Bookmarks

Jay Porter knows he is “this close” to being in trouble. He can’t rub two pennies together there is a baby on the way, and he really needs pull together a surprise of some kind for his wife’s birthday. It truly becomes a night to remember when gun shots are heard, and then they pull a woman onto the boat they were taking an evening cruise on.

Attica Locke’s debut novel, set in Houston at the beginning of the 80’s, is a face paced mystery. Taking us through oil boom town trying to keep its boom going, a dockworkers strike, a disappear-reappearing .22 and a Reverend for a father-in-law. It also tells the back story of Jay, a man who started out fighting for his civil rights in college and end up fighting for his life. Jay Porter is a man who wants to do the right thing, just too many people are pushing him into corners where he is going to have to fight his way out of. It shows how one makes the man that deals with the other later in life.

Black Water Rising is one of six nominees for the Edgar Allen Poe Award, Best First Novel by an American Writer. I look forward to other great works by her in the future.

The  other nominees in this category:

The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff

I usually read all of the books in this category before the  award is presented on April 29, 2010 in New York. For more information on the Edgar Awards, go to the Mystery Writers of America website at www.mysterywriters.org

I didn’t know what to expect from Joe Hill in Horns as this was first time to read him. I also don’t read a lot of horror, but I am not sure this is horror; This is more like a dark fantasy.

Ig woke up a mess, hungover and not able to remember a lot about the night before. So how did these horns get on his head.

Ig is a wonderful and charming boy, living a little in the shadow of his greater older brother and his formerly great father. As he bust out of his shell to become his own man, boy meets girl. Merrin steals Ig’s heart and in a few years, her murder shatters Ig life.

This dark fantasy plays out in 4 acts. Each twist and turn of the plot are as wonderful as a ride down the valley in a well tuned sports car. The forces of good and evil become blurred and mixed. At some point i think “Wait, am I rooting for the devil to win?”

This book will make you lose a little sleep. Because you won’t want to leave without finding out what is next.  Horns
will be in store Feb 16. Email me at efwhitfill@ukazoo.com if you want to reserve a copy.

Christopher Buckley tickled me with Thank You for Smoking and had me rolling in the floor with Little Green Men; Buckley has the keen wit concerning Washington and its inner working. In his newest book is something else all together. Losing Mum and Pup is about the 12 months in his life when he lost first his mother, then his father. This is hard enough for anybody. Is it easier or worse when you have to turn down the VP of the US as a guest to the memorial service and follow Harry Kissinger in giving the eulogy?

Buckley takes turns dropping name, going through the healing process of grief, telling funny and  cogent antidotes about growing up as the only son to the Lion of Conservatism, William F. Buckley and “chic and stunning Mrs. Buckley”, Patricia.

Something rings true and sincere in Losing Mum and Pup. This is no fluff piece about the man who George Nash has called “the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century”. This is what it is like to be his son; how arguments go against the man who started “Firing Line” on PBS.

Losing Mum and Pup is touching, funny and very, very real. I take away the lesson that Christopher started with, be careful saying the words you can’t take back. I will work on that - good advice.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey taught us to make deposts in emotional bank accounts. Now, Gary Chapman will teach us how to make sure we make those deposit in ways that the other person most feels loved.

The Five Love Languages is a simple book with a simple premise: it is important to show love to another in whatever way they most feel loved.  What does it take for the other person to feel loved, touch, quality time, gifts, act of service or words of affirmation? We usually speak to others in the way that makes us feel good; Chapman just ask us to do it their way.

Simplistic, absolutely.  So what? In a day and age where everything is complicated (including the process of posting a blog so you can read it) we need more simplicity in our lives. This book is a reminder to focus on your partner is life, and for them to focus on you. If you work at meeting each other’s needs, you will be ok. Maybe even wonderful.

Cemetery Dance is the new Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child novel with FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.  If you read Preston/Child novels, you know Pendergast.  If you don’t read Preston/Child novels, don’t start here, start at the beginning with Relic and Reliquary in which Pendergast is a supporting character. Then dig into Cabinets of Curiosities where he stars.

Pendergast is a odd duck.  Originally from New Orleans, is from a wealth family, Harvard graduate in Anthropology, and a PhD from Oxford in Classics and Philosophy; this is not your ordinary FBI agent. Not even for mystery novels this is not your ordinary FBI agent.

Preston/Child dabbles in the supernatural with each book. In Cemetery Dance it is Zombies. In each case,  Pendergast keeps us certain that these things do not exist.  Lincoln/Child novels are more thriller then mystery and very well written. They are mysteries for those who only read novels.  Not just the Pendergast books; Preston and Child are just good writers worthy of wanting to get wrapped up in a book.