50books_poc | Entries tagged with mystery

A Black sheriff. A serial killer.
A small town ready to combust.

I had a little trouble with the writing at first, but quickly got sucked into Titus' perspective and the town of Charon. He was such an interesting and complex character and it was an unique experience to read this story through his eyes considering the themes it addressed.

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brainwane

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee is a mystery written by a Scot of Bengali descent, taking place in 1919 Calcutta: "Desperate for a fresh start, Captain Sam Wyndham arrives to take up an important post in Calcutta’s police force." I agree with this book's politics but it really shows that the author had never written a novel before, in particular in the dialogue. Characters speak their subtext or otherwise exposit in that "unrealistically monologue coherently about national politics for six paragraphs" kind of way. I am a little interested in reading the next books in the series, because maybe the writing will improve.

emma-in-oz.livejournal.com

I enjoyed this Gerritsen even more than the last one. It has a serial killer, an archaeological theme and lots of forensics-y investigation.

I was so gripped that I stayed up past my bedtime reading!

emma-in-oz.livejournal.com

Annwfyn's review of *Girl Missing* made me want to read it: http://50books-poc.livejournal.com/384480.html

And I enjoyed it. It's a a cross between a romance and a forensic crime thriller. Of course, the forensics is very dated - in the mid-1990s things were a lot less forensic-y.

But, still, a good, light read.

sumofparts.livejournal.com

1. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai
2. Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch by Dai Sijie (translated by Ina Rilke; white)
3. Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup
4. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley
5. The Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh

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tags: a: selvadurai shyam, a: dai sijie, w-t: rilke ina, a: swarup vikas, a: o'malley bryan lee, a: ghosh amitav, chinese, french, indian, canadian, sri lankan, novel, fiction, graphic novel, young adult, china, india, toronto, sri lanka, glbt, mysteryr

veleda-k.livejournal.com

I swore I wouldn't get behind this year, and look at this. I'm already lagging. I suck at New Years resolutions.

#2: The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander)

( The Devotion of Suspect X )

#3: Villain by Shuichi Yoshida (translated by Philip Gabriel)

( Villain )

#4: The Other Side of Paradise: a Memoir by Staceyann Chin

( The Other Side of Paradise )

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Title: Mokuyou Kumikyoku (Thursday Suite)
Author: Onda Riku
Number of Pages: 247 pages
My Rating: 5/5

Jacket Summary: It's been four years since author Shigematsu Tokiko committed suicide. As they do every year, five women who were close to Tokiko gather at Nightingale House to remember her. Eriko writes non-fiction, Naomi writes popular fiction, Tsukasa writes literary fiction, Eiko is an editor, and Shizuko works for a publishing house. But a mysterious message turns their peaceful conversation into a storm of accusations and confessions. Did Tokiko really commit suicide, or was it murder...?

Review: Aaaages ago I was browsing tapes at the video store and this movie sounded interesting. I saw it was based on a book and thought I'd rather read the book than watch the movie, so I bought the book and then years and years passed and I never read it. Well, the other day I wanted a small book I could stick in my pocket while I was out running errands, and Japanese books are great for that, so I grabbed it off the shelf. I can't believe I took so long to get around to reading it, because it was really good! It was a bit of a slow starter, but I got really sucked in after a while and found it very hard to put down.

It's really not a traditional mystery at all, but there's a lot of intrigue and reveals, which I always like. Also, wow, this book passes the Bechdel Test like nobody's business. A lot of books about women still focus on them talking about guys all the time, but out of almost 250 pages I think there were maybe five pages tops that were about men. There was one convo about a male relative and one about a guy one of the women had been set up with (which was a hilarious convo, because she was talking about how she hates guys who think they're so feminist and awesome and say they split the housework with their wives when all they do is empty the trash occasionally and cook once in a while).

Anyway, I really enjoyed this and will definitely be looking for more books by her. She's written a ton and I'm sad to see that not a single one has been translated into English.

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Damn it, I keep forgetting to crosspost my reviews.

Title: Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo 4: Onibijima Satsujin Jiken
Author: Amagi Seimaru
Number of Pages: 318 pages
My Rating: 5/5

Jacket Summary: A murderer witnessed through a keyhole who disappears without a trace when the door is opened. An approaching tornado. And snow in the middle of summer... The stage for this tragedy is a cursed island that people call Onibijima...Will-o'-Wisp Island.

