Secrets Of Death by Stephen Booth

 

The Peaks District is known for its beauty and wonderful towns such as Derbyshire and Nottingham.  Tourists flock to view the beauty and hike on the miles of nature trails.  DI Ben Cooper is used to the tourist influx every summer but not what this summer has brought.  All of a sudden, suicides are being found all over the district and the terms suicide tourist is being bandied about.

This won't do and Cooper's superiors want him to look into it and see what, if anything, can be done.  The victims vary in age and gender and in methods of death.  There have been leaps from bridges, drug overdoses, slit wrists and asphyxiation.  What could possibly tie these deaths together?  But shockingly, Ben finds a common thread.  Each of the suicide victims has a card in their possession, a black card embossed with the phrase Secrets Of Death.

In the past, Ben would have been working with Diane Fry, his colleague with whom he had an uneasy work relationship.  But Diane has been transferred to Nottingham to the Major Crime division and is no longer a worry to him.  Until she reappears telling Ben that his latest victim was also one of the Major Crime's suspects in three womens' deaths.  What is the cord that binds these cases?

This is the sixteenth Cooper and Fry novel in the series.  Ben has had some personal setbacks and is just pulling himself out of a personal depression.  He meets several women who make him think about getting back into the dating game although he hasn't done so yet.  The relationship between Ben and Diane is fraught with tension and disconnects as always which makes the book more interesting.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Humankind by Rutger Bregman

 

The author of this book sets out the premise that humans are not the murderous individuals motivated by hate and fear that is a common perception.  Instead, he believes that humans are basically kind and in fact are hard-wired to help each other and behave in each other's best interests.  

This point is made by exploring several examples of bad behavior and seeing how wrong the stories are.  The first is the contrasting of a real life Lord Of The Flies scenario vs the one in the novel.  The novel has the stranded boys turning into misanthropes who hunt each other down to hurt and eventually kill.  It is contrasted with a real life group of boys who were stranded on an island for months.  They were found to have continued their friendships, found ways to handle conflicts without violence and validate each other.  Other stories include the Kitty Genovese murder case, the Stanford Experiment which supposedly showed people will revert to cruelty when given power over others.  Both are shown to have been reported incorrectly and that the lessons to be taken away are diametrically opposed to the legends.

One statistic that really struck me was the low proportion of soldiers who actually fire their weapons.  Instead they don't fire or fire over the heads of their enemies.  The point is made that the majority of casualties are done by those who don't really see their opponents; situations like bombers who don't see those they unleash destruction on.  

This is a fascinating book.  The author ends with examples of things that could be different if society acknowledged the best rather than the worst in people.  Examples are given of different ways of schooling or running prisons.  This book is fascinating and life affirming.  It is recommended for nonfiction readers.

The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato

 

Octavia Leander is about to start her adult life.  An orphan, she was rescued from the streets and raised in Miss Percival's school for healers.  It turns out that Octavia is extremely gifted in her service to the Lady of the Tree and one of the most successful healers to be found in decades.  She is off to her first job in a village that has many victims of a recent war and famine.  

Octavia boards her first airship in order to get to her new location.  She is given a cabin with a middle-aged lady who is cordial but a bit mothering and nosy.  Octavia is uneasy with the airship technology but fascinated as well.  She meets an airship employee, Alonzo Garrett, who seems interested in her and who wants to help her.  There are several other men on the ship who are also interested and Octavia is not sure their interest is positive.  

That feeling is right.  As the journey progresses, Octavia is attacked as is her roommate.  Someone wants to prevent her from reaching her destination.  With Alonzo on her side, Octavia is able to avoid the attacks.  Can she find out what is going on?

This is the first novel in the Clockwork series and is written for a young adult audience.  Octavia is a feminist and her abilities allow her to avoid disaster and make her way in a threatening world.  The novel was a Locus Award finalist for Best First Novel in 2015.  Readers will be interested in Octavia and her message of strong feminist power.  This book is recommended for fantasy and young adult readers.

