My thanks go to Doubleday and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review this singular debut novel. This book is for sale now.
Our protagonist is Cyrus, an Iranian immigrant who comes to live in the U.S. as an infant. He is raised by his father, Ali; his mother’s plane was shot down shortly after Cyrus was born, an accident on the part of the U.S. military. His father dies suddenly while he is away at college, leaving him rootless. He spends a lot of time anguishing over death, wondering what is worth dying for. He doesn’t want to waste his “one good death.” Later, he points out that “If I died trying to kill a genocidal dictator tomorrow, the news wouldn’t say a leftist American made a measured and principled sacrifice for the good of his species. The news would say an Iranian terrorist attempted a state assassination. “
And you know that he’s right.
The thing that attracted me to this story is its difference from everything else that I have read. Persians almost never show up in American novels, and when they do, the Persian is the other, the bad or weird person, pretty much like the quote above suggests. So I was all in.
However, I have to say that the amount of angsty inner dialogue makes this a slooow read in places. There is also dialogue between Cyrus and friends, but most of it basically the same thing with a different format. I was primed for humor, since that’s how the book is being promoted, but didn’t find much of it.
The story wakes up a bit when Cyrus leaves Indiana for New York, but the writing remains inconsistent, and the transitions are sometimes a bit ragged.
The revelation about his mother, which occurs toward the end of the story, is startling, and I didn’t see it coming, but it also presents a credibility issue; I won’t go into details here, because it would be a spoiler. Still, apart from this one reservation, the ending is nicely rendered.
Akbar is an interesting writer, and I look forward to seeing what he writes next.
Faithful readers, forgive the lack of new content. I have had surgery on my dominant hand, and so although I am still reading, typing is nearly impossible. (I am typing this note hunt-and-peck style, one letter at a time using the wrong hand,) If you like, feel free to peruse my archives, where you’ll find over 1,000 reviews. I will return soon with my customary candor. Till then, keep on reading!
Kristin Hannah can draw character like nobody else. Her latest novel, The Women, tells the story of Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a young woman from an upper middle class family that follows her brother to Vietnam, serving as an army nurse. Frankie is a character that will stay with me long after I read dozens of other novels, and this experience is made even more memorable by the talented Julia Whelan, the voice actor that narrates the audio version. My thanks go to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. It will be available to the public February 6, 2024.
Frankie is twenty years old when we meet her, and her family is throwing a party for her big brother and best friend, Finley, who is leaving to serve in the U.S. Navy. Kennedy is in the White House, and most Americans still bear an implicit trust in their government. But Frankie is worried about Fin, and doesn’t like that he is about to put himself in harm’s way. He reassures her, “It isn’t dangerous, Frankie. Trust me. I’m a Naval Academy graduate, an officer with a cushy assignment on a ship. I’ll be back in no time. You’ll hardly have time to miss me.”
Frankie completes her nurse’s training, then signs on to join her brother, but before she is even packed, the telegram arrives. Finley is dead; killed in action.
The plot itself is unremarkable. Yes, war is hell; yes, friends die. And yes, a married man that sees an attractive, vulnerable American woman in a place where they are scarce, will lie like a rug in order to get close to her. But in Hannah’s hands, every joy and every sorrow are real and visceral, because we believe.
Frankie serves as a combat nurse at the front, and works in every possible hard situation. Sometimes the lights go out during surgery because a bomb has fallen; at one point her sleeping quarters is bombed and has to be rebuilt. She works for days on end without sleep when it’s necessary. And the trauma follows her home.
My only quibble with this otherwise outstanding story is the emphasis Hannah places on the abuse of returning troops by the public. She brings in the old saw about them being spat upon and called baby killers, even though an easy search confirms what I remember: this is mostly myth. Just as women weren’t really burning bras, most troops were not greeted with abuse. It’s true that the wildly patriotic parades that greeted the troops that returned from World War Two are not there for these men and women, but then, the Korean War vets didn’t see them, either. Historical fiction should honor history, not rewrite it.
