Author: Carolyn Parkhurst

2010, Doubleday

Filed under: Mystery, Literary

Carolyn Parkhurst’s third novel, The Nobodies Album, is a frustrating read. Parkhurst clearly has great talent, but the convoluted project she sets for herself makes genuine success an impossibility.

Nobodies centers around Octavia Frost, a novelist in the second (or possibly third) act of her career. As the novel opens, Octavia arrives in New York to personally hand over a hard copy of her new book, The Nobodies Album, which is a collection of endings from her previous novels, along with revised new endings. (The text of Octavia’s The Nobodies Album is included, chapter by chapter, interspersed throughout the novel.)

But before she can make it to her agent’s office, she gets a call: her son, Milo, a famous rock star, has been arrested for killing his fiancée. Octavia and her son have been estranged for four years, and it has something to do with the deaths of her husband and daughter (but those happened decades earlier).

Almost every passage in The Nobodies Album is, by itself, well made and beautiful. But the overall effect is like using exquisite tiles for a bad mosaic: if you step back to take in the whole work, it’s utterly disappointing compared to any individual piece. …
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Author: Tarquin Hall

2010, Simon & Schuster

Filed under: Mystery

The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing has the foundation to be a phenomenal mystery. India, with its unique culture, makes a fascinating backdrop. The case itself is intricate and compelling, and Tarquin Hall has a terrific knack for plotting. The characters, from a distance, seem interesting, likeable, and fun.

That last part is where the foundation begins to crack. The more you see of Hall’s characters, the clearer it becomes that he doesn’t like them. Vish Puri—the detective sorting out the case—is a soft, arrogant hypocrite, who complains about India’s treatment of its poor from under the parasol his servant must forever hold above him. He’s incapable of speaking without mentioning how brilliant and insightful he is, and incapable of moving without complaining about the heat.

He’s insufferable, in other words, and Hall seems to delight in making him so, along with the rest of his cast; you’ll be hard-pressed to find a loving, or even amiable, description of anybody in this novel. Hall also takes great pleasure in keeping the culture at arm’s length: his interpretations of Indian customs are awkward and piecemeal, he seems to barely tolerate the country itself.

In short, Hall’s narration is oddly detached from the characters, setting, and action of the novel. There’s a good mystery in the heart of this book, but Hall does everything in his power to curb your enjoyment of it. …
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[This novel is a C4 Great Read.]

Author: Millard Kaufman

2010, McSweeney’s

Filed under: Literary, Mystery, Thriller

Misadventure is a terrific book. Its author, the late Millard Kaufman, was McSweeney’s's famous “boy novelist,” renowned for publishing his first novel, Bowl of Cherries, at 90.

While this is only his second novel, Kaufman’s been writing his whole life. He worked in 1950s Hollywood as a screenwriter, and it shows. Misadventure hovers somewhere between mystery and thriller—let’s call it “suspense”—and its tone and feel are reminiscent of Tinseltown’s Golden Age.

It’s a book that isn’t shy about having an intricate, twisting plot, but it still gets its drive from vivid characters and the way it dives headfirst into conflicts, one after another. …
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Author: Declan Hughes

2010, William Morrow

Filed under: Mystery

In an early scene in City of Lost Girls, the crew of the movie Nighttown falls all over themselves trying to find an extra who hasn’t been seen in several hours (nearly half a day!). This extra is crucial to the making of the movie, and, if she isn’t found, millions of dollars could be wasted on reshoots. Luckily, private eye Ed Loy is already there, and already working for the director on a different, unrelated matter.

And so, it’s only page 12 and we already know the lay of the land: City of Lost Girls will be a mystery founded on thin logic, absurd coincidences, overstuffed gestures, forced authorial machinations, and plain old unimaginative writing. It only gets worse from here. …
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[This novel is a C4 Great Read.]

Author: Robert Coover

Overlook Duckworth, 2010

Filed under: Literary, Mystery

If you’re a fan of postmodernism, I’m assuming you already have this book. I’m assuming it was delivered to your door—in an envelope marked only with a muted trumpet—by a nameless letter carrier you will never meet.

This review is for everybody else, everybody who didn’t get the muted trumpet joke (was it even a joke?). This is not an essay about postmodernism, its only purpose is to help you decide whether you should read this book.

In short, you should. Noir is very, very good. The mystery part of it is pretty hard to follow, but Coover’s enthralling writing, great humor, and boundless creativity make for a really fun read. And at barely 200 pages, you’ll be lucky to stretch it out for three days. …
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Author: John Burdett

Knopf, 2010

Filed under: Mystery

It’s often a good thing for a novel to have strong characters with clear motivations, whose moods and feelings you can sense as you read. Except, of course, if the main character wants to be in a different kind of novel.

