Lackberg and Leon in 2020: A Scandicrime and Venetian Mystery Challenge

This year (2020) we are going to read and compare and contrast the books of Camilla Lackberg, a Sweedish author, with those of Donna Leon, an American ex-patriot who lives in Venice and writes about La Serenissima. There are a total of 12 Patrik Hedstrom/Ericka Falck books published in the U. S. As a group, we have 4 more titles in this series to read and we will be caught up with Lackberg, bringing the series up-to-date with current publication. For this reason, we will be reading one Lackberg novel every quarter this year.

In total there are 28 currently published Guido Brunetti novels with novel number 29 coming out in 2020. We will be reading two of the Brunetti novels each quarter. This will bring us to number 21 in the current published list of Brunetti books.

This is the schedule for the year. (2020)

January 2020 Blood From a Stone by Donna Leon
February 2020 Through a Glass Darkly by Donna Leon
March 2020 Lost Boy by Camilla Lackberg
April 2020 Suffer the Little Children by Donna Leon
May 2020 Girl of His Dreams by Donna Leon
June 2020 Buried Angels (a.k.a. Angel Maker's Wife) by Camilla Lackberg
July 2020 About Face by Donna Leon
August 2020 A Question of Belief by Donna Leon
September 2020 Ice Child by Camilla Lackberg
October 2020 Drawing Conclusions by Donna Leon
November 2020 Beastly Things by Donna Leon
December 2020 Girl in the Woods by Camilla Lackberg

This schedule would bring the current publications of the Lackberg books to an end. Because Donna Leon continues to publish one Guido Brunetti book per year there would still be 8 titles left in that series for 2021.

Readers do not have to read every book or make comments about every book. We like lurkers and hope that even if you don't post you will enjoy reading the books. However, please make comments whenever you feel like doing so.

This thread is part of the 75 Books Challenge group.

Feel free to put these links on your threads and let people know what we are doing this year. I look forward to hearing your comments regarding the books and characters throughout the year.

Our first book for 2020 will be Blood From a Stone by Donna Leon so again this month we will be reading about Venice and the cultural and social problems to be found in that ancient city of Tourists. According to Leon's Wikipedia page "Shortly before Christmas, a man is killed in Venice's Campo Santo Stefano. An illegal immigrant, presumably from Senegal, he is one of the vu' cumprà who sell fake fashion accessories while trying to stay ahead of the law. At first, the crime seems like a simple clash between rival vendors, but as Commissario Guido Brunetti probes more deeply, he begins to suspect that this murder was the work of a professional and there was more to the victim's story than met the eye. And why does his boss want him off the case?"

I have not started reading the book, but will start shortly.

In case your are interested here is the link to a short article about the December Aqua Alta with a picture.

https://www.euronews.com/2019/12/21/venice-expects-130cm-acqua-alta-peak

I've added this thread to the group wiki. Have fun!

I finished Blood from a Stone yesterday. It was not my favorite book in this series. I felt like there were still some loose ends at the end of the book. More so than usual, anyway.

>5 cbl_tn:
Oh! Now my curiosity is piqued. I need to get to this one soon.

>4 drneutron:
Thanks. I forgot to notify you that I had added the new thread. I did post the link on the 2019 thread, so I hope that others will make their way here soon.

I'm trying to catch up by reading Doctored Evidence this month. I'll get to the January read next month. I've recently read the February one!

I have reserved Blood from a stone at the library, I hope to get it soon.

Ah, that's my next book in the series. I've put in on hold at the library.

I just requested teh first book for teh year as a book on CDs from the library - it is shown as on the shelf, so I should get it soon.

I had been borrowing the books from the library, but was finding that I had to put advance holds on them. In September/October, many of the ebooks were on sale through Amazon, so I now own the majority of the books which include the books we are going to read this year. I'm hoping to pick up the rest of the series, because I may want to reread, but I suspect it will be some time before the more recent ones go on sale.

I'll have to revise my planned reading a little - but it should be no problem - so I'm in for this year! Hopefully, I can lurk less and post more.

>3 benitastrnad: Thanks for sharing the aqua alta pictures, Benita. I suppose if you lived in Venice, you would get used to all the water, but I can't really imagine what it would be like.

I am glad to see a good number of participants for the coming year. I would like to say that it is perfectly OK to lurk on this thread. This tends to be a quiet thread with some comments from time-to-time. I will warn all of you that this is not one of those threads where you have to check it everyday or it gets out-of-control. This is much easier on all of us, with fewer comments. Last year we only had two threads the whole year and I suspect that this year will be much of the same - unless something controversial happens in our novels to provoke more posting. And that would be OK as well.

One of the things I have noticed about this mystery thread - which has been going on for about four years now - is that my antennae about Italy and Venice is now out. Whenever I hear anything about Italy and or Venice on the radio, TV, or elsewhere, I am closely attuned. I think that reading about a place makes it seem as if I have some connection to that place. The flooding of late last year was one of those cases. I knew what they were talking about on the news thanks to these books! I knew about who entirely possible it was that the new Sea Wall didn't work due to the corruption that was probably inherent in the construction of it. I knew about the Aqua Alta and about the raised sidewalks that people use. I knew about the knee high boots that Venetians use to walk around their city, and about how all that water is affecting the buildings. All of this due to information I picked up in a fictional mystery series.

This Christmas I was in the Munich train station waiting for a friend, and while waiting I met an American couple. They were working for an American company and were based in Uppsala, Sweden. They were traveling through the southern part of Germany taking in the Christmas Markets. We started talking about living in Sweden and the life style found in that country. Many of the things they talked about were things I knew about due to reading the Lackberg novels. It gave me a sense of connection to the place.

I also have to say that reading the Carofiglio novels two years ago inspired me to think seriously about traveling through the southern Adriatic portion of Italy. This area is not a usual American tourist haunt, but through the investigation I have done, I have discovered that the scenery there is amazing and the beaches and seaside life as interesting for vacationing as anything to be found in many of the Caribbean Islands. Even Rick Steves has a trip itinerary for that part of Italy and says that the ancient Greek and Roman ruins there are as good as anything to be found in and around Rome.

Mysteries are a good way to get to know the world.

It looks like the only library copy of Blood from a stone in our province is missing, or vanished. So I have to skip this years first read :-(

I just finished Blood From a Stone which was available after a short wait from my library. I picked it up yesterday and indulged myself in its complications until about 20 minutes ago. Why Brunetti doesn't go mad as he is thwarted by his own Questura and the corruption of Italy in general, I don't know.

This episode is interesting for some of the unexpected twists (as well as the usual ones). It is topical in its discussions of race and class, of course, and the reader should bear in mind the implications of its title. As usual, Brunetti's efforts are frustrated, but there is some light in the end. I found it quite compelling.

>1 benitastrnad: The touchstone is off on these:
March 2020 Lost Boy by Camilla Lackberg
December 2020 Girl in the Woods by Camilla Lackberg

I thought I read Blood from a Stone but no, I was confused by the African immigrants in The Snack Thief and having read earlier Commissario Brunetti mysteries. I have read Blood from Stone which might have complicated matters.

>16 quondame: Interesting about the touchstones. The March title is only listed in LT in Swedish, so maybe we will have to add it.

I finished the audiobook of Blood From a Stone. I think I like these a audiobooks- The ones I have listened to have good narration- even volume, so good for car listening. The story flows well and I rarely have to back track because I got distracted. I liked this book- hard to define why- but watching Guido struggle with ethics in the midst of such corruption is interesting.

I was fortunate enough to read the ARC of Leon's 29th Trace Elements and now want to read others I have on my bookshelf, some included on your list. I'll be reading Blood from a Stone in February and otherwise, basically lurk.
Thanks for the heads up, Lori.

>19 Carmenere: Well, at least 2 of us will be on Blood from a Stone. Happy you are joining us.

I finished Blood From A Stone yesterday while sitting around airports waiting. I really liked this entry in the series. It has a very open ending, and the ambiguity at the end just brings home the problems that the world is having regarding immigration. There are no easy answers. Another, big part of this novel, is Guido's fight with his family and with his fellow employees in trying to see justice done. Then there is the big concern about his fellow employees that he has endangered by his stubborn instance on the pursuit of justice - or at least that is the why he sees it.

I think that anybody reading this novel will be drawn into the world of Guido, Italy, and Venice.

It is almost time for us to start a new book. The next book on our list is Through a Glass, Darkly. It is book 15 in the series and it was first published in 2006. Here is the Amazon blurb for this book.

On a luminous spring day in Venice, Commissario Brunetti and his assistant play hooky from work to help a friend, Marco Ribetti, arrested during an environmental protest. They secure his release, only to be faced by the fury of the man’s father-in-law, Giovanni De Cal, a cantankerous glass factory owner who has been heard in the bars of Murano making violent threats about Ribetti.

Brunetti’s curiosity is piqued, and he finds himself drawn to Murano to investigate. Is De Cal the type of man to carry out his threats? Then one morning the body of De Cal’s night watchman is found. Over long lunches, on secret boat rides, in quiet bars, and down narrow streets, Brunetti searches for the killer . . .

