Summer Reading--Suggestions, Anyone?

So one of my fans posted his list of his planned summer reading and asked me what was on my list. (Click on the "comments" link under the posting for Strip to read his posting.)

I just finished The Girl who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson, and I'm planning to read The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I have to say that I don't totally love this series--I think it would have been stronger with better editing, and I'm not sure why the series is as popular as it is. I'm not even sure why I'm continuing to read the trilogy, except that I hate leaving things half done. I plan to blog about the series when I've finished Hornet's Nest.I actually find the drama surrounding Stieg Larsson to be as interesting as the books themselves.

The other mysteries stacked up on my "possible reads" shelf include:

The Big Bang, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25).  Mike Hammer and the lovely Velda take on the NYC drug trade. Outlined by Spillane in the 60s and finished by Max Allan Collins, one of the most versatile and talented writers to come down the pike. 


So Cold the River, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown; $24.99). A filmmaker visiting begins having hallucinations that pull him into the evil history of a small town.

The Taken, by Inger Ash Wolfe (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25). Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef's latest case, a body in a tourist-area lake, focuses on the dangers of obsessive love.

The Whisperers, by John Connolly (Atria Books; $26): Private detective Charlie Parker investigates a band of former soldiers involved in a nefarious smuggling operation.

Damaged, by Alex Kava (Doubleday; $24.95): FBI profiler Maggie O'Dell's latest hunt for a killer puts her in the path of a hurricane.

Blood Oath, by Christopher Farnsworth (Putnam; $24.95). Although I have sworn not to read any vampire or zombie stories, now that they are so annoyingly, unimaginatively ubiquitous, I may relent on this one, since it's a political thriller about the president's vampire.

Strip, by Thomas Perry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $26)

 A bar owner in Chicago witnesses a hit ordered by an OC boss. The feds relocate him, rename him Joe Carver, sell his bar and house, and send him a fat check for the proceeds. Joe moves to LA and tries to meet women by flashing some of the cash.

Meanwhile, a masked gunman robs strip club magnate Manco Kapak of his clubs' profits as he was making a night deposit.  He instructs his employees to learn if anyone has been seen holding an unusual amount of money. In no time, the word comes back that Joe Carver must be the guy.  Kapak orders a hit on Carver to signal to others not to mess with him.

The actual robber, however, was Jefferson Davis Falkins, a low-life, lying loser. When the Kapak money runs out, Jeff decides to hit him again. He brags to a woman named Carrie what he's planning. Carrie begs to go along, playing to his vanity ("I always needed a really hot, stupid guy, but never knew it until tonight.") Too bad for Jeff, Carrie turns out to be a danger addict. ("Thank you so much," she says after the robbery. "This is the best night of my whole life!")  Soon Falkins realizes that instead of being the woman of his dreams, Carrie is actually insane and that he's in way over his head.

The latest robbery, of course, inflames Kapak's rage against Joe Carver. Carver tries to prove he's not the robber, but when that doesn't work, decides to extract some payback from Kapak for making his life miserable. Kapak also has his hands full dealing with a flashy drug dealer who uses the strip clubs to launder funds. And on top of everything, the cop on the case is a bigamist facing college tuition for the oldest child in each of his (unsuspecting) families.

I loved this book. The characters were engaging and the clever dialogue kept the story hopping. Perry's convoluted plot held together well, and he tied up all the loose ends. I hate comparing authors, because doing so implies a lack of originality on the part of the author being described. But I will say this: if you enjoy Elmore Leonard's books, you'll enjoy Strip, because Perry writes with a similar dry wit and subtlety. This was terrific.

61 Hours, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press; $28)

Lee Child is one of those terrific authors who never disappoint. His main character, Jack Reacher, is a homeless guy with panache. He breezes into a town, rights the wrongs, breaks a heart or two, and moves on again.

In this latest, Reacher hops a ride on a tour bus filled with older folk from Seattle enjoying the sights of South Dakota in the dead of winter. On its way to Mount Rushmore, the bus skids and lands in a ditch. The passengers are bused into Bolton, a small town whose main claim to fame was its successful bid to land a new prison and all the jobs that resulted.