With this caveat, I recommend this book to you. Do read it; it’s a damn fine novel. But do so critically, because you can’t always believe everything you read.
This may have been the biggest sleeper of 2023. Dogboy vs. Catfish is a true thriller by Luke Gracias, one that grabbed me by the front of my shirt at the beginning and didn’t let me go till it was done with me. My thanks go to NetGalley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
A couple of Goodreads friends raved about this book, and right away, I was curious. The title: not your usual formulation. Then there’s the setting; I haven’t read many books set in Australia, and fewer Australian mysteries and thrillers than fingers on my hand. And finally, the book’s premise: a well-to-do, famous, glamorous woman turns up at a lawyer’s office, and she’s excited, because she’s been married to this man she doesn’t care much about for nearly 18 months, and in Australia, that is the magic time length that will entitle her to take him to the cleaners, particularly with regard to her daughter’s support. He has a lot of money, but it’s about to be hers. She expects this attorney will be thrilled, because what a payday it will be! Sadly for her, the attorney has principles and scruples, and she backs away from the case.
But then the man—Dogboy, of course—turns up missing. He’s told his best friend that he is certain his wife is going to leave him and take almost everything, and he’s not sure what he can do about it; now he is nowhere to be found. Is he alive? Nobody seems to know.
In investigating the man and his estranged wife, the internet darling named Catfish Kelly, it soon becomes clear she is mixed up in money laundering and drugs. The search takes the cops to Thailand, where their informant is literally shot to death before their very eyes. And all of these things happen early, so I am giving nothing away. The book goes quickly at the start, then ramps up to an even more heart pounding pace.
It’s difficult, with a thriller that moves so rapidly, to find a way to establish characters. Nobody here is a truly dynamic character, but we don’t need a lot of character development. What is most admirable is the lightning quick way Gracias bonds us to Dogboy, whom we mostly don’t even see. We know three things about him. First, we know that he married a terrible woman who’s about to bleed his assets out from under him. Second, we learn early on that he is concerned that his investors’ funds will likewise be siphoned away, and to prevent this happening, he returns all of their investment moneys to them before he disappears, so that he will be Catfish’s only victim. And third, we know that he is unusually appealing to dogs, to the point where dogs that do not know him and have never met him, nonetheless seek him out, and also try to protect him when danger is present.
With just these three facts, given to us briefly, we cannot not love Dogboy. I’ve never seen this done so fast and so smoothly.
I know nothing whatsoever about Australian law or its justice system, and perhaps that helps, too. At one point, the investigators are burning through what appears to be a lot of the state’s resources without obvious or immediate results, and just as one of my eyebrows lifts and I begin to think that this could never…I realize that I don’t know whether it could happen or not. Probably not in the U.S. Most likely not in England. Australia? What the hell do I know about Australia? So instead, I just take the author’s word for it.
There is not a single misstep in this story, no slow part, no inconsistency. The ending is enormously satisfying. For all that love the genre, this book is highly recommended.
By now the word is out about this genre-bending novel. North Woods, by Daniel Mason, is nothing short of brilliant. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review; this book is available to the public now.
This book is all about the setting; there are some terrific characters, but don’t get too attached to any of them, because for the most part, they come and then leave. Rather, our story is about a cabin in the woods of upstate New York, and the acreage surrounding it, and how its use changes over the years.
We commence before the American Revolution, and so in the beginning, the narrative has the style of a very old diary, with antiquated spelling and language. This section is the reason I am so dreadfully late reading and reviewing this book. Honestly, the first fifteen percent or so is as dull as watching paint dry. I would begin reading it, but then my eyes would glaze over and I knew I had some other things to read by authors I knew and loved, and so I would switch books. But my Goodreads friends were raving about this book in unusually large numbers. Nobody didn’t like it. And so I summoned my self-discipline and went to it in a determined fashion, fortified by the audio version, which I received from Seattle Bibliocommons. This was very helpful. And once I got past that dry beginning, I began to understand why other readers were raving about it.
