Best Reads of 2014: Part Two

2014 has been a good year for reading. It began with an extra-long serving of miserable winter weather, which kept me inside with a book in hand, followed by one of those cruel Aprils that T. S. Eliot beautifully described, and the showers for the flowers were also best avoided by hiding in a good story. But whom am I kidding? I don't need an excuse to read, whatever the weather.

I reviewed many of my highly valued reads after I read them; books like The Fairy Gunmother by Daniel Pennac, I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni, One Last Hit by Nathan Walpow and The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith.

Here are some more of my most memorable reading choices.

Top Mystery Reads

This Private Plot, by Alan Beechey (Poisoned Press, May 2014), is the third in the Oliver Swithin mystery series. Oliver is a nice fellow who is not always the brightest bulb on a string of lights. He writes children's books about a sneaky ferret, but wants to take a break and compile a book of trivia. In pursuit of the trivial, he comes across a murder, which he intends to solve. The story is perfectly balanced with wit, literary references, and plenty of humor and loose ends. I did a little happy dance when this book was finally published.

Joyland, by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime, 2013), is a wonderful tale about the summer a young college student traveled to the South to live and work at an amusement park. It has got everything––some love and loss, some coming-of-age, a bit of mystery and a nice spoonful of Stephen King horror. Nobody does it better.

Treasure Hunt, by Andrea Camilleri (Penguin, 2013), starts as a barrage of bullets rains down on a piazza. Salvo Montalbano is hailed as a hero as he clambers up a ladder to discover that the snipers are an elderly pair of siblings who have been going slightly nuts for decades. Montalbano has a double-barrel case going on as he searches for the answer both to the riddle of what happened to the treasure found in the shooters' apartment and to a slightly more sinister treasure hunt created by a malevolent secret admirer.

The Death of Friends (Putnam Adult, 1996) is a Henry Rios mystery by Michael Nava. It's the fifth in a series featuring Rios, a lawyer working in Los Angeles. While mourning for a close friend and lover who is succumbing to AIDS, he takes on the case of the murder of a friend and judge who was deep in the closet. Rios is a wonder, both a complex and very likable character. Maybe it would be more specific to say a very admirable character. This series is way too short!

The Glass Room, the fifth book in the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, 2012), was short-listed for the Specsavers Bestseller Dagger. Author S. J. Bolton put it well when she said this story has all the elements of a Golden Age Mystery––a windswept landscape, isolated country house, disparate people thrown together, crime scenes mimicking their fictional counterparts and a plot liberally strewn with blind alleys, red herrings and misdirection.


Top Non-Mystery Fiction Reads

Charming Billy, by Alice McDermott (FSG, 1997), is a beautifully told story about a man who led the sad life of unrelenting alcoholism, only redeemed by the fact that so many people loved him.

The Final Solution, by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, 2004), is literary rather than crime fiction. It features a once-famous octogenerian detective who is caring for a nine-year-old child, who is mute since he escaped from Nazi Germany. This is a short book, but I found it a gem of a story. It was brilliant, faceted and valuable.

Mike and Psmith (Penguin, 1998; first published 1909) and Psmith in the City (first published 1910), by P. G. Wodehouse, gave me the most laughs I had all year. Mike Jackson is a serious cricketer whose father has pulled him from public school because of his abysmal grades and has installed at a local high school where he meets one Rupert Eustace Psmith. The P is silent, as in Psychotic and Pterodactyl. This pair has riotous adventures and both end up working at a city bank after graduation where Psmith's genius for understanding and manipulation comes to fruition.

I can't imagine how I missed the talents of Robertson Davies after so many years of haunting bookstores and libraries. There is no explaining it. Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors. I began with The Deptford Trilogy. Davies is my best find in years.

The first in the series is Fifth Business (Penguin, 2002; first published 1970). Davies defines fifth business as "Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business."

Fifth business in this case is Dunstable Ramsay, a history professor with a wooden leg and many interests in mythology, magic and the lives of saints. The story begins with a badly thrown snowball that defines the lives of the five people involved in the incident.

