Wait, What Century Are We In? Radical New Fiction from Sujata Massey, Mick Herron, Chris McKinney

Book recommendations! My recent reading has been all over the timeline and globe, thanks to three summer releases from the Soho Crime imprint of Soho Press. NOTE the release dates, please, for ordering and pre-ordering. I'm not exaggerating when I say that each of these books has given me insight into the mastery of important stories, as well as intrigue and adventure.

1920s India, Courtrooms and Crime (JULY Release)

The 1920s gave women freedom of dress, dance, and hair in the United States, as well as the vote -- but social change moved differently in India then, and Perveen Mistry, British-trained daughter in a Bombay law firm, can't find her footing. She should be recognized as a solicitor. But when she rashly tries to stand up before a judge on behalf of another family's injured servant, her credential aren't good enough: "I completed the bachelor of civil law education at Oxford University. Following this, I clerked at Freshfields which granted me the rank of solicitor." The judge traps her with an inquiry into her grades on the law exams, which of course she hasn't taken. "Female law students were not permitted ..." A very embarrassing move by the judge banishes Perveen from the courtroom, threatens the liberty of the woman she'd tried to rescue, and sweeps her career faux pas onto the gossip mill.

Death, poisonings, and legal manipulations with the upper-class that used to hire that now-injured servant as a baby nurse escalate the crises around her. Despite its supposedly sedate setting, THE MISTRESS OF BHATIA HOUSE turns into a page-turner of betrayal, dishonesty, and by necessity, bravery, as Perveen risks her most important relationship—with her powerful father—for the sake of her surging principles. 

Followers of the series (this is the fourth of Massey's 1920s India mysteries) will get little more of the romance between Perveen and the British man who's won her heart in earlier books. But oh, what an education in customs, cruelty, and courage!

Cold War Refresher for Awkward Spies (SEPTEMBER Release)

The "Slow Horses" Apple TV series has brought fresh attention to Mick Herron's addictive espionage series set "today" (more or less) in London. Although THE SECRET HOURS is billed as a stand-alone, it's slowly revealed to be a Cold War back story to some of the most compelling characters of the book series. Discovering which of the ardent young people from 1994 Berlin match the partners in the current investigation of MI5 is half the fun. When they start to key into the Slough House itself, though, forget putting the book down. As the unnamed "First Desk" at MI5 refects, "You never know. You never know when treachery might strike, or from what quarter. ... What we do in the secret hours reveals who we really are." Soon various forms of skullduggery, including betrayal and murder, rack up: "Killings happen It is not a matter of whether this is true or not; it is more a matter of whether it is justifiable." 

Herron's crime novels feature sharp threads of wry humor, and every triumph gained by his spooks and "joes" come with a huge serving of regret. THE SECRET HOURS gains double poignancy if you've been reading the earlier titles (I actually re-read them, almost annually). But if you're a novice, plunge in anyway. Odds are you'll then email the local librarian for earlier books in the series, and work your way back to this 2023 release with delight and escalating appreciation.

What Could Go Wrong With Artificial Intelligence That Hates You? (JULY Release)

My grown sons speak Asian languages—it's unusual for Vermonters, granted, and they've been given quite a few side-eyes in Asia for the unexpected sounds coming from their mouths. I think that enhances the fascination I find in Chris McKinney's "Water City" series, with its multiple scenes of Japan and more. McKinney, despite the sound of his surname, is native-born Hawai'ian and his ocean savvy formed the fabric for the first book in the future-utopia neo-noir of Midnight, Water City. With EVENTIDE, WATER CITY,  the threads of manipulation that might have been excused on the part of world-saving science in the first book start to bite ... and draw blood.

McKinney's protagonist, whose name we still don't have, served as risk-it-all detective in the first book. But now he's retired, letting his wife do the career climbing, and instead he tackles the daunting task of teaching and then keeping up with his daughter Ascalon—who, like her father, is a synesthete, someone whose perceptions arrive in the form of colors, sounds, even messages that don't mirror everyday reality. 

