It took me ten days to read my first book of the year. Since I'm hoping to read more in 2023 than I had in 2022, that isn't good news. Maybe I'll pick up the pace with the next novel. I got Land of Careful Shadows by Suzanne Chazin from the library. I'm glad to get a chance to read a book I chose myself for a change.
I selected the only mystery on the tops of my library book piles. I like to start months with a mystery when I can, so I can be sure to have at least one mystery to discuss at the mystery book club that I attend on Zoom.
This police procedural begins with Detective Vega being stopped by a rookie who didn't know who he was. In case there are readers who don't know, detectives don't wear uniforms. Detective Greco tells him he should have let the rookie know he was a cop. "Not that he was profiling me or anything," Vega responded sarcastically. Of course the rookie had been profiling him.
Prejudice, particularly prejudice against immigrants, is a significant theme in this book. The victim is an illegal immigrant, but Vega wasn't going to bury the case. Yet a local cop who had responded to a domestic violence incident, didn't arrest the abuser probably because the case involved an immigrant couple. He didn't care enough about an immigrant woman getting abused.
This book takes place in a small town in upstate New York, and the characters tend to be inter-related in some way. For example, Linda, who is originally mentioned as Vega's girlfriend when he was a teenager, turns out to be significant to the plot because she's married to a major character.
Since a quinceanera is a plot event, I learned more about this Latino equivalent to a Jewish bar/bat mitzvah. I knew that it happens when a Latino girl turns fifteen.
Among Jews this rite of passage was originally for boys. The first bat mitzvah was in 1922 for the daughter of Mordechai Kaplan. He was the founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist sect.
I looked up the origin of the quinceanera and discovered that it originated from ancient practices of the cultures of Latin America which means that it's a good deal older than the bar mitzvah for boys which wasn't practiced widely among Jews until the 17th century.
One thing that bothered me about this quinceanera was that the cake was flanked by Barbie dolls. Although I had Barbie dolls as a young girl, I now think that Barbie dolls are an oppressive aspiration for girls. No real girl or woman can ever look like a Barbie doll. The struggle to reach this unattainable "ideal" can result in potentially dangerous eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. I knew someone in college who was hospitalized due to anorexia. No girl should risk her life for what is essentially a stereotype.
I was interested in author Chazin's idea that an accident is the opposite of murder because a murder is planned, but an accident is sudden. Land of Careful Shadows contains both deliberate murder and a pivotal accident that seem to both bookend the storyline, and upend it. I was satisfied with the ending. When I got to that point, it seemed fated. The opposites complemented each other.
Mysteries are often called puzzles. The puzzle pieces may appear disparate but when the plot of a good mystery reaches its conclusion, they all fit together neatly. So in this case, murder and accident belonged together. They weren't really opposites after all.
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