November 2022's Burgoine Reviews & Pearl Rule Reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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Winter Haven by Athol Dickson

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Thirteen years after Vera Gamble's little brother ran away from their Texas home, his body washes ashore on the remote island of Winter Haven, Maine. Vera goes to claim the corpse and discovers the impossible: her brother hasn't aged a day since last she saw him. Determined to uncover what happened, she is confronted by unearthly fog, disturbing locals, and stories of lost colonies and a vengeful witch.

Beyond the forest where no creature dares to live, her only hope is the mysterious owner of a dilapidated mansion on a rocky cliff. But will this solitary man assist her, or is Vera Gamble doomed to disappear forever into yet another Winter Haven legend?

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: In my ongoing, possibly misguided, quest not to die above the neck before I do below it, I asked Bethany House for an ARC of this author's latest (in 2008) christian-themed mystery. I don't know why they said yes, but they did, and then I never reviewed it. Sinful wicked shame on me!

There was a time in the early Aughts that I made a concerted effort to believe in the whole christian malarkey-fest. (I was pursuing a most callipygian, but Jesusy, guy.) It was a complete and abject failure on every level, since he didn't give up the goodies despite my going to church with him! The nerve! But I found some very interesting books....

Supernatural shenanigans? Teased; not delivered. Much depends on the voice the author creates when reading a first-person narrative. Vera Gamble is a ninny, the spit-and-image of a Mary Sue. Hanging the story on her was not satisfying. The death of her brother seems to me to be a weirdly xianized form of fridging. The entire story resolves into an address to the Problem of Evil. It is, as I am sure you've already twigged by now, utterly unconvincing as such. (I've never read anything, even straight-out apologetics, that resolve the Problem of Evil.)

There is a great deal of cartoonishly overstated Wickedness imputed to the townspeople of Winter Haven. It is, peculiarly enough, this over-egging of the pudding that gave me the "in" to this book's successful level: Gothic fiction is heightened, exaggerated, and therein its charm. It's a feature, not a bug, of the Gothic tropes that they're over every kind and sort of top. Without that the story would collapse under the weight of its silliness. Once I got that spark to light the brain-fuse I began to enjoy myself. I read the christianizing bits as irony, though they were decidedly not meant that way. It gave me a way to derive enjoyment from what was otherwise a truly dreary slog.

A Kindle edition is $3.99 if you follow this non-affiliate AmazonSmile link.

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The Golden Hour by T. Greenwood

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: On a spring afternoon long ago, thirteen-year-old Wyn Davies took a shortcut through the woods in her New Hampshire hometown and became a cautionary tale. Now, twenty years later, she lives in New York, on the opposite side of a duplex from her ex, with their four-year-old daughter shuttling between them. Wyn makes her living painting commissioned canvases of birch trees to match her clients’ furnishings. But the nagging sense that she has sold her artistic soul is soon eclipsed by a greater fear. Robby Rousseau, who has spent the past two decades in prison for a terrible crime against her, may be released based on new DNA evidence—unless Wyn breaks her silence about that afternoon.

To clear her head, refocus her painting, and escape an even more present threat, Wyn agrees to be temporary caretaker for a friend’s new property on a remote Maine island. The house has been empty for years, and in the basement Wyn discovers a box of film canisters labeled “Epitaphs and Prophecies.” Like time capsules, the photographs help her piece together the life of the house’s former owner, an artistic young mother, much like Wyn. But there is a mystery behind the images too, and unraveling it will force Wyn to finally confront what happened in those woods—and perhaps escape them at last.

A compelling and evocative novel with an unsettling question at its heart, T. Greenwood’s The Golden Hour explores the power of art to connect, to heal, and to reveal our most painful and necessary truths.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am sad to say that this pretty well-written story is the one that tipped my dislike of the woman as obligatory victim trope into a hard and fast opposition to it. Wyn's long-ago rape and violent assault was the reason this story existed. (Perpetrated by a man, of course, and a lying sack of shit without a moral in his entire body.) Her logical way to cope is to run away and bury its trauma. Well, okay. I get it. But...really, is there anything less appealing than spending a few hours with a character whose first response is to run away? It's a common response but reads like this character is, now and always, leaning in to her victim status by allowing it to overtake every other thing in her life.

There's a lot of occupational therapy in here. Wyn is an artist. At her new hidey-hole, there are canisters of undeveloped film. The author goes bonkers focusing on these images, on the art Wyn (isn't) creating, her artist ex-husband's...oh look, let me just say it plainly: In a thriller or a mystery, the *issue* should take the focus (!) of the storytelling. Wyn's attacker's retrial? Run away! The perpetrator of the attack from long ago? Offscreen always. The revelations that do come along the way, the identity of the perpetrator, the way in which the character opts to cope with all the changes required by the revelations (spoiler: not), all conspire to leave me with a terrible taste in my mouth. Author Greenwood joins a select company of mysterians named Greenwood whose books just do not work for me. That pernicious, disempowering victimization of women/girls trope in both the Greenwood writers' ouevre just does not work for me.

It's $6.99 on Kindle at that non-affiliate AmazonSmile link.

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The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From Nebula Award winner Sam J. Miller comes a frightening and uncanny ghost story about a rapidly changing city in upstate New York and the mysterious forces that threaten it.

Ronan Szepessy promised himself he’d never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill and New York City’s distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge.

Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom’s wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become—overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable.

Hudson has a rich, proud history and, it turns out, the real estate developers aren’t the only forces threatening its well-being: the spirits undergirding this once-thriving industrial town are enraged. Ronan’s hijinks have overlapped with a bubbling up of hate and violence among friends and neighbors, and everything is spiraling out of control. Ronan must summon the very best of himself to shed his own demons and save the city he once loathed.

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

My Review: Whale ghosts.

Seriously. Whale ghosts! Go get the book already! What's that about the plot? Oh, okay: Ronan, our out and queer protagonist, comes home to Hudson, New York. He was roundly hated for being his gayboy self, but Things Have Changed and, well, I myownself call someplace homophobically stuffed turning into Boystown-meets-the-Tenderloin a Martha-Stewart level Good Thing. The whale ghosts, um...they are...weird, as expected. That was okay with me, too, since I like the cli-fi elements of the read.