The first characters that are noteworthy are twin daughters named Alice and Mary, who are left to run the apple orchards on their own when their father goes off to war. He is a Loyalist, determined to save New England for his king. He doesn’t survive the war, which is just as well, because the locals hate him; he chose the wrong side to fight for. Neither daughter marries, and the property eventually goes to someone else.
The chain of owners is varied and, in many regards, absolutely hilarious. We see one new owner after another explore the house and the grounds, and of course, none of them has a full picture of the previous owner. I love the fact that I know more about this place than its most recent purchaser, and the assumptions that they make range from the merely incorrect to the disastrous. I cannot say too much more, although I particularly enjoy the character of George, whose phlegmatic, unattractive qualities are rendered uproarious in the audio version, and also the medium, a complete charlatan who’s horrified when she inadvertently awakens some actual supernatural beings. I would love to say more, but that would ruin it for you, and that would be a crime because surprise is an important part of the book’s success.
There is a formidable cast of actors that take on the reading for the audio book, and for those readers that are on the fence between audio and print, I recommend the audio version; better still, use both together.
After reading this one clever, memorable book, I will be watching to see what Daniel Mason writes next, because whatever it is, you know it will be good.
Highly recommended to those that enjoy historical fiction, literary fiction, humor, and horror.
System Collapse is the seventh book in Martha Wells’s acclaimed Murderbot Diaries series, and it’s a humdinger. Fans have been waiting for this one, and they will not be disappointed. My thanks go to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
If you are one such fan, I’ve already told you what you need to know; for the uninitiated, I’ll continue. I am a reluctant science fiction reader. I generally avoid anything that involves complex world building or a new vocabulary extensive enough to require a glossary. I absolutely don’t read science fiction series anymore, because I am not that dedicated. As we age, our brains become less flexible, and so whereas I loved reading a handful of excellent but rather intricate series when I was thirty, I’m just not up for it in my retirement years. I include this information because I know that a good number of my readers are also at or near retirement age, and may be similarly reluctant. So, first: you can do this, and it will be painless.
I was finally persuaded to try this series—not for review, merely as an audiobook from the library, which is about as low risk as it gets—when readers from a number of unrelated places in my life all recommended it. I saw good things from a couple of my Goodreads friends online. How nice, I thought, but I’ll pass. Next came my children, my eldest and my youngest, both grown, of course. Their rabid enthusiasm cracked my resolve a tiny bit, but I thought, maybe later. The final straw came when a couple of lifelong friends came to visit from out of state last spring. They were embarking on a road trip around the Pacific Northwestern USA, concluding their stay here in Seattle, and they, too, were wildly enthusiastic—and one of them doesn’t read for pleasure much at all! They listened to the audiobooks of the entire series up through the sixth, which is what was available at the time, and heartily recommended it.
Well, I thought. I could check the library. I could probably listen to the first one while watering the plants, and if I don’t like it, I’ll just send it on back. But of course, I didn’t send it back; I checked out the rest of the series, and friend, if you have to stand around for thirty or forty minutes daily with a hose in your hand, this is the way to do it.
The Murderbot is a being that is part machine, part human, and the term for this within the fictional world it inhabits is “sec unit,” because it has been invented for the security of the human beings inside the various spacecraft that are flying around out there, and also partly for the security of the ship also; but as we learn, the ship can sometimes take care of itself.
“Murderbot” is the specific name that our protagonist has chosen. And the main character is indeed about ninety percent of what’s important here. We don’t need a host of invented words. There are a bazillion other characters, and no effort is made to introduce them to us gradually, but it doesn’t matter. Just let it flow over you and at some point, the most important characters will click in.
