A MUZZLE FOR WITCHES, probably the last time we'll get to hear from a feminist ikon

A MUZZLE FOR WITCHES
DUBRAVKA UGRESIĆ (tr. Ellen Elias-Bursać)
Open Letter Books
$14.95 trade paper, available tomorrow

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature As with the rest of her literary career, Dubravka Ugresić's final work, A Muzzle for Witches, is uncategorizable. On its surface, the book is an conversation with the literary critic Merima Omeragić, covering topics such as "Women and the Male Perspective," "The Culture of (Self)Harm," and "The Melancholy of Vanishing."

But the book is more than a simple interview: It's a roadmap of the literary world, exploring the past century and all of its violence and turmoil—especially in Yugoslavia, Ugresić's birth country—and providing a direction for the future of feminist writing.

One of the greatest thinkers of the past hundred years, Ugresić was one-of-a-kind, whose novels and literary essays pushed the bounds of form and content, and A Muzzle for Witches offers the chance to see her at her most raw, and most playful.

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My Review: "Raw and playful" are not frequently paired in a publisher's synopsis. In this outraged, affronted growl, they're two of the best words for Ugresić's œuvre as a whole, and this last distilled, refined-to-purity last work in particular. Her métier was the essay, I've even said before the screed, and this one-sitting book is a great way to get one's eye in to the tenor of her work.

It's quite an achievement to call out, I'd venture to say even to take down, the sexist, fascist Establishment that's controlled...notionally, in her case...the course of both life and career, while being amusing. Mordantly so, but amusing nonetheless. Author Dubravka does this trick regularly. I'm very impressed by this because it means her focus is not on her topic of outrage. The outrage is there, but unlike the literature of grievance that grows so stale so very quickly. Jeremiads are so deeply tedious as anything except a light seasoning on top of one's regular reading.

The title of these collected interviews with a literary critic from Croatia, Merima Omeragić, is a call-out to the (male-dominated) Croatian establishment's characterization of her as a "witch" when her anti-war attitudes got her hounded into exile in 1993. "Muzzle me, you dickheads?" one can hear her thinking in this title. I do not know if she chose it, but it certainly captures her acerbic, flensing-knife wit.

What we, as a literary society, lost on her 2023 death, was an acute observer...better to say "witness" of the Ship of Fools we're riding on. Dubravka Ugrešić saw it from her berth in Second Class, where she was assigned, but never, ever stayed. Her head was the Imperial Suite's sole occupant. She saw right through the oppressive systems designed to reduce her to a compliant drone, a life support system for a uterus.

We need this voice as a society. The women who vote in the 2024 US elections should read this, and other feminists of an earlier generation, because their privileges are not secure when their very rights to bodily autonomy are being rolled back at a great rate of speed.

MURDER AT THE MATINEE, second quozy Bertie Carroll mystery...good fun!

MURDER AT THE MATINEE
JAMIE WEST
Brabinger Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.42 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Following on from the success of Death on the Pier, gay playwright detective Bertie Carroll returns for the second book in this golden-age-style whodunnit series, set in the exciting world of theatreland in 1930s London.

An unexpected phone call from a rival playwright puts Bertie centre stage in another mystery. Can he help unravel the motive behind a mysterious newspaper advert that boldly declares a murder will take place during a show’s third act? There’s only one problem, there is no murder in the third act of the play!

When a victim is discovered and the police are brought in, Bertie and Inspector Hugh Chapman get thrown awkwardly back together as they both work to find the killer.

The spotlight falls on each suspect in turn and, this time, even Bertie is not above suspicion. But can rivalries and differences be put aside to solve this devious murder?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A riff on Dame Agatha's A Murder is Announced, this quozy story of Bertie Carroll coming to the aid of frenemy Alice, with his...well, his policeman Hugh there to do...rather less than in the first book; and then narrowly miss out on taking a starring role in the murder as a suspect so that comes out okay.

The reason that sounds incoherent is that I felt more at sea this time than last. How is it Hugh, clearly being set up as Bertie's Gentleman Caller, recedes more into the background? I wasn't expecting grand passion, it may be set in the theatre world but it's 1930s London so discretion was all. However Hugh and Bertie weren't as bantering-mates-with-subtext this time. That was disappointing. I suspect we'll get more of the bantering, and maybe even that mooted swim from the first book, in the next one.

I was pretty clear on who killed Alice but really didn't know why until the polyphonic ending unfolded. This was more than enough to satisfy my series-mytery reader brain. The first book's adeptness at scene-setting that transported me, this time, to 1930s London (instead of the first book's Brighton) is very much in evidence again. The author is a theatre professional. It's clear he's also willing to do careful research into the past. It is always a pleasure to read the words of someone who presents the world being evoked with such panache and confidence.

Aside from missing more Hugh-time for Bertie and me, I felt the mystery was satisfying my series-story craving enough to get a solid four stars. I probably wouldn't have been as generous if I'd read this book first, so read Death on the Pier (my review linked above) before this. But don't miss out. Bertie and Hugh will wile away a few hours while you're focused on the made-up problems of fictional people.

SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS, debut novel with ideas that have real power

SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS
CEBO CAMPBELL
Simon & Schuster
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, this was a read and a half. A fantasia, an attempt to view the culture of privilege and prejudice confronted by a man and the mixed-race daughter he never knew he had in the wake of white peoples' mass lemming-like vanishing.

Now, let me bring something up: This is in no way some triumphalist "wouldn't it be cool if all the white people vanished?" racist fantasy. It isn't that kind of facile storytelling, or revenge fantasy. It's a fantasia on the inscrutable ways of the Universe, an unknowable, unfathomably powerful external force that, this time, spared you; but...Amid the reorgaization of society, there's that unease that comes from an unresolved stressor, like the Bomb in the Cold War.

A lot like Le Guin's The Dispossessed, A Morally Ambiguous Utopia, the ideas in this story are heady indeed. The overculture in each of these different stories presupposes the existence of a hegemonic economic system that can only be opposed not reimagined. In Author Campbell's story, the presumption includes the fact that when whiteness and its (largely) unexamined privilege vanish, the enforcement of the hegemonic capitalism dies. Is everything suddenly perfect? No, but it's free from many of the more abusive qualities of capitalism and racism. I myownself am not quite so confident that capitalism would wither so completely or so quickly; it's too effective a tool of control, that most human of needs. Leaving that aside, the Brave New World presented feels...right, just, positive. I say this as someone explicitly excluded from this world. That fact is, I suspect, what led a LOT of whiny little butthurt arrested adolescents to ratings-bomb the book on Goodreads. Such arrant nonsense makes Author Campbell's premise's point for him. It also embarrasses me, an old white man, to be relegated among such angry, hateful, immature people.

