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1250863856
| 9781250863850
| 1250863856
| 3.10
| 1,302
| Mar 26, 2024
| Mar 26, 2024
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really liked it
| A woman wearing a CNN shirt tells a man holding a clipboard to find a way to crop the other crews out of the shot. Adjacent to the riser, CNN has s A woman wearing a CNN shirt tells a man holding a clipboard to find a way to crop the other crews out of the shot. Adjacent to the riser, CNN has set up the barstool and the table littered with makeup, brushes, and hair products. Lots of hair products. There’s no riser for Entertainment Tonight’s reporter, but there’s a king-sized mirror secured to a step stool. A thick container rests on the top step. It reminds me of the attache case that travels with the president in doomsday movies. A man clacks open the lock, and pulls out the drawer loaded with shadows, blushes, and lipsticks.-------------------------------------- Attention is the drug of choice in local news.And attention will be paid. Good Evening world. This is Will Byrnes reporting live from my computer. (Well I was live when I wrote that) Our lead (and only) story tonight is breaking news. Phoenix-based TV reporter Christina Estes, has written a whodunit. Set, of course, in The Valley of the Sun. An odious, Rush Limbaugh-radio-talk-show sort has been cancelled with extreme prejudice. Seems he ingested something toxic and went off-the-air for good. Given that he was such a sweet, charming individual, there is no shortage of people who might have wanted to see him gone. [image] Christina Estes - Image from her site Jolene (named for the Dolly Parton song) Garcia is an intrepid TV news reporter looking for the truth and a good story. She is under relentless pressure from her bosses to produce something, anything, that they can put on air. She has an edge, as she had interviewed the happily departed just a few days prior. We follow Jolene as she follows the breadcrumb trail of clues, and comes up against resistance of all sorts, from her competitors, her police contact, and all the suspects. Payload is the real-world information one gleans from fiction. There are two major pieces of that here. In fact, Phoenix counts as a character in the book, as places often do in mysteries. Estes takes us around the place, offering looks at many aspects of Arizona life, and culture, and pointing out many local spots. (Sadly, Chase Field, where the Diamondbacks play, was not among them. But, as Estes is working on sequel, there is still hope. Maybe bring in Arcosanti as well? Or some Cactus League baseball?) Off the Air includes real locations and businesses with special significance. For example, two of my favorite photographers introduced me to Rito's Mexican Food and Harlow's Café. I included Chicago Hamburger Company because the owner allowed me to follow his journey during the first year of the pandemic. He was open and honest during a frightening time, and I appreciated his transparency. Food City chips and salsa are my favorite snack and I made them my main character's favorite. I included the history of the former Phoenix Indian School, which many people may not know about. Three historic buildings remain in what is now Steele Indian School Park. There's a walkway with columns depicting the school's history and a bridge that leads to a garden with Native American poems etched into concrete. It's a jewel in the heart of the city. - from the Los Angeles Public Library interviewThe other non-story major element here is TV reportage. Estes makes excellent use of her two-decade-long career as a TV reporter to inform a depiction of what that life is like. It was one of my favorite elements in the book. One can feel the huge stresses these folks endure with ever-decreasing resources, and ever-increasing demands from management. Film at Eleven. We’ve got film, right? Right? I think some people who have never worked in local news do not understand how much the industry has changed and how challenging it is for journalists who care about their communities to earn a decent living and stay in the business for more than a few years.Jolene is a good egg and easy to relate to, particularly as she faces conflicting demands. She handles all with aplomb. Secondary characters come and go, given enough detail to either laugh at them (this is a satire), be repulsed, or just watch them skip across the stage. Gripes are few. Some attributes noted early on were not utilized later, at least not nearly enough. The secondary characters sometimes felt a bit too secondary. I would have liked a bit more on one or two of them. Jolene follows clue after clue, placing herself into dangerous situations, sometimes very dangerous situations. As with any mystery, there will be red-herrings. Estes’ portrait of the local TV news reporter’s life will give you some reason to sympathize with hard-working TV reporters where you live, and maybe reason to feel scorn for some others. There is a single mystery, and it will be solved. Off the Air is a fun read, perfect for the beach, next to a pool, or maybe lounging in or near a cabin in the woods. Be sure to tune in next week (really two weeks) for the next installment of WB-Reviews. From all of us (that would be me, my wife, the cats, and a dog) here at the news center, goodnight, and stay cool. Review posted - 08/02/24 Publication date – 3/36/24 I received a hardcover of Off the Air from Minotaur Books in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon will be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Garcia’s personal, FB, Instagram, Goodreads and Twitter pages Profile - from Criminal Element CHRISTINA ESTES is an award-winning reporter who has spent more than 20 years covering crime, public policy, and business in Phoenix, Arizona. Her reporting has been heard on National Public Radio (NPR) and appeared in the Arizona Republic, Arizona Business Gazette, and Phoenix Business Journal. Christina’s career inspired Off the Air, which won the Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery Set in the Southwest. Interviews -----Voyage Phoenix - Daily Inspiration: Meet Christina Estes -----Arizona Horizon - Christina Estes releases first book | Arizona Horizon - by Ted Simmons - video – 8:28 -----KJZZ - Reporter Christina Estes debuts 'Off the Air,' her first mystery novel by Lauren Gilger -----Arizona Family - Beyond the Next Chapter Podcast: Christina Estes on her new book "Off the Air" by Whitney Clark – video – 33:56 -----Criminal Element - Q&A with Christina Estes about her mystery debut, Off the Air -----Los Angeles Public Library - Interview With an Author: Christina Estes by Daryl M. - print Item of Interest from the author -----Criminal Element - Excerpt ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 28, 2024
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Jul 31, 2024
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Hardcover
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059344938X
| 9780593449387
| 059344938X
| 3.66
| 1,957
| Mar 01, 2019
| Feb 27, 2024
|
really liked it
| History doesn’t allow itself to be rewritten that easily.-------------------------------------- One single night: A house burned down in Tolarp. History doesn’t allow itself to be rewritten that easily.-------------------------------------- One single night: A house burned down in Tolarp. There was someone inside, on the kitchen floor. One instant, a before and after: the stillness before the spark appeared, and the inferno that followed. One single event: That was all it took to redirect the path of a life. Like the filament of a root moving through time.Or, in this case, two lives. How do you deal when the thing that obsesses you interferes with your life? Isak Nyqvist is seven years old in 1994. Vidar Jörgensson is a young cop, four years in the police. We will follow them through the next twenty-one years. Both their lives are largely defined by the fire that takes place on a cold night in November. A young woman is found dead inside a torched house. It was not the fire that killed her. [image] Christoffer Carlsson - image from Frankurter Rundschau – credit Emelie Asplund Isak loves his uncle Edvard, 25, who has spent a lot of loving time with him, but Edvard has a history of rage, much of it provoked, and a lot of it ascribed to him because his father was a violent person. He had been dating Lovisa Markstrom, was seen leaving the scene of the crime on the night of the fire, and is presumed to have been the one who killed her. There is circumstantial evidence supporting that belief. The town is certain of it, given his family history. The person who had seen him that night was Vidar. But Vidar has his doubts, or will. Vidar has many local connections and uses those to help his investigation. Isak’s family is known by everyone, not in a good way. Gramps was known as a violent person. Isak’s uncle Edvard was also painted with that same brush, so it is easy to believe that he killed his girlfriend. Isak is only 7 when the murder take place but local biases, and bullies pile on Isak, assigning to him the snap-judgments that were affixed to his uncle The story is told in three parts, the first being when the death occurred, 1994, the second in 2003 and the third in 2015. Even though Isak has doubts, he still cannot believe his loving, kind uncle could be responsible for a murder. Vidar becomes aware of some problems with the evidence, sees alternate explanations for the crime and becomes obsessed with it for the rest of his police career and beyond. It even threatens his marriage (Wait, didn’t she know this about him when they got together?) The trope of the investigator’s non-understanding significant other gets on my nerves. Isak is impacted both internally, wondering if Edvard really was a killer, and wondering if genetics are destiny, and externally, as bullies constantly remind him that his uncle is serving time, and provoking him to violence. (Why are provoking bullies never held to account? Is the world really that dumb? Don’t answer that.) The long expanse of the tale gives us insight into the main characters, how they feel and behave in the world, and what has gone into creating those feelings and behaviors. It is both heart-breaking and illuminating. The parallelism of Isak and Vidar works well, showing how history ripples forward into the future for both of them, albeit in very different ways. Carlsson offers many specific ways in which their paths run in the same direction. Both their lives are crap, in a way. Both have boxes of clues to their mysteries. Vidar’s wife’s assumptions and lack of understanding re Vidar mirrors the community’s view of Erik. Vidar imagines himself as a child, akin to a dream of Isak’s In Carlsson’s previous novel (at least as far as USA release dates go) Carlsson had used a similar structure, with Vidar’s father tracking a crime from 1986 to 2019, stopping off at several intermediate years to track the characters and advance our understanding of the very cold case. This original Swedish language book was released in 2019, before Blaze Me a Sun (2021). Vidar Jörgensson features in this one. But in the later book, it is Vidar’s father who stars, with Vidar being introduced later in the tale. I do not know if Under the Storm was intended as a prequel, or maybe was written later but published earlier. I read the pair in the order in which they were published in the USA, #2, then #1. There is a third, which was released in Sweden in 2023, Levande och döda (The Living and the Dead). I do not know when an English translation will be available. Family is a major concern, as it was in Blaze Me a Sun. How does the cop’s obsession (or deep commitment to truth) impact his friendships, his work life, his marriage? (“You seem so far away sometimes,” she said at last.) How does Isak’s affection for and connection with a much-loved uncle affect his ability to have a normal social life, to have a family life? How is the rest of Edvard’s family impacted by his travails? As with Blaze Me a Sun, there is mention of a local superstition. That one had to do with fortune, good or bad, being caused by how one saw a particular bird. Here it is a place where a legendary rich man is buried, a place where ghostly apparitions are said to appear. Under a bridge in Anarp is where The Old Man sleeps, a boogie man who is death to anyone who meets his ghost. Non-superstition-based history is also addressed, as Carlsson tracks town history back to sundry events, like the introduction of manufacturing in the town, its loss and attempt to revive it. A persistent motif throughout is secrecy, as one might expect in a procedural murder tale. Vidar and Isak, while not alone in this, are robust practitioners. Isak keeps two things to himself from the night of and a short time after. It is never particularly clear why he fails to tell what he knows in time to have an impact. Vidar does not tell his boss what he is working on in the latter parts of the novel. Schtupping a local married lady is also kept on the down-low. Talking separately to Edvard and Isak while not informing either of them of his contact is another. Vidar keeping secret a challenging work-based relationship also requires deceit. The noir atmosphere gets jiggy when a major hurricane, Gudrun, blows through. Homes are destroyed, people displaced. This was a real storm that caused major damage in Sweden. Details of the experience of such a beast are chilling. Maybe not the same as the assassination of the Prime Minister in the psyche of the nation, but it had a real impact. A heat wave also adds to the tension. Carlsson succeeds in presenting both detailed character portraits and in giving us a sense of what life was like in this area, a place in which he grew up. He is a PhD criminologist for his day job, publishing papers and teaching. He grew up around things criminal, as mom was a police dispatcher. It is clear that a lot of the conversation on which he eavesdropped at home as a kid made an impact. He knows crime, both real and fictitious, and writes with authority about it. This is a procedural, however lengthy the duration of the investigation. You will enjoy Vidar picking up on clues and following through, as he spends a lifetime attempting to find out the truth about that night. In the beginning it is a hot, fiery case that becomes a cold-case in the following parts of the novel. (In Sweden are all cases cold cases?) But not to Vidar. He is a flawed guy, but is determined to find out what really happened that night. Under the Storm is a triumph of the genre, tickling your brain with the mystery, engaging you emotionally with the characters, and offering up informed looks at a place and time, well, times. As a smart, accomplished example of Swedish noir, Under the Storm is out of this world. The world had shown what it was truly capable of. As if a lifeline was suddenly severed, it could take your loved ones away. The world watched without blinking as you fell.Review posted - 06/28/24 In Sweden - 3/1/2019 English Translation - 2/27/24 I received an ARE of Under the Storm from Hogarth in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be, cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the Carlsson’s Instagram and Twitter pages Profile - from Penguin Random House Christoffer Carlsson was born in 1986 on the west coast of Sweden. He holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Stockholm and is one of Sweden’s leading crime experts. Carlsson is the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, voted by the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy, and has been a finalist for the prestigious Glass Key award, given to the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year.Interview -----The Occasional Bookwitch Christoffer Carlsson – neither pink nor fluffy - It’s close to where he grew up, where he and his brother used to play. And then, halfway through writing the book, his parents sold up and moved away from his childhood home, moving into a flat in town, enjoying their new life on the 13th floor with marvelous views. ‘The novel became some sort of farewell. It was pretty hard. It’s as if part of my past has moved out of reach.’My review of another book in this series -----Blaze Me a Sun Item of Interest from the author -----With the Dead - this is a must-read item, as Carlsson details how he became a writer. You will see how his books incorporate elements of his life. Item of Interest -----Cyclone Gudrun ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 20, 2024
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Jun 19, 2024
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Paperback
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166802568X
| 9781668025680
| 166802568X
| 3.86
| 16,180
| Nov 07, 2023
| Nov 07, 2023
|
really liked it
| The road to ruin is paved with certainty. The end of the world is only ever hastened by those who think they will be able to protect their own from The road to ruin is paved with certainty. The end of the world is only ever hastened by those who think they will be able to protect their own from the coming storm.-------------------------------------- Love is the mind killer.So what would you do if your super-secret software gave you the alert? End times are afoot. Time to scoot! If you are like most of us, you might seek our your nearest and dearest to see the world out together. But what if you are one of the richest people on the planet? Well, in that case, you would have prepared a plan, an escape, a plane, supplies, a bunker somewhere safe. Buh-bye, and off they go. The they in this case includes three billionaires, the heads of humongous tech companies, some years in the not-too-distant future, Lenk Sketlish, Zimri Nommik, and Ellen Bywater. They were definitely not inspired by anyone specifically who could sue me for everything I’m worth and barely notice it…They are composite characters made up of some of the ridiculous and awful things that tech billionaires have done and some of it just made up out of my head. But of course the companies are inspired by real companies. - from the LitHub interviewWhat if you were the number one assistant to one of these folks, or the less-than-thrilled wife of another, or the ousted former CEO and founder of a third one, maybe the gifted child of one? You might have been spending your time trying to see what you could do to mitigate the vast harm these mega-corporations have done to the planet. These are Martha Einkorn, Lenk’s #2, Selah Nommik, Zimri’s Black British wife, Alex Dabrowski, founder and former CEO of the company now headed by Ellen, and Badger, Ellen’s son. “Margaret [Atwood] has very much covered how bad it can get, so we don’t need a lesser writer doing that,” Alderman says. “I’m interested in the most radical ideas about how we can make things better, and what are the avenues we can pursue.” - from the AP interviewBTW, Atwood mentored Alderman. What if you were attending a conference in Singapore, having recently met one of group B above for an interview, and gotten entangled in an unexpected way, but now find yourself in the vast mall in which the conference is being held, being chased and shot at by some psycho, probably a religious nut? Lai Zhen is a 33yo refugee from Hong Kong, an archaeologist and well-known survivalist influencer. She had met someone she thinks may be The One, but her immediate survival is taking up all available mental space. Thankfully, she has help, but will it be enough? [image] Naomi Alderman - image from The Guardian The action-adventure-sci-fi shell encasing The Future is a dystopian near-future that takes an if-this-goes-on perspective re the road we are currently traveling toward planetary devastation, global warming, the increasing greedification of the world economy, and concentration of wealth, at the expense of sustainability and human decency. But Alderman has done so much more with it. The Future has a brain and a heart, to go along with the coursing hormones, and some serious mysteries as well. Did I mention there is a romance in here also? Good luck shelving this thing. You probably will not have much luck putting it down once you start reading. Well, take that advisedly. I did find that it took a while to settle in, as there is a fair bit to get through with introducing all the characters, but once you get going, day-um, you will want to keep on. While offering a look at survival post everything, Alderman tosses in some fun high tech and BP-raising sequences. And she gives readers’ brains a workout, providing considerable fodder for book club discussions. To bolster the thematic elements, Aldermen provides plenty of connections to classic tales, biblical and other, that offer excellent starting points for lively discussions. Martha was raised in an apocalypse-concerned cult, led by her father. As an adult she gets involved in on-line exchanges about questions like what might be learned from the experience of a biblical apocalypse survivor, Lot. Alderman was raised as an Orthodox Jew, studying the Torah in the original, so knows her material well. (God was about to firebomb Sodom when Lot’s kindness to a couple of god’s emissaries earned him and his family a get-out-of-hell-free pass.) In addition, she finds relevance in Ayn Rand, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and more. She brings in a discussion of the enclosure act in the UK, how the stealing of public land by the wealthy has a mirror in the theft of public space of different sorts in the 20th and 21st centuries. But the biggest issue at work here is trust. In fact, Alderman had intended to title the book Trust. But when Herman Diaz’s novel, Trust, won a Pulitzer Prize, she had to find an alternative. Can Zhen trust her new love interest. Can she trust the AI that is supposedly helping her? Can she trust any of the oligarchs? Can she trust people she has known for years on line, but never met in person? This is a core concept, not just on a personal, but on a societal level. Civilizations are built on trust. It is an issue that touches everyone. The wealthier you are, the less you have to ask people things and the less you ask people for things, the less you have to discover that you can trust and rely on them. Eventually, that erodes your ability to trust. Then, you’re sunk. - from the Electric Literature interviewConsider a concern that is immediate in early 2024. Can American allies, whose alliances have kept the world out of World War III since the end of World War II, trust the US intelligence services with their secrets, when our next president might give, trade, or sell it to our enemies? Can you trust that the person you are communicating with on-line is being honest with you. (As someone who has met people through Match.com, I am particularly aware of that one.) If you are stuck on a survival island, can you trust that the other people there will not do you in, in order to improve their chances of gaining power once things begin to return to some semblance of global livability? In today’s culture, technology, particularly social media, “encourages us not to really trust each other,” Alderman explains. “The ways that we use to communicate with each other have been monetized in order to make us as angry at and afraid [of one another] as possible.” And while the internet can all too often amplify “absolute hateful stupidity” to feed our distrust of one another, the author continues, “It can also demonstrably, again and again, multiply our knowledge and capacity to understand.” - from the Shondaland interviewZhen’s is our primary POV through this, although we spend a lot of time with Martha. She is an appealing lead, a person of good intentions, and reasonably pure heart. She is wicked smart, able, and adaptive. It is easy to root for her to make it through. But, noting the second quote at the top of this review, if Love is the mind killer, might it impair her clarity of thought, her maintenance of necessary defenses? Of might it impair that of the person she is love with? The concern with dark forces is a bit boilerplate. Two of the oligarchs are cardboard villains; another has some edges. But it is the conceptual bits that give The Future its heft. Oh, and one more thing. Woven throughout the 432 pages of this book is minor crime, Grand Theft Planet. It should come as no surprise that an author who has had great success with her previous novels, and who has spent some years writing video games, would produce a fast-paced, engaging read, replete with dangers, anxieties, fun toys, and wonderful, substantive philosophical sparks. I cannot predict the future any better than 2016 presidential pollsters, but my personal AI suggests that should The Future will find its way to you, you will be glad it did. Imagining bad futures creates fear and fear creates bad futures. The pulse beats faster, the pressure rises, the voice of instinct drives out reason and education. At a certain point, things become inevitable.Review posted - 3/8/24 Publication date – 11/7/23 I received an ARE of The Future from Simon & Schuster in return for a fair review, and the password to my super-secret software. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Instagram, GR, and Twitter pages Profile - from Simon & Schuster Naomi Alderman is the bestselling author of The Power, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and was recommended as a book of the year by both Barack Obama and Bill Gates. As a novelist, Alderman has been mentored by Margaret Atwood via the Rolex Arts Initiative, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and her work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. As a video games designer, she was lead writer on the groundbreaking alternate reality game Perplex City, and is cocreator of the award-winning smartphone exercise adventure game Zombies, Run!, which has more than 10 million players. She is professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University. She lives in London.Interviews -----Professional Book Nerds - Dystopian Futures with Naomi Alderman - video, well, mostly audio, with no real video – 41:59 -----Toronto Public Library - Naomi Alderman | The Future | Nov 13, 2023 with Vass Bednar - 45:05 - there is a nice bit in here on tech as neither bad nor good, but a tool which can be used for good or evil. -----Literary Hub - Naomi Alderman on Creating a Fictional Tech Dystopia by Jane Ciabattari -----Shondaland - Naomi Alderman Is Still Finding Hope in Humankind by Rachel Simon -----AP- Naomi Alderman novel ‘The Future’ scheduled for next fall by Hillel Italic -----Electric Literature - Dystopian Future Controlled by Technology by Jacqueline Alnes -----Independent - How We Met: Naomi Alderman & Margaret Atwood - by Adam Jacques – Atwood mentored Alderman in 2012 – a fun read Item of Interest from the author -----BBC Sounds - audio excerpt - 1.0 – The End of Days – 15:47 Items of Interest -----Tristia by Ovid – Zhen reads this prior to a trip to Canada -----The Admiralty Islands -----inert submunition dispenser - a kind of cluster bomb -----Wiki on the enclosure act ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 05, 2024
