I must get my hands on this one

Silly me, I have been away from the Washington Post book reviews for the most foolish of reasons. I lost my RSS feeds and neglected to add them. Thanks to Omnivoracious, I caught this Dirda review of a NYRB Classics release of William Lindsey's 1946 novel Nightmare Alley. The man knows how to sell a book:

While I've known for a long time that William Lindsay Gresham's "Nightmare Alley" (1946) was an established classic of noir fiction, I was utterly unprepared for its raw, Dostoevskian power. Why isn't this book on reading lists with Nathanael West's "Miss Lonelyhearts" and Albert Camus' "The Stranger"? It's not often that a novel leaves a weathered and jaded reviewer like myself utterly flattened, but this one did.

How can you not want this book right now?

On the "huh, isn't that interesting tip" we have this:

Still, the most notable factoid surrounding him involves his wife, Joy Davidman, the dedicatee of "Nightmare Alley." She left Gresham, traveled to England and there met, and ultimately married, the novelist, scholar and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. Did Lewis, I wonder, ever read "Nightmare Alley"? His books frequently address the problem of human pain, of temptation and sinfulness, of damnation.

The Third Rail

I am just back from Chicago, what a town that is! I am sure the winters are brutal, but in the nice weather, it is really something. The incredible architecture, cool neighborhoods, great food add up to a lot of fun. Being large of course, and with its reputation for shady politics it is also a great setting for a crime novel. Chicago's Michael Harvey's the Third Rail is his third book featuring Michael Kelly. The character may be a little too familiar (Irish, cop turned PI, problems with authority,) but the story isn't. It starts with random killings on the L trains and builds into a broader plot involving revenge, those nasty city politics and the lingering effects of a train crash.

This one is bleaker and nastier than the average crime novel. It feels like the mid period Lehanes in the level of violence and cruelty on the part of the bad guys. This is not a cozy crime novel by any means. It also pulls in quite a bit of the serial killer and thriller genres into crime picture.

The plot is fairly complicated and it can be a bit hard to follow, especially as Harvey intends the protagonists to be at a loss for the beginning of the book. Still, it is good to see new writers developing and taking the stories out of LA and New York.

Formulaic, but tasty nonetheless

I've come to think that formulaic is not a terribly useful descriptor for books. You can be formulaic and terrible, like say James Patterson, or formulaic and awesome like James Lee Burke. Burke's formula is fairly simple. Hero Dave Robicheaux faces a mix of crooked New Orleans cops, mobsters, arrogant rich people, and the odd crazed right winger. These folks are screwing over the locals and Robicheaux investigates, usually beating down three or four people, with the help of his violent friend Cletus. It takes awhile for him to figure out what's up and he generally gets a decent, if flawed, resolution.

That said, his books are wonderful reads. Half of the books are invested the side stories of his characters. The relationship of Dave with his wife and his adopted daughter are real and are integrated into the plots. His bad guys are perfectly sleazy, the kind of people that drive you up the wall, but in this case are also deeply engaged in crime. Burke's portrayal of Lousiana is part a love note to a people and a place and part a lament at what they have let happen to it.

Over the weekend, I read Purple Cane Road, one of the later books in the series, in just one or two sittings. This is one of his better ones overall. It is fairly lean with a straightforward plot. While trying to help out a woman on death row, Dave hears bad stories about his long missing mother. Namely that after she left him and his father, she became a whore and was killed for it. This does not bring out the best in Dave. Blocking his path to the truth are a bizzaro hit man, the Mob, a passel of old enemies and maybe even leading politicians in the state.

How does it feel to be hunted?

Is there any sub-genre more played than the serial killer tale? Hard to think of any. One way around the deadness is to write a serial killer novel that is less about the killer than it is about a suspect/potential victim. Andrew Pyper does that in his riveting Killing Circle.

The book is filled with stories, story tellers and thoughts about stories. The main character, a widower named Patrick has two loves, his son and his writing. Unfortunately his writing has devolved to writing a column about tv shows for a Toronto news daily. He spots an add for a writer's group and decides to join. The group is filled with oddballs including a comic geek, a graphic horror fan, the hot alterna-girl, the mobbed up divorcee and the creepy lecher who guides the circle. One of these people tells a gripping story about a bad man called the Sandman. Soon, they begin to fear that the character is real.