The idyllic life of water exploration with Ascalon ruptures under the intrusion of the potent and often cruel (needlessly? or correctly?) Ascalon Lee. By the time this strange villain-rescuer is captive, the roles of father, detective, bounty hunter, and world-saving hero have whirled into enormous confusion for McKinney's narrator: "She's got her gun raised to my belly. This should be easy. So easy. How many times have I pulled a trigger before? Then a single thought floods my mind. Anger. Rage. It's this emotion that makes it possible for me to make everything all about me. The thought melts and oozes into a deep self-loathing." There, bet you didn't see that coming — but if you savor well-written noir, you should have guessed. 

In this year of ChatGPT and other mixed monsters, the role of artificial intelligence in McKinney's series can't avoid a mix of promise and menace. Keep your eye on both Ascalon and Ascalon Lee, to gather hints of where this frankly terrifying series is headed for its finale, as the last of the trilogy, Sunset, Water City, will release in December.

I'd like to send all three of the books to my Congressional delegation. If only I thought they'd read them. Well, at least we the voters can be forewarned.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Book Recommendations: Back in the [Writing] Saddle Again

It's not true that I got NO writing done while Tilly the Lovable Dog was here ... but every bit of writing time was hard-earned, with Tilly often licking my elbows as I typed. So it's been all about priorities. She went back to NJ on Wednesday, and I think I've done the inevitable grieving at not being able to keep her (the scariest part of her knocking me down was being afraid I'd fall on top of her and hurt her). So, onward.

First, writing itself. I've got a couple of novels out being read by editors, which is always a good feeling (if also totally unpredictable). Memoir segments will catch up soon. Poems always underway. I've been taking a Zoom'd class in poetry-in-response-to-art, and I've learned nothing in it about how to do strong poetry in this framework, but I've made the most of the art end.

Now for some Book Recommendations!

Love a relaxed summer mystery that plays fair with the clues and keeps you feeling good about the amateur sleuth? Pick up Barbara Ross's new Maine Clambake mystery, releasing June 27; I have a review of it in the New York Journal of Books and will add the link here when it posts: Hidden Beneath is the title, and the action takes place on an island off Maine's rocky coast. This is a good one for a summer hostess gift, too.

Most important book of the year (IMHO): Eventide, Water City, by Chris McKinney (Soho Press). You want to know what damage AI like ChatGPT can do? This is the ultimate nightmare, framed in a highly readable action adventure. I couldn't put it down. Release is July 11 but don't wait. Pre-order now if you've got a moment ... it's book 2 of a trilogy but even if you haven't read Midnight, Water City, you'll get right into this speculative near future and the powerful sense of agency of the dad who's got to save his kid (and incidentally the world). Soho is releasing book 3 this fall, an unusual move of two books packed into one year, so you won't have long to wait for the finale of the series.

Historical mystery with punch and a great feel for how women's roles were changing at the end of the 19th century: That's Katharine Beutner's Killingly, a title that didn't light up for me but with a very unusual plot involving college-age girls, illicit love, missing person(s), even abortion access. It's set at Mount Holyoke College, in western Massachusetts. Although I wasn't a complete fan of the plot pacing, the issues make this a must-read for women's fiction in particular, and it's definitely a worthwhile response to all those Boston-based college murder books, with extra insight on effects of class at the time. Also from Soho.

If humorous mysteries with good twisty plots tickle you, try Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood. Ignore the lame cover. I love the author's comment about the seventy-somethings he's tapping as amateur sleuths in a British village group of aging friends (the earlier title was The Marlow Murder Club, also funny): Thorogood said, "They solve the murders without reference to any forensics or the science that goes behind it all. It's proper old-fashioned Agatha Christie, walking around a town and solving the crime by talking to people." Right, what he said ... with some memorable scenes in the nearby river, some naked. Already available from Poisoned Pen Press.

My reviews of historical material -- mostly novels but sometimes nonfiction -- usually run in Historical Novels Review, where the (in press) summer issue includes my attention to Ravage & Son by Jerome Charyn -- a must if you love New York Jewish history, in this case framed around The Forward -- and a remarkable and hefty novel of Denmark's resistance in World War II, Hamlet's Children, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Kluger. The lightly fictionalized The Girls Who Fought Crime by "Maj. Gen. Mari K. Eder" didn't suit me (how women entered the NYC police force; the writing wasn't my cup of tea).

