“Later, two cops would ask, more than once, how it was she didn’t see her. She could have offered up any number of theories: the dirt and mud on the woman’s back, the distance of twenty or thirty yards between the fence and Caren’s perch behind the driver’s seat, even her own layman’s assessment that the brain can’t possibly process what it has no precedent for. But none of the words came.

I don’t know, she said.

She watched one of the cops write this down.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 22, 2014)

The past and the present are inextricably bound, and history is examined, re-examined, and refined within the context of a changing world of ideas, new evidence, and reform. Attica Locke demonstrated this in her first crime book, Black Water Rising, (nominated for an Orange Prize in 2009). Once again, she braids controversial social and historical issues with an intense and multi-stranded mystery.

Locke artfully informs Cutting Season with the dark corners of our nation’s past and the ongoing prejudices and failures to live up to the enlightened ideals of equality and justice. Her fiction tells the truth through an imaginative storyline, and she enfolds these issues and more in this lush historical novel of murder, racism, and family. The title of the book refers to the season of sugarcane cutting.

Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, a pre-civil war sugar cane plantation, Belle Vie, sits on eighteen acres of land, owned by the affluent Clancy family. The Clancys are descendants of William Tynan, who was hired by the federal government after the civil war to oversee the plantation. Tynan did such an outstanding job, he was eventually deeded the land.

Converted to a tourist attraction/historic preserve, with restored slave quarters and dramatic re-enactments of plantation life, Bell Vie is also a favorite setting for weddings and other festivities. Caren Gray, a single mother, manages everything at Bell Vie– the grounds, events, and personnel. Caren also has ties to the early descendants of the plantation, a complex history that unfolds gradually and evocatively. She is the great-great-great granddaughter of a slave named Jason who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and was never found.

Abutting the land to the west sits 500 acres of actively farmed sugar cane, also owned by the Clancy family and run by the Groveland Corporation. Since Groveland started managing the land, the families that worked there for generations were pushed out and replaced by migrant workers.

The book starts off with a bang, just like Locke’s earlier book did. On the border between Bell Vie and the sugarcane land, an employee stumbles on a murdered women, a migrant worker. When the local sheriff prematurely accuses a Bell Vie employee with a criminal past, Caren resolves to solve the crime herself. She subsequently learns that there have been sinister shenanigans involving Groveland, including support of the budding political interests of Raymond Clancy.

The atmospherics and setting of this novel, as well as the increasing tension and artful story, keep the reader attentive. Locke is not just skillful, but fragrant in describing the landscape of this largely provincial community. Her prose is sensuous and plump, and the visuals are ripe and resonant.

“…beneath its loamy topsoil…two centuries of breathtaking wealth and spectacle—a stark beauty both irrepressible and utterly incapable of even the smallest nod of contrition—lay a land both black and bitter, soft to the touch, and pressing in its power. She should have known that one day it would spit out what it no longer had use for, the secrets it would no longer keep.”

Like Locke’s first book, the plot is multi-faceted, with subplots often taking center stage and progressively weaving into the main intrigue. The theme centers on the uneasy link between the past and present, and how they must be reconciled. Caren’s desire to protect her child and expose corruption across echoes of time struck a deep chord in me.

The pacing is initially taut, although the characterizations gravitate toward standard. I was a bit disappointed in the relationship between Caren and her ex, Eric, because Black Water Rising’s main character, Jay Porter was so arresting—tilted, ambiguous, and most of all, unpredictable. The action between Caren and Eric is stilted, and feels convenient to the arc of the story. However, Caren’s voice is sensitive, intimate, and tenderly portrayed, despite being easily anticipated.

As the novel progressed toward the climax, Locke veered to formula. Perhaps she tried too hard to please readers of conventional genre. Cutting Season lumbered as it neared the final moments, becoming too ungainly and stitched together. The past and present fall into place too readily, yet I appreciate what Locke was trying to do in the juxtaposition of time and circumstance. Her intent was poetic; she strove for equanimity, but it got too exorbitant and contrived.

Despite these complaints, Locke’s talents are evident on every page. Locke’s sensual approach to language and narrative filters her flaws, mitigating them. The joy of reading comes from being absorbed in Bell Vie and the sumptuous layering of story. There’s a fine line between writing platitudes and conveying an awareness of racial issues and conflicts. Locke is generally nuanced, but she occasionally turned toward heavy-handedness, especially toward the finale.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 172 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 17, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Attica Locke
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Black Water Rising

Bibliography:

• Black Water Rising (2009)
• The Cutting Season (2012)

“I can always tell if a broad is lying to me. I spent a lot of years honing this bullshit detector.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

In the 1960s, Mickey Spillane began to write The Consummata–a follow-up to The Delta Factor, the novel which introduced super-crook Morgan the Raider. After a series of disappointments with the Delta Factor film, Spillane stopped work on the unfinished The Consummata manuscript. Twenty years ago, he gave the manuscript to long-term friend, collaborator, and creative heir, Max Allan Collins. Since the death of Spillane in 2006, Collins has devoted himself to finishing the many Spillane projects left behind. So far fans have seen a number of publications, including Dead Street, The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang, and Kiss Her Goodbye. Now comes The Consummata–the long awaited sequel to The Delta Factor. The appearance of the sequel is reason enough to celebrate, but the novel’s publication also heralds the autumn return of Hard Case Crime following a short hiatus.

