William Morrow

Hangman

annette — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Hangman, the nineteenth entry in Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series, has a double mystery. Who killed young party-hearty nurse Adrianna Blanc, found hanging at a construction site? And what happened to Theresa McLaughlin, an old acquaintance of Decker, who has disappeared after a tense confrontation with her hit man husband? The former case is an official LAPD matter, which means Decker gets a helping hand from fellow cops Sergeant Marge Dunn and Detective Scott Oliver. The investigation into Terry McLaughlin's whereabouts, however, is more of a personal matter, especially since her fifteen-year-old son Gabe is now staying with the Lieutenant and his wife.

The details of the police work seem very authentic. The focus is on following up on realistic leads rather than on the heroics of the lawmen and women. We get a good picture of how cops proceed in a murder case and the toll it takes on the police and their families, as well as a glimpse at the reactions of the victim's friends and relatives.

While the crime investigation was intriguing, the most interesting sections are those concerning Gabe and his struggle to adapt to his new parent-less state. (His father makes contact on several occasions but decides his son will be better off with the Deckers.) It's amusing to see how Gabe, who went to a Catholic school in New York, reacts when he is suddenly thrust among the Orthodox Jewish Decker clan and begins attending a religious school with seventeen-year-old Hannah Decker. The Deckers must also adjust to having this young musical prodigy in the house.

Hangman is an engaging mystery that humanizes its police protagonist and avoids the “supercop” clichés we've seen too many times. Both fans of the series and new readers will find it hard to put down.

Written by: Karen Duda, January 7th 2011

Death Echo

beth — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Elizabeth Lowell

William Morrow

Death Echo is categorized as a suspense novel. On that score, the book delivers, but not for the reason that the author intended: I was in suspense for the entire book trying to figure out what was going on.

Emma Cross, of the elite security consulting firm St. Kilda's, is assigned to find out if a newly commissioned yacht is the same yacht that was supposedly washed overboard on its way to being delivered. Intel says that at least one of these yachts is going to be used to destroy an American city seven days into the future.

Emma gets herself aboard the yacht while it's being sailed up the Pacific coast of Washington and Canada on the way to being delivered to its new owner. She and the transit captain, MacKenzie Durand, search the yacht but don't find anything lethal aboard. And yet they continue their journey over the better part of the week, somehow hoping that when the yacht reaches its destination they will figure out exactly how it's to be used to destroy the unknown city.

The author throws in some inter-agency bickering, perhaps to show how incompetent the covert community really is. I suppose this is to justify hiring St. Kilda's to sort out the mess. And it all hinges on Emma Cross, who you think would be dead serious about her mission instead of spending most of the book fantasizing about and bantering with Mac. After many pages of sexual innuendo, ear nibbling, and finger sucking, Emma and Mac finally consummate their relationship in a graphic sex scene.

I would have been delighted if the attraction between Emma and Mac had made the story sizzle, but it didn't. The biggest problem I had with the book is that most of it was so boring, unless you're interested in the ins and outs of yachtmanship. To be fair, I did find this esoterica interesting at first, but eventually tired of it when it took the place of plot development.

The author, whose real name is Ann Maxwell, began her writing career in 1975 with science fiction. She didn't start writing romance until 1982, under the name Elizabeth Lowell. She has said that she welcomed her foray into romance suspense novels because she “loved being able to include a relationship in [her] books, because at that time the idea of a man and a woman working together was unexpected and/or unwelcome in thrillers, mysteries, and science fiction.”

The author does succeed in her depiction of a male-female team who fit well together (in every sense of the word), but it's hard to see how they are able to develop more than a purely sexual relationship in less than a week. And yet we are led to believe that they have finally found their soul mates. The reader is given only the scantiest of back stories for Emma and Mac, so it's hard to see them as real people. The most fleshed-out character is a former Russian agent who is trying to take possession of the yacht, but since it's not clear what his motive is, it's difficult to sort out how he relates to the story.

If you can make it through all the nautical details, you'll finally be rewarded during the last forty pages. If you're a boating enthusiast, you'll be in seventh heaven. If you like your international intrigue confusing and shadowy, this is the book for you. But if you're looking for strong, well-developed character and plot development, my advice would be to look elsewhere.

