The Affair by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on October 30, 2011 by pagesofjulia

The brand-newest Reacher, just out a few weeks now, is another flashback or prequel: it’s 1997, and Reacher is still in the army. He is sent out to Carter Crossing, Mississippi to do damage control on a murder case that threatens the army’s good reputation. There’s a lot of politics involved: the local army base is sending companies secretly into Kosovo, and one of the captains in question is the son of a senator in the Armed Services Committee. It develops that this very captain has some connections to the murdered woman – or maybe his father the senator does. Reacher breezes into town intending to remain under cover while investigating the case parallel to the above-board MP working from the base; but his cover is immediately blown by the local sheriff, a former Marine MP herself. The one murdered woman turns out to be the third in a series of similar killings – the first two having been ignored apparently because they were black. And then more people start dying. What exactly is going on here? And who can Reacher trust? He’s inclined to trust Elizabeth Devereaux, the sheriff, but he’s getting conflicting messages from various sources at the army.

The Affair is in several ways a standard Reacher production, and in several ways not. Reacher does his investigating; he’s a smart guy and he figures things out; he eventually will get the bad guy(s), no doubt about that. There is rather less ass-kicking in this book, though. Husband was disappointed, and I was just flat-out surprised at how easily and relatively bloodlessly the hooligans were taken down. There is rather more sex – Reacher does tend to get laid in many of the books, but the sex got a little more attention in this one. It was well done – I’m not complaining – but I was a little confused at the shifting focus. I wonder if Child has figured out that he has a number of female fans swooning over Reacher and decided to play up to them (us)? As a swooning Reacher fan myself, let me say: more ass-kicking please! I don’t begrudge him the sex but that was never the primary focus, and I’d rather stick with the classic model of ass-kicking with sex on the side, rather than the other way around.

This bit is very slightly spoilery… I had some trouble suspending disbelief as we discovered all the mistakes made by the illustrious Elizabeth Devereaux in investigating the murders before Reacher’s arrival. If she’s such a veteran hotshot MP herself, how did she miss that there was no blood on the white collar of the woman who had her THROAT CUT? Etc. She beats Neagley at the mind game at which the latter supposedly excels but makes all kinds of amateurish mistakes in the murder investigation. It just didn’t ring true for me. End spoiler. But hey, maybe I’m just mad at the whole Reacher camp right now because… have you heard? They’ve cast Tom Cruise, of all people, to play him in the movie they’re making of One Shot! Blasphemy, says I. Reacher is supposed to be 6’3″ and 230+ pounds, muscular, and blonde. Sigh. And I’m not alone – you should see the Reacher fans raising hell over at the facebook page.

But all in all, this was another satisfying edition of the Reacher adventure. I liked it. It just wasn’t my favorite. I wonder where Child is going to take Reacher from here? It occurs to me that he’s getting older (possibly a reason to keep writing prequels!) – but Child came up with another possible plot thread here: the younger version of Reacher, named Duncan Monroe, just a bit earlier in his career and otherwise apparently a spitting image. I guess we could always revisit Monroe as Reacher ages. What do you do with an aging hero? Realistically we could see him forced to accept some realities and calm down a bit; but action/adventure/thriller/hero/mysteries don’t always take the realistic route! At any rate I’m still hooked in. What’s next, Reacher?

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Play With Fire by Dana Stabenow

Posted on October 27, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I picked up this Kate Shugak mystery just to satisfy my need for an Alaska-set book, for the Where Are You Reading? Challenge. (This is becoming an issue around here.) But unlike some I have picked up just for their settings, this book was worth the time.

Kate Shugak was a police detective in Alaska but is now retired; she is also an Aleut (one kind of native Alaskan), with an interesting background. In Play With Fire, a forest fire the fall before has caused an extraordinary crop of morel mushrooms to pop up in the backcountry, and Kate is picking them to sell to an enthusiastic international market when she discovers a decomposing corpse. The same day, a young boy named Matthew shows up with some crumpled bills and hires her to search for his missing father. If this sounds awfully much like a coincidence, you are correct.

The mystery takes Kate into a small town with a very creepy religious tyrant and undertones of Jerry Falwell. Stabenow shares some details of the natural environment, flora and fauna, especially mushroom trivia. For me, the best part was learning about Shugak’s experience as a young “native” in Alaska, with snippets of cultural information and language; I would go back to this series for more of the same. I really enjoy a strong sense of place in my mystery novels, and this one has it. I would also return for more of Kate’s romance with Jack Morgan. So far he’s rather typical-romance-novel-hero by which I mean, perfect – but I’m not sick of him yet. Not a new favorite, but noteworthy.