The Consummata finds Morgan the Raider on the run in Miami’s Little Havana and being chased by “federal suits” teamed with “local fuzz” who think he has 40 million dollars in stolen funds. With no place to hide, the chase seems to be coming to its inevitable conclusion, but suddenly Morgan finds himself snatched and hidden from the feds by some of Little Havana’s Cuban community. As Morgan hangs out with the Cubans waiting for the heat to cool down, he learns that the exiles managed to scrape together a fund of $75,000 to assist their relatives back in Cuba. Double agent Jaimie Halaquez wormed his way into the Little Havana exile community, and once he gained their trust, he lifted the dough. Morgan, grateful for the Cubans’ help, agrees to track down Halaquez and get the money back.

Easier said than done….

Halaquez, as it turns out, is “an S&M freak,” and this leads Morgan on the hunt for La Consummata, a legendary dominatrix who is rumored to be “setting up shop in Miami:”

“Sometimes she works alone, by appointment through intermediaries. Other times she has set up a location with other young women trained in the arts of sado-masochism. And, again, clients are by referral only. She has turned up in every major city in America and not a few in Europe. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men in business and government. If she exists.”

“You don’t even know if she exists?”

“She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. A dream. Lovely, a vision in black leather, they say….”

Of course, it’s inevitable that La Consummata and Morgan meet and tangle.

The Consummata is unabashedly pulp, so this is fast-paced action with not a lot of down-time. The story is set in the 60s, so expect the women to be sexy babes and the men (Morgan specifically) to be macho. This is a sequel novel, and for those who didn’t read The Delta Factor, The Consummata plays catch-up for approximately one chapter. Naturally, since the action hits the notorious bordellos of Miami and includes some of its working women, the book includes sex which is told from a male fantasy perspective. Overall, however, the emphasis is on action, reaction, and the recovery of stolen money.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mickey Spillaine and Max Allan Collins
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins Something’s Down There by Mickey Spillaine And by both authors together: Dead Street

Bibliography:

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins:

• Dead Street (2007)
• The Goliath Bone (2008)
• The Big Bang ( 2010)
• Kiss Her Goodbye (May 2011)
• The Consummata (October 2011)

“A getaway needn’t be speedy if it’s accurate and efficient.” Wyatt said. “Vanishing, that’s the thing, and that means anticipation.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (SEP 16, 2011)

Australian author Garry Disher has a solid reputation for his Inspector Challis police procedurals, but on Disher’s other creative side of the law, there’s also the Wyatt series. Wyatt, a methodical, cool and collected anti-hero is a Melbourne crook, and Disher’s Wyatt series is frequently considered by crime aficionados as an Aussie counterpart to Robert Parker’s Stark series. Wyatt, a heist novel, is the seventh book in the series and it appears after a 13-year-break.

Melbourne has long been known as a hot bed of police corruption, and the city was also home to the notorious Pettingill crime family. Wyatt, however, is a crook who prefers to hunt alone–except for the occasional tip, and in this novel, it’s the tip that leads to trouble.

Wyatt receives inside information from a “fixer, an agent, a middle-man” named Eddie–a man who “could sit on a half-formed plan for years until the right circumstances come along.” Eddie usually provides information, and then sits out on the crime while getting a percentage of the cut. This time Eddie wants a role in the heist, and the job comes courtesy of inside information from Eddie’s sexy ex-wife, Lydia. Lydia used to work for a jeweler who did business with the Furneaux brothers, Henri and Joe. Lydia’s a bright woman who was groped once too often by the brothers, and now she has some valuable information regarding the under-the-table deals conducted by the Furneaux brothers. Seems they own a large Melbourne jewelry store and make deliveries of valuable items all over Southern New South Wales. The beauty of the plan is that the Furneaux brothers fence stolen jewelry brought in from various points all over the world by their cousin, Alain Le Page. As Eddie says: “That’s the beauty of it—we rob a robber.”

Right at the planning stage of the heist, Wyatt has a feeling that there’s something not quite right. For a start, Eddie wants to be involved, and then he’s bringing in his ex-wife Lydia as a crew member. Involving an ex- goes against the grain for Wyatt–after all, there’s a lot of dirty unfinished business between ex-spouses. Who’s to know whether or not one has an axe to grind against the other? In this case, Wyatt’s known Eddie for a long time, but he’s not sure exactly what Lydia’s game is. However, Wyatt finds himself “recognizing something of himself in Eddie’s ex-wife. She was naturally wary and assessing, and silence was probably her natural state.” But beyond feeling a grudging respect for Lydia’s intelligence, Wyatt also feels a reluctant attraction.

In spite of the fact that Wyatt intuitively senses that there’s something wrong with the heist set-up, he decides to go ahead–after all, he’s down on his luck and needs to make a score.

Wyatt should have listened to his sixth sense…..

The novel makes the point that Wyatt is in many ways becoming an anachronism. He’s strictly a low-tech thief and he’s finding fewer situations that accommodate his talents:

“Where could a man like Wyatt lift cash these days? Money was moved around electronically. If cash was used, it was stored and protected by the kinds of high-tech security that he couldn’t hope to crack or bypass, not without the help of experts and costly equipment. That left paintings and jewelry, which were also highly protected and could only be shifted by a fence who’d give you a few dollars and then sell you out.”

If things don’t look up for Wyatt soon, he may be left with purse-snatching as his only option.

