In the Pacific Northwest, October evenings are a great time to stay home. Of course, some people put on their hunting jackets, grab their gear, and head out into the woods; some are party animals seeking a good Halloween bash; and some are charitable souls that organize haunted houses and other seasonal attractions, with the proceeds going to good causes. But a fun fact is that a majority of us do exactly what I plan to do: curl up at home with my beagle, my book, a cup of hot apple cider and a bunch of Halloween candy that trick or treaters never show up to claim. Can’t let all that chocolate go to waste, now can we. If my plan looks good to you, check out these scary reads that I’ve collected over the years. A note of apology: ten years with Word Press isn’t enough, apparently, for me to adequately intuit all of the layout options. I have tried mightily to post each of these choices in a reasonable arrangement with links, but there are gremlins involved. Once again, then, I must ask that if you wish to read my review of one or more of these goosebump-worthy selections, please enter the title in the search bar. All of them are waiting for you!
“If I told a jury that Japs killed Santa Claus, I could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Everything changes, Sullivan, once you’ve got a different color defendant in the box. There isn’t a jury in this state that wouldn’t send a Jap to the gas chamber if they had a chance.”
4.5 stars, rounded upward.
‘The Golden Gate marks the authorial debut for Amy Chua, a badass author whose stories will be read for a long, long time. My thanks go to Net Galley, Macmillan Audio, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.
Our story is set during two time periods, 1930 and 1944, in Berkeley, California. Detective Al Sullivan is investigating a murder whose roots are inextricably tangled with those of another, in 1930. Our point of view shifts often, both in time period and narrator. Most of it is told in the first person, either by Sullivan or by the elderly Genevieve Bainbridge, grandmother of the victim in the 1930 murder, now ready, in full Mama Bear protective mode, to do whatever she must to protect what family she has left.
The narrative has a strong noir flavor, and I halfway expect to find Humphrey Bogart around the corner, smoking and looking pensive. However, there is something Chua brings to the story that Bogart never did: a frank look at the injustices of the period, from the immense disparity of wealth among the denizens of Northern California, to the shameless victimization of people of color, who were much fewer in number in this part of the world then, than now.
I put this information up front, because in the early portion of the novel it isn’t obvious that the racism isn’t being highlighted, rather than propagated. I nearly discontinued reading this book because the “J” word is a hot button for me, and I initially believed that it was being used as a lazy way to depict the culture of Anglo Caucasians during this time period. I’ve seen it done many times, the use of the racial slur against Japanese because the author believed it increased the story’s authenticity. In Chua’s case, it’s the opposite.
The solution provided at the end relies overmuch on the journal of Mrs. Bainbridge, and in places, the details of the murder, and the motivation for same, are a stretch. For that reason, I initially rated this fine novel four stars. In the end, though, I realized that the social justice component more than makes up for it.
I was fortunate enough to have both the audio and digital galleys. Although the readers do a creditable job, the complexity of the story, including frequent changes of place, time period, and point of view, make for a confusing listening experience. For that reason I recommend the print version over the audio, unless both are available together.
There are a good many books that have been written about President Theodore Roosevelt, and no two are exactly alike. That said, the two I’ve read—this one, and a biography by Clay Risen—could not be more different. In fact, you would never know they were writing about the same man.
My thanks go to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review. This book was published in May, but it took me some time to push my way through it. I started out not knowing what tack Shaara would take here, and it is this introductory note that caused me to sit back a bit:
“Few, very few, would disagree that Theodore Roosevelt ranks high among the most revered, most respected, and most admired presidents in history.”
I guess it’s time for me to change my name to Few.
Because I had signed on for it—on the strength of my admiration for its author, whose books I always read without regard to topic—I hunted down the audio version at Seattle Bibliocommons. The voice actor that reads it is second to none, and does a remarkable TR impression. But I also have to say that the various thoughts and conversations which the historical fiction genre permits its author to create seem a bit on the rosy side. Where is the TR that not only organized volunteers, himself included, to fight in Cuba, but used vast amounts of his family’s connections and wealth to advocate for it? Where is the braggard that crowed to his friends about how much he enjoyed shooting an enemy soldier from just a few feet away “like a jackrabbit,” and called his 45 days of combat the ultimate hunting trip?
This is one more reminder that all history is political. Nobody will, or should, write a book about a public figure that uses every single fact available, but it is when the author chooses what to include, and what to leave out, that bias shows. There’s no way around it, even for the most objective of writers.
