New Releases: A Mixed Bag of Genres

Well, I’m still busy reading away, but life does interfere with my plans.  I did enjoy a few good books.  Barry Eisler got close to being back on track with a new John Rain thriller.  Laura Resnick has another chapter in the Esther Diamond series with Vamparazzi – one of the BEST titles this year!  Vicki Lewis Thompson continues her amusing paranormal romance books and .  No, none are stunning blockbuster books, but all were above average and really good reads.

• Title:  The Detachment
  
• Author:  Barry Eisler
• Type:  Action thriller
• Genre:  John Rain and Dox get drawn into another adventure
• Sub-genre:  Manipulation, deception, and the impossible is all too plausible
• My Grade: B- (3.8*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 90,000+ $8.25 to$12
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores and online
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from an online book seller

The best news, John Rain, one of the BEST characters developed by any author in the past decade, is finally back.  So too is his Dox, his sniper friend and sometimes partner.  Barry Eisler had lost much of the edge that appealed to me with his two Ben Treven books, both of which I found disappointing.  He seems to recapture much of his old magic in The Detachment, though the plot is more obvious than those in his far more twisty and better written early books, and Col ‘Hort’ Horton is not in any way an admirable, or fundamentally honorable person.

Rain has broken up with his girlfriend and Mossad operative, Dehlia.  She refused to leave intelligence agency and he found he could not live with her job – or maybe he was just bored.  As always, he returned to Tokyo, living quietly and going just one place he might be associated with – the Kodokon.  He notices two Americans watching from the stands.  When he catches the them quickly checking the next night, he knows he’s been found.  His response is classic Rain – he leads there where they want to go, lulls them and then kills them both.

But it was a setup and the men pawns that were deliberately sacrificed to catch Rain on camera and blackmail him into doing a job for Col ‘Hort’ Horton.  In LA Hort tells Rain there’s on oligarchy ready to create domestic terrorism in such a way that suspending the Constitution and granting extraordinary powers to the President and Executive Branch of Government seems the only logical course of action.  He uses the very real slow erosion of rights and privacy that the Patriot Act and various government entities – from ICE to TSA to the NSA have already created as a way to get citizens accustomed to a ‘new reality’.

Four Super Short Reviews: Mixed Genre

Having a broken wrist caused a real bad attitude, and FINALLY, I’ve made it to therapy.  Now the ulnar nerve is having fits.  SIGH!  Back in the splint off and on, and I still have the problems with blood flow.  One stupid little fall.  A non-event.  What a pain in the rump.   Still, the enforced idleness came when a bunch of books I’d been waiting for got released.

• Title: Dead on the Delta
  
• Author:  Stacey Jay
• Type:  Paranormal UF/alternate reality
• Genre:  noir style paranormal mystery
• Sub-genre:  killer faries, drug runners, and family secrets on the bayou
• My Grade: B- (3.8*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 90,000+ $7.99
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from online bookstore

This was a semi-original story by a new author.  If certain backstory elements and world building had gelled just a bit better, this could have been an A.  The writing style and quality lacked some polish, but the atmosphere was there.  The story is centered around the murder of a small girl, thought to be one of a string of such murders, and it hits close to home for Annebelle.  Annabelle Lee, is seeking forgetfulness and oblivion at the bottom of the bottle way too often, but her unique talents – she’s one of the rare immunes who won’t die from mutant fairy bites – her affair with the too-good-to-be-true boyfriend, police detective Caine Cooper, and the appearance of ex-fiance Hitch as an FBI technical expert with his female partner/agent – who is his current fiance, was kind of too much coincidence for one book.

Annie keeps reminding herself she’s just a special kind of crime scene technician,med school dropout, and someone who deserves to be punished.  Her determined efforts at self-destruction for an incident in her past, are at odds with her unwanted sense of obligation to the murdered child.  the story unwinds rather like a choppy homemade movie, without smooth segues and criss-crossing various plot elements in a distracting style.  The ending brings an interesting twist, not so much to the crime, but to what happens to Annabelle and what she will become.

Was Dead on the Delta worth $7.99?  Yes – for any fan of the noir style.  The writing is no match for authors like Lawrence Sanders or Dennis Lehanne, but a decent read.  I just hope the authors style smooths out a bit in future.

Four Short Reviews: Assorted Genres – Paranormals, Mystery, Thrillers

Some new, or at least recent releases, in various genres.

• Title: Tangled Threads
  
• Author:  Jennifer Estep
• Type:  Paranormal UF/alternate reality
• Genre:  Female assassin helps others while she gets ready to avenge her family
• Sub-genre:  Magic is alive and well in Ashland
• My Grade: C+ to B-  (3.5*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 90,000+ $7.99
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from online bookstore

Short Reviews: Paranormal, Erotic Romance, Mystery, Action Thriller

My tastes in reading range far and wide, but mostly, I just like a good read.  Some here were, some weren’t.  Consider this a snapshot of my TBR mountain.

