A Romance?

Okay. I'm thinking it went something like this.
Publisher: "We love this book."

Author: (nervous, but excited) "Thank you."

Publisher: (leaning forward in chair and enunciating as if to a child) "It's not a mystery."

Author: (confused) "It's not?"

Publisher: (proud) "It's a Romance." (leans back in chair and stares expectantly at author)

Author: "Huh?"

Well, that's what I imagined happened. I never would have picked this up if I'd seen the Romance symbol on the jacket of this book. (like my last post, I have no idea where I got this recommendation. I really thought it was off the Beverly Connor Website, but, if it ever was there, it's gone now. Maybe it was a Rogue Beverly Connor website.) So, point being, don't let the Romance marketing put you off. Sure, there's some heaving bosoms, but it's not the point of the book and it's a shame that it's pigeon-holed this way.

Nods as good as a wink......

A few weeks ago I read Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear; I thought I got this book recommendation off Beverly Connor's website (Summer of Connor, why not, right?), but I can't find it on her site now...so, could have been Woman off the Street Recommendation. (hearing a lot about The Omnivore's Dilemma from various, unconnected people; things like that make me want to wait and read the book 20 years from now when everyone's forgotten about it, stupid, huh?)

So: Maisie Dobbs: I loved it at first - it started out both funny and serious. I do like the title character, but it got a little bogged down for me in the flashback (this was one of those books where I kept waiting for the return to the present and I kept waiting and I kept waiting). When Winspear did return back to the novel's present time (Post WWI, England); it just wasn't as good as it seemed in the beginning. I wanted more humor, more drama!

Even though I recommended this book to Husband and to my mother, I probably wouldn't recommend this to anyone else. It just wasn't one thing or the other very successfully - not a successful Historical Fiction or Mystery or Drama/Romance....for me, that is.

Summer of Connor

I know, cheesy, huh? Just wanted to add One Grave Too Many and Dead Past to my Summer of Connor list. I may be a bit Connored out for the time being - I kind of slogged through Dead Past, but I do believe it was due to me reading wayyy too many of those books in a row. Can't be healthy!

I love Beverly Connor and Lindsay and her twin, Diane

I think it all started with this book - it's been the summer (not really summer yet, but it feels like it) of Beverly Connor. I've just been steam rolling through her books - last summer was the summer of Richard Laymon. Nobody quite like Dick Laymon - I wish I could erase my memory of his books (like the episode of Red Dwarf where Holly erases his memory so he can go back and read all of Agatha Christie for the first time); that Laymon summer was spectacular. Connor is not quite as spectacular as Laymon (prob. a good thing); but I do enjoy her writing and she's a hell of a lot less embarrassing to recommend to someone.

One thing I find kind of amusing about Connor is that she has two different series going, and they both basically star the same heroine. Wouldn't you think if you had two different series they'd be about two very different people? Or, even if they weren't that different from each other personality-wise, maybe you'd change the sex, and have a male and a female star in your series? These women (Lindsay and Diane) are basically the same person except for the boyfriend. Did her publisher force her to come up with another series? Did she think; I know! I'll write about a female forensic anthropologist who solves crimes and is tall, with long dark hair and has a boyfriend that loves her but is not around a lot (convenient, no?)

Some are better than others, but I've enjoyed them all, here are the one's I've read and would recommend so far - can't wait to finish reading them, just check Connor's website and she has a few more Diane Fallon mysteries I haven't wrapped by grubby paws on yet! http://beverlyconnor.net/default.htm

Dead Hunt (Latest and very good! Female serial killer! Whoo hoo!)
Dressed to Die
Questionable Remains
A Rumor of Bones
Airtight Case

Oh, and did I also mention that both of these lovely ladies love to go caving?

The quarterback's got a gun! ...for an arm

Winter and Night - S. J. Rozan
Brilliant and mysterious expose on a football obsessed New Jersey town and an inherent high school violence.
4 stars. June 2008

Nights at the Museum

Dead Hunt - Beverly Connor
Fast paced action and lots of fun and twists as the Museum Detective Extraordinaire (MDE) Diane Fallon tracks a (female!) serial killer.
Three stars. June 2008

Just run baby

The Perfect Mile - Neal Bascomb
The perfect book about runners who ran for posterity. And joy.
4 stars. June 2008

Run run run. And please be quiet.

