I started re-reading some of my Michael Crichton books since with the release of his new posthumous book, I was reminded he’s not around anymore. Though The Andromeda Strain is 40 years old, it’s still a good read.

Four scientists, experts in clinical microbiology, epidemiology, pathology, and electrolyte chemistry, are brought together in secrecy to the Project Wildfire laboratory, also a secret and hidden below the Nevada desert. Though they have state-of-art equipment at their disposal, they are cut off from the outside world. Their mission is to find an antidote to an unknown microorganism that killed everyone in a small town except for an old derelict and an infant.

If the team can’t find the antidote the microorganism may cause a pandemic, but it is like nothing they have seen before. Not only is it foreign in origin, but it is extraterrestrial. As the team begins to unravel what is called The Andromeda Strain, the microorganism breaks the sterile seal in the laboratory and puts their own lives at risk.

You can read in The Andromeda Strain why Michael Crichton was bound for fame as a novelist. It has his trademark combination of fact extrapolated to the next level in order to create a suspenseful thriller.

Title: The Copper Bracelet

Authors: (In order of chapter written) Jeffery Deaver, Gayle Lynds, David Hewson, Jim Fusilli, John Gilstrap, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, David Corbett, Linda Barnes, Jenny Siler, David Liss, P.J. Parrish, Brett Battles, Lee Child, Jon Land, James Phelan

Narrator: Alfred Molina

Publisher: Audible Inc and International Thriller Writers Inc [2009]

Length: 8hrs 38 minutes

Genre: Thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A true edge of your seat thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This book features the same band of war-criminal hunting ‘Volunteers’ who first appeared in The Chopin Manuscript, which, like this one, featured chapters written by different thriller writers. In the opening sequence Harold Middleton, leader of the Volunteers, and key members of his crew are nearly the victims of a hired assassin but, of course, they turn the tables and instead begin to learn that the copper bracelet which the assassin was wearing is far more than a piece of jewellery. The team must track down someone known as The Scorpion and prevent the world exploding into a new world war when a conflict between India and Pakistan is orchestrated by some nefarious types.

If Frederick Forsythe had written a season of 24 it would, I imagine, have turned out a bit like this book. It’s full of global politics, double-crossing assassins and the implausible high-tech gadgetry that a decent thriller must have. But, probably because each one is written by a different author all trying to leave their mark, the chapters each have their own story arc and cliff-hanger endings so it’s even more action packed than an average thriller. There are undoubtedly more twists and turns in the overall plot than would be the case if the story was written by a single author but it holds together well and there are surprisingly few loose ends left over. It’s not a particularly thought-provoking story but it didn’t lose my attention once.

As tends to be the way with thrillers the characters aren’t particularly well-developed, partly because they’re busy leaping out of the way of thermobaric bombs and partly because there are so darned many of them (that’s probably another side-effect of the multiple authorship). However the notion of a group of people tracking down the world’s war criminals is more clearly defined in this book and some of them were quite engaging in their brief appearances.

As he did with the first book Alfred Molina narrates brilliantly, taking the numerous characters of multiple nationalities in his stride. As someone who is a real fan of audio books I am pleased to see this audio only experiment continue. It’s quite clear the authors have fun collaborating as a change from their solo pursuits and I can’t imagine too many listeners wouldn’t experience a similar sense of fun with this classic roller-coaster of a thriller.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As far as I can tell there are no plans for the book to be available in print but a version for the kindle is due in January 2010.

I reviewed The Chopin Manuscript, the first book in this audio-only series, earlier this year

The Susquehanna Writers, of which I’m an honorary member, have been reaching out to support area Indie bookstores.  We gave out gift baskets to two Indie bookstores this fall, and now we’re banding together for a group booksigning at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA, on December 19, 2009. A large group of authors will have books for sale and will autograph them for you. From romance to history, from mystery to self-help, from thrillers to YA; you’ll find something to please everyone on your holiday gift list. And if these books aren’t enough to entice you (though they certainly should be), the Midtown Scholar offers the largest array of rare and used books between New York and Chicago. They have more than ONE MILLION secondhand and out-of-print books in all fields.

Need a gift for that hard-to-please person? Consider a book. It’s a gift they’ll treasure for a lifetime.

If you want to know where and when to show up, here are the additional details:

3-5 pm, December 19, 2009

3401 N 6th St
Harrisburg, PA 17110
(717) 236-2665

And I’ll be there to sign copies of Rihanna and Summer Lovin‘. Feel free to drop by and get your copy signed if you already have one, or pick up some as gifts for the teens in your life.

Mysteries and Thrillers Seminar

Required Readings

Nilsen, Alleen Pace and Kenneth L. Donelson. Literature for Today’s Young Adults. 8th ed.  Boston:  Pearson, 2009:  200-208  (IMS stacks: Z1037.A1D578 2009)

A straight-forward introduction to mystery novels for young adults: types, popular authors, and the influence of Sherlock Holmes.

Gavin, Adrienne E. “Enigma’s Variation: the Puzzling Mysteries of Avi, Ellen Raskin, Diana Wynne Jones and Chris Van Allsburg.” Mystery in Children’s Literature: From the Rational to the Supernatural. Ed. Adrienne E. Gavin and Christopher Routledge. Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2001: 210-218.  (Copy placed on reserve at the GRC)

This article discusses texts by four innovative writers to demonstrate the possibilities of enigmatic and innovative originality in children’s mysteries.

Recommended Readings

Bucher, Katherine and KaaVonia Hinton. Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation and Appreciation. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle City: Pearson Education, 2006: 153-183.

Another introduction to mysteries for Young Adults, with a focus on their value to students in the classroom and teaching tools.

Cannon, Peter. “The Mystery of the Thriller.” Publishers Weekly 21 April 2008: 62.

In this one-page article, Cannon discusses the factors that influence whether a novel is reviewed as “general fiction” or as a “category mystery”.

Charles, John and Joanna Morrison. “Clueless? Adult Mysteries with Young Adult Appeal.” VOYA 31.5 (2008): 392-395.

Every December since 1997, VOYA has highlighted mysteries that are catalogued for adults and also have appeal to young adults.  Most of these articles also include reviews of mystery reader’s advisory resources.

Coats, Karen. “The Mysteries of Postmodern Epistemology: Stratemeyer, Stine, and Contemporary Mystery for Children.” Mystery in Children’s Literature: From the Rational to the Supernatural. Ed. Adrienne E. Gavin and Christopher Routledge. Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2001. 184-201.

