2011 Reading List

• Faceless Killers – Henning Mankell
  

  Faceless Killers

  At once a gripping mystery in the classic detective tradition and an incisive commentary on contemporary society, Faceless Killers introduces Swedish Inspector Kurt Wallander, a cop whose personal life is in shambles. Tenacious and levelheaded in his sleuthing, Wallander has to deal with an eruption of anti-foreign sentiment as he searches for brutal killers.

• The Dogs of Riga – Henning Mankell
  

  The Dogs of Riga

  Sweden, winter, 1991. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off. A few days later a life raft is washed up on a beach. In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead. The dead men were criminals, victims of what seems to have been a gangland hit. But what appears to be an open-and-shut case soon takes on a far more sinister aspect. Wallander travels across the Baltic Sea, to Riga in Latvia, where he is plunged into a frozen, alien world of police surveillance, scarcely veiled threats, and lies.

• Frost at Christmas – R.D. Wingfield
  

  Frost at Christmas

  Ten days to Christmas and Tracey Uphill, aged eight, hasn’t come home from Sunday school. Her mother, a young prostitute, is desperate. Enter Detective Inspector Jack Frost, sloppy, scruffy and insubordinate. To help him investigate the case of the missing child, Frost has been assigned a new sidekick, the Chief Constable’s nephew. Fresh to provincial Denton in an over smart suit, Detective Clive Barnard is an easy target for Frost’s withering satire.

• A Touch of Frost – R.D. Wingfield
  

  A Touch of Frost

  The sleepy English town of Denton has never known a crime wave like this–a robbery at a notorious strip joint, a hit-and-run whose chief suspect is the pampered son of a local MP, the kidnapping of a wealthy businessman’s daughter and a series of violent rapes. Detective Jack Frost strives to solve his caseload with typical aplomb.

• Sellevision- Augusten Burroughs
  

  Sellevision

  Darkly funny and gleefully mean-spirited, Sellevision explores greed, obsession and third tier celebrity, in the world of a fictional home shopping network.Welcome to the troubled world of Sellevision, America’s premier retail broadcasting network. When Max Andrews, the much-loved and handsome (lonely and gay) host of “Slumber Sunday Sundown” accidentally exposes himself in front of sixty million kids and their parents during a “Toys for Tots” segment, Sellevision faces its first big scandal. Many more scandals, in some expected and non expected ways… it’s just his debut novel. It’s good quick read but not wow.

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows
  

  Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society

  Easy, fun, humorous with some sadness. Enjoyed the narratives in letters and telegrams. Beautiful scenes in the island of Guernsey in the aftermath of WWII, one of my favorite books this year.

• Gone Baby Gone – Dennis Lehane
  

  Gone Baby Gone

  Who kidnapped Amanda McCready is it the mob, the bad mother, or someone else? I never watched the movie. I really enjoyed the book. It rises some ethical questions and moral ones. Connects the past with the present. A real page turner.

• The Miernik Dossier – Charles McCarry
  

  The Miernik Dossier

Riveting and imaginative tale in which a small group of international agents embark on a car trip in a Cadillac, from Switzerland to the Sudan.

Related as a collection of dossier notes written by the five characters, the novel reveals a complicated web in which each spins his or her own deception: each is a spider, and each is a spy…and the Miernik Dossier is a thorough-going masterpiece.

 

• Jar City – Arnaldur Indridason
  

  jar city

  One of the best thrillers I have read this summer. It takes place in Iceland, it is gloomy, realistic. The author uses flashbacks to connect some elements of the past with the present. It took me 2 days to finish this book. It is a real treat.