A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny

The second in the Inspector Gamache series brings back many of the same people from the first novel and introduces several more. The mystery here wasn't nearly as interesting this time around—the big reveal with the letters was pretty obvious—but the characters are why we keep reading. We get a peek into Gamache's past, which seems to be an overarching story that is told across the books; a bonus for people that read them all in order, but I suspect a detriment for anyone first picking one up later in the series. Penny's style is laid-back but engaging, with a lot of literary references thrown in throughout: Georges Simenon, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the Old Testament all figure in to the narrative. (And don't think this means the book is too haughty; Casablanca and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer make an appearance as well.) A pleasant read and a nice diversion.

First Sentence:

Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift.

The Gray Man, by Mark Greaney

This book reads like a bad action movie. No real plot other than save the captured princess (here the princess is played by twin girls) while racking up a huge body count all across Europe. The hero is an assassin with a heart of gold: "Court Gentry was the Gray Man simply because he believed there existed bad men in this world who truly needed to die." Two thirds of the way through, Gentry has a gunshot wound in his leg, a broken rib, a severely swollen wrist, deep lacerations on his knees and the bottoms of both feet, fallen off a mountain, and received no medical attention for any of these injuries. Seemingly cornered, he manages to perform a standing leap to grab a rafter, pull himself into an attic, and crawl through a small vent to safety. He later takes a vicious stab to the gut requiring stitches (delivered without anesthetic in a moving car which he was driving) and a blood transfusion. This all sets the stage for a huge gun battle where Gentry shoots his way into a fortified castle to confront his enemies. The Gray Man is part Jack Reacher, part Jason Bourne, and part Batman, but possessed none of the depth of those characters. This is a series, but not sure I'll read any more. Not bad, but not good either.

First Sentence:

The first gunmen arriving at the crash site were not Al Qaeda and had nothing to do with the shoot down.

Chicago, by David Mamet

Mamet is known for his dialogue (Alec Baldwin's monologue in Glengarry Glen Ross is maybe the best 7 minutes of film in existence) where characters often interrupt to finish each other's sentences, punctuated with obscenities. Chicago lives up to this reputation, filled with mobsters, whores, and reporters in a post-WWI era Windy City. Sadly, the writing overshadows the plot with the result feeling more like a badly edited short story stretched out to novel-length.

Nothing really happens in the first half of the book, and then another third has the "hero" trying to drink himself to death. The conversations are quite good and occasionally insightful ("Why do we lie? To obtain something from our listener.") and the individual scenes often are as well (I especially liked the discussion of why you shouldn't carry a gun or a flashlight when cracking a safe) but they are only tenuously connected and thinly strung together. It almost feels like a series of vignettes featuring Chicago, but the characters and settings don't change enough to pull this off. If you like the glib pen of Mamet this may hold your interest, but if you are looking for a gritty tale of mobsters during prohibition maybe check out Dennis Lehane's Live by Night instead.

First Sentence:

Parlow and Mike sat quiet in the duck blind.

The Punishment She Deserves, by Elizabeth George

Occasionally Elizabeth George is determined to put at least one insufferable character in the forefront of each of her Lynley novels. In Believing the Lie it was Deborah St. James, and here it is DCS Isabelle Ardery. Luckily for the reader, Ardery is given an interesting (if depressing) character arc: her alcoholism as demonstrated in the last few novels escalates and George does a brilliant job of depicting both the downward spiral and the desperate self-justification that accompanies it. "She calculated that a mere few shots of Grey Goose would not lead to another day of oblivion. So she had them." Coupled with the bizarre subplot of Barbara Havers learning to tap dance and a (unusual for George) throwaway pop culture reference to Luther, this depiction saves a rather mundane plot that seemingly paints every university student as a sex-crazed partier. Not a great entry in the series, but better than recent efforts for sure.

First Sentence:

The snow began falling on Ludlow town in the evening, while most people were doing their post-dinner washing-up as a prelude to sitting down in front of the television.

