Book Review: The Golden Egg by Donna Leon

Donna Leon is one of the crime writers that don’t quite follow the rules. Even though she’s lived in Venice, Italy for more than 25 years, she doesn’t want her novels to be translated into Italian, while the main character in her novels Guido Brunetti is nothing but a hardcore cop.

The Golden Egg is the 22^nd Commissario Brunetti novel and within its pages one would think that nothing much happens. A young man is found dead, everyone is certain that it’s a suicide and yet the good inspector decides to investigate because his wife Paola asks him to. Now that would sound crazy to any crime fiction fan who doesn’t know Brunetti, and especially to those that are used to the western clichés of moody detectives, with personal lives that smell of disaster, and who always find themselves in dangerous situations.

Brunetti is not only a good and honest cop in a country where corruption rules, but he’s also a great husband and father, who enjoys drinking coffees with his colleagues and wine with his wife and who likes navigating his beloved city with his own GPS: Guido’s Personal System. And he’s also someone who always tries to help out his friends, has no big regrets, doesn’t carry a gun, and works hard to bring criminals to justice.

The author doesn’t seem very interested in dazzling the reader with nonstop action and a plot full of twists and turns; she rather wants to tell stories about a city, its people and its customs, and about the local laws of silence that most often than not stop a lot of truths of coming to surface. And it’s exactly this silence that Brunetti has to overcome here to discover the truth behind the dead man’s life. So he moves all over the city, meets people, asks a lot of questions and little by little he comes to realize that a crime has indeed been committed, though it was of a different nature.

As we follow Brunetti all over the city we get to meet a lot of interesting characters: Mafiosi, corrupt politicians, a cruel mother, lawyers with no morals, people who prefer to turn a blind eye on a crime instead of helping the police; and the most surprising thing is that the Commissario doesn’t blame them, since he knows that they are right to feel the way they do. In Venice, and in Italy in general, it all comes down to who you know to get things done; this seems to be the message. Brunetti is no angel either, but he only uses his connections for the benefit of others and not himself. So, he’s more interested in helping a good cop getting a promotion than helping his boss out, and when it comes to office politics, he just keeps his distance. His job is to solve crimes and keep the streets safe, and not to parade himself in front of this politician or the other.

If you’d ask me to compare Brunetti with some well-known fictional detectives, I’d say that Ian Rankin’s Rebus and Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch come to mind, but for no other reason that all three of them are stubborn and only interested in fighting the good battle. However, even though the latter two have been through a lot of trouble, their Italian counterpart seems to be serene, as if he’s sailing through his everyday life, enjoying all the little joys that it has to offer: whether that’s dinner with his wife, a secret chat with the brilliant Elettra Zorzi, one of his colleagues, or reading his beloved Lucretius. Books are to Brunetti what music is to Bosch and Rebus: his favourite, though thought-provoking, escape from reality.

Book Review: Unseen by Karin Slaughter

I came to Karin Slaughter a little late and perhaps that’s one of the main reasons that I enjoy all her tales just as much. Whether they are short stories, novellas or full-scale novels it doesn’t make any difference to me. Her writing is consistently good and so are her plots, and in Will Trent I have found one of the most likeable and unforgettable heroes of crime fiction.

What makes this character different is his flaws, which are a little bit different from those of his colleagues. He’s dyslectic, an orphan and someone who prefers to work alone and undercover, not because he’s misanthropic but simply because he doesn’t want to see people he cares about get hurt. One could say that Will lives in his head, and they’d be more or less right, but that doesn’t mean that he’s unwilling to live in this world, in a circle of friends and lovers; he just finds it hard to do.

In this story Trent, along with many other cops and agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation go after an invisible man, a big time drug dealer who’s currently moving his operations from Florida to Macon. The problem they face in finding out who he is and arresting him is that no one has ever seen him. He runs his business in the darkness and moves in the shadows, and whoever comes close to discovering his identity doesn’t live to tell it.

So, how do you apprehend someone like that? Perhaps the only chance the cops have is to get lucky. But even if they do, will they be able to achieve their goal? Big Whitey, as the drug dealer is called, seems to be someone who’s not only very clever but also extremely careful. Will hopes to get close to him by going undercover, but what if the man you’re going up against knows your every move right from the start?