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Mar 06, 2024
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
0593537572
| 9780593537572
| 0593537572
| 3.06
| 3,866
| Oct 24, 2023
| Oct 24, 2023
|
really liked it
| A scream suddenly pierces the air. Startled glances are exchanged on the porch, a drink is spilled, a baby begins to cry, and your muscles tense; y A scream suddenly pierces the air. Startled glances are exchanged on the porch, a drink is spilled, a baby begins to cry, and your muscles tense; you sense this is one of those plot leaps that writers use to punctuate and propel the narrative, like those bursts of biological creativity that scientists claim shock evolution into action. But you are unsettled; just pages into the book, is it too early? Should a mystery unfold in a more demure fashion? Aren’t the suspense and anticipation the real secret thrill of the book, rather than (let us be honest) the all-too-often disappointing dénouement, the magician turning over his cards for an audience that realizes, bitterly leaving the theater, that they’ve been had?-------------------------------------- Other people’s secrets are easy. It’s our own that are hardI am not particularly a fan of video games, the large immersive, role-playing ones. Nothing against them. They are simply outside my experience for the most part. But I do know that a lot of the experience, the joy of these games, lies in figuring things out. If I do this, what happens? What if I do that? Where might secret intel reside? How can I get to it? It strikes me that for many readers, particularly for readers of detective stories, the experience is comparable, however different the physical approaches might appear. The internal processes are quite similar. Reading West Heart Kill is a bit like having a game designer walking you through the construction of the game as you play it, reminding you of the usual rules, and teasing you a bit about whether you will actually figure things out or not, suggesting tricks and traps that writers (or game designers) employ to keep you off base, while remaining entertained. I am a bit obsessive when I read mysteries, keeping lists of characters with their attributes, keeping track of timelines, locations, motives, et al, so am primed for such things. The game here is an overt one. The author is challenging you to figure out whodunit. If you accept the challenge you need to figure things out before the final reveal, otherwise it is game over for you. It is not that you finish the book with no points. Figuring out the mystery, the how, why, when and where, may be the top prize, but a skillful writer will offer plenty of rewards along the way, whether you succeed or fail. I did not figure out ahead of time the large murder questions, but I did suss out some of the lesser puzzles, and there was at least some whoo-hoo!-figured-it-out satisfaction to be had in that. There are further benefits to be had. [image] Dann McDorman - image from the NY Times – shot by Maansi Srivastava The West Heart of the title is a private club (membership fees are exorbitant), high on wealth (well, presumed wealth, at least), and low on morals. Secrets abound, as one might expect. The residents, many of whom spent their summers there as children, have considerable difficulty with marital vows, in particular, and then, of course, with that whole thou shalt not kill thing. Adam McAnnis is a thirty-something private investigator who has been hired to hang about, keep his eyes open, and see if he spots anything off. His connection is with an erstwhile classmate, from whom he manages to wheedle an invitation. The place is isolated, and will become more so as an expected storm seems likely to close off roads and cut off communications. Sound familiar? Many of the elements that make up this very meta novel will, particularly as McDorman lays them out for us, addressing readers directly. The weary detective is one: How often is he both lonely and alone, suspicious of everyone, accepting betrayal as the rule, not the exception? The deceits that begin to unfold the moment the client walks through his office door. Nights spent in parked cars watching illicit silhouettes behind shaded windows, receipts pulled from dripping trash bags, a five-dollar bill waved between two fingers before a junkie’s fixed gaze . . . the debased work of hundreds of cases, a file cabinet full of tragedies and comedies and tales too ambiguous to categorize.Or one particular character type: As a general rule, in murder mysteries, the least likable character is the most likely to die. But devious writers can anticipate your knowledge of this cliché and thrust a character like Warren Burr into early prominence to surprise you, later, with an entirely different victim. Or, perhaps, more devious still, circle back and kill him off in a double bluff—destined to die all along, exploiting and perverting your expectations from the start. Of course, some writers, among them not the least skilled, use much the same trick to mask and unmask their murderers . . .These permeate the story, as McDorman pokes you to figure things out. He even provides lists of characters and clues to help you along. It does not take too long for first mortality to occur. McAnnis takes on the role of investigator, publicly this time. We tag along as he interviews each of the suspects in turn. McDorman has a bit of fun, even concocting one interview with a dead person. We are treated to small essays on this and that, methods of killing people, for example, or an etymology of the word Murder, or on Agatha Christie’s mysterious disappearance, or on well-known writers using pseudonyms, or on the rules for mysteries, or on unresolved literary murders, and more. These are small, delightful diversions. Voice is handled differently from the norm here. The novel takes place over a long July 4th holiday weekend —Thursday to Sunday — and so I had the idea of writing each day from an additional different perspective: “he”... “I”... “we”... etc. Thus, each section is stamped with its own particular identity. And of course, the “you” voice explores why the perspective suddenly shifts, and how that plays into the intrigue of the plot… - from the Bloomsbury interviewIn fact, this works to keep one off-balance a bit. But there was some ambiguity even within the voice, at times, that I found off-putting. For example, there are sections in which the resident population is represented by a sort-of “we” voice. Then it mixed with an omniscient narrator. While there was certainly a purpose to it, it came across as jumbled to me. Asked what drew him to the 1970s as a time in which to set his novel, McDormand said, The superficial reason is that it was fun! The hairstyles alone defy belief. Some of the most entertaining hours I spent “working” on the novel involved paging through mid-70s clothing catalogs; that led directly to an entire paragraph early in the book that is just a listing of the trademarked (and fabulously named) artificial fabrics worn by the characters: Acrilan®, Fortrel®, PERMA-PREST®, Sansabelt®, Ban-Lon®… More substantively, the zeitgeist of the 1970s felt intensely familiar to me. We’d lost trust in institutions and in each other; the old solutions didn’t work; the new ones seemed inadequate; a creeping disillusionment had overtaken the best of us, while the worst seemed full of passionate intensity. As an era, the 1970s seems extraordinarily relevant to writers and readers today. - from the Bloomsbury interviewThere are plenty of suggestive atmospherics, like a part of the considerable property that is used for hunting (hunting what, exactly?), or a traditional bonfire that might be used for the destruction of evidence, (or maybe eliminating a pesky witness?) primitive maps, hidden paths, mysterious people seen at a distance on ill-lit trails, a dark and stormy night. All great fun. Of course, there is another traditional element in the mystery novel. Be sure to bring along your fishing pole. There are red herrings aplenty to land. I found this to be an entertaining read, but there were bits that did not sit well. There is an event that happens near the end, which I will not spoil, that created a bit of a vacuum, that space being filled in a way that, while very creative, still felt forced and unnatural. Certain scenes are written as plays, which seemed cutesy. Not saying these were not entertaining, but why? Many of us who read Stephen King continue to do so because there is pleasure to be had in the reading, the engagement, the flow, the scares, even though many readers often find his final reveals to be unsatisfying. In a similar vein here. There is much in West Heart Kill that is great fun, that engages us and prods our brains to kick into gear when a less meta approach might just leave us to cruise through the read in a straight line. It encourages us to play, rather than just watch. That is worth a lot. The elements that bugged me made it less than a five-star read, but it will certainly stand out from the pack for seasoned readers of crime novels for its interactive approach. Game on. Review posted - 01/26/24 Publication dates ----------Hardcover – 10/24/23 ----------Trade paperback - 9/3/24 I received an ARE of West Heart Kill from Knopf in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Author links – well, McDorman’s social media links definitely remind one of the time in which he located his novel. He did have a Twitter account at some point, but has not posted anything for years. Nada on FB. Here is his GR profile page. Interviews -----NY Times - When a Book Deal Feels Like ‘Winning the Middle-Age Lottery’ by Elizabeth A. Harris – nothing on the book itself, solely on his unlikely situation of getting a first novel published. -----Bloomsbury - “In the end, both the detective and the killer must make a choice, whether to act from hate, or from love” -----Crimereads - DANN MCDORMAN ON EXPLORING LITERARY HIJINKS AND META MYSTERY by Jenny Bartoy -----BookBrunch - Q&A: debut novelist Dann McDorman by Lucy Nathan Items of Interest -----Publishers Weekly - Knopf Bets on 'West Heart Kill' -----Wiki on Angela Atwood - referenced in Chapter 1 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 19, 2024
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Jan 25, 2024
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Hardcover
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1250843332
| 9781250843333
| 1250843332
| 3.73
| 3,794
| Jul 25, 2023
| Jul 25, 2023
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liked it
| Maybe sex made more sense than marriage—or even dating—in old age. Wasn’t courtship for the young?-------------------------------------- Meet me Maybe sex made more sense than marriage—or even dating—in old age. Wasn’t courtship for the young?-------------------------------------- Meet me at Café des Artistes, eighteen hundred.”Loretta Plansky, widowed, retired, pretty fair tennis player, (particularly considering her new hip, only nine-months in) 71, Florida resident, financially comfortable, wakes one morning to discover that she has been pretty much cleaned out. Bank account, retirement fund, investments, the whole kit and caboodle, well, mostly. It seems that the ten grand she had given to her grandson, Will, overnight went instead to cybercriminals. The real Will had not asked her for anything. (Of course, I am totally in favor of folks sending cash to people named Will, but that’s just me. Any amount gratefully accepted.). The FBI special agent in charge holds out virtually no hope of her ever seeing her lost funds restored, but her number two, about to leave the bureau for a private gig, gives Mrs P one intriguing bit of intel. Unwilling to let this crime stand, she heads out to darkest Romania hoping to do…what? who knows? something. [image] Spencer Quinn (pen name for Peter Abrahams) - image from Macmillan – photo by Diana Gray Mrs P is an intrepid investigator, with an unusual skill set. She manages to talk to a relevant person at the US embassy in Bucharest, and persists in following up the few clues that float down her way. The story is told in parallel lanes. Mrs P is the primary of course, but we are also let in on the doings on the other side. Dinu is a teenager with a gift for and enthusiastic interest in American English. He collects colloquialisms and contemporary American slang the way a video-game player collects tokens to gain power. Of course, the power Dinu is amassing causes real harm. His scary uncle has paid to train him, and is now employing Dinu in making calls to American grandparents, pretending to be their stressed-out grandson, in need of emergency cash in order to get out of jail, or whatever. He has a computer whiz bff, Romeo, another teen, who is also employed by the scary uncle. Generally, they do not seem all that morally concerned about what they are doing, and the pay is good. So, Mrs P makes her way to the relevant town, and stumbles her way through to the sort of cozy resolution one might expect. Along the way there are mysterious passageways, dark deeds, life-threatening adventures, a car chase, a valuable jewel, and some very unpleasant characters. So, I guess this is less of a cozy mystery and more of a cozy adventure tale. It is a very good-natured story, and Mrs P is a fun lead, a very engaging sort, a good egg, who has been done dirt, but who would prefer to take matters into her own hands rather than leave her fate to the dubious efforts of others. She displays considerable courage, the creativity of an experienced field agent, and a wily serenity in stressful circumstances. One lovely element was her continued connection to her late husband, Norm. No magical realism here, just a pining for the person to whom she had been the closest for most of her life, as she shares thoughts and concerns with his memory, wondering at his theoretical advice. She is also a very kind person, amenable to applying the resources she has…well, had…to helping out her kids, despite that not necessarily being the wisest choice. You will get a taste of Romania, a very small taste. Most entertaining among these is a hotel festooned with portraits of Bela Lugosi. There is enough humor in here to generate several actual LOLs, which is always welcome BUT, as things were winding up to the big finish, there were multiple eye-roller events that took me out of the book. Like running a marathon then tripping over a stick in the road, then another, then another. I did finish the book, and it was a fun read, for the most part. But I found myself saying “Really?” more than once or twice. And that damaged my overall feeling. Bottom line is that you have to be willing to overlook some egregious reliance on coincidence and deus-ex-machina trickery to make the story work out. I expect I am a bit towards the higher end in my sensitivity to such things. But if you are more forgiving, better at leaping past roadway impediments, then do it, jump in. You will be rewarded with a fun, light read, featuring a very engaging lead. Mrs P will be glad of the company, and so will you. Review posted - 09/29/23 Publication dates ----------Hardcover– 7/25/23 ----------Trade paperback - 7/9/24 I received an ARE of Mrs. Plansky's Revenge from Tor Publishing in return for a fair review and the password to my bank account. Hey, now wait a goldarned minute! Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages Profile Spencer Quinn is the pen name for Peter Abrahams, the Edgar-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Chet and Bernie mystery series, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling Bowser and Birdie series for middle-grade readers. He lives on Cape Cod with his wife Diana and dog Pearl.Interviews -----The Big Thrill - Up Close: Spencer Quinn by Karen Hugg – all on dog books -----Famous Writing Routines - Interview with Peter Abrahams: “I love what I do. Love seems to clear a lot of paths.” - nothing particular to this book. More on his methodology. Songs/Music -----The Byrds - Eight Miles High - appears in Chapter 13 -----The Chimes - I’m in the Mood for Love - Chapter 20 Items of Interest -----Excerpt - Chapter One -----Federal Trade Commission – Consumer Advice - Phone Scams -----Tor/Forge Blog - Inspiration and Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge by Spencer Quinn! by Ariana Carpenter Five or six years ago, my dad got a phone call. At the time he was in his early nineties. He died two weeks short of his 97th birthday and was in excellent mental shape and very good physical shape until the end. I want to emphasize that mental part. He was a very smart guy: quick, sharp, clear-headed. Back to the call....more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Sep 24, 2023
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Sep 26, 2023
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Hardcover
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1250860024
| 9781250860026
| 1250860024
| 3.49
| 12,565
| Aug 08, 2023
| Aug 08, 2023
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it was amazing
| The sea whispers, faint. It sounds like pages shuffling. A seal barks. I lick a finger and test the breeze. The wind is in the east. A moment late The sea whispers, faint. It sounds like pages shuffling. A seal barks. I lick a finger and test the breeze. The wind is in the east. A moment later it comes, mournful and high. The stones are singing and I feel it, at last, that I’m home. I listen for a time, despite my tiredness. I think, if heartbreak had a sound, it would be just like this.-------------------------------------- She can smell him the way wild animals smell prey.-------------------------------------- The visions don’t frighten me anymore. I can usually tell what’s real and what isn’t.Don’t get comfortable. Wilder Harlow has returned to the cottage where he stayed as a teen, to write the book he had started over three decades before. He is not entirely well. We meet him in 1989, via his unpublished memoir, which tells of the momentous events of that Summer. He was sixteen. His parents had just inherited a cottage from the late Uncle Vernon, and opt to spend a summer there before deciding whether to sell. It is on the Looking Glass Sound of the title, near a town, Castine, in Maine. Beset in prep school, for his unusual features, particularly pale skin and bug eyes, Wilder is ready for a novel experience. (“I’m looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and thinking about love, because I plan on falling in love this Summer. I don’t know how or with whom.”) [image] Catriona Ward - image from Love Reading The sound has an unusual…um…sound. The leaves of the sugar maple whisper—under it, there’s a high-pitched whine, a long shrill note like bad singing…it sounds like all the things you’re not supposed to believe in—mermaids, selkies, sirens…’What’s that sound?’ It seems like it’s coming from inside of me, somehow. Dad pauses in the act of unlocking the door. ‘It’s the stones on the beach. High tide has eaten away at them, making little holes—kind of like finger stops on a flute—and when the wind is in the east, coming over the ocean, it whistles through.’Sure, dad, but the wind-driven whistling is not the only sound that haunts in these parts. It does not take long for Wilder to make two friends. Nathaniel is the son of a local fisherman, his mother long gone. Harper is English, her well-to-do parents summer there. Wilder’s relationships with these two will define not only this Summer and the one after, but the rest of his life. Harper is a flaming redhead, with issues. She has been kicked out of many schools, for diverse crimes. So, of course, Wilder is madly in love with her at first sight. Nat, a golden boy in Wilder’s eyes, has a way of describing fishing with a harshness that is unsettling. The three form their own tribe for a time. Pearl is named for her mother’s favorite jewel. She was only five when mom disappeared. They had been staying at a B&B in Castine. But Pearl’s mother is far from forgotten. Sometimes her mother talks to Pearl in the night. She learns to keep herself awake, so she can hear her. It always happens the same way. Rebecca’s coming. It starts with the sound of the wind roaring in Pearl’s head, just like that day on the mountain. And then Rebecca’s warm hands close over her cold ears.The area has a local creep. Dagger Man is the name assigned to whoever is responsible for a series of break-ins of homes occupied by Summer people. He takes photos of kids sleeping. Then sends the polaroids to the parents. The images include a dagger to the throat. Adding to the creepiness, there is a history of women going missing here. And a legend of a sea goddess luring people to a dark end. The second summer in Castine, there is an accident in a secret cave, involving Wilder, Nat, and Harper. It leads to a very dark, traumatic discovery, upending their worlds. When Wilder heads off to college, soon after, he is intent on becoming a writer, but, while there, his closest friend, Sky, steals his story, going on to publish a wildly successful novel using Wilder's work. He is never able to get past this, thus his final return to the source a lifetime later, to have one last go at writing his true version. Ward employs some of the usual tricks of creating a discomfiting atmosphere. The sounds emanating from the bay are strong among these. Even underwater I can still hear the wind singing in the rocks. And I hear a voice, too, calling. In describing Harper, Wilder notes Her hair is deep, almost unnatural red, like blood. And The wet sand of the bay is slick and grey. It’s obscene like viscera, a surface that shouldn’t be uncovered. (Well, ok then. Which way to the pool?) Nat describing how his father kills seals is pretty chilling. Ward has had some eerie experiences, I suffer from hypnagogic hallucinations. They started when I was about 13, taking the form of a hand in the small of my back as I was falling asleep, shoving me out of bed really hard. I knew there was someone in the room and I knew they didn’t mean me well. With the information I had at the time – pre-Google as well – there was no other explanation for it, was there? I think it’s probably the deepest chasm I have ever looked into. There’s nothing comparable to it in the daylight world. - from the 9/26/22 Guardian interviewwhich find their way into the story. So, there are two presenting mysteries, Dagger Man and the missing women. And a bit of magic in the air, whether it is a dark siren luring some to a watery grave, mysterious noises and notes, or teens fooling around with witchy spells. Are the kids just being imaginative, or is there something truly spectral going on? A feeling of powerlessness is core to the horror genre. The main characters here share a deep sense of vulnerability. This is very much a coming-of-age novel. Adolescence is a prime vulnerable state, a transition between childhood and the mystery of adulthood. Not knowing who you are. Trying on different roles, names, behaviors, hoping for love, of whatever sort, always susceptible to rejection and/or betrayal, and/or disappointment. There is added vulnerability with their families. Any teen going through changes would benefit from a solid base of parental constancy. Wilder’s parents are going through more than just a rough patch. Nat does not seem particularly close to his only parent. Harper refers to a pet dog that protects her from her father. There are enough secrets in the world. Bad families, bad fathers. Pearl’s mother, like Nat’s, is long gone. In addition to whatever else assails them, there is self-harm. The Dagger Man is wandering about. People disappear. The bay has disturbing aspects to engage all the senses. There are a few more stressors, as well. That certainly sets the stage for an unsettling horror tale. That would all be plenty. But wait, there’s more. Some books have unreliable narrators This one has an unreliable ensemble, existing in unreliable worlds. Looking Glass Sound is not your usual scare-fest. The terrors here lie deeper than a slasher villain or a vengeful ghost. In addition to the external frights, these have to do with existential concerns, about identity, who, what, where, and when you are. Offering the sorts of thoughts that can interfere with a restful night, with the legs to disturb your sleep for a long time. This would be more than enough, but wait. This is also a book about writing. A pretty common element in many novels, it’s on steroids in this one, cruising along in the meta lane. Writers are monsters, really. We eat everything we see. The book is a mirror and I am stepping through the looking glass. ‘Writing is power,’ she says. ‘Big magic. It’s a way of keeping someone alive forever.’ I think about our three names, us kids, as we were. ‘Wilder,’ I whisper to myself sometimes. ‘Nathaniel, Harper.’ We’re all named after writers. It’s too much of a coincidence. Harper. Wilder. Harlow. The names chime together. The kind of thing that would never happen in real life but it might happen in a book. ‘You wanted to live forever,’ Harper says gently. ‘You both did, you and Wilder. That’s all writers really want, whatever they say.She also gets into the morality of story ownership. When does your personal tale become a commodity? Who has the right to tell your story? I cannot say I have ever read a book quite like this one. It is not an easy read. Despite some surface technique that places it in the gothic/horror realm, there is a lot more going on here. You will have to be on top of your reading game to keep track, but it will be worth your time and studied attention. There should be surgeon general’s warning on this book. Stick with it and you will get a very satisfying read, and endure many nights of unwelcome wondering. I wake to the sound of breath. No hand caressing me, this time. Instead I have the sense that I am being pummeled and stretched, pulled by firm hands into agonizing, geometrical shapes. I scream but no voice comes from my throat. Instead, an infernal scratching—horrible, like rats’ claws on stone, like bone grinding, like the creak of a bough before it breaks. Or like a pen scratching on paper. Review posted - 7/21/23 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - 08/08/23 ----------Trade paperback - 07/3-/24 I received an ARE of Looking Glass Sound from Tor/Nightfire in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. Can you please turn down the volume on that thing? [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Profile – from Wikipedia Catriona Ward was born in Washington, D.C. Her family moved a lot and she grew up all over the world, including in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. Dartmoor was the one place the family returned to on a regular basis. Ward read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Ward initially worked as an actor based in New York. When she returned to London she worked on her first novel while writing for a human rights foundation until she left to take an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. That novel, Rawblood (distributed in the United States as The Girl from Rawblood), was published in 2015. Now she writes novels and short stories, and reviews for various publications.[1] Ward won the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel in 2016 …and again in 2018 for Little Eve, making her the first woman to win the prize twice. Her most successful novel has been The Last House on Needless Street. Links to Ward’s FB and Instagram pages Interviews -----The Guardian – 9/26/22 - Catriona Ward: ‘When done right, horror is a transformative experience.’ by Hephzibah Anderson -----The Guardian - 3/13/21'Every monster has a story': Catriona Ward on her chilling gothic novel by Justine Jordan -----Lit Reactor - Catriona Ward: Learning to Fail by Jena Brown -----The Big Thrill – 8/31/2021 - Up Close: Catriona Ward by April Snellings -----Tor/Forge - Catriona Ward – What Was Your Inspiration for Looking Glass Sound? -----Books Around the Corner - Catriona Ward by Stephanie Ross -----Quick Book Reviews – Episode 206 – April 24, 2023 - Books! Boks! Books! from 26:06 to 42:30 Items of Interest -----The Novelry – 10/2/2022 - Catriona Ward and the Power of Writing Horror -----NHS - Charles Bonnet syndrome ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Jul 07, 2023
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Jul 19, 2023
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Hardcover
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1250853672
| 9781250853677
| 1250853672
| 4.09
| 58,297
| Nov 08, 2018
| Mar 14, 2023
|
really liked it
| The weight on her chest lightens, her breathing slows. The ‘monkeys inside her head screech a little less loudly. That’s what is so brilliant about The weight on her chest lightens, her breathing slows. The ‘monkeys inside her head screech a little less loudly. That’s what is so brilliant about certainties, even fleeting ones. They offer us respite.Police Inspector Jon Guttierez of the Bilbao PD, 43, is a large person, a weightlifter who lives with his mother. He ran into a spot of trouble recently when he attempted to plant evidence on a well-known drug dealer, only to be filmed in the act, said film going viral. Oopsy. He stands to lose a lot more than just his badge. When what to his wondering eyes should appear but a get-out-of-jail-free card, in the form of a mysterious personage known as Mentor. But Mentor has a tough, if unusual ask. He wants Jon to persuade someone to return to work. Someone who really, really does not want back in. [image] Juan Gómez-Jurado - image from Zenda Antonia Scott (her father the British ambassador, her mother a Spaniard) spends three minutes of every day contemplating suicide. (Whatever works for ya, dear.) Her comatose beloved husband has been in a hospital bed for three years. She has been by his side throughout, clearly feeling some responsibility for his condition. (Antonia’s struggle is reminiscent of how JGJ felt when his father was dying during the writing of the book.) Antonia has regular chats with her English grandmother, who encourages her to put her particular set of skills to good use, instead of letting them go to waste. She has some superpowers, but also some limitations, one being a need for a certain medication when she is overwhelmed. The inspiration for Antonia and Jon inevitably stems from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Antonia is that idealistic being, she does not hesitate to face the windmills, because she believes in a better world. Jon, on the other hand, is that pragmatist who has a dreamer hidden inside of him. - from the Hindustani interview [image] Vicky Luengo plays Antonia Scott in the Prime series – image from InStyle Jon clearly succeeds in drawing Antonia out, or we wouldn’t have a book. And he becomes her partner. Not spoilers. It appears that Antonia is quite special indeed, with a mental capacity well beyond the norm. She had been a member of an elite international police organization, Red Queen, a network across Europe, one unit per country, each led by a Mentor. They exist outside the usual police structures, relying on the local constabulary for on-scene access and intel. Each unit uses a person with special gifts to help solve major crimes. Red Queens are selected for having a set of particular characteristics, which Antonia has. Uber-smart, amazing memory, analytical capacity just this side of a super-computer. (very Lisbeth Salander) But will she be smart enough to foil a criminal mastermind who has already murdered one child of the uber-rich, and has kidnapped another? [image] Hovik Keuchkerian plays Jon Guttierez in the Prime series – image from his Twitter profile Alvaro Trueba, a teenager, has been dead several days, drained of blood, and laid out with bizarre religious iconography that is clear to the particularly perceptive. The kidnapper calls himself Ezekiel. The house in which his body was found, in a gated community, was one of several owned by his one-percenter parents. Antonia and Jon must contend with the Abduction and Extortion Unit. (AEU), led by Captain Jose Luis Parra. Far too often, police stories have a dickish supervisor, tacking to political winds at every breeze, and getting in the way of actual investigators. Parra serves that role here, although as someone in a parallel, instead of superior role. He is not a totally incompetent team leader. Still, very dickish. Just because we’re a unit created to avoid competition and secrets being kept between different police forces doesn’t mean we don’t repeat the same old mistakes.Carlos Ortiz is the wealthiest man in the world. When his daughter, Carla, is kidnapped, he receives a call. His next call is to Red Queen, and Jon and Antonia are brought in, seeing the obvious connections between the cases. The story is told in the 3rd person, primarily following Antonia and Jon as they track down leads in pursuit of the baddie. Once Carla is taken hostage, we flip back and forth between the investigation and her experience. There are occasional sidebar chapters in which we get a closer look at some of the supporting characters. Red Queen is a particularly fun thriller to read. JGJ has a wonderfully droll (snotty?) sense of humor which permeates. Do not expect rolling on the floor hysterics, but you will smile and titter a lot. Jon gets all he knows about children from Modern Family reruns or When his sandwich arrives, Jon confirms that the hospital follows tradition: the grill they use must never be cleaned. Because she is fluent in many languages, Antonia often brings in obscure words or expressions from diverse cultures (aboriginal, South Ghanaian, and others) when that word is particularly descriptive of a situation. This is a wonderful bit, speaking to the limits of communication in a single language. There is also some intel on the ancient, unseen, infrastructure of Madrid, a nifty Dan-Brownish touch. The supporting cast is also a plus. Corrupt security guards, a feisty nonagenarian granny, a tattoo artist who delights in disrespecting tourist customers, the testosterone-poisoned Captain Parra, an oily reporter, a mad scientist (I am not crazy; my reality is just different from yours.), and an evil baddie. The portrayal of criminal motivation and history was thin, but hopefully later volumes will flesh those out a bit more. I was hesitant at first to read this one, as it is the opener of a trilogy. Would there be resolution at the end or a cliffhanger? The answer is yes. There are some things that remain to be resolved, but there is enough of an ending here to make it a viable stand-alone read. Every adventure requires a first step. There are twists and turns aplenty, which always helps. And questions to be answered. Will Carla escape? Will Antonia and Jon uncover who is behind these crimes? Will the usual competitive misery from other forces interfere with the investigation? What is it the kidnappers want and why are those demands not being met? Will Antonia completely fall apart before they can complete their mission? (We’re all mad here) You will want to know as you flip-flip-flip-flip through these pages. Red Queen is a good beginning at which to begin. I would urge you to go on till you come to the end, then stop. But of course, that will not be possible for most of us. We only received an English-language translation of Reisa Rosa in 2023. It was originally released in Spain in 2018. There are three books in the series. For those fluent in Spanish there will be no waiting, but for those of us who do not speak Spanish, let the panting begin for volumes two (Loba Negra or Black Wolf, due 3/12/24 from Minotaur) and three (Rey Blanco or White King, presumably a year later) in English translation. The trilogy has been a huge international hit. Prime has optioned the series for a Spanish-language production. In the video interview linked below, we learn that primary shooting has completed for at least five episodes. I would guess a probable release in late 2023 or in 2024. I wouldn’t wait, though. Red Queen is a perfect summer read, whatever color roses you might prefer. A spasm of pure fear convulses Antonia’s body. Fear and loathing. Because she finally understands—with piercing, icy clarity—what has been going on from the very start. Review posted – June 30, 2023 Publication ----------Hardcover - March 14, 2023 – (English translation) ----------Trade paperback - March 12, 2024 It was first published in Spanish on November 8, 2018 I received an ARE of Red Queen from Minotaur Books in return for a fair review, and releasing my hostage. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Gomez-Jurado’s personal, FB, and Twitter pages Profile- from EAE Business School Juan Gómez-Jurado was born in Madrid in 1977. His interest in literature led him to pursue a career in Information Science. No one at TVE, Canal Plus, La Voz de Galicia or COPE Radio Station —where he has worked— could have imagined what he would become in time. It wasn’t until 2006, when he published his novel, God’s Spy, that his talent became known, not only in Spain, but all across the globe.Interviews -----Murder by the Book - Live from Madrid: Juan Gomez-Jurado Presents, "The Red Queen" Hosted by Sara DiVello - video – 35:08 – almost all of this is about his writing process, with bits about this book here and there -----Hindustan Times - Interview: Juan Gomez-Jurado, author, Red Queen by Arunima Mazumdar Item of Interest from the author -----Crime Reads - Excerpt - Jon trying to persuade Antonia to return to work Items of Interest -----Gutenberg - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll -----Gutenberg - Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll -----Gutenberg - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra -----Bookroo – quotes from Alice in Wonderland The epigraph of the novel is a quote from Through the Looking Glass, the book title having been taken from that. So, it seemed fitting to sprinkle throughout the review quotes from that and from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I used the Bookroo site above for that. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 07, 2023
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Jun 23, 2023
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Jun 27, 2023
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Hardcover
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0593540212
| 9780593540213
| 0593540212
| 3.34
| 1,736
| Jan 10, 2023
| Jan 10, 2023
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really liked it
| Maude’s voice was far away, the way the chime of a bell can feel distant even if it’s right in front of you. “You’re too late,” she said to me, to Maude’s voice was far away, the way the chime of a bell can feel distant even if it’s right in front of you. “You’re too late,” she said to me, to no one. “Every last one of them is dead.”-------------------------------------- “Every gift comes at a price.”NYPD detective Leigh O’Donnell is on double-secret suspension. Her prospects of returning to her job are about as real as Dean Wormer ever authorizing the return of Delta Tau Chi. On top of that, she is newly separated from her (boss) husband, the person who suspended her. He could not understand why she would pull her gun on a fellow officer, allowing a caught suspect to escape. Thankfully, her brother, Ronan (Ro), gets in touch. Seems that back home in Copper Falls, Ohio, there had been a very suspicious triple death. And they would love it if an actual NYC detective could pop by for a look-see. Leigh takes the opportunity to skip town for a while, bringing along her four-year-old daughter, Simone. [image] Jennifer Herrera - image from her site Who says you can’t go home again? Oh, Thomas Wolfe, in his novel of that name. Ok. Fine, whatever. Well, Leigh gives it a go anyway, taking the opportunity to introduce Simone to Leigh’s uncles, to Ro, and to the town in which she had grown up. It will come as no shock that author Jennifer Herrera spent much of her childhood in a small Ohio town. For the first five years of my life, I lived in a trailer park, which, while not economically diverse, was diverse in just about every other way. So when my family moved to a small town in rural Ohio, I wasn’t prepared for how alien I would feel there. Everyone was related. They all looked alike. They went to the same church. They held the same beliefs. If you’re not from there, it’s unbelievable. But those places still exist.Herrera comes up with a few possibilities about that, most of them less than complimentary to the residents of her fictionalized version. This is a place with secrets. Pretty tough to make any progress finding out the truth when you are struggling upstream against a torrent of lies. The first-person story-telling is mostly linear with some flashbacks. Added to the presenting mystery of what happened to these three young men are Leigh’s personal struggles. She wants to save her endangered marriage. She wants to resurrect her career as a detective. But she also wants to get a better handle on who she really is. For better or worse, this Podunk town is a part of her, even if she had left it years before, intending never to return. She has loving family here, in addition to painful memories. This was once a true home for her. Could it ever be that for her again? It would be great for her daughter to have a larger family tree than the few branches Leigh can offer her in NY. So, Leigh is engaging in a journey of self-discovery. But it is also a quest. You can tick off the Campbellian stages, as our hero does battle with dark forces and descends to the equivalent of hell, fending off monsters in order to reach her goal. One of her uncles even thinks of her as a classic Irish hero of legend, Fionn MacCumhaill - aka Finn McCool. The uncles serve multiple roles, connection to and intel on locals, child care for Simone, a warm, familial homey element, and comic relief. Imagery abounds. Herrera clearly enjoys playing with archetypal images. Snakes put in appearances. There is an apple orchard that, when paired with the snakes, certainly gives one an image of a corrupted Eden. A house tucked away out of sight makes one wonder if there might be someone inside preparing to cook children. A flock of birds massing to protect one damaged member has got to mean something, right? Shrines figure large. There are said to be shrines in the caves under the waterfall, likely remnants of indigenous people who were driven out by colonizers. The people of the town seriously want to keep their town the way it is, preserved in amber, a sort of shrine to their past, to themselves. Herrera includes a fun reference to a relevant Twilight Zone episode to bolster the image. The title of the book comes in for some use. Early on a character refers to detective Leigh as a hunter. An archetypal native personage figures large. There is even a sly reference to hunter green. There are peculiarities that grab our attention and demand exploration. For example, threes abound here. Maud had three brothers who perished together a lifetime ago. There were the multiple deaths seven years back of three young men of eighteen. The latest mortal hat trick included men in their twenties, contemporaries of the prior three. Interestingly, the last two trifectas all turned up in the pool at the bottom of the same waterfall. Curious, no? And Leigh’s mother had three brothers, the uncles of this tale. What’s up with all the treys? Obviously, poking through all this imagery stuff, looking for connections that may or may not be real, digging down into rabbit holes as they appear (What is that rabbit late for, and where is he going?) is great fun. But, pleasurable as that is, the book would not succeed if we did not feel a connection to the lead. Not to worry. Leigh has her issues, but she is definitely relatable. On the down side, I found it a bit tough to accept that Leigh would do what she did in NYC for the reason that is offered. The supporting cast is a mixed crew. Some stand out, like the elderly, mysterious Maud. Onetime bf and now reporter, Mason Vogel, is a confusing foil for Leigh. Her brother, Ronan, is a likeable partner. The uncles are fun. Most stand back, as supporting characters do. Means to an end, whether advancing the plot or offering atmospherics. The notion of history, both the immediate and personal history of individuals, and the larger, longer cultural history of a place, and its hold on the present, for good or ill, is palpable. The procedural elements are well done, and the explanations make a dark sort of sense. The lead is someone we can pull for. The Hunter is a fun read, an engaging mystery that will keep you well-entertained, and keep your gray cells firing for the duration. …most of the businesses in town—the grocery store, the antiques market, the candy shop—they’re all owned by the same seven families. The Wagners are the majority share, sure, but this town? It’s all one big family business.” Review posted - 2/3/23 Publication date – 1/10/23 I received an eARE of The Hunter from Putnam in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been, or soon will be, cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Instagram, and Twitter pages Interviews -----Oh! Murder - Interview: Jennifer Herrera, The Hunter -----The Mystery of Writing - The Hunter: Debut Thriller Items of Interest from the author -----Book Club Kit -----Crimereads - MEN ARE THE MOST LIKELY VICTIMS OF HOMICIDE. WHY DO CRIME WRITERS KILL SO MANY WOMEN? Items of Interest -----Wiki on Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again “You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”-----Discovering Ireland - Fionn MacCumhaill - aka Finn McCool of Irish legends -----Twilight Zone Fandom - The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine -----ProWritingAid - Deep Dive: Joseph Campbell’s "Hero’s Journey" -----Wiki on Animal House ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 20, 2023
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Jan 27, 2023
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Jan 31, 2023
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Hardcover
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0593186710
| 9780593186718
| 0593186710
| 3.11
| 157,285
| Jan 03, 2023
| Jan 03, 2023
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really liked it
