7 minute read
MR. WILDER AND ME by Jonathan Coe
hinting at the location of “Sir Scott’s Treasure” on the whiteboard at a local bar, everyone around has wondered who hid the treasure and where it can be found, and several intrepid hunters have died in the course of their search. Cassie’s caller, who tells her that he’s the one who’s hidden the treasure and written the poem, offers her $2,000 to test his security by attempting to find him; if, against all odds, she does track him down, he’ll pay her a bonus of $25,000. Box’s early revelation of who’s behind Spengler’s disappearance turns that mystery into a duel of wits between Cassie and the bad guys. But Kyle Westergaard, a teenager she once rescued from a dangerous kidnapper, keeps sparking her interest in Sir Scott’s Treasure, whose location and mastermind provide a nifty pair of final surprises.
All this and Montana, too. Talk about treasure.
MR. WILDER AND ME
Coe, Jonathan Europa Editions (256 pp.) $27.00 | Sept. 27, 2022 978-1-60945-792-1
A 50-something film composer meditates on the summer of 1977, when she worked with director Billy Wilder on one of his last films. As her own daughters prepare to leave home, Calista Frangopoulou, born in Athens, now living in Britain, thinks of the backpacking trip she took at 21 to the United States. A friend she made on her way west invited her along to a dinner in Hollywood arranged by her father. As it turned out, their companions were Billy Wilder, who owned the restaurant; his wife, Audrey; his writing partner, Iz Diamond; and Iz’s wife, Barbara. Though the girls were wildly underdressed and totally out of their depth, and though the friend absconded halfway through
the complicities
the meal and the Wilders had to have the drunken Calista sleep on their couch, she made such an impression that she was brought on to be their interpreter when they went to film Fedora in Greece the following year, then continued on during shooting in Germany and France. There is so much to enjoy about this book, which is rooted in extensive research about Wilder’s life and the making of Fedora, including the recollections of someone who actually lived a version of this experience—and yet it reads like a fairy tale. Calista forms deep relationships with both Billy and Iz and changes from a naïve know-nothing to someone with a deep understanding of the impact of World War II on a generation of artists. “I realized that for a man like him, a man who was essentially melancholy...humour was not just a beautiful thing but a necessary thing, that the telling of a good joke could bring a moment, transient but lovely, when life made a rare kind of sense, and would no longer seem random and chaotic and unknowable.” She also finds along the way the inspiration for her own future career as a composer of film scores. Beautifully written and full of wisdom, this unusual and fascinating book contains many treats, including a miniscreenplay done in Wilder’s style and an unforgettable scene in which Calista and Billy sample Brie de Meaux on a French farm where it is made.
If you love novels set in the world of moviemaking, this is as good as the best of them.
THE OTHER GUEST
Cooper, Helen Putnam (384 pp.) $17.00 paper | July 26, 2022 978-0-593-42259-5
Three storylines involve the unexpected, suspicious death of a 21-year-old woman in Italy. Amy is—was—the 21-year-old daughter of a polished couple who run a luxurious Italian lakeside resort. Her sister, Olivia, is 17 and working hard to become the same kind of gracious, beautiful, focused hostess as their mother, Charlotte. Their father, Gordon, dreamed of creating a high-end resort, and now that he’s managed it, his entire focus is on retaining it. Leah, Charlotte’s sister, was very close with Amy and never truly grieved the loss of her niece. She’s forced to take compassionate leave at work one calamitous day when everything boils over and her grief at Amy’s death can no longer be contained. The first thread follows the last eight hours of Amy’s life as she plots her secret escape from the resort to Scotland, where she will finally attend college. The second follows Joanna, the head of counseling services at an English university, who’s putting her life back together after her long-term partner breaks up with her. The third follows Leah’s visit to the resort nine months after Amy’s death as she tries to process her feelings and find some answers despite being stymied at every turn. Author Cooper has created a twisty tale of darkness and light, calmness and storm, rigid facades and underlying messiness as the three storylines unfold independently before resolving together as one in an unexpected fashion.
