Janet Hannah

Author of three books in the Alex Kertesz mystery Series

[janethannah-blog]

Rave Review

Karin Slaughter's "Criminal" is billed on the cover as a no.1 bestseller, and I'm not surprised.  She has managed to incorporate an evocation of the status of women in the American South of the 1970's into a well written murder mystery.  Because of the superior quality of the background, plot, and character development, I enjoyed it in spite of the gruesome nature of the crimes she describes. 

Women had only recently been accepted into the police force of Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and then only because of federal government rulings.  It is eminently believable that those token female recruits came to be there almost accidentally, and had to overcome not only the blatant sexism of their male colleagues but also the lifelong training that made them instinctively cater to the men around them.

The Horatio Alger story of two female officers bucking the system and succeeding in solving a horrific crime was, to me, by far the best part of the book.

[janethannah-blog]

The Saint Zita Society

I have just read Ruth Rendell's "The Saint Zita Society".  It didn't seem to be very interesting at the beginning, but there was a fairly neat plot tucked in there that eventually got into gear.

She creates a large cast of well-drawn characters, and what she seems to enjoy most is filling in their personalities and describing the relationships among them.  She does this very well; the drawback, for me, is that almost all of them are uninteresting, unpleasant, or both.  Since she intends to involve them in a murder at some point there clearly have to be some bad actors among them, but a few more likable people would have been welcome.

She  maintains the framework of a murder mystery almost as a matter of form, but what she really does is choose a seemingly random group of people and put them under a microscope.  It's like reading a reality show.

[janethannah-blog]

                                          Death of a Gypsy

                           An Alex Kertesz Mystery by Janet Hannah

                                             coming soon

[janethannah-blog]

Oops!

I have a hard time choosing a book to download to my Kindle, so yesterday I decided to try something new - I looked at the books that were listed as "also viewed" by people who had looked at my own books, thinking that if they had taken some interest in my books they might share my taste. 

Not so.  I read Steel Joe by S.A. Ferkey based on a couple of wildly enthusiastic reviews, and while it was somewhat entertaining, I see that the exaggerated enthusiasm should have made me suspect that these readers represent a tiny and unique subgroup.  

It's a Rip Van Winkle story, but Ferkey unwisely, in my opinion, attempts to explain the long hibernation of the main character in such a half-baked fashion that it's impossible to forget about it and just get on with the story, especially since he keeps repeating it.  If you're curious, after being shot the man falls into a hole near a frozen river and remains alive and stays frozen through the next hundred springs and summers.  Worse, he is resurrected when a pole carrying electrical wires is toppled after being hit by a car and the current in the loose wires reactivates him when it touches the ground far above where our hero is buried.  If Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mary Shelley have Kindles, they must be turning over in their graves.

Next time I'll try a book with more moderate but hopefully more rational reviews.

[janethannah-blog]

Literary Style and The Personality of the Writer

I often form a distinct impression of a  writer's personality, even when they aren't writing in the first person and are supposedly not describing themselves.  Some seem to be kind people who hate it when anything bad happens to somebody while others describe cruelty and depravity with suspicious relish. 

I don't know whether a writer should necessarily be trying to hide himself, but some signs of negative personality traits definitely put me off.  I gave le Carre another chance after once before promising myself to avoid him, but my latest attempt (about 20% of A Most Wanted Man) has reinforced my earlier opinion - he's insufferable.  It's like reading The Guardian, but with better plots.

[janethannah-blog]

Wrath of Angels

Thriller writer John Connolly has come up with a twist that gives him a unique plotting advantage.  He has imagined a villain who can be reborn after death, thus allowing the good guy to kill the same bad guy over and over.  This is a clever way to avoid what must be a problem for most writers of thriller series - how to kill off your villain and still be able to use him in the next book.