I cannot deny that there were positive aspects of TR’s tenure in the White House (which he named,) the birth of the nation’s park system, beginning with Yellowstone; he also gets points for having seen, ultimately, that these are not meant to be preserved as hunters’ playgrounds, but rather to preserve the natural life, including animals, that are native to the park. His attitude toward women and Black peoples’ suffrage is laudatory, compared with other politicians of his time, but Shaara doesn’t comment on the ugly racist attitude Roosevelt displayed toward other races and ethnicities, most notably those from Central and South America.
This is a four star read because no matter what he chooses to write about, Shaara spins a tremendously entertaining tale. If you choose to read this one, I recommend you obtain the audio version, and take the dialogue and in particular, Roosevelt’s innermost thoughts with a larger than usual grain of salt, and also read a second, nonfiction work for balance.
Len Bronstein is an art teacher. He has a whole lot of clay he’s filched from his employer’s supply closet, and now he’s stoned. He should make something. He should make a Golem. And friend, that’s just what he does.
Traditionally, The Golem is made by a rabbi to help the Jewish people during difficult times. Len isn’t a rabbi, and he doesn’t expect much from his creation:
Five minutes passed, and nothing happened. Len reminded himself that he didn’t actually expect anything to…he didn’t believe in any of this shit. He stood, dusted himself off, and went inside to grab a beer…Len deposited his beer in the sink just as The Golem ripped his back door off the hinges and flung it aside.
My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.
Now that The Golem has awakened, he needs to know what his target is. His answer comes to him as he views the news on Len’s television. White Supremacists are railing about a Jewish conspiracy; the Holocaust, they say, was a hoax. The Golem was asleep during the Holocaust, but once it’s explained to him, he’s ready to get busy. But first, he must talk to the rabbi.
Our second main character is a woman named Miriam, Miri to you and me. She works at the bodega down the street, and Len recruits her to be a translator; The Golem, you see, only speaks Yiddish, and Len doesn’t. Miri has been drummed out of the temple because she is a lesbian, but The Golem likes her just fine. Before you know it, Len, Miriam and The Golem are on a road trip beyond all others, first to find a way in to see the Sassov Grand Rebbe, a wealthy and powerful man with a great many gatekeepers, and then to a scheduled White Pride rally down south.
This is, as may be obvious by now, very edgy humor. There’s a great deal of profanity, and whereas most of it is hilarious, at the beginning, the author could have varied his choices more. There are lots of cuss words out there, and not all of them begin with F. But this is a small matter. This novel’s action is interspersed with brief passages of Jewish history that I find very interesting, and they are so brief, and so skillfully woven into the narrative, that you may not notice that you’re learning some things.
My favorite passages involve a bombastic politician, and multiple encounters with cops. (The Golem doesn’t care for them.) As for me, I have read several very funny novels this year, but none made me laugh out loud as often as this one. And in the end–well, you don’t expect me to tell you how this ends, now do you?
Highly recommended to readers that lean left and can tolerate profanity.
Kim Wickens’s book Lexington tells the story, not only of one immensely famous, popular race horse, but of horse racing in general during a bygone era in the U.S. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
From 1780 to 1860, horse racing was the most popular spectator sport in the United States, and almost a religion in the South. Great fortunes rose and fell with the purchase, training, performing, and procreating of prize horses, and Lexington was the greatest of them all. Kim Wickens has done an astounding amount of research. This is probably the best documented work on equestrian history on the market today. If you love horses, and especially if you love horse racing, then this book is for you.
This reviewer knows little about either subject; I read it because it was different from most history books I’ve seen. My particular interest is the American Civil War; the synopsis mentioned General Grant and Abraham Lincoln, and I was all in. One of Lexington’s progenies was gifted to Grant by a supporter during the war, and he prized it greatly. The horse, Cincinnati, carried its new owner into at least three major battles. Grant allowed no one else to ride it, except, on a single occasion, President Abraham Lincoln.
Sadly for me, that’s about all we see of Lincoln, Grant, or the Union Army. It’s done in about four pages, which left me with 412 other pages. There are additional aspects here that are of interest to me, in particular the role of Lexington and his descendants in the crime spree by a bushwhacker named Sue Mundy, a name the man took on in order to throw lawmen off his trail. In fact, I found the second half of this meaty story to be much more interesting than the first half. Of course, although I like horses well enough from a distance, I have never been a rider or had any active interest in them. I am a city dweller, urban to my bones. For horse lovers, perhaps the first half will be as interesting or even more so.
