Involuntary Witness by Gianrico Carofiglio

As a former prosecutor specializing in organized crime, novelist Gianrico Carofiglio has a unique perspective. He has also advised the anti-Mafia committee in the Italian parliament and served five years in the Italian senate.

Entering the world of the depressed, middle-aged lawyer Guido Guerrieri, we follow him through the law courts, bars, and beaches of Bari as he falls to the bottom of an emotional well, and join him as he slowly climbs out.

Ironically, it is the body of a child found down a real well that galvanizes Guerrieri. In a mysterious sequence of events, he is returned to life and purpose when he finds himself defending a Senegalese immigrant who is about to be convicted of the child's murder on the basis of wildly circumstantial evidence.

Through Guido's memories and reflections, the reader sees the numbing people he used to hang out with. Among this set, marriages of convenience, drinking, partying and meaningless affairs are commonplace. Some lawyers get paid in cash, give no receipts, declare improbably low incomes, and accept money they know has ties to organized crime. When Guido visits his client in prison, he is repelled by the routine unproven "violence committed on the prisoners to improve discipline."

After one successful court defence, we see Guido attacked on the street by thugs who disapprove. An amateur boxer, he's able to beat back the gangsters, only to have his tires slashed and his car damaged. To stop this escalating, he must work through a shady intermediary who visits Guido's attackers and returns with the message that if he does not report the damage to his car, but pays for it himself, the feud will end.

Though this novel is more noir than cosy, the narrator can be funny. Indeed, he places great value on a sense of humour, in particular, the ability to laugh at oneself. And speaking of noir, I haven't dyed the black-and-white cover red for effect. At this season, I mostly read outside; the colour is the result of the way our patio umbrella filters light.

Norwegian by Night, by Derek B. Miller

This brilliant novel by Derek B. Miller moves seamlessly from Oslo to Gramercy Park to the wars in Vietnam and the Balkans. Seen mostly through the eyes of an 82-year-old Jewish ex-Marine living in Norway, the story weaves in and out of conversations with people living and dead.

Sheldon may be feeling his age, possibly even suffering from the onset of dementia. His mind teems with thoughts and memories. A Vietnam vet, he carries a heavy burden of guilt and regret, even though he knows the deaths he feels worst about were dealt by the hands of fate and history.

When the aftermath of the Balkan wars arrives in Oslo, all hell breaks loose in the apartment of his granddaughter and grandson-in-law while they're out. Sheldon's military training kicks in, and he steps up to do what he can.

Miller's work is full of pithy lines that carry weighty ideas. "Only the educated stop to look for words -- having enough to occasionally misplace them." His characters' thoughts are also freighted with philosophy.

In a serious mood, Sheldon recalls how soldiers in Vietnam were imprinted with horrible smells. When ordered to approach a plane crash in case the pilot is still alive, the soldiers smell "fuel, which burned with a different odor than napalm, rice paddies, cattle and people." But burning fuel is "only a 2 on the gag-ometer" the soldiers have devised to classify the stenches that surround them; a 10 is reserved "for the smell of letters received from bureaucrats."

Looking back, Sheldon recalls that "It was not a grand moment" when he "watched as his son became a man." Without witnesses or heroics, Saul's "small gesture of dignity and respect between one man and another," opened "the possibility of a better world." Behind these simple words, we glimpse the vast and complex requirements demanded by society to satisfy honour among men.

The rules of honour also extend to ordinary life, causing Sheldon, in the presence of his young son, to shrug aside two bodyguards and punch out an anti-Semite who refuses to let him play golf at a country club. He is confident that the man will not complain to the police, reasoning that "The only thing worse for an anti-Semite than a Jew is being beaten up by a Jew." And therefore, "The fewer people who knew about it, the better."

