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340. Miracle Creek

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Drue Emerson

Author:   Angie Kim

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

357 pages, published April 16, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Miracle Creek is a literary courtroom drama about a Korean immigrant family and a young, single mother accused of murdering her eight-year-old autistic son.  It takes place in a small Virginia town and explores the intertwining lives of people who are very different from each other.  All is not what it seems as the courtroom tension builds.

Quotes 

“But that was the way life worked. Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together — one of a million sperm arriving at the egg at exactly a certain time; even a millisecond off, and another entirely different person would result. Good things and bad–every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness–resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential.”

 

“to Americans, verbiage was an inherent good, akin to kindness or courage. They loved words—the more, the longer, and more quickly said, the smarter and more impressive.” 

My Take

In Miracle Creek, author Angie Kim combines compelling character studies with a taut courtroom drama.  You also come away from the book with a deeper understanding of the highs and lows of living with an autistic child.  A page turner of the best kind.

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322. Find Her

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Lisa Gardner

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

402 pages, published February 9, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Find Her is a crime thriller that tells the story of Flora Dane, a young woman who  was kidnapped while on spring break.  For 472 days, Flora was held captive and did what she needed to do to survive.  Once released, Flora turned into a vigilante avenger.  Hired to find another abducted young woman, Flora finds herself ensnared again with her potential murder or release leading to a taut climax.

Quotes 

“Survivors make it because they learn to adapt. Adaptation is coping. Coping is strength.”

 

“Because it’s one thing to survive. It is much, much harder to truly live.”

 

“There’s no rewind, or erasing, or unmaking. The things that happened, they are you, you are them. You can escape, but you can’t get away. Just the way it is.”

 

“IN A DETECTIVE’S WORLD there was one true blight on society, and it wasn’t the master criminal; after all, superpredators were few and far between. It was the media.”

 

“I don’t know who I am,” I say. “No one does. Everyone spends their lives figuring that out, even people who’ve never been kidnapped.”

 

“You know about trauma bonding, right?” the agent asked abruptly. “Forget kidnapping victims, you see it all the time with battered women. They’re isolated, at the mercy of their dominating spouse, going through intense spells of abject terror followed by even more emotionally draining periods of soul-wrenching apologies. The trauma itself creates a powerful bonding element. The things these two have gone through together, how could anyone else ever understand? It becomes one more thing that makes a woman stay, even after her husband has beat the crap out of her again.” 

My Take

Find Her is a quick, captivating read.  I had previously read Lisa Gardner’s novella The Fourth Man and can definitely recommend Find Her over that short book which was just okay.  In Find Her, Gardner creates a compelling protagonist in Flora and hooks you into Flora’s world and experiences through lots of interesting details on survival and recovery.

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320. The Witch Elm

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lynn McInnes

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

528 pages, published October 9, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The protagonist in The Witch Elm is a modern day Dubliner named Toby, a carefree twenty something with a job at an art gallery, a nice flat and the perfect girlfriend.  Toby’s idyllic life is shattered when he is attacked in his home and left for dead.  During his recovery, he moves into the family home to take care of his Uncle Hugo who is dying of cancer.  While there, a long decomposed body is found inside the hollow of a large wych elm tree on the property.  As  Toby and his family begin to uncover the mystery, layers and layers of duplicity are revealed that has Toby questioning his own sanity.

Quotes 

“But we’re so desperate, aren’t we, to believe that bad luck only happens to people who deserve it.”

 

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

 

“I knew straightaway, from his smile, that he wasn’t a doctor; I’d already got the hang of the doctors’ smiles, firm and distancing, expertly calibrated to tell you how much time was left in the conversation.”

 

“Once the fear took hold, I was fucked. I’d never known anything like it could exist: all-consuming, ravenous, a whirling black vortex that sucked me under so completely and mercilessly that it truly felt like I was being devoured alive, bones splintered, marrow sucked.”

