alliance. Beyond that there is not a lot of dwelling on the science involved. Other reviewers who are more in the know than I am about science fiction say that this is a novel that people who are new to science fiction can enjoy. 

There are 18 books in this series at this point and I plan to look for more of them to read.

Please see another review at Carl's blog, Stainless Steel Droppings. Carl was the original host for the Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge (and also the Science Fiction Experience Challenge and the Once Upon a Time Challenge).

Scene of the Crime: Margot Kinberg

 

Scene of the Crime is the fifth novel in Margot Kinberg's Joel Williams series. The setting is academia; the protagonist is a college professor in Tilton University’s Department of Criminal Justice. Joel is not a policeman but he was in the past, and he has ties to the police department. Thus, the books are part academic mystery and part police procedural. I have read the four previous books in the series and this was another good one.

As this book opens, a waitress finds a body behind Maggie's Diner, a popular eatery near the campus. Coincidentally, Joel and his wife are going into the diner for brunch at the same time, and a group of students have been holding a protest in front of the diner.

In addition to Joel Williams, there are three distinct sets of characters: students at the university, people connected with the campaign to reelect State Representative Doug Kauffman, and the investigating team from the Tilton police.

Joel Williams is working on a study regarding alternative schools, specifically high schools for students who have had problems in standard high schools. Part of the study involves interviewing students who attended alternative high schools and then went on to college; several of the students involved in the death at the diner were part of his study.

Since Joel is a former policeman, he cannot help but be interested in a crime that occurs in the town of Tilton. The victim was in the study, and other students involved in the study are involved. Joel becomes more directly involved when one student approaches him because he fears that he is a suspect.

The solution was a surprise for me, but it made sense.

 

My thoughts:

The pacing is good and there are no dull spots. The plot is well thought out with plenty of possible suspects, but not so many characters that things get confusing.

The characters are fleshed out well. The two main detectives investigating the crime are professional and each has their own view of the situation; they work well together. I liked the mix of students that were described. Some of them were students from Joel’s study and had come to college from alternative high schools. Some were protesters who were unhappy about State Representative Kauffman and his stance on giving less funding to education and more to law and order. Most were working or dependent on scholarships or both.

The story does have a focus on politics and funding for education vs funding for police departments. Of course, Joel Williams has sympathy with both sides because he has worked in both areas. The issues are explored as they affect the various groups, but the book does not get preachy at any time. 

This story was a pleasure to read. It was never boring, and I was glad to hear more about Joel Williams. The books are not formulaic; each of the books has a different focus within an educational setting.

 

Also see the excellent review at FictionFan's Book Reviews.

Margot Kinberg has an interesting and informative blog where she shares information about mysteries, both vintage and contemporary. Please check out Margot’s blog.

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Publisher:  Grey Cells Press, 2024.
Length:      266 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       Joel Williams #5
Setting:      Pennsylvania, USA
Genre:       Mystery
Source:      I purchased this book.

Fall from Grace: L.R. Wright

 

The Prologue opens in Spring 1980. Several friends are attending the high school graduation of Bobby Ransome, a young man who was graduating several years late due to problems in his earlier years. The second part of the prologue takes place ten years later, in the summer of 1990, when Bobby has returned from several years in prison for dealing drugs. Bobby joins his ex-wife, Wanda, and her family for dinner, much to the dismay of her current husband, Warren. Bobby's return has caused some excitement and some dismay around the small town of Sechelt. 

A few weeks later, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Karl Alberg is out sailing with his lover Cassandra when they see the body of a man on the beach. It turns out that he had fallen from a cliff above. The dead man was Steven Grayson, who grew up in Sechelt but has been living in Vancouver for the last ten years. 

The story is told from multiple perspectives (Karl Alberg's, Cassandra's, the various members of the community that are affected by the death and by Bobby's return). At the same time that Cassandra and Karl are continuing to figure out their relationship, one of Karl's daughters is visiting for the summer and working part-time for the local newspaper. And Karl is dealing with the fact that his ex-wife is getting married again.

My thoughts:

As usual, the characters in this story are very well-drawn. This is the fourth book in the Karl Alberg series and I have found most of the books to be more of a character study than a mystery. And I like them that way.

The setting and the atmosphere are lovely. Sechelt is a real-life seaside community on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, northwest of Vancouver. As described below...

   On the Sunshine Coast that year, summertime was long and hot and dusty, and the world smelled of raspberries and roses.

   For weeks the sky remained utterly clear, and the air was hot and still.

