“I’ll tell you what this is, it’s two gallons of shit in a one-gallon bucket.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (NOV 17, 2011)

The hardscrabble desert land of New Mexico is the perfect setting for Percival Everett’s new novel, Assumption, mainly because it mirrors the protagonist’s character incredibly well. Ogden Walker is a deputy in the sheriff’s office in the small town of Plata, where he serves after a brief stint in the army. Plata might be where mom Eva Walker lives but Ogden finds her presence not enough of a comfort to overcome his unease with his mixed African American heritage (he is biracial) or his general malaise with what seems to be a dead-end career. He finds it hard to be content hunting for the small fish even if a colleague tells him, “A big fish is fun, I suppose, but so are small ones sometimes. Depends on the water. If I catch a ten-incher in a creek that’s two foot wide, that’s a big fish.”

One day, when an old lady in town is shot dead in her own home, Walker is not sure quite where to begin. His investigations eventually lead him to discover that she might have been part of some hate groups — it’s a hard paradox to serve the very people who might wish you harm. Before this murder is completely resolved, there’s more trouble. The body count rises again, this time through a seemingly unrelated murder on the other end of town.

This incident has Walker chasing down prostitutes in seedy sections of Denver. This mystery snowballs into a third one where a fellow law enforcement agent is shot and again, nobody knows what happened and how. As Everett goes about putting all the pieces together, the writing increasingly reaches a feverish pitch and one wonders if anybody is keeping count as the body count ratchets up easily and steadily. “Warren moved on to the next structure, knowing nothing more than that he was confused,” writes Everett of Ogden’s coworker, Warren Fragua, “More so with each piece of this puzzle, if in fact these were pieces, if in fact this was a puzzle.” That same disorienting sensation works itself on to the pages of this fast-paced novel.

Assumption is full of razor-sharp dialog and Everett does a wonderful job of capturing the gritty landscape but the disparate story threads and sudden detours in the action occasionally make the book trying.

With the twists and turns in the story, the moral of the novel might well be to assume nothing. But it sure feels like Everett goes to great lengths just to make that point. After a while the story is not so much genre-bending as genre-defying. Readers who like their suspense stories resolved well will find Everett’s latest novel frustrating. Even the surprise ending might not help redeem matters in such a case.

On the other hand, readers who love the chase as much as the outcome, will find Assumption entertaining and a fun ride. When one of the characters in the novel points out that the whole mess is “hinky as hell,” they will only be too happy. After all, when it comes to murder mysteries, “hinky” is good.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Graywolf Press (October 25, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Percival Everett
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Terror of Living by Urban Waite Crossers by Philip Caputo

Bibliography:

• Suder (1983)
• Walk Me to the Distance (1985)
• Cutting Lisa (1986)
• The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair: Stories (1987)
• For Her Dark Skin (1990)
• Zulus (1990)
• The One That Got Away (1992)
• God’s Country (1994)
• Big Picture: Stories (1996)
• Watershed (1996)
• Frenzy (1997)
• Glyph (1999)
• Erasure (2001)
• Grand Canyon, Inc. (2001)
• American Desert (2004)
• Damned If I Do: Stories (2004)
• Wounded (2005)
• The Water Cure (2007)
• I am Not Sidney Poitier (2009)
• Assumption (October 2011)

“He wondered if religion was partly the love for an imaginary parent and whether any steps to make contact with this parent were justifiable.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns  (OCT 30, 2011)

Once, many years ago when I was living in Northern Michigan, Jim Harrison walked into the restaurant where I was dining. He didn’t so much walk in, in retrospect, as lumber in. It was the Blue Bird Cafe and I confess that I’d been hanging out there in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him. I was young, trying to turn myself into a writer, and seeking out an idol. Even back then, over thirty years ago, he had lassoed my imagination. Like, many other Harrison readers, it started with Legends of the Fall (1979), then continued with Dalva (1988), and later, The Road Home (1998), a book that changed my life. Much later, I devoured his memoir, Off to the Side (2002), then started filling in the gaps. I studied his poetry, for Harrison thinks of himself first as a poet–and of course there was the column, The Raw and the Cooked in Esquire and Men’s Journal. I used to read the column at the grocery store, between the frozen foods and the bread rack, returning the magazine when I was finished. (Harrison was a foodie before it became sexy, though his style in no way suggests an affinity to the current legions of balsamic vinegar-sniffing poseur journalists.) The man has no gap in his repertoire.

That by way of introduction and confession: there will be no objectivity to this review.

I wish I’d mustered the courage to introduce myself and tell him how much I appreciate his work, but that’s not my style and I image it’s not his either. How do you approach someone who has peered so throughly into your being? A man the critics cite as the progeny of Faulkner and Hemingway? A real died-in-the-wool man of letters? A quiet and respectful distance is the way to go, at least that’s what we do in the Midwest from which we both harken. Anyway, he was seated at the bar. Bothering a man at a bar is bad form.