Wyatt is a definite read for fans of heist novels. While Soho Crime publishes Disher’s Inspector Challis novels, the earlier novels in the Wyatt series are out-of-print, and so Wyatt may be the first novel readers catch in the series. Much is made of the “legend” of Wyatt in the plot, and that’s hard to relate to if, like me, you haven’t heard of this character before. But nonetheless, this is a well-conducted heist novel complete with corrupt coppers, a psychotic hit man, and a deranged stripper who’s parted ways with her pole.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soho Crime (August 9, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Garry Disher
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Dirty Money by Richard Stark Criminal Karma by Steven M. Thomas

Partial Bibliography:

• Approaches: Stories (1981)
• Steal Away (1987)
• The Difference to Me: Stories (1988)
• The Stencil Man (1988)
• Flamingo Gate (1991)
• The Sunken Road (1996)
• Straight, Bent and Barbara Vine: Crime Stories (1997)
• Past the Headlands (2001)
• Play Abandoned (2011)

The Challis and Destry Novels

• The Dragon Man (1999)
• Kittyhawk Down (2003)
• Snapshot (2005)
• Chain of Evidence (2007)
• Blood Moon (2009)
• Whispering Death (2011)

Wyatt Series:

• Kickback (1991)
• Paydirt (1992)
• Deathdeal (1993)
• Crosskill (1994)
• Port Vila Blues (1995)
• The Fallout (1997)
• Wyatt (2010; September 2011 in US)

“There isn’t much call for deep thinking in my current job in Cloisters, New Jersey. We don’t do a lot of chatting about philosophical issues or natural phenomena in the casino. I tried to talk about National Geographic one night, and Jason gave me a look like I was insulting him, so I moved on to a safer subject: which of the girls have implants.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (SEP 9, 2011)

Eoin Colfer? He writes those kid’s books, Artemis Fowl, doesn’t he? What’s someone who writes really popular children’s books doing writing a crime novel? Well according to the dedication, Irish author Eoin Colfer says the book is “For Ken Bruen who made me do it.” So we have Bruen to thank for this first book in what promises to be an entertaining series.

The protagonist and narrator of Plugged is 40-something Irishman Daniel McEvoy, an ex-British army soldier with two horrendous tours in Lebanon under his belt. Plugged finds McEvoy, unable to adjust to civilian life, in Cloisters, New Jersey working nights as a bouncer in a seedy, low-rent strip club called Slotz:

“A formica bar, low lighting that’s more cheap than fashionable. A roulette wheel that bucks with every spin, two worn baize card tables and half a dozen slots. Slotz.”

Hardly a stellar career move, but then McEvoy isn’t so much into appearances–except when it comes to his bald head. When the book begins McEvoy is getting hair plugs from an unlicensed doctor named Zeb who operates a fly-by-night office, and it’s this relationship combined with the murder of a Slotz hostess that takes McEvoy out of his role of neighbourhood bouncer to amateur investigator. McEvoy soon finds himself partnered-up with a prickly female detective, and on the unfriendly end of the local crime boss.

The book’s narrative has an almost chatty, humorous, and casual approach which belies the violence that frequently and suddenly explodes on the page. McEvoy confides in his reader and enhances the narrative with flashes of Lebanese hell and memories of therapy sessions with his permanently hungover, trendy therapist Simon Moriarty–a man who in his absence has assumed the role of mentor and advisor. McEvoy is a likeable character whose seemingly-loser role in life covers independence and a well-honed philosophy:

“The great Stephen King once wrote don’t sweat the small stuff, which I mulled over for long enough to realize that I don’t entirely agree with it. I get what he means: we all have enough major sorrow in our lives without freaking out over the day-to-day hangnails and such, but sometimes sweating the small stuff helps you make it through the big stuff. Take me, for example; I have had enough earth-shattering events happen to me, beside me and underneath me to have most people dribbling in a psych ward, but what I do is try not to think about it. Let it fester inside, that’s my philosophy. It’s gotta be healthy, right? Focus on the everyday non-lethal bullshit to take your mind off the landmark psychological blows that are standing in line to grind you down.”

If you like that quote, then chances are you’re the sort of reader who will enjoy Plugged. It’s a light, fresh crime novel with an engaging protagonist whose lively sense of humour and unflinching eye deliver an entertaining read. Some of the humour gravitates around McEvoy’s Irishness and still more erupts from the well-drawn characters who range from McEvoy’s nutty neighbour–Mrs Delano: a woman who’s “beautiful-ish in a psycho kind of way” to the bitchy retired stripper, Brandi who’s “been angry at the world for about a year, since she had to hang up her stripper’s g-string and downgrade to a hostess job” at age 30.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Overlook Hardcover (September 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Eoin Colfer
EXTRAS:	Audio Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Max by Ken Bruen and Jason Star

Partial Bibliography:

• The Wish List (2000)
• The Supernaturalist (2004)
• Half Moon Investigations (2006)
• Airman (2008)
• And Another Thing…(Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) (2009)

Artemis Fowl series:

• Artemis Fowl (2001)
• Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident (2002)
• Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code (2003)
• Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception (2005)
• Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony (2006)
• Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox (2008)
• Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (2010)
• Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian (2012)

Not a kid’s book:

• Plugged (September 2011)

“You want me to recover your lost packages.”
“Or the cash, if they done offed it already. I’m not looking for any muscle here, Spero. Just get me back what’s mine. No one I got has your skills. I see what you did for my son. Got to say I was impressed.”
“What’s the value of the product?”
“Wholesale?”
“Retail,” said Lucas.
“Roughly, one hundred and thirty thousand.”
“I’d get forty.”
“Thousand.”
“Percent,” said Lucas.
“That’s fifty thousand and change.”
“Fifty two. Per package.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  AUG 29, 2011)

