Reading in February 2018

So far I have read nine books in January and nine books in February; a lot of reading for me. Two of the nine books read in February were not crime fiction, although there is a bit of mystery in one of them.

In the non-crime related group, we have:

Love & Treasure by Ayelet Waldman (2014)

This is a story about World War II, its aftermath, the Holocaust, displaced persons in camps, and the looting of the belongings of Jewish families.The story begins with a Prologue set in 2013 when Jack Wiseman is dying. He passes a pendant that he took from the Gold Train collection on to his granddaughter, with a request to return it to its rightful owner. What follows is essentially three linked novellas, each a self-contained story, depicting some events related to the pendant. See my review here.

The Blitz:  The British Under Attack by Juliet Gardiner (2010)

It took me over a year to read this. It is a very good book, and a topic I am extremely interested in, but it was harrowing to read about the Blitz, and non-fiction isn't my favorite reading. So I took lots of breaks. A lot of it was first hand accounts of life in Britain during the Blitz, what people had to endure, the difficulty of providing support for those who had lost homes or families, and the devastation to the cities.

This is a very readable book and I would not discourage anyone from reading it, but I see it more as a historical reference in which the author has pulled together a tremendous amount of information about this event in history.

Moving on to my crime fiction reads, this month I read three books in the espionage fiction sub-genre, three vintage mysteries, and a historical mystery. And all of these were from my TBR piles, books that I have owned for at least a year, and in most cases it has been several years.

Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer (1935)

Georgette Heyer (1902-1972) is primarily known for her regency romances, but she also wrote 12 mystery novels. Four of them featured Inspector Hemingway, and this is the 2nd novel in that series. I have just recently started reading Heyer's mysteries again, and I am enjoying them quite a bit. See my review here.

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst (1995)

The Polish officer of the title is recruited into the Polish underground after Poland is invaded by Germany in 1939. I was surprised by this book. It was drier than the first two books in the Night Soldiers series, and it felt more like a history than fiction. Many fans of Alan Furst's book consider this their favorite, so I think I am in a minority in my opinion. It doesn't deter me from moving on to the next one in the series, though.

Lumen by Ben Pastor (1999)

Immediately after reading The Polish Officer I started reading Lumen, which is set at the same time in Poland (1939 - 41). The protagonist is a Wehrmacht captain in Intelligence, Martin Bora, stationed in Cracow during the Nazi occupation of Poland. He is tasked with investigating the death of a nun, well known for her prophetic powers. The books were a perfect pair. I learned a lot about Poland during the time period from Alan Furst's book, and it made this one an easier and more interesting read.

The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall (1965)

Quiller is a British secret agent for a covert organization of spies, unacknowledged by the government. This book, originally titled The Berlin Memorandum, was the first in a series of 19 books about Quiller. There is a film adaptation starring George Segal, Alec Guinness, and Max Von Sydow. See my review here.

Murder Begins at Home by Delano Ames (1949)

Another pleasant and intriguing mystery featuring Jane and Dagobert Brown, a crime solving couple. Most of the books in the series are set in the UK, but this one, the second, is set in New Mexico, USA. One of the things I like about this series is that Jane and Dagobert are intellectual equals; Jane's part is not secondary to Dagobert's. See my review here.

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews (2013)

A Russian mole, spies working to turn enemy agents into double agents, a school for using sex in espionage, and lots and lots of violence. Some of my favorite spy fiction is low key and more about the tradecraft and gathering secrets from documents. This one is definitely on the gritty side but also puts the emphasis on tradecraft . Another one that has been adapted to film, now in theaters. A very good book, some very interesting characters, all very well developed. 

Gold Comes in Bricks by A.A. Fair (1940)

A.A. Fair is a pseudonym used by Erle Stanley Gardner for the Bertha Cool and Donald Lam stories. Flamboyant, fast-talking Bertha Cool is the boss; Donald Lam works for her. She spends most of her time telling Donald to change his ways, until he ends up making lots of money for her. This plot involves a very rich man who wants to find out why his daughter is spending too much money. It could be gambling or blackmail.

Six Degrees of Separation - From The Beauty Myth to The Wine of Angels

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

It is not a requirement that the books be ones I have read, but this month I have read all of the books in my chain.

The starting point this month is The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. I have not read the book, had never even heard of it, and I was surprised to find that it was first published in 1990. I doubt that things have changed that much since then.

Having grown up in the American South in the 1950s and 60s, I am well aware of pressure to be beautiful, to fit the mold, etc. And in my family, although my intelligence was praised, beauty in women was very important. It was a relief to get to California, and especially Santa Barbara, where things were much more relaxed. I stopped wearing make up, only putting it on when I went back to Alabama for the first few years. At least in my everyday life, I no longer felt that pressure.