In The Manticore (Penguin, 2006; first published 1972), the stories of these individuals continues. It is told by David Staunton, the son of Boy Staunton, as he tries to discover who killed his father.

Fortunately for me Davies has written several series, which will entertain me as well as enrich me in the years to come.


Top YA Reads

Paper Towns by John Green (Dutton, 2008) is a change from dark dystopian societies and post-apocalyptic scenarios. It led me to read several other John Green books.

The Giver by Lois Lowry (HMH Books, 1993) is about a futuristic society that has refined itself into a utopia by eliminating pain and pleasure as well as individuality. This is a great springboard for spirited discussion if you are around kids who would actually read a book!

The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick, 2001) is haunting, poignant and heart wrenching. The story is a short but powerful tale about rising out of despair.

I Didn’t Kill Your Cat by R. Stim (2011). This was one of those books I read because the cover caught my eye. I loved heroine Frankie Jackson, who must solve the case of a murdered cat and clear her own name. There is a wonderful cast of characters who live on houseboats in the Sausalito area.


Top Audio Listening

The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony (Thomas Dunne, 2009) is a fascinating story about how South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony accepted a herd of "rogue" elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in South Africa and kept them from being annihilated. Anthony says: "This is their story. They taught me that all life forms are important to each other in our common quest for happiness and survival. That there is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind." The narration by Simon Vance won the 2014 Audie Award for Biography/Memoir.

When the author of this book passed away, the elephants he interacted with for many years instinctively walked many, many miles to come and visit him at the place near where he died.

Fall Preview 2014: Part Eleven

Are we becoming a homogenized society with the same Wal-Mart and Gap store everywhere we turn? I don't think so! Every place in the country has its unique features and, occasionally, still-distinctive accents. Just like Arizona's Sedona said no to the Golden Arches for their town because the city fathers felt they clashed with the desert, every community has exceptional features that make it one of a kind. I look forward to reading American crime literature from all parts of the country this fall.

Betty Webb's Desert Rage (Poisoned Pen, October 7) brings back Lena Jones, a formidable PI who had been scarred on both the inside and the outside by a tumultuous childhood, which has made her particularly sensitive to the problems to the problems of children.

There has been the horrific killing in Scottsdale, Arizona of a prominent doctor, his wife and their 10-year-old son. Their adopted daughter, Ali, and her boyfriend, Kyle, confess to having beaten the victims to death with a baseball bat. Lena is surprised when a candidate for the upcoming US Senatorial elections, Juliana Thorsson, asks her to find out if Ali is telling the truth. Juliana has kept it a secret that she is Ali's biological mother. Thorsson is keeping more secrets than this, but they could ruin her chances for election.

Lena suspects that the murdered family also had secrets, and when she begins to uncover them she lets more danger out of the bag. Webb has a deft hand with characters such as these, who are both good and evil, and she tells their stories with compassion and grace. She always picks tales worth telling.

I am a sucker for stories about big city detectives who leave the hotbeds of crime to move to backwoods America, looking for small town Saturday nights where the shooting out of streetlights is what fills the local police report.

A case in point is Faye Kellerman's Murder 101 (Morrow, September 2). Detective Lieutenant Peter Decker of the LAPD has had it to the back teeth with the bedlam and ugliness of life on the streets lined with palm trees, so he has retired. He and his wife, Rina Lazarus, have migrated to upstate New York, to be closer to family, and he has taken a job with the Greenbury Police Department. This is a sleepy old town that hasn't seen a murder in a quarter of a century. It's a long time coming, but one fine day he is called to the scene of an actual crime, a break-in at the local cemetery.

The North American version of pharaonic burial involves ornate mausoleums. In the case in point, the burgled tomb contained gorgeous Tiffany panels that had been stolen and replaced by forgeries. Decker's investigation in this art theft is at first hampered by his burgeoning relationshipwith his new partner, an erstwhile Harvard scholar with an attitude problem, and then by the brutal murder of a coed at a nearby college. This takes the case to a higher echelon, with echoes of international crime, ruthless killers and intrigue far beyond dirt roads and haystacks.

