‘If You Were Here’ by Alafair Burke

Published by Harper,
June, 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-06-220835-4

In her ninth novel, and second standalone, Alafair Burke introduces McKenna Jordan, a writer for the fictitious NYC Magazine.  Before her marriage five years ago, she was McKenna Wright, who had spent four years as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, a job she lost in the aftermath of a police officer’s shooting of a 19-year-old youth, there being a question as to whether or not the boy had been unarmed, the gun found nearby planted.  McKenna’s zealous investigation into that incident, accusing the officer of homicide and perjury, ultimately caused her disgrace and ended her prosecutorial career.  This was soon followed by another, only slightly less traumatic event, when one of her best friends, beautiful West Point grad [and daughter of a two-star general] Susan Hauptmann, disappeared without a trace.

Now, all these years later, a cell-phone photo comes into McKenna’s hands showing a mysterious Superwoman, a female crime victim who had plucked her attacker’s body from the subway tracks to safety, who McKenna believes is that same friend, who she had become convinced was long dead.  Susan, an athletic 32 years old who had been deployed in the Middle East prior to the time of her disappearance, could have easily been capable of the feat in the subway station.

There ensue a series of bizarre and seemingly unrelated incidents that this reader never saw coming, including but not limited to a mysterious private operative [hitman?  private detective?  something else altogether?], a dead cop, someone hacking into and forging e-mails, and no clue as to who is pulling the strings.  The author somehow manages to tie them all up in a relentlessly intriguing plot.

Another well-written book by this author [who gives a tip-of-the-hat, without needing to name his completely recognizable protagonist, to Lee Child, which I loved], and recommended.
-----
Reviewer: Gloria Feit

Alafair Burke is a graduate of Stanford Law School and a former Deputy District Attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair is now a Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School, where she teaches criminal law and procedure.

She is the author of “two power house series” (Sun-Sentinel) that have earned her a reputation for creating strong, believable, and eminently likable female characters, such as NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and Portland Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid. Alafair’s novels grow out of her experience as a prosecutor in America’s police precincts and criminal courtrooms, and have been featured by The Today Show, People Magazine, The New York Times, MSNBC, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Sun-Times.

http://alafairburke.com/

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.

Donna Leon

When Donn Leon visited London last month I had the great pleasure of meeting and talking with her. It was a most enjoyable conversation

 

Donna Leon was born in Montclair, New Jersey of Irish/Spanish descent. She first went to Italy as a student in 1965 returning regularly over the next decade while pursuing a career as an academic in the States and then later in Iran, (where she taught English to helicopter pilots for three years), China (teaching literature at a university near Shanghai) and finally Saudi
Arabia.  Donna then decided to move to Venice permanently, where she has now lived for more than twenty five years. 

Her novels are all set in Venice, featuring police Commissario Guido
Brunette and are widely praised, amongst other things, for her ability to create a remarkable sense of place, and to conjure up the sights and smells of
Venice.

Q Donna, could you tell me about The Golden Egg, your twenty-second book, this latest book? Where did the idea of the mystery surrounding the death of a middle-aged, deaf and mute man originate?

A Well, I am always intrigued as an American that we never have to account for ourselves. In America we don’t have to have a residence, we don’t have to report to the police when we change city, we don’t have to

declare ourselves to the administration of the city. I am always been intrigued the way Italians, well, not only Italians, but Europeans, are always documented. There’s permission to be in that place, there’s the resident’s

permit, there’s the this, there’s the that, they are much more paper controlled than Americans are, and I wondered what would happen if someone slipped through the paper clips and how far in life, and how easy it would be for someone just not to exist in Italian society. The idea was also aided by the fact that there are so many

illegal people and immigrants in Italy; they flood in from everywhere.   That’s also true of Spain, Portugal and France. So I just started fooling around with the idea of a person who didn’t exist.  The only way that  person would come to the attention of the authorities is on his or her death. What does the city do upon the discovery of a dead person who doesn’t exist. And so this is a death, the person is taken to the hospital, here’s his name, here’s his address, but there is no birth certificate – this person does not exist. I just followed that, trying to

figure out how that would have happened.