This seventh installment in the series is the first time that I have read it with my eyes. I wasn’t sure how this would go, since voice actor Kevin R. Free is so adept at reading the series that I had begun to equate his voice with the character; I needn’t have worried. In fact, I find that I prefer reading it this way, because the internal monologue is immense, and it’s much easier to tell when the character’s ruminations have ended and the action resumes when I can see the (many, many) parentheses. Also, the humor here is often sly, and when listening to the story, I don’t get a pause that provides me with time to consider what’s been said; we’re off and running, and if I don’t want to miss anything, I have to forget all about that little witticism and move forward. Reading by sight allows some reflection.
The series is drop dead funny, and it is also timely, as AI makes more inroads toward humanity of its own, raising all sorts of ethical questions for the future.
For any fans of the series that are still reading, despite having been dismissed at the start of this review: my favorite character, apart from the protagonist, is Art, the ship that is also Murderbot’s beloved friend. Murderbot’s sarcasm is matchless, except when Art is around. matching snark for snark with Murderbot as it does here, and foreshadowing suggests that when #8 is written and available, the same will be true.
And I cannot wait for the next in the series. Highly recommended!
William Kent Krueger has been writing since the late 1990s, but he only came onto my radar in 2019, when he published This Tender Land. To read Krueger once is to want to read him again and again, as often as is possible, and that’s what I’ve been doing. The River We Remember is his most recent mystery, an achingly atmospheric novel set during the 1950s in rural Minnesota. My thanks go to Net Galley and Atria Books for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
The protagonist in this stand alone whodunit is the local sheriff, Brody Dern. Brody is a thoroughly believable character; there’s nothing of the TV sheriff about him. When the wealthy, universally hated Jimmy Quinn is found floating dead in the river, Dern does not lose sleep while vowing to find and reveal the entire truth. His first response is his own deep resentment that Quinn had to go and die in what had been, until now, Brody’s favorite spot to relax. How dare stupid, rotten Jimmy Quinn ruin this special place with his bloated corpse? And his second instinct is to minimize the damage to everyone else concerned. For example, the Quinns are Catholic, and if Jimmy committed suicide, they can’t bury him with the family. If not suicide, then perhaps a family member could stand it no more and shot him dead. Again, if so, no great loss, and let’s make sure the family is taken care of. And so, Brody’s first instinct is to wipe down Quinn’s truck so that, if other authorities should become involved in the case, none of these poor people will have to suffer for it.
Then, he goes to the evidence cabinet and removes some of the confiscated drugs so that he can get a decent night’s sleep.
Part of what fascinates me here is the culture of small town Minnesota during this time period. People don’t lock their doors most of the time. When a prisoner that Brody knows is almost certainly innocent requests a sharp knife in order to carve something, Brody gives it to him, right there in the cell. There are a number of interesting secondary threads, and all contribute to the steamy, smoldering ambience in which this story is set.
But oh lordy, the racism. And in this, I know there is no exaggeration. The culture among the Caucasian population of this tiny town, with regard to Native peoples and those of Japanese descent is not so very different from what I experienced as a child, growing up in the 1960s and even the 1970s in suburbs on the American West Coast. It’s bad. It’s really bad.
A feature of Krueger’s work—a signature aspect, in fact—is the inclusion of American Indian cultures and sociopolitical issues in Northern Minnesota. In other stories I’ve read, it’s been the Chippewa; this time, it’s a Dakota Sioux man named Noah Bluestone, and his Japanese wife, Kyoko. The author develops his characters well, with no stereotypes or hackneyed pop culture. This alone makes his work worth reading, but there’s so much more.
Over the course of just a few short years, Krueger has joined other luminaries on my list of authors whose work I read without question. I highly recommend this book to all that love the genre.
Unnatural Death is the twenty-seventh installment in the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell, and it’s as good as they get. My thanks go to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the review copy. You can get it now.
