What's In The Box?

Skinner
by Charlie Huston
Reviewed by Kemper
4 out 5 stars.

You gotta love a book in which the weapons used by the bad-ass hero include a pair of socks and a ruler.

Skinner was raised in a closed environment as part of a screwy experiment from his autistic parents, and as an adult he worked for an international security firm called Kestrel where he became legendary for his unique method.  Skinner’s Maxim dictated that if anything happened to anyone under his protection, that he would wreak bloody vengeance on anyone and everyone responsible.  This scorched earth policy worked well for a while, but eventually Skinner outlived his usefulness and had to go underground when Kestrel tried to arrange a permanent retirement for him.

Terrance was Skinner’s boss who was forced out of Kestrel, but they want him back to track down the people responsible for a cyber-attack on the US.  Terrance recruits Jae, an analyst with a talent for building robots and OCD tendencies that allow her to find patterns in the chaos of world events, and he contacts Skinner and talks him into providing protection for her.  Jae had a bad experience with Kestrel previously and doesn’t trust them so she and Skinner have that in common.  The two race around the globe uncovering a vast conspiracy that somehow involves a slum in Mumbai.

Charlie Huston used to crank out hard boiled books featuring criminals and/or vampires and then fill them up with enough attitude, atmosphere and graphic violence to make them highly entertaining reads.  He was good enough that he probably could have had a successful career if he had no bigger ambitions, but Huston has been showing a remarkable capacity for growth over his last several books.   In Skinner, he takes what could just be a good set-up for an action spy thriller and gives it a huge amount of depth by using a couple of complex characters to throw around some very big ideas.

Skinner’s story examines how a bunch of variables like economics, political unrest and climate change have combined into a murky threat cloud that always hangs on the horizon and perpetually seems about to engulf the world.  Huston has nailed that general unease that comes with scrolling through a day’s worth of news stories and realizing that the problems far outnumber the solutions.  The Jae character is particularly good at conveying this since she has a tendency to start following patterns obsessively to conclusions that indicate the world is doomed.  While there’s plenty of action, gee-whiz tech and the usual tropes of covert thrillers like suitcases full of fake passports and money, it’s the bigger picture that makes this feel a lot more important than just a typical spies-on-the-run-against-a-vast-conspiracy story.

My one gripe is that there’s almost too much in the book.  I would have liked to get more with Skinner and Jae because they’re both such intriguing characters, but it kind of feels like we’re racing through their history to keep the core story moving.  It almost seems like this could have been the conclusion of a larger series, but it was nice to get a self-contained story rather than an author just kicking off a new multi-book narrative so I won’t bitch too much about it.

Three Characters Haunted by an Event from the Past

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Three of five stars


I first tumbled to Harlan Coben very early in his career when a friend recommended the first or second book in his Myron Bolitar series. I enjoyed the Bolitar books and found Myron to be an unusual but engaging protagonist who almost always found himself in the midst of an interesting plot.

After writing a number of these books, Coben began writing stand-alone thrillers, and I followed dutifully along. Some of these books I liked a lot; others I thought did not work as well, usually because the author insisted on piling one implausible plot twist on top of another until the reader could no longer suspend disbelief and the entire structure collapsed in ruins.

Stay Close falls into the middle of the pack of Coben's books; it's okay, but it's certainly not his best effort. The book involves three central characters who are united by their ties to a terrifying night seventeen years earlier when a man named Stewart Green disappeared. Two people saw Green in an isolated area, dead or very close to it. But neither reported the discovery; the body was never found, and Green is still officially listed as a missing person.

Ray Levine was once a world-class photographer, but he made a number of bad choices that came to a head that fateful night and now he has spiraled down to rock bottom, drinking heavily, living in a crappy apartment and working as a fake paparazzi. Jack Broome is the police detective who can't let go of the case that has haunted him all these years, and Megan Pierce is the suburban wife who's "living the ultimate soccer-mom fantasy and hating it."

