"Not All Deaths Are Equal"

Cathleen of the Fiction/AV/Teen Department recommends Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup:

When playboy Vicky Rai shot doctoral student Ruby Gill in the face and neck in front of fifty witnesses, all because she refused to serve him a drink, the nation gasped.  Later, when Rai was acquitted, riots broke out.  So it is no surprise that he himself is murdered at the very party he throws to celebrate his release.  When the guests are searched, six separate individuals are found to have guns in their possession: a dim-witted American tourist, an ambitious politician, a Bollywood star, a primitive tribesman, a cell phone thief, and a corrupt bureaucrat who claims to have become Mahatma Ghandi.  Each has a secret, and each had just as good a reason to want Rai dead.  In his follow-up to Slumdog Millionaire, author Vikas Swarup casts a fascinating story of mystery and vengeance.  One by one the characters are revealed, but the pieces won’t fully come together until the shocking end.

Hugh Laurie, Renaissance Man

You probably know Hugh Laurie from his Golden Globe-winning performance on House, M.D.  Or you may have enjoyed his comedy stylings on A Bit of Fry & Laurie.  Perhaps you are even aware that he is a talented musician who performs with other actors in Band from TV.  But did you know that he is also a published author?  The Gun Seller is a comic spy caper that crackles with non-stop action, clever twists, and witty wordplay.  With a deft touch that both celebrates and spoofs the conventions of Bond and Bourne-type thrillers, Laurie invites the reader to have just as much fun reading as he did writing:  “She narrowed her eyes…horizontally, not vertically.  I suppose one should say she shortened her eyes, but nobody ever does.”  The Gun Seller is an arsenal of international intrigue, femmes fatales, sinister governments, and snappy dialogue.  Buckle in for the ride.

Death in the Land of ABBA

A lush field of tall golden flowers is the refuge of a stricken young woman.  When Inspector Kurt Wallander reaches out to her, he watches in horror as she sets herself on fire.  What would drive her to do this?  Wallander, now nominated for two Emmy Awards, features three mysteries based on the worldwide bestselling books by Henning Mankell.  The series has earned praise as “a thinking man’s thriller” from The New York Times Book Review, and Kenneth Branagh transforms into the gloomy, rumpled detective who pursues justice without regard to personal cost.  Each of the adapted stories (Sidetracked, Firewall, and One Step Behind) plots a complex murder investigation against the harsh beauties of modern Sweden.  Beware: nothing is as it appears. 

Awards, Honors, and Accolades

Looking for a winning story to cap off your summer reading?  Try one of these recently announced honorees:

The Christy Awards, recognizing excellence in several genres of Christian Fiction, presented awards to Beyond the Night by Marlo Schalesky (Contemporary Romance), Dogwood by Chris Fabry (Contemporary), Until We Reach Home by Lynn Austin (Historical), The Rook by Steven James (Suspense), and Vanish by Tom Pawlik (Visionary).

ThrillerFest, hosted by the International Thriller Writers, Inc., named The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffrey Deaver as the Best Thriller of the Year.  Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 added another in a growing list of honors as Best First Novel.

The Wild West History Association crowned Death of a Gunfighter by Dan Rottenberg the Best Western of 2008.

Last but certainly not least, the Crime Writers’ Association awarded the coveted International Dagger Award to The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas and Sîan Reynolds, their third win in four years!

The Chemistry of Mystery

Take an eleven-year-old aspiring chemist, a bird with a stamp impaled on its beak, and a red-haired stranger gasping his last words in the family cucumber patch, and what do you have?  You have Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, a sparkling debut mystery by C. Alan Bradley.  Flavia de Luce loves nothing more than experimenting in her home laboratory, but one early morning she stumbles over a body in the garden.  Her reaction?   “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”  Her father’s arrest for murder is the catalyst for her own investigation, one that is adventurous, unpredictable, and wickedly clever.

Audio Spectacular!

Love to listen to a great story?  Celebrate June as Audiobook Month by checking out the newly crowned winners of the 2009 Audies.  The utterly fantastic The Graveyard Book, written and read by Neil Gaiman, won top honors as Audiobook of the Year.  In a rare tie, the award for Fiction was given to both The Duma Key and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  Curse of the Blue Tattoo was the first winner of Distinguished Achievement in Production as well as the Female Solo Narration and Teen categories.  Other recipients include The Last Lecture (Biography/Memoir), When You are Engulfed in Flames (Author Narration), Child 44 (Thriller/Suspense), The Dark Highlander (Romance), and Hot, Flat, and Crowded (both Non-Fiction and the Judges’ Award).

Poirot Would Be Proud

Are you a fan of traditional mystery?  The Agatha Awards recognize whodunits with no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence.  Sometimes known as cozy mysteries, they often feature an amateur detective and take place in a confined setting with characters who know one another.  The Cruelest Month recently took top honors as Best Novel, a second consecutive win for Louise Penny, who was recognized last year for A Fatal Grace.  G.M. Malliet won in the category of Best First Novel for Death of a Cozy Writer, a story that has fun with its own genre.  The Agatha Awards, named after the venerable Agatha Christie, are presented at the annual Malice Domestic convention.

Killer Mysteries

Ready to add to your reading list?  The 2009 Edgar Awards were just announced in a ceremony that also honored Grand Masters James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton.  And the winners are… 

Best Novel: Blue Heaven (C. J. Box)
Best American First Novel: The Foreigner (Francie Lin)
Best Paperback Original: China Lake (Meg Gardiner)
Best Fact Crime: American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century (Howard Blum)
Best Short Story: “Skinhead Central” (T. Jefferson Parker)
Best Young Adult: Paper Towns (John Green)
Best Television Episode Teleplay: “Prayer of the Bone” - Wire in the Blood
Best Motion Picture Screenplay: In Bruges
Simon & Schuster/Mary Higgins Clark Award: The Killer’s Wife (Bill Floyd)

Scandinavian Evil

When journalist Mikael Blomkvist is invited to a remote island estate, he doesn’t expect to be thrust into a decades-old mystery.  No explanation has ever been found for the disappearance of teenager Harriet Vanger, and the family patriarch wants a fresh perspective on what actually happened.  Also introduced is Lisbeth Salander, the young researcher initially hired to investigate Blomkvist.  Compelling, brilliant, and more than a little scary, she has her own demons to fight.  The entwining of these stories leads down some very dark paths, but fans will be glad to know that Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is only the first of a trilogy to be released in the U.S. in coming months.

Time in a Bottle

Richard Young didn’t know what he was getting into.  When his friend, a chemical researcher, asked him to help with an experiment, he suddenly found himself transported back to the fourteenth century.  The trips are temporary but addictive, and Richard becomes increasingly fixated on the events he witnesses and the people he watches.  Dame Daphne du Maurier, much admired for Rebecca and “The Birds,” fashions another intoxicating and unsettling tale in The House on the Strand.  As the shifts between worlds grow progressively off-balance, what is real is not always clear in this haunting story of obsession.