I’ve been meaning to do this for a couple of weeks now, ever since I stopped updating my reading blog. But I’m still ambivalent…maybe I should post these on Goodreads instead or in addition?

• Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridasson: This novel, fourth in the series, highlights the problems of emigration and prejudice in Reykjavik, Iceland. It also provides more background about Inspector Erlendur’s tragic childhood and a possible step forward in his strained relationship with his own children.
• Frozen Tracks by Ake Edwardsson: Wow, I just read the Publishers Weekly review of this one, and it was harsh. I thought this was a pretty entertaining, if sometimes contrived, entry in the annals of Gothenburg, Sweden, police detection. DCI Erik Winter and his team struggle to discover whether there’s a relationship between a strange man who gives children candy, entertains them in his car, then returns them apparently unscathed to their nursery schools, and a rash of severe beatings that have left several university students near death.
• The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo: Another bleak noir about alcoholic Oslo detective Harry Hole, who is barely hanging onto his job and his life. Assigned to work a serial killing case under his nemesis–the corrupt police detective whom Hole believes killed his partner and runs an international gun-smuggling ring–he struggles with whether he cares enough to try to solve the case and salvage the tatters of his life. An excellent read despite the sometimes grim lives of the characters.
• Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf: I think I put off reading this for so long because I didn’t want to deny myself the pleasure of one more Haruf novel to read. Seriously, if you haven’t read the quartet by the author of Plainsong, do. He writes beautifully, in a sometimes Faulkneresque (but less overwrought than Faulkner can be) style, about the lives of people in the small High Plains town of Holt, Colorado. In this, his first novel, the local newspaper editor discusses his teenage friendship with a football hero gone bad, who betrays the town’s trust, leaves, and then returns, with devastating consequences.
• Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg: Reasonably entertaining, but I’m not quite sure why Lackberg is one of/the bestselling writer(s) in Sweden based on this novel. The plot is convoluted and dark, with some fascinating secrets, but the romantic thriller aspects are distracting.
• The Fourth Man by K.O. Dahl: This is a dark, sexual, twisted story of a woman who seduces a police detective and then uses him. When Frank Frolich begins his affair with an enigmatic woman, he has no idea that her brother’s a known criminal and thief, nor that she’s had dalliances with several women who are devoted to keeping her secrets. Describing it this way makes it sound like Basic Instinct, but it’s far better, more complex, more layered, and less gratuitous.
• Not Lost Forever by Carmina Salcido and Steve Jackson: This is an intense, powerful memoir by a girl whose father murdered her two sisters, her mother, her grandmother, her two aunts, and the man he thought was her mother’s lover, and who tried to kill her. She survived having her throat slit from ear to ear, only to be adopted by a couple who belonged to a strict, repressive cult, who abused her and stole her trust fund. The book is well-written and details Salcido’s search for family, freedom, and acceptance of her difficult life with poignant insight.
• Iron Lake by William Kent Kruger: This is the first novel in a series from which I’ve read and enjoyed a couple other selections. I’ve never been to the lake country of northern Minnesota, but Kruger evokes it well, I think, with an eye to the landscape, culture, history, and local issues. This sometimes reads like a first novel but overall is very good, with a satisfying amount of suspense and twists.
• There Was a Little Girl by Ed McBain: I’d read some of McBain’s Precinct 87 novels but none of his Matthew Hope series, of which this is one entry. It’s an entertaining, convoluted tale about circus people, former circus people, cocaine dealing, and Florida crime and corruption.
• The Last Best Hope by Ed McBain: I think this is the last novel in the Hope series, and I think the title is an allusion to this. After being shot, Hope hovers between coma and consciousness as his associates try to piece together what brought him to the place where he was ambushed. Blond women, missing husbands, love triangles, and art heists play into a plot that sees collaboration between some of Hope’s associates and Precinct 87 detectives.
• A Pug’s Tale by Alison Pace: This was a cute and entertaining read that could have been about half the length without losing any substance. Kind of a blend of chick lit and animal lit, with the backdrop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
• Precious Cargo by Clyde Ford: Set in the northern part of Puget Sound, this is a sobering detective story about human trafficking and the despair of immigrant parents who can’t afford any other way to bring their children to the U.S.
• Uneasy Relations by Aaron Elkins: Forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver and his wife travel to Gibraltar for a conference, but after a few suspicious incidents, they realize someone has an agenda that might bode ill for themselves and their friends.
• Garnethill by Denise Mina: I hadn’t read Mina before, but now I’m definitely a fan. This is bleak, Scottish fiction with a protagonist who’s likable, spunky, and not quite stable. Maureen O’Donnell has spent time in a psychiatric hospital, dealing with her memories of sexual abuse, yet she’s no passive victim. When her boyfriend–a married therapist–is murdered in her living room, she defies the police to conduct her own investigation, unearthing dark secrets that the official detectives haven’t stumbled across. I’m looking forward to the two concluding novels in the trilogy, especially as Maureen’s abusive father returned to the family at the end of Garnethill, and Maureen’s sisters and alcoholic mother tried to tell her she suffered from false memory syndrome.
  
• All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming: This is another series I’ve been curious about for awhile, and possibly midway through wasn’t the best place to pick it up. Still, there’s enough background that I didn’t feel I was missing anything too crucial. (Nor did I feel like I was reading a lengthy recap/backstory, which is also a plus.) Clare Fergusson, an Episcopal priest and former military helicopter pilot, and town police chief Russ Van Alstyne are in love. Only problem is he’s married. And when a murdered body that’s assumed to belong to his wife is found, both of them become suspects. As mysteries go, this is a good one, with a twist I didn’t see coming. On the other hand, the full extent to which I didn’t see the twist coming renders it almost unbelievable. And Clare’s relationship with God seems to consist of quick prayers about fairly shallow things–it’s difficult to tell what substance there is to her faith, at least in this book.
• The Devil’s Bones by Jefferson Bass: I was thinking I’d read another entry in this series before and didn’t care for it, but I really enjoyed this novel set at the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee. Threads of several tales wind through the narrative, including a case based on a real Georgia incident in which a crematorium was dumping bodies in the woods, the escape of a rival ME who tried to kill the protagonist, and the difficulty of identifying and dating bones from fire scenes.
• The Blackstone Chronicles by John Saul: First published as a six-part serial novel, this is the dark story of the Blackstone Asylum and the families over whom its malevolent (and deceased) former director casts his long shadow. Definitely brain candy, but spooky and evocative brain candy.
• A couple books whose titles I won’t bother mentioning, although I did finish them. One was a gothic romance that I thought was going to be more of a mystery. The mystery elements were decent, but the novel was so slow that I skipped huge portions and still almost didn’t finish. The other was supposed to be “darkly comic,” but the narrator’s sociopathy and cluelessness made him unappealing rather than humorous or ironic.

Books that I started but decided life’s too short:

• One by an author whose work I normally like, but this was a departure from his usual, and I just couldn’t get into it. Characters felt cliched, plot wasn’t compelling. Couldn’t tell what the plot was, in fact.
• One that had three elements any one of which would normally render me unable to put the book down, even if objectively I don’t think it’s very good. But in this author’s inept hands, I couldn’t make myself care enough to read past page 42 or so. Oh, and this author is the chair of a creative writing program at a large state university. Go figure.