The Art Detective, by Philip Mould

The Art Detective Philip Mould became a television celebrity from his role appraising works of art unearthed from dusty attics or flea markets on the popular “Antiques Roadshow,” but according to his memoir he began as an ambitious art dealer who just happened to fall in love with the game of chasing down a good find using the forensic and research expertise of his reliable staff, his vast knowledge of artists and fine art portraiture and often pure instinct along with a willingness to risk his reputation in the highly competitive art world.  Sheer luck seems to have been in his favor with a number of great finds that, had he been wrong — such as in his decision to scrape away some over-painting — might have had disastrous consequences both financial and for art’s sake.  He seems very fortunate to have found early success that he has been rolling with ever since, which makes for a very fascinating read about his life’s work.

“In this book I explain how the history of a picture can color its appearance.  I show how provenance can completely blind eminent authorities into believing a picture is authentic when it is a fake, and also how provenance can unlock a picture’s importance and stature.”

This book was very appealing for the sense of mystery involved with researching and following clues to determine a work of art’s provenance and condition, often literally peeling layers of paint to reveal the true masterpiece in disguise. I liked the storytelling skill and use of suspense.  Descriptions of bizarre art collectors’ habits created vivid portraits of the persons associated with the art under investigation.  These and some incredible frauds provided a number of laugh-out-loud moments for me as well.

The stories relating the complex process of unraveling the truth about individual works of arts were rich with detail, wit, and sensationalism.  I will say that they could have benefited from more complete documentation of his findings; particularly, some additional dates would have oriented me into the moment better.  Some of the works discussed are in museums or locations that I have either had access to or had contemplated in books previously, which increased my interest in learning more.  The book also sparked my interest in seeking episodes of Antiques Roadshow on both BBC and PBS, which before I read this book were the type of put-me-to-sleep programs I would have clicked right past.  I felt as though I were being welcomed behind the scenes of the elite art environment in which Philip Mould makes his living.

Check the WRL catalog for The Art Detective

I found it to be a very quick and engaging read as an e-book.

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Origin, by Jessica Khoury

For the scientists at Little Cam, a top-secret research compound hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest, immortality is no longer an ambition but a reality.  With the creation of Pia seventeen years ago, the scientists achieved their dream after more than a hundred years of experimentation. Hidden away from the world at Little Cam, Pia has always considered her life to be perfect and absolute. But one night curiosity takes over, and she dares to venture outside the facility through a newly created opening in the fence. Once on the other side, Pia is so transfixed by the freedom of the jungle that she fails to notice a native boy, Eio, and runs right into him. Soon, Pia is discovering a new community of people, a different way of life and emotions that she never knew existed. The tropical forest and its native Ai’oan inhabitants along with handsome Eio all call to Pia in a way the compound never has. As the story progresses, the history and happenings at the research facility become strikingly more disturbing, and shocking secrets about Pia’s creation are revealed. When every ounce of her morality and humanity are questioned, Pia is torn between the life she is expected to live and the one that speaks to her heart.

Check the WRL catalog for Origin

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The Injustice System, by Clive Stafford Smith

So a businessman and his son go into a downtown Miami hotel suite to meet with a potential client who might help boost their meager income. Instead, a man with whom they have a dispute steps out, shoots the father in the knee, drags the son up some stairs, then shoots him execution-style. The father escapes, gets out the door, and bangs on the door across the hall, leaving blood in the hall, but the import-export businessman in that room doesn’t hear a thing, including the shots that then kill the father. Neville Butler, who has been held hostage in the room since before the father and son arrived, is then released.

Following Butler’s call to the police, British businessman Krishna Maharaj is detained. After waiving his Miranda rights, he makes inconsistent statements to the investigators, who hold him long enough to discover that his fingerprints are in the hotel room, and Maharaj is arrested and charged with first-degree murder for the executions of Dwight and Duane Moo Young, former associates and now rivals for Maharaj’s Caribbean newspaper. The case goes to trial. Maharaj, a flamboyant millionaire, hires the lowest bidder, Mark Hendon, as his attorney. The trial proceeds in a swift and orderly manner, except that the presiding judge is replaced after three days of testimony. Based on fingerprint evidence, a ballistics expert’s identification of Maharaj’s gun, and Neville Butler’s testimony, Maharaj is given life in prison for Dwight’s murder, and the death sentence for Duane’s.

After several years, the case comes to the attention of Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney specializing in capital cases. On his own, taking time away from his fledgling non-profit practice focusing on Louisiana death penalty cases, Smith begins reviewing the case, and this open-and-shut case turns out to have been far more complex than the trial transcript would indicate. His early investigation turns up boxes of evidence and interview materials that hadn’t been made available to the defense, prosecutors’ notes indicating that they instructed the detectives and their chief witness how to perjure themselves, and witnesses that prove that Maharaj wasn’t even in Miami at the time of the killings. Some of his basic rights—over and above their violation of his Miranda rights—were not explained to him or put into practice. Forensic evidence was questionable, but Maharaj’s trial attorney didn’t cross-examine, and even rested without calling a single witness. Confident that the reams of documentary evidence show that Maharaj did not receive a fair trial and that his counsel was (to put it mildly) incompetent, Smith heads into the appeals process.

