Book Log 2012 #2: The Salisbury Manuscripts by Philip Gooden


A young lawyer is sent to Salisbury to take possession of a manuscript from a canon of the cathedral, but before he can do so the canon is murdered and the manuscript stolen, setting of a series of events that put the lawyer in the middle of investigation as he tries to recover the stolen papers.

Set in the early Victorian era, the book almost seems like it was written in that period. It's a little stiff in places and the narrator interjects in places better left alone. I was reminded a little bit of Dickens or other serialized writers of the time who created various twists to create future installments. Not that the writing is at that level.

My biggest problem is that the book, set in a cathedral town, did very little with the cathedral until the end. My thinking is that if you have a series of mysteries that take place in cathedral towns, you'd do more with the cathedral itself.

Not sure if I'll read on in the series. For all its drawbacks it was a reasonable enough commuting book, so maybe I'll pick up the second one to see if things improve.

Book Log 2012 #1: The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olson


The success of the Millenium trilogy opened the way for other Scandinavian crime writers, which would be great if my library actually acquired books in order. We seem to have a lot of second or third books in a series showing up, which is a problem for me and my OCD about reading series in order.

I wasn't so hampered with this book, as it's the first in the series, and the only novel in the series published in the US (so far). The series follows a Copenhagen police detective named Carl Morck, who believes his slow reaction to a shooting incident will lead to his firing. Instead, his boss finds the perfect solution for getting rid of Carl - he's bumped up to  lead Department Q, a newly-formed cold case squad. Or "squad," as the department is staffed by Carl and his assistant, a shadowy Syrian immigrant named Assad who is hired to make coffee and clean but winds up being much more involved in the investigation.

That investigation involves the disappearance of a member of Parliament five years previous. Dedicated to work and caring for her brother (who suffered some sort of brain injury in a car accident), she disappears off of a ferry bound for Germany. The assumption is that she fell (or jumped) off the ferry, but as Carl begins to investigate, he thinks there's more to the story. Morck also stays involved in the shooting case that started his new career in cold cases, and chips in on another investigation as well.

His personal life is about as messed up as work, as he lives with his teenaged stepson and a basement tenant. His wife lives in a garden shed, forcing Morck to live in limbo. He pursues other women, but can't quite escape his wife's orbit (though he seems pretty much over her romantically).

The story is told in parallel tracks between the present day and the past timeline of the cold case. It's done pretty effectively, allowing the mystery to build in one track while it then unfolds in the other. It helps that Morck is a pretty interesting character, though it's hard to tell if his melancholy is permanent or not. I really enjoyed the developing relationship he has with his assistant, and to future revelations on just how he got to Denmark from Syria.

Overall, the book is a worthy representative of the genre, and I'm hopeful the other books will work their way into English.

I don't normally give out the coveted Blogalicious endorsement until I'm actually able to vote (Massachusetts doesn't hold their primary until March), but I figured I'd do so earlier this year to give voters in Iowa and New Hampshire one more data point to consider.

To my way of thinking, it's a pretty clear choice. There is one candidate in the field who:

1. Has executive experience, having been a governor.

2. Has foreign policy experience, having been an ambassador.

3. Is rational, noting in an early debate that the GOP is flirting with irrelevance if they become a party whose position on science patterns itself after the Catholic Church in the time of Galileo.

From that, it's probably obvious that Blogalicious endorses Jon Huntsman, Jr. for the Republican nomination for President.

The unfortunate thing is that he may not be in the race by the time I get to vote. The early states are not favorable for him. Iowa and South Carolina favor social conservatives, and South Carolina in close enough to Georgia to be a decent state for Newt Gingrich. Knowing this, Huntsman has focused solely on New Hampshire, which seems like a good state for him except that Mitt Romney (a) was governor of next-door Massachusetts, and (b) has a house in New Hampshire. Romney's also spent a fair amount of time in the state, keeping damage from Huntsman to a minimum.

Still, after looking at the entire field I don't think there's another major candidate that I could support. While I don't know much about him, I'm also thinking that former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson seems like a possibility, though we'll see where things are in a couple months.