Q Tell us about police Commissario Guido Brunette. Is he based on any one person or is he mainly imagination? How did he come about?

A He’s not based on anyone. I had the good sense when I wrote the first book to know that I would be working and living with this person for however long it would take me to write this book, and I had no idea how long it would take me, so I chose to create a person who I would find simpatico, and Brunette after twenty-two years is simpatico, he’s intelligent, he’s decent, he’s quick witted, he’s funny, he’s tolerant and a good  father, he’s a good husband. He’s a reader of the things that I read, so he had all of those qualities which would make a man attractive to me.  And after twenty-two years he still remains attractive, for those qualities.

Q What influenced your decision to write about a male detective, as opposed to a female?
A Because it’s much easier. If the source of authority is female, much of the time must be spent justifying her power, although I am a woman you must answer this question, although I am a woman I am going to put you in jail.

 Q You had a relatively long academic career in the United States and in several other countries before your first book was published in 1992.  Had you always wanted to write? 

A No, absolutely not.  I got the idea for this book completely by accident when I was at an opera in Venice La Fenice.  I was backstage with a conductor friend and  discussing another conductor who had died. And  we were thinking of who, why, what.  I realised it was a great idea for a novel.   It hadn’t  previously crossed my mind to write a book, but I had read a lot of crime fiction at graduate school and I wrote a book using what I had stored unconsciously about the patterns of crime. The book then sat in a drawer for a year and a half, because all I had wanted to do was write the book, I wasn’t interested in publication.

But a friend nagged me into sending it in to a competition which it won and then I was offered a contract. The result was Death at La Fenice, which was published in 1992.

Q           Was this before or after you moved to Venice?

A           It was after. I had been there for sometime.

Q           So what prompted the move to Venice.

A           I don’t know.  My life has been very much the result of impulse. Because luckily my parents never

instilled in me any sense of ambition or responsibility, I just wanted to have a whole lot of fun and do interesting stuff.  So I had taught in Iran for some years, China, Switzerland, and then Saudi Arabia.  Saudi was such a
horrible experience that I then  decided to go to Venice to find a job. I had there very good friends at the level of family and I contacted then and asked to stay with them in Venice while I found a job, as I wanted to stop moving around and grow up. So I moved to Venice, I found a job, by then I spoke Italian. Soon I was absorbed into the family and I stayed. Then in 1990 I got the idea for the book, and that changed my life. This is one of the reasons I am not pretending to be cavalier about this. It just fell on me.  It was nothing I ever wanted, if it went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t make any difference to me.  It was great fun, a great run for twenty- two year, doing a job that was fun and making a lot of money doing it.

Q Are the ideas for your books sparked by real events and people, or do ideas just come to you? Or a

mixture of both?

A It’s both. Sometimes things happen. In Death in Judgement Brunetti is asked to investigate snuff films, real porno films where the woman is killed. That idea came to me in the early nineties when I read an article

explaining or rather stating that snuff films were being made in Bosnia, that Bosnian women were being raped and murdered. I was so repelled by this that I knew that this possibility would function largely in the next book.

Q Oh! And the ever-resourceful Signorina Elettra, Patta's secretary, isn’t she wonderful? She arrived in the third book. Where did she come from?

A Wouldn’t you like one? She came because I was at a loss as to what was going to happen, and I wrote a scene in which someone knocked on Brunetti’s door, and I had no idea who this could be, and so I went out for a walk and when I came back the door opened and Signorina Elettra walked in.

Q That is wonderful, and leads me onto my next question which is probably two questions in one.  Do you plan your plots before you start writing?  And, if so, do your books change during the writing process, or do they pan out exactly as you originally planned?

A At the start of a book I have no idea. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t have a clue. 

Q But do you always know who is the murderer or does he/she emerge as the book unfolds?