But door after legal door is slammed in Maharaj’s face. The appeals courts won’t consider new evidence—it wasn’t presented in a timely manner and appellate courts don’t try the facts of the case. Each attempt to reopen the case takes months, if not years, to litigate, partially because a prosecutor won’t accept plentiful evidence that her colleagues convicted an innocent man. When he’s finally granted a new trial, Smith can’t introduce all the new evidence and Maharaj is again found guilty. But because the jury doesn’t prescribe the death penalty, Maharaj’s future opportunities for appeal are severely limited—capital cases usually get at least a cursory glance. Based on all the trials and appeals that go before, Maharaj’s last chance—a reprieve from Florida Governor Charlie Crist—is denied.

Unfortunately, as Smith details, Maharaj’s case is only one example of the miscarriage of justice that capital crimes nearly always involve. From personal experience and well-documented cases, Smith demonstrates that each individual misstep in the justice system that Maharaj experienced is echoed across the country, even in non-capital cases. Part of it is the culture, and he shows that from the patrol officer to the US Supreme Court, the fundamental conservatism of the law is geared towards convictions, not justice or even truth. The real poverty of this view is that convicting the innocent allows the guilty to go unpunished.

Smith’s writing is urgent, and his construction of the story maximizes both the drama and the documentation of his fundamental thesis. As he breaks the case down, the depth of the law enforcement and judicial errors becomes appallingly clear. The parallels he establishes between Maharaj’s case and convictions across the country point to the idea that the American justice system has reversed its supposed ideal. At the same time, his admiration for Maharaj (which is echoed by everyone from business associates to prison guards) as a man shines through. Even after being in prison since 1987—including 10 years on Death Row—Maharaj remains kind, gentle, and positive.

This is a timely book. States have begun to revisit their commitments to the death penalty after subsequent investigations and trials have freed other innocent people from Death Row. It is increasingly likely that people known to be innocent were executed anyway. If someone heeds Clive Stafford Smith’s plea to come forward and exonerate Krishna Maharaj, it would be a miracle; if others use his case to strengthen their calls for an end to the death penalty, it would be a huge step to ending the gaping flaws in our (in)justice system.

Check the WRL catalog for The Injustice System

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Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

I was surprised to find that no one here at Blogging for a Good Book had written about Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn’s runaway bestseller. After all, a tight suspenseful mystery surrounding a ripped-from-the-headlines event should have caught our attention.

Well, I finally got my copy, and in trying to write about it without giving the whole thing away I’ve learned why no one else touched it. After all, it’s a runaway bestseller about a ripped-from-the-headlines event reconstructed as a tight suspenseful mystery, which means plot twists and surprises, and if you read any further you might just find out why, and then Gillian Flynn and Crown Publishers will be mad at me for spoiling the book, but I’m on the hook because I’ve already written this much. So, there’s this guy and this girl, and she’s gone.  Stop here if you don’t want me to give anything away.

Actually, the guy is Nick, and the girl is his wife, Amy. Nick is storybook handsome, with enough boyish charm to attract plenty of women. Amy is “Amazing Amy,” the inspiration for a long-running and successful series of children’s books that made her parents a fortune, gave her a huge trust fund, and got her lots of attention everywhere she went. Their meet-cute storybook romance and wedding have given way to the realities and compromises of marriage, but Amy is determined to press forward and recapture the excitement and intimacy of their early days together. At least, that’s according to her diary. Seriously, don’t read any further.

Nick, on the other hand, is a passive, self-centered guy whose failures in New York gave him an excuse to drag the cosmopolitan Amy to his Missouri hometown. His saintly mom is dying of cancer, his nasty father has Alzheimer’s, and his beloved twin sister has retreated home from her own losses. Their hometown is quickly dying in the turbulence of the Great Recession and the signs of collapse are all around.  Then comes the fateful day, which is detailed through Nick’s eyes.  I’m warning you—don’t go on!

On their fifth anniversary, Amy disappears, leaving behind signs of a struggle. The initial investigation and all-out search proceeds as if she’s been kidnapped, but the deeper the investigation gets, the more Nick tells us that he’s lying to the police. He has no alibi for the time surrounding her loss, he misleads them about the nature of his and Amy’s relationship, and he can’t explain why the evidence of a struggle appears to have been manufactured. And the culture of infamy begins. Unfortunate photographs,  inconsistencies in his story, and the natural inclination to look to the remaining spouse as the likely guilty party trigger the interest of a scandal-mongering true-crime TV show. Shocking revelations trickle out at the worst possible times, and Nick’s efforts to steer his public image are doomed in the face of the unrelenting spotlight. OK, you’ve made your choice—let the consequences be on your head.

