Fiction Reviews: Week of 9/24/2007

Escaped slaves, free blacks, slave-catchers and plantation owners weave a tangled web of intrigue and adventure in bestselling memoirist (The Color of Water) McBride's intricately constructed and impressive second novel, set in pre–Civil War Maryland. Liz Spocott, a beautiful young runaway slave, suffers a nasty head wound just before being nabbed by a posse of slave catchers. She falls into a coma, and, when she awakes, she can see the future—from the near-future to Martin Luther King to hip-hop—in her dreams. Liz's visions help her and her fellow slaves escape, but soon there are new dangers on her trail: Patty Cannon and her brutal gang of slave catchers, and a competing slave catcher, nicknamed “The Gimp,” who has a surprising streak of morality. Liz has some friends, including an older woman who teaches her “The Code” that guides runaways; a handsome young slave; and a wild inhabitant of the woods and swamps. Kidnappings, gunfights and chases ensue as Liz drifts in and out of her visions, which serve as a thoughtful meditation on the nature of freedom and offer sharp social commentary on contemporary America. McBride hasn't lost his touch: he nails the horrors of slavery as well as he does the power of hope and redemption. (Feb.)

The latest from Rocket Boys author Hickam takes an inside look at coal mining, from shoveling gob to negotiating international trade deals, through the lens of modern romance. A half-Korean New York rich girl turned takeover specialist for Daddy's company, Song Hawkins falls for Cable Jordan, a macho West Virginia mining manager. After a whirlwind wedding, she lasts four days in Cable's town of Highcoal, W.Va. (pop. 624), unable to rough it without her brand of cosmetics or low-fat meals. She likes Cable's house and artisan furniture, though, and she still loves Cable. After learning that her father has acquired the company that owns the Highcoal mine, Song returns to see for herself why the company isn't meeting quotas and signs on for beginner miner's training. As she encounters the camaraderies, rivalries, satisfactions and dangers of mining, Song works on solving a murder along with saving her marriage. Hickam's secondary characters—including a folksy wisdom-spouting preacher, a busty Botoxed ex-girlfriend, and a meticulous MSHA safety inspector—narrowly escape caricature by showing their human side during the climactic scene. Love may conquer all, Hickam suggests, but in a coal mine you also need good engineering. (Feb.)

Set during the frigid Berlin winter of 1946, Vyleta's wily debut follows the exploits of an American GI, a German street urchin and an enigmatic prostitute as they struggle to survive both the cold and the looming Cold War. Pavel Richter, an American soldier who remained in Berlin after the war, is shocked when his friend Boyd White shows up at his door with a dead German midget. After agreeing to help Boyd hide the body, Pavel and his friend Anders are thrust into the middle of a conspiracy that runs deeper than they could ever imagine. Boyd soon turns up dead, and Pavel and Anders discover that the midget, Söldmann, was a spy for the occupying Russians and was set to deliver a mysterious package on the night of his death. Boyd's and Söldmann's deaths arouse the interest of Pavel's upstairs neighbors, the nefarious British Colonel Fosko and his prostitute companion, Sonia, who join the Russians and Germans in the hunt for Söldmann's lost loot, and Pavel finds himself falling in love with Sonia. Despite an overabundance of minor characters and a conclusion that isn't exactly surprising, Vyleta conjures a convincing postwar Berlin in all of its moral ambiguity. (Feb.)

In the bleak first novel from Australian Robertson (following the 1998 story collection Proudflesh), Pearl, at eight, already exerts a self-punishing precision on a world she cannot control. When her younger brother, Riley, whom Pearl's aloof single mother, Lily, charged Pearl with caring for, is mowed down (along with several other children) by a madman's car, Lily tries to peddle Pearl's grief to the media. She then gets involved with Adam, an artist who has created a scandal by making and showing a body cast of a dead teenage heroin addict. With Adam up for the design of the memorial to honor the children slain with her son, Lily morbidly attempts to secure his affection. A sideline follows Sonia, a recent widow of a famous woodcarver and furniture maker, from whom Adam rents studio space. Pearl, meanwhile, to deal with her grief and keep chaos at bay, draws Frank Lloyd Wright's house Fallingwater over and over again. Marked by lyrical prose, credible characters and some artful links between the several story lines, the novel stays too close to numb Pearl and calculating Lily and comes off as emotionally flat and chilly. (Feb.)

Doyle's dynamic first collection of short stories offers light and heartfelt perspectives on the effects of immigration on Irish culture. Originally serialized for a Dublin newspaper, all eight stories draw from the conceit of “someone born in Ireland [who] meets someone who has come to live” there. The opener, “Guess Who's Coming for the Dinner,” covers familiar ground—a self-proclaimed “modern” father is taken aback when his daughter invites a “black fella” to dinner—but Doyle's wry sense of humor saves the narrative from triteness. Fans of Doyle's previous work will revel in the title story, a follow-up to The Commitments that finds Jimmy Rabbitte masterminding a multicultural revival of Woody Guthrie music. The later stories find Doyle experimenting with different styles and voices: “New Boy” charts an unlikely friendship between a nine-year-old African immigrant and two “small, angry Irish boys,” while “Black Hoodie” finds a timid, indifferent teenager discovering his passion for civil rights and a Nigerian girl. There are some abrupt endings that veer toward the convenient, though this may be an unavoidable consequence of their serial origins. Doyle's immense talent as a writer is neatly showcased throughout, and his sharp wit adds a richness to every tale. (Jan.)

Ripe with Southern charm and sultry atmosphere, West's diverting and funny latest unravels the tangled gossamer web of an eccentric extended Southern family. At the heart of the novel is Renata DeChavannes, who has a pretty full plate: a tabloid ran a story about her longtime film director boyfriend's possible on-set fling with an actress; her mother and step-father died in a plane crash five months ago; her father is about to marry his fourth wife (a squeaky-voiced young thang named Joie); and she's just found a letter written by her mother instructing her to ferret out her mother's “dirty secrets.” So Renata heads to her Gulf Coast Alabama hometown, where her indomitable grandmother Honora DeChavannes; steadfast former nanny Gladys Boudreax; and Honora's longtime friend and former actress, Isabella D'Agostina McGeehee, live. The story flies by, loaded with grand parties, sumptuous Southern meals, multiple affairs and harrowing calamities. West's storytelling talent shines when she's following around the fiery belles, though she has trouble getting convincingly into the head of Renata's father, Louie, and the profusion of subplots can feel overwhelming. On the whole, it's a joyride, if a sometimes bumpy one. (Jan.)

