Three Mysteries at Hand Worth Solving AUGUST SNOW by Stephen Mack Jones, Soho 312 pp., $25.95 , POLICE AT THE STATION AND THEY DON’T LOOK FRIENDLY By Adrian McKinty Seventh Street, 319 pp., paperback, $15.95, CONVICTION By Julia Dahl Minotaur, 320 pp., $25,

Former Detroit cop August Octavio Snow, narrator of Stephen Mack Jones’s “August Snow,’’ has a knack for making the right friends, a quality that comes in handy when he embroils himself in a banking magnate’s apparent suicide. The son of an African-American father and a Mexican mother — his middle name honors poet Octavio Paz — Snow was recently awarded $12 million in a suit for wrongful dismissal from the city’s police force. He was fired for blowing the whistle on high-level corruption and is using the payout to regenerate his Mexicantown neighborhood, several houses at a time. Meanwhile, his generosity and direct approach engage a proliferating, rag-tag network of intensely loyal allies, including a blue-eyed FBI agent, a former soldier willing to fight the good fight, a handful of neighbors — including the mightily entertaining Carmela and Sylvia — and a young lad that Snow pulls from the brink of becoming a drug dealer.

Jones, a Detroit-area poet and playwright, has immense fun with his first novel. He brings the city, its environs, and its eateries to vital life in a mystery coiled around the contemporary crime du jour of cyber-finance meddling. His is that rare tale that, despite its thriller-level violence, maintains a fiercely warm heart at its core — and ends far too quickly.

If newly-diagnosed asthma, fatherhood to six-month-old Emma, and mostly-happy domesticity with his girlfriend, Beth, has softened a few of Detective Inspector Sean Duffy’s edges, it hasn’t dulled his keen survival instinct or determined pursuit of dastardly criminals in the slightest. (That said, those two qualities are often in direct conflict with each other when it comes to Duffy.) In Adrian McKinty’s “Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly,’’ when challenged by a medical test, Duffy actually cuts down on his cigarettes-and-vodka-gimlet intake, but rest assured that nothing could ever cut down his curiosity-driven investigative work. There’ve been no murders in Carrickfergus in nearly a year, so when someone appears to be using drug dealers as targets for their crossbow practice, Duffy and his trusted colleagues, super brainy Detective Constable Lawson and semi-gentleman farmer Detective Sergeant McCrabban, jump on the case. But they are working in 1988’s Northern Ireland, a country mired in the violence of The Troubles: Are these new attacks the work of the Direct Action Against Drug Dealers group, or are they politically motivated?

McKinty imbues his writing with same level of attention to wit and cultural touchstones as the scrupulous care he takes structuring the police-procedural aspects of the novel. In the first chapter alone, there are references to philosopher Gaston Bachelard, Ireland’s once all-encompassing Holocene forest, “The Wicker Man,” and Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, creator of the iconic Che Guevara portrait; elsewhere we learn of Duffy’s favorite musical accompaniments to life (he’s partial to Arvo Pärt, can’t stand Kylie Minogue, and considers Ella Fitzgerald, Schubert and Mozart comfort music). All this, plus we get to observe the normally flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants detective grappling intentionally with his future.

Julia Dahl’s intrepid reporter Rebekah Roberts is in investigation mode once again in Dahl’s latest, “Conviction.’’ A freelancer primarily for a New York City tabloid, Roberts discovers a possible wrongful conviction involving one DeShawn Perkins, a man who has spent two decades in prison for a triple murder. As Roberts delves into the long-ago crime — which occurred during a time of heated unrest between the African-American and Jewish communities in early-’90s Brooklyn — she gets a shock: Her semi-mentor, friend, and mom’s current boyfriend, Saul Katz, was an arresting officer in the original case.

Dahl’s previous Roberts novels, “Invisible City’’ and “Run You Down,’’ are as much powerful indictments of the damage wrought by contemporary social issues as they are cannily crafted mysteries, and “Conviction’’ is no different. Dahl deftly weaves two timeframes and two stories — the crime and its belated reinvestigation — into a suspenseful and compulsive page-turner while adroitly capturing Brooklyn in what’s left of its melting-pot glory. And Roberts is a terrific character: She grapples with a certain amount of built-in anxiety, but she’s also tenacious, determined, and genuinely curious about the world around her; she brings immense empathy to her work, diligently homing in on and exposing the most damning issues damaging our civil fabric. Roberts’s dogged, heart-and-mind-centered pursuit of truth, fairness, and justice shines like a beacon in the dark, and Dahl renders this with grace and substance. What honed Dahl’s savvy writing? My favorite clue is in the acknowledgements, where she thanks her mom “for telling me to ‘bring a book’ wherever I go.”

