Books - I Love a Mystery!

A couple of years ago, two buddies at Harbin insisted that I read “The Poet” by Michael Connelly. I was soon hooked; Connelly is a terrific writer. I spent that winter devouring most of his books, especially the entire Harry Bosch series. Harry is an L.A. police detective. If you’ve lived there, as I did for 30 years, you may know every location Connelly describes in his stories. The first one, “The Black Echo”, starts in a drainage pipe at Mulholland Dam, at the Lake Hollywood reservoir. I used to rent a pretty cool house right there; I could bike a few hundred yards from my driveway in Deep Dell up to the ⅓-mile path around the lake. Often Harry would go to Musso & Frank’s, my regular hangout in Hollywood four times a week. And his house was on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills, across the Cahuenga Pass from Universal Studios. The stories themselves are perfect representatives of the genre. Connelly is our Raymond Chandler; If we were in the ‘40’s, classic movies would be made from these books. I haven’t seen “Bosch”, which is a streaming Amazon series now, because of my remote current location in an area not yet civilized. I learned that the fun of the mystery is in trying to out-guess the protagonist. Who did it? What’s cool is that there’s always a second (or even third!) revelation in store.

Then it was on to Lee Childs’ ridiculously popular Jack Reacher series. I was already a huge fan of Lincoln Childs (no relation), who co-authors the genius Pendergast series with the equally excellent Douglas Preston, and was curious how two writers with such similar names could co-exist on the best-seller lists. The answer was easy: they write in very different styles, and their characters are very different. Whereas A.E. Pendergast is a wealthy sophisticate (unusual for an FBI agent!), Jack Reacher is a badass on the road, traveling with only an ATM card and a toothbrush. He’s an ex-Army M.P. major who’s become a wandering adventurer. He’s 6’5”, 245 lbs of street-fight toughened muscle. Why anyone would mess with him is hard to fathom, but he manages to show up in places where some evil fiend will deserve Jack's judge, jury and executioner justice. The first book, “The Killing Floor”, comes on like a rocket. In the intro, Childs describes how he wanted to create a character who wasn’t conflicted or alcoholic, but incredibly sure of himself. Tom Cruise has optioned the series for movies, and, although it’s a stretch for Childs’ readers to accept the 5’6” actor in the role, he did bring the requisite ferociousness to the part in the first film. (A second is due in the fall.) For me, another winter and another series completed.

Recently, I found a solution for my Steig Larsson jones. His “Girl” trilogy inspired four movies
(“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” was done twice) and was a worldwide phenomenon.
The books were his first novels. Larsson turned them all in together, went back to his office
(like his male protagonist’s, he was a crusading journalist), and died of a heart attack. He never saw the enormous success, and we were left without hope of more. (Actually, a pretty good sequel was done by another Swedish writer this year, was a #1 book and will be a movie.)
​My epiphany was the discovery of another Scandanavian writer, Jo Nesbo. Beginning in the mid-’90’s, his Norwegian Harry Hole (pronounced “Ho-lay”) detective stories started getting attention.
The third, “Redbreast” (‘99), is the beginning of a trilogy. I’ve just finished it, and I’m hooked again.
This Harry is conflicted and alcoholic, but still smarter than the other guys in the room. There’s that delicious second and third reveal that keeps our hero and us guessing to the end. “Redbreast”, like Larsson’s novels, brings up the complicity of some of his countrymen with the Nazis during WWII, which, of course, always invokes deep fears. The political complexity seems to relate to our present situation of rising nationalism. “Redbreast” was voted the best mystery written by a Norwegian, and Nesbo has  deservedly gained international acclaim. There’s a fascinating flip between the war’s eastern front, when some Norwegians thought it best to ally with the Germans against the Russians, and the present, when old scores are being settled. I look forward to the next two books, and many more. Nesbo inserts a wicked sense of humor that pops up, unexpectedly, amid the carnage. There's also interesting shifts of subjective and objective viewpoints, and the occasional hallucinatory passage, especially when Harry goes off the wagon following the loss of someone he cares about.