I love, love, love the Simon Serailler series by Susan Hill. This is the third of the series. I’m not sure why I love it so much, but I expect it is because she creates such fully rounded characters, with lives far beyond the mysteries. And her detective is fascinating, maddening, and appealing to me. And his family is just as complex as he is.
I’m going to jump into book 4 tomorrow. I can’t wait!
First in the time travel series The Company, a wildly imaginative world where time travelers from the future create ‘immortals’ who then work for The Company collecting data, things, plants etc from the past to improve the lives of the people of the future.
They can only change children into immortals though, so they select children at risk to recruit to their purpose. Mendoza, a young child the Spanish Inquisition has locked in its dungeons is thusly recruited.
She grows up in a Company compound and the Garden of Iden is her first assignment.
It had a bit more romance than I like, but I did enjoy the story and especially the world-building. I’ll read more of the series.
Something of a transitional book for Charles Lenox. He’s a newly minted member of Parliament and newly married, attempting to find his feet in both circumstances, and finding, to his dismay, that he misses sussing out murderers and that when an opportunity to do so arises, he’s finding that more interesting than putting his shoulder to the wheel with regard to blue books and study of proposals in Parliament.
Kurt Wallander is a struggling with the changes happening to his world. His country is changing and he’s not sure he’s happy with its new-found ways. But he’s also a cop so he’s focused on trying to find a missing woman. From the first he’s baffled by seemingly unrelated clues that keep complicating the search. When he finds her dead, he’s even more baffled because he can find no reason whatsoever that she’d be the victim of a crime, never mind the victim of what appears to be an assassination.
A terrific series and this a worthy entry to it.
China Mieville has such a rich imagination that the locations where he sets his works are a character in themselves. The city of Crobuzon is no exception. It is a rusting out, miserable run-down place populated with a multitude of peoples centered in various areas of the city. But most, traveling the city’s version of mass transport, will pass through Perdido Street Station.
The story begins with a renegade scientist’s quest to help a tortured Garuda regain his lost wings and return to the air. But the story quickly devolves into a quest to stop creatures that are terrorizing the city and leaving a wake of mindless bodies in their wake.
Complex, depressing at times, maddening at others, never boring.
The third book in the excellent Night Soldiers series, follows a Polish Officer as he escapes from Poland just as the Nazis take his country. He joins the resistance and fights over much of Europe as he does whatever he can to help the Allies defeat Hitler.
Wonderfully done, understated on the violence and with a disturbing insight into the miseries of all out war.
First in the Harry Hole series, set in Australia, rather than at home. Harry has come to Australia because a Norwegian woman was murdered and he’s there to investigate and find information about what has happened.
Not much in the way of character development for Harry in this book, and I thought it far too full of info dumps. Hopefully I’ll like others in the series better.
I listened to an excellent audio version narrated by Steven Boyer.
New York City in the mid 1800s was a patchwork of competing and warring tribes. The newest immigrants getting the worst of it (the Irish0 at that moment. But political bosses and religions were just as divisive. It was in the midst of that wild madness that the first police force was formed, most of the members of that force selected by the Democatic party bosses, rather than by any person looking for any real credentials. But then, policing was mostly knocking heads together, rather than solving crimes. Into that mix comes Timothy Wilde, whose brother is a political boss and whose former job ended in a huge fire that swept through the city.
Timothy, much to his own surprise, finds he takes to the task, and when he discovers a dead kinchin, he’s swept up by his emotions and desires to solve the death of this little unwanted child. When yet more bodies turn up, he’s driven to create his own methods to find out just who is responsible and make them pay.
Beautifully written, period details are well drawn, and the tale is atmospheric and moving. You can almost imagine the misery that so many people experienced then.
The mystery itself is complex enough to draw you in and compel you forward to want to find out the whole story.
I obtained this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewer program.
Diana found her husband was far more than the titled handsome and fine man she married. She discovered he was a gatekeeper, one of the last to defend the gates to the Netherworld. When her husband goes to Transylvania and disappears, she feels required to take up her duties herself, but she plans not to just guard the portals, but instead to close every one of them she can find, Needless to say, she makes enemies on the far side of the portals.
A good first effort, but I certain scenes seemed to go on too long, and they dragged as a result. But I enjoyed the world building and the characters were all well drawn and interesting. I especially appreciated a fully capable heroine.
