Destination: Michigan, near Traverse City 

Audio Book: Love in a Nutshell by Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly

Put the mystery writer Janet Evanovich together with romance writer Dorien Kelly and this is what you get–perhaps not the best of either of them, but Love in a Nutshell is an enjoyable light-hearted romance loosely plotted around some amateur sleuthing.

Lake Michigan

Our heroine, Kate, needs a job because she just got fired and because she has decided to renovate her parents old summer home along Lake Michigan. She envisions a B & B catering to the summer people who swell the small town’s population during the warmer months.  Her only saleable skill is waitressing, so she marches into the most successful brew pub in town and more or less demands a job.
The impossibly handsome, intelligent and morally straight owner finds her impudence adorable and her perky curves attractive.  He offers her the job of finding out who is systematically attempting to sabotage his business. Since this quest involves the two of them working closely together, sparks inevitably fly.  In the old melodramas, the heroine’s property was being taken away by the evil landlord, who would trade the mortgage for a (ahem!) kiss.  We booed the villain and cheered when the handsome hero swooped in to save the heroine from a terrible fate.

But in this post-modern melodrama, the handsome hero owns the mortgage, and therefore plays the villain role, too.  I’m confused.  How can the villain also be the hero?  (I’m sensing a trend here. Remember the beach romance, Summer Rental? That romantic hero was the annoying landlord–although he had his own mortgage problems.)  But the real villain of this book  is the unknown saboteur. Kate finds herself in increasingly perilous situations and Mr. Impossibly Handsome rescues the plucky heroine just as though she were tied to that board going through the sawmill. (Remember that silent film scene?)

Kate wouldn’t be in such perilous situations if she exercised just a bit of common sense. I’m just sayin’.

The book pokes fun at an interesting assortment of small town characters.  Despite the rather lame shenanigans of the real villain, the book might tempt you to experience a vacation on the Michigan shore in a place like Traverse City. (Which just happens to be the home of our very own film critic, Jane Boursaw!) So if you’re looking for an audio book for a road trip, or to exercise by, consider Love in a Nutshell for your Traveler’s Library. And of course it comes in other flavors–i.e. electronic or print.

Today’s prize to one person who comments, subscribes, tweets or mentions us on Google+ will be the audio version of Love in a Nuts

hell, plus the audio version of A Trick of the Light–a mystery set near Montreal, reviewed here. (You can comment on this post or on an earlier post. Just do it before Monday Jan. 9, 3:00 a.m. MST. If you already subscribe by e-mail and want an extra entry as a subscriber, be sure to tell me that in the comments..)

Disclaimer: The audio books were provided by the publisher for review, without any expectations on their part. The photos in this post are from Flickr. Click on them to see more information about the photographer. When you click on a book title link to Amazon, anything that you buy in the following 24 hours gives a few cents to my affiliate account, without costing you any extra. Thank you.

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Scary Reads?  Not all of the mystery novels I have reviewed are about a place as creepy as Cora Harrison’s Burren of Ireland (♥)or Martin Cruz Smith’s  Wolves Eat Dogs (♥♥♥♥). I’m wrapping up the two weeks of scary things and mystery novels with a list of some of the reader-preferred mysteries, with hearts to denote how fast they’ll make your heart beat.

And sometimes a creepy story doesn’t need a creepy place, and sometimes a creepy place has a tame story! I recently read two books that would have earned five stars for terror, but they really did not fit the criteria for A Traveler’s Library. So, if you want a really horrific read, try one of these unreviewed books that are based on real events.

♥♥♥♥♥Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis Beautifully written and well-drawn characters but horrendous acts.

♥♥♥♥♥I Dreamt I Was in Heaven: the Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter.  It may be based on real events, but the book seems gratuitously gruesome.

Keep in mind the stars are not for overall quality–just for the terror factor.

♥♥♥A Mystery in a National Park-High Country by Nevada Barr has her middle-aged female park ranger heroine scrambling across the back country of Yosemite National Park in California. Barr, a former park ranger herself, has written mysteries set in 17  National Parks, so far.

♥♥♥Spenser’s Boston. The Godwulf Manuscript. This post talked more about Boston as the setting for the many Spenser novels than about the books themselves, but Robert Parker wrote an extremely popular detective in Spenser. The post includes 5 restaurant recommendations from the Parker website, but he passed away in 2011, and those are no longer on the web site. However another writer has been hired to continue the 39-book Spenser series.

♥♥♥♥A Pair of posts proved popular about a Robert Wilson mystery and Lisbon Portugal. I wrote about A Small Death in Lisbon, and followed it up with a post called Plan Travel to Lisbon courtesy of Pack a Book.

♥♥♥♥A Vienna Mystery was shared by guest author Kristen Gough, who usually writes the tamer My Kids Eat Squid. She shared her own experiences in Vienna and the locale painted by author Daniel Silva in A Death in Venice.

