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New crime novels feature a locked-room mystery, a Scarborough stabbing and a Jan. 6 insurrectionist

New crime novels feature a locked-room mystery, a Scarborough stabbing and a Jan. 6 insurrectionist

Toronto Star3 days ago

Fever Beach
Carl Hiaasen
Alfred A. Knopf, 384 pages, $39.99
It's a weird time in American politics, which means it's a perfect time for Florida novelist Carl Hiaasen to plumb the satirical depths of corruption and malfeasance in his home state. His last novel, 2020's 'Squeeze Me,' suffered from a subplot that attempted to satirize the once-and-current occupant of the White House, a Falstaffian spray-tanned figure so outrageous as to be almost impervious to satire. For 'Fever Beach,' Hiaasen wisely steers clear of POTUS and his inept administration, preferring instead to focus on wanton corruption at a lower level.
'Fever Beach,' by Carl Hiaasen, Alfred A. Knopf, $34.99.
The new novel begins with a meet-cute on an airplane between Twilly Spree and Viva Morales. Twilly is a stock Hiaasen character: an independently wealthy Florida do-gooder who spends his time making life miserable for folks who litter, antagonize the local wildlife or otherwise cause environmental or social havoc. Viva's job is administering the foundation of a couple of rich right-wing octogenarians whose fundraising operates as a money-laundering front to finance the campaign of far-right (and profoundly stupid) congressman Clure Boyette, in hot water with his obstreperous father over a scandal involving an underage prostitute named Galaxy.
Add in Viva's landlord — a Jan. 6 insurrectionist named Dale Figgo who heads the Strokers for Freedom (a white nationalist militia whose name is a rebuke to the Proud Boys' insistence on refraining from masturbation) — and his cohort, the violent and reckless Jonas Onus, and you have all the ingredients for a classic Hiaasen caper.
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Big Bad Wool: A Sheep Detective Mystery
Leonie Swann; translated by Amy Bojang
Soho Crime, 384 pages, $38.95
Twenty years ago, German-born author Leonie Swann debuted one of the most delightful detective teams in genre history: a flock of sheep on the trail of the person responsible for killing their shepherd with a spade through the chest. After a two-decade absence, Miss Maple, Othello, Mopple the Whale, and the other woolly sleuths are back on the case, this time on behalf of their new herder, Rebecca, the daughter of the early book's victim.
'Big Bad Wool,' by Leonie Swann, Soho Crime, $38.95.
Rebecca, her intrusive Mum, and the sheep are overwintering in the lee of a French chateau where there are rumours of a marauding Garou — a werewolf — that is responsible for mutilating deer in the nearby woods. Among other strange occurrences, Rebecca's red clothing is found torn to pieces and some sheep go missing — and soon enough there's a dead human for the flock, in the uncomfortable company of a group of local goats, to deal with.
'Big Bad Wool' is a charming romp, whose pleasure comes largely from the ironic distance between the sheep's understanding of the world and that of the people who surround them. ('The humans in the stories did plenty of ridiculous things. Spring cleaning, revenge and diets.') Their enthusiasm and excitement results in prose that is a bit too reliant on exclamation points, and some of the more heavy-handed puns (like the sheep's insistence on 'woolpower') seem forced, but this is nevertheless a fun variation on the traditional country cosy.
Detective Aunty
Uzma Jalaluddin
HarperCollins, 336 pages, $25.99
Romance novelist Uzma Jalaluddin takes a turn into mystery with this new book about amateur sleuth Kausar Khan. A widow in her late 50s, Kausar returns to Toronto from North Bay to help her daughter, Sana, who has been accused of stabbing her landlord to death in her Scarborough mall boutique. The police — including Sana's old flame, Ilyas — are convinced Sana is the prime suspect, but Kausar is determined to prove her daughter innocent.
'Detective Aunty,' by Uzma Jalaluddin, HarperCollins, $25.99.
Her investigation involves a couple of competing developers, both of whom want to purchase the land on which the mall stands, along with members of the dead man's family and fellow shopkeepers. On the domestic front, Kausar finds herself concerned with Sana's deteriorating marriage to her husband, Hamza, and her teenage granddaughter's sullenness and mysterious nighttime disappearances.
Jalaluddin does a good job integrating the various elements of her plot, and the familial relationships are nicely calibrated. The momentum is impeded, however, by a preponderance of clichés ('Playing devil's advocate, Kausar asked …'; 'Kausar's blood ran cold') and a tendency to hold the reader's hand by defining every easily Googleable Urdu word or greeting too programmatically. More attention to the writing on the line level would have helped move this one along.
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ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
The Labyrinth House Murders
Yukito Ayatsuji; translated by Ho-Ling Wong
Pushkin Vertigo, 272 pages, $24.95
Yukito Ayatsuji's clever postmodern locked-room mystery was first published in Japanese in 2009; it appears for the first time in English translation, which is good news for genre fans.
'The Labyrinth House Murders,' by Yukito Ayatsuji, Pushkin Vertigo, $24.95.
Ayatsuji's narrative is framed by Shimada, a mystery aficionado, who is presented with a novelization about murders that took place at the home of famed mystery writer Miyagaki Yotaro, found dead by his own hand soon after the manuscript opens. Miyagaki has left a bizarre challenge for the writers gathered at his Byzantine Labyrinth House: each must write a story featuring a murder, and the victim must be the writer him- or herself. The winning author, as adjudicated by a group of critics also convened at Labyrinth House, will inherit Miyagaki's sizable fortune.
As the writers compete for the reward, bodies start falling in real life and Ayatsuji has a grand time playing metafictional games with his readers, challenging them to figure out who the culprit is in the context of a story that owes more than a small debt to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None.' But Ayatsuji does Christie one better; it is only once the afterword, which closes the framed narrative, has unfolded that the reader fully understands how cleverly the author has conceived his multi-layered fictional trap.