Patrick eventually finds some success which allows for much musing on the nature of writing and reading and what writers have to do to succeed. The killer, it seems, is fascinated by the nature of story and what it means to have a story.

Pyper doesn't let this get too weighty though, he's too wise for that. One of his characters remarks that all the symbolism and ideas in the world won't matter if the story itself is bad. The story here is excellent, with nice shifts in direction and a nice amount of mis-direction as well. There is just enough grisly for those that want it. Pyper doesn't revel in it, but he does threaten it. I also like what he does with Patrick, a character that becomes increasingly unhinged by the idea that he is being pursued by a character from a story.

The most surprising book I have read in awhile

Surprising, in that I loved it, when I HATED the last book that I read by the person. In most cases, one book is enough to tell if I will like or dislike the author's other books. Even with a weak book, you can identify the signs that give hope for improvement. John Banville's Man Booker prize winning The Sea is one of my least favorite books ever. The book goes absolutely nowhere and in getting there you have to swim through the most opaque vocabulary imaginable.

Thanks to many reviews, personal recommendations, a nice article I saw he wrote about noir, and the fact that I picked it up for three dollars, I read his pseudonymously published Christine Falls (He goes by Benjamin Black, Black like Noir, get it?) I am SO happy I did. It is an A effort that any crime fan who likes the grimmer sort of books will love.

It would appear cliched at first. His hero, the amusingly named Quirke, is a drunken loner type with a single light in his life, his niece, who finally begins to see the truth about the world around him. The book is set in post-war Ireland, with the all powerful Church behind nearly everything. I liked how Banville/Black goes against the form of the noir tale, while remaining true to the overall spirit. Like nearly all noir heroes, ours gets a beating. Banville lets him fantasize about physical vengeance, but it's never in the cards.

The story, while very Irish, tells one of the basic crime novel tales. The powerful are corrupt and their corruption takes many forms. Not all will escape, but some small speck will be chipped away from the imposing edifice.

So what do I take away from this? Should I try again the authors, like John Irving, who vexed me so much that I never picked up another volume? Maybe, but the main lesson is probably not to write someone off for a single book.

Philip Kerr is back

For a long time, I thought Philip Kerr was like Weezer, starting off the career with the best work and then slowly deflating. Well, Weezer came back and so can Kerr. I devoured A Quiet Flame, the second in his Bernie Gunther after the war series. I worried that these books would suffer from missing the oppressive atmosphere of Nazi Germany. This book is set in Peronist Argentina and with Nazis on the run and an efficient police state of its own, this book has plenty of dark atmosphere. I could tell the book was going somewhere when Gunther is traveling on a boat with an unrepentent and completely repellent Adolf Eichmann on the way to South American exile.

Gunther feels a bit more like a Chandler character than I remember, maybe that is because I have read more Chandler since reading the Berlin Noir trilogy. His pulpy language goes over the top at times, but I thought he pulled it off well. What does go over the top, for some potenially, is an assertion he makes about Argentina in the 40s. Yikes is all I will say about that.

If I was smarter, I would have started with the One from the Other. The conclusion of that book explains how Gunther ends up on the run with Nazis. Oh well, I will still read it, but it won't be quite as fun.

Death comes ripping

Debut novelist Robert Jackson Bennett has gotten some buzz for his Mr. Shivers. I'm not quite sure what I make of it. Set in Depression America, it features a determined father named Connelly seeking vengeance for the death of his daughter. A man the hobos call Mr. Shivers is responsible, and Connelly follows Shivers into the Hoovervilles, the hobo camps and the desolate and abandoned dust bowl. He winds up joining a small band of men hunting the same man.

Thanks to the setting and the escalating sense that all is not what it seems, the book is called a marriage of Steinbeck and King. I think it is closer to Cormac McCarthy and a certain James Blish novel. I tend to think of California when I think of Steinbeck, whereas the wild, Biblical West is McCarthy's territory. Bennett's writing is also McCarthy like, with lengthy and symbolic descriptions of the barren landscape. He goes one better than McCarthy by pushing past the metaphor straight into reality.

Some of the scenes in the book are great. I particularly liked one where Connelly and his gang of vengeful seekers follow Shivers to an empty down about to be consumed in a dust storm. Bennett creates a great sense of dread and makes a pristine house particularly disturbing.

So why my hesitation? I think the prose weighs down the story of Connelly's dark quest of vengeance. His transformation from grieving father to vengeful destroyer didn't quite work either. Some of the mythological elements also felt a bit forced. In the end, I would recommend it to horror fans who like their books well written and their plots large scale.

