Sunday, July 18, 2010

Interview with Lisa Scottoline

From phillyBurbs.com --

Up close with a best-selling author --

By: Sarah McNab --
April 15, 2010 --

This past Saturday, I went to meet local author and national best-seller Lisa Scottoline at one of the last stops on her promotional tour for her latest novel, "Think Twice."



Scottoline was the first author I have ever met who is on the New York Times' Best-Seller List - OK, she's the only author I have ever met. The experience was so much fun (and not at all intimidating like I thought it would be).

They say write what you know, and that's exactly what Scottoline does.

As a Philly native, she sets her books in the city.

In addition to her 17 novels, Scottoline has a hilarious and brilliantly written column, "Chick Wit," which appears in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sundays. Since I am an aspiring journalist and writer, who better for me to talk to than someone who is so successful in the field?

We got to the Barnes & Noble where she was appearing nice and early. Actually, two and a half hours early because of a miscommunication, but we were able to get our admission wristbands early.

I was number 102, and plenty of people came in the hours afterward, so that should give you an idea of how many people, mainly women, came to see her.

As we waited, I had no idea what to expect. I thought she might say a few words, sign a few books and then be whisked away by a security team to some fancy dinner for famous people.

In reality, Scottoline was the complete opposite.

She came out right on time, led by two of her little dogs on leashes. Anyone who reads her column knows she is an avid animal lover, so it was fun to see some of the pets she writes about. She spoke for about an hour about how excited she was to be there, about her writing process and really just about her life.

She was so open to sharing anything and so down to earth that she seemed like an old friend.

Part of her appeal to women is how relatable she is. When asked how she gets the ideas for her column, Scottoline says: "I write with the assumption that my life is like your life."

Another positive about her writing philosophy is that she is all about empowering women. She writes about strong female main characters in her books and about the strong women in her life. She even shared one of her favorite quotes, which is from Eleanor Roosevelt, with us: "A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she is in hot water."

After she spoke, we got to meet her individually. She took the time to really talk to each person and make them feel important and special for coming. And she also said, "My mother raised me right and taught me that when you come to someone's house, you bring saturated fats," so she brought Tastykakes for everyone.

When it was my turn, she gave me a big hug, we had a mini photo shoot with the surrounding cameras and I asked her if she has any advice on being a successful writer.

So, all reality panelists and aspiring writers, listen up.

Her advice was, "Just go for it."

In fact, she encourages everyone to write and believes that everyone has a book in them.

She even has an outstanding offer to fans who write a manuscript that she will pass it along to her editors!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Review of House Rules by Jodi Picoult

From Express Advocate Wyong --

Friday book review - House Rules by Jodi Picoult --

By: Mandi McIntosh --
16 Apr 10 --

JODI Picoult novels debut at No.1 on bookseller charts around the country when they are released.

She is a huge name in women’s fiction and her audiences are very familiar with her style and content. Readers expect to have different voices telling the story. We expect a definite moral dilemma and we also expect a twist at the end.



I was a little disappointed by her 2009 novel Handle With Care but this new novel feels like a return to the form her audiences love.

Picoult’s new novel is titled House Rules and follows a mother with two sons. Her eldest son, Jacob, has Aspergers, a high functioning form of autism. Family life is shaped by a need to keep Jacob happy and safe.

Jacob is obsessed with forensics and loves to watch CSI-style shows to solve the cases. He is 18 but still very much dependent on his school and mother for keeping his routines in place.

The action in this novel is propelled by the death of Jacob’s social skills tutor and we are drawn in to try and ascertain whether Jacob, or perhaps his younger brother Theo, may have been at fault.

This novel has strong voices with the chapters alternating between different characters telling their stories, and Picoult has, as always, done her homework.

The insights into the emotions of the family, and in particular the brother, Theo, show just how difficult and all-consuming it can be to have a family member like Jacob.

The ending in this one wasn’t a huge surprise, but there were a couple of ways it could have gone. This is a novel for Picoult fans, but also a good start if you haven’t tried one of her novels before

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Interview with Elizabeth Kostova

From Dallas Morning News --

'Swan Thieves' author Elizabeth Kostova brings her flair for the artistic to Dallas Museum of Art --

By Joy Tipping --
April 14, 2010 --

Her gift, it turned out, was writing. She found a way to combine the two interests in her latest novel, the best-selling The Swan Thieves, which came out in January. It deals with a mystery involving both a contemporary painter and a group of 19th-century Impressionist artists.



Kostova wraps up her book tour with an appearance Friday at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of its Arts & Letters Live series.

In a recent phone conversation, Kostova, 45, said that although she's done other things to support herself, she's been a passionate writer since she was 8 or 9.

"My first things were just imitations of books I'd read as a child. I'd tinker around with them."

By the time she was 14 or 15, she had decided on writing as a career. That was, coincidentally, about the same time she quit painting.

"I loved it, and I had moved up into oil painting. ... I realized I never had the real gift for it. But I love color, I loved the smell of the oil paints, I had colors I liked best. And I had some memory of the feel of painting."

All that came in handy when she started writing The Swan Thieves. The book tells the story of a modern-day painter named Robert Oliver who attacks a painting depicting the mythical encounter of Leda and the swan (Zeus in disguise). Oliver is committed to a mental institution, where he refuses to tell anyone why he struck at the painting. The book's narrator, a psychiatrist charged with solving the mystery, begins to unweave the threads by talking to the various women in Oliver's life – although he finds that the most important one may have been dead for more than a century.

For both technical and emotional insight, Kostova says, she drew on information from artistically talented family members and friends who were professional visual artists.

"I pestered them with questions, followed them on landscaping expeditions, learned how they make the decisions that go into a painting," she says.

Although she didn't want the book to center around anything supernatural, she says, it nevertheless evolved into something with "a strong feeling of haunting by the past, someone caught between two worlds in something almost like possession."

As the daughter of a professor, Kostova grew up mostly in Connecticut but also spent time in other U.S. states and in the former Yugoslavia. Her first book, The Historian, is an updated Dracula tale set partially in Eastern Europe, and she clearly has a fondness for the region. That affection, and her desire to help fellow authors, led to the formation of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing (www.ekf.bg, where you can read about it in English or Bulgarian). The foundation supports seminars and competitions, public readings and lectures, and opportunities for writers to work in Bulgaria.

As for what's next in her own writing career, Kostova says she's started a new novel that's still in its infancy. She demurs when asked about the subject matter: "Part of it is that it's really raw right now, and things change a lot as you work on them. But I also feel like if you talk about it too much, it loses its energy."

Review of A Question of Belief by Donna Leon

From The Independent (UK) --

A Question of Belief, By Donna Leon --

Reviewed by Barry Forshaw --
15 April 2010 --

Donna Leon's elegant crime novels enjoy great success in various translations throughout the world. But, ironically, there is one country where they are not rendered into the native tongue: Italy, the stamping ground of her wily Commissario Brunetti. The reason? Italy is also the adopted country of Leon herself, an American expat who feels that the endemic corruption her copper encounters would seem provocative from an incomer.



Not that she's any more confrontational than native crime writers in Italy when it comes to the government of Berlusconi. As well as government scandals, Italy is in the throes of another brouhaha involving years of cover-up: the problems of the Catholic Church. Intriguingly, Leon's 19th Brunetti novel, A Question of Belief, folds into its plot both topical elements: corruption involving supernatural belief, and a self-serving establishment bending the law to its own ends.

Venice is suffering a heat wave, and Brunetti is yearning to leave for the mountains. His colleague Vianello has no thoughts of escape; his aunt, obsessed with the supernatural, is withdrawing massive amounts of money from the family coffers. Vianello asks Brunetti for permission to investigate, and discovers that the recipient is one Stefano Gorini. Who is this man? At the same time, Brunetti learns that there are discrepancies at the courthouse concerning Judge Luisa Coltellini and an usher, Fontana.

While Brunetti is on holiday, Fontana is savagely murdered. Does his death have something to do with double-dealing at the courthouse and alleged misconduct on the bench, where case postponements are being used to cover up sleaze? In 1940s Hollywood, censorship forced film-makers to use nuance to convey to adult audiences what was going on. In some ways, Leon uses the same strategy: multi-lingual Italians do read her books. On the surface, this is another entry in a reliable series. But it also obliquely addresses the issues of legal gerrymandering, faith and corruption that bedevil Leon's adopted country.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Review of The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear

From USA Today --

Jacqueline Winspear's 'Mapping of Love and Death' doesn't disappoint --

By Deirdre Donahue --
04/14/2010 --

Sometimes when you adore a series, you're terrified to crack open the next installment, fearing disappointment. Fortunately, Jacqueline Winspear's fans can rest easy. Her new Maisie Dobbs mystery, The Mapping of Love and Death, the seventh in the series, is excellent.



Begun in 2003, Winspear's series centers on Dobbs both as a character and as a symbol of the seismic upheavals — social, cultural, economic — that World War I caused in Britain. Dobbs, who comes from London slums, starts off as a maid in a great house. Her thirst for knowledge eventually lands her at Cambridge University.

She leaves that haven to volunteer as a battlefront nurse in France. The war exposes her to love and to soul-searing carnage. Marked forever, Dobbs trains as an investigator/psychologist, setting up shop in Depression-era London.

Mapping centers on an American family who have come to London after the remains of their missing soldier son, a trained cartographer, are found in France in 1932, two decades after the war. Also recovered: his diary and love letters from an unknown woman.

As Dobbs unravels the dead soldier's past, her creator brings the story to a satisfying conclusion. But the real pleasure is Winspear's insights into human beings and history.

Most moving is the way Winspear, a Brit living in California, captures the doomed young man's yearning for the sun as he sits in the mud of the Somme.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Review of House Rules by Jodi Picoult

From JG-TC Online (Illinois) --

Book Review: 'House Rules,' By Jodi Picoult --

By: Juanita Sherwood --
April 12, 2010 --

Many of Jodi Picoult’s recent books have featured societal issues. This one is no different: it deals with a form of autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a higher functioning form on the autism spectrum.



Jacob Hunt is the young man who has Aspergers; he is 18 years old, a senior in high school.

Jacob has suffered from autistic difficulties since he was a toddler. His mother has videos that show him as a normal youngster, but then he suddenly changed. She feels that these changes came about near the time he received some of his vaccinations, although neither she nor medical science could prove this theory.

He is a brilliant young man who has intensely focused on various subjects over the years. When he was younger it was dogs, then dinosaurs, and now it is crime scene investigation.

Jacob’s family consists of his mother and his younger brother, Theo. His parents divorced when Jacob began manifesting signs of autism around the age of 3, shortly after Theo was born.

Since he left, his father has had little to do with the boys and their mother except to send monthly support checks.

Emma, the mother, has learned techniques for dealing with Jacob both at home and in public when he has a “meltdown.” He is now the size of an adult, and sometimes physical restraint, which she used to employ when he was younger, is difficult, but she frequently is still able to apply it.

Jacob has difficulty expressing himself verbally in terms that most people use daily. He takes things literally, not understanding idioms or visual clues from others. He needs routine, and what that is disrupted, he can have a “meltdown.”

He has an IEP, an individual education plan, at school. Part of that plan is that he and other autistic teens have a timeout room that they can go to when their senses are overloaded. There he calmed himself using techniques that he had been taught.

Since he has difficulty interacting with his peers, his mother has hired Jess Ogilvy, a graduate student, to tutor him regarding social skills. Jess has been working with Jacob for several months, and he has made progress, albeit slowly. He has not been cured by any means, but he is gaining a few skills.

Jess is housesitting for a professor from her university when she turns up missing. Her boyfriend, Mark Macguire, is suspected of foul play at first, but he is “unarrested” when the police finally discover her body, and the blame turns to Jacob.

When he is arrested for Jess’s murder, he is stupefied by all of the things surrounding the arrest: being questioned by police, being held in jail, being restrained, and being separated from his family. He knows he didn’t do it, but he can’t convince the authorities of that fact.

He eventually goes to trial for Jess’s murder, and his attorney wants to use an insanity defense, feeling that that is the only hope Jacob has of being found not guilty.

Accommodations are made for Jacob’s disability in the courtroom, but the trial is difficult for all involved, especially the judge and prosecutor….

This book gives an empathetic picture of a family dealing with autism, even those with a less severe diagnosis.

At times, it seems that Picoult has overdone illustrating the effects of Asperger’s, making the book drag a bit. The chapters, narrated by characters in the story, are quite short, but it is not a fast read.

Whether or not dealing directly with autism, both parents and educators might want to give this book consideration.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Review of The Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark

From Oklahoma's NewsOK --

Book Review: Secrets of faith, fortune interplay
Suspense: Best-selling author offers twists
--

By: Betty Lytle --
April 11, 2010 --

"The Shadow of Your Smile” (Simon & Schuster, $25) by Mary Higgins Clark is a fast-paced suspense novel that draws the reader in with the first few pages and doesn’t let go until the climatic ending.



Olivia Morrow, 82, has kept a family secret all her life. Her deceased cousin, Sister Catherine, a nun, is about to be beatified. Before she entered the convent, Catherine had conceived a child. The man who fathered the child, Alexander Gannon, invented orthopedic devices that made him a fortune. Catherine’s granddaughter is Dr. Monica Farrell, a pediatrician in a New York City hospital. Should Olivia reveal this secret, Monica would be entitled to her rightful inheritance. But if she tells, the information could jeopardize Catherine’s beatification.

Catherine is being considered for beatification because she was founder of several children’s hospitals and because of her work with children. Michael O’Keefe, a 5-year-old diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, was deemed beyond hope. His mother organized a prayer crusade to Sister Catherine, and Michael’s cancer disappeared. The boy was Monica’s patient. Though skeptical of prayer’s power to heal, she agrees to testify at the beatification hearing that his recovery is beyond medical knowledge and likely a miracle.

Monica learns from a limo driver, the father of one of her patients, that an elderly passenger, Olivia Morrow, told him she knew Monica’s birth grandmother. Monica’s father, who was adopted, spent nearly his whole life searching for his birth parents. Monica calls Olivia and arranges to see her the next day. But when Monica gets there, Olivia is dead.

This is a great story, in bookstores Tuesday, with many twists and turns that mystery fans should enjoy.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Review of House Rules by Jodi Picoult

From Sunday Star Times (Australia) --

Crisp prose lifts thrilling Picoult yarn --

By: Kate Mead --
April 11, 2010 --

JODI PICOULT is not one to shy away from heartfelt, zeitgeisty matters, and her latest novel, told from the perspective of five different characters, is no exception.



Picoult introduces us to Jacob Hunt, an 18-year-old with Asperger's syndrome. Living with his mother Emma and brother Theo, Jacob is struggling in a world of colour in which he reads everything as black or white. Symptoms of his Asperger's means that Jacob has clumsy social skills, an inclination to take everything literally, and, in his case, an obsession with crime-solving and forensics. Emma and Theo alternate between feelings of guilt over how they treat Jacob and their feelings of pure love for him. While at times it is hard for them to understand his behaviour, they persevere and put up with his staged crime scenes, complete with fake blood and fingerprint analyses.

When Jacob's tutor Jess is found dead, Jacob becomes entangled in a real crime case. Because of his fascination with forensics and what seems like suspicious behaviour as a result of his condition, Jacob is charged with Jess's murder.

House Rules investigates the characters' fractured states of mind and reminds us that the lines between right and wrong are sometimes blurred. Using a dramatic narrative laced with thrills and compassion, Picoult is particularly successful in separating the characters so we can empathise and understand each one individually. Her prose is punchy and the topic is clearly well-researched, making for a wholly engrossing and emotional read. In typical Picoult style, there were no loose ends – yet I was still left wanting more.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Interview with Val Mcdermid

From Scotsman --

Interview: It can be murder, but Val McDermid's love of Raith is no mystery --

By Aidan Smith --
10 April 2010 --

Best-selling author's father was the Stark's Park scout who discovered Jim Baxter, and ensured his daughter became a fan

STARK'S Park is one of the world's great football grounds viewable from a train. Head north up the East Coast Main Line and the last you glimpse of it is the stand paid for by blood, guts, torture, dismemberment and ever more elaborate death.

But when the hard-up and grateful Raith Rovers offered to call the structure The Val McDermid Stand in recognition of her sponsorship, the ten million-selling crime writer and Rovers fanatic declined. "So it's known as The McDermid Stand in memory of my father," she says. "Being an internationally-renowned cultural icon is all well and good, ha ha, but in Kirkcaldy I'll always be Jim McDermid's lassie."

Jim McDermid was turnstile manager for Rovers and, more significantly, a scout. Crucially, he was the one who found Jim Baxter. His daughter would have been just a babe when he made the dramatic discovery, but as soon as she was old enough, she'd accompany him on his talent-spotting rounds.

"I'd be four or five and Dad would get this plank of wood he always kept in the boot of the car and place it by the side of the pitch," she says. "It stopped us sinking into the mud as we stood in the biting east wind and freezing rain watching Crossgates Primrose, Ladybank Thistle and the rest – teams mostly made up of miners who were experiencing the tremendous joy of not being underground. They'd spend all afternoon kicking great lumps out of each other."

You can tell she's a writer, can't you? Colourful description, social background, emphasis on the most romantic of club-names, nice juxtaposition of 'Primrose' and 'mud' – and of course Crossgates were Baxter's team. Rovers, because of her father who died in 1987, are McDermid's team and she'll be cutting short her customary Bahaman holiday after the completion of yet another book to be at Hampden tomorrow.

She thinks they've got "a wee glimmer of a chance" in their Scottish Cup semi-final against Dundee United although she admits this is based on the kind of evidence that would get her crimebusting heroine, psychological profiler Carol Jordan, laughed out of court.