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Critical minerals give China an edge in trade negotiations
Critical minerals give China an edge in trade negotiations

Winnipeg Free Press

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Critical minerals give China an edge in trade negotiations

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The Chinese Commerce Ministry said Saturday it had approved a 'certain number' of export licenses for rare earth products, apparently acknowledging Trump's personal request to Xi during a phone call last week. And on Wednesday, the Ganzhou-based rare-earth conglomerate JL MAG Rare-Earth Co. confirmed it had obtained some export licenses for shipments to destinations including the U.S., Europe and Southeast Asia. Experts say, however, Beijing is unlikely to do away with the permit system enabling it to control access to those valuable resources. The only scenario in which China might deregulate its critical minerals export is if the U.S. first fully removes tariffs imposed on Chinese goods as part of the trade war, said Wang Yiwei, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University, echoing the Chinese government's earlier stance. 'Without that,' he said, 'it will be difficult to blame China for continuing to strengthen its export controls.' 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Remaining reserves are deeper and harder to extract and process after decades of exploitation, said Li Shangkui, chairman of the Ganzhou-based Jiangxi Yuean Advanced Materials Co., Ltd. Processing factories in Ganzhou now routinely source materials from other provinces or other countries. Zhong's plant imports some raw materials from places like Africa and Cambodia. Major state-owned and private companies in Ganzhou are also ramping up investments abroad. Tungsten producer Ganzhou Haisheng, for instance, announced last year a $25 million investment in a new tungsten plant in Thailand. Whatever the challenges in procuring raw materials, China likely will seek to maintain its dominance in critical minerals, said Fabian Villalobos, an engineer and critical minerals expert at the RAND think tank. The U.S. lags far behind China on critical minerals Between 2020 and 2023, the U.S. imported at least 70% of the rare earth compounds it used from China, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It has diversified its sources in recent years, but still mainly relies on China. Since beginning his second term in office, Trump has made improving access to critical minerals a matter of national security. But the U.S. has an incredibly long way to go to catch up with China, experts say. The sole operational U.S. rare earths mine, in Mountain Pass, California, is unable to separate heavy rare earths. It sends its ore to China for processing. The U.S. Defense Department has provided funding to the mine's owner, MP Materials, to build new separation facilities. It will take months to build and still only produce a fraction of what is needed. Friction over the issue has opened the way for government-backed financing that was unavailable before, said Mark Smith, who ran the Mountain Pass mine in the early 2010s and now leads NioCorp. It's seeking about $780 million in financing through the U.S. Export-Import Bank to build a processing facility in Nebraska for critical minerals including rare earths. The Defense Department has committed $439 million to building domestic rare earth supply chains, but building a complete mining and processing industrial chain like China's could take decades. 'There are going to be some real issues here unless we can figure out how to get along with China for a period of time while we're developing our own resources and our mainstream processing,' Smith said. The spotlight on critical minerals also provides opportunities for smaller miners to invest in extracting and processing some critical minerals, such as tungsten, considered 'niche' because they are needed in relatively small amounts in key industries, said Milo McBride, an expert on sustainability and geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 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AP PHOTOS: Mexican flags at LA protests spark debate over symbolism
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Toronto Star

