Review of Charlaine Harris's Midnight Crossroad

Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

Along with the azaleas, the last weeks of spring are fading away and the colder-than-usual weather has allowed me ample time to appreciate the fortunate choices on my reading list for the last three months. Soon, I'll be excitedly picking some real finds for the summer.

One of my spring picks takes place in Midnight, Texas, a town that is a cross between a dismal sere ghost town of the Old West, with tumbleweeds running the single red light and a small community from anywhere in the South. It has one of everything: one gas station, one restaurant––the Home Cookin, of course––a pawn shop and, also, the one sign that there are people who really do live here, a nail salon combined with an antique gallery.

There is a small core of people who inhabit Midnight, and when Manfred Bernardo is moving into his new digs there, a few neighbors come to help. There is Bobo, his landlord, Joe Strong from the nail salon and Fiji, the local witch. When Manfred is settled in, he realizes that despite all the camaraderie of unpacking and moving in, no one asked the expected questions like Why are you moving to such a godforsaken place? Who are you and where do you come from? This suits Manfred to a tee and he realizes he has moved to the right place.

The unusual character names may be a clue to the author's name—Charlaine Harris of Sookie Stackhouse fame. This first book in a trilogy is Midnight Crossroad (Ace Hardcover/Penguin Group (USA), May 6, 2014).

When I delved into the first chapter, some of the characters seemed familiar. Manfred Bernardo is a truly psychic young man who traveled with his grandmother Xylda, and they helped Sookie on several occasions. They also appear in the Harper Connelly Mysteries (Grave series), my favorite of all the Harris works. Bobo Winthrop is a man in his thirties; big, blond and buff who has migrated from Harris's Lily Bard stories. There may be a few other transplants popping up in the book and in the future of the series.

Manfred has come to set up shop as an Internet psychic. He doesn't get real insights over the net, but he uses a lot of psychology and a bit of gobbledygook to flesh out his predictions.

But Fiji, named after the country, has reservations about Manfred because she knows who he really is, she knows of his powers and she's afraid he will find out the secrets of those lying low in Midnight––and almost everybody here has something to conceal.

Most of the denizens of Midnight maintain certain personal boundaries that include the cliché "what happens in Midnight" etc. There are lesser-kept secrets, and one of those is about Lemuel who runs the pawnshop at night. Lemuel, who, next to Bobo, looks bleached, desiccated and shrunken only comes out at night. His skin is white as snow and he has lived here for a long, long time.

For a seemingly lifeless town, things start happening in Midnight after Manfred's arrival. The only mystery previously is the disappearance of Bobo's girlfriend, but now a body is discovered, lives are threatened, murderous plots are revealed, more people disappear and fantastical elements enter the arena. There are white supremacists, motorcycle gangs and anarchists rounding out the unrest.

There is definitely a sense of unease pervading Midnight, which Harris communicates well, but where it comes from is vague. Many questions are left unanswered. Harris reveals little about what motivates the characters to do what they do. We have yet to find out why Manfred Bernardo chose to come to Midnight, Texas, and how he even found the place. The same goes for Bobo, Lemuel and Fiji.

There doesn't seem to be a main thrust to the plot. At first I accepted Bernardo as the central character, but then the focus gently shifts to Fiji. Plenty of time is spent fleshing out the different people––and I mean different in a weirdo way. While I was expecting some supernatural elements, I was a bit disappointed because everyone kept their big guns under wraps. On the other hand, getting to know the cat makes up for that.

The quirky humor of the Sookie books doesn't appear until the last third of the book and it is at this part of the story that the pace picks up. But when all the dust settles, the impression I got from the book is that it is mostly laying the foundation for future stories in which the characters and their histories will be brought to light.

I am looking forward to that.

The Cases of the Two Phoebes

I was struck by the symbolism of the names used by the author Benjamin Black in his novel The Silver Swan. His main protagonist is Dr. Garrett Quirke, who was introduced in Christine Falls, a story about a "fallen" (like a soldier is fallen) woman. He is a pathologist in 1950s Dublin, Ireland, who has a great thing for the bottle. As do babies, quips a friend of his. He describes himself as having a quirk––he suffers from an incurable curiosity, so when a friend of his named Billy Hunt from the early days of medical school comes to him with the story about his wife's death by suicide, and asks that he not do an autopsy, Quirke does just the opposite.

