Dispatches from Stay More

Nothing to Envy

2010-12-27T02:15:00.000-08:00

The irony of the title of Barbara Demick's moving book, Nothing to Envy (Random House, 2010) is of course that North Korea--where children were taught a nationalist song "We Have Nothing to Envy in This World"--itself possesses nothing at all to envy, nothing to support the heady propaganda of the Socialist state in acute decline. What was once a jewel in the Socialist crown has steadily and rapidly fallen into a hellish manifestation of a ruling dynasty's eccentric, deadly desires--a regime ill equipped to deal with the fall of the Soviet Union and its attenuating ramifications for former patron states.

But Demick's book steers clear of political rhetoric in favor of realist individualistic depictions of "real lives in North Korea." Her precise descriptions and renderings of North Korean families over a long period of time create a narrative momentum that grips the reader in an emotional and gut-wrenching pull. The recurring theme of North Korean lives from the early 1990s onward is the quest for basic food. Kim Jong Il's denial of the famine cost the lives and suffering of untold millions. A simple dish of white rice--once the basis of Kim Il Sung's Communist rule--by the 1990s under Kim Jong Il becomes an unfathomable luxury.

The dire conditions of ordinary North Koreans is one of the world's greatest tragedies, and I cannot imagine a more powerful book to bring the realities of this complex issue into the light. In 2009, Demick told The New Yorker: "Any glimpse of the outside world is corrosive to the regime’s hold over the population. When North Koreans watch soap operas, especially South Korean soap operas, and see ordinary people in kitchens with microwaves and gas stoves, refrigerators filled with food, they realize everything they’ve been told is untrue. They do have something to envy."

Holly Blues

2010-05-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

It’s nice to be back in Pecan Springs, Texas after the previous China Bayles mystery, Wormwood, had China on adventure in Kentucky Shaker country. Susan Wittig Albert’s latest installment, Holly Blues (Berkley, 2010) begins with the mysterious arrival to Pecan Springs of Sally, Mike McQuaid’s ex-wife and Brian’s mother. Sally is not exactly China’s nemesis but she is a perpetual nuisance to China, McQuaid and her own sister. In the past she has proven to be a liar, a cheat, a squanderer and all around bad news.

No one’s quite sure why Sally has come to Pecan Springs just a few days before Christmas. Neither China or McQuaid, happily married for many volumes now, warm to her presence, though their realization that no matter what, Sally is still Brian’s mother, she should be treated with some respect despite how crazy her stories sound and the various sorts of trouble they expect her to bring. Indeed it’s not long before China learns Sally has lied to her about why she came to Pecan Springs from her home in Kansas City. And soon, they both learn Sally has a stalker who has followed her to Texas.

McQuaid, away on business in Omaha, leaves China to deal with Sally and all of the increased holiday traffic at the shop herb shop she owns with Ruby, her venerable sidekick whose back story in Holly Blues isn’t quite as deep as in other installments, but nonetheless flawlessly realized and imagined.

Sally inexplicable disappears just as she and China were worried about the stalker. Meanwhile, someone near and dear to all of them is found dead in a north Texas town. There are a few murders, all off scene, and another subplot involving the decades-old murder of Sally’s parents in Kansas, which McQuaid is persuaded by Sally to investigate since he is in nearby Nebraska. Albert uses a narrative technique she first employed in Nightshade (one of the best entries in the whole series) that gives events from McQuaid’s perspective, a break from the first-person China narrative. I thought the technique was used to even greater effect in Holly Blues because McQuaid was far removed from the happenings in Pecan Springs and so we could get his point of view on things while he was away, things that China could not have told us from her real-time first-person perspective.

Holly Blues is a solid, welcome installment in the unique and expertly crafted China Bayles series. Few are better than Albert at bringing the complex strands of a new mystery puzzle together with the comfort of the setting and characters we have grown to love.

Stirring Up Strife

2010-02-05T04:05:00.001-08:00

Jennifer Stanley's Stirring Up Strife (St. Martin's Minotaur, 2010) is a well-plotted and well-written mystery that is as fun to read for the subplots as it is for the central "whodunit" puzzle. The premise is this: Cooper Lee, an unlikely female office machine repair technician, has a chance encounter with a client whose jammed copy machine Cooper is called in to repair. That client, Brooke Hughes, has an instant connection with Cooper and invites her to attend Bible study sessions at Hope Street Church. Cooper, feeling down and out after recently breaking up with her longtime boyfriend Drew and moving back in with her parents, could use a little light in her life, so she decides to visit Hope Street.

The Bible study is all aflutter when Cooper, as it seems one of their beloved church members, Wesley Hughes, has been arrested for the murder of his wife, Brooke! Cooper and members of the Bible study, who know Wesley and cannot imagine his having committed the crime, set out to prove his innocence through old fashioned gumshoe detective work.

The strength of Stirring up Strife is in its strong plot, and while all of the characters have some relationship to it, we also feel they have their own lives. Stanley does an excellent job of balancing our introduction to these lives (such as Cooper's parents, various members of the Bible study group, etc.) and offering action and clues to solve the mystery. One of the best subplots is Cooper's second chance at love with a member of the Bible study group; we are cheering for her all the way. Stanley is also great at evoking the atmosphere of urban Richmond, Virginia, the setting for this series.

As many readers who are drawn to this book because of its church-ish theme could potentially be driven away by it. However, I can attest that Stanley does a really good job of balancing the faith/God/prayer themes without much syrupy sentimentality or even a drivel of preachy rhetoric. That is a much more difficult task to do than Stanley makes it seem. While the Bible quotations at the beginning of every chapter did seem to get a bit heavy at times (and the more orthodox among readers might object to their contextualization), I found myself always reading them and finding resonance in the chapter that followed. This is a rather bold move for commercial mass market fiction, but Stanley is up to the job.

My qualms with the book are minor but bear mentioning because I am seeing them as a trend in many cozies. I am of a personal mind that authors should stop writing "clucked" as a term of expressive action. I'm pretty sure people don't cluck, or even if they do it must be rarer than what we're reading in a lot of cozy mysteries these days (maybe the tsk tsk??). I'm also not a fan of characters who refer to their vehicles with made-up cutesy proper names based on the vehicles size and/or color (here there are two, "Cherry-O" and "Sweet Pea," and you can probably guess one is red and the other, yep, green). It kind of removed me from the story every time I came across those things, clucked and proper-named autos. I would also lose Quinton's hymn lyrics, which as printed in full within the text read like doggerel even though they would be extremely appropriate set to the right music in a church environment.