But I was more intrigued by the Booklist review of this title. It made me go "Umhhhh?"

Leon's Guido Brunetti novels have been justly celebrated for their nuanced portrayal of Venice and their character-driven emphasis on human relationships. Both of those attributes are displayed nicely in her latest effort, the fifteenth in this long-running and much-loved series. When police commissario Brunetti and his assistant, Vianello, help out one of Vianello's friends, who has been arrested in an environmental protest, they find themselves embroiled in a family feud involving the friend's wife and her father, the owner of a centuries-old glass factory on the nearby island of Murano. No actual crime takes place until the novel is nearly half over, and even then, the death of a night watchman at the glass factory appears accidental. More than ever in this series, the emphasis here is not on mystery--the bad guy is obvious from the beginning--but on ambience and character. Leon delves deeply into the fascinating world of Murano glassmakers, and as always, she lingers lovingly over Brunetti's family life and the commissario's abiding empathy with everyone he encounters. Satisfying as always, but the lack of an engaging mystery plot leaves a bit of a hole this time.

Now I have to read the book, and soon, just to see if the reviewer is right. My public library has a copy of this title. The catalog says that it is not checked out, so I will heading there tonight to pick up the book.

>22 benitastrnad: An excerpt from my own review of it: "I probably learned more about pollutants from glass factories than I ever cared to learn." Still I gave it 3 stars. Not my favorite in the series.

For some of you who have been with this group since we started it you might remember that we read the books of Gianrico Carofiglio whose hero was also need Guido. There is a new book that was published in September 2019 by him that was reviewed positively by Publisher's Weekly. Here is the review and the pertinent information about the book.

The Cold Summer
Gianrico Carofiglio, trans. from the Italian by Howard Curtis. Bitter Lemon, $14.95 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-912242-03-0

In the summer of 1992, two real-life anti-Mafia prosecutors and their companions were assassinated in a pair of car bombings by the Sicilian Mafia, as Carofiglio (The Silence of the Wave) notes in a brief introduction to this fine police procedural. To the alarm of Marshal Pietro Fenoglio, a Carabinieri officer based in Bari, the Mafia wars have spread that same year from Sicily to Italy’s Puglia region. In particular, Fenoglio investigates the case of Damiano Grimaldi, a son of Nicola Grimaldi, the head of one of the warring factions, who was kidnapped on his way to school. Despite his parents paying a ransom, the boy’s body is discovered three days later down a well. Nicola vows revenge on his enemy Vito Lopez, who immediately surrenders to the police. Lopez is debriefed, confessing to a whole range of crimes, including murder, but swears that he didn’t take the child. In a number of long but fascinating interrogation scenes, Fenoglio gets closer to the truth. This standalone is sure to win Carofiglio, a former prosecutor who specialized in organized crime, a wider U.S. audience. (Sept.)

I finished Through a Glass, Darkly a couple of days ago. I was more satisfied with the ending of the book than I have been with most of the books up to this point in the series. Most of the books have ended with Brunetti's disappointment that the closing of his case won't lead to justice. This one ends with an elated Brunetti who has just discovered evidence that breaks the prime suspect's alibi.

Oh, I haven't read the Leon of the month yet. In fact, I think I had to let the library reclaim the ebook because of other priorities. Hm. I've got a pretty heavy reading schedule through March 3, but I'll see what I can bookhorn in.

>26 ffortsa:
It's OK to read it whenever you get a chance to do so. I am only half done with this title, but should finish it this weekend.

Finished the audiobook of Through a Glass Darkly. I think this was one of the best so far. Maybe for the same reason as cbl_tn laid out in post 25.

While I enjoyed the book when I read it in 2016, I made this comment that provides the main reason I rated it lower than some of you. I probably learned more about pollutants from glass factories than I ever cared to learn.

I finished the book today and like the rest of you I enjoyed it. I am not sure that this is the best one in the series, because there are lots of books still to go, but it was one of the few in which case Guido did not end up frustration. The ending also provided some insights as to Patta's reasoning and thinking and I found that interesting. He can't continue to be just a buffoon if the series is going to maintain any credibility.

I also went to the library and checked out The Lost Boy by Camilla Lackberg. This is our book for March. Interesting that the title doesn't show up in the touchstone lists under the English title. I only found it in the Sweedish.

It is now March and time to shift our reading focus from Leon to Lackberg. Lost Boy by Camilla Lackberg the book on tap for March. I have the book, but I have not started it yet. I have been immersed in my nonfiction reading for the last week and it has totally grabbed my attention. Lost Boy is a big one - right at 500 pages. That right there is a contrast between the two authors. I have not seen the length of the Brunetti series get longer with each addition to the series, but it seems that the Lackberg books are getting about 25 pages longer each time.

>32 benitastrnad: Oh boy. I'm finishing up a chunkster I started last month - Possession is 500+ pages.

I have just started Lost Boy on audio cd from the library. 11 discs

>32 benitastrnad: I loved Possession. It is one of my all time favorites!

>34 Helenoel: 11 CD's doesn't sound so bad. Maybe the library book has thick pages because the hardcopy that is sitting next to my bed seems huge!

The size of the two most recent novels on our list sitting on top of each other on my bedside table last week, got me to thinking about the contrast between the lengths of the two novels. (I had my copy of Through a Glass, Darkly on the bedside table because I hadn't taken it back to the library (different library from where I got Lost Boy.) This is now book 15 in the Brunetti series and the length of the books - number of pages - hasn't varied much in the three years we have been reading through them. I wonder if this consistency is a conscious effort on the part of the author, the editor, and the publisher. Does size matter?

Traditionally, mysteries in series were between 250 - 300 pages with many of the classic mystery series coming in at less than that - around 200 pages. That has changed in the last ten years and I wonder why? I think that the lack of editing has been one factor. In the past, publishers employed a large number of editors to work with the authors. These editors functioned as readers who acted like English teachers. They got out their red pencils and marked, marked, marked. The authors would revise and return the manuscripts. This process could go on for months, or a couple of years, until the manuscript was honed and sleek with crisp story lines, and a snappy pace. I remember reading in a book of letters from Eudora Welty to her editor William Maxwell how agonizing the process was. Add to that the fact that Welty lived in Jackson, Mississippi, and she typed and mailed her manuscripts to New York City. She wrote about her feelings about his suggested changes and why or why not she was in favor of them.

As publishers were bought out by "media companies" the lay-offs began. Editors disappeared. This is when books got longer. I have been a children's and young adult librarian for over 30 years and in that time I have seen the length of a standard children's novel grow from 150 pages to 300 pages. Young Adult novels have seen the same growth in pages. I think it is intimidating and I think that publishers need to get off their rear ends and start editing books again. This would improve the quality of books. And don't even get me started on fact checking.

I think this is one of the main differences between Donna Leon and Camilla Lackberg. The Leon books seem tighter and move at a better pace. Lackberg's books get bogged down in details about home life and family that most of the time don't seem to have a bearing on the mystery that is the heart of the book. For instance, Erica's sister. She murdered her husband, and there were pages devoted to that side story, but so far in the series, this murder has not had anything to do with the other stories. Why was so much space in the books devoted to this episode?

I also wonder if there isn't a cultural difference at play in these two series. Leon is American. Lackberg is Swedish. Sweden and the US are two different places with two different expectations in literature. The question of pacing in a mystery novel may be part of that difference. A Swedish audience might like more homey details in their books and like to lead down the garden path wandering around among the plants. I like the mysteries that Lackberg is writing, but I have to admit that I get a bit frustrated with the wandering in the novels. Even though I think that Leon's books are a bit formulaic, I am finding that I enjoy reading them better. I also admit that there is a certain satisfaction in starting and then finishing a book in a weeks time. I like that sense of accomplishment.

I know of several LT members who like Big Books and make a practice of reading only books above 750 pages in length. They like the idea of reading something for a long time. Personally, size does matter to me. I don't shy away from a big book, but if it doesn't meet my expectations for time invested in it, I end up disappointed.

>36 benitastrnad: I don't blame lack of editing, I suffer more from over-edited books ;-)
I like Donna Leons books, but if I had to make a choice I would prefer the Läckberg.
That could be a cultural thing, or just taste.
I completely agree with you on fact checking, wrong facts are very irritating.

My favorite mystery series are:
Henning Mankell - Wallander
Arnaldur Indriðason - Elendur
Fred Vargas - Adamsberg
Sjöwall & Walöö - Martin Beck
Peter Robinson - DCI Banks

It is Spring Break at the university and that along with advent of this panicdemic caused me to find myself with more reading time over the weekend so I finished reading Lost Boy today and enjoyed it. I do think it had a tendency to wander and “get lost in the weeds” so to speak with to many different plot elements, but it was a good story.

One of the things that I unexpectedly found myself really liking about this book was the picture of Swedish life that it gave me. I am also beginning to find myself getting to know all of the people who work at the police station better and I like that. I think that in that way Lackberg compares well with Leon, who has done the same thing with the people in the police station in Venice.

