The Kizuna Coast

The Kizuna Coast, by Sujata Massey

Hooray! Rei Shimura is back!

I've been reading Sujata Massey's Rei Shimura detective series since the late 1990s, captivated by these books because the main protagonist is a Japanese-American antiques dealer turned detective, living and working in Japan. I still remember my joy in first discovering this series! Sujata Massey is part Indian, part German, like a friend of mine, and lived in Japan for several years.

A fascinating character who I've always felt I could relate to more than most detectives, Rei Shimura led me through ten adventures, mostly set in Japan, before she retired in 2008 to live with her new husband Michael in Hawaii (Shimura Trouble). You can find the other Rei Shimura titles in chronological order on Sujata Massey's Web site, in case you want to start at the beginning (which I always prefer to do). It was a little odd, reading this one, because Rei had aged only a few years even though the series spans over 17 years, but I understand why Massey chose to keep her young.

Since Rei Shimura retired (and I sadly accepted there would be no more books in the series), I've begun following Sujata Massey online and became Facebook friends with her. She is delightful, and we have much in common (including the fact that we both turned 50 in 2014). I hope to meet her in person one day.

Fortunately, she's continued to stay busy, last year publishing The Sleeping Dictionary, a historical novel set in India, which was my second-top pick for fiction in 2013. (My parents' book group recently read The Sleeping Dictionary on my recommendation, and it was a popular pick!) She also published a beautiful little novella, The Ayah's Tale, about the relationship between an Indian ayah and the English children under her care.

My first week in Japan, befriending the neighbor kids, Fall 1986

But back to The Kizuna Coast! I was supremely lucky to be able to read an Advanced Reader Copy of this soon-to-be-published novel, which will be out in February.

I could relate so well to Rei Shimura's great angst when she saw news coverage of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster. Even though I don't have relatives in Japan, it's where I met my husband and spent three of the most adventurous years of my life, and I have so many fond memories of the kindness of so many Japanese people. During those first few harrowing days, I was glued to the Internet and couldn't keep myself from watching that devastating wave destroy whole towns...my heart ached for Japan.

Soon after the tsunami hit, Rei's mentor Mr. Ishida calls her, asking for help. She gets to Japan as soon as she can and gets embroiled in a mystery...to find out what happened to Mr. Ishida's young apprentice, Mayumi, who has disappeared. She goes to Tohoku as part of a relief effort and is touched by people who have lost their loved ones and livelihoods. She experiences  絆 (kizuna, or bonds of love), which the Japanese show for each other during this difficult period. The Japanese public chose 絆 as the kanji of 2011 after they witnessed an unprecedented outpouring of assistance after the earthquake and tsunami. 

While not as literary as her last book (The Sleeping Dictionary), The Kizuna Coast was a quicker read and compelling just the same. Rei Shimura remains cemented as my favorite detective series, and I hope the series continues.

I'm so glad Rei is back! I read this book over the Christmas holidays while I had family visiting from England and Australia, and it was hard to put down. The only other book I've read about the Japanese tsunami was Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, which was my top fiction pick last year. I would love to read more, and I hope one day to return to Japan myself. In the meantime, I'm grateful that my favorite authors are making the trips, doing the research, and telling the stories themselves.

Body Work

Body Work, by Sara Paretsky

I've been reading Sara Paretsky since my 20s...she's one of my favorite detective novelists. V.I. Warshawski is based in Chicago, and she's a hard-boiled feminist, whiskey-swilling, kick-ass detective. That's why I like her.

In Body Work, V.I. encounters edgy young artist/entertainers, grumpy night club owners, Eastern European gangsters, and Iraq war vets, while trying to help out her young, impulsive cousin Petra.

This novel was not my favorite...I did finish it, but it was not as compelling as her other books.

I will continue reading all of Paretsky's books, in the hope the next one will be better!

The Silkworm

The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)

This is #2 in J.K. Rowling's new adult mystery series. Detective Cormoran Strike is an interesting character--he's a disabled veteran with a prosthesis, born to a famous rock star father but alienated from him, motherless and still deeply ambivalent about breaking up with his psychopath girlfriend. I preferred the first book in the series, The Cuckoo's Calling, but this one still contained vintage J.K. Rowling story telling.

The Silkworm is all about the dog-eat-dog world of writing and the publishing industry, and it doesn't paint a particularly warm picture! For example, this quote accurately sums up the novel:

...writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels. 