He searches just a bit, finds a single needle injection site on the victim's arm, does an autopsy and suddenly drops the case. For a while. Quirke has discovered that the victim, Deirdre, has transformed herself into Laura Swan and, as such, had been dealing with a man of ill-repute, Mr. White, snowy of hair and attire, as well as with a Dr. Kreutz, a cross between bad medicine and good spiritual advice.

What concerns Quirke at present is trying to reestablish his relationship with his daughter, Phoebe, who has only recently discovered her relationship with him. She is not particularly happy with it, but she dines with him weekly. Quirke is now on the wagon, except for these weekly meals, where he is down to one glass of wine.

When Phoebe flies into the path of Mr. White, Quirke fears for her safety, and it is only then that he awakes to the danger around her. Quirke does too little, too late, because he is afraid to make waves, and it is left to others to save the day. I found the book a letdown. The characters' names tell you everything you need to know, including who the killer is.

There is another Phoebe who is in danger in Safe from Harm, by Stephanie Jaye Evans. One October night, Pastor Walker "Bear" Wells is enjoying an evening out with his wife when he gets a terse text from his 15-year-old daughter Jo saying come home. They never expect to see their teenage girl cradling the body of a dead friend, Phoebe.

Actually, it would be more accurate to call this girl an ex-friend. She was as different from Jo as it was possible to be. On the one hand, Phoebe seems to want to model herself after the girl with the dragon tattoo. She has dyed her once-blonde hair a crow black that leaves her blonde roots yearning to show themselves, and her skin is bedecked with piercings like the little air vents on a Corvette. One of her worst characteristics is that she seems to be one of those people who  always need to do you one better. She has been to a more exotic location, she has had a better ballet teacher and she plans to attend the Air Force Academy, among other things. Don't we all know people like that? I have not wanted to murder one yet, but I have come close!

The problem with this is that none of it makes sense, because Phoebe comes from a poor background, has been living in a trailer park and has been taking care of a terminally-ill mother, while her father lives in the lap of luxury with his new wife and two children. At first, Jo's tender heart took pity on her, but then these discrepancies and Phoebe's utter dependence on Jo caused a parting of the ways, and they hadn't seen each other for weeks.

Phoebe had recently lost her mother and moved in with her dad and his new family. Now, by all appearances, this troubled young woman had taken her own life.

After calling 911, as well as an acquaintance, Detective James Wanderley, Bear waits and thinks about Phoebe's parents. Phoebe’s father and stepmother had moved to the upscale area of Sugar Land, Texas and were living in one of the more wealthy enclaves. They were members of Bear's church. While the family seemed well-constructed on the outside, attending church, and successful at work, on closer examination it was clear that the picture was flawed.

Bear was glad he was not a cop, because it was the lot of a policeman to look for the worst in people, while he was always able to look for the best. Sometimes, this made for an adversarial relationship, especially when Wanderley assumed that Jo had to be a drug pusher and perhaps a user as well, until proven otherwise, preacher's daughter not withstanding.

What bothered Jo, though, was that she knew that Phoebe was a fighter above all things, and that not only did she not use drugs, she would not have committed suicide. Jo takes it upon herself to prove her case.

In an insightful way, Evans shows with subtle humor that just as being in a garage for a long time doesn't make something a car, spending an appropriate time in church doesn't make a person a Christian. There may be twisted personalities and murderers lurking among the pews.

There are many layers to this story, and because there are twists and turns that will catch the reader unaware, I don't want to give anything away. Certainly, Jo Wells is the smartest––if a bit foolhardy––heroine I have pinned my hopes on in a long time.

Phoebe bird

A Phoebe is a little brown bird. Both of these Phoebes were living out of sync with their families. They had that in common. They differed, in that one could have died to experience freedom from the nest, and one would have loved to be in a nest once again.

In the cases of the two Phoebes, one bird got what she wanted and one didn't.

But one had Jo on her side. I recommend this book!

Texas Twosome

One way of passing the time on road trips when we were kids was to have games naming the capitals of the states. A little bit of trivia was always helpful in remembering these names or even some little memory trick––don't "ju know"––might help with the capital of Alaska. Knowing a bit about Stephen Austin, who wasn't Jane's transatlantic cousin, but was the father of Texas, always helped me when it came to the Lone Star state. Reading a mystery that takes place in Austin brought back some memories for me.

