Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter – Tom Franklin

Former football star Silas “32” Jones was once the closest thing to a friend that Larry Ott had. They could not have been more different, in terms of race, poise, financial security, parental support or popularity, but they connected. For a time. After Cindy, everything changed.
The disappearance of popular Cindy Rutherford shook the small Mississippi town of Chabot – though she was never found, and there was no evidence, it was obvious that she was killed by her classmate – slightly strange and socially awkward, Larry’s story of dropping her off at her request is patently ridiculous.
Twenty years later the mystery continues to reverberate in Chabot, for nobody more than Larry Ott. His inherited automotive repair business used only by strangers passing through, Larry is more socially isolated than ever. The town has never forgotten; eight days after college girl Tina Rutherford was reported missing, Larry is shot in his home and left for dead.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is an arresting portrait of contrast and intersection – white and black, poor and rich, innocence and guilt, trust and betrayal, courage and cowardice, action and inaction all overlap and intersect. The text steps effortlessly between the past and the unfolding present, slowly revealing secrets and answers, while prompting psychological questions.
This is, quite clearly, literature despite the mystery at Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter’s core – though the disappearances, decades apart, of two white girls in their late teens act as an initial impetus for the narrative, they are a pretext for the exploration of deeper, less obvious mysteries. These include questions about the central characters of ‘Scary Larry’ and 32, but also about the meanings of friendship, connection, moral bravery, subtle peer pressure, fear, love and the meaning of truth. I realise that this description gives away almost nothing of the plot, but it's so closely interwoven that anything more specific would ruin it.
There are a number of laudatory reviews at the front of my paperback copy, with comparisons to other Southern literary works (To Kill a Mockingbird and Faulkner’s Sanctuary) – though I enjoyed the reading experience, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter didn’t quite have that level of emotional impact for me. The most pivotal revelations, which come late in the text, were gentle undulations in a text I found interesting and engaging but pastoral rather than vivid, no doubt in part because I'd guessed quite early on that Larry and 32 were brothers.
I felt that the book could stand on its own but, no doubt in response to public demand, there is an additional section at the end about the author, his back ground and the novel’s development, the process of turning autobiography in to fiction, and a readers’ group guide. I found this last particularly irritating, but this has more to do with me than the book itself.
I’m glad I read Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, a 2010 release I bought in Sydney this June (instead of reading books from my back log), read on my way to Hong Kong, and am reviewing on a train from Nijmegen to Schiphol. I shall leave it here, hoping it finds a receptive readership; I think once is sufficient for me. – Alex

The Bone Yard – Jefferson Bass

Bill Brockton is called away from his home under the University of Tennessee’s bleachers to Florida in the height of summer, at the request of forensic analyst Angie St. Claire – she’s convinced that her sister’s death, attributed by the coroner to suicide, was really a murder committed by the dead woman’s husband.
What promises to be a relatively quick trip is lengthened when an adolescent skull is found in the panhandle – decades old and damaged by time and predation, it bears the unmistakable signs of violent death. When a second skull, of similar age, vintage and trauma, appears Bill has to investigate. What he discovers reopens a dark and disturbing chapter in Florida’s history – and reveals a cycle of abuse that persists to this day.
I found this the most powerful in this six-part (to date) series. This is in part because it’s stepped away from the family aspect of Bill Brockton, which I was finding distracting, but mostly because of the subject matter. The heart of The Bone Yard is institutional child abuse, and the novel is a strong argument for change to a system that, particularly for young back men, compounds misfortune, poverty, youthful indiscretion and poor parenting, creating a perfect breeding ground for abuse, escalating crime, diminishing options, and a growing prison population. For anyone inclined to dismiss this as a problem of the past, disturbing contemporary cases are also discussed.
This is a novel, and the key message, along with a plea for better financing of forensic technology, is interwoven with a strong novel. There are also some light notes; I particularly liked the scene, clearly influenced by experience of police phone lines, when a press release about the first skull asks for anyone with information about a missing child (white, aged ten to twelve, and missing for months or even years) to call:
“We’ve had a few calls, including one from a guy who says that he’s the missing child.”
I laughed. “Did he say how he manages without his skull?”
“No,” Vickery deadpanned, “but I’m guessing the lack of a skull makes it a lot easier to go through life with his head up his ass.”
I was a little disappointed with the fifth novel in this series, and was relieved to find that my return was worth it - The Bone Yard combines an interesting mystery with a strong social message, including enough forensic detail to be genuine without becoming overly technical. The discomfort I had in Brockton's personality last time is not in evidence this time around, and the slightly more soapy aspects of the character arc (father/son issues and a pregnant ex-girlfriend fleeing from the law) are mercifully backgrounded. It is with relief and genuine excitement that I look forward to the release of book seven. - Alex

