Killers Beware: Waterman and Stark are on the Scene

The Girl in the Woods – Gregg Olsen

When it comes to mysteries, the people who investigate crimes for a living pretty much break down into three categories: cops (think Harry Bosch), medical examiners (Kay Scarpetta) and criminalists (Lincoln Rhyme). Those are the protagonists whose investigations are lumped together as police procedurals. Scarpetta and her fellow Quincys now have a new colleague: Birdy Waterman of Kitsap County, Washington. Birdy’s a member of the Makah, a Native American tribe local to the area. Birdy and Detective Kendall Stark make up the investigative team of Waterman and Stark, featured in Gregg Olsen’s series of the same name. The Girl in the Woods (2014) is the first of three, so far, novels in the series.

The eponymous girl’s first appearance is a bit part – the bit being one of her feet. Birdy’s investigation of the found foot is only just underway when a dirt biker comes across the remainder of the body. The girl was only sixteen, and to make matters worse, she and her mother were the only survivors of a traffic accident that killed her father and brother. As a result, Mom became a hoarder.

Meanwhile on the other side of town, a young nurse’s aide is certain that the once-handsome and –vital former naval officer next door has been murdered by his new wife. As luck would have it, Birdy quickly realizes that the gorgeous young widow and her equally gorgeous daughter (but less-gorgeous son) are hiding something. Sure enough, he’d been poisoned. Is there a “black widow” on the loose? Wonder of wonders, the two murders are revealed to be connected by a tenuous thread – they’re tangentially related to convicted murderer Brenda Nevins, the “most beautiful prisoner in America.” That means Kendall will have to interview the woman in a scene right out of “Orange Is the New Black”… and, of course, there will be the usual heart-pounding climactic showdown with the murderous villain. Of course.

Olsen’s red herrings are pretty faded (more of pink herrings) and his plot twist so hackneyed that I could see it a couple hundred pages in advance. The mechanism by which the two killings are connected is so clumsy that it’s almost laughable. Considering that Waterman is a coroner / medical examiner, there’s surprisingly little about the science of the autopsy suite (the text doesn’t even mention instars when talking about “maggots”). On the other hand, the characters – including the dead girl’s mother and the protagonists – are fairly well-crafted, although Olsen seems to lay the family drama on a little thick when it comes to Waterman.

As far as mysteries are concerned, The Girl in the Woods would only merit two stars – especially since the character of Brenda Nevins owes her very existence to Chelsea Cain’s Gretchen Lowell – but Olsen manages to drag it up to average with a fairly good sense of place and some interesting characters. In reality, though, the novel is about what you’d expect for a debut novel. The only problem with this observation is, according to the “other works by the author” list, that it’s his eighteenth.

copyright © 2016 scmrak

Gibson blends technology, politics and espionage in a cyberpunk melange

Spook Country - William Gibson

That William Gibson is about as geeky as the average suburban housewife probably comes as a surprise to most familiar with Gibson. He is, after all, the man who coined “cyberspace” two decades ago in Neuromancer, the first book ever to win all three science fiction awards (Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K Dick). Yet Gibson freely admits that he’s no more in tune with what’s inside his monitor or his keyboard than you or I. That’s pretty much on a par with learning that A-Rod has never heard of Cooperstown or that Norm Abram can’t tell walnut paneling from wood-grain wallpaper.

William Gibson Plumbs the Near Future: The Peripheral

The Peripheral - William Gibson

It never crossed Flynne Fisher’s mind that doing a favor for her brother would lead to such upheaval. After all, she was just doing security for some online game – or so she thought. This game was different, though: for one thing, the setting was… disturbingly familiar… and it was more realistic than any game she’d played before – especially the gruesome murder she witnessed. Flash forward a couple of days: word on the street is that there’s a contract out on her brother because someone thinks he saw something he shouldn’t have. What’s weird, though, is that the company who’d originally hired him is coming to his (and Flynne’s) defense with some pretty advanced tech. Turns out that her virtual reality trip hadn’t been into a game, it had been to the future. Or more accurately, to a future – you know: time-travel paradoxes and all that.