• Title: Under Wraps
  
• Author:  Hannah Jayne
• Type:  Humorous paranormal with an UF edge and a mystery
• Genre:  A magic resistant human gets involved in investigating a serial killing with a handsome detective
• Sub-genre:  Quirky blend of ordinary woman in a paranormal world who’d love to kick ass, but lacks the instincts and skills
• My Grade: C-  (2.8*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Full novel – about 80,000+ $6.99
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from online bookstore

A Vampire Mystery and a New Action Thriller

Every once in awhile, a book title is just so intriguing you simply MUST have it regardless of the fact it’s out of print and the publisher is defunct.  Such was the case with The Case of the Virtuous Vampire.  How did I stumble across such a niche market book from a tiny publisher?  Paperback Swap.  Yes, despite what many publishers think, book swapping online actually increased my purchasing of books, it didn’t reduce it.  It does the same for many others.  Why?  Because you find many new authors and/or genres and the waiting lists move too slowly because there aren’t millions of copies sold.  But I’ve bought a hundred paperbacks – trade paperbacks (those $14-$18 oversized paperbacks) and mass market paperbacks, many by new or new to me authors.  I’ve also bought more than my fair share of hardcovers.  SIGH!

I wonder sometimes just how much the current paranormal/UF craze owes to J.K. Rowling and her brilliant Harry Potter series.  You have a whole generation of kids growing up enjoying the story of the ‘boy wizard’ in the books and the movies.  A lot of today’s Twilight reader’s probably cut their fiction teeth on Harry and his friends.  It’s only natural they would find a touch of the supernatural appealing.   I think the predictions of a waning interest in paranormal and UF that many publishers predicted were a bit premature.

Book Review: Pursuit of Honor by Vince Flynn

• Title: Pursuit of Honor
• Author: Vince Flynn
• Type: Action Thriller
• Genre: Mitch Rapp CIA Op series; betrayal and death
• Sub-genre: Terrorists and assassins
• My Grade: D+ (2.5*)
• Rating: PG-13
• Length and price:  Plus novel – 100,000+ words
• Where Available: Available as a hardcover everywhere; paperback release Aug 2010
• FTC Disclosure: Book purchased from online bookseller

Vince Flynn burst onto the action/thriller scene with a terrific book about revenge called Term Limits.   He introduced Mitch Rapp, an undercover op and assassin for the CIA in second book, one of my personal favorites, Transfer of Power.  His books have increasingly become a kind of a protracted editorial and justification for his personal political beliefs and Pursuit of Honor reads more like an editorial than an action/thriller.  That part wouldn’t be so bad, but he makes two fatal errors – the first is, Mitch Rapp is never wrong, the second more grievous error is forgetting his readers want AN ACTION/THRILLER STORY!  There was a time when Vince was an automatic buy for me, then after 9/11, with each subsequent book, there was less and less of interest and more and more about the power struggles in Washington, DC.  I stopped buying him until I could either get his books as remainders – or from a book swapping site.

Book Review: Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

• Title: Hit and Run
• Author: Lawrence Block
• Type: Action thriller
• Genre: Assassin/hit man
• Sub-genre: Keller series
• My Grade: C (3*)
• Rating: PG-13
• Where Available: Wherever books are sold
• FTC Disclosure: purchased from and online bookstore

Lawrence Block, a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, is one of the best mystery thriller writers with a wide range of styles.  His dark and often grim Matt Scudder books are some of the best hardboiled PI books out there.  His Bernie Rhodenbarr ‘Burglar”books have a sense of humor involving his thief with a conscience in various mysteries.  He even wrote a government agent series featuring Evan Tanner back in the day.  Less well known than Matt Scudder or Bernie Rhodenbarr is hit man for hire, John Keller, the star of his 4 ‘Hit’ books.  Unfortunately, Hit and Run wasn’t his best work.  An oddly introspective and amoral tale of a hit man who gets setup to take the fall for a political assassination he didn’t commit is a bit Point of Impact, but Keller isn’t as sure, or sly, as Bob Lee Swagger, but he is less moral.

BOOK REVIEW: Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

That blissful, satisfied sigh you hear is me.  I devoured Gone Tomorrow in less than a day, all 421 pages.  No, it isn’t deathless prose, not even for an action thriller, but it is what Lee Child and his protagonist Jack Reacher do best – slam into you at full tilt from the opening lines and leave you hanging on for a wild thrill  ride.

“Suicide bombers are easy to spot.  They give out all kinds of telltale signs.  Mostly because they’re nervous.  By definition they’re all first timers.”

Jack Reacher is on the Lexington Avenue local at 2AM and remembering all the training he had by Israeli counterintelligence while watching a woman that fits the suicide bomber profile perfectly.  She’s wearing a bulky oversized parka on a hot fall day and it’s zipped to the neck.  She keeps muttering, as if reciting a prayer, her hands hidden in a small backpack on her lap wrapped around something hard – like the battery and detonator switch.  But surely it’s the wrong time – not enough people, but it was impossible for Reacher to ignore.  He figures he’s as dead where he sits as he will be closer, so he approaches.  Trying to calm her, he says he’s a cop.  Instead, she pulls out a gun and kills herself with a .357 Magnum through her head.

