Category: Books

Genre: Book 

Grade: A-/B+

Notable People: Michiko Aoyama

Title: What You Are Looking For is in the Library

Review: This unusually titled work of Japanese fiction is one of four books I was led to by the Chicago Tribune’s Best of 2023 list. Two were so millennial orientated I could not understand them and gave up, and one I really liked-and this one, I tried to give up on several times in first 50 pages- but stayed with it and am glad I did. Quiet, Zen like book that has five stogies of different age/type people who are linked by s shared mystical experience at a small community library, whose very eccentric librarian provides them books and experiences that change their mundane lives. This is a very un-flashy but meaningful book that touched me in a number of ways, though the adaptation to cultural difference is significant. You gotta like quiet to enjoy this one.

Genre: Book    

Grade: A-/B+

Notable People: David Handler

Title: The Lavender Lane Lothario

Review: This 2016 edition sadly seems to be the last in the line of Handlers very amusing and surprisingly captivating Berger and Mitry mystery series. The usual shenanigans take pace in the fabled town of Dorset in the Connecticut community on Long Island Sound. Formidably intense African American state trooper Mitry mixes it up with surprising love interest Jewish “Doughboy” transplanted NY film critic Berger and untangle local mysteries that defy belief. This one is more out there than most. Nothing heavy here, but Handler has won awards for this series and I hate to see it discontinued; he writes well and has created characters are quite engaging as is the community he has created in very old blue blood New England style. Bring it back, Dave!

Genre: Book          

Grade: A-

Notable People: Ron Rash

Title: The Caretaker

Review: This is my first experience with the prolific and award-winning books of Rash, after I found this book on the Chicago Tribune’s “Best of” books for 2023. Great recommendation!!!. This very powerful novel, set during the Koren war in North Carolina and Tennessee, is a brilliant telling of the damage done by possessiveness and control, and ultimately lies strewn like ashes in order to achieve ignoble ends, but also the balancing out of that with love, redemption and forgiveness. Al this is bound in a compelling and very well told tale. Rash, a Penn/Faulkner award winner lives up to the billing. This is a book that is hard to put down. More Rash in store for me.

Genre: Book     

Grade: A-

Notable People: Martin Walker

Title: A Chateau Under Siege

Review: Walker, a former diplomat and international journalist, once again delivers a brilliant combination of mystery, political intrigue, current world events and French culture. This latest (2023) Bruno, Chief of Police adventure surrounds the Russian invasion of Ukraine and related terrorist activities in France; seemingly astoundingly in the lovely and picturesque Vezere Valley. I love every part of these books- but the narrative in which Bruno instructs us on how he cooks classic French fare and the discovery of the remote wine caves, country markets, chateaus and a place that modern stresses have mostly left behind- are priceless. Walker is a really god writer, an apparently great cook, and a master storyteller…and Bruno, a character for the ages.

Genre: Book                 

Grade: A-

Notable People: Walter Mosley

Title: Blood Grove

Review: this 2021 take on Mosley’s fabulous and long running Easy Rawlins series brings us to Watts- torn LA of 1969. If you started early in this series, you know that Easy came to LA in the late 40s as a war struck GI, as the town was in its relative infancy and the boys were coming home to find a better life westward. Easy is in his late 40s now, and has his own private dick agency. The story is, as always, a complicated and convoluted whopper of tale, with endless red herrings. Mosley sis one of those writers whose chosen genre is mostly irrelevant; he is one of America’s best regardless of subject. As the Easy series has developed it had focused more and more on the American Black experience, and this one holds nothing back in describing the degree of racism, even at the time of the flowering of our country. At times, the book seems more about race than a mystery novel or character study, but it is hard not to see that as still relevant. Mosley has had the same adjunct characters for years and they are magnificent…study up on Mouse Alexander, possibly the most loyal sociopath in history. Mosley’s colors are a treat to behold.  

