The Thrill of It All

Thrillers & More for Dad and Graduates

reviews by Sharon L. Shervington

It’s rare to find such a stellar sampler of thrillers released within such a short period of time. But fortunately for fathers and graduates, that is the case this month.

Gripping nonfiction is a good choice for Father’s Day gifts. Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball’s Golden Age is a dual narrative that explores the similarities between these baseball giants, and also the places where their lives intersected.

Both of them had fathers who saw baseball as a way out for their sons from lives of back-breaking manual labor. So each father began teaching them the game and pushing them hard from an early age. They also were the same age, had similar physiques, and possessed quite remarkable baseball skill sets.

Portraying the world of baseball cards and sports nostalgia, the teams, the pennant races, and the friendship between the two men, paradoxically gives a deeper look at each one. The author takes a unique approach to the stories of two great sports legends, each of whom has had a great deal written about them.

Two award-winning Scandinavian authors—Jo Nesbo, with the latest in the Harry Hole series, and Jussi Adler-Olsen, Denmark’s number one crime writer—serve up new adventures of two well-loved signature characters. Mr. Nesbo’s franchise focuses on Harry Hole, an alcoholic and extremely talented detective, who has lost the love of his life, Rakel, to the deadly realities of police work. He uses all his skill to solve what turns out to be two intertwined crime sprees.

The story concerns the Salvation Army culture in Oslo, what can happen to those who are exposed to shaming religious beliefs from an early age, and a most common motive for murderers everywhere—greed. In the process of solving these crimes, Harry seems to find some well-deserved redemption of his own.

From Mr. Adler-Olsen we have the second and third of the “Department Q” novels. In these latest installments we further get to know three fascinating characters, each abundantly resourceful, in solving the very coldest cases. They are Detective Carl Morck, an avatar of ennui; his smart and self-effacing Middle Eastern assistant, Assad; and the somewhat schizoid secretary Rose.

Their sole clue in book three is a message in a bottle, sealed with beach tar and written in blood. Facing a worthy adversary who has been kidnapping and killing for more than a decade, all three characters have a chance to shine.

In The Absent One, now in paperback, a group of wealthy students gets up to deadly mischief. Years later when the only female member of the clique emerges from hiding, threatening their brutal and greedy games, Carl and his crew attempt to find the woman before she is destroyed by her old friends who are well aware that she can expose them. This is a look at the wealthy heights and drug-fueled dregs of a cross-section of characters that leaves one with the message that killer instinct and criminality are no respecters of rank, wealth, or privilege.

Walter Mosley stays fresh in Little Green, his twelfth mystery featuring Easy Rawlins, a character played by Denzel Washington in the iconic film Devil in a Blue Dress.

Along with the Chandleresque atmosphere, Mr. Mosley handles pervasive realities of race as smoothly as ever. This time, Easy, who has been brought back from the brink of death with a little help from his friends, takes on the psychedelic ’60s on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, and its dark underbelly of bad trips and darker deeds. But Easy will do anything for his deadly sidekick Mouse, who has saved his life more than once. He is searching for a young man, Evander Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip.

From the moment Easy gets up from his sick bed, the action never lets up, nor does Mr. Mosley let up on his ongoing exploration of good and evil at a time of great societal change. It is a memorable trip indeed.

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is a wonderful story that adds to the extensive lore surrounding the Berlin Olympics when Adolf Hitler was coming to power. It is the story of nine working-class boys who made up the University of Washington’s 1936 crew team. It is also the story of a passionate coach who puts together a team cohesive enough to defeat the elite East Coast teams that had long dominated the sport.

The deep emotional commitment between the rowers, their coach, and a British boat designer who mentored them, infuses the writing and shows how the team made their way to face off against the German and Italian crews at the “Nazi Olympics,” where they were filmed by Leni Riefenstahl’s cameras. It also is a fascinating portrait of Seattle during the Depression and of Berlin at a sinister pivot point in history.

The DaVinci Code was an international phenomenon when it was released, and much of it involved profound puzzles linked to Leonardo DaVinci’s work. Now, Dan Brown has crafted another sublime mix of epic art, symbology, science, and a continental cat-and-mouse tale with Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy, the noted piece of world literature, as its inspiration.

Set primarily in Florence and also in Istanbul, our hero Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of art history, never quite knows whom to trust after he awakens at the start of the novel in a Florence hospital with a gunshot wound to the scalp and retrograde amnesia, having no memory of the past two days or how, in fact, he arrived in the city.

He finds an ally in a brilliant and enigmatic doctor who whisks him away from the hospital when assassins come to kill him, apparently at the behest of a shadowy and exclusive fixer organization that offers clients the kind of services that are usually part of what black ops units do.

Also figuring prominently in the story are the World Health Organization and a genius billionaire who is convinced that humanity cannot survive because of overpopulation, and decides to take matters into his own hands.

It is a wonderfully creative thriller that is extraordinary because of its artistic visions of Hell over the centuries and the trail of clues that can actually be followed by modern visitors to Florence and Istanbul. Mr. Brown again delivers an artistic thriller woven of history, a sinister atmosphere, taut chase sequences, and memorable characters.