A Welcome Murder

A Welcome Murder by Robin Yocum
Prometheus Books: 4/4/17
eBook review copy; 263 pages
ISBN-13: 9781633882638

A Welcome Murder by Robin Yocum is a highly recommended small town murder mystery told through multiple points-of-view.

There is no question in many people's mind that Rayce Daubner deserved to be shot and left for dead in an isolated park. The question is who is responsible for the murder? Steubenville, Ohio is the setting for a widely diverse cast of characters and several suspects for Rayce's murder.

Johnny Earl, a former professional baseball player was just released from prison. He was busted for selling cocaine when Rayce worked as an informant with the FBI and set him up for the drug sting. Smoochie (Matthew) Xenakis's wife, Dena Marie Conchek Androski Xenakis, was having an affair with Rayce (and many others). Sheriff Francis Roberson, former FBI agent, dreams of running for congress and eventually the presidency. He needs to solve this case to look good and keep Dena out of his office. Allison Roberson, the sheriff's wife just wants her husband's plan to succeed so she can get out of Steubenville.

Each chapter in the narrative is told from the first person point-of-view of one of these character, often with thoughts that are widely divergent from what the other characters are thinking. None of these characters are particularly likeable or trustworthy. One character will be thinking one thing while the thoughts of the other are completely opposite of what is assumed. Many of these characters are still basking in the glory of their high school days.

The novel is really pretty funny and clever as it quickly moves from one character's thoughts to the next. We aren't following the murder investigation; rather we are just following the thought processes of the different characters during this time. There is a bit of a surprise reveal and a satisfying conclusion. This is a well-written, entertaining mystery that is easy to follow, and a pure pleasure to read.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Prometheus Books.

Hallelujah Anyway

Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott

Penguin Publishing Group: 4/4/17
eBook review copy; 192 pages
ISBN-13: 9780735213586  

Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott is a so-so exploration of mercy, as radical kindness.

Lamott says: Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves forgiving the debt, absolving the unabsolvable. Mercy, grace, forgiveness, and compassion are synonyms, and the approaches we might consider taking when facing a great big mess, especially the great big mess of ourselves—our arrogance, greed, poverty, disease, prejudice. It includes everything out there that just makes us sick and makes us want to turn away, the idea of accepting life as it presents itself and doing goodness anyway, the belief that love and caring are marbled even into the worst life has to offer.

Drawing on her own experiences on how difficult it is to extend mercy and accept it in the real world, Lamott uses plenty of personal examples and stories along with Biblical stories to support her thoughts. "When we manage a flash of mercy for someone we don’t like, especially a truly awful person, including ourselves, we experience a great spiritual moment, a new point of view that can make us gasp." She shares a few good examples of the difficulty of extending mercy to some of the especially unlovable people you might come across in your life, but also the same difficulty in extending mercy in disagreements with those you truly care about.

This is not her best work and it fell flat for me. It sort of felt like she phoned this one in and stretched the reach of some of the stories in order to make them apply to the point she wanted to illustrate. I agree with some of her conclusions and thoughts, but ultimately reject how she expressed herself in several instances in this book. Additionally, I've heard plenty of colorful language during my life, but it didn't feel all of the usage was entirely appropriate or needed when used in Hallelujah Anyway. Of course, I can extend mercy and ignore the language in multiple instances. But why were the multiple usages necessary to begin with? Finally, when she describes Jesus as getting "pissy" in his reaction, she lost me entirely. There are so many more appropriate and descriptive words in the English language, so why go low?

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Penguin Publishing Group.

Waking Gods

Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

Random House Publishing: 4/4/17
eBook review copy; 336 pages
ISBN-13: 9781101886724
Themis Files Series #2

Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel is the highly recommended second book in the Themis Files Series which began with Sleeping Giants. It is important to read these books in the order in which they were written.

In the prologue we hear from a new character named Eva Reyes: "They keep telling me it’s normal to have bad dreams. But I know they’re not dreams. I have them when I’m awake now. I saw it again today at school, and I started screaming. It’s the same one I’ve been having for months. Everyone’s dead. There are thousands of them, dead on the streets, a whole city filled with corpses. I see my parents lying in blood inside our house. I haven’t told them that part. Today there was something new. I saw a robot, like Themis, a big metal woman falling into the clouds."