The Godfather of Kathmandu should be a mystery. It’s about a detective in the Thai Police—the awesomely named Sonchai Jitpleecheep—and it opens with a case for Sonchai to solve, a case he describes as “a to-die-for little murder.”

Before he can get started on the case, though, Sonchai gets sidetracked by a $40 million heroin deal in which he becomes involved on behalf of his boss: police chief and heroin kingpin Colonel Vikorn. Sonchai loves the idea of being a “consigliere” (just like in the movie The Godfather) and to set up the deal he travels to Kathmandu, Nepal (thus the title).

Like Burdett’s previous Sonchai mysteries, Godfather uses its setting to great effect. Thailand, and Nepal for that matter, are fascinating places in which to have a mystery, and Burdett highlights the differences between Western and Eastern psychology with an insight that’s both culturally acute and delightfully gleeful.

Unfortunately, you can sense Sonchai’s apathy toward the case he’s assigned (you know, the actual plot of the novel), and so none of the author’s spirit translates to the mystery itself. …
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[2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]

Author: Malla Nunn

Washington Square Press, 2009

Filed under: Mystery

In A Beautiful Place to Die, a Johannesburg detective, Emmanuel Cooper, travels into the “deep country” of South Africa to investigate a hoax in a small town called Jacob’s Rest. It turns out to be a real case, the murder of a white police captain, possibly by a black or “coloured” (meaning, roughly, mixed-race) worker.

Beautiful takes place in the early 1950s, when race relations in SA were strictly governed by the Immorality Act, which explicitly bans interracial sex, and implicitly bans most other kinds of interracial contact.

The themes of race, racism and morality not only serve as emotional undercurrents, they also actively influence the case and Emmanuel’s attempt to solve it. The investigation is further complicated by small-town politics, national politics, laws, secrets, vendettas, bigotry, and more. It’s a case that could cost Emmanuel his career or even his life, and a very solid premise for a novel.

Additionally, Malla Nunn is the best prose stylist among the Edgar nominees…. when she wants to be. The first half of this novel is enjoyable and engrossing, thanks in no small part to her style and the lush, brutal setting. The second half is solid, but bows more to plot and the mechanics of the case, and forgets the fractured soul of the country Emmanuel finds himself in. …
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[2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel By An American Author---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]

Author: Stefanie Pintoff

Minotaur, 2009

Filed under: Mystery

In the Shadow of Gotham has a very straightforward premise, and isn’t shy about laying it out. The story centers on Simon Ziele, a CSI-style police detective in early 1900s New York. Ziele embraces forensic evidence despite the fact that fingerprints are not admissible in court in 1905.

At the end of the first chapter, Ziele gives us the first of many updates on the case:

I had the unsettling sensation that we were being drawn into an even more complicated case than I’d originally thought—one that would draw upon our every power of deduction to unravel.

That mission statement contains the novel’s best and worst facets. The best is Pintoff’s clear desire to tell a detective story and nothing but. She puts a new spin on the tired theme of forensics-based detecting, and from the get-go she writes an unapologetic mystery.

The bad part, though, is that tone. In sounding historically authentic, the novel also sounds stodgy and droll. The characters are too honorable and the case too straightforward for Ziele to need his every power. …
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[2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel By An American Author---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]

Author: Sophie Littlefied

Minotaur Books, 2009

Filed under: Mystery, Thrillers

A Bad Day for Sorry is, at its core, a revenge fantasy about a woman who tracks down and punishes wife-beaters. It’s a righteous premise, and it’s entertaining in the way that wish fulfillment usually is.

Our heroine is Stella, the middle-aged owner of a sewing supply store. In her spare time, Stella helps battered women get peace and respite from the abusive men in their lives. She ties bad men up with bondage equipment, and does whatever needs doing in order to convince them to leave their women and never come back.

In Sorry, Stella hunts down one particular scumbag on behalf of a woman she barely knows. It’s a quick-reading and fairly entertaining story, but Stella’s detachment from the case at hand makes for a relatively tension-free narrative. She doesn’t really care all that much, and so it’s hard to care about her. …
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[2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]

Author: Tim Gautreaux

Knopf, 2009

Filed under: Literary, Mystery, Thrillers

The Missing doesn’t quite know where to stand, genre-wise. On the one hand, there’s a bit of a mystery—a young girl is kidnapped in department store and the security guard on duty at the time, Sam Simoneaux, sets out to find her and get her back.

On the other hand, Gautreaux reveals by page 90 the culprits behind the kidnapping, and even the rednecks they paid to do the actual deed. That means the mystery is reduced to a yes/no question—will Sam find the girl or not?—and we still have 300 pages to get through.

I’m guessing, from those facts, that Gautreaux wants this to be a literary thriller, one of those “the true mystery is how it happens” books. It doesn’t work. …
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