Robin Agnew

[Editor's note: Robin Agnew and her husband Jamie own Aunt Agatha's mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor. She also helps run the annual Kerrytown BookFest.] 

“Shanghaied” by Eric Stone (Bleak House Books: hardcover $24.95; paperback $14.95)

“I love Chinese food. But sometimes China doesn’t do much for my appetite.” – Ray Sharp

Though this novel might at the beginning be categorized along with books by writers like Barry Eisler, Brent Ghelfi and maybe even Lee Child, halfway through Eric Stone turns his action story on its ear in an entirely unexpected way.

This is the fourth book in a series featuring detective Ray Sharp, a Hong Kong-based investigator who does “due diligence” investigations with his partner, the Chinese-Mexican dwarf Wen Lei Yue. As the story opens Ray and Lei are looking into a missing monk. What they can’t decide is if the monk is just having a little illicit fun or if the monk is the money man for his well-endowed monastery, in which case his disappearance is more worrisome.

The missing monk, however, is merely the kick-off for a non-stop action and adventure story through the streets of Hong Kong and eventually Shanghai. Stone is very adept as weaving the feel of the city into the narrative, so while you’re breathlessly following Ray and Lei on their quest, you’re also absorbing some details of life in Hong Kong. The book is set slightly in the past – on the day after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong by the British back to the Chinese. This is a place, the reader begins to feel, where anything might happen.

The complicated permutations of the plot eventually lead Ray and Lei to a shady banker, possible Triad involvement, and the workings of both slave labor and prostitution. The latter seems ubiquitous, and Ray – to his ultimate detriment – has a weakness for what his friend Lei calls putas. The complicated interweaving of his partner’s life and his, their mutual sense of right and wrong, and their dedication to uncovering the truth naturally lead them into a lot of trouble.

Most noteworthy is Lei’s growing involvement with a prostitute nicknamed “Big Breasted Korean Housewife,” someone who Ray has uncovered as an unlikely lead. When the monk is discovered murdered (not a surprise, really), the “Korean Housewife” is a big help to both partners. Unexpected to me was the shift in narrative about halfway through the book from Ray to Lei, and the gruesome depiction of her re-addiction to heroin. To me this was the strongest, and most disturbing, part of the novel.

Also integral to the plot is a depiction of a factory in Shanghai where the “workers” have been brought in from the country on the promise of fantastic (to them) wages, and where they end up living as virtual slaves, indentured to the factory owners who use them more or less like animals. Also highlighted are the way so called “snakeheads” are paid a fantastic fee to bring human cargo across the ocean in metal containers (Jeffrey Deaver covers this same horrible topic in his excellent book, “The Stone Monkey”) on a similar promise, of better wages in Mexico or the U.S.

In the end, though, Stone’s focus isn’t on the society as a whole or even on the non-stop action of the plot, but on the very human feelings and reactions of both Ray and Lei. If you’re like me, these are characters that you’ll be invested in by the time you close the covers of the book – and you’ll want to know more. This is a well-written and compelling book, and if you are at all interested in this area of the world, it’s well worth a look.

Editor’s note: Author Eric Stone will be giving a presentation at Aunt Agatha’s on Saturday, July 11 at 3 p.m. He’ll discuss his books, set in modern Shanghai where he worked as a journalist. 

“Last Known Address” by Theresa Schwegel (Minotaur Books, $24.99)

Theresa Schwegel is that rare writer who embraces mystery as a genre – the police novel in particular – and also transcends it. The eye for human behavior she brings to her books is preternaturally precocious. Schwegel is a young woman, but all of human behavior seems like an open book to her.  A simple description of a single girl dressing to go out – “I’m single. Leg is important.” – says a lot without saying more than it needs to. You get the picture.

Schwegel’s new novel is the chilling story of a serial rapist, and she uses her trademark first person/present tense to tell the rape victim’s stories from their point of view. It’s a scary, effective, and ultimately moving technique. The cop in charge of the investigation, Sloan Pearson, is a youngish woman whose personal life is a mess, whose partner lets things slide, and who herself has the kind of relentless eye for detail all good cops seem to have. Unfortunately, in this case her eye for detail gets her into trouble.

The subtext of the book – and it’s not really too “sub” – is the treatment of women. While rape victims are an obvious illustration (and Schwegel takes you through a rape exam with an insensitive male doctor), less obvious and less straightforward are the ways Sloane herself makes her way through the world, and the way she’s treated by all the men around her. She’s even slotted herself – much in part to her childhood – as the caretaker to her father, her boyfriend, and even, to a degree, her partner.