We parted company when Ronan gets involved with his married ex-lover. I've been in that car crash and I do not like that trope.

No matter, it's a well-written book, a delightfully weird story, and is available for $12.46 in hardcover. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses #1) by Sarah J. Maas

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.

At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.

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

My Review: Romance? Really? This is what you're telling young women Romance is all about? I don't know, but to me this sounds like a Bad Thing.

Lots of damsel-being-rescued stuff, seriously squicky "I'm so dumb" self-talk, The Beast is mostly just a brat who needs a spanking, and in the end there's little or nothing in this fairy-tale retelling that adds a whit to the Disneyfied version of the story its based on.

I do not like it. I would not recommend it to parents concerned about their daughter's internalizing pervasive misogyny. The writing is deft, but that even takes on a sinister cast because the message is just yuck-ick-ptui from giddy-up to whoa.

If you must get it by special demand, the Kindle edition's only $6.65. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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The Blue Macaw (Detective Valarie Garibaldi #1) by Ricky Ginsburg

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Officer Valarie Garibaldi, cancer survivor and heir to her cop father’s legacy, seizes an opportunity to fulfill his dream and earn her gold detective’s badge. A vacancy in the Ft. Lauderdale Police Department’s Homicide Unit is the twenty-six-year-old’s chance to prove to herself that she’d made the right choice between college, the beach, and the police academy. Partnering with veteran Detective Deesay Becerra, their first case together starts with a dead macaw–stuffed with millions in diamonds, and a murdered hooker–filled with heroin balloons. The body count ratchets up with the killing of two Miami Dolphins players, leaving the detectives no choice but to use one of their suspects as bait.

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

My Review: I don't think men should write sex scenes from women's points of view. We do not know what it's like. This was very obvious to me, again, and not a great start to my experience of this story. Add in a dead-in-a-gross-way female sex worker, a macaw that's been taxidermied by an amateur, and stakes I simply could not be less interested in, and this would've been a Pearl-Rule for me had it not had some silly, snappy dialogue...just enough to convince me to keep on.

Barely enough. But enough.

The Kindle edition's $6.99 but I'd use my Kindle Unlimited on it if I had suchlike nonsense.

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Reader, I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this daring tale of female agency and revenge from a New York Times bestselling author, a girl becomes a teenage vigilante who roams Victorian England using her privilege and power to punish her friends' abusive suitors and keep other young women safe.

Adele grew up in the shadows—first watching from backstage at her mother's Parisian dance halls, then wandering around the gloomy, haunted rooms of her father's manor. When she's finally sent away to boarding school in London, she's happy to enter the brightly lit world of society girls and their wealthy suitors.

Yet there are shadows there, too. Many of the men that try to charm Adele's new friends do so with dark intentions. After a violent assault, she turns to a roguish young con woman for help. Together, they become vigilantes meting out justice. But can Adele save herself from the same fate as those she protects?

With a queer romance at its heart, this lush historical thriller offers readers an irresistible mix of vengeance and empowerment.

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

My Review: First, read this:

“Why do you think, when women tell the stories of their lives, they end with marriage? It is not a happily ever after, cherie, only the end of happiness?”

In its bitter essence, Jane Eyre is a terrible, horrifying account of a cruel and controlling man's determined efforts to get the twisted things he most desired from the women he surrounded himself with. They had little choice in the matter. He exerted a charm, I'm told, in his "masterful" handling of them. I don't see it, myownself...Bertha or Jane, makes little difference, he was an archetypal narcissist in pursuit of minions.

I honestly forgot Adèle's existence in the original. Not a single scintilla of memory creased my cranium about her...how typical...and thus, when I got this book, I was in essence introduced to her for the first time. Her story is very affecting. I think it's a great shame that Adèle came into my awareness as a victim. Yes, she uses her victimhood to achieve something good as the Villainess, righter of wrongs and leveler of abusers. But there's a passage where her treatment of a loving soul, and her response to a shocking and disgusting betrayal, that just...rang so hollow to me. Her drive was always mitigated by her fears, as whose is not?, but her behavior is hard for me to mentally count as redemptive.

The resolution of the story is condign. It didn't hit the wrong notes so much as it simply played them too fast, too loud, and failed thus to distract me from my edge of unbelief. It's a fine book to give to your feminist granddaughter or romantically challenged niece.

There's a raft of editions for this new release. If this idea excites you, pursue it without hesitation.

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Underdogs (Underdogs #1) by Geonn Cannon

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Ariadne Willow is a private investigator with a secret weapon. She’s a canidae, a person with the ability to transform into a wolf at will. Using her heightened senses to track and her shapeshifting to follow people without being seen, she’s made a decent business for herself and her associate Dale Frye.

When one of the richest women in Seattle wishes to hire her, Ari and Dale think their ship has finally come in. All Ari has to do is observe the client’s tabloid-friendly daughter, fresh out of rehab, and confirm that she’s truly clean. Ari thinks the case will be a piece of cake, but a moment of shocking violence changes everything. Soon Ari finds herself backed into a corner with no way out, forced to either run or risk losing everything she holds dear by fighting an enemy with unlimited power and resources. With Dale refusing to leave her side, Ari decides to make a stand to remind her enemies that there’s only one rule in betting...

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

My Review: The fun part of taking advantage of NetGalley's "Read Now" collection is there is always some hidden pleasure or another to discover. A one-sitting canidae (werewolf to the tediously traditional readers like me) led urban fantasy chase story, this meets lots of my expectations. I was really amused and drawn to the very first pages' freshening-up of Little Red Riding Hood in particular...bringing to it that little something extra that comes from an eyewitness account of a crime as opposed to a polished and practiced witness-stand testimony via the Brothers Grimm. Much new information comes to light.

In general, I'm a lycanthropy fan. In this explicit case, I'm on a spiky fence because I question some of the judgment calls an author must always make...there seemed to me to be a peculiarly removed vibe to this fun take on a lesbian private eye-cum-werewolf urban fantasy. It's clearly an authorial choice, I must say, because it's in the structure of the sentences that're written in passive voice. It isn't, however, alienating to me as a reader. Honestly this surprised me because, under most every circumstance, I am hate-reading passive constructions in short order. So that was a surprise but was it a good one? I can't decide.