A He or she emerges, I never have any idea.  In fact I am 240 pages into the next book and I have a victim but I don't know the killer.  It’s worked for twenty-two years, so I am sure that it will work again. I have a

certainty that as I continue to write it will become obvious to me. I just need to find the motive.

Q So do you ever have to go back once the murderer emerges and change him or her a bit?

A The only thing I have to do is change adjectives. When people have changed from good to bad, I have had to go back and change all the good adjectives, so that when the person is revealed to be a good person the people will be surprised and by the revelation of the good person being a bad person.

Q So you must a some point then as you get towards the end of the book say ‘Oh! You did it’. That’s very organic.

A Yes, and lucky.

Q Do you have a regular working day?
A No, I don’t have a regular anything. I get up in the morning go and have a coffee with my best friend Roberta, whom I have known for more that forty years.  Then she goes to work, and I go back to my house and maybe I work. I force myself to sit in front of the computer. But during the day I am praying that people will drop by and say come out for coffee and then I say yeeees!

Q When embarking on a new book, what aspect challenges you the most?

A Physical description of what people look like. I find that difficult - always have. That I have to work at. Action, motion is OK for me. I do that easily. Physical description is hard, not the way they move, or the way  they dress. Just their faces.

Q           Do you have a favourite part of the writing process?

A           The funny bits, the conversations, the interchange between Signorina Elettra, Brunetti and Patta, who is a great figure of fun. He doesn’t understand why he is being sent up, he knows that he is, but he isn’t sure why.

Q Patta is so very suave. Don’t you think that  very good looking people can take themselves too seriously, as Patta seems to do?

A Absolutely

Q You have won several awards including a CWA Silver Dagger in 2000 for The ninth Brunetti novel, Friends in High Places. Do you have a favourite book of those you have written?

A Not really, maybe a couple of favourites.  I like The Golden Egg very much. The books are getting bleaker, I like Death in Judgement, very much but that’s dangerous because it’s about vigilante justice.  It was controversial, but I felt strongly about the subject matter.

Q German Television has produced a number of Commissario Brunette mysteries. Where you involved?

A In no way, and that was my choice. I don’t speak the language, so what am I going to say. I think that I have seen two of them maybe three.  They’re very German but they're OK.  I had lunch with the BBC yesterday,  and it looks as though our five year engagement is going to be fulfilled.  We have had a very long courtship, we were talking about the pre-nup. 

Q Oh! Very important. Will you take a greater role in that?

A Because the language is English and because I saw the German versions, I  might see what could better be changed.  I have told them that I will co-operate in any way I can to help them.  Not for my purposes but for their purposes.  Because I am a team player, and I would like this to be as good as it can be.

Q Are you in anyway influenced by other writers? 

A Not consciously, but I am sure that I am.  I read a lot of crime fiction.

Q Keeping a series going for 22 books and keeping it fresh and exciting is quite a feat.  Have you ever wanted or thought of writing a stand alone, or starting a new series?

A I did a stand-alone last year about music called The Jewels of Paradise.

Q Do you get back to America very often

A No, I was back there three years ago. I travel so much with book tours and related stuff. And a vast part of it is concerned with the music world. I am one of the managing directors of a Swiss Baroque Orchestra and I spend as much time with them as I can. I go to the rehearsals, the recordings, and I attend their series of concerts. I am very much committed to their success.

Q As you may know I am keen to promote new writers, so have you any golden tips for them?

A Read! And don’t just read crime fiction, read Jane Austin, read Dickens, read Trollope.

