“He wanted a new case. He needed a new case. He needed to see the look on the killer’s face when he knocked on the door and showed his badge, the embodiment of unexpected justice come calling after so many years.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 17, 2011)

Harry Bosch is the real deal. Michael Connelly’s The Drop is another superb entry in this outstanding series about an L. A. cop who is cynical and battle-weary, yet still committed to doing his job. Harry has had his share of troubles over the years, but now that Maddie, his fifteen-year old daughter, is living with him, he has cleaned up his act. He no longer smokes and avoids overindulging in alcohol. Harry is determined to be there for his little girl as she grows into adulthood. Maddie, who is smart and observant, has announced that she plans to follow in her father’s footsteps. She already has the makings of a good detective; she notices small but significant details, handles a firearm like a pro, and can spot a liar by looking for “tells.” The scenes between Bosch and his precocious teenager sparkle with warmth, humor, and love.

Harry knows that his days working for the LAPD are numbered. He has already “unretired” once, but in order to stay on the job, he will need a special dispensation under a program called DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Plan). Meanwhile, he is working on two investigations. As a member of the Open-Unsolved Unit, he is assigned to a cold case that involves the abduction, rape, and strangulation of nineteen-year-old Lily Price. New DNA evidence has come to light, but the data that it reveals raises more questions than it answers. The chief of police also orders Harry to look into the apparent suicide of forty-six year old George Irving, the son of a former ex-cop turned councilman, Irvin Irving. The outspoken and arrogant councilman loathes Bosch, but respects his ability to ferret out the truth.

The author’s crisp writing, use of jargon (“high jingo” means that higher ups are involved, so watch your step), and colorful depiction of police procedure imbue The Drop with energy, immediacy, and realism. The reader observes Harry making some tough decisions. Should he pull in a possible perp for questioning or first try to gather more evidence? Should he surreptitiously search a suspect’s home before obtaining a search warrant? How should Bosch deal with the brass, the media, and his skittish partner, David Chu? When a new woman enters his life, Harry is attracted to her, but is the relationship worth pursuing

Connelly juggles his plot brilliantly while he keeps us guessing about the outcome. Although Bosch can be brusque, tactless, and dismissive, he is willing to put his reputation on the line and is unafraid to make powerful enemies in his obsessive pursuit of justice. At times, Harry worries that he is starting to lose his edge. He needn’t be concerned, since he still has the expertise to read a crime scene, interview witnesses, and follow all of the clues to their logical conclusion. Even the way that Bosch assembles his “murder books” testifies to his tireless dedication to catching predators. If Harry’s performance in The Drop is any indication, he still has what it takes to put the bad guys away.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 324 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (November 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Connelly
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Harry Bosch reviews: Nine Dragons The Overlook Echo Park The Closers The Narrows Lost Light City of Bones Michael Haller: The Fifth Witness The Reversal Brass Verdict The Lincoln Lawyer Stand-alone mysteries: The Scarecrow Chasing the Dime Bloodwork

Bibliography:

LAPD Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch Series

• The Black Echo (1992)
• The Black Ice (1993)
• The Concrete Blonde (1994)
• The Last Coyote (1995)
• Trunk Music (1997)
• Angels Flight (1999)
• A Darkness More than Night (2001) *
• City of Bones (2002) /
• Lost Light (2003)
• The Narrows (2004) ***
• The Closers (2005)
• Echo Park (2006)
• The Overlook (2007)
• Nine Dragons (2009) ****
• The Drop (2011)
• The Black Box (November 2012)

Mickey Haller:

• The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) /
• The Brass Verdict (2008) **
• The Reversal (2010) **
• The Fifth Witness (2011)

Other:

• The Poet (1996) ***
• Blood Work (1998) *
• Void Moon (2000)
• Chasing the Dime (2002)
• The Scarecrow (2009)

* Terry McCaleb is in these novels
** Harry Bosch is in these novels
*** The Poet is in these novels.
****Mickey Haller is in this novel

Nonfiction:

• Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers (2006)

Movies from Books:

• Blood Work (2002)
• The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

“Do the things you’ve done in your past add up to the person you are now? Or are you reinvented by the choices you make for the future? I used to think I knew the answer to those questions. Now I’m not so sure.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

Hard Case Crime is back after a short hiatus, and for avid fans, the line-up is impressive: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins (delayed release from a year ago), Getting Off by Lawrence Block, The Consummata by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, and Choke Hold by Christa Faust.

