Audiobook Review: Snow White Must Die

Snow White Must Die
Author: Nele Neuhaus
Translator: Steven T. Murray
Narrator: Robert Fass
Published 2013 by AudioGO
15.75 hours – Unabridged

If the success of Stieg Larsson and the resulting surge in American interest in Scandinavian crime fiction has led to increased availability of mysteries and thrillers translated into English from all across Europe, then I say: Bring it on. I suspect that’s part of what’s behind the American publication of Snow White Must Die, which is actually Book 4 in a series of six so far that are already bestsellers in Germany and elsewhere. It’s the first of Nele Neuhaus’s books to be translated into English and published in the United States, and I hope we can look forward to further titles in this series making the Atlantic crossing.

For me, it’s been a treat to listen to a story set in contemporary Germany. The locale is fresh and unfamiliar, offering a welcome change of scenery. The investigative team of Pia Kirschhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein, members of the police department in Frankfurt, first become aware that something unsavory is afoot in the nearby tiny hamlet of Altenhain when a woman is pitched off a highway overpass, killing a driver and putting her in a coma with a massive number of broken bones and internal injuries. Who pushed her, and why? As terrible as this crime is, it turns out to be just a clue that puts the detectives on the trail of a much bigger story.

Tobias Sartorius is emerging from prison at around the same time as this, having served 10 years for the double murder of two female classmates in Altenhain, just after graduating from high school. His memory of the evening of the crime is a total blank, and Tobias has never been fully convinced that he actually committed the murders. It seems that everyone else in the village is certain that he did it, however, and he comes home to his parent’s house to find that they have been made to suffer while he was incarcerated, and that the residents of Altenhain plan to make Tobias continue paying for the crime as well.

But what really happened to Stefanie Schneeberger and Laura Wagner on that night 11 years ago? How much did Tobias have to do with the young women’s disappearance, who else may have been involved, and why were the bodies never recovered? Nele Neuhaus spins a good crime story, adding to the suspense and increasing the reader’s involvement by using multiple narrative points of view and revealing information in tantalizing bits and pieces. The Kirchhoff/Bodenstein cop team are an appealing pair, and American readers can hope that more titles in the series will be translated into English and published stateside.

Robert Fass’s narration has the tendency to zoom from flat to melodramatic with startling speed at times … but then, so do some of the characters in this chilly Teutonic tale of buried secrets, suppressed passions and perpetuated lies. Fass gets the German pronunciations right, which is a relief — and not something you can always count on in audiobook narration. He also manages to avoid making the female characters sound like saps or drag queens, another quality I appreciate in a male reader. Overall, Fass enhances Neuhaus’s storytelling, helping to bring the contemporary German setting and characters alive for the listener. Snow White Must Die is an absorbing crime thriller — well written and skillfully read — and recommended listening for all Anglophone readers ready to broaden their geographic horizons in the genre.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher as part of the Solid Gold Reviewer program administered by Audiobook Jukebox. No payment was received in return for a review. The receipt of the book had no influence on the opinions expressed in my review.

 

Book Review: What You Wish For

What You Wish For
Author: Janet Dawson
Published 2012 by Perseverance Press

Historian Lindsey Page must burrow through multiple layers of different kinds of secrets — family, corporate, romantic, political — to get at the truth in this absorbing story of intrigue and deception in the Bay Area. Follow Lindsey back and forth from the present day back to the 1960s and 1970s and to the brutal, bloody hills of El Salvador in the 1980s, and back again, as a favor for one of her interviewees leads to revelations of murder and massacre that prove once again that you should be careful what you wish for. Lindsey is a sympathetic and well-drawn character, and the web of lies and coverups she finds herself unraveling is compelling and complex. Give this new standalone novel of suspense by Janet Dawson a try. Then, if you like it, go back and read her 10-book series featuring PI Jeri Howard. It’s high-quality, intelligent crime-solving!

 

Audiobook Review: Dead Before Dying

Dead Before Dying
Author: Deon Meyer
Narrator: Simon Vance
Published 2012 by HighBridge Audio
10.75 hours – Unabridged

Having listened to Trackers about a year ago, I got excited about the opportunity to listen to and review Dead Before Dying, featuring the same author-narrator team. First published in print in the original Afrikaans in 1996 and in English translation in 1999, this first novel by South African Deon Meyer is one of several by the author seeing audio issue by HighBridge over the past year or so. And this is excellent news for mystery/thriller listeners. If you’ve already discovered Meyer’s storytelling mastery, you can now enjoy it on a whole new level through Simon Vance’s voice artistry. If Deon Meyer and his gritty, complex portrayals of today’s Cape Town are new to you, start here: you’re in for a listener’s treat.

