June 2007 Archives
Our hero, Harry Bosch, has now retired from the LAPD; his years as a detective having made him well versed in the underbelly of Californian life. With time on his hands, and no one to share it with, he carries on sleuthing, looking into cold cases which his (former) fellow officers have no time to pursue. Harry's unofficial investigation into the murder of a young woman who'd worked in the film industry brings him into contact with a former colleague paralysed in the course of duty, the FBI, weathly film financiers... and although Harry ties up everything at the end, there's an unexpected twist which left me wondering where things would go next!
Amazon.co.uk tells me that Lost Light is book 9 in the Harry Bosch series, and that book number 2 (next on the library list) is The Black Ice, so that leaves at least seven more installments to track down, starting with The Black Echo. Plus I'd never realised Amazon had these "Series" pages.... very handy!
Amazon.co.uk link: Lost Light - Michael Connelly
Another heartwarming tale from Botswana, even if Mma Ramotswe rather surprised me by starting to worry about her traditionally built figure! The crimes and misdemeanours range from staff pilfering to fears of witchcraft to cheeky apprentices, and the philosophical asides cover feminism and offender rehbilitation.
Amazon.co.uk link: Blue Shoes and Happiness - Alexander McCall Smith
A spur of the moment purchase at the St Giles Cripplegate summer fete, this book is a gem.
I must confess a general ignorance about Korea, other than random facts such as "It's the sticky out bit between China/Russia and Japan", "It is split into North Korea ("baddies") and South Korea ("goodies")" and "M*A*S*H was set in the Korean War (and not the Vietnam War as a lot of people assume)". Having read Simon Winchester's account of his walk from the island of Cheju in the far south to Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone that forms the frontier between North and South Korea, I feel rather more enlightened, and wondering how best to get my head around developments since 1988 when this book was written.
The route was inspired by the journey made by shipwrecked Dutch sailors in 1688, who became the first Westerners to enter and leave the Kingdom of Korea. As he travels, Winchester provides details of the history, culture and beliefs of the people of Korea since then, and develops insights into how these enabled them to survive the 20th century events of invasion, international, cold and then civil war and to create a thriving economy (Daewoo, Hyundai, Samsung), in the South at least.
Winchester is quite clear that he would have loved to have continued his walk all the way through the demilitarised zone and gained comparable exposure to the people and places of the North. For my part, reading his account has given me the idea of adding another destination(s) to my list (as Catherine observed: going for another country in the Axis of Evil).
Amazon.co.uk link: Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles - Simon Winchester
Another enjoyable, angst ridden novel by Maggie O'Farrell, although in this one the path of true love does seem to run a little bit more smoothly than in After You'd Gone.
One half of this is the tale of Scottish-Italian twins, with brief glimpses of the love and lives of their parents and grandparents, their relationships with one another (good) and the significant relationships with people they encounter from schooldays onwards (generally bad).
The other half tells the story of another cultural hotchpotch - Jake, born of a short lived on-the-road-relationship between his hippy Welsh mother and vanished Scottish father, and brought up from birth, single-handedly by his mother in Hong Kong.
Maggie O'Farrell reveals details of her characters piecemeal all the way through the novel, and jumps between times and locations right up to the very end. Some might find this frustrating, but to me it is rather like the way in which you find out about the history, hopes and hang ups of the friends you make in real life.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Distance Between Us - Maggie O'Farrell
A whistlestop account of Ted Simon's journey around the world on his trusty Triumph motorbike in the mid-1970s. Fascinating journey, through worlds which have changed much in the intervening thirty years.
Given the scale of Ted Simon's journey, it's not surprising that people and places flash by - apart from his problems with the Brazilian authorities on his arrival in South America which (currently) feel like they are getting more than their fair share of the book. It's also quite hard to find natural breaks in the story; the "chapters" follow the continents, and Africa took up almost all of the first half of the book. Many pages after he leaves South Africa, we're still stuck in northern Brazil, sans bike.
The second half of the book covers ground a lightning speed - zooming down the eastern side of South America and back up the western coast, zipping through Central America in a couple of pages before a chilled out, loved up stay in California. The whole of Australia and Malaysia go in a mere 36 pages (seven of which give his account of a merry time holed up in the outback with a quartet of truck drivers waiting for flash floods to subside) , and whilst India gets more of a look in, the journey on from there back to Ted Simon's home in France takes 10 just pages - and that's for Pakistan -> Afghanistan -> Iran -> Turkey -> Greece -> Yugoslavia -> Germany -> Switzerland -> France.
Jupiter's Travels was not an obvious book for me, but I'd spotted a copy in a bookshop somewhere before the book was republished (to bask in the reflected glory of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's adventures on more modern motorbikes, albeit not travelling quite so far) and had added it to my wishlist, from whence it was bought by TJBR for my birthday this year. Although I do now seem to have lots of motorbike themed recommended reads....
Amazon.co.uk link: Jupiter's Travels - Ted Simon
Having read all of (now sadly departed) Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen novels, and being up to date with both Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone Alphabet and (to the best of my knowledge - my reading has been a bit hotchpotch here) Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series, I am in need of some fresh crime fiction and a new detective hero/heroine.
I tried The Closers a few months ago but gave up after a few pages as the book needed to go back to the library, but I'd picked this one up for a pound at a S&S charity book sale, and found it much easier to get into. Set in LA, not a million miles from Kinsey Millhone's Santa Theresa turf, The Black Echo deals with a much darker world - the crimes investigated by the homicide team in the not so whiter than white LAPD.
In this novel, less than perfect Harry Bosch is digging into the drug-related death of a fellow Vietnam veteran and getting caught up in the more complex world of the FBI and sophisticated high value bank vault robberies.
If you like The Wire, then I think you'll like Harry Bosch.
And having just looked up the Amazon.co.uk link, I see that this is the first Harry Bosch novel. Excellent - no need to try to work out how best to backtrack to the start of the story... I just need to know which one comes next....
Amazon.co.uk link: The Black Echo - Michael Connelly