time4 hours ago

  • Toronto Star

AP PHOTOS: Mexican flags at LA protests spark debate over symbolism

This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors. ——— Over the last week, a sea of green, white and red Mexican flags have become a fixture of the Los Angeles protests against immigration raids. The use of Mexican and other Latin American flags during the protests are a form of symbolism many conservatives are calling anti-American — while others argue they're an expression of pride in one's homeland that could not be more American. Whether it be U.S., Mexican or Palestinian flags, the banners reflect a nation of immigrants whose stories have become intertwined with the story of America, experts say. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Kris Hernández, an associate professor of history at Connecticut College, said the flying of foreign flags in the U.S. has always brought awareness to the plight of marginalized groups. Their appearance in the latest protests might symbolize solidarity with their native land or social movements that support Americans of Mexican descent, she said. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that those flying Mexican flags at immigration protests were left-wing radicals that attacked law enforcement agents 'removing violent, criminal illegal aliens from the city.' And even fierce Trump critic Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Democrat, expressed his displeasure with the display of non-American flags at immigration protests that have spread to other states. 'Peaceful protests are fine. Violence is not and will only destroy your message,' Kinzinger wrote on X. 'American flags or nothing.' Amid the backlash, many Americans who support the right to protest are encouraging demonstrators to protest against immigration policies with the American flag instead of a foreign one, as way of reclaiming the U.S. flag for all who call the U.S. home. This underscores just how influential the American flag can be, Hernández said. 'What we are seeing ... is that people don't like to see some flags over others,' she said. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Some Latino activists say the Mexican flag is being used by people who were in this land before it was part of the United States. California was part of Mexico until the 1800's. Many Mexican Americans are descendants of people who never crossed a border — instead the border crossed them. Still, their display of the Mexican flag at protests is being twisted into something it's not, said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Hector E. Sanchez, president and CEO of 'Mi Familia Vota,' a non-profit focused on mobilizing Latino voters, said Mexicans have been at the forefront of attacks when it comes to immigration — attacks heightened during both of Trump's campaigns. Sanchez said he wonders why it's not called anti-American when some Americans fly Confederate flags next to the U.S. flag. 'We see a lot of flags celebrating cultural history and heritage,' he said. 'Why is it that the Mexican community is constantly under attack?'

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Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy 'They seem to be delaying, and I think that's a shame. I'm less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago. Something happened to them,' he said in the interview recorded Monday and released Wednesday. Iran's mission to the U.N. posted on social media that 'threats of overwhelming force won't change the facts.' 'Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon, and U.S. militarism only fuels instability,' the Iranian mission wrote. Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh separately told journalists Wednesday that he hoped talks with the U.S. would yield results, though Tehran stood ready to respond. 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