What made me finish the book in that one sitting mentioned above was the clarity of the conflict between Ari, our wolf sleuth, and her nemeses. If I can feel the pull of the story despite a narrative construct I'm not fond of, then there's something extra to this writer's storytelling chops. Kudos for that!

And let's face it...$2.99 on your Kindle ain't a lot to ask a reader to risk. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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Caspian's Fortune (Infinity's End #1) by Eric Warren

Pearl Ruled at 20%

Rating: 3-ish disappointed stars of five

The Publisher Says: He needs a payday. He’ll settle for payback.

Betrayed and left to rot on the edges of the galaxy, Caspian Robeaux is deep in debt and stuck flying courier missions in an old rustbucket he can barely keep afloat. His only friends are an annoying robot named Box and a bottle of booze.

It’s a far cry from his once-promising military career, but Cas stopped caring a long time ago.

Things start to look up, though, when a stranger arrives and offers a lucrative job that Cas can’t refuse, with a payday big enough to change his fortunes permanently. His luck gets even better when Cas learns that the job might offer him the one thing he wants more than his next drink: A chance to clear his name.

But nothing in his life is ever that simple, and for a man trying to buy his way out of debt, the price of redemption might be too steep.

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

My Review: There is a Serenity-shaped hole in my heart and I eagerly search for things to stuff into it. I loved the scruffy, "howinahell do we get outta this corner?!" vibe; I absolutely related to the search for the next payday just to keep the lights on and "keep flyin'" is a mantra I think most of us can relate to.

What turned me off was, in the end, I felt Cas was not particularly kind.

"I'm an engineer, I know how stuff works." He turned and made his way down the hallway, leaving her standing there. "But thanks for getting me out of my contract and for the repairs." He tickled the air with his fingers at her as he sauntered off in search of the nearest bar.

This woman tried to cheat him, and that merits a blow-off. But the whole vibe came across as unkind and that is something Mal never was. I stopped reading-reading at 20%, then, and skipped around to see what was going to happen. I checked out the Epilogue and, let's just say that I'm really, really glad I didn't read all the way through or I'd be incandescent and incoherent with outrage.

If you're okay with people abandoning their supposedly deeply-held principles, it's $3.99 on Kindle but...really? (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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The Camel Driver (Iron City #3) by Leonard Krishtalka

Rating: 3* of five

Pearl Ruled at 15%

The Publisher Says: Paleontologist turned private investigator, Harry Przewalski, excavates the dirty underbelly of people's lives, unearthing sexual betrayals, treachery, fraud and murder buried beneath the science of petrified shards, skin and bones. Ultimately, he must face a brutal killing in his own past, when he fled to a desert war and came back with a gun and a license to detect.

A famous, 140-year-old museum diorama is vandalized—it depicts the ferocious attack by two lions on a North African courier crossing the Sahara on a dromedary. The belly of the taxidermied camel has been sliced open and a bundle removed, shedding bits of flesh from a child. Harry is hired to investigate the macabre history of the exhibit. The taxidermist has a grisly past: a sexual affair, a lover's betrayal, a lurid trial, and graves in Botswana and Tunisia plundered for human dioramas. The camel driver's skull and skin are mounted under his clothing. In a Paris museum, a dead archaeologist, a bloodstained journal, and the theft of a Neanderthal child's skull and teeth lead Harry to the stolen bundle—a scientific bombshell worth killing for in a murderous race for fame.

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

My Review: First, read this:

I knew the end had begun. I knew she had conceived in the night, that hours after our uncontrollable pleasure the milky seed would plow its inexorable route, intent of consummating the act.

I don't even care what comes after this. It can not justify my continued eyeblinks.

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The Finder of the Lucky Devil (Lucky Devil #1) by Megan Mackie

Pearl Ruled at 18%

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Rune Leveau has a magical Talent for Finding things and a mountain of problems. Those problems get worse when she is approached by a charming, but dangerous cybernetically-altered corporate spy. When he says he wants her to help him find a wanted criminal called Anna Masterson, who went missing six years ago, it should be easy for a woman who's only special gift is finding things? The problem is Rune has a dangerous secret. She IS Anna Masterson, and the spy isn’t taking no for an answer.

St. Benedict has searched for the last six years for the Masterson Files, a computer program that is rumored to do the impossible, cast magic spells. Such a program would reshape the world. For his own reasons, he's determined to be the first to find it and the mysterious woman connected to it, Anna Masterson. Having exhausted his other options, he is left with a new hope that this Finder of the Lucky Devil can lead him to the prize he has sought for so long. But the Finder is proving difficult and he isn't going to take no for an answer.

Set in an alternate Chicago, where technology and magic are in competition with each other, this fast paced Cat-and-Mouse chase makes The Finder of the Lucky Devil a welcome addition to your urban fantasy/cyberpunk library.

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

My Review: Average-to-indifferent prose, stock characters, and absurdly overblown punctuation...seriously, never use double-exclams in a book ever...conspired to make this flimsily "altered" Chicago not worth the eyeblinks. In a publishing landscape where I can read Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines or absolutely anything by Ilona Andrews, there's nothing making this a good value proposition. Very disappointing to say, since more is better in urban-fantasy publishing only when it's good.

MURDER ON MONTE VISTA, 1st Mason Adler post-WWII mystery & MURDER IN UNION STATION, 2nd of the series

MURDER ON MONTE VISTA
DAVID S. PEDERSON (Mason Adler Mysteries #1)
Bold Strokes Books
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s 1946, and on a hot spring night in Phoenix, Arizona, things are only beginning to heat up at the Monte Vista Road home of flamboyant decorator Walter Waverly Wingate.

Private detective Mason T. Adler isn’t thrilled to be turning fifty, and the party Walter throws him makes him even more uncomfortable. Walter has arranged a special birthday present for Mason: a private hour with the handsome, young Henry Bowtrickle in Walter’s upstairs bedroom. But the night turns deadly when his birthday gift turns up murdered.

The room was locked, no way in or out, and only Henry and Mason were inside. Mason Adler is on the case, but he is also a suspect, along with the other assorted party guests who were all downstairs at the time of the stabbing. Or were they?