By this time, the reader is lost in a maze of mirrors. Do we believe the writings of the best wife a man can want, or the admissions of the worst kind of husband a woman can have? Do we trust his self-confessed failings, or his efforts to find out if someone from Amy’s past has surfaced to harm her? Does he deserve the belief that his family (and Amy’s) have in him, or are the police right to focus on him? Flynn constructs these uncertainties in a way that continually pulls the readers’ feet off what little firm ground they have to stand on.  Spoiler alert!

Keep in mind that this all happens in the first third of the book. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

By deconstructing Amy and Nick’s marriage (with Amy’s disappearance looming in the background), Flynn also asks readers to examine the fool’s paradise that most of us construct when we try to deceive others. (And it was Sir Walter Scott, not Shakespeare, who famously reminds us of that.) There are some, though, who can construct elaborate structures to hang their lies on, and who can manipulate others by observing and anticipating normal behavior. When the lie is big enough, its sheer improbability gives it credence—who could go to such lengths to create a falsehood? Flynn finds a way to show us, even as she gradually introduces the idea that their victims sometimes can’t find a way to escape the destruction.

Neil’s comprehensive list of 2012′s Best Books shows that Gone Girl was the best reviewed mystery of the year. Based on all the stuff I can’t or won’t tell you, I have to agree with the reviewers.

Check the WRL catalog for Gone Girl

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Department 19: The Rising, by Will Hill

Fans of Will Hill’s first book, Department 19, will not be disappointed by The Rising. In this exciting and fast-paced sequel, the Operators of Department 19 are tested beyond measure when their director, Admiral Seward, reveals that the world’s oldest and most powerful vampire, Dracula, has risen once again. As the disturbing news sparks more vampire attacks and a higher level of secrecy between department members, Jamie, Kate and Larissa all struggle to keep their bond intact. Subplots abound throughout Hill’s 600-page novel, and familiar characters such as Frankenstein and the Rusmanov brothers reappear at center stage. But there are plenty of new mysteries to be solved with the introduction of a seemingly friendly, genius scientist and a wandering desert man who knows all about vampires and the inter-workings of Department 19. Readers will find many of the aspects they loved from the first book here as well, including technological super weapons, intense battle scenes, a good level of descriptive gore and moral dilemmas that call human nature into question. The Rising is written in an almost movie script-like fashion that allows the reader to visualize the story in exceptional detail. There is no doubt that Hill is once again able to captivate readers and leave them begging for more.

Check the WRL catalog for The Rising

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Harvest, by Tess Gerritsen

The psychologically disturbing horrors of the evil-doers in this medical thriller made my spine tingle. Even though I found it hard to believe some of the sticky situations these characters found themselves in, I found myself believing that such corruption, immorality, and greed might indeed be possible in the medical community and I now possess a new suspicion of doctors and hospital systems.

Gerritsen’s adrenaline-charged thrillers followed her earlier career in romantic suspense, but her focus on the medical settings in these crime thrillers is what got my attention. That, and the constantly moving plot of this intricately layered story about a very promising medical resident-cum-amateur detective, Dr. Abby DiMatteo, who finds herself uncovering clues to the disturbing possibility that extremely wealthy heart transplant recipients may be jumping to the head of the non-discriminating transplant list while other patients with a legitimate place lose their lives. Even more disturbing is the possible source of the ”donated” organs. From the very first chapter, fascinating characters are introduced in separate plotlines such that the reader suspects but doesn’t know for sure how each of the characters will be connected later on. This was a great stand-alone read with a very satisfying ending. It’s not the entry into a series and it’s one of her early thrillers, but I didn’t find anything about it out of place in time. A romantic plot is threaded into the story as well.

The knowledge that the author was a real-life doctor before she turned to full-time writing gives me confidence in her ability to accurately portray medical students, residents, and practicing physicians. Lovers of suspense and mystery will love Harvest, and the themes are so disturbingly chilling that even horror fans might enjoy Tess Gerritsen, who also incorporates the supernatural into some of her novels.

Look for Harvest in the WRL catalog.

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The Watch, by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

It seems as though it took years for fiction writers to process the impact of the Vietnam War in a meaningful way.  It also seems as though the fiction emerging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is more immediate, rawer, and as significant as any that came out of Vietnam.  I don’t know why the two wars differ in that respect, nor which of the newer novels will survive, but in terms of sheer impact, The Watch has a good chance of being that book.

The story: at a remote outpost guarding access to the mountains of Kandahar, American soldiers maintain a vigilant watch against Taliban fighters.  After a brutal night attack which leaves the Americans on edge, a legless young woman arrives on the plain outside the base.  She has wheeled herself on a cart through the tortuous landscape to retrieve the body of her brother for proper burial.  Suspicious of her motives, afraid of a suicide bombing attempt, and unable to communicate with her, the Americans order her first to leave, then to stay outside the perimeter.  Negotiations, if her stubborn refusal to leave and their refusal to release the body, can be called negotiations, proceed very slowly, until an uneasy truce is achieved.  While the events are slowly unfolding, we see through the eyes of the various characters that this culture clash is both unavoidable and irreconcilable.

