Peachy Reads

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 tes...

I recently saw the Amazon series based on this 1962 novel and was taken by it.  It’s  set in 1962 in an America that is partitioned between the victors of World War II-- the Japanese and the Germans. There were some plot twists and scenes from the television series that I thought needed a bit more explication, so I decided to read the novel and see if it shed additional insight. Well, it didn’t.  The novel was the inspiration for the dramatic series, but other than the historical premise and some of the characters, the book and the television production diverge significantly. That’s not to say that the book isn’t good.  It’s just different.  I like alternate histories of World War II and this one is a good one. Readalikes:   Fatherland by Robert Harris, The Afrika Reich by Guy Saville

The summer of 1927 was a momentous one in America.  It was a year that saw the United States on the cusp of greatness.  Charles Lindbergh’s historic trans Atlantic flight helped to make the US the undisputed leader in aviation (whereas previously it was just trying to play catch-up with Europe).  Movie palaces were being built with a luxury to rival Versailles, newspapers boasted record subscriptions, but radio was quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with, and the earliest primitive experiments with television were being conducted.  Babe Ruth was creating a legend in the sports world, and Al Capone was becoming a legend of a different kind in prohibition-era crime-fueled Chicago.  Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in a controversial case, highlighting anarchist and anti-immigrant tendencies in the country at large.  Henry Ford abruptly ceased production of the Model T without having another replacement model in production, almost bankrupting the Ford...

Whatever suspense the David Lagercrantz book I read lacked, this one more than made up for.   But that’s what Dan Brown has always exceled at – the breathless day and night chase where no one seems to need to sleep very much, eat, or use the restroom, a sort of mash-up of the Amazing Race, the television show 24, with a dash of Rick Steves.   This time the action begins in the art city of Florence.   It’s a wonderful tour of the historic and cultural sites, and lets the reader explore secret passageways and pass through hidden doors that seem to honeycomb every building that Robert Langdon enters.   (Particularly fascinating is the Vasari corridor in Florence that snakes its way from the Pitti Palace across the Ponte Vecchio, around the Uffizi, to the Palazzo Vecchio, a relatively unknown passageway that secrets Robert across the river, one which I remember from our visits).   Anyway, Inferno takes its title from Dante’s poem and   Brown s...

In this latest installment in the UK series of police procedural meets the X-files, Peter Grant leaves the urban core of London and investigates unusual occurrences in a bucolic English countryside setting that could be straight out of a Merchant & Ivory film. Two girls are missing and while the nation’s attention is focused on the manhunt to recover them, Peter attempts to find out if their disappearance has any hallmarks of the supernatural or spirit realm.  And yes it does--there is a fairy queen and her retinue, beefy unicorns, a geriatric wizard, and an extended appearance by Beverley Brook.  This is not a series you can jump around in.  Start with the first at least before picking this one up.  It’s a bit different, but I find it surprisingly enjoyable.

The most famous names from Swedish literature since Pippi Longstocking may well be Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander.   The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the first title in the Millennium series, and while the series wasn't perfect, the characters were strong, and the books quickly became a worldwide publishing phenomenon.  Due to his untimely death several years ago, the estate of the author Stieg Larsson contracted a new writer to pen a further installment, and along with Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman , this may have been one of the most anticipated titles of 2015. Though some fans will be pleased, others will inevitably be disappointed.  I suppose I count myself among the second group. Lisbeth and Mikael seem to be on mood stabilizers and so very different from their previous incarnations as to be almost unidentifiable.  The action doesn’t really pick up until the last one hundred or so pages, and though it provides interesting insight into Lisbeth’s tw...

Near the Arc de Triomphe where the elegant Parisian boulevards radiate out from the traffic circle known as l'Etoile, a greasy black smoke billows out of a chimney and infiltrates the residences along the rue le Sueur.   When police are called they discover a grisly scene of mass murder inside. In the chaos of occupied Paris, a serial murderer is able to pursue a diabolical scheme of offering a path to freedom in South America.   Instead, he kills his unsuspecting victims and collects the money and valuables they planned to carry to the new world.   This is one of France’s most harrowing cases of mass murder, the story of Marcel Petiot.   Readalike:   The Devil in the White City .