Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for January, 2024

Visiting one’s childhood home often proves to be a challenging experience, especially if you have been living in the United States for years and are now returning to Cuba.  So much has changed, either in reality or in one’s imagination, that it’s not surprising that Mercedes Spivey is not quite certain how she should feel about her return.

Mercedes spent her childhood with her paternal grandmother, her mamina, living in a huge ramshackle mansion in Havana.  Their home had always needed major repairs, but now it, as well as mamina, has fallen on hard times, and it is primarily Mercedes’ concern for her grandmother’s mental and physical wellbeing that has prompted her return to Havana.

Mercedes’s mother was American.  She managed to travel to Cuba in the 1980s despite the prohibition in effect at the time, and once there she fell in love with a Cuban military officer. Her birth name was Sarah, but over time she changed it to Tania Rojas to fit into Cuban life more easily.  Mercedes was born, her parents got married, and life went on more or less smoothly until she was two years old.  Then, suddenly, her mother vanished, never to return; her father’s army unit was sent to Angola and he died there.

She was raised by her grandmother, who answered all her granddaughter’s questions except the one she most wanted answered:  what happened to my mother?  The unsatisfactory conversations have dominated Mercedes’ life and fueled her lifelong desire to find her mother.

Now the widowed owner of a successful bakery in Miami, La Bakería Cubana, Mercedes decides it’s time to return to Havana.  She’s been upset by recent phone calls, in which mamina was confused and disoriented.  A phone call from her grandmother’s neighbor convinces her that she needs to visit as soon as possible, and a follow-up call makes the point even more clearly.  Her mamina thinks Mercedes is a schoolchild in Havana and doesn’t remember her granddaughter’s age or her move to Florida.

Two days later Mercedes and her friend Candela fly to Cuba’s capital city. Both mamina and the house are in worse shape than Mercedes had anticipated, and she’s determined to take care of both.  Making repairs on Santa Villa Marta is the easier of the two; taking care of her grandmother is much more difficult.  Although it’s clear that mamina’s physical and mental health are failing, she downplays her difficulties and at first refuses to accept any help.  Plus, Mercedes’ desire to find out more about her mother is still a forbidden topic.

As well as being a novel with a terrific protagonist and a gripping story, Last Seen in Havana offers readers a close look into Havana and its nearby countryside, both in the 1980s and the present.  We can understand the fascination Cuba held for Sarah/Tania, a young woman with “leftist” ideals, but after living in a country with coupons needed for food and clothing, assuming either was available, is it possible that she simply returned to the United States without informing anyone, leaving her toddler daughter behind?

Teresa Dovalpage was born in Cuba and is a novelist, short story writer, translator, and playwright, and her knowledge of the country of her birth comes through on every page.  You can read more about her at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

It’s 1958, and memories are long in Black Earth County, Minnesota.  It is barely a generation since World War II, and the town of Jewel is holding the annual parade celebrating its freedom and honoring its veterans on Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day.  But discrimination against Native American Noah Bluestone and his Japanese wife Kyoko is ever-present.

Sheriff Brody Dern is in his office when a man enters with staggering news.  “They ate him, Brody.  They ate him right down to the bone.”

The “him” is James Patrick Quinn, the largest land owner in the county and probably its most unpopular citizen.  The “they” are catfish.

Despite the dislike that most people in Black Earth had for Quinn, many in the town are not unhappy to learn that Noah Bluestone, a member of the Dakota tribe, is suspected of the crime.  There is a long, difficult history between the whites and the Native Americans in Jewel, and for many the murder confirms their belief that an Indian is not to be trusted.

When Noah retired from the Marines, he went to work for Quinn although the two already had a strained relationship.  Bluestone admits to the sheriff that he and the deceased had an argument that resulted in his firing on the day of Quinn’s death.

Dern is working hard to convince himself that the death was an accident.  He doesn’t believe that Noah is the guilty party, and he knows if he calls the death a suicide, Quinn won’t be able to be buried alongside his family members in the cemetery belonging to the Catholic Church.  But the town’s sentiment against Bluestone is building, and there’s not much that the sheriff can do to counteract it.

In addition to the riveting plot, the author draws his characters so carefully that we understand what motivates them and explains their behaviors.  The secrets in Jewel are many.  Dern and his sister-in-law Garnet are carrying on a clandestine love affair, something that torments them both but are seemingly unable to stop.  Marta Quinn, the deceased’s widow, is trapped both by a terminal illness and her role in a loveless marriage.  Angie Madison, a war widow with a young son, writes in a journal that she keeps locked, with the key around her neck.  Her son Scott’s best friend Del is dealing with his stepfather’s frequent beatings, and that leads the two boys into danger.

Then there’s the most baffling secret of all–what is the reason Noah Bluestone refuses to enter any plea on his own behalf after his arrest?

William Kent Krueger has written another brilliant novel in The River We Remember, featuring a story and characters that are moving and real.  Among his many awards are two Anthony Awards and an Edgar Award, the most coveted prizes in the genre.  You can read more about the author at this website.

