Ian Rankin / Rebus, Ready for Retirement

Rebus, Ready for Retirement

Patrick Anderson

Monday, September 29, 2008

EXIT MUSIC
By Ian Rankin
Little, Brown. 421 pp. $24.99

There's a moment in "Exit Music," Ian Rankin's 17th -- and, he says, last -- novel about Detective Inspector John Rebus, when a man with a tape recorder explains, "I'm putting together a sort of soundscape of Edinburgh. From poetry readings to pub chatter, street noise, the Water of Leith at sunrise, football crowds, traffic on Princes Street, the beach at Portobello, dogs being walked in Hermitage . . . hundreds of hours of the stuff." That could be Rankin himself speaking, because in the Rebus novels he's provided a portrait of his chosen city that's as rich, detailed and loving as any that any crime writer working today has given us of any city in the world. "Exit Music" is far from the best of the Rebus novels, but if it is truly the last of them, attention must be paid: This has been one of the best police procedural series ever written.

‘Wilde Lake,’ one of Laura Lippman’s finest novels, feels personal

‘Wilde Lake,’ one of Laura Lippman’s finest novels, feels personal



By Patrick Anderson

April 28, 2016

Laura Lippman’s “Wilde Lake” is one of her best novels and feels like one of her most personal. The story takes us deep into the life of Luisa (Lu) Brant, seen both as a child and as the state’s attorney of Howard County, Maryland. The book is unusual in that Lippman spends more time relating Lu’s childhood and family life than she does the novel’s nominal plot, which concerns a murder case that Lu prosecutes. But Lippman’s portrayal of Lu’s girlhood and family is so exceptional, readers won’t miss the legal drama. You rarely find characterizations as sensitive as these in genre fiction or, indeed, any fiction.

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo / The Fascist's Revenge

 

The Fascist's Revenge

By Patrick Anderson,

Monday, December 10, 2007

THE REDBREAST
By Jo Nesbo
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
Harper. 519 pp. $24.95

The publisher of Jo Nesbo's "The Redbreast" reports that it was voted "Best Norwegian Crime Novel Ever Written" by members of Norwegian book clubs. I am not qualified to comment on that judgment, nor will I venture any dumb jokes about it, but will say that this is a fine novel, ambitious in concept, skillful in execution and grown-up in its view of people and events. In important ways it's also a political novel, one concerned with the threat of fascism, in Norway and by implication everywhere. All in all, "The Redbreast" certainly ranks with the best of current American crime fiction.

 

Book review of "The Devil's Star," by Jo Nesbo

By Patrick Anderson

Monday, March 15, 2010

THE DEVIL'S STAR
By Jo Nesbo
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
Harper. 452 pp. $25.99

"The Devil's Star" is the third of Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo's novels about the alcoholic Oslo detective Harry Hole to be published in this country. Reviewing "The Redbreast" a few years ago, I said that it ranked with today's best American crime writing.