Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

This book came out quite a while ago and honestly I only picked it because it's narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris and after finishing Every Note Played, I wasn't quite ready to leave his voice. I knew nothing about the book, the plot, or even the true life events which inspired them. I'm not above reading novels about countries in which the author has no experience (I have read all these German detective Bernie Gunther novels by Phillip Kerr, who is British and liked them) but I do take them with a grain of salt because it is immensely different when you read a novel by a native of that country.

That being said, I read Child 44 with a quiet sort of fascination as it details not only the actions of a methodical and sadistic serial killer but also the casual cruelties of Stalin-era police abuses and political paranoia. And honestly the parts about the Soviet apparatus and why it made it so difficult to hunt for a serial killer were more interesting than the crime facts itself because honestly, the brutal killing of children is not really something I like to read about. 

The book starts with a cat and a woman in Ukraine in the 1930s, during the famine sparked by forcing everyone onto collective farms. People are starving and dying. And a woman, somehow, still owns a cat. The cat is let go when the woman lets go on her desire to live. But a boy living nearby sees the cat and makes a plan with his brother to trap and eat it. During their trip into the woods, the braver older brother is struck by a man and taken away. 

We then jump to twenty years later. The "Great Patriotic War" is over and Leo Demidov is a ranking MGB officer who is tasked with finding an alleged spy. In tracking down the spy he is forced to confront the banality of evil existing in his duties as well as the shaky foundations upon which his investigations and executions have been based. He also must convince a grieving family that they cannot speak about the murder of their five year old son, because murder does not exist in Soviet Russia. It cannot. People have no reason to murder, being housed and fed, so any suggestion of murder is the spreading of anti-soviet sentiment.

Trapped within this circular reasoning, unable to name and investigate the murder, Leo goes so far as to threaten the family into silence. He is then asked to denounce his own wife, which he refuses to do, and is demoted and sent to a remote outpost. Upon arriving at the outpost he comes upon two children similarly murdered. He must then decide to what length he is willing to go to investigate the murders and to catch the killer. 

The events of the book are loosely based on the most notorious Russian serial killer of all time, Andrei Chikatilo, who evaded capture for decades as he killed as many as 56 women and children. He was convicted and sentenced to death for 52 of these murders in October 1992 and executed in February 1994. He was arrested several times over the course of his killing spree, but bungled investigations and shoddy police work led to his release and continued destruction until he was finally arrested in November 1990. 

Chikatilo's mug shot.

Everyone you care about in this novel has a sad and complicated back story that informs their decisions, and I really liked how the author teased out each of these issues in time. I may have to read the next book in the series to find out what happens to Leo later on.

4/5 Stars.

The Aviator's Wife - Melanie Benjamin

Being an Air Force veteran, it's virtually impossible to be unfamiliar with Charles Lindbergh and his non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. I was also aware that his child was kidnapped at some point thereafter. But the details of these things had become fuzzy if they had ever been present at all.

The Aviator's Wife tells the story of Anne Lindbergh, Charles wife and eventual widow. I was really impressed with Melanie Benjamin's detail and handling of Anne's life story. The novel did a good job of expressing Anne's desire for Charles and their complicated relationship. It also felt very honest about her grief at losing her oldest child to kidnap and murder, a horror I can't even imagine going through as a mother.

While at times I became exasperated at the repetitive nature of some of Anne's statements, it provides a a baseline for where Anne was at during her marriage to Charles. Equally satisfying was the fact that Charles motivations were murky and never really cleared up even to the end of the novel. I'm interested in reading more about this fascinating family. I wonder what Charles and Anne's children think of this book being out there in the world.




3.5/5 Stars

The Last Days of Night - Graham Moore

I really loved this book! I'm recommending it to everyone because it's so well done. 

The Last Days of Night chronicles the "current war" of the 1880s between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. No, A/C D/C is not just a band, they are the two types of current in which electricity flows. Thomas Edison was a proponent of direct current. George Westinghouse was accused of infringing on Edison's light bulb patent and so Edison sued him for $1B dollars. That's a lot of cheddar. 

In order to get around the bulb issue, Westinghouse adopted Nikola Tesla's alternating current (it didn't work for his lawsuit defense). The two men at times shamelessly worked against each other to promote their own system of electrifying the country, including a smear campaign aimed at alternating current which led to the invention of the electric chair. The first execution was terribly botched and actually proved alternating current was too safe to be used for murdering people. 

This book has it all, an upstart attorney, Paul Cravath (who would go on to develop the system of associate to partner track attorneys that now exists at law firms all over the world) a singing soprano with a past, a wiley inventor who answers to no one, and two industry barons trying to outdo each other. Yes Graham Moore took some liberties with the timeline and dialogue, but overall it's such great history that it's hard to believe it all isn't fiction.

Addition: And OMG this is going to be a movie with Benedict Cumberbatch. Click Here. 