Mystery in Children’s Literature contains a number of interesting critical articles that examine the functions of mystery in writing for children and young adults.  This article examines a change in children’s mysteries from the rational, order-restorying nature of Edward Streatmeyer’s detective series (like Nancy Drew)to the complex, uncertain and open-ended nature of contemporary mystery written for children (like R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series and Gary Crew’s Strange Objects).

Yarbrough, Scott D. “Literary Aspects of Mystery Fiction.” Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction. Ed. Carl Rollyson. Rev. ed. Vol. 5. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2008. 1919-1925.

This article, along with the following article titled “Mainstream Fiction v. Mystery Fiction” by David Peck (pages 1926-1931) may be useful to those interested in the differences, if any, between mainstream and mystery writers and their work.  This volume also contains articles on thrillers, graphic novels related to mystery and detective fiction, and feminist and lesbian mystery fiction.

Awards Websites

Malice Domestic Ltd. Agatha Awards. 2009. 22 November 2009.  http://www.malicedomestic.org/agathaawards.html.

The Agatha Awards are awarded for “cozy” mysteries:  no explicit sex, bloodshed, or unwarranted violence.  Awards are made in several categories including: best children/young adult fiction, best novel, best first mystery, best short sotry and lifetime achievement.

Mystery Writers of America. Search the Edgar Award Winners and Nominees. 2009. 23 November 2009 http://www.theedgars.com/edgarsDB/index.php.

Mystery Writers of America sponsors the most respected awards for mystery novels.  At this site, you can search for nominees and award winners for the categories of “Young Adult” since 1989and “Juvenile” since 1961.

First of all, I must wish all our US friends and contacts a very happy Thanksgiving Day – hope it’s all going swimmingly for you. Here at the other side of the water, however, I fear I have been overtaken by a determined wave of period pain (garrrgggghhh ….) so my day of pootling about and novel-writing has turned into a day of rolling around on the bed clutching a hot water bottle, groaning and blinking myopically at the TV. Loose Women was much-needed – aren’t they always?… It’s a long while since I’ve had a bout like that – I hope it doesn’t mean I’m going back to the old and rather nasty days, as I thought my various operations, pill cocktails and New Age remedies had got the whole dang thing under control. Deep sigh. Or maybe it’s the onset of those menopausal years? Ah, Lordy, even deeper sigh. Hey ho, what fun life is.

Anyway, the good news is that I’m feeling much better now and have even eaten some lunch. Still feel utterly shattered and as if I’ve been put through a mangle twice, but hell that’s how I usually feel after a normal day, so no difference there then. I really must get rid of that pesky mangle.

More interesting things that have happened this week are that I’ve sent in Thorn in the Flesh to Lulu Books ready for republishing that one. I hope it will be fully on the online markets again next year, but really with Amazon, who can tell? They’re not known for speed. Have also enjoyed my online poetry course on Wednesday. We had to write a poem which included the Ted Hughes’ line: Not a leaf flinched, nobody smiled. Here’ my effort:

Night

I carried the darkness on my skin
down to the lake where the air was still.
Not a leaf flinched, nobody smiled
and the swans sailed by as I took my fill

of the deepest blue in the water’s calm.
I gazed at the point where the elements meet –
the pond and the breeze, the flood and the wind,
decisions that lapped at the path by my feet.

When the sky darkened, I drifted away
back to the place where the people are bright.
But a smile is only one kind of truth
and I hold in my heart the knowledge of night.

It’s amazing what a depressed lunch-hour slumped on a bench at the University lake will do for you really, and Lordy but some days are like that. I’m also surprised by how much I enjoyed working with a rhyme scheme. Not something I do often, but the course is taking me to places I hadn’t anticipated on visiting, and that can only be a good thing.

I’ve also finally finished my book trailer for A Stranger’s Touch, but I’ve decided not to upload it anywhere until after Christmas, as the book isn’t due to be published till the middle of January. So I fear you’ll have to wait. All I can say is I’m very pleased with the pictures and music I’ve managed to find, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

I’ve also been musing on the terrible scenarios in flood-devastated Cumbria – I can’t imagine what people must be going through up there and – though it’s useless to say – really my every good wish goes out to them. I’m also shocked by the fact that the Government isn’t going to be able to mend any of the ruined bridges until Christmas. What the hell sort of a country are we living in??? Lord H says why on earth don’t they ask the army to fix the bridges – after all the Royal Engineers can run one up in 18 minutes in a warzone whilst under fire, and their bridges can take the weight of several tanks. It seems like the ideal solution to me, but perhaps the ruddy red tape is just too much for us all these days?? Bureaucracy is truly the death of action.

Meanwhile, back on safer land, I fear that Strictly Come Dancing is buckling under the weight of all those leg & foot injuries. Is it something they’re putting in their coffee? Really, this series – despite the joys of the lovely Chris & Ola – is becoming something of a disaster zone in itself …

Anne Brooke – mangled, mean and magnificent

Synopsis: Based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son across a desolate America ravaged by an unnamed cataclysm that has destroyed most life on earth, leaving a barren landscape populated by cannibals and thieves.

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garret Dillahunt, Michael K. Williams

Director: John Hillcoat

My personal opinion: this film is going to be rather interesting and worth to see at least once. So, enjoy!

Sometimes I think I’m never going to read another big-name writer, especially one who works in suspense-thriller realm. I really thought that would be the case when I finished “The Scarecrow” a few months ago.

I told myself I would spend the next half-dozen books reading writers whose names I’d never heard before. (Turns out in some cases there’s a reason you’d never heard the names.)

So when “9 Dragons” came long, I found I couldn’t resist Connelly’s next challenge for Harry Bosch.  After so many entertaining yarns, why would I ever swear off Michael Connelly? Maybe it was Harry Bosch I missed.

When I had finished “Scarecrow,” one word came to mind as I closed the book:

Tired.

Connelly is a former reporter—and so am I (twenty years worth).  Connelly’s newsroom tidbits are good and so is the idea of writing about a newsroom veteran on his way through the downsizing wringer.  The “newspapers in decline” backdrop is nifty. It sets up a terrific timeframe for the book, that our hero has only two weeks—until his job expires—to report and write a story that will light the city on fire.  The idea of “springing an innocent” during his final run has considerable appeal, of course, and Jack McEvoy has just the “case” he needs, a wrongly accused inner city kid.

But it’s not a “case” and that’s where I think Connelly has McEvoy approach things too much like a cop (hello, Harry Bosch) and not like a reporter.  Not like a reporter at all. McEvoy’s methods, approach, mobility and style are much more cop-like than reporter-like, even given the loose license McEvoy is given since this is allegedly his “last story.”

“This is getting pretty far- fetched, isn’t it?” McEvoy asks when thinking about how many firewalls and computer systems the bad guy would have had to crash in order to wreak so much havoc within the L.A. Times network.

The answer is, “yes, pretty far-fetched.”

The plot feels baked with a random series of cookie cutters. The bad guy’s warped sense of humanity is sprung from the familiar inner volcano of psycho/sexual perversions.  The bad guy saddles up next to McEvoy at a bar without McEvoy knowing it’s him. (Seen this before?) FBI agent Rachel Walling loses her badge and then regains it, drum roll please, just in the nick of time.  (I’ve never seen bureaucracy move so fast.) The bad guy is a mentor for other up-and-coming psychos and his students have to “prove” their worth to the master.  The ticking clock near the end—the most thought and action ever recorded in a 45-seconds span—is straight pulp.

Two lines in particular made me think Connelly had a good idea for this book and then mailed it in.

Number one from McEvoy: “The thought chilled me to the center of my soul.”

Number two: “I was part of the story again—I had killed one of the people the story was about.”

Some writers would have ripped those up, started up. I had concerns for franchise writers everwhere, even the good ones.

And then I read “9 Dragons.”

Action-packed, yes.

Still Harry Bosch?

All the way. “9 Dragons” is a book of reactions.  There are no long scenes where Bosch is thoughtfully reviewing a case file and uncovering what others missed. There is no granular deconstruction of a case, but it is still smart, deductive Harry Bosch, just flashing a bit more James Bond this time around. Even with heaps of action and some heart-pounding hunts, the plot is intricate and does some nifty dips and turns at the end.

“9 Dragons” follows a deadly series of steps stemming from the murder of a liquor store owner in L.A., near where Bosch had done some work during the big Los Angeles riots.  The murder quickly propels Bosch into warp speed when his daughter’s life is threatened half way around the world, in Hong Kong. The situation gives Bosch plenty of ripe opportunities to question every relationship in his life—partners, other detectives, ex-wife and daughter too. In “9 Dragons,” it’s Bosch’s agenda.

“Bosch was most at home in a case when he was pushing the action himself, setting the track for others to follow. He wasn’t a sideman. He had to drive the beat.”

The steps to find the precise building in Hong Kong where his daughter is being held are clever.  It’s much too early in the proceedings, of course, to actually find his daughter, however, and Bosch’s blood boils harder. The relentless pursuit from that point forward is cinematic and hard-charging.  Completely original? Perhaps not. Well-done? Your fingernails will attest to the suspense.

“9 Dragons” is Harry Bosch out of his clinical, analytical element. He is “in some sort of medieval painting.”  The normal assumptions aren’t as dependable. Living out on the edge of his senses and at the bitter tips of his anger, Bosch makes some serious mistakes.

“9 Dragons” is quite a ride.

Franchise writers? I’ll try to be more selective in the future.

No one blows up the world with quite the same aplomb as Roland Emmerich. Whether it’s aliens decimating our major cities in Independence Day or global warming burying the statue of liberty nipple-deep in snow, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Emmerich regards being filmmaker as something akin to a six year-old with a massive set of LEGOS. Sure you can build stuff, but the real fun is smashing it. His unique talent is melding this sensibility with storytelling talent just mediocre enough to keep the audience from emotionally-connecting with the world he presents onscreen. If he were a better filmmaker, we might feel a moment of dread at watching the wanton devastation unfold before us. Thankfully for us all, he’s not. This was a liability in his last film, 10,000 BC, in which he was called upon to, you know, tell a story. Instead he ended up meandering through a bunch of half-baked ideas, while expecting us to care about his characters (never a strong point in a Roland Emmerich movie),  and in the process did to history what Roman Polanski did to that 13 year-old girl in Jack Nicholson’s hot tub. With 2012, he is back where he belongs: using the spectacle of destroying everything in sight to distract us from the annoying characters that populate the movie.

2012 takes its title from the belief that the Mayans predicted that the world will end in December of 2012. Of course, that reading of Mayan calendar is by-and-large bunk, but whack-job conspiracy theorists still believe it (society having aged out of the whole “moon landing was a hoax” thing). Anyway, the Mayans do not really factor into the movie apocalypse that unfolds in 2012, and if I have one regret about this movie, that would be it. I was really hoping for some cool tie-in to the ancient Mayans—maybe the end of the world was brought about by rampaging Quetzalycoatls or an enormous Olmec head. No dice. Emmerich basically ditches the Mayan thing for a planetary alignment which causes the sun to create mutated neutrinos which superheat the Earth’s core and cause the crust to become unmoored. Tell me you wouldn’t rather see the Quetzalycoatls now.

Anyway, the movie mostly follows two separate plotlines: in one Chiwetal Ejiofor plays the National Geology Advisor (*skicker*) to the President  (Danny Glover), and warns of the impending disaster. He then assists them with the preparations for continuity of governance in the aftermath of the end of the world (this is a real optimistic administration). The other plotline sees John Cusack—who falls ass-backward into the knowledge of the upcoming endtimes—trying to rescue his estranged wife Kate (Amanda Peet), her new husband Gordon (Tom McCarthy) and their children (who cares). This involves utilizing Gordon’s sub-par piloting skills and turboprop they stole from a wrecked airport. It also involves a lot of last-minute take-offs in which the little plane must outrun a crumbling runway and dodge falling debris. They do this, like, eight times.

But along with those two main plots, we also have (in no particular order):

*  First Daughter Thandie Newton attempting to preserve the world’s great works of art

* The blossoming romance between Ejiofor and Newton.

*  Ejiofor’s jazz-musician father stuck on a luxury cruise ship playing a gig when the disaster hits. Mostly, this shows us what it looks like when a big cruise ship capsizes (and what it looks like: pretty cool!)

*  His buddy and musical partner (George Segal) trying to reconnect with his son, whom he hasn’t spoken to since the kid married a Japanese woman (apparently, in Segal’s world it’s still 1943)

* Cusack’s attempts to reconnect with his children, who seem to prefer Gordon to him (his efforts are ultimately successful when he repeatedly saves their lives, and Gordon is ground up in the gears of a massive ship).    

* Cusack’s daughter’s efforts to overcome her bedwetting (seems like a relatively minor thing in the face of the end of the world, but hey, I’m not a parent).

The plotlines converge in Himalayas, where the world governments have built a fleet (well, three) ships to carry a couple hundred thousand people to safety, as well as various and sundry animals to repopulate the Earth (we’re treated to shots of giraffes being airlifted, which are simply glorious is their sheer absurdity—and what the hell would you need giraffes for, anyway? Wouldn’t cows be a little more helpful?) This leads to much sturm und drang over who gets onto the ships and why. Seems the government sold seats to billionaires and Ejiofor feels real bad about that and so does Newton, and the movie takes a whole populist tone. Of course, by this time most of the world is destroyed, so their bold stance is mostly moot. Emmerich isn’t real good at pretending to care about people.

