Category Archives: Reading . . .

***Devil in the Grass

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alligator

(photo: heymeadow, creative commons license)

By Christopher Bowron – This debut thriller is an ambitious mix of Florida politics, Satanic cults, Seminole tradition, and alligators. And a bull shark. Author Bowron is clearly familiar with the southwest Florida setting, which he describes expertly, bringing the story to vivid life.

The Florida Everglades is home to any number of dangerous predators, including humans of the sort who don’t mix well with civilization. The 9-foot tall sawgrass that gives the Everglades its nickname—River of Grass—provides Canadian author Bowron’s inspiration for the book title as well as superb cover for his characters as they ply their small boats through its waters.

The impetus for the plot is also grounded in real life: the ongoing political battle between those who want to save the Everglades as a unique and irreplaceable natural resource and the agricultural interests making vast fortunes growing sugar cane and raising cattle along its edges. In Devil in the Grass, former pro football player and half-Seminole Jackson Walker works as an intern for Republican State Senator, James Hunter, who supports Clean Water legislation. Walker, in his mid-20s, meets and falls for a woman working for the state Republican Party. She seeks him out, seduces him, and gradually exposes him to the Satanic cult called The Brotherhood of Set.

After a while, Walker does what he believes will be an innocent errand for the cult leader, and at the book’s opening we find him hiding out in Big Cypress Swamp, accused of slaying a man and woman in a Satanic ritual. Although he believes he’s being framed because of his work with the Senator, letting himself become soft and apathetic may have contributed. He regrets the demise of his football career and its heroes: “It was the fearlessness with which they marched onto the field that had mattered to him.” Inevitably, Walker will be called upon to demonstrate that same fearlessness before the book’s last page.

If the leaders of the Satanic cult weren’t creepy enough, they have for generations used a particular local family—the McFaddens—to be their clean-up crew. They are prone to torture and killing, and they let the vastness of the Everglades hide the evidence. I’m a little burned out on serial killers with chain saws, but the alligators make for heart-pounding excitement.

As the story gets rolling, not only the police, but also the Satanists and their instruments, the McFaddens, are after Walker. And don’t forget the gators.

The book clearly ends with the promise of a sequel, which I hope can make the bad guys as believable as the environment and that Bowron gets a little help with dialog. I’m not sure when this novel takes place, but if Buck Henderson’s “old Cadillac” was manufactured after 2002, it has a trunk release lever. And I ardently wish he hadn’t laid Jimmy McFadden’s psychotic behavior at the door of “severe autism.” Scientific study has failed to link the two.

A longer version of this review appeared on CrimeFictionLover.com.

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***Jump Cut

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boy, desert

(photo: Claus Rebler, creative commons license)

By Libby Fischer Hellmann – In Jump Cut, Chicago-based thriller author Hellmann brings her outspoken heroine Ellie Foreman back for another exciting adventure after a 10-year hiatus. In the new book, video producer Foreman and her team have been hired to produce a series of puff pieces about ginormous Delcroft Aviation.

Her project is going well until a client meeting to review a rough cut, when a Delcroft executive unexpectedly tears into the video, the project, and Ellie herself. Given the vehemence of this reaction, the suits around the table have no choice but to postpone further work, and in short order they cancel Ellie’s contract altogether.

Ellie struggles to figure out what caused her to lose her client and fixes on a stranger who appears in the background of the video. She’d conversed with him, finding him oddly curious about her project, and they’d exchanged business cards. In the hope he can help her understand what went wrong, he agrees to meet her, but just before their rendezvous, he is killed. Suicide, the authorities say. Ellie suspects otherwise, especially when she realizes she possesses a flash drive containing significant clues. But various people want it back and aren’t picky about how they get it.

With its up-to-the-minute subject matter involving sophisticated surveillance, secret drone projects, quasi-political assassination, and international intrigue, Jump Cut is a timely, fast-paced read. The plot relies on a couple of shaky coincidences, especially finding the flash drive in the first place. And it includes the typical device of not spilling to the authorities when every bone of the reader’s body is screaming “Tell them! Now!”

Ellie’s close and believable relationships with boyfriend Luke, daughter Rachel, and dad Jake provide a warm counterpoint to the terrifying situation in which she finds herself. Hellmann writes in a breezy, easy-to-read style, but ultimately, the writing style is a jarring contrast to the book’s bleak take on the modern zeitgeist, in which the killing of innocent people is seen “as not just an acceptable but an inevitable part of war. Collateral damage.” That point is underscored a bit heavily by a prologue that recounts the death of a nine-year-old boy in a dusty desert on the far side of the world. We don’t hear another word about him until the epilogue, as a mother laments the loss of her children. Not until then do we know who he and his sister were and what their deaths have been: collateral damage.