The moral heart of the story is occupied by Nizam, the Pashtun woman, and by Americans Lieutenant Nick Frobenius and First Sergeant Marcus Whalen.  Frobenius brings the benefit of his classical Dartmouth education to the reader, recognizing Nizam’s stand as parallel to that of Antigone in Sophocles’ play.  He also represents the disillusionment of men who joined the military from patriotic motives only to discover that they were being used as pawns in a game of chess with ill-defined goals, as well as one whose relationship has suffered during his deployment.   Whalen is the competent career man, the bridge between the officers and the lower ranks whose sense of duty keeps him going despite his exhaustion.  And Nizam is the person who has right on her side but no power to claim it.  Now her family’s sole survivor, she wants to fulfill the final rite of a courageous warrior.  It is impossible for her to envision anything outside her traditional role in Pashtun society, but she brings the dignity and strength of a person secure in her identity to the battle of wills. Other chapters are narrated by different characters, but their stories revolve around their interactions with these three, and around the questions raised by the force of their characters.

Roy-Bhattacharya uses the atmosphere of the war zone effectively.  The Americans are running on uppers in the wake of the night attack, drowsing on their feet and experiencing vivid and all-too-short dreams of home.  Isolation and vulnerability,  and the harsh conditions—dust storms, freezing nights, hot days—reinforce to them that they are aliens.  Their base is cramped and smelly, but the expansive plains and looming mountains outside the walls may conceal threats.  And the close quarters can make them hate the comrades they must depend on.

Who should give way when an individual with right on her side meets powerful people with might and a strict code of conduct?  That question has been explored in literature and art, and lived out by individuals determined to change their world.  That question isn’t on Nizam’s mind, but the reader can’t help but confront it.  This is a tragic tale, told with power and precision by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya.

Check the WRL catalog for The Watch

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Ashen Winter, by Mike Mullin

A very important question for people who love to read is, can the sequel ever be as good as first book? And in this case the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’!

I blogged on Mike Mullin’s debut novel Ashfall in April, and I have been anticipating the release of the sequel Ashen Winter ever since. In Ashfall a supervolcano erupted under Yellowstone National Park and sixteen year old Alex sets off on an odyssey from his home in Iowa to find his family in Illinois. The ash has destroyed the plants, killed the livestock (from breathing the ash), and poisoned the water. In Ashfall  some people are kind, and Alex meets Darla who will become the love of his life. Ten months on in Ashen Winter people’s desperation is growing. No summer came, possibly presaging the beginning of an unbelievably long and cold volcanic winter. Stored food is running out, and the last supplies of necessities we take for granted like antibiotics and gasoline are also running out. Alex struggles to stay true to the values he didn’t even know he had. In a world full of human cruelty and even cannibalism  he wants to save everyone who is innocent. Even his previously mild, spineless father resorts to violence leading Alex to think, “The disaster had warped the landscape of our minds – perhaps even more than it had altered the physical landscape.”

Ashen Winter is as dark as Ashfall and goes at the same breakneck pace. The problems of survival are just as intense, and the characters continue to change and grow in a believable way. I find some apocalyptic books, movies or TV series fascinating in the beginning as the characters deal with how to survive their disasters. Then too many of them descend into soap opera, where the story centers around who is hooking up with whom, rather than who will actually be able to survive to be able to hook up with anyone.

Like its predecessor Ashen Winter is an apocalyptic read that is a good choice for both older teens and adults. It may be too violent and disturbing for younger teens. Try it if you enjoyed The Hunger Games or older apocalyptic titles such as On The Beach or even less well known books like Monument 14.

Ashen Winter was so eagerly anticipated that it had a Blog Tour before its official release date. One blog, My Reading Room, had an interview with Mike Mullin. When asked who is his favorite character in Ashen Winter, Mike Mullin replied “I love Rita Mae, because, well, she’s a librarian.” For a librarian, obviously this is the best answer he could give and shows his good sense and taste!

Check the WRL catalog for Ashen Winter

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Micro, by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

From watching Jurassic Park it seems plausible that Michael Crichton thought, “Hey, what if dinosaurs and people had been around at the same time? People are so helpless. We are small, with no claws and teensy teeth.  We’d just get eaten!”  Which made an exciting (albeit gory) story.  I am guessing that the idea for Micro started in a similar way.  Michael Crichton thought, “What if people were as small as insects? We’re just soft and squishy.  No exoskeleton and only two legs.  We’d just get eaten!”

