Posts filed under 'Thriller'
This old house is run-down. This old house is leaky. This old house is far from town. And this old house sends them screaming ’cause it’s the scariest place around. I’m talking about Hundreds Hall, the big, spooky mansion at the center of Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger.
Have you got a thing for old houses? Manderley? Northanger Abbey? The Castle of Otranto? Hill House? If you dream of polished wood banisters leading up grand central staircases, heirloom tapestries hanging from the windows, hidden corridors and maids in costumes, then Hundreds Hall is just your place. In post World War II England the Ayres estate is beyond crumbling and well on the way to ruin. The family is broke and while still respected in the community, they’re seen as more of a curiosity than anything else. Piece by piece the grounds are being sold off to developers, but the family’s still got the house.
Enter Dr. Faraday, whose mother worked in the nursery at Hundreds when she was a girl. He is called to the house for a medical emergency and befriends the family. Then weird things start to happen. Weird things involving blood and injury and madness. Weird things that culminate in a disturbing ending that I did not see coming. I do not normally predict these things, though, so that is nothing new.
On a scary scale of one to ten, I would rate this book at about six. On my scale, a one is something easy, like the picture book, Where the Wild Things Are, where everything gets resolved and all are safe and sound at the end. A five is anything by Neil Gaiman. OK, to be honest, The Graveyard Book and Coraline are really about a seven on my scale, because they did give me nightmares. Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House are at ten. The Little Stranger is sufficiently creepy, but it’s not going to give you nightmares, and there’s more to recommend than the horror.
What I enjoyed most about this book had nothing to do with the chillers and thrillers. I liked the house. The details of the flooring and ceiling and wallpaper and ornamental carvings were amazing. And that was just the beginning. There were also chandeliers and fireplaces and fancy chairs. And libraries and billiards rooms and nurseries. And linens and silver trays and aristocratic maid-calling bells. Hundreds Hall is a fantastic setting. If you appreciate a good mansion with a touch of terror, give this book a go.
March 17th, 2010
Molly - Central
A man with no memories wanders through a bazaar in Bahrain
Two Texas Rangers face an ambush along the border
A reporter drops dead at his computer
These scenes set the tone for Strong Enough to Die, a new thriller from Jon Land that introduces Caitlin Strong in a complex story that includes everything from the Mexican mafia to governmental contractors and a secret plot to rule the world. If that sounds too far-fetched, it’s actually not. Land manages to take some pretty big ideas and make them all too scarily plausible.
Caitlin Strong is a fifth generation Texas Ranger. As the book opens she barely survives that ambush on the border. Shaken by her own need for revenge after that attack, she leaves the rangers and instead completes the work necessary to get her psychology degree. Her new job will be working in a facility that treats people who are psychologically damaged after suffering horrendous torture. One of the first people Cailin meets in the facility is a man whose identity has been wiped away. This man has not simply lost his memories, but has lost all sense of self and no one knows who he is. Until Caitlin. To her shock she finds herself face to face with her husband - a man the army told her was killed in Iraq a year ago.
Where has her husband been? And how does his reappearance tie into the murders that are happening now? Where does corporate mogul and uberpatriot Harmon Delladonne fit into the equation? All good questions. And ones that Caitlin will need some help to answer. That help comes in the form of her fellow Texas Rangers and a man who has every reason to want Caitlin dead.
Though Land has twenty-seven other titles to his name this is a first in a new series and serves as a good introduction for both Caitlin Strong and Jon Land.
February 18th, 2010
Jane J. - Central Library
The ominous sky behind the title is a perfect representation of what’s inside this book: churning, nuanced gradations of mystery.
Dan Chaon’s new novel Await Your Reply is getting plenty of buzz, and I have to say, it’s worth it. I really love books that are just a bit creepy, that have a subtle undertone of discomfort beneath whatever normal actions the characters are performing. Each of the three storylines in this novel fits the bill in its own way.
Chaon introduces us first to Miles Cheshire, an emotionally stunted young man who is obsessed with finding his schizophrenic twin brother Hayden, who disappeared ten years ago. Hayden is something of a mad genius, and has managed to elude Miles for years as he has held various jobs under aliases around the country. Meanwhile, Lucy Lattimore has just graduated high school and left the dead-end town of Pompey, Ohio in search of the more exciting life her former history teacher and current boyfriend has promised her. In the third storyline, Ryan Schuyler’s father is rushing him to the hospital with Ryan’s severed hand in a cooler on the car seat next to him. While these disparate stories take place in different locations, each meanders towards a similar endpoint, and their connections are slowly revealed as the characters themselves begin to unravel their own identities.
Await Your Reply is definitely a thriller, but it’s also a beautifully written work of literature. No one in the book is exactly who they seem to be, and unfurling the mysteries of each character’s identity is almost as exciting as finding out what will happen to Ryan’s hand. I would love to say more about this book, but frankly, I don’t want to give anything away, because it’s too much fun to find everything out as you read. So, make sure to set aside a good chunk of time if you pick this one up, because you won’t want to put it down.
February 11th, 2010
Kylee
As I told you in my last post, I’d been in a bit of a reading slump. That slump has now passed (I hope) and I have two first time authors to thank. Both novels start with the discovery of a murdered young women - one found buried in a peat bog of the Shetland Islands and the other in her bedroom in the historical setting of Dobson, NY in 1905.
In Sacrifice, S. J. Bolton writes of the lonely Shetland Islands of Scotland where obstetrician Tora Hamilton has recently settled with her husband. Tora is a newcomer to the islands so when she discovers the body of a young woman and is told to leave the investigation alone, she initially complies. But the questions keep piling up and Tora, with the aid of another recent transplant - the detective on the case, can’t help but be drawn into an investigation. Why did the murder victim have her heart cut out and runic figures carved into her back? Why do the Shetland Islands seem to have a spike in the deaths of young women every few years? Why are there ore babies available for adoption in the Shetlands then elsewhere? All are questions Tora is determined to answer in Bolton’s moody, gothic mystery.
Equally atmospheric is In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff. Simon Ziele, like Tora, is a transplant. After his fiancee was killed in the General Slocum ferry disaster of 1904 Simon left his job with the New York City Police and moved to nearby town of Dobson. There he expects to live a quiet life as a small-town detective in a two-man department. His expectations are short-lived when the body of Sarah Wingate is discovered. Sarah, a graduate student of mathematics at Columbia University, has been stabbed and bludgeoned to death while visiting her aunt in Dobson. Suspects are thin on the ground until Simon is visited by Professor Alistair Sinclair. Alistair is studying the new science of criminology at Columbia University and he’s convinced that the subject of his study, a budding psychopath, is responsible for Miss Wingate’s death. Though Simon is skeptical, he follows the investigation back to New York and finds the case ever more twisty.
Both debuts are notable for their sense of time and place. As I read Bolton’s book I kept thinking of those old gothic suspense novels of the seventies (in a very good way!). Outsider finds herself caught up in mysterious events in a claustrophobic setting and doesn’t know who to trust. Combining that gothic sensibility with a more modern forensic investigation works to surprising effect. Equally effective is Pintoff’s use of the history of the science of crime within her mystery to set the stage. So if the next round of winter weather (snow, sleet, rain!) is going to keep you housebound, I would suggest being prepared with Bolton and Pintoff.
December 21st, 2009
Jane J. - Central Library
It’s nearing the end of the year and I had a little vacation time to use (or lose) and naturally I did some reading. Not as much as I thought I would of course, all that nice sunshiny weather got in the way of that plan, but I did get a few books read.
