Review of Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich

From The Reporter (California) --

Hamlin: 'Plum Spooky' packs plenty of paperback weirdness --

By Brian Hamlin --
03/07/2010 --

When it comes to finding the best and brightest supermarket paperbacks, it's usually a good idea to steer clear of established, best-selling authors.



Sure, they usually can write quite well, but most of them are caught in a kind of comfort zone created by years of success and fat wads of cash. Somehow they lack the off-the-wall spontaneity that unexpectedly launches a supermarket paperback to the top of the rack.

Fortunately, there are exceptions to this rule, and best-selling author Janet Evanovich has proved it with "Plum Spooky" (2010, St. Martin's Press, New York, N.Y., $7.99, 246 Pages).

In this fast-paced tale of murder, monkeys and missiles, Evanovich pulls out all the stops as her longtime heroine, bail enforcement agent Stephanie Plum, once again takes to the mean streets of Trenton, N.J., to round up a few forgetful clients who have somehow failed to show up in court after making bail.

In "Plum Spooky," however, events take a decidedly weird turn -- again and again and again.

Plum's problems begin when she's assigned to track down a young doctor of quantum physics named Martin Munch, who jumped bail after being arrested for smacking his boss in the nose with a Dunkin' Donuts coffee mug and then absconding with a one-of-a-kind cesium vapor magnetometer.

Under normal circumstances -- of which there are blissfully none in "Plum Spooky" -- Stephanie would be able to corral the boy genius without even working up a sweat, but he proves elusive and leads her and her cohorts on a merry chase through New Jersey.

Her cohorts?

Hey, everybody needs friends and Stephanie's got plenty of them backing her up. There's Lula, a plus-sized former prostitute who packs a nickel-plated Glock; Diesel, an international man of mystery who hunts down evildoers he refers to as "unmentionables"; Ranger, an armed and dangerous security consultant; and Carl, an itinerant monkey who was unceremoniously dumped on Stephanie's doorstep by a former bail jumper who wanted to have some quality, nonprimate time on her honeymoon.

With a team like that working around the clock, it's hard to believe Munch isn't back in custody within the hour, but he's teamed up with a sinister guy named Gerwulf Grimoire, a ne'er-do-well who drives a black Ferrari and looks like a stereotypical, albeit somewhat handsome, vampire. The pair have fled into the wilds of the Jersey Pine Barrens, where it appears they're working on a diabolical experiment involving rockets, barium and a half-dozen captive monkeys with helmets on their heads.

In pursuit of the pair, Stephanie soon finds herself confronted by everything from the legendary Jersey Devil -- a kind of flying, killer horse from hell -- to hordes of Jeep-eating, incontinent raccoons, a shotgun-wielding Sasquatch and a retiree who's been trapped in a threadbare pink bunny suit for years because the costume's zipper is stuck.

Weird? You betcha.

Janet Evanovich may be an established, best-selling author, but she certainly isn't in a rut and "Plum Spooky" proves it.

Interview with Heather Gudenkauf

From FemaleFirst (UK) --

The Weight Of Silence --

feb (05th) 2010 --

It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn’s shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.



Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet and gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by a tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler. Calli’s mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry, alcoholic husband.

Now, although she denies that her husband could be involved, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter’s voice.

Petra Gregory is Calli’s best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered.

Desperate to find his child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanour.

Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.

‘The idea for The Weight of Silence, the story of two young girls who disappear in the woods and the desperate hunt to find them, came about one day as I was hiking in a nature preserve near my home.

'I was trudging up a craggy path, the only sounds were my breathing and the rustling of wet leaves and grass beneath my feet. I thought about how terrifying it would be for a young child to be lost in those woods, even more so if that child wasn’t able to speak. So began The Weight of Silence

'I also chose to write The Weight of Silence because, as a teacher for special needs, I spend day after day with young children who have readily shared their experiences, worries, and dreams with me. Despite their candid honesty in sharing their lives, I have come to realize over time that no one can truly know what happens in the privacy of the home.

'While the story of Calli is fictional, the domestic drama found in many wealthy, middle class, or poor homes, is not. Through this novel, my initial objective was to give a voice to the voiceless children of abuse from homes you would not expect, but found that I could not effectively tell Calli’s story without giving a voice to those around her.

