A Hit and a Miss

For the Dignified Dead: A Commander Jana Matinova Thriller by Michael Genelin (Brash Books, $14.99, 359 pages)

The woman was already dead.  I didn’t need to spend much time with her.

The dead don’t want us to saunter in, then quickly leave.

Brutality permeates the most recent installment of the Commander Jana Matinova international mystery series written by Michael Genelin.  Returning readers will travel across international borders through a bleak winter landscape as Commander Matinova seeks justice for a murdered woman found encased in the ice of the frozen Danube River. The weapon of choice is an icepick, truly appropriate considering the weather.

The antidote is Matinova’s intense caring and commitment to solving the crime.  Her biggest obstacles are her staff’s indifference to the victim and the endless paperwork and stalling by the bureaucrats both at home in Slovakia and in the neighboring countries.  She manages to maintain a crisp professional demeanor while experiencing a deep sense of responsibility to her role as head of homicide in Bratislava.

Author Genelin is a master at creating voices that reflect the people and cultures portrayed in his novels.  As is his style, the tale is fast paced and multifaceted.  Everyday police issues are blended seamlessly with danger and intrigue.  One need not be a veteran of international travel or the convoluted structure of bureaucracy to appreciate the wealth of detail Genelin has infused into this most engaging tale.

Well recommended.

Ruta Arellano

Don’t You Cry: A Novel by Mary Kubica (Mira, $26.99, 320 pages)

Mary Kubica’s third novel shows some early promise but fizzles.

Don’t You Cry is structured such that the story is told through the lens of two different characters, Quinn and Alex, in alternating chapters.  (I sense trouble already.  Ed.) 

Quinn picks up a guy in a bar in downtown Chicago and wakes the next morning to discover that her roommate, Esther, has disappeared.  Alex is a dishwasher in a town an hour outside of Chicago who becomes fascinated with a woman who suddenly appears at the place he works.

The story moves along well enough in the chapters in which Quinn is narrating.  Elements of the mystery and an unexpected twist keep the reader interested, but the chapters with Alex interrupt the flow, and these unfold so slowly that the momentum wanes.  It takes too long to find out why we should care about the characters and their relationships, and Alex’s back story turns out to be irrelevant.

It is difficult to ascertain early in the story any evidence of why Esther and Quinn were close, which makes it difficult to be concerned about Esther’s disappearance.  But because of Kubica’s flair for storytelling, the reader sticks with the tale.  Halfway through, it gets interesting.  But by the time the mystery comes together, almost absurdly quickly in the final chapters, it’s difficult for the reader to put the various pieces together.

The flaw is not Kubica’s imagination or writing style, but due to the way she elected to structure this story the effect of any “aha” moment – when all is revealed, is significantly diminished.

Dave Moyer

Review copies were provided by the publishers.

Dave Moyer is a public school superintendent in the greater Chicago area, and the author of Life and Life Only: A Novel of love, life, baseball, and Bob Dylan.

Advertisement

Lying in Wait

The Marriage Lie: A Novel by Kimberly Belle (Mira, $15.99, 334 pages)

Synopsis:

Iris and Will have been married for seven years, and life is as close to perfect as it can be. But on the morning Will flies out for a business trip to Florida, Iris’s happy world comes to an abrupt halt: another plane headed for Seattle has crashed into a field, killing everyone on board and, according to the airline, Will was one of the passengers.

Grief stricken and confused, Iris is convinced it all must be a huge misunderstanding.

Review:

Iris Griffith always thought that her marriage to Will was secure. Together they are celebrating seven years of marriage and are trying to start a family. Will is a guest speaker in a business conference and leaves in the morning for Orlando. Later that afternoon, Iris is notified that her husband has been killed aboard a plane that crashed en route to Seattle. Iris refuses to believe that Will is dead and is adamant that he never boarded that flight.

As the days pass, Iris still cannot believe that Will would lie about his travel plans. She decides to investigate to find out the truth, Iris begins to uncover inconsistencies in Will’s past and feels betrayed. Along the way, she meets a friend of Will’s that he has never mentioned. As her journey continues, she learns much more about Will’s past.

This psychological thriller is an addictive read because of the gradual momentum that builds throughout the story. The characters introduced in this third novel by Belle are engaging. In fact, I was not sure who to trust. It was quite the page turner!

Well recommended.

Suzanne Leopold

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

The Marriage Lie was released on December 27, 2016. Kimberly Belle’s prior novels were The Last Breath and The Ones We Trust.

You can read more reviews by Suzanne Leopold at Suzy Approved!:

https://suzyapproved.wordpress.com

Curiously Charming

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper: A Novel by Phaedra Patrick (Mira, $24.99, 331 pages)

Arthur felt his heart dip. He hoped that she wouldn’t tell him about her husband. He didn’t want to trade stories of death. There seemed a strange one-upmanship among people who had lost spouses.

