There are a number of things about In Search of the Rose Notes  that I really liked. For one, I love the way that author Emily Arsenault portrays the friendship between Nora and Charlotte, both as children and later as adults. I love the mystery storyline, the way the children pursue their “investigation,” the difficulty that Nora has dealing with it as an adult. I thought the portrayal of Nora was especially good, the way she has grown away from her childhood home and the difficulties she has going back to it and seeing her classmates as adults. And most of all, I enjoyed the skillful way that Arsenault leads you from one suspect to another, the way that she subtly points the finger at different players in this game, so that it is easy to believe any one of them could have murdered Rose.

When Nora and Charlotte were eleven years old, they were best friends. They made plans for their around-the-world trip when they got out of high school. They did their schoolwork together. They played the elaborate games that kids dream up together. And they spent their afternoons with Rose, Charlotte’s babysitter, until one day, Rose walked out of their lives and out of the world.

Rose’s remains have been discovered, buried in a shallow grave near one of their old childhood haunts. Nora feels compelled to return to her hometown and reconnect with her old friend, Charlotte, and revisit the long-ago days when Nora and Charlotte tried to investigate Rose’s disappearance. They might have pulled their methods from crazy science fiction stories, but they were earnest in their desire to find her, to solve a mystery that left a gaping hole in their lives.

I have to admit that I probably suspected everyone in this novel, including Charlotte and Nora, at one time or another. It’s an excellent look at the way that time changes our perception of events, the way that we never really know our close friends, and the ways that people grow up and grow apart. Charlotte was a bit of a bully, always pushing Nora around, assuming that Nora would give her her way. Nora was a girl with secrets, including one desperate act that got everyone’s attention — something she has never told her husband about. She has trouble seeing her old classmates as anything other than the kids they were, tied up in prom night revelations and childhood grudges. I loved the way these storylines played out.

My copy of In Search of the Rose Notes was a review copy, provided free of charge.

I think this is the first time that reading a book has made me want to watch a tv show.

I’ve read books and wanted to see them made into movies, but I don’t normally watch a lot of television. Still, I might have to make an exception for Justified, the show based around Raylan Givens. Givens appears in Riding the Rap, Pronto and Raylan.

Raylan Givens is a former coal miner, now a U.S. Marshal. You get the distinct impression that Givens is not quickly climbing the career ladder at the Marshal service — he seems a bit too out-spoken and he has a tendency to go off in his own direction, rather than following directions he’s been given. He gets good results, especially since he’s assigned to his old stomping grounds:

“The troopers got a kick out of this marshal, at one time a coal miner from Harlan County but sounded like a lawman, his attitude about his job. This morning, they watched him enter a fugitive felon’s motel room without drawing his gun.”

This book covers a lot of ground. There are marijuana fields, illegal organ sales (and we are not talking about Wurlitzers), high stakes poker games, bank robbery and murder. The smaller stories flow naturally, one into the other, so the book seemed to slide right over what seemed like stopping points. I wasn’t sure where it was all going to end up, and Raylan followed some twisted paths to get there, but it was an interesting trip.

In the early chapters, I found the language a little choppy and difficult to follow — it seemed like the sentences broke off in mid thought and picked up in strange places. It took a little while to get used to it.

“The DEA fella comes down here in his dress shoes and pays for product before he’s given any. Anxious, in a hurry to get her done. Like cuttin’ a fart he believes is gas and messes himself. I’m to take your word my tads cheated this man?”

I am definitely planning to check out the earlier Raylan Givens novels, and if I can find the first season of Justified streaming somewhere, I want to give that a shot, too. Givens is a great character, but there are plenty of other interesting and oddball residents of Harlan County. They should make for a lot of good reading.

My copy of Raylan was a review copy, provided free of charge.

This is apparently my week for finally catching up on a few reviews that have been in the hopper. I really tried to love Love Me. There are a number of genuinely funny bits. But overall, it’s just too much. There’s not enough plot to hold the funny bits together.

“I’ll have the Jesus Fish sandwich,” one diner requests.

