Fiction Reviews: Week of 1/22/2007
by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 1/22/2007
Free Food for Millionaires
Min Jin Lee. Warner, $24.99 (512p) ISBN 978-0-446-58108-0
In her noteworthy debut, Lee filters through a lively postfeminist perspective a tale of first-generation immigrants stuck between stodgy parents and the hip new world. Lee's heroine, 22-year-old Casey Han, graduates magna cum laude in economics from Princeton with a taste for expensive clothes and an "enviable golf handicap," but hasn't found a "real" job yet, so her father kicks her out of his house. She heads to her white boyfriend's apartment only to find him in bed with two sorority girls. Next stop: running up her credit card at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. Casey's luck turns after a chance encounter with Ella Shim, an old acquaintance. Ella gives Casey a place to stay, while Ella's fiancé gets Casey a "low pay, high abuse" job at his investment firm and Ella's cousin Unu becomes Casey's new romance. Lee creates a large canvas, following Casey as she shifts between jobs, careers, friends, mentors and lovers; Ella and Ted as they hit a blazingly rocky patch; and Casey's mother, Leah, as she belatedly discovers her own talents and desires. Though a first-novel timidity sometimes weakens the narrative, Lee's take on contemporary intergenerational cultural friction is wide-ranging, sympathetic and well worth reading. (May)
The Rope WalkCarrie Brown. Pantheon, $24 (336p) ISBN 978-0-375-42463-2
Like Brown's first novel, Rose's Garden, her sixth sets themes of tolerance and understanding in a picture-postcard setting. In a Vermont town where a description of the local library racks up a dozen adjectives (including "tall," "bracing," "rippling," "silvery" and "delicious"), children collect butterflies and recite "Hiawatha." When Kenneth Fitzgerald, the artist who sponsored the library's transformation from dreary to spectacular, returns to his childhood home dying of AIDS, he asks 10-year-old Alice MacCauley and her neighbors' manic visiting mixed-race grandson, Thelonious Swann— "a tawny little lion cub"—to come by and read to him in the afternoons. Alice's mother died young; her father teaches Shakespeare and recites it around the house (while her older brothers blow smoke rings), so Alice is primed for literature. All three are drawn into Lewis and Clark's journals as Alice reads them aloud; the explorers' historic journey stands in for Fitzgerald's journey toward death and for Alice and Theo's trip into nascent first love and adulthood. The rope Alice walks isn't very high off the ground, but Brown keeps it taut and stretched across some engaging vistas. (May)
Chemistry and Other StoriesRon Rash. Picador, $13 (240p) ISBN 978-0-312-42508-1
An award-winning Southern novelist (The World Made Straight), short story writer (Casualties) and poet (Raising the Dead), Rash returns to short fiction with 13 snapshots of contemporary Appalachia. There are double-wide trailers, aging cars and lost souls "resigned to bad times and trouble," but there's also, in "Honesty," a lit professor struggling to get out from under his rich, cynical wife. In the title story, a chemistry teacher prescribed Elavil and shock treatments for a "chemical imbalance" seeks emotional ballast in the backwoods evangelical religion of his youth. In "Blackberries in June" a young couple—he a logger, she a waitress—buy a fixer-upper house, spend their free time repairing it and plan to take night classes at the local community college, but family demands and random events conspire to keep them down. In the haunting "Pemberton's Bride," the local lumber-mill owner brings home a Boston bride; she quickly adapts to the rough and tumble surroundings, remorselessly dispatching any threat to her position or to her husband's business interests, real or imagined. There are pacing problems throughout, particularly when characters get let off the hook with hurried resolutions. But the setups are imaginative, and Rash gets the feelings right. (May)
The Naming of the Dead: An Inspector Rebus NovelIan Rankin. Little, Brown, $24.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-316-05757-8
At the start of Rankin's overly complex 18th book to feature Edinburgh's Insp. John Rebus (after 2005's Fleshmarket Alley), Ben Webster, a Scottish delegate to the Group of Eight summit, dies suspiciously a couple of days before the world's leaders gather in Scotland in 2005. While his colleagues are preoccupied by ensuring security at the conference, Rebus is devoting his energy to the murder of Cyril Colliar, a recently released violent sex offender. No one really cares about the case except for Rebus, and that's mainly because Colliar was muscle for Edinburgh's crime boss "Big Ger" Cafferty, with whom Rebus has tangled in earlier novels. Rebus is more than willing to flout authority in his dogged pursuit of Colliar's killer, who may be a vigilante intent on punishing rapists. Webster's death, never wholly resolved, does connect with Rebus's investigation, but the link is tenuous at best. Rankin deftly captures the mad circus—the media, the security, the demonstrators—of the G8 summit, but this background muddies the narrative waters. He's at his best when he focuses on Rebus and the city of Edinburgh itself. 6-city author tour. (Apr.)
The Testament of Gideon MackJames Robertson. Viking, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-670-03844-2
Robertson offers in his absorbing American debut (two novels have been published in the U.K.) the cleverly framed autobiography of a Scottish minister who confronts the devil. A brief foreword claims the book is an autobiography penned by Gideon Mack, a Church of Scotland minister who, after allegedly encountering the devil, becomes a pariah and madman before disappearing. Raised by a harsh minister father, Gideon abandons faith at an early age, but later discovers it's possible to "be a Christian without involving Christ very much" and secures the pulpit at a small coastal church where he proves to be a gifted preacher. After his wife dies in a traffic accident, Gideon consummates a long-held obsession with old friend Elsie, whose husband, John, is also a longtime friend. A conflicted Gideon, while walking with another minister, falls into a gorge and is presumed dead. But he appears downstream, only slightly injured, three days later. His survival is miraculous, but his account of what happened is scandalous: he was saved by the devil. Gideon's struggle to find meaning in his experience leads to his undoing. Gideon's sly unreliability is cloaked by Robertson's mastery of language and command of the elements of fiction; the combination is addictive and captivating. (Apr.)
The Midnight ChoirGene Kerrigan. Europa, $14.95 paper (368p) ISBN 978-1-933372-26-6
The current Irish economic and real estate boom forms the backdrop for the assured second novel from Irish journalist Kerrigan (after Little Criminals). Any smalltime hood with an entrepreneurial bent and a workable scam can quickly work himself into the ranks of the millionaires produced by the boom, forcing police departments all over the country to scramble to keep up. In Dublin, Det. Insp. Harry Synnot, a man with an acute sense of morality and justice, is working a rape and a jewelry store robbery, manipulating his snitch, Dixie Peyton, and being groomed for a job in the Serious Crime Department of Europol. Meanwhile in Galway, policeman Joe Mills is investigating a mysterious double murder, probably committed by a man he's just rescued from a rooftop suicide attempt. While much of the fun is in puzzling out unfamiliar words like "gurriers" and "gaff," it's Kerrigan's firm control of the procedural genre and the breathtaking twist he gives his plot that show him to be a master of the form. (Apr.)
The Quilter's HomecomingJennifer Chiaverini. Simon & Schuster, $25 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7432-6022-0
Chiaverini's latest Elm Creek Quilts installment suffers at the hands of its lackluster hero and heroine. Newlyweds Elizabeth and Henry leave Elizabeth's sprawling Pennsylvania family farm in 1925 to work a Southern California ranch Henry has bought sight unseen. As they ride the train out west, Chiaverini fills in the backstory of the Rodriguez family, the ranch's original owners, who lost the land in the 1880s. When the couple arrive in the picturesque valley, they discover they have been swindled into the poorhouse by an unscrupulous land broker who sold them a fake deed. Determined not to crawl back to their families, Henry works as a hired hand, while Elizabeth cooks for the Jorgenson family, the ranch's true owners. Dispirited and resentful, Henry rejects Elizabeth's encouragement and support, and Elizabeth must decide if the marriage is worth fighting for. On the page, the relationship between Henry and Elizabeth teeters between dull and nonexistent—which hinders the story of a young couple striving to make their marriage work. (Apr.)
What the Dead Know Laura Lippman. Morrow, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-112885-1
Edgar-winner Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series (No Good Deeds, etc.), shows she's as good as Peter Abrahams and other A-list thriller writers with this outstanding stand-alone. A driver who flees a car accident on a Maryland highway breathes new life into a 30-year-old mystery—the disappearance of the young Bethany sisters at a shopping mall—after she later tells the police she's one of the missing girls. As soon as the mystery woman drops that bombshell, she clams up, placing the new lead detective, Kevin Infante, in a bind, as he struggles to gain her trust while exploring the odd holes in her story. Deftly moving between past and present, Lippman presents the last day both sisters, Sunny and Heather, were seen alive from a variety of perspectives. Subtle clues point to the surprising but plausible solution of the crime and the identity of the mystery woman. Lippman, who has also won Shamus, Agatha, Anthony and Nero Wolfe awards, should gain many new fans with this superb effort. 9-city author tour. (Mar.)
