Hits and Misses by Simon Rich
Little, Brown and Company: 7/24/18
eBook review copy; 240 pages
ISBN-13:
9780316468893
Hits and Misses: Stories by Simon Rich is a very highly recommended humorous collection of eighteen short stories.
The various stories in this collection run the gamete from hilarious to
satirical, from absurd to insightful, from audacious to circumspect. In
the final analysis, however, they are all entertaining, while
simultaneously pointing out some absurdities or proclivities of the
human condition (especially related to writers, media, film work and
even when the main protagonist isn't human) in a humorous manner. I
thoroughly enjoyed every story in this collection. They were all hits
for me.
Contents:
The Baby - A novelist begins competing with
his unborn child for literary recognition.
Riding Solo: The Oatsy Story - Paul Revere's horse reveals the true story.
The Foosball Championship of the
Whole Entire Universe - Two brothers are in an uneven competition where only one can be named the ultimate winner.
Birthday Party - A man who takes a corporate job is confronted by his former selves over his choices.
The Book of Simon - Simon's life as compared to the Book of Job.
Relapse - An intervention is needed for an artist who thinks she wants to get back into the music business.
Hands - A Christian monk is tested by his ethical deficits.
New
Client - An old-time talent agent signs up his last client.
The Great Jester: Havershire, a medieval court jester, tells his life's story.
Physician’s Lounge, April 1st: Dr. Metzger is no longer allowed to make April Fool's jokes.
Menlo Park, 1891 - Thomas Edison makes a film, Newark athlete.
Tom Hanks Stories - Tom Hanks is a nice guy.
Adolf Hitler: The GQ Profile - A gushing magazine profile of the dictator.
Any Person, Living or
Dead - Frequently asked questions about the new technology allows you to have dinner with anyone, living or dead.
Upward Mobility - A powerful studio boss and his able assistant are before Saint Peter.
Dinosaur - A dinosaur writer is unable to keep up with the new writers.
Artist’s Revenge - A successful director forces his harshest critic to make a movie.
Stage 13 - A young, unaccomplished director is offered the opportunity to make a movie with a unique star.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Little, Brown and Company
via Netgalley.
Last Seen Alive by Claire Douglas
HarperCollins: 6/26/18
eBook review copy; 336 pages
ISBN-13:
9780062843173
Last Seen Alive by Claire Douglas is a recommended psychological thriller.
Libby Hall and her husband Jamie both need a vacation. When there is an
offer to swap houses with a couple, the Haywoods, they decide to take a
chance on it. Libby and Jamie can't believe their luck when instead of a
seaside cottage, they have swapped staying in their flat in Bath to
stay at a lovely seaside estate in Cornwall. Soon, though, some
disquieting discoveries are made and disconcerting events seem to be
happening. When Jamie falls ill and then is rushed to the hospital, it
marks the beginning of a change in their plans.
After they return to Bath, odd things begin to happen. It seems the
Haywoods may have wished them harm. Libby is becoming paranoid,
wondering if Jamie is keeping a secret from her, but Libby has some
secrets she has been keeping from Jamie. This is just the beginning of
the twists and turns that await you.
On the positive side for those who like psychological thrillers there
are plenty of revelations and secrets to be revealed in this novel. It
opens with a woman killing her husband, so you know something is going
to go wrong. The writing is good; Douglas takes care to explore the
psychological aspects of her characters, especially Libby's paranoia.
She helps the reader gain some sympathy for Libby, as she is still
privately grieving over her lost child after a miscarriage, which was
caused by a very public heroic act.
Last Seen Alive started out interesting, but then it started to
become a bit too unbelievable. And, again, when Libby wouldn't talk
about and hadn't told Jamie what happened in Thailand (the novel will
tell you) I already sussed out what was going to be the big reveal. What
I really wondered was why would anyone leave personal information out
and accessible to people they have never met when doing a house swap,
especially if you are already generally suspicious and paranoid about
people? Any why wouldn't you met these people first? This sort of marked
the beginning of some rather forced revelations/twists.
In my final evaluation, Last Seen Alive would be a satisfying
vacation read. Certainly it is a decent airplane book that will hold
your attention, but you won't cry if you misplace it along the way.
Disclosure:
My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
Believe Me by JP Delaney
Penguin Random House: 7/24/18
eBook review copy; 352 pages
ISBN-13:
9781101966310
Believe Me by JP Delaney is a highly recommended deceptive psychological thriller.
Claire Wright is a British actor who has come to America to take classes
and hopefully find an acting job. Unfortunately she is here without a
green card and can't legally work, but she needs money to live so she
ends up working for a law firm specializing in divorce. Her job is to
act as a high price hooker and catch on film for female clients their
suspected unfaithful husbands negotiating for Claire's services. When
one of her clients is found murdered in a hotel room, the husband,
Patrick, who turned down Claire's proposition, is the main suspect.
Claire ends up working undercover for the police to try and get Patrick
to confess to his murder of his wife. She is forced to do this or risk
being deported as an illegal immigrant, but she also felt a connection
with Patrick when she was trying to entrap him, so she agrees to the
plan. The police also suspect that Patrick is a serial killer.