Slipping into Fanboy status

I think I am becoming a Ed Brubaker fanboy. I know because I just bought issue 4 of the new Criminal Tale, The Sinners, even though I have purchased, but still not read issues 1 through 3. Why am I doing this? I want to be able to sit down with all of them and read them all at once? I made a mistake with Incognito, where I went back for more and they were sold out!

I read the first issue of Incognito when it came out and it didn't quite click. I then went back for number two and it sat on my shelf for months. Then I read and loved it! That's when they were all sold out. Fortunately the trade just came out.

The story in this one is great. A supervillain is put into a witness protection program, but he finds he can't stop kicking people's asses. He tries to be covert by stopping criminals and finds he likes it. This gets the ire of his former employers, a none too nice group of folks and he also manages to piss off the a secret superhero-staffed version of the FBI. Bad times all around.

The book is great because it infuses the superhero story, with its constant, but generally nonconsequential violence, with the depth of a crime story with its very consequential violence. People die in this story and they tend to die badly. Now in a realistic crime book, there would be one or two terrible acts, but this is a superhero book so the chaos is constant.

The only reason I was happy it ended was the hint that there is more to come. Now I have to get a hold of his Gotham Central which tells story's of Batman's city from the perspective of the town's cops.

Crime, crime, everywhere there's crime

Another day, another set of graphic novels. Now's it crime time. I recently picked up two books, Torso and Criminal: Bad Night by modern comic masters, Brian Bendis and Ed Brubaker, respectively. These very different books illustrate what is possible in telling crime (true or otherwise) stories with the graphic format.

Torso is relatively old for a graphic novel, written in the late 90s. It takes it time in telling the story of an unsolved serial killer loose in Depression era Cleveland. These murders, terrible and grisly acts which left only a torso for the police to find, place on the watch of the man that took down Capone, Elliot Ness. The book uses experimental visuals and a long exposition to show how a man who could figure out how to deal with corrupt cops had a much harder time dealing with the novel idea of someone who killed frequently for non-material reasons. Having read up a smidge on the case, it seems Bendis sticks to the facts, including a shocking choice Ness makes in an attempt to break the killer. Much of the conclusion is imagined, but the end stays true to the facts.

Criminal: Bad Night is one of Brubaker's ongoing series of stand-alone stories of people who either through bad luck, desperation or bad choices, find themselves on the wrong side of the law. His use of browns, yellows and black hues and the haggard look of his characters gives the stories a grimy feel that is perfectly fitting the feel of the story. The ends of Brubaker's Criminal stories are what you might call twists, but really they are just the tragedies seem almost inevitable once you read them.

The Last Child

The Edgar Award (awards for the best in crime literature) list of nominees is now out and I was thrilled to see that John Hart's The Last Child is on the list for best novel. I am not sure if it reduces his chances, but his last novel, Down River, won the 2008 Best Edgar. The Last Child is a better book than Down River and it should be recognized.

The story takes place over a few days as young Johnny Merrimon marks the anniversary of the disappearance of his twin sister. He is becoming obsessed with looking for her, and has little help. His father ran off shortly after his sister disappeared and his mother spends most of her days drunk or in the arms of an abusive boyfriend. The cops think he is crazy, except for one that he doesn't trust. Things heat up when another child vanishes.

The plot is great and all, but the characters are fabulous. Johnny is a great hero as an outsider who both longs for community and is also a individual. The cops are also quite good. There is a subplot involving a potential crooked cop that keeps the story moving. There is a cliche about these sorts of books that the author keeps you guessing until the end. This is true in this case, Hart does a great job inserting shady characters and plot twists.

If I had to pick an author of whom Hart reminds me, I would have to go with James Lee Burke. You get the solid characters, the mature sense of loss and tragedy, the believable characters loaded with human frailties and the great stories. You even kinda sort get the badass friend to get the main character out of scrapes.

The one thing that bothered me a little and may bother you quite a bit, is the element of magical realism that creeps in towards the end. If such things make you throw a book across the room, then you might want to look elsewhere. I would add though that you are missing a hell of a book.

We can be like they are

Beat the Reaper is written by Josh Bazell, one of those hyper-capable people that might irritate you if they didn't do things so well. While he was in medical school, he came up with an idea for a comic novel about a doctor who is also an anti-healer, a hitman. I guess it helps that he was an English major in college.