“A double-bacon Buddhaburger with cheese,” says another.

“The Muhammad Special,” demands a third. He is served seventy-two french fries cooked in extra-virgin olive oil and four chicken nuggets that he’s not allowed to look at.

Our hero, the smartest and most amazing man in the world, is 243 years old and lives in a castle surrounded by a moat of blood. He is also the loneliest man on Earth, which isn’t surprising, since he even manages to get in a fight with the moon. When I read the blurb, I thought it had the potential to be really interesting, in a John Dies @ the End sort of way, but there’s no plot surrounding the over-the-top parts. Eventually, they stop being funny.

“But enough about me. What about you? Why are you still single?”

I lean back in my chair.

“Me? Well, I’ve spent the last several centuries wandering around and pondering various philosophical queries. I was a hippie for a while. I owned a gym. Helped pioneer Christianity. You know, the usual.”

Fans of over-the-top wackiness may really enjoy this. The Kindle price ($1.99) is certainly reasonable enough to give it a try. If you’re interested and you live in the US, leave me a comment with your email address and I may pass along my copy.

My copy of Love Me was a review copy, provided free of charge.

Contemplating this review, I started off thinking that This Burns My Heart has all the hallmarks of great historical fiction. It takes place in an exotic location (South Korea) in an interesting time period (1960s). It has an ambitious female protagonist, Soo-Ja Choi, who wants to do great things. There is plenty of conflict for Soo-Ja — with her parents, her culture, her husband. The world outside South Korea is changing rapidly, while her culture seems mired in the past, smothering her. But after three attempts to read the book and 175 pages, I just found myself asking, “so what?”

There is no doubt that Korean culture in this time period was repressive and male-dominated. As a woman, Soo-Ja has some freedom, but she is still ruled by her father and eventually by her husband. Her first attempt to escape her father, by applying for diplomatic school, is thwarted. Her second attempt is more successful, at least at first. She decides to marry a rather shiftless young man that she can control, someone she will be able to manipulate to get her own way. Her father agrees to the union, but things do not turn out the way she planned.

So what? She made a mess of her own life, and while I understand that she was trying to find a way to do something better for herself, she picked a pretty lousy way to do it. It has the potential to hurt a lot of people. That’s not shocking; people have been screwing up their lives for centuries. This book just didn’t seem to have anything new to say about it.

Postwar South Korea should be an interesting place, but the book doesn’t really give me its flavor. There are some small details, tidbits about festivals and bean cakes, a walk through the market, but I never felt like I was there. When I compare it to something like The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, where I felt completely immersed in the sights and sounds and smells of  18th century Japan, this could have been South Korea, or it could have been Chinatown.

I really wanted to like this book, but I never felt swept away to another era, the way you do in great historical fiction. There’s nothing wrong with the book: the writing is fine, the story has potential, but it didn’t grab me. Three attempts was enough for me.

My copy of This Burns My Heart was an Advanced Reader’s Edition, provided free of charge.

The Mirage is a fascinating book. It takes a situation we are all familiar with and turns it on its head and inside out. The reader has to re-imagine the world, and every page seems to throw out some new twist to be absorbed. It’s one of those books that leaves you feeling like there are layers to the story you haven’t uncovered, while still being very readable and entertaining.

“11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris and Euphrates Word Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers.”

What if America was the rogue terrorist nation and the Arab states were the world power? What if Osama bin Laden was a war hero and Dick Cheney was a terrorist? What would an Arab superpower look like? And what if none of it was real?

The story is centered around three Homeland Security Agents: Mustafa, still grieving a wife who was lost on 11/9; Amal, the daughter of a prominent politician, working in a country where women are still struggling for basic freedoms; and Samir, a good agent hiding a potentially deadly secret. They are involved in the War on Terror, as it exists in this alternate reality, and they are asked to help investigate a mystery: terrorists and militants have been arrested. All of them spoke of a “mirage.” They claimed that the world around them was an illusion, that in the real world, America was the superpower, Muslims had carried out the terrorist attacks, they have artifacts that back up their story, and it appears that the government may be making them disappear.

