European Reading Challenge 2012: Wrap Up Post

This year for the first time I participated in several reading challenges. The European Reading Challenge was one of the first I joined and it was a breeze to complete because I was eager to read each novel. One of my favorite topics in reading is World War II and I am primarily interested in Europe as a setting. Four of the books I read were related to World War II.

The goal of this challenge is: To read books by European authors or books set in European countries. The books can be fiction or non-fiction. Two further stipulations: Each book had to be by a different author, and for a different country.

I enjoyed reading about each country. All the books were not equally good (or perhaps I should say, enjoyable for me), but I learned something from each one. I think the one that was set in an area I am least familiar with is The Information Officer, set on the island of Malta. Norway and its history in World War II was also new to me; I have so much to learn about World War II history.

With the exception of Winter by Len Deighton, all of these books were in the mystery genre. Several were police procedurals; one was espionage fiction. Four of them were by authors new to me (Robert Wilson, Jo Nesbo, Ken Bruen, and Mark Mills).

Initially I had a goal of reading five books for this challenge. I ended up reading nine books. 

The books I read and reviewed:
Winter by Len Deighton (Germany)
The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson (Portugal)
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo (Norway)
Dying Light by Stuart MacBride (Scotland, UK)
The Guards by Ken Bruen (Ireland)
The Light of Day by Eric Ambler (Turkey)
The Information Officer by Mark Mills (Malta)
Death of a Russian Priest by Stuart Kaminsky (Russia)
The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sebastien Japrisot (France) 

Visit this post at Rose City Reader to see other wrap up posts for this challenge.

The Light of Day: Eric Ambler

From the summary at Goodreads:

"When Arthur Abdel Simpson first spots Harper in the Athens airport, he recognizes him as a tourist unfamiliar with city and in need of a private driver. In other words, the perfect mark for Simpson’s brand of entrepreneurship. But Harper proves to be more the spider than the fly when he catches Simpson riffling his wallet for traveler’s checks."

The narrator of this book, Arthur Simpson, is a thief and a con-man. He isn't as smart as he thinks he is, and ends up being forced to cooperate with a man he had hoped to steal from. While working for him, Arthur is arrested for smuggling at the Turkish border, and then ends up cooperating with the Turkish authorities to infiltrate the band of "criminals" he is working with. And throughout it all he whines and complains about how nothing is his fault.

Opening lines of the book:

It came down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police. I had no choice but to do as this man Harper told me. He was entirely responsible for what happened to me.

Yet Arthur is very likeable and entertaining.  He goes into details of his English education, and relates how his childhood and his school experiences affected his later behavior and decisions. And in doing so, he reveals much about his character...

While Arthur is a very complex character, the rest of the group he is working with are not as well depicted.  There is a beautiful young woman (Elizabeth Lipp, the mastermind of the group), and several other men are co-conspirators. They all have important parts to play, but are not very interesting as characters. Arthur carries the book.

The Light of Day was the winner of the Best Mystery Edgar in 1964.  It was also made into a movie, Topkapi,  in 1964. I have watched that movie many times. The movie does differ from the book substantially, but knowing the gist of the story did affect my enjoyment of the book. If you have a choice, read the book first. The movie is great, although it feels dated now, but the book is better.

Jules Dassin directed the movie and the role of Elizabeth Lipp was played by Melina Mercouri.  Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for the role of Arthur. Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley also starred. In the movie, Arthur is very much the same kind of person, a bumbler and dishonest, but the movie does not give us as much depth as you get with the first person narration of a book. One major difference between the book and the movie is that the other characters are much more fleshed out. As this in-depth review says: "The Light of Day was narrated by Arthur Simpson, but Topkapi is Elizabeth Lipp’s story."

I recently read The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler, and The Light of Day is more to my taste. I plan to read more books by Ambler, and I was pleasantly surprised today to find that I have two additional books that were lost in my TBR boxes. I knew I had Journey into Fear (part of a three book omnibus), but now I find that I have Epitaph for a Spy and Judgment on Deltchev. So I am set for a while.  Also ordering Background to Danger (US title for Uncommon Danger) soon.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge
Read Your Own Books Challenge
A-Z Challenge
European Reading Challenge
Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge  

The Guards: Ken Bruen

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. The Guards is the first of the Jack Taylor novels written by Ken Bruen.

I thought I would not like this book. I resisted reading it because the subject matter was bleak and I thought it would be too dark for me. It was my husband's encouragement and recommendation that finally got me to read the book; he had heard of the book, read my copy, and liked it a lot.

I liked it too, a lot. I would venture to say it is one of my favorite reads of the year, so far.

The writing style is unique and that was another thing I thought I would not like. As my husband said in his Goodreads review: "A fast read but pay close attention as the writing style takes a bit of getting used to."

