Today I'm posting another one of my "Honorable Mentions" special features of short reviews of five related types of books. Today I want to talk about historical novels, spy thrillers and mysteries I've enjoyed.
Book Review: The Girl From Venice (2016). Martin Cruz Smith.
Martin Cruz Smith is a very good and rather prolific thriller writer, most famous for his nine-book Gorky Park series about Arkady Renko, the disillusioned Russian police detective just trying to do his job while faced with nearly insurmountable political, bureaucratic and international espionage situations in the late Cold War and post-Cold War eras.
The Girl from Venice is one of his creative departures from the Arkady Renko books (I previously reviewed another one, December 6). This one is also a very worthwhile entertainment, and a quick-read historical thriller, about a 28-year-old war-weary fisherman in 1945 Italy, who catches a "dead" young woman in his fishing net, only to stumble into a whole series of dangerous situations as World War II in Italy, and the Allied invasion, rushes to its final chaotic conclusion. Recommended.
Book Review: The Red Sparrow Trilogy: Red Sparrow (2013), Palace of Treason (2015), and The Kremlin’s Candidate (2018). Jason Matthews.
This is an excellent set of modern spy novels, written by a real-life veteran CIA agent. When the cold war ended, a lot of us thought it might be the end of the great spy novel era too. As this trilogy demonstrates, there’s nothing to worry about on that front – the world’s second oldest profession is alive and well, along with the literary scene devoted to it.
These books have well-developed characters, a brave and tough heroine, great plots, nerve-shattering suspense, incredible complexity and realistic details of how modern spy operations are planned and carried out. The fact that they centered on the vicious and toxic regime of Vladimir Putin and the political world of post-Soviet Russia, before all of us were fully aware of the nature of his brutal regime, gives the books added authenticity.
The first book, Red Sparrow, was made into a popular spy thriller movie starring Jennifer Lawrence. These books are all recommended.
Book Review: Everyone Brave is Forgiven (2016). Chris Cleave.
This is a fictional story of three young people (a woman and two men) coming of age in London and Malta during the Blitz in the early part of World War II. Through their stories, we see the hard choices each one has to make, between their dreams for their own personal futures, and the unavoidable and limited options to be had in a time of war, sacrifice and loss.
There’s a love triangle, and a good English World War II adventure story, with a particularly vivid description of the lesser-known privations and tragedy of the British attempts to defend Malta.
Apparently the author was inspired to tell this story by love letters from the period by family members. The book is beautifully written. Recommended.
Book Review: Midnight in Europe (2015). Alan Furst.
This book is a predictably great read, as we can expect with most Alan Furst novels. For those who are not familiar with him, Alan Furst is arguably the best World War II spy fiction thriller writer of our generation.
His books tend to take place in different locales across Europe in the pre-war 1930s, and during the early war years, and he focuses on portraying the kinds of dangerous situations and unavoidable daily moral choices people faced as a consequence of the simultaneous rise of fascism and Soviet communism during this period.
This particular novel takes place in Paris in 1938, as the Spanish Republicans try desperately to find arms across Europe for their lost cause, the Spanish Civil War against General Franco and his army. It has Furst’s usual cast of mostly middle-aged men and women trying to figure out how to survive and maneuver against Nazi and Soviet spies and sympathizers, the secret police of various countries, local informers and the coming onslaught of total war. Recommended.
Book Review: Another Man's Moccasins (2008). Craig Johnson. Walt Longmire Series #4.
I previously reviewed the first three books in Craig Johnson’s 20+ book series about his modern western sheriff Walt Longmire, and his fictional Wyoming world of Absaroka County, where he tries to keep the peace and solve murders in his fraught small-town rural community of whites, Native Americans, Basques and others, with the help of a memorable supporting cast, including his Indian friend Henry Standing Bear, his tough young female deputy Vic Moretti, his daughter Cady and others.
Along the way, he usually has to interact with and come to understand a variety of new local characters and competing economic interests, in order to get to the bottom of whatever crime has been committed.
In Another Man’s Moccasins, the main crime at the heart of the story involves the murder of a young Vietnamese woman, possibly but not definitely by a disturbed young Crow Indian man. Without giving away the plot, I’ll just mention that there is a story line about sex trafficking, but also a mysterious link to Longmire’s own history as a U.S. Marine Military Policeman in the Vietnam war, a plot device that allows the author to further develop Longmire’s character and backstory, as well as that of Henry Standing Bear and their lifelong friendship.
This will probably be my last Longmire book review – it’s a very good series, the best murder mystery series I’ve encountered recently (I’m not generally that big a fan of the genre), especially because of the excellent characters and great dialogue. But it is a long series, and after awhile it just becomes an enjoyable pastime to read them. They’re not that individually memorable after you've read a few -- a common problem with long-running mystery series, I find. But still, recommended.
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