by on

I love vigilante stories. I’m always down to read about a jaded person who, disgusted by the failure of social institutions to punish wrongdoers, takes the law into their own hands to seek retribution. You see this theme a lot in westerns and police stories, but one with a medical theme? Now, that’s something new!

Dr. Hope Sullivan is just one such jaded person, and her method of exacting justice is to kidnap the lowlifes she finds in the world, take them to a remote and secluded shed, and subject them to the same pains they have inflicted on others. “Her object all sublime, she will achieve in time…” Not that she kills them, to be clear. She just… teaches them a lesson, that’s all.

But one day, she gets a threatening message. Someone is stalking her, seeking revenge of their own against her for some perceived wrong. And this person has stumbled on to Hope’s extra-judicial activities. Oh, all right, I’ll just go ahead and call them what they are: torture sessions. Something which the medical board would probably not look kindly upon, and while Hope has suffered from suicidal thoughts ever since the recent deaths of her parents and fiancé, her reputation as a doctor is the one thing in the world that still keeps her going.

In other words, this book is rather dark, in case you couldn’t tell from the cover. It makes Fatal Rounds, Rubin’s most recent thriller, look like an after-school special. But it is similar to Fatal Rounds in the sense that the protagonists, while sympathetic, are also very well aware of what happens when you gaze long into the abyss. Actually, Hope and the abyss do more than just gaze into each other; they’re so well-acquainted they practically give each other high-fives every morning.

I’m writing this review shortly after editing a forthcoming Writers Supporting Writers chat where we discuss whether it’s necessary for characters to suffer. Well, of course, it depends on the type of story being told. But this is definitely the kind where there has to be a lot of suffering. I think it’s the most violent book I’ve read since Peter Martuneac’s His Name Was Zach series. And there is no doubt that every bit of it is key to Broken Hope‘s mood. It’s about capturing anger, depression, resentment and revenge; feelings which all of us must have at one time or another. Obviously, Hope’s reaction is rather extreme… but then, that’s what makes for compelling fiction, isn’t it?

Broken Hope goes to some dark places, but that darkness is also what makes it such a gripping story. Highly recommended for fans of psychological thrillers.

by on

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. Obviously, from the cover, I could see it was sci-fi, but what kind of sci-fi was it?

As it turns out, it’s a mystery story. Private investigator McCall Richter is hired to find a huge cache of stolen valuables. The valuables in this case being tons of maple syrup. I love the idea of maple syrup as a precious commodity.

Richter gets help solving the mystery from her android assistant, Scipio. Scipio has a logical mind and a taste for fine clothing. His general helpfulness coupled with an ever-so-slightly stuck-up personality reminded me a little of the droid in the old Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear books I used to read as a kid. I enjoyed the relationship between these two characters, and I really liked reading a mystery story that isn’t about solving a murder, but something more original.

Richter and Scipio’s investigation turns up another fun character: a wounded dog named “Junkyard” who is abandoned in a… well, you can probably guess. Junkyard’s canine desire to chew on things does not mesh well with Scipio’s love of fancy clothing. But they work it all out eventually.

Of course, there’s still a mystery to be solved, and after a few twists, it all gets sorted. I don’t want to say much more about the plot because, well, with novella-length mysteries, saying even a little can give too much away. But I certainly enjoyed the ride.

This book serves as an intro to a larger story featuring Richter, Scipio, and Junkyard, and it certainly did get me interested in reading more about the characters. The writing style is fun, fast-paced, and witty; making this perfect quick reading for fans of sci-fi and mysteries alike.

by on

It’s always tough to review sequels. Especially a sequel to a sprawling book like Sunder of Time, that has a large cast of characters and multiple different timelines. Thus, there are not only a lot of characters, but different versions of the same character. (Probably this is one of those books where it’s helpful to keep notes, so you can remember who is who.) And when you add in that I don’t want to spoil what happens in the first book, it’s pretty hard to explain the plot of this one.

So, what’s a poor book reviewer to do? I could just say that if you liked the first book, you’ll probably like the second one, too. And that’s true. But, of course, probably not very helpful. Especially if you haven’t actually read the first book yet. (My review is here.) I highly recommend it.

But as to this book, it carries on the story of the first one, although in an interesting way. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that while the first book takes place mainly in the distant past, this one is largely in the far future. But still, the same kind of intrigues and political machinations are there, as is the brisk pace and intense action.

I think what I’ll focus on here, to avoid giving away major plot spoilers, is McTiernan’s keen grasp of psychology. Everything the characters do is informed by this, perhaps most notably in the way one character uses subtle psychological tricks to manipulate people into giving him loyalty he really doesn’t deserve. There are people like this in real life, and knowing how these kinds of mind games work is helpful in dealing with them.

This is an excellent sequel to a very good book, and I’ll be interested to see where the series goes from here.

by on

This is a cozy mystery. I don’t read a lot of cozy mysteries, unless you count Zachary Shatzer’s Roberta and Mr. Bigfluff stories, which are really parodies of cozies, rather than straight-up cozy mysteries. That said, this is a genre where the line between serious and parody is sketchy at best. More on that in a bit. But c’mon, it’s a Halloween book. How could I not read it?

The protagonist of the book is Tessa, a 30-year-old woman who has moved back to her small Minnesota hometown after the death of her husband. To take her mind off her loss, she has thrown herself into the job of helping out at her family’s B&B and helping run the town’s annual Halloween hayride.

The latter becomes more complicated when Earl Stone, the rather unpleasant fellow who owns the land for the hayride, is found run over with the tractor. Tessa is forced to use the detective skills she’s learned from listening to True Crime podcasts to solve the case. And all this while juggling deciding which of her two admirers–Clark the handsome football coach or Max the handsome policeman–she will favor with dressing up in a couples Halloween costume.

Already, you perhaps begin to see what I mean. The news of the murder, and the news that two of her suitors want to dress up in matching costumes, are given equal emotional weight.

Also, the writing style itself is a little… curious. Generally, it’s thought to be bad form to repeat the same word too many times in a sentence. Yet, this happens frequently here. Indeed, it happens so often it’s almost like a kind of literary device. Mark Paxson once wrote a story where he would pick a word out of the dictionary at random, and use it as a prompt for what would happen next. It feels like something similar is going on here, only the challenge is to see how many times you can use the word in the same paragraph.

But again: it’s a cozy mystery. Cozy mysteries are, by their nature, not that serious. That’s not to say it’s an outright comedy like Shatzer’s books are. At least, I don’t think so.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is as camp. Camp is always a difficult thing to define, though; and one man’s camp may be another man’s… whatever the opposite of camp is. But offhand, I’d say this book is more camp than Mr. Humphries.

I was able to figure out who the killer was about 70% of the way into the book, but again: “Zis is a cozy, ve don’t surprise here!” Cozies are about the familiar and the comfortable; surprise and suspense are antithetical to this. Perhaps the whole concept of a cozy mystery is inherently contradictory, like asking for “safe danger.”

Then again, isn’t this the whole concept behind amusement parks, too? The illusion of danger, while actually being rigorously designed for safety? No, faulting a cozy mystery for being too predictable is like faulting water for being too wet.

You know what this story needs? A change of narration. Instead of being told by the investigator herself, who makes all the deductions plain to the reader right away, we needed a framing device. Someone telling the story of Tessa’s investigation through their own bewildered eyes. A Dr. Watson, a Captain Hastings, a (to use that memorable phrase of Stephen Leacock’s) “Poor Nut”:

Here, at once, the writer is confronted with the problem of how to tell the story, and whether to write it as if it were told by the Great Detective himself. But the Great Detective is above that. For one thing, he’s too silent. And in any case, if he told the story himself, his modesty might hold him back from fully explaining how terribly clever he is, and how wonderful his deductions are. So the nearly universal method has come to be that the story is told through the mouth of an Inferior Person, a friend and confidant of the Great Detective. This humble associate has the special function of being lost in admiration all the time. In fact, this friend, taken at his own face value, must be regarded as a Poor Nut. 

That’s from Leacock’s essay “The Great Detective,” which I highly recommend.

Still, the acid test of any book is whether or not the reader enjoys it. I actually did enjoy this. Perhaps I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoy Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or Elvira’s Movie Macabre, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. And so ironic enjoyment comes right around to being sincere again. Strange how that works.

Anyway, if you like cozy mysteries and/or Halloween, give it a whirl.

by on

Another excellent Brad and Karen thriller. In this one, a case of academic misconduct escalates to murder and corruption. As always, Cooper does a great job using the political machinations of academia as a starting point to weave a tale of deception and crime.

If you’ve read previous books in the series, you already are familiar with the dynamic between Brad and Karen, and together they once again form an effective crime-solving partnership. I don’t want spoil anything here, but I think the ending of this one is my favorite in the series. (So far.)

I’ve been reading some traditionally-published thrillers by big name authors lately, and I have to say, many of them have over-the-top, superhero-like characters, which makes them hard to relate to. I prefer a book like this, where the characters are people you would like to meet in real life. That’s the big draw of the Brad and Karen books for me; I just like these two, and they make for pleasant company while venturing into the darker side of the academy.

by on

Human beings are bad at processing time. We think of time relative to our own existence, where a year seems long. But on a larger scale, a year, a decade, even a century, can be as nothing. We struggle to even conceptualize this. If something has lasted say, ten years, we’ll say, “It’s been that way forever.”

Which is why a book with a non-human protagonist is so tricky, and why this book, told from the perspective of an oak tree, makes for such an interesting exercise.

The story begins with Catherine Miller, a young doctor murdered in 1853 shortly after her graduation from medical school. She never knows who murdered her, but her spirit mysteriously lives on inside a oak tree. From this vantage point, she witnesses the changes that occur over the centuries, as a technology evolves, cities rise and fall, and human nature remains in many ways the same. In the present day, Catherine’s consciousness inhabits the backyard of a cruel man whom she sees murdering another medical student.

She does what she can to help the authorities in solving the crime to which she is the only witness. But as a tree, she has limited ability to communicate with humans, which is where the implacable veteran police detective Lani Whitaker and her partner come in to the picture. The book alternates between Lani and Catherine, between past and present, giving us a full scope of what changes, and what remains.