Still Life, by Louise Penny

I hadn't ever heard of Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache before my mother mentioned him, even though there are 16 books (so far) in the series dating back to 2005. I'm glad she did! This modern-day (and male) Miss Marple is thoroughly entertaining. "I watch. I'm very good at observing. Noticing things. And listening. Actively listening to what people are saying, their choice of words, their tone. What they aren't saying. ... It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. So when I'm observing, that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make." A good match for a character driven mystery.

Set in Quebec, Still Life reflects Canadian values quite well. Nature, politeness, and outdoor sports abound, although I suppose the murder does run counter to good manners a bit. In keeping with the gentler mood, there is no sex and very little violence—not at all like the Reacher series. It was kind of nice to read a mystery that didn't feel as if it were being crafted for a major motion picture, but instead unfolded at a leisurely pace; satisfying but not suspenseful. It is the kind of a book that is great to read on a rainy afternoon sitting in a big window seat; more cozy and less beach-read.

The mystery wasn't as interesting as the characters, but all the clues were there for the reader to follow. I thought I knew what happened at one point, but a well-done red herring convinced me I was wrong. Turns out I wasn't, and the misleading clue was explained away quite nicely. I like plots that surprise me and characters that actually change, so I certainly look forward to reading the next entry in this series.

First Sentence:

Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday.

The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

Set in the American South of the 1960s, this is a book with Jim Crow at its heart. Racism and unfairness saturate each page, coupled with sadness and misery, cruelty and inequity. Amazingly, the spirit of the main two boys keeps the story from becoming depressing, and in fact, was quite an engaging and even uplifting read.

Based loosely on the real-world Dozier School for Boys, a reform school in Florida that was violently abusive to its charges for virtually all of the 111 years it was open, The Nickel Boys tells the story of Elwood Curtis and his friend Turner. While violent, the dignity and dedication to survival the boys possess prevail over the casual racism shown by not just the craven staff, but the rest of the world in general. "They had whipped Elwood. But he took the whipping and he was still here. There was nothing they could do that white people hadn't done to black people before, were not doing at this moment in Montgomery and Baton Rouge, in broad daylight on a city street outside Woolworths." (Sadly, racism hasn't been vanquished in the decades since segregation fell out of favor, but simply driven underground until the recent rise of the alt-right and its seeming embrace by the Republican Party. It is hard not to read this book and see the parallels to what is happening today in migrant detention camps.)

The surprisingly short book is broken into three parts: the first two parts are presented sequentially and in a straightforward manner, but the third starts jumping backwards and forwards in time causing the narrative to be a bit hard to follow. This change in style makes sense once reaching the epilogue, but until then the chapter breaks can be a bit jarring. Entertaining seems an odd word to use for such a bleak plot, but I did truly enjoy reading this thought provoking novel.

First Sentence:

Elwood received the best gift of his life on Christmas Day 1962, even if the ideas it put in his head were his undoing.

Past Tense, by Lee Child

This book has four simultaneous threads happening: Reacher investigating his father, Reacher being targeted by the mob, Reacher being targeted by a group of local thugs, and a Canadian couple being held against their will in a strange motel. The last thread takes up maybe half the pages, and Reacher doesn't actually get involved until around chapter 35. A lot of suspense in this part of the story as we don't really understand what is happening to the couple until just before Reacher stumbles (fairly spectacularly) onto the scene. The mystery around Reacher's father is the most interesting of the four threads, and had a fairly satisfying solution. Oddly, the thread with the mob doesn't really get resolved, but everything else does, more or less. While this is one of the weaker Reacher novels, it is still pretty good.

First Sentence:

Jack Reacher caught the last of the summer sun in a small town on the coast of Maine, and then, like the birds in the sky above him, he began his long migration south.

