A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH with translation by Martin Aitken is the third book in the series, following last year’s THE ABSENT ONE. I didn’t finish THE ABSENT ONE due to its lack of ability to keep me engaged. However, A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH runs at about 505 pages long and is told in third person and mostly succeeds where the last book failed. I finished reading this book in about a week.

The story has Carl and his assistants, Assad and Rose, looking into another cold case where a message in a bottle that stretches back 13 years is found off the coast of Scotland.  The detectives try to decipher the message and eventually end up connecting the clues from this cold case to the present day where there’s a kidnaping in progress. There are two other subthreads where one involves a rash of arsons involving some banks and to a lesser degree, some gangland conflicts, that didn’t really get no more than a mention here and there.

In Department Q, located in the basement, they sift through a lot of old case files of crimes that remain unsolved and Carl has his work cut out for him with this current case. His suspect is a chameleon with several different identities.  He’s a monster hiding in public and carrying a lot of hatred that stems from his childhood. The villain and his sister were raised in a strict Catholic household. The suspect often was targeted by his pastor father, a highly regarded  man in the community, for physical as well as emotional abuse.

The suspect often referred to himself as Chaplin as in Charlie Chaplin, the “little tramp who made everyone laugh” including his sister but this only instigated fury from his deeply religious parents. The author succeeds in showing motive here but there’s little sympathy generated from these flashbacks that were inserted to provide insight into the villain’s troublesome childhood.

Cut to the present day and the crimes the suspect is involved in includes targeting large families in religious sects, kidnapping two of their children and demanding a ransom for their safe return. There is one other thing he does to incite fear and make sure that the families never go to the police. The villain also manages to successfully hide this life of his from his wife and their young son for several years. However, his wife has now grown weary and tired of his long absences and starts to ask questions.

Most of the twists in the story come from what the villain deems as his “stupid mistakes” only bringing up the old adage about how all criminals get caught by their mistakes eventually.  I felt the villain was almost too perfect in his scheming and plotting. But this is fiction after all and it’s entertaining to have a worthy adversary to make our hero work hard to catch him.

There’s also humor to be found either from Carl’s caustic tongue or Assad’s lack of understanding anything Carl says. Carl’s ex-wife continues to cause him fits and he continues to suffer from chest pains due to the shooting incident that left one partner dead and the other one paralyzed. That shooting has yet to be resolved (See The Keeper of Lost Causes). There’s also an ongoing thing about Assad’s mysterious background. He’s no policeman but he sure is well-informed on a lot of things.

A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH is an entertaining novel, that explores to some degree, religious sects, of which Assad seems to be an expert, and religious fanaticism/extremism that shows the negative effects that such a life may lead to: feeling devalued spiritually, generating a loss of faith and developing hatred for all religions especially those that are deeply devoted. Criticism wise, using the villain’s pov proved to be problematic. Some scenes were needed for insight while other scenes served no purpose other than to give you a play by play of what the villain’s next moves were which I found quite boring.

Also, I prefer endings that are no so easy to predict. The author does utilize certain tropes of the genre like ensuring that his two best leads face off with the bad guy. On the positive side, there’s this really great car chase that will have you turning the pages quickly. Overall,  the story moved fast but I don’t think this will be a favorite of mine in the series. I still think his first book was pretty damn good compared to this one so I will give A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH a B/B-.

Ideally, no-one should know anything about an author, but that’s no longer a possibility. We all have to be, if not actually attractive, at least presentable. We have to know how to conduct interviews, do live radio shows, appear before audiences and wear a tuxedo.

and the paragraph that has the quote that I used for the title:

Some writers discreetly vanish as they become aware of the disparity between their ‘bad boy’ writing and their actual looks. We see fewer pictures of Brett Easton Ellis these days. I’m not going to. Honesty is my natural mode, not a schtick, and you’ll get the Arthur Bryant me eventually. If that’s how an author loses fans, those particular fans can stay lost.

You can read the entire article here. 

The stories all had such a strong sense of time and place. They are required reading for any serious reader of the genre. The novels spoke often of the struggles and horrors of humanity. The nameless detective is supposed to be the antithesis of such horrors. He’s sympathetic, compassionate, dedicated to seeking out justice for those who often dwelled in the fringes of society. He’s loyal to no one but the dead.

