A World of Curiousities

 by Louise Penny

I always look forward with anticipation to the Louise Penny books.  She is my favourite mystery writer.  However, while this book was very good I found the premise of the story a bit far fetched and the ongoing focus on criminals and revenge on Inspector Gamache less satisfying than a good old murder investigation.

She certainly knows how to develop a plot and build suspense.  The story starts in the past, early in the careers of Gamache and Beauvoir his assistant.  A woman's body is found at the edge of a lake.  It is later determined that the woman was a prostitute and drug addict and was pimping her kids to people including the local police.  The conclusion is that the children killed their mother.  The oldest child, a girl, is sent to prison, her brother is put in care.

Gamache and his wife continue to support the girl including helping her get an engineering degree while in prision (is this possible??).  Gamache didn't and still does not like her younger brother.

The book then jumps to the present when the niece of Myrna, the former psychologist and now owner of the Three Pines used book store, and the girl who was imprisoned for killing her mother are at a graduation ceremony.

The celebrations continue to Three Pines and the brother shows up much to Gamache's disgust.  He and his wife are hosting the boy's sister at their house as they have in the past but Gamache won't invite the brother to stay with them.  Later the boy gets his sister to let him into the house and he moves things around so that Gamache will know he has been there.  He also takes photos in the house.

While this is going on Myrna decides she needs more space in her apartment above the bookstore.  It is discovered that there should be more space and then her boyfriend receives an old letter in the mail indicating a bricked in wall.  They eventually break through the wall to find a modified reproduction of a famous painting (with alterations that appear modern, not 100 years old, an old book of spells.

Then things get really elaborate and complicated.  We find out that a dangerous serial killer that Gamache had imprisioned has escaped from prison, by paying off prison officials.  This killer has someone take his place in prison (how??).  The killer has produced this modified painting, broken into Myrna's place while she was away and inserted it through the ceiling of the bookstore).  He has also arranged for the boyfriend to receive the strange letter about the bricked wall.

To me all this preparation, the letter, the painting, the breakin etc are too hard to believe.  Supposedly the prisoner worked on it while in prison and imbedded some code into it as well.

In the end we find out the prisoner is the father of the girl who was imprisoned for killing her mother. Gamache, his wife and Beauvoir are almost killed when the criminal and the girl's brother hold them hostage in their home.  Gamache ultimately kills the serial killer who has been involved with two more recent killings, along with the boy.  The boy and girl go to prison for the killings and kidnappings.  The boy hates Gamacher for ruining his family, taking his sister away from him, and ruining his life (being in care) and also for rejecting him while helping his sister over the years.

It was an action packed read but as I said I wish she would stop the plots that are so personal against Gamache and go back to some good old crime solving.

A Killer in King's Cove

 by Iona Whishaw

This book is by a Canadian author.  It is set in Nelson BC just after the second world war.  

A young British woman who worked as a spy during the war has moved to Canada to try to get away from her memories of the war.  Locals are curious about her.  A local young man is pestering her for attention.  There is an American couple that is also a curiosity to the locals.

She has a very grumpy neighbour.  One day she discovers she has no water.  As she is going to go to investigate her grumpy neighbour comes to tell her has no water either and blames it on her.  They go to investigage theit water source and find a body stuffed in a wooden channel.

The police are summoned, no one knows who the dead person is, he isn't a local.  They young woman is arrested temporarily.  The police officer is attracted to the young woman and has trouble believing she could have committed the crime

The police are surprised when a British official arrives and the police find out that both the dead man and the young woman were working as spies and are sworn to secrecy.  The British official tries to force the young woman to return to Britain to work for the government but she refuses.

Eventually it comes out that there was no connection between the two Brits are not connected.  The young man was actually coming to find his birth father.  He had recently discovered he was adoopted and that his mother had put him up for adoption.

We find out that the man's father attacked him, not knowing he was his son and the young suitor disposed of the body.

The book has a curious cast of characters including one "mad" woman who goes around the area with a gun shooting at things.  It was an okay read. 

Estates Large and Small

 by Ray Robertson

I bought this book because it was getting good reviews, because it was about a bookseller, but I didn't know what the book was really about.  If I had I probably wouldn't have bought it.  However, I am glad I did buy it.

The book takes place in covid times.  It is about Phil Cooper who has reluctantly had to close his used book business.  He is drowning his sorrows taking drugs and listening to the Grateful Dead.  He is sorry he as lost his business but especially misses his contact with customers.

He has all his book inventory in his house and is getting an online website set up with the assistane of his nephew and a young woman techie who is in a wheelchair.