One thing that I must mention has to do with the difficult material. This is nonfiction, and sometimes Lexington and other horses were mistreated by those responsible for their care. Whereas some race horse owners genuinely loved their steeds, ultimately they were investments. What to do with a horse, whether to race it or rest it, keep it or sell it, was governed mostly by the bottom line. Doubtless they would be appalled, were they alive today, to see the vast amount of coddling and spoiling we in the twenty-first century devote to our various fur babies. If you were to make a Venn diagram between us, about the only item that would occupy the shared bubble in the middle would be that we all own animals. That’s it. Whereas there is never any gratuitous description of the violence and other cruelties visited on the horses Wickens discusses, it’s in there, and if you can’t stand it, don’t read it.
I have rated Lexington four stars for a general readership, but for those with a strong, particular interest in horses, racing, and the history of both, this is most likely a five star read. Wickens is off and running!
I tend to avoid heartwarming holiday stories and romances because so many of them are infused with saccharine and require the reader to put their I.Q. in a box until the book is over. But two years ago, I was happily impressed with Mary Kay Andrews’ The Santa Suit, and so when I was invited to read and review Bright Lights, Big Christmas, I happily agreed. My thanks go to Net Galley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. This book is for sale now.
The Tolliver Christmas tree farm is an institution, not only at home in North Carolina but as far north as New York City. As a child, Kerry sometimes accompanied her family to New York to set up a tree stand and sell the trees, but as an adult, she’s had other priorities. This year, though, she finds herself unexpectedly jobless, while at the same time, her father’s health prevents him from executing the task. Kerry must take his place, traveling to the Big Apple with her brother, Murphy. They set up the stand, and they sleep in the ancient pink trailer nicknamed “Spammy” because of its resemblance to a canned ham. Adventure awaits.
Kerry’s love interest pops up before we’re even ten percent into the story, but it appears that the author planned for us to know that, and it doesn’t hurt anything. Over the weeks they are in New York, various small (and large) crises present themselves and are worked out with team work, ingenuity, and the occasional well-placed bribe. They have Murphy’s dog Queenie with them, but she is primarily left in the background where she belongs.
What I appreciate most about this novel is how well grounded the plot is, and the author’s restraint in not permitting any elements to go over the top. There are a host of stereotypes possible, but every time I see one coming, Andrews chooses a different path, and it keeps the story fresh and original. Small details that might be overlooked by someone less detail oriented are seen to, and it keeps the narrative credible. Examples are the need for a shower or bath, given the length of their stay in a trailer without working plumbing; the cost of living in New York; the hazards of theft and vandalism, especially active at Christmas. None of these sidetracks the plot or slows the pace, but the questions a reader might have are tidied away, and this makes for greater enjoyment.
One small criticism involves a situation where theft and vandalism occur at a time when Murphy has to be away, and immediately, other men folk clamor over the need to have someone—someone with a Y chromosome, folks—to do lookout duty, protecting the fair damsel, her trees, and so on.
Apart from that, this is a delightful story. However, for awhile I wasn’t sure I liked it, because I was listening to the audio version, which is poorly done. The male characters are voiced in a way that is choppy, wooden, and unconvincing; but worse is Kerry’s voice, which is performed in a high-pitched, girly-girl voice so off-putting that it took me awhile to realize that the problem wasn’t the author’s, but rather the voice actor’s. The children’s voices are much better, and I actually howled with laughter when the baby in a stroller wailed!
As the story reaches its climax, Kerry has to make some serious choices, and I admire the way this part is resolved. The side character Heinz, an elderly man that lives in the neighborhood and often stops by the tree stand, is terrific.
When all is said and done, I rate the printed version of this novel 4+ stars, and the audio version 3+ stars, with an overall score of 4. I recommend the print version of this book, but not the audio.
James Lee Burke is one of the finest prose stylists the U.S. has to offer. His brilliant, lush descriptions, quirky, resonant characters with interesting names, and his passion for the rights of the working class are the stuff of legends. My thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the invitation to read and review his latest novel, Flags on the Bayou. This book is for sale now.
Our protagonist is Hannah Laveau, a former slave who’s on the run from the law. With her is Florence Milton, an abolitionist from Massachusetts. Hannah is determined not to be caught, but also to retrieve her little boy, Samuel, a preschooler from whom she was separated at the battle of Shiloh. Her determination is singular. Along the way we have officers from both sides of the Civil War, corrupt rich guys, and bushwhackers. The story is complex, as are all of Burke’s novels, and the setting atmospheric.