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The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman

Posted on October 26, 2011 by pagesofjulia

The three Halloran brothers, Tim, Sean and Go-Go (Gordon), and two neighbor girls, Mickey and Gwen, were inseparable for a short time in childhood. During that period, they played in the enormous wooded Leakin Park behind their neighborhood, did normal childhood things, learned about some adult things, and maybe did some bad things. At the start of this book, the adult Go-Go dies. The other four – but mostly Gwen – look back at their childhood, consider guilt and responsibility, and wonder how well their secrets have been kept over the years.

Lippman handles family relationships, and friendships, and neighborhood whisperings fairly well. I felt that the most effective moments, the most evocative and emotional scenes, are the ones dealing with secrets and relationships. I feel for Tim in his desire to befriend his three daughters, and his feeling that his all-female family overwhelms him. Sean’s fear that his own son is gay is less sympathetic, but still feels very real. I thought Mickey was a pretty interesting character, both as a child and in adulthood. And the parents – Tim Sr. and Doris, Rita and Rick (and her various other men), and Tally and Dr. Robison – were very well drawn; they came across as real people to me.

The suspense was well done in that I had to keep coming back and opening the book; I was drawn along, I wanted to know what was going to happen next. The parent-child dynamics, and the development of them – Gwen’s observations of her adopted daughter, for instance – were engaging.

But the plot was weak, in my opinion. The mystery of what happened in the woods, after all the questions and all the intrigue, wasn’t as outrageous or shocking as it should have been; the big reveal was something of a let-down for me. I regretted not getting to know Go-Go better. The mystery of Go-Go was sort of the mystery of the book – that we didn’t know him was the point – but still, I missed more knowledge in that area; I think it might have improved my experience. Considering how well Lippman draws characters, relationships, and emotional impacts, I think she could have done a lot with him.

So while this book was engaging and entertaining during the reading – I couldn’t put it down for a day or two, and enjoyed it during those hours – I didn’t take much away from it. I fear I will forget it quickly. (I read Lippman’s earlier novel, I’d Know You Anywhere, and it kind of went the same way. My memory of it is vague; another similar book I read around the same time, Chevy Stevens’s Still Missing, made a far greater impression.) I can’t get all that excited about Lippman, although I do read rave reviews, so I know some people do.

I read this book to cover Maryland for the Where Are You Reading? Challenge, and it did its job. Although, here’s another minor beef: I love a strong sense of place in a mystery novel. If I’m reading about a place I’m familiar with, it’s great fun with to get a sense of familiarity. If I’m reading about a place I’m not familiar with – like Baltimore – I enjoy learning about a new place without actually traveling there. But Lippman’s Baltimore didn’t come alive; it didn’t make an impression on me as a city with personality. (Maybe Baltimore really doesn’t have a personality. But I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. Most cities do.) So, this book didn’t do too much more for me than fulfill my need for a Maryland-set story. I think I’m about done with Lippman.

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Teaser Tuesdays: The Drop by Michael Connelly

Posted on October 25, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Number 17 in the Harry Bosch series, can you believe it? I love this guy. I was afraid the quality was falling off a bit (especially with The Fifth Witness, ugh, come on Connelly!) but I think we’re back on track with this one. Here’s your teaser for the day (from page 330 of my galley copy):

“But what would you do if you quit?”

“I’m not sure but I know one thing. I think I would be able to be a better father. You know, be around more.”

“That doesn’t necessarily make you a better father. Remember that.”

Bosch nodded. He sometimes had a hard time believing he was talking to a fifteen year old. This was one of those times.

Don’t worry, I haven’t given anything away. Are you a Connelly fan? How do you think the series has progressed over the years? I can’t believe we’re at 17 already!!

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante

Posted on October 20, 2011 by pagesofjulia

This was a sad and fascinating book. I read it in a day – not unheard of, but fairly rare considering that it was a regular work day. Started on my lunch break and finished before bedtime. It was absorbing and unique. A murder-mystery, yes, but also sort of a psychological thriller. The unique framing element of the book is this:

Dr. Jennifer White is sixty-four, and has dementia. When the book opens, she’s in the early-to-mid stages of the disease, living at home with a full-time, live-in caretaker. Her best friend of several decades, who is also her three-doors-down neighbor and godmother to her daughter, has been murdered, several fingers cleanly amputated. Dr. White (whose specialty was hand surgery, ahem) is a suspect, and doesn’t know herself whether she did it or not. Her story is told in first-person; we read snippets from the notebook she keeps, hear conversations, and listen to her private thoughts as she struggles with the questions. The questions are only rarely about Amanda’s murder. In reading about this book I thought the murder case was the main focus, but it’s not. Dr. White is only occasionally aware of the question of her friend’s death, because she’s only occasionally aware that her friend is dead. Her disease and its progression, her confusion, the attempts by her adult children to shape her future, and her eventual fate are the book’s main concern – because we see through Dr. White’s eyes.