In this book Connolly returns to the subject of the fallen angels, angels banished from heaven millennia ago and now living among us.  As he imagines them, they are truly evil.  They are fought by a few people who understand who they are, including detective Charlie Parker, Rabbi Jacob Epstein, and an old lawyer with a vigilante son. 

A fast-moving plot, well written north woods background, and plenty of supernatural effects.

[janethannah-blog]

The Perfect Spy Thriller

The Spies of Warsaw is the perfect spy thriller, and Alan Furst is the perfect writer of spy thrillers.  One of the reasons his books are so satisfying is that he has had the intelligence to choose Europe on the verge of World War II as the setting for his stories.  This means that there is no shortage of truly important events, fascinating characters, and dangerous situations. 

The hero of the present story is a sympathetic French officer serving as military attache in Warsaw.  He is one of the group who have the sense to realize that the Maginot Line will not protect France against an assault from Germany, and manages to provide evidence to prove it.

Furst has a remarkable ability to recreate the places and circumstances of the period and as a quote from the Guardian claims on the cover, writes beautifully.

I've already bought my next Alan Furst thriller.

[janethannah-blog]

Happy New Year!

My usual reading is of occasional non-fiction on a subject that interests me and a lot of mysteries and thrillers the rest of the time.  Some of these are well-written good books and some are more-or-less entertaining "junk". 

The real junk is usually unreadable, but lately I'm having trouble finding entertainment even in some well-written books.  After losing patience with the political venting of John le Carre I tried hard to read Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, billed as among the top 100 thrillers of all time. 

I stopped for a while right at the beginning when I found myself reading about starving children being hunted for food by starving adults.  That sent me back to John le Carre.  When I went back to Child 44 it was was tough but bearable for a while, until the cumulative catastrophes afflicting the citizens of the old Soviet Union,  including murder, torture, parents killed in front of their children, and anything else you can think of finally were too much. 

So here's my problem:  I want suspense, but I don't want to be given nightmares.  You might say that the genre of cozy mysteries exists exactly for people like me, but most of those are a little too cozy to be interesting. 

I'm left with the mysteries I write myself.

[janethannah-blog]

Free Book Offer Results

From December 18th through December 22nd the Kindle editions of two of the Alex Kertesz mysteries by Janet Hannah were offered for free on Amazon.  The offer has just expired and here are the results:

The Wish to Kill, the first Alex Kertesz mystery - 143 copies downloaded.

Mystery Time, the third Alex Kertesz mystery - 113 copies downloaded.

I don't know whether that's a lot or a little, but I hope that those who took advantage of the offer read and enjoyed the books.  I'm especially glad that people were tempted to read The Wish to Kill, which I wrote as an attempt to make people think about some so-called paranormal phenomena which are so common that they really should be considered normal, although as yet unexplained.

[janethannah-blog]

Holiday Special - Free Books

Five-day free book holiday special!   from Wednesday, December 18 through Sunday, December 22 two of the Kindle editions of the Alex Kertesz mysteries by Janet Hannah are offered for free on Amazon.com.

The Wish to Kill, the first Alex Kertesz mystery, introduces the Hungarian born scientist as he is faced with the possibility that a colleague at the University of Jerusalem has been killed by the power of thought.

Mystery Time, the third book in the series, follows Alex to a scientific conference in Prague, where an American colleague is killed by an all too material knife.  An old watch belonging to a beautiful German professor who is Alex's friend and scientific partner disappears at the same time and adds another mystery to the plot.

My apologies for not adding the second Alex Kertesz mystery to this free offer.  This is because the Kindle edition of Murder with a French Accent was posted by the publisher, not by me. 

[janethannah-blog]

Le Carre Fatigue

A strange thing has happened to me.  I may be developing John le Carre fatigue.  I started reading A Most Wanted Man and although I can see a well thought out and intricate plot developing I can also see how the author indulges in long political rants in the guise of dialogue.  By putting these tirades in the  mouths of his characters the author distances himself from them, but they give the impression of being very much his own opinions.