Decker's job isn't boring any longer, but to solve this crime he needs help from family and old friends to stop some evil that has roots in the past. It takes a village.

Autumn in the northeast always makes for striking visuals. I believe the changes in LA are more subtle, but maybe it's more of a case of keeping the details of what you see to yourself. That's the way it is in Unnatural Murder (The Permanent Press, September 26), by Connie Dial. In plain view of several witnesses, a striking transvestite is murdered on a Hollywood street. But apparently no one saw a thing. Captain Josie Corsino is in charge of the case. It doesn't make it any easier that the death occurred on streets where menace lurks around every corner, or that here the bizarre is almost commonplace. When a second murder follows before the first corpse is cooled, Josie and her crew of the LAPD's finest begin to discover new meanings for the word strange. These seasoned vets are on some virgin territory.

Connie Dial is perfectly placed to tell the story, because she has had a 27-year career with the LAPD herself, working on the street and as the area's commanding officer. This is a ride into Joseph Wambaugh territory and should be an exciting read.

A story from the heartland is Ellen Hart's The Old Deep and Dark (Minotaur, October 7) that takes place in Minneapolis.

Once, there was a speakeasy in the center of downtown Minneapolis that was closed after a Prohibition-era double murder. Because of its lurid history, it was renamed The Old Deep and Dark when it was remodeled into a theater. Cordelia Thorn, a well-known director, had plans to reopen this historic venue, until three skeletons were found bricked up in the walls. What makes the bodies of immediate concern is that they were killed by the same gun used in the more recent, and maybe more scandalous, death of a famous country/western singer.

The sleuth in this case is Jane Lawless, a restaurateur in the city. Though this is my first experience with this author, she has written 21 books in the Lawless series. Since every day in the fall can be a surprise, it's a good time to give a new author a try.

Like author Janet Dailey, who wanted to write a book with a background in each state in the nation, I hope eventually to read one from each of the 50 stars on the flag.

North Dakota has an offering set in the backdrop of the oil boom. The Missing Place (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, October 14) by Sophie Littlefield. This book might be just the thing for fans of Gillian Flynn, who wrote Gone Girl.

When the oil business was booming, there were shantytowns filled with men hired to work on the rigs, places of iffy addresses and even less certain acquaintances. Two young men disappear during their first year on the job, without leaving a trace. It takes a mother to figure out that there is more to the story when the police can't help and the oil company is stonewalling.

Colleen, a wealthy East Coast suburbanite, and tough gal Shay, from the poor part of a town on the West Coast, have nothing in common except their lost sons.

Survival instincts, determination and grit bond these women together to help them face the adversity that may be more than they can handle. This story just might prepare me for the brutal winter the Farmer's Almanac is wishing on us.

Now, for a book that is perfect for when the shadows begin to lengthen, ominous gloom appears around every object on your walk home, the owls hoot just after six in the evening, and the skeletal, now-bare branches tap, tap on your windows. Of course, Stephen King has just the thing. It is billed as having the most terrifying conclusion King has ever written. For thrills, I may grab a copy of Revival (Scribner, November 11).

Like all King books, the beginning is a description of an almost idyllic scene of a boy, little Jamie, playing with toy soldiers when a darkness falls over them. It was the shadow of a new man in town, a charismatic minister, Charles Jacobs. This man and his wife will be initially idolized by one and all

Unknown to others, Jamie and the man of the cloth share a secret bond, an obsession really.

A serpent comes to Eden, as usual, and Jacobs suffers a tragedy, turns his back on God and is banished from the village. Jamie has demons of his own. His life is his guitar and rock and roll, and he goes on the road. Eventually, he becomes addicted to heroin and is desperate when he meets the ex-Reverend Jacobs again. Between these two, the devil has plenty to choose from and revival takes on a whole new meaning.