4.5/5 Stars. 

The Girl who Fought Napoleon - Linda Lafferty

I recently had to travel to Seattle for work. The most concrete way I can explain the length of time it takes to get out there (with a layover at O'Hare) is to say that I finished two books during my trip. I received The Girl Who Fought Napoleon from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

I'm a little torn on what I ultimately think of the book. It was entertaining and informative. The author used fantastic source material. Turns out, that during the end of Catherine the Great's reign as Tsar in Russia, there did live a girl, Nadezhda Durova who left home and joined the calvary, disguised as a young man, and went on to fight in the Napoleonic wars for Russia. She did, indeed have a close relationship with Catherine's grandson, the eventual Tsar Alexander I. Later in life, Durov wrote her own biography, which Lafferty used as source material.

So the basis and the general story were great, but in parts it felt like the book was trying to do too much. Aside from Durov and Alexander, we also get snippets from Napoleon's POV which seemed unnecessary as well as fleeting insights from rather minor characters due to a 3d person omniscient point of view during chapters that were not about Durov. At some points, these details seemed completely unnecessary, at at others, there were moments where I wondered why the reader was left in the dark. Amid all of this, the timeline jumped around a lot too. One chapter would be 1799 and then the next would be 1795 and then back to 1799 until finally Durov and Alexander's timelines matched up toward the second half of the novel. It seemed a bit overdone for me - as if the editor wasn't giving the reader enough credit for being able to be away from one particular story for a long time.

And at times, the research got a little lazy. Towards the end of the novel, when Alexander is marching into Paris (1814), the novel notes a young French boy watching the events unfold - Jules Verne. Verne is best known for his adventure novels, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. But, Verne wasn't born until 1828, so he couldn't have been present at Alexander's march into Paris. It was this kind of detail, totally gratuitous and then historically inaccurate, which undercut some of the authentic feel of the book. And while I realize that this ultimately is a work of historical fiction - I like the events to at least be possible. 

The writing itself was well done for this type of story. The prose wasn't overly difficult impacting the speed of the narrative. Durov herself seemed to be given a lot of accolades for her fighting in the war, but considering most of the details of her actions involve her getting yelled at for making stupid mistakes in battle, I'm not really sure how this came about. The end chapter was also a bit grating, as we see an elder Durov coming to terms with her life story - both the outward one she wanted to project, and the actual slightly seedier details she sought to hide. The author's choice to keep these details to the end, when it landed with more confusion than shock, fell flat for me. 

3/5 Stars.

A Place We Knew Well - Susan Carol McCarthy

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This is the second book in a row from NetGalley in which I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it (read my review of the other one here).

Despite a rather bland intro, the story really kicks off after the prologue in Chapter 1. The time is October 1962 and the place is Orlando, Florida. It came as a surprise to me that the story would use the Cuban Missile Crisis as it's backdrop. To me, this was the best part. I knew enough about the Cuban Missile Crisis to know that it happened while President Kennedy was in office, so likely 1961 or 1962 and I knew that it didn't last very long and that eventually the Soviets turned their ships around and took the missiles down (thanks Billy Joel). 

This story focuses on Wes Avery, his wife Sarah and their daughter Charlotte. Wes owns a local gas station in Orlando, just up the road from McCoy Air Force Base (it closed in 1975). A former Air Force man, Wes starts to notice a lot of firepower gathering at the base and believes something may be up. The presence of 5 U-2s at the base later confirms his suspicions. (The U-2 was a spy plane and is awesome - the pilots wear the space flight suit because it goes so high in the atmosphere). 

Wes' best friend Steve, and a Cuban exile, young Emilio also work at the station and have their own backstories to contend with. Emilio's family is stuck in Cuba, his father in prison, his mother hiding out, and his sister, later told in what I considered the most awkwardly written section of the story, raped and murdered for her parentage and privilege. While I thought it was important to show this portion of what was going on in Cuba at the time, the part where Emilio emotionally tells Wes and Steve about his sister's murder was just not as well written as the rest of the story and came out very disjointed from the rest of the prose. 

Meanwhile, Sarah is having trouble squaring the life she lives with the life she had planned for herself, a life she set aside when her older sister became pregnant not once, but twice out of wedlock. Sarah's stern parents then relied on Sarah to live a pedestrian life without taking any chances. Her early talents were squandered and she lived a life devoid of personal accomplishments. This ends up being a major problem for Sarah. 

I really appreciated the obvious research that went into the Cuban Missile Crisis sections of the story, and how well it fit with Wes' overall story arc. I thought Wes was a great character as well he was well developed and he felt very real. Charlotte, the daughter, was a bit wooden in some scenes, but her purpose was more to push the plot ahead. I don't think the epilogue did a good job setting the future tone of the novel, it came out a bit more sinister like it was setting up a mystery, but otherwise this was a solid story with great research.