'Through my interactions with families in crisis or with families of poverty I have learned that despite circumstances, despite mistakes, people truly do the best they can, however flawed.’

Heather Gudenkauf was born in South Dakota, the youngest of six children. At one month old, her family returned to the Rosebud Indian Reservation where her father was employed as a guidance counsellor and her mother as a school nurse. At the age of three, her family moved to Iowa, where she grew up.

Having been born with a profound unilateral hearing impairment, Heather tended to use books as a retreat and escape the world around her. Heather became a voracious reader and the seed of becoming a writer was planted.

Heather graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education and has spent the last sixteen years working with students of all ages.

She lives in Dubuque, Idaho with her husband, three children and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Maxine. In her free time Heather enjoys reading, hiking and running.

Review of The Wild Zone by Joy Fielding

From Globe and Mail (Toronto) --

Wild at heart, stupid in head --

Reviewed by Michelle Berry --
Mar. 05, 2010 --

Joy Fielding's latest novel, The Wild Zone, begins as a joke (there are three men, Jeff, Tom and Will, in a bar) and it also begins with a joke. The very first sentences: “This is how it starts. With a joke. ‘So, a man walks into a bar,' Jeff began, already chuckling.”



The thing is, Fielding's newest novel is anything but a joke. It is serious, disastrous stuff. Full of violence and mayhem and seriously angry and disturbed people.

Jeff, Will and Tom are in a bar, The Wild Zone (the motto is, “Proceed at Your Own Risk”), and they make a bet: Who can be the first to seduce the sad-looking female in the near booth? Who can take her home? These three completely different personalities – Jeff is handsome and rugged, calm but powerful; Will is shy (a PhD student in philosophy) and quiet; and Tom is the crazed, discharged-from-the-army guy – have three very dissimilar approaches to the bet. However, it's amazing how much they have in common.

Suzy, the “bet,” isn't as innocent as she first seems. She draws these men into her life easily, each one competing for her attention for his own reasons, each one sucked into the vortex of her subtle charm. Actually, nothing is subtle in the book. The sex is wild and violent, the drinking and drugs are intense, the violence is gory and detailed.

Well, it is a thriller. This is what Joy Fielding is known for, what she's good at. And although the story is more than compelling (the jacket sucked me in), there is definitely something missing in the telling of it. The writing is raw, but the characters are all stereotypes: Tom, the violent ex-army guy, is the Incredible Hulk on steroids; his anger seeps from every pore. Jeff, his best friend, is much better looking and gets the girl, and everyone else is somehow doing well in life, even though Tom doesn't think anyone deserves it. So what does he do? He rapes an Afghan girl and is dishonourably discharged from the army. Of course, it's everyone else's fault.

And Jeff – well, he is far too good-looking, too calm and too in control. He has the perfect girlfriend, a good life. But he is so horribly macho that he will induce your gag reflex. Everything for Jeff is about sex – violent sex, sex that's good for him – and his body. Finally, there is Will, your typical student, shy, insecure and not good with girls.

Stereotypes are okay, especially in genre fiction. It's like fast food: You go back again and again because you know what to expect and you know what you'll get. But when all the characters are dimensionless and unlikable (there isn't one character I feel for), the twisted and interesting plot falls flat. Why do all these men end up helping Suzy? There isn't anything interesting about her. She isn't even nice. Is it possible to have suspense if your reader doesn't care what happens to the characters?

I guess it is possible, because The Wild Zone is a strangely compelling read. As Lynn Crosbie said in her review of Fielding's Heartstoppers, creating a story that forces someone to read until the end is an “enviable artistic achievement.” She is absolutely right. It's extremely hard to glue your readers to the page. But The Wild Zone does compel you to read on.

Is it just the violence and sex that keep you reading? Perhaps this is why Joy Fielding is a bestseller-list author. Perhaps this is her lurking talent: She sucks you in with end-of-chapter cliffhangers, violent results and wild sex. Maybe then, it doesn't matter if all the characters are idiots. After all, this is a thriller and, as with all thrillers, there is that twist at the end that forces you read until the very last sentence.

