Review of LOCKED IN by Jussi Adler-Olsen

3.5 Stars 

This is the tenth and last installment in the Department Q series; this book brings everything full circle to the first book.

This book begins where The Shadow Murders, the ninth book, ends. Detective Carl Mørck, charged with aiding and abetting a murder, corruption, theft, and drug dealing, is arrested and incarcerated. He knows he has been framed but he doesn’t know by whom or how to prove his innocence. In prison he is in danger from incarcerated criminals and corrupt guards; he learns that there is a bounty on his head. The media is having a heyday, and few in the Copenhagen police department support him. The exceptions are Assad, Rose, and Gordon of Department Q, but they have been given strict orders not to investigate Carl’s case in any way. Fortunately, help does come from unexpected people who feel they owe Carl.

There are lots of connections to previous cases, especially the one central to the first book, The Keeper of Lost Causes. I had forgotten quite a bit but the author provides sufficient information to remind readers of the essential details. Then there’s the case that is mentioned in each of the books, the one which resulted in Hardy’s catastrophic injury and the death of his colleague Anker Høyer. That case is the one that is finally solved.

The novel covers a fairly short time span (Dec. 26, 2020 to Jan. 11, 2021) but several points of view are provided.  Included are the perspectives of various bad guys; tension increases as the reader knows the personalities, motivations, and plans of those interested in guaranteeing Carl’s demise. Carl is in danger from both inside and outside the prison.

The novel is like the previous Department Q books. There are the quirky Department Q staffers; touches of humour, usually via Assad’s misunderstanding of idiomatic expressions; graphic violence; and the untangling of “labyrinthine mysteries.” Though the case that lead to the creation of Department Q is resolved, I did find that some of the secondary characters are abandoned. What happened to “the invisible power behind it all” or Pelle? Their subplots, given more than cursory attention, are not completely resolved.

This book is recommended to those who have followed and read the entire series. I’m actually tempted to re-read the books to see if there are any subtle clues as to the villain’s identity which I missed in my initial readings.  

Review of THE LOST HOUSE by Melissa Larsen (New Release)

 3 Stars

Agnes Glin travels from California to Iceland to investigate the gruesome murders of her grandmother Marie and her infant daughter 40 years earlier. The case was never solved, but most people suspect that Einar, Agnes’ grandfather, killed his wife and daughter. Agnes’ beloved grandfather has died but she wants to clear his name so connects with Nora Carver, a true crime podcaster who has helped solve another case. Will Agnes be able to prove her grandfather’s innocence or will she only confirm what virtually everyone in the town of Bifröst already believes?

There are a couple of complications. Agnes has a dependence on pain medication after a major injury to her leg. Then, just as Agnes arrives in Iceland, a university student named Ása has gone missing in Bifröst after a party at Agnes’ ancestral home. Are the cases connected?

I found Agnes an unlikeable character and so had difficulty caring about what happens to her. She’s 26 years of age, but she seems very immature. Before arriving in Iceland and despite warnings from her father, it never occurred to her that her grandfather might be guilty? She’s in Iceland for two weeks in February, but doesn’t buy gloves to protect her hands from the cold? She is very self-centred, showing little consideration for other people’s struggles or emotions. She stays with Nora but not once offers to help with things like meals? Despite her life-altering injury, she doesn’t take care of herself; over and over again, she pushes her body beyond its limits and then seems shocked by the pain she experiences. She makes rash decisions without considering possible consequences; these seem choices more appropriate to a teenager. Though we are to believe she undergoes some character growth at the end of the novel, I wasn’t convinced.

The male characters feel underdeveloped, more like flat characters with one dominant trait: Óskar is hostile, Ingvar is sweet, Thor Senior is antagonistic, etc. And what’s with Óskar’s belief in a murder gene; he’s a university student so supposedly intelligent but thinks Agnes needs to be watched and calls her “’murderer’s child’”!

Pacing is an issue. Not much happens, especially in the middle of the plot. There are just a lot of conversations which are repetitive and reveal little new information. And so much else is repetitive; since so much of the narrative is Agnes’ interior monologue, there are repeated references to her injury, her struggles with opiate addiction, her fractured relationship with her father, and her feelings for Lilja. There is action at the end of the book, but readers might be tempted to stop reading before reaching the action-packed section.

