{"id":10479,"date":"2023-06-19T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10479"},"modified":"2023-06-18T18:42:24","modified_gmt":"2023-06-18T22:42:24","slug":"two-novels-that-couldnt-be-more-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10479","title":{"rendered":"Two Novels that Couldn’t Be More Different"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Between Two Strangers<\/em> by Kate White<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Skyler Moore can\u2019t escape the past in Kate White\u2019s new psychological mystery, Between Two Strangers.<\/em> The disappearance of her younger sister twelve years earlier not only haunts her, but forever damaged her relationship with her mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This psychic blow ended her graduate studies. She left Boston for New York, and she put her art studies behind her. Now nearing her mid-thirties, increasingly isolated, she has no promising relationship that would get her the one thing she really wants\u2014a child. You may think as I did that she isn\u2019t a very promising maternal figure for any number of reasons, but a child is what she wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least she\u2019s started creating art again. She\u2019s good too, and a small gallery in lower Manhattan is organizing a show for her. As the show\u2019s opening approaches, a call from a lawyer in the tony suburb of Scarsdale changes everything. He\u2019s the estate administrator for a recently deceased pharmaceutical executive whose name she doesn\u2019t recognize. He\u2019s left her a bequest. How much? $3.5 million. It\u2019s a life-saver, but unraveling the dead man\u2019s motive will take some work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are as skeptical of coincidence as Sherlock Holmes and most police detectives are, you may think Skyler is a bit slow to realize there\u2019s a relationship between her windfall and the harassment she\u2019s newly subjected to. But once she finally tumbles to it, White keeps the story twists coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapters alternate between Skyler\u2019s current life and the fateful weekend Chloe disappeared. Each leaves you on the brink of learning something critical, giving time to develop your own theories (all of mine were wrong!). With the story\u2019s nice pacing, it\u2019s a highly entertaining page-turner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White is the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan<\/em> magazine and author of several previous thrillers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to the Dirt<\/em> by Frank Bill<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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If you imagined the full spectrum of crime, mystery, and thriller stories, you might slot tidy Miss Marple and the cosies on the left extreme. Well, hang onto your hat, because Frank Bill will shoot you all the way to the right, literally Back to the Dirt<\/em>. His story is reminiscent of the late Cormac McCarthy\u2019s Blood Meridian<\/em> or Donald Ray Pollock\u2019s The Heavenly Table<\/em> in giving no quarter to sentiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main character, Miles Knox, is a Vietnam vet living in rural Indiana who saw some horrible things perpetrated there, and not just by the enemy. These episodes and his dead comrades haunt him, and when he\u2019s under stress, they come roaring back into his head in sounds, smells, and sensations. He\u2019s tried counselling with little apparent success. The only thing that relieves the stress is pumping iron. Since he\u2019s no longer young, he has to jack himself full of steroids, which take their own toll. Maybe somewhat more responsible than a loose cannon, don\u2019t get him angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His friend Nathaniel shows up with his eight-year-old nephew, Shadrach, who just saw his parents murdered. They were big-time drug dealers, but when the cops arrive, the trailer is clear of both drugs and money. Nathaniel  takes Miles on a long, drug-fueled night of pursuit and frustration. Whatever bad stuff happened that day, it\u2019s only going to get worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Bill paints a bleak picture of rural America, swamped with opioids, fully stocked with guns, and overtaken by despair. (This is the theme of Barbara Kingsolver\u2019s excellent Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, Demon Copperhead<\/em>. An author has to find a way into such a morass, and Kingsolver chose Dickens\u2019s David Copperfield<\/em> for inspiration; Bill chose the Vietnam War and PTSD. Worlds where there are no easy answers.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wouldn\u2019t recommend this book for the faint-hearted or easily offended, but if you are up for a bracing look at a segment of society rarely described so unflinchingly, this will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took a while to get into the rhythm of Bill\u2019s writing. He writes characters\u2019 thoughts and dialog not just phonetically, but the way the characters perceive\\s the words, adding considerable color to the text. Just when you think there should be an end to the legacy of Vietnam\u2014a war that ended for the politicians some forty-five years ago\u2014you are reminded that for many of the men who fought there, the war is a daily reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between Two Strangers by Kate White Skyler Moore can\u2019t escape the past in Kate White\u2019s new psychological mystery, Between Two Strangers. The disappearance of her younger sister twelve years earlier not only haunts her, but forever damaged her relationship with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Two top-notch thrillers that show how life can trip you up,despite a $3.5 million bequest, and that surviving a terrible war doesn't mean your battles are over.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1288,3,32],"tags":[2096,2097,129],"class_list":["post-10479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-mystery","category-thriller","tag-frank-bill","tag-kate-white","tag-wars-and-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2J1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10482,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10479\/revisions\/10482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}