“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 24 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bywater Books (August 23, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
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)
• Cross and Burn (2013)

Non-Fiction:

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

“We’re never gonna escape this,” Paps said. “Never.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (SEP 22, 2011)

We The Animals in this wonderful debut novel refers to three brothers, close in age, growing up in upstate New York. They are the Three Musketeers bound strongly together not just because of geographical isolation but because of cultural separateness too. The brothers are born to a white mother and a Puerto Rican father—they are half-breeds confused about their identity and constrained by desperate and mind-numbing poverty.

This wild and ferocious debut is narrated by the youngest of the three, now grown, looking back on his childhood. It’s a coming-of-age story told in lyrical sentences that are exquisitely crafted. And while there are many moments of beauty in here, there are also ones of searing violence.

The boys can do nothing but stand back and watch as the intensely abusive relationship between the parents plays out everyday and it’s almost worse because the evidence creeps up after the fact. One day, Mom’s eyes are swollen shut and cheeks turned purple “He told us the dentist had been punching on her after she went under; he said that’s how they loosen up the teeth before they rip them out,” the narrator, barely aged seven, recalls. The severe abuse is compounded and made even more heartbreaking by the boys’ innocence and gullibility—they buy this lie and many others, whole.

The daily struggle for survival is heart wrenching yet without melodrama. “We stayed at the table for another forty-five minutes, running our fingers around our empty bowls, pressing our thumb tips into the cracker plate and licking the crumbs off,” Torres writes about one of the many evenings when one can of soup and a few crackers would have to make do for all of them. The boys don’t quite understand why their parents are seemingly happy one moment and why their mother slips into deep bouts of depression the next.

One of the many beautiful chapters in the book is one called “Night Watch” (each short chapter in this slim volume has a name). In it, the boys accompany Dad to work when he finds work at a night job. They have to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags in front of the vending machines, out of plain sight. They are here (and not home) because Mom is at her job working the night shift at a local brewery. The next morning, when a white man comes to relieve Dad of his duties, he spots the three musketeers and can guess at the situation. From the argument that follows, the boys already know that Dad has probably lost this job too. The family’s otherness, especially as perceived by the boys, is just beautifully rendered here.

As the boys enter adolescence, the narrator immediately knows he is separate and apart from his brothers. “They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent,” Torres writes. It wouldn’t be a reveal to say that the difference lies in the narrator’s sexuality, which can be glimpsed early on, if one pays close attention.

In a recent interview, the author Justin Torres has said: “I think that everybody struggles with family in some way and I hope that they can come away realizing that you can go back to those experiences and find something beautiful in everything and that you can make art out of your experiences.” With We The Animals, Torres has crafted just that—a beautiful and memorable work of art. This slender novel packs a powerful punch.

Justin Torres proves you don’t have to pen a giant volume to write precociously about huge themes such as family, race, adolescence and sexuality. Of course Torres writes so beautifully that you almost wish that he did.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 49 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	An interview with Justin Torres
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Bibliography:

• We the Animals (August 2011)

“He wasn’t a student anymore, at least formally. He was nearly twenty-three and out of school for a year. Whether he liked it or not, many things had started to merge and coalesce in an unsortable tangle, enlarge and expand and grow complications like mold.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (FEB 21, 2011)

“What is it About Twenty-Somethings?” asked a recent story in the New York Times. The article—one of the most popular on the newspaper’s website—talked about the “changing timetable for adulthood” these days and the concept of “emerging adulthood.” The article’s author, Robin Marantz Henig, wrote: “The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.”

Robbie and Maize, the principal characters in Ralph Sassone’s immensely readable debut novel, The Intimates, totally fit the profile of these restless and searching young adults. As the book opens, the two are still in high school; Maize nurses a crush on her guidance counselor and when Robbie’s path crosses hers, it doesn’t immediately amount to much. Robbie is gay—a fact he doesn’t realize until much later in high school.

Maize and Robbie meet again during the college years and it is then that they become inseparable friends; after graduating they become roommates in New York City. They also become each other’s sounding boards as each goes through a different form of sexual awakening and through mediocre entry-level jobs.

Robbie has a brief but torrid affair with a young and needy college professor while Maize loses her virginity to a college admissions officer. Sassone chronicles the characters’ slow march toward adulthood through their sexual maturation as well. Towards the end when Robbie finds out that his lover, Daniel, is really not the ideal partner, you can tell Robbie has become wiser in forming this judgment.

As much as one can fault Robbie and Maize for their listlessness, you wonder how much of a role their parents play in their general malaise. The two are united by a general sense of resentment toward their parents—Robbie and Maize are convinced they can never measure up to their parents’ high expectations. When Robbie lands an unpaid internship after graduating from college, his mother’s acerbic reaction underlines the point: “Terrif, Robbie. You spend years getting honors so you can type and file and run other people’s errands for forty hours a week. And for free.”

“Meaningful changes didn’t happen when you expected and that you didn’t graduate when everybody else claimed you did, with ceremonies and celebrations and moving vans, with diplomas and severed ribbons cut to applause,” Sassone explains in The Intimates. He does a great job of exploring the lives of his young protagonists through their sexual awakening and eventually, as they stand on the cusp of real adulthood. Towards the end of the book, they have “No boyfriends, no significant new relationships, no parties or meetings or avenues where they fully belonged, no serious prospects, no commitment to graduate school or rigorous self-education or anything else.” Nevertheless the book never feels like a drag probably because the characters are so actively invested in making things turn out right.

Back to the Times article, emerging adulthood was defined by “identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between” and “a sense of possibilities.”

In (arguably) the best scene in the book, the older, twenty-something Maize comes across a newspaper announcement showing Bethany Campbell, a once popular girl in high school, now married to an investment banker. Even if everything about Bethany at school screamed “I Will Marry Well” Maize is shaken by the finality of the announcement and worse, the ordinariness of it. “Had she expected Bethany to be exceptional? To break out of the cage of her former identity and become someone completely unexpected?” Maize wonders. The answer is yes, she did. The pain she feels is of course not just for Bethany but for all their younger selves—hers and Robbie’s included. Here Maize mourns the slow erosion of the “sense of possibilities.” Like it or not, adulthood is right around the corner. And Maize already suspects it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (February 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ralph Sassone
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another book about friendships: The Legacy by Kirstin Tranter

Bibliography:

• The Intimates (February 2011)