Reading a mystery you cannot put down, while reclining in the cooling shade of a tree at the edge of a hot, sandy beach, is one of the rites of the season. And finding a terrific mystery novel to read on the beach is as simple as a visit to your local library.
A Cast of Falcons (2016) by Canadian author Steve Burrows is a suspenseful and well-crafted mystery ideal for the beach.
This is the third novel in the Birder Murder mystery series featuring bird-lover Det. Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune. The first book, A Siege of Bitterns, won the Crime Writers of Canada 2015 Award for Best First Novel.
This compelling story begins briskly. It opens with a man plunging from a cliff in Western Scotland. A second man, watching with binoculars, finds the body, tucks a bird guidebook in the corpse’s pocket and leaves the scene. When Scottish police show Domenic the book, he immediately recognizes it as a call for help from his older brother, Damian, a criminal on the run. But if Domenic answers the call and fails to bring his brother in, he risks his career and even being sent to prison himself.
The Language of Secrets 2016 by Ausma Zehanat Khan is not a puzzle mystery in the same vein as A Cast of Falcons. It is an extraordinary novel of characters and mores about the pursuit of a jihadist cell, the search for a killer and the infighting, much of it driven by prejudice and ignorance, among Canada’s law enforcement agencies.
Essa Khattack heads the Community Policing Section, an agency set up to navigate the confused politics of Canada’s Muslim community. But Khattack’s job just makes him a target for enemies in the Canada’s National Integrated Security Enforcement Team, an agency akin to Homeland Security. All Muslins are suspect to them. Rachel Getty is his attractive, gritty and inspired sidekick. She is devoted to her boss and together the two negotiate their way through one minefield after another.
The Lady from Zagreb (2015) by Philip Kerr is a wonderfully written novel that melds a superlative murder mystery and a searing look at the inhumanity of the Nazis and their allies. It is the 10th novel in the acclaimed Bernie Gunther series and just might be the author’s best work.
The protagonist, a former Berlin homicide detective, is forced by Joseph Goebbels, the wildly ambitious and extremely manipulative Nazi propaganda minister, to track down the estranged father of a beautiful actress, Dalia Dresner, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA. Bernie finally finds Antun Dragun Djurkovic, now a fanatical Croatian fascist and the brutally sadistic commandant of a notorious concentration camp. During his return to Berlin, our hero is ensnared by American, Swiss and German intelligence operatives due to his connections with powerful people in the Reich.
Nothing is what it appears to be and Bernie finds himself in a world of senseless violence and brutality where everyone has a hidden agenda and is out for the main chance.
These three titles, and many more, are available at your Okanagan Regional Library www.orl.bc.ca.
– Peter Critchley is a reference librarian at the Vernon branch of the Okanagan Regional Library.