Review of The Truth About Fire: A Novel (Hardcover)

Gillian Grace is a professor of modern German History who ends up teaching in rural Michgan to avoid her separated but un-divorced husband--with her troubled mixed- race daughter in tow.A graduate student talks her into helping him as he pursues the Far Right who may be responsible for the murder of his friend.Alternates with sections written from the point of view of Lucy Wirth whose husband has unwittingly allowed the Sons of the Shepherd to use his sporting goods store to stage their arms build up and plans for biological warfare.Interesting parallels between her relationship with her husband and with the graduate student--where the tables are turned and she now becomes over involved with a student.Fascinating development as she realizes that the student is as crazed as the neo-nazis he pursues.The bioterrorism angle seems too far removed from the action of the story for me to really care, but the characters and the struggle to understand evil are compelling enough to make up.



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Review of The Husband's Dilemma: Stories (Hardcover)

After her stunning "Places to Look for a Mother," Nicole Stansbury had a lot to prove with her second book, this collection of short stories. Unfortunately she succeeds only in part.
Despite some trenchant writing, particularly when she is writing about wives, as in "The Apology," most of the stories contained herein lack that Stansbury laser intelligence and insight: "And if you didn't treat a life that way-if she didn't rise each and every morning with determination and a checklist and consequences for sloth-you were bound, she was bound. To lapse into depression, and to feel trivial and female."
The title story of this collection should have been the centerpiece of this work, the piece around which all the other stories revolve. But instead, Stansbury has the "husband" go on and on about his wife Kathy: "...Why does she have to shop?...What's so important to buy?...Is she a sicko?...is she insane?...like her trying to prove she was good in bed." And on and on ultimately culminating in what amounts to a date rape. If this is an attempt at humor, it falls very very flat.
But when Stansbury's writing is right on...it is right on: "I thought my joy, my ecstasy really was from the baby, and a whole lot of it was. But what I didn't know was how the morphine went into the brain and revealed my secret garden...it smelled of heavy tomatoes on the vine...and all that beauty made me sentimental and everything made me cry."
At this very early stage of Stansbury's career you would have to say that her world is the world of wives and families. But I'd hate to see her limiting herself to these subjects. As Joyce Carol Oates says in regards to the old adage "Write what you know": "The artist can inhabit any individual for the individual is irrelevant to art."
Nicole Stansbury is a writer of uncommon insight and more importantly one who seems to possess a damn lot of horse sense. I'd just like to see her obvious gifts applied to other subjects, other emotions, other lives.




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Review of Dangerous Games: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries) (Hardcover)

When we last saw Jack Liffey, he had found the perpetrator of various crimes of vengeance arising from the racist history of Terminal Island, been dumped by his new girlfriend, survived a collapsed lung and renewed his relationship with his teenage daughter, Maeve.Liffey also fell for a police officer named Gloria Ramirez, a Native American who was raised by Latino parents who taught her to hate her own heritage."Dangerous Games" begins with Liffey living in East L.A. with Ramirez; his moody daughter is delighted with Ramirez and hopes her father won't mess this one up.But Liffey's relationship leads inexorably to a new search for a lost child: Ramirez's beautiful 18-year-old niece has disappeared from her tiny reservation in the Owens Valley leaving enough clues to make everyone suspect that she's been swallowed up by L.A.'s porn scene.Liffey feels up to the task.

If it were left at that, our hero would have more than enough to occupy him.But during one clear day while Liffey waters his girlfriend's lawn and Maeve lounges alongside chatting with her father, a gangbanger loses control and shoots indiscriminately in Liffey's direction leaving Maeve severely wounded.As Maeve recuperates, Liffey adds a new mission to his list: revenge.His subsequent confrontation of the perpetrator and eventual solution is one of the most surprising and fulfilling aspects of the narrative.