The title reflects what Phil does, he goes to peeople's homes to evaluate the book collections of the deceased.  However, one day when he goes to check out a collection he is startled to learn that the woman he meets is actually the owner of the book collection he is evaluating.  She has stage 4 cancer.  He agrees to wait until she is gone to buy the books from her.  The woman invites him to visit her and they strike up a friendship and eventually become lovers.

In addition to the man's lover we also meet a favourite customer of his who comes to visit him along with his dog.  The man's mother is in a care home because she has dementia.

Phil had been trying to learn about the history of Philosophy.  As his friendship with Caroline develops he suggests they study the history of philosophy together so they meet regularly with wine and marijunan spicing their discussions to talk about the Philosophers and their key philosophical thoughts.  I think they continue doing it because they are trying to figure out the meaning of life, what makes a good life, from the philosophers.

Phil's customer's dog dies and one day Caroline tells Phil she doesn't want to suffer to the end.  She wants to die after a good day. 

 Kant - A single moment is no different from eternity (Pg.254)

She also tells him she wants him to be with her when she takes the medicine.  Phil isn't sure he can deal with this.  But he is there with her/for her when she decides to end her life.

This book appealed to me as a book lover, the author really captured the addiction to books of the bibliophile.  It was tough to read with the talk of impending death.  It was about loss, loss of life, loss of your business, loss of your memories, loss of a beloved pet.  But it is also about the vital importance of human connection.

It was very painful to read, I cried at the end, but while I want to give it away because I don't know if I will ever want to read it again, I feel it is brilliantly, beautifully written so I won't give it away for now,

The Librarian Spy

 by Madeline Martin

This book takes place during the second world war and involves two stories, one about an American Librarian who is hired and sent to Lisbon to pick up newspapers and microfilm them and send them to the U.S.  The goverment officials scan these papers for tips about what is going on in France and other parts of Europe.  

The other story is about a woman in Paris whose husband disappears.  She finds out he was working for the resistance and he never told her.  She eventually joins the resistance and ends up giving a Jewish woman her ID.  She then works to give the woman a safe place to live and works to get her out of France,.

The woman is working on publishing resistance papers.  She puts a coded message in the papers asking someone to help get the Jewish woman and her son out of France.

The American girl sees the message and works in Portugal to get the woman and son to Portugal.

Maybe it is my chemo brain fog but I found the book a bit difficult to follow, especially the work of the American in Lisbon.

It was an okay story, they do manage to get the woman out of France and eventually get her reunited with her husband who had managed to get to the U.S.  The book does a good job of explaining the danger the resistance people faced.

Trust

 by Hernan Diaz

This is actually four books in one.  It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on.

The first story is a fiction book about a reclusive New York business man who gets rich by manipulating the stock market.  He brags about how successful he has been and how he has saved the American economy especially during the time of the crash.  His wife enjoys music and contributes to charities.   Her father had mental problems and disappeared from a facility in Switzerland.  In the end the woman has mental issues and ends up in the same institution where she dies.

The second book starts with a man bragging about how his ancestors were early arrivals in America.  They were dirt poor but managed to gain a fortune.  He brags about how he has built on this, taking advantage of the stock market, saving the American economy etc.  Again no humility here either.  At points there are a few notes made of things to talk about later.   Curious...

The third book is about a young woman who applies for a job at the second man's firm.  She is very poor, her father is a typesetter with communist leanings.  There are many candidates for the job but when as part of the interview process she is asked to write about her life she writes an entirely fictional account.  She is hired but then finds out she whill not be a secretary or stenographer, rather she will write a book to counter the lies the owner of the company feels were in the first book.  He and all of New York society know the first book was written about him and his wife.  The girl learns that the man's wife was involved in society and charities in New York and a very generous philanthropist.  The man creates a foundation for her charitable endeavours.  His wife died of cancer and was in Switzerland at a hospital for treatment when she died.  The man pays the girl handsomely.  She never tells her father what he real job is she knows he will be outraged that she is working for a rich man helping him write a memoir to justify his behaviour.  However, she comes back and tells the housekeeper that she has permission to see it.  The room is very stark and empty.  Not at all the fitting with the description the man gave of his wife and her interests.  Curiouser and curiouser. The book is never completed as the man dies suddenly.  The one thing the man had told her that she cannot see is the wife's bedroom.

The young girl is shocked and dismayed that a reporter, who had apparently been courting her has actually stolen some of her notes when she wasn't home.  She gets a ransom note saying that if she doesn't turn over more info her father will be outed as a communist.  But she gives the young courier a bribe and he tells her the name of the man who sent him -- her boyfriend.  She suspends contact with him.

