“Characters, characters, characters” – Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike

Brad Taylor, author of the Pike Logan Thriller series, noted in a recent New York Times Book Review’s By the Book column: “Setting, pace and trajectory are important, but they’re irrelevant without the reader’s emotional investment, and that is driven by characters.” No doubt it is the character of Cormoran Strike appearing in the eponymous series of crime fiction novels by Robert Galbraith, set in contemporary London, that has kept me reading. Galbraith is the pen name of British author J.K. Rowling. Strike is a big lug of a guy with a prosthetic leg; he is a throwback to the down on his luck private eye depending for sustenance, mental and physical, upon whatever walks through the door. His backstory is complex enough—he’s a former military policeman and the illegitimate son of a rock and roll musician—and he has a capable side-kick name Robin. I just finished reading the first in the series, The Cuckoos Calling (2013), and I am already on to the next, The Silkworm (2014). The latest in the series, Troubled Blood, appeared in September 2020.

*Taylor’s most recent installment in his Pike Logan Thriller series, American Traitor, just appeared.

Setting, setting, setting

Having stated that characters are paramount, I need to add that setting is a factor in what I like to read and, especially as we sit here in winter of 2021, a bit of sun is always welcome. A library patron suggested David Baldacci’s Atlee Pine series and I started with Long Road to Mercy (2018), the first book in the series. Pine is an FBI agent “with special skills assigned to the remote wilds of the southwestern United States.” I like the main character, and I am drawn to the vivid southwestern setting. The crime that sets off the narrative takes place at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I cannot get enough of the Grand Canyon and its environs, so when the characters dine at the El Tovar hotel with its breathtaking view of the canyon, the armchair traveler in me is delighted. Daylight, the latest Atlee Pine, appeared in November 2020.

Speaking of setting, I just read If Looks Could Kill (2002), the first book in the Bailey Weggins series by Kate White. This first-person story is set in the publishing world of NYC. I used to work in this milieu, and so it was fun to be plunged into that world again. The details of editorial meetings and book parties are spot on—not surprising as Kate White is a former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. The most recent installment in this series is Such a Perfect Wife which appeared in 2019.

–K.E.

Where the Crawdads Sing, the bestselling novel by Delia Owens, was one of the most borrowed books at TOJ Library in 2019, but there must be many who missed it. Or for whom it is still on a TBR list.

The novel is set in North Carolina marsh country in the 1950s and 60s; it is structured as two related narratives which the reader expects are moving toward each other. The main story, which begins in 1952, is thoroughly engrossing as it follows a young girl, Kya, as she grows up mostly on her own in the marsh; the second, set in 1969, follows a criminal investigation. Kya’s coming-of-age story is completely absorbing, and so is the book’s deep evocation of place, its flora and fauna:  

“Ducking beneath the low-hanging limbs of giant trees, she churned slowly through thicket for more than a hundred yards, as easy turtles slid from water-logs. A floating mat of duckweed colored the water as green as the leafy ceiling, creating an emerald tunnel. Finally, the trees parted, and she glided into a place of wide sky and reaching grasses, and the sounds of cawing birds. The view a chick gets, she reckoned, when it finally breaks its shell.”

It is perhaps not surprising to learn that Owens is a zoologist, but it may be surprising to learn that she spent most of her adult life in Botswana and Zambia, rather than in North Carolina. She has written about her experiences studying wildlife in Africa in nonfiction works, including Cry of the Kalahari (1984). Crawdads is her first work of fiction. She has said of her novel, “It’s about trying to make it in a wild place.”

The Ickabog has arrived at TOJ Library. This is J. K. Rowling’s first children’s book since the last installment of Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). Born as a bedtime story for Rowling’s now-teenaged children, The Ickabog is a fairytale set in the kindgom of Cornucopia and features a creature called the Ickabog.

Fans of Jo Nesbo’s may want to listen to Jo Nesbo Talks About The Kingdom from The New York Times. Jo Nesbo is the popular Norwegian author of crime novels. Nesbo’s previous novels include The Bat, The Redbreast, The Snowman, Phantom, The Thirst, and Knife from his Harry Hole series of novels. His stand-alone works include The Son and The Kingdom which was published this year.

In a 2017 New York Times “By the Book interview,” Nesbo suggested that he reads somewhat randomly–that he doesn’t plan out what he will read next: “Except for research, I don’t plan my reading. I read whatever’s on top of the pile on the floor by my bed. How they got there in the first place is often hard to recall.” That’s my favorite way to read.

A few nonfiction titles came in this week, including The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest by Ed Caesar, and A Promised Land by Barack Obama.

The Moth and the Mountain depicts an Englishman’s quest to be the first person to climb Mount Everest. Obama’s presidential memoir A Promised Land is the first installment in a planned 2-volume series.