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| 1250204593
| 9781250204592
| 1250204593
| 3.83
| 49,258
| 2018
| Jun 30, 2020
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My introduction to the fiction of Mattias Edvardsson is A Nearly Normal Family. Published in 2019, translated to English by Rachel Willson-Broyles, th
My introduction to the fiction of Mattias Edvardsson is A Nearly Normal Family. Published in 2019, translated to English by Rachel Willson-Broyles, this is a crime thriller about a couple in Sweden whose 18-year-old daughter is accused of murdering the 32-year-old son of a law professor. Did she do it? What lengths will her parents go to protect their child? I abandoned this on page 49/389. The author generates some nice, not riveting, suspense in the very early go, teasing the appearance of a father at the trial of his daughter. Then we move back in time. What is she accused of? Who did she supposedly do it to? Those questions are wrapped up within the first 40 pages and I started to lose interest. The English translation isn't bad, just tinny more than enough times to make it evident I was reading a translation. Minor things stuck out. A handball--I didn't even know this was a sport--coach asks a parent to be his colleague. Like, assistant? Minor stuff, nothing to make me stop reading. The narrator is a pastor. I know readers who are turned off by discussions of God in their fiction and I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone with those preferences. I didn't have a problem with the narrator's job. I just wish his job was dramatized instead of being summarized. Summarization vs. dramatization. The reader is told about the family's weekend schedule. We're told about episodes from the daughter's childhood that suggest a sociopath in training, meaning she could either be a murderer or a CEO, either/or. We're told how the father feels about his daughter. So much telling made it easier for me to ignore the story than I would have if I was being shown character through dramatization. The daughter, Stella, is completely objectified early on by the narrator as a precious little dove who is innocent. The fact that there is a lifetime of antisocial behavior, a tenuous relationship with the father, and very suspicious comings and goings on the night of the crime are overlooked. Stupid characters make it difficult for me to continue reading. Nearly every chapter includes or ends with foreshadowing of the "... little did we know our lives would soon change" variety that struck me as very amateurish. These could all have been deleted without the novel missing them. A debut novel, so no rating from me. The book appealed to readers with a sweet tooth for domestic suspense and unraveling crime, serving as source material for a six-episode mini-series on Netflix, shot in Swedish and dubbed to English, which Edvardsson did not adapt. ...more |
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Mar 2024
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Mar 2024
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Dec 31, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1250133734
| 9781250133731
| 1250133734
| 3.80
| 168,549
| Jan 08, 2019
| Jan 08, 2019
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did not like it
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My introduction to the fiction of Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen is An Anonymous Girl. Published in 2018, this is the best of the recently published
My introduction to the fiction of Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen is An Anonymous Girl. Published in 2018, this is the best of the recently published thrillers I've quit, its authors taking me to page 190/371 before I abandoned it. They equip their heroine with a fascinating job and intriguing backstory, then isolate her financially and emotionally in New York, where a clinical psychological study places her in a series of increasingly odd and perhaps dangerous social situations. The authors do a good job establishing a compelling noir character in Jessica Farris, a makeup artist whose love of theater drew her to Manhattan, where she now makes ends meet going on house calls to give a series of poorly tipping clients makeovers. Jeopardy is introduced with her family in Pennsylvania facing financial collapse. Jess has a dark secret, too. The writing is concise, parsing out information slowly, and short chapters keep the story moving. An Anonymous Girl alternates between the perspective of Jessica, and the point of view of Dr. Shields, director of a university study Jess gets word of while on a call and crashes for a chance at some quick cash. Her answers to a series of questions gauging her morality soon make her the focus of the increasingly unprofessional study. I tend to dislike novels that bounce between narrators and this was no exception. I didn't want to be told Dr. Shields's thoughts about Jess. I wanted to see what sort of mess Jess has to get herself out of. Jessica isn't placed in sufficiently dangerous situations through 50%, giving the novel the feeling of low stakes. When I noticed I wasn't updating my status with writing I found special, that was a red flag. The novel felt like a short story padded to novel length, with too much intrigue piled on top of intrigue. There's good character building, strong sense of place, concise writing ... and a story that I didn't care about. I co-sign anyone who calls this a page-turner, but the stark lack of anything more than ethically questionable behavior is exhibited from the villain through 50%, prompting me to stop turning the pages. Not a debut novel, so I have to give it the rating I do for all books I abandon. ...more |
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Mar 04, 2024
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Mar 08, 2024
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Dec 31, 2023
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| 0063204339
| 9780063204331
| 0063204339
| 3.69
| 19,983
| Nov 02, 2021
| Nov 02, 2021
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My introduction to the fiction of Wanda M. Morris is All Her Little Secrets. Published in 2021, this debut novel is set in a legal department of an At
My introduction to the fiction of Wanda M. Morris is All Her Little Secrets. Published in 2021, this debut novel is set in a legal department of an Atlanta transportation company being picketed by Black and Hispanic activists for its discriminatory hiring practices. Ellice Littlejohn is the only Black attorney at the company and reports to work early at the urging of her white boss and lover, who she discovers dead at his desk from a gunshot wound to the head. I abandoned this on page 71/371. At 20%, the story didn't grab me, the writing is cursory and character motivation implausible. The author moves back in time to the protagonist's childhood in Chillicothe, Georgia when she wins admittance to a school for the gifted that will get her out of town and away from her alcoholic mother. Morris sets the stage for dark secrets or past crimes coming back to haunt her protagonist. This distracts from the mystery developing in the present day. I struggled to empathize with the protagonist, not because she was helping commit adultery, but because she made the stupid decision to sleep with her boss. Rookie corporate mistake there and if there's one thing I dislike in a novel, it's people who are lousy at their jobs. If Ellice was introduced at being really good, maybe even the best at something, I would've followed her anywhere. An inept protagonist? Mildly annoying. The writing leans toward the superficial, but the larger issue I had is that Morris employs what Roger Ebert coined the Idiot Plot, which dictates that the story would be over in 5 minutes if the protagonist didn't behave like an idiot. Fleeing a crime scene seems like a big risk for a corporate lawyer. I don't think they teach that in Junior Law. So we begin with a protagonist who's following an ill-advised romantic choice with a potentially disastrous legal choice, because, reasons. Morris has since published two more novels, but since this was her debut, no rating from me. ...more |
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Jan 22, 2024
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Jan 22, 2024
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Dec 21, 2023
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| 1250198674
| 9781250198679
| 1250198674
| 3.67
| 18,302
| May 14, 2019
| May 14, 2019
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Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Published in Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Published in 2019, The Night Before by Wendy Walker is a commercial thriller in which the life of a young mom with the perfect child and perfect husband is upended when her sister disappears on an Internet date. I quit the book on page 34/310 due to telling versus showing. Telling is summarization. Showing is dramatization. All novels have some telling in them, or they'd be 1,000 pages long. Bad novels are strictly telling. "Reggie stopped by the mini-mart for little chocolate donuts. This was his custom after a shift at the toy factory and had been for years ..." versus an author describing Reggie entering the mini-mart and grabbing his items. If his job at the toy factory or his purchases have significance, Reggie can reveal that in dialogue with the clerk. That's also showing. An author telling me is telling. In plot-driven novels, particularly thrillers, the author can too often get in the way of what's more important: the story. Walker's writing is very rudimentary. She clutches at her pearls over the topic of Internet dating, which is surprising considering the year this was published, but according to some people, Internet dating is still a surefire way to get yourself murdered (warn your nieces). Trivial information is imparted while vital information withheld. The characters were flat. At best, if I read another 200 pages, they'd get into thrilling situations, maybe. But the author's unwillingness to show me anything in favor of telling is so counterintuitive to good storytelling that I didn't have the patience to continue. No rating because I picked the novel up and put it right down. Also, I see "psychological thriller" used to describe novels like this, but other than beginning in a psychiatrist's office, I couldn't discern anything psychological about it. A woman's sister disappears. She's not imagining that. She doesn't need to see a doctor. Her sister is gone. There's nothing psychologically curious about it, like Rosemary's Baby. I'd classify these books as domestic thrillers or mystery/ suspense but then again, no one is asking me to come reorganize their bookstore. ...more |