The mystery of who killed Amanda is different from the usual mystery we encounter, because we don’t see a murderer trying to cover his or her tracks. Dr. White’s children, and the lawyer they hire, work to protect her from an investigation that may damage her fragile mental health. At one point it is decided that she did kill her friend, but the legal system of course won’t take its normal course even in that event. (I’m not giving it away; there are still twists and turns.) And again, the mystery is not the primary focus of the book. As Dr. White’s story unfolds – backwards, in snippets, jumping around chronologically, and never reliably – talk about an unreliable narrator – we learn more about her husband, Amanda, Amanda’s husband, and Dr. White’s two children, as well as the hired caretaker and even the primary police investigator. Of course, no one’s story is simple or unblemished.

A fascinating and engrossing mystery is only part of the attraction of this book. It’s an exploration into the head of an Alzheimer’s sufferer, engaging and overwhelming and sad and riveting. Make no mistake: this is a terribly sad story. Being young myself, and having parents in excellent health and with plenty of youth and life left, I hadn’t thought much about nursing homes, but this book’s portrayal terrified me. If you can steel yourself for the tragedy, though, this is a beautiful story, communicated in a unique format, gripping and sensitive. I recommend it highly.

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The Enemy by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on October 16, 2011 by pagesofjulia


The 8th book in Child’s Jack Reacher series is a flashback, a prequel, set in Reacher’s days of employment with the U.S. Army. He is an MP (military police) major and it’s New Year’s Eve, 1989. The Berlin Wall has just come down, Soviet Russia is collapsing, and the U.S. military is facing major changes. Reacher has just been transferred from Panama to Fort Bird in North Carolina when people start dying. He enlists the help of young Lieutenant Summer and the two of them quickly find themselves drawing outside the lines – the military establishment repeatedly orders them off the case, makes threats, and finally demands their arrest. As we expect of Reacher, though, he solves the crimes and fixes everybody up right.


This is fun for several reasons. We finally see Reacher on the job. We see him and his brother Joe interacting; Joe is only treated in the past tense in the other books. (Well, there is the short story The Second Son also, in which the brothers are teenagers.) We meet Reacher’s mother and learn something about her past that her sons never knew; this is an especially poignant moment.

A few things are different in this book, too. For one thing, Reacher does fix up the problems and solve the mysteries; but it doesn’t end on quite as hopeful a note as the other books tend to. In his retired, roaming life, Reacher generally sets off into the sunset at the end of the book, headed for unknown adventures, with a world of possibilities ahead of him. At the end of The Enemy, he’s still in the army, but things have changed irrevocably; the end of his career is foreshadowed, and we begin to understand why he chose to get out. There’s a sadness. He wasn’t able to right all the wrongs. Something that’s not different in this book: I’m sad to see Summer go. But the characters we come to love in each book are always necessarily gone at the end; Reacher moves on.

Suspension of disbelief is necessary in every Reacher book; he’s too good, too strong, too smart, too perfectly-timed and awesome to be real. But I have a good time and I can play along. This time I had a little more difficultly with the suspension of disbelief, though, because he went so far off the reservation while in the army. I’m accustomed to seeing him not play nice, but he’s usually a renegade wanderer; it’s a little more bizarre to see him be just as much a rebellious loner while he’s still in the military.

But putting that quibble aside, it’s a highly enjoyable book as usual, and fans of the series will appreciate the backstory and further character development (of Reacher, as well as his brother and mother) provided by this flashback.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Enemy by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on October 14, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.


And we’re back to Lee Child and Jack Reacher on audio. Although the 8th in the series, this one’s a prequel, a flashback to the time when Reacher was still an active MP in the army. In fact, it’s the new year of 1990, and the wall has just come down and the fall of Soviet Russia is bringing change to military structures. The Reacher family also suffers a private tragedy, and private revelations.

It begins:

As serious as a heart attack. Maybe those were Ken Kramer’s last words, like a final explosion of panic in his mind as he stopped breathing and dropped into the abyss. He was out of line, in every way there was, and he knew it. He was where he shouldn’t have been, with someone he shouldn’t have been with, carrying something he should have kept in a safer place.

No surprise here: I’m loving it.

What are you reading this weekend?

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Without Fail by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on October 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Reacher is back!

This one follows Echo Burning, my very first Lee Child read. Reacher has just hitchhiked cross-country, from Los Angeles to Atlantic City, with a pair of musicians who, while minor characters, I came to appreciate. Reacher’s interactions with these minor players help to form his character as a basically good-hearted and generous guy; he goes out of his way for them. In Atlantic City, Reacher is tracked down by a Secret Service woman who knows him through his brother Joe, her ex-boyfriend. She wants to hire him to assassinate the Vice President elect. Weird, right? No, she wants him to sort of mock-assassinate. It’s meant to be a security audit. But of course, the reason why she wants a security audit is… someone is trying to kill the Vice President. (Elect).

