Anthony Quinn: Our friends in Berlin, 9781787330986, trade paperback, Jonathan Cape (Penguin Random House UK) July 2018

Anthony Quinn’s very atmospheric spy thriller opens in war torn London in 1941, giving it a graphic description of what it must have been like to live in London during the Blitz. According to the publisher, the book was inspired by real life events. It was a well kept secret after the war that England had quite a number of Nazi sympathizers, some quite famous.  

This book makes excellent holiday, escapist reading with a very believable ending and a sophisticated writing style. 

Amy Strallen works in a marriage bureau when she is approached by Jack Hoste. While she believes he is trying to find a suitable marriage candidate thru her bureau despite his odd behavior, his motives are absolutely different. Amy is the only connection to  Marita, a Nazi sympathizer who has gone into hiding and is crucial to Jack’s work.  He has been recruited by MI5 to infiltrate a group of British Nazi supporters who are feeding dangerous information to Berlin. 

When his contact to Amy succeeds leading him to headstrong Marita, a tight plot full of deception and unexpected events kept me turning the pages rather quickly particularly in the second half of the book.

Tales from a Masters Notebook: Stories Henry James never wrote, Vintage Classics, Penguin Random House UK, 9781784871475, hardback

I absolutely loved this book, what a brilliant idea!  When Henry James died, he left several notebooks filled with his ideas, stories and novels he never wrote.  Using his ideas, 10 very well-known contemporary authors have taken up the challenge giving them their own voice and interpretation: Colm Toibin, Rose Tremain, Jonathan Coe, Paul Theroux, Amit Chaudhuri, Giles Foden, Joseph O'Neill, Lynne Truss, Susie Boyt and Tessa Hadley have written some wonderful short stories. 

I was particularly thrilled by Paul Theroux's and Colm Toibin's masterful stories but it was always a pleasure to go back to the book and to discover authors I had never read before. For those with academic interest, Professor Philip Horne who is an expert on Henry James,  edited and introduces the stories. 

Love the cover design! 

Janelle Brown: Watch me disappear, 9780812989489, Spiegel & Grau (Penguin Random House US), paperback / No German translation yet.
 

The incredible success of “Gone Girl” saw an avalanche of similar titles in publishing.  Janelle Brown’s “Watch me disappear” falls into this genre but luckily does not fall into the category of those of questionable quality.  Janelle Brown’s” has written an entertaining, escapist novel with “Watch me disappear in keeping you captured until the end, with several outcomes possible. 

  

Billie Flanagan, a much loved Berkeley mother and wife, disappears during a Wilderness hike and no traces apart from one hiking boot and her shattered cell phone are found even after a year. Her husband Jonathan and her teenage daughter Olive are desperately trying to patch up their destroyed lives while having to go through the process of having Billie declared legally dead. 

When Olive starts to have strange visions of her mother, she is no longer convinced her mother is dead. But where is she, what happened to her and why has she disappeared?  While Olive is trying to do some research of her own, getting into trouble at school and with her father, Jonathan is writing a memoir of his and Billie’s life. He too harbors doubts when his stumbles over some inexplicable cash withdrawals and secrets Billie seems to have kept from him while doing research for the memoir.  Who really was this person he thought he knew inside out and loved so dearly? Jonathan and Olive eventually share their doubts; they decide they owe it to Billie to embark on a quest to find out whether she is truly dead. Some uncomfortable truth about Billie's past shakes them
both up putting the person they love in a new light.

The story of how we believe to know the person we love only to discover this to be untrue has been told before in many variations.  I enjoyed “Watch me disappear” as the story twists and turns, the characters are well drawn out and the author skillfully keeps you guessing.  However, it did not knock me off my socks. 

Tara Westover: Educated, Random House, 9780525510673, paperback
German Edition:  Befreit,  Kiepenheuer & Witsch, gebunden

It’s been a while since I stayed up late because I needed to finish a book. This just happened while reading Tara Westover’s “Educated”. 

