Newest books by Pelecanos and Penny reflect care and craftsmanship

Little wonder that the mystery genre is so wildly popular. It's a big house with accommodations for a range of styles and approaches.  No better example exists than the two books below -- one a hard-boiled thriller, the other a classic mystery in the tradition of the English cozy. Both reflects the care and craftsmanship of their authors. Both are superb reads.

Book 96: The Cut by George Pelecanos

With a nod to noir, D.C. writer George Pelecanos returns to his roots in The Cut. 

Pelecanos's most recent novels foundered in a high-minded bid to attain a level of moral instruction. That's gone.  His new character, a veteran of "I-raq", is a man of action and moral relativism. He has no qualms about the bodies he leaves in his wake nor his mission to restore stolen drugs to a jailed dealer. Neither will the reader.

With its smooth, jazz-like dialogue, a narrative that sweeps along at breakneck pace and scenes of sudden, explosive violence, The Cut recalls Pelecanos's first four novels, commonly known as the D.C. quartet. It also demonstrates the degree that Pelecanos's work as a writer on HBO's The Wire now influences his novels through concision, focus and pace.

Pelecanos celebrates his return to hard-boiled thrillers and lays claim to his literary heritage. Within the course of the novel he gives a chin nod to Elmore Leonard (Spero's brother is teaching Leonard's Unknown Man #89 to his high school class), Daniel Woodrell and Willy Vlautin (Spero presents a love interest with copies of The Death of Sweet Mister and Lean on Pete. Are you sending a message, she asks. "Good clean writing," says Spero) and Donald Westlake (with a reference to The Hunter, written under Westlake's pseudonym Richard Stark).

He also acknowledges a couple of characters who have served him well in past thrillers -- Derek Strange and Nick Stefanos. Stefanos was the narrator of Pelecanos's first three novels. Strange was a lead character in a number of the novels that followed.  These two may reappear. For now, it's enough to know that Spero "had heard tell of the man, Derek Strange, and his latest partner, a middle-aged Greek whose name he could not recall."

The Cut contains many of the stylistic touches that distinguish a novel by Pelecanos -- the street-level tour through Washington, D.C. and references to food and music. In one sense, there's nothing new to The Cut. It's simply a welcome return to the mean streets Pelecanos has traveled so artfully in the past.

Book 99: A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny  

I don't know which is more absurd -- that the denouement of Louise Penny's new mystery comes on a dark and stormy night with the all the suspects assembled by a crackling fire or that it works.

Because it does work. Just as it has worked so well in her past novels. Penny embraces the elements of the traditional English cozy and then rises above those conventions with an intelligent plot and vivid characters to produce a compelling mystery.

Penny's greatest strength lies in her characters.  Despite the large number of characters that populate her novels by simple necessity -- there's the homicide investigation team, the inhabitants of Three Pines and those figures we meet because of the demands of the current story -- Penny manages to give them each distinct personalities.

I cannot recall another author of a continuing series who has been as successful as Penny in telling the stories of each of her recurring characters.  She works at an almost leisurely pace, introducing their back story, their passions and peccadilloes, over the course of several books. Each character gets their turn in the spotlight.

Penny's gift is to create characters the reader cares about. We cannot wait to know what happens next in their lives. What does the future hold? What events are soon to unfold in the village of Three Pines?

On several occasions in A Trick of the Light, characters observe that Three Pines isn't on any map. No matter. Any admirer of intelligent, well-written mysteries knows the way to this small Canadian village.

Penny masterful storyteller in Bury Your Dead

Book 25:  Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

My admiration for the novels of Louise Penny increases with every book that she writes.  

With each novel, there are six now, Penny's mastery of her characters, plot, pacing, setting and the demands of the genre has grown and developed until it is clear that she is one of the finest mystery writers working today.

Her 2010 release, Bury Your Dead, is testament to Penny's mastery of the mystery. Indeed, she doesn't give the reader only one mystery to unravel in her newest work, but three.

