Review: The Accident

The Accident by Linwood Barclay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A fast paced mystery set in suburbia that doesn't have a bored single mom at the center of the story. That guarantees a book a two star rating from me! Add some decent research, good pacing (except for the big action scene that was obviously written for seeing rather than reading) and hardly any superfluous characters and you've got a decent contemporary mystery that successfully straddles the line between cozy and thriller. If you liked [a:John Katz|3166803|John Katz|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s early mystery series, you'll be happy to discover that the dark side of the suburbs has not lightened up one bit.



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Review: So Cold the River

So Cold the River by Michael Koryta

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



My Hoosier bias would have this as five stars: Koryta knows his setting! If, for some reason, a reader would like to immerse themselves in contemporary southern Indiana, this is the book to read. That is, if they want a creepy, haunted version of that part of the state. The living people are authentic, the not so living appear pretty much as you'd expect them. The thriller plot line goes on just a little too long and I thought the explanation for the grad student's heavy involvement was thin and cliched. However, there's a lot of originality in the rest of the story, enough to make me want to read another of Koryta's non-Lincoln Perry stories.



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Review: The Stranger's Child

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Hollinghurst's ability to immerse a reader in time and place is all that kept me going to the end of this book. The selective omniscient point of view is used to drag out scenes that go nowhere while plot lines that might have been interesting (How did Jonah end up working for Harry Hewitt?) are teased and then dropped. There's also a tantalizing theme, almost buried in the soap opera passing as history plot, about how facts are only as factual as the person reporting them.



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Review: Nightwoods

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Fantastic sense of place and amazing turns of phrases almost ruined by characters that are so flat and underdeveloped that I could not have cared less about the peril they are exposed to (and that includes the two kids!). I'll remember where this story took place a lot longer than I'll remember why it took place.



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Review: We the Animals: A novel

We the Animals: A novel by Justin Torres

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A portion of the three stars is for author potential, something I very rarely consider when rating a book. If Torres turns out to be capable of writing an actual story rather than a collection of scenes that may or may not reveal a sad character arc, he will prove to be a gifted writer. Right now, he shows the ability to pull a reader into the heart of his characters, but he doesn't seem to know what to do with them once they are there.



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Review: I'd Know You Anywhere

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



In order to give all opinions about the death penalty a fair shake, Lippman created characters, not people, to fit the opinions. That's moralizing, not story telling, and it's not even good moralizing when an author tries to cover the bases. For a novel that's about a spree killer and his one surviving victem, the story is rather bland and emotionless. Everyone thinks through everything and there's surprisingly little passion for something that should come off as horrific.



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Review: The Magic Cottage

The Magic Cottage by James Herbert

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Loved the house as a character, but the people in the book brought nothing to the story. The horror is good and creepy in some places and over the top silly (and pointless) in other parts of the book. The story is told by one of the main characters looking back after all the events have occurred and the clunky foreshadowing takes the edge off of the entire plot.



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Review: Creepers

Creepers by David Morrell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Morrell might be a masterful researcher, but the dialog reads like something written for a second rate screenplay. I can lose hours of a day looking at photos of urban decay and abandoned urban spaces, so I found the first two thirds of the book readable for the descriptive passages. But when the last third turns into an action-adventure thriller, I found myself skimming very quickly. The book is scary until everything is forced to fit into a weak and cliched reality closing.



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Review: The Death of Sweet Mister

The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Dark and twisted and masterfully written.



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Review: The Night Train: A Novel

The Night Train: A Novel by Clyde Edgerton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Amazing sense of time and place: early 1960's small town North Carolina. Martin Luther King Jr and the SCLC are beginning to make waves in little towns that thought everybody was happy with the status quo. Starke is just such a place, segregated by history, physically divided by railroad tracks. Edgerton uses the metaphor of his protagonist discovering Jazz at the same time as someone he considers a friend discovers R&B. Just as popular music began crossing over and blending genres in the 60s, so do some of the people who live in Starke. Others don't want things to change, and that's where this story finds its narrative.



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