When your heart is back in your chest, enjoy a nice warm cup of cider and remind yourself that it was fiction, just fiction!

A Rose By Any Other Name

Quietly, in the early spring, a novel by a new author Robert Galbraith called The Cuckoo's Calling was published. The author's note gave a short bio reporting that Robert Galbraith spent several years with the Royal Military Police before being attached to the SIB (Special Investigative Branch), the plainclothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003, and was working in the civilian security industry. The idea for Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. "Robert Galbraith" is a pseudonym.

As The Cuckoo's Calling begins, 25-year-old Robin Ellacott has just experienced some of the best times of her life. She had moved to London to be with her boyfriend, Michael, and last night she became romantically engaged to Michael at the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus. While Robin looks for a real job, she is working as a secretary, through a temp agency. On this morning, she is on her way to a new assignment. She is about to knock on an office door when she is literally bowled over by a very large, disheveled man, who bursts out of the door and nearly knocks her down a stairwell. This bulldozer turns out to be Cormoran Strike; an apt appellation, since he shares a forename with the first giant felled by Jack, in the fairy tale, Jack the Giant Killer.

Like Robin, Cormoran has also had an epoch-changing 12 hours. He has just broken up with his long-term girlfriend, Charlotte, who dented his head with a heavy glass ashtray as a goodbye present. He is on his last leg, both literally and financially, since he lost his lower leg not so long ago in war action in Afghanistan. Now he's lost his home, belongings and security, and is not sure what is coming around the corner––other than Robin.

Almost before Cormoran can pull himself together, Robin is introducing him to a new, wealthy client who wants him to investigate the death of his adopted sister, Lula Landry. She was a most beautiful supermodel, who appeared to have jumped out of a top story window in a suicidal depression. The client, John Bristow, is convinced that she was pushed. So, even with his life in disarray, Strike falls back into the familiar soldierly state of doing what must be done, without question or complaint.

A cuckoo is a small, brownish-gray bird that lays its eggs in another bird's nest. In this book, the cuckoo gives clues to the mystery. There are certainly birds growing up in others' nests in the plot, not only in the victim's family, but Strike's as well. He counted at least 17 schools that he had been hustled in and out of during his childhood. He was the illegitimate son of a famous rocker who cared little for him. The cuckoo is also known for its repetitive cry, and there are many repetitive cuckoo-like cries from all sorts of characters in this book, which give the reader pointers in the right direction.

The character Strike is fairly standard for a fictional PI. He comes from a policing background, he has a disastrously complex personal life and he has a great new young partner––I mean secretary––who is one of the only good things going for him. The case is not that unusual either; I have read a few "was he pushed or did he jump" scenarios. But what I really enjoyed was the ambience of London, the view through opera glasses at the lives of the rich and famous, and how the author took these ingredients and made an excellent reading experience from them. You would never guess that this was a debut novel. And of course it wasn't.

As it happens, Robert Galbraith is pure fiction as well. This is a nom de plume for the very well-known J. K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame. Rowling has been quoted in a British newspaper as saying, "I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name."

Since the news broke, New Statesman reports that the book's sales from Amazon alone have gone up more than 150,000%. Rowling once said, "The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous." She has also been quoted as saying, "I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do––ever––was write novels."

In that case, it is not surprising that Rowling has continued to write novels. Her last published Harry Potter story, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published six years ago, in July of 2007. She did publish an adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, that came out last year and sold like hotcakes. I must admit is on my wish list for when it comes out in paperback, which is any day now.

Someone seeking anonymity can change appearance, name and alter a biography, but experts will tell you that a voice will always reveal the real identity.

Of course, with the knowledge of hindsight, I can hear the Rowling voice in Galbraith's words. Robin, the character who opened the book, immediately charmed me, and I was firmly a Cormoran supporter before the first chapters were done, just as I was with young Harry P. The wonders of London were described so that I could visualize them, as I did the peripatetic stairway at Hogwarts.