The author's imagination, then, can't be faulted. This is his debut novel, so technique is logically enough less well-honed than his idea-generating musculature. I kept saying to my DRC, "Please don't explain so much to me. Trust that the stories you've imagined so richly will, in fact, lead me where you're wanting me to go. Conflicts whose roots and results you carefully elucidate aren't tense enough to keep me eagerly reading." I'm confident this can be attributed to his tyro status. I'm also very eager to read his next work when it comes out.

The ending of the story, while not exactly a release from tension, does flow from the events of the preceding action. It felt...I'm not sure "inevitable" is precisely correct, but it has the leadenness of affect I want to convey.

I've rated the book with four stars because I was brought up short and required to consider the ideas of the story multiple times. Good SF/F does that wonderful job better than any other form of storytelling.

This is good SF. That explains the other half-star.

THE BLIND DEVOTION OF IMOGENE, billed as #1 in a series...stop here, no need for more

THE BLIND DEVOTION OF IMOGENE (The Misadventures of Imogene Taylor #1)
DAVID PUTNAM
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1973, Imogene Taylor is seventy-five years old, on parole for murder, and works at a store that sells dented canned goods. Twelve years earlier, she went to prison for killing her love-of-her-life-husband, Wayne. She called it an accident. The judge and jury called it murder. Imogene’s parole agent is constantly on her case, looking to send her back to prison.

During her time in prison, Imogene had to vent her angst at someone and sent the sitting Presidents (during the ten years in prison) threatening letters bringing her to the attention of the Secret Service. She does extensive research and writes a novel, Peekaboo POTUS, about the assassination of a US President. She sends the book "over the transom" to one publisher. The publisher, after being unable to contact Imogene, comes looking for her.

The Cigar, an organized crime gangster, walks into Dentco, where Imogene works, and extorts the store for protection money. Pay up or get firebombed. The entire strip center is under this threat.Imogene must dodge an overzealous parole agent while dealing with a dead woman in the neighbor’s garage. She’s on parole for murder, so she can’t report it to the police. No one would believe her. Imogene and Suz think the woman in the box is Suz’s long-estranged mother. Rather than reveal Suz’s father as the probable killer, Imogene convinces Suz to bury her mom under the avocado tree in the backyard. Until Thelma, Suz’s mother, appears after reading the obituary.

It's a race to uncover the real killer as Imogene dodges gangsters, family members, and a publisher on her quest to find the truth.

At the same time, Imogene’s neighbor dies of natural causes and leaves a hoarder’s mess to his daughter, Suzanne. Imogene helps Suz clear out a pyramid of boxes filled with junk in the garage. At the bottom of the pile, they find a box with a dead woman who has been hidden for many years.

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My Review: This book is a mess! The author, well-known as the creator of the eleven-book-long Bruno Johnson tough-guy cop/sleuth thrillers, ought to know better how to trim and prune repetitive dialogue, description, and general focus inconsistencies.

Also, why was this set in 1973? There was no reason I could discern that it needed to be in, or benefited from, such a setting. Given when this character's alleged murder takes place, for example, I'd think she would shy away from writing a novel about a presidential assassination. Not only was she locked up the year Kennedy was shot, she's writing her novel during the famously Trumpian vengeance-seeking Nixon's reign of terror.

You'd do well to stay off either one's radar.

Stick to the Bruno Johnson series.

TELL ME EVERYTHING, the familiar salutation in Italian marking you out as special to the speaker

TELL ME EVERYTHING
ELIZABETH STROUT
Random House
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her “extraordinary capacity for radical empathy” (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

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My Review: Well, here we are...next in a series of books about people I care less about than I probably am safe admitting to publicly. Lucy Barton's fans are legion, and they looove her for being her mildly chaotic self. I mean, they've stuck by her despite her ongoing friendship with her truly toxic, lightly pathetic first husband! That would get a flesh-and-blood woman canceled fast.

I myownself admire her for it. Own your mistakes, forgive your abusers, move forward standing on the past and pushing into the future on those rocks.

This outing has Author Strout doing something bold: Lucy meets her *other* famous older-woman character, Olive Kitteridge! The glue is a story about a murder...you can read the synopsis above, I feel no need to yak on about it...and, surprisingly, sparks do not fly. They clash, of course, Olive is after all a nasty bully who I myownself disliked the second I met her, but no snarktastic duels of wits ensue. Pity, that, but in keeping with the world Author Strout's created.

Amgash/Crosby is another fictional universe where characters have multiple chances to shine. This time it's mostly about Lucy's platonic bestie, Bob Burgess. They are each other's confidante, talking over things they don't have anyone else to confide in. His troubles, his life's burdens, are the topic he least discusses as he busily solves others' problems, much like Lucy herself.

I am generally very receptive to this sort of intertwined storytelling technique. I've read, and love, EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia books, the massive Barsetshire series shared by Trollope and Thirkell, and some of Miss Read's Fairacre series. These all have the virtue of following a group of characters more or less closely, with individual books having one or another focused on, albeit not usually exclusively. So that's how I keep coming back to this wellhead. I'm ready to involve myself in the lives of strangers when they all know each other, more or less well.

I don't think the Amgash series makes the grade as a successor to those series, at least in my own affections, because I myownself find the dithering that Lucy does, and the bullying that Olive does, incompatible with a lovely immersive read. Entirely a personal assessment, and not in the least meant to discourage anyone from pursuing these reads; just, well, be aware that Lucy's insightful comments and Olive's shrewd observations come wrapped in definite personalities. Since they're not really the ones I find most congenial, I'm not going to warble my fool lungs out singing their praises.

I will say that, in this book's case, I think you're best off reading it after having read Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton first. They're not strictly speaking necessary to have done so but, well, the way this storyverse goes, it helps to know the ladies you're relying on for context before going in.

If those are under your belt, dive in. I'm such an outlier when it comes to these characters. They irk and annoy me. They also come with such a well-conceived storyverse, one that soothes the need to make fictional friends, one that is part of a web of interrelated characters you don't know yet...much like life is. That more than any other quality is why I read the books. It feels prosocial.

