Booked (and Printed): October 2025

 

Booked (and Printed) October 2025     October came and went with the same dreariness as a solitary night cap. The shortening daylight and crisp temps marked the passage from summer into autumn. Halloween was a blast, but with mixed emotions since it was the first year our sweet daughter spent the holiday with her friends rather than her dear old parents. But keep in mind my complaints are, at worst, superficial since I truly am a lucky man. I have a home, a family, a good job, and— Almost everything a man could want. Including more reading material than anyone could finish in a long, long lifetime. My reading was shallow again: two books—both novels—and seven short stories. This sparsity was due, mostly, to my continued eye troubles, which I’m not going to talk much about here but for the curious you can always read my prior Booked (and Printed) post here. Those same eye issues are why this post is so late, too. The month opened with a return to John Keyse-Walker’s brilliant Caribbean-set Teddy Creque mystery series. REEFS, ROYALS, RECKONINGS (2023), which is the final (so far at least) of four books. But hopefully not the last. In this one, a royal in direct line—albeit a distant one—to the throne of England is visiting the British Virgin Islands. At Government House welcome party, the royal and her husband, an American of little worth, are thrust into a murder investigation after a woman attending the gala is gunned down. Teddy is his usual affable and brilliant, if insecure, self. The mystery is tightly wound. The plot is fun and unique. And while I guessed the culprit earlier than I should have, the journey into Teddy’s world was a blast. If you enjoy BBC’s Death in Paradise, you’ll love Reefs, Royals, Reckonings, as well as the other three Teddy Creque mysteries. The other book-length mystery was the unorthodox WE CAN’T SAVE YOU, by Thomas E. Ricks (2025). We Can’t Save You is part mystery, part thriller, and part political manifesto. When a group of Maine First People organize a recurring protest on a bridge that routinely floods it gives rise (yeah, pun very much intended) to a larger movement: a First People’s protest against industrial caused climate change. The bulk of the narrative follows a peaceful march of natives down Maine’s coast. The issues We Can’t Save You discusses are interesting and relevant, but there wasn’t much of a mystery, or any suspense, either. But it still pulled me to the last page without more than a few complaints along the way.

Now for those seven short stories. Peggy Wurtz Fisher’s “THE PICKUP”—which appeared in the Department of “First Stories” in the October 1984 issue of EQMM—is a dazzling dark suspense tale about a single mother and a drifter. The perfectly ironic twist will bring a smile to even the most jaded reader. There is a touch of James M. Cain about “Pick Up”—and wow did I like it. “THE BOOK CASE,” by Nelson DeMille (2012), features DeMille’s recurring character, John Corey. The tale—the plotting, narrative, etc.—is pedestrian but readable. The real pain is Corey’s constant reminders of his brilliance as a detective. He had to remind us how damn good he is because it surely never surfaced in the narrative. Oy vey. It was like watching a Pink Panther movie without any of the humor. Joe Hill’s “THE PRAM” (2023), is as entertaining as any story I’ve read this year. About a married couple mourning a miscarriage, it is haunting and spooky with a dry wit and a lively and clever style. It is a horror story and a very, very good one. “BIG DRIVER,” by Stephen King (2008), is a revenge tale about a midlist cozy mystery writer—Tess Thorne—and her turn with a psychopath nicknamed Big Driver. The action, from almost the first page to the last, is brutal. There is a rape and an attempted murder. But Tess comes through the far side with a do-it-yourself kind of justice. I liked this one a bunch, but if violence and fear bother you, Big Driver is one you should skip. As an aside, “Big Driver,” was filmed as a Lifetime movie starring the always watchable Maria Bello. October ended with a trio of Jack Ketchum shorts—in honor of Halloween—culled from his brilliant collection Peaceable Kingdom (2003). “THE RIFLE” (1996), is a tale of fear and motherhood—what would you do if you discovered your child was evil? “THE BOX” (1994) is about a box with a secret so dark it ruins anyone that looks inside. “The Box” won a Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers of America. And the final tale, “LUCK” (2000), is a weird western with a handful of hardcases stranded in an anonymous camp waiting for a comrade to die. My favorite story of October? It is most certainly, Joe Hill’s “The Pram.” Fin— Now on to next month…