Book Talk

October 2007

You don’t usually bond with a serial killer but Dexter Morgan isn’t your average psychopath. He only kills bad guys. If you enjoyed Darkly Dreaming Dexter you’ll want to read Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay.

There’s a new entry in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson, Bloodline. This well-reviewed series is a combination of private eye and horror and guaranteed to keep you turning pages.

Perennial favorite Stuart Woods is out with Shoot Him if He Runs. Stone Barrington is asked to help the CIA locate a fugitive whose activities may influence the upcoming presidential election. He finds himself on a tropical island where everyone has something to hide.

If you enjoy historical fiction, you’ll want to check out The Star Garden: a Novel of Sarah Agnes Prine by Nancy E. Turner. This continues the story began in Sarah’s Quilt about a woman’s struggle to make a home in the Arizona Territory.

Several years ago Andrea Barrett’s novel, Servants of the Map, was the “If All of Rochester Read the Same Book” selection. Her latest, The Air we Breathe, is set in 1916 at a sanatorium in the Adirondacks. The boredom of sanatorium life is set against the developing war, massive immigration and changes in scientific and medical thought.
 
Andrew Vachss’ latest is Terminal. Burke is contacted by the leader of a white supremacist prison gang with a deal. He’ll receive the identity of three rich men who raped and murdered a young girl thirty years earlier in exchange for part of the cash received from the murderer’s blackmail payment.

Brady Coyne gets a phone call from Robert, the son of a good friend. His dad is in the hospital having been badly beaten. Evidently Robert is deep in debt to the mob and Dad took the hit. Coyne has to extract all from a rapidly escalating situation in One-Way Ticket by William G. Tapply.

I’m currently reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky and was pleased to see another by her arrive, Fire in the Blood. Suite… is set in France during WWII. Fire…, written in 1941, is set in the period before the war, when peace was not even a consideration. The author gave pieces of this manuscript to family and friends when she was sent to Auschwitz, where she died.

Set in almost the same time period is Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace. In 1946, a year after the war ended the remains of two raped and strangled women are found. More discoveries follow, obviously by the same killer. Based on the real hunt for the “Japanese Bluebeard”, this is set against the chaos of post war Japan.

If you have also been riveted by the Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns documentary, you’ll want to take a look at the accompanying book.  The War: an Intimate History 1941-1945 is full of stunning photos from the series.

Virginia Cooper
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