All Lies by Andrew Cunningham

 

Del Honeycutt leads a boring life.  He lives in rural New York in the same apartment for years.  He has a job that's so boring that he can't even tell people what he does for a living.  He hasn't had a girlfriend for a couple of years.  But that's all going to change.  He has decided to move into the world of online dating.  

His first foray isn't that successful.  The woman he meets seems overly interested in his family, grilling him about his parents and grandparents.  She seems to lose all interest when Del doesn't know much about them and leaves shortly thereafter.  He writes it off as just the weirdness one finds on the net but has to reevaluate when the woman turns up dead a few days later.  Now the police are involved and they want to know what Del knows which is a big fat nothing.

Del is contacted by the woman's sister who turns out to be mystery writer Sabrina Spencer.  Together they figure out that the murder traces back to a crime committed by Del's grandfather and his cohorts and tied to an art heist.  But there are other people who have also figured that out and they will stop at nothing to find the answers.  Can Del and Sabrina solve the crime before they are killed?

This is the first in what is currently a five novel series.  The characters are very likeable and the reader will be pulling for Del and Sabrina.  They fall in love and their love story is an intriguing secondary story to the crime investigation.  I plan to read more in this series.  This novel is recommended for mystery readers.

The Window Seat by Aminatta Forna

 

This book is a collection of autobiographical essays by Aminatta Forna.  She is not only an author with books such as The Hired Man and Memory Of Love but a professor of writing in various universities throughout the world.  Forna has led a fascinating life.  Her childhood was spent in various countries.  Her father was executed as a revolutionary in Sierra Leon during the period when various African countries were establishing their independence from colonial rule.  Her stepfather was a diplomat so she and her brother grew up in various embassies in such locations as Iran, Zambia and Thailand.  Her mother was Scottish and she also spent time as a child in Scotland.  The first part of this collection are stories from her childhood and these events.

The latter part of the collection are more reaction pieces to various topics that she has an interest in.  She has a real love for animals that comes through in these pieces.  Topics she covers include the inauguration of Donald Trump, various dogs she has owned and the street dogs in Africa, suffering from insomnia, the experience of being a woman and dealing with men's catcalls and attempts to belittle based on gender, chimpanzees kept as pets or used in testing, peanut butter and wildlife she has encountered, especially foxes and coyotes; the foxes in England and the coyotes in various locations in the United States.  I listened to this book and Forna was the narrator.  Often having the author as the narrator is not a good choice but Forna was an excellent narrator and having her own voice narrating her life experiences was a fabulous choice.

I can highly recommend this book.  Forna is an amazing author and I can't imagine anything she would write that I wouldn't find fascinating.  She is determined to live life on her terms and to live a full life and the reader is blessed to be able to share this part of her life with her.  This book is recommended for readers of memoirs and essays.  

Faithless by Karin Slaughter

 When Sara Linton and Jeffrey Tolliver go for a walk in the woods around Sara's parents' house, they don't expect it to end in horror.  But it does.  Jeffrey tripped over something and they realize it is a pipe.  The pipe leads to a coffin buried in the earth and a young girl who has been buried alive and is now dead.  

The two are used to seeing dead bodies.  Jeffrey is the police chief in this small Southern town and Sara the coroner.  But this is a particularly gruesome death.  Who is this girl?  Who hated her enough to do this?  As the investigation progresses, it turns out that the girl did not suffocate.  Instead someone sent cyanide down the pipe and poisoned her.  She is part of a religious family that runs a large farm that grows soy and employs ex-cons and drifters.  Did one of them do this?  Was it part of the family?  The family sends off cult vibes and Jeffrey isn't sure what they would do.  Can the two find the answer before more girls are killed?

