Review: 'A Killing in the Hills'

A KILLING IN THE HILLS
By Julia Keller
Crime fiction
August 2012
Minotaur Books
ISBN: 9781250003485
                                                                                                                                                                 
A woman returns to the place where a family tragedy took place years ago. Everyone else is gone. She decides there is nothing here for her, either.

That woman is the prosecuting attorney of Raythune County, West Virginia. Bell Elkins has brought her teenage daughter, Carla, back to her hometown when her husband wanted a high-flying career that didn't seem to include them. But home hasn't been a sanctuary. Carla is in full teenage-rebel mode. She also could have been hurt the day a gunman walked into a local restaurant and killed three old men in the middle of their morning coffee meeting.

Bell and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong, who was a young deputy when the tragedy in Bell's family took place and who took her under his wing, seek to find the killer. They also deal with other cases, the people they work with and the rest of the town where everybody seemingly knows everybody else. As is normal in a small town, not everyone is as they seem.

One of the cases appears to be an easy prosecution but shows Bell's determination for precision and doing right. A developmentally disabled young man plays with a much younger boy. One day, the younger boy dies. On its own, this case could have taken center stage in showing Bell's character, the ins and outs of small-town prosecutions and a decent plot.

The main story is told from the investigation side as well as the first-person account of the shooter, who is fairly standard-issue small-town nobody who wants to be known for something. The interesting part of the case has to do with Carla as she struggles with growing up and wanting to make her mother proud of her even if she wants Mom to just leave her alone.

Keller's first novel is an interesting attempt to showcase the struggles of people who live in beautiful country and high poverty, where drugs can offer an easy way out and a way to make some money. It isn't the strongest novel, as a few Too Stupid to Live moments are employed to raise the stakes in finding the killer. A contractor wanting to stop by a house after 10 p.m. also can easily take a reader out of the story. But the novel is an honest attempt and shows the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's considerable admiration for West Virginia and her people.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

In progress: 'Yellow Birds', ties to 'Fobbit'

Having just finished the midway part of Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds, the big chapter with the big sentence where the young narrator who has survived a tour of duty in Iraq drifts through life and partway down the river, one of those "aha!" connection moments between books occurred.

The Yellow Birds is one of the three Iraq novels published last year. The first I've read, David Abrams' Fobbit, succeeded for my brain and my heart, as well as my sense of humor. It was a smooth, stunningly clever novel in which the total nonsense of war came together.

Powers's novel is completely different. In style, it veers between the extremes of Hemingway admiration and Jamesian twists and turns. One sentence, in the above-mentioned Chapter 7, takes up about two pages. It reveals a great deal of the narrator's character, his motivation, his heart and why his mournful inertia is so hard for him to get past.

And that's when I realized the difference between the two novels. Fobbit is told from an omnipresent perspective that shows the interior and exterior portions of several characters. It's grown-up. It knows war is supremely ridiculous and tragic at the same time.

The Yellow Birds reads from the perspective of a sensitive young man who is just seeing how bad life can be, and has learned this lesson in the worst way possible -- by seeing and causing the taking of life in service of powers that take but never give.

This difference in the two novels is one of the reasons to celebrate the breadth of contemporary fiction. It takes more than one voice, one story, to try to convey the scope of something like war, especially Iraq. I'm looking forward to adding my reading of Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk to my cumulative knowledge in hopes of understanding more.

Review: 'Brooklyn Bones'

BROOKLYN BONES (An Erica Donato mystery)
By Triss Stein
Crime fiction (traditional mystery)
February 2013
Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN: 9781464201202
                                                                                                                                              
Erica Donato is making a life for herself and her daughter, going to grad school, working part-time in a museum and renovating their Park Slope home. She misses her husband, who died too young, but she treasures her friends and family. What was a quiet life is shattered when the renovaters, including her daughter, discover the bones of a teenage girl, cradling a teddy bear, hidden in a wall of the house.

Soon, Erica and her teenage daughter, Chris, are encountering strangers threatening them in the street and on the phone. Retired cop Rick Malone, friend of Erica's father, has been a surrogate parent to both of them, but now he's not answering phone messages.

Meanwhile, Erica's friend introduces her to dashing and rich Steven Richmond, who offers her consulting work. He represents developers who want to be highly regarded when they change the neighborhood. Erica is not certain how her historian credentials work into this, but as a grad student and single mother welcomes the extra money to look up material about where she lives. The search is also to try to find out about the early 1970s, when that girl's remains were walled up inside Erica's home.