"I never remember my dreams and I can't stand people who start sentences with: 'I had the most amazing dream last night ... ' Now, you probably won't believe this, but I had the most amazing dream last night and what's more I remember it. I dreamt the Rovers won 2-1."

I tell her I believe her because a made-up dream would have been over-egged with highly suspect detail, such as the nature of the injuries reducing Raith to eight men, the number of opposition players beaten twice in the dribble leading to the equaliser, the velocity of the overhead-kick winner, and so on. And I guess that's the mark of a good writer: knowing when to embellish, and when 2-1 is just enough.

Today we're not in the Bahamas or Kirkcaldy but in Stockport, just outside Manchester, enjoying a spot of lunch. McDermid is a large, jolly 54-year-old with spiky silver hair, a radical feminist and just as radical socialist, who, when asked by the waitress what size of wine glass she'd like, quips: "Do I look the sort of person who ever orders a small anything?" She spends two days a week here to be with nine-year-old Cameron, the son conceived with a previous lesbian partner through artificial insemination. The rest of the time she's in Alnmouth in Northumberland with Kelly Smith who she calls "the wife".

Tentatively, I ask how all of this goes down at Raith but there's no need for coyness with McDermid, who says: "If I ever worry about being an old, fat lezza – which by the way I don't – then I'm pretty confident the attitude of the Rovers would be: 'Aye, but you're our old, fat lezza.'"

At school in Stockport, young Cameron plays dodgeball in a Rovers strip. "He likes to say that Man U are his second team," she laughs. Smith has also been indoctrinated in Rovers' ways, and while the American publisher's first team remain baseball's Detroit Tigers, she was with McDermid for the derby with East Fife when Cameron got to lead out Raith as their mascot.

"That was a very proud day," says the writer, "and a pretty hilarious one as well. The wee man got to keep the ref's pound coin and was interviewed in the centre circle. Cameron introduced himself and said he was from Manchester; the Stark's announcer said: 'So you've come here to see how fitba should be played.' Then the announcer asked who he'd brought to the game and Cameron – bless him, uttering words never before used at the Rovers – said: 'My mum and my step-mum.'"

Any reaction from the away end? "Well, if you're wondering if they jeered, then no. East Fife are from Methil, don't forget, and they're slow on the uptake there. By the time they'd worked out our domestic arrangements the moment to hurl abuse was gone."

McDermid has written 26 books, and the Carol Jordan titles have been turned into the hit ITV series Wire in the Blood starring Robson Green. The 27th will be called The Cost of Everything and concerns a series of deaths dating back 20 years. "The question is, are they the work of a psychopathic serial killer or is this person just someone around whom bad things happen?" The title is a Deacon Blue song, as is every chapter heading, the Scots rockers' leader Ricky Ross being more generous than Paul Weller, who refused McDermid permission to use Jam songs in her book The Distant Echo.

The restaurant is a favourite haunt, and the maitre d' has just passed on a request from another regular, a professor in medical history, who wants McDermid to talk to his students. She's happy to oblige, just as long as it's understood her talent is writerly imagination. "Some folk get the wrong idea. Recently I had to tell these clinical psychologists: 'No no, I make this stuff up.'"

The excitable newspapers which ask her to write profiles of murderers, such as Gianni Versace's killer, can get similarly confused, but McDermid admits there's been the odd unnerving moment when a real-life crime has echoed one she's dreamed up. If she inhabits a world positioned between fact and fiction, though, maybe the same can be said for Raith.

There's the celebrity patronage, something which can provoke sneers from the terraces' hodden rank-and-file, and Rovers are the team of Gordon Brown and, improbably, almost the whole of Scotland's senior whodunnit fraternity when you include Ian Rankin. There's the legend: "And they'll be dancing in the streets of Raith tonight!" Even more improbably, Raith were once shipwrecked. And what are the team supposed to be this season – fact or fiction? First Division plodders or Scottish Cup fantasists?

McDermid details her credentials. "I cannot remember a time when football, and the Rovers, weren't a huge part of growing up in Kirkcaldy. We lived across the road from the library, which was definitely a bigger influence on my life, but every Saturday night I'd be sent round to the corner shop for the Evening Telegraph sports final so Dad could read about the Rovers and, of course, our rivals.

"I asked him why Dunfermline were known as 'The Pars'. He said: 'Well, darlin', it's short for 'Paraplegics' 'cause that's how they play.' He also told me that the tank traps on Kirkcaldy beach were there specifically to stop Hitler getting his hands on the linoleum he craved and I believed that one for quite a long time."

McDermid still believes in football rivalry. "I've no time for slab-faced sectarianism but a little bit of responsible hatred is necessary for the cohesion of the whole." It was right and proper, she says, that when East Fife-supporting Jack Vettriano was asked to help Raith in their hour of need, he said he'd only give money to see them go bust.

Her oldest memories of Stark's Park are of restricted views ("My dad had to put me down whenever he wanted to wave and yell, which was quite often") and the perishing cold which only became slightly more bearable when she learned to let the gravy in a Pillans pie run down her sleeve. Perhaps not surprisingly, she struggles to nominate a favourite player from childhood.

"My early relationship with the Rovers was unusual. I didn't share experiences with kids my age because on match-days I'd be hanging on to Dad while he chatted with Bert Herdman, the manager, or Rankin Grimshaw, the chairman. And of course I was a girl. I did give Dad the satisfaction of buying me football boots – from Brown's Bazaar in Kirkcaldy – when I started playing hockey for the school. I was the goalie so I needed the protection of the re-enforced toecaps. I remember him saying: 'I'm the only man in the whole of Fife whose daughter wants fitba boots for Christmas.'

"He wasn't very successful at tempting my mother to games – she got soaked to the skin at Alloa once and never went back. In fact, when she was invited to Stark's Park for the stand dedication, that was her first time inside the ground. Dad would have loved to have been a footballer, I'm sure, only the TB he contracted during the war put paid to that." But did he wish his only child had been a son? "No, I was never dragged along to the Rovers – I loved it."

Perhaps because she grew up an outsider ("There were no lesbians in 1960s Fife"), McDermid never got frustrated by Raith's inability to be all-conquering. "You need a sense of humour to be a Rovers fan, though – same with being a Fifer. Only Fife would try to persuade tourists to walk a coastal path which goes through Methil Docks and past the slurry-burning Levenmouth Power Station!"

Work commitments prevented McDermid from being in the crowd for the 1994 League Cup triumph over Celtic ("I listened on the car radio. When the winning penalty was scored I burst into tears and almost drove off the M62"). But on the tenth anniversary of the club's greatest day, and with Raith threatened with extinction, she answered the call.

Or rather the wife did. "Kelly said: 'This guy Gordon Brown was on the phone.' I presumed she meant the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Whatever you say about Gordon – and I could say a lot about how he's awkward and unspinnable but that's what people claimed they wanted after Tony Blair; and how we must have short memories if we're seriously thinking about voting for the posh, smug gits again – it's beyond dispute that he's a Rovers man. I don't think he's happier than when he's watching a game with his boys either side of him. Our own fathers were good friends from the BBs. He told me it was time for everyone with the Rovers in their hearts to help save them."

Her sponsorship of the old north stand, rumoured to be six figures, is initially for two years though she hopes the arrangement will continue beyond that. "When Gordon asked me to get involved, I wasn't sure I belonged – but I've really been made to feel part of things. You'll probably want to cue the violins here, but, in a community that has been kicked in the teeth so many times in recent years, the Raith story is a heartwarming one about a family club that people still care deeply about."

The novelist much preoccupied with death has helped resuscitate Raith, but she gives all of the credit to everyone else including manager John McGlynn ("He's done a fantastic job, totally changing the culture and showing the team how to have pride in themselves") and Ally Gourlay, chairman of the ex-players' association.

McDermid tries to make it back for half a dozen games a season and these days she sits in the directors' box. "They're the same seats as in the main stand, separated by a small concrete wall, so the luxury is relative." And what does the famous crime writer get from her football team? Oh, just about everything.

There's mother-son bonding, humour ("After we beat Aberdeen, the Dons fans spotted the team coach and sang: 'Can you play for us instead?'"), and the reassurance that, like the smell of lino, Raith never leaves you. An old school friend is Hampden-bound after getting in touch from Saudi Arabia via Facebook and she's even bumped into Rovers fans in the Bahamas. "I was in a restaurant when this guy started complaining to the waiter. I turned round, pointed to the club crest on his shirt and right away he dropped the American accent. Would you believe that his mum and mine play cards together?"

It takes all sorts to follow Raith, as the murder-obsessed old, fat lezza who's good friends with the last Prime Minister would confirm, although McDermid likes being just another face in the crowd. "Sometimes I'll be asked if I'm the one who writes 'they books'. But, you know, Dad never let on to me he'd discovered Jim Baxter. Years later when I found out by myself he said: 'Oh him? Aye he wisnae bad.' That's very Fife. We don't like to make a fuss."

First rule of Fife Club: no dancing in the streets? If Raith win tomorrow, let's see if that holds.

