You can now read my review of Aly Monroe’s Black Bear at Euro Crime.
If you like intelligent books that will teach you something about the relationship between the USA, Britain and the Soviet Union in the immediate post war period, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Fiction award winning Peter Cotton series is well worth reading.
Karen of Euro Crime kindly arranged for Aly Monroe’s latest book in her Peter Cotton series, Black Bear, to be sent to me by the publishers John Murray. I was very pleased to see on the inside pages blurbs from Euro Crime and Crime Scraps, we didn’t quite make the back cover.
I have now finished reading Black Bear, and my review will appear on Euro Crime in due course.
I read only three crime fiction books during April because I was busy with other activities, and also I read some non-fiction. Those three books:
The Fifth Witness-Michael Connelly
were all enjoyable, but Hakan Nesser’s intriguing police procedural with Ewa Moreno as the main character was my pick of the month.
My reading in April so far has been a bit restricted as some of life’s little pleasures intervened; arranging a relocation for a relative, VAT returns, 
having windows replaced, and clocking up yet another birthday. Those birthdays do seem to come round rather quickly now.
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly was disappointing, and I can understand why readers of the ABA Journal favoured Robert Dugoni’s Murder One as their choice for the 2012 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction.
Over 500 pages of first person Mickey Haller was a bit difficult to digest, turgid and in places frankly boring, perhaps you had to be a lawyer to fully appreciate it. At times it did read more like a textbook for aspiring defence lawyers than a novel, and I was not entranced because I thought the “brilliant double twist” [Evening Standard] was telegraphed for all to see.
Some passages did interest me though, Haller enjoys himself at the expense of his junior associate Jennifer by constantly calling her ‘Bullocks’ after the art deco department store in LA that was purchased by the Southwestern Law School to be part of the campus. This reminded me of the reverse situation when the Royal Dental Hospital in Leicester Square, London was bizarrely situated over a Tennessee Pancake House. The property was worth a fortune, and although dentists from all over London referred patients there, it was sold off in 1987, and reincarnated as a five star hotel. A similar fate awaited Exeter’s Eye Hospital a few years later, as the sight of a Victorian/Edwardian hospital building produces £ signs to in the heads of NHS administrators.
I think I might have enjoyed The Fifth Witness more if Haller had been defending a more pleasant and deserving character than Lisa Trammel. Lisa is one of Haller’s clients in his new business of preventing bank foreclosures in the property debacle following the banking collapse. Lisa is then charged with murdering the bank’s CEO Mitchell Bondurant, when he is found with his head bashed in and a witness sees her near the scene of the crime. The reader is taken through the minutiae of the case. We learn about foreclosure mills, Hollywood deals, Haller’s relationships with his two ex-wives and teenage daughter, and all this is interesting but doesn’t make up for the fact that Mickey Haller is not Harry Bosch.
It is difficult to criticise an author whose books you have enjoyed so much in the past, but I think because of the weak plot twist and the unsympathetic characters this was not one of Michael Connelly’s better books, even though it did win the Harper Lee.
I read four books in March:
The Age of Doubt by Andrea Camilleri
Ratlines by Stuart Neville
Murder One by Robert Dugoni
and my pick of the month, The Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas.
I was impressed by Robert Dugoni’s Murder One as I find the American legal system endlessly fascinating. I spent too much time in my youth watching Perry Mason.
But the inventiveness of her plots and the brilliant quirkiness of her characters make every novel written by Fred Vargas a joy to read.
I find that the mainstream media and large book chains continue to push the same old books with the same old blurbs about books that frequently turn out to be disappointing.
I am much more likely to find a new author worth reading from bloggers posts and recommendations, and so it turned out with Robert Dugoni’s Murder One. I was inspired to read this novel by a post at Bill Selnes excellent blog Mysteries and More From Saskatchewan about the fairly new Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction.
This prize to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of the classic To Kill A Mockingbird written by Alabama native Nelle Harper Lee, has been awarded twice; in 2011 to John Grisham for The Confession, and in 2012 to Michael Connelly for The Fifth Witness. But Bill pointed out that a poll of the Alabama Bar Association Journal readers preferred Robert Dugoni’s Murder One. I needed no more encouragement to read this novel but because I haven’t read The Fifth Witness yet I will give my opinion about the award at a later date. Murder One is a fine legal thriller as attorney David Sloane, recovering from the murder of his wife Tina, is asked by attractive fellow attorney Barclay Reid to take her case for wrongful death against drug dealer Filyp Vasiliev, who she holds responsible for the death of her drug addicted daughter. Vasiliev has escaped prosecution for drug dealing on a technicality, but the burden of proof in a civil action is less demanding.
That this warrant was in part based upon speculation by Drug Enforcement Agents that Mr Vasiliev associated with members of organized crime-specifically Russian mafia-is equally reprehensible and a generalization no less offensive to the Russian community than it has been to the Italian and Asian communities.
Vasiliev is found shot in the back of his head, Barclay [American female names can be confusing] is arrested and asks David Sloane, who has become her lover, to defend her in the criminal case. Sloane, a civil attorney, has never tackled a criminal case before and is tested by the complexities that arise.
Upon entering the back room, Stafford noted the single hole in the sliding-glass door, calling it a defect. They were trained not to say ‘”bullet hole”, as it could be considered a conclusion that a good defense attorney might later try to exploit.
This is an excellent legal thriller with strong well drawn characters, and the sort of forensic detail that is contained in the best of American TV crime series. As someone who enjoyed the Perry Mason series this blend of police procedural, legal thriller and courtroom drama was a pleasant diversion from dark Nordic angst and Nazi atrocities. The intriguing characters struggling to deal with personal tragedies, and an interesting series of plot twists made this a very satisfying read.