 

“I’ve never got the self-flagellating middle-class belief that being poor and having a petty crime habit magically makes you more worthy, more deeply connected to some wellspring of artistic truth, even more real.”

 

“Faye had always been sweet, flaky but sweet, unlikely to ask about your problems but deeply concerned about them if you reminded her they existed.”

 

“The wych elm’s whole crown was gone, only the trunk left, thick stubs of branches poking out obscenely. It should have looked pathetic, but instead it had a new, condensed force: some great malformed creature, musclebound and nameless, huddled in the darkness waiting for a sign.” 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed the many hours of reading that I spent with The Witch Elm and discovered a deep appreciation for the writing talent of Tana French.  Her characters are so multi-dimensional and so thoroughly fleshed out that you feel as if you are living your life right alongside of them.  While the book excels as a character study, there is also a fascinating mystery at its heart that keeps you reading long after it is time to turn off the bedside light.  Highly recommended.

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317. The Outsider

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Suspense

561 pages, published May 22, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

When an eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park, all the evidence, from eyewitnesses to fingerprints to DNA, point to Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls.  Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney arrest him with what seems to be a bulletproof case.  When Maitland’s alibi checks out, the authorities start to questions their rush to judgment, but have no answers as to how the two contradictory circumstances are possible.

Quotes 

“If you can’t let go of the past, the mistakes you’ve made will eat you alive.”

 

“I believe there’s another dozen thoughts lined up behind each one I’m aware of.”

 

“I would like to believe in God,” she said, “because I don’t want to believe we just end, even though it balances the equation—since we came from blackness, it seems logical to assume that it’s to blackness we return. But I believe in the stars, and the infinity of the universe. That’s the great Out There. Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand, because infinity is a two-way street.”

 

“Dreams are the way we touch the unseen world,”

 

“My tongue runs like a supermarket conveyor belt on payday.”

 

“Money was no cure for sorrow, Alec reflected, but it did allow one to grieve in relative comfort.”

 

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ ” 

My Take

The Outsider is quintessential Stephen King.  You get to affectionately know a cast of characters comprised of normal people in a normal town that have to deal with something completely abnormal.  King, a master storyteller, delivers the goods once again.

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316. The Silent Wife

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   A.S.A. Harrison

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

326 pages, published June 25, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Silent Wife is a psychological thriller about a marriage that is at risk and how far one woman will go to keep what she believes to be rightfully hers.

Quotes 

“Life has a way of taking its toll on the person you thought you were.”

 

“Other people are not here to fulfill our needs or meet our expectations, nor will they always treat us well. Failure to accept this will generate feelings of anger and resentment. Peace of mind comes with taking people as they are and emphasizing the positive.”

 

“In asserting that people don’t change, what she means is that they don’t change for the better. Whereas changing for the worse, that goes without saying.”

 

“She didn’t know then that life has a way of backing you into a corner. You make your choices when you’re far too young to understand their implications, and with each choice you make the field of possibility narrows. You choose a career and other careers are lost to you. You choose a mate and commit to loving no other.”

 

“Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely thinking of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite of everything, for better or worse.”

 

“We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions – and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another.  Do you want your man to be a man or do you want to turn him into a pussy? Don’t think you can have it both ways.”

 

“You will not be the same person coming out of a relationship as you were going into it.”

 

“Even if you forget that´s not the same as if it never happened. The slate is not entirely wiped clean; you can´t reclaim the person you were beforehand; your state of innocence is not there to be retrieved.”

 

“It’s money not education that’s the holy grail in America.”

 

“The woman who refuses to object, who doesn’t yell and scream—there’s strength in that, and power. The way she overrides sentiment, won’t enter into blaming or bickering, never gives him an opening, doesn’t allow him to turn it back on her. She knows that her refusal leaves him alone with his choices.”

 

“Acceptance is supposed to be a good thing – Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Also compromise, as every couples therapist will tell you. But the cost was high – the damping of expectation, the dwindling of spirit, the resignation that comes to replace enthusiasm, the cynicism that supplants hope. The mouldering that goes unnoticed and unchecked.”

