Fiction Reviews: Week of 10/22/2007

Poet Sheers takes readers to a small Welsh village during a speculative WWII—featuring a German invasion of Britain—in his auspicious debut novel. It’s 1944 and Sarah Lewis and the women in Ochlon valley are left alone after all the local men disappear one night. The women’s worlds suddenly shrink to the day-to-day struggles to keep their sheep farms going until the war comes to their doorsteps in the form of Capt. Albrecht Wolfram and his men, who have a murky mission to carry out in the valley. Promising to leave the women alone, the Germans occupy an abandoned house and the two camps keep mostly to themselves until a harsh winter takes hold, and it becomes clear that the locals and the Germans will have to depend on one another to survive. It’s also revealed that Albrecht is just as interested as the locals are in staying away from the war for as long as possible, and the two communities begin to merge. But when the weather breaks and the valley reopens to the world—and hence the war—the peculiar idyll threatens to shatter. Sheers’s alternate reality is frighteningly convincing and dripping with heartbreak. This is an outstanding debut. (Feb.)

The second novel from Suri (The Death of Vishnu) follows Meera Sawhney from her unhappy 1950s marriage to aspiring singer Dev Arora through to her own son’s coming-of-age. After an impulsive act forces Meera’s marriage at 17, her complex, controlling father decries her tying herself (and, by extension, her family) to the provincial, lower-class Aroras. Meera soon finds herself pulled in different directions by her in-laws’ religious orthodoxy, her father’s progressivism (which doesn’t run deep), her husband’s self-pitying alcoholism and her own resentment. She finds salvation in the birth of a son, Ashvin; mother love, which Suri describes in intensely physical terms, gives her life passion and purpose, and overwhelms her adult relationships. But as India modernizes, Meera senses that Ashvin, and she herself, must live their own lives. Suri renders Meera’s perspective marvelously, especially in small particulars (such as Meera’s deliberations around the cutting of Ashvin’s hair) and in the perils and conflicts Meera faces in her relationships with men. He also takes a close look at Hindu practices and charts the rise of religious nationalism in the years following Gandhi’s death. Suri’s vivid portrait of a woman in post-independence India engages timeless themes of self-determination. (Feb.)

A klatch of wealthy suburban women become deeply entangled in one another’s lives while planning a public health clinic benefit in Walker’s uninspired first novel. Housewife Janie is having a heated affair she can’t give up; lawyer Marie is trying to balance her law practice, family obligations and loafing husband when a hot summer intern arrives; heiress Gayle has turned to pills to numb her to the treatment of her abusive husband; and Love, a doctor’s wife, receives a letter from her estranged father that dredges up a painful past. As the women’s personal struggles invade their other, pedestrian pursuits, Love’s struggle with the demands of motherhood and family forces Marie, Janie and Gayle to get more involved in the lives of their friends and neighbors. Unfortunately, Walker doesn’t do much to bring life to her typecast characters, and the narrative wobbles wildly as the subplots barrel toward a big revelation. The ending is mostly happy, which will please some, but the novel’s phoned-in feeling prevents readers from connecting with the characters. (Feb.)

The two most successful stories of Crane’s third collection (following All This Heavenly Glory) are also the most intimate: “The Most Everything in the World” listens in on a husband and wife playing the what-would-you-take-to-a-deserted-island game, while “Donovan’s Closet,” about a girl with a fetish involving her boyfriend’s lemon-scented closet, turns into an optimistic tale of a seemingly doomed relationship’s survival. Other characters in Crane’s lineup include a suburban zombie turned reality TV star (“Betty the Zombie”), a time-traveling photographer who gets arrested for being happy (the title story) and a handful of other victims and survivors of not-so-everyday life. Because of Crane’s repetitive narration the book is best read piecemeal rather than straight through: “I don’t mean literally everything. Literally most things, but not everything.” In “Promise,” a story about a woman waiting for the arrival of her adopted child, which closes the collection, Crane quips, “I will feed you sugar.” And that might as well be Crane’s promise for the collection as a whole. (Feb.)

This charming if uneven Edwardian from Marks (Geek to Chic) opens as Miss Larissa Quinn completes her education and journeys to Westmoreland estate to become the companion to an aunt she doesn’t know. She resolves, however, to have one adventure before resigning herself to her fate. On arriving at an inn, Larissa, spys a handsome gentleman, and claims that the two are newlyweds in order to secure the last remaining room. Once settled, it takes a little convincing to get the man, Sir Randall Trent, to go on with the charade. After a chaste night, the two board the coach assuming that no one will be the wiser and that they will never meet again. But Larissa’s very undoddering aunt eschews dull country life for the London season, and when Larissa and Sir Randall inevitably meet, their “marriage” slips out of their control—leading to unpleasant and possibly deadly consequences. The lovers don’t quite come into focus and often seem not to know whether to fight or kiss, but the inventive plot carries them along with sweet abandon. (Feb.)

Hannah (On Mystic Lake) goes a little too far into Lifetime movie territory in her latest, an epic exploration of the complicated terrain between best friends—one who chooses marriage and motherhood while the other opts for career and celebrity. The adventures of poor, ambitious Tully Hart and middle-class romantic Kate Mularkey begin in the 1970s, but don’t really get moving until about halfway into the book, when Tully, who claws her way to the heights of broadcast journalism, discovers it’s lonely at the top, and Katie, a stay-at-home Seattle housewife, forgets what it’s like to be a rebellious teen. What holds the overlong narrative together is the appealing nature of Tully and Katie’s devotion to one another even as they are repeatedly tested by jealousy and ambition. Katie’s husband, Johnny, is smitten with Tully, and Tully, who is abandoned by her own booze-and-drug-addled mother, relishes the adoration from Katie’s daughter, Marah. Hannah takes the easy way out with an over-the-top tear-jerker ending, though her upbeat message of the power of friendship and family will, for some readers, trump even the most contrived plot twists. (Feb.)

