Picks of the Week

  • Benjamin Black: The Lemur: A Novel

    Benjamin Black: The Lemur: A Novel
    Anyone who thinks John Banville lacks a sense of humor clearly did not read his serial for the New York Times magazine, available in novella-ish format in July. The story has all the basic crime ingredients - blackmail, adultery, murder, betrayal, that sort of thing - but it is so, so clear how much fun Banville had writing this pseudonymous exercise, loading up sentences filled with bizarre but well-placed metaphors and gently (or not so gently!) lampooning his characters as he moves them around his narrative chess board.

  • Cassandra Clare: City of Bones

    Cassandra Clare: City of Bones
    I read this on the flight home from the LA Times Festival of Books and it really is about the perfect airport read: fantastic storytelling, characters whose adventures and melodramas wrap you in their spells and really ass-kicking action scenes involving demons and all manner of underworld types. Sure, Clare clearly owes a huge debt to Buffy and Harry Potter, but dammit, I want to find out what will happen next to Clary, Jace, Simon & co. - and that's exactly the button that's supposed to be pushed.

  • Ibi Kaslik: ANGEL RIOTS

    Ibi Kaslik: ANGEL RIOTS
    Reading this novel was like being transported back to the mid-1990s Montreal I knew during my college years. But it also affords an inside look at the ups and downs, the politics and the dramas, the hookups and breakups endemic to a rising rock band. It's clear, whether told from the vantage point of the young violin prodigy with a boy's name or her bandmate looking to redefine himself outside the orbit of his best friend (and leader) that Kaslik knows this world cold, and we're privileged to share in this knowledge.

  • Irene Nemirovsky: David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))

    Irene Nemirovsky: David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    I'd recommend this simply based off of the utter gobsmacking brilliance that is LE BAL, one of the most crystalline and shocking novellas I've ever read, but the other three works simply confirm Nemirovsky's literary brilliance. THE COURILOF AFFAIR is a wonderful surprise for mystery readers because it's her version of a spy novel, tackling the moral quandaries of terrorism for a so-called greater good by personalizing the narrator's deeds and misdeeds. In other words, Nemirovsky's entire backlist can't be translated fast enough for me.

  • Sarah Hall: Daughters of the North

    Sarah Hall: Daughters of the North
    Goddamn, Hall can write, and her chosen dystopian subject matter gives her the chance not only to show off her sentence-by-sentence chops but to demonstrate how few steps removed our current culture is from the apocalyptic fervor of her world, where the reproductive rights of women are trampled on so definitively it takes an army of women to try, however futile the exercise might be, to take some independence back. I can't think of enough good things to say about this except that it should be read, now and years to come.

Archived Picks

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May 09, 2008

Dark Passages: Charlotte, Oscar & Co.

My newest "Dark Passages" column for the LA Times Book Review - which now has a handy archive page for previous months, hurray! - blurs the line between life and art by looking at a slew of crime novels with real life writers as sleuths. Read on for my thoughts on Nicola Upson's AN EXPERT IN MURDER (starring Josephine Tey), and the self explanatory THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE (by Laura Joh Rowland) and OSCAR WILDE AND A DEATH OF NO IMPORTANCE (by Gyles Brandreth.)

May 08, 2008

A Swell Looking Babe

Referring, in this instance, to Evelyn Nesbit:  turn-of-the-20th-century starlet, objet de notoriété,and the subject of Paula Uruburu's fascinating new book AMERICAN EVE. My Q&A with Uruburu runs today at Vulture

April 17, 2008

The North Still Has Frozen Spots

Greetings from my hometown, where I'll be for the next few days to celebrate my favorite example of obsessive-compulsive disorder gone wild. In fact, thanks to this wondrous holiday, I have rediscovered the joys of shelf liner. Amazing, I realized, that the width corresponded almost exactly to the width of the shelf! Genius.

But then, being back in Ottawa is getting me back in touch with the off-kilter nature of Canadian suburbia. It's 70 degrees out and dirty snow still lingers on the streets near my home. The pathway to the synagogue has become so drenched with melted snow that ducks thought it was a manmade lake, quacking happily and untroubled that they aren't supposed to be here and never have before. Gas prices are so high that it reminds me I really can't afford to live anywhere else than New York, even with increased unlimited Metrocard fare. And Canada's arguably most famous dynamic duo will return as a cartoon show.

And then there's today's front page story around the country, which seems the epitome of weird:

MERRITT , B.C. - Kim Robinson is a beefy, tough-talkin' bushman who didn't really need his intimidating bull mastiff and .22-magnum Savage rifle to bring Allan Dwayne Schoenborn to justice Wednesday morning.

"A scared, pathetic little shell of a man," is how Robinson described the multiple-murder suspect in an interview with The Vancouver Sun. "I'm 240 pounds and I've done hard shit all my life."

Robinson said Schoenborn,  the subject of a Canada-wide manhunt since his three children were found dead in their mother's trailer in Merritt on April 6, appeared frail and beaten in his tattered jeans, long johns and coat.

Asked how the suspect managed to survive in the wild, Robinson snorted: "He didn't 'survive.' He looked like anyone else who had gone for 10 days with no food and was too stupid to drink."

Now that's badass.

April 15, 2008

Wambaugh Then and Now

At the Barnes & Noble Review, I take the long view on Joseph Wambaugh's career as a novelist and chronicler of the Los Angeles Police Department in order to properly assess his new book HOLLYWOOD CROWS, a curious mix of brilliance and misfire that added up to an interesting read.

April 13, 2008

Pulp Blogging

Photo editor and writer Antony Bennison had some fun and produced the following bit of awesomeness:

:

Talk about seriously cool. I also think this might be a new meme....in which case, I tag Bill Crider as the next cover boy. On your marks, Photoshoppers!

March 28, 2008

Multi-Level BSP

At the Barnes & Noble Review, I kick off an occasional series on historical mysteries by starting at the beginning of time - or at least going as far back as ancient periods.

In a slightly more tongue-in-cheek vein, my mini-rant on the revamped editions of the first two SWEET VALLEY HIGH books appears at Vulture.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon I'll be among several dozen choristers taking part in a celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel at Carnegie Hall. The rehearsal schedule has been understandably intensive but when this man's on the bill, any and all hard work is a no-brainer.

March 19, 2008

Physics of the Impossible

It's the title of Michio Kaku's book, yes, but right now that seems an appropriate way to sum up trying to blog here this week. Between pinch-hitting and scouting and other deadlines, there's not a lot of time left over. Having said that, I must direct you to Dana Kaye's post today on tax tips for writers. On this point it bears repeating things we might already know or forgot about.

More tomorrow.

March 03, 2008

BSP Redux

My review of Samantha Hunt's fantastic and wondrous novel THE INVENTION OF EVERYTHING ELSE ran yesterday in the Philly Inquirer. I am still in awe of this book.

February 21, 2008

More anon

...but this was truly beautiful.

February 15, 2008

Neighborhood fiction

Adam Langer's new novel ELLINGTON BOULEVARD was a curious read for me because it takes place - literally - in my neighborhood. I explore the strange feelings it evoked in my newest piece for the Guardian Books blog.

Also, my newest LA Times column is up a bit early, and it has a posthumous ring to it.