This alternate history novel takes us back to Tudor England’s royal family in the mid-sixteenth century. In reality, Anne Boleyn bore a female child to King Henry VIII. Unable to produce a male heir and accused of adultery, Anne was beheaded along with members of her family. Ultimately, her child became Queen Elizabeth I.

But what if Anne had borne a male child as well? How would events have played out differently? This is the conceit of The Boleyn King, a first novel by Laura Andersen. She’s been compared to Alison Weir, but Weir’s Plantagenet novels about the princes in the tower and Eleanor of Aquitaine are real history. Andersen’s book is alternate history, a respected sub-category of science fiction.

Given this premise, Anne Boleyn is not beheaded, and her son William becomes a king known as Henry IX. In the narrative, Henry VIII is dead. Anne Boleyn survives, although her character has only a minor role. The real teenage King Edward VI is never born because Henry never married his mother, Jane Seymour. And the brutal debacle of Lady Jane Gray never takes place. I had to look up my Tudor history several times while reading this book just to keep the characters straight.

The Boleyn King is written in modern English which makes things easier. There are some archaic spellings in letters, diary entries, and official proclamations, but these pop up only occasionally. Because of the language and the fact that the main characters are in their teens or early twenties, this book is clearly aimed at young adult readers.

The thrust of the narrative is carried by two fictional characters: Dominic Courtenay, a loyal courtier, later a soldier of the king, and Genevieve Wyatt, known as Minuette, a lady-in-waiting, later a spy. By the end of the book their future as a romantic couple is uncertain.

As loyal subjects, Dominic and Minuette work to sustain the English Protestant Reformation begun by Henry VIII. There is a danger of a Catholic counter-reformation personified by Henry’s daughter Princess Mary, a real figure later known as Bloody Mary. The highly political Catholic movement of both France and Spain represented a genuine danger of war.

Reading alternate history can be a challenge. It’s a mix of fictional characters interacting with real historical figures, some of whom do things they never actually did. The Boleyn King accomplishes this deftly and is easy to read. In the end, for history to get back on track, something has to happen to the fictional King Henry IX so the real-life Princess Elizabeth can become queen.

Minuette is charged with retrieving a document called The Penitent’s Confession which in the wrong hands would call into question the legitimacy of the king. Palace intrigue is at the center of the novel’s action. The Boleyn King ends with matters unresolved. Part Two of the trilogy, The Boleyn Deceit, comes out in November.

One final note about the name Boleyn. Shakespeare, writing half a century later spelled it “Bullen.” The actor Charles Laughton who portrayed King Henry VIII so memorably on at least two occasions, pronounced it “Bullen.” I let the reader be guided by these precedents. I recommend The Boleyn King to readers who like to have a little fun with history, but watch out for the cliffhanger ending.            — Dan Erwine

Buy The Boleyn King: A Novel (Anne Boleyn Trilogy) locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

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The Round House, Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, foregrounds all of her considerable talents. Set on an Ojibwe Indian reservation in North Dakota, the story opens with a violent attack and rape of one the characters. The reader doesn’t see the horrific action, however. Instead, we are situated in the consciousness of the woman’s thirteen-year-old son, Joe, as he responds to his mother’s injuries and to his father’s reactions. The course of the novel then follows Joe’s increasing awareness, and his maturation, as he struggles to understand genuine evil in his world.

Joe is a typical youthful adolescent, and Erdrich perfectly depicts his sensibility. He is sad, he is funny, he is puzzled, he often is in over his head. Joe and his three best buddies do stupid things, ordinary things, and sometimes very brave things. They also learn about life. Meanwhile, Joe’s father, a lawyer and a judge, teaches him about the complexities of reservation laws. The Round House in fact draws from recent headlines about the Violence Against Women Act; jurisdiction matters. Depending upon exactly where the crime took place, different laws apply. Those complications are very much a part of this novel’s directions and misdirections.

The Round House also has a great deal to say about reservation life in the twenty-first century. Family is important, and maintaining old traditions is a necessary part of Joe’s relatives’ daily existence. The boy’s elderly grandfather, Mooshum, talks in his sleep and night after night mutters a story that teaches Joe an ancient myth about a boy who at all costs protects his mother. Joe, in turn, interprets the story line in terms of his own relationship with his damaged mom.