Genre: Book           

Grade: A-/ B+

Notable People: James Lee Burke

Title: Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Review: this may be the most challenging book to review (as in grade) yet for me. I believe that Burke may be one of the 2-3 greatest living American authors-and that is an opinion shard by quite few. By his own forward to this book, this is his most personal work of his 60 plus books, and in his opinion, his best. It is clearly his most autobiographical and emotional; in many ways the story of his extraordinary grief after the passing of his daughter, Pamela, which coincided with the inherent losses of the pandemic. The book is gut wrenching and extremely powerful. I like a lot of that, but it is also pretty out there in terms of mysticism/ephemerality……and sometimes hard to tell between the two. This was a quite hard read for me at times; both painful and consuming, but then there is his legendary prose to consider. How do you ignore  a sentence (run on as it may be like this: “And the most poignant image of all, the one that defined the existential and ephemeral and heartbreaking imprint on our souls, one we could neither quarrel with nor of our own volition, choose to reject; an orange moon in late autumn above an ocean of sugarcane swirling in the wind, the stalks hammered with streaks of purple and gold, clacking like broomsticks, the smoke from the sugar refineries electrified with floodlights, all of it as transient as an ancient fish working its way out of the sea and onto the sand.” .

Burke is an American giant of letters and this book basks in many of the themes and characters of his legacy. If you like Burke, worth a try…he is a great, great writer.  

Genre: Book            

Grade: B+

Notable People: Linda Castillo

Title: An Evil Heart

Review: Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates the brutal death of a young Amish man in the latest installment of the bestselling series by Linda Castillo. Castillo continues to write insightfully about the nuances of Amish culture and her characters have become much more fleshed out and substantive over the course of this series. Some of the themes, and musings, are pretty repetitive but the stories are all barn burners and the inside scoop on this unusual culture is quite engaging. This is one of the 2-3 best offerings in this long running series and a can’t- put- it- down type of 300 page quick read (a gift after several 1000 page tomes)

Genre: Book          

Grade: B+

Notable People: Robert Galbraith

Title: The Running Grave

Review: Number six in the wildly popular Cormoran Strike mystery series by noted Harry Potter author, JK Rowland, writing under the Galbreath pseudonym (what is that about, anyway?). This is her/his/their long awaited (by fanatics) book surrounding the mystery of cults-and it’s a whopper of a cult- dating back to 40 years and including murder, fields of dead bodies, pedophilia, child slavery, brainwashing and extreme punishment/deprivation-all in the guise of a gigantic humanitarian church with a brilliantly charismatic founder. Strike and his partner Robin (like Batman) are a brilliantly conceived pair with never ending sexual tension, reminiscent of Willis and Sheppard in Moonlighting. Galbraith/Rowland is a magnificent writer and the books are charming and inviting-but the length, oy, the length. This one became almost tedious at almost 1000 pages. So if you don’t mind a very long winter read and power lifting if you read in ol’ fashioned book form, it is well worth it.

Genre: Book                                             

Grade: A-

Notable People: Philip Roth

Title: Nemesis

Review: This was the giant of American letters’ last novel in 2010 (died 2018) and is consistent with much of his work; representing elements of his own life as a pathway for his themes of how choice can fatally affect our lived outcomes and how subject we are to the whims of circumstance. All of this wrapped up in the story of the summer of 1944 in Newark, NJ-where the war is raging in Europe and the Pacific and polio is raging in the hot city. For people of a certain age and cultural background (East coast Jewish) Roth nabs many of our cultural anomalies dead on; which may be a bit abstract for some, but pretty recognizable for most. The characters are wonderfully explored, the story one you wish to go on and have nicer endings, but Roth was never much for panaceas, and his truths are often pretty difficult (though often quite humorous). A fine sendoff for a master.

Genre: Book   

Grade: A-

Notable People: Archer Mayor

Title: Fall Guy

Review: Mayors’ 33^rd novel featuring Vermont Bureau of Investigation stalwart, Joe Gunther, is a beaut. If you are a fan of: Archers’ works, police procedurals, great character development, serial stories or New England settings-this is for you. Gunther and his band of pranksters cross the big river to the land of Live Free or Die in this elaborate story of intrigue and mystery. Mayor would be a very good writer regardless of the genre, but he owns this genre sand is generally regarded as being at the top of his class by all the major reviewers. Just gets better and better.