But the movie’s big draw is its scenes of unmitigated carnage, and lemme tell you: they do not disappoint. California sinks into the sea (hah!). Vegas is swallowed by the Earth (holy crap, the Bible-thumpers were right!). And Washington DC is swept away by a massive tsunami, which dumps the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy onto the White House (I’m tempted to call this a bit of editorializing against massive defense spending, but really, it’s probably just Emmerich’s love of smashing things into each other.) This is a movie that must be seen on the big screen. You cannot fully appreciate the details (like tiny CGI people dangling off of collapsing buildings) unless it is seen on the big screen. Also, I give Emmerich mad props for sparing us the site of New York being destroyed and, instead seizing upon the potential of so many other cities to be decimated (hey, the Vatican just squashed a bunch of praying Catholics! Awesome!).

Of course the character scenes are dumb enough to make my eyes glaze over, but you just run out for popcorn during those. Or nap. It’s a long movie, you need your rest. The first time something blows up, the Dolby BOOM! will wake you up. Or you can mentally write love letters to Thandie Newton, who—let’s face it—you really want heavily donating her genes into the pool to repopulate the Earth.  

Still, I can’t help but think all of this could have been improved by a Quetzalcoatl or two.

Stephanie Meyer’s Mormon tale of self-denial continues its filmic adaptation series with The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, you know that Meyer’s books were huge hits amongst the tween-teen girl set and that, subsequently, the movie series was destined to become a huge hit as well. Twilight was released in 2008 and the tepid vampire nonsense continues with New Moon.

All your pals are here for the fun, but there’s a different director behind the camera in case anybody notices. Chris Weitz, who directed The Golden Compass, is in charge of making the continuation of Bella and Edward’s romance fly with its target audience. There is literally no attempt to reach beyond the target audience here, either.

Kristen Stewart is back as Bella Swan, the long-suffering, selfish brat living in Forks with her father. She is still in love with Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the vampire, and is concerned that she’s going to grow into an old woman and Edward won’t want her anymore. Of course, Edward is perpetually 17 and this bothers the now-18-year-old Bella. The Cullen family elects to throw her a birthday party and it is revealed that Bella may be more in danger than originally realized.

The Cullens decide to leave Forks and this sends Bella into a fit of insanity and weird behaviour. She starts hanging around Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and they develop their friendship and toy with the idea of romance. Soon, though, it is discovered that there is more to Jacob than meets the eye and beneath his buff exterior lies something…well, fluffy. Through a series of events and a little Romeo and Juliet twist, Bella and Edward are finally reunited in time for a crucial question.

There are so many basic problems with Meyer’s entire series that it really leaves the film adaptations with no chance right out of the gate. Granted, a decent cast and a better script could make something out of the limp narrative and awful construction of the Twilight series, but most of this stuff was doomed from the start.

For starters, Bella is one of the most self-absorbed and repugnant characters in recent memory and she is touted as a veritable heroine. She isn’t the least bit aware of the way in which she uses virtually every character in the picture, either, and this is worsened when one realizes that she is incessantly drawn to men who are destined to abuse her. This concept is lightly brushed off as a byproduct of being with a “werewolf” or a “vampire,” but a deeper look reveals something quite sinister in the overall message.

New Moon finds Stewart’s Bella asking Edward to take her soul. This is an interesting conception when one considers what’s really on the line here. For Bella and Edward’s epic romance to mean anything on a large scale, something must be on the line. Of course, Meyer and Co. realize that there is nothing to draw these characters together so the mythos must draw us (the audience) in instead. That leaves us with hollow posturing and showiness that the actors are only more than willing to portray insipidly.

See, Stewart and Pattinson and Lautner simply cannot make this stuff interesting because it means nothing to them. The idea that Bella is drawn into abusive relationships with men is ignored in favour of this great love; the notion that Edward and Jacob will hurt her physically is brushed aside because the “love story” should be the focus. Indeed, nothing about the “love” Bella feels is presented as dangerous. What is presented as dangerous is riding on motorcycles or cliff-jumping.

As a film, New Moon is incredibly dull, hollow and absurd. The effects are meaningless and crappy, the rare action sequences cut off just at the point of interest, the romantic angles mean absolutely nothing, and the inferences of Mormon moralizing are flat-out vile. Weitz pulls the movie deeper into the sludge, giving us characters who are reprehensible and, on top of it all, bland in their declarations of emotion to one another.

The goal, however, isn’t for people to actually consider how bizarre and obscene the messages are here (‘tis better to fall in love with a man who puts you in perpetual danger than it is to try independence and ride motorcycles). Instead, Weitz and everyone else involved with this turd have ensured that the audience is far too busy concentrating on the shirtless eye candy and inane attempts at tension and “humour” that take place here. And the scary thing is, for the most part, it appears to be working.

1.0/10

Trailer:

This week we are pleased to welcome back staff from the WRL Circulation Services Division to BFGB. Today’s review comes from Mandy Malone, who opens the week with an exciting and thought-provoking thriller.

Upon finishing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I set the book aside, shook my head, and muttered my frustration with Stieg Larsson. Not because I was unhappy with the book, far from it. Rather, I was caught off guard by how much the novel engaged me on an intellectual level, and how reaching the last page filled me with an unexpected sense of loss and despair – a reaction I don‘t typically have when I read a book. I could only react with bemused frustration towards the author who evoked such emotions.

Set in Larsson’s native Sweden, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo begins with a premise that seems simple enough, at least on the surface. For more than 40 years, an octogenarian industrialist named Henrik Vanger has been haunted by the disappearance of his beloved great-niece Harriet. Vanger is convinced that Harriet was murdered and he wants to make one last effort to solve the mystery. He asks Mikael Blomkvist, an outspoken journalist recently convicted of libel, to reexamine the case and, hopefully, find the solution. Blomkvist is skeptical about the case, but in addition to a handsome fee, the bait Vanger dangles before him makes the offer too good to pass up. Vanger has information that will enable Blomkvist to clear himself in the libel case. As Blomkvist’s investigation proceeds, he crosses paths with Lisbeth Salander, whose backstory forms the other part of the narrative. Salander, who may be one of the most compelling anti-heroines of contemporary literature, is a 24-year-old pierced and tattooed genius computer hacker who works as a researcher for a security company. She’s also sullen and almost pathologically antisocial and has been under court ordered guardianship since she was a teenager. The character is frequently compared to a disturbing Pippi Longstocking. Together, Blomkvist and Salander uncover a legacy of dark family secrets with links to a series of unsolved murders, untangle a complicated web of financial corruption, and forge a unique personal connection.

