The Murderer’s Daughter, by Jonathan Kellerman *****

Posted on July 12, 2015 by seattlebookmama

Grace Blades is a psychologist helping victims of violent trauma, those she mentally refers to as “The Haunted”. And she should know; as a small child, she watched her mother murder her father, and then more or less eviscerate herself before Grace’s own tiny eyes. So yes, she knows. But a client has come to her with a concern that is more than it appears to be, and it dovetails with a harrowing part of Grace’s past. In fact, she has reason now to believe she may be in danger, and it’s up to her to sort out the pieces and save her own life. This riveting DRC came to me free from Net Galley and Random House-Ballantine Publishers; thanks go to both. The book is for sale August 18.

Fans of Kellerman’s have likely bonded with his Alex Delaware series. Although Delaware’s name is coyly inserted into the background text a time or two, this book isn’t about him, it’s a stand alone. It’s a strong story, and Kellerman’s initial career as a child psychologist makes Grace wholly believable. Someone that has gone through the multiple traumas her childhood has visited upon her would probably have trouble bonding with others, and indeed, Grace goes through life neither wanting nor having real friends her own age. She trusts one social worker, as well as the psychologist who together with his wife ultimately adopts her. And even with them, she has to force herself to smile, to show affection; these are never spontaneous behaviors, but ones learned by observation.

Readers of my blog know that I generally don’t review books about wealthy people. I don’t relate to the rich, and it generally seems like a coward’s way out on the part of the author, because they can excuse their protagonist from the daily financial obstacles that most people have to deal with. But Grace has gone through so many hells by the time she reaches her wealth that this book is different; then too, Jonathan Kellerman is such a crazy-good writer that it would be hard to leave a galley of his by the wayside in any case.

In addition, I appreciated the strength and intelligence of this protagonist. Although the sexual (and sexually violent) content makes the book unsuitable for younger teens, it’s still great to have a strong female character that doesn’t need to be saved by men. And thank you, thank you Mr. Kellerman for avoiding the nearly-obligatory kidnapping scene as part of the climax. I have often wondered why exactly so many sleuths, particularly female ones, end up bound, gagged, and in the trunk of a car at some point near the story’s crescendo, and I was heartily glad not to find it here.

In short, fans of Kellerman’s will get their money’s worth and more, whereas those that have never read his work but love a good mystery can dive in here and also be deeply satisfied. Terrific work by one of the best mystery writers out there.

The Burying Ground, by Janet Kellough ****

Posted on July 11, 2015 by seattlebookmama

This book will be released in a couple of weeks, and I can tell you, it’s already gotten some really good reviews. Since I read and reviewed it clear back in January, I’m reblogging it today.

Seattle Book Mama

This is the fourth book in Kellough’s Thaddeus Lewis series, but it was brand new to me, and I was able to follow the story quite well as a stand-alone. My thanks go to Net Galley and Dundurn Group for the DRC. This book comes out in early August, and I will run my review a second time on my blog then to remind readers that it’s available.

Kellough has merged two enjoyable genres, mystery or detective fiction and historical fiction, and added a splash of social justice–the sort that slides into the story neatly and without preaching. Lots of different story threads eventually braid together elegantly into an ending that satisfies deeply.

The settings are Montreal close to the time of the Industrial Revolution, and outside of Montreal in a village called Yorke. Our protagonists are Thaddeus Lewis, a Methodist Episcopal preacher who travels the circuit, and his son…

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Brush Back, by Sara Paretsky *****

Posted on July 10, 2015 by seattlebookmama

A good mystery writer engages the writer at the beginning, and gets the adrenaline pumping by the 75% point in the story arc. A great mystery writer grabs us by the shirt right from the get-go, ramps us up into overdrive during the first quarter of the story, and doesn’t let us go till we turn the last page, exhausted, feeling both satisfied and bereaved because the story is over. And Sara Paretsky is a great writer, every single time. She’s only gotten better with this 17th installment of the Vic Warshawski series. Thank you and thank you again (and again, and again) to Putnam-Penguin Publishers and Net Galley for the DRC. You can buy this book July 28 if you want to. And you know you do!

Vic is a working class hero, but she’s left the mean streets of the south part of Chicago behind, and when she goes back to visit, nobody who knew her when she was younger will let her forget it. But she does go back, because an old flame approaches her with a serious problem. His mother Stella is out of prison, finally. She pulled the full twenty years for murdering her daughter Annie. But now there is a possibility she really didn’t do it, and Frank wants Vic to search for the truth. Vic doesn’t like it one bit, but agrees to give him a single hour off the clock; after that, it’s the standard fee. She has bills to pay just like he does.

