On July 1, I had 61 followers; as of midnight on July 14, the number had grown to 84. So while I had originally specified I'd be giving away one book per every 20 additional followers, I chose to interpret that liberally, and to give away two books. Also, rather than just work my way up the list, I'm giving the two winners their choice of the five books on offer.
As I heard from everyone who e-mailed me asking to participate in the Bastille Day giveaway I allotted them a number. I then turned to the ever-reliable folks at Random.Org tonight to select two of those numbers -- at random, of course.
And the winners -- who should already find e-mails in their inboxes informing them of this -- are MARJORIE and TERZAH! Both of you just need to confirm which book you want, and your addresses, in a return e-mail.
Congratulations to you both!
And stick around, there will be more giveaways in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, settle back and enjoy the book talk!
Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Am I a Literary Voyeur?
I admit there were times when reading Untold Story by Monica Ali made me feel like I was peeping through a telephoto camera lens, rummaging through a celeb's garbage or even (echoes of the News of the World scandal) listening to a wiretapped conversation. I'm not passing judgment on Ali's decision to write a "what if Princess Diana hadn't died in that Paris tunnel?" novel; one that instead imagined the late Princess of Wales faking her own death, undergoing plastic surgery and taking up residence in a Midwestern town where she has a circle of friends, a boyfriend, and helps out at the local dog shelter. But reading this, I couldn't help wondering about the taste factor: the woman has been dead for more than a decade, and now all the folks who fueled the papparazzi frenzy that contributed to some of the problems she faced in life are all going to flock to this book. It's the same way I feel when I succumb to the urge to pick up a copy of People magazine at the drugstore register: I know that in some ways I'm being used by the PR people to the stars, but it's kind of distasteful to think that the only reason I might read a story is because of the involvement of some kind of well-known figure.
That's the kind of feeling this book instilled in me -- and the narrative itself wasn't good enough to quell that sense of unease, alas. Hey, it's a guaranteed winner of a concept from a marketing perspective: every Diana fan who laid wreaths for her is going to want to at least read this for themselves, whether they love or loathe Ali's imagined future for her. But I think it's a bit sad that the author of the acclaimed Brick Lane (once described as one of the most talented British young writers around) resorted to this kind of stunt fiction. Because ultimately, that's what this book has going for it: the quirky concept.
In Ali's vision, Princess Diana enlists the help of a key aide to vanish from her real life; her body is never found and a new woman, Lydia, begins a new life in the United States. When we meet her, she has been three months in the small community of Kensington (yes, nudge, wink...) in the US midwest, and she has carved out a life for herself. She feels the pain of the loss of her sons every day, but she has ceased to fear being exposed. Perhaps she has become too relaxed, for into town wanders, by chance, one of the photographers who for years studied every detail of her face and knows it better than nearly anyone in the world.
To be fair to Ali's novel, she creates a real tension in this part of the story: will Grabowski the photographer identify Diana/Lydia? If he does, will the former princess seize the opportunity to make a miraculous comeback in order to see her children again? Will she find a way to outwit him? But that's pretty much the only part of the book that really worked for me (although at least that made the final third or so more of a page-turner.) Most of the characters are flat or at best two-dimensional, engaging in tedious dialog and situations; discussions about clothes and boyfriends blah blah blah. Ali comes back over and over and over again to the way that Lydia/Diana never confides in Carson, her new lover. The same few themes are harped on endlessly. What I found most annoying -- and potentially most offensive to many -- was the retroactive diagnosis of the real-life Diana's behavior. Sure, it was refreshing that Ali didn't succumb to the temptation to do craft a kind of hagiography, but I couldn't help imagining how offended Diana's sons and close friends might be by this. And I'd have the same reaction if it was anyone who wasn't royal -- imagine someone writing a fictional version of the young Salt Lake City girl, Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped and held as a kind of sex slave for years, without the subject's input or consent? At some point, that becomes almost a violation of privacy, even when the person is a public figure and dead, to boot.