I will wait about a week before I post more specific things about this book to give others the chance to finish.

>37 FAMeulstee:
Thanks for that post. I was getting really perturbed with Lackberg early on in this book because I felt that there were too many different story elements in this book and it needed to be cleaned up. Your post made me stop and think about what the author might have been trying to accomplish with this novel. That gave me the patience to finish reading the book. Your post also made me stop and think that other people like these books so why might that be the case? What do they see in them that I am missing? Your post made me stop and look at the novel in a different way. Thanks for posting it and defending the novels of Lackberg. They are good. Just different than the Leon books.

I also enjoyed Lost Boy - on audioCDs. I had been getting a bit tired of all the themes of abused children in this series, so this was at least a little different (at least not a major character).

On a different note, have you seen the news that thE totAl shutdown in Italy has led to water quality improvements in the Venetian canals? You can see through the water, there are fish, swans and dolphins!. Interesting in light of the environmental themes in the Leon books. The news caught me attention more for having read about the city.

>40 Helenoel: On a different note, have you seen the news that thE totAl shutdown in Italy has led to water quality improvements in the Venetian canals? You can see through the water, there are fish, swans and dolphins!

I saw a couple of stories on that. The photos are gorgeous! The last story I saw said the dolphin photo may be from Sardinia and not Venice, though.

> 41. I saw that some stores may be over optimistic, but the idea is good...

I haven't gotten my hands on the Leon book yet, mainly because the libraries are closed, but I ordered a copy through paperbackswap yesterday and it's already been mailed. I do like the length of these books, but I've read longer mysteries, and as long as the story holds together, I don't mind. And I agree that mystery stories, even the best of them, used to be shorter - the Martin Beck stories never fattened up, for instance.

I will catch up in due course.

Tomorrow we move back to reading about Guido. The book for April is Suffer the Little Children. I hope that most of you have a copy from some source or other. I hope to start reading this book tonight and am looking forward to it.

Sorry, I have to skip this month. The library is closed and sadly the Donna Leon books are not available at the e-library. I hope to catch up when the library opens again. Don't know yet when that will be...

>45 FAMeulstee:
I figured that most of us will have this same problem. Tuscaloosa libraries will be closed until April 21 and now with then latest announcement I suspect it will be April 30 before they reopen. Luckily for me I have a copy of this one on my book shelves.

Only one month behind! I managed to get Through a Glass, Darkly from PaperbackSwap.

I really enjoyed this entry into the Brunetti series. I don't recall one I enjoyed more, as Brunetti tries to help a friend of Vianetto's and gets involved in a pair of Murano glassmakers way before anyone dies. I felt could see the glassmakers at their furnaces, manipulating the hot glass into the beautiful works of art we still associate with that area, as well as the pollution that results from that work. Leon lets us see the tight-knit community of craftsmen, and the beauty of spring in Venice.

>45 FAMeulstee:
If you will PM me your address I will mail you the book. I finished it this morning.

>48 benitastrnad: Thank you, Benita, for this very sweet gesture. I decline, as I rarely read books in English. I will wait until the library re-opens to get the Dutch translation. Luckely I can get the Läckberg books at the e-library.

Oh my gosh! I didn't realize that you were reading them in Dutch? Does that mean you live in the Netherlands? I am not sure I knew that.

>50 benitastrnad: You can't know everything, Benita ;-)
Yes, I live in Lelystad, the Netherlands.

>51 FAMeulstee:
How cool is that! We have an international group. I find that one of the amazing things about Librarything. I guess it is true that books connect us all - that's why we are in Librarything.

It is also interesting to me that as common as libraries are in this country, and as easy as it is to get books through services like Inter-Library Loan programs we still have problems getting access to the books that we want when we need them. The library at the University of Alabama doesn't have most "trade books." Trade books are books that are produced for marketing to the public. We have academic books, so the majority of the collection is in nonfiction works. The local public library here in Tuscaloosa is small given the population of the city - 170,000. That means that they have to regularly purge the collection in order to provide enough space for new titles to come in. I suspect that is the reason why so many of the earlier titles for both Lackberg and Leon were titles I had to request through ILL.

I had the first two Lackberg titles on my shelves and the public library has had the later titles in the series. It is the opposite with the Leon titles. Since 2007 I have been picking up the ARC's (advanced reader's copies) at the ALA (American Library Association) conferences, so I have a good many of these titles on my shelves.

I have noticed that Lackberg isn't publishing as many of the Hedstrom/Falck books as she has in the past. Here in the US a new title came out in 2018 but there has been none since. Our public library does not have this new one, so when we get ready to read it I will have to go to ILL once again.

How does ILL work in the Netherlands? For that matter - do you have public libraries in The Netherlands, or are they subscription libraries like what is common in the UK?

>52 benitastrnad: The libraries are free for anyone until the age of 18. The amount you have to pay to be a member of the library above that age depends on where you live. Most libraries are municipal and the local council decides about the finances of the local library. In Lelystad we were lucky, as they started building our new library in 2007 and it opened in 2009. Any later the plans would have been cancelled because of the financial crisis.

Inter library loans also depend on where you live. Most libraries ask a small fee for ILL within the same province, at some others it is free. Loans outside the province cost more. At my local library it is € 0,20 for loans withing the province (Flevoland) and € 4,50 nationwide. I mainly use provincial service, as the for costs for nationwide service most books can be obtained secondhand.

My local library culls a lot, the largest library in the province is in Almere and they keep most books in storage. The problem is that all cities in Flevoland are very new cities, the first libraries were founded in the 1970s.

Most of the small cities within Los Angeles county allow no residents to check out books at no charge, but a few years back Santa Monica, which has my favorite library, had a $25 fee for non-residents. But that only lasted for a couple of years. Los Angeles has both city and county library systems which are quite good, but the branches are small and give most of the floor space to non-book services.

>53 FAMeulstee:
That's interesting. Here it is free to get a library card if you live in the county. It you are outside the county then you have to pay a fee each year.

I work at the University Library and this library is free only to currently registered faculty, staff, and students, and to university retirees. The ILL services at the university are free as well. The Tuscaloosa public library has free ILL's. Back home in Kansas, ILL is only free from the regional library. If you have to go statewide, then they charge.

I agree with you that often just purchasing a used book is cheaper.

>54 quondame:
I have been in the Santa Monica library. The one at the bottom of the hill closest to the park that was on 4th street. Is that the library you use?

>56 benitastrnad: I go to the Main one, rebuilt in 2005, between 6th and 7th in downtown SM, just north of SM Blvd.
The freeway just north of me gets me there in less than 15 min. I have been to other branches, including the tiny Carnegie one for 3D printing class, but not the Montana Branch.

I had a cousin who lived on 4th street since 1952. I went to the corner just east of his house and walked straight down the hill to the library. It was very small, but lovely place. My cousin has since moved to an assisted living facility in Duarte. His house was two houses east of that little park on 4th street. It was pink stucco. I understand that the house has been torn down and a new one built in its place. You cold see the ocean from the upstairs bedroom windows.

>58 benitastrnad: This is our Ocean Park, Carnegie library:



I lived on 5th street for a few years in the 1970s, finally leaving SM to get a condo several blocks to east of SM. I'm about 3 miles away now.

That is a lovely library. The library I went to was more modern in style and built into the side of a hill. But gosh - I love libraries. And to think that Andrew Carnegie built thousands of libraries all across the country. Amazing.

In all the excitement about libraries in Santa Monica, CA and international members of our group, I forgot to tell you guys that I finished reading Suffer the Little Children and found it to be a bit different for Leon. I hope that all of you are reading what you can in it over the weekend, because this will be an interesting title to discuss.

>39 benitastrnad: I too felt frustrated by the scattered story threads in The Lost Boy, but persevered to the end. I felt like I was partly ahead of the story most of the way, although I didn't quite anticipate the ending. And of course, there are some dangling threads at the end of the book. Maybe she ties them up in a future one.

And I didn't quite realize how far into the series this particular title was. I'll have to catch up later on.

I read Amarcord - Marcella Remembers for the Nonfiction Challenge for April. This memoir was by the great Italian cook and teacher Marcella Hazan. She had famous cooking schools in Bologna and in Venice. I found this passage concerning Donna Leon in the book and just have to share it with you.

"We also had very good ties at home, where I would make dinner for one friend or forty. The one might have ben Padre Pio, an unwavering devotee of my cooking, or a neighbor, Donna Leon, an English teacher at the Air Force base in Aviano who would become known as a writer of mysteries. It was moreover a fortunate time for eating out. There were good restaurants everywhere in Venice. It proved to be the last happy period for my legs, which were still strong and agile enough to climb the bridges and take me wherever in the city Victor chose to go, either to try a new restaurant or return to a favorite. Whenever we are in Venice again, it is a comforting reminder of a precious and vigorous period of our lives to sit at the corner table by the window at Fiaschetteria Toscana, or in one of Ivo's banquettes, and find that we can still eat as well as we did so many years ago." page 258

Yes. Donna Leon is known as a writer of mysteries and I can't help but think that perhaps Brunetti's love of food of Venice might have been shaped by Leon's friendship with Hazan.

