Tag Archives: Mystery

Review | A Door in the River, Inger Ash Wolfe

Posted on by
Reply

Inger Ash Wolfe’s A Door in the River is my first Hazel Micallef mystery, and at first I didn’t believe the person on Twitter who told me the series was disturbing. After all, I’ve read Stuart MacBride and Val McDermid, and at first glance, the mystery of a well-liked man being killed by a bee sting didn’t sound too horrific. The book doesn’t get quite as gruesome or horrific as MacBride and McDermid, but it does enter some pretty emotionally and psychologically intense territory.

The setting is Port Dundas, Ontario, and the heroine is a snappy, broody sixty-plus year old inspector who lives with her eighty eight year old mother. Hazel is sharp, has issues with authority, and is overall a great series character, but for me, it’s her mother who takes the spotlight. Cranky and a bit emo in this book, Hazel’s mother is hilarious and compelling, and I love seeing them interact with each other.

From a seemingly straightforward murder, Wolfe takes the mystery to a place that totally blindsided me. More than a surprise however, the story suddenly takes a much darker, more emotionally fraught tone, and the crime much more horrific.

A Door in the River is a good, solid mystery, and I like the surprise twist. It didn’t quite blow me away, and a few parts dragged, but Wolfe does pull at the heartstrings. His story is horrific, not because it’s gruesome or especially dark and twisty, but because the crime is horrible, and all too easily imagined in real life headlines.

It’s a good book, and worth reading particularly for Hazel and her mother.

+

Thank you to Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan

Posted on by
4

9780374214913Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is my book soulmate. Seriously, if ever a book were to combine all the elements that would make me fall in love with it, this is it.

The title alone is enough to hook me, and, I suspect, any fellow book lover. The idea of a bookstore open 24 hours sounds like heaven. And no, online retailers don’t count — sure you can download an ebook or order a print book at any time, but there’s a magic to actually being in a bricks and mortar place. And Mr. Penumbra’s store in particular has the musty, old book charm that makes me want to spend hours in it.

Even better, Penumbra’s store is an indie! Bookseller protagonist Clay is used to customers asking for book recommendations, then leaving to buy it on their e-reader. As a bookseller at an indie myself, I could relate, and the scene where author Robin Sloan creates a clever reversal of this scenario made me as baffled and overjoyed as it did Clay.

I’m an avid mystery reader, and Sloan teases his reader with a creepy, utterly compelling one: What books are in the dark stacks Clay is forbidden to read? Who are the customers who come in the dead of the night to return a book to those stacks and pick up a new one? I was definitely hooked. Where would the author take this?

To his credit, Sloan completely blindsided me. When I think of a book about an indie 24-hour bookstore, with mysterious leather-bound tomes taken out in the dead of the night, I have a certain type of storyline in mind, and I bet you do too. So it took me completely by surprise when Sloan introduced a digital element — 3D mapping, Google search capabilities, computer wizardry — and somehow managed to make it all work with the mysterious, musty atmosphere of the old-fashioned bookstore. I admit, as a total book and mystery geek who also happens to be a tech geek, all I could think was, this book was tailor made for me.

Too often, the divide between the physical and the digital, the old school and the new, is posited as a one or the other type deal. You’re either a print book person or an ebook person, someone who appreciates the handwritten card or someone who loves the 3D IMAX 42fps type movie. Obviously, reality is rarely so clearcut, but in books at least, I usually find either nostalgia for the way things were or all out Cory Doctorow-style techno-geekery. To have both so seamlessly in one book just blew me away.

To be honest, the reason behind the mysterious customers disappointed me at first. On one hand, it would’ve been really difficult for any author to come up with an explanation impressive enough to live up to amazing build up, but then again, it also made me feel like Sloan settled for safe, overdone Dan Brown territory. Not a spoiler — Mr. Penumbra has nothing to do with Mary Magdalene, but the customers are using the books to search for something, and the object of their search disappointed me. Sloan reverts to a classic trope, and after having build such an exciting, esoteric world, the familiar was a letdown.

