The Inky Whisk

published January 19, 2016
Little, Brown and Company

Fans of the well-established, well-loved John Rebus series will find much to like in this 20th outing. When a government prosecutor is murdered, Rebus is called out of retirement by his former partner, DI Siobahn Clarke, to consult. Then shots are taken at his old nemesis, gangster Big Ger Cafferty, in his home. It is soon apparent these cases entwine but the how is buried deep in the past.  Meanwhile Rebus’ former work nemesis and ex-Complaints (a.k.a. internal affairs) officer DI Malcom Fox is assisting a visiting team doing surveillance on a Glasgow crime family that is after something in Edinburgh.

Fox and Rebus spend more time in each other’s company as colleagues rather than adversaries this time, giving grudging acknowledgment to the skills each brings to police work, helping to round out Fox’s character. Clarke is, as always, the perfect foil for Rebus, and took more of a lead in this book. But it is the evolution of the endless sparring match between Rebus and Cafferty, the underworld upheaval to fill the vacuum being left as aging gangsters like Cafferty fade away, and the pesky way that bodies refuse to stay buried in Edinburgh that makes “Even Dogs in the Wild” an exceptional entry in the series.

An advance galley of this book was kindly provided by the publisher with no expectations other than an honest opinion.

published January 19, 2015
St. Martins Press

Anna Forster has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in her late 30s. Once the disease has progressed to a certain point she and her twin brother agree it is time to  move to an assisted-living facility, Rosalind House. They chose Rosalind in part because there is one other resident near her age: Luke. He doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, but a similarly tragic form of dementia. Meanwhile, Eve has come to Rosalind House seeking employment and a chance to rebuild her life with her young daughter after suffering a devastating personal loss of her own. The novel tells their stories through alternating chapters.

Luke and Anna form a bond over the course of the book that raises questions about the nature of love and responsibility toward those with diminished capacities. Hepworth moves the reader back and forth in time between the two women giving a slightly disorienting effect that keeps the  pages turning. The reveals unfold slowly and, in some cases surprisingly.

This touching tale is a good choice for book clubs, and fans of Lisa Genova.

An advance galley of this book was kindly provided by the publisher with no expectations other than an honest opinion.

Do you ever get on a roll with your reading where you love every book you pick up? Where you don’t feel like waving the white flag on a single title? Where your nose is stuck so far in a book that maybe calls go to voice mail, the dog has to bark at the back door more than once, and the kids have to remind you that you PROMISED you would make lunch, like, half an hour ago? Well, I have been in that reading nirvana lately. It’s a nice place to be and it certainly bodes well for the year ahead.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Random House
published January 12, 2016

I read this at least a month ago and I still find myself returning to it in my mind. Strout did something extraordinary with just over 200 pages. Not a word is wasted in this spare, beautiful tale of family, art, and how childhood poverty wreaks a kind of violence on families and individuals that can persist.

Lucy is recalling a period in the 1980s when she went into the hospital for an appendectomy and wound up staying for weeks, fighting off an infection. The mother she hasn’t spoken to in years comes to stay with her for a time. Slowly, through “where are they now” conversations about the people that populated Lucy’s childhood – a kind of neutral ground topic for them –  we learn where Lucy came from, and the effort it took to extricate herself.  The affection and bond between mother and daughter is apparent but neither can get past their own barriers for long.

This lovely, haunting book is a joy and a heartbreak. I expect it will make it onto many “best of” lists at the end of the year. Highly recommended.

The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian
Doubleday
published January 5, 2016

This title is a nail-biter about one poor decision turning into consequence after worsening consequence. The bad decision in this case is Richard Chapman agreeing to host his younger brother’s bachelor party at his Westchester home. He assumed one of his brother’s friends would organize for a stripper to be there, and there was. In fact, there were two. Along with two intimidating Russian bodyguards. What he didn’t expect was the strippers murdering their bodyguards in his living room and driving away into the night.

What follows is the story of Richard, his wife, and daughter coping with the murder becoming the sordid news story of the moment, alternating with the tragic story of one of the strippers, Alexandra. We learn how she went from schoolgirl and ballet student in earthquake-ravaged Armenia to bachelor party “talent” and now doubly a fugitive – wanted for questioning by the police, and wanted back by the gangsters that brought her to America.

Her harrowing tale contrasts with Richard’s comfortable upper-middle-class naiveté. He tells himself the strippers he sees on stage are really a “sociology major with a flat stomach” or  a Brazilian who “viewed herself as a feminist capitalist.” The more problems caused by the case’s notoriety, the more he mentally catalogues his almost-the-best material possessions: the “wannabe Bierstadt painting” ruined by blood spatter, the “faux antique divan.” It’s never a car, it’s a pewter gray Audi. He is quietly irked when the paper describes his house as the smallest on a street full of mansions. It’s the comforting language of Stuff and he clings to it as his carefully curated American Dream frays.

