Review by New York Times Review
Early in THE REDBREAST (Harper/HarperCollins, $24.95), an elegant and complex thriller by the Norwegian musician, economist and crime writer Jo Nesbo, an old man who has just received a death sentence from his doctor goes into the palace gardens in Oslo and kills an ancient oak tree. "Yes!" you think. "What a terrible act, but what wonderful symbolism!" And you'll be amazed when, hundreds of pages later, the real reason for the aboricide is revealed, along with the answers to other seemingly minor mysteries (including the significance of the title) that figure in the novel's ingenious design. The engineering of the interlocking plot pieces is intricate because it has to support Nesbo's complicated ideas - and dire thoughts - about Norwegian nationalism, past and present. While giving his ambitious book the form of a police procedural, featuring Harry Hole, an attractive if familiarly flawed loose cannon of a cop, the author expands his street-level subplots into a narrative that reaches all the way back to World War II, when Norway was under German occupation. There's a pattern to the various criminal activities Hole investigates, from the black-market sale of a German semiautomatic hunting rifle ("the ultimate professional murder weapon") to the "fascist nests" of neo-Nazis who can be counted on to disrupt most national holidays. But the pattern doesn't emerge until the detective investigates the present-day lives and past histories of a group of war veterans, among the many Norwegians who volunteered to fight against the Russians on the Eastern front and were later denounced as traitors. Told in flashbacks, the parallel story of their forgotten war begins in a trench in 1942, develops in harrowingly beautiful scenes of harsh wartime suffering and ends in 1945 with mass executions in Oslo. Pristinely translated by Don Bartlett, Nesbo's book eloquently uses its multiple horrors to advance a disturbing argument: suppressing history is an open invitation for history to repeat itself. For sheer likability, no private eye comes close to Sue Grafton's endearing California sleuth, Kinsey Millhone, who has been making friends with readers for more than two decades. Settling into T IS FOR TRESPASS (Marian Wood/Putnam, $26.95), the 20th mystery in an evergreen series, first means making sure that all's right in Kinsey's world. Is it still the 1980s in Santa Teresa? Check. Is she still renting a studio apartment from her octogenarian landlord, Henry - and is Henry still baking bread? Check and check. Now for the kicker: Does she still have her warm heart and wicked sense of humor? Absolutely. Just because Kinsey is adorable doesn't make her a pushover, and the issue she takes up here - criminal negligence and abuse of the elderly - is as serious as it is ugly. Gus Vronsky, a cranky old neighbor, has a bad fall at Christmastime, and his greatniece from New York hires a licensed vocational nurse named Solana Rojas to take care of him, after first hiring Kinsey to check her credentials. But aside from noticing that "there's something creepy about her," Kinsey doesn't know what we do (from chapters told from the caretaker's perspective) - namely that "Solana" stole her identity and has evil plans for Gus. For all its familiar comforts, this is one sad, tough book. Ian Rutledge, the Scotland Yard man in Charles Todd's outstanding series of historical mysteries, has a wonderful capacity for compassion - a quality this shell-shocked (and guilt-ridden) World War I veteran acquired over four hellish years in the battlefields of France. That heightened sensibility comes into play in A PALE HORSE (Morrow, $23.95), when the War Office orders Rutledge to locate an eccentric scientist who has disappeared from his secluded cottage in Berkshire. In penetrating interviews with the scientist's reclusive neighbors, Rutledge comes to realize that they're all emotionally wounded outcasts of society ("lepers, without the sores") and that many of the secrets they're guarding go back to the Great War. Even the huge prehistoric animal carved into the whitechalk cliffs above the cottages reminds one tenant of the cloud of poison gas that passed over Ypres like "a great horse moving across a barren meadow." However they apportion their literary chores, the mother and son who write together as Charles Todd clearly share an affinity for quiet souls haunted by unquiet memories. Runaway capitalism can be held accountable for a multitude of social sins, but can it be blamed for the acts of a serial killer? That's one of the many intriguing questions posed by the poet and translator Qiu Xiaolong in his latest Inspector Chen mystery, RED MANDARIN DRESS (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95). The erudite Shanghai detective (who writes romantic poetry to clear his head) has to postpone his participation in an intensive course in classical Chinese literature when murder victims wearing identical mandarin dresses begin turning up around the city. Are these aberrant crimes somehow linked to modern China's struggle to contain the widespread corruption that accompanies unregulated economic growth? You bet. But the novel also contains pertinent references to the huge ideological upheaval of the Cultural Revolution - a subject that's never far from the surface in this intelligent series - along with many poignant hints that once it's lost, a country's cultural identity can never be restored. Jo Nesbo's thriller takes us back to World War II and the German occupation of his native country.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]