Mixed into this is the atmosphere at work – the jokiness and the dismissal of women as an entirety – and the interactions she has with the men around her sometimes make her job seem almost unbearable. Here Schwegel is entering territory tread by other authors like Lillian O’Donnell, Barbara D’Amato and Leslie Glass, who all wrote about female cops in a male world. Schwegel seems to bring the extra subtlety of all human behavior into her observations, which seem less like observations and more like a documentary or primer on human behavior written by a master observer.

The plot is terrific too, as Schwegel folds a seemingly unrelated string of rapes into a high tension narrative that takes in, very Chicago like, the world of political corruption that surrounds her city and her job. There’s also the business of Sloan’s personal life, which is a mess, and which Schwegel explicates in a straightforward fashion, holding back details until the right moment. This is a gifted writer who combines narrative skill, character development and an ability to take in the entire surroundings of her character (also known as setting) with panache and seeming ease. Even better, the book leaves you thinking. This writer is fast becoming one of the crown jewels of mystery fiction.

Robin Agnew

[Editor's note: Robin Agnew and her husband Jamie own Aunt Agatha's mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor. She also helps run the annual Kerrytown BookFest.]

“The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu” by Michael Stanley (Harper, $24.99)

As everyone knows, there is a very famous series of books set in Botswana, by Alexander McCall-Smith. McCall-Smith’s delicate prose is matched by the charm of his main character, Precious Ramotswe. Now there is a new series set in Botswana, with a slightly darker take, though the main character, Detective Kubu, would surely be friendly with Precious were they to meet.

Detective Kubu (the Botswana word for “Hippo”) is hugely fat and hugely smart. If Precious is the African Miss Marple, then Kubu is the African Nero Wolfe. Kubu and Wolfe both share a deep appreciation for the pleasures of the table, and both of them have brains that work best with their eyes closed.

The settings in the book are so gorgeously rendered you can almost see and hear them, and obviously the writers have a deep love for their subject. The mystery is in the classic vein: the scene opens at a tourist camp where two of the guests have been murdered and one of them has disappeared. Detective Kubu is put in charge of the case, which turns out to be remarkably complex and involves the horrors of the Rhodesian Civil War (there’s a note about it in the book in case you need to brush up). This is a very rich novel – rich setting, rich characters, and many of them with a complicated story that is told in a kind of laid back way. The author has his own rhythm, but if you give yourself time to adjust to it (as with a Tony Hillerman novel, for example) the pleasures are many.

Making this book even more delightful are the snippets of Kubu’s home life with his wife, Joy. (Every woman in the book has a wonderful name like “Joy” or “Pleasant” or “Beauty.”)  I think the inclusion of Kubu’s strong marriage and his weekly visits to his parents flesh out more than anything what life might be like for a normal African living in a city. While Kubu relishes his time in the bush investigating the crimes at the Jackalberry camp, he also longs for home, where a good meal and a good bottle of wine are always available.

The crimes at the camp are almost Agatha Christie-like as each member of the camp, visitor or owner, turns out to have a tie or a motive to the crimes. Even more puzzling is the character of the deceased, Goodluck Tinubu himself, who appears to be a good-hearted teacher, yet all signs point to him being a drug runner. None of the easy assumptions make sense to Kubu, who is, after all, a gifted detective in the classic mode. His determination is paired with his desire to finish a case that ends up endangering his beloved Joy, and makes him, like a charging hippo, hard to stop once he gets going. Clues are many and various and while the astute reader may pick up on some of them, plenty of them aren’t so obvious.

Detective Kubu is a gift to mystery readers – he’s an instant classic. These books are a shade darker than McCall-Smith’s, including rape, drugs, and several brutal murders, but the surroundings are just as comfortable. Somehow, only two outings in, I feel certain that Kubu will get to the bottom of everything.

“The Collaborator of Bethlehem” by Matt Beynon Rees (Mariner Books, $13.95)

“It was a mistake to think that detection was a matter of figuring out what had happened in the past and then taking revenge for it.  He understood now that it was about protecting the future from the people that committed evil and who would do so again.”

When enough customers ask you about a certain author in a short period of time, it makes you take notice. When several of my more discerning “guy” readers mentioned Matt Rees as a wonderful writer, I was intrigued enough to pick up the first book. Rees was a longtime bureau chief for Time in Jerusalem, and his familiarity with the area certainly shows. The book is set in Bethlehem, with characters that are a mix of all the peoples that crowd into this tiny area – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Palestinians. The central character, Omar Yussef, teaches at a UN Refugee school. He is a Muslim originally from Palestine, and his view of the world is out of sync with many of those around him.

