Monday, November 29, 2010

Book club discusses "Murder in Exile" [September]

The award-winning Murder in Exile was the September selection for the book club. Vincent H. O'Neil's debut mystery was the winner of the 2005 St. Martin's Press Malice Domestic contest introducing his series featuring Frank Cole.

Here's a googled pix of author O'Neil.

Cole is a background checker in Florida where he recently settled after a frustrating legal matter deals him a severe professional setback. His life is downsized and he's content for now but his newest assignment is grating his nerves. He is told to work to deny an insurance claim for a young man killed during a biking accident. Convinced his supervisor is in error, he attempts to continue his investigation of the death and comes to believes the victim was mistaken for another man.

Stubbornly pursuing this insurance case, Cole reaches what he feels is a good spot in his work when he arrives home and finds a threat in a "bullet sitting straight up and insolent on my kitchen table." That threat is not dismissed as Cole gets help from a private detective acquaintance and--along with his and operatives--unearth a sticky mess involving questionable businessmen.

Some book club discussion included the following:
  • the book is a "good summer read"
  • an informative book about all elements covered
  • liked the mystery and characters but not the writing (felt the writing was aimed for those at a young reading level)
  • liked the humor in the book
  • the theme of justice was nicely presented in Cole's sense of feeling wronged at on the job and the victim doing wronged too and in another situation where a mental challenged employed man faced a tough situation--he was fairly supported by others
  • Cole is flexible with his pared down lifestyle and makes do without much fuss.

O'Neil has three additional "Frank Cole mystery" books in print with the newest Contest of Wills published this year.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Book club discusses "Snow Angel" [July]


As the year is winding up, it is time to finish up certain matters and one for me is recapping book club discussions I missed earlier here.

One summer selection this year did often up a chill as we read James Thompson's debut thriller Snow Angels. Here's a copy of the same pix Thompson has on his website. Set in Lapland, Finland during the Christmas holiday season, the police are set upon an investigation of a gruesome murder of a Somali immigrant. The victim, Sufia Elmi, is an actress with a modestly-successful series of movies behind her and is staying in the area under the generous assistance of a private benefactor.

Then abruptly, she is violently murdered and left in an outdoor location with a racial epithet carved in her flesh.

The resourceful Inspector Kari Vaara is charge of the investigation and he has a challenging time with the apparent appearance of a hate crime and devoting attention to his pregnant American-born wife. A few of our observations of the book during our discussion included the following:

  • the writer does an affective job setting mood with the despondent nature of some Finnish people and how it can show up through heavy drinking (along those lines, one attendee mentioned how in a social setting that some from that part of the world would seemingly only perk up after some drinking although another person wondered if the "Finns" were displeased by the author's overall characterization of them--writer James Thompson is a native American but lives in Finland's capital of Helsinki)
  • the constant cold weather and type of community that results of such led to discussions about coping with colder temps in some parts of the U.S. where others had lived
  • the book was well-received for good writing and a good mystery with a ending perhaps strangely fitting for the novel (while another take is that the ending feels rushed in relation to the story)
  • Inspector Vaara takes a jack-of-all trades persona at work as a supervisor, detective and crime scene investigator (complete with equipment he conveniently stores in his car)--sometimes the job requires all those tasks
  • the novel does have an additional element of conflict--should Vaara get outside help to run the case especially when an ex-wife becomes involved
  • the book's title has a partially sharp ring as the Sufia's mother once appears to talk to her deceased daughter and gestures to the sky saying [in part] "...my angel..."
Writer James Thompson wrote the library's website (cmlibrary.org) a short message when he read the book club was using his book and I emailed him on behalf of the book club but signals got crossed, I guess, and I didn't hear from him. According to his website, a sequel to Snow Angels is coming entitled Dead of Winter.


Thursday, November 04, 2010

Recommended (writer Spencer Quinn)--

While assisting a woman last month in the library, she passed on to me a reading recommendation of a mystery she had recently read. Well, she qualified it as a good choice if you like dogs. The book Dog On It: a Chet and Bernie mystery is the first of a new series by writer Spencer Quinn about the mystery (man and dog) team of a private investigator and his pooch.

She shared the book was funny as the story is told through the dog's (Chet) viewpoint. Imagine the world we see through a dog's eyes. Imagine how helpful it is to be a canine and assisting on a missing person case by sniffing out glues. Well, actually that helps a ton and as we see by the book cover, Chet does appear to ride shotgun. Anyway, Chet is devoted to that "down-on-his-luck" Bernie--even if he can't understand his life's troubles (from the book jacket).
Here's a book one library user solidly recommends.