These small annoyances, which may well be just my own hangups anyway, do not detract from this excellent first entry into the Hope Street Church Mystery Series. The solid and believable finish is as satisfying as what came before it, one mark of a good mystery. I will look forward to the next book, Path of the Wicked with anticipation.

Taking Chance

2010-01-31T05:28:00.000-08:00

Taking Chance was a surprisingly moving film about what happens in the aftermath of war tragedy. Kevin Bacon portrays US Marine Lieutenant Corporal Michael Strobl, who has volunteered to accompany the remains of a young Marine killed in the Iraq war, Chance Phelps, back to Phelps's hometown in Wyoming.

What makes the emotions of this movie work is that it avoids the saccharine emotion-tugs prone to movies of its type; it is not of a piece, which is precisely what makes it work. Based on a true story, it is not a film that takes an evident "side" or makes moral judgments about the war itself, and so viewers' readings of it will certainly be wide and different. Bacon's steady performance is one of his best, perhaps since Murder in the First. And the film far outpaces its nearest recent comparison, the Woody Harrelson-helmed The Messenger, which somehow seemed more contrived than Taking Chance.

Taking Chance's concentration on the mechanical processes of the return of a war-dead soldier holds a magnifying glass to the heavy tolls that war, patriotism, responsibility, and duty exact on the individual who must bear them. Beyond the glare of star-spangled soldiery and military steel, there are the soft hearts of family and friends, and a nation that continues to ask itself, "Is it really worth it?"

Together, Alone

2009-12-31T04:35:00.000-08:00

This beautifully-written memoir by the multi-talented, Susan Wittig Albert is a wonderful meditation about what it means to live in the world. Her mature sensibility of "place" as more than just the location where you are takes the reader into various understandings of an individual's lived experience of history, contemplation, meditation, writing, silence, spirituality and choice.

She writes about the deliberate choices she made in mid-life, from college professor and administrator to full-time author and gardener. Her concern with the natural environment of where she lives in the Texas hill country--the plants, trees, waterways and fauna--seems to have deepened over time. She has a healthily fearful appreciation of the limits of what the earth can do, and give, and likewise has many insightful thoughts on the matter. The second half of the book was mostly about Albert's experiences of going to a "silence" retreat in a remote corner of southeast Texas (Kenedy County), which allows her to craft some beautiful set pieces on the natural history of the area. I had no idea there were nilgai running the plains of Kenedy County!

The other theme of the book is about understanding one's individuality; for example, her own place in a marriage, in doing work of her own. Albert's perspective on this seems to be influenced by certain Eastern philosophies and religions, but this is a neutral observation as she is not at all preachy or condescending, nor does she posit her own views as somehow superior to others.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for an enjoyable, informative read by an author whose sensibilities I appreciate more and more with every book.

The Writing Class

2009-10-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

The Writing Class (Picador 2009) is an enjoyable entertainment from the unpredictable but very talented Jincy Willett. Although the mystery puzzle seems a bit cliche as a plot device, it really doesn't matter as there are frequent moments of brilliant writing in this sometimes sad, often funny novel. Willett is a perceptive writer, and probably a wholly dedicated teacher.

Willett laces the depths of human feeling and emotion through her characters in the most unexpected ways, especially in the strong lead character, extension professor of creative writing, Amy Gallup. One cannot help but draw similarities between Gallup and Willett, which is perhaps what gives Gallup her human heart and sense of professionalism in its most soldiering sense, replete with duty, honor, anxiety, joy.

Gallup is a one-hit-wonder semi-famous author who is in a decades-long dry spell and teaches writing courses at the local university extension to make ends meet. She is an identifiable character especially because of the private moments of her fear, resilience, love and care we are privileged to witness. She represents a large segment of successful, single American women who lead independent but somewhat lonely lives not always by choice and not always without fear; we don't often see these vulnerable sides portrayed in such original, funny and ultimately winning scenes.

The writing class itself is populated by seemingly misfit types that one might expect at a university extension writing class. When an anonymous interloper starts leaving bizarre notes and signs to the class, Amy is on edge: The Killer, as they call him, could be any one her students! But she soldiers on, and it is in balancing the large cast of supporting characters (the many members of the writing class) where Willett stumbles a bit.

The Writing Class is a wholly original work, but for me the puzzle (and people's subsequent actions/reactions to events unfolding around it) was difficult to buy. I recommend it nonetheless for Willett's incredibly satisfying creation of Amy Gallup. And because it is a valuable book and de facto book of advice about how to become a good writer.

Enduring

2009-09-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Stay More, Arkansas and the magical world of Latha Bourne, one of the most singularly interesting characters in all of American fiction. Donald Harington's Enduring (Toby Press, 2009) is a beautiful, expansive novel and perhaps one of the most engrossing and fascinating works I have ever read. It follows the life of Latha Bourne, her entire life so far, from cradle to the age of something past 100.

Like all of Harington's books, there is no need to read them in any kind of order or sequence as Mr. Harington writes as a storyteller first, and he does it so artfully that every novel exists as its own creation--I myself have read his novels in different orders and have been rewarded in my own experience. There is no earthly way a reader will get lost in this book, other than in its enchantment and delicious plot. In fact this book itself may be a good place to start if it's your first Harington novel. If you read it you'll see why.

Latha Bourne is one of the most beautiful heroines in all of literature, and she is also one of the most independent and enduring. I loved learning about her family, her troubles, her "exile" and sojourn, and triumphant return to Stay More. Along the way, we meet and admire, perhaps fall in love with, a large cast of major and minor players (Every Dill, Doc Swain, the Duckworths, the Whitters, Dawny, Dan, Sharon, Larry, the Ingledews and Chisms and a few other surprises), all of whom--almost by magic--leave an indelible mark on the mind of the reader, the only place where in fact they exist. The settings vary from Stay More, Jasper, Little Rock, and Tennessee. I can't give away much more because I risk spoiling so many beautiful surprises that are best encountered in your reading.

The book is told as a wonderful story, as if around a campfire or an old fashioned gathering, and I couldn't help myself but want to visit this place sometime, to see if I could sit with Latha on her front porch, or near the dogtrot, and have a glass of lemonade and learn about the history of her mythical, inviting, beckoning hamlet.

Mr. Harington is well-known for his playful wordplay and musical language, and his impeccable comedic timing--all of which are present here. But he is not usually given his due as the master of suspense and plot he is... ENDURING is a testament to those talents. I turned the final page with a great deal of satisfaction and also without a clue where the hours went, the hours I spent happily traveling through Latha Bourne's remarkable life.

