Robert B. Parker's Wonderland: A Spenser Novel

Having read just about every Spenser novel Parker ever wrote, I was understandably a bit dubious about Ace Atkins (the estate's selected author to carry on the Spenser series) matching up to Parker's wit and style. Nevertheless, it was a respectable effort and I enjoyed the book. Zebulon Sixkill is very present as Spenser's "apprentice" and Hawk is noticeably absent, ostensibly on a job in Florida. Henry Cimoli, former boxer, coach and now upscale health club owner, has never asked Spenser for a favor, so when he tells Spenser that some thugs are trying to pressure the owners in his condo building into selling, Spenser promises to get to the bottom of it. Along the way, Zebulon, called "Z" by his friends, gets badly beaten and falls back to drinking, although not irretrievably so. Susan shows up periodically from a teaching gig in South Carolina to dispense wisdom and keep Spenser on the straight and narrow. There are big players vying to buy up property and win the gaming license on the outskirts of Boston at the old Wonderland dog racing track. Henry's condo occupies a prime waterfront spot adjacent, hence the heavy muscle that shows up from Vegas. The biggest bidder from Las Vegas loses his head--literally, people are kidnapped, and Spenser eventually wins through in the end. There's nothing new or earth shattering here, but a venerable tradition has been carried on and for that, as a hard core fan, I am grateful.

Blood Orange Brewing

A totally fluffy book in Laura Childs' "Tea Shop Mysteries" series, as an antidote to reading The Goldfinch. I had read one other book in the series and love the descriptions of the city of Charleston, SC--the architecture and social customs in particular--as well as her lavish descriptions of tea and food. There are always several scrumptious sounding recipes included in the book, much like Diane Mott Davidson's books about caterer Goldy Schulz. In addition to running the Indigo Tea Shop, Theodosia Browning is also an amateur sleuth. She agrees to casually look into things when the husband of Pookie Wilkes is murdered at a candlelight concert to raise money for the Heritage Foundation. Theo stumbles into a secret room in the house where the murder happens, discovers the murder weapon came from the inventory of the Heritage Society, and show up on the scene of a second murder just minutes after the murderer has fled. Apparently someone thinks Theo is getting too close and they dognap her beloved Earl Grey, which only drives Theo to greater efforts to figure out what is going on. The bad guys are caught, Earl Grey is rescued, and lives return to normal.

The Goldfinch

This novel by Donna Tartt has been on a lot of bestseller lists. The painting at the center of this story is a real one that was on display at the Frick last fall. In the story, 13 year old Theo Decker and his mother had taken a side trip to MOMA on their way to a meeting with Theo's teachers at school. Just after they had viewed the painting in question, Theo's mom moves away to another part of the gallery while Theo lingers to ponder an intriguing red-headed girl, who has been making eye contact throughout their somewhat parallel wanderings through the museum. Suddenly a bomb explodes and life is changed forever for Theo. Immediately after the blast, Theo crawls toward the older man who had been accompanying the red-hair girl. The dying man hands Theo a ring and gives him a somewhat garbled message. As Theo crawls through the rubble, he finds the painting lying on the floor and "rescues" it. After all his losses, though, Theo cannot bring himself to return the famous painting and he becomes a captive to it, just as the subject bird is shown chained. Theo temporarily lands at the home of a school chum, but life takes another bad turn when Theo's gambler, alcoholic father shows up to take him to Las Vegas. Theo makes his way back to Manhattan when his father dies in a drunken car wreck and hooks up with the partner of the deceased man at the museum. He continues to make bad decisions, a legacy of his father, not his mother. I admit I skipped about 150 pages and jumped to the last chapter of this 700+ page book, because it was due back at the library. Her writing is beautiful with captivating imagery and detail. The story is heartbreaking; so much damage and opportunity lost. I wouldn't seek out other books by this author, but obviously a lot of people liked this work...see the comments here.

A Secret Rage

Charlaine Harris is the author of the Sookie Stackhouse (vampire) series, as well as several others--not all of which include supernatural beings (e.g., Shakespeare series, Teagarden series). In this novel, fashion model Nickie  has just been told by her agent that she is past her prime at the tender age of 27. She decides to accept the invitation of  BFF, Mimi, to move home and share a big rambling house left by Mimi's grandmother. Knolls, TN has a small college and Nickie is going to finish her bachelor's degree and get her novels published. A series of rapes, which include Nickie's, quickly dispel the sense of homecoming and safety. When the rapes escalate to murder, no woman in town feels safe. Nickie and one of the other rape victims, a professor at the university decide to solve this mystery on their own and have narrowed the list down to just a handful of names--none of whom seem to be the kind of person who could commit such heinous crimes. Nickie's long-standing and unrequited crush on Mimi's older brother is realized and, of course, the women triumph in the end. Good characters, well-developed southern setting (a specialty of Harris'), and fast-moving and tension filled plot all make this a very readable book.

