Collected Miscellany

***Sorry about the radio silence – for those few readers left – I’ve been very distracted of late. Here is a catch-up In the Mail to fill the space until I can get back in the groove.***

Innocent as Sin by Elizabeth Lowell

Book Description

Kayla Shaw is a private banker in Arizona—smart and capable but underpaid and underappreciated. Rand McCree is a haunted man who paints landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, burning with a need for answers about the terrible event that shattered his world. They are two strangers with nothing in common . . . until their lives entwine—and explode.

On what at first appears to be an ordinary day, everything changes for Kayla, as she barely escapes a kidnapping attempt and finds herself accused of a shocking crime: the illegal laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars. Damned by lies and false “evidence,” she is trapped with no place to run.

After five agonizing years, Rand has finally been offered what he desires the most: the name of his twin brother’s murderer. Hungry for vengeance, he accepts a job with St. Kilda Consulting that will place him in the killer’s orbit . . . and tantalizingly close to Kayla Shaw. The cold-blooded international criminal responsible for Rand’s brother’s death has targeted Kayla as his next victim. Since she can’t turn to the police, who believe she’s guilty as sin, she must place her life in the hands of the shadowy, secretive man who has come out of nowhere to protect her.

Suspicious of each other, needing each other, they are two against the world—with unknown enemies on all sides and even the government itself suspect—as the violence of the past erupts in the present. And now innocence alone will not be enough to keep Kayla Shaw alive. . . .

Love Kills by Edna Buchanan

Booklist

Miami crime reporter Britt Montero, on the mend emotionally after losing her fiance in a shootout (The Ice Maiden, 2002), decides work is the best medicine. Her first case is actually an old one. The body of Nathan York is excavated by construction workers. Years earlier York was the subject of Britt’s first big story. He was a militant advocate for men’s rights in custody cases and would snatch children from their mothers and deliver them to their estranged fathers. Britt is also trying to track down Marsh Holt, the Honeymoon Killer. A hunky thirtysomething lothario operating with aliases in various states, Holt married a string of women across the country who all suffered fatal “accidents” while on their honeymoons. The ninth Montero mystery reflects Buchanan’s steady growth as a novelist. Montero becomes a more textured, deeper character with each entry in the series, and the personal revelations here are as riveting as the crimes being investigated.

My Dreams Out in the Street by Kim Addonizio

Publishers Weekly

Harsh realism mixes with poetic despair as the characters in Addonizio’s second novel try to climb out of the hells of their own making. Rita Louise Jackson is homeless at 24, trying to get off heroin and find her husband, Jimmy D’Angelo, who left her after a fight. Rita wanders through contemporary San Francisco, sometimes drunk, sometimes strung out, turning tricks or panhandling when she needs money, all the while haunted by memories of her murdered mother and of her time with Jimmy. As she contemplates ways to turn her life around, an unwelcome opportunity arises when she sees a body being taken out of a seedy hotel. The murderer spots her and promises to come after her. The ensuing fear brings private investigator Gary Shepard into her life. Jimmy, meanwhile, is finding something like success as a waiter at a swanky restaurant. Even during the harshest times, the beauty of Addonizio’s language binds the reader to a story that unfolds in the shadows of Denis Johnson’s and Charles Bukowski’s works. Addonizio (Little Beauties, and several poetry volumes, including What Is This Thing Called Love) might not bring much new to the hobo/vagabond-lit. bonfire, but her characters’ desperate lives are rendered with striking delicacy.

Megan Abbott has an interesting background. She earned a Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University and she is the author of a non-fiction study of hardboiled or noir fiction and movies that grew out of her dissertation. She has taught literature, writing and film at New York University and the State University of New York at Oswego.

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” goes the old saw, but Abbott decided she could do more than study and teach, she could write. Her first work of fiction, Die A Little, was nominated for a 2006 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America and a 2006 Barry Award and Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

When Abbott’s second novel, The Song Is You, was released it had garnered a spot on the TBR pile but, like so many other worthy books, I never did get to it. Now that her third novel, Queenpin, has just been released, I figured this would be a good time to finally read it.

In The Song Is You Abbott used the real life disappearance of Jean Spangler as a jumping off point for her own fictional account. The novel

tells the story of Gil “Hop” Hopkins, a smooth-talking Hollywood publicist whose career, despite a complicated personal life, is on the rise. It is 1951, two years after Jean Spangler’s disappearance and Hop finds himself unwillingly drawn into the still-unsolved mystery by a friend of Jean’s who blames Hop for concealing details about Jean’s whereabouts the night she vanished. Driven by guilt and fears of blackmail, Hop delves into the case himself, feverishly trying to stay one step ahead of an intrepid female reporter also chasing the story. Hop thought he’d seen it all, but what he uncovers both tantalizes and horrifies him as he plunges deeper and deeper into Hollywood’s substratum in his attempt to uncover the truth.

