The Cuckoo's Calling

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1) by Robert Galbraith (2013)

This is the first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, who initially published it under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. I've heard great things about it - about the whole series - and I love all of Rowling's other books, so it was only a matter of time before I read it. Of course it's fairly long so I kept putting it off, and it ended up on my 2018 TBR Pile Challenge list.

The story opens on the aftermath of an apparent suicide. A famous model has jumped from her balcony, and police and paparazzi swarm the street outside her London home. But her brother refuses to believe she killed herself and hires private detective Cormoran Strike to investigate. One witness, a resident of the building's first floor, claims to have heard Lula Landry arguing with a man before falling to her death, but is this witness credible? Is there something suspicious about Landry's down-and-out friend Rochelle, who seems like she doesn't want to be found? And what of Landry's estranged boyfriend? The police consider it an open-and-shut case of suicide, but to Strike too many unanswered questions remain.

Cormoran Strike is in the midst of his own difficulties. As the story begins, he's just begun living in his office after a devastating breakup, business not healthy enough to support his renting an apartment. He has a new secretary sent by a temp agency, Robin, who is fascinated by Strike's work and dreads being moved on to her next job. This tension permeates the novel, as Robin proves herself worthy of more than just administrative duties due to her cleverness and resourcefulness, but Strike knows he can't afford to keep her on. Robin is engaged to a guy named Matthew who disapproves of her working for Strike, and I kept hoping she would dump him. It's a sketchy situation really, working for a guy who is clearly living in his office but trying unsuccessfully to hide that fact. He also tries to hide his prosthetic leg, crankily urging Robin to leave when he's been walking a lot and just needs to take his leg off for some relief but refuses to do so with her there. I loved seeing their very different personalities interact, especially as the story progressed and they got more comfortable with each other.

Along the way, we learn a lot about Landry's life. Her adoptive family, as well as her reconnection with her birth mother and search for her biological father. We also meet her friends, both the unlikely - Rochelle, who she met in rehab - and the other models as well as a designer she modeled for and had a close relationship with. We also learn about Strike's life: the son of a groupie and a rock star, everyone knows who his father is and mention him whenever they meet Strike, but he himself has only met his father a couple of times. The similarities between Landry's and Strike's life were apparent, but so were the vast differences, but both characters were fully realized even though one was already dead when the book began.

It was long, as I mentioned, but not unnecessarily so. The mystery of Lula Landry's death had many twists and turns and it took Strike - with Robin's help - a long time to investigate all the leads. It did take me a long time to read, but it was definitely worth it. There are two more books in the series, with a fourth to come later this year, so I look forward to picking those up at some point.

All the Beautiful Lies

All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson (2018)

Just days before his college graduation, Harry Ackerman learns that his father has died. He returns home to Maine, to his stepmother Alice, where he learns that his fathers death may not have been an accident. A mysterious young woman attends his father's funeral, and Harry befriends her because he's convinced there's a connection. Meanwhile, his relationship with Alice is a bit awkward as Harry tries to dampen the attraction he's always had to her. As the story progresses, chapters alternate between the current time and Alice's youth, until the full story is revealed.

In true Swanson fashion, the twists and turns the story takes are often surprising and in that way it lives up to his other books that I've read, The Kind Worth Killing and Her Every Fear. I think I was less shocked at some of the reveals this time, but that's likely because I'm familiar with Swanson's work and I know by now to expected the unexpected. I had a lot of fun guessing what was going on.

Unlike with his other books, I got mightily creeped out for a while here. I tend to read before bed and I had some strange dreams, and once I even had to stop myself and put the book down for the night because I saw where it was going and I wasn't ready to experience it just before sleeping. I could barely put the book down, but was also motivated to finish it quickly so I wouldn't have many sleeps while reading it. Once I got past a few of the parts around the middle of the book, I was less affected by the rest. But of course I kept plowing through it because it was good and I needed to find out the truth!