A Novel That Proves Anyone Can Be a Published Author

Dream With Little Angels - Michael Hiebert

Alvin, Alabama, is the only home eleven-year-old Abe Teal has ever known. His mother, Leah, is a second-generation town cop who’s gotten her life back on track after getting pregnant at 17 with Abe’s sister Carry. Alvin’s so tiny that the high school is in the next town, but it isn’t too small for murder… When one of Carry’s classmates disappears, Abe’s mother is haunted by memories of the death of another teenaged girl twelve years ago. Her first case as the town’s new detective remains unsolved. Now that not one but two young girls have disappeared again, Mother Teal finds herself driven – and extremely worried about her own daughter, who has only recently entered “the difficult years.” Meanwhile, Abe and his BFF Dewey are convinced that the new neighbor across the street from the Teal home is up to no good – maybe he’s even the killer.

Abe Teal is about to get a hands-on education in the sort of goings-on that make small southern towns so strange.

Stephen King’s "Revival": Lovecraft Lives!

Revival - Stephen King

Jamie Morton was barely six years old the first time Charlie Jacobs’ shadow fell across him. It would not be the last time – in fact, Charlie Jacobs’ shadow would remain with him until the end of his days. But back in 1962, Charlie was the newly-hired minister at the Morton family’s church, and with his wife and son beside him he'd brought new life to the moribund congregation.

Grossman's Debut Novel Lacks the Magic

Warp - Lev Grossman

Once a reader has found a new author he or she truly enjoys, a typical next step is to visit that author’s older works.  Clearly, St. Martin’s Press figured that they had a gold mine in their vaults:

with the SyFy channel version of Lev Grossman’s "Magicians" series, they figured fans would be eager to (buy and) read Grossman’s earlier works.

If you’re inclined to do just that by snapping up a copy of his novel Warp, it’s not a good idea…

The aimless, slacker Gen-Xer bit has been done to death. Let’s face it: there are dozens, if not hundreds, of novels out there about the aimless types who’ve now been replaced in the literary world by their own aimless offspring. In the case of Warp, it’s Hollis Kessler, late a graduate of Boston College who – like so many LT¹ types before him – is determined to stay in the town where he had so much fun as an undergrad. Hollis’s problem is that he’s the slackest of his little coterie of slackers – even his ex-girlfriend has yuppified herself and now sashays about a glamorous office.

"The Last One" Effortlessly Marries Reality TV and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction. No Kidding!

The Last One - Alexandra Oliva

Just about anyone who knows me well probably also knows that I have nothing to do with so-called “reality” televisions shows. I’ve never voluntarily watched more than a few seconds of “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” or any other example of the genre. Face facts: I’m really not willing to suspend my disbelief for this particular form of escapism: life’s tough enough for most people without phony challenges and fake contests. So it might come as a surprise to my acquaintances that my most recent literary find is all about a reality television show…

…or maybe they wouldn’t be surprised, since Alexandra Oliva’s debut novel, The Last One, is at the same time a damned fine example of one of my favorite genres: post-apocalyptic fiction. Here: let me tell you about it.

Storey’s Debut Novel Filled with Blood and Tropes

Nothing Short of Dying - Erik Storey

Cliché number 1: Clyde Barr, who left his western Colorado home after a horrendous youth to “see the world,” became a mercenary. Unlike most, he (claims he) chose the good side of his fights, protecting the little guys. Nevertheless, he apparently perfected his skills: Barr’s a stone killer. Just sprung from a Mexican jail, he stops in his home town to reach out to the only one of his three sisters he still talks to, only to find that Jen has been taken by an unnamed “big guy” to help him with some crime, after which she’ll be “discarded like a used needle.”

This John Jordan Prequel Needs Some "Oomph!"

Innocent Blood - Michael Lister

One line from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House” was running through my head as I read Michael Lister’s Innocent Blood: “The Foxy Grandpa shoehorned himself into the scene…” Never mind that protagonist John Jordan is but a stripling in his late teens instead of a grandpa, Lister still managed to shoehorn the boy into early-‘80s Atlanta, complete with a face-to-face meeting with serial killer Wayne Williams. Give us a break…

The title is the seventh in the John Jordan mystery series – some quick sleuthing reveals that it’s a prequel set well before the first in the series; intended to provide insight into Jordan's formative years. According to reviews of Lister’s other work (all of which have “blood” in the title), Jordan’s a “reluctant detective” type; a minister who keeps having to solve murders. I don’t know that for sure, and I don’t intend to find out… 

Life at the Comic-Con

A Hundred Thousand Worlds - Bob Proehl

Those readers among us who prefer that their fiction have a beginning and an end will not particularly like Bob Proehl’s A Hundred Thousand Worlds. I can’t blame them. Oh, sure, the novel has a beginning (around page 1) and an ending (of sorts, slightly before page 368), but the story and the characters seem somehow to aimlessly wander through the interstices of the pages between those two points.

