“She knows that she is the obvious — the inevitable — literary agent for this project. And there’s also one very obvious acquiring editor for the manuscript, a close friend who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, no matter how ludicrous, no matter what level of lunatic the author. He used to have impressive success with this type of book, even by some of his less rational authors; there’s apparently a good-size book-buying audience out there that inhabits a space beyond the margins of sane discourse. He’ll be motivated to publish another. Especially this one, about these people.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (APR 6, 2014)

Isabel Reed, a literary agent for ATM, spends all night reading, The Accident by Anonymous, the new manuscript from her assistant Alexis who was very enthusiastic about it. The book has startling information about Charlie Wolfe, a major media figure with major political connections that is hoping to run for office himself. The information in the manuscript, if true, would certainly end Wolfe’s career as it describes a crime he apparently covered up while a student at Cornell University.

Isabel’s agency and the book business in general have not been doing well, and she knows immediately that this new book is one that will make a lot of money for everyone. She also knows she needs to be careful with whom she works with or it could get out from under her control. She therefore goes to one of her best friends, Jeff Fielder, an editor for McNally & Sons, Inc. Soon after meeting with Jeff, Isabel visits her assistant Alexis to make sure she has not given away the manuscript but she finds her dead in her apartment. This leads Isabel to fear that the wrong people may be working to assure The Accident is never published.

The author of The Accident is very intent on assuring the book is published and has gone to many lengths to stay hidden and to assure that the book is given to the right people. Slowly throughout this novel, more and more information is given about the author, his life and what he has done to assure the story about Charlie Wolfe is revealed. Some of what is revealed is not that surprising while others are major twists that only add to making this an even more enjoyable read.

Hayden Gray, a CIA operative apparently working on his own time, is working with Charlie Wolfe to assure that The Accident is never published. He seems willing to take whatever means are necessary to find out who and where the author of the book is and to eliminate all copies of the manuscript. These conflicting objectives and challenges lead Isabel Reed, Jeff Fielder and many others on one long adventurous day in this very entertaining book.

Pavone includes a lot of characters in the book, along with lots of twists and really you need notes to keep track. I normally do this when reading a book I’m reviewing, but if you are not one to do it, you will need to do it for this one or you probably will get lost. Pavone also likes to change the point of view through many of these characters as well. He rewards the reader with a great story if you can keep up, but otherwise you may be frustrated. Pavone also uses his many years in the book business to provide a realistic and interesting portrayal of the people and difficulties they face.

I was fortunate to meet Chris Pavone in Bouchercon in Albany last year, but at the time I did not know anything about him, although I certainly enjoyed my time talking to him. I was impressed though that he, along with a few other authors, were volunteering in the Concierge area where I was also volunteering. I was happy to see later that he won the Anthony for The Expats, his first novel and that I was able to obtain a copy of The Accident in my Bouchercon book bag. (As as a Boucheron volunteer, I obtained a few extra books and I made sure this was one of them.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 98 readers
PUBLISHER:	Crown; First Edition edition (March 11, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Chris Pavone
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of another murder story: Death of a Writer by Michael Collins

Bibliography:

• The Expats (2012)  / 
• The Accident (March 2014)

“We whoosh down between dark ­rock-­faces, through hairpin turns, down and around past dry scrub,  silver-­pale trees and back up, then over a ridge where the car nearly leaves ground and Niklas and I whoop as our entrails become weightless.

The hot Mediterranean air buffets our faces, for all four windows are open. Frederik takes a curve so fast that I grab my headrest. The sea beneath us keeps switching left and right.

Normally Frederik’s never brave behind the wheel, so I try not to be afraid. And the heat makes the rocks steeper, darker, the lemon groves prickling even more tartly in my nose, the sea shining blue like I’ve never seen it before.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (FEB 4, 2014)

In Christian Jungersen’s You Disappear, translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra, forty-two year old Mia Halling’s life will never be the same following a family vacation in Majorca. Mia notices that her husband, Frederik, who is at the wheel of their rental car, is speeding through hairpin turns like a madman. She implores him to slow down, to no avail. Although they crash, they manage to survive. What should have been a relaxing and enjoyable holiday nearly ends in tragedy.