| An ancient poplar loomed at the entrance to the abandoned road, its rounded mass of huddled gray limbs reminding her of a brain. She passed beneath An ancient poplar loomed at the entrance to the abandoned road, its rounded mass of huddled gray limbs reminding her of a brain. She passed beneath its lobes, twigs branching like arteries overhead as she entered the forest.-------------------------------------- Deep in these woods, there is a house that’s easy to miss.Maya Edwards is 25, not well off, ½ Guatemalan, ¼ Irish, ¼ Italian, with no career drive after getting her degree from Boston University. She is from Pittsfield, MA, where her mother still lives. Her father died before she was born. Not the only significant death in her life. When she was 18, her bff, Aubrey, died a mysterious death, at the hands, she believes, of a man they had both dated. But, despite her being present when it happened, there are no viable clues with which to make a case, and folks thought her nuts for even trying. Today Maya has a life, just moved in with her boyfriend, is about to meet his parents, when she sees a video on Youtube. A young woman, in a diner with her bf, suddenly keels over dead. A close look at her table partner reveals the same man who had killed her friend. She is terrified that he might continue to kill women and may be coming back to Pittsfield to clean up loose ends. [image] Ana Reyes - image from her site Maya keeps having dreams about a cabin in the woods, a welcoming abode, with a warm blaze in the fireplace, the burning pine logs adding their scent to the room, the log walls offering shelter from a strong wind. It is cozy, feels like home. But there is danger there as well. Frank is there in the dreams, always there. She struggles to understand the sounds she hears, but realizes they are coming from Frank, who appears suddenly behind her, and she wakes, drenched in sweat. So, what’s up with that? The central mystery (well, there are two, the first one is whether Frank actually killed those two women, and if so how, and) what is the deal with the strange house in the woods that haunts her dreams, the House in the Pines of the title. Maya is not the most reliable of narrators. She is going through withdrawal from Klonopin. It was prescribed to help her sleep, but the scrip can no longer be filled and she is trying to go cold turkey. She has used alcohol liberally to help her both sleep and drown out the darkness that troubles her. Is she imagining things? Are the drugs and alcohol causing her to hallucinate? Is the stress of white-knuckle withdrawal impairing her ability to reason? I was living in Louisiana, working toward my MFA in fiction, and, like Maya,…had suddenly quit Klonopin after several years of taking it nightly for sleep. The doctor who had prescribed it back in LA never said anything about addiction, while my new Baton Rouge doctor treated me like an addict when I asked her for it. She cut me off cold turkey, and I went through protracted withdrawal syndrome, the symptoms of which inform Maya’s experience in the book. Writing about benzodiazepine withdrawal—albeit from her perspective—helped me through it. - from the Book Club KitThe story flips back and forth between the present day and seven years prior. We get to see her friendship with Aubrey, and how Frank had come between them. We see how her current troubles with withdrawal and her determination to look into the Frank situation may be interfering with her current serious relationship. Maya does her Miss Marple thing to try to find out what really happened to Aubrey, to find out how Frank killed her, and one more thing. During the few weeks in which she dated Frank, there were multiple episodes in which she lost hours of time. Did Frank drug her? There is peril aplenty, as we take Maya’s word that Frank is a killer, so all her activity might be putting her in mortal peril. If only the cops had taken her seriously, but you know the cops in such almost stories never do. Pliny the Elder said Home is where the heart is, but how can a place that feels so home-like also be so terrifying? This reflects some events and concerns in Reyes’s life. The inspiration was mostly subconscious. I was living alone in a new city, cut off from any place I’d call home, when I wrote the first draft. This lonely feeling inspired one of the book’s major themes, which is the universal yearning to return to a place and time of belonging. That theme shaped the story and helped me build the titular house in the pines. - from the Book Club KitReyes incorporated several elements of her life into the book. In addition to struggles with addiction, both Maya and Ana are half Guatemalan. Both were raised in Pittsfield, MA. The book took seven years to write, and the gap between Aubrey’s death and Maya’s return to the scene of the crime is seven years. In order to solve the mysteries, Maya must figure out the imagery in an incomplete book her father had been writing when he died in Guatemala. The references take one a bit afield, but if you dig into them, you will be rewarded. I posted some info in EXTRA STUFF. Maya’s father’s book points to an important truth about the danger she’s in. For me this was a metaphor for inherited trauma. Like so many people with roots in colonized places, the violence of the past has a way of showing up in the present in unexpected and highly personal ways. This is true for Maya in a very literal sense. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born. - from the Book Club KitThere are some fairy-tale-like references in here, but I am not sure they are much more than added in passing. One can see certainly see Frank as a seductive wolf, a la Little Red Riding Hood. A musical group dresses as the fairy godmothers, lending one to consider Sleeping Beauty, which is further reinforced by Maya’s several episodes of lost time, and, ironically, her difficulties with sleep. Woods, per se, have always been a source of fear in Western lore. So, is it any good? Yep. Ana is certainly flawed enough for us to gain some sympathy, although she cashes in some of those chits with occasional foolish decisions. Secondary characters are a mixed lot. Her boyfriend is thinly drawn. Mom has more to her. Her teen bud, Aubrey, even more. Frank is an interesting mix of loser and menace. The strongest bits for me were a visit to Guatemala and the depiction of the attractiveness of the house. I will not give away the explanation for it all, but, while it may have a basis in the real world, I found it a stretch to buy completely. Still, righteous, if damaged, seeker of truth digging into the mysterious, while imperiled by a dark force, with little support from anyone, with a fascinating bit of other-worldliness at its core. I enjoyed my stay in the cabin. Page-turner material. The image is both comforting and really sinister at the same time once we learn more about it. Review posted - 01/27/23 Publication dates ----------01/03/23 - hardcover ----------12/05/23 - trade paperback I received an ARE of The House in the Pines from Dutton in return for a fair review, and another log on the fire. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been, or soon will be, cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages The House in the Woods Was a Reese’s book club selection for January 2023 Interviews -----NY Times - Teaching Writing to Retirees Helped Ana Reyes Stay Focused by Elisabeth Egan -----Salon - "House in the Pines" thriller author on the "dark side of nostalgia" with a narrator no one believes -----Writer’s Digest - Ana Reyes: On Working The Writing Muscles by Robert Lee Brewer -----Professional Book Nerds - Talking The House in the Pines with Author Ana Reyes by Joe Skelley - audio – 40:00 Items of Interest -----Book Club Kit -----Gnosis.org - The Hymn of the Pearl - The Acts of Thomas Songs/Music ----- Emily Portman - Two Sisters - referenced in Chapter 5, although by a different performer -----Bobby Darin - Dream Lover - playing at the Blue Moon Diner in Chapter 10 -----Mano Negra - El Senor Matanza - noted in Chapter 11 as Maya’s new favorite band ----- Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral - mentioned in Chapter 17 ----- The Foo Fighters - There is Nothing Left to Lose - mentioned in Chapter 17 -----Lenny Kravitz - Mama Said - mentioned in Chapter 17 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 16, 2023
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Jan 20, 2023
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Jan 20, 2023
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Hardcover
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0593449355
| 9780593449356
| 0593449355
| 3.93
| 4,020
| Mar 10, 2021
| Jan 03, 2023
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really liked it
| I raped a woman in a car. It’s near Tiarp Farm. A brief silence followed. Then: I’m going to do it again. Bye.------------------------------------ I raped a woman in a car. It’s near Tiarp Farm. A brief silence followed. Then: I’m going to do it again. Bye.-------------------------------------- Monstrousness was always sleeping right beneath the surface, just out of sight.1986 - A terrible crime in an out-of-the-way place. A young woman is brutally raped and murdered in her own car. It might have gotten a bit more national attention had there not been another crime that night, the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. The attention would have been merited, as the killer taunted the police with a phone call, boasting of his deed and promising more of the same. He will become known as Tiarp Man. The case falls to Sven Jörgensson. It will consume him. [image] Christoffer Carlsson- image from Ahlander Agency Blaze Me a Sun has a frame structure. It opens in 2019, with a writer looking into the famous crimes that had taken place in Halland County, in southern Sweden. He is a local, who has been away for a long time, but felt a need to return home. Those who knew him as a kid call him Moth. The primary story is the one that Moth researches and tells. Then we go back to Moth for the final fifth (or so) of the novel. The book is divided into multiple periods. The first (inside the frame) is 1986, when the first crimes take place. Next is 1988 when the national police take over the investigation. In 1991, there are more violent crimes. Is it the same person? 2019 is when Moth is up front as our narrator, at the beginning and end of the novel. I was reminded of the true-crime format, in which the host/narrator walks you through all the details of one or multiple crimes, then offers the reveal at the end. But the first-person perspective of the frame is replaced in the core here by a third-person-omniscient perspective. At the back end of the story, the narrator takes center stage again, leading us through his further inquiries. Mostly, we follow Sven as he looks into several murders and one near-killing. As with the Palme murder, finding the perpetrator is a fraught, frustrating job. Evidence is scarce and the struggle to identify the perpetrator wears down the patience of both Sven and his superiors over time. He is an intrepid detective, someone who takes his responsibility to the victims and their families to heart. He thinks of them every day, even long after he is no longer on the case, even after he is retired. Sven is an easy character to pull for, mostly. A white knight on a worthy quest, but there is tarnish on that armor as well. Sven is far from purely benign. Even heroes can make mistakes. The dream of a spotless past is, after all, only a dream. No one makes it through unmarked. We have to learn to live with it. If we can.One element that struck me was that we come to think of the victims by their first names, as Sven does. It gives them a bit of extra presence that enhances our feel for Sven’s struggles, his determination to see justice done. Even Sven’s son, Vidar, as an adult, gets caught up in the complications, the reverberations of the case. Families are a major focus of the book. The crimes have both immediate and long-term impact on the people who must survive the horrific loss of a loved one. Single crimes echo through time to generate multiple waves of misery and destruction. People come to learn things about those to whom they are the closest. You can see why some folks might be jarred learning those things. The truth doesn’t just hurt, it can break your psychic bones, change your direction in life, make you into a different person than you were. Sven’s relationship with Vidar is both loving and strained, a source of tension that carries through the story. Carlsson links the Tiarp Man murders to the Palme assassination thematically, rather than concretely. When the prime minister was shot and the shooter was never more than a shadow heading up the stairs into the dim light of David Bagares Gata, it unleashed something. Distaste. A rage that no one could quite control.Tiarp Man personified that for this part of Sweden. Things that remained unresolved for far too long. A sense of community comfort that was forever disrupted. There is no real magical realism at work in this book, but Carlsson does offer up an omen in the form of a local superstition. As spring arrived, the village came to life. Everything seemed to shimmer, and the colors grew so vivid. Sweet days awaited.Carlsson knows a bit about police work and crime. Mom was the Swedish equivalent of a 911 dispatcher. And the author’s day job is putting his Criminology PhD to use as a college professor, and writer of professional papers on criminology. His father was an auto mechanic, a job he hands off to Moth’s father in the book. Carlsson is from the area in which these crimes take place. I suppose only those who know the area can opine on whether he presented it accurately. Criminology taught me the rough brutal truths about crime: it’s dirty, bloody, messy, painful, raw, costs a lot, and, sometimes, it’s beyond meaning in any reasonable sense of that term. - From Crimereads articleI had only two real issues with the book. There is a gap between some of the crimes that is not really explained, and an authorial disinclination to go into the killer’s motivations. If you are ok with that, then this one should satisfy. It enhances a procedural mystery with a look at family, questioning how well we really know those closest to us, and the limits of what one might do for loved ones. It adds a take on the sense of the place and the times. Best of all, there are some excellent twists. The one she asks for light is also the one who will bring darkness. Like the face of Janus. Review posted - 01/20/23 Publication dates ----------01/03/23 – (English translation) – It was originally published in Swedish in 2021 ----------11/28/23 - trade paperback (English) I received a digital ARE of Blaze Me a Sun from Hogarth in return for a fair review. Tack, gott folk, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s Instagram and Twitter pages Blaze Me A Sun is Carlsson’s ninth book and American debut. Interview -----Penguin Random House - Book Club Kit - there is an excellent interview in this -----Booktopia - An award-winning crime writer’s advice for aspiring authors. by Anastasia Hadjidemetri – from 2017 Songs/Music -----Sting - Russians - noted in chapter 23 Items of Interest -----Wikipedia - Assassination of Olof Palme -----Oregon State University - frame structure in novels Items of Interest from the author -----Google Scholar - Carlsson’s criminology writings -----Crimereads – 1/11/2023 - With the Dead Could the worst of crimes be devoid of meaning? Strange things happen all the time, every day, and we don’t think too much of them because they don’t affect us that deeply. They are just “coincidences” or something else, depending on what you believe in. Criminology taught me the rough brutal truths about crime: it’s dirty, bloody, messy, painful, raw, costs a lot, and, sometimes, it’s beyond meaning in any reasonable sense of that term....more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 08, 2023
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Jan 16, 2023
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Jan 10, 2023
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Hardcover
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0440000211
| 9780440000211
| 0440000211
| 3.78
| 116,513
| Mar 15, 2022
| Mar 15, 2022
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really liked it
| On the lawn, something moved across the surface of the grass. The touch of a footprint. Inside the house, one of the cupboard doors opened in the d On the lawn, something moved across the surface of the grass. The touch of a footprint. Inside the house, one of the cupboard doors opened in the dark kitchen, groaning softly into the silence.-------------------------------------- “Being a girl is the best,” she said, “because no one ever believes you’d do something bad. People think you’ll do nothing, which means you can do anything. I’ll show you.”1977 – Claire Lake, Oregon. Two men have been brutally murdered in separate incidents, roadside, no obvious motive. But a witness did see someone leaving the scene of one of the crimes. The description matches a local, a young woman generally regarded as odd. Beth Greer is standoffish, young, attractive, and rich. Parents both dead, Mom from an auto accident in a tree, Dad from a close encounter with fired round, in the kitchen. She has a taste for alcohol and keeping human connections ephemeral. When she is not out at bars and clubs, she is mostly at home, Greer House, not the happiest place on Earth. The bullets that did in the two randos just happen to match the one that laid Julian Greer out on the kitchen floor, a murder, BTW, that was never solved. You can see why the police might be a tad suspicious. [image] Simone St. James - image from her site – credit: Lauren Perry 2017 – Shea Collins is 29, newly (ok, almost a year) divorced. Has worked reception in a doctor’s office in downtown Claire Lake for five years. But her real self is invested in her website, The Book of Cold Cases. Shea is a true crime blogger, been at it for ten years, is certainly up on local crime legends, so she notices when one walks into the office, Beth Greer, forty years after she was believed to be The Lady Killer of tabloid fame, forty years after she was acquitted of the murders, which were never solved. Most think she was guilty. Beth pursues Greer, who, to her great shock, agrees to be interviewed. And the game is afoot. There are two timelines at work, contemporary and back-then. In the 2017 line, Shea interviews Beth at Greer House, even though the place creeps her out. The décor is from the era of Beth’s parents, which is off-putting enough, but there is clearly a lot more going on there. Objects move without obvious cause. A mysterious girl appears outside a window. Shea does not feel safe there, but the lure of getting the whole story from Beth is too much to resist so she keeps coming back. Also, she and Beth seem to be forming a friendship. Beth may or may not be a killer, but Shea likes her, is fascinated by her. In the earlier time, we follow Beth’s childhood, stretching back to 1960, as events that lead up to the killings are revealed, bit by bit. The alternate perspectives, Shea’s in first person and Beth’s in third, are not evenly divided. We get more Shea than Beth (26 chapters to 18, if you must know), with a few Others tossed in. They do not alternate in a steady format, but streak at times for one or the other. Shea has some dark visions from her own past she has had to deal with for the last twenty years. At age nine she was abducted, but managed to escape with her life. The next girl her abductor took was not so lucky. Helps explain why she takes the bus and is reluctant to get into cars. Helps explain why she is way security conscious. Also, helps explain why she is reluctant to date again. “Do you know how many serial killers dated lonely women in their everyday lives? Some divorcée who just wants companionship from a nice man? She thinks she’s won the dating lottery, and meanwhile he’s out there on a Sunday afternoon, dumping bodies. And now we’re supposed to use internet apps, where someone’s picture might not even be real. People are lying about their faces.”(view spoiler)[It took a long time after we met on Match for me to discover my now wife’s history of serial criminal activity, so I get that. (hide spoiler)] There are mysteries to be solved and in the best True Crime fashion, Shea, along with her sort-of partner-in-crime-solving, PI Michael De Vos, dig into each of the questions as they arise. Very cozy mystery style. There is even a retired detective who offers a bit of help, continuing the cozy format. Of course, there are other elements that make this less of a cozy, the supernatural, for one, and a little more on-screen violence than might fit in that format. In fact The Book of Cold Cases crosses many genre lines, could be gothic, thriller, horror, suspense, or mystery, with a bit of romance tossed in for good measure. This particular mix of genre-salad was not always the Simone St. James brand. I wrote five books set in 1920’s England, and while I loved writing them, I never intended to write about one period for the rest of my life. I wanted to flex my writing muscles and write something set in the USA—something that had two timelines, one of them contemporary. Creatively, I wanted a new goal and a new challenge while still writing a Simone St. James book. I got my wish! - from the Criminal Element interviewSt James has stuck with that. Her first America-set thriller, The Broken Girls (2018), offers a split timeline, 1950/2014, the story centering on a deserted and reputedly haunted school for girls, and a journalist looking into the death of her sister twenty years before. The Sun Down Motel (2020) takes on a haunted establishment in upstate New York, splits between 1982 and 2017, and includes a 35-years-ago missing aunt, a niece eager to dig up the truth, and a slew of killings and disappearances that really need looking into. Keeping the string going, The Book of Cold Cases splits between 1977 and 2017, includes an amateur investigator (a blogger this time), some contemporary frights, some historical killings, and a haunted house. (I did ask her what she was planning to haunt next, but St. James declined to spill) Strong primary characters can carry a book if the plot is well-thought out, and that would have been enough here. But St. James’ secondary characters were quite good, although we could have used even more of some of them. Detective Black, retired now, but involved in the 1977 investigations, was a strong presence. Shea’s PI, Michael De Vos, was off screen too much, as he was quite engaging when he was in view. I enjoyed the parallelism of relationships, Beth with Black and Shea with Michael. Gripes – The only real blogging work we see Shea do (yes, there is a session or two noted, but only very much in passing) is on Beth’s case. Might have been a good thing to get a stronger, more fleshed out, look at how Shea has been spending her nights, which would have included a lot more on-line than live and in person investigations. Claire Lake, the town, did not feel strongly realized. This was more than made up for, however, by the seriously creepy haunted house, and the powerful presence of Beth Greer. Lest you suspect there is some actual true crime in this true crime tale, I asked SSJ that question on her FB page, and she replied, “the cases in the book were all entirely fictional.” So you True Crime obsessives can stop looking for real-world sparks for this one. And as for ghosts in the real world, she has never had a spectral experience. St. James likes putting literary Easter eggs in her work, so keep an eye out for those. Bottom line is that The Book of Cold Cases is a fun page-turner that delivers what it promises, murder mysteries, an intrepid investigator, some fascinating characters, a taste of the 70s, and a large dollop of the other-worldly. It is even a bit scary. I have a pretty high bar for such things, but there was one moment in which I got chills and the hair on my arms stood up at attention. That is one more than usually occurs, so, kudos. It sustains tension throughout, making you want to either blast through ASAP, or, my preferred approach, savor the fun in relatively low-dose portions night after night. In either case this is a fun, spooky, engaging read that is well worth your time, and should provide most readers with some chills. some places hold you so that you can’t get free. They squeeze you like a fist. Review posted – March 4, 2022 Publication dates ----------Hardcover – March 15, 2022 ----------Trade paperback - February 28, 2023 I received an ARE of The Book of Cold Cases from Berkley in return for a fair review, and keeping quiet about a few things. Thanks, folks. And thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages Simone St. James is the nom de plume of Simone Seguin, of Toronto. She worked for many years in TV, for a Canadian sports network, but not as a writer. She worked on budgets. She says she knows nothing about sports, despite the gig. It was only after she had had multiple novels published that she ditched budgeting to become a full-time writer. She had endured six years of rejections before her first book was published. The Book of Cold Cases is her eighth novel. Interviews -----Criminal Element – 2018 - Q&A with Simone St. James, Author of The Broken Girls for The Broken Girls by Angie Barry -----The Inside Flap – 2020 - Ep. 98 How To Spy On People With Simone St. James by Dave Medicus, Andrew Dowd, and Laura Medicus – 1:36:48 - begins about 30:00 – to 58:00 Item of Interest from the author -----Indigo - Sample - 1st four chapters Music -----George Thorogood - Bad to the Bone ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 12, 2022