Interview with Jodi Picoult

From The Wire (NH) --

Looking autism in the eye --

By: Matt Kanner --
06 April 2010 --

Best-selling author and N.H. resident Jodi Picoult discusses her latest novel at The Music Hall

After a grueling national tour in support of her new best-selling book, Jodi Picoult was elated to be back in her home state.



“It is so nice to be in New Hampshire again,” she told the crowd at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, where she participated in the Writers on a New England Stage series on March 31.

At the time of her visit, Picoult’s new novel “House Rules” sat atop the New York Times bestseller list for fiction. Topping the list for nonfiction, coincidentally, was “The Big Short,” the latest book from Michael Lewis, who will take The Music Hall’s stage on Wednesday, April 7.

This isn’t the first time Picoult has authored a bestseller. At the age of 43, she has already published 17 novels, several of which have been made into TV movies. Her 2003 hit novel “My Sister’s Keeper” was made into a major motion picture last year starring Cameron Diaz and Alec Baldwin. She has also authored several issues of the “Wonder Woman” comic book series for DC Comics.

“House Rules” tells the story of Jacob Hunt, a teenager with Asperger’s Syndrome. Jacob is phenomenally intelligent, but he struggles to express himself socially. And, like many kids with Asperger’s, he has a specific passion—in Jacob’s case, forensic analysis and crime scene investigation. Tipped off by his police scanner, he begins showing up at crime scenes and offering pointers to the cops. But the tables turn when Jacob, himself, becomes a murder suspect.

Picoult, who is known for plotlines that revolve around controversial social issues, said she chose to write about Asperger’s because it’s an often misunderstood condition that affects countless families, including her own. “Like many people, I’ve had autism touch my family personally,” she said in an onstage interview with Virginia Prescott, host of New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth.”

Asperger’s is on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum and manifests itself in a variety of ways. Picoult spoke of her cousin David, who grew up with the syndrome and now lives in a group home. He is prone to destructive tantrums, which, at over six feet tall and 250 pounds, often draw attention from police.

Like many of Picoult’s novels, “House Rules” is written from the perspective of several different narrators. At The Music Hall, Picoult read a section of the book with narration from Jacob, his mother Emma and a police detective named Rich.

Getting into the head of a teenage boy with Asperger’s was a challenge Picoult did not take lightly. She researched prodigiously on the topic, interviewing and surveying dozens of people with Asperger’s and their families. She also studied ongoing debates about what causes Asperger’s and how best to treat it.

“I literally wound up with hundreds of pages of research,” she told Prescott.

Some of the stories Picoult heard from real people made it into her book, and a woman with Asperger’s read over the final manuscript to verify its accuracy.

Still, although Picoult has heard positive feedback from thousands of fans, some people have criticized her fictional portrayal of Asperger’s. But if Picoult weren’t confident with the accuracy of her work, she said, she never would have published it.

“Jacob is a compilation of a lot of real kids, and every kid with Asperger’s is different,” she said. “You can’t please everybody all the time, but I can tell you that if the book is out there, I stand by it.”

Picoult does exhaustive research for all her books. She has no assistant and does all the work herself. During her research for “House Rules,” she even attended an autopsy, which she said was “fun.” For her 2003 novel “Second Chance,” which involves supernatural forces, she visited haunted buildings with a team of “ghost hunters” and witnessed some truly spooky happenings.

Picoult is no stranger to writing about murky and often contentious issues. The Hanover resident, who has three kids of her own, has written about teen suicide, date rape, bulimia, the death penalty, school bullying and stem cell research, among other things. Her forthcoming novel “Sing You Home,” due out in 2011, will deal with embryo donation and gay rights.

Prescott asked Picoult how she has managed to sell millions of books in a country where most people are uncomfortable discussing the types of social issues she addresses.

“I think it’s because I try very hard not to preach to you,” Picoult said. “I really think that my opinion is no better than yours.” Instead of telling readers what to think, she added, she attempts to illustrate all sides of the argument.

Part of the price of tremendous commercial success is that Picoult does not receive much esteem from the highbrow literary community. Like some past regional authors to participate in Writers on a New England Stage, including Stephen King and Dan Brown, she’s considered more of a commercial writer than a literary writer.

Picoult said going the commercial route was a deliberate choice. Although she will likely never win a National Book Award in the United States, she said, reaching a wide audience is more important than garnering personal accolades, and she’s encouraged by the support of fans who have been touched by her work.

Also like King, Picoult is not always completely satisfied with the film interpretations of her books. Many fans of “My Sister’s Keeper” were disappointed that the film version dramatically changed the ending.

Picoult said she had no control over the screen adaptation. She said having one of your books made into a movie is like having someone else raise your baby. “Sometimes you find out that your baby grew up with crack whores, and that’s just the way it is,” she said to immense laughter.

Picoult’s work has been tagged with a reputation for appealing mainly to women—a theory supported by the predominantly female audience at The Music Hall. But Picoult thinks she is equally popular among men. She started tracking all the emails she receives from fans (she gets about 250 per day and responds to every one). “Forty-nine percent of them came from men, so hah!” she said.

Why, then, were there so many more ladies than men in the audience?

“That’s because women need a night out,” Picoult said to applause.

Jodi Picoult’s appearance at The Music Hall will air on New Hampshire Public Radio during “Word of Mouth” on Thursday, April 8 at noon. For more information on Writers on a New England Stage, a collaboration between The Music Hall, NHPR, RiverRun Bookstore and Yankee Magazine, visit www.themusichall.org.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Review of The Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark

From Blogcritics Books --

Book Review: Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark --

By: Sahar --
Apr 06, 2010 --

I have been a fan of Mary Higgins Clark for many years now, and a new book release is always cause for celebration. In Shadow of Your Smile, her newest one, Mary Higgins Clark manages yet again to flawlessly weave a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page.

Monica Farell's father spent his life searching for his biological parents, but to no avail; he passed away without ever finding them. Thirty-one year-old Monica isn't particularly concerned with her biological heritage; after all, her own family is everything she could have asked for. On top of that, the demands of her job as a beloved and successful pediatrician don't leave much time for anything else.



But her biological heritage catches up with her. Her biological grandmother, Catherine, told only a handful of people about her pregnancy, which occurred right before she entered a convent to become a nun. Since that fateful day, Catherine and most of the secret holders have passed on. The only secret holder left is Olivia, Catherine's cousin and adoptive sister. Olivia has in her possession letters proving the latter is Monica's grandmother. She has kept this knowledge safe throughout her life but now, the 82 year-old is on her deathbed. Faced with at best two to three weeks, she has to decide: will she share what she knows with Monica, or take it with her to the grave?

The situation is delicate for many reasons. Telling Monica who she really is entails Olivia betraying Catherine’s wishes by revealing the story behind Monica’s ancestry. As a nun, Catherine has served the cause of children as a nun during most of her life and is being considered for beatification by the Catholic Church when a four-year-old boy diagnosed with terminal brain cancer is miraculously cured after his desperate mother organized a prayer crusade to Catherine. Curiously enough, this little boy's pediatrician is none other than Monica Farell. While there have been rumours of this child before, Catherine's good name had, up to then, kept the gossips at bay.

There is also the fact that Monica Farell would stand to inherit all of her grandfather's holdings — or whatever is left of them. After his adventure with Catherine, Alex Gannon became a internationally renown doctor, a scientist at the cutting edge of his field and the inventor of numerous hip & knee prosthetic replacements. Alex Gannon knew about the child Catherine carried and gave away, but was never able to find out the identity of said child. However, in the hopes that, one day, his fortune would return to his rightful heir, a stipulation in his will and testament clearly states that were his biological child ever to be found, the Gannon fortune will go to it or it's descendants.

But while Alex Gannon and his direct biological descents are hardworking, honest people, the inheritors of his estate certainly are not. Alex Gannon's nephews have been squandering their uncle's fortune, and there is almost nothing left of it. Greg and Peter Gannon hid their inclination towards extravagance with philanthropy, but their carefully constructed public image is falling apart. Thankfully, no one knows about Gannon's biological child and the one who did know had no intention of sharing the information — until Olivia found out she was dying.

Unfortunately, Olivia confides in the wrong person. Since there is no money left, and since their public image would be ruined were the truth to come out, neither nephew wants anyone to come poking around in their finances — something that would certainly happen were Monica to be identified as Alex Gannon's descendant.

How do you solve a problem like Monica? You get rid of both the cause and the source, i.e. Monica and Olivia — permanently.

It's not for nothing that Mary Higgins Clark is known as the Queen of Mystery. The author of twenty-eight previous suspense novels, all of which have been best-sellers, she once again delivers a flawless book that bit by bit builds tension, bringing together a collection of people who would have otherwise never met. And the years have been kind to her writing, as its quality been steadily increasing. Not only has the level of intricacy of her stories increases, but the number of themes covered in her stories has also been increasing. In Shadow of Your Smile, Monica struggles with the seeming conflicting concepts of religion and science, in particular medical science, as well as the definition of what one's identity is and entails.