The Bill Brockton series:
Carved in Bone
Flesh and Bone
The Devil’s Bones
Bones of Betrayal
The Bone Yard
The Bone Thief

61 Hours – Lee Child

A random accident on a snowy bridge in the middle of South Dakota sees traveller Jack Reacher stranded with an elderly tour group and a shocked driver. In the midst of two approaching snow storms all the tow trucks sixty miles in either direction are caught up, and the only nearby shelter is the small town of Bolton. Most of the town is reliant on the recently opened jail; the contract was contested, and came with a number of non-negotiable conditions, chief among which was the requirement that, in the event of a jailbreak, all officers in town must attend until stood down.
When Reacher learns that there’s a witness under protection in the town, and that a lawyer’s been shot in the head in his car, he suspects an attempt to kill the witness before she can testify. Though he doesn’t know it, there’s a clock running – he’s got less than three days to stop a murder.
And we’re reminded of that clock at every opportunity. Done more subtly I think this would have added to the suspense, but I became increasingly irritated by the ending or opening of almost every chapter reiterating the countdown - the first lines of the book are

“Five minutes to three in the afternoon.
Exactly sixty-one hours before it happened.

And that was fine, setting the scene. But then we have page twelve:

Five minutes to four in the afternoon. Sixty hours to go.

The end of chapter two:

Five minutes to five in the afternoon. Fifty-nine hours to go.

The end of chapter three:

Five to eight in the evening. Fifty-six hours to go.

Page forty-seven:

Five minutes to ten in the evening. Fifty-four hours to go.

The end of chapter six:

Five minutes to eleven in the evening. Fifty-three hours to go.

Page 71 (and a small variation):

The clock on the refrigerator ticked on and hot five to midnight. Fifty-two hours to go.

And so on – four more times in the next twenty pages, and another thirty-two times (unless I missed one) before we get to “Twenty-seven minutes past three in the morning. Twenty-eight minutes to go.”
And then we have another two updates before:

Five minutes to four in the morning. Sixty-one hours gone.

61 Hours is supposed to be a novel of significance on the Reacher series, with a cliff-hanger ending and a twist, because the countdown isn’t to what we expect. There’s even a twist in the hook-up aspect that’s de rigueur in the series, because Reacher’s potential bed mate isn’t even in the same state.
As is often the case in the Reacher novels, the initial issue is only the introduction to a far bigger situation, and in the case of 61 Hours it’s a pretty big scenario, with roots going back to WW2, and an almost believable premise.
However, the impact of the twist, the force of the shock ending, was almost wholly diminished for me by the monotonous countdown. Not only did it occur with tedious regularity but, like a series of 24, every update occurred at five minutes to the hour. Except for the three updates within the final hour, page forty gave the only break in the monotony: “Twenty-five past nine in the evening. Fifty-four and a half hours to go.”
Okay, fine, ratchet up the tension with a ticking clock, but a little variety and a little less tick-tick-tick would have been more effective and less distracting. Though that wasn’t my only issue with 61 Hours, it was my biggest.
Others included the fact that I also got ahead of Reacher a couple of times, when it came to the location of a key, and the identity of a mole; in the first case I got there over fifty pages ahead of him, and I wasn’t looking for an answer.
But back to the count down. Frankly, by the time of the big boom finale I didn’t really care any more. Worse, when I closed the book my sense was relief rather than suspense about where to from here for Reacher.
And that’s a shame. Though I’ve found a number of the Reacher plots to be a little far-fetched, I think they’re generally great escapist action novels that repay a willing suspension of disbelief with strong story telling and satisfying conclusions – the wrong are punished, the righteous rewarded, the right upheld, there’s a little non-graphic sheet action, and our archetype strolls off into the sunset as footloose as he began.
When 61 Hours was released there was the promise of a sequel, as Jack Reacher’s story was to be continued. I certainly found the least-sequelly-sequel-ever next instalment a return to the Reacher I enjoy, and it’s reviewed here. - Alex