Things turn ugly very quickly, of course. Of course they do! But just as she is ready to wash her hands of the whole unpleasant business, the evening news picks the story up, along with insinuations that smear her own family’s legacy. Now it’s a matter of family honor; Vic is in it for keeps. Her attorney tells her to keep out of it; Lotty, who is like a second mother to Vic, tells her the same thing. Steer clear; let it go. But our detective is like a dog with a bone, and together with her family pride and reckless nature, she’s in it up to her neck again in no time.

In this installment of the Warshawski series, Paretsky has eighty-sixed young relative Petra, who visited a recent installment, and I was glad to see her go. I found her abrasive. However, young cousin Bernie, a high school student checking out colleges, is visiting, and every inch of my being understood Warshawski’s annoyance at the lack of privacy a teen in one’s home creates, and the irritation of having a young person who’s awake half the night and sleeping in the living room all damn day. I have five grown children and endless others have accepted my hospitality over various summers, and so this tidbit hit home. But Bernie is a much more agreeable sidekick than Petra was, and I hope Paretsky will find cause to bring her back in some future installment.

Another of my favorite moments was the lecture Warshawski’s mechanic treated her to when her car was stripped right down to the nub after she left in parked in a South Chicago hot spot under emergency circumstances. He recites the litany of every bad thing she has ever permitted to happen to every single car she’s owned and brought to him, and I laughed out loud as I read it. I would quote it here, but for that I am supposed to wait for the published copy to be sure it hasn’t been altered, and that won’t happen, since you need to know to order your copy right now.

In closing, there are four things you need to remember. First, don’t just pack your gun; pack enough ammunition to get you through your misadventures. Second, technology is a great boon to those that collect threatening evidence against bad guys; scan your pictures, your receipts, your photos and damning letters and put them in the Cloud where bad guys can’t get to them. Third, try to stay away from the cement mafia if at all possible. The things they do to their enemies just aren’t pretty. And fourth, in an unfair scrap when they’re bigger than you are, go for the ankles!

Oh, there’s so much more, but hey, that’s what the book itself is for. It’s not due out till the end of the month, but you can reserve your copy now. Do it!

Mot, by Sarah Einstein*****

Posted on July 10, 2015 by seattlebookmama

Sarah is forty, and she’s floundering. Her life’s work, like her mother’s, has been to try to make the world a better place, and so she works at a homeless shelter as its director. But things are falling apart there; whereas once upon a time most of the mentally ill homeless were passive, now meth and other addictions have created so much anger and violence that she isn’t even safe there. She’s been physically attacked three times, one of which was sexual, and her life has been threatened on an ongoing basis. Too often she is the only staff member present, and it’s getting scary out there.

Many thanks to Net Galley and University of Georgia Press for the DRC. This title goes up for sale September 15.

In addition, her marriage, which was predicated upon a mutual dedication to social justice issues and the understanding that neither she nor her new husband would be around much because of the time and attention their work demanded, is coming undone as well. Her husband Scotti has at times sided with the population she is supposed to be managing at the shelter against her.

Think of it!

So maybe it isn’t so very strange that she has decided to load herself into her vehicle and drive 1400 miles to Texas to visit a homeless friend who has moved there. “Mot”, who used to be “Thomas”, is living in a beat-up car in a Walmart parking lot. And whereas most of us would regard her mission as either an immense personal sacrifice or even a little bit bizarre, the fact is that she needed to get away from West Virginia, that shelter (where she has given notice and is using up every possible minute of vacation time), and Scotti. She has rented a little cabin—the closest thing Mot will accept even temporarily in terms of living indoors—with two beds, one for herself, and one for him. And as the book opens, she is reflecting that even if he never shows up, a whole week in this primitive little yurt, all by herself, sounds positively wonderful.

Right away her spouse is ringing her cell to complain of how much inconvenience he is experiencing while she is gone. He sends unhappy e-mails constantly, but he also doesn’t want her to use her smart phone because that data costs money. So although she hasn’t explained to us yet about the state of her marriage, which should still be in its honeymoon phase but really, really isn’t, we start to get the picture.

Mot is a complicated fellow. Immediately, when she quotes him, I start asking myself whether this is schizophrenia, a dissociative disorder, both or neither? I’m not a professional by a long shot, but when a guy routinely refers to the other folks with whom he is sharing a body and that control his behavior, it’s pretty clear all is not well. And my jaw dropped on the floor later in the book when he commented, in a moment of total lucidity, that it was probably the latter.

Mot is a veteran, and Sarah’s documentation of the unconscionable way the USA treats its veterans is noteworthy. Advocates for veterans’ health care should be plugging this book all the time, everywhere.