I will say that Proehl has a way with words, as the saying goes, but that's probably the only reason I managed to slog through this entire book. As for a plot, however, let’s just say that the concept at its core was lost on this particular reader. Of course I get it: the novel recounts the westward journey of Valerie Torrey and her nine-year-old son, Alex, as they return to LA from New York City. Exactly why they’re “returning,” however, and why they left in the first place spin out quite slowly (too slowly?) within the pages of the novel.

Val’s an actor, once the female heroine of a long-since cancelled scifi television series, a show that strikingly resembles “Continuum” (no word on whether Val looks like Rachel Nichols, though). Mother and son's westward migration takes place in three steps as she reprises her character at comics conventions in Cleveland, Chicago and LA; with side trips to see her mother and... "The Woman." The road show's cast of characters is padded out with Brett, a comic artist (who, unbeknownst to anyone but the readers, just broke up with a woman who once babysat Alex) and Gail, a lesbian comic writer. A Greek… errr, geek chorus of women in superhero costumes accompanies the little group on their journey. Enormous swaths of the text are given over to the “wonders” (I use the term sarcastically) of comic books, while little or nothing is given over to the motivations of the characters or even scene setting.

Casey Duncan and the Biggest Locked-Room Mystery Ever

City of the Lost: A Thriller - Kelley Armstrong

Meet Casey Duncan, a homicide cop in some random Canadian town who’s hiding a deep, dark secret. A dozen years ago, Casey murdered her sometime boyfriend; she put him down like a rabid dog when she was only eighteen. He may well have deserved it, but…Ever since that day in Calgary, Casey has been pretty much on the run. She must be a bit self-destructive, though, since she likes to tell therapists about killing Brian to see if they’ll turn her in… and this time, the latest one does

That's why Casey's on the run again – except that this time instead of heading for another city, she and her best friend Diana head for a town Diana had heard of in rumors, a place where everyone in town is hiding from something (for a fee, of course).  Diana, who's running from an abusive ex-husband, and Casey join the population of the City of the Lost. That’s how the two end up sequestered in a tiny town deep in the wilds of Canada’s Yukon, among people who are all hiding from someone or something – and a few of whom are also hiding something.

Generation Starship? Or Generation Novel...

Arkwright - Allen Steele

It’s getting harder and harder to be a science fiction fan. For one thing, the library and bookstore shelves that used to be filled with space operas are now jammed with vampire tales. For another, there just don’t seem to be any more Asimovs, Clarkes, Sturgeons or Silverbergs coming down the pike (Charlie Stross, perhaps, excepted). To make matters worse, fans have recently been subjected to a slew of long novels that read more like soap operas than space operas – some fairly good (Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves) and some not quite so good (the John Sandford and Ctein collaboration, Saturn Run). And then there’s the just plain bad: Allen Steele’s Arkwright.

Kadrey's Episodic Fiction Flat

The Everything Box - Richard Kadrey

Imagine, if you will, the angel sent to Earth after the Noahic flood with specific instructions to kill off any unauthorized survivors. Go ahead, imagine him – his name’s Qaphsiel, and this is his first big assignment (normally he’s in charge of office supplies)… and he blows it. Yep, Qaphsiel had The Everything Box in his pocket, but he lost it… “Crap!”

The Fat Twin

Nowhere Girl - Susan Strecker

Do identical twins have a supernatural bond, the ability to communicate across time and space in a way no one else can penetrate? Cady Bernard certainly believes they do – and she should know, since she’s an identical twin. That is, she was: once. Sixteen years ago; half her life; Cady’s twin sister Savannah died…. a homicide… her body found in an abandoned house on the hill behind their high school. Cady knew without being told that her sister was gone.

Time files. After battling self-abuse (cutting, attempted suicide) in the aftermath of her sister’s death, Cady grew up and became a best-selling author… an author who writes what she knows: murder. She’s (unhappily) married to a bassoon-tooting psychiatrist she suspects is 1) ashamed that she makes more money than he does and 2) probably playing hide-the-salami with his waiflike receptionist. Because, although Savannah Martino was gorgeous, luminous, slim and lovely; twin sis Cadence was and remains the “chubby” one. Apparently epigenesis rules…

McCallum's Fiction Debut a Misfire

Once a Crooked Man - David McCallum

I’ve always considered it rather depressing that one of the surest ways to get a novel published (at least back in the days before rampant self-publishing) was to already have a degree of celebrity. Take a look at all the dozens of actors and singers who’ve published children’s books – Madonna, Sting, Cate Blanchett, etc. – for example. Even in my favorite genre, the mystery, more than a few actors have been published. Some – Harley Jane Kozak or Hugh Laurie  – have actually done a fairly good job. Others (say, Gillian Anderson) haven’t done so well. Into the midst of that second group, regrettable, comes veteran actor David McCallum with his debut novel, Once a Crooked Man.