The Jack Reacher novels
Killing Floor; Die Trying; Tripwire; The Visitor; Echo Burning; Without Fail; Persuader;The Enemy; One Shot;The Hard Way; Bad Luck and Trouble; Nothing to Lose; Gone Tomorrow; 61 Hours; Worth Dying For

Unwind - Neal Shusterman

Although he knew it was possible, Connor never believed his parents would make him an Unwind, until he found the paperwork. He plans to run - if he can survive until his eighteenth birthday he'll be safe.
Pianist Risa knew she'd blown her latest assessment; as a ward of the state she's only required to be supported as long as she's exceptional - now she's not, she's an Unwind.
Lev grew up knowing he was a Tithe, the tenth child of religious family who've chosen to give back to the community. All his life he's been prepared for the day after his thirteenth birthday when, after a tithing party to celebrate his joyous sacrifice, his body parts would be reallocated to worthy recipients, allowing him - in a way - to live forever.
A bloody Civil War between the Life Army and the Choice Brigade was resolved when a compromise was suggested - life is sacred from conception to age thirteen, but for the five years until children reaches adulthood their parents may retrospectively abort them, provided the child doesn't technically die. Known as Unwinding, the unwanted teen's organs are redistributed according to need and merit. Three youths of different backgrounds are thrown together by chance, and have the potential to make a difference.
Unwind has a fascinating premise (though the idea that either side would see this compromise as acceptable, this is acknowledged in the text), and a new twist on this months' inadvertent theme of teens in dystopia. There are some lovely moments, chief among which was the letter writing scene in the Unwind underground railway sequence.
There's also some imagining of the consequences of this policy: without termination an option for unwanted pregnancies, society has created 'storking' - leaving a baby on the doorstep of a stranger, who is then obliged to take it in, a practice that has its own consequences. There's a mythology around Humphrey Dunfee, whose distraught and repentant parents tried to reconstitute him post-Unwinding. And there's social commentary, including an observation that, were it not for Unwinds, science would be working on improving health instead of relying on quick patch-ups (with the assumption that immunosuppressent medications have been improved between now and then). Finally, opening each chapter is a news extract or factual nugget supporting the direction the narrative takes from that point. This last reminded me a little of Tepper's Gibbon's Decline and Fall.
It's a little distressing, then, that I found the whole delivered less than the promise of its parts. I think this may be because more attention was paid to the world-building than the characters - I just didn't warm to the central trio, and found reading the novel more an exercise of intellectual interest than engagement. - Alex

Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You - Peter Cameron

In the summer between graduating from high school and starting college, eighteen-year-old James Sveck decides he doesn't need to continue his education, and would rather move to an isolated farmhouse somewhere - maybe Kansas. His mother, an art gallery owner recently returned from an aborted honeymoon with her third, soon-to-be-ex-husband, and his working-class-made-good lawyer father are not pleased, and send him to a therapist. During his sessions with Dr. Adler James talks about his life, particularly the incident that happened while he was in Washington, DC, attending the American Classroom program.
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is literature - James is filled with angst, more sensitive that the common folk around him, and appears devoid of the need for human connection. He has no real friends, is close only to his grandmother, and manages to drive away the nearest person he has to a proto-friend, because he's unable to understand societal norms. Had these personality traits been related to an autism-spectrum disorder they may have made his narrative more interesting - though difficult, I can think of at least two novels (Moon's The Speed of Dark, and the more well-known Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Haddon) that have carried it off well.
James, however, is not in any way disabled, except by his crippling sensitivity. Like the vast majority of adolescents I, too, was Too Sensitive To Live - every moment was filled with high drama, visible only to me (and, if hey weren't involved in it, my friends). I sporadically kept diaries at the time - like Someday This Pain... they don't make for interesting reading as an adult.
This isn't to say that I found the novel barren of interest - I finished it, and from time to time came across a line that resonated, like this one:

“My mother was right, but that didn’t change the way I felt about things. People always think that if they can prove they’re right, you’ll change your mind.”