He remembers with fondness a time when differences were more tolerated; the violence and suicide bombings that surround him now fill him with anger. He’s 56, an age where he teeters on retirement, and he knows his way of seeing the world – through a veil of politeness and civility – is long past, but he feels that if he can just get his message through to a few of his students, his time on earth will not have been wasted.

This is a large, rich, complex chunk to bite off and work with, and the wonder is that not only was Rees apparently a gifted journalist, he is also a gifted novelist, with a real ability to breathe life and emotion into the characters he writes about. After reading this book it’s almost upsetting to me that Omar Yussef is not actually a real person. More than that, the way he sets up the story is the work of a full blown pro. Yussef meets one of his students, George Saba, for coffee. George has recently brought his family back to Bethelehem from Chile, and he is not sure it was the right decision, even though his children can now live with, and know, their grandfather. George is also one of the students that Yussef feels was a success – George’s kindness and decency, he hopes, came about partly because of his teaching.

The second part of the set-up is the next scene, where George and his family are crouched in their apartment, hoping to avoid the sniper fire that is whizzing around them. The bullets are imbedding themselves in the walls of his apartment – over the heads of his children –and he is angry. He goes up on the roof with an antique gun (so rusted it can’t be loaded or fired) and threatens the gunmen with it, telling them to leave. Right then I was invested completely in the story, but then Rees takes it one better: next day comes the news that George has been arrested as a collaborator. Yussef is stricken – he knows his friend is innocent – but in Bethlehem innocence and guilt mean very little, something he already knows, but which is hammered home to him throughout his quest to save George from inevitable execution.

Yussef, who is able to accept and adapt to many of the vagaries of life in such a violent corner of the world, is continually frustrated in his quest to free George. His old friend Khamis Zeydan, now the frequently drunk police chief of Bethlehem, seems like he might be involved, and Yussef questions even this old friendship. The “collaborator” of the title is not only the innocent George Saba, but almost every one else who lives in and around Israel and the West Bank.

Rees is able – like the very best of novelists – to convey absolute horror without sentimentality. Some of the things that happen in this book will probably haunt you, but they also seem like things that can and do happen. The real bit of grace in the book is the way Yussef chooses to deal with what happens. He shows that even a somewhat frail 56 year old can find a reason to move ahead in the world. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Robin Agnew

[Editor's note: Robin Agnew and her husband Jamie own Aunt Agatha's mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor. She also helps run the annual Kerrytown BookFest.] 

“The Last Child” by John Hart (Minotaur Books, $24.95)

Recently one of the VPs at St. Martin’s, Matthew Baldacci, asked if he could swing by the store with author John Hart. I had enjoyed Hart’s first book, “King of Lies,” and enthusiastically agreed – just as enthusiastically, Mathew offered to FedEx me copies of Hart’s new book, “The Last Child.” The book arrived on a Wednesday afternoon for a Thursday visit – I trundled into the store to pick it up, hoping I might get at last halfway through before Hart stopped in – and I couldn’t put it down. I was finished with the book Thursday morning, eager to have a chance to discuss it with the author.

There are few things I enjoy more about bookselling than watching an author get even better, which is the case with this book, one that is tighter that the preceeding books but at the same time is wider in scope. 2009 has only just started, and I think I have already found a contender for next year’s top 10 list. All of Hart’s books are standalones, so no need to start with the first one (though it’s well worth a read). This novel is about 13-year-old Johnny Merrimon, who is obsessed by the disappearance of his twin sister a year ago. As his family has self destructed – his father has disappeared, his mother is lost in a fog of drugs and alcohol, and dating an abusive man – Johnny is left to fend for himself, and one of the things he’s chosen to do is to get on his bike, map in hand, scouring likely neighborhoods where his sister might have vanished. There are red “x’s” all over the map, sometimes with the notation, “Bad men live here.”

As Johnny works on his guide, he’s shadowed by Detective Clyde Hunt, who is almost as haunted by Johnny’s sister as Johnny himself.  His life has taken an almost equally self-destructive turn, as he’s gotten divorced, become estranged from his teenaged son, and gotten on the thin side of legal behavior at work. While Johnny feels alone, he has an ally in both Hunt and his somewhat wayward friend Jack, who helps sometimes when Johnny is off with his map and his bike.