For his U.S. debut, Fabre offers a poignantly funny, slender slice of a French waiter’s life. Pierre, 56 and divorced, has worked at the suburban Parisian cafe Le Cercle for so long that he’s become a fixture. He’s a good listener, too, particularly to the boss’s wife, heartbroken over her husband’s seeming affair with the young head waitress, Sabrina. As a long shift unrolls, the boss and Sabrina are absent from the busy cafe, leaving Senegalese cook Amédée fuming and Pierre and the title’s fill-in waitress scrambling. The next day brings big changes, and loyal, orderly Pierre must suddenly measure out his mortality by the pay stubs he has hoarded over his working life. In Fabre’s patient, deliberative layering, the details of Pierre’s quotidian life assume an affecting solidity and significance. (Feb.)

Like Isabella, a giant “superconducting supercollider particle accelerator,” the thought-provoking new thriller from bestseller Preston (Tyrannosaur Canyon) takes a while to power up, but once it does, this baby roars. The ostensible goal of Isabella’s creator, physicist Gregory North Hazelius, is to discover new forms of energy, but what he really wants is to talk to God. The project, located inside Red Mesa (“a five-hundred-square-mile tableland on the Navajo Indian Reservation”), is behind schedule, so presidential science adviser Stanton Lockwood hires ex-CIA man Wyman Ford to go to Red Mesa and find out what’s causing the holdup. Meanwhile, a Navajo medicine man, a televangelist and a pastor who runs a failed mission on the reservation are gearing up to pull the plug on Isabella before she destroys the earth. Science has often tangled with religion in this genre, but Preston puts his own philosophical spin on the usual proceedings, and when he gets his irate villagers with their burning torches headed for the castle, the pages simply fly. (Jan.)

Schwartz bases his finely wrought fourth novel on the life of Empress Michiko of Japan, the first commoner to marry into the Japanese imperial family. Haruko Tsuneyasu grows up in postwar rural Japan and studies at Sacred Heart University, where she excels—particularly and fatefully—at tennis, which provides her entrée to the crown prince, whom she handily beats in an exhibition match. After more meetings on and off the court, the prince asks Haruko to marry him. Persuaded by their mutual attraction and by assurances that the break with tradition will usher in a modern era, Haruko ultimately agrees, against her father’s wishes, to become the first commoner turned royal. But, as her father had feared, her freedom and ambition suffer under the stifling rituals of court life. Eventually, Haruko succumbs to the inescapable judgment of the empress and her entourage, falling mute after the birth of her son, Yasuhito. Though the narrative loses some of its life after Haruko marries—perhaps mirroring Haruko’s experience within the palace walls—urgency returns after Haruko chooses a wife for Yasuhito; the marriage tests Haruko’s dedication to the crown. Schwartz (Reservation Road) pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world. (Jan.)

In Johnson’s vivid debut, Revere, Miss., is a 1966 small town teetering on the brink of integration. Willie B. Tate Jr., a 10-year-old black boy known as “Critter,” drives poor white man Billy Ray Puckett to the whites-only emergency room after Billy Ray has a hunting accident. Caught up in the middle of the fallout after Billy Ray’s unexpected death is Dr. Cooper Connelly, a prominent white doctor who serves on the school board and has controversial prointegration views. Cooper is a man with secrets, including why he keeps company with Madame Melba Obrensky, a “raceless” woman with a mysterious past who manages to keep herself well-apprised of all sides of the town’s doings. Melba happens to be the next-door neighbor of Dr. Reese Jackson, a respected black physician who has managed to cross the race barrier and establish his practice on Main Street. As the heat of the school board meetings about integration and of the investigation into Billy Ray’s death increase, the atmosphere becomes explosive. Johnson tries to squeeze too much out of the limited plot, but compelling character studies keep pages turning. (Jan.)

Set initially in 1914 before the start of WWI, Barker’s first novel since 2004’s Double Vision tells the story of two students at London’s Slade School of Fine Art, Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke, along with that of Kit Neville, a promising young painter. Paul begins an affair with Teresa Halliday, a troubled artist’s model, and Kit woos Elinor, but both men rush off to the Continent at the outset of hostilities to work with the wounded. The author’s unflinching eye for detail and her supple prose create an undeniably powerful narrative, but her skills cannot compensate for a weak plot. What appear to be critical story lines (Paul’s affair with Teresa, Kit’s painting career) are almost abandoned once Paul and Elinor become lovers. And the book’s main theme—war’s impact on art and love—pales in comparison with the tragic experiences of those who fight and die in the conflict. Despite riveting passages depicting the waste and horror of WWI, this effort falls short of the standard set by Barker’s magisterial Regeneration trilogy, the last of which, The Ghost Road, won the Booker Prize. (Jan.)

Hart’s latest (after Ordinary Springs) imagines the fictional Becky Thatcher—best known as Tom Sawyer’s crybaby girlfriend—as a strong heroine whose true story was held back by childhood friend Samuel Clemens, who chose to give the charismatic Tom Sawyer center stage in his writings. Hart’s riveting and often moving take intersperses Becky’s version of events in the Mark Twain novel with the events of Becky’s life as the wife of Tom’s cousin Sid during and after the Civil War. In Hart’s hands, Becky morphs from sniveling and helpless to woman warrior: dressing as a man to find her husband on Civil War battlefields and trying to hide from Sid and herself her lifelong love for Tom. The narrative finds Becky in Nevada, navigating life in a mining town, and eventually in San Francisco as a wealthy woman. In between, the author conveys the hell of battle and how its effects linger long after the last shot is fired. Mark Twain purists may balk at the idea of Becky fearlessly trekking with Tom’s Freebooters, and though the charisma that Tom supposedly radiated doesn’t entirely come through, Hart brings her sometimes motley cast to life throughout. Mark Twain is a tough act to follow, but Hart does her heroine justice. (Jan.)

