Nevermore Report: ShadowMan, Witch and Wizard, The Mathmaker: A Spy in Berlin, Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun

 

Reported by Garry

ShadowMan: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling by Ron Franscell is a fascinating look at the beginning of the field of psychological profiling in murder investigations. In 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from her family’s camping tent in Montana. Someone cut the tent and snatched the girl, leaving no traces at all. The largest manhunt in Montana ensued, led by the FBI. Special Agents Howard Teten and Patrick Mullany had come up with the radical new idea that killers had patterns in their behavior that could be tracked and used to identify them. The 1973 case was the testbed for this new idea which has now become a standard tool in the forensic investigation kit. Packed with information, this book is both humorous and terrifying in equal measures. Our reader stated how she couldn’t put this book down and was amazed by how much she learned from this true-crime case that gave birth to an entire field of investigation.  NH

 

Witch and Wizard by James Patterson, the first in the five book Witch and Wizard series, is a fun, fantastical romp, according to our reader. Wisty and Whit Allgood are siblings in a dystopian future where the government has seized control of all aspects of daily life, and are kidnapping children – including Wisty and Whit, who thought they were just normal teenagers, until their (highly illegal) magical powers start to show. Can these two survive, and overthrow the evil regime? Read it to find out!  MC

The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin by Paul Vidich is a historical thriller set in 1989 Germany. Anne Simpson is an American whose seemingly normal marriage to Stefan, a charming German piano tuner, comes crashing down when Stefan disappears and the CIA and West German Intelligence arrive at her doorstep. Stefan was not a piano tuner; he was a spy for East Germany with ties to the KGB. Anne is now in a race to find the Matchmaker – the East German mastermind of a network of Stasi spies — before he escapes to Moscow in the turmoil surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tightly written with believable characters and gripping suspense, our reader thoroughly enjoyed this Cold War spy story and recommends it highly.  ML

 

Our next reader read both Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. Our reader noted how Ishiguro writes mainly about the relationships between adults and how complex and forceful his prose can be. Never Let Me Go is set in a dystopian parallel universe where clones are raised in isolated “boarding schools” until they are old enough that their organs can be harvested for transplant into the “original” body. Klara and the Sun explores the relationship between Klara, an “Artificial Friend,” and the teenage girl she was purchased to accompany. Both of these works look at the dangers of technology to human lives, the future of our world, and what it means to be “human.”  WJ

Also Mentioned:

The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER by Thomas Fisher

To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change by Alfred W. McCoy

The Middle of Somewhere: An Artist Explores the Nature of Virginia by Suzanne Stryk

How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for our Times by Pablo Servigne

Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead by Elle Cosimano

Book Girl:  A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson

Sister Stardust by Jane Green

Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sara Weinman

Never Simple by Liz Sheier

Nevermore: Ripped from the Headlines, Gentleman in Moscow, Klara and the Sun, Agent for the Stars

 

Reported by Garry

 

Ripped from the Headlines by Harold Schechter had a rave review.  “This is the most fun book!” says our reader.  This collection of essays digs into the true stories behind 40 of the most iconic movie killers in history.  Psycho, The Hills Have Eyes, Arsenic and Old Lace, Scream and more film all had some basis in real events and stories.  Each essay is less than 10 pages long and self-contained, so our reader really liked the ability to finish a “full story” in a quick sitting.  This salacious, fun read tells the true stories behind the fictionalized stories that we know so well, many of which are far stranger than their fictional counterparts.  Two of our readers highly recommend this book. 

 

A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles was our next book.  This hefty (480 pages) book tells the story of life and societal changes in Russia in the in the run-up to World War II.  The novel starts in 1922 when Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in The Hotel Metropol Moscow, a storied luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin.  The hotel is the location of plots, affairs, thievery and revolution – all of which Count Rostov must negotiate while keeping a low profile.  Our reader loved this novel for its vivid characterizations of the various denizens of the hotel, and the way that it looks at personal growth over time despite circumstances.  This book is highly recommended by our reader.

 

The speculative fiction Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro was the next book reviewed.  This novel by the Nobel Prize winning author is told through the eyes of Klara, a solar powered Artificial Friend – a type of robot that has been programmed be highly observant of human behavior and give kindness.  Klara is purchased by the mother of Josie, a sickly teenage girl with an unspecified disease.   Our reader found this dystopian near-future book to be very interesting and moving, particularly in the way that the author weaves in sunlight, which Klara must have in order to survive.  This moving, complex book comes highly recommended. 

 

Another science fiction novel, Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi comes highly recommended by our next reader.  This funny, insightful romp is written by our readers’ very favorite sci-fi author and follows the story of Tom Stein, a young Hollywood agent who is hired by a race of aliens to manage the reveal of their existence to the world.  One of the (multiple) complicating factors that Tom has to deal with is that the aliens communicate by smell, but themselves smell horrifically awful.  Hijinks ensue involving an elderly dog, a brainless but ambitious blonde actress, Tom’s aging grandmother and a Holocaust film.  Our reader loves Scalzi’s lighthearted, funny, sarcastic wit, and this debut novel is a great example of the author’s works.

 

Also mentioned:

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman

So Cold the River by Michael Koryta 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux 

The Unidentified:  Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters and Our Obsession with the Unexplained by Colin Dickey

This Is The Fire: What I say to my friends about racism by Don Lemon

The Black Church:  This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates

The Girl Explorers: The Untold Story of the Globetrotting Women who Trekked, Flew and Fought Their Way Around the World by Jayne Zanglein

Who is Maud Dixon by Alexandra Andrews

Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton