Dipping Into Korean History

The joy Brigade [by] Martin Limón

[New York] ; Soho Press [2012]

978-1-61695-148-1; $25.00

Ordinarily we see Sgt. George Sueño patrolling the community of Itaewon, right outside the gates of the Eighth U.S. Army compound in Seoul, South Korea, with his partner, Ernie Bascomb.  But this time it’s different – Sueño is on his own, on a mission of extreme importance to both the South Korean Government and the U.S. Army.  Kim Il-Sung has vowed to reunite North and South Korea before he hands control of the Government over to his son. This means the forces of North Korea will cross the DMZ and overpower the American-allied South Korean Government.  Sueño’s mission is to prevent this by sneaking into North Korea to obtain an ancient map which details the network of secret tunnels that run underneath the DMZ.  This means Sueño will eventually meet his former lover, Doctor Yong In-ja, the keeper of the map.

Sueño enters the northern port of Nampo as a Rumanian member of the crew of an Albanian freighter.  As they are welcomed into the harbor, one of the sailors is taken aside, abused in front of the others, and then taken away “to be dealt with,” while the others are welcomes into the People’s Hall of International Friendship as guests of the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung.  They receive food and “entertainment.”

Sueño bribes an employee to get him out of the Hall, so that he can go to the nearby People’s Grain Warehouse to meet his contact, Hero Kang.  When he gets there, he finds a message that says “run,” so he does, finally finding himself hanging off a cliff above the river, with a North Korean policeman urinating on him!  When he gets back to terra firma, it is not safe, for he is captured by the Commander who had the sailor from the ship abused.  But the scene is interrupted by a big man who begins to upbraid the Commander for taking this prisoner while out of his jurisdiction.  The man is quite flamboyant, to Sueño’s amazement, and the Commander gives in, marching his troop away, leaving Sueño with his savior – Hero Kang. Kang briefs him and gives him a Warsaw Pact uniform to wear.  The next day they board a train, which takes them to Pyongyang. There are several close calls before Sueño meets Doc Yong.  Fortunately, Sueño has kept the fact that he can speak Korean under wraps, but he can still negotiate through things with life-saving awareness.

Sueño learns more about his task, which is not to be an easy one.  He must win a taekwondo tournament, so he gets some practice time in.  But while he has a black belt, he is not as in-shape as he should be.  He beats all of the foreigners except one, and is badly trounced by the North Korean Army favorite.  He does not get chosen to take the course that will easily take him past some of the major hurdles in the rest of his journey.  Instead, he has to fight hard to get past them, involving others, including Doc Yong and their son, whom Sueño had never met until then, Hero Kang and his daughter, and another man known as Moon Chaser.  There are plenty of close calls, with them getting captured and tortured, and then escaping, only to be captured again.  The journey is long and arduous, as they seek the tunnels that will take them south, where the Sergeant will hopefully be able to convince the U.S. Army to help the Manchurian Battalion, the last hangers-on of the Korean revolution, who hope to reunite their country, not under the Great Leader, but under the forces of historic righteousness.

Is the Sergeant strong enough to do this?  Will the Army listen?  What will the South Koreans do?  Will Doc Yong be captured and imprisoned for her crimes when last in the south?  What will become of the little boy who is Sueño’s legacy?

Many times during the journey, Sueño crosses paths with a beautiful woman named Senior Captain Rhee Mi-Sook of the North Korean secret police and a so-called “fixer” when things go wrong.  The last time he sees her, she is wearing a Major’s uniform in the South Korean Army.  Who is this mysterious woman, really?  Why does he keep seeing her?

This is a somewhat different book than Limón normally writes – the violence is not so general, and there’s more politics and history, but it is just as compelling as his other books.  Highly recommended. ~lss-r

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My book.





