Books Read in March 2024

Even though I am getting my summary of reading for March 2024 out very late, I am happy because I have actually written reviews for six of the nine books I read. For me that is very good. And I enjoyed almost all of the books. So March was a good reading month. 

Of the fiction books I read this month, six were published between 2007 and 2020. Only two were published before 1960. That is a big change in the direction of my reading. I read too many exceptional books to pick a favorite for the month but I am glad I reread another book by Rex Stout. And I am in the middle of a book of three novellas in the Nero Wolfe series, Curtains for Three. 

This week I participated in the Classics Club Spin, where 20 books are listed and a random number between 1 and 20 is selected. The book that resulted from the spin for me to read for this spin was The Warden by Anthony Trollope. I am happy with that pick because I haven't read anything by Trollope before.

Here are the nine books I finished reading in March:

Nonfiction

The Book of Books (2007) by Les Krantz and Tim Knight

The subtitle of this book is "An Eclectic Collection of Reading Recommendations, Quirky Lists, and Fun Facts about Books." It has a more formal approach than the Book Lust series by Nancy Pearl, although it was published around the same time. This book is made up of lists of books about specific subjects, or genres and subgenres. Each book on the lists is summarized briefly. Some of the lists came from outside sources and some were put together by the authors.

Fiction

My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) by Elizabeth Strout

While Lucy Barton is in a hospital in New York City for many weeks due to complications following an appendectomy, her mother visits her and they have some strained conversations about the past. The story is set in the 1980s, and Lucy narrates it, years after it happened. See my review. 

The Glass Hotel (2020) Emily St. John Mandel 

This story revolves around Paul Smith and his half-sister Vincent Smith, and starts when they are teens. Many other characters that they interact with then and later in their lives are important to the plot. Set in Canada. See my review. 

Crime Fiction

The Silver Swan (2007) by Benjamin Black

Set in Ireland in the 1950s, this is the 2nd book about Quirke, a pathologist working in a hospital in Dublin.  Benjamin Black is a pseudonym of John Banville. See my review.

Defectors (2017) by Joseph Kanon

This is the first book I have read by Joseph Kanon, and it definitely won't be my last. I have six more of his books on my shelves. The Defectors focuses on a group of American and British spies living in and around Moscow during the Cold War, after defecting. My focus was on the relationship of the two brothers in the story, Frank, the US spy who defected to Russia in 1949, and Simon, his younger brother, who had to leave his job in intelligence to work in publishing after Frank's defection. In 1961, Simon has been allowed to come to Moscow to work with Frank on publishing his memoirs. He has not seen or heard from Frank in the years since his defection. I loved the exploration of family relationships, but the story has plenty of action also.

Your Republic is Calling You (2006) by Young-ha Kim

The story takes place over the course of one day in the life of Ki-Yong, a South Korean with a wife and teenage daughter. Except that he is really a North Korean spy who has been living in Seoul, working as a film importer, over 20 years, and has now been recalled to North Korea. See my review.

A Beautiful Place to Die (2008) Malla Nunn

This is a historical mystery, set in a very small town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique in 1952. New apartheid laws have recently gone into effect. The protagonist is an English police detective who is investigating the death of an Afrikaner police captain. See my review.

A Scream in Soho (1940) by John G. Brandon

This was one of the earlier books in the British Library Crime Classics series, and it was the only book this month that I was disappointed with. It is not a bad book, it is just that it is more a thriller than a mystery, along the lines of Edgar Wallace's novels, per the introduction by Martin Edwards. Published during the war, the plot centers around a spy hiding in Soho. It also had a good bit of overt racism and sexism which was distasteful, although not that unusual for book of this period. 

Plot It Yourself (1959) by Rex Stout

This book is part of the Nero Wolfe series; Wolfe is a private detective and his assistant is Archie Goodwin. In this case, the story revolves around authors, publishers, and accusations of plagiarism. The first novel, Fer-de-Lance, was published in 1934. See my review.

Currently reading

I started The Mistress of Alderley by Robert Barnard last night, and surprised myself by reading 100 pages. Caroline Fawley has given up her acting career quite willingly to live in an elegant home in the country. Her wealthy lover Marius purchased a country house for her to live in, but her children worry that she is depending too much on his generosity, with no promise of marriage. This book has a surprise appearance by Inspector Oddie and Detective Charlie Peace from Barnard's Charlie Peace series; I have read all except the last two books in that series.

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken in late March in our back yard after we had a good bit of rain. The lighting was perfect. We had a lot of weeds in the back at the time, and we still do. Lots of work to be done. 