The author created a tight plot, with some twists and turns, but mostly with lots of downs when it comes to her heroes. Every single one of the protagonists of this series of novels seems to be struggling with their lives, with their past, and with some memories that they want to create but which perhaps are never meant to be. Amanda, Will’s boss and kind-of-a-mother, has to fight racial and gender discrimination every day, something that makes her life miserable most times than not. Faith, his partner at the GBI has her own ghosts to deal with, while Sara, his doctor-girlfriend is not the happiest woman around either. Can these damaged souls live together or around each other and do their jobs without getting into some serious trouble? Well, they can, and they cannot. And that’s exactly what makes the story work. Their weaknesses make them human, and their humanity brings them close, and as a result they have each other’s back no matter what.

If you’ve enjoyed the previous novels in the series you’ll surely enjoy this one. But if you haven’t had a chance yet to take a look at this author’s fictional criminal world, starting here could be as good a point as any. This is pure, well-written, and finely-tuned crime fiction, and as such if you are a fan of the genre, you’re bound to enjoy it.

L.F.

 

First published in Crime Factory magazine.

 

The Second Deadly Sin by Åsa Larsson review

Great crime novels keep coming out of Sweden in particular and Scandinavia in general for the past few years, at a rate that sometimes is hard to follow. What is it that all of sudden made Scandinoir, or Nordic Noir, look so appealing in the eyes of readers all over the world? Is it still because of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo phenomenon or is it something else? Whatever the reason Scandinavian authors now seem to command our full attention and I for one are happy about itThis is the second book I read by this author and I’m sure that more will follow. Mrs. Larsson has a way of gripping the reader’s attention without seemingly trying to do so. Her heroes are everyday people who are trying to live their lives as best they can. They have families and pets, they have a lot of worries and most of them are torturing themselves psychologically, because they can’t really express their feelings, or because they do what they do out of greed or lust for glory instead for the right reasons.

The reader travels back and forth in time in rural Sweden as they embark on the journey of solving the many riddles at the heart of this story. A not so strange incident is what gives spark to flame and ignites the plot. A bear appears out of the snowy nowhere and attacks a farm. A professional bear hunter is called in to find and kill the animal, which under the circumstances is considered extremely dangerous. That happens sooner rather than later but the bear’s death brings to light a sinister discovery: within its body lie parts of the remains of a man. In the meantime, a woman is killed in her house, while a boy of seven, her grandson, hardly escapes with his life. What is it that connects the two cases?

Well, the perfect candidate for heading the investigation would be District Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson, who knows the people and the place really well, but an ambitious colleague that goes by the name of von Post hijacks her case. She expects that he’ll make a mess of it, and of course he obliges. Rebecka is furious with her boss for allowing him to do that to her and the case, but at the same time she’s determined to find the truth, even though at first she doesn’t even know she’s doing that.

As we follow her around and through the many flashbacks that spread throughout the story we get to learn a lot of things about the history of the region and its people, but most importantly about the stories of the victims. Rebecka is thorough in her research and a great detective of sorts and that’s exactly what leads her to discover the truth; a truth that was there for her to see right from the start.

The Second Deadly Sin is a crime novel, a psychological thriller and a social commentary at the same time, but most of all it’s a great book and as such I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to all.

First published in Crime Factory magazine

Book Review: Chasing the Storm by Martin Molsted

The best thing about the ebook revolution was that it gave us, the readers, the opportunity to discover a lot of new authors, from all over the world. One of the best ones out there, at least when it comes to thrillers, is the Norwegian Martin Molsted.

Chasing the Storm is an action-packed story that follows the exploits of a reluctant at first adventurer, as he struggles to solve a couple of mysteries, with the help of some unlikely allies. Torgrim Rygg, that used to work for the Norwegian Secret Service, but who resigned after a few near-death experiences, is a hero who seems to be at war with himself; a tortured soul that no longer knows where it belongs.

It all begins when Rygg, while in Hamburg for a business trip, saves the life of a Russian journalist, who has a long list of enemies. Marko Marin clashed heads, time and again, with the rich and powerful in Moscow, so he is in constant danger. He knows all too well that he’ll always be one, and as such he believes that he could use Rygg’s services.