A macabre setup makes for a surprisingly moving read in Canadian writer Itani's second novel to be published in the U.S. (after Deafening). Ottawa born and bred octogenarian Georgie Danforth Whitley has always noted similarities—including their birth dates—between herself and Queen Elizabeth, whom she privately imagines as “Lilibet, a kind of parallel life-mate.” A serendipitous invitation to enjoy a birthday lunch with the queen in London gives Georgie a rare opportunity to experience independence from her 103-year-old mother and her 50-something daughter. However, a momentary distraction on the drive to the airport ends with Georgie's car falling to the bottom of a ravine—with no one, except maybe Lilibet, knowing she is missing. Minutes turn into days with a wounded Georgie flashing back to pivotal (and not-so-pivotal) moments in her past as she attempts to crawl to her car. The narrative gathers momentum as Georgie's plight becomes increasingly dire and she searches through her catalogue of memories for a measure of her life's worth. The ending, with its potential for melodrama, is expertly played; throughout, Itani handles her tension-fraught material with a precise, light touch. (Jan.)

In this lugubrious first novel from Brooklynite Attenberg (Instant Love), Jarvis Miller is a young, pretty “half-widow” in the Williamsburg neighborhood. For six years, her brilliant painter husband, Martin Miller, has lain in a coma in a nursing home, while Jarvis rarely leaves the apartment for more than her once-a-week visit to see him. With frequent musings such as “Waiting for Martin to wake up is a different kind of waiting than waiting for him to die,” Jarvis slowly takes steps to go on with her life, and in the process, begins to suspect that her picture-perfect marriage may have been something else entirely. She finds little solace in Alice, Martin's glossy, possessive art dealer, or in Davis, Martin's louche artist friend. What helps the most is a serendipitous friendship with three married men she meets in a Laundromat, “The Kept Men Club”; the three are financially supported by their wives just as Jarvis, former party girl, was supported first by Martin, and now by his legacy. Attenberg gets the Williamsburg cityscape correct but builds almost zero tension with Jarvis's depressive brooding over Martin, his continued hold on her and the decisions she faces. Not for a moment in this airless dirge does Jarvis or her marriage feel credible. (Jan.)

Palmer follows up her mirthful debut, Conversations with the Fat Girl, with a subtly sophisticated romance that outclasses most of the genre's other offerings. Elisabeth Page is a 30-year-old pastry chef at L.A.'s restaurant du jour whose perpetually knotted stomach has roots in any number of sources: her father, Ben, a two-time Pulitzer-winning novelist and “the kind of cultural icon that doesn't exist anymore,” with whom “every conversation is a chess game”; childhood sweetheart Will Houghton, whose globe-trotting as a journalist has stunted their ill-defined relationship; the head chef from hell at her all-consuming job; and her patrician family's way of “bonding through blood sport.” But relief begins to filter in as Elisabeth's dalliance with beer-drinking, salt-of-the-earth basketball coach Daniel Sullivan turns into a fulfilling relationship and her culinary career takes an unexpected turn. If it sounds chick litty, it is, but consider it haute chick lit; Palmer's prose is sharp, her characters are solid and her narrative is laced with moments of graceful sentiment. (Jan.)

The playing fields of Rookwood did little to prepare reluctant spy Harry Brett for the moral no man's land of post–Civil War Spain that awaits him in this cinematic historical thriller from British author Sansom (Sovereign). But those halcyon days have made him one of the few people likely to win the confidence of fellow old boy Sandy Forsyth, now a shady Madrid businessman, Franco associate and object of intense curiosity to British intelligence. Despite his reservations, Brett—whose best friend from Rookwood, Bernie Piper, disappeared in Spain a few years earlier while battling Franco with the International Brigade—accepts the assignment as his duty, and almost as swiftly regrets it. For the Madrid he finds has become a mockery of the vibrant, hopeful place he and Bernie visited during the dawn of the Republic. As in his Matthew Shardlake mystery series set in Tudor London, Sansom deftly plots his politically charged tale for maximal suspense, all the way up to its stunning conclusion. A bestseller in the U.K., this moving opus leaves the reader mourning for the Spain that might have been—and the England that maybe never was. (Jan.)

Sex, lies, crushed dreams and slot machines are paramount in McGinniss's flashy, fast-moving debut. Chase is a struggling artist who couldn't hack NYU and moves back to Vegas, where he is reunited with his adolescent flame, Michele. After being fired from his teaching job for beating up a student, Chase plans to hook up with his girlfriend, Julia, in California, but instead spends his summer as a chauffeur for Michele's call-girl business. Michele has plans for herself (buying a house, getting an advanced degree in women's studies), but for the time being is running the call-girl service out of a suite in the Versailles Palace Hotel and Casino with her boyfriend, Bailey. Girls too young for the job, readily available cocaine, untrustworthy business partners, memories of a family tragedy and glammed-out Vegas goons make Chase's summer more stressful than he had hoped for as he attempts to finish a few paintings for a group gallery show. The novel is action-packed, though the character development—particularly with the women—is sometimes superficial. McGinniss (son of another Joe McGinnis you may have heard of) successfully gambles with the notion that whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what does that mean for Chase and his plans to escape? (Jan.)

Richman's first novel offers a curious and satisfying blend of longing, political criticism and a middle-aged woman's sudden realization that she has been pretending all her life. Dickie Sinfield, 52, spent her childhood on a hardscrabble Utah cattle ranch, after her father uprooted her and her siblings from the suburbs and forced her to become a cowgirl at age seven. Fleeing at 18, Dickie never married and has been a Salt Lake City newspaper reporter for 25 years, all the while denying her love for her family and for childhood neighbor boy Stumpy Nelson. When Dickie's brother, Heber, is killed by poison gas in an accident at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Grounds, Dickie comes home for the funeral. There, she face her father's anger and bitterness, her mother's infidelity, her best friend's betrayal—and her own life. Amid Dickie's personal angst and gradual self-discovery, Richman unloads heaping criticism on the federal government's handling of chemical weapons and its treatment of civilian accident victims. Author of the memoir Riding in the Shadows of Saints: A Woman's Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail, Richman delivers a warm story of good folks who make bad decisions, justify them and then have to live with the consequences. (Jan.)