One Day at a Time

Valley of Ashes by Cornelia Read

New York ; Grand Central Publishing [2012]

978-0-446-51136-0 ; $24.99

Madeline Dare has traded New York's gritty streets for the tree-lined ‘burbs of Boulder, Colorado when her husband Dean lands a promising job.  Now a full-time homemaker and mother to beautiful toddler twin girls, Madeline has achieved everything she thought she always wanted, but with her husband constantly on the road, she's fighting a losing battle against the Betty Friedan riptide of suburban/maternal exhaustion, angst, and sheer loneli-ness. A new freelance newspaper gig writing restaurant reviews helps her to get her mojo back, but Boulder isn't nearly as tranquil as it seems:  there's a serial arsonist at large in the city.  With the support of Jon McNally, her contact at the paper, and his friend, a fire inspector named Mimi Neff, Madeline joins in the case, while reporting on it.

None of these writing gigs is mentioned to Dean, since the state of their marriage is extremely precarious a structure. This doesn’t stop Dare from writing both her restaurant reviews and covering the increasing the number of fires popping up around Boulder.  As she closes in on the culprit, the fires turn deadly -- and the stakes become tragically personal. She'll need every ounce of strength and courage she has to keep the flames from reaching her own doorstep, threatening all she holds most dear.

Madeline’s desire to ferret out the truth is an instinct not easily stamped down, but it can be swamped by the sheer overwhelming time commitment of juggling nearly single-handedly the responsibility of caring for twins in a town where she knows almost no one. While she was ecstatically happy at first, as exhaustion wears her down, she becomes dissatisfied. Her world has shrunk to an endless round of taking care of two demanding babies, a house that is never clean, and a husband who, when he is home, is more and more critical of her.

Getting to know people, however, doesn’t seem to be Dean’s problem; especially people of the female persuasion. Whether he’s out of town on a business trip or in the office working long hours, he’s drifting away. The only friend who keeps husband and wife together is Cary, who works at Dean’s office.  After his death in one of the fires, Madeline discovers just how far Dean had strayed, and she finds herself in a fight, both for her life and the preservation of her family.

The mystery concerning the arsonist is an intriguing one, but this book is about so much more than arson. It's about motherhood and marriage, it's about friendship and tragedy and grief. It's about standing up for yourself and those you love. There are many things in life that can turn to ash within the blink of an eye.  Madeline is a wonderful creation, strong yet vulnerable; smart, but sometimes completely clueless; opinionated, interesting and observant. Her story involves both love and the heartbreak of betrayal. She couldn’t be more real.

As Madeline struggles with all the issues of her life, the reader gets very emotionally involved. This sassy-mouthed woman with a big, big heart can make you cheer, laugh, and cry within the space of a very few sentences.  This is beautifully-written, emotional, soul-searing and laugh-out-loud funny fiction at its very best.

What makes Read’s crime novels unique and difficult to pigeonhole, is the fact that the action doesn’t stop—and she doesn’t stop writing—when the murder is solved and the criminals are apprehended. Nor is everything tied up in tidy packages after the climax. That’s not how real life works, nor is it how satisfying fiction is supposed to work. And it’s definitely not how life has ever worked for Dare, whose whole world takes such a blow in this book that it’s hard to fathom how she’ll get up again. But, as readers of the series know from experience, she most certainly will, while eloquently telling off anyone who gets in her way! This is a funny and sad novel about a woman trying to establish an identity for herself and justice for everyone else.  I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that Cornelia Read's voice is one of the most original, vivid and memorable in all of contemporary crime fiction. Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library Book.

 

The First Detective Novel --- Ever!



The Notting Hill Mystery [by] Charles Warren Adams

[London; The British Library, 2012]

978-0-7123-5859-0 [$15.00]

This smallish tome represents the very first full-length detective novel ever published, according to the book’s introduction, bridging the gap between Poe’s short stories [“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was published in 1841.] and the prodigious The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins [1868].  This title was first published in 8 parts in Once a Week magazine beginning on November 29, 1862.  It was later published as a book in 1865 by Saunders, Otley & Co. of London, and it is the pages of that book which are recreated here by the British Library, but including the illustrations by George du Maurier [the grandfather of Daphne], which appeared in the magazine version.

The original was published under the name of Charles Felix. Felix only wrote a couple of other books, which are thoroughly unremarkable – one now exists in only 4 copies.  But it took some real detective work to figure out who Felix was, since there was nothing in the archives of the publisher – no correspondence between author and publisher exists.  The bottom line is that there didn’t need to be any.  Charles Felix is actually Charles Warren Adams, the publisher, who had, of course, no reason to write to himself!

Apparently, Adams had both legal training and a religious bent, and these show up in this story.  His book is profoundly moral:  it asks not only why and how evil exists, but also what is to be done about it.  The author’s law school training underlies the novel’s evidentiary process, which so wowed Julian Symons back in 1972, when he wrote Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, one of the best-known critical works in the field of crime fiction. He admitted that the book “quite bowled me over.”

The plot is fairly straight-forward. The wife of Baron R** dies after sleep-walking down the stairs into her husband’s home laboratory and drinking a bottle of acid. It looks like a tragic accident, until a private investigator, Ralph Henderson, notices that the Baron took out five life insurance policies on Madame R**, worth a staggering £25,000! Hired by an insurance company, Henderson enters into a maze of intrigue that is perfectly Victorian, with a diabolical mesmerist, kidnapping by gypsies, a mysterious carnival with odd, secretive characters, slow poisonings, and a rich uncle’s will. Oh, and murder – actually, three murders.

Source documents compiled by insurance investigator Ralph Henderson are used to build a case against Baron R**. Although the baron's guilt is clear to the reader even from the outset, how he did it remains a mystery. Finally this is revealed, but how to catch him becomes the final challenge, for he seems to have committed the perfect crime.

The evidence against the Baron is presented as Henderson’s own findings — diary entries; family letters; depositions of servant girls, other roomers in the house, police officers, etc.; a chemical analyst’s report;  and a crime scene map.  These were such innovations at the time, and wouldn’t gain currency again until the 1920s.

It’s quite a joy to read this book, which is so modern, and yet so of its own time as well.  While the culprit is known at the outset, the thoroughness and tenacity of the investigator, and the materials he amasses, are a joy to see.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.



Something Like Justice, With a Baritone Hum

Ranchero [by] Rick Gavin

New York; Minotaur [2011]

978-1-250-00658-5; $14.99

This book is billed as “a crime novel,” but it’s certainly one with a difference.  It’s really more of a slice-of-life around a crime.  Yes, a crime has been committed, but the question is not a whodunit, but more like a “will justice be served” kind of thing. It is a testosterone-filled road trip-type of romp, involving a number of good ol’ boys from the Mississippi Delta.

Nick Reid, former-cop-turned-repo-man, is trying to put the bite on Percy Dwayne Dubois [that’s Dew-boys] for the 42-inch flat-screen TV he’s missed 3 payments on.  But Percy Dwayne cold cocks him with a fireplace shovel and helps himself to Nick’s wallet, cell phone, and the 1969 Calypso Coral Ford Ranchero he’s driving.  Now the car rightfully belongs to Pearl Jarvis, Nick’s landlady, whose husband Gil drove it with great pride and joy until he croaked. Nick’s borrowed it since his wheels were in the shop.  Now he fervently promises to bring it back to Pearl in mint condition.

He enlists the help of his hulking African-American colleague, Desmond, who is driving his ex-wife’s Geo Metro.  They slip by their enraged Lebanese boss K-Lo and head off with a sort-of-plan:  to head to Yazoo City, where Luther Dubois – perhaps a relative of Percy Dwayne’s – reputedly lives.    Meanwhile, Percy Dwayne calls Nick, using his own cell phone, and offers to ransom the Ranchero.  This proves fruitless, since a violent meth cooker named Guy meets up with Percy Dwayne, and takes the Ranchero, along with Percy Dwayne’s wife Sissy and their son, the diapered PD, Jr.

The whole thing reads like the plot of a ‘70’s Southern exploitation flick starring a young Burt Reynolds. Most of the characters are an iffy bunch, but, generally, their hearts are in the right place.  Aficionados of Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard, who don’t mind a little b.o. and sleaze and potty humor, will enjoy this, for Gavin, like them, grounds his story in his colorful, weird, yet believable characters, their ways of thinking and speaking, and a comparison of Sonics from town to town.  It’s a trip through the backwoods South , combusting its way towards something like justice, to the music of that “glorious baritone hum” on a stolen 1969 Calypso Coral Ford Ranchero. Recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.