Janice Hamrick's Death Makes the Cut begins on the last day of summer vacation, when history teacher Jocelyn Shore is busy getting her classroom in order awaiting the onslaught of the more than 2000 Texas teenagers who will be saying goodbye to a hot steamy summer and beginning a new school year. Jocelyn hears the loud voices of what appears to be an abusive confrontation between Fred Argus, fellow teacher as well as the tennis coach, and a typical unrealistic parent who thinks his freshman son should be team captain (really?), and she rushes in where others fear to tread, confronting this angry, blustering man as if he might be an errant schoolboy himself. This approach is effective, and the situation is resolved, but aptly-named Fred Argus is not behaving in his usual manner, and he leaves for home.

The next time Jocelyn sees Fred is on the floor of the tennis shed, surrounded by tennis balls and lying with his milky white eyes blankly open. Fred was on older man in his sixties, who was a teacher as a second career. Despite being a coach, he was known for his spindly white legs and his two-pack-a-day smoking habit. Jocelyn knew him to be an excellent teacher, and she credited him with teaching her more than she learned in all her formal years of education about how to impart knowledge to the teenage mind.

Despite the fact that the police are called, it is appropriate to assume that this death was a natural one and, although Jocelyn is deeply saddened, the pressing issues of the first day of school is upon them. Aside from her own classes, she is expected to help her look-alike cousin Kyla teach a course to girls about technology as part of a community service program. It doesn’t take long for it to become clear that this death is really a murder. Before the day is out, Jocelyn finds that she is also the new interim tennis coach.

But Jocelyn is not too busy to realize that Fred had been on the trail of some wrongdoing and, as she begins to investigate, she puts herself in danger. The clues are there for the reader to join in the hunt for the murderer. He will murder again before he is through.

This is a lively, fast-paced story with an excellent cast of characters. The setting is a bit unlike high school as I knew it, but hey, the times they do change. It may help that I read it at this time of year, but I felt the sweltering Texas ambience like I was there. The characters have developing nice backgrounds which were introduced in the first of the series, Death on Tour.

Note: I received a free review copy of Death Makes the Cut, published by St. Martin's Press on July 17, 2012.

I would like to mention another book that recently caught my eye because it was billed as a Sugar Land mystery. I visited there not too long ago and was fascinated by the name. Sugar Land began as a sugar plantation and is the home of the large Imperial Sugar refinery. Sugar Land is a rapidly growing city just outside Houston. It is listed frequently as one of the safest and best cities in the USA to live in. Of course, there is always trouble in paradise.

The mystery is Faithful Unto Death, by Stephanie Jaye Evans.

The story revolves around Walker Wells, better known as Bear, because he once played college football, and perhaps because of his physique. Bear is a minister at a church in Sugar Land. Bear is a man of God, but he is very much a man of family and a Texan.

The smooth path of his days is disturbed when lawyer Graham Garcia is found Big Berthaed to death by a blow to the head at a local golf course. The problem for the police is that it happened in the dead of night, so it was not an accident, and the problem for Bear is that it involves members of his church. The more Bear finds out about the case, the more he realizes that his family members are mixed up in the ragout in some way as well.

Bear may resort to prayer before he loses his control, but he still is quite human in his emotions as he tries to do his best as a husband and father. That he has complete blinkers on when it comes to seeing his family as they really are, is a surprise. He needs a little self-examination at times, but don't we all. He has insight where others are concerned, though, as well as all the compassion and empathy needed for his flock. His slightly snarky, sarcastic sense of humor which is kept to himself for the most part, makes him an endearing character.

The character I found most intriguing, though, was the detective assigned to the case, James Wanderly. Author Evans kept an interesting dynamic going between this young man and the minister, and his future relationship with Bear ought to be interesting. I hope there is one.

Faithful Unto Death was published by Berkley Trade on June 5, 2012.

Book Review of Reavis Z. Wortham's Burrows

Burrows by Reavis Z. Wortham

The Red River separates Oklahoma and Texas

It's the fall of 1964 in East Texas. Barry Goldwater vs. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Bewitched on TV. The Beatles and the Stones on the radio, but if you're 11-year-old cousins Top and Pepper, you don't get to listen to them long-hairs. You listen to bluegrass by Bill Monroe. That's music, according to Grandpa, Ned Parker.

In Reavis Z. Wortham's Burrows, Ned is now retired from his job as Lamar County constable and is working on his farm. His nephew Cody, home from Vietnam, has been elected constable to replace him. Horrific events by a killer in the spring (detailed in the first Red River Mystery series book, The Rock Hole, named one of 2011's best books by Kirkus Reviews) have left people on edge. Some folks still interrupt Ned's mealtimes with calls reporting trouble. One such call sends Ned to the river, where a body has been found by a fisherman. The corpse is proof that three fugitives have brought a killing spree through three states to Lamar County. The reader has already met two of them, former area residents Kendal Bowden and Kevin Jennings, in the first few pages.