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

My Review: What I expect from a first-in-series mystery is simple: Let me know what this world is about; let me in to the characters' interrelatedness; and tell me what kind of crimes we're going to be dealing with.

Can't say I didn't get all those things...a little bit too much of 'em.

The story is of Mason Adler, newly fifty gay man, and his social circle: gal-pal Lydia, long-term frenemy Walter, and cop Emil. Various peripheral people step a measure before us, but no one else really matters. The main thing about a series mystery is the series, not the mystery, and that very much comes true here. By the halfway mark there's no body worth mentioning. Things are slowly unfolding, and the tensions of Mason Adler's life are lying before us prior to a murder accelerating the plot.

Possibly one of the most mean-spirited murders I've ever encountered, spite and envy fueling the circumstances that enable the murder to take place, and then the dead body comes in for a lot of muffled amusement because of how the whole plot evolved. There wasn't much to recommend the dead one, but there was little enough to recommend a lot of these people.

Phoenix, Arizona, is a place I've never, ever wanted to be the few times I've been there. I dislike deserts. I was transported to Phoenix circa 1946 with the author's major characters. It was darn near told in real-time vignettes. I got the sense of the oppressive, horrifying heat, the blasting, battering sunshine, the dreadful helplessness of life in this kind of nightmare before home air conditioning was ubiquitous in the US. (Even with air conditioning I don't want to be in Phoenix or any other desert city. Or town. Or hamlet. Or structure. Or outdoor space.)

So there was that going against the read. The pluses were the economy of the author's characterization. He needn't linger over loving descriptions because he chooses the details that actually matter and doesn't linger on them. He also doesn't clutter up my mental landscape, choosing instead to focus on the telling details. It was a way of bringing me a vivid, textured experience without using a lot of words to do it.

But at the end of the read, I was just...repelled...by the murder's cruel, appalling conception. (Murder will never not be cruel! I'm going on about the *circumstances* not the act.) The person whose life was taken didn't get, in life or after, near enough sympathy. Then there's the person whose idea erected the framework for the murder...I truly do not ever want to see that person in this series again.

I'll certainly move on to the next entry in the series. I won't be likely to revisit this one, though.

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MURDER IN UNION STATION
DAVID S. PEDERSON (Mason Adler Mysteries #2)
Bold Strokes Books
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Phoenix, May 6, 1946

At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.

The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.

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

My Review: Oh damn. Walter's back. *shudder*

After the nasty stunt he pulled in the first book, I really don't want to believe it's going to go well for him vis-a-vis this series, if we're going to keep seeing Walter. But the good part is the mystery Author Pederson chose this time is one ripped from the century-old headlines! I was really curious to see what would happen next.

What happens is the requisite amount of banter, a close friendship between a straight woman and a gay guy, bitchy-queen Walter being a complete cow when he wasn't being a tedious crook, oh let's see...hm...oh, Emil the cop being bested by Mason again like Perry Mason beats Hamilton Burger in every contest...um...the murder was done in vain as no one gets away with anything in these books.

I don't think this one took quite as long as the first one, but these aren't propulsive "...and then what happened?!" reads. They're going to take you down the path the detective treads with him, and cause you to get your helper's badge on your efforts and merits. I particularly liked the detail of Mason's car being a 1939 Studebaker Champion, famously a cheap-to-run and stodgy vehicle. The kind of car Uncle Dale drives to Thanksgiving and parks in front of the house despite everyone urging him to take the bus.

By the standards of the day, a real plain-jane-mobile though I myownself would love to have one.

The unmaksing event that Mason stages is very interesting, and not something I expected. Let's just say that Lydia is a useful gal-pal indeed. I was very interested in the book from giddy-up to whoa, and will certainly seek out the next Mason Adler mystery to check in on everyone, make sure they're doing okay.

OUTSIDE, Ragnar Jónasson's non-Dark Iceland thriller & DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST, 1920s London noir about lost innocence

OUTSIDE
RAGNAR JÓNASSON (tr. Victoria Cribb)
Minotaur Books
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Four friends. One night. Not everyone will come out alive . . .

When a deadly snowstorm strikes the Icelandic highlands, four friends seek shelter in a small, abandoned hunting lodge.

It is in the middle of nowhere and there's no way of communicating with the outside world.

They are isolated, but they are not alone . . .

As the night darkens, and fears intensify, an old tragedy gradually surfaces - one that forever changed the course of their friendship.

Those dark memories could hold the key to the mystery the friends now find themselves in.

And whether they will survive until morning . . .

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

My Review: Short, intense, and darkly atmospheric novella by one of Iceland's most valuable exports.

This honestly feels like a climactic scene from a longer novel that Ragnar didn't think was working, but it was just too darn good to let go to waste. We join the dramatis personae in medias res, we experience the building tension of a climax, and then...that was it...? Abrupt ending that doesn't do a lot of explaining, at least to me. It makes the whole exercise of reading the book just a bit frustrating to invest in the idea of this kind of pressure-cooker plot and then...stop.

I think everyone over 21 knows that we're defined by our worst moments, our biggest lapses of judgment. (If there are kids in your life, you *really* know this!) And we all know there are people in our lives whose place is more theirs by habit than by any desire on your, often nor their, part. People change and when we're young we think that won't matter. It's only as the weight of coping with our own lives becomes more and more demanding that we realize the weight of carrying someone whose place in our life is no longer a good investment of our energy.

The problem for me, in reading this chilling short take, is that these emotions are so common to all adults that to see them turned into a justification for chillingly, cruelly premeditated murder is asking me to go a bit farther than I'm generally prepared to go. The murderer in this piece is so coldly obsessed with a terrible event that no other thing can be allowed to enter their mental sphere.

Sociopaths aren't delightful company, and the ugliness of the murderer's interior is too much the focus of the story for me to get anything I wanted in the way of understanding out of the read. I left as revolted as I entered, and that's not a good reult for me.

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

DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST
MARTIN CATHCART FRODEN
Freight Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.59 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A gripping historical noir set during the amphetamine-fuelled craze for velodrome racing which took London by storm in the late 1920s.