Novelist Owen Quine writes a poison pen novel about everyone he knows...then he shows up dead. Quine's novel itself is a bizarre, sexually weird, and symbolically complicated story that I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to read. The writers, publishers, agents, and their family members in The Silkworm are mostly all cut throat and vicious. They have few, if any, redeeming qualities. 

Also, I would love to see J.K. Rowling write a book with a really standout, great female lead...instead of consigning women and girls to the supporting character role (ala Hermione Granger). Robin, Strike's assistant, is smart, resourceful, and dedicated, but she's still stuck with her boring drip of a boyfriend and can't seem to realize he's no good. I'm finding that to be tiresome! Also, she's desperate for more opportunities to become an investigator, but this process is so slow it makes me sleepy!

J.K. Rowling is a skilled writer, and I will keep reading anything she writes...but this one just didn't hit the mark for me.

In the Woods

In the Woods, by Tana French

I've seen this book around for awhile, and I had a copy of it on my bookshelves that I finally decided to read. It's the story of Rob Ryan, victim of a crime 20 years before and now a murder detective himself. He's on a case in which a young girl is murdered in the same area where his two best friends vanished when he was a child.

My favorite character is Ryan's partner, Cassie Maddow, a tough, tender detective with secrets of her own.

I would describe this book as a literary thriller/detective novel. It took me a bit of time to finish it, but I enjoyed it. After I closed the last page, I looked up the rest of the series. French chooses a different main character to profile in each book, all based in Ireland (the "Dublin Murder Squad"). The next book will focus mostly on Cassie herself. I'm not sure whether Rob ever returns to the plot...but I will be reading more of the series!

The Cuckoo's Calling

The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith

Unless you've been sleeping under a rock, you'll know that this is the latest book, a debut mystery, by J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. Its protagonist is Cormoran Strike, a private investigator who lost his leg while a soldier in Afghanistan. A bit of a tragic figure, he has just broken up with his manipulative, cruel, but beautiful girlfriend. He owes tons of money and is living in his office.

Cormoran is hired to figure out whether supermodel Lula Landry really killed herself, or if she was murdered. He, along with his temporary secretary Robin, dabble in the world of fashion designers, druggies, and movie producers, most wealthy and competitive. Editor David Shelley apparently first read the novel without knowing of its true author and expressed surprise that a woman had written the novel...she writes from a man's (and a soldier's) perspective that well.

I was reading out examples of classically British English to my British husband all through this book. So glad they didn't try to edit it to suit American audiences. I suspect that some American readers might not understand every single word or phrase without looking things up...just fine with me. It's truly a London novel, too.

J.K. Rowling is a master, and she deftly handles this detective genre, just as she did middle grade/young adult fantasy and literature (The Casual Vacancy). I will definitely be reading her next Cormoran Strike novel!

The Burning

The Burning, by Jane Casey

I read Jane Casey's first novel, The Missing, and was not as nearly taken with it as her second, The Burning, which felt similar to BBC's "Prime Suspect" (with Helen Mirren), but with a young Irish detective named Maeve.

One reason why I didn't like her first novel was that I didn't find her main character, Sarah Finch, to be very likable. She ended up being a teacher after she hated school, and she didn't seem to get any enjoyment out of her job. I cannot relate to this, but my husband tells me that he thinks it sounds British...he thinks that more people in the UK go into teaching without really being called to do so. That might be true.

At any rate, I prefer Maeve. She has to put up with her English colleagues' misogyny and crap about her Irish ancestry, but she is a strong and complex character. She's working on a case to catch a London serial killer who likes to beat his female victims to a pulp and then set their bodies ablaze. It's more of a police procedural (hence the Prime Suspect comparison) than a mystery book, but I liked it.

The other thing I appreciated about this book was the publisher didn't dumb it down for Americans...as in, they didn't change the British terms and language (like they did in Harry Potter, for example). Most Americans will not know what a bacon buttie is...but that's okay! They can look it up if they want to know.

I will keep reading Casey's books (she has three more Maeve Kerrigan books published with another one on the way), and I'm so glad she redeemed herself after the first one.

Maisie Dobbs: Cross between Downton Abbey and Sherlock Holmes

Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear

A friend recommended I try out Maisie Dobbs for my post-surgery recovery because I find I lack mental energy when I'm in pain and on pain meds. (My brain just doesn't work right!) After my Joanna Trollope waste of time, I finally dove into Maisie Dobbs. I was beginning to worry that I'd lost my passion for reading from the brain surgery I had, but I'm happy to report that I'm getting back into the swing of things. Maisie Dobbs was just the ticket, although it took a little getting into in the beginning.

