Waiting for Wednesday

Waiting for Wednesday by Nicci French

Pamela Dorman Books: 4/3/2014
Hardcover, 384 pages
ISBN-13: 9780670015771
www.niccifrench.co.uk/
Frieda Klein series #3

Nicci French’s Blue Monday and Tuesday’s Gone introduced the brilliant yet reclusive psychotherapist Frieda Klein to widespread critical acclaim, but Waiting for Wednesday promises to be her most haunting case yet.

Ruth Lennox, housewife and mother of three, is found dead in a pool of her own blood. Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson can’t piece together a motive and calls in Frieda, hoping her talents will offer a new angle on the case.

When it emerges that the mother was hiding a scandalous secret, her family closes ranks. Frieda herself is distracted, still reeling from an attempt on her life, and struggling with her own rare feelings of vulnerability. Then a patient’s chance remark sends Frieda down a dangerous path that seems to lead to a serial killer who’s long escaped detection. Is Frieda getting closer to unraveling either case? Or is she just the victim of her own paranoid, fragile mind? Because, as Frieda knows, every step closer to a killer is one more step into a darkness from which there may be no return . . .

Flawlessly executed, Waiting for Wednesday is a penetrating, twisted novel of murder and neurosis with a jaw-dropping climax that will linger in readers’ minds long after they have turned the last page.

My Thoughts:

Waiting for Wednesday by Nicci French is a highly recommended psychological mystery and third in the series featuring London psychotherapist-turned-detective Frieda Klein.

When Ruth Lennox is found brutally murdered it appears to Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson that this housewife and mother of three may have interrupted a burglary. At the same time that an accused murderer is set free, journalist Jim Fearby begins to investigate a series of missing young women. Soon it not only appears that Ruth was living a secret life, but more and more secrets are exposed.  Frieda, following her own leads and rules, manages to find the connection between the two cases, but her efforts to help are sabotaged.  

The writing is superb, compelling and descriptive by "Nicci French,"  the pseudonym for writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. They excel at setting up the scenes and the descriptions manage to capture small, intricate details that make a complete picture in your mind as you read.

This is a complex plot that explores two very intricate storylines in the investigations and brings them together for a memorable conclusion. There is a plethora of psychological nuances to all the characters, including Frieda, that are explored.

The major problem I had with Waiting for Wednesday was a problem of my own making. I have not read the first two books in the series and in this case it would have behooved me to read  Blue Monday, and Tuesday's Gone, the first and second novels featuring Frieda Klein, before undertaking Waiting for Wednesday. Although it is not always the case with many mysteries, I know I would have had a better appreciation for Frieda and the whole backstory if I had read the first two books in the series. I felt like I was missing some important pieces.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Pamela Dorman Books for review purposes.

The Here and Now

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

Random House Children's Books: 4/8/2014
Hardcover, 256 pages
ISBN-13: 9780385736800
annbrashares.com

An unforgettable epic romantic thriller about a girl from the future who might be able to save the world . . . if she lets go of the one thing she’s found to hold on to.
Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.
This is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.
Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth.
But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves. 

My Thoughts:

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares is recommended for teens who crave a mystery/thriller with sci-fi overtones and light romance. 

Prenna James, 17, is from the year 2098. She traveled here along with her mother and others to escape the plague and climate change that is devastating the Earth of the future. The travelers keep their mouths closed, keep to themselves and always follow the 12 rules they have memorized. The rules govern their lives in the past and all are stressed, but rule #12 is most important:
"We must never, under any circumstances, develop a physically or emotionally intimate relationship with any person outside the Community."

Prenna is on the verge of violating rule #12 as she has a secret crush on her classmate Ethan. To further complicate matters, Prenna is concerned that the community of travelers may not be divulging the whole truth and there may be some nefarious secrets that the elders in the group are harboring. Her life gets even more complicated when a homeless man seems to know more about her than he should and gives her some startling information that may change everything.

