Books! (I Have a Great One…)
I read three books last week. The first two were mysteries. First up: This was good! Two detectives are called to investigate a murder that has taken place in a house on a private island. A major storm is underway, and various other plot points make this a “locked island” mystery- i.e., you know the killer has to be one of the seven or eight people in the house that night. I mean- this wasn’t a literary masterpiece. But I liked the character of the main detective, a woman working through some of her own past trauma, and I liked the fact that it was truly a mystery. You don’t know who the killer was until the end. Fun read. Next up was this one… You know, I really have to be more discerning in my book choices. This book was… okay. It’s a police procedural that takes place in New Zealand. There’s a lot of backstory about the main detective (again, a woman) which I like. But there were two things I didn’t like about it. One- it wasn’t a mystery. By the middle of the book, we know who the killer is, the detectives know who the killer is, and it’s just a question of whether they’ll catch him before he kills again. I started to feel a little bored- I was PRETTY SURE the killer wasn’t going to murder a zillion people and then get away, so I felt like I knew the ending- I didn’t know all the details, but I had the basic idea. Second… this is tricky because I don’t want to come off as a spoiled, superficial woman steeped in white privilege, but here we go. The plot is VERY heavy on Maori history- the lead detective is Maori, and the motivation of the killer ties in with the way the indigenous people were screwed over. I kind of just wanted a mystery… and the fact that indigenous people were treated terribly wasn’t exactly a shocking discovery to me. Get ready for this next one: It was kind of like the universe heard me complaining about predictable endings, and sent this one my way. IT IS SO SO SO SO SO SO GOOD! The basic plot is this: A plane flying from Paris to JFK hits a bizarre patch of turbulence, emerges unscathed, only to land and discover that… this exact planeload of people already landed 100 days ago. It’s a mystery (as in, what the heck is going on?) and fantasy (as in, this can’t happen in real life!) There are philosophical and theological questions, as well as practical (what are we going to do with 200 people who now have an exact duplicate?) The writing is incredible. The book starts with introducing about 10 characters, which isn’t normally something I like. Each character has a short chapter. By the end of the chapter I was totally immersed in each person’s life and felt like I knew them so well. Later on when they all started interacting with each other (because, they were all on the same flight) I had that feeling you get when you see your kid’s teacher at the grocery store. Wait- Victor is talking to Lucie? Oh, David is the pilot! In spite of the bizarre setup, every person felt real to me. The ending… in a million years, you would not be able to predict this ending. I actually had to google “What happened at the end of The Anomaly?” I had my own idea, but wanted to see what other people had to say. But don’t let that put you off- the ending was ambiguous, but also perfect. What are you reading now? Who has read The Anomaly? Top photo by Abinash Jothimani on Unsplash