They talked about their loved ones as if they were objects. Miriam would always be a real person to him. He wouldn’t trade her memory like that.

Arthur Pepper is a mild-mannered British pensioner whose wife, Miriam, passed away a year earlier. Arthur has built a solitary life structured on keeping a schedule, tidying his small house and intermittently hiding from Bernadette, a well-meaning widow from across the street who brings him home-baked pies. Lucy and Dan, Arthur’s grown children, are distant from him, both geographically in the case of Dan and emotionally in the case of Lucy.

At this one-year anniversary, Arthur decides it is time to go through Miriam’s personal possessions – clothes, makeup, shoes, etc. He reaches into one of her boots to check for anything that might be hidden deep inside. To his amazement, Arthur’s hand closes around a heavy metal object, which proves to be a gold charm bracelet. As the book’s title announces, this is the beginning of an adventure for Arthur.

Author Phaedra Patrick has used a somewhat ordinary premise to create one of the most enduring and touching tales this reviewer has read. Although the physical book is only 331 pages in length, the story between its covers contains a series of encounters for Arthur Pepper that require and demand his emotional strength and willingness to be open to a shift in perspective regarding his 40-year marriage to Miriam.

Each of the disparate characters portrayed by Ms. Patrick evolves into a fully developed and believable person. She does not rely on gimmicks or magic to provide her reader with an enlightening experience. Moreover, the phrase “you can’t judge a book by its cover” takes on multiple meanings as Arthur discovers the Miriam he never knew.

Perhaps this reviewer’s similar age to Arthur may have contributed to the resonance and warmth felt for the situations and challenges he faces. Regardless, the tears that fell as the book came to its conclusion were produced by writing that reaches the emotions of a reader, regardless of age or gender.

Highly recommended.

Ruta Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

“Eccentric, charming and wise, this will illuminate your heart.” Nina George, author of The Little Paris Bookshop.

This book was released on May 3, 2016.

Perfect World

The Fragile World: A Novel by Paula Treick DeBoard (Mira, $14.99, 415 pages)

Synopsis:

The Kaufmans have always considered themselves to be a normal, happy family. Curtis is a physics teacher at a local high school. His wife, Kathleen, restores furniture for upscale boutiques. Daniel is away at college on a prestigious music scholarship, and twelve-year-old Olivia is a happy-go-lucky kid whose biggest concern is passing her next math test. And then comes the middle-of-the-night phone call that changes everything. Daniel has been killed in what the police are calling a “freak” accident, and the remaining Kaufmans are left to flounder in their grief.

The anguish of Daniel’s death is isolating, and it’s not long before this once-perfect family finds itself falling apart. As time passes and the wound refuses to heal, Curtis becomes obsessed with the idea of revenge, a growing mania that leads him to pack up his life and his anxious teenage daughter and set out on a collision course to right a wrong.

Like the film Ordinary People, The Fragile World is a story about imperfect people, beset by tragedy, doing their best to get by. It’s a story narrated by both Curtis and Olivia. Not many writers would base the events of a novel in Sacramento, California or Oberlin, Ohio but DeBoard uses both locations. It’s a risk, and it works. It enables her to realistically paint the Kaufmans as a humble family – a family whose breadwinner drives an over-used Ford Explorer with a bad transmission. There’s nothing glamorous to see here, people.

The story is about a father and daughter road trip, from Sacramento to Omaha. Olivia thinks that the purpose of the trip is to reunite her with her mother, Kathleen, who could not live with Curtis’s unending mourning of Daniel’s death. But Curtis plans to deposit Olivia with her mother while he travels to Oberlin to confront the person he believes was responsible for his son’s death.

Initially, the reader has the impression that he or she knows how this tale will play out. Don’t bet on it. DeBoard throws in some unexpected events – such as having Curtis show up at his hated father’s death bed in the Chicago area – before the denouement in tiny Oberlin. Curtis finds the man he’s looking for and he’s got a gun in his hand. Knowing this does not provide a spoiler because DeBoard tips the chessboard over. The book is worth reading to discover how DeBoard wraps things up.

The Fragile World is also worth reading because it perfectly examines the imperfections of family life. There’s a father who hates his own father so much that he’s never communicated with him during his adult life. There’s a daughter who blames herself for not being what her brother was. There’s a wife and mother who cannot accept or understand why her husband and daughter are unable to simply move on with their lives after a tragedy. These are ordinary people who are hurting, people who feel pain. They inhabit a fragile world, one with which many readers will identify.

Highly recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher. “Emotionally powerful… This bold and moving story is absolutely unforgettable.” New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf