The World of Books

The Devil’s Alternative is a spy thriller from the end of the 1970’s – from the Era of the Cold War. The Russian leader and the American President face off in a crisis situation. Spies and intelligence play a crucial role: The British happen to have a spy with access to the Russian Politburo meetings. This may provide the key to gaining advantage for the West.

The story is very exciting, although somewhat unrealistic. As usual, the good guys are trying to prevent World War III while the “hawks” in both the Kremlin and the White House can hardly wait to get going. The ending is somewhat contrived but on the whole the book is a very good read.

However, The Devil’s Alternative is a book written in a political context long gone. But given that most readers will be somewhat familiar with the Cold War, this is probably not a factor that will prevent readers from enjoying the book even today.

The Devil’s Alternative is a classic thriller – politicians, spies, terrorists, and huge decisions that needs to be made in a situation where information is scarce. It is one of Frederick Forsyth’s best thrillers, and a book I enjoyed tremendously. Highly recommended!

Links to Frederick Forsyth’s books at amazon US, amazon CAN, and amazon UK.

It is interesting to notice how tightly interrelated things are, and how developments internationally have domestic effects even in such areas as literature and, more specifically, crime fiction. Some years ago the traditionally industrious Swedes started to build an impressive crime fiction literature, with writers like Henning Mankell, Jan Guillou, Liza Marklund, Håkan Nesser, Åke Edwardson and others.

Then a new guy, named Stieg Larsson, totally unknown as a crime fiction author, came along. And then he became an enormously popular name internationally – all over the world – in just a few years. And all of sudden not only Swedish crime fiction, but Scandinavian crime fiction, became popular internationally. Booksellers who had seen Larsson’s books flying out the doors created displays for other crime fiction writers –Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Jo Nesbø, Karin Fossum, Kjell Ola Dahl, Anne Holt, Gunnar Staalesen and Tom Egeland, as well as “new” Swedes like Camilla Läckberg and Johan Theorin, alongside the Swedish authors mentioned above.

My point is not that Norwegian crime writers could not or would not have “made it” internationally without the assistance of the Swedes. Glass Key Award winners Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbø were already established, and they are marvelous writers. But it seems clear to me that their sales have increased because of the recent interest in crime from the countries up in the frigid North.

My other point is that we seem to experiencing a very strong growth in the Norwegian crime fiction industry these days, one that cannot fully be explained by increased demand inside Norway. It is evident primarily in the many new writers that have recently entered the crime fiction scene in Norway – Torkil Damhaug, Thomas Enger, Merete Junker, Jørgen Jæger, Tom Kristensen, Unni Lindell, Knut Nærum, Vidar Sundstøl, Kjetil Try, Chris Tvedt, Øystein Wiik. Some of these are very new, some not so new, and all of them are good enough, in my opinion, to sell very well internationally. Some of them have won the Norwegian Golden Gun award (Tom Kristensen, Unni Lindell and Vidar Sundstøl) and international prizes and awards,

To me, this seems to indicate that we are experiencing something of a Golden Age in Norwegian Crime fiction right now. It is wonderful and very exciting to witness the emergence of this strong cadre of talented authors. I feel confident that several of them will be published internationally during the next couple of years, and can’t wait to see how they are received!

Don Winslow

Don Winslow is an American author. He is most recognized for his crime and mystery novels. Many of his books are set in California. He has published a series of five novels that have a private investigator named Neal Carey as their main character.

Bibliography

• 1991: A Cool Breeze on the Underground
• 1992: The Trail to Buddha’s Mirror
• 1993: Way Down on the High Lonely
• 1994: A Long Walk Up the Water Slide
• 1995: While Drowning in the Desert
• 1996: Isle of Joy
• 1997: Death and Life of Bobby Z
• 1999: California Fire and Life
• 2004: Looking for a Hero (with Peter Maslowski)
• 2005: The Power of the Dog
• 2006: The Winter of Frankie Machine
• 2008: The Dawn Patrol
• 2009: The Gentlemen’s Hour
• 2010: Savages

See also Don Winslow’s website.

