PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY LIKES ICE CHEST, TOO!

 Ice Chest by J.D. Rhoades

In this winning caper novel from Rhoades (Devils and Dust and three other Jack Keller mysteries), the Enigma agency’s top model, Clarissa Cartwright, and her entourage fly from New York City to Atlanta, where she’s due to wear a jewel-encrusted bra known as the Ice Chest at a fashion show. Chunk McNeill, a former New York cop, and Zoe Piper, a whiz at using computers to gather intel, lead the team providing security, while Hermione Starr manages the flock of Enigma’s underwear models. Meanwhile, crooks Rafe Valentine, L.B. Gordon, and their associates aim to snatch Clarissa and her multimillion-dollar brassiere with the aid of Branson Suggs, Rafe’s rather naïve nephew. Also watching Clarissa is Aldo “the Moose” Cantone, a henchman of an ex-boyfriend of hers, Mario Allegretti, who just can’t accept her leaving him. The grab is made, and that’s when the fun really begins. Chunk and Zoe want to save the innocents, Rafe and L.B. want to get paid, and Mario wants to kill anyone who has touched “his girl.” Other zany characters keep the plot twisting.

GREAT BOOKLIST REVIEW FOR ICE CHEST!

Bill Ott at Booklist seems kinda relieved about ICE CHEST: 


Fans can’t be blamed for their furrowed brows when a favorite author decides to change styles. So when action-maestro Rhoades turns away from flawed noir heroes and nonstop overdrive to try his hand at a wacky, Elmore Leonard–style caper novel, well, we can’t help but worry. 

No need, as it turns out. There’s  just enough edge in this gang-who-couldn’t-shoot-straight heist tale to remind us that blood is only an itchy trigger finger away, but connected to those trembling digits are some of the goofiest, oddly sympathetic characters since Brad Smith rigged a horse race in All Hat (2003). The bad guys, including twins who happen to be eunuchs (long story) and a ringleader whose outsize vocabulary has led to delusions of grandeur, plan to kidnap a supermodel who will be wearing a bra studded with $5 million in jewels. On the other side of the scrimmage line are the security chief for the lingerie company; his punky, computer-wizard assistant; and the model’s chaperone, who has some special skills of her own. Oh, and there’s the supermodel’s jealous, mobbed-up boyfriend, too. 

The thing is, every one of these characters could star in his or her own thriller—well, except maybe the eunuchs—and together they comprise an ensemble that delivers nonstop entertainment. Does Rhoades do comic caper novels better than he does high-octane thrillers? Too close to call. 

Thanks, Bill! I think I'm going to add "action-maestro" to my business card.  

They Love Me In the Heartland

Thanks to the Lincoln, Nebraska Star Journal who posted this review of  Devils and Dust:

"Jack Keller is a hard man. He has a troubled past but is on the loose right now, playing at being a bartender in a saloon in a dusty desert town. Then Angela comes in, looking for Jack, and our hero is off on another adventure. This is the fourth Keller story, and they are always exciting.

Seems that Angela, in the bail bond business, searched out Jack to find her husband, Oscar, who went off himself to find his sons. Oscar is an illegal immigrant who had sent for his children to join him from Mexico, using a dangerous route that got violently interrupted. Now Jack will have to backtrack to find them all.

This gets complicated, because Jack and Angela used to be lovers, and there is a close tie between Jack and Oscar as well. Thus does the heart dictate our behavior.

Jack is truly a hard man, so you can expect violence, blood and rough action. You won’t be disappointed.

The plot involves a group of modern-day white supremacists who run a slavery community of hijacked men, women and children who are caught trying to get into the United States across the border. It is a story that seems all too true in these days of controversy over illegal entries with often-tragic consequences.

Unfortunately, the fiction approaches the truth."

Review: Let the Devil Speak by Steven Hart

Let the Devil Speak: Articles, Essays, and Incitements by Steven Hart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Smart, witty, acerbic essays about American culture, literature, and music. The book's real tour de force is the first  chapter, "He May Be a Fool, But He's Our Fool", which proceeds from a curious juxtaposition between two cultural events: racist Georgia Governor Lester Maddox' contentious appearance on the "Dick Cavett Show" and Randy Newman's seminal 1974 album "Good Old Boys." Newman had often said that the Maddox appearance, where Newman felt the Governor was treated unfairly, was the inspiration for the album's opening track "Rednecks." Steven Hart uses that connection to trace not only the divergent careers of Newman and Maddox, but the thread of bitter, corrosive resentment, inevitably tinged with racism, which runs through right wing politics to this day.

