ALL THE DEAD VOICES

TITLE: ALL THE DEAD VOICES

AUTHOR: DECLAN HUGHES

Audio: 9 CD’s / 9 hours, 15 minutes

           Narrated by Stanley Townsend

Date: 17/03/2012

Grade: 4

Details: no. 4 Ed Loy

Library

Ed Loy is a busy man. He finds himself keeping an eye on Patrick, the younger brother of a friend of his. The young man is a talented footballer with a promising future who seems to be falling under the influence of a very violent drug-dealer. It is up to Ed to try and find out what the footballer is up to and report on his findings. This should be straightforward enough but soon after starting his inquiries Ed finds himself violently attacked by two men. And when those two men turn up dead the next morning Ed knows that, although he didn’t kill them, this could be the start of big trouble for him. And that is only the start of it. Next thing he hears is that Patrick has been violently killed by persons unknown.

In a separate case, Ed is hired by a woman who asks him to re-investigate the murder of her father 15 years ago. Her mother’s lover was arrested and convicted for the murder at the time but subsequently acquitted when it turned out that there were three other suspects who had never been investigated.

With Dublin about the celebrate the official opening of a new bridge to celebrate the peace in Ireland, Loy finds himself up to his neck in violence, investigating two cases that have their origins in the heights of the troubles.

This is a very violent yet well plotted and uncomfortably realistic mystery. In Ed Loy we meet an investigator prepared to do almost anything to solve his case. He has a cynical view of both himself and the society he is operating in as well as a softer side he doesn’t like to show.

These Ed Loy mysteries don’t really come with good guys. Everybody in the story is in one way or another involved in acts that can’t quite meet the light of day. Nobody is blameless and some have no redeeming qualities what-so-ever.

The story is very well plotted. Story-lines that appear to be completely unconnected to each other eventually come together to make a coherent whole. And while in some books that coming together of story-lines infuriates me, it makes sense in this book set in Ireland which after all is a small country with only a few million people living in it. A country where connections run deep and are cultivated both in fiction and in real life.

The narrator of this book did a great job giving all the various characters in the story their own voice. At all times it was perfectly clear whose point of view I was listening to and how that character was feeling.

I will have to see if I can get my hands on more audio books in this series. Despite all the violence, this was one fascinating, thrilling and compulsive listening experience.

THE DIME MUSEUM MURDERS

TITLE: THE DIME MUSEUM MURDERS

AUTHOR: DANIEL STASHOWER

Pages: 217

Date: 13/03/2012

Grade: 4+

Details: no. 1 The Harry Houdini Mysteries

            Copy received from BookGeeks

Own

The year is 1897 and Harry Houdini is still a struggling magician in New York. While he is determined to become a world-famous escapologist, New York and the world are not yet ready to accept him as such or give him a chance to prove himself.
With the help of his brother, Dash, and his wife Bess, Harry is just about making a living in a Dime Museum, performing a three minute trick several times per day as part of a human curiosities show, when he is summoned to the house of toy tycoon Branford Wintour by New York detectives.
It appears that Wintour has been killed by a toy automaton while alone in a room with the door locked from the inside.
Although the police have already apprehended the man who provided Wintour with the toy for questioning, Harry is convinced that the automaton was not the murder weapon and determined to prove that the toy-seller, who is an old friend, did not kill anyone. As a big fan of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Harry is sure that he can use the famous detective’s reasoning methods and discover who did kill the tycoon and how. And like his fictional hero, Harry has no faith in the investigative powers of the local police.
Dash on the other hand would prefer to leave the matter to those whose job it is to solve crimes but indulges his brother while he starts making inquiries.
When both the old toy-seller and his wife end up dead too, both Harry and Dash want to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on, putting themselves into grave danger while delving into the darker sides of New York.

Harry and his brother Dash make a fun partnership to read about. They bounce of each other well, exasperating each other yet very close, as only brothers can be. While Dash is a rather sensible and down-to-earth character, Harry doesn’t suffer from modesty, false or otherwise. He is convinced of his greatness, both as an escapologist and as an investigator, and not shy about sharing that conviction with others. He is also rather innocent and naïve though, which makes for a charming combination and gets the two brothers both in and out of some tricky situations.

On the surface there are strong parallels with the Sherlock Holmes stories here. Not only is Harry Houdini a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, he also shares the famous detective’s arrogance and doesn’t think twice about casting his brother Dash in the role of Dr. Watson. In this respect though, the book holds one or two surprises for the reader which made the story far less predictable than it might have been.