One of the many remarkable things about this book is the fact that though it’s told through the lens of a 13-year-old boy – and they are certainly complicated creatures – it never feels either condescending or false. Johnny is a very believable flesh-and-blood character, and often his desperation and desire to find his sister pulls you through the narrative, though you may know in your gut what the probable outcome will be. Hart manages to both maintain suspense and to describe Johnny’s landscape so fully, fleshed out with the other people and situations that surround him, that sometimes looking up from this book is almost jarring. Hart has put you in Johnny’s world that completely.

When you finish, the characters and story have a real hold on both your brain and your heart – two important things for a good writer to get ahold of, and Hart is a very good writer. He also writes beautiful prose, complete with motifs – in this book the motif is a raven (sometimes ravens plural), which adds an occasional extra note of both poetry and atmosphere. There’s really not too much more to ask for in a good book and I don’t expect to read too many finer books this year.

“The Big Dirt Nap” by Rosemary Harris (Minotaur Books, $24.95), and “Deadly Appraisal” by  Jane Cleland (St. Martin’s Minotaur, $6.99)

Rosemary Harris and Jane Cleland do many book events together, which makes perfect sense, since their books compliment each other beautifully. Harris writes about gardener Paula Holliday, and Cleland about antiques expert Josie Prescott. Both bring real world knowledge to their respective topics (Harris is herself a master gardener, and Cleland has owned an antiques and rare book business), and both women share an obvious affection for mysteries as a genre, which shows in their books. While Harris’ character doesn’t actually have a mystery paperback at her bedside, Cleland’s character usually has a prime Rex Stout title to help her fall asleep. Again, the real world creeps in – Cleland is a giant fan of Stout and Nero Wolfe in real life. The verisimilitude adds a lot to the books.

I’m going to review the books generationally, with apologies to both authors. Harris is a newcomer to the business – her first book,” Pushing Up Daisies,” came out last winter, and her character, Paula Holliday, who has given up a cool job in New York City and moved out to the burbs, is still on the hip side. She might be in her early 30s, but when she needs a “good” outfit she’s actually able to produce a pair of leather pants for the occasion. Paula occasionally becomes upset during the course of the story when various service employees call her “ma’am” or “lady” (all I can say to that is, suck it up, sister!). My point here is that she’s younger than the average mystery heroine and it makes her pretty refreshing as a main character.

In this novel, Paula has agreed to meet her best friend Lucy at the Titans Hotel for an all-expense paid weekend (Lucy still has the cool NYC job) and she’s snagged a few bucks from the local paper to write about the corpse flower the hotel has in the lobby, which is about to bloom. The flowers, which are gigantic, only bloom every seven years, and when they do they produce an odor not unlike decaying flesh (hence the name). Paula, waiting for her friend Lucy to arrive, strikes up a short conversation with a man in the hotel bar, one Nick Vigoriti. Shortly after their conversation (with Lucy still nowhere in sight) Nick turns up dead in the dumpster behind the hotel.

While the story and resolution are in the traditional mystery story mode, the threads Harris draws into her plot are not. As in the first book, the sidebar characters are strong ones: the shady hotel owner; the tormented young Russian girl, Oksana; the young woman in charge of the corpse flower (her enthusiasm seems to exceed Paula’s); even a cashier at the mini mart (he of the “ma’am” remark);  the missing and possibly shady Crawford brothers; and the cranky homicide cop heading up the investigation. The rotating and complex cast of villains, as well as the residents of the small town where the Titans Hotel is located, all add spice to the story. Lucy’s disappearance is of course tied to the central mystery, and Harris’ account of Paula finding her lost friend is a real classic. This is a light, enjoyable, and at the same time thoughtful mystery.

Cleland’s Josie Prescott is a little older than Paula Holliday – she’s been around the block a few times, but not too many. The seasoning gives her character some memorable spice. The set up for her novel truly is classic – the book opens at a Gala antiques auction, sponsored by Josie’s antiques auction house, Prescott’s, and before the night has ended one of the main organizers of the event has succumbed to cyanide poisoning, right before Josie’s very eyes. Josie, who didn’t know or especially like the dead woman, Maisey, is still traumatized by seeing her die right in front of her, and it makes her judgment of subsequent events sometimes shaky. The book actually has a central theme: are perceptions the same as reality? As Josie digs for details of the dead woman’s life, she realizes her perception of her has been all wrong.