His passion for his work and for standing up for the dead was one of the memorable things about these books. His fury was sometimes aimed at anyone who mocked the dead and how they lived and sometimes he yelled at his superiors who tended to focus or concentrate their money and resources on crimes that made headlines and not on those who lived their lives in obscurity.  Sometimes it seemed as if the nameless detective from the unpopular department of Unexplained Deaths, was the lone voice for truth and justice. He was about the only character to offer hope in a decaying society.

Here is the one article I found via Twitter, published today, that takes a deeper, more studied look at writer Derek Raymond and his novels. I was hoping the publisher would put his books on sale since it’s his birthday today but from browsing Amazon, that seems to not be the case but just wishful thinking on my part. Anyway, you should buy them. If you have a library near you, borrow them and read them. These books are well worth your time.

The Visionary Detective (Joyce Carol Oates) – The New York Review of Books 

Bibliography (Selected)

He Died With His Eyes Open
The Devil’s Home on Leave
How The Dead Live
I Was Dora Suarez
Dead Man Upright

Here is the Norwegian cover for Jo Nesbø’s latest book in the Harry Hole series, Politi (or The Police as it’s known elsewhere). I knew you were just as curious as I was to know what the cover looked like. So when is this bad boy coming to the US? It hasn’t been translated yet. My guess is sometime next year. I can guess better when there’s a UK date.

On his website, they released a video of the release party. I watched it. Understood nothing being said but still, what a huge crowd coming out to see him! Also, it’s stated on his website that the first print run made history is Norway with 270,000 copies and after one day of sales, the book went into a second print run of 110,000 copies. Haven’t read Jo Nesbo yet? He writes police procedurals set in Norway. Start with The Redbreast and go from there. You won’t be disappointed. Video after the break.

That link was shared with me yesterday and is only good for 7 days since I am a non-subscriber. I think it should still work for those interested in reading it.

I don’t feel guilt from leaving books half read but some readers do feel obligated to finish reading books that they don’t enjoy. If you need to understand why, maybe that article will shed some light on it for you. I’ve read books for pleasure since my teens and have been through the gamut of emotions and decisions when it comes to dealing with books that don’t quite meet my expectations.

My habit has always been that if a book doesn’t take off for me within the first few pages then I usually set it back on the (virtual) shelf. I will admit to missing out on some good books if I continue to do that. Sometimes I’m in the mood for the story to get set up properly and sometimes I’m not.  On a good day, I can go up to maybe the first 25 pages before putting it down.  

Where I feel guilt is probably when a friend recommends a book to me that they enjoyed and I find myself hard put to get through it. But nope. I don’t force myself to finish reading books that are not engaging me. However, I respect those who stick with it to the end. Maybe this has something to do with my maturity level as a reader? Because I tend to have high expectations and I am sometimes very impatient. I admit to not giving a book a half-way decent chance. I do think reading up to 50 pages is a good gauge if you’re going to finish it or not don’t you think? 

Ever wonder what books are left unfinished the most? Here is the one paragraph I am copying here from the article:

Goodreads, an online community of readers that was recently bought by Amazon.com Inc., allows its 18 million members to rank the most initiated but unfinished books of all time; 7,300 members have voted. Top of the list: “Catch 22,” Joseph Heller’s American classic. Books in the “Lord of the Rings” series finished a close second.

In conclusion, I guess you just have to stick with what works for you and ignore everybody else. If you’re a reader who sticks by every book no matter how bad, great. Some people just want to say that they finished it and move on. If you are like me and ditch them after the 50 page rule, there’s nothing wrong with that either. I am curious to know what rules most readers have for books that don’t meet their expectations? Stick with it? Ditch it? Skim to the end? Just read the ending and call it a day?

The victim is Victor Solomon, the chairman of the tribal council. He was involved in some tribal politics. He pushed to have “Uncle Frosty”, the unidentified Inupiat mummy shipped from the Smithsonian to the museum in Chukchi. Amid vocal dissent about Uncle Frosty’s remains, it is stolen from the museum along with a whaler’s harpoon which was used to kill the tribal councilman.