Rygg on the other hand isn’t so eager to help, as he’s used to his routine by now. Routine however breeds boredom, and boredom is something that he desperately needs to escape. So when Marin asks for his help he answers that call. What follows is an adventure that will take him to his native Norway just for a while, to Croatia, back to Hamburg, to Russia and to Egypt, and finally to Cyprus. During this long journey he will get to meet some likeable characters and a few vicious villains, and come face to face with death on more than one occasions.

The author created a fast-paced thriller, with a movie like plot, that reminds the reader of the Bourne adventures by Robert Ludlum. All his characters are well-sketched, and he seems to know his geography and the new geopolitical map very well. Torgrim Rygg, his protagonist, as I read, is here to stay, and I must say that his presence is more than welcome. Heroes like him are easy to like, and adventures of this kind have a lot to offer to the modern spy canon. I’d highly recommend this book to all the fans of the genre.

Book Review: Daybreak by Fabio Volo

Fabio Volo came to my attention with One More Day (read my review here), a great novel that I’ve read only recently. What I like most about him is his voice, a voice that can follow many rhythms and talk in an almost lighthearted way about some of the most important things in life.

Daybreak is the story of a marriage that’s going really bad. Both the parties, Elena and Paolo, are unhappy, yet for some reason they stay together. Perhaps that has something to do with their need to have somebody to lean on, perhaps not. Paolo is his mother’s boy, always quiet, always obedient, and unable to cut the cord that ties him to her. Elena is a woman that flirts with depression and who finds it hard to dare exit her dead-end current life and start anew.

We read about their story and her thoughts in her journal, while we also take a look at her present life. As in One More Day, the author gives the reader many beautiful turns of phrase, words that stick to the head and the heart. However, no matter how beautiful words can be, at the same time they can cut like a knife:

“I imitate my idea of an ideal wife; I imitate my friends who are happily married; I imitate who I was at the beginning of my marriage, someone I don’t know how to be anymore.”

How can someone escape their life? And, more importantly, how can they escape the ghosts that haunt their soul? The answer is simple, by seeking a new love. But, even if they find it, will that new love save them? According to Carla, Elena’s best friend, yes, it will. But, how can she be so certain, she who did almost everything wrong in her own life?

Volo does a great job in building the internal worlds of his characters. None of them is innocent, and none of them is guilty. They all have to carry their own burdens, but not all of them can be happy; not really. As we read Elena’s journals we come to know some people who are constantly in conflict, with themselves and the others, without even realizing it; people who are most of the time weak, but every now and then strong; brave and coward; dreamers and conformists.

This is not a perfect world that we live in, but, the author seems to suggest, if we don’t fight to change our circumstances, we’ll never have a chance at finding happiness. His story is a story of ordinary people, beautifully written, that tries to find an audience in one’s soul, and it manages to do just that. This is a sentimental novel that can be read with pleasure by anyone, no matter their gender. And the friends of Italian literature will surely find something to love in its pages.

Book Review: Montalbano’s First Case by Andrea Camilleri

I’ve been reading Andrea Camilleri for more than 15 years now. I think the best thing about his stories is their simplicity. He doesn’t seem to try to impress the reader by creating exploding scenes of chaos and mayhem; he just wants to tell a story.

As the title suggests this book is all about Montalbano’s First Case. The good detective, who was to become a celebrity one day, in this story is young, but not so inexperienced. He lives and works in Mascalippa, but not for long since soon he’s going to be promoted to an Inspector and probably move to another town. The truth is that he doesn’t seem to care so much about the promotion, but he does care about the transfer, as he really wants to go away. Not long before he departs, he takes in the landscape:

“In a matter of seconds he saw the landscape of Mascalippa and its surroundings pass before his eyes. It was certainly splendid, but not his cup of tea. For good measure, he also saw four cows grazing on the withering grass. He felt a cold shiver down his spine, like a bout of malaria.”

His new place of work and residence is Vigata, a town by the sea. He becomes chief of the department there, and soon enough he comes to realize that the whole show is ran by the Mafia; the rich can get away with anything, while the poor have to suffer the consequences. However, not everything is black since there are a couple of people, one of them a cop, that really like to do what’s right.

The new beginning in his career proves somewhat difficult, but Montalbano is not one to run away from trouble. The more some people of power try to push him into the corner, the more he fights back. Corruption is not something he can tolerate, but he knows that if he wants to make a difference he has to balance on a tightrope, made from remnants of the past and the realities of today.