The Year of FogMichelle Richmond. Delacorte, $20 (384p) ISBN 978-0-385-34011-3
In this spare page-turner, Richmond (Dream of the Blue Room) draws complex tensions from a the set setup of a child gone missing. Photographer Abby Mason stops on San Francisco's Ocean Beach with her fiancé Jake's six-year-old daughter, Emma, to photograph a seal pup; by the time Abby looks up, Emma has disappeared. Abby, who narrates, flashes back to her growing relationship with high school teacherJake, and sketches its transformation over the course of the search. Emma's mother, Lisbeth (who abandoned the family three years earlier), wants back into Jake's life—even as he is giving up hope on finding Emma. Abby delves into the bereft missing children subculture and into the vagaries of memory. A hypnotist helps Abby unearth promising details of that singular last day with Emma, but the information requires major follow-through from Abby. The book's twist on missing child stories is wholly effective. Richmond develops the principle characters, and Abby's dysfunctional parents make for sharply drawn secondaries, as do local surfers. The book is beautifully paced—one feels Abby's clarity of purpose from the first page. The sure-handed denouement reflects the focus and restraint that Richmond brings to bear throughout. (Mar.)
GrotesqueNatsuo Kirino, trans. from the Japanese by Rebecca Copeland. Knopf, $24.95 (464p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4494-8
Readers with a taste for ambiguity and oddball characters will enjoy this twisted novel of suspense from Japanese author Kirino (Out). The Apartment Serial Murders case, which involved the brutal killings of two Tokyo prostitutes, has gripped the country, leading to the arrest of a Chinese immigrant, Zhang Zhe-zhong, for the crimes. Strangely, Zhang freely admits to murdering the first victim, Yuriko Hirata, but denies the near-identical slaying 10 months later of Kazue Sato. The events leading to the killings are related from a variety of perspectives—that of Yuriko's unnamed older sister, bitterly jealous of her sibling's good looks; of each victim; and of the accused. Unusual connections—for example, Kazue was a classmate of the older sister—cast doubt on the veracity of individual narrators. This mesmerizing tale of betrayal reveals some sobering truths about Japan's social hierarchy. 4-city author tour. (Mar.)
Troy: Shield of ThunderDavid Gemmell. Ballantine, $25.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-345-47701-9
Prolific historical novelist Gemmell continues his imaginative and addictive Trojan War trilogy with this second installment (after Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow). While King Agamemnon schemes and "dreams of a war with Troy," rival monarch Priam of Troy maneuvers to secure his city's future through the marriage of his son Hektor to Princess Andromache of Thebe Under Plakos. Born with a birthmark resembling the shield of Athene—"the Shield of Thunder"—Andromache will, according to prophesy, bear the Eagle Child: a king who will never be defeated and whose city "will be eternal." Faithful to Homeric legend, there is enough intrigue, treachery and sanguinary violence to keep readers riveted as Priam publicly humiliates King Odysseus of Ithaka, who had hoped to remain neutral in the coming conflict. With Odysseus and the demigod warrior Achilles among his allies, Agamemnon attacks Troy in a war for hegemony. Seamlessly blending legend, mythology and history, Gemmell vividly recreates the world of the Greek city-states in all of their nobility and pettiness. Lively and seductive, this is historical fiction at its page-turning best. (Mar.)
Blood of ParadiseDavid Corbett. Ballantine, $9.95 paper (448p) ISBN 978-0-8129-7733-2
Corbett's third novel, a moving if somewhat directionless thriller, is as much a political statement as it is crime fiction. Jude McManus, a young American bodyguard assigned to keep watch over a business executive working for an El Salvador bottling plant, is approached by Bill Malvasio, an old Chicago police partner of McManus's late father, who, along with another cop, was fired from the force for corruption. Malvasio, who fled the U.S. for El Salvador during the scandal, wants to hire McManus to return to Chicago and bring back the third member of the trio. McManus accepts the job because Malvasio's reason seems benevolent—there's a job waiting, and the old partner has fallen on hard times. It's a decision McManus soon regrets. Corbett (Done for a Dime) spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the wreck that El Salvador has become since the civil war of the 1980s. While interesting in small doses, the sociopolitics detracts from a meandering plot already lacking in suspense and punch. (Mar.)
Twin Study: StoriesStacey Richter. Counterpoint, $23 (320p) ISBN 978-1-58243-371-2
Twelve bracingly imaginative tales from Richter (My Date with Satan) look at pairs of women (mostly) at various crisis points, small and large. The title tale follows an actualset of twins, two deeply conflicted 30-something women, who see each other for the first time in four years at a Cal State twin study. "The Long Hall" sets two rebellious daughters of a divorced alcoholic mother in Mormon Utah, where they must choose between their outrageous punk band and their growing desire to be with boys. In "Blackout," a student narrator on a spring break in Baja confesses to betraying a sorority acquaintance. "Duet" follows two gifted Juilliard musicians: one chooses marriage and mediocrity, and the other finds mastery as an artist. "The Cavemen in the Hedges" shows the sadly hilarious unraveling of an unmarried suburban couple when they come into contact, thrillingly, with a savage band of transient cavemen. Richter has a great feel for dialogue and conflict, extreme and otherwise (Mar.)
Set Me FreeMiranda Beverly-Whittemore. Warner, $24.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-446-53331-7
Secrets are unveiled and histories explored in Beverly-Whittemore's sophomore novel that follows the small mélange of family and friends surrounding Elliott Barrow, the idealist founder of a school for Native American children. The book's frequently narrated by Cal Fleecing, a Native American who returned to his Oregon reservation after failing to complete his Harvard graduate coursework 17 years earlier. He meets Elliot on the reservation and helps him set up Ponderosa Academy, Elliot's dream school, in Stolen, Ore. But off the record, and to the reader, Cal's jealous of Elliot's charisma and annoyed at his optimism, feelings somewhat shared by Elliot's 17-year-old daughter, Amelia, returned home from a Portland conservatory, and Elliot's first wife, Helen Bernstein, a New York City theater director recruited by Elliot to direct a student production of The Tempest. In a separate plot set seven months ahead of Helen's arrival in Stolen, 17-year-old Willa Llewlyn is being driven across country from Connecticut by her father, Nat, to meet Elliot for reasons Nat'sreluctant to make clear. Though the hidden connections between characters aren't exactly surprising, the allusions to Shakespeare and shifts in time and perspective make for an intriguing read. (Mar.)
The RebelsSándor Márai, trans. from the Hungarian by George Szirtes. Knopf, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-375-40757-4
First published in 1930, this lugubrious novel is the third by Hungarian novelist Márai (1900–1989) to be translated into English in the last decade. Four class of 1918 students expect to be in uniform and at the front by the end of the summer. Over the course of their last year of school, they have played an elaborate game of thievery, stealing petty cash and useless items—mostly from their own families—and storing the purloined objects in rooms rented from a local inn, to which they repair after lunch to "continue playing at childhood." By the end of the school year, however, the game has escalated beyond their control; Tibor Prockauer, the most aristocratic of the group, has pawned the family silver, and the gang (including grocer's son Béla, doctor's son Ábel and poor cobbler's son Ernõ) has no means to recover it. The war as a malevolent backdrop to the students' desperate game makes their plight vivid, but the characters themselves are less so. By the time Márai's moody, uneven narration gives way to the students' long-winded confessions, the novel's seams are clearly visible. (Mar.)
Wang in Love and Bondage: Three NovellasWang Xiaobo, trans. from the Chinese by Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer. SUNY, $25 (160p) ISBN 978-0-7914-7065-7
Reading popular, irreverent Chinese essayist and novelist Wang, who died in 1997 at 44, can feel like being held upside down—particularly during the zingy sex scenes. Characters cultivate an artful irrelevance to circumvent official stricture, and fail most every time. In the first work, "2015," the narrator's uncle, Wang Er, is a painter without a government permit to paint; his paintings are so stridently fractal that they make people dizzy. Sent for re-education, he readily admits his stupidity, but is undone when a female guard takes a very twisted interest in him. "The Golden Age" concerns another Wang Er: a 21-year-old, well-endowed Beijing student sent to the Yunan countryside during the Mao period. There, he runs off with a married doctor. Told to confess on returning, Wang, ironically, becomes a writer, as his superiors insist on more and more pornographic detail in every revised version of his confessions. The slighter final story, "East Palace, West Palace," relates a story about a policeman who falls in love with a bisexual cross-dresser. Wang's deeply convincing novellas will certainly please the readers who have enjoyed recent Nobel Prize–winner Gao Xingjian's novel, Soul Mountain.(Mar.)