SHAMAN PASS is rich in atmosphere. You can just imagine those Arctic wind gusts and below freezing temperatures. The story also moves pretty fast at 289 pages* and is told in third person narrative. The story is rich in detail about the Inupiat culture and customs. In fact, the crime itself while fictional, the background behind it is true per the author’s note. Nathan’s grandfather tells an old Eskimo story about a highly regarded shaman who spoke prophecy and warned about the arrival  and changes the white man and Christianity would bring. There was also some shaman rivalry which leads to present day generational blood feud. 

The story is not only about solving a crime, it is about Nathan accepting his heritage. His personal life is an open book to us. He was raised by white parents in Anchorage because his teen mother gave him up for adoption. He anxiously awaits the day that he can transfer back to Anchorage. He’s tired of being labeled a naluaqmiiyaaq – the Inupiat word for “an Eskimo who tried to be like a white man.” He is often chided by his Inupiat elders.

His birth mother stays in Chukchi and while they interact with each other, there is still a way to go for healing. In this entry, I felt that Nathan grew a little closer to accepting his heritage. He tries to fit in and the people from Chukchi remind him in their own way, through Inupiat ridicule, of how different he tries to be but they embrace him into the fold. It’s Nathan who is at times – resistant. In here, I felt that his resistance is starting to give just a bit. He has a girlfriend, Lucy, who works in dispatch. There’s a bit of a romance in here as a bonus.

SHAMAN PASS is rich in folklore and old tribal stories. I ate it up.  The title of the story, SHAMAN PASS, is described as a “bad place” because the wind blows hard enough to kill caribou, according to the old-timers. The Inupiat language is used liberally throughout the novel and there’s a glossary at the front of the book for reference. There’s humor as well, mostly at the expense of Nathan as he struggles with the language, culture and with his most recent purchase of a purple Yamaha snowmobile that every male in the village labels as a “ladies model.” I had fun reading this story. It was a welcome break after reading a lot of dark crime fiction.

The author has a good ear for dialogue, his characters are memorable, the mystery unfolds at a leisurely pace with the help of the characters who help move things along. Criticism-wise, I did find the ending a bit drawn out and less suspenseful but the author did do some  detailed research behind the search technique of finding tracks buried underneath the snow. The culmination of events was set against a snowstorm type blizzard. There is much that I left out and as it should be. I recommend Stan Jones for readers who are looking for a mystery that provides insight and knowledge about another culture and is set in an exotic location. I love stories set in cold climates myself. Another plus is that the stories are not overly violent. My grade, B+.  Highly recommend this book and the one before it, if that matters to anyone.

NOTES: I bought his ebook at the trade paperback price of $9.75 at Amazon. There are four books in the series and all are digitized. I am happy to report no formatting errors. You can also read a sample of this book at Google Books and of course, at Amazon as well.

Similar authors you might enjoy: Asa Larsson (Sun Storm)  and Dana Stabenow (Fire and Ice) who also write in cold climes.  If you have any additional recommendations, please share.

Senseless by Stona Fitch (A-)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins (A)
Unknown Man #89 by Elmore Leonard (A)
The Getaway by Jim Thompson (B+)

Only four books read this month. Hey, I’ve always been a slow reader who is easily distracted by life. Anyway, this wasn’t a bad month reading-wise for me. I picked these books specifically because they were supposed to be good reads and they were. I set aside the Shirley Kennett book, Time of Death. Not sure when or if I will get back to it.

I’ve always wanted to do a round-up post at the end of the month but never had time or forgot. I plan to do more of these just to keep track. I am going to set a goal for myself to read five books next month. A lot of you may laugh but with a full-time job & being a workaholic that’s about the best I can do. So, I’m looking forward to reading some great books next month! I have some titles picked  but I don’t want to post them because it never works out the way I plan it on paper or in a post.

I’m just going to borrow other adjectives I’ve seen with links to the reviews that best sum up this book: Unusual and Outstanding  and great writing in a great, unforgettable, singular work of art. The adjectives I have for it would be: compelling, grotesque and unforgettable. The novel’s length is about 160 pages, told in first person. I read this entire book in one sitting. I recommend doing it that way, too, because you’ll find yourself deeply immersed and captivated by the story of Elliot Gast, our doomed protagonist who finds himself kidnapped off the streets of Brussels, “the polite heart of Europe” by a group of anti-globalization terrorists.