First up was Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti. This thriller starts off with a bang - or a crash - and doesn’t let up once. Chemist Emma Caldridge is on a flight to Bogota, Columbia that’s been hijacked and forced to land in the jungle. The too-small runway causes a crash and kills many of the passengers and crew, but enough remain to be taken hostage by a guerilla army. Since she was ejected a ways from the crash, only Emma manages to escape capture. When the possibility of rescue becomes increasingly remote, Emma decides to follow the rest of the passengers and their captors to somewhere where escape may be possible. Emma’s experience as a chemist and the fact that she’s an ultramarathoner (running races over 100 miles) help her to not only survive but triumph. Though some reviewers have commented on Emma’s lucky streak and abilities, I liked that Emma was entirely competent and put her knowledge to good use. Just the right pace for a vacation read.
Next I dived into the latest J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts) book, Kindred in Death. As with all the books in the series this is a futuristic mystery with romance in the mix. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is supposed to be enjoying a few days off from her job in homicide. That plan is quashed when a fellow officer’s daughter is murdered. He wants Dallas on the case and she’s determined to do all in her power to find the killer. In many of the books in this series the ratio of mystery to romance is probably 70/30, here it’s about 90/10. So if you read these for the relationship development or the appearance of the members of Eve’s “family” you may not be as pleased with this one as I was. I liked the intense police procedural arc of this one given the brutality of the crime. Eve is the future version of Brenda Lee Johnson of The Closer (though the character of Eve Dallas came first) and she is just as single-minded when it comes to murder. As it should be.
The book I finished just before returning to work was The Hidden Man by David Ellis. Jason Kollarich is an attorney who is trying to come back from a personal tragedy. He’d been an up-and-comer at a big law firm but gave it up after the death of his wife and daughter. Now he is nominally still in business as a single practitioner, but many days he barely makes it to the office. On one of the rare days Jason does make an appearance at the office he gains a new client. A mysterious man by the name of Smith hires Jason to represent Sammy Cutler. Jason has known Sammy all his life, though he hasn’t seen him in years. Now Sammy is accused of killing a man who was the main suspect in the disappearance of Sammy’s three-year-old sister 26 years ago. Jason accepts the assignment but chafes at the strictures placed on him by Mr. Smith. As he delves deeper he realizes that nothing is at it seems - today or 26 years ago. Great legal procedural.
All in all some great choices whether you’re on vacation or not.
November 12th, 2009
Jane J. - Central Library
Want to read a scary book? How would it be if it was set in small town Maine? Sounds familiar? Well you’re wrong, it’s not this guy. It’s a couple of books written by someone relatively new to the horror scene, Sarah Langan.
The Keeper & The Missing both take place in the same area in Maine. In The Keeper, we are introduced to the town of Bedford, Maine. Things are not well there. The paper mill has closed down and the rain is never-ending. The town is also haunted by Susan Marley, once a good looking popular girl, now a shell of her former self. Susan wanders the streets of Bedford and also enters the dreams of the locals, with portents of doom. The Missing is a sort of sequel to The Keeper. The town of Corpus Christi was a neighboring town to Bedford. The awful thing that happened in Bedford, is now infecting Corpus Christi.
Sarah Langan is great at creating a sense of menance and foreboding in her books. You get that tingling in the back of your spine as you read. If you are only an occasional reader of horror titles, then these are the two you should read this year. If you are a fan of the genre, then you probably have already read them, but if you haven’t, do so now.
October 28th, 2009
Gregg - Sequoya
There are some books that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, inspired by the goodness of humanity and hopeful for the future. And then there are James M. Cain’s novels. Written in the 1930s and 1940s, Cain’s terse, bleak crime novels portray people as hard as the times in which they live. But for all the darkness at the heart of Cain’s tales, it’s hard to deny the brilliance of his writing and the deep seated humanity it invokes in his people. In a scant paragraph, Cain can sketch out a drifter’s wariness, a housewife’s prejudices or an insurance salesman’s patient plotting. Dialogue takes on a distinctive rhythm, with slang and attitude masking characters’ distrust and vulnerabilities. When the betrayal comes, it is as sharp as a stab.
