Booked (and Printed): July 2025
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Booked
(and Printed) July
2025 July is fireworks, apple pie, heat, humidity, fireflies,
swimming, long but shortening days, and quite honestly both the best and worst of summer. The worst (of course) is the heat and humidity. The
best is…well, for me, the swimming. I won’t bore you with the heat since I’m
sure you have your own awful version, but the best of our summer? I’ll share
some of that. We’ve been swimming in the lakes around our home: Lake
Bomoseen, Lake St. Catherine, and Emerald Lake. We saw snapping turtles in
Bomoseen, sat in a frigid spring at St. Catherine (every time we go), and got
caught in an epic rainstorm at Emerald. A rainstorm that almost drowned us;
or at least made us really, really wet. As for reading? July’s
numbers were better than the prior month’s but it was far from my best with five
novels and two short stories. The lackluster numbers are due to my aching eyes,
but I kept the course, followed my doctor’s advice and pushed forward anyway.
So—with that, I’ll stop complaining. Of the five novels I completed, three were
released in 2025: DEATH OF AN EX,
by Delia Pitts, LENGTH OF DAYS,
by Lynn Kostoff, and Falls to Pieces, by Douglas Corleone. All three
were enjoyable and I wrote detailed reviews of the first two here As for FALLS TO PIECES—it is something
different from the talented and reliable Corleone’s usual fare since it fits nicely into
the psychological thriller category. His other work tends toward straight
thrillers, crime, and mystery. Kati Dawes and her seventeen-year-old
daughter, Zoe, are hiding from Kati’s estranged husband, Jeremy, in the
tropical paradise of Maui. Their protected world is shattered when Kati’s fiancé,
Eddie, disappears while the couple are hiking. Kati tells law enforcement she
last saw Eddie talking on his cell phone, waving for her to go on ahead of
him. Of course, Kati is the
prime suspect in Eddie’s disappearance and she doesn’t do much to help her
cause. Her story is scattered and inconsistent and it doesn’t always line up
with the evidence at the scene. And this inconsistency spreads to the reader
since Kati is the primary narrator and she is oh so wonderfully unreliable. Things
get worse when Eddie’s disappearance hits the national news—and images of
Kati are broadcast that bring her ex, Jeremy, scrambling to the island. Falls to Pieces is
good fun. The Maui setting is marvelous enough that one can almost smell the
trees and earth, and taste the ocean air. The action is swift as it moves
around Maui with an almost breathless fervor. The final twist is surprising,
as are those preceding it, but I found myself wishing there had been a few
more clues to prepare me for that last reveal. With that said, I liked Falls to
Pieces and hope to see more fiction like this from Douglas Corleone. |
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The two “vintage” books I read in July are: What
the Dead Leave Behind, by David Housewright (2017), and FRONT SIGHT, by Stephen Hunter
(2024). Front Sight is a collection of three Swagger novellas—one each
starring Bob Lee, Earl, and Charles (Bob Lee’s grandad). A collection I
liked, and one I reviewed here. WHAT THE
DEAD LEAVE BEHIND is David Housewright’s fourteenth
Rushmore McKenzie and I really dug it. McKenzie is a former St. Paul,
Minnesota cop, turned millionaire that does “favors” for friends. Erica, the daughter
of McKenzie’s longtime girlfriend Nina Truhler, asks McKenzie to help her
college friend, Malcolm Harris, find out who murdered his father, Frank
Harris, a year earlier. The police case has gone cold and it seems no one,
even Malcolm’s mother and Frank’s widow, cares if the crime is ever solved. McKenzie
is hesitant to get involved, but he can’t say no to Erica, and what he finds are
another murder that seems to be connected to Frank’s and an array of suspects
and motives. What the Dead Leave
Behind is a solid mystery—the plotting is tight, the clues
are rampant, and the suspense builds with every page. There is Housewright’s
usual brilliant Twin Cities (and beyond) setting, too. But it is McKenzie’s
witty tongue and his tough guy style that give What the Dead Leave Behind
that all too rare shimmer. As for my paltry list of
short stories: Both came from the October 1983 issue of Ellery Queen’s
Mystery Magazine. I won’t say anything about the first, “HOW’S YOUR MOTHER?,”
by the always reliable Simon Brett, since you can read my full review here.
The other, “LOCKED DOORS,”
by Lilly Carlson, appeared in EQMM’s Department of “First Stories.” I
had never read anything by its author and my internet searches failed to uncover
anything else by (or about) her—do any of you know anything about Ms.
Carlson?—but I liked “Locked Doors” a bunch. A psychological thriller
with an unreliable narrator, a writer of course, with a couple kids, a dog,
and what may or may not be an overactive imagination. This one is worth
looking up if you’re of a mind. The only book I started
and failed to finish was Elise Hart Kipness’s latest release, CLOSE CALL (2025)—which is slated for release
on August 19. This third in the Kate Green mystery series is set at the U.S.
Open tennis grand slam championship tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York.
But it could have been set anywhere since little of the tournament filters into
the story until late in the day. At its center, a world class and mostly
despised female tennis champion is kidnapped, and Kate (a television sports
newscaster) and her father, an NYPD detective, are the only hope of getting
her back alive. I made it more than 70-percent of the way through but it failed to
pique my interest from the first sentence to the last one I read. There is repetition,
not much character development, and the U.S. Open setting could have been so
much better. But that’s just me… Okay, as my mom always
taught me, exit on something positive. My favorite book of the month? What
the Dead Leave Behind. Just thinking about it makes me want to dip into McKenzie’s next adventure, which if memory serves is Like to Die (2018). Fin— Now on to next month… |
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