#22: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

After Dark follows two young people who meet in the late hours of a Tokyo night and spend the time until dawn revealing bits and pieces of themselves in Haruki Murakami's whimsical, magical, yet sometimes maddening novel.

Although I thought Murakami had the rythyms of staying up all night down right, not to mention the denizens you find there, I was unhappy with the open-ended conclusion and some of the writing conceits. Perhaps it was in the translation from Japanese, but I found the storytelling mannered and often written, curiously enough, like a screenplay.

However, I thought Murakami had a unique style and I know some of this other novels have been very well-received. I will mark this one down as interesting if not entirely satisfying and perhaps seek out another.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#21: Panhandle Pistolero by Ray Hogan

I have always dabbled in Westerns, lantern-jawed Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey as a kid, revisionist Elmore Leonard and Loren Estleman later, a smattering of whatever these days, Elmer Kelton and Cormac McCarthy and the new Robert Parker. I went to a big library book sale and found a stack of Ace Western Doubles, which I bought author and title unseen. I have always collected Ace Doubles when I can find them but had never found any of the Westerns, so I went away happy at a quarter a shot.

Later I saw one was by Ray Hogan. Hogan is one of those guys whose names I recognized, who I have not sought out but read and enjoyed from time to time. This one starts off nicely with our hero bringing a corpse back to the sheriff even though the dead man, who our hero recently filled with hot lead, was the only person who could get him out of a frame. The story then jumps back in time to tell how our hero ended up in this tight spot with only his shootin' irons and his trusty sidekick Cholo for help. Panhandle Pistolero hits all the right beats, but has some nice twists and more of the rethinking of those 60s-era Westerns. Hogan is a muscular, clear-eyed writer and this was a pleasant, easy, read.

I'm going to flip this one over and check out Nelson Nye's Marshall of Pioche next.

#20: The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo

I have been burrowing through stacks of morose Scandinavian mysteries lately, so I thought surely I should tackled The Redbreast, voted the best Norwegian crime novel of all time. And, falling in line with my Norwegian brethren, I would recommend it highly.

The unfortunately named Harry Hole is a hard drinking, rule-busting Oslo cop whose bosses generally turn a blind eye because of his knack for solving crimes. He reminds me favorably of one of my favorite series characters, Michael Connelly's similiarly-named Harry Bosch. Unlike the more somber Scandinavian writers, Jo Nesbo infuses Hole with a fair amount of sardonic humor, a welcome relief from the somewhat navel-gazing detectives that populate these works.

The Redbreast is intricate but fast-moving, hard-nosed but philosophical, sprawling but intimate. The story jumps from a case involving modern Neo-Nazis to the Eastern Front of World War II, where Norwegians fought alongside Nazis against the Russians, and the terrible ties that bind these events. I enjoyed the plotting and characters and learned a lot about Norway's history during this time period.

Nesbo has been very popular overseas, and I hope this overture to English-reading audiences brings more translations of his work here. Recommended.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana and had to renew it several times to muscle through the 500-page-plus work.