Psychologist Gilligan’s landmark study of gender and moral thinking, In a Different Voice (1982), set off a generation’s worth of Mars vs. Venus debates. In Gilligan’s poised debut novel, Kyra is a Cambridge-based architect and professor of architecture who meets Andreas, an opera director, at a friend’s Thanksgiving dinner. Both have lost spouses to political turmoil. They are intrigued by each other, falling first into companionship as he persuades her to design sets for his nontraditional production of Tosca, and later into an affair. When Andreas leaves suddenly to pursue his work, Kyra spirals downward, bottoming out in a dramatic attempt to find out what is “real.” As Kyra begins an unconventional, sometimes combative course of therapy, Andreas floats in and out of her life. The novel’s great strength is Kyra’s voice, which Gilligan renders with assurance and lyricism. The result is a powerful portrait of a complex character. (Jan.)

Flawed Rev. Curtis Black returns in Roby’s latest melodrama (following Love and Lies). The repentant, 46-year-old Curtis has finally made amends with his 31-year-old wife, Charlotte: she’s forgiven him for his five-year affair with Tabitha, but forbids him from seeing Tabitha or the infant daughter he fathered with her. An enraged Tabitha harasses Curtis, stalks Charlotte around their hometown of Mitchell, Ill., and threatens to go public. Haunted by her own daughter’s death and determined to keep her husband’s secrets, Charlotte decides to take matters into her own hands. Meanwhile, interim pastor Rev. Tolson, who knows a thing or two about Curtis’s business, is smarting from his loss of power now that Curtis has returned to the pulpit from a book tour and speaking engagements. And Curtis and Charlotte risk losing their 13-year-old son, Matthew, after David, the man they believe is Matthew’s biological dad, decides to seek full custody. Roby has got smalltown church politics down, but spends more time on stiffly repeated backstory and hollow finger-wagging than on plot, leading to a hurried, undermotivated denouement. (Jan.)

Kennedy’s contemplative, stylized sixth novel (after Paradise) follows former Royal Air Force tail gunner Alfred Day as he relives his experiences in a WWII German prison camp. It’s 1949, and the diminutive but sparky Alfred, now in his mid-20s, is unraveling without the peculiar sense of purpose and dread the war had instilled in him, and without the crew he’d befriended. He volunteers as an extra on the set of a war documentary, hoping to regain precious lost camaraderie, but instead teeters on the edge of total breakdown. Flashbacks abound, detailing Alfred’s turbulent childhood with an abusive, alcoholic father. The film set experience grows darker as Alfred begins reliving his time in the prison camp, and the roots of his growing anger and depression are exposed. Kennedy is known for her language and methodical sentence structure, and this dexterity sparkles in her narration, which includes Alfred’s interior thoughts (offset in italics) as well as ingenious forays into the second person (where he’s presumably talking to himself). It takes getting used to, but adds texture and intimacy to this timely story about the detrimental effects of war on a good man. (Jan.)

For this impressive crime anthology, bestseller Child (One Shot) has gathered 13 stories by newcomers and three by veterans. Such established writers as David Morrell, James Rollins, Gayle Lynds, Ken Bruen and Allison Brennan introduce tales by such rising stars as Marcus Sakey, Brett Battles, Robert Gregory Browne, Sean Chercover and Gregg Olsen. Some selections, like Olsen’s “The Crime of My Life,” hit like a hard swung sap. Battles’s “Perfect Gentleman” is more like a knife that slides in easily, then twists in the gut. Browne’s “Bottom Deal” features a PI that would be at home in a lineup with Spade and Marlowe. Sakey’s “Gravity and Need” lets the reader bleed out slowly, while Chercover’s “One Serving of Bad Luck” earns a rueful smile. Not every entry is a winner, but the disturbingly good new talent showcased in this volume bodes well for the future of the genre. (Jan.)

British author Beaumont’s American debut tells the story of a once successful London voiceover artist nearing the end of her 30s and possibly a divorce. Narrator Fran Clark, a 36-year-old stay-at-home mother of two, has been stuck in a rut for nearly 11 years. Her marketing genius husband Richard’s career has taken off, and though he’s spending less time at home, he wants Fran to get back into the voiceover game because he thinks it’ll make her happier. Fran, however, chickens out before every audition and soon suspects Richard’s cheating on her. Run-ins with gossipy mothers at the children’s school, missed auditions, accusations of unfit parenting by the school principal, a dangerous flirtation with alcoholism and her friends’ separate life dramas provide the obstacles to Fran’s mission of getting herself sorted out. It’s enjoyable mommy lit, aided by ample doses of British humor, breezy storytelling and an upbeat feel even in the down moments. (Jan.)

In this very funny but slight second novel, Hardy imbues the familiar cool-dude-suddenly-saddled-with-a-little-dude-he-didn’t-know-existed plot with enough giggle-worthy humor about 30-something quasibohemian life to make it more than a Nick Hornby also-ran. Jimmy Keeper is divorced from Cynthia, a pastry chef with a penchant for secrecy; he runs an antiques salvage business in Providence, R.I., and lives in a tiny house with girlfriend Leah, a self-assured architect. But after Cynthia falls gravely ill and summons him to the hospital, Keeper’s carefully constructed, somewhat man-boyish life is destined for disruption. It turns out that he and Cynthia have a three-year-old son, Leo, the secret product of a final pre-Leah fling. In due course, the boy lands in Keeper’s care, and Leah flees. Will Keeper be able to successfully take care of Leo? Will Leah be able to love Keeper despite the addition of a child not her own? Because Keeper is a companionable narrator (he’s a dude’s dude who likes beer, sex and playing cards, and yet is aware of his propensity for emotional stupidity), the quest for these answers is a fun if predictable jaunt. (Jan.)

The Cameroon-born, Ivory Coast–based Liking (Love Across a Hundred Lives) centers her fifth novel on Halla Njokè, 75, who resolves to honor the women of her Bassa clan and to “convey Africa’s silences” by unearthing her memories. The result is an exhaustive, meandering bildungsroman, interspersed with chantlike songs of life in a fictionalized, strife-torn 20th-century African country recognizable as Cameroon. Largely addressed directly to Halla’s grandiose and philandering father, the first part of the novel recounts her harrowing rural childhood during which her father rapes Halla, attempts to marry her to much older men and fails to provide a promised education. Further, as the struggle for independence plays out in the background, her father collaborates with the white colonial leaders rather than supporting the local resistance. After Halla breaks with her family and moves to the city, she sings at nightclubs and begins to develop as an artist, which leads to a lot of interior monologue. The novel’s last third, full of long summaries rather than dramatized events, thwarts its promising start. (Jan.)