Despite its subject matter, the novel is not all negative. Erdrich has a wonderful gift for including subtle Indian humor in her narratives, and The Round House contains many, many uproarious scenes and conversations. Hot red pepper, thrown on a sweat lodge fire, sends naked men exploding out into the night. When one of the boys confesses the seduction of another thirteen-year-old to the priest, the priest’s response is explosively over the top. And the discussion of sex between Mooshum and an old Indian woman he has known for years is absolutely hilarious.

I would have to say that I think The Round House may be my favorite of Erdrich’s novels (and I have read most of them). It rightly describes both the heights and depths of reservation life today. It brings forth many ongoing problems, such as the complexities of legal jurisdiction, and it accurately questions some of the dubious historical events preceding current Native conundrums. At the same time, these characters live a rich existence. They love each other, they care for each other, and they cope. Even in the face of the rape that sets the book in motion, the family—and the extended family—pulls together. They weep, but they laugh, too. Alcohol sometimes adds humor as well, although it often leads to tears.

Louise Erdrich is one of the finest Native American writers of this generation, and I would say that The Round House ranks with the very best of other such contemporary novels. With believable characters, complicated themes, and profound observations, it is both enjoyable and thought-provoking. This novel, winner of the National Book Award, well deserves the accolades and commendations it has received.

Buy The Round House locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

Also available by Erdrich: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse; The Plague of Doves; The Master Butchers Singing Club; Love Medicine; The Painted Drum; Four Souls; Tracks; The Porcupine Year; The Game of Silence; Chickadee; The Antelope Wife; The Birchbark House; Shadow Tag; The Bingo Palace; The Beet Queen; The Blue Jay’s Dance; Tales of a Burning Love; Original Fire (poems); Baptism of Desire; Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of  my Ancestors.

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Pirate King is Laurie R. King’s eleventh Sherlock Holmes novel, starring Mary Russell. My Bantam trade paperback copy of the book contains a special treat—the reprinting of a short story that was King’s original introduction of the duo. In that story, Beekeeping for Beginners, a crotchety, depressed, newly-retired Holmes narrates his first meeting with young Mary, who totally captivates his imagination with her energy and her intellect. Soon he is her friend, her mentor, and her protector. Throughout King’s subsequent novels, their relationship grows and develops. By the time it reaches Pirate King, the two not only are married but are actively engaged in the pursuit of all manner of scoundrels and villains.

Mary is the narrator of Pirate King. The novel is a rollicking take-off on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, complete with exotic locales, lusty exchanges, and tongue-in-cheek humor. The difference in tone between Beekeeping for Beginners and this latest King book is striking. Where the short story is told with sonorous irony, the novel rings with light-hearted lampooning. As I recall, each of the books in between bears its own special tone, too. By reading the whole series, we are treated to an entire range of satire. And mayhem, of course.

Pirate King is the story of a film company and its founder, Randolph Fflytte, who makes silent movies in the post-World War I era. This ‘Fflytte of Fancy,’ he hopes, will be his latest masterpiece. Loosely following the script of Pirates of Penzance, and then extrapolating wildly, Fflytte is filming a film company making a film. He hires a troop of young women actresses, and takes them to Lisbon where he intends to employ a comparable set of pirate actors. There, his imagination goes wild. He buys a pirate ship, and the entire company sets sail for northern Africa. I won’t give away any more of this ridiculous plot. Suffice to say it is not only absolutely absurd, but absolutely hilarious; rather like Gilbert and Sullivan.

Mary goes along as the company’s secretary. Something is amiss about this Fflytte and his crew, and Mary’s job is to find out why each of his films ends up in a criminal disaster that parallels the movie’s action. An earlier film about Hannibal? Smuggled elephant ivory. Another film about Prohibition? Illicit white lightning. This film about pirates? Perhaps actual piracy on the high seas? When the story begins, Mary has no clue about what the crime will be, but she and her detective husband (who ensconces himself aboard ship, too) are convinced that some horrendous new ‘Fflytte of Fancy’ will occur. It does.

A USA Today quote on the cover of Pirate King calls it “an engaging romp guaranteed to please … perfectly written in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” I agree that the book is ‘an engaging romp,’ but I give Laurie R. King more credit than mere imitation of Doyle. She has her own engaging style, perfectly attuned to the particular action of any particular novel, and keenly honed from one Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes adventure to another. That Pirate King is so much more amusing than her other books, which sometimes are very dark and depressing, is testimony to her talents.