Q & A with Charlaine Harris

From Nottingham.co.uk --

Q&A with True Blood author Charlaine Harris --

March 05, 2010 --

AMERICAN author Charlaine Harris is best known for vampires-in-the-deep-south True Blood novels featuring heroine Sookie Stackhouse. On Wednesday, she's signing books in Nottingham.



What inspired you to start writing vampire/supernatural stories? Is the deep south really that spooky or did you grow up watching Hammer Horror films?

I had reached a crossroads in my career, and decided to write something different. It seemed interesting to write about a young woman who was dating a vampire. Any region of the US can seem creepy, I'm sure; I just specialise in the south.

You've created a world of "supes" although the fairies have gone. (I'll miss 'em, I love the way you gave them Irish names). Are there any new beings to come?

In the next book there's an incidental character who's of another race. And there are still some fairies hanging around. Hope you enjoy them.

What did you think of the True Blood TV version and were you able to have any input in the series? (They did seem to go overboard on the sex.)

I love the TV show, and I really enjoy seeing my work through Alan's interpretation. (Alan Ball, who created American series Six Feet Under, is creator and producer of the True Blood television series.) My input lies in writing the books the show is based on.

What did you think of our true Brit Stephen Moyer's performance as Bill Compton?

I admire Stephen. I'm so pleased he's in the series, and I think he's given Bill depth and great appeal.

What's in store for Sookie, as the next book is out in May? Will the FBI come back to recruit her?

You'll have to find out then. You'll be surprised.

Why do you think the world's gone bats over vampires?

In depressed economic times people turn to fantasy literature, and my books fit the bill. In our youth obsessed society, vampires represent the ideal in keeping their looks, never ageing, never getting ill.

You also write crime fiction with the Harper Connelly "grave" stories. Would you like to see Harper get the same small screen treatment as Sookie? The latest instalment, Grave Secret, seems to flesh out some characters, such as Manfred and Harper's sisters, aunt and uncle, so there seem to be plenty of cast members for a TV series. Was this deliberate?

No, I fleshed out the characters because they were an integral part of the story. But there has been TV interest in the Harper books, and it may happen, may not.

How do you divide your time between the genres, as we're told writers have to be very focused and disciplined?

It's like switching heads. It's a nice change of pace.

How do you relax?

I read. Sometimes my husband and I go to the movies. We watch my daughter play baseball. I e-mail friends.

You're only making three stops in the UK and Nottingham is one. Do you have a fan club here or is it a hot spot for sales?

As I understand it, it is a hot spot for sales. I don't book my own tours in the US or overseas, and I enjoy seeing different places and different fans.

Review of U Is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

From San Francisco Bay Guardian --

Trash Lit: Grafton's craft in 'U is for Undertow' --

By: Tim Redmond --
03.04.10 --

U is for Undertow
Sue Grafton
Putnam. 403 pages, $27.95

I love the Sue Grafton books. I bought A is for Alibi in 1983, when it came out, and I’ve read every one of them since. Unlike, say, Patricia Cornwell, whose characters age (and get crabbier) as time passes, Kinsey Milhone is eternal, always young, always living in a town called Santa Teresa that’s a lot like Santa Barbara, always living with her old (but never dying) landlord, Henry, always eating at the foul Hungarian restaurant down the street. Milhone is a comfortable protagonist, never deeply tortured, but never exactly adjusted either, and even her OCD habits (locking her car – and telling us she locked her car – about 50 times a book) are endearing.



This one’s set in 1988, where Milhone is quite at home, and in 1963-1967, where Sue Grafton is less so. Grafton’s got a problem with hippie chicks – one of the central villains in U is for Undertow is a girl named Shelly who later changes her name to Destiny. She’s an almost embarrassing parody of how middle America saw flower children in the late 1960s – except that she appears in 1963, before there were a lot of real hippies about in the land. To make matters worse, she brags that she was part of the beat scene in San Francisco and slept with both Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg – which is fairly unlikely, even in fiction; I don’t know who Allen Ginsberg, a proudly gay poet, was fucking in 1963, but I don’t think there were many hippie chicks on the list.