The Earth Defense Corps members, including physicist Rose Franklin, are still studying the advanced technology found in the giant robot named Themis, while Army pilot Kara Resnik and Quebecois linguist Vincent Couture are becoming more adroit at moving/controlling the robot. It was thought that Themis was left on Earth to protect humankind from future invasion. This theory is tested when a giant robot suddenly appears in London and subsequently wipes out a wide swath of the city. While they were somewhat successful in the aftermath of the attack, how will they handle the many robots landing in large cities worldwide? These new robots have arrived with a new way to exterminate millions of people.

The narrative is again told through an epistolary compilation of interviews, news items, and official journal entries. The mysterious interrogator/examiner is back, discussing events and actions with the characters. The development of the characters is though these interviews and journal entries and is surprisingly effective for the most part. Some more surprising information is revealed in these almost matter-of-fact entries. The complex plot moves quickly forward and the action is very fast-paced due to the way the novel is written, which allows the facts to be succinctly presented. While new questions arise, some previous questions from Sleeping Giants are answered.

Waking Gods is the second in the series and does suffer a bit from second-in-a-series syndrome with some plot points cleared up but many new ones left opened and unanswered. Still, there are giant robots arriving in cities and being piloted by aliens with some nefarious plans. And there are new scientific facts learned as well as many startling personal revelations. 

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Random House Publishing.

A Mother's Reckoning

A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold

Penguin/Random House: 2/7/17
trade paperback; 336 pages
ISBN-13: 9781101902776

A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold is a memoir of the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine killers.
"On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives."

In the introduction Andrew Solomon states "The ultimate message of this book is terrifying: you may not know your own children, and, worse yet, your children may be unknowable to you."(pg. xvii) "Columbine was above all an ambush of unknowability, of horror hidden in plain sight." "Eric Harris appears to have been a homicidal psychopath, and Dylan Klebold, a suicidal depressive, and their disparate madnesses were each other's necessary condition."(xviii) Eric Harris wanted to kill and Dylan Klebold wanted to die. Dr. Dwayne Fuselier, a clinical psychologist and the supervisor in charge of the FBI team during the Columbine investigation said, "I believe Eric went to the school to kill people and didn't care if he died, while Dylan wanted to die and didn't care if others died as well." (pg 172)

Sue Klebold has had to live with her grief, questions, and public scrutiny since that day. In this memoir she explores her quest to understand her son's actions and if she could have done anything to prevent Columbine from happening.  Do not expect answers in this book. Klebold tells us in the Preface that she has been writing about what happened from the start because she needed to get her thoughts down on paper. That is where this memoir came from, a mother's thoughts about the inconceivable actions of her son. She is sure that she missed subtle signs of psychological deterioration in Dylan and could have prevented the killings and her son's suicide.

It is noted that: "All author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues." Klebold makes it clear that she is donating the profits to "organizations dedicated to suicide prevention, evidence based programs, and brain health research." (Klebold also prefers to use the term "brain health" instead of mental health. Even though she explained the source of this term on page 153, the repeated unending usage of it becomes extremely annoying.)

Ultimately this is a book about mental health, depression, and suicide prevention in teens. Klebold is sure that Dylan "was experiencing depression or another brain health crisis that contributed to his desire to die by suicide, and his desire to die played an intrinsic role in his participation in the massacre."(pg 152) She continues to say it is not an explanation of what he did, as many people with depression or other "brain health issues" are not dangerous to others, but she points out that  there is an "overlap between brain health issues and mass shooting." Her understanding of what lead Dylan to desire to commit suicide helped her understand what he had done.

After reading A Mother's Reckoning, I was left perplexed and uneasy. There are no answers, nor did I expect them, even though the title of the book implies that there will be answers, a reckoning. But how much objectivity did I really expect from the mother of a killer? I vividly remember the day Columbine happened and it was horrific. Klebold seems to  desire to deny some of her son's responsibility. She desperately wants to show how they were good parents and a normal family - and I believe her. The fact is, though, that both boys suffered from mental health issues.  Both are culpable for the killings. Both of them. But Klebold seems to want to push the greater share of the blame on Eric Harris.  It is awful that Dylan committed suicide, but he also killed people. Eric and Dylan both killed and then committed suicide.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author via Library Thing.

Mississippi Blood

Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles
HarperCollins: 3/21/17
advanced reader's edition; 704 pages
ISBN-13: 9780062311153
Natchez Burning Series #3

Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles is an amazing, incredible, extraordinary, stunning literary achievement of nail-biting suspense and breathtaking drama. It is the very highly recommended conclusion of the phenomenal epic Natchez Burning trilogy that explores how sins of the past haunt the present. The series includes Natchez Burning, The Bone Tree and Mississippi Blood. This conclusion to the impressive dramatic series is a contender for my top ten books of the year.

"[W]here good people stand against evil, sooner or later fate demands a reckoning."
Set in Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage and his family are under constant guard and it appears that their lives are not only under a constant threat but that everything is collapsing around them as they as they prepare themselves for the murder trial of his father, Dr. Tom Cage. Despite the fact that Penn was a lawyer, his father has chosen to keep him guessing about the defense strategy. Dr. Cage is on trial for murdering his former African-American nurse, Viola Turner, who worked for him in the 1960's. Tom Gage had an affair with Viola and fathered a child. Viola was suffering from terminal cancer and came home to Mississippi to die, asking Tom Cage to help her. It is their child, Lincoln Turner, who sets into motion the murder case.

Penn is in a battle for his father's life and his family's safety, while trying to uncover witnesses who can help Tom by testifying about the activities of the Double Eagles. Now headed by Snake Knox, the notorious and murderous Double Eagles, a splinter KKK group, still have a few loyal followers around. Once you are a double Eagle, you are in it for life. To talk and betray your brothers means death, which has been proven time and time again. The nefarious deeds of the Double Eagles are a huge part of the secrets from the past that haunt Viola and Tom and threaten the safety of Penn's family still. Snake has recruited the VK, a motorcycle gang, to assist him.

The courtroom scenes are simple excellent and provide some of the finest scenes of drama and suspense I've read in quite awhile. There are several twists and reveals that are heart-stopping and had me racing through to the next scene... and the next... and the next. Let me just admit that I stayed up way-too-late over several nights compulsively reading Mississippi Blood right up to the concluding epilogue. This is sure to be a classic series.

The writing is excellent. The character development is excellent. Allow me just reiterate what I said about the first book in this stunning trilogy, Natchez Burning as it hold true for Mississippi Blood: "This is an excellent book on all points: great writing, check; intricate plot twists, check; complexity, check; well-developed characters, check; suspense, check, check, check. Forget my stuck-overnight-at-the-airport book rating. You'd miss them calling your next flight. In fact, just save yourself the trouble and postpone your trip to finish Natchez Burning and jump right into The Bone Tree. Greg Iles just made another fan." Read this series ASAP.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins

Purchase links:
HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

TLC TOUR SCHEDULE

 

It Happens All the Time

It Happens All the Time by Amy Hatvany

Atria Books: 3/28/17
eBook review copy; 320 pages
ISBN-13: 9781476704456

It Happens All the Time by Amy Hatvany is a highly recommended examination of a friendship changed by sexual expectations.

Amber Bryant and Tyler Hicks have been best friends since they were teenagers. She was there for him when his macho father humiliates and degrades him. He was there for her when her eating disorder leads to a heart attack. Amber made it clear to Tyler during high school that she wasn't interested in a romantic relationship with him. Now Amber has returned home for the summer. She's just graduated from college and is engaged. She strictly watches her eating, but she's eating. Tyler is working as an EMT. He still has feelings for Amber and has hoped that someday she'd reciprocate them.

Tyler and Amber rekindle their friendship. Amber's fiancé is miles away and she's working before moving to meet him in the Fall. While Amber still wants the friendship to remain platonic, she's confused about her engagement. Tyler still desires more than a friendship. The two begin to see each other a lot and the flirtation between the two increases. A drunken party on the fourth of July, blatant sexual flirting, and a kiss lead to a sexual encounter. Amber feels it was rape while Tyler sees it as his dreams fulfilled.