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 in more on Jack, his relationships, his life, his battle with alcohol. It isn't a happy book, but it isn't depressing either.

This is what Charlie Stella said in his long and detailed review at Noir Zine (warning: lots of detail about the plot there):

What a read, what a writer! Great stuff!

I cannot say it any better.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge
Read Your Own Books Challenge
New Author Challenge
1st in a Series Challenge
European Reading Challenge
Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge

Dying Light: Stuart MacBride

From the Book Description at Goodreads:

On the coast of Scotland, in the "Granite City" of Aberdeen, Detective Sergeant Logan MacRae is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Bumped to the homicide department's "Screw-up Squad" after a sting operation gone wrong, Logan will do anything to prove that he doesn't belong there…even if it means working overtime on two baffling cases: a fatal act of arson in a squatter's apartment and the murder of a prostitute in the city's notorious red-light district.

I really did not enjoy reading this book. I had read the first book in the series and liked it well enough to buy the next 3 in the series (when I found them at a good price). For some reason I could not get into the story. Out of roughly 400 pages, I enjoyed about 30 in the middle, and maybe 100 at the end.

I do like that the protagonist, MacRae, is fallible and not superhuman, but he really messed up a lot in this story and I had a hard time figuring out why he had the reputation as a capable policeman. Part of his problems seem to be in dealing with relationships and jumping to conclusions. In the end, it almost seemed accidental that they actually caught the bad guys.

A warning. The book (and the series) is very gritty. With a lot of swearing and graphic violence. I don't mind swearing (in books or in real life); I can handle violence to a certain extent in fiction. But I need something else to keep me going. I felt like the book moved slowly and I was not that interested in the characters and their plights. Maybe both Logan MacRae and I were having a bad week. (His was way worse than mine.)

A quote from this review (which was overall very favorable):

I do have to say that MacBride increases the graphic nature of the sexualized violence here beyond anything found in Cold Granite or in the Ian Rankin canon.

I have come to the conclusion that I like my books a little less gritty than this one. I like to read all kinds, from cozies to thrillers to spy fiction, but I do need some softening around the edges. However, I have read a lot of reviews that praise this book and the rest of the series highly, so I am not giving up on it.  I will read the next one.

To assure you that a lot of other readers enjoyed this book:
Review at Euro Crime
At Book World In My Head

What I learned about Scotland:
This series is set in the city of Aberdeen. This book (and the one before) gives one the impression that Aberdeen is dark and cold and full of crime.  I guess it is relatively cold, and like any large city, has plenty of crime.  If you check out this page on Aberdeen at Undiscovered Scotland, it looks beautiful and light and full of delightful attractions. I would love to visit.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge
Read Your Own Books Challenge
Merely Mystery Reading Challenge
Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge
European Reading Challenge
2nds Challenge

The Redbreast: Jo Nesbo

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo is a complex police procedural, following the story of a Norwegian detective investigating neo-Nazi activities in Oslo, with flashbacks to events during World War II on the Eastern Front. It is a very long book (my copy was a mass market paperback with 567 pages of small print) but I enjoyed almost every page of it.

Nesbo has written nine Harry Hole novels, and this is the third in the series. As yet, the first two in the series have not been published in English. I did not find it difficult to start the series with this book, although there were references to earlier exploits.

Harry Hole has many of the typical problems of policemen (at least the fictional ones): struggles with alcohol and smoking, depression, talented but has difficulty taking orders and dealing with co-workers. But I found him likable and interesting. He had integrity; he was confident of his abilities but not full of himself; and he was vulnerable. I liked the developing relationship with a single mother and her child.

There is a large cast of characters and they are convincingly written. I cared about what was happening to them.  I liked the short chapters and the headings for each chapter noting time and place.

I have recently become very interested in World War II and in reading both fiction and non-fiction on that time period. There is so much to learn. Although I was aware of the term "quisling," I was not fully aware of the origins of the term nor how many Norwegians aligned themselves with the Germans during World War II. This books was very educational for me, and entertaining at the same time.

The unfolding of two story lines at the same time and the fact that one of them was during World War II doubled my enjoyment of this book. However, I liked the contemporary sections a lot, and I am sure I will enjoy future books in the series whether or not they share this element.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge, Read Your Own Books Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Chunkster Challenge, 
European Challenge, Merely Mystery Reading Challenge, Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge, New Author Challenge, First in a Series Challenge

Note: Even though this is not technically the first in the series, I am counting it because it it the first book in the series available (at this time) in English.

I am also participating in the April Challenge (Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group) at Goodreads, and this book counts for that challenge.

