Category Archives: Suspense

**** The Reversal

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Michael Connelly, Mickey Haller, Lincoln Lawyer

If you’ve read the Lincoln Lawyer series, you know Mickey Haller does most of his legal work from the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, which has the vanity plate NT GLTY

Got my Michael Connelly fix for the year—The Reversal—a 2010 crime thriller that alternates chapters between brash lawyer Mickey Haller and his half-brother (or did you miss that one?) cynical LAPD detective Harry Bosch. Both men have teen daughters so are especially anxiety-prone when a man convicted of abducting and murdering a young girl is released from San Quentin as a result of DNA evidence and must face trial again after 24 years.

It’s interesting how Haller—working for the prosecution this time—must introduce old evidence without revealing to the jury the prejudicial information that the accused has already been convicted once. Nor can he say why some witnesses are unable to appear (dead or demented) and interviews with them, actually their previous trial testimony, must be read aloud.

While this isn’t Connelly’s best, he never disappoints and received four Amazon stars from readers. If you like every plot angle tied up with a bow, in this one, that doesn’t happen, and the author leaves Harry still pursuing leads as to the convict’s possible involvement in other crimes. It’s as if Connelly was leaving the door open for a never-written sequel.

Matthew McConaughey, Lincoln Lawyer

Matthew McConaughey stars in the movie version – note vanity plate!

For a fun Netflix pick, Matthew McConaghey in The Lincoln Lawyer. Rotten Tomatoes Critics rating: 83%. I thought it was better than that, and I’d read the book! Also notice how the movie poster changed the license plate to “NT GUILTY,” thinking viewers were too dim to figure it out, I suppose.

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True Detective

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Been enjoying Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in HBO’s True Detective? Think there’s more there there? Maybe you’re right. I’m not surprised that its weirder elements are generating the kind of easter egg hunt inspired by Twin Peaks and similar entertainments: the human mind searching for connection and sense in chaos. “I think I see a pattern here!” The hunt is so much easier with the Internet, and some people are making discoveries for the rest of us to ponder. There’s the whole thing about The Yellow King, for instance, covered extensively,  and the flatness of time.

The show continues to receive excellent reviews, and you can watch it oblivious to the layers of arcane references and just focus on the psychological interplay among the characters, but for gold-miners, there’s that, too.

*****The Goldfinch

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By Donna Tartt – The 1654 painting, The Goldfinch, animates the action of Donna Tartt’s third novel, which is receiving much-deserved attention (and the Pulitzer Prize). The story begins when twelve-year-old Theo is injured in a terrorist explosion at the Metropolitan Museum, and an elderly dying man orders him to pick the painting—which happens to be one of Theo’s mother’s favorites—out of the rubble. Stunned, confused, and pretty much ignored in the aftermath of the explosion, he stumbles home to show it to her. Yes, there is an over-long interlude in Las Vegas when Theo lives a feral existence with his father and delightfully reprobate Russian friend Boris, and yes, it ends with a rambling 20-page essay. Still, it’s a wonderful adventure story that at its heart is about how we decide what’s important in life, what’s real to us and worth saving, and what is simulacrum and worth saving anyway. In that essay was one of my favorite lines of the book, about how different people are strongly, inevitably drawn to certain things—“a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.” Don’t let the length put you off–it’s a page-turner.  (2/10)

*** The Dordogne Deception

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By Sherry Joyce – Very interesting to read the first romantic suspense novel from a new author and see her struggle with the same kinds of issues that I do. How to plant clues, how to keep the plot moving logically and organically, creating 3-dimensional characters. She picked an interesting setting, and creates a believable sense of place. Some first-timer rough patches, but congratulations to her for finishing (how many novels languish, half-written, in the bottom drawers of people’s desks?) and getting into print! (1/5)

Incendies

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film, Incendies

“Incendies” (image: nymag.com)

The New Year is off to a great Netflix start with the 2010 Canadian drama Incendies (trailer), adapted from a play by Wajdi Mouawad, and directed by Denis Villeneuve. In it, a twin brother and sister are directed by their mother’s will with finding their father and previously unknown half-brother, both presumably lost in the human fallout from a Middle East conflict.

The key question is, how can they find their father when they did not really know their mother? Who and what she was is the first mystery they must solve. Incendies was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Foreign Language Film), won numerous other awards, and was picked by the New York Times (review) as one of the 10 best films of 2011. It covers a wartime history, so there’s violence, but mostly it’s a moving mystery that captivates until the end. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 92.