Enjoy! I did.

STEPHEN KING: His Life, Work, and Influences, perfect gift for your teen/tween Constant Reader

STEPHEN KING: His Life, Work, and Influences
BEV VINCENT
becker&mayer! kids
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A thrilling visual companion curated for young adults voraciously reading their way through Stephen King’s colossal corpus of creepy books.

For many young readers, when the last page of Goosebumps is turned, the first chapter of Pet Sematary begins, and a world of terror crafted by Stephen King is revealed. His novels are as fascinating as his life, and in this ultimate illustrated guidebook, young readers explore the cultural phenomenon and legacy of the King of Horror.

From scare-seeking child to impoverished university student to struggling schoolteacher to one of the best-selling—and most recognizable—authors of all time, this engrossing book reveals the evolution and influences of Stephen King’s body of work over his nearly 50-year career, and how the themes of his writing reflect the changing times and events within his life.

With tons of photos, approachable bite-size sections, and gripping details to captivate young readers, the book offers an extensive look into Stephen King’s books, short stories, writings, movies, series, and other adaptations ideal for the young reader to review. Exclusive memorabilia from Stephen King, including personal and professional correspondences, handwritten manuscript pages, book covers, movie stills, and a never-before-seen excerpts from his poems. Personal insights and observations such as real-life settings that inspired King’s writing, the editor who discovered him, his life as a Boston Red Sox fan, and the many awards and honors he has received. Motivating quotes from King from interviews over the decades.

“My childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age I wanted to be scared…there was a radio program at the time called Dimension X, and my mother didn’t want me to listen to that because she felt it was too scary for me, so I would creep out of bed and go to the bedroom door and crack it open. And she loved it, so apparently, I got it from her, but I would listen at the door and then when the program was over, I’d go back to bed and quake.” —Stephen King

Young adults will covet this comprehensive yet accessible reference to their favorite horror author.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Author Vincent's a King superfan, and believe you me, it shows. This compendium of anecdotes and overviews of his career, and the stories he's offered us, is exactly what a young fan will love.

Plenty of not-so-young fans too, I'll wager.

I'm not a Constant Reader, as he addresses his immense and well-earned audience online, more of a dibble-dabbler. I enjoy many of his massive tomes—my own favorite being 11/22/63—because I'm very old and that date means so very much to me. (Rob asked me once why that date was important...ouch.) The manner in which Author Vincent hits the life and career high points will make this a deeply welcome gift to your King-stan teen or tween. (Officially. We won't discuss what you do with it before wrapping it up.)

The design and visuals are very much up to the job, as one would expect from a Quarto Group imprint.

Clear, concise, not too busy to fail in its primary duty of informing as well as keeping one's interest.


I enjoyed the glimpse into King's early methods and processes.


It's safe to say we do not share a taste in companion animals. *shudder*


The stuff of literal nightmares for decades now!


...speaking of which...Tim Curry does Pennywise the best, in my never-remotely humble opinion. Skarsgard's got a different take, not worse not better...but give me Curry every time.

Here are a couple text-only spreads to round out your visual impression of the book. I'll stress that, even on my tablet, the design's readable and very appealing.


Solid design, appealing to a recipient fan, very intentionally a gift book. It's a terrific value at this price!

THE MIKE BOWDITCH PAGE: Paul Doiron's sleuth in his latest cases

PITCH DARK (Mike Bowditch #15)
PAUL DOIRON
Minotaur Books
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Game Warden Mike Bowditch must chase down a cunning and dangerous fugitive in the North Maine Woods in this nail-biter of a thriller from Edgar Award-nominated author Paul Doiron, Pitch Dark.

Legendary bush pilot Josie Jonson can’t believe her luck when a skilled builder just happens to show up after she purchases land near Prentiss Pond. All Mark Redmond asks in return for building Josie’s dream cabin is that he be left alone to homeschool his 12-year-old daughter, Cady.

For Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch, the intensity of Redmond's secretiveness is troubling, especially in light of suspicious criminal activity being reported around the area―including rumors of an armed man offering large sums of money in exchange for the location of Redmond and Cady. Josie, though hesitant to violate the trust of her prized builder, eventually agrees to fly Mike and his father-in-law Charley Stevens to the secluded pond in an attempt to protect Redmond and Cady. But hours after landing, the trip takes a dark turn when they witness a horrific murder and are taken captive themselves.

Freeing himself, Mike is forced to set off through the impenetrable Maine forest towards Canada, alone and unarmed in pursuit of a mysterious fugitive. As he navigates a windblown landscape choked with deadfalls and blocked by swollen streams, he marvels at his enemy’s bush craft. The killer possesses skills surpassing his own, and Bowditch can't tell if he is the cat or the mouse in this dangerous game. Can Mike Bowditch stop his adversary in time to save the life of a young girl, or will he be forced to watch another innocent soul die?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm going to address the elephant in the room now: appearances deceive in this set-up. Suspend your reflexive judgments.

Fifteenth in a procedural series I've read four of before this one. I'm glad to say I liked this one, too. I do now recall why I stopped reading them back when: There is not one likable woman except Mike's new wife, Stacey. It calls to my mind the series reads in the vein of Scot Horvath or Jack Reacher.

The set-up of this story, father and daughter living off the grid in the big fat middle of a chunk of Maine that even tracker-dude Bowditch says, "nah, gimme a plane ride," already has my spidey senses a-tingle. Add an armed stranger on the hunt for these two and, well, there's not much left to wonder is there?

Yes there is.

The twists and surprises kept me interested enough that I got snarled at about my reading lamp. I was expecting things thoroughly unpleasant to develop that didn't...whew...and not expecting things to develop that did, which was pleasantly surprising. I'm usually very averse to a child being put in jeopardy for amusement. I ws not really a fan here, but the issues surrounding the jeopardy are such that I felt less like this was a cheap ploy than a timely use of a horrifying reality.

By the end of the read, I was ready for the light to go off and sleep to come. It didn't for a half-hour (that's really long for me, I usually get to sleep in minutes) because I kept replaying some of the scenes in my mind. That is a good story! Keeps me up late, hard to do, then keeps me wakeful thinking about it.

Good work, Author Doiron. Recommended for procedural fans tired of the usual settings and attitudes based on arrogance and/or testosterone poisoning. Bowditch's 'tude is amply backed up, and earned, by his skills and his moral cdnter.