But my common complaint when it comes to Literature, holds true here - nothing happens, nobody changes, and I didn't enjoy the reading process. Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You has been favourably and frequently compared to Catcher in the Rye. Another gap in my literary background, I'm ill-equipped to judge. Knowing the way analysing novels for English Literature generally reduced rather than increased my pleasure of the work, I am heartily glad I'll never have to study the themes, metaphors and sub-texts of this book. - Alex

This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper

Judd Foxman learned of his father’s death from his sister Wendy, who delivered the news casually; it was almost appropriate, given Mort’s repression of emotion, a trait held by the family as a whole. After eighteen months treating metastatic cancer, his death was less surprising than Mort’s instruction, despite his long-held atheism, that the family sit shiva for him. Wendy brings her financial big shot husband, Barry, and her three small and boisterous children; older brother Paul brings his wife, Alice, who desperately wants o become pregnant; and wild child baby brother Phillip, after some tension about whether or not he’d make it all, meets his life coach/therapist/fiancée Tracy at the family home after the service. Judd goes alone – he and his wife separated after he found her, on her birthday, in bed with his boss. And, as Judd finalises his packing for the drive to the family home, Jen breaks the news that she’s pregnant to Wade – news especially distressing because their baby died three weeks before the due date.
Like the recently-reviewed Tropper novel How to Talk to a Widower, This is Where I Leave You deals with grief, loss and renewal. In this case, however, there's a wider cast and a broader palette - it's also a masterful study of family dynamics, interpersonal tensions, change, the presence of the past, and love and relationships of all kinds.
As Judd deals with his wife in the present he revisits the evolution of their relationship, from their first meeting on campus to his discovery of her in flagrante on her birthday, and the fallout. The shiva requirement that the family sit together every day for a week forces them to spend more time together than they have since their teens, bringing old allegiances, tensions, guilt and hostility up from the depths. Though markedly different from my own family, so many of the Foxman’s interactions and tensions resonated with me, a fact I suspect lies less with our similarities than with Tropper’s skill. Seen through the filter of Judd's gaze, we view a family that, despite matriarch and celebrity therapist Hillary's (who Mort so often responded "Jesus, Hill," to that Judd thought that was Jesus' full name) best efforts to have total honesty and openness, is full of secrets, chaotic, flawed and real.
The product of an over-sharing mother, many of the scenes featuring Hill struck a chord with me. But then there are so many wonderful lines and vignettes that I imagine readers from wholly different backgrounds would find things with which to relate, too - “You get married to have an ally against your family, and now I’m heading into the trenches alone.”
I've become more aware, since the weddings of my siblings, of the massive differences there are in family cultures, something I was already aware of thanks to the very different dynamics of my maternal and paternal grandparents, but which I see differently encountering them as an adult. So I was struck by the apposite response of Judd and his family to an attempt at interveneing in a fraternal fight:

"We all stare at Tracy as if she just started jabbering in ancient tongues. We've always been a family of fighters and spectators. Intervening with reason and consideration demonstrates a dangerous cultural ignorance."

And of the long-winded passage sung by a cantor, his “slow, operatic tenor makes you want to prostrate yourself on the spot and accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.” I read Tropper's second novel, The Book of Joe, not long after it was published, before beginning this blog. Like This is Where I Leave You it was funny, observant, raw, real, and poignant, though less accomplished. I'd like to revisit it, but I also think that, having read two of his novels in the space of a couple of weeks, I should probably take a break for the time being. - Alex

Carolyn Parkhurst: Lost and Found

Alex has already reviewed this book twice; see either of those for a more detailed synopsis. To briefly recap-
This story follows the progress of several pairs of game show contestants as they are filmed searching the globe for esoteric items in a bid to win a million dollars. Team loyalties are tested and partnership dynamics irreversibly changed as the show’s creators introduce challenges designed to reveal each contestant’s darkest secrets.
Unlike Alex, I am not a fan of the kind of reality TV show upon which this story is based, but since she thought the book good enough to read twice in such a short space of time when I saw it in my local library I thought I’d give it a try. To my surprise in the end I found that I liked it very much.
At first glance I found the main characters and their conflicts unrealistic, but as their stories progressed and aspects of their personalities were revealed they became more believable. The game show setting worked well, introducing tension and temptation that highlighted the cracks in foundering relationships and allowing the author to explore a number of controversial issues in an accessible way. The (probably) realistic technicalities of filming the show added a layer of realism and interest.
I don’t see myself rereading this book any time soon but it was certainly worth stepping outside my usual area of interest.-Lynn

For Alex's reviews click here (2009) or here (2010).