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Jan 02, 2024
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Jan 03, 2024
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Dec 16, 2023
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| 3.48
| 92,604
| Jun 07, 2022
| Jun 07, 2022
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did not like it
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My introduction to the fiction of Kirsten Chen is Counterfeit. Published in 2022, this novel was mentioned by a literary agent--not Chen's--I'm submit
My introduction to the fiction of Kirsten Chen is Counterfeit. Published in 2022, this novel was mentioned by a literary agent--not Chen's--I'm submitting my work to as being an example of the type of "secrets and lies" suspense novel she loves, so I wanted to read it. Upmarket fiction, complicated women, suspense where you get to know the characters, all of these boxes check what I plan to submit. I abandoned this one on page 50/274. Summarization vs. dramatization. The author tells the reader everything. We're told about a law school grad living in San Francisco who's given up her career to raise her tyrannical two-year-old with her nanny while growing distant from her surgeon husband. We're told about the reunion with a mysterious college roommate who invites her to join her operation in trafficking counterfeit luxury goods. We're not shown anything. The telling is so overwhelming that Chen doesn't even use quotation marks for dialogue. The novel is just a run-on recap of action or dialogue. Several days after the Neiman's fiasco, Winnie called me to apologize. She said she hadn't been thinking straight. Dealing with Guangzhou remotely was such a colossal headache that the stress had gotten to her. She was about to pay top dollar for a shipment practically sight unseen--she cut herself off then. You've made your views clear, she said, so that's the last thing I'll say about your work. But, Ava, I want you to know that I've loved spending time with you and Henri. I hope we can remain friends. I don't want to read Cliff Notes, I want to read the original version. Foreshadowing indicates the main character is being questioned by police, but is glib beyond the point anyone being questioned by a detective would be, especially if she'd committed a crime. I generally dislike foreshadowing due to how amateurish it often feels, and unnecessary. 70% of the first fifty pages involves the tantrums the main character's infant is throwing. No judgment here, but I lost interest in the main character due to how incompetent she appears to be in parenting, requiring a full-time Mexican nanny to help her not quell her son's outbursts. First World problems: Main character unfulfilled giving up a legal career to be a mother and wife, as well as grow distant from her surgeon husband, who's working surgeon hours to give them the lifestyle she covets. Can authors either pretend not everyone graduates from Stanford, marries a doctor, and hires a nanny to help them manage the household, or, make me care? Through fifty pages, Counterfeit isn't suspenseful, so to call it a thriller would be a stretch. It doesn't present a crime or a puzzle to be solved, precluding it from mystery. It isn't funny, so it's not comic. There aren't any aliens, robots, or time travelers, so it's definitely not science fiction. What is this? Boring. This is not a debut, it just reads like one, so I'll have to give it my usual rating when I abandon a book. This is an unpopular opinion. Chen has drawn admiration from a top literary agent who probably wishes she represented her, as well as selection for Reese's Book Club, so, more power to her. ...more |
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1
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Feb 27, 2024
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Feb 27, 2024
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Dec 14, 2023
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| 198269467X
| B0BXBF3PGF
| 3.75
| 54,779
| Aug 17, 2021
| Mar 01, 2023
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did not like it
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Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Teres Saint
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Teres Saint-Marie hooked me up. Thank you, Teres! 56 Days is my introduction to Catherine Ryan Howard. Published in 2021, this novel leapt up my reading docket because it's a thriller set during lockdown. I was curious what another author would do with that scenario. I read 12%, put it aside for four days, tried picking it back up, and then decided to throw in the towel. If Howard were a debut novelist, I wouldn't have given this a rating, but she is not, and I purchased a copy on Kindle. A one-star review wouldn't ruin my day as long as the reviewer purchased a copy. For $9.99, you can call me the devil if you want to. We're in Dublin, where there's apparently a dead body in one of the units of an apartment community in lockdown. I'm always game for a novel set in contemporary Ireland. The author then moves back in time 56 days, a red flag that nothing is going to happen for perhaps the next 50% of the book, like Who Is Maud Dixon?, baiting the reader with a crime up front. There is a very shy woman who meets a gorgeous guy in line for coffee. She's a Mary Sue type who Has No Idea How Beautiful She Really Is. They are both obsessed with space flight, which was a bit different and kind of nice. I wasn't particularly immersed in either the place or time. This relationship could be taking place anywhere and anytime. What turned me off is Howard switching perspectives to a cop heading to the flat of her colleague, who's been handcuffed to his bed in a sex act gone awry. This chapter goes on for so long, isn't as cute as the author seems to think it is, and interrupts the momentum with this couple meeting each other. This is a red flag that the author isn't very interested in the characters they introduced. Chapter headings: 56 Days Ago. 53 Days Ago. I don't think I'm a dummy but I disliked having to do math at the beginning of each chapter to figure out how many days were left until the body is found. I get the feeling this isn't a story that the author was dying to tell as much as one she wanted to ship quickly while we were in the grips of the pandemic. As slow as the publishing industry is moving these days, this one was on shelves in August 2021. It needed more time in the pot. The thrillers on my reading docket, including three I picked up from the library today: The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton, Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater, The Night Before by Wendy Walker, Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins, Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li and The House Guest by Hank Phillippi Ryan. I have too many enticing books to get to and not enough time. Next! ...more |
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1
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Dec 14, 2023
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Dec 19, 2023
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Dec 14, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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| 1250274257
| 9781250274250
| 1250274257
| 3.56
| 133,674
| Jan 04, 2022
| Jan 04, 2022
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it was ok
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My introduction to the fiction of Rachel Hawkins is Reckless Girls. Published in 2021, this is a partly nautical, partly tropical thriller told mostly
My introduction to the fiction of Rachel Hawkins is Reckless Girls. Published in 2021, this is a partly nautical, partly tropical thriller told mostly from the point of view of Lux McAllister, a 29-year-old housekeeper in Maui who accompanies her charter captain boyfriend on a trip commissioned by two globetrotting women--the reckless girls of the title--to a remote atoll mired in bad history. "Agatha Christie" is proclaimed on the book jacket and while I haven't read enough Christie to appraise its credit worthiness there, what started as a promising thriller turned mundane and proceeds along extremely boring lines. The author starts strong by assigning her protagonist a working class living, one who cleans up after the rich rather than being rich herself. Lux McAllister: great name. Lux joins her boyfriend Nico, who comes from wealth and is described in too cute a manner to be trustworthy. The couple sets off on a tour with two American backpackers in tow. The son of a navy veteran, I always enjoy reading about boats and the absolute freedom of a passage like the one portrayed here. In terms of a story, anything can happen. Hawkins allows Lux to summarize a bit too much for my taste rather than dramatize her insecurities or flaws through action and dialogue. The author also disrupts the pacing by moving back in time to acquaint the reader with the two reckless girls. The less I knew about these girls, the stronger the suspense would've been. Neither the prose or dialogue are very good. It's usually a red flag when I can't find a particularly good sentence an author conjured, and I didn't here. I did keep reading to see what skullduggery Hawkins had in store. Lux devolves into a character who things happen to. She's nearly swept overboard in a storm, but even she acknowledges she acted on reflex and got lucky. She's followed a feckless male halfway around the world and is both emotionally and financially dependent on him, simply because he offered her an escape from trauma in her past. Yet this is a man who named his boat after his ex-girlfriend and who keeps it as such even after he gets serious with Lux. This made me lose respect for her as events develop that suggest she is in over her water skis and kind of a dumb person. Reckless Girls might've been saved by a killer story, like Charles Williams was so gifted at spinning on the high seas. Even with rudimentary prose and dialogue I started to skim, I was prepared for something malicious to happen on the atoll or with the reckless girls. Nothing did. Of course, not everyone is who they seem, but Lux isn't skilled enough to do anything about it. She hovers around her boyfriend--who she's helpless without--watching him for warning signs that she might have listened to in San Diego before hooking up with a guy whose boat was named after his ex-girlfriend. The title--which I'd be willing to bet underwent at least one change--is misleading, suggesting a thriller that takes place at a reform school rather than the high seas. Two stars because I skimmed to the end and liked two and a half things Hawkins does very early in her book: protagonist as maid, protagonist with cool name, sailing. ...more |