In Dawn Patrol, Don Winslow introduced us to Boone Daniels, a very laid-back ex-cop turned private investigator, and a man with a talent for detection. Boone Daniels is a likeable, sharp guy, and has a passion for surfing as well. A very interesting protagonist indeed.

And now we get to meet him again, in The Gentlemen’s Hour. Times are tough for private investigators – there is little work for our PI, and Boone has plenty of time on his hands. So his life revolves around his surfing sessions. However, one day at the beach, Daniels stays on into what is known as “the gentlemen’s hour”, when older surfers come and do their stuff, and is approached by a millionaire surfer named Dan Nichols. Nichols, it turns out, has a new case for Boone. And Boone needs a new case.

The millionaire believes his wife is cheating on him. And now he wants to find out if it is true, and if it is, he wants evidence. This is not exactly the kind of job Boone loves the most, and under other circumstances he would have said no. But times are tough, and he needs money and takes the job. And then, of course, once he has said yes to one job, many more come his way. And in the case of the suspected cheating, he quickly discovers that Nichols had it right – he is being cheated. So he considers the job done and over – until, that is, the man Nichols’ wife cheated him with turns up dead with a hole in his head.

Don Winslow is a great writer, quite noir in his style, and he knows how to tell a tale in a way that makes it intriguing and suspenseful. And on July 23, when the shortlist for The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2010 was announced, The Gentlemen’s Hour was on the list! No big surprise, but noteworthy even so.

The characters in Winslow’s books – and in this one as well – are cool, bright, have humor and are believable, and some of them are very fun as well. Also, the action is quite fast and intense, so the book is actually hard to put down. The Gentlemen’s Hour is very, very enjoyable, and Don Winslow is now high on my list of authors to watch: He can make me alternate between biting my nails and laughing out loud while sitting alone in the back yard. I strongly recommend him and this book in particular! So go get his book – it is hot and may well soon be a CWA Dagger winner!

Links to books by Don Winslow at Amazon US and Amazon UK. Se også Bokkilden.

This is an intriguing anthology of poetry by Swedish author Lars Gustafsson. It has been translated from the original Swedish by John Irons.

A Time in Xanadu raises some rather big questions. Where are we? How do we know? It contains powerful musings, written in a sparse and compact language. But beneath lie strange, eerie landscapes; “those white, strangely meaningless / days between Christmas and New Year.”

The questions raised concern travel, war, philosophy. The poem-stories take figures from avenues such as entertainment, history, mythology, and even comics, and use them as actors in the sometimes quite philosophical narratives.

The style and setting is distinctly Scandinavian, quite dark but even so with glimpses of humor. I like the collection a lot. It is, for me, a collection of poems to be read one at a time, at least twice, and perhaps even three or four times. My favorite is Centuries and Minutes – a poem for New Year’s Eve 1999. The poems, 84 in all, are highly evocative and very interesting.

Praise for A Time in Xanadu:

“Lars Gustafsson has an uncompromising vision of the utter complexity of modern life.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Gustafsson’s A Time in Xanadu, his third translated collection of poems, manages to be personal and quirky while also deeply philosophical.” —ForeWord

Links to books by Lars Gustafsson at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN, and in German: Auszug aus Xanadu.

This masterpiece of a novel won Styron the 1967 Pulitzer Prize. Also, Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It was controversial at the time it was published, due to a large extent to the heated discussions about issues concerning race in the USA at the time.

The book is about a revolt occurring in the late summer of 1831. In a remote section of southeastern Virginia, the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery took place. The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner. He was an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region.

The Confessions of Nate Turner is based on an extant document, the “confession” of Turner to the white lawyer Thomas Gray. In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been divinely inspired, charged with a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and destroy the white race.