Another great piece of literature, a great travel companion that is bound to make summertime traveling a lot easier, since you won't notice the time passing while you read it.

Just make sure you don't miss your flight.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Q & A with Jodi Picoult

From Autism Support Network --

Q&A with bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult --

By: Katherine Olson --
April 4, 2010 --

Q:House Rules follows the struggle of a single mother, her AS son Jacob and her neurotypical son Theo, as they navigate a murder mystery involving Jacob’s beloved friend and tutor. What has been your personal experience with autism? How does it relate to Jacob’s struggle to communicate, such as when he is questioned at the police station in such an aggressive way that it causes a meltdown?

A:Today, everyone has experience with autism. I have a cousin who, when he was young, was found to be profoundly autistic. Police were once called in, with allegations of child abuse. Law enforcement often doesn’t know how to question, or how to deal with autism.



Q:What are some of the rules or prejudices you feel might be broken by parents, educators in order to better reach AS kids like Jacob?

A: For teachers: Don’t assume that a child who thinks “different” is “lesser than.” Instead of teaching to the group, realize that there are multiple ways a child might learn. For parents: Don’t be such an advocate for your child that you forget who you used to be. For researchers: Stop the semantics war regarding autism and vaccines. No, science has not proved causality. But there is a difference between “connection” and “causality.” Vaccines may not cause autism but perhaps it’s worth researching whether, in certain kids, they trigger underlying genetic or mitochondrial issues which then blossom into autistic behavior.

Q: You seem to have perfected Jacob’s voice. How did you nail it?

A: I began my research at a Pennsylvania school for autistic children and interviewed six AS kids and their parents, individually. I also had 40 other teens with AS fill out questionnaires, which gave me hundreds of pages of research. These kids were blisteringly bright, and open when there isn’t social interaction concerned. I also asked one particularly bright girl with AS, who is a great writer, to read through Jacob’s narrative. Because of her incredible attention to detail, I have 100% faith in the validity of Jacob’s narrative.

Q: How has the AS and autism community reacted to your research for this book, and the story itself?

A: I have heard from so many parents thanking me for raising awareness about autism through my fiction. I only hope that when they read the book they find their experiences validated. And for those who don’t have a personal connection to autism, I hope the book can open their eyes a bit and spread a little more tolerance of children who are different.

5 Facts you don’t know about Jodi Picoult

I have two miniature donkeys

I have been skydiving.

I can’t stand custard or crème brĂ»lĂ©e.

I met my husband when we were both on the crew team in college (I was the coxswain, he was the stroke of the boat).

In my spare time, I’ve written six original children’s musicals that have been performed to raise over $40K for charity.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Review of House Rules by Jodi Picoult

From Winnipeg Free Press --

Picoult page-turner about autism takes breath away --

By: Anne Katz --
3/04/2010 --

Jodi Picoult's new novel will demand your undivided attention.

House Rules
By Jodi Picoult
Simon & Schuster, 557 pages, $32



American commercial novelist Jodi Picoult is a prodigious writer, with almost a book a year since 1992.

She is immensely popular; her last three debuted in first place on the New York Times bestseller list; and this one has already made No. 1 on McNally Robinson's Winnipeg list.

Three of her novels (The Pact, Plain Truth and The Tenth Circle) have been made into TV movies and one (My Sister's Keeper) made it to the big screen with Cameron Diaz in the lead role.

Her books usually focus on a family with a big issue -- a child with a rare and devastating illness -- and involve a court case involved where one parent tries desperately to find a solution to the problem and the other parent is opposed to this strategy.

In House Rules, Picoult tackles the topical issue of autism spectrum disorder by telling the story of an 18-year-old man with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism.

This is a big book, and a real page turner. While Picoult counts women as her fan base, this novel will appeal to men as well.

It is the ideal read as cottage season starts. But be careful, you won't be cleaning and organizing once you read the first page.

Jacob lives with his mother Emma, who has given up pretty much her whole life, including her husband who couldn't cope with the demands of this brilliant but extremely challenging child.

Emma has a younger son, Theo, who at 16 is profoundly affected by the accommodations they all have to make to live with Jacob.

Emma has a set of house rules that she expects her sons to abide by: clean up your own messes; tell the truth; and take care of your brother because he's the only one you've got.

One of Jacob's eccentricities is that he is extremely literal with no ability to grasp nuance or subtlety, and these three rules which he abides by almost slavishly form the focus of the story.

A young woman who tutors Jacob in social skills goes missing, and this small family is drawn into a maelstrom when her body is found and Jacob is charged with her murder.

He has all the signs of guilt -- an inability to look one in the eye, as well as an obsessive interest in forensic science and crime scene re-enactments. Was he involved in some way in her death?

Picoult tells the story through the voices of Emma, Jacob (who has an appealingly wry sense of humour), Theo, a police officer investigating the case, and the young, likely unqualified, lawyer Emma hires. Their voices are clear and distinct and the story moves along at a fast pace.

Like all Picoult's novels, House Rules is well-researched and she provides an intimate and detailed understanding of the issue at hand.

In this case, we learn about autism spectrum disorder and the fascinating presentation of Asperger's Syndrome. We also see a vivid example of the deep love parents hold for their children in all their perfection and with all their flaws.

Picoult provides the prerequisite court case and a twist at the end that some readers will see coming. But for those who don't, it may take your breath away for an instant.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Review of 31 Hours by Masha Hamilton

From Blogcritics --

Book Review: 31 Hours by Masha Hamilton --

By: Gordon Hauptfleisch --
Mar 29, 2010 --

“Tomorrow Jonas’s day belonged to a greater cause. Tomorrow he would be pure energy, a spark and a flash, a name on a million lips. But today he was just Jonas, Manhattan Jonas, Upper West Side Jonas, young man Jonas…”

Those hours between being Manhattan Jonas and being on a million lips – those tightly stretched 31 Hours, to be precise – did not so much belong to a greater cause as belong to the actions of a foolish and immature young 21-year old who deceives himself and many others that he is a sensitive and impressionable martyr and not the monster he truly is. Yes, he is overwhelmed by his rage and passion over the world’s injustices, to the point of irrationality (“We’re all terrorists… Every single one of us…”); despite the subtle and ever less-and-less sparsely set signs of mental instability (“He feels like something’s missing, like the world is immoral and only he sees it”); and, protestations aside, his proneness to violence and all-out destruction (“He wanted, after all this, nothing short of the collapse of Rome").



And yes, this man of peace, faith, and understanding — intent to make a statement to a hardened and hypocritical populace in his new role as an Islamic suicide bomber – will be strapping on a vest of explosives, leaving his safe-house beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and entering the New York City subway system with six others to right the world’s wrongs by taking his life and as many other innocent others as he can.

As author Masha Hamilton skillfully interweaves the sequence of events and the telling of the tale from various perspectives, 31 Hours belongs just as much – if not more so — to Jonas’ mother Carol Meitzner from the start, from her woman’s intuitive premonition when she woke up and “sat fully upright, an inhale caught in her chest,” her mind “filled with Jonas. Her son. Her wild-haired precious.” She had been concerned about his erratic moods and depression, and realizes she had not heard from Jonas in several days. It’s a worry that translates into action as Carol initiates a game plan of sorts, journeying through the city on a mission, contacting family and friends, in down times reflecting on the inner-life of her only son, splendidly explicated in Hamilton’s nuanced, scalpel-sharp,and inspired prose:

Ever since adolescence, Jonas had suffered from periods of overcast internal weather. He asked for so much from life. He demanded the stripping away of the skin; he insisted on seeing all the way to the muscles and veins, but if those muscles seemed insubstantial, the veins too paltry to carry the essential rush of blood, he was disappointed as an old man finished with his days. At those times, when he spoke, he voice would catch on some random word, as if everything was about to be too much for him. Sometimes, in those depression periods, she felt Jonas was lost to her, wandering alone in a bitter night, carrying only a flashlight with a beam too hesitant and shallow to guide him home.

Carol, in addition to contacting the authorities – who identifies Jonas as a home-grown terrorist who had traveled to Pakistan for special training — calls upon others who know the “real” Jonas: her ex-husband, Jake; Jonas's girlfriend, Vic, a dancer whose longtime friendship with Jonas recently turned to love; and Vic's younger sister, Mara, who feels she must carry the burdens of a broken family on her shoulders. Also in the mix is Sonny Hirt, a personable homeless man with a sixth sense that provides him with portent of impending tragedy while he spends life underground in the subway, a crossroads of humanity in which we come to know the full bearing a terrorist attack on the subway systems would cause.

It is all the more remarkable that Hamilton not only balances these secondary characterizations, subplots, and back stories in a craftsman-like manner, but that she seamlessly integrates them within the main plot as back-of-my-mind narrative embellishments, all the more humanizing the warts-and-all world that, by extension, Jonas would wipe out with "Something significant. The Gandhi alternative seemed grandiose and improbable in the current day. This was an age of sanctioned violence — air strikes, not hunger strikes."