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Feb 25, 2022
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Jan 19, 2022
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Hardcover
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1250799392
| 9781250799395
| 1250799392
| 3.53
| 4,032
| Jan 25, 2022
| Jan 25, 2022
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really liked it
| Never tell. Never tell.-------------------------------------- It’s not heaven. It’s Iowa.Damn, did he have that right. The Iowa of Erin Young’s The Fields is a hell of a lot closer to The Children of the Corn than it is to any Field of Dreams. After spending some time in Cedar Falls and its larger sibling, agro-urban wasteland town, Waterloo, where the rust-belt meets the corn-belt, you might swear off dreaming altogether. Well, town might be down-playing it a bit. Between the two (both are real places) they total about 100,000 souls (not counting livestock), so maybe small cities rather than towns. Abba may have been on to something when they referred to Waterloo. (Couldn’t escape if I wanted to) Some truly can’t. One of those turns up dead in a cornfield. If not for the University of Northern Iowa—where she’d majored in criminology—with its annual influx of students and money, Riley guessed Cedar Falls would have slumped into the same depression as Waterloo. There had been some brave attempts at regeneration in recent years—microbreweries sprouting on weed-covered lots, kayaks for hire on the Cedar River and an annual Pride festival, fulminated against by local churches. But they were fighting a strong downward pull. [image] Erin Young, nom de plume for Robyn Young, showing off her Thriller-writer pose, or her “You expect me to believe that? Come on now.” face - image from her Facebook pages Riley Fisher is local, mid-thirties, single, grew up in Cedar Falls, her grandfather a former head of the Blackhawk County Sheriff’s Office. She knew early on that she wanted to follow in his footsteps. Now, after a detour or two along the way, she is head of investigations, to the consternation of others who had hoped for the promotion. The new-found body is in a field owned by the Zephyr Farms cooperative. Cooperatives were how some smaller Iowa farms had been able to survive the relentless advances of Big Ag. By dominating the market in hybrid seeds, fertilizer and pesticides—the holy trinity of crop production—through aggressive trademarking, swallowing up the competition and tactical lobbying at the highest levels of government, giants like Agri-Co had come to control much of the nation’s agricultural wealth.Been out there for days, been ripped at in an unusual way, was maggoty, ripe, and unsettling. No problems with an ID, though, once Sergeant Fisher arrives on the scene. Chloe Miller (nee Clark) was one of Riley’s besties two decades back, in high school. But they’d gone their separate ways. Seeing Chloe brings back a terrible time from Riley’s youth, a time that had derailed her life, a time she could never forget. So, we are faced with two mysteries. What happened to Chloe in that field and why, and what is it about Chloe’s death that has brought Riley to such a state of emotional turmoil? Something happened back when they were still friends, something major. And the revived memories are not exactly a source of comfort. Both mysteries are peeled back like leaves on a lovely ear of you-of-what, bit by bit, the present-day crime via procedural investigation; the personal mystery through intermittent, mostly small recollections. [image] Image from KWWL.com by Olivia Shmitt But wait, there’s more. The discovery of Chloe’s body is the spark that starts the action, but Young has a wider field of view in her sites. A writer of very successful (over two million sold) historical novels, she wanted to have a go at writing thrillers, finding inspiration in an article she read about the menacing power of Big Agriculture. A decision to set the novel in Iowa, corn-capital of the world, led her to make a fascinating journey across the state – from chance encounters with cops and farmers, and an audience with a local mayor, to shooting Glocks and getting caught in supercell storms. - from her websiteA voice is given to concerns about the darker implications of increasing concentration in the age of the agro-industrial complex. A necessary evil, some called them. Progress, said more. But to those whose forefathers had farmed this land since the days of the first families from New York, Philadelphia, and Virginia, who’d settled here after the Black Hawk War when the Ioway had been driven west, these corporations were vultures, polluters and thieves.(Entirely unlike the settlers who drove out the natives, I presume.) So, not exactly a tension-free relationship between local growers and the bigger side of the farming industry, personified here by the Agri-co corporation. We get a strong oppo position from an activist determined to head off even more governmental pro-corporation actions. Companies like Agri-Co only care about profit, not the soil and water they infect with their chemicals, or the wildlife they destroy. Cancer rates are rising from pesticides, and, still, their political allies and lobbyists help them sow their poison.She blames the current governor, up for re-election, for his role in this. Concern with big-Ag concentrating power at the expense of smaller producers and fouling the environment in the process finds an echo in another part of the country. It was almost a year since Logan joined the department, moving with his folks from Flint. His father, niece, and nephew had been badly affected by the crisis there—when lead seeped into Flint’s water supply after city officials changed the system in an attempt to save money, then tried to cover up the devastating consequences.It is clearly impossible to run from the national corporation-led degradation of our environment, or from pervasive public corruption. Riley is an engaging lead, clever in the way we expect our fictional detectives to be. We also expect our lead to carry some personal baggage, challenges at the very least. Her beloved grandfather, Joe, has been in decline for quite a while, coherent and in possession of his memories on an increasingly part-time basis. Her brother Ethan is a bit of a disaster, divorced, a ne’er do well with some substance issues. Riley can usually count on Ethan to step back whenever she needs him to step up. Ethan’s daughter Maddie is a teenager, a decent sort, overall, in a tough situation, but, you know, a teenager, so offering the family their RDA of stress. And Riley still carries the weight of what happened all those years ago. Unfortunately, Riley is saddled with the addition to her team of Officer Cole, an asshole cop straight from central casting, toting the usual bigotries, inflated self-view, and presumptions, with an extra dose of jealousy. Thankfully, Riley’s other partner, Logan, is another good cop. And then a second body turns up, (not in a field) also not discovered until well past passing, also in very nasty shape, also featuring some remarkable damage. Is there a serial killer on the loose? [image] Abandoned meat-packing plant - image from sometimes-interesting.com Thrillers have tropes like Ruffles have Ridges. Black SUVs put in an appearance. Are they good SUVs or bad SUVs? Ya gotta figure, when Riley spots a large poisonous snake on her property, (Chekov’s snake?) that it will rattle into play at some point. The question is how, when, to whom, and to what effect. News of a coming storm is another one. Usually this signals that the violent final resolution will occur against an atmospherically dramatic background. Young preps us with a mention of eight twisters having touched down in Iowa since April. Will one drop down into the mix here? Now, that would be a real twist. The upcoming Iowa State Fair is also noted, and gave me visions of snakes dropping on fair-goers, transported by a tornado, as everything is revealed in a climactic disaster scene. But Chekov surely does not have to take ownership of all these things. They could also just be foreshadowing images or external representations of the fear and turmoil Riley is experiencing, or the dangers she is facing. (But I sure do like that State Fairground snakenado notion). So how does the historical novelist fare at the thriller genre? Young ticks off many of the usual boxes that make up the type. The author has to make good with the reader on explaining things at the end, the main things, anyway. Check. A ticking clock? “I’ve had the county attorney on the line already. Less than two months from the state fair and with the gubernatorial coming up? You know how vital this next budget is to the department. I want this case handled quickly. Efficiently.”, so, check. Our hero must face an increasingly perilous set of challenges, no escaping, victory can only be had by overcoming. What’s she gonna do when all those snakes start dropping out of the sky (Ok. I got carried away, again.) But yeah, Riley rolls, doing battle on multiple fronts. An element of suspense? Sure. Got that. Whodunit, why, and who’s next. An appealing hero? Sure. A reliable sidekick with an alternate skill set? Yep. Logan fills the bill. Plot twists? Of course. Red herrings? Bring your fishing pole. There are a few swimming about. Alternate POVs? The story is told in third person, but there is one first person POV that appears a few times. Cliffhangers? That is what made it tough to read only 20-30 pages a night of this book. An exciting climax? Yeah, for sure, even though I was really kinda hoping for the snakenado thing, even though I know it would have been really I quite enjoyed Young’s simple, but dark descriptions. Waterloo was lifeless in the stagnant air. Smoke seeped from factory chimneys and the Cedar flowed sluggish and brown. Although the roads were clogged with trucks and trailers, there were few people about, just a few vagrants shambling along broken sidewalks, and cleaners and hospital workers trudging to or from shifts…It wasn’t long before she saw the old meatpacking plant on the outskirts of the city…Its twin smokestacks were dark fingers against the pallid sky, old bricks the color of rust. The bottom windows were boarded over, the ones higher up mostly shattered. A chain-link fence surrounded the site, bristling with barbed wire…stepping over heaps of rubbish, she found herself in a cavernous hall. Metal steps ascended to gantries that crisscrossed in between pillars and snaking pipes, conveyor belts and wheels. It all looked like some complex ride at the state fair, only made of metal and rust, fractured glass and hooks. She imagined the steers and hogs shuddering round, the iron spike of blood, steam from spilling guts. Parts of the gantries had collapsed. In places, the floor yawned into darkness.A good book should teach you something about the world while delivering a good story. You will certainly get a sense of the perils of Big Ag, the history of how such concentration got started, and the impact it has had on the economy and the people of this area (presumed to be comparable in all farming states) You will learn a bit about the potential and potential dangers of genetic research for crops. And will learn some Ag lingo. Good writing is good writing whether it is for historical novels set across the pond (well, across for us in the Western Hemisphere. For her, living in Brighton, no pond crossing is needed.) or for a gritty thriller set in America’s heartland. Young has made the transition smoothly, with an engaging procedural-cum-political-thriller, featuring a strong lead, a diverse supporting cast, well-paced action, and plenty of mystery to keep one’s curiosity on high alert, all while offering a bit of information about the world, and highlighting very real issues concerning Big Agriculture. I am looking forward to the further fleshing out of Riley’s story and those of her supporting cast. Seeds have been planted. The soil is fertile. The shoots are emerging for the Riley Fisher series, and look very promising. A bountiful annual harvest is forecast. Volume #2 will be set in Des Moines. I am betting that when she writes it, readers will come. The lifeblood of rural America was being drained, leaving husks of cities, where poverty and crime rushed in to fill the void. It was a legacy all too visible in the boarded-up factories and processing plants that loomed like broken tombs around the city, haunted by vagrants and hookers, and cruised nightly by the squad cars of Waterloo PD. Review posted – January 14, 2022 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - January 25, 2022 ----------Trade paperback - February 7, 2023 [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! I received an ARE of The Fields from Flatiron in return for a review that was not too horribly corny. Well, I tried, ok. Thanks, too to NetGalley for facilitating. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s Erin Young and Robin Young personal, FB, and Twitter pages Items of Interest -----Ruffles have Ridges -----Master Class - Masterclass: What is the Thriller genre? -----A bit of silliness -----Reedsy Blog- Chekhov’s Gun: Don’t Shoot Your Story In the Foot -----Crop Prophet - Corn production by state Corn Production Rankings: 2020 Rank State Production (M bu) 1 Iowa 2296.2 2 Illinois 2131.2 3 Nebraska 1790.1 4 Minnesota 1441.9 5 Indiana 981.8 6 Kansas 766.5 7 South Dakota 729.0 8 Ohio 564.3 9 Missouri 560.9 10 Wisconsin 516.8 11 Michigan 306.5 Items of Interest from the author Young has a few items coming up for publication soon, one in CrimeReads on her research trip to Iowa, and another in The Big Thrill Magazine. There is also an interview upcoming on Jeff Rutherford's Reading and Writing podcast ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 29, 2021
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Jan 10, 2022
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Jan 10, 2022
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Hardcover
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1324001933
| 9781324001935
| 1324001933
| 3.84
| 25,618
| Sep 14, 2021
| Sep 14, 2021
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really liked it
| …I…follow along behind a small group of conservation officers heading to the lawn outside. Their leather hiking boots squeak as they walk. “So she …I…follow along behind a small group of conservation officers heading to the lawn outside. Their leather hiking boots squeak as they walk. “So she looks in her rearview mirror,” one is saying, and there’s a bear in the back seat earing popcolrn.” When wildlife officers gather at a conference, the shop talk is outstanding. Last night I stepped onto the elevator as a man was saying, “Ever tase an elk?”Mary Roach is up to her old tricks. A science writer now publishing her seventh book, Roach has written for many publications, including National Geographic, Wired, NY Times Magazine, and many more. She begins with a notion, then goes exploring. Roach tells Goodreads, in a book-recommendation piece, that she came across a potential story about cattle breeders staging deaths to commit insurance fraud. She even had a grand theft avocado story lined up, but the local Smokeys would not let her come along, which was a requisite. She shifted to wildlife. I paid a visit to a woman at the National Wildlife Service forensics lab who had authored a paper on how to detect counterfeit “medicinal” tiger penises. - from the GR pieceWait! What? (there is link to the study in EXTRA STUFF, of course) But again it was nogo accompanying the officers into the field. Really? Her presence would blow a National Wildlife Service raid on a market selling junk johnsons? It is pretty easy to come up with a descriptive for such unwarranted reticence. (Rhymes with sickish.) In any case, in her investigative travels, Mary came across a weird 1906 book about the prosecution and execution of animals and realized she had her hook. What if animals were the perpetrators of crimes instead of people? She breaks the book down into “criminal” categories, homicide, B&E, man-slaughter, larceny, even jaywalking, and off we go. [image] Mary Roach - image from Lapham’s Quarterly First, and foremost, I need to let you know straight away that you will be laughing out loud at least every few pages. This is not an experience I have with any other writer, and yet have had it consistently with Mary Roach, across the several books of hers that I have read. Ditto here. Well, fine, your sense of humor may not be like mine, but Mary has the key to my funny-bone. Her intro offers a stunning representation of just how stupid people have been when attempting to enforce laws on animals over the course of history. Python-worthy material, totally side-splitting, and jaw-dropping. Really, they actually did that? Yes, gentle reader, they totally did. On June 26, 1659, a representative from five towns in a province in northern Italy initiated legal proceedings against caterpillars. The local specimens, went the complaint, were trespassing and pilfering from people’s gardens and orchards. A summons was issued and five copies made and nailed to trees in forests adjacent to each town. The caterpillars were ordered to appear in court…Of course no caterpillars appeared at the appointed time, but the case went forward anyway.It goes on. Would have been tough making a charge stick anyway. They would have just blamed each other. It was that caterpillar, not me. I was nowhere near that orchard. And even if they were jailed they would have just flown out anyway. The law may be a ass, far too often, but sometimes it truly boggles the mind. As usual, Mary interviews experts in all the areas she investigates. She begins her contemporary explorations with a gathering of Canadian Conservation officers (in the USA) getting Wildlife Human Attack Response Training or WHART. They don’t, but you go right on ahead and call it what it is, CSI-Wildlife – DUUUUUM-DA-DUM! Mary brings plenty of funny to her reporting, but a lot of it is simply laying out the facts and letting them make you laugh themselves. For example, the test manikins are named for brands of beer. Good one, eh? And there is that quote at the top of the review. You will also learn some real-world intel like the significance of a round versus a more oval drop of blood at a crime scene. As usual with Mary, you will find yourself learning a whole bunch of information you never knew you wanted to know, like how to tell the difference between a bear and a cougar kill. (No, not that sort of cougar, the one with fur and claws, a mountain lion, Geez! and no, no, no, not that sort of bear, creatures of the Ursus genus, not those other large hairy beasts. Stop that right now!) She considers issues with elephants, leopards, cougars, bears, macaques, gulls, vultures and other birds, rats and mice, trees, and beans. Come again? The lines here get a bit vague. It is not just animals that are the focus but some non-critter-based elements of nature as well. Sticking with critters for the moment, there are considerable challenges in managing the interface between people and animals. For instance, the vig that farm mice seem to extract from farmers regardless of what is done to get rid of them can turn peaceable crop-growers homicidal. Mary looks at the control methods that have been tried, and explores a promising, more laid-back approach. Rats in the Vatican (which is an outstanding name for a band, just sayin’) present the challenge of managing the property while taking seriously the lead of Saint Francis of Assisi, an animal rights figure of long-standing, and a major inspiration for Pope, ya know, Francis. Mary talks to the guy in charge of this problem (I could not help but imagine Father Guido Sarducci, sorry), the Vatican Director of Gardens and Garbage, Rafael Torning. The considerable Vatican rat population has a taste for wires, and damages a lot of machinery. VG&G does what they can, trying to avoid using nasty chemicals. But even so, aren’t there ethical concerns? So, she talks with the house bioethicist, Father Carlo. Let’s just say that if you could count the number of angels on the head of a pin, Father Carlo could very nicely twist all of them into pretzels with his words. [image] A possible solution to half of the Vatican’s Gull-and-rats problem? - image from the Irish Sun The Vatican has a considerable problem with herring gulls as well, thousands of ‘em. None of this Mary Poppins Feed the Birds nonsense. The feathered rabble that descend on Saint Peter’s seem more like the gathered horde in that Hitchcock movie. You will not come away from this book fond of gulls. I found her lapsed-Catholic’s tour of the Vatican to be worth many, many indulgences, rich as it was with fun details and ambience. Chapters on elephants and leopards are particularly alarming. …when a leopard stalks and kills more than three or four people, villagers consider it a demon. - [it, clearly, considers them takeout]There was one historical case in which a single leopard killed over a hundred people. Mary travels with government and non-government people as they try to educate local populations in best practices for avoiding potential conflict. Not all leopard attacks are the same. You will learn the sorts. And not all attacking leopards are handled the same way. She looks at changes that have been at least partially implemented to try to reduce the carnage. (Indoor toilets, for example), and the challenges going forward in handling the problem, getting leopards to leave people alone. [image] Leopard - image from Wild Cats India When it comes to elephants, Mary Roach knows her shit, literally. She reports on a Smithsonian project that measured daily defecation by an Indian elephant. A poop scooper will not do. Maybe a poop plow? 400 pounds, give or take, per diem. Elephants loom large as a danger, laying waste to crops, trampling fields and bulldozing buildings. People are sometimes accidentally trampled. Sometimes it is no accident, as when one elephant did a headstand on someone. A bull elephant in an elevated period of breeding excitement, called musth, is particularly aggressive and a mortal peril. She can also tell you about the effectiveness of small arms against big pachyderms. Keep your powder dry. Most bullets do little or no damage. Even a bit of armor-piercing ordnance intended for tanks needs a follow up to get the job done. [image] Indian elephant in musth - image from Wikipedia Monkeys in India come in for a look. Macaques in particular, have made pests of themselves in urban areas, becoming aggressive thieves, to the point of violence, and even of extortion, as some will steal your phone, handing it back only when you pay the fee in food. Government officials struggle to come up with solutions, tough in a place where the monkey is a sacred animal. It is impossible to deliver directed doses of birth control without endangering other native wildlife, for example. Roach delivers a bleak portrait of official finger-pointing and inaction. [image] Street Monkeys in India – image from Outlook While reporting on the damage done to area farms and people, and the impact of wildlife in places populated with humans, Roach does point out that a lot (all) of these conflicts result from people expanding into the native territory of dangerous or potentially pestiferous, animals. I was surprised that there were parts of the book dedicated to non-creature natural perils. The