It’s April, 2020 in Edinburgh, and the COVID era is just beginning.  So little is known about it–how long the lockdown will last, how to protect one’s self from getting the virus, exactly how it’s transmitted–that it’s a really strange time.

For Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, life in lockdown is particularly challenging.  It’s obviously difficult, if not impossible, to conduct investigations when she can’t move around the city freely and interview people as is necessary in her job in the Historic Cases Unit (what in the United States are called cold cases).

Trying to deal with a difficult situation, she’s in a “bubble” with a sergeant from her team, Daisy Mortimer.  They’re living in the flat belonging to Hamish Mackenzie, the man Karen’s been dating for several months, which is definitely better than Karen living alone in her much smaller and less luxurious flat a few miles away.  But in addition to the worry about the virus, Karen is frustrated by the lack of work and a concern about Hamish that she’s unwilling to examine too closely.

A phone call from Jason Murray, another member of the HCU, may be the beginning of a new case.  Jason receives a call from a woman he knows at the National Library of Scotland.  She’s an archivist and has been going through boxes of material that belonged to Jake Stein, a crime writer who recently died.  He was very well known and respected until a sexual scandal derailed his career; although he continued to write, he never regained his former popularity.

The librarian tells Jason that in one of the many boxes that were donated to the library by Stein’s widow, she’s reading what appears to be a novel about the murder of Lara Hardie, a young woman who actually disappeared a year earlier and whose body was never found.  The book is “full of echoes of Lara Hardie’s story,” Jason is told.  “It’s really creepy.”

When Karen and Daisy receive a copy of the manuscript, they assume that it’s written by Stein, since it was in one of the boxes given to the library by Ros Stein, Jake Stein’s widow.  Strangely though, Karen thinks, it mentions his slumping book sales and the fact that his long-time publisher had dropped him, something she has trouble imagining the author would admit and want published.  But then, she continues musing to herself, the HCU team is at a disadvantage since the manuscript is incomplete.  Who knows how Stein would have ended the story?

At the same time, Karen and Jason are dealing with personal issues.  Karen is rethinking her relationship with Hamish, bothered by his casual disregard of the government mandated degrees of separation rules, while Jason is dealing with his mother’s hospitalization due to the illness.

Val McDermid brings back all the stresses and fears of the virus’ early days, when so much about it was unknown and the possibility of a vaccine lay in a possibly distant future.  Each character behaves according to their personality, and, as always, Ms. McDermid brings each one perfectly to life, along with the picture of a major city brought almost to its knees by a deadly illness.

You can read more about the author at this website.https://www.valmcdermid.com/.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

Calling Dark Ride a thriller is an understatement.  It’s a novel that’s so tense, so taut, that I was finding it difficult to turn the pages, fearful of what would happen next.

The book starts out calmly enough.  The protagonist is Hardy Reed, although he’s always called by his childhood nickname “Hardly.”  That’s because he’s often hardly anywhere–at college, where he dropped out after three semesters; at his dead end job at a rundown amusement park; in his life, which he’s going through “high” most of the time.

In his semi-stoned state, Hardly goes to the Driver Improvement Verification department to get a thirty day extension on paying his parking ticket.  After accomplishing that, he turns around and is leaving the building when he sees two children sitting on a bench.

Hardly thinks they’re too young to be left alone waiting for an adult to finish whatever business has brought them here, when he notices three perfectly round marks on the girl’s ankle.  For a moment he’s confused, thinking they might be moles or tattoos, but then he realizes they’re too perfectly circular to be either–they’re cigarette burns.  And a second look at the boy shows that he has three identical marks just above the collar of his shirt.

At that moment a woman, whom Hardly thinks must be their mother, walks over to the bench, and then the three of them are out the door.  It all happens so fast that Hardly doesn’t have time to react or talk to the woman.  By the time he gets to the parking lot the car is leaving, and it’s too far away for him to read the license plate.  He returns to the DIV desk and manages to get a look at the sign in sheet, and he sees the name Tracy Shaw a line or two above his name.  That must be the children’s mother, he thinks.

Slacker though he is, Hardly wants to help the children.  He first goes to Child Protective Services, but it’s obvious that the case workers there are overwhelmed and not too interested in finding these anonymous children.  Next he talks to his two friends,  but they are so high on weed and whatever else they can lay their hands on that they’re no help.

After much investigating on his own, he’s able to find out the girl’s name and the school she attends.  He visits her teacher to ask whether he has any concerns about her safety or noticed any signs of abuse.  The teacher admits he had some concerns, but a conference with both parents and the girl allayed his fears.  But wait, Hardly thinks.  The teacher “asked Pearl if she was being abused by her parents while her parents were in the room.  How could he be that clueless?  Even I’m not that clueless.”  So he decides he has to go this alone.

Lou Berney has written a spellbinding thriller, as he had with two of his previous novels I’ve reviewed on this blog, November Road and The Long and Faraway Gone.  His characters are wonderfully drawn, from the major ones to those who appear in a brief scene.  The plot, as I mentioned, is breathtaking, and you will be swept away as you read.  And the conclusion is one I never expected.

You can read more about the author at this site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.