Etiquette and Espionage

This is the first in Gail Carriger's "Finishing School" series for young adults...like her adult "Parasol Protectorate" series for adults in that it's the same setting, only 25 years earlier, i.e., Victorian England, steampunk society where werewolves and vampires are accepted--if not universally admired--segments of high society. (See previous reviews for Soulless, Timeless, Changeless, Blameless, Heartless). Our protagonist is Sophronia Angelina Temminnick, the youngest daughter of a landed country family, who is too much of a tomboy, too curious about how things work, and, hence too troublesome for her mother's taste. At the suggestion of one of Mrs. Temminnick's close acquaintances, Mrs. Barnaclegoose (Carriger loves goofing with names), Sophronia is to be sent off to Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. What Mrs. Temminnick does not know, and Sophronia only gradually finds out, is that this is a very different kind of finishing school--one that teaches deadly skills with a knife as well as mastering the perfect curtsy or fluttering one's eyelashes to manipulative ends. To top it off,  the finishing school floats above the moors in an elaborate contrivance of joined dirigibles. Sophronia, though not a legacy recruit, takes to her lessons with relish and manages to learn a few things that are definitely NOT part of the curriculum. Like climbing around the outside of the school (high above the ground) in order to skirt the alarmed mechanicals and get to the boiler room, where she meets the "sooties" and procurs coal supplies for her not-exactly-permitted pet mechanimal (which resembes a dachsund run by a miniatures boiler).  This is totally enjoyable for those who like this genre and not so "young" that adult won't be challenged to figure out what's going on. Highly recommended.

Scarlet

This is Book 2 in Marissa Meyer's "Lunar Chronicles" series, preceded by Cinder. I am officially hooked. I really like the cyborg heroine of the first book and, although she plays a secondary role here, she is, in fact, the driver for the whole series. Cinder, an outcast because she is cyborg in a world of humans, finds out at the end of the first book that she is also the missing Lunar princess, Selene. People have been trying to find her for years, and if Queen Levana does find her, she will finish what she started when she tried to kill her as a toddler. Selene is the rightful heir to the Lunar empire.  Levana has made the moon her launching place for a planned takeover of earth and only Cinder/Selene has ANY hope of stopping her. Scarlet, the title character, gets involved because the kidnapping of her grandmother 3 weeks ago, is tied up with Levana finding Cinder. Her grandmother helped rescue the infant princess and now Levana's minions will torture her and anyone dear to her in order to find out what she knows about Princess Selene's location. There has been a little breakdown in communication, though, because Cinder inadvertently revealed herself to Levana at Emperor Kai's coronation ball. Captured, imprisoned and slated for execution, Cinder is an internationally wanted fugitive. She escaped from prison by using her newly available lunar powers of manipulating bioelectricity--she can manage people's perceptions and feelings. If you have seen any of the Star Wars movies, you are familiar with the tactic exercised by Obi-Wan Kanobi. Along the way, she hooks up with another fugitive who just happens to "own" (OK maybe he borrowed it from the U.S. military) a large star ship. Throw in some lunar super soldiers who have been hiding in plain sight--a bit like werewolves-- and you have a rousing good adventure tale. Will Emperor Kai cave in and marry Levana to stop the bloodshed, even though he knows she plans to kill him? I can hardly wait for the next in the series, Cress, due to come out this year.

Wool Omnibus

Previously self-published e-books Wool, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4, and Wool 5, make up this 500+ page compilation by author Hugh Howey. It is no small undertaking to read; however, it was well worth it. After piddling slowly through the first book (originally a 40 page short story), I got a notice from the library that it was due and could not be renewed, so I read all day yesterday until 2:30 this morning to finish. In a post apocalyptic future, several thousand people are living in a cement silo that bores nearly 150 stories into the ground. Goods and information and bodies are all moved via a single spiral staircase. The various levels contain a handful of administrative offices (mayor, sheriff, deputies), a few cafeterias, clinics/nurseries, hydroponic farms, animal pens, fabrication facilities, IT, and in the lowest levels is "Mechanical" where are found the oil well, the mines, the generator, the pumps, and the people who maintain them. We open the story with a ritualized death by Cleaning. No one is allowed to say anything about the outside--wondering about it or voicing a desire to go there. The only view of the bleak and utterly desolate remains of earth (presumably) come from sensors that extend above the ground. Large screens on the top floor of the silo show this view in the cafeteria, and in the holding cell of the jail. Whenever someone is convicted of any crime, they are given wool pads, a suit to protect them from the toxic air, sent outside to clean the sensor lenses. In living memory, no one has ever returned from this task. the view of the sere brown hills, and the skeletal city remains in the distance is punctuated by the decomposing bodies of those sent out to clean. When a popular and long-standing sheriff volunteers to go "out," the Mayor and deputy sheriff seek a mechanic from the "down-deep" to replace him. Reluctant new sheriff Juliette is obsessed with finding out why Sheriff Holston voluntarily went outside to his death. Since it turns out that IT, not the popularly elected Mayor has secretly been running the whole show in the silo, they quickly determine that Juliette is a menace and must die. Before she is sentenced to clean, however, she figures out that IT has been engineering the deaths of people and through close friends in Mechanical she gets a suit that does not fail and walks out of view over the hills where she discovers another silo. This is a well-developed plot with interesting characters, and my only niggling complaint is that we are supposed to believe that it gets colder the further down you bore into the earth--probably not! Otherwise, the science seems realistic and the resolution is satisfying. Other post-apocalyptic novels I have enjoyed include The Postman (Brin), Into the Forest (Hegland), and A Gift Upon the Shore (Wren)--almost all set in the Pacific Northwest. Now there is something to ponder.

