SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley

"When they finally saw the light, I might even become something of a village heroine, with banquets, etc. held in my honor, with after-dinner speeches by Father, the vicar, the bishop, and, yes, perhaps even by Magistrate Ridley-Smith himself, thanking me for my dogged persistence, and so forth.

     I believe Daffy referred to such an extravagant outpouring of praise as an encomium, and I realized that I had not been given an encomium for a very long while."

----------

"Neither of us spoke a word and we didn’t need to. We stood there clinging to each other like squids, damp, quivering, and unhappy."

So Cold the Winter in Nebraska, I mean the River

Author: Michael Kortya
Title: So Cold the River
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (June 9, 2010)
Format: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B0035IIBUA

A good twisty story that connects a creepy story from the past with current characters through the paranormal. You will find ESP, possession, and ghosts. The characters are vivid and I liked the main guy a lot. I thought I could tell a bit where things were going, but I liked the trip; there are great descriptions of architecture and setting. There's a nicely drawn older female character. The main guy, a failed movie maker whose marriage is on the rocks, is likeable, too. I thought this was scary enough to be unsettling but not so violent or gross as to be off-putting. A memorable read; I will track down more of this guy's books.

Lee Child, Worth Dying For

Author: Lee Child
Title: Worth Dying For
Publisher/format: Delacorte Press, cloth
ISBN: 978-0385344319

I really respect Lee Child for not churning out identical Reacher books each year. This author has taken care to develop his character in interesting ways, and he has also taken him through various psychological twists and turns. The penultimate Reacher book, 61 Hours, ended with a cliffhanger that I wasn't expecting; also, it featured a more broken, uncertain Reacher, and fabulous descriptions of a barren South Dakota winter. Child has stayed in the middle of the country for Worth Dying For: here, he places Reacher in a rural, agricultural area of Nebraska--not near the larger cities of Lincoln/Omaha but somewhere in the west (but not, I think, the Sandhills, because the main occupation of the people is farming).

Child does a great job with the NE landscape, its wideness, starkness, and flatness, and he describes a certain kind of Nebraska woman--older, strong, no-nonsense, modest, conscientious, full of integrity, reserved--perfectly. He describes many of the rest of his Nebraskans as quiet, fairly passive go-along-with-the-flow sorts. (Many Nebraskans do seem this way to others, but I believe that the truth is that once you find the part in the flow that they refuse to go along with [which does, in fact, exist, but which they will not tell you about until you accidentally stumble onto it], they will be shockingly stubborn and unmovable.) Even the Nebraskan evildoers in this book have a certain amount of integrity and civility despite their psychopathic, horrid selves. The culture of civility and refusing to make waves is important in NE, but as I hinted before, not everyone here is as passive as the folks in Reacher's town.

Also suffering from this passivity, sort of, are the ten Cornhusker (I think ten) football players Reacher beats up at one time or another in the course of the book. This is very amusing in some ways, but these could not have been Blackshirts. Note that Child is careful to call them "Cornhuskers," and that the trademarked name for the team is "Huskers." He did not want to run afoul of UNL/trademarking/etc.etc., I bet (or his publisher did not want him to).

Anyway, this book is interesting in that it's kind of humorous in an Elmore Leonard sort of a way--criminals and Reacher showing up at the same time and same place without realizing it; comic timing and quick cuts, etc.etc. The nature of the evildoers is kept uncertain until late on. It is very, very horrible what they are doing--which is pretty shocking to the reader because you've been set up, so to speak, by the Elmore Leonard-type timing/humor, and it kind of falls away very quickly into horribleness. There's something of a revenge scene at the end that shocked me a bit in that it has a civilian being Reacher-like.

Reacher is especially hard and distant and killer-like in this one--scary again, despite the fact that he begins the book injured and presumably psychologically battered. Not much is mentioned about the unresolved cliffhanger from 61 Hours; Child is in no hurry to tell us what happened, and when he does, it's almost off-handedly. This I liked.

Anyway, this was a very satisfactory installment in the Reacher series, and I liked it a lot. My big problem is this: there was no shopping expedition for Reacher. I don't care that there are no stores in the middle of the country. I really, really missed the shopping, and I hope he will get back to it. Those are absolutely my favorite parts of the books.