William Styron, of course, takes liberties with the historical Nat Turner. Nat Turner is a man whose life is undocumented, and so Styron created a life. And the book is on the whole fairly sympathetic to Turner, at the same time as it does not express such sentiments concerning Turner’s thoughts and ideas.

The book tells the story of Nat Turner and the uprising masterfully. But more than that; it is also a tale of some of the extremely agonizing and hard essences of slavery. Styron tells the story using the mind of a slave, and recreates and reconstructs masterfully in a way that makes this book a kind of literary history that conveys not only the facts but also the experiences of slavery. The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution.

This is not a fun novel. Rather it is very dark, and full of ugliness and very negative characters from both sides of the divide. It is, however a very deep and penetrating novel, with excellent psychological analyses, that uncovers and lays bare motivations and shows in considerable detail some of the extremely dehumanizing aspects of the institution of slavery as it once existed.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is a great story that still deserves to be read. It is a masterful novel, an important novel in American literature, and a book that will forever have a special place in the literature of the United States.

Links to books by William Styron at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN. See also Bokkilden.no.

Some books are more scary than others – and some science fiction books have been unbelievably scary because they have raised alarming questions about social development and political organization. George Orwell’s Animal Farm, written in 1945, and his 1984, written in 1949, are two such books. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is another. Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano is another such book, along with some very few other books. And Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley in 1931, belongs to the same group. These books are often referred to as dystopian allegorical novellas. They are all science fiction novels, and depict visions of a futuristic society which has developed into a negative version of Utopia. In most cases such books also describe societies that have degraded into repressive, controlled states.

Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World continues to be a significant warning to our society today. It is, without doubt, one of the most brilliant pieces of satire ever written. It takes place on a future Earth where human beings are mass-produced and conditioned for lives in a rigid caste system. As the story progresses, some of the very disturbing secrets that lie underneath the bright, shiny facade of this highly-ordered world is gradually revealed to us.

The book opens by allowing a tour of the Fertilizing Room of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where the high-tech reproduction takes place. Then, into this seemingly advanced civilization, John is introduced. He is a “savage” from a reservation where old human culture still survives. Thus, Brave New World also is a tale of culture shock and cultural conflict.

Aldous Huxley

Huxley’s ironic portrait of a populace doped into Nirvana on “soma” (read Prozac and Zoloft), isolated and diverted by petty preoccupations in mindless trivial pursuits is shocking. The people of this wonderful society are totally unaware of the degree to which they are being socially, economically, and politically co-opted and manipulated.

The novel raises important and interesting questions: What can possibly be wrong with a world in which everybody is happy, even if there is no real free will involved? Is contentment really a goal to strive for? Are deeper meanings really important? What happens if all we seek is instant gratification and materialism? Perhaps the scariest thing about this novel is that in many ways humanity seems to be moving closer to its dystopian vision.

Brave New World is an excellent book and unfortunately seems to be becoming more and more relevant. Also, reading it is very refreshing, as somehow, even today, the book makes you think and ponder issues that one usually does not devote time to think about. In addition, it is a wonderfully written book; Huxley’s prose is clear, crisp, witty, elegant and insightful without being overly obvious.

Links to books by Aldous Huxley at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN. Linker til Bokkilden, Haugenbok og Tanum.

The tale in this book begins in 2380. Humans have had wormhole technology for over 300 years. It was the work of Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie Isaacs, that strange pair of men that made this possible. And the wormhole technology has been put to good use since it was invented. The human race has colonized planets across hundreds of light years, and has grown culturally, politically, technologically and economically. But there are many threats – some known, some unknown.

Now, in Pandora’s Star, two strange stars have been located, 1,000 light years from Earth, and 750 light years from the edge of Commonwealth space, which seemingly disappeared some time earlier. The theory is that they have been enclosed inside Dyson spheres. And currently, on a distant planet, Astronomer Dudley Bose performs the first detailed observations of an astronomical event known as the Dyson Pair Enclosure. Who created the enclosure around Dyson Alpha and Dyson Beta? And why was it created?