♥♥♥♥♥ A Spooky Vienna Film to go along with the Vienna theme–is one of my favorites of all time, The Third Man. I called the post How to Find the Third Man in Vienna.

♥♥Exploring the Dark Corners of Venice talks about Donna Leon‘s mysteries starring the lovable Commissario Brunetti.  She keeps turning them out, and I’m falling behind, but loved the dozen or so I’ve read. Related Announcement: Venice is such a wonderful place to set all kinds of stories, that next week is Venice week at A Traveler’s Library.

♥♥♥♥American Road Trip Thriller–Greek novelist Alexis Stamatis wrote a Hitchcock-worth tale of mistaken identity and a chase across country in American Fugue. It is fascinating to see an outsider’s take on the American road.

♥♥♥♥Florence Italy Real Life Horror Story tells about a murder case in Florence Italy that Douglas Preston presents in his non-fiction book, The Monster of Florence. The way that the legal system functions–or doesn’t–made me glad that I did not know this story before I went to Florence.

♥♥In Raymond Chandler nails Southern California, I talked about the master American detective story writer and his masterpiece Farewell My Lovely. My love for Chandler is about the language and the attitude–not about the suspense and terror. But he does set a spooky scene!

♥♥In  Murder in Paris,I talk about Cara Black introduces a delightful young woman and visits the neighborhoods of Paris, book by book.  I chose  Murder in the Latin Quarter, because that is where Ken and I spent most of our time in Paris. I liked it because of its terrific heroine and great scene setting.

I want to thank the generous photographer who made this photo available with a Creative Commons license at Flickr.com. And although I did not include the usual Amazon links in this post, if you go to the original post, you can order any of the books directly, in case your local Independent bookstore doesn’t have it immediately available.

The Holiday Season is coming, and your Amazon gift orders through this site help me buy MY holiday gifts–or even better, buy a copy of the beautiful Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist for someone. Native American magazine just listed it as their top pick for special gifts for the holidays. (There’s a convenient Buy Now button over on the right hand side of the blog.)

So was your favorite mystery from A Traveler’s Library on this list? Do you have a different one you’d like to nominate? Let me know in the comment section.

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Destination: Russia

Book: Wolves Eat Dogs, an Arkady Renko Novel by Martin Cruz Smith (2004)

Here is a fitting horror story for Halloween in the 21st century. Death by radiation poisoning. Life in a dead zone.

Martin Cruz Smith

When we were fortunate enough to meet Martin Cruz Smith last March, and accompany him around Tucson during the Tucson Festival of Books, I asked him many questions, and he entertained me with honest and illuminating and some very very funny anecdotes and opinions.

Naturally, one of the things I wanted to know, was which of his books I should I should buy for Ken, who loves thrillers, but had never read any of Cruz Smith’s books. Cruz Smith unhesitatingly recommended Wolves Eat Dogs. He thinks it is his best book.

If you play word association with the writer’s name, most people will identify him with Gorky Park .  That demonstrates both the lasting appeal of that book, and the power of the motion picture.  William Hurt played the lead and the 1983 film was a big hit.

Martin Cruz Smith started the Arkady Renko series when he visited Russia and found it endlessly fascinating.  ”Nobody was getting it right,” he says. He first traveled to Russia during the Cold War when the information that Americans received was filtered through government sources and through our own fear, as well as being thoroughly distorted by a Soviet government trying hard to put on a powerful face while the society was disintegrating. (Cruz Smith did NOT say any of those things. It is my own conclusion.)

Doll Abandoned outside a kindergarten in the Zone. Arkady notices abandoned dolls in several scenes.

Arkady Renko is in some ways typical of police procedural detectives.  He is the smart but self-effacing police detective who is independent and therefore annoying to his superiors–always on the edge of being pushed out the door.  He has serious character flaws and his personal life is a mess, but his innate honesty and devotion to justice keeps us on his side.  On the other hand, the Arkady novels differ from most anything else you have read because they are drenched in Soviet culture and politics. That is what makes them a particularly good addition to the traveler’s library.  By the way, these novels are not stuck in the cold war period. One of the most fascinating things about them to me is that Arkady reflects the massive adjustments that Russians had to make as the Soviet government disintegrated.
Chernobyl crystallizes that disintegration, and provides Arkady’s boss an opportunity to get him way out of Moscow.  Siberia is not bad enough for Renko–he gets sent to the countryside of the Ukraine where radiation is so high from the nuclear plant explosions that he begins to turn off the dosimeter he carries with him because it makes too much noise. The plot is complex and loaded with creepy, well-developed, characters in a setting of desolation that Cruz Smith describes like an artist. Which, although he denies it, he is.

The Kremlin, Moscow

The author as tourist in communist Russia learned that an American on the streets with a camera or a notepad could attract suspicion.  But sketching seemed harmless, so sketching became his principle notetaking method. (You can see some of his sketches along with photos of Russia from his visits at the Gallery of his website.)