But then, again Sloan surprises me. And again, it’s with his masterful integration of the digital with the physical. The object of the customers’ search may be overdone (in my view, at least), but the combination of ways in which Sloan makes his various characters conduct this search is highly original. The final answer is highly original as well, and quite frankly, brilliant. Bravo, Mr. Sloan — you’ve blown me away.

I am in love with this story. I love that it manages to bring together so many things I love, including science fiction and fantasy, an absolutely awesome romance, even typography and design! My copy is filled with underlined text, marginal notations, and at the very end:

Posted on Instagram 26 Sept 2012

Sometimes, words aren’t enough.

+

Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Note: If you live in the US, your edition of Penumbra has a glow-in-the-dark cover!]

Review | Trust Your Eyes, Linwood Barclay

Posted on by
Reply

Stephen King calls Trust Your Eyes “the best Barclay so far,” and who am I to disagree with the master of horror? I’ve been a fan of Barclay’s work since No Time for Goodbye. His mysteries begin with a killer hook (in No Time, it was a teenage girl waking up to find her whole family gone), and while his stories usually turn out to have fairly conventional endings (mildly disappointing only because the hook is so gripping), they are fun, entertaining thrillers. I definitely agree with King however that Trust Your Eyes is Barclay’s best one yet — it’s the most tightly plotted of his books, and probably the one I found most difficult to put down.

Family relationships play a big part in all the Barclay books I’ve read, and in Trust Your Eyes, the author focuses on the strained relationship between brothers Thomas and Ray. Their father had just died, and Ray has had to put his life on hold to figure out how to best care for Thomas now that their father is gone. Thomas is a map-obsessed schizophrenic who spends most of his day in his bedroom, travelling the world through a Google Maps-type program called Whirl360. Part of Thomas’ schizophrenia is the belief that it’s his job, practically a calling, to study the world through Whirl360 and commit the streets to memory. The mystery kicks off when Thomas sees an image in a New York window that looks like a woman being murdered.

I have to admit — a major part of this book’s attraction for me is the techie spin on a concept similar to one of my favourite Hitchcock films. The amazing thing is, this story isn’t even futuristic anymore. Who hasn’t used Google Maps and Google Street View to find places? A character admits using Whirl360 to find a restaurant and research their menu, and that’s not even awe-inspiring anymore. The average person probably wouldn’t get involved in a murder mystery like Thomas does — like Ray, we are more likely to choose to ignore odd images and focus on our own lives. So I love how Thomas’ obsession with online maps is disturbing voyeurism on one hand, yet also offers itself to superhero potential in this story.

The mystery itself is fairly straightforward. We know fairly early on the circumstances and key players behind the scene that Thomas witnesses, and a plot thread leading up to that scene runs parallel to Thomas and Ray’s story. Despite our access into the perspectives within this plot line, however, Barclay deliberately obfuscates the thread, so that we are treated to various surprising revelations throughout.

The real hook to this story however is the family dynamics between Thomas and Ray. Their relationship adds a tender, complex angle to this fast-paced high-tech thriller. You feel for Ray, who has no idea how to teach his brother to take care of himself, yet you also feel for Thomas, who, as another character points out, is treated with condescension. There are several subplots about their family — the circumstances around their father’s death, an incident from Thomas’ past that seems to have scarred him — and, to be honest, there were times I found those even more compelling than the main plot. I wanted to learn more about these characters, and Barclay’s given both of them very rich backgrounds.

I generally find Barclay’s endings the weakest part of his books, and Trust Your Eyes is no exception. His endings are still good, just difficult to live up to the expectations set by the absolutely gripping beginnings. I especially love how Thomas’ unique talents played such a big role. Still, the big thriller ending in Trust Your Eyes felt a bit rushed — having taken up all these plot threads, Barclay had to tie all of them up neatly. The big action scene also involves a couple of really convenient twists. The ending also included some really big revelations that, while fairly central to the story, felt like they were placed at the end just to elicit a last minute gasp from the reader. True, there was a last minute adrenaline spike, but it felt artificial.

Still, Trust  Your Eyes is his most tightly plotted, possibly his best novel that I’ve read yet. Compelling mystery, and fascinating story about brothers.