I read this book at the invitation of Open Road Integrated Media and Net Galley. Thank you to both parties. This title is one of several in a series that I had not encountered before. The pot in question is the ancient artifact sort, not the type that people grow and smoke. The author manages to work several disparate and esoteric topics into a single novel, but not necessarily to its benefit. My own viewpoint is that a high profile editor might be of great use here.
The protagonist, Hubie Schuze, is an archaeologist who has decided that ancient ruins are wasted if they are left where their owners chose to bury them, or if they are made available to everyone by placing them in a museum. He likes to dig them up and sell them to private collectors, and this is how he makes a living; he regards himself as “a short Indiana Jones”, but recognizes that the similarities are superficial at best.
Of course, anyone that makes a living through illegal means will tell you that there’s very little recourse if the client stiffs him; he can’t report them to the cops, and he can’t take them to court, either. It’s a dubious situation at best, but the protagonist is enthusiastic, and chooses to continue digging up artifacts and selling them. There is one place he hasn’t been able to access, however, and that is the area cordoned off on the nuclear reservation. Through various nefarious methods, he manages to sneak onto the reservation and find some treasure.
In this story, Hubie has partnered himself with Sharice, a beautiful African-Canadian who’s had a mastectomy. She is also a virgin when the story begins.
The enjoyable part of this story is the way the author incorporates word play into his protagonist’s snappy narrative. Also, I haven’t read many novels set in New Mexico, and so the setting was a refreshing change from more frequently chosen locations.
On the downside, there are too many side issues. If the interracial relationship is controversial, which the narrative indicates it is, then let’s have a mystery and a controversial relationship. Or, let’s have a mystery and breast cancer. Or, let’s have a mystery and O’Keefe’s art. This novel feels as if too many ingredients have been thrown in, and they can’t blend into a cohesive whole as a result.
The protagonist is difficult to like, given that he is pillaging ruins to which he has no legal or moral right, but I have read novels with unlikable protagonists before, and it isn’t necessarily a deal breaker. Sometimes the protagonist becomes more likable as the character is developed; sometimes a side character is developed and we find ourselves drawn to him or her as they interact with the protagonist. Sometimes the whole point of the novel is to watch the unlikable protagonist struggle and develop. That didn’t happen here.
Possibly the greatest hindrance, though, had nothing to do with the characters; every time the plot started to gain momentum, we would have to pause for a cooking lesson. God save us all from story arcs held hostage by one recipe after another. At the 78% mark I threw up my hands, skipped to the end, and called myself done with this novel.
Which I am.
This book is available for sale to the public January 26, 2016.
Breakdown is #31 in the Alex Delaware series, and Kellerman’s long-running series still has plenty of gas left in the tank. The premise this time is that six years ago, Delaware was called in to evaluate the parental fitness of a mother; custody issues have become his bread and butter, done on a case-by-case basis. The boy’s mother, Zelda, was an actress plagued by mental health issues, but seemed to be doing a competent job of raising Ovid. The actress’s psychiatrist wanted to be sure, so he called in Delaware to spend time with the child in question. Now things have gone downhill, and the psychologist that treated Zelda is dead. Zelda isn’t doing so well herself.
Paul Kalanithi was a promising young physician who had nearly finished completing ten years of training as a neurosurgeon when he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. His twin ambitions had been to become a neurosurgeon and to write. When he realized how little time was left of his too-brief life, he decided to spend his remaining time writing this book. Thank you, Net Galley and Random House Publishing House for the DRC. Dr. Kalanithi died in March 2015, but he left this luminous memoir behind as part of his legacy. It is available to the public January 19, 2016.
If Fannie Flagg worries that she has no heir, she can relax; Richard Fifield is here. The Flood Girls is his brilliant debut, and you have to read it! Fifield will cut out your heart and feed it to you with a rusty spoon, and he’ll make you like it, too. Hell, he’ll even make you laugh through it. I got the DRC free via Net Galley and Gallery Books in exchange for an honest review, and I’m going to read it a second time before I archive it as I am supposed to. This is only the second time I have done so after hundreds of galleys have come my way; that should give you a measure of how impressed I am with this title.
This book is the fourth in the series featuring Peter Bragg; the series was nominated for the Edgar Award and twice for the Shamus Award. I’ve read three others in the series already, so imagine my delight when I located this book, formerly published as Sausalito, among the DRC’s offered by Brash Priority Readers Circle.
I was already a Barbara Neely fan when I received this DRC, courtesy of the Brash Priority Reviewers Circle, in exchange for an honest review. I’ve been reviewing books for Brash Books and others for the past couple of years, and had read three other Blanche White mysteries out of order, so when I saw that the first in the series—which I think was the only one I hadn’t read yet—was up for grabs, I nailed it right away. It’s available for purchase now.
Pawn’s Gambit and Other Stratagems is a collection of kick-ass science fiction stories, including a novella, produced digitally for the first time. This is the cool thing about Open Road Integrated Media: the publishers find outstanding work from the pre-digital era and bring it to present-day readers anew so that it can be widely read and appreciated all over again. But though these stories were written earlier, many of them have never been published in book form before. I got to check out the collection free in exchange for an honest review, and I struck oil. I wondered why I hadn’t found this writer earlier, since I have been known to binge on sci fi now and then since the 1990’s. What Zahn is best known for is the Star Wars series, which I didn’t read. In passing it by, I nearly missed a fine writer, and I will watch…
Lambert is a brilliant writer, and his absorbing new novel, The Children’s Home, is the best literary fiction I have read in some time. Thank you to Scribner and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for an honest review.
Richard Thomas is a monstrously great writer. In Breaker, a Windy City Dark mystery, he presents us with Ray, a man of unusual and intimidating appearance; a sinister stranger in a white van who victimizes Chicago’s working class school girls; and Natalie, the girl that lives next door to Ray. Though this is the first Windy City Dark mystery I read, I fell in, only extricating myself close to bedtime, because this is not the kind of thing you want entering your dreams. This smashing thriller came to me free of charge from Net Galley and Random House Alibi.
Seattle Book Mama 