This is an easy to read story. The narrative flows and the action comes at such a pace that the pages almost turn themselves.  On the other hand, there are enough observations and descriptions in the story to give the reader a good picture of the sights, sounds and smells of New York just before the start of the 20th century.
Although the solution to the who-dunnit part of the mystery did not come as a huge surprise to me, the manner in which the crime was accomplished and the reason why both did, which was very gratifying.

Overall I would call this an entertaining, light and rather traditional mystery which was a delight to read.

THE GODS OF GOTHAM

TITLE: THE GODS OF GOTHAM

AUTHOR: LYNDSAY FAYE

Pages: 400

Date: 12/03/2012

Grade: 5-

Details: Proof copy received from BookGeeks

            Historical Mystery

Own

It is the summer of 1845 and in New York City the NYPD is born.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in Ireland, the potato blight brings the prospect of starvation to thousands and those who can, flee their home country for the land of opportunity, landing in New York where they’re anything but universally welcomed.

After a fire that destroys his home, his place of work and his savings Timothy Wilde is reluctantly recruited into the newly established copper stars by his brother Valentine.

Tim has had an ambivalent relationship with his older brother ever since their parents died in a fire when Tim was eleven and has no interest in the Democratic politics his brother is involved in or his life-style centered around drink, drugs and women.

On one of his first nights on parole, a young girl wearing only a nightdress covered in blood runs into Tim. He brings the girl with him to the place where he’s renting a room only to discover that none of the blood on her dress is hers. Before the girls feints she murmurs the words “They’ll tear him to pieces” leaving both Tim and his landlady bewildered.

When Tim questions the girl the next morning he initially gets nothing but lies from her but eventually she leads him to the mutilated body of a young boy and subsequently to a field in which the bodies of nearly 20 other children with similar mutilations are found.

The newly formed police force finds itself with a horrific case on its hands and unrest erupting in the City when word about the dead children spreads.

In a town already worried about the mass influx of Roman Catholics it doesn’t take a lot for people to start believing that those depraved followers of the Pope are killing their own children in demonic ways and even less for unrest to erupt.

With the copper stars still new and unproven, not solving a case of this magnitude would be disastrous and thus those in charge decide to deny the case exists at all while at the same time instructing Timothy to singlehandedly investigate the murders.

Timothy soon finds himself up to his neck in an investigation that appears to be going nowhere, unable to trust almost everybody around him and in danger of losing his brother, the girl he loves as well as his life.

This is a fascinating story not in the least because a lot of the events described in it are based on historical fact.

Lyndsay Faye paints a very realistic and life-like picture of New York in 1845. Not only could I see the place, I could almost smell the stink and hear the noise. No romanticised portrait of New York in this book. Instead the reader is given a raw and at times heart-breaking description of what life was like for those who had little or nothing and did whatever needed to be done in order to stay alive.

In Timothy the author has created a credible main character. Here we have someone who wants to be and do good, but also someone who is filled with anger, doubt and suspicion. Tim is a man in his twenties who is in many ways still an innocent about to have his eyes cruelly opened for him.

My only reservation about this book concerns the language used by Faye. The whole story is told as if written down by Timothy and therefore in the language as it was spoken at the time. And not just that, she also includes a lot of contemporary street talk or “Flash”.

While I admire the author for the consistent way in which she uses this language I did find that it interrupted the flow of reading for me. There were too many times when I had to stop reading and translate what I’d just read before I could continue. It is for that reason and for that reason only that I rate this book 5- rather than 5 out of 5 while fully aware that this may be a shortcoming on my part and not the author’s.

THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

TITLE: THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

AUTHOR: HARUKI MURAKAMI

Pages: 607

Date: 10/03/2012

Grade: 5

Library

What a strange, wonderful and fascinating story.

It all starts when the cats disappears. Or does it start with the strange and very intimate phone-calls from a woman who claims familiarity without revealing who she is?

Toru Okada has recently resigned his job and takes care of the household chores while his wife, Kumiko goes to work every day.

Okada is quite content spending his time at home while he tries to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life. Although his wife is getting more and more distant and is coming home from work ever later, Okada doesn’t worry or even think about it too much.

And then one day Kumiko disappears. She leaves for work in the morning, wearing a perfume Okada doesn’t recognize and doesn’t come back. She vanishes without a word or trace leaving Okada confused and eager to find her.

In the time after his wife’s disappearance Okada meets a host of strange and fascinating people who all share stories with him. Both the people and their stories are somehow important for and connected to Okada’s life and quest although neither Okada nor the reader can be sure how or why.

From a sixteen year old school girl to a World War Two veteran, an evil brother and the woman he violated, to people with deeper insights all sorts of characters have their role to play and histories to share before this story comes to its conclusion.

This is indeed a fascinating book. It is also a very well written and perfectly plotted story.

For about 550 out of 607 pages this story made little or no sense. This book appeared to be a collection of narratives with very little connection between them. And then in those final pages it all starts to make some kind of fantastical sense. All the various stories come together, and not a single detail in any of those disparate stories is without relevance. I have absolutely no idea how Murakami managed to make the nonsensical make sense, but he did.

I usually don’t have time for books that don’t make sense. If I can’t lose myself in a story that I can somehow visualise, I tend to lose interest in it.

This book hardly ever made any sense, and I could never really distinguish between fantasy and reality in this story. Yet the writing took me along. The words were well placed, the humour made me smile and the sentences flowed beautifully along. While I found myself wondering what on earth I was reading I never once felt tempted to put the book aside unfinished. What I read might not have been making a lot of sense to me, but all the apparently separate stories were interesting enough in and off themselves for me to keep on turning the pages. The fact that it all appeared to make some sort of weird sense in the end after all was a bonus, but I would have enjoyed this book if that had not been the case.

No matter how much I write, I can’t seem to do this book and the hold it had over me any justice, so I’ll give up.

Read the book and be ready to be amazed, bewildered and fascinated!

SHELTER

TITLE: SHELTER

AUTHOR: HARLAN COBEN

Date: 08/03/2012

Grade: 4

Details: no. 1 Mickey Bolitar

            Young-Adult

            Audio / 7 CD’s / 7.73 Hours /

            Narrated by Eric Meyers

Library

Mickey Bolitar is going through a horrible time in is young life. He witnessed his father’s death in a car crash, saw how his mother, unable to cope with the grieve became a junkie and now finds himself living with his estranged uncle, Myron.

Joining a new high school should be the least of Mickey’s worries but it is still a scary occasion, made easier by Ashley. She is a beautiful girl, also new to the school and before long Mickey and Ashley are close.

And then, after just a few weeks in school, Ashley disappears without a word and without a trace.

Devastated to have lost yet another person he felt close to, Mickey decides to try and find Ashley unaware that she was not the squeaky clean girl she appeared to be and that following her trail will lead him into dangerous territory.

Of course, there is also Bat-lady, the old woman living a secluded life in the neighbourhood who shouts out at Mickey one morning that his father is still alive. Although he knows better, Mickey can’t help hoping and has to know what the woman meant.

Two investigations for Mickey both involving people close to his heart. 

Two cases that may well be connected.

Several shocking revelations to follow.

The character Mickey Bolitar was introduced in Live Wire, a book in the Myron Bolitar series. At the time I wrote that the book felt a bit like a vehicle to introduce Mickey and that I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

When I started this book I was a bit afraid that the opposite might happen here. Was this really going to be a book and series about a new character, Mickey, or would it in reality turn out to be more Myron but this time with a much younger side-kick.

I’m very glad to have discovered that this is very much a Mickey Bolitar story. Myron features of course, he has to since Mickey is living in his house, but he is very much in the background. In fact he was so much in the background that I couldn’t help wishing for a little bit more of him.

Having said that, there are very obvious similarities between nephew and uncle and at times they even sound exactly the same but that didn’t bother me. In fact, on several occasions those similarities made me smile.

This was an interesting mystery and thrilling story. Yes, I could see some things coming a long time before they were revealed in the book, but this is a book for teenagers, and besides, there were quite a few things I could never have predicted.

I liked the way the friendships Mickey makes were described and I love the idea of the group of friends he ends up with, even if I’m not sure how realistic that grouping actually is.

Overall I enjoyed listening to this story, liked the characters in it and found myself caught up in the story. And I know I will read or listen to the sequel as soon as it comes out because to say that this book ended on a bombshell and cliff-hanger would be the understatement of the year.

