The Hurricane Party
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Klas Östergren, Canongate (Trafalgar Sq., dist.), $16.95 paper (304p) ISBN 978-1-84767-258-2 9781847672582
A celebrated Swedish screenwriter, Östergren (Gentlemen) fills this near-future dystopian tale with beautiful sentences that lack any greater narrative cohesion. Former government investigator Hanck Orn, now a typewriter repairman, lives in the City Under the Roof with his 20-year-old son, Toby, whose mother was a member of a religious cult and believed that the act of sneezing is mankind’s greatest opportunity for divine communion. When Toby dies suddenly and city officials claim the cause was a heart attack, Hanck embarks on a journey to the islands of the Archipelago, where he confronts Norse deities and uncovers the truth of his son’s death. Unfortunately, it takes more than 100 pages for the plot to get started, and the setting and characterization are so vague and abstract that readers will struggle to stay engaged. (July)
Discord’s Apple
Carrie Vaughn, Tor, $23.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2554-9 9780765325549
Taking a break from the Kitty Norville urban fantasy series, Vaughn melds a near-future world torn by war with the legend of the fall of Troy in this brilliantly structured, beautifully written stand-alone. Evie Walker is a comic book writer who leaves behind a strife-filled Los Angeles to care for her dying father in the smalltown of Hopes Fort, Colo. Evie soon inherits the responsibility of guarding a magical storeroom and its contents as the country becomes hyperdefensive about possible terrorist threats. Intermingled with Evie’s story is the tale of Sinon the Liar, who persuaded the Trojans to bring Odysseus’s horse inside their walls and wound up cursed with immortality. Vaughn brings together mythology, fairy tales, and very human lives, immersing readers in the stories these complex characters tell themselves to make sense of their war-torn worlds. (July)
Swords and Dark Magic
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Edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders, Eos, $15.99 paper (544p) ISBN 978-0-06-172381-0 9780061723810
Editors Strahan (Eclipse 3) and Anders (Fast Forward 2) present 17 original stories that recall the classic works of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. To earn the book’s subtitle of “The New Sword and Sorcery,” Gene Wolfe puts on literary airs (“Bloodsport”); Tim Lebbon contributes some of the graphic horror and moral twists of the New Weird (“The Deification of Dal Balmore”); and Caitlín R. Kiernan introduces a complicated heroine rescued by the ostensible villain (“The Sea Troll’s Daughter”). But most of the stories are more traditional tales of apprentice mages coming-of-age and down-on-their-luck mercenaries facing unexpected perils. Fans of the classics will appreciate the tie-ins to familiar series by Michael Moorcock, Glen Cook, and Robert Silverberg, plus a “fully authorized” Cugel the Clever cameo by Michael Shea. (July)
Wormfood
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Jeff Jacobson, Medallion (IPG, dist.), $15.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-60542-101-8 9781605421018
Creative cursing and caricatures are all this soi-disant horror novel has to offer readers. While driving a truck for his hillbilly friends so they can moon the funeral procession of a prominent and hated local rancher, scrawny, shy Arch Turner accidentally knocks the casket into an irrigation ditch, and the corpse releases an infestation of foot-long wormlike creatures that slowly kill from the inside out. The ensuing havoc includes infected cheeseburgers, a lot of shotgun ammo, two very angry elderly women, one dazzling belt buckle, and a ton of blood. Jacobson’s attempt at a cheesy B-movie on paper has plenty of colorful stereotypes, vulgar language, and truly disgusting descriptions of the damage wrought by the worms on human and bovine bodies, but it’s short on the actual scares. (July)
Day One
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Bill Cameron, Tyrus (Consortium, dist.), $24.95 (392p) ISBN 978-1-935562-09-2; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-935562-08-5
Set in Portland, Ore., Cameron’s richly flavored if contrived third crime novel opens with what looks like a familiar urban domestic crisis. But when battered ex-cop Skin Kadash, last seen in Chasing Smoke (2008), scans the crowd gathered outside the house in his neighborhood where a man supposedly has gone berserk and pulled a gun on his family, Skin recognizes the teenage skateboarder who was the sole witness to an unsolved Jane Doe murder a few years before—and so begins wondering whether the two outbursts of violence could be related. Like Skin, readers may become obsessed with making unlikely connections, as the book offers a montage of narrative fragments from different times and viewpoints, interspersed with “objective” but semi-informed newspaper reports. The characters’ operatically intense passions are powerful, but the extreme coincidences underlying the plot weaken the overall impact. (June)
Forbidden Fruit: A Corinna Chapman Mystery
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Kerry Greenwood, Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (280p) ISBN 978-1-59058-738-6; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-59058-740-9