Into this world stumbles Paul, a bewildered Scottish farmboy running away from home. Powerfully built with a fierce passion for cycling, he is taken under the wing of Silas, a local loan shark, and from there enters a world he is ill-equipped to survive.

As the races get harder, the bets get larger, and the terrifying Mr Morton starts to take an interest in Paul's career. For fans of Peaky Blinders and Brighton Rock, Devil Take the Hindmost is a thrilling ride through a historical London that is rarely visited.

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

My Review: So, you've read the synopsis. You've seen the way the parade's headed. And, you clever thing, you've seen my rating. Why isn't it up to a four?

Because it was a very good story that didn't need to make Silas, the intermediary between the owner and the athlete, have a queer passion for the athlete to make its point.

It's not like it never happens. There's an entire subsection of M/M romances based around this plot. But those are *reciprocated* queer feelings. These, with the best will in the world, are not. I hasten to say this isn't ever promised to us. It's never even said out loud in the story's description. It's still there, though, one gets the little tickle behind the eyeballs that means either excess pollen or gay subtext is in the blurb's air.

Then we get to the story itself. To the author's credit there isn't a lot of dishonesty in the presentation of the gay subtext. It's there, it's known...just nothing comes of it. So, though I found this oft-told tale well done, and the author's gift for dialogue pretty darn decent, this story suffers from the same thing that My Policeman suffered from: Yes, in the 2010s; not so much in the 2020s.

What led to a whole star-and-a-half going back onto the rating is the way the athlete, a raw innocent from the nowhere that was Scotland in the 1920s, simply doesn't care about the man who's in love with him being a man. I mean, it's not for him, but it's also not a problem because they're really good friends and that's what he values the most. The ending, which did not surprise me one bit, did satisfy me. I was completely comfortable with the way Author Froden sent these characters off into the world to meet their destinies. Why? Because, in every case, there was a powerful sense of each one grabbing the power to *create* that ending. Win, lose, or draw, each characted earned their destiny.

Nothing whatever wrong with a revenge story, in my book at least.

KIBOGO, latest treat from Scholastique Mukasonga AND A FINALIST for the National Book Award—Translated Literature!

KIBOGO
SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA (tr. Mark Polizzotti)
Archipelago Books
$12.99 ebook editions, available now

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION IN TRANSLATION FINALIST!

One of LitHub's 38 Favorite Books of 2022!

Rating: 6* of five It's my annual six-stars-of-five read!

The Publisher Says: In four beautifully woven parts, Mukasonga spins a marvelous recounting of the clash between ancient Rwandan beliefs and the missionaries determined to replace them with European Christianity.

When a rogue priest is defrocked for fusing the gospels with the martyrdom of Kibogo, a fierce clash of cults ensues. Swirling with the heady smell of wet earth and flashes of acerbic humor, Mukasonga brings to life the vital mythologies that imbue the Rwandan spirit. In doing so, she gives us a tale of disarming simplicity and profound universal truth.

Kibogo's story is reserved for the evening's end, when women sit around a fire drinking honeyed brew, when just a few are able to stave off sleep. With heads nodding, drifting into the mist of a dream, one faithful storyteller will weave the old legends of the hillside, stories which church missionaries have done everything in their power to expunge.

To some, Kibogo's tale is founding myth, celestial marvel, magic incantation, bottomless source of hope. To white priests spritzing holy water on shriveled, drought-ridden trees, it looms like red fog over the village: forbidden, satanic, a witchdoctor's hoax. All debate the twisted roots of this story, but deep down, all secretly wonder--can Kibogo really summon the rain?

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

My Review: Come and sit down. Settle in for a winter afternoon's pleasure-reading of someone else's culture's stories. This novella-in-stories is, in under 150pp or about three hours'-worth of reading, going to tell you about Rwanda. Not the country that threw itself a genocide in 1994. The foreign colony undergoing coerced christianization, the colonizers whose need for men and food to fight a war on another continent was the only thing they saw, the people of Ruanda-Urundi whose bodies and souls were the raw material and the means of production but never just themselves. What happens when Nature decides to withhold her usual munificence and deny Mankind her fecundity is always very, very educational to the mass of the people.

What Kibogo does, then, is tell you the stories of the people. They're funny, they're poignant, they're sometimes befuddlingly different from our Global Northern expectations. But they are alive, they sing on the pages of this book, they make their world felt and heard and seen through Author Scholastique Mukasonga's careful, gentle, unsparingly honest eyes. Translator Mark Polizzotti comes in for a heap of praise as well. I could hear Author Scholastique speaking to me, and he is the reason I wasn't slugging through the book with La Petite Larousse ten centimeters from my elbow at all times.

Kibogo is a god, a divine creature whose rule over Ruanda's people is challenged by the Catholic priests. If you know anything about that religion, the focus of worship is what they start with changing...Jesus, not Kibogo...while syncretizing as much of the pre-christian myth structure and storytelling architecture as possible. In the event, who's the god isn't always clear...it comes down to the name one calls when one is in extremis...and that name can surprise even the caller.

The worst part of believing in a super-natural being, a creature above the natural world we must perforce inhabit, is that there is always, always a loose end to tuck in, a wrinkled page to smooth out and make readable. When a man works to make this his life's gift to the world, he neglects the woman whose gift the world is in: No birth happens without a man and a woman agreeing to make it happen. The issues for the Ruandan god's bride and the Catholic church's groom grow urgent. Both seek a spirit, see a world for what it has and can be made into; the world, meanwhile, just Is. How can this end except in tears? Watch and learn, people without belief.

Or just follow Author Scholastique as she, seeming as bemused as the rest of us, watches the borning Rwandan African attempts to put flesh on the hollow bones of ancestral skulls. It is here that I felt the sting of tears as, not free of sarcasm, Author Scholastique offers up the flesh of a bumbling, pompous Western world in sacrifice to the simple, bright, carnivorous land we all must share. The land is the only god worth worshiping because it is the only god we can touch and who responds to us, who feeds our families and accepts our worn-out remains for its eventual reuse, recycling what can not be reduced more than it is by the myriad eating mouths and excreting guts of Life.