material is interesting, but thematically it felt a bit off the central topic. There is much surprise information (well, for me anyway) about “danger trees,” those fully grown trees that have come to the end of their lives, at least in terms of growing. They still serve as useful woodland citizens by providing places in which creatures can nest, wood in which bugs can live, biomaterials that will be absorbed back into the woods. This is all good, but there is still one problem. The rotting tops of these gentle souls can come crashing down on passers-by, unaware of the peril. The approach that is taken, by woodland managers makes one wonder whether it is better to yell “Timber” or “Fire in the Hole!” [image] Decay throughout this tree makes it too hazardous to fell with a saw. It was felled with one bundle of fireline explosives taped to the side of the tree - image and text from the US Forest Service There is an element in this book that you should be aware of. The disposal of animals considered pests. This is of particular relevance in places where invasive species have arrived and laid waste to significant segments of the local fauna, and/or flora. Not all of these are the usual suspects, stowaway rats wiping out bird populations with their fondness for eggs, brown snakes, ditto and far too many others, often foolishly introduced by people attempting to counteract an earlier invasives problem. Some of the invaders are adorable and not on your likely list of things that MUST BE EXTERMINATED NOW. Mary looks at the techniques attempted (usually failed) and on the thought that goes into trying to make a creature’s passing as quick as possible. You might want to skip that chapter (14). Many of my daily companions are on that list and, although I did read it all, it was disquieting at times. Just lettin’ ya know. I hope this does not turn you off the book if you are otherwise interested. She does focus on ways in which people can live in coexistence with nature. This includes a greater understanding of the deer-in-the-headlights syndrome, and a workable approach for reducing roadway carnage. [image] Deer in the headlights - image from Bryans Blog I have issues with the titling of the book. The raised-patch addition to the hardcover jacket goes very nicely with the patches my wife and I picked up at many US National Parks. Mary might have called it Nature Gone Wild, but that was already taken. Naming it Fuzz, though, (maintaining the tradition of single-syllable Mary Roach book titles) does make it seem like it is about the police-type officials who are charged with coping when forces of nature interfere with people. Although there were indeed some badged officials in her stable of interviewees and guides through these fascinating worlds, she spoke as often with people who were researchers or administrators, and the stories were about the problems, not so much the law enforcers. Many may be related to parks here and there. Some were employed by wildlife services, but it just did not sit well with me. Her reporting is as much about a wider view of the issues as it is about the direct, Book-em, Danno “crimes” supposedly perpetrated on people by the furry or feathered set. So, I will not shy away from this. When it comes to actually describing what the book is about the title is decidedly fuzzy. There. I did it, and I am not sorry. Well, ok, maybe a little. Not that I can come up with anything better, just whining. That done, it is clear that wherever Mary Roach shines her light there will be surprises, there will be new knowledge, and there will be smiles, lots and lots of smiles, covered with copious quantities of laughter. Follow along behind Mary as she opens some closed doors, peeks into some hidden corners, and pesters defenseless officials to find fascinating, wondrous real-world material. Even despite that one grim chapter, I found myself reacting as I always do to a Mary Roach book, laughing out loud, often, very, very often. There is a definite joy in trailing after Mary as she shines her very bright light into unseen corners and calls back “Hey guys, come see what I found!” If you have enjoyed her books before, this one should do quite nicely. There is nothing fuzzy about that at all. Feeding animals, as we know, is the quickest path to conflict. The promise of food motivates normally human-shy animals to take a risk. The risk-taking is rewarded, and the behavior escalates. Shyness becomes fearlessness, and fearlessness becomes aggression. If you don’t hand over the food you are carrying, the monkey will grab it. If you try to hold onto it, or push the animal away…it may slap you. Or bite you. The Times of India put the number of monkey bites reported by Delhi hospitals in 2018 at 950. [When your teenager makes off with your car, just remember that it all began when they were small, and you made the mistake of offering them food] Review first posted – October 29, 2021 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - September 21, 2021 ----------Trade Paperback - August 30, 2022 I received this book from Barnes & Noble in return for cold, hard cash [image] [image] [image] ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I moved it to the Comments section directly below. But in Summer 2021, GR disallowed the use of external links in the Comments section, so I have posted the entire review, including EXTRA STUFF, on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! ...more |
Notes are private!
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Oct 02, 2021
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Oct 23, 2021
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Oct 27, 2021
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Hardcover
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1627795944
| 9781627795944
| 1627795944
| 3.98
| 32,306
| Feb 11, 2016
| Mar 15, 2016
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None
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Notes are private!
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Jul 26, 2021
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Aug 05, 2021
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Aug 05, 2021
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Hardcover
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1982129476
| 9781982129477
| 1982129476
| 3.66
| 9,769
| Mar 02, 2021
| Mar 02, 2021
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really liked it
| ”Close your eyes and count to ten,” he whispered. I felt his breath on my cheek. The barrel of the gun was hard and cold against my forehead. ”Close your eyes and count to ten,” he whispered. I felt his breath on my cheek. The barrel of the gun was hard and cold against my forehead.Thus begins The Babysitter, a telling of growing up unaware that one of the author’s favorite adults was not who she’d thought. [image] Liza Rodman - image from Simon & Schuster – Photo by Joel Benjamin In 2005, Liza Rodman, then in her forties, was working on the thesis for her undergraduate degree when she began having frequent nightmares. It was not her first such experience. She had had these for a long time, but all of a sudden they were happening every night. In one, her husband was trying to kill her with a fireplace poker. Another featured a man killing nurses and eating their hearts. The dreams kept coming, with a faceless man chasing her, always with a weapon. She would wake up as her dream self was about to crash through a window, fleeing for her life. [image] Jennifer Jordan - image from her site – photo by Jeff Rhoads Clearly there was motivation to figure out this puzzle, so she started writing about them, incorporating them into her thesis, over a two year period, drawing out more and more details. One dream-site was The Royal Coachman motel where she, her mother, and sister had lived for a time in Provincetown. Another was Bayberry Bend, a P-town motel her mother had owned. Slowly the process moved along, six months of regular dreams, more images, months more of nightmares, until she saw the face, a familiar one, someone she hadn’t seen since she was a kid, a handyman hired to work at the motel where her mother was employed. His mother worked at the motel too. He was one of a series of people who took care of her and her sister, a really nice guy, one of the few adults who were kind to them, who never yelled at or hit them, who took them around with him in the motel’s utility truck, on chores, to the dump, to his garden in the woods, but who had disappeared when she was ten. This was not all that unusual for the adult males who scooted through her childhood. Why would she be having dark dreams about that guy? So she decides to ask her mother, then in her 70s, what this might all mean. “Did something happen to me back then that you’re not telling me?” I said, suddenly wondering if it did.Oh, is that all? Not all that surprising from Betty. Liza’s divorced mom was not exactly the best. While she did manage to keep body and soul together for herself and her two girls, she was frequently cruel to Liza, for no reason that the child could fathom. Mom, in fact is a major focus of the book, as chapters flip back and forth, more or less, between a focus on Tony and a focus on Liza and her relationship with her mother. [image] Antone Charles “Tony” Costa, Provincetown handyman and murderer of four young women. (Photo courtesy Barnstable County Identity Bureau) – image from the author’s site Who was this guy? Tony Costa never got to know his father, who had drowned trying to save a fellow seaman in New Guinea near the end of World War II, when Tony was only eight months old. He would be obsessed with his war hero dad for the rest of his life. There were early signs of trouble with Tony. At age seven he claimed to have been visited regularly by a man in his bedroom at night, an actual intruder? a fantasy? an obsession? He said the man looked like his father. He stood out among his peers during summers in Provincetown, his mother’s birthplace, cooler, smarter, and more “inside himself” than anyone else, according to a kid he hung out with there. Then there was the taxidermy kit. Lots of killing of small animals, neighborhood pets going missing, yet never a successful display of a stuffed animal. There is no mention of bed-wetting in his psychopath Bingo card, but who knows? We know he was raped as a pre-teen, and was probably one of several victims of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest in Provincetown. So his potential for madness certainly had some outside assistance. He was accused of attempting to rape a young girl as a teen. [image] Jen and Liza, Northampton, 1979 - image from Rodman’s site Tony was smart and handsome, but had terrible judgment, a ne’er do well, capable at work but unable to hold onto a job. He became a heavy drug user and local dealer. Clearly this guy had some charisma (as well as a considerable supply of illegal substances) and a way with young teens. A pedophile who married his pregnant fourteen-year-old girlfriend, he kept a crowd of young acolytes around him unable or unwilling to see through his line of distilled, grandiose, narcissistic bullshit. Cult-leader stuff. There is a Manson-like quality to him. And, like most narcissists, he was never willing to accept any responsibility for his own actions, always insisting that people were out to get him, blaming others for things he had done. [image] The VW Tony stole after murdering its owner. A local spotted it in the woods and notified the local police, which spelled doom for Tony Costa - image from the author’s FB pages There is more going on here than personal profiles of the major actors. A lot is made of how different from the mainstream Provincetown was, particularly during the tourist season. The ethos was much more accepting of whatever than most places. With people coming and going so much, it was custom-made for a predator. It was the 60s, man, drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll, and kids taking off for adventures, whether drug-related or not, and thus not necessarily raising instant alarms when they went missing. In 1971, for example, I bought an old Post Office truck at auction for three hundred bucks, and drove across country with three friends. (well, tried, we never actually made it across the continent) No cellphone, no regular check-ins. We didn’t exactly file a flight plan. If we had come to a bad end, no one would have known, or been alarmed back home for weeks. This is something a lot of people did. Of course, we were not runaways, and we were not female. That would have been a whole other order of business. The cops in Provincetown took a lackadaisical attitude toward worried parents looking for missing progeny. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they will turn up in due time.” And they were probably right, mostly. Except, sometimes they weren’t. It took a lot of pushing from those concerned about the missing young women to get the police to pay much attention. Rodman and Jordan provide a very detailed look at the various police departments that became involved in Tony’s case, both the occasional good police work and the ineptitude of inter-departmental communications. Sound familiar? The locals were slow to allow for the possibility that there was a killer in their midst. Even today, there is an urge to protect one of their own, despite it being fifty years since the events of the book. “I got threats when I wrote this book,” Liza says. It’s a loving portrait of the town, but not especially flattering. “I have a comfort level there that I don’t have anywhere else. Even in the face of this book.” - from The Provincetown Independent [image] It was her sister’s 8th birthday. At the moment Liza was making a face at the camera, Tony was leading two young women into the Truro woods, where he would murder and bury them. - image from the author’s FB pages One of the things about true crime books is that there is an element of suspense that is lacking. We know that little Liza will grow up to write this book, so we know that Tony did not kill her. This makes it more like a Columbo episode, knowing that the bad guy will get got, but enjoying seeing how that ultimately happens. That said, this is not a straight-up true crime effort. It is a fusion of true crime with memoir. Half of the book is about Liza’s childhood, her relationship with her mother in particular. It is an interesting look at how someone can survive a bad parent-child relationship. Showing how things were for Liza at home makes her a more sympathetic narrator for the other story. Geez, ya poor kid. I sure hope nothing else bad happens t’ya. And it makes it much more understandable how a kid who was starved for adult affection and attention would be drawn to an adult who was offering kindness and interest. I did not get the frisson of fear reading this that pervaded in another true crime book, I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Maybe because the killer in this one was long ago jailed, whereas the California killer had not yet been arrested when that book came out. But there is a certain vertigo, like walking near a cliff edge, blindfolded, only to realize the danger you were in when you take it off. It is distinctly possible that Liza might have found her way into Tony’s special garden if he had managed to stay out of jail for a few more years. Liza was like the little girl playing with Frankenstein's monster in the movie, not realizing that he was more than just a large playmate, and seemingly friendly soul. Whew! Rodman had been working on this project for about thirteen years. It happened that, in 2018, Jordan, a professional writer, was casting about for her next book project (She had previously published four books.) when she thought of her dear friend, Liza, (they had met in college) who was thrilled at the suggestion that they collaborate. So, sixteen years of research in all and here it is. An in depth look at a monstrous series of events, a sick individual, an interesting place in a time of upheaval, a difficult childhood, an odd friendship, and a very close call. The Babysitter is an engaging, informative read that will make you appreciate your sane parents, most likely, and appreciate your luck even more in never having had such a person as Tony in your life. (You haven’t, right?) His coterie of teenagers, his stash of pills, and his marijuana helped mask his ever-increasing feelings of inferiority; by surrounding himself with idolizing acolytes who needed a hero, he could feel more in control, sophisticated, confident, and, of course, more intelligent. Review first posted – March 5, 2021 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - March 2, 2021 ----------Trade Paperback - June 14, 2022 I received an ARE of The Babysitter from Atria in return for an honest review. I did not charge them my usual rate of ten bucks an hour and whatever I want to eat from their fridge. [image] [image] [image] I have posted the entire review on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! ===========================EXTRA STUFF Links to Liza Rodman’s ’s personal, FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter pages Links to Jennifer Jordan’s personal and FB pages Interviews -----Red Carpet Crash – February 24, 2021 - Interview: Authors ‘Liza Rodman And Jennifer Jordan’ Talk Their Book The Babysitter: My Summers With A Serial Killer - audio – 17:02 - definitely check this one out -----New York Post - February 27, 2021 - How I discovered my babysitter Tony Costa was a serial killer by Raquel Laneri -----The Provincetown Independent – February 24, 2021 - Remembrance of Serial Murders Past by Howard Karren -----WickedLocal.com – February 23, 2021 - In new memoir, local serial killer Tony Costa babysat two youngsters by Susan Blood Items of Interest -----Frankenstein playing with sweet young Maria -----Columbo - or substituting for whodunit the howchatchem -----My review of I'll Be Gone in the Dark Songs/Music The author's site provides a link to a considerable list of 39 songs mentioned in the book. But you have to have a membership to hear the full songs on Spotify instead of just the clips that are available on Rodman’s site. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 14, 2021
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Feb 22, 2021
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Mar 03, 2021
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Hardcover
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125079076X
| 9781250790767
| 125079076X
| 3.82
| 118,776
| May 11, 2021
| May 11, 2021
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really liked it
| …a few minutes later in the car, he found the first of the messages. It had been forwarded from the contact form on his own author website (Thanks …a few minutes later in the car, he found the first of the messages. It had been forwarded from the contact form on his own author website (Thanks for visiting my page! Have a question or a comment about my work? Please use the form!) just around the time as he was about to go on the air with local Seattle institution Randy Johnson, and it had already been sitting there in his own email in-box for about ninety radioactive minutes. Reading it now made every good thing of that morning, not to speak of the last year of Jake’s life, instantly fall from him and land in a horrible, reverberating crack. Its horrifying email address was [email protected], and though the message was brevity itself at a mere four words, it still managed to get its point across. You are a thief, it said.Buckle up. Jacob Finch Bonner (Jake) had some early success as a writer. His novel, The Invention of Wonder, received critical acclaim, the New York Times including it in its list of New and Noteworthy books. But it has been a while since that critical (if not commercial) triumph. A story collection was largely ignored and then there was, well, nada. Jake teaches at Ripley University in northern Vermont. It is not writer’s block Jake suffers, it is more like Writer’s-Great-Wall-of-China. He teaches creative writing, endures the continual delights of academia politics, and lives, literally, on Poverty Lane. But then Evan Parker happens. [image] Jean Hanff Korelitz - image from her site - Photo: Michael Avedon An incoming student, Evan is convinced that he has a perfect plot for a novel. He is insufferable, arrogant, condescending, and clearly thinks that Jake cannot really teach him anything. He does not want to tell anyone the specifics of his work, just get a degree, educational cred, and some connections, figuring that is all he will need. But a time comes when he does share with Jake the arc and some detail of his novel. Turns out Evan was right. A few years later Ripley has down-sized, and Jake is working at a proprietary artist colony. All he had ever wanted was to tell—in the best possible words, arranged in the best possible order—the stories inside him. He had been more than willing to do the apprenticeship and the work. He had been humble with his teachers and respectful of his peers. He had acceded to the editorial notes of his agent (when he’d had one) and bowed to the red pencil of his editor (when he’d had one) without complaint. He had supported the other writers he’d known and admired (even the ones he hadn’t particularly admired) by attending their readings and actually purchasing their books (in hardcover! at independent bookstores!) and he had acquitted himself as the best teacher, mentor, cheerleader, and editor that he’d known how to be, despite the (to be frank) utter hopelessness of most of the writing he was given to work with. And where had he arrived, for all of that? He was a deck attendant on the Titanic, moving the chairs around with fifteen ungifted prose writers while somehow persuading them that additional work would help them improve.But when Jake learns that Evan Parker has died, and that his magnum opus appears to have never been published, he makes a decision, backing it up with large volumes of excuse-making and a cyclotronic level of self-justifying spin. Three years later he is on his long-dreamed-of book tour, promoting his hugely successful novel, Crib. He still carries guilt and paranoia about being found out. The guilt he manages (Mr. Bonner, when it pops up, take two excuses in a large glass of entitlement and call me in the morning), but I guess you can’t be too paranoid. Then the message. This is where the book kicks into high gear. Who is #Talented Tom, how much does he know, what can he prove, what does he want, and what will he do? Is this blackmail? I was reminded of a classic story of guilt and crime. ...at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears. No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound –much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale HeartAn e-mailed threat was not the only thing he left Seattle with. Anna Williams, a fan, the producer at the Randy Johnson show at KBIK, who had arranged for Jake to do the interview, chats him up afterwards. They have a coffee, stay in touch even when he returns to New York, and their connection soon become a thing. The messages do not stop. but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore!- EAPWe ride along as Jake deals with his publisher, his agent, his fans, and his peers. There is a lot of support for him in the community, as most presume it is just a nutter harassing him in search of a lawyer-enhanced payday. But Jake knows this is no gold-digging faker. Yet he still feels it necessary to keep this from Anna for a long time, even after they are living together. Just how dangerous is TalentedTom? I seem to be attracted to sociopathic male antagonists. I also appear to like college campuses. - from the Scoundrel Time interviewThe engine shifts into overdrive when Jake decides to stop playing defense and begins doing some serious research to identify his tormentor, and learns that his may not be the only theft related to Evan’s plot. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! - EAPIn addition to Poe, I was reminded of another book-stealing novel of recent vintage, A Ladder to the Sky, with a much more flagrant, and feckless thief. In this one Korelitz drives us through Jake’s excuses and makes us consider just where fair use ends and theft begins. As one might expect there is a lot in here about writing. Where do you get your ideas? an eternal question, the struggle to create. Coping with a book tour, difficult questions, redundant questions, ignorant interviewers. As this is Korelitz’s seventh published novel, and I am sure she has motored the book tour circuit a time or six, I expect this is the product of experience. As is her take on campus life, coping with students, and the horrors of faculty politics. Not to mention a writer’s inner turmoil. The Plot may seem a little hard on writers, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone; we’re hard on ourselves. In fact, you couldn’t hope to meet a more self-flagellating bunch of creatives anywhere. At the end of the day, though, we are the lucky ones. First, because we get to work with language, and language is thrilling. Second, because we love stories and we get to frolic in them. Begged, borrowed, adapted, embroidered … perhaps even stolen: it’s all a part of a grand conversation. - from AcknowledgementsThe only place I had issues was with the baddie’s final explanations. I cannot really go into details as it would require significant spoilage, but the motivation for what comes at the end seems thin. A name change might have raised questions at an institution. And one might have expected a greater bit of interest on the part of the authorities after one death, particularly in tracing back a specific person’s real-world movements, and someone else’s on-line activity. That said, keep your BP meds handy. This is a tension-filled journey, page-turning wonderfulness, leaving you panting to know what happens next, and unable to turn out the light and go to sleep before you get through some serious white-knuckle twists and turns to arrive at The Plot’s destination. I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! - EAP Review first posted – January 15, 2021 Publication dates ----------Hard cover – May 11, 2021 ----------Trade paperback - May 3, 2022 I received an early e-look through MacMillan's Reading Insiders Club. While reluctant at first, they came around after I used a pitch written by a friend. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter – for insulting morons, Twitter #2 – for book promo and FB pages Her FB page is inaccessible at present. I am not sure if she has shut it down permanently, or if access is merely limited. This is Korelitz’s 7th published novel Her book You Should Have Known was adapted to the recent TV miniseries, The Undoing Interview -----Scoundrel Time - Into that Dark Room Where the Fiction Gets Made: An Interview with Novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz Items of Interest -----The Poe Museum - The Tell-Tale Heart -----My review of John Boyne’s 2018 novel, A Ladder to the Sky -----Sidebar Saturdays - Plots, Prose And Plagiarism In Fiction – Four Things Every Writer Should Know About Literary Theft by Matt Knight -----Catapult - Reading Group Guide ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 26, 2020
