A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch

There have been many (too many) redos, continuations, re-imaginings, and spin-offs of Sherlock Holmes. Being a big fan, I've read quite a few of them. Most are not worth reading (though my recent favorite is Michael Chabon's The Final Solution). Charles Finch has come up with a wonderful alternative, a way for readers to be in the world of Sherlock Holmes without it being subject to the expectations and scrutiny that would come with his using that character.
A Beautiful Blue Death introduces readers to Charles Lenox, an amateur detective in Victorian London. He seems almost to be Holmes' rich, aristocratic brother; Lenox's friend, and assistant, is a doctor who could be a school friend of Watson's; and, of course, the art of careful observation and deduction is the key to Lenox's success. I won't give away the mystery (it involves a rare, blue poison), but it was very satisfying. There's even a bit of possible romance that I always wished for in the Holmes stories.
I plan to read the next two in this series coming this summer - The September Society (in paperback) and The Fleet Street Murders (in hardcover). I'm hoping they'll be equally well-done fun.

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

At its base, Finding Nouf is a murder mystery. A young girl has run away from home and her wealthy family calls in a friend to help look for her. The family friend becomes intrigued by the girl and begins to track down the details of her life. If that was all there was to this novel, I would still recommend it. I liked the twisting (but not falsely complicated) nature of the story. I liked the main characters, their flaws, their interesting lives.
But, there's more to the story - it is set in a coastal city in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Nouf lead the life of a very sheltered, rich Muslim girl. She runs away from home shortly before her wedding to a man who has never seen her face. Nayir, the family friend, is a devout Muslim who faints at the sight of too much female flesh exposed. The forensic investigation is carried out by a woman with a PhD  who has shamed her family by wanting to work.
All the little details add a fascinating other level to Finding Nouf. One of the strengths of this book is that they give insight into what life would be like for the characters, but never feel like they've been brought up to say, "look how strange they are, look how different they are from us." Instead, I found myself understanding a little better why a woman might choose to wear a headscarf.

Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin

I probably don’t need to mention that Scandinavian authors are popular right now - you might have heard of a certain Girl and her Tattoo. My family is a little obsessed with them - Steig Larsson, Jo Nesbo, Per Petterson (not mysteries, but very good), Henning Mankell, and others. So when both my dad and my brother told me that Theorin is their new favorite Swedish author, I had to give him a try.
Echoes from the Dead is set on a chilly, windswept island off the coast of Sweden. The story follows Julia Davidsson and her father Gerlof as they delve into the twenty-year-old disappearance of Julia’s young son, Jens. It is a quieter book than some mysteries. Julia’s long-held grief over her lost son is very well portrayed. Gerlof is a former ship’s captain in his eighties. The search for new information about Jens is partly a way to escape the care facility where he lives and feel important again. And then there is the shadowy figure of Nils Kant. He is revealed in historical chapters interspersed throughout the story. Nils is legendary on the island, evoked almost as boogieman, and Gerlof thinks he was involved in Jens’s disappearance.
The best part about Echoes from the Dead was that Theorin kept me guessing about what happened to Jens and Nils Kant, and about what might happen to Julia and Gerlof.

Pavel & I by Dan Vyleta

Normally I hate being tricked when a book is repackaged with a new cover so that I don’t realize it’s been out for years. But if the publishers hadn't “tricked” me into reading Pavel & I, I would have missed a great read. It has just about everything I want in a mystery: fantastic atmosphere, intriguing characters, enough of a mystery that I’m surprised at times, and an ending that I didn't see coming.
The story takes place in Berlin during the winter of 1946-1947. With resources at a frightening low, this is the worst time for one of the coldest winters on record. Pavel Richter, a decommissioned American soldier, is just barely getting by when another former-soldier comes to him for help covering up the death of a Russian midget. When the friend later turns up dead, Pavel is drawn into an investigation of multiple murders. There’s also a monkey and a hooker with a heart of, well, maybe not quite gold. I loved this book. It’s especially great for readers of Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, and those who, like me, loved Winter in Madrid.

Signed, Mata Hari by Yannick Murphy

This is not a Christmas book. It may be red and it may be a new release in December, but it’s not for most casual gift giving. It is a fictional account of the life of Mata Hari (born Margaretha Zelle), the infamous World War I spy and exotic dancer. It is beautifully told both by Margaretha and a third person narrator. It follows her from losing her parents to moving to Java with her abusive husband, to raising her children and then returning to Europe to become a dancer and professional mistress. The descriptions are vivid and the characters so believable, it all feels true even though I know it can’t all be true. I looked up information about Mata Hari (I won’t give too much away here), but I still felt complete sympathy for her as she awaits her fate in prison.
Any book about Mata Hari would also have to be sexy and this book does that so well. Sex in novels, I think, is absolutely the most difficult thing to pull off. So often the descriptions become overly mechanical or pornographic, trying for too much accuracy or titillation, but the author here really manages to make the few sex scenes telling and interesting and just plain sexy.
So, I recommend this book if you need a little escape from sweet holiday stories, from cloying diamond commercials, from insincere well-wishes, if you’re in the mood for just great literary story-telling, and I suppose if there is someone on your list who needs a little sexy…

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

(Any reviews on this blog from before summer of 2012 are reposts from when I worked at Queen Anne Books. I've back-dated them to when they ran in the in-store flyer. I had a good laugh when I found my review of Twilight from February of 2007. I considered not reposting it because of  what a thing it became, but (obviously) I changed my mind. I never really got into the later books in the series and I haven't seen the movies, but I stand by my enthusiasm for the first book.)

This book is the definition of a guilty pleasure. It is a Teen-Vampire-Romance. It doesn’t try to be much more than that. The writing isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. It is not what I normally read. Teens have known about this book for over a year, but it wasn’t until an adult customer came in gushing about it that I considered picking it up. I read it in 2 days, my breath catching in my throat at times, constantly thinking of the first time I saw Sixteen Candles or Valley Girl, and the first time I thought I might actually just die if I didn’t go out with Him. I’m renaming this book Pretty in Black.

The main character is, of course, very cool and pretty but not one of the in-crowd. She has just moved to Forks, WA from Phoenix and she hates it. The other main character is the Vampire, the bad boy (who wants to be good), the tortured soul, the brooding musician, the most beautiful boy in school. Oh, he works on so many levels. And they are destined to fall hopelessly, painfully, endlessly in love. His being a Vampire is no match for their destiny together.

It’s safe to guess that very few men will like this book. It’s also safe to guess that most women (who are craving that perfect guilty/light read/beach read/romance) will like it. If you think too hard about this book, it won’t work. It’s not about thinking. It’s about that flood of emotion, that tingle from your toes to your scalp, that sick but pleasant twist in the stomach, that happens when He walks in the room. It’s best to get a copy now, dedicate a good part of the weekend to it, and then try – just attempt – to hold off buying the 2nd book in hardcover.
Yes, a movie is in the works.