Three tales of Arab outcasts make up this fresh-voiced debut novel by Saudi Arabian author Al-Mohaimeed. A one-eared Bedouin tribesman named Turad quits his humiliating 13-year job as a low-level ministry servant and ends up at the Riyadh bus station with a plan to flee, but no destination in mind. While he figures out where he wants to go, two additional voices join the narrative. One is the memory of Turad's elderly co-worker at the ministry, Tawfiq, whose sad story begins when he was a child and his Sudanese village was attacked by slave traders. Tawfiq was later captured, raped, castrated and performed the services of a eunuch until he grew too old to be of use. The other voice is from a discarded official file Turad finds at the bus station. It involves a one-eyed orphan named Nasir, who is sexually abused by the staff at the orphanage where he grows up and is eventually denied his ambition of becoming a soldier. Al-Mohaimeed's work, assisted by Calderbank's faultless translation, beautifully captures the frustrations and resentments of his tormented characters. (Jan.)

Fans of Rankin's Inspector Rebus series (The Naming of the Dead, etc.) will welcome the U.S. publication of his second novel, a stand-alone spy thriller from 1988 that contains Rebus-like elements. Miles Flint has been a successful middle manager in the shadowy ranks of British intelligence until recent mistakes, including a botched surveillance of an Arab assassin, put his career and reputation in jeopardy. Suspecting that the killer evaded him because of a tip from one of his own, Miles launches his own mole hunt, casting himself in a role that's uncomfortably active for him—especially as his search leads back to his wife, Sheila. And Miles's doings seemingly strike a nerve within the organization, getting him dispatched on a perilous IRA bombing-related mission. Rankin creates plausible and fascinating characters in a manner that seems effortless (as in Miles's tic of comparing people to different kinds of beetles). While the elements of the denouement will strike some as gimmicky, it's clear that if Rankin had devoted his gifts to spy fiction rather than mysteries, he would still have been a hit. (Dec.)

Shifting effortlessly between the last days of WWII on the Eastern front and modern day Oslo, Norwegian Nesbø (The Devil's Star) spins a complex tale of murder, revenge and betrayal. A recovering alcoholic recently reassigned to the Norwegian Security Service, Insp. Harry Hole begins tracking Sverre Olsen, a vicious neo-Nazi who escaped prosecution on a technicality. But what starts as a quest to put Olsen behind bars soon explodes into a race to prevent an assassination. As Hole struggles to stay one step ahead of Olsen and his gang of skinheads, Nesbø takes the reader back to WWII, as Norwegians fighting for Hitler wage a losing battle on the Eastern front. When the two story lines finally collide, it's up to Hole to stop a man hell-bent on carrying out the deadly plan he hatched half a century ago in the trenches. Perfectly paced and painfully suspenseful, this crime novel illuminates not only Norway's alleged Nazi ties but also its present skinhead subculture. Readers will delight in Hole, a laconic hero as doggedly stubborn as Connelly's Harry Bosch, and yet with a prickly appeal all his own. (Dec.)

The taut 10th entry in Poyer's series featuring U.S. Navy commander Dan Lenson (following The Threat) is rich in the naval detail fans have come to expect. After refusing a request that he take a medical retirement (after his political hot-potato adventures saving the president from assassination), Dan is less than pleased when he's “put on the shelf” and ordered to oversee a small crew of U.S. civilians and retired military personnel who will participate in an international training exercise off the Korean peninsula. But even before he comes aboard the South Korean frigate on which he and his team will be stationed, the discovery of a disabled North Korean submarine off the coast—and the lethal response of the survivors, trapped within—is the first clue he has that North Korea may have decided to plunge the world into nuclear war. From there, Poyer provides readers with a satisfying, fast-paced narrative in which Dan must negotiate his past, his superiors and an unpredictable submerged enemy. Poyer's tech talk throughout is nicely turned, and Dan Lenson remains a winningly weary hero. (Dec.)

Like the classic noir film Chinatown, Eidson's thriller, set in late 19th-century Los Angeles, involves political corruption and an unscrupulous scheme to buy up land, but admirers of the author's earlier work, notably The Missing, are likely to be disappointed. When Don Maximiato Lugo, “the patrón of La Cienega,” is arrested for a prostitute's murder, his daughter, Sister Ria Lugo, returns home from India, where she has spent 10 years in self-imposed exile in a convent, to try to clear his name. She suspects he was framed because he refused to sell land to a powerful syndicate planning to install lamplights throughout the city. Don Lugo's refusal to deny his guilt, his increasingly eccentric behavior and his bizarre past make it difficult for Ria to be sure of his innocence, even as his execution day draws near. Some readers will appreciate the rare view of Mexican Los Angeles, but others may find the solution to the crime contrived and the killer's motive underdeveloped. (Dec.)

Swiss novelist Kramer's first work to be translated into English is the Prix Lipp-winning, brutally forthright take on a family unraveling after the accidental death of two young siblings. The children's deaths are heart-stopping: on a joy ride one hot May afternoon, the boys fatally fall out of an elevated gondola as their 17-year-old uncle, Benoît, and their beautiful young mother, Louise, look on in horror. Louise, around whom the novel largely revolves, has come with her children and surly husband, Vincent, to visit her family in a French town called S.; the children's deaths gradually derail the life of each member of the family. Louise moves in a torpor of grief while growing more dependent on Vincent, who lashes out by taking up with an available local girl. Benoit, gnawed by guilt, begins to cling to Vincent, and Louise's mother, still angry at Louise for getting pregnant when she was a teenager, encourages the men to escape while Louise is paralyzed by suffering. Kramer's sensuous, close observation casts a hypnotic spell on the narrative, leaving the reader unable to put it down until the last word. (Dec.)

At 27 books and counting, Nora Roberts is more prolific under her Robb pseudonym than most authors manage in a single career. Yet the latest in her not-so-near-future detective series featuring New York Police Det. Eve Dallas offers a satisfyingly novel mélange of suspense, sex, forensics and heroics. It's 2060, and the serial killer nicknamed “The Groom” is back in town after an absence of nine years, resuming his horrific run of kidnapping, torturing and killing young women. Dallas, who served as a detective in the frustrating first investigation, assumes lead role in this one. This time, not only do the killer's chosen victims have ties to Dallas's husband, Roarke, but Dallas herself may be the killer's ultimate target. Swiftly paced, the story cuts frequently from the investigation to the killer's “progress” with his victims. Dallas works to outplan, outfight and outsmart the killer; to keep her handsome, rich husband happy; and to be ready for the next round after a good night's sleep. Robb's latest is bound to please Dallas fans. (Nov.)