In The Cut, the first book in a new series, George Pelecanos presents 29-year old tough private investigator and Iraqi war vet Spero Lucas. Lucas’s main job is to help defense attorney Tom Petersen, but he also works on his own at times. After helping gather information that leads to the acquittal of 15-year-old David Hawkins, Spero, at the request of Petersen, decides to visit with David’s father Anwan Hawkins, a drug dealer also represented by attorney Tom Petersen. Hawkins, in prison awaiting a major drug charge, wants Spero to investigate some theft of marijuana from a couple of his employees who are still running his drug business. Although somewhat reluctant, Spero decides to help as long as his 40% return fee cut is agreed to by Hawkins.

Spero meets with Hawkins’ two main lieutenants, Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis, both 20 and overconfident in their ability from Spero’s perspective. They explain that drugs are shipped by overnight mail to homes where resident are not at home during the day. Twice their deliveries have been taken from the selected homes before they could quickly claim it. Lucas finds that this is not some small time theft and he quickly finds things not as he expected and has to face some pressure to stop his investigation. He’s certainly up for the challenge and is not afraid to show a little violence of his own to get what he wants and needs.

The Cut is certainly an excellent start of this new series that will be sure to bring back some readers who were missing some hard crime that was less prevalent in Pelecanos’ recent work. Of course, the dedicated readers will also be satisfied as well.

I became a fan of George Pelecanos in 2002 after deciding to buy Right as Rain at a book signing where he showed up with Michael Connelly. At that point, I had not heard of him but was impressed with what he had to say and what he read from the book. After reading Right as Rain, I quickly looked for his backlist of titles (only 5 books at that time) and have read almost everything he has written since. He has changed somewhat over the years depending on what he wanted to write, but everything he has written has certainly had that George Pelecanos style with excellent but rough dialog with most action taking place in and around the parts of Washington DC not visited by tourists.

In recent years, Pelecanos has spent more time on family relationships than on private investigators that were more prevalent in his earlier works, especially in the Derek Strange series that started with Right as Rain. With The Cut, he has returned to this style, although of course, family relationships are still important and prevalent. The family in The Cut is not very traditional, but has the typical Pelecanos’ Greek influences, even though Spero and most of his siblings are adopted and not Greek. Spero Lucas’ relationship with his father is also important to him and even though his father has passed, he always finds time to visit his gravesite. Spero is closest to his brother Leo, an African-American English teacher of one of the inner city schools. Spero and Lucas are the two favorite children of their Mother Eleni and the only ones who still spend any time with her. Lucas does need the help of Leo when a potential witness to one of the drug thefts is Ernest Lindsay, a student of Leo’s. Lucas shows his softer side when he works hard to protect Lindsay when he becomes potentially threatened.

Although I’ve read most of George Pelecanos’ books, I have difficulty in remembering all his various characters (plus I’ve still not read 2 of his early books). I’ve noticed in prior books that he likes to make some of his characters make minor or sometimes not so minor, appearance in his books. One of these days, I’ll write the characters names down so I don’t miss these references as that will be the only way I will remember. I did pick up the minor reference to Derek Strange, but if I missed any others, I apologize and would appreciate if you could let me know.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 83 readers
PUBLISHER:	Reagan Arthur Books (August 29, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	George Pelecanos
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	We are big fans of George Pelecanos, read more of our reviews: The Way Home The Turnaround The Night Gardener Drama City Hard Revolution Soul Circus Hell to Pay Nick’s Trip

Bibliography:

Featuring Derek Strange and Terry Quinn:

• Right as Rain (2001)
• Hell to Pay (2002)
• Soul Circus (2003)
• Hard Revolution (2004)

Featuring P.I. Spero Lucas:

• The Cut (2011)
• The Double (October 2013)

Featuring Nick Stefanos:

• A Firing Offense (1992)
• Nick’s Trip (1993)
• Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (1995)

The D.C. Quartet:

• The Big Blowdown (1996)
• King Suckerman (1997)
• The Sweet Forever (1998)
• Shame the Devil (Jan 2000)

Other:

• Shoedog (1994)
• Drama City (2005)
• The Night Gardener (2006)
• The Turnaround (2008)
• The Way Home (2009)

“Oh, my God! He cried out. “They’ve been slaughtered . . . Children have been slaughtered . . . I don’t know what to do. I’m all alone, and they’re all dead.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  AUG 10, 2011)

The Hypnotist, written by Lars Kepler (a pseudonym for a husband and wife team writing together in Sweden), was tauted by Janet Maslin of The New York Times as “The summer’s likeliest new Nordic hit.” The writing is compared to that of Steig Larsson and Henning Mankell. Other than the novel taking place in Sweden, I observed little or no similarities to either of these two writers.

The novel opens up with a bloody, horrific murder scene. An entire family has been hacked up with an axe, knives and scissors. Body parts are strewn everywhere. Arms and entrails are mixed in with the blood. Only the fifteen year old boy, Josef, survives. As he lies in a hospital bed, a detective, Joona Linna, is called in and takes the case. There are two things that Joona detests. “One is having to give up on a case, walking away from unidentified bodies, unsolved rapes, robberies, cases of abuse and murder. And the other thing he loathes, although in a completely different way, is when these unsolved cases are finally solved, because when the old questions are answered, it is seldom in the way one would wish.” Joona is a detective well-respected by his peers and someone with an instinctual sense for the underlying truth of things. He is also known for never giving up on a case.