My favorite passage is the one about Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech at the 1992 Republican convention. Hart writes: "the imperturbably sunny face of the Reagan Presidency had been replaced by a frothing troglodyte with an anti-tax pledge in one paw and a picture of a bloody fetus in the other." That passage perfectly sums up the moment when I got off the moderate fence I'd been sitting on during the first George H.W. Bush term and threw in with the liberals.

It's not all politics, however: "The Ents From The Orcs" provides a fascinating glimpse of another particular moment in time that left an indelible mark on our culture: a night-long conversation in 1931 between three Oxford University academics (Henry Victor Dyson, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien) that led to the writing of Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" and Tolkien's Middle Earth series. "Bruno" is an appreciation of the life and work of the late Jacob Bronowski (of "Ascent of Man" fame). All of the essays share the same insight and sharp, incisive, sometimes cutting prose. I found myself nodding along in some places, laughing out loud in others. Great book, and highly recommended.


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Review: 212 by Alafair Burke

212 by Alafair Burke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alafair Burke is an incredibly talented writer. One of her many strengths is the ability to use just the right detail (the unmatched desks in a detective squad room, the contrast between a DA's cheap Bic pen and a defense lawyer's expensive one) to make the reader feel that they're right there in the scene. The plotting is tight and just twisty enough to keep the reader guessing without going so over the top as to elicit eye rolling. And her characters are very well drawn. For instance, I love how Burke portrays Ellie Hatcher, the protagonist of 212. She's certainly less than perfect, but without so much baggage that it weighs down the story. This is police procedural done right. Highly recommended.


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What I Read On My Summer Vacation | Views From the Muse

 Blogging today at  Views From the Muse, the Thalia Press Authors Co-Op blog.

Review: AN APRIL SHROUD by Reginald Hill

An April Shroud by Reginald Hill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Andy Dalziel, the older, louder, fatter, and cruder member of one of crime fiction's oddest couples, is pretty much on his own for most of this fourth installment in the series, and that's not a bad thing. With his more cerebral and often annoying younger partner off on his honeymoon with his equally annoying spouse, Dalziel finds himself on holiday and at loose ends. When he stumbles across a curiously aquatic funeral procession, Dalziel quickly finds himself drying himself and his rain-soaked belongings in an English country house with an assemblage of incessantly bickering oddballs who seem strangely unaffected by the recent death of one of their own.

Like the other books in the series that I've read up to now, the plot is a little slow and plodding, and it doesn't pack much of an emotional charge. Also, the book was originally published in 1975 and a couple of the characters are seriously dated.

What makes the book (and the series) entertaining is the character of Dalziel himself: acerbic, outspoken, cynical, boorish, drunk a fair amount of the time, and generally not giving a rat's hindquarters about what anyone thinks of him. It's worth a read just to chuckle over his observations on the cast of characters around him and on life in general. I want to party with this guy sometime.

Recommended.


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Review: N0S4A2, by Joe Hill

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A great horror novel needs a great villain, and Charlie Manx is one of the greatest: creepy, nearly invincible, with a seductive reasonableness in his alleged motive for doing the horrible things he does. It's all for the sake of the children. Right? RIGHT?

Brrr...

Everybody knows by now that Joe Hill is the son of mega-best-selling horror novelist Stephen King. It's true that Hill uses some of the techniques his old man made famous, most notably the use of cultural icons to tether the fantastic and bizarre plot to the real world (let me just say, you may never hear Christmas music the same way again, and if you hated it before, you'll be terrified by it after this).

All that said, Joe Hill has his own strong, tough, idiosyncratic voice and a real feel for character that makes you ache for the damaged people pitted against the powerful Manx. There were several times in this book when I heard myself whispering, "Oh, no, no, no..." But in a good way.

Pity, fear, and eventual katharsis. You can't ask for more.

Highly recommended.




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Review: JERICHO'S RAZOR, by Casey Doran

Jericho's Razor by Casey Doran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Okay, full disclosure time. Casey Doran and I both have the same publisher, Polis Books. But I've never met the man, and in any case, whoever the publisher may be, I don't review books I don't actually like, because I don't finish books I don't like. And I liked this book. A lot.

The idea of an author who's horrified to find out that a killer is using idea from his novels has been done before (IIRC, it's the original premise of the show "Castle"). But Casey Doran puts a new twist on it: Jericho Sands is not only a best selling crime novelist, he's the son of a pair of notorious serial killers who admits that, to some extent, he trades on that notoriety to sell books. But apparently that's attracted a vicious killer whose first victim is decapitated with a chainsaw in Jericho's garage.

That's how the book starts, and the pace never lets up after that. There are a couple of moments where the thread my disbelief is suspended from got a little frayed (there's one point early on, for example, at which Jericho would have certainly been locked up and is inexplicably allowed to go free). But the book moves so fast, and Jericho's narrative voice is so compelling, that I couldn't help but keep reading. This is a great debut and I look forward to the next book in the series. Recommended.