Defending Angels

2009-06-15T16:53:00.000-07:00

I had been looking forward to reading Mary Stanton's Defending Angels (Berkley Prime Crime, 2008) for quite a while. It had been sitting in my "to be read" pile for some time before I finally got to it this week. The premise was intriguing--a young Savannah attorney, Bree Winston-Beaufort, assumes the law practice of her late uncle. Soon she learns it is no ordinary law, but Celestial Law that she'll be expected to practice, where the clients are dead and must be defended in Celestial Court. Obviously it is a paranormal mystery, and that was fine with me, in fact I was excited to break into that genre a little (although I enjoy Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books). Bree assembles a crack team of support staff to help her defend a dead client (whose murder she also must solve), and is guided throughout by mysterious advice from her former law professor. Sometimes the allusions to all things celestial came off as corny rather than clever: Her sister Angelica breezes into town and stays with Bree; the law practice is in an old mansion near a Murderer's Cemetary on Angelcus Street. You get the idea.

Unfortunately, this book was terribly disappointing and not at all what I expected. Certainly it is up to every author to write the kind of book they want, and many will differ from my view of this book.

Bree does not seem to have any savvy or even curiosity. She approaches almost anything that people tell her with an "Oh well" approach. It was difficult, too, to understand much of Bree's motivation. Too often, Bree feels like she just sort of lets stuff happen to her rather than question or express genuine concern. I did not find her to be a very sympathetic character, which is another of book's several problems. The dialogue and backstory felt like filler, not contributing to substantive plot points. The large supporting cast of characters is odd and underdeveloped.

Originally I thought the concept was interesting and innovative, but the more I read, the more it seemed to closely echo Albert Brooks's 1991 film, Defending Your Life. The central puzzle of this book was rather simple, and thus not very compelling as a mystery.

I personally think Ms. Stanton does not make full use of the Savannah, Georgia setting, in fact what could be the perfect setting for this kind of mystery. I did not get any real sense that place was important, inasmuch as Savannah's mysterious, Gothic details were not an integral part of the story, which seems like a lost opportunity.

Perhaps the order was too tall for a book like this: to create a whole new system of law (basically) and set your character to work in it, a character trained in the codified laws of Georgia. It required quite a bit of world-building that just seemed missing: You've got to have the basic system of law itself, then the new Celestial Law, then the local authorities, usual suspects, etc. In addition there is the paranormal element, which here feels contrived. I won't spoil the actual happenings for those interested in reading it for themselves.

Finally, I was increasingly annoyed by the heavy quotations from Milton and others at the beginning of every chapter. They did not contribute to the story (as do, for example, the herb lore at the beginning of chapters in the China Bayles series by Susan Wittig Albert), and seemed woefully dissonant with the novel itself.

Ms. Stanton (who also writes as Claudia Bishop) deserves credit for trying to branch out in a very different direction than the typical "cozy" mystery. She succeeded in that regard, but the story itself does not.

Murder is Binding

2009-06-05T11:35:00.001-07:00

Lorna Barrett (the nom de plume of writer Lorraine Bartlett) has written an excellent first mystery novel in Murder is Binding (Berkley Prime Crime, 2008). The setting is the small town of Stoneham, New Hampshire, where local developer Bob Kelly has leased downtown property to a series of small bookshop owners (each shop focuses on a particular genre, like cookbooks, mystery, history, etc.). Tricia Miles, the owner of mystery bookshop Haven't Got a Clue, is the lead character in this story and in the series.

When the owner of Tricia's neighboring store, Doris Gleason of The Cookery, turns up dead, Tricia is left to sort out the mess in order to provide peace of mind not only for herself, but for the tranquil Stoneham. Tricia's sister, Angelica breezes into town for what turns out to be more than just a short visit, and ends up helping Tricia solve the murder. What's more, the sheriff is intent to pin the Doris's murder on Tricia. The "cozy" meter registers pretty high here: small, idyllic town (more like paradise... a town full of bookstores!); Tricia lives above her bookshop; Angelica is a gourmet cook; a meddling sheriff; and more.

Lorna Barrett is a mystery writer of great talent. I especially appreciated the way she brought the retail environment of Haven't Got a Clue to life, a venue I suspect that will provide endless opportunities for future plots (Susan Wittig Albert has used China Bayles's herb business in this way for upwards of 17 books!). Barrett is also part of a new generation of cozy writers who have endowed their characters with complicated social relationships. The subplot of familial fractures in the sister-bond between Tricia and Angelica will offer many opportunities to really understand the motivation for these characters in future novels, as it did in Binding. She also touched on the generational problems we all will face in the characters of Mr. Everett, Grace and Doris Gleason (I won't spoil the plot by giving details!). At the end of the book, I was also left wondering if Mr. Everett and Grace have a future together?

There are other themes Ms. Barrett may pursue, such as community development and the arrival of "big box" stores in small towns (a theme also present in Sheila Connolly's One Bad Apple, a cozy set in neighboring Massachusetts). I'm also looking forward to the development of Angelica's relocation to Stoneham, and how that affects her relationship with Tricia (and her business).

My only quarrel is with the character of Sheriff Wendy Adams, whose motivation was somewhat difficult to believe. If Adams is to be Tricia's foil throughout the series, we will need to learn much more about her and her background. I realize this is not a police procedural, but it seems that any sheriff (even in a small town) would want to give the aesthetic of a proper investigation. This is not a major criticism and certainly does not detract from the many enjoyments of the novel. Personally I didn't find any redeeming quality in Adams, and I'd like to see her knocked off (or moved away) soon, but I am only a reader and it is always up to the author to populate the universe they create.

The action toward the last third of the book was downright suspenseful, and the climactic scene (in the bookshop of course) is much more realistic than one typically finds in a cozy mystery. I applaud Ms. Barrett's first outing and look forward to the next installments.

Reading, Reviewing and Not Reviewing

2009-06-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

I've been doing quite a bit of academic reading over the past few months, nothing much worth reviewing here (or nothing I've been inspired to review). I've also finished a few novels such as Dean Koontz's latest, Your Heart Belongs To Me, which I found quite disappointing.

I really don't like writing long reviews of books that I don't like. Reviewing books is not my job, so I am free to review only those books I enjoyed. Perhaps an exception will appear in the future, I don't know; and I perhaps some books deserve a bad review. But there are already plenty of poison pen reviewers. I have no problem mentioning that I didn't like a particular title, such as Mr. Koontz's latest (but I have enjoyed many of his other novels), I am just personally not inspired to write several paragraphs about it.