Husbands and Wives and Lovers, Oh My!

The Diva Digs up the Dirt [by] Krista Davis

New York; Berkley Prime Crime [2012]

978-0-425-25134-8; $7.99

Sophie Winston and Natasha Smith have been rivals for years, especially in the Domestic Diva department.  Now they are writing feuding advice columns.  Natasha has always been a bit over the top, but, then she also took Mars, Sophie’s husband, although they haven’t gotten married yet.

This time, Natasha is angling for a big TV show by showing how well she can work with the cast of the makeover show “Dig It Up With Troy.”  The person who is having the makeover – of her backyard, with the introduction of a garage, is – Sophie!

But before this even gets underway, Sophie is set upon by an improbable lady in a festive, brightly-colored ensemble.  She says she knows who Sophie is, and she would like to hire her to find her daughter, getting out a wad of cash.  Sophie explained she was an event planner and didn’t know how to find people.  Soon she finds the woman sneaking around, talking to her neighbors and trying to get into her house. And Sophie’s best friend and neighbor is encouraging her!

But Sophie is busy – that afternoon Roscoe Greene, the wealthy owner of a catalog store catering to Southern gardeners and outdoorsmen, is having his big picnic-party, complete with famous ice cream bar.  Because just 10 days before, Roscoe had married one of his employees, Mindy, in a destination Ireland wedding (after having dumped his wife of 45 years, Olive), he had hired Sophie to plan the whole thing.  And, apparently, Olive had taken umbrage at not being invited, and had had a dumptruckload of steer manure delivered to their house in Mindy’s name! (Olive has heard that Mindy is threatening to concrete over the gardens she spent many loving years cultivating.) Sophie tries to deal with all of the mishaps and last-minute-issues, and then the guests are there and the party starts. 

Roscoe shows off his new – and costly – print of Four Mallards.  He also announces that he has bought a retirement place, about which he is really excited.  Mindy asks if it’s the Palm Beach place, and he says No –it’s a 500 acre bed-and-breakfast lodge in the mountains, where there’s the best hunting and fishing in the world!  Mindy can barely hide her disappointment.

Later, Sophie and her best friend Nina spot a trio of interlopers watching the party from the woods.  One looks to be Olive, Roscoe’s former wife, one is a sandy-haired man, and the third is the woman who’d accosted Sophie about her missing daughter – a woman they have since learned is named Mona – short for Desdemona. Later, Sophie gets an eyeful of Roscoe’s 40-something son Audie (who is engaged to another employee, Cricket) with his arms wrapped around his future stepmother.  Hmm – what’s that all about?

The next morning, Sophie gets to meet Troy and the show crew, who have come to dig up her backyard.  Included in the crew is a man that Sophie and Nina saw yesterday, prowling in the woods near Roscoe’s.  Sophie gets a visit from the man she has been dating for a while, a Homicide Detective named Wolf.  They start to make a date for dinner, but when Sophie mentions her meeting with Roscoe tomorrow, Wolf gets angry.  He tells her to cancel it.  She believes he wants to give her more work, and she can’t.  Wolf stalks off.  The last person Sophie wants to see while her backyard is being torn up is Mona, but she shows up next.  Sophie has to avoid her – she gets her dog Daisy and walks her around the side of her yard and gets away, making it to her car, parked four blocks away.  (She really does need a garage!)

Every time she and Wolf sit in her yard, he admires the climbing Blaze rose she has. He used to have one, but it died not long after his wife Anne went missing.  He mourns both of those losses.  Since Troy will most likely chop her rose into oblivion, Sophie decides to plant one in Wolf’s yard as a sort of truce.

The need for this seems to be underscored as, when she goes shopping, she meets Wolf coming out of a restaurant.  They apologize to each other, but then get into it again as Wolf says that Roscoe isn’t to be trusted.  Then, Cricket comes out of the same restaurant, and stops to greet Wolf – they haven’t seen each other in years. Sophie is amazed that they know each other.