Connections?

We are almost to the end of the month and it will soon be time to start our next Brunetti book. Up next will be Girl of His Dreams. Fortunately for me, I happen to have this one on my shelves, so I don't have to worry about getting into the library, or purchasing a copy and having it delivered. I did check on Alibris and there are used copies available for under $2.00. I use this service frequently and have found it to be reliable.

I am in, the Donna Leon books are now available at the e-library :-)
I found both Suffer the Little Children and Girl of His Dreams today.

>65 FAMeulstee: That's great news!

>65 FAMeulstee: Excellent! I read The Girl of His Dreams in 2014 and don't want to re-read it, so I'm sitting out for May, but I'll follow along.

I have been stuck on reading Deon Meyer thrillers the past two weeks and I have one more to go. These were all books on my shelf, so I will finish that one and then start on Girl of His Dreams. Another title from off my shelves.

I know that many people here on LT have had a hard time reading during this time, but for me - I have been buzzing through the books!

>66 cbl_tn: I hope to finish Suffer the Little Children in a few days, Cariie, so I can make it a shared TIOLI read.

>67 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori, they recently added a lot of e-books, as most libraries are closed now.

It is now May 2 and I will be starting to read Girl of His Dreams this next week. Here in Alabama the quarantine has been lifted - partially. We are now under "Safer-At-Home" orders. I am not sure what that means for me as I still can't report for work and probably won't until the end of May. The University notified us on Thursday that starting with our May paycheck they will no longer be matching our 403b contributions. That will be in effect until at least the end of the fiscal year. Our fiscal year ends on September 30. Our university system is losing $70 million per month due to Covid-19 restrictions and we won't be open for summer school. Projected enrollments for the Fall 2020 semester are down as well. On the upside - I have 25 months until retirement! My stay-at-home time has been great practice for retirement. I have loved it!

Did you guys who got a late start on Suffer the Little Children like the book?

I don't think I ever commented here when I finished the book. Suffer the Little Children was not one of my favorites in the series. As usual for the series, justice doesn't seem to have been served. Unusually, Brunetti doesn't even have solace in truth even if it doesn't lead to justice. And for a book in which Brunetti thinks so much about his love for his children, it's striking that they only appear in one brief dinner scene.

>71 cbl_tn:
I have noticed that in several of the books. The impression is that Brunetti is a real family man, but his "family" doesn't appear in many places in the books. Paola does but the kids don't. Neither does his brother. I sometimes think that we get a better picture of his reading habits than we do of his family. That is very different than what we see in the Lackberg books.

Our other authorCamila Läckberg has a new title coming out on July 7, 2020. It is Golden Cage and it is the first in a new series. It got a starred review in "Publisher's Weekly." I will try to find that review and post it here.

I finally got to and finished Blood from a Stone as the last minutes of April ticked away. For my first full length read this month I into The Ice Princess. The Leon was a paperback that has settled in with me since mid-March when the libraries closed, and the Läckberg was the only one I could find in English as the local libraries only carried the others in Spanish. Now, one has several available as e-books, probably due to the current crisis.

I got a really good start on Girl of His Dreams yesterday and the first thing I noticed was the dust jacket. It is another Venetian photograph but it isn ORANGE! Very orange.

I am doing some research on paratext. Paratext is defined as "a concept in literary interpretation. The main text of published authors (e.g. the story, non-fiction description, poems, etc.) is often surrounded by other material supplied by the authors, editors, printers, and publishers, which is known as the paratext. These added elements form a frame for the main text, and can change the reception of a text or its interpretation by the public. Paratext is most often associated with books, as they typically include a cover (with associated cover art), title, front matter (dedication, opening information, foreword), back matter (endpapers, colophon) footnotes, and many other materials not crafted by the author. Other editorial decisions can also fall into the category of paratext, such as the formatting or typography." This is from Wikipedia.

The idea of paratext is that it contributes to how a reader understands a book. It enhances the reading experience - or detracts from it. It is the idea that nothing is by chance when a reader enters a book. We are bringing lots of knowledge with us when we read words, or see illustrations on a page.

Given that I am immersed in the concept of paratext I started looking at the object - the book. I have a hardcover copy of the title. I got it at the ALA Summer Conference in Anaheim, California in the summer of 2008. Like I do for books that have a dust jacket, I remove the dust jacket while I am reading it, and low and behold - the boards of the book underneath is covered in orange paper. Bright orange. (About the color of Donald Trumps hair when he first started campaigning for President, or when he was married to Marla Maples.) I noticed the color because it is unusual for book boards. Most of them are very neutral in color with maybe a bright colored binding tape, but this book has orange binding tape that exactly matches the color of the boards. Very unusual.

I was turned on to the idea of paratext about a year ago when I read a book titled Riding With Rilke by Ted Bishop. Bishop is a university professor and his speciality is modern English novels. He rode a Ducati motorcycle from Edmonton, Alberta to Austin, Texas to do research at the archives there. While he as there he got to examine a first edition of James Joyce's novel Ulysses that was published by the woman who owned the book shop Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, France. Bishop describes how the publisher and the author agonized over getting the exact shade of turquoise for the binding. It was important to Joyce that the book be bound in a very precise shade of "Aegean Blue."

I am sure that there is a reason why Girl of His Dreams is bound in this precise shade of orange. I am convinced there is a reason for the color of the binding because it is quite garish. It is uncommon and therefore, made to be noticed. I am just not sure why at this point. I am hoping that my continued reading will uncover the reason.

I thought I'd get a head start on acquiring a copy of next month's read, Buried Angels, and it doesn't appear to be widely available. It's not at either of my public libraries, all the editions I see are UK editions but it's not for sale from Book Depository, and the Kindle edition is not available - at least, not in the US. It's looking the same for numbers 9 & 10 in the series. I am not sure that numbers 8, 9 & 10 have been published in the US.

>76 cbl_tn:
Interesting - so I checked WorldCat. That is the OCLC catalog and the world's largest catalog of all kinds of materials. According to WorldCat there are 415 libraries world wide that have Buried Angels in their collections. Almost half of them appear to be in Canada, Austraila, New Zealand, and the UK. It is also interesting that in a quick glance there appear to be only 4 academic libraries in the U.S. that have the book in their collection. None of our libraries here are open and the public library won't open until May 31, 2020 so there is no way I can even put in an ILL request for the book until then. The UA Libraries have not set a date yet for when they will reopen, so I can't put in an ILL request with them at this time.

I looked in Amazon and Alibris and there are used copies of the book available to purchase. However, the cheapest I found was priced at $11.00 on Alibris.

I figure that we have two options.

1. We can do nothing and hope that the libraries will reopen in June and that we will be able to get copies of the book when they do so.
2. We can push this title back and move to our next Donna Leon title which is About Face.

Think about it and let me know what you want to do. It would be OK with me to push the Lackberg book back until the libraries get back to normal and move on with the next Donna Leon book.

I looked in WorldCat to see what the numbers look like for About Face. There are 1132 libraries world-wide that have this title in their collections. It is available in hardback, paperback, and recorded versions. My local library doesn't have it, but I already have a copy.

Both Amazon and Alibris list used copies for sale, some as low as $1.45. It is listed in Book Depository as well for $11.15.

It appears to me that this book would be easier to get our hands on at this time than would Buried Angels. Let me know what you want to do.

Both books are available for me in the e-library. I prefer the Läckberg, after reading two Donna Leon books. I will read both if About Face becomes the book for June.

>79 FAMeulstee:
I want to read the Lackberg book, but I know that I won't get it for some time in June because I was planning on going through Inter-Library Loan to get it. I know that our ILL service is going to be swamped when we get back and it is going to take them some time to work through the requests. When I left work in March I had no idea that 2 months down the road we would still be closed so I didn't place my order.

I was thinking of just pushing the Lackberg back one month - to July.

I don't think I'll be able to get the Lackberg book in time to read it in June. I do want to finish the series, but I think those of us in the US will have to work harder than we're used to doing to get our hands on a copy of the last 3 books in the series. Under normal conditions ILL is not a problem for me, but many libraries in our state are just now reopening after several weeks of being shut down. I may end up skipping the Lackberg months.

You guys aren't going to believe this. I went to Birmingham today and stopped at the used book store 2nd & Charles. I looked specifically for Lackberg mysteries in the mystery section and only found 1 - Stonecutter. While I was walking out of the store I passed a wire display stand that had some employee recommendations displayed. There was a copy of Buried Angels. I was $11.95. What luck!

So now I have a copy.

>81 cbl_tn:
I will start reading it this week and as soon as I get done with it I can mail it to you. Would that work?

>82 benitastrnad: It was meant to be! Yes, that would work for me! I'll send you a pm with my address.

A month behind as usual. I just finished Suffer the Little Children, which I found to be one of the better Leon mysteries, if harder to read because of the topic. I'll check up above for other people's comments.

