During the one week in August in which the action in this novel takes place, the city of Florence is almost claustrophobic with the heat, with temperatures over a hundred degrees (Fahrenheit), paralyzing the city during the day, with little respite at night. In a welcome change from the darkly violent noir novels which have been so popular among mystery aficionados in recent years, author Christobel Kent uses this setting to create a character-based “summer mystery,” focusing on several groups of characters as they cope with the summer heat and with a mystery which the author presents through their eyes. The novel is effectively plotted, with plenty of excitement, but it develops as the outcome of the characters’ actions and their thoughts as they deal with a disappearance and the eventual determination of murder, rather than through author-initiated violent twists, turns, and fast-paced dramatic action in which the characters are pawns of the author. The unique characters reflect many different aspects of life in a realistically depicted Florence, and as in any other city, crime does exist here, and murders and disappearances do take place. Author Christobel Kent creates a taut and psychologically intriguing novel about characters dealing with crises of life-changing dimensions during a period in which the August heat ratchets up the drama by its claustrophobic intensity.
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Setting this unusual, aesthetically intriguing, and often exciting novel in Malaya/Malaysia, author Tan Twan Eng* provides insights into the Japanese Occupation of Malaya from 1941 – 1945, while recreating the horrors endured by the local population. At the same time, he also illustrates the highly formal aesthetic principles which underlie Japanese gardens, ukiyo-e prints, and the practice of horimono (literally “carving”), which is part of the long tradition of irezumi, Japanese tattooing. Amazing as it may sound, Tan succeeds in accomplishing an elegant blend of these seemingly incompatible subjects and themes while also appealing to the reader with characters who face personal tragedies and strive, somehow, to endure. Through hints and small details mentioned throughout the novel, Tan creates interest in Yun Ling’s history, and the eventual discovery of how she becomes the sole survivor of her work camp in the mountains is one of the most dramatic sections of the novel.
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Author Bernardo Atxaga, whose previous works have been set in his native Basque country in Spain, provides only basic information about the rule of King Leopold II and Belgium’s Force Publique in the Congo in 1903. Spending little time on the grand scale of the atrocities this group committed historically against the native population, he focuses instead on the behavior of the individual officers of one small garrison in Yangambi as they conduct their daily lives. This creates a unique narrative in which the author explores what happens when there are, essentially, no limits on what individuals may do to keep themselves entertained – life is truly a “jungle.” By creating Chrysostrome Liege, a young soldier who is both naïve and timid, Atxaga also creates scenes in which Chrysostrome’s reactions set the behaviors of the others into sharp relief. He has no sense of being part of the group and no apparent need to become part of it, and since he also has no feeling for irony or absurdity, even in circumstances in which the ironies and absurdities are patently obvious, the reader is alternately horrified by some of the officers’ activities and somewhat nonplussed by Chrysostrome’s apparent attitude of being above it all. As one of the officers notes, “I’ve no idea whether he’ll be a good soldier or a bad one, but he’ll certainly be a miserable one. As miserable as a mandrill.”
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