The Bone Thief – Jefferson Bass

Sill recovering from the twin blows of discovering Isabella, briefly his lover, was a murdered, and from the devastation her murder weapon wrought on the life of one of Tennessee’s most gifted medical examiners, famed forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton is ready for a little peace and quiet. When he and his research assistant Miranda Lovelady are asked to collect a specimen for paternity testing it seems like a straight forward enough task – exhume the body, take a sample of long bone, and compare DNA to that of the child. But when Trey Willoughby’s coffin was open it quickly became apparent that something was wrong – the body’s limbs had been amputated and replaced with PVC piping.
A little investigation quickly reveals that Trey is only the first uncovering of a number of antemortem dismemberments. In no time Bill is acting on behalf of the FBI to get to the bottom of a multi-million dollar racket, one that not only mutilates the bodies of the dead but also risks the lives of the living. At least as importantly, to Bill at least, he’s required to act in ways he finds unethical and disreputable, risking his good name, his reputation, and the high opinion of those whose regard he values; and until they know exactly who is involved, the FBI have forbidden Bill to confide in anyone, including Miranda.
The Bone Thief is the fifth in this series, one I’ve thus far enjoyed thoroughly. I had a little less fun with this instalment though, for two reasons. The first is that the plot felt a little hackneyed – in the past couple of years there have been several novels and TV episodes dealing with similar illegal activities involving profiteering, the dead, and shady undertakers, and I didn’t feel as though this added anything particularly new or different, except for the ongoing chronicling of the very interesting Bill Brockton’s life in general.
This aspect was relatively minor – rarely are novels, particularly genre novels, groundbreaking in every aspect, and I would have been just a little dissatisfied had that been all. But I was less sanguine about the new personality traits The Bone Thief revealed of Bill. His streak of Puritanism seemed to come from nowhere, so that although he’s quite comfortable sleeping with a woman he’s relatively recently met, he’s morally distressed by the necessity of going to a strip club as part of his undercover operation. The only reason we’re given is that he finds it tawdry and he doesn’t like it. I’ve got no issue wth that, but his aversion seems unrelated to any of the usual reasons: there’s no mention of immorality, feminism, commodification or power inequity; in fact, there’s no explanation at all, apart from an etiquette-based discomfort once he’s inside:

I felt myself turn crimson and was grateful for the darkness of the club. “Not to worry,” I said, unsure of what to say next. Maybe, I didn’t recognize you without your clothes. Or, How’d you get so good at gymnastics? Or maybe, Doesn’t it bother you that strange men come in to stare at your body and don’t even clap or tip?

Perhaps part of my discomfort with these sections was because Bill is given to analysis in every other aspect of his life, from his career to his relationships, but spares no introversion for the marked visceral reaction he has to the idea of a strip club. It is, granted, part of larger activity he finds increasingly morally precarious, posing as being far more comfortable in ethically grey areas than he is so as to build a case for the FBI against the matermind behind the body part thefts. But this whole sub-plot, including a blackmail scam that’s equally implausible, wholly failed to enage me.
A secondary plot, about Bill’s previously estranged son Jeff’s reaction to the news that Isabella is apparently pregnant, didn’t feel genuine. I’m not doubting that the revelation your widowed father is expecting a child younger than your own children, could come as a shock. But given the equanimity with which Jeff received the news that Bill had slept with her, and the fact that the pregnancy was clearly unplanned, his shutting down and withdrawing from Bill read more like a plot device than an authentic, character-driven response.
I also found the writing overblown at times, which pulled me out of the narrative. For example:

I stared at the small digital recorder in my hand, paralysed by the countless unspoken questions it posed, questions to which I had no answers. I was as paralysed by the machine as I’d been by the man who loaned it to me: a Knoxville psychologist named John Hoover, highly recommended by my family physician.

