Books Set in North America: Baltimore, Maryland USA

Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman (2019)

 

This is a delightful suspense novel that takes place in Baltimore in the 1960s.  Maddie Schwartz is a 37-year old bored Jewish housewife who suddenly leaves her husband and son to be on her own.  She realized that she needs money, so stages a fake robbery so she can collect the insurance money on her engagement and wedding rings.  This brings her in contact with Ferdie, an African-American police officer.  Soon they find themselves in a passionate affair.  They can’t be seen in public, however, because (1) she is still married, and (2) because interracial relationships are illegal in 1960s Maryland.

 

After a young girl goes missing, Maddie joins a search group and discovers the body.  This sparks her interest in pursuing a job as a reporter.  She wrangles her way into a small job at one of Baltimore’s newspapers. When the body of Cleo Sherwood, a young African-American woman, is discovered in a fountain, Maddie becomes obsessed with the woman’s death.  She relentlessly pursues leads to find out what happened to the dead woman.

 

The story slowly unfolds from Maddie’s point of view, as well as that of several other characters, including the ghost of Cleo.  The novel gently also touches upon many social issues of the 1960s, including racism, classism, sexism, and gender matters.  The solution, once it was revealed, was a surprise twist, but one that fit nicely into the story.  [Spoiler Alert:  Cleo, it turns out, didn't die.  The body in the fountain was that of her roommate, whom no one would miss.  Cleo wanted to disappear so she could marry her lover.]

Read: February 21, 2023

4 Stars

 

Books Set in Europe: United Kingdom

The Palace Papers, by Tina Brown (2022)

 

Wow!  Just Wow!  In this book about the British Royal family, no one comes off smelling like a rose.  The book focuses mainly on the last 40 or so years of the Firm, touching on the marriage and life of Charles and Diana before concentrating on the more recent royal relationships and marriages.

 

Unless you are THE Monarch, the lives of all others royals is to support, but not outshine, the Monarch.  That was Diana’s downfall – her overwhelming popularity.  Brown dissects the tawdry and sorted affair of Charles and Camilla before, during and after Charles’ first marriage.  Camilla is seen as shrewd and calculating as she repaired her reputation to elevate her status to now Queen consort.  Her friends were in on the game as well.  (The book was published shortly before the death of Queen Elizabeth.)

 

None of the senior royals escape Brown’s lens.  Nor do Prince Harry and Meghan escape unscathed.  The royals are seen as rude, ruthless, calculating, cold, and, in some cases, just stupid.  Many in the family are quite clueless about how the other 99.9% of the population lives.  Many family members come across as extremely spoiled and pampered.  We knew that didn’t we?  Just not to the extent that they think their privilege extends.

 

Brown notes that the media, which Harry has so often complained about, does, indeed, get leaks from various members of the family.  Thus, the family and the press have a rather cruel symbiotic relationship.  It is the double-edged sword that Firm uses to its advantage at times and despairs at others.

 

The rich are truly different.

Read: February 17, 2023

4 Stars

Books Set in Africa: Kenya

The Lioness, by Chris Bohjalian (2022)

 

This novel takes place in 1964 in East Africa, at a time when there was considerable violence in the continent.  Kate Barstow, a wealthy A-list Hollywood actress had just married David Hill, a struggling art gallery owner.  They were on a safari honeymoon in the Serengeti along with several of their closest friends.

 

David’s gallery isn’t doing well, and he is well aware that his wife is the main breadwinner.  After all, she is funding the trip for everyon ethe safari.  David’s father also holds some ambiguous position with the CIA, which adds to the political intrigue.

 

Kate’s inner circle, who are on the safari include her brother and sister-in-law, her best friend (a minor Hollywood actress) and her husband, Kate’s publicist, her agent and another fellow actor.  Their local guide is a big game hunter, who had to change is focus from clients who were more interested in shooting animals to clients more interested in shooting photographs.

 

While there were political uprisings in the Congo, the safari party has been assured that they will be perfectly safe in East Africa.  Unaware that there are political rumblings throughout the continent, the party seems oblivious to their surroundings.  They are luxuriating in the extreme pampering they are experiencing on their safari.

 

After enjoying a few spectacular days on the safari, in which the African porters tend to the company’s every need, things take a drastic turn.  Suddenly, they are caught in a kidnapping gone wrong.  Russian mercenaries burst upon their camp and separate the American tourists into smaller groups.  Immediately, one of their guards is shot and killed.

 

The novel goes back and forth between the events unwrapping in the kidnapping, and the events leading up to the trip.  The reader gets to know the background stories behind each tourist.  Before embarking on the trip, they knew of the potential dangers in the African plains but believed themselves to be in capable hands.

 

What is the motive of the kidnapping?  Is it money?  Who is behind the kidnapping?  Who has the most to gain?  What is the importance of David’s father?

 

We know from the first page, that very few of the party will survive, we just don't know who.  While I enjoyed most of the book, the ending left me wanting.  Why did one of the captors confess to the rationale of the kidnapping?  This was done in a manner that didn’t fit with the rest of the novel.