Aspects of this story will likely turn off some readers who are easily icked out by certain taboo relationships, and there were moments where I wondered at some of the coincidences. But ultimately it didn't much matter and the story was completely engrossing. I think I liked his other two books more, but just by a hair. I can't imagine why Swanson isn't more popular. There was a waiting list at the library when it came out, but it was modest. I know crime is popular and in my opinion Swanson's books surpass - or are at least equal too - those by popular authors like Ruth Ware and Gillian Flynn. If you like crime novels, Peter Swanson is a must-read.

The Fact of a Body

The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (2017)

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich went to Louisiana for an internship at a law firm, where she learned about the case of Ricky Langley, who was convicted of murdering a 6-year-old boy. He was a pedophile and the more she learned about his case, the more memories it brought back about her own childhood and the grandfather who had abused her. The story of Ricky Langley and the story of Marzano-Lesnevich's childhood are both told in alternating chapters, resulting in a book that is both true crime and memoir.

Neither story is simple or straightforward. Ricky's life even began in a strange way, born while his mother was confined to a body cast after an accident that killed two of Ricky's siblings. At the time of the murder, Ricky was living with a couple and their two kids. Apparently the man, Terry, had been known to abuse at least one of his own kids. Ricky maintains he did not sexually abuse the young kid before murdering him, but there was some physical evidence showing that he was possibly abused at that time. However, DNA tests showed that evidence wasn't related to Langley. Just a few months after the murder, Terry drove his motorcycle into the side of a moving train, killing himself and his son. Ricky kept asking for help and it was denied. He tried to educate people about pedophilia in an attempt to help deal with other pedophiles and nobody wanted to listen. He wanted to be in prison so he wouldn't hurt anyone.

Marzano-Lesnevich, coincidentally, also lost a sibling. She and her brother thought they were twins until it was revealed they were actually triplets, and their sister died as an infant. Her grandfather sexually abused her and her sister for several years. As if the abuse itself weren't enough, her family later denied that it ever happened. Her parents consulted a child psychologist at the time who advised them not to press charges, not to even confront the abuser, in an effort to minimize impact on the kids. As an adult she overheard a conversation at a party in which her father told someone, and I think he was laughing about it, that she was the only one who remembered the abuse. Her sister made a conscious decision to pretend it never happened.

Reviews of the book make too much of the author's views on the death penalty and her reaction upon meeting Langley, when she suddenly felt that she wanted him to die. I thought this whole book would be about how her feelings about capital punishment changed through this case, but it wasn't. There is so much to this story, to both stories.

Her writing is beautiful and evocative, and I became completely wrapped up in both stories. Part of what made it so immersive are the detailed descriptions that go beyond what you normally find in nonfiction. She cleverly achieved this by using words like "maybe" and "perhaps" to describe what things may been like for a particular character. For instance: "Standing outside is a woman. Maybe she's leaning against the side of the building, one hand resting on the top of the trash can, her head thrown back as she exhales into the night sky." In this way, she was able to paint a scene quite vividly without actually making it into fiction. It was brilliant.

In fact, the whole book was brilliant and powerful and thought-provoking. If you like true crime or memoirs - and especially if you like both - I highly recommend reading it.

Her Every Fear

Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson (2017)

Kate Priddy has always been anxious, but a few years ago a traumatic experience with an ex-boyfriend put her over the edge. She is finally ready to leave the safety of her parents' house and agrees to apartment-swap with a second cousin she's never met. He'll come to London for work and stay her flat; she'll travel to Boston and stay in his Beacon Hill apartment and take classes. But the day after she arrives, the next-door neighbor is found murdered. Did her cousin Corbin have something to do with it? And what of the kind but somewhat-creepy neighbor Alan, whose apartment gives him a perfect view through the murdered woman's windows? Kate doesn't know who to trust, and neither do we.

Everything about Kate's experiences were tinged with creepiness. Because she had been subject to violence in the past and was still haunted by it, she often doubted her instincts. She would hear a sound or find something out-of-place in the apartment and grow suspicious, but then assume she was just being paranoid. She also had compulsions whereby as soon as a thought entered her head - like when she found a key to Corbin's basement storage unit and wondered if it contained clues - she had to check on it. If she didn't, she would be convinced something dark was lurking there. The whole setup just added to it: she's staying in a cousin's apartment but has never met him, there's a cat that comes and goes throughout the building, sneaking into apartments whenever he feels like it, Alan Cherney across the way admits he used to watch the murdered woman through her window, and a mysterious man who claimed to be a good friend of the victim starts hanging around, chumming up to the building's residents. So many things add to the creepy atmosphere and the feelings of uncertainty experienced by more than just Kate.

I really want to talk about Corbin and his story, but I'll have to reserve that conversation to have with someone who's read the book because it's too good to spoil. Let's just say I had some conflicting feelings about this cleverly-crafted character.

This plot involved a lot of violence against women, the sort we sometimes hear about in the news. A man is spurned or humiliated by a woman and lashes out, maybe at that woman or just women in general (because we are all the same.) It's especially sickening because it's so real. But it goes even farther. There is more than one murder in this novel, and we get parts of the story from the perspective of a murderer and I found it incredibly disturbing. It was worth it in the end, but be warned if your tolerance for vileness has limits.

I was very tense the entire time I was reading this suspenseful story. Kate was a fantastic protagonist who I rooted for. I didn't know who else to trust. Alan seemed nice enough so I hoped that he was a good guy, despite being a little off. The whole premise of the story was great, and it was executed very well. If you can stand a lot of violence and creepiness, I highly recommend it. I'd also encourage you to check out Swanson's last novel, The Kind Worth Killing.

The Woman in Cabin 10

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (2016)

Journalist Laura "Lo" Blacklock has scored the kind of assignment she has always dreamed of: a luxury cruise through Scandinavia aboard a ship with only 10 cabins. But one night she hears a scream coming from the cabin next to hers - a cabin that is supposed to be unoccupied. She heads out onto her veranda in time to hear something heaved overboard and to see blood on the railing. She tries to report what she assumes is a murder, but nobody will believe her. All the passengers and staff are accounted for, and the cabin in question was pristine only minutes after she reported the crime.

Yet another wildly popular crime novel, this one drew me in because of the gaslighting. I'd been sort of interested in this author for a while (I've also heard great things about In a Dark, Dark Wood) but after hearing someone on a podcast talk about the more psychological aspects of the book, I was sold. Lo is dismissed because of a few factors that supposedly point to her being unstable and unreliable. Before the cruise, a man broke into her apartment while she was there and though she was unharmed, she was quite shaken, unable to sleep and rather on edge. She also takes medication for anxiety, and drinks a lot. Therefore, she must be hallucinating.

When I began reading, I became almost immediately distracted by the idea of a cruise ship with only 10 cabins. I had to put the book down and do a little internet research to find out if this is actually a thing, how big that boat would be, and - most importantly - whether this should go on my list of vacation ideas.

Although it was a great premise for a story, it didn't quite capture me the way it apparently has some people. I felt like the first third of the book was Lo complaining about how tired she was and how much her head hurt. And also, she was really stupid. When people wouldn't believe what she witnessed, she kept pushing it even after receiving anonymous threats. She also kept telling people more than she should, considering they could actually be the killer and/or the person threatening her. There were, of course, bad consequences. Any reasonable person would have taken a hint after their story was dismissed, waited to get onto dry land, and then reported it. Why would you draw so much attention to yourself and point out that someone in your group is a murderer when you are all still trapped on a boat together in international waters?

When all was said and done, I found the story rather convoluted and the reveal a bit of a letdown. I liked the idea of the story and kind of liked the main character despite her being rather dense, but I'm not sure why the book is so incredibly popular. It wasn't an unpleasant way to spend a few hours, but I've read better crime novels that didn't get nearly this much attention.

The Kind Worth Killing

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson (2015)

While waiting for a flight back home to Boston, two strangers meet in a London airport bar. After several martinis Ted admits that his wife, Miranda, has been cheating on him, and jokes that he wants to kill her. Lily casually agrees that she deserves to die and offers to help. From here, the two get more involved as they form their plan, but there's a lot that Ted doesn't know about Lily and that neither of them know about Miranda.

I was first struck by the idea that murdering a spouse was somehow preferable to just getting a divorce. It's an awful lot of trouble to go through, and you might end up in jail because of someone you hate. But Ted was rich and his wealth was at stake, and it seems like money can be a huge motivator in crime. In the beginning, I was also rather taken aback by how casually Ted and Lily were discussing this murder they were planning. It seemed sort of unreal, but also disturbing real. (The night I started reading the book I had an upsetting dream that I killed someone and couldn't figure out how to hide the body.)