There are plot issues. The author seems not to have researched Iceland’s weather very carefully because blizzards are not likely to happen so often and so conveniently in a two-week span. And where’s the reference to the Northern Lights since February is the best month to see them there? The search for Ása is so uncoordinated and no one thinks of a cellar in a farmhouse? Agnes, not once but twice, somehow finds herself at the back of houses? And what’s with the unnecessary romantic relationship, especially one which relies on the love-at-first-sight trope? Finally and most importantly, there is no great reveal because the plot is predictable. The repeated references to people’s ages give any astute reader the answer very early on.

I understand this is not the author’s first novel, but with its plot weaknesses it feels very much like a debut book.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL by Charlotte Wood

 3.5 Stars

Slow, meditative novels dominated the 2024 Booker Prize for Fiction. This title was on the shortlist.

The narrator is an unnamed woman who worked in a Threatened Species Rescue Centre. She leaves her job and her marriage in Sydney and joins a convent in her childhood town in New South Wales. She doesn’t convert; she becomes an oblate, not a member of the religious order but offering herself in service to it. She despairs about the state of the world and wants to withdraw and reflect on her life. She believes the routine, solitude, and quiet of the convent will allow her to contemplate grief, forgiveness, and atonement.

There is minimal plot. Only three events occur: the remains of Sister Jenny, a nun murdered years ago in Thailand, are repatriated; Helen Parry, an activist nun working on environmental and human rights issues, arrives and brings the noise of the world with her; and the region suffers a plague of mice which swarm the convent after a drought in the north.

The description of the mice is visceral. The narrator admits to hating them: “Their stink, their rapaciousness and skittering feet. . . . At night . . . No birds, no psalm practice, no miscellaneous noises . . . Only mice feet overhead, pattering across the ceiling and inside the walls.” The narrator wakes up to “see that the flyscreen over my closed window is crawling with leaping, climbing mice.” At one point the mice begin to feed on their own dead. The scene where the woman opens the car door and feels “a squirming sensation” at her back only to discover a dozen mice will not leave me.

It is the flashbacks to the narrator’s childhood that were most interesting to me. Her relationship with her mother receives most attention. It’s obvious that she was deeply influenced by her mother: “I never knew anyone else who had her reverence for the earth itself.” A major regret is her not having understood her mother better and therefore not helping her more as her death approached. The woman realizes her inability to recover from her parents’ death; she describes this as “a source of lifelong shame to me.”

For me, it is not the narrator who is most memorable; it is Helen Parry who steals the show. Helen and the narrator were classmates and she remembers Helen as a vulnerable, needy child with a negligent mother; Helen was treated as an outcast and terribly bullied. Now she seems invulnerable and so confident that she requires no affirmation from anyone. Her comment at the end shows wisdom: “’I loved my mother, and she – tried, as much as she was able, to love me.’” I’d love to read a book focusing on Helen and her development into “the radical environmentalist nun.”

The novel asks what is the appropriate response when there are so many problems that require our attention. Sister Jenny insisted “on the immorality of staying” but her friend who stayed at the convent has difficulty forgiving Jenny for leaving. The narrator admits that she can accurately be described as “Choosing disappearance, while Helen has chosen the opposite.” Is retreat or escape an ethical choice when problems like climate change need action?

As I read, I found myself identifying with a comment made by the narrator: “It feels always that I am on the edge of some comprehension here but never breaking through to the other side.” I still feel that I’ve missed a lot in this novel, as if I’m the stone yard, arid ground, which has not absorbed much.

Review of BUTTER: A NOVEL OF FOOD AND MURDER by Asako Yuzuki

 3.5 Stars

This almost-500-page book, a bestseller in Japan, is based on the real-life case of the Konkatsu Killer, a con woman and talented cook convicted of killing three of her lovers.

Rika Machida is a 33-year-old journalist in Tokyo who wants to write about Manako Kajii and meets with her several times in the detention centre where she is awaiting a re-trial. Rika becomes fascinated with Kajii’s gourmet tastes and starts to learn how to cook. As a result she gains weight and begins to receive negative comments just as Kajii was the target of relentless fat-shaming.

The novel examines the impossible beauty standards and gender expectations to which Japanese women are held: “Japanese women are required to be self-denying, hard-working and ascetic, and in the same breath, to be feminine, soft and caring towards men.” Men are domestically dependent on women, but “At the end of the day, men were not looking for a real-life woman, but a professional entertainer.”