Bohjalian knows how to keep the reader turning pages. The issues around sex workers, particularly international, that he raises make this a good choice for book clubs looking to sink their teeth into a very serious issue.

American Housewife by Helen Ellis
Doubleday
published January 12, 2016

This is another slim volume – a sharp collection of (very) loosely connected short stories and vignettes about ladies who lunch – and who might be heard to exclaim at one of these lunches “my breath is the Pinot Grigio-est!” There is plenty to make the reader laugh out loud – from the demented anarchy  of the “Wainscoting War” to the chilling (but ever amusing) oppression of “My Novel is Brought to You by the Good People at Tampax.”

You can easily devour this dark confection all at once or dip into these stories of a privileged, rule-bound, and slightly deranged milieu here and there as you find a moment. Ellis has something to say – something serious when you look past the absurdity – and a wickedly funny way of saying it.

Advance galleys of these books were kindly provided by the publishers with no expectations other than an honest opinion.

I didn’t intend for a month to go by between posts but the World’s Worst Cold had different ideas. By the time I recovered from The Cold (mostly – I’m still the proud owner of an annoying cough), I was well behind on Christmas preparations.

So now the gifts have been opened, the friends have visited, the rum cake has been scarfed, and it is time to get back to books. The worst thing about being sick was how difficult it was to read more than a few pages at a time. It was much easier to prop the iPad next to me and mindlessly watch Netflix while drifting in and out of sleep. Luckily I had two fantastic books on hand for when I was reading.

So if you received a gift card to your local bookseller and you don’t know what to get, I happily recommend the following two books. (If you didn’t receive a gift card, or you ran out first thing on the 26th and spent it, get thee to a Library!)

Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid
Atlantic Monthly Press
published December 1, 2015

If you are a lover of moody mysteries with despicable and depraved villains, and complicated heroes then you must already know the work of master crime writer Val McDermid. “Splinter the Silence” is the 9th outing for DCI (retired in this book) Carol Jordan and criminal psychologist/profiler Tony Hill. Jordan’s team is disbanded and scattered. She is hiding away in the country, nursing wounds through application of copious amounts of alcohol. She suffers a humiliating fall from grace and Hill arrives to help her climb back whether she wants the help or not.

A chance to return to policing comes when she is approached to head a multi-county major crimes unit with members hand-picked by her. A good part of the book focuses on efforts to reassemble her previous team and reestablishing the grievances of old rivals and foes in the Bradford Police. But this wouldn’t be a Jordan/Hill book without a serial killer and Hill is quietly making connections from a spate of suicides – women who were recently targeted by internet trolls.

There is much focus on personal lives and personal demons in “Splinter the Silence,” with the hunt for the killer taking a smaller role but that does not detract from what is a very good entry to this series, that seems to be setting characters up for a next phase. The chase is still a thrill, the Jordan/Hill dynamic is as compelling as ever, and some intriguing threads left dangling should leave fans eager for the next installment. Readers new to the series should be able to jump in and enjoy without confusion – but why not treat yourself and start at the beginning? Pick up “The Mermaids Singing” and see where it all began.

The Verdict by Nick Stone
Pegasus
published December 7, 2015

I have been recommending “The Verdict” to everyone lately. This London-based legal thriller kept me turning pages well past my bedtime. When I first saw the page count (512) I hesitated but the story pulled me along so well I didn’t once want to skip through sections just to get ahead.

Terry Flynt is a man who spent a good part of his young adulthood getting in his own way and squandering opportunity. He is paying the price now by working to maintain hard-won sobriety and struggling to support a family as a lowly legal clerk in a prestigious law firm. He is older than the typical entry-level clerk and that marks him for bullying in the competitive atmosphere – bullying that ramps up when he gets a plum trial assignment because he happened to be the one who answered the phone. If he does well, it could lead to promotion and a company scholarship to finish his law degree.

The brass ring recedes when he discovers he must help defend wealthy, successful Vernon James, a man Flynt loathes. James and Flynt were childhood friends – inseparable, until James betrayed Flynt. Now James stands accused of the murder of a woman in his hotel suite and Flynt will need to reopen some old wounds along the way to finding out what happened that night.

This plot is full of satisfying twists and surprise revelations with a good mix of mystery and action. Just when I thought I knew the inevitable outcome, the outcome became much less inevitable. Characters are for the most part well-developed, especially Flynt. This made a lot of 2015 “Best of” lists, and for good reason. Highly recommended.

Happy Reading!