A crawdad

As if the lawmen need more proof, one of Kendal's childhood friends and his family are found slaughtered. The question is whether Kendal is still around. While Cody tries to track him down, Ned rides herd on his grandkids. Top's parents died in a car accident, and he lives with his grandma, Miss Becky, and Ned. His cousin Pepper is a good companion come fishing or crawdading time, but she isn't always a good influence on Top. Top and Pepper live with loving people and in a county where neighbors rely on each other. The lives of these kids are straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird or the TV show Lassie, except for moments when they remember what happened in the spring. They have their real-life heroes, including their Uncle Cody.

Cody's search for Kendal leads him to the Cotton Exchange in Chisum. The huge, dilapidated building hasn't been used for decades, and it is packed full of trash and junk. Through all this is a web of booby-trapped tunnels, where Cody and Deputy "Big John" Washington become trapped.

Whoa. Let's leave the scene at the Exchange. Read the book, and experience your heart jack-hammering like it hasn't since The Silence of the Lambs. It's a statement about Wortham's writing skills that his harrowing chapters about these tunnels through hell are as well-crafted as chapters narrated by Top about his escapades with Pepper.

Wortham, a former teacher and humor writer for outdoor-life magazines, has hunted and fished the bottoms in East Texas. He spent weekends of his childhood with grandparents in Paris, Texas, the Lamar County seat at the edge of the Piney Woods and the model for the book's Chisum. Wortham's familiarity with the area shows. Was Wortham a Top? His grandparents a Ned and Miss Becky? Their thoughts and actions are realistic for the time and place. The relationships between family members and between old friends are extremely well done. All of Wortham's characters breathe on the page, and their conversations twang with a Texas accent. They learn––or don't learn––from experience. Whites are––or aren't––decent to blacks. These are real folks living in 1964 Lamar County, Texas.

Paris, Texas ain't Paris, France, but it erected its own Eiffel Tower and gave it a suitable hat

Burrows' plot arises naturally from these characters. Kendal Bowden has become much more complex than a disturbed badass by the story's end. Interesting information about mental disorders gives better understanding of some of the other characters. The importance of ties––between people and with one's self, animals, and the land––is stressed. Ned takes responsibilities seriously and ponders his retirement. John Washington, legendary black deputy, and Cody, new white constable still dreaming about Vietnam, have a particularly interesting relationship in the light of racial history in Texas and Johnson's 1964 Civil Rights Act. Top and Pepper, innocent children exposed to the world of adult violence through Ned's job and the criminal acts of others, grow up. On the one hand, Burrows is a coming-of-age story for Top and Pepper, and one of tremendous personal and professional growth for Cody. On the other hand, it's an explanation for Kendal's life of downward spiral, about the long roots of violence, and the sins that beget sins.

The pacing is like riding a wily bronco. It begins with a jolt before deceptively settling down to follow the kids and life in Center Springs and Chisum. It then gallops and bucks to a crescendo, calms, and then rears again as the book reaches its end. Events are foreshadowed by half-caught movements, nightmares, and statements that are meaningful in retrospect. Nature, in the form of fauna, flora, the Red River, and the weather, plays an important role in both the plot and the story's symbolism. There is some bird hunting, and another event that an animal lover will find painful. Scenes are accompanied by suitable changes in the unpredictable fall weather of East Texas. A beautiful day of shirtsleeves weather is followed by a howling blue norther at the Exchange, bringing a fast 50-degree drop in temperature and sleet. The whole shebang––alternating bucolic and incredibly suspenseful plot––is all reeled in nice 'n' tidy and told in a warm Texan drawl by Wortham, a gifted storyteller.

Burrows, the second book in Wortham's terrific Red River Mystery series, will be published by Poisoned Pen Press on July 3, 2012. It is The Real Texas Deal. Hard-boiled fans, read it after The Rock Hole. Read it for unremittingly good writing, memorable characters, and a kick-ass plot. But whatever you do, Don't Miss It.

Note: I received Burrows as a free digital galley from the publisher.

How Texans divvy up their state

The Badification of Love

Valentine's Day is Tuesday, February 14th. It's a time for celebrating love with greeting cards, gifts, champagne toasts and kisses. That's tomorrow.

This is today, at Read Me Deadly. It's a time for observing the badification of love in crime fiction. Let's look at some good books involving love that's unrequited, gone missing, gone awry, gone belly up . . . . In other words, love that's gone bad.