I hope he come looking for me after my kidnapping.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


DEAD MAN'S WAKE (Mike Bowditch #14)
PAUL DOIRON
Minotaur Books
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Game Warden Mike Bowditch's engagement party is interrupted by the discovery of a gruesome double murder in Dead Man's Wake, a new thriller from Edgar Award-winning author Paul Doiron.

On the evening of their engagement party, Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch and Stacey Stevens witness what seems to be a hit-and-run speedboat crash on a darkened lake. When they arrive at the scene, their spotlight reveals a gruesome sight: a severed arm beneath the surface. As day breaks, the warden dive team recovers not one but two naked corpses: the dismembered man and the married woman with whom he was having an affair. Mike begins to suspect the swimmers' deaths were not a senseless accident but a coldly calculated murder. Alone among his fellow officers, Mike begins to sense the involvement of a trained professional, smarter and more dangerous than any enemy he has faced. As Mike and Stacey get closer to identifying the killer, their own lives are suddenly put on the line, leading to a confrontation designed to silence them forever.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Picking this series up after dropping it after Bad Little Falls (book #3), for no particular reason I can recall, I'm glad to say I got the hang of things again right quick.

Mike's in a place I wouldn't necessarily have predicted back then, what with planning to marry Stacey, but there we are. What hasn't changed much is this sarcastic, tangy dude's ability to offend everyone while doing far too good a job to get his smart mouth fired.

Stacey feels like a fairly generic character, if I'm honest, but then again who really cares about the sleuth's love interest? She doesn't simply exist to take up space like Bruno's lady-friends in Martin Walker's series; she has skills and uses them with Mike's investigation in this story. I remembered her name as Jamie, but either this is a different woman or my memory is wrong.

The plot starts out really strong, again as remembered from Author Doiron's earlier books. The events start weird and grisly early on. A lot of names are thrown at you from the start, which is often the case in series mysteries at this stage of their run. Here I suppose I'm running on the assumption that these characters are as I remember them. If they aren't, well...serves me right for being away more than ten books.

What the reader of series mysteries looks for, as far as I can see, is the sense that ma'at is served, that the Rightness of things is restored when the crime is solved. Murder is a gross insult to the body politic no matter who's killed; yes, even if it's someone who needs killin', responsibility must be apportioned or the precedent it sets is unthinkably dangerous. That's what I felt about this particular murder, TBH. Understandable that someone taking your spouse away from you would piss you off; but then again, why was said spouse in play, exactly? And no one's gonna support the old-fashioned sense that a man's wife is his, as in his property, in the twenty-first century.

Maine's as much of a character as any human was. The atmospherics will either immerse you in the setting (me) or make you a crazy person. Particularly prominent in this outing is information on boating that will quite possibly make some wish for an acute drought to dry up the whole state. Maine's unusually powerful wardens...power of arrest?! really?...make this series a procedural of the sort I enjoy. It's detailed without feeling, to me at least, dense and chewy. It doesn't hurt that I feel Mike's spiny, acerbic nature makes him a kindred spirit. Stacey is detailed enough to give me the slightly uncomfortable feeling she sees herself as "riding herd" on her man. I don't know this; she's developed over eleven books since I met her in book three. If indeed this is the same woman....

You already know I picked up the next one, so my vote is in. Good series.

THE IDEAL STATE: A Model Based on Analysis of Savagery, Feudalism, Capitalism and Beyond

THE IDEAL STATE: A Model Based on Analysis of Savagery, Feudalism, Capitalism and Beyond
TAYYIB AHMAD TAYYIB
Ideal Publishing Inc.
$18.00 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* because I fully agree with the politics.

The Publisher Says: Previously published as "The Evil Within Evolution of Social Systems & The Ideal State"

This is a fully revised and expanded edition. Have you not wondered what kind of a country you would want to live in? What policies of its government would guarantee a secure and happy life for you and your children? We need to look at our past history and understand how our previous generations have fared under different social systems. Only then we can decide how a state should be structured and what policies it should adopt to ensure security and well-being of its population. It is important to know what makes a state into an imperial power and drives it to subjugate other states and peoples and exploit them. How could this tendency be avoided?

All civilized states and societies are moving towards more and more socialism and democratic control of their governments, despite temporary setbacks. What do you think lies ahead? States like Norway, Sweden, Denmark and most other European states are referred to as "social democratic states". Their citizens enjoy free education, universal health care and a guaranteed retirement income. China calls its socio-economic system as "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics". Despite being a developing country, it has eliminated extreme poverty and offers free high-school education to all its citizens and subsidized higher education and virtually universal health care. Bernie Sanders pleaded for a "democratic socialism" in the United States in his bid for the presidency of the US, a few years ago.

In this work, you would find a comprehensive analysis of the development of socio-economic and political systems from the age of savagery to feudalism and capitalism. You would find why, and how, capitalism leads to extreme exploitation, imperialism and violence, why it needs to be discarded and why a democratic socialist future for mankind is inevitable. The resulting ideal state should ensure equality of social, economic and political rights for all, without any distinction - racial, national, or gender. It should eliminate all kinds of economic exploitation resulting in development of all individuals to their full potential. Numerous illustrations are included and many political thinkers, economists and political leaders have, indirectly, contributed to this work. Quotations from their works are included on specific issues. Imagine what such an ideal state, or states, would mean for you and for the rest of humanity. Find out how humanity is progressing in that direction now and how this process would accelerate in the future. Let us not give up hope. The future of humanity is bright!

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My Review: This book is preaching to the choir, in terms of my belief the author is onto something good in his negative assessment of capitalism.

But, for four hundred pages, the prose is a lot like the synopsis above. That is to say, it's not fluid and readable like Yannis Varoufakis and Thomas Piketty (as translated by Arthur Goldhammer, anyway) are. I'm not in good conscience able to recommend the read to laypeople. If you're interested in leftist economics and social policy, come to the altar, but check your expectations at the door.

THE PALACE OF EROS, strange choice of a myth to novelize post-#MeToo

THE PALACE OF EROS
CARO DE ROBERTIS
Atria/Primero Sueno Press
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as a woman yet undesirable as a wife. Secretly, she longs for a life away from the expectations and demands of men. When her father realizes that the future of his family and town will be forever cursed unless he appeases an enraged Aphrodite, he follows the orders of the Oracle, tying Psyche to a rock to be ravaged by a monstrous husband. And yet a monster never arrives.