Buy Pirate King locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

Also available by Laurie R. King: Garment of Shadows; The Beekeeper’s Apprentice; A Grave Talent; The God of the Hive; O Jerusalem; A Letter of Mary; The Art of Detection; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; Justice Hall; The Moor; The Language of Bees; Locked Rooms; With Child; Beekeeping for Beginners; To Play the Fool; Night Work; Folly; Touchstone; A Darker Place; Keeping Watch; The Game; Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes.

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Yesterday, on my way to Southwest Gate B5 at Reno Lake Tahoe International Airport for the short flight to Portland, Oregon, I stopped by a shop to pick up a package of pocket Kleenex. While waiting at the cash register where the clerk was ringing up a book sale, I overheard the clerk ask the customer if he was part of the Read & Return Program and would he like to check out their used books? He wasn’t, but did wonder about the plan. I turned up my hearing aids.

A used bookstore at every airport? Well, maybe not every airport, but those airports where The Paradies Shops sell books. Paradies has a program, begun in 2003, in which any book purchased at any of their airport stores, if brought back, to any of their airport stores, within six months, in good condition and with a receipt in hand, will be bought back for half the purchase price. Those returned books are then placed on a Used Book shelf and sold at half price to customers looking for a bargain on the fly. How cool is that?

The math whiz in me wanted to know where the profit is in that sort of largesse. It suggests that the markup in the publishing world is pretty high to carry a “buy back” policy which is a clear wash if you don’t count the time and effort taken by employees to process the returned books. The thinking of The Paradies Shops is that it’s “… part of the company’s commitment to encourage reading.”

My sense of reality also knows the program is one helluva nifty marketing tool. Regardless of the aforementioned thought, I still believe the Read and Return policy is a dynamite idea. It may be a monetary draw or even a slight cost for Paradies, but it’s great deal for the customer who’s looking for a bargain and not a bad deal for living green. Powell’s Books, quite naturally, also has a shop at Portland International, and I know they sell both new and used books at that shop, but I’ll have to see, on my way home Monday, if they have a special return policy for books bought at their airport shop. Out of loyalty, I’d pick Powell’s first, but at any other airport, I’d check to see if there is a Paradies Shop selling books.

One last thought before taking that next flight, check out the book reviews at Bookin’ with Sunny, then look for The Paradies Shops. The “friendly skies” just got a little friendlier without even leaving the ground.      — Sunny Solomon

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Another Place & Time: Voices from the Carrisa Plains

Too many voices from our American past have been lost, especially those of men and women who led decent but unspectacular lives. Without leaving much of a mark on history, they vanish into the past. So every once in a while, we should pause and remember their contributions to the American dream, their struggles, their goals, and their humanity. Craig Deutsche has taken time to preserve a representation of these voices from a lonesome California valley called the Carrisa Plains. East of San Luis Obispo and west of Bakersfield, the area is now designated on maps as the Corrizo Plain National Monument. For much of the twentieth century, however, it was home to farmers, ranchers, and sheepherders—an array of families who represent ways of life now almost extinguished.

Craig Deutsche discovered the Carrisa Plains almost by accident, when he volunteered to do some service work at the newly named Monument. The more time he spent there, and the more people he met, the more intrigued he became. Jackie Czapla, who works at the Visitor Center, had tried to preserve some of the valley’s past, but time was escaping her. Conferring, the two decided to track down and record, as soon as possible, as many remembrances as they could find. The result? Another Place & Time: Voices from the Carrisa Plains.

Unlike academic oral histories, this one unapologetically is filtered through Craig’s consciousness. Not only is Another Place and Time a repository of the valley’s memories, but it is also the story of Craig’s quest to meet as many relevant people as possible, to convince them to talk with him and with Jackie, and to personally understand his attraction to the valley and its history. The result is a readable narrative that intersperses Carrisa Plains voices with Craig’s own. For all the participants in this project, the experience was one of coming of age.

The book is organized thematically, rather than chronologically. A single family may reappear in different chapters, under the rubric of ranchers, for example, and then under children or as part of the portraits of matriarchs. The result is not confusion, however. Instead, one finishes reading Another Place & Time with a strong sense of how lives bonded in an isolated place where finances were always precarious. I was especially struck by the ways the people helped each other out—at harvest time, when someone was ill or hurt in an accident, house raising, or after a violent storm. Craig mentions, too, that the interviewees never used the word “hardship.” Rather, they just faced whatever came their ways, and made the best of their circumstances.