A longer version of this review appeared on CrimeFictionLover.com.

*****Black Wings Has My Angel

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cigarette

(photo: pixelblume, creative commons license)

By Elliott Chaze – A 2016 reissue, this noir crime novel by a Mississippi newspaperman, originally published in 1954, is a roller-coaster of a read—lightning fast and a lot of fun. At the outset, an escaped prisoner using the name Tim Sunblade has just finished a stint working on an oil drilling rig.

To rid himself of four months of grime, he takes a nice long bath at a cheap hotel. The comforts of the bath put him in mind of having a little female companionship, and with the bellman’s aid he meets Virginia. They turn out to be quite a team. His plan is to head west (isn’t that the classic American criminal’s destination—the wide open spaces?). Virginia’s look and demeanor suggest she’s not just a hotel tramp, and eventually he learns she’s on the lam herself, fleeing the New York City cops.

The book is full of sly dialog. When Tim discovers her call-girl past, Virginia tells him she used to “go with” various Army officers, who were always talking about “the big picture.” “Do I make it clear, Tim? About what is the big picture?” she asks. “You make it clear that your wartime activities were not on the enlisted level.”

Virginia is accustomed to rolling in dough, literally, and more than a bit money-mad, so she encourages Tim’s plan to rob an armored car in Denver and dispose of it in an abandoned mine shaft they’ve found in the Rockies. Flush with their cash, they hit the road again until a drive through a small town turns out to be a big mistake.

It’s a first-person narrative, and Chaze has captured the voice of Sunblade terrifically well. A bit bemused by life’s twists and turns, but resigned to them. Loving and hating Virginia in fairly equal amounts and never quite trusting her. Too much whiskey and too many cigarettes.

In the introduction to this reissue. Barry Gifford calls Black Wings a gem that still sparkles, and though author Chaze wrote several other novels, none of them stack up to it. A New Orleans native, Chaze worked for the Associated Press, served in the Second World War, then settled in Mississippi. He lived a time in Denver as well, which is perhaps why the book’s locations are so well drawn.

He working in various capacities for The Hattiesburg American, for a decade as its city editor. His newspaper training shows in the economy and precision of his prose, and even when events are dire, the narrator’s detached view allows his wry humor to surface. Though Sunblade doesn’t often dwell on Life’s Larger Questions, I was struck by this observation: “Life is a rental proposition with no lease.” That’s exactly the kind of thing Tim Sunblade would say.

I don’t give very many books five stars, but in this one, every word is perfect. A longer version of this review appeared on the Crime Fiction Lover website.

***Naked Shall I Return

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Cliff House fire, San Francisco

(photo: Ed Blerman, creative commons license)

By Christopher Bartley – Noir mysteries set in the 1930s are delicious. Noir mysteries set in the 1930s in San Francisco’s Chinatown are as tasty as a platter of Peking duck. In this complex novel, protagonist and career criminal Ross Duncan is launched on a mysterious quest. An an elusive couple wants him to locate a thing—they’ve never seen it and can’t really describe it—called the Blue Orb, which legend says holds the key to immortality.

Whether Duncan believes this or not is immaterial. The couple also agrees to help him fence a load of stolen jewels that will bankroll him for a good long while and for that reason alone, he’s game. He encounters a succession of interesting characters—opium den impresarios, antiques experts, people whose legends precede them—whose help he might be able to use in locating the Blue Orb. Too bad they keep being murdered before they can provide much assistance.

This book has shady characters galore, a beautiful dame out to bed Duncan, and a plot with more twists and turns than a Chinese Dragon. As it happens, he keeps meeting people connected to Adolph Sutro’s Cliff House who were present when it was destroyed in the famous 1907 fire. That the Blue Orb was smuggled out of tunnels under Cliff House on that fateful day is just one theory about its fate that Duncan must run to ground.

I wouldn’t have heard about this entertaining book if it weren’t for a review on the Crime Fiction Lover website—a great source for tips about the latest thriller, mystery, and crime novels, author interviews, and the like. Some of my reviews appear there too.

Six Months of Ellery Queen

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Ellery Queen

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

I packed my tempting pile of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines in my Costa Rica-bound suitcase. What a treat! Here’s the true advantage of staying at a remote resort: evenings with lots of time to read. OK, everyone has their own vices, as a review of the July 2015 through February 2016 EQMM issues amply attests.

