Random Things Tours: Hunting Shadows by Jane Hamilton

True crime books belong to a very specific genre: compared to the novels on similar topics I am so often reading and reviewing, books about and inspired about real serial killers do not spare any details about the horrible secrets of the human minds.

Hunting Shadows by Scotland´s most experienced and well known crime journalist, Jane Hamilton is an extensive account of the serial killer Peter Tobin. Tobin, a recognized sexual abuser who died in prison in 2022, was found guitly of killing three women in three separate incidents.

Hamilton, which is a proeminent crime journalist, whose investigations not only informed, but also succeeded to change and challenge laws and local regulations, followed the investigations of the crime, as well as the police and legal proceedings. Her book provides not only important investigations about the case, but also horrible psychological details about Tobin´s mind and possible motivation.

Personally, I´ve read the book at a very slow pace, as I really needed to take a break from it more often than I expected. As usually, a true crime story may be brutal and disturbing. But this is the reality of the criminal minds, and it is interesting to have access to such well documented cases.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions, as usual, are my own 

The Widow Spy by Martha D. Peterson

Last weekend, I watched a funny comedy on Netflix, about two spies - a couple - who every couple of minutes were actively fighting for their life, juggling two or more weapons while hitting hard the many enemies in the most sensitive places. Surviving with a big smile on their face. What a life!

Spies, as well as diplomats, are often associated with glamour, action and adrenaline-driven daily tasks. In reality, most part of the job, in both cases, has to do more with office jobs, reading and interpreting incessantly, waiting, a lot of waiting for the right moment or message.

Martha D. Peterson, the author of The Widow Spy, was among the first female CIA case officers assigned in Moscow in the 1970s, at the peak of Cold War tensions. She joined the Agency after her husband, a CIA operative, died in a helicopter crash in Laos. Involved in a defection of a Soviet diplomat - codenamed: Trigon - she was caught while recovering the secret messages left in Moscow and shortly imprisoned to Lublianka.

As a woman, in the CIA, working under cover, being a spy was a permanent work of proving herself. Which at least in relationship with her mission, helped her as she was able to due her assignment without being taken seriously by KGB. Although the facts she shared, important testimonies about the state of the arts for female spies in the 1970s is very relevant for the case for women in intelligence.

The book has plenty of facts, important for the historian as well as anyone passionate about the Cold War, but it also shares an important episode of women´s history, from the most unexpected place.

Rating: 4 stars

Orenda Books Blog Tour: Catherine by Essie Fox

 

I am generally very careful with the retold novels I chose to read, as I always prefer original versions. But  two trustworthy sources - an author that I´ve discovered one year ago and really appreciated, Essie Fox, and an edition house that cannot be wrong, Orenda Books - changed my mind.

Essie Fox´s latest, Catherine, is a retelling of the iconic Wuthering Heights, a novel I´ve read in my teenage years. I also watched the movie - the 1939 version -, that at the time left me a stronger impression.

Catherine has however a different spin and perspective. The ambiance is eerie, very visual and with strong correspondences with the events related in the story. The storyteller is Catherine herself, who 18 years after her death, she is returning to the places of her ultimate love. Many of the landscape descriptions may stay with me for a very long time.

Personally, I´ve found the relationships between characters emotionally deep, facing a strength going beyond life and death. Similarly with the blind irrationality of nature, humans themselves seem to be possessed by passions beyond their own power and understanding.

The book is very well written and for someone who never read Wuthering Heights it may sound as a standalone, original writing as well. In the end, what really matters, is the story, no matter how often and the angle it is written. 

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Imminent Risk by S. Lee Manning

The fourth in the Kolya Petrov series - to whom it was elegantly added Alex Feinstein, his partner and wife to be - Imminent Risk by award-winning author S. Lee Manning takes the reader to a risky ride in the underworld of ´conspiracy nuts´.