Do you recall the 2006 case of the Russian who was poisoned by a radioactive pellet slipped into something he ate or drank? That case must have carried the germ of the idea for Wolves Eat Dogs. Although the police would prefer that a millionaire’s plunge off his high-rise balcony in Moscow be written off as suicide, Renko suspects murder when he discovers piles of salt and traces of radioactivity. And then the body of a friend of the first victim shows up at a graveyard near Chernobyl, and we’re off to the breath-taking races.

Right from the beginning, the author lets us know that things are out of kilter. He describes a Moscow that is nothing at all like the picture postcard onion domes in our mind. At the same time, we meet the first victim, Pasha Ivanov:

“Moscow swam in color. Hazy floodlights of Red Square mixed with the neon of casinos in Revolution Square…Gilded domes still floated around the Garden Ring, but all night earthmovers tore at the old city and dug widening pools of light to raise a modern, vertical Moscow more like Houston or Dubai.  It was a Moscow that Pasha Ivanov had helped to create, a shifting landscaped o tectonic plates and lava flows and fatal missteps.”

Once the action moves to Chernobyl, we are in a land that seems more mythical than real, a feeling that Cruz Smith underscores by having Arkady make up stories about the Russian fairy tale character Baba Yaga for a child back in Moscow he has befriended. Baba Yaga’s odd fantasy life comes closer and closer to the reality that Renko sees around him, as he stays in the Zone of Exclusion for weeks. Like everything and everyone in the novel, the child is not normal. He does not speak. He is a chess genius. He refuses to take off a heavy winter jacket even in hot weather. Nothing quite makes sense in this book. Least of all the lives of the squatters that insist on living in Chernobyl and the village of Pripyat that is even nearer the devastation and therefore even more irradiated.

Pripyat (or Prypiat)

To answer the question in the title of this post: ‘Is Chernobyl in your travel plans?’…Well, I certainly would never have thought it belonged there. And it’s clear I would not go there for the lush scenery, but on the other hand….Martin Cruz Smith has made it sound so intriguing, that I might just consider packing my dosimeter and heading off to the Zone of Exclusion. And here’s a tour that will take me to Chernobyl and Pripyat. And here is another Chernobyl tour, that warns, “You will NOT see zombies, three-head horses, and other monsters.”

Well, darn!

The Photo of Martin Cruz Smith is my property, all rights reserved. The other wonderful photos are from Flickr, used by Creative Commons license. It is worthwhile to click on them to see more about and by those photographers.  If you click on a link on this blog that leads you to Amazon, we make a few cents, even though it does not cost you any extra. THANKS!

Would you go to Chernobyl?

Question of the day…Would you plan a trip to Chernobyl?

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Book: My Lady Judge: A Mystery of Medieval Ireland by Cora Harrison (2007)

The Burren

The Burren of Ireland fascinated me when we traveled through County Clare. Long, flat tables of gray stone stretch toward the sea. Cracks and ridges and deep fissures make walking across the limestone ground an adventure. Lovely little wild flowers poked up out of this seemingly hostile environment, adding to the oddness. It all looks very ancient, even before you come upon the frequent Ring Forts and Dolmens left behind by prehistoric settlers.  The spooky, otherworldly atmosphere of the Burren makes it a perfect locale for a mystery, and how appropriate that Cora Harrison has set her six Burren mysteries in the 16th Century.

My Lady Judge has been followed by five more Burren mysteries from this prolific writer, who has also turned out a mystery series set in London, and various other books, including young adult novels. Someone recommended these Irish mysteries to me some time ago, probably Kerry Dexter, who keeps me up to speed on all things Celtic–and I can certainly see the attraction for a lover of Ireland.

The author based the lady judge of the title on a real woman judge of that period, and the cases discussed are detailed in records copied out in the mid sixteenth century at the very real law school of Cahermacnaughten, the setting for the book. Without the author’s acknowledgement to those ancient scholars and the snippet from their work that heads each chapter, I certainly would have thought that she had a great imagination.  Women judges in medieval times? Actually Mara was called a Brehon, and her responsibilities were much broader than a judge today.  She not only judged cases, but also investigated them. And she ran a law school where children (all boys in this case) from  six to twenty years old lived and studied the law.

Laws that set fines according to the value of the person wronged? In other words, it is more egregious to kill a king than a common peasant. And the lessening of penalty for anyone who confesses? All of these things are laid out in the book.

Poulnabrone

In the rural areas of the Burren life centers around the Catholic churches, but ancient Celtic rituals die hard, and when the people gather for a bonfire on top of a mountain in celebration of May Day, one of the older law students is “secretly murdered.”  Mara uses a combination of Sherlock Holmes type logic, gathering of physical evidence and psychology to discover the killer and bring justice.

The regular assembly of court happens outdoors around the Poulnabrone dolman. I perked up when I read that name, because when Ken and I went to Ireland and drove through the Burrens, we made a special effort to go to Poulnabrone. It is an impressive and mysterious assemblage of enormous rock slabs.  And I can understand how such a place would lend the proper solemnity to the proceedings of the court in the Middle Ages.