Brashares does a nice job introducing her characters and setting up the plot but for many readers (me) the implausibility of her science fiction elements (as well as the intelligence of future citizens sending back mainly teens and having them memorize rules to govern their behavior) will hamper enjoyment of the book. If you are reading The Here and Now mainly for the light romance combined with the aspects of a thriller, then it might work just fine for you.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House Children's Books for review purposes.

Worst. Person. Ever.

Worst. Person. Ever. by Douglas Coupland
Blue Rider Press: 4/3/2014
Hardcover, 304 pages
ISBN-13: 9780399168437

Raymond Gunt likes to think of himself as a pretty decent guy—he believes in karma, and helping his fellow man, and all that other good stuff. Sure, he can be foulmouthed, occasionally misogynistic, and can just generally rub people the wrong way—through no fault of his own! So with all the positive energy he’s creating, it’s a little perplexing to consider the recent downward spiral his life has taken…Could the universe be trying to tell him something?
A B-unit cameraman with no immediate employment prospects, Gunt decides to accept his ex-wife Fiona’s offer to shoot a Survivor-style reality show on an obscure island in the Pacific. With his upwardly failing sidekick, Neal, in tow, Gunt somehow suffers multiple comas and unjust imprisonment, is forced to reenact the “Angry Dance” from the movie Billy Elliot, and finds himself at the center of a nuclear war—among other tribulations and humiliations.

A razor-sharp portrait of a morally bankrupt, gleefully wicked modern man, Worst. Person. Ever. is a side-splittingly funny and gloriously filthy new novel from acclaimed author Douglas Coupland. A deeply unworthy book about a dreadful human being with absolutely no redeeming social value, it’s guaranteed to brighten up your day.

My Thoughts:

Worst. Person. Ever. by Douglas Coupland is recommended only for those who can appreciate an irreverent, profane, humorous commentary on modern culture that pushes all boundaries aside.

Raymond Gunt is the narrator and the titular awful person in Coupland's latest novel: "...Mr. Gunt, you are the worst human being I’ve ever met. The. Worst. Person. Ever.” (Location 1083)
Ray is a cameraman whose ex-wife, Fiona, gets him a job on an American reality show, Survival. Even though Ray is suspicious of her offer, he accepts, and recruits Neal, the homeless man who attacked him after he insulted Ray, to be his assistant. They are headed off to an island in the Pacific called Kiribati, via Hawaii. Along the way Raymond manages to insult just about everyone, while never shying away from the obscene or profane leaving mayhem and habitually using the f-word everywhere he goes.

Coupland noted at the beginning: "This book began, improbably, as an attempt in McSweeney’s to reinvigorate the biji, a genre in classical Chinese literature. Biji roughly translates as 'notebook' and can contain anecdotes, quotations, random musings, philological speculations, literary criticism and anything that the author deems worth recording."

While Coupland's humor is right on target, skewering pop culture and current PC sensibilities along the way, it takes a bit of will power and fortitude to take this journey. Not only do you have to be willing to laugh at Ray's antics and colorful language, you need to slog through the vulgar, crude, absurd and disgusting. Not all readers will be willing to undertake the monumental commitment to endure/ignore the language and commentary for the rewards the plot offers.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Blue Rider Press for review purposes.

And the Dark Sacred Night

And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass

Knopf Doubleday: 4/1/2014
Hardcover, 400 pages
ISBN-13: 9780307377937

In this richly detailed novel about the quest for an unknown father, Julia Glass brings new characters together with familiar figures from her first two novels, immersing readers in a panorama that stretches from suburban New Jersey to rural Vermont and ultimately to the tip of Cape Cod.
 
Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with twins to help support and a mortgage to pay—and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has never known the identity of his father—a mystery that his wife insists he must solve to move forward with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband, Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman. There, in the midst of a fierce blizzard, Kit and Jasper confront memories of the bittersweet decade when their families were joined. Reluctantly breaking a long-ago promise, Jasper connects Kit with Lucinda and Zeke Burns, who know the answer he’s looking for. Readers of Glass’s first novel, Three Junes, will recognize Lucinda as the mother of Malachy, the music critic who died of AIDS. In fact, to fully understand the secrets surrounding his paternity, Kit will travel farther still, meeting Fenno McLeod, now in his late fifties, and Fenno’s longtime companion, the gregarious Walter Kinderman.
 