She buys the rose and takes it over to Wolf’s yard and begins to dig a hole to plant it in.  Wolf’s neighbor wants to know what she’s doing.  His neighbor is Roscoe’s ex-wife Olive (Small world!)  Sophie explains, and Olive leaves her to continue her digging.  Deeper into the hole she finds a purse.  A very nice leather purse.  Inside it is a driver’s license for Anne Fleishman, Wolf’s missing wife!  Rumors had circulated all over the place that Wolf had killed his wife, and thoughts of that rush back into Sophie’s mind.  Nina comes over to console her and then Mona shows up.  The Mona who is looking for her daughter – her daughter Anne, who married Wolf!

Sophie calls Wolf, who comes home.  He looks at the hole and the handbag, and then calls the police.  He seems not to be surprised at Mona’s presence.  He looks very sad.  His partner, Det. Kenner, whom Sophie does not like, arrives with a uniform.  He asks questions and looks at the hole and the purse, and then gives it to the uniform to bag. Kenner gives Sophie his card and suggests that she be very careful.  She’s surprised – this is the nicest he’s ever been to her.  

Wolf then disappears, telling no one where he is going.  Roscoe's mallard print goes missing. Sophie goes to Roscoe's, against Wolf's admonishments, and talks to Cricket, who used to be his late wife's best friend.  Meanwhile, Roscoe's housekeeper, Violet, dubbed by Sophie and her friends as "Mrs. Danvers" for her behaviour towards them:  condescending, closemouthed, and unforthcoming, is practically crazy over a calico cat, which is bothering her birds. Nina promises Violet she will capture the cat, with Sophie's help.

Sophie also discovers Mona in her closet. A body is found under the mulch at Roscoe's.  Roscoe goes to the hospital, then comes home.  Audie and Cricket begin their wedding in Roscoe's backyard, and Audie keels over and has to go to the hospital, too.  Then Sophie has a flash of insight in a junk store, where she and Natasha have gone to repurpose items for her backyard.  She also finds Roscoe's missing mallard print.

The final upshot is that Sophie loves her backyard, as made over by Troy, and Natasha's little touches aren't too bad.  The perpetrators of Anne's disappearance, as well as attacks on Roscoe's family are unmasked and jailed, and Sophie's group of friends is brought back together.  Roscoe takes back his first wife, and Sophie gains a friend, but loses her boyfriend.  She's gotten very philosophical about it.  We'll see if it holds up in the next one, or if there are other prospects.  Now that Kenner has proven to be a real person, he may also have a bright future.  Lose ends get tied up -- not necessarily as you would expect them to, proving that Krista Davis still has the magic in one of the best constructed cozies in the business.  Excellent recipes and gardening tips, too.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r
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My own book.





Sins of the Fathers

Night Rounds [by] Helene Tursten

[New York; Soho Press, 2012]

978-1-61695-006-4; $25.00

When the lights go back up at the Löwander Private Hospital, the ICU nurse, Marianne, is missing, the surgical patient Peterzén is dead, and the other nurse, Siv Persson, sees the ghost of Nurse Tekla mounting the stairs in the moonlight. Moments later, the security guard finds Nurse Marianne dead in the basement, lying across the back-up generator, which was also dead, its powerlines cut.  She has ligature marks around her neck, and is missing one shoe, which was found later in the elevator.

The Violent Crimes Division puts in an appearance early the next day in the persons of Superintendent Sven Andersson and Detective Inspector Irene Huss.  They begin to ask questions.  They are told about the love affair rumored to have happened between the formidable Dr. Hilding Löwander, the father of the current director of the hospital, Dr. Sverker Löwander, and Nurse Tekla.  It was broken off when Mrs. Löwander became pregnant with her son, and Tekla hanged herself in a garret room. Of course, the inspectors tell Nurse Siv that they do not believe that a ghost was responsible for the murders.