Once father and son are safely away from the scene of the fight, Sheldon lectures Saul, saying 'This country is what you make it...you don't make excuses for America's bullshit. That's what the Nazis and commies do. The Fatherland. The Motherland. America isn't your parent. It's  your kid. And today I made America a place where you get your nose broken for telling a Jew he can't play a round of golf.' Sadly, in spite of its important lesson, this moment "that Saul would never forget... ruined the whole day."

Riding along the back roads of Norway on his motorcycle, Lars, the gentle modern Norwegian who still hunts animals, ponders the condition of being a Jew. He finds something unsettling about the way they speak as witnesses to history. "Since Egypt. Since the morning of Western civilization, when its light shone west from Jerusalem and Athens, and blanketed Rome and all that it would leave behind. They've watched the Western tribes and empires rise and fall--from the Babylonians to the Gauls, from the Moors to the Habsburgs to the Ottomans--and have alone remained. They have seen it all. And the rest of us wait for the verdict that is still, even now, to come."

Behind him on the bike, his wife Rhea wonders if her beloved grandfather really is succumbing to dementia. "Imagining what Sheldon would say in response to her doubts, she can't help but smile. 'Sanity is the thick soup of distraction we immerse ourselves in to keep from remembering that we're gonna bite it.'"

Sigrid, an Oslo police officer with her finger firmly on the pulse of the era, reflects that, "Recent immigration from Africa and Eastern Europe--and Muslim countries farther east--created a new social tension in the city that still lacked the political maturity to address it." With the liberals expounding "limitless tolerance," and the conservatives "racist or xenophobic," people "debate from philosophical positions but never from ones grounded in evidence, and so no sober consideration [is] being given to the very real question haunting Western civilization--namely, How tolerant should we be of intolerance?"

This novel portrays themes of deep resonance: guilt, regret, revenge, war and the cycle of violence; the pressures of history and the inescapable solitude of the self. Underpinning the stunning novels of Derek B. Miller is an impressive resume. Undoubtedly, his work with the UN, governments and think tanks, as well as his American - Swiss education and the fact that he lives in Norway add to the broad international perspective of his work.

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

I'm grateful to the student in my recent SFU Mystery course who told me about this novel. An Irish writer living in England, Edna O'Brien was 84 when this "chilling masterpiece" came out in 2015. In a long writing life, O'Brien has won significant international prizes. She has also been vilified and seen her work banned and burned.

In an Irish village, we meet middle-aged Fildelma, who longs for a child, but with her much older husband, this dream seems dead. We also glimpse European migrants who have come to Ireland to work, earn and survive. One young man has been displaced and traumatized by the Balkan wars.

He is the only villager who is not impressed by the newly arrived healer. But Dr. Vlad soon charms the ladies, and many of the men as well. Fidelma gets disastrously embroiled in the doctor's life, and ends up fleeing to London. There she is befriended by displaced people who have left their own countries following traumas far worse than her own.

This is a book about sexual politics, about ethnic identity, about shaming and blaming, about the the human tendency to look away from what we do not wish to see, and about the meaning of home. With Fidelma, we seek to understand the nature of evil, and share her relief when in the end, she escapes its toils and finds the courage to "come home to herself."

This book is an absolutely brilliant portrayal of contemporary history, and an amazing read.

The Afrikaner by Ariana Dagnino

"The past always resurfaces," and "change has its own dynamic." So the protagonist is told in the gripping new novel by Ariana Dagnino.

South African Paleoarchaeologist Zoe du Plessis is on a dual quest. When tragedy strikes, she tries to escape her pain by redoubling her effort to find evidence of early humans in the Kalahari.

Her family can trace their roots in Africa back three hundred years. The Du Plessis were Huguenots. Fleeing France to escape persecution, they went first to Holland then on to the Cape region of South Africa where they planted grapes and re-established themselves in the wine business.

Absorbing though Zoe's work is, it can't help her cope with the pressure of her Afrikaner heritage in the post-apartheid era. She is filled with pain, guilt and uncertainty. To free herself, Zoe must let go self-blame and toxic secrets.

