I more than made up for that in May, despite the fact that I was teaching a very intensive mystery workshop for professional writers.  Those writers each produced 20,000+ words of fiction during that week.  The stories in that workshop alone were better than almost anything I read in April.  Those twelve writers hit everything out of the park, and I can’t wait to see the stories/novels in print.

But I’ll have to wait to recommend them because you can’t find them yet.  (Note to editors: buy those stories!)  However, you can find the works below.  I read so many good books and essays and articles that I felt overwhelmed by the riches before me.  What a month! As I write this (on June 1), I’m midway through three other books I will recommend, with two more in the queue that I expect to love.  Let’s hope the next novel isn’t as jealous as the novel I was finishing in April…

May, 2010

Callahan, Michael, “Sorority On E. 63^rd Street,” Vanity Fair, April, 2010.  This article had a personal fascination for me.  The article, about the Barbizon on 63^rd and Lexington Avenue in New York City, gave me a window into my own past.  In December of 1990, I took my first solo trip to New York, and asked my then-agent where I should stay.  He recommended the Barbizon Hotel.  The rooms were tiny, but the lobby was impressive, and the restaurant was good. The neighborhood was better.  I felt safe there—and NYC in 1990 wasn’t the safest city in the world (the Port Authority Terminal scared the bejesus out of me—and that was my introduction to the city).

All I knew about the Barbizon was that it had once been a hotel for women, but was now co-ed. When I mentioned the hotel, my mother told me that my former sister-in-law stayed there when she went to an upscale finishing school in the city.  So I imagined my beloved former sister-in-law, who had been in my life since I was two, wander those tiny hallways, and I wondered if she had had my room.

I didn’t know that Grace Kelly, Candice Bergen, Joan Crawford, Phyllis Diller, Ali McGraw, and Sylvia Plath (among others) had stayed there as well, back when they were young as I was and as frightened of the city as I was and as green behind the ears as I was.  I wish I had known.  It might have made me feel better.

This article tells the history of the Barbizon—which is no more.  Brought back a lot of memories for me, and a question.  Did my then-agent, a man of a certain age, still think the hotel was a dormitory for single women?  I don’t know.  But it would have been just like him to watch out for me, poor naïve dear that I was.

Chabon, Michael, “Diving into the Wreck,” Maps and Legends: Reading And Writing Along The Borderlands, Harper Perennial edition, 2009. I’m still reading the essay collection that contains “Diving into the Wreck,” so I don’t yet know if I’m going to recommend the entire book.  If the other essays are like this one, I probably will.  “Diving into the Wreck” is a marvelous essay on the process of writing.  In particular, it’s a great essay about the process of writing a second novel, especially when the first came out to great acclaim.

Chabon went into his office with the weight of all that acclaim, the expectations of his readers, editor, and agent on his shoulders, and wrote—and rewrote—his second novel for five long years.  Then, while it was still unfinished, he started a third novel and…oh, you’ll have to read this.  But it’s worth the read.  Particularly if you’ve read his novel The Wonder Boys (or seen the movie with Michael Douglas and Toby McGuire).  Because there’s some autobiography in that story, and the autobiography gets explained here.  Any writer interested in how other writers work needs to read this essay.

Chabon, Michael, “Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes,” Maps and Legends: Reading And Writing Along The Borderlands, Harper Perennial edition, 2009.  Chabon got a lot more out of reading Holmes than I did, but in this essay, he managed to share his enthusiasm without going over the edge that topples some Holmes fans.  The essay talks about the importance of Holmes to Chabon and to writing in general.  It also explores the history of Conan Doyle and the stories themselves.  A must-read for mystery fans, Holmes fans, and writers.

Chabon, Michael, “Kids’ Stuff,” Maps and Legends: Reading And Writing Along The Borderlands, Harper Perennial edition, 2009.  Chabon, who wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is an unabashed comic book fan.  This essay, first written as the keynote speech for the Eisner Awards Ceremony in 2004, is a call for comic book writers/artists/publishers to return to the days when comic books were written for kids.  Not that Chabon wants comics to be dumbed down; he doesn’t.  But his complaint in this essay about comics is the same as mine has been about book-length science fiction.  We have lost the entry level works into our own genre.  He makes a strong case for “kids’ stuff” comic books, written from the perspective of someone who adores comic books.  It’s a manifesto worth reading.