Despite Josef being on extremely strong pain killers and having been stabbed all over, Joona wants him to be hypnotized. He calls in Erik Maria Bark, a hypnotist and trauma specialist who has sworn ten years ago never to practice hypnosis again. Despite this promise, Joona talks him into hypnotizing Josef. During the course of hypnosis, it turns out that Josef himself is the murderer. The wounds he has are all self-inflicted

The novel deals with Josef’s escape from the hospital, serial murders and kidnappings. All is told in full graphic detail. Not one drop of blood is left to the reader’s imagination. This is not a book for the weak of heart or squeamish.

The novel also deals with the troubled marital relationship of Erik and his wife, Simone, as they struggle to hold their floundering marriage together. Erik is addicted to several medications that he keeps in a special “parrot and native” box. He uses multiple sleeping pills, pain killers, uppers and downers in order to numb himself from the world.

Unlike the works of Steig Larsson, Arne Dahl and Henning Mankell, this book is mainly about external actions rather than existential and internal reflections. The book is written in short chapters and follows several cases of murder and mayhem. The middle section of the book is about Erik’s history as a hypnotist and the reasons that he decided to give up the practice of hypnosis.

The book falters in many ways. Characters are not fully realized, the ending is too pat, and though the beginning of the book alludes to secrets in Joona’s past, these are never fully revealed. Perhaps this is because a sequel is in the works. The reader is also left without knowing what happens to some of the characters, especially Evelyn, Josef’s sister.

For a first novel, this is an extraordinary tome at 503 pages. Some of it works and some of it just didn’t keep me entranced. I must admit that at times I found it to be an effort to pick up the book and keep reading despite the action sequences which I usually enjoy a lot. The book tries hard to belong to the Swedish genre of existential angst and lost souls but doesn’t quite find its way. I think it would make a fine book for the airplane or beach but unlike some of Mankell’s work, it won’t stay in my mind for a long period of time. The book would have been better served if tauter as an action-packed mystery with graphic descriptions of mayhem, severed body parts and bloody corpses throughout.  (Translated by Ann Long.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 262 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (June 21, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Lars Keplar
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson The Man from Beijing by Daniel Mankell

Bibliography:

• The Hypnotist (2011)
• The Nightmare (2012)
• The Fire Witness (July 2013)

“Do you remember?” Mitch said staring out the darkened window, “how we used to talk about the rich guys, the CEOs and politicians? How we used to hate them for acting in their own interests instead of for the good of everyone else

“We went into this thinking we were going to stick it to guys like that. Like Johnny. People who broke the rules for their own good. And now here we are. Thinking the same way.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  AUG 6, 2011)

The titular novices of Marcus Sakey’s recent novel, The Amateurs, are four friends, three men and one woman, who band together against the frigidity of Chicago’s winters and the loneliness of urban life to form the Thursday Night Drinking Club. But amateur drinkers these four are not – experts in the art of throwing back martinis, the first thing any of these four do in a time of crisis is reach for a bottle of vodka. If only the same could be said for their foray into the criminal underworld.

Rounding thirty, they are poster children for urban ennui: Alex is a former law-student whose sideline as a bartender turned full-time ten years ago when his now-ex wife gave birth to their daughter, Cassie; Ian, a trader with a coke problem, flew too high, too fast with a phenomenal trade in undervalued Hudson-Pollam Biolabs stock, only to face increasing loss and derision as he stalks the financial markets, looking for another off-the-radar meteor to ride back to his seat among the stars; Mitch is a bookish hotel doorman who carries a torch for Jenn, the only female member of their drinking crew, but lacks the spine to do anything about it; Jenn is a travel agent who dreams of travelling herself but can’t seem to commit to making it happen, much like she can’t seem to commit to any of the men she dates, content to coast along on what is left of her good looks. If the group reads like a clichéd list of youngish urbanites, well that is largely because it is. But in lieu of nuanced characters, Mr. Sakey presents us with a moral dilemma.

Imagine you could steal a substantial sum of money, not enough to make you rich, but enough to alleviate some of your immediate problems and broaden your future horizons, would you do it? What if I promised you wouldn’t get caught? Or what if that money belonged to people you knew were overdue for some karmic comeuppance, people like professional criminals?

That is the question the Thursday Night Drinking Crew faces when Alex’s no-good boss, Johnny Love, bullies him into posing as muscle for an after-hours deal. The money for the deal is locked away in a safe, but Alex knows the combination. Resentful of Johnny Love for coercing his participation, Alex tells the crew about the deal. With their last game of “What would you do if . . .. you had half-a-million dollars?” (called “Ready-go” here) still fresh in their minds, the others are primed and ready to fantasize about travelling the world or day trading themselves to a fortune, but the stakes for Alex are much higher.

Cassie’s step-father has received a promotion that requires moving the family to Phoenix. Alex’s ex-wife informs him that, while she has no intention of keeping his daughter from him, due to a series of late or missed child support payments, he doesn’t have a legal say in the matter. Figuring (bizarrely) that making up the late payments will give him the legal right to stop the move, Alex pushes his friends, first Jenn, who he’s casually sleeping with, then Ian, who has developed a gambling problem (and the concomitant debts) to help him steal the money. Following Alex’s lead, the group uses Mitch’s crush on Jenn to coax him out of his reluctance.