The pressures of politics and philosophy bring a Dutch diplomat to crisis in this 1990 novel that examines the ways internal angst plays out against external forces. Capping off an erratic career in the foreign service, Felix Hoffman lands in Prague a few months before the 1989 Velvet Revolution, his new position as ambassador promising a cushy ride into retirement. Steeped in stale grief over the loss of his two daughters—one to leukemia, one to a heroin overdose—that spurred an escalating estrangement from his wife, Marian, Hoffman wallows in gluttony and self-destruction. As he works his way through the contents of his refrigerator, he finds temporary respite in Spinoza's Treatise. Excerpts from this work require close attention, and the philosopher's notions of aligning perception, impressions and intuition highlight Hoffman's existential weariness. The story takes on a snappy pace as the era's political turmoil comes to the fore and a slew of subplots begin to coalesce: American tourist Freddy Mancini witnesses a kidnapping that later requires the involvement of John Marks, a CIA agent with romantic and espionage ties to Hoffman's wife; Czech journalist Irena Nová befriends Hoffman, but has her own twisted motivations; and Wim Scheffers, a higher-up in the Dutch diplomatic hierarchy, tries to shepherd along Hoffman's career to a respectable close. De Winter's original slant on a straightforward plot of Eastern bloc intrigue creates a resonant portrait of a conflicted man in a conflicted era. (Nov.)

French Algerian novelist Bouraoui explores growing up torn between two identities in this spare, emotionally arduous narrative. The daughter of a blonde, blue-eyed French mother and a well-educated Algerian father, young narrator Nina is deeply conflicted about her identity. She shields herself from the Arab dictates of women's behavior by becoming a tomboy with short hair, a mannish swagger and a boy's nickname; she is devoted to a boy of similar mixed identity named Amine with whom she navigates the violence of newly independent Algeria during the 1970s. The underlying menaces of disenfranchisement and racism torment their childhoods, until the two friends are separated. In the novel's second half, Nina spends summers at her grandparents' house in Rennes, where she must assume a new identity as a French girl while being constantly reminded that she is a foreigner. Bouraoui's quiet and inwardly focused coming-of-age novel delves deeply into intimate questions of self-definition—and ultimately the urge to become a writer. (Dec.)

A veteran avant-garde novelist, playwright and translator of Beckett's Eleutheria, Brodsky (Detour) resurfaces with this beguiling collection of two novellas, one short story and three short-shorts. The title novella, which opens the collection, is written in that trickiest of forms, the second person (“you feel excluded, snubbed, far more than you've ever been, ever allowed yourself to be”), and follows the Beckettian peregrinations of Goodis (“you, Goodis!”) as he steals an overcoat, sits in a noirish diner and falls in with a low-end criminal gang, all the while commenting feverishly on what he sees: “Among the trashcans that divvy up the eft-head glimmer of an expiring streetlamp, you choose the biggest one to hide behind.” The second novella, “Midtown Pythagoras,” closes the book and is a similarly noirish, and very funny, play on detective fiction; a writer hires a private dick to strong-arm a reviewer into changing her views of the writer's work: “if I could make her vision of him coincide with his own then at last all would be well with his posterities.” All the work here is drenched in a weary angst, but Brodsky's joyful relief in writing—despite uncertain posterities—comes through on every page. (Nov.)

This aching debut explores a girl's coming-of-age in poverty-drenched mid-1970s New Orleans. Eight-year-old Sandrine Miller lives like a servant to her mother, Shirleen, a low-wage typist, and her mean-spirited grandmother, Mother Dear, both of whom keep Sandrine overloaded with chores despite her homework and eagerness to keep up good grades at school. Sandrine's main escape is visiting her father and his mother, Mamalita, in the country for the summer, but her dream of moving there is crushed when Mamalita dies, and her busy country doctor dad leaves Sandrine in the noncare of his girlfriend, Philipa, whose dotty daughter, Yolanda, is, to Sandrine's bookish disgust, more interested in boys than her education. Indeed, Sandrine feels wronged, especially by her mother, who holds Sandrine's light skin against her. As she grows, Sandrine finds empowerment in knowledge of her body (taught to her by an older classmate, Lydia, whose step-dad molests her) and the recognition that learning is her only escape from the defeating cycle of early pregnancy, poverty and general futility. There are echoes of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Sandrine, with her fierce price, is an instantly likable underdog. (Nov.)

The Uwharrie of North Carolina came up against the controversial Indian termination policy of the 1950s and '60s, which sought to mainstream Native Americans. Warren Eubanks, whose Uwharrie name means “the Seed,” grew up under the care of his grandparents in the 1950s, and narrates troubled reservation life as an older man looking back at his childhood and Vietnam-era younger adulthood, witness to a besieged community that has had to figure out how to “continu[e] to be Indian.” Warren moves back and forth between different periods in the past, telling of conflict between the old ways, as followed by elders such as great Aunt Ida, who could read minds, and Grandmother, a weaver and singer, and the ruinous ways of the Kowache, or white people, to which Chief Billy Farmer is drawn. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the American Indian Movement and various corporations all play in as Warren slowly narrates how the reservation lands are handled, all the while staying close to people like the motorcycle riding Joe Bad Crow and Sun Susie, a horse trainer daughter whose mysterious death haunts these pages. In channeling Warren, Cook's beautifully modulated, speechlike cadences give his debut novel a quiet power. (Nov.)

After a gripping opening, Doyle's debut degenerates into a routine science fiction thriller. Early one morning, Dr. Christine Myers, a forensic scientist for the CIA, receives a call from her superior to investigate a bizarre crime: the crew members of a North Korean submarine intent on defecting to the U.S. have all been killed, some by chlorine gas, which may have formed accidentally, but others bear marks of violence that suggest they turned on each other. Accompanied by a team of navy SEALs, Myers arrives by helicopter on the sub off the Virginia coast and starts reconstructing the fatal events. What appears to be an interesting locked-room murder mystery takes a detour into X-Files territory when Myers finds evidence that the sub was transporting a powerful bioweapon that may have transformed one of the sailors into a superhuman monster. The book lapses into a less than engaging takeoff on the movie Alien, redeemed somewhat by an unconventional ending. (Nov.)