A thriller that relies on misdirection while dealing with issues of family, love, mental health, assault, and suicide.
THE COMPLICITIES
D’Erasmo, Stacey Algonquin (304 pp.) $27.00 | Sept. 20, 2022 978-1-64375-196-2
A Massachusetts woman tries to rebuild her life after her husband goes to prison for a white-collar crime. Suzanne and Alan had a good life in Boston. They had a big house, with a housekeeper and a gardener, a darling if somewhat aimless son, the freedom to travel. All of this was courtesy of Alan’s successful brokerage business and Suzanne’s
ability to keep the household running smoothly. But then everything blew up: Alan had been defrauding people and is sent to prison for his crimes, and Suzanne leaves, insisting to anyone who will listen, including the reader, that she didn’t understand enough about money to know what Alan was doing, not really. The novel begins with Suzanne arriving in the seaside town of Chesham, trying to start her life over as a massage therapist (or “bodywork” practitioner), to reconnect with her college-age son, who has sided with Alan, and to come to terms with her own complicity in the collapse of her life. D’Erasmo sets herself up for a challenge, perhaps, in trying to make wealthy white-collar criminals sympathetic, but in many ways this circumstance is beside the point. Though Suzanne gets the most airtime, her central narrative is spliced together with the perspectives of two other women: Lydia, Alan’s new wife, whom he met after being released from prison and who has demons of her own; and Sylvia, Alan’s estranged mother. It’s only in piecing together all three of these narratives that we get a fuller picture of Alan, and that’s the point, through D’Erasmo’s clever telling—people can never be seen whole, and parts you think you see never tell the full tale. “A real genealogy chart would trace damage back and back,” Suzanne muses. “It would look like a kaleidoscope.”
Slow burning but thoughtful and deftly structured.
FORSAKEN COUNTRY
Eskens, Allen Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (304 pp.) $28.00 | Sept. 20, 2022 978-0-316-70354-3
A case the cops in charge have already declared closed drags former Minneapolis Homicide detective Max Rupert out of his self-imposed exile and into a series of ever more dangerous adventures.
The way Itasca County Sheriff Tate Bolger tells it, there is no case. Sandy Voight withdrew most of her savings from her bank account, packed up her 6-year-old son, Pip, and all their belongings, and took off for parts unknown, leaving David Haas, her live-in lover, to come home from work to find her gone. She might have been afraid of Reed Harris, her violently abusive ex-husband, but Reed clearly didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance because he has a perfect alibi. Sandy’s father, Lyle Voight, doesn’t believe a word of this. He’s convinced that Sandy never would have vanished without a word to him, and he doesn’t think much of Bolger, who may have defeated him in the last election for sheriff but has no clue how to work the job. So Lyle looks up Max, who’s been living in an isolated cabin trying to come to terms with his complicated feelings about killing the man who murdered his wife in The Deep Dark Descending (2017). Max isn’t eager to rejoin the human race, let alone get involved in another case, but he can’t resist the pleas of Lyle and his wife, Meredith, and soon enough he and Lyle are on the trail of two men who’ve taken custody of Pip. Eskens provides an irresistible hook, a clever spin on a classic suspense plot, and a series of expertly escalating confrontations between enemies and ultimately between allies forced to acknowledge that their goals aren’t quite as consensual as they thought.
Guaranteed to keep your heart pounding till the end.
DAISY DARKER
Feeney, Alice Flatiron Books (352 pp.) $28.99 | Aug. 30, 2022 978-1-250-84393-7
A birthday party on a remote island turns into a series of bizarre murders. “I was born with a broken heart” is how the title character and narrator of this murder mystery opens her story. Daisy is happy, however, to be celebrating the 80th birthday of her beloved nana, Beatrice Darker. Nana is a children’s author who several decades ago made a fortune on