Aside from Larsson’s complex plot and characters, what I found myself contemplating long after I finished the book were its themes of free will and personal responsibility, particularly when it comes to criminal activity. Larsson’s villains commit horrific acts, and Blomkvist and Salander are often at odds as to whether or not an offender’s behavior is shaped by their background. Blomkvist believes that criminal behavior is largely influenced by societal forces and/or upbringing; Salander vehemently disagrees, believing that wrongdoing is a matter of choice regardless of the offender‘s background. “It’s as if we no longer believe anyone has a will of their own,” she says at one point. While Salander herself exacts revenge on certain characters in the novel, she only targets those who commit evil acts. I like it when a book offers themes I can really sink my teeth into, and I was pleasantly surprised I found it with this book.

Larsson died after completing this book and two sequels, The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (due out in June 2010).

Check the WRL catalog for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Believe it or not, Roland Emmerich actually explores a common theme in most of his disaster movies. He is very concerned with how people unite during a catastrophe and is interested in how they come out of it as human beings. Now there’s obviously nothing nuanced about Emmerich’s approach and his conclusions aren’t every very logical or meaningful, but there is a method to the madness beyond blowing stuff up real good.

With 2012, Emmerich blows things up real good and then some in creating one of the biggest and baddest disaster pictures of all time. It is a ridiculous motion picture in just about every sense of the word, but it delivers a thrilling first half and packs a slew of awe-inspiring visuals into its colossal runtime before running out of gas when Emmerich tries to put too fine a point on things.

2012 is of course Emmerich’s take on the various disasters predicted for the end of the world. It invokes a host of myths about our planet’s grand finale, ranging from the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar to the beliefs of the Mayans. The earth starts to get in trouble due to solar flare bombardment, we are told, and that causes a series of events that plunge the world into destruction. California falls into the Pacific, for instance, and a slew of earthquakes and tsunamis wreck the joint with style.

Through it all, Emmerich has us follow a cast of unnecessary characters. John Cusack is one, playing a writer from Los Angeles that manages to make it through a zillion improbable circumstances with his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), two kids and his ex-wife’s new man (Thomas McCarthy). Danny Glover gets to be president, too, and Thandie Newton is the president’s daughter. There’s also a host of scientists and crazies warning the planet, including Woody Harrelson as a hermit/conspiracy theorist.

2012 manages to roll its improbable, silly scenario out for quite a good long while thanks to some absolutely dazzling effects. Watching the destruction of Los Angeles is especially thrilling, as Emmerich lets the ground gobble everything up in brilliant light and colour. The tsunamis and earthquakes do their stuff and give the characters lots of cool crashing stuff to fly around and drive through. This provides copious amounts of popcorn-munching entertainment and should be seen on a big screen to truly appreciate it.

Of course, Emmerich does eventually drop the ball. Things get a little fuzzy and repetitive when the various large-scale attempts to survive start emerging. There’s a whole bunch of “arks,” apparently, and they were built by the private sector to ensure the survival of society’s elite. This was done in secret until the last minute, amazingly enough, and their existence generates the movie’s ethical quandaries.

Emmerich just isn’t very good at the ethical stuff, though, and the film stumbles when he starts to thin things out. Telling the “human story” doesn’t particularly work with this disaster flick, especially when it involves more dogs and kids than Independence Day. The problems emerge when it becomes obvious as to where certain characters are gravitating, making for many a groan-worthy moment in what was a pretty slick, deadly disaster pic.

In the end, 2012 gets a pass because it delivers the goods in a big way. It’s worth a look or two just to see how cool the effects look and how well Emmerich can blow stuff up when he really wants to. His patience and timing with the destruction is especially admirable, as he doesn’t “Michael Bay” it with overwhelming motion. The Los Angeles scenes are incredible. But when things start drawing to their conclusion, don’t be surprised if you find yourself looking at your watch.

5.9/10

Trailer:

When it comes to trashy movies, there are generally two different categories. The first is the trashy movie that knows it’s a trashy movie, while the second and much, much worst category is the trashy movie that has no awareness of its trashiness. Luckily, Obsessed falls into the former category and builds to the climax that everyone who’s anyone wants to see. It also manages to reach the inexorable apex of its story without being boring along the way, which certainly earns it some points.

Directed by Steve Shill, who has worked on some pretty terrific HBO programs, Obsessed picks up on the scenario from Fatal Attraction somewhat and builds it to a knock-down-drag-out fight in the final sequences. This is a movie that is all about the build and all about the tension of what will happen and it uses every resource imaginable to do so.

Idris Elba is good as the happily married Derek Charles. He’s a successful executive vice president of a successful company and he’s living the dream. Derek’s marriage to Sharon Charles (Beyoncé Knowles) is a happy one and their child, Kyle, is the centre of their universe. As one might expect, everything changes when temp Lisa Sheridan (Ali Larter) steps into the picture. She meets Derek in an elevator and instantly becomes envious of what he has.

Lisa obsesses over Derek, using all of her assets to get at him in any possible way. She aims to seduce him initially, but the obsession grows and she begins to want to be in his life as a permanent fixture. Derek is having none of it, however, and this puts a significant strain on her plan. She works hard to get at him, drugging him at a business retreat and taking advantage of him. This leads to difficulty between Derek and Sharon, but the truth eventually comes out and leads to Sharon “asserting herself.”

One doesn’t go see a popcorn flick like Obsessed to ruminate about the nuances of the performances or the direction. Shill does work some nice tricks, though, and his approach to the material is clean and unfussy. He builds objects well, like a drink with a drug in it or a glass table, and knows how to draw our attention to the right places.

The match-up between Larter and Knowles is every bit as good as it should be, invoking every piece of cheesy fight cliché to get the job done in a sequence that literally tears the house apart. The two women really go at it and it works as a fun, thrilling sequence that ends as it should. It is the main event of the picture and Shill delivers the goods with a combination of timing and over-the-top glee. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Obsessed is really a simple motion picture. Everybody holds up their end of the bargain and nobody comes up short, including the supporting cast. This is a movie that doesn’t stretch, doesn’t move mountains and doesn’t overreach. It certainly knows its boundaries and Shill does well to work within his parameters, taking few risks and delivering an entertaining, satisfying guilty pleasure of a picture that boasts a really cool fight scene to close things off aptly.

The film doesn’t bore along the way, either, and it’s fun to watch Larter attempt to scoop Elba’s character with a variety of sneaky attempts. She plays a good villainous woman here and matches up well with Knowles’ assertive but happy Sharon. There are also some good early moments that allow each actress to try their hand at subtle digs. Overall, Obsessed is just good fun. It’s a good matinee or drive-in picture that goes down easy with a soda and a nice big tub of popcorn.

