The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey

The Inspector Peter Diamond mystery series by Peter Lovesey has been on my reading list for some time. I am pleased to discover that The Last Detective turns out to be the first in the series. As I read, I was struck with the obvious erudition of the author, the complex and somewhat daring change of voice throughout the narrative, the presentation of fine moral and ethical questions, and the unsettling ambiguity of the ending. The main character, Peter Diamond, is meant to be a "diamond in the rough." He may be overbearing and critical with his associates at the police force, but he is unerring in sensing discrepancies between suspects' statements and their deeds. He is not above taking pride in finding a piece of evidence that disproves his colleagues' assumptions.

In this, the first in the mystery series, the characterizations are finely wrought and suprisingly sympathetic. One finds oneself shifting allegiances with each chapter. All the characters have failings, but each have redeeming features which impel our interest. The ending is both heartbreaking and shocking and open-ended as regards the fate of our chief investigator. A fine addition to British mystery.

Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy by the Staff of the New York Times

An astonishing collection of articles, cables, photos, and references to the Wikileaks cable dump of U.S. secrets, all hyperlinked for easy navigation in an ebook format. I wasn't able to keep up with the wiki-secrets when they came out, but time has shown the extraordinary impact they have had on foreign affairs and inter-country relations. The NYT magazine cover article for January 26, 2011 gives an abridged version of the introduction to Open Secrets but it is the referenced material that makes this such a great volume. Finally I get to see the cables that everyone talked about, without searching them out for myself. Novelists and reporters are going to be using the source materials shown here for many years, I expect.

What I especially liked is hearing what the editors and reporters at the NYTimes thought when they were landed with the opportunity to print U.S. government secrets, what they did, and how they proceeded, given the extraordinary circumstances: two wars, an unstable (possibly unhinged) source, and the inflammatory nature of the documents themselves.

Finally we have an ebook worthy of the name. Material is hyperlinked forward and backward, so checking cable sources and references is relatively easy. At least two videos (of U.S. helicopters firing on a crowd and a building in Baghdad in 2007), full and edited verison, are embedded with links. The best way to read this would be on a computer, but I used a NOOKcolor and it worked well (no video, alas). I might remind those of you interested in having this ebook stored on your computer that the software to read this is free and a quick and easy download from the bn.com site.

Bamboo and Blood by James Church

James Church's series of North Korean Police Detective Inspector O is something of an anomoly in the world of detective fiction. Here we have a keen-eyed detective whose field of expertise is not so much citizen-on-citizen violence as government-on-citizen violence. While Inspector O is a patriot of uncommon fidelity, the angle from which we view his mind working is not so much internal as external. We, facilitated by the author Church, are watching Inspector O make decisions and we are making an analysis. We are foreign agents--we are being taught to be foreign agents--in this series written by a foreign agent. We are being shown what to look for, and this is latest edition, we are even being taught tradecraft. Wacky tradecraft, but there you have it.

I like Inspector O very much. The author has a depth of compassion for him and his close compatriots that helps us to imagine them with a depth of character and a degree of humanity. We know so little about North Korea, every bit of description helps us "to put flesh on the bones", so to speak. And if even a portion of the descripton given us here of that woe-begone country is true, North Korea and its people are in a world of hurt.

I especially liked this third book in the series because Inspector O was given his head and allowed to travel overseas. He was quite witty when describing Geneva and New York, the "talks" going on there, and the spymasters he encountered. Much of the best parts of this book consisted of conversation rather than description, so Church is taking a unique jog in the business of series writing and engaging the reader in a way different from others writing detective series. Church's method is more cerebral, and less kinetic, the characters more likely to suffer psychological damage than physical. Approach this with an open mind, and I believe you will be amused, but will also have plenty of food for thought.

The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear

Loved the idea of this series about a female private investigator in London between the Wars from the start, though through it I recognize the difficulty of keeping a series advancing without stagnating. I so enjoyed the first books in the series, but passed up many opportunities to pick up this seventh in the series until I came across an audio version and had time on my hands. Maisie Dobbs, investigator extraordinaire, has a touch of the mystic about her which makes her feel both contemporary and exceptional. She may be reserved to a fault, but that particular characteristic is prized in certain fields. In this installment, Maisie and her sidekick Billy uncover the killer of an American mapmaker in France during the Great War. The series ends with a promise of great changes in the lives of all concerned, which will undoubtedly spark the interest of avid fans.

I was also struck this time with the thought that the series would make great Masterpiece Theatre as it does not delve into the lurid, and sometimes gruesome, details of murder or passion. It could, with some tinkering, be a profitable vehicle for a number of actors to strut their talent and keep the television public amused. However, I see no sign of the film options mentioned on her website. Filmmakers, take note!