QuanticoGreg Bear. Perseus/Vanguard, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-59315-445-5
This thought-provoking near-future thriller from bestseller Bear (Dead Lines) focuses on two young FBI agents: William Griffin, the son of a legendary FBI lawman, struggles through training; Fouad Al-Husam, who expects suspicion for his heritage and Muslim faith, finds himself instead sent on super-secret missions to the Middle East. Playing a minor supporting role is their Quantico classmate, Jane Rowland. When a quiet man with mismatched eyes starts telling certain fanatics that he can make gene-keyed anthrax to destroy their hereditary enemies, Griffin and Al-Husam form an unlikely team, headed by veteran agent Rebecca Rose, to handle the threat. Bear's near-future science is, as always, eerily plausible, and while he doesn't stint on sharp criticism of political infighting and its potential to hinder antiterrorism efforts, his would-be terrorists become surprisingly sympathetic as the complex details of their true plan are slowly (sometimes too slowly) revealed. (Mar.)
I Think of You: StoriesAhdaf Soueif. Anchor, $13 paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-307-27721-3
Soueif (shortlisted for the Booker in 1999 for The Map of Love) serves up a mostly stale collection of previously published stories, all at least a decade old, about clashing cultures and disappointed love. The best are three stories that follow Aisha from her Cairo childhood to a rough period as a teenager in 1964 London, where, as the misfit daughter of Muslim intellectuals, she encounters boorish classmates who tease her about polygamy and camels. Back in Egypt years later, Aisha confronts sorrowful memories of her doomed marriage. Two related stories, also set in England, feature Asya, a Middle Eastern woman moving on after a failed marriage and a miscarriage. Soueif incorporates wonderfully atmospheric details, particularly in the stories set in Egypt, but the stories feel thin and are too frequently overly lyrical. Though competent, these stories comprise the early works of a writer who has come into her own in later works. (Mar.)
SnowKenji Jasper. Kensington/Vibe, $14 paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-60183-001-2
Nicknamed for his snowflake-shaped birthmark, the title character of Jasper's taut, brutal inner-city character study is trying hard to preserve a shred of purity and decency, but the mean streets of Washington, D.C., make it a tough proposition. A murdering thief for hire, Snow manages to keep just out of reach of the cops, and of his archrival Kamau. Luscious Adele and baby Kayi are what he comes home to, and what he wants to quit for, if he can manage both to make a big enough score, and to get out of the business cleanly. Authentic and cinematically convincing details (a poker game puts "local weed and weight money, high four-figure money, in the middle") underpin Snow's inner struggle as, in flashback, he tells the story of his street education; they help move the latest from Jasper (Dakota Grand) beyond casual urban nihilism. But it's Snow's voice—at once sardonic, tough, tender and full of a bravado that can't quite hide the cold fear underneath—that propels the novel forward. (Mar.)
The Watchman: A Joe Pike NovelRobert Crais. Simon & Schuster, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7432-8163-8
As the subtitle suggests, Joe Pike, the intriguing, enigmatic partner of L.A. PI Elvis Cole, takes center stage in this intense thriller from bestseller Crais (The Two Minute Rule). To pay back an old debt, Pike is coerced into protecting Larkin Barkley, a hard-partying young heiress whose life is in danger after a "wrong place wrong time" encounter that quickly escalates and spins out of control. The enemy is shadowy, violent and relentless—but the fierce, focused Pike, one of the strongest characters in modern crime fiction, is equal to the challenge. The breathless pace and rich styling are sure to appeal to readers of hard-boiled fiction in general, but since up to now Pike has mostly remained in the background, some fans of the Elvis Cole series (The Forgotten Man, etc.) may find the explicit picture that emerges of Pike at odds with the image they've constructed for themselves. (Mar.)
Astrid & VeronikaLinda Olsson. Penguin, $14 paper (272p) ISBN 978-0-14-303807-8
In Swedish novelist Olsson's somber debut, Veronika Bergman returns to Sweden after a childhood following her diplomat father around the world (her mother abandoned the family), and after publishing her first novel titled Single, One Way, No Luggage. She rents a small house in a rural town to work on her second, but in solitude finds herself seized by feverish dreams and paralyzed by the "stillness" of the landscape and the memories of her recently dead fiancé. Reclusive septuagenarian Astrid Mattson, thought by the village to be a witch, takes an interest in Veronika, and the two strike up a friendship based on loss. Against the backdrop of the changing seasons and their small, plangent houses, the two women slowly tell each other their most closely guarded secrets (which concern their mothers and lovers), and venture, tentatively, out of the safety of their routines. Olsson has a clear feel for the emotional wellsprings of both characters, but can't convert her terse lyricism into a fully realized story. (Mar.)
HerselfLeslie Carroll. Avon, $13.95 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-085995-4
Forty-year-old Tessa Craig has been Congressman David Weyburn's speechwriter by day and lover by night for three years. So after David dumps her (he says he needs to be alone), she takes a short trip to Dublin and realizes she'd fallen in love with the "magical semi-fiction" of David's dashing public persona (that, as his speechwriter, she'd helped create). She also quickly finds another man: Jamie Doyle, a fisherman who alternately cracks one-liners and drops kernels of Yeatsian wisdom. Although Carroll (Spin Doctor) throws obstacles in the way, she leaves no doubt that Tessa and Jamie are fated—never mind that Tessa is a lapsed Jew and Jamie has a ferociously possessive and traditionally Catholic mother, Maureen. Jamie follows Tessa back to New York, and the story culminates in Tessa's run for David's congressional seat after he's sidelined by a heart attack. Politics proves punishing, especially after Maureen and Jamie's sister arrive on Tessa's Manhattan doorstep to reclaim Jamie and the New York Post publishes steamy excerpts from Tessa's purloined diary. Though Carroll tends to let her scenes run on too long, her endearingly quirky cast and (mostly) snappy dialogue should keep readers rooting for Tessa up to the tears-of-joy ending. (Mar.)
Paper TigerOlivier Rolin, trans. from the French by William Cloonan. Univ. of Nebraska, $40 (203p) ISBN 978-0-8032-3955-5; $17.95 paper ISBN 978-0-8032-8999-4
A former Communist radical recalls his revolutionary cell's late 1960s glory days as he drives around contemporary Paris and explains "the movement" to Marie, the daughter of a comrade who died under questionable circumstances. Back in the day, Martin and others in the cause wreaked havoc on the bourgeoisie, from vandalizing the villas of the rich to kidnapping the CEO of a company that was selling bomb components to the U.S. Air Force. But now, the aging idealist has trouble confronting the realities of the new millennium, with former comrades selling real estate and frequenting trendy bistros. In the end, the death is still a mystery to both Martin and Marie: was it suicide, or a stoned man's accident? And does it matter which? Shortlisted for the 2003 Goncourt Prize, the novel's emphasis on French politics, combined with the second-person, nearly stream-of-consciousness narration—though superbly translated by Cloonan—will make Rolin's latest rough sledding for American readers not already into dense French lit. (Mar.)
Migrations and Other StoriesLisa Hernandez. Arte Público, $14.95 paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-55885-499-4
Though the ages and predicaments of the Chicanas of Hernandez's debut vary, a passionate emotional resiliency reigns throughout. The opening "Migrations" follows two mismatched California neighbors who travel to Mexico together over Christmas almost arbitrarily: the young woman narrator aims to rid herself of an odious lover, while her neighbor, Reynaldo, returns to Guadalajara in order to make amends to his embittered daughter after his years of absence in America. "The Neighbor" is the wry narrative of a 79-year-old, thrice-married L.A. widow named Sarita, who resolves that her young neighbors' sadistic passion for each other, which she must regularly witness, is an affront to the memory of the warm, generous lovers she has known. Doomed and hopeless love rules the lives of these resolute women, as in "My Little Tyrant Heart—Corazoncito Tirano," where two men locked in years of friendship and love rivalry rehash secrets of passion and murder—and are overheard by one of the men's grown daughter, a young widow who narrates her own tale of heartache. Short and affecting, Hernandez's tales are as ardent as they are prosaic and unflinching. (Mar.)
The Legend of the FirefishGeorge Bryan Polivka. Harvest House, $13.99 paper (350p) ISBN 978-0-7369-1956-2
Swashbuckling is the best way to describe Book One of the Trophy Chase Trilogy. Without wasting time, Polivka's first novel drops readers into a fantasy world filled with action, where chivalry is alive and well, and sword fights are frequent. Packer Throme—a failed seminarian turned master swordsman—sets out on a great quest, but not in search of fame. He hopes to honor God by stowing away on (former) pirate Scatter Wilkins's ship Trophy Chase, convincing its captain and crew to seek the legendary firefish—a feat that could raise Packer's fishing village from poverty and win the heart of his longtime love, the beautiful Panna Seline. Happily, Polivka gives this heroine a backbone, not to mention a mighty right hook and her own part to play in this adventure. "It was wrong to have let her, and thousands of young women just like her, believe they had no power, no strength, and therefore could have no place or position," Panna reflects angrily about the plight of women. Though the Packer-Panna romance finds considerable ink, this is a tale almost entirely of pirates, warriors, stormy seas and battles with monsters. The Christian message is palpable, and Polivka's characters relatively complex. With the nonstop action that cuts between multiple story lines, readers will be flipping pages eagerly. (Mar.)