It has been said that Harrison is that rare writer who can successfully blend the life of the mind with the life of action. It is a formula, though I am hesitate to use that word, that most often appeals to the male reader. That said, the voice he created for Dalva, a woman, in the book of the same name, astounded critics for being so spot-on a female voice–and this from a manly man.

The Great Leader falls soundly into the Harrison oeuvre. It is the story of a hard-drinking, female-ogling fiercely-independent male, Simon Sunderson. (Harrison’s men ogle without the uncomfortable squeamishness of, say, those created by Roth or the hormonal blindness of Updike.)  Sunderson, a recently retired detective, lives deep in Harrison territory, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “It was good to live in a place largely ignored by the rest of the world,” reflects Sunderson. Though now officially off the job, Sunderson can’t seem to call it quits and the novel finds him in pursuit of a religious cult leader with an affinity for young girls. Like so many of Harrison’s characters, Sunderson is not so much a reflection of biography as an amalgam ideas. Attempting to explain his current pursuit: “My hobby has always been history,” Sunderson says. “I became interested in the relationship between religion, money and sex.”

Sunderson, not without his personal challenges, is trying hard to be a better man. He misses his wife Diane who left him three years earlier, though they remain in close contact. (“With Diane he always felt a little vulgar and brutish…”) He is a father figure to a neighbor, a sixteen-year-old hottie who seems hell-bent on seducing him. (“The frankness of young women these days always caught him off guard and made him feel like a middle-aged antique, or like a diminutive football player without a face guard on his helmet.”) He drinks too much and is trying to cut back. He spends a lot of time by himself in the woods, thinking, walking around and resolving to make retirement work. His progress is slow on all fronts. He is wracked with ideas, but execution is haphazard.

There is a character in the novel, a friend of Sunderson, who ruefully observes “that a central fact of our time was the triumph of process over content.” That notion is at the core of the Harrison attraction. His prose, like his characters, is direct and intelligent, without many grace notes and devoid of filigree. There is, in other words, a zen-like transparency to the Harrison process. That process, the act of conveying content, is trumped every time by content. Pulling that off consistently, as Harrison continues to do, is a talent that is reserved for the best of the best. This novel is an example of how rare such a voice has become.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grove Press (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Jim Harrison
EXTRAS:	Interview and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Disaster Was My God by Bruce Duffy

Bibliography:

• Wolf: A False Memoir (1971)
• A Good Day to Die (1973)
• Farmer (1976)
• Legends of the Fall: Three Novellas (1979)
• Warlock (1981)
• Sundog: The Story of an American Foreman, Robert Corvus Strang (1984)
• Dalva (1988)
• The Woman Lit By Fireflies: Three Novellas (1990)
• Julip: Three Novellas (1994)
• The Road Home (1988)
• The Beast God Forgot to Invent: Three Novellas (2000)
• True North (2004)
• The Summer He Didn’t Die: Three Novellas (2005)
• Returning To Earth (2007)
• The English Major (2008)
• The Farmer’s Daughter (2009)
• The Great Leader (2011)
• Brown Dog: Novellas (December 2012)

Children’s books:

• The Boy Who Ran to the Woods (Illustrated by Tom Pohrt) (2000)

Nonfiction:

• Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction (1991)
• The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand (2001)
• Off to the Side: A Memoir (2002)

“The eye sockets were sunken; the eyes protruded, a vivid blue; his flesh was a morbid gray. Long blond hair—almost white, albino-looking—hung over his eyes. Once he was forced to break from his labor to cough—and Andrew recognized the noise that had drawn him. The cough combined the bark of a sick animal with a wet, slapping sound. The skeletal man drew his hand across his mouth. Then he looked up. He locked eyes with Andrew.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (OCT 1, 2011)

Kicked out of his last American boarding school for drugs, Andrew Taylor’s father has sent him to England’s Harrow Academy to redo his senior year. It’s his last chance, and Andrew tries hard to follow the rules and not bring attention to himself. But author Justin Evans has other plans for Andrew in The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.

Andrew witnesses the murder of his friend, Theo, on a path near the school’s graveyard, but he can’t give all the details to the police. No one would ever believe that a ghost, for that is all Andrew can come up with for an explanation of the albino-type figure that killed his friend and then vanished.

Rumors abound of the Lot Ghost, a ghost that haunts the house-turned-dorm in which Andrew lives. But there’s much more to this mystery that’s gradually revealed. Andrew bears a strong resemblance to Byron and is cast as the lead in the school play about the Harrow alumnus, written and directed by Piers Fawkes, a poet and master at Lot. Andrew’s other confidante and love interest is Persephone, the only girl at Harrow, the daughter of the school’s headmaster. What Andrew can piece together is that his friends’ lives are in danger, and if he can’t find out the mystery with Lord Byron at its center, he may die as well.

Life at Harrow lies at the center of Evans’s tale. He combines the bullying and torrid relationships of the past with the goings-on in the present, moving easily between the two. Our hero, Andrew, with his resemblance to Byron, links the two eras together. There’s a chance he can solve the mystery of who the ghost is and why people are dying with the help of Fawkes, Persephone and a library researcher, but time may run out on him.