This is the fifth of the six novels in the Grant County series.  The crime is arresting and the investigation is interesting.  Jeffrey and Sara are in an on again, off again relationship, moving through marriage, estrangement and reengagement.  A secondary character, Lena, is a detective in the force who faces many issues from her own past and she is featured again in this novel.  Readers will be caught up in the action and horror that only Karin Slaughter can deliver.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Reputation by Sara Shepard

 

Things are not going well at Aldrich University.  A hacker has broken into the university's servers and has released an easily searched database of all the emails of each student, administrator, faculty and staff as well as the medical personnel attached to the university.  This leads to revelations of many scandals and gossip runs wild.  The ante is upped when Dr. Greg Strasser is found murdered in his kitchen the night of the Aldrich annual fundraising gala.  Strasser is married to the university president's daughter, Kit Manning, the main fundraiser.  Did she kill him?

Greg had been revealed as having a torrid affair.  Kit doesn't remember coming home that night from the fundraiser just finding Greg.  Although she didn't drink at fundraising events, that night she had in order to face down the gossips whispering about Greg.  But Kit isn't the only suspect.  There is Laura, a nurse whose newborn baby has Greg's piercing blue eyes.  Kit's daughters are acting strangely.  Willa, Kit's sister and a scandal journalist comes home to support her sister and investigate the mystery but she has secrets of her own.  There is Raina, a student who worked as the university president's assistant and who has befriended Kit's daughter.  She seems to have some connection to Greg as well.  Then there are the men whose wives, daughters and girlfriends have been seduced by Greg.  

This twisty tale of gossip, backstabbing and secrets is a real pageturner.  There are multiple characters and the story is told in turn from each character's point of view.  Everyone has a secret they don't want revealed and the hack puts all those tawdry actions out in full view of all.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Dead Of Winter by Stephen Mack Jones

 August Snow is a native Detroit guy.  A former policeman, Snow is now retired and a millionaire due to a civil settlement leading from an injury on the job.  Snow grew up in Mexicantown and one of his favorite places was Authentico Foods.  Ronaldo Ochoa, the founder of Authentico was a friend from back when the restaurant was just starting.  Now the restaurant has morphed into a company that supplies tortillas to restaurants throughout the area.

Ochoa asks Snow to come meet him.  To Snow's surprise, Ochoa asks Snow to buy his company.  Ochoa is older and ill and wants to assure that his company will survive to provide for his family.  He has been approached by a shadowy figure to buy him out and Ochoa fears that the proposed purchaser wants to raze the company and develop the area for the professionals who are starting to return to Detroit.  Snow isn't interested in buying but agrees to look around.

As he investigates, Snow starts to see that what Ochoa had feared is true and that violence isn't out of the question for the people behind the offer.  Soon Snow and his friends are caught up in a maelstrom of violence with assassins gunning for them.  Can Snow unravel the business and those behind it before he and his friends are killed?

This is the third August Snow novel.  Readers may find the violence a bit over the top and the lack of police follow-up after multiple killings is a sticking point.  Outside of that, the author explores the topic of gentrification in a realistic manner with the results of such development on those who already live in the area and who are forced out.  It is an interesting viewpoint from a detective of color and one whose roots in the black and Hispanic communities are deep.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

 

Detective Karen Pirie is in limbo at the police station.  She headed up the case that sent the former superintendent of the station to jail for murder and has now been shunted aside as the head of the Cold Care Review Team.  Her new supervisor is not sure what to make of her but he knows he doesn't like what he sees.  Unfortunately, he has to depend on her when two cases show up at the same time.

Back in 1984, a sensational case happened in this rural locality.  The daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Scotland, Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant, was kidnapped along with her infant son.  During the ransom payoff things went badly and the daughter was killed, her son never found.  Now new evidence has shown up in the case and it has landed in Pirie's lap.

At the same time another cold case from the same time period has been reported.  Misha Gibson shows up at the police station to report her father missing.  Not unusual except that he went missing twenty-two years before and this is the first report filed.  Misha's mother always assumed Mick Prentice ran out on the marriage and his daughter and they learned to live with that.  His best friend went missing at the same time and it was during the coal strikes when society was disordered.  They figured Mick just upped stakes and went to find a better life somewhere else but now Misha's son is sick and needs a blood donor to have a chance at getting better so Misha wants him found.  Can Karen juggle the two cases and solve them both?