This is not a mystery to read if you are looking for blood-soaked action and breathless chases–although Mara does have a few hairy moments which both take place in caves. It is rather, a study in history and psychology–a gentle, scholarly tale reflecting the lady judge herself.  Reading it, we learn not only about the legal system of Ireland in the Middle Ages, frequently compared unfavorably to the savagery of the British, but also we meet an assembly of fascinating individuals. They range from the sour village priest to the King who is smitten with Mara– providing a bit of gentle romance.

This (and I’m sure all the other books of the series) are a perfect addition to the Traveler’s Library–particularly if you are going to visit the moody and compelling Burren of Ireland.

Craggaunowen Castle

When you visit the Burren, besides stopping at Poulnabrone, you might want to include in your travel plans, a visit to the Craggaunowen Project. There we saw a 15th century castle, and a recreation of an earlier Iron Age settlement (5-12th century), as well as the boat of St. Brendan who supposedly discovered America before Columbus. The Craggaunowen Project is hidden away in a rural area and does not have its own web page. Nevertheless, as a living history site it was one of the most fascinating we ever visited.

All the photographs here are the property of Vera Marie Badertscher. All rights reserved. The link from My Lady Judge allows you to go directly to Amazon. If you buy anything there, even though it costs the same A Traveler’s Library will earn a few cents. Thank you.

Have you been to the Burren? Tell us what you saw there.

Recreated Iron Age artificial island settlement, Crannog

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

And remember, there are still a few books to give away in the Giant 25-Book Giveaway. So subscribe, tell me in a comment you have subscribed, tweet a reference to @pen4hire, or leave a comment on any post. It would be frightening, if you did not win something. {THIS CONTEST OVER!]

Destination: Colorado

Book: The Perfect Suspect: A Catherine McLeod Mystery by Margaret Coel (NEW September 2011)

I will never look at Denver in the same way, and newspaper reporters who read Margaret Coel‘s Catherine McLeod books may reconsider their careers. I heard Coel speak about her Wind River Series–set on an Arapaho reservation–at the Tucson Festival of Books last year.  The fact that the author is an expert in the culture of the Arapaho fascinated me, and her crime-solving combo of Catholic priest and female American Indian lawyer sounded like a winner.  However, when I read The Spider’s Web, it did not hold my interest and I did not review it here. (In fairness, I should let you know that book won a Colorado Book Award for 2011.)

Downtown Denver Pedestrian Mall

Therefore, when the publisher sent me The Perfect Suspect it sat on my table for several months before I opened it.  The heroine here is part Arapaho, just discovering her heritage.  She works as a newspaper reporter in Denver and has a boyfriend who is a cop.  In the first book featuring Catherine McLeod, she was the victim of a stalker.  In The Perfect Suspect, she becomes the target of a tough but beautiful police woman who goes on a killing spree in an attempt to cover up her murder of a politician.

Don’t worry, I’m not throwing out a spoiler by telling you that the policewoman is a killer.  The Perfect Suspect is not a Who Done It? It’s a What Next? The reader works alongside Catherine as she investigates the story and with her, you wonder who else may be killed. Things get pretty tense as Catherine gets closer to the truth and Ryan, the female cop, gets more desperate. The suspense builds as the cop and the reporter get closer and closer and their paths finally intersect.

This novel makes a great Halloween Season suspenseful read. This was a better book in many ways than The Spider’s Web.  I cared about the characters. Even the warped Ryan never fails to fascinate. I believed the actions of the characters. They fit their psychology. If I have any complaints about the drawing of the characters it is that we are repeatedly told how attractive protaganist Catherine and antagonist Ryan are. Okay, we get it. And if I had not been involved in politics myself at one time, I might have thought Coel was laying it on a little thick about the gubernatorial candidate who could persuade anyone how much he cared, when the truth was that he cared only about getting ahead. And he, too, was beautiful handsome beyond all mortals.  But I’ve seen such people in politics and could totally believe this character and his character flaws.

Aspen Colorado

And of course I loved the reality of the settings–the neighborhoods of Denver, the wealthy ski towns of Breckenridge and Aspen, the magnificent mountain scenery. I can see someone visiting the pleasant downtown area of Denver and thinking–this must be where Catherine met the informer, this is the route she took to her office–it is all very real.

The Perfect Suspect gets high grades for being an exciting and compelling read and for the traveler’s library criteria of showing us a place we would like to visit. When you travel to Denver, climb to the top of the State Capitol dome, visit the Denver Art Museum, linger in a restaurant on the downtown pedestrian 16th Street Mall. But steer clear of a part-Arapaho newspaper reporter named Catherine. She draws danger like a magnet.

Photographs here come from Flickr.com, with a Creative Commons license.  Please click on each photo to learn about the photographer and see more of his or her work.