Because why should they be shut out when everyone else has their hands in the cookie jar? Bear Stearns is in the midst of collapsing as the sub-prime mortgage crisis guts the economy, leaving many on Wall Street millions, if not billions, of dollars richer. Regular people like them are being stolen from everyday. Why shouldn’t they step up and start taking want they want too?

Ian brings up a problem that has become a classic in both game theory and moral philosophy, The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Although it can take many forms, the dilemma is usually presented in the form of two people getting arrested for a crime. The police know they are guilty, but don’t have enough evidence to press charges. The criminals are separated and told that if they rat out their partner they will go free, but their partner will get 10 years. If both criminals stay silent, they will each get charged with a lesser crime that carries a penalty of, say, 6 months in jail. If both confess, they will split the time, each serving 5 years. What is the rational thing to do here? If maintaining your freedom is a priority, then obviously you’re best off confessing before your friend does. But if the game is repeated, that is, if after the first prisoner confesses, the second prisoner is still given the opportunity to confess, the best thing to do over time is to stay silent, because 6 months (the time served if both stay silent) is better than 5 years (the time served if both confess).
Since the Thursday Night Drinking Club do not belong to the criminal underworld, and do not need to maintain trust and relationships of fellow criminals, there is no iteration of the game for them, and so, according to Ian, they have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by betraying Johnny Love.

But, in moral philosophy, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is often used to illustrate how rational self-interest can produce socially undesirable outcomes. Or to put it another way, the problem describes the tension between self-interest and the interests of the group, because a group where everyone acts in self-interest can sometimes produce individuals that are all worse off than they would have been if they had acted in the interest of the group.

As the four friends plan their heist, they fail to anticipate some obvious contingencies, and the robbery goes the only way it could – horribly wrong. Left with a pile of money and a new set of problems, the group promises to lay low for a while, each swearing not to spend their share of the money until the heat has died down and they’re sure they’re beyond suspicion.

But group interests aren’t enough to keep Alex from breaking their pact and paying his overdue child support. Ian, fearing for their personal safety (when Ian exchanged information about their plan for guns, Katz, the gangster running an illegal casino, threatened the lives of his friends if he didn’t settle immediately following the robbery) pays off his gambling debts. However, word travels fast in the underworld, and Victor, the other end of Johnny Love’s deal, gets wind of this ridiculously inept band of robbers. Not planning on ever having to deal with these criminals again, the group didn’t account for iteration – and as things go from bad to heart-breakingly horrible, they quickly realize that what they made the wrong choice: they should have played it straight instead of betraying a group of known criminals.

Despite all this philosophy – Plato, Nietzsche, and Sartre all get paraphrased for good measure – this is a darkly effervescent book. In this fast-paced and entertaining novel, Mr. Sakey spins the crime genre on its head to ask what happens when regular folk take it into their heads to become criminals.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 25 readers
PUBLISHER:	NAL Trade; Reprint edition (June 7, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Marcus Sakey
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes

Bibliography:

• The Blade Itself (2007)
• At the City’s Edge (2008)
• Good People (2008)
• The Amateurs (2009)
• Scar Tissue: Stories (2010)
• The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (June 2011)

The boss glowered at me when I walked into his office, his shoulders hunched and hangover tense, a condition that had to exacerbate the pain in his ribcage. Before he had a chance to snap at me I dropped the bag with the Hycodan on the blotter that sat atop his massive mahogany desk. “Instructions are written on the side of the bag.”

It was as though a state of grace washed over him just then. His musculature relaxed visibly, and he exhaled as though he’d been holding it in all morning. His torn ear got redder, his eyes brightened and he opened the bag like a little kid digging into his Christmas stocking. “Morphine. Hot Diggety”

“Isn’t morphine. Something new. Better than morphine.”

“The hell you say.”

“Fix you right up, is what the doc says.”

Without reading the directions he unscrewed the bottle top and tossed one into his mouth and crunched it.

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barkdsale  AUG 5, 2011)

The Adjustment, Scott Phillips latest novel, World War II veteran Wayne Ogden (from The Walkaway) returns to work in Wichita Kansas for Everett Collins, the rich, but lazy owner of Collins Aircraft. Although Ogden is supposed to be the head of the Publicity and Marketing Department, he spends more time finding women, alcohol and drugs for his boss and also helping the women get abortions that his boss has impregnated. Ogden is not above sharing in the alcohol and women despite having a very attractive and pregnant wife at home. He also likes going to the abortion doctor in Kansas City to see his favorite girlfriend Vickie.

This is not a book that everyone would enjoy especially since most of the men, including the main character, are not particularly likeable, or at least shouldn’t be likeable. You really need to check your morals at the first page and just enjoy the book for what it is. Many would also not find it funny, but it is very funny, again as long as you don’t let yourself be offended. Relax, it’s fiction. Wayne Ogden is not that good a person, but his treatment of his sleazy boss is fun to read as the excerpt above shows. If you haven’t read anything by Phillips, but have seen the movie The Ice Harvest, based on Phillips’ first book of the same name, you’ll get a sense of what to expect in this book. Overall, I really enjoyed Phillips style in the first person novel.

While still missing his days in the service and adjusting to his life at home, Ogden starts receiving strange messages, starting with this first one:

YOU SON OF A BITCH THIEF THERE’S BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS. ERUPOEAN LADYS ARE DELICATE AS FLOWERS.

