The Singer’s Gun (Unbridled Books, $14.95) opens with two questions: how well do we really know our colleagues? And more specifically, why is Anton Waker alone on his honeymoon? Through meticulously layered flashbacks that reveal passport fraud, Kafka-esque bureaucracies, and an international crime ring, the talented Emily St. John Mandel does, eventually, give us answers. Moving from the grimy streets of Brooklyn to shiny Manhattan office towers to an idyllic Italian island, The Singer’s Gun happily subverts the conventions of both literary novel and genre thriller. Like Mandel’s wandering, amoral characters, this unique book resides in a netherworld of its own creation.
Claire Dewitt And The City Of The Dead (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24), by Sara Gran, is more than just a mystery story, it is a story about mysteries. Set in ravaged, post-Katrina New Orleans, Claire Dewitt (imagine Nancy Drew as a grown-up, pot-smoking, liquor-slugging, tattooed PI) is on the case of a missing DA. Following in the footsteps of her eccentric mentor and using the enigmatic Detection, the only book of famed French detective Jaquest Sillette, as a guide, Claire searches for clues in the Big Easy. But “searches for clues” is too pedestrian to describe Claire’s procedures. She analyzes her dreams, throws dice, consults the I Ching, interviews suspects and witnesses (sometimes at gunpoint), goes undercover—and makes brilliant connections. While trying to locate the missing DA, Claire also nears the truth about the disappearance of her best friend in 1980s Brooklyn, the biggest mystery of all. This is the first installment of what promises to be an engrossing new series.
I came late to the party. By the time I started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, most Stieg Larsson fans were already on volume three, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. But once I opened this thriller, I couldn’t put it down. I sailed through the next two. Now I’m one of the millions who hope the feud between Larsson’s family and his girlfriend will be resolved soon so we can get a fourth book. I even made a special order for THE MILLENNIUM TRILOGY DELUXE BOXED SET (Knopf, $99), a slip-cased package of the three novels, each unjacketed, bound in full cloth and uniquely stamped, with maps and individual full-color endpapers—as well as ON STIEG LARSSON, a previously unpublished collection of essays about and correspondence with the author. Why? Well, I want to have these books forever. I think of them as a memorial to Stieg and to the most original character created by a mystery writer in a very long time, Lisbeth Salander.