Written by: Ellen Keim, November 10th 2010

Running Dark

alicia — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jamie Freveletti

William Morrow

Running Dark is the second book in Jamie Freveletti’s action-mystery-thriller series featuring chemist and long-distance runner Emma Caldridge. The first book, Running from the Devil, establishes the character of Caldridge as a strong scientist with a flair for quick thinking and physical endurance in the worst of situations. Running from the Devil followed Caldridge as her commercial plane was hijacked and crashed in the Colombian rainforest; Caldridge managed to get away from the group of surviving passengers as they were rounded up and lead through the forest by a group of Colombian fighters playing the middlemen for a drug cartel, intent on ransoming the survivors at their destination.

Caldridge demonstrated her physical and mental endurance as well as her scientific knowledge of natural chemistry, as she carefully followed the group through the Colombian jungle, surviving first on the remains of increasingly-rancid airplane food and then native plants. The group walked several miles a day; as Caldridge followed, she often had to race ahead or double back to avoid detection, landmines, and another mysterious group who begins to track her path with the help of trained dogs.

Occasionally, crash survivors were killed by the Colombian fighters, or left for dead on the path. When the kidnappers realize that Cameron Sumner, a U.S. government agent, might threaten their plan for ransoming the survivors, they hurt him badly. Caldridge eventually stumbles upon him, helps him through infection and fever, and makes an ally in the process. Their dependence on one another for personal survival and professional secrecy established the core relationships at work in the next book in the series.

Following on the heels of Freveletti’s first thriller, Running Dark takes place in South Africa, Somalia, and on the high seas of the Gulf of Aden as Caldridge makes her way from an endurance race during which she survives a roadside bomb and injection by an unknown substance to a cruise ship in peril of being overrun by Somali pirates. On that cruise ship is Cameron Sumner, working for Darkview, a United States-based independent security firm.

The pirate strike is a surprise to Sumner and the crew; because weapons are illegal on cruise ships, they barely manage to stave off several attacks using Sumner’s smuggled gun and the help of several passengers and crew members. Meanwhile, no one but Caldridge and the Darkview team back in the U.S. know that amongst the cargo on the ship might be several vials of Sarin, a colorless, odorless, and very deadly chemical weapon. When Caldridge finally reaches the imperiled boat, Sumner and Calderidge work with the crew and passengers of the ship to fight the invasion and try to safely operate the ship despite the nearly-constant threat of chemical and conventional attacks.

As was Running from the Devil, Running Dark is fast-paced and filled with interesting details about the characters’ lives, work habits, and career-oriented knowledge. The chapter narratives move back and forth in point of view from the bad guys to the good guys, keeping the reader on her/ his toes and introducing new and dangerous scenarios every few pages. Running Dark is not as all-absorbing as is Running from the Devil, and unfortunately there are several chapters that feel as if they are marking time until the final climax. I highly recommend reading the first novel before the second in order to contextualize the relationships and understand the back story of the events and characters revisited in Running Dark; if you’re a fan of international thrillers and/ or layered female characters, give Freveletti’s Emma Caldridge a try in this series.

Written by: Stefanie Snider, October 4th 2010

All the Dead Voices

admin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:37:00 +0000

By Declan Hughes

William Morrow

I have always been drawn to a good crime story. When I was given the opportunity to read a writer previously unknown to me, a book that sold itself as a cross breed of modern American noir and Irish culture, I was excited at the prospect. I should have opted for a love story.

All the Dead Voices is a strange mix of modern American urban gangster style with an Irish bent and a distinct dislike of the female in all her forms. As I read, I kept attempting to find a connection to Declan Hughes' story, the characters, the history, and even the location. However, there is such disparity between my expectations and what the pages hold that this connection never came about.

Ed Loy is trying to escape his past, but I’m still fuzzy about what that past entailed. He is a private investigator in Ireland. Maybe this is the true mystery—how a reader can understand a character that was fleshed out in three previous novels without sufficient introduction for those of us joining the series in progress. For me, a good story is defined by its ability to make me believe in the characters, good and bad. I have to admit that I don’t know any of them besides Ed himself, well enough to like or dislike them. Ed wallows through the mire of a slow story, which is also somewhat disjointed, to attempt to solve murders, have sex with everything in a skirt, and feel sorry for himself and his lot in life.

Three murders occur in a short period of time. All three people killed were speaking with Ed just moments before their demise. You’d think the proper authorities would have wondered at his participation. Ed seems to be free to associate with known felons and a soccer star murdered “gangland style,” and yet Ed escapes without so much as a second look. He stumbles through life in the pages of this book being almost, but not completely, unlikeable. Otherwise he wouldn’t be having so much sex, I suppose.