The Last Sheriff in Texas, by James P. McCollom

This book chronicles the changes the state of Texas underwent after WWII, moving from mostly rural to mostly urban, and seeing the cowboy fade from a real profession to a role in the movies. Sheriff Vail Ennis of Bee County was a violent, uncompromising man with a flair for violence—he shot and killed eight men while in office between 1944 and 1952. Johnny Barnhart was raised in Bee County, but while attending the University of Texas uncovered a passion for civil rights that set him apart from his conservative neighbors. These two icons clashed during the election of 1952, forcing citizens to choose between frontier justice and law and order, changing Texas politics forever.

The story is told primarily via interviews and reminiscences with a healthy amount of historical context thrown in for good measure. I found it to be compelling (if very repetitive), although I can easily see how someone that isn't familiar with life on the Texas Costal Plain might find it slow and meandering. The book is part true crime, part political history, part biography, and part memoir resulting in a style that is a bit offbeat. On one page there will be a excerpt from a newspaper article, and on the next conversational dialogue from people long since dead. I found this see-sawing between fact and fabrication hard to get used to at first, but eventually settled down and enjoyed the story.

First Sentence:

The man who shot the sheriff was Roy Hines, thirty-four, ex-con, a grifter on his way from Oklahoma to Mexico.

Dreams of the Golden Age, by Carrie Vaughn

Not quite as strong as the earlier outing (After the Golden Age) but still very good. This volume takes place about 18 years after the first, with the next generation of heroes taking the stage. Mostly high school kids, they are trying to figure out both how to use their powers safely and where they fit in the world—all with a healthy dose of teenage angst. I especially liked how some of the powers the kids have aren't as easy to be heroic with as others, and the conflicts that arise as a result. The plot is straightforward with almost none of the mystery of the earlier novel; it was pretty clear who the bad guy was from his first introduction (a bit of the author's political stance on housing shows through here, where the hero has an economic redevelopment plan that adds density and revitalization in the city core and the villain's competing plan enhances suburban sprawl. I approve, but it makes me a bit sad that in my hometown of Austin the villain would be winning...), although the universe expanded nicely with a lot more super-powered people running around. Considering Dreams of the Golden Age was released in 2011, though, I'm sadly not sure if a third volume is forthcoming, but I'm hopeful the world-building wasn't for naught. A lot of fun, this is a nice easy read.

First Sentence:

Celia West sat alone in her office, a corner suite in the family penthouse at West Plaza.

After the Golden Age, by Carrie Vaughn

A coming-of-age story, this novel focuses on Celia, the only daughter of the world's greatest superheroes, Captain Olympus and Spark. Celia has no powers herself, though, and spent her childhood feeling like a disappointment to her famous parents. After a major act of rebellion she ran away to college, became a forensic accountant, and has refused to have anything to do with her family while rebuilding her life. However, when her parents' archenemy is jailed for tax evasion, Celia is assigned to the case and finds her worlds drawn together once again.

While superheroes and villains are at the core, this is really a tale of redemption simply set in a four color world. There are a few different mysteries in play, but everything is wrapped up neatly (if predictably) at the end. The main romance jarred me a bit; I clearly misunderstood the age of one character so the sudden affair seemed to come out of nowhere. Regardless, I found myself rooting for Celia and look forward to the next volume, Dreams of the Golden Age.

First Sentence:

Celia took the late bus home, riding along with other young workaholic professionals, the odd student, and late-shift retail clerks.

Ghost in the Wires, by Kevin Mitnick with William L. Simon

Subtitled "My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker" this is a rollicking story of how Kevin Mitnick became a computer break-in artist, how he eluded the FBI for years, and how he was eventually caught. It is a fascinating read; he starts by breaking into the phone company to make free long distance calls, and continually improves his skills and systems access until he can control tapping any phone. He stole thousands of credit card numbers and personal details, and created multiple false identities to evade the FBI when they caught on. Mitnick claims he never used any of these details for personal gain, but instead simply approached hacking as a problem to be solved—he wasn't interested in the credit cards, just the challenge of obtaining them.