Maisie Dobbs is the daughter of a costermonger (a street seller of fruits and vegetables) and after her mother dies, she's taken into service because her dad cannot afford to take care of her. Soon Lady Rowan (lady of the house) takes her on as a project after noting Maisie's keen intelligence. She's tutored by Rowan's friend Maurice, who helps her prepare for Cambridge entrance exams. However, after a year of studying at Cambridge's women's college (in those days they didn't actually bestow degrees on women, but they were allowed to study), she decides her country needs her. She signs up as a nurse and is sent to France. After returning from France, she sets up her own business as a private investigator.

Much of this first book in the series is used to set up the character of Maisie. She takes on a case that requires her to delve into her own sad history in the war and her one true love. The book starts in the present (well, 1929), but then flashes back to her childhood, life in service, and time during the war. I found those pieces the most interesting because I wanted to get to know more about Maisie. Winspear slowly unravels the secrets of Maisie's past and her own tragic life.

Like Downton Abbey, it tackles themes of British class mores and the impact that World War I had on its participants. For example, both the show and the book feature stories about soldiers who deserted in cowardice and were shot.

I'm not sure how realistic this series is...how likely is it for the aristocracy to actually invest in one of their young housemaids to help them better themselves? She seems to fit in well at Cambridge, but all we really see about that part of her life is her close friendship with her roommate. How did she do with her studies? Not sure.

I really enjoyed this novel but it wasn't perfect. I found some details lacking, but I will keep reading in the hopes that it will only improve! I'm curious to learn more about Maisie--she's an interesting character.

Hardball: VI, I've missed you

Hardball, by Sara Paretsky
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I wouldn't call myself a lover of detective novels, but I have a few favorite authors: Sujata Massey (who wrote the Rei Shimura series) and Sara Paretsky. I've been reading Paretsky since she wrote her first V.I. Warshawski novel, Indemnity Only, in the early 1980s, and I've read all of them until this one. She took a four-year break between #12 (Fire Sale) and #13 (Hardball), and during that time she wrote a nondetective novel, Bleeding Kansas, which I also enjoyed. Somehow I missed the fact that she's written two more V.I. Warshawski novels in recent years, so I'm catching up now before her next one comes out in January.

Having never been to Chicago, I feel that I almost have a taste of the city by watching "ER" and reading Paretsky. It's clear that she loves her city, gritty and hardboiled as it can be.

In recent books, Paretsky's political stripes have been showing a bit more, which is fine with me because our stripes are similar. She began working as a community organizer in Chicago when Martin Luther King Jr. was there, and that's where she bases this story: in that violent era of racial conflict. She explores themes of subtle and outright racism and even torture through her characters.

V.I. is engaged to find a man who went missing 40 years ago. Soon the case gets much more complicated than she expected, around the time that her clueless young cousin, Petra, shows up. When Petra goes missing after V.I.'s office is ransacked, the search expands to the present day. Soon she begins to uncover deep-seated family secrets and corruption in the Chicago police force.

I found Petra to be far too ridiculous and insensitive, and her father (V.I.'s uncle) was particularly awful. Because I like happy endings, I want V.I. to be romantically involved with someone who is good for her...but how many detectives ever end up happily married or in a successful long-term relationship? It just doesn't work.

I enjoyed this story and the return of V.I. Warshawski, and I look forward to catching up with the series again. Most other detective/mystery authors I get tired of (e.g., Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell), but Paretsky always keeps me coming back. She's the great queen of female private investigators!

Final Jeapardy: Inspiration for Law & Order SVU

Final Jeopardy by Linda Fairstein

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When looking for novels set in New York City (preparing for our trip there), I discovered this writer--a former sex crimes prosecutor who writes books about the sex crimes unit in NYC. This is the precursor to "Law & Order: SVU" and her first novel. I will read more.



View all my reviews

Likely to Die: Sex crimes in NYC

Likely to Die by Linda Fairstein

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second of Fairstein's books I've read, and I'm finding that I enjoy them more than Patricia Cornwell's because of the NYC setting. I just can't imagine how she finds time to write, given that she's also the head of NYC's sex crimes prosecution unit!



View all my reviews