The only female character worthy of a name is Anne Fogarty. She is recently divorced, obviously pretty and walks into Ed’s office and his life to find out about the murder of her father. The man who served time for this murder has been set free and Anne believes him to be innocent. She wants to know the truth about her father’s death, her mother’s involvement (she was having an affair at the time with the prime suspect). Anne has found the NBCI to be unwilling to help. By the way, I had to look online to find out what NBCI stands for—National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, an arm of the Irish police force. Mr. Hughes has a tendency to banter around acronyms as though they should be well known by everyone.

Forty-five seconds into Ed’s first meeting with Anne, he is thinking, “I had promised myself never again to fall for a client and here I was. I could smell her now...” I think I have to promise myself never again to pick up a novel by Mr. Hughes until after I’ve had my breakfast. It left me nauseous.

The most memorable interchange is between our man Ed and his friend Dave who is an investigator on the police force. Ed has recently helped Dave out of another red-faced moment—being caught with his pants down—and the need to appease his wife so she’ll go back to making him breakfast. The playful banter about their recent interactions falls flat on its face when Ed realizes that the beautiful Anne has been making the rounds of the NBCI.

Dave explains, “I met Anne Fogarty, I took her for coffee, I talked through the reasons we wouldn’t revisit her father’s case. I took her to the Merrion Hotel, Ed. And now she’s telling you I’m the bad guy?” When Ed exclaims that Dave’s wife might find out, Dave’s witty response is, “Stop. I can hear her now. You never take me to the Merrion Hotel. But yeah, I did, and do you know why? Because I felt sorry for the child.”

Declan Hughes is a Shamus Award-winning author, a husband, and a father of two girls. I hope he never lets them read his work.

Written by: Rachel Petzold, October 14th 2009

The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:51:00 +0000

By Dr. Anthony Rao, Michelle Seaton

William Morrow

Having raised daughters and taught young girls, I know what is required to be competent in those roles. The nature and needs of boys, however, were foreign to me. I had very little experience with the care and nurturing of very young boys. I naively and wrongly presumed that a child’s gender was of little, if any, consequence affecting the parent/teacher role. In reality, infancy seems to be the only time of relative equality. Once these tiny beings begin developing skills of locomotion and communication, the gender dichotomy begins in earnest. It is at this point in development that one needs to understand fully just how inherently different boys are in all that is their journey toward maturity.

In this little gem of a book, Rao and Seaton gave me a wonderful look into this heretofore alien world. They present a wealth of boy knowledge in an anecdotal style, making this book an enjoyable read. The focus is predominantly on boys between two and seven years old, the time when most behavior problems arise. The authors clearly present methods to help caretakers address discipline and training issues successfully. Simply put, boys are not girls. We cannot successfully raise both genders from the same perspective. Boys tend to lag behind girls in skills acquisition, particularly language. Unfortunately, developmental expectations are lumped in somewhat generic lists of milestones, and herein lies the beginning of the unintentional assault on development in male children. It is the profound difference in thought process combined with the imperative need to expend energy that makes raising and educating boys much more challenging.

After a general introduction into the nature of boys, the text flows through the myriad of troubling behaviors that plague social and educational settings (e.g., making friends, bullying, competitiveness, fantasizing). The authors then set about guiding the reader through the problems associated with limiting physical activity and the tendency to perceive natural boy behavior as a sickness that must be wrangled with medication. They also offer parents solid guidance to help them in determining that which is in the best interest of the child when presented with fearful scenarios by educators and school administrators. The final chapter is a delightful light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel view, looking at some of the grown boys who had been youthful patients of Dr. Rao.

The Way of Boys is an absolute must read for anyone raising, educating, counseling, treating, and/or advocating for boys. Early-education teachers—who tend to be female—and mothers of boys need to be cognizant of the dynamic differences and be accommodating in the process so as not to stifle genuine development by trying to fit the proverbial square peg into a round hole. Boys are looking for the system, figuring things out, pushing the boundaries, and expending excessive energy in all that they do. I glimpsed this firsthand when I took my two-year-old grandson on an errand to the bank recently. He busied himself grabbing for, inspecting, and enthusiastically throwing the pens provided for patrons. Before reading this book, I would have been frustrated by this ill-mannered child. My girls NEVER did such at that age. By having this new knowledge, I was able to see him not as a bad child, but as a b-o-y. He taught me that I had to plan differently for him to avoid such temptations. I could not be mad with him for being male. This is what they do and how they think, and I love him for it.

Written by: Katherine P. Hutchison, October 12th 2009