The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler-Olsen

First published in Denmark in 2014; published in translation by Dutton on September 8, 2015

The Hanging Girl is tied with the first Department Q novel as my favorite entry (so far) in this excellent series. The mystery is complex but credible. The story builds suspense but doesn’t skimp on character development. Humor and drama are carefully balanced. The book is long but it never moves slowly and it ends in a burst of excitement.

A police sergeant on an outlying island finally gives up on a case he could never solve, but not without asking Department Q for help. Carl wants nothing to do with it. As usual, Rose bullies him into investigating the case, an unsolved hit-and-run that left a young girl’s body hanging from the tree branches in which it was entangled.

When Carl, Rose, and Assad look into the old case and a more recent death, Carl sees nothing worth investigating and wants to go home. As is the custom in these books, Carl is outvoted by his subordinates and the subsequent investigation leads to a deepening mystery.

As that investigation progresses, alternating chapters fill us in on a story of several missing women and of rivalries for the attention of Atu, a charismatic fellow who worships the sun. Another woman, not yet missing, is at risk.

An ongoing storyline in these novels concerns an incident in which Carl and his colleague Hardy were shot. Carl blames his cowardice for the fact that Hardy was left paralyzed. That subplot is advanced a bit in The Hanging Girl, more than it has been in recent novels. Jussi Adler-Olsen seems to be setting up a significant development in that subplot in an upcoming novel.

Also advancing is the evolving mystery of Assad’s background. Assad is my favorite character in the series, an outwardly gentle and decent man (most of the time) who clearly has a violent history. Each novel teases the reader with hits of Assad’s past, but it is the Assad of the present who plays a heroic and self-sacrificing role in The Hanging Girl.

I always learn something when I read one of these novels. This one features a good bit of interesting information about the intersection of astrology, astronomy, and theology. More importantly, it features a surprising plot that continues to twist until the truth is finally revealed.

RECOMMENDED

The Book of the Lion by Thomas Perry

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on July 14, 2015

This is another entry in Mysterious Press’ Bibliomystery series of short stories that relate to books, bookstores, libraries, or manuscripts. Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffrey Deaver, and a number of other popular crime writers have contributed to the series.

A professor who is a leading expert on Chaucer gets a call from a mysterious stranger who claims to possess the only existing manuscript of Chaucer’s Book of the Lion. The manuscript is thought to have been lost, or possibly it never existed. Is its sudden appearance a hoax? A prank? A fraud?

Rather than offering to sell the manuscript, as a con artist might, the mysterious man has another scheme in mind. Of course, the scheme involves money. With the help of a wealthy friend who has a literary bent, the professor strives to learn the truth about the manuscript.

Thomas Perry peppers the story with snippets of history from the Middle Ages. The characters and tidbits about Chaucer’s works and medieval history make the background more interesting than the plot, which is fun but leads to an unsurprising ending. Still, the fast-moving story is a worthy entry in the series.

RECOMMENDED

A Clue to the Exit by Edward St. Aubyn

First published in Great Britain in 2000; published by Picador on September 1, 2015

Charlie Fairburn has six months to live. He’s a writer and he’d like to write about his impending death, but death is depressing so his agent (who wants him to continue writing screenplays) tells him to write something upbeat. Instead, Charlie sells his house, moves into a hotel, and begins work on a novel called On the Train, snatches of which appear as A Clue to the Exit moves forward.

As every starving artist intuits and as Charlie soon learns, luxury inhibits ambition, so Charlie embarks on a course that will relieve him of the burden of wealth and inspire creativity. His quest takes him to a casino, where parties and a beautiful gambler interfere with his ability to solve “the riddle of consciousness” via the literary exploration of death.

At some point, the beautiful gambler asks him why he’s writing what he’s writing -- what the point of it is -- and it’s a question I was asking, as well. She wants Charlie to meet his death by writing a celebration of life. Instead, he’s writing a story in which pretentious characters discuss the philosophical implications of quantum physics. While the questions they ask are worth pondering -- from Charlie’s dying perspective, the question is how to live consciously -- I agree with the gambler that the story is dry and lifeless. But that’s probably the point. As Charlie provides a pedantic explanation of the novel’s goals and the techniques he is using to achieve them, it becomes all the more clear that Charlie really doesn’t know what he wants to say.

It takes a shocking amount of time for a guy with six months to live who loves but is estranged from his daughter to figure out what is important in his brief remaining life. He gains some other worthwhile insights (people should not hurt others to make themselves happy) but they are less than profound. He also arrives at the conclusion that “consciousness and experience are synonymous.” I take his meaning (I feel the sun warming my face, therefore I am) but the words really aren’t synonymous.

I think Charlie's ultimate realization is that life is a collection of experiences which, again, is hardly a momentous epiphany. His last great insight is “the thing that is closest to us is the most mysterious” which made me wonder when Charlie was going to get around to dying. Someone who is devoting the end of his life to deep thoughts might want to come up with something more meaningful. Or better yet, opt for hedonism, since he’s still young enough to enjoy it.

Near the end of the novel, Charlie goes on something like a vision quest that struck me as laughable. Maybe it was intended as humor. My greatest reservation about this novel is that, while some scenes are amusing, I can’t tell whether it is meant to be taken seriously. If so, I can’t. If not, too many scenes are pointless to justify reading it as a comedy. There is an abundance of good writing here, but it never adds up to much.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Injustice by Lee Goodman

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on September 15, 2015

I started out disliking Injustice because I could not warm up to Nick Davis, the protagonist. By the end of the story I still disliked Nick Davis, but I thought the novel was okay. Its biggest flaw, other than an unlikable protagonist, is that it relies on a chain of improbable coincidences. I don’t mind a coincidence or two -- in real life, they happen all the time -- but too many coincidences are difficult to bear.