People of the NightlandW. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear. Forge, $27.95 (480p) ISBN 978-0-765-31440-6
The latest installment of the Gears' popular and long-running First North Americans series (after People of the Moon) is a timely saga of environmental catastrophe and misguided hubris. As the ice age is ending, 13,000 years ago, the Paleo-Indians of the Great Lakes region of North America face an apocalyptic crisis: even as the ice dams holding back the flood waters from melting glaciers near capacity, the local tribes are locked in a desperate war. The Nightland People, who live on the edge of the retreating glacier and worship the god Raven Hunter, seek to destroy their neighbors, the Sunpath and Lame Bull Peoples, who worship Wolf Dreamer. As the fighting rages, Raven Hunter sends a guide to lead the Nightland People to paradise through a hole in the ice. Meanwhile, Wolf Dreamer taps a young orphan, Silvertip, to save the Sunpath and Lame Bull Peoples by leading them away from the catastrophic flooding. With time running out, Silvertip and his allies race to escape both the Nightland warriors and the looming natural disaster. Drawing on their backgrounds in archeology, the Gears vividly recreate Paleolithic America in this enchanting and instructive novel. (Mar.)
Quaker Summer Lisa Samson. WestBow, $14.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-59554-207-6
One of the most powerful voices in Christian fiction, Samson delivers what seems, on the surface, to be just another Christian women's novel, but in reality is a staggering examination of the Christian conscience. Like most Samson heroines, Heather Curridge is a woman in crisis. Outwardly, her life seems idyllic: she has an unusually handsome, successful and loving husband, a child she adores and the most beautiful home she could imagine. Inwardly, however, she is falling apart, overcome by the idea that this comfortable, affluent life is keeping her from God's will. With the help of several older, wiser Christians, her patient family and her two best friends, Heather comes to some painful conclusions about her past and future. Samson's unflinching exploration of childhood bullying, as well as inner-city poverty and drug culture, are rivaled only by her portrayal of the soul-desiccating acquisitiveness in which many Christians engage, often in a misguided attempt to numb both their heartache and their awareness of God's potentially life-upending plans. Unlike many Christian novelists, Samson does not tidily resolve every single problem her heroine faces, but instead paints an emotionally and spiritually luminous portrait of a soul beckoned by God. (Mar.)
The Boxmaker's SonDonald S. Smurthwaite. Deseret, $17.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-59038-704-7
This tender but disjointed novella explores what the author clearly believes was a kinder, gentler time: the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the hands of Smurthwaite (Fine Old High Priests; Letter by a Half Moon), mid-century Portland, Ore., becomes a simple utopia, where neighbors knew neighbors (but did not intrude on their business), and kindness was the order of the day. Indeed, not one ugly incident mars the coming-of-age of protagonist Neal Rogers, which makes for some nostalgic moments but a not very compelling plot. Growing up as one of five children in a boxmaker's family, Neal experiences a loving Mormon childhood, full of the security of a stable home and a close-knit ward (congregation). Smurthwaite offers some sweet, even cloying, snatches of Mormon life, including a particularly endearing sketch about an awkward young couple who have to be urged into courtship by various members of the ward. However, the novella constantly switches from vignette to vignette, giving readers a paragraph of one and then confusing them with a paragraph of another, with very little to go on in the way of time frame, setting and character. The artistic result is a frenetic disorder that is precisely the opposite of the unhurried, cohesive sensibility Smurthwaite seeks to convey. (Mar.)
Step on a CrackJames Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown, $27.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-316-01394-9
Pop a bowl of popcorn, settle into a comfy chair and you might finish this combination thriller and tearjerker before the popcorn. Bestseller Patterson (Cross) and Ledwidge (The Narrowback) spin a fantastic tale of an audacious mass kidnapping and the unlikely detective thrust into the primary role of negotiator, sleuth and hero. Michael Bennett, a senior NYPD homicide detective, has a wife dying of cancer and 10 adopted children of various ethnic origins. When St. Patrick's Cathedral, site of the celebrity-packed funeral of a former first lady, is seized by a dozen ruthless men, Bennett ends up as point man for the hastily assembled negotiating team. From then on, the tale requires the reader to go with the flow as Bennett alternates visits to his wife's hospital bedside, brief trips to check on how his kids are managing and tense dealings with the well-prepared kidnappers. Short on credibility on the crime front, long on sentimentality on the home front, this book would be a good candidate for adaptation as a one-hour TV movie. (Feb.)
Poetry
Collected Poems Michael Longley. Wake Forest Univ., $18.95 paper (368p) ISBN 978-1-930630-31-4; $50 cloth ISBN 978-1-930630-32-1
Despite (or because of) sectarian violence, Belfast in the late '60s and '70s produced a brace of extraordinary poetic talents. Among them, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon moved to America and achieved international stardom, while Longley remained in Northern Ireland, developing a subtle power of his own, as this first retrospective since 1985 shows. Longley's debut volume, No Continuing City (1969), made clear his careful mastery of form, but not until Man Lying on a Wall (1976) did he establish his recognizable style: Longley's short, segmented poems and sinuous lines, often approximating Latin hexameters, exhibit an understated beauty, and yet remain conscious of violence past and present, from the Trojan War through WWI and Northern Ireland's Troubles. An archetypal elegy depicts "shell cases from the last war filled with flowers." War—what it does to combatants and to their children—becomes a preoccupation throughout Longley's work, especially in the haunted Gorse Fires (1991) and the mellifluous Snow Water (2004). Yet marital love and tenderness, domestic calm and pastoral counterpoise also stand among Longley's signature subjects: "the fireflies at the waterfall, a well of stars." Longley's genius is pastoral and commemorative, summed up perhaps in this recent one-line poem: "my lost lamb lovelier than all the wool." (Mar.)
Domestic ViolenceEavan Boland. Norton, $23.95 (129p) ISBN 978-0-393-06241-0
Vivid and passionate, if at times repetitive, Boland's 10th book of verse returns to familiar subjects: Irish landscapes, seascapes and townscapes, erotic passion and persistent anger between men and women, households that carry the weight of an unjust history, and Boland's own hopes to make that history clear. Boland (Against Love Poetry) pursues, in fierce, accessible free verse her sense that the personal is political. She also depicts a pathos in nature, using attractive lyrical symbols: "the red-billed bird/ with swept-back wings always trying to/ arrive safely on the inch or so of cotton it/ might have occupied." Elsewhere she describes the uneasiness of love: "nothing is ever entirely/ right in the lives of those who love each other." Though all her books invoke her Irish roots, this one is more self-consciously Irish than most: several poems address, or describe, Irish art, such as James Melton's 1765 engraving of a Dublin mansion. Boland links herself to a national past, even as she interrogates it on feminist and other grounds, and even as she turns to familial subjects: to her own memory, to advancing age, to questions any mother might ask, such as how to know "what I have to leave behind, to give my daughters." (Mar.)
The Pushcart Book of Poetry: The Best Poems from Three Decades of the Pushcart PrizeEdited by Joan Murray. Pushcart (Norton, dist.), $29.95 (633p) ISBN 978-1-888889-34-5
This gigantic volume of recent verse is culled from Pushcart Prize annual anthologies, 1976 to the present, chosen by small-press editors and previous winners. Reappearing are 180 poems, in chronological order. The volume leads off with Adrienne Rich, marches through superb lyrics by Stanley Kunitz, Linda Gregerson and Rosanna Warren, and brandishes aphorisms from Derek Walcott ("all revolution is rooted in crime"), Philip Levine ("So many poems begin where they/ should end, and never end"), and others. Readers seeking clear situations and boldly stated emotion may find more to like than readers who prefer the reverse, though there's something for almost everyone. The standouts are often the long poems, a rarity for anthologies, which this book's project almost demands—Leslie Scalapino's fugue about girlhood, for example, and Lynda Hull's scorching seven-part elegy "Suite for Emily." Though Pushcart's slogan, "best of the small presses," suggests writers rescued from obscurity, many poets here are mainstream names, like Levine, Heaney, Stern and Wright. Also included are less famous poets like the raw and haunting Brigit Pegeen Kelly—perhaps the strongest among the discoveries this big book permits. (Mar.)
