Book Notices | Bad Luck in Berlin by Tom Wood / Dead Pig Collector by Warren Ellis / Burial by Neill Cross / The Man with the Electrified Brain by Simon Winchester / Swimming and Flying by Mark Haddon / How to Get Into Harvard by Paul Micou

Tom Wood, Bad Luck in Berlin

Amazon   Tom Wood's Bad Luck in Berlin is a short read that fills us in on Victor the assassin's activities between books one and two of the series. He's in Berlin collecting information for his next kill, but things don't quite go according to plan. A good read. In fact, I really liked reading about Victor at this length: it gives you a quick jolt of exciting reading without committing you to a long books. I want more--more shorts and more full-length manuscripts.

Warren Ellis, Dead Pig Collector

Amazon   A strange, twisted, and amusing--if implausible--story about a love that blossoms over the dismemberment of a corpse. Certainly worth the 99 cents.

Neill Cross, Burial

Amazon   Neil Cross is the guy who created and writes the BBC show Luther--which you should watch if you're not already familiar with it. This connection led me to check out his prequel to the series, Luther: The Calling, a few months back, and it's now brought me to some non-Luther reading, Cross's Burial. It's a great story. Happily married greeting card salesman Nathan Redmond answers his door one night and is confronted by someone from his past. What his unwelcome guest has to say threatens to destroy Nathan's life and family. We backtrack to find out what happened ten years earlier--the event around which the whole story pivots--and what has happened since, so that when we return to the present we're more emotionally invested. Very compelling, very readable. I would certainly go on to read more by Cross, but unfortunately none of his other books have made it to Kindle yet, so I'll have to wait.

Simon Winchester, The Man with the Electrified Brain

Amazon   This is a great example of the Kindle Single format: an interesting, well-written piece of prose that's just the right length for an afternoon's read, for those times when you're not ready to embark on anything longer. That's exactly the position I was in yesterday when I saw The Man with the Electrified Brain listed among new Singles. It's an account of a difficult period in the author's life when he was plagued by intermittent bouts of...something--confusion, disorientation, irrational fears. An interesting subject, and the prose sparkles.

Mark Haddon, Swimming and Flying

Amazon   This didn't do much for me, I'm afraid. It's a mix of stories, some of them having to do with the author's one-time fears of flying and swimming, with comments about writing and teaching writing thrown in. Apparently it's assembled from talks Haddon has given. You get to know him a little bit, but I suspect I won't remember anything about this essay past next week--although the letter he received from a woman who wanted him to date her daughter was a high point.

Paul Micou, How to Get Into Harvard

Amazon   A good little mystery surrounding the murder of a girl on a beach. A neighbor, Amy Lund, may know more than she's letting on, since she tends to watch the goings-on at the beach, but she's got her future to think about: Amy's parents have raised her with the sole view of getting her into Harvard. I'm a little perplexed by one conversation in the story, at location 162, between Amy and her father. Not sure how it fits in to the rest of the story. But otherwise I like how it hangs together. The ending is worth the read.

Norbert Davis, Holocaust House

Amazon   Amazon refers to this first book in the Doan & Carstairs series as "The delightful mystery classic!" and by gum, it was delightful. Doan is an oddly appealing private investigator, Carstairs is his beguiling Great Dane, and the story was infused with humor. I shall, I think, read more of these. Originally published in the 1940s.