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Mar 12, 2024
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Mar 17, 2024
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Dec 14, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0593184734
| 9780593184738
| 0593184734
| 3.46
| 28,749
| Apr 05, 2022
| Apr 05, 2022
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My introduction to the fiction of Grace D. Li is Portrait of a Thief. Published in 2022, this debut thriller follows five Chinese Americans who with s
My introduction to the fiction of Grace D. Li is Portrait of a Thief. Published in 2022, this debut thriller follows five Chinese Americans who with support from a mysterious benefactor in Beijing conspire to steal back five Chinese sculptures looted from the city centuries ago. The ringleader, Will Chen, is a Harvard senior majoring in art history. His sister Irene is a public policy expert at Duke who can talk anyone into anything. Daniel Liang is a premed student who can pick locks. Lily Wu is an engineering major who races cars for cash and acts as getaway driver. Alex Hiang is an MIT dropout and a computer hacker. I abandoned this on page 57/369. At 15%, the conceit is stretched to the point it snaps. Five college students with financially rewarding if unfulfilling futures decide to risk their freedom and perhaps their lives because art needs to be returned to Beijing. Okay. But they assemble with a deafening level of disconnect. Their conversations with each other are low energy and their thoughts--chapters alternate between Will, Irene, Daniel, Lily and Alex in a way that hurts the pacing--are mundane. It's as if the novel were about a trip to the Apple Bar and the characters were struggling with where to eat lunch. Li summarizes an awful lot, falling into the trap of telling instead of showing. Even a heist that Will witnesses and is subsequently questioned about by police ... just happens. Stakes feel low. Spreading the point of view between five characters hinders rather than helps the story, which would've benefited by just being about Will as he goes down the ring of fire. For Li's next novel, I'm hoping for characters who have the best possible thing happen to them or the worst possible thing, preferably both. Her debut shoots right down the middle of the road into the lukewarm. No rating because this is a debut novel. ...more |
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Jan 23, 2024
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Feb 2024
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Dec 12, 2023
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| 3.49
| 11,156
| Apr 25, 2023
| Apr 25, 2023
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it was amazing
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Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Death of a B Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Death of a Bookseller is the debut novel by Alice Slater. Published in 2023, it's a first-person account of a young bookstore clerk and true crime fan in the northeast London neighborhood of Walthamstow. Given to morbid self-intentions, she becomes obsessed with a radiant co-worker, who narrates her segments of the story as well. I can't recall which page Slater made me abandon my distaste for first-person narration or switching points of view and enjoy what she was cooking, but she does it quickly with precise and often witty writing, a fascinating milieu, and a suspenseful story that kept me turning the pages. Brogan Roach works at her local branch of Spines, a bookstore chain whose arrival in the 1990s forced two local booksellers to shutter and in 2019, is now on its last legs. Roach lives in a flat above the bar her mother operates. She keeps a giant African land snail named Bleep as a pet and consumes true crime books, electing herself curator of that section at Spines. She dismisses the "Pumpkin Spice Girls" who flock to true crime like any new trend. A loner who surrounds herself with books and morbid explorations of death, Roach considers herself above the "normies." Laura Bunting appears to Roach like a vision, a pretty and confident and well-liked bookseller who transfers to her branch with a new manager and the male bookseller Laura is fixated on. Her mother the victim of a serial murderer, Laura writes poetry that champions the lives of victims. Without sharing her macabre family history, Laura takes offense to Roach's gothic obsession with death. The harder her new co-worker tries to win her approval, the more Laura ignores her. Bad idea. I have a sweet spot for any story about work and workplace dynamics. Slater doesn't stop there, identifying a favorite milieu of writers and readers alike--the bookstore--and on its most immediate level, Death of a Bookseller is a great book about books. Slater writes what I've thought about: management, perky co-workers, popular books or trending topics, and finally customers, who interfere with what otherwise would be a fun job. Her writing is sharp, substantive and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. I've always fancied myself a death row bride. I'd rock up in black lace, a leather jacket, sunglasses. I liked the idea of writing to a serial killer in jail, striking up a friendship, finding out what made them tick. It was difficult to find cool serial killers to write to in the UK, though. They lacked the glamour of the Californian devils of the 1970s, the wry smiles and sarcastic waves to the press, the rock-star swagger, the achingly cool indifference to it all. There were loads of them in the '70s. It was like the Satanic American dream: girls with bare shoulders hitchhiked and climbed happily into the cars of strangers, housewives left their back doors unlocked, slept with their windows wide open and welcoming. But that was then. The golden age of serial killing was over, and the chances of me finding one to marry were slim. The toxic male-female friendship in the novel is really well written. Laura's co-worker Eli enjoys the attention Laura bestows him--and his girlfriend perhaps doesn't--while Laura wastes her youth on a man who's unavailable. Neither possess the maturity to shake hands and retire to their separate corners as colleagues. Slater also associates alcohol consumption and blackout drunks among people in their twenties struggling with adulthood, depression and palpable fear of going home to an empty flat and vacant lives. Psychologically, Slater takes all the best lessons from Patricia Highsmith. Her narrators are not very good people, but the more of their stories they told, the more empathy I felt for them. Finally, I understood them, and took a rooting interest in them escaping prison or death despite the best efforts of the other characters in the story to do them in. I finished the novel in four days, a good land speed for me, and anticipated getting back to it every day. This is the easiest five stars I've given a novel in months and recommend it highly. The Christmas and New Year's Eve setting the novel stalks toward was an accident and made the book that more enjoyable to me, particularly as Roach shares her thoughts on the consensus best book of the year (it's not Yellowface). The book of the year was Flower Crowns of the Arctic, like I give a shit. Another mass-market paperback with a pseudo-smart title for book clubs full of Lauras to fawn over. It was about some girl's dead mother, and climate change. Laura had written a neat little recommendation card for it: a sweeping novel about the way things can feel broken beyond repair, how things can feel ruined, and how we must heal before we can move on. Laura xox. Sentimental bullshit. ...more |
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Dec 26, 2023
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Dec 30, 2023
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Dec 09, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0778311554
| 9780778311553
| 0778311554
| 3.62
| 33,924
| Sep 07, 2021
| Sep 07, 2021
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Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Published i Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Published in 2021, Vera Kurian's debut novel Never Saw Me Coming begins with the first-person account of Chloe Sevre, a freshman at the fictitious John Adams University in Washington D.C. Chloe is obsessed with a classmate named Will, which she reveals to the reader at the conclusion of Chapter 1 she plans to kill. Chloe is not only a functioning psychopath, but is one of seven psychopathic students who've been selected to participate in a clinical study at the university, wearing a smartwatch to monitor her physiology and respond to mood prompts. When a student dies of stab wounds in the psychology department, whodunit? After 20 pages, I started skimming. I abandoned the book at page 94/389. Kurian does four things that kept me from wanting to continue reading: 1. Young Adult prose. I had to doublecheck that this book was not in fact YA and I had picked it up by mistake. After all, Chloe is a teenager. It's marketed for adults but is full of the very mundane, very superficial, Tik-Tok brain contemporary writing that is part and parcel for YA, at least when Chloe is narrating. Which brings me to ... 2. Multiple narrators. Kurian bounces from Chloe to one of the seven psychopaths--a Black student named Andre who is not really a psychopath but gamed the survey so he could get a scholarship--to the conniving shrink (is there really any other kind in a thriller?) directing the study. Multiple narrators are not a dealbreaker for me, but often make it easier for me to ignore the book. 3. Hook didn't grab me. I'll admit, it's different, and readers drawn to dark academia or collegiate novels might have far more patience than I did. Neither of these sub-genres are automatic winners for me. 20 pages in, there simply wasn't enough going on to pique my curiosity. Chloe is a psychopath seeking revenge. I shouldn't have been this bored. 4. Politics. As someone who might agree with 80% of this author's political beliefs, I really dislike it when writers caricature based on what clubs or parties a character belongs to. Membership in Greek society or the Republican Party do not make someone venal. What they do or how they treat others might make them venal. Some authors develop their characters better than others. No rating because debut authors need all the support they can get, and if not for searching for a comp title, I wouldn't have read this one. The reviews on Goodreads are excellent. ...more |