When Eros, nonbinary deity of desire, sees Psyche, she cannot fulfill her promise to her mother Aphrodite to destroy the mortal young woman. Instead, Eros devises a plan to sweep Psyche away to an idyllic palace, hidden from the prying eyes of Aphrodite, Zeus, and the outside world. There, against the dire dictates of Olympus, Eros and Psyche fall in love. Each night, Eros visits Psyche under the cover of impenetrable darkness, where they both experience untold passion and love. But each morning, Eros flies away before light comes to break the spell of the palace that keeps them safe.

Before long, Psyche’s nights spent in pleasure turn to days filled with doubts, as she grapples with the cost of secrecy and the complexities of freedom and desire. Restless and spurred by her sisters to reveal Eros’s true nature, she breaks her trust and forces a reckoning that tests them both—and transforms the very heavens.

Told in bold and sparkling prose, The Palace of Eros transports us to a magical world imbued by divine forces as well as everyday realities, where palaces glitter with magic even as ordinary people fight for freedom in a society that fears the unknown.

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My Review: All the Muses please praise the Divine Madeline...Miller, of The Song of Achilles fame...for igniting the seemingly unquenchable flame of queered/regendered mythology retellings we've been treated to this past decade.

The existence of a flood means, obviously and inevitably, some iterations will not live up to the flood-breaker's level. This book is one that doesn't quite reach heights the very best do. Most of that is down to a tendency of the author to, um, overelaborate:

She came here on some winged creature through the night sky, she is a woman free to roam the sky, a woman with a palace, a woman whose days are hidden from you, a woman who can do outrageous things to another woman’s body, a woman whose power is mountainous, whose strength is vast, whose charm is boundless, you’d never imagined such a woman could be, yet here she is, and far be it from you to anger her when she’s already given you so much, how could you ask for more, when she has chosen you for this adventure for some inscrutable reason you’ll never understand, just as it’s impossible to understand how this adventure can exist or what the scope of it will be, but there it is, the need to clasp it close and not let go because you want this life she’s offered you, want it with every fiber of your being, yet also want to hold on to your own knowing, however tiny it may be compared to hers.

I think that single sentence says more than I ever could.

I am very sure that, absent familiarity with the many versions existing of the underlying myth, this story will still make sense. After you take out you mental machete and whack back some of the vines and shrubs in your path. It is not, in the final analysis, a terribly complicated plot. It's about the nature of desire, and to twenty-first century eyes, the nature of consent.

I was most interested in Author De Robertis' decision to use first-person narration, and a deep access to her thoughts and feelings, for the human/victim of coercive sex Psyche, while according the deity/rapist third person freedom. A force of nature like a deity should, I agree, have an impersonal voice; if any personification of a natural force needs and deserves this distancing, it is the personification of Lust, and subsidiarily, physical Love. There is a reason the Greeks split Love/Aphrodite from Lust/sex Eros. These things are not the same.

I don't entirely understand why, post-#MeToo, one would choose to retell this particular myth without including some examination of the romanticization of coercion that the myth has always represented. Making Eros a non-binary deity, while very much in the spirit of the times, doesn't change what Eros did to Psyche.

A slender reed of a story to hang a novel on, and one that still misses its chances to add value to the ongoing conversation about sexuality and romance. Published about ten years too late to make its best and biggest splash.

I'M STILL HERE: A Dog's Purpose Forever, lovely meditation on love, loss, grief, and going on anyway

I'M STILL HERE: A Dog's Purpose Forever
CATHRYN MICHON (illus. Seth Taylor)
Andrews McMeel
$9.99 Kindle edition, available 10 September 2024

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This richly illustrated book reveals a comforting narrative told from the point of view of a loving angel dog, who wants you to know, “I’m still here . . . But I’m also there where all the animals run free, with no pain, waiting for you, watching for you, loving you, and guiding you.”

Losing one’s dog is one of the most difficult experiences we go through and it’s hard to find solace. However, the profound, four-legged narrator of I’m Still Here has nothing but good news for humans. The free verse is equally rhapsodic about the eternal nature of our souls and the amazing sound of crinkly wrappers that means cheese is about to be sliced. This very good dog proclaims that love never dies, that we will meet again, and that if you ever doubted that humans are magnificent creatures, look no further than the humble ball.

There is nothing to fear, because it is this dog’s purpose to pull you (like a bad dog who doesn’t know how to do “leash”) toward joy, and to remind you to relish all the naps and treats life has to offer.

Author Cathryn Michon co-wrote the blockbuster hit film A Dog’s Purpose. Elegant, full-color watercolor paintings by award-winning artist Seth Taylor make this sumptuous volume the perfect gesture of compassion for anyone who has ever said goodbye to a dog (or person) gone too soon, because it’s always too soon. It turns out that the best way to honor those we’ve loved and lost is to be here now, until we meet again.

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My Review: Not my usual fare. I'm pretty hard-hearted abou grief and grieving, compared to most, because I feel so much of the stuff most people resonate with is mawkish and embarrassing.

Except when it comes to our poochies.

Much emotional investment in many dogs, oceans of tears when I lose them, and a beautifully warm glow that no human's ever induced in me, made this a must-read. It was sentimental, the illustrations gorgeous, and the package came through as beautiful and luxurious even on my tablet. That's good design.

So heartfelt!
Embodying joy.

Good boy!

She's got the right idea!

Precious little pup...makes you want to schmoozle those teeny little ears, no?

I think anyone who's ever loved and lost would love this poultice for that ache.

ALL THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN, horror rooted in reality and scarier for it

ALL THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN
R.J. McDANIEL
ECW Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An incisive reflection on identity and wealth, and a refreshing racial queer story of survival

All Things Seen and Unseen follows Alex Nguyen, an isolated, chronically ill university student in her early 20s. After a suicide attempt and subsequent lengthy hospitalization, she finds herself without a job, kicked out of campus housing, unable to afford school, and still struggling in the aftermath of a relationship’s dissolution. Hope comes in the form of a rich high school friend who offers Alex a job housesitting at her family’s empty summer mansion on a gulf island.

Surrounded by dense forest and ocean, in the increasingly oppressive heat of a 2010s summer, Alex must try to survive as an outsider in a remote, insular community; to navigate the awkward, unexpected beginnings of a possible new romance; and to live through the trauma she has repressed to survive, even as the memories — and a series of increasingly unnerving events — threaten to pull her back under the surface.

