A SHORTER BOOK NOW

After reading four books of more than 500 pages each in recent weeks, I longed for a shorter volume to give my hands a good rest. There was no real search for such a book; I just walked over to the most accessible of my walls of books and picked up the most accessible volume, The Coffee Trader by David Liss, copyrighted in 2003. I had started reading the book way back then, but it dragged a bit and I shelved it. Now I wanted to get it read and placed in the library here where I live. I am almost half way through it, and I must say . . .

It is extremely well written and doesn't drag at all. As my favorite author is Shakespeare, it took no time to settle into the year 1659 to see what was going on in Amsterdam. Plenty! As that city was quite an important  shipping center, the popular place to be was at the world's first commodities Exchange, where fortunes were won and lost in minutes. But since this is a historical mystery, I won't give away the plot, which gets more exciting as the pages turn. 

This highly educated author presents his characters as if they are actors on a stage. That is a plus, not a negative. They act with their eyes and sometimes get caught at it, while dickering about a move on the Exchange. There seem to be spies everywhere and several languages and nationalities abound. But this writer is so clever, he keeps me reading to learn what the big mystery is.

David Liss's Conspiracy of Paper won the Edgar Award in 2000 for Best First Novel. What an intriguing title. Perhaps I should read it. In the meantime, I must find out what the mystery is in the coffee trading business.