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Review: TAKEDOWN, by Brett Battles and Robert Gregory Browne

Takedown by Brett Battles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Poe boys (Robert Gregory Browne and Brett Battles) are back with the second installment in the Alexandra Poe series. I really liked the first one, and I have to say this one is even better. The pacing is letter-perfect and the action scenes are crisper and more focused.

Like the writers of a great TV show, the authors do a good job of weaving the plot of this "episode" in with the overall story arc of Alexandra Poe's search to find out the truth about her missing father and murdered mother, and like great TV, the end of this story leaves you gasping to find out what happens next time. Recommended.


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Review: The Unburied Dead, Douglas Lindsay

The Unburied Dead by Douglas Lindsay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A serial killer is brutally slaughtering young women in Glasgow. In pursuit of the maniac is the most dysfunctional police squad I think I've ever encountered in print. Drunks, has-beens, cuckolds,  horndogs of both sexes and all orientations, every blessed one of them seriously morose and tormented...it's astounding that they just don't all join hands and jump into the River Clyde together, except they seem to loathe one another too much to get that organized.

In the center of it all is DS Thomas Hutton, who's carrying around a head full of nightmares from his wartime service in Bosnia. As the investigation goes on, members of the team start dying, and Hutton begins to suspect that the murderer may actually be one of their own. And it wouldn't be the first time...

I love discovering a great writer I've never read before, and I really loved this book. It's dark, grimly humorous, with twists, reversals and surprises that made me go "holy sh*t!" out loud, more than once (if you're wondering how to pronounce that, the "*" is silent). I've already got the second book in the series from Blasted Heath Publishing, and I'm looking forward to it, after a short break to recover. It's got that kind of impact.

Highly recommended.


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Review: Louise's War, by Sarah Shaber

Louise's War by Sarah R. Shaber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At the height of World War 2, young widow Louise Pearlie comes up to Washington DC from her home in Wilmington, NC and finds a job as a file clerk at the ultra-secret OSS (precursor to the CIA). When her boss is murdered and a file with connections to an old friend of Louise's who's trapped and endangered in Vichy France disappears, she dives in to set things right.

Louise is an engaging character, the kind of tough, no-nonsense Southern girl I can't help but like. Sarah Shaber also perfectly evokes the setting of the nation's capital in time of war: the near-chaos, the paranoia, the unsettling sense that the world is changing in ways no one really understands or has any control over. I definitely recommend this one.


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Review: HOUR OF THE RAT, Lisa Brackmann

Hour of the Rat by Lisa Brackmann
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The protagonist is engaging, the local color and descriptions of life in modern China are fascinating, and the writing is top-notch. Problem is, the story doesn't finish. The book just ends, and not even on a cliffhanger. Nothing is resolved, the situation is still as perilous as it ever was, and the reader, one supposes, just has to buy the next volume to find out what happens next. This always annoys me. I don't mind series, and I don't even mind story arcs that go from book to book, but I just feel like each book should have at least one self-contained story. Even the rambling Song of Ice and Fire series ends each book on a high note or turning point. This just feels like the author wrote till she hit the deadline and quit. YMMV, of course, and it that sort of thing doesn't bother you, then this is a fine read.


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Review: BROKEN HARBOR by Tana French

Broken Harbor by Tana French
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy and his new partner Richie Curran get called out to investigate a brutal crime in a crumbling, failed, mostly empty housing estate. Two children are dead, smothered in their beds. The unemployed father is dead of multiple stab wounds and the mother is barely alive and unconscious.

The detectives immediately find more strange and unsettling things at the Spain house. There are holes smashed in the walls, with video cameras pointed at the holes and at the hatch to the attic (which is covered with wire, as if to keep something from getting out). The wife had confided in her sister that she thought an intruder had been entering the house unobserved over the past few months. And someone has set up an observation post in the empty house across the street so as to watch the place.

It's the slow peeling away of the layers of this mystery that keeps the reader fascinated and engaged. If you're looking for an edge of your seat, "who will survive and what will be left of them" thriller with the heroes in danger at every turn, this is not the book for you. The drama and conflict comes in the interaction of the characters and in their personal lives, particularly Mick's travails with his mentally unbalanced sister Dina and the memories they both carry of their mother's suicide at the beach resort that was replaced by the development where the murders took place. This means that the book sometimes gets a little slow and talky. I also had trouble swallowing one of Richie's decisions, one that's the setup for the major reveal. It just didn't seem like something that character would do.

But, as always with Tana French, the prose is absolutely beautiful--I stopped to read the soliloquy at the beginning of Chapter 18 three times because it was so perfect, even though I knew there was a major turning point about to happen. And the ending was absolutely shattering. Recommended.


