Mystery Scene Review of 'Never Wave Goodbye' by Doug Magee

It's a parent's worst nightmare. They send their children off to camp on a bus driven by what's supposed to be a camp counselor. However, when the real bus shows up later, panic sets in as the parents realize their kids have been kidnapped.

This is the set up of NEVER WAVE GOODBYE by Doug Magee, which I reviewed for Mystery Scene Magazine.

This debut novel is not only highly suspenseful, but a great character study of people under the worst form of pressure.

I highly recommend it.

Mystery Scene Review of 'Fragile' by Lisa Unger

I have a few reviews in the latest Mystery Scene Magazine. I'd like to post each separately over the next week.

The first up is FRAGILE by Lisa Unger. You can read the review here, but in short, this book is awesome.

I happened to run across this post from Lisa's blog, in which she talks about this book and her development as a writer. I think it speaks for itself, but I wanted to highlight a portion of it. Quoting Lisa:

"This story has tried to find its way out in various partials over the years. Always with different voices and never quite succeeding to resolve itself. I was surprised when it surfaced in FRAGILE. And in writing this book I learned something truly interesting: one can have ambitions to write a story but not have the talent or the craft to tell it well. It took the writing of eight novels before I had the skills necessary to tell the story, to write the kind of book that had been simmering for decades."

Congratulations, Lisa! You've succeeded.

I Love (Hate) Finding New Authors!

One of the joys of writing book reviews is discovering authors I've never read before.

For instance, I discovered the work of Twist Phelan after picking up one of her books at Book Expo and finding it to be awesome. That's when I started writing reviews (on another blog -- I hadn't thought to start this one yet). When I found a book I really loved (especially by a midlist, small press or indie author that wasn't a household name, but probably should be), I felt almost obliged to tell everyone why they should read it.

This has been true for many authors, including (to name only a few off the top of my head) Megan Abbott, Alex Carr (aka Jenny Siler), Reed Farrel Coleman (aka Tony Spinosa), James Crumley, J.T. Cummins, Christa Faust, Timothy Hallinan, Mercedes Lambert (aka Douglas Ann Munson), Scott Nicholson, C.J. West, Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, et al.), Simon Wood, Daniel Woodrell, and now Ken Bruen (I'm doing a review for Mystery Scene Magazine of Ken Bruen's upcoming novel and--wow!).

That's just a short list of ones that come right to mind. And it doesn't even count major bestselling authors (such as Walter Mosley, Sue Grafton, Robert Parker, et al.) or classic crime fiction authors (such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald, Margaret Millar, et al.).

The thing about these authors is they all have backlists. A few of them stretching out into eternity.

And, once I've found out how great they are, I want to read them all.

This creates something of a love/hate feeling about the whole thing. I really love to read great fiction, but I can only read so fast and I have a limited amount of time I reserve toward reading.

On top of that, I'm well aware that there are many other great authors I haven't even gotten around to reading yet.

To make matters even worse, I've limited the discussion to the mystery, noir, suspense and thriller genre(s?). What about all the great sci-fi? What about the awesome mainstream, commercial and "literary" (whatever that means) fiction? How about historicals? What about memoirs? Non-fiction?

*sigh* Let's face it. I'll never catch up.

How Green is Your iPad?

Now and then, I'll run across a bit of news that I'd like to blog about, but won't be sure where to post it. That was definitely the case with this particular item about how "green" an iPad actually is. (And isn't that an awesome photo? I found that here.)

You see, I have five blogs. One of the others is Green Reality Check, on which I try to scrutinize green claims (and discuss unexpected or odd aspects of sustainability and green concepts, in general).

This article would be a perfect fit for that blog, but it also fits quite well with this one. I figure many readers are interested in the sustainability of using an iPad or other electronic device for reading, as opposed to reading DTBs (aka, dead tree books).