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My Review: What a wild ride. I knew, by the end of the read, what it feels like to have paranoid hallucinations, and let me tell you it was 1000% more effective than "spernatural" horror could ever be. Tell me all the mishegas is a demon, I check out; tell me the MC is fresh out of the bin and these weird things are happening, I'm terrified. Plus horror in hot climates works better on 80° (Fahrenheit, obvs)-ought-to-be-illegal me than sweater weather ever could.

Add in homelessness, that scourge of the capitalist world we love for its trinkets and need for its ability to keep us alive at the expense of our future, and my knees are knockin'. All of these elements are central to this story. Alex is genuinely unsure what's in her head and what's not. When, ten years ago, I had a stint in the bin, my roommates were schizophrenic...can you even imagine hearing voices, having hallucinations so real you respond to them like they're there? I don't think you can unless you've seen it, and you will never, ever again think of mental illness as a dodge, a lie, a clever ruse to work the system.

So I'm pretty much the perfect reader for this horror story. Where's that fifth star?

I loved Alex's unapologetic, unexplained queerness a lot. She's just...queer. Nothing's made of it; it just is. This does come with a price. Alex is also not connected to reality in part due to trauma that, again, just is. This makes some of Alex's behaviors feel unmoored to the (negligible) plot. That isn't a problem per se but does leave things, eg relating to Alex's ethnic identity, up in the air that could usefully have been expanded on. It's a quibble; I was drawn along by the sheer richness with which Author McDaniel wove the tapestry of Alex's experience of her world.

This is a horror novel for people who do not read horror novels. It's also truly the best novel I've read about the actual experience of mental illness, of fracturing in the mind, about how the world can simply weigh too much to be borne.

ORIGIN STORY, tough, trying reading for this maternal sex-abuse survivor

ORIGIN STORY
JENDI REITER
Saddle Road Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$7.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: What is the Poison Cure? For Peter Edelman, it's his alter ego in the comic book he's writing, a mysterious anti-hero who seduces and kills child abusers—a storyline that's bringing up his own long-repressed memories. For his co-author Tyler "Tai" Wick, a genderfluid teen artist in the group foster home where Peter is employed, it's the social workers who will deem him fit for adoption if he will suppress his female self, which they consider a split personality from his traumatic years working the streets. And for fashion photographer Julian Selkirk, who's trying to get Peter to say "I love you," it's the Christian faith that offers to help him break intergenerational patterns of alcoholism and violence, but at the cost of rejecting his sexuality.

Against the backdrop of late-1990s New York City sexual politics, these characters strive to redefine home and family in ways that are strong enough to contain their truths. From a Miami comic-book convention to a Christian men's retreat in Georgia, from an elite New Age wellness center to a BDSM dungeon in Manhattan, Origin Story follows their quest to determine the nature of healing and the price we pay for it.

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My Review: Adult men dealing with maternal sexual abuse is going to stop most of you from picking this up.

Conversion "therapy", kink shaming, and the panoply of misunderstandings and bad takes that was 1990s-era psychotherapy should finish the remainder off.

Too bad. This is a solid love story between two deeply damaged men whose lives are somehow *better* when they're together. I'm really familiar with all the huge issues dealt with in here. I know these struggles. I think they're well-represented even when they're really hard to read.

If you're up for a very high-angst, dark and tough issue read, with a believable (though unsatisfying to me) HFN ending, this will apparate like it's dusted in Floo Powder into your cart. I myownself will never read it again. And I wish the comics stuff (which bored me) had been cut.

I'm really glad I'm seeing my therapist soon.

HOLLYWOOD HUSTLE, entertaining debut novel/thriller from veteran Actor Jon Lindstrom

HOLLYWOOD HUSTLE
JON LINDSTROM
Crooked Lane Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From 4-time Emmy-nominated actor Jon Lindstrom of General Hospital, Bosch, and True Detective fame, comes a gripping debut thriller.

Set in the dark underbelly of the LA film industry, Hollywood Hustle is the perfect read for fans of Alex Finlay and Jeffrey Deaver.

Winston Greene, a has-been film star, wakes one morning to find his six-year-old granddaughter at his bedside—traumatized, unattended, and gripping onto a thumb drive. She comes bearing video proof that her mother, Win’s troubled adult daughter, has been kidnapped by a murderous gang demanding all his “movie money” for her safe return. But what they don’t know is…his movie money is long gone.

Unable to go to the police for fear the kidnappers will make good on their promise to kill his daughter, Winston turns to two close friends—a legendary Hollywood stuntman and a disgraced former LAPD detective.

There’s no easy way out for Winston or his daughter—the gang is violent and willing to do anything to get the money they’re after, and Winston begins to realize that to get his daughter back, he’ll have to beat the kidnappers at their own game.

This propulsive and tense thriller will transport readers to the seedier side of LA, depicted in bold prose by a Hollywood insider.

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My Review: Thrillers starring grandfathers are uncommon. Grandfathers aren't. The fact we have a man who failed on multiple axes in his life rising to the challenge that, in part, stems from those failures feels to me both just and condign.

I do love a redemption arc. This one's a doozy.

The key to a solid, entertaining thriller, then, is turned: I'm invested in the set-up and the characters. I care about the stakes...a child's life is precious to a father, doubly so to a grandfather, and these are real relatable emotional states for Winston to occupy.

The next hurdle for a thriller to make a good impact, as opposed to a stinky splat, on me is the storytelling. The voice of the PoV character, or the use of an omniscient narrator; the pacing, the setting's depth, the blend of familiar and novel elements in this; and crucially the organization...how long are the paragraphs? the chapters?...all must reinforce each other for the trick of suspension of disbelief to work. Someone writing sentences as long as mine isn't writing a thriller, they're writing a mystery. Happily, Author Lindstrom is the veteran of many scripts read and enacted, so he grasps with a sureness born of experience the need for dialogue to serve a purpose or be left on the cutting-room floor.

I am unsurprised therefore to give him full marks on the craft of writing dialogue. I take away a star, paradoxically, for not listening to the effect of all the swearing. There are a few people reading this who are howling with laughter at my statement. I'm "foul-mouthed" as many a pursey-lipped prude has told me over the years.

Reinforcing the horror trope "the call is coming from inside the house."

If *I* noticed this facet of the dialogue, many others did too, and either checked out or gave up and Pearl-Ruled the book.