The one person who Josie can trust, her boyfriend Ty, is out of town at the deathbed of his Aunt Trina, and isn’t around to tell Josie to snap out of it. That’s left to her practical lawyer, Max. The fact that the boyfriend is out of town downplays the romantic aspect present in the first book, and I thought it was an effective way for the author to delve more deeply into Josie’s personality. As the murder investigation proceeds, it emerges not (as often happens in mysteries) that Josie is the prime suspect, but that she might have been the intended victim. When a car tries to run her down one night, that supposition becomes cemented as fact for everyone but Josie, who still desperately wants Maisey and not herself to have been the intended victim.

Along the way Josie’s perceptions of her co-workers and friends are challenged and tested as she figures out who she can trust and who she can’t. The lesson of this book might be “go with your gut,” but the killer is still unexpected. As it turns out, Josie’s perceptions of the killer were completely off base. I also truly enjoy the detail Cleland includes about running her antiques business, as well as details of the antiques themselves. There are several objects where the provenance has to be traced and verified, and that was as interesting a mystery to me as anything else in the novel. Josie’s practical, generous and intelligent personality win the day, and that makes this series one I’d be happy to revisit.

Robin Agnew

[Editor's note: Robin Agnew and her husband Jamie own Aunt Agatha's mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor. She also helps run the annual Kerrytown BookFest.]

“Liars Anonymous” by Louise Ure (St. Martin’s Minotaur, $25.95)

“When had I crossed that weathered threshold that divided the world between citizens and survivors? Between what could be and what we are in our darkest hours.”

I know I’ve really enjoyed an ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of a novel when I look back and see how many pages I’ve dog-eared, for one reason or another. In the case of Louise Ure, it’s for her use of language, which is both precise and original. Sentences like “I missed my friend Catherine like she was a country I could no longer visit,” and “Her teeth had click-clacked with nervous energy while she filled out the paperwork, like a sleeping rabbit dreaming of carrots” are so evocative, and so vivid, they stay with you. It’s not often this kind of clarity is found in a hard-boiled mystery novel, but here it is. Maybe the beauty of the language is meant to carry the reader through the story of Jessie Dancing, which is one of the darker books I’ve read in a long while.

It’s told in first person, so you as a reader see everything through Jessie’s lens, but Ure is asking you at the same time to make your own judgment about her behavior. She doesn’t make it easy. The story begins more or less simply: Jessie is an operator for an OnStar type service, and she gets a call from a man who appears to have been assaulted while she is listening. There’s of course nothing she can do – it’s too far away – but she calls the police and is questioned by them extensively as they go to look for the man and the car; both have disappeared. The man’s wife also wants to talk to her and she takes the day off from her job in Phoenix and goes back to her hometown of Tucson to talk to the man’s wife.

It’s when Jessie goes home that her back story begins to emerge. She’s recently been released from prison and is estranged from her mother; the reason for it is teased out through the story, which gathers acceleration as the pieces of the man’s disappearance begin to fit into other events. This book is solidly put together and the story is complex, but what really sets it apart are the characters, especially Jessie, and the setting, which to this Michigander is fairly exotic.

As the parts of Jessie’s past life begin to tie into the present crime, and her life circumstances begin again to disintegrate, you’re caught up in her investigation even as you want to reach through the pages and tell her to stop. The ending is both inevitable and heartbreaking, and will likely stay with you for a while after you close the book, as will the character of Jessie Dancing.

“The Forgery of Venus” by Michael Gruber (Harper, $14.99)

“I want to paint in a culture that transcends the art that expresses it. And all that’s gone.”

Some books are like a drug. Even though you know you shouldn’t, you find yourself staying up late and snatching time out of your day to read them. Michael Gruber, an author whose wonderful books I carefully ration, is such a writer, and his latest book “The Forgery of Venus” was for me practically irresistible. I kept actually hiding it so I could get work done but it called me back and I was forced (yes, forced!) into reading more and more. Gruber is an insanely original writer – he has an imagination the equivalent of writers like L. Frank Baum or J.K. Rowling – but he puts his imagination in the service of us lucky adults.

In this outing, his story concerns one Chaz Wilmont, a gifted painter who nevertheless feels he’s been born at the wrong time. The current art scene doesn’t suit his love of the old masters, masters whose technique he is able to channel. To make things more complicated, Chaz has been raised from birth to be an artist by an artist father who’s described as a “second rate Rockwell.” And while he’s exceeded his father’s talent, he hasn’t achieved the kind of acclamation and success that those around him feel he deserves. He instead cranks out a living as a highly paid magazine illustrator.