This solid WWII-era romance from Bostwick (Fields of Gold) puts two self-reliant pilots, both of whom nurse childhoods hurts, on the same flight path. Oklahoma-born Morgan Glennon never met his father, a barnstormer who swept his mother off her feet before disappearing back into the sky; after Pearl Harbor, Morgan's dreams of flying take him straight from his freshman year at the University of Oklahoma into enlistment. Georgia Carter, 18, from “the cracker part of Florida, far from the beach” and the daughter of an erratic mother, takes a job at a diner near a Waukegan, Ill., airport, trying to get airtime to quell her flying jones (not easy as a woman). These two lives are very differently affected by WWII, and as the narrative moves back and forth between them, readers will wait for fate to bring them together. Bostwick fills out their destinies satisfyingly and delivers tempting brushes with intimacy at all the right moments before the end-of-war denouement. (Nov.)

After taking care of a loose end from Act of Treason (2006), Mitch Rapp looks into the destruction of Iran's secret nuclear weapons facility in bestseller's Flynn's predictable eighth thriller to feature the counterterrorism agent. Given the absence of any indication of either a U.S. or an Israeli air strike, Rapp takes the opportunity to persuade the U.S. administration to plot an operation to destabilize the fanatical Iranian regime by having an Iranian dissident group claim responsibility for what he suspects was an inside job by an Israeli spy. When the Iranian government sinks one of its own ships and blames the U.S., Rapp and CIA chief Irene Kennedy travel to Iraq to try to defuse the crisis, only to fall victim to an ambush (reminiscent of one in Tom Clancy's A Clear and Present Danger) that results in Kennedy's abduction. Rapp races the clock to rescue his boss before she's tortured into revealing what she knows. Despite a backstory replete with personal loss, Rapp comes across as a one-dimensional killing machine, willing to do whatever needs doing to complete the mission. (Oct. 30)

The discovery of two mutilated corpses and a comatose stranger on the ancient pilgrims' path up Tibet's Sleeping Dragon mountain throws former Beijing special investigator Shan into a quandary at the start of Edgar-winner Pattison's atmospheric fifth mystery set in Tibet (after 2005's Beautiful Ghosts). The detective and gulag escapee, who has been mysteriously summoned to the remote hamlet of Drango along with his lama friends Lokesh and Gendun, refuses to let the survivor be summarily executed for murder, putting himself and the equally outlaw monks in jeopardy. Shan soon finds himself with just days to delve into a deepening conundrum that hints at both modern corruption and ancient evil. Pattison fans will savor all the Tibetan flavor they have come to expect as well as an intriguing subplot exploring possible kinship between Tibetans and the Navajo. (Tony Hillerman buffs, take note.) Although first-timers may initially stumble over the abundance of foreign names, the journey, like the climb up Sleeping Dragon, soon becomes both frightening and unforgettable. (Dec.)

This impressive debut, a comic whodunit from British entertainment lawyer Ewan, owes much of its charm and success to its compelling antihero, Charles Howard. An established author of mysteries featuring a burglar-detective, Howard himself is a successful burglar. While finishing his latest novel in Amsterdam, Howard receives a cryptic invitation via his Web site and follows his curiosity to a meeting with a mysterious American who somehow knows of the author's secret profession. Howard initially declines the commission to steal two small plaster monkeys, but when he succeeds in his assignment, he finds his client has been brutally bludgeoned. After becoming a suspect, Howard scrambles to understand the link between the monkeys and a diamond heist over a decade earlier. The ease with which Ewan creates a memorable protagonist and pits him against a plausible and tricky killer will be the envy of many more established authors. The detection is first-rate, and Howard is a fresh, irreverent creation who will make readers eager for his next exploit. (Nov.)

At the start of Kelly's poetic first novel, Phoenix Scribe reporter Michael Callan stands at the grave of Rhea Montero, a woman he once loved who he suspects ran a crime syndicate he's investigating. A friend from Rhea's childhood, the naïve Daly Marcus, can't believe Rhea could have been a crook. Together Callan and Marcus seek the truth as murder erupts around them and they're drawn into a web of human trafficking and darker crimes. Kelly, a longtime reporter for the Arizona Republic, excels in capturing the local scene, the high desert and Phoenix itself, with such intriguing neighborhoods as “the gangbanger purlieus of the West Valley, where I once heard a driver chastised because his booming car radio was drowning out a gunfight.” His alter ego Callan, a legalized Irish national with a dicey past, shows potential as a series hero, but the revelations he unearths will be overly familiar to most mystery readers. (Nov.)

Death and recovery consume Det. Jack Leightner in his second appearance and validate the praise Cohen received for Red Hook (2001). Winter is settling over New York harbor and a small coffin containing the body of a boy floats off a Red Hook pier. The box was assembled without nails and the corpse treated carefully. But by whom? Jack is temporarily assigned to his old Brooklyn neighborhood, once the hub of a thriving shipping industry, now decrepit but on the brink of gentrification. Tommy Balfa, the other officer on the case, leaves Jack alone except for favors he can call in. Oddly, Jack welcomes this challenge as a distraction from personal problems such as his repeated failure to propose to his magnificent girlfriend, even though working in Red Hook brings up his guilt over his brother's death when they were kids on the streets. Cohen offers not just a mystery but a satisfying elegy for vanished ways of life. (Nov.)

While the many fans of Akashic's consistently high-quality series might have expected the Motor City to be tapped sooner (maybe before the Twin Cities), they will find the delay well worth the wait. Few cities are as well suited to the genre as Detroit, with its embattled inner city and history of urban decline and blight, and the editors have assembled a talented lineup to do it justice with 16 original short stories. The always superb Loren D. Estleman starts the anthology off on a high note with his spare hard-boiled whodunit short, “Kill the Cat.” The constantly simmering background threat of violence informs two very different but equally accomplished tales: Joyce Carol Oates's “Panic” and Detroit Free Press columnist Desiree Cooper's “Night Coming.” The editors also include some well-done period pieces, like the 1950s-era “The Coffee Break” by Detroit News business editor Melissa Preddy, and their discerning selections maintain Akashic's excellent track record. (Nov.)