Sorry to inflict my amateur literature teacher routine on you two weeks in a row, but this book has a theme, and that theme is age. Besides the obvious point of the Catherine-as-oak’s many decades, Whitaker is also confronting a more human experience of time, as she is near the mandatory retirement age, and is reminded of it constantly.

The book has a very melancholy feel to it, and not just because of the multiple murders that drive the plot. It’s about people observing the passage of time from a variety of perspectives. The vibe of the book is the same vibe you get from a tree in late Autumn, and obviously that’s exactly what it should be. It’s a work of magical realism with a motif that goes beyond the typical police procedural elements to evoke a bittersweet longing for things we can’t even remember.

by on

Spies! Teenage hackers! Nuclear secrets! And above all else, 1990s nostalgia!

All these things are in Phillip McCollum’s short story A Nuclear Family. I can’t really explain how they all fit together without spoiling the whole deal, but what I can do is praise McCollum’s gift for telling a tale. Remember, this is a man who once wrote 52 short stories in a year.

The same blend of teenage tech culture and mysterious goings-on uncovered by the youth of California that formed the theme of McCollum’s The Almost-Apocalypse of Apple Valley are present, but in a more potent, concentrated form. McCollum’s skill at concisely telling a good story is on full display, as is his way with words:

“I was way past wondering if what we’d done was a smart thing–it wasn’t. The question, now, was did we do the dumb thing smartly?”

A question familiar to anyone who has ever been a teenager, I’m sure.

A Nuclear Family is a gripping and suspenseful short story, that keeps you off balance from the start and doesn’t let up. It’s like a Hitchcock movie, updated to the ’90s and in literary form. A Phillip McCollum Special, through and through.

by on

This is a cybercrime techno-thriller about a hacker who finds himself entrapped in an elaborate blackmail scheme. He’s forced to recruit old friends from his past in an effort to save himself.

What I liked most about the book was the setting. It’s a classic cyber-dystopia, with omnipresent surveillance and ongoing threats of pandemics. The atmosphere was creepy and disturbing, without being distracting.

Also, the technical details of all the hacking and counter-hacking were well done. I could follow what was going on without getting bogged down in the details.

I did struggle with some of the characters, in particular the protagonist. Let’s just say that, while he is the victim of a crime, he is far from innocent of wrongdoing himself. This made it hard for me to feel much sympathy for him.

However, if you can get past that, the book certainly makes for a fast-paced and exciting page-turner. Also, that cover is spectacular, isn’t it? Makes me think of Ghost in the Shell a little.

by on

Books require a higher level of investment from the audience than, say, movies do. As readers, we have to do some of the work of imagining things for ourselves. I think it’s accurate to say that while you and I may read the same book, we don’t necessarily read the same story. Your way of envisioning it will not quite match mine, much the way a computer program may be handled differently by different compilers.

This subjectivity is a key element of the written word as a medium for fiction. A really good book takes full advantage of this curious feature, inviting the reader to use their imagination to fill in details, or even to come up with their own interpretations of the entire story.

Fatal Rounds is just such a book. The central character, Liza Larkin, is a pathology resident at a hospital in Massachusetts. She has chosen the hospital specifically because she has become suspicious of one of the hospital’s surgeons, Dr. Donovan, who attended her father’s funeral, much to the horror of Liza’s schizophrenic mother.

Liza’s obsessive investigation of Dr. Donovan brings her into possession of evidence that implicates him in a number of deaths. Her highly atypical mind gives her an unusual ability to concentrate on her goal, and she becomes fixated on bringing Donovan to justice.

That’s the basic plot of the book. But the real meat of Fatal Rounds is in subtle details and ambiguities. It’s not so much about what happens as it is the reader’s interpretation of what happens. That’s why I don’t want to talk too much about specifics; lest I color your reading of the book with my own views.

No joke, this book reminded me of one of my favorite works of fiction of all time, “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers. If you’ve read that story, you probably can see what I mean. If you haven’t… well, let’s just say Fatal Rounds is a great demonstration of the philosophy of fiction that I acquired from reading “Repairer of Reputations.”

This book is a great medical thriller, but more than that, it’s just a flat-out great story, and I highly recommend it to anyone, even if medical thrillers aren’t a genre you typically read. It gives you some things to chew on long after you close the book.

by on

Another fast-paced thriller from Geoffrey Cooper, the fifth in the series. This time Brad Parker and Karen Richmond are drawn into investigating a sex trafficking ring with connections to a major medical institute.

Strictly speaking, you can read this book without reading any of the previous Brad and Karen books. But, unlike the others, I have to say I think you shouldn’t. The way the characters develop is an important element of this book. So, I don’t think it’s possible to fully enjoy this story without already being familiar with the dynamic between the two leads.

And Brad and Karen really are likable characters. It’s always a pleasure to open a new book in the series, because they are an excellent team, besides being a cute couple romantically. <Insert “name a more iconic duo” meme.>

And so if you have read the other books in the series, you’ll be glad to know that this one is just as enjoyable as the rest. I highly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys thrillers. It’s action-packed and interesting. Check it out if you haven’t done so already.