Mitnick goes into great detail about how he got into so many systems, and that detail is fascinating. Most of his entry points weren't purchased on the dark web, but obtained through fairly straightforward social engineering. We hear all the time about how we are never supposed to give out passwords over the phone or provide detailed answers for people we don't know, but over and over again Mitnick does exactly that. For example, he'd call someone and ask if they were authorized for a particular system, and when they said yes he'd reply with something like, Your password is '0128.'" The person on the other end would respond, "No, no, no. My password is '6E2H." And just like that, Mitnick had another password. Simple.

Mitnick comes off as antisocial, narcissistic, and arrogant which is a bit surprising as he is the author; I'd expect he'd tone down his disdain for authority or contempt of social mores. He shows a staggering lack of remorse, and his regrets all center around him getting caught. While not very likable, his story is compelling and hard to put down. If you are in any way interested in cyber crime or the dark side of technology, this is a must-read story.

First Sentence:

My instinct for finding a way around barriers and safeguards began very early.

The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters

In 2011 scientists discover a huge asteroid that is going to hit the earth in about a year, ending life as we know it. As the world unravels with this news (economic panic and massive inflation, a staggering rise in suicide and cultism, people walking away from all responsibility) a young detective discovers what he believes is a murder, but is having a difficult time getting anyone to care. The mystery is a by-the-numbers affair, following one lead to the next, but what sets it apart is the hopelessness and apathy of pretty much everyone but the detective, Hank Palace. The secondary plot involves Palace's sister and a supposed government conspiracy, but that is left largely unresolved and I imagine fodder for future books. A fascinating setting, but I'm not sure I liked it enough to read the next in the series.

First Sentence:

I'm staring at the insurance man and he's staring at me, two cold gray eyes behind old-fashioned tortoiseshell frames, and I'm having this awful and inspiring feeling, like holy moly this is real, and I don't know if I'm ready, I really don't.

Crashed, by Timothy Hallinan

Junior Bender is the next in a long line of quirky criminals with a heart of gold. Okay, so heart of gold is a stretch, but Junior is a cross between Dave Robicheaux and Bernie Rhodenbarr with a dash of Spenser thrown in. The plot follows a wide range of shady characters, with the main thread finding Junior blackmailed by a dirty cop into finding a saboteur on a porn set starring a fallen child TV star. The mystery drives the action, but I sometimes miss the old Agatha Christie style where the clues are there for the reader to solve right along with the detective. Crashed follows the more modern style where the hero figures everything out using an observation he keeps to himself. The adventure is the thing, though, and this book delivers that in spades! This initial volume in the series is quite good and I'll be looking for the second soon.

First Sentence:

If I'd liked impressionism, I might have been okay.

Sex on the Moon, by Ben Mezrich

In 2002, Thad Roberts stole of some of the most rare and valuable items anywhere: moon rocks. Told in Mezrich's fictional non-fiction style, this is an entertaining romp telling how a brilliant kid with the world at his feet ended up in prison. Roberts is a fascinating person; raised in a strict Mormon household, when going on his mission trip he and his companions all told each other they'd already had sex. Roberts went one step further, though, and as he had been taught, confessed to his mission president. Instead of absolution, he was abruptly thrown out of the mission and the church, and after being returned home thrown out of his family as well. At nineteen years old, he was on his own with no support structure. From this inauspicious beginning, he reinvented himself as a scholar (majoring in geology, astronomy, and physics at the University of Utah) and an adrenalin junkie (becoming a pilot and a certified scuba instructor, and bicycling across the country), and eventually accepted into one of the most prestigious student programs in the country at NASA.

Why would such a confident and successful person commit such a public crime? The difficulty of the problem appealed to his intellectual side and the audacity of the act appealed to his daredevil side, but that is simply what made the act successful. What set Roberts off was when a scientist referred to the rocks as trash because they'd been outside of controlled environments and thus contaminated. Being a boy who had been disposed of by his religion and his family for being worthless, Roberts has a unique view on finding value where others do not; this view of the world is what led him to collect things he saw as unwanted. At Utah he stole "trash" fossils from the geology department for the same reason.