Thank you, Donna for taking the time to talk to me. It’s been lovely and informative to meet and chat with you.

http://www.donnaleon.net/

The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery Series

Death at La Fenice (1992)  

Death in a Strange Country (1993)         

The Anonymous Venetian (UK 1994)             

Dressed For Death (USA 1994)

A Venetian Reckoning (UK 1995) 

Aqua Alta (1996) The Death of Faith (1997)

Death and Judgement (USA 1995) 

Quietly in Their Sleep (USA 1997)

A Noble Radiance (1998)            

Fatal Remedies (1999)  

Friends in High Places (2000)

A Sea of Troubles (2001)         

Wilful Behaviour (2002)  

Uniform Justice (2003)

Doctored Evidence (2004)         

Blood From a Stone (2005)

Through a Glass Darkly  (2006)

Suffer Little Children (2007)      

The Girl of His Dreams (2008)  

About Face (2009)

A Question of Belief (2010)        

Drawing Conclusions (2011)  

Beastly Things (2012)

The Golden Egg (2013)

‘Reviver’ by Seth Patrick

Published by Macmillan,
20th June 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-330-51776-8    

It's some time in the not-too-distant future, and Seth Patrick delivers a logical exposition of how human beings have evolved to the point where they can revive the recently dead for a short while, in order to give testimony regarding the way they died and the person who killed them.  This has become increasingly important, in that such testimony is now permitted in murder trials round the globe.  But the ability to wake the dead is a poisoned chalice, hard on the revived dead, and harder still on the reviver, of whom there are very few.

Jonah Miller, our protagonist, is one of the top revivers in the world, and a key member of the FRS – the Forensic Revival Service in the United States.  As you read on, you can see the increasing signs of trouble looming in Jonah's psyche, especially when he begins to have longer and longer periods of 'possession' by the body he had revived, its memories, its terrors, its stresses attaching to himself in disturbing and incomprehensible fashion.

One death in particular is that of abducted Daniel Harker, a journalist who first highlighted the whole revival issue.   Harker is found bound and gagged – and dead.  It is determined that he died of thirst and starvation, after his kidnappers abandoned him to die.  The deceased Harker is thirsting for answers, particularly as to why they left him to his painful death, and in the process of finding out, invades the mind of Jonah Miller.  And then something ancient and evil, long-hidden and dangerous, makes its presence felt through the doorway provided by the revived dead …

That's a rough synopsis of the story.  But it doesn't begin to elaborate the fascinating details of reviving.  Seth Patrick has created an entire forensic discipline, all backed up with authentic (at least, to this non-scientist) and utterly believable detail.  I was completely absorbed by the weird take on the world he has created between the covers of this book.  Heartily recommended.
------
Reviewer: Susan Moody

Seth Patrick Seth Patrick was born in Northern Ireland.  An Oxford mathematics graduate, he works as a programmer in an award-winning games company.  He lives in England with his wife and two young children.  Reviver is his first novel. 

 

Susan Moody was born in Oxford is the principal nom de plume  of Susan Elizabeth Donaldson, née Horwood, a British novelist best known for her suspense novels. She is a former Chairman of the Crime Writer's Association, served as World President of the International Association of Crime Writers, and was elected to the prestigious Detection Club. Susan Moody has given numerous courses on writing crime fiction and continues to teach creative writing in England, France, Australia, the USA and Denmark.  In addition to her many stand alone books, Susan has written two series, on featuring PI Penny Wanawake (seven books) and a series of six books featuring bridge player Cassie Swan.

‘Blind Faith’ by C J Lyons

Published by Sphere, 

15^th February 2013. 

ISBN: 978-0-7515-5027-6

I hadn't heard of this author before but she certainly knows how to set up a-grab-you-by-the-lapels story.  The book opens with widow Sarah Durandt watching a horrifyingly perverted multiple child killer being executed by injection in a Texas prison facility.  It's over, she tells herself, as the man who killed her son as well as her husband finally succumbs to the lethal dose in his veins. 

It's over…  But of course it's not. All Sarah wants is to know is where the killer hid the bodies of her son and husband, but he wasn't telling.  All she can do now is, one way or another, to find them, by searching the forest and mountain where the murders took place.  She is determined not to rest until she's done and is helped in the search by a kindly lawyer, as well as the attractive police chief of the small town where she lives, and where she grew up. 

Things soon grow murky.  Nothing is what it appears to be.  Betrayal and further betrayal are the order of the day.  A terrifyingly callous and sadistic Russian criminal is let out of jail and immediately sets out to find Sarah, with the intention of torturing her to death.