This is the second Karen Pirie novel in the series.  She is an interesting character, a confident woman who isn't described as the most attractive woman anyone has ever seen but the average woman most of us are used to seeing in daily life.  Pirie is intelligent and insightful and has the determination and force to follow a case from start to finish no matter the price she has to pay with her superiors in order to get to the solution.  As such, she is a breath of fresh air.  The cases are intriguing and the resolution is satisfactory.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Runner by Thomas Perry

 

Jane Whitfield has retired from her work helping people disappear.  These days she leads the life of a surgeon's wife in upper New York, volunteering at the hospital and living her life.  But when the girl comes to her begging for help, Jane decides that maybe she needs to do one last job.  The fact that there is an explosion at the hospital minutes later with the people searching for Christine responsible makes her decision a reality.  She grabs Christine and off they go.

This will be a hard job.  Christine is pregnant.  Her boyfriend wants her back because his wealthy parent will cut him off unless he can produce a grandchild.  Unfortunately, Christine also knows about his unlawful deals and can send him to jail if word gets out.  He sends six people to track her down and bring her home. The six are professional finders and they make it clear early on that they will stop at nothing to bring Christine back.  What they hadn't counted on was that Jane is just as determined and will whatever it takes to help Christine escape to a new life.

This is the sixth novel in the Jane Whitfield series.  Thomas Perry is one of my favorite authors.  His tight plotting and his knowledge of all the details that would have to be attended to in order for a person to escape their life is fascinating.  Jane is an enigma; a woman who will stop at literally nothing in order to help those who must flee for their lives.  What motivates her to put her life at such risk?  How many times can she do this successfully?  This book is recommended for thriller readers.

The Demi-Monde Winter by Rod Rees

 

The Demi-Monde is a computer virtual reality game created to train the military.  It is the most elaborate game ever developed with millions of characters, most of whom are programmed to be vicious and desperate for power.  The world is broken into sectors which are based on reality so there are sectors for England, Europe, the far East, Russia and other geographical regions.  The cultures in each sector is distinct with some having male dominated cultures, other women dominated, some futuristic, some caught up in Victorian times.  The worst villains in history are leaders in these sectors.

Somehow, the President's daughter has been transported into the game.  The government is tasked with getting her back to reality and they recruit Ella to head up the mission.  Ella is a college student just looking for a way to finance her studies and the five million dollar payday is just what she is looking for.  Whether she would agree if she knew what was facing her is another story.

Once inserted, Ella find some allies to help her.  The main one is a magician who can get into any place and who agrees to use Ella as his assistant.  That requires her to play various things such as a magician's assistant and a voodoo queen.  The two manage to find the President's daughter who is a spoiled brat.  Can they now get her back while the Demi-monde is about to break into a war to rival that of World War II?

This is the first novel of four in this series.  The world building is elaborate and detailed and the use of historical characters is interesting.  There are many characters and each is given a full backstory.  The interplay of these characters fuels the novel along with the main mission.  This book is recommended for sci fi readers.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

 

Mariana Andros goes to Cambridge to be with her niece Zoe when Zoe's friend is found murdered.  A therapist, Mariana worries about Zoe's mental health after the death.  They are both still grieving the recent death of Mariana's husband.  Simon and Mariana raised Zoe after the death of her parents in an accident.  Zoe has more experience with loss than most her age and Mariana worries that this death may be more than Zoe can handle.

Zoe's friend is just the first.  There is a group of young women who flock around a charismatic professor, Edward Fosca.  After observing him, Mariana is convinced he is the murderer and sets out to prove it.  The police are not convinced, viewing Mariana as an amateur who doesn't have any proof to back up her theories.  They are right but Mariana is convinced her training has given her the ability to diagnose Fosca as a psychopath.  As the murders continue, can Mariana get the proof she needs?

