Our August Author: Rebecca Pawel

It's time to get to know Rebecca Pawel, author of our enaging "Mystery Month" selection Watcher in the Pine.  First stop is her website, Rebeccapawel.com, which has the usual biography and info about her other books. In the Links section, she has helpful pointers to the sources she consulted to create the Spanish Civil War setting for her books, something I was curious about, but unfortunately many of the links are now defunct. This one which will give you a little tour of Liébana and Potes, still works.  The New York Sun also has a brief profile of the Pawel here.  Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of interviews with this author available online. Fellow crime fiction writer Cara Black gets her on record with her favorite writers and films and other assorted trivia here, but the most interesting stuff can be found at Morpheme Tales where she discusses creating the central character, Tejada, how she worked to get the historical details right and the reception of her first book Death of a Nationalist, in Spain. Probably the best news is that although she has completed the Tejada series, her next book will be in Renaissance Flanders during the Eighty Years War. I'm not sure that's going to bring her back to Rights Readers, but it'll be on my personal "to read" list for sure.

Back to Picasso's War

I was excited we chose Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine as our "Mystery Month" selection thinking it was great that we were going to discuss a new topic, the Spanish Civil War. Somehow, I had completely forgotten how much we had enjoyed reading Russell Martin's Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece That Changed the World. If you want to jog your memory about the painting, the book and the history behind it in preparation for reading this month's mystery, the Picasso's War website is a fun place to start.

For more visuals of the era, check out UCSD's collection of posters from the Spanish Civil War or Columbia University's collection of children's drawings from the period.  I would love to find more books like Picasso's War that offer great works of art as an entry point into a discussion of history and human rights. Let me know if you know of any or nominate some works of art for this treatment in comments!

For August: Watcher in the Pine by Rebecca Pawel

Once again, we are kicking back in August and enjoying a mystery, this time one from Rebecca Pawel's series set in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, Watcher in the Pine:

Spain, 1940. Potes, a remote northern mountain village, is Carlos Tejada’s first independent Guardia Civil command. He soon discovers that this “promotion” is a mixed blessing. The villagers are unwelcoming. He and his pregnant wife, Elena, have no place to live but the jail, and his own men seem strangely hostile. Is it just their suspicion of his wife’s Republican sympathies? Or is there more going on in the beautiful but bleak area, recently devastated by the civil war? Tejada discovers that there may, indeed, be a new outbreak of that war with Potes as its epicenter. And he must find a way to reconcile his love for his wife with his duty.

For August: The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall

For our August mystery month we have decided to have a bit of fun with The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall:

Meet Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India’s swindlers, cheats, and murderers. 

In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centers and malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri’s main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests. But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri’s resources to investigate. With his team of undercover operatives—Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream—Puri combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago, and reveals modern India in all its seething complexity.

Tarquin Hall is a British writer and journalist who has reported extensively on S.E. Asia and the Middle East for the British press. He is also the author of the highly acclaimed non-fiction books Salaam Brick Lane and To the Elephant Graveyard. The Vish Puri series is his first venture into fiction. He lives in London, England.

Catching up with Clea Koff

This month we are reading The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, a novel that takes us to the Balkans, and in the company of a young woman and her grandfather, both physicians, and a lot of inventive folktale-like storytelling, into the physical and psychological wounds of several generations of conflict.  There's even some digging for bones, and that reminded me of an earlier nonfiction Rights Readers selection from some years back, The Bone Woman, a memoir by Clea Koff. Koff is a forensic anthropologist who was part of the team investigating war crimes in both Rwanda and the Balkans. Here's an interview from last summer where she explains the kind of evidence a forensic team working for the International Criminal Tribune for the Former Yugoslavia might bring to bear on the ongoing trials of war criminals such as Ratko Mladic. For readers of The Tiger's Wife who'd like to know the reality behind the book, The Bone Woman would be a good place to start.

Of course, I was interested in finding out what Koff has been up to recently and was surprised to learn that she is the author of two mysteries, Freezing and the forthcoming Passing about a pair of L.A-based forensic investigators solving missing persons identification cases. Sounds promising! Mystery fans! Let me know if you think one of these would be a good option for our August mystery month selection some time...

For August: Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage

For August, our mystery month, we have selected Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage,

In the interior of Brazil, landless workers battle the owners of vast fazendas. When a visiting archbishop is assassinated, Mario Silva of the federal police is called upon to investigate. Then a newspaper owner, a TV journalist, a landowner’s son, and a priest are brutally killed. In a country where dead street kids are known as “hams,” justice is scarce.

Leighton Gage has spent many years in Brazil, where he maintains a home. He also resides in Florida and lives part of the year in the Netherlands.