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Dec 04, 2023
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Dec 05, 2023
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Nov 18, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0062858092
| 9780062858092
| 0062858092
| 4.09
| 100,079
| Jul 20, 2021
| Jul 20, 2021
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liked it
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Looking for novels set during the pandemic, I picked up my first Karin Slaughter book. Published in 2021, False Witness is strictly a research read an
Looking for novels set during the pandemic, I picked up my first Karin Slaughter book. Published in 2021, False Witness is strictly a research read and in full disclosure, I skimmed a great deal of this so I could finish it in one afternoon. That said, I was more impressed with Slaughter's mechanics than I thought I'd be and liked enough of this novel to give it a qualified positive rating, rather than back out of the room with my hands up. The plot involves defense attorney Harleigh "Leigh" Collier being called up to the major leagues to defend a very white and very wealthy young man accused of a brutal rape and assault. Plot twist: Leigh's client, Andrew Trevor Tennant, was the boy she and her sister Callie used to babysit before they murdered his piece-of-shit pedophile mob enforcer adulterer daddy in 1998. Andrew knows what Leigh did and intends to use it as leverage in her defense. Karin Slaughter is known for setting her amp to 11. Her prologue unravels in a series of shocking escalations: Domestic abuse victim is actually the babysitter, the babysitter is only 14, the victim discovers her abuser has been videotaping their sex acts, the victim is then beaten to a pulp, the victim then slices her abuser's femoral artery open with a butcher knife. And that's just the half of it. This business bypasses "lurid," starts at "stagy" and gradually works its way through various levels of "ridiculous." But having read much of False Witness, I can't say it's unsophisticated. Slaughter balances her A-storyline, the courtroom plot of an attorney in trouble, with a terrific B-storyline in which the attorney's sister, a junkie living from one score to the next, gets involved in protecting her family and putting the antagonist away. I would've preferred a gritty noir focusing on the junkie, Callie. She's by far the most compelling character and didn't need any ginned-up childhood trauma to be so. A former cheerleader suffering from neck injuries sustained as a teen, Callie is a devoted animal lover, and Slaughter (with her research team) plot out a very sophisticated criminal scheme in which Callie scores dope through her work assisting an old veterinarian. I perked up whenever Callie came around. As for what Slaughter wrote, she deserves props for creating two siblings who work together. Despite living vastly different lives, as close to The Prince and the Pauper as Slaughter could get, there are no lengthy scenes of Leigh and Callie arguing or litigating their childhoods. They support each other and when the family is threatened, unite quickly instead of bickering for seventy-five pages. My major dislike here are the male characters. This is where cranking everything up to 11 goes wrong. Not only are the men in this novel bad, they're biblically vile. The only vaguely human male character is Leigh's ex-husband, who Slaughter states is a good father but despite being on friendly terms with his ex and later a major part of the plot, divorced Leigh (bad guy!). Never mind that nearly 70% of divorces are filed by women, Slaughter can't let that get in the way of painting men very poorly. I jotted down nine notes concerning criminal justice in the time of Covid and want to thank Slaughter and her research team for providing me this expert-level information for the price of a library card. The novel is very long and very well-researched. I prefer my thrillers moody, atmospheric, down and dirty, but was surprised how sophisticated False Witness is. I cannot say I was bored. Haunted houses, if nothing else, aren't boring. Estimated word count: 127,160 words Adaptations: None. The Karin Slaughter novel that has been adapted to film or TV so far is Pieces of Her, which snared Toni Collette in its twisty, violent grasp as a Netflix movie in 2022. Thanks for reading: If you love dining at Medieval Times, or any themed restaurant where your waiter is in costume and entertainment like a jousting tournament takes place, Karin Slaughter might be for you. ...more |
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1
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Sep 24, 2023
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Sep 24, 2023
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Aug 16, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1789096111
| 9781789096118
| 1789096111
| 4.43
| 8,318
| Oct 19, 2021
| Oct 19, 2021
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it was amazing
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My introduction to the fiction of James Kestrel is Five Decembers. Anyone who's been searching for pulp fiction done the right way--lurid action, disi
My introduction to the fiction of James Kestrel is Five Decembers. Anyone who's been searching for pulp fiction done the right way--lurid action, disillusioned men in search of purpose, mysterious women in need of help, exotic locales--needs to stop reading my review and read this novel, recently published by Hard Case Crime with plaudits from Megan Abbott and Meg Gardiner among others. I went into the reading blind, unaware of when it was written or takes place, and was rewarded with one surprise after another. In short, this is a book that preserves everything I love about 1940s pulp fiction and replaces everything I don't love with a contemporary sensibility. Published in 2021 and the first under Kestrel's name (he wrote six crime novels as Jonathan Moore), the story begins in Honolulu of yesteryear, where Army veteran and police detective Joe McGrady is summoned by his captain from the shot glass he's searching for fulfillment in. Short staffed due to Thanksgiving, bachelor McGrady is assigned his first homicide, a dead body on the land of a dairy farmer. McGrady is the first on the scene and shortly after discovering a young man cut open, confronts a man trying to destroy the crime scene and shoots it out with him. McGrady discovers a woman's body on the scene and gets the impression the criminal he shot was not working alone. Present at the autopsy on Fort Shafter is a U.S. Navy admiral whose search for his missing nephew has come to a conclusion where McGrady's investigation begins. The detective discovers that the woman--who appears to be Japanese but has no identity as of yet--was killed after the admiral's nephew, as if whoever did it wanted her to see. McGrady is assigned a partner in Fred Ball, who's never detained a suspect he couldn't beat an answer out of, and following a lead to Guam, assures his lovely girlfriend Molly that he'll be home soon. Closing in on a suspect in Hong Kong, McGrady is caught in the city on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacks mainland China and takes over. Five Decembers reminded me of the movie Cast Away if instead of climaxing when Tom Hanks returns to civilization, tasked his character with solving the murder investigation he was working when he was shipwrecked. Not just any murder, but one our protagonist realizes changed the entire course of history while he was marooned, including his life and the lives of those nearest to him: the girlfriend who gave him up for dead, and the daughter of the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose father springs McGrady from a prison camp for his help finding the men who murdered his niece, hiding him in Tokyo until the conclusion of the war. Kestrel does everything extremely well in this novel. He paints a vivid picture of Honolulu and Hong Kong before and after World War II without bogging the reader down in historical research. He's intricate when it comes to police procedure in the 1940s while keeping a fast pace, plausibly sending McGrady across the Pacific on a killer's trail. After reading a plethora of thrillers that hinge on text messaging, it was so refreshing to read one revolving around telegrams. The dialogue is terse while containing emotional resonance. Kestrel clearly establishes the necessity each character has in their relationships with others. I looked forward to getting back to the book every time I put it down. For a long time, the novel I'd bring up if anyone asked what I thought would make a good TV mini-series was Kindred by Octavia Butler. FX on Hulu finally got around to that. My new great book begging for an adaptation is Five Decembers by James Kestrel. Opening sentence: Joe McGrady was looking at a whiskey. Memorable prose: The first night in Yokohama, he could have listened to Takahashi's pitch. Then he could've walked away. Back down the steel stairs, back to his place in the line of naked prisoners. None of the other men from the ship had been given any kind of choice. They had to take whatever the Japs decided to dish out. He could have taken it, too. Maybe he'd have survived. Or maybe not. But in either case his name wouldn't have been on the wrong Red Cross list. If people asked him what had happened in Japan, he'd be able to answer with some kind of dignity. And everything would be different. ...more |
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1
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Jan 04, 2024
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Jan 19, 2024
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Aug 11, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0593315448
| 9780593315446
| 0593315448
| 4.27
| 13,285
| Apr 18, 2023
| Apr 18, 2023
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really liked it
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Symphony of Secrets is Brendan Slocumb's follow-up his 2022 debut The Violin Conspiracy. Published in 2023, this is a richer novel that returns to the
Symphony of Secrets is Brendan Slocumb's follow-up his 2022 debut The Violin Conspiracy. Published in 2023, this is a richer novel that returns to the milieu of Western classical music and once again is propelled by a puzzle. This would be a unique sub-genre of mystery/ suspense as is--what if John Grisham had gone to Julliard instead of University of Mississippi Law School?--but Slocumb distinguishes the book further by featuring Black protagonists. Neither the prose or dialogue stand out, but his narrative is so propulsive that after a chapter or two, I was hooked. The story opens in 1936, sixteen hours before the death of Frederic Delaney, a celebrated American composer. Backstage, Delaney (who reminded me of Aaron Copland if his productivity and global reach rivaled Walt Disney) indulges in his normal performance ritual, opening a bottle of champagne, pouring two glasses before the show and two after. No one knows who this second glass is intended for, and the phantom does not reveal itself backstage. In the present day, Professor Bern Hendricks of the University of Virginia, considered the foremost expert on Delaney, is summoned by the Delaney Foundation for a hush-hush commission. Bern, who grew up poor in Milwaukee and like many children who couldn't afford otherwise, owes his entry to music to the charitable work of the Foundation. He feels that Delaney was the greatest composer in the world. Among the man's achievements is the Five Rings of Olympia, an opera cycle based on the blue, yellow, black, green and red rings of the new Olympic flag, each ring representing a different region of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas). The first four operas debuted between 1921 and 1926, but the final opera, RED, missed its delivery date and didn't premiere until 1936. After changing his story, Delaney ultimately conceded that the delay was due to him losing his original draft. Between that boner and the spectacularly bad reception RED received when it finally debuted, Delaney became something of a joke late in his life. Bern hopes that the Foundation has found the lost version of RED and he can help restore Delaney's reputation. Flown to New York on the Foundation's private jet and put up in an apartment, Bern learns that the long-lost RED has been recovered and that the Foundation wants him to prepare the score for a performance in six months, interpreting what are known as Delaney Doodles, whirls and geometric shapes that usually annotate the music. The recovered RED consists only of Doodles, including a new one that appears to read JaR. To help decipher the code, Bern seeks the help of a colleague named Eboni Washington, an expert in cybersecurity. Eboni, a native of the Bronx who does not worship Delaney or revere the Foundation, pushes for access to the original document instead of a scan. She and Bern discover that "JaR" is actually JoR. They match this to a Black woman in the Delaney archives named Josephine Reed who accompanied him on his first European tour and was on his payroll. Historians have ignored her. Eboni suspects Josephine was Delaney's mistress, but tracking her people down to North Carolina, Bern and Eboni find a trunk full of never-before-seen Delaney Doodles. It becomes apparent to them that Josephine Reed wrote the music Delaney claimed credit for. Symphony of Secrets jumps back to 1918 as Josephine Reed arrives in New York and meets a struggling pianist named Freddy Delaney. Josephine is what today would be called "neurodivergent." She is able to translate everyday sounds into colors and music. Often enigmatic, money doesn't seem to interest her and she lives on the street, but is a more skilled, instinctive jazz piano player than Delaney. Starting as his tutor, she's soon sleeping on his floor. Then she shares her ability to compose catchy tunes, which Delaney discovers he can sell, provided they keep her involvement a secret. Delaney promises to split their earnings 50/50. The fact that I related all of this indicates the novel's strength: it's a damn good yarn. Slocumb--a former music instructor at the public and private school level and a violinist--creates very believable musicians, and their music and lyrics. I tend to dislike novels or movies that fabricate celebrities or their fake work (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and That Thing You Do! are two of the more credible showbiz films) but Symphony of Secrets is rich in these areas. Five Rings of Olympia has the feel of something incredible and Slocumb describes opera a way that was easy for me to understand. Like The Violin Conspiracy, this is a modern faerie tale. I was actively rooting for Josephine to break out of the tower she'd been locked in and through efforts past and present, receive credit for her work. Slocumb does a supremely good job of writing a white character who starts out with good intentions, but lives under segregation and is a product of that system. Greed ultimately clouds any moral judgment Delaney might have possessed. The novel is not subtle and I would've preferred if the forces marshaled against Josephine and Bern weren't so melodramatic in their evil. But I was caught up in the tale and wanted to see how good would triumph. By accident, this is the third book I've read (one non-fiction, two fiction) this spring that deals with masterworks of 20th century art whose full authors or contributors have been lost to history (spoiler alert: a white man received sole credit). The cover art, though it looks a tad generic, is a ring design featuring blue, yellow, black and green, with the fifth ring of the Olympic flag (red) missing, a la the missing opera RED in the novel. ...more |
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1
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Jun 23, 2023
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Jun 29, 2023
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May 02, 2023
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Hardcover
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| B08CDYRWGK
| 3.83
| 37,684
| Mar 02, 2021
| Apr 2022
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it was ok
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My introduction to the fiction of Alexandra Andrews is Who Is Maud Dixon? Published in 2021, this novel continues my jag into literary thieves with a
My introduction to the fiction of Alexandra Andrews is Who Is Maud Dixon? Published in 2021, this novel continues my jag into literary thieves with a story about an unhinged editorial assistant who is inexplicably offered the job of a lifetime, moving to the Hudson Valley to work as assistant to a reclusive bestselling author known only as "Maud Dixon." Marginally a book about books, there's a seed of a good story here, a Prince and the Pauper tale of a nobody who impersonates a somebody, but the novel is too fluffy and ridiculous for me, never aspiring to be harrowing or crafty. Florence Darrow is a University of Florida at Gainesville graduate who like many before her, moves to Montana to work in the publishing industry (just kidding, it's New York City, at one of those fictional niche publishing houses that's big but not too big). Henpecked by her uncultured mother, Florence has never had an easy go cultivating friendships or romances, preferring the comfort of books (favorite author: Joan Didion). Accustomed to being the most literate and sophisticated of her school, Florence realizes she's small potatoes in the Big Apple, having scribbled a few short stories but far from the novelist she dreams of being. Just as it seems Florence will have to surrender her ambitions and return to Florida, divine intervention delivers her a job interview with the enigmatic "Maud Dixon," author of the acclaimed bestseller Mississippi Foxtrot. After accepting the job, Florence arrives in the country and discovers that Maud is a thirty-two-year-old woman named Helen Wilcox. Florence begins to model herself on her brilliant employer, who is at work on her second novel. When the boss suggests Florence accompany her to Morocco for two weeks of research, Florence jumps at the opportunity, of course. Already I have a problem with Who Is Maud Dixon? because, in spite of a prologue giving the reader a taste of what's to come, it is not until the 50% mark that Florence, in what seems like another stroke of divine intervention, assumes the identity of Maud Dixon following a car accident. Prior to this, the reader is left in a waiting room while Florence is socially awkward, Florence has an affair with an editor married to a film actress, Florence wants to be a great writer, Florence stalks her lover's wife, Florence is antagonized by her mother, Florence settles in to her new job and Florence accompanies Helen/Maud to Morocco. After taking entirely too long for the story--a nobody steps into the shoes of a rich and sophisticated somebody--to begin, Who Is Maud Dixon? stalls by not giving Florence anything crafty to do. One of the things that makes The Talented Mr. Ripley so great is that on the verge of being exposed at every turn, Tom Ripley has to figure his way out of predicament. Florence is simply in an awkward situation, bumbling around in pants that don’t fit her. She hangs out with some expats in Morocco, has a vacation fling, and in another fit of you-can-only-write-this-shit, bumps into her high school friend in Morocco while impersonating Helen. I never felt the author knew her characters. Anyone familiar with Bridget Jones' Diary will recognize Florence, the twenty-something fender bender who keeps embarrassing herself. Andrews never commits to exploring her protagonist's darker, sociopathic tendencies. Instead of morbid self-intentions, Florence apologizes on what seems like every other page. She is not a good writer and switches places just as she's becoming adept as an assistant. Helen/ Maud is unremarkable through three-fourths of the book. Andrews also punts on an opportunity for literary criticism. Mississippi Foxtrot is clearly a stand-in for Where the Crawdads Sing but in Andrews' world, it's just accepted that this is a great novel. By its climax, Andrews answers two-thirds of the story's problematic developments--why a character was given a job, why characters are in Morocco--but by this time, the implausibilities and mundanes of Who Is Maud Dixon? had done their damage. I found this to be a resoundingly boring read, skimming the last 30% of the novel. I didn't quit it, so Andrews did generate just enough intrigue for me to see exactly how her imposter would get herself out of her fix, but otherwise, I can't think of anything to recommend. This was a tandem read with the prolific Diane Bornscheuer. Here's her review! Diane's Reviews > Who Is Maud Dixon? And here's a dissenting, five-star review from a very popular Goodreads user! Yun's Reviews > Who Is Maud Dixon? ...more |
