An Entertaining, Who-Done-It Mystery: Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino.

Salvation of a Saint is a great mystery to read over a weekend.  I'd categorize it as a combination cozy mystery and police procedural.  Here is the puzzle:  A business man, Yoshitaka Mashiba, tells his wife that he is divorcing her because, although they have been married one year, she has not yet become pregnant.  A few days later Yoshitaka is found dead; his coffee had been laced with poison.  His wife has an alibi: she was hundreds of miles away, visiting her parents.  So who did it?  his girlfriend? a business associate? and how was the poisoning accomplished?

Tokyo police detective Kusanagi, his partner Utsumi, and a clever university professor named Manabu Yukawa struggle to solve what appears to be the perfect crime in this absorbing mystery by the popular Japanese author Keigo Higashino.

Reading Salvation of a Saint reminded me a bit of reading an Agatha Christie book. Like a Christie mystery, it is a relatively peaceful puzzler, where time is devoted to character, relationships, and motive. And based upon this book, I'll definitely check out Higashino's first English-language publication, The Devotion of Suspect X.

Highly Recommended Reading: "The Last Summer of the Camperdowns" by Elizabeth Kelly.

If sometime in the next few months you plan to be stretched out on a chair somewhere with a book, here is a title to consider:  The Last Summer of the Camperdowns by Elizabeth Kelly.  I greatly enjoyed this funny, scary, tense, and memorable novel.  

The novel takes place in the summer of 1972 on Cape Cod.  The protagonist is a 12-year-old girl, Riddle James Camperdown.  Riddle witnesses something dreadful and is terrorized into keeping what she saw a secret.  The secret and her fear reverberates, shaking loose other secrets, and changing Riddle and her parents forever.

Elizabeth Kelly's writing is fresh and energetic, and the plot structure is fantastic. Kelly creates incredible suspense and a long note of tension that is broken only at the very end of the book, when much of what we think we know gets turned onto its head.  At the very end, I had tears in my eyes and could only think one thing: Wow.

The Last Summer of the Camperdowns is a very good book and highly recommended reading.

   

The Current Reading List: "The Last Summer of the Camperdowns" and More.

Lake Monona Morning.

Despite a great many distractions and a lengthy to-do list, I'm managing to find time to finish a terrific new book, The Last Summer of the Camperdowns by Elizabeth Kelly.  I plan to write about it here shortly.  After Camperdowns, I have a stack of books to work down, including:

This Love is Not for Cowards:  Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juarez by Robert Andrew Powell,

Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino, and

The Elephant Keepers' Children by Peter Hoeg.

Given that President Obama is visiting Mexico this week, I think I'll start with This Love is Not for Cowards, which received good reviews when it was published last year.  In the book author Robert Andrew Powell writes about a season of soccer in Ciudad Juarez.  Ciudad Juarez is just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.  A snarl of murder and gang violence, Ciudad Jarez has been called the world's most dangerous city.  It should be an interesting read.   

Poetry Fans, Let's Check This Out: "The Best of the Best American Poetry".

Check out this article in which David Ulin of the L.A. Times reviews The Best of the Best American Poetry, a collection of the 100 best poems that appeared over the last 25-years in the Best American Poetry anthology series.

I love the series.  I'm buying this book!

Saturday is Perfect for Poetry.

 

It is Saturday, a good day to pull things together:  Grocery shop.  Do the laundry.  Take care of the car.

On Saturday, amends are made for weekday shortcuts:  A longer run for Fido at the dog park.  Ride your bike all the way around the lake.  Play with the kids.  Call mom.

On Saturday night we freshen up, unkink, wiggle our toes.

This kind of day, Saturday, is made for poetry.  It's a shot of fresh language directly into the brain.  Or a pleasantly familiar visit, like getting together with your old friend Shakespeare.  For example, a fun, short burst of poetry is found in Shakespeare's witches' chant from Macbeth.  It's great writing to read out loud.  Go ahead and try it; and give it a little punch, a little drama.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt, and toe of frog

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, -

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Did you smile after reading it aloud?  I do.

Unlike many other forms of writing, poems can have tremendous staying power.  For years I've carried in my wallet a poem called Fool's Errands by Kay Ryan that I'd read in the New Yorker.  It's a short poem with simple language, but perfectly captures and explains a joy that I've seen myself.  Here is the link.   Another poem I've hung onto after reading it in the New Yorker is by Michael Longley and called Cloudberries.   The title alone hooked me; I love the word 'cloudberries'

Something as fun, surprising, and engaging as poetry has to be good for you, right? Why not take a moment this Saturday to read, or write, some poetry.