Skip to footer

3 new foreign mystery novels that are worth your travel time

Craving a foreign excursion? Try the next best thing – one of these mystery novels set in far-away lands.

2. 'Ratlines,' by Stuart Neville

  • By Randy Dotinga Contributor

Location: Ireland, 1963
 Detective: Lt. Albert Ryan
 
The timing could hardly have been any less impeccable. Yet another German man is found murdered in Ireland right before a historic visit by the first Irish-American president.

This is not good for a variety of reasons, especially the uncomfortable truth the Ireland has been good to ex-Nazis. Very good, in fact. In real life, as in the new mystery novel "Ratlines," Ireland served as a friendly post-war host to Reich leaders on the run.

Lt. Albert Ryan gets the case. He's young but not young enough in 1963: He chose to serve with the British during World War II, a decision that turns him into a traitor in the eyes some of his countrymen.

Soon he finds himself navigating through a maze of violence, intrigue, and (of course) romance.

"Ratlines" is a brash and exciting thriller, full of hairpin turns and espionage. Even the film "Dr. No" makes an appearance, appropriate for a book that tries to create a James Bond with a lilt instead of a Connery-style brogue.

Lt. Ryan, stolid and a bit colorless, doesn't come to as much life as the novel's cinematic villains do. But that's okay. The bad guys, along with an expert depiction of 1960s-era Ireland and a rapid-fire plot, turn "Ratlines" into a must-read thriller.

2 of 3
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.