And sadly for the characters, that is exactly what happens in Micro.  Not for the faint hearted or the weak stomached, Micro is extremely violent and extremely gross. Have you ever seen a nature documentary where the parasitic wasps lay their eggs in the caterpillars, then the larvae hatch and eat the caterpillar from the inside out?  Yuk!  You can’t get much grosser than that.  But imagine the victim isn’t a caterpillar, but a person?  My stomach is uneasy just typing this.  But it doesn’t stop there, the many other nasty ways that insects have of killing and eating each other are explored in exciting, but grisly, detail in Micro.

Michael Crichton died in 2008 before Micro was finished.  To complete the book they selected Richard Preston, whose best books are non-fiction books about diseases and science, try The Hot Zone or Wild Trees.  I think this was an inspired combination.  The book has Michael Crichton’s thrilling pace and Richard Preston’s eye for plausible biological detail.

Micro was an exciting, escapist read that I consumed in one weekend.  Perhaps it is not great literature, and it didn’t receive very good reviews, but when you add an evil corporation, a mad scientist, an exotic tropical location, and a budding love affair, it kept me reading.

Check the WRL catalog for Micro.

 

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The Inverted Forest, by John Dalton

Summer camp, notwithstanding Bill Murray’s view of it, is supposed to be a quintessentially formative experience, both for the campers and the counselors.  How then to deal with a summer camp that begins with the hasty dispatch of the trained counselors and ends with a murder?  No, it isn’t Friday the 13th, but a well-drawn, sensitive, and shocking novel by John Dalton.

Three characters dominate the story of Kindermann Forest Summer Camp: owner Schuller Kindermann, camp nurse Harriet Foster, and counselor Wyatt Huddy.  Kindermann has been in charge of the slowly-failing camp since its founding, but always at a slight remove from the daily operation.  A narrow and judgmental man, his ideal is the manufactured and manageable world of model railroads and paper sculpture.  Harriet Foster and her five-year old son James are the only African-Americans in camp.  An outsider by virtue of color, age, and professional background, Harriet is the person with perhaps the clearest view overall of the camp’s operations.  She does have a serious blind spot–she continually second-guesses her understanding of white people.

Wyatt Huddy, along with most of the other counselors, is a last-minute hire.  Born with Apert’s Syndrome, Wyatt hides himself away from people as much as he can.  When the camp job comes up, he and his friend/employer, Salvation Army Captain Throckmorton think working with non-judgmental children is the best way to build Wyatt’s self-confidence.  So off he goes.

Little does he, or any of the new counselors, know what is in store for them.  For the first two weeks of their season, Kindermann Forest hosts the residents of the Missouri state institution for profoundly mentally disabled people.  Even before he’s unpacked his few things, Wyatt is given charge of four men whose need for individual attention would try a saint.

Not that these counselors are saints–some are ordinary teenagers, some have serious troubles of their own, and some just don’t think they can deal with the 24-hour responsibility of these campers.  But as the summer begins shaking out and everyone adapts to the routine, Kindermann Forest looks like it might just turn out to be, if not idyllic, at least a good place.  But trouble lurks, and when it strikes, one character will die, two others will have their ordered lives upended, and Kindermann Forest will be forever changed.  The story doesn’t end there, but to say more would be to reveal the most wonderful section of Dalton’s novel – a sequence of sacrifice and redemption that closes the story.

Dalton used a line from a fictitious poet created by JD Salinger in a 1947 novella -

Not a wasteland, but a great inverted forest with all the foliage underground

for his title, and the novel is filled with those reverses of perception.  It seems obvious in two principal characters, but his deeper reading of all the characters shows each of them presenting one face to the world and another hidden underground.

Check the WRL catalog for The Inverted Forest

The Inverted Forest will be added as a Gab Bag in Fall 2012, and I’ll update the catalog link then.

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The Ask and the Answer, by Patrick Ness

My friend and colleague Charlotte previously recommended the first book in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go. If you haven’t read that book, you ought to stop here, read this post about the series starter and come back to The Ask and the Answer after you’ve read it. Spoiler alerts for anyone who reads on in this post! Still, this YA series is so good that it deserves a second entry.

The second book picks up with Todd and Viola waking to discover that Mayor Prentiss has arrived at Haven and holds them separately captive. The Mayor has changed tactics somewhat, and is now working to win Todd and Viola over to his cause. What follows are chapters full of subtle psychological games, as Todd and Viola try to confirm each other’s safety and reunite, while the Mayor plays both good cop and bad cop in his nasty but subtle style.

The unusual conceit of the series is that a virus left men on this planet unable to hide their thoughts from others. In their heads, each can hear what everyone else is thinking. Women don’t broadcast their thoughts but can hear those of men, an inequality that makes Mayor Prentiss particularly hard on them as he struggles to maintain control. Some residents of Haven give in quickly to his armed dictatorship, but others begin to engage in vicious guerilla warfare, hiding under the mysterious moniker of The Ask. The Mayor responds with his own Gestapo-like organization, The Answer. Not just Todd and Viola are at risk, everyone in Haven is in danger, and the future of the whole planet’s up for grabs, as another wave of colonizing ships is due soon. To make matters worse, the Mayor has discovered a method of masking his thoughts at time, using them like a weapon at others.