And the Dark Sacred Night is an exquisitely memorable tale about the youthful choices that steer our destinies, the necessity of forgiveness, and the risks we take when we face down the shadows from our past.

My Thoughts:

And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass is a recommended novel for those who enjoy melodramatic family sagas, especially those that span several novels.

In And the Dark Sacred Night Kit Noonan is ordered by his wife, Sandra, to find out the identity of his birth father. Kit's mother, Daphne, has withheld the information from him for the 40 plus years since his birth. Currently Kit and Sandra are the parents of twins. Kit is an unemployed art history professor who is experiencing inertia, or more likely depression, since he lost his job. His marriage seems to be in trouble but his wife insists that discovering who his father is will be the key to pull him out of his funk.

Kit takes off to see Jasper, his stepfather and former husband to Daphne, at his home. Jasper was a father to Kit along with his own two boys and Kit turns to him to find the answers that Daphne refuses to share. Since Jasper promised Daphne he would keep her secret, he doesn't divulge everything he knows, but does give Kit a name to contact, which helps him continue his search for the truth.

The writing is quite good in And the Dark Sacred Night, but the plot left something to be desired for me. Perhaps it would have helped if I had read the first novel, Three Junes, which has characters that tie the two stories together - or perhaps not since this novel is said to be a stand alone novel. What I did feel was an overwhelming sensation that I was missing part of the story, some essential kernel of truth that would pull it all together into a fabulous sprawling tale of family ties, destiny, and forgiveness. Instead of that I was left with questions right at the start when a wife inexplicably sends her forty-something unemployed husband off to seek the identity of his true father because that will give him the answers he needs... even though they are apparently having marriage problems. It just didn't ring true to me. Additionally I could not understand why Daphne wouldn't just tell this adult man who his father was. There was no point in hiding the information from Kit.

Kit himself was a bore. I understand he has shouldered the great burden of this mystery for his whole life but at 40+ years old one would think he would have come to terms with it and be creating a life for himself.  That said, the novel redeemed itself for me in other ways. I felt there was some great character development in many of the other characters and really liked them. The problem was, for me, Kit was the least intriguing character but the main character.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday for review purposes.

Love and Treasure

Love and Treasure by Ayelet Waldman

Knopf Doubleday: 4/1/2014
Hardcover, 352 pages
ISBN-13: 9780385533546
www.ayeletwaldman.com

A spellbinding new novel of contraband masterpieces, tragic love, and the unexpected legacies of forgotten crimes, Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Treasure weaves a tale around the fascinating, true history of the Hungarian Gold Train in the Second World War.

In 1945 on the outskirts of Salzburg, victorious American soldiers capture a train filled with unspeakable riches: piles of fine gold watches; mountains of fur coats; crates filled with wedding rings, silver picture frames, family heirlooms, and Shabbat candlesticks passed down through generations. Jack Wiseman, a tough, smart New York Jew, is the lieutenant charged with guarding this treasure—a responsibility that grows more complicated when he meets Ilona, a fierce, beautiful Hungarian who has lost everything in the ravages of the Holocaust. Seventy years later, amid the shadowy world of art dealers who profit off the sins of previous generations, Jack gives a necklace to his granddaughter, Natalie Stein, and charges her with searching for an unknown woman—a woman whose portrait and fate come to haunt Natalie, a woman whose secret may help Natalie to understand the guilt her grandfather will take to his grave and to find a way out of the mess she has made of her own life.