But there is still a lost child to find.And this is where things get ugly as we're thrown into the world of phone sex, porn films, dangerous reality videos, AIDS and very violent men who truly believe that women are meant to be controlled and used in any way imaginable.Throughout, we're treated to Shannon's smart dialogue, complex characters and a thrill ride of action.The denouement takes place in the Malibu Hills, set ablaze by reality "filmmakers" as their ultimate get-rich-quick venture.As Liffey and others try to outrun the flames, Liffey muses on all the failures in his life and wonders about the meaning of it all.There are wonderful things in life to be certain: the love of both his girlfriend and his resilient, brilliant daughter.But all the mistakes are there too: failed relationships, a battle with alcohol, physical scars too many to count.In Shannon's sure hands, we see the world through the eyes of a man who struggles to reconcile life's joy and pain shaped in large part by Los Angeles itself.Shannon offers more questions than answers.But that's okay.Finely-crafted novels do that.And this is certainly one of Shannon's best.

[The full version of this review first appeared in The Elegant Variation.]



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Review of Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Hardcover)

Thank goodness it's not Jack Liffey that's terminal!Here's a wonderful new book that takes us back to Jack's hometown.We even get to meet a family member of his that he's hidden up to now.It's almost impossible to put this book down once you start it.Be warned!



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Review of The Orange Curtain: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Hardcover)

I'm not normally much of a mystery reader. I guess I'm a bit of a prose snob. I confess. For my taste, mysteries tend to be a bit insipid. Characters are too often one-dimentional: overly described and under-developed. Plots may be clever but are so totally predictable. Atmosphere is too often written in little florid slashes, in a kind of straight-jacketed prose brought in specially just to set the scene.

Not so with John Shannon's Jack Liffy series. Wow. These books rock. This man can write. His sentences are beautiful and thought-provoking, yet he can slash through a scene, leaving you breathless and needing more, as well as anyone I've read. And Shannon gives the reader real characters and a true sense of place, not just walking cartoons and specially engineered atmospherics.

This new book, The Orange Curtain, may be the best yet in the Jack Liffy series, but all of Shannon's Jack Liffy mysteries have been well done. The first book, Concrete River really captured for me a section of the slimy underbelly of Los Angeles. No mystery writer since Chander has sliced LA open and spilled out its guts as compellingly as Shannon has. LA is a huge place. There are lots of corners to explore. This new book, The Orange Curtain, takes in, among other things, Orange County and its huge Vietnamese population. It's a great book, whether you want to disappear into it on the coast-to-coast airliner or want to take it in over several days and savor its wonderful prose and interesting characters. It's a great book, and this is a series that just keeps getting better.

There is plenty of punch in this book for you mystery addicts, plenty of hard-boiled sentiment and riveting, page-turning action. But between the lines--in the lines--there is also some superb writing.

I can't wait for the next one.



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Review of Greatest Hits: Original Stories of Hitmen, Hired Guns, and Private Eyes (Hardcover)

Short attention span?Don't have the time to devote to a full-length novel?Or maybe you just want to sample the genre with a book that contains multiple writing styles.This may be the book for you.

I was in the library with my wife recently and was strolling past the isles looking for something to pass the time.The cover of this book alone is enough to grab your attention.

After I saw it was short stories, it was perfect to pass the time with and something I could be interrupted while reading.However, before I knew it I was half way through the book devouring each story.My wife was finally ready to leave but I wasn't ready to leave the book!

I picked up a copy on Amazon because I knew it was something I would probably go back and reread in the future.For someone who might get bored with a novel that has the same writing style throughout, this may just keep your attention.The first few stories start out with small narratives following just the day-to-day activities of a hitman "on the job."

But before you get bored it moves on to stories following their inner thoughts, personal relationships, life "off the job", and a few stories that will throw you for a loop at the end in true mystery story style.

The book ends with stories about private investigators where clients hire them not just for their ability to kill someone but their ability to judge based on the client's criteria whether they should be killed.

This is a truly large collection of stories that share a theme on the surface only but each story is a new adventure that is totally unrelated to any other story in the book.You will start fresh with each narrative and will ask yourself at the end of each one, "How can it get better than that?"



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