4/5 Stars.

Loving Frank - Nancy Horan

My mom and sister received a scolding text message for not warning me I would cry in the last chapters of this wonderful and heartbreaking debut novel. So as I write this with swollen and red eyes at Midway airport I have mostly great things to say about this book.

The book takes an honest look at the role of women at the turn of the twentieth century. It is with a sense of relief and gratitude that the sacrifices and demands made by that generation such as the protagonist Mamah Borthwick made to ensure I and women everywhere would be evaluated and valued on our own contributions to society.

The author did a wonderful job of creating honest characters. Just as I was growing tired of one of the characters lamenting the situations they had made for themselves the character would also realize they were acting a little put upon.

They only detracting comment I can really say about this novel is that certain passages ran on and on and on. This may be part of a new author developing their craft but I found some pages largely unnecessary as Horan had done such a good job developing the characters already. 

I had absolutely no background in anything involving Frank Lloyd Wright aside from knowing where his homes are located and what the architecture generally looked like. This was such a pleasant and wonderful surprise. I can't recommend enough.

4/5 Stars.

The White Princess - Phillipa Gregory

Probably a 3.5 star book. I really liked the story but the middle of the book was repetitive and thus got a little boring. This installment in the Cousin's War books (do not need to be read in order) tells the tale of Princess Elizabeth of York who weds Henry VII (Henry Tudor), her family's enemy. Told from Elizabeth's point of view, the story focuses on a series of York pretenders to the throne and Henry's treatment of them. It also posits a possible back story for the final York pretender which Tudor historians named "Warbeck" but understandable skepticism exists regarding the plausibility here. I do appreciate that Gregory isn't afraid to go her own way on some of these unclear historical events. The tale ends before Henry's reign ends. I would have liked to see Elizabeth deal with her son's death and the eventual crowning of Henry VIII rather than all the pages wasted repeating Henry VII's fears regarding Warbeck which is basically the same chapter over and over for 100+ pages. I feel like that put the story firmly in Henry's domain rather than focusing on Elizabeth.  3.5/5 Stars.

Circling the Sun - Paula McLain

I received a free copy of this book. Could it be because I loved McLain's Paris Wife so much I named my daughter after the main character? Maybe. 

Where to start with Circling the Sun? I'd never heard of Beryl Markham prior to reading the description on Goodreads. I had read, however, Out of Africa, which although the author was originally penned as "Isak Dinesen," this person was later revealed to be Karen Blixen.

While Blixen appears heavily in Circling the Sun, Beryl Markham is absent from Out of Africa. It's an interesting aspect of memoir and the things Karen Blixen chose to remember. By historical accounts, Beryl and Karen were in love with the same man, Denys Finch Hatton, a safari hunter, pilot and basically all around gorgeous human being. To say they were involved in a love triangle would be inaccurate and inadequate at the same time. Both women loved Finch Hatton fiercely, and he, in turn, seemed to be faithful and in love with both women.

Wasn't she gorgeous?

 
The circles in which Beryl moved in Kenya are fascinating and the social decorum required within are dizzying.

Beryl grew up abandoned by her mother and parented by a distracted father. Wild and stubborn, Beryl found her own way until her father's bankruptcy when she was 17 led her into a hastily agreed to marriage with an almost complete stranger.

Unhappy playing wife in her marriage, Beryl sought out an opportunity to be independent and became the first certified female horse trainer. Over the years of her young adulthood she is constantly thrown down in poverty and disgrace only to come back fiercer than ever and more dedicated to being her own woman. She was not afraid to go after what she desired. Her affair with Finch Hatton led to her interest in flying, and even though a crash would take her lover from her, right on the cusp of their rekindled romance, she continued to fly and became the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic (East to West).

McLain's writing is, as expected, spot on. She weaves Beryl's story into the backdrop of Kenya so well it's obvious that Beryl and Africa were inseparable - almost as if Africa is a characteristic of Beryl's personality, like being strong willed, or even having blonde hair. The book left me wanting to know more about Beryl. The book ends following Beryl's solo flight, but she's only in her early thirties as this point.

Beryl went on to write her own memoir - West with the Night (which I will be reading tout suite - you can now read that review here). Despite it getting rave reviews, it was not a hit like Out of Africa. When it was discovered by someone looking through Ernest Hemingway's letters in the 1980s, and ultimately entered into republication, Beryl was living in poverty in Kenya, in her 80s. She was able to live the rest of her life in relative comfort thanks to the success of this second printing.

What a fascinating person and life. I refuse to believe the second half of her life wasn't just as interesting as the first part which is included in Circling the Sun. I wish I knew more about her and the fate of her family.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a little slow in parts and took a while to turn some plot corners and therefore gets a 4 star rather than a 5 star rating, but I'll definitely be recommending this to basically everyone.

4/5 Stars.