Doing a bit of research shows that Mezrich amalgamated several characters and there is a lot of dialog that couldn't possibly be authentic, explaining why this often reads more like a screenplay than a research paper. The gist of the story is accurate, though, and I learned quite a bit about a unique pop culture event—the theft of extraterrestrial material. While Sex on the Moon may be more "based on a true story" than "narrative nonfiction" it is still highly entertaining.

First Sentence:

There was something vaguely menacing about the folders.

The Emperor's Soul, by Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson has quickly become one of my favorite authors. His magic systems are unique and consistent, unlike anything else out there. In The Emperor's Soul there are two main approaches: Bloodsealing, targeting individuals with necrologic accuracy, and Forging, rewriting the history of an object to change it's present form. Much like Mistborn, though, while the thaumaturgy is fascinating, the storyline is what makes this wonderful entertainment.

This is a short paperback—more of a novella than a novel—but thoroughly enjoyable. Shai, the main character, is a thief imprisoned by a faction that believes her Forging talent is an abomination but at the same time needs her skill to keep them in power. The setting is largely in a single cell, but Shai Forges the room in small steps, improving it so even though the characters don't physically change locations the look-and-feel is very fluid. This subtle alteration of her surroundings is an excellent demonstration of the power of Forging, and even with the constant change the payoff towards the end is still surprising. Sanderson is an excellent writer, and this is another example of why.

The Emperor's Soul is apparently set in the same world as his Elantris so that book will be added to my shelf very soon.

First Sentence:

Shai pressed her fingernail into one of the stone blocks of her prison cell.

The Yard, by Alex Grecian

I enjoyed every word of this novel. Set in a post-Jack the Ripper England the adventure follows Inspector Day, the newest member of the homicide squad, who is trying to solve what begins as a murder of a fellow investigator but eventually encompasses several other grisly deaths and a child abduction as well. Day is joined in his efforts by Dr. Kingsley, Scotland Yard's first forensic pathologist, and the dedicated Constable Hammersmith; the trio makes a formidable and effective team, making use of new and untrusted technologies such as fingerprinting as they work. In this era the failure of the justice system to bring the Ripper to justice has both seriously diminished the police in the eyes of the public, and the thought of another serial killer working London is frightening to everyone. Our heroes are depicted as exceptionally talented, but the disdain of the people they are trying to protect and their own insecurities make for interesting if not quite flawed individuals.

Grecian paints a compelling picture of Victorian London, even including as an active character the real-world Sir Edward Bradford as the Police Commissioner. London doesn't quite manage to be a character of its own here as in Gaiman's Neverwhere, but its influence on the story is commented on often by its citizens. "He had seen idealistic men come and go, the city leaching hope from them too quickly." "We're in the biggest city in the world, ... and I think it's trying to get rid of us." The city's size may be hard to fathom for its inhabitants, but with only a few characters and settings the overwhelming scope didn't really come through to the reader as powerfully as it could have. Ignoring the occasional anachronistic language and the characters constantly bumping into one another in a city as large as London, though, is easy with such a gripping story.

First Sentence:

Nobody noticed when Inspector Christian Little of Scotland Yard disappeared, and nobody was looking for him when he was found.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins

Reluctantly, I'd have to say I enjoyed reading this novel. With not a single likable character and no identifiable heroes or villains the first third is interminably slow as the reader has to wait for the various plot lines to be firmly established and intermingle before it becomes interesting. There is very little descriptive text; nearly the entire story is told with dialogue—it often felt more like a play than a novel other than the widely varying locations. The speech comes across as very authentic rather than something you'd hear watching Law and Order but one mild complaint I had is that many of the voices sound the same: one thug speaks in much the same tone as the next. There isn't really a mystery here, just a story of a handful of crooks and cops going about their business. As far as Boston crime novels go I think I still prefer Parker to Higgins, but if you don't need a sympathetic lead to enjoy a book you could do a lot worse than The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

First Sentence:

Jackie Brown at twenty-six, with no expression on his face, said that he could get some guns.