There are multiple narrative strands in this book, all satisfyingly unravelled by the last page.  You'll enjoy this.
-----
Reviewer: Susan Moody
   

C J Lyons grew up in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, the heart of the rust belt, and lived there until she left home at 17 to go to college in North Carolina. Then it was on to Florida for med school and back to Pennsylvania for her pediatric residency at Childrens’ Hospital of Pittsburgh. Now a pediatric ER doctor turned suspense/thriller author. Writing stories was her way of dealing with the “real” world. Until her internship year in Pittsburgh. The year everything changed. As an intern she   worked and lived a life out of sync with the “normal” world. But then one of then interns was killed. Murdered in a horrific fashion. The stuff of nightmares. As always, she turned to writing to help her through her shock and grief. And wrote her first piece of crime fiction.

Susan Moody was born in Oxford is the principal nom de plume  of Susan Elizabeth Donaldson, née Horwood, a British novelist best known for her suspense novels. She is a former Chairman of the Crime Writer's Association, served as World President of the International Association of Crime Writers, and was elected to the prestigious Detection Club. Susan Moody has given numerous courses on writing crime fiction and continues to teach creative writing in England, France, Australia, the USA and Denmark.  In addition to her many stand alone books, Susan has written two series, on featuring PI Penny Wanawake (seven books) and a series of six books featuring bridge player Cassie Swan.

‘Another Small Kingdon’ by James Green

Published by Accent press,
23 August 2012.
ISBN: 978 190 8262 899

The USA, 1802. In Europe the Napoleonic wars are raging with Britain and France pitted against each othe: not the concern of the fledgling democracy with its capital Washington only recently founded. Yet European politics are extending their tentacles across the Atlantic to the new state which wishes to expand across the Mississippi and into the Louisiana Territories, nominally still Spanish but acquired by the French under a secret treaty two years previously. What do the French want in return?  Could it be that they wish to install Cardinal Henry Newman, last of the Stuart line and brother to Bonnie Prince Charlie, as a puppet king in the USA who will lead that country into the European wars on the side of the French?

The key to the conspiracy is in New Orleans and it is there that Lawyer Macleod arrives. Although Macleod is a Bostonian, his father was a Highland Jacobite who had lost everything after the ‘45 Rising and had sought refuge in the States. Macleod has not forgiven the British for the wrongs done to his family and as a Catholic and a fluent French speaker would be an ideal choice to find out what exactly the French are up to in New Orleans. Except that Macleod does not wish to go and being of a stubborn nature refuses to do so. So the shadowy and secretive Office of Internal and International Information (precursor of the CIA) in the person of the mysterious and sinister Cedric Bentley sets Macleod up so that he has no choice but to go. In New Orleans he meets the beautiful Marie de Valois and through her learns the truth about the conspiracy. Meanwhile the British have also sent as agent to New Orleans the seductive Madame de Metz (in reality Molly O’Hara). Before long Macleod and Marie find they are engaged in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse in which no-one can be sure who is friend and who is foe.

Another Small Kingdom has a highly complex and convoluted plot which provides a penetrating insight into the history of the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

-------

Reviewer: Radmila May

Other books by the same author (2013, 2014): A Union Not Blessed, The Eagle Turns, Never an Empire, Winston’s Witch.

James Green was educated by the Vincentian Fathers at Bishop Ullathorne Gammar School , Coventry. He left school at sixteen and, after working as coal-miner, farm-worker, motor-cycle courier and building labourer, he went to St. Mary's College, Twickenham and qualified as a teacher. During his teaching career Jim acquired, by part-time study, an Open University B.A. and a research M.A. in Education. He studied, again part-time and for three years, for a Ph.D. in Education at Leicester University but, in 1983, the school where he was head teacher was completely destroyed by an arson attack and the final write-up of the research for the Doctorate was postponed, as it turned out, indefinitely. In 1997 Jim left teaching to become a full-time writer and published magazine articles and books on travel. He then began writing the first of what was to become the Jimmy Costello series, Bad Catholics, which in 2009 was short-listed for a CWA Dagger. Over the years Jim has been the author of academic texts and reference works but now concentrates on adult novels and is currently writing the Freedom to Espionage series which chronicles through fiction, but based on actual historical events and characters, the rise of the American Intelligence Service culminating in the establishment in 1947 of the CIA. The first in the five-book series, Another Small Kingdom, was published by Accent Press in August 2012 and the second, A Union Not Blessed, will be published in April 2013. Jim has also been invited to become one of the Traverse 50, an international group of writers new to the theatre, invited to work with the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh for one year as part of the celebration the theatre's 50th birthday.