This frugal novel from the Finnish Vartio (1924–1966), is set in a Finnish village (“near Viipuri”) during the early 20th century. The mentally unstable title character, Adele, argues with her maid, Alma, about the fire that consumed the parsonage, and soon moves on to other topics. An obsession with a set of stuffed birds—passed down from the parson’s uncle to the parson, to his wife and, finally, to Alma’s care—serves as a major focus, with ample space devoted to addiction, sexual violence, the color of Alma’s scarf on the day the Alma and Adele first met and Adele’s criticism of Alma for her treatment of the birds. That last inspires Alma to tell a face-saving lie: that a rare, stuffed swan resides in her family home. The tale feeds Adele’s mad obsession and leads to a shocking final conflict between the parson’s widow and her maid. With a masterful judiciousness of detail, Vartio manages to make the slight scenario take on a great deal of weight. The perpetual conflict is as affecting as it is absurd. (Jan.)

Simoni’s juicy debut is the story of Rosa, a young Genoan woman born to a prostitute and orphaned at birth in the late 19th century. Her guardian is Madam C, the proprietor of a much-loved brothel called the Luna, who shields Rosa from “the game” played on the second floor of her house. But for Rosa’s 16th birthday party, she wears a special perfume distilled by her peculiar friend Isabel, and before the evening’s over, the mayor, enchanted by the scent, ends up playing “the game” with Rosa. (Rosa, unbelievably, doesn’t realize what’s going on nor has she ever seen a naked man before.) When their tryst is discovered, Madame C, who has pined for the mayor for years, hurls Rosa onto the street. The orphan seeks refuge with Isabel and hides her born-in-a-brothel past from her new beau, longshoreman Renato (who is also susceptible to Isabel’s perfume), but when Renato’s life and their love are threatened, Rosa must decide what truths are worth the risk of losing him. Though parts of the story feel pat and the dialogue is often stiff, most of this light, whimsical romance’s flaws are forgivable. (Jan.)

Cassie Shaw, the 30-year-old dyslexic high school dropout narrator of Kaufman and Mack’s follow-up to Literacy and Longing in L.A., is devoid of self-esteem and, as the winsome novel opens, has just been widowed by a jerk who left her nothing but debt. Desperate for a job, Cassie fudges her education background on a job application and snags an entry-level university office job working under William Conner, a charismatic professor of animal behavior who ignites Cassie’s desire for learning—and other things. As Cassie’s lust for knowledge swells and she becomes more involved with Conner, the list of her deceptions lengthens, and it’s only a matter of time until budding beau Conner finds out. Kaufman and Mack lace the narrative with light humor (the rats in California’s Topanga Canyon are like “roaches in NY or liars in LA”) and nods to Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Plato and Keats. Delightfully merging humor, philosophy and reflections on nature, this novel is a lot of fun and might give some readers freshman-year flashbacks. (Jan.)

Memoirist Merritt (Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star) delivers a thought-provoking fiction on the problem of being gay in the military. As Clinton begins putting the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy into place in the early 1990s, closeted and disturbed Naval Investigative Service Agent Jay Gared goes on a mission to catch violators of Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice—i.e., the rule that states sodomy is a criminal act. Chief Petty Officer Eddie L. Johnson, who has been switching blood test vials for six years to get around the service’s mandatory HIV test, gets into Jay’s sights. When Eddie catches Jay snooping in his home, Jay shoots Eddie and fakes Eddie’s suicide. Shocked friends and family know better, and for a group of close-knit gay and lesbian military personnel, the “suicide” is a call to arms. Marine Gunnery Sgt. Donald A. Hawkins, a gay rights advocate, vows to learn the truth. Merritt raises provocative questions and delivers a graphic crime tale. (Jan.)

British author Harper brings to life the political and religious passions of the 11th-century in his excellent conclusion to his First Crusade trilogy (after The Mosaic of Shadows and Knights of the Cross). While series hero Demetrios Askiates, a Greek in service to the Byzantine emperor, doesn’t have a mystery to solve as he did in the previous two books, Harper’s gifts as a writer are more than equal to the task of sustaining interest and suspense without that plot device. As various warlords compete to be the first to reach Jerusalem, Askiates attempts to free himself of his obligations to the emperor and return home to Constantinople. A diplomatic mission to gain the ruling Fatimids as allies against the Turks sends Askiates to Egypt instead, where he must endure a harrowing trek through the desert to survive. This first-rate historical makes accessible the prosaic details of everyday life in a distant era. (Dec.)

Set before and during WWII, this compelling paranormal love story from Sickels (Walking West; The Shopkeeper’s Wife) will remind many of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series (Messenger of Truth, etc.), with its deft historical detail and timeless characters. Helen Schneider, a 13-year-old school girl, discovers she has remarkable powers as a medium after she has a vision of a New Jersey neighbor caught in a fire. As Helen matures, her ability to communicate with the dead and see the future sets her at odds with her fiancé, Billy Mackey, and eventually arouses the interest of the U.S. military. Helen must decide whether to use her psychic gift to do what she thinks is right or to bow to the opposition of skeptics like Billy. Paranormal fans seeking a realistic change from the vampires and werewolves that dominate this popular subgenre will be well rewarded. (Dec.)

