Carmen | Author Carmen Amato

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3 Latino Reads with Universal Appeal

May 3, 2013 | #reviews

Each of these 3 exceptional books has universal appeal that transcends its roots, but for different reasons.

The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters by Lorraine M. López

In all honesty, I picked up The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters because it has an eye-catching cover. Luckily, the story inside was just as mesmerizing.

It traces the lives of four sisters, who each seem endowed with a magical ability or “gift.” But it’s not fairy tale magic and it shapes their lives in unexpected ways. The story swings between the lives of the sisters, and the official account of government research into the Puebla tribe. At first I didn’t understand the connection but after a few chapters realized that the research was the background story of Fermina, the girls’ caretaker after the death of their mother. Fermina is the one who gives the girls their “gifts.”

The sisters are all named after Hollywood stars from the 40’s and 50’s, which not only made it easy to keep track of the different sisters and their gifts, but also gave a rich feeling of the family’s atmosphere and the legacy of their dead mother. My favorite character was Bette Davis Gabaldón, who believes her “gift” is the ability to persuade people to do what she wants. The gifts are both burdens and things to celebrate. This isn’t a pulse-pounder that races to a climax but a gentle story of women who believe themselves bound by their gifts. It is that belief that ultimately shapes their lives and draws the reader along on the journey.

This book is recommended for anyone who likes contemporary literature, stories with a bit of magic in them, as well as those who like fiction that draws on history.

Take Me With You by Carlos Frías

My basis of understanding Cuba comes from a grad school friend whose parents fled Castro’s revolution, leaving behind everything. The mother, who was pregnant at the time, never really got over what had happened and her later years were full of emotional pain. So it was with this family in mind that I picked up the book during a memoir phase and it turned out to be one of the best contemporary memoirs I have read.

A Miami-based journalist, Frías recounts his own 2006 trip to Cuba to cover the political scene, which allowed him to trace his father’s life there before the revolution. Frías writes simply and smoothly and his descriptions put the reader right into today’s Cuba, with its decayed buildings, endless scrabbling for the basics, and sense of waiting for it all to end. Although the book moves around between the author’s family in Miami, his father’s middle-class life in pre-revolution Cuba, and the author’s own experiences in today’s Cuba, the reader never gets confused. Frías is able to show us real people and how their lives were damaged by Cuba’s revolution, including that of his father and the family members who stayed behind and are now trapped in Cuba’s poverty.

This book is recommended for anyone interested in Cuba, for those who like to read memoirs, or anyone contemplating writing a memoir. This is how it is done.

The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela

A couple of years ago I walked through a display of Mexican Revolution photographs in a museum in Rome, Italy. Meant primarily to showcase the era’s photographers, the exhibit was a sepia-toned illustration of the brutality and confusion of the times. All of the images we association with early 20th century Mexico were there–horsemen with crossed bandoliers and wide palm sombreros, women in white dresses with ruffled bodices, ragged laborers in white cotton rags, soldiers in short jackets with brass buttons and pistols strapped to their legs. The captions told of indiscriminate killings, rapes of camp followers, the political double-crosses that made the presidency into an institution of corruption, coups, and murder for many years. I walked away sad and confused.

Written in 1915, literally on the front lines of the revolution, The Underdogs describes with a powerful narrative the images I carried away from that museum. Author Mariano Azuela was a doctor who traveled with several of the revolutionary armies. His main character is an illiterate farmer, Demetrio Macías, who becomes the leader of a small group of fighters aligned with Pancho Villa. He feeds his men by taking from the countryside, uses innocent citizens as human shields, collects women along the way, and hardly understands the political situation and the swings of allegiances. He just knows that fighting is better than scraping by as a farmer.

Through dialogue, the various characters shine through, rivalries are made immediate and the story moves quickly. Over and over, I marveled at the authenticity, at how Azuela was able to paint such a realistic picture in so few words, and how so much was packed into the story. Basically, anything I’d seen or heard about the Mexican Revolution was distilled into one short novel. The imagery and vignettes of brutality and rivalry truly resonated and were better than any history book.

Recommended for those interested in Mexican history, historical novels, and for students of literary construction.

← Why Navigation With a Map Still Matters On The Occasion of My First Anniversary of Being a Published Author →

Why Navigation With a Map Still Matters

Apr 30, 2013 | #truestory

Love your GPS? Love how easy it makes getting from Point A to Point B? If you’re like me, your GPS saves travel time, keeps you from getting lost, and provides an Australian or British voice so you can get directions from Ned Kelly or James Bond, depending on your mood.

But while GPS is a great tool, I think we’re losing the skill of navigation. And basic navigation is one of those skills we need to possess in order to be confident that we can find our way, no matter where we happen to be. Navigating with a real map means–

You’re self-reliant. Not wholly dependent on electricity, satellites or the phone company.
You’re in control over where you are going and willing to learn new skills along the way.
Personal achievement! Another deposit into the emotional bank account!

Plus you get a really cool souvenir.

In the Ice Age, before internet and GPS, I traveled with (gasp) paper maps! Newer maps, like the laminated Streetwise series by streetwisemaps.com are compact accordions that fold to the size of a business envelope. The older maps are Technicolor murals that led me across Europe, the South Pacific and Down Under.

Revelation time

I recently sifted through the box where I keep those old paper maps and had a revelation:

I probably wouldn’t be writing books or this blog if I hadn’t had those formative experiences, if I had never learned that I could do things and go places on my own with just the help of a map.

Where I’ve been

Tourist map of Florence, Italy, circa 1981. A friend studied there during my year in Paris. We met up several times in Florence and made the rounds of the museums. I learned about male anatomy staring at Michelangelo’s David.

Map of Venice, circa 1981. The paper is stiff. the muted colors are those of the sea beyond San Marco’s square. Of all my maps, this one is the closest to artwork.

Map of Biarritz in the south of France where I lived for a month, taking and failing an intensive French course prior to the school year in Paris.

Related post: Girl Meets Paris

Map of Amsterdam by streetwisemaps.com. Amsterdam is not big but it is incredibly picturesque and very walkable. The Anne Frank House was more than moving; it was a powerful lesson in history. And humanity instead of hate.

Brussels is a lovely blend of big metropolitan city and old Europe. French fries are served with mayonnaise. Still getting over that.

Oslo is one of my favorite places. The sky is bluer in Oslo than anywhere else on earth. The seafaring tradition + Scandinavian design + the legacy and legends of polar exploration make it a fascinating place to visit. Travel by ferry to the Fram and Kon-Tiki Museums was a highlight.

The map of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, is a huge affair from the country’s National Mapping Bureau. The thick paper is only printed on one side.

Related post: Land of the Unexpected

I walked around Pompeii in August and the temperature was around 100 F. I felt like I was inside a volcano not viewing the ruins of one. Sweaty hands nearly turned the map (came with admission) to mush. This is the eastern side of the site.

Rome, Italy is noisy, chaotic, crazy, amazing. Every street is full of clothes I want to buy, food I want to eat, and books, art, & pharmacies with unique lotions and potions. The city is compact enough to walk nearly everywhere but Streetwise’s metro map was very handy.

Mexico City is so big you need a whole book, called the Guia Roji, to navigate. My copy was falling apart after three years there! This page is the Lomas de Chapultepec area where THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY is set.

If you ever get a chance to visit Sydney, Australia, take it! Sydney is a beautiful city with lots of things to do and friendly people. This map helped me navigate to the first Virgin Records store I’d ever seen, where I bought Midnight Oil LPs for a friend and Man of Colors by Icehouse (“Had a little accident, nothing too serious“) for myself.

This map of Fremantle, Australia, on the country’s west coast, was created by the Western Australian Tourism Commission. Below the seal it says William C. Brown, Government Printer, Western Australia. The map itself is about six square inches; the rest of the big foldout (both sides) lists things to do such as the America’s Cup Museum or the Royal Australian Navy Corvettes Association Memorial Monument Hill.

As a final inducement to brush up on your navigation skills, here’s what author and Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings had to say in his great book, MAPHEADS:

“Almost every map, whether of a shopping mall, a city, or a continent, will show us two kinds of places: places where we’ve been and places we’ve never been . . . We can understand, at a glance, our place in the universe, our potential to go and see new things, and the way to get back home afterward.”

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World Malaria Day: Song of the Mosquito

Apr 25, 2013 | #giving

I’m tiny, innocuous. Driven by instinct.

I’m tiny, innocuous. I hum as I go.

I’m tiny, innocuous, and I killed over 22,000 foolish Frenchmen who thought they could build a canal in Panama. I gave them malaria and yellow fever and they went away.

I’m tiny, innocuous, and I still roam at will, spreading malaria across the world, debilitating millions, giving them fevers, keeping them from working, killing when I can.

There are people out to get me. More than 100 years ago, an army doctor named Colonel William C. Gorgas showed what it took to keep me away.

As American engineers cut through Panama in a renewed attempt to build a canal, Gorgas galvanized a medical corps. They burned sulfur or pyrethrum, sprayed insect-breeding areas with oil and pesticide, draped mosquito netting over beds and screened windows, and implemented measures to reduce stagnant water where mosquitos breed. Over 5000 still died from disease before the canal opened in 1914 but today Panama is malaria-free and the canal is undergoing a second huge excavation that will more than double the global shipping capacity going through it.

Today is World Malaria Day–or rather anti-malaria day!– and we need to get more communities doing what Gorgas did. Everyone from Shaquille O’Neal to Compassion.com’s Bite Back initiative Bloggers is raising awareness. If we knew how to get rid of malaria over 100 years ago, why does it still exist today?

Check out more about countering malaria on the Huffington Post’s The Big Push page.

Fast-moving plot . . . consistently exciting . . . A clever Mexican detective tale that will leave readers eager for the series’ next installment.–Kirkus Review

Get Cliff Diver today on amazon.com

$2.99 Kindle $12.99 paperback

Book Review: Cold Service by Robert B. Parker

Apr 19, 2013 | #reviews

This review is dedicated to the people of Boston.

I’m still surprised when I run across someone who is a mystery novel fan but who has never read a book by Robert B. Parker, creator of the Spenser novels that have come to define the mystery genre. His tough-as-nail-with-heart-of-gold private detective, whose first name we never know, is as much a part of the Boston landscape for me as Copley Square or Harvard Yard. The hardback editions of the books–and there around 40 in the series–include a map on the flyleaf with all of Spenser’s haunts labelled on it. Locke-Ober’s Restaurant, Faneuil Hall, his apartment on Marlborough Street and the oft-mentioned swan boats in Boston’s Public Gardens.

But we don’t just read Spenser mysteries for the Boston scenery. We read them for great characters, perfect plots, the crisp sparse language. And Spenser’s firmly rooted code of ethics. He may be a private eye and a self-admitted thug, but he’s got a clear and believable moral compass and expresses it in a way we don’t see very often any more. COLD SERVICE is the Spenser novel that best sets out that code which includes loyalty to friends, standing your ground, but never striking without provocation.

In COLD SERVICE (the title is derived from the saying that revenge is a dish best served cold) his friend Hawk is shot and left for dead. Hawk was protecting a Boston bookie from a Ukrainian mob trying to muscle into the area. Needless to say the bookie and family are dead. With Spenser’s help, Hawk recovers, infiltrates the mob, and stops it from gaining a foothold in Boston.

Not many of the Spenser books revolve so closely around Hawk, although the enigmatic thug/hitman/bodyguard/boxer who plays wingman in almost all the books. Dialogue between them is nearly a work of art:

“They tell me I ain’t gonna die.”
“That’s what I heard.”
There were hard things being discussed, and not all of them aloud.

Without giving away the plot twists, let’s just say this is one of the best of the Spenser series, which is one of the best mystery series out there. The Ukrainian mob is opaque and brutish. Help comes but cannot be trusted. Strange alliances must be forged to get at the mob, but they are tenuous at best.

The mayor of a small town near Boston holds the key; his administration is synonymous with corruption. Hawk’s quest for vengeance distances him from the surgeon he’s dating and his refusal to adjust his own code eventually pushes her away. Spenser understands Hawk’s code but will not pursue revenge in the same brute force way.

The end is a terrific nail-biter.

← Book Review: A Sunless Sea by Anne Perry World Malaria Day: Song of the Mosquito →

Book Review: A Sunless Sea by Anne Perry

Apr 12, 2013 | #reviews

William Monk is back and better than ever in A SUNLESS SEA, the latest novel by Anne Perry about the amnesiac cop-turned private detective-turned head of law enforcement on the Thames River in 1860’s London. As always, Perry’s vivid descriptions put us right there–aboard the river police boats, turning up our collar as Monk shivers and water plays about his feet, or on the streets of old London with a wide variety of the city’s denizens from high society spoiled girls to the prostitutes who ply their pathetic trade along the city’s wharves.

Plot + Twist

The book starts with a bang as Monk is drawn to the edge of the river by screams and discovers the body of a woman who has literally been gutted. His investigation into her identity and murderer leads to a curious set of circumstances and a perfect plot twist along the way that made me read the discovery twice. Like so many Monk books, the ending weaves together careful clues and secondary characters whose motive makes you curl your lip in dismay.

Pitch-Perfect Characters

All of the series regular characters get a part to play as Monk tries to unravel the mystery, as usual racing against time to provide evidence at a trial. Oliver Rathbone, the lawyer who defends the accused has his moments in the book as he copes with a dissolving marriage, his still unresolved feelings for Monk’s wife Hester, and damning evidence from a previous case he has inherited. Hester, who had more prominence in earlier Monk books but who still stands tall here as the crusading nurse, helps Monk, further defining her role as an independent woman in contrast to London high society’s gawd-help-us types.

Monk himself has gentled a bit from when we first met him in MAN WITHOUT A FACE. Perry demonstrates his emotional journey quite brilliantly. Read the Monk books with Daniel Day-Lewis in mind; I’m quite sure if the author had a movie dreamcast he’d be her pick for the role.

Bottom Line

Like some of Perry’s books, there is some repetition in A SUNLESS SEA as characters spend time mentally rehashing known facts, as if the author wants to keep reminding us of the action so far. But like all the Monk books, it is full of great characters, a well-done historical setting, and an outcome that leaves you wondering when the next book is coming out. A great addition to the series.

← The Girl on the Cutting Room Floor Book Review: Cold Service by Robert B. Parker →

The Girl on the Cutting Room Floor

Apr 11, 2013 | #booknews, #EmiliaCruz

Book editing is a ruthless business. How much of a book gets rewritten when an author comes back to an old manuscript?

In the book editing case of HAT DANCE, the second Emilia Cruz novel coming 30 July, it looks like about 50% of what I wrote 18 months ago will hit the cutting room floor. Included in the discard party is female arson investigator Betty Estefan.

Bye bye, Betty

Betty uses her sexuality to get ahead; a direct contrast to Emilia whose approach is to fight her way through. But with a fully-loaded book plot (Fire! Hookers! Missing girl!) Betty’s antics quickly became excess baggage.

But even mean girls need their 15 minutes of fame so I’m sharing Betty before I hit “delete” on her brief and troubled virtual life.

The set-up

An upscale Acapulco restaurant was set on fire, just as Emilia and her date were leaving. Acapulco’s famous mayor was in the restaurant at the time.
Chief Salazar is Acapulco’s chief of police
Rufino is the new chief of detectives
Obregon is head of the police union for the state of Guerrero
Silvio is the senior detective who’d actively opposed Emilia coming into the squadroom as the first and only female detective in Acapulco but now has to work closely with her

What got cut

Chief Salazar looked grim. His bald dome shone faintly yellow under the squadroom’s weak florescent lights. “Everything’s by the book this time, with our visiting arson expert showing the way.”

The woman next to him stepped forward. “Betty Estefan will be with us for a few weeks,” Salazar went on. “She’ll be leading the investigation and teaching arson investigation techniques to the rest of you. Betty’s from Mexico City, an instructor from the national bomberos training school.”

“Thank you, Chief Salazar,” Betty said without hesitation. “I’m looking forward to the challenge of this investigation and getting to know the detective team here in Acapulco.”

She was a curvaceous woman whose figure was contained by a plain white blouse and well-fitting but not tight jeans. Betty wore pale brown work boots, which Emilia figured were useful for walking through ashy fire scenes but which would be hellishly hot on Acapulco’s beaches and superheated tarmac. Blonde hair—dyed but it suited her well—was pulled back and wound into a bun at the nape of her neck. She was older than Emilia by a few years at least, probably in her mid-thirties. The look in her eyes as she scanned the detectives in the squadroom said she’d seen their types before.

“Betty will need some local expertise to assist in the investigation,” Obregon said. The union boss let his eyes sweep the squadroom and Emilia resisted the urge to hide under her desk. Obregon almost certainly had been involved in the drug smuggling mess that had gotten Rico killed. She had no proof, just her gut instinct. And Obregon knew it. Their last encounter some months ago had staked out the distance between them.

“Cruz was at the scene,” Chief Salazar stepped in front of Obregon and the unspoken power battle between the two men flared. Emilia could almost smell a gust of anger. Chief Salazar went on. “Silvio, you and Cruz help Betty settle in and take her over to El Tigre today.”

“Maybe that should be Lieutenant Rufino’s call,” Obregon said smoothly. Emilia had only ever seen him wear black and today was no exception; black leather coat, black jeans, a v-necked shirt that forced the eye up to his face and those high indio cheekbones.

Chief Salazar’s face tightened. He gestured at Rufino. “Get her situated. Make sure the front desk sergeant knows her phone number.”

Gomez, never one to feel the tension in the room, raised a hand. “Does Betty replace the two detectives we’re missing?” he drawled around the gum in his mouth.

Salazar pressed his lips together in annoyance. “No,” he said. “She’s only here temporarily.”

“But those positions are going to be filled, right?” Castro asked.

“Lieutenant Rufino–,” Salazar started.

“Chief Salazar’s recommendations will be reviewed by the union as soon as they’re available,” said Obregon.

The meeting ended on that knife-edge, the pressure they’d started with now cranked to fever pitch by the tension between Salazar and Obregon. Both left, Obregon ahead of Salazar who feigned a conversation with Rufino and Betty in order to loiter while the detectives all feigned busywork at their computers.

When Salazar left, Rufino and Betty went into the lieutenant’s office. As soon as the door closed behind them Gomez and Castro bolted up and started acting like idiots, talking about how Betty looked like she knew her way around, how they were going to make it with her.

“Shut the fuck up,” Silvio growled.

“Cruz pulling on your leash, Silvio?” Castro jeered.

Silvio half rose out of his chair and Castro and Gomez crashed their way out of the squadroom. They were going to mangle the El Pharaoh casino money laundering case, Emilia knew, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Ten minutes later, Betty came out of Lt. Rufino’s office. She touched her hair, smoothing it back toward the blonde bun, then fingered the buttons running down the front of her blouse.

“I’m ready whenever you are,” she said to Silvio.

“Great,” Emilia said. She got her shoulder bag out of her desk drawer and stood up.

Betty ignored her. The woman’s attention was fixed on Silvio, a fuck you smile curving her lips. The top of the demure white blouse gaped wider than when Chief Salazar was in the room and Emilia saw the edge of a pink lace camisole.

Silvio stared back, his mouth tight.

Emilia permitted herself a tiny grin. This was going to be good.

If you liked “The Girl on the Cutting Room Floor” about book editing, please sign up to join me on this mystery writing journey! We’ll pick apart motive, catch a few killers, have a margarita or two. And if you are worried about privacy, rest assured your email will never be shared.

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The Art of Travel Without a Camera

Apr 9, 2013 | #truestory

The art of travel is being able to create memories. But how can we relive the experiences and relationships of an exciting or romantic or never-again adventure? Think outside the camera–the right postcard can be more of a memory-maker than all those digital photos that never leave the device.

Travel + Postcards

When I was younger and couldn’t afford to take alot of pictures I found myself traveling through Europe on a student budget. It was the era of 35mm cameras and the cost to develop pictures was out of my reach. I began buying postcards instead, not to mail, but to keep as souvenirs.

The postcards were easy to share and display. The collection grew. I often rifle through the cards and they never fail to do what a good souvenir does–bring back memories.

Related post: The Kitchen UN

Buying Tips

People have asked about my postcard purchases and so without further ado, the three most important tips for collecting the art of travel:

Only buy a postcard from a place you’ve actually been. It’s tempting to buy a beautiful scene or a painting and heck, it’s only a dollar, right? But when you get home you won’t have any association with it. So don’t bother. Stay authentic to your experience.
Go beyond the ordinary color photo postcard and go with a theme. Collect map postcards. Drawings. Vintage scenes. Hunting a postcard that corresponds to the theme of your collection can liven up a trip.
Look for postcards in quirky places. Museums and souvenir shops are the expected places but churches, antique malls, university bookstores, and art galleries are also good places to check, especially if you collect a theme.

The Gallery

To get your imagination going, here are some of mine and the stories they tell:

manuscript page

A British Library postcard of a page of Lewis Carroll’s handwritten and illustrated manuscript of Alice in Wonderland. This was my first trip to London as an adult, when I went to the British Library and Sir John Soanes’ Museum and was a hopeless Anglophile for a week.

This postcard of Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises was purchased during a student trip to Amsterdam. My roommate and I rode the train from Paris and met up with a motley group of foreign students with whom we went to the Van Gogh Museum. This painting, with its thickly daubed paint and eye-popping colors fascinated me. I could have stared at it all day.

Related post: Girl Meets Paris

This postcard is a double art bonus: it shows both sides of the Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam but also reflects the colors and layout of the flag of the Netherlands.

This postcard of the medieval walled village of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany will always bring forth the memory of a trip through Germany and Austria with my mother. Rothenburg was the scene of a particularly funny beer drinking event during which my mother did herself proud at 11:00 am.

The Ritz Hotel has been mentioned in many books and always seemed the epitome of high society. I crossed it off my bucket list several years ago when I had brunch there (coffee and toast that cost as much as my first car) and picked up this postcard from the lounge on my way out.

Australian artist Colin Colahan painted “Ballet of Wind and Rain” in 1945 as an official artist with Australian forces in the UK during WWII. I purchased the postcard at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, one of the most moving tributes to fallen soldiers I’ve ever seen.

This is a photo of image of the Madonna imprinted on a cloth garment (the famous tilma of San Juan Diego) which now hangs in the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. I got it at the Basilica gift shop. The postcard is simply a photo with “Expression de los ojos de la Virgen” stamped on the back and space for postage and the recipient’s address.

This is an oversized postcard for an oversized item, namely the Viking ship or “Oseberg-stavnen” in the Viking ship museum in Oslo, Norway. On the same trip I went to the Fram Museum, the final home of the ship that took Roald Amundsen to Antarctica. I doubt the Viking tradition will ever die out in Norway.

← previous post next post →

Book Review: A NEAPOLITAN INTRIGUE by Kate McVaugh

Past and present collide in this clever thriller that moves between present-day Naples, Italy, and...

Could Gas Prices Make You a Victim of Fuel Thieves?

A month ago, the catalytic converter was hacked out of my daughter’s car as it was parked on a...

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Book Review: The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell

Apr 5, 2013 | #reviews

Books starring the depressed Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander are growing on me, but not as fast as the portrayal of him by British actor Kenneth Branagh. I like the book plotlines, the descriptions of rural Sweden, the nice balance of character introspection and action. His perpetual unhappiness, stilted dialogue, and self-searching angst are part of Henning Mankell’s moody style, and Branagh captures it perfectly.

In THE MAN WHO SMILED, Wallander can’t come to grips with the fact that he killed a man in the line of duty. He’s drinking himself into oblivion, emerging briefly for a sex-addict’s blurred holiday in Thailand. After an intervention by his grownup yet unseen daughter Linda, he takes his angst to the windswept beaches of Jutland and plans to retire from his job as senior police detective in Ystad, Sweden. But an old friend approaches him to investigate the death of his father, then later turns up murdered. Wallander pulls himself together and heads back into his police career.

He’s been gone for over a year. The squadroom has changed, notably with the addition of a young female detective. As I write a mystery series about a lone female detective in a squadroom full of hostile men, this character really resonated with me. Her attitudes, dialogue and action scenes were very well done.

The book showcased the way Wallander pieces together multiple murders. I enjoyed the pacing of the discovery of clues and the logic thread which made the mystery one of the best in the Wallander series.

But there was one epic fail and it surprised me, given that the rest of the book came together so well. The wrong part would have been very easy to leave out or adjust to make sense. Without giving it away, it involved a switch by the bad guys after the good guy was dead and they simply could have taken the clue when they left the scene of the crime. Or Mankell could have left the original item to be found as the clue. Either way the plot elements would have hardly been affected.

I often look for solid motive in a mystery. The bad guy’s motive was a bit thin, but Mankell sold it as an appalling disregard for human life. It worked—but barely.

← Book Review: Doors Open by Ian Rankin The Art of Travel Without a Camera →

Book Review: Doors Open by Ian Rankin

Mar 29, 2013 | #reviews

Ian Rankin is one of my favorite mystery writers, with robust, imaginative characters that are true to their environment, beautifully paced plots, and locations that I’ve visited and love despite the flaws he exposes. Up front I’ll admit that I’m prejudiced in favor of his Detective Inspector John Rebus books. My favorites are Resurrection Men, the Falls and Exit Music.

DOORS OPEN by Ian Rankin is a standalone suspense novel with a plot that revolves around Edinburgh’s art scene. The main character, rich and bored Mike Mackenzie, ends up with two unlikely cohorts in a scheme to steal paintings from the National Gallery of Edinburgh. The partnership is anything but smooth–no one truly trusts anybody in this novel, for good reason–and soon the action is complicated by thugs and cops.

Rankin’s heavy in the book, Chib Calloway, is a reincarnation of Big Ger Rafferty in the Rebus books, but with a bit less finesse. “My town, my rules,” the character snarls at one point.

The ending has a bit of a wow factor, in that everyone gets what is coming to them, but the book moves more slowly than the Rebus books. The theme of doors opening, as in new opportunities, is overused and soon gets tiresome. While I won’t say don’t give it a try, if you’re looking for a great suspense novel set in Scotland, go with one of Rankin’s Rebus novels. They are all 5 star winners.

P.S. A movie was made from the book, starring among others, Stephen Fry who in his youth starred opposite Hugh Laurie in the wonderful Jeeves and Wooster BBC series based on the P.G. Wodehouse books. Others will recognize him as Mycroft Holmes in the Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes movies.

Fry obviously couldn’t keep the DOORS OPEN movie from a lukewarm reception, however, and it only rates 5.9 out of 10 on imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2371315/

← Solve Problems Like a Detective Book Review: The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell →

Solve Problems Like a Detective

Mar 26, 2013 | #authorlife, #EmiliaCruz

In CLIFF DIVER, Detective Emilia Cruz starts piecing together a police investigation by using a timeline. Emilia’s love of timelines will be an element of her crime-solving skills in every book in the Emilia Cruz mystery series. It’s her go-to problem-solving device and the best way she knows to start organizing the many disparate threads running through every case.

Off the pages of a mystery series and into real life, however, a timeline is a better planning device than a decision-making tool, in my view. Alone, it can’t help you narrow down solutions or predict consequences. But pair it with one of the tools below and you have a powerful way to resolve issues:

Pros and Cons

I once bought paper pre-printed with two columns, one reading PRO and the other reading CON. I actually pulled it out when a friend could not choose between a new job that was a risk and the current, safe, job where he felt stale. We literally brainstormed both sides of going vs staying. It was a simple exercise but helped him see solutions through an unemotional lens.

Plot the pros and cons on a timeline to know the time frame each will require. In my friend’s case he took the higher risk job because when he counted up all the pros of the new opportunity, they far outweighed not only the cons, but also the limited pros of staying where he was.

Action items

For years when I felt blue, worried, or stuck, I’d make a list of what was going wrong on the left side of a legal pad. On the right side I’d list all possible action items for changing the situation and achieving a solution. I’d timeline the actions to see how long they’d take or if I could do them immediately, in the next few days, or in the distant future. Inevitably I’d find something I could do to improve the situation and know when I could do it.

Maybe the list won’t make the problem completely go away but the exercise always leaves me with a feeling of greater control and that is half the battle.

Linear Thinking

A lot of problems feel bigger than they are because we are afraid of unknown consequences. So diagram the linear logic thread and figure out what and when some of those consequences might be/take place. It’s a basic “this action will lead to this outcome” exercise. But in order to work you have to be both realistic and honest.

For example, when we lived in Mexico, friends rarely paid their gardener on time. He stopped showing up and they attributed it to “typical” laziness. A more honest, linear thinking mindset might have recognized that if they wanted a nice yard, they’d have to pay for the work on time. The gardener could not afford transportation to get there on Thursday when he wasn’t paid for his work on Monday, even if they were prepared to pay him for both days on Thursday.

These problem solving ideas are likely to make their way into the investigations in the Emilia Cruz mystery series. But will they help her find a solution to her problems with Kurt Rucker? She might have to deal with corrupt politicians, dirty cops, and drug cartels in Acapulco, but Kurt is without a doubt her biggest challenge!

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