Book Review Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre

Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre is the true story of Eddie Chapman, a criminal-turned-spy and his role as “Agent Zigzag” during WWII.  As always with Macintyre’s books, the characters here are first rate, with Chapman coming across as a character with a capital C.  He fascinated almost everyone he came into contact with, from the women who fell for his blue eyes to the man who “ran” him as an agent for MI5.  This was a man who made his living as a thief, but who also courted friendships with people like Noel Coward and a young filmmaker who went on to direct the first James Bond movie. 

Eddie Chapman/Agent Zigzag

Macintyre has a knack for taking footnotes in history and turning them into riveting non-fiction. The author does a terrific job of sketching out both time and place, wherever that time or place might be.  Whether he’s recounting the story of Eddie’s early crimes, the night he was arrested while dining with a date or his growing frustration in prison, there’s always an emotional underpinning to the scenes, and they spring from the pages in three dimensions.  The writer intersperses contemporary documents with his own narrative, so that we read accounts of Eddie’s crimes and exploits.  It gives a true immediacy to the events and brings us into his story. 

Stephan Graumann, the aristocratic German spymaster who "runs" Eddie in Germany is very much the antithesis of the clichéd German spy.  He’s an educated and intelligent man.  (And as we learn from the author’s graceful side trips into context, we know that the Abwehr was antithetical to Nazi culture.  Headed up by Admiral Canaris, who would later be executed for his part in a plot to kill Hitler, the German intelligence service sought to serve the country without serving the Fuhrer.)

The backdrop of events is elegant.  In fact, it’s about as far removed from modern-day spycraft, with its anonymous rooms and bland personalities as it is possible to be.  The Villa de la Bretonniere is an irresistible setting for Eddie’s schooling. 

Book Review The Gods of Gotham

In pre-Civil War New York, a reluctant cop must find a murderer preying on child prostitutes as tensions escalate between locals and Irish immigrants. Lindsay Faye's novel The Gods of Gotham has just been nominated for an Edgar Award and in a year that was filled with outstanding historical mysteries, from The Killing of Emma Gross to The Technologists, this book stands out.

There is meticulous attention to period detail and excellent character work. The writer offers up four plausible candidates for the role of the killer and the revelation of who’s responsible will come as a surprise even for a reader paying close attention.

Be warned though, the plot is so dark it makes Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness look like a Nancy Drew mystery with a portrait of a cold-hearted madam that is chilling. Fans of the BBC America series Copper may find this book particularly engaging with its blend of crime and politics.

In Gods of Gotham the hero and investigator is a former barman who becomes a "copper star" after his life savings bur up in a fire that destroys his lodging. Timothy Wilde is no stranger to the mean streets of the city but even he is shocked when a madam who specializes in child prostitutes is protected by the Democratic Party because she's a generous benefactor.

The characters here are rich and layered, and their relationships are believable and adult.

Timothy is a complex man but his older brother Valentine is even better. There’s something twisted and tweaked about him and when we find out what it is, it explains a lot. Then there's Mercy, the do-gooder who is Timothy's childhood friend and the love of his life. As with Timothy and Valentine, there's a lot more going on with her than meets the eye.

Timothy has a large and eclectic circle of friends that include a former "oysterman" and a group of "newsies" who have banded together in an informal family. His landlady, a baker's widow, has a life filled with sorrow and a practicality that serves Timothy well.

Father Sheehy, an Irish Catholic priest who helps Timothy, is what a priest should be—a man who is ready to defend his flock—at gunpoint if necessary—and who harbors a fine, fierce outrage over injustice. He reminds us a bit of characters from the works of Andrew Vachss where the protagonists are always on the childrens' side. Then there’s Matsell and Piest, Timothy’s colleagues on the police force. They both turn out to be (again) terrific characters.

It seems likely that this is the first in a series of books about these characters and the characters are up to the task of keeping readers interested from one book to the next.

Fleur Pellerin and Twitter

Fleur Pellerin is France's Minister for the Digital Economy (a very cool-sounding job title) and she's very much involved in a current contretemps over racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic hashtags on Twitter. The country that gave us liberte, egalite and fraternite, is having some problems living up to its national motto.  (Witness the huge turnout against gay marriage over the weekend.) Read about the court case now going on here.

Top baby names of 2013

Sookie? Are you kidding me? Eithne?  Really? (I actually know someone who named her baby girl Eithne. I hope she will grow into it.)  Speaking as someone who hated her first name enough to legally get rid of it--no one ever called me by the name except for elementary school teachers on the first day of class--it constantly amazes me the names that crop up.  Millie's' on the list too. My mother's name was Mildred and her mother called her "Mert," which she despised. She was Mickey from college onward. I always thought "Mickey" was kind of cool.
"Ellie" and "Betty" are on the list too.
The boys fare a bit better. Team Jacob comes up on top in the boy's list (and Edward actually isn't on the list at all). However Mo, Bertie and Gus make the list. "Bertie?" Not even "Albert," which would be bad enough? The commplete list of baby names is here.

Review of Snow White Must Die

This is a Euro-noir from German writer Cornelia "Nele" Neuhaus. It's part of a series about two detectives working homicides in the burbs of Frankfurt. I would love to read the first three books but they haven't been translated yet. The review is posted over at Criminal Element. Head over there for a chance to win the book.

Book Review of Sarah Fine's SANCTUM

How far would you go to save someone you love?

In Sarah Fine's SANCTUM, a young woman goes to hell to retrieve her best friend, and finds the afterlife is not what she expected at all.

While the author gets major props for not mining the same old/same old tropes used in so many YA paranormals, and for injecting a strong dose of reality into the backstory of her characters, the set up is not nearly as accessible as many of the other shadowlands/otherworld/afterlife versions of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth.

SANCTUM is a well-written story by a writer who understands the genre very well and has twisted it around to make it darker and richer than the familiar aching angsty teen sex fantasy wrapped around a paranormal core. There's a little of that, along with the instant attraction that seems to be de obligatory with these books, but heroine Lela Santos (who could not be MORE out of place in her Rhode Island high school) has a mission that is more important to her than the relationship she develops with the hunky alpha male Malachi, one of the "Guards" who polices the infernal city.

There are some neat little twists to the conventions and tropes that are so overused in the genre. When Lela gets a tattoo, it's not a tramp stamp but a picture of her dead friend, and it's there as a promise and a pledge more than just skin art.

This is basically a quest novel and in many ways, it's a quantum quest in that just being on the quest changes Lela. One of the best things about the book is that it quickly leaves the high school world behind and takes us to a magical/supernatural/horrible place. The city is visually stunning, but the Judge who presides over it seems a lot like the Oracle in the MATRIX series, although she's not baking anyone cookies or smoking a cigarette. (One of the reasons we know that Lela is a tough girl is that she is smoking a cigarette at the beginning of the book, though she never does it again.)

We like Lela, who has escaped a horrible past and who has a very interesting destiny. The book includes a preview chapter of the next book, and it sounds pretty intriguing. In fact, it sounds more interesting than SANCTUM. That's one of the problems with reading the first in a series--there's a LOT of setup.

This is a promising start to a series, and it will be nice to see where it goes. Right now, it doesn't seem different enough--at least not to someone who reads A LOT of this kind of material (the Guards, in particular, seem a lot like the angels in ANGELFALL)--but Fine is a writer whose work is so enjoyable that readers will stick around to see what happens next.

Feminist Friday Bonus Deadline Hollywood's Interview with Jodie Foster

Jodie Foster is the child star who got it right and segued into a fantastic career as an adult actress and director. Check out the interview here as she talks about her career and the DeMille Award she'll get at the Golden Globes.