Highest Rated in Our Group This Year

Our Mystery Book Club -the one that meets in the town Library- uses a score sheet to "rate" or "grade" the books we read each month. You can download a copy from the link on the right. Anyway, this month's selection was Run Before the Wind by Stuart Woods. The book was placed on the schedule because we had such a collectively high regard for Chiefs, Woods' first book, when we read it last year (my review). Like last year, this book was rated very high by everyone - the average score was 94 ! Eight of nine people rated it 90 or above.

Run Before the Wind picks up in the early 1970s with the next generation of the Lee family in Georgia. Young Will Lee is an unfocused law school student who finds himself forced to take a year off. He sets out to travel around Europe, but a chance act of daring in which he rescues a yacht adrift in a harbor, changes everything. He accepts a proposal to help build a competitive sailing yacht in a small Irish village alongside a former British marine and his wife. It happens that the Brit is targeted by IRA extremists, and Will finds himself caught up in the cross hairs.

Many in our group loved the nautical scenes and descriptions: boat building, sailing, harborside activities, and so on.

Others were fascinated by the issues of ideological extremists in general and Irish nationalists in particular: how can people get so caught up in their view of life that they would kill the people they are defending ... to defend them?

We all felt the book was a page turner aided by extremely good writing: new elements of plot, lots of foreshadowing, excellent characterizations throughout the book.

Quite a few said it was the best book they had read all year. NOTE: see our list at bottom of this post. But two of us like Chiefs better than this second book.

I was the only one giving an under-90 rating, namely 87. Still nothing to sneeze at. (My avergae of 11 books was 81.)

My problems with the book: 1) Some unrealistic scenes / or scenes that didn't really make sense: **SPOILER** Example, when the "Bishop" tries to kill the "Nun" in the trailer, why did he wait until then? It made no sense, especially since he opposed the Nun's desire to kill Lee all along anyway. 2) A lot of questions about characters left up in the air, especially the millionaire Thresher. 3) A central character (Lee) with whom I did not identify as well as I did two of the chiefs in Chiefs.

Interesting observation though, several participants who do not like the Stone Barrington character (a PI featured in a number of Woods' later books), felt drawn to Will Lee as someone who learned and matured. Well, I hope so. In the continuing Lee family saga, Will runs for President of the US.

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Books read during the last 11 months listed in the order of how I personally rated them:

Hold Tight - Coben - 95
Undue Influence - Martini - 93
Brass Verdict - Connelly - 90
Winter Prey - Sandford - 89
Indemnity Only - Paretsky - 88
Run Before the Wind - Woods - 87
The Shape Shifter - Hillerman - 87
Power Play - Finder - 85
Christine Falls - Black - 76
Skin Deep - Braver - 54
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders - Mortimer - 45

Mysteries, Racism, and MLK Day

Do any mysteries revolve around a theme suitable for MLK Day? I'm not sure.

Chiefs (Stuart Woods) traces a crime through 3 generations of police chiefs in a small Georgia town. One factor is the evolving race relations. By the end of the book, An African-American chief solves the series of murders that goes back some forty years.

I have always enjoyed the Easy Rawlins character created by Walter Moseley. There are many things that come together to make the Moseley books a great series: plot, characterization, great dialog. But it's hard to find a lot of books that provide insight into the challenges of urban African Americans in the Civil Rights era (1945-1970ish) as you get from following the life of Rawlins and his friends.

Like many, I never read John Ball's In the Heat of the Night (1965) but remember the movie. The book one an Edgar for first mystery, and was strong on theme of racial tension.

A ten year old article describes "a crowded list of black protagonists who solve crimes in detective stories and novels penned by African-American writers." I am not familiar with these books. This should be a good start into some new and different writers.

As usual, the "Stop You're Killing Me" site is great for lists: For example all of the African-American sleuths featured in mystery fiction.

I found an interesting study of both positive and negative stereotyping in mysteries of the 1940s and earlier.

I do not believe that every black author necessarily will result in a book with insights into the issues of racism and civil rights in our society; however I'm not well read enough to say for sure. In looking up various books, I found one for my "must read" list: A Rage in Harlem, (1957) by Chester Himes. You can get the idea from Amazon readers and others.

Strong Unanimous Agreement: Thumbs Up for Chiefs

Just got back from our book club discussion of Chiefs by Stuart Woods. Considering how often our group has had differing views of what makes a good mystery, it was nothing short of thrilling to report- we all loved it. Chiefs, the first book by Woods (1982), is not exactly "current," but it did win an Edgar Award when it first came out. It has since been reissued.

We all felt that it had a different feel from the average mystery book. Which makes an interesting point: Is it a mystery? A thriller? A novel? Historical fiction? Epic story? All of those things. By the way, on the rating form, or grading sheet, I gave the book a 97 - the highest grade out of over 20 books rated on that form.

The book takes place in rural Georgia over a 43 year period. It is divided into three parts, each focused on a different police chief in the small town of Delano. We learn of the beginnings of a serial killer and how his work is never fully discovered until the end of the book. Yet the book is not exactly about the crime, but about relationships, attitudes about race, irony, character, and more. It was a book that was at once slow enough to explore the depths of character over time, and breathless enough (thanks to chapter endings with cliffhangers) to make me stay up until wee hours too finish it. The book got unanimous endorsement by the group probably because it had something for everyone.

I can't recommend this book highly enough! Chiefs