Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer, 9781472151360, Corsair (Atlantic Grove) paperback

German: Viet Thanh Nguyen: Der Sympathisant,  9783896675965, Karl Blessing Verlag, Gebunden

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s „The Sympathizer“ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016 and several other internationally important literary prizes. It is one of the most unusual books I read all year with the 
potential to become a classic about the Vietnam War and the aftermath years, written from a Vietnamese viewpoint. 

Often the novel feels like an espionage thriller but especially towards the end the book turns into a philosophical, psychological and political reflection on what happens to societies once revolutions, ideologies and uprisings succeed. This was the most brilliant part of the book for me.

I read Nguyen’s follow up first, a book of short stories called “The Refugees”, centering on Vietnamese refugees in the US in particular before reading his debut, loving his exquisite storytelling and language.  The author fled Vietnam with his parents as a young boy and is now a Professor at the University of California.

“The Sympathizers”  I had to read with interruptions not finding it easy at times which was probably due to the fact that his writing is unusual in every  sense requiring dedication and concentration, very few characters appear with real names but most are referred to as “The General”,  “The captain” etc.  with very little direct speech throughout the book. 

The book is a confession by an unnamed narrator, a Vietnamese army captain with divided loyalties. Born to a Vietnamese mother with a French priest as a father, his  rank is with the South Vietnamese army but in secret he belongs to a Viet Cong cell in Saigon working for North Vietnam's victory.  With the fall of Saigon he is told to leave his homeland together with his general on one of the last planes out of Saigon heading for the US.  The descriptions of the fall of Saigon, the agony and misery of those lucky or unlucky enough  to make it having to start a new life in the US with all privileges of their  Vietnamese past gone,  are intense yet often funny.

The almost 500 pages never let up on intensity; they make for riveting reading,  humorous on occassion and at other times difficult to digest.
The description of murder, torture and the brutality of war made me take a deep breath several times.

Having visited Vietnam a few years ago, I knew why I did not want to 
visit the museum of war in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) displaying all the atrocities committed. 
This is a book which will stay with you for some time. Anyone visiting this buzzing, beautiful country still affected by the Vietnam War would do well reading this novel before they leave. 

Cara Hunter: Close to Home, Penguin Viking UK, 9780241283097, paperback, pub date 14. December 2017

Cara Hunter: Sie finden dich nie, Aufbau Verlag, 9783746633589, 17. August 2018

One nightmare of anyone with children is that your child goes missing. This is how this debut crime mystery of Cara Hunter begins; Daisy Mason disappears during a costume party her family is throwing for their neighbors and children under everyone’s watchful eyes. 

Oxford Detective Inspector Adam Fawley and his team are assigned to the case and soon realize that something is utterly wrong with the Mason family.  A mother who is more concerned with her appearance then with what happend to her lost 8 year old, a very disturbed brother Leo and Barry, the father who is falling apart faster than his wife. As DI Fawley starts scratching at the surface of Daisy’s family, more questions popp up than answers.  Is it possible someone in her own family had a motive?

 

Despite Cara Hunter keeping a fast pace flowing between various suspects depending on new findings by the police, I would only give this debut a four star rating.  I was never bored but felt the novel was more of a kind that had been told before.  Perhaps the publisher intended to feed the appetite of readers of this genre with a new author. The ending is good but not totally unexpected as the author did not leave too many possibilities by the time the last chapter arrived. 

Jane Harper: The Dry, 978034914211, Abacus (Little Brown UK), paperback

German edition: Jane Harper: The Dry – Aaron Falk ermittelt, 9783499290268, Rowohlt Paperback

WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER AWARD 2017
The Gold Australian Book Industry Award for Book of the Year
Australian Book Industry Award for Fiction Book of the Year

I discovered Jane Harpers breathtaking thriller when checking who had won the Gold Dagger Award 2017 – she did with “The Dry”.  It is hard to believe this is her debut, not too many crime novels set in the Australian hinterland make it into the International publishing circuit taking away major prizes. “The Dry” is not only a superb thriller but a precise, atmospheric portrait of the Australian small town community Kiewarra experiencing a 2 year draught and facing an atrocious killing.  Luke Hadler, a well-liked farmer, shot his wife and child, sparing his baby daughter Charlotte before turning the gun on himself.

Aaron Falk, a financial investigator with the police in Melbourne, returns to Kiewarra for the funeral of his childhood friend Luke in disbelief of what Luke supposedly did.  Barbara and Gerry Hadler, Luke’s parents, beg him to give the closed investigation by the Clyde police a second check for the sake of their old friendship believing their son to be innocent despite incriminating evidence.  Aaron is reluctant wanting to flee his former hometown remembering why he and his father were driven out of town, him an innocent suspect around his girlfriend Ellie Deacon’s drowning death. Gerry Hadler reminds Aaron of the note he mailed to him “Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral”.  When Aaron decides to face the past starting his investigation with the financial records of his friend’s farm, he encounters another policemen, Sergeant Greg Raco who is not convinced the official murder investigation is air tight having come up with too many question marks around the case. The two man team up against a farming town full of violent men and an explosive atmosphere fired by economic decline, hate  and suspicion.

What follows is a breathtaking peeling away of layers, every page reveals mysteries and betrayals of the past and present  leading eventually to the truth.  I could not put this book down, the plot and the characters are not only very well drawn out but I did not suspect the outcome, well at least not one. Highly recommend “The Dry”, one of the best thrillers I have read all year.

Karen Cleveland: Need to know, 9781524797362: International edition, 9781524797027 Hardback, Ballantine/ Penguin Random House US, Pub date: 23. January 2018,

I  was lucky to receive a pre publication proof, thank you Penguin Random House,  and can guarantee once you start reading “Need to know”, out in January 23, 2018, this thriller will keep you glued to your seat way past the amount of reading time you thought you would allow yourself. 

This is one of the fastest paced thrillers I have read in a very long time and the author Karen Cleveland who spent her time as a CIA analyst, some of them in counterterrorism, certainly knows how to apply her experience to the novel.  A fantastic, fast paced read from start to finish with an ending I kind of suspected towards the end but the twist is superb!  It seems unbelievable that this is her debut novel.

Film rights were sold to Universal Pictures for Charlize Theron and rights to the novel sold in more than 20 markets which is a very strong indicator of the quality of the book.  

Here is what happens: Vivian Miller works as a career CIA counterintelligence analyst assigned to uncover Russian sleeper cells in the US. She is also happily married and the mother of 4 children, juggling parental duties with Matt, her husband of 10 years.  Vivian develops a program that allows her to filter out possible Russian espionage suspects who lead a completely normal life within the US. The system also grants her access to the computer of probable sleepers.  One day she logs herself into the computer of a Russian suspect we later know as Yuri detecting a promising file.   Within  the next clicks through the dossier her entire life falls apart demanding impossible personal and professional choices.

I realize this reads like a blurb of the book but it would be cruel if I revealed any more than what is only the very first chapter. Go out and buy the book  once it is published January 23, 2018, you have great suspense ahead of you.

German edition: Martin Suter: Montecristo, 9783257243666, Detebe (Diogenes) Taschenbuch, 13, €

English Edition: Martin Suter: Montecristo, 9781843448228, paperback, No Exit Press/ Old Castle Books

Martin Suter is a Swiss author I have enjoyed 
reading immensely for some time. He is regularly in the top section of the German bestseller lists, I am really surprised he is not more successful in England. Working originally as a copywriter and creative director in advertising, this training still transpires in his writing: his sentences are clipped, short and to the point mixed with a dry, black sense of humor which I love. The plots are always unexpected and twisted.  “Montecristo”, a thriller set in the world of Swiss finance, is no exception.
 

Jonas Brand is making his living as a video journalist working for a People style magazine in Zurich while trying to raise financial backing for his film project “Montecristo”.  Then two seemingly unconnected events unsettle his carefree existence.  While riding the train, he involuntarily  witnesses  a suicide or “Personalschaden”/”human damage” as the Swiss train company refer to it.

