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Book Notices | Satan and the Adventure of the (Other) God by Ray Bendici

Ray Bendici, Satan and the Adventure of the (Other) God

Amazon   In this second installment of Ray Bendici’s series of satanic adventures, sports writer/Satan-in-human-form Nick Brooks and his troop of unusual associates, including his better half, have to save the world—within five days. The book is clever as heck, riddled (but not cloyingly) with cultural allusions and the odd oddly apt observation: "He then adjusted his mirrored sunglasses and lumbered out of the vehicle with the urgency of Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka trying to stop Mike Teavee from broadcasting himself." "Despite raising a flag redder than anything flying over Beijing on National Day, I simply texted back the standard Brady Bunch 'Something suddenly came up' regarding dinner, and that we would catch up with her later." "Tonya's arm firmly went across my chest like Frank Costanza trying his move, only without the sophistry." "'Nyx,' I whispered, my gut clenching more awkwardly than the drawstring of a store-brand trash bag." If these references aren't in your wheelhouse, others that went over my head no doubt will be. The book is part adventure, part romance, playful and even philosophical. Readers inclined to think ill of the devil going in may come away thinking he's a likable guy who's gotten a bad rap (although, admittedly, the story is told from Satan's perspective, so there may be a pro-diablo slant at play). I read the first book in the series (Satan and the Adventure of the Blue-Eyed Freak) a couple years ago and don’t remember its making me question whether the story—only purportedly published by Satan’s human vessel—was in fact something more than fiction. But there is now legitimate cause to think it may be autobiographical, which is a nice twist. (Has anyone ever seen Satan and Ray Bendici in the same room? [Confession: I have actually seen Ray Bendici in a room, and Satan was not there, so.... Also, Ray's mode of discourse is not dissimilar to that of Satan's. Make of that what you will.]) Anyway, recommended—but read the first book first! You'll laugh, you probably won't cry, you'll look things up.

Book Notices | The Oligarch's Daughter by Joseph Finder

Joseph Finder, The Oligarch's Daughter

Amazon   Paul Brightman, a brilliant finance guy, marries the titular daughter of a Russian oligarch and soon finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy that leaves a growing number of people dead. Brightman's entanglements ultimately lead to his living on the lam under a false identity. We know this from the get-go because the story oscillates between the present time and the events of 5-6 years earlier that culminated in his going into hiding. The Oligarch's Daughter is an entertaining read, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I have some of Finder's previous thrillers. Perhaps it's because I blame Brightman for becoming involved in such a clearly problematic situation in the first place.

Book Notices | A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson

Peter Swanson, A Talent for Murder

Amazon   A Talent for Murder is the third book in Peter Swanson's Henry Kimball series. Hopefully it won't be the last. I've really enjoyed the series, which, as I've mentioned before, draws inspiration from Patricia Highsmith's oeuvre. There's a nod in this book, for example, to Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley (which is also echoed in this book's title). Once again, we find private detective Henry Kimball involved in tracking down a killer. The odd thing about this series, though, is that Kimball really isn't and never has been its main character, so I'm not sure why he's its eponym. Perhaps it's common for mystery/thriller series to be named after the official-ish investigator involved in a case? Henry is, at least, semi-official. But the main character really has always been Lily Kintner. This third book in the series is an excellent read. You don't have to read the first two to enjoy it, but understanding Lily's backstory and the genesis of her relationship with Henry will enhance your appreciation of the story.

Book Notices | The Kind Worth Saving by Peter Swanson

Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Saving

Amazon   Back in 2019 (my review), I read and loved Peter Swanson's The Kind Worth Killing, which shares a premise with Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train: What if two people who have no reason to know each other collaborate on a murder? More than five years later, I come to find out that the author has published two sequels! So I reread book one to refresh my memory—and loved it again—and then got my hands on The Kind Worth Saving. Like its predecessor, this story is told from multiple perspectives, and readers of the first book (which should certainly be read first) will see some familiar faces here along with new ones. This book also preserves a hint of that Strangers on a Train premise—the power of secret relationships when it comes to plotting murder. For me, the sequel wasn't quite as compelling as the first book, perhaps just because I knew more or less what to expect from the story: murders of convenience. But book one was also more twisty and featured a more relatable bad-guy protagonist. Nonetheless, The Kind Worth Saving is a good read, and I'm ready to jump into book three in the series (A Talent for Murder).

Book Notices | The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2024 ed. Otto Penzler

Otto Penzler, ed., The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2024

Amazon   This is the fourth volume in the Best Mystery Stories of the Year series, edited by Otto Penzler and featuring an introduction by this year’s guest editor, Anthony Horowitz. The collection contains 19 stories originally published in 2023 and one bonus story from the past. Of the modern tales, I particularly enjoyed those by Fleur Bradley (“How to Teach Yourself to Swim”), Jeffery Deaver (“The Lady in My Life”), Shells Legoullon (“The Backwoods”), Victor Methos (“Kill Night”), Dan Pope (“Snow Over Hartford”), Anna Scotti (“It’s Not Even Past”), Archer Sullivan (“Good Harvest”), and Andrew Welsh-Huggins (“Wonder Falls”). All but one of those names are new to me, and I mention them here at such length primarily as a record for myself of authors to watch. Of those eight stories, the one I think I’ll remember most is Archer Sullivan’s “Good Harvest,” which begins auspiciously with a nine-year-old watching her mother dig a grave by moonlight. The bonus story in this volume is “The Suicide of Kiaros” by L. Frank Baum, first published in 1897. It's interesting reading as a historical artifact. I think it were written today, however, I’d expect a Hitchcockian twist at the end rather than the the more straightforward conclusion Baum provides. Other books in the series: 2021 (guest editor Lee Child) 2022 (guest editor Sara Paretsky) 2023 (guest editor Amor Towles)

Book Notices | You Like It Darker by Stephen King

Stephen King, You Like It Darker

Amazon   Stephen King’s You Like It Darker is a collection of 12 titles—seven previously published short stories and five novellas. Looking back over the table of contents now, those that stand out for me as memorable are the novellas. The book starts with “Two Talented Bastids,” which I appreciated as a story with a simple central idea that sustains a lengthy narrative in an interesting way. “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” has a great premise: What happens if a guy dreams about a dead body in a place he’s never been, and the dream turns out to be true? But my favorite story in the collection is probably the last one, “Answer Man.” Interestingly, King explains in his Afterword that he’d started and abandoned “Answer Man” in the late 70s, returning to it only after his nephew found the manuscript and convinced him it was worth finishing. I’m glad he did because it’s a sweet story, ultimately, and its ending scene is simply perfect.

Book Notices | Run by Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch, Run

Amazon   Blake Crouch's Run was originally self-published in 2011 and has now been re-released by Ballantine in 2024. (This publishing history unfortunately is not apparent in the description of the book on Amazon.) So it's an earlier novel and not the product of the writer that Crouch has become in the more than ten years since Run first appeared. Back then, while I enjoyed some of the author's books, he was too focused on gore for my taste. I actually gave up reading him for a while because of this, and to my astonishment, when I looked again at what he was writing some years later, he was producing great novels like Recursion and Dark Matter. Anyway, Run is a product of that earlier time, and it is indeed a bit gory, but not as gory as some of his other early stuff. The book starts out slow, with a great deal of description about the burned-out towns and barren countryside through which our protagonist and his family are traveling as they try to survive a sort of murder plague. This opening part can seem endless, and maybe some of it could have been cut, but eventually the story takes off and the book becomes more interesting. And I'm willing to believe that maybe that less interesting stuff early on helps put readers in the right frame of mind to appreciate what Crouch's characters are going through. In short, this is definitely not one of Crouch's best books, but it's an okay read. Just don't abandon the author if you don't like this one, because his newer stuff is quite good.

Book Notices | Summer Frost by Blake Crouch / The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz / The Answer is No by Frederik Backman

Blake Crouch, Summer Frost

Amazon   Blake Crouch's Summer Frost is a an entertaining short read about a not-too-distant future in which artificial intelligence has the potential to become life, or at least to approximate it very closely. So what happens when an NPC in a video game strays from its programming? Well, Crouch has come up with a readable account of one potential outcome.

Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Sequel

Amazon   I read and enjoyed Jean Hanff Korelitz's book The Plot back in 2021 (my review), but by the time this sequel came along, I had to refresh my memory: A professor of writing steals a killer plot from a dead student to write his own bestseller, and trouble ensues because the plot wasn't all that fictional. And the bad guy in that book was...well, I had to be reminded of that too, but I won't give it away here. Okay, so the protagonist of The Sequel is—I'm trying hard here not to spoil the plot of either book—someone who's done a lot of bad things in the past and who racks up more of them in this book. This character is presented as a sort of Tom Ripley, the eponymous antihero of Patricia Highsmith's series that started with The Talented Mr. Ripley: Tom is a complex character who winds up having to commit a number of murders, but usually for understandable reasons. Despite disapproving of his behavior, readers are invested enough to root for him and worry that he may not get away with it. So Korelitz sets out to create her own Tom Ripley. (In fact, that professor from the first book taught writing at Ripley College.) Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me. Unlike Tom, Korelitz's protagonist is unlikable and unsympathetic and, for a supposedly clever criminal, makes a lot of stupid mistakes. Nor is the book suspenseful. The story just rolls forward from one unlikely scenario to another without ever creating any buildup of tension, at least for me. Not the worst book in the world by any means, but only a so-so sequel after The Plot, which seemed for a time to be a darling of the book world.

Frederk Backman, The Answer is No

Amazon   This Amazon Original Story by Frederik Backman is about a happy loner named Lucas who just wants to continue to live his peaceful, solitary existence. Unfortunately, he is dragged into the politics of his apartment building by a series of unrealistically quirky characters. The plot is unrealistic too, and kind of stupid, and just in general the whole thing is trying too hard to be cute. It wound up just being cloying and irritating. Imagine Gilmore Girls in book form but even more annoying.