Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

 July 12, 2020

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

Career criminals Maurice and Charlie wait in the ferry boat terminal in Algeciras, Spain.  They have been told that Maurice's missing daughter Dilly will be either arriving on the ferry boat coming from Tangier, Morocco, or departing on one of the ferries going to Tangier.  In between handing out missing person flyers and terrorizing the waiting passengers, they reminisce about their long life of crime together.

Kevin Barry won the Dublin IMPAC award in 2013 for his previous novel City of Bohane, set in a gritty Ireland of the not-too-distant future.  Night Boat to Tangier is written in the same Irish colloquial dialect, salted with frequent vulgarities.  Sometimes it's hard to figure out which of the two main characters is speaking/thinking, since the author doesn't bother with phrases like "Maurice said" or "Charlie replied."  If you're easily offended by curse words and disturbed by various types of abuse, Kevin Barry is not for you.

This is my second week of retirement, and it's been hectic to say the least.  On Monday, a woman in an SUV hit the front end of my car when she was turning left into a parking lot (or maybe she was trying to make a u-turn).  Tuesday was spent finding a repair shop and getting a rental car, a cute little Hyundai Elantra hatchback.  Hyundai wasn't on my new-car-buying radar but the Elantra is a small sedan, very quiet and nice to drive.  Today I'm venturing out to the library to return a couple of books and to the grocery store for a few items.

On the plus side, my good friend Marj Monaghan stopped by and we had coffee and conversation on my patio in the backyard.  She brought a yummy carrot cake and flowers from Whole Foods.  It's always so good to catch up with her.

The rescue group (As Good as Gold) has identified an adopter that they think will be a good fit for foster guy Tommy.  They are coming to visit him on Tuesday.  Is he a cutie or what?

Tommy, the foster dog

I also talked to Bonnie at the library, who had some good work gossip in addition to needing to vent.  She is going to come over and drink wine on the patio one of these days.  AND I got the first shipment of wine from Winc - the LIT staff gave me a gift certificate as a retirement gift.  So much fun to try different kinds of wine!

The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka

January 8, 2020

The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka

Fifteen years ago, Sarah Cook disappeared on the same night that her parents were brutally murdered.  Her boyfriend at the time was quickly arrested and convicted of the crime, and has been on Death Row ever since.  Now a date has been set for his execution.  His sister, convinced of his innocence, wants to make one last attempt to find Sarah, believing that she holds the answers to what happened on that long ago night.  Believing she has seen Sarah in the area, she hires private investigator Roxane Weary to try to locate the woman that she is sure is the missing Sarah.  Roxane takes on the case, needing the money, but already pretty convinced that the police got the right guy, although she soon realizes that there is more to the story.  But Roxane has troubles of her own, dealing with her father’s death in the only way she knows how, by looking at the world through the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

This is quite a decent thriller with a number of plot turns and a flawed detective who lives a messy life.  Roxane herself fits the mold of the noir detective nicely:  she’s always broke, so she takes on cases that she knows she shouldn’t; she has a cool old car; she is attracted to lovers that she knows she should stay the hell away from; she drinks way too much; she hides from her feelings, refusing to deal with the emotional issues looming in her life; she doesn’t take care of herself; she gets stopped by the police frequently since she skitters on the edge of the law in her work.  It’s fast-paced, a quick read, and will keep you turning the pages.  

The Huntress by Kate Quinn

December 7, 2019

The Huntress by Kate Quinn

Boston, April 1946 – Dan McBride owns an antique shop in Boston, and one day, a pretty Austrian widow named Annelise Weber comes in to sell some of her jewelry.  They are attracted to each other and marry after a brief courtship.  Dan’s 17 year old daughter Jordan is initially happy that her lonely father has found love again since he has been a widower for ten years.  But there is something about her new stepmother that bothers Jordan, and she sets out to discover the new Mrs. McBride's past.

Vienna, April 1950 – former war correspondent Ian Graham has dedicated his life to hunting down Nazi war criminals who have escaped prosecution, but the Nazi he wants to capture the most is Die Jagerin (The Huntress).  He teams up with Nina Markova, a Russian pilot who was a member of the Night Witches, a famous squadron of female pilots.  Nina barely escaped from Die Jagerin with her life and will stop at nothing to hunt her down, even if the search takes her to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Kate Quinn writes about little-known historical events, especially about women.  I loved her previous book, The Alice Network, which covered another little-known World War II story about a network of female spies, but this one was disappointing. The Huntress is told from three points of view:  Jordan, Ian, and Nina.  Nina’s sections about being a Night Witch were fascinating.  This is a really long book that could have been considerably shorter – there is a lot of filler, conversations and love scenes that don’t help move the story forward, especially in Jordan’s sections (the plot almost didn’t need Jordan at all).  A good editor could have cut out 100-150 pages, making a better narrative.

(Why do so many authors feel that they have to write a love story or sexual relationship for every character?  Unless it has something to do with the plot, it's certainly not necessary in a work of historical fiction.  How does it improve the story to hear about Ian and Nina rolling around in bed all the way across the Atlantic?  I'm also sick of men tucking curls behind women's ears - does any guy do that in real life???  If I want romance, I'll read a romance.)

Historical note:  the Night Witches, as they were called by the Nazis, were the Russian 588^th Night Bomber Regiment made up entirely of women pilots in their late teens and early twenties.  Although the Russian military originally tried to recruit educated university women, they soon realized they needed tough peasant girls who were accustomed to hardship and bitterly cold weather.  Each airplane had a two-woman crew, a pilot and a navigator who was also the bombardier.  As they neared their targets, the pilot would cut the engines so that the German soldiers on the ground would not hear them approaching.  They would glide to the drop zone, and after dropping their payload, the plane would head back to their base, where the ground crew would quickly refuel the plane and reload it with bombs.  The same pilot and navigator would head out for another pass over the Germans, sometimes doing as many as ten bombing runs per night per plane.  The Night Witches were so feared that any German pilot who brought down one of their planes was immediately awarded the Iron Cross.  (Sources:  history.com and Wikipedia.)