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I just finished reading Colin Woodard’s The Republic of Pirates and I have to say, being a novice in the area of pirate history, that I was impressed by Woodard’s work. He packs in a lot of information with easy prose.

Here is a brief synopsis from the book’s website:

In the early eighteenth century a number of the great pirate captains, including Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and “Black Sam” Bellamy, joined forces. This infamous “Flying Gang” was more than simply a thieving band of brothers. Many of its members had come to piracy as a revolt against conditions in the merchant fleet and in the cities and plantations in the Old and New Worlds.

Inspired by notions of self-government, they established a crude but distinctive form of democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own one of freedom in which indentured servants were released and leaders chosen or deposed by a vote.

They were ultimately overcome by their arch-nemesis, Captain Woodes Rogers – a merchant fleet owner and former privateer – and the brief though glorious moment of the Republic of Pirates came to an end.

For the most part, this is a very fast read – although I have to say that the book bogged down a bit with the inclusion in the story of every ship taken by the pirates. Woodard may have been able to shorten the book a bit by only including stories of ships taken that affected the outcome of the “war.”

Woodard’s writes about a time that has long been shrouded in mystery and short on facts. He ably explains some misunderstandings many have of pirates. For instance, he explains that pirates and privateers are very different – privateers are commissioned by a sovereign power and the profits are not split as equally as they are with pirates.

Woodard may be a little light on his portraits of the pirates. He mostly portrays the pirates as a group of men out to make a profit without hurting anyone. Although I am a novice in this area of history, I have read enough to know that the pirates were not a bunch of Boy Scouts – they roughed up more people than Woodard lets on.

In all, the book is a fascinating look at a time period that has come and gone – “the Golden Age of Piracy.”

I just finished reading Colin Woodard’s The Republic of Pirates and I have to say, being a novice in the area of pirate history, that I was impressed by Woodard’s work. He packs in a lot of information with easy prose.

Here is a brief synopsis from the book’s website:

In the early eighteenth century a number of the great pirate captains, including Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and “Black Sam” Bellamy, joined forces. This infamous “Flying Gang” was more than simply a thieving band of brothers. Many of its members had come to piracy as a revolt against conditions in the merchant fleet and in the cities and plantations in the Old and New Worlds.

Inspired by notions of self-government, they established a crude but distinctive form of democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own one of freedom in which indentured servants were released and leaders chosen or deposed by a vote.

They were ultimately overcome by their arch-nemesis, Captain Woodes Rogers – a merchant fleet owner and former privateer – and the brief though glorious moment of the Republic of Pirates came to an end.

For the most part, this is a very fast read – although I have to say that the book bogged down a bit with the inclusion in the story of every ship taken by the pirates. Woodard may have been able to shorten the book a bit by only including stories of ships taken that affected the outcome of the “war.”

Woodard’s writes about a time that has long been shrouded in mystery and short on facts. He ably explains some misunderstandings many have of pirates. For instance, he explains that pirates and privateers are very different – privateers are commissioned by a sovereign power and the profits are not split as equally as they are with pirates.

Woodard may be a little light on his portraits of the pirates. He mostly portrays the pirates as a group of men out to make a profit without hurting anyone. Although I am a novice in this area of history, I have read enough to know that the pirates were not a bunch of Boy Scouts – they roughed up more people than Woodard lets on.

In all, the book is a fascinating look at a time period that has come and gone – “the Golden Age of Piracy.”

In discussing the soon to be released Volk’s Game by Brent Ghelfi I wanted to take a slightly different approach (as if I had a standard approach around here). I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast different reviews; a sort of “dueling book reviews” (see here and here for movie review examples of this format).

Let’s allow the publisher start things off. Here is the publicity book description:

A firefight reverberates through Moscow’s dark, rain-soaked streets; shattered glass and screams echo in the air. In the lawless ways of Russia’s capital city, the gunmen melt away into the night. Two men are dead, the targets not what they seem. A shadowy figure lopes along the riverbank outside the Kremlin walls. Known to all as Volk, a battle-hardened veteran of Russia’s brutal war in Chechnya, he prowls Moscow’s grim alleyways, a knife concealed in his prosthetic foot at all times. As both a major player in the black market and a covert agent for the Russian military, Volk serves two masters: Maxim, a psychotic Azeri mafia kingpin with hordes of loyal informers; and a man known only as the General, to whom Volk is mysteriously indebted.