To find answers to these questions, the Commonwealth builds an interstellar ship, the Second Chance, and places it under command of Wilson Kime, to travel to Dyson Alpha and investigate. As they arrive, the barrier disappears. Inside the first imprisoned star system they find an incredibly warlike and aggressive species, a race that has come to be called the Primes. It is a strange race of intelligent immotiles that breed and control vast armies of sub-sentient ‘motiles’ via electronically extended neural interfaces.

After capturing crew members of the Second Chance, the Primes discover the location of the Commonwealth, and the dominant immotile grouping, MorningLightMountain, makes it its primary objective to destroy the Commonwealth. The human race is forced to enter into a brutal nuclear war of devastating proportions. And in the middle of it, another challenge – the Starflyer – also emerges.

Pandora’s Star is a wonderful, very intriguing, fascinating and suspenseful book. The world invented by Peter F. Hamilton is rich, technologically very advanced, dynamic and full of surprises. Science fiction does get much better than this!

Links to Peter F. Hamilton’s books: amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

The ninth book in Daniel Silva’s excellent, intelligent and fast-paced series about the assassin and art restorer Gabriel Allon is perhaps the best so far. It is a tough book, full of violence and feels very realistic. Many of the great characters from the previous books are present here as well. The book most relevant for the action in The Defector is Moscow Rules, where readers were introduced to the evil and hard Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB agent who has become a Russian oligarch.

The tale is about vengeance, spy craft, finance, corruption and greed. When it starts, we find Gabriel in the tan hills of Umbria, where he restores a painting and honeymoons with his new wife, Chiara. There he receives shocking news from London. The defector and former Russian intelligence officer Grigori Bulganov, who twice saved Gabriel’s life, has vanished. The British believe he has re-defected. Gabriel is certain this is wrong. What is more – he owes Grigori his life and has made him a promise:

Do you know what we do with traitors, Gabriel? Many things have changed in Russia since the fall of Communism. But the punishment for betrayal remains the same. Promise me one thing, Gabriel. Promise me I won’t end up in an unmarked grave.

He has no choice but to go to London and investigate the disappearance. There his suspicions are confirmed. And soon Gabriel and his team of operatives find themselves in a deadly conflict with one of the world’s most ruthless men: Ivan Kharkov – a man with unlimited resources. A man who is protected by people in very high places in Russian society. The hunt for Grigori, and the fight against the wily oligarch seeking vengeance at all costs, take Gabriel and his men from a quiet mews in London, to the shores of Lake Como, to the glittering streets of Geneva and Zurich, and, finally, to a heart-stopping, extremely dramatic climax in the snowbound birch forests of Russia. Gabriel has never before been tested like this.

Daniel Silva’s spy stories are excellent. And The Defector is probably his finest novel – so far, that is. It is very suspenseful, of course, but there is also humor, love, warmth and elegant prose. This really is an excellently written novel. And this, together with the smart turns in the plot and the wide array of remarkable characters together make this an exceptional book. The Defector is an outstanding spy thriller.

PS: Daniel Silva’s next book, The Rembrandt Affair (Gabriel Allon), is now ready for pre-order. It will be published in July, 2010.

Little Birds is an evocative and superbly erotic journey into the mysterious world of sex and sensuality. This collection of thirteen excellent erotic short stories span all the way from the beach towns of Normandy to the streets of New Orleans. The stories, written by the imaginative and compelling story teller Anias Nin, tell the tales of a variety of characters – a covetous French painter, a sleepless wanderer of the night, a guitar-playing gypsy, and others who yearn for and dive into the turbulent depths of romantic experience.

