Some notes on mysteries that weren't great but had something interesting about them . . .
I didn't love House of Correction by Nicci French, but I was impressed by the author's ability to write a legal mystery from the standpoint of the accused, who is planning her defense from a jail cell and then acts as her own attorney in a manner that is entertaining (although certainly would not be allowed by an actual judge). It's really just another take on "ditzy girl solves the case when the dense police can't," but the ditzy girl is usually loved by everyone; here, she doesn't have a friend in the world except for her cellmate, who turns out to be an effective sleuth/lawyer. An interesting twist if not entirely successful.
I am not a huge fan of William Kent Krueger, although I know he's beloved and I do respect that he deals with important issues in his mysteries. Among the issues that underpin Spirit Crossing is violence against indigenous women and girls (and law enforcement's lack of attention to this epidemic). Somehow I wasn't as moved as I feel like I should have been by the book--but I cried at the Author's Note at the end, which was about a real woman who was trafficked, was rescued, built a life, and then was killed by a boyfriend. Reality has an impact.
Kelley Armstrong is an incredibly prolific Canadian novelist best known to me as the author of a mystery series set in a secret Yukon town where all of the residents are hiding from something, usually the law. Thus, I was interested in reading her YA novel Someone Is Always Watching to find that it had a somewhat similar underlying idea, except that it involves children. It's hard to say more without including spoilers, but it's entertaining. I'm not including it in the "favorite" section because the "surprise" is obvious fairly early to an adult reader and there are too many red herrings--but wondering about why the similar underlying theme is important to this author interested me. I might also note that I read several YA books in February, perhaps trying to escape the horror of being an adult in the current political situation.
On to my favorite winter reads.
Fiction
I have to wonder at myself for really liking The World After Alice, by Lauren Aliza Green, because the two families at its core are so dysfunctional it should be painful. But somehow, it's not. The titular Alice committed suicide as a teenager (or at least we think she did). More than a decade later, her brother Benji and her best friend Morgan are getting married, after keeping their relationship secret from their family for years. Meanwhile, Morgan's father Peter is in love with Benji's mother Linnie, who is bringing a date to the wedding, a man who might have had an inappropriate relationship with Alice. And Benji's dad Nick has been let go from his job but hasn't told his second (younger) wife. Alice's presence hangs over the wedding like a monstrous cloud, and the conflicts are as bad as you might imagine. Yet, it's still somehow a good read.
Long Island, by Colm Toibin, is a sequel to Brooklyn, a much-lauded book that I didn't love. However, I did really enjoy Long Island, despite the fact that, as the book progressed, the three main characters in the novel--Eilis Lacey, Jim Farrell, and Nancy (forgot her last name)--morph from sympathetic characters dealing with loneliness (among other challenges) to dishonest manipulators of their supposed friends/loved ones. Eilis, the heroine of Brooklyn, is already feeling alienated from her husband Tony's family--all of whom live on the same Long Island cul de sac--when a man shows up at her door to tell her his wife is having Tony's baby and that he will drop the baby on her doorstep when it is born. Unwilling to raise the child and unable to convince Tony and his family to have no part in raising the baby, she decides to retreat to her native Ireland for the summer. There, she reconnects with her fling from Brooklyn, Jim Farrell, who has become secretly engaged to her former best friend Nancy. The secrets the three are keeping erode their relationships and decision-making to a serious degree. The book's ending is abrupt--some readers clearly see it as a set-up for another sequel but I'm not so sure; Toibin may simply be illustrating what happens when bad decisions intersect.
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson is a book I resisted for a long time, even though I would see it on Libby or at the library--or being read by someone in public. A book about children who burst into flames seemed dumb. And maybe it is a little dumb, but it's also really good. Upper crust Southern girl Madison and scholarship girl Lillian are roommates at a boarding school when Madison gets framed by a rival; Madison's wealthy father then pays Lillian's mother to have Lillian take the fall. Expelled, Lillian falls back into a trailer park kind of existence, but she is still in sporadic touch with Madison, who is married to an older U.S. Senator. When Madison calls and asks Lillian to serve as "governess" for her husband's children by a previous wife--a position that will pay much more than the series of hourly jobs she's been working--Lillian agrees. She then finds out the reason the children need care is that they spontaneously combust from time to time and must be kept out of the way because Madison's husband may soon be nominated for Secretary of State. Crazy set-up, right? But what develops from there is touching, funny, occasionally infuriating--just really enjoyable. I've read reviews that say the novel is about female friendship, but I think it's about learning to care and be cared for.
Richard Powers has the mind of a scientist and the soul of a poet, and they come together to create novels like those of no other authors. In Playground, his most recent book, the science is multifaceted--the importance and incredible diversity of the ocean ecosystem as well as AI and the threat it poses (oh, and Lewy body dementia--Powers is not averse to including odd human infirmities). The poetry emerges in the relationship between the sea and humans and in an exploration of a deep and ultimately painful friendship. The narrative goes back and forth in time and location, involves numerous characters, and can sometimes be confusing, but a twist at the end brings it together. The human/sea relationship is mostly seen through the character Evie, who is an obsessive diver, scholar, and author of an enchanting children's book about the sea (one reviewer described her husband as a Doug Emhoff-type character, which I found amusing). One of the young people enchanted by her book is Todd, a bright Evanstonian who very early sees the potential of computer games. He becomes friends with Rafi, a scholarship student at his prestigious high school. Rafi is a gifted poet and a lover of literature. The two obsessively play chess and then Go and head off to the University of Illinois together, but they have a falling out after graduation. Todd moves to San Jose to start his company, Playground, a platform something like Reddit but with a competitive element. Rafi stays in Urbana, working on his dissertation and eventually taking a job at the U of I library (one of the best in the country!). Eventually, all the main characters end up on a French Polynesian island where Todd has proposed building a modular floating city and the island's residents have been trying to figure out how to decide democratically whether to agree to the project (should children vote? how should animals' views be considered?). Despite saying a lot about the book, I haven't really captured it, so I'll just end by saying it's highly recommended. (I feel compelled to admit another reason that I love Powers' work is that it often involves the U of I as a setting--just reading a phrase like "north of Green" sparks memories. And the character Todd was involved with a project based on the groundbreaking Plato project, where a friend of mine was the art director for some years. How can I not love this, no matter how bad a reason it is for loving a novel?)
Mysteries
Winter started with a mystery that made a lot of "Best of 2024" lists--The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore. It opens in 1975 with camp counselor Louise discovering that 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar, the only surviving child of her wealthy family, is missing from her bunk at the camp near the Van Laar's estate. Years ago, before Barbara's birth, her brother Bear disappeared. A serial killer has escaped from a prison not too far away, and the Van Laars have been hosting a huge end-of-summer party, meaning suspects--both guests and an expanded staff--are numerous. The story switches between the times around the two disappearances and between multiple perspectives. One of the most interesting is that of a young police officer, Judy Luptack, who in 1975 has become one of the first female investigators in the New York State Police, who must navigate strict gender expectations of both the rich and the working class while following her instincts and the evidence to unravel what happened to the two Van Laar children. Moore introduces a variety of serious themes, including family dysfunction and dating violence, but she also knows how to plot a mystery. Very enjoyable.
I was probably first taken by Emiko Jean's The Return of Ellie Black because it was so entirely different from her YA book I had recently read, which was basically Princess Diaries in Japan. But then I got pulled in by the story. In the opening chapter, a young woman missing for two years suddenly reappears. Police detective Chelsey Calhoun, daughter of the late police chief and sister of a girl killed as a teenager, is determined to find the man or men who took Ellie. But, as she tirelessly works the case, the reader gradually begins to learn, through chapters narrated by Ellie, key pieces of information she has not told the police. These pieces of the story lead to several surprises that actually surprise to varying extents. Complicated and entertaining.