And then there’s the unanswered question of why a forensic anthropologist, who therefore has no medical qualifications, is accompanying a critically ill man by helicopter from one hospital to another. Well, no reason except that it increases the drama of the plot, and allows for an uncomfortably neat and tidy ending.
It’s certainly not all bad. Though not as well accomplished as the discussion about evolution in Flesh and Bone, the authors briefly discuss some of the ethical issues surrounding paying for first and third world organ donation, albeit predominantly presenting only one aspect of this increasingly topical debate. The plot is also wrapped around the growing uses and demand for cadaveric body parts other than solid organ transplantation, in combination with stem cell research and biotechnological advances.
However, particularly in comparison with the first four books of the series, I finished The Bone Thief significantly disappointed, and with hoped that the sixth in the series proves to be a return to the previous form. I haven’t given up, yet. - Alex

The Bill Brockton series:
Carved in Bone
Flesh and Bone
The Devil’s Bones
Bones of Betrayal
The Bone Yard
The Bone Thief

Hollywood Hustle - Gordon Korman

Vince Luca wants to be a director, but that's only part of the reason he chose to go to college in California - the other reason is to get as far away as possible from his father, cappo of a New York mob. He and his girlfriend drop his best friend Alex off in Las Vegas before driving west; Kendra's starting at a music academy - she's gorgeous, plays piano beautifully and has a great but untrained voice. She's also the daughter of an FBI agent more interested in bringing down Anthony Luca than almost anything else, so Romeo and Juliet have nothing on this couple.
College life strains their relationship more than Vince anticipated - Kendra has no time for him but apparently endless hours to star in would-be-director and Vince's classmate P. Richard Shapiro's (a real P-Rick) student film. And though he's trying hard to be strong, roommate Trey's new, gorgeous, older girlfriend Willow seems to be throwing herself at him. Trey can't stand his father, US senator William Sutter, but the straight life fascinates Vince, who desperately wants to expunge every aspect of his father's involvement in The Life from his life.
This sequel to Son of the Mob is as funny and fun as the original - in common with most of Korman's longer novels, it's peopled with distinctive characters who have agendas that bewilder the Everyman hero, tilting him a little off the unobtrusive path he has in mind for himself. for Vince this starts with his rebellious roommate and the host of characters who inhabit his college aerie, but the arrival of his connected brother Tommy, apparently interested in going straight, is only the second in a series of appearances of family (both blood and Family) who pop up, reminding Vince that you can never really leave.
I've said before that Korman should be more widely read, particularly by reluctant male readers - his writing is accessible but nuanced, his plots are twisty but easily followed, his dialogue is realistic and funny, his protagonists are everymen, and his supporting characters are just a little larger than life. - Alex

Killing Floor - Lee Child

Former MP and army brat Jack Reacher's not long out of a down-sized military - after a lifetime of relentless travel nowhere feels like home, and being in one place to long makes him antsy. So Jack's taking it a day at a time, travelling as the mood takes him and stopping the same way. That's how he wound up in Margrave, a tiny town in the middle of Georgia - as the Greyhound he was on passed by he remembered his brother, Joe, telling him that legendary guitarist Blind Blake was rumoured to have died in Margrave and so Jack got off. He hadn't seen Joe in years, or heard from him for almost as long, but Jack remembered that.
What Jack didn't expect was to be embroiled, on his very first day in town, in a brutal murder that saw him in jail, that almost got him killed, that triggered a wave of violence through the apparently peaceful town, and that was committed to cover up a massive criminal enterprise.
Killing Floor is the first in what is now over a dozen Jack Reacher novels, and it's a worthy opening - the writing is arresting from the opening line - "I was arrested in Eno's diner." (I swear that when I typed that I had no thought of wordplay in mind). Child conveys a sense of purpose to this aimless-looking man, imbues him with strengths and weaknesses, and shows the reader how an experienced and intelligent cop can size up and manipulate virtually any situation.
I really liked the character of Jack, and although there was more of a crowd of secondary characters than usual, I thought they were fairly well drawn. I also liked the smaller mysteries (like what happened to Blind Blake) scattered through and tied into the larger narrative.
There are genuine moments of shock, chief among which is the identity of the initial murder victim, and while there was a little more reliance on coincidence than I'd like, that aspect's not flagrant and is used fairly judiciously. I was a little disappointed in to spots (the first when I guessed how the scam was bring run, and when I picked up a point that indicated there was an inside man), but overall enjoyed Jack's first foray. Having now read the series thoroughly out of order I'd have to say my enjoyment of the later ones wasn't in any way hampered by my nonconsecutive reading. - Alex