Here are just some of my favorite stories:

  • “Gun Accident: An Investigation,” by Joyce Carol Oates – Oates really ramps up the tension in this recounting of a teenager’s perilous house-sitting experience. (July 2015)
  • “The Kashmir Enigma” by Joan Richter – A mysterious man, a romantic setting, and a never-to-be-forgotten encounter in Kashmir. (July 2015)
  • “The Longboat Cove Murders,” by Marilyn Todd – A tiny English seacoast town copes with a series of mysterious murders. (August 2015)
  • “Black Rock,” by Steven Gore – Family history isn’t always what we think it is. Gore’s latest San Francisco-based legal thriller is Night is the Hunter. (August 2015)
  • “The Siege,” by Hilary Davidson – Clever title for a story about betrayal and being just a bit too smart. This award-winning Canadian author’s latest book, Blood Always Tells, “will surprise you at every turn.” (December 2015)
  • “The Missing Motive,” by R.J. Koreto – The unmarried couple that are the protagonists in this Martha’s Vineyard murder tale are a lot of fun. (December 2015)
  • “Cruel Memory,” by Ed Wyrick – Interesting characters and situations are well-developed in this investigation of a suicide. Or was it murder? (January 2016)
  • “The Adventure of the Single Footprint,” by Robert Arthur – A murderer both gets away with it and solves his own crime. You’ll have to read the story to unravel that conundrum. First published in EQMM in 1948 and included in this year’s Sherlock Holmes theme issue. (February 2016)

2016 marks EQMM’s 75th year of publication. All this year, issues of “The World’s Leading Mystery Magazine” will include special features. You can subscribe to EQMM online or find copies in the periodicals section of major bookstores.

**Slade House

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haunted house

(photo: Joey Gannon, creative commons license)

By David Mitchell – I’ve read all of David Mitchell’s books except 2015’s The Bone Clocks and enjoyed each of them, so looked forward to reading his latest. It’s the distinctive square book with the yellow die-cut cover through which Slade House’s floorplan shows. While many of these other novels wandered briefly into the supernatural or uncanny, this one is firmly planted there.

According to Dwight Garner in his New York Times review, the book grew out of a short story, published in 140-character tweets. It tells the story of five people who, nine years apart, happen into another dimension where the elaborate mansion Slade House exists and where they encounter a pair of twins, brother and sister, who are, as one would-be victim puts it, “parasitic soul-slayers.” They need to suck the souls of humans in order to preserve their immortality. The first victim we read about has many of the charms of the 13-year-old narrator of Black Swan Green, but don’t get too attached. He’s soon replaced by a vulnerable police detective, not nearly as perceptive as he thinks he is. And so on.

Mitchell is a superb writer and conjures images of Slade House and his all-too-human victims and all-too-inhuman protagonists that are hard to dispel. But, what’s the point? Possibly such stories are just not my cuppa. Certainly, this one didn’t appeal to me, even at the level of simple entertainment. There is no one in the book to relate to or learn from. The brother and sister are too weird (not “fleshed out,” I’d say) and their victims on the scene too briefly. Says Garner, “These characters aren’t alive enough for us to fear for them when they’re in peril.”

Nevertheless, readers who enjoy the paranormal may find themselves agreeing with the Washington Post reviewer who said the book is “devilishly fun” or The Daily Beast, which called it “dark, thrilling, and fun.” While the novel was an easy-to-complete read on a five-hour plane ride, the recurring, but temporary illusion of Slade House itself was perhaps the most stable touchpoint in the whole enterprise.

Maybe I should give Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House a try and see whether I have the same reaction. Other suggestions?

****The Drifter

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wild dog

(photo: numb photo, creative commons license)

By Nicholas Petrie, narrated by Stephen Mendel – This exciting debut thriller pits U.S. Marine lieutenant and veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars Peter Ash against a mysterious conspiracy involving psychologically damaged vets, some serious explosives, and $400,000 in cash. Ash has post-traumatic stress, a “white static” that rises up whenever he’s indoors too long. This extreme claustrophobia promises to be more than an inconvenience with winter coming on in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the story is set.

When Ash hears of the suicide of his former comrade Big Jimmie Johnson, guilt motivates him to try to make it up to his widow Dinah and her two young sons. He invents a Marine Corps program that supports families by doing free home repairs and sets to work first on the Johnson family’s dilapidated porch. But he can’t rebuild the porch supports until he does something about the huge, vicious, and rank-smelling dog that’s taken up residence underneath it.