I kept wishing that Ali had taken the approach chosen by John Burnham Schwartz in his excellent novel, The Commoner, about the plight of a fictionalized crown princess of Japan. In that novel, the author is obviously drawing on both the experiences of the current Crown Princess Masako, who has battled fertility woes and depression, as well as the current Empress Michiko, who faced her own problems when she became the first real commoner to marry into the imperial family in the 1950s. And yet while the parallels are there for an informed reader to see, the characters he creates are fictional beings. Like Ali, he ventures off into fantasyland when it comes time to resolve his story, and a lot of readers found his solution unconvincing, but I didn't finish reading the book with the same feeling of having trespassed on the private thoughts of another human being -- even if dressed up in fictional fancy dress. (It didn't hurt that John Burnham Schwartz is a stronger writer, despite the occasional lapse into exoticism, predictable observations about Japan and purple prose.) For me, this was a solid 4-star book, one that blended the real and the fictional to the point that the reader thought only about the story being recounted on the page, not as if they were being asked to chuckle knowingly about the real life parallels.
But after finishing Untold Story, I not only felt uneasy but also puzzled. What has happened to Monica Ali? After writing one acclaimed novel, she wrote an indifferent series of shorter, linked works that I couldn't even finish, Alentejo Blue, followed by a rather overwrought and overdone novel, In the Kitchen, the main interest of which lay in its portrayal of the underclass of immigrants who toil invisibly in the London's global hub. And now this novel, to which I'd struggle to award even three stars. This felt like slightly elevated chick lit, at best; or chick lit with a twist. From writing a book that was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize to this? Surely a novelist of the caliber she displayed in Brick Lane has enough of an imagination to come up with something on her own, without prowling through the debris of someone elses's life? Just as I felt like washing my hands after I finished the book, I feel like asking the real Monica Ali to stand up, please.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The Delicate Art of the Memoir
Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you I'm an outspoken foe of most memoirs. It sometimes feels as if everyone who has endured some kind of trauma in their life has channeled it into a writing project as a form of therapy, and then sought readers. And they find them, in the same way that daytime television and reality television find viewers -- millions and millions of them. But the problem many memoir writers have is that they forget -- like a lot of non-writers do -- that while they may be the central figure in their own melodrama, to most of the rest of us they are at best walk-on characters of marginal interest. So, for a memoir to be interesting enough for me to even contemplate reading -- much less finish -- it needs to be exceptional in some way -- the subject matter, the writing, the narrative arc, etc. etc. The reason I feel rather jaundiced about this is that relatively few books manage to leap these hurdles, and I'm left wishing the author had simply decided to channel their experiences into a novel.
I've just finished reading two books that, while they had their merits, left me wishing for more. (One probably didn't set out to be a memoir, but ended up feeling enough like a family story for me to lump it in this 'group' review.) But before I tackle them, I thought I'd give a shout-out to one book that I thought almost perfectly captured what a memoir can become, in the right hands. The book, Losing my Cool, is one that I got a copy of when I participated in a Media Bistro group reading last summer; the author, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and I were among five people reading from newly-published books. When I first spotted it, I made a little face (to myself!) and said "oh no, not another memoir..." When Williams began to read an excerpt (about his first time in a really up-market grocery, like Dean & DeLuca, when his white friend tells him to get a baguette, and he decides that must be a small kind of bag...) I began changing my mind. A few months later, I picked up the book and read it cover to in a single evening, captivated. Sure, the message was important -- Chatterton wrote about his realization that emulating hip hop culture might make him accepted among his peers, but wasn't going to satisfy any of his other goals, and how the intensive education his father had given him was something he could draw on in an effort to become his own person. But Chatterton wrote with wit, verve and flair -- and a degree of wry self-knowledge that was irresistible. I felt as if I was being taken into the world he inhabited growing up, and sharing his efforts to build an identity among the noise of inner-city New Jersey. The result: a five-star book that just happened to be a memoir; one of my best reads of last year.
This month I picked up a copy of Read My Hips by Kimberly Brittingham (another Media Bistro alum; she and I took some classes together and were part of a small writer's group that met after the class expired.) I knew what to expect from her work: she has a remarkably vivid style and a way of telling stories about her life that pulls the reader into her work. And the book she chose to write (not the project she was working on at the time of our Media Bistro classes) is a book on a mission -- to persuade/remind the world that folks who are overweight or obese are interesting, engaging, active and even sexy individuals and deserve to be seen as individuals rather than just a number on a scale. Now, anyone making that case for a group such as the disabled -- even those left disabled because they took foolish risks bungee-jumping or skiing -- would get a sympathetic hearing, and a nod of understanding an acceptance; a kind of "of course, and what a fascinating tale." But as anyone who has ever been overweight knows all too well, that's not the case with weight -- enough people see them as no more than the sum total of their surplus pounds, judge them and then proceed to make it very clear that they have been judged -- for it to affect their self-esteem. In many ways, what Brittingham does in this booked is aimed squarely at her peers -- those who have been the target of disgusted or even angry comments from strangers, and who have struggled to accept themselves. And on that level, the book works brilliantly -- learn how to strut when you walk; learn that people accept you at your own valuation of yourself; be comfortable with who you are as a person; all great lessons to learn.