Choke Hold is novelist and former peep show girl Faust’s second title for Hard Case Crime, and it’s a sequel to Money Shot. Faust is Hard Case Crime’s first female novelist, and if you think that means a tender, sensitive look at crime, then think again. Faust’s protagonist is tough former porn star, Angel Dare, a woman who feels more comfortable giving a blowjob than extending a sympathy hug. In Money Shot, Angel, owner of an adult modeling agency came out of retirement for one last gig. Big mistake. The job is a set-up by some particularly nasty gangsters who are hunting for a briefcase full of cash. Angel, who’s raped, beaten and stuffed in the trunk of a car, finds herself on the wrong side of a prostitution ring.

Choke Hold (and the title’s meaning becomes clear as the story plays out) finds Angel living under an assumed name as a waitress in Arizona. She was part of the Witness Protection program for 19 months and attending mandatory therapy with a shrink named Lindsay:

“She was always making these unequivocal statements about ‘women in my situation’ that had nothing to do with how I actually felt. She also insisted that I was in denial about my ‘abuse’ in the adult film industry. I could never talk to her about the things that were really on my mind. About the fact I didn’t feel like a poor violated victim at all. I felt like some kind of war veteran. Like I’d been forced to turn off something important inside me to become the killer I needed to be and I didn’t have any idea how to turn it back on again. To become an ordinary citizen again, if such a thing were possible. So instead I spent most of our time during the sessions with her by telling the raunchiest, kinkiest stories about my ‘abuse.’ I think she secretly got off on it. Poor Lindsay just needed a decent orgasm.”

Angel’s boring life under the Witness Protection program comes to an abrupt end when she realizes that her cover’s been blown. With her emergency ever-packed, go-bag, “two shitty fake IDs” and a few grand in cash, Angel ran. She’s in Arizona, waitressing, and providing after-hours entertainment for her boss trying to work off the expenses of a forged passport when her past catches up to her in an explosively violent way. Thick Vic, crankster and washed-up porn star, unexpectedly walks into Angel’s diner and death’s along for the ride. From this moment until the novel’s conclusion, it’s non-stop action with Angel on the run from pissed off Mexican gangsters involved in illegal boxing matches and cocaine smuggling. And she’s also on the run from her old nemesis, brutal Croatian gangster, Vukasin.

Choke Hold moves the action from Arizona to the illegal boxing matches held in Mexico, to a Las Vegas porn convention with live-streaming action. Throughout the chase, Angel picks up two protectors, Thick Vic’s cocky son, Cody and Hank “The Hammer”–a legendary boxer who’s sunk to teaching in a tacky local gym, fighting illegal matches, and practicing a little loan enforcement on the side. It’s through Angel’s relationship with Hank that this pulp novel shows its depth beyond the action. Angel never sees herself as a victim, but here’s she’s used and abused more than once in an industry in which no one rides for free. Hank’s industry takes a similar approach. He’s boxed his way into physical damage and suffers permanent migraines and short term memory loss. There’s a sad connection between Angel and Hank–a connection of two people who use their bodies to get by.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 23 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Christa Faust
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Money Shot And: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins The Consummata by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

Bibliography:

• Control Freak (1998; 2002)
• Hoodtown (2004)

• Money Shot (2008)
• Choke Hold (2011)

With Poppy Z. Brite:

• Triads (2004)

“Daddy hadn’t meant to hurt her, she knew. Even Momma believed this, which was why she hadn’t called 911. And when the doctor at the ER had asked Lisette how her face had got so bruised, her nose and eye socket broken, she’d said that it was an accident on the stairs – she’ been running and she’d fallen.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 5, 2011)

This year’s editor of The Best American Short Stories 2011 is Geraldine Brooks, an accomplished journalist and fiction writer. She says of her selections “that the easiest and the first choices were the stories to which I had a physical response.” I would agree that the best stories in this collection are those that are most visceral and physical in nature. Ms. Brooks also states that “In the end, the stories I fell upon with perhaps the greatest delight were the outliers, the handful or so that defied the overwhelming gravitational pull toward small-canvas contemporary realism.”

There are twenty stories in this alphabetically arranged collection. About half of them swept me away and the other half didn’t move me as much as I’d hoped they would. Each year, I look forward to this collection with much anticipation and excitement. This year’s collection felt a bit below par in consistency and quality.