Plus the article has an awesomely detailed analysis of the iPad's green qualities, looking at the carbon footprint of iPad versus DTBs and showing how many DTBs you'd have to read in order to create the same footprint as an iPad. They came up with 18, although someone else said it was more like 100. A bit of a difference, I'd say, which makes the point debatable and the article quite appropriate for the green blog. However, even though the analysis (debatable or not) makes it thoroughly appropriate for the other blog, it could also be of interest to book lovers. (Also not sure the analysis takes into account the tendency of ebook readers to simply collect downloads in massive numbers and worry about actually reading them later. *sigh* But, anyway ...)

In addition, the issues of materials used, waste and labor standards in manufacturing facilities are raised, but deferred for a future post. So you might want to be aware of that if you'd like to follow up.

Anyway, I hope you find this educational. (Or, at least, not completely boring.)

Dell Map Back Mysteries: Awesome Collectibles

These days, ebooks are growing in popularity so fast. Many think they could replace print books at some point. (When? No one knows if or when this will happen.)

However, one thing ebooks don't have is a gorgeous cover -- at least, a gorgeous cover you can touch.

The Dell Map Back mysteries of the 1940s and 1950s are examples of such books. Check them out. Those books had some really great covers.

Notice that the fine cover art includes a map of the city (on the back, of course -- thus the moniker) where the crime takes place.

Could they digitize the maps and include them in an ebook? Sure. But would that be the same as holding a book with a "sturdy laminated cover" in your hand? Nope.

Get a Taste of Country Noir in 'Tomato Red'

Review: TOMATO RED (Plume 2000)
(to be reissued by Busted Flush Press in Sept. 2010)
Author: Daniel Woodrell

If you're of a mind to read a crime fiction novel that takes you off the beaten path (setting-wise and literary-wise), with prose that seems to sing to you with a rhythm all its own, and even features an opening sentence a mind-blowing 250 words long, you might take joy in reading TOMATO RED by Daniel Woodrell.

The story opens with Sammy, a drifter and criminal of the two-bit sort, breaking and entering a fancy house in (of all places) West Table, Mo. Sammy, who's coming down off a lost weekend of drug use and debauchery, drifts off to sleep in a chair. (No one said Sammy was the sharpest tool in the drawer.) When he awakes he's confronted by two young people -- a man named Jason who's too beautiful to exist and a woman named Jamalee with hair "a shade of red that would be natural on something growing in a garden but not on a person's head." Naturally, he nicknames this woman Tomato Red and uses clever phrases to describe the rest of her. Phrases concatenated to form sentences like, "She sported lipstick that I'd call graveyard black, and her fingernails could've been dead-baby blue."

Seems Jason and Jamalee live on the wrong side of the tracks in Venus Holler, which (as Sammy puts it) "was the most low-life part of town, so I already knew where it was. ... I felt instantly at home." It's a place from which Jamalee would like to escape, taking Jason with her. And Sammy can tag along as their protection. (The first question Jamalee asks Sammy when he wakes up is, "Are you dangerous?" She makes it sound like an interview question, rather than a concern.)

The threesome hang together, but all is not sweetness and light in their Ozarks setting. They run afoul of West Table, Mo., society's conventions. Doesn't help that Jamalee's mother, um, entertains men for a living. Entertains them at her house at all hours and in every possible manner.

Despite the patina of hope that keeps the threesome moving toward their goal of leaving the Holler, a situation arises that threatens their ambitions.

Because, you know, mean streets can turn out to be gravelly roads that lead down into places like the Holler, as well as desolate coves. Places where people end up facedown dead in water unfit for swimming.

And when you live on the wrong side of town, it don't matter whether that wrong side is in New York City or West Table, Mo. The justice for crimes committed against the poor is the same all over. Which is to say such justice can be illusive.

When faced with such a situation, those affected try to take matters into their own hands. Needless to say, this all leads to nothing good.

Written in well-crafted prose imbued with genuine Ozarks sensibility, TOMATO RED stands out as great literature and thought-provoking noir.

'The End of Marking Time' Leads to a Prison-Free Dystopia

Review: THE END OF MARKING TIME (22 West Books 2010) Author: C.J. West

Imagine waking up from a coma to a world you don't recognize. When you went under, you were bound for prison. Now the prisoners have all been released – at least ostensibly. There's just one catch. You're under continual surveillance. You're being watched and judged everywhere you go. The so-called freedom you enjoy is non-existent.