Obviously, Rowling is not the first author to write under an assumed name. In 1870, Charlotte Brontë admitted that she and her sisters had been writing under masculine names. Well-known author Nora Roberts writes under at least three other names. Even Stephen King tried out a nom de plume or two; the best known of which is Richard Bachman.

Donald Westlake was an American writer with over a hundred novels and nonfiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, much of it comic capers, and he wanted to try to see if he would be as successful in a different guise. He began a series of books that he was writing simultaneously in order to keep his character consistent. He wrote the books under the pen name Sam Holt. His publisher, unknown to him, let the bookstores in on the secret in order to boost the sales of the book. In the introduction to One of Us Is Wrong, Westlake said he became aware of this and he lost heart and did not finish the series for years. On the other hand, he must not have completely lost heart, since he is known to have written under about a total 16 pseudonyms.

The question is: Did Rowling countenance the leak to the British newspapers? Bob Minzesheimer of USA TODAY speculates that she did, because she was not very angry at being outed. Either way, I hope there is another book in this series. I will get it ASAP. I am anxious to know what happens to Strike, and what the future holds for Robin. It will come as no surprise that Strike solves this very high-profile case and, of course, now he has a name. What will he do with it?

Book Review of Stephen King's 11/22/63

11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 is a quest story; the type of mythic tale in which a hero leaves his home and battles through daunting trials as he seeks his goal. Jake Epping's quest in this story is to travel from current-day Lisbon Falls, Maine, back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. As in any good quest story, from The Odyssey to The Princess Bride, Jake's journey is also a search for meaning and self-discovery. Does that sound high-falutin'? Don't worry; this is also a page-turning adventure with laughter, tears and thrills.

Jake Epping is an English teacher at Lisbon High School, where he makes extra money teaching GED students. Jake ends the school year on a high note, attending a GED awards ceremony and congratulating his favorite GED student, the school's janitor, Harry. Jake was moved to tears by Harry's essay describing the Halloween night in 1958 in upstate Derry, when Harry's father attacked his family with a hammer, killing Harry's mother, sister and two brothers, and leaving Harry crippled for life.

After the GED ceremony, Jake unwinds at Al Templeton's diner on Main Street, across from the long-closed Worumbo Woolen Mill. Later on, Jake receives a call from a desperate-sounding Al, who begs Jake to meet him at the diner. Al shows Jake a "rabbit hole" in the diner's pantry that pops up next to the Worumbo Mill––in 1958. Al mysteriously appears years older and is suddenly near death from lung cancer. He won't be able to complete his self-appointed mission to use the time portal to prevent JFK's assassination.

Jake agrees to take Al's place and, in nothing flat, he steps into 1958 Lisbon Falls, where everything seems peachy, except for the pollutants pouring from the Worumbo Mill and the creepy wino at the gate who accosts him. Jake now has five years to kill before Al's zero hour. He decides to spend his spare time preventing a couple of other past tragedies; one local and the other, Harry's horror story in Derry.

Jake's journey moves on to Florida and then to Texas, where he lives for a time in Jodie, a small town not far from Dallas. There, he teaches at the local high school and forms important relationships with teachers, students, other townspeople and, most notably, the new school librarian, Sadie. Life in Jodie is an almost idyllic interlude in Jake's quest. He introduces his students to The Catcher in the Rye and inspires jocks to be in the school play.

As November, 1963 draws near, Jake must return his focus to his mission. Jake is willing to sacrifice almost anything to prevent the tragedies in Maine and the catastrophe in Dallas, but he finds that time travel is a strange and complex thing. Weird associations, duplications and "harmonics" keep popping up and, as he puts it, the past is "obdurate," resisting change with a force of its own. Every effort to alter the past creates another thread in the fabric of the future, and some of those threads can become hopelessly tangled, threatening to tear that fabric beyond repair. The responsibility of his quest and the need to keep it secret is a crushing burden to Jake, like being J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye for all of humanity.