This is Alex Micahelides' second novel.  Like his successful first novel, The Patient, it is based in the world of psychological practice.  As Mariana attempts to prove her theory, she finds that she has put herself in danger, drawing attention from the killer.  I'm not sure that universities would allow the kind of female adulation of a male professor that the book documents or that the police would give Mariana even the amount of attention she gets in the book for her theories.  Those two elements don't ring true for me but work in the book to build tension.  This book is recommended for thriller readers. 

Cat And Mouse by James Patterson

 

Detective Alex Cross is more challenged than ever in this novel.  He is faced with two separate serial killers on the loose and the cases need his insights.  Gary Soneji, the killer Alex caught and put away for life has escaped and is on the loose.  He knows he will be caught again but he is determined to cause as much havoc as he can before then and killing Cross is definitely on his list.  At the same time, there is a killer in Europe who has claimed more than a dozen victims.  He is known as Mr. Smith and one of the FBI's top consultants wants Cross's help on that case.  He agrees to help Cross catch Soneji if Cross will help with the Mr. Smith case.  Another factor is that Cross has fallen in love.  He is starting a relationship with the principal of his children's school and worries that his job will make that relationship difficult to sustain.

The defining characteristic of Patterson's novels is pace.  He writes at a breakthroat pace with short chapters that rush the reader along on a roller coaster ride.  Alex Cross is an intriguing character and readers will be interested in reading about how his mind works.  There are lots of interesting characters around him in his family and friends and plenty of twists and turns to surprise the reader.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Mechanical Animals edited by Selena Chambers

 

In this anthology, all the stories are about mechanical animals and how such entities fit into our everyday world.  Although one might think this is a recent idea with the advent of robots and AI, it is a surprising mix of the modern and older stories as the idea has fascinated the imagination of scientists and authors for decades.

Authors in this anthology include Jess Nevins, Tessa Kum, Delia Sherman, Maurice Broaddus and Sarah Hans, Lauren Beukes, Jesse Bullington, An Owomoyela, Stephen Graham Jones, Hans Christian Andersen, Molly Tanzer, Aliette de Bodard, Nick Mamatas, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kat Howard, Michael Cisco, Adrian Van Young, Robert Toombs, Joseph S. Pulver, Jr, Alistair Rennie, Jules Verne, Caroline Yoachim and Carrie Vaughn.

My favorite story was Closer To The Sky by Carrie Vaughn.  It is about a family on the frontier.  The young daughter of the family has been gifted a mechanical horse by her uncle who is an inventor and this horse is her original living horse who has been retrofitted by the uncle after an accident that should have taken its life.  The horse allows the girl to outwit a gang of outlaws and one of lawmen who all want to find her uncle's workshop and control his inventions going forward.  The horse saves her life out of love and the girl ends the story by vowing to learn her uncle's knowledge in order to keep her beloved companion in good stead going forward.  This book is recommended for science fiction readers.

The Archer by Shruti Swamy

 

From the moment Vidya sees the dance form known as Kathak, she knows what she was meant to do with her life.  She is living in the in Bombay with her father and younger brother, her mother having died.  She is expected to run the household, cook, shop and clean but she knows there is more to her life than this.  She manages to study hard enough to get a scholarship to a school of engineering.

While she is studying to get her degree, it is her secondary priority.  Her first is always Kathak.  She practices for hours daily and goes for lessons with a renowned teacher several times a week.  The teacher encourages her to devote her life to dance and Vidya is glad to.

But life intervenes.  Moving forward, the reader encounters Vidya as a young wife, her husband another artist.  His media is photography.  He comes from a very wealthy family which has disowned him for marrying Vidya but the couple is happy.  When Vidya becomes pregnant, the family is willing to take her in.  Vidya wonders which she will put first, her child or her art?

