It is summer, school is soon out. Time for fluffy drinks, maybe the beach, or at least a lawn chair out by the old clapped out Ford, and EASY READS. Following are some popular mysteries, a new and interesting mystery departure from Stephen King, a suspense filled tale of two kids in France during WW II. If the beach and fluffy drinks create too much endorphine rush, you can turn to Robert B. Gates memoir, Duty. At the end is an appreciation of Paul Gallico's 1941 "Snow goose." We hope you will find something here that will bring you in to YOUR library!
Ace Atkins: Robert
Parker's Cheap Shot
"The
iconic, tough-but-tender Boston PI Spenser returns in an outstanding new
addition to the New York Times-bestselling series from author Ace Atkins.
Kinjo Heywood is one of the New England Patriots’ marquee players—a hard-nosed linebacker who’s earned his reputation as one of the toughest guys in the league. When off-field violence repeatedly lands Heywood in the news, his slick agent hires Spenser to find the men who he says have been harassing his client.
Heywood’s troubles seem to be tied to a nightclub shooting from two years earlier. But when Heywood’s nine-year-old son, Akira, is kidnapped, ransom demands are given, and a winding trail through Boston’s underworld begins, Spenser puts together his own all-star team of toughs. It will take both Hawk and Spenser’s protégé, Zebulon Sixkill, to watch Spenser’s back and return the child to the football star’s sprawling Chestnut Hill mansion. A controversial decision from Heywood only ups the ante as the clock winds down on Akira’s future." (from amazon.com)
Kinjo Heywood is one of the New England Patriots’ marquee players—a hard-nosed linebacker who’s earned his reputation as one of the toughest guys in the league. When off-field violence repeatedly lands Heywood in the news, his slick agent hires Spenser to find the men who he says have been harassing his client.
Heywood’s troubles seem to be tied to a nightclub shooting from two years earlier. But when Heywood’s nine-year-old son, Akira, is kidnapped, ransom demands are given, and a winding trail through Boston’s underworld begins, Spenser puts together his own all-star team of toughs. It will take both Hawk and Spenser’s protégé, Zebulon Sixkill, to watch Spenser’s back and return the child to the football star’s sprawling Chestnut Hill mansion. A controversial decision from Heywood only ups the ante as the clock winds down on Akira’s future." (from amazon.com)
Mary Higgins Clark: I've
got you under my skin
"When
Laurie Moran’s husband was brutally murdered, only three-year-old Timmy saw the
face of his father’s killer. Five years later his piercing blue eyes still
haunt Timmy’s dreams. Laurie is haunted by more—the killer’s threat to her son
as he fled the scene: “Tell your mother she’s next, then it’s your turn . . .”
Now Laurie is dealing with murder again, this time as the producer of a true-crime, cold-case television show. The series will launch with the twenty-year-old unsolved murder of Betsy Powell. Betsy, a socialite, was found suffocated in her bed after a gala celebrating the graduation of her daughter and three friends. The sensational murder was news nationwide. Reopening the case in its lavish setting and with the cooperation of the surviving guests that night, Laurie is sure to have a hit on her hands. But when the estranged friends begin filming, it becomes clear each is hiding secrets . . . small and large.
And a pair of blue eyes is watching events unfold, too . . ." (from amazon.com)
Now Laurie is dealing with murder again, this time as the producer of a true-crime, cold-case television show. The series will launch with the twenty-year-old unsolved murder of Betsy Powell. Betsy, a socialite, was found suffocated in her bed after a gala celebrating the graduation of her daughter and three friends. The sensational murder was news nationwide. Reopening the case in its lavish setting and with the cooperation of the surviving guests that night, Laurie is sure to have a hit on her hands. But when the estranged friends begin filming, it becomes clear each is hiding secrets . . . small and large.
And a pair of blue eyes is watching events unfold, too . . ." (from amazon.com)
Anthony Doerr: All the light we cannot see
"From
the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful,
stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind
French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try
to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure
lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he
works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure
goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so
she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the
Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of
Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by
the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and
dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times)." " (from Amazon.com)
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times)." " (from Amazon.com)
Robert M. Gates,
Duty, Memoirs of a secretary at war (2013)
"From
the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vividly written account
of his experience serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House in 2006, he thought he’d left Washington politics behind: after working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happy in his role as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty. Now, in this unsparing memoir, meticulously fair in its assessments, he takes us behind the scenes of his nearly five years as a secretary at war: the battles with Congress, the two presidents he served, the military itself, and the vast Pentagon bureaucracy; his efforts to help Bush turn the tide in Iraq; his role as a guiding, and often dissenting, voice for Obama; the ardent devotion to and love for American soldiers—his “heroes”—he developed on the job.
In relating his personal journey as secretary, Gates draws us into the innermost sanctums of government and military power during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, illuminating iconic figures, vital negotiations, and critical situations in revealing, intimate detail. Offering unvarnished appraisals of Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Presidents Bush and Obama among other key players, Gates exposes the full spectrum of behind-closed-doors politicking within both the Bush and Obama administrations.
