Book Notices | The Traitor's Story by Kevin Wignall / The Speed of Sound by Eric Bernt / The Night Bird by Brian Freeman

Kevin Wignall, The Traitor's Story

Amazon   Finn Harrington is an ex-spy who's spent the six years since he left the business writing popular history books. He lives in Switzerland with his girlfriend, Adrienne, and with a vague sense that his past will one day come back to haunt him. It does in this story when Finn agrees to investigate the disappearance of his neighbors' teenaged daughter. Turns out that she unwittingly dredged up ghosts from Finn's past, and we learn about them in historical chapters that are interlaced with the modern narrative. In order to reclaim his life with Adrienne, Finn has to put those ghosts to rest. I really enjoyed this book. It took a little effort to keep the timeline straight as the author's switching between the modern-day and historical chapters was sometimes confusing. But that's my only complaint. Finn is a complex, interesting character, a flawed hero for whom "nothing much had mattered" for a long time when the book opens. It's enjoyable to watch him find his way after six years of living a life of shadows.

Eric Bernt, The Speed of Sound

Amazon   There are a lot of moving parts in this fast-paced sci fi novel by Eric Bernt. There are the good guys, a new doctor at a secret home for autistic savants and her genius patient Eddie, who's working on a project that could change life forever for everyone. And then there are the various sets of bad guys who are out to get Eddie's invention for themselves. The machine, by the way, is an implausible one: The device is able to scan a room and replay sounds that were made in it at pretty much any point in the past. You just have to input the proper date to retrieve the sounds you're looking for. So, yes, it's definitely a machine that would change the course of history. There's a lot going on in the book, with the crazy science and the multiple teams of malefactors, but Bernt does a good job of keeping things from getting too confusing. My only major complaint is that the book ends very abruptly. It's the kind of ending where you turn the page and literally say aloud—I speak from experience—"That's it?" We're being set up, it turns out, to read a sequel, Bernt's The Sound of Echoes, which was published a year after this one. I liked this book enough to read a sequel one day, maybe, but it annoys me a bit that I wasn't really given closure within this book, that the story isn't finished, and if I want to know how it ends I'd have to read book two.

Brian Freeman, The Night Bird

Amazon   In this first of a three-book (so far?) series, San Francisco Detective Frost Easton is investigating a string of bizarre deaths. A handful of otherwise happy women have suffered violent psychotic breaks that led to their dramatic deaths. Turns out they're all one-time patients of a psychiatrist who specializes in rewriting people's memories, and someone is tormenting her through her patients. There's scary stuff here, specifically, a guy in a creepy mask with a creepy voice—either is a problem independently, but in combination they're a nightmare. The main story is interesting, and the characters' back stories add to it. I liked Frost Easton, too. He's a cat lover with a weird living situation and a tragic past, a good anchor for a series. I think this one would make a good TV show.