(Courtesy of Lake Union Publishing)
“The Probable Son”: by Cindy Jiban (Lake Union Publishing, $16.99)
Cindy Jiban (Courtesy of Lake Union Publishing)
It’s hard to believe this accomplished novel is Cindy Jiban’s debut. It’s part mystery, part parental love and part middle-school angst.
Teacher Elsa Vargas and her husband, Ham, were excited about their first pregnancy, but their daughter lived only a short time and Elsa went into a mental tailspin that alarmed her family. Elsa eventually came out of her grief and waited happily for her second child to be born. But from the moment this baby boy was put into her arms she was sure there was a mistake. This was not her baby. Fearful her family would think she was coming unglued again, she finally accepted and loved the child nicknamed Bird and never said another word about a possible hospital mix-up.
For 14 years, Elsa kept her secret even though Bird was not like the rest of the family. Then Thomas walks into her eighth-grade math class. When she realizes Thomas and Bird have the same birthday, she is sure Thomas must be her long-lost son.
Elsa cannot keep her eyes off Thomas, attending his soccer games in the rain and paying so much attention to him that the other kids notice. Soon there are allegations against her of inappropriate behavior with Thomas. Meanwhile, she knows she loves Bird, too, and has to grapple with what will happen to him if Thomas is really her son. How will Ham react to learning this boy he loves is not his? And she has to deal with Thomas’ mother, who understands she may lose her boy if the secret is revealed.
Then the story is turned on its head when Elsa sends in a DNA sample and gets unexpected results.
This novel is much more than a story of a possible hospital mix-up of babies. It’s a psychological study of a woman torn between a mother’s love for two boys. It’s obvious Jiban has taught in middle-school classrooms. Her dialogue between the students and Elsa is spot-on and sometimes very funny.
Jiban has a doctorate in educational psychology and was, like her protagonist, a middle-school teacher, whom she refers to as “the Navy SEALs of the education world.”
She will launch her novel at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Lake Monster Brewing, 550 Vandalia St., St. Paul.
Teaser quote: “She stared into the too-dark blue eyes while Ham called him their son, his words drenched in love. She wanted this for Ham, wanted to feel what he felt. Eventually, she echoed him.
‘Our son’ she said, and the chorus of humans outside her filled with relief and rejoicing.
That was the beginning of pretending to believe.”
(Courtesy of Severn House)
“Dark Humor”: by Matt Goldman (Severn House, $29.99)
Matt Goldman (Courtesy of the author)
In the fifth installment of his crime series featuring Minneapolis private investigator Nils Shapiro (after “Dead West”), we accompany Nils to Europe where he chases the drug kingpin who was responsible for the murder of his wife, Gabby, Minneapolis chief of police. He dotes on his daughter, Evelyn, whose mother is his previous wife.
It’s two years after Gabby’s death, and Nils is still grieving when he visits in prison Anna, the daughter of Sammy Sykes, the drug dealer who’s responsible for the deaths of dozens of teens who worked for him until they weren’t needed. Anna is a “dirty cop” who was convicted while her father got away. Nils, a quiet and thoughtful guy, is as tenacious as a terrier with a bone, and he sees something at the prison that gives him the first clue about where to find Sammy.
Following his hunches and some leads, he traces Sammy through Amsterdam, Munich and Austria, a trip that worries stoic Anders Ellegard, his partner in their Stone Arch Investigators P.I. business; Jameson White, a 6’7″ nurse practitioner who took care of Nils when he was injured in a previous book; and a woman friend in the police department.
On the plane to Amsterdam Nils he meets a Canadian woman looking for her husband, with whom he becomes friendly and is an unexpected ally as she joins him in sleuthing across Europe. Will she help him lessen his grief?
Goldman is an award-winning television writer (“Seinfeld,” “Ellen”), so it’s no surprise narrator Nils’ dialogue and inner speculations move the plot along gracefully and, sometimes chillingly, but also with humor. A discussion about taking a tourist bus in Salzburg to see sites where “The Sound of Music” were filmed fills Nils with horror.
The most entertaining part of this plot is Nils’ clever use of disguises that turn him into two people, one of whom the bad guys trust and one they want to kill. His scheme for finding Sammy works until his daughter is threatened and then he has to decide whether he can kill someone.
Goldman will launch his book with a free reading at 6:30 Tuesday at Comma book shop, 4250 Upton Ave. S., Mpls.
Teaser quote: “Again, I feel danger on the back of my neck. I reach for it but my hand never finds my neck. It’s grabbed from behind, a black sack is pulled over my head, and I’m pulled off my feet. My back hits the hard metal floor of what I realize is a cargo van. And then everything goes blank.”
(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)
“Mysterious Tales of Old Minneapolis”: by Larry Millett (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95)
Larry Millett (Courtesy of the author)
In this companion to “Mysterious Tales of Old St. Paul,” Millett gives us three loosely connected novellas set in the 19th century.
The first story, “Murder at the Falls,” is about murder among rich owners of lumber mills lining the area beneath St. Anthony Falls. We meet Peter Nichols, night watchman at a mill where the owner’s body is found. Nichols’ mother, Sophie Westerly, is a strong woman who takes up the challenge of clearing her son’s name and has clever ways of doing so.
The sparkling second story, “A Wilde Night at the Nicollet House,” is a romp in which Oscar Wilde, touring the United States to talk about beauty, helps the night detective at the fancy Minneapolis Nicollet House solve a murder. In a story narrated by the detective, who admits the Irish writer was the most fascinating man he has ever known, the pair strike up a friendship over the murder in the hotel that takes them to bordellos and mean streets. Throughout, the Minneapolitan’s reaction to Wilde, who is famous, varies from incredulous to intrigued. Although the plot is involving, the real centerpiece of this story is Wilde, who did stop in Minneapolis on his 1882 tour. Millett’s depiction of the key figure in the emerging Aestheticism movement offers readers a fully realized portrait of one of the century’s colorful visitors.
The Nichols family returns in “The Death Committee,” in which a rich man who is murdered had instructed his lawyer to stage a lottery to form a committee that will investigate his death. Three people, including Anna Nichols, win the lottery, but Anna, another woman and a man realize the event was rigged and they “won” the lottery for reasons they don’t understand. The man on the committee, who is up to no good, is wary of the strong-minded women who are supposed to be his colleagues, and it is up to these women to solve the puzzle.
Millett is a St. Paul author of 10 mysteries that feature Sherlock Holmes and St. Paul detective Shadwell Rafferty.
Teaser Quote: ‘”No scandal?’ said Oscar, as though he’d been refused butter on his toast. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. My dear Mr. Vale, scandal is a wonderful thing! It is the shortest route to fame. and I highly recommend it to any man who wishes to be in the public eye, as I most assuredly do.’”
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