I agree with Ms. Brooks that the best stories in this collection are those to which I had a physical response. They tended towards themes of violence and/or grief. One such story is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In “Ceiling,” she writes about a man who realizes he is in the wrong life. He feels lassitude in his marriage which is superficial and without depth. He yearns for his college sweetheart who he’s built up in his mind as perfect. As Ms. Brooks states, this story “perfectly captures the yearning spirit of a man who has settled for the wrong wife, the wrong life, in the stultifying salons of Lagos’s corrupt upper class.”

In “Housewifely Arts” by Megan Mayhew Bergman, a single mother drives nine hours to visit her dead mother’s parrot because the parrot is so perfectly able to mimic her mother’s voice. The parrot has more of her mother inside her than the daughter does.

Nathan Englander’s story, “Free Fruit for Young Widows,” opens with a violent act and continues with acts of violence. The story examines the roots of violence as it explores the possibilities and rationales that make violence an appropriate act. Part tale of vengeance and part philosophy, the reader puzzles the situations as does the young son whose father is telling him the story.

Allegra Goodman’s “La Vita Nuova” is a haunting story of grief. A woman who is a children’s art teacher is left by her fiancé. She brings her wedding dress to school and lets her students paint all over it. The story is about the depths of grief and loss.

“Soldier of Fortune” by Bret Anthony Johnston tells about Josh, a high school freshman who is in love with his neighbor Holly, a senior. When Holly’s three year-old brother accidentally gets severely scalded by boiling water and the family has to spend weeks at the hospital, Josh takes care of their home and dog. He grows up during this pivotal time.

In “Peter Torrelli, Falling Apart,” by Rebecca Makai, a man and his friend, Peter, have known each other since high school. Both are gay and they initially bonded over that commonality. Peter was beautiful and charismatic and went on to become an actor. At one of his performances he has a meltdown and can’t work again. His friend gives his all to Peter getting nothing in return. The reader wonders why his friend would risk so much for Peter.

Joyce Carol Oates, in “ID,” tells about Lisette, an eighth-grader who is recovering from a shattered eye socket and broken nose incurred by a beating from her estranged father. Lisette lives with her mother, a black jack dealer in Atlantic City. Lisette’s mother has been gone for several days, leaving Lisette alone with no idea of when she’ll be back or where she went. The police appear at her school and ask her to ID a corpse that they think might be her mother.

George Saunders writes about prisoners who are used in an experiment where they are given psychoactive drugs that take them to the deepest recesses of their souls. “Escape from Spiderland” is about these prisoners, the experiment, and the feelings of ultimate love, eloquence and sexuality that these drugs render. The prisoners can be brought to the depths of despair and the height of exaltation and then returned to their baselines in a few seconds.

Overall, there are some very good stories in this collection and some that are just mediocre. The ones that stand out are definitely the ones that feel like a visceral gut punch and that pound on the reader’s psyche. Ms. Brooks did not want “small-canvas contemporary realism” but sometimes it is the small canvas that shows the most detail and beauty. One just needs to look at it from the right angle.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mariner Books (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Best American Short Stories
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Best American Stories 2010 edited by Richard Russo Our reviews of some of Geraldine Brooks’ novels: Caleb’s Crossing People of the Book

Partial Bibliography:

• The Best American Short Stories 2000 edited by E.L. Doctorow  (October 2000)
• The Best American Short Stories 2001 edited by Barbara Kingsolver  (October 2001)
• The Best American Short Stories 2002 edited by Sue Miller  (October 2002)
• The Best American Short Stories 2003 edited by Walter Mosley  (October 2003)
• The Best American Short Stories 2004 edited by Lorrie Moore (October 2004)
• The Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon  (October 2006)
• The Best American Short Stories 2006 edited by Ann Patchett   (October 2006)
• The Best American Short Stories 2007 edited by Stephen King  (October 2007)
• The Best American Short Stories 2008 edited by Salman Rushdie  (October 2008)
• The Best American Short Stories 2009 edited by Alice Sebold  (October 2009)
• The Best American Short Stories 2010 edited by Richard Russo (September 2010)
• The Best American Short Stories 2011 edited by Geraldine Brooks (September 2011)

“Samuel knew that he was living through dangerous times – this was not the moment to simply sniffle and weep. He had left Hamburg just in the knick of time – Kristallnacht had happened just nine months earlier – the “party” in Europe […] had already begun. ”

Book Review:

Review by Friederick Knabe  (SEP 29, 2011)

Samuel Berkow, at thirty-eight, stands at the crossroads: In 1938, life in Germany is fast becoming dangerous for Jews. At the urging of his concerned uncle, he agrees to leave Hamburg and emigrate to Guatemala, where his cousin is expected to help him settle. In The Price of Escape, David Unger explores his hero’s self-conscious and stumbling efforts to put his German existence out of his mind as he prepares for a new one that carries promise but is also full of uncertainty.