The Outernationale Peter Gizzi. Wesleyan Univ., $22.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-8195-6736-9
Gizzi has been a rising star in contemporary poetry for more than a decade. With his ambitious fourth collection, he cements his status as a poet-to-watch and a bridge between challenging experimental writing, "language" poetry and accessible mainstream verse. Extending the associative, disjunctive and at times flippant aesthetics of New York School poets like Ashbery, O'Hara and Berrigan, and adding an emotional clarity all his own, Gizzi writes movingly about love ("It is so easy now to see gravity at work in your face/ Easy to understand time, that dark process,/ To accept it as a beautiful process, your face"), contemporary ennui ("We went to the store and why not") and the decline of America ("If our loves are anointed with missiles/ Apache fire, Tomahawks/ did we follow the tablets the pilgrims suggested") as well as its subtle wonders ("everywhere in the day lost in sun"). Most impressive are a series of long pieces, including two poems titled "The Outernationale" and the extraordinary "A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me." In poems, often cast in couplets, that are by turns mournful, exalting and humorous, Gizzi (Some Values of Landscape and Weather) evokes a world perceived from too many angles to merely make straight sense. (Feb.)
CaptivityLaurie Sheck. Knopf, $25 (96p) ISBN 978-0-307-26539-5
The squat, long-lined poems of Sheck's fifth collection meditate on American captivity narratives—stories popular in the late 17th century, such as Mary Rowlandson's A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, often about abduction by Native Americans—as metaphors for the limitations of consciousness and the poetry that tries to render it. These narratives are directly addressed in the 17 "Removes," a term taken from Rowlandson's book. Elsewhere, Sheck (Black Series) references other singularly American figures, including Dickinson, Stevens, William James and Emerson. Sheck relishes the "slow conversion of myself into nothingness," a necessary (and often violent) step toward understanding "this chain of feelings by which we mean (if it is that) a self." These poems at times seem to court vagueness—words such as "scatter," "broken," and "elsewhere" are among Sheck's most precise descriptive terms. Some readers may find that Sheck exhausts her themes and the time from which they originate; modernity appears infrequently, and when it does—in the form of "a computer screen candescing," the human genome and one "marketing director"—the effect is jarring. Throughout, however, Sheck's long lines sustain an elegant uncertainty, and her fractured syntax calls both Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins to mind: "The seconds slant and coarse with split-asunder." (Feb.)
Selected Poems: Expanded EditionW. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson. Vintage, $14.95 paper(376p) ISBN 978-0-307-27808-1
One of the 20th century's greatest poets, Auden (1907–1973) has also joined the ranks of its most popular. His "Funeral Blues," a 16-line song about lost love, became a widespread favorite after its use in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral; his "Sept. 1, 1939" ("Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return") seemed to be everywhere after September 11, 2001, as readers used its somber public voice to make sense of a senseless day. Mendelson—Auden's literary executor, and the man who knows more than anyone else alive about Auden's life and writings—has already assembled the standard books Auden fans know, among them an earlier 100-poem Selected, which included poems famous during Auden's life, such as "Sept. 1" and "In Memory of W.B. Yeats," but excluded some of his finest light verse—the tongue-in-cheek self-descriptive haiku series called "Profiles," for example, the barbed wartime quatrains of "Leap Before You Look," and "Funeral Blues" itself. Mendelson now rectifies those faults, adds 17 more poems and amplifies his articulate preface, just in time for the centennial of Auden's birth. The volume reveals a poet by turns charming and authoritative, masterful and humble, deftly evasive and ringingly quotable. (Feb.)
Theory of OrangeRachel M. Simon. Pavement Saw (SPD, dist.), $12 paper (80p) ISBN 978-1-886350-45-8
Hip, funny, moving and at times bizarre, this first outing from the Yonkers, N.Y.–based Simon stitches together the elegiac with the entertaining, the fragmentarily outré with the clearly autobiographical: they make an attractive weave. The poems (almost all shorter than one page) include, as she phrases it, "getting-to-know-you-games," multiple tributes to summer camp and "family funerals." Several elegies appear to lament the friend and writer, dead at 21, to whom Simon dedicates the book. "Neither bitter nor embittered,/ non-eponymous but partially self-referential," Simon is also partial to self-portraits composed in apparently unrelated sentences; to in-jokes against writing-workshop platitudes ("No surprise for the writer,/ no surprise behind door number three there is never a car"); and to baffling one-line quips ("My blood is completely cheese"). She can wring comedy from nostalgia, and nostalgia from the detritus of modern childhood: "I hoped that/ by sending a box of twinkies/ you'd remember to remember me." Yet her flirtatious advertisements for herself double as postmodern queries into the dangerous culture of advertising, where men and women risk disappearing unless they find something new to say. (Feb.)
The Collected Poems Zbigniew Herbert, trans. from the Polish by Alissa Valles. Ecco, $34.95 (608p) ISBN 978-0-06-078390-7
Herbert (1924–1998) lived to witness his hometown of Lwów, Poland, occupied by the Soviets in 1939, the Nazis in 1941, and the Soviets again in 1944. This exposure to systematic and violent oppression awakened in Herbert a protective and motivating skepticism that pervades all his poetry: "If you put trust in your five senses/ the world contracts into a hazelnut." This impeccably, newly translated and edited volume finds Herbert, strongly anticommunist throughout his life, determined to resist the reduction of the human to anything easily measured, manipulated and forgotten, even if history keeps reminding us that "only our dreams have not been humiliated." Tender, wary, melancholy and wry, the poems visit ideas of redemption as one might visit a grave site, i.e., knowing that what you seek can only be experienced in the heart and mind. If one attempts through poetry to "offer to the betrayed world / a rose," Herbert's world-weary, tragicomic alter-ego, Mr. Cogito—one of last century's most memorable poetic personages–warns us that the gesture will probably go unnoticed, especially in an age when even "the temple of freedom/ has been turned into a flea market." Finally, the work of this powerful master of 20th-century literature is all in one place. (Feb.)
The PicturesMax Winter. Tarpaulin Sky Press (SPD, dist.), $12 (76p) ISBN 978-0-9779019-2-0
The images in Fence editor Winter's first collection have been rendered twice, from 30 unnamed photos and short movies into 30 poems. Arranged in two sections, "Still" and "Moving," the poems are ordered and titled according to picture size or film length. Unlike traditional ekphrastic work, these poems are noticeably devoid of any overt attribution to the source images; there is only the poet's unsparing description. Each of the images, from family portraits to clips of warfare, is described in relation to the reader, demanding a passive agreement with the poem's judgments, as in "11 by 11": "Her skin is rough/ and her face indicates/ that the emotion we see/ has been her only emotion,/ with occasional deviations, for several weeks." As these images and conclusions mount, they develop into a composite picture of the speaker himself. The centerpiece is "9 by 9," a dense, contemplative two-page prose poem describing a portrait of a woman posing in a subway station: "No use in worrying, here, about what the hair is all about, because that never really comes forward in a purely two-dimensional medium." This is a long-awaited debut by a promising younger poet. (Feb.)
In No One's LandPaige Ackerson-Kiely. Ahsahta (SPD, dist.), $16 (88p) ISBN 978-0-916272-92-0
The 44 poems that make up Ackerson-Kiely's debut are a pleasure to read and delightfully free from the conceptual projects, gimmickry and silly minutiae of many first books. Ackerson-Kiely tackles familiar subjects—love, work, landscape—in fresh and deeply affecting ways. In "No, I've Had Enough," she writes, "The world/ is limp and furthermore dead and I am so hungry I will not eat a/ single thing as you are everything to me, you are at this instant/ every single thing." This prize-winning book, chosen by D.A. Powell, can be strikingly raw, especially in regard to workaday topics; Ackerson-Kiely expertly navigates a world of low-level office work, one-night stands and Wal-Mart ("the biggest place I have been to date"), illuminating life's unexpected turns and beauty, yet never shying away from its loneliness and despair. In "Nocturne IV," Ackerson-Kiely displays her talent for splendid, unpredictable last lines: "You weren't anywhere I was planning to go," she concludes, "The path from the porch to the car/ for example, feeling my way along." Compelling and inventive, this is a welcome new voice. (Jan.)
Selected PoemsDerek Walcott, edited by Edward Baugh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25 (352p) ISBN 978-0-374-26066-8
This career-spannning retrospective, culled from nearly 50 years of work, will go a long way toward reminding readers of the breadth and depth of Nobel laureate Walcott's achievement. Though he is perhaps best known for his modern epic, Omeros, which tells a Homeric tale set in St. Lucia, Walcott is a fine lyric poet as well, writing in traditional forms and meters as well as in powerful free verse. Alongside the epic tone that he brought into modern verse—"I sing of Achille, Afolabe's son,/ who never ascended in an elevator"—is lustful writing about a woman humming Bob Marley on a bus, a casual description of being mugged in Greenwich Village or a painter's-eye view of a fish. The political Walcott is also here; observing a crowd listening to a politician, he writes, "Who will name this silence/ respect? Those forced, hoarse hosannas/ awe?" The lyric Walcott is well represented, but the long poems—which are necessarily excerpted—prove more problematic. At best, the editor can hope that readers, hooked by one of these narrative poems, will be compelled to seek out the complete version. Nonetheless, this book represents a milestone in the career of a major writer. (Jan.)