Once the dog is secure, he finds another surprise: a Samsonite suitcase filled with money and four packs of explosives. Dinah says she knows nothing about the money, but someone does, because the house was recently broken into and is still being watched by a man driving a big black SUV.

Ash wants to protect Dinah and the boys, but he also wants to get to the bottom of Johnson’s death. At first he buys the police story that his former sergeant was a suicide, but the more he finds out about Jimmie’s recent actions, the more he suspects something else was in play. Although what Jimmie might have gotten himself involved in—either as a participant or a sleuth—is unclear, it must be serious, or people wouldn’t have started trying to kill Ash too.

Rehabilitating the wild dog Mingus, author Petrie has said, was Ash’s “first useful act.” Certainly it has powerful parallels to Ash’s own need to learn how to live with people and civilization again.

Petrie went a little overboard in describing the construction the bad guys’ bomb. I was prepared to accept that the bomb-maker—after all, his nickname was “Boomer”—knew what he was doing. But most of the descriptions of damage done, whether to people, property, vehicles, or psyches, was just right. I also appreciated that Ash’s “everyday” home repair skills were put to new and creative purposes. They make Ash a down-to-earth hero readers can easily identify with and get behind.

Television and movie actor Stephen Mendel—who seems to make a specialty of narrating the thriller genre—does a nice job in the book’s audio version. The characters’ voices are believable—regardless of race or social class—and easy to distinguish, and the women and children are realistic. With his portrayal of Peter Ash, Mendel has made his own contribution to the creation of a likeable protagonist.

A longer version of this review appeared on the Crime Fiction Lover website.

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*****Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

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Declaration of Independence, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson

Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson (graphic: wikimedia)

By Joseph J. Ellis – What a wonderful way Pulitzer Prize-winner Ellis has of distilling complicated historical events and people into a readable narrative! I’ve read his His Excellency, George Washington, too, and for the first time truly appreciated our first President. Both books are relatively short—around 200 pages—so if you need a doorstop, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

In Revolutionary Summer, Ellis takes the reader through the events of 1776, both before and after the Declaration of Independence. He says most histories of that era concentrate either on the political machinations within Independence Hall or on the travails of George Washington leading the ragtag Continental Army. Ellis’s contention is that the two threads—military and political—are inextricably intertwined, and the fates of each depended on the other.

As an example, the individual colonies-cum-states put their local political autonomy (an early manifestation of “states’ rights”) above the needs of the combined entity that the delegates in Philadelphia were promoting. While they’d occasionally contribute a few ill-trained and ill-equipped militias to the cause, they wouldn’t necessarily respond to Washington’s pleas for more.

On the political side, says Ellis, “Virginia regarded itself as the most important player in this political crisis, and the Virginians sent their resolutions [regarding independence] to all the other colonies on the assumption that they set the standard for others to imitate.” This mindset accords perfectly with genealogical research I’ve done about my family, in which early Georgia settlers from Virginia generally held themselves in much higher esteem than the “uncouth and rowdy” settlers from the Carolinas (my people!).

On the military side, Ellis makes the interesting point that “both (the British and American) armies would have been better served if their respective commanders had exchanged places. For Howe, in targeting the territory rather than the Continental Army, pursued the cautious strategy when he should have been bold. And Washington, in his very decision to defend New York, pursued the bold strategy when he should have been cautious.”

This book is a highly readable refresher if you’ve neglected your American History since, say, 10th grade. The United States has a great historical legacy, but by and large greatness is not necessarily found in the teaching of history nor in its textbooks. Revolutionary Summer is a bracing corrective.

****& Sons

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ampersand

(photo: Leo Reynolds, creative commons license)

By David Gilbert – This 2014 novel was named a “best book of the year” by many reviewers, and it’s full of richness on every page. A literary novel in every sense, it’s about an aging Manhattan author and notorious recluse, A.N.Dyer, whose failing faculties compel him to call his sons to him and in other ways try to straighten out the tangle he’s made of his life.

His two older sons are estranged both from him and each other. Jamie is a filmmakers living on the East Coast who’s just completed a dubious project documenting, perhaps too rigorously, life’s final decay. Richard is a struggling Los Angeles-based screenwriter, who has the prospect of long-awaited success dangled in front of him if only he can deliver the impossible-to-get film rights to his father’s first and most important novel, Ampersand.