As the novel opens, Penny's principal character, Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, is visiting an old friend in Quebec. It soon becomes clear that Gamache is recovering from physical and psychological wounds suffered in a devastating attack in which Gamache's second-in-command Jean Guy Beauvoir was also injured and other Sûreté officers killed.

The story behind the attack, which haunts Gamache, unfolds through the course of the novel.  Naturally, Gamache is also reluctantly caught up in a murder in Quebec.

The third storyline involves Jean Guy who is sent to the village of Three Pines to reopen the murder investigation of the Hermit, who was killed in Penny's preceding novel, The Brutal Telling.

From Quebec to Three Pines, from the present to the past, Penny skillfully interweaves the three story lines into a single compelling story of singular skill and artistry.

2011 reading begins with two mysteries by Louise Penny

Book One: A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

Book Two: The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

The first two books of 2011 were mysteries by Louise Penny.

Increasingly, I've come to appreciate Penny's work in recasting the cozy mystery for a modern audience.

Largely set in the tiny Canadian village of Three Pines, Penny provides a fascinating cast of characters -- Chief Inspector Gamache, in particular, can hold his own with Banks or Rebus -- and through their lives she skillfully explores human nature, especially its dark side.

That's the value of such a large cast of charactes in a mystery series. Penny, who provides the reader with three sets of distinct characters, has the luxury of time and space to explore the twists and turns of human nature and to develop backstories for the most enduring of her characters.

The three sets of characters are Gamache and his investigative team, the villagers of Three Pines (both of these groupings re-appear from novel to novel) and finally those characters who are one-offs, appearing for the sake of the narrative in a single novel, but destined not to re-appear in future books.

In A Rule Against Murder, the village of Three Pines makes only a cameo appearance. Bulk of the novel is set in an isolated auberge where Gamache and his wife, Reine Marie, are vacationing. Also at the auberge, for an annual gathering, is a quarrelsome family that includes two of the Three Pines villagers that we've come to known.

Naturally, a member of the family is murdered, by a most ingenious method, which takes Gamache and the reader some time to unravel. It's not Penny's best book in the series, but it is especially good because of what we learn about Gamache's past and the insight into one of the two Three Pines familiars.

The Brutal Telling may be Penny's finest mystery to date. It involves the death of a hermit, whose existence in a cabin a short distance from Three Pines, is unknown to all of the villagers save one, until the hermit's untimely demise.

The mystery surrounding the hermit's identity and the treasure that fills his modest cabin is engaging, but what elevates the book is Penny's courage in tying the murder to one of the Three Pines denizens we've come to know since the series debuted.

Pooping in space and other topics you wanted to know about, but didn't want to ask

These two most recent books -- one a mystery, the other a work of non-fiction -- satisfy my number one criteria: they are entertaining reads.

Book 84: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Entertaining isn't something you necessarily expect, or look for, in a work of non-fiction, but that's an apt description of Mary Roach's treatise on man's efforts "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Roach writes in a effortless manner that equates to a dinner-time chat across the kitchen table with a knowledgeable friend, a friend who is seeking to entertain as well as to inform. Her sense of humor infuses the entire book and, again, brings an unexpected, but welcome quality to a work of non-fiction.

Another apt description of Packing for Mars is gross. Roach dishes out gross, but also engrossing information on all those things we've wondered about life in space, but never asked. She discourses on vomiting, farting, body odor and peeing while among the stars, but her most notable chapter is on pooping in zero gravity.

One might conclude (and I will) that Roach takes the line "to boldly go where no man has gone before" literally in this charmingly informative book.

Book 85: The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

Charm oozes from the work of Louise Penny. The Cruelest Month is her third novel to feature Inspector Gamache and the villagers of Three Pines.

Give Penny credit, she is willing to embrace all the conventions of the cozy novel. In The Cruelest Month she goes so far as to summon all the murder suspects at the scene of the crime, a haunted house overlooking the village, for the grand denouement by Gamache. It's an ancient convention that Penny manages to make freshingly new.

