I love Megan Abbott. I think she is one of the most accomplished novelists writing today. Just the mere scent of a new book from her gets my reader blI love Megan Abbott. I think she is one of the most accomplished novelists writing today. Just the mere scent of a new book from her gets my reader blood all bubbly and excited. Getting to meet her in person is one of those experiences that cannot be measured in the regular way.
But Give Me Your Hand didn't quite do it for me. It's a good book with a compelling plot, and strong female characters. I just didn't fall down the rabbit hole this time as quickly or deeply as I usually do with Abbott's books. Everyone else is five starring this though, so I'm fully taking the blame that it's my fault and I'm bummed that I didn't experience what everyone else did.
Now back to counting down the days to Abbott's next book. The wait is always agonizing. ...more
Last October I was lucky enough to attend a Bouchercon -- the longstanding World Mystery Convention that's been gathering every year in all sorts of iLast October I was lucky enough to attend a Bouchercon -- the longstanding World Mystery Convention that's been gathering every year in all sorts of interesting places since 1970. It is here that the Anthony Awards are given out and there just might be a murder or two committed over a long weekend. My favorite quote about the experience is from none other than the great Lawrence Block:
Fill a hotel with a few thousand socially-challenged introverts, folks for whom the ‘I’d rather be reading’ T-shirt was created, and force them to spend a long autumn weekend together, and what have you got? Bouchercon—and you’d be a fool to miss it.
Much to my crushing disappointment Block had to cancel his appearance in 2017, but meeting the Mighty Megan Abbott and Nick Cutter took the sting out of that. Despite what those two choose to write about, they are LOVELY people who I'm almost sure don't have dead bodies buried in their backyards. Erm...almost.
Someone else in attendance at last years's Bouchercon was Laura Lippman. I'd been seeing her name for years, but had never read one of her books. Close friends with Megan Abbott and married to the inimitable David Simon (Simon and Lippman met and married as Baltimore Sun crime reporters), I knew that it was long past time I gave this woman's writing a try. And her new book Sunburn does not disappoint. Inspired by noir godfather James M. Cain (who lived in Baltimore and also wrote for the Sun) Lippman's latest book is definitely in the domestic noir tradition that deals in desperate characters with shady pasts carrying big secrets where trusting the wrong person could mean your life.
When we meet Polly, she has just abandoned her husband and small child. Adam is a private investigator who has been hired to follow and befriend Polly because someone thinks she has a lot of money stashed away some place -- possibly the insurance settlement she got from killing her first husband. Adam is warned not to fall for Polly's lethal charms, but he does anyway, rushing into a heady affair and Adam is left wondering if he's made the biggest mistake of his life. Who is Polly really? What is she hiding and is she as dangerous as she seems? Or maybe she's just a desperate woman looking to start over and finally have the life and happiness she's always wanted.
There's a lot to enjoy here in this twisty noir narrative that's tightly written with some nice turns of phrase: She has no use for women. That's why she has to befriend them. Polly is an interesting character study even if she fails to become as memorable as Mildred Pierce or Phyllis Dietrichson....more
I hate to be the Debbie Downer here because so many people are so excited about this book, but it did practically nothing for me. I thought the “twistI hate to be the Debbie Downer here because so many people are so excited about this book, but it did practically nothing for me. I thought the “twists” were ridiculous and obvious in a soap opera way, and most of the time I was bored waiting for something of import to happen. This might be a good portrayal of living with agoraphobia but even if it is, using it as a plot device is not enough to carry the whole book. Neither is the main character’s love of classic noir and suspense films. Referencing Hitchcock repeatedly doesn’t miraculously transmogrify your book into a suspense masterpiece.
I suppose if you’re reading by the pool, at the beach (or in a bar because I hear some people do that — I’ve only ever written letters, remember those?) and recovering from a head cold the short chapters and derivative plot would probably scratch an itch. Probably. My advice? Pick up Megan Abbott instead. Life is too short for mediocre books....more
So just recently I was grumbling and being a Debbie Downer by 2 starring a buzz book that's got a lot of people excited. It doesn't have "Girl" in theSo just recently I was grumbling and being a Debbie Downer by 2 starring a buzz book that's got a lot of people excited. It doesn't have "Girl" in the title, but it does have "Woman" and the waitlist at my library is already pretty long. I expect this book's popularity is only going to increase exponentially as summer approaches. You might already have this book on hold yourself, or have added it to your teetering TBR pile. I'm not going to judge you. Much. No really. ::cough::
Today I'm going to recommend you pick up Tom Hunt's Killer Choice instead. I had way more fun reading it because it's one of those tightly plotted suspense thrillers with an irresistible hook where the pages practically turn themselves. We're introduced to middle America all around good guy Gary Foster whose life suddenly spirals into desperate circumstances. His pregnant wife Beth, who he is madly in love with, has been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. They need 200,000 dollars to get her the miracle treatment she needs.