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Review: A FINE AND DANGEROUS SEASON, by Keith Raffel

A Fine and Dangerous Season by Keith Raffel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What I liked most about this book is the way it showed how history is made by real people, with all their strengths, weaknesses, flaws, old grudges, resentments, grace, loyalty, faithlessness, idealism, and cynicism--sometimes all in the same character. Keith Raffel does a great job of portraying his people, both historical and fictional, so that you care not only about what happens to the country (which you probably already know) but what happens to them. That's what makes the best historical fiction, and the way Raffel handles the "ticking clock" of the Cuban Missile Crisis makes this a top-notch thriller as well. Recommended.



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Review: BOOK OF SHADOWS, by Alexandra Sokoloff

Book of Shadows by Alexandra Sokoloff

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Alex Sokoloff blew me away with her first novel "The Harrowing", and she's just gotten better and better with every book. She writes what I like to call "whatdunnits": mysteries and thrillers with a supernatural overtone in which the main characters (and the reader) are trying to figure out if their enemy is a particularly evil human or...something else, something Other. This is a brilliant example of that style, with some added eroticism to spice things up. Sokoloff is an deft, assured writer with a real gift for putting your head right into the scene using all the senses. She can really bring the shivers, both the sexy and the scary kind. Highly recommended.



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Review: Layer Cake by J.J. Connolly

Layer Cake by J.J. Connolly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A young drug dealer who fancies himself a bit above it all, a bit smarter than the average thug, learns some harsh lessons at the hands of some very bad people. The book is written in first person, in such a thick British criminal argot that it took me back to the first time I read "A Clockwork Orange." Eventually, you adjust to it, though. The plot wanders a bit in the middle, but eventually it all comes together in a fast and furious climax of big fish eating little fish, only to find out that, as the man said, there's always a bigger fish. Recommended.



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Review: THE HARD BOUNCE by Todd Robinson

The Hard Bounce by Todd Robinson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It's a standard P.I. novel plot: rich powerful man asks the wisecracking gumshoe to find and bring back his troubled young daughter. P.I. goes looking, poking around and asking questions, until someone beats him up or takes a shot at him and he discovers that things aren't as they seem, and things get more complicated from there.

In Todd Robinson's original take on the well-worn plot, however, the protagonist and his sidekick aren't P.I.'s, they're bouncers for downscale bars. They're professional kickers of asses, and they're as apt to dish out a beating with their questions as to take one--but only if the lowlife in question deserves it. And in their quest to find the girl, Boo Malone and Junior McCullough find plenty of folks who deserve it. They're saved from being portrayed as mere leg-breakers by Robinson's sharp, funny dialogue and the characters' fierce, years-long loyalty to each other. You quickly come to really care about the big bruisers and the surrogate family they've cobbled together over years of hard knocks. The book has plenty of twists and surprises, as any good hardboiled adventure should, and it all comes together to a fine, satisfying ending.

Recommended.



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Review: SNUFF, Terry Pratchett

Snuff by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sam Vimes has always been my favorite Discworld main character because he's easily the richest and most complex: a good man and a good copper who's always aware just how thin the barrier is between that and becoming bad. It doesn't help that he's taken on a rider in his head (possibly imaginary, but very possibly all too real) who would cheerfully give him a shove through that barrier.


In this book, Vimes takes a holiday at the insistence of his adoring (and incredibly rich) wife Sybil. Vimes being Vimes of course, it's not long before he's neck deep in murder and corruption in a place where no one knows him or cares that he's the Commander of the City Watch.


There are some of the usual pointed and witty observations here, as well as some good suspense. Pratchett does seem to indulge his penchant for beating you over the head with the book's message a little more than usual, but once you get past that, it's an amusing, fun read. I would have liked to see more of Vetinari (my second favorite Pratchett character), but then I feel that way in every one of the Discworld books. I just love that magnificent bastard.


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Review: CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA by Frank Bill

Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories by Frank Bill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You might try to comfort yourself by thinking that Frank Bill's exaggerating for dramatic effect in these short, tightly written tales of country meth addicts, domestic brutality, dog-fighters, unpredictably vicious rednecks, and rural ultra-violence. You might try to tell yourself that things this grim and lurid could never happen in real life. But I can tell you, they do.


This is not a book for the faint of heart; it's pure distilled essence of redneck noir, and there are few happy endings. But the quality of the writing keeps you coming back for just one more page, then another, until it's all gone, like a bottle of cheap whiskey that you can't put down and that's gone all too soon.


I got this book for Christmas, and Frank Bill just made it to the top of the "Buy As Soon As It Comes Out list."


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