Nick Davis is a federal prosecutor who displays all the humorless self-righteousness, pettiness, and narrow-mindedness that characterizes the worst of the breed. He is overly impressed with himself and with his “mission of excising moral disease from the population of free citizens,” a phrase that had me choking with laughter. Isn’t hubris a moral disease? He also seems incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy, given the number of times he vows to commit perjury to protect his family. At least he has the virtue of realizing that he’s irritating, particularly to Tina, his wife.

Someone in Davis’ extended family is murdered and one of his subordinates, who also happens to have been living with that family member, becomes a suspect. Davis sticks his nose into the investigation, which I could believe, then he rides around with FBI agents and waves his Glock around, which seems like a conflict of interest for a prosecutor since he might turn himself into a witness against the bad guys he’s being paid to prosecute. In fact, Davis is always charging around, leading the cops in the field, which is something a prosecutor just doesn’t do. That’s one of the reasons this novel didn’t ring true. There are a bunch of smaller reasons, like calling the security in a federal trial “guards” when a federal prosecutor would call them “marshals” and concluding that a prisoner who won’t talk to cops about an ex-cellmate must feel intimidated by the cellmate when most prisoners refuse on principle to cooperate with the police unless they’re being rewarded for it.

Meanwhile, as Davis and the reader try to figure out whether Davis’ subordinate is innocent or guilty, Davis is half-heartedly investigating a federal crime that involves a corporate conspiracy to bribe politicians. It is a rule in modern crime fiction that if a protagonist is working on two separate and apparently unrelated cases, the cases will eventually connect. The question is how they will connect and whether the connection will make sense, or whether it will seem strained as the writer juggles too many coincidences to keep the plot moving. The latter is the case here.

On a more positive note, courtroom scenes are lively and the novel moves at a good pace. Lee Goodman’s prose is stronger than most thriller writers manage. My interest in the story grew as the novel progressed and continued until the last chapters, when a final coincidence -- one that seemed just too contrived -- left me rolling my eyes. Still, while the contrivance has been used before in thrillers, it is given a creative twist in Injustice. On the other hand, the very last scene is too far over-the-top. Despite my reservations, I recommend the novel for its engaging plot.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

In the Distance, and Ahead in Time by George Zebrowski

First published in 2002; published digitally by Open Road Media on May 19, 2015

The need for balance is a theme that dominates this collection. The stories set in the near future emphasize the need to balance progress against its environmental consequences. Stories set in a more distant time emphasize the need to balance imagination and reality.

The stories tend to be cautionary but they generally avoid becoming preachy. To some extent, they use familiar themes of science fiction to address questions of philosophy. Some of the stories feature recurring characters. Others are set in different points of the same unfolding future that provided the setting for the novel Macrolife. An introduction explains where the stories fit into George Zebrowski’s development as a writer.

The collection was first published in 2002. It contains stories written between 1970 and 1996.

Five bleak stories are set in the near future:

“The Water Sculptor” - Two friends, orbiting the Earth in space stations, contemplate the nature of art and the future of mankind.

“Parks of Rest and Sculpture” - A man who is about to make a life among the stars mourns an ecologically devastated Earth that is on the verge of being abandoned by its population.

“Assassins in Air” - In the battle between man and machine (specifically, pollution-generating cars), it isn’t clear who will win.

“The Soft Terrible Music” - In a post-plague world, a man goes to great lengths to conceal a crime, but concealing his feelings of guilt is a more difficult task.

“The Sea of Evening” - When Artificial Intelligence is finally developed, will alien civilizations finally think that mankind merits contact?

Three stories are set in a more distant time:

“Heathen God” - An imprisoned alien explains the creation of humanity and gives a priest a new mission in life. This is probably Zebrowski’s signature short story, having been anthologized as a Nebula-nominee.

“Wayside World” - On a distant Earth colony that has lost the old knowledge, a man wanders from library to library until he is given new knowledge by people who have come to rebuild the colony -- but is the data in their computers the kind of knowledge that will restore a civilization?

“In the Distance, and Ahead in Time” - Colonists are given the chance to leave a world before they have a catastrophic impact upon the development of its native species. The story illustrates two differing philosophies: humans have no right to interfere with the natural development of life on other planets vs. humans have the right to compete with other life forms for supremacy.

The last two are set in the far future:

“Transfigured Mind” - People live long lives, then change and live different lives. They see life as a game and self-consciousness as a painful experience that is best avoided. They choose not to remember the past. An outsider asks whether experiencing a more tangible reality would be more fruitful, but the search for new knowledge does not interest the humans who dwell on Earth.

“Between the Winds” - Set in the same future as “Transfigured Mind,” the remaining inhabitants of an Earth that is coming back to life are living a Matrix-like existence. The story again explores whether it is better to live in virtual reality or actual reality.

“Transfigured Mind” makes a self-conscious effort to be literary. Like “Between the Winds,” it doesn’t hold up as well as the other stories, perhaps because other writers have taken the notion of virtual reality to loftier heights. Still, this is a strong collection by one of the genre’s more philosophical writers.

RECOMMENDED