Review: I think my love for Kindaichi mysteries is pretty well established, and I don't really have much of anything new or different to say here. I love Kindaichi so I loved this book. :p It's not just that they're good mysteries (though they are), but I really love how the killer always has this heart-wrenching tale of why they had to kill all these people. No one kills for greed or just because they're a psychotic killer. They're always motivated by revenge against the people who wronged them or their friends/family and there's always this big heart-felt apology at the end. idk, I like the ~drama~. (Sadly, these novels and even most of the manga are only available in Japanese, though some of the manga was released in English and I highly recommend those as well.)

Title: The Icarus Girl
Author: Helen Oyeyemi
Number of Pages: 338 pages
My Rating: 4/5

Jacket Summary: Jessamy "Jess" Harrison, age eight, is the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother. Possessed of an extraordinary imagination, she has a hard time fitting in at school. It is only when she visits Nigeria for the first time that she makes a friend who understands her: a ragged little girl named TillyTilly. But soon TillyTilly's visits become more disturbing, until Jess realizes she doesn't actually know who her friend is at all.

Review: I really enjoyed this a lot. I took it with me the other day to my doctor's appointment and ended up reading two-thirds of it on the bus and while waiting. It was definitely a good choice for being stuck out for a long time with no other options. It sucked me in right away and I found it hard to put down.

Apparently the author wrote this while still at school, and it does show, but it's still overall really well-written. The biggest annoyance to me was POV slippage here and there and stuff like how the entire book is from Jess's POV except for one random paragraph from her friend's POV, and then the last two chapters are her parents' POV (that choice at least has a good reason; the paragraph in the friend's POV was unnecessary and tell-y).

I have another of her books on my wishlist and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Title: Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
Author: Carol Kaesuk Yoon
Number of Pages: 344 pages
My Rating: 4/5

Jacket Summary: In Naming Nature, Yoon takes us on a guided tour of science's brilliant, if sometimes misguided, attempts to order and name the overwhelming diversity of earth's living things. We follow a trail of scattered clues that reveals taxonomy's real origins in humanity's distant past. Yoon's journey brings us from New Guinea tribesmen who call a giant bird a mammal to the trials and tribulations of patients with a curious form of brain damage that causes them to be unable to distinguish among living things. Finally, Yoon shows us how the reclaiming of taxonomy will rekindle humanity's dwindling connection with wild nature.

Review: I did not previously have any interest in taxonomy before picking this up, or really much interest in nature at all. But I happened to see it on the shelf at the library and it sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did, because it really is interesting and written in a very engaging way. One thing that bugged me, though, was that she went on and on and on about how wonderful Carl Linneaus was and I would have liked for her to at least touch on the fact that not only did he order plants and animals, but also humans (with whites at the top, natch).

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

10. Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

If you ever wanted to know the Mumbai slang terms for 'motherfucker', 'ass-fucker' 'sister-fucker', or just plain old 'fucker', well, this is the book for you!

More seriously, this enormous novel is the story of two men: Sartaj Singh, a world-weary, slightly corrupt, recently divorced, low-level policeman; and Ganesh Gaitonde, the head of an organized crime syndicate, and probably one of the most powerful and wealthy men in India. The novel opens with Singh receiving a phone call from an unknown source, who tells him that Gaitonde is in Mumbai and gives an address. When Singh arrives, he finds a strange building, a sort of concrete bunker; a short conversation between the two men via intercom later, the police break down the door and inside find Gaitonde, dead by his own hand.

The rest of the novel follows two threads. The first is (mostly) Singh's, who is given the assignment to figure out why Gaitonde was in Mumbai and what he was doing in that building. This half of the novel is a crime thriller, particularly as it picks up speed near the end as consequences and meanings start to come clear and events take on an urgency (I admit, I didn't figure out the mystery at all, and once the truth comes out, it's genuinely scary and exciting). Despite that, other characters occasionally speak, ones usually related to the plot, but who fill out the world of the book. I found a chapter from Singh's mother, remembering her childhood during Partition, particularly moving. Partition and the violence then show up repeatedly throughout the novel as a recurring theme. The second half of the story is Gaitonde's; he speaks in first person, directly to Singh, though it's never clear if this is meant to be a ghost, the proverbial "life flashing before your eyes as you die", or what. He retells the story of his life, beginning as a child without a name or past, up through his struggles to get his first few followers, the growth of his mob, gang-wars with rival organizations, several stints in jail, advancing to become an international figure, his dabbles with Bollywood, his struggle with faith, and finally the explanation of how he ended up in a small building in Mumbai and why he killed himself. I liked the Gaitonde sections better than the Singh ones, if just because Gaitonde appealed to me more as a character; he has a incredibly engrossing voice and point of view. And his story is just more exciting, at least until the discoveries Singh makes at the end. The tone of the novel ranges from melodramatic gun shoot-outs or spy adventures to high-minded discussions of religion and the meaning of good and evil. There's lot of sex and violence, but just as many epiphanies and golden moments, and some seriously beautiful turns of phrase.

