April in Spain

 by John Banville

This is the second mystery book I have read by Banville.  He used to write more general fiction and in fact one the Booker Prize for one of his books.  I wonder why he switched to mysteries.

I love his writing.  He has incredible descriptions of settings, etc.  He also does a superb job of describing his characters and what motivates them.

The story is about a coroner who is reluctantly vacationing in Spain with his second wife.  The guy has a lot of issues, he doesn't like change, he doesn't want to be anywhere but home.  One day he sees a girl in a restaurant and is convinced that she is a friend of his daughter who was supposedly killed by her brother a few years ago.  The brother admitted to the killing and killed himself but the body of his sister was never found.

He contacts his daughter in England, who is having issues with her boyfriend.  He tells her of his suspicions and convinces her to come to Spain to see if he is correct.

Before she leaves England the man's daughter contacts the police and the girl's uncle telling them of her father's suspicion.  It seems a weak case but the police decide to send an officer along with her to Spain.  The uncle is shocked and dismayed at this news and makes arrangements for a hitman to go and kill his niece.  He feels news of her being alive and knowledge of some family business dealings will ruin him as a politiican and businessman.

The man's daughter does meet up with her friend who is working as a doctor in the local hospital.

The author does a great job or portraying the cornoner, is very supportive, encouraging wife, the psycophathic hitman, and others.  The books comes to a shocking climax as the hitman arrives in the restaurant of the hotel where the coroner, his wife and daughter, the policeman and the friend are sitting. The hitmans kills the coroner's wife and the police officer kills him.  It seemed sad that the poor wife had to die.  We find out that both the girl and her brother were abused by their father and then had an incestual relationship.  The uncle know about this.  He gets his just desserts in the end.

A very intersting book.

Mistress of the Ritz

 by Melanie Benjamin

I picked this book up on a whim at Chapters.  I expected it to be a light read about WWII.  Boy was I wrong,,and pleasantly surprised.

The book is based on the life of a real couple, the Manager of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and his American, Jewiish wife, Claude and Blanche Auzello.

The story takes place in Paris when the Nazis have orverrun the city and taken over the Ritz for their headquarters.  The two people are disgusted to have to be nice to the Nazis.

The couple have quite a fiery relationship.  The wife is especially upset when her husband insists that he has to have a mistress because it is what French husbands do.  The wife is upset at how her husband cowtows to the Germans.  She does not know that he is working with the resistance, feeding information  to the resistance, hiding away supplies for the resistance.  

Blanche meets a kind of wild woman, a gypsy, on a boat when she is returning to Paris after leaving her husband for a time.  The two become fast friends and the girl, Lily, convinces Blanche to help her with her work for the resistance.  While Blanche's husband thinks she is off drinking and partying she is actually on missions to help downed soldiers, etc.  It is ironic that neither of them know what the other is doing until late in the book.

One day Blanche makes a mistake, she throws a drink at a Nazi while she is at a famous restaurant with Lily.  She is arrested and tortured.  The Germans know what Lily is and want her to turn Lily in.  Both of them end up in a prison.  While she is in prison Blanche keeps telling them she is a Jew to take attention off Lily but the Germans won't believe her. Blanche assumes Lily dies there.  When the Americans enter Paris the prison doors are opened and Blanche is able to make it back to the hotel.  Her husband is shocked at how much she has changed.  After the war Blanche is plagued by nightmares of her torture and what she experienced in the prison.  Finally one night Claude shoots her and then himself.  At the end of the book we find out that Lily did survive and kept awared of Blanche and Claude but she never got in contact.  Perhaps if she had Blanche would have been able to recover a bit.  She felt guilty for thinking she was responsbible for Lily's death.

This turned out to be a very interesting book with very powerful characters.