In the Woods

In the Woods by Tana French
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is more of psychological thriller than detective story since the more interesting parts of the story happen in the protagonist--Rob's--head. It's a story about friendships, the close kind that only occur at certain times of your life and rarely more than once--where two or three of you are so in sync you feel like they are an extension of you. And how those friendships inevitably ends, due to moving, death, growing up, falling out. The mystery gets solved but questions still remain and I actually like they do--it lets the book haunt you after it ends.

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In some ways grief anonymizes as powerfully as a Greek tragedy mask, cut in others it pares people down to the essential.

People need a moral code, to help them make decisions.

the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.

All these private, parallel dimensions, underlying such an innocuous little estate; all these self-contained worlds layered into the same space.

Sometimes I think about the sly, flickering line that separates being spared from being rejected.

The Spy and the Traitor

 

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love spy novels and this was one of the best, especially since it was true. I can't imagine the courage and intelligence of Oleg Gordievsky. I also admired the diligence and thoroughness of Veronica Price, who helped orchestrate his escape, but to do so was required to run the plan for years, even when he wasn't in the country. It struck me the reasons Oleg turned traitor to his country and the reasons many of the spies for Britain and America turned--he did it for truth's sake, they did it for money or power. The women married to these spies are the unsung heroes--they didn't choose this life, but had to deal with the consequences and sometimes apparently had to play a crucial part. Changing diapers was never more fortuitous and monumental! Great book!

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Crudo

Crudo by Olivia Laing
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't really put into words why I liked this book so much. From the first paragraph which I finished and said to myself, that is a perfect paragraph, to the fever finish, I couldn't help but feel excited, even though it is mostly just a stream of consciousness written as third person but felt as first-person. I didn't even understand everything but the writing was just so electrifying. It also helped that it occurred during Trump's first weeks on the job in 2017 and so it perfectly mirrored the time I was reading it. I didn't know anything about Kathy Acker, who is the main character in this book (had she lived). Acker is known for being shockingly vulgar and this book is not that, but it does quote her often. My surface swimming didn't pull up any Acker writings that seemed much like Laing's, so without doing a deep dive I don't know where Laing got her writing style from, but like I said, it tickled me.

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She failed to get a death-grip on time

Memory showers desire, desire infects memory.

Imagine what a process it was to unnumb yourself, he said, to see it as it actually was.  That's the only reason to be an artist: to escape, to bear witness to this.

what is art if it's not plagiarising the world?

Loot

Loot by Tania James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this much more than I did. It's about an automaton built in the 18th century. That part was totally fascinating. In fact, everything was fascinating and that was what was frustrating. There would be these in-depth explorations of characters and events, like the defeat of Tipu Sultan, or the life of the watch-maker who helped craft the tiger automaton, or the English lady who acquired it and was quite non-conventional. All of these stories started to unfold only to be left and time to skip forward without too much of a bridge. I normally think things should be edited out, in this case I wanted more. I kept investing and not feeling like I got a pay out.

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Moonflower Murders

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this Susan Ryeland mystery better than the first, even if the conceit is a little implausible--she gets hired to investigate the disappearance of a lady who realized someone was wrongfully convicted of a crime after reading one of Alan Conway's mysteries that Susan edited. Once again there is a modern mystery (maybe two--the original crime and the disappearance) and the cozy mystery. This time the modern mystery goes first and since we are set up to look for clues in the book version, this one was more fun. I thought the tandem mysteries worked well and even Susan wasn't as annoying. On this one, the PBS adaptation works slightly less well than the book, but both are worth looking into.

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Magpie Murders

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This detective story inside a detective story was interesting because it gave you two chances to figure out who the culprit was. One story is a cozy mystery set in the 1950's and I enjoyed the set-up with the chapter headings as part of the Magpie Rhyme...The second one was set in today's time with the death of the author and the editor trying to figure out who did it. Susan, the editor, is a bit unlikeable and no body seemed to like the author so that mystery was less fun. The book was a bit of a showcase of how an author could take real people and real events and twist them until they became part of a new story. The author seemed to dislike the genre he became famous for and skewered the tropes and stereo-types of the mystery genre which made you wonder if that was what Horowitz was doing and almost poking fun at the people who read them, so I didn't like that. The PBS adaptation was actually well-done, and ran the two mysteries side by side instead of consecutively and it worked better. I didn't like the character of Susan in either itineration but I would still see the show over the book in this case.

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The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an ok thriller. I just feel like it tried to smush too much in one book: multiple Alfred Hitchcock plot lines (Rear View Window and Vertigo were ones I recognized, and there were probably many more); unreliable narrator; psychological disorders. All of which made the book interesting, but perhaps it was too much because the the reader is often distracted by things such as references to classic movies (that the author seemed to think was self-evident the reader has seen) or by how much the narrator was drinking and whether or not she was wearing the same robe all four days or if she has a collection, and therefore the plot-line can be confusing. There were also several parts that could have been edited down or out. The whole first 50 pages were boring and didn't add to the story, and the dialogue in the on-line chat room was often superfluous. Actually the movie starring Amy Adams, while not perfect, does a better job tying things together and tightening the story. The exploration into people with agoraphobia was actually informative and there a few surprises I didn't see coming. Still, I would watch the movie in this case.

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