THE NATURE OF THE BEAST by Louise Penny: a chilling conversation

I love Louise Penny's novels about Three Pines, Québec: a Brigadoon-like village near the Vermont border full of friendship, good food, warm fires, beautiful scenery--and the occasional murder. Penny can terrify you, though more often she makes you chuckle. With a perspicacious eye for character, she can also amaze you with her insights.

I recently came across this chilling conversation in The Nature of the Beast (2015). Retired Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is questioning a physics professor about a suspect, Gerald Bull. The professor speaks first:

"... no one really worked with Gerald Bull. It might start out that way, but eventually you found yourself working for him."

"Were you working for him when he came up with the plans for the Supergun?"

"No. I left when he began using the Soviets as a back door to sell his arms. He wasn't very smart."

"Is that why you left? Fear you'd get caught?"

"No. I left because it was wrong. ... Gerald Bull was the consummate salesman, and completely without a conscience."

"Why did you just say that he wasn't very smart?" asked Gamache.

"He made some stupid choices, like cozying up to the Soviets. He had an outsized ego that told him he was smarter than other people."

No, Ms Penny is not alluding to Donald Trump.

[Hand-colored woodcut, 1523,
for Martin Luther's New Testament]

She most likely wrote this passage in late 2014 before Trump had begun exploring the possibility of running for president. And, while Trump's connections to Russia had been going on for decades, they were not yet a matter of public speculation.

Penny's stories tend to have literary, not political, themes, and this book is no exception. In it she frequently mentions an image from the biblical book of Revelation, chapters 17 and 18: the great whore who--riding a fearsome seven-headed beast--glorifies herself and lives luxuriously, consorts with kings and merchants, helps them become rich and powerful, and deceives all nations.

But don't feel bad if your first thought was that the passage referred to Trump, not the great whore. Feel bad because the two have so much in common.

Love stories for literati: romances my book-loving friends admit reading

[Forget stereotypical bodice-rippers.
This is the book that got the most
votes from my friends.]

If you wanted to read a romance novel, my friends might not be the first people you'd turn to for recommendations. I've been an English teacher and a book editor, and the people I know tend to have high brows (considerably higher than mine); many of them actually enjoy literary fiction.

Yet when I--inspired by romance novelist Kristan Higgins's eloquent defense of her chosen genre in Publishers Weekly--wanted to branch out and read a romance, I asked my Facebook friends anyway, even though I feared they would limit their suggestions to Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters.

They didn't.

Here is a list of romances, mostly series, recommended by an assortment of bibliophiles including several published writers, some editors, a publisher, a linguist, a bookstore assistant and other dedicated bookworms. "I read them with NO apology," wrote a multilingual physician.

Contemporary
Martin, Deirdre: New York Blades series (Hip Check)
Nicholls, David: One Day
Phillips, Susan Elizabeth: Chicago Star series
Roberts, Nora: Bride Quartet series

Fantasy
Harkness, Deborah: All Souls trilogy

Historical
Bourne, Joanna: Spymaster series (The Spymaster’s Lady or The Forbidden Rose)
Gabaldon, Diana: Outlander series, Lord John Grey series
Heyer, Georgette: Regency Romances series (Frederica or The Corinthian)
James, Eloisa: Desperate Duchesses series (Three Weeks with Lady X)
MacKenzie, Sally: The Naked … series (The Naked Earl)
Quinn, Julia: Bridgerton series

Inspirational
Heitzmann, Kristen: A Rush of Wings Series (The Still of Night)
Marshall, Catherine: Christy

Suspense
Brockmann, Suzanne: Troubleshooters series (The Defiant Hero)

If you'd like a longer list that includes some of these books as well as Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, a retired English teacher recommends that you check out NPR's "Happily Ever After: 100 Swoon-Worthy Romances."

THE TOOTH TATTOO by Peter Lovesey

It seemed appropriate last week, when my dentist was replacing five fillings, to show him the book I was reading: The Tooth Tattoo by British writer Peter Lovesey (published April 30).

Like Lovesey's Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond, I had never heard of tooth tattoos, but my dentist told me he had done some. He then hauled out a handful of photos to show me the possibilities. My favorite showed a Canada goose on the upper molar and a bullet on the corresponding lower molar.