Jonas soon discovers that the dead man was working as a top trader on the floor of one of Swiss's leading banks.  When he gets home and leaves two 100 Swiss Franc notes for his cleaner, he notices both bills showing the same serial numbers, something his bank manager Mr. Weber assures him is impossible yet at the same time confirming both bills are clean and no counterfeits.  When he is attacked while walking home and his apartment is broken into after meeting up with a high ranking Swiss banker to discuss his unusual discoveries, Jonas contacts Max Gantmann, a former TV economics front man now working behind the scenes as an investigative journalist and a trusted friend.  Max does not believe that burglary and assault are not connected as the police want Jonas to think. What unfolds is a high caliber thriller set in the ruthless world of finance which kept me turning over pages faster and faster until the very last page. 

I read the book in its German original but an English Edition is published by No Exit Press.

Abir Mukherjee: A Rising Man, Vintage (Penguin Random House) Paperback, 9781784701345 /

German edition:  Ein angesehener Mann, Heyne
 

I cannot remember how I discovered “A Rising Man” by Abir Mukherjee but I am very glad I did, he is a true find. I really fell for this captivating historical thriller set in 1915 Calcutta which had me turning the pages rapidly making it very hard to tear myself away from the book.  The novel was shortlisted for the CWA Gold and Endeavour historical daggers and was selected Book of the Year of the Daily Telegraph in 2016. A German translation is out already and the sequel “A Necessary Evil” was published this year cannot wait to read it, the second one in a new series.  The atmosphere of the book reminds me a great deal of M.J. Carter’s “A Stranglers Vine” but Mukherjee’s novel has a more realistic feel to it, painting a vivid portrait of the British Raj.

 

This highly atmospheric novel opens  in Calcutta of 1919 were the British Raj is affording many British a life they would never be able to dream of in England, all at the expense of  India’s treasures  and its citizens. Captain Sam Wyndham is thankful for his new Calcutta posting hoping to leave his nightmares of WWI behind.  Travelling with him is the ghost of his wife Sarah who died during an influenza epidemic and his addiction to morphium and painkillers, consequences of the war. Previously employed at Scotland Yard he comes with high recommendations but has barely time to settle in when he is called to his first murder victim in the darker parts of Calcutta. 
 

A senior British Official, Alexander MacAuley, aid to the Lieutenant Governor and problem fixer par excellence, was found brutally murdered with a note stuffed in his mouth signaling the British to leave India to the Indians. The murder is first attributed to rebel movements but Sam has his doubts once he starts digging.  Arrogant English Inspector Digby and a very smart but disadvantaged Indian Sergeant Banerjee, also known as “Surrender-Not”, are part of his investigative team.  I am not going to go into much more detail as it would spoil the fun, but from the opium dens of Calcutta to the Lord Governor of Bengal, a cast of very colorful characters paint a rich portrait of the early 20^th Century Calcutta and the first uprisings of the Indian independent movement. 

William Boyd: The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth, 9780241295878 hardback and outside the UK 9780241295885, C format paperback / publication date: November 2, 2017, Viking (Penguin Random House)

Those who have been following my blog know that William Boyd is one of my absolute favorite contemporary authors.  “Any Human Heart” (Eines Menschen Herz) and “Sweet caress” (Die Fotografin: Die vielen Leben der Amory Clay) sit on my shelf of beloved books.  I was very happy indeed to get my hands on his upcoming book of short stories “The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth) pre-publication date and what a treat it was.  Boyd is simply a master story teller.  

“The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth” is by far the longest short story in the book, a small novella in itself, a story of how chance encounters with different man shape the direction of Bethany Mellmoth’s life repeatedly.  I loved the one of the frustrated film director/screen play writer whose life situation is revealed bit by bit through the letters he writes to his girlfriend, brother, banker, producer and his leading actor, really had me laughing at times. The book begins with the story of the philandering husband who has resorted to kissing only which he doesn’t consider cheating . Then there is the story of the couple whose relationship starts with the end and ends with how they met.

Almost a small thriller in itself is the last story.  A mediocre actor is offered 1.000 pounds during an audition by a stranger if he drives a small glass container of liquid, supposedly holy water for a baptism, to a remote church in Scotland.  All these stories are William Boyd at his best, he describes human weaknesses so very brilliantly, you just keep turning the pages furiously. I cannot wait for his next book, he is said to be working on a novel due next year.