Sara Gran: Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway

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When Annie Hall first came out, I saw it with my mother.  I was a senior in high school, and I was absolutely transported.  It’s still one of my favorite movies.  My mother, on the other hand, was disturbed by it.  She was dismayed by the easy way Annie moved in with Woody Allen’s character, without being married, and the casual nature of the sexual relationships throughout the movie.  It seemed like a sea-change to her.

Sara Gran’s novel, while I liked and appreciated it, feels like a sea-change to me, a generation later.  I guess I’m the now the older person reading about a younger one; about a younger person whose choices I don’t always understand and whose “lifestyle” is foreign to me.  That’s a good reason to read books, of course, and while Claire has a drug issue – it’s presented as almost normal for her to be snorting cocaine off her house keys – it turns out that her drug use, like everything else in this novel, is a journey of self-discovery for her.clairebohemian read more

Jussi Adler-Olsen: The Absent One

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The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen’s second novel in his gripping Department Q series, creates one of the more interesting female characters in recent fiction.  While Kimmie, the “absent one” of the title, is certainly not entirely sympathetic, as Adler-Olsen draws the reader deeper into her world there are sympathetic glimmers.  Explanations of her behavior.  And a portrayal of an exceptionally strong woman who ultimately chooses to do the right thing.

AbsentOneWhile that is part of this novel, this is also, like the first novel, a terrific thriller that will keep any reader glued to the page.  Adler-Olsen has set up his two main characters, Carl and Assad, as a perfect yin and yang.  They are the reliable and comfortable center of the novels, and in this one he’s added a third party, Rose, greeted by Carl as grumpily as he initially greeted Assad.  Despite Rose’s alleged assignment of assembling new desks for their workspace, she manages to prove to Carl that she has plenty to offer. read more

Marco Vichi: Death and the Olive Grove

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“The story had something at once horrifying and sweet about it, something he had difficulty understanding.” – from Death and the Olive Grove

There are a few poets who are also mystery writers – Georges Simenon, Andrea Camilleri, Colin Cotterill, Matt Beynon Rees, Louise Penny, Karin Fossom – add to that short list Marco Vichi.  I mean poets in a spiritual sense (though Fossom is actually one).  Vichi’s blend of an almost delicate prose style with a gripping story, as well as a wider look at life, places him in that rarified company.  What makes this book special is that it’s thought provoking as well as hard to put down. read more

Louise Penny: How the Light Gets In

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Louise Penny has always possessed a “voice”, a recognizable prose style and way of telling a story, but as her career has progressed you can feel the originality and power of her voice increasing.  She’s exploring deeply personal themes and rigorously examining her characters from the inside out,  giving them a little (or big) shake. While Gamache has some mystery left (and hence some of his own mythic power) there’s lots we’ve learned about him as readers since the publication of Still Life. read more

Author Interview: Steve Hamilton

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Steve Hamilton has visited the store since his first novel, A Cold Day in Paradise, was published in 1998.  Since then he’s been loyal, kind, and funny, and he’s long been a favorite with our customers. He is our bestselling author. We love his Michigan-centric series and look forward to every novel – I was happy to have the chance to ask him a few questions.

steve-hamiltonQ: One of the things I like best about your books is the way you use dialogue to tell the story.  Do you kind of think in dialogue?  Is that the way storytelling comes to you?  read more

Simone St. James: An Inquiry into Love and Death

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This is a fun mix of romance, mystery and a cracking good ghost story.  I enjoyed the fact that the author unabashedly buys into the whole ghost paradigm – there’s not an ounce of irony here, which serves to make her ghost far more scary. Set just after WWI, the main character is a young woman at Somerville College, Oxford, part of an illustrious group of women who were the first to get a university education at Oxford.  In real life their numbers included Dorothy L. Sayers and Vera Brittain, author of the classic memoir of WWI, Testament of Youth. read more

Chris Pavone: The Expats

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This novel has garnered lots of praise and attention, as well as winning the Edgar for Best First Novel.  I can say it was a well-deserved award – this is a very original and quirky novel that is more than worthy of all the attention.  It’s not much like any other novel I’ve ever read – it has spy elements, international elements, and a strong domestic element that brings what is primarily a spy thriller into the more human realm.  It made me like it much more.

expats_coverI’m not big on spy thrillers and they haven’t been a big part of the genre for awhile – though it’s making a comeback, certainly, with the success of authors like Vince Flynn or the slyly imaginative Mike Lawson.  Pavone brings yet another take. read more

David Housewright: The Last Kind Word

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There are seriously few writers who can beat David Housewright for sheer storytelling power.  His books hit the ground running and don’t let up until the last page.  This is the latest Rushmore “Mac” MacKenzie novel, and Housewright has taken a slightly new tack.  Mac is undercover as desperate criminal Dyson  in order to help catch a band of robbers and more importantly, the gunrunners who are supplying them with weapons at the Canadian border.

thelastkindwordThe opening chapter is pure, classic Housewright.  The only other author who can match his opening chapter skills is Barbara D’Amato, who has several first chapters that remain my favorites of all time,  her ultimate being the baby crawling across Chicago’s Dan Ryan expressway in 2010’s Other Eyes. read more

S.J. Bolton: Lost

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Bolton’s reputation and popularity has been a slow burn, but she’s catching on more and more with readers and if you like her – boy – do you like her.  Lately she’s focused on a series rather than the amazing stand alone novels which began her career (Sacrifice, Awakening), but her series is wonderful as well.  Her Lacey Flint books began with the outstanding Jack the Ripper thriller, Now You See Me, and she followed it up with the ultra creepy Dead Scared.

lost-sjbWell, she’s put Lacey through the wringer and this novel seems to be the one where she’s trying to set Lacey back to rights.  It’s certainly original to have the main series character be both so troubled and so actually physically tormented just by way of doing her job.  Lacey is part of the police force, ending up on a big case in the first novel by virtue of having a victim literally die in her arms; in the second, she’s undercover, and becomes the victim herself; in the third, she’s literally, as the title suggests, “lost.”  She’s not the only lost one here, of course, but it becomes a theme of the book. read more

Steve Ulfelder: Purgatory Chasm

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When is a P.I. not a P.I.?  Today’s rash of younger male writers are taking a look at that question, and they all have a different answer.  Tim O’Brien has a teacher; Brad Parks, a reporter.  Steve Ulfelder has an auto mechanic AA member whose main motive is revenge.  Really, though, the motives of the P.I. haven’t changed:  to a man, the new P.I.s  are interested in putting things right simply because it’s the right thing to do.  It looks like what’s surviving from the long standing P.I. trope is not the private eye aspect itself, but the white knight aspect.  That’s something I can get behind. read more