Todd, along with the Mayor’s bullying, ne’er-do-well son Davy, is put to work rounding up the planet’s other species, the strange Spackle, and monitoring their forced labor. Viola must recover from injuries, then begins to learn healing arts herself, all the while searching for both Todd and those with whom she could ally to fight the Mayor.

Ness writes masterfully, leaving the reader unsure of whom to trust. Todd, in particular, undergoes a dark journey in this novel, suffering manipulations that lead him to behaviors that give him great shame. The suspense of the outcome of the ongoing war becomes almost secondary to the question of whether Todd can even save his own soul. If you’ve ever wondered how people can become twisted enough to perpetrate the heinous deeds committed during wartime, this book will provide an unforgettable example. There’s drama, suspense, action, and an enduring romance at the core of a series, which should be enjoyable to all adults, whether they’re young or not.

Check the WRL catalog for The Ask and the Answer

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The Devil in Silver, by Victor LaValle

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A guy walks into a bar…

Well I promise you haven’t heard this one. The guy in question goes by the name of Pepper, which would also be a good description for his personality. Pepper’s a hothead and his trip to a Queens bar to warn his girlfriend’s ex-husband to leave her alone turns into a brawl that includes three off-duty cops. Not wanting to take the time it would require to put Pepper through the booking process, and also wanting to teach him a lesson, the three take him instead to a mental health facility, where he’s committed for a 72-hour surveillance.

That’s the starting point for LaValle’s tale. Pepper’s lack of friends or family, his temper, his mishandling of initial contacts with some of the other patients, his run-ins with the overworked staff, and the numbing effects of powerful meds soon stretch that three-day stay into months. To make matters worse, a patient who is mysteriously protected by the staff in a separate wing that nobody is allowed to enter makes nighttime trips through the ceiling tiles, occasionally murdering other residents. They call him the Devil, and most think him a  monster while a few think he’s just a very sick man. Pepper becomes allied in a plot to stop him with the facility’s longest-held resident, a deceptively tough African-American teenage girl, and a man who obsessively uses the phones to try to get help from outside.

LaValle has a fluid, unusual style and a real gift for original characters. I found it easy to get immersed in his story, a kind of blend of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and a monster novel like Stephen King’s It. The book is great summer reading fun, but it also has a serious side with indictments of bureaucracy and the mental health system, insightful glimpses into human nature, and a thorough exploration of what it means to be mentally ill. Pepper is an antihero whose screwups you’ll lament, whose ultimate victory you’ll always desire. To top it off the book is often flat-out funny. In short, there’s something here for almost any kind of reader, making The Devil in Silver an easy book to recommend.

Check the WRL catalog for The Devil in Silver.

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Doors Open, by Ian Rankin

Mike, Robert, and Allan, just regular guys bonded by a mutual interest in fine art, very uncharacteristically plot to pull off an art heist during Scotland’s Doors Open Days from the National Gallery’s warehouse in Edinburgh, Scotland.  The crime requires enlisting the help of an immature but very talented art student to paint forgeries and a handful of professional thugs, including a former classmate of Mike’s, to disable guards and hold hostages.  All goes as planned until elements beyond their control spiral them into rather deep trouble.  New and unexpected dangers are at every turn.  Loyalties thought to be rock-solid unravel, with cops and mobsters over their shoulders constantly, sparking up their nerves like firecrackers fused and ready to ignite.

Mike’s software company had made a bundle but he was seeking the kind of thrills he’d discovered money couldn’t buy.  He far too much enjoys the illicit power of concealing a firearm that he never loads.  Allan’s a bored banker who’s lost his wife’s affection and respect, yearning to stop feeling so spineless.  Robert, an aging and ambitious art expert, comes up with the big idea to liberate a number of paintings from storage, convincing his art-appreciating buddies that they should have them.

Not the type I usually read, but picked because I’m intrigued by art theft.  I enjoy high-suspense heist films such as Oceans Eleven and The Thomas Crown Affair so I figured this book would be interesting.  I didn’t immediately like its main characters who take foolish risks by turning criminal out of disenchantment with their lives.  But I was soon fully engaged and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen.  Playing the audiobook in my car, I caught myself slowing down or taking longer routes, flying through the eight discs totaling ten hours.

Those who love fast-paced suspenseful crime reads will enjoy this book right up to the ending.  There’s a nice Scottish flavor to the narration of the audiobook, and James MacPherson gives distinctive voices to each personality.  The character of Detective Ransome is not as fully developed as fans of Rankin’s retired Inspector Rebus series may expect, but Doors Open is a fine stand-alone.