This was a rare, perfect reading experience for me. It came exactly when I wanted and needed it. It answered some call I made, unknowing, as I looked for a reason for winter's cold and brilliance not to weigh me down. Thank you for it, Author Scholatique, Translator Polizzotti, and Archipelago Books via Edelweiss+. Gifts of this great value come when they're most needed.

THE DAVIN GOODWIN PAGE: DIVER'S PARADISE, first Roscoe Conklin procedural mystery & PARADISE COVE, sequel thereto

PARADISE COVE
DAVIN GOODWIN (Roscoe Conklin Mysteries #2)
Oceanview Publishing
$11.49 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Every day is paradise on Bonaire—until something unexpected washes ashore

On the laid-back island of Bonaire, every day is paradise until a seaweed-entangled human leg washes ashore. Combing the beach, retired cop Roscoe Conklin examines the scene and quickly determines that the leg belongs to the nephew of a close friend.

The island police launch an investigation, but with little evidence and no suspects, their progress comes to a frustrating halt. Then, thanks to a unique barter with the lead detective, Conklin finds himself in possession of the case file. He can now aggressively probe for his own answers.

Sifting through the scant clues, eager to bring the killer to justice, Conklin struggles to maintain forward momentum. He has all the pieces. He can feel it. But he’d better get them snapped together soon.

Otherwise, the body count will continue to rise.

The novels in the Roscoe Conklin Mystery Series stand on their own and can be read in any order.

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

My Review: The awfulness of a friend's loss is hard to bear. Roscoe, our hilariously yclept detective, has that experience in spades when Erika, the lovely Bonaire native who runs...well, let's be honest, his entire life on Bonaire...loses her nephew whom she raised from childhood.

Roscoe is for sure gonna get deep into this case. He found the young man's leg on the beach. Yes, his leg...singular...and unattached.

Foul play is suspected.

What ensues is, as expected, Roscoe dealing with the Bonaire cops (in the form of his love interest Arabella) though, this time at least, he also has to deal with the Top Cop. As a client, as it happens...there's some whiff of shenanigans between the Inspector's wife and...well, that would be telling.

As much a tropical cozy as a procedural novel, the series is going to give you a lovely trip to Bonaire right as it's getting cold for #Noirvember here in the Global North. As the author lives in Wisconsin (!), one assumes he's there under eiderdowns and wearing Thinsulate gloves as he pecks these tales out with a pencil eraser-side-down in each claw-shaped frozen hand, tap-tap-tapping as he drifts away dreaming of being Roscoe.

I read these books back-to-back, and that was a mistake on my part. There are details in each, and the same sort of details, that go unnoticed and un-dealt-with in resolving the crime. There is not a huge sense of urgency in Roscoe's investigative technique...even when the dead person is someone close to his found-family circle. Everyone who needs to be found out is, and that is why I awarded the full fourth star to what otherwise would've been a three-and-a-half star read.

Space the reads out, don't binge, and make your experience mood-dictated, and you will have a lovely read indeed.

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

DIVER'S PARADISE
DAVIN GOODWIN (Roscoe Conklin Mysteries #1)
Oceanview Publishing
$1.99 on Kindle!!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: After 25 years on the job, Detective Roscoe Conklin trades his badge for a pair of shorts and sandals and moves to Bonaire, a small island nestled in the southern Caribbean. But the warm water, palm trees, and sunsets are derailed when his long-time police-buddy and friend back home, is murdered.

Conklin dusts off a few markers and calls his old department, trolling for information. It’s slow going. No surprise, there. After all, it’s an active investigation, and his compadres back home aren’t saying a damn thing.

He’s 2,000 miles away, living in paradise. Does he really think he can help? They suggest he go to the beach and catch some rays.

For Conklin, it’s not that simple. Outside looking in? Not him. Never has been. Never will be.

When a suspicious mishap lands his significant other, Arabella, in the hospital, the island police conduct, at best, a sluggish investigation, stonewalling progress. Conklin questions the evidence and challenges the department’s methods. Something isn’t right.

Arabella wasn’t the intended target.
He was.

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

My Review: Living in New York for as long as I have done, I found the detective's name...Roscoe Conklin (no "g")...very humorous. I also appreciated the setting, little-used Dutch possession Bonaire, particularly fun. Author Goodwin evokes island life, with its on-top-of-each-other intimacy and its high stress on reputations and their value, absolutely spot-on at every turn. (My own island residence isn't tropical, but it's very much that way exactly.)

I do actually, in this case, agree that these two books can be read in any order and you won't miss out on any connections or subtleties. I'm usually a very by-the-order kind of a reader.

The sleuth, Roscoe, is a mensch...salt of the earth...a solid, do-right kind of guy. For all that, someone's got a grudge against him. I suppose that's pretty inevitable for the cops of the world. What isn't inevitable, I hope, is the somewhat slapdash way Roscoe and his island love Arabella (a cop, not a retired one) treat clues and miss seeing some important ones (eg, friend Tiffany's boyfriend's a domestic abuser among other things). That's where that missing star went.

One thing I found particularly endearing was retired Chicago PD detective Roscoe explicitly says he wants to get to the truth of the matter, that being the only way he'll be safe and able to keep Arabella and his other island friends safe from tbe violence that's followed him there. That really made me like the author and his creation that little bit more.

THE GAYL JONES PAGE: THE BIRDCATCHER, nominated for a National Book Award & PALMARES, breaking a long silence in the author's art

THE BIRDCATCHER
GAYL JONES
Beacon Press
$24.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST!

The Publisher Says: Legendary writer Gayl Jones returns with a stunning new novel about Black American artists in exile

Gayl Jones, the novelist Toni Morrison discovered decades ago and Tayari Jones recently called her favorite writer, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is publishing again. In the wake of her long-awaited fifth novel, Palmares, The Birdcatcher is another singular achievement, a return to the circles of her National Book Award finalist, The Healing.

Set primarily on the island of Ibiza, the story is narrated by the writer Amanda Wordlaw, whose closest friend, a gifted sculptor named Catherine Shuger, is repeatedly institutionalized for trying to kill a husband who never leaves her. The three form a quirky triangle on the white-washed island.

A study in Black women's creative expression, and the intensity of their relationships, this work from Jones shows off her range and insight into the vicissitudes of all human nature—rewarding longtime fans and bringing her talent to a new generation of readers.

