Le meurtre dans la ville lumiere.

As of late, I've been drawn to mystery titles published by the Soho Press, a little company that specializes in works set in diverse locales and unusual investigators (just browsing through the library shelves, I've seen crime stories set in Sweden, Afghanistan and the Arctic). Their list includes some well known authors (they publish Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series), but some authors are often new to most mystery readers.

One such author is San Francisco-based Cara Black, who sets her main investigator back a decade and on another continent. Aimee Leduc, resident of Ile St. Louis in the center of Paris, makes her living investigating mostly computer crime in the heady early days of the Internet. Yet in Murder in Belleville, Aimee finds herself literally thrown into the search for a murderer after witnessing a car bombing. Roaming far from the well-trod center of the city, Leduc searches the gritty streets of Belleville, a suburb of Paris tense with clashes between Algerian fundamentalists and a government intent on cracking down on illegal immigrants. There's a lot that Leduc has to wade through to get to the truth behind the woman killed in the bombing--and much of it leads to friends of hers and the highest levels of the govenment. Her job is made all the more complicated by shadowy figures intent on keeping her from that truth.

Black creates a multilayered, complex knot of a mystery, fast-paced to the point that it's almost impossible to recall all that's going on. I will admit to be entirely confused by many of the events, some of which tended to assume a strong grounding in the history of Algerian/Franco relations--an area that I'm woefully deficient. But part of the mystery played upon Leduc's relationships with Rene, her brilliant (if mostly off stage) partner, and an Inspector Morbier, whom Leduc seemed to rely on in the past. Murder in Belleville is the second in Black's series (Murder in the Marais is the first), so perhaps anyone interested in Black's P.I. would do best to start with that title. For my tastes, I found Black's frantic pace and sprawling cast of characters a little too confusing. But Black's efforts to provide a different twist to a city that seems so familiar is worth a look for anyone searching for murder in unfamiliar territory.

Travels with chilly.

With so many travel books out on the market, it sometimes hard to capture a reader's interest with yet another story of ramblings about one country or another. So what better way to draw attention to your foray into the genre than by undertaking what any sober person would consider an insane endeavor--an attempt to hitchhike around the whole of Ireland with a refridgerator?

Tony Hawks, to be fair, was not sober at the time he undertook a bet to do just that. Round Ireland With a Fridge is just that--Hawks' month-long journey around the island with a dorm-sized fridge, relying on only the generousity of picking him up off the side of the road in spite of his unusual baggage. Or so the original plan went. Hawks garnered some radio backing, with periodic on-air appeals to give him a lift when rides were slow in coming. I don't know if I would consider that real fulfillment of his bet--nor the use of anything other than a full-size Kelvinator as his traveling companion--but still, it's enough to give Hawks an unusual look at Ireland than if he had been a typical tourist. There's a lot of scenes that happen in pubs and the like (Hawks makes no secret of his desire to enjoy Irish hospitality--preferably with available Irish ladies), but Hawks and fridge also take some forays into some unexpected sidetrips.

Hawks' day job is that of a comedian for a British radio show, and his story is told in a humorous irreverent tone. Following his hilarious description of an especially memorable night in a rural hostel, it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to look at anyone planning a backpacking vacation without feeling pity for them. A twist on travelogues of the past, Hawks' Round Ireland has much of the offbeat feel of Bill Bryson, with the tone of a Dave Barry.

A most compelling 'hero.'

I picked up The Talented Mr. Ripley because it was the selection for the sole book club that met at a convenient time for me. So I wasn't really eager to delve into Patricia Highsmith's dark, literary style, which made for slow going in the first portion of the novel. But such detailed characterization leads directly into the mind of Tom Ripley, or as close to an understanding of the motives that drive him to commit his crimes.

The novel opens with Tom posing as an IRS representative, running small con jobs while brooding over his own feelings of deprevation and persecution. When he's enlisted to retrieve a wayward son from Italy, Tom sees his chance to have that life to which he feels entitled. Through manipulation and the use of his incredible talents , Tom sets about to get that life. To say more would be to give away much of the plot, but the story arc is not necessarily the best part of the book. Rather, it's Highsmith's ability to make Tom the sort of person that blurs the distinction between the repulsive and the compelling. Tom is always on the edge of being discovered and all his plans exposed, but much of the suspense lies in whether we want to see Tom come to justice--a question that I doubt would be easily answered. It's a pity that Hitchcock never made The Talented Mr. Ripley into a film (as he did with another of Highsmith's novels, Strangers on a Train), as the atmospheric settings of 1950s Italy would have provided a great backdrop for the suspense of the plot. But Highsmith's carefully crafted work requires no visual interpretation to bring to life her chilling story, and a central character who will likely linger in the minds of anyone who encounters him.

The harshest peace.

Being a child of the '80s, my personal perceptions of the Cold War consists of mostly stock images and quotes: duck and cover drills in schools, Spam-stocked bomb shelters, ICBMs paraded through Red Square, JFK's 'Berliner' moment, and always, always the image of a mushroom cloud looming on the horizon.

Of course, the intricacies of the Cold War go well beyond a few points in time. John Lewis Gaddis, professor of history at Yale, has completed several hefty tomes on the subject. Fortunately for those of us who aren't well-versed in diplomatic history, Gaddis has provided an approachable yet thorough introduction to the period in The Cold War: A New History, published in 2005. Writing over a decade after the fall of the USSR, there's never any question in Gaddis' text whose decisions would prove decisive. Gaddis' theories aren't going to break a great deal of new ground: still, even those who are well-versed in the events of the day will appreciate Gaddis' ability to explain clearly the motives of both sides in spite of the tangled geopolitics of the time.

Since The Cold War serves as an introductory text, Gaddis did sacrifice details of events and personalities for the sake of theories and grand strategies. Those looking for a detailed description of the Cuban Missile Crisis or Reagan's words to Gorbachev at Reykjavik won't find either here. But in a war that was just as much about battles that didn't happen, Gaddis' work is indespensible in understanding why events played out as they did.