A thing I felt was...underdeveloped? glossed over? not explored to the extent needed to justify its centrality?...was the pervasive illicit-drug use. Winston passed the curse of addiction to his child. That is the igniting incident of the entire plot. I expect that to be more of a topic of either reflection or regret rather than a background taken for granted. If a character's failings are the reason they are in enough hot water to justify a thriller, it feels careless for the author not to offer more than passing acknowledgment of that reality.

While I know Author Lindsrom has portrayed a LOT of flawed characters in his acting career, that shows in this case. Scripts do not ever have room for exploration comparable to that in a novel, so I'm observing the need for a good storyteller to shift gears, not develop a missing skill.

I really hope this is not the last novel I'll read from Author Lindstrom. I liked Winston, and wouldn't pass up a second book featuring him. I think the thriller world can use some older men doing their best to offer amends for past wrongs, errors, and omissions.

RED DEAD'S HISTORY: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past, solid read about a very interesting subject

RED DEAD'S HISTORY: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past
TORE C. OLSSON
St. Martin's Press
$30.00, hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A pathbreaking new way to examine US history, through the lens of a bestselling video game

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as recreations of history?

In this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more. Weaving the games’ plot and characters into an exploration of American violence between 1870 and 1920, Olsson shows that it was more often disputes over capitalism and race, not just poker games and bank robberies, that fueled the bloodshed of these turbulent years. As such, this era has much to teach us today. From the West to the Deep South to Appalachia, Olsson reveals the gritty and brutal world that inspired the games, but sometimes lacks context and complexity on the digital screen. Colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic, Red Dead’s History sheds light on dark corners of the American past for gamers and history buffs alike.

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My Review: I don't play these kinds of games, even ones based on history, so I approach the books about games and gaming like I would explications of religious texts. This is fascinating, I think, why do people get invested in this stuff? I have never found an answer to that but I have definitely learned to appreciate the skill and craft of storytelling involved in creating these interactive spaces.

No exception here. The author is a (tenured! Go Doc!) college professor trained to teach US history specifically, so has a deep knowledge of the universe the game discussed here inhabits; being a child of the time when games like this were in their infancy, and by his own admission an addicted game player until he went to college, he's brilliantly...almost uniquely...suited to see the game universe, more importantly this game and its universe, from both its important axes.

After a long absence from the gaming world spent building and solidifying a career, the author got the giant clonk on the noggin that was the COVID pandemic. His life was upended and the time budget entailed in being an academic completely altered. What better way to use his time than rediscovering gaming, especially since a hot game of the time was Red Dead Redemption? History plus gaming equaled irresistible. The history content of the game was solid...and sometimes not.

If there is better bait for a hook meant for academics, I do not know of it.

As one might expect from a history professor, the "not" side gets the bulk of the attention. It's not presented in a "GOTCHA!!" way. The facts are presented, the footnote corroborates his source, and on we move. For a reader accustomed to accusatory fact-correcting, that might lessen the interest. For me it was a balm. If a fact isn't supported by historiography, but is supported by the needs of gameplay, this is noted. Doesn't make him call it correct, just...noted.

As an opportunity to spread knowledge of US history, this book would not be my first suggestion. It is not a fast-paced trip down History's highway; it is not a slow meander through the woods, examining the flora and spotting the fauna. It is a solid, readable work of game analysis as this intersects with actual history, contextualized by very interesting meditations on what the choice of historical background, and the alterations to historiography, say about both gaming and overall culture.

I was never bored, or even disengaged from, the story. For context recall that I am well into my seventh decade on Earth, and had no concept of home computing as a thing until the early Eighties. I liked card games and board games as a kid. Dungeons and Dragons felt like math class to me. And my interest was held. I hope that tells you what kind of work this is: Quality thinking expressed clearly and organized well.

It didn't make me excited, gave me no frisson, so I can't add a fifth star. It is a solid, thought provoking read about two subjects of great interest to me, and very probably of even greater to those who skew towards interest in gaming than I do.

THE DEVIL AT HIS ELBOW: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty, in a nutshell: Sick-making

THE DEVIL AT HIS ELBOW: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty
VALERIE BAUERLEIN
Ballantine Books
$32.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.

Alex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator—the president of the South Carolina trial lawyers’ association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always ready with a favor, a drink, and an invitation to Moselle, his family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate. The Murdaugh name ignited respect—and fear—for a hundred miles in any direction.

When he murdered his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at Moselle on a dark summer night, the fragile façade of Alex’s world could no longer hold. His forefathers had covered up a midnight suicide at a remote railroad crossing, a bootlegging ring run from a courthouse, and the attempted murder of a pregnant lover. Alex, too, almost walked away from his unspeakable crimes with his reputation intact, but his downfall was secured by a twist of fate, some stray mistakes, and a fateful decision by an old friend who’d finally seen enough.

Why would a man who had everything kill his wife and grown son? To unwind the roots of Alex’s ruin, award-winning journalist Valerie Bauerlein reported not just from the courthouse every day but also along the backroads and through the tidal marshes of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. When the jurors made their pilgrimage to the crime scene, trying to envision Maggie and Paul’s last moments, she walked right behind them, sensing the ghosts that haunt the Murdaughs’ now-shattered legacy.

Through masterful research and cinematic writing, The Devil at His Elbow is a transporting journey through Alex’s life, the night of the murders, and the investigation that culminated in a trial that held tens of millions spellbound. With her stunning insights and fearless instinct for the truth, Bauerlein uncovers layers of the Murdaugh murder case that have not been told.

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My Review: Sick-making.

True-crime books are not strangers to my TBR himalaya, or my blog. They regularly infuriate me, offend my sense of ma'at, and reorient my moral compass in the direction of "humans are irredeemable scum".

This story marks the second time I have felt physically sick while reading about a true crime. (American Honor Killings was the first.) Author Bauerlein covered the story for the Wall Street Journal because, one assumes, there were so very many financial crimes uncovered in this murder trial. The malpractice, malfeasance, and felony money-laundering are what made the case interesting enough for that bastion of The Establishment to consent to spend resources on the take-down of what is presented as a rogue actor, a bad apple, an outlier. What better way to protect The Establishment than to show it policing itself?

The book details a century's worth of similar, often worse, crimes committed by the same family. Unprosecuted, usually uninvestigated crimes committed as good as out in the open.

But this one's a rogue.