In Lovesey's latest novel - the thirteenth in the Peter Diamond series - an almost unidentifiable corpse is discovered in a canal. The one distinguishing feature, so faint that it was missed by the first medical examiner, is a tattoo on one of the corpse's teeth. It appears to be a quaver, or an eighth note. Diamond and his team spring into action.

But all is not well at the Bath CID. Diamond's coworkers fear that, due to the economic crisis and government cutbacks, their jobs may be on the line. Diamond's churlish behavior, even more extreme than usual, seems to confirm their fears: they have no way of knowing that he is in the midst of a crisis of his own.

When I read the first 12 Peter Diamond books last year (for a review in Books and Culture magazine, "A Rough Diamond"), I grew increasingly enamored of the burly Bath detective's exploits. The Tooth Tattoo, I think, is one of Lovesey's best. Like the others, it's a procedural puzzle, but here Lovesey pays more than usual attention to Diamond's personal life. In addition, much of the novel focuses on the relationships among the members of a world famous string quartet. (If you like music-themed mysteries too, see my reviews of Morag Joss's Sara Selkirk series and Donna Leon's The Jewels of Paradise.)

You don't need to have read the rest of the series to enjoy this book. After you've read it, though, you may want to go back and check out the others. Here's a list of all the titles.

KNOTS & CROSSES by Ian Rankin

The test of a really good mystery: you can read it more than once and still get caught up in the story, even if you remember whodunnit.

To be honest, I didn't mean to reread Ian Rankin's first Inspector Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, a second time. I knew I'd checked it out of the library some time back, but I thought I'd read the first chapter and quit. That must have been some other novel. As I read it this time, I kept realizing what was going to happen, and not because the plot was thin (it wasn't). Finally I googled my book lists and discovered that indeed I had read the entire book less than a year and a half ago.

I liked it even better the second time (and am likely to remember that I read it). Now I'm ready to follow in the footsteps of my husband, who, I believe, has read every one of the Rebus books and has seen some of the TV adaptations too.

Knots and Crosses, published in 1987 when Rankin was 27 years old, introduces Edinburgh Detective Sergeant John Rebus and immediately throws him into an investigation of a serial killer who targets young girls. Rebus has an 11-year-old daughter, and some secrets from his past that he can't bear to face, and ... well, the story turns into a thriller in which he's very personally involved.

Rankin's plotting is great: neither so complex as to require note-taking on the part of the reader, nor so simple as to be obvious (though the killer keeps taunting Rebus by sending him clues that, he says, should reveal his identity). He knows how to evoke emotions, from compassion to terror. Best of all, he makes Rebus fully human: on the one hand, a hard-drinking loner with a penchant for petty theft and fornication; on the other, a caring father and a praying, Bible-reading Christian who keeps wishing for better treatment from his vengeful personal god.

I've checked my library's holdings against Rankin's book list and am delighted that they stock most of them including the newest Rebus novel, Standing in Another Man's Grave (January 2013 in US). I've put in for an interlibrary loan on a couple of the early titles that they don't have. It's going to be a good spring.

Oh, by the way, if you're wondering about the title, "noughts and crosses" is the British term for what Americans call tic-tac-toe.

FUNERAL MUSIC by Morag Joss

Thanks to my friend Anne Buchanan, who recommended Morag Joss's Sara Selkirk mysteries.

Anne knows the kind of mysteries I like best. I'd rather the murder(s) happened offstage. I want the characters to be more than plot devices--I like to read about their friends and families, what annoys them at work, what brings them joy, what they like to eat. I love a writer who knows how to develop a sense of place. And it helps if the writer can make me laugh every now and then.

I was delighted with Funeral Music.

Sara Selkirk is a concert cellist of international renown who has been suffering from "musician's block" for a year or so. Originally from Scotland but now a resident of Bath, England, Sara has agreed to play a short concert at the Pump Room in order to raise funds for the Bath Festival. Not long afterward she discovers a corpse.

Fortunately she is well connected. One of her cello students is a police inspector. A friend is a colleague of the murder victim. Another friend takes her to an alternative healing fair, where she happens to observe the eventual murder victim talking with a large man who, it turns out, badly wants a job they both are applying for. This friend's landlady, as it turns out, is the large man's girlfriend (Bath's population is only about 80,000). And then there is Paul, who is good with women and knives; and James, who has a rotten alibi; and George, the prejudiced museum guard, and ...