All of these things being said—and I’ve said them many times before, since I began reading his work about a decade ago—there are some things that I would like to see done differently. Burke has always intertwined social and political messages within his novels, and so it’s the subtext in this book that jars me. In fact, it bothers me enough that I abandoned this story twice before I finally dug in, determined to finish it.
The first category here is the American Civil War, and the fallout we still deal with today. In past novels, Burke has told us that the slaveocracy was wrong, and that the war was indefensible. I feel as if he has retreated from that here. We have some ugly Confederate characters, to be sure, but we also have ugly Union officers, and General Sherman—one of this reviewer’s most beloved heroes—gets run through the mud multiple times. It’s as if Burke wants us to know that actually, both sides were bad, and that war itself is just plain awful. This is weak tea indeed.
The second is one I’ve been eyeing for the last few of Burke’s novels, and I have soft-pedaled it because of my great admiration for the body of his work, and for his ageing dignity, but I do have to say something here. His development of female characters needs work. Lots of it. All of his females are either Madonnas or whores (and sometimes, Madonnas that are forced to be whores, through no real fault of their own.) I would dearly love to see a female character in his books who is not there for her sexuality, and who is not either a victim or a potential victim. With Burke’s Dave Robicheaux detective novels, progress was made with a lesbian cop character, and I was thrilled. But she came and then went, and his experience creating her hasn’t overflowed into his other work.
More than any one thing, I want to see Mr. Burke write a book—just one, seriously—where there is no sexual assault, no threat of sexual assault, and no memory of sexual assault. It’s getting old, sir. You surely have the ability to provide female characters with other motivations. I want to see it.
I was nearly annoyed enough to rate this book three stars, but I liked the ending a lot, and so the fourth star remains.
So that’s my two cents, because as much as I love his work in general, this is getting in the way. There will doubtless be some blowback from his other devoted fans once I publish this review; bring it.
A final note: because I was struggling with this book, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons. The voice actors that perform it are world class. However, because the story is so complex, bouncing back and forth in point of view and setting, it is hard to follow in audio alone. The best way to read this is with both the printed word, whether on paper or digitally, accompanied by the audio.
Nina Simon’s debut novel, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, marks a fine beginning to an auspicious career. My thanks go to Net Galley and William Morrow for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
The story unfolds with three generations of women—Lana, Beth, and Jack—solving a murder mystery together. Lana, the grandmother, has just received dreadful news from her doctor, and she’s forced to rely upon Beth, her estranged daughter, for help to and from chemo appointments. Jack is her granddaughter, Beth’s daughter. Although all three are important characters, Lana is the protagonist.
Lana doesn’t deal well with helplessness.
No sooner has she moved into the little beach house in central California where the other two reside, than Jack, a teenager with a job as a kayak tour guide when not in school, finds a dead body while she is working. Suspicion initially falls on Jack, and so Beth and Lana dive in, first seeking to prove that Jack is innocent, and then, led by Lana, to find out who actually did it.
Amateur sleuth books come with an inherent challenge to the author, because obviously, civilians that have never worked in law enforcement are badly outmatched by actual cops. They don’t have the tools, the connections, or the experience to carry it off, and so such mystery novels sometimes end up looking ridiculous. Simon holds her own here nicely. Another issue I see frequently is with characters that are children. Jack is a teen, and she’s a bright girl, but Simon doesn’t fall into the trap of creating an unbelievably smart teen in order to justify making her walk and talk exactly like an adult. Jack has the naivete and occasional bad judgement common to kids her age, and because of this, the story rings true.
There are a couple of things that I’d change if I could. First, the whole “fiercely independent” and “tiny firecracker” personas are badly overused and becoming a cliché. The second may be partially due to my own false assumptions. Between the cover and the title, I initially thought this would be a comic caper, with the women planning to mete out some vigilante justice with hilarious missteps and hijinks along the way. Although the book has its moments, it’s not as funny as I anticipated.
Nonetheless, this is a fun read, easily followed, and with more character development than one usually sees in a novel of this nature. The chemo occasionally seems a little too easy on Lana, but it’s not beyond the pale; after all, different people tolerate these things at different levels. There’s never a moment where I slam down the book due to disbelief. I appreciate the working class realism in Beth and Jack’s lives.
I recommend Mother-Daughter Murder Night to those that enjoy the genre, and I look forward to seeing what Simon writes next.