I know I will fail in conveying how well written this novel is and how its ideas and plot and characters will leave you spellbound. I will leave it up to Megan Abbott:

Holding your breath as the mayhem multiplies, you cling to the spaces between the scenes of escalating terror. And in those spaces you find lushly rendered reveries from Gast’s past, impressionistic memory fugues that provide shrewd parallels to his abject present. Recalling them, his escape is yours, and you reach for it desperately.

Elliot Gast is an American economist and an ex-bureaucrat. He makes his home between Washington and Brussels. He’s married but they are not especially close. As he says, he’d led a predictable life before this, before he finds himself kidnapped by a group of terrorists who want to make an example of him and punish him for the work that he did to bring about globalization. And even though he has no power or connections.

At first Elliot is treated comfortably as he is held captive inside a white colored apartment. His liaison is with Nin, whose face is covered up with a scarf. She provides him with his Dunghill cigarettes and books. What Nin tells Elliot made my heart race just a bit and that’s when I knew things were gonna get serious:

….all I can tell you is that most hostages live,” she said with remarkable vagueness, then added a more cryptic note: “Unless they decide not to.”

At its best moments, this novel is riveting as Elliot reminisces about his boyhood travails, on meeting his wife, on his life work, on his parents and his childhood fears. I enjoyed those scenes immensely and felt myself living it with him. It’s those moments between his remembrances that we are forced to turn away and cringe in anticipation as the terror begins and escalates to the highest levels of human endurance. The best parts of the book are Elliott’s memories and as for the villains? they are memorable for their ideology and having the means and determination to carry out horrible acts to get their message across. Then there’s the added element of reality TV where there are cables that snake around the room to broadcast a man’s suffering in captivity to a detached audience.

The violence will be the deal breaker, well, for some readers. Violence in fiction doesn’t disturb me unless the writer is very effective at imagery, with using the right words to make you visualize everything that is happening. This author did exactly that but still, this book isn’t for the squeamish and upon reaching the end, all I could say was: I got through it.

Again, how do we define noir? Merely because it’s dark? or because it ends in tragedy? or both? I tend to want to stick to Daniel Woodrell’s version of noir in that true noir ends in tragedy and if that is the definition I am using then SENSELESS wouldn’t fit. Make no mistake though, it is dark. This novel is self-described as a thriller with a literary tone. That is correct. My grade is an A-. I did have some questions but nothing that will ever get answered, so the novel is not without its imperfections. Anyway, I’ve read what most call the most disturbing novel ever written. Eh, maybe I would have said the same if I hadn’t read Derek Raymond first.

Source: I bought this book for $3.99 at Amazon

Notes: There is actually a movie version of this book with the same title starring nobody I know.

Filed under: Book Reviews, Must Read Tagged: globalization, Grade A, Megan Abbott, Stona Fitch, terrorism ]]> http://avidmysteryreader.com/2013/05/22/book-review-senseless-stona-fitch/feed/ 12 elise38 senseless http://avidmysteryreader.com/2013/05/21/stephen-king-you-disappoint-me/ http://avidmysteryreader.com/2013/05/21/stephen-king-you-disappoint-me/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 22:10:09 +0000 Keishon http://avidmysteryreader.com/?p=16843 Continue reading →]]> From the The Wall Street  Journal: 

“I have no plans for a digital version,” Mr. King said. “Maybe at some point, but in the meantime, let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.”

Writer Stephen King has been getting a lot of “atta boys” from all over the net (especially in my RSS feed) in announcing that his next book, Joyland, will be print only.  All I can do is sigh and think: here we go again. I’m sure people in important places will watch to see how this plays out. Will there be backlash? Will Stephen King’s fans stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore? Time will only tell. I wouldn’t be going but then I’m not a fan. And he’s wrong in what he’s doing. The consumer should have the choice, always.

