Back on the horse

In Cold Blood is behind me. My book discussion group talked about it on Tuesday so it is finished. I did not enjoy the book and now I remember why I have passed up reading it for 40 years, it is grim, ugly, without redemption, and not my cup of tea. Monday evening we had a showing of the film Capote at the library, it was an interesting sidelight on the book and gave another dimension to the story, but again, it was cheerless and without redemption. Yuck!

Now I can read some fun stuff. Currently on the nightstand is Slipknot by Linda Greenlaw. She is the gutsy swordfishing captain from Maine who appears as a character in Sebastian Junger's book The Perfect Storm. Her memoir of the storm event was titled The Hungry Ocean and it is a good read. She has produced several books about her life fishing and one family cookbook. She writes a good sentence and tells a good story. Slipknot is her first mystery and I like it so far. A good interview of Greenlaw ran in USAtoday.

The Indian Bride by Karin Fossum is another one of those "Translated from the Norwegian," books that fascinate me. Set in the quiet village of Elvestad, Norway it concerns the brutal death of an Indian woman who has arrived in Norway to join her new husband who lives in the village. Events conspire to keep him from picking her up at the airport and she is murdered as she makes her way to meet him. Fossum has concocted a touching story wrapped in a solid police procedural. Fossum writes Inspector Konrad Sejer and this is the eighth book featuring him, but only five of them have been translated. If you liked Henning Mankell you might like Karin Fossum. The titles that we own by her are:

1. When the Devil Holds the Candle
2. He Who Fears the Wolf
3. Don't Look Back
4. The Indian Bride