The photos were taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

 

Two Brief Reviews

I read these books in March. Both were good books and very different stories. Each was challenging to read at times, and both were well worth the effort.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

The story is about a woman, Lucy Barton, who was in a hospital in New York City in the 1980s for many weeks due to complications following an appendectomy. Her husband doesn't visit her very often because they have two young daughters at home and he has a job. Her mother comes to sit with her for a few days when she is in the hospital and they have some strained conversations about the past. This leads Lucy to remember her strange and unfortunate upbringing and her relationship with her parents and siblings. 

Lucy tells the story; thus it feels very personal. She is telling it years after it happened. That approach worked very well.

My thoughts...

•  I loved this book. I do have to caution that this is not a happy, feel good book; I found it unsettling and sad at times.  Also sometimes it was very funny. 
• On the other hand, it is only about 200 pages long and it had me longing to read more about Lucy and her life. Fortunately there are three more books about Lucy Barton. 
• I like the themes, childhood experiences and mother-daughter relationships. This was only my second book by Strout; I read Olive Kitteridge a few years ago. 

A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

This is a historical mystery, set in a very small town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique in 1952. New apartheid laws have recently gone into effect. 

The protagonist is an English police detective who is investigating the death of an Afrikaner police captain. The Security Branch takes over the investigation. They would like to blame the death on black communist radicals, and will be happy to beat a confession out of any suspect that fits their bias. Detective Emmanuel Cooper is directed by his superior to stay in the area so that he can ensure that the real murderer is arrested, if possible.

The story gets very complex. Emmanuel, an emotionally traumatized World War II vet, has problems of his own. The dead Afrikaner policeman's sons have it in for him, and he spends a lot of time avoiding them. He is lucky to be working with a native Zulu officer, Shabalala and a Jewish doctor who has no real credentials in South Africa.

My thoughts:

• The setting of South Africa in the 1950s was well done. There was plenty of action and a sense of dread about how the English detective could survive. 
• I could have done without some of the melodrama but I liked the depiction of apartheid at this time, and hope to continue reading the series. 
• Apartheid is not a totally new subject to me, but I don't know much about it. I am still trying to understand the differences between the various racial groups involved.
• It was a good story but a difficult read. The same thing applies to the other book I read that was set in South Africa during apartheid, A Lonely Place to Die by Wessel Ebersohn. That one was published in 1979 and set around that time. 

Six Degrees of Separation: From Ruth Ozeki to Louise Penny

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 is The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. I know nothing about this book so I am using just a few sentences from the Goodreads summary to describe it:

After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house – a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

This time I am using a simple approach, linking from a word in the current title to a word in the next title. 

Using "Emptiness" in the starting title, my first link is to An Empty Death by Laura Wilson. That book is the second in a historical mystery series set from the early 1940s into the late 1950s, a period I enjoy reading about. The novel provides a vivid picture of the wartime years in Great Britain, and how the war affected family life in particular. Set in 1944 after several years at war, it also focuses on the deprivation that was experienced during those years.

From An Empty Death, I move on to A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson. This book has two story lines, one set in the 1940's in Germany and Portugal, the other set in the late 1990's in Lisbon. The later time line features a police detective whose investigation of a teenage girl's murder links back to the experiences of a Berlin factory owner forced into Hitler's SS in 1941. The story is suspenseful and compelling, the characters have depth, but there was too much violence and sex for me. This book won the CWA Gold Dagger in 1999.

From A Small Death in Lisbon, I next link to The Lisbon Crossing by Tom Gabbay. Comparing the two books, this story is much lighter and very picturesque. Jack Teller is a US citizen visiting Lisbon with international film star Lili Sterne in 1940, to help her locate a childhood friend, Eva Lange. This is the 2nd in the Jack Teller series and each book is set in a different city and time period. 

The Lisbon Crossing leads me to The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. That book takes me out of the World War II period to a more contemporary mystery. This is the first book in the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries. The main character is a forensic archeologist who often ends up working with the police when there are questions about skeletal remains. There are 15 books in the series but I have only read the first four. 

My next link is A Beautiful Place to Die (2008) by Malla Nunn, a story set in 1950s apartheid South Africa. This is the only one of the six linked books that I have not read.  And it has been on my TBR pile for five years now! 

Description at the publisher's site:

In a morally complex tale rich with authenticity, Nunn takes readers to Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. It is 1952, and new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect, dividing a nation into black and white while supposedly healing the political rifts between the Afrikaners and the English. Tensions simmer as the fault line between the oppressed and the oppressors cuts deeper, but it's not until an Afrikaner police officer is found dead that emotions more dangerous than anyone thought possible boil to the surface...