Highly, highly recommended, though be warned: this is seriously a massive tome of a book (my copy had nearly a thousand pages), so don't start it if you're on a deadline for something.

Current Mood: cheerful

veleda-k.livejournal.com

What we have today is a selection of not very good reviews. Why? Because I'm moving into an apartment that's half the size of my current place. That means that some stuff has got to go. So I'd thought I'd do these reviews before I got rid of the books.

( Shadow Family by Miyuki Miyabe )

( Waiting for Rain by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay )

( All I Asking for is My Body by Milton Murayama )

( Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan )

sumofparts.livejournal.com

( Cut for length and mild spoilers )

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

42. Diana Abu-Jaber, Origin

Abu-Jaber is totally my new favorite author. She has an amazing, vivid way of describing things, particularly places, which I adore. In this book, the setting is Syracuse, New York in the middle of winter, and everything about that is so exactly described: the particular blues and white of winter light, early twilights, lead-colored skies, too much wind, the look of snow falling in the early morning, black ice on the streets, the feelings of isolation, claustrophobia, and loneliness that winter often inspires, cold air in your lungs.

The plot is about Lena, who works as a fingerprint examiner in a police office. There's a case involving a dead baby that the medical examiner ruled to be SIDS, but which the mother swears was a murder, saying that she heard footsteps in her empty house just before finding that her baby had died. Meanwhile, Lena has been doing research into her own past: she was adopted at three, and has only strange, vague memories of the time before that- rain forests, monkeys, a plane crash- and no one seems to know if these memories are real, metaphorical, or just a three-year-old's daydreams.

Everything eventually turns out to be connected, of course, but the revelations still surprised me. This novel is completely different in voice from everything else Abu-Jaber has written; it's almost a thriller, with a tense, brooding tone that fits perfectly with the mysteries and the cold winter. Highly recommended.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "Poor Man's Grey" Matthew Good

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

An intricately plotted mystery with sf elements.

Two young women commit suicide under mysterious circumstances, but when a third dashes out into the path of a taxi, the driver is blamed for her death. The taxi driver’s nephew, teenage Mamoru, is living with the family after his father embezzled money and then disappeared. All of these elements and more intertwine as Mamoru investigates the deaths.

Like Miyabe’s other novels that I’ve read, this begins with a who-dun-it (or why- or how-) and spirals out into more primal mysteries about why people behave the way they do, how far they’ll go in pursuit of their desires, and what we really mean when we talk about morality and justice. There are also strong noir elements, in which people play out their desperate dramas within a larger society that couldn’t care less about any given individuals and whose impersonal forces can crush them like bugs and never even notice.

This novel is written in omniscient point of view, and the God’s-eye perspective works well with the complex structure, in which a web of connections and coincidences begins to seem like some greater power is at work behind the scenes. (God, fate, Miyabe— you decide.)

Engrossing, thoughtful, and well-characterized; dark but also humane and hopeful. Note that the most gruesome bit in the whole book is in the first few pages, so if you can get past that, you’re good to go.

View on Amazon: The Devil's Whisper

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rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Massey, a biracial (Indian-German-American) woman, used her experience living in Japan and dealing with cross-cultural issues to create a series of mysteries featuring a biracial Japanese-American woman antique dealer living in Tokyo.

I read the first bunch years ago and was charmed by the vivid and down to earth depiction of Tokyo, which was very close to my own experience of the city. The novels themselves are fluffy mysteries with romantic elements, each focusing on a different aspect of Japanese culture, such as ikebana in The Flower Master. I recall them as fun but not terribly well-written, and may also be quite dated by now judging by my experience with the one I just read.