Those who care more for food than crime-solving will best appreciate Australian author Greenwood’s fifth comic mystery featuring Melbourne baker Corinna Chapman (after 2009’s Trick or Treat). Corinna remains ecstatically involved with her lover, PI Daniel Cohen, who winds up on the trail of two 16-year-old runaways, Brigid O’Ryan and Manny Lake, though Brigid and Manny’s respective parents disagree whether the pair went off together. Greenwood throws some militant vegans and freegans as well as a donkey with a taste for rosewater-infused muffins into the plot, but the pieces fail to coalesce as they do in her superior Phryne Fisher series (Cocaine Blues, etc.), in which she deftly balances humor and suspense. In this series, setups are more farcical than funny, and some may grow weary of Corinna’s frequent editorializing about one food item or another she’s just eaten. (June)
Something Borrowed, Something Bleu: A Home Crafting Mystery
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Cricket McRae, Midnight Ink (www.midnightinkbooks.com), $14.95 paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-7387-1996-2 9780738719962
Artisan cheese making and a really stinky cold case (or two) occupy soap maker Sophie Mae Reynolds of Cadyville, Wash., in Macrae’s well-constructed fourth Home Crafting mystery (after 2009’s Spin a Wicked Web). Sophie heads home to Spring Creek, Colo., after her mother, Anna Belle Watson, receives a disturbing letter, lost for 18 years, that never reached its intended recipient. Sophie Mae’s late brother, Bobby Lee, wrote the letter to his teen sweetheart, Tabby Atwood, shortly before hanging himself. Tabby, now married to Joe Bines, Bobby Lee’s best friend, is shocked when Sophie shows up at their dairy to take Tabby’s cheese-making class and show her the letter. The plot thickens after someone fatally beans Joe with a glass bottle of heavy cream. Likable characters and an easy-to-follow plot that doesn’t require knowledge of previous entries in the series are a plus. (July)
Hot Shot
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Gary Ruffin, Overlook, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-59020-234-0 9781590202340
At the start of Ruffin’s run-of-the-mill debut, the discovery of the half-naked body of Caroline Quitman, the 22-year-old daughter of Louisiana senator Harry James Quitman, on a pier in Gulf Front, Fla., presents the town’s police chief and sole detective, Samuel “Coop” Cooper, with his first serious crime in his 11 years on the panhandle town’s force. The murder of a possible witness raises the stakes. Coop, a former Tallahassee homicide detective, is perfectly willing to let the FBI take over, until he meets attractive FBI agent Shelley Brooke. When early clues suggest a New Orleans mob connection, Coop decides to go there and see what he and his NOPD buddy, Det. Neal Feagin, can dig up. As Coop tangles with Don Carmine Carrabba and the don’s henchmen, it becomes clear his investigative skills are a little rusty. Some humorous and romantic touches lighten a freshman effort that otherwise offers only familiar genre types (the corrupt politician, the brutal mob enforcer, etc.). (July)
Bad Samaritan: A Sister Agatha Mystery
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Aimée and David Thurlo, Minotaur, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-312-36732-9 9780312367329
Sister Agatha of Our Lady of Hope monastery in Bernalillo, N.Mex., sets out to clear her old college boyfriend, Sheriff Tom Green, of a murder charge in the Thurlos’ engaging sixth Sister Agatha mystery (after 2008’s The Prodigal Nun). The police suspect that the sheriff, who was running in a nasty re-election campaign against Robert Garcia, the mayor’s wealthy brother, shot Garcia in an isolated park area during a Fourth of July celebration. Green, who passed out shortly before the killing, thinks someone in on a plot to frame him drugged either the hot dog or the lemonade he was consuming. The astute, down-to-earth Sister Agatha, whose choice to become a nun the authors make persuasively real, gets on a trail that uncovers drug and spousal abuse. Hopefully, despite an impending move to Colorado, Sister Agatha will return to solve more crimes with her trusted former police dog, Pax, and the convent’s old station wagon she drives, the Antichrysler. (July)
The Eye of the Virgin
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Frederick Ramsay, Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (250p) ISBN 978-1-59058-760-7; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-59058-762-1
Picketsville, Va., sheriff Ike Schwartz investigates a botched robbery at the home of Louis Dakis, a professor at Callend University, where Ike’s lady friend, Ruth Harris, happens to be president, in Ramsay’s absorbing sixth mystery to feature the dogged lawman (after 2008’s Choker). Though it appears nothing was taken during the break-in, a dead body turns up around the same time, propped in the local hospital’s emergency room. Convinced the two cases are related, Ike digs into Louis’s life and finds a bitterly estranged wife, a missing lover, and several religious icons, one recently brought into the country. Ike soon has dozens of questions, no answers, and an itch to learn more about a particular icon called The Virgin of Tenderness. With folksy charm and dollops of humor, Ramsay crafts a tale of international intrigue in which the past and present make poor bedfellows. Fans of Ruth and Ike’s blossoming romance will find plenty to cheer about. (July)