5.9/10

Trailer:

The reality is that in today’s world, if you want to be an independent filmmaker you have to embrace the idea of DIY distribution.

Even if you are able  to secure a traditional deal for some or all of the rights, the filmmaker has to become part of the distribution and marketing of his or her film in order for the film to be successful.   Using the examples of perhaps the two recently most successful  indies,  ”Paranormal Activity” and “Precious”  in both cases, the filmmakers have been instrumental in getting the word out to the audiences even though the films are being released by traditional distributors.

Of course, if I am not able to sell some or all of the rights to “Claustrophobia”, it becomes my job to be the distributor in fact.   At the moment, it is unclear what path the film will follow (traditional, DIY, or a hybrid of both.)

In any case,  I will be putting the word out soon through various social networks and a widening circle of friends and follows to help me reach “Claustrophobia’s” audiences.    I’ll talk more about this later.

Title: Too Close to Home

Author: Linwood Barclay

Publisher: Orion Books [2009]

ISBN: 978-1-4091-0209-0

Length: 466 pages

Genre: Thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 2.5/5

One-liner: A bit superficial and predictable for me but those who like plot twists and turns should enjoy it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Teenager Derek Cutter has a plan. He’ll hide in his next door neighbour and best friend Adam Langley’s house when Adam and his parents go on holidays. Then Derek will have a venue for hooking up with his girlfriend Penny. Things go awry when the Langley family returns home only an hour after leaving but while Derek is trying to work out how to sneak out without being discovered the entire Langley family is killed by intruders. The next morning Derek’s parents, Jim and Ellen, are shocked to learn of their neighbours’ fate and Derek says nothing about what he saw or heard the previous night. However, Jim Cutter learns some things that make him wonder if the Langley family were killed mistakenly.

I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye earlier this year and what grabbed me most were the thoughtful depictions of a couple’s individual and joint struggles in a time of crisis for their family. In Too Close to Home the characters were not nearly as engaging. Jim Cutter, whose point of view occupies most of the book, is superficial and he didn’t seem to react authentically to much of what was going on in his life. His response to people he didn’t like (punching them) was juvenile and became dull (he did it four times that I can recall) and overall I was bored by him. I never bought Ellen’s character at all but I can’t really say why without giving away spoilers but I think she waited far too long in terms of the internal logic of the story to share her secret with her husband. The only person who I really thought was depicted well was their teenage son Derek but he wasn’t enough of a pivotal role to hold the book together for me.

I also struggled to maintain interest in the plot. It seemed to take forever to get going and, aside from a few minor surprises, was quite predictable. The killer was obvious to me at the moment of their introduction and, even though it had three twists too many, the end of the convoluted plagiarism thread was easy to forecast. There seemed to me to be too many ideas jammed into this one story and so nothing really got explored terribly deeply and the fact that one thread was a very (very) long and obvious red herring didn’t really work.

The book is not terrible. But, as is the way of things, if something grabs my heart in some way I forgive its flaws and when something doesn’t grab me I do admit to becoming overly picky. For tangible and intangible reasons this book just didn’t grab me and so I’ve undoubtedly gotten hot under the collar about things that don’t really matter. However if you haven’t tried Linwood Barclay yet I’d recommend No Time For Goodbye.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I reviewed Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye in February this year

Other, far more positive, reviews of Too Close to Home can be found at Material Witness (who thinks it’s a better book than No Time for Goodbye), Peeking Between the Pages and A Bookworm’s World

There was a time when I believed, with the police and the media and my stunned parents, that I was the redeemed one, the boy borne safely home on the ebb of whatever freak tide carried Peter and Jamie away. Not any more. In ways too dark and crucial to be called metaphorical, I never left that wood.

In Knocknaree, Ireland in 1984, young Adam Ryan and two of his friends disappeared into the woods near their home. Ryan was later found standing in the woods, his shoes filled with blood, in a near-catatonic state. He has no memory of what happened in the woods or where his friends ended up, and he’s done everything he can to forget the experience, move on with his life, and prevent people from finding out that he was the boy who came back.

Now, twenty years later, Adam Ryan has become Rob Ryan, and he’s a homicide detective. When a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in a clearing where Knocknaree’s woods used to be, Rob and his partner (and very close friend) Cassie Maddox are called to investigate, and Rob, wondering if this murder is somehow connected to the long-ago disappearance of his friends, is simultaneously excited and terrified.

What if he gets answers? What if he remembers something he’d really rather not? What if the truth about his identity gets out, and what if the truth about what happened to him is even worse than what he’s imagined for the last twenty years?

Tana French’s debut novel In the Woods is a deliciously creepy psychological thriller of the very best sort. While the whodunit element of the story is certainly important and well-written, the real beauty of In the Woods lies in French’s depiction of the easy, comfortable intimacy between Rob and Cassie—the sort we all feel with our very closest friends but can rarely put into words—and her vivid imagining of the effects the investigation has on Rob. Unable to keep his usual professional distance from this case, Rob finds himself slowly falling apart. A crack here. A slip there. One drink too many some night or other. They’re small things, but he is both painfully aware of them and unable to make himself stop, and they become impossible to ignore.

Not only does French craft a smart, unpredictable, well-told mystery that will keep readers guessing AND bring her characters to life with spot-on descriptions and true-to-life relationships, she does it all with wonderful writing. I don’t always expect that from mysteries, since the linchpin of a mystery really is the plot, and it was such a delightful surprise with In the Woods. I occasionally found myself pausing to savor a particularly beautiful sentence or absorb a vivid description, and that’s the kind of thing that really makes me appreciate a book.

In the Woods is engrossing and frightening in that all-too-possible way, and it will appeal to seasoned mystery fans and cross-over readers alike.  After devouring this great read, I can hardly wait to get my hands on The Likeness, French’s second novel, told from Cassie’s perspective. 4 out of 5.

Check out this book trailer for In the Woods, and visit Tana French’s website for more details.

I realize I now no longer have a claim to being a blogger.  Alas cruel fate.  I lost the time, some of the interest, and I didn’t like the sense I started developing that I owed something to my blog.  Just another task to complete.  Still, I just wrote up a quick review over on Good Reads after finishing Del Toro’s new book, The Strain, so I thought I might as well add it here.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find a way to do this again.  I’ve read a bunch of Dostoevsky since my post lo these many months ago.  Some of it is actually worth writing about.