Unrequited or obsessional love has inspired many rock 'n' roll songs, and Eric Clapton's "Layla" is one of the best. You might want to play it while we think about books such as John Fowles's The Collector, in which a lonely young butterfly collector named Frederick Clegg kidnaps his beloved Miranda Grey and keeps her captive in the hopes that she will come to love him. Or Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's disturbing 1955 masterpiece about Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who falls in love with 12-year-old Dolores Haze, and then marries her mother.

Of course, unrequited love doesn't always inspire a crime. It may merely burrow into the heart of a criminal or a sleuth, making his or her life more or less miserable and leading readers to groan in empathy. In David Liss's wonderful historical fiction set in 18th-century London, Benjamin Weaver unrequitedly loves the very beautiful Miriam Lienzo, but he is a Jewish ex-prizefighter, and his ethnicity prevents his entry into higher society. He makes a living finding thieves and debtors for the wealthy. In A Conspiracy of Paper, the first book in this literary series, Weaver is hired to find the murderer of a client's father, and his search becomes a Russian nesting doll of financial jiggery-pokery and murderous intrigue.

Keigo Higashino creates a nightmare for his characters when brilliant high-school math teacher Ishigami hankers after his apartment-house neighbor Yasuko Hanaoka in the riveting 2011 book The Devotion of Suspect X. When Yasuko kills her cruel ex-husband, Ishigami leaps to help her dispose of the body and to fix an alibi. The body is discovered and identified, and the police are quickly led to Yasuko and Ishigami. A cat-and-mouse game that becomes increasingly complex develops between the police and Ishigami.

Sometimes the unresolved nature of unrequited love makes it haunt a heart forever. Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides involves the five young and lovely Lisbon sisters, who committed suicide one after another, and the mesmerizing effect these deaths have on their hometown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Hannah Pittard's Nora Lindell is 16 years old when she goes missing in The Fates Will Find Their Way and, in a similar way, this event stuns some adolescent boys. Nora's disappearance still preoccupies them 25 years later.

In 1962, Ben Wade was a Choctaw, Alabama, teenager secretly in love with a beautiful classmate, Kelli Troy, who had recently arrived from Maryland. It was the early days of desegregation, and Kelli was outspoken in her support of it. Then Kelli was murdered. In Breakheart Hill, by Thomas H. Cook, Wade, now a middle-aged physician, looks back at the days leading up to Kelli's death and its shattering aftermath. His halting narrative that dances around the facts reminds me of Ford Maddox Ford's John Dowell, who slowly teases out the surprising truth of his marriage in The Good Soldier.

Sometimes the death of a loved one creates a terrible void. So terrible for Frank Cairns, that he feels compelled to do something criminal about it. In Nicholas Blake's 1938 book, The Beast Must Die, Cairns begins with a vow: "I am going to kill a man. I don't know his name. I don't know where he lives, I have no idea what he looks like. But I am going to find him and kill him." This unknown man is the hit-and-run driver who killed his seven-year-old son. The police have run out of leads, so Cairns builds some information and logical leaps into a case against a man whom he befriends in order to better plot his revenge. The Beast Must Die is both serious and lighthearted, full of twists and turns, and the fourth Nigel Strangeways book written by Nicholas Blake, the pen name of Cecil Day-Lewis, England's Poet Laureate and father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Edward Elgar, British ecclesiastical composer

Authors sometimes fill death's lonely void with a ghost, which the book's characters don't always appreciate. British fiction writers cannot leave Edward Elgar alone. The last time I saw this British composer, he was taking a fictional trip up the Amazon in James Hamilton-Paterson's Gerontius. (That is a stunning book, by the way, and I recommend it.) Now, Phil Rickman puts a dead Elgar to work as a ghost, haunting his beloved Malvern Hills, in The Remains of an Altar, the eighth Merrily Watkins book. When does this poor man get to retire? Merrily, Anglican vicar of Ledwardine, has been asked in her role of Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford to exorcise the bike-riding Elgar, who is causing road accidents. Proposed development on a Wychehill hillside possibly sacred to the Druids, Merrily's 17-year-old daughter Jane's activism, a new night club, and the ambitions of the church choirmaster are a troublesome stew coming to the boil. Rickman's series is an entertaining blend of historical research, mystery, and horror.