But there are still odd things at the hospital.  Nurses disappear, and aspects of the hospital’s history, and the history of its key family, take on greater and greater importance.  Then a newspaper article comes out saying that a witness had seen the ghost on the grounds.  Huss goes to see the journalist, Kurt Höök.  She begins to search for the witness Höök only knows as Mama Bird.

They find a garden shed on the grounds of the hospital, which looks to be one of Mama Bird’s hidey-holes.  But even when they stake it out, they do not find her.  Visiting with a street person at one of the downtown soup kitchens, they learn her name.  They also discover that she had a relationship to the hospital.  Then the shed is torched.  The river that goes near the shed begins to flood because of a blockage under a bridge.  The bicycle that belonged to a missing nurse named Linda is found there, holding back the dead and mangled body of Mama Bird.

The body of the missing Linda is then found hanging in the same garret room where Nurse Tekla was found.  More hospital people are interviewed, as are both of Sverker Löwander’s wives, past and present.  Even the wife of the dead patient Peterzén and her son are visited.  Old records are looked at. Old luggage is gone through.  Personnel from other hospitals, who know the players in this drama are also talked to by the inspectors. The books of the hospital, which show that it is bankrupt, are looked at.  At last, Inspector Huss puts together the whole story, which has a lot to do with the past, and also the future, as it turns out.  The final scene is pretty exciting, as Irene Huss is very nearly killed by the culprit.

There are some really nice touches to this book, beyond the really depressing scene set at the old hospital.  There are lovely insights into Irene Huss’ family life, as well as the very human dynamics of the Violent Crimes Division in Göteborg, Sweden.  A very satisfying police procedural. Recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.



Counterfeit and the Real Thing

Counterfeit Road [by] Kirk Russell

[Sutton, Eng.] Severn House [2012]

978-0-7278-8145-8; $28.95

22 years to the day, a videotape of an unsolved 1989 murder – the murder of former Secret Service agent Alan Krueger – arrives for the San Francisco Homicide detail, and falls into Homicide Inspector Ben Raveneau’s proverbial lap.  What’s more:  back then the 61 $100 bills in the victim’s pocket were considered legitimate; but now the Secret Service takes another look and calls them counterfeit. What is going on?

There also seems to be a link to the present, which no one wants to talk about.  Ben studies the video.  He pores over the old case files.  He hunts for the couple who found the body.  He enlists the help of a retired homicide inspector.  Then a young man shows up, saying that he’s the son of the man whose name was in Alan Krueger’s pants pocket.  He has photographs, which he brings along for Raveneau to see.  A photo tech he knows tells Raveneau that the pictures were taken in Hawaii, and names the places. There are pictures of the young man’s father, Alan Krueger, and two others with whom he saw service in Vietnam.

Then, there is a shooting in a warehouse.  A truck had just delivered plywood and driven off.  Then a shooter killed three of the workers and wounded another, who died on the way to the hospital.  The boss was out of the office at the time.  The saws were still running at the little cabinet shop when the cops got there.  Raveneau went after the trucker, but got no real answers.

When he went back to the shop, Raveneau inspected the palette of plywood and discovered it was faked. Inside hollowed-out parts of the plywood there were things which turned out to be bomb casings.  Unfortunately, they try to follow them when they are trucked away, but they lose track of the truck, so they still have no answers, but lots more questions.

Raveneau goes to Hawaii, to the house owned by Jim Franks, the father of the young man with the photos in San Francisco.  It looks like he will find answers there, but the house is no longer lived in.  He is shot at, and gets to meet another son of Jim Franks, and then his friend Tom Casey.  Casey was one of Krueger’s Vietnam buddies.

Eventually Raveneau gets to tie all of the loose ends together.  There is a very large conspiracy, which includes the money found on Krueger – so-called “supernotes” – extraordinarily good counterfeit U.S. currency, which predated the known supernotes, as well as the bomb casings, and this small circle of Vietnam vets.  Not to mention Feds of different kinds, and people who were not who they said they were, but turn out to be threatening, with pieces of the past hanging about them.  It is quite a relief for Raveneau to finally get back to his ordinary life, and the time to celebrate his girlfriend’s new bar to the utmost.  A great thriller – highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.