‘It’s an historian’s duty to uncover, not to judge.’ He lit his pipe. ‘Many people believe that right and wrong are fixed absolutes. That is incorrect, they change over time. The job of the historian is primarily to find the historical truth, to look at what the sources say and present them, objectively and dispassionately. If historians were to stand in judgment on human folly, our work would seem to posterity like fossils – the remnants of the orthodoxy of their time.’

This snippet of dialogue is delivered by one of the characters in the novel The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbø. I’m having trouble deciding exactly what to think about this book, but that passage seems to me about as close to a statement of the author’s world view as I can find (I may, of course, be entirely mistaken). Nesbø seems to believe that moral choices are extremely important, but who’s to say what the right ones are? Continue reading The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbo →

I’ve written about the Lew Fonesca books before, perhaps my favorite of the late Stuart M. Kaminsky’s detective series. It occurs to me that my personal fondness for Lew may rise in part from the fact that he’s a fellow depressive, and that some readers may be put off by that. Perhaps it should be noted that although the hero of these books is a depressive, the books are not necessarily depressing. There’s a lot of comedy here (some of it pretty black), and wry humor. Lew is sad, but he knows when he’s being ridiculous.

In any case, I want to do what I can to raise Kaminsky’s profile in the world, while some of his books are still in print. They’re worth reading.

Denial begins with Lew locked in the office which is also his home, refusing to speak to any of his friends. Finally his therapist talks her way in, persuading him to tell her what’s kneecapped his spirits even more than usual.

The body of the story is his account of two detective jobs he was hired for (Lew isn’t actually a private investigator. He’s a retired prosecutor’s investigator from Chicago, now eking out a living as a process server in Sarasota, Florida. But people keep bringing problems to him). One job is a serious one, trying to find out who fatally ran down a teenage boy with a car. The other is almost comic—a lady in a nursing home insists she saw someone murdered in one of their rooms, and wants him to prove she’s not senile.

Lew sets about the jobs in his usual quiet, methodical way, with his friend Ames McKinney, a latter-day Gary Cooper from Texas, providing backup and bodyguard service.

Feathers will be ruffled. Secrets will be uncovered.

People will die.

In the end, Lew makes a life-changing resolution. I’m going to order the next book tonight, because I really want to find out how that goes.

Highly recommended.