Rika is a dynamic character. She learns to cook, wrestles to be comfortable in her new body, navigates society’s patriarchal views of women’s roles and bodies, and in the end discovers how she wants to live. It’s patently obvious that one central theme is that one should accept oneself as one is, not as society dictates. Another theme is that there are different ways of living and one must find the way that best fits: “what’s so wrong about choosing whichever path seems more appealing to you? What’s so wrong about coating barren, flavourless reality in oodles of melted butter and seasoning it with condiments and spices?’’

These themes are not developed subtly. Topics like gender expectations and beauty standards are discussed by the characters in a very straightforward manner. Actually some of the dialogue feels didactic rather than realistic as if the author was worried her theme was not developed with sufficient clarity. In fact, much of the novel feels inauthentic. Behaviour feels contrived to develop theme. Rika’s weight gain is meant to challenge societal pressures regarding feminine appearance and her friend Reiko’s behaviour is meant to challenge societal expectations regarding relationships.

I found characters behave inconsistently. Rika is supposedly intelligent as evidenced by her success at her job, but her behaviour suggests the opposite. It is obvious from the beginning that Kajii is narcissistic, cruel, and conniving, yet Rika doesn’t see how she is being manipulated. Her friend Reiko’s behaviour also seems idiotic for someone who is supposed to be intelligent. Her decision to play detective to help her friend seems extreme to say the least.

There are extensive luscious descriptions of food: “the pale-yellow solid gently began to change colour, spreading out to the sides and turning golden, mingling with the fish eggs. The full, milky aroma of the butter married with the salty marine tang of the roe . . . She garnished the pasta with a scattering of shiso leaves . . . There was a rosy-cheeked frankness about the pink of the roe, and in combination with the oozing butter, it looked positively carefree. . . .Cloaked in a coating of minuscule fish eggs and butter, the spaghetti strands sprang around Rika’s tongue as if in excitement. The dish was adequately salted, but there was a relaxed, mellow quality to its taste. What a wonderful combination pollock roe and butter made.” Some of these descriptions go on and on and so overshadow the narrative.

I must admit to feeling out of my league at times. I certainly don’t know anything about the many different kinds of butter: Snow Brand, Calpis, Sado, Échiré, and Koiwai. There are many references to Japanese food like nanakusagayu and noppe and hizunumasu and toshikoshi soba and osechi and kuromame and datemaki which meant nothing to me. There are also many cultural references unfamiliar to me: otaku and hanami parties.

This is not a bad book, but I found it overly long with everything artificially contrived to serve a thematic agenda.

Review of NIGHTWATCHING by Tracy Sierra

 3 Stars

This novel received a lot of publicity when it was a Jimmy Fallon book club pick. I think it’s been over-hyped.

A mother is home with her two young children, aged 8 and 5, during a blizzard. When she realizes there’s an intruder in the house, the three of them hide in a tiny secret compartment in their old house. She has to keep her children quiet so as not to alert the intruder. When she realizes who he is and what he wants, her fear intensifies. Even after not finding them, he doesn’t leave and resorts to taunting her. When an opportunity arises, she flees the house to find help.

Because the book plays on our fears of a home invasion with the lives of children threatened, there is a lot of tension. The problem is that the reader is frequently pulled away from the danger by the woman’s thoughts and flashbacks. For example, when she senses the presence of the intruder, she starts thinking about her son’s nightmares and how she and her husband dealt with them. Such thoughts at that time are unrealistic. The flashbacks to her past are interesting but, again, because they interupt events, they lessen the level of suspense.

What is emphasized by these flashbacks is that the protagonist has been patronized and disbelieved by many men. Even her husband questions her interpretation of an event involving her father-in-law. The author examines what happens when a woman is not believed, but the amount of gaslighting and victim-blaming is over the top. She is thought of as “irresponsible, culpable, suspect” and lying, exaggerating and hysterical. Though the father-in-law and the police are especially good at denigrating her, it’s difficult to find any man with mostly positive qualities.

There are a number of elements that irked me. The characters are not given names; they’re only identified as daughter, son, father-in-law, husband, etc. The only person named is the intruder and he is called Corner. Why he’s assigned this designation is obvious, but it’s just weird. The misogynistic, incompetent police trope becomes ridiculous and annoying. And the reactions to the woman’s vitiligo are also extreme: she’s described as disfigured and questioned about contagion.