A Midsummer's Equation by Keigo Higashino, Minotaur Books

Another Inspector Galileo Mystery





Keigo Higashino is "the most widely read author in Japan, with hundreds of millions of copies of his books sold worldwide and nearly twenty films and television series based on his work," according to the author page in my Kindle edition of A Midsummer's Equation. It's the fourth Higashino book I've read, and I continue to enjoy them for the multi-dimensional characters, the clever plots, and the local color and food descriptions. I must say, though, that this, the third available book in the Inspector Galileo series, doesn't have quite as surprising a plot as the first two did.

At the beginning, we meet Kyohei, a fifth-grade boy traveling alone on a train. His parents don't want to bother with him during summer vacation, so they're sending him to a tiny seaside resort where an aunt and uncle have a small hotel. The boy is a major character throughout the story, which in itself is an innovative device in a mystery novel.

Immediately, we find out what Kyohei has for lunch:

"The train lurched into motion. Kyohei opened his backpack and took out a plastic bag with his lunch inside. The rice balls wrapped in aluminum foil were still warm. A small Tupperware container held some fried chicken and grilled egg, both favorites of his. He drank some water out of a bottle and crammed one of the rice balls into his mouth. He could already see the ocean outside the window. There was a blue sky today, and sunlight glittered off the waves in the distance, beyond the white spray closer to shore." (A Midsummer's Equation: A Detective Galileo Mystery, p. 2)

Kyohei's slightly drunk father's promise to him was that the food would be good at his aunt and uncle's place: "The food’s great down there," his father said. "I’ll tell your aunt to stuff you full of fresh fish.” (p. 3).

In fact, the reader finds out quite a lot about the aunt's cooking both for hotel guests and for the family in the course of the novel. Upon Kyohei's arrival, he learns that two guests are staying at the hotel. One is a retired police officer who soon dies a mysterious death. The other is Manabu Yukawa, Assistant Professor of Physics, Tokyo Imperial University, whom we've met before -- he's known to the police, whom he often helps out in investigations, as Inspector Galileo. (p. 15)

The boy and the physicist establish a very nice relationship, as Yukawa takes charge of teaching the boy some science while he's also consulting for a mining company AND helping the police. Quite a character! I was especially amused at several scenes in the middle of the book where Yukawa and Kyohei eat dinner together at the hotel. Yukawa is always served a high-end fresh fish or sushi dinner, while Kyohei has the family meal such as meatloaf, egg over a ball of rice, or pork cutlets. Eventually Yukawa requests to have the family's dinner served to him instead of the food intended only for guests. The aunt's cooking turns out to provide a critical clue in Yukawa's solution of the mysterious death of the police officer and the events from the distant past that were associated with it (but no spoilers here).

Quite a number of police officers and detectives participate in the case of the retired policeman's death, including two competing and not-fully cooperating teams from the local resort town and Tokyo. Several of their discussions take place while they are eating at a variety of restaurants with intriguing Japanese special foods -- the combination of detecting and dining is extremely enjoyable to read!

A woman detective named Utsumi is responsible for quite a lot of the pavement-beating work that's needed to locate information about both victims and criminals. She and Kusanagi, one of the detectives, have one meeting at a restaurant with a special food that's pretty unusual for American readers:

"Utsumi’s favorite spot to grab a late dinner in Asakusa was right next to the Azuma Bridge, a little place on a narrow alleyway wedged in between the main road and the Sumida River. Lucky for Kusanagi, there was a parking lot just across the way.


The two sat down at a table fashioned from the cross-section of a large log. They both ordered Utsumi’s recommendation: the cow tongue platter.


"'Well, let’s hear it,' Kusanagi said, pulling an ashtray over and lighting a cigarette.


"Utsumi pulled a navy-colored notebook out of her shoulder bag."

She informs Kusanagi of her detecting efforts as they wait for their food.


"'I showed the picture to everyone I talked to, but nothing.' Kusanagi frowned. 'Yeah, that would’ve been too easy.'


"Their dinner arrived. Each one of them had seven pieces of cow tongue on a large tray, surrounded by a small bowl of grated yam, a bowl of boiled rice and barley, salad, and oxtail soup.

“This looks fantastic,” Kusanagi said, snuffing out his cigarette."

They discuss the discoveries she's made about the whereabouts of one of the important targets of their investigation and they eat their dinner:

"Kusanagi took a bite of his cow tongue and whistled. The combination of texture and taste was sublime. 'That is good. Dammit. Now I want a beer.'"


"'Where would he have gone, then? An Internet café?'