Megan is also a woman with a very dark past that she escaped on that night seventeen years ago. After all this time, she decides to pull the curtain back just a bit for a quick glimpse into her former life. Just as she does, though, another man goes missing in the same way as Stewart Green. Everyone involved in the earlier case will be sucked into the new one, with potentially disastrous consequences for all of them.

As is usually the case in one of Harlan Coben's thrillers, this one moves fairly swiftly along, but I had a hard time moving with it. Unhappily, this is one of those books in which the main protagonist, in this case Megan Pierce, makes one astoundingly stupid decision after another, which is the only thing that allows the plot to advance beyond the first chapter. But after seventy-five pages or so, I simply stopped caring what happened to the woman. My attitude by that point was that a person as stupid as she deserved whatever bad things might happen to befall her. And once you stop caring about a book's central character, you usually stop caring about the book itself.

It doesn't help that at some points the writing seems unusually clunky and that the book contains a couple of villains who are simply unbelievable from the outset. By the last hundred pages or so, the book finally gets some traction and the conclusion is fairly satisfying, but by then it almost seems too little too late. Again, this is not a bad book, but a person new to the work of Harlan Coben would probably want to start with another of his efforts.

Broken Homes isn't Broken At All

 

BROKEN HOMES

Ben Aaronovich

Reviewed by Carol

Recommended for: fans of urban fantasy police procedural

★  ★  ★  ★  ★

If you've read any other Broken Homes reviews or checked out the range of ratings, you'll know that opinion on this book runs the gamut. For me, Aaronovich is starting to feel like he is coming into his own. It's mature, developed writing with rich characters and a thoughtfully developed magic and supernatural system. Without doubt, pacing is a little off from a traditional detective story, but I found that for me, it reflected the inconsistent nature of real-life police work; one does not work a case to the exclusivity of all others, and sometimes the pieces are slow to fit into place. The result is a plot that is a little more "day in the life" until it gestalts together at the end, but was an enjoyable tour on the way. If you want nicely sophisticated characters, sly humor and an insider's view to England, this is an excellent installment in a quality urban fantasy detective series.

The summary: Peter and Leslie are at the Folly, developing their magic skills and researching an Oxford University dining club group that was learning magic a couple of decades ago. Research is interrupted when they're called to an unusual car accident that resulted in one of the driver's deaths. Blood in the back seat leads them to another dead body--strangely missing a face. It sets off vague internal alarms, but with nothing clear to go on, Peter continues on with his mandatory Officer Safety training. As someone who was required to attend annual recertifications every year, I found his asides on the usual dry dust mandatory topics to be snort-worthy:
"The morning lecture was on stop and search with reference to spotting suspicious behavior... he did warn us to make an exception for tourists, because London needed the foreign currency."

There's a sidebar with a River summit and a cameo with the Folly cadet, giving more insight into the complicated nature of supernatural politics. At one point in the case, Peter and Leslie go undercover at an estate (project housing), giving a very unique glimpse from a police perspective into the local human denizens.

"I know trouble when it's below the age of criminal responsibility, and while my first instinct was to arrest his parents on general principles, I gave him a cheery wave instead."

I was really enjoying the mischievous, dry wit until about page 200 or so when Aaronvitch started to become quite serious. The wit was still there, but more sly, less frequent, letting the reader focus on the impact of the story. I found it refreshing; although I love a snarky remark, at a certain point, they become incongruent with the emotion of the story.

Honestly, I can't say enough. I love Aaronvich's tone and style. I love that his dogs are dogs, but are still amusing; that Peter is not an anti-hero, and as wry as he is, still believes in loyalty and justice; that Peter doesn't describe all women in terms of sexability, just the one(s) he wants to have sex with; that magic isn't easy; that magic is part of an ambient system living all around us; that Peter is self-depreciating as much as he chaffs others. Add to it that unlike most UF books, the police are not bumbling idiots or obstructive foils, and you have a UF detective read with a very different flavor.