The third, much younger son, is 17-year-old Andy. (You’ll have noticed A.N.Dyer, Andy, Ampersand, and the book’s title). Andy is ostensibly the product of a liaison between Dyer and a Swedish nanny. The arrival in the household of baby Andy and the story of his conception ended Dyer’s marriage. But the real story of Andy’s origins are more significant than anyone but Dyer knows, and he’s summoned Jamie and Richard to New York to tell it. And to enlist them in ensuring to Andy’s future welfare, should he die.

Throughout, as a sort of shambling Greek chorus is Philip Topping, son of Dyer’s oldest friend, Charlie, whose funeral opens the book. Philip is the same age as the two older sons, and they’ve obviously never had much use for him and still don’t, even though he’s ensconced in Dyer’s East 70th Street apartment, the flotsam washed ashore from a foundering marriage. Topping is a “Mr. Cellophane”; they look right through him and never know he’s there. Or, as Philip himself says, “I’m guilty of easily falling in love, of confusing the abstract with the concrete, hoping those words might cast me as a caring individual and dispel my notions of a sinister center. I believe in love at first sight so that I might be seen.” But the Dyers don’t see him, even when it’s necessary they should.

Dyer’s clean-up of his affairs includes selling his papers to the Morgan Library, and they, like the Hollywood manipulators, are interested in Ampersand. They will sweeten their offer considerably if he includes a draft of it. Alas, he destroyed all the drafts years before, so is pushed into the insupportable position of having to retype the whole manuscript, inserting awkward phrases and misdirected text, which he crosses out to arrive at the version in the published book.

It’s a very New York book, with apt references not just to places and events but to the way the city and its citizens go about their business. All this seems sly and perfectly grounded. Here are a few sentences from the Morgan Library rep’s pitch to Dyer:

In my biased view, we are the intellectual heart of this city. A visitor from another planet would do well to visit here first in order to understand our human narrative. We also have a tremendous gift shop.

Dyer’s agent then suggests they’ve been approached by the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center with a much more generous offer, and receives this response, which manages to insult everyone:

If money’s the bottom line, we can’t possibly compete. Ransom and their ilk will always win. And they are a fine institution and Austin is a fine central Texas town. But if you want to maximize profits, may I suggest breaking up the archive and selling the pieces in lots. But if respect, sensitivity, geo . . .

Philip Topping is everywhere and nowhere in the book, as its part-time narrator. It also includes excerpts (freshly typed!) from Ampersand—a vicious tale indeed—correspondence between Dyer and Topping, senior, from childhood on, and texts between Andy and a young woman he’s hoping to seduce. Full of humor, human foibles, and beautiful writing—“seductive and ripe with both comedy and heartbreak,” as NPR reviewer Mary Pols said—it’s a book that flew under my radar, but which I’m glad I finally found.

Bonus: A History of the 27th Letter! The Ampersand!

****Wishful Thinking

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(photo: Priscilla, creative commons license)

By Kamy Wicoff — On Amazon, this book is categorized as “women’s fiction,” which is probably a more politically correct designation for “chick-lit,” but whatever, it’s a genre I don’t usually read. It turned out to be a lot of fun and a refreshing change from serial killers trading in body parts.

Jennifer Sharpe is a stressed-out, divorced Manhattan career woman with two young sons who struggles to fit everything into her schedule. She’s wracked with guilt that her kids are getting too little of her time. Add an ex-husband who has documented her missed appointments and such and wants to renegotiate their custody agreement to have more time with the kids. Then add a nanny whose school commitments mean she has less time to help out, and a work project that will be Jennifer’s dream come true (plus some much-needed extra $$$), if only she can reach the boss’s ambitious productivity targets.

Of course, her life is impossible—that is, until someone puts an app on her cell phone called “Wishful Thinking” that lets her be in two places at once. There are so many ways this little technological boost (involving wormholes and—don’t ask, you just have to go with it) can go wrong and does.

Wicoff has written a believable Jennifer, plausible friends and work colleagues, a self-absorbed but not totally worthless ex, a dishy new boyfriend, and a sympathetic genius physicist who is behind the whole thing. All in all, an interesting cast of characters. The book is both good-humored and grounded in the frantic reality of many working moms’ lives (minus the wormholes).

Christina Baker Kline (author of the best-selling Orphan Train) calls Wishful Thinking “A thought-provoking, gimlet-eyed satire of contemporary motherhood in the guise of a romantic comedy.” If you’re looking for a fast-paced, mostly light-hearted novel to enjoy on your winter vacation—one that really lives up to its title—this could be just the thing!