#15

The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The feral nature of adolescent girls and the vagaries of history...set on the Isle of Guernsey.

The lies told by the Rozier family during the Nazi Occupation in WWII resound down the years to impact on fifteen year old Cat Rozier

Cat the brain, the outcast, becomes fast friends with Nicolette, the new girl in town...The lovely and wild Nicolette. they become inseparable.....partying, drinking, hooking up with the local boys. All the while Nicolette alternates her friendship with taunts and bullying. A personal betrayal ends in murder...and Cat lays the blame on her family's history of lies and betrayal

Interspersed within this tale of "teens gone wrong" is Cat's father's account of the Nazi Occupation and the part played by his older brother as a collaborator.....and the disclosure of other family secrets

Hence, this BOOK OF LIES penned by Cat...History does repeat itself..and adolescent girls, by their nature and hormones, are not innocent.

I liked this book. I read it back-to-back with LIGHT FROM A DISTANT STAR by Mary McGarry Morris ...another story of a teenage girl in crisis...although that child didn't resort to murder. In this case, the girls were none of them very likable, but the interweaving of family history, secrets and lies...made the whole ghastly, central Act a little more justified....but just a little

Recommended...but only to those who don't see teenage girls as angels...to those who see the blood still on the lip

4 Stars

***This was a Net Galley***

#14

Light from a Distant Star: A Novel by Mary McGarry Morris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The summer of Nellie Peck's thirteenth year is fraught with peril, and the impending vagaries of adulthood.

The family hardware business is failing, and dad (Benjamin) is busy writing a history of the town, while the family finances go haywire. Mom has to go back to work to pay the bills which leads to stressful family situations. Half-sister Ruth embarks on a search for her birth father, and little brother Henry becomes Nellie's responsibility. In an effort to toughen him up, she resorts to an old WWI hand-to-hand combat manual. Add cantankerous Grandpa, keeper of the town junkyard, and his hired man, Max, the loner.....and the stage is just about set for trouble.

When the Peck's tenant, Dolly is found dead.....all eyes turn toward Max..it doesn't help that she was a stripper by trade. However, Nellie knows that max is innocent....she even knows the identity of the real killer. Or does she? And how is she going to tell her "truth" and convince everyone when it would mean accusing an upstanding pillar of the community..the very person able to save her family from financial ruin? Oh, the quandary.....oh, the lack of credibility.

I've been a fan of Mary McGarry Morris' work for quite some time....and this, her take on To Kill a Mockingbird is, in my opinion, a success. While her prose is not as elegant as Harper Lee's..the story is set in the present day, where elegance is not a requirement...Nellie Peck is not Scout Finch, but Scout didn't have the media and Pop culture distractions that are part of Nellie's life. Nellie's dilemma is part and parcel of adolescence itself...the lack of credibility we all feel when on the verge of adulthood.

Maybe life was easier in the 1950s...but when Nellie eventually has her say, she does so with heart...even though the outcome is not victorious....most of the characters do survive and live their lives. Not perfectly.

Recommended.....4 Stars

***This was a Net Galley***

Noir.....

Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A high-speed chase down the Hollywood Hills.....and, you're the girl at the wheel of the car. No brakes? The car has brakes and, neither does this story

B-movie actress Lane Madden is next on the list of THE ACCIDENT PEOPLE.

Have you ever wondered what becomes of screenwriters and film techncians....when their careers are over...or, they've fallen out of favor....Scripted "accidents".....posed "hits"???

Lane is next on The List.....through various nefarious events (exploding gas mains and biotoxic weaponry) our girl does not end up well.....she dies...nuff said

Did i mention Charlie Hardie??? The erstwhile hero of this book...the first of a series???

Charlie.....a former cop living off the guilt of the death of his former partner?

I love Mr Swiercznyski's work....since i read The Blonde.....though i can't spell his name for shit.....the fact that he writes for Marvel Comics makes this particular book a must!

This book is a Quentin Tarantino movie..on paper....a literary Graphic Novel....fast-paced with no apologies

I'm posting this review because I love the author's work.....i loved this book and recommend it to anyone who likes Noir fiction.....i can't wait for the second book

****this was an ER book from Library Thing***

Justice

Nairobi Heat by Mukoma wa Ngugi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars




What could have been a decent, if unexciting murder mystery.....rapidly turned into a well written thriller. Set mainly in Nairobi, Kenya....we find our protagonist Ishmael, a Detective from Madison, Wisconsin (!), on the case of a young white woman...Identity Unknown....whose body was found on the doorstep of a prominent University professor. Not just any professor, though...Joshua Hakizimana being a famous hero of the Rwandan Genocide

Life in Nairobi proves a bit tricky, as Ishmael discovers after being summoned by a mysterious phone call. In the company of the enigmatic O...a local detective-of-sorts, and the sensuous spoken-word performer, Muddy.....Ishmael discovers the corrupt underbelly of Global Humanitarianism....and the lingering aftertaste of Mass Murder...

Ambiguity abounds, here....and for a while, no one is who he seems to be..but Wa Ngugi gives the reader a taste of the Real Africa...an the people surviving in the wake of a national horror.

While this is not a novel of detection, per se..it is a novel about justice...swift and unrelenting...where the Bad Guys do pay....and the Good Guys??? Endure.


This is a review of a Net Galley

4 Stars (****)

Color Online: 2011 YA/MG POC Releases

I saw this list the other day and thought it was pretty awesome...enjoy!



Color Online: 2011 YA/MG POC Releases

Noirella

Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Book Review "on the fly":

A dark "Noirella"....a meditation on personal and professional failure....Marriage gone bust...Career permanently on the rocks (save the twist)

Our nameless hero is homeward bound, reluctantly....after a failed marriage and a career-gone-stagnant...in the company of his bulldog Churchill

Lots of pent up rage, accompanied by a case of Hypergraphia....you know this guy is circling the drain.

At first, I would have called this a Stephen King type Road Novel....given his penchant for exposing the Hell that writers endure to serve their craft...on second thought..the only Horror here, is our protagonist's dilemma, being so out of touch with what is generally perceived as Reality...yet being so in touch with his own pain and frustration (if that makes any sense) that his vision is blurred, to say the least....

After a corner beat-down, he acquires a gun...Homeless and raging...he's homeward bound to a brother who probably doesn't want him around any way

If this seems depressing...it's nothing compared to the short sharp ending....which i won't give up...let's just say "suicide or the highway"

This book packs a wallop in 175 pages...not for the fain if heart...

The only other book i have read by Mr Piccirilli...is A Choir of Ill Children...which was more of a Southern Gothic...and a lot creepier

I give this book 4 Stars...because it smacked me upside the head with its wit, heart, violence,and craft




This was a Net Galley....

Electric

The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



More NOTES, as it were:


Lightning streaks in the sky, running parallel until they finally converge, in the distance/future

Two lives.....Becca Burke and Buckley Pitank...two kids trying to grow up with dysfunctional families and the odd lightning strike

Becca: with a love-struck alcoholic mother and a philandering father...still very much a Daddy’s girl...struck by lightning, the first time at age 8. Of course, no one believed her, because she wasn’t dead

Buckley: with an overweight, loving mother...a hard-hearted Grandma...and, later, an abusive stepfather...the Preacher Man-of-God.....after his mother takes them both away from all that, he still thinks he’s unworthy of love and takes his own mental beatings...Mom is killed by a lightning strike...Buckley pens an eponymous Handbook

Becca reads the book, they meet but don’t fall in love. Young adulthood is a bitch...Buckley finally gets his own Lightning Strike and all ends well, more or less, in hospital

Life is messy and painful, with occasional flashes of bliss.....clear and sharp as lightning bolts and just as fatal

I know i’ve given up a bit of the story here, but that isn’t what carried me....in this case it was the prose...the words. For a first novel this one is a joy...takes a while to get started but is worth the effort. Ms Young-Stone is, in fact, a lightning strike survivor...i’d like to think that “bolt” contributed to her talent.....the fluidity of these words...

Highly recommended

4 Stars (****)



*This was from Net Galley*