Nonfiction
Whether you think you know a lot about how social media operates or haven't a clue why you see what you see on FB or IG, I recommend Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, by Renee DiResta. DiResta looks at how influencers, algorithms, and crowds/mobs/cults have created "bespoke realities" that challenge the public's understanding of what is true and what is a new form of propaganda. Herself the victim of online character assassination by conspiracy theorists whose false narratives about the work of her then institution, the Stanford Internet Observatory, resulted in threats to her family and a congressional subpoena, DiResta makes clear the toxic effects of the new media environment by detailing conspiracies around the COVID pandemic and the 2020 election. A must-read in our current screwed-up environment.
The Small and the Mighty, by Sharon McMahon, has a subtitle long enough to provide a good synopsis of the book: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement. Some of the "unsung" are actually fairly well known--Daniel Inouye, Norm Mineta, Booker T. Washington, Katharine Lee Bates. But McMahon adds depth to the stories we know, and it's rewarding to learn of the truly unsung (at least to me). For example, Clara Brown was an enslaved woman whose family was sold away; following emancipation, she searched for her family members while building a successful business in Colorado. Virginia Randolph was an African American woman who built a system of schools for black children in Virginia in the late 19th and early 20 century. Julius Rosenwald was one of the owners of Sears, who funded vocational/technical schools for African American children across the South. I recommend listening to the audio version of the text, as it is read by the author who sounds just like your favorite opinionated high school social studies teacher--wound up in her topic and ready to convince you it matters. As someone who took black history and lit courses in the late 60s/early 70s, I have a view of Booker T. Washington that doesn't necessarily align with McMahon's, but I appreciate the argument she makes. Very enjoyable read.
Poetry
I've got two poem-a-day books I'm trying to keep up with in 2025 but I've also been reading some other collections (yes, I might be tooting my own horn a bit). I am a big fan of Kwame Alexander, so I picked up This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, which he edited. It includes a wide range of poems--poems celebrating African American culture, political poems, poems addressing the sacred, and more. Every reader is likely to find something that resonates. Some of my favorites include a poem celebrating butter by Elizabeth Alexander, a very funny prayer for a COVID-denying family by Frank X Walker, a comparison of hanging laundry with poetry (Maritza Rivera), and a Ruth Forman poem calling for resistance. Here's the Rivera poem for your enjoyment:
Hanging Laundry
by Maritza Rivera
Of all the chores
I did as a child
the one I hated most
was hanging laundry.
Clotheslines, clothespins
a basket of wee tee shirts
towels and bed linens:
my penance,
I saw nothing wrong
with just tossing them all
into the dryer and letting them
tumble into submission
but my insistent grandmother
would just not have it.
Why waste the warmth of the sun
she knowingly asked. Smell the tropical
breeze in the sheets she proclaimed.
I would say she had a point except
for the sudden downpour that always
followed once everything was
neatly hung and almost dry.
Running to rescue
hanging laundry
from the tears of angels
seemed so useless.
Now, here I am so many years later
seeing words hang like laundry
watching them bask in the warm
of an unsuspecting page awaiting
a cloud burst of ink.
Favorite Passages
Hope and truth could not be reconciled. The things that had filled her with awe were passing away. There was no other honest ending.
Without the ability to feel sad, a person could not be kind or thoughtful, because you wouldn't care or know how anybody else feels. Without sadness, you would never learn anything from history. Sadness is the key to loving what you love and to becoming better than you were. A person who never felt sad would be a monster.
--Richard Powers, Playground (I could pick many more passages as well--these choices may be influenced by the fact that I am writing this early in Trump's second term.)
You know, at Vanderbilt, there was a kind of boy who wore pastel shorts and boat shoes. They wore seersucker, like they were racist lawyers from the forties. I hated them. They seemed like children but they already looked like middle-aged men. I called them Mint Julep Boys, like they missed the Old South because, even if there was horrible racism, it was worth it if it meant that they could be important by default.
--Kevin Wilson, Nothing to See Here (see note above re Trump's second term)
American has been just, and it has perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been--and are--good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn't deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression.
--Sharon McMahon, The Small and the Mighty (note applies yet again)
