Louise Penny: The Madness of Crowds, hardback · ‎ 9781529379389, Minotaur US 

(cheaper eBook edition available)

 

Ever since my friend Neva tugged a Louise Penny book in my bag for a long transatlantic flight, I have been a big fan of her writing loving the escape to Canada with Inspector Armand Gamache and his Quebec team.  The Madness of Crowds has a serious subject at heart, something we have all been experiencing during this pandemic, how crowds and opinions can be manipulated often resulting in dangerous movements, in this book’s case euthanasia of the old and handicapped.  Armand Gamache and his team are asked to provide security for Professor Abigail Robinson who is at the head of such a movement. Of course it does not take long before serious unrest and even a murder at Three Pines are the consequences of a speech she held. Louise Penny’s novels are far removed from the currently successful so-called cozy crime fiction although there is always a lot of drinking and eating going on for comfort. They always deal with human conflicts and political issues, are meticulously researched with a great plot that often keeps you guessing till the end which is exactly why I love them.  “The Madness of Crowds” was no different, spent some great reading hours my only critique being that several facts and circumstances were reiterated a bit too much for my taste.

 

Louise Erdrich „The Night Watchman“, 9781472155368, Little Brown UK, paperback
(German: Der Nachtwächter, gebunden,  Aufbau Verlag)

 

Ever since the publication of “Love Medicine”  I have been a big fan of Louise Erdrich’s writing,  loving her ability to tell unique stories, weaving in Native American beliefs, dreams and traditions reminding me often of Magical Realism.  I was so thrilled when she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2021 for “The Night Watchman” but only bought a copy recently.

What a pleasure to read her prose again, to immerse myself in her strong main characters:  feisty, determined Pixie “Patrice” Paranteau  who supports her entire family with a rare  job at a factory on the Turtle Mountain Reservation and  Thomas Wazhushk, the night watchman  at the same factory who is based on Erdrich's grandfather,  who like Thomas was also a Chippewa Council member and  successfully  fought a seemingly hopeless case against  the US government in the 1950ties over the so called “Emancipation Bill” , a fancy word  and effort in trying to justify stealing Native American tribal land and to erase their very identity,  introduced interestingly by a Mormon senator.  

I particularly liked how Eldrich structured her novel, breaking it up into very short chapters with the effect that whatever she has to tell stands out that much more:   

Patrice searching for her lost sister after her mother's
dream, her wondrous trip to the city, Wood Mountain, a boxer on the reservation who has a crush on Patrice and Thomas trying to figure out how to beat his opponent by studying  the bill at night during his shift, two Mormon missionaries appearing on the reservation .....

It is a beautifully written book; and wow, what an incredibly rich story, from a literary point of view way at the top on my shelf of favorite books of the year!      

 

Craig Johnson: Daughter of the Morning Star, 9780593297254, Viking US (Penguin Random House) hardback

 

When a new Longmire novel by Craig Johnson comes out, I am always exited as it means an armchair trip to Wyoming and Montana. His latest book “Daughter of the Morning Star” has a particularly unknown, troubling fact at its heart with an impactful statement by Craig Johnson at the beginning of the novel: native American women have an unusually high missing person and murder rate with most of the killers being non-Natives, and four out of five of them having experienced physical or sexual abuse.  What troubles one the most is the silence and little effort that is put into resolving the missing person cases by the police.  

Tribal Police chief Lolo Long’s niece Yaya, a gifted baseball star in the local “ Lame Deer Lady Star” team with a rocky family history,  is receiving death threats as was the case for her sister Jeanie who has disappeared into thin air after a car stop when traveling with friends from a party. Lolo desperately wants to spare her niece the same fate and asks  Walt Longmire's and Henry Standing Bear's  to look into the threats. With "Daughter of the Morning Star"  Johnson goes deeper into Native American spiritual beliefs  giving it an unusual quality  but of course Longmire remains his usual stubborn self and soon realizes in order to help Yaya they have to look into her sister's disappearance.  Thoroughly enjoyed my once a year Longmire fix and trip out West!