Despite the weighty subject matter, this is a very engaging, entertaining story about cops chasing bad guys. The setting and the rules are different, but it’s a familiar story. The characters are interesting and surprising, and I enjoyed seeing the ways that they reacted inside this reality. (Could you have a female police officer in a part of the world where women still veil their faces and aren’t allowed to drive?) There are colorful bad guys, a lot of old-fashioned police-work, following leads and interviewing suspects, and the agents are fully aware that there are things going on behind the scenes — the bad guys aren’t the only dangers. But there are also a lot of layers to this story, and I found myself often feeling like I was missing something, like there was something I hadn’t quite grasped.

A lot of the groundwork in the story is laid out in entries from this reality’s version of Wikipedia, The Library of Alexandria: A User-Edited Reference Source. The entries provide explanations, background, even maps to help you make sense of the story. Those are pretty fun, at least in the beginning, as are the appearances of a lot of well-known names, but by the time Dick Cheney makes an appearance, near the end of the book, it was beginning to feel like overkill. The ending of the story wasn’t completely satisfying, but I still had a good time getting there.

My copy of The Mirage by Matt Ruff was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Someone really should have warned me.

I started reading The Night Strangers at the airport. Flying from Cleveland to Detroit — over Lake Erie. Now, if you’ve read the book, you know what a bad idea that is. The Night Strangers starts with an horrific plane crash into Lake Champlain. Great. Good thing I’m not a nervous flyer.

Chip Linton, the pilot, does everything right and that doesn’t make him feel any better, because the outcome is still tragic. He and his wife, Emily, eventually decide to leave their home in Philadelphia and move to a small town in New Hampshire and try for a fresh start. I got the feeling that was really Emily’s decision — Chip doesn’t seem able to do much deciding and that isn’t at all surprising. He’s carrying a lot of guilt and Emily hopes the quiet and the scenery will help him begin to heal. Instead, they find themselves in the midst of a new nightmare…but by the time they realize what’s happening, it may be too late.

This is a good, scary read, full of twists and misdirection and suspense. It’s clear from the beginning that there is something strange about the house. There is something strange about the community and it’s population of women named after exotic plants and herbs. There is something strange about the greenhouses. You just can’t quite put your finger on what that is.

Their new neighbors are friendly to Chip and Emily, but their reaction to the Linton’s twin daughters, Hallie and Garnet, is spooky. They are fascinated, overly attentive, almost obsessed with the girls.

And let’s face it, Chip is not getting settled in. His tragedy has followed him in a very literal way. He sees his victims; he thought they were just hallucinations at first, but there’s more to it than that.

“When you turn back to Ashley, she is gone. Reflexively you pat the carpet where she was sitting, and it is damp with lake water. All that remains is the paper towel, which you pick up. It, too is wet, and it has the rank odor of jet fuel.”

In addition to Chip’s visitations and Emily’s sometimes bizarre interactions with the women in town, there is the house. Who wouldn’t be unsettled if they found weapons hidden in odd corners throughout the house? And the door in the basement, secured with 39 carriage bolts. Is it a coincidence that 39 is the exact number of fatalities from Flight 1611? And why are the girls so drawn to the abandoned greenhouse?

Plot twists and turns and lots of scary moments make this a real pleasure for horror and suspense fans. The ending will have you guessing — and even I could not have predicted how things would turn out. It’s a great ride, but take my advice: Don’t read it at the airport.

My copy of The Night Strangers came from my personal library.

In Reluctant Muse, Carrie takes a job at Betta Burger to pay her college expenses. Mr. Singleton, the boss, isn’t too bad, but his nephew, Steve, is a real jerk. Luckily, Carrie has the blonde, handsome Jamie to show her the ropes — literally. Their friendship, after Carrie’s initial reluctance, becomes something much, much more.

Carrie has a lot of insecurities about her appearance and about her fantasy life. Her fantasy man pins her down and has his way with her, and she feels a little bad about that, like it’s not the sort of fantasy she’s supposed to have. It takes her a while to accept that Jamie is serious about his advances, but he is a persistent young man.