Anyway, the book is great fun. We see former hitman Pietro Brnwa, now Dr Peter Brown in the witness protection program, go through his day as an intern in a run down Manhattan hospital. His days are rough enough, but get worse when one of his former colleagues from the Life surfaces and lets his enemies know where he is. Now he has to dodge assassination while saving lives in the hospital.

The book alternates between Peter's life in the hospital and Pietro's life as a hitman. At first, I thought we had some of the dread Killer with a Heart of Gold* here, and to be honest, it is still hard to believe that someone who takes money for murder is going to turn out to be a peachy guy who risks his life to prevent an unnecessary amputation. I accepted it here, because the writing is flashy and hilarious and because there is a life changing event for Pietro that arises from his life of crime.

There is so much to enjoy here, including all sorts of little nuggets about medicine. At the end Bazell puts in a disclaimer that the whole book is fiction, but I like to think there are some fun facts to be enjoyed.

*An example of a book that is killed by the Killer with a Heart of Gold is the Electric Church. Here again we have a supposedly hardened killer, who keeps claiming life is too hard to go easy on people, but who constantly finds reasons to do the ethical thing. Sorry, don't buy it.

Another one I didn't finish

CG is going to be pissed at me, but I put down the Abstinence Teacher. I generally like me some Tom Perrotta, but this felt a bit too much like Little Children Part Deux. Once again we have the unlikely couples coming together while learning of the travails of bourgeois suburbanites. Not that I have anything against bourgeois suburbanites, being a bourgeois urbanite. Perrotta's observational humor is in full effect, but I wasn't in the mood I guess. I jumped into the heady genre pleasures of John Hart's the Last Child (the library is going to freak as I spilled a ton of Pad Prik King all over it) and the Dark Avengers.

Thinking about this made me muse about the nature of entertainment, which of course led me to That's Entertainment. The original version by the Jam is all well and good, but I adore the Moz cover below:

9 Dragons

Michael Connelly's 9 Dragons was better than I hoped. I liked the early Bosch books, but I felt that got a bit samey over time. The subject matter (Chinese gangs in LA and Hong Kong) and the fact that my Mom gave me her copy convinced me to give it a shot. I ended up reading it in an evening. This speaks both to the engaging plot and the brevity.

The story is a definate strength of the book. It moves fast, even a touch too fast really. It lurches from plot development to plot development at such speed that there are few lulls that would lead you to take a break. On the downside, the speed sacrifices character and the full exploitation of the Chinese subject matter.

I was suprised that Bosch didn't seem as tired as I thought he would. Yes, he has the cliched relationship issues and the love of jazz records, but he fallible, often terribly so and he avoids screeching into Jack Bauer amoral superhero territory.

Still, I was hoping for a little more background on China. Rather than give us a feel for Hong Kong, we get a list of place names. The bad guys are conveniently strewn across the territory. The characters are also terribly thin.

There are, I think, at least two kinds of good crime novels. One is the thoughtful, and often lengthy study that mulls over the grey emotions, like regret and remorse. Then there are the sorts that get the pulse racing. They both serve a purpose. What I do dislike about the new thrillers is how efficient they have become. Nearly everything other than plot is cast aside in order to hurtle the reader down the track. It's a fun ride, but when its over, it is more often than not forgetable.

A last minute addition to my best of the year list

Stuart Neville's debut, the Ghosts of Belfast, is crazy good. It is the sort of book I kept nearby at all times, so that I can could read it when I found some spare minutes. It reminded me of first reading Dennis Lehane, although that is slightly unfair to Neville, as his debut is better than Lehane's. We are lucky indeed to have another crime novelist of this caliber.

The book's anti-hero is Gerry Fegan, a former IRA enforcer and murderer. Released from prison, he is going slowly mad from drink and from 12 ghosts that haunt him. His only way out is to listen to the ghosts and to kill the men that ordered or helped him to kill.

Neville's protagonist is nasty and so are the rest of his characters, it's no surprise that he considers James Ellroy to be the greatest living crime writer. The cruel mobster/terrorists of the IRA are now gussied up politicians, although they aren't afraid to dabble in crime to get a few more dollars. The British are manipulative monsters, willing to throw innocent after innocent into the maw in order to maintain their political objectives. Fegan gains our reluctant sympathy as he is the only one to recognize what he has done is wrong and to act on that understanding as well.