Just posting my counter point as I’m sure I’m in the minority. No author on my auto-buy list will make me forgo digital for a print copy if they ever decide to pull this stunt. I’d rather not read it or wait till a digital version is made available. Hopefully the authors I enjoy have some sense. I think books should be made available in every possible format to make it more accessible to everybody and should not be held hostage in the hopes of drumming up business for struggling bookstores (who more or less don’t discount). I don’t think bookstores should go away but one format shouldn’t be preferred over another. It’s survival of the fittest as far as I am concerned. 

Stephen King, Hero of Print, Nixes Digital Version of New Novel – Daily News

“I’d just as soon not have people buy their books while typing a thank-you note,” Ingram said.

What a bizarre statement. I’m done.

Update 5/22/13: This is not a well thought out rant and I’ve seen read that this is a gimmick by Stephen King who is able to do this with a small publisher. My thoughts stand though no matter how flawed.

Eddie “Fingers” Coyle is a small time gunrunner working for the mob. He got his nickname from getting his hand smashed in a drawer for a mistake he made in providing guns he bought from somebody that got one of his mob buddies arrested.

When we meet the middle-aged Eddie Coyle, he’s distressed about a criminal charge. He was convicted a month ago for trucking 200 cases of Canadian Club that wasn’t his and is looking at jail time. With three kids and a wife, he wants to avoid prison. He asks what he can do to make the charge go away.  Federal agent, Dave Foley wants Eddie to turn informant. Eddie gives Foley a tip on a young up and coming gunrunner selling machine guns and M-sixteens.

“Well,” the stocky man said, “suppose we were to talk about some machine guns.”

“Just to change the subject, ” the driver said.

“Yeah, ” the stocky man said. “Suppose you had a reliable informer that put you onto a colored gentleman that was buying some machine guns. Army machine guns, M-sixteens. Would you want a fellow like that, that was helping you like that, would you want him to go to jail and embarrass his kids and all?

The second thread involves some bank robberies. A slew of them and by the same gang, where their m.o. involves slipping into the homes of bankers, taking them hostage and accompanying them to the bank to empty out the vault. Much of this thread was not very clear especially on who the bank robbers were until you get closer to the end. They rob four banks in total, mostly with some success. Complications arise eventually and I was waiting for it to happen and wasn’t disappointed.

Eddie Coyle has made some mistakes and his time has probably passed. His character was not written without a touch of sympathy for his circumstances. With that said, Eddie’s not interested in going straight or being reformed. He’s only interested in saving himself from serving time. And it isn’t until you read the last two sentences at the end of the book that you understand why the author wrote this story in the first place. It’s the ever revolving door of organized crime where you see the same crimes but with different faces.

“Some of us die, the rest of us get older, new guys come along, old guys disappear. It changes everyday.”

The era of the 1970′s is rendered well between these 192 pages. The FBI’s focus on the Panthers, the militants and to some extent, the mafia. Moving on. On TV there’s mention of the David Frost show. Soundtrack wise, there’s Johnny Cash singing about Folsom Prison and as for sports, there’s the mention of hockey and the Boston Bruins and Bobby Orr who led the team to winning the Stanley Cup in 1972. There’s a decent sense of time and place. While the story contains violence, it is not pervasive or all that graphic. I enjoyed the scenes with the FBI agents, their interactions with Eddie Coyle and one other snitch who goes by Dillon, whose role in the story stayed mostly hidden to the end.

I must say I had my heart in my throat as the story came to its conclusion. This is a short story that packs a hell of a punch. Closed the book with a touch of sadness. THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE is dark and chilling. It is the non-romanticized portrayal of the mob and street crime in general. To paraphrase Dennis Lehane from the introduction of the 40th Picador edition, Higgins didn’t glamorize the police or the thugs who inhabit this world. The tone of this story was more in line with being direct and written with some authenticity   I’m glad to have read this excellent crime novel. My grade is an solid A. No surprise here since I love this genre and these types of books. This is a novel of significant importance in the genre and a must read for all mystery readers.

The movie version of THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, directed by Peter Yates and released in 1973, starred Robert Mitchum as Eddie Coyle. For once, I think I’d like to watch the movie since it’s free on Amazon Prime.

Source: I bought this one + several more

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Kindle), 192 pages, $8.89, the price of a trade paperback maybe?

Up next: Shirley Kennett’s police procedural, Time of Death, book five in the PJ Gray series.