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1
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Jul 29, 2023
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Aug 02, 2023
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Jan 16, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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| 1638930244
| 9781638930242
| 1638930244
| 3.20
| 7,039
| Feb 21, 2023
| Feb 21, 2023
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really liked it
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My introduction to the fiction of Margot Douaihy is Scorched Grace. Published in 2023, this novel introduces a wonderful amateur detective in Sister H
My introduction to the fiction of Margot Douaihy is Scorched Grace. Published in 2023, this novel introduces a wonderful amateur detective in Sister Holiday Walsh, a thirty-three-year-old chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun who matches wits with an arsonist who seems to have targeted Saint Sebastian's School in New Orleans. Like many strong writers turned loose with a first-person narrative, Douaihy riveted me in the early chapters as she established her world in the voice of a completely original sleuth. Sister Holiday has been given sanctuary by the Sisters of the Sublime Blood. She's the youngest staff member of Saint Sebastian's, teaching a guitar ensemble class (taking students from the Ramones to Django Reinhardt, with quantifiable results). As one of four nuns at the school, she's given up conveniences like a cell phone, personal computer, car, mirrors and money of her own. Gloves and a neck scarf cover up her tattoos, remnants of her days playing bass for an all-girl punk band in Brooklyn called Original Sin. Her vice remains cigarettes, which she obtains by confiscating them from the student body. Stepping into the alley that serves as her private smoking lounge before supper on Sunday, Sister Holiday witnesses one of Saint Sebastian's janitors, Jack Corolla, fall on fire from the second floor of the east wing of the school. She rescues two students she finds huddled in a classroom, both of whom are seriously injured by smoke or glass. A young arson investigator, Magnolia Riveaux, confides to Sister Holiday that arson is the cause. Unsatisfied with the progress of the police investigation, Sister Holiday begins to search the school, church or rectory for clues. She has a history of sleuthing, dating back to high school. They talked so freely in front of me, they must have thought I was praying. And I let them think that. I made the sign of the cross again. People view nuns as nameless clones, a collective noun rather than individuals. That was ironic, because, denuded of so-called luxuries like cell phones and social media, leading lives of service and prayer, nuns cultivated rich inner worlds. Real inner dialogue. Most female mystics were nuns. Beatrice of Nazareth. Consolata Betrone. Sister Helen Prejean is more of a badass than most self-proclaimed radicals moaning about the ethical failings of single-use plastic straws. Nuns forge genuine connections, soul to eternal soul. What choice do we have but to be achingly present? Margot Douaihy's prose, her sensibility and her one-of-a-kind protagonist put Scorched Grace over the bar for me. The paragraphs flooded by description--of New Orleans, of fire, of sex--knocked me out. I was absorbed by the activities of a private Catholic school and the rituals of Sister Holiday's faith, though the book contains more of the former than the latter. Vivid and witty, Douaihy establishes why a nun is well-suited to solve crime. The mood is similar to Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt mysteries, rough as opposed to cozy. Douaihy exhibits her punk rock influence admirably. My wisdom held a kind of grace, I'll admit. I offered my students the only thing that mattered in life--honesty--and I served it the way I meted out revenge, ice cold. I was a fuckup about most things, but when it came to commitment, I was all in, like a python eating a goat, sinew and toenails and skeleton and all. Like my Sisters, I did everything I could to lift each student, to help them carry the light in their own hands, not hold it for them. Sometimes that meant calling out their sloth and turpitude. And I knew how to clock BS because I lived it. To break a horse or a human, you must first understand wildness. Scorched Grace is Douaihy's debut novel and my criticism of it is that a mystery is not incorporated in a strong way. Sister Holiday is a detective who spends most of her time ambushing investigators or others and not that much time detecting. Her social work takes her to the Women's Birth Center of a prison, a location fertile with intimate mysteries. In contrast, Sister Holiday's relationship to the janitor or her school feel tenuous. I thought she would've been fine had investigators done their jobs. The mystery element comes off with very low import. As debuts go, Scorched Grace is dazzling. I'm looking forward to the next in the series. I would've enjoyed a novel set in Sister Holiday's guitar ensemble class, that's how much I enjoyed this character. The book has a bananas cover design and illustration by Will Staehle. It sold me this book quicker than a box of Girl Scouts cookies. [image] ...more |
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1
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Jun 14, 2023
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Jun 19, 2023
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Jan 14, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0316457914
| 9780316457910
| 0316457914
| 3.76
| 8,051
| Jan 10, 2023
| Jan 10, 2023
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it was amazing
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Everybody Knows is the second novel by Jordan Harper and surpasses his excellent debut She Rides Shotgun as exhilarating crime fiction and the epitome
Everybody Knows is the second novel by Jordan Harper and surpasses his excellent debut She Rides Shotgun as exhilarating crime fiction and the epitome of Los Angeles noir. Published in 2023, the book weaves the investigations of a publicist and her ex-lover, a private security contractor, and is one of those I stayed up past my bedtime to finish. And I rarely miss my curfew. Writing in close third person, Harper begins Everybody Knows alternating between two equally compelling narratives: Mae Pruett is a publicist entrusted with catching and killing stories damaging to the reputations of her firm's wealthy clients. Mae's boss asks her to meet him at the Beverly Hills Hotel for a drink, triggering concern. Rather than solicit her sexually, he proposes partnering with him on something he's working on off the books. Mae senses blackmail, but before she can find out what he's got his big toe in, her boss is gunned down by a man with gang affiliations. The LA County Sheriff's Department catches and kills the shooter, with what to Mae's trained ear sounds like a cover story. Ex-sheriff's deputy Chris Tamburro works for the private security firm BlackGuard as hired muscle. He's the guy wealthy men call when they need to send a message to someone who won't file assault charges. BlackGuard's owner summons Chris to his home and employs him to use his contacts in the LASD to find out whether the shooting is on the up-and-up. Mae and Chris soon discover they're pursuing the same answer and work together to get to the truth. Harper exhibits great finesse articulating the cynicism of his characters as they sift through the garbage of some of the worst human beings in Los Angeles County, which puts them in the running for worst human beings on Earth. He writes like a thief, breaking into mansions and reporting back on what he found in the bedrooms and closets. -- Blackmail isn't unheard of in the black-bag world. Shakedowns happen. Too many secrets worth too much money float through people's hands. Too many cell phone videos and scorned employees. Usually the shakedowns happen UNSAID. You triple-charge the client and dare them to ask you why. The bill is saying here is what the secret is worth. -- Here’s what being an ex-cop teaches you: There’s all these invisible walls that keep everybody in line. And if you refuse to see them, they just aren’t there anymore. Once you walk through the walls, they never come back up again. Harper's choice of narration limits the whiplash of head-hopping I usually experience with books that bounce from narrator to narrator. There's some summarization, but the plot is so crackerjack that I didn't mind some telling here or there where showing might've been more compelling. I didn't know where the story was headed or what might become of the protagonists. While I usually dislike novels that fabricate celebrities--Harper name drops real ones who aren't required to contribute depraved behavior--those in Everybody Knows are credible. Thinly veiled versions of tweener sitcom producer Dan Schneider and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are featured. Disgust rises, like it should in great fiction. In addition to depicting how a conspiracy works--things go UNSAID instead of said out loud--the book's refrain is that in LA, nobody talks, but everybody whispers. Rather than titillate with sleaze, Harper offers the only way for an industry--which among many things, preys on child actors--to change is for the whisperers to go public with how they participated. Easier said than done. Non-Angelenos might skim the descriptions of neighborhoods or freeways, but I loved seeing details of my city, accurately reflecting how spread out LA is, why Hollywood is completely different than Brentwood, and why Venice has a whole other vibe from Koreatown. Ignore the terrible cover art. Wildfire, not earthquake, is illustrated by Harper as the region's most disruptive natural disaster. ...more |
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Mar 19, 2024
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Mar 22, 2024
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Jan 13, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1616205628
| 9781616205621
| 1616205628
| 3.29
| 3,875
| Jun 06, 2016
| Jun 07, 2016
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did not like it
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My introduction to the fiction of Gina Wohlsdorf is her debut novel Security. Published in 2016, this was hyped by CrimeReads, whose standards, I'm le
