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Art & Books

More IFOA reviews: Denise Mina, Sara Blaedel, Andre Alexis

BLOOD, SALT, WATER by Denise Mina (HarperCollins), 295 pages, $22.99 paper. Rating: NNN

THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS by Sara Blaedel (Grand Central), 339 pages, $17.99 paper. Rating: NNN

In two solid additions to established series, Scotland’s Denise Mina and Denmark’s Sara Blaedel have crafted complex police procedurals with formidable women at the helm.

Mina’s Blood, Salt, Water takes place during the Scottish independence referendum, and Glasgow Detective Inspector Alex Morrow is fed up with the politics. She wants to get on with the job – looking into the disappearance of a wealthy local businesswoman – and get home to her twin boys. But the missing woman’s family isn’t cooperating, and the case bogs down.

Morrow has a good nose for sniffing out bullshit and some anger management issues, but she also has empathy for the bad men she encounters and the hard lives they’ve endured. Not allowed to forget where she comes from – her half-brother is a feared local gangster – she struggles to keep her obligations to family from interfering with her work.

There’s a wonderful Glasgow-ness to Mina’s writing. Using various points of view, she captures a city full of hopelessness and hope, a place of deep class divides and gang crime, of loyalty and pride in belonging.

Also about the ties that bind us, Blaedel’s The Forgotten Girls finds Detective Louise Rick back in her hometown heading up a new missing-persons department. In this case, the body of a badly scarred woman has turned up in the woods, but no one’s been reported missing.

The investigation leads to more crimes committed in the same forest, crimes with a link to a terrible secret in Rick’s own past.

For fans of Nordic noir, the elements are all here – a direct writing style, an enigmatic protagonist, the fairy-tale setting. The book’s title refers to mentally handicapped children separated from their parents and institutionalized in 1960s and 70s Denmark. It’s a story of shameful abuse and unbelievable sadness, and Blaedel does it justice.

Both books are worthy reads for crime fiction aficionados who like their heroes strong, smart and female. Mina and Blaedel don’t disappoint. Lesley McAllister

Sara Blaedel and Denise Mina participate in the International Crime Watch round table October 23 at the Studio Theatre.

Denise Mina is at the Pub Hub on October 24, noon.

Sara Blaedel participates in the Death In Translation round table October 24, Lakeside Terrace.

FIFTEEN DOGS by Andre Alexis (Coach House) 171 pages, $17.95 paper. Rating: NNN

Fifteen Dogs, shortlisted for the Giller and Writers’ Trust fiction prizes, is the literary equivalent of a party piece – charming, witty but not exactly deep.

Andre Alexis’s premise promises plenty: Apollo and Hermes plan to grant 15 dogs, ensconced at a veterinary clinic, the powers of human intelligence. Apollo bets that the dogs will die even more unhappy than they would have as mere canines. Hermes wins if even one faces death with new inspiration.

Soon, the dogs escape the vet, new hierarchies take shape, they fight among themselves, and a good number of them die quickly – and quite unhappily. Hierarchies then take on new forms. There are battles between those who embrace the new ways and those who hold on to the old, and the dogs start talking – either freaking out or fascinating the humans around them.

The canines discover boredom, humans’ strange copulation habits and the problem with being able to think rather than act on instinct.

With the attrition rate so high so soon, only three dogs become major characters. Alexis makes us sympathize with them all.

And he makes a major statement about the power of poetry.

But Fifteen Dogs never finds its emotional footing, choosing playfulness over a commitment to shedding new light on the human condition. Susan G. Cole

Alexis is part of the Writers’ Trust Finalists reading, October 28, Brigantine Room.

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