The book is framed by another narrator, one of Chaz’s roommates at Columbia, who encounters Chaz years later (where the story begins) at an auction for a newly discovered painting by Velazquez. The old roommate – who lives a staid life – thinks Chaz looks terrible, and thinks he must indeed be actually crazy when Chaz tells him that the Velazquez is a forgery. He then adds that he, Chaz, painted it himself – in 1650. As a concept for a novel this turns out to be pretty mind bending, and it’s as though we as the readers are the staid roommate who listen to the CD Chaz has pressed into his hand, making our own judgments about his outlandish story. Yet, such is Gruber’s skill as a narrative storyteller, you’re drawn gradually into Chaz’s tale. It seems almost believable.

Chaz, it seems, has decided to be part of an experimental drug study in which he takes something called Salvinorin A in a controlled environment. (The kind of thing that was actually done in the ’60s with LSD). The study is attempting to find out how the drug affects creativity. The first time Chaz takes it he has the experience of living in another time and place – and it seems absolutely real. Each time he takes it, he goes back to this same time period, and each time the result is both disorientation and a huge burst of creativity. He paints a series of paintings for a magazine of famous actresses done in the style of Velazquez, his favorite painter. The magazine rejects them as not quite what they wanted, but when he shows them to his gallery owning ex-wife, she loves them and puts them in a show. They sell out almost instantly.

None of this story sounds simple, but it’s really just a framing device for Gruber’s musings on the state of modern art, the joy and pain of creativity, the realization of mediocrity of talent, and the essential mystery of actual genius. When Chaz eventually ends up in Italy commissioned to paint a copy of a Tiepolo fresco-using Tiepolo’s original cartoons, you’re there with him. If you’ve ever in your life picked up a pencil or a brush, you’re also with him as he lays down every luscious brush stroke. There’s a real joy and mystery to the painting sequences that are almost transcendent.

There is also some real depth of thought here about perception, reality and the nature of time. As you as a reader flit between Chaz’s “actual” life and his “life” as Diego Velazquez, time becomes fluid for you as well. Gruber’s beliefs about art are passionate ones – if you love modern art, you probably won’t agree with them, but if you love old masters, and Velazquez in particular, you probably will. I dog-eared lots of pages as I read, but this quote stood out for me: “I mean, really, what is the world now? I mean visually. Image after image on screen, but the kicker is we aren’t actually allowed to see them, I mean actually study them long enough to derive meaning, it’s all quick cut and on to the next one, which essentially destroys all judgment, all reflection.” Chaz’s need for reflection and his love of museums – the sacred places where he and his ex-wife get along, and where he simply finds beauty – are ones that I happen to share. If you do too, Gruber’s book is meant for you to inhale.

Robin Agnew

[Editor's note: Robin Agnew and her husband Jamie own Aunt Agatha's mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor. She also helps run the annual Kerrytown BookFest.]

“Next of Kin,” by John Boyne (Thomas Dunne Books, $15.95)

Every good book has a secret somewhere in the story – in a mystery, the secret of course is usually the identity of the killer. In John Boyne’s historical mystery, the secret is not the killer’s identity, but the killer’s very personality, his motives, and the extent of his moral depravity. This stand-alone novel is set in 1936 Britain, where one of the central issues of the day is the relationship between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Of course, we know how that turns out, but Boyne offers a possible behind-the-scenes scenario that’s very interesting.

The main portion of the book – the King and Mrs. Simpson are more of an atmospheric sidebar, though they relate to the plot – concerns one Owen Montignac, the scion of the wealthy Montignac family. When the book opens, Owen is giving the eulogy at his uncle’s funeral, the appropriateness of which is hotly debated by the guests at the after-funeral gathering. Such display of emotion is considered by some of the guests (mostly male) to be excessive; by some of the guests (mostly female) to be a welcome change. Owen himself seems oblivious.

By making Owen the central mystery of the novel, Boyne is entering Ruth Rendell territory. Her books often deal not with the “who” behind the crime but the “why,” something she can usually make the reader wonder about until the very last page. Boyne hasn’t reached the celestial heights that Ms. Rendell achieved in her long and noteworthy career, but he gives her a run for her money. Owen, it quickly becomes clear, is the “poor relation” nephew who has been raised along with his cousin Stella by his uncle, with the expectation that the wealth and land of the estate would come to him as the family has always left their estate to the male heir.