I delightedly discovered that the story was earlier published as a serial in the New York Times Magazine, with an mp3 recording of Chapter 1 read by Ian Rankin still available online in The Funny Pages/Sunday Serial.

Check the WRL Catalog for Doors Open in Audiobook format on CD,  in print or in large print.

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Monument 14, By Emmy Laybourne

High school junior Dean is starting a normal day in his Colorado suburb, riding his school bus in a future not too different from now, where every child has a minitab that keeps them continuously connected to the Network. Suddenly, strange hail filled with stones and sticks inundates them so terribly that his bus crashes, killing the driver and over half the students. The survivors of the crash are helped into a nearby superstore by the resourceful driver of the nearby elementary school bus. She goes looking for help and eight teenagers are left to look after six small children as the world goes crazy.

From an old fashioned TV they learn that a volcanic eruption in the far away Canary Islands have set off a chain of catastrophes such as the strange hail and earthquakes which have caused the release of chemical weapons. Things are looking very bleak. How will these eight teenagers survive? Will they able to care for the six small children who have unexpectedly become their responsibility?

Monument 14 only covers 12 days, but an amazing amount of action is squeezed into less than two weeks. Like Ashfall (about which I previously posted), Monument 14 starts with a natural disaster that is beyond the control of people, but unlike Ashfall it then delves into the man made disaster of the released chemical weapons.  Monument 14 focuses less on the action and more on the psychology of the previously carefree teenagers and the children who are now their responsibility. There are many characters to keep track of, but they are well drawn with some being likable and others distinctly less so. The teenagers already know each other from high school, but travel different social circles. The teenagers who were popular aren’t necessarily the ones best suited to the extremes of their new situation.

Monument 14 suggests that during an apocalyptic event a superstore is a great place to take shelter, as it has everything you might need–food, medicine, bedding, clothing, and camping supplies to start with. In reality, it may be a terrible place because everyone will want the same supplies and you may have to fight for them. In Monument 14, the store has strong, automatic “riot gates” that close and lock the children in. More importantly, it also locks everyone else out, but other people want to get in, adding to the tension and plot twists.

Monument 14 is another book published for teenagers that many adults will enjoy. It has enough action to keep you on the edge of your seat and enough post-apocalyptic problems and psychology to keep you thinking long after the last page. It ends in a cliffhanger and, according to the author’s website,  the sequel, Monument 14: Sky on Fire, will come out in the summer of 2013. I can’t wait!

Check the WRL catalog for Monument 14.

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Frost, by Marianna Baer

What Leena expects to be a perfect senior year at boarding school begins to fall apart from the first moment she sets foot back on campus. She’s excited to be living in Frost House with her two best friends, and will have a room to herself until their other friend returns from a semester abroad. Leena can’t wait to be out of the dorm, and moving into Frost House is a special treat because it was repurposed as women’s housing just for her and her roommates. Her excitement is soon dulled, however, by the news that she will be sharing her sanctuary with a roommate after all.

Celeste is eccentric, arty, and attention-seeking. So when she starts to complain about Frost House, Leena doesn’t quite know what to believe. Leena loves living in the old house and feels completely at home. Celeste feels like she is being watched, claims her belongings are being tampered with, and swears it smells like something died in her closet. Could Celeste be making it all up or is there really a presence in the house that Leena can’t sense? Why would Leena feel so comfortable in the house if there was really something wrong? Celeste certainly has a history of being unreliable, but even Leena can’t argue with the strange, if disparate, effect Frost House seems to have on them both.

Frost is not your usual haunted house story, and you may end the story with as many questions as you began. With that said, I enjoyed the layers author Baer built, each one adding more and more depth to the story than the last. Are the events of the story the result of a character’s psychological deterioration, a haunting, or something more mundane?

Check the WRL catalog for Frost.

 

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The Vanishing Game, by Kate Kae Myers

Kate Kae Myers, author of The Vanishing Game, wrote on her blog, “Smart teens interested in clues and codes (and fiction, of course!) are my target market.” I may no longer be a teen, but I am definitely a fan of fiction that incorporates clues and codes. That may have been what started me reading, but what kept me reading was the atmosphere, the suspense, and the plot. It is a mystery, thriller, noir, fantasy novel all weaved into one. It is suitably eerie as well as puzzling. Most of the time I had no idea where the story would twist and turn next, and I certainly didn’t guess the ending.

The overarching mystery in the story is whether Jocelyn’s brother Jack is dead or alive. Jocelyn was told that Jack had died in a car wreck, but shortly thereafter she received a letter in the mail. It was signed “Jason December,” a code name she and Jack had created as children. The only other person who knew that name was their friend Noah. Jocelyn, Jack, and Noah had all grown up in Seale House, a foster home where they were neglected. One of their diversions was making up codes to try and stump one another. The message Jocelyn receives from “Jason December” is a newspaper clipping about a fire that destroyed Seale House. Jocelyn is sure it is a clue, especially since it was sent after Jack’s death, but first she must track down Noah. At worst she can confirm that he did not send the letter, at best maybe he’ll help her find Jack.