The narrative alternates between the point of view of Amber and Tyler. Since the novel opens with Amber kidnapping Tyler at gun point, you know right away a rape is going to happen. When it does, well, the line is a little blurry since "No!" was never used, but "Wait" was. I can concede that it was rape because it was unwanted. However that doesn't make Amber's later crime okay. You'll have to read the book, but it didn't sit well with me that it was alright to lie about Amber's actions, but Tyler had to be held accountable for his actions. Hmmmm... They were both guilty of acts of violence. And the eating disorder thrown in for good measure also muddied the plot.

This is a well-written novel that is imminently readable with a plot that moves along quickly. Amber and Tyler are well-developed characters, even though the plot does get in the way of them being actually likeable. Additionally Amber's eating disorder lessens the emotional impact of the assault, especially after we learn that Tyler is the one who saved her when she had the heart attack. He's wanted a relationship for years, she knew it, and yet she still led him on sexually. I'm not letting him off the hook either. When she said wait he should have stopped. Even though she was drunk and coming on to him, he could have told her to stop it because she was engaged.

This could be a good choice for a book club because the discussion would undoubtedly be lively.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria Books.

Pirate Women

Pirate Women by Laura Sook Duncombe
Chicago Review Press: 4/1/17
eBook review copy; 264 pages
ISBN-13: 9781613736012

Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe is the first-ever collection of stories about women pirates, real and legendary.

"[T]o be a pirate is to assert that whatever you fancy belongs to you." This was written to describe sixteenth‑century pirate Grace O’Malley.
While it is difficult to define exactly what would constitute a pirate, Duncombe takes a broadly defined look at the definition beyond the golden age of piracy. All pirates had the desire for freedom to live as they chose as a common denominator, but female pirates are often absent in historical accounts. "Pirates live outside the laws of man, but women pirates live outside the laws of nature. Women pirates are left out because they don’t fit nicely into the categories of 'normal' women or traditional women's virtues." Since traditional historians are men, accurate historical information about women pirates is lacking. "As long as men control the narrative, women pirates will be mostly left out. Even if male historians today were inclined to write about pirate women, they would have a difficult time doing so because of the dearth of primary sources about them. Since women have been considered unworthy subjects of historical documentation in the past, it is now difficult to study them - a vicious cycle that persists in keeping women 'off the record.'"

The women pirates Duncombe covers include, in part: Queen Artemisia I of Halicarnassus; Queen Teuta of Illyria, or "the Terror of the Adriatic"; Christina Anna Skytte; Elise Eskilsdotter; Ingela Gathenhielm; Johanna Hård; longship captains Wisna, Webiorg, and Hetha; Princess Alfhild, also called Awilda;  Jeanne de Montfort, aka Joanna of Flanders; Jeanne de Clisson, aka the Lioness of Brittany; Sayyida al‑Hurra; Lady Elizabeth and Lady Mary Killigrew; Gráinne (Grace) Ní Mháille, the pirate queen of Ireland; Anne de Graaf; Jacquotte Delahaye; Anne Dieu‑le‑veut; Anne Bonny; Mary Read; Maria Cobham; Martha (Mary) Farley (or Harvey); Maria Crichett (or Mary Crickett/Crichett); Flora Burn; Rachel Wall; Charlotte Badger; Catherine Hagerty; Margaret Croke; Cheng I Sao (with four hundred ships and somewhere between forty thousand and sixty thousand pirates under her command); Sadie Farrell, aka Sadie the Goat; Gallus Mag: Lai Choi San; Hon‑ cho (or Honcho Lo); and Cheng Chui Ping, aka Sister. There is also a discussion of women pirates in the movies.

This is a well-researched, thoughtful, scholarly account of the women in history, real or fictional, that have made a mark as a pirate.  Pirate Women includes a list of general resources, specific sources used for each chapter, and an index for those who would like more information on the historical records.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Chicago Review Press.