The narrative quickly moves on to Samuel’s travel on the ship en route to the port town of Puerto Barrios and then focuses on his first three days on land. Guatemalan-American Unger, recognized as one of Guatemala’s prominent writers today, convincingly portrays his hero’s sense of utter confusion and helplessness as he enters, totally unprepared, a foreign world that bears no resemblance to his own. He contrasts Samuel’s former lifestyle, his self-confidence, based mostly on physical appearance and family wealth, with the poverty-ridden, appalling and at times dangerous conditions in Puerto Barrios. Thus, Unger not only builds an affecting portrait of one refugee’s complete dislocation in an unfamiliar environment and his awareness that he must cope somehow, he paints at the same time a colourful, vivid picture of a community in decline, abandoned by a corrupt political system that allows private company interests to control people’s lives and basis for existence.

As the novel unfolds, Samuel encounters a wide range of odd characters, starting with American Alfred Lewis, the dubious captain of the “tramp steamer” that brings Samuel into port. He turns out to be one of the manipulating representatives of the sinister United Fruit Company, the big corporation that has made of Puerto Barrios a “company town” but recently downgraded it to a mere reloading point for banana shipments. While Lewis warns Samuel not to linger in town and to get on the train to Guatemala City as soon as possible, he does everything to add to Samuel’s bewilderment and delay. Every time Samuel is set to make a move to leave, something or somebody interferes: the dwarf, Mr. Price, who offers himself as a guide to the one and only “International Hotel,” his bare room there, or George, the hotel clerk/manager who appears to be one of the more helpful people. Others are added to the colourful mix: a defrocked priest, the station master, an old prostitute, or various odd assemblies of people in the streets or cafes/bars… None of these may in fact behave in any way threatening, however, in his mind, Samuel cannot extricate himself from their influence so that he can get to the train station in time.

Unger creates an atmosphere of suspicion, of hidden and open threats that intermingle in Samuel’s mind with images from his past life, thereby escalating not only his uneasiness but also resulting in his own increasingly strange behaviour towards the people he meets. Personal memories from his past life, especially his short-lived disastrous marriage, still haunt him, more so than any of the recent dangerous political changes in Germany. People come at him with either sugary, even creepy, friendliness or with sarcastic comments and aggressive, even violent, behaviour, one can turn into the other without warning. Samuel appears to be caught in a vicious circle. With only basic Spanish, his communication is fraught with misunderstandings. Who is there to talk to openly and, above all, whose advice can he trust?

Unger illustrates Samuel’s increasing disorientation with scenarios and encounters that recall in some ways Kafkaesque hopeless labyrinthine struggles. Yet, here, the protagonist is responsible for much of the precarious situations he finds himself in: His fashion-conscious clothing make him a laughing stock among the locals; his inability to extricate himself safely and in time from several brewing conflicts puts him into physical danger. His reluctance to eat the local food and even drink the water results in stages of temporary mental confusion, even delirium, that make him act totally irrationally. Afterwards, he has no memory of what he said or did or why, for example, he ends up in the muddy water near the harbour, totally wet and soiled, crawling on all fours, searching for his passport…

Will Samuel manage to escape or will he be completely taken over by the locality? What is “the price” of escape – both from Germany and from Puerto Barrios? The novel’s conclusion answers these questions aptly, coincidences not withstanding. Over the course of the three-day story, Unger creates a continuous narrative tension that keeps us as readers engaged. We never quite know, what accident or confrontation awaits the protagonist next. Despite his sympathetic and expansive characterization of Samuel Berkow, I found him less than a likeable protagonist, at times arbitrarily overdrawn and his behaviour somewhat exaggerated. Readers who anticipate – given various publicity materials – that considerable attention in the novel is given to the historical situation in Germany in the nineteen thirties, will be disappointed. Unger’s primary concern is Guatemala.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Akashic Books; 1 edition (April 19, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on David Unger
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Fame: A Novel In Nine Episodes by Daniel Kehlmann Banana by Daniel Koppel

Bibliography (English only):

• Life in the Damn Tropics (2004)
• The Price of Escape (April 2011)

“Just go sit in a café and read the play,” he told us. “Have a coffee. Take a pen.”

He said these things as if they were obvious, as if they were what any normal person would do.