You've caught me in another re-read of books 1 and 2 of William Gibson's latest trilogy: The Peripheral, and Agency. Gibson's books give me a shuddering awareness of the perils of our time -- and a very small crumb of hope. Plus they're an amazing read, powerful and lively and full of expressions that brand themselves into my thoughts. 

Summer is for reading. And a bunch of other stuff. Don't get me started on my gardens.

Book Recommendations: A New Review Feature on This Author Blog

Grieving under the wildfire smoke.

This 'n that, first: As usual, I'm working on four writing projects at once. One's a mystery novel that's gone through a couple of major revisions -- since the focal point of the crime had to change entirely, when Vermont laws changed. I'm looking for a publisher for book 3 in my Winds of Freedom series; the one who'd eagerly said "yes please" discontinued its Frontier Fiction line as the pandemic wrapped up. I've always got poems underway and am taking a course in ekphrasis, poems that respond to or interact with visual art. Wild! And in that magical moment just before sleep recently, I saw a way to entirely rewrite Queen of the Kingdom (a Northeast Kingdom contemporary novel) that I think I've got to indulge, for the fun of it.

That's the "output." I need good "input" to do all this -- some comes from daily walks, some from friendships, some from sorting the past in my ongoing memoir on Medium.

But for me, the biggest and best influences are conversations about books, and reading good ones. Here are some I'm recommending:

Tom Piazza, The Auburn Conference. A young college professor in 1883, Frederick Olstead Matthews, is desperate to make his mark and impress the college (and wider public). So he invites a handful of prestigious authors to come talk about The Future of America. Do you expect Mark Twain to get along with Frederick Douglass? Walt Whitman to treat well Harriet Beecher Stowe? What about Herman Melville's personal despair ... and what may happen when a local and equally eager journalist decides to spark things up by personally inviting a group of suffragettes, or when Twain turns mischief maker? At just under 200 pages, this short lively novel turns out to be a perfect frame for merriment, grief, and a timely look at American Dreams. University of Iowa Press (bless their heart).

Nilima Rao, Disappearance in Fiji. No sign here of being a debut novel -- Rao, a Fijian Indian Australian author, spins a deft tale of a religious Sikh whose police career has self-destructed, landing him in a racist work environment on the island of Fiji in 1914, as the world heats up for major war. Akai Singh holds human values and justice dear, which takes him digging more deeply than desired into the case of a disappearance: searching for a vanished immigrant worker, a mother from India, practically enslaved on a plantation where Akai's investigation is totally not wanted. Timely in its framing of the evils of colonialism, the book offers both a tidily told mystery and multiple cultural perspectives. From Soho Press under the ambitious and global Soho Crime imprint.

Rebecca McKanna, Don't Forget the Girl. What have true crime TV shows and books done to us? Hardened us about victims, fed a fascination with killers? McKanna's thriller poses one nasty situation after another. I hated reading it, because every chapter made me more miserable, but ... it sure gave me a lot to think about. If you're a true crime junkie, grab a copy. Sourcebook Landmarks.

I'm also re-reading A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith, a set of interviews with poets about their religious backgrounds, discoveries, and passions. Ukrainian-American Jewish poet Ilya Kaminsky (find his poems elsewhere, online and in his books) and New Hampshire novelist Katherine Towler asked hard questions, and persuaded Carolyn Forché, Gerald Stern, Kazim Ali, Jean Hirshfield, Jean Valentine, and other heroes of modern narrative and lyric poetry to answer from personal experience and heartache -- and joy. I keep adding more bookmarks to my copy, for provocative assertions that I want to consider further. The book came out in 2012 from Tupelo Press; I should schedule another re-read for myself every couple of years. SO worth it.

Poem Published Today at Written Tales: STORM SURGE

 

Here's the link to the dramatic presentation at Written Tales: click here.

Storm Surge [published on Written Tales 5-30-23]

by Beth Kanell

 

First comes the wind, and then torrential rain—

there was no “eye” of peace, no silent space

but driven loss (one death) and pounding pain.