Since childhood, she has kept her promise to Georgina, the family housekeeper, to never speak about something she was not meant to witness. Now she uncovers shocking secrets in her own family -- history that explains why her aunt and grandmother were shunned by other relatives. The disgraced Aunt Claire has left her a journal containing clues that lead Zoe to the truth. But knowing is not enough; she must share this explosive information with someone she trusts. Meanwhile, she learns that her brother Andre has been keeping secrets of his own.

Journeying with Zoe towards a more peaceful acceptance of who she is, we understand her in the wider context of her history. A poet she meets, a fellow-Afrikaner, speaks of their people's 'collective self-delusion.' Due to uncertainty about their place and identity, he says, "a whole nation was made to believe that ethnic pride and culture could only come from race." Now, though he admits the "the Rainbow Nation is an appealing brand name for a torn nation trying to heal itself," he finds this idea too simplistic. Integration and hybridization are natural evolutionary processes that "can't be socially engineered."

Pondering the complications of her nation, Zoe notices how other tribes resent the Zulus, and how black and Coloured South Africans feel their jobs are threatened by the influx of blacks from neighbouring countries including Congo, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

In this fascinating glimpse of contemporary Southern Africa, we travel from the camel thorns of the Kalahari to Stone Town in Zanzibar. We observe some customs of the San or Bushmen, who "gather their veld food with the self-assurance of an inveterate city shopper."

We also glimpse fallout from border skirmishes between South Africa and Mozambique, seen by locals as "a proxy war for the democracies of the West." As one man bitterly remarks, "They called us racists, but we came in handy when it came time to keep the commies in check."

We witness the behaviour of diehard racists and meet South Africans of various ethnicities as they work together in an effort to realize a new way forward. We hear how during the Apartheid regime, scientists were shunned at conferences, and glimpse recently discovered (1995) hominid footprints on the beach at Langebaan.

The challenge for each "poor human being biting into the thorns of existence" is to face up to the past, and then make the present better. The fact that South Africans are by no means alone in needing to do so makes this topic novel thematically universal as well.

Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand by Fred Vargas

In this volume of the Commissaire Adamsberg investigates series, Fred Vargas features a visit by Paris police to GRC HQ in Gatineau, Quebec. This leads to some hilarious linguistic and cultural miscommunication between casual Quebecois cops and their formal French colleagues.

From the medieval Strasbourg Cathedral to the strange Pink Lake in the Quebec bush, the intuitive Commissaire Adamsberg dogs the Trident, a serial killer whose crimes span five decades, and may even reach into the afterworld.

Delightfully drawn characters sport all kinds of oddities and contradictions. Robin Hood figure Josette, the aged "hackeress," makes a castle of her rice pudding at the dinner table, provoking her elderly hostess Clementine to ask her not to play with her food.

Across this same dinner table, Adamsberg ponders the fate of his boss, who has taken a big risk to support him. Brezillon, he explains, "puts out his fag with his thumb without burning himself," making him a "good guy." Thus, reasons the commissaire, he "can't compromise him."

Sheltered by the two aged women, Adamsberg thinks, plans and investigates. While Josette helps by hunching happily over her hacking, Clementine plies the nervous and underfed detective with cookies and maple syrup, and stands over him to ensure that he is "eating up as instructed."

Meanwhile, Adamsberg helps his hostess by carrying the shopping. In her kitchen, he learns to peel potatoes properly, removing the eyes first. Obediently stirring the pan in a figure eight so as "not to  ruin the bechamel sauce," he imagines a confrontation with the villain, telling himself he will not "be reduced to ashes by the pressure of a cane on his chest from this would-be aristocrat."

Tongue firmly in cheek, the author treats us to a wide variety of classic scenes. We see the village priest's memory as "a telephoto lens into the past," and witness an exhumation in the winter rain. Sensing the approach of a hunch, the eccentric detective treats intuitions "like an angler handling a bite," and refrains from pouncing on an idea until it is "safely landed in his conscious brain."