"Kusanagi nodded, pouring his grated yam over the rice and barley. 'That’s where all the drifters, young and old, wind up these days. Cheaper than budget places in Sanya, and they’ve got showers. Wow, this yam rice is amazing too.'


"'Okay,' Utsumi said, 'I’ll try the Internet cafés tomorrow, then. We still haven’t figured out why Tsukahara was looking for Senba in the first place, though.'"


"Kusanagi sipped his oxtail soup, gave a little sigh, and reached for his jacket on the chair next to him. He pulled his notebook out of the inner pocket and flipped through the pages." (p. 149-150)

On a different occasion, an interchange between Kusanagi and a witness took place at a restaurant run by the person he wanted to interview:


"Kusanagi stood outside a restaurant that served okonomiyaki pancakes a short walk from Azabu Juban Station. ... The tables all had hot plates in the middle so customers could cook their own okonomiyaki. ...

"'How many years were you at Bar Calvin?” Kusanagi asked. “Twelve, exactly. ...,” Muroi said, pouring the batter out on the hot plate in front of them. There was a loud sizzle as drops of oil began to dance on the plate.

As the detective questions the owner about the his long-ago experiences that will help to catch the perp, he also enjoys some of the special pancakes:

"Muroi paused to check how the okonomiyaki was coming along before leaning forward in his chair. 'Actually, I heard a rumor about that.'

"Muroi flipped one of the pancakes and said, 'It wasn’t just me who saw him. A few of the other guys at the bar were talking about it, wondering why he was so worked up.'"

The questioning and the pancake flipping alternate as the detective learns more and more about the people who interested him. He wraps up when he has all the info he needs:

"'Right,' Kusanagi said, putting away his notebook in his pocket. It was over twenty years ago, as it was. He hadn’t been expecting Muroi to even remember as much as he had.

"'All done— eat up while it’s hot,' Muroi said, spreading some rich, dark sauce on the okonomiyaki before sprinkling it with seaweed and bonito flakes and cutting it on top of the hot plate. 'Oh, almost forgot the beer.'

"'Can’t drink while I’m on duty...' " (Quotes are from p. 170 - 174).

During this interchange, we the readers learn more and more about the motives for murder AND more and more about okonomiyaki, the special Japanese pancakes. (I ate them in an oknomiyaki place in Tokyo once and they were fantastic!)

All things considered, I love the combination of suspense, gastronomy, police rivalries, and clever characters in this novel, though I don't feel the need to summarize the story, just to give these few hints about the way the book is constructed. I'm actually a little surprised that the author, so famous in Japan, isn't better known here.

Labels: , Japanese Literature, June-2016, sushi

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, Minotaur Books

Inspector Galileo Solves a Mystery

“The very word restaurant sounded like something alien. Would she have to go to a restaurant and eat now? Would she have to pretend to smile with this black lump in her chest?” (p. 284).

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino is an impressively well-plotted police procedural. Throughout the novel, Yasuko, a former bar girl who works in a bento shop and her teenage daughter Misato try to lead a normal life to prevent the police from knowing that they are guilty of murder. One way they do this is to agree to eat in restaurants when they don’t feel like it, as indicated in the quotation.

The intense characterization of Yasuko, Misato, and several other characters goes beyond what's usual in detective fiction. The characters all live in Tokyo where the action takes place. Besides the two already mentioned they are:

• Yasuko’s ex-husband (not her daughter’s father), whom she and her daughter murder right at the beginning of the book. 
• Ishigami, her neighbor, who comes to her assistance in attempting to cover up the crime. Ishigami taught math in high school while doing deep research in mathematics at night. He was a loner until he secretly fell in love with Yasuko.
• Kusanagi, the detective assigned to the case. 
• The university professor/physicist Yukawa, an associate of the detective. Yukawa is known as "Inspector Galileo" for his keen ability to solve mysteries. “Inspector Galileo” and Ishigami had been students together some time in the past, and each respected the other’s abilities in math and physics. Eventually the novel boils down to a duel of wits between them as the clever way Ishigami had provided Yasuko with an alibi finally is revealed. 

As always, I was interested in the way that food is used to create the atmosphere, delineate the characters, and advance the plot in a mystery novel. First, there's the bento shop where Yasuko works. Ishigami has made a habit of buying his lunch there: specifically whenever he knew she was there, usually asking for “the special” which is not further described. He used it as a way to have frequent though brief contact with her. After the murder, helping her to cover up provides him with a whole new way to interact with her and (he hopes) to win her affection.