The first two books in the bibliophile series by Kate Carlisle

Homicide in Hardcover

Bibliophile series #1

by Kate Carlisle

Ebook (B&N)

9781440687655

Penguin

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)

Plot: 4

Characters: 3.5

Writing: 3.5

Final: 3.66

Comments: Extra points were given to the plot category for setting the series in the world of book restoration. This series reminds me of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mystery series. It's pretty goofy, but not quite as over-the-top ridiculous. It helps that the main character is actually good at her job.

Publisher's description

The streets of San Francisco would be lined with hardcovers if rare book expert Brooklyn Wainwright had her way. And her mentor wouldn’t be lying in a pool of his own blood on the eve of a celebration for his latest book restoration. With his final breath he leaves Brooklyn a cryptic message, and gives her a priceless—and supposedly cursed—copy of Goethe’s Faust for safekeeping. Brooklyn suddenly finds herself accused of murder and theft, thanks to the humorless—but attractive—British security officer who finds her kneeling over the body. Now she has to read the clues left behind by her mentor if she is going to restore justice . . .

If Books Could Kill
Bibliophile series #2
by Kate Carlisle
Ebook (B&N)
9781101184707
Penguin

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4
Characters: 3.5
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.66

Comments: I'd love to see even more about book restoration. I hope that Carlisle doesn't let that part fade away as result of Brooklyn's improved financial circumstances. I'm finding the number of very attractive men she encounters ridiculous almost to the point of distraction. I think we have enough in there to keep her busy for a while. Please don't add any more.

Publisher's description

Murder is easy-on paper. Book restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright is attending the world-renowned Book Fair when her ex Kyle shows up with a bombshell. He has an original copy of a scandalous text that could change history and humiliate the beloved British monarchy. When Kyle turns up dead, the police are convinced Brooklyn's the culprit. But with an entire convention of suspects, Brooklyn's conducting her own investigation to find out if the motive for murder was a 200-year-old secret—or something much more personal.

This is how far behind I am

Sadly, I think I'm even missing some.


Books That Need to be Reviewed

Title (series, if applicable) Author

• It Sucked and then I Cried by Heather B. Armstrong
• The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
• The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce, #2) by Alan Bradley
• Homicide in Hardcover (Bibliophile series #1) by Kate Carlisle Update: reviewed here
• If Books Could Kill (Bibliophile series #2) by Kate Carlisle Update: reviewed here
• The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
• Heat Wave (Nikki Heat, #1) by Richard Castle
• Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
• Faithful Place by Tana French
• The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann
• Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz
• Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr
• My Fair Laz: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or A Culture-up Manifesto by Jen Lancaster
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
• Killing the Shadows by Val McDermid
• Still Midnight by Denise Mina
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
• Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro
• Hardball (V.I. Warshawski #13) by Sara Paretsky
• Body Work (V.I. Warshawski #14) by Sara Paretsky
• Sea Change (Jesse Stone #5) by Robert B. Parker
• High Profile (Jesse Stone #6) by Robert B. Parker
• Stranger in Paradise (Jesse Stone #7) by Robert B. Parker
• Night and Day (Jesse Stone #8) by Robert B. Parker
• Split Image (Jesse Stone #9) by Robert B. Parker
• The Professional (Spenser #37) by Robert B. Parker
• Blue Screen (Sunny Randall #5) by Robert B. Parker
• Spare Change (Sunny Randall #6) by Robert B. Parker
• 206 Bones (Temperance Brennan #12) by Kathy Reichs
• Spider Bones (Temperance Brennan #13) by Kathy Reichs
• Going in Circles by Pamela Ribon
• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
• Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

Lately

Author: Lee Child
Narrator: Dick Hill
Title: 61 Hours

The problem with long-running series is that it's hard to keep them interesting, hard to avoid either becoming so repetitive you're putting people to sleep or so far-fetched it feels as if the characters/plots become unrecognizable. Anyway, Lee Child is a very smart guy and Jack Reacher has remained a very interesting hero, but I had started to feel some series malaise lately. In this book, Child takes Reacher in some unexpected directions psychologically. Maybe it felt too fast or neat in some senses, but I was mostly okay with it, very diverted. Reacher did not sleep with a woman in this book, which I found refreshing; however, he does still go on one of his patented shopping sprees, which I love most dearly. I pray to god in heaven he'll never stop *that.*

I listened to the audiobook for this one. Dick Hill, who I used to like, has lately become hard for me to take. I've noticed he tends to increase volume and decrease the pace of his reading to signify intensity, and to me in this book, it just felt too heavy. Maybe he's gone batty. Maybe I have. I don't know.






Author: Sarah Graves
Narrator Lindsay Ellison
Title: Trap Door (Home Repair is Homicide series)

I started reading this series around book 9, so I can't claim to have an extensive knowledge of it. I'll start with what I like most, which is the local color/detail about Maine (landscape, clothing, accents, food, etc.). I've been listening to the books and I enjoy Lindsay Ellison's Maine accent a lot. I find the heroine, Jacobia Tiptree, tiresome and not all that bright, and she's impulsive, which drives me crazy as a personality trait because it's so inimical to good home repair or good detective work. The supporting characters are more sympathetic and interesting. I do love the realistic plotline involving Jacobia's son Sam, who battles substance abuse; this is handled very well, because he doesn't *get* well at once; he has relapses, and the incredible every-day difficulty of staying clean is portrayed well. Just wished I found the heroine less annoying--more sensitive, more thoughtful--though she has her moments.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Passage
by Justin Cronin
Ebook (B&N)
978-0-345-51686-2
Ballantine Books / Random House

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4.5
Characters: 3.5
Writing: 4
Final: 4
       
Comments: I bought this on a whim, and I can't remember which tweet or blog post piqued my interest. I'd seen a lot of both regarding this book, but one in particular pushed me over the edge and got me to buy it. I knew very little about it and I had no idea how long it was. To be honest, I don't know if I would have ended up buying it as a print book. I would have known right off the bat how long it was, and that can sometimes kill a whim. Most distressingly, I didn't know it was the first of a trilogy! I got to the end and thought "Huh. Either I really missed something or that was a pretty vague way to end that." (Obviously, I am a genius.)

I really enjoyed the story--it was suspenseful and creepy. Way too long, though. I can't believe there are two more whole books coming: on the one hand, like the idea of getting back into this world; on the other, I just think "Ugh. 800 more pages?"


See also the review by Bibliolatry: The long, mostly interesting (but very long) passage.

Publisher's description

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.

Cozies and Louise Penny's Three Pines series

Author: Louise Penny
Titles: Still Life (Mass-market paperback)
and
A Rule against Murder (Audiobook, read by Ralph Cosham)
ISBNs: Still Life: 9780312948559; Rule against Murder: 9781433251306
Publishers: St. Martin's (2007); Blackstone Audio (2009)

Detective: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, at the Sûrété du Quebec
Setting: Three Pines, a fictional village in Quebec
Genre: Cozy but with psychological complexity that is rewarding. Series seems to focus on artists and the act of creation; generational miscues and attempts to communicate; group dynamics; psychological growth or entrapment

I'm confused by the "cozy" genre of mysteries. I guess they're supposed to make you feel cozy and happy . . . about murder? About not being murdered? Generally, they seem to produce "feel-good" murder stories. At their worst, they tend to kill off threats/scapegoats (not "nice" people) and preserve the strength of the community through the ultimate expulsion. On the positive side, cozies do not intend to glorify violence or crime; they show it as a tragedy and chart the subtle ways murder can affect a community and the psychological dynamics within it.

The cozies I've read feature close-knit groups of people who happen to live in places where many murders occur. That's where the genre gets a bit dicey for me. If these are such great places, why do so many people die in them? I am reminded of the TV show Murder, She Wrote. Why weren't people shunning Jessica Fletcher or running like hell from her? Why wasn't she banished from Cabot Cove? Nothing good happened while she was around.

In more seriousness, it is a worthwhile project to think about how crime affects a community, and in this, cozies excel. Often, mystery novels forget to trace the longstanding, painful effects of violent crime: how families/friends of victims, suspects, the police, and so forth all cope with the fallout. If some of the cozies I've read tend to idealize community ties and affluence, they also provide well-drawn and interesting characters and seem more psychologically astute than the standard plot-driven whodunnit.

Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series features a great main character and an interesting community in Quebec. I have learned much about the English/Quebecois relationship in Canada from the two books I've read. Penny is a great plotter and her mysteries have interesting twists and turns. She makes you feel exasperated and fond of her characters on alternating pages, and she does not idealize them. They are flawed and yet still likable. If these books tend toward a certain worship of Gamache, I have to sympathize, because he truly is a great character. Sometimes the denizens of Three Pines are a bit too talented, too progressive, too witty, too sensitive and artistic to be believable, but at the same time, the place seems appealing as well. Gamache is an outsider in a sense to the community, which is an important, useful device because this way readers, like him, can evaluate the positive and negatives in the community. I've found the plots very interesting and engaging; Penny is a good storyteller and does a great job of creating tension. The two books in the Three Pines series I've read, the first and fourth, are very interesting, and I'm going to keep reading the series. Louise Penny is a great find for me--I love character-driven mysteries, and hers are very engaging.