Links to book titles provide you with a convenient way to purchase the book, and when you buy anything at Amazon after clicking on links from A Traveler’s Library, I earn a few cents to help pay the rent on the site. Thanks.

Whether you’re reading appropriately scary mysteries for Halloween, or you are just building up your place-oriented mystery library, where in the world would you like a mystery to take you?

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Destination: England

Book: Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (2003)

It’s a cozy, or is it?  A mystery novel that sidesteps blood and merciless beatings for a more measured and intellectual approach to solving crimes is called a cozy.  Maisie Dobbs, the first in a series of (so far) seven novels written by Jacqueline Winspear,  introduces us to the English woman whose business placard reads “psychologist and investigator.” Cozies generally feature women, but their content may not be quite as fraught with meaning as Maisie Dobbs.

Maisie tracks a criminal, but the leisurely pursuit occupies less than half of a fairly short book.  The rest provides us with most of Maisie’s unconventional life story. Winspear recreates the time preceding, during and after World War I and the effect that horrors of that war had on a whole generation.

End of World War I, 1918, London

The fledgling investigator sets up her office in 1929 London with the help of a wealthy woman she used to work for as a maid.   When a man asks Maisie to find out if his wife is cheating on him, she uncovers a scheme to take advantage of wounded veterans.  Working on discovering the truth draws her back through a lengthy flashback to her own growth from household servant to the grueling work as a battlefield nurse in France during the war. Winspear skillfully introduces the upstairs-downstairs world of Ladies and their servants and then the realities of World War I. In fact, all of her books are set in the period of the Great War, and in this first book, she acknowledges the stories of her Grandfather for setting her on that path.
With the exception of a bit of suspenseful action toward the end, the pace is slow and deliberate…fitting Maisie’s training by her mentor Maurice Blanc.  Some of his teachings–which always come to mind when she needs them, include meditation, although it is not called that. She also practices body mirroring to feel through another’s stance what they are feeling, and trusts her instincts along with logic.

The most unusual characteristic of Maisie in comparison to other sleuths you have known is her insistence that she has a duty to make people better–to help them heal.  Most fictional detectives have a deep understanding of human nature, but most are more focused on punishment and revenge than on healing.  And certainly the detectives we have talked about here at A Traveler’s Library view the world with a good deal more skepticism than Maisie. Take Phillip Marlowe and Spenser, for instance.

Sissinghurst in Kent, UK

So how does this mystery novel help the traveler?  Set in London and in the countryside of Sussex and Kent in the teens and twenties of the 20th century, it describes a bygone age.  And yet, please forgive me English friends, I tend to picture England and particularly London, in the early twentieth century anyhow.  This even though I’ve been there and know about the Millennium Bridge and the Eye and the bustles of the modern world. It is still the Mews and the Beefeaters and the venerable government buildings that come to mind. Furthermore, Winspear shows us a class system that is definitely altered by the advent of “The Great War,” but cannot be avoided even today in a country with a Queen and titled landowners.

Westminster Bridge over the Thames, London, early morning

Maisie likes to take walks, and as we follow her, we see London:

She entered Palace Road from Royal Street, and turned right to walk toward Westminster Bridge.  She loved to watch the Thames first thing in the morning.  Those Londoners who lived just South of the river always said they “were going over the water” when they crossed the Thames, never referring to the river by name unless they were speaking to a stranger.

And Winspear drops little tidbits that read like guidebook entries, like this about Mecklenburg Square which is very little changed since Maisie walked there in 1929, and Virginia Woolf lived there in 1939:

Named in honor of Charlotte of Mecklinburgh-Strelitz who became queen consort upon her marriage to George III of England, the gracious Georgian houses of the square were set around a garden protected by a wrought-iron fence secured with a locked gate.

As Maisie loves the countryside (out of the smoke, as her father says), we also are introduced to other areas of England.

In France, she had dreamed of Kent, of apple orchards in full blossom, primroses and bluebells carpeting the woodland, and the soft countryside stretching out before her.

Because of her skillful presentation of life as it was in the period of the war, and because the detailed descriptions allow the reader to see London and see the countryside, this is a fine book to add to the traveler’s Library.

Links to book titles provide you with a convenient way to purchase the book, and when you buy anything at Amazon after clicking on links from A Traveler’s Library, I earn a few cents to help pay the rent on the site. Thanks.

I would like to thank the photographers who share their pictures via Creative Commons License at Flickr for these amazingly appropriate pictures. You can thank them by clicking on the image to learn more. And a special thank you to regular readers Colleen Alley and Lorrie McCallum who both recommended that I read Winspear, and start with the first book, Maisie Dobbs.

Are you a reader of “cozies?”  Would you classify Maisie Dobbs as a cozy?

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

From Packabook Newsletter

But if time is short – here are some highlights of things you can get up to, inspired by the book itself.