What doesn't quite click, despite the author's knack with anecdotes and all her wit, is anything broader. The book is a collection of short, episodic sketches (one of the most hilarious being her experiences riding a Manhattan bus with a fake book cover bearing the title "Fat is Contagious") that are linked together only loosely. Too often, I was brought back to the message at the expense of a coherent narrative of the author's own life. That left me with gaps that I wanted to fill, and a narrative that didn't satisfy me as a reader. Don't get me wrong; I was entertained, amused and made to think even more about these issues. But the book could have transcended that and become more deeply personal, the story of one woman's voyage. True, the reader gets glimpses, but it's in the context of Brittingham's discovery of the joys of fresh vegetables or bicycling, rather than as part of a coherent narrative arc. The result was a book that read like a collection of memoirish essays instead of a memoir that might have drawn in an audience that didn't think they cared about the topic but found on reading the first pages that because they care about the narrator, they end up sharing her vision. So this was a 3.5 star book for me.
Of these three, the book that has the best potential (it will be published next week) to reach the broadest audience is Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family and a Way of Life by Alicia Oltuski. It's probably not exactly a memoir, but was originally intended as something broader, a work of narrative non-fiction about the secretive world of the diamond trade. That's what grabbed my attention and made me eager to read the galleys of the book; I love a well-executed "who knew???" book of any kind, even on unlikely subjects like the codfish. (Mark Kurlansky, stand up and take a bow...) The problem is that this wasn't that well executed: Oltuski's subject matter may sparkle brilliantly, but her prose doesn't. I'll refrain from details until I know whether some of the more egregious malapropisms and cumbersome turns of phrase have been excised from the final book, but I felt as if I was slogging through a series of terribly earnest and well-intentioned magazine articles, not being caught up in a narrative. Because there really is no narrative arc here; no story -- just a series of vignettes about the diamond trade, its personalities and the players. But Oltuski relies so heavily on banal quotes from her interview subjects when as a reader I cried out for more detail, that at times I just had to put this down and go and read something by Tony Horwitz to remind myself that it's possible to turn out something fascinating about even unlikely subjects (like Confederate re-enactors -- see Confederates in the Attic.)
Narrative arc. It's a phrase tossed around a lot among writers, but it means more than having a beginning, middle and an end. It means that the author wants you to accompany them on a journey of discovery and perhaps of self-discovery, and each chapter should add to that process, not simply be another facet of the same basic tale. I learned about artificial diamonds, about women in the diamond industry, about technology and the diamond industry -- but I never learned what Oltuski wanted me to take away from this; the 'elevator pitch' that went beyond taking me behind closed doors in the diamond district. Don't get me wrong: that was fun, but that wasn't enough to save this from being a deeply mediocre book. Hey, read it if you've always wanted to know what goes on on 47th Street, but it's probably safe to skim pages here and there, especially given the caliber of the writing. I yearned for this book to grab me at some point along the way, but ended up concluding that the high point was actually in the first few pages, when the narrator straps on a carrying pouch to transport her father's jewelry safely within the diamond district. This was a 2.9 star book for me; the reason I couldn't give it a higher rating is that even while I reading I was constantly checking to see how many more pages I had left. Not the hallmark of a must-read book -- especially one that is essentially a family memoir, with so much potential.
Some other memoirs I've read and like, against the odds, include the following:
This month I picked up a copy of Read My Hips by Kimberly Brittingham (another Media Bistro alum; she and I took some classes together and were part of a small writer's group that met after the class expired.) I knew what to expect from her work: she has a remarkably vivid style and a way of telling stories about her life that pulls the reader into her work. And the book she chose to write (not the project she was working on at the time of our Media Bistro classes) is a book on a mission -- to persuade/remind the world that folks who are overweight or obese are interesting, engaging, active and even sexy individuals and deserve to be seen as individuals rather than just a number on a scale. Now, anyone making that case for a group such as the disabled -- even those left disabled because they took foolish risks bungee-jumping or skiing -- would get a sympathetic hearing, and a nod of understanding an acceptance; a kind of "of course, and what a fascinating tale." But as anyone who has ever been overweight knows all too well, that's not the case with weight -- enough people see them as no more than the sum total of their surplus pounds, judge them and then proceed to make it very clear that they have been judged -- for it to affect their self-esteem. In many ways, what Brittingham does in this booked is aimed squarely at her peers -- those who have been the target of disgusted or even angry comments from strangers, and who have struggled to accept themselves. And on that level, the book works brilliantly -- learn how to strut when you walk; learn that people accept you at your own valuation of yourself; be comfortable with who you are as a person; all great lessons to learn.
What doesn't quite click, despite the author's knack with anecdotes and all her wit, is anything broader. The book is a collection of short, episodic sketches (one of the most hilarious being her experiences riding a Manhattan bus with a fake book cover bearing the title "Fat is Contagious") that are linked together only loosely. Too often, I was brought back to the message at the expense of a coherent narrative of the author's own life. That left me with gaps that I wanted to fill, and a narrative that didn't satisfy me as a reader. Don't get me wrong; I was entertained, amused and made to think even more about these issues. But the book could have transcended that and become more deeply personal, the story of one woman's voyage. True, the reader gets glimpses, but it's in the context of Brittingham's discovery of the joys of fresh vegetables or bicycling, rather than as part of a coherent narrative arc. The result was a book that read like a collection of memoirish essays instead of a memoir that might have drawn in an audience that didn't think they cared about the topic but found on reading the first pages that because they care about the narrator, they end up sharing her vision. So this was a 3.5 star book for me.
Of these three, the book that has the best potential (it will be published next week) to reach the broadest audience is Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family and a Way of Life by Alicia Oltuski. It's probably not exactly a memoir, but was originally intended as something broader, a work of narrative non-fiction about the secretive world of the diamond trade. That's what grabbed my attention and made me eager to read the galleys of the book; I love a well-executed "who knew???" book of any kind, even on unlikely subjects like the codfish. (Mark Kurlansky, stand up and take a bow...) The problem is that this wasn't that well executed: Oltuski's subject matter may sparkle brilliantly, but her prose doesn't. I'll refrain from details until I know whether some of the more egregious malapropisms and cumbersome turns of phrase have been excised from the final book, but I felt as if I was slogging through a series of terribly earnest and well-intentioned magazine articles, not being caught up in a narrative. Because there really is no narrative arc here; no story -- just a series of vignettes about the diamond trade, its personalities and the players. But Oltuski relies so heavily on banal quotes from her interview subjects when as a reader I cried out for more detail, that at times I just had to put this down and go and read something by Tony Horwitz to remind myself that it's possible to turn out something fascinating about even unlikely subjects (like Confederate re-enactors -- see Confederates in the Attic.)
Narrative arc. It's a phrase tossed around a lot among writers, but it means more than having a beginning, middle and an end. It means that the author wants you to accompany them on a journey of discovery and perhaps of self-discovery, and each chapter should add to that process, not simply be another facet of the same basic tale. I learned about artificial diamonds, about women in the diamond industry, about technology and the diamond industry -- but I never learned what Oltuski wanted me to take away from this; the 'elevator pitch' that went beyond taking me behind closed doors in the diamond district. Don't get me wrong: that was fun, but that wasn't enough to save this from being a deeply mediocre book. Hey, read it if you've always wanted to know what goes on on 47th Street, but it's probably safe to skim pages here and there, especially given the caliber of the writing. I yearned for this book to grab me at some point along the way, but ended up concluding that the high point was actually in the first few pages, when the narrator straps on a carrying pouch to transport her father's jewelry safely within the diamond district. This was a 2.9 star book for me; the reason I couldn't give it a higher rating is that even while I reading I was constantly checking to see how many more pages I had left. Not the hallmark of a must-read book -- especially one that is essentially a family memoir, with so much potential.
Some other memoirs I've read and like, against the odds, include the following:
- The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok: A lot of buzz about this at the 2010 BEA (BookExpo) and it was well-founded; the story of a woman's struggle to recover from neurological trauma and her childhood as the daughter of a schizophrenic mother.
- Objects of Our Affection by Lisa Tracy: By taking the reader through her family's objects, collected over centuries and each with their own independent and family history, as she decides what to keep and what to sell, Tracy has imposed a fabulous structure on a family narrative and made it appealing to a broader audience. A fave book of 2011.
- The Music Room by William Fiennes: Fiennes alternates his memories of growing up in an ancient English home with a neurologically-damaged brother with a history of psycho-surgery.
- Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett: The novelist tells the story of her closest friend, which is also the story of the demands friends make on each other. Brilliant; the book that convinced me not to shun memoirs outright.
Bastille Day Giveaway: Reminder & Update!
Just a quick reminder to all blog followers: the deadline to enter the Bastille Day giveaway is TOMORROW at MIDNIGHT on the East Coast of North America (9 PM to those of you in Vancouver, LA or San Francisco...)
The details are in the post (see the list of most-read posts in the right-hand column). You need to e-mail me at uncommonreading@gmail.com to be entered. (And yes, I'm checking my spam filter to make sure I'm not missing anything that isn't a scam from Burkina Faso...)
A minor tweak: as you'll note, the number of books available is tied to the number of new followers. Right now, that's 22 people, or 1 book. With a late surge, I suppose that might hit 40 people, or two books (101 followers). As the response has been great but not overwhelming, I'll be giving the winner or winners their choice of one title from the list of five books.
I'll notify the winner via e-mail shortly after midnight -- as soon as I do the random number draw (courtesy of Random.org) and post the result the next day.
Good luck!
The details are in the post (see the list of most-read posts in the right-hand column). You need to e-mail me at uncommonreading@gmail.com to be entered. (And yes, I'm checking my spam filter to make sure I'm not missing anything that isn't a scam from Burkina Faso...)
A minor tweak: as you'll note, the number of books available is tied to the number of new followers. Right now, that's 22 people, or 1 book. With a late surge, I suppose that might hit 40 people, or two books (101 followers). As the response has been great but not overwhelming, I'll be giving the winner or winners their choice of one title from the list of five books.
I'll notify the winner via e-mail shortly after midnight -- as soon as I do the random number draw (courtesy of Random.org) and post the result the next day.
Good luck!
Guess who outsells JK Rowling on AbeBooks?
I couldn't let this slip past without commenting. According to a post on the website of online bookseller AbeBooks (which I highly recommend, btw, it's amazing what you can find via their network of booksellers), Georgette Heyer outsells novelists like Harry Potter creator JK Rowling and Charles Dickens.
If your reaction was, "Georgette Who?", prepare to be educated. (Briefly) Heyer sold her first historical romance in 1921, when only 19. Between then and her death in 1974, she churned out a series of iconic Regency romances; I've even heard people comparing Jane Austen to her unfavorably. She also wrote a series of rather unmemorable police detective novels -- my grandfather loved those, but I wolfed down the Regency stories at a rapid rate, beginning at the age of 9 or 10. I still recall that my first Heyers were Arabella and Regency Buck, but I rapidly came to prefer those with an older, more independent heroine, like The Grand Sophy, Venetia, The Nonesuch Frederica or A Lady of Quality. Her best novels have wit and verve, and still have a place on my shelves.
Happily, Sourcebooks began reprinting the Heyer oeuvre a few years ago, so they've already made most of my favorites available once more, and I don't need to worry about covers hanging by a thread or not being able to find what I want on AbeBooks. No surprise to me that they are still in such hot demand (even though Shakespeare and Agatha Christie still outsell her!)
If your reaction was, "Georgette Who?", prepare to be educated. (Briefly) Heyer sold her first historical romance in 1921, when only 19. Between then and her death in 1974, she churned out a series of iconic Regency romances; I've even heard people comparing Jane Austen to her unfavorably. She also wrote a series of rather unmemorable police detective novels -- my grandfather loved those, but I wolfed down the Regency stories at a rapid rate, beginning at the age of 9 or 10. I still recall that my first Heyers were Arabella and Regency Buck, but I rapidly came to prefer those with an older, more independent heroine, like The Grand Sophy, Venetia, The Nonesuch Frederica or A Lady of Quality. Her best novels have wit and verve, and still have a place on my shelves.