Maintaining the peace however, doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s willing to allow the criminals go unpunished. He’ll do anything to get them, even if that means breaking the law: “Olė! I give you Inspector Salvo Montalbano: otherwise known as the acrobat,” he thinks sarcastically as he enters the house of a suspect through an open window.

This book is a little bit short if compared to the other adventures of the good Inspector but it is a fun read and the characterization is solid. And the mystery and the language, keep the reader’s interest alive until the very last page. If you’re a fan of the author you’ll love it, but you’ll also enjoy it if you’re a lover of Italian literature. It may be short, but it marks the beginning of a literary legend, and as such it deserves all the attention it can get.

Book Review: Deadly Heat by Richard Castle

I really loved the Heat series, until now. No, I’m not saying that all of a sudden I’ve stopped enjoying the books; I’m only saying that Deadly Heat is so predictable that it just makes no sense.

It was the suspense and the mystery that kept the pages turning in the previous novels, and these two elements seem to have gone missing from the latest installment. What’s not missing is the humor, but is that enough to keep the reader going?

My first thought, as I finished reading, was that in here we have the same heroes, more or less the same storyline, but a different author, one that’s somehow clumsy, as they give away too many clues about most of the villains, and as a result, the expected reading pleasure is nowhere to be found – perhaps Heat can look for it.

When the readers embark on a journey with the words of an author as a vehicle, they expect to be thrilled, or feel simply excited, to get to know inside out the souls of the characters, good or bad, to seek and find all the hidden clues that may or may not lead them to solving the various riddles. Well, that doesn’t exactly happen here, and that’s a shame.

I don’t want to give away any clues because that could ruin the fun for some people but, I will say though, that if the answers are going to be so obvious in almost every single question, then one shouldn’t even bother posing any questions at all.

But of course, not all is black. I’ve already said the humor is quite good and the interactions between Rook and Heat are great too; their chemistry is pretty much alive. They could do with a breath of fresh air though, something that will turn the spark into a flame again. As for the action, that’s good too, but it seems to me as though the first couple of episodes of the Castle TV Series would emerge as the big winners in a possible Mexican standoff.

I give the book three stars out of five, because no matter how hard I try I can’t say that it’s a bad book; it’s just bad if compared to the its predecessors. I hope the next one will be better and thus able to restore my faith in the power of team ‘Heat and Rook’ to impress.

Reviews of other book by same author:

Frozen Heat
A Bloody Storm
A Brewing Storm
A Raging Storm

Book Review: One More Day by Fabio Volo

I’ve always been a fan of Italian literature. But, I don’t really know what it is that makes me like books by Italian authors so much. Perhaps it’s the way they write; like good old storytellers. Perhaps it’s the subjects they occupy themselves with; like love and remembrance. Or perhaps they seem familiar to me because I also come from a country that’s washed by the Mediterranean Sea. Whatever the reason, Italian books make me feel good, and the one at hand does that better than most.

One More Day is the story of two seemingly different people that cross paths time and again. At the beginning that happens by pure luck, but as time goes by they start trying to steal glimpses of each other at any given chance. He’s Giacomo and she’s Michela, and their story is a story of love and loss, of failure and new beginnings.

As we follow the heroes from Italy to New York, and finally to Paris, we get to know them very well; and we get to like them. They are very human, full of weaknesses and fear, full of hopes and dreams. I guess one could say that the whole story revolves around dreams. The dream of getting away from everything and everyone that keeps you trapped in a cage; the dream of starting anew in a different land; the impossible dream of learning to love all over again by playing a game.

That’s what Giacomo and Michela do, they play the game of love, time and again, but not for very long. Win or lose, at first that doesn’t seem to matter to them. What matters is to get to know each other well, and to get to enjoy what each of them has to offer. They meet, they talk, they drink, they listen to great music and they make love, and the words flow like a serene stream on the page: “I wanted to become a hunter of emotions and memories,” he says. “We have been kicked outside of ourselves,” she states. “She was the door I had the courage to open,” he thinks and smiles.

I could keep writing quotes for a long time, but I won’t do it, since some of the magic of this book can be found in them, and I wouldn’t like to take that pleasure away from you.