What does love got to do with it? Even if singer Tina Turner is less than thrilled with love, P. D. James's Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh is clear about its role in murder. Early in his career, he learned that all the motives for murder could be covered by the four L's: love, lust, lucre, and loathing. Check out these two traditional books of crime fiction, written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, that have the L's pretty well covered:

Bill Crider's eleventh Dan Rhodes book, the charming A Romantic Way to Die, finds Obert College the site of a romance writers' workshop. Townspeople of Clearview, Texas, are thrilled that local-boy-turned-famous-Fabio-dude Terry Don Coslin is back in town. Terry Don's aim is to appear on the cover of every single romance novel published. Given his pecs ("hard enough to strike a match on"), his flowing locks and his handsome face, this is a real possibility. Several local residents are also attending the workshop, including newly-published author, Vernell Lindsey. A well-known New York agent is even scheduling appointments at Obert. It's a cryin' shame when the conference is interrupted by a death, and laid-back Sheriff Rhodes must investigate.

Elizabeth Peters's Die for Love, third book in her entertaining Jacqueline Kirby series about a college librarian, is set at a New York City convention for historical romance writers and their fans. The enterprising Kirby wants an escape from Nebraska, so she travels to New York for this convention, where she poses as an author so she can write off the trip on her tax return. When a murder takes place, the always-curious Kirby feels compelled to investigate despite the warnings of a very attractive cop. D'oh!

Listening to the Righteous Brothers always makes me sing in the shower. I'd be curious to know if  "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" inspires you in that way, too. Maybe you'll feel inspired to read one of these books about love that's wandered away.

Dick Lochte's hardboiled novel Sleeping Dog is teeming with lost love and the just plain lost. The narrative alternates between Serendipity Dahlquist, the teenage granddaughter of a Los Angeles soap star, who prides herself on her worldiness and intelligence, and a tired but dedicated ex-cop turned private detective named Leo Bloodworth, aka "The Bloodhound." Serendipity is referred to Bloodworth when her dog Groucho is stolen, but they have barely met before Bloodworth's smarmy office mate is murdered. The two mismatched sleuths set off on a complicated trail. (Note: there is some material in this book that is painful reading for animal lovers, but I read it with a hand over one eye and the other eye half closed, and I survived.)

Drink to Yesterday by Manning Coles opens at a coroner's inquest in a small town in Hampshire, England, on July 19, 1924. A well-liked garage proprietor has been found dead in his home. After the jury reaches its verdict, the story looks back at Chappell's School in the spring of 1914, where a pump and some rubber tubing have been sitting in a lab for simply ages, just waiting to be used by some bored school boys to inject air into the gas line that lights their school. During the months that follow, teachers and staff disappear into the war effort, and one of the gas-line pranksters follows as well. The result is a grim, realistic story set behind German lines in 1941, but told in such a graceful way that it is a bittersweet pleasure to read. The spies are casual about their braveness, but they are very brave indeed. The people back home who love them need to be brave, too, because as Tommy Hambledon tells his young recruit, "Once the job has taken hold you'll find that nothing else in life has any kick in it, and apart from the job you're dead. Neither the fields of home nor the arts of peace nor the love of women will suffice." Being a spy can be heart breaking, and we're not talking about James Bond here.

What would crime fiction be without dangerous women who need a man's help? Ask private eye Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, insurance salesman Walter Neff in James M. Cain's Double Indemnity or Korean-American investigator Allen Choice in Leonard Chang's Fade to Clear. In the first Allen Choice book, Over the Shoulder, San Jose Sentinel reporter Linda Maldonado saw Choice through a horrific sequence of events, including his being framed for murder. The two became lovers, but then Linda called it off. Now, in Fade to Clear, the intriguing third book, she tells Choice her nine-year-old niece has been kidnapped by the girl's father, Frank Staunton, who is in the middle of a divorce from Linda's sister. The father and daughter have disappeared. Will Choice help? This is trouble all around for Choice, since Staunton is a real badass, Choice's current girlfriend will not appreciate his involvement in Linda's case, and Linda herself presents a problem. But Choice doesn't have a choice. (Oh come on, you completely saw that coming!) This is no place for a discussion of fate and free will. The point is, for better or worse, Choice doesn't stop thinking in Fade to Clear.

Now that we've whetted your appetite for some crime fiction involving love and warned you about the approach of Valentine's Day, you can't say that you don't see it coming TOMORROW. Don't forget your sweetie, family, pets, friends, and the people at work who make it bearable. You can be nice tomorrow. Today, after your Valentine's Day preparations are finished, you can kiss it all off by treating yourself to a nice book about crime.