A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay

A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This hit all my buttons for a mystery.

I despise mysteries that rely on coincidence for a solution—all the clues should be available in the text, and a careful reader should reach the same conclusion as the protagonist. If the author is really good, even a brilliant reader won't get there too soon.

Which is not to say coincidence can't have a part—the odds just aren't that good that anybody, even a big city cop, could stumble into these scenarios. So, A Tap on the Window does begin with a coincidence: Cal Weaver just happens to be in front of Patchett's when a young girl is hitchhiking in the rain, and she knew his son. But that's where the coincidence ends; the rest is tightly plotted detective work.

Throughout the story there are anonymous interludes letting us know about the crime that's being covered up, but we're carefully kept in the dark about who the perpetrators are, and there are multiple candidates. I worked it out, but not so soon that it would ruin the story for me. If it's too easy, it just gets boring.

There's just one thing that jarred: "He looks like a child who’s been promised a trip to Santa’s Village." Really, Barclay? Do you think the kids of Griffon, NY, dream of a trip to Santa's Village? I'm not sure anybody does any more, but it's a Southern Ontario thing, probably best remembered by those of Barclay's and my age.

Silken Prey by John Sandford

Silken Prey by John Sandford

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's hard to keep interested in a series that has reached 23 volumes now, but somehow Sandford keeps doing it. This time, he ties in all three of his major series characters. Almost since the debut of his Virgil Flowers series,"that fuckin' Flowers" has made cameo appearances in the Prey novels, but in this one we also get a major contribution from Kidd — Sandford wasn't even Sandford the last time he wrote a Kidd novel! And Kidd (and Lauren/Lu-Ellen) is seriously cool!

There's some hinting that he's trying to wrap up Davenport — or at least send the series in a new direction — with the suggestion that Davenport is now tainted by politics, and a change of administration will force him out of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but I'm cool with that. There's always that fuckin' Flowers...

Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman

Guilt: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I never miss an Alex Delaware novel. I'm mostly highly sceptical of psychologists and psychiatrists – prodding around inside peoples heads, without a very clear understanding of what really happens in there. But, of course, fictional shrinks aren't taking stabs in the dark, they know as much as their authors want them to, so Alex is the perfect shrink. That might seem manipulative and not conducive to the reader's suspension of disbelief, but ironically I find it makes Kellerman's mystery/thrillers easier to believe than many others.

Face it, any mystery novel has to take short cuts – if the cops could solve a murder in the time it took me to read this book, it wouldn't be much of a mystery. Many other writers rely on massive coincidence to create those shortcuts. Alex, through his understanding of other people, gets to manufacture his coincidences.

A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church

A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I read these mystery/thrillers set in foreign lands as much for the insight into another culture as for the mystery, so this novel was a disappointment when I learned almost nothing about North Korea. It's an authoritarian system. Great. I didn't even get much of a sense of "asia-ness" about it. As for the actual mystery - nobody actually seemed to care about the "Corpse in the Koryo" hotel, and it's solution was a throwaway at the very end.

Dismissed With Prejudice by J.A. Jance

Dismissed With Prejudice by J.A. Jance

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a classical whodunnit, dun right.

We're introduced to all the characters fairly early, so there's no sudden introduction of the killer 90% of the way through the book. Everything follows logically, without outrageous coincidence (as detective Beaumont says, the police don't believe in coincidences, so why should mystery readers be expected to), and naturally, I didn't figure out whodidit, even with all the clues. 

I must say though that it was terribly dated - this library e-book had a copyright date of 2005, but the dead-tree-book was published in 1989. Nobody has cell-phones (Beaumont has a car phone), everybody apparently uses actual answering machines, and computer technology is primitive. How did we ever manage?

Second Son by Lee Child

Second Son by Lee Child

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A very interesting peek at the life of young (13 years old) Jack Reacher.

Reacher admits to a military-base bully that he's probably a psychopath, and he's probably right — but as Elliott Leyton, author of Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, tells us, the majority of psychopaths aren't Hannibal Lecter. As with any psychological diagnosis, there must be a range of psychopathy, from those who are merely empathically challenged to those who have no empathy at all. Young Jack Reacher exhibits many of the signs of psychopathy, but he does care for his family. Can he empathize with them? Perhaps not, but he fakes it well.

Another Canadian Elliott, Elliott Barker, says of The Partial Psychopath: "For about half a century, we have known one unfailing recipe for creating psychopaths -- move a child through a dozen foster homes in the first three years." I wonder if it even requires foster families: could moving a child as frequently between military bases, even with a loving but emotionally stunted mother, have some of the same effect.

This story shows that, even at 13, Reacher was dividing the world into Us & Them, and consequences to "Them" were never important, while he would protect "Us" (his family) at all costs. For the rest of his life, the attitude clearly never changes, though his definition of family does.

The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I understand that there's so little crime in Sweden that a mystery writer has to look to redder fields, but the whole Latvian plot is so incredibly unbelievable! Why on Earth would Wallander agree to help a bunch of people who repeatedly refuse to tell him what's going on? How could he ever trust them?

I'll stick to Brannagh's Wallander, thanks.

To be fair to Mankell, this is early Wallander and I like newer stories much better.