Predator by Patricia Cornwall is a Little Too Much

Predator by Patricia Cornwall

Paperback: 464 pages

Publisher: Berkley (September 26, 2006) 

ISBN-10: 0425210278

This crime novel is from a series that features Kay Scarpetta, and it is filled with oddball characters who are macabre, at best, and I am not even talking about the bad guys.  The story is focussed on a Harvard program that is studying the mind of serial killers, and as the reader we soon find ourselves inside the mind of at least two villains. Throw in a radio shrink,  tree blight,  spiders, Christmas in July, and sadomasochist torture and you have covered maybe 10% of the book. 

This book was written before CSI and such shows dominated the airwaves so a look inside crime scene investigations, autopsies and forensic labs is not a cliche here, and Cornwell is good at delivering details for the crime buff who might be interested. But the sexual and psychological warfare among the characters is as jumbled for the good guys as it is twisted fro the bad ones, and nobody tells the truth much, or trusts anyone.  The plot switches faster than the speed of light and the excesses of the plot detract from the book.

While Cornwall’s characters as always are interesting they are mostly hard to like, and you can feel certain they would never like or trust you if you had a chance to meet them.  Dr. Kay Scarpetta is reserved,  insecure, and suspicious of everyone she has ever known. Troubled lesbian niece Lucy has a secret in this book.  Pete Marino, the macho biker  security chief of the National Forensic Academy, has become a charicature of masogyny and narcissism, and the radio shrink is so shallow no one would ever call her for advice. As a psychologist reading this book I found the psychologists described unartfully. While I cannot give away the ending of the book, it involves a psychological twist that is almost believable, but could have been boltered with some consultation from a psychologist.

The book gets 3 stars, mostly for the forensic details and the villains. The earlier books in the series are better, but this is still a good read and worth your time. Give yourself a glimse inside the mind of the twisted.

Memories of Casino in Nice

With all the poker pros jetting into Nice, France to travel to the Monte Carlo tournament, I am reminded of my most recent trip there, playing at the Petite Casino in Nice.

I am not accustomed to wearing a dark suit to a casino, but that was just about the easiest part. I was playing blackjack and the fun part was, since I was winning and the casino was small, all the wealthy arabs begab to bet with me against the house. I had never been in a casino where strangers can do that, but I tried to keep my focus. Fortunately good play is independent of such matters.

But what really floored me was I had inverted the exchange ratem and when I cashed out, instead of winnings in the hundreds it was in the thousands. But I had not  even come close to realizing that all those humoungous bets  the onlookers were making on me brought them winnings closer to 6 figures..

I guess this was a seminal experience on the path to an eventual moneymaking career in cards.

Maryland/DC Book Store Vertigo Closes

Another bookstore is closing. Putting it succintly, they did not sell enoughbooks. The following blogpost looks at the economics of shopping local:

http://vertigobooks.blogsome.com/

General Thoughts About Books and Book Promotion

Rumor has it that Barnes and Noble is in talks to try to get their own ereader to compete with Kindle. Different companies are mentioned and nobody is confirming anything so it may all be hype.

NPR is doing a segment with Sarah and Candy from SmartBitchesTrashyBooks. They are one of the more popular sites and gained some fame when they caght a well known author in plagiarism. The NPR interview will air on Saturday April 11th,  They are promoting thier new book, Beyond Heaving Bosoms.

Anyone who is using Twitter, may have noticed its catching fire. All the mentions in the main stream media are fueling a growth that is taxing the servers. This week most of the avatars briefly disappeared and in the afternoons the wait for tweets can be several minutes longer than instantaneous. One of the fun things about twitter is that a haiku like brevity can put a premium on good writing.  Let’s hope that it can survive the success and doesnt fall down like Digg and other sites, who couldn’t handle success well. Stumble Upon seems to be improving though

Lee Goldberg reports that Fox is yanking Dollhouse after episode 12, and will not be airing the 13th episode. Sounds like a gimmick to get interest, at least in that last episiode if not in renewing.