The puzzle is fun, with several healthy red herrings. Even more fun are Joss's descriptions--short ones, like "his face had the faraway, otherworldly look of a defecating Labrador," and dazzling longer ones, like her evocation of Bach's Trio Sonata in C Major, which

splashed out and down in a shower of weightless drops into the open lap of the abbey nave.... Only Bach could do this, make you feel you had been only half alive until this moment, pull you into the dance, lift you and take you as high as the roof, right up to where you could drink from the music's spring and be filled with a few bubbles of his crazy joy.... It flowed on, the little sounds dancing out across the transept like drops of light, darting through the melodic web that the organist's feet and fingers were spinning to and fro on which to catch them. Sara had the sensation that she had unknowingly been suffering from some sort of deafness and that with this glorious noise she had suddenly woken up to find that her ears were working properly.

Joss spices up the story with a number of complicated relationships: Paul and Sue (or Olivia?), Andrew and Valerie (or Sara?), Derek and Cecily (or Pauline?), James and Tom (or Graham?). One of the funniest scenes I've ever read in a mystery is between  Derek and his wife, Pauline, after she has learned about Cecily--but you'll have to read the book if you want to know more.

Publishers Weekly gave Funeral Music a starred review and P.D. James gave it a laudatory blurb. I'd call it a clever combination of Peter Lovesey and Jane Austen. I can't imagine why the Wheaton Public Library doesn't have the Sara Selkirk mysteries on its shelves, but they got it for me quickly through interlibrary loan. Or you can get a used copy for less than $4 from Amazon.

2012: My year of series fiction

[Me, reading a nonfiction book
 approved by my mother]

In 1997, faced with a daunting commute, I decided to devote train time to reading for pleasure. At the same time, I began keeping a list of books I'd read. My mind goes blank whenever anyone asks, "Read any good books lately?" The list helps me access my hard drive. Sometimes I consult it before going to parties, just in case.

At the end of each year, I tally the books I've read. First, out of curiosity, I count how many are fiction and how many nonfiction. When I was a child, my mother, who was a serious and responsible woman, tried to keep me from reading fiction. She soon learned that she could not take me to libraries and expect me to refrain from reading stories, so she relented - but for every fiction book, I had to read a nonfiction book as well. Mothers are powerful: for maybe 10 years, even without trying, I read about an equal amount of fiction and nonfiction.

And then I fell in love with several mystery series.

In 2011, I read great stacks of M.C. Beaton (creator of Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth). They are very lightweight, predictable, funny, and excellent for people who are recovering from major surgery.

In 2012, nearly half the books I read were from one series or another:
Just one book each by Sue Grafton and Michael Connelly because they are two of my favorites and I had already read all 40-some of their previous books. Four books by Alexander McCall Smith and two by M.C. Beaton - I was caught up with them too, but that's how many they published last year. One each by Janet Evanovich (her Stephanie Plum series: I probably won't read the other 18) and the late Michael Dibdin (I may go back and pick up some I've missed), two out of five by Martin Walker, and three out of fifteen by Andrea Camilleri. If you want to see my reviews of some of these books, click here or click the Mysteries tab at the top of this page.

My discovery last year was British writer Peter Lovesey's series about Bath detective Peter Diamond. Books & Culture asked me to review his 12th book, Cop to Corpse, and I ended up compulsively reading the first 11, with increasing satisfaction.

The series I most enjoyed was the Venice-based Commissario Guido Brunetti series by Donna Leon, an American who has lived in Venice for 30 years and who, at least according to an American-Italian friend of mine who has lived in Florence for nearly 40 years, really gets Italy. I had read her first book, Death at la Fenice, in 2009 and was only moderately impressed. Friends urged me to keep going. Last year I read books 2 through 21, and I just put book 22, published last October, on hold at the library - along with the new Alexander McCall Smith and the new Sue Grafton.

Maybe I'll develop a more serious mind in 2013 and read more nonfiction. I'll let you know ...

-------------------------------------------------
For more series fiction recommendations, see "'Tis the season to read something relaxing."

THE BLACK BOX by Michael Connelly

Harry Bosch fans, it's time to pour yourself a Fat Tire (one of Bosch's favorites), put Art Pepper's "Patricia" (Bosch's birthday gift from his 16-year-old daughter, Maddie) on your iPod, and settle down for an engrossing read. If you haven't yet read any of the Harry Bosch books, that's OK too. You can start with this one and pick up the others later.

--from my review of The Black Box, now up on the Books and Culture website.
Click here to read it.

'Tis the season to read something relaxing

Renoir, La lectrice, 1874

Thanksgiving down, Christmas coming. Parties to attend. Christmas greetings to send. Gifts to buy. Travel arrangements to make. Groceries to buy. Meals to cook. Guest rooms to get ready. Decorations to display. Checks to write.

Nerves to calm.

I dedicate this blog post to my friend Karen, and to everyone else who needs to pour a comforting drink, sit down, elevate feet, and read a diverting novel--one that engrosses you, makes you smile, lets you relax, does not leave you with the taste of ashes.

Actually, you may need more than one such novel. So despite my inordinate fondness for one-offs like Sarah Dunn's Secrets to Happiness and Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, I'm going to give you a list of novels any one of which can lead you to four or a hundred similar delectable books.

My rules for series fiction:
1. Start with whatever book grabs your attention. It doesn't have to be the first in the series.
2. If you don't like it, don't bother with the rest of the series unless at least three of your friends have recommended it--in which case, try a second book.
3. If you like either the first or second book reasonably well, read two more books in the same series. By then, you'll either be in love with the series or you'll be ready to try something else.

Here are ten of my favorite authors of series fiction. The links will take you to reviews I've written either on this blog or in magazines.

• Michael Connelly, The Reversal (and others). Detective Harry Bosch is the best in the business. Connelly has written 25 books, 18 about Harry. Newest, The Black Box, came out two days ago. Not a bad place to start. But if you'd rather start with a legal thriller, go for The Lincoln Lawyer.
• Margaret Frazer, The Apostate's Tale. The indomitable nun Dame Frevisse gets involved with a lot of 15th-century mayhem. I like Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael books, but I got even more attached to Dame Frevisse.
• Sue Grafton, V Is for Vengeance. Start with A Is for Alibi. If the fourth sentence doesn't grab you, nothing will: "The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind." W-Z are still to come, but you have 22 books to read before you run out.
• P.D. James, Talking About Detective Fiction. First, read P.D. James's mysteries. They're all good, and you don't have to read them in order. Or just watch the TV adaptations starring Roy Marsden. Talking About Detective Fiction is Dame James's discussion of great mystery writers--dozens of them. Follow her leads and you'll have enough to read until you retire.
• Donna Leon, Death and Judgment. Oh, just start with Death at La Fenice and read all of Leon's Venetian mysteries featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. He's a lovable cop, and the Italian ambiance is a treat.
• Peter Lovesey, Cop to Corpse. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond presides grumpily over the Avon and Somerset murder squad. You may not care for him at first--his coworkers certainly don't--but he grows on you.
• Alexander McCall Smith, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth. I find Scottish author McCall Smith more relaxing than a wee dram of single malt. His characters are quirky, funny, and fundamentally good. My review mentions several of his series; fortunately for his fans, he tends to write three books a year.
• Spencer Quinn, To Fetch a Thief. Chet the dog narrates, but these stories are rarely cutesie. They can be pretty darn funny, though--especially to those of us who live with dogs. And there's always an interesting plot.
• C.J. Sansom, Dissolution. Sansom is writing a series of fantastic 16th-century (think Henry VIII) mysteries. These are large books, a bit more serious than some on this list, but utterly engrossing. You can have Wolf Hall and its sequel: I'll take Sansom any day.
• Jennifer Weiner, Good in Bed / Certain Girls. Bright and sassy chick lit. Weiner is a Princeton grad with a rowdy sense of humor. Not to be sexist or anything, but I'm guessing these aren't for guys.

And there are others ... so many others. Laurie R. King is a delight. She's been turning out a lot of books in the Mary Russell (Mrs. Sherlock Holmes) series as well as several stand-alone volumes, but my favorites are her Kate Martinelli books. Jane Langton, who is about to turn 90, wrote a lot of gently humorous New England-based books about ex-cop/current Harvard professor Homer Kelly and his brilliant wife, Mary.

And if you're feeling really, really tired--as I was after open-heart surgery last year--M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series are silly fun. I read 30 of them while convalescing, and I'm feeling fine, thanks!

Please, readers, add comments (here, and not just on Facebook) about series fiction you've enjoyed...