Denby, David, “Out of the West,” The New Yorker, March 8, 2010.  My March 8 issue of The New Yorker arrived deformed.  Something happened in the printing process that pulled signatures (pages) out of order.  When signatures are out of order, you get weird pagination like 59, 26, 27, 62.  And the problems seemed to fall in the middle of this article.  Once I got everything put into place, I read a fascinating piece on Clint Eastwood, and his influence on film.

I’d read a biography of Eastwood years ago, and didn’t get as much out of it as I got out of these 5,000 words.  A great (if snobby) analysis of Eastwood’s contribution to American cinema.  Also worthwhile for artists out there who are struggling to follow their own vision.  Eastwood is a great example of someone who balances commercial and artistic.  Good stuff.

Feige, David, Indefensible, Little, Brown, 2006.  Indefensible is a stunningly written account of one day in the life of a public defender in the South Bronx.  Feige is that defender, and he chose the career over many others, including being a defense attorney at a private firm.  Terrifying for the horrors he deals with on a daily basis, but ultimately uplifting for the hope he still holds for humanity, Indefensible is one of the best books I’ve read in years on the criminal justice system—its faults and its strengths.  Highly recommended.

Goodman, Carol, Arcadia Falls, Ballantine, 2010.  It’s no secret that I like Carol Goodman’s work.  The fact that the books are falling into a formula—highly educated but down on her luck woman goes to a retreat/hidden school/academic program, discovers long-lost secrets, nearly dies, but reveals all in the end.  Goodman writes modern Gothics—very little romance, lots of strong women, lots of discussion of literature, art, theater, history—and they work.  These books are catnip for me, well written with great atmosphere, and excellent characters.

This time, she writes about a private high school in the made-up town of Arcadia Falls—where women occasionally fall to their deaths.  Not a safe or secure place, but an interesting one.  I liked the book enough to recommend it, although not as much as I liked her first The Lake of Dead Languages. Maybe I liked that one so much because it was my introduction to her work.  If this is your introduction, you’ll enjoy it as well.

Lewis, Michael, “Betting on the Blind Side,” Vanity Fair, April 2010.  Vanity Fair is doing the best writing on the financial crisis that led to our recession bar none.  I’ve been reading essays in places from The New Yorker to The Washington Post and Forbes, and I’m getting the most fascinating, frightening, and insightful information out of Vanity Fair.  Who knew?

This piece is an excerpt from Lewis’s book, The Big Short, which I have not read yet, about Michael Burry, a trader who figured out what was going to happen long before other “experts.”  Fascinating and frightening doesn’t cover the financial part.  It goes beyond both. Also interesting is Burry himself who happens to have Asperger’s Syndrome, and how that has benefited his career.  Worth reading.

Paretsky, Sara, Hardball: A V.I. Warshawski Novel, Putnam, 2009.  Hardball was my reward for successfully teaching a mystery writing workshop for professionals who want to move into mystery.  Critical voice on high, I went into this novel defensively, much as I love Paretsky.  And the opening was bumpy—I was afraid that I hadn’t remembered something from the previous book which I’d read years before.  But nope, she started this one in exactly the right place, and didn’t rely on the previous book at all.  It was my highly critical brain on alert that made the opening seem bumpy.

Once I was in, I stayed up all night to finish the damn thing.  I had forgotten how much I love Paretsky’s work.  Now I want her to write faster.  I want more.

If you haven’t read Paretsky, Hardball might be a good place to start. The novel is relatively self-contained and has an incredible emotional pay-off.  I loved it.

Seal, Mark, “Big Trouble at 11:35,” Vanity Fair, April, 2010.  I expect Vanity Fair to do well with celebrity reportage.  I also expect it to do well with upscale sleaze.  (Not the financial stuff [see above] but this stuff)  This article is like reading about a particularly riveting train wreck—the blackmail of David Letterman.  Whatever made Joe Halderman go off the deep end? Who knows? But the behind-the-scenes stuff is page-turning.

Turow, Scott, Innocent, Grand Central, May, 2010.  Let me state here and now that this is 7/8ths of the most brilliant book I’ve ever read.  I was nearly to the end and I couldn’t figure out why the reviews of the book came in mixed.  Now I know.  One of three things happened: Turow rewrote too much and decided his original ending was “bad”; Turow had too many “advisors” in the mix, and they told him to back off his original idea; or Turow couldn’t face what he was about to put his characters through.  I’m guessing it was #3.  He didn’t have enough courage, as an author, to go the distance with this plot scenario.