Ok. Here are my comments: This was a tough read. Both secular and religious laws are brought to bear to do damage to people, and there is nothing Brunetti can do about it, except recognize his love for his family even more deeply than before.

My library opens tomorrow and I just reserved the April and May Donna Leon books..
They do not have the June Lackberg- Woo Hoo anyway.

>85 Helenoel:
Yeah for the library opening. Our public library was to open here later this week, but our Covid-19 cases are on the rise, by big numbers - 55 in one day, so I am expecting a return to the quarantine. When they do open, they are going to offer curbside delivery. Maybe you can get the Lackberg book through ILL. It may take awhile, but maybe you can place the order for it. I read half of it in two days. It is quite good.

The public library in Tuscaloosa has opened, but for circulation only. No library services until next week.

I finished the book Buried Angels last night. I have been chewing through the books like they were M&M's and it only took me a few days to read this mystery. I know that some people have said that they are having trouble reading during the last two months. I have been the opposite. I can't get enough time to do enough reading. I am on a regular reading roll! I have been reading a variety of books and I have to say it has been great fun.

This mystery was a good one and while I had my suspicions early on the author threw one twist at me that I didn't expect, so reading this novel was one that I enjoyed reading. I have a few things to say about it but will wait until a few more of you have had the chance to read it.

Yesterday I got my copy from the e-library. I have two books I want to finish first, then I will get to Buried Angels.

Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg is our title form reading in June. This book has been published with a second title Angel Makers Wife. Buried Angels is the title on the UK published novel. I am not sure what the US title so somebody who has a US published book can let us know. The UK novel was published by HarperCollins UK and I am not sure who the US publisher is.

I have finished the book and sent it on its way to Carrie Beth. I it reads fast and I anticipate some discussion about parts of the novel, so look forward to that.

Our local public library opened to the public for circulation of books only. They are on reduced hours, but at least they are open. I have one title I want to get from them, but won't go until Friday. they are only letting 20 people at a time into the building, so it is advised that you know what book you want and get it, then get out. Books to be returned are to be returned in the outdoor book drops. I suspect that as soon as people discover that they are open that they will be busy.

I hope that all of you can find the book and that you have good library hunting.

>89 benitastrnad: I can't determine that Buried Angels has been published in the U.S. Books 1-7 were published by Simon & Schuster (or one of their imprints). Books 8-10 are not in Simon & Schuster's catalog. They're not available in the Kindle store, either.

>89 benitastrnad: And thanks in advance for the loan of the book! This morning's informed delivery email from the USPS shows that it's in transit. :-)

>90 cbl_tn:
That's interesting. I wonder why it wasn't published here in the U.S.? Her sales in the U.S. seem to be strong and plenty of libraries have the other titles. The next title in the series was published by HarperCollins, but it looks to me like it was also only published in the U.K. I wonder if Book Depository has it?

Just looked and Book Depository has both of the last titles listed. I looked in WorldCat and they have both of the last titles listed. Both sources say that it is published by HarperCollins UK. When it comes time to read these books we may have to put in ILL requests in advance of the date we need to start reading them.

I'm almost caught up! I read The Girl of His Dreams this past week and it really cheered me right out of my book funk. I found it one of the best of the Brunetti books, although it grapples with horrible circumstances. I was more aware than usual of the passage of time - this is not a quick case. And I'm interested in the changes in Signorina Elettra. She seems more waspish, more ready to be angry. I hope we don't lose her.

I just ordered the last two Camilla Lackberg books from Book Depository. They are in stock, and I had a 10% discount voucher. I'll be all set for September and December!

My public library doesn't have either of the last two books, so I will be trying to get them through ILL. The University of South Alabama announced today that they opened up their ILL requests starting Monday, so I have hopes that ours will start up again soon.

I thought I'd read the Lackberg series from the beginning, but I just can't read The Preacher and will DNF it. So tired of sadistic stories of abused women.

>96 ffortsa:
I get bothered by that stuff to. I don't really like the parts of Lackberg's books that are the italicized parts - where she goes back into the past and tries to explain something. I don't think they have much bearing on the story in the present and I find them to be a distraction from the story in real time. IMO they could be removed and not damage the novels at all.

It is now July 1st and time to move to our next Donna Leon entry. This month we will be reading About Face. I will be listening to this one as I found a recorded copy of it at our public libraries used bookstore some time ago. I have not started it yet, but will do so sometime next week. (I am currently listening to another book and want to finish that one first.)

Here is the Amazon blurb about About Face. Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti and his wife, Paola, are on their way to a dinner party when Brunetti’s eye is caught by a couple ahead of them: a woman in an impossibly expensive fur coat on the arm of a much older man. He is intrigued when they turn out to be fellow dinner guests, and even more so when he sees the woman’s face, which has been disfigured by excessive plastic surgery. She is Franca Marinello, La Superliftata, whom he’s heard of but never met. This intelligent, mysterious woman entrances Brunetti with her love of Virgil and Cicero, but when she visits him later at the Questura and asks a favor, he is troubled. Her request seems to land near his investigation into a suspicious death and the illegal hauling of garbage. In Italy, the environment has reached a crisis; incinerators across the south are at full capacity, burning who-knows-what, the polluted waters of Venice’s canals sit in the shadow of a major chemical complex, and in Naples, enormous piles of garbage grow in the streets. As Brunetti delves into this shadowy, toxic world, he comes face to face with violence and corruption more dangerous than anything he’s seen before.

Just curious - did everybody get Buried Angels read? And if so what did you think?

I thought this one was well done and I ended up liking the mystery. It had plenty of twists for me and I like that some of the minor characters are being developed a bit more.

>99 benitastrnad: Yes, I did read it, and did like it :-)

I will get the Donna Leon from the e-library tomorrow.

I think Buried Angels is my favorite in the series so far. It seemed to me that the domestic scenes, instead of detracting from the murder investigation, all tied into the main plot. I liked that!

I received this today in a newsletter from a publisher and thought I would pass it on to the rest of you. It came from the publisher of her new books Golden Cage published by Knopf.

A Note from Camilla Läckberg,
Author of The Golden Cage
Dear Readers,

I'm so happy to introduce you to Faye, the main character in The Golden Cage. The idea for this novel — the story of a fierce woman taking revenge on the man who wronged her — came to me almost a decade ago, but I wasn't ready to write it until recently. Seeing the rise of female role models in business and in popular culture convinced me that the timing was right and that I was prepared to take this leap.

Faye is no saint. She is a woman with a traumatic past cloaked in secrets, and now she has had enough — and she isn't afraid to do something about it. I felt a need to tell her story and examine what happens when a woman won't be silenced anymore. But Faye is not a cold-blooded revenge machine, either. I aimed to bring Faye to life as a full-bodied and complex person, and I can't wait for you to meet her.

Without any further ado, I will let you get to know Faye and The Golden Cage she has built for herself! Enjoy!

—Camilla Läckberg

We are getting close to the end of the month. How is everybody doing with About Face? I found it a bit different than some of the previous entries in the series. But I enjoyed it.

Penguin Random House is certainly upping the ante for Camilla Lackberg's new book Golden Cage. This morning there was an e-mail promo for librarians delivered to my inbox. It contained the following information.

the first was the promo page on the Penguin Random House web site.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617467/the-golden-cage-by-camilla-lackb...

The second was a page dedicated to Reading Groups.
http://knopfdoubleday.com/2020/07/09/serving-up-a-revenge-thriller-cocktails-and...

There are some good cocktail recipes on the second page.

Check this out. This is the kind of promotion that librarians regularly see it is the kind of stuff that lands books on best seller lists.

I liked About Face better than the previous Brunetti books.

I am about halfway through About Face and I am enjoying it very much so far.

I'm sort of here glimpsing the future. This month I read The Preacher.

I downloaded the audio of About Face but with being in class all next week, I may have trouble finishing it before the end of the month. I'll try. If not, I guess I'll be finishing it up in August.

My library has most of the Leon books, but no recent Lackbergs - they have copies of Golden Cage -all out but reservable. Nothing else newer than Lost Boy Just checked out About Face and A Question of Belief since the loan period spans the end of the month. About Face was a quick read, but good. I like the growing revelation of relationship with Guido's in-laws

>109 Helenoel:
I have noticed that as well in the last two books. Is Guido mellowing?

My library doesn't have the recent Erica and Patrick books either, but I think I can get them through ILL, even though ILL is much slower than it was. Oh well! This too shall pass. Since we are so close to catching up with the author in this series I want to finish the series.

OK everybody! Are we ready for the next installment of the Guido Brunetti series?

It is now August 2nd and one night away from a full moon. It is also time to start a new book. This month the book will be number 19 in the series - A Question of Belief. In this book we get to see more of how the Italian court system works as it is about a curious pattern that Guido and a friend find in the court proceedings of a judge and her friend. This book takes place during the hot summer time in Venice and of course lots of tourists. I found this wonderful quote on page 72 of the hardcover edition (chapter 10). It is about the Basilica San Marco.