Dead Before Dying marks the first appearance of police captain Mat Joubert of the Murder and Robbery Squad, whom I got to know from his role in Trackers, set some 15 years later. Here, Joubert is in a dark place personally, still reeling from the violent death of his cop wife two years earlier. He’s hanging in there on the job, but just barely. An abrasive new boss with newfangled ideas arrives, just as Joubert begins investigating a string of apparently random killings in the Cape Town area involving the same (very distinctive) murder weapon. Joubert finds himself thrust into mandatory psychological counseling and a rigorous diet regime (courtesy of the new colonel), making it even harder than usual to cope with the daily routine of violence and death. The pressure is on for Joubert and the rest of the squad to figure out the common thread linking a series of murder victims with no apparent connection to one another – beyond the fact that they were all shot with a 100-year-old German gun loaded with original bullets. Further complicating matters is a serial bank robber with a distinctive style, whose work just may be somehow tangled up with the mounting roster of mystifying murders.

As always, Simon Vance does an admirable job of voicing all characters at hand, here spanning the class, race and gender spectrum of modern South Africa. The listener thrills to each new twist in the plot, while rooting for Mat Joubert to pull himself out of the hole and learn to live again. A note to those who wish to read further into Deon Meyer’s works: Dead Before Dying also introduces Sergeant Benny Griessel, who features prominently in later novels, including Thirteen Hours and Seven Days. Let Meyer and Vance show you around the cops and crooks of Cape Town; Dead Before Dying is the perfect place to begin.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher as part of the Solid Gold Reviewer program administered by Audiobook Jukebox. No payment was received in return for a review. The receipt of the book had no influence on the opinions expressed in my review.

 

Audiobook Review: Little Century

Little Century
Author: Anna Keesey
Narrator: Tavia Gilbert
Published 2012 by Blackstone Audio
10 hours – Unabridged

When 18-year-old Esther Chambers’ mother dies suddenly in Chicago just as the 19th century is turning to the 20th, Esther finds herself alone in the world, without family or prospects for the future. Invited to the Oregon frontier by Ferris Pickett, a distant cousin whom she has never met, Esther accepts his offer to take her in and boards a westbound train.

Upon arrival in the rough-hewn hamlet of Century, in the high desert of Peterson County, Oregon, Esther learns that her cousin — known to everyone as “Pick” — has an agenda in which he has already cast his young relative in a central role. A successful rancher and the acknowledged “big man” of the town, Pick is the owner and boss of the robust and prosperous Two Forks cattle ranch, but he has his eye on an adjacent piece of land that happens to be open for claim. If Esther will pretend to be 21 and spend five years of nights in the humble cabin a mile away by the shore of Lake Half-a-Mind, Pick will be able to purchase the claim from her and make it his own.

Esther is the greenest greenhorn that a city girl could be, but she is also a quick study, and soon she has mastered horseback riding and begun to try her hand at growing a small crop of alfalfa on the Half-a-Mind claim. She makes the cabin into a home for herself, and Pick begins to see that Esther’s utility might extend even further. He has been a bachelor long enough, and heaven knows the ladies of Century never tire of speculating on when he might select a wife. Almost without realizing she’s done it, Esther soon finds herself entering into “an understanding” with Pick, the implication being that when she’s a little older and feels ready, the two will wed.

But things are more complicated than they seem on the wind-blown range lands surrounding Century. An ongoing feud over grazing land between the cattle ranchers and the sheep herders is escalating and turning more bitter, vindictive and violent by the day. Esther is more or less willing to go along with the cattlemens’ point of view and shun the sheepmen … until she gets to know Ben Cruff, the young sheep herder assigned to dig her a well in payment for one of his family’s alleged transgressions. Before long, she is questioning the official version of everything she’s learned since coming to Oregon. When her good friend Joe Peaslee, the eccentric owner of Century’s general store, goes missing, Esther has more questions than ever.

Tavia Gilbert’s narration buoys up the story and carries the listener along. She is a natural for Esther’s ingenue voice and point of view, and is equally adept at portraying the range of other characters, from the gossiping womenfolk of Century to the rough-and-tumble buckaroos (they hate to be called cowboys) of Two Forks. She makes it easy to forget that you’re hearing just one person read from a page, as the people of 1900 Oregon come to life all around you.

Little Century is enough of a western and enough of a romance that you can rest assured a rosy sunset and a happy ending await in the final tracks. However, the trail thereto is littered with enough trouble and heartache that the listener feels the satisfaction of contentment and redemption well earned.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher as part of the Solid Gold Reviewer program administered by Audiobook Jukebox. No payment was received in return for a review. The receipt of the book had no influence on the opinions expressed in my review.

