Kearby's simplistic historical adventure (after Ambush at Mustang Canyon) flashes back and forth from 1864 Texas, when five-year-old William is taken by Comanche warriors, to 1874 Comanche Territory where his now 17-year-old brother, James, searches for him after having promised his dying mother that he'd find his brother. As James, an expert tracker, follows clues, Kearby profiles William's transformation into Runs Horses, the warrior Cherokee legend says will kill the tai-vo-tovt, a devil spirit. It may do the trick for younger readers—the plot moseys along nicely and there's some shoot-'em-up action—but the flat characters and pedestrian prose will likely turn off readers accustomed to the work of, say, Elmer Kelton. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Five-time Pushcart-winner Burgin (Ghost Quartet) straddles the psychological thriller and modern literary genres with mixed results. Nearing the end of his university teaching contract, Elliot Martin renews ties with Barry Auer, his independently wealthy childhood friend. Six years before, Elliot and Barry fell out over the literary magazine they'd tried to create, using Barry's money. Now, they decide to revive their grand project, and Elliot moves into Barry's spacious New York apartment. Elliot soon falls in love with Cheri, a pretty, blond painter. That Barry becomes enamored with Cheri is a minor problem; a far worse problem is Barry's dark alter ego, the homicidal sex deviant "Gordon Green." When one of his victims survives and attempts to expose him, Barry/Gordon's behavior grows increasingly erratic, causing Elliot and Cheri, still unaware of his hidden life, to worry. And when Elliot announces his intention to marry Cheri, Barry goes off the deep end, putting Cheri in grave danger. While the stuffy, pretentious milieu of the Big Apple's art circles is satirized to scathing effect, long stretches of flat dialogue encumber much of the suspense that Burgin works so hard to build. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: | Details & Permalink

Argentinian Saer (1937–2005) sets his novel during a walk through the streets of a seaside Argentinian city in the early '60s with a conversation comprising memories, images, and digressions in the mode of Proust and Laurence Sterne. Two characters meet in the street and walk together while discussing Washington Noriega's 65th birthday party, which neither of them attended. The elegant aristocratic Mathematician missed the soiree because he was in Europe; the plebeian Angel Leto wasn't invited. The two men veer off topic to consider the behavior of mosquitoes and whether a horse can stumble, frivolous subjects that contrast with visions of Argentina's harsh political turmoil that would occur in the near future when the mathematician's wife will be killed and Leto will disappear, suicide pill in hand. Saer reaches deep into the psychology of his characters, yet for all his skill, the streams of consciousness become arduous as does identifying with the characters on an emotional level. Think Berman film, difficult but worth the effort. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

The cleverness Bakker displayed in his Prince of Nothing fantasy trilogy (The Darkness That Comes Before, etc.) is lacking in this suspense novel introducing Disciple Manning, a Newark, N.J., PI who can remember everything he has ever heard. Jonathan and Amanda Bonjour hire Manning to track down their missing 21-year-old daughter, Jennifer, who's joined a New Age cult known as the Framers, dropped out of nursing school, and is possibly now living at "the Compound," an old horse farm in southeastern Pennsylvania that serves as the cult's retreat. The Framers' leader, former Berkeley philosophy professor Xenophon Baars, has persuaded his followers that the world is more than five billion years older than it is and is about to end. Manning heads to the Compound in search of Jennifer, though he suspects she's already dead. A crude, off-putting hero with a flatulence problem may leave few readers eager for a sequel. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

In Gore's masterful second thriller featuring San Francisco PI Graham Gage (after Final Target), Gage's investigation of a former FBI agent's mysterious death puts him on the track of Hani Ibrahim, an MIT economist deported under suspicion of masterminding a scheme to funnel money to foreign terrorists. In rural China, an earthquake sparks a workers' uprising, complicating the efforts of Gage's wife, Faith, to rescue two Chinese friends from government forces in the area. As Gage gets closer to discovering that Ibrahim is behind a terrorist act that could destroy the world's economy, the detective's actions imperil Faith's safety further. When U.S. vice president Cooper Wallace, a devout evangelical, ascends to the presidency at the peak of a worldwide financial crisis, Wallace faces a faith-based dilemma: should he act to save the country if the economic disaster is part of God's larger plan for humanity? Sharp, smart writing and convincing economic detail put this in the front rank of genre fiction. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: | Details & Permalink

