March 6, 2017
Norman's (Next Life Might Be Kind) latest novel opens with Canadian Jacob Rigolet witnessing his mother, Nora, vandalize a famous World War II photograph at a Halifax art auction in 1977. Nora, having escaped from the Nova Scotia Rest Hospital, is subsequently arrested and interviewed by Jacob's fiancée, Halifax police detective Martha Crauchet. Martha's investigation reveals that Jacob's father is in the photo taken by Robert Capa on Apr. 20, 1945, in Leipzig, Germanyâand was killed the next day. The investigation's real surprise, however, is the link it uncovers between Nora and Robert Emil, a Jew-hating Halifax cop and the prime suspect in two unsolved 1945 murders. Martha and her two detective partners reopen the cold cases, never suspecting how the connections will affect Jacob. Emil is still alive, as arrogant and shifty as ever, and after a tense police interrogation, arrest, and subsequent escape from custody, he vows to kill everyone involved in the case. The result is a scary stand-off in the Halifax public library. Jacob and Martha are delightful characters, young lovers unraveling a complex and very personal mystery. This is a crowd-pleasing old school mystery novel. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency.
June 26, 2017
In Norman’s smart new novel, set in 1970s Nova Scotia, protagonist Jacob Rigolet is attending a photographic art auction when his mother, Nora, a patient at a nearby residential treatment center, rushes into the room and tosses ink on Robert Capa’s famous 1945 photo Death on a Leipzig Balcony. After a swift arrest, Nora is interrogated by Halifax Regional Police investigator Martha Crauchet—who is also her future daughter-in-law. The story behind the attack on Capa’s photo is revealed, bringing up other mysteries involving family relationships, romantic entanglements, books, libraries, an amusingly noir radio drama, and murders. All of this is presented in a fast-paced, whimsical, semidetached literary style that few can bring off as successfully or as entertainingly as Norman. Fortunately, Pinchot is an actor capable of the subtlety this type of stylized fiction demands. His excellent portrayals of the hopelessly-in-love Jacob and Martha, to the wistful Nora, and the hard-boiled characters on the couple’s favorite radio show, Detective Levy Detects, don’t miss a beat. A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover.
February 1, 2017
An aspiring librarian strives to get to the bottom of a decades-old murder and his mother's act of vandalism in this foray into noir by Norman (Next Life Might Be Kinder, 2014, etc.).Norman's novels tend to recycle themes and settings so consistently that each individual work can feel like a fuguelike variation in a broader epic. Now we are once again in Halifax, in a story centering on a man, Jacob, with a peculiar job (auction representative for a wealthy dowager) who becomes entangled in an unusual calamity. This one involves Jacob's librarian mother, Nora, who has defaced a Robert Capa photo of a dead World War II soldier at an auction; conveniently and peculiarly, the lead detective on the case is Jacob's fiancee, Martha. Her investigation reveals not only that Nora was acting out her feelings toward her soldier husband (who she believes is the man in the Capa photo), but that a different man may have been Jacob's father--and that man is on the run after having committed an anti-Semitic murder decades ago. The plot is a tangle, often absurdly so, but Norman is gifted at establishing atmosphere and character, and he pleasurably engages with old-fashioned crime-story patter (mostly via a radio drama Jacob and Martha enjoy) and hard-nosed detectives pitted against Jacob's more genteel and bookish sensibility. Norman's idea of a good time is still pretty dour, though. Motifs of doubling--Jacob's two fathers, his pursuing a librarian career like his mom, the radio drama's echoing Martha's own investigation--suggest a history-keeps-repeating sense of entrapment. But ultimately Norman pulls off what old-school noir pros like Chandler and Goodis did: mixes romance with blood in the gutter, makes sure the bad guys get theirs, and ensures the good guys don't come out unscathed. An unconventional, lively literary mystery.
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November 1, 2016
When the librarian mother of Jacob Rigolet flings black ink at a Robert Capa photograph during an auction, Jacob's police detective fiancee becomes involved. As does Jacob himself, for the case leads him to dark secrets about the man he's always assumed to be his father, a Halifax police detective suspected of murdering two Jewish residents in the city's burst of anti-Semitism during 1945. From National Book Award finalist Norman, an homage to noir and so much more.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 1, 2017
In his 2013 memoir, I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place, Norman reflected on his maturation through an ever-shifting array of residences, from Michigan to Canada. The one form of continuity in Norman's life was the public library, providing the spark for his luminous literary career. His new novel pays homage to the endurance and intrigue of libraries, as it is set in and around the Halifax Free Library. After his mother, recently retired as head librarian, inexplicably defaces a photograph during an art auction, Jacob Rigolet is left with questions about her erratic behavior, the significance of the photograph, and the true identity of his own father. Literally born in the Halifax Free Library, Jacob begins to piece together his childhood memories among the stacks in an attempt to solve the puzzle. Along with his fiancee, Martha, the detective assigned to the case, he soon discovers that the answers to his questions are tied to a cold murder case back in 1945. VERDICT Norman punctuates literary noir's "darkness within" with both poignancy and a penchant for humor. Librarians will appreciate the nod to library and information science. [See Prepub Alert, 10/3/16.]--Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 1, 2016
When the librarian mother of Jacob Rigolet flings black ink at a Robert Capa photograph during an auction, Jacob's police detective fiancee becomes involved. As does Jacob himself, for the case leads him to dark secrets about the man he's always assumed to be his father, a Halifax police detective suspected of murdering two Jewish residents in the city's burst of anti-Semitism during 1945. From National Book Award finalist Norman, an homage to noir and so much more.
Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.