Borders Struggling

 There are quite a few less Waldenbooks bookstores, as Borders (who owns Waldenbooks) continues to struggle. Borders announced that they have closed more than 15% of their Waldenbooks stores and 4 of the Borders Superstores. The Borders stores revenue was down about 15% and Waldenbooks lost about 1/3 of that figure. Book comps were down as well reflecting the cutbacks at the publishers.

Afraid I Liked It- A Review of Jack Kilborn’s Afraid

 

Afraid

By Jack Kilborn

Grand Central Publishing (March 31, 2009)

Paperback, 384 pages

$6.99

 

Safe Haven, Wisconsin is under siege, and the war on terror has come home to Midwestern America. This sleepy rural Wisconsin town-on-a-lake is the perfect place to live out your quiet retirement, or die trying. There is only one road in, so when a helicopter crashes and that road is blockaded, the evil that has been unleashed is going to go unchecked unless the local talent can somehow prevail.

 

We meet several appealing characters including the town sheriff, a firefighter, the single mom and her son, the son’s dog, and of course a cross-section of local villagers. But there is mayhem loose and death is a welcome alternative to what lies in store: a nemesis that relentlessly stalks and toys with the all too human prey.  The horror seems superhuman, and figuring out what makes the enemy tick is part of the puzzle that needs to be solved for the good guys to prevail.

 

Kilborn has written a masterful horror story, and he has put the “terror” back in terrorist. Filled with so much adrenaline and suspense you will need  to take a time out, this book is in your face with menace and gruesome peril. The book is well over 2/3 through before the reader begins to feel there is a chance this won’t all end very badly. More accurately, by then you have likely come to believe that the menace is unstoppable, or at least un-killable. While you do root for the townsfolk, you soon begin to suspect that your team is going to lose, and lose big.

 

I really enjoyed this first book by Jack Kilborn. Kilborn, is also JA Konrath, who is a very funny, accomplished and talented mystery writer. When you read his Jack Daniels Mystery series, you come to expect an irreverent humor that provides a break from the darker mystery plots. But under the new pen name, Kilborn gives the reader no such relief. Don’t expect any comedy.  Don’t expect any relief. You won’t get any relief until you take a plane out of Safe Haven. If you like your thrillers with more kills than thrills, and you do not have a weak stomach, then you will be consumed by this suspenseful book.

 

4  Stars

San Fransisco’s Largest Bookseller Closes

Staceys was the largest independent book store in the city, and it closed Tuesday. The store on Second and Market, had been open for five decades. Staceys is the most recent of several bookstores to close in thes hard finacial times. The story can be read here.

Passing Notes Behind the Teacher’s Back at SXSW

In the South By Southwest Intereactive  festival a watershed event occurred during a panel discussion. While the “experts of publishing” talked at the festival  panel a spontaneous discusssion on twitter emerged in the audience. The panelists did not initiate it, and were not involved or for the most part aware of the conversation.

This panelists, who were discussing “New Think for Old Publishers” had relatively little new to say, and seemed clueless about hashtags, for example. But the twitter discussion was spontaneous and reflected a new type of emerging learning that includes the rest of the experts and not just the calcified and coronated leaders. This revolution seems to this blogger to be a metaphor for the creative learning potential for the new web.

The Book Publicity Blog   Booksqaure and mediabistro all have discussions of the dual events. By the way, credit for the title of this post: it was a line from the discussion at the book publicity blog.

5 Star Review: Nutcase by Charlotte Hughes

As a psychologist I love the opportunity to read fiction that involves psychology. Nutcase is a romantic suspense by Charlotte Hughes. It features Kate Holly, a clinical psychologist from Atlanta. While it has a plot that centers on a serial arsonist, the book is really an ensemble story with a host of interesting and fun characters, and its central premise, that the life of a psychologist is enough to drive anyone nuts, rings true.

The story begins with Kate and her ex-husband in couples therapy. In the first book in the series (this book stands alone fine) Kate and her husband Jay “accdentally” go through with a divorce that Kate intended to call off. But what with a nitroglycerin explosion of her office and other madness and mahem from the first book, the divorce unfolded without protest. Now they are trying to get back together, but her Jay complains that she is using sex to avoid talking.

And there is a lot that kate is keeping to herself. Like that she is being evicted from her office because of the explosision and may have to move to share an office with a psychiatrist ex-boyfriend, who still wants her back. Her dog gets depressed from an empty nest syndrome. Her aunt (who is her mother’s twin and co-owner of a Junk art business) has run off with a con man who is also her patient. Her eccentric receptionist is dressing like a nurse as a dress rehearsal for nursing school, and one of her patients thinks she is Marie Osmand.

These problems and dozens of other unusual predicaments challenge Kate, who just happens to have a mild obsessive compulsive disorder (Monk light) and serve to entertain while the arson plot unfolds.

This is the second book in this series by Ms. Hughes, and in this series, one can see that she perfected the art of writing a series when she co-authored the FULL series with Janet Evanovich. This book is most like her ensemble romantic comedy A NEW ATTITUDE in that it’s also about the support and love you get from friends and family, when the going gets tough; it is also just as uplifting. There are several therapy scenes in the book, and as a psychologist I thought that they often (while obviously magnified for fictional effect)
not only true to form but also often potentially helpful to the casual reader who has not had the benefit of therapy. I especially enjoyed the vignette where she helps a young gang member sort things out.

I give this book my top rating, despite its relatively striaghtforward suspense plot. It still a novel you cant put down, and what it lacks in dramatic tension it more than makes up for in humor and inspiration. This is a book you will keep on your shelves, so your friends will just have to get their own copy. Charlotte Hughes writes incredibly realistic dialogue, makes her characters always 3 dimensional, and most important makes them so likable and interesting that you are sorry the book ends. The perfect setup for a series that will be a great success.

Book Review- Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Twighlight by Stephenie Meyer
Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers (September 6, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0316015849

The first book in the Twighlight Series by Stephanie Meyer is really two different books. As a book about teen vampires, it is essentially a comelling romance. The first 2/3 of the book deals with a forbidden love between an endearing mortal teen girl and the alluring teen male vampire she finds at her new school. Since vampires and humans dont mix well, this chasm between thier worlds serves to keep them apart, despite the fatal attraction they feel for each other. As thier feelings emerge and unfold, thier dangerous dalliance is heightened by the simple fact that Bella, the 17 year old girl, smells so delicious to Edward, her vampire suitor, that he can barely resist eating her. Therefore, because he loves her they cannot be too close. But he brings other virtues that make him the perfect (if unattainable) suitor. For one thing he is (excuse the pun) drop dead gorgeous. Also he has this habit of saving her life repeatedly. The early book is nonetheless a classic romance with very slow movement towards a requited love in which each is more than willing to sacrifice their own needs, for the other.

The last third of the book is a suspense/action/fantasy book in which two warring clans of vampires fight over Bella. Edward and his family are on her side, and a wily nemesis proves a worthy adversary. This part of the book feels so different from the first 2/3 that this evaluator got the sense it might have been better if it had been expanded and included as the second book in the series. It comes out of nowhere and detracts as much as it adds, although the plot is well enough written and a page turner while it is happening. It does not seem organically related to the romance, however.

Meyer has had great success with this series, and this, the first book of the Twilight series has a number of features that help explain her success. Foremost is how likable and believable Bella is, as a teenage heroine. The self-conscious intelligent clutz, who does not know how beautiful she is, is just enough of an outsider to be a compelling target of identification for the many women and girls who cherish the book. The interplay with other teens is often set in the lunchroom, and the rivalries, prom dates, and cars all ring about as true as any teen story ever penned by an adult; who hasn’t experienced these universal problems of finding a date, or a tablemate at the lunchroom? These scenes will make every reader that attended a public high school feel at home. But it is the juxtaposition of this homey, familiar angst with the dark dangerous vampire drama that makes both apsects of this novel special.

Meyer has written a memorable romance and uses the vampire angle to make the forbiden love theme especially compelling, and as a result she is able to keep her hero and heroine apart in a believable way, and consequently she sets up a series in a manner that will allow the relationship chasm to be crossed on a slow and believable way across several later books. As a first book in a series, the story works very well, but that means this single book loses something, since she can not have much closure in this one stand alone book. It’s designed to keep you reading.

Rated 3 1/2 stars