Lighthearted but not lightweight—a smart, sassy reflection on the varieties of female experience.
SECOND GRAVE ON THE LEFT
-RQHV 'DU\QGD St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $22.99 | e-book: $22.99 | August 16, 2011 978-0-312-36081-8 e-book 978-1-4272-1243-6 Booth #3352
THE TAKER .DWVX $OPD Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (448 pp.) $25.00 | September 6, 2011 978-1-4391-9705-9 Booths #3652-3653; signing on 5/24 from 11 a.m. to noon in signing area A backwoods Maine doctor falls under the spell of a confessed killer whose loves and sorrows go back two centuries.
KIRKUS REVIEWS GUIDE TO THE STARS
Grim Reaper Charley Davidson ()LUVW *UDYH RQ WKH 5LJKW, 2011) returns to solve a missing-person case and to protect the Son of Satan Reyes Farrow from demons. Private investigator Charley Davidson, otherwise known as the Grim Reaper, is woken in the middle of the night by her assistant Cookie, frantically explaining that her friend Mimi disappeared five days earlier and that she received a text message to meet her at a coffee shop. When the two women arrive at their destination, they discover no Mimi, but Charley finds a cryptic message scrawled on the bathroom wall—a clue that will eventually lead them to a tragic event that occurred at a party when Mimi was in high school. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Reyes Alexander Farrow, who has been Charley’s protector and is the Son of Satan, has left his corporeal body and is haunting Charley. In a seductive moment between the two, Farrow confesses that he has left his body because he’s being tortured by demons who want to lure and use Charley as their portal to heaven. Terrified to lose him, Charley insists that he tell her where he has hidden his body to save him from a grisly death. Interwoven subplots include finding out the mysterious identity of Cookie’s ghostly passenger, who resides in the trunk of her car and refuses to crossover, and Charley’s strained relationship with her family. Jones includes back story in this sequel that explains Charley’s powers as the Grim Reaper and her complex relationship with Farrow. Much of that information does little to enlighten new readers to the series. An onslaught of over-the-top, sarcastic and infantile one-liners and observations become increasingly tedious. These inconsequential comments have little connection to the story, and the reader grows weary to not care whether Charley will save Farrow from his demonic torturers or whether she will find the missing Mimi.
When Dr. Luke Findley undresses Lanore McIlvrae, the murder suspect the St. Andrew sheriff has brought into Aroostook County Hospital, he discovers that although her clothes are saturated in blood, her body is unwounded; every drop came from the man she admits she slashed to death. Even so, Lanny tells Luke that the murder was anything but murder and begs him to help her escape. After he’s treated to an unnerving demonstration of her claim that she’s not just an ordinary killer, he agrees. During their headlong flight to Canada and freedom, she fills in her back story for him, and what a back story it is. Lanny’s troubles began at age 12, when she first spotted beautiful Jonathan St. Andrew, the son of the town’s wealthy founder, at church back in 1809. Although Jonathan was happy to acknowledge her love, he never exactly returned it, and her tempestuous tale takes her from romantic disappointments, crises and encounters with evil to a genre-crossing exile in Boston, where she’s taken in by the Mephistophelean savior who’ll become her fate: Count Adair cel Rau, whose own lengthy back story, which stretches back to 1349, is even more eventful than hers. Adair and his unholy retinue don’t suck anyone’s blood, but the gift of eternal life he offers in return for the souls of his lovers and followers will sound awfully familiar to vampire lovers everywhere. Debut novelist Katsu adds heavy foreshadowing, insistent underlining and a suffocating earnestness to this familiar story of the bonds that never die. Beneath the trappings of undead lore is a love story that’s deeply old-fashioned, and not just because the principals were born 200 years ago.
THE VISIBLE MAN .ORVWHUPDQ &KXFN Scribner (256 pp.) $25.00 | October 4, 2011 978-1-4391-8446-2 Booths #3652-3653; galley signing (time TBD) An author best known for his journalism and nonfiction books makes a big leap with his second novel. The former mid-market newspaper rock critic has attracted a growing following since his breakout debut ()DUJR 5RFN &LW\, 2001), which was all about coming of age far from the media centers and arbiters of hip. Since then, he has expanded from music to sports and pop culture in general, always reflecting a Gen X attitude at odds with the baby-boomer verities. Thus, it’s characteristic to have his second novel dismiss a pot-smoking Beatles fan as “listening to dead hippies sing about the Maharishi.� Yet this novel is far more daring and ambitious than his debut novel ('RZQWRZQ 2ZO, 2008), which was mainly a fictionalized version of coming of age in North Dakota. It concerns a therapist and a most unusual patient. Initially, he refuses to meet her in person or to allow her to ask questions, opting instead for long monologues over the phone (which constitute a hefty chunk of the narrative). It’s unclear to both the therapist and the reader why he has sought her services, since he doesn’t seem to be looking for advice or even perspective. Instead, he has |
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