I´ve previously reviewed books by this author and I was never disappointed due to the perfect mix of action, political relevance and spy spicy stories. The same literary recipe was followed in this latest book published by Misbehavin´ Press as well. The book can be read as a stand alone, but I definitely recommend to continue with the other installments in the series, especially if you love action-packed page turning books.

Kolya Petrov and his talented attorney fiancé Alex are in the middle of the rehearsal for their wedding. But as Alex is requested by an old childhood friend to help her with a conflict with the social services, she agrees to take a break and assist her. But what looked as a mundane child protection case escalated to a plot that threatens to literally explode Manhattan, minutiously prepared by a disillusioned deluted ex-CIA obsessed by aliens and Jews taking over the country. The nuts are as dangerous as nukes falling in the wrong hands.

Kolya, working for a secret governmental office, is always ready for action, quietly fighting his PTSD following dangerous missions he was involved before, but Alex is by far the complex character in the book. Her past experiences taught her how to react in an extremely adverse environment, but meanwhile she is also intensively reflecting about her relationship questioning sometimes the readiness of constantly being at risk and exposed. These details balance the other important trains of thought about extreme domestic violence and the twisted minds of the conspirationists - for sure inspired by real life characters.

Imminent Risk is very intense, well written and plotted, keeping the reader in a ceaseless suspense. A perfect addition for a weekend read.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the author in exchange for an honest review

 

Orenda Books Blog Tour: Sharks by Simone Bucholz translated by Rachel Ward

I love to discover my favorite cities through literary lenses. Given Germany´s strong local crime writing tradition I am very often rewarded to crime stories set in the many places I´ve left a piece of my heart.

Hamburg-based multi-awarded crime bestseller author Simone Buchholz bring her city of choice into the English-speaking realm. Beatles played here too, of course, but crime stories sound better for me.

Sharks, her latest translated into English by Rachel Ward, is published the 26th of February by Orenda Books, who published other Buchholz translations I had the opportunity to present on my blog. This is the third book featuring the public prosecutor Chastity Riley, but can be easily read as a stand alone (although the other two are heartly recommended). It is a relatively short book, but well written and with detailed information about those places in Hamburg that you need to be an insider to know them, particularly the bars and clubs in the Reeperbahn (´gloomy pubs, grey streets´).

Riley, who is dangerously ill, coughing blood, over exhausted and dealing with relationship crisis, is tasked with the investigation of the murder of an estranged ex-GI family - described as ´hard core conservatives´) living in a compound hunted by greedy real estate ´sharks´. Her very diverse team (´We´re all a pile of glorious bastards. And I like us´) is fast, they are completing each other very well, enjoying the exercise of having to solve the riddle. 

Sharks is not necessarily a highly eventful novel, but well written and admirably translated, with a very clear plot. The characters of the book are by far the most interesting, including Riley whose inner dialogues doubling her conversations are very entertaining.

Clearly, the next time will be visiting Hamburg will see the city with completely different eyes. Sharks seems to have been cut a short sequency from the everyday life in the Wilhelmsburg borrough that ends at the author´s will. But we, the readers, may be curious to come back soon, hence the excitement of waiting for the next installment in the series.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but opinions are, as usual, my own

CLASSIC READS: So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas

My CLASSIC READS project took me this time a bit farther away: in Senegal. So Long a Letter by French writing Senegalese author Mariama Bâ (translated from the original French version Une si longue lettre by Modupé Bodé-Thomas) was on my reading list for a very long time. As my interest with this project is not only to cover less known ´classical´ - in my own timeline decision until mid-1990s - reads, but also less read world literature, I loved the chance of spending some time with this book.

This book is ´classical´ in its level of literary achievement for the Senegalese literature. It was published in 1979, and it is the only book Bâ - a teacher, Minister of Health, a feminist - published during her lifetime. The book received the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, an annual prize awarded between 1980 and 2009. 