The Jack Reacher novels
Killing Floor; Die Trying; Tripwire; The Visitor; Echo Burning; Without Fail; Persuader;The Enemy; One Shot;The Hard Way; Bad Luck and Trouble; Nothing to Lose; Gone Tomorrow; 61 Hours; Worth Dying For

The Rapture - Elliott Hall

Following an arduous debriefing about his investigation into the murder of Brother Isaiah, private eye and returned soldier Felix Strange is drawn into investigating the disappearance of old army buddy Issac Taylor. He owes Issac, not least because Issac saved his life in the field. But a cursory search reveals no evidence that Issac ever existed, a rare thing in a country whose citizens are now so well documented.
And then Strange discovers Issac is only one of an army of disappeared, as thoroughly and tracelessly, terrifyingly gone as the disappeared of south American totalitarian regimes past. But why?
This complex, noir-edged novel is the second in a planned trilogy that explores a post-apocalyptic, dystopia future with a difference, is absorbing and rapid. Unfortunately, like my review of its predecessor, The First Stone, I have waited a little too long after reading to go into specifics. Instead, i give you a taste of the style and tone:

The [mayor] we’d actually elected hadn’t lasted long after the Battle of Christopher Park last year. If you’d been asleep for the last ten years it might have looked like democracy in action: the mayor taking responsibility for not stopping an urban war that had left dozens in body bags and a lot more injured. He had held back the police while militias attacked his own constituents for the crime of being gay. The mayor had held the NYPD back on the orders of the Elders, the assholes who actually ran this excuse for a republic. We still had a Congress that anyone could run for, but every man there (and it was all men now) and even the President never would have gotten elected without their help. Some of the Elders had moved into government, but most stayed at their mega-churches and foundations, content for their power to be an open secret. I sometimes wished that they’d just move into the White House and be done with it, but America though too highly of itself to admit that it was a dictatorship.

I'm very much looking forward to reading the final installment in this complicated three-part series, which I will review immediately after I finish. - Alex

Never Look Away - Linwood Barclay

Investigative reporter David Harwood’s been concerned about his wife Jan’s apparent depression – she’s been taking mental health days at work, had a couple of not so accidental accidents, and told him of flirting with the idea of jumping of a nearby bridge. So when she has the idea of a family expedition to the local amusement park David jumps at the idea, even if their four year old son Ethan is more anxious about roller coasters than excited. When Jan loses Ethan, taking her eyes off his stroller for only an instant, David is terrified. The sleeping child is found within minutes, before park security even start looking, but David’s relief is short-lived, because Jan abruptly vanishes. Unlike Ethan, not only does she stay vanished, the preliminary investigation shows no sign of her entering Five Mountains, of booking the tickets, or even of her recent depression. As David looks increasingly like the chief suspect in a domestic crime he tries desperately to make sense of his life, and his marriage.

Barclay’s stock in trade is domestic terror, and Never Look Away is a worthy addition to a fine stable. The reader is quickly aware that David was duped from the beginning, and as the novel unfolds we learn more about Jan’s motivation, alongside David’s increasingly frantic search to uncover the truth and protect his child. There’s also a secondary plot, about a political intrigue David was working on in the lead up to the Five Mountain’s trip, and some nice character development overall. There are a couple of gory moments, but for the most part this is more a psychological suspense and very well done; though not my favourite of his works to date, Barclay off his best nonetheless excels. - Alex

The First Stone Elliott Hall

The American ideological and political landscape, once separate and now one, looks very different in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on home soil. Southern-style fundamentalism has swept most of the country, and the Elders have established their own law enforcement structure, primarily manned by home-schooled, secularly-naïve Daveys. But private eye and former Greater Middle-Eastern War soldier Felix Strange has bigger things to worry about, chief of which is managing the nameless Gulf-War-like syndrome that doesn’t officially exist but nonetheless manages to beset him unless kept at bay by a complicated and expensive cocktail of off-label prescription drugs.