A Labyrinthine Read

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IMG_0204“Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.”–MZD

Title of this blog post might better be, “What Happens When You Follow the Reading Suggestions of a 17-year old Boy?”  Short answer: “A lot.” And not just any 17-year-old, one of Those Boys. Smart and intense and eager to become an Intellectual. We fell into a long conversation about reading at a cocktail party (he was with his parents), and I made some suggestions, and he hazarded one back.

Now I’ve read his book. I’m tempted to say, “or it read me,” not in the sense that the book bore any relationship to my life, inner or otherwise, but in being so outside my life experience in both form and content, it filled out a place I didn’t know was vacant.

The book is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, copyright 2000, but for many years before that, pieces of it had a samizdat-like distribution, were the subject of whispered Internet rumors, and finally attained a cult following. I bought the full-color edition, in which the word “house” appears in blue. (It’s not to be confused with John Guare’s 1966 play, House of Blue Leaves, which I have seen but, alas, do not remember.  Considering the multiple games the author plays, he might have had Guare’s title lurking around a corner of his maze-like mind.)

The book is the story of a house—one that is measurably bigger on the inside than the outside. An exterior wall contains a closet that stretches many feet into cold darkness (and eventually descends deeper than the diameter of the earth), but the closet cannot be detected from outside the house. The effects of the house on the family that lives there and the people who attempt (futilely) to understand the phenomenon is one story.

The young man who finds a trunkful of notes about the house, especially the films made of the explorations of it, and the histories of its inhabitants (and so much more) tells his own story in a series of rambly footnotes. Trying to cobble together the narrative of the house—that is, to create the book you are holding—apparently drives him mad.

There are photos, art objects, quotes, letters from the compiler’s institutionalized mother, an enormous index, and, throughout, academic-sounding footnotes from researchers into the house’s arcana.

Called, by turns, a horror story (the house), a love story (its residents), and a satire on academic criticism (the footnotes), it is an effortful read.  Danielewski received much praise upon its publication (4 stars from Amazon and Goodreads; 4.5 from B&N). Intriguing and mesmerizing in its content and bizarre—but perfectly apt—typographical presentation, smitten New York Times reviewer Robert Kelly, said, “I love the difficult, since it makes the easy seem finally possible.”

I’m not the first person to notice some at-least-superficial similarities between this book and last year’s Night Film, by Marisha Pessl. Both books give readers a collection of parts from which they can almost make their own construction. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that both deal with works of film, and in their construction variously bend time and use jump-cuts, split-screen, and the scene-setting of a movie.

You already knew all about this one, right? I’m just late to the party??

What a Thrill!

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On Main Street in OtR.The International Thriller Writers announced the 2013 Thriller Award Winners last Saturday. More books to add to the my “best of” reading and listening lists (and falling farther and farther behind!).

Best Hardcover Novel – Spilled Blood by Brian Freeman – two Minnesota towns in an epic battle, and there’s only the daughters paying the price . . . one with her life!
She got out of her car and stood like the last girl on earth in the center of the old main street. She studied her stricken Mustang, which was covered with a film of dust. The flabby rubber on the left rear tire looked like melted ice cream. On either side of her, the remains of a half-dozen decaying buildings loomed behind boarded-up doors and No Trespassing signs. The buildings were interspersed with weedy, overgrown lots, like missing teeth in a rotting smile.

Best Paperback Original – Lake Country by Sean Doolittle – a Minnesota architect falls asleep driving, and there’s only the daughters paying the price . . . one with her life!
He opened his door and got out. It was a clean night, scrubbed fresh by the rain. The cloud cover had pulled apart in spots overhead, showing starry black patches here and there, and the moon looked like a puddle of silver on the water.

Best First Novel – The 500 by Matthew Quirk – for a moment I thought the contest winners might have created a Midwestern juggernaut, but The 500 isn’t set in Indianapolis, it’s in the nation’s capital, and the 500 are “the elite men and women who really run Washington—and the world.” Oh-kaaaay. Sounds powerful.

Best e-Book Original Novel – Blind Faith by C. J. Lyons – this book (not her first) debuted at #2 on the NYT bestsellers list, and her own story—from pediatric Emergency Room doc to best-selling author is a good read, too. In the novel, a woman has watched the killer of her husband and son die by lethal injection, but she seeks closure, so returns to their remote Adirondack mountain home and . . . C.J.’s tagline is “thrillers with heart.”