Necessary StrangerGraham Foust. Flood Editions (SPD, dist.), $12.95 (87p) ISBN 978-0-9787467-1-1
In his intense, hip, ironic and subtly humorous third book, Foust (Leave the Room to Itself) takes a look at ideas and things that distort one's view of the world at hand: pop culture, consumerism, poetic tradition, emotions and language itself all interrupt these poem like trees blocking a view of the mountains, or, more accurately, skyscrapers blocking a view of the trees. What's left is the "Barest Gist"—as Foust calls one poem—of what's there. Beauty is tweaked by a contemporary America populated by irreconcilable opposites. In a love poem called "Google," "A dead bag commutes/ between the street/ and the trees." Hauntingly, things aren't what they seem, or even what they should be: "What I take to be/ the stuffing from/ a toy/ animal isn't," and "...the sky/ above a prison is a lie." Often writing in jagged couplets and tercets, but also moving through a host of poetic forms and high and popular cultural references—there's a sonnet, a pantoum, a haiku and poems that wink at Frank O'Hara and the '90s rock band Pavement—Foust catalogues the contents of an oversaturated mind in 52 short, jumpy poems, always in search of some remnant of the real thing: "I wonder// how much per sway/ is the wind worth today/ in these trees?" (Jan.)
Mystery
Murdering AmericansRuth Dudley Edwards. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (248p) ISBN 978-1-59058-413-2
In Dudley Edwards's provocative, humorous 11th Robert Amiss mystery (after 2004's Carnage on the Committee), the outrageous Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck—Mistress of St. Martha's College, Cambridge, and member of the House of Lords—experiences culture shock as a distinguished visiting professor at Freeman State University in New Paddington, Ind. With Horace, her loquacious parrot, perched on her shoulder, the conservative academic arrives in the Midwest to find a campus where political correctness has taken over, threatening to destroy Western Civilization as she knows it. Jack has her suspicions about the previous provost's death, and no trust in the left-wing current provost and the university president. She launches an investigation and convinces her partner-in-sleuthing, Robert Amiss, to cut his honeymoon short and help expose Freeman State's corruption, crime—and shoddy knee-jerk liberalism. Dudley Edwards wittily satirizes political correctness in this fast-paced academic romp. (Apr.)
Priest Ken Bruen. St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-34140-4
Recovered from incapacitating guilt over the death of a child on his watch, Jack Taylor is released from the loony bin at the start of Shamus-winner Bruen's searing fifth book about the alcoholic Galwegian ex-cop (after 2006's The Dramatist). Jack's friend Nio "Ridge" Iomaire picks him up from the hospital and mentions the gory headlines: a pedophilic priest, Father Joyce, was beheaded. At the request of another frightened priest, Jack launches an unofficial investigation with the assistance of an eager, younger partner, Cody. All the while fighting his constant ache for a drink, the maverick PI also helps Ridge ward off a stalker. Jack is a keen and literary narrator, and Bruen's latest Irish noir makes for a kind of savage poetry, at once exhausting and exhilarating. Bruen has been a finalist for Edgar, Anthony and Barry awards. (Mar.)
Puss 'n Cahoots: A Mrs. Murphy MysteryRita Mae Brown and
Sneaky Pie Brown. Bantam, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-0-553-80364-8
The charming 14th Mrs. Murphy mystery (after 2006's Sour Puss) finds ex-postmistress and sometime-detective Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen accompanying her veterinarian husband, Fair, to an equestrian extravaganza in Kentucky. The mishaps begin when Harry's good friend Joan loses a beloved pin—or is the treasured piece of jewelry stolen? Then Jorge, a groom at Joan's farm, is found murdered, a pair of crosses cut into his palm. As if murder's not enough, an aging movie star's horse goes missing, and INS officials show up, hunting illegal aliens. Throughout, Harry's menagerie—cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter as well as corgi Tee Tucker—cleverly sniff out wrongdoing. Though some readers might find the anthropomorphized animals' italicized dialogue a bit much, the novel's tight pacing, combined with intriguing local color, make this mystery a blue-ribbon winner. (Mar.)
In Dublin's Fair City: A Molly Murphy MysteryRhys Bowen. St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-32819-1
Set in 1903, Bowen's sixth brisk Molly Murphy historical (after 2006's Oh Danny Boy) takes the Irish immigrant to New York City back to the Emerald Isle for an assignment to find a theater impresario's long-lost sister, left behind when his family fled the potato famine 50 years earlier. Even though Molly had left Ireland under a cloud of suspicion herself, she bids a temporary farewell to her beau, New York police captain Daniel Sullivan. The voyage begins auspiciously when a famous actress offers Molly her first class stateroom, but Molly's discovery of a corpse in her sumptuous bed is only the beginning of a complicated, dangerous journey. In Dublin, she becomes embroiled in the Irish struggle for freedom and finds herself a target for murder. With a riveting plot capped off by a dramatic conclusion, Bowen captures the passion and struggles of the Irish people at the turn of the 20th century. (Mar.)
The PactRoberta Kray. Carroll & Graf, $26.95 (448p) ISBN 978-0-78671-902-0
Eve Weston's younger brother is in jail, her cancer-ridden father has committed suicide and she's been fired from her job for something she didn't do—then things get really complicated for the 34-year-old former legal secretary in Kray's skillful if overlong sophomore effort (after 2006's The Debt). The collateral damage piles up while Eve, who's moved from London to her father's flat in Norwich, struggles to unravel the myriad skeins that tangle her life: her brother's real role in the robbery he was sentenced for; the meaning of her father's death; the handsome policeman wooing her; the packages she's guarding for the con protecting her brother and the mysterious item that someone named Joe thinks she is hiding. Though Kray choreographs too many unlikely convergences, she delivers well-drawn minor characters and a resilient, appealing heroine who uses brains and beauty to deal with the devils that beset her. (Mar.)
The BetrayersJames Patrick Hunt. St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-36276-8
A simple traffic stop gone bad propels St. Louis cops Lt. George Hastings and Det. Bobby Cain into a world of trouble they hadn't bargained for in Hunt's fourth novel, an intriguing, unsentimental police procedural. Two police officers are machine-gunned when they pull over a reckless driver. One of them had been working undercover in narcotics. Could this be payback time? Seasoned veteran Hastings and the rest of the force cope with their own reactions to the loss while they investigate the brutal killings. Hunt (Before They Make You Run) reveals the wear and tear of work in the precinct on family and home life, and his landscape abounds with quirky characters of all stripes; some are great company and others can crack wise and kill at the same time. At the center, Hastings, a divorced and devoted father, struggles to maintain his own version of the straight and narrow with varied results. (Mar.)
Knock OffRhonda Pollero. Kensington, $19.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-7582-1557-4
With more than 25 contemporary romances (Automatic Proposal, etc.) under the pen name Kelsey Roberts, Pollero makes her frivolous but fun mystery debut featuring Finley Anderson Tanner (F.A.T.), a 29-year-old West Palm Beach paralegal whose designer name-dropping prattle and discount shopaholism obscure her smarts. Bored silly by her job in the estates and trusts department, she agrees to help a senior partner handle a client convinced that her deceased husband didn't fall asleep at the wheel but was actually murdered. Finley's sweet but boring boyfriend is out of town, and her credit cards are maxed out, so she applies her bargain-hunting instincts to the investigation and finds a statistical improbability in the "accidental" deaths of several jurors after a medical malpractice suit. She meets the obligatory bad boy detective, Liam McGarrity, and wriggles out of several tight spots in this lighthearted romp. (Mar.)
Hog WildCathy Pickens. St. Martin's Minotaur/ Dunne, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-35440-4
A potbellied pig gone AWOL is the least of the disruptions that beset Dacus, S.C., in Pickens's comfy third cozy in her Southern Fried mystery series starring attorney and sleuth Avery Andrews (after 2005's Done Gone Wrong). A distraught widow, Maggy Avinger, hires Avery because Maggy's late husband, Harden, before he died of cancer, wanted a large tombstone engraved with the words: "Know all when this you see / My 'faithful' wife, she poisoned me." On top of this case, Avery deals with the threat of real estate development that could destroy fragile wetlands, the discovery of a corpse at the development site and the arrival of several ominous anonymous letters. With a rising body count, the batter thickens on this highly seasoned chicken-fried clue fest. (Mar.)
Dragonwell Dead: A Tea Shop MysteryLaura Childs. Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-425-21386-5
In the enjoyable eighth installment of Childs's tea shop series (after 2006's Blood Orange Brewing), Mark Congdon, commodities broker and co-owner of a Charleston bed and breakfast, drops dead after sipping a glass of sweet tea at the Spring Plantation Ramble. This was no simple heart attack—Mark was poisoned. Eager to help out Mark's grieving widow, tea shop proprietress and gumshoe Theodosia Browning offers to collect his belongings from his office. There, she discovers that a surprising number of co-workers, including a spurned lover and a professional rival, had reason to want Mark dead. Yet again, Childs proves herself skilled at local color, serving up cunning portraits of Southern society and delectable descriptions of dishes like cheesy crab casserole (recipe included). (Mar.)