The stories are all very different from one another, and explore different types of sexual encounters and situations. For instance, A Model is a story of a young woman’s progress in sexual awakening as she works as a nude model. The Queen is a story of a Parisian artist in love with and inspired by a famous prostitute named Bijou. And The Runaway depicts a runaway young woman who is taken in by two men who both begin to train her in lovemaking.

The stories in this collection are Little Birds, The Woman on the Dunes, Lina, Two Sisters, Sirocco, The Maja, A Model, The Queen, Hilda & Rango, The Chanchiquito, Saffron, Mandra, and Runaway.

The writing in each of the stories is eloquent, steamy and sexy without being crass. All the stories are easy reads. This, plus the fact that the stories are written by a feminist author, makes Little Birds a very interesting experience into the world of erotica. I liked the stories and do not hesitate to recommend it for its sensual stories. It is an incredible collection.

Praise for Little Birds:

“[It is] so distinct an advance in the depiction of female sensuality that I felt, on reading it, enormous gratitude.” –Alice Walker

Links to books by Anais Nin at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and at Bokkilden, CDON og Tanum.

Shadow is Karin Alvtegen’s fifth book, and a great Scandinavian crime fiction book. In my opinion it is her best so far. Shadow is more a psychological thriller novel than a crime or mystery book in the traditional sense. There is no detective, police or private, investing crimes in this book, even if there are villains. Shadow is a genuinely wicked story of a family full of dysfunctional relationships and dark secrets. As in her other books, the dark tale she tells is anchored in a plausible tale of everyday life.

Karin Alvtegen is a master of psychological thrillers. In many ways her story-telling reminds me of Karin Fossum sans detective. Her plots are masterful. She slowly builds up tension, creating a situation where it more and more becomes very probable; maybe even in a sense feels necessary, that something happens. And even though you expect it, Alvtegen manages to surprise you when it actually happens.

Shadow tells a tale of fame and the high prize sometimes paid for it. It is an utterly compelling novel about the lengths and depths people can be driven in order to achieve fame and acclaim, and the effect that this has on those closest to them.
Marianne Folkesson, employed by the state to close up a life with dignity and respect, arrives in a non-descript apartment. The woman living there, Gerda Persson, has lain dead in her apartment for three days before Marianne is called. When she arrives, she finds the apartment tidy and ordered. Gerda’s life seems to have been quite ordinary.

At least, so it seems, until Marianne opens the freezer and finds it full of books, neatly stacked and wrapped, with a thick layer of ice covering them. They are all by Axel Ragnerfeldt, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, with handwritten dedications to Gerda from the author. What story do these books have to tell, about Gerda, and more importantly about Ragnerfeldt, a man whose fame is without precedent in the nation’s cultural life, but seldom gives interviews?

Thus the death of the old housemaid of Alex Ragnarfeldt sets in motion events that brings to the fore old skeletons that have for long been hidden in closets and kept out of sight. But the secrets have real implications in the present, among other for the authors son, Jan-Erik, who makes a living by travelling around telling people about the life and work of his father, the famous author. As it turns out, Jan-Erik’s marriage, and ideed his life, is not what it seems, and he himself is a drinker and sex-fixated.

Shadow tells a gripping and somewhat gruesome tale, involving murder, betrayal and the holocaust, with great care and considerable skill. No wonder Shadow won the Danish Academy of Crime Writers´Award “The Palle Rosenkrantz Prize 2008″ for Best Crime Novel in Denmark of the year and was Shortlisted for the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers’ Award 2007 for Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year. Shadow is, frankly, frightfully good!

Praise for Karin Alvtegen’s Shadow:

Karin Alvtegen is a gifted storyteller, with a strong sense of style and shades of meaning. She gets under the skin of her characters and portrays them in a credible way. At the core of Shadow is a strong moral indignation and the question of what we do with our lives.”

– Norrtelje Tidning

”The violence comes into play late in the novel, but the way leading up to it is well worth trailing in all is perfectly plotted unpredictability.”

– Sydsvenskan

Links to books by Karin Alvtegen at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.