Perceptive and cohesive throughout, 31 Hours makes for tautly-building suspense as each chapter’s changing viewpoint centers on closing in on Jonas' whereabouts and narrowing in on his progress as he tries to widen the gap from being “just Jonas, Manhattan Jonas, Upper West Side Jonas, young man Jonas..." After all, amid the pulse-pounding and heartrending moments evoked, he has some "sanctioned violence" to attend to — if he isn't stopped first.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Interview with Deborah Crombie

From The Journal News (New York) --


Writer Deborah Crombie is obsessed with her characters --

By Connie Ogle --
March 28, 2010 --

Some suspense novelists grow weary of reprising their characters in book after book and seek respite by writing stand-alone novels. Deborah Crombie's fans needn't worry.



"I hear writers say they are bored and that they would like to do something else, but I don't feel that way at all," says the creator of the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mystery series, which follows the personal and professional lives of two Scotland Yard investigators in London. "I miss them when I'm in between books doing research. I always want to be back with them, back in their lives."

Crombie, who lives with her husband in McKinney, Texas, sounds as if she could happily talk about Duncan and Gemma for a long time. She likes them that much, though she admits that Gemma's young son Toby is "lots of fun, but if I had to live with this kid, I would kill him."

Solving crimes and domestic disasters plays a part in Crombie's works, with the domestic issues as important as whodunnit. The relationship between Duncan and Gemma has deepened in the 13 novels: Crombie's latest book, "Necessary as Blood" (Morrow, $24.99) involves not only the disappearance of a young mother and the murder of her solicitor husband but also a big development in the lives of the couple. The two finally joined households in "And Justice There Is None."

The menage now includes two dogs and a cat, given that animal lover Crombie has two cats and two German shepherds. (You can see photos at deborahcrombie.com.)

"I have a soft spot for cocker spaniels, too," she admits, "which is why Gemma has Geordie, her cocker. But I sneak some shepherds into the books, too."

Q: When you began the series, was there criticism about you being "an American who writes about England"?

A: Not as much as I thought there would be. Martha Grimes was already published, and so was Elizabeth George. ... I don't know if I would have had the nerve to do it otherwise. I've wanted to write since I was a teenager. I was not an English major. I was a biology major. But I took a creative writing class that kept me from writing for about 10 years. The teacher hadn't published anything but would tell you what was wrong with what you wrote and persistent in telling you that you have to write what you know. I think that's true in a sense. You need depths of research to learn about your subject, and you need to create authenticity, but if you take it literally, nobody would write anything! We'd have no science fiction, no historical novels, no women writing from men's viewpoints. And I thought, "I don't want to write a story about a girl growing up in suburban Dallas!" I loved English crime fiction.

Q: When did you settle down and write your first book?

A: When my daughter was born in 1983 I was working on a master's in humanities, not because I wanted to teach but because I had grad-school syndrome. I quit because I couldn't juggle everything. ... But when she was 4 or 5 my ex-husband and I made a trip to Yorkshire and stayed at the place that becomes the time share in "A Share in Death." I thought, "Wouldn't that be a fun place to set an updated country-house mystery?" I thought, "I need a detective," and went from there.

Q: Were you thinking in terms of writing a series?

A: Yes, because that's what I like to read. I had very specific things in mind for the characters. Not in terms of the story arc — I didn't know that when I started — but I had specific things in mind for the people. I was tired of emotionally damaged characters. I wanted to write about people who were police officers because they were good at it, not because they were alcoholics or their fathers were serial murderers. I wanted people I could identify with and who readers could identify with. And with Gemma, in particular, I had a small child at the time. I had functioned like a single mother though I was married, and I wanted to write about a character who was dealing with those things and still cared about her job and wanted to do well at it. I wanted the characters to be different in background and class so you would have those irritants in the relationship.

Q: Did you worry about breaking the cardinal rule of fictional relationships when you brought Duncan and Gemma together as a couple?

A: That was a deliberate decision from the first book. I don't want to write static characters. You knew Inspector Morse was never going to get sober, and if he loved a woman she'd be the victim or the murderer. I want to write about characters who have real lives. People said about Duncan and Gemma's relationship, "You can't get them together. You'll kill the series!" But people move on. Relationships evolve.

I seldom get letters from people about the crime in the books. About 95 percent of my e-mail is about Duncan and Gemma and what's going to happen with them. Obviously something hits the reader about them as much as it does me.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Review of The Last Illusion by Rhys Bowen

From Hollywood Today --

Books: The Last Illusion --

By Gabrielle Pantera --
March 27th, 2010 --

In this Molly Murphy Mystery, a female sleuth is hired to protect the life of master illusionist and man of danger Harry Houdini **** 4 Stars



HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 3/27/2010 – “Harry Houdini was in a league of his own,” says The Last Illusion author Rhys Bowen. “He inflicted terrible bodily harm on himself while performing his escapes. Many of Houdini’s illusions have never been improved upon in the past hundred years.”

The Last Illusion, a Molly Murphy Mystery, features New York private investigator and Irish immigrant Molly Murphy on her way to see a trio of illusionists headlined by Harry Houdini. Houdini has just returned from Europe, and Murphy looks forward to the show and a pleasant evening with her fiancĂ©, police captain Daniel Sullivan. Unfortunately, Houdini won’t perform that night. Signor Scarpelli’s saw-a-lady-in-half trick goes horribly wrong. His assistant dies. Is it an accident or murder?

When the body of Scarpelli’s assistant disappears, there are more questions then answers. Houdini’s wife Bess asks Molly to keep Houdini safe. She thinks someone is actually after Houdini. But, how can Molly keep the master illusionist safe when he puts his life in danger every night?

“I’d long wanted Molly to meet Houdini because he was such an iconic figure of his time,’ says Bowen. “I read every biography, talked to members of the Magic Circle, and watched him perform in some very old movies,”

“It was such a pivotal decade, starting with the death of Queen Victoria and everything her age stood for…decorum, meek little women, security, the family and ending with the Titanic, invention of radio and first rumblings of WW1,” says Bowen. “The mass migrations to the U.S. meant that America would be changed forever. Setting my book in New York City gives me a chance to show the melting pot in action.”

There are currently no plans to adapt the The Last Illusion for the screen. However, Bowen’s bookConstable Evans series has been optioned for TV and Her Royal Spyness has been optioned for a film. Her Royal Spyness is a Bowen mystery series that features Lady Georgiana as the sleuth.

“I am almost finished with the next Molly Murphy book, called tentatively Bless the Bride,” says Bowen. “It takes place in New York’s Chinatown. The history of the Chinese in America makes for fascinating reading.”

“For those who have read my other Molly Murphy books, this one reads more like a thriller,” says Bowen. “It’s definitely a nail-biting page-turner as Molly enters the world of illusionists and international espionage.”

This is Rhys Bowen’s ninth Molly Murphy mystery. Her characters are charming and witty. The level of historical detail is perfectly in balance with the story. Bowen brings the time and her characters to life. Another Mystery by Bowen not to be missed by mystery lovers.

Rhys Bowen was born in the city of Bath, England. She currently lives in Marin County, California. She’s written 22 mysteries. Bowen has won both the Agatha and Anthony Awards for mystery writing.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Review of Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain

From Canada.com --

Book Review: Books at center of murder tale --

By: Terry Peters --
March 26, 2010 --

- Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain, Minotaur Books, 308 pages, $31.99.

A roadside washroom yields a horrifying surprise to a young family that brings the police racing to the scene.



As the discovered organ is removed, more body parts surface and then the recognition of a graffiti covered wall's significance leads to one conclusion, the Beauty Killer is back.

Gretchen Lowell, the serial killer whose beauty has brought her a legion of followers, is still at large.

The last encounter between her and detective Archie Sheridan, head of the Beauty Killer Task Force, left the damaged Portland police officer at death's door. Addicted to painkillers, estranged from his family, psychologically battered, Sheridan has checked into a psych ward. But Lowell's heart shaped graffiti is enough to pull him back to the chase as inevitably as his own hand is drawn to trace the same shaped scar that she carved in his chest.

Chelsea Cain is in top form as this third novel rips into the night with the same intensity of her debut, Heartsick.

Her characters continue to evolve, ready to surprise us and keep our attention. With Gretchen Lowell, Cain has created one of the most memorable and dangerous killers in modern fiction.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Interview with Jodi Picoult

From KKTV (Southern Colorado) --

My Interview with Jodi Picoult --

By: Leslie Fichera --
Mar 26, 2010 --

There are times when you just think, I love my job! This was one of those times for me. I got to sit down and interview my very favorite author, Jodi Picoult. It was my version of meeting a celebrity and I was nervous! I had to be a one-man band (meaning I was the reporter and photographer) ... not to mention my actual job at KKTV is Web director, so although I write a lot, it had been a while since I'd picked up a camera and done my own story.



Anyway, I really liked Jodi. She was very nice and also very straight forward and funny! She made the auidience laugh a lot during her lecture and I really enjoyed listening to her speak. I was only allowed to tape the first 5 minutes of her lecture (not her rule!), but once I turned my camera off, I sat and listened to the whole lecture. It was so interesting!

