Author Archive

I couldn’t wait to crack the cover of Elizabeth George’s newest, This Body of Death.

The 16th of the Inspector Lynley series finds the Earl still grieving the murder of his wife and unborn child. He is coaxed back to work on the murder of a young woman found dead in a deserted graveyard by the strong woman now working in his shoes as Acting Superintendant. Isabelle Ardery has her own issues, not the least of which are the little bottles of vodka she ferrets in and out of her purse.

The story is parsed out between supposed-excerpts of a psychologist’s sociological treatise, describing the backgrounds of three young boys sent to prison for murdering a toddler.Based on the real horrific incident in Britain when three youths coaxed a toddler out of a fast-food restaurant, his torture and murder are chillingly and almost antiseptically described. The reader catches on soon enough that one of the three youths is part of the current story.

Lynley’s team is present, all with varying responses to Acting Super Ardery . Sgt. Barbara Havers, my favorite, is hounded into a makeover of sorts. An unlikely (and I felt forced), relationship springs up between Lynley and Isabelle.Various members of the team act out and destroy the cohesiveness a murder investigation requires.

The investigation takes the reader into New Forest, where wild ponies roam, and in and out of London, and has as many twists and turns as the usual George novel. There’s even an appearance by the St. James’. As much as I admired the actual mystery, the length of this novel (over 650 pages) felt too long, with the appearance of some of our old favorite secondary characters tacked on.

I’m grumbling because this is the second George novel where the sociological interests of the story have trumped the mystery (What Came Before He Shot Her was pure social issue rant). For me George is at her best when she focuses on the mystery and the lives of her characters she has spent years painstakingly building for her readers.

Am I being too severe to wish she would leave the heavy sociological stories to social workers? Any murder has sociological overtones to be explored, but these novels seem to hit us over the head with the implications, and I for one, am an unhappy reader. I read George’s novels for her complex mysteries and characterizations, not her social injustice.  The question is: do the readers have any right to question an author’s choices?

What say you??

A few blogs ago I waxed heartily about the wonderful novel by the late Stieg Larrson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

As promised, I’m back again after finishing the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire. All I can say is: “Wow!”

If you thought I loved the first one, I zipped through this one and it was even better! This man was a master plotter, above all. The permutations he puts his girl, Lisbeth Salander through, are unbelievable, and yet in this world he has created, totally believable.

This time Mikael Blomkvist, the intrepid investigative reporter, must clear Lisbeth of suspicion of three murders. We see the investigation from the police’s side of things, too.  The plot revolves around an international sex trafficking operation that Blomkvist’s magazine was readying to blow apart, with the double whammy of a dedicated magazine issue and a book, lies at the heart of the novel. But so does Salander’s dark past.  The two overlap in ways that define explanation without giving the plot away.

Suffice it to say that Salandar is the Swedish Bourne and Blomkvist is the Swedish Robin Hood. You won’t regret a minute of reading this novel. You won’t be able to put it down, either.

Truman Capote said:

“Writing has laws of perspective of light and shade just as painting does or music.”

Being a mystery writer, I have to agree with Truman on this one. Everyone has their favorite shading of genre. Adjust the variation of setting and pace and you may have a cozy. Add a trill of thrill and you have an action suspense novel.  Put your main character fighting against any number of governmental agencies or threats to it and you have a spy thriller.

Spy thrillers are not my personal favorite mystery genre, although I have read some good ones: le Carre’’s novels were stunning, as were the Bourne series. Some of the earliest spy novels were made into delightful movies, like Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.  I decided to let you in on the favorites of someone who should be an expert on the subject: Frederick Hitz, the former inspector general of the CIA. Here are his picks for the top four fictional agents.

Rudyard Kipling’s Kim: Hitz point out Kim’s excellent cover: an Anglo-Irishman who assume native dress and darken his face so he can pass as an India. Kim’s employer in provides institutional cover for British spies in India, using Kim at first to deliver news of troop movements along the Grand Truck Road.  Recruited to the service, Kim is sent to surveying school to perform surveys in the outback, where is keeps his eye on French and Russian intruders. Then Kim becomes a manservant to a wandering Tibetan Buddhist holy man, which gives him the freedom to travel anywhere in India. Hitz says Kim “has excellent spy instincts. He’s a watcher.”

James Bond: Think how many people would be disappointed if Hitz hadn’t hit on Ian Fleming’s Bond, James Bond. Hitz admits Bond “isn’t a very careful spy” but points to Dr. No and From Russia with Love as illustrating the great ops security which both show it does not pay to get too close to Mr. Bond. Booth manages to escape being swallowed up by a swamp-eating protective machine policing Dr. No’s Cayman Island. In Russia, Bond’s sidekick is “eliminated” by a KGB assassin trying to gun down 007, who of course, survives.

George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is John le Carre’s creation. Described as “small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London’s meek who do not inherit the earth.” Interesting how appearances can be deceiving, isn’t it? And his gift of going relatively unnoticed made Smiley a master spy, one who knew that in his profession, to stay alive meant “there is no such thing as coincidence.” This was one case where casting got it absolutely correct in the BBC series when they hired Alec Guinness to play George.

Frederick Forsyth’s Jackal is meticulous in his trade and craft. In The Day of the Jackal Hitz notes “a maximum of preparation is required when you intend to assassinate a heavily guarded chief of state and want to survive the attack. Stealing multiple identities, adopting different guises, the Jackal is exhaustive in the minutia of his work. The famous ending revolves around an unanticipated simple human act of kindness.

Who would you add to Hitz’ hit list?

Marni had so many friends recommend this book but never got around to reading it earlier in the year. Finally her writer pal Dr. Warren, Communications expert at GW Unie, sent her a copy.

Finally, I decided to see what the fuss was all about.

I read the first two chapters and was distracted by the publishing of The Blue Virgin (really, anyone could understand THAT) so by the time I picked it up again, I had to start all over to set the story and the characters in my mind. This is not a brain candy novel, ala’ Higgins Clark, to be devoured in one sitting on a sunny porch.

What it IS: a novel of mysteries, old and new; a fascinating character study of two of the most unusual protagonists living in a place where the mores and culture are different from the US; and a novel that explores the reactions to situations with often surprising results.

I find it tough to talk about the plot without giving much away, but suffice it to say that the lives of these two main characters, plus those of the others they intersect, will keep you riveted until you finish the book . . . and leave you wanting to read the next one.

Mikael Blomkvist is the publisher of a financial magazine.  When a twist in his life leaves him with open time, he is seduced into taking on the job of solving a murder that is over thirty years old.  Lisbeth Salander is the genius hacker he hires to assist him with his investigation. A troubled soul, Lisbeth has her own way of dealing with problems as they arise. She is the most unique character I’ve come across in recent memory.

This is a series of three; unfortunately for readers around the world, the author Stieg Larsson died before he could see the success of the world and the people he has created.

I’ll start Book II this weekend, The Girl Who Played with Fire, if all goes well.  I can’t wait~

Reader: what book did you start and put down, and then pick up again and persevere and find it to be a total delight?

Auntie M told you a few days ago that she was doing two readings/signings of her new book, The Blue Virgin, one in NYC and one on Long Island, along with Lauren Small and Nina Romano from the Screw Iowa book. After a presentation on the world of publishing and the rise of independent and self publishing, we each read from our works. Nina read from her two poetry books, Cooking Lessons and her newly published Coffeehouse Meditations. Lauren read from her historical novel, Choke Creek.

It was an interesting experience all around, in the company of good friends, and surrounded by others. In Manhattan we met a group from the IWWG, the International Women’s Writers Group, at the META Center, where we all had to take our shoes off! That audience was attentive, but most writers are struggling, so the sales were almost nonexistent. We appreciated the chance to tell our story and get the reading experience.

It was a different story on Long Island, where I used to live. My good friend Laura Hamilton organized an evening at her lovely log cabin home in Miller Place. A group of about 15 gathered for good food and drinks, and we were asked to read. Since the majority of these friends would be at our presentation the next day, we chose different sections to read from our books. The reading experience is always good, and we were well-received. It was lovely to be feted that way. Laura said she felt as though she had a literary salon on her house that night!

The Port Jefferson Library presentation was so well attended that the head librarian said we were welcome to come back any time! His Sunday programs usually garner an audience of 15 or so; we drew a crowd of over 40! Our presentation was again well-received, with astute questions afterwards that made it interesting for us. Our readings went well, also. But the best part for me was sitting at a table and having people lined up to have me sign their copy of my book~I said it would be priceless, and it was. Nina and Lauren sold books, I sold a bunch, and it was a great day to be an author with a book in print.

Anyone wishing to see their work in print, who has been through the traditional route without success, please consider self publishing or using an independent press such as Bridle Path Press. Check the link to read more about the community being developed by this unique press, whose mission statements includes: “This press will make NO money.”

Now there’s an intriguing thought for you!

Today Nina, Lauren and Marni are presenting a program kicking off National Library Week at the Port Jefferson Library on New York’s Long Island.

The library has an active writers group who invited the Screw Iowa gals to talk about The End of the Book: Writing in a Changing World and to discuss the changing nature in the publishing business, and the rise of independent and self-publishing.

They will end the afternoon reading from their own books with a signing to follow.  What more could a writer ask for? An audience, a chance to read your own work, and maybe even to sell a few books.  Priceless.

Marni wants to share the meat of a recent article she read, written by Rebecca Goldstein, the author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. I confess I haven’t read her book, but the title alone will make me check it out.

Goldstein’s thesis in this article was for a “Five Best” series in the Wall Street Journal, and in this case, she’s chosen her top five novels of ideas, based on their characters, plot and more.

Up first is Herzog, Saul Bellows’ 1964 comedic tale where his protagonist addresses “immortal thinkers in grave earnestness, demanding of them relevance to his own very mortal predicament.  Herzog has been betrayed by his beautiful but neurotic wife with his best friend. He rails against the reality he’s facing, feeling betrayed by “the entire Western canon, not to speak of God, to whom he also dashes off a few choice lines.”