 

Why should I think I’d heal back, whole again

when half my hopes were his, his smile, his face,

gone with the roaring wind, the wrenching rain

 

and now these flooded fields that cannot drain.

My friend said, “Get a dog, expect new grace!”

But in her dark eyes, loss; trust pounds like pain.

 

He loved me as I am. That love’s a chain,

my anchor in this storm-soaked, battered place.

His life’s blown past like wind, like salted rain.

 

When healing comes, it’s tentative and plain,

a tender scar, a tentative new base—

as if a second life could lurch from pain!

 

Adopt the dog, and bonding close again

turns out to hold a storm surge that will race

and flood: Such wind may scream, such chilled rain:

This dog insists on love. Now comes more pain.

 

Where Poems Come From

A few weeks ago, I wrote a bluebird poem for an old friend. He makes bluebird houses. Also he makes poems. Later he asked me: "Did you just sit down and write that poem, just like that?"

"Nope," I answered. "It had been brewing for a few weeks."

For me, that's how it goes. One morning the last straw lands on the camel's back, or a spark catches on a shred of paper under a heap of sticks, and it's time to shut the visiting dog into her crate for a bit, so I can focus on the keyboard instead of delivering scratches, pats, and "good girl" crooning.

Today three poems erupted, after a long-ish dry spell (long for me, anyway). There's fourth one stuck in my chest, like a burp that refuses to escape. Well, maybe later.

At any rate, to reassure those of you who panic about when and where poems "come": I've had a self-assignment of topic for these, for about a month, with no lines crafted at all. Reading an essay this morning on how passages in the Torah are crafted, I found a Greek-rooted word that was new-ish to me: chiasm. By the time I'd looked up several aspects of it, I'd also found a poetry structure I wanted to try out, and realized that it's the word for the way our eyes and brain cross over information, inverting it into what we "see" in front of us.

Which led, at last,  to an opening I could step through, into a poem.

When I didn't care so much, it was easier to "toss off" a poem. Now, though ... it's a day's work, and more. Which, I admit, is how I like it.

 

Optic cabling -- a graphic by Ratznium. [Ratznium at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons]

You CAN Go Home Again if You Dare ... in a Poem

Yesterday's road trip into the Upper Kingdom -- the part of the Northeast Kingdom north of Sheffield Heights -- was my third within five weeks. 

Which is a lot, for a region I've carefully stayed away from for years now. Call it dipping a toe back into the ice water. I might not want to go all the way in, at this time of year! (I'm not one of those Polar Bear Plunge folks. Give me a good book and a thick sweater instead.)

At the intended goal location of yesterday's trip, I met someone who'd been living less than 2 miles from my home in Irasburg at the time when I gave birth to my second son, in an uninsulated house on the ridge, facing a spectacular view of distant Jay Peak. It took 23 cords of split wood to heat that house for a winter. And it was actually 41 years ago, but that doesn't fit well into the line.

So here's the poem:

Road Trip

 

December settles into biting cold, and the snow-cased fields

spool past, low metal structures, unpainted houses.

This is where I lived back then, close to the northern border.

Only blink, and a battered green car from forty years back

could pass in the other direction, my young-mother self cooing

to the baby in the snowsuit. With icy chunks of split wood

jammed into the Subaru’s flattened cargo hold, not enough

warmth even as the heater cranks, full on. “Home soon,

sweetheart.” Inside my patched jacket, past my blue sweater,

under the long-sleeved T, breastmilk leaking in anticipation

quick-chilling along my chest. One-third cord of firewood,

five days of heat for the house, maybe six. After lunch,

do it again—lucky to buy six cords with cash. The pale sun

sets early in December. That year’s best Christmas gift was

the slow cooker: It didn’t need to be watched or touched

until, baby nursed, diaper changed, husband hungry,

beef stew was ready. With food stamps, I always got

the cheapest cut of meat.

Not Every Poem Will Be a Great One ... but Still ...

