Late Summer Reads
There are plenty of summer reads still to be read and I love a good Nordic thriller. When Stieg Larsson introduced Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I was all-in following her violent, damaged journey as she battled a host of bad guys. The saga continues, minus Larsson, with the second writer to helm the Millennium series. Karin Smirnoff grabs the reins in The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons. It has the familiar complicated plot and spider web of relationships where every character is important to the story. Pay attention. In Smirnoff’s version, Salander is still the loner and the badass, perhaps a tad too mellow – hopefully the author will not soften her too much. Still, it is a worthy read, as Salander, journalist Blomkvist and a new character, Lisbeth’s niece Svala, battle neo-Nazis and drug dealers in northern Sweden.
Starting over doesn’t mean letting go of the past. In Tracey Lange’s The Connellys of County Down, Tara is released after 18 months in prison for drug trafficking. She moves back home with her sister and brother, trying to move on, except the detective that put her in jail comes sniffing around into her past, once again. The Connellys are a family that is stuck and Lange highlights their plight, years of trauma, and the claustrophobia that is family. This is a moving, beautiful book.
If the world is ending but it’s not over yet, what are you planning to do with the freedom you still have? Our protagonist Larch and his wife, Kristina, are former heroes. Along with 20 million volunteers, they helped save the world once and in Nick Fuller Googin’s debut novel, The Great Transition, they are once again called to help. This book is an utterly profound look at our collective responsibility towards one another. Emi is your normal teen, fighting with her mother, tolerant of her dad. That all changes when she is witness to a mass assassination and her mother goes missing, possibly responsible for the killings. Soon Larch and Emi are on the run, hoping to find and save Kristina. This story is sad and beautiful and yet hopeful all wrapped in a story that moves forward and back in time towards its surprising end.
After a horrible accident, budding ballerina Luz suffers brain damage and memory loss. It is 1975 in Puerto Rico. Jump forward to 2017 and Luz and her daughter Marysol are living in the Bronx. When they return to Puerto Rico with a group of female friends, Marysol uncovers her mother’s tragic past, a time Luz herself cannot remember. Esmeralda Santiago’s Las Madres switches between the past and present as the women come together during a devastating hurricane that wipes out many on the island.
Not going to lie, the era and subject matter in Sara DiVello’s Broadway Butterfly are right up my alley. This is a true-crime thriller based on the murder of showgirl Dot King, a flapper who flitters between several lovers. Dot has acquired a drawer full of jewels but winds up beaten and dead. Female crime reporter Julia is on the story, like a dog with a bone, she won’t let go, questioning and prodding the police who seem to look the other way. Are they protecting a powerful man? The research on this is intensive and detailed – the dark side of Broadway fame during the Roaring Twenties. A very compelling story.
Even if the story is familiar, the scope of the crimes and coverups thoroughly detailed in John Glatt’s excellent Tangled Vines: Power, Privilege, and the Murdaugh Family Murders will leave readers shaking their heads. How did the powerful South Carolina legal family get away with so much for so long? Glatt methodically lays out the family’s climb to prominence and stranglehold on a small town where they lived like kings, resulting in numerous alleged murders, payoffs, corruption of juries, and more. Richard Alexander Murdaugh is now in jail for the murder of his wife and son, while an ongoing investigation continues into two other deaths.