He discusses the great controversies of his tenure—surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan, how to deal with Iran and Syria, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” Guantánamo Bay, WikiLeaks—as they played out behind the television cameras. He brings to life the Situation Room during the Bin Laden raid. And, searingly, he shows how congressional debate and action or inaction on everything from equipment budgeting to troop withdrawals was often motivated, to his increasing despair and anger, more by party politics and media impact than by members’ desires to protect our soldiers and ensure their success.
However embroiled he became in the trials of Washington, Gates makes clear that his heart was always in the most important theater of his tenure as secretary: the front lines. We journey with him to both war zones as he meets with active-duty troops and their commanders, awed by their courage, and also witness him greet coffin after flag-draped coffin returned to U.S. soil, heartbreakingly aware that he signed every deployment order. In frank and poignant vignettes, Gates conveys the human cost of war, and his admiration for those brave enough to undertake it when necessary.
Duty tells a powerful and deeply personal story that allows us an unprecedented look at two administrations and the wars that have defined them." (from amazon.com)
Before Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House in 2006, he thought he’d left Washington politics behind: after working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happy in his role as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty. Now, in this unsparing memoir, meticulously fair in its assessments, he takes us behind the scenes of his nearly five years as a secretary at war: the battles with Congress, the two presidents he served, the military itself, and the vast Pentagon bureaucracy; his efforts to help Bush turn the tide in Iraq; his role as a guiding, and often dissenting, voice for Obama; the ardent devotion to and love for American soldiers—his “heroes”—he developed on the job.
In relating his personal journey as secretary, Gates draws us into the innermost sanctums of government and military power during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, illuminating iconic figures, vital negotiations, and critical situations in revealing, intimate detail. Offering unvarnished appraisals of Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Presidents Bush and Obama among other key players, Gates exposes the full spectrum of behind-closed-doors politicking within both the Bush and Obama administrations.
He discusses the great controversies of his tenure—surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan, how to deal with Iran and Syria, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” Guantánamo Bay, WikiLeaks—as they played out behind the television cameras. He brings to life the Situation Room during the Bin Laden raid. And, searingly, he shows how congressional debate and action or inaction on everything from equipment budgeting to troop withdrawals was often motivated, to his increasing despair and anger, more by party politics and media impact than by members’ desires to protect our soldiers and ensure their success.
However embroiled he became in the trials of Washington, Gates makes clear that his heart was always in the most important theater of his tenure as secretary: the front lines. We journey with him to both war zones as he meets with active-duty troops and their commanders, awed by their courage, and also witness him greet coffin after flag-draped coffin returned to U.S. soil, heartbreakingly aware that he signed every deployment order. In frank and poignant vignettes, Gates conveys the human cost of war, and his admiration for those brave enough to undertake it when necessary.
Duty tells a powerful and deeply personal story that allows us an unprecedented look at two administrations and the wars that have defined them." (from amazon.com)
John Grisham: Sycamore Row (2013)
"John
Grisham's A Time to Kill is one of the most popular novels of our time.
Now we return to that famous courthouse in Clanton as Jake Brigance once again
finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial-a trial that will
expose old racial tensions and force Ford County to confront its tortured
history.
Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.
The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?
In Sycamore Row, John Grisham returns to the setting and the compelling characters that first established him as America's favorite storyteller. Here, in his most assured and thrilling novel yet, is a powerful testament to the fact that Grisham remains the master of the legal thriller, nearly twenty-five years after the publication of A Time to Kill." (from amazon.com).
Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.
The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?
In Sycamore Row, John Grisham returns to the setting and the compelling characters that first established him as America's favorite storyteller. Here, in his most assured and thrilling novel yet, is a powerful testament to the fact that Grisham remains the master of the legal thriller, nearly twenty-five years after the publication of A Time to Kill." (from amazon.com).
Stephen King, Mr.
Mercedes
Mr Mercedes
in Stephen King's first attempt at a mystery/crime novel. Here is part of the
review by Megan Abbott in the NY Times on 5 June 2014:
"For
the first half of the novel, King tickles our anxieties, his detective engaging
in a classic cat-and-mouse game with the killer. But you can feel him wriggling
against the hard-boiled tradition, shaking the hinges. Soon enough, in ways
large and small, he rejects and replaces the genre’s creakiest devices. Instead
of another hard-drinking soulful detective, King presents a hero who lost
interest in alcohol upon his retirement, and whose only addiction is daytime
television. And while Marlowe (nearly always) abstains from women, and John D.