So why, if the book is flawed, am I recommending it to you?  Because it is 7/8ths of the most brilliant book I’ve ever read.  Just because it’s not the most brilliant book I’ve ever read doesn’t mean it fails.  It’s still a spectacular novel, just not as good as it originally promised to be.

What the novel actually is, once you get passed the  missed opportunity, is a meditation on growing older.  I think it’s no coincidence that the book begins with Presumed Innocent’s protagonist, Rusty Sabich, turning sixty.  Twenty years have passed since Presumed Innocent, and everyone’s lives have changed because of the events of that book, although some lives haven’t changed enough.

If you haven’t read Presumed Innocent, you must read it before Innocent.  You’re in for a treat.  Presumed Innocent is the book that began the modern legal thriller genre, and it’s a hell of a ride.  Innocent isn’t a ride—Turow hasn’t written a ride since Presumed Innocent—but Innocent is still a page-turner, keeping me up all night during a week when I actually needed the sleep.  The mystery is good, the characters excellent, the insights superb.

If you read Presumed Innocent twenty years ago and still remember it, I’d recommend that you not reread it.  Twenty years have passed in book-time as well as real life, and the events fade to memories, which is how they are in Innocent as well.  Turow does so many things right here that it’s a primer on how to write a mystery novel.   Because that’s what this is.  Not a legal thriller.  A mystery novel.  Something that looks at life as it is, and as we want it to be.  Maybe that’s what he was going for. Because life is never as neatly wrapped up as a thriller would have you believe.  Pick up the book.  It’s very good.

Finished the book a little after the middle of the month, so I could finally get to reading novels again. I also had a bunch of research I have to do, so the novel-reading started up slowly.

So…all I have for recommendations this month are a few short stories, a few articles, and one novel. Here’s hoping May will be better.

April, 2010

Costa, Shelley, “As The Screw Turns,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2010.  Wonderful ghost story.  Had I read the title before the story (did I tell you I got tired in April?), I would have realized that she was playing off Henry James, but I figured it out anyway.  A lovely mystery chock-full of ghosts, all of whom must solve murders. This one pulls the heartstrings, and introduces an afterlife that I hope Costa explores again.

Estleman, Loren D., “Get Sinatra,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2010.  Nice period piece featuring the young, and mostly unknown, Frank Sinatra.  So well written, in fact, that it made me break out the early Sinatra CDs.  If I say any more, I shall reveal too much.

Jones, Chris, “The Essential Man,” Esquire, March, 2010.  Fascinating article on the film critic Roger Ebert.  His cancer surgery took his speaking voice away four years ago, but he still communicates.  Good stuff in here on writing, movies, and enjoying life.  Highly recommended.

Kamp, David, “Sweet Bard of Youth,” Vanity Fair, March, 2010.  I love Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue, which comes out in time for the Oscars, but which I always manage to read in April.  I’m chronically behind on my reading. Ah, well.

Kamp’s article is about John Hughes, whose films I’ve always enjoyed.  I never knew much about Hughes himself, and this article remedies that.  It also provides a portrait of an artist who remained true to himself.  If you want to work in the arts or if you already do, check this one out.

Mockenhaupt, Brian, “Hood,” Esquire, March, 2010.  An article on Fort Hood, describing the community, the culture, and the aftershocks of last fall’s shootings.  Sad, interesting, well done.

Robb, J.D., Born in Death, Berkley, 2007.  Nora Roberts (whose sf pen name is J.D. Robb) writes faster than I can read.  She’s the only author I know I can say that about.

It’s not entirely true.  If I read only Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, then I’d keep up easily. But I do get tired of reading the same author over and over, no matter how good the writer is—and Roberts is damn good.

I usually read the Robb books when I travel. That way, if I lose it en route, I can always pick up another copy.  I decided to try this one while writing the jealous novel.  It didn’t work; but I managed to get far enough to want to finish when I was done with my own novel.

Babies, childbirth, mystery, and murder are the themes of this Eve/Roarke adventure.  And it would’ve been an uncomfortable read if it weren’t for Eve’s shock and dismay over the way that human reproduction works.  I have (and still do) feel the same way at times, so reading her dialogue often made me laugh aloud in recognition.  One of the better J.D. Robb installments.

Weller, Sheila, “Once In Love With Ali,” Vanity Fair, March, 2010.  I didn’t expect to enjoy an article on Ali McGraw.  I was never incredibly impressed with her as an actress, possibly because I loathed Love Story.  The article, though, shows what a fascinating woman she is, and what an interesting life she’s led.  Made me want to see some McGraw films, which is danged unusual—and shows the power of print.

What is worth recommending from March? Some magazine articles and two books.  After my stellar January, March really was a disappointment.  (Although the student manuscripts were all better than expected—so no disappointments there.)

March, 2010

Blum, Deborah, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, The Penguin Press, 2010.  First the title caught me.  Then the subtitle:  I adore the history of science, the  history of criminology, and anything about Jazz Age New York.  And of course the word murder.  I made a mental note: get this book.  But it wasn’t until I started seeing reviews that I realized I wanted this book now.

Reviewers have said this reads like a good thriller, which is a bit of an overstatement—thrillers have plot after all—but the book is immensely readable and fascinating.  Readers who lack strong stomachs might want to avoid reading this over meals. (I read it mostly during lunch; clearly, I have a strong stomach and high gag threshold.)  Poisons are nasty killers and poisoners are nastier than most.  The stories in here—the killings, the methodology, and the forensic solutions are wonderful.  One even (sadly) made me laugh out loud—the story of Mike the Durable, whose “pals” at a local bar decided to kill him for the insurance money, seemed like something out of a farce instead of an actual case.

Good stuff here, memorable stuff, and great writing.  The Poisoner’s Handbook is worth all of those weird looks you’re going to get if you read it over lunch.

Deaver, Jeffrey, Roadside Crosses, Pocket Books, 2010.  Normally, I buy Deaver’s novels in hardcover the moment they appear, but I didn’t buy this one right away.  I’m not a big fan of Kathryn Dance, the main character in these novels.  I love Deaver’s writing, but I knew there was a chance that this novel wouldn’t measure up to his other novels, and I didn’t want to risk my $25 on being disappointed.

It turns out that I needn’t have worried.  Roadside Crosses is a marvelous Jeffrey Deaver novel, not just a marvelous Kathryn Dance story.  It measures up to his other works and kept me reading.  Also, had I known beforehand what the subject matter—blogs, cyberbullies, online gaming—I would have been a lot more interested. But the hardcover edition didn’t emphasize that, instead emphasizing the crosses left on the side of the road before someone died.

Good characters, stellar plotting (as usual), an interesting exploration of a world I’m passingly familiar with from an outside perspective, and some fun additions.  Head out and buy this one; it’s absolutely worth your time (and your money).

Gladwell, Malcolm, “The Sure Thing,” The New Yorker, January 18, 2010.  Those of you who also read my freelancer’s guide might want to read this article as well.  Gladwell examines some high profile entrepreneurs and discusses how they really succeeded.  He blows the myth out of the water that entrepreneurs are gamblers and risk-takers, using example after example to show that high-level entrepreneurs are risk-averse.

These high-level entrepreneurs are also predators, willing to take advantage of weaknesses that they might perceive within the world around them, and willing to use those weaknesses to their advantage.  Fascinating stuff, which corralates with some of the things I have been writing.  He just said it better, clearer, and with a few high end examples.

Grape, Jan, “Interview with Tony Hillerman,” Speaking of Murder, edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, Berkley Prime Crime, 1998.  I can’t in good conscience recommend the entire book Speaking of Murder. Some of the interviews are more than fifteen years old, and talk about the mystery market as if it’s fixed.  It wasn’t then, and isn’t now.

But for pure enjoyment, as well as the proper attitude toward a writing career, read Jan Grape’s interview with Tony Hillerman.  I had known a lot about his history, and I hadn’t known most of this.  If you want to read the rest of the volume, remember that the book is out of date—although the interviews that deal with the craft of writing are not.

Packer, George, “Letters from Dresden: Embers,” The New Yorker, February 1, 2010.  Fascinating article about a city I only know of in conjunction with the phrase “the bombing of” out of World War II.  Packer has spent time there, and contemplates the city’s history here—and whether or not the city can confront that history.  I think that question can be asked of all of us, cities or human beings. But the question is particularly dramatic here, and the analysis, as well as the city itself, is thought-provoking.

The books I did enjoy are listed below, including two stellar nonfiction works.

February, 2010

Bruen, Ken, The Killing of the Tinkers, St. Martins Minotaur, 2005.  Another short bleak novel, beautifully written, with an uncompromising view of the world.  Wonderful stuff.  I laughed aloud in several places, shook my head in surprise, and just enjoyed.  This book is noir, for those of you who don’t know what noir is.  Fiction doesn’t get much darker—or more enjoyable.

Curriden, Mark, and Phillips, Leroy, Jr., Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the Century Lynching That Launched A Hundred Years of Federalism, Anchor Books, 2001.  I read a lot for research and much of what I read is dry, to say the least.  This is anything but dry.  It’s so compelling that I talked to Dean about it the entire time I read the book, exclaiming about it, and wondering why I hadn’t heard about this in my con law or my history classes.

In 1906, Ed Johnson, a black man, was convicted of raping a white woman in Chattanooga, despite having dozens of alibi witnesses.  A mob nearly lynched him right after his arrest.  No blacks served on juries there.  His appointed lawyers were told in no uncertain terms by the trial judge that they could not apply for a change of venue, even though the whole town thought him guilty.  At his trial, a juror stood up and shouted that he wanted to rip the defendant’s heart out right then and there.  At the trial.

His lawyers refused to appeal. Two black lawyers took up the case, but the judge refused to hear the appeal within the time limit for filing. So they went to federal court, asking for a stay. The federal judge wasn’t sure he had jurisdiction (the law hadn’t evolved yet), and stayed the execution long enough to let the lawyers go to the Supreme Court. Which they did.

Surprisingly, the court chose to hear the case—and sent telegrams to the local sheriff as well as the papers and a local magistrate, demanding that Ed Johnson get put into federal custody. Instead, Ed Johnson was lynched.  The locals blamed the Supreme Court for “causing” the lynching with their ruling, and a sign on Johnson’s body—well, I can’t type the foul thing here.

So the Court had to deal with this blatant disregard of its authority, and…you’ll see.  This book is so worth reading.  It’s riveting. The writing is superb. There are two court cases here, and lots of fascinating issues.

Because this was such a big deal at the time, there was a lot of newspaper coverage. The lawyers involved wrote about it, and then there was all the court records. So the wealth of detail in the book is amazing.  A lawyer and a newspaper reporter got together to write this, and the newspaper reporter, Mark Curriden, knows how to tell a story. Or in this case, several stories.

This is an amazing book. If you like history or just a good legal thriller, read this.  I was sorry to see it end.

Larsson, Stieg, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.  I don’t know why I waited so long to read this.  I think it was because of the subject matter as mentioned in the blurb—sex trafficking (which turns out to be a minor, almost unimportant part of the story) and the explosive power of the prologue.   All the reviews have said that this, the second book in Stieg Larsson’s story about Lisbeth Salander, is better than the first, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which also made my recommended reading list).  I normally don’t read reviews, but these were hard to miss, since they were everywhere.

This book is better. It has a more traditional structure, and it’s impossible to put down.  It gets more and more fantastic—a gigantic, impossible-to-overpower man fighting the greatest boxer in Sweden, for example—but as it gets more and more outre, the characters in the book remark, “How much more unbelievable can this get?” and that’s more than enough to sustain the story.

Lisbeth Salander is a tremendous character and she’s in grave danger in this book. Because we know her from the previous book, we also worry when she sets her sights on someone who betrayed her.  Not for her, but for that character (scummy as he is).  Excellent writing, albeit a bit creepy.  Particularly the chapter in which a publisher discusses whether or not to publish a dead author’s masterpiece.  Larsson, for those of you who don’t know, died shortly after turning in the third book in this series.  It’s a shame that he’s gone, depriving the world of his stories.  Fortunately, we have these three books.  I’m expecting the third to measure up, even if it doesn’t quite hit the pyrotechnics of The Girl Who Played With Fire.  The next book is on preorder, and I’m tapping my fingers as I wait.

Penzler, Otto, editor, The Lineup, Little, Brown, 2009.  This is the perfect book for the long-term mystery fan.  Penzler asked his favorite authors to write a chapbook about their most famous character.  He gave those chapbooks away at his mystery bookstore in New York to excellent customers.  Eventually, someone convinced him to compile the essays.

Good thing that he did.  They’re mostly marvelous, with fantastic writerly insights, and tales of characters gone wild.  I was going to write about each essay, the way I write about the essays in an essay collection, but then decided against it.  I often found I was less interested in the essays by my favorite authors because I was already familiar with the character and the character’s history.  (The only essays that worked for me by my favorites described the writing process as well as the character.)  Since everyone has different favorites, everyone is going to have a different reaction to the various essays.

The only ones I didn’t like were the ones that the authors wrote in the form of a short story.  It seemed a bit twee to me—and a lot less revealing, about the characters, and about the writing process.  The only one of those that worked for me was Robert B. Parker’s.  But I suspect Parker could have written about the interior of his underwear drawer and come up with something fascinating.  (What a shame to lose him this year!)

If you like mysteries, buy this book.  If you like fiction, buy this book.  If you like knowing the background of your favorite characters, buy this book.  And if you are a writer or an aspiring writer, buy this book.  Enough said.

Willis, Connie, Blackout, Ballantine Books, February, 2010.  I have been waiting for this book for years, ever since I saw the first third of it in the editor’s office.  I’ve known Connie’s editor, Anne Groell, for a long time, and for a while, Anne was my editor.  (I’ve known Connie longer.  Wow.)  At lunch in NYC in 2007, Anne showed me the first third of Connie’s manuscript for her time-travel World War II book.  That first third was about the size of one of my Fey novels—at least 800 pages in manuscript, maybe more.

Connie says this novel grew like crazy, and I can believe it.  It’s now two books—Blackout and All Clear, which won’t be out until the fall. Dammit. Which is much too far away.

Clearly, some of that 800-page draft had been trimmed.  But the book is still big, and complicated.  If I were Ballantine, I’d’ve left some of those early pages, cut the book into three parts, and released them one after the other—in February, March, and April, the way that romance hardcovers get released sometimes.  But I’m not in charge of marketing this.

Too bad, because I worry that current marketing might hurt the book.  The cover’s attractive to WWII fans, but not sf fans, and there is no ending.  In fact at the end, the action has just started to get tighter.  Nothing in the cover blurb or the flaps say that this is book one of anything, which is a problem, I think.

But it’s only a problem for people who are surprised, and now you won’t be surprised.  Pick up Blackout.  I devoured it in a few short reading sessions.  Connie’s trademark excellent characters are here, and her historical detail is spot-on. The time-travel concerns feel frighteningly real, and the story moves quickly.  It’s easy to tell the large cast apart, and to keep track of all the different time periods.

The story so far is about time-traveling historians who may or may not have gotten stuck in the London Blitz of 1940. But there’s more than that here—Dunkirk, the British children sent to the countryside for safety reasons, hospitals, shopgirls, and bomb shelters in the Underground.  Excellent scary stuff, with the bombs as real as if they were falling outside your window as you read.  Read this and then order All Clear immediately, so that Ballantine will buy more books from Connie and we can roam around in her vast imagination once more.  Enjoy!

January, 2010

Bruen, Ken, The Guards, St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2001.  Let me just say, “Oh, my.”  I had no idea you could write like this and get published.  The Guards is a prose poem of darkness, with a character that I—the daughter of two alcoholics—should hate, and I don’t hate him even though he drinks his way through the entire novel, and makes all the mistakes that an alcoholic makes.  Set in Ireland and very very dark, very well written, unforgettable.  One of the best novels I’ve read in years.  Seriously.  Buy it, read it, but not before bed.

Cantrell, Rebecca, A Trace of Smoke, Forge, 2009.  One of the best first novels I’ve read in years.  One of the best novels I’ve read in years, quite honestly. Set in 1931 Berlin, A Trace of Smoke follows Hannah Vogel as she tries to find out why her brother was murdered. That her brother was gay and part of Berlin’s night club scene makes her work all the more difficult.  She manages to show the bone-shaking poverty of the time, along with the menace of the political situation.  The rise of the Nazis, and the involvement of some famous Nazis makes this story all the more hair-raising.

But the book is unputdownable because of one character, Anton, about whom I’m going to say little without spoiling the read.  From his first line of dialogue to the very end of the novel, Anton kept me reading.  Wonderful job. Evocative novel.  Set aside several hours because you’ll read it in one sitting.

Carlin, Peter Ames, Paul McCartney: A Life, Touchstone, 2009.  Paul McCartney was my first crush, back before my age had two digits in it.  I must’ve been four when I first became aware of the man.  I thought him marvelous then, and I still like him even now, which is more than I can say for any other childhood or teenage crush.  I don’t think I find him sexy so much as intriguingly creative.  Talk about surviving a long-time career, and still going strong.

Carlin’s book is very, very well written, and very thin.  He did do his interviews with the side players and did all of his research, but obviously didn’t interview McCartney.  The book skips over things in an odd fashion—like John Lennon’s murder. Carlin assumes we all know how Lennon died.  I’m not sure a 20-something who ended up liking Beatles: Rock Band will know.  Still, I couldn’t put this down—and much of that was the sentence-by-sentence writing (and the subject matter, of course).

Gates, David Edgerly, “Skin and Bones,” Between The Dark And The Daylight And 27 More Of The Best Crime & Mystery Stories of The Year, edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, Tyrus, 2009.  I have no idea how I missed this excellent story when it first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  It’s a marvelous hardboiled novella that got nominated for the Edgar award (deservedly so), set in 1949 New York. The language is right, the feel is right, the town is right—and it reads like a novel.  It’s as deep and rich as anything else you’ll read this year.  Highly Recommended.

Gorman, Ed and Greenberg, Martin H., editors, Between The Dark And The Daylight And 27 More Of The Best Crime & Mystery Stories of The Year, Tyrus, 2009.  I love this volume every year, and every year, I only recommend a few stories from it.  Partly that’s because I’ve already recommended some of the stories (like Doug Allyn’s “Pig Party”) and partly it’s because the quality of this volume is so consistently good that stories which would normally stand out are part of a piece here.  This best of the year volume always has more of the award-winning and nominated stories than its competitor, and is probably more representative of the short mystery field.  The only thing I really would like to improve the volume is the kind of analysis that Gardner Dozois and Ellen Datlow do in their best of the year volume.  (The Jon L. Breen overview is nice, but not enough.) Pick this up.  It’s good.

James, P.D., Talking About Detective Fiction, Knopf, 2009.  This little book was a joy to read.  From the dust jacket to the paperstock to the inky smell of the pages, the actual book itself was a pleasure to hold.  The subject matter is one I love, and the writer herself is one of my very favorites.

She doesn’t disappoint.  This little book on detective fiction focuses mostly on the British tradition (which makes sense, since P.D. James is a British writer), but the analysis is cogent and thought-provoking. She takes aim at a few other critics of mystery fiction, always remembering that the important thing about fiction is its ability to tell a story.  Her insights into her own work are great, but my favorite part of the book is her discussion of the American hardboiled tradition versus the British drawing room mystery, both of which were being developed at the same time.

I’ve never seen the two traditions analyzed as a product of their time before (the late 1920s and early 1930s).  I learned a lot reading this little book and I enjoyed the experience of holding it.  What more can you want?

Kinsale, Laura, Lessons in French, Sourcebooks, January, 2010.  Ah, Laura Kinsale is back and all is right with the world. Seriously, does anyone else get depressed when one of their favorite writers doesn’t put out a book for a few years?   Kinsale hit some personal setbacks in her writing (she alludes to them in her Author’s Note), and they made her stop publishing books for a while.  I, for one, missed her tremendously.

Kinsale wrote one of my favorite novels ever, Flowers from the Storm, which is not your classic romance novel.  It’s better. It’s better than most novels in any genre.  Is Lessons in French that good? No, of course not, but Kinsale hit it out of the park with Flowers.  I don’t ask my favorite writers to hit a homerun each time at bat, but I do want them to hit the ball.  And to extend the already overwrought metaphor, Lessons in French is at least a double, maybe a triple.

Wonderful characters, great situations, lots of humor without being a funny book, lots of tension—and a bull named Hubert who becomes very important to the plot.  This book lives and breathes adventure and fun and warmth and…oh, I read it too fast.  Please, is there another Kinsale novel on the horizon? Please?