This Swamy's first novel as her first publication was an anthology.  The text is poetic and dreamy as Vidya describes her feelings for her art, her friendships, her love for her husband and her child.  The message seems to be that each person must find the one thing in life that will bring them the most joy.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

 

In this novel, Elizabeth Strout takes the reader again to the small town of Crosby, Maine and one of the most memorable inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge.  Olive is still the person she always was, quick to say whatever is on her mind and surprising to those around her.  She is older now and life has changed.  Olive's husband Henry has died and she is a widow.  But things change and Olive meets Jack, a retired Harvard professor and they fall in love and marry.  

The novel is a collection of stories about those who live in Crosby and their relationships to Olive.  There is the woman fighting cancer whose friends ignore her because they don't know what to say yet Olive steps in and visits and gives the woman space to say the forbidden things that are preying on her mind.  There is the teenager who is cleaning houses to make enough money to get out of town and who develops a strange relationship with the husband of one of her employers.  The reader gets to find out what is going on with the Burgess brothers, another of Strout's novels.  

Throughout the novel, Olive is the blunt woman who many turn away from and who always speaks her mind.  She isn't sure if her only son likes her although she knows he loves her.  She can show amazing kindness but is also quick to bring her friends and acquaintances to task when she sees them straying.  Those who liked the first novel, Olive Kitteridge, will enjoy returning to Olive's life and hearing more about this unique individual.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

The Dirty South by John Connolly

 

Another dead girl has been found in Burdon County, Arkansas.  That makes three in five years, all killed in the same brutal way with the same mutilations.  All are young African-American women, teenagers.  Cargill police chief Evander Griffin is determined that this murder will not get swept under the rug like the last one did.  Burdon County is up for a huge investment by a multinational company and it was deemed unadvisable to have a murderer around the last time so the death had been classified as an accident although everyone knew it wasn't one at all.

Griffin hears that there is a new guy hanging around in a bar, asking questions about the dead women.  He goes to talk with the man but his attitude is irritating and Griffin ends up taking him in and putting him in a jail cell while he checks him out.  The man is Charley Parker.  He is a New York City ex-cop, having left when the tragedy hit.  His wife and child were murdered and Parker now spends his time searching for their killer.  Griffin feels that Parker could help them find their killer and after some thought, Parker agrees.

There are plenty of suspects.  There is the Cade family who run the county.  Pappy Cade is getting older and determined that the business deal that will make Burdon County rich will be his legacy.  His older son, Jurel is an investigator with the county police while his daughter handles the politics at the state capital.  His youngest son is considered the family's weak link.  There are drug dealers and meth cookers, strip joint owners and disreputable preachers, all lining up to make money from the deal if it happens.  Which of them is killing off young women?

This is a prequel novel in the Charley Parker series although it is the nineteenth in the series.  It explores what made Parker the man he is and why he feels compelled to seek out the evil found in the world.  Some of the characterizations of the small town grifters and power hungry are a bit trite but overall the novel is a satisfactory chapter in the series and gives readers a deeper understanding of Parker.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

 

It's not what he'd dreamed of but Kinch Na Shannack finds himself in a forest by the highway waiting on someone to rob.  He needs to pay the Takers Guild for his education.  All that education on stealing, lying, robbing and how to tell a tattoo that contains a spell needs to be paid for and Kinch has no other way to find the money.  But sometimes you are lucky and sometimes not.  Kinch and his cohorts rush out to rob a company only to find it contains a female knight, Galva.  She makes short work of Kinch's crew but at the end of the fight, the two decide to travel a bit together.  Galva is searching for her queen, rumored to be in giant country and she is willing to spare Kinch's life in exchange for his help.

Thus starts an epic quest.  There are dangers aplenty.  Goblins abound and there is nothing they like more than a dinner of human flesh.  Krakens kill everything in their path indiscriminately.  Giants are not jolly folk but terrifying behemoths who can kill with a swat.  Witches abound, including one called Deadlegs who lost her legs in a fight and now gets around by hacking off the legs of her dead enemies and using them until they rot past use. A blind cat takes Kinch as her soulmate.   Kinch is alternately terrified and amazed, falling in love or fighting for his life.  