Re. Del Toro’s The Strain.  Ok, I’m a sucker for a decent vampire thriller. I forced myself through the Twilight books as an act of solidarity with my infatuated daughter, so it was good to get back to the dark side with Del Toro’s book. If anything, Del Toro’s book reads a little too much like an immediate slap in the face at the Stephanie Meyer phenomenon. While Meyer’s Vampires are the pictures of life, health, and youth, Del Toro’s vampires are literally a kind of living cancer virus, consuming and transforming the host into undead animalistic killing machines. Clearly Del Toro the filmmaker is lurching back to Nosferatu, where the vampire is more animal than human, and hardly an exemplar of sexual seductiveness. And, indeed, there’s a lot of quotations of cinema–the armies of vampires are a little bit more like the zombies of Dawn of the Dead than the isolated and brooding quasi-intellectuals that have been a dominant strain since Stoker’s original. The bizarre but effective weaponry quotes from both Van Helsing and from Men in Black. The apocalypse that threatens Manhattan quotes from I Am Legend and from…well, almost every other movie that threatens the destruction of Manhattan. Mostly I like going with this and love it though I thought the nail gun that shot silver tipped nails was a little much and the connection to the Holocaust oddly original and overreaching at the same time–the Van Helsing of this book is a holocaust survivor on a hunt for metaphorical antisemites. And I thought a Dracula in Manhattan could have been a little more original than to have a literal coffin filled with soil, but what do I know. Still, I admit it was a good break after being very serious and thoughtful and intellectual as I made my way through Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment last week. I’ll look forward to reading the next

The House of the Devil (VOD – 2009) – Wildside Cinema – Cult, Horror, Exploitation & More!.

Thirst (DVD – 2009) – Wildside Cinema – Cult, Horror, Exploitation & More!.

Terror Express (DVD – 1979) – Wildside Cinema – Cult, Horror, Exploitation & More!.

I hadn’t heard of Lee Child until a few years ago when I attended a thriller writers’ conference where he was a speaker. I enjoyed hearing him speak and purchased Without Fail, which was a new book at the time.

Without Fail is the sixth Jack Reacher novel that Child had written. Reacher is an ex-military cop who has to discover whether threats against Senator Brook Armstrong, a vice president elect, are real or intended to embarrass the new head of Armstrong’s Secret Service detail. Reacher impersonates an assassin because he can’t walk away from the challenge of trying to beat the Secret Service at their game.

The story is an action-packed thriller that was a great read. However, what the story has in action, it lacks in character development. I didn’t mind it too much because Jack Reacher is a character who has been developed over a number of books so Reacher was a fully fleshed out character by this novel. So it wasn’t critically important that Reacher didn’t develop much in Without Fail. Where it hurt the story was with the supporting characters who needed more development.

I did enjoy the book enough to start reading other Jack Reacher novels. Reacher has also continued his development as a great action character.

A beautiful Sunday, and I am inside.   It does mean that I am reading though.  As promised I did finish the prequel to “Black Friday” by Alex Kava.  ”Exposed” is a lovely book about Ebola.  Relevant now, with all the H1N1 germs flying around.  Scary how easy it is to whip my overactive imagination into an absolute frenzy.  I enjoyed the book more than the first one I read.  Maybe because it has some relevance now.  Same cast of characters.  Well drawn and believable, though I question whether FBI profilers can pull profiles out of their hats like that.   It did make me want to go reread “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston.  I was telling my thirteen year old son about that book, scared me very badly.  I don’t consider myself a conspiracy nut, but I do find it incredibly plausible that our government is ever willing to cover things up, for the good of the country of course.  I guess that begs another question, how are authors able to be so far ahead of us readers?  Nelson DeMille’s seems to be frighteningly accurate about what is happening now a days.  (He is a big Phillip Roth fan I bet)  I always used to think that if I were to invest in the stock market, I just needed to find out what Michael Crichton was working on and invest in that. (Nanotechnology anyone?)  Steve Alten, made my jaw drop with “The Shell Game.”  I worry about his safety.  After that book I wonder if he always looks over his shoulder.  Currently reading the latest Stephen King.  surprisingly at 1000+ pages it is going quite quickly.  He says in the afterwords that is actually pared down from its original length.  Yikes!  Again, even though it’s a different cast of characters, I feel like some of them could be people I know, my neighbors, co-workers, family.  He does have a unique knack for “normal” everyday prose.  He writes like I think or speak.  I like that in a writer.  Makes me think that writing a book might not be so hard after all.  (I am joking.  Mr. King actually started this book in 1976, I guess that speaks for itself.)

I am thinking I need to read something really eloquent and informative on sibling rivalry right about now.  Both children are in their respective rooms, and I need to go mediate somehow.  And then I will read more…

I came across The site Thrillers, Killers n Chillers just a few weeks ago and I’m already a fan – it is basically a site to showcase the work of others.  Some of the work on there is absolute brilliant…you must go and see.

The concept is beautifully simple and the site uncomplicated to use, with just  an archive column for navigational purposes.  Although I think that it could be a little difficult on the eye, with its black background and white text, for reading for any length of time.  However,  for the length of the average content, it’s perfectly acceptable.  I’m slightly bemused by the choice of graphics and artwork that accompanies the work at times…but hey, that’s a personal taste thing…and it just adds a little extra entertainment that doesn’t detract from the work itself.  So it’s all good.

They have an open invitation for submissions, just so long as you are over 16 years old, the work is of submission standard, under 2000 words and in keeping with the concept of the site.  To submit work email col.bury@live.co.uk or matthiltonbooks@live.co.uk.

Of the current work (November 2009) Coins for Charon by Lee Hughes is excellent.  It flows really well, and is shockingly intriguing from the first paragraph.  Lee has put in enough strangeness into the tale to pull you in, yet it has a gritty realism that keeps you reading.  You see the ending coming, but he manages to do it with aplomb…I’ll never look at those chocolate coins you get in coffee shops in the same way again….

Chapter One

Jock Stewart woke up this morning with an industrial strength hangover. An empty Scotch bottle lay on the floor next to an empty little black dress that wasn’t his. Last night, a fair amount of Monique Starnes wore it at the newspaper’s office party. Her cleavage, more out than in, was deep enough to kidnap a man’s dreams. Now, there would be hell to pay.

At first glance, he appeared to be alone in the bed. Maybe he stole the dress. Maybe he maxed out a credit card at an all-night Vera Wang shop, then came home and slung it on the floor in an ill-conceived pretense of having a life. “The second glance”—as Star-Gazer editor Marcus Cash always told him—“is always the beginning of trouble.”

Just past the far side of the bed, Monique lay face up on the floor in a 40-year-old birthday suit so worn out no Goodwill Store would take it. She looked like a corpse. Things went too far and he hadn’t bothered to conceal the murder weapon.

