A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

I loved this novel about several generations of a family that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I recognized the themes that I've seen in other Anne Tyler novels: the longing for closeness, disappointments and grievances, rejections and frustrations.

There were several things I really loved here.  One was the legacy of the past represented by the story of how Abby's in-laws met and married, and the seemingly random nature of both this marriage and Abby's own. One was the decades-long conflict between the emotionally withholding, frequently absent and commitment-phobic son and his increasingly perplexed mother, a conflict finally dissolved by grief.

Another thing I loved was Tyler's language, and the way she told the story.  While the novel's not short, it seemed to me to be a novel written in a style with great economy and realism.

This novel really spoke to me, although she was revisiting themes she has explored before.  The tension between the past and the present, the coexistence of love and exasperation, the constant rub of disappointed idealism and how the passage of time alters our passions and perceptions, feels authentic and familiar.

The other novels I've read by Anne Tyler were her first, If Tomorrow Ever Comes, The Accidental Tourist, and The Breathing Lessons, which featured a parental anxiety like Abby's.

Children of the Revolution by Peter Robinson

This is a novel in the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson, a Yorkshire-born Canadian crime writer.  I'd read a good review and I thought I might enjoy it.

Inspector Banks is called to the scene of a suspicious death.  A man in his sixties has been found on an old railway right-of-way that has been converted into a paved walk.  The embankment is steep enough, and the site far enough away from the nearest village, that the place seems strangely isolated and is mostly frequently by dogwalkers.

The deceased, Gavin Miller, is a disgraced college professor who had fallen on hard times.  And he has 5,000 pounds in his pocket when he's found.

The occasion of Miller's dismissal on sexual misconduct charges produces three suspects; a former student is another; and finally, the circle Miller knew as an undergraduate at the University of Essex provide another two. The character Miller, like the author himself, travels to Canada for his master's degree.

Banks is divorced and spends a lot of his free time at home, listening to jazz and pop while sipping Laphraoig and listening to the rain on his conservatory roof. Loving Van Morrison - and wondering what a Veedon Fleece is - comes up twice in the novel, as well as references to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and other bands of the '60's and '70s.

I found the opening somewhat clunky and prosaic - both the pace at which the tale was told and the character of Inspector Banks himself. (Inspector Banks is refreshingly normal, strategizing ways to get home without driving after going to the pub, for instance.)  Yet I quickly fell under the spell, which is saying quite a lot, I think. I recall that when I read Harlan Coben's Six Years, the unpacking of the mystery - and the many road trips, between New England and Virginia, if I remember correctly - seemed a bit tedious. (I suppose the TV equivalent is folks getting in or out of their cars.)

SoHo Sins by Richard Vine

There's so much to say about this novel I hardly know where to begin.

First, it's published by by the Hard Case Crime imprint of Titan Books, self-described as one that "brings you the best in hard-boiled crime fiction, from lost pulp classics to new work by today's most powerful writers, all in handsome and affordable editions.  The yellow ribbon represents your assurance of quality" (from the back cover).

These crime paperbacks always have the kind of covers used for cheap crime pulp fiction from the 50's and 60's and I know I'd always wanted to read one since I saw a Lawrence Block novel perhaps a year ago.  When I came across this ARC copy of Soho Sins, I was a goner.  In fact, this cover has a Marilynesque woman in a red dress sitting on the ground in alley, gazed upon by a man wearing a fedora and a brown overcoat - right next to a garbage can.

The story is set in the past - in the eighties or nineties. Jack is a gallery owner and art dealer, and an owner of several buildings in Soho, in New York City, as the real estate market there heated up.

He recalls a wealthy couple he knew, and his gratitude to them for befriending him, "taking him up," after his wife had died. What they shared was a passion for art, and this is backdrop for this murder noir.

The wife is killed; the husband immediately confesses. But it's not that simple: while he'd always strayed, at the time of his wife's death, he'd been seeing a beautiful young artist for several years and his wife was planning divorce. The other wrinkle, more profound, is that the husband, Phillip, has a degenerative brain disease that is robbing him of his memory.

There are other suspects: There's Phillip's first wife, living in the suburbs and trying to continue her career as an artist while raising their now twelve-year-old daughter. She's never quite gotten over her ex-husband.

There's the wife's shady performance artist lover, young and good-looking but involved in underworld business ventures, with members of the Italian mafia and Chinese gangs.

Then there's the cabal:  the circle of executives at Phillip's tech company that have a lot to lose as Phillip deteriorates and something to gain from his wife's death.

Phillip's lawyer hires a private eye who's an old friend of Jack's and who insists that Jack use his access to the art world, and Phillip, to help him with his inquiries - all the while making sardonic remarks about the ill-gotten gains of Jack's wealthy clients.

About 75% of the way into the novel, when I realized that the shady boyfriend's illegal doings were pornography I thought about bailing on the novel. (I did ask myself what it was that I expected, after all, when I picked up a crime paperback with a pulp fiction cover.) I decided to stick with it and was rewarded with another couple of major twists to the plot, all the way to the last pages.  Whew!

Richard Vine is the nom-de-plume of this debut novel author, an editor of a fine art magazine.

The story reminded me a little of Bonjour Tristresse, although this was far more shocking.  If tales of domestic crises are too tame for your beach reading. this jaw-dropping, totally not-in-the-best-of-taste roller coast ride might be the perfect vacation read for you.

The Revenant/The Hateful Eight

It surprises me that two Western movies were nominated for Academy Awards this year.

I loved the cinematography of The Hateful Eight; it made a great impression on me and is a large part of why I enjoyed the film.  I think the acting was wonderful, too.

The Revenant was also very beautifully photographed, and the locations in which it was shot were spectacular.

Both films were terrifically entertaining, perfect summer movies.  The Revenant was based on a true story, but after reading a few articles on the Internet, I concluced that the only overlap between the movie and reality is that fur trapper Hugh Glass really was horribly mauled by a grizzly and really did survive, was abandoned by his companions, and subsequently recovered enough to walk into camp 80 miles away.

I wonder if, in our age of anxiety, it is more comforting to look backward than to look forward.

The dictionary definition of revenant, by the way, is one who returns from the dead or long absence.

Heirs and Graces by Rhys Bowen

I enjoyed this book, and was impressed by how closely it seemed to hew to the Agatha Christie formula:  plenty of suspects, class tension between the local constabulary and the suspects, a drawing room unmasking of the murderer.  I also thought it was well-written and nicely paced.  It's part of the Royal Spyness series, and there was a little expositionary background offered to help folks who hadn't read the rest of the series to be introduced to all of the returning characters.

In this series, the detective is a duke's daughter who is 35th to the throne, and the murder takes place at a aristocratic home in rural Surrey, complete with fox hunt, so it did feel like very much like something that a Downton Abbey fan might enjoy.

I read it with a book group and several folks described it as fluff.  I found myself wondering why that was, exactly, when to me, the book seemed like such a classic Agatha Christie-type mystery.

I'm not sure but I'd guess that tastes have changed, and Agatha Christie-type mysteries seem tame compard to today's suspense thrillers.

Also, this particular book had a surprising ending, one that I didn't at all anticipate, but it perhaps just didn't have the bite and menace that Christie mysteries have.