Bellows earns his spot for what Goldstein calls his “blend of high-mindedness and low farce…a rare form of tragic comedy, ‘King Lear’ as filtered through Milton Berle.” I’d never thought of it that way, but it fits.

Second is George Eliot’s superb Middlemarch. I came to read Eliot as an adult and became hooked. I learned from Goldstein that this novel was written  in 1873, only months after Eliot finished her translation of Spinoza’s “Ethica,” which highly influenced the work.  The book’s main plot follows protagonist Dorothea Brooke, who Goldstein describes as blundering “her way toward moral clarity, on the way making an unfortunate marriage to a dry pedant, Edward Casaubon.” The interlacing stories show Eliot’s mastery of weaving her study of ethics into wonderful novels.

Third is Thomas Mann’s 1951 The Holy Sinner. I admit right up front that although this was written the year I was born, I haven’t read it.  After the seriousness of his Doctor Faustus, Mann manages to bury “its seriousness beneath the seductions of storytelling.”  The book is set in medieval Europe, filled with sumptuous detail, and is based on the legend of a pope who was the offspring of incestuous brother-and-sister twins. It sounds made for the big screen.

Goldstein lists Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince, from 1973, in fourth place.  Goldstein says she admires the way Murdoch “hides its high purpose under well-developed characters and an organic plot. She notes Murdoch’s philosophy follows that of Plato, “mistrusting enchantment, whether artistic, religious or erotic.” Yet in this novel, set in modern England, Murdoch underlines Plato’s suspicions before turning them upside down.

Fifth and final is Alan Lightmans’ 1993 Einstein’s Dreams, set in 1905, centering on an patent clerk named. . .Albert Einstein.  Albert’s nightly dreams on the nature of time are a “heady play of ideas” as Lightman “wrests irony, pathos and poetry out of the abstractions of physics, but the meaning of it all is viewed from the human perspective.”

Another one to add to my reading list.

Who amongst you had read some of these, and how do Goldstein’s reviews fit your own?

Marni has to admit that this book has been in her pile for a while.

It had been recommended by a friend, but got pushed to the end of the waiting-to-be-read pile, where it languished behind a new Reginald Hill and got pushed aside by an unread Peter Lovesey.

Then I saw its red cover poking out and grabbed it a few days ago. What a treat!

Author Lisa Lutz has a wild and dark sense of humor. She’s been compared to Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiassen, but her humor lies somewhere between the two.

The Spellman’s are a family of private investigators, down to little sister Rae. Narrator Isabel, trying to live down her wilder youthful days, has reached her late 20’s and become a maven of invading other people’s privacy, even as her own is invaded and she reacts with, well, how she reacts is actually the plot of this book, so I’d better let you find out for yourself.

Izzy is a great protagonist, but part of the delight in reading this is the layout, the way Izzy characterizes events in her life. Her entire dysfunctional family has a very different way of looking at life.

Yes, Lutz has already followed up with Curse of the Spellmans, Revenge of the Spellmans, and The Spellmans Strike Again (mea culpa, I told you it sat on my shelf for a while). Read them in order, as I plan to, to get the full flavor of the growth of Izzy and her clan.

PI Teddy Ruzak is back in the third novel of this engaging series.

Still hounded by the state (he’s lacking his license despite taking the test three times), Teddy is visited by an angry, sad wife with an unusual situation. I won’t give away the plot, but suffice it to say that Teddy’s instincts get him to the bottom of the case once again.

Teddy is a likable, hapeless man, fond of Krisy Kreme doughnuts and savvy enough to know they are at their best whe the “HOT” light is on.  He’s in love with his secretary, the domineering and comely Felicia, who already has a live-in boyfriend. Even his dog, Archie doesn’t seem to like him. The beagle was acquired in the second book in the series: The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs. And his philosophical monologues, born from his years of working as a night-time security guard, drive most people crazy, but make Teddy an endearing character.

These are lovely, readable books, filled with humor and humanity. Just the ticket for a spring read.

Ruth Rendell’s newest Inspector Wexford mystery takes us back and forth through the likeable detective’s career.

Wexford has never told anyone of his suspicions that dog-loving entrepreneur Eric Targo is a murderer. He has little evidence to support his theory, beyond his suspicions of the man, and the fact that Targo gives Wexford an unnerving stare.  There are more apparently motiveless murders whenever Targo is around, and Wexford becomes increasingly convinced they are down to Targo.

When Targo returns to the area and another murder occurs, Wexford finally confides his suspicions to his partner, Mike Burden, who dismisses him and his ideas as fantasy, in the same way Wexford has dismissed Burden’s wife of the belief a local Pakistani family is arranging a marriage for their only daughter.

How these two plot lines converge, and eventually involve Wexford’s  wife Dora, are examples of Rendell’s fine sense of story and plot. And along the way, you will find out what ‘the box’ signifies.

This is the 22nd Wexford novel, and if you’ve never read one of Rendell’s novels, stand-alones or from the Wexford series, start right here and you will learn all you have to know about her compelling protagonist.

Along with PD James and Frances Fyfield, (whom are all friends) Rendell forms the triumvirate of English mystery writers who only get better with age.