Just when you think life can't get any shittier or more scary, in walks a menacing tattooed stranger, with a shaved head calling himself Shamrock. Shamrock wants Gary to kill someone, and in exchange for that dirty deed, he will give Gary the 200,000 dollars needed to maybe save his wife. Whatever will Good Guy Gary do? What's that saying? -- oh yeah, lie down with the devil and wake up in hell. Generally decent people finding themselves morally compromised is one of my favourite noir tropes. I usually can't get enough of it in any story but this one we're presented with here is particularly well-executed.
On the flip side of Gary's ordeal pulling him towards the edge of the abyss, is Shamrock's -- or Otto as we will come to know him. Otto is *not* a good guy and is basically living a Mirror Universe life that's the polar opposite from Good Guy Gary's. But in his own way Otto's found himself ensnared in circumstances just as desperate, driving him to make choices he thought he would never make.
The collision course that both these men are on and how far it will take them is straight up compelling reading. For a debut novel this is very strong and I can't wait to see what the author does next. ...more
And those of you who know me will know how much it poisons me every time I have to say that. One of these days I’m just going to turnKemper was right.
And those of you who know me will know how much it poisons me every time I have to say that. One of these days I’m just going to turn to stone. Ah but seriously, for you noir lovers out there it really doesn’t come any more smartly, authentically written than The Fade Out. This is a story that sizzles and understands at the heart of every noir tale is a fucking tragedy. This is a period piece and I lapped up the historical details like heavy cream. The characters are flawed just as we’ve come to expect in noir but retain a humanity that makes their pain a tangible breathing thing. And the dialogue is aces, I tell you....more
I'm going to try and make this review as quick and painless as possible -- if you liked this book you're not going to want to hear me bellyache about I'm going to try and make this review as quick and painless as possible -- if you liked this book you're not going to want to hear me bellyache about it, and if you didn't like this book, you already feel you've wasted enough of your precious reading time on this series and are just ready to move the fuck on (and hope King is too).
Things started out sort of optimistic for me with Mr. Mercedes -- I didn't hate it; in fact, some parts of it I really enjoyed. Even so, for me it was missing something fundamentally King. If he had stopped there I would have been fine -- but instead, he wanted to drag this wayward experiment into the crime thriller genre out into a trilogy and two more books. And that's where I started to get really frustrated and pissed off.
King is almost 70 years old. I hate to be morbid, but let's be realistic. Who knows how many more books this man has got left in him. Probably not many more. My heart broke a little reading End of Watch. Every part of my Constant Reader soul (which came into existence when I was eleven years old), sunk into the depths of near despair. King was wasting my time, and his time (however much either one of us has got left) on a weak, middling, trashy airport novel filled with ridiculous cardboard cutout characters and a ludicrous plodding plot that left me lukewarm, and quite frankly, bored. King's efforts to unravel his "mystery" with excessive plot details felt like excruciating, eye-crossing infodumps at times.
Arguably End of Watch is the best of the trilogy, but by the time I got to this one, my patience had run out with the entire experiment. When I think about what King could have been writing in the time it took him to peddle this schlock I want to sob and pull my hair out. There's other King books that haven't done it for me over the years, but they've still felt like King. In his ill-conceived foray into another genre, it's like King was a tad self-conscious and insecure and spent more time mimicking what he thinks makes the crime thriller genre so great rather than just writing as himself. When he did try to plug some supernatural elements into the final book, they felt forced and out of place, a messy, stitched up hybrid of a Frankenstein's monster NOBODY wanted. Well, this girl anyway.
And now to cleanse my reader palate of this bitter disappointment, I shall re-read The Long Walk to soothe my Constant Reader soul. It's feeling a little battered and bruised. ...more
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