I will tell you though, that if you are someone who enjoyed movies like Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight (yes, that great Paris trilogy), you will love this book. The prose is exquisite, the plot is simple and yet intriguing, and the feelings are as real as one could ever find in the pages of a novel. The author seems to inhabit the bodies and the souls of his characters and thus manages to give us a story that’s hard to forget. This novel is a must-read for me.

It has taken me a long time to finish this novel, but that was only because I was so enthralled by its heroes and their world that I wished it could go on and on. Of course, there are other books, as there are other stories; stories that remind us about the most important things in life; like how much it matters to be our own selves and chase our own impossible dreams. Just like Giacomo and Michela did.

Book Review: The Ostracism of Ophelia by Claire Fitzpatrick

The Ostracism of Ophelia by Claire Fitzpatrick is one of those novels that can make the reader feel more than simple sympathy for its heroes. It’s a story about pain and sorrow, hope and despair, love and forgiveness. And it’s also a story about crime and punishment.

Ophelia, William, Wren and Casper, the main protagonists, are damaged souls. They are young, they seem to have a bright future ahead of them, yet their everyday lives are bleak, bathed in despair, haunted by a past that just won’t let them make their dreams come true and fulfill their potential.

Good and evil seem to walk hand in hand in this story; no one is a really good person or a completely bad one. However, they are not ordinary in any way — they may do ordinary things every now and then, but that’s about it. What are they? They are young people who are trying hard to escape their demons, to travel like lucky Alice to Wonderland. Will they ever make it there? And if they do, how, and what will they find?

I wish that I could say that their story resembled a fairy tale, but it doesn’t. The heros live in a cruel world, and try to survive by taking difficult decisions and making hard choices. They read a bit, they play music, they take drugs, they hide in their secret garden and they create an unimaginable plot in order to escape their reality and also save one of them from her own self.

Sometimes their actions are cruel, and sometimes they are very kind; most of the times their bond seems unbreakable though every now and then they somehow drift apart. They look and act as if they belong together, but at the same time it seems that their meeting was not planned by some gods but rather by the devil. As the reader follows the paths of their lives, he finds himself in their shoes; he empathizes with them; he can feel their pain and he has no choice but to feel sorry for them.

If it wasn’t for the light touches of humour and the special moments of magic that can be found throughout the text this would be a bleak novel indeed. But instead this book is simply a great read. However, it’s not only the aforementioned elements that make it a good novel; it’s also the intricate plot and the well-crafted timeline, and finally the writing itself. Going through these pages one can find pure reading joy, and bathe himself in emotions; happy and sad. This is not a story for the fainthearted, but it is a story for those who have a big heart.

Book Review: The Black Box by Michael Connelly

Harry Bosch, Michael Connelly’s fictional hero, is celebrating 20 years in the crime-solving business, and The Black Box was promoted well in advance as a novel that would celebrate the life and work of this unconventional character.

The story takes the reader back and forth in time as Harry, who now works in the open-unsolved unit of the LAPD, decides to investigate a cold case, the murder of a young white woman during the Rodney King Riots of 1992. The woman, who was given the nickname Snow White by the press, was shot and killed, almost execution-style, in a somewhat quiet and deserted area of the city. At the time of the murder no witnesses came forth and apart from a bullet, nothing else was found at the scene.

Normally nobody would pay too much attention to the incident, since at the time chaos and mayhem prevailed in the city, but when somebody opened fire against Harry and his partner Jerry Edgar, while they were inspecting the scene, things changed; but yet things remained the same, since there was not enough evidence to carry on with the investigation.

Now, 20 years later, Harry is still haunted by the case and he’s determined more than ever to discover the truth. However, the higher-ups in the chain of command are not so pleased with his decision for political reasons; the victim was white. So they try to stop him. And they fail. When it comes to the politicians, in his precinct, or elsewhere, he couldn’t care less. What he cares about is the victims, and his personal need to give the relatives, whoever they may be, some kind of closure. So he battles on, though most of the time he’s all alone, and little by little he starts to unravel the threads of the mystery.

At the same time he tries to spend as much time as he possibly can with his daughter Maddie, who also wants to be a cop and his girlfriend Hannah Stone, a therapist who has a son in jail, but of course that’s not quite easy, since his job is his obsession, it’s what he lives for, and it’s what more often than not puts him into trouble. Thus it comes as no surprise that he’s yet again investigated by the Internal Affairs.

