Review: The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

Title: the Dogs of Riga (the second Kurt Wallander novel)

Author: Henning Mankell (translated by Laurie Thompson)

Publisher: Vintage [originally 1991, this edition 2001]

ISBN: 1-860-46959-0

Length: 326 pages

Genre: Police Procedural/Espionage thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: An intense throwback to thrillers like Gorky Park

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A lifeboat holding the bodies of two dead men washes up on the shore near Ystad, Sweden and Kurt Wallander’s team must investigate. They soon discover that the men were dead prior to being placed in the life raft and then that the men were from Latvia. A Major from the Latvian Police comes to Sweden to assist with the investigation but returns home after only a few days. A major event that could be connected then forces Wallander to go to Riga in Latvia where he is like a fish out of water in a murky political world.

I only read my first Henning Mankell book, Faceless Killers, last year (yes, yes I know I am late to the party). While it was a good read it wasn’t a great one and frankly I found Wallander to be a bit of a boring stereotype so I didn’t rush to pick up the next book in the series. However, having bought the first four books all at the same time because they were on special I embarked on The Dogs of Riga, albeit without a lot of enthusiasm. Luckily I found this story much more engrossing and stayed up way past my bedtime to finish it.

One of the things that struck me most about this particular book is what a good job Mankell does of putting readers in the shoes of Wallander the outsider when he travels to Latvia. The mix of curiosity, confusion and fear that Wallander displays seemed very natural to me. Although we often see these traits in amateur sleuths or accidental heroes we don’t often see ‘official’ investigators in situations where this kind of uncertainty would be believable but in this situation it’s entirely credible. The Latvia that Mankell depicts during a time of political upheaval is a world apart from Wallander’s native Sweden and his growing discomfort with the differences is palpable.

Despite all of that I still can’t warm to Wallander as a character. His hypochondria, bowel problems (ugh!) and ‘helpless male’ shtick just don’t grab me and nor does his habit of believing himself in love with various women at the drop of a hat. About the only thing I like about him is his habit of ‘consulting’ his recently deceased colleague and mentor Rydberg which I found quite touching. He is certainly a richly created character but not one I’d care to meet in real life. Far more than the first book in the series this was a book about Wallander alone so the rest of the characters were fairly two-dimensional although as I was so engrossed in the story I didn’t mind this as much as I normally would.

As I read the book I was reminded of Margot Kinberg’s recent blog post about the politics of murder as this book is all about politics which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. With the bulk of the book being set in one of the three Baltic states which were, when Wallander wrote it, yet to achieve their full independence from Russia the book is dripping with big picture politics and how various individuals coped with their highly charged environment. Some took advantage of the changing landscape while others fought to return to different points in the past and I was thoroughly intrigued by this depiction. In fact the book reminded me of the cold war thrillers I used to devour than a traditional police procedural.

I haven’t decided if I will read the rest of the books in this series or not as I suspect my real enjoyment of this one might be an aberration due to the subject matter and I don’t know if I can stand another encounter with Wallander’s teenager-like behaviour. Does the man ever grow up?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Inspector-Wallander.org is a great site with all the information about various incarnations of Wallander that you could possibly want. As well as details about the various books (their publication dates, translation availability etc) there are FAQs, character details and information about the various films and DVDs that have featured Wallander.

 

Review: Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie

Title: Dead Man’s Folly

Author: Agatha Christie

Narrator: David Suchet

Publisher: Harper Collins [This edition 2007, originally 1956]

ISBN: N/A [downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 6hrs 1min

Genre: Private Detective

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: A book that simultaneously manages to offer exactly what you expect at the same time as a surprise ending

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Hercule Poirot receives a frantic phone call from his friend Ariadne Oliver, a writer of murder mysteries. She has created a live murder game for a fête to be held in the grounds of Nasse House which is the home of Lord and Lady Stubbs but she believes there is real danger lurking at the House and she begs Poirot to come immediately. Oliver gives Poirot little to go on but her feelings and, perhaps because of this, he fails to prevent the murder of the young girl who was only supposed to be playing the role of victim in the murder game. He subsequently participates in a stop-start investigation before finally solving the crime.