Here's the story I wrote about the interview with Jodi... I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed interviewing her and writing it!

She's one of the most well-known and intriguing authors of our day. Her name tops the bestseller list 17 times over. Jodi Picoult is an outstanding writer and a strong-willed woman who dares to write about topics that force us all to challenge our beliefs, question our convictions and ponder a world that could very well be our own, if just in another life.

As an avid Picoult reader, I jumped at the chance to sit down with her while she was in Denver on tour to promote her newest book, out just this month, House Rules.

I wondered, we all know she has the ability to create dramatic and heart-wrenching stories on paper, but, where do the story ideas come from? What's behind her first-person narratives? How does she feel about her outstanding success? What's her favorite of her own novels?

In short, what's her story?

I started with what's probably the most common question for Picoult... where does she get the ideas for her dramatic and controversial books? Centered around topics like a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome who's accused of murder ("House Rules"), a death row inmate who wants to donate his heart to the sister of his victim ("Change of Heart") or an Amish girl who finds herself unmarried and pregnant ("Plain Truth"), is it her imagination or are these real-life experiences?

"My ideas come from the 'what if?' questions that I can't answer. It's the stuff that keeps me up at night," Jodi says. But Picoult says none of her books are completely made up.

"I've been doing this for 19 years now and I have never just say down at my computer and started making stuff up. In fact, sometimes research takes me longer than the physical act of writing the novel. Well, why do I even bother? I think fiction is a tight rope. I think it's my job to whisk you away from your everyday life and to somehow take you to a different place. In order to do that, I have to make characters and situations that reign extremely true, and because of that I have found myself doing some pretty remarkable things in the name of research. I have observed open heart surgery, I have spent time in jail, I got to leave at the end of the night but I did spend time in jail... I have studied with craft, I've shadowed police chiefs, I've lived with the Amish. If I haven't done it, I'm sure I'm getting there sooner of later. It makes for some really interesting work days," Picoult told the crowd of almost 1,000 at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts in Denver.

If you haven’t read any of Picoult’s books yet, well, that gives you a taste of the topics. Whether it’s religion, politics, sex, abortion, scandal, the death penalty or violence, Picoult says the controversial topics are no mistake. She says she feels strongly about her beliefs but she hopes the reader will never know it. She says if she’s done her job well as an author then she’s researched and represented both sides of any argument and her own beliefs should never be evident.

Specifically with “House Rules,” Picoult says she wanted to highlight a breakdown in our country's legal system when someone like Jacob Hunt, the book's main character who is diagnosed with Autism, finds himself accused of murder. His "Aspie" tendencies, the inability to look people in the eye, nervous twitches, lack of empathy and monotone voice, look an awful lot like guilt.
“You see that total breakdown in the legal system when you don’t communicate a certain way and that was really what I was driving at.”

“House Rules” hit bookstores on March 2, and debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Picoult says the story idea was also partly personal; her 30-year-old cousin is autistic so she’s seen firsthand how it affects families. She says the center of the problem in our society is a simple lack of understanding. And that’s what “House Rules” is all about. That led me to my next question… how do you go about writing a first-person narrative through the voice of someone with Asperger’s syndrome? Picoult says she visited with autistic children and talked to families who live this life every day.

“I have to say I’ve been doing this for almost 19 years and Jacob is one of my favorite narrators. It was great to write like him and really stick my mind inside his. There’s a beautiful logic to Aspergers that we don’t usually think about because neuro-typical people just don’t think that way. But to think differently is not to think lesser than.”

Personally, my favorite part of her writing is that style of first person narratives. She weaves and builds characters in a way that makes us all understand them. No matter what the character or extraordinary situation, we empathize with each of them because we get into their thoughts and see it through their eyes.

“One of the things that makes me different is that I’m really hard to pigeonhole. I have people that come up to me and say you’re my favorite mystery writer or they say you’re my favorite women’s fiction writer, you’re my favorite courtroom thriller writer. I’m not any one of those, I’m sort of a mix of all of them. If I had to pick a genre, which I really hate doing, I would say it’s moral and ethical fiction because it really addresses big problems that we usually don’t want to talk about but somehow get easier to talk about when you’re following a fictional family’s excursion through that topic. And that’s something that I think does make me unique.”

Speaking of that “courtroom thriller” title- If you’ve read a lot, or all of her books (like me), you’ve probably noticed a trend: the majority of the stories go to trial. You’d think Picoult must have a law degree with the accuracy and diligence in which she writes. Picoult just chalks it up to research. She says she likes the effect a court case has on a story.

“A trial is a really natural dramatic conclusion. You have a great big build up and there’s some kind of resolution.” Although Jodi laughed as she admitted the “resolutions” are not always what you expect.

Now, I would never dare give away an ending to one of her books because they always pack a punch (Oh, and also because she told the audience during the question and answer portion of her lecture later that night that if their question gave away the ending of a book, she’d kill them – no joke). So I’m keeping my mouth shut, but I will say the endings are my favorite part of her books. Sometimes it’s left open for interpretation and sometimes it’s a huge twist. Either way on the last few pages of every one of her books, I find myself covering up the rest of the page so as not to be tempted to spoil the ending!

Picoult’s thoughts about her books’ dramatic conclusions? “I think the ends leave you with more questions. But that’s what life is. Life doesn’t wrap up in a nice tiny little bow.”

One of her books most well-known for the ending is "My Sister’s Keeper", published in 2004 and picked up as a major motion picture in 2009. It was her first book to be published in 40 languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Its global appeal is what Picoult said made it ripe for the picking as a movie, but she emphasizes that she feels the book, not the movie, was the jumping point for her career. (Picoult is also extremely candid about her disappointment in the way the director, Nick Cassavetes, decided to end the movie). To summarize her thoughts: why change a good thing?

As a fan, I agree, and so do many of the fellow Picoult readers I’ve spoken to. Jodi’s face lights up when I ask her about her fans. “I have a really huge demographic and that’s really a big compliment I think. I’m really proud of that.” And her fan base might surprise you… Picoult smiled as she told me, “49% of my fan mail comes from men. Which is a great thing, I love that. And they take away very different things from the books than the women do and I really appreciate the comments that they have and the way that they chose to read the books.”

So what are the days like for a bestselling author? Picoult is on book tours about three months out of the year. The other nine months, almost like clockwork she says, she’s writing a book. She’s on a pace of writing about one book a year. Picoult says she has a strict schedule for herself. Her days start with a 5 a.m. wake-up call and a three-mile walk with her best friend. She then gets her three teenage kids ready for school and out the door. At 7:30 a.m., she sits down at her desk to answer all of her fan mail (yes, the REAL Jodi Picoult answered you!). Then it’s on to the writing, rarely breaking for lunch (except when her husband, Tim, surprises her) until 3:30 p.m., when she says suddenly, she becomes a mom again.

Her methods seem to be working well for his 17-time bestselling author. So could she, or would she, answer my most burning question?

Of the 17 books you’ve written, do you have a favorite?

“I do have a favorite novel. It’s Second Glance. And I have my reasons for it being a favorite. It involved the great research I did, the fact that as a writer it was really hard to put it together, it has characters I know you’ve never seen in fiction and it has a historical plot that is real and that most people don’t even realize ever happened in America. So for all those reasons, it’s like this wonderful constellation of what made it a great act of writing for me. And I’m really proud of the way it came out. I’ve always said you can have a different favorite as long as it’s still one of my books.”

Jodi says a lot of people tell her their favorite book is the first one they read. I say my favorite changes every time I finish another one of her books. So what’s my next favorite? Picoult has already finished her next novel. Here’s a special sneak peak for all of you fans: “Sing You Home” will tell the story of Zoe and will follow suit with Picoult’s controversies by focusing on embryo donation and gay rights in America.

Picoult promises it won’t disappoint, but we’ll have to wait until March 2011 to read it. I don’t know about you, but I’ll be first in line!

Monday, May 31, 2010

Review of The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

From The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) --

LITERALLY PUZZLING --

By: Ipsita Chakravarty --
March 26, 2010 --

The Swan Thieves By Elizabeth Kostova, Little, Brown, Rs 595

Elizabeth Kostova seems to possess a love for the literal. The Swan Thieves, she tells you, is about “a mystery in the heart of the rise of French Impressionism”; it is “a story about painting and painters”. The subject of her first book, The Historian, had attracted her as she is “interested in history”. Kostova also stresses the role of “research” in both novels. Shortly after starting work on The Swan Thieves, she mentions reading A.S. Byatt. One can’t help feeling this might have been injudicious candour.



Robert Olivier is a painter. He likes the French Impressionists. He’s obsessed with a woman he may not even know. One day, he flies at a painting in the National Gallery. Admitted into a mental home, he refuses to speak. As the story progresses, this rather interesting situation is sidetracked. Olivier must be crazy in the good old-fashioned sense of the word. At least, that’s almost all the explanation you’ll get.