"... Brunetti saw the crowd, the queues snaking back from the entrance to the Basilica, even at three in the afternoon. What possessed people to stand in the open, under the sun, motionless? It was difficult for him to subtract his familiarity with the Basilica from his store of knowledge. He had been taken there countless times in his youth by his teachers and by his mother: the teachers took their students to show them the beauty, and his mother had taken him, he supposed, to show him the truth and power of her faith. He tried to wipe his mind clear of familiarity with the sweeping glory of the interior and wondered to what lengths he would go if he had but one chance in his lifetime to stand inside Basilica San Marco, and to do so he had to stand in a queue for an hour under the afternoon sun. He turned to his right to consult the angel on the bell tower of San Giorgio, and together they decided. "I'd do it," Brunetti said and nodded in affirmation, ..." page 72

It must be tough to live in a place that is a tourist spot of such proportions.

I have finished A Question of Belief. How is everybody else doing with the reading? I took this one slow and easy and read other books in between shots of Guido. I think the dogs days of summer slowed me reading as I liked to read the Brunetti series outside on my patio. But, it was simply too hot to sit outside and read. Plus, I have been doing lots of professional reading and that has eaten into my pleasure reading time.

I finished Een kwestie van vertrouwen (the Dutch translation of A question of belief) a few days ago.
I thought it was one of the lesser stories in the series. I was reading inside at the couch, as I mostly do. Outside was way too hot we had a terrible recordbreaking heatwave :-(

On to the next Läckberg next month :-)

>113 FAMeulstee:
Of course, there is no such thing as global warming. :-)

I finished A Question of Belief a few days ago as well. I liked this one better than most of the books in the series because it seemed more evenly balanced between Brunetti's work relationships and his family relationships. At the end of most books in the series I usually feel shortchanged in one of those areas.

It is the second day of September and time for us to start reading Ice Child by Camilla Lackberg. My local library didn't have this book, so I place an Inter-Library loan request for it. It still hasn't gotten here and I placed it two weeks ago. It may take awhile, but I will read the book. It is the second to the last one in the series so far, and I do want to keep up with Erica and Patrik. Does anybody else have the book? I could order it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble but I would rather use the library to get this one. If it doesn't get here in a week or so I will go ahead and purchase a new copy.

I got my copy from the e-library.

I got my copy of the Ice Child last week and started reading it over the weekend. So far it is very interesting and I have to say that I am liking all of the digressions and side stories that are going on in this book. The plot even took a surprise turn around page 250 with some new possibilities and directions for the crime. This may be the best one of the Lackberg books so far when I thought she had topped out with The Stonecutter. I may get lots of extra reading time this week because Tropical Storm/Hurricane Sally is forecasted to travel right over Tuscaloosa on Wednesday and Thursday. We are 200 miles inland and usually the wind from these storms doesn't come this far in. The rain, however, does. We are expecting to get up to 4 inches of rain here in Tuscaloosa. It will be nice to get because it has been very hot and dry here since about the 20th of August.

Ice Child was a good read. I am getting into all the digressions that Lackberg puts into her books. There are certainly lots more of the private life of Erica and Patrik in these books than in Donna Leon's books. For instance we have read 15 of the Guido Brunetti books and we don't know much about the life of Brunetti's assistant, but in the Erica and Patrik books we know what has happened in Annika's life, Martin's life, and the private life of Paula and Bertal as well. We know that Paola cooks all of Guido's meals, but we know about Erica's sister and her mother-in-law in the Lackberg books. These are big differences in style and account for the disparity in the number of pages in each of the Lackberg books when compared to the spareness of the Leon books. These are very different stylistic approaches to writing mysteries.

I had to get my copy of Ice Child through Inter-Library Loan and it took a long time to get it due to the slowness of the delivery systems in the U. S. By the time I got the book and picked it up from our ILL department on September 10, 2020 I was surprised to learn that it was due back on September 15, 2020. Usually our ILL's can be renewed 1 time. I sent my renewal request in yesterday and it was denied today. It worked out OK because I finished the book over my lunch hour, but I will be requesting the December Lackberg book early in November just so that I get it in time and have time to read it.

Book 10 Girl in the Woods in the Erica Falck and Patrik Hedstrom series was published in the U. S. in 2018 and is only available in paperback. I checked WorldCat today and there are 312 libraries world wide that have the book. (Australia has the most copies in libraries.) All of us may have to place our requests for this book earlier than we would under normal conditions.

Tomorrow is the first day of October and time to start a new book. We will be returning to Donna Leon and the world of Guido Brunetti. The book for this month will be Drawing Conclusions. This one is number 20 in the series and was published in 2011. (There are now a total of 29 titles in this series. Do you think we will ever catch up with Leon?)

I found Drawing Conclusions in my local library and checked it out. According to WorldCat (the world's largest database of library holdings in the world) there are 1,176 libraries with this book, so it should not be hard to find.

In this book, Brunetti is called away from a dinner meeting with Patta and Scarpa to deal with the death of an retired school teacher. When he enters the apartment he senses that something has gone wrong, but the evidence seems to point to no big mystery. However, Brunetti can't shake the feeling and his preliminary investigation leads him to some interesting discoveries.

This entry in the series is not long - 256 pages and should provide all of us a welcome escape from life under quarantine.

Just got Drawing Conclusions from the library and asked for the June Lackberg through ILL. I was not minding a break from Lackberg because of the abundance of abused children, but figure I can manage another.

Uh-oh. Somehow I skipped ahead in the list and read About Face before A Question of Belief. Oh well. I have some book club related stuff to finish first, but I should be able to catch up this month.

>122 Helenoel:
It seems that theme continues in one form or another in most of Lackberg's books. But there are lots of happy families in them as well, so it makes the reading a bit easier.

I am almost done with Drawing Conclusions and that's a good thing. It is due back at the library on Saturday. My public library is now charging fines for overdue books so I will have to be more careful about returning things on time. They start doing that today. I think it is a sign that things are slowly returning to some sort of modified normal.

Somehow I've gotten behind on the Leon books. I need to finish both the August and October installments. I'm skipping the Lackberg ones. I'm trying to finish an audiobook before it expires. I may not succeed. Since I'm really only driving to and from work, I just didn't quite have enough time to finish the audio book I'm listening to. When I finish it, I'll try to move on to a Leon. ETA: I found the book I'm listening to in the other library's audio collection and borrowed it. I should be able to complete it.

>125 thornton37814:
I have the same problem with my audio books. They keep coming due before I have finished listening to them. I simply am not driving enough miles. I wonder what that will mean for the car companies. Less miles means that cars will last longer.

I was averaging a week to ten days per audiobook commuting to work. This was a good fit for library 2 week loan period. I now go to office about once in two weeks and to grocery or other shopping about once a week. On the other hand i have more time to read dead trees at home.

I got Girl in the Woods last night from our ILL. Don't worry folks. It is the December book, but I figured that as slow as my ILL requests have been since August I should get my request in earlier than normal. Good thing I did. I placed the ILL request for Girl in the Woods on September 12, 2020 and got the book last night. It is a big book. 600 pages. I only have one week to read it as it is due back to my ILL department on October 23. I will go home tonight and start it as I have only about 25 pages left in the book I am currently reading.

It is now November 1 and time for us to take up another Donna Leon Brunetti novel. This time we will be reading book 21 in the series Beastly Things. This novel was first published in 2012. It should be fairly easy to find in the US as it is a recent publication. It is also readily available in paperback.

I was surprised to learn that Donna Leon has lived in Venice since the 1980's, but in 2015 she moved from Venice to Zurich, Switzerland. She became a Swiss citizen in 2020. She spends one week a month in Venice.

Since it is November it is also time for us to think about our mystery read-along for next year. This raises two questions.

1. Do we want to continue a mystery read-along?
2. If so what do we want to read?

We will have completed reading the currently published Erica Falk/Patrik Hedstrom series by Camilla Lackberg with our December title. (This is a hard title to find in the U.S. so if you are going to have to place an ILL request for it I would advise doing so now.). Lackberg does have a new standalone thriller that has just been released in the U.S. titled Golden Cage but it is not part of the Falk/Hedstrom series.

It was suggested that we take up reading the Andrea Camilleri Inspector Montalbano series. this police detective series is set in Camilleri's native Sicily. There are 28 novels in this series so far.

There are now a total of 29 titles in the Brunetti series and we will have completed 21 of them. Leon continues to publish them at the rate of about 1 per year. There will be a new one published in March of 2021 titled Transient Desires and it will be number 30 in the series.

Traditionally, we have alternated reading one book by each of our selected authors each month. That would mean that in 2021 we would read 6 Leon titles and 6 Camilleri titles.

I am not wedded to Camilleri as our next author. I do think that the contrast between northern Italy and southern Italy might be of interest. Especially since that thread ties the two series together.

There have been other authors suggested for a contrast as well. The Bruno Police Chief series set in France by Martin Walker, and the Jules Maigret series by Georges Simenon would move our reading beyond Italy. The Spanish Pepe Carvalho series by Manuel Vazquez Montalban was also suggested. There are 5 of those novels currently available in an English Translation from Melville House.