THE BLOODY MEADOW

TITLE: THE BLOODY MEADOW

AUTHOR: WILLIAM RYAN

Pages: 308

Date: 05/05/2012

Grade: 5

Details: no. 2 Alexei Korolev

            Received from Mantle

Own

After having survived the dangerous investigation in The Holy Thief, Captain Alexei Korolev is relieved to be investigating straight forward crimes again. He knows that if those in power ever find out the exact nature of his activities during the politically very sensitive earlier investigation, he will be deported at best. At the moment he finds himself decorated and hailed as a perfect Soviet citizen, but he knows that this perception can change at any moment and anybody’s whim.

When he hears a knock on his door in the middle of the night he is therefore prepared for the worst. It turns out though that he is not facing deportation but is needed for another very sensitive and politically dangerous investigation.

Maria Alexandovna Lenskaya, a young production assistant on a film set in the Ukraine, has been found dead in what may turn out to be a case of suicide. Since she was very close to a very important party member the exact cause of and reason for her death has to be determined in a very discreet investigation and with Korolev’s earlier success in mind the security service has decided that he is the man to execute this investigation.

Almost as soon as Korolev arrives on the scene he determines that the young woman’s death was unfortunately not a case of suicide and reluctantly and with fear in his heart he starts his murder investigation. It isn’t long before he finds himself facing multiple suspects, people with questionable pasts and lots of opposition.

Partnered with a young local police sergeant, Korolev has to dig his way through lies, secret identities and intrigue before he gets to the answers, always aware that solving the crime might just mean the end for him.

These are very good mysteries as well as historical novels.

William Ryan strikes just the right balance between a police procedural and the historical reality of oppression and political manipulations. The investigation and resolution of the crimes would have made this book a page-turner in and off themselves. It’s the added undercurrent of political menace resulting in a situation where nobody can be sure that their actions and words won’t be interpreted the wrong way, that raises this book to the level of full-blown thriller.

In Korolev the author has created a believable and likeable yet very human main character. The way in which he is constantly trying to balance the successful conclusion to his current investigation with the need to be discreet if he wants to stay alive and not put others connected to him into danger as well as the frustration this leads to at times, are very convincing.

I like the way in which certain other characters appear to be regulars in these stories. The uneasy relationship and collaboration between Korolev and Count Kolya, the leader of the Moscow Thieves, is inspired and I am delighted that it seems as if Slivka, the young police sergeant, will be returning in future books.

I hope this will be a long running series and that Mr. Ryan won’t keep me waiting too long before I can read the next Korolev mystery.

LOVE YOU MORE

TITLE: LOVE YOU MORE

AUTHOR: LISA GARDNER

Pages: 356

Date: 03/03/2012

Grade: 5

Details: no. 5 D.D. Warren

Own

Detective D.D. Warren isn’t feeling very well and looking forward to a few days off work when she gets called out to a messy crime scene.

What D.D. Warren finds on a Boston kitchen floor is the body of Brian Darby who was shot by his wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni who claims she shot him in self-defence. Since Leoni has all the injuries and bruises to indicate a severe case of abuse, it would seem that this is an open-and-shut case except, Leoni’s six year old daughter is missing.

D.D. Warren finds herself working with Bobby Dodge, her former lover and still good friend. Together they try to make sense of the case they’re facing. Is this a case of self-defence? Would a trained trooper use her gun when she has so many other weapons at her disposal? Did Leoni kill both her husband and her daughter? Or is something else, something bigger going on.

Tessa Leoni meanwhile has her own, very urgent, agenda and will do anything it takes to find and save that which is most precious in her life regardless of the cost to herself and to others.

This is a very well plotted and fast-paced thriller/mystery. Told in alternating chapters from both Tessa Leoni’s and the investigator’s perspective the reader has a little bit more information about what is going on than D.D. and Bobby do. Even so, the story is filled with shocks and surprises as Leoni manipulates those around her.

I found myself changing my opinion about Leoni every few pages, never quite sure what she was up to and what had really happened in that kitchen until near the end of the book.

Gardner keeps the tension high at all times while still inserting a personal story-line for D.D. that makes the case she’s dealing with even more harrowing than it already was.

This story made me wonder how far I would be willing to go to protect those I love. What would I be capable of if it came down to the safety of my child? I don’t think I can answer that question and I sincerely hope that I will never find myself in a situation where I will be forced to find out.

These books by Lisa Gardner are a perfect example of what a page-turner actually is and I enjoyed this one so much that I ordered the next one in the series, Catch me, when I was about halfway through this story. I do hope I will have my hands on it soon.