A Thrilling Roller Coaster Ride!

Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay (NAL hardcover, 4 September 2012).

Reviewed by guest blogger Ann Holt.

As a librarian I regularly read Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and other professional publications before choosing books to be ordered. Secretly, I scoured popular magazines including Entertainment Weekly to keep current with what the public was reading about and often found the books that have meant the most to me through those sources. There are so many books being published even librarians need someone to recommend the best to them.

And that is exactly what Stephen King did for me when he was writing a column for Entertainment Weekly. He wrote about Linwood Barclay, an American born Canadian writer, who had been a columnist for the Toronto Star. Having already found that King was a reliable source of wonderful authors, I searched the library catalog for Never Look Away (2010), read it, and I was hooked.

For many years I was lucky to receive boxes of Advanced Reading Copies (ARC) every month. ARCs are sent to reviewers and librarians to get them reading and excited about titles that might be overlooked or will benefit from word of mouth. When Marlyn Beebe asked me if I would like to read Linwood Barclay’s most recent thriller in ARC format, I jumped at the opportunity. The reward was Trust Your Eyes, which may be the author’s best story so far. It has been described as a modern version of Hitchcock’s Rear Window with overtones of Levinson’s Rain Man and it’s easy to see why.

Ray Kilbride, a successful political cartoonist, has come home to Promise Falls for his father’s funeral and to make arrangements to sell the house and find new living arrangements for his younger brother Thomas, a high functioning schizophrenic. Totally absorbed with maps, Thomas rarely leaves his room and his computer. He is convinced that by using Whirl360 (read Google map street view) and memorizing the streets of cities throughout the world, he will be useful to the CIA in a future catastrophe. As a matter of fact, Thomas thinks he is working for them already and he takes his job seriously. His intense scrutiny of the streetscapes reveals something odd in an upper window of a building in New York City. Humoring Thomas, and needing to make a trip into the city for business, Ray agrees to check it out. To say much more would spoil the fun and surprises. Just trust that you are in good hands.

Barclay’s thrillers are inventive roller coaster rides. They tend to involve everyday people swept up in extraordinary events resulting in page turners that will keep anyone up at night wanting to know what happens next.

Not surprisingly Variety recently announced that Trust Your Eyes is being made into a movie with The Hangover’s Todd Phillips directing. Like Stephen King you will find yourself wondering, how did I miss this writer?

Ann Holt is a random reader, preferring literate mysteries, the odd novel, and bestsellers in no particular order. She has indulged in blogging about the books she has read since 2007 at Book Keeping (http://bkkp.blogspot.com/). That was the year she retired as the Director of the Capital Library Cooperative, a state funded membership consortia of twenty-five public libraries. During her career she worked in every type of library from school to prison from academic to special.

After studying acting at Carnegie Mellon University, Ann settled down and obtained degrees in Communications (University of Pittsburgh) and Information Science (University of Michigan). 

Ann describes herself as an actress, director, reader, reviewer, genealogist, and time traveler.

Countdown to Left Coast Crime: Day 20

Poison Flower by Thomas Perry.*

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.

When Jane Whitefield married Dr. Carey McKinnon, they both hoped that she could leave behind the former life where she helped people disappear. It worked, for a while. She became a model surgeon's wife: working on committees and raising money for the hospital. They thought about having a child. But eventually, someone desperately needed her help and she couldn't say "no". As Carey thinks to himself at one point during the story

"To her, saving people was just something a person did, if she happened to have the skills".

This book begins with the third "runner" Jane has helped since her marriage. James Shelby was framed for the murder of his wife. The people who set him up try to have him killed in prison, and he is taken to court to testify against his attacker.

Posing as an attorney, Jane helps him escape, then acting as a decoy,she is captured, taken to a remote warehouse and tortured. She manages not to reveal where James is, but her captors do learn who she is. When they discover that many powerful people would like to get revenge against her, they decide to auction her off to the highest bidder.

Jane Whitefield makes all of her cunning and intelligent moves seem like simple common sense. She is so attuned to the world around her: the people, the animals, trees and even physical structures, that she is able to anticipate almost exactly what will happen in any situation. Her actions are almost always calm and measured and planned. She has the enviable ability to focus on whatever task she happens to be doing, yet still remain aware of her surroundings.

Many of these traits can be ascribed to her upbringing as a Seneca, and her study of Native American history and folklore. It's only a tiny spoiler to reveal that there's a wonderful chapter in the book when Jane goes to the riverbank and gives a tribute to the Jo-Ge-Oh, the little people, as thanks for helping her to return alive.

Make sure to set aside a block of time to read this book. Once you open it, you won't want to put it down until you reach the end.

*FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, and to NetGalley for providing me an e-galley to review.

Thomas Perry was born in Tonawanda, New York. He received a B.A. from Cornell University and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. His many and varied jobs include  park maintenance man, factory laborer, commercial fisherman, university administrator and teacher, and television writer/producer.  The Butcher's Boy won the Edgar award for Best First Novel in 1983.  Vanishing Act (1996) the first Jane Whiteifield novel, was chosen as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Just finished reading...

Free-Range Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of the Yarn Harlot's latest collection of essays from Library Thing.

What a charming little book. It contains things like a letter to the designer of a sweater pattern that just doesn't work, emails to a customer service representative from a yarn company, affectionate reminiscences of friends, relatives and acquatances who are knitters, and not-so-affectionate reminiscences of cheap acrylic yarn.

I love Pearl-McPhee's writing. She's really good at it, and I admire and envy her so much. Until I read her descriptions of what she goes through on book tours.

Just finished reading...

Christietown: A novel about vintage clothing, romance, mystery and Agatha Christie by Susan Kandel. (Fourth in the Cece Caruso series)

Cece is getting married. Her daughter Annie is having a baby. Cece's publisher has requested a partial revision of her latest book, a biography of Agatha Christie.

On top of it all, Cece has been volunteered to plan a grand opening celebration for a housing development based on Christie's writings. Part of these celebrations is a Miss-Marple-themed play (written by Cece), with her friends and family acting the parts. But on the night of the play, the lead actress disappears, and is eventually found dead.

Of course, this throws all of Cece's projects into chaos, but rewriting the portion of her book about Christie's 11-day disappearance seems to keep her going.

A riveting book, with one of the best quotes about mystery literature that I've ever come across:

Of course, all mysteries are about forgetting. Clues, suspects, motives, opportunities: the author lays them out before you, then tricks you into forgetting what you know. By the end of the book, with the revelation of the guilty party, your memories suddenly come flooding back. How could I have missed that? How did I not notice her? The answer is simple: you knew there's be no pleasure in remembering too soon.
(Chapter 43)

Just finished reading...

The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

I first read this book when it was released in 1994, and just finished rereading it due to the possibility I might have to lead a book discussion on it. (It turned out that I won't.)

I seldom reread books anymore, except for occasions like this; not because I don't want to, but because there are too many new books to read. At present, I have 3 books checked out of the library, with two waiting on the hold shelf, as well as the 4 on the list. And my TBR pile at home fills two shelves.

I remembered Mary, and Holmes and the development of their relationship. I remembered Mary's lodgings in Oxford. But I remembered very little of the actual plot, neither the identity of the villain nor the conclusion of the book. It was almost like reading a new book, and I loved it just as much as I think I did the first time I read it.

King is an amazing writer, and her characters are almost alive and breathing. I remember feeling the same way about her last Kate Martinelli book, The Art of Detection. And I've become so involved in the tale of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes that I plan to reread the rest of the series.

Just finished reading...

Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field by Melissa Nathan

Published in 2001, this is one of the earlier members of the Jane Austen spin-off club. It's the story of Jasmin Field, a columnist for a women's weekly, who lands the part of Elizabeth Bennet in a charity production of Pride and Prejudice.
Almost immediately, there is friction between her and the director, Oscar-winning actor Harry Noble.

Yes, it's pretty obvious where this hostility will lead, but Nathan is not precious enough to have her characters pretend they don't see the parallels. And though the parallels with the plot of P & P are many, they are made different enough by the time and setting to avoid feeling like carbon copies.

Nathan has also written a novel called Persuading Annie, based on (you guessed it!) Persuasion, which I plan to find.

Holiday week reading

I didn't get as much reading done in Galveston as I'd hoped. I took along 3 books, finishing the first one while at the airport waiting for the flight home, and the second the next day.
I really enjoyed Some Like it Hot-Buttered, the first in Jeffrey Cohen's Double Feature mystery series. We are introduced to protagonist Elliot Freed. After selling a novel to Hollywood, he sinks the proceeds into a historic movie theatre, calling it Comedy Tonight, and showing (d'uh) only comedies. On a night when the main feature is Young Frankenstein, one of the audience members is found dead after the show.
I can't really go into much detail on this book, because I gave it to my sister-in-law after I finished it. Suffice it to say that Cohen has a great way with the English language, and is one of the funniest mystery writers around. I look forward to more in this series.

I love Leslie Caine's Domestic Bliss series. Fatal Feng Shui is the 5th installment, and begins with interior designers Erin Gilbert and Steve Sullivan having merged their businesses and calling the result "Sullivan and Gilbert". (Gilbert and Sullivan/Sullivan and Gilbert is kind of a running gag throughout the book.)
One of the first clients of the new firm is a woman who constantly changed her mind about what she wants, usually deciding after a particular portion of the construction is completed that she doesn't like it. Of course, this causes no end of headaches for Erin and Steve, and the headaches get worse when the construction foreman (who just happens to be Erin's black-sheep brother) is killed on the site.
Erin, who has been dealing with having a new siblng appear in her life, is suddenly forced to deal with his death.
This story is mildly funny, with most of the humour coming from the relationship between the two protagonists. Now that Erin and Steve are business partners, is another kind of partnership on the horizon?

Just finished reading...

Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner

I generally don't enjoy short stories because, well, they're too short. I get interested in the characters and the story, and feel frustrated when it ends. I bought this book anyway, because I'm a big fan of both the editors, and I'm not sorry I did.

The book includes stories by some of my favourite authors: Jim Butcher (whose entry is a Harry Dresden story), Charlaine Harris (who contributed a Sookie Stackhouse tale), Toni Kelner, and Elaine Viets.

I discovered some authors I hadn't read before, such as Rachel Caine. I loved her story The First Day of the Rest of Your Life, about a young woman's 18th birthday. That was one of the stories I wished would go on. As was Jeanne Stein's The Witch and the Wicked, about a witch who is a caterer.

That's not all, of course. I was thoroughly entranced by most... no ALL of the stories. I can't think of a single one I didn't like. And I'm definitely going to look for novels by the other contributors.