It also quickly becomes clear that Owen has a serious gambling debt, one he had hoped to repay on the death of his uncle. Like many of the other pieces of this story, each fits together, and as the story progresses, things begin to line up. 

Involved as plot cogs are the unfortunate Gareth Bentley, a lazy man about town who resists working, as his father does, in the courts; the controversial verdict Gareth’s father has recently handed down in a death penalty case; the art gallery Owen runs; and the relationship between Owen and his cousin, Stella. The outlying cogs are Edward and Wallis and their ultimate fate.

Boyne nicely sketches in the background of 1936 London, and though it’s not as evocative as writing by someone like Kate Ross or Anne Perry, it gets the job done. What he is after is a good story, and he delivers. He’s excellent at deconstructing Owen, who begins as very mysterious and becomes less so as the story moves forward. In a Rendell novel I would never have figured out the ultimate “secret,” though I did here, and it’s one that fits with the way Boyne has set up the plot and characters. With each step Owen takes to reach his ultimate goal, it becomes clear that what he’s willing to do to accomplish it is pretty horrible. This is a fairly haunting and very well told story, well worth a look.

“The Shanghai Moon,” by S.J. Rozan (Minotaur Books, $24.95)

S.J. Rozan’s series featuring, in alternating volumes, P.I.s Lydia Chin and Bill Smith, has returned after a seven-year hiatus. Since Rozan’s previous novel in the series, “Winter and Night,” won an Edgar for best novel, her publishers were willing to cut her some slack and wait for her return. It was a good decision – “The Shanghai Moon” is one of the more complex and deeply felt novels in the series, and the topic is so interesting it could definitely host its own book. It’s obviously a topic that has grabbed the author’s passionate attention. Lydia and Bill, thanks to some events in the last book, have been somewhat estranged (though it’s more a case of Bill holding Lydia at arm’s length for reasons of his own), so the case she takes on is at the request of another P.I., Joel Pilarsky.

Joel has been asked by a woman who works as a Holocaust recovery agent to try and track down some missing jewels that have recently been discovered in Shanghai. To give it historical context, Shanghai was one of only two places in the world that allowed Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis free access through its ports. Shanghai was occupied by Japan at the time, but the Japanese didn’t share Hitler’s idea of extinguishing the Jews, and in China, anti-Semitism was unknown. (Anti-European sentiment was another story). The jewels Lydia is trying to find in modern day New York City’s Chinatown long ago belonged to a young refugee, Rosalie Gilder, who fled her home with her brother at the age of 18. She ended up settling in Shanghai and eventually marrying a wealthy Chinese man – her jewels, some of them belonging to her Viennese mother, had been taken with her as security.

Rozan skillfully tells her story through the use of Rosalie’s letters home to her mother, who is waiting, with her Uncle Horst, for passage out of Austria, and also through the diaries of Rosalie’s sister-in-law. The unearthing of these documents involves a lot of detective work, and none of them come from the same source, though all of them are tied to Rosalie’s descendants, who now live in New York. When Joel is murdered and Lydia is fired by the Holocaust recovery agent – supposedly to keep her safe – she stubbornly refuses to give up on Rosalie, and it will be difficult for any reader to give up on her either. Luckily Bill decides to step back into Lydia’s life, and they work the case together.

The customs of modern day Chinatown, contrasted with the customs of an older China and the story of the Japanese occupation (where resident Jews were eventually put into a ghetto, though they were allowed to leave the ghetto to work and go to school) is seamlessly intertwined, though I won’t say I wasn’t sometimes unhappy to be wrenched away from Rosalie’s story. As it happens, the narrator of the book, Lydia Chin, feels the same way and she is just as saddened by Rosalie’s fate as I was as a reader.

When I asked the author about it, telling her how attached I had gotten to Rosalie, she described her strategy: “I thought to myself that even if she hadn’t died young she would have been dead by now.” However, she admitted it didn’t make her feel all that much better either.

The characters and the setting, as well as the historical lesson, make this novel an absolute standout, one you can enjoy without having read any others in the series.

Robin Agnew

[Editor's note: Robin Agnew and her husband Jamie own Aunt Agatha's mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor.  She also helps run the annual Kerrytown BookFest, along with eight other book lovers. Versions of these book reviews first appeared in her store's newsletter.]

“A Rule Against Murder,” by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books, $24.95)

This may be the most traditional of Canadian writer Louise Penny’s now four novels, though she has been labeled from the beginning as a “traditional” mystery writer. And indeed, she does write in the same tradition that Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey and Agatha Christie were following (and helped create), but she has managed to make this old form her own. She has an exceptional gift with prose, and the character development she brings to her writing is very modern. In each book, Penny has manages to slightly change up her formula to make each story feel fresh, and this one is no exception.