“Jamie is feeling a host of emotions, too. Carrie is a sensitive, shy girl and he does not want to blow his chances with her by stepping over the line, but oh, does she bring out the dominant in him. He wants to take care of her, nurture her and punish her sweet, sweet behind.”

Jamie wants to paint her…and he wants to tie her up! That fits in perfectly with Carrie’s plans. Of course there will be some obstacles in their path, but eventually, you know these two kids will work things out.

Reluctant Muse is 75 pages of naughty but still romantic sex — sweet, but with a bit of an edge. My copy was a review copy, provided free of charge.

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France is proof that a book can be both heart-breaking and uplifting. It is the the story of the woman behind the French resistance to the Nazis, women who worked in secret, died in secret, and were mostly unheralded for their work. But most importantly, it is the story of their friendship, their camaraderie, and how it quite literally saved their lives.

The story really has 3 parts: the resistance, the camps and the aftermath. It begins in June, 1940, with the German takeover of Paris. It was fairly quiet, the fighting already over and the Nazis simply coming in to take possession of the city. The political climate was charged with controversy — Marshal Petain’s Vichy government more concerned with collaboration and pandering than liberation, a vigorous Communist faction that was strongly opposed to collaboration, and the majority of the French people caught between.

This isn’t history that I’m terribly familiar with, only in a very general way, and the stories and anecdotes about life under occupation were interesting and enlightening. The Germans lived like princes in the best houses, with the best food, while the Parisians stood in ration lines and stuffed their coats with newspaper to keep warm. That’s an excellent way to stir up resentment and resistance, and the existing Communist party — already used to protesting and keeping a low profile — gave it structure.

These women were involved in all sorts of resistance activities. They acted as couriers, sometimes leaving small children at home while they bicycled across the country, carrying money, weapons and anti-German tracts and newsletters. The punishments, if they were caught, could be severe, but at least in the beginning, no one suspected that pretty young women could be political activists and they took advantage of that. They dressed up, they flirted with the German officers, and they flew below the radar for a very long time.

Their bravery was born in part of naivete. They simply could not fathom that the Germans would imprison or execute them. They expected to be arrested, to be interrogated, to be held for short periods of time, but they seemed certain that no one would imprison a mother with young children — who would do such a thing? So while I commend their bravery, I sometimes cringed at their foolishness.

Eventually, they were rounded up, a result of intensive efforts by the German police and the French collaborators. They made their way through a series of more and more serious incarcerations and increasingly dismal conditions, before being shipped off to Poland, to the fort at Romainville, and eventually to Auschwitz. they would eventually become known as Le Convoi des 31,000. There were 230 women from all walks of life: students, chemists, writers and housewives; schoolgirls, an opera singer, a dentist. Only 49 would survive.

What you see most clearly is that this was not survival of the fittest; this was survival of the most cohesive. their friendship literally saved their lives. In Auschwitz, the weakest were pulled out of lines and executed. The women of Le Convoi protected their wick and injured. They pooled their food. The risked their lives to keep the others safe. They conspired to steal food and medication, at great personal risk. They found hiding places for the injured, to keep them out of the sight of the Nazis. They kept each other’s spirits high and provided what comfort they could, in conditions most people cannot imagine.

They came home to a mixed welcome, not unlike our returning Vietnam vets, years later. The country had changed and they had changed. People did not really want to hear about their suffering — they wanted to forget and get on with their lives. And when Charles de Gaulle and the French government celebrated the heroes of the resistance, the women were mostly forgotten…but they never forgot each other.

I can’t easily express how moved I was by this book. Women form friendships differently than men, I think, and we nurture them in different ways. Quite simply, without their friends, these women would have died. They lived because they had friends to rely on, and they placed tremendous importance on the group surviving to tell their story. Selfishness and looking out for number one would have meant certain death.

Countless times throughout the book, the women sing to lift their spirits and to show their resistance. The Marsellaise, the French national anthem, is sung so many times in the book that I caught myself humming it as I read. So I thought I would end this with the perfect example of the power of this song, a scene from the 1942 film, Casablanca.