BOOK REVIEW: Fault Line by Barry Eisler

Barry Eisler is arguably the best action thriller writer working today, though you’d never know it by Fault Line.  He’s better than Lee Child, Jack Higgins, Brad Thor, Kyle Mills, Vince Flynn, even Daniel Silva, who is his nearest competition.  Yes, he really is that good.  His plots are intelligent, his world building some of the best out there (that’s also Silva’s greatest strength) and his action realistic.  His characters have depth, his ability to paint an atmosphere with words rivals Silva and his action scenes are as good as anyone’s – maybe better.  That’s why this book seems like a more spectacular failure than it really is.  If this was Mills, Thor, Flynn, or Higgins I doubt I would judge it so harshly.  Child has slipped lately, just not as badly.  Sliva’s deterioration is much more subtle and involves his plots and lead character, so only his hardcore fans really see it.  This was the literary equivalent of a NASCAR wreck.

The premise of Fault Line is not all that original.  The whole concept of encryption that is nearly unbreakable is one that’s been done before.  Versions have even played out in the news over the years as the government has forced various encryption software manufacturers to turn over source code so they can break encrypted files, always invoking the argument that it a matter of public safety and national security.  Neither is killing off the creator of an encryption code.  Even Windtalkers had a version of ‘kill the source code’, in that case it was shoot the code talker as a key plot element!  Right from the start, the plot has no new ground, so Eisler set himself a formidable task: find a new take on a well explored area and make your characters different yet believable.

Next are the three key protagonists, again they’re predictable and shallow:  Ben Treven is the eldest son in a family of three and in some ways a misfit in his family.  He’s the athlete who became a soldier, not the academic his family wanted.  A former Ranger, he now works as an assassin for a black ops military unit.  He believes people should be grateful to him and others for protecting them and has a certain disdain for those ordinary people. Alex Treven, the youngest, is a super smart kid who always showed off and acted like being smart somehow makes him better than others.  Now he’s clawing his way up to a partnership in a major law firm with a specialty in patent law.  His condescension toward others and scheming against his nominal boss is totally believable.  Richard Hilzoy’s encryption patent is his ticket to the coveted partnership.  Sarah Hosseini is a young first year associate at the firm and another smart patent lawyer.  The only child of Iranian parents caught in the US when the Shah was overthrown, she’s trying to make her parents happy by being a successful lawyer.  She’s smart and beautiful, but not all that happy or satisfied with her career.  Ten years younger than Alex, she hasn’t developed his arrogance or lust for the trappings of power.

Finally there is the inter-character tension, which Eisler built with a really old plot device of childhood angers and another round of clichéd tragic family events – a sister killed in a car accident, a father’s suicide – that shapes how the brothers interact.  Ben believes himself more virtuous and deserving of thanks for the dangerous and deadly work he does for ‘the nation’.  Alex believes himself the more virtuous because he was the one who stayed home and dealt with all the emotional fallout of their sister’s death, their father’s suicide and their mother’s cancer while Ben was off playing solider.  Frankly, I thought they both needed to just GROW UP and please, dear God, get over themselves.  (All that was missing was the Smothers Brothers doing their “Mom Always Liked You Best!” routine.)  Not to mention the whole thing plays out in flashbacks throughout the book like some new kind of psychological torture for readers.

BOOK REVIEW: The Killing Floor by Lee Child

Jack Reacher is an Army brat raised with his older brother on bases around the world. Schooled at West Point, and a following career in Army, his whole life is intimately tied to the service. In the service and became a first rate investigator in the MP’s, among other things. Now a retired major, thanks to the huge military downsizing in the ‘90’s, and free of the of the regimentation that has been there his whole life. Now he finds comfort moving around at will. Under the radar suits him just fine. No hometown, no family ties, other than a very distant relationship with his Secret Service bother whom he hasn’t seen in years, he’s truly free. But that’s about to change.

The Killing Floor, Lee Child’s first book, opens in machine gun style:

“I was arrested at Eno’s Diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.”

As Reacher moves from the local jail, to a nite in a prison holding cell, to release next morning, his size and capacity for violence save his life and that of another man with him. Despite every effort, Reacher is still a curious man. He looks at things differently. The very frightened man in the cell with Reacher tells him just a little bit of information. Reacher refuses to be drawn. When they are both released, Reacher’s alibi confirmed, Reacher is planning to leave town. The lovely deputy changes his mind in the usual way. He also resents the people trying to force him out. Despite realizing there is something profoundly wrong in Margrave, despite the plea for help from the wife of the man he protected in prison, despite his attraction to a female deputy, he does not want to get involved. Then the Sheriff and his wife are murdered in a very gruesome fashion and Reacher decides to lend a hand.