For those not conversant with the series, Scarpetta is a medical examiner for the state of Virginia. She’s moved around over the course of the series, decamped to Boston, and come back. So now she’s in her old stomping grounds, but all is not well. The obnoxious, obstructive secretary she was saddled with in the last book, a miserable woman that blamed her for the ouster of the corrupt man that came before, has been—finally—fired, but somehow, she is back in a different government position in the same building, along with the corrupt guy she likes working with, so it’s tense.
Our other permanent characters are Pete Marino, who’s worked with Kay forever and is now married to her sister, Dorothy, who’s a hot mess; Benton Wesley, Kay’s enigmatic husband, a forensic psychologist that works in extremely high level situations that he can’t tell Kay about, even when they have a bearing on her life; and Lucy, her adult niece whom she has raised as her own, and who is the daughter of Dorothy. Lucy is a wunderkind, a tech wizard employed by the FBI, sometimes on loan to the CIA.
I won’t go into the premise for this installment because you can get that in the promotional blurb, but I will tell you that by the ten percent mark I was riveted, and before the halfway point my notes say, “I hate being away from this thing.” A shocking development occurs that is much more impactful to those of us that have followed the series from the start. I have heard other reviewers say that they used to read the series, then lost the habit, so I will say this: if you have read most of the series but missed a book here or there, you can still get the full measure of this thriller. If you just missed the most recent one, that’s okay. But if you go into this book cold, your very first time reading a Scarpetta book, some of the magic will be missing. Perhaps you will read it and be impressed enough to go back and binge read the whole series. It’s not a bad idea!
Any author that writes a long running, successful series like this has to flesh out the main characters to keep readers’ attention. For the first few books, pure plot-based adrenaline rushes are possible, but at some point, there’s going to be a credibility issue continuing that way. I would have difficulty believing that a forensic coroner had been kidnapped by bad guys and hurled into the back of a vehicle, bound and gagged, even once, but when it happens over and over, I’m done and I’m done. Cornwell does the smart thing instead, developing crises that are sometimes more about others in Kay’s family, but that nevertheless spill over onto her in a big way. In doing this, she forces us to examine questions that have no easy answers. For example, if an extremely dangerous development comes up that could affect you or your family, but it is also a matter of national security, and one family member knows, should they break the vows of their office in order to let you or other family members know? Or should they keep it ambiguous, along the lines of, “Maybe you should stay home today?” What if two know, and you don’t?
One way or the other, this story is a wild ride. The tension is occasionally broken up by Marino’s fixation on Bigfoot. He’s obsessed, and it cracks me up when we’re worried about killer drones and enemies unseen, and then Marino pipes up about the big ole footprint he found in the woods. For quite awhile I have wondered why Cornwell hasn’t been made a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Hopefully, this outstanding novel will serve as a clarion call. Highly recommended.
Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert were the best known film critics in the United States during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Their often fractious debates on television opened up a new conversation among its viewers. Entertaining, principled, and deeply analytical, they said what they really thought in every forum available, without concern for bruising the egos of industry titans or corporate sponsors. Matt Singer recounts this important chapter in television—and film—history, and he does it well.
My thanks go to NetGalley and Putnam Books for the review copy. This book is available to the public right now.
In the beginning, Siskel and Ebert were journalists and professional rivals working for competing Chicago newspapers. They were invited to share a stage on a local TV station, and the program was successful beyond everyone’s wildest expectations. The hardest to sell on the notion were Gene Siskel, who felt sure he could carry the show on his own without Ebert, and Ebert, who wanted it for himself without Siskel. The two men hated each other on sight, but the energy that crackled between these two tremendously articulate critics made outstanding television; viewers understood immediately that what they brought to the screen was completely authentic. Eventually, the pair took their skills to a larger network with syndication, and soon became famous nationwide and even beyond.
I was a kid when these two took to the airwaves, and as I grew older, I never watched them. At most, I saw their faces flicker by as I channel surfed. I had nothing against these men in particular; I never watched talk shows, which is what this felt like to me. And I tell you this because—as you can see from my rating—I love this book. Perhaps this is a good measure of how the show’s fans will feel about it.