Andrew Marlow, a psychiatrist, sets out to record Olivier’s history. This entails sentimental reminiscences by women in the painter’s life and trips to exotic locales. Marlow’s perambulations are interspersed by letters between two 19th-century artists who had been lovers. As promised, everyone in the novel paints copiously.

The women are good-looking and, through sheer insistence, one is made aware that Olivier has a looming presence, “dark locks” and dishevelled clothes. Each character comes to that conclusion independently, several times over. Kostova seems to confuse her characters with the paintings they profess to love.

Perhaps this is partly intentional. Kostova begins with a rather obvious mis en scène, conflating text and painting. Presumably, the story that is about to be told must be seen within the framework of this painting. What follows is relentless description, often in an irritatingly formulaic cadence: “it was too pale, translucent”, “The furniture was modern and unobtrusive, incidental”. Sometimes Kostova has a stab at intensity. Lines like “and I felt his selfhood go down through me like lightning” certainly make for a lively read.

A glut of adjectives and frames clutter The Swan Thieves. The novel refers to so many contextual frameworks that it confuses itself. The myth of Leda and the swan is evoked, apparently to question traditional notions of power and sexual domination that it employs. Yeats’s poem is dutifully quoted. Kostova succeeds in making one almost comfortable with this disturbing myth. For a novel about obsession, it’s remarkably placid.

Painters diligently discuss what they feel about painting; a sentiment largely centred on paint under fingernails. Yet the engagement with French Impressionism seems superficial at best. Perhaps Impressionist painting, with its lilt of light and shadow, its fervent brush-stroke of heartfelt immediacy, its rebellious energy, is difficult to depict. Kostova periodically utters “Sisley” and “Monet”, describes paintings in laboured detail and offers a tenuous historical link through the epistolary narrative. Impressionism must serve a functional purpose; it must provide an object for the quest undertaken by Olivier’s psychiatrist.

In yet another ambitious frame of reference, Andrew Marlow is named after Joseph Conrad’s famous narrator. Conrad’s Marlow tells the story of the mysterious Lord Jim and goes on a quest that leads him to the depths of the human psyche, to the very heart of darkness. Andrew Marlow’s quest leads him to Olivier’s secret and, according to Kostova, to a “mystery” that lies at the “heart” of French Impressionism. Only it’s more of a puzzle, complete with clues and a solution, a triumph of the literal.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Interview with Lisa Scottoline

From The Doings Hinsdale (IL) --

Lisa Scottoline talks about latest thriller --

By: Lilli Kuzma --
March 25, 2010 --

Remember the lyrics from "The Patty Duke Show" that described identical cousins: "They look alike, they talk alike, at times they even walk alike, you can lose your mind, when cousins are two of a kind." But murder didn't enter into that light-hearted show.



In Think Twice, the new book by acclaimed writer, Lisa Scottoline, one twin sister definitely loses her mind, and the other may lose her life as a result. With her multiple-viewpoint thriller, Scottoline delivers a fast-forward story that puts the main character in peril by Page 4, bringing new meaning to the description, "page-turner."

"It's important for any novel to do that, to get the reader involved right away," said Scottoline, 54, speaking by phone from her home in Pennsylvania.

"This is a battle between good and evil, and while there is the 'evil' twin, part of the book is about the good and evil in the same person, and the potential for evil in all of us. With Think Twice there is so much more action, darkness. Everyone has dark impulses, someone may wish someone dead."

Scottoline will be at the Borders in La Grange March 29 for a discussion and book signing. Scottoline has written 18 novels since 1994, and she won the prestigious Edgar Award for her second novel, Final Appeal.

Think Twice revisits the characters of Rosato & Associates, a women's law firm in Philadelphia, adeptly incorporating work dynamics, friendships, romantic relationships, parents and family life as interesting sub-plots. The book is also infused with Scottoline's edgy, hip, often "laugh out loud" humor, woven into what is otherwise a harrowing tale.

"I think I'm writing stories about women," said Scottoline. "I write about smart women in difficult situations. And really smart people are also really funny."

Scottoline should know, as she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in three years, then finished law school with honors at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Scottoline also writes a popular weekly column, "Chick Wit" for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has published a collection of her columns in a humorous book, My Next Husband Will Be A Dog. She is twice divorced and refers to her exes as "Thing 1" and "Thing 2." Her daughter, Francesca, 24, is a Harvard grad and emerging writer.

"I learned to write mostly in law school, logically using facts. And I think my newspaper columns are improving my writing, having to (condense) my thoughts into a short space. It's great to involve Francesca in writing the columns, too."

Scottoline laughs often and speaks freely about her home life, where she dotes on her pet dogs, cats, and even chickens. Her Web site contains many pictures of her beloved animals. Writing with a dog or cat in her lap is the norm for Scottoline.

"I feel as if I live on the edge (in my writing), even though I live the life of a housewife in the suburbs!" she said, chuckling.

But Scottoline did do significant research and field work to develop Think Twice, going so far as to roll around in dirt, creep around a Pennsylvania farm field at night, and travel to the Bahamas to develop the final scenes of the book.

"A cornfield really is near my house and there is a wolf in the woods," she said.

In Think Twice, the "good" twin finds herself buried alive in this field, with a wolf sniffing, biting and clawing at the box she's locked inside of.

"I think I improve with each book," said Scottoline. "Writing in multiple viewpoints, this really changed it up. But I'm not one for lots of exposition. Characters are what they do."

Asked if another book is in the works and what it's about, Scottoline would only say:

"I'm in the middle of it right now. Come to the book signing to find out more!"

Monday, May 24, 2010

Review of Fantasy in Death by J.D. Robb

From Blogcritics.org --

Book Review: Fantasy in Death by J. D. Robb --

By: Mel Odom --
Mar 21, 2010 --

J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts) opens her newest murder mystery with New York Police Detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas investigating a homicide involving a top video game designer in Fantasy in Death. The year is 2060, and the world is just enough different than ours to be interesting, although the chase for the murderer seems very familiar.



I enjoyed Robb's treatment of the entertainment available that late in the 21st century, but after seeing all the entertainment dollars that get spent every month and how much technology seems to jump every three or four years, I think she may have seriously underestimated where video gaming and virtual reality may be in the next 50 years.

Robb is a virtuoso at getting a story underway, though. Within just a few pages, she's introduced us to the murder victim, a new way of gaming, and a host of other SF elements that mesh really well in her story.

As usual, Dallas and her ex-criminal husband Roarke end up chasing the same murderer for different reasons, and they end up at cross-purposes now and again. It's a formula, but it's a formula that works and has worked for over 30 novels in this series so far.

Eve Dallas's family and circle of friends has grown exponentially over the books. Each of them show up for cameo bits pretty much as their lives continually get tangled with each other's.

For the most part, I enjoyed Eve's pursuit of the murder investigation. Robb has the procedure down pat, and she's got her characters firmly in place as she marches them forward.

However, the plot in this one seemed to spiral for a while and become repetitious in the middle. And there was no real reason to expand Eve's suspicions past the three surviving partners. The false leads weren't developed quite as expertly as Robb normally does. And the revelation of the killer's identity wasn't astounding in any way.

I did like the fact that Eve and Roarke ended up fighting alone in the virtual reality world, and that Eve "cheated" the perverted system for the win. Fantasy in Death might not be anything new for long-time readers, but it's a solid entry into the long-lived series.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Review of Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein

From South Florida Sun-Sentinel --

Mystery review: 'Hell Gate' by Linda Fairstein --

By Oline H. Cogdill --
March 21, 2010 --

Hell Gate. Linda Fairstein. Dutton. $26.95. 416 pp.

In each of Linda Fairstein's legal thrillers, the author gracefully melds New York City's hidden spots and history into a contemporary novel, showing how little has changed in crime and the ways people treat each other.



This theme is well-served in Fairstein's 12th novel featuring New York City Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper, who specializes in sex crimes. A top-notch plot and realistic situations make "Hell Gate" a first-class tale of New York and the people who built it and now control it.

Politics, sexual trafficking – age-old issues that never go away -- and New York's historical, tax-supported mansions provide a sturdy foundation for "Hell Gate."

Cooper is called to the scene of a rusted freighter that has run aground on a sandbar near Rockaway Beach. The captain has abandoned his vessel, which is loaded with human cargo from Ukraine, including many young women being forced into sexual slavery. The cops also are dealing with Congressman Ethan Leighton whose rising career may be on the skids after he fled the scene of a car accident to cover up an extramarital affair.

Fairstein balances glimpses of New York City history that parallel the contemporary events of "Hell Gate." The horrific importing of young women later forced into prostitution seems ripped from the headlines, but the practice is centuries-old. The 21st century didn't spawn politicians cheating on their wives or denying parenthood, nor are politicial corruption and slush funds modern inventions. All that's changed, Fairstein shows, is the way these events unfurl.

Each outing with Alex brings new insight, and Fairstein is careful not to make her a super sleuth; she is a prosecutor whose job takes her behind the scenes of crimes but, as in real life, the detectives do the investigating.