A nice variety of bad behavior. East, West: Noir’s best.
Novelist Mengiste presents 14 stories showcasing Ethiopia’s capital at its darkest.
History has not always been kind to Addis Ababa. From 1974 through '87, when the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia, known as the Derg, ruled the country, armed militias kept order at gunpoint. Those brutal days are chronicled in Teferi Nigussie Tafa’s “Agony of the Congested Heart” and editor Mengiste’s “Of Dust and Ash.” Nature plays its own part in human misery. In Mikael Awake’s “Father Bread,” a pack of hyenas decimates a young boy’s family. Cultural practices like female circumcision also take their toll, as Sulaiman Addonia shows in “A Night in Bela Sefer” and Linda Yohannes demonstrates in “Kebele ID,” in which a housemaid compensates for the loss of her pleasure by stealing from her employers. Some misery has otherworldly sources, as in Adam Reta’s “Of Buns and Howls.” But some individuals can be cruel even in the absence of external forces. A survivor of the Derg takes revenge on an unlikely target in Meron Hadero’s “Kind Stranger.” And in “A Double-Edged Inheritance,” Hannah Giorgis presents a college student who avenges her mother’s mistreatment by her father’s family. And of course, people can be their own worst enemies, as in Lelissa Girma’s “Insomnia” and Girma T. Fantaye’s “Of the Poet and the Café.”
A nice variety of bad behavior. East, West: Noir’s best.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61775-820-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fascinating genre mashup for the discerning—and reflective—mystery reader.
A young Indian American man finds himself playing detective when a murder interrupts his relaxing vacation.
In some possibly extraneous backstory, Ro Krishna attends a pair of birthday parties in Bermuda and in London, where we learn that he and his friends are highly educated, affluent, glamorous jet-setters. Ro is trying to recover from a mysterious traumatic experience at his most recent job, so he decides to take some time off and spend the Christmas holidays at Samsara, a luxury Ayurvedic spa in India, surrounded by friends both old and new. When a guest is murdered, Ro finds himself helping the local inspector, the hotel’s eccentric owner, and an embedded CIA agent solve the crime, as well as the subsequent ones that follow. There are tongue-in-cheek references to Agatha Christie, who may have provided inspiration for the cozy surroundings and frequent musings about class, wealth, and race, but the dialogue is fully contemporary, as is Ro. The novel takes a while to get going; the story would have benefited from a tighter, faster beginning that plunged straight into the action at Samsara. The moments of foreshadowing leading to the murder feel somewhat heavy-handed. But the easy rapport of the people at the spa creates a lovely foundation for the psychological intrigue of the mystery. One minute someone can be making off-color jokes about death, and the next Ro is dealing with very real grief. Though he often claims to feel alone, Ro’s involvement with the rest of the characters creates sympathy, humor, and complexity, and it’s the interactions within the different pairs and groups that make the narrative flow—as well as some well-timed twists.
A fascinating genre mashup for the discerning—and reflective—mystery reader.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780063319301
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Zippy and fun, with an otherworldly hook that’s further enhanced by characters with a little magic of their own.
Magic and mayhem collide when the owner of a Connecticut crystal shop is arrested for murder and her ghostly mother comes to her rescue.
Though her store is strictly about healing and feeling, not everyone is a fan of Violet Mooney’s Full Moon crystal shop, as she learns when town official Carla Fernandez yells at her about some supposed séance one morning when Violet’s just trying to caffeinate. Carla’s aura is a bright blue that some might see as evincing creativity but Violet is seasoned enough to know speaks of Carla’s strong opinions, which Carla seems more than willing to speak of herself. Before Violet can fret too much about the fallout from Carla’s verbal firestorm, she’s being asked by North Harbor police about Carla’s murder. But wait, Carla’s been killed? It seems so, and when the police bring in Violet—whose alibi is that she was napping—as a likely suspect, an unlikely ally comes to Violet’s aid: her mother, Fiona Ravenstar. Accompanied by Violet’s teenage sister, Zoe, Fiona ducks out of her responsibilities in the astral realm to help the daughter she hasn’t seen since she was 5. Literally hasn’t seen, because Violet’s recently deceased grandmother, Abigail Moonstone, evidently cast a spell blocking Violet from Fiona’s visions. Now that Fiona can see her daughter’s in trouble, she’s more than ready to help. But Violet isn’t sure she wants help from a mother she’s always been told abandoned her, and Fiona can’t help Violet until she earns her daughter’s trust.
Zippy and fun, with an otherworldly hook that’s further enhanced by characters with a little magic of their own.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1760-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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