2012 Book Log #6: In the Garden of Beasts  by Erik Larson


Larson is best known for his books that contrast technological marvels with criminal events that happened concurrently (Devil in the White City, for example), but this book harkens back to Isaac's Storm, the story of a man who had his beliefs changed due to a seminal event (in this case, a deadly hurricane that more or less destroyed Galveston, Texas).

This book moves on to a bigger stage, as it covers the tenure of US ambassador to Germany William Dodd, a history professor who winds up being the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany. He takes the job believing that he can use the power of his intellect (and the US government) to help steer Hitler and his friends into less radical waters. As his time in office unfolds, he has to battle both the Germans - who continue to act out, occasionally beating an American citizen who didn't stop to salute marching SA members - and internal enemies in the State Department, who seemed to spend as much time deriding Dodd for his lack of Ivy League credentials and frugal way as they did working on actual diplomacy.

Dodd's daughter is a sort of co-main character, a vivacious young woman whose own intellect and writing gets her into literary and higher society. She's also a bit of a romantic adventurer, between her marriage to a much older New York banker and the on-again, off-again romance she kindled in Berlin with a Russian intelligence agent who was working to turn her into an informant (a task of which she was apparently unaware).

I don't know if I really enjoyed the book as much as his others, but I did find it fascinating to see how the common if often casual anti-Semitism among American diplomats (including Dodd) and the common belief that the Nazis would moderate or be replaced led to a number of missed opportunities. I don't think another ambassador could have done more to push the Nazis to a more moderate position - Dodd did as well as he could, I think, and anyone trying to do more would likely have put US-German relations in a more difficult position - and I don't think anyone would have really succeeded in doing anything to make things better. Anyone and everyone could have done more to get Jews out of Germany while the getting was good.

All that being said, I do think the strength of the book is the inside look into the early days of the Nazi regime, and it's well worth a read for that alone.

Book Log 2012 #5: The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte

An art restorer, working on a 15th century painting of a chess match, discovers a question painted under the surface of the work - the Latin equivalent of Who killed the knight? - and in doing so decides to solve the mystery posed by the question, with the help of her long-time mentor and father-figure, a former boyfriend and art historian, the agent selling the painting, and a reserved chess master. This quickly spreads into a modern day murder mystery, as members of the group begin to drop. Muddying things is the potential transfer of the painting to another firm, as the value of the painting becomes greater in the face of all the killings.

It's a pretty good mystery, but I was disappointed in the ending. Suffice it to say I didn't quite buy into why the guilty party's motivation. But I did enjoy it overall, just a little less than some of his other books.

Book Log 2012 #4: A Lily of the Field by John Lawton

So I got a new phone recently, and in the process of transferring information from my old phone I managed to delete the file where I'd been keeping all of the book titles I'd not yet logged here. It was a solid dozen, so well done by me.

This is actually one of the more recent books I've read, and to add annoyance to annoyance it's the eighth book in a series featuring a London police detective and cases he's picked up before, during and after World War II. There's one, maybe two previous books to which I likely now know who the guilty party is, so even more well done by me.

Even so, I am glad that I picked this one up as I enjoyed it quite a bit. The set-up is a little odd, in that the main character of the series doesn't show up in the book until it's well underway. The first third of the book (if not more) follows a group of characters who become important to the actual crime. It was a little confusing at first, but given where this book is in the series it's not like you have to trot out the main character on page one.

The actual murders in the book are secondary to the great period detail, from the social and musical life pre-war Vienna to post-war London and its rationing. I would certainly recommend this book, but I'd also recommend starting from the beginning (and to throw another wrench into things, the books take place in a different chronological order than their published order).