To help with the historical record, Erica befriends a crochety retired newspaper reporter who broke stories about the gentrification of part of Brooklyn. Leary's old clippings and notes of the days when runaways crashed in Park Slope homes and landlords wanted them out are interesting not just to Erica the historian and homeowner where a skeleton was found, they also attract the attention of those who may not want the past brought to light.

Stein does well in setting up both the main characters -- Erica and her daughter, their friend Joe, the contractor who is renovating the house, and other characters -- and the whodunit. There are times when the story threatens to veer into romance rather than mystery, but it's intentional for both the plot and for the character development of Erica the young widow. The groundwork laid in this novel should provide a sturdy foundation to further books in the series.

One area in which Stein particular excels is in bringing Erica's Brooklyn neighborhood to life. Readers see what it was like back in the day, as well as the vibrant district it is now. Families have roots of several generations or as newcomers make a block their own. The interactions play a key role in solving the mystery of the skeletal remains, but also show what makes Brooklyn a special place to the author and her main character.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'The St. Zita Society'

THE ST. ZITA SOCIETY
By Ruth Rendell
Crime fiction
August 2012
Scribner
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6668-7
                                                                                                                                                      
Ruth Rendell is, along with P.D. James, the jewel in the crown of British crime fiction after the first Golden Age. Her Inspector Wexford novels, stand-alones and deliciously creepy tales written as Barbara Vine have garnered fans and favorable critical attention for decades.

In recent years, she has enlarged her range to include stand-alone novels taking place on various London streets. The St. Zita Society takes place among the posh and would-be posh. Set on Hexam Place, it's an "Upstairs, Downstairs"-style novel in which those in service, and those roped into doing for others, gather at the local.

June has been lady's maid for more than 60 years to Princess Susan, who came by the title from a long-abandoned Italian prince. June forms the St. Zita Society, which she says is named after the patron saint of domestic servants, as a way for the downstairs group to congregate, discuss issues and perhaps go to a show.

Although most of the others don't mind congregating at the local, they're not that interested in any type of society or causing trouble. It's not that they're cowardly. It's that most of them are too wrapped up in themselves or the onus their employers place upon them.

Take Henry, for example. Lord Studley's valet is sleeping with both Lord Studley's wife and his daughter.

 June has to walk the dog but her employer, the princess, is taken with June's nephew, Rad, who acts on a TV soap. Preston Still's wife also is taken with Rad. But it's the Stills' au pair, Montserrat, who has to let him in and out off the house across from where June and the princess live. At least Preston and Lucy Still's children are diligently cared for by Rabia, whose traditional Muslim father wants the young widow to get married again. But Rabia also lost her children and Thomas is such a lovely baby who adores her. Thea isn't in service but her landlords seem to think she works for them without pay.
Then there's Dr. Jefferson. His driver, Jimmy, doesn't work too hard but he does put up with Dex the gardener. Dex killed someone once because a voice commanded him to get rid of that evil spirit. Most people don't have faces to Dex, but there is the voice of Peach, sometimes found by dialing random numbers on his mobile, to guide him.

Rendell sets up these dominoes and, with one push, sets them all into inevitable motion. The rest of the novel is a delightfully devilish discourse on how some people get away with things, how some people only seem to get away with things and how some people are doomed.

Along the way, Rendell is as great as ever with her wicked ability to skewer those who need it, add just the right touches of pathos and the occasional moment of genuine sweetness.

If the set-up seems to take a bit, hang on. It's worth it when those dominoes begin to fall.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

In Progress: 'The St. Zita Society'

Ruth Rendell has been writing novels set on various London blocks in addition to her stand-alones, Inspector Wexford novels and Barbara Vine books.

The latest, The St. Zita Society, has the usual combination of various households but is the first written in "Upstairs, Downstairs" mode. Hexam Place is one of those posh London squares where people still have servants. One of them insists on forming a society of the downstairs folk while they meet at the local pub.

Not much happens at these meetings. There are so many characters that it's best to read as much of the book at once as possible (which you know I can't seem to do these days).

I was about to put this one down as a rare misstep for Rendell, whose work has been creepy good for decades, but an unexpected event midway through has really picked things up. If only Hitchcock was still around to film a version of this.

Now to see if it continues through to the end as well as it's going now.

AS THE CROW FLIES: A Walt Longmire mystery
By Craig Johnson
Crime fiction
May 2012
Viking
ISBN: 978-0670023516
                                                                                                                                                                     
Walt Longmire has survived desperate situations before, but this could be the most dire. His daughter is getting married, and he and Henry Standing Bear have been assigned some of the preparations. When the pair witness a murder while looking for a wedding site in Montana, Longmire doesn't exactly complain about being drawn into the investigation.

