When I saw Kestrel’s Five Decembers won the Edgar for best novel, I wanted to read it. On a whim I requested it on Edelweiss+ and I don’t know what gods are “for my unconquerable [reading] soul,” but Hard Case Crime was kind enough to grant my request. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to read such a great novel. It kept me glued to the page and surprised me by making narrative about-turns I never anticipated. It had depth and sweep and the blurb, quoted below, doesn’t encompass it, but it’s a start:
December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn’t know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor.
To start, Five Decembers is symphonic in narrative structure, with hero Joe McGrady, like Odysseus, trying to make his way home; it has four distinct yet concentrically interconnected movements. Unlike Homer’s hero, however, Circe’s cave is a transformative interlude of peace and love where Penelope and Circe merge and become one. History precedes it, encroaches on it, and history ends it, but while it lasts, it turns Joe McGrady from hard-boiled detective to a man stripped of everything except his word and honour. (more…)
Much as Miss Bates loves the HP line, she’s never been much for the connected HP-series. A few years ago, the line went with a crud-awful interconnected hotel-setting series and it was ugh. So MissB. was leery of trying another one in this “Di Sione” series, but, hey, Jennifer Hayward! woot!, one of the more original, more interesting HP writers (her The Italian’s Deal For I Do one of MissB’s favourite HPs EVAH). The past few books have never reached The Italian’s Deal‘s heights, but they’ve consistently been well-written and absent of the insane WTF-ery that distinguishes the line. Hayward seems to like the idea of the “deal” as a romantic premise, essentially the opening to a good ole marriage-of-convenience romance narrative, in this case, a marriage-deal for Nate Brunswick and Mina Mastrantino. The product of Benito Di Sione’s affair with his secretary, Nate has a huge-o-rama shoulder chip about his illegitimacy, place in the Di Sione family, except in his relationship with his paternal grand-father, Giovanni, his eschewing of marriage and anything that says “feels”. When Nate was a teen, Giovanni gave him a place at the family-company-table, thus saving him from a life on the streets. Now that Nate’s created and expanded his personal fortune as well as the family one, he wants to give dying, fragile Giovanni the gift of the “Di Sione ring,” which seems to have a mysterious special significance for Giovanni. In one of Nate’s Palermo hotels, he meets an adorably curvy, tiny chambermaid who, it turns out, is none other than the possessor of the precious ring.
Miss Bates Reads Romance 