But all is not peaceful up there on the northern plains. A 100-member motorcycle gang living on an abandoned army base outside of town is dealing methamphetamine. Lots of it. A big buyer from Chicago came to town and a witness clearly saw him buy some product from one of the bikers. Now the witness, a 70-something librarian, is a sitting duck. The cops know someone is coming soon to kill her. They at first suspect that Reacher is the hitman. When he convinces them that he's not the guy, they enlist his help to protect the witness and figure out just what is going on at the biker's camp. Throughout it all, snow and record cold present a challenge to those not used to the extreme weather.

Lee Child's books are so readable, I give him a pass for the flaws in his books. There were a few scenes in this book that left me saying, "Huh? Where did THAT come from?" It's always possible that I missed something, but some of these details were pretty significant. I was also a bit disappointed to have figured the mystery out way early in the book. I much prefer to be kept guessing until the end.

Please don't let these snarky criticisms dissuade you from reading Lee Child. Trust me, there are few better.    

Bee Books by Laurie R. King

The only good thing about a blog with only a handful of followers is that I pretty much know each one personally! So that's how I know that at least two of my "fans" are beekeepers. (Jeff: meet Scott! Scott, meet Jeff! Jeff: join the blog!) See, if I had hundreds of fans, this blog wouldn't be nearly so friendly!

You might be wondering why I have this bee in my bonnet. I just received two books by Laurie R. King, who writes a series of mysteries about Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes. Beekeeping makes an appearance in both The Language of Bees (Bantam; $15; paperback) and The God of the Hive (Bantam; $25). One warning, though: although both have bee-related titles, and a disappearing hive figures in at least the first of the two, murder--not beekeeping--is the major focus of both books.  I haven't read either book, but I have read Laurie R. King in the distant past. Her books are satisfying and well-crafted.

Still Midnight, by Denise Mina (Little, Brown; $24.99)

Two masked men enter the well-kept home of the Anwar family, just back from Ramadan prayers at the mosque. The men demand to see "Bob," and when none of the Anwars know who they mean, grab Aamir Anwar, the patriarch of the family, demanding two million pounds for his release and saying the kidnapping was payback for Afghanistan. In the melee, the hapless losers accidentally shoot the hand off of the Anwars' teenaged daughter.

Glaswegian detective Alex Morrow, who rubs virtually everyone the wrong way, should get the high profile case. But it is instead assigned to DS Bannerman, a suck-up colleague with shoddy police skills but excellent skills at self-promotion.  Each of Bannerman's missed clues and mishandled interrogations reduce the chances of recovering Mr. Anwar alive. When it becomes obvious that the case is a nearly unsolvable mess, Bannerman takes sick leave, forcing Morrow to soldier on alone and solve the case. Alex's job is made more difficult by family ties she would prefer her police department colleagues not know about.

Denise Mina's latest includes the elements we've come to expect from this excellent writer: a gritty portrayal of Glasgow, an unlikable woman who forces others to take her seriously, and a great plot with a satisfying ending.  I've liked her books since first reading her Garnethill trilogy, but a warning: these books are not for those who shrink from really graphic, vulgar language. She freely throws around a word that starts with "c" that is about the last taboo, at least in the US.

New Books: March 2010

Books are stacking up on my shelves, silent evidence that I'm not reading fast enough. I know I can't get to them all, but some by popular authors look like they could be pretty good. Instead of continuing to feel guilty, I'm going to just list them here with a short blurb describing the plot. If you read any of them and find they weren't worth your time, well--sorry! 

Deception, by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine Books; $28): Psychologist Alex Delaware works with LA detective Milo Sturgis on the murder of young teacher at one of LA's most prestigious schools. A DVD found near her body contains the record of her 18-month nightmare of abuse at the hands of three fellow teachers.

Deep Shadow, by Randy Wayne White (Putnam; $25.95): South Florida jack-of-all-water-trades Doc Ford is diving in a safe little lake when a falling rock ledge traps two of his friends. He comes up to try to get help, but runs into two low-lifes who want Doc to help them dive to the bottom of the lake to salvage a wrecked plane allegedly filled with Cuban gold. With the lives of his pals in the balance, Doc is, as usual, in a mess of hot Florida trouble.

Capitol Betrayal, by William Bernhardt (Ballantine Books; $26): Former senator Ben Kincaid is meeting with the president when a threat to Washington forces their evacuation, along with the president's advisors, to the secure underground bunker. There they learn that a foreign dictator has hacked into the US nuclear defense system and will blow the US to smithereens unless the president does his bidding.

Sleepless, by Charlie Huston (Ballantine Books; $25): When insomnia infects the Los Angeles population. LAPD detective Parker Hess goes undercover to investigate the pharmaceutical company behind Dreamer, the only drug that can help victims sleep. I like Charlie Huston. His Joe Pitt vampire books are among the very, very few vampire books that I read. His Already Dead was terrific.

Rules of Vengeance, by Christopher Reich (Doubleday; $25.95): The plan for a romantic weekend away for Doctors without Borders physician Jonathan Ransom and his secret-agent wife, Emma, come to a bloody end in a terrorist attack. Now Emma is missing, and Jonathan is threatened with imprisonment unless he aids in her capture. His only chance is to think like a spy and uncover what she's been cooking up. Soon he learns that she's in far deeper than he realized and he's been an unwitting player. My husband really liked this book.

Kisser, by Stuart Woods (Putnam; $25.95): Lawyer Stone Barrington's latest assignment, protecting a lip model (seriously!), puts him in the New York world of art, million-dollar co-ops, and family scandals.

Blood Ties, by Kay Hooper (Bantam; $26): Special Agent Hollis Templeton uses her psychic abilities to help the FBI's Special Crimes Unit solve a series of brutal murders.

Treasure Hunt, by John Lescroart (Dutton; $26.95) San Francisco detective Mickey Dade investigates the murder of Dominic Como, a prominent activist, who may have been involved in some unseemly goings-on.  

Breathless, by Dean Koontz (Bantam; $28.00): Okay, I read the flyleaf, and I can't begin to describe what this one is about. There's a dog, twins, a veterinarian, the government, a vagrant, chaos theory--I have no clue. I consider it a very bad sign when I can't understand the publisher's description of a book's plot.

Dick Francis, 1920-2010

Dick Francis, one of my favorite authors, died on February 14 at the age of 89. He had been ailing for some time.  He wrote his first mystery, Dead Cert, in 1962; in the nearly 50 intervening years, he wrote more than 40 books. The Washington Post reported that his books sold more than 60 million copies.

I first discovered Dick Francis when I began reading a copy of Banker left unguarded at a family gathering by Louis Massery, my late brother-in-law. I liked it so much that I began working through Francis' previous books, and then reading each new book he wrote. I loved how, despite being murder mysteries, the books had a gentleness to them. His male characters were strong, but not aggressive; cautious, but brave; and sweetly persistent in getting the girl. 

As most all of his fans know, he started out as a jockey, becoming so successful that in 1953 he was chosen to ride the Queen Mother's horses in British races. Riding Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National, the 35-year-old Francis was 50 yards from winning when the horse inexplicably went down. Some theorize that the horse was startled by the roar of the crowd; others thought he tried to jump a "phantom fence." Whatever the cause of the collapse, Francis' disappointment and injuries from previous falls made him hang up his racing career for good. He wrote an autobiography, and then began writing racing-related mysteries. 

Several years ago, I interviewed Mr. Francis when he came here to Washington, DC, for a book tour. I met him in his suite at a ritzy downtown hotel. He was older than he looked on book jackets and disarmingly sweet--not at all what I had expected of a wildly successful murder mystery writer. He told me that he had never been educated, having dropped out of school to be a jockey. He said that he would write his books in a very rough fashion, and then his wife, Mary, who had a university degree, would fix them up.

In an obit appearing in the Daily Mail's online edition, Graham Lord, Francis' biographer, said that it was actually Mary, and not Dick Francis, who wrote the books. According to Lord:

Mary was a crucial part of the thriller-writing 'team'. Although partly paralysed by polio and suffering chronic asthma and bronchitis, she researched all the books - in the process becoming a computer expert, photographer, accountant, painter and wine buff, even qualifying as a pilot for the book Flying Finish.

Indeed, as his biographer, I am convinced that Francis (who was poorly educated and not at all literary) did not write the books himself. I am sure that they were written by his clever, literate, university-educated wife but published under his name because as a famous jockey he would sell more copies.

In 1980, Mary told me: 'Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them, but believe me, it's much better for everyone, including the readers, to think that he writes them because they're taut, masculine books that might otherwise lose their credibility.'

When I revealed the truth in my double biography of the Francises in 1999, the Mail on Sunday reported that Mary was 'evasive when asked bluntly whether she is the true author.

She said equivocally, "It is not exactly true to say that I write Dick's books ... I could get him to write you a letter and you would see he can write". The amount of sharing we do is, to my mind, sort of private. We would really like people not to press us too hard on this".' The truth is that Dick Francis hated writing and took little pleasure in the success of the books. His first love was horses and he once said: 'My life ended when I stopped racing.'

Several years ago, Dick Francis and Mary moved to the Cayman Islands.  Mary died in 2000, and for several years, Dick did not write any more books.  Recently, he began writing with his son, Felix. Their third collaboration, Even Money, came out in 2009. It centered on betting on horse racing, but also included a long-lost father, a wife with mental illness, and various other plots and subplots. The overly-busy story had a Dick Francis-like feel, but without Mary's influence, it just wasn't the same. 

The First Rule, by Robert Crais (Putnam; $26.95)

I blow hot and cold on Robert Crais. He can always be counted on for a solid detective story, and when I'm looking for a solid detective yarn, I know I can count on his LA-based Elvis Cole series to deliver. But he's no John Sandford or Michael Connelly. I don't yearn for his books, the way I do theirs.

His latest focuses not on Cole, but on his sidekick, Joe Pike. The story is good, but Pike himself is a caricature.  Pike learns from some cops that an old friend, fellow mercenary Frank Meyer, has been killed in a home invasion, along with his wife, young boys, and the nanny.  The cops think Frank must have been involved in something nefarious, because the crime fit the pattern of six previous home invasion/murders where the victim was also a criminal. But Frank lived a clean life, or so Pike thinks.  He sets out to learn why Frank was targeted and to wreak vengeance on those who killed his guy.

Pike has always been the strong, silent type, which is okay for a sidekick, but doesn't work so well for a main character. It's hard to care about a character who refuses to speak. This is a guy who has been on "missions as long as a week, and never uttered a word." A good guy to have watching your back, but not very compelling as a main character. He does warm up a bit when he meets a pit bull and a baby, but these flashes of humanity are too rare to compensate for the over-the-top taciturnity. (If that's not a word, it should be.)

Recent comments

Two comments from mystery lover DB:

1.  Alan Furst has a new title coming out in June, titled Spies of the Balkans. He is always worth a read. Great atmosphere. DB

2.  Has anyone heard anything about Robert Harris' new title Conspirata? I have enjoyed his earlier works. DB

Twisted Tree, by Kent Meyers (Houghton Mifflin;$24)

I have to admit, the cover of this book initially kept me from reading it. The photo of a horse, taken at sunset or sunrise, seemed more like something trying to appeal to the tweens who watch Saddle Club on Discovery Kids than to grownups looking for a good read.  And it wasn't just the cover art that was off-putting: the jacket describes the plot as revolving around the kidnapping and murder of a young woman suffering from anorexia. Like many people, I generally hate books in which children or teens are the victims.  So it's a wonder that I read the book at all.

But I'm so very glad that I did. Twisted Tree is one of the best books I've read in a long while.  I'm hard pressed to choose what aspect of the book I liked the most: the structure, the setting, the language, or the characters.  The weakest part, actually, is the murder plot.  It ended up being almost unnecessary, and the book would have been stronger had Meyers found some other way to unify the vignettes that comprise the book.

So here's the set-up.  Hayley Jo Zimmerman is slowly starving herself, with the encouragement of the people she's met on a "pro-Ana" website. (These are sites on which, unbelievably, anorexics support each other in their quest to continue to lose weight.) Hayley Jo doesn't know that the virtual friend with whom she's become closest (and shared a fatal amount of identifying information) is actually a fat creep who has been murdering other anorexics in the northern plains. By the end of the first chapter, Hayley Jo is basically out of the book.

Each subsequent chapter focuses on someone else living in the area around Twisted Tree, South Dakota. Although each person has had some tangential contact with Hayley Jo in her short lifetime, she is certainly not central to the action. There's the story of Angela Morrison, a young bride (later, the mother of Hayley Jo's best friend) who slowly goes crazy living on a rattlesnake-infested ranch with her husband Brock. Or Sophie Lawrence, who looks to all of Twisted Tree like a saint for tending to her disabled stepfather, while actually tormenting him in private to make up for how he abused her when she was a girl. And one of my favorites: crazy Shane Valen, whose great-grandfather settled the land, and who--well, I'm not going to give his story away.  ("The thing about weird sonsabitches is they stick to their weird," the sheriff muses about Shane. "You can trust them. Normal people keep their weird hid, so if it ever gets out you have no idea where it'll go.")

The aspect of the book that I found the most amazing, however, is how each detail, no matter how small, ends up being significant in some way.  A marble, two dusty golf bags, some old names carved in a school desk--they appear, and reappear, in a way that speaks to Kent Meyers' precision and--for lack of a better word--control over his writing. I cannot even contemplate the effort it must take to keep track of so many of what might just seem like throw-away details. It reminded me of the movie Crash, one of my favorites, where all the stories end up with overlapping details that you don't even pick up on until you see the movie for a second time. In a similar fashion, my second reading of Twisted Tree unearthed details that I missed the first time because I hadn't realized their significance.

If I were Kent Meyers, I would demand that my publisher change the cover art, rewrite the flyleaf, and pay for a huge book tour in which the book gets as much publicity as is possible. This book simply blew me away.

Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown; $24.99)

Three guys, three different reasons to steal priceless art.  Former software whiz kid Mike MacKenzie can buy most anything he wants, but he's bored, restless, and looking for adventure.  Boring, divorced banker Allan Cruickshank needs cash to pay for his sons to attend their outrageously expensive private school.  And Professor Robert Gissing has a cause: the "repatriation" of art being stored or displayed privately.

The three joke about how to go about stealing art from the storage rooms of Scotland's National Gallery, but soon their talk moves from fantasy to an actual plan. They can't pull it off on their own, however, and turn for help to Chib Calloway, a rough type with ready access to extra manpower.  Adding Chib to the caper is a mistake-he's a cutthroat, take-no-prisoners gangster with money problems.  Add an art student with a demanding girlfriend, a detective trying for advancement, a Hell's Angel nicknamed Hate (due probably to the fact that both of his hands are tattooed with the word) to the mix and the plot just gets better and better.

In 2007, Ian Rankin retired Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus after more than 20 books written over 20 years.  Doors Open, a stand-alone mystery, was published as a 14-week story in the New York Times Magazine.  The story's origin as a series is clear from each chapter's cliff-hanger ending. Rankin is beloved among mystery fans on both sides of the pond. Even if you thought Rebus was a bit of a crank, you'll love his latest.  

Poe No-Show

There's a real mystery afoot in Baltimore this week. For the past 60 years, a mysterious figure has visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poe on January 20, his birthday, leaving three roses and a half-full bottle of cognac. 

This year, no one came.

According to the Washington Post, the Baltimore Evening Sun first reported on the mysterious offerings in 1949.  The tradition has continued since then, with the identity of the stranger the subject of intense speculation on the part of Poe fans.  One "suspect" mentioned fairly recently is Baltimore poet/performance artist David Franks, who, according to the Post, "once photocopied his private parts on a Xerox machine at a Social Security office and put the images on display. Decades ago, he posed as a disabled poet in a wheelchair, solicited donations from the crowd, then thanked everyone and got up and walked away."

I couldn't make that up if I tried!

Franks died last week at age 60. If he was the mysterious visitor, his death would explain the no-show on Poe's birthday Tuesday.

I guess we'll have to wait for a year to learn if the tradition was merely interrupted this year, or if Poe's birthday will be celebrated (wait for it!) nevermore.