The Circle

I was intrigued by the NYT book review as well as a post on the Powell's Bookstore newsletter; here is another review from the NY Review of Books by Margaret Atwood.  This only slightly futuristic novel by Dave Eggers is--or should be--extremely unsettling. Given recent events surrounding the revelations of NSA electronic snooping, there are apparently still some powerful voices that can make themselves heard around intrusions on privacy. But I suspect that, as in this book, there are those who would say, "what's all the fuss?" Sick and tired of the dead-end job at the utility company, which was the only work she could find after college, Mae has called upon former roommate Annie--a few years older and now working for one of the hottest hi-tech companies in the world, The Circle. The Circle's founder came up with online services that simplified people's lives by consolidating all the various online activities in which they engaged and providing a single identity. No more lists of passwords to remember, now there is a single personal profile, "TruYou," which links you to shopping, financial services, health care, and more. But they are just getting started. And once Mae has drunk the kool-aid, she becomes their biggest advocate and their public face, a position she finds intoxicating--millions of viewers (for in the end she wears a camera around her neck nearly 24 x 7) who hang on her every word and product endorsement. She alienates her ex-boyfriend and her parents to the point where they cut off contact, but she rationalizes this by saying they are just not understanding the immense power and benefit of these social networking tools which make everyone's life fully knowable. Even Annie eventually opts out in her own way. There are so many ominous and somewhat obvious patterns that send up red flags, for example, the fact that politicians who refuse to become "transparent" always seem to end up being publicly disgraced by the revelation of some illegal or immoral online activity. There is a mystery man at the Circle Mae hooks up with for sex, but in spite of all the discovery tools at her command, she is unable to identify him. I was surprised to find out who he was, but perhaps you won't be. I kept reading 'til the end because I kept hoping Mae would come to her senses. Let me cut to the chase--she doesn't.

The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I

In spite of the rave reviews this series has garnered, I was not impressed. I would never peg myself as a Stephen King fan to start with, but I did like "The Green Mile" and the whole idea of a futuristic, sci-fi western intrigued me, so I gave it a shot. I read the newly revised edition of the first in a series of seven "Dark Tower" books. The present world the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, inhabits is a bleak one of deterioration, mutation, and despair. But when he was a boy, there was a civilization that sounds a bit Arthurian. He lived in a stone palace that was the center of culture. His father, also a gunslinger, was the ostensible ruler. Becoming a gunslinger bears similarity to becoming a knight--hard training under hard-handed masters. But gunslingers are esteemed in that world, just as knights were. Then the "world moved on" and the gunslinger is now on a quest to find "the man in black," who seems to be a sorcerer of some kind; for example, he can enchant a whole town into seeing the gunslinger as an evil spirit, so that he is forced to kill the entire population in self-defense. They sounded a miserable lot anyway, but YUCK. Then he finds a young boy in a deserted way station in the desert--no doubt another trap set by the man in black. And the gunslinger must betray this boy to his death in order to catch the man in black. It is all very grim, a little murky as to storyline, and, to my taste, somewhat boring. Don't think I will pursue the other 6 books in the series.

Cinder

It would be bad enough losing your shoe at the ball, but to lose your whole foot!--Now that would be seriously problematic. Marissa Meyer has written a futuristic version of Cinderella with a cyborg (human being augmented by mechanical/electrical parts) as her heroine, Linh Cinder of New Beijing. Set in a future after World War IV, the world has reassembled into 6 political units, with the Eastern Commonwealth being one of them. Cinder lives here with a nasty step-mother, two step-sisters, Pearl and Peony. Only Peony and the family droid, Iko, seem to have any affection for Cinder. Step-mother Adri blames Cinder for the death of her husband, who insisted they adopt Cinder after her life-saving surgery. But cyborgs are treated as 2nd class citizens on Earth, and in spite of Cinder's uncanny skills repairing anything mechanical or electrical--skills that provide the family's only income--Adri and Pearl are embarrassed about being associated with Cinder. Plans are underway to attend the annual palace ball when Peony contracts the plague that has been devastating the earth's population in recent years.  Cinder gets the blame for that as well, and Adri "volunteers" Cinder to be a subject for unfailingly fatal research on antidotes for the plague. But Cinder does NOT die, and a whole new set of problems now present themselves. Of course the parallel storyline is that the somewhat unorthodox Prince Kai has personally brought his royal droid to Cinder for repairs, claiming it is a matter of national security. The emperor has contracted the plague and if he dies, Kai will become Emperor. The Queen of Luna would very much like to get a foothold on earth through a marriage to Kai, but nobody on earth really wants that to happen. Then she offers a cure for the plague--the day after the Emperor dies. There is clearly a sequel(s) in the works, as Cinder warns Prince Kai of an imminent threat to his life, but forfeits her own freedom, and possibly her life, in the process.