Bloody Thrilling - Recent Mystery and Thriller Reads

Finally I managed to read enough thrillers for this corner, phew! They're all recommendations I got from the Hammett crew, so they're all expert approved and quality controlled. Hope you enjoy!

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

Suppose you're having dinner and have a little chat with the elderly guy at the next table, but when he leaves you realize he forgot his briefcase. It contains the info where he lives and you bring it to him, just to find him bleeding and dying on his bed. What would you do?

Our lead, Adam Kindred, makes an interesting choice and loses everything in life, so he has to start all over again, from scratch. The police is looking for him, and so is a hired killer, but there is one kind of person in a big city that almost everyone tries to avoid: homeless people. So he becomes one of them and lies low for a while. What follows is quite the adventure and will throw all sorts of people in Adam's way, and make a brand new person of him all over again.

I was discussing the premise of this book with Christian from Hammett and how it's interesting how people think they would react in the face of shocking things happening to them. Would I just want to get away if I found someone dying, like Adam, or would I help? It's difficult to estimate how one would act. When I was at university I was living with one of my friends in a flat on the ground floor and you could literally touch and push open our old windows from the backyard, though there were safety bars outside. One night I was studying in my room and we had a friend over, when someone in the backyard loudly pushed and knocked on the windows. My two friends in the living room started screaming and holding onto each other and for the life of me, I never understood the logic behind shouting when you're in danger, so I was in a terrified state too, but also kind of annoyed by them. Stupid with adrenaline, I went to the kitchen and took the biggest knife I could find, I took my phone and went out there to find the idiot all the while talking to the police very loudly so the person would know I'm not cowering, I'm calling for help. Of course, when I went out there and even later when police came, they were never found. I can never forget though how I lost a little respect for my roommate back then. Thinking about it now, I was hard on her. You don't control how you react when in danger. A couple of years ago, years after those university days, I witnessed a huge boxer dog attack a small dog and tear it into pieces before my eyes, and all I could do was shut my eyes with my hands and freeze, pretend I'm not there. Had I been the shouting kind, I would have screamed too. You never know.

These are just a few interesting thoughts this book incites, almost philosophical in nature. Quite an engaging read on the whole, with memorable characters too.

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

We're in Los Angeles in the 50s when a stranger is chasing young women at night and kills them. Dix Steele, a veteran who hates women, is top suspect but he knows how to slide along. Until he meets an old army friend and his cunning wife, as well as his femme fatale neighbor Laurel Gray. These people will turn his world upside down, and how they will... Girl power!

This might be the most unusual kind of noir mystery I have ever read. There's no secret as to who the serial killer is, and it's more like a portrait of a killer sort of a book without much suspense, but a delightful twist, or rather surprise at the end. This must have been quite ahead of its time when it was first published, and it's written by a woman too. I tried watching the film but had to dnf as it's not really my kind of movie and I struggle to watch black and white movies.

The Trees by Percival Everett

Money, Mississippi, is crime scene to a series of brutal murders: There's always at least one victim but also an additional second body of a man who resembles Emmett Till, and he's always holding the dead man's balls. A pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are sent there to investigate but they meet lots of resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and the racist white inhabitants. They discover that similar murders happen all over the country and it just has to be something retributional! Or not? 

Amazing how Everett treats such heavy themes such as racism, police violence, lynchings or white supremacy in such a lighthearted, and dare I say, fun manner. I can't say I understood all the references and cultural nuances, but it was a wonderful, brilliant read nonetheless.

Marple: Twelve New Mysteries 

St. Mary Meads, tiny cottages in the cozy English countryside, travels to exotic locations, comfy Christmas dinners laced with mysteries, generous nephews, murdered choir leaders and house maids, dukes, people with names like Cuthbert, Dolly or Prudence Fairweather, lost jewelry and a certain birdlike, unremarkable old lady too intelligent for her own good named Jane Marple.

Is your pulse racing with excitement at the mention of all this already? Then throw on that woolen shawl, sip your hot cup of tea with sherry and grab this book.

The idea is genius and the execution no less great – in twelve stories Miss Marple, one of Agatha Christie's most impressive lead characters, the grand dame of English small town killings, is being re-invented by twelve present day female authors. And they're all rocking it – the atmosphere and the very core of Miss Marple's unassuming but sharp logic are captured brilliantly in all of them. My only critique would be that short form mysteries don't really work for me fully as the conclusion comes way too sudden and I'm somehow unable to build mental suspense. Nevertheless, a delight to read.

My highlights were A Deadly Wedding Day by Dreda Say Mitchell which is set against the lively background of a Caribbean wedding and Murder at the Villa Rosa by Elly Griffiths which is told from the point of view of an author who plans a murder.