Cold, wet Denmark is a strange land to Raihana, the widowed Afghan refugee at the center of Malladi’s well-intentioned but wooden fifth novel. After her husband is killed by the Taliban, Raihana moves to Denmark, enrolls in language school and, with the help of a supportive teacher, lands an unusual apprenticeship helping Gunnar, a Danish widower and beekeeper, harvest his honey. Though their relationship is initially strained, Raihana and Gunnar soon develop a restorative friendship, but the road to redemption is not easy: Raihana feels pressure within the Afghan community to remarry, and the idea of an Afghan woman working alone with a Danish man soon has both their communities in a tizzy. Meanwhile, racial violence simmers day-to-day. Unfortunately, Malladi’s treatment of cultural tension is one-dimensional at best; most of the supporting characters are xenophobic, if not flat-out racist, and their actions play into an overarching philosophy that expounds the benefits of tolerance and multiculturalism. Malladi means well, but her parable-like treatment of complex issues is too pat to resonate. (Dec.)

In Thriller Award–nominee Gussin’s unremarkable second novel (after 2006’s Shadow of Death), Tampa, Fla., thoracic surgeon Laura Nelson suffers a cascading series of disasters: she’s unable to save a young traffic accident victim and heads home only to find her husband, Steve, in flagrante with his young and attractive colleague, Kim Connor. Furious at the betrayal, Laura kicks Steve out and prepares for divorce. While visiting Steve’s temporary digs, Laura finds Kim’s corpse and is still near the body when the police arrive. Her efforts to clear her name and hold on to her children are complicated by Steve’s hostility, a medical crisis affecting their youngest son and the machinations of mobsters connected to Kim and the killing. There are few surprises, and the only interesting moments come when the doctor finds herself just another parent of an ill child, with the feel-good vibe done to death by the implausibly saccharine ending. (Dec.)

Poet McSweeney (The Commandrine and Other Poems) enters the realm of speculative fiction with this debut novel, with spotty success. Years after “E-Day”—a bioterrorist version of 9/11, aimed at what survivors now remember as “Old Capitol”—a new version of the U.S. has reconstituted itself along familiar near-future lines: fake food, curtailed travel and Internet, government-controlled TV. The heroine, Flet, is a top aide to Sub-Secretary Lonnie Otis, a mid-level bureaucrat and icy Hillary Clinton type. Flet cherishes a few trinkets left behind by the decontaminators, junky fossils of a life before everything became dirty, and finds diversion with Mick, a reality TV “filetape” editor contracted to the government’s Education Media. In the days leading up to a memorial “Re-Enactment,” Flet comes to believe that the government has distorted the real events of the emergency, and that Otis is an agent of the coverup. The Devil Wears Prada elements of the setup make for some workplace sparks, and the 9/11 parallels are nicely turned. McSweeney’s descriptive writing can be precise and energetic, and the dialogue of her young people amusing and real. But the narrative, chopped into short, titled chapters, is too often freighted with impressionistic passages that defy understanding. (Dec.)

English professor Cioffari has a few lyrical flashes in this 1960s Bronx thriller, but never manages to sustain them. Tormented detective Alex Ramsey is still shattered by the death two years before in a traffic accident of his 11-year-old son, Evan, a loss that also cost him his job with the NYPD. Ramsey’s ghosts return with a vengeance when his current position as head of security for a Bronx housing project involves him with the investigation into a boy’s murder. After Ramsey’s wife leaves him and more bodies turn up, Ramsey finds himself seeking out the company of Krissie, the driver whose carelessness killed Evan. Despite some sections reminiscent of Richard Price’s powerful works of urban crime, the book as a whole is weighed down by the highly implausible relationship between Ramsey and Krissie and a routine solution to the crimes. (Dec.)

Bestseller Patterson’s 13th Alex Cross thriller (after 2006’s Cross) pits the legendary profiler, now retired from law enforcement and working as a psychiatrist in private practice, against two serial killers. Kyle Craig, Cross’s former colleague in the FBI (who was revealed to be the Mastermind, a particularly vicious and resourceful murderer, in 2001’s Violets Are Blue), has managed to escape from a Colorado maximum-security prison and is steadily working his way through his list of those he holds responsible for his capture and incarceration. Cross, who heads the list, is drawn back into police work by his love interest, Maryland homicide detective Brianna Stone, who’s been assigned to the task force focusing on the D.C. Audience Killer (or DCAK), who stages high-profile and sadistic murders to get the most public attention possible. Even newcomers will find themselves turning the pages to see how everything turns out, but significant plot holes and implausibilities make this a far cry from the similar, but far more suspenseful, two-front war waged by Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. (Nov.)

palestinian history teacher Omar Yussef travels from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, where he becomes immersed in local violence and politics, in this over-the-top sequel to Rees’s The Collaborator of Bethlehem (2007). Omar Yussef is a modest figure, quiet and middle-aged. When a U.N. official asks him to speak to a kidnapped schoolteacher’s wife, he soon finds himself in the midst of international intrigue, dealing missiles over dinner, shouting down police officers and militants armed with machine guns and rescuing someone from a smuggling tunnel. These incidents seem a bit extreme for an aging academic, though his charm and calm demeanor are almost enough to convince the reader. The zany plot is interesting despite its implausibility, and the richly detailed descriptions, complete with deliberately brutal details of torture and death, emphasize Omar Yussef’s peril and the violent tumult of the Middle East. (Feb.)

Martin’s riveting third Jim Stringer mystery (after 2007’s The Blackpool Highflyer) finds Jim newly made detective for the North Eastern Railway at York station in 1906. His first day starts ominously when a hotel porter’s throat is cut and Stringer’s prized copies of Railways Magazine go missing. The latter mishap takes him to the lost luggage office, where gospel-quoting porter Edwin Lund tells Stringer about a pickpocket ring working the railways. After two brothers are found shot in the rail yard, Stringer goes undercover as hapless Allan Appleby, joining two men Lund calls Brains and Blocker in lifting wallets while preparing for “the big one.” Stringer’s suffragist wife remains home awaiting childbirth, and Stringer, dreading the financial needs of parenthood, finds himself thinking about keeping some of “Allan’s” ill-gotten gains. Plenty of action, plot twists and moral quandaries help this engaging mystery pick up steam. (Jan.)

