Review: Once Upon a Time, Barbara Fradkin (Canada: Ontario)

Title: Once Upon a Time
Author: Barbara Fradkin
Publication: 2002/Toronto: RendezVous Press
ISBN #: 0-929141-84-9
# of pages: 254
Discovered at Crime Writers of Canada
Read in paper format
Also available in e-book format
Link to author’s website: www.barbarafradkin.com

 Despite the cold Ottawa winter, an old man waits in the car while his wife attends her hospital appointment. By the time she returns, he is face down in the snow, dead.

The autopsy states the death was from natural causes, an elderly person in poor health with nothing but a small gash on his forehead. Staff Sergeant Sullivan of the Major Crimes department attended the scene and agrees with this result.  But his friend and boss Inspector Green is bored, despite the stack of paper on his desk and this small gash bothers him. Or maybe it just distracts him from bureaucratic paperwork that he doesn’t want to do.

Green decides to take a small break and make a few inquiries. In doing so, he manages to upset the pathologist, the deceased man’s family and his staff sergeant. He can’t find a logical explanation for the gash and combined with a witness to a possible second person in the car, Green decides he must continue to pick away at these few threads.

He is also supposed to be helping his wife Sharon organize their son’s first birthday party but as the investigation heats up, his work time quickly eats into his personal life. Green knows he needs to better balance the two as he has already been through one divorce as a result of his singular focus on his job but the case starts to become personal and he is soon caught up in events that occurred many years before, in Poland during World War II.

The author starts each chapter with a tantalizing poem, dating back to WWII. This is part of her strong character development. All the characters seem real, people who could be your next door neighbours. The book weaves the past and the present together well, leaving the motive in doubt until the end. Green’s struggles with both his work and family roles ring true, and you like him, despite his flaws.

Several interesting aspects of WWII are explored, particularly the life altering decisions ordinary citizens had to make, choices that sometimes are only horrific with the (apparent) clarity of hindsight. As one character says “No one is a saint who survived the ghettos. All the saints died."

This book caught my attention from the beginning and challenged me to the end. I can`t wait to read more of this series.     Rating: (^_°)       Intriguing

Author Fradkin was a child psychologist for many years before retiring to write full time, a pastime she had started at the tender age of six. The Inspector Green series totals nine books so far, two of which have won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis award for Best Novel. ("Once Upon a Time" was shortlisted for the award.) She has also written numerous short stories, started the Cedric O`Toole mystery series for reluctant or emerging adult readers, and is a member of the Ladies’ Killing Circle which edits short story anthologies.

 

 

Review: Last to Die, Tess Gerritsen (USA)

Title: Last to Die

Author: Tess Gerritsen
Publication: 2013/New York: Ballantine Books
ISBN #: 978-0-345-51552-0
# of pages: 423
Discovered by my brother who let me and my mother fight over who got it next!
Read in paper format
Also available in e-book format
Link to author’s website: Tess Gerristsen
 

Some teenagers have it rougher than others. Claire Ward just wanted to hang out with her friends but her foster parents tracked her down late one night…and almost got her killed. Teddy Clock lived in a wealthy neighbourhood with all the material benefits….and barely survived his foster family’s slaughter. Once Detective Jane Rizzoli hears about both cases, she is sure they are linked, even though they occurred in different cities. Her friend, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, has a safe place for Teddy to stay while the two of them try to work out what is happening and determine if the events can possibly be connected.

Rizzoli also has to contend with her newly engaged mother’s wedding plans and her father (but not quite ex-husband) who is bent on derailing them. And if that wasn’t enough, the senior detective, Crowe, completely disagrees with Rizzoli’s assessment of the Clock case and will not assign her the resources she needs to explore her theory. Then a third case pops up that increases the urgency of solving the case…or more people will die.

As a keen follower of the “Rizzoli & Isles” TV series, I was curious to read one of the books in the series. It was a bit confusing at first as some of the characters are different (for instance, the mother’s fiancé in the book is Rizzoli’s ex-partner in the TV series).  This story had more substance than the TV shows; as much as I like them, they really are entertainment fluff. It was challenging trying to work out how the cases might be connected and who was behind the murders. The scenes at the special school were also interesting: even children with a major challenge in common still find a way to divide up into the “cool kids” and the “nerds”.  However, the plot was rather over the top and  the support Rizzoli gets from a senior officer is unlikely to happen in the real world. That said, I enjoyed the story, great bedtime reading.            

Rating: (°_°)      Worth reading

Author Gerritsen is a retired physician who began writing romantic thrillers while on maternity leave. Ten years later, she switched to medical thrillers, one historical thriller and finally to the Rizzoli and Isles series in 2001, of which there are currently 10 books. She is now writing full time.