The victim is a young Cheyenne woman. She was shielding her baby when she went over a cliff. The child improbably survives with only a few bruises, and the father is the presumed suspect. But in the entangled family relationships, long-held grudges and dealings with drugs, government bureaucracy and war wounds, easy presumptions may well not be enough.

Longmire also comes up against the young tribal chief of police, an Iraq war vet named Lolo. Her attempts to run down every miscreant have her placing Longmire under arrest in their initial meeting.

The revealing of Lolo's character, which shows more depth than small-town, hot-headed rookie cop, is one of the highlights of the novel. So are the appearances of Longmire's daughter, Cady, and her mother-in-law to be, and, of course, the Cheyenne Nation. For those who still haven't warmed up to Vic, she doesn't play a significant role. A certain FBI agent also shows up, for better or for worse.

Johnson also is master of pacing. As with all Longmire novels, they are fast reads but contain a fully realized plot with characters to wonder and care about.

But as with all other Longmire novels, there are parts that still don't feel right. There is the obligatory woo-woo. This time, a milky-eyed older Cheyenne medicine woman invites Longmire to a peyote ceremony. The disbelief has a hard time staying suspended for that, since there are opposing philosophies about allowing whites into these ceremonies. Johnson does a good job showing awareness of what modern life is like on reservations with his characters, what they go through, what they face and how they respond to myriad obstacles. He doesn't have to go the route of Native American mysticism through a white man's perspective for a solid series with a grand cast of continuing characters.

This is especially true when the plot itself is so solid and the action-filled resolution is high adventure without being too much to believe.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette'

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE
By Maria Semple
Literary fiction
December 2012
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 978-0316256193
                                                                                                                                                             
WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE could have gone in so many directions. Maria Semple's novel, told from various points of view and in emails, letters and journal entries, starts off in full-blown, glorious snark mode. The parents of a snooty Seattle private school's children have their knickers in a twist over the antics of fish-out-of-water Bernadette. She is a reclusive, misanthropic famed architect and mother of talented prodigy Bee. Dad is a Microsoft muckymuck who has one of the most-viewed TED talks ever.

Bee wants to see Antarctica as a graduation present. Because Bernadette cannot face people, she hires a virtual assistant in India to make the arrangements. Below their house, which is really a rundown former school, Audrey Griffin wants to hold a fundraising party for Bee's school. (Her son also attends.) The goal is to attract the best Mercedes parents, like one of the Pearl Jam band members. It doesn't have to be Eddie Vedder.

Audrey is a gnat to Bernadette. She demands Bernadette remove the rambling blackberry bushes from her yard before the party. The fact that it's winter and the hillside will lose its cover to battle erosion do not occur to Audrey. Then again, she's also the kind of parent who wonders what the principal is doing looking in her son's locker. After all, "don't they have locks on them? Isn't that why they're called lockers?"

Bee's dad, Elgin, is up against a tight deadline at work. His new admin assistant, Soo-Lin, is another prep school gnat, um, parent. Soo-Lin is a divorced single mother who attends Victims Against Victimhood meetings. Complications will, of course, ensue as lives become entangled.

It all gets to be too much for Bee's mother. So she disappears two days before Christmas. And Bee decides to find her. That's when the novel hits its true stride and the reader discovers its deep heart.

As the story begins, the satire and snark are delicious. Semple began the novel after moving to the unknown territory known as Seattle, and to someone who has watched the pretentiousness present in some Emerald City residents from the other side of the Cascades since before Microsoft, Starbucks and grunge rock existed, she is spot on.

But like all great novelists who use various forms of humor, Semple knows when to add layers of emotional depth. Bernadette has good reasons to do what she does, and few of the characters turn out to be as cartoonish as they may appear at first. There is a great set piece of sorts when the novel changes tone, a long letter Bernadette writes to a former colleague about her life as a MacArthur grant-winning architect and the birth of Bee. His response to the letter is nearly the same as the one that Semple received as she adapted to a city she now loves, after Bernadette has poured out her heart for pages:

"Bernadette, 

Are you done? You can't honestly believe any of this nonsense. People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society."

To see what Bernadette does next is not revealed until the end, and there is far too much tell rather than show in the revealing, but it is still a resolution that rings true emotionally and fits these characters just right.

Best of all, Bee is a delightful creation. A brilliant, intrepid daughter could be too twee a character, but Semple keeps Bee from going too far into that territory. Instead, Bee is a fully realized character who just happens to be the youngest of the main ones in this novel. And, just as Semple handles the various voices who relate the narrative, she also allows more than one main character to have her own journey of discovery.

These are characters worth knowing, and their story is one well worth discovering.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reposted with permission