Most of the 10 outstanding stories in this collection from French author Halter, the first English-language edition of his work, center on an impossible crime, a still potent subgenre that was once a fixture of last century’s golden age of detective fiction. Halter sets up puzzles for his sleuths that appear to defy any rational explanation and then provides logical and satisfying solutions that few, if any, readers will anticipate. John Dickson Carr fans should be particularly impressed by the variations Halter plays on the no-footprint-in-the-snow-near-the-corpse premise, especially with “The Abominable Snowman,” in which witnesses see a snowman come to life and stab a man to death. Readers intrigued by such situations as how bodies in a locked vault could move around or how three people could be shot to death in a sealed escalator with no one nearby, will relish these tales. One hopes that Halter’s impossible crime novels will soon be made available in English as well. (Dec.)

Two fine mystery writers team up for the third and last time (after Second Sight and First Light), with their series heroes swapping chapters and stories seamlessly. Tapply’s Boston lawyer, Brady Coyne, responds to an anguished call for help from an old client living on Martha’s Vineyard, where the late Philip Craig’s ex-cop, J.W. Jackson, is being urged by his wife to investigate the death of a striking ferry boat worker. The authors, real-life friends, could not have gotten along better than their fictional heroes, who share a love of fishing, eating, family and adventure. The two friends pursue their cases separately and together as tensions caused by the ferry strike mount and a murder raises the stakes. This marks the highly enjoyable and poignant end to a short, sweet series. (Dec.)

Glamorous to outsiders, the high-powered music business can exact a fatally high price for fame, as Molly Forrester discovers when she turns investigative reporter in Anderson’s entertaining fourth mystery (after 2006’s Killer Deal) to feature the popular advice columnist for Zeitgeist, a fashionable Manhattan magazine. Molly seizes the chance to profile music industry giant Russell Elliott, who’s recently died of what’s been ruled an accidental drug overdose. As Molly begins to interview Elliott’s complex family, which includes an assortment of ex-wives, and learns of the legal and personal tangles of the tortured genius, she suspects his demise was no accident. Meanwhile, she struggles to keep her job and to rekindle her romance with handsome NYPD homicide detective Kyle Edwards. Anderson’s breezy style—a mix of wit and trendy references—at times borders on the silly, but chick lit fans, not to mention Sex in the City buffs, will find much to like. (Dec.)

With a central plot line hinging on a bioengineered strain of killer ladybugs and a solution that will strike most as far-fetched, this romantic cozy is an unremarkable outing for Soule (Chase the Dream), better known for writing straight romances. P.J. Benson, an accountant in the small Michigan town of Zenith, leads a humdrum existence as April 15 approaches. When a dead stranger turns up in her house, P.J. becomes the prime suspect of hunky homicide detective Wade Kingsley. Further break-ins make P.J. wonder whether the killer was after a mysterious box stolen from her neighbors, Julia and John Westman, but when the Westmans deny ever telling her that the box contained lethal insects, neighbors familiar with her family history of mental illness begin to wonder whether P.J. herself is losing touch with reality. The burgeoning relationship between P.J. and Wade generates few sparks, leaving little to keep readers going through the slow-moving plot. (Dec.)

At the start of this introspective, low-key thriller from Stoker-winner Piccirilli (The Midnight Road), the enigmatic Crease tools his ’Stang back to his childhood home of Hangtree, Vt., where “the adolescent pain clung to your back like a clawed animal.” Now 27 and an undercover narc in New York City, Crease remains haunted by the shooting of a kidnapped girl by his lawman father, an event that scarred their lives. Piccirilli marches Crease through the obligatory encounters with childhood sweethearts, bullies and other figures from the past, and throws on some extra voltage by having his hero trailed home by a knife-wielding drug dealer. Occasional bursts of hotter prose (“Lightning blitzkrieged him with every beat of his pulse”) liven up the very familiar plot, but the idea that Vermont “was a spooky place compared to New York” never quite convinces. An introduction by Ken Bruen may draw some attention to this quiet brush with neo-noir, the first full-length novel from a small press that previously specialized in novelettes. (Dec.)

Lin (Waylaid) examines the life of a 1976 Chinatown beat cop in his understated second novel. Young officer Robert Chow is unabashedly used by the NYPD to create the illusion of diversity in the force, despite anti-Asian bias from white cops who don’t know or don’t care that Chow served with U.S. forces in Vietnam. Chow can’t get his superiors’ attention when he suspects that a woman may have been murdered by her husband, and he soon finds himself caught between the corrupt rulers of the local Chinese-American community and the average men and women who toil for meager wages to survive. Chow is a little too enigmatic to engage most readers, and the murder plot remains in the background throughout much of the story; nonetheless, Lin succeeds at recreating his chosen time and place, even if authors like Reggie Nadelson and S.J. Rozan have better handled issues of assimilation and real-life policing. (Dec.)

The engaging eighth book in Green’s popular offbeat Nightside series (after 2006’s Hell to Pay) drops another paranormal mystery in the lap of series hero John Taylor, a PI in the shadowy realm of Nightside. Pen Donavon, who claims to have a DVD depicting actual footage of the afterlife, has vanished shortly after signing an exclusive deal with the tabloid Unnatural Inquirer. Various factions seeking to control the Nightside are leaving a considerable body count behind as they hunt for him. Accompanied by sexy half-demon reporter Bettie Divine, Taylor navigates the treacherous terrain with his typical skill before tracking down the real force behind Donavon’s disappearance. Green skillfully blends action and humor, and shows no sign of running out of ideas. This installment will undoubtedly rope in new readers who enjoy his blend of dark humor and the supernatural. (Jan.)