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

My Review: It's very odd to me that Gayl Jones's voice was silent in American English for over a quarter century. This novel was first published in German during 1986—more than thirty-five years ago—and, until Beacon Press decided to take up the baton of being her publishing champions, simply didn't exist in her native country. It's hard not to see this as the fruits of racist-turbocharged sexism.

That said, this read (nominated for a National Book Award for Fiction, the prize to be awarded tomorrow) is a challenge for most readers. It's very complex and demands focus to derive a full picture of what happens in it; this makes a looser, less organized second half much more effort to decode.

Author Gayl has made a beautiful and strange artist's colony on the Spanish Mediterranean island of Ibiza where we meet Amanda Wordlaw (a name that might be familiar to some with previous exposure to Author Gayl), a Black American writer, as she resumes an intimate and borderline transgressive relationship with sculptor Catherine and her husband Ernest. The couple are deeply enmeshed in a psychically and physically violent relationship. Catherine, suffering from depression and other psychiatric ills, periodically makes strange attempts on Ernest's life. After Catherine is institutionalized, Amanda—in flight from a husband and child of her own for unexplained reasons—becomes ever closer to crossing the line into an inappropriate relationship with scientist and strangely calm Ernest. By the time Catherine comes home to continue work on her magnum opus, "The Birdcatcher" of the title...will she or won't she keep trying to kill Ernest? Are her materials-use restriction for Ernest's safety or are they self-imposed? And what the heck's this other artist, a white lady called "Gillette" like the razors, doing in this book? She's just irrelevant to my eyes...and why is Catherine allowed out of her institution? She's very clearly not in any way improved in her quotidian functioning....

This is why I am rating the book four, not five, stars. The second half shifts narrators from Amanda (whose husband has a *very* peculiar, and I suspect metaphorical, um...physiology) and her ponderings to being all over the place. It's not expected, and it means I now need to re-establish my investment in the tale being told as well as bring that level of investment to people I do not quite think are as interesting as Amanda, Catherine, and Ernest.

It was a very interesting note to end on...Catherine's past as a political activist and racism fighter (while never integrated into the story but rather reported to us at the end) was a major missed opportunity to explore but, more than anything else, explains the role of Catherine's obsessive de- and re-construction of the title sculpture. Such a graceful and beautiful metaphor deserved more from Author Gayl's talented pen.

If Palmares is a lyrical, evocative allohistorical exploration of the roots of identity, The Birdcatcher considers the eternal impossibility of knowing another soul, of being fully in touch with one's own soul, when in the toils of a toxic system of racism, misogyny, and the marginalization of creativity as anything except a commercial pursuit. If you're up for doing some very involved thinking about the story you're reading, this is a worthwhile story to invest in. I really ended up surprised at how much more I wanted from these characters, and then how glad I was not to be given it.

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

PALMARES
GAYL JONES
Beacon Press
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The epic rendering of a Black woman’s journey through slavery and liberation, set in 17th-century colonial Brazil; the return of a major voice in American literature.

First discovered and edited by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is ready to publish again. Palmares is the first of five new works by Gayl Jones to be published in the next two years, rewarding longtime fans and bringing her talent to a new generation of readers.

Intricate and compelling, Palmares recounts the journey of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who comes of age on Portuguese plantations and escapes to a fugitive slave settlement called Palmares. Following its destruction, Almeyda embarks on a journey across colonial Brazil to find her husband, lost in battle.

Her story brings to life a world impacted by greed, conquest, and colonial desire. She encounters a mad lexicographer, desperate to avoid military service; a village that praises a god living in a nearby cave; and a medicine woman who offers great magic, at a greater price.

Combining the author’s mastery of language and voice with her unique brand of mythology and magical realism, Jones reimagines the historical novel. The result is a sweeping saga spanning a quarter century, with vibrant settings and unforgettable characters, steeped in the rich oral tradition of its world. Of Gayl Jones, the New Yorker noted, “[Her] great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.” Like nothing else before it, Palmares embodies this gift.

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

My Review: Lyrical writing, exploring the roots of Identity, in an exoticized "Brazilian" setting that the author herself acknowledges is merely called Brazilian without deeply exploring Brazil or its extremely complex society.

There's been a lot of stick wielded at Author Gayl for this latter decision. She's not even trying to hide her lack of research. The Callaloo interview linked above is, simply, her statement of an author's privilege to invent and create as needed for her art: "...there aren't any facts or stories that one could say really happened."

The flipside of that choice is, of course, the responses of Brazilian people to what comes across to them as appropriation of their culture for the entertainment of others. The loudest complaints are Dandara do Palmares, famously African, replaced by a white character with her name. An unworthy part of me really enjoys seeing this kerfuffle center on a Black woman creator in this context. Another part of me is slightly impatient with Author Gayl for bringing such fully warranted criticism on a story that, at its heart, is about the roots of identity in memory, a notoriously unreliable source of any sort of truth or fact. Then the problems with Spanish words in a Brazilian context...well, it wasn't particularly well-handled to be honest.

So what the heck am I doing giving it four stars?

Because this is a work of fantastical fiction, made by a writer in her own mind, and that to me is a different thing than an historical study, biography, or even conventional historical novel. The author isn't attempting to tell the story of the actual Dandara, but has made the choice to invent an entirely other Brazil that doesn't really resemble the real one. It was a choice. She made it up...and that is an artist's privilege. I'm not hugely interested in ownership arguments, as I see them as the wrong angle to take on the "who tells the stories" argument we, as a culture, need to have. The answer in my view: Bring diverse voices to the table, listen to all the voices you can find, and quit worrying about whose voice is saying things "wrong." That's not relevant to fiction...the story one wants to tell is either true to the spirit of the inspiration or not, but that's not "wrong" it's just something people whose identity is involved should bring up as a data point. I want to read stories, always; I usually prefer them to be true to the source that inspired them, but even that is negotiable.