Frederik’s behavior in Spain is just the tip of an iceberg that threatens to irrevocably damage the Hallings’ ability to communicate. It seems that Halling has a brain tumor that manifests itself in bizarre changes in his speech, actions, and emotional responses. A complete recovery is far from certain. Thus begins a lengthy ordeal that Jungersen describes in excruciating detail. Mia and Frederik live together, but they might as well be on different planets. Their son, seventeen-year-old, Niklas, is frightened and confused. In addition, when revelations emerge about Frederik’s unsavory activities while he was the headmaster of a private school in Copenhagen, it becomes horrifyingly obvious that the Hallings’ troubles have just begun.

You Disappear is far more than a conventional tale of domestic angst. Jungersen is an accomplished and daring writer who challenges us to ponder weighty topics such as free will and the mind-body connection. In addition, he poses a question that has no clear-cut answer: What does a spouse owe to a husband or wife who can no longer function normally? Mia is frustrated, angry, guilt-ridden, and lonely, knowing that the person she married is unable to provide her with the love, caring, and companionship that she desperately needs. To help her deal with her battered psyche, she joins a support group and reads extensively about brain injuries. Excerpts from her findings are inserted in key points of the book, giving us a window into her thoughts.

Jungersen creates fully developed characters, writes evocatively and perceptively about sensitive topics, and offers provocative theories about what makes each of us who we are. Mia, the narrator, reveals her most intimate and embarrassing thoughts and deeds, as well as her dreams, memories, and fantasies. She had a difficult childhood and her marriage to Frederik was imperfect, even prior to his diagnosis. Readers will empathize with this woman who is torn between her duty to her impaired husband and her desire to have a partner who understands and cares for her. This is a grim novel with little humor and few lighthearted moments. However, it is filled with enlightening information about how brain injuries affect both the victims and their loved ones. Mia describes her existence as an “endless grey corridor of disheartening days, days that look like they’ll last the rest of your life.” “You Disappear” is recommended for its poignant, compassionate, and uncompromising look at how people cope (or fail to cope) when they are in danger of losing everything that they cherish.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 28readers
PUBLISHER:	Nan A. Talese (January 7, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Christian Jungersen
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Exception and some other marriages: The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris  Caribou Island by David Vann

Bibliography:

• Undergrowth (1999)
• The Exception (2004; 2007 in US)
• You Disappear (2012; January 2014 in US)

“Have you thought about the question? Why we’re keeping you in a cage like an animal? Why you have to be put through all of this? Have you come up with a solution, Merete, or do we need to punish you again? What’s it going to be? A birthday present or a punishment?”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (SEP 10, 2011)

Danish Detective Carl Morck is a walking tormented shell of his former self. Recently returned to work, he is living with post-traumatic stress disorder following an incident that ended with the shooting death of one of his colleagues and a shot that paralyzed his friend, Detective Hardy. Morck was also injured by a shot to the head. So far the perpetrators have not been found and Morck lives with survivor’s guilt. He is difficult to get along with, often late to work, and no longer has his heart in his work.

To deal with his attitude, his supervisor, Superintendent Jacobsen, assigns Carl to head Department Q, a newly funded police department, and he stations it in the basement so that Carl is out of eyesight from his colleagues who are sick of his negativity and attitude. Department Q has been funded by parliament in order to solve dead cases, especially those that involve persons of interest or famous victims. Carl’s idea of a perfect work-day is to lounge around with his feet on his desk, napping or watching television. “In his end of the basement there were no people, there was no daylight, air, or anything else that might distinguish the place from the Gulag Archipelago. Nothing was more natural than to compare his domain with the fourth circle of hell.”

