Book Reviews by vicki rock

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.

It is September 1864 in Virginia. Libby Steadman’s husband, Peter, has been away for a long time. He is now in a Union prison camp after being wounded and captured at Gettysburg.

Libby’s days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, Jubilee, a freedman, Joseph, and his wife, Sally. All the grain they can produce is requisitioned by the Confederate Army.

Lt. Henry Morgan of the Sixth Virginia Calvary is the grandson of one of her neighbors, Leveritt Covington. When Morgan arrives to take Joseph with them, Libby points out that Joseph is over 60 and without him she will have trouble running the mill. They don’t conscript Joseph.

Union Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade, a former college professor, had enlisted. He and his men are to occupy a hilltop near Berryville. Weybridge is severely injured in the battle and one of his legs is amputated.

His unit leaves him in a confiscated house alone when they move on. Libby finds Weybridge. She hopes that her husband was humanely treated when he was wounded and she thinks she may be able to trade Weybridge for Peter. Libby and Weybridge slowly form a friendship.

This was inspired by a true story. It is a story of surviving war and depicts the best and worst of humanity. The novel accurately depicts the Civil War and medical care of the time. Chris Bohjalian is an excellent storyteller and I am a fan of everything he writes. You will root for the characters and cheer at the ending.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Dr. Henry Byrd, a New York psychiatrist, is the narrator. Jane O., 38, goes to his office for the first time and stays only 14 minutes. She tells him she is a librarian and has a one-year-old son, Caleb.

She hasn’t been sleeping well since her son was born. The only trauma she recalls is the death of an elderly neighbor named Shelia Schwartz. Jane tells Byrd that she also had a hallucination: she saw someone that she knows is dead and talked with him. His name was Nico Lombardi and he died when he was 18.

Three days later, Byrd gets a call from New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. A woman has been brought in to the emergency room. She was found unconscious in Prospect Park. She says her name is Jane and that Byrd is her doctor.

The more Byrd learns of her case, the less certain he is of its nature. At Byrd’s suggestion that she keep a journal, Jane begins to write letters to her son. Jane has an excellent memory but are her memories real? Is Byrd or Jane the reliable narrator?

The plot and the characters are interesting. Karen Thompson Walker does an excellent job of blending the two main characters’ voices. The ending is surprising.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Camilla Deschamps has been on maternity leave since the birth of her daughter, Polly. She is happy to be returning to work as a literary agent. It is June 21, 2017.

When she goes to wake her husband, Luke, he isn’t there. Luke is a ghostwriter and has a co-working space, so Cam thinks that’s where he is. They live in Pimlico, a neighborhood in London.

Then as she is leaving, she finds an odd note from Luke, but puts it out of her mind and takes Polly to daycare. While at work, she sees a breaking news report about a hostage situation at a warehouse in central London.

Detective Sergeant Steven Lambert and Constable Emma Smith come to Cam’s office and tell her that they believe Luke is holding three people hostage. Niall Thompson is the hostage negotiator. James Maidstone is the lead detective.

“Famous Last Words” is the story of a complicated crime and of a complicated marriage. It has multiple twists and the reveal is shocking. Mystery lovers don’t want to miss this one.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Hana Babic, 47, is a librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. Children call her The Sweater Lady.

But when St. Paul Detective David Claypool arrives with the news that her best friend, Amina Junuzovic, has been murdered, Hana knows that it is because of something from their mutual past. Amina was raising her grandson, Dylan Greene, 8, because his parents were killed in a boating accident.

The police know the women are from Bosnia. They don’t know that the two women were different people years ago. Thirty years before, Hana was Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia.

Serbian soldiers slaughtered Nura’s entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became a legend—the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.

Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price. Amina left Dylan in Hana’s care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora—and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.

Chapters of what happened in Bosnia alternate with chapters of the current time. It is fast-paced with well-drawn characters. The story is a sad but endearing tale, with a good ending. Hana is a character you won’t soon forget.

I rate it five out of five stars.

In Los Angeles, the body of Marissa French, 25, an aspiring actress, is found dumped near a hospital emergency room. She’s been drugged and murdered.

While there is a poor security video of the body dump, she wasn’t found for six minutes. Homicide Detective Milo Sturgis is in charge of the investigation. He calls in psychologist Alex Delaware.

Then they get a call from Detective Petra Conner, who was assigned to the homicide of Paul O’Brien, 43, who was shot. Marissa’s clothes and identification are in his apartment. If he killed her, then who killed him?

The police learn that the gun that was used to kill O’Brien was used in an earlier homicide. And another before that. It’s not long before more bodies begin piling up.

The characters are believable and the plot is complex and fast-paced. The reason behind the murders is unusual and as a psychologist, Alex figures out the motive.

This is the 40th in the series.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Ebony Freeman and her brother, Baz, are close. They live with their parents, Soh and Ed, in New England. When Ebby is 10, Baz, 15, is fatally shot in their home. A 19th century stoneware jar that has been in their family for six generations was also shattered by gunfire.

The Freemans are one of the few Black families in that town. The murder is never solved. Each family member copes with grief in their way. Eighteen years later, Ebby is to be married to Henry Pepper. But he calls off the wedding on the day of the ceremony.