The Company of Strangers: Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson's description of The Company of Strangers in an article at the Crime Time website:

"The Company of Strangers is a spy thriller / love story which is set primarily in Lisbon in the July of 1944, has its continuation in East Berlin of early 1971 and a denouement in England in the early 1990s." 

A quote: 

     Cardew's conversation drifted toward work.

     "Yes, the fifties were terrific once we go rid of bugger boys Burgess and Maclean. Thought we were right on top of the game, only to find it was a complete bloody farce…

Khrushchev said to Kennedy once that we should give each other a list of all our spies and we'd probably find they read the same. Too bloody right."

There are two main protagonists, Karl Voss, a young intelligence officer in the German Army and Andrea Aspinall, who becomes a spy for the British during World War II in Lisbon at a very young age. The complications of their family relationships and their affair mold the rest of the story.

It is a love story, but I would not call it romantic. It is more about the harsh realities of life. It is about families, and relationships, and maturing. It seems like a lot of books I have read lately have had a theme of family relationships and how they affect us. Or maybe I am just focused on that topic right now.

Did I like this book? Yes, very much. I enjoyed the author’s storytelling and the characterizations. It did take me a long time to read. It was a big thick book but I don’t think that was the problem. There was a section in the middle where it slowed down and I would have like more explanation of that period of Andrea’s life, but then it would have been even longer. At the end, I felt that the author had set the stage well for the final events. 

This book also appealed to me because of the time period and subject matter. World War II and spy intrigue. And then it transitions into a Cold War novel and double agents. Was the depiction of spies and their double crosses and cynicism realistic? I don’t know, but I was convinced. It was real for me.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge
Read Your Own Books Challenge
A-Z Challenge
Chunkster Challenge
European Challenge
Merely Mystery Reading Challenge
Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge

Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945 by Len Deighton

This novel by Len Deighton was written following the first Bernard Samson trilogy, Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match (reviews here and here). In a sense, it is a prequel to those books. It provides some background information on a few of the characters that are prominent in the trilogy. That was a major motivator in my decision to read it. And I did enjoy it from that point of view, as a look back at what came before. The Game, Set, and Match trilogy takes place in the 1980’s in London and Berlin (primarily); Winter is set in the first half of that century. But this novel stood well on its own.

 Winter is the story of two German brothers, both born around the beginning of the twentieth century. Both grow up in Germany, and both fight on the German side in World War I.  By the end of World War II, the brothers end up on different sides, one a member of the Nazi party, the other working for the Allies. This is believable in part because they are half American by birth. Their mother is from a wealthy American family, the father is a well-to-do German industrialist.

Deighton uses this story of family and friends to show the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and how it affected Germans and how they dealt with the changes in their society. There are some limitations. The story focuses on the wealthy family and does not spend much time on how Germans of lower classes were affected. Because the novel covers events over such a long span of time (1900 - 1945), characters were not always fully fleshed out, some periods and events were glossed over. Even at 571 pages, the author could not cover everything. The book ends at the Nuremberg trials.

What did I like about Winter?

The topic of World War II and Germany is a favorite of mine; thus, I found it very interesting and illuminating. Reading the book gave me a better perspective of the events in Germany's history and broadened my knowledge in that area. From what I have read, the author did a lot of research on this book. The limitations I note above are not criticisms. I enjoyed the book from beginning to end.

Reading this book makes me want to read other books on the subject. I am currently reading The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson (a spy novel which begins in the early 1940’s and continues into the Cold War). My husband has a lot of non-fiction books about this time period. I would like to read In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larsen, and Richard J. Evan's Third Reich trilogy, especially The Coming of the Third Reich.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge
Read Your Own Books Challenge
A-Z Challenge
Chunkster Challenge
European Challenge

European Reading Challenge

This is the 6th reading challenge I have entered since February 26th. Many will overlap, but this one does pose some additional challenges.

European Reading challenge 2012

Organized by: Rose City Reader

From January 1st 2012 to January 31st 2013
Goal: To read books by European authors or books set in European countries. The books can be fiction or non-fiction. However, each book must be by a different author and set in a different country.




I am joining at the Five Star (Deluxe Entourage) level: Read at least five books by different European authors or books set in different European countries.

I am currently reading a book set in Germany, and I am listing others I hope to read this year.

Winter by Len Deighton (Germany)
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo (Norway)
The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg (Sweden)
Murder In Belleville by Cara Black (France)
The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson (Portugal)

Actual books read and reviewed:
Winter by Len Deighton (Germany)
The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson (Portugal)
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo (Norway)
Dying Light by Stuart MacBride (Scotland, UK)
The Guards by Ken Bruen (Ireland)
The Light of Day by Eric Ambler (Turkey)
The Information Officer by Mark Mills (Malta)
Death of a Russian Priest by Stuart Kaminsky (Russia)
The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sebastien Japrisot (France)