The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire is less spectacular than than the previous entry in the trilogy, yet a rewarding and captivating read. This book is a sequel of sorts to the previous book's allusions to sex trafficking victims, while also unveiling the background of Lisbeth Salander. Structurally, perhaps the novel could have cut the adventures of Salander in Grenada, and maybe trimmed some of the characters and sub-plots at later points. Nonetheless, the novel 'works' while criticizing the Scandinavian welfare state through its shortcomings on trafficking. In the interest of brevity, the novel also exposes additional abuses of the welfare state when it comes to minors, gender-based violence, and treating marginalized individuals as people. Naturally, Larsson achieves this without a preachy protest novel, and along the way hints at the various flaws of the post-Cold War integration of Eastern Europe, Reagan's invasion of Grenada and the increase in human misery in the Caribbean, as well as the relationship between independent media and the police/state. For example, the link between the breakdown of the Soviet Union and Russian mob-violence and sex trafficking is directly tied to the nefarious Swedish government's use of Soviet defectors and Cold War geopolitics. The consequences of these actions reverberate into the neoliberal post-Soviet order. As you can probably guess, Blomkvist, per usual, proves to be sharper than police investigators as he solves the case while believing in Lisbeth's innocence throughout. And, as in the previous novel, gender-based violence and sexism in various forms is a common theme.

Our Man in Havana

Graham Greene's hilarious Our Man in Havana is both more humorous and entertaining read than The Comedians, but doesn't exploit the Cuban setting as effectively Port-au-Prince in the other famous novel. Maybe it reflects my own greater familiarity with Port-au-Prince than Havana, a city I have never visited, but Havana does not come to life as easily here as Port-au-Prince and Duvalierville in Comedians. Sure, the famous nightclubs, the Paseo, and Havana's whorehouses and gambling dens (and the many pimps, bootblacks, and crooked cops) are key to the story, with the Batista regime tumbling, yet something was amiss here. That said, Greene's novel manages to fuse comedy with prescient visions of the importance of Cuba in the Cold War and the imminent Cuban Revolution, and all through a tale of sheer absurdity poking fun at the British Secret Service! Anyone who romanticizes pre-Castro Cuba should read this entertaining novel just for an idea of the volatile period of Batista or the institutionalization of Havana's existence as entertainment for tourists. Oh, and Captain Segura ain't got nothing on the macoutes of Duvalierist Haiti. 

Zoo City

Lauren Beukes has written an engaging thriller that defies categorization. It's urban fantasy with Johannesburg's Hillbrow taking center stage, a strong female protagonist, an interesting concept of the "animalled" featuring magic, and the dark, gritty streets of contemporary urban South Africa. Nothing is quite as it seems, those who commit crimes get "animalled," a concept explained in some of the news reports, online forums, and emails that comprise some of the chapters. Zinzi December, the novel's protagonist, has a sloth for her animal, and while not literally glued together, the magical bond that connects human to their animal is so strong they cannot part way, that is, not without using magical means.

While the novel is quite accurate to the realities of contemporary Johannesburg's Hillbrow (the daily violence, lack of police protection, gang wars, squatters, and refugees from other African countries), and it uses elements of romance, crime thriller, science fiction, and fantasy, it also endeavors to incorporate muti into the narrative. This is dangerous because it can, perhaps, be used to promote negative, outdated stereotypes of Africa as full of superstitious cannibals who believe in witchcraft. The complexities of witchcraft and muti murders in South Africa is too difficult to explain in this novel, and one sees how it ties with the "animalled" concept and Undertow, but can leave the reader with negative stereotypes of Africa. Nevertheless, in a world where animals become magically "tied" to those who commit crimes and the world responds in kind with a combination of discrimination, superstition, and magic (mashavi, the word used in southern Africa), perhaps the retention of muti beliefs in the use of human and animal body parts remains relevant (hey, even non-black characters also use it).

The novel concludes in an open-ended way, with some redemption possible for Zinzi. Ultimately, the novel seems to be about just that, Zinzi restoring her moral balance in a dysfunctional world known. As one might expect, the novel functions as allegory for apartheid in some respects, too, given that those who are "animalled" are segregated in "Zoo City," a fictionalized neighborhood in Hillbrow. Housing segregation, employment discrimination, and the reality of life for poor South Africans haunt the narrative, allowing Beukes to make light social commentary on the social discord in Johannesburg. I will have to follow Beukes's work for some time to read such an interesting science fiction story set in South Africa.

Nick Stone's Mr. Clarinet

Crime fiction writer Nick Stone, son of a Haitian mother and Scottish historian, Norman Stone, has written quite the thriller. Mr. Clarinet at its best moments is as suspenseful and engaging as Walter Mosley's writings, meaning that it's impossible to put down. Nonetheless, I am quite disappointed that a writer of Haitian descent, who has spent years in his mother's home, would write a novel full of so many stereotypes, concocted tales of superstition, rumors and savagery. Nick Stone obviously knows Haiti well enough to write about a missing child case without delving so deep into the occult and completely made up claims regarding Haitian history, but hey, that's what sells. Write a book about Haiti, throw in zombies, black magic, child sacrifice, 'voodoo,' and exceptional violence.

At the novel's conclusion, the occult is revealed to not have the role one thinks, and the novel plays on the 'superstition.' The protagonist grows on the reader, too, although only because the mystery at the heart of the novel compels the reader to finish. I originally intended to read the next Max Mingus thriller, which is about the past investigation into Boukman in Miami, but I think I have read enough tales about child sacrifice by Haitians.