Harry Bosch is maybe older now and a little bit wiser, but he hasn’t changed. He’s as stubborn, restless and uncompromising as ever. He may have mellowed somehow because of Maddie and Hannah, but that’s about it. As they say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

The Black Box is not one of the best Bosch novels. The plot is good and the story runs smoothly, but not always, since every now and then it seems to lose its pace. I think that if it was a little bit shorter it would be much better. It is an enjoyable read though.

By the same author:

The Safe Man
Mulholland Dive
The Drop
Angle of Investigation
Suicide Run
The Fifth Witness

Book Review: The Sunday Arrangement by Lucy Smith

If somebody told me that one day I’d find myself reading an erotica novel I’d tell them that they were nuts, and obviously I’d be wrong. Since I read just every kind of literature there is out there, I’ve decided to give this "The Sunday Arrangement" a try, if not for anything else for the fun of it.

And you know what, it is a fun read. It’s a book that takes itself seriously and lightly at the same time. To start with one of the main protagonists is called Pierce Maverick; and this is one of those cases when a name tells it all. Then there’s an unforgettable woman called Kat who’s the heroine’s best friend, and who’s absolutely into everything. And then there’s the heroine herself, Lauren, a woman with oppressed desires.

Okay this is the classic story of a woman meeting a man and taking a leap of faith with him when it comes to her sexuality. But it’s also a story about the business world, about fathers who are nothing but good and children who are trying to find their way into a world of hypocrisy and wealth, who like it or not are always on the limelight. There’s a touch of mystery here as well, as someone seems to try to sabotage everyone’s life.

The writing is quite good, the story flows effortlessly and in the end this book is, as I’ve already pointed out, a fun one to read. The friends of the genre will love it; the other readers may just secretly enjoy it.

Book Review: How to Become a Celebrity by Charles Hopkins-Thyne

As the title suggests this "How to Become a Celebrity" a practical guide book that promises the reader to help him or her become a celebrity. The author seems to know the showbiz arena inside-out, and has a lot of advice to offer to the young people who are dreaming of making it big in the movie and music scene, and in the arts world in general.

“Anyone can be famous,” we read somewhere, but that doesn’t mean that anyone can be a celebrity. The celebrities, like it or not, seem to serve a purpose in our modern era: they feed our need for gossip, they make us bathe under their limelight and they kill our boredom. But how easy or how hard is it to become one yourself? The truth is that it’s very hard, but thanks to the author the reader gets to know all they have to do to make it happen.

Desire and persistence; these two are the basic elements that one should have in their character to achieve their goals. As we read Abraham Lincoln have fought hard and lost many battles in the process, in order to become the man that now everybody knows, and most people admire. What’s true for politics is also true for the showbiz. Don’t let the rejections and the stonewalling get you down, the author seems to suggest, and as Lincoln did, “Identify exactly what you are good at, exactly what your strengths are,” and work on them.

What makes this the useful book that it is though, is not only the author’s inside knowledge and wisdom, but also the appendix that provides the reader with dozens of names of organizations, links and addresses that can make a hopeful star’s first steps in the glittering world of showbiz much easier.

Thus, if you’re one of those people who dream big, then this is the book for you. Reading it will point you in the right direction; following the advice it offers will most likely lead you to your destination. This is a guide unlike any other out there.

Book Review: The Ocean and Other Poems by Claire Fitzpatrick

Poetry is not an easy beast to tame; it takes effort and time, and it does take a lot out of you if your abandon yourself in its vices. Claire Fitzpatrick has written a collection of poems that at times seem to be bleeding, and which at other times almost silently bathe in the sweet smelling waters of love. In these pages you’ll come face to face with a lot of emotion, with torrents of humanity and human frailty. Fitzpatrick doesn’t hide behind her words; she seems to wants to express herself in a raw manner, with words that convey their meaning in a straightforward and non-cryptic way.

“If I wipe my brain against sandpaper
And find the true artist in my soul
Will you see me as I am?
A dreamer, idolatrous, alone.”

she wonders somewhere, while someplace else she feels bitter about a precious yet painful gift she receives:

“…And yet you give me your heart:
A fortress encased with envy and hatred
And it burns me
Until my skin begins to peel away.”

This is a world of love and of hatred, of joy and of pain, that we live in, and the poet’s job is to talk all about that, to give voice to our feelings, to sooth our anger, but also to make us rebel against the injustices that we have to go through during our time here.