   The waters that lapped at the western shoreline were such a deep blue they looked as if they might stain the skin. The nearer islands near the Strait of Georgia were etched fine and clear, every tree and every rock sharp-edged; the islands somewhat farther away were soft dark shapes against the sky; the most distant islands were purple shadows in the far-reaching sea.

I continue to enjoy this series and I am surprised each time at the themes the author covers and the different approaches she takes to each novel.

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Publisher: Felony & Mayhem, 2010. Orig. pub. 1991.
Length:  275 pages
Format:  Trade paperback
Series:   Karl Alberg #4 
Setting:  Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Canada
Genre:   Mystery, Police Procedural

Six Degrees of Separation: From Prophet Song to Rachel's Holiday

  

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is the 2023 Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. I have not read that book, but from what I gather it is a dystopian novel set in Ireland and written by an Irish author. That novel follows one woman trying to keep her family together as the country moves towards totalitarianism. This sounds like a very good book and I may want to read it some day. 

The books that I have linked to for my Six Degrees chain are all set primarily in Ireland, and are written by Irish authors. 

1st degree:

My first link is to an Irish crime fiction book on my TBR pile – Winterland by Alan Glynn. From the book dust jacket: "The worlds of business, politics and crime collide in contemporary Dublin when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night - one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That's the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels."

2nd degree:

Winterland can be described as dark and gritty, and that leads me to The Guards, the first of the Jack Taylor novels written by Ken Bruen. The series is set in Galway, Ireland. Jack Taylor was in the Garda Síochána (the police force of the Republic of Ireland), and thrown out because of serious problems with alcohol. He becomes, almost accidentally, a finder, a sort of private detective. One element of the writing is frequent mentions of books, especially mystery novels, and quotes interspersed here and there, often with no apparent connection to the story.  The mystery portion of the plot is slight. The emphasis is more on Jack, his relationships, his life, his battle with alcohol. It isn't a happy book, but it isn't depressing either.

3rd degree:

Like The Guards, the The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black is more of a character study than a mystery. And beautifully written. Set in Ireland in the 1950s, it is the 2nd book about Quirke, a pathologist working in a hospital in Dublin. Deirdre Hunt died and the assumption is that it was suicide; Quirke suspects that this is not correct, so he spends some time looking into her death. Dierdre also went by the name Laura Swan and ran a beauty salon, The Silver Swan. In looking into Deirdre's death, Quirke discovers that his daughter Phoebe has some connections to that salon also, and he becomes more interested. After reading this book, I was hooked on the series.

4th degree:

Benjamin Black is a pseudonym used by John Banville for some of his crime fiction books. In 2020, John Banville published Snow, set in Ireland in 1957. The Catholic Church is powerful in Ireland at that time. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been sent to County Wexford to investigate the death of a priest, found dead in the home of a well-known Protestant family. DI Strafford is also Protestant, an unusual occurrence in the Garda. He finds himself in an uncomfortable position, isolated in the small community by the accumulating snow and getting little cooperation from the family or the townspeople. 

 

5th degree:

My next link also involves Garda detectives. The Secret Place is the 5th book in the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French. It is set in a girl's boarding school and the investigation takes place in one day. Holly Mackey, daughter of a policeman and student at St. Kilda's, brings a new piece of evidence related to the death of a teenage boy to Stephen Moran, a detective in the Cold Cases division who would really rather be in the Murder Squad. Stephen takes the information to Detective Antoinette Conway in the Murder Squad. They pursue the investigation. Tana French's mysteries are very good, but none end happily, and they usually leave me a bit down.

6th degree:

To be honest, most of the books in my chain are dark and bleak. For my last link, I am switching to the opposite. Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes is from my TBR pile. One Goodreads review described it as "dark, depressive, and sad" which is strange for a book categorized mainly as chick lit. Although the story is about a woman who returns to her home town of Dublin and goes into rehab for drug addiction, I believe this is handled with humor and wit. It is the 2nd book in the Walsh Family series; I read Watermelon and liked it, so I am expecting to like this one too, although it is close to 600 pages long.

In my Six Degrees I stayed in Ireland, although two of the books do go back to the 1950s.  If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

Have you read any of these books or authors?

The next Six Degrees will be on April 5, 2025, and the starting book will be Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.

Short Story Wednesday: The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

 

The Goodbye Cat is a Japanese book, written by Hiro Arikawa, and translated by Philip Gabriel. It  consists of seven short stories, and each story is set in Japan. All of the stories are about cats. Most of them focus on one cat and the family that it lives with. Another common theme is rescued cats, cats that are brought home after being abandoned. At least two of the stories are about kittens that are too young to survive unless a human intervenes and provides warmth and the necessary nutrition. I learned a lot about that process from this book. Some of the stories are told at least partially from the cat's point of view. 