Anyone who loves American history and American stories will thoroughly enjoy Another Place & Time. Not only are the voices authentic, but the details of daily life echo many other narratives of the same time. Not long ago I reviewed Dorothy Wickenden’s Nothing Daunted for “Bookin’ with Sunny,” and I heard those Colorado experiences resonating throughout this tale of California. Making a living in a rural setting is hard work, but most families look to the future with optimism and do the best they can. Craig and Jackie deserve our thanks for preserving these memories of the Carrisa Plains. Because of its somewhat narrow focus, their book had to be self-published. Personally, I think it deserves a wide distribution and a much wider audience. Another Place & Time has a lot to say.

(I was asked to review Another Place & Time for the Sierra Club’s Desert Report. When I read the book, I realized that readers of “Bookin’ with Sunny” would enjoy hearing about its contents, too. So I’ve just done what I don’t believe I’ve ever done before—reviewed the same book for two different venues. .Maybe that’s fitting for a book about a place that’s spelled two different ways—Carrisa Plains and Corrizo Plain.)                              –Ann Ronald

Buy Another Place and Time: Voices from the Carrisa Plains locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

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Sometime in the mid-1950s, the California State Board of Education decided all fourth grade children should learn about the California Missions and the California Indians who built them. Today we know that course as“The California Mission Unit.” By the time the unit is over, when books are returned to libraries, and dioramas, homemade charts, diagrams and purchased books have been relegated to the highest shelves in closets or garages, most participating students and parents believe they know the Missions and the story of the California Indians inside and out.

It took Deborah Miranda, in her search for her own California Indian roots, to go much further than “inside and out.” Miranda went under. She dug deeper than what a mission gift shop offers its thousands of visitors. She sought primary sources and followed every unpleasant clue as to the real history of the California Missions and the Indian cultures that were very nearly decimated.

Miranda was born in California, but by the time she was in the fourth grade, she was living in the State of Washington and her California Indian heritage was of no interest to that state’s board of education. The State of Washington had its own Indian history to deal with. Although the author’s mother was not Indian, her father was of Chumash and Esselen heritage. Unless you have a special interest in California Indians, you’ve probably never heard of those tribes. Bad Indians does more than introduce the reader to the hidden history of California Indians, it reaffirms the inherent destructiveness of colonialism.

Bad Indians is Deborah Miranda’s own fourth grade California Mission unit, written, with eyes wide open, as an adult. It is also memoir – not just her own, but through extensive oral histories, those of her grandparents, great grandparents and the cultures in which they lived. The Spanish colonization of Mexico, and then its spilling over into what would someday become the State of California, is a story of ignorance, greed, and the quest for power over people and land. There was nothing benign about Spain’s Franciscan missionaries’ treatment of the indigenous inhabitants of California. The book contains quotes from original diaries of the priests (photographs of these diary pages are also included). Their descriptions of how they controlled the Indians are both incredibly shocking and sad. Miranda has used words from Father Junipero Serra himself as the springboard to her own poetic retelling.

To Miranda’s credit, Bad Indians is a great deal more than a litany of the sins of the Franciscan missionaries and Spain, whose orders they were following, more even than a litany of legal abuses (including murder) carried out against the California Indians by the U.S. Government and State of California. At the heart of this intensely personal search for her own identity is the power of language, both written and spoken. The author not only uncovers, with the help of family, other like-minded people and dedicated historians, the lost stories, but lays bare the lies that have kept these stories so well buried for hundreds of years.

How is the author able to take us, Indian and non-Indian reader alike, through a door into a history we have never been taught, and to do it without guilt-shaming the non-Indian and enraging the Indian? As awful as the facts are, it is the shape of Bad Indians, its chapters, its graphs, photographs, songs, poetry, and language of hope that keep the reader from closing the book and saying, “Enough.”

“Enough” is not a word valued by readers who love history. It is certainly not a word in Deborah Miranda’s vocabulary. The stories she has uncovered have brought to life cultures long-assumed lost. The poems she has written give voice to a language thought dead. The truths contained in her book are difficult to absorb, but necessary to share. Let us lay to rest the old adage that “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” and give thanks that Deborah Miranda is one of the “Bad Indians” living to tell her story.    — Sunny Solomon

Buy Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

Also avaialable by Deborah A. Miranda: The Zen of  La Llorona; Indian Cartography; Your Time for Peace has Come; Deer: Poems.

