Book Reviews by vicki rock

It is November of 1895. Private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn are in the East End of London at 4 a.m. one morning, looking for a gang of criminals who commit early morning burglaries. Merchants asked Barker and Llewelyn for help.

A homeless woman who calls herself Dutch is serving as lookout and admits that a jewelry store is being burglarized. Barker and Llewelyn run there and notify a nearby officer who tells his superiors at the Metropolitan Police. They fight the four men before police arrive.

Then Sir Hugh Danvers and his wife, Lady Jane Danvers, hire Barker and Llewelyn to find Lady Jane’s missing sister, May Evans. At the end of the day, Llewelyn returns home to his wife, Rebecca, and their infant daughter, Rachel.

He is awake early the next morning when a mile from his home, an abandoned railway tunnel in the East End of London collapses, killing at least 75. Barker believes there was a meeting of the criminal underworld when the tunnel collapsed.

The relationship between Barker and Llewelyn is reminiscent of Holmes and Watson, but Barker and Llewelyn are more like partners than the other duo. The story behind the plot is well done and the big reveal is perfect. This is the 16th in the series, but it can be read without reading those that preceded it.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito is getting ready to go on her morning run. She is planning on later getting together with her mentor, retired lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Her husband, Lt. Jim Chee, has already left for work.

Before Bernie can leave, Officer Roper Black comes to her house to tell her she has to go to a mandatory meeting although it is her day off. U.S. Secretary of Energy Savannah Cooper is expected to come to Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border. A group, Citizens United to Save the Planet, may be protesting.

Meanwhile, Darleen Manuelito, Bernie’s younger sister, learns that Mrs. Raymond, one of her home health clients, is missing. Darleen discovers that Mrs. Raymond’s grandson, Andrew Morgan, 17, is also gone. Then a body is found inside of a restricted area.

This has a good complex plot with very descriptive settings. As usual, there are many interesting things about Navajo life and culture woven into the book. Anne Hillerman gives complexity to the main characters’ lives as Bernie and Darlene’s elderly mother lives with Bernie and Chee. Anne Hillerman continues the mystery series her father Tony Hillerman created.

I rate it four out of five stars.

It is 1944 and Charlie Matters, 13, lives in London. He steals what he needs to survive day to day. His grandmother tries to support him after his mother was killed in the Blitz and his father died in the Navy. Charlie works when he can.

He decides to go to St. Savior’s School to steal money to buy a pair of shoes. But he is unable to get inside. Then he sees a light on at The Book Keep, a bookstore owned by Ignatius Oliver, and goes inside. He steals money and a book.

Molly Wakefield, 15, has just returned to London. One of millions of people who were evacuated to the countryside via “Operation Pied Piper,” Molly has been away from her parents, Herbert and Eloise Wakefield, for nearly five years. She was living with the Cooper family. A Cooper family aunt who is a nurse, Eleanor Cooper, taught her to help care for the wounded.

She hasn’t heard from her parents in awhile, so she returns to London. Her return, however, is not the homecoming she’d hoped for. Mrs. Pride, her former nanny, answers the door. Mrs. Pride tells Molly that her father is at work at the Ministry of Food and her mother is in a sanatorium. When Molly’s father doesn’t come home in a week, she finally learns that he left London months ago. And someone is following her. Charlie and Molly go to The Book Keep for help.

While this is a moving story about war and how people form friendships and families, it is overall very sad. The characters are well-written and those you expect to be good or bad people aren’t always that way. It is a realistic view of war impacting civilians.

I rate it four out of five stars.

It is 1920 and for the first time, female students are admitted to Oxford University. Four young women move into neighboring rooms in Corridor 8. They are known as The Eights.

Beatrice Sparks is the daughter of a suffragette. Marianne Grey is a vicar’s daughter. Ottoline Wallace-Kerr, called Otto, was a nurse during World War I. Theodora Greenwood, who goes by Dora, lost both her brother, George, and her fiancé, Charles, in the war.

As they arrive for their first day, the woman are subjected to nasty remarks by male students, and numerous restrictions imposed by the university. The accommodations are subpar and often the lecturers are misogynists.

