Book Report: The Nature of the Beast

12. Louise Penny, The Nature of the Beast ( 2015) (5/11/23)

Continuing my need to dip into something with a driving plot, I picked up this, the eleventh in the Chief Inspector (now Monsieur) Gamache series (I read the tenth last November). It carried me along nicely, introducing a few new characters—one of whom may end up being recurring, but mostly not—and a fantastic story of a giant missile launcher hidden in the forest near Three Pines for some forty years, with possible ties to Saddam Hussein. A cold-blooded serial killer who wrote a play that kicks the story off also figures in. There are two murders: a young boy and the director of the play. An old war crime is uncovered.

Every mystery writer has something different to offer. With Penny, I especially enjoy the development of the lead characters, both in the police force and among the Quebecois villagers. The plots themselves often have me shaking my head, but that's okay. Mysteries aren't meant to be believable per se. They're meant to carry us along. And this one did that. Although the murderer's motive is rather weak to my mind, there was plenty to keep one guessing about as the story progressed. Who doesn't love a red herring or two?

Nothing to quote this time. It is apple season, though, and Penny likes to throw in lots of food allusions—in this book, every single dish seems to be made of or with apples. Including the potato chips!

Random artists

Various people I follow on FB post imagery by artists I've never heard of, and I'm often intrigued enough to search them out. Then I forget their names and they fade from view. So I thought today I'd devote a post of my own to some of the artists I've encountered recently, so they won't disappear on me. I've linked their names to a little more about them and their work. There's so much beautifully inspired art out in the world. It makes my heart glad. (Click on the images to see them large on black.)

Akiyama Iwao, Japanese, 1921–2014

Wheat in Autumn, 1968

Owl, 1979

Gala Porras-Kim, Colombian-born, Los Angeles–based, b. 1984

Four Mourners on a Mantel, 2017

Nayarit Index, 2017

Julia Loken, British

Spring Cabbage, 2009

 
Billy Missi, Torres Strait Islander (Australia), 1970–2012

Waru thural (turtle tracks), 2009

Mudhaw warul (sheltered turtles
behind the reef), 2007

Matthijs Röling, Dutch, b. 1943

1969

Lente / Spring, 1975

Reza Derakshani, Iranian, b. 1952

Every Green Day and Every Red Night, 2010

Graceful Red Hunt, 2018

I have plenty to feast on from my friends' posts. I may well do a repeat random medley hodgepodge as a future post, to celebrate all the good creative energy swirling around us.

 

Book Report: A Darkness More Than Night

11. Michael Connelly, A Darkness More Than Night (2000) (5/2/23)

I've been slowly making my way through the next book in my alphabet project (I'm up to "I")—so slowly that I felt I needed a boost, and what better than a good mystery? I googled the Michael Connelly Bosch books, which I am also trying to read in order, then searched my shelves, and yes! I had the next one up, the seventh in the series. Or so I thought. Turns out, I skipped one. It had been part of the recent TV series, so the story was fresh in my mind, which made me think I'd read it. Oh well! 

This one brought together various characters from past non-Bosch Connelly books—FBI agent (now former) Terry McCaleb and Sheriff's Department detective Jaye Winston, from Blood Work, and tangentially the journalist protagonist of The Poet, Jack McEvoy. The story is a double one, involving the murder trial of a cocky Hollywood director, in which Bosch is the key witness for the prosecution, and a different recent murder, of a man suspected of yet another murder several years earlier but never caught, which Winston brings McCaleb in on for his professional opinion as a profiler. For a while, Bosch becomes the chief suspect in the second murder, because of evidence at the scene evoking the paintings of the darker-than-night 15th–16th-century Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch. 

Too simplistic? Well, yeah. The reader of course knows it wasn't Bosch, that he was set up. I mean seriously, would he actually leave behind such blatant clues pointing at his own self? Though the outcome—successful: they get the new killer and the director both—does have a dark tinge that underscores the fraught nature of bringing justice in a slippery world of evil. 

Nuff said. It's a Harry Bosch mystery—nothing deep, but entertaining enough. And now, back to my "I" book. Maybe now that I'm on a reading roll, I can polish it off quickly.