So at the outset I wasn't sure how I felt about this book and was not especially excited about it, and then...then, the first half ended and the second part began. Here, there was a game change and that is when things got really interesting and it became a whole different kind of book. The least said about this the better, but I just want you to know that if you start reading this and you're not sure whether to keep going, you should because it gets really good about halfway through.

The narrative viewpoint switches from chapter to chapter, sticking with Ted and Lily for the first half of the book. As it progresses, though, the narration shifts around to different characters and, oh, it is not at all what I thought when I started. I'm sorry for doubting you, Peter Swanson.

Once things really got going I couldn't put the book down, and I really didn't know how it would all turn out. It kept me guessing until the very end. I hate to make direct comparisons, but I think those who like dark, psychological crime novels like Gone Girl or Eileen will likely find this one as satisfying as I did.

Faithful Place

Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3) by Tana French (2010)

More than 20 years ago, Frank Mackey was making plans to run away with a girl named Rosie Daly. But the night they were supposed to meet, he arrived to find only an ambiguous note that seemed to be telling him she was going to England alone. Now, at the same abandoned house where his heart was broken so long ago, somebody finds her suitcase hidden away. Frank returns to the street where he grew up, dreading what he would find, but determined to uncover the whole truth of what happened that night in Faithful Place.

The night that Rosie never showed up to meet him, Frank left the neighborhood anyhow, and with good reason. His family was poor and his father was an alcoholic who abused his wife and kids. Frank left and became a cop, which definitely didn't endear him to the people in his old neighborhood and the distance grew even more. It was good to see his brothers and sisters again (he had two of each) even though he didn't really get along with all of them. By the time he returned, he was divorced with a 9-year-old daughter. Although Frank put on a pretty cold, tough front he was utterly devoted to his daughter and it was clear that he had been in love with Rosie Daly. Otherwise, he would have been pretty hard even for me to like.

This is my second Tana French book after The Likeness, and it was a similar reading experience in some ways. It's dense and long but it's easy to get lost in the characters and their lives and though it's not exactly a page-turner it still has a pretty good momentum when you get going. She does a great job of creating characters who feel real, and the Mackey family and the other neighbors really came to life here in all their boisterous working-class glory.

I guessed the killer early on which is pretty strange for me, but I was never quite sure until it was all revealed. This story doesn't rely on shock or surprise though, it's more about the psychology of the relationships. The Likeness was better in my opinion, but Faithful Place is still a solid 4-star book.

This is the fifth book I've read for my TBR Pile Challenge, which means I'm halfway there!

Eileen

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)

Twenty-four year old Eileen was trapped in a life she didn't want, working at a boys' prison just outside of Boston and living with her deranged alcoholic father. Told from the point of view of herself in her 70s, she reveals what happened in the week leading up to Christmas that finally spurred her to leave her hometown of "X-ville" and start a new life.

The catalyst was a glamorous woman named Rebecca, a new coworker who befriended Eileen right away. Eileen was usually very stand-offish but was drawn to Rebecca right away, and became obsessed with her. When Rebecca drew Eileen into a crime, there was no turning her down.

Although Eileen is a crime novel, a thriller, it's not action-packed, but more of a character study and a slow burn. But it was filled with anticipation of what was to come, with many references to the eventual crime and Eileen's later life once she escapes her home and basically becomes a different person. There was a point at which I got a bit annoyed and thought come on, where is this actually going? But I am impatient and that was a brief feeling. When the crime eventually came, it was pretty great.

But it's more about the character than the crime, and she is super dark. She describes herself in unflattering ways: "I looked like nothing special...I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time." She was constantly punishing herself, denying herself food, comfort, pleasure. Her eating was disordered, she drank too much, she had no friends. She projected a bland exterior, a "death mask" to cover all the negative feelings swirling inside of her. She kept a dead mouse in the glove compartment of her car.

The house she shared with her father was a disgusting mess. Neither of them cleaned and the place was cluttered, dingy, and dirty. Rolls of insulation in her attic bedroom sat for years, an unfinished project her father had abandoned. In 1964, when the story takes place, it was a women's job to keep a tidy house, but Eileen rejects this role, as she rejects much of what is considered appropriate for women at the time. She is suspicious of orderly houses: "Those perfect, neat colonials I'd passed earlier that evening on my way through X-ville are the death masks of normal people. Nobody is really so orderly, so perfect. To have a house like that says more about what's wrong with you than any decrepit dump...People truly engaged in life have messy houses." Of course, despite her messy house, Eileen is not engaged with life. At least not until she meets Rebecca and everything changes.

I've been wanting to read this for a while, and picked it up this week because I saw that it takes place in the week leading up to Christmas. (On Christmas Eve as I was reading, I noticed that Christmas Eve that year was also a Thursday, so the timing was especially good.) I first heard about Eileen when I saw the galley on Edelweiss last spring before it came out. I requested the galley but didn't get approved until later when I was wrapped up in reading our Community Read nominations so it sort of fell by the wayside until I was browsing at the library a week or so ago and grabbed this copy.

It hasn't received much attention despite positive reviews, including this one from the New York Times. It doesn't have many ratings on Goodreads, nor has there been much buzz about it. But it will definitely find its way to my Staff Picks shelf, right next to other dark novels like Gillian Flynn's Dark Places and my ever-present favorite, The Cry of the Sloth. If you like dark crime novels that are strongly character-driven, I highly recommend this one.

Winter Bingo is going better than I thought it would. This fulfills the "thriller" square.

The Forgotten Girls

The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blaedel (2015)

A woman is found dead in a forest in Denmark, but nobody has reported her missing or come forward to identify her. When the police release her photo to the media, an older lady says she recognizes the woman's distinct scar, and that she cared for her as a child at a hospital for the developmentally disabled. When Louise Rick begins investigating, she finds a death certificate for the girl - and her twin sister - issued 30 years ago.

The sisters were "forgotten girls," dropped off the hospital and never visited by their families. At the time, it was recommended that families sever contact to make the permanent hospital stay less traumatic. This way, kids wouldn't live in hope of their families someday coming back to take them home. This background made for a pretty sad story, but also an intriguing one.

The central mystery was a great setup, as was Louise's situation at work in the newly-created Missing Persons Department. She was hoping to hire her own staff, but on the first day she found that someone had been assigned to her; not only that, but she had to go fetch him because he was hungover and overslept. This sub-plot about Louise's relationship with her co-worker was an interesting one, but I think it will developed more in later books in the series.

While Louise is investigating, there are more murders and a disappearance which, predictably, are all related. I had some ideas about where this story was going, but when it all came out it was worse than I thought, and some of it was a little implausible. Not what happened, but certain characters' attitudes about it. Not everyone in my book group agreed with my criticisms though, so this might not bother other readers. Better character development would have improved this aspect of the story for me.

Camilla, a journalist and Louise's friend, decided to also start investigating the case, but separately without consulting Louise. She could have been replicating Louise's work and screwing things up for the investigation - which is what I thought was going to happen - but it just happens that her nosing into police business was super helpful. I found Camilla's subplot (which also included some romance drama) to be unnecessary.

Although this novel had a lot of elements that should have worked for me - crime, Scandinavian setting, secrets from an old hospital - somehow it just didn't quite hold together. I think there's much better Scandinavian crime out there than this one, which I only found to be ok. The Forgotten Girls is seventh in a series and I haven't read any of the others, but I'm unlikely to try them.

Have you read anything by this author? Do you have other Scandinavian crime novels to recommend? The only other author I've read in this genre is Stieg Larsson.

The Wicked Girls

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood (2012)

When they were eleven years old, Bel and Jade met by chance and became friends for just one day. By the end of the day they had killed a little girl and after their trial never saw each other again. Twenty-five years later both women, now under assumed identities, are peripherally involved in a series of murders in the seaside town of Whitmouth, England. Amber Gordon is a cleaner at an amusement park called Funnland where she discovers one of the bodies. Kirsty Lindsay is a reporter who comes to town to investigate the murders. Now that they've crossed paths again in a situation with so much attention turned towards them, the new lives they've built are suddenly threatened to come crashing down.