Nominated in the “Best First Novel” category was the much-better-than-average The Expats, by Chris Pavone, which is among a number of thrillers I’ve read and listened to so far this year. You’ll find brief reviews of all of them in Reading . . .

Witness – Scene 1

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This week’s post is the first scene of my thriller Witness, set in Rome in the current day. I’m interested in your feedback. Enjoy!

The scowling twenty-something with spiky white-blond hair still trailed her by more than a block, though the distance between them was shrinking fast. Steel zippers and snaps punctuated his black leather jacket, and he hid his eyes behind mirror sunglasses, but the prickling skin on Eugenia Clarke’s neck told her he fixed those eyes on her.

She forced herself not to turn and look. Dozens of times she’d walked these few blocks along Rome’s Via del Babuino, which connects the Piazza del Popolo with the Piazza di Spagna, but the street felt hostile now. Despite the clear autumn sunlight of a Sunday afternoon, the stones of the shuttered buildings reflected no warmth.

She glanced behind her. Damn!

She should have called out to one of the young couples she’d passed when she first entered the street, but at that point she hadn’t expected he would really follow her. Even now she could hardly believe it, did not want to believe it, did not want to panic. Yet the street was unaccountably deserted, its antique shops closed tight as oysters. How ironic, she thought. An experienced travel writer, Eugenia helped tourists stay out of trouble. Thousands of readers relied on her. How is this happening? She picked up her pace.

Her gaze darted left and right, searching for refuge, help of any sort. A side street to the left, jammed with parked cars, no people. On the right, a trattoria a few doors down, closed. Even the cats took siestas. She kicked off her flapping sandals and began to run. The clomp of his boots alternated with her pounding heartbeats. He’d catch her long before she could reach the crowds near the Spanish Steps.

His bootsteps grew nearer, and the metallic taste of adrenalin filled her mouth. Another few strides and, finally, ahead on the right, the Anglican All Saints’ Church. She remembered the sanctuary’s side door that opened onto a narrow park leading to another street. She dashed across the Via di Gesu e Maria—Thank you, Jesus and Mary!—through the main doors, and into a hallway sidling along the sanctuary.

“Hello?” Panting, Eugenia called again, louder, as she streaked past the unattended offices. Silence. Desks abandoned. Phones stilled. Where is everyone? Isn’t there church business on a Sunday? Counting the collection, choir practice—something?

A hint of incense and candle smoke lingered in the empty sanctuary. Sun streaming through leaded windows stained the brickwork bloody. The tile was cold on her feet. She called out to the empty air. “Hello! Anybody here?” After a few seconds, “Anybody??”

She checked behind her, down the unlit hallway. Not there yet. At the side door, the new-looking deadbolt turned easily, but the heavy brass doorknob resisted, and she needed both sweating hands to turn it. A final glance over her shoulder before she jerked open the stubborn door.

Outside, she blinked in the sudden brightness. She sensed movement to her left, and tried to duck away. A harsh blow struck the back of her head. Dizzy, she watched her new straw hat sail to the ground. Reaching up to protect herself, she knocked off the man’s sunglasses. He seized her arm and squeezed it hard enough to bruise.

“Fatti i cazzi tuoi!” he growled. Mind your own fucking business! She swayed, stunned and staring into eyes pale and hard as silver coins, until her knees gave way and she collapsed against him. She slid down his chest, breathing the foul odor of sweat-stained leather. A zipper tore her cheek. He gripped her armpit to keep her from falling, and his fist found her face, stomach, ribs. She twisted away, but she couldn’t escape. Their bodies were locked too close together, and she managed only to bury her face deeper in the rancid jacket. Again a metallic taste. Blood, this time. She gasped for breath as a boot came down hard on her bare foot. She felt the force of his blows, but the pain hadn’t started yet.

Her vision blurred, her thoughts clouded. She stared mesmerized at the intricate tattoo coiling up his wrist and disappearing under the leather sleeve. A blue and green snake’s head covered the back of his hand, and through her hazy perceptions she could almost believe it was the snake striking her. Her gaze followed its hypnotic black eyes as it dove into the man’s pocket, and he pulled out a knife. The flash as the blade flicked open broke the spell. She tore herself from his grasp and choked out, “No!”

“Impicciona!” he spat. Meddler.

A flood of pain rose up within her, and she might have heard shouts, running feet. She fell into blackness.