A man is out walking his dog on the beach in Sandhamn, in the Stockholm archipelago. It’s a beautiful summer morning, but then his dachshund comes upon the body of a man caught up in a fishing net at the shores edge and the storybook idyll is shattered. Thomas Andreasson is a detective in the serious crimes unit at Nacka, a municipality that is considered a suburb of Stockholm. He’s looking forward to his upcoming vacation, which he will spend on the island of Haro, […]
A world without happy endings
A solitary man is ambling down a country road in pre-WWII France. He hails a bus and boards. Not long afterwards, a woman asks to be let off. It’s market day and she is laden with baskets and has items tied to the top of the bus. On a whim he jumps off to help her with her cargo, and so begins this wonderfully paced and elegantly written novel. Jean, the man on the road, has recently been released from prison, after serving five years […]
Appearances are deceiving
This was a delightful little Maigret mystery. It’s March, just when the Inspector is just beginning to find Paris oppressive. His wife is off in Alsace, attending the delivery of her sister’s child, so when he receives a letter from an old colleague inviting him to the Dordogne, he happily accepts. That night on the train, he spends too much time in the dining car (naturally) and when he returns to his first class berth, he finds it occupied. He is found a place to […]
I see all my dreams come tumbling down I can’t be happy without you around
I picked this memoir up when I got Caitlin Moran’s hilarious and mortifying How to Build a Girl last fall, but then it got shuffled to the bottom of the towering pile(s) of Must Read Next books. I can’t even remember why I got this in the first place. I didn’t even know who Ms. Albertine was. Was I just cruising Amazon and buying Random Memoirs By Brassy British Chicks? Sigh. Thanks, Merlot! Befitting the music motif, this book is set up like an album, […]