I was prompted to read this book by one of Margot Kinberg’s excellent contributions to the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme. Margot highlighted the humour of the book and as that is an element of crime fiction I enjoy and hadn’t really associated with Christie before I thought it would be an interesting choice for me. I wasn’t disappointed. The Ariadne Oliver character really does make a nice contrast to the somewhat prissy and proper Poirot with her ability to laugh at herself and it does seem like Christie was having a bit of fun with her genre by using the ‘mystery within a mystery’ twist.

This twist is also a perfect device for Christie’s favourite ploy: misdirection of her readers. Even though I know that her plots are always complex and that the obvious clues are red herrings to be ignored I still didn’t come close to picking up on the key hints that led to the solution. As almost always with Christie’s books, the uncovering of the murderer follows a wonderfully convoluted and unexpected journey. One of the things I liked about this book is that Poirot didn’t seem quite so cocky as he is in earlier stories. He doesn’t inveigle himself into every single interrogation and for some time it seems as if he might not even solve the mystery at all. I found this slightly more humble Poirot more likable than I have in the past.

I notice that some people mention struggling to keep track of all the people who appear in this book and I think this is where listening to the audio book had me at an advantage. David Suchet is a superb narrator and manages to provide all the characters a distinctive voice which is very helpful in such a dialogue-rich story. I must admit I am becoming quite addicted to Suchet’s narrations of Christie’s works.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

If you’ve read the print book and listened to the audio book of Dead Man’s Folly clearly the next step is to play the hidden object game based on the book. This screen shot has me tempted.

Another blog to have reviewed Dead Man’s Folly is Books Please as part of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge that Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise is hosting.

 

Review: Tell No One by Harlan Coben

Title: Tell No One

Author: Harlan Coben

Publisher: Orion Books [originally 2000, this edition 2007]

ISBN: 978-1-4091-1702-5

Length: 346 pages

Genre: Thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A frenetically paced, superbly plotted yarn.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Eight years ago David Beck and his wife Elizabeth took their annual trip to the remote place where they had shared their first kiss. That night Beck was beaten and his wife kidnapped. She was found dead several days later, apparently the victim of a serial killer. Beck has since put some semblance of a life back together but it quickly unravels when he starts to receive messages that appear to be from his supposedly dead wife at the same time as two bodies are found in the spot where Elizabeth was kidnapped from. As Beck tries to determine if his wife might be alive after all, the authorities become convinced it was Beck not the serial killer who was responsible for her death and some nefarious characters who seem to know what really happened eight years ago take whatever action is necessary to ensure no one else finds out the truth.

I know it’s an over-used phrase but this book was, for me, a genuine page turner. Sure there are coincidences and plot contrivances to be found but I still read the book as quickly as I physically could, sneaking a few pages whenever I had a spare moment. The original premise hooked me immediately and the story, although far-fetched, sustained its internal logic throughout. There were multiple switches in point of view from first person (Beck’s) to third (virtually everyone else’s at one point or another) which helped give the frantic sense that lots of action was taking place simultaneously.

While the yarn was enjoyable unfortunately the characters were a little too predictable and trite for me to really connect with. Beck is so full of wholesome goodness (he’s a white doctor in a ghetto neighbourhood who never judges anyone not even the pregnant 12-year olds and is still in love with his dead high school sweetheart and is even kind to puppy dogs….) that if I met him in real life I’d want to beat him myself. Almost all of the rest of the characters are stereotypes too: the drug dealer with a heart of gold who helps Beck to go on the run and the evil generic Asian who has seen too much and can kill a man with his bare hands and so on. About the only character who I was really interested in as a person rather than a plot device was Beck’s best friend Shauna the plus size model who “stalks into a room as though it offends her”.

