Jane Harper: Force of Nature, 9781408711019, C format paperback, Little Brown, publication date February 1, 2018

Ever since reading the CWA Dagger Award winning novel “The Dry”, I am a big fan of Jane Harper. I was thrilled to be able to read her new novel “Force of Nature” before pub date February 1^st and boy, does this woman know how to spin a yarn! “Force of Nature” is just as gripping as “The Dry” and Aaron Falk, the very sympatico detective featured in The Dry, is making his reappearance.  I hope she continues the Aaron Falk series and might chose a case with more illegal financial transactions, Aarons special investigation skills. Not that I do not like her current novels set in the Australian bushland…..

 

Five women embark on a company sponsored team building trekking tour into the bushland not far outside Melbourne. When they reappear a few days later, one of them has gone missing and their world is upside down.

Alice Russel, a manager and troublemaker at work and in the hiking team, has disappeared in the Giralang Ranges.  Bree and Beth, the unlike twins, are battered and bruised, one of them suffering from a snake bike. Lauren, Alice’s old friend and Jill Bailey, co-owner of family owned Bailey Tennants, are unharmed but deeply shaken. Falk and his colleague Carmen Cooper are called into the investigation as Alice had been aiding their team as a whistle blower supplying information of supposed illegal financial irregularities within Bailey Tennants. Her last sign of life was an interupted call to Falk. 

What unfolds is a nail biting page turner of a thriller.  Harper unravels the story in two story lines. One follows the day by day events of the women’s hike and the other Falk’s and the search teams discoveries.  Until the very end several outcomes seem possible as to why and how Alice disappeared  and this suspense is kept up pretty much to the last pages.  A fantastic crime novel set in Australia from start to finish, I loved it!

Robert Harris: Munich, Hutchinson (Penguin Random House), 9780091959203, large format paperback

German Edition: München 1938,  Heyne Verlag, 9783453271432, gebunden

New titles by Robert Harris always land right at the top of the bestseller lists worldwide. Never having read one of his books, I was keen to try his latest book „ Munich” as it deals with an explosive period in Germany’s history before World War II.

The book is set during several fateful days in September 1938 when everything points towards war breaking out on the issue of the Sudetenland, then Czechoslovakia which the Germans want to annex by force.  Prime Minister Chamberlain is dead set to do everything in his power to avoid war and has managed to maneuver Hitler into agreeing to a meeting between the British, France and Italy.

Hugh Legat, one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries, is surprised to learn he is about to meet one of his former Oxford friends again. Paul Hartmann, now a German career diplomat in Berlin, has secretly joined the resistance movement despite being close to Hitler’s inner circle of staff.  Both men have not seen each other for several years and are harboring secrets of their own.  Their bilingual language skills have gained them enterance to be part of the support staff assisting Chamberlain, Hitler and high ranking government officials attending this historical gathering in Munich.

 

Very skillfully Harris weaves historical detail and fiction into a thriller.  Despite being aware of the historical outcome of the story, curiousness about the fate of Hugh Legat and Paul Hartmann makes one turn the pages faster especially towards the last third of the book. However, I personally prefer thriller writer Daniel Silva for this type of escapist reading .

Julian Barnes: The Only Story, 9781787330696, C format paperback, Cape/Penguin Random House UK, pub date: 1. February 2018

Julian Barnes, next to William Boyd, is a brilliant chronicler of conditions of the human heart and an acute observer of human failures. I always look forward to his new work.  His latest book, due for publication February 1^st, opens with this sentence: Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.

This line sets the tone for the next 224 pages where we become witness to Susan and Paul’s love story.  Paul, age nineteen, feeling bored during his semester break, decides to join the local tennis club and is paired off with Susan, age 48, to start in the doubles matches. What begins as a perfectly innocent encounter between a young man and what we today would refer to as a “cougar”, develops into a life changing relationship, both throwing caution to the wind.

It is the Fifties; Susan is trapped in a loveless marriage with Gordon Macleod and mother of two girls Paul’s age.  Despite their huge age difference, Paul and Susan are certain about the depth of their love and never doubt the seriousness of their feelings.  When Paul comes close to finishing his studies as a solicitor, they run off with each other to live together but the demands put on Paul as their relationship shifts are greater than he ever thought possible.  Barnes chronicles their relationship until Paul’s old age beyond Susan’s death.  The voice of Paul as a young and much older narrator looking back on a life lived is very moving and masterfully written.

One of the characters in the book I particularly adored is Joan, Susan’s best friend, whose dry sense of humor and no nonsense approach to life and her friend’s situation is only achieved by someone who has been beaten by life herself.

9780735218406 Chloe Benjamin:  The Immortalists, Putnam (Penguin Random House US), C format paperback in export markets, 9780735213180 hardback, pub date January 9^th, 2018

I just finished “The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin, a 28 year old immensely gifted writer. How someone so young can write so brilliantly and wisely is really quite astonishing.  I absolutely loved this book.

What happens to your life and that of your 3 other siblings if a fortune teller reveals the date of your death while still quite young?  This is exactly what happens to the Gold children, Simon, Clara, Daniel and Varya, growing up in the Lower East Side of New York in the late sixties. 

These prophecies affect their lives deeply for the next five decades.  Simon escapes his Jewish controlling mother Gertie to the West Coast to become a dancer, hitting San Francisco’s gay scene just as the gay movement in the 1980’s erupts. Clara leaves with him to San Francisco to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a female magician.  Daniel is to become a medical doctor doing service in the Army and Varya choses a career in science doing longevity studies. 

 

One chapter is dedicated to each of them as the reader witnesses how their life paths is overshadowed by thinking they know the date of their deaths. I found the book at times heartbreaking and sad but also quite humorous and uplifting. How knowledge like this can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy is hardly surprising. 
 

"The Immortalist" is an incredibly well spun story and I would expect to see the book to become a word by mouth bestseller, a book club favorite,  hitting the NY Times Bestseller list hopefully. I love the beautiful cover design, hope it was kept from the proof I read. 

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.