Barbieri's in top form as she delivers a smooth sequel to her witty debut (Murder 101). English professor Alison Bergeron wishes she'd stop getting uninvited visits from her ex-husband, Raymond Stark, “fornicator extraordinaire” and fellow professor at St. Thomas, a small Catholic university north of New York City. Ray's past conquests include Alison's slutty neighbor, Terri, and St. Thomas student Kathy Miceli, whose recent murder shocked the campus. Then Alison comes home one night to find Ray's body in her kitchen, hands and feet chopped off: the slaying signature of “chubby mobster” Peter Miceli, Kathy's father. Peter begins stalking Alison, showing up uninvited in her house to proclaim his innocence. Alison reluctantly turns to her soon-to-be-divorced former boyfriend, Bobby Crawford, an NYPD homicide detective, for help and comfort. The plot thickens when Terri disappears, leaving Alison in charge of Trixie, a scene-stealing golden retriever who makes a gruesome discovery. Barbieri juggles romance, murder and mayhem with stark realism and disarming charm. (Nov.)

Pilkington's straightforward seventh mystery featuring 16th-century falconer Thomas Finbow as an unlikely amateur sleuth is stronger on period feeling than plot twists. The prologue introduces the reader to a shadowy Italian cutthroat named Corvino, whom a French nobleman enlists to trace a treasured piece of jewelry. The action then shifts to England, where Thomas's master, Sir Robert Vicary, has been entrusted by the Privy Council with the valuable Muscovy Chain, intended to be conveyed as a gift to Boris Godunov, the de facto ruler of Russia, in an effort to solidify trading relations. Despite Thomas's best efforts, the chain disappears and a number of corpses turn up in and around Vicary's estate. While the action is swift and the color convincing, there's no mystery about who's behind the killings, and the theft is solved relatively quickly. The characters and period would be better served by a plot with more suspense. (Nov.)

In Grabien's enthralling fifth Haunted Ballad mystery, a tragedy in 1481 Cornwall has startling modern-day repercussions for musician Ringan Laine; his psychically talented “significant other,” Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes; and Ringan's beautiful adolescent niece, gifted violinist Rebecca Eisler. Becca accompanies Ringan and Penny on holiday to visit rakish, middle-aged Gowan Camborne, who invites Becca and Ringan to perform with his group, the Tin Miners. Gowan is shocked by Becca's resemblance to a lost love, while Penny senses something off about his St. Ives family estate. Then Penny and Becca encounter restless spirits seeking contact, apparently stirred up by an old folk ballad, and Becca becomes increasingly sensitive to the ghost of Jenna Camborne, one of Gowan's ancestors. The need to learn the truth behind a 500-year-old crime before another death occurs today gives Penny, Ringan and their friends a major challenge and provides Grabien's fans with another chilling psychic puzzler. (Nov.)

In the sequel to Timeweb (2006), bestseller Herbert (Sandworms of Dune) offers readers a space opera where interstellar travel is mostly embargoed and characters spend over a third of the book in solitary self-reflection. When the alien Parvii cut two empires off from the podship networks, the Parvii derail a war between humankind and the shape-shifting Mutati and forcibly separate many members of Herbert's large cast. Frequent viewpoint shifts and lengthy stretches of internal monologue make character development all but impossible. Neither guerrilla mystic Noah Watanabe nor his nemesis, Doge Lorenzo, are more than cartoon archetypes, and hardly anyone else has enough time onstage to acquire much depth. The short chapters also create an odd tonal dissonance, with heavy-handed philosophical musing regularly interrupted by crisp plot newsbreaks. Pacing improves somewhat in the book's second half (a grisly torture sequence marks the turning point), but in the end, ideas are spread too thin and most characters drawn too broadly to lift the novel above pulp-era comic strip quality. (Dec.)

Equal parts sword-and-sorcery action/adventure and noir whodunit, Bledsoe's finely polished debut is evocative of fantasy legend Fritz Leiber's classic tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Bledsoe's narrative, while set in a comparable world, features only one protagonist: “sword jockey” Eddie LaCrosse, a private investigator who has spent most of his life trying to distance himself from a shadowy and tragic past. When his old childhood friend, King Philip of Arentia, enlists his help to unravel a scandalous mystery surrounding the brutal death of the young royal heir—a murder in which the king's beautiful wife, Rhiannon, is the prime suspect—LaCrosse accepts only to encounter a deity who forces him to come to grips with the horrific events of his youth. Incorporating elements from both hard-boiled mystery and heroic fantasy, Bledsoe's genre-blending first novel is both stylish and self-assured: Raymond Chandler meets Raymond E. Feist. (Nov.)

Space opera specialist McDevitt shoehorns two traditional SF plots into his latest Academy novel (after 2006's Odyssey), doing both stories a disservice. Youthful physicist Jon Silvestri persuades the philanthropic Prometheus Foundation to back tests of a risky interstellar drive that's vastly superior to current technology. Soon series keystone Priscilla Hutchins finds herself aboard a newly outfitted ship dispatched to the galactic core, seeking the source of a million-year-old interstellar menace. The cast is uniformly likable if prickly, but no true protagonist emerges from McDevitt's ensemble. Some sections are leisurely, others rushed. Readers see little of the star drive research, and the space voyage is triply sidetracked—to a planet of cheerfully technophobic aliens, an abandoned world with unexpected dangers and a black hole with a tantalizing secret—before reaching its stated objective, where the threat's origin is summarily introduced and disposed of in the last 60 pages. Despite considerable inventiveness and an enthusiastic pro-space agenda, the story remains superficial, especially frustrating from a writer of McDevitt's caliber. (Nov.)

This rich collection from Nebula-winner Moon (The Speed of Dark) offers 15 stories spanning two decades of her career. Fans of the Chicks in Chainmail anthology series will enjoy “And Ladies of the Club” and three other tales of the intrepid females of the Ladies' Aid and Armor Society. In “Gifts” and “Judgment,” young men earn just rewards for their dedication and honor. “Tradition” is an alternate history about cowardice and bravery during WWI. The musicians in “New World Symphony” and “Hand to Hand” offer striking commentary on the price and value of creativity. “Say Cheese” is a humorous tale of bad luck and skillful trading set in the Vatta's War universe. The heart of the collection is “Politics,” a story of young soldiers serving a questionable authority; it sums up many of Moon's themes, from honor and family to being true to oneself. Readers who only know Moon's novels will be thrilled to learn that her short stories are equally entertaining and thoughtful. (Nov.)