Using another timeless mystery trope – Penny takes her series character out of his familiar surroundings – she’s still able to make this seem new by painting a verbal portrait of each of the characters in the story. It’s as though Agatha Christie has come back and re-written “Ten Little Indians,” only using fully fleshed characters. It’s extremely entertaining, but Penny is enough of a psychologist to eventually make the effect disturbing, as the people in the novel, and their problems and sadnessess, begin to take on three dimensions instead of the two they are allotted on the page.

Inspector Gamache and his wife, the lovely Reine-Marie, have gone to celebrate their anniversary at the charming Manior Bellechasse, which nevertheless seems to have an air of mystery hanging over it, set up in part by an atmospheric prologue. They have spent every anniversary there and are expected; they come prepared to enjoy everything that comes their way.

They are surrounded, however, by the Finney family, who have no such plans to enjoy themselves. This troubled, complicated and alienated family stand apart from each other like prickly hedgehogs – everything they say to each other offends or wounds, and they retreat to their own corners to brood. To the surprise of Armand and Reine-Marie, two of their friends from Three Pines are part of this family. Gamache himself is coming to terms with some old family history that’s teased out throughout the book, but the main part of the plot involves the murder of one of the Finneys, Julia, the most distant of the siblings.

I’ve heard Louise say that she thinks the manner of the death is the least important aspect of the story, and that may be true in terms of the characters and the story arc, but she’s managed, once again, to set up a fiendishly clever manner of death with a seemingly impossible manner of implementation. Simply put, Julia is killed by a falling statue that couldn’t fall over. The way Gamache figures it out is sort of the way a sculptor works – he keeps polishing up aspects of the crime, and polishing and revealing the characters until they are clearer and clearer, until the solution itself is also clear. The way the characters are knit together, and the way the Gamaches respond to them, is richly layered, complex, and frequently humorous.

I also appreciate the fact that this author chooses not to hit the reader over the head with details or even explain everything that happens. There are some details left up to the reader to figure out, and I appreciate the respect she has for her readers to be able to do that. When you finish the book, I think you’ll know what I’m talking about, and you’ll probably enjoy thinking about it as much as I have. Now you can read “A Rule Against Murder” yourself and discover its delights on your own.

“All the Colors of Darkness,” by Peter Robinson (Harper Collins, $25.99)

For a long time now, Peter Robinson’s fine Inspector Banks books haven’t just been mysteries, but novels. The longer he’s written, the sharper and more keenly observed his books have become, and Banks himself is so real I’ve had many conversations with customers over the years about his love life and his children. Banks long ago joined the “canon” of classic police Inspectors – by all rights there should be a group meeting of Rebus, Morse, Lynley and Dalgleish – perhaps presided over by Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn, of whom they are all direct descendants.

I think the modern police novel is one of the most adept forms at dealing with the realities of modern life, as it can take in its sweep life in the workplace, family life, and relationships – romantic and otherwise – between men and women. Banks himself is a case in point – in the course of the novels he’s gotten divorced, his children have grown up, and his ex-wife has remarried and had another child. In this novel he has a new girlfriend, Sophia. (I was actually a little behind on Robinson’s books and e-mailed a few friends to see if Sophia was worthy of Banks. Opinion was mixed).

Robinson opens his book with an epigraph from “Othello” and indeed the novel develops into a thoughtful treatise on jealousy, though telling what forms it takes would be giving things away. The story begins with the discovery of a hanged man by some school boys out for a swim on a hot day. When the man’s lover is also found dead, the plot of course ratchets up. This is a fairly simple story, and in other hands it might remain that way, but Robinson sees all the shades of character – indeed, “All the Colors of Darkness” as the title promises.

As the book develops it encompasses P.I. work, the MI6, trouble with Banks’ boss, and a stabbing on an estate that Banks leaves to be solved by his team while he spends a bit of time in London with Sophia and works the main case off the books on his own. This has all sorts of repercussions, and late in the book is a moving and memorable action sequence that tightens the actions and the feelings of everyone involved.

As I said, I know intellectually that Banks isn’t a real person, but every time I finish one of these fine books, I’m not so sure in my heart. Each book is a little look into a life that seems to be going on after you close the covers, and one that will be picked up again with the next book. There is hardly a greater gift that any writer can give to a reader.