Enjoy the nightlife (and daylife!) of the Bairro Alto

 ”An eighteen-year old Zé Coelho was drinking cheap bagaço in a white tiled tasca in the middle of the Bairro Alto with three of his school friends when the owner came thundering down the stairs from his apartment above.
    “Something’s happening,” he said, breathless and shocked…..
Zė Coelho flicked his shoulder-length hair over the wolfskin collar of his floor length woollen capote Alenteano and they started running down the narrow cobbled alleyway towards the square below.” 
(Robert Wilson’s A Small Death in Lisbon p387-8) 

Not far from Santos is the Bairro Alto, its steep, cobbled streets filled with galleries, museums and bars.
This is where the teenage Coelho is drinking with his friends when the 1974 coup against Salazar breaks out – and more than thirty years later it is still a center for youth culture. The authorities may have tried to clean up the area, but it remains one of the most colorful parts of the city, with a hectic nightlife, vestiges of prostitution and extensive graffiti.

Come the dawn, the Bairro Alto transforms back into a traditional local community, complete with laundry drying on the balconies and shop-keepers trading their wares. Visit the Chiado art museum, drop in on the area’s historical churches and enjoy one of the oldest districts of the city.
Drive along The Marginal
“He drove out onto the Marginal and noticed for the first time on the outskirts of the city that the air was fresher and purer. After five days of brutal swelter, the sea was blue again, the sky clear and the twin steel towers of the Ponte Salazar, the new suspension bridge being built across the Tagus, were pin-sharp in the flat calm of the estuary.” (Robert Wilson’s A Small Death in Lisbon - p359)

The characters in this novel spend a fair bit of time driving along the coastal road between Lisbon and Cascais known as ‘The Marginal’, and so should you. As you drive, there is little to block your view of the beach towns dotted along the way, each with their own restaurants, bars and golden stretches of sand down to the water to tempt you off the road.

Stay in your own ‘House at the End of the World’

“They spent the time driving out to his house, the westernmost house on mainland Europe – only heather, gorse, the cliffs and the lighthouse at Cabo da Roca between it and the ocean…they bought two chairs and sat in the enclosed terrace on the roof and drank brandy and watched the storms out at sea, the deranged clouds and the blood-orange sunsets.” – Felsen and Susana

(Robert Wilson’s A Small Death in Lisbon - p288) 
 
I’m not sure if Felsen’s house actually exists, but there is a place that you can stay which is pretty close by. Quinta da Rio Touro is a guesthouse and organic farm less than a five minute drive away from the Cabo de Roca lighthouse, the most westerly point of continental Europe.

The restored farm house is part of the Sintra/Cascais Natural Park, and gives you a taste of more traditional Portuguese life, on the edge of the ocean. Take a picnic to the lighthouse to watch the sunset and you are sure to leave with some stunning photographs.
The joy of this novel is that we are able to explore Lisbon from two different avenues of the past.
During World War Two we see the city mainly through Poser’s cynical eyes and Felsen’s almost indifferent ones  - where the struggles of a city trying to cope with a huge influx of refugees and little time for aesthetic values leave us with a picture of grime and despair.In Coelho’s time we see Lisbon as new money comes to the fore, with a rapid program of change and development.
If you make a trip to the Portuguese capital now, you will see the city has moved on a step further. This novel made me want to explore Wilson’s city for myself, to discover what is new and to find the beacons of the past which remain.

Thanks so much to Suzi Butcher at Packabook for allowing me to share this portion of the Packabook Newsletter with readers of A Travelers’ Library.  The link to A Small Death in Lisbon that you find above leads to Packabook’s Amazon affiliation, so the profit goes to them if you choose to use this link.

Can you think of a time that you have visited a particular neighborhood or region because you read about it in a novel or travel literature? I planned my travel to Paris by zeroing in on the Latin Quarter of Paris after reading Hemingway’s Moveable Feast. But now, I’m dying to go to the end of the world in Portugal. How about you?

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Book: A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson

Lisbon, Portugal

The intense drama of A Small Death in Lisbon zigzags between the 1940′s and 1990′s and between a Nazi thriller and a police procedural, but the focus is always Portugal, and mostly Lisbon.  While we read about a Portuguese cop, Zé Coelho, trying to unravel the murder of a teenage druggie in modern day Portugal, author Robert Wilson brings us another story centered on a German officer assigned to the technically neutral country during World War II. It served the dictator’s purpose, despite Salazar’s Facist tendencies, for the country to be able to do business with both Britain and Germany.

Portugal Country House

The two stories, both with plenty of complications, kept me guessing. The main guessing game for the reader is–when and how are these two threads going to connect?  The present day detective story is spiced up with the detective fighting alcoholism (a common failing among mystery novel policemen) and puzzling over his teenage daughter.  He also has a new partner whose odd ways have alienated most of the department. They criss-cross Lisbon and its suburbs and we get a good picture of the city and the life of the country today.