Many-time Hugo-winner Resnick provides further demonstration that science fiction, fantasy and horror clichés can be turned into rich comedy with just a teensy, absurd twist. Terry Bisson's “He Loved Lucy” depicts the tragic romance between a man and an underwear-obsessed computerized voice-recognition system. Gene Wolfe and Brian Hopkins's “Rattler” presents a pickup truck possessed by a canine ghost. Ron Goulart's “The Robot Who Came to Dinner” is a hard-boiled detective story, but the detective is a human character's ex-husband downloaded into a robot body. Astrophysicist Gregory Benford explains “How to Write a Scientific Paper” in wickedly sharp detail. Folksinger Janis Ian offers “Conversations with a Breeder” in “revenge” for Resnick dragging her into writing science fiction. The real prize may be the Lovecraftian sendup “A Study in Scarlet Herrings” by M.M. Moamrath (the pseudonym of Joe Pumilia and Bill Wallace). The overall humor quality ranges from mildly amusing to fall-out-of-your-chair, making it a pleasant companion for light reading. (Nov.)

This offbeat novel in the form of a minor demon's diary may satisfy devoted Barker fans eager for his return to adult fiction after several years writing the Abarat series, but others, especially first-time readers, are likely to find this fable about good and evil less than rewarding. Jakabok Botch, the child of two demons who has inherited his father's two tails, is rendered even more grotesque after he tumbles into a fire and most of his face is badly burned. A violent dispute with his abusive father, Pappy Gatmuss, leads to the pair being trapped by a net from our world. Jakabok manages to elude capture and eventually finds his way to the home of Johannes Gutenberg, whose wife turns out to be an angel in disguise. The book's format—simultaneously Botch's first-person narrative and his break-the-fourth-wall address to the reader pleading for him or her to burn the book—may puzzle readers unused to Barker's quirks. (Oct. 30)

Veteran British horror writer Gallagher (The Kingdom of Bones) shows off his versatility in this collection of 11 stories and a review of Joseph Payne Brennan's Nine Horrors and a Dream. Among the best are “The Back of His Hand,” a shocking description of the unexpected dangers involved in tattoo removal; “The Plot,” a Victorian tale in which a mill girl enacts a bizarre revenge on the kindly priest who refuses to let her illegitimate baby be buried in sacred ground; “Doctor Hood,” a touching ghost story concerning a world-famous physicist, his daughter and the recently deceased loved one haunting their family home; and “My Repeater,” a grim science fiction story about the fruitlessness of using time travel to correct one's past errors. Capable of being either subtle or blunt depending upon the needs of his plot, Gallagher has assembled a fine and varied collection of weird fiction that should find many admirers. (Oct.)

Released right on the heels of her impressive October debut, Lord of the Fading Lands, Wilson's sequel picks up, appropriately, right on the heels of the first title's denouement. Ellysetta Baristani and her betrothed Fey lord, returning hero Rain Tairen Soul, are days away from their wedding, but the wicked Eld lords are drawing ever closer to locating Ellysetta, whose magic they hope to use for their own ends. As the intrigues of the Eld plot ripple throughout the court, Ellysetta wrestles with personal demons and the mysterious power within her. Meanwhile, tensions on the country's borders mount as the specter of war draws nearer. Wilson jumps back into her tale without skipping a beat, expanding her world with finesse while boldly taking her story in entirely unexpected directions. As Ellysetta comes into her own as a proper heroine, driving the story toward its breath-taking conclusion, gratified fans may find their elation giving way to anxiety, as the wait for the next volume will be considerably longer. (Nov.)

Robb (aka Nora Roberts) is indeed the headliner, but this all-new four-novella anthology definitely doesn't suffer from “standout single” syndrome—this one's all killer, no filler. In Robb's opener, a courageous female cop with a troubled past clashes with a bloodthirsty, unnaturally powerful mystery man who promises his enthralled victims immortality: charismatic con artist, or much worse? Blayney follows with the story of an enigmatic old coin that transports an American tourist and an oddly aristocratic bartender into a Regency-era adventure. In Langan's, another unsuspecting American time-traveler stumbles into romance with a 15th-century Scottish warlord who believes she's his kidnapped wife. And in McComas's, a bored housewife takes a magic carpet ride to an alternate universe do-over of her marriage. Though they don't always keep a straight face, occasionally tipping from fantasy into farce—for instance, a canny medieval Scottish ruler blithely accepting a 21st-century designer pant suit as regulation female barbarian dress—such lapses are minor; the biggest fault readers will find is that these intriguing characters are taken away so quickly (especially in Blayney's frustratingly rushed resolution). (Nov.)

Warren's latest Regency is the lighthearted tale of Lady Julianna Hawthorne, a young and beautiful widow, whose brother, a profligate gambler, is in danger of losing the family estate to financier Rafe Pendragon. To forgive his debt, Julianna strikes a deal with Rafe, agreeing to become his mistress for six months. As time wears on, Julianna finds herself unexpectedly falling for the ruthless businessman, and even more unexpectedly heartbroken when he must separate himself from her, lest she become the target of his villainous, spiteful half-brother, Viscount St. George. An unpredictable villain capable of real harm, St. George is a menacing standout among a lackluster supporting cast; similarly disappointing dialogue between Rafe and Julianna doesn't get far beyond the expository, but their overwhelming chemistry should keep romance readers hooked. Warren's attempt at creating a world beyond her lovers may fail, but the three principles create enough drama to keep the pages turning. (Nov.)

In this tame debut, the body of a young girl discovered by the side of a Nashville highway puts homicide detective Taylor Jackson and her lowdown boyfriend, FBI Agent John Baldwin, on the trail of the Southern Strangler, a playful, brutal killer who likes to carry his victims across state lines before murdering them and removing their hands. Before long, however, Taylor's reassigned to the suspicious death of a prominent TV personality, leaving John struggling to keep ahead of the Strangler's mounting body count. Meanwhile, Taylor is still recovering from a near-fatal neck injury earned in her last case and worrying over her own demons—not the least of which is John's threat to marry her. The real victim is Ellison's plot, strangled by slow pacing, egregious subplots (a serial rapist, a crooked officer, a pregnancy scare) and a clichéd cast of characters: the shady Southern belle, the veteran detective pushed over the edge, the evil genius who stays a step ahead of everyone—even the appealing Taylor strikes a numbingly familiar tough-yet-vulnerable pose. Though a climactic showdown injects some much-needed excitement, readers may have a hard time getting there. (Nov.)