Silver Wedding by Maeve Binchy

Silver Wedding
by Maeve Binchy
ebook
978-0-440-33760-7
Delta / Random House

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 3.5
Characters: 3
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.33
       
Comments: I had read a couple of Ken Bruen books in a row and was in dire need of a little Binchy.

Publisher's description

There was never any question that Deirdre and Desmond Doyle would celebrate a gala twenty-fifth anniversary. Naturally, their daughter Anna, would plan their grand affair. Of all three Doyle children, Anna knew exactly what their mother wished--even as she lived her own secret life. Will Brendan, the rebellious son, even bother to return to London? Will Helen, the hapless would-be nun, embarrass them all? This is Deirdre’s day, a triumph for a woman obsessed with keeping up appearances, her silvery revenge after “marrying down” twenty-five years ago. She’s determined to show them all: the maid of honor, still unmarried, still gorgeous, now a successful London business woman . . . the best man, once Desmond’s close friend, now his boss . . . their reluctant priest, who harbors his own guilty secret.

As family and friends gather, a lifetime of lies takes its toll. But what begins as a family charade brings with it the transforming power of love--and truth.

The Guards by Ken Bruen

The Guards
by Ken Bruen
ebook
0-312-32027-2 (paperback)
St. Martin's Press

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.83
       
Comments: As you can see, I'm reading the Jack Taylor novels completely out of order, thanks to my inability to consistently find them as ebooks. What's even worse, I had to read the Kindle edition of this one and the formatting was so horrible. I've never seen formatting any where near this bad in either eReader or Barnes & Noble eReader editions. Check it out below: I know it's blurry (it's a picture of my iPod Kindle app taken with my Pre), but you can still see the huge gaps between the words, which means you're constantly turning the page. And that brings up another complaint: I hate having to "swipe" the screen to turn the page. Such a hassle. Why not allow me to just touch the screen like every other ereading app? Come on, Kindle. Help a girl out.

Publisher's description

Jack Taylor's life is spiraling downward. Dumped from the Garda Siochana ("the Guards"), Ireland's elite police force, he now passes his days drinking in a friend's bar. Enter Ann Henderson, a woman searching for her missing daughter. Jack agrees to take on her case, learning about Ann's daughter as well as other young women who have recently disappeared . . .

The Dramatist by Ken Bruen

The Dramatist
by Ken Bruen
ebook
97-8-142-99023-6
Minotaur / St. Martin's Press

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 3.5
Characters: 4
Writing: 4
Final: 3.83
       
Comments: Don't read Ken Bruen if you don't want your heart broken--his books hurt. This one actually made me gasp audibly at the end.

Publisher's description

The impossible has happened: Jack Taylor is living clean and dating a mature woman. Rumour suggests he is even attending mass . . . The accidental deaths of two students appear random, tragic events, except that in each case a copy of a book by John Millington Synge is found beneath the body. Jack begins to believe that "The Dramatist," a calculating killer, is out there, enticing him to play. As the case twists and turns Jack's refuge, the city of Galway, now demands he sacrifice the only love he's maintained, and while Iraq burns, he seems a step away from the abyss. 

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

Beat the Reaper
by Josh Bazell
ebook
978-0-316-04030-3
Little, Brown and Company / Hachette Book Group

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4.5
Characters: 4.5
Writing: 4
Final: 4.33
       
Comments: Super fast-paced, foul-mouthed, with graphic descriptions of violence and medical procedures. Fun!


Publisher's description

Dr. Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan’s worst hospital. He has a talent for medicine, a shift from hell, and a past he’d prefer to keep hidden. Whether it’s a blocked circumflex artery or a plan to land a massive malpractice suit, he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Pietro “Bearclaw” Brnwna is a hit man for the mob, with a genius for violence, a well-earned fear of sharks, and an overly close relationship with the Federal Witness Protection Program. More likely to leave a trail of dead gangsters than a molecule of evidence, he’s the last person you want to see in your hospital room.

Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, is Dr. Brown’s new patient, with three months to live and a very strange idea: that Peter Brown and Pietro Brnwa might--just might --be the same person . . .

Now with the mob, the government, and death itself descending on the hospital, Peter has to buy time and do whatever it takes to keep his patients, himself, and his last shot at redemption alive. To get through the next eight hours--and somehow beat the Reaper.

10 Questions with Josh Bazell (on Goodreads--I'm not sure if you need to be a member to see this)

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects
by Gillian Flynn
ebook
978-0-307-35148-7
Shaye Areheart / Crown / Random House

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4
Characters: 3.5
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.66
       
Comments: Something about this book just didn't quite work for me. There are some interesting ideas and images here, but there was just too much--too bad Tim Gunn wasn't there to tell her to bring her editing eye to this project. In the video below, the author describes intending the book to have a fairy-tale quality to it so maybe that explains the excess.

Publisher's description

WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.

NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.

HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.

Robert Parker/Jesse Stone on TV and in audio

Title: High Profile
Author: Robert B. Parker
Reader: Scott Sowers
Publisher: Random House Audio
ISBN-10: 0739318683
ISBN-13: 978-0739318683

CBS's Jesse Stone series: Thin Ice



TV
Usually, I don't get the TV my mom chooses to watch. When I was in Ohio one time minus the last time, we saw an episode of Gray's Anatomy in which all plot lines were sad and everyone was dying or failing at their job, and I kid you not, I believe every single character cried at one point or another. The whole thing was just so very, very depressing that at the end of the episode, I was moved to yell, though tears, "Why do you watch this?" at my also-crying mother. NOT the ideal TV experience for me. So, when I was home this past Christmas and my mom and dad seemed excited about the "Jesse Stone" show that was coming on TV, I was very, very dubious.

In CBS's Jesse Stone series, Tom Selleck plays Jesse Stone; the episode I saw was called Thin Ice. I expected it to be awful, but instead I loved it, and I'm grateful to my mom and dad for pointing it out to me.

Tom Selleck plays Stone in the series, and he's really perfect, I think. Once in a while--though hardly ever--a fictional detective is cast perfectly in a TV series. The last really great (and probably unparalleled) example of this would be the inimitable Jeremy Brett in the BBC's Sherlock Holmes series.


Jeremy Brett was Sherlock Holmes.

Now, I can't make the same claim for Selleck/Stone because at this point I've only read a few of the Stone mysteries (and still have seen only one of the TV shows), but I feel that Selleck really nails the essence of Stone (in my opinion): he's great at the restrained delivery required to make Stone's deadpan brand of humor come off successfully on screen. He also does a fabulous job of communicating Stone's world-weary, thoughtful approach to police work. The other main roles are cast very nicely, too: I liked the guy who plays Suitcase a lot, and Kathy Barker, who plays Molly, is wonderful also (though I believe we are to think she is younger in the books, I actually prefer her to the book version). At any rate, the TV show was quite a surpise, in the best of ways.

Audio
Since I'd liked the TV show so much, I started listening to the audiobooks, and I think those are also well worth the time. It's a rare gift to me to find a great detective series I hadn't known about before, and this series has many of the components I love most: a complicated, introspective, flawed but likable detective; intelligence and humor in the dialogue and the story, but also a respect for the horror of crime/homicide; strong supporting characters; crimes that are resonant and upsetting. In addition, Stone is in therapy, and I enjoy how Parker portrays his therapist, Dix. It's an excellent example of how even a macho guy can be thoughtful about his emotions and moral behavior.

The audiobooks are read by Scott Sowers, and he does (to my Ohio/Nebraska ears) a fine job with the New England area accent of the locals (Suitcase and Molly in particular). The audiobooks are really addictive; thus far, I've listened to High Profile, Night and Day, and Sea Change. All of these audiobooks are available for download from the Lincoln City Library's downloadable audiobooks page. It has revolutionized my life, that service.

I have yet to actually read a Stone mystery from a physical book. That's my next goal. I was quite saddened, like Jana, to see that Robert B. Parker recently died, particularly (for selfish reasons) since I just discovered him and was hoping for many more Stone mysteries. I will have to try the Spenser books, perhaps.