Over the years, the men became friends, almost in spite of themselves. Both held journalistic integrity as the highest of ideals, and this quality helped them bond. Roger Ebert famously dissed Chevy Chase’s newly released movie on the Tonight Show, with Chase sitting next to him on the sofa. This wasn’t an angry gesture, just the unvarnished truth. (Perhaps Carson shouldn’t have asked him what he thought.) Together they waged a campaign against movies that glorified violence against women; they saw this trend as a backlash against the third wave of feminism. I believe they were right. In everything they did, their analysis was deeply intelligent, and their explanations and debate points were simple enough for any member of the general public to understand what they were saying.
For fans of the show, this book is an absolute must read, and for those that are interested in film criticism, film history, or any adjacent topic, I would say the same. I am not especially interested in any of these, but I do love a good biography, and this is that. If anything, it made me wish, just a little, that I had watched their program. Perhaps I will surf the internet and find an old one that I can view.
Rebecca Renner is a journalist who has written for National Geographic and a host of other prestigious newspapers and magazines. Gator Country is her first book. Lucky me, I read it free and early. My thanks go to Macmillan Audio and Net Galley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
Gator Country is the true story of wildlife officer Jeff Babouta and the sting that brought in a number of poachers and slowed the ravaging of the alligator population in the Florida Everglades. Babouta is coasting toward retirement when he is approached, and although he is reluctant, he is eventually convinced that he is the best qualified officer to carry out this assignment. To do it, he has to live away from his family for years, posing as a newbie gator farmer. This is a legal profession, but it’s also one that is rife with poachers. In order to bring the poachers in, he must first convince them to mentor him and befriend him in his farming operation. He spends years gaining their trust and learning from them, but then has to turn them in.
I thought hard about whether to read this book, because generally speaking, I don’t have warm feelings toward cops, and the past ten years have intensified that sentiment. But rangers and other wildlife cops are a bit more ambiguous; some of them do more good than harm. So it is with Babouta.
There are, Renner tells us, basically two types of poachers. Some are the small, independent people that she says are just trying to feed their families, and some are the large scale despoilers, those working on a large scale to provide gator parts to buyers from China, where they are prized for their medicinal properties and folk cures. Renner is sympathetic toward the former but not the latter.
In following Babouta’s story I pick up odd bits of knowledge. I have never been to the Everglades, nor do I plan to, and so had I not read this book, I would probably never have known that there are bottlenose dolphins there. Who knew? There are a number of such tidbits that I pick up along the way, and this is one of the best things about reading—or listening to—nonfiction.
That said, the audio becomes a complicated read for two reasons. One is that the narrative skips around a great deal. The main part is Babouta’s, but we also hear about Peg Brown, a legendary poacher whose name keeps coming up as Babouta converses with his new colleagues. I have no idea why I or any reader needs to know so much about the guy; from where I sit, Brown hasn’t earned his place in this book, but then it’s not my book. The story is needlessly complicated by Brown as well as a handful of other bits that are woven into the narrative, such as the journalist following along, and we would be better off without these.
The other issue with the audio is that when we shift the point of view, the person whose story we’re hearing has exactly the same voice as Babouta. Now and then I would have to pause and run it back, just to figure out who we’re talking about, or hearing from.
Even though the synopsis makes it crystal clear that the book is about wildlife poaching, rather than an alligator version of Jaws, I expected to hear of some close calls, some scary moments. But the scary moments are mostly about humans.
At the beginning, this book was such a snooze that in order to force myself to keep listening, I found other things to do with my hands. About a third of the way in, however, the story woke up, and after that I was mostly interested, apart from the occasional divergence of topic and point of view. For those that are sufficiently interested to want to read this book, I recommend that you either stick to the print version, or if you strongly favor the audio, get the print version to help you stay oriented and follow along. I would also try to get it free or cheap, unless you have an endless amount of cash to burn.
Seattle Book Mama 