A lush and energetic drawing style makes for a beautiful book, but the plot of this ambitious graphic novel falls short. Wilson, a journalist who has spent many years in the city of the book's title, gamely attempts to construct a gripping narrative, mixing magic, politics and romance. Her story brings together an American tourist, a would-be suicide bomber, a female Israeli soldier, a smalltime drug runner and a radical Egyptian reporter. Add to this mix a hookah with a smooth-talking genie inside, and you have the makings of a fine story. The sum is somewhat less than its parts, however, as various subplots fail to mesh comfortably, plot points and elements of magic and legend are inadequately introduced, and a long-winded explanation of political ideals weighs down the last quarter of the book. Wilson is a talented young writer, but tells her story at an uneven pace, revealing crucial elements late in the book. Narrative faltering aside, the knowledgeable view of the Islamic world and interesting visual effects do keep the reader's attention. Perker draws the city and the legendary figures in rich detail, revealing personalities and emotional states in characters' faces. (Nov.)

The different settings for the stories in this single-volume yaoi collection provide variety in approach and mood. The first and longest is a costume drama featuring two unnamed aristocrats fighting boredom. One, disguised as a masked thief, kidnaps and ravages the other, who then finds ways to meet the thief again. After their teasing, love/hate encounters, the thief downplays the victim's sexual prowess, which only eggs him on. It's like From Eroica with Love, only with a more modern art style and more explicit encounters. The lush lives of these characters provide room for wide romantic fantasy, and the sketchy, suggestive storytelling allows plenty of space for reader imagination around the poetic rogue, a classic seductive ideal. The second story is a generic tale of schoolboys initiating one another into their sexual ways, but the third presents the unusual angle of love between a congressman who's being pressured to get married and his assistant, who's also his boyfriend. The unusual premise will likely make the forced separation between two characters who clearly care for each other more plausible to the reader, even if U.S. culture makes the happy ending not so realistic. (Sept.)

In his afterword to this jaw-dropping collection of early, little-known wordless graphic novels, cartoonist Seth asserts that rather than being seen only as a link between early comic strips and today's graphic novels, these stories stand powerfully on their own. The proof is in the stark appearance produced by wood cuts and lino-engraving and the themes in these once-controversial works: social unrest, the plight of the downtrodden worker and the oppression of the weak by the strong. Masereel's The Passion of a Man (1918) tells a modernist Christ story in 25 dark pictures, while Hyde's Southern Cross (1951) is a pastoral tragedy about Pacific islanders caught up in the U.S. Navy's A-bomb testing. Ward's Wild Pilgrimage (1932) is a passionate aria to the human spirit, threatened with crushing death by the specter of soulless factory work and cruel bosses. Patri's White Collar (1939) is the real standout; on the surface it's a simple story about a commercial artist fighting to keep his family going, but ending as a stunning validation of the dignity of man. Handsomely printed and bound and smartly edited, this book sets the standard for how to present anew the important but lesser-known classics of graphic fiction's past. (Sept.)

This delightful collection spotlights early work by Weissman, whose recent Chewing Gum in Church and Kid Firechief have generated much deserved acclaim. Weissman is the increasingly rare cartoonist whose simple, lush works hide a wicked intelligence and biting wit. He employs a classic, almost 1950s graphic style to tell stories of mischievous children. In this collection, Weissman focuses on a cast of monster kids, including Li'l Bloody (a kid vampire), Kid Medusa (a child Medusa), Pullapart Boy (his limbs pop off) and others. These twisted little ones are like the Peanuts gang on a bad acid trip. They punch, bite, kick and abuse one another in their eternal quest for friendship and mayhem. Weissman always walks the line between the comedic and the corny, but his pacing, dialogue and drawing is spot-on throughout. There's nothing quite like Kid Medusa feeling lonely or Pullapart Boy in shambles. The characters heighten all the universal childhood feelings with grotesque flair. Also included is a lengthy adventure featuring Rip Van Helsing, which is must reading, as is the whole book. (Sept.)

Signature

Reviewed by Junot Díaz

Tomine's lacerating falling-out-of-love story is an irresistible gem of a graphic novel. Shortcomings is set primarily in an almost otherworldly San Francisco Bay Area; its antihero, Ben Tanaka, is not your average comic book protagonist: he's crabby, negative, self-absorbed, über-critical, slack-a-riffic and for someone who is strenuously “race-blind,” has a pernicious hankering for whitegirls.

His girlfriend Miko (alas and tragically) is an Asian-American community activist of the moderate variety. Ben is the sort of cat who walks into a Korean wedding and says, “Man, look at all these Asians,” while Miko programs Asian-American independent films and both are equally skilled in the underhanded art of “fighting without fighting.” As you might imagine, their relationship is in full decay. In Tomine's apt hands, Tanaka's heartbreaking descent into awareness is reading as good as you'll find anywhere. What a relief to find such unprecious intelligent dynamic young people of color wrestling with real issues that they can neither escape nor hope completely to understand.

Tomine's no dummy: he keeps the “issues” secondary to his characters' messy humanity and gains incredible thematic resonance from this subordination. Tomine's dialogue is hilarious (he makes Seth Rogan seem a little forced), his secondary characters knockouts (Ben's Korean-American “only friend” Alice steals every scene she's in, and the Korean wedding they attend together as pretend-partners is a study in the even blending of tragedy and farce), and his dramatic instincts second-to-none.

Besides orchestrating a gripping kick-ass story with people who feel like you've had the pleasure/misfortune of rooming with, Tomine does something far more valuable: almost incidentally and without visible effort (for such is the strength of a true artist) he explodes the tottering myth that love is blind and from its million phony fragments assembles a compelling meditation on the role of race in the romantic economy, dramatizing with evil clarity how we are both utterly blind and cannily hyperaware of the immense invisible power race exerts in shaping what we call “desire.”

And that moment at the end when the whiteboy squares up against Ben, kung-fu style: I couldn't decide whether to fold over in laughter or to hug Ben or both. Tomine accomplishes in one panel of this graphic novel what so many writers have failed to do in entire books. In crisp spare lines, he captures in all its excruciating, disappointing absurdity a single moment and makes from it our world. (Oct.)

Junot Díaz's first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, has just been published by Riverhead.