Bride's Kimono, The is mostly set in American, as Rei Shimura gets a job shepherding a set of valuable kimono from a museum in Tokyo to one in Washington DC; naturally, a kimono is stolen, someone is murdered, her ex-boyfriend appears, and she’s accused of being a prostitute (!) and must clear her name, find the kimono, pick a man, and solve the crime, all the while stumbling through culture clashes with both Japanese and American people.

The new setting took away a lot of the fun of the series for me, though I did enjoy the details about antique kimono. I was a little boggled that in a book written in 2001, Rei had never used a computer and didn’t know what a mouse was; this was presented as slightly eccentric but not bizarre.

Nothing special, but I was entertained.

caile.livejournal.com

I began this challenge in August, but it's taken me a while to get around to posting.

1. Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker - I really love Alice Walker's writing. This book is loosely connected to The Colour Purple and The Temple of My Familiar, but I think it could be read alone or out of sequence as it's not really a sequel to those books. It deals with female genital mutilation and being a black woman from Africa in America and love and life.

2. Tiger Eye, Marjorie Liu - I am a fan of paranormal romance novels. Or maybe I should say I am a sucker for paranormal romance novels and a fan of well-written paranormal romance novels. After reading this book, I am now a fan of Marjorie Liu and am hunting down all her novels.

3. The Bone Garden, Tess Gerritson - An entertaining thriller about a woman who finds an old skeleton buried in her garden and the historical mystery that led to the burial.

4. Gravity, Tess Gerritson - This is a medical thriller set on the international space station! I could completely imagine it as a TV movie, in a good way.

5. Red Heart of Jade, Marjorie Liu - This book is solid weird, far more so than I expected from a romance novel. I found it compelling, though.

livii.livejournal.com

I've been meaning to join and start posting reviews for a month, so am doing a catch-up post now. I love the idea of challenging myself to consciously read more authors of colour, and so far it's been terrific.

1. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga: reading this one inspired me to get on the ball and start the challenge in a meaningful way. Well-written (and remarkably light on first-time-author flaws), the main character is fascinating partly for his flaws, and the setting in modern India was vividly portrayed. Pretty much deserves the hype.

2. Inside the Helmet: My Life as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior, Michael Strahan with Jay Glazer: I'm a big NFL football nerd and Strahan was one of my favourites on my favourite team, the New York Giants. I couldn't recommend this book as a prose classic (there's a spelling mistake on the first page!) but generally it's a pretty insightful look into the life of a player in the NFL, the practices, the prep work, the game day mentality, the pain. I think Glazer (a black sportscaster/writer) was likely a big help in structuring the book and together the two of them pull off something fairly readable for the genre, and it's a quick, generally entertaining read. One complaint would be the rabid homophobia that unfortunately permeates Strahan's world and comes through several times in the book; at one point I just said "yes, Michael, it's okay, you're not gay, we get it!" But this is a complaint about the NFL culture in general, really.

3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie: I read this based on the comm's overwhelmingly positive reviews, and was glad I did. I had a few reservations about the book, mainly based on the fact I'm not generally a fan of modern YA and there were aspects in that sense that pinged against my tastes, but overall I thought the characterizations were fabulous, the story compelling, and by the end I was crying all over myself and couldn't stop.

4. Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley: this was also reading against genre for me, as I don't read much in the way of mysteries, but I was glad to have done so - this is a terrific book. The setting is fascinating, and Easy is a wonderful creation, especially the way he grows and changes as the book goes on, in a really organic way, that's sometimes a little unsettling, but in a thoughtful and challenging way. The style of how the mystery played out appealed to me, and the ending was very satisfying. A definite success.

shimizu-hitomi.livejournal.com

First post here, though I've been lurking for a while. I write rambly reviews, so be warned.

- Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others (link to my journal)

("Story of Your Life" is without a question the best thing I've read all year. The other stories in the anthology were bonus.)

- Laura Joh Rowland's The Snow Empress

- Walter Mosley's Fear Itself and Fear of the Dark

(I love mysteries, so it's been great discovering PoC mystery authors. Next on my list is Qiu Xiaolong.)