But they weren’t obvious things to most of us. Even if I explored Paris on my own, even if I sat by myself from time to time on the banks of the river, when he suggested them they were different, as if we’d be crazy not to listen. And so those many of us who loved him, we did what he asked. And we felt important, we felt wild, we felt like poets and artists, we felt like adults living in the world with books in our hands, with pens, with passions. And when we returned to school, how many of us prayed he’d ask what we’d done over the weekend? Not only if we’d read but where.

And that’s something.

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (SEP 26, 2011)

Part school story, part existentialism primer, You Deserve Nothing, is a deftly told and absorbing debut. Ostensibly, the story of a troubled teacher who goes too far, You Deserve Nothing is also a thoughtful examination of moral education, of the ways in which we learn to navigate the minefield between duty and freedom, courage and cowardice, the self and the persona. The story, predominately concerned with a scandal that is as shocking as it is mundane, is told from three perspectives some five or so years later: Will Silver’s, a young and charismatic English teacher; Marie de Cléry’s, the beautiful, but insecure daughter of a cruelly elegant mother and a workaholic father; Gilad Fischer’s, an intelligent but lonely boy, the son of an American diplomat and Israeli mother, who idolizes Will.

International School of France is an expensive private school in Paris, and while the majority of students at ISF are “kids who’d been plucked from an Air Force base in Virginia and deposited in Paris, who resented the move, refused to adapt,” the informal style of Will Silver’s Senior Seminar resonates with the privileged offspring of upper-echelon executives and foreign diplomats, kids “who were fluent in several languages and cultures, who were so relaxed, so natural in exquisite apartments at elaborate parties, who moved from country to country, from adult to adolescent with a professional ease.” A dynamic and charismatic teacher, Will pushes his students to think through ideas of duty and freedom, courage and responsibility as they appear in the Bible and the works of Sartre, Camus, Shakespeare, and Faulkner. Although a true believer in the power and importance of literature, Will can’t help but wonder if much of the pleasure of teaching “lies exclusively in the performing, in being adored.” Will enjoys celebrity among the student body, and undoubtedly, his exhortation to pursue your dreams “in spite of fear . . . No matter what. Because you have to. Because you know it’s right. Because you believe in it. Because by not doing it you’re betraying yourself” will remind many of Robin Williams’ character (carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary) in Dead Poet’s Society, and as I read the classroom scenes, I half-expected everyone to jump up on chairs and quote Walt Whitman (O Captain! My Captain).

An obvious association, I know, but I couldn’t help but feel at times that that’s the point, that Will is aping that role – the role of risk-taking, life-changing teacher. This is a book about courage and responsibility, about the ways in which we shirk our freedom and opt out of creating ourselves; moving half-way across the world for a job you love might seem like a brave choice, but for Will it’s an act of cowardice, an abrupt flight from a wife he loves when the pain of his parents’ deaths becomes too much.

Numbing himself with a sort of Sartrean bad faith, Will’s dazzling persona protects him from having to emotionally engage with the world. Even when he flouts conventional morality and starts a sexual relationship with Marie, both a minor and a student at ISF, it is less a principled embrace of desire than a retreat from his despair, having witnessed a murder, and his shame at having done nothing to apprehend the murderer. Even the young and inexperienced Marie starts “to have the impression that [she] was making love to a ghost or something.” However, there are no easy villains here, and Alexander Maksik wisely avoids moralizing their relationship. Although Marie, masking her inexperience and insecurity, plays at being the seductress, Maksik allows her a honest sexuality, and Will, unable to doff his role as the instructor, gently teaches her how to enjoy her sexual nature. This is not to excuse Will, of course. Mickey Gold, ISF’s bumbling biology teacher, hits it on the head when he advises Will that trading in the complicated (and reciprocated) love of a real woman for the empty pleasure of “those adoring eyes” is “a coward’s game.”

Just as Marie’s disappointment with Will is inevitable, Gilad’s hero-worship can only mature through disillusionment. Gilad, in the way of the young, conflates the thrilling ideas being taught with the character of his teacher and when, after a heartbreaking scene with his parents, he sits in a café, reading Camus, it pleases him to think that Will would approve of him “there alone, so early in the morning, paying such attention to simple, beautiful things” and when Gilad admits that his infatuation was so complete he “wanted to go to war for him,”,I was reminded of one of the best instances of hero-worship and disillusionment in literature: Nicholas Rostov’s infatuation with Tsar Alexander in War and Peace (in case there’s any doubt: I mean this as a compliment). In fact, it’s partly  Maksik’s astute understanding of adolescent psychology and mannerism that makes this book so good and his characters so real, as captured here in this bantering dialogue between Will and a former student, Mazin:

“ . . . I miss our talks.”
“But we’re having one now.”
“Yeah, on my free period. Lame.”
“I’m flattered you’d waste your free period with me, Maz.”
“Yeah, well don’t get too excited. Anyway Silver, school’s a waste of my time.”
“Carrot?”
“No man, I don’t want a carrot, I want to know why I shouldn’t just move to LA and start a band.”
“Who says you shouldn’t?”
“Please. Everyone.”
“You realize, right, that this is a tired conversation? You know everything I’m going to tell you. It’s the height of boring.”
“No, I don’t. You’re the height of boring. What are you going to tell me?”

However difficult Marie and Gilad’s loss of innocence is, narrated from a place of relative wisdom many years later, that past pain is softened. In comparison, Will is frustratingly opaque, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the place he was narrating from: had he found the courage to dismantle his armor or was he “teaching the needy in some unspecified African nation” or “living cheap in Thailand,” still a ghost?

You Deserve Nothing is an auspicious debut, both for Alexander Maksik who shows himself here to be an unfairly talented writer and for the new Europa Editions’ imprint, edited by Alice Sebold (of The Lovely Bones fame), Tonga Books. I look forward to seeing more from both.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 73 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alexander Maksik
EXTRAS:	Excerpt and Interview with the author
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah

Bibliography:

• You Deserve Nothing (August 2011)
• A Marker to Measure Drift (July 2013)

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

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (SEP 24, 2011)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography:

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

Lindsay Gordon Mysteries

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

Kate Brannigan Mysteries

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

Dr. Tony Hill & Carol Jordan Mysteries

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

Non-Fiction:

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

“I thought about how sometimes loyalty is the one thing keeping you from dropping to your knees and howling like a poisoned animal in all your aloneness.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns  (SEP 23, 2011)

A collection of stories presents the reviewer with a special set of challenges. Unlike the novel, the story collection cannot be summarized by plot, character or linear narrative. Instead, the reviewer must search for common themes, or seek a common voice or style shared throughout the collection. Maybe that’ll be the hook. But even that simple conceit is challenged here, so cleverly disparate are these tales. The Surf Guru does not lend itself to such easy analysis.

The Surf Guru reads like a challenge to all that is conventional. Just when the reader begins to see a link, one story to the next–all these characters seem marginal, for instance–along comes the atypical character profile and out goes the convention of form. Similarly, from the venue of style, Mr. Dorst seems capable of exercising writer’s muscles not often, if ever, so clearly developed. Indeed, the linking aspect of this collection is its mix of tone, subject and verve. Even though some stories share characters, they have little in common, so as to read more like the chapbook of an extremely talented voice, then a “collection” of stories.

There is, for instance, the high-end wedding cake baker, Kacy, in the story “Dinaburg’s Cake.” Kacy is competing for the wedding business of the daughter of a New York businessman. She views the project as a spring board for her business, an opportunity to take her craft and her business to a new level. Simultaneously, her daughter suffers from trichotillomania (pulling out of one’s hair) and Kacy seems paralyzed by her daughter’s malady. She grows obsessed by the business opportunity while rejecting the obvious home challenge. Although the ending is a tad too neat, the story does not fail to upend the reader’s anticipation.

“Vikings,” a story told in the first person, is completely different. As the story opens we discover the narrator, Phil, awaiting his partner Tracey. “We were almost out of money,” relates Phil, “so Trace went to steal us another bottle of something. We were celebrating. The holiday weekend was almost over…” A couple of pages later, Trace returns. “…he was carrying a baby wrapped in a threadbare beach towel. ‘Hey, Phil,’ he said. ‘Look what I got.’ He held it up like it was a carnival prize. The baby’s eyes were shut, but it wrinkled its little fingers open and closed, so I knew it was alive.” There is a hearty dish of black humor to be consumed reading this book.

The stories often read more like vignettes, like extended studies in the absurd. There is the general of a foreign war who tosses decapitated heads about like bowling balls. An aging beauty who refuses to trade sex for a passing grade on a license to drive a big rig. “Suit yourself,” says the instructor. Another story finds a campaign advisor struggling to keep a loser candidate afloat–and alive–but failing. The title story portrays an aging surfing champion, turned entrepreneur watching an upstart generation of young surfers from his balcony, all but one, wearing a wetsuit emblazoned with his company name. We learn, among other things, that his wife “once bought a cable-knit doggie sweater at a church craft fair, but the dog bit her when she tried to force its legs into the sleeves.” In a deft conclusion to this abrupt vignette, we learn that, “Later, he and the dog played fetch with the sweater until it fell apart. From inside the house, she watched them with mercury eyes.” This is a voice with perfect pitch.