There’s always been an ongoing discussion on what makes poetry great, and on what makes someone a great poet. Some people say that it’s the technical part that’s more important, while others insist on the significance of the voice. However, apart from the great lyrical epics, not only of the western but also of the eastern world, it is mostly the shorter poems that talk about how people think and feel that win the day. Byron talked about a woman “Who walked in beauty”, Emily Dickinson found that beauty in the things and the people around her and so did Christina Rossetti. Even Poe, despite all the darkness that surrounded his being, talked about the struggles of the human soul and his love that was not destined to live for long. What is it that I’m trying to say? Simply that the beauty of this collection lies in its lyrics, in its soul…

“I have not felt your heart
For so long now
That I feel as though it's stopped beating
For me  
When I am near.”

How many of us have we felt that way over the years? I guess, most. How many of us did we put our thoughts, our feelings, onto paper? Not many.

While reading this collection I felt as if the poet was speaking directly to my psyche, and in more than one instances I caught myself thinking: “Yes! That’s it…”

Claire Fitzpatrick is a young poet, and as such she still has a long way to go, but if I were to judge by the poems at hand I’d say that her future looks promising and bright.

Book Review: Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

I have to begin this review with an admission: I have never liked “Atonement”, the book that was a great success for the author, and which became a successful movie as well. I found it kind of boring and too long. On the other hand I did like his much shorter “On Chesil Beach”. That one was a pleasure to read, mainly because it told a story in a masterful way and in the right amount of words.

“Sweet Tooth” I have loved as well, even though at the beginning I felt reluctant to dive into its world. I guess that had to do with my distrust of the big newspaper critics who are willing to hail every book as a masterpiece once its author is of McEwan’s fame and caliber. I’m so glad that I was proven wrong, and that I did get to read this novel. It is a masterpiece. I’m not saying that it’s the best fiction book I’ve ever read, but it is one of the best I have read this year.

This is a story of lovers and spies, and of writers and politicians, in a highly charged era of the European history. We meet the heroes in London in the early seventies. The cold war is going strong, the people feel insecure, and the propaganda, or mind games are at their peak. It is under these circumstances that a young and seemingly brilliant woman is recruited by the British secret service. At first she has nothing much to do, she’s a paper pusher, but one day her luck will change and she’ll be given a mission, to help an author promote her country’s interests.

What ensues is an adventure, with not too much action, but with a lot of ups and downs. As the reader will soon come to understand most of the actors in this drama are more or less sad, and they are mostly ignorant: “Everyone knew as much as they needed to know to be happy,” we read, but yet that happiness eluded them.

If it wasn’t for the author’s beautiful prose and the final twist that takes the reader by surprise this would be a brilliant but sad story, as we follow the footsteps of two people who are doomed to fail. However, things are not exactly the way they seem, and as McEwan seems to suggest, even if the whole world comes tumbling down, there’s still hope to be found.

I believe that anyone out there that likes literary fiction of the highest quality should read this novel, as it has a lot to offer: raw emotions, a great story, a beautiful background, and exquisite writing.

Book Review: Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich

While reading Wicked Business I felt like I was going through a Stephanie Plum novel that simply took place in a different world. Almost every main character in this book reminds me of someone else in the latter series. Lizzy is Stephanie in disguise, and Diesel looks and sounds so much like Ranger that it wouldn’t be too difficult for a reader to confuse the one with the other.

What saves this new series of becoming a simple copy of the old one is the author’s wicked sense of humor. When you read a Janet Evanovich novel you know that you’ll smile a lot, and every now and then laugh-out-loud, and that’s not something a reader could or should ignore. Her novels are not so much meant to intrigue the reader or give him food for thought; they are meant to entertain him.

Lizzy and Diesel are two people with supernatural powers and strong feelings for each other who, for some reason, can never be together. Their relationship is not strictly professional, but it can never become purely emotional either. They work together as investigators of sorts, in order to stop bad people from doing bad things, including Diesel’s cousin, Wulf, but at the same time they try to lead something like a normal life. However, these two and normalcy don’t go together, as they have too many enemies who are willing to do anything to hurt them. But, at the same time, they have a few friends as well; a master baker, a wise woman who owns an old bookshop and Glo, a sidekick who’s as colorful as they come: she dresses funny, loves going out on blind dates, and has a heart of gold; a heart that will make her help one of their enemies. Glo, reminds the reader, in more than one ways of Kenzi from Lost Girl, the TV series, something that makes her all the more interesting.

