Brief Mentions: Alan Furst, Åsa Larsson, Joelle Charbonneau

Summer schedules can be downright challenging, but the graduations, birthday, and family weddings are over for now, and I have a great stack of mysteries that kept me calm on the inside while dancing through June's gentle chaos. Reviews will roll ...

But here are three titles I won't be reviewing at length this time:

1. Alan Furst, MIDNIGHT IN EUROPE. Furst's pre-World-War-II noir brings Europe in its potent darkness alive, and although technically his books are mysteries (thrillers), they separate from the crowd in two ways: First, we know the upcoming world events that will  follow the action of each book (war will break out, yeah), so the suspense resides in the smaller, personal details of lives and goodness at risk. This time the protagonist is Christián Ferrar, whose efforts in the Spanish Civil War threaten to give him the ultimate reward, as in, "No good deed goes unpunished." (I was eager to get more details of the Spanish Civil War myself ... I'd always been a bit fuzzy about it.) Second, Furst writes with the lush deliberation of a deep literary novel. The drawback for MIDNIGHT IN EUROPE is that this leads to an ending that's hesitant, sweet, but also distant from the press of the plot. Consider it a tease, perhaps, for the sequels we know are en route. Note: Furst's "sequels" are not a series in the traditional sense -- some characters occur in multiple books, but there is no need to read his others before opening up MIDNIGHT IN EUROPE. And yet ... I want each of them on my shelf.

2. Reading Scandinavian noir? You may still not know the name Åsa Larsson; she isn't at the top of the PR lists. But oh my, her books have gripped me this summer. I'm catching up -- I read Sun Storm and The Blood Spilt, and devoured The Black Path, then cruised into the most recent, Until Thy Wrath Be Past. I'm fully committed to the protagonist, lawyer and crime victim and now dogged sleuth Rebecka Martinsson. The fifth book comes to the United States in August, and I've pre-ordered my copy of The Second Deadly Sin. Most intriguing aspect (besides the character of Martinsson): discovering Swedish prejudices and ethnic groups. Mmm.

3. Joelle Charbonneau's widely awaited final book in her YA dystopian series "The Testing" is here -- GRADUATION DAY. It's a fitting finale to Malecia "Cia" Vale's investigation of the powers running her post-apocalyptic world, and distinguishes the series emphatically from its "older sister" in "The Hunger Games." I wasn't entirely happy with the percent of the book that takes place through Cia's thoughts, present tense, but I think that's more a personal taste -- and I suspect the frame is on target for many "young adult" readers who live in the intense present themselves. No major issues of sex or religion in this series -- it's all about power, personal and governmental. Cia is a reluctant leader, but once she accepts the role, the action is nonstop. More about the books at the author website: http://www.joellecharbonneau.com

Agatha Award Nominees, 2014: Congratulations, and Let's Read Them!

The big annual award sequence for "traditional mysteries" (sort of PG-13) is the Agatha Awards, given at the Malice Domestic conference in May. This year's official top choices among the nominees were just announced. Here they are ... and if, like me, there are titles here you haven't yet read, what a great reading challenge this list can be!

Best Historical Novel

Heirs and Graces by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)
Death in the Time of Ice by Kaye George (Untreed Reads Publishing)
A Friendly Game of Murder by JJ Murphy (Signet)
Murder in Chelsea by Victoria Thompson (Berkley Prime Crime)
A Question of Honor by Charles Todd (William Morrow)

Best Children's/YA Nominations

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau (HMH Books for Young Readers)
Traitor in the Shipyard: A Caroline Mystery by Kathleen Ernst (American Girl Mysteries)
Andi Unexpected by Amanda Flower (Zonderkidz)
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein (Random House Books)
Code Busters Club: Mystery of the Pirate's Treasure by Penny Warner (Edgmont USA)

Best Contemporary Novel

Through the Evil Days by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)
Pagan Spring by G.M. Malliet (Minotaur Books)
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Clammed Up by Barbara Ross (Kensington Books)
The Wrong Girl by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge Books)

Best Nonfiction

Georgette Heyer by Jennifer Kloester (Source Books Inc.)
Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova (Viking Penguin)
Not Everyone's Cup of Tea: An Interesting & Entertaining History of Malice Domestic's First 25 Years by Verena Rose and Rita Owen (editors) (Wildside Press)
The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War by Daniel Stashower (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel

Death Al Dente by Leslie Budewitz (Berkley Prime Crime)
You Cannoli Die Once by Shelley Costa (Pocket Books)
Board Stiff by Kendel Lynn (Henery Press)
Kneading to Die by Liz Mugavero (Kensington)
Front Page Fatality by LynDee Walker (Henery Press)

Best Short Story

"Evil Little Girl" in Don't Get Mad, Get Even by Barb Goffman (Wildside Press)
"Nightmare" in Don't Get Mad, Get Even by Barb Goffman (Wildside Press)
"The Hindi Houdini" in Fish Nets by Gigi Pandian (Wildside Press)
"Bread Baby" in Best new England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold by Barbara Ross (Level Best Books)
"The Care and Feeding of House Plants" by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

For more on the awards, the conference, and many authors, try the Malice Domestic website, here.

New YA Fiction from Laurie Halse Anderson and Joelle Charbonneau

This is a big weekend for hearing Laurie Halse Anderson and her new book, THE IMPOSSIBLE KNIFE OF MEMORY; she'll be on National Public Radio today, and tomorrow the New York Times Book Review has comments on it from Jo Knowles, a perceptive Vermont-based author in the same field. Way to go! Commentators unfamiliar with the leap of "young adult" (YA) fiction into our culture's mainstream may focus on the age of the protagonist, Hayley Kincain, a senior in high school. But readers are onto Anderson for the sustained tension of her plots, the complexity of her characters, and the forms of courage they demonstrate. Quick summary: Hayley's dad, an Iraq/Afghanistan vet, complicates her life to such an extent that she has almost no memories of her life before this year's move "home" to the house her deceased grandmother owned. Is it even possible to have real friends, if your dad is your 24/7 care assignment and often violent? Before you brush this aside as a "teen" situation, try inverting the ages -- suppose the protagonist were the adult, trying to cope with a terrorism-damaged teen who is a threat to those around him? Yeah, this could happen to any of us, couldn't it?

Joelle Charbonneau's newest, INDEPENDENT STUDY, is book 2 in her "Testing" trilogy. If the "Hunger Games" hadn't already set such a high bar for dystopian competition, there would be a lot more attention for this new book. But even so, Charbonneau is rising rapidly on the lists, and I like 17-year-old Cia Vale -- isolated from her family, threatened by a manipulative government trying to recreate society after a nuclear and chemical war, and rapidly developing the survival skills and planning ability of a junior Jack Reacher. Courage, betrayal, and enormous impossible tasks to accomplish ... well, that's how adulthood looks from the teen years. Actually, that can be how adulthood looks from midlife, too,

Neither of these is a conventional mystery, yet each has that recognizable thriller pattern of high tension, risk, and investigation. For a venture across the genre lines into the titles that teens and adults are now sharing, I can recommend both. No need to read other Anderson books before the newest -- hers run independently -- but for the Charbonneau, the suspense will resonate more from a reading of The Testing before this new volume.