I think it is also worth noting that these books have high re-read potential. Ilona Andrews recently noted "a writer can teach the readers pretty much anything through the narrative, but the lower is that starting threshold, the wider is the audience." Aaronovich doesn't handhold the reader, resulting in a higher threshold. He uses London slang, British police vocabulary, architectural terms and stories that are heavily influenced by local geography. Yet, I feel so satisfied after reading his works. This ending especially was a gobsmacker. I wouldn't call it a cliff-hanger, exactly, since I'm pretty confident in his characterizations. I think Aaronovich's tv roots are showing, and it's more of a titillating lead-in to the next installment. There's a reason I've made an effort to get the series in hardcover--I want them around for a long time.


Laughs:

"Arts and Antiques, definitely not known by the rest of the Met as the Arts and Crafts squad, occasionally recover an item so valuable that even the evidence storage locker in the middle of New Scotland Yard isn't secure enough."

"I said she could have a look around the fair as long as she didn't talk to any strange people.
'Okay,' she said.
'Or strange things,' I said.
'Whatever,' she said and skipped off.
'Or strange things that are also people,' I called after her."

"'They're probably waiting for one of us to get freeze dried,' said Lesley, whose attitude towards taser deployment was that people with heart conditions, epilepsy and an aversion to electrocution should not embark upon breaches of the peace in the first place."

Delirium

Delirium
by Lauren Oliver

Reviewed by Sesana
Three out of five stars

Publisher Summary:

Ninety-five days, and then I’ll be safe.
I wonder whether the procedure will hurt.
I want to get it over with.
It’s hard to be patient.
It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet.
Still, I worry.
They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness.
The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.

My Review:

I have to start by saying that I really do like the way that Lauren Oliver writes. She constructs nice sentences, and has a gift for describing scenes and characters vividly, but without getting too purple. I still didn't love this book, and I'll spend the rest of the review trying to say why I didn't. But Oliver is a good writer, and Delirium is more than just a decent book.

When you read this book, the very first thing you need to do is break out a crane to help you suspend your disbelief. The thing is, Oliver's dystopian world, where love is an illness with a failsafe, and mandatory, cure, is fairly well thought out, except for one major thing: how did we get here? Because it seems like she's thought about nearly every detail but that. I have such a hard time believing that this would ever come to pass. Imagine how much of the world today would react to being told that a scientist has decided that he has the cure to love. Maybe some people would take him up on it, but I think that far more would be horrified. And the government that made the cure mandatory... Well, let's just say that I doubt that government would last for long. But you have to ignore all of that and just take it as given that this did happen, and the vast majority of the population were thrilled at the change. I had a really hard time buying in that far, which did affect how much I enjoyed the book.

And it is, indeed, a romance. As far as YA romances go, it wasn't a terrible one. Alex might not have been the most exciting of love interests, but he was a nice enough guy and I felt like Oliver did a good job of making me believe that Lena was truly falling in love with him. Her emotions felt real enough for me to sympathize with her, even if I didn't feel much for Alex myself. As a romance, it was neither exciting nor infuriating, so I guess I'll take that.

I couldn't help but compare this book to Matched, which I also felt lukewarm towards. They are both YA dystopias where the evil in society is basically arranged marriage. Delirium does raise the bar quite a bit, and I don't remember anything in Matched being as chilling as Lena's visit to the Crypt. Oliver also gets bonus points for acknowledging that gay and lesbian people would exist in this world (Here, it's called Unnaturalism, and the cure will fix them! Doesn't that sound like a great idea for a book in its own right?) which I don't recall Matched doing at all. Unless you're really attached to the premise, there probably isn't any point in reading two YA dystopias that revolve around a lack of romantic freedom. Of the two, I would say that Delirium is better written and has higher stakes.

Also reviewed on Goodreads.