In his first successful novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain tells a simple story: Frank, a drifter, comes upon a California roadside diner run by a Greek immigrant and his wife. Cora and Frank fall in love, but their efforts to dispatch the Greek prove difficult (for all their cool plotting, the two prove to be rather nervous when it comes to the actual deed). While the murder of an endearing figure (one that even Frank says he liked) is disturbing enough, it is the mix of violence and sexuality in Frank and Cora’s relationship that riled enough critics to have the book tried for obscenity in Boston.
In his later (1943) novel, Double Indemnity, Cain’s narrative feels a little more polished, as does the murder methodology. Insurance salesman Walter Huff pays a sales call on an oilman’s wife. But Phyllis has a special purpose for her husband’s new life insurance policy, and Walter willingly goes against his better judgment in plotting a convenient accident that will allow them to collect a sizeable settlement and run away together. Based on a true story, most people are familiar with Cain’s novel through the classic 1944 Billy Wilder-Raymond Chandler film adaptation. It’s worth reading the book even after seeing the film, as Cain’s ending is more satisfyingly ambigious. Of course, Walter and Phyllis may get exactly what they want, but is it really love when it’s bound up with murder and greed? Cain isn’t read as often today as his comporaries Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but his style is the sort that continues in today’s books by authors like Walter Mosley and James Ellroy. Just the perfect sort of cozy writing to curl up with before bed.
October 5th, 2009
Katie H.
I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for a man in a uniform. That said I don’t go for most military shows, but something about the combination of the legal puzzles and David James Elliot in that uniform sucked me into watching JAG. At least for the first few seasons - when Harm started to go undercover on secret missions to save the world, I considered it jump the shark time. Though the show became too improbable, the combination of law and the military still trip my trigger, so to speak. In fact, it’s what made me pick up Brian Haig’s first legal/military thriller featuring former infantryman turned JAG lawyer Major Sean Drummond.
In Secret Sanction Drummond is assigned a career killer of a case. The Bosnian war is in full swing and a Green Beret A-Team has been accused of a massacre of 35 Serbian soldiers in Bosnia. Nominally the army is supposed to be providing training and support for the Kosovo Liberation Army. They are not meant to be part of the action. So Sean is faced with a complex puzzle. Did the team kill the Serbs and if they did what were they doing there in the first place? No answer will make everyone happy. If he finds the Green Berets did commit the atrocity then the whole international effort to aid the Kosovars will be in jeopardy. And if he finds that they did not commit any crime but were merely acting in self-defense then Slobodan Milosevic will have a field day claiming that there has been a cover-up. It’s a no-win situation made worse by the animosity and lack of cooperation Sean faces when he begins his investigation.
Though a few readers have found fault with some of the military details, I think Brian Haig’s (and yes he’s the son of that famous other Haig) own experience in the military shines through. The story is compelling and the puzzle about what happened before Sean arrived has plenty of twists. Adding to my enjoyment was the fact that the military mindset was offset by Sean’s often sardonic (sometimes wiseass) narration. Combine that with the tension of not knowing who’s plotting against whom and you have a great read. So great, I’ve already requested book two in the series from my friendly neighborhood library.
September 17th, 2009
Jane J. - Central Library
So says agent John Tomasetti whose been brought in to help solve the serial killer murders plaguing sleepy Painters Mill, Ohio. If you can make it through the first three pages (a description of the last torturous moments of a young victim) then you are in for a thrilling treat. Fans of Tess Gerritsen or Patricia Cornwell will love Linda Castillo’s new novel Sworn to Silence that introduces us to Police Chief Kate Burkholder.
Burkholder’s rookie cop TJ Banks discovers a body one blustery winter evening on a routine cow roundup (the normal type of Painters Mill police work). His discovery sets off a chain of events for the town that will end with two other women dead and a unraveling of Burkholder’s life. Burkholder has a suspicion of who the killer is but to pursue the suspect she’ll have to uncover her own past.
Castillo does a great job of parceling out the back story of Burkholder’s secret life and weaving it into the present investigation. Her inclusion of Amish cultural references and description of the community also really added to the story and made Burkholder’s character believable and emotional, not just some hard nosed cop with a murder to solve.