I have to confess that my first reaction to the plot premise was… do Vice Presidents really get assassinated? I thought the old joke was that they were sort of insignificant, until somebody assassinates the President. At any rate, I gladly buy in because it’s a fascinating storyline. So Reacher is working with Froehlich – that’s Joe’s ex, the Secret Service ace – and Neagley, a fellow retired MP and general badass who Reacher calls in. Neagley was a fun character to meet, too: she’s got skills and smarts much like Reacher, and they’re clearly pretty close, but she also has baggage that I’d love to learn more about in a later novel. The layers that are discovered! Well, so we spend a lot of time in DC for obvious reasons, and also in North Dakota where the VP-elect has been serving as Senator; and the final scene takes place in the middle of nowhere in Froehlich’s home state of Wyoming. It’s a well-traveled book (have you been counting? CA, NJ, DC, ND, and WY) and naturally ends with a bang.

I have just a handful of new observations with this listen. As stated, I’m really enjoying some of the minor or side characters. I have also noted something in this book that I’ve been unconsciously appreciating throughout this series: Child presents back-story, technical details, and general exposition in a smooth and natural way. You know how sometimes, if we need to know that the kid goes to soccer practice every Wednesday, the mom will say to the dad, “Can you pick up Billy from his usual Wednesday night soccer practice this week even though I usually do?” And that’s silly, because real people don’t put in all that detail in dialog when the other person already knows it? Child does it better.

Also, I’m beginning to notice speech patterns. Reacher has a way of ending a lot of his statements with a rhetorical “…right?” As in, “so, we need to get there first, right?” It’s just one of those colloquialisms people have. But what I think I noticed in this book is… other people have the same verbal habits. I’m not sure that’s entirely realistic, since one of the features of the Reacher books is travel, geographic instability, everybody being from different places. Reacher even emphasizes this, observing from people’s speech and clothing that they come from different parts of the country; he’s really big on regionalism. I like those touches. But everyone having the same rhetorical “…right?” seems somehow less authentic. I don’t know, it’s just something I noticed.

Along the same lines, I think I’m beginning to hear narrator Dick Hill (who I love for this series!) use the same voices for several different characters. All women, I think, and that may explain it; it may be difficult for his deep man’s voice to come up with different female-character-voices. But still. I guess I’m beginning to recognize patterns. Is it perhaps time for a break from Reacher? Ha ha ha. NO! I’m still loving it. Don’t take my Reacher away.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Without Fail by Lee Child

Posted on October 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Yet another Lee Child! Yes! In this one, Reacher is hired to try to assassinate the vice-president of the USA. You know, as a sort of security audit; not for real. But is somebody out there trying the same thing – for real? (My first reaction to this is, the vice-president? Really? Do they get assassinated?) Here’s your teaser:

The guy on the right took his hands out of his pockets. He had the same neuralgic pain in his knuckles, or else a couple more rolls of quarters. Reacher smiled. He liked rolls of quarters. Good old-fashioned technology. And they implied the absence of firearms. Nobody clutches rolls of coins if they’ve got a gun in their pocket.

Yes, I used more sentences than prescribed, but wasn’t it worth it?

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The Coldest Fear by Rick Reed

Posted on October 2, 2011 by pagesofjulia

A fast-paced crime thriller involving a serial killer; likable, witty detectives; and a mess of body parts.

Rick Reed, former police detective and author of the true crime Blood Trail, brings back Detective Jack Murphy from his first novel The Cruelest Cut in this suspenseful ride. A woman’s body is found mutilated and missing parts in a bathtub at the Marriot in Evansville, Indiana; mere hours later, Jack is looking at her right hand, arranged alongside the similarly abused body of a young mother in the projects. The bodies stack up quickly as Jack and his partner struggle to keep up with their own investigation. A local newspaper reporter scoops them at every turn, and his source just might be their serial killer. They’re taken out to a small town with a two-man police department, and then an FBI profiler is brought in, as the case quickly spins into mammoth proportions and spans jurisdictions.

Reed lends his professional expertise to this thriller in which the vantage point shifts from Jack’s criminal investigation to the perspective of the killer, providing a unique reading experience. The murderer remains nameless, but we get glimpses into what drives him and what makes him hesitate. When his identity is finally revealed, the shock is not lessened, but the journey gets an interesting twist from the shifting viewpoint.

Reed’s second crime thriller delivers with fast-paced suspense, twists and turns, the humor of several witty detectives and that rarity of fiction, a likeable FBI agent. Gruesome serial killings are balanced by banter, the sweet if harried relationship between Jack and his parole officer girlfriend, and an ending with a note of hope.

This review originally ran in the September 16, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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