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Claude & Camille A Novel of Monet

Today, if one hears the name of the artist Claude Monet, a picture of a Japanese bridge crossing a garden pond filled with water lilies comes to mind, not the self-serving, ego-driven man depicted in Stephanie Cowell’s novel Claude & Camille. Just as Monet was compelled to create a telling light in his paintings, Cowell seeks to turn a realistic, yet sympathetic light on the life of Claude Monet and his relationship with Camille Doncieux, his model, mistress and wife.

The biographical novel can be a tricky endeavor for the best of writers, but judging from the “Historical Notes” included at the end of the book and Cowell’s strong narrative voice, Claude & Camille is not only a rich and rewarding novel of the tortuous love between Claude and Camille, but a most enlightening history of the Impressionist movement. For those of us who were in the Bay Area between April and July of 1986, and lucky enough to have attended the exhibit of The New Painting Impressionism 1874–1886, at the de Young Memorial Museum, this novel will make you wish for a second visit.

The story begins with a mystery. The year is 1908, the place, Giverny, and Monet is reading a letter from Camille’s sister Annette, a letter in which he is accused of being responsible for Camille’s death in 1879. From brief moments in Giverny, toward the end of Monet’s life, the story runs swiftly back to Monet’s life as a young artist, a life which in the last half of the nineteenth century is not nearly as romantic as depicted in his 1865 “Luncheon on the Grass.” Cowell makes use of these Giverny moments in her novelization of Monet’s life. They are generous reminders of Monet’s more mature years as caring man.  In reality, as depicted by Cowell, young Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Bazille and Manet, are perfect images of the starving artist. If not supported by their families or patrons, they took jobs where they could find them, often sharing apartments, meals and debts. Monet had scant help from his father and refused almost all offers of work, regardless of obligations. Claude & Camille also gives an intimate introduction to a group of young and unrecognized artists whose work we know today like the backs of our hands.

From the moment Monet first sees Camille until he actually meets her several years later, we know a great love story is about to begin. She is very young, beautiful and headstrong. She looks for a means to escape her family’s expectations and almost immediately recognizes Monet as her way out. Theirs is a relationship with only brief respites from upheaval. Monet paints most successfully when outside and by himself, but Camille is plagued by periods of deep depression. When money is scarcest Monet will abandon Camille to the care of her sister or friends or herself while he returns to Le Havre and the seascapes of his youth.

Cowell succeeds in depicting two equally flawed characters with enough honesty and empathy that the reader, always with the foreknowledge of Monet’s ultimate success, cares deeply. Claude & Camille is best read with a book of Monet’s paintings nearby.     — Sunny Solomon

Buy Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

Also available by Cowell: Marrying Mozart; The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare; Nicholas Cooke; The Physician of London.

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The House on Mango Street: 25th Anniversary Edition

What purpose does art serve? What inspires you to practice your craft? These are questions that aspiring artists confront at some point in their lives, and it is affirming to read answers from mature, experienced voices. During my time as an undergraduate, no work of literature has given me more affirmation than Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. Since it was first published in 1984, Cisneros’ novel has been widely taught in schools and translated into more than twenty languages. Among her accolades, Cisneros is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.

The 25th anniversary edition of her novel The House on Mango Street, prefaced with a personal essay, gives readers an opportunity to get a glimpse of Sandra’s journey as a young writer. We learn about her experience as a graduate student at the Iowa Workshop where she develops her own philosophy about literary art: “She thinks stories are about beauty. Beauty that is there to be admired by anyone, like a herd of clouds grazing overhead. She thinks people who are busy working for a living deserve beautiful little stories, because they don’t have much time and are often tired.” This is exactly what Cisneros’ novel is comprised of–a series of vignettes, little stories that can stand alone as much as they are intertwined.

More than an essay on the craft of writing, Cisneros’ preface considers identity and rites of passage. She details the struggles of moving away from home and choosing between cultural norms: “When she thinks to herself in her father’s language, Spanish, she knows sons and daughters don’t leave their parents’ house until they marry. When she thinks in English, she knows she should’ve been on her own since eighteen.” Cisneros’ journey segues into a modern classic where the transition to adulthood is marked by reconciling the voices within ourselves, taking ownership of the paths we pursue, and following them with all our hopes and fears.

The House on Mango Street is about Esperanza Cordero, a girl who strives to invent herself. From a young age, Esperanza is deeply engaged with language. She inhabits a world where “you can never have too much sky,” and the magic within these words propels her beyond the boundaries of her childhood home in Chicago. While we follow Esperanza’s story, Cisneros weaves in succinct portraits of other people who live on Mango Street. Among these characters are Minerva, a woman who writes poems to cope with abuse, and Marin, a girl who “is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.” We encounter pain and longing from all walks of life, and we learn not to underestimate our strength.