If we want to continue the Scandicrime reading there were two authors suggested. The first was the Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason and the second was the Swedish author Helene Tusten. Indridason is the author of the Detective Erlendur series. These are set in Reykjavik and some people say they are dark and bloody. I would have to investigate this farther, but there is an Wikipedia entry for these books so you can get some information there. The other Scandicrime author suggested was Helen Tursten a Swedish author who writes the Detective Inspector Huss series. There are 8 of these novels translated into English that are readily available.

The last author that I have on my list would send us to a completely different part of the world. This time to Tibet with Inspector Shan. There are 10 mysteries in this series by Eliot Pattison. The first one in this series won an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery. A friend of mine has read these and has sung their praises.

Let me know what you think about the choices. I personally lean toward the Camilleri series as I have wanted to get started on them for some time. I know that these titles are available in paperback and most libraries have at least some of the titles. However, all of the above series mentioned sound interesting to me and all are series that I would like to read - someday.

In the meantime - there is Beastly Things and another visit into the live of Guido Brunetti.

I will join in if we continue the mystery reads next year. I like the Inspector Montalbano series, and I've read the first three or four of them. I probably wouldn't join in until the group catches up to what I've already read. I am also very interested in the Bruno, Chief of Police series. I have the first one sitting unread on my shelves, and I'd love an excuse to bump it to the top of my TBR list.

I will also join, as far as books are available in Dutch translation. And if I find a copy.
As far as I can tell the "Bruno, chief of Police" books are not available in Dutch.
The early "Montalbano" books will be hard to find.
I have read every book by Arnaldur Indriðason, and don't mind to read them again :-)
Three books of the "Detective Inspector Huss" series by Helen Tursten are translated into Dutch.

I just started a re-read of the Inspector Banks series.

>132 FAMeulstee:
I have not heard of the Inspector Banks series. I will have to look those up and see about them. I also have the first 2 of the Bruno books on my shelves. maybe those would be a good contrast to the Brunetti books?

I've read Beastly Things recently enough and remember the plot well enough that I'm not going to re-read it. I've read many of the Camilleri books and would probably only read those that I have not previously read. I've read a few of the Indridason books. Tursten has been on my radar. I've read many Inspector Banks books and have been making my way through those. I'm at #9 but I've read a few later installments. I probably would not join those until we get to ones I have not read. The Bruno series is also on my radar to read. I will continue the Leon series at this point.

I would like to finish Leon. I have read most of Bruno, but would not like to deprive others of that joy. I have read some Indridison and they are dark. No opinion on others but will follow.

Just to clarify. I figured that most of us would like to finish, or at least catch-up to Leon in reading the Brunetti series. For that reason I had thought that we would read the next six in this series and alternate them with a new series. The question is which new series? Right now it looks like the Bruno Chief of Police series has a couple of votes as does Inspector Banks and Inspector Huss. I did a bit of research on the three series about which people have expressed interest.

All three authors are still active and adding to the list of titles in the series. If we continue on with Brunetti and alternate with a new series we will be reading 6 books by each author this year. That means that we would not be finished with the Brunetti series since there will be 30 books in that series and we have read through 21 of them.

There are 22 books in the Inspector Banks series and still counting. WorldCat says that there are plenty of copies out there of the first 6 novels, so it wouldn't be hard to get copies of this series.

The Bruno, Chief of Police has 14 novels in the series so far with one just released this fall. WorldCat shows that there are plenty of copies in libraries all across the U. S.

There are 11 books in the Detective Inspector Huss series. WorldCat shows that there are plenty of English copies around.

Let's keep in mind that some in our group need books that they can get in other languages. I don't have any information on what languages any of these have been translated into except for the Inspector Huss series. Those who need books in a language other than English will have to do their own research to see if they can find a copy to read. Let's give them a day or two to see if there are versions of these three series in other languages and then we can make a better decision.

At least we have narrowed it down to these three series. Think about it and I will check back next week to see what people have discovered.

I have done some checking regarding the Swedish author Helene Tursten and I have learned that there are now 10 books in the Detective Inspector Huss series, with one book of short stories that are connected to the series, but not necessarily about Inspector Huss. That one is titled An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good. All 10 of the books have been translated into English and they are all available from Amazon. I checked in WorldCat and most of the books are available in other countries as well. 8 of the books have been translated into German. I don't know if that means they are available in Dutch, but it bodes well if they are in German. Doesn't it? (Let me know if you can find these books in Dutch translations.)

The first of these books was published in Sweden in 1999 and the latest one was in 2017. The Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime Fiction states that the overarching topic is crime against children. Tursten's fiction, unlike that of many of her fellow Swedish crime writers, conveys a sense of hope, because she firmly believes that such brutal crimes as child and spousal abuse, human trafficking, and incest need to be forced 'into the light' so that perpetrators can be brought to justice and future crimes prevented.

Tursten also has another mystery series that she writes. These are the Embla Nystrom series.

So, here is my two cents worth on this series and author. It may be more of the same as the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedstrom series, and there are some of you who have had problems with this series. On-the-other-hand, it appears that this series is available in several languages, and in at least three libraries in New Zealand. Let's think about it and read the rest of my posts and we can then make a decision.

Peter Robinson is the author of the Inspector Banks series. There are currently 20 novels in this series and they appear roughly every year. (Sort of the same schedule as the Donna Leon books.)

The first book in the series Gallows View was published in 1987 and was reprinted in 2010 and again in 2013, so there are plenty of copies of the series available in English. It appears to me that there are copies available in German translation, but it is harder for me to tell. According to WorldCat the first book in the series Gallows View is available in 2 libraries in New Zealand.

The series is set in Yorkshire and the hero is Alan Banks, who has moved from the big city to a small town because he is tired of all the big city crime and violence. There are some problems in his marriage and his close work with a local psychologist adds to the problems.

This series of books was turned into a TV series under the title DCI Banks.

Robinson is a British born Canadian citizen. He was a student of the American author Joyce Carol Oates when he worked on his PhD at York University in Toronto, Canada. He now lives part of the year in Canada and part of the year in north Yorkshire in England.

Robinson said in a 2009 interview that "I think Banks is a character who has evolved over many books, rather than someone who was born fully formed. When I started writing the series back in the mid eighties, I had absolutely no experience of the police, other than running away from them! I had read very few crime novels, and the ones that had most impact on me were the Maigret books, by Simenon, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahloo’s Martin Beck series, Nicholas’s Freeling’s Van der Valk, and Raymond Chandler. So I suppose if I was picking up influences from my reading, Banks is a combination of Maigret, Martin Beck, Van der Valk and Philip Marlowe! But I don’t really think that is the case. He was just my idea of an interesting character who happened to work as a detective. "

I couldn't find an over arching theme to these books, but several places I looked commented on the scary quotient as being quite high. Robinson had this to say on that topic from that 2009 interview. "I must admit that Aftermath gave me a few nightmares! Really, though, for me it works the other way around. I don’t so much scare myself by what I write, but I write what scares me. I have a morbid imagination and can often imagine the worst in certain situations, and this often provides the basis for frightening scenes in the books. If I hadn’t become a crime writer I think I would have written horror. I get scared first, then I write about what scares me. The writing is actually cathartic, and I hate to think what kind of a wreck I would be if I didn’t gave that outlet."

The third series we are considering is the Bruno, Chief of Police series by Martin Walker. The first book of this series is titled Bruno, Chief of Police first published in 2008. There are currently 15 books in this series, with several of these being short stories that are only published and available in digital format. Near as I can tell, there are 12 novels in this series.

Walker is another British author. He was born in 1947 and worked for the Guardian for most of his career as an international correspondent. He started to work for the United Press International in 2000 and was based in Washington, D. C. He is now Editor-In-Chief Emeritus at UPI and is a regular commentator on CNN. He lives part time in the Perigord region of France where the Bruno novels are set. (It appears to me that Perigord is the Occitan word for that region of France known as the Dordogne that is in the central coastal part of France between the Loire Valley and the Pyrennes. This region of France is noted for it's food and wine, especially its duck and truffles. This is a region of France that has retained it Medieval heritage. There is a website devoted to the Bruno novels on which Walker makes regular entries regarding the food and wine of the region. Here is the URL. http://www.brunochiefofpolice.com/ This site is available in English and in German translation.

The Bruno books appear to be translated into both German and French. They are readily available in libraries in the U. S. and once again there are 3 libraries in New Zealand who have the first novel listed in their catalogs - according to WorldCat.

I was not able to get a clear picture of any over arching themes in these novels, but one review did say that most often the base for the novels are sordid political crimes.

I hope that the above posts have helped you to think about what kind of series that you want to start reading in the next year. Each of them appear to be very different. It seems to me that the Bruno series may be the closest to the Brunetti series in flavor and tone while the Tursten may be closer to the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedstrom series.