This has a very direct and personal relationship to me, an older gay man, because so many...so! many!...books about gay men in relationships are written by straight women. They get things wrong. It's really inevitable...a few have done so in ways I found quite startling. But I'm not going to say they were wrong for "appropriating" my identity as a gay man because they didn't. They chose to tell a story about people like me without doing research? Okay...but I'm going to tell on you. What difference it makes is to the people who listen to me, and take my opinions for what they are: More or less informed, experienced in some areas, and where possible backed up by facts. (Opinions are of necessity based on facts as one understands them, but not wholly defined by them.)

Anyway. My point, and I do have one, is that I took on board the upset responses of actual Brazilians to the way Author Gayl used their history as a launching pad for this lyrical and flowing exploration of American Black slave identities, and still found much to admire and enjoy in the way the author told her unique, wholly fictional story.

I can't give it a full five stars, as some have done, because I found the longueurs of stream-of-consciousness writing obtruded into my ability to connect the story just that fraction of time too much for the experience to be fully immersive. It's possible the novel is just that touch too long for its story....Almeyda does not start out fully formed yet we're asked to invest in her as though she has...but, at all events, Palmares made me stay up too late and care enough to do it.

NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC, follow-up to his fame-setting novel...worthy successor?

NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC
KEVIN WILSON
Ecco Press
$27.99 hardcover, available now

One of Time Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2022

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here comes an exuberant, bighearted novel about two teenage misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever.

Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge—aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner—is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother’s unhappy house and who is as lonely and awkward as Frankie is. Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.

The posters begin appearing everywhere, and people wonder who is behind them. Satanists, kidnappers—the rumors won’t stop, and soon the mystery has dangerous repercussions that spread far beyond the town. The art that brought Frankie and Zeke together now threatens to tear them apart.

Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge—famous author, mom to a wonderful daughter, wife to a loving husband—gets a call that threatens to upend everything: a journalist named Mazzy Brower is writing a story about the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Might Frances know something about that? And will what she knows destroy the life she’s so carefully built?

A bold coming-of-age story, written with Kevin Wilson’s trademark wit and blazing prose, Now Is Not The Time to Panic is a nuanced exploration of young love, identity, and the power of art. It’s also about the secrets that haunt us—and, ultimately, what the truth will set free.

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

My Review: Nothing to See Here was a solid 3.5-star read for me. It was entertaining and I got a few moments of real emotional involvement. I didn't think I'd go looking for more of Author Wilson's work but the Universe had other ideas...Ecco offered me the DRC and, being game as well as greedy, I hopped on it like a hen on a junebug.

Frankie Budge is a teenaged girl with a serious boredom problem. She's a Coalfield, Tennessee, girl who's smart enough to be a novelist in training and bored enough to do anything to stave off the screaming meemees. She's got triplet brothers whose lives will clearly end in tears, prison sentences, and severe emotional damage. Her father's left his family for another woman, and her mother...cruises...she lets Frankie be her own weird self because, well, triplet boys on the way to prison require more than a single working mother actually has to give. Yay for Frankie! Then she meets Zeke, a new kid with no friends.

Zeke's dad was a horndog, too. (Is this something Author Wilson knows about from personal experience, one must ask oneself.) Zeke apparently decompensated all over the guy in the middle of his office. Well, that's what his mom says...he can't remember any of it. Oh, and this is important: He's so freaked about the whole nightmare that he's decided to rename himself "Zeke" short for his middle name, Ezekiel. He and his mom are staying in Coalfield, where she was from. And that's how the match met the gas....

Y'all remember the 1980s Satanic Panic era? All that horror, all those lives ruined...well, in her gawky attempt to connect with this boy she likes, Frankie made the error to end all errors...she showed him a Xerox machine her brothers had stolen from the high school's shed. With toner and paper and everything...and she lets Zeke fix it, using the loveliest phrase for a paper jam I've ever heard: "like the machine had done origami"...so thus begins one of the major Satanic panics moved all the way up in time to 1996.

Their use for the photocopier is to make an art project (after Frankie uses it as an excuse to cop her first-ever kiss from a boy who's never kissed a girl either) of a poster—a drawing Zeke does after she writes “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us” on a piece of paper. Then the Xerox comes into play...she comments in her narrative about them being kids from Nowheresville and never having heard of Andy Warhol so they were inventing this new thing together...and, after making a bunch of them, Frankie puts them up all over Coalfield.

Hijinks quite horribly ensue.

The inspiration of some older teens to play off this mysterious and compelling artwork, using it for their own ends, and the horrors that any powerful thing can call forth when it's anonymous and unclaimed, break the entire town. Frankie and Zeke are kids. They're way too scared to face up to the consequences (some truly terrifying) of their innocent actions. And that is where I realized I was a lot more involved with this story than I ever was with the first book of his I read. I circled back and read "On Writing Now Is Not The Time to Panic", Author Wilson's introductory story of how this book has been moving inside him for a long time. He spoke directly from his heart, revealed his genuine grief that finally summoned this book into the world after the decades of growing, and I was utterly changed. A story I'd thought was pretty good became a moving, honest act of love for a past and a life he was no longer living. And that made my pleasure multiply many-fold.

What it means to my old-man self to see someone as young as Author Wilson contend with the doomed promise of nostalgia, to confront the power of a past one can never reach but must always reach for...well, that spoke to me. That made me feel I was heard and understood by a complete stranger who couldn't pick me out in a line-up of Boomers. I am validated by this evidence of my sad, wistful knowledge of the ghost-hand of the past clutching with steel talons in someone young enough to be my child.

Then what the hell happened to that fifth star, it's fair to ask. Welllll...I'm really not sure it's fair to say, he said, glancing at the ever-present truncheons of the Spoiler Stasi. I'm not a big fan of the way the pressure to dredge up her past with Zeke, now going by his first name again, entered Frankie's life, and the things it led her to do were understandable but frankly disturbing to me. I felt she was violating boundaries for selfish reasons. It's not like she needed to do something she did the way she did it...the knowledge could've been gained less invasively...but here we are. I've only docked a quarter-star and I'm pretty sure the sales won't suffer because one no-name blogger was squicked out at some stuff that most of y'all (who never had your boundaries utterly disregarded by a woman) won't notice.

I'm still glad I read the book, you can see. I'm especially delighted by a piece of mother-daughter healing that spoke loudly to me. And you know, that is more than enough of a gift to take the slight sting of imperfection off my eyes.