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Jan 03, 2021
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Jan 03, 2021
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Hardcover
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1538746832
| 9781538746837
| 1538746832
| 3.73
| 12,330
| Nov 10, 2020
| Nov 10, 2020
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it was amazing
| I’m here because, for the past ten years. I have been haunted by a murder that took place a few steps away. It was told to me my junior year of col I’m here because, for the past ten years. I have been haunted by a murder that took place a few steps away. It was told to me my junior year of college like a ghost story: a young woman, a Harvard graduate student of archaeology, was bludgeoned to death in her off-campus apartment in January 1969. Her body was covered with fur blankets and the killer threw red ochre on her body, a perfect recreation of a burial ritual. No one heard any screams; nothing was stolen. Decades passed, and her case remained unsolved. Unsolved, that is, until yesterday.------------------------------------- “Every nation-state wants an important past,” Karl said. So, often the ruling parties will commission archaeologists. But sometimes the past the archaeologists find is not what the powers want them to find.In Becky Cooper’s gripping true-crime tale, We Keep the Dead Close, there are two mysteries at work. Who brutally murdered Jane Britton and why, and was Harvard University involved in covering up the murder? If so, did they know who the guilty party was? [image] Becky Cooper – from the Boston Globe – photo by Becky Cooper Ok, so here is how I went about reading the book. In addition to entering into my review file the names of the Questions so far -----Was Jim H (Jane’s sort-of bf) at her door at 9a as reported by her friends and neighbors, the Mitchells? -----Where is Jim H now? -----Who were the two men dashing to a car at 12:30a as reported by neighbor Ravi? -----Why was Jane’s cat screaming at 8p, and if the place was effectively soundproof how did neighbor Carol Presser hear it? -----Sounds like the killer was left-handed, given the location of the fatal blow. -----What’s the deal with the red ochre sprinkled over Jane’s body? [image] Jane Britton – image from Wikimedia I kept a separate list for the question of whether Harvard engaged in a coverup. In a book of over 400 pages you can see how this list might grow. And grow it did, even as I checked off many of the questions when they were answered. But that was one of the major joys of reading this, or, I guess, any true crime book, or fictional crime book for that matter. Seeing if what strikes the author, or the investigators, is also what strikes you, the reader, the rousing of our inner Sherlock. Aside from the mystery, the whodunit of the story, there is content in abundance. For example, how can an institution like Harvard at the very least appear to be involved in covering up a crime, and yet remain unaccountable. Maybe that is not so surprising given that, after lives of diverse forms of crime, the Trump family remains on the spacious side of prison bars. But still, there is, or at least should be, some shock value to this. Did Harvard leadership hide a capital crime, did Harvard obstruct justice for fifty years? Cooper looks at evidence suggesting that it did. [image] Professor Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky was a prime suspect in Britton’s murder – image from the NY Post – grad students had accumulated a file on him. One of them died under questionable circumstances. As noted in the opening quote at top, Cooper had come across this story while an undergraduate at Radcliffe. The professor presumed most likely to have done the deed was still teaching at Harvard. Cooper graduated, moved on, was having a life, but the story stuck with her. Ten years after her undergrad days, she returned to the scene of the crime, as a graduate student, determined to find out the truth of Jane Britton’s death. [image] The Dig team in Iran in 1968 - from West Hunter This is a journey very reminiscent of Michelle McNamara’s amazing I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, in which she helped track down the Golden State Killer. Could Cooper do the same? We follow her through the labyrinth of her investigation, talking with everyone who knew Jane at the time of her death, and then branching out to the people who knew the people who knew her. She keeps trying to get access to official police records, a remarkably difficult undertaking for such a cold case, even moreso as Massachusetts is one of the worst states in the nation on Freedom of Information access, and gets in touch with local and state investigators who were involved back then. Suspects get their time in the spotlight, then are replaced with others. Was it one of these, or maybe someone in Jane’s circle who was never thought of as a suspect, or maybe someone else entirely? [image] Jane Britton and Ed Franquemont at their college graduation in 1967 - image from Town & Country – source: the Jane Britton Police File – Franquemont, an ex, was universally disliked by Jane’s friends. He may have been physically abusive to her But there is a whole lot more going on here than a procedural effort to unearth the truth in a nearly fifty-year-old cold case. There is a consideration of historical and all-too-contemporary gender discrimination issues at Harvard, a strong thread about story that permeates, and a subset of that, on rumor as a means of social control. Cooper documents decades of dismissive treatment of women, not just at Harvard, but in academia well beyond those ivied walls. This manifests in many ways. Women at Harvard in the 1970s learned to dress as sexlessly as possible in order to de-emphasize their gender, lest they be seen as less academically capable than their male clasamates. In the 1980s, women were ushered to positions in the university that were high on administrative duties and low in departmental influence. In 1994 Nancy Hopkins documented the bias against women, showing that only 8 percent of the science faculty at MIT were women, and even lower, 5 percent, at Harvard. In 2005 Hopkins confronted then Harvard president Larry Summers at a conference when he claimed that female under-representation in science faculties was the result of innate biological differences. In the twenty-teens, Associate Professor Kimberly Theidon, was active at Harvard speaking out about sex discrimination and sexual assault, faulting Harvard for its lagging sexual assault policy. When her concerns made it into The Crimson, Harvard’s newspaper, her tenure application, which had already been approved by the authorizing committee, was withdrawn. Behind-closed-door deliberations on tenure decisions shields Harvard from much-needed transparency. The tenure decision-making process “is an invitation to abuse,” Howard Georgi, a Harvard physicist who has served on tenure committees told Science magazine in 1999. “There’s no question this has affected women.”The whole notion for the book began, of course, with the story BC heard when she was a Radcliffe undergrad. The police withholding their information made the story of Jane’s death largely oral, and certainly unofficial. And we know from the game Telephone, how stories can change when passed along that way. The file kept by graduate students at Harvard about Karl, with so many elements poorly examined, if researched at all, made that a kind of urban legend. Everybody back at the time of her death had their own experience of Jane and BC tries to make sense of them, learn from their Rashomon-like views the truth of who Jane was. She presents to us a Jane Britton who is not just a body deprived of life, but a three-dimensional person, with a personality, a history, hopes, talents, complications, and ambitions. [image] Jane Britton’s boyfriend, Jim Humphries, was also a possible suspect. – image from the NY Post - source: Jane Britton police file We construct history from the pieces that are available to us. Artifacts, physical objects, letters, photographs, newspaper reports, police reports, spaces that existed then that are still around today. Cooper pursues all she can find, but some will never be unearthed. Sometimes those pieces might lead in opposing directions. Sometimes the pieces might lead nowhere. Sometimes small pieces might hold large truths. Sometimes what seem large pieces hold little explanatory value. Which are the important shards? And which are just detritus? It takes persistence, sensitivity, intelligence, and creativity to make the story we construct of these pieces reflect the truth of the person, the event, or the time we are attempting to describe. Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky’s claim to fame, for example, was not the high academic achievement of his field research. It was his ability to transform the bits he found into a compelling tale. And what about the missing puzzle pieces, the police reports that were kept hidden, the people there in 1968 and 1969 who had died? We can never really know all there is to know. But hopefully we can, with the evidence we are able to gather, get close enough. [image] Richard Michael (Mike) Gramly (many years later, obviously) not only knew Jane at the time of her death, but was also on an expedition when another young woman vanished mysteriously – he was known to have serious anger issues There were rumors bouncing around Jane and her death like neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Many of the people with whom Cooper spoke had a favorite suspect they believed guilty of the crime, offering what they knew or, maybe, had heard or suspected as supporting evidence. Did Ed Franquemont beat her? Was Mike Gramly guilty of maybe two killings? Did Jane have an affair with Karl in Iran? Did Jane threaten to expose a professional lie Karl had told? Did she blackmail him to gain an advantage in her exams, and a place on the next dig? Was Karl a plagiarist? Was Karl a murderer? Did rumors surround him because of his arrogance or because he might be guilty? How about Lee Parsons [sorry, I was unable to find a photo, but Lee is a prime suspect]? Something happened between Lee and Jane at a notorious “Incense Party” at his place. But what? Did Lee confess to killing Jane many years later? In Cooper’s investigative travels she crosses paths with an expert in such things. As I thought more about [medical anthropologist] Mel [Konner]’s assertion that the rumors were a form of punishment, I found myself reading scholarly work on the social functions of gossip. I eventually worked my way to Chris Boehm, a former classmate of Jane’s who’s studied how gossip works in small-scale societies. He had, in fact, used Jane’s murder as an example in his paper about gossip as a form of social control.There is so much going on here, and it is so accessibly presented that you will be rewarded with much more than the knowledge of who killed Jane Britton. You will learn a lot about Harvard, how academia treats women, how gossip works in the world, and how one might go about solving a very cold case. You may or may not want to read this book in the somewhat OCD manner I pursued, focusing on solving the mystery. That way does add considerably to the reading time, as well as the filling feeling one gets from such activities. But whether you dust off each piece of information as it emerges, or speed through Cooper’s excavation on a mud-spattered Jeep, you will be well rewarded. Once you dig out We Keep the Dead Close from your bookseller’s shelves, you will definitely want to keep it close until you finish reading, exploring, and learning. This is an expedition well worth signing up for. …the act of interpretation molds the facts in service of the storyteller. I have been burned enough times to know. There are no true stories; there are only facts, and the stories we tell ourselves about those facts. Review posted – January 8, 2021 Publication dates ----------November 10, 2020 - hardcover ----------September 14, 2021 - trade paperback I received a copy of the book from Grand Central in return for an honest review, or at least, as honest a review as might be possible given the materials I was able to excavate. Thanks, folks. And thanks to MC. You know who you are. You can find the entire, un-chopped-up review on my site, Coot's Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 16, 2020
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Jan 04, 2021
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Dec 10, 2020
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Hardcover
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0062869760
| 9780062869760
| 0062869760
| 3.53
| 453
| Apr 14, 2020
| Apr 14, 2020
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really liked it
| Every person has within her a certain amount of self-preservation to guide her. But when the self in question has taken the sheer number of knocks Every person has within her a certain amount of self-preservation to guide her. But when the self in question has taken the sheer number of knocks that I have, the preservation instinct is ground down. Mine is a fine dust, little particulates that have all but disappeared. I’m not sure what self there is left to preserve.She has led something less than a charmed life. Trouble seems to follow her as if she had a tracking device stuck on her collar and an army of people at monitors reporting her every move. [image] Sheena Kamal - in studio making the audio book of her other 2020 release, the YA novel Fight Like a Girl Nora Watts, the considerably flawed, but still kick-ass PI from Eyes Like Mine (2017) and It All Falls Down (2018), is back and is taking her game on offense. Having survived a few too many attempts on her life, Nora is determined to track down the man who has it in for her, and take him down, one way or another, before he can kill her. More importantly, she is eager to see that her teenage daughter, the one she had given up for adoption at birth and only recently has had any relationship with, is removed from the playing field as a target and potential hostage. Her nemesis is Dao, the head of security for the uber-rich and powerful Zhang family, which Nora had seriously damaged in earlier volumes, and he has his own reasons for wanting her dead. His criminal connections give him global reach. No stress, no stress at all. She finds allies in her quest. Bernard Lam is one, a billionaire who likes and is willing to finance Nora, but has an agenda of his own. Also along for the ride is Jon Brazuca, ex-cop, Nora’s former AA sponsor (she’s got issues, ok?), tough as nails, except when it comes to Nora. If PT Barnum was right, this guy must have been born many, many times. She does care for him, but, well, Nora. Familiar faces from the former books take turns in the spotlight. Daughter Bonnie, and her adoptive parents, PI Leo Kruschnik, her former employer, Simone, her drag queen tech guru, biker baddies who provide some of the usual mayhem and poor sartorial choices, and a few new faces. Welcome back is Whisper, Nora’s four-legged bff. Still not enough screen time for this bitch, though, IMHO. As with the first two Nora Watts novels, this one has a background theme of musicality. The favorite music of a late friend plays from time to time as does The Dark End of the Street, with a bit of Bob Marley tossed in for good measure. Music, both incoming and outgoing, is able to get past Nora’s considerable armor and touch her wary, vulnerable core, although it’s all one-way this time. He warms up to “Amazing Grace,” and so do I. We’re singing together now and I’m in my head voice, a tone I haven’t heard out of my mouth since I was a kid in youth choir. Buck-toothed and scrappy but with a voice like a lounge singer just months away from a lung cancer diagnosis.No Going Back is the third book in Sheena Kamal’s Nora Watts series. There are sufficient catching-up passages here that it is not necessary to have read the first two to enjoy this one. But really, why would you want to deprive yourself? The first two are outstanding, and will make you better prepared to get the most out of volume #3. I’m just sayin’. There are motifs and issues that permeate the story. Vancouver is not used to the sort of harsh winters that people in, say Winnipeg, would hardly notice. But Kamal uses the encroaching cold and snow in the same way she used fire in book #2, as a background thumping ramping up the volume and beat as the climax approaches. To say the heavy snowfall caught the city by surprise is a ridiculous understatement. People are in a state of shock, interspersed by moments of panic. No one knows what to do with their hands. Should they try to dig out their vehicles, which they don’t know how to drive in these weather conditions, or do they dial their workplaces to say they aren’t coming in? Tips on how to drive in the snow fill local news reports while those who had moved here to get out of this kind of vengeful weather curse their misfortune and sneer at the masses who are seemingly struck helpless by flakes of fluffy white precipitation. I am on the side of the cursing and sneering few.Being an outsider is part of Nora’s core. Her mother was Palestinian and her father was indigenous Canadian. She is very conscious of the history of European encroachment and being seen as an other. It reinforces her unwillingness to trust, expecting that no one, certainly no one in authority, will believe her anyway. Relationships and/or tensions between parents and children provide a central element. Nora is desperate to protect the child she gave away at birth, Bonnie, finally wanting to have a relationship with her. There is the relationship between Bonnie and her adoptive parents. The billionaire client and even her evil nemesis have daddy issues. I drive away from the cabin with the knowledge that I’ve been reprimanded and nourished simultaneously. It’s a new experience for me. Does Bonnie experience this every day? Is this what it’s like to have a mother?Nora remains a fascinating, if damaged character. She has the sort of code you expect the noir hero to adopt, even though she follows it to her own disadvantage far too many times. She struggles to maintain a secure perimeter around herself, even though she can taste the fulfillment of intimate human connection in patches. “I’ve never seen the point of tears. There’s something inside me that grows cold at the thought of shedding them, at the sight of someone else letting them fall. I don’t give into tears, not even now, because I’ll never take the chance that someone will see it as weakness, as I do. But I wonder what it would be like if I did. I feel like we’re on the brink of something in our friendship.”The first person narrative, mostly Nora’s, but with a few chapters from the perspective of others, offers an immediacy to the story, makes you feel present, and tense. I do not know if the title No Going Back signals more than just the story at hand. While the trilogy is complete with this novel, it remains to be seen whether Nora Watts will be making a return in the years ahead. Kamal is open to bringing her back but she’s “…not really there yet. If I bring her back, I want to be a little different. I want her journey to make sense. I want it to be a progression.” - from the Hank Garner interviewI sincerely hope Nora can find her way back to us. Compelling characters are to be cherished, particularly those who struggle with themselves as well as the world around them. Sheena Kamal has brought us, yet again, both wonderful characters and an engaging, fraught tale, rich with substance, in addition to tension, mayhem, and artistry. If she can find a way to bring Nora back to the pages of a book, I am sure many of us will find our way back to her. I’m a woman over twenty-five. I’m so used to people ignoring my existence that it’s startling when someone admits they’ve been paying attention. Review first posted – May 15, 2020 Publication date – April 14, 2020 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Instagram, and FB pages -----A list of Seven Short Pieces by the author that have appeared in diverse publications. I suggest you check out the one in The Guardian - from her website Interviews -----The Big Thrill -Up Close: Sheena Kamal by K.L. Romo -----The Star - Sheena Kamal’s two new books: “I like my heroines to be a little rough around the edges” by Sue Carter -----Author Stories Podcast #866 - Sheena Kamal Returns With No Going Back by Hank Garner – audio – 37:10 – from 4:39 -----Crimespree Magazine - Q&A with Sheena Kamal -----Writer Types Podcast by Co-Hosts E.A. Aymar & Sarah Chen – audio – 40:40 – from 9:26 to 22:30 My reviews of other books by the author -----Eyes Like Mine - Nora Watts #1 - 2017 -----It All Falls Down - Nora Watts #2 - 2018 Songs/Music -----James Carr - The Dark End of the Street -----Bob Marley - One Love -----Chopin’s nocturnes -----Leon Bridges - Coming Home ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 19, 2020
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Apr 29, 2020
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May 12, 2020
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Paperback
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0062878824
| 9780062878823
| 3.97
| 5,189
| Feb 18, 2020
| Feb 18, 2020
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it was amazing