On the other hand, I read a very wonderful novel over the last two months, too, a long novel by Donald Harington (whose mythical hamlet of Stay More inspired the title of this blog). It was an advance reader's copy of his forthcoming novel, Enduring. I have many things to say about this great book, due in September 2009, but won't post a review until closer to its publication date. Stay tuned for that!

Bloodroot

2009-04-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

In Bloodroot (Berkley, 2001) Susan Wittig Albert has written a novel that probes the depths of generational family secrets through a multi-layered story of kinship bonds and lost loves. China Bayles, Albert's venerable protagonist of (currently) seventeen published novels and many short stories, has left the relatively comfortable confines of her herb business in Pecan Springs, Texas to join her mother, Leatha and Aunt Tullie at Jordan's Crossing, the Coldwell family plantation in the Yazoo Valley of Mississippi. What is supposed to be a short trip to help her mother and Aunt Tullie get the plantation affairs in order turns into a labyrinthine exploration of the generations of families who have lived on the plantation, and the mysteries surrounding their legacies.

Albert is not a writer who shies away from tough issues, and though some classify the China Bayles novels as "cozy," Bloodroot is anything but. In addition to a fever-pitch climactic scene, she tackles such subjects as the repercussions of inherited disease; Native American land rights; several varieties of "forbidden love" and other topics. China's investigation of the present-day affairs of the plantation lead her head-on into the buried secrets of her ancestors' past. The body count was three as far as I could tell, and even though only one takes place in the present, they're all very relevant for China as she seeks to set the affairs of the plantation in order.

Although readers accustomed to the series will miss the presence of regulars like McQuaid and Ruby, Bloodroot works very well as a stand-alone novel. Albert is at the top of her writing game here, magically evoking the deeply atmospheric and beautiful environment of rural Mississippi on the page. Her handling of a number of complex story lines has never been better.

This book brought to mind several interesting perspectives on family secrets and the nature of history. We often tend to view the past as quaint, we romanticize it. But our ancestors faced all sorts of difficult relationships, economic hardships, deaths, etc. Sure the time period and cultural context was different, but they were human experiences all the same. China's realization of this, which is never preachy, reveals a tender strain of love that binds and separates her relatives.

Albert's emphasis on love and remembrance shows us, in some way, why we do the things we do. We don't know the extent of what people have faced in their lives that leads them to be the kinds of people they are. Often such events are purposely buried, but never forgotten. They haunt the present in more ways than we might anticipate.

Over the Bridge

2009-03-31T00:15:00.001-07:00

Muhammad al-Bisatie's creative vision is on full display in this compact narrative, Over the Bridge (American University in Cairo Press, 2006) that blurs the line between reality and dream worlds. It begins with an Egyptian bureaucrat who, in a scheme to fatten his meager take-home pay, exploits his position in the notoriously chaotic government and "invents" on paper a complete small city in Upper Egypt. And as a proper "city," al-Khalidya has govermnet officials who need to be paid. When the checks for al-Khalidya are issued, he cashes them himself.

Yet what begins as a quiet fraud evolves into the protagonist's continuing descent into quasi-madness. He becomes obssessed with his new creation, the village, and builds a model of it. He begins to imagine the lives of its inhabitants, and the structural violence of city life comes into sharper relief the more he imagines. He becomes a kind of godplayer.

He turned out the light in the room and lay down on the bed,the model twinkling atop the desk. Feeling pleased, he rested his head on his bent arm.

El-Bisatie's technique also becomes somewhat blurry as the narrative proceeds, and as a reader we are sometimes confused about the setting or happenings: is it in the bureaucrat's real world or his make-believe, or is it both at the same time? Are his waking actions more viable or real than his dream world actions, and how can we tell them apart? Echoes of Borges and Garcia Marquez give this novel its sense of magic realism and wonder.

While the plot becomes a little less interesting as it goes on, we come to understand the very existence of a village in Upper Egypt doesn't matter very much to those beyond its inhabitants, least of all to the Egyptian bureaucracy. And thus the novel can be read as a kind of disturbing allegory.

Somewhere Towards the End

2009-03-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Diana Athill's beautifully-written new book, Somewhere Towards the End (Norton, 2009) has the unique quality of being a memoir of being very old and happy about it without the maudlin set pieces or generic nostalgia one might expect in a fin de siecle.

The 90-year-old Athill was during her 20th century career a notable British editor who worked with Andre Deutsch in setting up one of Europe's most-respected publishing houses. She worked with such authors as Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Philip Roth and John Updike to name a few. She has also been, occasionally, an author herself of several highly-respected volumes, mostly memoirs but also a book of short stories and one novel (the one, she says, she "squeezed" out).

Somewhere Towards the End is composed to sixteen relatively short chapters, all of which center on Athill's experience of being, as she terms it, "very old." She has had a rich and varied life, not necessarily glamorous but well-lived. Although she has never had (nor wanted) children, it is clear she is a motherly figure in the way she has taken care of people in her life, including her mother and a past lover.

Athill, who frankly discusses topics such as being post-sexual, not being around to see the full growth of a tree she has planted, and so on, relies very little on metaphor to make her points, instead filling the pages with concrete little treasures of experience, such as this passage when she discusses her pleasure in being around young people:

"So if when you are old a beloved child happens to look at you as if he or she thinks (even if mistakenly!) that you are wise and kind: what a blessing!... [it] does make you feel like a better person while it's going on and for an hour or two afterwards... It does seem to me that the young nowadays are often more sophisticated than I used to be, and that many of them... relate to their elders more easily than we did; but I am convinced that one should never, never expect them to want one's company, or make the kind of claims on them that one makes on a friend of one's own age. Enjoy whatever they are generous enough to offer, and leave it at that."

Her spirited championing of youth belies the stereotype of the rebellious youth we think many "old people" maintain, and so in her writing Athill breaks another stereotype that many of us have about old people, namely that they are narrow thinkers, static and unwilling to change and so very much "post life." Among many other points to ponder, the book made me think that it is somewhat ironic, of course, that old people should be so marginalized in Western societies given the universal inevitability of growing old (and dying). In one of the more moving passages of the book, Athill writes:

"What dies is not a life's value, but the worn-out (or damaged) container of the self, together with the self's awareness of itself... That is what is so disconcerting to an onlooker, because unless someone slips away while unconscious, a person who is just about to die is still fully alive and fully her or himself... The difference between being and non-being is both so abrupt and so vast that it remains shocking even though it happens to every living thing that is, was, or ever will be."