There are flashbacks to their lives before the university. They each had a traumatic event in their past. The narrative jumps around so at times it is difficult to keep straight which person is which. The slow pacing is an obstacle to finishing the book.

I rate it three out of five stars.

Edward and Isabel are in their 30s. One summer evening, a man breaks into their home in England. He rapes Isabel and brutalizes both of them.

The man, known as the South London Invader, isn’t arrested until shortly after Isabel’s 55th birthday. His name is Nigel Wood. He is 70 and is a retired police officer. He is now accused of murdering nine people and raping many more. He was tracked down by the use of ancestry DNA.

Edward and Isabel divorced years before the arrest. Edward has remarried. Isabel hasn’t. They haven’t seen each other in years. Wood is pleading guilty and surviving victims are allowed to give impact statements in court.

Isabel is sure she’ll speak in court and finally let the past go. Edward has spent the years since the break-in trying to figure out how a near-miss with death resulted in their divorce. This is told through both viewpoints, with Isabel’s chapters set in the past and Edward’s chapters set in the present.

“The Death of Us” is not an easy read. The topics are brutal, but there is little graphic violence. The novel is deeply emotional and not for everyone. It is well written, but slow-moving.

Abigail Dean is also the author of the bestselling novel “Girl A.”

I rate it four out of five stars.

It is 1926. On the cliffs of Yorkshire, England, men are lowered on ropes to steal the eggs of the sea birds who nest there. The most beautiful are sold for large sums. The Chandler gang is the most successful of the thieves because Jim Chandler keeps meticulous records of where the best are found.

Celie Sheppard, 6, is neglected by her family. Her father, John, deserted them when she was born. Enid is her mother. Celie has four older siblings. They are tenants on Metland Farm.

Robert, no last name, is 8. He just showed up one day and stayed. Celie becomes Robert’s responsibility. One day, she and Robert realize that they can steal seabirds’ eggs for food. When she gets stranded on a cliff, the men rescue her, not knowing that she has hidden a rare red egg. The men then realize she is small enough and brave enough to help them steal eggs.

A century later in a remote cottage in Wales, Patrick Fort finds his friend, Nick, and Nick’s mother tied up and robbed. The only thing missing: a carved case containing a scarlet egg. Nick had listed the egg, which had belonged to his father, for sale online. Patrick and Nick decide to try to recover the stolen egg.

I was excited to read this because of rave reviews online, but the large number of characters and the jump in timelines caused me to lose interest. I knew about the theft of rare eggs from “The Crow Trap” by Ann Cleeves, which I enjoyed more than “The Impossible Thing.”

I rate it three out of five stars.

Valerie Gillis. 42, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker, is missing about 200 miles from her final destination. She has been hiking for three months. There’s no cell phone service on that stretch of the trail.

Valerie, a nurse, writes in her journal a series of letters to her mother as she struggles to stay alive. Her trail name is Sparrow. Her husband, Gregory Bouras, reported her missing.

Lt. Beverly Miller, a Maine State Game Warden, leads the search on the ground. She’s been in the business of finding people lost in the woods for 30 years. She and Bob Cross head the incident management team for their district. Warden Cody Ouellette interviews Ruben Serrano, an overweight Black man, who uses the trail name Santo. He hiked with Valerie in Pennsylvania, but he quit his hike in Vermont.

Lena Kulcharski, 76, a birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an armchair detective. She is talking to someone in a chat room who goes by the online name Terrible Silence. He lives in Bethel, Maine. He thinks he knows what happened to Valerie.

The characters are good and the depictions of conflict between mothers and daughters are realistic. The descriptions of how searches are done fascinating. The novel does drag a bit towards the middle, but it has a good ending.

I rate it four out of five stars.

In Heppleburn, Northumberland County, England, people are getting ready for Halloween. Jack Robeson is a school governor and custodian. He is a widower and has two adult daughters, Susan and Patty.

Patty is married to Jim Atkins. Their children are Jennifer and Andrew. Patty is on the school Parents’ Association. Paul Wilcox, a stay-at-home father, is chairman of the group. Patty suggests they have a Halloween party for adults.

Harold Medburn, the headmaster, is a nasty bully. Almost everybody in Heppleburn hates or fears him. He is trying to get new teacher, Matthew Carpenter, to resign because Medburn didn’t choose him. Medburn’s wife, Kitty, is a district nurse.