I also read Yxta Maya Murray's The Conquest and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. I intended to write something more in depth for both books, but never got around to it, and not sure I can or will at this point, so I'll just c/p what I originally wrote in my journal:

( remarks, with brief mention of Cynthia Kadohata's In the Heart of the Valley of Love )

serenejournal.livejournal.com

#1: Black Betty, Walter Mosley

I started off with something that matches my standard reading pattern: Basic detective fiction. I read a lot of murder mysteries -- they're my fluff reading -- so I was grateful when a pile of books that

wild_irises lent me included this book. I'd read Devil in a Blue Dress long ago, and I can only surmise that I haven't read more of Mosley's stuff because I'm a half-unconscious sheep, and I have been too intellectually lazy to seek out POC mystery authors.

(The publishers certainly aren't going out of their way to point them out to me -- just now, I checked a top-ten-bestselling-mysteries list, and as far as I can see, they're all white.)

Anyway, I liked the story, and I liked the way that Easy doesn't fit the stereotypical detective mold. He's not always the good guy. He doesn't always protect people. He lets bad things happen -- it will be a while before I get the images of all his dead friends out of my head. He is afraid of people who can harm him. He is very human and not at all invulnerable. I'll be checking out more of Mosley's stories.

#2: Dawn, Octavia Butler

I don't read much science fiction, and I'm not really sure why, because I do usually like it when I read it. Dawn is no exception. I did think at one point "This will never become a movie, because it's written in the slow style of days long gone", but then again, so was "Enemy Mine", and that was made into a movie. Anyway, the pace was a plus for me -- no car chases or anything, but it was a quick, pleasant read even though it dealt with some really serious issues. I am not entirely comfortable with where it left off, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I will certainly get the next books in the series, because while I don't doubt at all that Butler will continue poking at issues of slavery, xenophobia, and torture, I just have to know how it turns out, and I really want for the ending to the series to be more satisfying than the ending to Dawn.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Location: 94609
Current Music: "Angels of the Silences" earworm

icecreamempress.livejournal.com

(From my book-a-day Twitter reviews, which you can find at booktweeting.)

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jinian.livejournal.com

Another amazing book in my continuing series (yes! I made it to two!) of posts on books new to the comm.

Origin is a mystery, or several mysteries. The main character, Lena, has an unknown past about which her not-quite-adopted parents have told her little, and in her job as a fingerprint specialist she is also drawn into investigating a series of crib deaths in her city. Lena is logical and detached, overwhelmingly drawn to the details of her work, but also highly intuitive and constantly worrying at her lost memories -- what she does remember seems impossible. Abu-Jaber's writing is evocative and possibly addictive, though in a very different style from her other work. Summer would be a great time to read this book since the miserable freezing cold of a northeastern winter is awfully well described!

Race in this book was largely invisible. There's one moment where Lena's foster parents reveal how important it was to them to get a white baby, but other than that I didn't see it addressed. Abu-Jaber is a fabulous writer, though, so I still recommend Origin on grounds of sheer literary greatness. I also read Crescent, which is set among Arab-American immigrants and their wonderful food; it wasn't as memorable as Origin, but I recommend it as well.

[Abu-Jaber's The Language of Baklava, a memoir of the author's mixed-race, mixed-location childhood, was previously reviewed by

littlebutfierce.]

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

Entries tagged with mystery

All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

"A Rising Man" by Abir Mukherjee

2.42 Tess Gerritsen, Keeping the Dead (2008)

2.41 Tess Gerritsen, Girl Missing (1994)

1-5. Shyam Selvadurai, Dai Sijie, Vikas Swarup, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Amitav Ghosh

The Devotion of Suspect X, Villain, The Other Side of Paradise

Mokuyou Kumikyoku by Onda Riku

Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Helen Oyeyemi, Amagi Seimaru

10. Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

#8-11: Shadow Family, Waiting for Rain, All I Asking for is My Body, Say You're One of Them

27-32 Rawi Hage, Octavia E Butler, Qiu Xiaolong, Shaun Tan, Aravind Adiga, Karin Lowachee

Diana Abu-Jaber, Origin

The Devil’s Whisper, by Miyuki Miyabe. 50.

The Bride’s Kimono, by Sujata Massey. 49.

First batch

1-4/50: Adiga, Strahan, Alexie, Mosley

Mosley, Rowland, Ted Chiang

#1 & 2: Black Betty, Walter Mosley; Dawn, Octavia Butler

Three More Brief Reviews

15. Origin, Diana Abu-Jaber