A menacing, heartening mystery, set in Berlin as World War II has rattled to a close, The Good German collapses a very personal reunion with the rumblings of geopolitics.

More of a police procedural than a spy story — albeit with a journalist leading the investigation — this novel weaves in the larger realities. Again and again, the mundane details of larger issues are bluntly laid out for review: assigning blame for the Holocaust, the whitewashing of the sins of weapons developers, and the ominously clear rising conflict between the West and the Russians.

And it does all that in prose more direct and readable than my own. My thanks for the gift! I never saw the movie made from this book, but now I’m curious.

Wildtrack (1988) reads like a Dick Francis book with sailboats instead of horses, reminiscent of Sam Llewellyn’s thrillers. (I’ve read several, all before I started keeping track on this blog.)

The only false notes in Wildtrack are Nick Sandman’s quickly changing feelings for the two leading women in the novel. His decisions don’t feel true to the character, distracting from the rising tide of the story.

Wonder if Le Carré had any premonition he would be writing novels with Smiley involved one way or another for decades?

Call for the Dead takes place all in England. The interaction between the spy service and the police is delicate, and successful only because of personal connections overcoming institutional edginess (not quite outright rivalry). The Spy Who Came In from the Cold harkens back to these events, expanding on an event (turning an East German agent) that isn’t quite there, but could have been.

Whatever. This mystery turns the pages.

I’ve spent a weekend in Salt Lake City, near the University of Utah, and we visited the museum described in the book — pretty good place to view those old bones!

I’m trying to avoid returning to old favorites, but sometimes a comfortable read is worth it.

Anyway, T. Jefferson Parker delivered a great read. A homicide detective investigating a murder…pretty standard outline of a plot, but the story is about people, well painted. The detective has synesthesia and a marriage that’s not quite what he thinks. The murder victim had been recovering from the recent drowning death of his three-year-old daughter. (As a parent, even reading about this kind of tragedy hurts.) We actually get to “know” the victim quite well, thanks to the investigation. Mix in a range of characters scattered around San Diego’s political life, and you have a good story told very well.

In this book, at least, Dunning blends books and horses, so a good mix — although I really don’t know horses beyond what I’ve read in Dick Francis mysteries. This book is a pleasant enough read, but happy it’s going back to the library now.