My introduction to the fiction of Gina Wohlsdorf is her debut novel Security. Published in 2016, this was hyped by CrimeReads, whose standards, I'm learning, for a good thriller seem to be that it's not a telephone or a cow but a book. Recommended three times ("9 Crime Novels You Should Read In August," "Six Great Novels with Mysterious Protagonists," "Six Thrillers That Use Unusual Structures To Build Suspense"), the story seems to involve a luxury hotel in Santa Barbara which on the eve of its grand opening is plagued by a killer on the loose. What's going on or what the nature of reality is seem to be at play, but I abandoned this on page 36/229 due to its perplexing points of view, unconventional formatting, bewildering action and superficial characters. The author tips her hat to Daphne du Maurier and Rebecca, but that was a novel with concise and powerful prose, excellent dialogue and vivid characters. We wanted to figure out what type of novel it was exactly--gothic romance, murder mystery, ghost story--because the scenario was so intoxicating. Reading Security is like being hung over. Wohlsdorf introduces a hotel manager named Tessa who seems to be the protagonist. A daredevil who may be either a foster brother or ex-boyfriend shows up to follow her on her rounds. The hotel's owner has personally berated every employee before leaving for the day, you know, like wealthy men do. A killer (referred to as The Killer) wearing a Michael Myers mask speaks in first person. A chef darts out of a door and slices Tessa's hand with a knife accidentally then farts while she continues on her rounds with the daredevil following her around for God knows why. At the 15% mark, I had no idea if this was a slasher movie script in book form, a video game simulation, or a dream. I am not at all the reader for these postmodern slasher novels like The Last Final Girl that attempt to reimagine what a novel is, not because I dislike '70s or '80s slasher movies, but because I hate writing that calls attention to itself. I don't want to read a construct, I want to read something real. This book seems to have designs to be a puzzle for reader. That's easy: puzzle me whether the author has ever read a book. I see no evidence Wohlsdorf has. ...more |
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Apr 12, 2023
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Apr 12, 2023
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Dec 27, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 0062292439
| 9780062292438
| 0062292439
| 3.98
| 10,887
| Feb 10, 2015
| Feb 10, 2015
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really liked it
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My introduction to the fiction of Lou Berney is The Long and Faraway Gone. Published in 2015, this is a unique and often very enthralling mystery that
My introduction to the fiction of Lou Berney is The Long and Faraway Gone. Published in 2015, this is a unique and often very enthralling mystery that alternates between several mysteries, of the professional and personal variety, of two characters: a private detective on a job who returns to city he inexplicably survived a movie theater massacre in, and a nurse haunted by the disappearance of her older sister from a state fair when she was twelve years old. Born and raised in Oklahoma City, Berney sets most of the action there and gets tremendous value from his location, with a landscape flatter than most scenic American cities, where the strange stands out a little more. The most compelling portions of the book involve how and why Wyatt Rivers--a smart-ass who's very good at digging up secrets--was spared in the armed robbery in which six of his co-workers were murdered, and the disappearance of Genevieve Rosales from the annual state fair, a scary environment where transiency and access to freeways make investigating crimes extremely difficult. Genevieve's vanishing haunts her younger sister Juliana, and as most novels that alternate between storylines, I wanted to get back to Wyatt's chapters. Juliana, as an amateur detective, is reduced to stalking a carny who's been released from prison and she remains convinced knows more about her sister's unsolved disappearance then he's admitted. She's out of her element and Berney seems a bit unsure of how to make her as compelling as Wyatt, who not only survived a trauma in his youth but is actively working an equally baffling harassment case for a young woman who owns a nightclub in OKC someone badly wants her to vacate. The writing is energetic, dialogue sharp, and characters leap from the page. Wyatt's move theater co-workers are every co-worker I've ever shared a shift with. The novel is anchored by two terrifying crimes, one of which I was drawn into much more than the other. Berney springs a good twist near the end--for readers who appreciate those--and the details he's able to share regarding OKC were wonderful, with the coffeeshops filled with music majors and the tornado sirens tested Saturdays at noon. I would've liked the two storylines integrated better, but both are well-written meditations on memory and how unreliable a tool it is for processing that which may ultimately be unknowable. ...more |
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1
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May 28, 2024
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Jun 09, 2024
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Dec 24, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0670016381
| 9780670016389
| 0670016381
| 3.44
| 15,680
| Jul 31, 2014
| Jul 31, 2014
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did not like it
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My introduction to the fiction of Elizabeth Little is Dear Daughter. Published in 2014, this debut novel is the first-person account of Jane Jenkins,
My introduction to the fiction of Elizabeth Little is Dear Daughter. Published in 2014, this debut novel is the first-person account of Jane Jenkins, an infamous society girl who spent ten years in prison for the murder of her wealthy mother. Exonerated due to mismanaged evidence and released, Jane sets out to find her mother's real killer, if there is one, Jane's memory a fog of drugs, alcohol and repressed memory. Web sleuths and the paparazzi are hot on her trail. This rollicking mystery was not a good match for me and I abandoned it on page 88/358. - Pop-culture addled narrator. If you love movie, TV, music and cultural references, you'd better love them on every page with this book. I'll give Little credit, she throws in a Beethoven reference and a Brown vs. Board of Education reference. I've never seen anyone whose liberal arts education paid such dividends as it does here. Problem 1: I didn't feel this was appropriate for a narrator who's been in prison for a decade and by her own admission, cut off from society. That's the author dropping these bon mots, not her narrator. Problem 2: It's goddamn annoying. Fortunately, I had some experience with this particular species. For the first fifteen years of my life I had been shuffled from tutor to tutor, learning all the things my mother thought ladies (or bastard children of petty nobility) should know--which as far as I can tell were gleamed directly from an Edith Wharton novel. I studied etiquette, music, antique furniture, napkin folding. I can spot a fake Picasso at a thousand paces; I dance the gavotte; I'm adept with a lemon fork, a butter pick, and a piccalilli spoon. My education was then rounded out with perfunctory attention to the more usual subjects, which were taught largely by mediocre or disgraced academics who were unwilling to cry uncle and find another field. I'm in awe of the cultural salad that is this paragraph. It's not that the writing is bad or I didn't find some of it funny. One of the frequent news updates or social media feeds that Little inserts between chapters made me laugh out loud. But all I needed was one quip or one reference to get the point here. Reminding me that the narrator was a culture junkie on every page was repetitive. - Narrator jumping back-and-forth (within the same chapter even) between the present and her past made an unsteady narration flying all over the place even more annoying to follow. - Narrator vastly overstating her celebrity or newsworthiness. Within a week of being released from prison, if that, the public would've forgotten about Jane and exhibited zero interest in her whereabouts. But Little has Jane running around like Dr. Richard Kimble, a fugitive from a chain gang, her face on every screen. She could've hunkered down in a hotel for a week and reemerged with zero attention. - Media overload. I've yet to read a novel deeply immersed in podcasting or cable news or reality TV or social media that I've enjoyed. One of the reasons I read is to get away from that noise. My phone is always within reach if I need breaking news, and I dislike novels that overdose on media. There was a more compelling story here that Little missed. Instead of a woman being exonerated for a capital crime and going in search of the killer, what if a woman was exonerated for a capital crime and with no prospects (Jane had no job before she was sent to the hoosegow) she's drawn into committing a crime? ("On the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook" -- Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption.) The more interesting question is staring right at us: Even if Jane finds the killer, then what? What's she do with her life? Here's a dissenting, four-star review from a hugely popular reviewer on Goodreads! Why not a five-star review? The most popular five-star review for this book only has 24 likes. Objection withdrawn ... Delee's Reviews > Dear Daughter ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 10, 2023
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Jul 10, 2023
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Dec 24, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 1250788420
| 9781250788429
| 1250788420
| 3.41
| 2,500
| Jun 01, 2021
| Jun 01, 2021
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it was amazing
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My introduction to the fiction of Christine Mangan is Palace of the Drowned. Published in 2021, this is an example of a novel I paused reading to chec