This is a fast-paced thriller packed full of unreliable narrators,
especially Claire. I will freely admit that the plot is preposterous and
purposefully deceptive - vital information is held back from the reader
in order to create suspense. Does Delaney mess with your mind, withhold
vital information, and make you wonder what the heck is going on in
this novel? Yup.... and it was simultaneously kind of fun and annoying. I
didn't see the ending coming at all.
Claire is an over-the-top unreliable narrator obsessed with acting and
her roles. Claire (and the novel) approaches almost everything as a
role, a part
she is performing, which can also make you wonder what is real. The
thing is that the story is very compelling and even when you are shaking
your head saying "Really?" you will want to keep reading to see what
happens next. I need to note that Patrick is a translator for Charles
Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (1857), a book of poetry dealing with evil and eroticism, which plays a major part in the novel and can be off putting.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House
via Netgalley.
Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey
HarperCollins: 7/24/18
eBook review copy; 336 pages
ISBN-13:
9780062309716
Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey is a highly recommended psychologically complex mystery.
Lana, the youngest daughter of Jen and Hugh Maddox, has just been found,
bloody, bruised, and soaking wet after being missing for four days. Jen
and fifteen-year-old Lana were taking a painting class in the country
for a mother-daughter
vacation when the teen went missing. Now Lana simple repeats to everyone
who asks that she can't remember what happened to her. Lana, who is
suffering from depression and full of teen angst, has been moody,
difficult, and undergoing counseling after self-harming and a suicide
attempt. So, was she abducted? How did she get hurt?
Jen needs to know the truth and begins to contemplate what happened
before the vacation and reconstruct the events of the painting class.
She begins her own desperate investigation into Lana's life, looking at
her social media interactions, trying to find out what she is telling
friends, looking through her sketchbooks, looking at the books in her
room. Jen is full of anxiety about Lana, and her quest to find answers
becomes an obsession.
Whistle in the Dark has created a quandary for me in terms of
evaluating/rating it. On the one hand it is beautifully written literary
novel that realistically explores in-depth the psychological reactions
of a family and their interpersonal relationships in the midst of
complex situation. Healey authentically captures the reactions of a
truculent teen and a worried inquisitive, hyper-vigilant mother. The
emotional turmoil roiling through the novel is exhausting, but
compelling. The anxiety is palpable and oppressive. Both Jen and Lana
are realistic, complicated characters and their relationship is
thoroughly explored and examined through their interaction. The short
chapters are all from Jen's point-of-view and vacillate back and forth
in time.
On the other hand, early on in the novel I was quietly telling Jen (and
the police) where to look for the answers. I was correct. If the central
theme of the novel is the answer to the query "Where was Lana?" then it
isn't a huge mystery because Healey provides the clues to answer the
question early on in the novel. If the theme of the novel is the
exploration and examination of the relationship between a troubled
mentally ill teen and her mother, then it succeeded. However, it is
rather slow moving in regards to both thematic questions.
Healey's Elizabeth is Missing was on my top ten novel of 2014, so I had high hopes (and high expectations) for Whistle in the Dark.
The sheer excellence of the writing, the character development and the
exploration complex psychological reactions met my expectations. The
final resolution... not so much. Still it is a very good novel.
Disclosure:
My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
Watch the Girls by Jennifer Wolfe
Grand Central Publishing: 7/10/18
eBook review copy; 400 pages
ISBN-13:
9781538760840
Watch the Girls by Jennifer Wolfe is a highly recommended debut mystery/thriller.
Liv Hendricks used to be Olivia Hill, a child star. She left the TV show
she was on after the night her sister Miranda disappeared. That night
their other sister, Gemma, also a child actor, called to be rescued from
a party and the two sisters went out to pick her up. Something awful
happened and only two sisters remained. Gemma continued on with her
career, but Olivia changed her name to Liv and dropped out for over ten
years. Now she was on a farcical, derivative show based on Scooby-Doo,
but has just been let go. She hears about Shot in the Dark, a
crowdfunding site, and offers to investigate a mystery for the highest
bidder and share her findings in a webseries.
When she receives an anonymous offer of $20,000 from Red_Stranger to
investigate the disappearance of four girls along Dag Road, now called
the Dark Road. The donor identifies himself as filmmaker Jonas Kron, a
man known for his dark, gory horror films. He lives in a California town
called Stone's Throw, near the Dark Road, and filmed his movies in the
area. His niece was one of the girls who disappeared. The disappearances
have negatively impacted the town and its economy. Liv accepts the
offer. She receives a clue when she arrives, to follow the white wolf,
and her investigation begins, but then her sister Gemma shows up, and
subsequently disappears, which adds a different urgency to her
investigation.
The writing is good. Wolfe will hold your attention and entertain you
while telling the story. The narrative mostly follows Liv in the present
day, but there are flashbacks to the fateful night her sister Miranda
disappeared and the events that lead up to this. Not everything in the
plot is completely believable. Parts of the novel are a little
over-the-top, just like many Hollywood productions, and the mood can
jump from humorous to disturbing quite quickly.
Liv is a complicated character and well-developed. There is a reason for
her excesses and her issues that comes to light at the end. Liv is
really the only well-developed character, as the others are more
archetypes of certain caricatures. Admittedly, I had most of the mystery
figured out early on in the novel, but Wolfe also had a few surprises
that I didn't see coming.
Watch the Girls is enjoyable and full of twists and action, but
there were two drawbacks for me. First was Liv's promiscuity. It was
bothersome enough to drop my rating down a star. I just wanted to see
some mature, thoughtful behavior and better judgement from a character
that I liked. In this day and age that is such a destructive choice. The
second was the disturbing descriptions of sexual violence. (There could
be some triggers for people in this one.)
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grand Central Publishing
via Netgalley.
The Pharaoh Key by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Grand Central Publishing: 6/22/18
eBook review copy; 320 pages
ISBN-13:
9781455525829
Gideon Crew Series #5
The Pharaoh Key by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is a highly recommended final novel and fitting ending (?) to the Gideon Crew series.
Gideon Crew has a brain arteriovenous malformation or
AVM, and has about two months left to live, however, he will remain
strong and mobile right until the end so the doctor's advice is for him
to live every minute the best way he can. He and his engineer colleague
Manuel Garza have also discovered, after not being paid for months and
no word of warning from their employer Eli Glinn that they no longer
have a job with Effective Engineering Solutions, EES. Garza calls Crew
telling him that they have a few hours to clear their belongings out of
the office.
While gathering what they can, they discover that a code-breaking
computer at EES, after working on it for almost five years, has cracked
the code found on the centuries-old stone tablet, the Phaistos
Disc. With some sleight of hand, the two smuggle out a copy of the
findings on a flash drive. The two work on deciphering the data and
agree to split the treasure they expect to find. Their destination is
the remote and forbidden zone of the Hala’ib Triangle in southeastern
Egypt. The treasure hunt involves one mishap and disaster after another,
but still Crew and Garza keep pressing on to the remote location.
The Pharaoh Key is a fast paced, enjoyable action/adventure novel
that involves more than one unexpected twist. Although reading the
previous novels will give you additional background information and
character development, I think you can enjoy this one as a stand-alone
for the sheer value of the escapism and adventure it will provide. Are
there some unanswered questions? Sure. Lucky coincidences? Yup.
Miraculous escapes? Uh huh. But is it a page-turner? Oh, yes! Adding to
the action, Preston and Child manage to keep the tone light and even
evoke a few laughs while providing an entertaining adventure, which, in
the end is worthy of at least 4 out of 5 stars (and only rated in
comparison against their other novels). Preston and Child know how to
write well-paced entertaining story and that was certainly the case
here. I enjoyed reading The Pharaoh Key
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grand Central Publishing
via Netgalley.
The Last Thing I Told You by Emily Arsenault
William Marrow: 7/24/18
eBook review copy; 416 pages
ISBN-13:
9780062567369
The Last Thing I Told You by Emily Arsenault is a highly recommended psychological mystery/police procedural.
When therapist Dr. Mark Fabian is found Bludgeoned to death in his
office, it shakes the town of Campion, Connecticut. In the opening
chapter former patient Nadine Raines finds Fabian's body and flees, full
of conflicting emotions and introspection. After a violent incident at
the local high school, she was a patient of Fabian's 20 years ago,
starting when she was sixteen until she went off to college at eighteen.
Nadine's chapters find her contemplating and replaying events from her
life, including her sessions with the doctor. Why did she come back to
see the doctor after so many years away?
Henry Peacher is the detective investigating
Fabian’s death. He is a local hero after he stopped mass shooter Johnny
Streeter's killing spree at a nursing home five years previously. Now,
as he tries to piece together clues found in Fabian's office, he knows
he needs to look into the doctors patients. His search leads him to two
old files that the doctor had pulled and left out in his home. One file
is Nadine's; the other file is Johnny Streeter's. Are the two connected?
Henry also remembers Nadine from high school and the incident that lead
her to therapy. Could she still have the same violent tendencies or
hold a grudge against the doctor?
I really enjoyed the alternating chapters from the viewpoints of Nadine
Raines and Detective Henry Preacher. Both are nuanced, well developed,
imperfect characters. Henry Preacher is a great, realistically portrayed
character and I loved the chapters following the police investigation.
Nadine's chapters brought in the psychological thriller aspects to the
novel. She is tormented still from her past. Much of her inner monologue
is addressed to the doctor, as if she is still in therapy with him, and
also dwells on other events from her past and childhood.
The Last Thing I Told You is really a enjoyable, well written
novel with a nice twist at the end. It's not really a shocking thriller,
but it is a very satisfying investigation with some psychological
unease provided by Nadine's inner commentary. The suspense does continue
to build gradually as the investigation continues and Nadine's
commentary provides more background information. The setting, in a small
town where everyone always seems to know everyone else, adds an
additional dimension to the novel. I found the ending very satisfying
because it reflected how an investigation might suddenly take an oblique
turn, based on evidence, to find a resolution to the case.
Disclosure:
My review copy was courtesy of William Marrow.