Jay Lake Pre-Mortem Readathon, Review #8

ENDURANCE (Green Universe #2)
JAY LAKE
Tor Books
$15.99 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Green is back in Copper Downs. Purchased from her father in sunny Selistan when she was four years old, she was harshly raised to be a courtesan, companion, and bedmate of the Immortal Duke of Copper Downs. But Green rebelled. Green killed the Duke, and many others, and won her freedom. Yet she is still claimed by the gods and goddesses of her world, and they still require her service. Their demands are greater than any duke’s could have been.

Godslayers have come to the Stone Coast, magicians whose cult is dedicated to destroying the many gods of Green’s world. In the turmoil following the Immortal Duke’s murder, Green made a God out of her power and her memories. Now the gods turn to her to protect them from the Slayers.

Jay Lake brings us an epic fantasy not “in the tradition of Tolkien,” but, instead, sensual, ominous, shot through with the sweat of fear and the intoxication of power.

My Review: How on earth does Jay Lake do this? He writes a series of first-person narratives from a female late-adolescent person's PoV and makes me like it.

The man is a sorcerer. I feel more sure of it now than ever. No other fact explains his ability to snare me in something I am not automatically a fan of.

Green, in this entry in the series, is as embattled as she was before. The difference is that, as an older and "wiser" character, she's battling for something outside herself. Yes, the battle will still benefit her in the winning. But she is not, unlike in Green, solely on a personal vendetta.

My main issue with Green was how frustrating I found it not to have a fuller, richer sense of the world that she inhabits. I put this down to first-person narration.

I was wrong. It was Lake working his magic. Green is a younger person in the first book, and like every single younger person on the surface of any planet, she is self-absorbed. We all were. Some of us get past it, some don't. And for some who get past the self-absorption of adolescence, it's a demanding external process that sets the gears turning.

With Green, the external source is...epic. Godlike. (You'll get the pun in the last 40pp of the book.) (Which you need to read.) (No, really.) And once we're acquainted with the quest Green needs to follow, once we're back in the leftover first-book conflict with Mother Vajpai, once we're involved and eager to follow the thread to its new, startling, and still inevitable conclusion...
...
...
...pages 317, 318, and 319 happen. I was so glad that I was reading this book AFTER the next one, Kalimpura, was published and was in my hot, grubby fists, I cannot adequately inform you of the good feeling.

A guy who can write from a girl's perspective, a young woman's perspective, and make a mean old misogynist care, not just care but CARE and want to know what happens next, is a sorcerer.

Light the torches. We need to get a stake put up. Who's got the pitchforks? Road trip to Lake-land, there to demand explanations for his powers.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A Broken Family Picks Up the Pieces

Then Came the Evening
by Brian Hart
Published by Bloomsbury USA

5 Out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Amanda 

Despite not being the focal point of the narrative, all of the events in Brian Hart's Then Came the Evening can be traced back to one defining moment: Bandy Dorner enlisted for Vietnam. We never know what Bandy experienced during his tour of duty because the novel begins after his return home, but we know it had a profound effect. He returns a changed man and, after learning that his home has burnt down and believing his young wife, Iona, to have been inside, a drunk, grief-stricken Bandy turns to the familiarity of violence, shooting and killing the officer trying to subdue him. Little does Bandy know that his pain will only beget pain as his wife, Iona, has left him for another man but is pregnant with Bandy's child--a child who will later be marked and judged by his father's actions.

Now before you chastise me for spoilers, all of this happens in the first few pages of the novel. Then Came the Evening picks up nearly two decades later, as Bandy's son, Tracy, decides to reconnect with the father who never knew of his existence. Bandy's release from prison is imminent and, hoping to mend the shattered family, Tracy sets about reclaiming the abandoned family ranch, restoring the gutted house in anticipation of Bandy's return home. As his wayward parents are drawn back to the hometown and the past they left behind, Tracy, Iona, and Bandy tentatively attempt to recapture a sense of family despite old wounds and fresh betrayals, learning the futility of trying to recapture what never was.

