NY: RH Graphic, 2020.
I’m a big fan of Lucy’s graphic novels — except they’re not really fictional, but “confessional,” since they’re based on changes and events in her own life. Her first book was French Milk, published in 2008, when she was twenty-two, and this is (I think) her fifteenth, not to mention mini-comics and contributions to anthologies. Busy, busy.
NY: Soho Press, 2020.
Forty years ago, the author began this police-procedural mystery series featuring Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond of Bath, and I honestly had my doubts about it. Diamond was blustery, grossly overweight, ego-ridden, verbally abusive to his subordinates, and in the first book he even got sacked and had to do private security work for a department store for awhile. But that was nineteen books ago and Diamond (and Lovesey) have long since gotten their act together. The series has been pretty good for some time now, though it’s not really up to award-winning level, and Lovesey sometimes seems to be mailing it in.
NY: HarperCollins, 2014.
This is a YA novel of very high quality, but while one of its themes is romantic, there’s nothing at all comedic about it. The setting is a small, mostly blue-collar town in Ohio, the sort of dead-end place that most of the younger generation can’t wait to escape from, and there are three POV characters, all high school seniors, who take turns telling the story.
Continue reading “McGinnis, Mindy. The Female of the Species.”
NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020.
McDermid has been among the best (and most commercially successful) writers of mysteries and thrillers for a couple of decades now, with two highly-rated ongoing series and a number of excellent independent novels. I’m especially partial to he series featuring DCI Karen Pirie, head of Police Scotland’s “historical cases” unit, of which this is the sixth outing. It’s a very small unit — just Karen and a not overly bright but Loyal and hard-working DC — but Karen rather likes it that way, being not much of a team player.
NY: Scholastic, 2019.
This is the third in this sister-brother team’s series of semi-autobiographical graphic novels about the adolescence of Sunny Lewin of suburban Pennsylvania. It’s the late ’70s and Sunny is about the age of my own kids, so I remember that period well. She’s in 7th Grade now and things are changing in her life and the lives of her friends — more so in the latter, though.
Continue reading “Holm, Jennifer L. & Matthew. Sunny Rolls the Dice.”
NY: Riverhead Books, 2021.
Ordinarily, when I DNF a book — and that happens at least 10% of the time — I just make a note of it on the appropriate list and go on to something else. That’s it. (Every book I even start will end on one list or another, just to keep track.) But I’m making an exception for this one because it’s my third attempt to get through a book by this author — all of them well reviewed and semi-best sellers — and I’ve not been successful with any of them, and it irritates the hell out of me. I mean, I’ve been a heavy reader since before I started school and that was more than seventy years ago now. My whole life has been built around books — as a librarian, editor, writer, and reviewer — and I believe I have some claim to knowing what I’m doing when it comes to understanding what an author is up to. When I don’t finish a book, it’s usually within the first fifty pages and it’s because that particular book just doesn’t grab me. It’s usually not even the book’s fault. It just doesn’t do anything for me personally. And that’s fine. But for a book to actually defeat my attempts to read it? Okay, I take that personally.
NY: Riverhead Books, 2016.
Emma hasn’t been writing that long, but she’s already one of my favorite authors when it comes to sheer style and her portrayal of memorable, fully realized characters. (She’s also the daughter of master horror author Peter Straub, but her style couldn’t be more different from her Dad’s.) This third novel is about two couples living in Brooklyn, on the only block that really feels “suburban,” with actual houses with yards, near Prospect Park.
NY: First Second, 2019,
This is the third graphic work I’ve read by this artist/author, and it’s decidedly different from her memoir, Spinning, and from her first work of fiction, On a Sunbeam. The two main characters, Bea and Lou, are on the run from the lives they can’t deal with anymore when they bump into each other and a connection is made.
NY: Penguin, 2013.
“Nicci French” is actually a husband and wife team of mystery writers and they do excellent work. I read the first two volumes of this series (named for Monday and Tuesday) a couple of years ago and somehow drifted away from it, but now I’ve picked up the next several volumes. The protagonist is Frieda Klein, a London psychoanalyst who has nearly as many deep-seated problems as her patients. Nevertheless, even though she has no training in criminal psychology, she does have a knack, as she demonstrated to a very impressed DCI Malcolm Karlsson of the Met in the first two books, and they’ve become sort-of friends — though it’s not easy for Frieda to be friends with anyone.
NY: Putnam, 2021.
Rowley wrote The Editor, which I read awhile back and greatly enjoyed, so I came to this new one with pretty high expectations — and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. Patrick is gay, forty-three, a native of Connecticut, and now a resident of Palm Springs, after fleeing LA following nine seasons starring in a very successful TV family comedy. He even has a Golden Globe. But he has never recovered from the death by drunken driver of Joe, the guy he loved, and he’s been hiding out ever since, in danger of becoming a recluse. And then Sara, his sister-in-law, dies after fighting cancer for three years.
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