Far from being a depressing swan song, Somewhere Towards the End is a wonderfully uplifting and amazing exploration of what it is to be alive and human.

Off the Beaten Bookshelf #2

2009-03-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

Taxi is an interesting patchwork of a novel by the freshly-minted Egyptian journalist-commentator-filmmaker cum writer Khaled al-Khamissi. The fifty-eight chapters that comprise this unusual book represent fifty-eight separate taxi rides taken by the narrator, who is merely the guise of a thinly-veiled al-Khamissi. This work is, in some sense, an ethnographic novel in that it attempts to portray the working lives of Cairo’s 80,000+ taxi drivers through punctuated scenes (chapters) which are a cross-section of that part of society.

Al-Khamissi’s portrayal of the Cairene cabby is definitely sympathetic though not patronizing. While giving due credence to the unique social and political perspectives that taxi drivers maintain by virtue of their near-constant physical presence on the maddening city streets, he does not shy away from revealing some of the wackier encounters with those drivers who spout conspiracy theories, conservatism and tales of faux poverty.

There are moments of knowing and astute political irony in Taxi. An example of the meta-critique of Egyptian government that pervades the book occurs in chapter seven, where the driver laments Egypt’s arcane statutes regarding seatbelts and the myriad laws and tariffs and cost of it all to be borne by the poor taxi driver. At the end of that particular encounter after mentioning how he skirts the law by only installing a decorative rather than functional seat belt to appease the authorities, the driver tells the narrator: “We live a lie and believe it. The government’s only role is to check that we believe the lie, don’t you think?”

Mr. al-Khamissi works hard at being representational of the whole of Egyptian society through the work of the commentary and dialogue offered by his characters. Yet in his desire for a complete cross-section of Cairo taxi culture all of the offstage laboring by the author began to seep into the text. The first twenty-five episodes are interesting and insightful but they eventually began to feel like a gimmick and came perilously close to monotony. If it were a television series it would have been canceled after half a season.

But it is not episodic television, it is is a book, and its annoyances do not detract from its originality as an interesting new voice in pop-Arab fiction. The chapters provide often captivating nuggets of insight into the concerns and ebbs and flows of daily life in one of the world’s largest cities, and most important countries. A helpful glossary in the back is included for readers less familiar with details of the culture.

Jonathan Wright’s English translation of the colloquial Egyptian Arabic is good though a bit uneven. Yet Wright is to be commended for taking a frenetic text and rendering it into something readable and perhaps appealing for an English-speaking audience. We ought to have more popular fiction in translation and not just higher-brow literary novels (Taxi has been on Arabic language bestsellers lists for more than a year).

Asking for Murder

2009-01-20T22:45:00.000-08:00

The third and perhaps final installment in Roberta Isleib's Advice Column mystery series, Asking for Murder (Berkley Prime Crime, 2008), is a very fine testament to the pleasures of familiarity one gains from returning to a solid series. It's always a treat when one of your new favorite authors hits one out of the park. And here, I'm happy to report, Isleib's penned another winner.

Inherent in the etymology of familiarity is the idea of family--and certainly Dr. Rebecca Butterman and the other characters of coastal Connecticut that populate these novels have come to represent a kind of "literary family." Luckily, even readers who enter the series with this book will find uncommon familiarity since Ms. Isleib does an effortless job of evoking characters, settings and ambiance for the uninitiated. But what makes such family/familiarity pleasurable in Asking for Murder?

Isleib has described and immersed us in an environment so real that we only need sketches of description--a busy highway, the hunger pains of a busy professional, a rainy day, the wall decor in a psychologist's office--to bring us into the story. These sketches are the touchstones of another world that help us imagine what it would be like to live/work/play/eat/love there. We jump from touchstone to touchstone, like boulders in a wide river, over the arc of the narrative. And in the context of the novel we are free to imagine the spaces between the rocks upon which the story is built.
We have such a good understanding of our protagonist, Rebecca Butterman that we can begin to anticipate (but not necessarily predict, and this is a fine distinction) how she will react in given circumstances. The art of this fiction, though, is that Rebecca is not merely a pawn run through the maze of a story. She is fundamentally changed by her experience. In Asking for Murder she must learn about a novel type of psychological therapy (sandplay or sand tray therapy, influenced by Carl Jung's emphasis on the subconscious). The reader learns along with Rebecca how this fascinating therapy works. And, Rebecca is always working out her emotional experience through the exercise of writing her advice column.
The supporting cast of characters are integral to the story. Rebecca's psychologist friend, Annabelle Hart, is found badly beaten at the beginning of the story and this is the driving mystery throughout the book: Who would beat Dr. Hart within an inch of her life? As Rebecca attempts to answer that question, she must confront not only Annabelle's family and friends but also her league of patients. No one is free of suspicion. Meanwhile the first (and only) dead body doesn't turn up until more than halfway through. How interesting!
The premise of the story is believable. Because both Dr. Butterman and Dr. Hart are clinical psychologists, we can easily believe that they would frequently be in contact with all manner of "strange" individuals--even ones in their own families. Beyond the premise, there are enough day-to-day happenings in Rebecca's life that we can easily imagine her as we might our friends or ourselves... sleeping, cooking, eating, meeting people, playing with pets, following up on responsibilities, etc.
There are important questions in Rebecca's life that remain unanswered. Since these involve her personal relationships and have little bearing on the solution to the central mystery of this book, the reader is not disappointed that they remain unanswered. Rather, this reader is anxious to find out what happens between Rebecca and Detective Meigs. And what develops between Rebecca and her estranged father? How does her sister, Janice ultimately react? Will Rebecca ever resolve her ambivalent feelings about Mark?

I was more than a little sad to close the final chapter in this book knowing there was not another one waiting. I recently read an online interview with Ms. Isleib wherein she mentioned there were no immediate plans for any more books in this series and that she was at work on a stand-alone novel. It would be a darn shame for mystery lovers if this is Dr. Rebecca Butterman's swan song, but given its fine writing and satisfying resolution, Asking for Murder would not be a disastrous coda to a very confident and well-written mystery series.