Ogden figures this and the other messages he gets must have something to do with his time in the service when he was a supply sergeant with the Quartermaster Corps. Of course, true to his nature, Ogden used his time there to occasionally do what he was paid to do, but spent more time overseeing his sale of prostitutes, alcohol and other items. His skills honed in the service were now in use working for his boss Everett Collins. Nonetheless, this work often led him to meet some violent people in both jobs and he becomes concerned about what he may have done to result in these disturbing notes.

Up to now, the only thing I had read by Scott Phillips was a short story in Damn Near Dead 2. I had seen him speak at Noircon in November, 2011 and have since picked up a few of his books, including the free (with a donation of your choice) book, Rut issued by Concord Free Press. After reading The Adjustment, I’m glad I have more to read.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Counterpoint (July 26, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Scott Phillips
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Damn Near Dead 2 edited by Bill Crider Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski

Bibliography:

• The Ice Harvest (2000)
• The Walkaway (2002)
• Cottonwood (2004)
• Rum, Sodomy and False Eyelashes: Stories (May 2011)
• The Adjustment (July 2011)

“There is the need for the interdisciplinary reading of bodies with students, for breaking away from dichotomies, ruptures that are enviable and deforming.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (AUG 3, 2011)

In this artful, cerebral novel spanning four decades and encompassing the tribal conventions and counterculture movements of the 70’s and 80’s, the reader is plunged into a cunning world of philosophy and hedonism that is best described as baroque rawness or stark-naked grandiloquence. If these terms appear to be incompatible pairings, the reader will grasp the seeming polarity as axiomatic soon after feasting on Edie Meidav’s complex narrative style. A carnal vapor infuses every provocative page of this unorthodox psychological crime thriller.

Contrary to the suggestive cover, title, and product description, this will not appeal to fans of chick lit or genre suspense thrillers. This is more in tune with Martin Amis or Salman Rushdie, with a peppering of TC Boyle and Dan Chaon. Muscular, sweat-producing, and erudite, the satisfaction of reading these pages rests on the reader’s consent to capitulate control of predetermined ideas and conceptions and enter into a contract with the author, giving Meidav permission and authority to rule the aesthetic jurisdiction, and to accede to the flow, command, and demand of its prose.

The eponymous title refers to Lana Mahler and her best friend, Rose, who meet as teenagers and form a bond that graduates from symbiotic to alpha/supplicant (Lana as alpha). They call themselves Lola One and Lola Two. Lana’s parents are both esteemed academics; her father, Vic, is a neuroscientist cum philosopher of the counterculture variety, and has his own willing supplicants known as “shaggies.”

Lana’s mother is an ethnologist/feminist who has garnered popular fame. As noted, the novel takes place primarily in California, with an emphasis on the analysis of California lifestyles and attitudes, particularly the free-thinking Berkeley. Lana and Rose parted ways many years ago, but the psychodynamics of their early relationship continues to haunt both of them.

The book opens in 2008 in the Alcatraz penitentiary. Vic Mahler is on death row, with an execution date less than two weeks away. The author takes us into Mahler’s mind, which gravitates from hearty to hallucinogenic. We learn that he hasn’t seen his daughter in twenty years, but that Rose has been writing him letters and offering her assistance as an attorney. Juxtaposed with the prison opening, the story takes us to Lana, who is on her way to a desert spa with her latest boyfriend and her twin boys, a place right out of Boyle‘s The Road to Wellville. Rosa is on the verge of tracing Lana down after a twenty-year separation.

The disclosure of Vic’s crime and fate, as well as the unveiling of the Mahler family and Rose, is gradually revealed by positioning each character in alternating chapters. They examine their lives, past and present, and dissect each other, so that the reader is shown each character through various lenses that eventually coalesce into a prism of overlapping and juxtaposed realities.

Like Chaon’s Await Your Reply, the narrative unfolds with an intricate opacity toward transparency. Meidav has a knack for shocking the reader at intervals, like the best thrillers do. Just as the Lolas once worked as strip-tease dancers together, the author unveils surprises in increments like a strip-tease act for the reader.

Lana and Rose are the locus of the novel, and the narrative forms a mosaic or tapestry of several dialogues and narratives between them and their relationship with the external world, much like Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children is a tapestry of texts and collage of languages that form a unity of what is virtual and what is real. There is a constant flux between the Lolas, and a tension between what is true and what is illusive, what is implied and what is extant.

It took me about one hundred pages to relax into Meidav’s style, the wrap-around sentences and esoterica of neuroscience and philosophy, the limbic arousal and dourness of Martin Amis.

“…people’s faces work to hold up new veils by the minute: the all-time favorite is dignity, as is the visage of sex-transcending enlightenment, a new kind of spiritual chastity armature.”