Advance galleys of these books were kindly provided by the publishers with no expectations other than an honest opinion.

Published November 10, 2015
Minotaur Press

A new Charles Lenox mystery is always a good excuse to clear one’s schedule and find a comfortable chair to inhabit. Lenox’s ninth outing, “Home By Nightfall” is up there with my favorites in the series.

We catch up with gentleman sleuth Lenox in the Autumn of 1876. The private detection agency he founded with two partners in the series’ previous title (“The Laws of Murder,” 2014) is finally finding its feet. Except for the fact that he is spending most of his time in the office instead of out on cases, and that his first-of-its-kind in England agency quickly spawned a less-than-scrupulous rival agency, Lenox is enjoying being (gasp!) “in trade.”

In the opening pages we learn London is abuzz with the disappearance of a visiting German pianist named Muller. It’s a baffling locked-room mystery and solving it would be a feather in the cap of his agency. It would also be a feather in his rival’s cap. But Lenox also has family to tend to – his brother, a recent widower is mourning alone at the family estate in Sussex.

And so we have Lenox splitting time between London and Markethouse, the village of his boyhood. It isn’t long before a nervous villager seeks his services on a curious break-in. That and a series of seemingly unrelated thefts in the quiet village quickly escalate into something more sinister.

Finch is an excellent writer who gets even better with every book. He brings the era and locales into focus with attention to the rich details of the day-to-day and an ever-growing cast of characters. Often when a novel has a secondary mystery I will find myself rushing through whichever I find less interesting to get back to the storyline I want; however, “Home By Nightfall” had me enjoying every page. Finch also provides just the right amount of backstory so a lack of familiarity with the previous books shouldn’t hinder readers’ enjoyment of this excellent cold-weather read.

Happy reading!

An advance galley of this book was kindly provided by the publisher with no expectations other than an honest opinion.

Published November 3, 2015
Atria Books

It came late in the year, but I believe I have finally read my favorite book of 2015. Allende’s latest is a beautiful meditation on love, aging, and regret explored through the relationship of two disparate women: privileged and elderly Alma Belasco and young, haunted Irina Bazili.

Irina has found peace and refuge from her troubled past working with the residents of the Lark House senior residence. But she is drawn to one particular resident – Alma. Alma is a successful fabric artist and member of an old respected San Francisco family. That same family is baffled when one day Alma declares she no longer wishes to preside over charity functions, or live on the sprawling family estate, Sea Cliff. Instead she packs the bare essentials (including her cat), and moves to Lark House. Soon she has Irina working part time for her, helping her sort out a lifetime of papers, clippings, and photos. This is partly to help her grandson Seth, who has long been working on a book about his family. Seth and Irina wonder: who is sending Alma gardenias and mysterious letters each week? And where does she disappear to for days at a time?

We are taken in and out of various points in Alma’s life, from her childhood when she was sent from Poland to live at Sea Cliff with her relatives in the U.S. to wait out the war (a wait that would never end) to young adulthood and beyond. It is at Sea Cliff, we learn, that as a child she befriended Ichimei Fukuda, the son of the Bellascos’ gardener. Irina’s story is also revealed, a bit at a time, but it is Alma’s tale that is the centerpiece of this novel.

The Japanese Lover kept surprising me. Just as I felt the story was coming to a natural resolution it would deepen or change or twist. The ache of regret over choices made, or made for you, and their ramifications over a lifetime is always in the background but still the book manages to not be utterly bleak or hopeless.  (That said, I may have had to dab at my eyes once or twice.)

An advance galley of this book was kindly provided by the publisher with no expectations other than an honest opinion.

Published October 27, 2015
Simon & Schuster

Scott’s latest title in her series of “Madame Chic” books is a gentle exhortation to cultivate a little poise and grace in ourselves and our surroundings, whether it be the home, the office, or the escalator at the mall. Like past titles, Scott draws on the example of effortless elegance she absorbed as an exchange student in Paris from her host family, presided over by the “Madame Chic” of the title.

I admit I love a good self-improvement book. Habits, happiness, mindfulness, de-cluttering, etiquette – they are my guilty pleasure and I dip into one every few months. Many of these titles share a particular trait: much of what is between the covers is, well, obvious – a matter of common sense. But when presented well, or at least charmingly, with an engaging voice these books can be a little refresher course in gracious living, or a reminder to shore up resolve that has slipped over time.

Scott’s genial tone makes this a pleasant afternoon read when you are in the mood for a book of this sort (if you are ever even in such a mood.) If you know a younger person just getting their bearings in the adult world who likes this type of book then “Polish Your Poise” could make an excellent gift.

An advance galley of this book was kindly provided by the publisher with no expectations other than an honest opinion.