Preaching to the Corpse

2008-12-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

The second book in Roberta Isleib's Advice Column Mystery series, Preaching to the Corpse (Berkley Prime Crime, 2007) does everything a second book in a series should do. I always look for four general developments in a series' installments, and if I find them in multiple books, I know I've found an author I like. Rather than summarize the plot (which you can easily look up on Google, just like Rebecca Butterman!), for this review I will outline the general criteria I look for in an ongoing series and then discuss how it relates to Preaching to the Corpse.

A. Development of the main character. In the series, Dr. Rebecca Butterman is the protagonist: a newly-divorced, smart and self-starting psychologist in Guilford, Connecticut. She's in private practice and teaches part-time at Yale, and she moonlights as an advice columnist ("Ask Dr. Aster") for a popular online magazine. Preaching, while it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone, develops Rebecca into a three-dimensional character first introduced in Deadly Advice. She is asked to take over the search committee for an interim pastor at the Shoreline Congregational Church after the mysterious death of its former chair, Lacy Bailes. She juggles her relationship with her sister, Janice, after deciding to track down their estranged father. She's forced to manage her ambivalent feelings for the married Detective Meigs as their relationship takes turns both tender and coy.

Rebecca shows some more vulnerabilities in this book which makes her more "real." She's a person we'd like to know and be neighbors with, to work with or share an office. She also seems to care less and less about writing her advice column. This does have the effect of making at least this reader a little less interested in the advice column, too. The author, Roberta Isleib is a psychologist herself, and she actually dispenses some very useful advice in the narrative passages of the book which careful readers will pick up on (wise ones will employ it!). Butterman is such a vivid character, and it occurred to me while reading that just being a psychologist is enough for Rebecca The series is strong enough to stand without the periodic (albeit less frequent) "Dear Dr. Aster" letters. Whereas in Deadly Advice the column provided motivation and motion for the action, here it feels not exactly ornamental but rather another task on Rebecca's already-full plate.

B. Development of the setting and environment. The small towns of New England, particularly the Connecticut shoreline, come alive in Preaching. It's winter so the roads are icy and snow is falling; the characters nurse colds and ailments; food is warm and appropriate to the season, and so forth. We have church potlucks, Christmas cookies, warmed-up soup and even a tea party. I am particularly drawn to the condominium complex setting: this is a very unique and "cozy" choice for Rebecca's home, and Isleib does a great job of evoking how it must feel to live there and the way that works into her character's life. That this setting is neither quaint nor idyllic but just plain old realistic has turned out to be part of Rebecca's identity and one of the strongest suits of the series.

C. A strong supporting cast with characters old and new. The best series writers have a set of characters that alternately emerge or play more of a background role depending on their role in the plot of the book. Recurring characters are helpful because they make us feel comfortable in the environment, and they tell us much about the protagonist (who they have some sort of relationship with). Preaching's main recurring supporting character is Detective Meigs, who this time is a little more willing (albeit begrudgingly) to suffer Rebecca's amateur sleuthing into the circumstances surrounding Lacy Bailes's death. We also encounter some of the condo residents again, and Rebecca's sister, but they have background role. There are many new characters, too, almost all associated with the Church in some way, but because Isleib ties up this puzzle so well it is doubtful we will (need) to see many of those folks again (but these are small towns, so we may).

D. A widening and deepening complexity. This is probably true of all of the above categories, but I separate it because it is the overall feeling I expect to have when I've finished the novel. I can begin to answer anthropological questions (with greater certainty) like: How do these characters assign meaning to their lives? Why do they make the choices they do? What kinds of food do they eat? How do they interact with people? What sorts of things are important to them, and why? If you can answer questions like those about the characters in a novel, you know the author is keeping up their end of the author-reader contract--and for that matter, so are you!

This very strong second installment is another great read from Isleib. Readers will be particularly pleased with the resolution, I think, as the perp is not someone I expected at all (I really want to say more about this but I can't because I don't want to commit a cardinal sin and drop any hints!!). There are many intriguing plot points about inner-church politics (even one with echoes of New Hampshire's Bishop Gene Robinson controversy). The writing is tight, the plot believable and I recommend this book.

Deadly Advice

2008-12-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

With Deadly Advice (Berkley Prime Crime, 2007), Roberta Isleib has introduced one of the best mystery series to appear since Susan Wittig Albert introduced the China Bayles series in the early 1990s. We can only hope that Isleib's series will run as long as Albert's (currently in its 17th installment).

Deadly Advice introduces Dr. Rebecca Butterman, a Guilford, Connecticut psychologist who sees clients in private practice, moonlights at Yale, and writes a pseudonymous relationship advice column, "Ask Dr. Aster." Newly divorced, Butterman has bought a townhouse condominium in an association full of singles and retirees. It is quite a cozy environment with all the requisite characters (the handyman, the nosy neighbor, the widows, single professionals, etc.), until 34-year-old Madeline Stanton--Dr. Butterman's neighbor--turns up dead in her bathtub of an apparent suicide. Butterman, unnerved by the prospect that such a horrible thing could happen on the other side of the wall shared by their respective units, begins to suspect that Madeline's death may not have been a suicide. Madeline's mother, Isabel, thinks the same thing, and persuades Dr. Butterman to do some amateur sleuthing to uncover the real truth. Madeline may not have been the person her family, or neighbors, thought she was...

Isleib works in the Ask Dr. Aster column angle quite skillfully, so that the subject of the columns mirrors the current preoccupations of Dr. Butterman (the singles dating scene, relationships between children and parents, etc.). We also learn more about Dr. Butterman's life through the various interactions she has with her best friends Angie and Annabelle; her neighbors; her sister, Janice; and various clients and colleagues. There is also an intriguing male police detective, Meigs, who we are sure to meet in subsequent books. Readers will also appreciate Isleib's informative, but never preachy, insights into the human psyche. The many unexpected twists and cliffhangers keep the pages turning quickly, and there are enough red herring suspects for a fiendish fish market.

Deadly Advice unequivocally marks the debut of a major series by an extremely talented and inventive author. Butterman is a real character, confident and vulnerable but likeable. We'll want to get to know her more. Isleib's writing is so smooth is goes down like a fine blended Scotch; the last drop isn't quite enough and it leaves us wanting another round.

Tales of the Bandicoot

2008-12-18T21:52:00.000-08:00

A bandicoot is a maruspial, weasel-like animal native to western Australia. But it has the best name of any animal, ever! This week on the TV show Jeopardy!, the final answer in the Double Jeopardy round was "bandicoot," and they flashed this picture. Then the Final Jeopardy category was "novel inspirations." This got me thinking, "What if you removed one word from the titles of classic novels and replaced it with the word bandicoot?" So here is my random list, an exercise of complete self-indulgence but also great fun. Add your own in the comments section! Enjoy.