 

I find that this author often wraps up in novels quickly in a way that doesn’t fit with the rest of the book.

Read:  February 11, 2023

3.5 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Vietnam

Build Your House Around My Body, by Violet Kupersmith (2021)

 

This novel defies description.  The novel mainly focuses on Winnie, a young Vietnamese-American woman, who moved to Saigon ostensibly to teach English and to connect with her Vietnamese heritage.  She is very unhappy and drowns herself in beer and sex.  We know from the first page that she will disappear without a trace.

 

The novel seamless moves from the present to the past and back again, through French colonization to the Japanese coup in the 1940s, with brief references to the Vietnamese War.  We meet a marvelous assortment of odd characters, from a Khmer-French schoolboy who was left in a rubber plantation in the 1940s, to the Fortune Teller, to the brothers Tan and Long, to the young Binh, who disappeared decades before Winnie. Interwove through these characters is the supernatural and superstitions inherent in rural Vietnamese culture.

 

The author slowly peels away the layers, and slowly the connections between all these characters becomes evident.

 

This book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I absolutely loved it.

 

Read:  January b28, 2023

 

5 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Cambodia

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung (2000)

 

Loung Ung was 5 years old when her world was upended by the Khmer Rouge.  She had been living a care-free childhood in an upper-middle class family in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with her parents and six siblings.  Her father was a government official, but when the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government, his life was in jeopardy if his work status was discovered.  In April 1975, the family had to leave Phnom Penh, hide their identity, and live as peasant farmers.  Eventually, they were captured and sent to forced-labor camps where they were given very little food.

 

This memoir is told through the eyes of Loung Ung, who was a child during this period of Cambodian history.  She describes the horrors of being separated from her family, how the Khmer soldiers can for her father, and he was never seen again.  She describes how starvation and malnutrition stole the life of her younger sister.  She describes how she, as a 7-year-old, was recruited into the Khmer as a child soldier.  She lived through the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, and in 1979, was finally able to reunite with what remained of her family.  It is harrowing to imaging young children living through and being exposed to such hatred and horror.

 

Read: January 21, 2023

 

4 Stars

 

 

 

Books Set in the World: Unnamed city and country

The Maid, by Nita Prose (2022)

 

Molly Gray is a maid in a fancy hotel.  She takes pride in her work and lives to return hotel rooms to a “state of perfection”.  The novel is written in first person with Molly as the narrator.  She knows that she sees the world differently from others.  Her deceased grandmother has taught her how to interact with others.

 

She has few friends but takes people at face value.  She finds Rodney, the hotel’s bar tender, to be dreamy. When he sets a time to meet with her about a particular matter, she thinks she is on a date.  She is also friendly with Mr. Preston, the doorman, and Juan Manuel, the dishwasher.  Mr. Preston seems to care about Molly and, knowing that she perceives the world differently from most people, tries to warn her that not everyone has her best interest at heart.

 

One day, Molly goes in to clean a room only to find Mr. Charles Black, a very important and repeat guest in the hotel, dead on the bed.  Molly follows protocol and calls reception to report the death.  She takes careful note of the room but is unable to read the people involved in the investigation.  Soon, she finds herself as the prime suspect.  She knows she didn’t commit the murder and wants to clear her name.

 

The Maid is an absolutely delightful novel.

 

 Read:  January 15, 2023

5 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States, Washington, D.C.

The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: The Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets, by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (2016)

In 2000, an informant provided the FBI with a package that contained a sample of confidential documents and pages of codes that, once deciphered, indicated that the writer was offering to sell United States top secret documents.  A clue as to the identity of the letter’s writer was the fact that many words were misspelled.  After an exhaustive search, the FBI identified the writer as Brian P. Regan, a disgruntled security specialist with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), who, realizing that he wasn’t getting a promotion, decided to supplement his income by selling classified intelligence to foreign countries.  His first target was Libya, before moving on to Iraq and China.

The author explored Regan’s childhood.  He was from a working-class family and was a bit of an odd duck.  In school, he was often the butt of jokes.  He learned early on that cheating helped him move on with his life.  By cheating on the entrance exams, he enlisted in the military as a non-commissioned officer.  He had a talent for cracking codes, which landed him a job with the NRO.

After marrying and beginning a family, he soon found himself heavily in debt.  Hence, his scheme to sell America’s secrets to foreign powers.  For this amateur, this proved to be more difficult than he imagined.  He copied numerous top secret and confidential papers and buried them throughout federal properties.  He encrypted the location of these papers with a complex code.  These buried documents were to provide him with insurance in the event that he was ever caught.

Regan sent numerous coded letters to foreign powers with the offer to sell secrets, but none of his contact took his bait.

The author provided a brief history on code and encryption, dating back thousands of years.

This was a fascinating book and a true-life thriller.

Read:  January 13, 2023

4 Stars