Tell No One - Harlan Coben
A wife long thought dead reappears, and a race from the cops begins.
2 1/2 stars. June 2008

Thank God he's a country boy

Down River - John Hart
A son comes home to face the family he's tried to forget, but can't.
3 stars. June 2008

Long Day's Journey Into the The Olive Garden

Stewart O’Nan, champion of the proletariat, has created a vivid, moving portrait of one man’s struggle to stay relevant as he faces the loss of an identity he has created for himself, in his new book, Last Night at the Lobster. More a study in character than a plot driven narrative, the story centers on Manny DeLeon, the manager of a Red Lobster restaurant that is being closed by corporate due to sluggish sales. Manny is being reassigned as an assistant manager at a nearby Olive Garden and must deal with this demotion while struggling with his affection for his former lover, the waitress Jacquie, and his seeming lack of affection for his pregnant girlfriend Deena, who remains faceless throughout the story, but whose presence hangs over Manny like the snow piling up in his parking lot.
This slim yet meaningful book takes place during one bleak and drab winter day in which the snow builds in intensity as the characters peel away from the store. The Red Lobster, shadowed by the local mall, in its imminent closing, is the slip sliding of hope fading away, like the lottery tickets Manny buys for his workers as one final token of appreciation. O’Nan has captured the essence of his characters, painting with blunt, muted colors; people drifting through life fleetingly. O’Nan has managed, in a scant 160 pages, to create an evocative and meaningful world, moody and poignant, and in the end we wish for a better world for them all.
3 1/2 stars. May 2008

Cricket is just alright by me

Joseph O’Neill’s latest book Netherland, though set in New York in the aftermath of 9/11, is not really a book about 9/11. The tragedy does, however, serve its purpose well as a background character, the senselessness and meaninglessness of its atrocity a muted dullness hovering in the atmosphere, permeating its way straight through to the hero’s soul. The hero, in this case, is Hans van der Broek, an English citizen born Dutch, who finds himself living amongst the eccentric occupants of a Chelsea hotel as his apartment, the one he shared with his wife Rachel and young son Jake, lies dormant amidst the post 9/11 apocalyptic landscape. Rachel, sensing a disconnectedness to the city and to Hans himself, has taken Jake back to live with her parents in England, while Hans attempts to find meaning and purpose in his life, drifting through his uneasy days in a meloncholic state of ennui. He finds this purpose in the form of the sport of cricket, a game he had played as a child and rediscovers being played by immigrants in parks all over the city. O’Neill’s depictions of the game are artful masterpieces. It is in these scenes where the novel really takes off, thanks in no small part to the presence of Chuck Ramkissoon, a lifelong cricket devotee from Trinidad who aspires to build a massive stadium in Brooklyn, where the entire country will become enamored of the game he so loves. It is in the game of cricket where Hans rediscovers himself, and readers are better off for the journey.

3 stars. May 2008

Football ain't all fun and games

Hell to Pay - George Pelecanos
Heartbreaking and harrowing account of a youth football team and a drug kingpin.
3 1/2 stars. May 2008

Serial Killers are fun!

13 Steps Down - Ruth Rendell
A wannabe serial killer who's just too lazy.
3 stars. May 2008

All murders can't be bad, can they?

One Good Turn... Kate Atkinson

Funny account of a hit and run during the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. Huge cast of characters.
3 1/2 stars. May 2008

The Lower East Side slides...

Lush Life - Richard Price
Bitter cops, a redball murder, and the city comes alive at 4 AM.
4 Stars. May 2008

An Irishman who drinks?

The Guards - Ken Bruen
A whirlwind tale of an alcoholic Irish ex-cop (Guard). Steeped in rage and sadness.
3 1/2 stars. May 2008

Alcatraz has nothing on this place...

Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
A twisting and turning mystery in a mental institution on an island with a hurricane raging.
4 Stars. May 2008