But rather than continue on the Beauty theme I will move to another non-fiction book. The Monuments Men is about a kind of beauty, the beauty found in art. This book tells the true story of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program established in 1943 to help protect cultural property in war areas during and after World War II. Several hundred service members and civilians worked with various military forces to safeguard art works of historic and cultural importance from war damage. It is an amazing story.

My next link is to Love & Treasure by Ayelet Waldman, a novel that starts with the discovery of the Hungarian Gold Train, which contained valuables confiscated from Jewish citizens of Hungary during World War II. Where The Monuments Men focused on art treasures that were saved, this book focuses on the looting of everyday belongings (watches, jewelry, silverware, china), most of which were never returned to the owners or their families.

The next connection uses the time setting, another book related to World War II. The Holiday Murders by Robert Gott is a historical crime fiction novel, set during WWII in Australia. I like to read crime fiction set before, during and after that war, and this was especially interesting because I had not read much about Australia during that time. As the title indicates, the events take place from Christmas to New Year's Day. This was a somewhat gritty thriller.

 This leads to another mystery set at Christmas, Murder at the Old Vicarage by Jill McGown. This one is set in the UK in the 1980s, when it was published. The victim is the vicar's son-in-law, and he is found dead in a bedroom at the vicarage. The vicar, his wife, and his daughter are all suspects. This is a Christmas mystery that is not saccharine, and not cozy at all. This book is part of the Lloyd and Hill series, one of my favorite mystery series.

The link to my next book, Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, is quite clear. Not only are the titles very similar but Jill McGown's book was written as a homage to Christie's book. This novel is the first in the Miss Marple series and was published in 1930. The story is set in the village of St. Mary Mead. A very unpopular resident of the village is murdered in the vicar's study. The first person narrator is the Vicar. Miss Marple  is very perceptive and sees the evil that is hidden underneath the surface in the village.

My final link is to The Wine of Angels by Phil Rickman, a completely different kind of mystery novel, with a touch of the supernatural, starring a female vicar. I have enjoyed series with clerical protagonists, but mixing the supernatural in was questionable and the length was daunting (589 pages).  However, the book proved to be especially interesting because it highlights the difficulties of being a woman priest; it was an engaging read and I loved every page of it.

Love & Treasure: Ayelet Waldman

This is a story about World War II, its aftermath, the Holocaust, displaced persons in camps, and the looting of the belongings of Jewish families.The story begins with a Prologue set in 2013 when Jack Wiseman is dying. He passes a pendant that he took from the Gold Train collection on to his granddaughter, with a request to return it to its rightful owner. What follows is essentially three linked novellas, each a self-contained story, depicting some events related to the pendant.

The first section follows Jack in Salzberg as he is assigned to catalog and guard the items that arrived on the Hungarian Gold Train. He meets and falls in love with Ilona, a Hungarian refugee and survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau. During his assignment in Salzburg, Jack wrestles with the dilemma between his duty to the US Army and his belief that the items on the train that were taken from Jewish families should be returned to the rightful owners. The middle section features Jack's granddaughter, Natalie, as she works with Amitai, an art dealer who recovers lost World War II art pieces, to determine the provenance of the pendant. The last section is the most bizarre, but also the most entertaining and disturbing. Set in 1913 in Budapest and told from a psychoanalyst's point of view, we see the early history of the pendant. That section is especially interesting because it focuses on two young women of the time who are interested in having careers, and also are working towards women's suffrage.

There are so many things I liked about this book. First of all, the writing. Without good writing, the experience might be educational but boring. The story itself is told beautifully, and the characters in each section are fully developed and I cared about them.

I like the structure of the book. By dividing the book into three distinct stories, each provided some illumination of different topics related to Jewish life and anti-semitism over the course of 100 years. Although my favorite section dealt with Jack and the aftermath of the war in Europe, the other two sections expanded on the themes and gave the story more depth. There are no tidy endings here, and I liked that too.

I learned so much about World War II and its aftermath without it feeling at all like a history lesson. I have read The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, but the focus of that book is on art treasures that were saved, and this book focuses on the everyday belongings (watches, jewelry, silverware, china) that were confiscated by the Hungarian government from Jewish families. I had known nothing of the Hungarian Gold Train until I read this book. Plus the section set in the early 1900s was especially interesting, a time period I have read little about.

Other resources:

• For more about the history of the Hungarian Gold Train, see Beyond the Book: The Hungarian Gold Train at BookBrowse and an article at author James Twining's website.
• Also see reviews at Clothes in Books, Ms. Wordopolis Reads, and Mostly Fiction.

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Publisher:   Alfred A. Knopf, 2014
Length:       331 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Settings:     First part in Salzburg, Austria; 2nd and 3rd parts mainly in
                   Budapest, Hungary. Also some of the 2nd part was in Israel.
Genre:        Historical fiction
Source:       I purchased my copy. On my TBR pile since 2014.