 

What the Book Group is Reading

The Thursday Night Book Group has voted, and the selections for October and November (respectively) are:

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I’m planning to show the 1963 movie based on the Shirley Jackson book the day before the meeting.

In December, we don’t read a book — we just get together with the Monday Morning Mystery book group (that I also run) and have a potluck dinner party.

 

Audiobook Review: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
Author: Matthew Dicks
Narrator: Matthew Brown
Published 2012 by Macmillan Audio
11 hours – Unabridged

“Just because we’re imaginary, doesn’t mean we’re not real.” Throughout Matthew Dicks’ wonderfully inventive novel, Budo struggles with the dichotomy at the heart of this statement. Budo is an imaginary friend, created by Max, an eight-year-old boy somewhere on the autism spectrum. Budo’s been around for five years at the time of the story, which makes him a lot longer-lived than most imaginary friends. In fact, an enormous number of imaginary friends are killed by kindergarten, where daily routines and access to a large number of potential human friends combine to do away with the imagining child’s need for his or her made-up friend. For, you see, in Dicks’ world of people and their imaginary friends, the imaginary ones begin to fade and finally disappear altogether when their creators stop needing them and stop believing in them.

Max has continued to need Budo because he has no other friends, and in fact does his best to stay away from other people, aside from a select few including his parents and his beloved teacher Mrs. Gosk. Max goes to school each day and, with Budo’s help, navigates its confusing and sometimes terrifying landscape with a minimum of disasters. Until the day of a certain gross-but-funny encounter in the boys’ bathroom with fifth-grade bully Tommy Swindon, and then things begin to change for Max and Budo. Tommy is a typical bully, familiar to anyone who’s ever been an outsider at school, and no different from countless bullies in literature through the ages. But while Max and Budo are worrying about Tommy Swindon and how he might retaliate for what went down in the bathroom, an unexpected threat sneaks up on them. For there’s somebody else at school who poses a greater danger to Max than Tommy Swindon does, and no one suspects a thing.

When Max disappears from school one day, Budo is the only one who knows what has happened to him. And not only can Budo not be heard or seen by anyone in the real world other than Max, he has no power to physically move or otherwise act upon objects in the real world. Luckily, Max has imagined him with the ability to pass through closed doors, so Budo can move freely about. He’s smart and resourceful, too — which we learn is not always the case with imaginary friends. We meet some of the other imaginary friends that Budo knows, and they give him what help they can, according to their various abilities. But finally Budo has to face facts: the only one who can help him rescue Max is Oswald: a very unusual and very scary imaginary friend who hangs out over at the grownups’ hospital.

What happens next is thrilling and suspenseful, an exhilaratingly fun and nail-biting ride for the listener that culminates in a climactic resolution scene reminiscent of the great A Prayer for Owen Meany. It packs an emotional wallop, all right, as does the denouement. Matthew Dicks (whose works are published under the name “Matthew Green” in the UK) has done a beautiful job of fleshing out the world of imaginary friends and depicting the roles they play in the lives of the people who created them. Narrator Matthew Brown (so many Matthews!) skillfully breathes life into Budo, who knows and understands more about the world than Max does, but still regards everything with a naivete that reflects the fact that he is a child’s creation. Dicks’ writing and Brown’s voice combine to capture this perfectly.

I was only a few tracks into this story when I started thinking more and more about my own childhood imaginary friend: a strongly detailed character who has lived on in memory because I dictated his adventures to my sister, and together we created an illustrated book about him that I have in my possession to this day. My old made-up friend has been so much on my mind while I’ve been listening to Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend that I even googled him. (You will perhaps be relieved to learn that I found no trace of him.) I have often thought that I’d like to read a novel about what becomes of imaginary friends after their people don’t need them anymore. Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend does not fulfill this wish, and in fact the author’s vision of what happens to superannuated imaginary friends is somewhat different from what I’ve always pictured. Nevertheless, this is a terrific story, loaded with laughter, tears, and insight. I can also recommend highly Matthew Dicks’ previous novel, Unexpectedly, Milo, and plan to read his first novel, Something Missing, soon.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher as part of the Solid Gold Reviewer program administered by Audiobook Jukebox. No payment was received in return for a review. The receipt of the book had no influence on the opinions expressed in my review.

 

November fiction choices for book group: Creepy Classics

Fiction’s turn comes around again in November. I decided that’s close enough to Halloween to justify a theme of  “Creepy Classics.” Here’s what the folks get to vote on:

My Cousin Rachel
by Daphne Du Maurier

The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson

The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James

Uncle Silas
by Sheridan Le Fanu

Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dracula
by Bram Stoker

The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde