The Innocent

Ian McEwan receives uniformly rave reviews and this is the first book of his I have read, one written about mid-span of his career to date (1990). Set in Berlin in the depth of the Cold War (1955), the main character, 25-year old Leonard Marnham, is a British civil servant recruited to facilitate work on a joint venture between the Americans and the Brits. They are building a tunnel under the east-west Berlin border to eavesdrop on Russian communications--ostensibly a real event. Leonard is naive in almost every imaginable way.  He is awkward around both the Americans, who are somewhat stereotypically portrayed as brash, over-confident bullies, and around the German woman who picks him up in a night club and seduces him. He falls in love with and eventually becomes engaged to Maria, and their relationship eventually leads to a dramatic and deadly confrontation with her abusive and drunken ex-husband. Desperate to save himself and Maria, Leonard engages in his own personal act of espionage. In spite of being well-crafted, I didn't ever really come to care for or about any of the characters, and felt as cold about the story as the bitter winter the characters must endure.

Seventeen and Eighteen

I was a little put off by Janet Evanovich's Sizzling Sixteen, feeling it lacked some of the zany energy that her books usually have. But she seems to have regained her footing in Smokin' Seventeen and Explosive Eighteen. In Seventeen, Stephanie's mom is once again trying to set her up with a future mate since neither Morelli nor Ranger seem likely to make the commitment to marriage. While the burned out bail bonds office--temporarily replaced by Mooner's bus--is under construction, dead bodies start showing up in shallow graves on the construction site. The killer is apparently making this personal for Stephanie. Meanwhile, Morelli's grandmother puts the Vordo spell on Stephanie with wild results. Eighteen opens with Stephanie returning from a vacation in Hawaii one day ahead of both Ranger and Morelli--but no one is talking about what happened. Eventually we learn why she has a white tan line on her left hand ring finger, but it takes longer to find out why the photograph that mysteriously appeared in her purse on the flight back is bringing strangers out of the woodwork to threaten Stephanie if she doesn't return it. Except that she doesn't have it anymore. Cars and buses are destroyed, Lula takes a love potion by accident and falls in love with one of their more unsavory FTA's, and their investigations result in a lot of roosters being loosed on Trenton.

Agnes and the Hit Man

I have SO lost track of what I have been reading. I haven't posted since August and yet I am NEVER without at least 2-3 books going. I have been doing a lot of review books for Library Journal Express Reviews and for the Children's Literature Database, but I'm sure I've been doing some personal reading in there somewhere. I listen to books on CD going and coming from work and those rarely find their way into the blog. Anyway, things have been stressful at home recently with health and other issues so when I finished my last batch of books for CLCD I dove into pure escapist fare. Agnes and the Hit Man, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, is a bit like Stephanie Plum meets Goldie Schwartz (or Janet Evanovich meets Diane Mott Davidson if you want author names).  Agnes is a bit of an entrepreneur, currently partnered with and afianced to Taylor, a man who turns out to be (a) already  married, (b) trying to steal her house and business, and (c) murdered with a meat fork. Agnes, who writes the food column "Cranky Agnes" does have some issues with anger management, but who wouldn't in her situation. Agnes was essentially an orphan growing up until she met Lisa Livia at boarding school and was unofficially adopted into her home for holidays and summers. She seems to attract lying cheating men, Taylor being just the latest. She has moved back to this somewhat idyllic spot on the Blood River in S. Carolina and bought the house of her childhood summers from Lisa Livia's mother, Brenda. Oh, but wait a minute, Brenda is the one who married Taylor and is trying to ruin her granddaughter's wedding, upon which Agnes' keeping the house depends. If you think that's complicated, it's only just the start. A pseudo-uncle, Joey, is concerned about Agnes' safety and has called his pseudo-nephew, Shane, to come back and protect Agnes. Shane kills people for a living. He works for the U.S. government. He's very good at his job, and it's a good thing, because a string of unsavory characters show up trying to kill Agnes or kidnap her bloodhound Rhett--she's not exactly sure which. Predictably, Agnes and Shane get involved. Unpredictably, we find out lots of family secrets about Shane and who he really is. This is a fun read, highly recommended for anyone wanting to get away from it all. Great characters!