A story of brilliantly drawn characters—a suave and shady art historian, a delusive and infatuated Freudian, a family of singing circus dwarfs fallen into the clutches of Josef Mengele, and desperate lovers facing choices that will tear them apart—Love and Treasure is Ayelet Waldman’s finest novel to date: a sad, funny, richly detailed work that poses hard questions about the value of precious things in a time when life itself has no value, and about the slenderest of chains that can bind us to the griefs and passions of the past.

My Thoughts:

Love and Treasure by Ayelet Waldman is highly recommended for those who enjoy WWII historical fiction based on facts.

Following three different time periods, Love and Treasure opens in the present with a granddaughter, Natalie Stein, caring for her dying grandfather, Jack Wiseman.  Then the story jumps back in time, to 1945 at the end of WWII, when then Lt. Jack Wiseman is with the US troops in Austria who seize a train full of treasures that were all originally items confiscated from Hungarian Jews by the Nazis - the so called Hungarian Gold Train. Jack becomes involved with with Ilona, a Holocaust survivor, who eventually breaks his heart and leaves him to go to Palestine. Jack ends up keeping an enamel peacock necklace in remembrance of Ilona, but his dying wish is that Natalie returns it to its rightful owner.  In the present, Natalie travels to Budapest in hopes of tracking down the rightful owner and discovers the necklace was depicted in a painting, Portrait of Frau E. The last part of Love and Treasure takes another jump back in time to 1913 where we meet Frau E, Nina Schillinger.

Waldman does an exemplary job incorporating history with a richly layered story. The complicated story is told through the perspective of characters based in three different time periods and under very different circumstances. Her characters are finely crafted, multidimensional people, flawed but realistic. She doesn't shy away from some of the less than stellar characteristics of her characters and those around them, like the officers who furnished their quarters with items from the train, or Jack taking the peacock necklace, but Waldman also treats her characters with care and compassion rather than harsh judgement as they try to do the best they can in their circumstances.

This is a perceptive, well written novel that assumes a measure of intelligence on the part of the reader as you follow the three separate stories that combine to make a complete picture of who originally owned the peacock necklace. There is a wonderful sense of time and place captured in the writing of each part of the story, allowing them to separately represent their respective time periods but also making the whole of the story that much richer for the care taken with them.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday for review purposes.

Dark Eden

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
Crown Publishing: 4/1/2014

ebook, 448 pages
ISBN-13: 9780804138680
www.chris-beckett.com 

On the alien, sunless planet they call Eden, the 532 members of the Family take shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest’s lantern trees. Beyond the Forest lie the mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it.

The Oldest among the Family recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross the stars. These ships brought us here, the Oldest say—and the Family must only wait for the travelers to return.

But young John Redlantern will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. He will abandon the old ways, venture into the Dark...and discover the truth about their world.

Already remarkably acclaimed in the United Kingdom, Dark Eden is science fiction as literature: part parable, part powerful coming-of-age story, set in a truly original alien world of dark, sinister beauty and rendered in prose that is at once strikingly simple and stunningly inventive.

My Thoughts:

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett is a science fiction novel that creates a new world and initiates the start of a new series.

Dark Eden is a story of a group of stranded survivors generations removed from the event that left them behind. Currently the human Family on Eden number 532, but they all originated with Tommy and Angela. Now the descendants of these two are a motley group of rag tag humans whose incestuous inbreeding has left them plagued with genetic disorders. They are so far removed from Earth that any remnants of the culture and language have been deteriorating for years, leaving behind a strange mixture of old and the new in their evolved culture. 

"It sounds dumb but all I could think of for a moment was that it was a Landing Veekle, one of those sky-boats with lights on them that brought Tommy and Angela and the Three Companions down to Eden from the starship Defiant. Well, we were always taught that it would happen sometime. The Three Companions had gone back to Earth for help. Something must have gone wrong, we knew, or the Earth people would have come long ago, but they had a thing with them called a Rayed Yo that could shout across sky, and another thing called a Computer that could remember things for itself." 

