The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari, Random House, Memoir, 204 pp., $23

Hari, now living in Maryland, recently served as translator for courageous journalists like Ann Curry and Nicholas Kristof and others both here and abroad when they investigated the genocide of the indigenous peoples of Darfur in Sudan. He was imprisoned and tortured for his work after immigration violations brought him to the attention of the authorities.

From the start, Hari is engaging and sincere as he describes the wholesale murder and savagery he has witnessed firsthand. His beloved brother Ahmed was killed while their village was attacked, and Hari found his nearly unrecognizable body and buried it himself.

What began as competition among tribesman for grazing lands has escalated into genocide by the Arab- run government of Sudan, and at its core is greed for oil to send to China, which now receives most of Sudan’s supply. Hari describes Africa as a place where its riches, diamonds and oil, lie underground, while atop the fields live the poor who earn about a dollar per day. Two million indigenous people have already been slaughtered.

Writing what amounts to unbearably sad poetry, Hari describes his people as peace loving Muslims, bound by honor and the beloved traditions of love of family and hospitality. They used to live in huts, raising some chickens and goats, with the loyal, hardworking family donkey treated much the way we revere our pets here. The children kiss them goodnight.

Entire villages have been set ablaze, children and the elderly burned alive. The resistance fighters are believed to be funded by the West, yet the United Nations does nothing. Girls as young as eight years are raped repeatedly as they scavenge for wood in the refugee camps in Chad.

To read this book is to know for certain that the world has gone mad, perhaps because it is run by madmen for whom oil is the new god. One would think that after Hitler the world would have no tolerance for wholesale extermination, but that isn’t true. If it were otherwise, the current government of Sudan would be crushed beneath the world’s indignation and outrage.

This is a beautiful book. Hari writes with simplicity and grace of these unspeakable atrocities, taking every opportunity to thank God for blessings large and small. We have much to learn from him about gratitude.

Hope’s Boy by Andrew Bridge, Hyperion, Memoir, 306 pp., $22.95

The author is a graduate of Wesleyan and Harvard Law School, but before that he was a foster child, absorbed into the California foster care system when he was seven years-old. He was taken on the street as he returned from trying to buy cigarettes for his seriously disturbed mother, Hope, a single parent. What a Providential title for this sad but triumphant tale of how even love in small doses can conquer overwhelming odds. Hope loved her son ferociously, and she groomed him during the short time they were together (two years) to be independent. Bridge clung to the memory of his mother’s love like a lifeline that kept him afloat during his youth spent in permanent placement with a Dachau survivor and her family. Never having resolved the conflicts that arose from being a child in a German concentration camp, this woman lashed out at Bridge and her own children as well, making them kneel before her seeking forgiveness for whatever transgression aroused her rage that day.

Bridge was fortunate to have spent his earliest years with his impoverished, hardworking grandmother in Chicago. They didn’t have much, but life was stable and predictable until Hope demanded to have her son back in California.

Today, Bridge is dedicating himself to improving conditions for foster children everywhere, and conditions can be appalling.

This book is a monument to the power of love to uplift and sustain. Here is an excerpt of a letter that Bridge wanted to send, but never did, to accompany his college applications: “Sometimes when you’re lost, the most you can do is wait. More than anything else, that is what I have learned to do best: to wait, to outlast the fear, and to hold on just a bit longer. Finally, when you read this, I hope that you will not feel sorry for me. Because even in years of quiet, a boy can still find his way.”

Think about it, here’s a young man whose mother was so ill that even today she remains institutionalized, but she loved her son, and he knew it. That flawed relationship produced a highly educated, good man of some stature whose contributions to foster children over the course of his life are inestimable. How incredible that is.

This is a powerful memoir, told honestly and with piercing poignancy. Please don’t miss it.

Chat by Archer Mayor, Grand Central Publishing, Police Procedural, 326 pp., $24.99

Mayor’s 18th entry in the Joe Gunther series is as much a love letter to Vermont as it is a solidly plotted, action-packed mystery populated by characters so real you feel you know them.

The body of a man has been found facedown in a brook. No one knows who he is why he died, or how. Gunther’s elite investigative team is on the scene, but Gunther has to leave when he learns his widowed mother and his bachelor brother have been seriously injured in a car crash.

Some stellar police work leads Gunther’s team into the world of chat rooms and cybersex, and it seems there is more than one murder to solve. The question arises, was Gunther’s family targeted to die and why. But it’s not all doom and gloom as Gunther reunites with a lady from his recent past, and it’s not former longtime love Gail Zigman.