How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu

A friend says this is less an immigrant narrative than a meditation on marriage, on a dysfunctional family, on ordinary life. It is true that much of it appears to be lies. Or story. Perhaps that is all the immigrant experience, or ordinary life, is...all story. We can make our own story if we don't like the hand we're dealt. That is the beauty of fiction. In the last third of this novel I was struck with some echo of the parents' lives being replayed in the son's. Of course by then we were made aware that his parents' lives were what he chose to tell us--to create for us--and his own life was equally suspect, the author being a self-professed liar. He created for the students in his English class the immigrant narrative of his father, wildly speculating and inventing on the horrors of the journey in the belly of an overburdened ship. His students began to see him--really see him--and it gave their own lives depth and grandeur. We don't fault the author of these inventions because if not true in his own instance, these things were undoubtedly true for some people, somewhere, sometime. And anything that can break through the insularity of a freshman English class is education.

I Live in the Future by Nick Bilton

Nick Bilton is extremely upbeat in his assessment of where we're going with information sharing. In fact, one might accuse him of having the tail-wagging enthusiasm of a convert. He does, in fact, call himself a "borderline digital immigrant" rather than a "digital native." He may be aiming this narrative at an audience who does not already spend much of it's time online, and instead is aiming at "digital immigrants" who feel somewhat battered by cyberspace's firehose information portals. He takes a unique angle on information sharing in Chapter One where he investigates the way the porn industry has changed their online presence over time to adjust to the needs and wants of adherents. The chapter was undoubtedly orginial research, but I thought it overlong and after awhile, rather off-putting. Chapter Two tells us about the past (undoubtedly the past informs the future) but the ideas weren't new and though they may have rounded out the piece somewhat, I thought he was lolly-gagging on the way to a point. I gave him to page 90, by which time I'd underlined more stuff than in any previous book. I skipped to the last chapter, at which point he tells me something I'd read years ago: Jeff Gomez in Print is Dead. Gomez left something imprinted in my brain that resonates to this day: [to parphrase] "It's not how you read something, it's the ideas that count."


Bilton tells us that he "no longer feels a shred of information overload, content anxiety, or fear that I might be missing something, online or off" because he relies on his anchoring communities (friends, family, and online associates) to funnel information to him. Research shows that "most people do." Bilton introduces us to the term "homophily," the concept of living within a segregated bubble in any community. He asserts that "we see drastically more opinions and viewpoints than we do in traditional media such as television and newsprint." Could it be that the traditional news media made a (crude, perhaps, but sincere) attempt to be fact rather than opinion? He cites extensively from an article published 2010 Gentzkow & Shapiro University of Chicago which concludes that there is "no evidence that the Internet is becoming more segregated over time," and therefore are not being herded into silos of thought and opinion.

I'd like to believe this, but the research of one article does not make the case for me. I feel like I have the evidence of my eyes to tell me that there has been a hardening of position amongst the populace, and a greater incivility and lack of respect for another's opinions. I think people may be shoring themselves up in positions taken for no other reason than their friend (or, god forbid, a celebrity) takes a position, and the way people get information on the web allows them to feel justified in even unreasonable positions because so many people out of their group will support it. A mob mentality, if you will, borne out on a scale the world has never before seen.

The author explains a series of dueling opinion pieces between himself and George Packer (author of Assassin's Gate and a New Yorker staff writer) regarding the value of constant connection. The dueling positions are described in detail and he admits that impassioned responses supporting both sides came down in greater numbers in support of Packer's position. But Bilton seems to be saying that one cannot hold back the tide. Who wants to? When Bilton next tells us that "digital natives do not distinguish between mainstream stories in the mainstream media such as newspapers and television and those created by their peers," I'd say we have more a generational divide here. The digital natives are clever and all, but really, when Bilton says that "online name recognition and trust may be more important than simply affiliating with a trusted institution..." I begin to shut down. I read him only because he was the NY Times correspondent for electronic developments, so you can see I am not a digital native.

I picked up this book because of a one-liner by Jonah Lehrer endorsing it. I get sucked in every time. I don't know Jonah Lehrer. I just read one of his books and admired it. But he's just doing what authors do: endorse other authors books in hopes that his own will be recommended fairly. I admit to feeling something akin to rage the further I read in Bilton's book, but perhaps it was just terror.

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

This delicately-sized debut thriller packs a punch well above its weight. Exquisitely observed, the story focuses on a young boy in a depressed moor town and a serial killer who preys on the same. The language and the sentiments feel real, and one's attachment to the main character grows in direct proportion to our disquiet as the story unfolds. A first-class debut from a talented author.