Calculated in Death (JD Robb)

Available from all good bookstores and on the Kindle

Hmmm. I’m a long-term fan of JD Robb (even though I hate the writing of her alter ego, Nora Roberts). To prove to you the extent of my fandom, here’s the evidence: I named my cat Dallas, after Lieutenant Eve Dallas, Robbs’ protagonist.

Buuut… Robbs’ writing is starting to annoy me lately, for four reasons:

a)    It’s getting very formulaic.

Something bad and bloody happens, in one of Hot Hubby’s empire of locations. Eve, despite constantly battling her own inner demons, enlists Hot Hubby, her faithful sidekick Peabody, the tea-drinking Dr Mira and the usual assortment of allies. She then allows Hot Hubby to choose her clothes/deck her out for a function she doesn’t want to go to, force her to eat and sleep, have jaw-dropping sex with her on the shower floor/in the pool, and provide genius assistance in catching the bad guy. Whose ass she (literally) hands to him before sending him off-planet for, like, ever.

b)    The sex scenes are dreadful.

“When she rose over him, her skin gleaming in the last red lights of the dying sun, he was beyond speech. Now her fingers linked with his, and she took him in. She bowed back, her body a slim and lovely arch of energy, and it shuddered, shuddered, as his did. Then she shifted her gaze, fixed her eyes on his. And rode.” – Portrait in Death

Seriously? It’s all getting a bit 50 Shades for me. And before you ask, no, I haven’t read it. But I’ve been told that there’s lots of “She shattered into a million pieces.”

c)    Eve Dallas thinks in phrases.

“Six hours before, she'd killed a man, had watched death creep into his eyes. It wasn't the first time she'd exercised maximum force, or dreamed. But it was the child that haunted her. The child she hadn't been in time to save. The child whose screams had echoed in the dreams with her own.” – Naked in Death

I’m getting a bit bored with the way Eve’s inner monologue moves; specifically, the constant and repetitive use of sentence fragments to add drama. She grumps, grumbles, whines, deflects and generally behaves like a massive curmudgeon, only showing a small sense of humour while being ravished by Hot Hubby. Boring.

d)    The futuristic stuff is dwindling.

The early books had great detail about cars that fly and weird GM foods and crazy fashion. The later ones, specifically Calculated in Death, is a bit short on it. Which is a pity. Because if I’m going to read 37 books set in and around the year 2060, you’d better believe I’m going to need some awesome tech stuff to keep me interested.

If you’re going to read this book, despite my indictment, you should know the plot:

A dead woman lies at the bottom of the stairs. Mugged, apparently. But Eve and Peabody find blood inside the apartment building, and evidence of a hit. Problem is, Marta, the vic, isn’t the ‘sort’ to be on a hit list. She’s a boring, well-to-do accountant. Eve enters Roarke’s world of big billionaire business to find the money trail.

I’d love to know what you think -> tiffany@tiffanymarkman.co.za

Guilt (Jonathan Kellerman)

Available from all good bookstores and on the Kindle

Now this is crime fiction! 

Kellerman never misses. Yes, he’s written 28 Alex Delaware novels, but each one is different. And while Alex (and his cohorts, to be fair) has his particular quirks, we see different facets of his character each time.

This, Kellerman’s latest offering, begins with an expectant mom who’s renovating her yard when she finds a blue metal box in the soil. There’s a baby’s skeleton in it.

Alex and his partner, Los Angeles Police Lt. Milo Sturgis, begin to hunt for clues to the infant’s identity, but the bones of another baby emerge in a nearby park. Together with the corpse of a 20-something woman, killed by a gunshot. 

The three must be related, but how and why? The detective and psychologist delve sixty years into the past, to explore a former hospital with a dangerous staff and reputation.

Expect the usual brisk investigation, with the calm, cool and seldom-ruffled Alex bantering with the grouchy, touchy, binge-eating Milo. Expect a series of tense and detailed scenes and evocative dialogue. Expect the entrance of Hollywood and its own dramas. And expect a case so heart-rending that brings even Alex to tears.

www.tiffanymarkman

Tell The Wolves I'm Home (Carol Rivka Brunt)

And... it's live. Have a look at the Women24 Books page for my review of one of my top 2012 reads: Carol Rivka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I'm Home.

I loved this novel, which tells the story of 14-year-old June and her beloved gay (yes, this really is central to the story) Uncle Finn.

If you appreciate beautiful writing, realistic characters and profound messages, add it to your pile. (Also available on Kindle and from kalahari.net)

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Stolen Prey (John Sandford)

So here’s the back cover blurb:

"Lucas Davenport has seen many terrible murder scenes. This is one of the worst. In the Minnesota town of Wayzata, an entire family has been killed — husband, wife, two kids, dogs. On the wall, in blood: "Were coming." No apostrophe."

It’s that apostrophe that would have hooked me, even if I didn’t already love John Sandford, who’s written a novel a year since the Ark. Buuut, this isn’t his finest work.

The Prey series, of which this is #22, is a whole lot of edgy police drama in which Lucas Davenport is a snarky, quick-witted lunatic. He’s getting old, fine, but he’s also starting to spend a lot of time on the details – like, in this book, turning cash into gold.

I preferred the old Lucas. So, here’s my take... 

I’ve enjoyed it. It’s pretty good. I love this sort of thing. But it didn’t rock my world. If you’re already a Sandford fan, read it. May as well. If you’re not and you spot it in a second-hand store, on sale on Kindle or on a friend’s shelf, don't worry – Stolen Prey works well as a stand-alone for the uninitiated.

But know that there are better novels in this series, and that John Sandford (whose real name is John Camp) isn’t a Pulitzer Prize winner for nothing.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Worth Dying For (Lee Child)

Available on the Amazon Kindle.