I have loved this series since its beginning. It is lavishly atmospheric, ( think lots of snow and ice) consistently excellent, with a guy at the center who’s smart and decent. Start at the series’ beginning or start here. Either way, you’re hooked.

Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman, Ballantine Books, Mystery, 337 pp., $27

This book is already number one on the New York Times Bestseller List, and there’s no surprise there. Kellerman hits a home run every time he’s up at bat. In this 22nd book in the Alex Delaware series, the child psychologist and his best friend, LAPD Det. Milo Sturgis, a kind, brave, and generous gay man in a strictly testosterone fueled PD, track a serial killer who uses luxury autos to lure victims.

Fans will be happy to know Alex and Robin are solid, and the new member of the family is adjusting well. You’ll love it.

Cache of Corpses by Henry Kisor, Forge, Mystery, 300 pp., $24.95

This third book in Kisor’s Steve Martinez series features a fascinating quasi-sport called geocaching which is hiding objects in remote precise locations that players locate using their GPS systems. The problem here is someone is hiding dead bodies.

Kisor, like Steve Hamilton, writes what amount to cozy mysteries that men will enjoy. Our hero, Deputy Martinez, is running for sheriff against a popular incumbent in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, not a place for the feint-hearted.

Martinez campaigns, solves the crimes, and forges a relationship with a young Native American boy whom his lady love has taken in as a foster child. All’s well because Martinez, also a Native American, is a good guy with a big heart unless you’re dropping dead people all over his territory. There’s action, suspense, humor, and a lot of heart in this series. I love it.

Carrot Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke, Kensington, Cozy Mystery, 336 pp., $22

This tenth entry in the Hannah Swensen series featuring a cookie shop owner in Lake Eden, Minnesota is delightful, like all those that came before.

It’s summertime, and the Beeseman family is holding a reunion, but when a long lost uncle turns up lost for good with an ice pick in his chest, Hannah and family go to work to solve the crime. Sleuthing poses a few problems for Hannah especially since she’s kind of romantically linked to local detective Mike Kingston. Also in the running for Hannah’s affections is Norman, the local dentist. I wish she’d marry him already because he’s so kind and thoughtful, but Fluke is devious, and you never know what other guy will show up to complicate matters even more.

As always, the book comes with some excellent recipes. I tried the raisin drop cookies. The raisins are plump and moist from being simmered in water, and the sugar cookie providing a pillow for them is sweet, chewy and crunchy all at the same time. I also tried the easy celery sauce which really is a miracle for those days when you’re making chicken yet again.

The book was good, too.

Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka, Hyperion Books, Forensic Mystery, 324 pp., $22.95

Add Becka to your list of favorites. This is the second in the Evelyn James series, after last year’s Trace Evidence, set in Cleveland and featuring a divorced mother of a teenage girl. James is also a crime busting forensic scientist. She has a genuinely loving but conflicted relationship with a detective, but James just isn’t ready for more than they’ve got now, and that’s the problem.

The case at hand is that of a wealthy woman found murdered in her luxury apartment. Ostensibly the killer had no way in and no way out. When James’s best friend, another forensic technician, is attacked, James jumps into the investigation. There are plenty of viable suspects, but the evidence just doesn’t add up.

Cleveland is not exactly a glam location, but Becka is a sharp and talented writer who saves all the excitement for her well drawn characters and the fantastic nature of the crimes. This book is absorbing, intelligently written, and a sure thing for a rainy weekend.

Sleight of Hand: A Jo Banks Mystery by Robin Hathaway, Thomas Dunn Books, Cozy Mystery, 240 pp., $23.95

Dr. Jo Banks used to be a hotshot pediatrician in Manhattan, but when her misdiagnosis left a child dead, Banks fled into exile in the under-populated farmlands of south Jersey, working as a doctor in a rundown motel. The upside is she’s met some decent people and laid a solid foundation for a new, though humbler, beginning.

In the third installment of this well written series, Jo stumbles upon an injured man who refuses to seek medical treatment at a hospital, and whose developmentally challenged daughter will have to care for him after Banks does her best performing hand surgery in the man’s farmhouse kitchen. There is no wife or mother in sight. Additionally, a corpse, shot execution style, has been found on a lonely road.

While trying to manage her medical practice, her haphazard love life, a murder, and a mystery, Jo is determined to get to the bottom of things. Her attempts are Herculean, and it is impossible not to love this intrepid and generous heroine.

This is a solid series, especially for those who like their cozies with a little substance.

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