The House of Unexpected Sisters by Alexander McCall Smith

The House of Unexpected Sisters: The New No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Novel by Alexander McCall Smith --- 227 pages

The 18th book in this much-loved, long-running series is one of McCall Smith's best efforts. Botswana’s first female private detective, Precious Ramotswe and her co-director Grace Makutsi – who's upped her title again, to Principal Investigating Officer – agree to take on the case of Charity Mompoloki, a young widow with two children to support, who has been fired from her job at an office furniture company in Gaborone, because an important client said she was rude to him. Charity steadfastly maintains her innocence of the charge; and since up until then she had been a top performing saleswoman, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are looking to see what other motive the store owner, Rra Gopolang, might have had to dismiss Charity.


Mma Ramotswe is distracted from the case however, when she sees a photograph in the Botswana Daily News of a nurse named Mingie Ramotswe working in Lobotse. Mma Ramotswe is immediately intrigued: her surname is unusual; she was an only child and besides her and her daddy, there were only a few cousins. She wonders who this Mingie could be.  But when she finds out, it turns everything she believed about her family completely upside down. 

Then her friend Mma Potokwane warns Mma Ramotswe that her abusive ex-husband, Note Mokoti, has come back to Gaborone, creating more anxieties for Mma Ramotswe (the last time Note returned to Gabarone he tried to extort money from Mma Ramotswe).

How McCall Smith finally resolves all the disparate threads of this story is both clever and emotionally satisfying.  His traditional coda at the conclusion of the story reminds us just how powerful is the bond that connects a person with a beloved place.

Click HERE to read the review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Belgravia by Julian Fellowes

Belgravia by Julia Fellowes; editorial consultant Imogen Edward-Jones; historical consultant Lindy Woodhead --- 402 pages

As a fan of Downton Abbey I was quite looking forward to Fellowes' new novel, Belgravia, and intrigued by the advance publiclity of how he planned to serialize online with an app prior to the actual book publication.

Belgravia is set primarily in London in the first half of the nineteenth century. The plot centers on the potentially scandalous secret connecting the aristocratic Bellasis family of Belgravia and the nouveau riche  Trenchards of Eaton Square. It opens with the historic ball given by the Duchess of Richmond in Brussels on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. The literary connection to Dickens, Thackeray and other nineteenth century Bristish novelists whose works were first serialized in popular magazines before they were published, is clear.

The book is divided into eleven episodes, with a "cliff-hanger" at the end of each, designed to leave the reader eagerly awaiting the next episode. Unfortunately, reading Belgravia is rather more like reading a script or a screenplay than a novel.  The bare bones of the story are there, but curiously lack that sensation of total immersion in a heightened reality.  We are missing the actors --- and the sets, the lighting, the costumes, the musical score, and all those collaborators who help bring a script or a screenplay to life.  Maybe it's been a long time since Fellowes pulled one off on his own, and it shows.

Click HERE for an article in The Atlantic on the novel as app.

Click HERE for an interview with Fellowes from National Public Radio.

Click HERE for an article from the UK Telegraph.

Click HERE for a review of Belgravia from the New York Times.

Click HERE for a review of Belgravia from the Seattle Times.

Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridason

Strange Shores: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason --- 296 pages

Arnaldur Indridason is perhaps the best known of Icelandic mystery author of "Nordic Noir" thrillers, with nine of his twelve Inspector Erlendur books translated into English.

Erlendur is a misfit, a dour man whose entire life has been weighed down by guilt over the childhood death of his younger brother, who was lost on the high moors above their remote east Icelandic village during a sudden snowstorm. The two young boys had accompanied their father on a search for some of the family's sheep. All three had become separated from each other during the blizzard. Their father made it back home and raised the alarm; search parties found and rescued Erlendur; but young Beggi vanished, his body never found.

The tragedy destroyed the family. They abandoned the farm and moved to Reykjavik., where his father succumbed to depression. Eventually Erlendur found work as a police officer.

There's an underlying fatalism to all of Erlendur's cases;  many of the crimes he investigates have their roots in the past, when Iceland was a poor, insular country, life was hard and unforgiving, and domestic violence was often covered up. Yet Erlendur understands that kind of crime far better than the crimes of the "new" Iceland, connived at by shady developers and greedy financiers, drug dealers and sex traffickers.  

In Indridason's last novel, Black Skies, Erlendur was referred to but never appeared; he was said to be on leave and visiting his old family croft at Bakkasel. In Strange Shores we read the story of Erlendur's visit there, once again wandering the moors searching for expiation from his guilt.

There he meets an old hunter and hears again the stories of other lives lost during past storms; one, in particular, catches his interest, because it happened very close in time to the loss of his brother.  A young married woman left her home one morning to walk over the mountain pass to visit her mother in the next village; a sudden storm came down on the mountains and she too was never found.

A few years later, the tragedy was completed when her husband, who never remarried, was drowned in a storm while working on a fishing boat. But his body at least was recovered and laid to rest in his village graveyard.

The story catches Erlendur's attention. Even though it all happened more than forty years ago, in his usual obsessive way, Erlendur begins making inquiries, piecing together accounts of what occurred, tracing family members and anyone yet alive who knew the people involved and might still remember details of these events. And he begins to discover discrepancies, as he compares the various accounts, that lead him to suspect something quite different happened. That someone still alive is harboring a guilty secret that has wreaked his life, as Erlendur's guilt has worked on him.

A powerful tale of love and death, revenge and retribution, confession and absolution, very like the ancient Icelandic sagas.

Click HERE to read an interview with Arnaldur Indridason talking about Strange Shores.

The Deepest Secret by Cara Buckley

The Deepest Secret by Cara Buckley - 448 pages

The Deepest Secret is the perfect title of a book where multiple characters have secrets they do not wish to ever be disclosed.  The bulk of the story follows Eve and Tyler Lattimore, a son with the fatal disease XP and his overprotective mother.  While Tyler has taken to roaming the neighborhood at night and peaking into his neighbors' worlds, his mother accidentally commits a terrible crime.  Also a critical part of the story is the search for a missing neighborhood girl and it's outcome.  The book is about hiding these secrets and others with a bit of mystery and intrigue mixed in.

The Deepest Secret was a quick read.  The text flowed easily and one wanted to know the ultimate outcome.  Compared to other fiction, I think the novel is fairly average.

This book will be released on February 4, 2014.  I reviewed an ACR copy.

Island of Bones by Imogen Robertson

Island of Bones by Imogen Robertson --- 367 pages

The third book in the mystery series featuring Mrs. Harriet Westerman and the irascible Gabriel Crowther, set in 18th century England.

Mrs. Westerman and Crowther are summoned to Cumbria in the Lake District to investigate when an extra body is found in the crypt of the first Earl of Greta and his wife on the Isle of Bones. Who was the man and how did he die? And how did he get into the three hundred year old tomb?

These questions are of more than academic interest to Crowther, for his own bloody past is caught up in the mystery. Crowther's father bought the Greta land when the last Earl of Greta fled the country with a price on his head for supporting the cause of the last Stuart pretender. His father was awarded the title of Baron Keswick for unspecified services to the government not long after the last Earl's brother was captured and hanged as a traitor --- and rumor says he was betrayed by someone who coveted the Greta wealth and holdings. When his feckless elder brother was hanged in his turn for murdering their father, Crowther renounced his tainted heritage, sold the land and made a new life for himself under an assumed name. Now thirty years later, he finds himself drawn back into the twisted fate of his family.

Well plotted and rich with local history and folklore, this series will appeal to fans of Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mysteries, combining the novel of manners with the sensibility and mysticism of the early Romantics.