The Nightmare / Lars Kepler

It seems more than a bit incongruous that Sweden, a neutral peace-loving nation, would be one of the world’s top weapons producers and exporters. The weapons industry is the context for this latest thriller from the Swedish couple writing under the pseudonym Lars Kepler. It’s a chase from start to finish when a contract killer is hired to hunt down peace activist Penelope Fernandez when she inadvertently finds herself in an intrigue involving government officials and illegal weapons exports to Sudan. At first she and her boyfriend are relentlessly hunted on a remote island in the Stockholm archipelago (with a very strange stop at the summer house of a faded TV personality who tries to involve them in sex games… hunh?), then the chase switches to Stockholm (with an exciting shoot-out at Östermalms market hall and the German embassy near Gärdet).

The translation is a little spotty-- there were some odd lexical choices. A main theme which comes up again and again is to “reap your nightmare”. Okay, I understand it, it’s probably a direct translation from Swedish, but would it maybe have been better to say in English “realize your worst nightmare” or “live your worst nightmare?” Here’s an example of another unwieldy translation—“She had fashioned an elaborate arrangement of her hair on the back of her neck, even sprayed it heavily to keep it in place, but now it looks just right.” (okay, so maybe the authors and editors are partially responsible for that mess, and I shouldn’t blame the translator entirely, but...). Translations always present challenges, but I have read some excellent translations from Swedish-- Marlaine Delargy’s translation of Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist, for example, comes to mind. For some reason the translator of The Nightmare was changed from previous Lars Kepler title The Hypnotist, which I think was to the detriment of this new title.

The Nightmare reads more like a Robert Ludlum thriller rather than a Thomas Harris type novel like Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon which The Hypnotist seemed to resemble a bit more. And Joona Linna just didn’t seem to play as integral a role in this one. Yes, he was always darting about and barking orders in his funny Finland-Swedish accent, but I still didn’t think his character was as central in this book, which was unfortunate. I enjoyed The Hypnotist, and while The Nightmare was a diversion, it definitely wasn’t as well-crafted.

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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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