Now you know as much as I did when I started reading The Vanishing Game. I wouldn’t deprive you the enjoyment of finding out the rest for yourself. Myers drops you right into the middle of the action and rarely gives you time to catch your breath. I also wouldn’t recommend reading this alone at night. Myers’ story is as creepy as it is suspenseful.

Check the WRL catalog for The Vanishing Game.

 

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Ashfall, by Mike Mullin

Some apocalyptic stories begin with human folly. Ashfall starts with a catastrophe that no human could ever prevent, the eruption of the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park. Some authorities think that these supervolcanic events have occurred several times in the course of human history. They may have caused ice ages and may have caused a bottleneck in human evolution. Perhaps humans can predict supervolcanic events in the short term if we notice a rise in seismic and volcanic activity but no human power can prevent them.

In Ashfall, Alex is an ordinary teenager living in a suburb in Iowa. He argues with his mother and likes playing World of Warcraft. He is thrilled when his parents go on a weekend visit to his uncle’s farm 3 hours’ drive away in Warren, Illinois and leave him home alone for the first time.

Nobody suspected that this routine Friday would be the last ordinary day that anyone in America, and maybe the whole world, would ever see. Alex’s house suddenly explodes into flames and all the phones, internet and even the radios don’t work. He goes to a neighbor’s house and for days the world is plunged into darkness as they are surrounded by a noise so loud that they have to stuff toilet paper in their ears and wear headphones to prevent pain. At first Alex has no idea what is going on, but his neighbor connects the crazy events to a short radio news bulletin about a volcanic eruption.

Even when they know what has happened, nobody knows what it means for them in the short term or humanity in the long term. All Alex knows is that he must find his family, so he sets off with cross country skis and a backpack of food. Conditions are terrible as every water source is poisoned and it becomes so cold that it starts snowing in September, but the behavior of people is far worse. Some are kind, together in towns to look after each other, but with civilization collapsing, criminals have no restraints. Alex meets good people like sharp-tongued Darla but also murderous criminals like Target.

Ashfall can be enjoyed as a tense action adventure with fascinating post-apocalyptic problems. Who would have considered that flat-roofed buildings are a terrible choice during a supervolcanic eruption because they may collapse under the weight of the ash? But Ashfall is more than a simple thriller. Author Mike Mullins movingly and realistically portrays Alex’s growth from a spoiled teenager to a strong and mature young man, capable of surviving in the new, harsh world.

Since this book deals with future events, I will make a prediction. I think this book is destined for popularity. If sequels that are planned to complete the trilogy are as good, they are as well (Ashen Winter is due out October 2012). Yet at the same time I fervently hope Mike Mullins’ predictive skills are lacking and no supervolcanic eruptions are coming soon.

Check the WRL catalog for Ashfall

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Harry Brown

Harry Brown is an uncompromising movie that grabbed me by the throat. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.

I was browsing in the library for a movie for the weekend and chose it for veteran British actor Michael Caine. He is well-known in America as the Butler from Batman, but also stars or features in over fifty movies that the Williamsburg Regional Library owns. His performance as British pensioner Harry Brown is stunning.

The movie opens with shaky scenes filmed on a phone. Drug-addled youths pursue and appear to kill a young mother pushing her child in a stroller through a park on a sunny morning. Then the scene cuts to the apparent peace of everyman Harry Brown’s ordinary life. We see him as he rises in the morning and goes about his daily business in his small and shabby council flat. He spends his quiet days visiting his dying wife in hospital, while his own emphysema slows him down. He walks to the hospital as he is not nearly rich enough to own a car. We know he wants to take a short cut through a pedestrian tunnel under a busy road, but the tunnel is the hangout for the youths from the first scene.

Harry quietly endures the torments of his small life until his only friend, his pub companion, chess playing Leonard, is murdered by the tunnel youths. We know that Harry Brown used to be in the Marines but those days are long past. He is old and ill and generally inoffensive. But the criminals underestimate him and fail to realize that they are taking on someone who has nothing to lose.

This may sound like the plot of a predictable action movie, but Harry Brown is more. It is certainly violent – disturbingly so, but there is nothing cartoonish about the violence and Harry’s character and ordinary decency are revealed by the understated but breathtaking acting of Michael Caine.

Harry Brown is not a movie that is easy to watch in several senses. The plot moves forward unrelentingly. If you miss a development, you miss it. The violence is gritty and extremely disturbing. And the conclusions it draws about the role of the police and vigilantism are definitely controversial. Comparisons to Gran Torino are inevitable and you will have to draw your own conclusions about which movie you agree with. Overall, this is one of the most intense, gripping movies that I have ever seen, that has stayed with me even when I prefer to forget it.

Check the WRL catalog for Harry Brown

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