David Joy is a brilliant writer. His stories, set in the Carolina mountains that he calls home are resonant, visceral, and always about believable characters that hail from the hardscrabble working class. Those We Thought We Knew is his best. My thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam Penguin for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
Sylva, North Carolina is the sort of insular, homespun community that you don’t see much of anymore. Everybody knows everybody, not only by name but by family, religion, and a host of salient details that form their backstories. There’s not a lot of traffic in or out of Sylva, nestled as it is in a hollow of the mountains. Now, however, two newcomers have arrived, but they aren’t together. Surely not. One is a lowlife vagrant, a pencil-necked, mullet-headed, greasy drunk in an ’84 Caprice named William Dean Cawthorne. When the sheriff’s deputies roust him, one of them finds a small notebook that contains some surprising names; he also has a long, white robe in the car, and with it, a conical white head covering with eyeholes in it. Mr. Cawthorne, you see, is a recruiter for the Klan.
Toya Gardner comes to town at about the same time to visit her grandmother and work on her thesis. She’s a graduate student from Atlanta; she creates meaningful African-American sculptures and other art works. But when she finds the statue of the Confederate soldier in the town square, she is inspired to make a different artistic statement than she’d originally planned, and when she does, all hell breaks loose.
This searing story sees two terrible crimes unfold in sleepy little Sylva. The dynamics that exist between the county sheriff, the Sylva police force, and the local citizenry—particularly Toya’s family—are rich and complex, and they showcase Joy’s best character development to date. In the end, we must concede that alongside the horrors represented by overt white supremacists, the more chilling may be that which simmers below the surface of men and women that, yes, We Thought We Knew.
This is brave writing. Joy will no doubt be the subject of some unfriendly attention because of it. My hope is that it draws the accolades that it deserves from those that seek true social justice, and that it will inspire useful, critical introspection and conversation on the part of its readers.
Larry McMurtry, eat your heart out. There’s a fine new word-slinger come to town, and her name is Claudia Cravens.
My thanks go to Random House and Net Galley for the invitation to read and review Lucky Red. This book is for sale now, and you should get it and read it.
Bridget lives a life of hardscrabble deprivation; her mother died in childbirth, and all she has is her pa. He loves her, but he’s worthless; when he finally gets a bit of money, he invariably drinks and gambles till it’s nearly gone. During one such episode, he gambles away their little house, and then buys a homestead, sight unseen and many miles away. What they find instead is a tar paper shack; there are no crops or tilled acreage, no tools or even a decent place to live. They crawl into the miserable hovel to get out of the elements, at least, and get some sleep; a rattler has the same notion, but when pa thrashes in his sleep, the rattler bites him in the neck, and then there is only teenage Bridget.
Bridget makes her way to Dodge City, and in no time, she is stone cold broke. She’s recruited to work in a brothel, the only one in town owned and run by women. She doesn’t mind the work and makes friends among the other “sporting women,” and is curiously removed from the process for which she is paid; slide prong A into slot V; moan a little, gush, and collect your pay. But later, she finds herself obsessed with a new sex worker; a lovely blonde woman named Sallie. Everyone around her understands the significance of this fascination, but Bridget herself doesn’t get it. She’s young, and she’s naïve. But when Spartan Lee, a female bounty hunter, comes to town and asks to hire Bridget, the sun shines and the angels sing.
This story is epic, and in many ways reminds me of Little Big Man, but with a female protagonist. And in many ways, what makes it so successful is its restraint. At the book’s outset, there’s a slimy man that wants to buy Bridget’s hand in marriage, which would give her father a nice chunk of change, but she hates the man, and her father doesn’t push it. A less capable writer would have done it the other way, but here, and in every instance where I predict what will happen because it’s so obvious, Cravens does something else. And the lesbian sex is brief and almost free of physical details—a sad thing for anyone looking for soft porn, but it serves to keep the story moving forward—with the emotion behind it carrying the internal narrative.
Although Bridget has no complaint about the work she does, and the management is more benign than in houses owned and run by men, Cravens keeps it real. One night, Sallie is attacked by a client, and Bridget bursts in to rescue her. It doesn’t go well. Sallie berates her for her naivete:
“You don’t see the first thing about this, though, do you. They all have a knife, Bridget. They all have a gun, and they were all born with two fists on the ends of their arms. You think you’ve got this all figured out, but any single one of ‘em could take a swipe at you some night and you’d be dead before you hit the ground.”
To tell you more would be to spoil it for you, so I’ll leave you with this: Lucky Red is the best debut novel of 2023, and one of the best books I’ve seen this year, period. Don’t miss it.
Seattle Book Mama 