 

“Time hangs suspended, and yet it’s about to end. Death should be a seduction, not a rape. Given one more minute he could do so much. Even the guilty are allowed to make a phone call, send a message. How alive he feels, how brightly he shines, like a lit fuse, a firecracker about to go off. What he wouldn’t give for a minute more, just one ordinary minute tacked crudely onto the end of his life.”

 

“As for herself, every morning on waking she gives thanks to the God she doesn’t disbelieve in. Although she can’t credit him with saving her, she needs this outlet for her gratitude.” 

My Take

Much in the same vein as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, The Silent Wife was a page turner that I couldn’t put down.  Interesting insights into a long term marriage on the rocks, with some twists and turns that kept me engaged.  Great vacation read.

 

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305. The Dogs of Riga

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Henning Mankell

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense, Foreign

326 pages, published April 13, 2004

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Dogs of Riga is the second book in the Kurt Wallander Detective series and takes place in Sweden during 1991.  A few days after Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off, a life raft washes up on a beach containing two dead men, dressed in expensive suits.  In his pursuit of a solution to this case, Wallander finds himself in Riga, Latvia where he is plunged into a world of corruption and intrigue.

Quotes 

“He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.”

 

“The experience he’d gained during his years in the police force had given him this unambiguous answer: there are no murderers. Only ordinary people who commit murder.”

 

“I’m a religious man,” he said. “I don’t believe in a particular God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not merely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: until now I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union or Poland or the Baltic states. In your country I see an abundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. But there’s a difference between our countries that is also a similarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has different

faces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don’t have the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for your survival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, and I would not want to exchange that for your abundance.” “I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.”

 

“We live in an age when the mice are hunting the cats…nobody knows who are the mice and who the cats.” 

My Take

Having just read the short Wallander book An Event in Autumn and enjoyed it, I was looking forward to another installment featuring the cynical Swedish inspector.  I liked The Dogs of Riga and appreciated the strong writing by Henning Mankell as well as the interesting locale of Latvia (I place I knew little about).  However, I wasn’t captivated by it.  I’ll try another Wallander and see if I like the next one better.

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302. The 4th Man

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Lisa Gardner

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime

47 pages, published December 27, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

A young woman is found strangled in the stairwell of a college library.  The only thing missing are her sneakers.  With no physical evidence, no signs of sexual assault, and no witnesses, all the police have to go on are the three men who were in the library with her: her boyfriend and two campus security guards, all of whom have secrets.  Five years later, ex-FBI profiler Pierce Quincy and his wife, former police officer Rainie Conner, agree to investigate this cold case.  The question is whether they be able to build a case against one of the three suspects, or is there a fourth man out there?

 

My Take

At 47 pages, The 4th Man is really a short story rather than a book.  Even so, I found it hard  to focus as the it was not particularly compelling.  There is a twist at the end, but it too was underwhelming.

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298. An Event in Autumn

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Henning Mankell

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Foreign

176 pages, published August 12, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

An Event in Autumn is a short novel featuring the famous Swedish detective Kurt Wallander (who has spawned two television series).  Soon after Inspector Wallander looks at a home to potentially buy, he makes a horrifying discovery of a skeletal hand poking through the earth in the garden.  He unearths two corpses and turns the investigation over to the local police.  However, Wallander is soon drawn into the search to discover who died, why and by whose hand.

Quotes 

“A question that wasn’t asked was a question that didn’t need an answer.”

 

“Many years ago Wallander had learned that one of the manifold virtues a police officer must possess is the ability to be patient with himself.”

 

“There was a sort of beauty that only comes with age. A whole life engraved into facial wrinkles.”

 

“It struck Wallander that nothing could make him as depressed as the sight of old spectacles that nobody wanted anymore.”

 

“The great Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose once said, liberally translated, “the only things worth writing about are love and murder.”