It was almost physically painful at times to read Tara Westover’s testimony of what it was like to grow up in an abusive, tyrannical, survivalist Mormon home in Idaho with parents who are religious zealots and as crazy as a bat.  I found myself mad as hell at her parents for not protecting her from her abusive and violent brother Shawn.  How she was able to survive a childhood doing heavy physical, dangerous men’s work in her father’s junkyard is beyond me. The physical violence and disregard for her and her sibling’s personal safety that her parents exposed them to and the tragedies that followed, all under the umbrella 

of “God’s will”, is incomprehensible. How they overcame severe injuries without proper medical attention with her mothers herbal medicine their only aid,  borders on a miracle.

Never having set foot in a classroom let alone sharing intimacy with other children apart from siblings, Tara’s brother Tyler is the first one who starts to doubt his father’s severe religious beliefs  studying in secret for his high school equivalent test which would enable him to go to college. He is also the one to introduce Tara to music, encouraging her to use her beautiful voice and to start studying. 

I found it particularly heartbreaking how her hunger for knowledge and education is met by rejection and punishment from her family and how she never gives up loving her family, longing for their approval. It is haunting how powerful to this day, after all her achievements, her parents pull remains. That she was able to walk her own path staying true to her beliefs without their love and support is an incredible achievement, a testimony of determination, resilience and strength.  An absolutely five star rating for this memoir.

Daniel Silva: The other Woman, 9780008280932, Harper Collins, Trade Paperback

Those following my blog know I rate Daniel Silva as one of the very best espionage thriller writers in the trade.

But for some reason his latest novel “The other Woman” did not grab me as much as his previous two had, “Black Widow”  and ” House of Spies”  they are brilliant ! Maybe it is the same old story, Kremlin bad guys against Israel and the rest of the somewhat corrupt but ultimately ethically correct Western world that made me  feel  this is a little tired and has been done before. The story about a mole inside the highest English or American Intelligence echelons is not so novel either. The mysterious Frenchwoman living in Andalusia and her connection to a past lover felt equally constructed. 

The book has all the brilliance of Daniel Silva’s writing, it is a good escapist espionage thriller no doubt but not his best, I am somewhat disappointed, only a three star rating from me this time . 

Michael David Lukas: The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, 9780525511946, Spiegel & Grau (Penguin Random House USA) paperback

“The Last Watchman of Cairo” has a fairy tale like quality reminding me of the stories from thousand and one nights. The novel is set in the present but also has two other multigenerational stories running parallel, one around the turn of the first millennium and the other at the end of the 19th century when European archeologist discovered the magic of Egypt and Cairo. 

Lukas has written an entertaining story which captures the allure of the Middle East and the Old Cairo very beautifully; I really enjoyed this escapist novel read during warm summer days transporting me into the past.

Joseph is a literature student living in Berkeley with a mixed heritage, his mother Jewish descending from a small group of Jews from Old Cairo, his father a Muslim still living in Cairo.  He never shared a home with his father on a regularly basis, instead growing up in the US with his mother but visiting his Dad during summer holidays.  When his father dies, a package arrives from him prompting Joseph to start investigating his family’s conflicting background.  For many years the men in the al- Riqb family were the watchmen of the Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo although they themselves remained Muslim, guarding the Ezra Scrolls and other ancient documents. Joseph packs his bags and moves in with his uncle Hassan and his family in Cairo trying to learn more about his father’s life and the mysterious Ezra scrolls. 

The novel switches over to Ali, the first of the al-Riqb men to watch over the synagogue, an orphan around the turn of the millennium who is given a life time chance to improve his situation. He is quickly intrigued by the Ezra scrolls and the mysteries surroundings Jewish life.  The character of Ali and his coming of age was my favorite in the novel, his innocence totally enchanting.

The wealthy British sisters Agnes and Margret give the novel the third colorful story, both well known in academic circles but as women of their time unable to work as scholars.  In 1897 they embark on a trip from Cambridge to Cairo trying to rescue ancient Jewish text that have started to appear on the black market and soon learn of the Ezra scrolls.  

All three story lines are woven around the Ezra scroll mystery, coming together eventually guiding Joseph towards answers about his own heritage, his father’s and and mothers love and his own life choices.