It’s not long until Carl realizes that Department Q has been funded to the tune of five million kroner. The money is all being channeled to the homicide division and hardly any of it is going to Department Q. Carl approaches Jacobsen and requests his own car and an assistant, letting him know that he is wise to the side-channeling of his funding. He gets what he wants.

As the book opens in 2007, we find out that Merete Lynggaard, a once promising Danish politician, has been kidnapped and held in captivity since 2002. She has no idea why she has been kidnapped. She only knows that she is in an empty concrete cell with two buckets given to her each day – one for her waste products and the other with barely edible food. Each year, on her birthday, the atmospheric pressure in her chamber is cranked up two notches. This will happen every year until she is able to answer her captors’ question: “Why are you here?” Of course, Merete has no idea.

There is a case file for Merete on Carl’s desk and the theory is that she jumped or was pushed overboard on a ferry while on vacation with her brother Uffe. However, no body was ever found and no reason for her to commit suicide was ever ascertained. Uffe, who was disabled in a car crash that killed their parents, is very close with Merete and she cares for him with a deep and abiding love. She is also a rising star in her political party.

Meanwhile, Carl is assigned an assistant named Assad. He is a man of many abilities, strange though they may be. He makes strong coffee, drives like a maniac, can take a lock apart in a second, knows people who can decipher encrypted words and numbers and is a mystery to Carl. He is Syrian and ostensibly is hired to clean Department Q and keep it neat. Carl makes the mistake of giving Assad a book on police procedure – Handbook for Crime Technicians. Assad reads the book and then gets antsy for Carl to start working on cases. He prompts Carl to start working on the Merete Lynggaard case and together they get a start on it.

Carl tries to find out more about Assad but he keeps his past close to his chest, alluding to difficult and bad times. He keeps a prayer rug in his office and kneels to pray to Allah during the day. He also plays Arabic CD’s and has only a passing knowledge of spoken Danish. He gradually becomes Carl’s partner, leaving his cleaning duties in the background.

The novel is noir, filled with great characterizations and action, and also comedic at times. Carl’s wife, Vigga, from whom he is separated, has gotten Carl to help subsidize a gallery that she is starting with one of her many young lovers. Carl is also raising Vigga’s son from another relationship. Vigga doesn’t believe in getting another divorce so Carl is stuck with her. Vigga has the uncanny act of calling Carl’s cell phone at the most inopportune times. Carl also has a boarder who pays him rent and is like a housewife to him. His name is Morton and he collects play animals and is a great cook.

Carl suffers from physical symptoms of his Post-traumatic stress disorder including chest pains, anxiety and panic attacks. He is attracted to his department’s psychologist and sees her for treatment. However, he spends most of the time trying to pick her up and she’s wise to him, telling him to come back when he can be honest with her.

This is a book filled with great writing, telling a page-turning story. I could not put it down. It has everything I’ve come to expect from the very best Scandinavian writers – an angst-driven hero, dark situations that confound the mind, characterizations that are stunning, and action-packed scenes. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen is definitely one of the ten best books I’ve read this year and certainly the best Scandinavian mystery I’ve read, bar none. It is excellently translated by Lisa Hartford.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 381 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult (August 23, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jussi Adler-Olsen
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbø The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Bibliography:

Q series:

• The Keeper of Lost Causes (2007; 2011 in US) (originally called The Woman in the Cage)
• The Absent One (2008; 2012 in US) (originally called The Pheasant Killers)
• The Conspiracy of Faith (2010; May 2013 in US) (originally called Message in a Bottle)
• The Purity of Vengeance (2009; December 2013 in US)

“Homeland security is a myth…. It’s a bedtime story we tell our people to make them feel safe at night. Despite all our best efforts and all our billions spent, the United States is largely indefensible.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JUL 25, 2011)

As Daniel Silva’s Portrait of a Spy opens, art restorer and master spy Gabriel Allon and his wife, Chiara, are living quietly in a cottage by the sea. Silva sets the stage with a series of events that are eerily familiar: Countries all over the world are “teetering on the brink of fiscal and monetary disaster;” Europe is having difficulty absorbing “an endless tide of Muslim immigrants;” and Bin Laden is dead, but others are scrambling to take his place. Government leaders in America and on the Continent are desperate to identify and thwart the new masterminds of terror.

