Synopsis:
A lonely young man sells his soul to the devil so that he will grow tall, but it’s his troubled sister who falls under the sway of the occult.
Review:
The Killing Doll is an odd little book, with more horror elements than can usually be found in a Ruth Rendell crime novel. I’m used to the pettiness of her characters, but usually there are one or two who engage me. I really didn’t connect to any of these people, and was glad when the book was over.
Synopsis:
A love affair turns murderous during a voyage among desolate Arctic islands.
Review:
No Night Is Too Long was not my favorite Barbara Vine. While I found the central murder to be wonderfully original, I didn’t care for the characters and felt like some of the plot was a bit too contrived. The book appears to be out of print, so someone will get a lucky treat at my local thrift store this week!
Synopsis:
Convinced her sister murdered their stepfather, a young woman unravels when her relationship ends while her sister’s flourishes, and she wonders whether she should finally tell.
Review:
The Water’s Lovely is one of Ruth Rendell’s quieter books, with a fineness to it despite the emotional (and sometimes physical) violence that lurks in most of the relationships. While most of the characters have deep emotional flaws, some of them are appealingly good, even brave and admirable, and that’s what kept me really engaged in this book. It would be a good introduction to Ruth Rendell, one of Britain’s finest living writers.
Synopsis:
An MP arranges a kinky, consensual abduction for his mistress, but when a chance car accident takes her life, he chooses to keep silent, with devastating results.
Review:
Everything is connected–except when it isn’t. In The Birthday Present, Barbara Vine follows a scandal-that-wasn’t over the course of four years to show how a secret poisons everyone it touches, and how unrelated events can become part of a story because they appear to fit.
The story is told mostly by Rob, brother-in-law to Ivor Tesham, a rising luminary in British politics with a penchant for trashy women. He decides to gift his latest lover, one Hebe Furnal, with a special birthday present. He’ll have her abducted off the street and taken to him, in an elaborate rape fantasy that was entirely consensual. He hired an actor to do the abduction, and his mechanic to drive the van, and got Rob and his wife Iris–Ivor’s sister–to allow him the use of their home for the actual consummation. On the way, the van is hit by another car, and Hebe and the actor are killed. The mechanic is gravely injured and left with no memory of the accident. The police assume that Hebe was picked up by mistake, and Ivor says nothing to tell them that the actor and the mechanic were hired by him. Life goes on… but Hebe’s death has echoes that just won’t quit.
Interspersed in Rob’s account are diary entries by Jane Atherton, Hebe’s best friend and alibi to Hebe’s husband the night of the birthday present. She becomes obsessed with both Ivor Tesham and Hebe’s husband, and gradually grows unhinged.
Both stories are riveting and suspenseful despite the lack of a mystery. I listened to this on audiobook and highly recommend the two narrators, who gave splendid performances.
Synopsis:
Fresh out of jail and trying to go straight, ex-bodyguard Jimmy Boone’s curiosity is piqued by a mauled pit bull, leading him to a cache of counterfeit money, a pissed-off stripper, and a conman looking to retire at any cost.
Review:
I wasn’t sure that I would like This Wicked World, being that I typically prefer British crime novels written by women to American crime novels of any kind. It did not take long for me to get totally sucked into the book, however, mainly because Richard Lange tells one helluva story.
Formerly a bodyguard to the rich and famous, Jimmy Boone is working as a bartender and a building superintendent while on parole after beating a client half to death. He’s trying to keep his nose clean, but when he helps the bouncer at his bar try to get answers for the grandfather of a dead young Mexican man, Boone winds up bringing home a badly injured pit bull whose teeth have all been forcibly extracted. He decides to do a little digging on his own and soon he’s in one wicked world of trouble.
You can’t help but feel sympathy for a guy who rescues a dog that’s been so mistreated. Boone really wants to tread the straight and narrow, in sharp contrast with most of the rest of the characters. It’s a sad story, and a dark story, but it’s not a story that glamorizes the criminal life at all. I really appreciated that Lange was up to something deeper than just guns and goons. I wish Superfast Husband had more time for books because I know he’d really like this one.
Synopsis:
When wannabe journalist Dixie Nguyen stumbles into the story of a lifetime in the boys’ locker room, he risks everything, including his place on the football team, to bring down an albino drug lord–who happens to be another high school student.
Review:
Sophomore Undercover is written in a breezy, comic style that will definitely appeal to readers, especially boys. I wasn’t so into it myself, because I found the plot really frustrating from the get-go. Dixie makes some assumptions that send him down the wrong road, and because it was so obvious to me that they were the wrong ones it made me not enjoy the story. I really don’t enjoy comedy based on misunderstandings, because I just want to shake the people involved and tell them to pay attention. However, if you are not like me and are more forgiving towards fictional people, then you may like this book if you enjoyed I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle.