Part four of the book occurs as the Rich man's home has been turned into a museum.  The young girl, a seventy year old woman now finds she can now face going back.  She has done research in the museum and finds out it was the man's wife who actually had the financial and mathematical acumen and not him.

A fascinsting read with lots of twists and turns.  Plus a critique? commentary? on whether well can really benefit/save an economy or are the rich deluding themselves when they say that. Especially these days as the rich are getting richer because of the pandemic and with the large inflation the rest of us are fallling farther and farther behind.

 

Sutra of the Pearl

 by Lee Kaiser

This is another book I bought on impulse at Chapters.  It is supposed to be by a local author but the bio is very brief.  I think the book is self-published.

At first I didn't think much of the book but by the end I felt that maybe I should read it again.

Page 193 "Do you know a pearl starts as a parasite?  Over time these foul innards inside the oyster release a protective coating around the poison.  That becomes the pearl.  If nature can create the strength and purity of a pearl from such ugliness , why not believe that people can change no matter how far they've strayed..

At first I didn't like the book.  The main character, Julie was a bit of a hysterical, dependent person. The first sentence in the books is "Julia Paglia was a crackerjack of a liar, just like her mother".

The book seemed a bit disjointed at first.  Julia travels the world as a travel writer.  Her goal is to be published in National Geographic.  Julia hates her drug addict mother who is dying of lung cancer.  She believes her mother killed her young brother years ago.  She thinks of turning her mother in to the police.

She goes to India because she found an article that says that Jesus spent some time in India.  She thinks if she can find proof she could get rich and famous.  But when she gets to India she gets obsessed with saving all the diseased dogs she finds in the street.  She frantically tries to save them or at least give them a peaceful death.  

She hears about an underwater city and finally finds a group of people who will take her out in a boat to look at it at night.  The area is in a goverment restricted area, that is why they have to do the dive at night.  She gets some good pix and sends some to National Geographic.  She is shocked to learn that the people who took her out are really terrorists who want to destroy a nuclear plant that is on land near where she was diving, that is why there is a restricted zone.

She develops a relationship one particular Indian man and a few other people.  A friend from Canada also comes to join her.  The authorities eventually find out she was in the restricted area and they put out an arrest warrant for her.  Her friends remove the images from her computer so that should be no evidence against her.  

Her boyfriend is estranged from his brother (one of the terrorists) and his father.  She eventually meets the man's father and likes him.  She can't understand why her boyfriend doesn't get on with him.  The man gives her a book of Buddhist prayers/thoughts. 

She is eventually located and deported.

However, a few years later she sneaks back into India thanks to a back door into India and bribes to officials by her boyfriend. She learns that the father was very poor initially but became rich when he bought some land (from which others were evicted) from some officials who were re-allocating the land.  The father gives her a book and asks her to take it to someone he knew years before.

Disaster stikes when the terrorists take the brakes off a train loaded with fuel.  They think it will careen down a hill and into the nuclear plant but instead it crashes on a curve in a nearby village.  Much of  the village is destroyed and many people are killed or maimed.  The girl, her boyfriend and others, including his father rush to rescue the injured as police say emegency vehicles will not enter the area. The father is shot trying to rescue the injured.

The girl eventually gets the book to the man per her boyfriend's father's instructions.  She finds that the inscription in the book gives the recipient the father's share of the business.  The recipient is one of the people the father wronged years before.

Julia is devastated when she learns her boyfriend is leaving her to marry his mistress in Sweden who is pregnant with his child.  She and the man had planned to marry.  

Finally Julia decides to set out for Nepal to seek out the writings that would confirm Christ spent time in India.  She spends time at a monastery where in return for some help around the monastery, and promising to attend daily meditation, she is allowed access to the monastery's library.  The head monk is an American.  On her last day at the monastery he gives her the writings she is looking for.

She takes the writings or at least a copy and deposits them at the National Geographic office anonymously.

There was a lot going on in this book and a lot to think about -- unintended consequences for eg.  A lot of people did some bad things, the questions arose, can you change once you have done bad things? can you make amends for the wrongs you have done? The author seems to think yes and yes.

I will have to re-read it again to get all the details straight and also get a better understanding of the many complex issues.

 

Murder at the Book Club

 by Betsy Reavley

I picked this book up on impulse at Chapters.  It is about a very disfunctional bookclub. Some people met on an online bookclub and decided to start meeting in person.  They invited others to join.  One of their bookclub members is killed and as police investigate they find that the people in the book club don't like each other and often squabble with each other.  It makes you wonder why they belong to the club as it is so stressful.  

When a second member of the book club is killed the police suspect it really has something to do with the book club.

This wasn't a very interesting book.