The horror of the dirty girl is almost too much to believe! Destiny is living in a bus with the son of a respectable family who dropped out of college to join her – and she has a child by another man who’s left the picture! And she’s raising her child (gasp) a vegan! And he runs around naked! And she’s preggers again, this time with his kid, and she insists on natural childbirth! She is, of course, also a total beyotch, who doesn’t respect the mother of the once-nice-young-boy loser who is under her hippie-chick spell.

There’s other stuff I didn’t love in here – one young character, who hates his stepmom, gets in trouble at his fancy private school and is forced to transfer to the horrors of a public school, where he of course meets awful bad kids who corrupt him entirely and turn him into a druggie.

In and around all this, though, is a fascinating mystery. It involves two kidnappings from the '60s, a guy who might or might not have fabricated repressed memories, a dead dog in a dead girls’ grave, and a tangled tale across three decades that weaves the lives of the good and the bad (and it’s deliciously hard to tell which is which) into a first-rate detective story.

We also along the way learn some new clues about Milhone’s past (great trivia about Aunt Gin for serious fans of the series) and get a couple of excellent Grafton comments about the important things in life:

“At the time, I’d introduced [cancer patient] Stacey to junk food, which he’d never eaten in his life. Thereafter, I tagged along with him as he went from McDonald’s to Wendy’s to Arby’s to Jack in the Box. My crowning achievement was introducing him to the In-N-Out Burger. His appetite increased, he regained some of the weight he’d lost during the cancer treatments, and his enthusiasm for life returned. Doctors were still scratching their heads.”

Hippie-chick sex. Hippie chick seduction of a high school kid. Sweet Kinsey-shoots-murderer scene. (“It’s only in the movies the bad guys keep firing. In real life, they sit down and behave.”) I almost gagged on the '60s stuff, but I stayed up way past my bedtime to get to the end.

Review of A Night Too Dark by Dana Stabenow

From Washington Post --

Book Review of "A Night Too Dark," by Dana Stabenow --

By Patrick Anderson --
March 1, 2010 --

A NIGHT TOO DARK
By Dana Stabenow
Minotaur. 323 pp. $24.99

Dana Stabenow is one of those regional crime novelists who too often don't achieve national attention. She was born in Alaska in 1952 and has lived there ever since, and this is her 17th novel about the Aleut private investigator Kate Shugak. It's an outstanding series and one that has, in fact, won awards and begun to turn up on bestseller lists here in the Lower 48. If you've never visited Alaska, it's also an intriguing introduction to that big, brawling, rather bewildering state. Once you've met the strange characters who inhabit the Shugak novels, Sarah Palin becomes easier to comprehend.



Kate is only 5 feet tall but fears neither man nor beast: Early in this novel she takes down a knife-wielding roustabout and a charging grizzly bear. Her two live-in loves are Sgt. Jim Chopin, a hunky state trooper, and silver-gray Mutt, who's half wolf and half husky and whose ever-changing moods make him somewhat more interesting than the trooper. Kate started her career as an undercover investigator for the DA's office in Anchorage but later moved to the small, isolated town of Niniltna, where she works as a PI and also heads the board of directors of the Niniltna Native Association, the primary governing body in that corner of Alaska.

The plot of "A Night Too Dark" centers on the Suulutaq Mine, where vast gold deposits have been discovered. The gold isn't being mined yet because environmental questions must be answered, but the prospect of a billion-dollar bonanza has various hustlers and corporate vultures circling. (The Suulutaq Mine is fictional, but Stabenow has said it is based on the controversial real-life Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska.) Kate has deeply mixed feelings about the mine; the region needs the jobs but doesn't need the environmental damage and the threat to its way of life. However, she and Sgt. Jim are drawn there after two of the mine's employees mysteriously die and a third goes missing.

This plot unfolds nicely, but what makes the novel outstanding is Stabenow's vivid portrait of the Alaskan culture. In the opening pages we meet an old-timer with a long white beard whose "Carhartt bibs were frayed and stained, the black-and-red plaid Pendleton shirt beneath it patched and faded, and the Xtra Tuffs on his feet looked like they'd been gnawed on by ferrets." We meet the town's four "aunties," Native Alaskan women in their 80s who are the community's social arbiters. We learn that it is unwise to ask an Alaskan "Where are you from?" because so many have pasts they are determined to escape.