The book is relatively short - read it within few hours - and is written as a letter that Ramatoulaye - whose name is revealed long towards the end of the story, and when uttered by a man - sent to her childhood friend Aissatou. Ramatoulaye is sharing her struggle and survival after being indirectly faced with the announcement that her husband of 30 years and 12 children took a second wife. The second wife, the same age with the older daughter, in the company of whom he met her, was a victim of her circumstances and the desire of her mother to achieve a social status.

The letter starts with the announcement with the sudden death of her husband, as she details the funeral and the mourning ceremonies. The compassionate tone of the beginning is progressively growing into the anger and frustration of the betrayal she experienced. Abandoned, not divorced, she remained faithful to the love of her youth. Offered to be taken as a second wife herself, by a man who used to be in love with her, she refused. The recipient of her lettr, Aissatou refused radically the same option, ending up as a diplomat and educated free woman.

The book is written very insightfully, with delicate observations about social change and the new wave of ideas, from anthropological observations to city planning, social change in Senegal or religious and sexual education for girls.  

Bâ writes with confidence, as someone aware that she has something to say may be. The translation itself mediates the knowledge for the non-French reader.

I am very grateful for having the time and opportunity to read this book. It shows how women realities may be generated individually, nevertheless are so similar in the ways they affect women worldwide.

CLASSIC READS: Death in Venice/Der Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann

My next installment of CLASSIC READS is a book I wanted to read for a very long time: Death in Venice/Der Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann. Mann was an author I admired in my late teenage years and I´ve read most of his books. I loved The Buddenbrooks as I used, and still have, a weakness for books with a social and sociological background. Until now though, I´ve read everything in various translations, therefore my latest ´classical´ was not only a literary challenge, but also a linguistic novelty.

Der Tod in Venedig is a novella that can be easily read within two hours or so. However, I wanted to spend a bit of more time with the text, therefore it took me few days until I was happy with my understanding of the text and ideas.

Let´s talk language though: I´ve seen reviews by native speakers complaining that it is empty and sophisticated on purpose. It could be, but let´s do not ignore that this book was published in 1912. Nowadays, we write and read today in shorter and plain sentences. At the time, literature was a priviledge of the few, therefore it appealed to a very specific category of readers. Unfortunately today, the long and complex sentences in German are rather reserved for highly bureaucratic texts. Inside jokes put aside, if you are reading Proust - another important name on my CLASSICAL READS list - the style, vocabulary and sentence structure is far from the register used in TikTok book reviews. Those were the days.

Back to the novella now: Set in Venice during the 1911 cholera epidemic - that Mann himself experienced while visiting there - it follows Gustav von Aschenbach, a fictional famous author in his 50s, visiting on Island Lido. His stay turns progressively into a deadly obsession as he sees the perfectly beautiful 14-year old Tadzio, who is visiting with his Polish family. The young man is the perfect projection of the ideal of beauty as per Plato´s Phaidros. 

The ambiance and the various locations are described in the smallest details, literally transporting the reader in the 1900s Venice. There are both visual and atmospheric, reflecting at certain extent the emotional troubles Aschenbach is himself going through.

Echoing another novella by Mann, Tonio Kröger - where the main character is progressively acknowledging his status as an artist - Death in Venice is clearly discussing ideas about the role of the artists, as well as his hidden aspirations and aims. Physical beauty therefore is stirring passions, although there are good reasons to compare the novella with Lolita, the gay version, despite the attraction being in Mann´s case purely platonic. I´ve seen some critics mentioning Mann´s homosexual tendencies, but need to read more about it maybe.

There is also a movie inspired by the book by Visconti I haven´t watched yet. 

I have mixed feelings about this novella: reading it was definitely a welcomed linguistic challenge, but from the point of view of the topic as such, not too much. The Buddenbrooks remain my favorite Mann´s work. 

On the other hand, I will hopefully be able soon to read and review soon some relevant critique and biographical books about Thomas Mann that may bring more personal details into picture.