Felix doesn’t work homicide cases, but when Brother Isaiah, Elder council member, is found dead in a hotel room filled with obviously planted pornography and illegal drugs, he has little choice but to investigate at the instigation of Ezekiel White, head of the Committee for Child Protection, better known to the non-faithful as the Holy Rollers. Spurred on by the carrot of enough money to pay for a year’s worth of medication, and the stick of infinite harassment (beginning with, but certainly not limited to, tax audits), Felix looks at who might have had the motive and opportunity not only to kill but also attempt to discredit America’s most trusted and beloved religious figure.

I’m writing this review almost a month after finishing The First Stone, and over many intervening novels, which means my faint recollections are going to do this first in a planned trilogy inadequate justice. Despite this, several elements of the novel remain clear, particularly the stunning Revivalist Holy Sons of American Liberty’s attack on New York’s Christopher Park, in the gay and lesbian heart of Greenwich Village, which was triumphantly overturned by the Gay and Lesbian Self Defence League. The character of Felix is engrossing and unlike any character I’ve encountered in recent memory. The noir style of dames and grittily hard-boiled detectives, usually an uneasy style in contemporary works, sits particularly well in a world where feminist equality and homosexuality have vanished. The alternate history, in which September 11 was replaced by a nuclear bomb on American soil, is fascinating, and the almost unnoticed transfer of power from a secular base to a Christian ideology as fundamentalist as any organization in the Middle East, is chillingly convincing. In The First Stone, the reality of a movement that those on the West and East coasts were able to dismiss as not really affecting them becomes overwhelming evident, and I was left with a sense of their shaken complacency. I was so captured by the premise and the writing that I borrowed and almost immediately devoured the sequel. - Alex

Without Fail - Lee Child

Jack Reacher – former army cop, now wanderer – is back in his sixth adventure. Inadvertently assisting an elderly pair of itinerant musicians, he’s tracked down by M.E. Froelich, a member of the Vice President-elect’s protection detail, and former lover of Jack’s brother, Joe, killed six years earlier, two years after they broke up.

Froelich wants to hire Reacher to attempt an assassination of the VP, to test the integrity of his security detail, in response to a serious, potentially internal, assassination threat. When Reacher finds no fewer than five opportunities where he (or a co-conspirator) could have killed Brook Armstrong, Froelich is distressed, confirming Reacher’s suspicions that his assignment was to check the likelihood of a real threat being carried out. But is the threat aimed at the VP-elect, Froelich, or the Secret Service?

Reacher is the action equivalent of a fanfic Mary-Sue – he’s intelligent, insightful, disciplined, skilled, principled, strong, brave, patriotic, expert at manly arts like shooting and hunting, self-sufficient, unfettered by possessions and relationships, independently well enough off that he need only work when he wants to, and he gets to have sex with beautiful women who don’t expect him to call the next day. It’s a testament to Childs’ prowess that Reacher is also well rounded, relatable and interesting.

Also interesting was the explorations of the mindset of an assassin, and the precautions taken by the Secret Service – understandably, popular culture is referenced, with particular attention paid to presidential assassination films. As Childs, via Reacher, points out, there’s a big difference between killers who want to get away, and those who are happy to die once their mission’s accomplished.

This is the second Reacher novel I've read, and I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be moving my way up on the back list with some alacrity. As I wrote in my first Child review, it's not world changing but the Reacherverse is excellent escapist fun. Though not at complex as my stand out, all time favourite action/adventure author, Bagley, the protagonist is surprisingly relatable and the plots are fast paced and vastly entertaining. I'm usually quite adamant about reading a series in order (by publication date or, if they differ, chronology) but that appears to be unnecessary here - enough history is given for the character of Reacher to make sense, and it doesn't seem as though there are any recurring characters apart from our lone wolf. - Alex

The Jack Reacher novels

Killing Floor; Die Trying; Tripwire; The Visitor; Echo Burning; Without Fail; Persuader;The Enemy; One Shot;The Hard Way; Bad Luck and Trouble; Nothing to Lose; Gone Tomorrow; 61 Hours; Worth Dying For