No other book has touched me so deeply as Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. This novel is like an anthem for those who are in the midst of discerning who they want to be, those striving to take ownership of their identity. Whether you are moving out of your parents’ house for the first time and taking a leap of faith to study what you love, working to support your passion, or making amends with the past in order to embrace the future, you will find a community of very relatable characters within these vignettes.

While Cisneros writes of re-inventing the self, she also acknowledges the importance of re-visiting one’s roots. A mature Esperanza writes, “They will not know I have gone away to come back.” As I have come to learn, life is not linear. Although there is a chronological order to events as they occur, there is also a lot of going back in order to move forward. We tackle new experiences, and we return to the places that made us who we are. It is when we come back to these places that we realize how much we’ve grown. Against the backdrop of our past, we are not the same and our roles are changed. The House on Mango Street is the story of a girl who dares to pave her own way, a girl who faces the unfamiliar, and in sharing her dreams and doubts, reveals to us a piece of our humanity—that part of us that yearns to find our niche in the world.                   — Joanne Mallari

Buy The House on Mango Street locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

Also available by Cisneros: Caramelo; Woman Hollering Creek: and other Stories; Hairs/Pelitos; My Wicked Wicked Ways; Loose Woman; Vintage Cisneros; Have You Seen Marie? (Illustrated by Ester Hernandez).

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Quick, before National Poetry Month is over!

Take a look at what the offering from our friends at SPD:

SMALL PRESS DISTRIBUTION SALE

It’s a great sale! 

CELEBRATE POETRY

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Let me begin this review with a glittering generality. I find contemporary Scandinavian murder mysteries to be graphic, violent, unsettling, and almost off-putting. I try not to read them. But when I pick one up, I turn the pages almost non-stop until the end. I stay awake past midnight, urgently finishing the book. So it was with The Boy in the Suitcase, written by the duo of Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis.

This Danish novel is the first of a series with an unlikely and totally unique primary character, a Red Cross nurse. The dust jacket calls Nina Borg a “compulsive do-gooder,” but after reading The Boy in the Suitcase I would describe her somewhat differently. Once the book’s puzzles have been resolved and the non-stop action has quieted down, the narrative flashes back to Nina’s girlhood. The reader learns a piece of her past that goes a long way toward explaining the odd choices she has been making throughout the preceding pages. All along, I had been coaching from the sidelines, urging this character to make good decisions, not bad. But Nina is a prisoner of her past, programmed at an early age to act and react in illogical ways.

She is introduced to the reader when a friend asks her to pick up a suitcase from a storage locker in a Copenhagen train station. She does so, and then she looks inside. She finds a little boy, naked, unconscious and apparently drugged. Instinctively, she thinks of contacting the police, and then, just as instinctively, she decides to solve the conundrum herself. The steps she takes are peculiar, to say the least. Instead of going home to her husband and family, she spends the night in her car with the boy. When she discovers he speaks a European language other than Danish, she hires a Lithuanian prostitute to talk with her new-found charge. Every time she has an opportunity to consult authorities, she finds a reason not to do so.

Scenes of duress and mayhem recur over and over again in The Boy in the Suitcase, and Nina manages to escape from several ugly scenes. At the same time Nina and the little boy, Mikas, are trying to solve the mystery of his past, the stories of other characters are converging. Mikas’s mother is desperately trying to find her missing son. And the men involved in his kidnapping are trying to find not only the boy but a large sum of money missing from the storage locker. All this action seems quite straight-forward, yet when the novel ends the denouement is quite surprising. And quite satisfying, too. I like mysteries where the ending makes a kind of logical sense. And despite Nina’s illogical behavior, the ultimate story line of The Boy in the Suitcase is absolutely coherent. Even the senseless violence makes a kind of sense, given the labyrinth of events that unfold.

I understand that novels of this sort are often described a “Nordic Noir.” Stieg Larrson’s Swedish trilogy and Yrsa Siggurdardottir’s dark Icelandic thrillers are among the most popular. I have to confess that, with clammy hands and pounding heart, I continue to pick them off the bookstore shelves. And stay up late, unable to stop reading until the bitter end, as I did with The Boy in the Suitcase.                       — Ann Ronald

Buy The Boy in the Suitcase locally or look online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books, or through an IndieBound bookstore.

Also availabe by Kaaberol and Friis: Invisible Murder. 

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