We attend a board meeting of the Niniltna Native Association and discover that Native Alaskans are just as angry, stubborn, greedy and duplicitous as anyone else in politics. We learn that in today's Alaska, outsiders sometimes marry indigenous Alaskans for their money -- the Alaska Claims Settlement Act of 1971 having awarded huge amounts of land and nearly a billion dollars to them through regional corporations like the one Kate heads. As a result, at least some Native Alaskans have become prosperous. We see that Sgt. Jim doesn't bother much with dope smokers, bigamists and poachers, if they otherwise behave. We also learn, after a quiet dinner at home, that he and Kate are partial to spontaneous displays of affection: "She laughed harder when he cleared the table with a sweep of one arm and threw her down on it."

Stabenow is blessed with a rich prose style and a fine eye for detail. At one point she devotes two delightful pages to detailing the beauty of Kate's garden ("The deep purple spire of monkshood, its cluster of closed blooms giving off an air of mystery, appeared and disappeared around every bend of trail"), and elsewhere we're treated to a digression on the hunting and cooking of moose ("Old Sam liked his meat crisp on the outside and bloody close to the bone, and this took time and care.").

Stabenow doesn't say much about Alaskan politics, except to have Kate quip, "Anyone in Juneau [the state capital] in their right mind is an oxymoron." However, in an interview with Publishers Weekly, Stabenow said that she'd met then-Gov. Sarah Palin twice, the second time in 2007, when Palin named her Alaska's Artist of the Year. Stabenow added, "She didn't mention the novels either time." This is alarming. It's always wise to greet a novelist with "Loved your book," whether or not you've read the book in question. The writers are invariably grateful, and none has ever been known to demand proof. If Palin can't figure that out, how can she ever hope to lead a great nation?

Review of The Wild Zone by Joy Fielding

From Winnipeg Free Press --

Fast-moving tale of bet gone wrong --

Reviewed by: Rebeca Kuropatwa --
27/02/2010 --

Fielding's story is gripping.

The Wild Zone
By Joy Fielding



Veteran novelist Joy Fielding's latest suspense outing is a fast-moving tale of a bet that goes terribly wrong.

Fielding is a rarity in Canadian publishing, a writer of successful commercial fiction rather than literary fare.

She has written more than 20 titles since the early '70s, among them such bestsellers as Kiss Mommy Goodbye and See Jane Run, which have been made in TV movies.

Her work is closer in spirit to Danielle Steel's than Margaret Atwood's, melding topical subject matter with no-nonsense storytelling.

The Wild Zone is set in Florida. It stars two 30ish brothers, Jeff and Will, out one night at The Wild Zone, a South Beach bar, with a married friend, Tom.

Tom, who is carrying a gun, has been Jeff's best friend since high school. They enlisted together in the army and served several tours of duty in Afghanistan.

Jeff, now a charismatic personal trainer, had come home a hero, but Tom was dishonourably discharged for an unprovoked assault on an innocent civilian.

Tom returned from Afghanistan a different man -- "a loose cannon." As the story unfolds, Tom's wife takes their kids and leaves him.

Will left Princeton to visit Jeff, needing to "take a break" from his PhD dissertation.

Jeff proposes a $100 bet on who can be the first to sleep with Suzy, an enticing dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty.

Jeff describes Suzy, who is drinking a pomegranate martini alone, as "just waiting for Prince Charming to hit on her."

The trio even enlist the help of Jeff's live-in girlfriend, Wild Zone bartender Kristin.

Little does this threesome know that Suzy is not just a simple deer caught in headlights.

She is secretly married to an abusive husband and is constantly under his watchful eye. As it turns out, Suzy has a lethal agenda of her own.

Kristin approaches Suzy, and comes back to tell Will, "Her name is Suzy and she picked you."

Hesitantly, Will takes a drink over to Suzy, still raw from being jilted by his last girlfriend. Will and Suzy leave the bar together, much to Jeff and Tom's chagrin.

Quickly, the story kicks into a high gear, a wild ride with a life all its own, strewn with surprises and consequences for all parties along the way.

Fielding's characters and plot are strong and well-developed. The story is gripping, always leaving the reader guessing, and culminates in a deliciously untamed twist of a conclusion.