One of my favorite stories is "The Goodbye Cat." The family in that story have two cats; Diana is the oldest cat, Kota is the youngest. Kota was adopted about the same time the second son in the family is born. The parents discuss and decide on the names for the new cat and the new baby at the same time. (There is much emphasis on names and how they are chosen in these stories.) The story follows the family from the time Kota joins the family until his death of old age, when the youngest son has graduated from college. 

The second story is also very good. In "Bringing Up Baby," a married couple who have recently had a baby also acquire a cat about the same time. The father, Keisuke, is a manga artist, and most of his effort goes into his artistic work. He has always been somewhat flaky and incompetent in other areas of life. When his wife goes to stay with her parents to have the baby, Keisuke finds a tiny kitten and rescues it, and with the help of the vet and online research, learns to help it survive. So when his wife gets home with the baby, she finds a new helpless kitten in the house. But along the way she discovers that his efforts to care for the kitten have given him skills to become a competent parent too. Sounds mawkish, but really it isn't. 

"Cat Island" is about a man, his second wife, and his young son adjusting to their new life as a family together. The family takes a trip to Taketomi Island in Okinawa, referred to as Cat Island. The father is a freelance photographer who is taking photos of the cats on the island for an assignment. That story had some supernatural aspects. After reading that story I found that there are several islands in Japan called Cat Island, with unusually large populations of cats.

The last two stories in the book are about characters in a previous book by Hiro Arikawa, The Travelling Cat Chronicles, which I read in January. In that book, a cat is adopted by a man, Satoru, after he takes the cat in when it is hit by a car. He names the cat Nana, and they live together for five years. At that point, Satoru has to find a home for Nana. They travel to various parts of Japan to visit with several of Satoru's old friends to see if they can take the cat in. "Finding Hachi" is sort of a prequel to The Travelling Cat Chronicles, telling more about Satoru's first cat, Hachi, that he had for several years as a child. "Life Is Not Always Kind" tells about one more person in Satoru's earlier life that he and Nana visit on the trip. 

I liked this book a lot. I did not like all the stories equally, and there was one I did not care for, but it was very short. Most of the stories were between 40 to 50 pages in length. I am a cat lover; I don't think that is required to enjoy the book, but it certainly helps.

Silent Parade: Keigo Higashino

 

This is my third book read for the Japanese Literature Challenge 18, hosted at Dolce Bellezza. Silent Parade is about two crimes, separated by about 20 years, which have connections. In both cases, young girls have been killed. The suspect is the same for both. This summary is from the Macmillan site:

A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned out house. There’s a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn’t indicted, he returns to mock the girl’s family. And this isn’t the first time he’s been suspected of the murder of a young girl, nearly twenty years ago he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.

The neighborhood in which the murdered girl lived is famous for an annual street festival, featuring a parade with entries from around Tokyo and Japan. During the parade, the suspected killer dies unexpectedly. His death is suspiciously convenient but the people with all the best motives have rock solid alibis. DCI Kusanagi turns once again to his college friend, Physics professor and occasional police consultant Manabu Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo, to help solve the string of impossible-to-prove murders.

My Thoughts:

• My copy of the book was only 344 pages long but it seemed longer. I think that is because the plot is so complex; the story has several twists and turns, but the plot dragged at times. It was worth it in the end; the final solution was satisfying. 
• The book is full of very interesting characters, and many of them get fleshed out throughout the book. I felt like we got to know several of the police detectives, plus Manabu Yukawa (also playfully referred to as Detective Galileo, which he dislikes), better than in any of the previous books in the series. Plus many of the secondary characters related to the crimes (family members of the victim, friends of the family, etc.) are well defined also.
• I don't see these books as traditional mysteries like those written by Agatha Christie, but the author sprinkles references to Christie's books throughout the story. Also another vintage mystery author, John Dickson Carr.
• For once I saw how Manabu Yukawa puts his physics background to work. That also may have happened in the previous book in the series, A Midsummer's Equation, which is my favorite in the series so far. He did a few experiments in that book too.
• This book gives the reader a good look at the police procedures and legal limitations in Japan, versus in the US. 

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Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2021 (orig. pub. 2018)
Translator:  Giles Murray 
Length:       344 pages
Format:       Hardcover
Series:        Detective Galileo
Setting:       Tokyo, Japan
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:       Borrowed from my husband.