If there is one thing that rankles a bit in the Stone books, it has to be the portrayal of him as devastatingly attractive to most (if not all) women, and also, his addiction to a bad, bad relationship with Jen, who is an interesting if fairly irredeemable character. Women like Jen--beautiful liars who sleep their way to the top--don't really exist, I always thought; they are mostly a sexist stereotype. Now, I could be wrong, but I hope I'm not. But like I said, Jen is at least marginally interesting, though Stone's blind devotion to her is puzzling. (He is working it out in therapy, of course!) Finally, there is a healthy level of on-the-job sexual innuendo at the Paradise Police Dept., and while mostly that makes me smile, sometimes I feel sorry for Molly, the lone female in the department.

If you are reading fairly hard-boiled detective novels, you're going to encounter stereotypical portrayals of women; that is a given. The great writers end up making these women compelling characters nonetheless, and my early impression of the Stone books is that Parker manages to do so successfully.

One of the most common lines of the Stone stories I've read is "Jesse smiled." He usually does this in an interrogation when he's helping someone hang themselves. Here is a photo of Selleck doing "Jesse smiled" to perfection:

(from the CBS site for the Stone series)

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

That Old Cape Magic
by Richard Russo
cloth
978-0-375-41496-1
Knopf

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4.5
Characters: 5
Writing: 5
Final: 4.83

Comments: This book deviates a little from the usual Russo formula where the small northeastern town is treated like an additional character. I happen to really enjoy that formula, but I liked this one, too.

Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that’s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He’d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they’d moved into an old house full of character; and they’d started a family. Check, check and check.

But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura’s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin’s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Home
by Marilynne Robinson
cloth
9780374299101
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 5
Characters: 5
Writing: 5
Final: 5

Comments: I'm not going to be able to do this book justice. The two words that keep coming to mind are beautiful and devastating. It gave me a feeling I don't experience much any more--I don't know how common this feeling is, so this might not mean much to you. Particularly throughout my childhood, in that indefinable period of stillness between late afternoon and evening (generally on Sundays) I would be overwhelmed by what I can only describe as a crushing, suffocating sense of melancholy. This book gave me that same feeling. However, lest you get the wrong idea, I loved it. I couldn't put it down.

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames's closest friend.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.

Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson's greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

Marked and Anita

Jana and Bethann's recent postings on Kellerman and Evanovich inspired me to review a couple of series I've recently read part of . . .

I'd like to think I'm just not the demographic for the Young Adult novel anymore, and that maybe I never was. I fancy myself too cynical and jaded. Admittedly, I read the entire Twilight series. I'll even cop to staying up all night to read the first one and seeing the movie with my Twi-hard co-workers. It was a nice diversion, but in the end I wanted more biting and fighting. I vowed to move on.

But, here I am again in the middle of another too young vampire series--the House of Night novels. Initially, the moralizing asides against pot smoking, underage drinking, and sex was pretty annoying. Fortunately, this seems to abate as there series gets rolling. The mother/daughter team of P.C. and Kristin Cast write from the first-person perspective of Zoey Redbird, a 16 year-old girl marked as a potential vampire with unusual powers for a "fledgling." She is shipped off to the House of Night, a vampire boarding school in Oklahoma for training, nocturnal living and the usual trials and tribulations of high school life. The stories themselves are zippy and move best when Zoey is exchanging lively quips with her friends. The matriarchal vampire society is a nice touch, and the relationships between vamps and humans, friends and enemies, is growing in complexity without being too melodramatic. By the end of book 2 the action is hopping with a nice mix of--dare I say--Buffy-esque humor and friend power. Book 3 beckons. Maybe this is my demographic.

I did look for more adult vampire adventures in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. Blood Noir started out interestingly enough with Anita having sex with two hunky young werewolves for FIVE CHAPTERS. However, the incessant (and exhausting) sex scenes were interrupted by waaaay too many issues. Admittedly, I came into the series in the 16th book, but as the narrative was fairly non-existent, I still have no idea what the heck. In short, Anita agrees pose as the girlfriend of one of her lovers to visit his dying father. What ensues is a mess of mistaken identity, sex with random stripper werecreatures (yes, stripping werewolves and weretigers), TMI on the post sex clean-up, and talk, talk, talk, talk about sex and feelings and feeling bad about the sex. Oh, Anita also has some "metaphysical ardeur" that needs feeding with sex (Aristotle is feeling bad about abuse of the term "metaphyscial" in this book). Ugh! I leave with an excerpt that captures the essence of it all: I just held up the pills. "Guess."