Neville could have written a simple, if exhilarating, revenge thriller, but he set his sights higher. The book pulls back the reality behind the ideas of nationalism and national security. The real bad guys of the book aren't the trigger pullers, although many are loathsome, but the people pulling the strings, who use happy concepts to justify the blood on their hands.

I can't wait for Neville's next book!

Gillian Flynn puts on her pants just like the rest of you, except once her pants are on, she writes great crime novels

I used to have no taste in books. It's true! I liked the worst of the worst British (and there are no worse) 80s horror novels. I once gave a friend Michael Slade's atrocious Ghoul, which he rightly hated. The book is notable for a profusion of gore and also a blurb from Bruce Dickinson (yes, THE Bruce Dickinson) He said "Slade is warped and I love it!" The twisted characters in Gillian Flynn's two excellent novels make me wonder about her daydreams, but I will say I love her books but not for the reason Dickinson praised Slade.

Slade like the torture pornographers that dominate horror movies believes that gore and physical torment is scary, or, worse, entertaining. Flynn is more interested in social cruelty and psychological torment. Her first book, Sharp Objects, featured an emotionally shattered outsider who returned to her hometown to cover a brutal murder and to confront her unspeakable family.

Her newer book is Dark Places. This one dials back the social critique a tad, but features a dual timeline story in which the only survivor of a 1980s home massacre finally comes to terms with it. Libby was seven when her family was killed and she helped put her brother in jail for her life as the killer. She becomes a violent withdrawn person herself and makes it to her thirties living off donations. When she runs out of money and choices, she helps out some bizarro murder fetishists who believe her brother did not commit the crime. Not believing them, but needing money she becomes involved in their investigation.

The flashbacks to the 80s depict a small town awash in fears of Satanists (remember that? I recall reading a book cashing in on the hysteria called Say You Love Satan!). The town looks down on Libby's family, as they are barely holding their heads above water. Libby's brother is poor and awkward, which makes him doubly suspicious in the eyes of the community. They are all too happy to demonize him as the story progresses.

The story itself is much better in this book than in the first book. As much as I loved that book for the characterization and writing, the ending was fairly clear at about the midpoint. In this case, you get the gimlet eyed writing, the weak, bitter, but still sympathetic characters, but you also get a story that keeps you uncertain until the end.

I can't wait to see what human ruin Flynn creates next!

Blood's A Rover

So I've finished Blood's A Rover and I am happy to say that my initial enthusiasm carried throughout the entire read. I was so sad to see it finish, which is rare for a crime novel. While I tend to think the best crime novels are the equal of the best litfic, there are those that disagree. Genre snobs should consider the book a literary work and note that while its story line is like that of a thriller, the depth of character, the singular use of language and syntax and the emotional depth of the story will win over the more effete readers. Unless of course you can't stand the over the top vulgarity.

Past fans of Ellroy will note many consistencies with his earlier books. There are a pair of men with a complicated relationship who weave back and forth across the good and evil line. There is an unsolved crime scene around which much of the plot revolves, although it is often unclear why. There is the uneasy sense that the power structure is completely corrupt and there is little chance for hope for the good.

If you want to scare yourself this Halloween, but don't like traditional horror stories, you should pick this up. All the conspiracy theories that nagged you about the 60s and early 70s are true. What's more, in Ellroy's dark world, no one is truly innocent. The left is populated by the deluded, the self-important, the idiotic and the ineffectual. The right is populated by a range of terrifying monsters perfectly happy to grind up anyone in their path. The path chosen by the book's few survivors makes perfect sense after the hell they have been through.

My only regret after reading the book is my fear that Ellroy now has no place to go. He has completed his major work started with the Black Dahlia, the first in the LA Quartet and continued with the Underground America trilogy. His story line has been so epic for so long, I am not sure how he goes back to simpler plots or how he would continue this story. My only solace is that his creativity and vision are strong enough to do just about anything.

Anyone like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

I was on the return flight from Atlanta yesterday when I started the much lauded Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I made decent headway into it, but put it down mid-flight. It was clicking. I'm not sure it was the book's fault as

A) I had just finished Blood's A Rover and loved it. The style of that book is so particular that it may have spoiled crime novels for a week or so.

B) I was tired. I was in a car for six hours and then got on a plane. The brain was not firing on all cylinders I assure you.

