No Man's Land

The German novelist Martin Walser's No Man's Land was first published in English in 1989, the year the division of Germany collapsed. Its central character, Wolf Zieger, lives in the West and spies for the East. It's a testament to Walser's skill with characterization and his handling of the themes of identity that book retains its relevance even after the direct cause of the story's conflict has been removed. Walser puts a reader in mind of Max Frisch; he was also called by the New Republic the "closest thing the West Germans have to John Updike."

Hide & Seek

Ian Rankin's second effort in the Rebus detective series is a marked improvement over the first, despite an excess of sawdust stuffing.

The Good Cripple

This novel by the Gautemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa is, like his Severina, short and astringent. Taking as its subject a kidnapping, it touches on themes of friendship, revenge, and filial love. 

Love in Amsterdam

Piet Van der Valk is not a typical fictional detective, to judge by this first installment in the series by Nicolas Freeling. Set in Amsterdam, the story relies more on characterization than plot and has a satisfying sophistication. Van der Valk himself barely appears in the middle section of the novel, which fills in the life stories of the principals. What writer of detective fiction today could be so assured as to leave his main character out of the frame for 80 pages?

Knots & Crosses

The first novel in the John Rebus police series by Ian Rankin shows the hero to be a run-of-the-mill, if not positively dense, detective. But good pacing and Edinburgh color are enough to warrant giving book two a try.

Mozart: A Life

Paul Johnson seems determined to make of Mozart a moral exemplar: His attraction to dozens of women? It never descended to adultery. Freemasonry? He was still a faithful Catholic. Begging letters? They weren't what they seemed. A domineering Leopold? He was actually a loving father. In this way and others, Johnson's short biography is 180 degrees from the longer Beethoven biography referenced below. On the positive side, unlike John Suchet's vast silences on the subject of music, Johnson crams every page with facts about compositions and Mozart's working life, supplemented by extracts from his letters (and those of his father), with a small amount of personal information.

The Search

Geoff Dyer's second novel begins as a detective story and veers into Surrealism.

Harvest

Jim Crace's final novel generates gothic dread with its pre-industrial setting and strange vocabulary. Two plumes of smoke begin the tale: one signaling the arrival of newcomers to the outskirts of a farming village, the other the burning of the master's dovecote. At the center of the story is Walter Thirsk, a widower and relative outsider himself, although a "milk cousin" of the lord of the manor (they nursed at the same breast). The arrival of the three outsiders, plus a mapmaker and the master's cousin by marriage, portend trouble. Crace's prose seems to become more modern as the story unfolds, a subtlety that I may be imagining. In any case, the fable-like tale brings to mind the best of Par Lagerkvist.