Orphaned 16-year-old Leodora, a talented puppeteer and storyteller, is forced to hide her identity and gender as she travels the spans and tunnels of the ocean-crossing Shadowbridge in Frost’s exciting first of a diptych. Stubborn and god-touched, Leodora feels nearly friendless until she meets a youth with similar gifts. Diverus, an enslaved simpleton, is endowed with intelligence and uncanny musical abilities when an unpredictable deity visits his span. When Diverus plays and Leodora performs, their synergy creates magic and brings them instant fame. Only Leodora’s mentor, the perpetually drunken Soter, realizes that their brilliance attracts dangerous chaos energy, and he must protect the young pair while keeping long-held secrets about the deaths of Leodora’s parents and the dangers of her talent. Frost (Fitcher’s Brides) draws richly detailed human characters and embellishes his multilayered stories with intriguing creatures—benevolent sea dragons, trickster foxes, death-eating snakes and capricious gods—that make this fantasy a sparkling gem of mythic invention and wonder. (Dec.)

If Anne Rice is the celebrity journalist of vampires, Yarbro is their domestic chronicler. The meticulous 20th entry in her Count Saint-Germain saga (after 2006’s Roman Dusk) finds her 4,000-year-old hero in the Swiss countryside of 1817, helping the struggling locals recover from the Napoleonic wars and severe winters. By this period, Saint-Germain is a cultured and compassionate figure, occupied with the spread of knowledge through publishing and the child custody struggles of his lover, Hero Corvosaggio. His greatest threats come from discharged soldiers turned bandits and an abused debutante turned murderer, whose blood-obsessed guardian he lectures on the difference between heredity and destiny. Monsters are made, he knows, not born. Yarbro piles on the historical detail, giving an intimate look at the households of early 19th-century Europe and the commerce and travels of its inhabitants. Letters, with headnotes on their delivery methods and times, litter the text, adding to the period feel. Intimate, too, describes Saint-Germain and Hero, whose relationship is explored in fine-grained emotional as well as physical terms. (Dec.)

The 12 simply narrated tales of terror in Myers’s second collection (after 1975’s The House of the Worm) perfectly accommodate their stripped-down Lovecraftian themes. In “The Web,” two Web-surfing teens get more than they bargained for when they hack into an online edition of the Necronomicon and activate one of its spells. “The Big Picture” tells of an ordinary guy whose fascination with stereoscopic games and picture puzzles sensitizes him to horrors that lurk behind the facade of the visible world. In “Understudy,” a Hollywood special effects artist who sculpts lifelike rubber monster outfits saves the day on an underwater monster flick when he brings in his living model to body-double for the movie’s star. “What Rough Beast” chronicles a terrified hitchhiker’s flight from the eerie cult leader who arranged her impregnation. Myers often leavens the horror with wry humor, avoiding the cardinal horror sin of overdramatization. Fans of the Cthulhu mythos will welcome this new compilation from one of horror’s most able contemporary practitioners. (Dec.)

Karigan G’ladheon was hoping for a break from adventure after the breakneck escapades of First Rider’s Call (2004), but this action-packed third Green Rider volume gives her no time to rest. Sent on what she thinks is a mundane errand for the king of Sacoridia and the captain of the royal messenger corps known as the Green Riders, Karigan begins having strange dreams that may hold hidden meaning. Then she receives a cryptic message from the ghost of a would-be magician. Karigan finally accepts that she’s destined for the extraordinary when the magnificent black horse Salvistar, the steed of the god of death, beckons her to ride with him among the stars. Britain keeps the excitement high from beginning to end, balancing epic magical battles with the humor and camaraderie of Karigan and her fellow riders. (Nov.)

While the millennium revelation in this fantastic first of a new paranormal series might not be a shocker for urban fantasy fans—i.e., vampires, werewolves, witches and zombies come out of the closet after Y2K—Douglas (Cat in a Red Hot Rage) handles the premise with such spectacular style, it feels fresh. Delilah Street, who was only 11 in 2000, is now 24 and works for WTCH, a Kansas TV station, as a paranormal investigative reporter. When Delilah angers an undead co-worker and is demoted, she moves to Sin City in hopes of finding a possible blood relative seen on CSI Las Vegas V. She gets a job with Hector Nightwine, the show’s producer, and falls in love with Ric Montoya, a former FBI agent who finds corpses by dowsing. Douglas spices the action with fabulous characters: Quicksilver, Delilah’s protective dog; CinSims (Cinema Simulacrums), dead celebrities recreated via science and magic; the oldest living vampire in Vegas, once a famous aviator; and Cocaine (aka Snow), a devilish albino rocker. Readers will eagerly await the sequel. (Dec.)

The latest from bestseller Shayne (Prince of Twilight) is an interesting, inventive tale of vampires with a world that’s almost too fully realized, occasionally suffering from plot overload. Before he became a vampire, Reaper worked for the CIA; now he works solo, as a hired assassin. Reaper’s latest commission is the rogue vampire Gregor, who along with his followers is leaving a trail of blood-drained corpses that may, if unchecked, reveal the carefully hidden world of vampires to the blissfully unsuspecting mortal masses. Complicating Reaper’s mission is Seth, a newly turned vampire he’s compelled to bring along on his assignment. Unfortunately for the self-proclaimed “lone wolf,” that opens the door to other unwanted partners: Roxy, a Wicca healer; the vampiress Topaz; and a shape-shifter called Vixen, each of whom has her own reasons for wanting Gregor stopped. Shayne crafts a convincing world, tweaking vampire legends just enough to draw fresh blood. Though her attention to a number of subplots can frustrate, they’ll also suck in an audience for the inevitable sequel. (Dec.)

Morgan’s paranormal Paladin series begins to lose steam in this fourth installment, which picks up right after the end of In Darkness Reborn. Barak q’Arc has just crossed the magical barrier into enemy Paladin territory to save the woman he loves, condemning himself to certain death, should he cross back, at the hands of his sister, Lusahn, determined to carry out the penalty for his treason. It’s not her brother who returns, however, but Cullen Finley, the Paladin warrior Lusahn had the pleasure of wounding only days before. Cullen calls a truce so he and Lusahn can discover who’s been robbing her world of its life-sustaining energy stones, the main source of their energy and warmth. Lusahn agrees to hide Cullen in her home until the mystery is solved, risking not only her life and the safety of her two adopted children, but also her heart, which she’s coming dangerously close to losing to the dashing enemy. Unfortunately, the plot proves thin and the romance anemic; faced with the inevitable end of her fictional world, Morgan may be saving her energy for the big finale. (Dec.)