My only pet peeve with this book is that the author tries to do too much. Add in Fawkes problem with alcohol, a speech Andrew has planned for speech day and some of the story threads get dropped without becoming fully developed. That said, Evans does a nice job of pulling the reader into the story and maintaining enough tension and hints to keep one’s focus.

I have a penchant for books with boarding schools at their center as well as those with historical settings in part or in whole, so I enjoyed the story immensely. Part horror and part thriller, there are enough creepy, very realistic moments in the story to give out shivers. Evans has a talent for vivid descriptions too, and some weren’t so pretty. While I don’t think the novel has any profound messages to pass along, fans of historical settings, Lord Byron or boarding schools should give it a whirl. Just don’t turn out the lights if it’s late.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 44 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (May 10, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Justin Evans
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss

Bibliography:

• A Good and Happy Child (2007)
• The White Devil (May 2011)

“The real meaning of retirement had come to him the first day. When it didn’t matter what time he got up, he could stay in bed all day. He didn’t, of course. Those first days, all his interest seemed petty, not worth doing. It seemed to him that he had read all the books he wanted to read, heard all the music he wanted to hear. He thought of closing his eyes and turning his face to the wall.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (SEP 25, 2011)

The brilliant and prolific Ruth Rendell continues to entertain us with her latest Inspector Wexford novel, The Vault. Although he is retired and has no official standing, Wexford, the former Chief Inspector of Kingsmarkham, is delighted when Detective Superintendent Thomas Ede asks for his advice concerning a puzzling case. The scene of the crime(s) is a two-hundred year old house in London, Orcadia Cottage. The current residents are Martin and Anne Rokeby, who bought the property for one and a half million pounds. One day, Martin decides to lift a manhole cover in the “paved yard at the back of the house,” curious to know what, if anything, is down there. Little does he realize that this deed would end up “wrecking his life for a long time to come.” It seems that some unknown person or persons had hidden four dead bodies, two male and two female, in this hole in the ground, along with forty thousand pounds worth of jewelry.

Ruth Rendell has always dug beneath the surface of her characters’ lives, and this time she reveals how retirement has, in some ways, diminished Wexford. Although he loves reading, long walks, listening to music, and spending time with his family, he misses being a detective. How could he be content when “it didn’t matter what time he got up?” Fortunately, Wexford’s affluent daughter offers her parents the use of a home in London, which they happily accept. Now that Wexford and Dora have places both in London and Kingsmarkham, they have more ways to keep themselves active and entertained.

The case of the four corpses proves to be just what the doctor ordered to make Wexford feel useful and involved. He examines the evidence, helps interview witnesses, studies the autopsy reports, and uses his superb instincts, experience, and impressive intellect to help solve what turns out to be a series of complex misdeeds and misadventures. Adding to the drama, another crime is committed that hits close to home, since the victim is Wexford’s daughter.

The author’s prose style is as crisp, fluid, and succinct as anyone writing today, and she creates a rich and realistic picture of life in urban and rural London. Her descriptive writing is precise and evocative. In addition, Rendell presents us with a fascinating and varied array of characters who are compassionate, altruistic, adulterous, desperate, vicious, and predatory. The mystery is challenging, even for someone as uniquely talented as Wexford. The Vault succeeds as a character study, family drama, police procedural, and whodunit. Ruth Rendell delivers the goods, as she has done so often during her long and legendary career.

Bibliography:

Inspector Wexford Mysteries:

• From Doon with Death (1964)
• A New Lease of Death (1967) (retitled: Sins of the Fathers)
• Wolf to the Slaughter (1967)
• The Best Man to Die (1969)
• A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970)
• No More Dying Then (1971)
• Murder Being Once Done (1972)
• Some Lie and Some Die (1973)
• Shake Hands Forever (1975)
• A Sleeping Life (1978)
• Put on the Cunning (1981) (a.k.a Death Notes)
• Speaker of Mandarin (1983)
• An Unkindness of Ravens (1985)
• The Veiled One (1988)
• Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter (1992)
• Simisola (1995)
• Road Rage (1997)
• Harm Done (November 1999)
• The Babes in the Wood (2003)
• End in Tears (July 2006)
• Not in the Flesh (2008)
• The Monster in the Box (2009)
• The Vault (September 2011)

Standalone Mysteries & Psychological Thrillers:

• To Fear a Painted Devil (1965)
• Vanity Dies Hard (1965)
• The Secret House of Death (1968)
• One Across, Two Down (1971)
• The Face of Trespass (1974)
• A Demon in My View (1976)
• A Judgement in Stone (1977)
• Make Death Love Me (1979)
• The Lake of Darkness (1980)
• Master of the Moor (1982)
• The Killing Doll (1984)
• The Tree of Hands (1984)
• Live Flesh (1986)
• Heartstones (1987)
• Talking to Strange Men (1987)
• The Bridesmaid (1989)
• Going Wrong (1990)
• The Crocodile Bird (1993)
• The Keys to the Street (1996)
• A Sight for Sore Eyes (1999)
• Adam and Eve and Pinch (2002)
• The Rottweiler (2004)
• Thirteen Steps Down (2005)
• The Water’s Lovely (2007)
• Portobello (2010)
• Tigerlily’s Orchids (2011)
• The St. Zita Society (August 2012)

Collections:

• The Fallen Curtain and Other Stories (1976)
• Means of Evil (1979)
• The Fever Tree (1982)
• The Copper Peacock (1991)
• Blood Lines: Long and Short Stories (1996)
• Piranha to Scurfy: And Other Stories (2001)

Movies from books:

• Dead Lucky (The Lake of Darkness)
• An Affair of the Mind (1988)
• A Demon in My View (1992)
• Master of the Moor
• A Judgement in Stone
• La Ceremonie (1996) (A Judgement in Stone)
• Live Flesh (1998)

“Psychopaths are individuals who don’t have the capacity for empathy or remorse. How their actions affect other people is a matter of complete indifference to them. They lie, they try to control the world so it runs their way. The smart ones are glib and manipulative and learn how to fit in.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (SEP 24, 2011)

Scottish author Val McDermid is arguably best known for her Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series. This series (7 in all so far), featuring psychologist Tony Hill and Detective Inspector Carol Hill became the basis of the television programme Wire in the Blood. McDermid also created the Lindsay Gordon series and the Kate Brannigan series as well as a number of stand-alone mysteries. Now comes Trick of the Dark — an excellent crime novel that may well herald the start of an exciting new series.

The protagonist of Trick of the Dark is lesbian Manchester-based psychiatrist Charlie Flint who lives with her civil-union wife, dentist Maria. Charlie, currently barred from practice pending the outcome of an investigation conducted by the General Medical Council, and vilified by the press, is troubled by her past involvement in a court case. One morning, she receives an anonymous package of press cuttings concerning a notorious murder case. The case is the bold battering murder of a groom just moments after his wedding took place in the grounds of Charlie’s old Oxford College. The murder of the groom, an extremely wealthy young entrepreneur named Philip Carling, has apparently been solved; his business partners have been charged, tried and convicted for his death.

Charlie discovers that the now widowed bride is Magda Newsam–the daughter of Charlie’s old college mentor, Dr. Corinna Newsam. Intrigued by the connection and the anonymous package, Charlie travels to Oxford at Corinna’s insistence. Corinna is convinced that Philip was not murdered by his business partners, and Charlie is shocked by Corinna’s revelation that the newly-widowed Magda has begun a lesbian relationship with successful business entrepreneur and celebrity author, Jay Stewart. While Corinna is alarmed by the fact that this is a lesbian relationship, she also claims that Jay is a serial killer. Charlie senses that Jay moved in when Madga was at her most vulnerable, and Charlie silently acknowledges: “if my daughter was running around with Jay Macallan Stewart, I’d be shouting for the cavalry.”

With a sense of obligation to Corinna, and with spare time on her hands, Charlie begins to investigate the crime. There are some aspects to Philip’s murder that leave a stench, but what’s rather more disturbing is that a series of mysterious deaths surround Jay’s phenomenal career. Whenever someone appeared to stand in the way of Jay’s success, they met a violent end. How can so many murders be in one person’s past?

Trick of the Dark is an interesting tale–not just for the mystery that surrounds the fabrications of Jay’s celebrity life, but also because the book is not shy about tackling lesbianism. While Charlie investigates the truth behind the stories of Jay’s past, her relationship with Maria, normally loving and nurturing, is under a considerable amount of strain. It doesn’t help matters that Charlie, bewitched by a lesbian self-help guru is considering straying outside of her monogamous relationship. The intelligent but flawed Charlie Flint would make a marvelous series detective, so for this long-term Mcdermid fan, I hope we see many more Flint novels to come.

There are some complaints that the book has a “lesbian agenda” which seems nonsensical to this reader. Mcdermid’s characters, and a vast number of them in the book are lesbians, are a fairly mixed bunch–the good, the bad, and the indifferent. One of the book’s major themes explores the real vs. fictional self–from minor lies to full scale deception, and sexual orientation falls into some of this. The issue of lesbianism raises its head at every turn, and Mcdermid shows, with great sensitivity, how sexual orientation deeply affects the lives of her characters. At one point, for example, Charlie is accused of expressing “lesbian solidarity,” and at other times she faces bigotry and must decide whether or not to let it pass or make a stand. This is, therefore an unapologetic novel written by a lesbian, featuring lesbian characters and touching on issues that affect lesbians. If you are bigoted enough to have a problem with that, then you’re about to miss an excellent McDermid novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bywater Books (August 23, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Val McDermid
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Val McDermid reviews: Beneath the Bleeding Fever of the Bone A Darker Domain Hostage to Murder Star Stuck

Bibliography:

