December 2008 Archives
More Tudor-set murder and mystery.... and sadly I have no recollection at all of the plot only a month after reading it! Still, all the others on the Shardlake series have been good...
Amazon.co.uk links:
Uhtred's and Alfred's saga moves to London, with Uhtred ordered to retake the city from Viking invaders to protect Wessex's northern borders....
Amazon.co.uk links
It's back-to-back Bosch, still set in his (relatively) early years. There's a noticeably sombre note to The Last Coyote, with Harry's beloved house condemned and due to be demolished after an LA earthquake, and the relationship that emerged during The Conceret Blonde having bitten the dust. What's more, Harry has been suspended from duty for attacking a senior officer, and in therapy on pain of the ultimate sanction: dismissal.
Prompted by an early session with his therapist (we're not a million miles away from The Sopranos here) Bosch decides to look into the still unsolved murder of his mother. Orphaned at 12, Harry spent his teenage years in juvenile hall, before 'escaping' to military service in Vietnam.... and so this 30 year old murder utlimately underpins his solitary streak and maverick approach to solving crime.
In classic Bosch style, despite having had to hand in his badge and his gun, Harry calls in favours and bends the rules until he finally finds out the killer's identity. Excellent.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Last Coyote - Michael Connelly
I'm clearly into to a crime patch at present, what with Donna Leon, my first Val McDermid and even the so-so The Island of Lost Maps: A Story of Cartographic Crime.
Still, it's nice to come back to old friends like Connelly's Harry Bosch, particularly when you find them in an early part of their life. In The Concrete Blonde, Harry is on trial for the murder of Norman Church, the man LAPD had identified as a serial killer years back, and whom Harry had shot dead, he says in self defence. Fast forward a few years to the present, and LAPD are called in to investigate when the body of a blonde woman is found, buried under concrete poured after Norman Church's demise, but bearing all the signs of the original serial killer .... And then there's Harry's love life to consider...
Amazon.co.uk link: The Concrete Blonde - Michael Connelly
My first Donna Leon for a long time; Hello again Commissario Brunetti!
The murder of a transvestite on the outskirts of Venice arouses surprisingly little concern amongst the police, until Guido Brunetti arrives on the scene and listens to the niggling doubts that convince him that all is not as straightforward as it seems. As the investigation unfolds, bank managers and local worthies come into focus in an inevitably Italian way, and Vice-Questore Patta is left by one woman (his wife, for a pornographer) and joined by another (welcome Signora Elletra).
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A bit heavy going if I'm honest, The Island of Lost Maps felt like it would have made a great magazine article, but had to be stretched too thin to make a book.
The two themes that run through the book are the history of maps and cartographic kleptomaniac Gilbert Bland who stole an unknown number of maps from university and city library collections across North America. There were a few points of interest: how tempting it is for collectors to break bound books because they can make more by selling off the individual maps than they can the whole; how some of the institutions that had maps stolen were/are reluctant to admit this for fear of highlighting how lax their security is (and how low on their list of expenditure library collections have sunk); but the main thrust is Harvey's own quest to find Gilbert Bland, which just wasn't that interesting to me.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Island of Lost Maps: A Story of Cartographic Crime