Reviews

Julie Kramer: Shunning Sarah

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Julia Kramer’s skill set is extremely varied:  she’s funny, she writes suspenseful books, she tells you a bit about the way TV news works, and her books are an enjoyable breeze to read.  Why that is is a mystery, as she tends to actually cover some very dark territory in her novels, and they’ve gotten a tad darker lately.

She’s also, since her first novel, sharpened her skills as a straight up mystery writer.  She’s gotten terrific at twists and clues, and at setting up a story that gives the reader a fair chance at figuring things out.  In this novel, set partially in Minnesota’s Amish community, she takes two disparate worlds, the “English” and the Amish, and sort of pits them reluctantly against each other. The book opens with a terrific scene of a farm boy falling into a sinkhole and finding he’s there with a dead body.  While the farm boy isn’t the point, the dead body is the point, this wonderful scene setter grabs your attention and gets you completely invested in the story Kramer wants to tell. read more

Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl

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I think it’s safe to say this is the book of the year, and there isn’t always a “book of the year”, a book everyone’s talking about and reading.  But the premise and the voice in this book are so original and so captivating that the story will probably stay with you for a long, long time, and you’ll probably want to talk about it.

The author is definitely channeling psychological masters like Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith.  Putting together this lean, vicious, compelling book is a real act of writerly fortitude, because it’s an exhausting and sometimes terrible sprint.  And, like a Rendell or Highsmith book, when you get to the twisty middle, you know things are only going to get far, far worse. read more

Cornelia Read: Valley of Ashes

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Sorrow is always your own, offering no temptation to fickle gods.  Fucking joy, on the other hand?  You might as well string your heart from the ceiling for use as a frat-party piñata.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that Cornelia Read’s voice is one of the most original, vivid and memorable in all of contemporary crime fiction.  I think I would be happy to read anything she wrote, in novel form or no, but happily she also writes wonderful novels.  While her books are technically a series, I think each of them stand well alone, and each have a different slant which sets them apart from one another. read more

Julia Keller: A Killing in the Hills

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Here’s some advice: run, don’t walk, to the stack of Julia Keller’s first crime novel, A Killing in the Hills, and stash away a first edition for yourself.  I rarely make this prediction but I am predicting Keller’s career will be a long one.  This is a wonderful first novel, strongly reminiscent of some of Laura Lippman’s best work – her stand-alone crime novels that, like this book, are about so much more.

A Killing in the Hills is set in the tiny, and fictional, Acker’s Gap, West Virginia, but the assured writing and sense of place make clear that while technically Acker’s Gap is not a real place, the town Keller is describing and writing about most definitely is real.  The book kicks off with the kind of random and senseless shooting that we have become all too familiar with recently:  three old men are gunned down in the middle of a busy lunch time at a fast food restaurant in Acker’s Gap. read more

D.E. Johnson: Detroit Breakdown

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Sometimes when an author is writing an historical series, his or her rhythm gets so in tune with the time they are writing about, that the story they are telling takes on the tone of the actual time period.  D.E. Johnson’s third novel set in 1912 Detroit takes on a gothic feel and the whole tenor of the story is enriched by it.  The first two books were set inside the automobile industry, this one takes the scion of the electric car company, Will Anderson, and sets him inside the gigantic mental hospital known as Eloise. read more

Hank Phillippi Ryan: The Other Woman

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Hank Phillippi Ryan’s smart, fun thriller set in the world of Boston news – a world she is very familiar with, as it’s one she’s worked in for decades – will have you flipping the pages faster and faster as you get to the twisty end.  Her central character, Jane Ryland, a former television reporter, has left her TV station in disgrace as she’s been on the losing end of a million dollar lawsuit, one where she’s refused to reveal a source.

Jane is starting over as a print reporter at the fictional Boston Register. While she’s adjusting to the fact that she doesn’t have to look great all the time like an on air reporter does (a positive) she’s also adjusting to the fact that she’s often digging in her bag for her own camera as, unlike an on air reporter, she has no following camera-person (a negative).  Also she has to share a desk with the mysterious and elusive Tuck (another negative). Her first assignment is the seemingly simple and uncomplicated task of getting an interview with Owen Lassister’s wife, who seems to be MIA.  Lassiter is running for the senate. read more

Timothy Masters: Drawn to Injustice and Mark Seal: The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

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There are more pleasures to be found in true crime than simply you couldn’t make this stuff up. Because the events described actually happened, true crime has the authority to make us question our assumptions about human nature and society in a way we wouldn’t accept from fiction. Two very fine and very different examples of this are the new paperback arrivals Drawn to Injustice: The Wrongful Conviction of Timothy Masters by Timothy Masters with Steve Lehto and The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal. (They’re also examples of the genre’s predilection for long, explanatory subtitles!) read more

Eleanor Kuhns: A Simple Murder

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Winner of the new contest set up by the Mystery Writers of America and Minotaur Books, this is an unusual novel in its setting and time period, but in every other way it is an absolutely classic traditional mystery.  Set in a Shaker community in Maine in 1796, the main character is a traveling weaver and former soldier searching for his runaway teenage son.

The Shakers were a “charismatic Christian” sect formed as an offshoot of the Quakers, sharing some of their more advanced concepts like equality between the sexes and pacifism.  Because the Shakers didn’t actually reproduce, they have now practically died out. However, back in the 1700’s the communities were vital ones, as they took in children (and other lost souls, no questions asked) via adoption or abandonment.  In this way, the main character’s son, David, has come to be a part of the Shaker community. read more

Tabish Khair: The Thing About Thugs

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“Stories, true or false, are difficult to escape from…Especially the stories we tell about ourselves.  In some ways, all of us become what we pretend to be.”

This exquisite little volume would be a lovely addition to the library the narrator describes as belonging to his Indian grandparents.  Their dusty old house was a treasure trove of books and as the narrator discovers, of stories.  His own story is elegantly told but complicated and layered – you have to pay attention, though the light shines brighter about midway through the book when certain narrative identities are confirmed. read more

Elly Griffiths: A Room Full of Bones

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Elly Griffiths has quickly become one of my favorite writers, and we sold so many copies of her first book, The Crossing Places, that she’s obviously a favorite not just of mine but of many readers.  A big reason is her main character, the down to earth and very real  Ruth Galloway, an archeologist, professor and single mother.  But Ruth isn’t the only reason these books are terrific.

Griffiths is a true mystery writer, and she’s become more accomplished at plotting with each book, though all involve connections to history and spirituality of a sort (though a very unconventional sort).  This one has perhaps the most traditional set-up – dead museum curator found next to the awaiting to be opened bones of a long-ago bishop. read more