Tis the season -- poetry classes have resumed, and I'm awake in a new way. Yes, the brisk November air helps, and so does the temporary end of garden labor. But to spend hours with a gifted teacher, being shown what works, what makes a poem strong, vibrant, joyful or tragic -- that's a whole other kind of awakening, and I'm thriving with it.

There are "exercises" after each class, and they've become my favorite homework. Sometimes they lead me to write poems that I'm really excited about, leaps in skill that mean a lot. At other times, like today, I step onto uncertain ground, and craft a "first try" that's heartfelt but not yet powerful. And yet, I love this stage, too: reminiscing, trying to pull out strands that (if the last class is anything to go by) will in turn pull up other feelings and images, and in a week or so, I will make a new discovery.

For today, I figured I'd write about missing my mother. It's a normal part of life to have one's parents die —we don't like it, but it's part of how time works. My mother died when I was just 28, heavily pregnant with my second child. I would have loved more years with her, but ... it didn't turn out that way.

Still, I hold her close.

Singing Your Songs

 

Clementine and “Wait for the Wagon,” ballads and longing

and lullabyes—after your sudden death, I searched

the secondhand stores for a copy of your book, Mom:

American folk songs. Jeannie with light brown hair. Old Smoky.

Lines that rhymed and endings sweetly certain.

 

In the key of C, you’d lift each tune till Dad could not resist:

his deep rumble, half a note off, happily sharing the car’s front seat.

Down by the old mill stream. John Henry. “In the evening

by the moonlight,” music that once soothed raw throats, tended

sore bodies, beside long-ago fields. If a mother sang it,

 

or a worker made it ring out freedom, you did, too. No regrets.

No holding back. You made your choices (a man, some babies),

planted black-eyed Susans, pressed tiny purple wildflowers

between the soft pages of old phone books, taught us all the verses

though I needed the book afterward, so many words. So many.

 

Sing with me now? Death’s still the same, four decades on.

I miss you, Mom; I’m walking with all of your songs.

 

-- BK

North Danville Family Stories, Updates, Corrections, and Additions from Gerard Lamothe, October 5, 2022

 Many thanks to Gerard W. Lamothe of North Danville, who provided the following material:

Now I Know What It Is -- What It Lives Like

One of my earliest stories.

I started to "write" -- that is, to put writing in front of everything else, no matter what kind of writing, and in the beginning it was reporting for a little weekly "shopper" newspaper -- I started at age 22, while I was still working as a chemist in New Jersey and living with R, the man who'd become my second husband.

In that first breathless savoring of writing-by-choice, instead of writing for school or writing work reports, what exhilaration I found! Nothing else mattered as much. Fortunately for my partner and my income, at that point I wrote something once a month for the paper. Life could go on, in between.

Poems, those were different. I grew up writing poems; my mother wrote them, not the deep kind but the happy rhyming ones that were for children or to enliven an evening party. By 1972, when I graduated from college, I'd write a poem any time; if I liked you, I'd give you a poem. I didn't revise. I didn't re-think. I didn't think a whole lot, really, just scribbled them down. Thanks, Mom.

In 1996 I wrote The Adventure Guide to Vermont, for a plain fee, for Hunter Publishing; the editor said "it's your book" but it was work-for-hire in my life.

Then a Vermont novel seized me, and I wrote The Darkness Under the Ice, was told I'd written the wrong book, and started over, writing The Darkness Under the Water (published in 2008). With that, I discovered the heady sensation of creating characters and their world, and marveled that in one day, something came alive that hadn't existed before.

But I'll tell you now -- it was always Work. Triumphant when done, but ... Work.

What would it be like to be obsessed, compelled, by something I was writing? To breathe it in, around the clock? To find my life's core, the way I did when I found DK and gave him my heart and received his?

Now I know.

I'm writing a book that is always on my tongue and in my pulse. At night I turn the bedside light back on, to write a note about something for the next chapter. In the morning, I am impatient with breakfast and dishes and ordinary earning a living, because I have more notes all over my desk and they all involve what I will write when a pocket of time opens, later today or early tomorrow. (I meet commitments to others, before I indulge.)

It's waiting for me. I miss my DK, of course, always. But he'd understand what is happening, probably better than I do, and if there's a sort of post-life cheering section, he's standing at the front of it, pounding the air with a fist, and singing something by Arethra. He really loved Arethrea. Also Alicia Keys. I'll tell you about that, some other time.

Right now, there's a new segment waiting to be written, and I'm in love.

PS Don't expect me to vacuum in the corners. As I said: There's a new segment waiting. https://bethkanell.medium.com/

Poem after Poem ... on a Blue-Sky Day in July

Last night just before I dug into my late-night reading, an email arrived, accepting three of my poems for the summer 2023 issue of Soul-Lit Magazine. What a wonderful gift to the evening! 

And today, "Do the Next Right Thing" was published beautifully in As It Ought To Be Magazine (https://asitoughttobemagazine.com/2022/07/26/beth-kanell-do-the-next-right-thing). Talk about glowing with joy!

It reminded me that I should explain something new in what I'm doing. Day upon day, I'm writing poems as I find the language for feelings and experiences that matter to me, some light-hearted, some discovering new parts of the grief journey (more than 3 years now since Dave died). And many, of course, celebrating this place: high on a ridge in northeastern Vermont, listening to the wind, the birds, and an occasional neighbor in action.

But I'm not always putting the poems out publicly right away (like, on Facebook or this blog), because it's my season to reach for wider groups of readers. Most of the publications that I'm sending poems to have a rule: It can't have been published (even on Facebook) before their chance to present it.

Since the poems aren't reaching you "as written," you might look at one and think it describes "today," when actually it began a year ago, was rewritten and revised "about 50 times" (as Donald Hall described it), and then crept out under cover of darkness to make a new friend.

So I thought I might give you something quite fresh from the writing desk this week. A lot of friends, and friends of friends, are going through the newest round of Covid variants. Sick for a few days, and then miserable for a few weeks afterward, drained. I ache for them (and know one of these days it will probably be my turn, too). This is called VARIANT, and now you know why:

Variant

 

Crawling through the long pandemic

death’s come closer than it used to:

masked, vaxed, boosted, still we shiver

at the risk—strange and incalculable as

the meteors crossing the night. Raw beauty

like the sequenced chain of DNA

potent and seeking.

 

Thanks for walking with me, friends. See you here again soon. -- BK 

When We Make It to Autumn -- Book Celebrations Ahead

It's a hot muggy July afternoon, with intermittent thunderstorms. Everyone's taking photos of butterflies lately, and I just received my first bag of "extra" zucchini squash. Double chocolate zucchini bread and a cheesey zuke casserole will follow, this evening.

But as I tend the yard and gardens, tiny crickets hop out of the way, then dive under the greenery. At night, their chirps have replaced the peepfrogs as music in the darkness. And for me, that's the first reminder: Vermont's glorious autumn is not far away.

And it's going to be an incredible October for my writing.

 

Last year's release of THIS ARDENT FLAME, the second in my Winds of Freedom historical novels series, dropped into the hush of the pandemic -- no book launch, no events, no readers jumping into the pages. So this fall I'm re-launching the book. I'll be at the Pope Library in Danville on Saturday October 10. Then at NVU-Lyndon for Kingdom Connect on October 4, and with bookseller Kim Crady-Smith, I'll be in North Danville for a 7 pm book talk at the Brainerd Memorial Library on Thursday October 13. (More dates to follow!)

I'm eager to share the surprises I discovered about Vermont's thriving Abolition movement in 1852 -- and about "free black" residents here at that time. Plus, of course, there's the excitement of the novel itself!

Believe it or not, I have a SECOND book launch to savor this year -- Lilith Magazine's new short story collection, Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine. My story in the collection is "What Was Cut," and it uses bits from my life as a La Leche League Leader, a person in 12-Step recovery, and a rededicated Jewish family member. I think you'll appreciate the spooky edge that it carries!

Watch here for more announcements ... September 4 is already booked for my poem "Sundown Psalm" in Amethyst Review, and some time in August, As It Ought To Be Magazine is publishing another of my poems, "Do the Next Right Thing." 

Come on, crickets, keep chirping!