The Man Who Died Twice

 by Richard Osman

This is the second book about the Thursday Mystery Club, about some seniors who like to solve crimes.  This time a crime comes to them.... One of the women was a former MI-5 person receives a note to meet a man who is supposed to be dead.  He was from a case years before where they faked a death as part of a case.

When she goes to meet the person she is shocked to find that the man who contacted her was actually an ex-husband.  He has still been working and is now in protection because he has been accused of stealing diamonds from a case he was working on.

Soon after the ex and his "keeper" are both found murdered.  The faces are so damaged that they suspect one or the other of the bodies are not really who they think they are.

The woman is convinced her ex probably did steal the diamonds.  He leaves her various clues.  Eventually after dealing with some really nasty characters they do find the diamonds and donate the proceeds to a good cause.

These are entertaining books, there are a lot of spunky characters and a lot of humour. The plot development was really interesting.

The Island of Missing Trees

 by Elif Shafak

This is a beautiful, very unique book.  I really enjoyed it though the basic stories were quite sad.

The story opens with a young girl, daughter of a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, in London having a meltdown in class.  She has been asked to interview a family member about their life.... she has no family that she can contact.  She is devastated further when she finds her meltdown has made it onto the Internet.

The girl's mother has died and she feels that her father cares more about his job and the plants he works on than he does about her.  

The book then describes how the father buries a fig tree he brought from Cypress (illegally) every fall.  The tree cannot survive the English winters so he buries it every year til spring.  He doesn't just bury it he goes out and talks to it.

We then learn that the girl's parents were lovers in Cypress just before all the violence started.  Their parents would not approve of their relationship but two gay men who run a tavern, which has a fig tree growing in the centre of the tavern, let the kids meet at their restaurant.  The boy's mother has seen one son killed and another join the fighting and she fears for her youngest son so she ships him off to England to live with a relative.  The boy doesn't know that his girlfriend has become pregnant.

Suddenly the girl's aunt arrives from Cypress for a visit.  The girl doesn't trust her and is rude to her.  She is angry the woman never came sooner.  She learns a little about her parent's love affair as young people and also that the aunt couldn't come sooner because she had to look after her mother.

A unique and fascinating part of the book is that part of the story is told by the fig tree in the tavern.  It is a branch of this tree that the girl's father brought to England.

As the story progresses we find out the girl's mother gave her baby up for adoption but the baby died of a fever that plagued Cypress killing many infants.  The two gay guys were tortured and murdered.

Eventually the girl's father returned to Cypress on a business trip and reconnects with his lover.  At first the father thinks his girlfriend had an abortion and he is furious with her.  But eventually he finds out the truth. She is a forensic scientist trying to document and identify all those who died in the conflict.  He convinces her to marry him and they return to England where the daughter was born.

The mother, perhaps because afflicted with depression or PTSD eventually dies of an overdose.  The father is devastated.

As the book ends we find that the girl now has an understanding of what has happened in her family and is starting to re-develop her relationship with her father.

As the book ends we find the spirit of the mother has moved into the little fig tree.

A sad, but powerful, fascinating and well crafted story.

Blue Sky Kingdom

 by Bruce Kirby

This is a memoir by a BC adventure traveller from Kimberly BC.  The man takes his wife and two young sons, one of whom is autistic, on a very challenging journey to stay for several months in a monastery in the Himalayas.  First they canoe to Kamloops, or somewhere near there, to catch the Rocky Mountaineer Train to Vancouver.  There they board a container ship to sail across the ocean to Korea.  After that they eventually trek up some steep and dangerous paths, with the man carrying one of his sons a lot of the time, til they get to the monastery.

They spend six months or so living with one of the monks and trying to teach the young buddhist trainees English.  Their host is quite a character and the man and his family are welcomed into the monastery.  They are pleased at how their sons thrive, even sitting still to do some meditation.

The book talks a lot about their interactions with the locals, the changes that have occurred and will occur and what impact this will have on the valley and the monastery.  The trip was life changing for them in more ways than they expected.

One of the sad things is of course how the world is encroaching on the monastery, but also in the past the monastery used to provide the young buddhist monks with an excellent education, this seems to have declined so what future will face them.

It was a fascinating story with a lot of engaging stories and great description of the people and the country.