This is the intriguing and frightening premise of THE END OF MARKING TIME. The main character Michael has made a lifetime occupation of burglary and other types of property theft. He gets caught after selling the wrong credit card to the wrong man. As he's being taken to prison, a melee breaks out. Michael gets shot and lapses into a four-year coma. When he recovers, the world has completely changed. The Supreme Court has ruled that long-term prison sentences are "cruel and unusual punishment," striking them down as unconstitutional.

As a result, all prisoners are set free. This creates a, er, difficult situation, to say the least. With prisoners roaming wild, people are frightened. Things turn anarchic, until a new system is put into place. Michael wakes up after the new system is implemented and all the bugs are worked out – at least to the satisfaction of law-abiding citizens.

Michael has to learn to live with all the new rules. He's monitored constantly, his movements tracked by a chip implant and an ankle bracelet. The chip triggers an alarm at every commercial or public building he enters. Cameras watch his movements. He's free to move about, but stripped of his privacy.

Michael is what's referred to as a "relearner." These are criminals who have a shot at being trained to live by society's rules. And although Michael tries to learn his lessons and make sense of this brave new world, the situation is far more complicated than he can imagine. And he's in continual fear of being punished by being sent to the "catbaggers" (a group of unethical criminal reformists, purported to use extreme measures on the most hardened criminals).

The story is told by Michael himself to (we learn up front) an unseen jury. We know he's in trouble because he's run afoul of the rules to the new game he has to play.

C.J. West builds the tension and suspense, by showing you everything from Michael's point of view. In doing so, West also creates a lot of sympathy for the character. The world he describes is a benign dystopia, full of outwardly good intentions, but fraught with menace. The deeper Michael gets into predicaments, the more you worry about him from knowing how he ends up. So, the farther you get into the story, the more you'll want to keep reading.

To say more would probably risk spoilers. Although some of Michael's behavior seems inexplicable, it's probably consistent with a repeat offender (and one of life's losers). He seems to have two strikes against him from the start, by having to endure an abusive mother and an absent father.

THE END OF MARKING TIME takes a chilling and thought provoking look at punitive reform and will make you question whether this particular approach is really kinder and gentler.

Would You Buy (the Concept of) a Used Ebook?

Believe it or not, a company is looking to get into the "used" ebook business.

Lexink (the company in question) claims that ebooks can be resold using its technology through the usual sales channels like Amazon or iTunes.

This article takes a look at the, ahem, interesting economic implications and the differences between reselling print versus ebooks.

Interesting times, indeed.

'The Blonde': Your Basic Over-the-Top Guilty Pleasure

Review: THE BLONDE (St. Martin's Minotaur 2007)
Author: Duane Swierczynski

Following on the heels of THE WHEELMAN, Duane Swierczynski spins the literary equivalent of cotton candy, if such a confection were made with acid. THE BLONDE is a non-stop thrill ride. The kind of reading that goes down so easy the reader will gobble page after page. A story so wild and over-the-top, it feels like a guilty pleasure.

From the opening line – "I poisoned your drink" – the reader hangs on every word. The line is spoken by the titular woman to Jack Eisley, a man hanging out at an airport bar in Philadelphia. Jack has an inevitable and horrible meeting the next morning with his wife's divorce attorney. He's told he has only 10 hours to live, unless he takes the antidote the blonde offers. An antidote she can only give him if he accompanies her to a hotel room. Jack thinks it's a con, until he feels sick, just as she predicted.

Meanwhile, in a parallel plotline, Mike Kowalski is getting ready to whack another Mafia member (the ones responsible for killing his fiance in THE WHEELMAN), when his boss orders him to find a woman named Kelly White. Three guesses who that is and her hair color.

Kelly tries to tell Jack about a catastrophe in the making. She tells him a story that sounds too crazy to be true about being infected by potentially deadly nanotechnology.

Read the entire review at: http://thriller-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/review-of-the-blonde