Then Came the Evening is about people who are broken beyond repair, who have been shaped by proximity to violence and live in a world with sharp teeth. The narrative moves at a slow, unhurried pace and may frustrate readers who crave more external action, but I enjoyed Hart's refusal to rush a story that should unfold for us as it unfolds for the characters. There shouldn't be a race to the finish line here as Hart is writing about life as it is lived, exploring how people are marked by choices made in mundane circumstances. I also enjoyed lingering over the novel's brutally poetic descriptions of the physical landscape that reflects and explores the internal landscape of the characters--especially in the case of Iona and Bandy as they struggle to reconnect with a time and a place and a version of themselves that was, but is no more. These are not characters who are keenly in touch with their emotions, for whom words come easily. Told in vignettes adrift in time and from varying perspectives, the novel allows the stories of each character to jostle against the other like pieces of a puzzle trying to find a way of fitting together.

While Hart does a fine job of depicting the depths to which Iona has sunk after Tracy initially leaves her to find Bandy, it's his portrayal of Bandy that is the real genius of the novel. A man who has been in prison for the last 20 years, Bandy's return home is painful and raw as Bandy's fear and disorientation are palpable. While his crime was admittedly a heinous one, there's also a realization that this Bandy Dorner is not the same one who pulled the trigger years ago. There's something heartbreaking about his cautious hope that maybe something can still be salvaged from the wreck he made of his family; he knows he doesn't deserve it, but it doesn't stop him from wanting it. However, the novel is not interested in making a case for justifying the circumstances of the crime (as Bandy's mother says, "Everybody blames the war for everything. I'm sick of it" [13]), but more interested in making a case for Bandy as a human being--one still capable of brutality, but one who has not forgotten how to feel.

While the characters in Hart's novel aren't necessarily likable, I admire how they try--with varying levels of success--to make something better of themselves and of each other. While the reader knows the odds are against these shattered people being able to mend one another, there's an inherent nobility in the attempt.

Celestial Matters

Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Commander Aias of the Celestial Ship Chandra's Tear is charged with heading up operation Sunthief, using a ship to steal a piece of the sun and drop it on the capital city of the Middle Kingdom, the enemy of the Delian League.

This is one of those books that's hard to classify. Can something be classified as hard sf if the science in question is that of the ancient Greeks and equally ancient Chinese? That's right. Celestial matters is part hard sf, part alternate history. The Delia League is a Greek Empire founded on the spurious science of the ancient Greeks, which works in this universe. Spontaneous Generation farms are used to create animals. Space is full of air. The humors govern the health of the body. The Delian League is at war with the Middle Kingdom, which is an equally large empire built upon Taoist science.

As you can tell, the world behind Celestial Matters is a very interesting one once you wrap your head around the science. That being said, while the story is good, the writing drags. It took me about seventy pages to be fully invested in the book. It's not a light read and the science takes a bit of getting used to.

Still, I recommend this to alternate history fans who are into the ridiculous and magical science of 2000 years ago.


Also on Goodreads

Quintessence

Quintessence by David Walton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a world where the Earth is flat and alchemy works, Alchemist Chistopher Sinclair and physician Stephen Parris leave their uncertain futures in England and flee to Horizon, a colony on the edge of the world. But even as they unravel the island's many wonders, can they truly escape the religious upheavals in England?

The Quintessance is part alternate history and part what I'm now calling alternate science. It takes place during the Age of Exploration, only in this world, the Earth is flat and the world is ruled by alchemical principles, and alchemist search for the Quintessence, the mysterious fifth element. It reminded me of Celestial Matters, another alternate history/alternate science tale.

The two leads, Sinclair and Parris, contrast each other nicely. Parris is a rational-thinking family man and Sinclair is a driven alchemist seeking to beat death. Parris's relationship with his family does a lot to flesh out his character. The wonders of the quintessence got me interested in the story before the gang ever left England, especially Catherine and the manticore.