Lovett's evocative novel portrays widower Liu Renfu, a day laborer turned scrounger, caught in the Yangtze dam breach, part of the Chinese government's relocation plan. Liu braves the terrifying waters, alone, after losing his family, searching for items to sell. "The river showed no mercy. It swallowed the landscape in slow, heaving gulps. The surrounding fields had all but disappeared, digested over the course of the day in a pulpy mass." In his search, Liu discovers an abandoned infant and saves the child from drowning. The baby, who he names Rose, becomes his charge, despite Liu's meager circumstances. In his scavenging, Liu also uncovers an item that is precious to Fang Shuping, a successful local businessman whose yearning for the past forces him to confront contemporary injustice altering his life in the process. Lovett's complex tale of displacement and hardship, contrasting modern China with its past, highlights the human spirit's capacity for renewal. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

At the start of this tepid stand-alone from Vachss (Haiku), professional thief Tim "Sugar" Caine finds himself in an interesting dilemma—a rape victim has mistakenly identified him as her attacker, but he hesitates to tell the cops the truth because he was participating in a jewel robbery at the time. The canny ex-con figures that if he does time for the sex crime, he will evade scrutiny for the crime he did commit. Caine ends up serving a five-year sentence for sexual assault before he's back on the New York City streets, where he reconnects with Solly Vizner, the man who put the jewel heist together. Most of the book concerns Caine's efforts to track down another member of the crew who Vizner fears could squeal on everyone else, but a less than exciting lead and a slow-moving plot make this one of Vachss's weaker crime novels. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

A court-system mistake forces a man to pay child support for a child that's not his. Tucker addresses this surprisingly not so unlikely situation and other Texas law conundrums in this dazzling drama, her first trade paperback after a series of mass market titles (Proceed with Caution). Parker and Roxanne Redman are heading home in sadness after Roxanne's suffered another miscarriage when Parker's pulled over for speeding and arrested for $45,000 in delinquent child support for a child that's not his, by a woman he doesn't even know. Meanwhile, Parker's best friend James, who's divorcing his wife, Serena, has just agreed to pay child support for six-year-old Semaj, ill with sickle cell anemia, although James later learns through a blood test that Semaj is not his biological daughter. Tucker's dissection of family law and corruption in the welfare system is both fascinating and horrifying. The men and the women involved, including Parker's distraught wife, Roxy; working-the-system welfare mom Lachez Baker; and out-of-control Serena come vividly to life, along with the innocent children caught in the crossfire of paternity fraud. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

At the start of this uninspired entry in Australian author Corris's long-running crime series featuring PI Cliff Hardy (Open File, etc.), Cliff wakes up after a serious heart attack in a San Diego hospital. Margaret McKinley, the good-looking Australian ex-pat nurse who aided in his recovery from a quadruple cardiac bypass, needs Cliff's assistance: her father, Henry, a geologist employed by a large corporation, has disappeared from his Sydney home. Cliff is glad to help, though he's lost his PI license. Back in Australia, Cliff finds that Henry's office and darkroom have been ransacked and, more disturbingly, that the missing man's seismologist friend, Terry Dart, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The trail is as predictable as the burgeoning romance between Cliff and his client. Solid writing compensates only in part for a not particularly distinctive protagonist. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 03/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Four easily digestible shorts fixate on fleeting incidents in the life of the young and fearful. A knock on the door precipitates the nonaction of "At the End of This Story the Door Will Open and Under Eight Seconds Will Have Passed," in which the narrator mulls over who might be calling. She runs through a series of insignificant scenarios, testing out irony and earnestness, before concluding, "I half believed that the world made sense and I just didn't get it." "Moments Before the Future Begins to Approach" takes a similarly offhand approach in short incidental sketches involving a high school girl engaged in a sad-funny dance with her absent father, who sends messages that they will meet, though he keeps changing the date. "McDonald's Is Impossible" is a clever but unsatisfying gesture that traces the action of the narrator's ordering a meal at the fast-food restaurant back to the meeting of her parents, while the last piece, "The Consumption," finds its working-girl narrator wounded by a breakup. Within a bland and insipid landscape, Martin finds moments of true sweetness. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink