The Book world will miss Robert B. Parker – the celebrated writer of more than 50 books, the best known of which were his Spenser novels about a wisecracking ex-boxer turned Boston private eye – he died yesterday morning in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.
Category: Mystery (Page 8 of 9)
As I was driving into work this morning James Ellroy was on NPR Morning Edition and as usual was his fantastic self!!! If you missed it here it is…
Blood’s A Rover: A Novel
James Ellroy
(Random House, 2009)
Hard-boiled crime fiction is at its boiling point in 2009. Chef Ellroy has finished his fine hot meal with his new novel, Blood’s A Rover, as a cowboy steak for his main course. American Tabloid (1995) was the appetizer, followed by the salad, Cold Six Thousand (2001). With dinner now served, this meal is like no other in literary crime fiction. Ellroy is extending this grand genre with Blood’s literary accomplishment.
Reading Ellroy, you enter the writer’s mind as he expresses himself through a multitude of
complex, believable characters. This fine author challenges the reader while being touched with the full gambit of internal emotions, feeling these characters experiences not just reading them. Plots too complex to summarize, characters too many to name, adjectives too many to start using in description.
I consider Ellroy to be totally courteous to the reader: not giving away too much, not letting this meal be chewed too fast, a dinner served to last awhile and savor with dessert being the last page.
P.S.: While reading Blood’s A Rover, don’t be surprised if you find yourself cussing more in your day-to-day conversation.
Yes, I have jumped on the bandwagon. With the rest of the world I too am reading The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. In fact I had my book in my “hot little hand” by 8:10 am on Tuesday ( I did get the store opened before I made my purchase) and then went straight home after work and started reading. So far so good.
Robert Langdon is again caught up in some diabolical plan that could change the world as we know it!!! He has been “tricked” into coming to Washington DC under the guise of giving a lecture at the US Capitol Building but his night soon takes a turn when an ‘object’ decorated with 5 symbols shows up in the rotunda. Langdon realizes the object as an invitation “into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom”. Peter Solomon, Langdon’s mentor, has been kidnapped and Langdon knows the only way to save his friend, who is also a prominent Mason, is to accept the invitation and delve into the secret world of the Masons, 
mysterious history and hidden locations in our nation’s capitol, Washington DC. This is the only way to find the truth.
I’m sure when I finish The Lost Symbol I will have many questions regarding the Masons and our Founding Fathers(who were all Masons) and the Freemasonic roots of the United States of America. So I have a list of books that I think will help me and you (if interested) with further research to unanswered questions.
Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, Significance by W. Kirk MacNulty
American Gospel by Jon Meacham
Occult America: The Secret History of how Mysticism Shaped our Nation by Mitch Horowitz
Road Dogs: A Novelby Elmore Leonard
Morrow (2009)
In June, Lemuria was visited once again by our pal Elmore “Dutch” Leonard. Real joy from working in a bookstore comes from developing a friendship with an author which is bridged and forged by the tool of the book itself. The author’s work meets your work in achieving fulfillment: author through bookseller to reader.
Around 30 years ago, I started reading this fine writer and set off on the path to bring Elmore Leonard to Lemuria. After about a decade, I succeeded with a first trip to Jackson. Since then, Elmore’s now been here a half dozen times or so, helping us to get readers for his fine work.
Reading Road Dogs during his visit increased the magic of this trip. It is a favorite among many Elmore Leonard favorites. If you have not read Elmore in a while or ever–try this one. Road Dogs is delightful, full of clever characters with tight, offbeat, and surprising dialogue. It’s a great weekend summer book. And when you’re finished, check out La Brava, perhaps Elmore’s best.
I hope Elmore will visit Lemuria again in friendship and give us many more fun reads down the road.
If you are a Greg Iles fan you will be pleased to know that this novel is set in Natchez and Penn Cage is now the mayor. In his quest to improve the Natchez public schools and bring jobs back to Natchez he has turned to casino gambling like other Mississippi towns. There are now five floating casinos along the river but one boat, The Magnolia Queen, is not the same and has a lot to hide. There have been rumors that big players from Vegas have been coming to the Mississippi backwater on private jets to gamble and to participate in various “blood sports” such as dog fighting. When an old friend of Penn’s brings him evidence he feels the completely guilty for not being able to protect his home town from these wicked ways. Soon Penn realizes that if he is going to fight this corruption he is going to be on his own. Not knowing who to trust in his own administration or on the police force Penn calls in some old friends for help, Caitlin Masters, Danny McDavitt, Tom Cage and Walt Garrity. These friends and some new friends made along the way realize that is no ordinary enemy but one who has the ability to anticipate and counter their every move.
This book is nonstop action–full of plot twists–so if you have a long “to do list” do not start this book before everything is done because you will not want to stop reading until you are finished with The Devils Punchbowl and then trust me you will want more.
Greg Iles will be signing at Lemuria on July 11 at 4 pm and then reading at 5:30 pm.
Check out this great article in the JFP about our event on Monday.
My favorite mystery for 2008 is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. It is set in Russia while Stalin was in power and there is no crime. Leo Demidov, a war hero and MGB officer, is a big believer in his country and its laws but when a killer does strike he is torn between being obedient to the State or investigating the murders and being demoted and exiled. He knows a killer is on the loose so he takes a chance and does the right thing with only his wife by his side. Well, Smith’s new book is out.
The Secret Speech picks up bascially where Child 44 left off. It is 1956 and the new Khrushchev regime has leaked a “secret speech” that basically tells all of Stalins notorius crimes. Demidov has left his MGB days behind and started a homicide department but his former colleagues fearful of reprisals of thier past victims begin to take thier own lives. Demidov now has to face the fact that many of the people he arrested and sent to the gulags were innocent and want revenge. It becomes clear that the suicides are not what they appear to be when Fraera, the wife of a priest that Demidov sent to prison, targets him and his family. She kidnaps Zoya, his adopted daughter, and threatens to kill her if he doesn’t free her husband from prison. Tom Rob Smith again gives us a novel full of action and as in Child 44 successfully personalizes the tragic and brutal life of many Russians during this time period.
Ok folks hold onto your hats…it has been confirmed today that in our store, Lemuria, we will have at the same time some of the best crime fiction writers in the world! Are you ready…Elmore Leonard, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, and Peter Leonard will be here on June 15, 2009. They will be signing at 5:30 and then down in the DotCom building at 6:30 there will be a panel discussion and you can ask all the questions that you want to!!! Can you believe it?!?!? I will be off that week because I will have gotten married on June 13 but I just might have to come up here for this event.
Elmore Leonard is back with his first contemporary novel since 2004. In Road Dogs, Leonard brings back some of his favorite characters. Jack Foley from Out of Sight is serving out the rest of his 30 year sentence for bank robbery and has made a friend in the Miami Penitentiary who might be able to help him out with that problem. Cundo Rey from LaBrava, a former transvestite go-go dancer and now Foley’s fellow wealthy inmate, arranges for Foley’s sentence to be reduced, released a week before himself and a place to live (in his pink house). Waiting at home for Rey, is his common-law wife and psychic, Dawn Navarro from Riding the Rap. She has her own motives for waiting for Cundo to come home mainly his money. She wants it all!! When Jack arrives at the house she thinks she might have found the perfect partner to help her with her plans. Cundo is Jack’s good friend but can he trust him and can either of them trust Dawn? Road Dogs is typical Leonard and you will love seeing Cundo, Jack, and Dawn back in action and working together…or are they?
Michael Connelly brings back Jack McEvoy from The Poet to a thriller that is just as creepy! In The Scarecrow , Jack is still a crime beat reporter but he has just been laid off from the Times. The same day he receives this news he gets a phone call from a lady saying that he is a liar. Ms. Sessums’ drug dealing grandson, Alonzo Winslow, has been arrested and confessed to the murder of a young woman found strangled in the trunk of her car. Ms. Sessums swears he is innocent and wants Jack to recant his article he had written the week before. Since he is being forced to leave the paper he decides to go out with a bang and begins to investigate the murder and uncovers that the confession is bogus and connects this murder with an earlier murder in Las Vegas. Jack begins to realize that this might be his biggest story since the Poet murders, which jump-started his career, but what he doesn’t know is that the killer is on to him and is waiting and watching his every move.
George Pelecanos has been called “one of the most literary of America’s crime writers” In The Way Home Chris Flynn a “bad kid from a good family” has been given a second chance. With the help of his loving parents he had started a new life after spending a good bit of his teenage years in juvenile prison. While at his new job of laying carpet he and a co-worker, a “juvie friend” find a satchel of money. At first, they leave it where they found but soon find the temptation is too great and both are drawn back into the life they had hoped to leave behind. Chris’s father, Thomas Flynn, owns the carpet buisness and soon realizes that something is wrong but knows that he cannot always protect his son from the world’s evils and you just have to let them find thier own way home. This is a unforgettable novel of fathers’ hopes and sons’s ambitions, of love, drive, and forgiveness.
Peter Leonard is a new author to the mystery genre. His father is Elmore Leonard but Peter can stand on his own. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel says “Peter Leonard’s energetic style makes one forget the name Elmore and concentrate on the Leonard…Good writing may be in his genes, but the style’s all his own”. In Trust Me, Karen Delaney has made two mistakes, first she entrusted $300,00 to her boyfriend, Samir, the head of a illegal bookmaking operations and second she broke up with him. After Karen’s home is broken into, she enlists the thieves to steal her money back but she soon realizes that she is in way over her head. Karen is being chased by an ex-con/ex-cop, O’Clair, who wants the money so he can retire, by Ricky, Samir’s nephew, who needs the money for his gambling debts, by the two thieves who have double-crossed and by two hit men who want thier piece of the American dream. Peter Leonard made a splash with his debut, Quiver, and now he reaches for new heights with Trust Me, a thriller loaded with double- and triple-crosses.