Teen Tuesday

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Hyperion hardcover, 15 May 2012).

I cannot begin to describe how much I loved this book.

It's the story of a young Englishwoman, whose name we don't know for some time.  Flying into German-occupied France in 1943 on a secret mission, her plane crashed.  She was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a former castle, and she believes the female pilot of the plane was killed.

The story is written in diary form, and the young woman tells us that she is a coward and a turncoat, and is giving the Germans information about the British aeroplanes and the location of airfields.  She is absolutely, brutally, blunt in her assessment of her own behavior, despite also telling us that she was tortured before she decided to inform on her country. 

She begins from the very beginning with the story of how she became involved with her country's war effort, and as she progresses, we  learn not only her name, but a great deal more about her life.

It's difficult to say much more about the story without giving away too much, so please believe me when I tell you that it's an absolutely mesmerizing tale.  Despite wanting to continue reading as fast as you can to find out what happens, you may find yourself putting down the book just so you can absorb what the young woman and her compatriots experience, the insanity that they begin to perceive as normal. 

This book is a departure for author Wein, who previously has written fantasy novels aimed at young adults, and judging by the number of 2012"best" lists it was on (it would certainly have been on mine had I finished it in time), she's been remarkably successful.




FTC full disclosure: I won this book in an online contest.

Countdown to Left Coast Crime -- 8 days

A Game of Lies by Rebecca Cantrell.*

Hannah Vogel has been living in Switzerland with her adopted son Anton and her lover Boris, occasionally working as a reporter for a Swiss newspaper under the name of Adelheid Zinsli. She has also been acting as a courier, transporting documents out of Germany for quisling SS Officer Lars Lang.

This time, though, Adelheid has been asked to remain in Berlin for the entire two weeks of the Olympics, which could prove to be difficult as many of the local press would certainly recognize Hannah.

At the opening ceremonies, Hannah slips away to meet her mentor, Peter Weill, but moments after they greet each other, he dies. She suspects he's been poisoned, but how to prove it?

Rebecca Cantrell won the Bruce Alexander Memorial and the Sue Feder Memorial(Macavity) historical mystery awards in 2010 for the first book in the series, A Trace of Smoke. Fluent in German, she went to high school and university in Germany, and it is obvious that she has done deep and careful research about life in Nazi Germany.

Cantrell writes from Hannah's point of view in the first person, describing Hannah's experiences so vividly that the reader can almost identify with her completely. The "almost" is a result of the many instances when the reader wants to caution her against something she's decided upon, but of course this is what makes the narrative into a story.

The book concludes with a glossary and historical notes.

Some time ago Rebecca Cantrell quit her job, sold her house, and moved to Hawaii to write a novel because, at seven, she decided that she would be a writer.  She writes the Hannah Vogel mystery series set in Berlin in the 1930s, including A Trace of Smoke,  A Night of Long Knives,  A Game of Lies, and the upcoming A City of Broken Glass.
A Game of Lies is nominated for the 2012 Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award.





*FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the author, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.

Just finished reading...

A Game of Lies by Rebecca Cantrell.*

Hannah Vogel has been living in Switzerland with her adopted son Anton and her lover Boris, occasionally working as a reporter for a Swiss newspaper under the name of Adelheid Zinsli. She has also been acting as a courier, transporting documents out of Germany for quisling SS Officer Lars Lang.

This time, though, Adelheid has been asked to remain in Berlin for the entire two weeks of the Olympics, which could prove to be difficult as many of the local press would certainly recognize Hannah.

At the opening ceremonies, Hannah slips away to meet her mentor, Peter Weill, but moments after they greet each other, he dies. She suspects he's been poisoned, but how to prove it?

Rebecca Cantrell won the Bruce Alexander Memorial and the Sue Feder Memorial(Macavity) historical mystery awards in 2010 for the first book in the series, A Trace of Smoke. Fluent in German, she went to high school and university in Germany, and it is obvious that she has done deep and careful research about life in Nazi Germany.

Cantrell writes from Hannah's point of view in the first person, describing Hannah's experiences so vividly that the reader can almost identify with her completely. The "almost" is a result of the many instances when the reader wants to caution her against something she's decided upon, but of course this is what makes the narrative into a story.

The book concludes with a glossary and historical notes.



*FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the author, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.

Just finished reading...

A Night of Long Knives by Rebecca Cantrell.

I've been waiting anxiously for this sequel to A Trace of Smoke, and so was thrilled when I received an ARC from the author.

Hannah's story continues three years after Smoke. As a travel writer for a Swiss magazine, she is describing the Graf Zeppelin's journey from Brazil to Switzerland. Nearly at their destination, Hannah sees a lake below, and knows that they have veered off course. Immediately suspicious, she and Anton escape through a rear window. Unfortunately, their flight was expected, and they are chloroformed and taken to Nazi officer Ernst Rohm.

Rohm believes that Anton is his son, and is determined to raise him. He also has a plan for Hannah, which she learns when she wakes up in his hotel room. When there is a knock on the door, he makes her hide in the bathroom, so she is able to watch through a crack in the door while he has arrested by Adolf Hitler.

After they leave, she sneaks out, looking for Anton, but is unable to find him. She follows Hitler's convoy and though she speaks with Rohm briefly before he is killed, is unable to learn the whereabouts of the boy she thinks of as her son.

A hint from Rohm leads her to his mother's home in Munich, then to Berlin.

Hannah is an extraordinary woman, injured and making her way around Germany while hiding from the authorities; torn between her need to find Anton and her need to chronicle the horrific conditions in the country that is no longer her home.

Rebecca Cantrell is an amazing writer. To read this book is to be Hannah (an experience that is heightened because it's written from her point of view); to see, feel and almost smell what she does.

Set aside a large block of time to read A Night of Long Knives, as you will not want to put it down once begun.

Just finished reading...

A trace of smoke by Rebecca Cantrell.

Hannah Vogel is a single 32-year-old woman in a Germany where Nazi-ism is becoming rampant. A crime reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt, she considers herself fairly tough and unshakeable. But when, on a regular visit to the police station she sees a photo of her younger brother Ernst in the photos of the unnamed dead, the unidentified bodies discovered over the past week, she is (understandably) upset.

Hannah's friend Fritz Waldheim is the policeman on duty, though, so she tries not to show it. She doesn't want anyone to find out that she and Ernst loaned their identity papers to a Jewish friend so she and her son could leave the country. Once Sarah and Tobias arrive in America, the papers will be returned, but until then, Hannah and Ernst must be virtually invisible.

Hannah succeeds in distracting Fritz before he sees the photograph of Ernst, but she determines that she will discover what happened to her brother and try to avenge his death. She still has to do her job as a crime reporter, but because of it, she knows some investigative tricks.

Ernst was a performer in a gay bar, and had some very important benefactors. Hannah knows little about his life besides where he lived and worked, and that's where she begins.

Meanwhile, a 5-year-old boy appears on her doorstep, claiming to be Ernst's son, and Hannah has another puzzle to solve.

I'm not usually a fan of historical fiction, but I was totally taken with this story. This is one of the books which had me torn between gobbling it up and slowly savoring. I guess I managed a happy medium, but it was a gripping read.

Another Hannah Vogel story, A Night of Long Knives, is due out in June, but that seems a very long time to wait.