When Medburn doesn’t show for the school Halloween party, Jack decides to go to his house and get him. Instead he finds Medburn’s body hanging from a noose in the playground.

Inspector Stephen Ramsay and Sgt. Gordon Hunter are assigned as investigators. Ramsay is convinced the murderer was the headmaster's wife because Medburn was leaving her for Angela Brayshaw. Jack Robeson is determined to prove her innocence. With the help of his daughter, Jack digs into the secrets of Heppleburn, and uncovers lies, adultery and blackmail.

This is an older novel, but it is being published in the US for the first time. It predates the Vera Stanhope and Shetland series. It is slow-moving at first, but picks up. I liked the characters, but I thought the police should have been more involved in the investigation than the neighbors. The reason behind the murder is a surprise.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Gregory Maguire is the author of “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” and the related books that are a retelling of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum.

“Elphie” is the coming-of-age story. She is shaped by her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She has a sister Nessarose and a brother Shell. Elphie first encounters the mistreatment of the animal populations of Oz.

While I enjoyed the original “Wicked” and the resulting musical and movie, “Elphie” is a letdown. it is slow-moving and doesn’t have much of a plot. It is more of a story of Frex searching for Turtle Heart's family to atone than about Elphaba. There are long descriptions of landscapes. It is disjointed and relays on time jumps.

I recommend the original “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” instead of “Elphie.”

I rate it three out of five stars.

Annie, 35, is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA in Portland, Oregon. It is the first day of her maternity leave. Her dream was to be a playwright. Now she is the office manager at a technology company.

Her husband, Dom, 38, is a struggling actor who picks up shifts at a cafe. They had a fight the night before. She talks to the baby “Bean” in her thoughts.

Then a massive earthquake hits. Annie starts thinking back to when she and Dom met. She is trapped under debris, but another woman helps her get out. She’s lost her purse and can’t find her car keys or her phone. She and a woman named Taylor, who is trying to get to her daughter’s school, decide to walk.

As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life. Will she make it to safety before going into labor?

The timeline of the book is one day. I struggled with this novel. Both Annie and Dom are immature and self-centered and some parts are just unbelievable. The ending doesn’t resolve the big questions.

I rate it three out of five stars..

October 22, 1895 in Granville, on the coast of Normandy, Mado Pelletier, is waiting at the small railroad station. She lives in Paris with her widowed mother and traveled to Granville for her 21st birthday because she always wanted to see the ocean.

Maurice Marland, 7, will be riding the train alone. Elise Blonska, an older woman, was in Granville for her health. Henry Tanner, an American painter, is also on board as are John Synge from Dublin, several medical students and three members of Parliament.

Railroad guard Jean Le Goff gets people onto the Granville-Paris Express which is to arrive at 3:55 p.m. Leon Mariette is the senior guard. Guillaume Pellerin is the train’s engineer and Victor Garnier is his stoker. Both Pellerin and Garnier have been on the train for hours, conducting safety checks. Mariette has an alarm bell and handbrake in case he sees danger. But someone on the train is carrying a bomb.

“The Paris Express” is very intense and fast-moving with a surprise ending. The various characters are realistic. It is based on a real train derailment that was captured in a series of amazing photographs, one of which appears in the author’s note. She also details which characters are based on real people and what happened to them.

Emma Donoghue is the author of 16 novels, including the bestseller, “Room.” This is one of her best.

I rate it five out of five stars.

The Altermans are a Jewish family in Vienna in 1938. The parents send Sonja, their daughter, on the Kindertransport to Britain to keep her safe from Nazis. They stay behind with infant, Moses.

Sonja believes her family will soon follow. They don’t. Years later, she marries a symphony conductor in London. They have a daughter who dies at the age of nine.

When Arnold, the father, is 99, he submits a DNA test and is then contacted by a woman claiming to be Sonja. Fania, the mother, ends up in Montreal with a man named Hermann. She encounters a woman who could be her double. Moses is followed by a ghost. Are these people actually alive and grieving or have they all died?

Unfortunately, I had trouble getting through this novel. It has long run-on sentences and is too fragmented to follow. It was not for me.

I rate it three out of five stars.