The story “Splitters” is composed as an academic’s lost manuscript, an acerbic review of famous botanists. It is complete with footnotes, editor’s comments and vintage photographs of the subjects. The “author,” Hartford Anderton Quilcock, has an axe to grind and intended on titling the manuscript, “Botanists in the Age of Quilcock: A field Guide to Frauds, Fools, Thieves, and Demagogues.” The story is perhaps the most extreme example of the author’s reach. It is clever and smart and sassy–completely original. But for this reader, it lacked the clear-eyed human aspect of the other stories.

Dorst is an original. This collection of stories, following the success of his highly-praised first novel, Alive in Necropolis, does not disappoint.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (August 2, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Doug Dorst
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: and they were happy by Helen Phillips I’d Knew You’d Be Lovely by Alethea Black

Bibliography:

• Alive in Necropolis (2008)
• The Surf Guru: Stories (July 2010)

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

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

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (SEP 17, 2011)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography:

• Incognito (July 2011)
• Maisie Villiers

“I am imprinting this upon my memory,” she said. “The southern exposure of a winter morning light, the sounds of thaw, water dripping off the eaves, the squirrels…Sometimes I seem to know, in the split of a second of a moment, that it will be a moment I’ll want to keep.”

Book Review:

Review by Vesna McMaster  (SEP 12, 2011)

This is a beautiful book. If you want to read something that has the same effect as gazing at a vast and perfect ink-wash painting, calming and yet utterly absorbing, reach for this. Like the tiniest haze of seeping ink will be skillful enough to convey a distant village nestling in the hills, or the flight of a crane; there is not a word misplaced in this small and lovely work. Its theme is poetry, and indeed the exquisite style does full justice to the subject.

The plot follows the lives of a handful of graduate poetry students and their teacher. The initial focus is on their interactions and early relationships during university years, but as the story progresses the camera lens zooms with painful precision on subsequent pinpoints of time.

The technique of the writing is such that it leaves one with an impression of overlapping layers rather than a well-woven tapestry, the latter of which is the more usual impression in a well-plotted novel. Life depicted here is more a palimpsest than a continuous narrative. There’s an almost fatalistic crystallisation of the view of the past seeping into the present (or the ongoing) that’s highly peculiar, and entirely seductive.

It’s even more astonishing to find such alluring excellence in a book that is essentially about writing. Generally, tomes ranting away about the torment of literary endeavours and the social inadequacies of their perpetrators are best put out of their misery immediately by means of a swift bonfire. But rather than wallow first-hand in the self-absorption and uncertainty as so many of these efforts tend to, Chang depicts a view onto these same themes that’s as unnervingly detached as a high-resolution spy satellite picture: taken from space, but accurate enough to read the print on a newspaper. The style is formal, bordering on the stilted, the tone even and quiet.

Two of the central characters are the poetry student friends Roman and Bernard. Roman is driven, moderately gifted, insistently handsome and, eventually, inordinately successful. Bernard is his counterpart, with caricature-like introversion, religious torment and more than a hint of obsessive compulsive disorder born out in poverty, and the novel makes no bones about his role in the narrative as the “traditional” poet.

These extreme stereotypes should be flat shadows by rights. Instead they’re almost luminous, depicted by refraction, like a painter using the space that is not to denote the presence of an object. These two characters vie with each other, in their peculiar way, for the attentions of their teacher Miranda Sturgis, the acclaimed and established poet. Their differing approaches, viewpoints and degree of success in gaining her approval and attention are at the core of the novel.

Along with the much-debated question of “why write poetry,” the novel explores facets of the role of the teacher (or mentor), the relationship of the mentor with the recipient, and the progression of the student in turn becoming mentor. The development here is linked structurally and thematically to the ageing process, which gives the novel as a whole a feeling of natural evolution; something organic and inevitable. Perhaps this is why I can’t remember reading anything with so little a sense of contrivance. Despite, or perhaps because of, the meticulous precision with which it’s put together.

The character reveal is also atypical. It’s not so much a reader discovering an already-formed entity but the entity and the reader making the discovery together. Again, the sense of extreme detachment fused with extreme intimacy is slightly dizzying.