This is a debut novel and it has the weaknesses of a novice writer. Some will find it a suspenseful thriller, but for me the most frightening thing was the reminder that “suffering and misfortune fall as wide and uniformly as snow.”

Review of ORBITAL by Samantha Harvey

 4 Stars

My first review of 2025 is of the Booker Prize winner of 2024.

Six astronauts, four men and two women, are aboard a space station. Roman and Anton are from Russia, Chie is Japanese, Nell is from the U.K., Pietro is Italian, and Shaun is American. We experience a day in their lives during which they complete sixteen orbits of Earth. The reader learns about their scientific studies and about the difficulties of life in a cramped space station and the stresses of prolonged weightlessness.

But this is a novel with little plot. We do learn a bit about the lives and interests of the crew and some events occurring on Earth, but the focus is on the astronauts’ thoughts and reactions to looking at their home planet. They are always captivated and astonished by Earth, so the book is really a meditation about the beauty and vulnerability of our planet.

As the space station orbits various parts of Earth, there are dazzling descriptions of its splendour. Africa, for instance, “is the paint-splattered, ink-leached, crumpled-satin, crumbled-pastel overflowing-fruit-bowl continent of chaotic perfection, the continent of salt pans and red sedimented floodplain and the nerve networks of splaying rivers and mountains that bubble up from the plains green and velvety like mould growth.” One orbit gives views of French Polynesia, “the islands like cell samples, the atolls opal lozenges . . . the arc of smoking volcanoes on the Caribbean Plate. It’s Uzbekistan in an expanse of ochre and brown, the snowy mountainous beauty of Kyrgyzstan. The clean and brilliant Indian Ocean of blues untold. The apricot desert of Takla Makan traced about with the faint confluencing and parting lines of creek beds.”

What is also emphasized is how the planet has been “shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything.” The damage humans have done is described: “Every swirling neon or red algal bloom in the polluted, warming, overfished Atlantic . . . Every retreating or retreated or disintegrating glacier, every granite boulder of every mountain laid newly bare by snow that has never before melted, every scorched and blazing forest or bush, every shrinking ice sheet, every burning oil spill, the discolouration of a Mexican reservoir which signals the invasion of water hyacinths feeding on untreated sewage, a distorted flood-bulged river . . . or the prolonged pinking of evaporated lakes, or the Gran Chaco’s brown seepage of cattle ranch where once was rainforest, the green-blue geometries of evaporation pools where lithium is mined from the brine, or Tunisian salt flats in cloisonné pink, or the altered contour of a coastline where sea is reclaimed . . . or a vanishing mangrove forest in Mumbai, or the hundreds of acres of greenhouses which make the entire southern tip of Spain reflective in the sun.”

Of course, on the space station boundaries between countries are not visible: “a sense of friendliness and peace prevails, since even at night there’s only one man-made border in the whole of the world . . . That’s all civilisation has to show for its divisions, and by day even that has gone.” For the astronauts, the station is a “nationless, borderless outpost” where they “drink each other’s recycled urine . . . [and] breathe each other’s recycled air.” The message for humans is clear.

Humans tend to think of themselves and their planet as exceptional, but “in fact it’s a planet of normalish size and normalish mass rotating about an average star in a solar system of average everything in a galaxy of innumerable many, and that the whole thing is going to explode or collapse.” The earth is not everything but “it’s not nothing” either. Likewise, our lives are “inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once. . . . We matter greatly and not at all. . . . your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which is nothing, and also much more than everything.”

Regardless, Earth is worth preserving. The astronauts think, “maybe all of us born to [Earth] have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.”

Though the book is short, really more of a novella, it should, I think, be read in snippets rather than as a whole. Pick it up, read a chapter, and put it down. The lyrical language should be savoured and the ideas deserve thought. It takes time to ponder whether progress is beautiful: each rocket has boosters which “at lift-off burn the fuel of a million cars” and human ventures in space have resulted in “Two hundred million things orbiting at twenty-five thousand miles an hour and sandblasting the veneer of space.”

Reading the book is a good way of beginning a new year. It reminds us of the beauty that surrounds us and, though humbling in some ways, also offers hope.

SCHATJE'S FAVOURITE BOOKS READ IN 2024

 

Schatje’s Favourite Books Read in 2024

Of the 105 books I reviewed this year, here are my favourites; all received a 4-star rating. Unless I’ve indicated a date, the books were published in 2024. It’s been a great year of reading!