A Line to Kill

 by Anthony Horowitz

This was a strange book.  It is by the author who is behind Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War.  He is also the author of a series of children's book.  In this story, an author, this author actually, goes to an island with a detective he is writing books about for a book festival

It turns out there is conflict on the island about a potential technology development.  The detective has some past history with an employee of the person who has funded the festival.  The detective was accused of pushing the man downstairs and crippling him, while pursuing him on pedophile charges.  The festival funder is not a likeable person either.

The rich man and his wife end up getting killed.  It appears the employee may have done it.  But in the end it turns out it was one of the other authors at the event who was angry at the festival sponsor because her son committed suicide after becoming addicted to the man's gambling site.

It was an okay story but I found it very bizarre that the author would insert himself and his real life into the story so much.  I like Midsommer Murders and Foyle's war much more.  The stories are much more interesting, the characters more intriguing.

A bit of a disappointment.

Cloud Cuckoo Land

 by Anthony Doer

This is a highly anticipated book by the author of All the Light We Cannot See, which I enjoyed.  I looked at some of the reviews/ratings for this book and they ranged from 1 star to 5 stars.  I can understand this.  This was a long book and a bit of a hard slog.  All the parts came together at the end but I am not sure it was worth it, in my opinion.

First of all, the author obviously values libraries and books, in fact he seems to bemoan the loss of anything written that has disappeared.  I am not sure all books are worth mourning....

The basic thread linking all the various lives/times in this book is a partial book that has been discovered Called Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes.  It is the story of a Shepherd who seeks to become a bird and make it to a land in the sky Cloud Cuckoo Land which is supposedly a paradise.  As the man strives to make it there he meets gods who first turn him into a donkey, he is treated harshly by his masters; then he becomes a fish inside the belly of a whale; then he becomes a raven and makes it to CCL where he still isn't happy.  When he goes to see an Oracle he basically discovers that he wants to be back where he came from and goes home.

There are several stories that relate to the book

- A girl from 14th Century Constantinople and a young boy from a farm outside Constantinople.  The girl discovers the manuscript while scrounging for books to sell to booksellers during a siege of constantinople.  Eventually she flees from the city and meets up with the young boy who is leaving the seige and returning to his family.  They eventually marry and after she dies her husband returns the scrolls to Urbino where the story appears to have originated.

Another character is a gay man, who was a prisoner of war in the Korean war.  As an old man he is working with children at a library to act out the story.  While they are preparing the play a young autistic boy who is angry because the forest next to his mother's property was razed for development and the owl he loved has disappeard.  The boy has gotten into anti-establishment posts on the internet and decides to bomb a real estate office but as he cannot get into the real estate office undetected he decides to put the bomb in the library.  He has used the library a lot.  The bomb is discovered, in a panic the boy shoots a Librarian and the old man ends up dying when he runs out of the library with the bomb.

The first story is about a space ship leaving earth with a destination hundreds of years away.  One of the families includes a young girl, her father and mother.  The ship gets a virus, many people get sick, the mother disappears (has died or been quarantined).  The father tosses his daughter into a room with the main computer, Sybil, with supplies and locks her in.  Why would a father want his daughter to survive alone??  The girl also has been told the CCL story by her father.  The girl is able to access a library using 3D goggles, supposedly the library has all knowledge.  She is also able to go see parts of the earth in a snapshot like a googlearth shot of a street.  Eventually the girl realizes that Sybil and the library do not have all info or are not willing to give her access to all info.  She discovers that if she finds an owl icon somewhere she can actually break through the images to get active views of things and see the devastation, tragedy in the world.  Ultimately the girl suspects that she is  not really travelling through space at all.  She breaks out and finds a community on Greenland where she spends the rest of her life.  The company that planned the space ship had programmed the library to show their preferred views of the world.

The young bomber, while in jail, learns to translate the CCL story.  When he gets out he asks the children who were at the library when he bombed it to meet him.  When they come he gives them copies of his translation of the books.  We also find out that the young bomber was hired by the spaceship company to "edit" clips of reality for the library files on the ship.  He eventually starts to sabotage/edit the system, using the Owl icons to allow people to access the truth rather than the sterilized views of earth.

The book certainly stressed the value and power of stories to engage us.  It was interesting how the author wove the various lives together because of their involvement with the book.  However, I did find it a hard slog to get to the end.  This may have been an interesting, challenging, intellectual exercise for the author but my final thought was, you took us on this long journey, so what, for what?? The character in the main story, after his trials and tribulations decides he wants to be back home.

