Apricots

I reviewed Sally Christie's fantastic Versailles trilogy 2 years ago. I was not aware that she wrote any other books so when this mystery appeared in my Amazon feed, I grabbed it. 

Apricots takes place in a town called Apricots in 1792 St. Domingue (present day Haiti). During the largest slave rebellion that the world has ever seen, 1,000 plantations were burned on the northern plains and 2,000 whites were killed. The rebellion was put down but slaves still controlled the northern plains. A young widow, Rose Fongravier, is struggling to manage her crumbling coffee plantation when she discovers a dead body at the bottom of her garden. The island residents wonder if there was an accident or a murder and whether it will begin another slave revolt. With 400,000 slaves and 30,000 whites, a rebellion could be started at any time. The story covers the span of merely one day within its 392 pages, with a cross section of the plantation's inhabitants offering their understanding of who is responsible for the dead body in the garden. 

I had a hard time keeping track of all the characters in the beginning of the story. After a few chapters, though, it was easy to keep up with them. The story is tightly packed with action and the reader gets to see the awful conditions that the slaves had to live with on the coffee and sugar plantations. Their stories were heartbreaking. Can you imagine being free for 60 years and then enslaved again on the whim of another person? Promises made to slaves by their owners in wills were simply discarded by their heirs; the law be damned.

The characters were fully developed and reflected the era in which they lived. I think the author's choice to have the events occur within one day made the pace of the story uber fast. I found it to be unputdownable.

The book is based on a true story and I feel it should be recommended reading. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Bookworm

The Bookworm is a fantastical thriller set in both WWII and the modern era. It provides an interesting theory on why Adolph Hitler decided not to invade England after the Blitz and instead send his army east toward Russia.

Lara Menelova Klimt "the bookworm" is a geohistorian.  She studies how geography determines a people's history, rather than its politics.  When not teaching classes at Moscow State University, Lara spends time in the Osobyi Arkhiv reviewing Nazi documents and listening to Dictaphone recordings of the dictated letters of Hitler, Himmler and others in the Third Reich.  One day after class she is approached by a stranger who hands her a shopping bag full of six Dictaphone cylinders for her to listen to and tells her that they have the testimony of one man who started the Great Patriotic War. Then the stranger abruptly leaves.

The man giving his testimony is none other than the actor Noel Coward.  In real life he worked as a British spy during WWII.  The transcripts also show a young John Kennedy coming up with an idea to trick Hitler into invading Russia instead of England. This trick, of course, protects the U. S. because if England fell then the U. S. would be next to be attacked by Hitler. The trick? Have a fortuneteller say that Hitler would be successful in invading Russia. The fortuneteller?  Nostradamus. Hitler was known to be a mystic and the idea was that if a page in a book could be created with a Nostradamus rhyme to convince Hitler of his success that he would decide not to invade England. It is a historical fact that after the Blitz Hitler did not invade England. No one knows why he decided not to invade. He made several similar decisions that his generals opposed and they resulted in his defeat.

The book goes back and forth between WWII and the current year.  There is a G20 summit in Moscow going on and a new American president who is loud mouthed and a womanizer with a wife from Slovenia is present. Lara has been snagged to be the moderator at a townhall meeting with the American president and the Russian people.  After discovering a plot that he has to drill oil in Alaska,  which will have a disastrous effect on Russia's economy, she comes up with a plan to expose it.

Kudos to the author for his creativity in devising this plot.  It may seem fantastical but it sure was entertaining.  I was totally absorbed in this book from the first page.  It has been a long time since that has happened to me and it felt sooooo good.  Adding in a Trump-like president and Nostradamus in one book was a genius idea.  I was laughing all the way through it.  As far as suspension of belief is concerned, the only thing that bothered me was having John Kennedy come up with the trick.  I don't know why he had to be in the book.  It did not seem very natural because he was in college at the time and had his girlfriend, Marlene Dietrich, with him.

The Bookworm is Mitch Silver's second book and I will have to check out his In Secret Service soon.  What I would love to see from him is another book featuring another made-up Nostradamus rhyme for another politician.  I just thought this was hilarious.