From the writer's point of view political rants are fun to write and an easy way to fill pages, but in this case, at least, I seem to be getting tired of them.

The plot involves money laundering in Hamburg, Russians, Muslims, and Chechen terrorists.

[proseprunings]

a big novel can ramble structurally, and maybe should. It’s the run-of-the-mill jobs where you always know where you’re going. A big novel has a deeper directional sense.

Hortense Calisher (via proseprunings)

I was so glad to read this!  So a rambling structure doesn't mean I've lost the plot, just that I'm writing a "big novel".

[janethannah-blog]

Christmas Special

Mystery, romance, science, and the paranormal. 

 Alex Kertesz grew up in Communist Hungary, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and served in the Israel Defense Forces.  He's an assistant professor in the department of molecular biology at the University of Jerusalem when the violent death of a colleague confronts him with the possibility that murder can be committed by the power of thought.

 The Wish to Kill by Janet Hannah, on sale at Amazon.com at a special Christmas discount price of $0.99 for a limited time only. 

[janethannah-blog]

Death of a Gypsy - Book Preview

The next book in the Alex Kertesz mystery series will be Death of a Gypsy.  It's the story of a journey undertaken by Alex and his son to find a member of his wife's family, a Gypsy from Transylvania who has disappeared. 

Gypsies have been persecuted in Europe for nearly a thousand years, and if this specific story hasn't happened - it could have.

More information and excerpts from the book will be posted here.

[janethannah-blog]

Interesting Little Known Fact

In the Interesting Little Known Fact department, here's a fact that I'm sure is little known and may also be interesting to a few people other than myself:

Corsica is the only place in the world to still have a Bonapartiste political party.  In fact, Ajaccio has had a mayor belonging to this party almost continuously since the nineteenth century and up until 2001.

[janethannah-blog]

The Co-Writer Trend

I don't know when it started, but for the last several years at least mystery/thriller addicts have had to contend with the phenomenon of co-writers.  I'm talking about picking up a book by a well known name only to notice at home that it was actually written by someone else less famous whose name appears in smaller print.  After each time it happens I'm more careful for a while, but eventually I'm caught again. 

I have just done it again, buying The Janus Reprisal, which was attributed to Robert Ludlum in large letters on the cover but was actually written by Jaimie Freveletti.   I  haven't read many of Ludlum's books so I can't say whether Ms Freveletti has maintained his standard.  She did provide an explanation of the co-writer trend, however.  It seems that she was invited by whoever holds the rights to Robert Ludlum's literary estate to write a book using some of his characters.  Given the difficulty of marketing books by unknown writers and the automatic sales generated by a well know name, this makes sense.

As for the book  - the entire population of New York City is at risk due to an outlandish and extremely complicated plot, and someone is shot, stabbed, or poisoned every few pages. 

Interesting sidelight - Before her real name was "leaked" , presumably by disgruntled book marketers, the novel J.K.Rowling recently published under a pseudonym had fewer sales than my first book.  No, I'm not comparing myself to J.K.Rowling, but I couldn't help noticing.

P.S.  It seems Ms Freveletti isn't an unknown writer.  I just hadn't heard of her.

[janethannah-blog]

The Panther

The Panther by Nelson Demille is a thriller I can recommend.  The plot, which is about U.S. agents fighting Al Qaida in Yemen, gives a surprising impression of moving along quickly.  Surprising, because the book is 738 pages long.  Demille achieves this length by going into great detail.  The characters never get into a vehicle without us hearing who sat where, and they're always getting into vehicles.  We know what they eat, what they wear, and nearly every movement they make, including answering calls of nature.  This comprehensive coverage fills pages and gives a sense of realism, but how does Demille keep it from slowing down the action?  I don't know. Somehow he makes it work  

This is one of those books with a wisecracking hero.  Even when done well, these smartmouthed heros often become a little wearing.  FBI agent John Corey manages to stay amusing through almost all of the 738 pages.