‘Agent Dmitri’ by Emil Draiter

Published by Duckworth,
25 October 2012.
ISBN 978 0 7156 4377 8

This is the true story of the handsome, suave master spy Dmitri Bystrolyotov who spied for the Soviet Union in the inter-war years. Born in 1901, his mother was of aristocratic descent but with feminist views which led her to have an illegitimate child as a gesture against the rigidly conformist society of the time in which class distinctions were legally enforceable. His father was a member of the Tolstoy family but Dmitri never knew him and after his early childhood saw little of  his mother, the Tolstoy family arranging for him to live with a foster family and for his education. But the upheavals caused by World War I and even more the 1917 Bolshevik revolution changes his life from one of privilege to one of extreme poverty while his experiences influence his political views, and in order to escape the chaos caused by the conflict between the White and Red Armies he escapes to Turkey where he is at first utterly destitute. His circumstances improve slightly and when he makes his way to Prague he eventually comes to the attention of the OGPU (the then name for the Soviet secret police) who recruit him as a spy. His life changes absolutely; he becomes not just a spy but a master spy, one of the most successful in Europe, stealing military secrets from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Britain, often employing seduction of embassy staff. But the strains of his lifestyle, which could involve adopting several identities in one day, and a series of catastrophic personal relationships, begin to affect his already frail personality. He returns to Moscow - a mistake since Stalin’s terrible show trials were just beginning. Like so many others who dedicated their lives to their political and patriotic ideals he is arrested on false charges, tortured, and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in the Gulag. Unusually he survives but the account of those years, derived from a record he kept at the time, is harrowing in the extreme. Even after his eventual release, life is difficult but with the help of his devoted wife, whom he met in the Gulag, he  achieves a measure of happiness in his old age until his death in 1975.

The author of this book is about the only person who could have written it. Emil Draitser, himself Russian, met Dmitri once when the latter was an old man. Due to the still repressive nature of the Soviet regime, he did not tackle his subject until he himself had left the USSR and was well established in the United States. By this time, Russia was presenting in various books and films a sanitised version of Dmitri as being entirely motivated by socialist patriotism, ignoring the more questionable aspects of his activities and passing over his maltreatment by the government he had served so devotedly and his eventual disillusionment with not only Stalin but Lenin and the vast edifice of state repression under which so many people had suffered. With the aid of the vast amount of materials unearthed from various archives, Draitser has told a compelling story of a brave, complex, sensitive and flawed man. A must for all those interested in twentieth century history.

-----

Reviewer: Radmila May

Emil Draiter was born in Odessa, Ukraine, Emil Draitser has published both fiction and nonfiction since 1964. His work appeared in leading Soviet journals (Youth, Literary Gazette, and Crocodile) under his pen name "Emil Abramov." He began his writing career as a freelancer contributing satirical articles for Soviet newspapers and magazines. Eventually, he was blacklisted for criticizing an important official, prompting him to leave for the United States. He immigrated to Los Angeles, where he earned a Ph.D. in Russian literature from UCLA. In 1986, he took a job at Hunter College in New York City, where he continues to teach. Besides twelve books of artistic and scholarly prose, Emil Draitser's essays and short stories have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Partisan Review, North American Review, Prism International, and many other American and Canadian periodicals. His fiction has also appeared in Russian, Polish, and Israeli journals.