Harry Murphy , New York-based actor, had just finished yet another audition – spoiler alert: he wouldn’t win the part – and badly needed to pee. So he slipped into the Chinese restaurant he was passing, hoping to empty an overflowing bladder. The four men at the table chased him off, so a desperate Harry ducked into the neighboring alley and watered the brick wall instead. What he overheard standing under an open window was (somehow) sufficient to send the young man across the pond to London, planning to warn a complete stranger (for whom he had only a surname) that someone in America planned to terminate their arrangement, whatever it was – permanently.

Cornwell's Personal Problems with the FBI Ruin "Depraved Heart"

Depraved Heart - Patricia Cornwell

Read any Scarpetta novels lately? Well, I have—but I haven’t bought one in years, and don’t intend to buy any in the future. In fact, I’m not even sure I want to read another one, because… well, because they just keep getting worse and worse. I did read the latest one, Depraved Heart, however; and I’m here to warn you not to bother.

“Why?” you might ask. Well, mainly because it was lousy. No, it was worse than lousy: it was an overblown and bloated complaint that, frankly, says a lot more about author Patricia Cornwell’s mindset than it does about her writing skills. While her two most recent volumes (Flesh and Blood and Dust at least featured some fairly interesting forensic investigations, the 23rd installment in the Scarpetta series devolves into nothing but a 466-page rant about the FBI. At the risk of getting distracted by the tabloid descriptions of Scarpetta’s messy personal life circa the mid-1990s, we have to ask, “What is your problem with the FBI, Patricia?” 

Wacky Hoosiers and Their Strange Attractions -- If You Can Find Them

Weird Indiana - Mark Marimen, James A. Willis and Troy Taylor

When we moved back to Indiana after nearly forty years, reacquainting ourselves with our surroundings ranked pretty high on our to-do list. In fact, it was right below recycling about a ton of moving boxes.  We’re not the kind of people who are content with typical tourist sites –like museums, amusement parks or state parks: we tend to be more attracted to the kind of places that show up in the “Weird U.S.” series. So once we’d finished our move to Indianapolis, we picked up a copy of Weird Indiana; written by our fellow Hoosier  Mark Marimen and a neighbor to the east, James Willis (Ohio), and one from the west, Troy Taylor (Illinois). 

Weird Indiana is available either as a trade paperback or an eBook. On its 250-plus pages you’ll find details of more than a hundred Indiana legends (“The House of Blue Lights” in northern Indianapolis), roadside oddities (giant “muffler men” in Indy and Yorktown), and – naturally – haunts, like the Stepp Cemetery near Bloomington. The “haunt” section is to be expected, since all three authors have written their own books about the haunted places of the Midwest and beyond.

As the Series Draws to a Close, Pittacus Lore Details "The Fate of Ten"

The Fate of Ten - Pittacus Lore

Even as the giant ships filled with Mogadorian soldiers loomed over two dozen human cities, John Smith (title character of I am Number Four)  and his faithful friend Samwise… err, Sam bring the powers vested in them by the elders of Lorien to bear against the evil Setrakus Rá. As the two BFFs battle pasty-faced Mogs in the streets of NYC; Six, Seven (aka Marina) and the trueborn Mogadorian Adam who channels One find themselves in a pitched battle with other Mogs at an ancient temple in the Central American jungle. That leaves only Five and Nine, the remaining Garde, who battle against each other high above Manhattan.

Sam’s beloved Sarah and his high-school nemesis, Mark, have joined forces with The Navigator in what looks as though it will be a losing cause: ten or so teens and one adult, arrayed against a gazillion evil aliens led by a shape-changing ghoul who can blank the Garde's legacy powers with a twist of a wrist? But wait… suddenly, teens (and only teens – this is, YA, after all) around the world have suddenly begun developing Legacies of their own. 

But why? How? And more to the point, is it too late? Read The Fate of Ten and perhaps you’ll find out…