I read six more crime fiction books during a cold miserable February and they varied between historical thrillers and psychological mysteries.
Into The Darkest Corner: Elizabeth Haynes-[To Be Reviewed next week]
A superb psychological thriller and a debut novel which I literally could not put down as the author racks up the tension towards the conclusion.
Pierced: Thomas Enger translator Charlotte Barslund- A disappointing book for me with too many pages, too much switching of perspective, and 119 chapters. I will be reading number three in this series and hoping the choppy style will be smoothed out a bit.
The Bridge of Sighs: Olen Steinhauer- A good police procedural set in a fictional post-Second World War Eastern European country that had been “liberated” by the Red Army. Four more books await me in this interesting series.
Bones and Silence: Reginald Hill- The 1990 CWA Gold Dagger winning police procedural from one of England’s greatest crime writers.
Beast In View: Margaret Millar- This brilliant psychological mystery won the Edgar in 1955, but unfortunately shows its age with outdated attitudes. Nevertheless a great read with a fantastic twist and a glimpse of the past.
A Man Without Breath: Philip Kerr- [The review to appear on Euro Crime]- Another fine book in the Bernie Gunther series.
And my pick of the month was another close run thing but Into The Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes was something a bit different from my recent reading and therefore was my February choice.
…with 25 blurbs* must:
a] be a “near-masterpiece”.
b] be the beneficiary of a very large advertising budget, and a Twitter campaign.
c] likely to feature big stars in the movie version.
d] be set in the scary tribal regions east of the Rockies and west of the Appalachians.
e] make it impossible to review the book, as so many people have given it so much praise that any opinion that varies with that will mark the reviewer down as an eccentric.
[* in the British paperback edition.]
I am referring to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a book I had trouble getting into, and discovered that another blogger, whose opinion I respect, had given up at about page 80. It was around that point in the narrative that I wondered if I had got a different version of this book than that read by the blurbers. But I stuck it out and finished reading the book, and I have no quibble with the author, who produced an interestingly plotted psychological thriller. What I find mildly annoying is all the blurbling ballyhoo, and fuss, which raised my expectations to a level that could only have been satisfied by some brilliant new plot twist devised by a combination of Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell and Reginald Hill. Some of the blurbs are interesting, one is by someone who hasn’t even read the book yet….
‘Just about everyone I meet, and everyone on Twitter, is telling me it’s brilliant, so I can’t wait to see what the fuss is all about’ S.J. Watson, Sunday Express
Many are frankly just a little bit over the top.
(with a mid-story twist so shocking you’ll drop the book)- a gasp-inducing twist- A near-masterpiece- wildly unexpected plot twists- you’ll beg others to read it so you can discuss it with them- The plot has it all- her terrifying wonderful conclusion is reached.
I didn’t drop the book because the blurbs had prepared me for some brilliant new plot idea and it wasn’t there. Readers who gasped in complete shock and dropped their books perhaps haven’t read much crime fiction.
Also I would have preferred to have been given less information on the location of the major plot twist. Soon we may have blurbs telling the reader there are plot twists on page 234 and 356. The book itself has at least one flaw in that the main characters Nick and Amy are both horrid, spoilt, pretentious and arrogant, and I did not really care what happened to them. One could say that Gillian Flynn’s writing is brilliant in that she inspires strong emotions in her readers, and succeeded in creating two of the most unpleasant characters in modern crime fiction.
My pick of a very good reading month was The Black Box by Michael Connelly, but that was only by a short head from Lime’s Photograph by Leif Davidsen. 
I am about to finish my 45th crime fiction book of the year, which probably means I will miss my target of 50 for the year; but considering the number and length of the non-fiction books I have read in addition I think I have done quite well.
During the LA riots of 1992, which followed the acquittal of four LAPD police officers for the beating of Rodney King, homicide detective Harry Bosch is called to the body of Anneke Jespersen, a white female journalist, shot through the eye in what looks like an execution. In the chaos of the riots with shooting, looting and burning buildings all around Harry is called to another case and the murder of Anneke Jespersen is passed on to the Riot Crimes Task Force.
Twenty years later Harry now working in the cold case unit gets a lead when modern technology links the gun used in the murder of Anneke Jespersen with more recent gang killings. The reader is taken on a classic police procedural journey as Harry methodically and systematically pursues all the leads which will take him to the “black box’ that will unlock the case. This is one of those books where you don’t want to know too much about the plot before you start reading.
Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch has always been one of my favourite detectives and this book reminded me of his appeal as he clashes with his politically motivated superiors.
“You forgot that I close cases. Not for the stats you send up to the tenth-floor Power Point shows. For the victims. And their families. And that’s something you’ll never understand because you’re not out there like the rest of us.”
His daughter Madeline is now living with him and Harry is struggling with the complications of dealing with a teenage daughter. There is a very interesting section when Harry takes Madeline to try out the Forces Options Simulator at the police academy where she goes through various shoot/don’t shoot scenarios on the computer.
“You are within policy if your action is in immediate defense of life. That can mean your life or somebody else’s. It doesn’t matter.”
The jazz loving Harry Bosch usually has his own policies when it comes to dealing with criminals. What I really liked about The Black Box was that it was a straightforward police procedural without the fancy bells and whistles, italicised thoughts of dead people, multiple perspectives, numerous flashbacks and other writing techniques that characterise so many of today’s crime fiction. It seemed old fashioned, and despite the use of mobile phones, as if it had come from a different era. I enjoyed The Black Box so much that I am tempted to go back and read both the early Harry Bosch books again, and the last couple of books that I have missed.
“I had just come back from the war in Vietnam, and people like me-you know, ex-soldiers from over there-they weren’t accepted back here. Especially by people our own age.”