Meidav’s bare-bones plot–a crime, a perpetrator, and a fate–are less important than the characters that inhabit this dystopia of false and renegade idols. Nature, the pliable state of consciousness, and the desire to reclaim the credo of youth and supple confidence, is the plaintive hope and recursive doctrine. We are all disciples of the mind; we are prisoners of our bodies.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 8 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Edie Meidav
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows The Legacy by Kirstin Tranter

Bibliography:

• The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon (2001)
• Crawl Space (2005)
• Lola, California (July 2011)

“I don’t want friends, you silly shit. Friends—hah! Friends are the ones shoot you twice in the back of the head. Friends snitch you out for the long stretches. Up the joint, you see a guy doin’ life you can figure he had one too many friends.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (APR 27, 2011)

Winter’s Bone was one of the best crime films I saw in 2010. I discovered that it was based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell, and I was surprised that I’d never heard that name before. But I’m apparently not the only one, and the success of Winter’s Bone is guaranteed to bring this author new readers. Woodrell is best known as a writer of Ozark Noir, but the Bayou Trilogy is, as the title suggests, set in a different geographical region. The trilogy is composed of three novels from Woodrell’s early writing career: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing and The Ones You Do. The protagonist of the trilogy is Cajun cop Rene Shade. Shade hails from the fictional Louisiana city of San Bruno: “a city of many neighborhoods, Frogtown and Pan Fry being the largest and most fabled, and great numbing stretches of anonymous, bland, and nearly affluent subdivisions.” These neighborhoods are sharply divided along ethnic lines with the French hanging out in Frogtown and the blacks sticking to Pan Fry. There’s also Hawthorne Hills–the wealthy impenetrable suburb of the powerful elite.

Former boxer now detective Rene Shade has French-Irish roots. His older brother Tip runs the Frogtown Catfish bar while younger brother, District Attorney Francois is trying hard to disguise his working class roots. Rene’s mother, Ma Blanqui rules a run-down pool hall, and Rene lives in a room above the family business. To add even more flavour to the local geography, a swamp, the Marias du Croche–full of water moccasins with plenty of attitude, lies on the outskirts of town. Rene’s father, John X, returns to Frogtown for the third novel in the series.

In the fast-paced, explosive action-packed tale Under The Bright Lights, a local city councilman is murdered and Rene Shade is pressured by his “superiors” to conclude that the crime was a simple burglary gone wrong, but it’s not long before all hell breaks loose with a range war between Frogtown and Pan Fry. A hired hit man with dreams of becoming a professional musician is just the tool of other ambitious, greedy men in a matter of contracts and corrupt local politics gone wrong.

Muscle for the Wing begins with a “protected” poker game being blown wide open (literally) by a violent gang known as the Wing. These ex-cons, led by a muscle-bound brute, Emil Jadick have moved into town with the intention of taking what they want and to hell with the consequences. Here’s the Wing’s first hit:

“Despite the low hum of air-conditioning, the victims sweated gushingly and shook with concern, for, not only were they being shorn of their gambling money, but history was staggering and order decaying before their eyes. The swinging side of St. Bruno night world had been run as smoothly and nearly as openly as a pizza franchise for most of a decade and now these tourists from the wrong side of the road somewhere else were demonstrating the folly of such complacence. Auguste Beaurain, the wizened little genius of regional adoration, had run the upriver dagos, the downriver riffraff, the homegrown Carpenter brothers, and the out-of-state Dixie Mafia from this town and all its profitable games in such an efficient manner that no one had truly believed he would ever again be tested this side of the pearly gates.

But here and now these strangers, too ignorant of local folklore to know how much danger they were in, were taking the test and deciding on their own grades.”

St. Bruno operates with its own customs and laws, and the reason the city doesn’t blow apart from crime and corruption is it’s controlled from the top down. So the rich white folks in Hawthorne Hills call the shots and occasionally throw a bone to a chosen few in Frogtown or Pan Fry. Everybody plays by the rules–more-or-less–although we see the sort of catastrophe that develops when someone gets greedy (Under the Bright Lights). In Muscle for the Wing, outsiders think the local muscle is soft, lazy and fat enough to be taken without much of a fight. It’s Shade’s job to stop The Wing from taking over.

The Ones You Do sees the return of Rene Shade’s father, former pool shark John X. Dumped by his young second wife who’s split with all the cash, John X returns to his roots with a pissed-off killer Lunch Pumphrey in hot pursuit.

The Bayou Trilogy is extremely violent, fast paced and the closest thing I’ve read to a pulp flick pasted onto 470 pages. There are no middle-of-road characters here. The busty, trampy babes slide into cut-offs three sizes too small, tote weapons, flip hash and are meaner than pole cats. As for the men–there’s a range of stupid, and others who are cunning, vicious or just plain evil. Woodrell can wrap up character in a nutshell. Here’s Mayor Crawford after hours in Under the Bright Lights:

He was in slacks and a polo shirt with a cherry half-robe loosely belted. Fit and silver-haired, he looked like the aging stud of a prime-time soap.

Woodrell’s Bayou world is not a place for outsiders–the author makes that clear. Only those born and bred in view of the swamp can understand the arcane rules and Cajun St Bruno philosophy of righteous violence and vengeance.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 29 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mulholland Books (April 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Daniel Woodrell Interview with Daniel Woodrell
EXTRAS:	Under the Bright Lights excerpt Muscle for the Wing excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: New Orleans Noir edited by Julie Smith The John Turner series by James Sallis Also by Daniel Woodrell: The Maid’s Version The Outlaw Album: Stories

Bibliography:

• Under the Bright Lights (1986) *
• Woe to Live On (1987; 2012)
• Muscle for the Wing (1988) *
• The Ones You Do (1992) *
• Give Us a Kiss: A Country Noir (1996; 2012)
• Tomato Red (1998; 2012)
• The Death of Sweet Mister (2001; 2012)
• Winter’s Bone (2006)
• The Outlaw Album: Stories (2011)
• The Maid’s Version (September 2013)

*The Bayou Trilogy (2011)

Movies from Books:

• Ride with the Devil (1999) (adapted from Woe to Live On)
• Winter’s Bone (2010)