Wuthering Bandicoots
The Grapes of Bandicoot
David Bandicoot
Up the Down Bandicoot
The Stepford Bandicoots
Jurassic Bandicoot
Look Homeward, Bandicoot
The Bandicoots of Eastwick
All Quiet on the Western Bandicoot
The Great Bandicoot
The Old Man and the Bandicoot
To Kill a Bandicoot
The Sound and the Bandicoot
Bandicoot, Run
Bandicoots for Algernon
The Adventures of Huckleberry Bandicoot
The Bandicoot in the Rye
Bandicoot-22
The Red Bandicoot of Courage
Tess of the Bandicoots
A Tale of Two Bandicoots
Silas Bandicoot
The Bandicoot of Monte Cristo
Madame Bandicoot
Bandicoot the Obscure
The Prime of Miss Jean Bandicoot
One Hundred Years of Bandicoots
Bandicoot's Complaint
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Bandicoots But Were Afraid to Ask
A Connecticut Bandicoot in King Arthur's Court
Lady Bandicoot's Lover
Bandicoot 451
The Scarlet Bandicoot
The Lion, The Witch and the Bandicoot
The Joy of Bandicoots
The Bandicoot Who Came in from the Cold
The Bandicoot is a Lonely Hunter
One Flew Over the Bandicoot's Nest
The Bandicoot of San Luis Rey
Lord of the Bandicoots

Ding Dong Dead

2008-12-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

Ding Dong Dead is the fourth installment of the "Dolls to Die For" series by author Deb Baker. It's also the first one in the series that I've read. Like many readers, I don't necessarily like to start series from the beginning because I'm impatient, since most reviews cover the current title and it is inevitable that I've been hooked in by the particular storyline that is mentioned in the reviews. Of course, if the book is good, I'll delve backward into the earlier titles.

That will certainly be the case with Deb Baker, who has crafted a quickly-paced mystery that is both suspenseful and interesting. The premise is that a group of doll collectors in Phoenix--led by the protagonist, Gretchen Birch and her mother, Caroline--is gifted the use of a large mansion to use for a museum. To raise money for its opening and upkeep, they decide to produce a stage play called "Ding Dong Dead." Meanwhile, Gretchen's newish boyfriend, Matt--a Phoenix police detective--is called to a murder scene at the local cemetery. Gretchen and her mother become involved in the investigation of that murder and their sleuthing takes them deep into the troubled history of the long-deceased original owners of the mansion that has been granted to their club to establish the "World of Dolls Museum."

Don't be fooled by the doll theme--Baker does a great job of making dolls work for the suspenseful mystery puzzle that drives the action and thus the story, rather than the other way around. This is a serious mystery with a large cast and several complex plot points. The natural eeriness of dolls, their inherent personification that makes people pause, is reflected in the character of Matt. Yet do not think this is a Chucky-esque, "demonic dolls" sort of series. It's not.

The body count is 2, but there are many other potential victims with near-escapes, and you won't know who the killer is (or their motives) until almost the very end. There are also subplots on mental health and homelessness that Baker works into the narrative with a gentle nod but no preaching, and it was surprising and nice to find these in a contemporary mystery--and handled with great respect and expertise. I will be interested to see what happens to Gretchen and Matt in the next installment!

Off the Beaten Bookshelf #1

2008-12-10T20:04:00.000-08:00

Periodically I plan to profile a book or two that you might have missed among the 250,000 others that are published in the United States every year. The books that I will profile are unique and a bit quirky and just generally off the beaten path (or, as I say, off the beaten bookshelf). You might not find these books on your small-town library shelves, but they're in print and available online. I recommend them!

Tonight I'll mention two books. The first was published last year to some good notices and I took a chance on it because it deals with Africa, and I'm a nut for most memoirs or novels of Africa. This one, The Unheard by Josh Swiller (Holt Paperbacks, 2007), is a memoir about Swiller's deafness and how it impacts his tour as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, a republic in southern Africa just north of Zimbabwe. I read it last December and it still sticks with me!

Swiller takes what could be a very maudlin story (a deaf guy in Africa... OK, so what?, you might think) and weaves it into a heartfelt and compelling narrative about the challenges of being an outsider in a very political village in northern Zambia. You'll also enjoy learning about the inner workings of the Peace Corps. What's great about this story is that Swiller's deafness is by all means not the greatest of his challenges in Africa. The simple rudiments of everyday life in a foreign context are brought into sharp relief in a unique and thought-provoking way. And to top it all off, Josh Swiller happens to be an excellent storyteller... I couldn't put the book down. Although there are times of frustration, and I don't necessarily agree with Swiller's level of involvement in some of the political battles of his village (which are nonetheless the kind of ethical issues that anthropologists face all the time), you'll find this is a terrific read that hopefully will give you pause to think during the hectic holiday season.

A completely different book is Trickster in Tweed: The Quest for Quality in Faculty Life by Thomas Frentz, a distinguished professor of communication at the University of Arkansas (Left Coast Press, 2008). I will start by giving the disclaimer that Frentz was my teacher in a non-major course in autoethnographic writing that I took one semester when I had a brain freeze and thought that signing up for a communications class would be a good idea. As it turns out, Frentz's class--like this book--was full of surprises, hilarious anecdotes, and surprising wisdom.

Frentz's short but erudite book blends stories from his personal and professional lives, suggesting that the two are intimately and inextricably connected and can influence one another often in unexpected and unintended ways. He sees himself as a kind of "Trickster," a mischief-making character who uses humor to destroy the stodgy structures of the academy (and of "real life!") without destroying other people. As he admits, this is not always an easy task, for there are many roles one may assume other than the trickster--the shepherd, the sheep, the wolf. Too often, Frentz had been the wolf, always at the ready in a situation to show a little fang. But the Trickster-outlaw is a more comfortable persona and one that fits him well.

In this book, Frentz also expands the horizons of autoethnography by using his personal quest for Quality as an illustration and formative story for the reader. We are with him through a few stories of a challenging upbringing; through various tenure denials and professional triumphs; through his own cancer diagnosis and the loss of his dear spouse. It's some tough emotional material dealt to us in a palatable, understanding hand. No need to be an academic to read or enjoy this book, though, as it is largely jargon-free and has a narrative arc. It is in a sense a memoir that is often (and often at the same time) heartbreaking and hysterically funny. I think most general readers would enjoy it, especially as he draws on the very-popular work by Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance.
--
PARTING WISDOM: "...Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now." - Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

When You Become the Victim

2008-12-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

As I noted in the previous blog post, I love reading mysteries that involve varying levels of crime. But last night, for the first time in my life, I was the victim of a crime.