By his side is Valya, an exotic beauty charged with protecting her lover from his unsavory associates. Valya is the most dangerous weapon in Volks arsenal. Together they are commissioned to steal a long-lost da Vinci painting called Leda and the Swan from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. Ledas ethereal radiance is undeniably captivating and incalculably dangerous. Volk must choose which powerful man he will betray in order to escape with the painting and with his life. With the high-octane rush and vivid intensity of a feature film, Volks Game delivers at every turn, announcing Alexei Volkovoy as the boldest hero of a new generation.

Next up, Publishers Weekly:

Former attorney Ghelfi’s impressive debut introduces a compelling antihero, Alekei “Volk” Volkovoy. A brutal killer maimed in Russia’s war against Chechnya, Volk leads two lives—one as a powerful gangster with a hand in virtually all underworld rackets, the other as a covert military operative. When Volk gets the chance to steal a previously unknown Da Vinci painting, Leda and the Swan, which has been concealed beneath another painting in a St. Petersburg museum, Volk enlists the aid of Valya, a beautiful assassin, in plotting the theft. After an ostensible ally sabotages the operation, Volk seeks vengeance. The twists and turns accumulate at an almost dizzying pace, building to a satisfactory resolution. Frederick Forysth fans will appreciate the crisp writing. This thriller could mark the start of a successful long-running series.

Last but not least, Kirkus Reviews:

In this testosterone rampage, a super-studly master thief pulls off gonzo caper in post-Soviet Russia. Having absorbed every cliche of Bond-knockoff tale-telling-the outsize villains, the world-weary cynicism, the sexy girl-debut novelist Ghelfi breathlessly parlays them all again. The girl is comely Valya, whom protagonist Volk (the name means “wolf”) meets cute as a “mud-masked Chechen fighter dwarfed by the smoking Kalashnikov she carried.” Volk is a “Special Forces wunderkind” who loses a leg in combat after weathering five years of the “assault of rapists, skin-fillet artists, flesh-burning pyromaniacs, and other assorted torturers.” The former foes become squeezes and then a sort of Hart-to-Hart on amphetamines: boy/girl desperadoes. Guns for hire, they’re enlisted by rival Very Bad Guys.

Their mission impossible is to break into the Hermitage, St. Petersburg’s ultra-secure treasure trove of big-name artworks. Under a canvas by the obscure Pierre Mignard, a stunner has been discovered-one of the 15 paintings actually done by Leonardo, the only artist-since the canonization of Dan Brown-of whom popular entertainment knows the existence. Volk/Valya have to nab it. Moonlighting from his day job of manufacturing porno, Volk constructs a head-spinningly elaborate game plan, requiring Valya’s “renting an ancient four-seat Moscvitch, two Lambretta scooters, and a skiff, buying secondhand clothes and scuba gear, and arranging drop points.” Predictable betrayals, sex scenes and violence ensue. Lurid, if not original.

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My once fierce determination not to read book series out of order now lays broken and battered on the side of the road. Given the limited time I have and the seemingly never ending stream of books in my TBR pile something has to give. I know there are those who would argue that you can’t really review a novel without a good understanding of the authors previous work and his general career arc. Perhaps this is really aimed at literary criticism and not the review of genre fiction, nevertheless I always have a pang of guilt reading works that are part of series, or that have a reoccurring character, without having read them in order. It leaves me with the feeling that I am missing something; that I am not getting a full appreciation of the sweep of the plot and the character development. I am sure these books are designed to work at some level as a stand along work, but there is a built in advantage to having read the previous works.

All of this is a lament by way of introducing the fact that I haven’t read any of Martin Cruz Smith’s previous book prior to reading Stalin’s Ghost which is the sixth in a series centering on the Arkady Renko character. So keep this caveat in mind for what follows.

Renko’s boss assigns him the awkward job of trying to get to the bottom of rumors that Stalin is haunting a Moscow subway station. The ghost turns out to be a bit of agitprop for a nationalist political party seeking to use Uncle Joe’s image for political gain. This in turn ties into the Senate campaign of one of Renko’s colleagues Nikolai Isakov – a former Black Beret who has returned a hero from the ugly war in Chechnya.

Renko soon finds that out, however, that there are a number of connections between his fellow investigator and a number of recent homicide cases. Renko being Renko, he can’t help but to keep pulling at the loose threads despite the mounting bodies and threats to his own life. To add a twist to the plot, Renko’s girlfriend also has a connection with Isakov and it appears she is intent on reconnecting with the Black Beret. Everything points back to what was supposed to be a heroic stand by the Black Berets facing superior arms and numbers from Chechen rebels, but something isn’t quite right about the events of that day. The question is whether Renko can get the answers before getting himself killed.

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