No, he is not, and if #MeToo taught the world anything it's that The Establishment circles the wagons fast to contain the damage. Zoë Kravitz has made this superficial damage control the center of her directorial debut film Blink Twice. Author Bauerlein does not seem to make this connection, though, as she says, Alex Murdaugh had inherited his forebears' power and prowess and then squandered it, the work of a hundred years washed away in blood. Even after digging into the history of these crackers in expensive shoes, her allegiance is firmly to The Establishment, and thus confines condemnation to this scumbag while quietly and indirectly exonerating the evil demon of generational wealth that enabled at the least, caused is more like it, the inevitable rise of the very scumbag she ringingly condemns.

I understood the need to organize the book out of chronological order; there's evidence that otherwise wouldn't fit into the story. It did mean that all the almost-five hundred pages feel weighty, freighted with meanings you can not slip past or you will indeed miss something. It also made the read a week longer for me than it would have been otherwise. Processing the implications of the murderer's inherited sense of entitlement and immunity from consequences was, and is, effortful for me.

Terrible story of a vile scion of ill-gotten wealth squandered, and for a wonder, the criminal punished at long last. A cautionary tale for others in similar circumstances.

The chickens will come home to roost.

CITY OF SECRETS, oops...started at #4, don't do that!

CITY OF SECRETS
P.J. TRACY
Minotaur Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan returns in P. J. Tracy’s City of Secrets, the next book in the series praised by the New York Times Book Review: “Tracy seems to have found her literary sweet spot.”

Los Angeles Police Detective Margaret Nolan and her partner have worked a lot of different cases, ones where things aren’t always as they appear. And it’s Nolan’s job to find the truth in the darkness around her. When they’re called to the scene of what looks like a fatal car-jacking, Nolan soon realizes her victim was a founder of a company about to sell for millions, and within a day of his death, his partner’s wife is abducted. As Nolan learns more about the victim and his life, she gets pulled into a disturbing world of sex, violence, and big business; and an even darker world, where whispers of an "Angel of Death" are beginning to surface.

One of today's finest crime writers, P. J. Tracy has created a series that is a rich and authentic portrait of LA, filled with the tragedy and optimism of her multi-layered characters and a story guaranteed to keep readers enthralled.

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My Review: Starting a series with book four is never ideal. I felt no investment in the Maggie/Remy subplot, but really didn't expect to once I twigged that the series was multiple books along.

That said, the dynamic between Maggie Nolan and Al Crawford, her policework partner, was an effortless joining of process. In large part that's because the pseudonymous Tracy partners really involve us in the way the investigation goes. This book, and I presume the entire series (as series authors seldom change tones radically this early in one), exemplifies the charms of the police procedural...that sense of being in on the action, a fly on the wall.

That's a wonderful way to build a series IMO because it gives the plotting a major through line without the need, at times, to contrive things just to keep up the pace. Of course the police work is a reductive fantasy version of the real thing, granted – stipulated – understood but it's the mystery reader's vision of it from countless other iterations, so it works. It also means one knows, if the series mystery world is not a new and fresh experience, that ornamental plot devices stand out. There are "dark sexual secrets' in the murder victim's life. Cheap, brummagem time-waster from the get-go, and, with Margaret's dull "romance" as the other lusterless sex distraction, means I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes.

The existence of a well-stocked larder of interesting side-characters, however, both redeemed and further irked me. I'm quite sure they've been here before, but I haven't. I'm on the fence about picking the series up but if I do, the first trip will be back to #1 before anything. I really want the answer to one burning question: Why does Ike like licorice?

Note for animal lovers: despite some suspense on the matter, no abuse or harm occurs and past wrongs are righted.

THE MONSTERS IN OUR SHADOWS, atmospheric horror/dystopia with a lot to say

THE MONSTERS IN OUR SHADOWS
EDWARD J. CEMBAL
Tempus Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s been a century since “the great consumption.” Humanity has been devoured to the edge of extinction by the ever-ravenous Shivers – terrifying, shapeless creatures that latch onto their hosts, tormenting them over time before consuming them all at once. The last of civilization lives in the crumbling city of Atlas, where they subsist on processed insects and await their inevitable fate.

Anthem is the city Exilist, tasked with trapping the Shivers and banishing them to the malevolent Deadlands outside the city walls. But Anthem is ailing and destined to soon fall victim to his own Shiver, a fate he’s reluctantly accepted. As Anthem begins to withdraw from his world, a threat he’s unprepared for comes hurtling home. If he is to save anyone, he will have to travel into the Deadlands in search of a remedy to tame these creatures. But no Atlas dweller has ever made it back alive, and Anthem must confront his own darkness before humankind is forever lost to the monsters in our shadows.

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My Review: I like horror stories about things I can believe exist, and the Shiver is one of those things. A thing unseen and unseeable to direct examination but real, and perceptible only obliquely? A thing that costs you huge energy to overcome the fear of, and ultimately it's most likely the thing that carries you off anyway?

Sounds like Life to me. Only this time it's seen from the widdershins view. No demons or supernatural gubbins or things from legend that don't exist. A real, demonstrably harmful...something...that we just don't understand. Like diseases we can't cure, conditions we can't treat, mental illnesses we refuse to look at.

Anthem, our PoV character, lives in Atlas, a walled city that's been erected to "protect" people yet it can't keep them safe from their Shiver. His job is to identify the threatened person's Shiver and get it corralled so he can take them both to the Deadlands outside Atlas's walls. He succeeds, he fails, but all he can do is treat the symptoms of the Shiver by ridding Atlas of the affected and their affliction. The drug that has prevented mass deaths is no longer effective, and Atlas needs a real solution...but where's it going to come from?

Atlas is under the control of a "savior" called The Architect whose walls have failed to keep out the Shiver, and whose claims to be the only one who can understand the Shiver and keep Atlas's people safe from it are wearing thin. The drug's no longer available and the price of cruelly exiling the sufferers to die outside Atlas is...well...distasteful. Anthem himself is now aware he needs to be exiled as his own Shiver is about to finish its ugly work.

The point of the story won't need belaboring, I trust, and the parallels won't need explication. The most effective part of the read is the sensory world Author Cembal evokes. The tense, paranoid, claustrophobic Atlas he creates is very effective. The way he adds sensory cues smalls and sights and sounds that get right to the emotional heart of the scene they're in...*chef's kiss*

I won't give the ending away. I will say that, by the end of the read, I felt I was rewarded by the story.