However, in a thriller more than almost any other genre plot is king and I can’t go past the fact that the book kept me interested from the first page to the last.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

For some quite unfathomable reason I’ve never read any of Coben’s other books but based on the writing here I’m keen to try more so if you have a favourite Harlan Coben book or can tell me whether or not I need to start at the beginning of his Myron Bolitar series let me know in the comments below.

This book was supplied to me free by the First Reads program at goodreads.com (how a book that’s been available since 2000 qualifies as ‘first read’ has me baffled but I’m grateful for the book anyway).

Tell No One has been reviewed at Jen’s Book Thoughts and You’ve Gotta Read This,

 

Review: Murder Between the Covers by Elaine Viets

Title: Murder Between the Covers (the second dead-end job mystery)

Author: Elaine Viets

Publisher: Signet

ISBN:1-86254-486-7

Length: 268 pages

Genre: Amateur sleuth/cosy

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 2.5/5

One-liner: A light, undemanding read

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Helen Hawthorne works for cash at Page Turners, a family owned bookstore in South Florida. The proprietor, Page Turner III, is horrible to staff and customers alike and few people are upset when he is murdered. Helen is forced to investigate his death when her friend Peggy is arrested for his murder and finds that almost everyone who knew Page Turner had a good motive for killing him.

The interesting fact behind this series (which as of this year will run to eight books) is that before writing each book Elaine Viets does the jobs that she describes in the book. She was, according to her website FAQ, a bookseller for over a year before (or perhaps while) writing Murder Between the Covers. I’m sure this is what helps to give the bookstore and its myriad of demanding, (and only occasionally lovely) customers. Having done my share of time in jobs dealing with the general public I found much to relate to in that aspect of the book.

The rest of the book is fairly standard for the genre. Each potential suspect is eliminated, generally via direct questioning, until there’s only one potential killer remaining and most of this was done quite believably although the ending was a little too contrived.  There are a series of oddball characters, such as Helen’s purple-loving 76-year-old landlady, Margery, who provided the kind of humour I tend to like in my cosies.

My one problem with the book is that I never quite bought into the Helen character. The premise is that she works for cash because any income she earns officially has to be shared with her ex-husband so even though she’s well-educated she works ‘dead-end jobs’. I suspect that in the real world someone smart in similar circumstances would just get themselves some good quality fake identification and get a better paying job. So there were quite a few points when I thought “well you really don’t have to be in that situation” and so I couldn’t summon up the sympathy I’m sure I was supposed to have.

 

 

Review: The Trojan Dog by Dorothy Johnston

Title: The Trojan Dog

Author: Dorothy Johnston

Publisher: Wakefield Press [2000]

ISBN:1-86254-486-7

Length: 268 pages

Genre: Amateur sleuth

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 1/5

One-liner: A confusing, disjointed mess.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The book is set in 1996 in the lead up to the Australian Federal Election of that year. Amid fear that the government of the day would soon be ousted Sandra Mahoney is contracted to write a report on administrative out-workers for the department dealing with labour issues. Soon after she starts the woman who hired Sandra, Rae Evans, is accused of fraudulently obtaining $900,000. For reasons I still can’t explain Sandra decides that Evans is not guilty and sets out to ‘investigate’ the case (if you define investigate as blunder through a series of conversations and random acts of stupidity).

I struggled with this book thought can’t really explain why. Why I didn’t throw it against a wall that is. Probably something to do with the fact it was given to me as a gift.

It’s the most confusingly convoluted plot I have come across in a very long time. It felt as if someone had laid all the book’s paragraphs out end-to-end then rearranged them randomly before sticking them back together and calling it a book. Some of the several dozen story threads seemed to end almost mid-sentence while others went on interminably but in neither case there was not much advancement in the main story. The case hinged on computer fraud which required complex explanations of hacking and other techno-babble and the parts of the story dealing with these sounded as if they’d been translated from the Martian by a drunk babel fish. When we finally got to the resolution it was a complete non-event, I could barely remember having encountered the bloke who turned out to be the bad guy although I had long since given up caring ‘whodunit’ (in fact I kept forgetting what ‘it’ was).