Assassins' Dawn, by Stephen Leigh

Three books in one, the blurb on the back described "a guild of assassins, whose single law is that the victim must always retain a tiny but finite chance of escape." This struck my fancy, so I grabbed it and started reading. Assassins' Dawn depicts a fascinating universe with three warring cultures: one hidebound and stagnant, one militaristic and xenophobic, and one capitalist at any cost. What starts as the story of a group of people pulling themselves up out of the mire over the course of the novels becomes the story of the latter two societies warring over the dying third. Unfortunately, the drama drags on and on and never really lives up to the early promise. With a strong start and a depressing finish, this is an okay read but hard to truly recommend.

First Sentence:

Pause.

A Wanted Man, by Lee Child

In Gone Tomorrow Jack Reacher finds himself in a NYC subway car with a suicide bomber. In Die Trying he is accidentally kidnapped. Here in A Wanted Man he hitches a ride in a car with three mysterious strangers during a statewide manhunt for a vicious killer. Reacher has some of the worst luck I've ever seen, but it sure does make for entertaining novels!

This is a good story, with virtually everyone the reader meets keeping a secret of some sort. Starting with a bizarre murder in rural Nebraska Child weaves a pretty good tale filled with twists; we know Reacher is in the car with the killers, but as he doesn't the suspense ratchets up well. Initially the storytelling is split between Reacher's POV and the murder investigation, eventually joining up for the second half. There are some pretty unbelievable twists but in the spirit of an action thriller I can let them go. The strangest scene was when Reacher communicates in a fairly ridiculous code using eye blinks and head nods to spell words. I can't imagine trying to drive a car at highway speeds at night while staring in the rear-view mirror and counting eye blinks; even for Reacher this seemed a bit much.

Also included is a short story "Deep Down" that is set in the late-eighties when Reacher was still in the Army. I like these glimpses into the past, and this one in particular tells how he earned his prestigious Legion of Merit award. While it wouldn't be a Reacher story without a few busted heads, the bulk of this is about an undercover investigation into a possible traitor. Workmanlike but entertaining—I can't imagine this story encouraging me to read other Reacher novels, but having already developed a fondness for the character I quite liked it.

As an aside, I recently saw the Tom Cruise movie Jack Reacher (based on the novel One Shot) and quite enjoyed it—but the 5'7" clean-cut Cruise didn't fit my image of the character. "Reacher was a big man, six feet five inches tall, heavily built, and that night as always he looked a little ragged and unkempt." Great movie, but I'm still waiting to see the Reacher I've read about on the big screen.

First Sentence:

The eyewitness said he didn't actually see it happen.

Frozen Heat, by Richard Castle

The Castle books continue to deliver. The plot here is richer than previous novels, but the humor and pop culture references are the reason for reading. There are several winks to the TV show throughout, from cracks about a bulletproof vest labelled WRITER to an Elvis convention in Atlantic City. This being a book by a fictional mystery writer I appreciated the meta humor of having the characters eat at Grill 23 in Boston, simply because that is where Spenser—a fictional detective from another series—enjoyed dining. My favorite bit of humor, though, was when the main character Jameson Rook says, "I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something I like about Malcolm and Reynolds." The dizzying nature of a line from a character that is a direct analogue for the fictional author Richard Castle who is played on television by Nathan Fillion that is in turn a reference to another character Fillion played I find enormously amusing.

As I mentioned earlier the story is stronger than other entries in the series, concerning a bizarre murder linked to the death of Nikki Heat's mother years before (another nod to the show) but the conclusion was a bit clichéd. A coda provides a cliffhanger that promises an interesting next novel, though, and gives a hopeful moment to an otherwise downbeat ending. I suspect this series will only be truly appreciated by fans of the show, but I'm certainly enjoying it!

First Sentence:

"Oh, yeah, that's it, Rook," said Nikki Heat.