I honestly can't remember where or how I first heard of this book, but when someone in my book group suggested it, I knew I had heard that it was good so I jumped at the chance to read it. I wasn't disappointed.

There's something especially horrifying about children committing murder and I was rather fascinated by this premise. It's not that I can't conceive of children being cruel or violent; I can. It's more the idea that they now have to go through the rest of their lives with such a thing weighing on them. As proven by Amber and Kirsty, it's not easy. They've both grown into adults who are just like everyone else: they each want a good job, a relationship, a nice vacation now and then. But neither can go a day without thinking of the little girl who is dead because of them, or wipe away the visceral images of that day that still continue to haunt them.

Their lives are both fleshed out quite well, though they are very different. Amber lives with her common-law husband, Vic, who seems like a jerk from the very beginning, and two tiny dogs named Mary-Kate and Ashley (a particularly pleasing touch.) She is friendly with some of her co-workers, including a woman named Jackie who is being stalked by a guy she dated briefly. Amber doesn't have a bad life, all things considered, but she works cleaning an amusement park and she's not paid well for it and her husband leaves a lot to be desired. Kirsty, on the other hand, has an incredibly supportive (though unemployed) husband, two children, and a satisfying job. She is the sort of person who drinks lattes and eats bruschetta. Compared to Amber, she is quite posh. (By the way, this book is British so I feel compelled to use their language.)

Another person we get a close look at is the creepy man who is stalking Jackie, Martin Bagshawe. He is clearly lacking in social skills and doesn't understand how to relate to people, especially women; he will get obsessed with a woman in a way that involves both lust and anger and it is very unpleasant to witness. Still, I have to give props to Marwood for this well-drawn, though uncomfortable character.

If I had to find a criticism, it would be that there are a lot of murderers in this book. That is pretty much all I can think of, and even that doesn't actually bother me. I thought this was a great story with characters that felt genuine, and it was told with a level of detail that made it all very easy to picture without getting too bogged down in descriptions. I highly recommend it if you like character-driven fiction that's a bit on the dark side.

The Likeness

The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad #2) by Tana French (2008)

Detective Cassie Maddox is unexpectedly summoned to a murder scene to find that the victim bears an uncanny resemblance to her. Not only that, but the ID found on the body is for a fake identity created for Cassie when she worked undercover. Now she's going under again, infiltrating the household where this fake Lexie Madison lived, pretending that she was only badly injured, not killed, and has returned home. She needs to find out who the killer was and, almost as importantly, who the the victim herself was.

This book was not at all what I expected. Although it's about a detective investigating a crime, it didn't feel at all like a crime novel. Mostly it was about someone pretending to be another person, trying to learn more about her life and her housemates. The group - one other woman and three men - lived in a big old house full of inherited detritus, and they were all graduate students who read and played poker and cooked big dinners together every night. They were eccentric, for sure. They didn't really have friends outside of their close-knit household group, they didn't have a tv, and they didn't go out at night. They listened to records, drank wine, worked on fixing up the house, and were totally devoted to each other. It was completely enchanting.

Even I felt like I wanted to live with this group, and I do not enjoy living with other people. But I can absolutely see why Cassie - who has no living family and lives alone in a drab apartment - was so drawn into this life and wanted to stay as long as possible. And that was a big problem with her investigation. She was so comfortable slipping into Lexie's life, she just kept wanting to live it. As much as she wanted to know who killed Lexie, she didn't actually want the case to be over because then she'd have to go home.

Of course it wasn't as perfect and peaceful as it seems, and she knew going in that these people were hiding something. The whole story unfolded slowly and deliciously and I didn't want it to end. It reminded me a lot of The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler or The Secret History by Donna Tartt. To be fair, I read them both so long ago I barely remember them, so I could be totally off about this, but they are books about murder and eccentric students who are hiding something.

French's writing is just wonderful, the details and descriptions creating an atmosphere that is dark and, again, enchanting. The way she describes the household, it somehow it feels like it exists in another time, separate from the outside world. As much as I felt compelled to keep going and learn all the secrets, I also wanted to savor every bit of it.

