Giles Blunt, The Fields of Grief (2006)

[I should have been guest blogging on Thoughts in Progress today, but with Blogger gone awry I don´t know when the post will be up.]

This Canadian police procedural is the fourth John Cardinal story, but the first I have read by this author. See my teaser.

Though I found the story interesting and appealing, it was hard to read as it begins with the death of Catherine Cardinal, John´s beloved wife, who suffered from very severe depressions and is supposed to have committed suicide. The description of his grief and his self-reproach are very realistic, meaning that the story made a great impact.

Besides, there is a story about child abuse. Always a tough theme, but Blunt never goes into uncanny details so for me the theme of depression was harder to handle.

Soon John Cardinal begins to wonder if Catherine really did take her own life, but even though Lise Delorme, a close colleague and friend, offer him some support, the main reaction is that it is just Cardinal´s unwillingness to accept his wife´s suicide.

My overall impression: a really fine mystery with great characters and a fine sense of place. I bought the book myself, and Giles Blunt has gone on the list.

James W. Nichol, Midnight Cab (2002)

A mini-review 

This Canadian thriller offers a most intriguing beginning. A three-year-old boy is left by the roadside, and all he can tell the police is that his name is Walker. Inexplicably, no one misses the little boy who is later adopted by a loving family in the country.

Of course Walker feels an urge to know who he is when he grows up, so at the age of eighteen he moves to Toronto. Here he finds a job as a taxi driver and forms a friendship with the handicapped night despatcher Krista Papadopoulos.

And then there is the story from the past about the boy Bobby who knows his father is not satisfied with him but doesn´t really understand why - Bobby is certain he has a brilliant future ahead of him, but for the reader it is difficult not to worry about his violent streak.

Very entertaining and exciting thriller. Furthermore the character Walker and his friendship with Krista appealed to me quite a lot. This debut is strongly recommended.

This was a Petrona book (caution: they tend to be addictive).

Sunday´s post: come back tomorrow for the Notice Board - and meet a rather unusual character. 

Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009)

[Dansk titel: Flavia de Luce og hævneren fra Ulster, 2010. De to første kapitler kan læses på Saxos hjemmeside] 

This debut is written by a Canadian but set in Britain in the 1950s.

On the very first page eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce has been gagged, tied and locked up in the attic. Fortunately only by her older sisters Daphne and Octavia. With the mother dead and the father an unobservant philatelist, the daughters are left to solve their conflicts on their own.

Soon, however, a very real enemy from outside the family leaves a dead snipe with a one-penny stamp on the doorstep. Flavia, who is not beyond listening at doors, learns that her father is involved in a thirty-year-old mystery that involves a very rare stamp and a death.  The following morning she finds a dying man among their cucumbers, and when Inspector Hewitt botches up the case, it is up to Flavia to solve the mystery with the aid of faithful Gladys, her mother´s old bicycle.

Despite her young age, Flavia is an excellent chemist who also shows great detecting skills. She has taken over the old lab in the Georgian family home, Buckshaw – a setting which slowly comes to life together with Flavia who seems to know the place better than anyone else.

“Like an inchworm, I wiggled my way up onto my knees, but it was too late.”

This ubiquitous inchworm is a rather unusual amateur detective; a lonely, precocious protagonist who struggles hard to be the son she believes her father wanted.

I bought the Kindle version myself and my one-word judgement: wonderful!

Read for the 2011 Global Reading Challenge: North America (Canada)
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Charlotte MacLeod, The Recycled Citizen (1987)

This Canadian cosy mystery is the seventh Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn mystery.

When you have read the very first lines, the scene is set:

´Coffee, Theonia?´
Mrs Adolphus Kelling was a strong woman for her age and size. She managed to lift Dolph´s great-aunt Matilda´s baroque silver pot without a quiver, and pour without a splash.
´Thank you, Mary dear.´Mrs Brooks Kelling stretched a graceful hand from the chaise-longue on which she was reclining like Madame Récamier to accept the ornate gold and green demitasse.

We are in Boston, among the blue-blooded Kelling family. Mary and Adolphus Kelling run the Senior Citizens´ Recycling Center, trying to improve the conditions of the poor and homeless by letting them salvage bottles and cans.

Unfortunately Chet Arthur, one of the regulars of the centre, is mugged and killed. Among his earthly possessions, the Kellings find traces of heroin. The family have their own private detective, however, so Max Bittersohn and his pregnant wife Sarah (formerly Kelling), set out to solve the case before it can endanger the reputation of the recycling centre.

The characters are appealing, and though the story was written in 1987, it has this typical cosy fiftyish feel so you are quite surprised when you hear that Sarah actually owns a microwave and that Max´ wardrobe includes a pair of jeans.

The story is a quick and entertaining read though I am not sure anyone would distribute heroin the way it is done in this book. I bought it myself and recommend it for lovers of traditional cosy mysteries.

Vicki Delany, Valley of the Lost (2009)

[Denne krimi er ikke oversat til dansk]

This Canadian police procedural is the second in the Constable Molly Smith series.

Lucky Smith hears a baby cry in the bushes outside the Trafalgar Women´s Support Centre. She follows the sound, and next to the angry baby she finds the dead body of his mother Ashley, one of the young clients of the centre.

Lucky calls for help, and the first constable who arrives is Molly Smith, Lucky´s own daughter. Molly, baptized Moonlight Legolas Smith by her hippie parents, is a competent policewoman, but in private she is unhappy and sleeps badly after the loss of her lover, Graham.

Molly and her superior, Sergeant John Winters, soon realize that it is surprisingly difficult to find information about Ashley and her past, and after the autopsy they are told that she has never given birth to a child. Who is little Miller then, and why has he not been reported missing?

Meanwhile Molly´s stubborn mother insists on taking care of the little baby at the cost of all her strength and most of her sleep. The social services are determined to put Miller in an approved foster home, however, though good homes do not exactly grow on trees.

A fine police procedural with a solid, exciting plot.

Thank you to Kerrie, Mysteries in Paradise, who sent this ARC on to me! See her review of Valley of the Lost.

Reviewed for the 2010 Global Reading Challenge, North America.

TOMORROW: a guest blogger writes about forensics.

Louise Penny, Still Life (2005)

[Denne serie er ikke oversat til dansk]

This Canadian novel is Louise Penny´s debut, and the first in the cozy Armand Gamache series.

The story takes place in the village of Three Pines. “Three Pines wasn´t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back.”

But one day evil strikes in this little paradise, first when young hoodlums assault the queer owners of the local Bistro, later when 76-year-old Jane Neal, retired teacher and amateur painter, is killed. The villagers are shocked, and even more so when they realized their dear friend must have been murdered because she had decided to invite them all into her home for the first time ever.

No more about the plot, but Penny deserves much praise for a well-arranged plot teeming with old secrets and a number of rather convincing villagers, for better or worse.

The protagonist is Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, happily married, very successful in his career and a great judge of character. And here comes my only problem with Penny´s series: Gamache is simply too good, kind and forgiving to be true, and his nasty little piece of an agent, Yvette Nichols, is too stupid, unpleasant and persistently loathsome.

Will I read more? Yes, certainly – keeping my fingers crossed that one day Louise Penny will make Gamache as credible as her other characters.

See my review of the third in the series, The Cruellest Month.

Impending Louise Penny

As I warned you beforehand, I am not ready for a review today, but of course you deserve the solution to Wednesday´s Bait in the Box.

The book in question is Louise Penny, Still Life, the author´s debut from 2005, and the first in the Armand Gamache series.


Tomorrow´s post: there may be news about The Red Shoes.

Louise Penny, The Cruellest Month (2007)

[Denne roman er ikke oversat til dansk]

This novel is the third in the Armand Gamache series which takes place in Quebec, Canada. The review is the last of six for my cozy mystery challenge.

A quotation from the first page:
“You going tonight?” Clara asked, trying to distract the old poet from taking aim at Monsier Béliveau. “Are you kidding? Live people are bad enough; why would I want to bring one back from the dead?” With that Ruth whacked Monsieur Bélieau in the back of his head.

The village of Three Pines prepare for their Easter egg hunt, hiding wooden eggs around for the children. One gets an impression of the colourful villagers immediately, e.g. old Ruth Zardo who throws her eggs at people rather than trying to hide them. She was the one who warned the others against using chocolate eggs the first year, predicting that ´something bad will happen´. That year the villagers learnt that bears also like chocolate and quickly decided to substitute them with wooden eggs in the future.

This particular year offers special entertainment: a séance to wake up the dead. The first try has no effect at all, hence the medium (a psychic witch) suggests that they have another one in the abandoned Hadley house. As any reader could have predicted, something bad will happen again: apparently one of the participants is frightened to death.

Armand Gamache of the Sûreté is put on the case; an excellent agent as well as a kind and likeable person. Gamache has been to Three Pines before on a case related to the mysterious Hadley house. Apart from solving the case he has his own problems: some years ago he exposed a bent colleague, and since then strong forces within the Sûreté have wanted to get rid of him.
Canadian Louise Penny is brilliant at creating an atmosphere. Even though I don´t like superstition and psychics in crime fiction as a rule, I found this mystery more exciting and appealing than most of the traditional cozies.

One small minus: in the ongoing “civil war” between good and corrupt forces within Sûreté, Armand Gamache is almost too perfect, more like a saviour than a real human being.

See some other reviews here: Kerrie, Mysteries in Paradise and Cathy, Kittling: Books.