The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are back in a new mystery!  Approximately nine months after solving the Lula Landry case, things are looking slightly better for gritty private investigator Cormoran Strike.   He’s now sleeping in the flat above his office (instead of *in* the office itself) and has a steady stream of rich socialites who have hired Strike to spy on their wives/husbands/girlfriends.  But Strike is bored.  Soon, a shabby, mousy woman arrives at the office saying that her husband has gone missing.  Leonora Quine insists that though Owen may be an unfaithful husband who often disappears for days at a time, he would never leave for too long because of their daughter.  Owen Quine is a has-been writer known for novels of a very graphic nature.  The newest book that he’s just finished and is ready to publish, Bombyx Mori, is more of the same or so it first appears.  Cormoran’s gut tells him that this is no ordinary case and is soon on the hunt for the missing Quine.

After a visit to Quine’s agent, Strike learns that the new novel is more than it seems.  Apparently Quine has based the characters in his book on many of his friends and coworkers in the publishing industry.  After being told that his book was unpublishable due to possible libel lawsuits, the author threatens to publish it himself as an ebook, gathers up every last scrap of the manuscript and disappears.  When Quine is discovered murdered in a way that mirrors that of the main character in Bombyx Mori, even more questions arise.  Who had a chance to read the manuscript?  Quine had dirt of a lot of people, but who would go so far as to commit murder?

Like The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first book in the Strike series written under J.K. Rowling’s pseudonym, The Silkworm jumps right back into the middle of Cormoran and Robin’s world of mystery and crime.  There is more character development: Robin’s fiancée Matthew still hasn’t come around to Robin’s career choice and Stike is still struggling with his latest breakup with Charlotte.  And yes, there is still a lot of unvoiced tension ala “Why don’t Robin and Strike just date each other?  Then they wouldn’t be so darn miserable!” which is half the fun of these books.  Readers who enjoyed The Cuckoos Calling will not be disappointed by The Silkworm and the fact that Galbraith has left plenty of room for more Cormoran Strike novels in the future.

Check out The Silkworm @ the library!

The Cuckoo's Calling By Robert Galbraith

In THE CUCKOO’S CALLING, author Robert Galbraith (a pseudonym for the famous J.K. Rowling) creates an old-fashioned detective novel, one that, despite being set in 21^st century London, could easily fit in 1930’s Los Angeles.  In  1944,  mystery writer Raymond Chandler defined the American private detective: “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid…He is the hero… a man of honor…He is a relatively poor man. He is a common man…He is a lonely man…” In this book, private detective Cormoran Strike embodies these characteristics. A former British soldier who saw action in Afghanistan, he is down on his luck. Broke and forced to live in his seedy office, unable to pay his rent or the temporary secretary he is too kind to dismiss, he cannot see a way out of his current troubles. Fortune, in the form of a wealthy client, arrives at his door on the same day as his new secretary, Robin. Strike is asked to investigate the death of a supermodel who fell from the balcony of her third story luxury apartment. The death had been ruled suicide by the London police three months earlier, but the client, the model’s brother, is not satisfied with the finding.  Strike’s investigation leads him across class lines, from nouveau riche musicians, designers and film producers to old money families to immigrants and drug addicts. His ability to talk to all types of people, retain their information, sort through lies and truth and organize it all into a logical progression are the skills Strike uses to solve this mystery.  There are no surprising twists, no gimmicks and no improbable strokes of luck in this book. Strike solves the mystery with straight-forward hard detective work: interviews, deductive reasoning and paying attention to seemingly unimportant details. THE CUCKOO’S CALLING will appeal to the reader who appreciates a well-written, realistic mystery.

Check out The Cuckoo's Calling at the library!

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre

Alex by French author Pierre Lemaitre will be published in September by MacLehose, and imprint of Quercus Books.  What's so special about Quercus?  They were the lucky publishing group who snagged Stieg Larsson's wildly popular Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium) trilogy.  Quercus is again hoping to strike crime fiction gold with Lemaitre's newest novel.  

There are a few similarities between Larsson's Lisbeth Salander and Lemaitre's Alex Prevost. Both are strong, vibrant characters who are stuck in rather unfortunate situations.  And like Dragon Tattoo, Alex has another main character who is trying to solve a crime/mystery; in this case, police Commandant Camille Verhoeven.  But the similarities pretty much end there.

Camille has worked for the brigade criminelle for years and there is only one kind of case he won't work: kidnappings.  It isn't any wonder, considering his wife (who was eight months pregnant) was abducted on her way to the hospital and later found murdered.  But Camille's boss has forced him to be the lead investigator on a new case which involves, of course, a kidnapped young woman.  The Commandant tries his best to ignore his emotions and does what he can to try to find missing Alex Prevost.