The Likeness is second in a series and I haven't read the first one (yet.) I started with this one because my coworker Jenny who recommended it has read all of Tana French's books and this one is her favorite. There are some references to events of the first book, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything. This was chosen for my book group and I think it will be a really good discussion. If you like literary fiction and/or psychological crime, I highly recommend it.

Have you read any of the books in this series? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Agent 6

Agent 6 (Leo Demidov #3) by Tom Rob Smith (2012)

We were first introduced to secret police agent Leo Demidov in Child 44, then continued his story in The Secret Speech. Agent 6 is the latest final volume in this series. It's 1965 and Leo's wife Raisa will be traveling to the US with their daughters to give a concert. Because he left the KGB, Leo is forbidden from traveling abroad so he stays behind in Moscow, worrying and waiting. When his family becomes involved in a plot that ends in tragedy, Leo becomes desperate to hunt down those responsible.

Agent 6 is a saga spanning continents and years. It has two distinct major parts; the first takes place in Russia and in the US, and the second is set unexpectedly in Afghanistan fifteen years later. Leo is again working for the government, as a Soviet advisor for the Afghan Communist regime. Being stationed in Afghanistan - an unpopular assignment - may allow him the opportunity to escape to the US and finally carry out his investigation into the events of 1965. Smith captures both settings quite well, I think, though I rather wished the Afghanistan part was a little shorter.

As with the first two books in the series, the plot was quite well-crafted. Here it revolved partially around a black, communist, American singer named Jesse Austin who was under great scrutiny from the US government and often felt more at home in the Soviet Union. The government destroyed his career because of his political leanings towards the Soviet Union, where, ironically, a similar sort of fear and paranoia reigned.

Leo continues to be an intriguing, though flawed, hero. His single-minded goal for so many years speaks less of justice than stubbornness and an inability to let go of the past. But his life is so tightly controlled in the Soviet Union and he had so little to begin with that every loss is devastating.

Agent 6 is not happy or hopeful, and I'm still undecided about how I feel about the ending. All in all, this trilogy was consistently good, which is fairly unusual. Usually I feel like the second or third book is especially weak, but not here, though I did love the first book a bit more than the others. I don't consider myself a fan of spy novels (I read about half of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and understood none of it, and the movie didn't help things any) but Smith's writing is clear, his settings vivid, and his characters real enough that you root for them all the way.

And When She Was Good

And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman (2012), narrated by Linda Emond

Heloise has it all: a big house, expensive car, perfect son, and a successful business. One day, while in line for a latte at Starbucks, she hears that a suburban madam has died, apparently of suicide. But it's not as simple as it seems, and neither is Heloise. Her lobbying firm is in fact a cover for an escort service and though she has been careful over the years to make sure she and her girls are protected, suddenly everything seems like it may begin to unravel.

Most summaries of this novel contain a lot more information, but it's best if you know little going into it because Heloise's past - and much of her present life - is revealed slowly over the course of the novel. In fact, although I knew that Lippman was a crime writer (I've read two of her other books), this didn't even seem like a crime novel most of the way through, more like a novel about Heloise and how she came to be a madam. Which is fine, because it was fascinating to read about how she ran her business to look legitimate - she filed taxes and everything - and how she kept that side of her life so separate from her life with her son.

Heloise's childhood and young adulthood - during which she was known as Helen - were troubled, to put it mildly, and she was still haunted by her cruel father and the other men who mistreated her. But she emerged strong and hard and capable. It's sad though, as she has had little contact with men who aren't horrible (except professionally, and they paid money for that bit of intimacy), and she isolated herself even from potential friends. I like to think these things changed for her later.

I should mention the narrator - I barely thought of her at all, which is a testament to her expertise. Worthy of mention is her portrayal of Heloise's assistant, Audrey, who is hearing-impaired. Her voice was convincing in its subtle tone sounding much, but not exactly, like someone who is deaf. I would think it's difficult to get it right without overdoing it, and Emond succeeded at that.

This is the third book I've read by Laura Lippman, and each one has been just as good as the last. She is quickly becoming one of my favorites.