Our August Author: Stieg Larsson (The Girl Who Playes With Fire)

It's our mystery month and this time we chose Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire.  I'm not sure who is behind the site, but for a compendium of Stieg Larsson links, you could start with stieglarsson.com or try this Life of Stieg Larsson interactive feature from the New York Times.  In addition, the NYT offers a couple of useful articles on the backstory of the series, The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson and Pippi Longstocking and Lisbeth Salander.

The Daily Telegraph has an account of Larsson's only interview on the series with some tips for further reading...

Every spring and autumn, back when he worked for the news agency, he was assigned to write reviews that summed up the season’s releases of translated crime fiction. “I’d include the top five crime novels at that particular time,” he said. “Some of the writers I’ve praised are Sara Paretsky, Val McDermid, Elisabeth George and Minette Walters. Strangely enough, almost all are women.”

If you'd like to get a jumpstart on the discussion, check out Slate's Culture Gabfest on Stieg Larsson. Otherwise you can dig in and wrestle with some of the issues the book raises:

Is Lisbeth Salander a feminist icon or male fantasy figure? There's no shortage of opinions. Here's a sampler:  Why we should cheer Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson’s girl gang, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: feminist, or not?, Did Stieg Larsson have a problem with women? Feminist or misogynist?
 
How does Larsson's Sweden match up with the reality? Here is a trio of articles to check out: Millenium's distorting mirror, Understanding Swedish society through Stieg Larsson's popular fiction and Foreign Policy's  We're All Swedes Now, 

The sex-trafficking subplot didn't move sufficiently beyond lecture to where it emotionally engaged me, but the NYT's Nick Kristof is hopeful that the books might raise some awareness of the issue.

A tip of the hat to Larsson's English translator, Reg Keeland who has a blog.

Just for fun you can get a peek at the 'Dragon Tattoo' tour of Stockholm.

And finally, don't miss Nora Ephron's Stieg Larsson parody The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut in The New Yorker.

For August: The Girl Who Played with Fire

For August, our mystery month, we have selected The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson:

Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing exposé on social injustice, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a masterful, endlessly satisfying novel.

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past. 

Our August Author: Zoe Ferraris

Zoe Ferraris, author of Finding Nouf, a mystery set in Saudi Arabia, has her own website where you should be sure to check out the Q&A. She also has a blog, Pilgrimage, that will probably get more interesting when she has more than one post (although that first one is pretty good). Matt Beynon Rees (a possible future Rights Readers author) has an interview focusing mostly on the writing and publishing process while KUCI has a good audio interview.

For a little of the Saudi atmosphere, check out this National Geograhic photo gallery .

For human rights background, here is Amnesty International's Saudi Arabia page with additional commentary on the Human Rights Now blog. Even more on topic, check out this Human Rights Watch report: Saudi Arabia: Male Guardianship Policies Harm Women.

For August: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

For August, we have selected Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris,

When sixteen-year-old Nouf goes missing, her prominent family calls on Nayir al-Sharqi, a pious desert guide, to lead the search party. Ten days later, just as Nayir is about to give up in frustration, her body is discovered by anonymous desert travelers. But when the coroner’s office determines that Nouf died not of dehydration but from drowning, and her family seems suspiciously uninterested in getting at the truth, Nayir takes it upon himself to find out what really happened. He quickly realizes that if he wants to gain access to the hidden world of women, he will have to join forces with Katya Hijazi, a lab worker at the coroner’s office who is bold enough to bare her face and to work in public. Their partnership challenges Nayir, as he confronts his desire for female companionship and the limitations imposed by his beliefs. Fast-paced and utterly transporting, Finding Nouf is a riveting literary mystery that offers an unprecedented window into Saudi Arabia and the lives of men and women there.

For August: The Redbreast

In keeping with our tradition of reading a mystery in August, we have selected Jo Nesbo's The Redbreast,

Police Detective Harry Hole has made a terrible mistake. An embarrassment in the line of duty has pulled him off his usual beat. Reassigned to mundane surveillance tasks, he reluctantly agrees to monitor neo-Nazi activities in Oslo. But as Hole is drawn into an underground world of illegal gun trafficking, brutal beatings, and sexual extortions, he soon learns that he must act fast to prevent an international conspiracy from unfolding.

Trapped in the crosshairs of the man with all the answers, Harry Hole plunges headlong into a mystery with roots deep in the past. His investigation takes him back to Norway's darkest hour—when members of the young nation's government collaborated with leaders of Nazi Germany. Dredging up a painful history of denial, Hole turns his attention to the Norwegian troops who fought for Adolf Hitler on the Eastern front. Branded by their countrymen as traitors, the soldiers who survived the brutal Russian winter—the hunger, fear, cold, grenades, and snipers—returned home as scapegoats of a nation's atonement. Sixty years later, old grudges and betrayals appear to have been laid to rest, until Hole realizes that someone has begun to pick off the surviving soldiers one by one.