Because of gossip about what happened, Ebby flees to France. Her friend Hannah Pitts owns the vacation house in France where Ebby will stay. Hannah asks Ebby to welcome tourists while she is working in London. Ebby is shocked to see the guests are Henry and another woman, Avery Williams.

The story then goes back to 1803. Kandia is one of the women who makes pottery. She is kidnapped into slavery. Edward "Willis" Freeman, Ebby’s great-great-grandfather, escaped slavery by stowing away on a ship from South Carolina to Massachusetts. He took the jar with him.

There are also flashbacks into the Freeman’s lives, which to me detracted from the story because of all the characters and the changes in timeline. But the novel is basically about trauma, racism and families.

Charmaine Wilkerson is also the author of “Black Cake,” published in 2022.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Bulwark is a walled city built to protect the people who survived a series of great cataclysms. Parallax, the artificial intelligence system that runs the city, rewards people. Over generations, an elite class, the Sainted, has evolved from the descendants of those who founded the stronghold.

Saint Enita Malovis feels that the end of her life is coming and that her decades of work as a bio-prosthetist must be protected. The lone practitioner of her art, Enita is determined to preserve her legacy and decides to create a physical being, called Nix, filled with her knowledge and experience. Nix refers to itself as “we” and “they.” Enita’s best friend is Saint Helen Vinter, who preserves books. The library is referred to as The Stacks.

Enita knows she received a kidney donation as a child. There are people designated as Body Martyrs, who donate organs to others. Any societal debt owed can be reduced or erased by donating organs. Recipient and Martyr are never allowed to meet. In the midst of her project, Saint Lucius Ohno is murdered and Parallax erases the event from its data.

Then Neren Tragoudi is injured in a building collapse. She is a Body Martyr. Her friends, Joni and Tomas, who are siblings, take her to Enita for help. Soon, Enita and Nix are drawn into the growing war that could change everything between Bulwark’s underclass and the programs that maintain order.

This novel is unusual. There are themes of utopia, revolution, artificial intelligence, body autonomy and friendship. There isn’t much action until the last quarter of the book. Much of it is speculation on the use of artificial intelligence.

Erika Swyler is also the author of “Light From Other Stars,” and “The Book of Speculation.”

I rate it four out of five stars.

Rusty Sabich is a retired judge. His fiancée, Bea Housley, has an adopted Black son, Aaron, 22, who is living with them in the rural Midwest because he is on probation for drug possession. One day Aaron disappears.

Aaron was recently laid off from his job with a party planning company. If he doesn’t return soon, he will be sent back to jail. Aaron eventually turns up with a story about a camping trip with his troubled girlfriend, Mae Potter, that ended in a fight and a long hitchhike home. Mae is the granddaughter of Mansy Potter, Rusty’s best friend. Her father, Harrison Potter, is a prosecuting attorney.

After two weeks, Mae still hasn’t returned home. After her car is found wrecked in the largest wilderness area in the state, her body is located. Mae had a lot of drugs in her possession. Then police arrive to arrest Aaron for murder.

Casper Sobonjian, Aaron’s defense attorney for the arraignment, tells Rusty and Bea that he’s never defended anyone for murder, so they need to find another lawyer. Rusty has kept his law license because he still works part time as an arbitrator and mediator. Bea begs Rusty to represent Aaron.

After he struggles to find another attorney, Rusty realizes that most people will presume Aaron is guilty and agrees to defend him. Hiram Jackdorp is the prosecuting attorney in this case.

The characters are outstanding. The plotting, especially the courtroom scenes, is amazing and the ending will come as a total surprise. “Presumed Guilty” is as good as Scott Turow’s first novel, “Presumed Innocent,” published in 1987. This is the third in the series, but it can be read as a stand alone.

I rate it five out of five stars.

It is soon after places started reopening after the pandemic. May Hanover, a law professor, lives with her partner, Josh Nelson. They are planning their wedding.

May and her best friends, Lauren and Kelsey, are going to the beach for a weekend. They have been friends since they were twelve. They haven’t been together in almost four years.

They call themselves The Canceled Crew. They think they’ve been cancelled: Lauren because of an affair, May because of a video of a confrontation on a subway platform and Kelsey Ellis because of her estranged husband’s murder. When they were camp counselors one year, Marnie Mann, another counselor, drowned.

This is heavily of the characters recounting past events. I didn’t like any of the four main characters and everything is blown out of proportion. The twists were minimal and the red herrings were obvious.

I rate it three out of five stars.

Dr. Layla Byrnes knows Nora, her unstable mother, will call her just before Christmas, although Layla has already told her that the plane tickets have been purchased. Her mother lives in a remote part of Tasmania.

Layla is an anesthesiologist who lives in Queensland. She has been suspended because she gave a patient a wrong medication. Her marriage is coming apart. She and her husband Gabe have two young children. Layla is also having an affair. Gabe wants her to work, but he still wants her to do everything at home.

Her mother tells her that there’s something she wants to tell her about Layla’s late father. Layla drops everything and goes to her childhood home.

It is slow-moving. I didn’t care for the characters. The plot tried to cover too many themes and became disjointed. Warning, there are sexual and abuse scenes.

I rate it three out of five stars.