Yasuko works at the counter of the shop and also helps in the kitchen; this work becomes an important background to her efforts to avoid having the police verify their suspicions of her. As she becomes more and more nervous, her behavior at the shop helps convey suspense to the reader: “Yasuko passed a fried chicken meal across the counter to the last customer in line and glanced up at the clock. Only a few minutes until six.” (p. 265).

We learn more about her when she eats in restaurants with Kudo, a man who was once her customer when she was a bar girl, and who reappears in her life during the investigation. “They had eaten the last of the shrimp, and the wine bottle was empty. Yasuko drank the last sip of wine from her glass and breathed a sigh of contentment. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been out for real Italian food.” (p. 127).

Her daughter, in contrast, is uncomfortable in such places; when her former client asks to include Misato at their next meeting  Yasuko says: “I don’t know. I think she prefers watching TV and eating pizza to a place like this. She’s not fond of formal dining — or anything else where you have to act proper.” (p. 129)

Later she thinks: “You can drag a teenager to a good restaurant, but you can’t make her enjoy it.” With her admirer, she and her daughter “had come to a Chinese place in Ginza for dinner. Kudo had insisted that Yasuko bring her daughter, and so she had dragged Misato along, despite the girl’s protests. In the end, Yasuko had convinced her to come by telling her that it would seem unnatural for them to avoid going out — that it might make the police suspicious.” (pp. 226-227).

Yasuko and Misato themselves do not know what their neighbor did to protect them and create an alibi for them. Thus, the primary mystery throughout the book is WHAT DID ISHIGAMI DO TO CONCEAL THE MURDER? We know the result of his work as detail after detail is discovered by the police and analyzed by "Galileo," but only at the end do we learn what really happened (no spoilers here, though).

A Rule Against Murder: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel Paperback – March 15, 2011 by Louise Penny ,Minotaur Books

French-Canadian Meals with Inspector Gamache

A pudding du chômeur à l’érable from the blog FoodNouveau.

"The guests watched the sun set ... and enjoyed course after course, beginning with the chef’s amuse-bouche of local caribou. Reine-Marie had the escargots à l’ail, followed by seared duck breast with confit of wild ginger, mandarin and kumquat. Gamache started with fresh roquette from the garden and shaved parmesan then ordered the organic salmon with sorrel yogurt. ... 'And for dessert?'...'For Madame, we have fresh mint ice cream on an éclair filled with creamy dark organic chocolate, and for Monsieur a pudding du chômeur à l’érable avec crème chantilly.'*... Finally, when they could eat no more, the cheese cart arrived burdened with a selection of local cheeses made by the monks in the nearby Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoit-du-Lac." Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder, pages 21-22)

That's just the first meal in over 400 pages of country living, detecting, and dining by Inspector Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie. It's a rather long-winded, description-heavy book -- the murder doesn't happen until page 111. Though the plot is fairly tight and the suspense relatively good, I'm tempted to say that food descriptions are my favorite part.

Here few more of MANY food descriptions, which I'm citing without explaining at just which point in the investigation breakfasts, dinners, snacks, and lunches appeared:

"Gamache looked down at a tray of frothy cold soups with delicate mint leaves and curled lemon rind floating on the top. Another tray held platters of open-faced sandwiches, roast beef, smoked salmon, tomato and Brie. The final tray held bottles of ginger beer, spruce beer, ginger ale, beer and a bucket with a light white wine on ice." (p. 146) 

"... sipping his cold cucumber and raspberry soup. There was a bit of dill in it, a hint of lemon and something sweet. Honey, he realized." (p. 204)

"He put a lobster salad in front of her. And Beauvoir got a hamburger and string fries. For the last twenty minutes they’d smelled the charcoals warming up in the huge barbecue in the garden, with the unmistakable summer scents of hot coals and lighter fluid. Beauvoir hadn’t stopped salivating. Between that and the sweating he thought he should order a cold beer. Just to prevent dehydration. The chief thought that sounded good, as did Lacoste, and before long each had a beer in a tall frosted glass." (p. 300)

"... on the village green, waving to the people tending the glowing embers around the stuffed lamb au jus wrapped in herbs and foil and buried before dawn. The meshoui, the traditional Québécois celebratory meal. For Canada Day." (p. 356)

The meals contribute to the Québécois atmosphere which the book works very hard to create. Though the descriptions are very enjoyable, in a way I feel as if all these details, including descriptions of the Auberge where the murder and investigation take place, are a bit forced. I think I like my mystery stories to keep the focus more thoroughly on the detecting.

I'm resisting the urge to compare the way Agatha Christie only suggests and sketches the surroundings, and gives details mainly when they show how time is advancing or when they will turn out to be clues. That said, I enjoyed this and one other of author Louise Penny's Armand Gamache detective stories, and most likely will read a few more.