The Geographer's Library

A really good literary mystery, with murder, betrayal, and alchemy. In part, it reminded me a bit of [People of the Book], as we are given chapters on various objects throughout the centuries. But the main part of the book is a contemporary mystery about a young newspaper reporter and the seemingly mysterious death of a local professor. I found the ending a bit hard to follow, but I loved the journey getting there.

4.25 stars

Closer to a 3.5 but I'm rounding down because I wasn't really wowed. Aims for some Venn diagram wedge between cozy mystery, noir, and The Da Vinci Code and doesn't really hit any of them. Fasman should've just stuck to the "small town reporter investigates bizarre murder" angle and left out the rest of this.

Paul Tomm is a smart but somewhat aimless college grad who lands a reporter job at a weekly newspaper in the tiny town of Lincoln, Connecticut. When a professor from his alma mater dies, he is assigned the obituary, but soon finds that there is more to this quiet professor than meets the eye. Soon he is swept up in an unusual tale of murder, greed, and alchemy. A collection of alchemical objects are described in alternating chapters, and their sordid histories are almost as engaging as the main plot. And while the story itself was a very enjoyable read, what really drew me in was my empathy with Paul. His observations and reactions are so familiar to me. It really helped me feel like part of the story. I'll definitely be on the lookout show more for Fasman's other works. show less

Organized in chapters alternating between a small-town journalist's investigation of a college professor's murder and a multitude of cloak-and-dagger dealings in the Near East involving centuries-old artifacts, "The Geographer's Library" is an original and challenging mystery. Jon Fasman's vividly imagined descriptions of the artifacts themselves, together with his use of well-researched historical settings to bring the unsavory dealings surrounding them to life, reminded me at times of Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay." By the middle of the book, however, the "artifact chapters" became somewhat tedious and predictable, and I found myself fighting the urge to rush through them to get to the next present-day show more chapter. I also found the resolution of the plot less effective than it could have been, as many aspects of this fascinating mystery, and the alchemy underlying it, became somewhat superfluous when the alternating narratives finally came together. Perhaps this minor shortcoming could have been avoided if Fasman had used a third-person narrator to tell the entire tale, rather than the first-person journalist narrator whose limited knowledge base (even with the assistance of a friendly professor and police officer) only allowed him to scratch the surface of the relics' saga. Still, in its sheer originality and beautiful writing style, this book is a highly recommended departure from many of the dumbed-down thrillers that litter our bookstores.

-Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker" show less

This was potentially a great book, until the end, which disappointed me. There are multiple stories bound together by the amateur investigation into a mysterious death in a liberal New England college. Alchemy gets in there, and a lot of intrigue over valuable arcane objects (including, perhaps,The Emerald Tablet itself) that once were part of a single collection and now have been gathered together again by deadly ruthless hands from their scattered locations around the world. Each object is treated individually, with a story line explaining how it was "liberated" from its last known owner. The modern story line, which is the weakness of this novel, involves an incredibly innocent young reporter who gets caught up in this murky show more undertaking totally by chance. It is slightly reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code, although the ancient "secrets" of that book were all fairly well-known to me when I read it. Violating one of my rules, Fasman told us, rather than showing us, how everything fit together at the end, and some of it was a bit much, thank you. When I got to the end, in fact, I thought I must have missed something fairly significant along the way, because I had that "up in the air" feeling. I had almost determined to go back to the beginning and read through it again. But I read some reviews on Amazon and this site, most of which noted all the same flaws, so I decided against spending any more precious reading time on it. I enjoyed the 15 vignettes devoted to the far-flung objects, as they were fascinating, and very well written. But ultimately, the whole was LESS than the sum of its parts. As this was Fasman's first novel, I will keep him in mind; he may improve with practice. show less

It turns out that, other than the fact that there is some globetrotting going on, the book really isn't about geography at all. (It's not about libraries either).

What the book is about is Paul Tomm, a fresh-out-of-college journalist working for a small town weekly newspaper in Connecticut. One of his many responsibilities is writing up obituaries, including one for a mysterious professor who's death is just as mysterious. The deeper Paul digs, the weirder the professor's story gets.

Between chapters, the novel follows the movement of fifteen objects relating to alchemy. These objects were stolen from the library of a king's geographer in the 12th century (while he was off mapping some far-away land) and have become dispersed throughout show more the world since then. It seems that lately someone has been trying to reunite the pieces, while leaving a trail of dead former owners in his wake (many of them unaware of the true value of the items they held). These little stories, which take place all over the world, start in the time of the geographer and run right up to present day.

The caduceus, the emblem of two snakes intertwined on a staff, shows up quite a bit in the novel, since it was apparently a symbol once used by alchemists. It also serves as a good representation of this book, since its strongest point is the way Fasman intertwines the two stories to both deepen and unravel his murder mystery.

But then a funny thing happens as the book progresses - the stories about the missing items, which start out hard to follow and nowhere near as engaging as the story of the inquisitive journalist, become much more interesting than the current day investigation. Just as the stories of how the alchemy pieces are recollected start getting more colorful, the main story starts to get bogged down in long, stilted conversations. In fact, when the solution to the mystery finally gets revealed, the novel, with all of its fascinating tales of worldwide adventure interspersed throughout, ends in a dull and drawn-out dialogue in Paul's apartment. I feels like 350 pages into what should have been a 500 page book some editor told the author that he had twenty more pages to wrap everything up.

Overall, I'd say it's about three-quarters of a good book. Up until that last quarter the writing is excellent and the stories are strong. The idea to wrap the two narratives together is very clever and works well. Despite the fact that the parts chronicling the movement of the objects of alchemy happen in some pretty far-flung locales, the writing in them never becomes far-fetched. If only the author had been able to work a little alchemy on his ending. show less

What can I say about this book that hasn't been said by others? If you enjoy books like [The Da Vince Code] and [The Historian], you'll probably enjoy this one. If not, keep moving.

Though it's nearly 400 pages, it reads as though it were half that. This is good and bad; on the one hand, it's a light read, enjoyable if you let yourself get pulled into the story without asking it to make sense. On the other hand, the characters could be fleshed out a bit more. The author indulges himself quite a bit, trying to convince us of how clever he is, to the detriment of the story. And while I allowed myself to become interested in the story, I never felt invested in the outcome.

If these books are your cup of tea, I could recommend this if you show more want something light and easy to read on, say, a cross-country plane trip. Most of you can skip this one, though. show less