When one of her best friends announces her engagement, Claire Hutchinson feels less than ecstatic. Though she puts on a brave face in front of her girlfriends, the close-knit Yellow Brick Road Gang, Claire can’t help wondering when it will be her turn to find love, or more importantly, “did she even want a turn?” At 43, she’s content to be independent, keeping her friends close and her secrets closer. A seemingly random meeting in a video store, however, introduces her to Michael, a sexy geek who seems to know a lot about her. When a death in her estranged family forces her to confront the pain of her past, she discovers there’s more to Michael than he lets on and there’s much more hidden inside herself than pain. Unfortunately, the interesting premise doesn’t save the story from sluggish pacing and predictability; plot twists are easily spotted from a distance, defusing any attempts at suspense. Readers of the first two books will want to find out what happens to the Gang, but others should give this a pass. (Dec.)

Even the most benevolent impulse is sure to lead to a planet in ruins in this debut collection of Gurewitch’s popular Web comic, The Perry Bible Fellowship. The dark, surreal humor is often compared to The Far Side but has an even more brutal and fatalistic sense of humor. Lavishly colored, the art switches among detailed depictions of comedy staples like sloths and dinosaurs to an empty-faced cast of doomed stick figure dreamers. Gurewitch’s true strength is in expertly using the four-panel comic strip structure to suggest entire storylines and their bleak payoffs. In one, a man and woman stand in a field full of dead bodies, and the woman reacts angrily when she discovers the secret revealed in the final panel: the touching message “Will you marry me?” written on a hillside with the bodies. Similar themes of pop culture tropes played out to the point of disaster abound: aliens decide to kill the Earth instead of a planet of cute puppies, heaven is found to be not so cool when God forbids billiards, and so on. But as usual, attempting to analyze the humor defeats the purpose—Gurewitch’s strips are destined to be refrigerator door classics in the very near future. (Nov.)

The first of a projected ten-volume series by Chris Forgues, who signs his comics work as C.F., sets the scene for what, if completed, will be an epic experimental comic series unlike any seen before in the U.S. Though it bears no remote stylistic resemblance to Japanese manga, the book puts one in mind of such works, both because of its long-form multivolume approach featuring a large cast of characters and its way of making the reader feel slightly lost in an unfamiliar form and culture. It reads like the dream of someone who spent all night copying art out of the Dungeons and Dragons manuals while watching Yellow Submarine over and over. Multiple story threads are introduced, including one about Subra Ptareo, a naïve young man who wanders fantastical landscapes on a vague quest to purge himself of some imaginary or real poison. Other characters include Lady Minirex, who has an extended sex scene with a giant jellyfish, and Mosfet Warlock, who harnesses vaporized chrysanthemums to turn corpses into “living metal.” Drawn in graphite pencil without color or shading, the deliberately unpolished artwork has a raw appeal, particularly in the author’s penchant for fantastic environments where geometrical patterns integrate with organic nature tableaux. (Nov.)

Batiuk, creator of the long-lasting Funky Winkerbean comic strip, subjects one of his supporting characters to cancer in this collection of “very special” strips. Lisa and her husband, Les, have a pretty good life in their hometown, until Lisa discovers a lump in her breast. She beats back the cancer once, but when it recurs after remission, she has to prepare for the worst. In the meantime, the son she gave up for adoption eighteen years before finally decides it’s time to locate his birth mother. While Batiuk’s attempt to take on a difficult, life-changing event should be applauded, trying it in the context of a gag-a-day newspaper strip may not have been the best choice. Batiuk works hard to tell a realistic, engaging story of a woman facing one of life’s trials, but the relentless demands of a daily strip—and occasional mugging by the characters—cramps his pacing, forcing him to prolong some vignettes, cut short moments that could have used more room to breathe, and pause every few panels for, if not a joke, then something with a jokelike appearance. Artwise, Batiuk’s simplified realism has a good sense of detail in the later strips. (Oct.)

Captain Marvel returns in a new incarnation, aimed at a younger audience, by Smith, the award-winning creator of Bone. Billy Batson, a young orphan living in a condemned building, follows a mysterious figure into the subway one day and is taken to a wizard who tells him that just by speaking one word—“Shazam!”—he can transform into the superpowered Captain Marvel. His brand-new ability arrives none too soon, because talking alligators and giant robots are showing up all over the city. Unfortunately, Billy has just learned something else—he has a sister who is not content to wait on the sidelines while Billy gets to save the world. Smith brings to this project his considerable talent in creating comics that are as fun for children as they are for adults. The art is brightly colored and engaging, and the young characters at the center of the story are adorable. Unfortunately, the heavy-handed political allegory takes away from the charm somewhat. Longtime fans of the series may be dismayed by the radical changes to the continuity. Newcomers, however, will find plenty to be entertained by in Smith’s lively reinvention. (Oct.)

In this stand-alone fantasy comedy, all girls have disappeared, and the boys are becoming wizards. While this sounds like an intriguing counterpoint to Y: The Last Man, Suekane goes for a mundane manga starring two government functionaries. In a standard chapter, they’re just trying to do their jobs when something explodes. There’s yelling and panic, and the reader is dumped into the middle of the action without explanation. The younger agent complains about having to clean up the mess while the older one orders him around, over and over. The premise pales rapidly. Since there’s widespread magic, things appear and disappear without reason. The clean art line is fine and precise, which makes the destruction all the more ridiculous when shown against a detailed house or city background. Of course, there’s a section where a young wizard tries turning boys into girls—who are dressed like maids. That’s typical of the lowest common denominator–style humor. Female roles are quite literal: a bunny girl, an evil witch. The second half becomes more dramatic, with an incestuous relationship responsible for the disappearance of the girls. The implication that without females in the world, males would be able to do amazing things is bizarre at best and unpleasant at worst. (Oct.)