• The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories (1997)
• A Place of Execution (1999) /
• Killing the Shadows (2000)
• Distant Echo (2003)
• Stranded: Stories (2005)
• The Grave Tattoo (2006)
• A Darker Domain (2009)
• Trick of the Dark (2010; August 2011 in US)

Lindsay Gordon Mysteries

• Report for Murder (1987)
• Common Murder (1989)
• Final Edition (1991) (called Open and Shut in US)
• Union Jack (1993) (called Conferences are Murder in US)
• Booked For Murder (1996)
• Hostage to Murder (2003)
• Deadline for Murder (2005)

Kate Brannigan Mysteries

• Dead Beat (1992)
• Kick Back (1993)
• Crack Down (1994)
• Clean Break (1995)
• Blue Genes (1996)
• Star Struck (1998)

Dr. Tony Hill & Carol Jordan Mysteries

• Mermaids Singing (1995)
• The Wire in the Blood (1997)
• Last Temptation (2002)
• The Torment of Others (2004)
• Beneath the Bleeding (2007)
• Fever of the Bone (2009; 2010 in US)
• The Retribution(2011)

Non-Fiction:

• A Suitable Job for a Woman: Inside the World of Private Eyes (1994)

“I’m afraid I’ve made more than a few mistakes along the way”

“Well, then, unmake them. That’s what life is about—making and unmaking mistakes, getting back on the track and moving on. The problem with mistakes is that they have the habit of growing into such big, fat, lovely excuses.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (SEP 17, 2011)

Thirty-one year old William Dysart should be on top of the world. He is a successful attorney, lives in a beautiful home, and is married to Arabella, a stunner who turns heads wherever she goes. Gregory Murphy looks beneath the veneer of the Dysarts’ seemingly enviable life in Incognito.

William is growing tired of doing the bidding of Phil Havering, the managing partner at his law firm. In addition, he has become disenchanted with his wife who, in spite of her great beauty, is insecure and demanding. After six years of marriage, the couple is childless, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that Arabella is a social-climbing, vain, and shallow individual who is more interested in material possessions and status than she is in her relationship with William. “It was rare now that their conversations did not end in a quarrel.”

This is Edith Wharton country —- New York society in 1911 -— and, for the most part, Murphy mines this fertile territory effectively. The premise is intriguing: William is dispatched by his boss to Long Island to convince the lovely Sybil Curtis that it would be in her best interest to sell her five-acre property to Lydia Billings, a fabulously wealthy widow who wants to augment her two-thousand acre estate. William is surprised to learn that Sybil is a self-possessed and independent young woman who is not interested in selling her home, even for the princely sum of ten thousand dollars. Dysart senses that there is ill-will between Lydia and Sybil that goes far deeper than the matter at hand. As the weeks pass, the attorney finds himself sympathizing with Sybil, while Havering is furious that William cannot convince Sybil to accept Lydia’s offer.

Incognito effectively unmasks the hypocrisy of affluent, prominent, and degenerate people who carefully hide their vices behind a veneer of respectability. William and Arabella spend a great deal of time attending charity functions, dinner parties, and other lavish events, and although Arabella is in her element, William is becoming bored with the strain of keeping up appearances. It is painful to observe his deteriorating marriage, and in flashback, we eventually learn why William settled for this loveless union instead of seeking a partner with more depth and character. This is a touching study of men and women at cross purposes. Although William is anxious to bring about a rapprochement between Sybil and Lydia, until he finds out why there is bad blood between them, he is powerless to accomplish his mission.

Murphy stumbles, however, when he makes some labored points about the pettiness, prejudice, and selfishness of those who occupied the highest strata of New York society. They socialize compulsively, spend money lavishly, and care little about such issues as the rights of women and the oppressed. Sybil is a mysterious and provocative character who is less than candid about her tragic past. William is at heart a good man who knows that he will never be content unless he makes some fundamental changes in his life. The book’s main flaw is that, as it progresses, the narrative becomes heavy-handed and melodramatic, with too many revelations, ugly confrontations, and a conclusion that is a bit too pat. Although most of us would agree that the keys to happiness are fulfilling relationships, meaningful work, and peace of mind, Murphy might have conveyed this message with a bit more subtlety. As it stands, Incognito has some powerful scenes, an appealing protagonist in William Dysart and, for the most part, a story that keeps us turning pages, wanting to know what will happen next.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 19 readers
PUBLISHER:	Berkley Trade; 1 edition (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Gregory Murphy
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Bibliography:

• Incognito (July 2011)
• Maisie Villiers

Then he decided Kayla deserved as close to the truth as he could get.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Some of them don’t deserve the education they’re getting. They think things will always go easily for them. That they’ll always get their way. Some of them have a lot of money, but they don’t have much more than that, especially parents who think twice about them. And some of them are nice kids, smart kids. I don’t know, Kayla. They’re a mixed bag, like people everywhere.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  SEP 3, 2011)

Voice, an Hyperion imprint, marketed Charlotte Bacon’s The Twisted Thread as a mystery, but it’s more a mainstream novel with elements of suspense. The action takes place at Armitage Academy, a prestigious boarding school for children of the rich and a few scholarship students from the surrounding, and much poorer, community. Much of the mystery surrounds the death of Claire Harkness, one of the most popular girls in the school. She is found, naked in her room, showing signs of recently giving birth. Not only had no one realized her pregnancy, but where is the missing baby? And why did she feel she had to keep it a secret in the first place?

These are the questions that fuel the storyline and about which there is much speculation. Two of the characters who play key roles in the investigation are detective Matt Corelli, a scholarship student at Armitage who broke the mold to enter the police force in Philadelphia but returned home in hopes of less grisly crime. And Madeline Christopher, an intern in Armitage’s English department, finds herself smack in the middle of the investigation because of her allegedly closer relationship to the students and her innate curiosity. Bacon gives life to her characters especially Madeline, whose faults —- she’s a bit of a klutz —- endears her to readers. Corelli, too, rings true with his ability to see both sides, having attended Armitage but who grew up locally. These characters, with their very humanness, lend credibility to Bacon’s story.

Although not part of the story per se, Bacon does a nice job of building Claire’s character, so we get to know her almost better than some of the fairly well-developed supporting cast members. Bacon uses multiple alternating viewpoints to tell her story, a method that introduces different voices but also gives us varying viewpoints.

The Twisted Thread has a number of layers. On the surface, it’s a murder at an elite boarding school, but the author delves deeper, giving social commentary on privilege and wealth as well as insight into hazing, secret societies and bullying that occur at boarding schools. Bacon’s story moves at a methodical pace as she drops clues here and there that ask as many questions as they answer. She deftly has the reader thinking one thing and then gives information to change direction. Bacon introduces a subplot, too, that while interesting, doesn’t add a whole lot to the story.

Rich with vivid descriptions and issues that serve as food-for-thought long after the book has been closed, I enjoyed Bacon’s tale. I found myself going back to read some paragraphs just for the sake of hearing how they sounded. The mystery is solved long before the end of the book, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 39 readers
PUBLISHER:	Voice; Original edition (June 14, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Charlotte Bacon
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Split Estate

Bibliography:

• Lost Geography (2000)
• A Private State: Stories (2003) 
• There is Room For You (2004)
• Split Estate (2008)
• The Twisted Thread (June 2011)

“Odd thoughts were entering my head again. And like before I had no idea where they were coming from. Odd, crazy thoughts: another job just about done, after running stupidly about for weeks, all the tracking, waiting, time spent and wasted, and what do you get but another dead body, then on to the next hit, another city, another bastard to track, another doomed man, to be taken out by me or someone else, it really made no difference, dead is dead. The same story, the same routine. You pull the trigger, the man falls. But what if you didn’t pull the trigger? That would be different. That might even be exciting. That would change everything.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  SEP 1, 2011)

Calling Mr. King by Ronald De Feo is an exhilarating read. It is poignant, funny, serious and sad. It grabs the reader from the beginning and we go on a short but rich journey with Mr. King, a hit-man, an employee of The Firm, as he transforms himself from a killer to a would-be intellectual and lover of art and architecture.

Mr. King is one of The Firm’s best marksmen and, as the novel opens, he is in Paris to do a hit. Something about the job starts getting to him and he postpones his hit repeatedly. He puts off an easy mark day after day. When he finally does his hit, it is with a bit of trepidation, anger and regret, wishing that he had something better to do.

This “something better” begins to take shape in his life as an appreciation for art, especially the Georgian architecture of his adopted city, London. He gets excited, going from bookstore to bookstore and collecting books on architecture and works of art by John Constable, the artist. His employer, however, is not happy with him. They are upset about the amount of time it took for him to do his job in Paris and they decide to send him to New York on a vacation. Mr. King feels he is long due for a vacation so this is not the worst thing in the world for him.

In New York, he devours the bookstores and museums, daily increasing his knowledge and excitement about art and architecture, expanding his interests and horizons in this area. He becomes interested in Regency style and art nouveau. He goes to see the Constable show at the Frick Museum after a clerk at Rizzoli’s bookstore recommends this to him. He also becomes interested in John Turner and artists who paint the English countryside.

He was known as Peter Chilton in London and he uses this alias to its full advantage in New York, acting like a rich and well-appointed Englishman. It is hard to tell where Mr. King ends and Mr. Chilton begins. He dreams of living in a Georgian home of his own some day. He takes on an English accent and his identity becomes obscured. He is now Peter Chilton, the art aficionado on vacation from his manor in England. He decides to dress the part and purchases a $215 shirt. This is his entry into the world of fashion as well as art. The shirt represents the possibility of something more, of his presenting himself as the real Peter Chilton, a man to whom fashion is paramount.

One day while resting in his New York hotel, the phone rings and it’s a call for Mr. King. This is the code name for The Firm calling him when they want a hit to be done. He is quite put out about being disturbed on his vacation but he leaves the hotel to return the call from a pay phone which is The Firm’s way of doing things. He is going to have to do a hit in New York. He is sick of The Firm. He finds his bosses stupid, “onions,” not up to his caliber. He does his hit within four hours in the hope that he’ll be able to rest and continue his vacation. However, he is transferred to Barcelona.