| With Trump in the White House there would presumably be extensive digging into every deal he’d ever done, every partner he’d ever worked with, ever With Trump in the White House there would presumably be extensive digging into every deal he’d ever done, every partner he’d ever worked with, every loan he’d ever received—many of which involved Deutsche. And the facts that Trump’s election was under a cloud because of Russia’s efforts to sway the vote and that his leading lender had for years been engaged in money-laundering activity in Russia—well, it didn’t take a genius to realize that real or imagined dots would soon be connected linking Deutsche to Russia to Donald Trump. This was especially true since the bank a decade earlier had connected Trump with wealthy Russians as he prepared to build resorts in Hawaii and Mexico.We all know that those much anticipated revelations have had scant time in the sun, but we also know that Deutsche Bank (DB) is where a whole bunch of the bodies are buried. In looking at DB, Donald Trump makes up only a small part of the book, but he is the tale that wags the dog in this biography of a bank. Donald Trump is a deadbeat, a con man extraordinaire. After getting massive loans from a range of New York banks, and stiffing them, resulting in massive losses, he was essentially blacklisted in New York. No reputable bank would lend him anything. Yet, as he announced his candidacy for the presidency, there was one financial entity still willing to do deals with him. How did DB get to a point where they were the only bank in the world that would lend money to such a complete fiscal lowlife. How could any bank make loans of billions of dollars to him and his family? [image] David Enrich - image from AirMail.News Enrich introduces us early to a key figure in understanding DB’s secrets. Val Broeksmit was the ne’er do well stepson of Bill Broeksmit, a reasonably ethical guy who had been called on multiple times to step in at DB and make sure things were being done on the up and up. When they were not, he let upper management know. This does not mean that his advice was always heeded. But there came a time when regulators were closing in, and a part of DB where he had particular responsibility had been doing business in an unacceptable way. He had missed it. Years of working at this mad company had taken a toll. He had retired or tried to retire several times, but, like Michael Corleone in Godfather III, he finds it is not so easy to stay out. The years of major stress and this final failing, his internalization of the stresses of the company, became too much. Bill hanged himself. (although Val thinks he was killed) Val managed to get his hands on considerable quantities of stepdad’s communications. How he uses this trove, and how it is used by others, researchers, authors, and government officials, forms a tranche that permeates the modern story of the bank. As an example of how greed turns good people turn bad, though, it is never made clear that Broeksmit had ever really done anything illegal or clearly unethical. Maybe it is more that this criminal corporation had destroyed a guy who was basically decent, who had the temerity to ask how bank actions might affect their clients. [image] Bill Broeksmit - image from The New York Post Enrich gives us a look at the bank’s beginnings in the 19th century, its later alignment with Nazis, as it removed Jews from its board and staff, its financing of the construction of Aushwitz, and its survival, after the war. The USA wanted the bank liquidated, but the UK wanted it around to help in paying the UK the war debts Germany had agreed to. [image] Val Broeksmit - image from the NY Times DB settled in to being a conservative bank, serving businesses, and scrupulously looking after their clients’ interests. But a new element entered as derivatives began to grow from a conservative way to hedge one’s risks to a form of casino gambling. DB looked to expand from its European roots to a global presence. They brought in people, from the USA and elsewhere, who had the expertise to establish DB in these new markets. [image] Josef Ackermann - image from The Irish Times - DB CEO from 2002 to 2012 – he led the huge expansion of the corporation It was wildly successful, even if the paper DB held, now that it was gambling with its own as well its clients’ money, might be wildly overvalued. DB had made itself into the largest bank in the world. Part of the success was because the top bosses demanded insane levels of growth. At one point it was expected that profits should grow 25% a year. In no sane world was this possible. But there were, however, insane ways to achieve the goal. Do business with dodgy characters with whom no one else wanted to do business, and charge them hefty fees for the privilege. People like Russian oligarchs, middle eastern royal families, and kleptocrats, were eager for ways to transform their local currencies into dollars or euros, and DB was more than happy to help. They were also willing to match eastern dirty laundry with western spin cycles, and thus were able to connect Russian officials busy looting their nation’s resources with, say, real estate developers in need of large cash infusions to pursue expensive projects, for a piece of the action. Legality was an unfortunate victim to such transactions. International sanctions were ignored. Adherence to fiduciary norms took a hit. The result was that DB eventually became known for the stain of its dishonesty with its own customers, and willingness to cut legal corners to sustain an unnatural level of growth. Neither did the Mad Max atmosphere at the bank do much for the people working there, except, of course, for those directing the crimes, who made off with staggering sums. Enrich tells the DB story by focusing on a series of individuals at the upper levels of management, offering not only a look at where they came from and what they did in their executive positions, but a take on their personalities, what made them tick, even, for some, their family lives. This approach is a common, but effective one, that succeeds in making the DB story not one of a glass-encased corporate entity (or, a person, according to Mitt Romney) but a human story, with some decent people, some bad guys, and some really, really bad guys. [image] The DB towers in Frankfurt – image by Krisztian Bocs for Bloomberg There are some fun bits in here that are likely to surprise you, like how Val and his trove of dad’s intel got connected with Adam Schiff by way of Moby. Mostly, though, Val’s doings seem sad rather than enlightening, but do offer a bit of a look at how difficult it can be, sometimes, for journalists and investigators to secure much-needed information, when the source is less than a standup sort. [image] Anshu Jain - Co-CEO of DB from 2011 to 2015 – he left as a result of the the Libor Rate-fixing Scandal - image from FirstPost.com By the end you will see how it came about that DJT had found a financial home with DB, and you will know what it took for a conservative institution to have totally lost its mind and evolved into a grand scale criminal enterprise. And you will be left wondering just how long it will take for the wheels of justice to grind their way to delivering actual justice to so many who flaunt the laws to the detriment of the rest of us. In the final months of the Obama administration, all signs had pointed to charges soon being filed against bank employees and probably the bank itself. At the very least, a multibillion-dollar financial penalty looked all but certain.Something curious, however, had happened as soon as Trump took the oath of office. The investigation had gone silent. Week after week, Deutsch’s lawyers and executives wondered when they would get an update. At first, they worried that the delay spelled trouble. Perhaps, after campaigning as a populist, after vowing that he was “not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,” Trump planned an aggressive crackdown on banking malfeasance. Perhaps, after having his election victory tarnished by Russian interference, Trump would try to dispel those suspicions with a high-profile assault on Russian money laundering. But as the months passed, and nothing happened, executives’ fears faded. One source of relief was the realization that two of the Justice Department’s most powerful prosecutors, Geoffrey Berman and Robert Khuzami, both had previously represented Deutsche…Bank executives soon concluded that Russia was off-limits, too hot to handle, for the Trump administration. So, it seemed, was Deutsche. Review first posted – February 28, 2020 Publication dates ----------February 18, 2020 - hardcover ----------December 16, 2020 - trade paperback [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s GR, Twitter, Instagram and FB pages Interviews ----- Expected case against Deutsche Bank disappeared in Trump transition -----Rachel Maddow - Transcript of the entire show -----NPR - 'Dark Towers' Exposes Chaos And Corruption At The Bank That Holds Trump's Secrets - by Dale Davies Items of Interest -----Why are so many bankers committing suicide? -----NY Times – by Enrich - Me and My Whistle-Blower -----The Libor Scandal ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 07, 2020
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Feb 24, 2020
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Feb 24, 2020
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ebook
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0062838202
| 9780062838209
| 0062838202
| 3.63
| 82,092
| 2020
| Mar 03, 2020
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liked it
| I don’t trust narrators any more than I trust the actual people in my life. We never get the whole truth, not from anybody. When we first meet some I don’t trust narrators any more than I trust the actual people in my life. We never get the whole truth, not from anybody. When we first meet someone, before words are ever spoken, there are already lies and half-truths. The clothes we wear cover the truth of our bodies, but they also present who we want to be to the world. They are fabrications, figuratively and literally.Back in 2004, when he first started working at Old Devils, the mysteries-oriented bookstore that he now runs, Malcolm Kershaw was asked to write a blog post. Eight Perfect Murders was his list of the best, fool-proof murders committed in mystery fiction. He posted and promptly forgot about it. Now, many years later, a killer seems to be using his list as the basis for a series of murders. Is Malcolm a potential target? Or is Malcolm otherwise involved? Special Agent Gwen Mulvey, thirties, blonde, has taken an interest. Seems not only is Malcolm’s list in use by a fan of the genre, someone Malcolm knows is one of the victims. [image] Peter Swanson - image from the site Blood Type The blog piece that Malcolm wrote includes: The Red House Mystery – A.A. (Alan Alexander) Milne – 1922For fans of mysteries this is both a fun puzzle and a docent-led tour of some of the best suspense writing of all time. Be forewarned, if you have not read these already, or seen the films made of some, the book will spoil them for you. Caveat lector. The list of eight is only the beginning. More than any other book I can remember, Eight Perfect Murders offers a cornucopia of fun genre references with a stop or two outside the field as well. It gives you a chance to reacquaint with some of the true whodunit classics, each with unique ways of doing someone in, ways the killer is aping. Swanson has some fun with the list, questioning whether the murders were all that foolproof and whether this or that other book should have been included instead. It is a delightful element, and you can imagine the discussions that went on in selecting this or that and excluding some others. It will certainly provide considerable fodder for your already mountainous TBR lists. [image][image] We follow Kershaw as he tries to figure out who may be up to no good, with, and without Agent Mulvey, and tries to keep one step ahead of any official investigations. There is a bit of body heat developing between Krenshaw and Mulvey, but is that a natural result of boy meets hot special agent, or is the attraction a fatal sort, a manipulation, and if so, on whose part? There does seem to be something a bit off about the hot detective. I have not read all of Swanson’s books, but caught his first two, and there are common elements. Secrets abound. Not surprising for the genre, but Swanson’s leading men tend to hold significant intel back from the reader, to be revealed over the course of the book. There are also femmes fatale, dramatic women who hold the leading man in thrall, resulting in dark consequences. In this case, it is Kershaw’s wife, Claire, and I will say no more about that. One thing that is different this time is that we have a single narrator. Swanson usually likes multiple perspectives. Krenshaw’s bookstore is in Boston, being a familiar siting of Swanson stories. Beacon Hill being revisited is a familiar locale for readers of his oeuvre. Asked in a 2017 interview about this element in his work, Swanson said: It’s hugely important. I think Boston is a good location for a thriller, but I write mainly about Boston because that’s where I live. In Her Every Fear, [published in 2017] I wanted to write something that felt like a gothic thriller, and to me, a large apartment building in Beacon Hill just felt right. That section of Boston feels a little bit trapped in time. It has cobblestones, and narrow streets, and several of the buildings still have stable doors.He was going for something along those lines this time too, I expect, an old-timey specialty bookstore with familiar but infrequent customers, and scads of references to old books. This would have felt out of place in a Barnes & Noble on a large public square. [image][image] Early on, Krenshaw is reminded of another young fictional special agent. It was impossible for me not to think of Clarice Starling,…from Silence of the Lambs. It was where my mind almost always went, to books and movies. It had been that way since I first began to read, And Mulvey, like her fictional counterpart, seemed too tame for the job. It was hard to imagine her whipping a gun from a holster, or aggressively questioning a suspect. She did question a suspect, though. She questioned you.Mulvey keeps Kershaw involved, even if his motives might be less along the lines of providing a public service than they are keeping informed of her progress in order to better protect himself. But what is he protecting? Thus, the quote that opens this review. Is Mulvey a good actor, intent on seeing justice served, or is he Dr. Lecter, serving up bits of information to someone he likes and respects, in service of some other plan? [image][image] As for gripes I heard the ticking sound that meant Nero was coming toward us along the hardwood floor. Agent Mulvey, who heard it as well, turned and looked at the store cat.Hearing cat claws clicking on the floor is not a thing. My wife and I care for many cats, and have had many more over the years, none lacking claws, and never have we ever heard the click-clack that is described here. It is possible, I suppose, that there are cats that might provide such a sonic announcement of their arrival, but natural selection has seen to it, as Carl Sandburg can attest, that little cat feet are silent. A jarring item like this takes one out of the story, and I bet there are many readers in the target demo for this book, graced with feline presence, who might hack up a hairball on reading about such a cacophonous cat. A small, nerve-jarring bit. Swanson tosses in an impending storm, fills the streets with snow, but other than showing us a bit of Boston in winter, it did not seem that the weather motif added much, really, to the feel of the tale. [image][image] In addition, there will be unrelated eye-rolling. You may hear yourself saying things like “fuh realz?” or “No, no way,” or “You’re kidding me, right?” as a character does this, that, or something else, that seems just dramatically dumb. On the other hand, if you are willing to treat your eye-ball chafing with over the counter products, and use ear plugs to drown out the sound of your own complaining voice, this remains a pretty fun, engaging read. Krenshaw seems likable, and his love of books will make him sympathetic to, you know, readers. Mulvey is intriguing, as we wonder if she is a straight arrow, or up to something. Krenshaw’s wife is a damaged, over-the-top siren, someone I found a bit tough to relate to, which is hardly a crime. But then we are not looking for high lit in a mystery novel. The rest of the supporting cast were drawn lightly, but served their purposes well. Swanson’s clear love of and appreciation for the genre, as expressed in the multitude of references, both in written and cinematic form, is infectious. (a treatable infection, nothing deadly, I promise). Having a shop cat named Nero doesn’t hurt. While it may not be Swanson’s best work, there is no mystery about it. Eight Perfect Murders is a perfectly fun, engaging page-turner of a read, particularly for devotees of crime fiction. “I felt closer to Claire than I’ve ever felt to anyone before or since,” I said.” But sometimes I didn’t know her.” Review posted – March 6, 2020 Publication dates -----March 3, 2020 - Hardcover -----January 26, 2021 - Trade paperback =============================EXTRA STUFF The book was released as Rules for Perfect Murders in the UK on May 3, 2020 Links to the author’s Tumblr, Twitter and FB pages Swanson’s web site has a cornucopia of samples of his Hitchcock poems, other poetry, short fiction and non-fiction, and is well worth checking out. Armchair Audience is Swanson’s site for writing on “Books read. Movies seen. TV Watched” He makes a slight nod to himself by referencing in the book a site called The Armchair Spoiler Book references - the Eight perfect Murders…Plus -----The Red House Mystery by A.A. (Alan Alexander) Milne (a writer of very substantial brain on Gutenberg -----Malice Aforethought by Anthony Berkeley Cox - Part 1 of 8 - audiobook -----The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie - free text on Internet Archive -----The ABC Murders - free audio on Internet Archive -----Double Indemnity by James M. Cain - novel - wiki -----Double Indemnity - film - wiki -----Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith – novel - wiki -----The Drowner - John D. Macdonald. novel - wiki ----- The Secret History by Donna Tartt – novel- wiki ==========Others, but not all – wiki links -----Shake Hands Forever by Ruth Rendell ----- Louise Penny novels -----We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson -----Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn -----Too Many Crooks by Rex Stout -----The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith – (really J.K. Rowling) -----James Crumley - Elaine Johnson’s (a character in 8PM) favorite author Poems -----Winter Nightfall by Sir John Collings Squire -----Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath -----An Exequy by Peter Porter (About a dead wife) My reviews of other books by the author -----2015 - The Kind Worth Killing -----2014 - The Girl with a Clock for a Heart Songs/Music -----Max Richter - 24 Postcards in Full Colour -----The End of the Affair soundtrack by Michael Nyman Interviews -----Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb – 2017 - Q&A with Peter Swanson -----You might check out my 2014 interview of the author below my review of - The Girl with a Clock for a Heart ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 19, 2020
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Feb 24, 2020
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Feb 23, 2020
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Hardcover
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3.10
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really liked it
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Jul 28, 2024
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Jul 31, 2024
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3.66
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really liked it
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Jun 20, 2024
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Jun 19, 2024
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3.86
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really liked it
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Mar 05, 2024
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Mar 06, 2024
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3.06
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really liked it
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Jan 19, 2024
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Jan 25, 2024
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3.73
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liked it
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Sep 24, 2023
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Sep 26, 2023
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3.49
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it was amazing
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Jul 07, 2023
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Jul 19, 2023
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4.09
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really liked it
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Jun 23, 2023
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Jun 27, 2023
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3.34
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really liked it
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Jan 27, 2023
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Jan 31, 2023
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3.11
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really liked it
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Jan 20, 2023
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Jan 20, 2023
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3.93
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really liked it
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Jan 16, 2023
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Jan 10, 2023
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3.78
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really liked it
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Feb 25, 2022
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Jan 19, 2022
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3.53
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really liked it
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Jan 10, 2022
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Jan 10, 2022
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3.84
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really liked it
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Oct 23, 2021
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Oct 27, 2021
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3.98
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Aug 05, 2021
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Aug 05, 2021
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3.66
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really liked it
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Feb 22, 2021
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Mar 03, 2021
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3.82
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really liked it
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Jan 03, 2021
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Jan 03, 2021
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3.73
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it was amazing
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Jan 04, 2021
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Dec 10, 2020
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3.53
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really liked it
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Apr 29, 2020
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May 12, 2020
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3.97
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it was amazing
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Feb 24, 2020
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Feb 24, 2020
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3.63
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liked it
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Feb 24, 2020
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Feb 23, 2020
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