Another problem with the book was what I took, by the end anyway, for pretentiousness but may have been poor copy editing. I’m way more interested in politics than the average person (I remember election years the way others do World Cups or Olympics) but for the typical reader (and anyone outside this country) I can only imagine that chunks of this book, especially the first third, would make no sense at all. It’s full of obscure references to the political landscape and is peppered with acronyms that I can’t believe anyone outside the Canberra scene would have understood then let alone 13 years later.

The characters were equally difficult to come to grips with. The book is told in the first-person voice from Sandra’s point of view which should have made it a personal story but didn’t. Sandra was vague and timid most of the time which made her occasional risking of life and limb quite unbelievable. Her reason for believing in Rae Evans was only ever hinted at and never explained why she went to such lengths to find out what really happened. Not that I need to like a character to enjoy a book but when everything else is going wrong too an unlikable protagonist is one burden too many so I found Sandra’s insipidity and shoddy treatment of many of the people around her very disagreeable and when at the end of the book she decides she is going to become a computer analyst I wanted to scream “oh really, so all I have to do to get a new job is call myself an air traffic controller eh?”

Sandra’s love interest is Ivan something-Russian and he isn’t her husband (a fact which should have added far more interest to the narrative than it did) and he is a caricature of all things geek. Most of the others who features in the book are so randomly discussed or involved with the story that I didn’t form any other lasting opinions.

I could actually go on some more but I’d probably start getting really rude and/or personal and I really try to avoid that on Reactions to Reading. I’m only cross because I feel I wasted a lot of time on this book and that isn’t the author’s fault because I could have stopped at any point.

Other Stuff

I was relieved when I read this review in the Australian Crime Fiction Database and realised I was not alone in my thoughts about this book because I was beginning to think I was completely mad. Well respected Aussie crime fiction reviewer Graeme Blundell says that Johnston’s series has improved considerably since this outing but I can’t imagine spending another moment in Sandra Mahoney’s company.

 

Review: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Title: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life

Author: Steve Martin

Narrator: Steve Martin

Publisher: Clipper Audio [2007]

ISBN: 9781407412740

Length: 4hrs 3 mins

Genre: Autobiography

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3/5

One-liner: A sombre look at a funny man’s life

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Steve Martin concentrates on only a certain portion of his life with this offering which, while incorporating elements of his childhood, focuses on his dozen or so years as a stand-up comic during the late 60’s and into the 70’s. I’ve always thought being a comedian would be one of the toughest jobs on earth and so was interested to hear him tell of the years of hard work and rejection that led to his success as a headliner of arena shows being a regular on such shows as Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show. He talks at some length about how he developed and honed his act from the mish-mash it started as to the more polished work it became where all the sweat and effort were hidden from the audience. It made me wish I’d been able to see him at one of his early live shows when he regularly took his audience members on a tour of the venue’s car park. There are also a smattering of anecdotes about his meetings and relationships with other celebrities though not a lot of these and, happily from my point of view, no dirt is dished on anyone.

While there are occasional interesting insights in the book it is for the most part simply a recitation of facts about Martin’s working life. There’s little reflection about the impact various events had on him, even when he talks about serious issues such as his depression or his strained relationship with his father. He says at one point that he’s a very private person and that becomes so clear by the end of the book that I wondered why on earth he bothered to include those more serious personal things at all if he only ever intended to boil them down to an unemotional sentence or two.

I thought it would be interesting to hear Martin read his own words but his delivery was, presumably deliberately, very flat. It didn’t matter whether he was re-telling a funny anecdote or recounting his emotional final meeting with his dying father: his tone of voice was exactly the same monotone. I think this is one of the few instances where I think I’d have enjoyed the print book more than the audio version as I’d have given a bit more emotion to some sections of the book than Martin did.