I believe that anyone who loves the Plum novels will like this book as well, as it does have a lot of action, a little bit of mystery, interesting characters, a… genius of a monkey called Carl, and a cat that goes by the name of Cat 7143. If you’re looking for an antidote to everyday boredom this might just be the book for you. 7/10

By the same author:

Smokin' Seventeen

Book Review: Resources Investment: Profit from Hot Commodities by Martin Li

The financial crisis is still growing strong in the western world and even though, no matter how hard we try, most of us don’t seem to understand what’s really going on, others see the opportunities arising from the current situation. The people who know best always say that one should invest when the markets are low. That sounds great, but invest in what? Commodities; this seems to be the answer to the question, according at least to Martin Li, the author of Resources Investment: Profit from Hot Commodities.

Li seems to know really well how the commodities market works, on which companies one should invest his or her money, and when. He goes at great lengths to explain how the financial crisis and the oil prices affect the society and why some stock prices skyrocket or fall with a bang, and he tries to solve the mystery of the eternal lust for gold.

If there’s one thing that someone could get from this book is that in the world of commodities, as well as in the marketplace, there’s no such thing as a certainty. You can buy and sell stocks, you can save your money in gold or play the exchange rate game, but at the end of the day the most important thing is to take calculated risks and don’t try too hard to make an easy profit.

There’s a lot of knowledge in these pages concerning everything that keeps this industrialist world of ours going around. The author tells us all we need to know about fuel and the precious metals, as well as for the companies that extract and distribute them to the world. He explains why things happen in one way or another, and points out the impact that China and India have as rising economies and consumer societies in today’s world. And he quotes experts in an effort to explain how our energy needs drive the prices up, along with the exhaustion of the “cheap” oil wells.

Before reading this book I was under the impression that I knew a lot about how things work in the oil and mining industry; well, I was wrong. The truth is that I knew too little, but now that has changed, since I, at last, have the full picture. You don’t have to be in finance or in one of the industries the book preoccupies itself with to read this; all you have to be is interested in the world around you, a world that changes by the day. This is a perfect guide to the turbulent economic waters of this modern era, which can easily be read and understood by one and all.

By the same author:

Inca Trails 

Book Review: The Stranger by Camilla Läckberg

As it is usual the case with Scandinavian crime fiction what the authors seem more interested about is talking about the local societies and their many ills than crime itself. Camilla Läckberg is one of those writers who have started becoming more and more popular in the west mainly because of her characters. Detective Patrik Hedström and his writer wife Erica, do not only seem to be everyday people, but also people with big hearts, who can feel the pain of the others, whose psyches are deeply scarred by the past, and who care more for justice than anything else.

In “The Stranger” there are too many people circling around them, but also around the rural area where they live, and mostly where Patrik works: the chief of the Tanumshede police station who’s as lazy as they come; a cop who lives and breathes in boredom; another cop who’s finally got a lucky break; and finally a new transfer, an ambitious woman who at some point in the future wants to become chief of police herself.

And these are the people that only reside in the police station. Add to them an ambitious politician, a mysterious psychologist, the cast and the production team of a reality show, an old woman desperately in love, as well as another old woman that lives all alone in the wilderness, and you almost get the full picture. I say almost, because most of these people have a lot of secrets to hide and a lot of pain that weighs on their shoulders.

Läckberg seems to be more interested in dissecting the society than giving the readers a mystery; in making them think about everyday life, instead of trying to solve the puzzles. A road accident turns out to be a murder. Then another murder takes place that puts the city and the cops on the spotlight. And Patrik is caught in the middle of two investigations that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, even though there’s a chance they do. One can feel sympathy for some of the characters and their strife, but this is not an angelic world we live in, so most of them simply make him dislike them.

The author seems to enjoying playing with the reader’s perceptions. What is good and what is evil? Would you act any differently if you were in the perp’s shoes? Can you really judge a person by his or her looks? Can somebody escape the past unscathed?

If you are looking for an overcomplicated mystery, you’ll like parts of this book; but if you’re searching for a novel that speaks about damaged people and the many evils of modern society you’ll simply love it.

By the same author:

The Preacher