A few of us had gone to a nearby large city for our company Christmas dinner. My friend parked her vehicle in the (very well-lit and central) parking garage across the street from the restaurant. When we came out to the parking garage four hours later, the passenger side window was shattered and my briefcase-satchel was gone. Purloined. Missing. Snatched. Stolen.

Inside the satchel was my watch, my jump drive, and my checkbook, among a few books (of course) and papers. Not to mention the Eddie Bauer satchel itself, which I loved because it was the perfect size for my things and very durable. I've traveled with it all around the world. Luckily nothing too valuable was in there but nonetheless I was upset that some lowlife felt entitled to my things (and I felt bad for my friend who had to get her window replaced). So I spent all morning today getting a new bank account, stopping payment on the remaining checks in my book, and all of the other measures one takes after being the victim of a crime. I will get a copy of the police report in a few days so I have it in case there are any problems down the road.

I have traveled in more than 40 US states and 25 countries around the world, including places like Egypt and Mexico and Zimbabwe. I've spent time in Los Angeles, Orlando, Little Rock and New York. I spend a lot of time in Chicago. Nothing has ever happened to me. I've always felt safe. Theft happens to other people, not me.

Or so I thought.

Just a week ago one of my best friends had his computer and some cash snatched from his Chicago apartment. It was upsetting, but I thought Hey, it's Chicago. It could happen. But it was very strange. And now, a week later, I had my own similarly upsetting experience.

I don't know if it's the bad economy, or just plain old entitlement and thuggery, but taking something that doesn't belong to you is despicable. And being made the victim is truly a violation of privacy and human decency. One thing for sure is that I certainly do appreciate our law enforcement officers more than ever. Most of them work very hard to make sure criminal activity does not go unpunished, and the officer who responded to our incident made a telling comment. He said: "Why would these thieves go out and get a job, when they can just take things from people who do have a job?" That's so true. And sad.

This is to whoever took my things: I hope you find fulfillment in your life beyond the cowardly acts of a petty thief. If you need money to support yourself and your family, or you need help to free yourself from an addiction to drugs or gambling, there are plenty of organizations that will help you. No one deserves to be victimized because of the choices you make. Thievery is one of the lowest forms of existence. You only have one life to live: Make it count. Do something you can be proud of, and that your mother can be proud of.

The Time of Year for Mysteries

2008-12-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

Mystery novels are great companions for snowy, cold winter nights when the sun goes down early and, it seems, everyone closes shop by 7:30. I love to read mystery novels all year long but I find the winter to be a particularly productive reading time. There are fewer distractions in the winter--such as beautiful warm weather, long days, the beach--and a good mystery keeps the mind active during a season in which the mind would rather hibernate.

Winters in the Arkansas Ozarks are certainly different than they are here at Lake Michigan. Even the slightest hint of snow down south is enough to close everything from schools to shopping malls. In Michigan we proceed through lake effect blizzards and over icy streets and highways because, if we didn't, we'd never go anywhere for about four months of the year! Why am I not in the Ozarks this winter???

Too often, snooty readers think that mysteries are a "low" form of literature, that they are fluff, popcorn, easy to read and write. The truth is that mysteries are just as much literature as anything else you'll pick up to read; what makes them mysteries is that they have a narrative centering around a puzzle (usually a murder but not always) that the reader tries to figure out as they proceed through the book, picking up clues the writer has left along the way. This is the mystery in its most simplistic form, though it hardly encompasses all of the other subplots, characterizations, and every other element of a good story that are present in the best mysteries, and indeed, the best books.

One of my favorite mystery writers is Susan Wittig Albert. You can find a link to her website over in the left column, near the top in the list of writer links. She writes the China Bayles mystery series set in Pecan Springs, Texas. China, an ex-lawyer and amateur sleuth, is the owner of the herb shop in town. Together with an interesting cast of supporting characters, including love interest Mike McQuaid (ex-cop and college professor) and best friend Ruby (a partner in the business), China is at the center of every odd happening in the complicated but delightful Pecan Springs.

What sets the China Bayles series apart, now in its sixteenth installment, are the complicated plot lines and deep character development that we appreciate more and more with every book. Susan Albert is a writer who always delivers an entertaining read because her stories and hooks are innovative without being hackneyed. There is no need to read the series in order (I didn't) but it could enhance one's appreciation of the development of the town and characters over time. The latest three books in the series (Bleeding Hearts, Spanish Dagger and Nightshade) form their own kind of mystery trilogy that really explains a lot about China's family background. These volumes are among Albert's best work. I can hardly wait for the new one, out in April, called Wormwood. If anyone wants to send me a pre-pub galley let me know!

I have some other favorite mystery series. Margaret Maron's series about a North Carolina judge, Deborah Knott, is fantastic and seems to get better with every book. As with Albert, I was very late to the series even though my good friend Susan told me she loved these books for years. I read the latest paperback, Hard Row, and can highly recommend it. I've gone on to read High Country Fall and Winter's Child and more recently, Rituals of the Season, which has our heroine getting married to a pretty good guy.

And there are other authors whose series I like to keep up with: Donna Andrews, Sarah Atwell, M.C. Beaton, Rhys Bowen, James Lee Burke, Charlaine Harris, Joan Hess, Henning Mankell, Robin Paige (pen name for Susan Albert and her husband, Bill), Sara Paretsky, Marcus Sakey and others. I occasionally enjoy Robert B. Parker's Spencer series (his new paperback, Now and Then, is one of the strongest entries in many years). I am a new fan of John Hart, who just won the Edgar Award for his novel, Down River, and who previously wrote a great southern mystery novel, The King of Lies. Hart's books are set, like Maron's, in his native North Carolina.

I'm very much looking forward to reading Roberta Isleib's (relatively) new Advice Column mysteries, of which there are now three. They all center around Dr. Rebecca Butterman, a psychologist and advice columnist. I ordered all of them today and hope to hunker down with them in a week or two, before my Big Trip overseas at the end of December. Better yet, maybe I'll take them with me on the airplane.

Donald Harington in a New Documentary

2008-11-25T08:38:00.000-08:00

Brian Walter is currently making a new documentary film about the great Arkansas writer, Donald Harington. Mr. Harington is perhaps the most inventive and expert storyteller in America.