Once they drew closer to Horizon and began encountering all sorts of magical creatures, the story took off to me, only to bog down once they reached the colony. While the experiments with the quintessence were interesting, not a lot happened until the mysterious earthquake and the bad guys showed up.

The bad guys were a bit of a problem. Parris' cousin Vaughan was almost unbelievable he was such a selfish douche and Tavera, late of the Spanish Inquisition (NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!), was practically twirling his mustache in villainous delight, although I actually found him the more believable of the pair. The best villains are the ones that think their actions are justified and Tavera certainly had that going for him. If the story had gone another way, I could easily see Sinclair playing the villainous role.

That's about all I have to say. Quintessence was an enjoyable read but I'm not wetting myself in anticipation for the sequel. 3.5 out of 5.

ALso on Goodreads

Nobody Likes To Share...

Elysium

Reviewed by Kemper

3 out of 5 stars with giant space habitats orbiting them.

Like a lot of people, I was eagerly anticipating Neill Blomkamp’s follow up to District 9, but while there’s a lot to like about Elysium, it doesn’t live up to the D9 standard.  It almost seems like  Blomkamp came up with the idea after drinking heavily and flipping channels between a cable news debate about illegal immigration and one of the Jason Bourne movies.  I picture him waking up in the middle of the night shouting, “The space station is America and Earth is Mexico and I’ll give robot arms to Matt Damon to make him even more deadly!”

In the year 2154 the Earth is so polluted and overpopulated that the wealthy have relocated to a huge space habitat called Elysium.  On Elysium everything is clean and beautiful, and best of all, automated medical pods can cure any disease or heal any injury.  The citizens have robots to serve and guard them from any Earth riff-raff trying to use shuttles to sneak in illegally.  Elysium’s chief guard dog is the ruthless Delacourt (Jodie Foster) who doesn’t hesitate to use lethal force to keep out any undesirables, but she is chafing under the restrictions of the president and the ruling council who think that blowing up shuttles full of desperate people seems a bit harsh.

On Earth, Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-convict who has dreamed of going to Elysium since he was a young orphan, and he’s delighted to bump into his old childhood sweetheart Frey (Alice Braga).  Max is trying to keep his nose clean, but the automated parole system and demanding boss at the factory he works in make it nearly impossible.  After Max is the victim of an industrial accident that leaves him dosed with a lethal amount of radiation, his only chance is to get to Elysium within a few days and use one of the med pods.

Max turns to Spider (Wagner Moura) who tries to smuggle people onto Elysium with little success.  Spider offers Max a ride if he’ll help kidnap a wealthy Elysium citizen on Earth so that they can hack the financial and security data they all have loaded in their brains.  Since Max is sick from the radiation poisoning, Spider has him augmented with some spare cybernetic parts, and Max targets John Carlyle (William Fichtner), the heartless owner of the factory where he worked.  Unknown to them, Delacourt has been conspiring with Carlyle to initiate a reboot of Elysium’s system that will put her in charge, and Carlyle now has that program loaded into his brain.  To try and keep the codes out of anyone else’s hands, Delacourt dispatches a dangerous and crazy operative named Kruger (Sharlto Copley).

Part of the problem is that there’s no subtly here.  Elysium is filled with spoiled assholes and Earth is made up of the common good-hearted folks just trying to get a break.  Damon does an adequate job of making Max relatable, especially in early scenes where his frustration at the rigid laws and bureaucracy is boiling just under the surface.  However, things are especially weak on the villain’s side. Foster’s Delacourt is heartless and ruthless. Carlyle is a greedy spineless weasel.  Kruger is a sadistic killer and that’s about it even though Copley does some entertaining scenery chewing at times.  None of their motives are explained, and there’s no perspective given on how Elysium can live so well when the Earth has supposedly been used up like a paper towel.