SF/Fantasy/Horror
Into a Dark Realm: Book Two of the Darkwar SagaRaymond E. Feist. Eos, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-079280-0
Feist's competent but uninventive second installment to his Darkwar Saga (after 2006's Flight of the Nighthawks) follows Pug the wizard and his grandsons—Jommy, Tad and Zane, now of military age—on their various magic-enhanced and bloody military quests to defy evil. Pug's search for the renegade sorcerer Leso Varen takes him from the land of Midkemia into the realm of the bloodthirsty Dasati, who are planning a war on behalf of their Dark God. Feist's narrative also follows the coming-of-age of the young Dasati warrior Valko, whose eventual enlightenment makes him an ally for Pug. Meanwhile, Pug's grandsons go to the University of Roldem, take commissions in its embattled army and prove themselves formidable soldiers. The author's depictions of battles, torture and the Social Darwinism of the ruthless Dasati society may not be suited to fantasy readers of all ages, but Feist's fans will look forward to the saga's final episode. (Apr.)
The Fate of Mice Susan Palwick. Tachyon (www.tachyonpublications.com), $14.95 paper (234p) ISBN 978-1-892391-42-1
Spanning the past 20 years of Palwick's career, the eight previously published and three new stories in this outstanding collection (after her 2005 novel The Necessary Beggar) display the author's versatility. The fine title story about an IQ-enhanced mouse named Rodney recalls "Flowers for Algernon." "Gestella" centers on a woman werewolf whose accelerated aging complicates her doomed marriage to a self-obsessed professor. In "Jo's Hair," Palwick imagines remarkable alternate fates for Louisa May Alcott's little woman, Jo March, and her chopped and sold chestnut braid. The quintessential fairy tale "Stormdusk" depicts a child worried about her mother, a trapped snow maiden; the wise, whimsical concluding gem, "GI Jesus," addresses friendship and sacred smalltown "miracles." Palwick's genre-bending short fiction defies categorization and blends humor with pathos. (Mar.)
The Silver Ship and the SeaBrenda Cooper. Tor, $25.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-765-31597-7
Cooper's first solo flight into SF (after Building Harlequin's Moon, with Larry Niven) doesn't quite get off the deadly colony planet Fremont, where 12 years earlier war raged between the original pure-human settlers and the "altered" (bioengineered) second wave of colonists. Adolescent heroine Chelo Lee, orphaned by that war and adopted by the leader-couple of the planet's only city, Artistos, leads the other five living altered youths to the silver spaceship New Making that had brought their parents to Fremont. With the help of Jenna, the only surviving altered adult, Chelo dreams of freeing herself and the other altereds from the paranoid subjugation of the Fremontians, who both fear and need the youngsters' gifts. The lack of psychological development in this sluggish and predictable growing-up excursion may limit its appeal to preteen readers. (Mar.)
World Leader PretendJames Bernard Frost. St. Martin's Griffin, $13.95 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-35223-3
Debut novelist Frost captures the messy, human interaction of the Internet with the equally messy story of 32-year-old failed dot-commer Xerxes Meticula, who plays an online multiplayer strategy game called the Realm with allies as diverse as a technician in Antarctica and an exploited teen girl in Bangkok. Xerxes organizes his life online in ways that he cannot match in real life, where his twin sister, Gabriella, is struggling with schizophrenia and his business partner, Zahn Mendoza, is marrying Xerxes's ex-girlfriend. In the Realm, though, he is in control, until he runs into the Two-Headed Boy, a four-time game winner who's a quadriplegic former world-class skier. They set their rivalry aside after one of its online victims becomes a real-life suicide. Though Frost's year 2000 setting can feel dated and his character development occasionally schematic, he crafts an uncommon literary illustration of the split-identity common to gamers. (Mar.)
AntagonistGordon R. Dickson and
David W. Wixon. Tor, $27.95 (432p) ISBN 978-0-312-85388-4
Gordon R. Dickson fans were used to years of anticipating each installment in the Childe Cycle, begun with Dorsai! in 1959, but they may not feel this latest volume, completed by Wixon after Dickson's death in 2001, is worth the 13-year wait. The "classic" space-opera vibe of the series is sliding rapidly toward "outdated," complete with heavy oversized void pistols, planetary shielding and a lone female protagonist, the inscrutable Antonia Lu, who exists mostly to agree and sleep with her half-brother, Bleys Ahrens. The creepily persuasive Bleys, last seen in Other (1994), is increasingly megalomaniacal, so obsessed with his plan to save the human race that his uncle's disapproval and his brother's possible betrayal barely register. In Wixon's hands, Dickson's journalistic style becomes long stretches of exposition punctuated by disaster. SF readers who have come to care about Bleys may be unable to turn away from his slow moral decline; newcomers are unlikely to be captivated by it. (Mar.)
Dragon LoversJo Beverley,
Mary Jo Putney,
Karen Harbaugh,
Barbara Samuel. Signet Eclipse, $14 paper (384p) ISBN 978-0-451-22039-4
Dragons may rival vampires as a popular fantasy motif and, like vampires, the mythical beasts can provide a theme for romance as well. These four original paranormal novellas mix the two genres, but are far more romantic than fantastic. All the heroines are strong, brave, smart, independent and beautiful, and each finds a manly-but-tender soul mate with whom she will live happily ever after. The ritual role of an official, if ceremonial, Sacrificial Virgin Princess turns dangerously real in bestseller Beverley's "The Dragon and the Virgin Princess," when a dragon-riding foreigner claims her as his bride. Set in a mythical medieval England, bestseller Putney's "The Dragon and the Dark Knight" features a hero who discovers that slaying dragons is the last thing he wants to do. Though fantasy fans will find these novellas far too frothy, romance lovers with a fondness for fire-breathers will be delighted. (Mar.)
DelivererC.J. Cherryh. DAW, $25.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0414-7
At the start of the stirring ninth entry in Cherryh's much praised Foreigner series (after 2006's Pretender), the atevi ruler Tabini has thwarted an attempt to overthrow him, though the usurper, Murini, has not yet been captured. Things appear to have settled back into routine, except for the hijinks of Cajeiri, Tabini's young heir, who has grown used to the liberties allowed a human child but not the heir to atevi rule. Then Cajeiri disappears and a troublesome Eastern lord is suspected of kidnapping him. Murini may also be involved. Human translator and diplomat Bren Cameron, along with the elderly but indomitable atevi matriarch Ilisidi and their deadly servants from the Assassins' Guild, must set off cross country in the dead of winter to attempt a rescue, while Cajeiri must prove that he is indeed worthy to be Tabini's heir. As always, Cherryh alternates complex political maneuvering with pell-mell action sequences in an intensely character-driven SF novel sure to appeal to the many fans of this series. (Feb.)
Mass Market
McKettrick's Pride Linda Lael Miller. HQN, $7.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-373-77190-5
Miller enthralls, once again, in the second entry of her new McKettrick Men series (following McKettrick's Luck), an engrossing, contemporary western romance starring Rance McKettrick, a handsome, successful businessman and cousin to the last volume's hero, Jesse. Having buried himself in work since his wife's death five years earlier, Rance gets a wake-up call in the form of a blonde newcomer to the small ranching town of Indian Rock, Ariz. Riding up in a hot pink VW Bug, eccentric Chicagoan Echo Wells sparks the whole town's interest when she opens up Indian Rock's first bookstore. Echo sets up shop next to the Curl and Twirl, a beauty parlor and baton-twirling school owned by Rance's kindly, nosy mother-in-law, Cora Tellington. Echo quickly befriends Cora and Rance's two daughters, whom he leaves with Cora during his frequent business trips. Once Rance meets Echo, their mutual attraction stirs feelings of love the stolid, scarred man thought he'd put away forever. Miller's masterful ability to create living, breathing characters never flags, even in the case of Echo's dog, Avalon; combined with a taut story line and vivid prose, Miller's romance won't disappoint. (Mar.)