Much depends on the frail old hacker, but big barriers must first be overcome. As Adamsberg comments sadly, 'you can't break into the files of life like you can into computers.'

The plot is outrageous, straining the very edges of credibility. Yet the authorial hand evokes instinctive trust in the reader, who is more than willing to suspend disbelief for as long as it takes to untangle the tale. A historian and archeologist by profession, Parisienne author Fred Vargas (her nom de plume) has taken the mystery genre by storm.

The Blackhouse by Peter May

Peter May has set this story, the first in a trilogy, on the remote and rocky isle in the Orkneys where the Lewis chessmen were found. Made in Trondheim in the 12th century, these remarkable artifacts were likely buried beneath the Lewis peat by Norse traders on their way to Ireland. A brief reference to this find is one well-chosen detail in this layered and atmospheric tale.

As a young man, Fin Macleod escapes this harsh land with its suffocatingly rigid society, only to find himself back two decades later, once more at a crossroads in his life. Skillful use of sensory images evokes the remote isle of Lewis. Passing harled walls and pebbledash buildings hunched against the weather, we follow Fin into the suffocating primal room to gaze on the cracked ceiling and the gannet-shaped stain on the oft-painted anaglyptic wallpaper.

We catch the "old-fashioned" smell of Brut on the fawn suit jacket of the arrogant police inspector, and when May describes the guga hunt, find ourselves in the midst of a semi-secret ritual of male endurance and group identity that reaches back to the Middle Ages. Glimpses of mysterious cairns from WWII hint at the ultimate unknowability of history.

Tankers keep passing on the horizon, suggesting the changes that have shaken even this remote community on the wild North Atlantic, which is nevertheless deeply defined by ancient traditions. We learn that even now, after a funeral, "only men go to the burial place." We learn of the decline of the former industries due to the reduced numbers of wild salmon, as well as the fading fashion of the Harris tweed that was once the backbone of the island's economy. We also discover that Jardine, Matheson and Company financed the purchase of an entire Scottish island with the proceeds of the 19th century China opium trade.

We think we know the character of the ironically named "Angel" Macritchie; a sudden glimpse of his other side is both surprising and inevitable. Above all, May takes us deep into the mind of Fin Macleod, revealing the peaks and valleys, joys and regrets of this Glasgow detective's life. We hold our breath in hope and terrified anticipation as the author brings Fin face to face with cold realities that, as a younger man, he unsuccessfully tried to flee. This is a book about society, about history, and about individual psychology. May's skillful use of language makes it even more stunningly impressive.

Science and Spiritual Practices by Rupert Sheldrake

Like biologist Rupert Sheldrake's previous books, this is both interesting and practical. It's also more personal than his other works, providing glimpses of the man behind the ideas, and how he has evolved as an individual and a thinker. A self-described panetheist, Sheldrake meditates, chants, feels grateful, attends evensong and goes on pilgrimages. He speaks of his wife, Jill Purce, a sound healer, and describes his interest in morphic resonance, a topic he has dealt with in previous books.

The author, a biologist, loves trees and gardens and  maintains a strong connection to the natural world. To connect with forces greater than ourselves and to promote health and inner peace, he advocates spending time in nature and in silence.

In this context, he says the purpose of ritual is to connect those who partake in it "with the original event that the ritual commemorates, and also to link them with all those who have participated in the custom in the past." Significantly, "Rituals cross time, bringing the past into the present," allowing direct access to past time. In ritual, we intuit and feel the presence of the past. Places hold the resonance of memory, collective and individual.

Sheldrake likes to entertain unusual ideas, for instance, the possibility that the sun is conscious. He argues thus: "If the universe is more like an organism than a machine, then so is our galazy and so is our sun," whose patterns of electromagnetic activity "are much vaster and more complex" than that in our brains." While admitting he "cannot prove that the sun is conscious," he points out that neither can a skeptic prove it isn't, and states that "From a nondogmatic point of view, the consciousness of the sun is an open question." A conscious sun, suggests the scientist, "could modulate the entire solar system by choosing when and where to fire off solar flares and coronal mass ejections." Yet though such events have huge implications for our life on earth, the sun is one of the more-than-human aspects of nature that contemporary people habitually neglect.