C) I was uncomfortable. The person in front of me kept adjusting her seat and the person next to me needed more room than an economy seat provides. I became more acquainted with the side of the plan than I would have liked.

So, I am thinking I should maybe try the book again. Any advice would be appreciated.

The new Ellroy and why I like it

Man, am I loving the new Ellroy* I'm sure you're all, whatever dude, you like it, that's cool, but this really matters to me.

In the late 90s, there was no author I loved more than Ellroy. I could not get enough of him. Then I read Cold Six Thousand and I felt like my a close friend had betrayed me. The book did not work for me at all. I didn't speak of his books for years and didn't recommend them. Now the new one feels like an old, but wayward friend showing up with tickets to London to see the reunited Pavement along with a tour of Irish pubs with the Pogues. All is forgiven.

Anyway, I was trying to think of why Ellroy, Thompson, Lehane, Kerr and other authors stand out for me. It comes down to world view. Many crime writers (and nearly all adventure writers) assume that the world is basically good. Their stories tell of evil aberrations brought down by shining exemplars of good. Once vanquished, the world is returned to its rightful, cheerful, sunny state.

Not so for our Ellroy and his ideological brethren. In their novels, the world is evil. The power structure exists to extract, exploit and exterminate, all the while proclaiming its goodness. The heroes in these books are damaged people who rise above their baser instincts and carve some out some small victory, often at terrible cost.

The treatment of violence in these books is markedly different. In the sunny novels, an act of violence by the hero is normally clean, and shaming. He won't be sadistic or attempt to levy justice. Violence is clearly the wrong path in these books. In the darker books, violence is righteous, cathartic and, in its own way, uplifting. The philosophy underlying these books is that some people need a beatdown and the books give us that beatdown.

The best books of the dark side nearly always have some moment where violence is meted out to those who deserve it. The scene in LA Confidential where Bud wrecks the crooked lawyer is an example. Joe Lansdale has a patient man taking an axe handle to a pair of racist fucks. Dennis Lehane's Prayer for Rain has a notable suggested beat down that had me smarting. Deep down, there is a part of us that wants to

The subtext is that the world is terrible and we can't really hope to change it, but we can make some of the jackals and vampires pay, and pay dearly. The funny thing is, for the most part I am an optimist and think most things are just peachy. When I see that view reflected in fiction, it seems mawkish and foolish, and I recoil. Some deeper part of me suspects that the world is not as nice as I hope.

Reading the new James Ellroy

Blood's a Rover. yowza. I am about 50 pages in and I am hooked. The writing style is singular and will put off lots of people. It is terse, brutal, abrasively musical, and filled with emotion, mostly negative. The odd thing is, it didn't really work for me in Cold Six Thousand, but it is working now.

I was listening to an Fresh Air interview with another favorite, Michael Chabon, who said that good writing should make the author and the reader uncomfortable. If that's the case, then Ellroy needs to take home the National Book Award and the Pulitzer. Ellroy puts his dark characters through hell and takes the reader through the worst of America. One character is a heroin dealer patricide with a hand in the MLK assasination, and he is one of the good guys.

A lot of crime novelists have supposedly evil characters. Usually this means they are amoral killers who have no mercy on their victims. Ellroy goes a step further with people who use hate to guide society and politics. These are the real monsters. Here he describes the art collection of the country's leading creator of hate pamphlets:

Fine oils. The masters reconsidered. A Van Gogh lynching. A Rembrandt gas-chamber tableaux. Matisse does Congolese atrocities. Paul Klee does Martin Luther King charbroiled.
Crutch scoped the walls. Man Ray did Bobby Kennedy dead on a slab. Picasso did Lady Bird Johnson muff-diving Anne Frank.

My reaction to that last one was the same as the character Crutch, a disbelieving "fuck......" The book is like a fictional, conspiracy theorist version of Nixonland. It shows you the horrors behind the smiles. Oh man would it be fun to read those two books together. You'd need a few weeks to recover, but what a ride.

The next Dennis Lehane

Well I was hoping for another Given Day, but it looks like Lehane is finally going back to Kenzie and Gennaro. His next book is a sequel to Gone Baby Gone. The book takes place 11 years after Gone Baby Gone. The young girl of that story is now a teen and has disappeared....again. I'm a little sad that we won't get a new Given Day (yet!) but I am also happy to see Kenzie and Gennaro again.