 

“No doubt you thought I was dead. I sometimes think I am myself.”        

 

“It’s about contradictions between us and inside us, between individuals and society, between dream and reality. Sometimes these contradictions express themselves in violence, such as racial conflict. And this mirror of crime can take us back to the Greek authors.” 

My Take

An Event in Autumn is the first Kurt Wallander book that I have read and it was very enjoyable.  Mankell is a gifted writer and his books are much more than your standard whodunit’s.  He delves into characters and place in an original, nuanced and insightful manner that adds depth to the mystery, which is also an entertaining page turner.

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288. SS-GB: Nazi-occupied Britain, 1941

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Len Deighton

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, World War II

344 pages, published February 12, 1979

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

SS-GB:  Nazi-occupied Britain, 1941 is a detective story set within an alternative history scenario in which the United Kingdom has surrendered and is occupied by Nazi Germany.  The King is a hostage in the Tower of London, the Queen and Princesses have fled to Australia, Winston Churchill has been executed by a firing squad, Englishmen are being deported to work in German factories, the SS is in charge of Scotland Yard and a secret Resistance force is sabotaging the Germans.  The protagonist of the story, Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer (nicknamed “Archer of the Yard”) is asked to assist SS Standartenführer from Himmler’s personal staff in what seems, at first, to be a routine murder case.  However, things are not as they first appear and Archer finds himself navigating a labyrinth full of intrigue and the highest of stakes.

Quotes 

“You spend too much time listening to what people say.”

 

“A man can get used to yellow fever, thought Douglas, but many of them die in the attempt.”

 

“Thomas Aquinas argued that suicide is a sin because it is an offence against society. By taking one’s own life a man deprives society of something that rightfully belongs to it.”

 

“Pity.  Best pastime a police officer can have, in my opinion. Fishing teaches a man patience; and teaches him a lot about men.”

 

“Perhaps hell is like that; a discordant confusion of anxious souls.”

 

“And yet, after all the reasoning was done, he’d fallen in love with her. There was no denying it; he wanted her in every way. But as a policeman, he distrusted love; too often had he seen the other side of it, the violence, the suffering and despair it could bring.” 

My Take

I liked, but did not love, SS-GB.  Deighton is a decent writer and creates an interesting scenario with his alternative history detective story. However, I found the characters a bit flat and the plot too opaque.

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282. Something in the Water

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Jackie Funk

Author:   Catherine Steadman

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

342 pages, published June 5, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

When documentary filmmaker and Londoner Erin meets and then marries the handsome and successful investment banker Mark, she believes she has achieved the perfect life.   However, when Mark loses his job, the soon to be newlyweds start to worry about money.  While a surprising turn of events during their South Pacific honeymoon has the potential to allay their financial worries, it also stirs up all sorts of trouble leaving Erin wondering how well she really knows her husband.

Quotes 

“… She told me not to let it make me angry, not to let it break my heart, but to remember that we all lose the things we love the most and how we have to remember that we were lucky to have them at all in the first place.”

 

“always read outside your comfort zone. That’s where stories come from. That’s where ideas come from.”

 

“Sometimes you’re the lamp post, and sometimes you’re the dog.”

 

“It’s impossible to know if we were a good thing that broke somehow or a bad thing that eventually became exposed. But either way, if I could just go back now to the way we were, I would. I would, without a moment’s hesitation. If I could just lie in his arms one last time, I could live with an illusion the rest of my life. If I could, I would.”

 

“But you don’t sign up for certain things without knowing the rules, Erin. And if you’ve signed up for the game, then you can’t complain when you lose. You got to lose with dignity is all; a good sportsman always lets people lose with dignity.”

 

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” 

My Take

Something in the Water is a taut, page turning thriller in the same vein as The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl.  Steadman knows how to bait the hook and reel in her reader.  Even though I had an inkling of the big plot twist, this book was still compelling reading until the end.  A great fun read!

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