The question of beauty is another conundrum. "From a panpsychist point of view, insects and other animals are aware and have minds that are capable of appreciating beauty. Our own minds share in a sense of beauty widespread in the animal kingdom, and many of the forms and colours that appeal to other animals appeal to us too." The idea of beauty makes us think of its source: is it in nature alone, or is there, as the Platonic tradition holds, "a transcendent mind beyond time and space...the ultimate source of all forms"? A view shared by traditional Christian, Muslim and Hindu is that "All the qualities we experience...are present in the mind of God...The whole of nature is a reflection of the creative mind that underlies all things."

Humans love music and it's good for our health. Christians sing in choirs and attend evensong, Hindus sing bhajans of devotion to gods and goddesses, and Sufis chant ecstatically. Sheldrake's wife, Jill Purce, taps into the power of sound in another way: she leads chanting and sound-healing workshops that draw on many cultural traditions including Mongolian and Tuvan. Music in its multifarious forms has been with us a long time: the oldest flutes were made 40,000 years ago, and undoubtedly singing preceded the invention of instruments.

Biologically, music promotes entrainment -- "People breathe together, makes sounds together, and move in synchrony. They come into a resonant, rhythmical relationship with the other members of the group." The author suggests a quick and easy way to demonstrate to yourself how different sounds vibrate in different parts of the body. Plug your ears with your fingertips, then chant single notes, one at a time, and observe how the vibrations move within your body.

Research has found choral singing to be very beneficial, since it "involves focused concentration, which reduces worrying." Singing in a choir also requires deep breathing, and provides social support, education and learning. Not to mention that being committed to choir practice is a good way to motivate oneself to get out and move. Music raises oxytocin levels, which "facilitates trusting behavior and reduces fear and anxiety." This is perhaps why it can be used to soothe agitated dementia patients. To combat feelings of disenchantment, Jill Purce advocates chanting.

Charles Darwin thought that song predated speech. Steven Brown and others have now proposed that both song and speech "arose from a common communicative system, 'musilanguage.' When they diverged, language became more important for exact communication, and music came to play a predominantly social role, to do with the bonding and unity of the group."

I love odd facts and obscure lore, so was delighted to learn the history of Anabaptists, with their return to the ancient practice of baptism by immersion -- the clue is in the name. Something else I'd been unaware of was that in most species, only the males sing. That includes not only birds, but amphibians like frogs and toads, some reptiles, and mammals including some mice and gibbons.
From this book I also learned that chimps travel some distance to pile stones under certain trees, which arguably constitutes ritual. Another odd fact is that oak trees, which were sacred to the Druids, are more often hit by lightning than other trees. Perhaps this was what caused Druids to revere them as the bridge between earth and sky. After all, lightning does quite literally connect the two realms.

One more surprise was that Muslims at Mecca circumambulate the Kabbah in a counterclockwise direction; this is different from the clockwise circumambulation that is carried out at most other places of pilgrimage.

As in his previous book The Science Delusion, Sheldrake criticizes mainstream science for failing to be open to possibilities. Instead, most mainstream scientists have embraced materialism, though it is a quasi-religion, filled with beliefs and assumptions. Materialists assume that consciousness "is nothing but the activity of brains" although this does not really explain the 'hard problem' of the nature of consciousness. Unlike current scientific materialism, religions are founded on the assumption that consciousness transcends the human level...all religions assume that consciousness is more extensive than brain activity. Plenty of food for thought here. Including the question of where that thought is taking place: is it in the brain or beyond it? By providing questions such as this to ponder, Sheldrake has created an absolutely fascinating book.