In fact, the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense in that almost everyone wants to get to Elysium simply for the medical treatments there.  Yet the pods seem to work so magically that withholding them from Earth is stupid because it’d make a lot more sense for Elysium to use them to keep people in line by offering or withholding medical treatment.  To universally deny it sets Elysium up as the targeted destination of the desperate and creates most of their problems.

This would have been a lot more interesting if the story was about resources in general and not just mainly about the magical cures that Elysium refuses to share for no reason that‘s explained.  If they were denying the medical treatment because the machines require too much power or rare materials to work, it’d make more sense.  Or perhaps the world’s overpopulation requires a brutal thinning of the herd.  If Delacourt saw herself as acting in the interest of humanity by trying to save precious resources for a few that would carry on, that would have made her a much more effective villain than someone who just doesn’t want any of those filthy Earth people on her space station.

The movie looks great visually and the contrast of Elysium which looks like the spiffiest gated community ever built against a Los Angeles which is now nothing but filth and squalor makes the point that this is definitely the Haves vs. the Have-Nots.

Blomkamp also delivers cool sci-fi action and weaponry just as he did in District 9, but he fell into the common trap of using choppy editing for many of the fight scenes so that at times it’s nearly impossible to tell what’s going on.  That’s made even more frustrating because at some points there are some cool shots like a robot being torn apart by explosive bullets in slow motion that is simply stunning so it’s even weirder that Blomkamp chose to make other scenes practically incomprehensible.


At the end of the day, Elyisum is weird mix in that it’s a big action sci-fi movie that has a few too many ideas to be a pure shoot ‘em up, yet the plot lacks the kind of detail and character motivation needed to lift it up to the level required for a more thoughtful kind of sci-fi story.  I cared more about the alien creatures of District 9 than I do the humans stuck on Earth in Elysium even though both stories are about the plight of immigrants in one form or another.

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Five out of five stars


Homicide 69 is another excellent book from Sam Reaves, an author who doesn't have nearly the following nor the reputation that he deserves.

The book is set in the summer of 1969. Richard Nixon is in the White House; war is raging in Vietnam; Neal Armstrong is walking on the moon; the Manson family is on its murderous rampage, and American society is in the process of being torn apart.

Against that backdrop, Mike Dooley, a solid, decent homicide detective, is doing what he can to redress the injustices committed by his fellow Chicago residents against each other. He's also trying, with marginal success, to navigate the treacherous waters of his own personal life. And a veteran of World War II, Dooley worries day and night about the safety of his son Kevin, a Marine who has been deployed to Vietnam.

Late one night, Dooley and his partner are called to the scene of an especially horrific homicide. A young woman, Sally Kotowski, has been brutally tortured and murdered. Kotowski was a former Playboy Bunny who hung out with mobsters, and Dooley quickly concludes that her death was mob-related.

A solution to the murder appears almost magically, and Dooley's bosses are happy to sign off on the case and declare it closed. Dooley is not. He believes that the solution is too neat and tidy and that the real killers are still at large. Through a long and difficult summer, he pursues the case relentlessly, often on his own time and at the risk of destroying his own career. And his journey takes him deep into the dark side of Chicago life in the late 1960s.

Homicide 69 is much more than a conventional crime novel. The reader knows fairly early on who the guilty parties are and so this is not a "mystery" novel in the traditional sense. It is, at heart, the story of one lone man, struggling against seemingly impossible odds, to do the right thing and to achieve one very small measure of justice in a world gone mad.

It's a story brilliantly told. Reaves has captured perfectly the tenor of the time in which the story is set and he has created an absolutely riveting protagonist in Mike Dooley. Even at nearly 600 pages, the story is way too short, and one closes the book wishing that you could follow Dooley's career indefinitely.

After being hard to find for some time, Homicide 69 is now available in a new e-book edition. It's hard to imagine any fan of crime fiction who would not enjoy it.