Archive for the ‘Prize Winner’ Category
SHADOW COUNTRY by Peter Matthiessen
I’ve been concerned about reviewing SHADOW COUNTRY from the get go. For starters, it is big at eight hundred and ninety-two pages. Getting one’s head around all those words is, plain and simple, challenging. And then there is the longevity involved, for lack of a better word. Matthiessen confesses at the outset that his first notes on the work, “to my horror date back to 1978.” That is a long time to invest in a project and the reviewer wants to do it justice. And there is the subject matter: Nothing less than a reckoning of the “last American frontier,” the turn of the century coast of southwest Florida, the Ten Thousand Islands, as reflected through the experience of a single, highly complex, enigmatic figure, Edgar J. Watson.
July 20, 2009
Tags: Real Event Fiction Posted in: 19th Century, Award Winning Author, Historical Perspective, National Book Award, Wild West 
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MIND’S EYE by Håkan Nesser
In Håkan Nesser’s MIND’S EYE, a high school teacher named Janek Mitter finds his wife of three months, Eva Maria Ringmar, drowned in their bathtub. When Mitter is accused of murdering her, he has no alibi. He claims that, on the night in question, he was asleep in the next room after drinking too much, and awoke the next morning suffering from a massive hangover. His defense lawyer candidly tells Mitter that his story is unconvincing. However, Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is not completely sold on the husband’s guilt. When a second shocking crime follows on the heels of the first one, Van Veeteren and his team face the daunting task of finding a killer whose boundless rage impels him to commit unspeakable acts.
June 27, 2009
Tags: Humorous, Mystery, Swedish Posted in: Award Winning Author, Detective, Foreign Detective, Swedish Crime Writer, Translated No Comments