Meanwhile, back in World War II days, the German officer with an insatiable appetite for prostitutes bonds with a rural, illiterate Portuguese wheeler-dealer with enough smarts to make him a Godfather of corruption in his rural province.  An illigitimate son of the German inherits his sexual appetites and as the story moves through the years to the present day, several strands of narrative tangle in a final knot to be straightened–or maybe not–by Zé Coelho.

Lisbon Cafe, Portugal

Real historic events not only add interest to the stories, they are essentially part of the stories.  I was particularly interested in an extremely artful scene where Wilson introduces the day of the peaceful coup against Salazar in April, 1974.  A husband and wife are bickering because he wants her to  turn off the radio. As she fiddles with the dial, the song Grôndola, vila moreno comes on.  The two people go on arguing and the husband tries to make phone calls to some of his important friends in the Salazar regime.  We learn that the song triggered the uprising of the army, and the VIPS he was trying to reach on the phone, were busy trying to save the government. From reading The Portuguese: A Modern History, I learned that the scene is completely accurate. The song is still sung with emotion in Portugal as a symbol of freedom.

Here the stories begin to merge, as we see Zé as an eighteen-year-old, seeing the only deaths that happened that day. The art of Wilson’s writing is his ability to pull all that historical research seamlessly into the story. There is never a moment when the story stops for exposition, we just live the characters lives as they live through historic events.

The other endearing thing about Wilson is that he started as a travel writer.  (Just like African writer Binyavanga Wainaina, remember?) Robert Wilson wanted to tell about his experiences in Africa, but a friend suggested there would be more money in setting a mystery there instead.  He studied the genre, and wrote four African mysteries, before A Small Death in Lisbon the first of two books set in Portugal, this one became his break-out novel, winning awards and readers. Next he moved on to four spy novels set in Seville, Spain, the latest, The Ignorance of Blood in 2009. (Wilson, by the way, would prefer that we read these four books in order, so I’ll start with The Blind Man of Seville.)

Based on his own description of the pace of his writing , his next book is overdue.  In a 2009 interview, he said that his next book would be set in London.  I cannot wait.  But meanwhile, you can bet I will get copies of those four set in Seville.  I have a fondness for Seville that sounds very like Wilson’s own description of the magic of that city. Like him, I arrived there during Easter week and stayed up all night watching the processions, streets packed with people and cheering their favorite image of the Virgin like football fans. (Here are some pictures that capture the magic of Semana Santa (Holy Week)–although they are taken in other parts of Spain) The city is gorgeous, alluring, and somewhat mysterious…a perfect setting for a travel writer turned mystery/thriller novelist.

The book title is linked to Amazon for your convenience. If you click through to Amazon and purchase anything at all, I get a few cents which helps support A Traveler’s Library. Thanks.

Wilson admits that as a reader he is not fond of books with parallel stories. Do you have an opinion about that form? And which of his books would you start with? Portugal, Africa or Seville?

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Destination: Montreal area, Canada

Book: A Trick of the Light: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel  by Louise Penny (NEW 8/30/2011) from St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio

Thank you, Macmillan Audio, for sending me A Trick of the Light on CD just in time for my road trip to Santa Fe.  A mystery is just the thing for our road trips, because both Ken and I  generally like mysteries, and they keep our interest without demanding deep concentration.  I had a great experience with Back of Beyond by C. J. Box on my road trip in Nova Scotia.

However, I will tell you right up front that I would have enjoyed  A Trick of the Light more in print form… maybe.  Because it is set in Quebec Province of Canada — Montreal and the fictional village of Three Pines, most of the names are French and characters use French language expressions liberally.  Even though I know  a little French, I was uncomfortable not being able to visualize the words, particularly names, on the page.

Oldest House in Montreal

The second problem with an audio book like this–there are LOT of characters to keep track of. Had I been reading a physical book (or even an e-book), I would have been able to turn back and find a reminder of who was who. Third, I simply did not like the reader, Ralph Cosham.  The press release states that Ralph Cosham has read all Louise Penny‘s previous six audiobooks, and quotes AudioFile Magazine’s review, “My only quibble is that the Penny-Cosham team kept me listening past my bedtime.”

My problem was not  missing my bedtime  as we drove through the wide open spaces of southern Arizona and New Mexico. Rather, I had trouble staying awake. I found Cosham’s tone tedious and lacking the clear differentiation between characters that makes for an outstanding audio book experience.

A point in this book’s favor is its setting in Montreal, which we fell in love with when we visited in 2001. The old brick buildings, the gilded and gorgeous Church of Notre Dame, the amazing French restaurants, the pommes frites, the street musicians, the waterfront–Montreal is a prime travel destination.

The inside view of a cut-throat world of art, museums and critics should have been just my cup of tea.  In talking to Chief Inspector Gamache, one of the art dealers says “It’s a vicious place, full of greed and fear.” And that provides plenty of backstory and lots of people with motives to murder a former art critic in the garden of Clara Morrow, an artist celebrating her first showing at the Musée  Montreal. (Moan-ree-Al)

Angel on top of Chapel of Bons Secours, Montreal

The title refers to the chiaroscuro effect–light and dark contrasting in paintings, and by extension, the contrast between the dark side and the “light”, or good side, of people and between the truth and lies the policeman must sift through.

The cast of characters has gathered in the small village of  Three Pines, invited to a party to celebrate Clara’s success. The author lives in a similar small town near Montreal, and clearly understands the dynamics of village life. Reading about this village–despite the fact that it is the site of a murder–makes one want to wander the roads near Montreal in search of a similar little Eden.

All of this adds up to exciting potential for a police novel, but for me it fell flat. The story develops ever so slowly, and lacks any real excitement. Gamache solves the crime mainly by his  intellectual musings. He is an extraordinarily intelligent and well-informed policeman. But the classic “gather all the suspects in a room” ending drags on for several pages before wrapping up the case.

Louise Penny writes New York Times bestsellers, gobbled up by readers in The United States and Great Britain (and presumably Canada). However, her style is not for me–particularly not as read on this audio book.  Your mileage may vary, (after all she sells super amounts of books and gets great reviews) and if you disagree, please let me know.

Disclaimers: As I mentioned above, Macmillan Audio provided this book for review. The pictures are scans of print photos taken on our trip to Montreal in 2001, all rights reserved. I have provided a link to Amazon, and if you are inclined to order anything from Amazon, please use my link because I earn a few cents when you do. Thanks.

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Historic cafe in Left Bank

Destination: Paris

Book: Murder in the Latin Quarter(2009) by Cara Black

You can win this book by leaving a comment below (see end of post).

I often think of Alfred Hitchcok and the MacGuffin when I read a mystery.  To Hitchcok, the core of a mystery was the MacGuffin, a physical object that eludes the key characters and drives their frantic actions. “The papers”, “the key”, “the gun”, even the Holy Grail might be the MacGuffin. Once found, the characters believe the MacGuffin will answer all questions–in other words–solve the mystery–but it may be a false lead.

Cara Black‘s Murder in the Latin Quarter has the MacGuffin–a researcher’s report–but it has another x-factor that makes a murder mystery work.  Particularly in a series, the reader must love the main character.  The character must have enough quirks not to get boring.  He/she is ‘brighter than the average bear’ as Yogi the Bear said in those old cartoons. Flawed, but lovable like Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko. I’m also thinking of Sam Spade, Hercule Porot, Miss Marple, T.V.’s Adrian Monk–every one a character a traveler would choose to be shipwrecked with on a desert island. Well, maybe not Mr.  Monk, unless you had a lifetime supply of wipes along.

Reading Murder in the Latin Quarter made me think of  Cara Black‘s Parisian private eye, Aimèe as an interesting friend–a woman I’d call up to serve as my tour guide on my next trip to Paris. She is definitely younger than I am and hipper than I ever was, but she would know where to go to get a good cup of coffee (with or without absinthe) and she has a friend with entree to the party scene in the tunnels below Paris. Her clothing choices alone qualify her for the position of BFF.  Who wouldn’t want to swap clothes with someone who knows how to score second hand Givenchy’s and glamorous shoes from designers who don’t descend to selling in America?

Latin Quarter side street

Having heard Cara Black speak when she visited the Tucson Festival of Books, I know how important accuracy is to her.  She shared one of her trade secrets–take a flic (cop) out for a beer.  They know everything about the streets of Paris. Each of the Aimèe Leduc mysteries is set in a different arrondissement of Paris, making them perfect for the reading traveler who likes to get off the worn tourist trail.

Because Aimèe could not possibly know everything about every neighborhood, she has a wide circle of friends to inform her–and us–about hidden corners and forgotten history.  One of those auxilliary characters works on the police force, where Aimèe’s father once worked.

Morher is the rumpled older detective who gets out of favor with authority–the character who plays the lead role in so many detective novels–here delegated to supporting cast.

Latin Quarter street, Paris

This particular volume, Murder in the Latin Quarter, almost lost me in its dense plot about Haiti and Haitian immigrants in Paris, dirty politics and voodoo, but Aimèe and the tour of the Latin Quarter kept me going.  No question, if I had read this before going to Paris, I would have made it a point to see some of the places Black describes.  It would make a great guide for a walk in the Latin Quarter.

In researching Cara Black, I found this wonderful International mystery writer’s blog to which she contributes along with other writers who set their mysteries in various countries. What a find!

Several people recommended Cara Black to me back when I was exploring French reading. Her latest book, just out is Murder in Passy.

Who’s YOUR favorite fictional detective–in books, movies or TV? Leave a comment and I’ll enter you in a drawing to receive this paperback mystery. (U.S. Resident and over 18, please)

All of these travel pictures were taken by and are the property of VMB or Ken Badertscher. If you would like to reprint something, please ask. vmb@ atravelerslibrary.com

Print PDF

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.