My copy of A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge

When I heard the news of Robert B. Parker’s passing, I was heartbroken. I have been reading his Spenser novels for ages and the thought there would be no more of them — too much to contemplate. Sixkill is the 39th Spenser novel and, according to the book jacket, “the last Spenser novel Parker completed.” Now, that doesn’t sound very…final. It sounds like there might be some unfinished stuff out there. I am not completely opposed to another author carrying the mantle, as long as we don’t lose any of the snappy dialogue and hooligan philosophy of the original.

In Sixkill, Spenser is older and wiser and without his usual back-up, Hawk, who is off in Central Asia. We start off with a visit from our old friend, Martin Quirk, who wants Spenser to look into a murder. A particularly nasty piece of work named Jumbo Nelson is shooting a movie in Boston and has apparently murdered a young woman he hooked up with. At least, she died in his bed, the coroner isn’t quite sure of what, and he claims to have been barely sober enough to notice she was dead when he came back from taking a leak. Like I said, nasty fella. As much as everyone wants to put him away, Quirk isn’t sure, and Spenser trusts Quirk’s instincts.

The novel introduces a new character that I think would have had some staying power. Zebulon Sixkill (and what an awesome name that is!) is a Native American college drop-out, former college football star, now a bodyguard for Jumbo Nelson. He’s got a drinking problem (not the sort of thing that is helped by hanging out with celebrities) and he ends up working with Spenser. Actually, what Spenser does is more like mentoring — he helps the kid get sober, gets him back in shape, gets him a job at the gym. Gets him back to a place where he might be able to make something of his life. He’s an interesting young man and, like a lot of other tough guys from previous Spenser novels, could definitely become a recurring character. Sadly, we won’t get to read what Parker might have had in mind.

Sixkill is one of the better Spenser novels I’ve read recently. There were a couple of books where I thought it might be time for Spenser and Susan to retire to a little cabin in the Catskills or something, but there is plenty of snappy dialogue, cool new characters, and an engaging mystery to solve. It was a real pleasure to read, which makes the fact that it is the one that was completely Parker’s all the more melancholy. This is an author and a series that I will truly miss, but I am glad that he goes out on such a high note.

My copy of Sixkill came from my personal library.

This was a fun read. When it comes to the backside of Hollywood, you have to admit that Cheryl Crane, daughter of screen legend Lana Turner, really knows her stuff. The Bad Always Die Twice is a Hollywood murder mystery with all of the fun details that only an insider would know.

Nikki Harper is a Hollywood real estate agent, selling those megamillion dollar mansions in the hills with her partner, Jessica Martin. They are young, pretty, celebrity-savvy girls:

“One of Jessica’s most endearing qualities was that she wasn’t any more impressed by celebrities than Nikki was. Their only difference was that Nikki had grown up with them and Jessica slept with them. The combination of their personalities made them a great team at work.”

Sort of sets the tone for their interaction. Jessica is the pretty, flashy girl who flirts with the gentlemen clients and reels them in. Nikki is less flashy, with a more understated style, and the Hollywood chops to make the deals. And when Jessica is accused of murder, Nikki puts those Tinseltown connections to work.

The real star of the story is Victoria Bordeaux. She is stunningly beautiful, incredibly poised, an old-school screen goddess in the style of, well, Lana Turner. She is also Nikki’s mother. Nikki’s relationship with her mother and her mother’s particular flair for dealing with people are the best parts of the book. Nikki is a great character, with a complicated love life, interesting friends and the sort of foibles that will make her a fun read. Still, Victoria is what will keep me coming back — you can just tell that she’s going to be very involved in whatever Nikki does…and that’s not a bad thing at all.

I was a little wary taking this on — sometimes you suspect that a writer got their contract based more on a celebrity pedigree than their writing talent — but it was a real pleasure. I wouldn’t put Nikki up there with my new detective lady-love, Keye Street, but I would certainly enjoy picking up the next Nikki Harper mystery.

My copy of The Bad Always Die Twice was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.