The family clings to life by the landing sight of the original space ship that left their ancestors stranded despite the fact that resources to insure their survival are quickly dwindling and can no longer support their growing population.  In an act of defiance and surety John Redlantern tries to force change and is exiled. John has supporters, including Gerry, Jeff, and Tina Spiketree. The society is matriarchal at the beginning, but the underpinnings of society are in flux and change is on the horizon.

Eden the world is dark. There is no sun, only plants and animals that have evolved to give off light. The surface of the planet is kept warm from the trees that pump hot air and water up from the inner core of the planet. "We could barely make out each other’s faces. It made me think about that place called Earth where Tommy and Angela first came from, way back in the beginning with the Three Companions, and where one waking we would all return, if only we stayed in the right place and were good good good. There were no lanterntrees back there on Earth, no glittery flutterbyes or shiny flowers, but they had a big big light that we don’t have at all. It came from a giant star. And it was so bright that it would burn out your eyes if you stared at it."

While I found the world building and the creation of this new society intriguing, there were some questions about it that plagued me - chiefly why have the plants and animals evolved to give off light and why would having the sun be so important to these people who have grown up without it? It seems that they all would have been better off adapting to a dark world, allowing other senses to take the forefront. It's not a hard science fiction novel, however, which some readers like me will need to take into account.

Even though I can appreciate the societal changes Beckett is trying to capture, combining them with the over-emphasis on woman as simple wombs that need to be filled by any male became too much very quickly.  This points to my biggest problem with Dark Eden: all the sex in all its various "slip-slipping" forms with very young men and women with adults. 

In the end Dark Eden just wasn't successful for me. It had some good qualities, but I find it hard to overlook what was not working for me in the plot. So-so for me.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Crown Publishing for review purposes.

Not for Nothing

Not for Nothing by Stephen Graham Jones

Dzanc Books: 3/18/2014
ebook, 298 pages
ISBN-13: 9781938604539
www.demontheory.net

The town is Stanton, TX, population 3000. Your name is Nicholas Bruiseman, and you’re a disgraced homicide detective so down on your luck you’ve been forced to take a job as the live-in security guard for the town’s lone storage facility. At last, you can finally get on with the business of drinking yourself to a better state of mind, except the ghosts of childhood keep rising all around you. You might have been done with Stanton once upon a time, but Stanton’s hardly done with you.

My Thoughts:

Not for Nothing by Stephen Graham Jones is a recommended detective novel.

Nick Bruiseman was a detective with the police department. Now, after being kicked off the force and told to leave Midland, he's a private investigator, sort of, and the security guard for the storage facility in his hometown of Stanton, Texas. What Nick is really doing is living - and mostly drinking - in a storage unit.  Then things get more complicated.

A woman he thought he loved during high school shows up to hire Nick: "The exhaled smoke rises to the top of the storage unit, goes all paisley around the yellow bulb, and it’s then that the woman you know you should know says your name. The one nobody’s called you since grammar school."

Nick The woman, Gwen, wants to hire Nick. She's concerned that an ex-con is stalking her:
“You said you—that you provide security for this place.”
You nod once.
She picks it up, keeps nodding, adds, “That’s what I want too, Nick. Security.”

After this Rory Gates shows up and wants to hire Nick to spy on his wife whom he believes is having an affair. Nick ends up with "Three-hundred and seventy-five dollars in one day, you tell yourself. Three hundred of it cash money, even. The other seventy-five you unfold, study. In the top left corner of the check is Rory and Gwen Gates. You close your eyes, press the check to your forehead." That's right, now Nick has money to keep up his drinking but both husband and wife have hired him. And then a murder happens and Nick is the suspect...

Nick is a damaged character who admits to more than one flaw and plenty are present. The story is packed with plenty of twists and turns that keep the plot interesting and the action moving at a brisk pace. For me, it is worth noting that Not for Nothing is written in the second person. I guess while I liked the story, I felt some prejudice over the second person, present tense delivery.  I found it cumbersome and awkward to read. Admittedly this is my problem. The novel is worth reading, especially if you don't get hung up on delivery.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Dzanc Book via Netgalley for review purposes.