Once in Barcelona, Mr. King becomes so immersed in the architecture of Gaudi and the city’s art nouveau décor that he is overwhelmed. He knows that he has an important hit to do but by this time his bag of books is much, much heavier than his clothing and accoutrements. He is a man possessed by learning and potential.

We learn a bit about his early life. His father was a rage-ridden gun-crazy man, teaching Mr. King how to shoot animals – not how to play games or sports. His mother paid more attention to cleaning the house and taking care of her flowers than she did to Mr. King. When Mr. King left his home in a small suburb of New York when he was about twenty, it was in a traumatic way, and he was never to return except for his father’s funeral.

Mr. King often wonders what his life would have been like had he been exposed to things besides guns and hunting. He is excellent at what he does but could he have been something else, something of the mind? The reader wonders this along with him because he is caught up in a life he can never leave alive. A life with The Firm is a life forever with The Firm. No matter how much art and architecture he sees or yearns for it can never be enough. And when will his time run out?

Mr. King goes through existential angst with nods to Camus and Sartre as he feels like a stranger and has an overwhelming sense of nausea about his identity and his place in the world. He is alone and a loner, someone who has never thought of himself as one with the world. Since childhood, he’s been an outcast and finally, through his intellectual endeavors he is finding himself. The irony of this is that the closer he comes to finding himself, the further he travels from his required path.

This is a first novel by Mr. De Feo and it is an excellent piece of writing, one that had me devouring this book quickly. Mr. King made me laugh and feel deeply saddened. I was with him on every step of his journey and loved every minute of it. I hope that Mr. De Feo continues with his writing as he has quite an understanding of human nature.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ronald De Feo
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More hit men: For the Dogs by Kevin Wignall Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

Bibliography:

• Calling Mr. King (August 2011)

“I didn’t believe in demons; I ranked them with ghosts and vampires and werewolves, as products of a fevered imagination, or phenomena with a perfectly rational explanation. I did not realize yet, that summer when I was seventeen and my sister Polly was still alive, when the sun was shining and even the wind was warm and my whole body was restless, that there are worse things than being stuck in a small town for a year.  There are demons, and they are more terrible than we can imagine.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (AUG 27, 2011)

The narrator’s father, Dr. Oliver Fox, a professor seeking fame and fortune, provides the catalyst for the eerie and violent events of Linden’s second (after The Vanishing of Katharina Linden) novel, a finely crafted literary tale of psychological terror.

But it’s the narrator herself, his 17-year-old daughter Lin, who finds herself at the center of it all, trying to control events that threaten to tear her family apart, events that are far beyond her understanding, much less her ability to manipulate. Indeed, her attempts to take matters into her own impatient hands make things worse.

From the first page, we know people will die, including Lin’s sister Polly.

“If anyone were to ask me, ‘What is the root of all evil?’ I would say not ‘Money,’ but ‘Food.’ It was food – specifically the lack of it – that killed my sister, or at least assisted at the death. And the old man that day in the orchard in Niederburgheim was the only person I have ever seen who died of eating an apple.”

Grant opens the novel with the Fox family – Oliver, his wife Tuesday, Lin, Polly and baby brother Reuben – nearly at the end of their road trip from their home in England to a small rural town in Germany.

A local historian has invited Oliver to come and research the famous, exquisite Allerheiligen stained glass, medieval masterpieces which have been lost to the world for more than 200 years and may well have been destroyed. They are also, legend has it, haunted, by the demon Bonchariant.

Lost, they pull to the side of the road to ask directions, but the man who appears to be sleeping in an apple orchard is actually dead (probably having fallen off his ladder), an apple with one bite taken beside him, the ground oddly littered with glass sparkling in the sunlight.

Oliver, unwilling to get involved, drives on, leaving the body for someone else to discover. Eventually they find the crumbling castle they have rented so Oliver can conduct his research from a suitably atmospheric base. These priceless windows will make Oliver’s reputation if he can only find them, but to begin with he is unable even to find the local man who invited him to come.

Eventually he tracks down the man’s address but Herr Heinrich Mahlberg no longer lives there. He has recently died, having suffered an accident in his bath. The other locals are not nearly as welcoming as Herr Mahlberg promised to be. One local historian offers to share his notes – handwritten in German – but assures Oliver he is wasting his time as the windows were destroyed by the French in the 19th century, the letter describing the destruction itself destroyed in the last war’s bombings.

Meanwhile Lin (who speaks fluent German) has started school and been thrown together with the boy next door – or, in this case, the boy on an uninviting farm the other side of the spooky woods. Michel drives her to school each morning, his crush painfully obvious, and unrequited.

Threats against the family mount as their isolation increases. Inexplicable events – all involving broken bits of glass – begin to loom larger as the family feels itself hounded by superstition or, as Lin begins to think, by the Bonchariant demon who inhabits the famous glass.