I enjoyed the parts of this book that dealt with the profession of stand-up comedy as I like peeking into worlds I know little about. I’d have preferred him to include more of these details than the snippets of his personal life that I assume he included reluctantly (or under pressure from publishers) based on the lack of substance those portions of the book had.

 

Review: Tilt A Whirl by Chris Grabenstein

Title: Tilt A Whirl

Author: Chris Grabenstein

Publisher: Audible Inc [2007]

ISBN: n/a [downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Setting: New Jersey, USA, present day

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: Brilliantly narrated and entertaining feel-good book.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Sea Haven, on the New Jersey shore, is overrun by summer tourists and the most serious crime is a stole bike. One Saturday morning two local police officers, John Ceepak, a former MP, and Danny Boyle, a rookie part-timer, see a hysterical young girl covered in blood. She tells them her father was shot in the local amusement park. Ceepak is asked by his old army buddy who is now the Police Chief to head up the investigation into Reginald Hart’s murder and he also gives his word to Ashley, the young girl, that he’ll protect her from the danger which still surrounds her.

If you had told me that every time I pressed stop I’d be itching to get back to a single-body whodunit narrated by a 20-something party animal and featuring a goody-two-shoes ex-soldier who lives by a corny moral code I’d have given you the look. The “I don’t think you have a clue and thanks for nothing” look. But, based on the infinitesimally small chance I might be wrong, I accepted a passionate audio book recommendation from Belle (of Ms Bookish) and was thoroughly entertained from start to finish.

First I must mention that Jeff Woodman is a superb narrator: managing to give a completely different yet realistic sounding voice (complete with regional accent) to more than a dozen characters of different ages and genders. I have no doubt that his skill is part of the reason I so thoroughly enjoyed the book and had such vivid images of the setting and characters in my head.

I thought the choice of narrative voice in the story was a particularly good one. Using someone who is an observer and a participant in the action worked well, especially when combined with the fact that Danny Boyle is a rookie working with a more experienced policeman. This provided plausible opportunities for the kind of explanatory scenes and missed bits of action that can become clunky in first-person narratives. Danny also turned out to be a likable, engaging young man with a good sense of humour and the story unfolded quite naturally through his eyes.

The use of a ‘Duddley Do-Right’ style character in the form of John Ceepak (whose life motto is ‘neither lie nor cheat not steal nor tolerate those who do) is a risk because I cannot possibly be the only potential reader who is wary of such fantasies. However, even though he is too good to be truly credible, I found myself interested in his back story and smiling at his all around good-guy-ness and rooting for him to triumph over the bad guys. Maybe even natural born cynics like me need to take a day off from being jaded every once in a while.

Although there were some corny, predictable lines the broader story kept me guessing right to the end, the New Jersey Shore setting felt realistic, the characters were charming and overall it was the literary equivalent of a feel good movie. I’ll definitely be listening to the rest of this series (though unlike Belle who gobbled them all up at once I’m going to space them out).

Other stuff

Here is a review by Belle (from Ms Bookish) (thanks again for the recommendation) and a review of the whole series by Beth (from Beth Fish Reads) who introduced Belle to the series. Don’t you love the way the book blogging world works?

 

Review: Frozen Tracks by Ake Edwardson

Title: Frozen Tracks

Author: Åke Edwardson (translated by Laurie Thompson)

Publisher: Vintage  Books [original edition 2001, this translation 2008]

ISBN: 9780099472070

Length: 538 pages

Setting: Sweden, Present day

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: An emotionally charged and unpredictable novel which I struggled to put down.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In the weeks before Christmas several police stations in Gothenburg receive phone calls from parents who think their children might have, temporarily, been kidnapped by ‘a mister’. However because the incidents are minor (the children are unhurt and parents aren’t even sure the children whether the children have imagined things) and not logged centrally no one realises there might be a pattern of crimes emerging. At the same time DCI Erik Winter and his team are investigating a series of apparently random but brutal bashings of young men in the city. Both sequences of events begin to gain momentum while the personal lives of the investigating team take a battering too.