Despite the fantastical premise of the book, Stephen King has heartfelt and human points to make about interconnectedness: how people and events interweave, with the threads coming together in a pattern that persists in our lives, long after those events and people have passed. That theme plays out for Jake through his experiences in Maine and then in Texas.

I can't help but feel that the theme of interconnectedness was very personal to King himself. I'm no expert on his work but, while he's made fictional small towns like Castle Rock, Jerusalem's Lot and Derry famous, I think this is the first of his books to feature a real Maine town as a primary location. Jake's––and Stephen King's––Lisbon Falls is very real. Most of the places and institutions King describes actually existed and some still do: the Worumbo Mill, Saint Cyril's, the Kennebec Fruit Company, the Lisbon Enterprise newspaper, the Jolly White Elephant, the Red & White grocery store, the Hi-Hat Drive-In, Baumer's Barber Shop, Dunton's Jewelry and the Holly. And many of the people he places in Lisbon Falls are (or were) real, like Frank Anicetti (Senior and Junior, former and current proprietors of the Kennebec Fruit Company), John Gould (former editor of the Lisbon Enterprise) and many others.

King grew up in Durham, Maine, across the Androscoggin River from Lisbon Falls, and went to Lisbon High School. He was a high-school reporter for the Lisbon Enterprise, he worked for a time at the Worumbo Mill and, like Jake, he had a credential to teach English. He probably ate at the Hi-Hat, got his hair cut at Baumer's and bought groceries at the Red & White. (I won't speculate about whether he frequented the Holly, a dive bar and one-time strip club.) I think King broke from his prior practice in using a real location, Lisbon Falls, so that he could acknowledge the part the town's places and people played in his life.

Even when King moves on to the fictional town of Derry and then to Texas, King's personal connections are evident. When King uses the fictional Derry in this book, he incorporates so many of the places and characters in Derry that have been a part of his past writings that it's like a reminiscence. King's chapters on Jake's time in Jodie, Texas, are a kind of love letter to teachers, which reflects King's own background,  his longtime advocacy for literacy and his support for community. And King's choice to make the JFK assassination the linchpin of the time-travel story is appropriate for a man born in 1947. No matter what your politics are, if you were an American in 1963, the assassination was a cataclysmic event. It was a kind of end of innocence and it split our lives into a before and after. For King, 16 years old at the time, it must have hit hard.

In 11/22/63, Stephen King has used time travel, a classic device of genre fiction, in service of a larger theme that is both personal and universal. But the fact that he has a serious point doesn't stand in the way of the sheer entertainment value of his story. He paints a vivid picture of this country in 1958-1963, with 10-cent root beer, cream-topped milk delivered in bottles, yogurt as a new and exotic food, everyone wearing hats, The Blob playing at the drive-in, cruising in a Ford Sunliner and being able to leave it unlocked. But he doesn't overlook the negatives: overt racism, general acceptance of spousal abuse, people smoking everywhere and polluted air and water.

King's storytelling is absorbing and his characters, compelling. Some, like Jake and Sadie, you'll miss when the story is over, and others you'll be glad you'll never meet in real life. This is a riveting and fully dimensional story. I could have wished for a little more detailed and lucid dénouement, and some editing of the Dallas chapters, but those minor flaws didn't mar an overall terrific read that I'll be thinking about for quite some time.

Friday Fun Fact: In 2001, one of those flaky conspiracy-oriented websites reported that the government had packed up all of the alien technology and bodies from Area 51 in Nevada and moved it to Maine, trucking it in the dead of night into storage at the shut-down Worumbo Mill in Lisbon Falls, Maine. When the local media heard the story, they asked for a comment from Stephen King. King's reaction: "If ever there was a place to stick aliens, Worumbo Mill is it." What do you think; was this what first put the idea in his head to use the Worumbo Mill in 11/22/63?

Note: A version of this review appears on the Amazon product page for the book, under my Amazon pen name.