Best Literary Fiction

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (American, 2021)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/01/review-of-cloud-cuckoo-land-by-anthony.html

Leaving by Roxana Robinson (American)    https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/02/review-of-leaving-by-roxana-robinson.html

After Annie by Anna Quindlen (American)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/03/review-of-after-annie-by-anna-quindlen.html

A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda (Canadian)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/03/review-of-great-country-by-shilpi.html

Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary (Irish, 2023)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/04/review-of-juno-loves-legs-by-karl-geary.html

Long Island by Colm Tóibín (Irish)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/05/review-of-long-island-by-colm-toibin.html

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (American, 2011)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/05/review-of-rules-of-civility-by-amor.html

Toxic by Helga Flatland (Norwegian)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/05/review-of-toxic-by-helga-flatland-new.html

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (New Zealand, 2022)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/06/review-of-axemans-carnival-by-catherine.html

Forgotten on Sunday by Valérie Perrin (French)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/06/review-of-forgotten-on-sunday-by.html

Bear by Julia Phillips (American)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/06/review-of-bear-by-julia-phillips-new.html

One Grand Summer by Ewald Arenz (German)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/07/review-of-one-grand-summer-by-ewald.html

In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart (Canadian)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/09/review-of-in-winter-i-get-up-at-night.html

Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari (Canadian)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/09/review-of-songs-for-brokenhearted-by.html

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (American)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/09/review-of-tell-me-everything-by.html

Real Ones by Katherena Vermette (Canadian)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/09/review-of-real-ones-by-katherena.html

Death and Other Inconveniences by Lesley Crewe (Canadian)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/10/review-of-death-and-other.html

Brotherless Nights by V. V. Ganeshananthan (American)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/11/review-of-brotherless-night-by-v-v.html

Sandwich by Catherine Newman (American)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/11/review-of-sandwich-by-catherine-newman.html

Bad Land by Corinna Chong (Canadian)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/12/review-of-bad-land-by-corinna-chong.html

Best Historical Fiction

The Swan’s Nest by Laura McNeal (American)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/03/review-of-swans-nest-by-laura-mcneal.html

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (English)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/05/review-of-hazelbourne-ladies-motorcycle.html

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Irish)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/07/review-of-heart-in-winter-by-kevin.html

The Wildes by Louis Bayard (American)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/09/review-of-wildes-by-louis-bayard-new.html

Clear by Carys Davies (Welsh)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/12/review-of-clear-by-carys-davies.html

Best Crime Drama/Psychological Suspense/Mystery

One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall (English)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/01/review-of-one-of-good-guys-by-araminta.html

Yule Island by Johana Gustawsson (French, 2023)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/02/review-of-yule-island-by-johana.html

Dead Sweet by Katrín Júlíusdóttir (Icelandic, 2023)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/02/review-of-dead-sweet-by-katrin.html

The Guests by Agnes Ravatn (Norwegian)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/02/review-of-guests-by-agnes-ravatn.html

A Man Downstairs by Nicole Lundrigan (Canadian)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/03/review-of-man-downstairs-by-nicole.html

Pet by Catherine Chidgey (New Zealand, 2023)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/03/review-of-pet-by-catherine-chidgey.html

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (American)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/11/review-of-god-of-woods-by-liz-moore.html

All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (American)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/12/review-of-all-colours-of-dark-by-chris.html

The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher (English)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/12/review-of-night-in-question-by-susan.html

Best Crime Series

I read the latest installments in some favourite crime series. Here are my top five.

From Sweetgrass Bridge by Anthony Bidulka (Canadian)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/05/review-of-from-sweetgrass-bridge-by.html - the 2^nd Merry Bell Mystery

Boys Who Hurt by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Icelandic)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/06/review-of-boys-who-hurt-by-eva-bjorg.html - the 5^th in the Forbidden Iceland series

All the Way Gone by Joanna Schaffhausen (American)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/08/review-of-all-way-gone-by-joanna.html - the 4^th in the Detective Annalisa Vega series

The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves (English)   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/08/review-of-dark-wives-by-ann-cleeves-new.html - the 11^th in the Vera Stanhope series

Living is a Problem by Doug Johnstone (Scottish)  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2024/09/review-of-living-is-problem-by-doug.html - the 6^th in the Skelfs series