Craig Johnson: The Western Star, 9780525426950, hardback, Viking / Penguin Random House US

Craig Johnson’s sheriff Walt Longmire, one of the most likeable characters in crime fiction, has been turned into a successful Netflix series but I prefer to keep my own picture of him in my mind’s eye when reading a new crime novel set in Absaroka County Wyoming.  

“The Western Star” has two parallel story lines; one is set in the past when Longmire, just back from his Vietnam duty, started working as an Undersheriff to Lucian Connolly.  Before he boards the train, his pregnant wife Martha has decided to leave him throwing him into turmoil about his life choices.  During their pleasure journey on the Western Star with 24 veteran sheriffs on board, two murders take place, something hardly anyone thought possible on a train full of lawmen.  Young Longmire is suspected of the murder at first but after being cleared, he starts investigating who of the sheriffs or staff might have a motive .  

The second story finds Walt on his way to a parole hearing of one of the most dangerous criminals he ever arrested.  Walt has every reason to fear that the long arm of the person in question will endanger the lives of his daughter Cady and his granddaughter Lola as he was responsible for killing Cady’s husband Michael. 

 

I am usually quite enthusiastic about Craig Johnson’s crime novels but I have to say, he lost me switching between these two stories. They eventually connect but I found this confusing during the reading, particularly the one set in the present.  The novel ends with a cliffhanger which was unsatisfying but I guess Johnson is laying the ground for his next novel. Sorry, only a 3 star rating this time,  one of his weaker ones in the series in my opinion. 

Tom Hanks: Uncommon Type, 9781785151521, Trade paperback, Heinemann (Penguin Random House UK)

Tom Hanks is one of the most likeable and successful Hollywood actors and known to be an avid reader.  He has now tried his hand at writing and has chosen one of the most difficult categories, the short story.

I really looked forward to checking out how he had fared and my verdict after reading the books is he can most definitely write and tell a story. But let’s put it this way; he did not knock me of my socks, his stories are solid, entertaining and moving.  Bestseller author Ann Patchett gave him a flaming review.

 

All his short stories center on old typewriters and I am not quite sure why he chose to do that as I could not find it adding anything to the stories.  The stories vary in subject and mood. One of my favorites is that of a second rate actor who is plunged into fame all of a sudden which portraits the craziness of the film industry just as you might imagine. I am sure real life experiences flowed into this.  A surfer teenager discovering his father’s secret is a sweet, melancholical story as is that of a woman adjusting to her new neighbors after a divorce and move. 

All the characters are well observed, his stories are easy, entertaining reading. 

Colin Whitehead:  The Underground Railroad, Little Brown UK, 978-0708898406, paperback
Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction 2017,

German edition:  Underground Railroad, 978-3446256552, Hanser Verlag, gebunden
 

Colin Whitehead is a new discovery for me and what an exquisite book he has written with “The Underground Railroad", one of the finest I read all year. Do not miss reading this novel.  

I have to confess I was very reluctant to read this Pulitzer Prize winner at first as descriptions of cruelty usually stay with me for days.  A book dealing with slavery in 19^th century America I knew would contain scenes  I would find difficult to Digest. But for some reason Whitehead’s writing did not affect me this way. The cruelty committed by the white population and American Southern plantation owners towards their black slaves were truly incomprehensible.  One of the sentences in this book that really stuck with me is that “evil soaks into the earth”, an explanation for why many countries and former colonies that have treated some of their citizens in the most brutal manner have been unable to shed this bloody heritage, racism and hate still sticking in people’s behavior and minds.  As one of the critics I read said so correctly, Colin Whitehead perfectly portraits “a road movie into the heart of America’s darkness”.

 

“The Underground Railroad” is a literary but highly accessible novel telling the story of Cora, a slave runaway and the history of the American Underground Railroad aiding slaves on their way into freedom up North or into Canada. Cora’s odyssey and her journey from inhuman plantation life in George in the mid-19^th century and her escape with Cesar , a fellow slave, left me often almost in tears and despair for their plight. The journey she undertakes trying to stay ahead of Ridgeway, a slave catcher, experiencing passages of utter misery and many throwbacks but also encountering selfless abolitionists and members of the Underground Railroad risking their own lives to help others, make for unputdownable reading. The cruelty and brutality human beings can inflict on others in this novel are sometimes unimaginable including other slaves telling on their own kind, behavior we encounter worldwide into the present when victims side with their oppressors.  “The Underground Railway” and all the characters in this book captured my heart and mind until the very last word, particularly that of Cora’s fate.