Happily, Sourcebooks began reprinting the Heyer oeuvre a few years ago, so they've already made most of my favorites available once more, and I don't need to worry about covers hanging by a thread or not being able to find what I want on AbeBooks. No surprise to me that they are still in such hot demand (even though Shakespeare and Agatha Christie still outsell her!)
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Tabloid Wars -- And a Tale of Murder
In The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars, Paul Collins (author of Sixpence House and the more recent The Book of William, about Shakespeare's First Folio), the author explores with glee and gusto the no-holds barred world of newspapering in the 1890s in a narrative that is built around the murder and dismemberment of William Guldensuppe, a German-born masseur. From the moment that the man's torso washes up on the southern tip of Manhattan on a hot summer weekend, the newspapers are on the case, turning it into a public spectacle. As the victim is identified, Hearst rents out the prime suspect's apartment after she lets her lease lapse -- his reporters allow the police in to investigate but block other reporters. Reporters cut telephone wires (except their own), hire passenger pigeons to carry sketches from the courtroom to the pressroom and even try to undertake a citizen's arrest of a possible suspect in the crime. “Really,” the Herald’s publisher had mused during the throes of that scandal, “the newspapers are becoming the only efficient police, the only efficient judges that we have.”
This focus on the early tabloid wars in the booming late 19th century Manhattan is the really fascinating part of this book, juxtaposed against the details of rudimentary forensic science, a murder conspiracy and life for "ordinary" New Yorkers at the turn of the century. One of the fascinating elements is the way that Collins hones in on the tiny details: when the man sentenced to die for the crime is taken off to Sing-Sing to await electrocution, he is able to glimpse out the window of elevated train the daily lives of New Yorkers in their apartments; in 1897, the community of Woodside in Queens revolved around the hub of a hay feed and general store and was so rural that ducks swam in the ponds. One of those ducks would play a crucial, if slapstick role in the investigation, and so hard up was one newspaper for stories that it would end up writing a profile of the critter. ("It is an ordinary duck," their correspondent informed readers...) His depiction of the "Wrecking Crew" -- a mass of journalists on bicycles whose goal was to outride the competition and hamper them by any possible means -- left me laughing so hard I ended up with hiccups.
This is a great book to read for summer, combining a true-crime mystery safely in the past with enough color about New York in the 1890s and the birth of "journalism as entertainment" of the kind that endures to this day to make it of broader interest. Those who might be tempted to mutter "but who cares?" about a century-old tale of reckless journalism might remember that only months later, Hearst would take great pride in the disproportionate role he played in pushing the United States into the Spanish-American War. From crime as entertainment, it was an easy step to war as entertainment.
Collins doesn't play up any explicit parallels or try to draw any morals, which is just fine -- that fun is left to the reader. His writing style is crisp and lively, doing justice to the larger-than-life characters that inhabit these pages. I found this both fascinating and fun -- a great book that can either be read for the historical tale it tells or looked at as one of the steps that led the tabloid world in the direction of headlines like the famous "Headless Body in Topless Bar" -- and the misadventures of the late and somewhat lamented News of the World. Highly recommended; 4.4 stars.
Europa Challenge: "I'm a policeman!"
That's what Commissario De Luca keeps insisting. After all, he has finally managed to transfer from the special political police to the regular police in the final days of Mussolini's fascist regime at the opening of Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli (published by Europa Editions, and read for my Europa Challenge.). But it's early 1945, and the Allied troops are approaching and the partisans gaining courage.
This is a quick read, and an intriguing one. The idea of the stubborn cop pursuing "truth" even when those above him make it clear they don't want to hear it is hardly new (after all, I've just finished reading the very good novel, The Pericles Commission, by Gary Corby, which puts its hero in exactly the same kind of position.) But the writing and translation are both excellent, and the setting is almost perfectly designed for this kind of conflict: a cop who literally tries not to hear the sounds of torture when he revisits his old office in search of information.
A good start to the Europa Challenge, and a recommended book to those looking for a slightly different kind of mystery. I've rated it 3.8 stars; the only reason it isn't higher is that I prefer books that devote a bit more time and attention to character development, and while Lucarelli does accomplish a lot in a relatively skimpy number of pages, the book still left me wanting more.
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