Killer in High HeelsGemma Halliday. Dorchester/Making It, $6.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-505-52712-7
Drag queens meet the high-fashion mob in this fun, fast-paced follow-up to Halliday's delectable Spying in High Heels. A kids' shoe designer whose best creations end up in Payless, Maddie Springer is a down-to-earth blonde whose tough luck with men has her forbidding friends and family to mention her last boyfriend, LAPD detective Jack Ramirez. Her mom had similar luck with Maddie's father, Larry, who ran off to Vegas with a showgirl named Lola when Maddie was three. But when Maddie receives a cryptic plea from Larry on her answering machine—punctuated by a gunshot—she decides to investigate, trekking to Sin City with her voluptuous, well-armed best friend Dana and their gay cohort, Marco. There, they soon discover that Larry and Lola are one and the same, that an innocuous nightclub fronts an ingenious counterfeit shoe scheme and that—naturally—there's a murderer on the loose. This amusing whodunit scores big with inimitable characters like psychic Mrs. Rosenblatt, Maddie's tell-all mom and bad-boy Ramirez, who shows up with some surprises in tow. Maddie's winning return, with her bold comical voice and knack for thinking fast on her strappy slingbacks, will elicit cheers from fans of the growing chick mystery field. (Mar.)
A Wicked SnowGregg Olsen. Pinnacle, $6.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7860-1829-1
In his first novel, true crime writer Olsen (The Deep Dark) brings complex mystery and crackling authenticity to bear on a cold case police procedural. Hannah Griffin has spent most of her life trying to forget the notorious Christmas Eve house fire that claimed her family and turned up almost two dozen other bodies buried in their yard; though the case remained unsolved, Hannah's mother became, posthumously, the de facto prime suspect. Twenty years later, Hannah's a happily married mother of one, a crime scene investigator for Santa Louisa, Calif., and a lifetime away from her traumatic Oregon childhood—until a series of mysterious events indicates that her mother may still be alive. Hannah reopens the case, as well as old wounds, after enlisting the help of FBI Special Agent Jeff Bauer, the still-haunted chief officer from the original investigation. Thanks to Olsen's true-crime work, the case's particulars—both grisly and mundane—all carry genuine weight, though his characters can be cloying: Hannah's neuroses occasionally seem more dingbat than damaged, and Agent Bauer's tough-but-tender act is a familiar one. That said, Olsen's flashback narrative shines with lurid, carefully distributed details, and if it ultimately overshadows the present-day plot, his bizarre, many-layered mystery will keep fans of crime fiction hooked. (Mar.)
The Marcelli PrincessSusan Mallery. Pocket Star, $6.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7434-9958-3
The finale of Mallery's Marcelli family series (after The Marcelli Bride) is a charming but exasperating misfire. Mia Marcelli is shocked to wake up in her California home next to the father of her four-year-old son, a man she believed had been killed. It turns out that he's not the thief she thought he was, but rather Crown Prince Rafael of Calandria. She doesn't yet know it, but he's come to claim his love child and heir—and once his son is on Calandrian soil, Mia will have no legal rights to him. Rather then deal honestly with Mia, Rafael schemes to get his son before the truth is revealed, giving him all the more work to do when the time comes to redeem himself. Most of the previously introduced Marcelli clan return in this book, but Mia and her family are its best part. The sexist, duty-bound Rafael is a one-note brooder who doesn't do much to win over the reader, despite some humor and strong chemistry between the leads. Mia's unlikely history as a secret agent and the "disguised prince's secret baby" premise may require more suspension of disbelief than readers can spare, though series fans will find much to enjoy in the family dynamics. (Mar.)
Comics
Elk's RunJoshua Hale Fialkov and
Noel Tuazon. Villard, $19.95 (220p) ISBN 978-0-345-49511-2
Originally serialized as a comic book (until its publisher went under), this coming-of-age thriller appears in its entirety for the first time. The young protagonist, John Kohler, is even more bored and frustrated than most teenagers: he's grown up in the tiny town of Elk's Run, whose fanatical survivalist founders have sealed it off from the rest of the world, turning it into a sort of cross between Mayberry and the Branch Davidian compound. When a fatal accident leads to a revenge lynching and a series of murders, John and his friends try to escape; their parents come after them; and the ensuing cat-and-mouse game involves a mine fire, a stockpile of napalm and a stash of terrorist plans. Tuazon's chunky, scribbly brushwork occasionally seems too crude for a story whose heart is in its gritty precision. Still, his characters' facial and body language is remarkably expressive, and he pulls off some clever visual interpretations of the story—flashbacks to the teenagers' childhoods are drawn in a cartoonier, Archie-inspired style. And although the story is sometimes marred by simplistic characterization (the parents go from cruel disciplinarians to murderous psychotics rather quickly), Fialkov builds the suspense incrementally until the cycle of violence becomes a wave of disasters. (Mar.)
Jack of Fables, Vol 1: The (Nearly) Great EscapeBill Willingham,
Mathew Sturges,
Tony Atkins and
Andrew Pepoy. DC Comics/Vertigo, $14.99 paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-4012-1222-3
Willingham first created a contemporary world inhabited by fairy tale characters in his series, Fables. He continues that success with Sturges, who co-writes this recent spinoff. A new story line further develops Jack Horner's escapades in Hollywood and establishes him as the most dangerous Fable loose in the "mundy"—short for "mundane"—world. Jack is forced into the Golden Boughs Retirement Community, a jail of sorts where Fables are imprisoned until society-at-large forgets about them, thereby diminishing their magic powers. Enlisting the support of Goldilocks and a cage full of fairies, Jack plans the entire retirement community's escape. Willingham and Sturges give Jack a bad-boy attitude, making him an everyman hero that readers won't always identify with, but will enjoy watching flub and fake his way to freedom, complete with clever riffs on the Turtle and the Hare, the Toothfairy, Mother Goose and Humpty Dumpty. Readers will enjoy this more if they first familiarize themselves with Willingham's established Fables world (Legends in Exile, Wolves, etc.). Rated for mature readers, the tale includes sex, nudity, corruption, so it's got a little bit of everything that any sophisticated comics fan will enjoy. (Mar.)
The Grave Robber's DaughterRichard Sala. Fantagraphics, $9.95 paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-56097-773-5
When Judy Drood's car breaks down outside of Obadiah's Glen, the foul-mouthed Nancy Drew stand-in wanders into town for assistance and gets caught up in a bizarre hallucination brought to life. The town appears deserted save for a group of teenagers gathered inside an old house, an eerie little girl named Nellie Kelley and a small army of ever-grinning, sinister clowns. The answers to the many questions raised by this queer scenario unfolds at a brisk pace, revelations punctuated with fisticuffs, a tentacled sideshow mutant, ghoulish shenanigans in an accursed graveyard and a most unusual potion housed in the bottles of a dank wine cellar. Sala's David Lynchian world possesses the feel of a spooky mystery tale, but his illustrative style echoes a retro children's book, and the visual style adds a friendly yet disturbing quality to the proceedings. Sala (Evil Eye) has always offered something different, and this piece leaves the reader eager for the further exploits of Judy Drood in a world so similar to our own, but with one toe over the line into the Twilight Zone. (Feb.)
Gacha Gacha: The Next Revolution, Vol. 1Hiroyuki Tamakoshi. Del Rey, $9.99 paper (218p) ISBN 978-0-345-49233-3
Shy high schooler Akira Hatsushiba fruitlessly lusts after nubile classmate Yurika Sakuraba, and when his not-so-innocent desires can't get past his crippling timidity, he resorts to a dating scenario in a state-of-the-art virtual reality game. But things go awry, and Akira emerges from the simulator with the ability to randomly transform into the female character that appears as the game's menu guide, thereby opening a doorway into the mysterious world of females in general and Yurika in particular. The gender switch genre has been a staple of manga at least since Ranma 1/2, and subsequent entries in that niche have steadily upped the ante of nudity and smarmy situations. This series is a T & A festival of a magnitude that would be considered gratuitous even by the standards of the genre. Though charmingly illustrated, Tamakoshi's story offers mostly titillating shots of semilesbian encounters between the scantily clad Akira and Yurika as they innocently grope each other's curvy bits while in underwear or bikinis, rub sun tan oil on one another and generally wander around wearing very little. Definitely not recommended for those who read Archie comics. (Jan.)
PhantomLee Ki-hoon &
Seung-yup Cho. Tokyopop, $9.99 paper (192p) ISBN 978-1-5981677-0-7
K is a hot-headed and determined pilot of a mech, a large robot commonly referred to as a mobile unit, in the Neo Seoul police. Fighting against terrorism with unfaltering dedication, K never questions the megacorporations in control of his world—until he finds himself engaged in battle against the beautiful terrorist Sara, and a nightmarish confrontation explodes his sense of justice. Unfortunately, despite Cho's standout art (the character designs are sharp, smart and uniquely futuristic; the mechs are impeccably drawn; the battle sequences are clean and easy to follow), Phantom is a very bland story. The dark and totalitarian vision of the future has been more effectively imagined many times before, across many different mediums, and the characters are flat and predictable. Lee's vision is intriguing but falls dramatically short of its potential, relying too much on its Japanese anime inspirations (Gundam Wing) to produce interest among readers. No matter how compelling Cho's artwork is, it cannot propel the plot of Phantom into being anything other than a mildly amusing, albeit forgettable, read in the mecha genre. (Jan.)