MacDonald’s Travis McGee or Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins pursue them
relentlessly, Hodges’ sexual interests are focused, monogamous and decidedly
un-neurotic. But it’s the larger genre deviations that make “Mr. Mercedes” feel
so fresh. At their purest, hard-boiled novels are fatalistic, offering a
Manichaean view of humanity. For King, however, dark humor extends beyond the
investigator’s standard one-liners, reflecting a larger worldview. Killers and
detectives make mistakes all the time (the wrong victim consumes the poisoned
hamburger; the intended target fails to start his own car), and coincidences
play a far greater role than fate. “Mr. Mercedes” is a universe both ruled by a
playful, occasionally cruel god and populated by characters all of whom have
their reasons. One man can do only so much."
James Patterson
& Marshall Karp, NYPD Red 2
"When
NYPD Red arrives at a crime scene, everyone takes notice. Known as the
protectors of the rich, famous, and connected, NYPD Red is the elite task force
called in only for New York City's most high-profile crimes. And Detective Zach
Jordan is the best of the best, a brilliant and relentless pursuer of justice.
He puts professionalism above all, ignoring his feelings for his partner,
Detective Kylie MacDonald, the woman who broke his heart when they first met in
the academy.
But even with their top-notch training, Zach and Kylie aren't prepared for what they see when they're called to a crime scene in the heart of Central Park. They arrive to find a carousel spinning round and round, its painted horses grinning eerily in the early morning dark. There is only one rider: a brutally slaughtered woman, her body tied up and dressed in a Hazmat suit, on display for the world to see.
The victim, a woman of vast wealth and even greater connections, is the fourth in a string of shocking murders that have hit the city. As the public pressure mounts, and political and personal secrets of the highest order hang in the balance, Zach and Kylie must find out what's really behind the murderer's rampage. But Kylie has been acting strange recently--and Zach knows whatever she's hiding could threaten the biggest case of their careers.
NYPD Red 2 is the next outstanding novel in James Patterson's newest series, a thriller that careens through New York City and deep into the psyche of a depraved killer you've never seen before." (From Amazon.com)
But even with their top-notch training, Zach and Kylie aren't prepared for what they see when they're called to a crime scene in the heart of Central Park. They arrive to find a carousel spinning round and round, its painted horses grinning eerily in the early morning dark. There is only one rider: a brutally slaughtered woman, her body tied up and dressed in a Hazmat suit, on display for the world to see.
The victim, a woman of vast wealth and even greater connections, is the fourth in a string of shocking murders that have hit the city. As the public pressure mounts, and political and personal secrets of the highest order hang in the balance, Zach and Kylie must find out what's really behind the murderer's rampage. But Kylie has been acting strange recently--and Zach knows whatever she's hiding could threaten the biggest case of their careers.
NYPD Red 2 is the next outstanding novel in James Patterson's newest series, a thriller that careens through New York City and deep into the psyche of a depraved killer you've never seen before." (From Amazon.com)
Following is an
older book in our collection that is worth a look.
Our library
is well stocked with older fiction, not quite classic, but certainly candidates
for that distinction. Among them is this one that was published in 1941, during
the darkest days of WW II.
Paul Gallico, The
Snow Goose
The Snow
Goose is a
sentimental story told in black and white about self exiled and hunchbacked
artist (Rhayader), a village girl, Fritha, and a snow goose blown by a
tremendous storm from Canada to the Essex coast of Britain. The bird has been
shot, wounded, by hunters and is brought to the artist in his lighthouse. Over
the first winter the bird is restored to health and Fritha provides Rhayader with
simple companionship that he so longs for. With spring the bird and Fritha take
flight, but each returns in each of the seven autumns that span this little
book. It is now WW II and the British army is backed against the sea at
Dunkirk. Rhayader takes his sailboat across the channel eventually saving a
hundred or more soldiers. This part of the story is told by soldiers in pubs
because Rhayader is killed in the process. Fritha comes back in search of
Rhayader but instead finds the snow goose, which she takes to be Rhayader's
soaring spirit. She realizes that she loved Rhayader all along. She collects a
painting Rhayader made of her with the snow bird as she leaves. Eventually a
German aircraft destroys the lighthouse and all sign of Rhayader. It's a sad, sentimental
story told from a bleak and wintery place. This week, as we mark the 70th anniversary of the Allied landings in France on D-day, is is good for us to remember how bleak things looked for our civilization just three years earlier, in 1941 when this book was written. The book has been described as being
overly sentimental but I think that criticism is far off the mark. Here is what
Lisa Allerdice said about that in the Guardian in 2011: "But Gallico was
unrepentant, responding that "in the contest between sentiment and
'slime', 'sentiment' remains so far out in front, as it always has and always
will among ordinary humans that the calamity-howlers and porn merchants have to
increase the decibels of their lamentations, the hideousness of their violence
and the mountainous piles of their filth to keep in the race at all."
If the
novella's place in the affections of generations of "ordinary humans"
is anything to go by, he was right. Michael Morpurgo cites it as an influence
on his much-loved War Horse (it was also, much to Gallico's dismay, the
inspiration for a
1975 album by the rock band Camel). Somehow, the simplicity of the snow
goose's emblematic burden – love, innocence and loyalty – and of the
storytelling itself, creates a lightness that allows the story to soar."