A Beautiful Place to Die leads me to my last link, The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny. This is the eighth book in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, set in a secluded monastery. I enjoyed the new setting. The stories set in Three Pines are charming, but I also enjoy exposure to other parts of Québec. It was interesting to get a look at the workings of a small monastery. (I am currently reading the tenth book in the series, The Long Way Home.)

All of my links are crime fiction stories, and all are set outside of the USA. Settings are in the UK, Portugal, Germany, South Africa, and Canada. 

If you are participating in the Six Degrees meme, where did your links take you? If not, have you read these books? Any comments on The Book of Form and Emptiness or A Beautiful Place to Die, which I have not read yet?

Next month (September 3, 2022), Six Degrees of Separation will begin with the book you ended with this month. (So, for me it will be The Beautiful Mystery.) For those who did not participate this month, start with the last book you read.

Annual Book Sale Purchases, Part 1

This year was the 43rd Planned Parenthood Book Sale, which goes on for approximately 10 days. We attended the first Friday (I always take the day off from work and this year my husband did too), Saturday and then both Saturday and Sunday of the next weekend. Each year is a bit different, at least in the mystery section, but on the second Saturday several boxes of older vintage paperbacks appeared and I picked up quite a few of those.

However, this post is concentrating on a few of the more contemporary books I picked up.

The Torso (1999) by Helene Tursten

From the review at Publishers Weekly:

In Swedish author Tursten's outstanding second police procedural to feature Irene Huss of the Göteborg Violent Crimes Unit (after 2003's Detective Inspector Huss), the discovery of a dismembered corpse initiates a frustrating chase for a wily serial killer.

I don't like books about serial killers, but I want to read more of this series set in Sweden. This book was the 2nd published in English, but Night Rounds precedes it and I have a copy of that so I plan to read that one sometime soon.

Ah, the confusion of foreign language series being published out of order. Such fun.

A Beautiful Place to Die (2008) by Malla Nunn

Now we move to South Africa. From the publisher's site:

Award-winning screenwriter Malla Nunn delivers a stunning and darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper -- a man caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power make life very dangerous indeed. 

In a morally complex tale rich with authenticity, Nunn takes readers to Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. It is 1952, and new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect, dividing a nation into black and white while supposedly healing the political rifts between the Afrikaners and the English. Tensions simmer as the fault line between the oppressed and the oppressors cuts deeper, but it's not until an Afrikaner police officer is found dead that emotions more dangerous than anyone thought possible boil to the surface... 

Adios Muchachos (2001) by Daniel Chavarría

From the Akashic website

The first suspense novel in English-translation by internationally acclaimed Uruguayan mystery writer Daniel Chavarría, Adios Muchachos is a dark, erotic, brutally funny romp through the sexual underworld and black-market boardrooms of post-Cold War Cuba. Seen through Chavarría’s compassionate but uncompromising eyes, present-day Havana is a crossroads for petty hustlers looking for an easy mark, two-time losers looking for a fresh start, and high-rolling international speculators looking to take advantage of them all.

This may be outside of my comfort zone, but I will find out and let you know.

Stormy Weather (2001) 

by Paula L. Woods

From the AudioFile site:

Detective Charlotte Justice of the LAPD investigates the peculiar death of African-American film director Maynard Duncan against a backdrop of Hollywood glamour, greed, and lost opportunities.

I read Inner City Blues by Woods earlier this year and was glad to find two more books in the series at the book sale.

In this series, Charlotte Justice is a black female policewoman in Los Angeles in the 1990's. Themes of how women and especially black women are treated in the police force are explored in Inner City Blues. I look forward to finding out what the remaining books cover. 

The Sirens Sang of Murder (1989) 

by Sarah Caudwell

Description from Goodreads:

Young barrister Michael Cantrip has skipped off to the Channel Islands to take on a tax-law case that's worth a fortune–if Cantrip's tax-planning cronies can locate the missing heir. But Cantrip has waded in way over his head. Strange things are happening on these mysterious, isolated isles.

Third in Sarah Caudwell's series about Professor Hilary Tamar, who is friends with four young London barristers. I have read the first book and I have copies of all of the books, but this hardcover copy appealed to me.

The Mistletoe Murder and other stories (2016) by P. D. James

From the dust jacket of the book:

As the acknowledged queen of crime, P. D. James was frequently commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write a special short story for Christmas. Four of the best of these are collected here for the first time. Swift, cunning murder mysteries (two of which feature the young poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh) that together–to borrow the author's own description–add up to a delightful "entertainment."