I’ve not read the previous two books in this series that have been translated into English but I don’t think I am at much disadvantage. I was quickly engaged by the eclectic investigative team who are dogged, introspective and quite funny. There’s a mildly insulting banter that is depicted between the team that lightens an otherwise quite sombre book and I thoroughly enjoyed that aspect (and kudos to the translator for this in particular as I think humour must be the most difficult thing to get right). At different times though team members can be emotional with each other, such as when Winter is consoling his friend and colleague Bertil Ringmar, and this depiction of people being affected and conflicted by events in their personal and professional lives is very compelling. Edwardson does a good job too at showing the effects of crime on victims and their families and also the families of investigators although the same depth wasn’t really visible with the main suspect who I found to be a bit stereotypical.

The story is, for the most part, well constructed although I did find the ending a little more convoluted than it needed to be. However the parallel cases are developed nicely with a realistic sense of wrong turns and dead ends and any linkages between the two threads are plausible. There are some slow points in the pacing which could easily have been removed by tighter editing and I am, again, at a loss to explain why books are so much longer these days than their counterparts from 10 or 20 years ago.

Edwardson has an odd style of writing in which a good deal of the action is inferred rather than described explicitly and many of the facts of the story are revealed through conversations between the team members rather than pure narrative description. I can understand that this might be frustrating for some readers as it leaves quite a few things unknown but it gave me the feeling that I was eavesdropping on a current investigation rather than reading a report once the case had been closed and I liked the immediacy and unpredictability this offered.

Other stuff

It was this review by Maxine at Euro Crime that made me pick this book up from the specials table (because I never buy books I don’t need without prompting) and Fiona at Euro Crime also offers her take on the book.

 

Review: White Nights by Ann Cleeves

Title: White Nights [Unabridged Audiobook]

Author: Ann Cleeves

Narrator: Gordon Griffin

Publisher: ISIS Audio Books [2008]

ISBN: N/A [downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 11hrs 35mins

Setting: Shetland Islands, Scotland, Present day

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A story where setting takes center stage, ably supported by compelling characters.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It’s summer in Shetland and well-known artist Bella Sinclair is hosting an exhibition of her work alongside that of new artist Fran Hunter. Although there are not as many guests at the opening as Bella expected, one unknown Englishman does make an impression when he breaks down in tears at the sight of one of the paintings. Local Detective Jimmy Perez, attending the exhibition on a date with Fran Hunter, takes the man aside and discovers he has amnesia. When the man disappears from the gallery Jimmy doesn’t make much effort to find him but wishes he had done when the man is discovered dead the next morning. This presumed suicide and subsequent events all seem to be affected by the endless daylight of the far northern summer and the isolation of the islands.

I’m a sucker for books set in remote locations. They are as different from my inner-city life as it gets (and not somewhere I’d willingly spend more than about 5 days) but I love reading about them. Cleeves does a superb job of immersing readers in the isolated world populated by familiar faces  who, although they share much, all seem to work incredibly hard at keeping a little piece of themselves private. I quickly developed an image of Biddista, the village of half a dozen houses where most of the action takes place, and its inhabitants thanks to Cleeves’ imagery and her depictions of how the locals interact with the various ‘incomers’ in the story.

Cleeves takes time too to develop a range of characters. Jimmy Perez is engaging as he pursues both personal and professional interests despite the fact he is unsure of himself in both spheres. I thought his mixture of introspection and decisiveness quite realistic although I was a bit bored by his somewhat laboured relationship with Fran. Several of the island ‘old-timers’ were utterly absorbing including Kenny who has the misfortune to discover more than one body and who seemed to represent the Islands’ struggle to have its traditions coexist with modern ways. The Inverness Inspector in charge of the case, Roy Taylor, was a different type of character all together but equally well depicted and a good source of conflict for the novel.