Alex was out for a night of shopping and dinner when she was pummeled by a very large man, tossed into a van and taken to a secret location.  When she wakes, the man forces her into a rough wooden crate and suspends her from the ceiling of what appears to be a warehouse.  After who knows how many days, Alex realizes that the water and dog kibble the man has been feeding her daily, was not to keep her alive but to attract a horde of rats that live in the building.  More terrifying than being eaten alive by rats, however, is the fact that the crate is too small for Alex to even stretch out and, being a nurse, she knows her muscles are beginning to deteriorate.  

Camille is working with a very small pile of evidence.  There was witness who saw the woman get thrown into a van, there is a little bit of vomit on the street and not much else.  Camille knows that the more hours that pass, the less likely they are to find their victim alive.  After a stroke of luck identifying the van that the criminal used, the police now know who they are looking for.  When they find the man, he throws himself off a bridge into oncoming traffic rather than tell the police who Alex is or where he has hidden her. Back to square one and the clock continues ticking.  More investigation into the kidnapper leads to the discovery that the man's son went missing year or so ago.  When they go to ask questions at the former home of the son's girlfriend, they discover the son's body.  Is Alex really just the victim of a kidnapping or is she a murderer?  By the time Camille and his men have discovered the warehouse where Alex was taken, she has managed to escape.

This book is full of twists and turns and is a fascinating detective story.  A word of warning, however for the folks who were put off by the sexual violence in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo- this also appears in Alex.  But it is a thriller that will keep you guessing.  A thriller that might just answer the question: is there a worse way to die than being eaten alive by rats?  

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre is available everywhere September 3rd.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Winner of the National Books Award in 2012, The Round House is just as much a coming of age story as it is a crime drama.  Our narrator, thirteen-year-old Joe, is faced with an event that will change life on a North Dakota reservation as he knows it.  His mother Geraldine is attacked and assaulted on a Sunday in the summer of 1988.  With no one else to turn to, her husband Bazil (the local tribal judge) confides in Joe and together the two begin to piece together the details of the attack.  Reservation politics make it difficult to determine where the crime was committed and who should be held responsible and Joe and his father fight for normalcy as they watch Geraldine sink lower and lower into solitude and fear.  As the summer days pass by, Joe and his three friends manage to find out who the attacker is and go to great lengths to seek justice.  Readers who enjoyed Erdrich’s other family sagas such as Love Medicine will recognize many of the names (Mooshum, Nanapush) that crop up time and again.  This book is filled with the quiet grace and heart-breaking complexity of Erdrich’s other novels and paints a truthful portrait of a family who struggles to survive the emotional aftermath of a horrific crime.

Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye

New York City in the 1840’s was a crowded and lawless place. Refugees from the Great Famine in Ireland were flooding in, crowding the already crowded slums. Nativist New Yorkers resented the immigrants, feared their poverty, hated their religion and expressed these feelings through physical violence. Responding to this violence, city leaders created a police force, an organization which was hated by nearly all. Under these circumstances, Timothy Wilde, a young man in need of employment, reluctantly accepts a position on the force offered to him by his brother. Unwillingly, he becomes a skilled and dedicated officer, particularly after he discovers a young girl wandering the streets, covered in blood, muttering about another child being ripped apart.  Eventually, he discovers a mass grave containing nineteen mutilated skeletons in varying degrees of decomposition. Spurred on by a sense of duty and outrage, Timothy’s investigation takes him to all parts of old New York City and he meets all manner of its citizens, men and women, rich and poor, immigrant and nativist. Pre-Civil War New York is vividly described in this book and the combination of fictional and historical figures makes the gruesome plot of Gods of Gotham plausible.

Derby Day by D.J. Taylor

Readers familiar with the novels of Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters, be it through book, movie, or Masterpiece Theater, will recognize many of the character types in this amusing book.  The unscrupulous cad scheming to marry for money; the befuddled elderly rich man; the cold, self-absorbed daughter; the bankrupt squire hounded by creditors; and the poor young governess who must take a position at a desolate country house are just some of the familiar Victorian characters who populate this book.  The focus of the book is the popular horse race, the Derby, held at Epsom Downs in June of each year. For months before the race, lowlifes, aristocrats and all classes in between plot to make their fortunes off the race and honest citizens are hard put to protect their interests.  The unscrupulous Mr. Happerton defrauds the rightful owner out of possession of a favored horse, Tiberius, and employs a safecracker to raise enough funds to place a large wager on the race. But it is not clear whether he intends to bet on or against his own horse?  On race day the masses flock to Epsom Downs and the various characters Mr. Happerton has used, abused, tricked, cheated and deceived converge on the grounds, looking for payment, justice or revenge. But justice is not always easily achieved and Mr. Happerton is a slippery character.  Nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize, Derby Day is an exciting crime caper but the best of the book is the author’s picture of life and society in Victorian England.