If you’re a Lee Child fan you’ll know that Jack Reacher - former US Army Major, former military policeman and current wandering nomad - can’t leave things alone. 

He’s like a rabid dog that way: he smells a bit of small-town drama, some nasty local lore, and that’s it. He’s mad. And bad people (notably those who hurt women, children, animals or the vulnerable) are going to get hurt in all the ways they deserve to. Impressively. Brutally. Utterly unemotionally. In about three seconds flat.

If you’re not a Lee Child fan, meet Jack Reacher – the coolest hero of contemporary skop-skiet-en-donder fiction. (There are 14 books before this; find them.) But you should know a couple of important and fascinating things at the outset…

Reacher’s a drifter. His only possessions are a foldable toothbrush and, since 9/11, an expired passport. He wears his clothing for a couple of days before discarding it and replacing it at cheap chain stores - because he doesn’t like luggage. 

And although he doesn’t own a cell phone, or know how to use Google, he can tell the time – to the minute – using the ‘clock in his head’. He’s also passionate about strong black coffee, blues music and gamine yet powerful women in positions of authority.

Worth Dying For, host to Reacher’s latest appearance, is a by-the-book Child: there is a small town with an egomaniacal boss family, a couple of broken-hearted locals, a few cases of mistaken identity, some seriously dark and dangerous secret stuff going on, and Reacher in the middle – with the clock ticking towards a showdown.

Here’s a taste of our man, and of this novel: 

"Reacher smiled. He had been raised on military bases around the world, battling hardcore Marine progeny, honing his skills against gangs of resentful native youths in dusty Pacific streets and damp European alleys. Whatever hardscrabble town…these guys had come up in had been a feather bed by comparison. And while they had been studying the playbook and learning to run and jump and catch, he had been broken down and built back up by the kind of experts who could snap your neck so fast you never knew it had happened until you went to nod your head and it rolled away down the street without you."

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Free Food for Millionaires (Min Jin Lee)

Available at Exclusive Books and all good bookstores.

As I've said before, I'm not a book buyer. Reviewers (and Kindle owners) seldom are. But this book was on sale. And the title intrigued me. So I did what we're never supposed to do, and I bought it largely based on the cover. Lucky me.

Free Food for Millionaires has been positioned as a potential 'Great American Novel' which is, um, a little out there - but it is a super read. Have a go at the first bit of the blurb, and you'll see what I mean:

"Casey Han's years at Princeton have given her 'a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, wealthy friends, a popular white boyfriend, and a magna cum laude degree in economics'. But no job, and a number of bad habits."

And it gets better from there. Casey Han is fabulous - a gal with a designer lifestyle she can't possibly afford, a knack for choosing the right friends and the wrong men, and a spectacular taste in and addiction to beautiful hats. Hats?! I ask you.

She's also trying to make it in high finance, from the bottom up, while dragging behind her all of the fundamental crises of immigrants' children, class struggle, social status and, yes, love.

All this, against the backdrop of Nineties New York. Read it.

P.S. I realise that the hats and clothing and man drama collaborate to make this book sound alarmingly like chick lit, which I unreservedly and unapologetically despise, but I promise it isn't. Vaguely. Even a little bit.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Ways of Staying (Kevin Bloom)

Available at Exclusive Books and all good bookstores.

Reviewers usually don't buy books. Why would we? We're lucky and suitably smug buggers who typically take delivery of a large box every month - free, gratis, for nothing - thanks to the many superb publishers out there (Penguin, chief among them).

And since the arrival of my Kindle, I buy new books even less. But that's another self-satisfied rant for another day...

My point is that I bought Kevin Bloom's Ways of Staying. I didn't even have a book voucher. I took the money out of my purse and paid for it. (Which hurt. A lot.) It's not my usual choice of reading material, in that I'm not a wild fan of local authors, much less local journos who are much, much smarter than me and whose regular columns I seldom, if ever, understand. But the blurb spoke to me.

Here's why.

Like many, we've been thinking about emigration. In a vague, passive-aggressive, weak-willed sort of a way, but still. I've been moaning about how I didn't work this hard to move to Boston and be 'poor'. My husband's been whining about how shitty the service is here and how, in the States, you get Amazon deliveries the next day. To the front door. (We don't talk about crime. It's too real an issue.)

And Bloom's blurb ends thus:

"Ways of Staying is in the final analysis a love letter to a country that will not be forsaken. This is not only the story of why we stay, and how; it's the story of who we are."

So I brought the book home, took it on holiday with me a week or two later, and didn't put it down again til I was done. Oy vey. It's a ride and a half, through truth and lies and human suffering and humour and the tragedies of communities including my own tiny Jewish one. On the surface pretty harrowing, its content is surprisingly palatable, thanks to Bloom's interesting narrative style and on-the-ground insights.

Also, as he's a journo by day, he writes clean. None of the droning waffle, effusive adjective use and academiish you'd expect from someone with a Writing Fellowship.

I never like to give too much away in my reviews, so I won't here either. But my parting shot is this: if you've ever considered leaving the country because you feel like you can't take the drama any more; if you've even dwelt on the idea briefly and then put it out of your mind; or if you've had it and you're outta here, this brilliant book should be your next step. At the very least, you can read it on the plane.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

I've been the slackest of slack reviewers lately...

I've been reading a lot (but not as much as usual, thanks to audiobooks and my Kindle full of old classics), and gradually adding review books to the teetering 'To be urgently reviewed' pile on my desk. (Which I largely ignore, but for balancing the occasional coffee cup on it.) This means, of course, that I haven't actually posted anything substantial for some time. Apologies. I do plan to remedy the situation. Soonest. So please check back in a coupla days...