Sarah’s time with Mot mixes with some odd bits of philosophy, most of them his, and so although plot wise there aren’t a lot of parallels, the overall flavor to this book is similar to that of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (I have never compared any other book to that book before, and don’t expect to!)

I should also add that I came to this galley after having read a couple of Pulitzer winners and some books by my favorite bestselling authors. I dove into Mot not because I thought it would be my favorite of the remaining DRC’s I had to review, but because I had snagged it right before it was due to be archived, and I felt an obligation to the author and the publisher. In other words, although it looked interesting, I didn’t expect to give it five stars. But the sum of the book is so much more than its parts, and to get it, you really just have to read it.

Highly recommended to anyone and everyone.

One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, by Tim Weiner*****

Posted on July 9, 2015 by seattlebookmama

Question: What do an old typewriter, a copy machine, Scotch tape, and a razor blade share in common?

Answer: They were all tools used by White House employee Howard Hunt, at President Richard Nixon’s request, to forge a cable that would make (dead) President JFK appear to have ordered the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.

My, my, my. The things you can learn once you start digging. This is by no means the most important part of the Nixon story as told by veteran political writer Tim Weiner, nor even the most humorous, in a grim, gallows sense; it’s just a small sample of the bizarre, the paranoid, and above all, the crooked, reprehensible deeds committed by Nixon and his creepy co-conspirators during his administration. And by now I am already supposed to have told you that I read this book free, thanks to Net Galley and Henry Holt Company.

So, can we find a way to go back and make it look like I told you during the first paragraph, like I was supposed to? And for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone.

How much will it cost to keep this thing quiet?

I was just a kid during Nixon’s first term. But as young as I was, I have to tell you, dear reader, that the times were so polarized, so politicized (not unlike the time in which we now find ourselves) that issues like Civil Rights and the Vietnam War could not be relegated to the more traditional venues, such as the evening news or the newspaper. As soon as someone opened the newspaper, or turned on the television, or started to talk about something they had seen on the news, everyone within hearing range erupted in one direction or another. It happened at home; it happened at school; and it probably happened in workplaces. Even if I hadn’t been so fascinated, there was no getting away from it.

During the time Nixon was in office, most of the media criticism of his behavior was initially soft-pedaled out of respect for his office. It took awhile before anyone in the journalistic community used the word “lie”, for example. The words I heard were “discrepancies” and “evasions”. And all of us, kids and adults alike, were stunned by the number of times the words “expletive deleted” were used.

The fact that President Nixon referred to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall as “black of course…dumb as hell” was redacted until after Marshall’s death. The horror.

All that was a long time ago, of course, and Weiner is unfettered by any of the above considerations. His story is remarkably complete yet succinct, and oh so darkly funny. Even though others in my household do not share my absorption in things Nixon-related, I can’t get through more than three pages of this book without having to stop and repeat something on the page to whoever is walking through the room. For example, after having invaded Cambodia without the consent of Congress, and in direct violation of every US and international military law on the books, Nixon announced the invasion to the American people on television thusly:

“This is not an invasion of Cambodia.”

One more thing: Nixon’s cover up; the vast number of dead people, mostly young, who should have emerged alive and unhurt rather than killed against their will in an unjust war; the outrageous wrongdoings that unfolded in our capital and that were paid for with our tax dollars; and the outright theft of Federal monies for personal gain…the parallels that shake out between Nixon and Stalin, whose biography I reviewed two weeks ago, are disquieting.

And that much really isn’t funny.

Weiner, whose journalistic pedigree to date may make him America’s finest living political writer, does an outstanding job of eloquently stating what needs to be said and its significance without tossing in a lot of arcane trivia to muddy the water. Unlike most that have written about Watergate, he had no role in the crimes that took place and has no personal ax to grind. So if you want to just read everything that gets printed about Watergate, as I have so far, then read this along with everything else. But if you weren’t around during this time in American history and want to read one—and just one—book about Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation, then let this be it.

At the end of the book is a treasure trove of web links that will take the reader to primary resources, very valuable to those doing research.

Read it for your own political education, or look at it as grim, terrible humor, whichever suits you. For me, I guess it was some of each. But if you want to avoid stepping into the abyss, whether here in the USA or in whatever nation you call home, you’re better off being aware of what took place in the past.

Because it’s better to be watching, participating, and engaging in honest dialogue, and better to back your statements with actions that demonstrate integrity, than it is to hide in the fucking basement and scheme against enemies, real or imagined. Honest social and political discourse carried out as citizens of the world are what keep the rest of us from going down that rabbit hole.

Weiner’s masterpiece will be available starting July 21, but it’s probably best to order your copy now. So much of the future depends on what we know of the past.