Mostly unable to speak the language and shunned by the locals, the atmosphere thickens around the isolated Fox family, while Lin finds herself becoming more deeply swept up in the ancient myths surrounding the glass.

Grant uses a winning combination of psychological tension and local folkloric atmosphere to advance her tale, building suspense and dread as she goes, much as she did in her first novel.

There is one problem however, which may not bother the YA audience the story is at least partly aimed at. Lin is a sulky teenager and for me at least, this grows tiresome. She’s always complaining about mess and other peoples’ self-centeredness but never lifts a finger to help with all the chores that don’t get done, or get left to her anorexic sister, Polly.

However, Grant delivers a smashing conclusion and by the end of the book most readers will have forgiven Lin her teen brattiness.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bantam; Original edition (June 14, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Helen Grant
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

Bibliography:

• The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (2009; 2010 in US)
• The Glass Demon (2010; June 2011 in US)
• Wish Me Dead (2011 in UK)

“Even though he was exhausted and stabs of pain pulsed through his ear, Cody refused to take the medication they’d given him because he knew, he just knew, that if he let his defenses down even a little he’d start drinking. He knew himself. He’d find a justification to start off on another bender. His ear hurt; He was suspended; Precious hours for finding the killer had been wasted and he’d never get them back; His dog had died (granted, it was twenty years before, but it was still dead; He missed his son; His 401(k) wasn’t worth crap anymore.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  AUG 20, 2011) Back of Beyond by C. J. Box is just what a mystery thriller should be – a wild ride through twists and turns with rogue characters that have depth of spirit and lots of baggage. This book is a hardcore page-turner with characters the reader gets to know well. It’s well-plotted and everything comes together just when it’s supposed to; no red herrings and no deus ex machina. Box knows exactly how to plot his book so that each page brings the reader closer to crisis and then conclusion. There is the dark side that is required in order for good to prevail and there are lots of cold, dark pathways that wind their way to a fine conclusion. Cody Hoyt is a rogue cop with a history of alcoholism and wild behavior. If he doesn’t like a suspect he will shoot him in the knee to get a confession. He’s been kicked out of the Denver police force and finds himself back in Helena, Montana where his people hail from. As he self-describes his family, they’re “white trash.” The only good thing to his credit is his son Justin, who has turned out to be a good kid raised primarily by his ex-wife, Jenny. As the book opens, Cody has been on the wagon for 59 days and is participating in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). His AA sponsor, Hank, is a man Cody trusts and who has guided him to his tentative sobriety. Cody finds out that Hank’s cabin has been destroyed by fire and that Hank has been killed. It appears, at first, to be a suicide but after careful investigation, Cody realizes it’s a homicide. He knows Hank and he knows that Hank would never take his life. He also realizes that Hank’s AA coins are missing and Hank never kept these coins far from his person. Whoever killed Hank stole the coins and made the scene look like a suicide. The only person who believes Cody is his partner, Larry. The clues that Cody finds lead him to an outfitter called Wilderness Adventures run by one Jed McCarthy. Jed is a narcissistic self-promoter who is about to start his longest trip of the season into Yellowstone Park. He calls this trip “Back of Beyond” because it goes so deep into the National Park. Unfortunately, Cody finds out that his son, Justin, along with Jenny’s fiancé, are on this trip. He tries to get to Yellowstone in time to prevent the trip from starting but doesn’t make it. Meanwhile, Cody gets suspended from the Helena police force and must make the trip alone as a civilian. He realizes that he’s being followed and stalked and that his very life is in danger. As he gets closer to the park, there is an attempt on his life. Cody becomes paranoid and doesn’t know who to trust. Could his partner Larry be his nemesis? The book has a lot of good information on alcoholism and recovery, both the disease, the confidentiality and the rehabilitation process. It shows Cody’s constant efforts to remain sober along with his slips. It also shows him picking himself up again to get on the wagon. I was impressed by how much Box knows about AA and the program. The reader can’t help but notice the author’s love and respect for the wilderness. His descriptions of Yellowstone and its geologic formations are breathtaking. We get to see Wyoming and Montana from the eyes of a writer who loves the spaces of the great outdoors. Back of Beyondis hard to put down. It’s one of those thrillers where each page adds new information and each of the characters are interesting. The book comprises the best of both worlds – it is character and action driven. It may be a bit formulaic but it’s a great formula, one that keeps the reader on his toes and coming back for more.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 83 readers
PUBLISHER:	Minotaur Books; First Edition (August 2, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	C.J. Box
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Cold Wind

Bibliography:

Joe Pickett Series:

• Open Season (2001)
• Savage Run (2002)
• Winterkill (2003)
• Trophy Hunt (2004)
• Out of Range (2005)
• In Plain Sight (2006)
• Free Fire (2007)
• Blood Trail (2008)
• Below Zero (2009)
• Nowhere to Run (2010)
• Cold Wind (2011)
• Force of Nature (March 2012)

Stand-alone:

• Blue Heaven (2008) /  / / 
• Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (2009)
• Back of Beyond (August 2011)