He looked stricken, like someone had hit him in the gut. "Mother of God."
I nodded. "I had sex with three men for two days and I've missed the pill."
"You didn't use the condoms?" he asked.
My body chose that minute to remind me that what goes in comes out. I shook my head. "We were all metaphysically mind-fucked, so no, we didn't take precautions. I need some privacy."
"Anita..."
"I need to clean up, Richard, okay?" I fought not to cry or scream at him. I wasn't mad at him. I was too confused to be angry with anyone.

P.S. No vampires were hunted or slayed in this novel. One vampire was briefly talked to on the phone.

Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs

Devil Bones
by Kathy Reichs
ebook
978-1-4165-7983-4
Scribner (Simon & Schuster)

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 3
Characters: 4
Writing: 4
Final: 3.66

Comments: Not to be confused with Devil's Bones (no wonder I kept thinking I'd already reviewed this). The mystery, while fine, was less interesting to me in this one than the developments in Temperance's personal life. I do love a flawed main character.

In a house under renovation, a plumber uncovers a cellar no one knew about, and makes a rather grisly discovery — a decapitated chicken, animal bones, and cauldrons containing beads, feathers, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In the center of the shrine, there is the skull of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, on a nearby lakeshore, the headless body of a teenage boy is found by a man walking his dog.

Nothing is clear — neither when the deaths occurred, nor where. Was the skull brought to the cellar or was the girl murdered there? Why is the boy's body remarkably well preserved? Led by a preacher turned politician, citizen vigilantes blame devil worshippers and Wiccans. They begin a witch hunt, intent on seeking revenge.

Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain

Evil at Heart
by Chelsea Cain
ebook
978-0-312-36848-7
Minotaur Books (St. Martin's)

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Writing: 3
Final: 3.66

Comments: Cain hasn't run out of twisted ways to torment Archie yet. I wonder how long she can keep it up. Currently, though, Susan is my favorite. I'm so glad she has become a recurring character. Here is one of my favorite Susan bits where she is casually tossing around her Lewis & Clark knowledge:

"Go Pioneers," he said.
"They should have gone with Seaman," she said.
"Excuse me?"
"They should have made the mascot Seaman. After Lewis's Newfoundland. He was right there with them, blazing the Oregon Trail."

And now, please to enjoy author Chelsea Cain with Archie & Gretchen, Episode 1: Valentine's Day

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

"Where you came from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it."

I was introduced to Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood in college for a course called American Humor. The professor, who was as memorable as the books he chose, had thin grey hair that hung pin straight around a smiling round face punctuated by a large mole and thick lips. It was impossible to take your eyes off of him in class. Those books are still some of my favorites today. As a bonus, he also introduced my friends and I to the word "incongruous" which we used with zeal throughout the semester.

Wise Blood stuck with me throughout the years, and recently, a friend inspired me to go back. The book follows Hazel Motes, a man scarred by his fire and brimstone upbringing--rejecting a cruel, stalking Jesus, but terrified to do so just the same. Motes "saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown." After four years in the service, he moves to the city to throw God and sin behind him, in a jolyless embrace of sex and the Church Without Christ. His mission leads him to a cast a characters, all on their own missions of some sort of faith including a lost and unlovable young man named Enoch Emery, Asa Hawks the un-blind preacher, his bastard daughter Sabbath Lily, and the opportunistic huckster Hoover Shoats who sets up competition.

In a forward written by O'Connor, she states that the book is about integrity--the integrity of Hazel's refusal to shake his shadowy saviour. But, it seems to also be a book about our basic instincts. The many animals in Wise Blood are caged and abused, base creatures cut off from nature and any way to act instinctually. Human needs, basic needs, are held in low, sinful regard. Enoch Emery and Hazel are driven to animalistic actions that free them both. In fact, true happiness only comes--if but for a moment--to Enoch after he dons a gorilla suit.

Wise Blood is a dark comedy, although its so easy to get caught up in Hazel's dark world its easy to forget. Thankfully, Enoch and Sabbath are there with earnest, but crazed thoughts to bring us back into a satirical state of mind. O'Connor's struggle between old time religion and contemporary culture, is kind to neither, but it is a fine reminder that we cannot deny who and what we are. We always rear our true selves in the end.

If, after Wise Blood, you're still in the mood for some old time religion, but need a bit more levity--watch Night of the Hunter. Robert Mitchem rocks as the murderous, knuckle tattooed preacher Harry Powell (he's creepy and humorous).