All her strengths are on display: a genuine mystery to unravel, a brisk and riveting narrative and vividly drawn characters. One particularly nice aspect of The Cruelest Month is the conclusion of a shadow upon Gamache's career.

I have not dwelt on this plot line in talking about Penny's first two books, and I won't here either, expect to say Penny weaves the various threads together into a most satisfying conclusion.

It will be interesting to see where she takes this series in future novels. We have so much more we want to know about Gamache, the members of his team and the village of Three Pines.

Tepper's The Margarets a deeply moral work; Petterson's I Curse the River of Time falls flat

Book 68: The Margarets by Sheri Tepper

The Margarets by Sheri Tepper is a sprawling book featuring one protagonist who is really seven characters (or seven protagonists who are really one character), an assortment of minor characters, numerous alien races and equally numerous planetary settings.

Yet somehow -- well, we know how, Tepper is a vastly talented writer -- Tepper keeps all the plates spinning and delivers a thoroughly suspenseful, thoroughly satisfying read. The Margarets stands alongside some of her finest work -- Grass, The Gates to Women's Country and The Family Tree.

The Margarets is about the efforts of a shadowy collection of cat-like aliens, humans and minor god to save the human race by giving humankind a racial memory. The only way this can be done is by fulfilling an ancient prophecy that "one road is seven roads, walked simultaneously by one creature." Hence, the Margarets, seven individuals spawned from one young girl who begins her life on the Martian satellite, Phobos.

The Margarets is a work of vast imagination. And, like the best of Tepper's writing, it is also a deeply moral work, exploring the boundaries between good and evil inhabited by the human race.

Book 69: A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

Listen closely. These are words I do not often use. I was wrong. In writing about Louise Penny's first book, Still Life, I indicated that this new series, set in Canada, would feature Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté. And that is true, some of the paperback editions of this series proclaim that it is A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel.

But . . . I did not go far enough, because these novels are also about the small Canadian village of Three Pines. (Other paperback editions of the series proclaim that the book is a Three Pines Mystery.) Each murder has occurred in Three Pines and at least a half dozen of its villagers have been recurring figures in the two mysteries I have read so far.

Now that the record is straight on to A Fatal Grace.

I liked Still Life quite a bit, but was disappointed with A Fatal Grace in its early pages. Or so I thought. Actually the book's murder victim, who is alive in the first 50-odd pages, is such an annoying and unlikeable person that I was reacting to her, not Penny's work. Once the murder takes place and Gamache enters the scene, we have a delightful and diverting mystery.

Book 70: I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson

Amazing, isn't it, how themes so often appear in our reading. I disliked a character in Louise Penny's mystery and it affected my entire outlook of the novel until she exited.

In much the same way, a character's personality has a negative influence on Per Petterson's I Curse the River of Time. If we're going to compare books, and that is inevitable, I think, then I Curse the River of Time is not in the same league as Out Stealing Horses, the superb novel that introduced most Americans to Petterson's writing.

The problem is Arvid Jansen, the book's narrator. Arvid is 37, but as his mother observes, "I wouldn't call him a grown-up. That would be an exaggeration."

Arvid is attempting to come to terms with the knowledge that his mother has cancer and little time to live. This is difficult for Arvid because there is a long-standing emotional distance between him and his mother, largely because Arvid is immature and self-centered. His fascination with Communism, his refusal to further his college education and his impending divorce all serve to make him a disappointment to his mother. Since being a disappointment to one's mother is something we've all experienced to one degree or another, this should make Arvid a sympathetic figure. It doesn't.

Petterson is a skillful and insightful writer, but in this book that seems to work against him. Arvid is such a vivid character and the tone that Petterson has built is so unrelentingly bleak that the reader feels compelled to keep the book at some distance. As with Arvid and his mother, the reader cannot make an emotional connection with the writer.