The Lady from Zagreb (A Bernie Gunther Novel) / Philip Kerr

It is always rewarding to revisit Bernie Gunther, the independent-minded cynical Berlin police detective who tries to pursue his profession and stay alive in a dangerous world where the rules of justice and civil order have been turned upside down.

In this installment he takes instructions from Joseph Goebbels who has taken a shine to a film starlet who goes by the name of Dalia Dresner. Gunther's task is to track down Dresner's father in Croatia, a land where a barbaric internecine conflict is taking place that in some regards rivals the brutalities of the Nazi killing machine. Gunther's wanderings also take him to Switzerland, which in contrast to the Balkans seems to represent an oasis of tranquility and a glimpse of what life used to be like in prewar Europe.

The characters are wonderfully drawn and the plot gripping. There is an unforgettable scene where Gunther turns the tables on two Gestapo agents in a fiery defense, and a clever strategy involving a testy Swiss bull. This is definitely a page-turner. If anything, the resolution is a bit too tidy and involves far too many coincidences, but nonetheless this is a rewarding read from start to finish.

I downloaded this book from the library.

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Murder in Passy, An Aimée Leduc Investigation / Cara Black

If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

The Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

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

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