The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka

Josef Skvorecky is a recently deceased Czech-born author who was known for his dissident literature during the Communist era. This is the first time he has been reviewed in the blog. The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka is a series of detective short stories which take place in and around Prague. The Lieutenant was the protagonist in all the short stories and I read eight of the twelve short stories. I found the tales to be generally delightful and Boruvka was a very different character for this crime genre - intuitive, sad, obese, and most human. A friend who knew I had just traveled through the Czech Republic passed along this book. Ultimately, this 1966 book did capture what life must have been like there 50 years ago, but I’m not a fan of short stories. I’m in the midst of a couple other short story compilations at the moment, and they always leave me a bit dissatisfied with regard to character development and plot. However, on short plane rides or during late nights when sleep is elusive, these short story tales are a nice distraction.

Paradise Valley by C.J. Box

Cassie Dewell is a detective for the Bakken County, North Dakota sheriff’s department.  Her low self-esteem and single Mom status don’t keep her from being the best investigator in the department and her boss, Sheriff Kirkbride knows this.  But she is obsessed with the one that got away… a long-haul trucker/ serial killer… Ronald Pergram… the Lizard King.  Yes, Cassie knows who he is and has once almost caught him… almost.  But he somehow got away and is still out there, trolling truck stops for unsuspecting prostitutes who he can overpower, torture, and murder.  As an independent trucker with no address and cash payment for everything, he manages to evade all law enforcement.

So Cassie tries to set a trap for him.  She posts a load for pick up out of Grimstad, where she now lives, in hopes of luring the Lizard King to her.  One day, he calls to book the load and Cassie assembles a pose of deputies at the local factory where the fictitious load awaits.  But Pergram smells the trap and sends a substitute driver in his truck.  He packs C4 explosives under the driver's seat of the tractor and detonates it with a cell phone call just as the truck backs into the loading dock.  The substitute driver and three deputies are killed in the explosion and three others are injured.  A housewife observes Pergram in a pickup truck on a hill overlooking the factory as it explodes.  He kidnaps her and travels back roads into hiding.

Coincidently the same day, two young teenage boys from Grimstad leave on an adventure in a small boat on the Missouri River.  They stumble across Pergram at his first hideout as they attempt to camp for the night.  Pergram grabs them and puts electronic dog collars on them to control their movements… a method he uses frequently on his victims.  He then heads west into the Montana mountains near a secluded area of Yellowstone known as Paradise Valley.  No one suspects Pergram is still alive or that he has the woman or the two boys… no one that is except Cassie.

But Cassie takes a hard political fall and takes Sheriff Kirkbride with her as the Bakken County DA blames her for the lives lost due to the explosion.  She quits before she is fired but can’t give up on hunting the Lizard King, especially since she suspects he has prisoners.  She heads to Montana, a private citizen now, gathering clues from local law enforcement and citizens as she goes.  She can’t let this scumbag get away again no matter what it costs her.

I love it when a book exceeds my expectations and this one does just that.  Box develops a protagonist, you can’t help but revere.  Her weaknesses are relatable and her courage and tenacity admirable.  Add in her personal code and distain for politics and it’s easy to compare her to Harry Bosch.  I think we’ll see more of Cassie Dewell.

Thanks to Netgalley for the preview.

Eyes of the Innocent

I raved about Brad Parks first award-winning novel, Faces of the Gone, and his second, Eyes of the Innocent is equally praise worthy. Carter Ross is an investigative newspaper reporter in Newark, and Parks is able to spin a great crime story while providing a between-the-lines social commentary. This book starts with the death of two young boys who were trapped in a home that was intentionally torched. Their single mom had taken on a second job at night in order to pay the skyrocketing costs of her subprime mortgage, and she could not afford for anyone to stay with her boys. The story gets complicated when it turns out the father of the two boys is a city councilman who has been doing some under-the-table real estate dealing.

Parks is a master at character development and portrayal. He does particularly well playing off his characters racial and sexual differences, and his use of dialogue is fantastic. I am officially now a Brad Park fan and will promptly get his third book, The Girl Next Door, another award winning novel.

Faces of the Gone

Once again, hounded by one of my non-review writing bibliophile friends (Matt, you know I’m talking about you) to read an author not yet reviewed in the blog, I read Brad Parks first novel, Faces of the Gone. This one came with promise given that it won two prestigious awards in 2010, the Shamus and Nero Awards. Impressive credentials for a first time novelist. I was not disappointed.

Carter Ross is an investigative reporter for the Newark Eagle-Examiner, a fictional newspaper. The book opened with a grisly scene of the quadruple homicide of four heroin dealers, three men and one woman, all shot in the back of a head in a vacant lot in Newark. The villain was known as the Director. He had been selling the best pure heroin ever to hit the market in Newark, 99% pure, and it was his clear expectation that his dealers would deliver “The Stuff” in the uncut form – except the four dead dealers had decided to cut the product. None of them had known the penalty for going against the Director’s orders, and he wanted the murders to get maximum publicity so the rest of his dealers would cooperate with him henceforward.

The Feds and the National Drug Bureau got involved and took the crime investigation out of the hands of the local cops, who only too happy to get rid of the case. Newark was already producing enough murders for them to deal with. But, the NDB did not want to share information with Ross. As Ross made progress with his investigations and had developed sources on all of the four murdered suspects, suddenly his house and the home locations of each of the dealers and sources were blown up or set on fire. Then, one of his sources was found dead at the same spot the first four bodies were found.

Much about the murders did not make sense to Carter Ross, a wise-cracking guy, 31 years old, single, and the best reporter on the paper, and the main plot had to do with his investigation. Ross was a very hetero guy who was being hit on by biological clock-ticking 38-year-old Tina Thompson, who happened to be the paper’s city editor. Ross had an intern, Tommy Hernandez who happened to be a flaming gay. One the one hand, Parks produced a gripping plot which had a great twist at the end, and on the other hand, he provided character development and dialogue as good as any that I’ve read lately. Both Ross and Hernandez were very comfortable with their sexual orientation and neither was threatened by the other. The open teasing between them was priceless, playing off stereotypes in a refreshing manner. The female dealer who was killed happened to be an exotic dancer at the very black Stop In Go-Go, which led to Ross and Hernandez going there to talk to the other dancers. Hernandez could not believe he had to step foot in an ultimate hetero titty bar. The dialogue between these two was hysterical. Then, with Tina’s open sexuality and pursuit of Ross to be the father of her baby, the interplay of these three characters was fantastic. The interaction between the white and black characters which was equally compelling.

So, we have a great plot, great characters, and great dialogue. I’ve already downloaded the second book in this six book series, Eyes of the Innocent.

Spook House

Spook House is the fifth and most recent in Mick Herron’s Slough House series. I’ve been a fan since I read the first one, Slow Horses, and I can only hope that Herron will make this an ongoing saga. The characters, especially Jackson Lamb, but also River Cartwright, Diana Taverner, Roderick Ho, and Louisa Guy, but this book adds J. K. Coe, Emma Flyte, and Claude Whelan. This a cast rich with character, both assets and liabilities which Herron’s exploits beautifully.

If you’ve gotten this far in the Slough House books, you don’t need to know much more about the plot – but it is complex enough to keep the conclusion hidden without being overly convoluted. What happens when an old spook, in this case David Cartwright, grandfather of River, starts to develop dementia? What about the secrets he knows and what about his fading ability to keep secrets and know the good guys from the bad guys? What about old plans and secrets that suddenly come to the surface, so that people who are now in charge have to deal with them? The final scenes are incredible, and it kept me reading late into the night to get to the end.