All of this should not be Gabriel Allon’s problem, since he is no longer an agent of Israeli intelligence. However, Gabriel happens to be in London when he learns that two suicide bombers have struck, one in Paris and the other in Copenhagen. Later, Gabriel is strolling through Covent Garden when he spots a man who arouses his suspicions. Should he alert the police or take out this individual on his own? A series of unexpected events ensue that will bring Gabriel’s brief retirement to an abrupt end. He becomes a key player in a complex plot–involving high finance, a valuable painting, and a beautiful heiress–to destroy the new Bin Laden and his bloodthirsty cohorts. Allon will clash not just with his natural enemies but also with certain American politicians and their subordinates whose short-sighted and self-serving attitudes he finds repugnant.

Portrait of a Spy is an intricate, powerful, well-researched, and engrossing tale of deception, betrayal, and self-sacrifice. The most memorable character is thirty-three year old Nadia al-Bakari, a savvy businesswoman who is highly intelligent, secretive, and one of the richest women in the world. Her late father was a known supporter of terror networks. Will she follow in his footsteps or choose a different path? Silva brings back many of Allon’s comrades, including the amusing Julian Isherwood, an aging but still sharp-tongued Ari Shamron, and art curator/CIA operative, Sarah Bancroft.

The author choreographs his story perfectly and manages an extremely large cast with consummate skill. The sharp and clever dialogue, meaningful themes (including a description of how women are demeaned and manual laborers are exploited in Saudi Arabia and Dubai), as well as the nicely staged action sequences all combine to make this one of the most entertaining espionage thrillers of the year.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 446 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper; First Edition edition (July 19, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Daniel Silva
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Rembrandt Affair Moscow Rules The Prince of Fire A Death in Vienna

Bibliography:

• The Unlikely Spy (1996)

Michael Osbourne series:

• The Mark of the Assassin (1998)
• The Marching Season (1999)

Gabriel Allon series:

• The Kill Artist (2000)
• The English Assassin (2002)
• The Confessor (2003)
• A Death in Vienna (2004)
• Prince of Fire (2005)
• The Messenger (2006)
• The Secret Servant (2007)
• Moscow Rules (2008)
• The Defector (2009)
• The Rembrandt Affair (2010)
• Portrait of a Spy (2011)
• The Fallen Angel (2012)
• The English Girl (July 2013)

“Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou? The life you seek you shall not find.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (MAR 01, 2011)

In his fantastic and insightful book, On Writing, the prolific writer Stephen King once said: “People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do.”

But what if that work is especially mind-numbing and unfulfilling and involves plodding away at an outfit called the Tank—chatting, shuffling papers, composing reports, sending e-mails and wondering where things went wrong? Would that still make for a readable story? As Thomas Kennedy’s new book, Falling Sideways shows, the answer is yes.

It’s probably because most readers will be able to relate to the book’s central protagonist, Fred Breathwaite. Breathwaite is an American expat living in Denmark, his adopted country, and works as an international liaison at the Tank—he is its “eyes in the greater world outside of Denmark” which means he is also responsible for bringing in international clients and accounts. Breathwaite has no great fascination for his job—as the book opens, he is dreading the Wednesday morning meeting at the “Mumble Club” a weekly meeting of department heads—but knows that the job affords him material comforts and a comfortable life he otherwise would not have had.