For me the book fell down a bit in its story. The establishment portion was quite good but after that I found the plot fairly predictable and I actually thought the ending a bit too melodramatic (and not terribly credible) which was out of keeping with the earlier events. As all the suspects were highlighted then rejected during the final scenes I got the sense that the culprit had been chosen for shock value more than continuity.

I haven’t read the first book in this quartet but I didn’t feel that I was at any disadvantage. There were mentions of earlier events but I wasn’t troubled by not knowing the details which scores bonus points from me as books which can be read independently seem to be a rare commodity in crime fiction these days. Although the story wasn’t the most gripping I’ve read there is much else to recommend this book, especially when narrated by the delightful Gordon Griffin who managed to portray an entire range of people without really changing his voice at all.

Other Stuff

I reviewed another book set in Shetland last year, SJ Bolton’s Sacrifice, and this is the second book in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland Quartet: for islands with a population of around 23,000 people they seem to be inspiring a disproportionate number of murders!

White Nights is also reviewed at It’s Criminal, Mysteries in Paradise, Euro Crime, Euro Crime again and, for a review with a difference, try WhereDunnit

 

Review: The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl by Joseph Telushkin

Title: The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl (the 1st Daniel Winter mystery)

Author: Joseph Telushkin

Publisher: Bantam Books [1987]

ISBN: 0553258095

Length: 180 pages

Setting: Los Angeles, USA, contemporary present day

Genre: Amateur sleuth (with a smidgen of police procedural)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: An off-beat setting for a classic whodunnit.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As well as being the Rabbi for a small Los Angeles synagogue Daniel Winter hosts a religious-themed radio show. One Sunday evening he puts together a panel of three women who are outspoken on the issue of feminism and general womens’ issues. One of these women is Rabbi Myra Wahl who is from a different synagogue in the city. The show is a lively one but towards the end Myra Wahl hurls an extremely offensive insult at Daniel Winter and when she begs his forgiveness he does not give it. As she jogs home from the radio station she is killed by a hit and run driver and Daniel is soon a prime suspect although Myra Wahl has made several other enemies in her young life. Daniel is provided information that the police don’t have access to and so runs a somewhat parallel investigation to the official one.

Reading a lot of mysteries as I do it’s difficult to find settings and characters that I haven’t seen a hundred times before so I was attracted to the premise of this book. Happily the execution lived up to the promise. In tandem with the classically well constructed plot was an exploration of the sorts of subjects we’re normally advised against discussing in polite company including religion, abortion and the treatment of homosexuality in the Jewish faith. I’m not sure that I’d want all my books to be so serious but I found it refreshing to read something of a ‘cosy’ that isn’t populated by women who shop.

Daniel Winter is a very likable character although he seems a bit too perfect to believe. However a minor thread of the novel, in which he has to decide if he wants to continue being a Rabbi or become a full-time radio host with a national show, made him seem more human. The only other character depicted with any real depth is Brenda Goldstein, a some-time member of his synagogue and a police psychologist who becomes involved in the investigation of Wahl’s murder. The one character I found difficult to swallow was Lieutenant Joe Cerezzi who is ostensibly in charge of the case but who seems remarkably cavalier about allowing a psychologist and a Rabbi to do almost all of the investigating.

Ultimately I found the depiction of both the rituals of the Jewish religion and some sensitive issues as seen from the point of view of a Rabbi a quite refreshing change from the more traditional mystery settings. It was definitely this aspect of the novel that led to me reading it in a couple of sittings as the mystery itself was perfectly serviceable but nothing extraordinary.

Other stuff

In all there were three books in this series although Josepth Telushkin, himself a Rabbi, has many non-fiction and religious works published as well.