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Book Notices | Out of the Ashes by Kara Thomas

Kara Thomas, Out of the Ashes

Amazon   This book starts out well. Samantha Newsom, driving past a police cruiser, reminds herself not to behave like a criminal: "I hadn't killed anyone. Not yet." That line hooked me for a while. Sam is heading back to her hometown to take care of that "yet," and while there, she confronts the defining fact of her life, the unsolved murder of her family and her life afterward as the unloved ward of a miserable relative. She starts playing private detective, hunting down old acquaintances and anyone who might have some insight into her family's fate. About halfway through the book, I realized that there were too many characters who were related to one another who I couldn't keep straight and too many different crimes that Samantha became interested in solving. And I lost count of how many people she thought the murderer of her family might be. By the time I found out who actually did it, I didn't care. I think this book had a lot of promise. I just felt like I was drowning in extraneous details after a while.

Book Notices | The Forgetting by Hannah Beckerman

Hannah Beckerman, The Forgetting

Amazon   In The Forgetting, Hannah Beckerman tells the story of two women in problematic relationships. Livvy married Dominic after a whirlwind romance, and they now have a baby, Leo. She's still in the honeymoon phase of her marriage, and what she doesn't see clearly—and we do—is that Dominic is manipulative and controlling. Our second protagonist, Anna, has been married longer to her husband, Stephen, and their relationship isn't perfect either. Stephen can be a little controlling, too, but it's harder for us to recognize and condemn it in his case because the issue is complicated by Anna's amnesia, the result of a car crash that occurred just before the book opens. So is Stephen keeping her from looking at their old photo albums, for example, because he wants to aid in her recovery, as he claims, or is something else going on? Beckerman tells the stories of these women in chapters that alternate throughout most of the book. It's a highly readable story, but also sometimes maddening. I wanted to reach through the pages and slap Livvy into awareness, or just slap Dominic. His gaslighting, the way he warps truths to undermine his wife's sense of reality, is infuriating. Things come to a head, of course, and readers may not be expecting the way the story is resolved. I wasn't.

Book Notices | The Trap by Melanie Raabe

Melanie Raabe, The Trap

Amazon   Linda Conrads is a best-selling author who hasn't left her house in 11 years. She went into seclusion not long after finding her sister Anna murdered—and seeing the face of the murderer before he ran off. The murder is still unsolved, and Linda is still haunted by that face. So what if she sees it one day on TV? Melanie Raabe's debut novel, translated from the German, is a twisty thriller that really did keep me guessing until the end. With very pages to go, I still half expected a different outcome. There's also a story within the story, as Linda seeks to lure her sister's killer out of hiding by writing a novel based on the crime. Passages from that text are interspersed throughout The Trap, and they provide information—lightly fictionalized, and filtered through our protagonist's perhaps imperfect memory—about what happened in the aftermath of Anna's death. An enjoyable read.

Book Notices | Rebel with a Clause by Ellen Jovin

Ellen Jovin, Rebel with a Clause

Amazon   Rebel with a Clause is a sort of grammar travelogue. Since 2018, Ellen Jovin has been setting up a folding table in public with a "Grammar Table" sign and answering any grammar-related questions that passersby happen to have. She started in New York, where she lives, but at time of writing, she and her husband (who films the interactions at the table for a Grammar Table documentary!) had hit 47 states. This book is an account of her conversations with people from all over, organized by topic rather than geography. Chapters include, for example, discussions of the Oxford comma (of course; I don't really understand the world's obsession with this one piece of punctuation); affect vs. effect and lay vs lie (see below); its and it's and your and you're and their and they're and so on. After each chapter, Jovin includes a quizlet so readers can test their skills. I love grammar, but this book wasn't really about the grammar for me. It's more about the author's personality. Jovin is an immediately likable narrator who, with her friendly vibe, managed to coax a lot of people nationwide into talking about their grammar-related issues. She is far from a grammar scold, and in fact admits to some grammatical laxity that would draw ire from some, e.g., her lack of concern about the distinction between “farther” and “further.” (This is the sort of thing that may have earned her the term "rebel" in the title.) Anybody who likes grammar will enjoy the conversations in this book. If you're a grammar expert, you're unlikely to learn anything new, but I think you'll enjoy the experience anyway. Two notes: (1) This is the perfect place for me to promote the rule of thumb I propose for those who can't remember the difference between "lay" and "lie." It is this: If you're in doubt, if you're questioning which word to use, you almost certainly want "lie." Most people (especially those who are not bricklayers and are not involved with chicken farming) can get away with never saying "lay." Why? "Lay" is one of two things. (a) It can be a transitive verb (one that takes an object), as in "laying brick" or "laying eggs" or "laying a book on a table." But how often do you say any of these things? Chances are, if you want to say that you put a book on a table, you wouldn't say "lay," you'd say "put." And I think you're unlikely to be confused when you're talking about bricks or eggs. (b) The second possibility is the one that trips people up. "Lay" is also the past tense of "lie." So, you might say, "I am lying down right now." "I will lie down soon." "You should lie down." "Lie down!" (Not "lay"  or "laying" in any of those cases!) But, if you're talking about the past tense, you'd say, "Yesterday I lay down." If that explanation is enough to make you remember the distinction, great, but if not, just don't use "lay"! Because you can get away with saying, "Yesterday I was lying down." So I repeat, if you're wondering which to use, you almost certainly want "lie" (or you can get away with using "lying"). (2) In her introduction, Jovin notes that one of the three states she and her husband did not set up shop in was Connecticut—despite its proximity to New York. They did visit Connecticut, but rather than doling out grammar advice, they got pizza. This is perfectly reasonable behavior, even expected. But as a native of New Haven, I'm sure I join a chorus of other readers from the area in my need to know, where did they get their pizza from?

Book Notices | The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz, The Sentence is Death

Amazon   This is the second installment in Anthony Horowitz’s delightful series of literary whodunits. The author (who is real) blends reality and fiction by injecting himself into the story as a Watson-like character, the somewhat bumbling sidekick of a brilliant detective, disgraced former policeman Daniel Hawthorne (who is fictional). Together, they investigate unusual crimes, with Horowitz taking notes and working on the very book that we're reading. This time around, the crime that warrants chronicling is the murder by wine bottle of a prominent divorce attorney. The mystery is compelling, but it's the relationship between Hawthorne and Horowitz that is most appealing. It’s great to watch as the author slowly uncovers more personal information about his enigmatic and cantankerous partner. This series is a lot of fun.

Book Notices | Betrayal by Tim Tigner

Tim Tigner, Betrayal

Amazon   In Tim Tigner's early stand-alone novel Betrayal, twin siblings Ody and Cassi Carr—an FBI agent and profiler, respectively—run afoul of a political plot aimed at getting Cassi's soon-to-be ex into the White House. The book is fast-paced and readable, but it falls short of being riveting or memorable. The pace often feels rushed, and I never felt any attachment to the characters. It's hard to believe that Cassi, who is so impressive in other areas, would ever have fallen for the bad guy and not been able to see through him. And Ody doesn't make the best decisions in the story either. So, it's an okay read if you've got some time to kill, but Tigner went on to write better books.

Book Notices | The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz, The Word is Murder

Amazon   Anthony Horowitz injects himself into the story in this first book in his Hawthorne and Horowitz series, playing the John Watson figure to an enigmatic ex-policeman known mostly by his last name. A particularly intriguing case—the murder of a popular actor's mother on the day she plans her own funeral—prompts Hawthorne to propose the partnership, and after some initial reluctance, Horowitz signs on. So Horowitz is the real-life author writing about his fictional experience tailing the fictional detective while he solves a fictional crime. I write those adjectives with the certainty of someone who's Googled to find out exactly where the many real-life details in this book give way to fiction. The blend is exquisite. So I really enjoyed that playfulness—the melding of reality and fiction—and I like the first-person narrative in which Horowitz brings us along not only while he shadows Hawthorne but also while he tries to figure out how to approach writing this kind of story in the first place. It's quite a fun read, and there are (to date) three more books in the series waiting to be enjoyed! Hopefully they'll keep coming. (In closing, I must say that I love the cover art for these books. Also, in my head, Hawthorne was played by actor Bruce Weitz.)

Book Notices | A Column of Fire by Ken Follett

Ken Follett, A Column of Fire

Amazon   A Column of Fire is the third installment in Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series.* Like its predecessors, it's a big, sprawling read, centered loosely around the fictional English town of Kingsbridge. This novel picks up the story of the city's inhabitants hundreds of years after the events of Follett's World Without End. We're now in the 16th and early 17th centuries, when Europe is riven by religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. The main protagonist, Kingsbridge native Ned Willard, spends his life in the service of Queen Elizabeth helping to root out extremist plots, all the while hoping for a world free of religious division. He's a good guy who's thwarted throughout his life by, among others, the brother of his (Catholic) childhood sweetheart. If you're familiar with the author's books, you won't be surprised by anything here—the huge cast of characters and clearly delineated good guys and bad guys; the stories of characters it's hard not to root for or against woven around real historical events; and, always, the sheer readability of it all, even at 900-plus pages. *A prequel to the series published in 2020—The Evening and the Morning—complicates things: A Column of Fire was the third book published (in 2017) in the original trilogy of Kingsbridge books, which includes Pillars of the Earth (1989) and World Without End (2007).