Our August Author: Colin Cotterill

Launching our discussion of Colin Cotterill's mystery, The Coroner's Lunch, I want to direct you to the author's website: Colin Cotterill. Not only are the pictures, always a plus, especially in our reading discussion-lite August mode, there are cartoons! Also, for those who just finished reading Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, you'll want to check out the Books for Laos section --more about under-served kids and education.

NPR's Day to Day did a profile on the author a couple years back: Book Bag: Laos as Character in 'The Coroner's Lunch'

For August: The Coroner's Lunch

Continuing our tradition of reading a mystery set in an exotic location in August, we've selected Colin Cotterill's The Coroner's Lunch,

Laos, 1975. The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over this former French colony. Dr. Siri Paiboun, a 72-year-old Paris-trained doctor, is appointed national coroner. Although he has no training for the job, there is no one else; the rest of the educated class has fled.

He is expected to come up with the answers the party wants. But crafty and charming Dr.Siri is immune to bureaucratic pressure. At his age, he reasons, what can they do to him? And he knows he cannot fail the dead who come into his care without risk of incurring their boundless displeasure. Eternity could be a long time to have the spirits mad at you.

Naomi Hirahara at Pacific Asia Museum

Naomi Hirahara, author of (Summer of the Big Bachi) will be speaking at Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum on Thursday, November 2 at 7 PM. She will be joined by Sujata Massey, author of Girl in a Box, in which Japanese American sleuth Rei Shimura must use all her resourcefulness and unorthodox methods to unmask a killer. Naomi Hirahara's newest novel, Snakeskin Shamisen, finds Mas Arai, one of mystery fiction's most unique heroes, caught up in a dark tale that reaches from the islands of Okinawa to the streets of L.A.

Book signing and light refreshments included. Reservations recommended, 626.449.2742, ext. 20. Authors on Asia programs are included in museum admission, $7, $5 and are free for museum members.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, events

Mystery Month Preview

Rights Readers discovered some time ago that reading detective fiction can be a fun way to explore serious human rights issues-- after all, mysteries are all about the search for justice.  Today's Los Angeles Times brings us an article on the social consciousness of some local mystery writers.  Rights Reader favorite Walter Mosley (Little Scarlet) and our August author, Naomi Hirahara (Summer of the Big Bachi) get a mention.  Of her father (survivor of Hiroshima and the inspiration for her fictional gardner hero, Mas Arai) she says,

"Some drivers passing my father tending someone's lawn and garden may have thought nothing of him, but in fact he had survived and witnessed one of the horrific events of the 20th century," ... "I wanted to give a voice to people like this."

Mosley observes,

"At this point there are feminist, black, Japanese writers," he said. "And they think, 'Hey, I could tell this story in this genre. Certainly the people who have had critical success have spoken more to the social implications.' "

The protagonist of the new noir is still "the existentialist hero, someone standing up against corruption in society," Mosley said. But now "there's a critique not of bad people in society, but of society itself."

The new noir, Mosley said, is not a break from the past. Mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, who famously refused to testify during the anti-Communist witch hunting of the McCarthy era, "was extraordinarily political," Mosley said. "He was the guy who wouldn't name names. He went to prison."

Taking note of the other authors, --Paula L. Woods, Denise Hamilton, Marcos McPeek Villatoro-- mentioned for future Rights Readers mystery months!

For August: Summer of the Big Bachi

For August, our mystery month, we have selected Summer of the Big Bachi by local author Namoi Hirahara.

In the foothills of Pasadena, Mas Arai is just another Japanese-American gardener, his lawnmower blades clean and sharp, his truck carefully tuned. But while Mas keeps lawns neatly trimmed, his own life has gone to seed. His wife is dead. And his livelihood is falling into the hands of the men he once hired by the day. For Mas, a life of sin is catching up to him. And now bachi, the spirit of retribution, is knocking on his door.

It begins when a stranger comes around, asking questions about a nurseryman who once lived in Hiroshima, a man known as Joji Haneda. By the end of the summer, Joji will be dead and Mas’s own life will be in danger. For while Mas was building a life on the edge of the American dream, he has kept powerful secrets: about three friends long ago, about two lives entwined, and about what really happened when the bomb fell on Hiroshima in August 1945.

A spellbinding mystery played out from war-torn Japan to the rich tidewaters of L.A.’s multicultural landscape, this stunning debut novel weaves a powerful tale of family, loyalty, and the price of both survival and forgiveness.