Münster's Case / Håkan Nesser

A group of old men makes a small winning with the lottery and after their celebratory bender, 72-year-old Waldemar Leverkuhn ends up dead at home in his bed with twenty-eight stab wounds. The same night one of his drinking buddies disappears, and several days later the concierge’s wife from the Leverkuhns' building is reported missing. Is someone stalking senior citizens? Are the cases even related? When Fru Leverkuhn confesses to the murder of her husband, it seems that the case is solved… or is it? Truth be told, this novel didn’t really pick up until about page 200 for me, which is a shame, because the last 100 or so pages were well worth it and the plotline is really rather clever, with the reader guessing until the last page about motives and responsible parties.

This was the first Håkan Nesser novel that I’d read. I picked it up because of my fondness for Scandinavian mystery/thrillers and the fact that it had both a “ü” and an “å” on the cover. Münster's Case is billed as an Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery, but this character only appears in this book peripherally. It’s Münster's case, after all. Nesser is a Swedish writer, but this series takes place in what appears to be the Netherlands (place names, guilders, and lots of canals hint at this), but Maardam is impossible to place on the map and there are German and Slavic names used that cloud the identity of the surroundings. I wish it had a stronger sense of place. I always like to get maps out and look at pictures of where things happen. Have to rely totally on your mind’s eye in this series, though that’s probably not a bad thing. I was also confused by the use of Swedish “fru,” “fröken” and even “salutorget,” (market square) when it was so clearly not Sweden. I wonder if this was just an artifact of the translation. The UK version of the novel was perhaps more appropriately titled The Unlucky Lottery—I think that’s a better title. I’ll probably read Nesser again, but not before I read another by Henning Mankell, who remains the true master. Which reminds me, I need to see the new PBS episodes of Wallander!

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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