 

Review: Black Star Nairobi, Mukoma wa Ngugi (Kenya)

Title: Black Star Nairobi
Author: Mukoma wa Ngugi
Publication: 2013/Brooklyn, New York: Melville House Publishing
ISBN #: 978-1-61219-210-9
# of pages: 267
Discovered by scanning all the shelves at a bookstore, looking for new authors
Read in paper format
Also available in e-book format
Link to author’s website: Mukoma wa Ngugi

For the past three years, Ishmael and Odhiambo, known simply as O, have operated the Black Star detective agency. Fortunately O is still a police officer and his boss Hassan tosses them the odd case, which is keeping them in business. This latest case is very odd, the decomposing body of an African-American killed execution style and left to rot in Ngong Forest near Nairobi. As a displaced African-American, this hits close to home for Ishmael. Their investigation has barely begun when their world is rocked...literally...by an explosion at the Norfolk Hotel. Ishmael strongly believes the incidents are connected so they set out to see what is happening at the hotel.

Ethnic tension bubbles just below the surface in Kenya as the 2007 elections are about to be held. Some Americans...and many Kenyans...were killed at the hotel so fears of Al-Qaeda involvement are running rampant, bringing the CIA into the picture. Ishmael and O are told to back off, which only makes them more curious.

Their investigation quickly takes an ugly turn and they no longer know whom to trust. Muddy, Rwandan genocide survivor and Ishmael’s girlfriend, soon joins their quest for the truth.

This turned out to be more thriller than murder mystery. The Kenyan election backdrop was very interesting, a taste of how quickly a country can disintegrate into violence. The three main characters are strong ones and you soon want to know more about each of their backgrounds. I would like to read the first book in the series to learn how Ishmael ended up in Kenya. The book does go bit astray about halfway through and the plot becomes more convoluted than necessary. However, the story and the lead characters carry the reader through to the end.

Rating: (°_°)             Worth reading

Notable sentence:  “Pulled in to this vortex of violence and more violence, my principles of justice were becoming rudimentary – us against them.”

Author wa Ngugi was born in the USA but grew up in Kenya. In addition to the first mystery in this series “Nairobi Heat”, he has also written poetry, fiction and non-fiction books, political columns and essays. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell University and his father is a renowned African author.  

 

Review: Who Killed Palomino Molero?, Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

Title: Who Killed Palomino Molero?
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Translator: Alfred MacAdam
Publication: 1987/New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Original Publication: 1986/Spain?: Seix Barral (“ƾQuién mató a Palomino Molero?”)

ISBN #: 0374289786

# of pages: 151

Discovered at mysteries in paradise

Read in paper format
Also available in e-book, Spanish

It's northern Peru in the 1950s. A goat herder has called police officer Lituma out to view a body, a horribly mutilated and tortured body of a young man. Lituma quickly determines the young man is Palomino Molero, a beautiful singer who had unaccountably signed up for the army even though he was exempt from military service. He questions Molero's mother who could only say it was a matter of life and death for her son to enlist but she didn't know why. Questions to a few locals reveal that Molero was madly in love and used to serenade a girl near the air base before he joined up. Did he enlist to follow her?

Lituma’s boss Lieutenant Silva, also madly in love - with the chubby and very married Doña Adriana - works the case with him, teaching him interviewing techniques and the facts of life along the way. They work out of a rundown police station with little equipment and the local cabdriver acts as their chauffeur. They quickly run into roadblocks from the military, mixed with elitism and ethnic discrimination. Silva may suspect who is responsible but can he prove it and bring the culprit to justice?

This book came highly recommended and most of the reviews rate it very well. However, I found it a rough book: horrific murder, rough language, disparaging to women. This may well have been indicative of the times and the setting the author was portraying; I just don't enjoy reading this type of story. Hopefully Lituma is a fairly new police officer as he seems quite inexperienced and naive. Silva - despite his chauvinistic attitude towards his purported love - is a talented police officer, with creative approaches and a willingness to push against the establishment. His investigation is interesting but his treatment of Adriana borders on harassment. A number of topics were raised (power politics, lower class versus upper class, injustice) but they were touched on, not delved into. I reluctantly pushed myself to finish the book yet I have obviously missed what others saw since the majority of ratings were 4 and 5 stars. I was quite surprised to learn the author is a Nobel Prize winner in Literature. So I did miss something!!!    

Rating: (-_°)   Nodded off a few times but finished

Peruvian by birth, Llosa lived abroad for many years, especially after the Peruvian military burned 1,000 copies of one of his books. He returned in 1980, just as democratic rule was being reinstituted, and actually ran for the presidency in 1990. He was president of PEN International for three years and has written critical studies of authors as well as numerous books of fiction. He has received numerous literary honours.