It will be easier for me to set up the new threads from my work desk PC and so I would like for us to make a decision about our series for next year by the end of November. I will have access to more databases to get titles and information from here. When I go home for December (to Kansas) I will be more limited in my connectivity and that will make a difference in us getting a start on the reading for 2021.

I am leaning toward the Bruno or the Huss series, as I don't really like to be scared. However, I am a reader as well as the moderator and would like to participate in reading with other people who want to be reading these books as well. For that reason I do want your input. Please do some thinking and let me know what you would like.

I don't really think of the Robinson books as scary--at least not the first eight or the one later installment I've read. Sometimes the murder has a little darker tone, but I still think of these as pleasant mysteries. I wouldn't like them so much if they were that scary. I'm slowly working my way through this series anyway.

Of the two you prefer, I would probably lean toward the Bruno based on descriptions a bit more than the Tursten ones, but I do want to give Tursten a try sometime. Both series have been on my radar. If Tursten is too much like Lackberg, I will probably quit that series as I did Lackberg's. I like the fact that Bruno is set in a different area (France) than some of our other series.

>141 thornton37814:
Thanks for that input. I have not read a single one of these authors so am only parroting what I found on websites and in one case a reference book I have here in my office on Nordic crime fiction. It is good to get input from somebody who has read some of the books, rather than going by what is said on a website. The "scare" quotient varies from person to person and I tend to avoid scary books. I quit reading the Jo Nesbo books for just that reason. However, you also pointed out to me that nobody is forcing anybody to read these books so if I don't like them I can just sit out a month. That would solve the problem - if there is one.

>142 benitastrnad: I might add that James Langton is a wonderful narrator for the audio editions of the Peter Robinson books.

I lean toward the Bruno series, but really I would be happy with any of them.

Bruno is great. I think this group would enjoy him. I have read most, so might not re-read, but that should not be a factor.

>140 benitastrnad: I will read along with whatever you choose, as far as I can find the books in Dutch translation.
To me the DCI Banks books were not scary. I found some scenes in Läckberg's books more so.

--
I finished and enjoyed Beastly Things, looking forward to the last Läckberg next month.

>147 FAMeulstee:
I found myself with the same opinion about some of the things in the Lackberg books as well. I am glad to know that I wasn't the only one. That also gives me more confidence that for me the DCI Banks books would be readable.

I really don't enjoy the macabre or the gory very much. I liked the way that Donna Leon described the scene in the slaughter house in Beastly Things. I thought she managed to convey the scene without going into it too much.

It looks like most of us agree, or at least have some enthusiasm for reading the Bruno, Chief of Police series. There are currently 10 titles left in the Guido Brunetti series by Donna Leon and there are 16 titles in the Bruno, Chief of Police series by Martin Walker. That makes for about 2 years of reading to get through the entire list of both authors. Of course, both authors are still publishing one title per year so their list keeps growing --- but we are catching up with Ms. Leon!

For 2021 we will continue to read Donna Leon's Burnetti series and we will alternate months with the Bruno, Chief of Police series by Martin Walker.

I checked my local library and they have books 2,3, and 4 in the series, and WorldCat shows that there is a good distribution of copies in public libraries around the U. S., so we shouldn't have too much trouble getting the books. Our Inter-Library Loan at my library as been a bit wonky in the last few months due to the slow-down in the U. S. Mail, but now that the election is over I suspect that will straighten out and loans will come through faster.

Our schedule for 2021 will look like this.

January 2021 - Golden Egg by Donna Leon
February 2021 - Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker
March 2021 - By It's Cover by Donna Leon
April 2021 - Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker
May 2021 - Falling in Love by Donna Leon
June 2021 - Black Diamond by Martin Walker
July 2021 - Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon
August 2021 - Crowded Grave by Martin Walker
September 2021 - Earthly Remains by Donna Leon
October 2021 - Devil's Cave by Martin Walker
November 2021 - Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon
December 2021 - Bruno and the Carol Singers by Martin Walker

The December book is a short story that is only available as an e-book, but it would be a nice December read, so I am including it on our list. It is available in libraries around the U. S. and there are 26 libraries in the U. S. that have it on CD. We can read it if we can find it.

We still have two weeks to discuss Beastly Things and next month we finish out the current publications of the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedstrom series by Camilla Lackberg with the last published title in that series Girl in the Woods. I had to put in an ILL request for this title and it has arrived, so I am already reading it.

November 20 is the last day of our Covid shortened semester here at UA and I am happy to say that the campus has turned out to be a safe island in the middle of a huge number of exploding cases in Tuscaloosa (the city and the county). There are approximately 40,000 faculty, staff, and students who work here and last week the campus had 11 new cases of Covid. The city and county surrounding us had over 1,000. Our hospital is not full, so we don't have any of the overcrowding reported in some other places in our state and region.

With the students leaving campus my library is moving to short hours, so that means I will have long evenings to devote to reading. There is also the Thanksgiving long weekend to look forward to and all that extra time for reading.

>149 benitastrnad: The last day of face-to-face classes for us is also November 20. We have Thanksgiving week off. They even gave support staff the time off! After Thanksgiving week, we have 3 days of online classes and then exams online. The dorms will remain open. I suspect it will mostly be international students remaining on campus. We're reducing the library's hours, but it doesn't really affect anything librarian schedules. We'll close at 9 p.m. when we normally get off on our night to work. We just hope a lot of the ones who refuse to wear masks and social distance go home at Thanksgiving and stay there through Christmas break.

>150 thornton37814:
They finally posted our campus wide numbers for last week and we had 77 new cases. Despite what has been in the news the campus is a safe island. So far, not a single case has been traced back to a classroom on campus. We got the news yesterday that they expect classes to be 70% face-to-face for the spring semester.

OK folks - it is our last month of 2020. It is also time for the last book in the Erica Falk/Patrik Hedstrom series written by Camilla Lackberg. The title for this month is Girl in the Woods. This book is hard to get and appears to me that it was not published in the U. S. I was able to get the book through Inter-Library Loan and it came all the way from a public library in Iowa. I read most of it during the Thanksgiving break but this book is a big one. It is almost 600 pages so it should be a big mystery to curl up with on these long winter nights. I should finish the book by this weekend, and will be happy to let you know what I think of it when I do so.

As a reminder this will be our schedule for 2021.

January 2021 - Golden Egg by Donna Leon
February 2021 - Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker
March 2021 - By It's Cover by Donna Leon
April 2021 - Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker
May 2021 - Falling in Love by Donna Leon
June 2021 - Black Diamond by Martin Walker
July 2021 - Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon
August 2021 - Crowded Grave by Martin Walker
September 2021 - Earthly Remains by Donna Leon
October 2021 - Devil's Cave by Martin Walker
November 2021 - Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon
December 2021 - Bruno and the Carol Singers by Martin Walker - a Christmas short story

I will fix up a new thread for us later in December so keep posting here about the last Lackberg novel.

I finished the Dutch translation of The Girl in the Woods tonight.
It is a bit much in many ways, and a few times on the edge of what I can handle.
The part from the 17th century felt a bit disconnected, not a clear connection to present time, as in her other books.
3* this time.

>154 FAMeulstee:
I agree with you about the 17th century part. I kept wondering why it was in there until the very end. However, I felt that was wrapped up too neatly.

I thought this book was better than the previous one. It seemed to be more of a conventional mystery to me.

I noticed today that the book review magazine "Publishers Weekly" listed Camilla Lackberg's new novel Golden Cage as one of the best mysteries of the year. That should mean good sales for Lackberg with that book.

I am not sure that I will read it. I am a bit tired of some of themes and especially tired of the women who stay with wife and child beaters. I know that the statistics are the most women are killed by husbands or boyfriends and I understand the psychology about why women stay with men like that, but I don't like reading about it. Even so, I haven't struck that title off my TBR list. I may read it someday.

How is everybody doing with Girl in the Woods? I finished it earlier this month and there were parts of it I liked and parts that seemed to be reaching a bit far. The basic mystery was not that hard to figure out who-done-it, but the how and why it happened were not what I expected. This has turned out to be one of the better novels in this series for me. It is too long with too many threads going, but it was a good mystery.

I'm a little more than halfway through the book. It's keeping me guessing so far, although I do have an idea about the murderer's identity. I'm assuming it's longer than the other books in the series because it's the last one and the author is wrapping up all the secondary plots that have developed across the series.

>153 benitastrnad: : : I got to this thread late, but am happy with the results. My library seems to have the Bruno series books, so I shall continue along with both reads. Thank you for keeping us going!

I am getting ready to set up the thread for the new year and the new read along. I am thinking of calling it La Serenissima & Dordogne Mystery Read Along. What do you guys think of that? Would it work for you?

Works for me!

Here is the link to the new thread for 2021.
https://www.librarything.com/topic/328018#n7363740

I'm sorry guys but I made a mistake and created two threads instead of one. This should get you to the correct thread. Dr. Neutron, the administrator for the 75'ers group tells me that there isn't anyway to delete a thread so I have really confused the issue. I apologize.

The link at the end of this thread will take you to the correct new thread for 2021. Using it will get you to the right place.