My introduction to the fiction of Christine Mangan is Palace of the Drowned. Published in 2021, this is an example of a novel I paused reading to check what other books the author had written so I could add those to my reading docket. I wish there was a bell I could ring when this happens. "Fiction-General" might be a more appropriate shelf for this than "Mystery/ Suspense," but the novel is evocative, mysterious and strong enough that I kept turning the pages even without a lot of tricks and turns. Some writers need plot to keep me engaged while others can do so by the imagery they conjure and strangeness their stories generate. Mangan belongs to the latter. The story centers on Frances Croy, a writer whose debut novel was published to great acclaim, but whose three subsequent books have received diminishing praise. Frankie, single and childless, has grown apprehensive about her future. She is upset by a harsh critique in a weekly magazine she's unfamiliar with by a writer who identified themselves only as "J.L." Frankie was seething by the time she attended a party and socked a woman in the mouth. She checked herself into a clinic but tiring of the rigamarole there, fled London for Venice, where the family of her best friend Jack own a vacant palazzo where Frankie can work on the last novel remaining on her contract. On her way to the market to buy vangole from one of the fishermen, Frankie is approached by an enthusiastic young Brit named Gilly Larson. Gilly claims to have met Frankie before and allows her to believe that she is the daughter of one of her editors. She persists on meeting Frankie for a cup of coffee sometime and despite her best efforts, Frankie concedes. Alone in the palazzo with the exception of the family's housekeeper, Frankie hears footsteps on the second floor and assumes it to be her neighbors, though Jack has no knowledge of any tenants. Gilly sounds a few warning bells but for lack of anyone to spend time in Venice with, Frankie befriends her. During the recital, Gilly appeared indifferent--or oblivious, rather--to the looks her presence was garnering from the men who crowded the bar on the other side. She was tall and thin and young, and that always counted for something in the world, Frankie knew. It was enough, at any rate, to ensure a casual glance, a roving eye. But this was something different, as was, it seemed, Gilly. There was the way that she spoke--loudly, not so much that it annoyed but enough so that it aroused interest--and there were the gestures that went along with her speech, wide and sweeping, without concern for the space of others around her. And behind it all, a confidence, a certainty, in the way she spoke, in the way she moved, that belied her youth. That was it, Frankie realized. She had never before met anyone so self-assured at her age--other than herself--and so she knew firsthand how it made one unique among peers, however unintentional. Frankie stifled a smirk. It was strange to think of how differently these same attributes were viewed with age. Now, instead of confident, she was labeled stubborn. Instead of independent, she was a spinster. The most frustrating part was that she didn't feel any differently than she had at Gilly's age, only a bit less manic, a bit more calm, and yet the world insisted that she was entirely changed from her younger self. Palace of the Drowned doesn't embrace its potential as a thriller until the 65% mark but its strength is that without crime or violence or sex, Mangan fully invested me. Venice isn't described as much as it is imbibed. The way she sets not just places or people but a rhythm of life and almost a different way of dreaming in the City of Bridges put its hooks into me. I wasn't sure what direction the novel was going to take. Though set in October 1966, with only minor changes the story could take place in virtually any decade. In a credit to its protagonist, the writing is muscular and propulsive. If it were a Golden Girl, it would be Dorothy. Gilly. That was what she had called herself. Frankie thought it had a ring of falsity to it. As did her story about their supposed introduction. Gilly, with a hard G. It was too juvenile, too hard to believe that someone had willingly bestowed it as an actual given name. As Frankie took another sip of wine, she allowed that it wasn't the girl herself so much as the girl's recognition that had unsettled her. A reminder that while she might play at disappearing into Venice, her vanishing act could never truly be complete. There would always be someone who knew her--and who knew about what had happened at the Savoy. The two were synonymous now, intrinsically linked. No matter how much she detested the thought. Frankie gave a small shake of her head, cursing under her breath. If only she had never read that damned review. In other novels, I'd be fidgeting if an author digressed into Venice or cafe society for half a book and might abandon it out of boredom, but not Palace of the Drowned. Mangan could've set the novel in a phone booth and I'd have hung in there with her. The writing is so confident that I felt myself in good hands, certain this was leading somewhere. My only criticism is that Frankie is so caustic and has so little control of her emotions that she's freaking out in public, begging why her friend Jack (a heiress, a woman) is so devoted to her. It's a minor ding in a book that is fantastic from cover to cover. I'm looking forward to reading Mangan's debut novel as well as her next. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 03, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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Dec 23, 2022
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.83
|
Mar 2024
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Dec 31, 2023
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||||||
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| 3.80
|
did not like it
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Mar 08, 2024
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Dec 31, 2023
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|||||
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| 3.69
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Jan 22, 2024
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Dec 21, 2023
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| 3.67
|
Jan 03, 2024
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Dec 16, 2023
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||||||
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| 3.48
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did not like it
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Feb 27, 2024
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Dec 14, 2023
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|||||
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| 3.75
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did not like it
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Dec 19, 2023
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Dec 14, 2023
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| 3.56
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it was ok
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Mar 17, 2024
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Dec 14, 2023
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|||||
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| 3.46
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Feb 2024
|
Dec 12, 2023
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||||||
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| 3.49
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it was amazing
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Dec 30, 2023
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Dec 09, 2023
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|||||
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| 3.62
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Dec 05, 2023
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Nov 18, 2023
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| 4.09
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liked it
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Sep 24, 2023
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Aug 16, 2023
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| 4.43
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it was amazing
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Jan 19, 2024
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Aug 11, 2023
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| 4.27
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really liked it
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Jun 29, 2023
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May 02, 2023
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| 3.83
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it was ok
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Aug 02, 2023
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Jan 16, 2023
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| 3.20
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really liked it
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Jun 19, 2023
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Jan 14, 2023
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| 3.76
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it was amazing
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Mar 22, 2024
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Jan 13, 2023
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| 3.29
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did not like it
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Apr 12, 2023
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Dec 27, 2022
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|||||
|
| 3.98
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really liked it
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Jun 09, 2024
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Dec 24, 2022
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|||||
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| 3.44
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did not like it
|
Jul 10, 2023
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Dec 24, 2022
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|||||
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| 3.41
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it was amazing
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Aug 04, 2023
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Dec 23, 2022
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