Seana's Reviews

Adrian Hyland is the Tony Hillerman of the aboriginal people of Australia. Living in the Australian Outback himself, he captures the culture of the whitefellas, blackfellas and everybody in between. His mixed race protagonist Emily Tempest returns to her “Moonlight Mob”, hoping to find home somehow. But when tribal leader Lincoln Flinders is murdered shortly after her arrival, what can she do but find out who done it?

My long campaign to improve Western civilization by getting everyone to read McKinty continues. This is the second Inspector Sean Duffy book in the Troubles trilogy, or if that bums you out, the Tom Waits song title trilogy. This chapter takes place in 1982, when everyone thought the DeLorean factory was going to be the new hope of Northern Ireland. We all know how well that worked out. Duffy has to solve the case of a headless torso found in a trash bin. If this sounds bleak, don’t worry. The dry Northern Irish humor here will keep you afloat.

More years ago than either of us would probably care to admit, I took a course on the 20th century monk Thomas Merton, co-taught by Doug Christie while we were both still undergrads. The course proved formative for most of us involved with it, and I am very happy to see that Christie has been “contemplating contemplation” ever since. He makes a plea for the contemplative life as a necessary part of the work of healing the planet. Drawing on the likes of Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold, but also on the writings of the early hermetic desert fathers, this book would be a perfect gift for anyone who seeks a bit more quiet reflection during the hectic holiday season.

The leading lights of today’s mystery and suspense fiction weigh in on their favorites. Think of your favorite mystery author and chances are you’ll find them in this volume. A great strength of the collection is that the editors know terrific writers from both sides of the Atlantic and have twisted a lot of arms to get this done. They’re crime writers. Don’t make them have to come twist yours. 

This fall, not one, but two of McKinty’s terrific crime novels make their way to our shores. Falling Glass follows the Irish tinker (or Payee) Killian as the economic downturn forces him to take a dicey job hunting down the ex-wife and daughters of a shady Irish businessman. Of course things turn out to be a bit more complicated than they first seemed. Michael Forsythe fans will welcome a brief cameo. Not everyone’s going to like the ending, but it absolutely blew me away.

I’ve long wanted McKinty to use the material of his own life growing up in war-torn Northern Ireland, and with The Cold Cold Ground, he more than fulfills my wishes. Sean Duffy is a Roman Catholic cop stationed in a Protestant town where the police have to check under their cars every morning for mercury tilt bombs. Duffy gets assigned a case which may involve a serial killer, but he sometimes must pursue his investigations in full riot gear. Beautifully evocative of a tragic era, often tersely funny, this novel shows McKinty at the top of his game—a very high level indeed.

Like many of you, I am a big fan of Jonathan Franzen’s fiction. But I think his essays may have just a slight edge in my heart. Maybe I just like seeing the compassionate, thoughtful everyman lurking behind the persona of the darkly comic novelist. Whether probing the life of his troubled friend David Foster Wallace, or traveling the world in aid of the vanishing songbirds, Franzen always has something interesting to say, and he is often unexpectedly self-revealing.

If you read last year’s Finishing the Hat, the first volume of Sondheim’s work, I’m pretty sure I won’t have to talk you into this one. This time around, Sondheim talks about how he composed the lyrics for more recent musicals like Sundays in the Park with George and Into the Woods. Even those who aren’t Sondheim fans, or fans of musicals in general, will find a lot to reflect on in Sondheim’s analysis and sometimes outright criticism of his own work. A good song is one thing—but how it furthers the work as a whole is Sondheim’s chief criterion.