Breathwaite has older children comfortably settled and leading their own lives but it his youngest, Jes, who “gave him cause for concern and hope.” The teenaged Jes is convinced he does not want his life to turn out like his Dad’s. It seemed to Jes that “almost nobody in Denmark actually did anything anymore; they all just sat in offices sending e-mails to one another or went to meetings where they sat around a table and talked about the e-mails…Meanwhile, there were a million truly important things that needed doing in the world, things that were a matter of life and death for people who lived in poverty and misery. Jes wanted a foot into that door. And meanwhile, he wanted to do something concrete,” Kennedy writes. This “something concrete” is work at a key shop owned by an Afghani immigrant—Jes works here with his hands duplicating keys and reading Rilke is his spare time.

The elder Breathwaite can’t stand to see his son throw away his life. “The boy had all the right ideas and not a chance of realizing them,” he thinks. It is this conflict between father and son that forms one of the two central theses in the novel.

The other of course, is Breathwaite’s own job. Early in the book, he finds out he is being laid off and replaced by a younger executive Harald Jaeger, a skirt-chasing insecure worker with personal problems of his own. Breathwaite uses this career turn to question what the net sum of his life has really amounted to.

Falling Sideways is populated by a whole host of other characters including Martin Kampman, CEO of the Tank, and professional downsizer; Martin’s son, Adam, who also rebels against his father; and Birgitte Somers, the company’s CFO.

Falling Sideways is the second book in Kennedy’s “Copenhagen Quartet” to be released in the United States. The city comes alive in these pages and Kennedy does a fantastic job of portraying the city in the beautiful season of fall. The problem with Falling Sideways is that it does not meet the high expectations set by the first book in the quartet, In the Company of Angels. Compared to that earlier work, this one seems much more ordinary, its conclusion and narrative path foretold well before the end. In addition, quite a few of the characters seem clichéd and flat—probably because Kennedy never gets a chance to realize them fully. Nevertheless if the point of the quartet is to show Kennedy’s “range,” this book does that task well.

Together, the Copenhagen quartet is meant to encompass the four enduring seasons and if the first two books are any indication, the quartet is on its way to achieve this objective very effectively. In The Company of Angels embodies the spirit of spring. It is possible, after all, to view that book as a ray of hope despite horrific events in the characters’ past. In Falling Sideways, it is the melancholic allure of fall that beautifully permeates the novel. The season of decay and slow death is a perfect metaphor for the downward spiral many of the characters face. And just like the season, there are brief and spectacular splashes of color before it all ends.

It is fitting that Gilgamesh makes a brief appearance in the book. The moral of the story, if there is any, is that one could do no worse than to follow the timeless advice given to Gilgamesh:

Make thou merry by day and by night.
Of each day make thou a feast or rejoicing,
Pay heed to the little one that holds thy hand,
Let thy spouse delight in thy bosom,
For this is the task of mankind.

But as many of the characters in Falling Sideways realize, sometimes the best advice is the hardest to follow.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bloomsbury USA (March 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Thomas E. Kennedy
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: In The Company of Angels And another book all about office work: And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Bibliography:

• Crossing Borders (1990)
• A Weather of the Eye (1996)
• Unreal City: Stories (1996)
• The Book of Angels (1997)
• Drive, Dive, Dance & Fight: Stories (1997)
• A Passion in the Desert (2007)
• Cast Upon the Day: Stories (2007)

The Copenhagen Quartet:

• Bluett’s Blue Hours (2002)
• Danish Fall (2003) To be published as Falling Sideways (March 2011 US and UK)
• Greene’s Summer (2004) Published as In the Company of Angels (March 2010 US and UK)
• Kerrigan’s Copenhagen: A Love Story (2005)

Nonfiction:

• Andre Dubus: A Study of the Short Fiction (1988)
• The American Short Story Today (1991) (with Henrik Specht)
• Robert Coover: A Study of the Short Fiction (1992)
• Index to American Short Story Award Collections (1993)
• Realism & Other Illusions: Essays on the Craft of Fiction (2002)
• The Literary Traveler (2005) (with Walter Cummins)
• Riding the Dog: A Look Back at America (2008)