So where does Tomasetti fit into all of this story? He’s a rogue cop who’s lost his family to violence and become lost in booze and drugs. He is sent to Painters Mill by his superiors as a last ditch effort to get him to mess up one more time, but Burkholder ends up using his killer profiling experience to her advantage to figure whose responsible for the murders. Does she end up using Tomasetti in other ways? You’ll have to read it to find out. According to the book blurb Castillo is working on the next installment of Kate’s police career and that makes this another must read female cop series on my list.
August 27th, 2009
Katharine - Sequoya
Tired of those attractive, yet angst-filled teenage vampires with whom your daughter seems obsessed? In the mood for a vampire story you can (dare I say it?) sink your teeth into? Get ready to thank me. Blood Groove is the story, and it’s written by novelist Alex Bledsoe.
See, there was this vampire in an English village, Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski. Long story short, he was spiked with a gold cross (it had a sharpened tip) in 1915 and entombed for 60 years, then reanimated when a medical examiner in Memphis, Tennessee, removes the spike/cross during an autopsy requested by a local museum. After feasting on the unfortunate medical examiner, the Baron must come to terms with life (existence is probably a better word) in a very different place and time. The post-Victorian England he last inhabited has been replaced with the new American South, including a resurgent African-American community newly empowered by the civil rights and black power movements after centuries of racial oppression. In addition, it turns out Memphis already has a few local vampires. The Baron, having recognized the telltale signs of one who was photographed in a crowd scene that appeared in the local paper, decides to seek them out. He feels that kindred spirits (of a sort) will be able to help him adjust more readily to the brave new world in which he has awakened.
That stranger in a strange land vibe was what appealed to me the most when I decided to dive into this story. A vampire who’s been out of circulation (ha!) for that long had some potential to flip this particular genre on its head. So I was interested. And 1975 is a year with which I had some familiarity. I”m not particularly proud of that fact, but there you go. Anyway, the local vampires turn out to be a pretty raggedy bunch. Five of them are living in an abandoned (and trashed) warehouse on the edge of town. Held somewhat together by an adult male there are four younger appearing vampires– two male and two female, two of whom happen to be black (one male and one female). But one of the younger vampires has come across a new drug, one that suppresses the need to feed on the blood of victims. Which seems to have some appeal, until that vampire suddenly dies–from no discernible cause. Turns out the drug he was using is poisonous. So, our little group of vampires must become detectives, somewhat reluctantly following the overbearing and condescending Baron, in order to find out what it is that killed their friend, who concocted it, and why.
Fans of traditionalist vampire stories should know in advance that there are some twists on established vampire conventions. Turns out they can go out in daylight, they can change into wolves, they can summon storms, they don’t really have to be invited into your home to come in, and they can even eat garlic. Actually, only the Baron knows all this stuff. He might teach it to the others. Or not. And that power vampires have to make people do their will? It turns out to be an ability to create a strong sexual attraction. Baron Rudy quickly finds an attractive young miss to serve as his minion. (No fly-catching Renfield’s for this vampire!)
Unfortunately, the story isn’t exactly great. That may be due to the main characters being blood-sucking killers. And the Baron isn’t really a sympathetic lead. A couple of the local (white) vampires had flashes of character background that could have been better developed. No such similar effort was spent in giving the younger black vampires much back-story. There’s a bit of an effort to paint the vampires into lonely individuals seeking acceptance in a familial group, after having been ostracized by a xenophobic larger society. But they’re still inhuman blood-sucking killers so that effort is pretty much wasted in my opinion. (Your mileage may vary.)
The racial undertones don’t amount to much either, although there are some racial epithets that some may find offensive. There was a scene when the Baron dragged one of the Memphis vampires into a theater showing the movie Blacula, in an attempt to find out what modern society knew/suspected/feared about vampires. But apart from some resistance to the Baron’s condescending orders to the rest of the vampires from the black male vampire, the racial issue didn’t seem to me to be that pronounced. Maybe I’m colorblind though.
