The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø

Harry Hole is back in Norway and in charge of making sure the visiting U.S. President is not assassinated.  A tollbooth that should have been emptied has a man standing in it holding a machine gun.  Harry tells his partner to call their liaison with the Secret Service and if it's one of theirs to blow the horn.  He races towards the tollbooth and as the President's motorcade tops the rise where the man has a clear shot, Harry shoots him.  Then the car horn blows.

Harry followed protocol and the Norwegian government does not want to say it's their fault.  Everyone agrees that the only solution is to treat Harry like he was being heroic and give him a promotion.  When they extract him from his retreat into drunkenness, he understands what's up.  They transfer him upstairs into his new job as an inspector.  He notices that there was an illegal gun sent into the country and he worries that since it is only used by assassins that there is murder that will happen.  His new job has him investigating neo-nazis and he discovers a connection.  The story takes place in two timelines, one during world war ii.  The purpose of the timeline is both a red herring and an explanation of the murderer and the woman Harry falls in love with.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré

Another Smiley story – in this book, Smiley has been ‘retired’, Control is dead and there is a new group in charge of the circus.  The top man, Percy, does not have the experience to really run the place.  His lieutenants, including one who had an affair with Smiley’s wife, go out of their way to be nice to Smiley, but tell him nothing.  Smiley is suspicious that there is a Soviet mole in the organization, feeding intelligence to a master spy back in Moscow.  The story is tough to get through because of how much negative introspection is involved – whether Smiley or someone else.  You have to read ¾ of the story to find the reference to the title – code names assigned by Smiley and those he can recruit for the possible suspects in the circus.  Eventually the mole is found, it’s the man who seduced Smiley’s wife, and deported to the Soviet Union, others are removed from their positions, Smiley is offered at least temporary command of the circus, and he is reunited with his wife.  The plot drags, though it ties stories together – I’m not so sure I agree it was Le Carré’s best work.

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

Abilene Tucker has been sent to the town of Manifest, Kansas during the Great Depression.  She is loosely taken care of by a 'pastor' who also runs a speak-easy.  She loses the compass her father had given her and looks in the one place everyone warned her away from - a house named the Road to Perdition, where a diviner lives.  She agrees to work for the woman in exchange for getting the compass back.  But there is far more to the town and its history than meets the eye.  A man who owns most of the town and its mine gets tricked into selling land that allows the town to buy back its rights.  The book is well written and worth the read.

Hail Mary by Andy Weir

A man wakes up, disoriented, from a medically induced coma.  He is attended by an medical robot in the ceiling of his room.  When he is able to rise from his bed he discovers he has two companions in the room who are desiccated.  He begins to remember that he is on a spaceship.  He is on a mission to save Earth from a disaster.  The sun is getting dimmer.  So are several other stars surrounding Tau Ceti.  But Tau Ceti is not getting dimmer.  He is there to find out why in hopes of applying that same difference to Sol.  He also discovers that he is not alone.  There is another spaceship that has parked itself nearby.  And it has a survivor too.  They’re from one of the other affected stars.  Both civilizations figured out the cause of the dimming and in the process found they could use that to achieve near light speed travel.  Now they have to cooperate to save both civilizations.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman 

Backman’s masterpiece – almost eight-year-old Elsa loves her grandmother, and her grandmother loves her fiercely.  Her grandmother is an odd duck who tells fairy tales from the land of almost asleep and defends Elsa like no one else.  But her grandmother is sick and dies.  Elsa is given a quest to deliver letters, which she must find to the people who live in her building.  She finds out it really is her building because her grandmother owned it and left it to her.  We meet people who were rescued by the grandmother when they were just children, except for one woman who was rescued after a tsunami killed her husband and two sons.  There is Wolfheart who is a warrior who doesn’t like to fight.  There is Britt-Marie, who took care of Elsa’s mother while her grandmother was off saving other people.  There is a set of brothers who were both in love with the same woman.  There is a family taking care of their grandson while hoping their son gets some help.  And there’s a wourse who is a hero.

The Quick Red Fox by John D MacDonald

Travis McGee is asked by a movie actress to find out who is trying to blackmail her, a second time, over pictures at a party she does not want the public to see.  He agrees and finds himself ‘saddled’ with the actress’ personal secretary.  They start tracking down the other people who were at the same party to find out which were behind the photo-taking.  They go from Miami to a rehab and decide that person is harmless to the situation.  Then they go to New York to check on another red herring.  Then they go to the scene of the crime in California and discover why it was so easy for the photographer to take the pictures from about 100 yards away.  Then they go to Oakland and track down the photographer, and the daughter who helped him.  Only the photographer has been murdered and his assistant has fled town.  They track another member of the party to a ski lodge and discover he is just a braggart but did not know about the photos.  They find another member of the party in Las Vegas, recovering from multiple bad relationships.  Then they hear that she has been killed.  They track down the last member of the party with his wife in Phoenix.  During a horse ride, he is thrown from his horse and dragged.  Only his head has been bashed-in just like the other deaths.  Turns out the man’s wife did all the murders to try to cover up her quest for the man’s riches.