If more than one crime had been committed here, she was an accessory beginning with an illegal use of a little black dress—though many women contend that dresses don’t seduce people, people seduce people. When it got late enough last night for everyone to pair up with nobody cared whom—or was it “who”?—she dared him to dance with her. In spite of the chronic animosity between them she danced close enough to display her breasts in an arousing light.

The world resolved into a curious mix of limbo and dream after she said, “I like a man with a cocked weapon in his trousers.”

Now, the best approach to his future might be to draw a chalk outline around her before calling the police to report the accident. Chief Kruller would be pissed, not because he had any love for the newspaper’s gossip columnist but because coming by the house to clean up the mess would force him to give up his space at the counter of the Main Street Krispy Kreme.

Though he wasn’t being interrogated yet, Jock had to admit that Monique was a voluptuous, saucy, black-haired she-devil if there ever was one. It was her mouth and her typewriter that bothered him. No ass kicking, hard-boiled reporter he knew (including himself) could tolerate gossip columnists. They dragged the whole damn paper down to their level. While exciting in bed, that level was bad for the newspaper business.

She did have nice breasts—for a probable corpse.

Even so, newspapering didn’t need columns called Hands Under Society’s Dress with comments like: “Democracy demands that we celebrate the election process at one ball after another. Just think, in some countries, the winners aren’t allowed to have any balls.”

Her luscious brown eyes popped open like they were controlled by a zombified spirit who hadn’t “crossed over” properly.

He jumped back in fear or what looked like fear.

“Jock!”

“Monique, what have we done?”

She sat up, partially covering herself with the sheer window curtain one of his former girlfriends with a name like Bambi or Barbie hung up in the bedroom either as a civilizing influence or to allow his neighbors the dubious entertainment of watching them (Jock and whoever) having sex during blue moons.

“We did what any self-respecting man and woman do when they find themselves drunk in bed,” she said. “Did I scream much?”

“Did I hurt you?”

“You gave me what I wanted.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Want to take another shot at it?”

She put her hands where they didn’t belong—as an incentive.

“Doesn’t either one of us need to take a leak or something?” he asked.

“Let’s do it together and be kinky.”

She stood up and stretched while running her hands through her hair in a way that made her look both wanton and innocent, an oh-God-Jock-you-caught-me-in-a-private-moment kind of way. He had seen such moments before in photography books.

“You go first,” he said.

When she flounced toward the bathroom everything shook. While she was there he got dressed. He heard the shower running, so he went out to the kitchen and made coffee and set out two cups. The midmorning light was too bright. None of the cars out on Maple Street had mufflers. The birds were chirping like they were having hot sex in the locust tree. Air molecules careened into each other as though some asshole just lit a barrel full of cherry bombs.

“If we’d known each other then, you could have had my cherry,” Monique announced. She was wearing one of his old work shirts and Irish Spring soap.

“Back where?” he asked. He appreciated the view when she leaned over to fish her cigarettes out of her purse.

“Back anywhere,” she said, smiling when she saw where he was looking. “Where were you in those days?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“Light me?”

He took a match out of the tin on the gas stove top and struck it on the zipper of his jeans while she leaned so close he almost dropped the match down the front of her (actually, his) shirt.

“You need to get dressed,” he said.

“Let me enjoy the moment. Act like you want me here.”

He poured the coffee, adding cream to his and sugar to hers. He knew how she liked it because they had gotten drunk before and ended up at kitchen tables before on bright Sunday mornings. If he’d known her “back then,” things still would have ended up like this. Her eyes were on him as they always were on mornings after, but she would pull away if he unbuttoned the shirt and he would pull away if she grabbed his belt buckle.

“I found a Lucinda voice mail on my cell this morning,” said Monique.

“I feel so lucky.”

“Some juicy tidbit for Monday’s under the dress column?”

“Jock, don’t.”

She drew out the words and he felt rather sorry for teasing her while they were sharing their faux-vulnerable morning-after coffee.

“What’s she want.”

“She wants her horse back. Sea of Fire is missing?”

“Do you have him?”

She gave him an odd look. Then she looked down the front of the shirt.

“Nope, no naughty horsey down here.”

“Have they called the police?”

“She didn’t say. I don’t know why she called me. It’s not the kind of story I do.”

“I’ll look into it,” said Jock.

Monique sipped her coffee, frowning and thinking. Whatever she wanted, he was going to say ‘no.’ She unbuttoned the shirt and raised her hands.

“Start me out with a good frisking. Then we can go back to bed with no more questions asked. May we?”

She stood close enough for him to touch.

If he did, where would it end? How easily he could visualize the lead to her next column: “My sweets, you might well ask what Maple Street reporter found himself under my little black dress last night.”

No, she did that last time and Monique had a firm rule. She never recycled old material.

“No,” he said. “I have more worries than questions.”

“What, do you think you can’t get it up again?” She pressed both hands firmly against the front of his trousers. “No, that’s not it. So what is it?”

“I forgot to use any protection last night,” he said.

She laughed and momentarily he saw the Monique he wanted her to be 24/7. Her laugh almost made him forget where things ended up when he trusted her and so he put his hand on her ass in a possessive way and she responded more the way a lover than an overnighter responds.

“I started out with a purse full of condoms last night,” she gasped.

“We had enough protection for a long, slow weekend.”

“No,” he said, “that’s not what I meant.”

She heard the change in his voice, backed away and pulled the front of the shirt together.

“Protection from me, that’s what you’re saying.”

He was surprised the whole neighborhood didn’t hear it.

“You got that right.”

She grabbed the coffee cup and slung its sugary contents in his face.

“You asshole. Go. Just go back to your precious job or wherever else you go when you’re like this. I’ll know how to let myself out.”

Jock pulled a dishtowel off the rack and went out to the car. The keys were still in the ignition from last night. He sat for a while and watched the house. It looked dead. He considered drawing a chalk outline around it and calling somebody.

Chapter Two

Coral Snake Smith was sitting in his favorite booth at the Purple Platter when Jock got there at 11:45 a.m. Smith, who suffered disfiguring burns as a child, ended up with a ruddy, red and yellow complexion that made him unfit for any career other than crime or psychiatry. He dabbled in psychiatry until the review board questioned why 98.6% of his male and female patients were diagnosed with an Electra complex. Subsequently, he practiced crime without conviction.

Now he described himself as a storyteller, an information handler, and an unidentified source. Those who trusted him believed his word was well worth the price of a meal, hash browns scattered and smothered and a Denver omelet. Others hypothesized that he was a stool pigeon.

To see what happens next, pick up the book on Smashwords (multiple formats) or on Kindle for $5.99. The paperback on Amazon is only $11.86.