Synopsis:
A host of missing children prompts an investigation led by Adjunct Pointsman Rathe, in a world reminiscent of 17th Century Europe where astrology is the governing religion and worldview.
Review:
Point of Hopes was a refreshing change of pace from the fantasy I’ve been reading lately. Instead of an epic tale spanning the whole of the human experience in the midst of catastrophic upheaval, Point of Hopes is a simple police procedural set among the ordinary middle class. Within the genre, it’s a fairly small story, and that’s what I liked about it.
Rathe is an Adjunct Pointsman, or a sort-of policeman assigned to the Point of Hopes, and a spate of disappearances of children who seem to have very little in common has him stymied. As his investigation unfolds, co-authors Scott and Barnett reveal a workaday world of people forging their lives in ordinary times. Nobody has a special destiny; there are no urchins who could be king; there is no war. The magic here is that everyone uses astrology, and the stars do seem to have authority over them, though there is still plenty of free will to go around. This fantastical element is gradually introduced and treated almost as though it were a true historical reconstruction. It’s just the way things were back then, nothing special.
Point of Hopes is out of print but it looks like there are a lot of used copies available on Amazon. Though set in a totally different time period, the book evoked for me the same things that steampunk does. Maybe call it mercantilepunk?
Synopsis:
After the suicide of his troubled daughter, a British journalist heads out to recuperate in Mexico and flee the ghosts that still linger even after he was acquitted of the murder of his wife.
Review:
Everything You Know is a much better book than its title would indicate. Author Zoe Heller is well-known for Notes on a Scandal, which became a great movie with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. Everything You Know lacks that book’s tawdrily catchy premise, but goes much deeper into its exploration of human nature.
Willy once stood trial for the murder of his wife Oona. Though not found guilty, his daughters Sophie and Sadie severed all ties with him. Sadie has recently committed suicide and sent Willy her diary, which he is reading while convalescing in Puerto Vallarta after a heart attack. Willy’s career has flourished, but his personal life has not, and he’s increasingly unable to account for the creeping despair that inflects his every interaction.
This is a character portrait of a man who has no redeeming qualities, no charm or charisma, and no passions, yet Heller makes Willy utterly fascinating in his quest to figure out why he feels so guilty when he’s convinced he’s done nothing wrong. Heller is a fantastic writer and I look forward to her next effort.
Synopsis:
A bereft woman’s mother’s desperate act triggers a violent spiral affecting a whole community.
Review:
The Tree of Hands was lesser Ruth Rendell. It dates back to 1986 and she’s really grown as a writer since then. It definitely has her trademark nuanced characterizations but the story wasn’t as gripping as later works like The Rottweiler have been.
Synopsis:
When a detective goes undercover to impersonate a murder victim sharing her face, she finds the family she’s always dreamed of and risks blowing everything.
Review:
I was a big fan of Tana French’s In the Woods, so I leapt at the chance to read The Likeness, her followup featuring several of the same characters.
Former detective Cassie Maddox is stuck in Domestic Violence after being forced off the Murder squad due to her role in the catastrophe outlined within In the Woods. A routine murder investigation turns very, very weird when it turns out that the victim, Lexie Madison, looks exactly like Cassie, and is using an identity created by Cassie back when she was working as an undercover agent. Her former boss in the undercover unit decides to send Cassie back to the home she shared with four housemates and see if she can ferret out the murderer by pretending to be Lexie.
The roommates, who think that Lexie was in a coma, are Bright Young Things, living a hermetically sealed, intellectually and aesthetically stimulating life inside Daniel’s family’s estate home. They’re the kind of glittering coterie that has appeared in books like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Danny Boyle’s excellent film Shallow Grave. Cassie is instantly seduced–both by the closeness she finds among the housemates, and by Lexie herself, whose bright exterior masked a rabbit’s warren of dark secrets.
The Likeness was a riveting read. I found myself stealing every available minute for it–dishes piling up, bathroom growing fuzzier by the minute, with Superfast Toddler mercifully cooperating by giving me some very long naps. I was as much in suspense over Cassie’s impending breakdown as I was with the identity of the murderer. French previously limned Cassie’s friendship with former partner Rob in such heartrending detail that I felt like their chaos was happening to me. Here, she builds a web of friendship that conjures up what my friend Megan calls pre-nostalgia–where you anticipate feeling nostalgic while something is unfolding, where the ache is part of the pleasure. More than just bittersweet, pre-nostalgia is self-inflicted yet inevitable. Just like Lexie’s death.
Oh, and The Likeness features an outstandingly poignant last paragraph that will mean nothing unless you read the whole book first. Don’t spoil it for yourself!