I listened to this novel and it was wonderful.  The author, Christopher Buehlman, was also the narrator and his accented narration was perfect.  It is one of the few books I'd love to listen to again just to hear his voice some more.  There are songs interspersed throughout and they are done well also.  

This book is a five star rating for me.  It's one of the best fantasy books I've read lately and I read a lot of fantasy.  It is humorous and thrilling by turns.  Kinch is a thief and a rascal but his exploits hide a heart of gold.  The book is getting a lot of positive buzz with accolades such as editor's choice for Best Books of 2021 in the fantasy genre.  It is the first of a proposed trilogy and the reader will finish the last page desperate to read the next.  This book is highly recommended for fantasy readers. 

Midnight In Peking by Paul French

 

January 8, 1937.  It is a cold and bitter night in the city of Peking.  The Chinese inhabitants are uneasy as the Japanese Army is inching its way ever closer to the city with its motto of kill and burn all.  The Foreign Legation of British, French and other countries has fewer and fewer inhabitants as they flee back to their own countries.  A young British girl, Pamela Werner, 19, is missing.  She left the night before to go skating with some friends and never returned.

But she is no longer missing.  Her body is found on the outskirts of the Legation near what is known as the Fox Towers. She has been brutally murdered and the body mutilated with its heart and other organs cut out and missing.  Pamela is the daughter of a former British consul.  The Peking police know that this will be a massive case with political implications.

Two detectives are assigned to the case.  Inspector Dennis is brought in from Shanghai to head up the British investigation while Inspector Han is in charge of the Chinese one.  Although they are to cooperate, it is soon clear that there are political forces which do not want the case solved as it may reflect poorly on the city and its inhabitants.  

There are multiple suspects.  Pamela's former headmaster has rumors of possible pediphile leanings.  A rickshaw operator has been found with a bloody rickshaw.  Pamela was dating many boys, both British and Chinese.  There is talk of a secret club of British men who run parties where young girls are paid to dance naked.  Who has killed Pamela and will the powers that be let the case be solved?

Paul French has discovered and written an in-depth exploration of this case.  He lived and worked in Shanghai for many years as a journalist and his writing skills are on full display.  The book won an Edgar Award for best nonfiction as well as a Crime Writers Dagger for nonfiction.  The case with its intricate layers of political maneuverings is fascinating for readers of true crime and is recommended for them.

Klara And The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguru

 

Klara is an AF or Artificial Friend.  She spends her days in the store window display waiting for a parent to choose her as a companion to their child. When Josie picks her from all the other AFs, Klara is excited.  She goes home with Josie and her mother and fits into the routine of the household.

Josie is pretty much always at home.  She is sickly perhaps as a result of being 'lifted' which is the term for genetic modification to give children advantages.  Klara, of course, being entirely artificial, is more intelligent but since she lacks the emotional responses of a human, filters everything through her logic base and misses much.  One example is that since Klara is solar powered, she believes that the sun is a god.  As Josie becomes sicker, Klara attempts to make a deal with the sun whom she believes can heal Josie.  She also doesn't get the emotional interactions between Josie and her mother or the mother and the neighbors.  Rick, the neighbor boy, is Josie's main friend outside of Klara.  He is not lifted and there is a stark difference between the anticipated futures for the two children.

This book is a Booker longlist nomination.  It is written in a very flat, unemotional way as that is the way that Klara, who is the narrator, views the world but which makes it more challenging for readers to engage with.  Ishiguru explores what artificial intelligence will mean for our world when humans are perhaps not needed to run things.  What will that mean for relationships and for the economy?  Will humans come to be seen as replaceable commodities?  Can a child be replaced by an artificial friend for those who can't have children?  There are lots of questions to ponder yet the unemotional narration makes it more difficult for readers to embrace this work.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.