bookshelf

WOLF ON A STRING

Name: WOLF ON A STRING
Author: Benjamin Black
ISBN: 978-1-62779-517-3

by Benjamin Black ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 6, 2017

Patient readers in no hurry will savor Black’s dark, vivid mural of Prague at the turn of the 16th century.

bookshelf

The first night a young scholar arrives in Prague (in 1599) he becomes entangled in court intrigue and murder.

Black, the pen name for Man Booker Prize–winning novelist John Banville, here impresses with his literary dexterity as he spins from hard-boiled detective fiction (Even the Dead, 2016, etc.) to a rich, expansive, if sometimes discursive, historical mystery. On Christian Stern’s first night in wintry Prague, the 25-year-old scholar and alchemist stumbles across the body of a beautiful woman he guesses to be 17 or 18, “a deep gash across her throat, like a second, grotesquely gaping mouth…her head…resting in a pool of her own life-blood, a black round in which the faint radiance of the heavens faintly glinted.” The young woman was Magdalena Kroll, daughter of Dr. Ulrich Kroll, court physician to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. Of late, Magdalena had deserted her lover, Jan Madek, to become the emperor’s mistress. In this dangerous city, simply being at the site of the murder makes Stern a suspect, and soon the eccentric Rudolph calls him to court. A believer in the occult, the emperor thinks Stern is the manifestation of a dream he had in which Christ sends a savior to him to protect the throne against the Turks. Rudolph charges Stern with finding Magdalena’s murderer, a task hastened by Stern’s fear that if he fails, he will be executed. Shortly, Madek’s body, brutally mutilated, turns up in a moat. Stern’s hunch that Madek killed Magdalena and then was murdered in revenge is dashed when Dr. Stern’s examination of Madek’s corpse finds he was killed well before Magdalena was. Feeling inadequate to the task of solving the crimes, Stern nevertheless persists. His wit and curiosity lend style to the tale he narrates but also slow its pace—the new detective never meets an alley or a character he can’t resist exploring, knowing, and expounding upon. However languorous the tale sometimes becomes, Stern moves it to a denouement that befits the treacherous times.

Patient readers in no hurry will savor Black’s dark, vivid mural of Prague at the turn of the 16th century.

Pub Date: June 6, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-62779-517-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SECRET GUESTS
by Benjamin Black

- BOOK REVIEW
EVEN THE DEAD
by Benjamin Black

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE
by Benjamin Black

bookshelf

HAUNTING PARIS

by Mamta Chaudhry ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2019

A curious fusion of the predictable and the unconventional which, given the appetite for Paris, love, and wartime tragedy,...

bookshelf

While a timid French music teacher grieves the death of her partner, outside, on the streets of Paris, his ghost lingers, lending historical context and soulful musings to a story of unresolved anguish and late love.

Chaudhry’s elegant debut rests on an unusual and risky premise: It is narrated in part by a soul in limbo. Julien Dalsace has died before the story opens, and his old-fashioned voice sets the scene: “The scent of lilacs on the breeze stirs dormant phantoms to life, but music is sorcery more potent.” We are in Paris in the year of the bicentennial, 1989, observing, like Julien, the struggles of his surviving partner, Sylvie, to cope with her loss. Julien, although spectral, is the novel’s lynchpin. The romance between him—an older, upper-class, married Jewish psychologist—and the quiveringly sensitive piano teacher is the beating heart of the story. But there’s another thread, taking the reader back to 1942, when the Jews of Paris were rounded up and deported, including Julien’s sister, Clara, and her twin daughters. Julien never forgave himself for his absence in London during World War II and his failure to save Clara, but a secret folder that emerges after his death offers Sylvie the opportunity to conclude his quest to discover the fate of Clara’s girls. Julien’s curious perspective—on history, on other ghosts, on the beauty but complexity of France generally and the Île Saint-Louis, his corner of Paris, in particular—is the novel’s most original aspect. Elsewhere, while Chaudhry brings a kind of reverent seriousness to events both past and present, her approach is more familiar. Characters are often simple, like the kindly Jewish baker, the protective (but kindly) concierge, the sympathetic American lodgers, and even Sylvie’s anthropomorphized terrier, Coco. And resolutions, even sad ones, arrive with coincidence and ease.

A curious fusion of the predictable and the unconventional which, given the appetite for Paris, love, and wartime tragedy, might well touch a popular nerve.

Pub Date: June 18, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54460-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

bookshelf

HIDE AWAY

by Jason Pinter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 2020

Determined to shield her family from violence, a woman becomes a fierce freelance crime fighter in this mostly satisfying...

bookshelf

In the aftermath of a horrific crime, a woman makes herself over into a powerful protector—or perhaps an avenger.

Pinter (The Castle, 2019, etc.) already has the Henry Parker thriller series under his belt. In this book he introduces another potential series character, Rachel Marin. The story opens with a warm domestic scene of a young woman making dinner for her husband and two kids when a shattering (but undescribed) discovery intervenes. Jump ahead seven years, and single mom Rachel is living in another town several states away. When a mugger jumps her as she’s walking home from work, she leaves him bleeding in the street and hurries home to her bookish son, Eric, and sweet little daughter, Megan. Keeping them safe is her mission in life. But when she sees a news report about a body found on the ice beneath a nearby bridge, she’s riveted. The cops assigned to the case, detectives John Serrano and Leslie Tally, are shocked to discover the body is that of the town’s disgraced former mayor, Constance Wright. They’re even more shocked when Rachel, whom they don’t know, sends Serrano a message that the death was no suicide: “Constance Wright was murdered. And I can prove it.” When Serrano and Tally go to question Wright’s sketchy ex-husband, Rachel shows up at the same time, and they don’t know whether to order her away or be grateful for her help. Pinter builds a complex plot on the dual mysteries of Constance’s murder and Rachel’s transformation from suburban mom to crack investigator and lethal streetfighter. But the story has so many subplots and timelines that it can feel overstuffed, and some crucial questions asked early on are answered so late the reader might be surprised to be reminded of them. Pinter creates engaging characters, though, and keeps the suspense taut.

Determined to shield her family from violence, a woman becomes a fierce freelance crime fighter in this mostly satisfying thriller.