Book Jacket quote: "Dedicated to 'the librarians, then, now and in the years to come'. Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship -- of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart.  I am not sure it was all that redemptive, only one of the character, the Turkish girl and the spaceship girl seem to have ended with a happy life....

August Into Winter

 by Guy Vanderhaeghe

I read another book of his a number of years ago, the Last Crossing.  As I recall I really enjoyed it so I was looking forward to this book.

" You carried the past into the future on your back, its knees and arms hugging you tighter with every step."

This book is about a number of very damaged people. Vanderhaeghe is a masterful storyteller but I just couldn't deal with all the sadness and violence in the book.

The book is set in a small town where a number of petty crimes occur.  One of the local police is convinced that a young man in town is responsible for the crimes.  This young man is a loner and is scared because his parents had him but didn't really want a child.  They farmed him out to other relatives for awhile.  His father has died and the boy, Ernie, is now loving with his mother but there is no affection there.

The police officer goes to confront Ernie and is murdered by him.  

The other police officer wants to track down Ernie.  There is a big rainstorm which makes the roads impassable so the police officer recruits the help and the horses of a local farmer.  The local farmer is a widower is a scarred war veteran who has guilt because he feels he is repsonsible for his wife's death as he got her drinking along with him when he came back from the war.  His brother is even more damaged.  He is living in a local hotel, supported by his brother, and is writing a great opus as he is convinced he is in direct communication with god.  The farmer, Oliver Dill, has a grudge against Ernie because his wife seemed to like him and rely on him more than her husband.

The two men set off on horseback.  While this is being organized Ernie has packed and taken his late father's car.  He has also picked up a local girl, who is only 12 years old.  He is in love with her and tells her he will marry her when it is legal to do so.  She is happy to leave the house where she lives with her sister as her sister treats her like a slave.  They head off but end up crashing the car in a ditch.  Ernie gets her to the local teacher's house/school and tells her to stay there til he can get the car fixed. They tell the teacher that they are brother and sister and that she is being taken to a boarding school.  But from the girls shabby clothes the teacher knows this is a lie.

The teacher is new to the area, and is there reluctantly.  She lost her teaching job in Winnipeg after it was revealed she had an affair with a married man.    Her lover, a fellow teacher, went to fight in Spain and was killed.  She has received the diary of his time in Spain and pours over it morning his loss.

Eventually the cop and farmer see the crashed car and go to the teacherage where they discover the girl. The teacher is asked to look after the girl.  Ernie goes to a nearby store and robs it and kills the owner and hurts his wife.  The girl sets fire to the school and teacherage.

Eventually the farmer and police officer find Ernie.  He escapes but not before he kills the police officer.

The farmer offers the teacher money to buy some clothes and that she can stay at his place until she figures out what she is going to do.  As the school is destroyed she is told she will not get paid but she has to stay around to be a witness in the arson trial against the girl.  

The farmer is  in love witht he teacher and hopes he can convince her to marry him but she longs for the big city.  So the teacher does't feel to beholding to him he asks her to type up his brothers document.  He is but crazy but she does it. She also dreams about publishing her lover's journal.  The farmer asks her to marry him but she says she can't.  He does everything he can to endear himself to her even taking her to an all expenses paid weekend to Winnipeg, not strings attached.  He even tells her she can stay in Winnipeg if that is what she wants to do but she decides to return with him as she has to be a witness at the trial.

Meantime, the boy Ernie is plotting an escape from prison, to take place while they are being transferred to the court for the trial. He and another prisoner are able to escape.  Ernie has two goals, to get his girlfriend out of prison and to kill the farmer and the teacher because they are going to testify against his girlfriend.

In the end the farmer, his brother and the teacher are running from Ernie and the farmer's brother stays behind to say his brother and the teacher.  He is killed by Ernie but Ernie is wounded and dies in the snow also.

In the end the farmer and the teacher go to Vancouver where the teacher finds and teaching job and is very happy, the farmer who is happy just to be with her, does odd jobs. It seems that the teacher might have finally developed affection for him because he is such a good man and has been so good to her.

It was brilliantly told, but a little long I think, the long sections of the lovers journal could have been shorter, I think.  But as I said all the violence and craziness was a bit hard to take in these covid times. At least two of the characters found some type of happiness.

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.