If you read action thrillers exclusively, then I suppose this book is not for you. Apart from that I’d recommend it to anybody. You don’t need to know about writing or poetry, just be ready to think about why art is necessary for life. And read a jolly good story in the meantime, complete with romance, betrayal, suspense and verve. It’s quiet, but it’s a page-turner.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 15 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (September 12, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Lan Samantha Change
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another book on poetry: The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

Bibliography:

• Hunger: A Novella (1998)
• Inheritance (2004)
• All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (September 2010)

“Her eyes came open. Fully open. But she could no longer see the Abyssinian mountain that the Sabbath sun had turned like fire…
She could no longer see anything. She was blind.
For a long and disconcerting moment, she did not know who she was or where she was.  Only five to eight seconds later did she begin to realize that she had been dreaming.”

Book Review:

Review by Friedericke  (SEP 10, 2011)

Makeda is the title character of Randall Robinson’s astounding, thought provoking, and highly engaging novel. A blind retired “laundress,” Makeda’s life is anchored in her tiny, often sun-filled, parlour in Richmond, Virginia. Her modest circumstances, after a life of hardship, stand in stark contrast to her appearance and demeanor: at home, at church and in the market, she is usually clad in richly embroidered beautiful African gowns and she radiates wisdom and emotional strength, instilling respect wherever she goes. Some unknown visitors leave gifts for her, or speak to her as if she were somebody else…

Often, when she lifts her unseeing eyes toward the sun, her posture and diction change: she appears to have moved from one instant to the next – like a time traveller – into a far away place. She dreams “in pictures – color pictures, pictures of people, pictures of odd places – though she had never in her life seen a human soul…” she tells Gray, her youngest grandson, later. Recalling her dreams in great detail, she will only allow Gray, her “spirit child,” to share her secrets. “I remember at that point she said to me: Things are almost never what you, with your two eyes, can see them being. Sometimes they are less, but most of the time they are more. Worlds and worlds more, son.”

Makeda’s dreams, the “special ones,” take her to different places in Africa, regions that all have a special spiritual connection to African-American history. The dream stories are so vividly told, and, with each recurrence, grow in such intricate detail, that they pull the reader into those past lives just as much as Gray, letting us forget that it may be “just a dream.” Or is it? Is there more to it? Makeda knows where she has been and who she is in her dreams; did these places really exist at some time in the past? Is there surviving evidence of them today? Why those places and not others? What are the connections of those people to her own life and time? Many questions occupy her mind. Her curiosity grows to the point that she, after warning her grandson not to share his knowledge with anybody, instructs him to investigate any factual bases of what she tells him. Especially the amazing story of the Dogon people in Mali, West Africa, fascinates both: Dogon cosmology claims to have known about Sirius and his three stars hundreds or, maybe, thousands of years before science could prove their claim. Gray, by then a college student, will have to find a way to make this journey for his grandmother, and as it turns out, also for himself.

Robinson, recognized for his extensive non-fiction writing on topics that range from African-American socio-politics to international human rights, ventures with Makeda beyond any confines of a more traditional novel. The very moving account of Gray’s coming-of-age journey, the depiction of his close ties to his grandmother, set against the backdrop of the family’s difficult circumstances in nineteen fifties and sixties, represent by themselves a richly rewarding story. Yet, Makeda’s dream travels are more than a key for Gray’s own journey in search for identity and, eventual, love. They are like virtual spiritual doors that Robinson opens that lead us into his multi-layered vision of a broad-based African-American identity that, while recognizing its contemporary challenges, is intimately connecting it back to its African roots and its African historical and spiritual heritage.

To expand on his theme, the author introduces fictional and existing expert voices that speak to the young people in Gray’s college environment. For many students and readers, these are provocative and challenging propositions. For Gray, through the many talks with his grandmother, they are, more than anything, confirmation of his learning and evolving vision of his own role in life.

Robinson is an exquisite writer and stylist who brings the different narrative strands and themes harmoniously together and into one fascinating and enriching reading experience. I want to add on a personal level, that I found Robinson’s choices for Makeda’s “dream places and times” highly relevant for the themes of the novel. For me, they have been meaningful also as they reminded me of my own journeys of discovery into Africa and, especially of my very own very similar experience in Mali’s Dogon region.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 5 readers
PUBLISHER:	OpenLens; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Randall Robinson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker

Bibliography:

• Makeda (August 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America (1998)
• The Debt: What America Owes the Blacks (2000)
• The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other (DATE)
• Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land (2004)
• An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (2007)