Don’t let the flippant tone of this review lull you. Be aware that that the story is pretty bloody in some spots. More blood-and-guts than belly-laughs. It’s pretty sexplicit in other spots too. And probably not like the supernatural romance/fantasy novels that seem to be popular these days. Consider this fair warning.
So, I was hoping for an inspired addition to the vampire genre, but instead got one that’s only fun in spots. And yet, I read it cover to cover. And I can’t shake the nagging suspicion that a sequel might be in the works. Or that I might want to read such a sequel. Nothing to suggest one on author Bledsoe’s website as of this writing though…
August 25th, 2009
Dennis - Central
When I saw that Robert Goolrick’s debut novel A Reliable Wife was about a mail-order bride AND it was set in Wisconsin, I had to read it. Wealthy, lonely Ralph Truitt has a dark past that sets him apart from everyone in the town of Truitt, Wisconsin (named after his entrepreneur grandfather) in 1907. He places an ad in the newspaper to find a “reliable wife” to help him get through the harsh winters, but what he finds is not so reliable. Catherine Land, the woman he chooses to marry from the many responses he receives, is clearly hiding something. As Ralph and Catherine become acquainted amidst snowstorms and ice, their pasts and possible futures are slowly revealed - as is the small bottle of arsenic Catherine has tucked away in her suitcase.
Goolrick manages to incorporate elements of a gothic tale, a Dickensian tragedy, and a Harlequin romance into this suspenseful drama. If that sounds like way too much to pack into one book, well, it probably is, but somehow, Goolrick pulls it off. Though Catherine and Ralph are melodramatic characters and the events of their lives border on ludicrous, their earnestness makes them intriguing, and I was willing to set aside my skepticism just to find out what they were going to do. A word of caution, though: this book is pretty racy. Be prepared for more than one R-rated scene.
August 21st, 2009
Kylee
The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson is the second volume to feature journalist Mikael Blomkvist and brilliant sociophobe (and computer hacker) Lisbeth Salander, the protagonists from Larsson’s debut novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (read Mary K.’s review here). The new work picks up shortly after the conclusion of the first novel (and you should probably read that first, just so you’ll have a better idea of the character’s background/backstory, including why Salander had a falling-out with Blomkvist).
The new volume begins with Salander on vacation in the Caribbean where she finds herself in the path of an oncoming storm, which she uses to hide her rescue of a battered wife staying at her hotel. Back in Sweden, Mikael’s magazine decides to do a feature story on sex trafficking in Sweden, while simultaneously publishing a book written by a young author whose work is complimented by his fiancee’s dissertation along the same lines. The plan is to name some of the men, including government officials and members of the police, who’ve had sex with the girls, many of whom were underage. On another front, Nils Bjurman, Salander’s legal guardian, is trying to find a way out from under her threats to expose him as a rapist with an incriminating video to use as proof.
Things heat up when the young journalist and his fiancee are murdered in their apartment, on the same evening that Nils Bjurman was murdered with the same gun–a gun that has Salander’s fingerprints on it. In the ensuing rush to judgment, aided in no small part by glory-seeking police inspectors, corrupt officers, and sensation-seeking journalists, Salander’s life is suddenly thrust into the spotlight, where her sanity, sexuality, and past violent tendencies are speculated upon. Her only supporters are Blomkvist and his staff, her former employer at a private security firm, a woman friend and sometime lover, a former boxing champion, and her former legal guardian, now recovering from a stroke. Arrayed against her are most of the country, as well as some of the people who had been contracted by Bjurman to kill her.
Like the first novel, the story zooms along at a breakneck pace, with revelations and plot twists that can leave you reeling from the enormity of the horror and injustice that has taken place. I even found myself noting parallels between Salander and Hannibal Lecter, both equally brilliant, yet removed from the rest of humanity, and with a tortured past slowly being revealed to readers.
If you’re not already on the waiting list for this volume, sign up now. And if you haven’t read the previous volume, do make a point of reading that first.
Also available in large print and as an audiobook.
August 14th, 2009
Dennis - Central
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