Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

Ok, you can blame this one on PopCultureNerd from Twitter. She has come up with a very clever meme in which you describe yourself by completing a set of sentences using only the titles of books you’ve read in 2010.

So, without further ado, here is “My Life as a Book 2010″ using only titles I’ve read in this calendar year to date… I didn’t even cheat by going into my TBR list!

In high school I was: The Girl Who Played With Fire (Stieg Larsson)

People might be surprised: I Am Not A Serial Killer (Dan Wells)

I will never be: The Insider (Reece Hirsch)

My fantasy job is: The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (Charlie Huston)

At the end of a long day I need: Exit Strategy (Michael Wiecek)

I hate it when: The Lizard’s Bite (David Hewson)

Wish I had: The Villa of Mysteries (David Hewson)

My family reunions are: A Thousand Cuts (Simon Lelic)

At a party you’d find me with: The Cutting Crew (Steve Mosby)

I’ve never been to: Jar City (Arnaldur Indridason)

A happy day includes: Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins)

Motto I live by: Beat The Reaper (Josh Bazell)

On my bucket list: Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)

In my next life, I want to be: The Lock Artist (Steve Hamilton)

Next year I’ll know better to read more books with versatile, clever titles.

You can check out PopCultureNerd’s list here. And if you’re feeling brave enough to play I’d love to see your lists too. If you don’t have enough 2010 titles you can fudge a little and include books from 2009 as well.

If there was one thing I had learned in the U.S., it was the benefit of nailing your enemies before they nailed you. – Matt Wells

In Maps of Hell, British crime writer Matt Wells initially has a bigger problem on his hands than nailing his enemies… he has to figure out who he is first.

The book opens with Matt regaining consciousness in a tiny cell, naked, beaten and unable to recall who he is or how he got there. He’s taken from his cell repeatedly for bizarre, Clockwork Orange-esque sessions aimed at conditioning his mind… but to what end? Matt doesn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

Taking advantage of a lapse in one of the sessions he makes a daring escape, during which he realizes that he – and many others – are being held and experimented on by a fringe militia group at a compound deep in the forests of Maine. His memory slowly returns while he’s on the run trying desperately to stay one step ahead of his militia pursuers. And they aren’t the only ones looking for him.

A series of gruesome murders have been occurring in Washington, D.C., with Matt’s fingerprints turning up at one of the crime scenes. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’s also wanted for questioning in the disappearance of his girlfriend, British DCI Karen Oaten, who was in D.C. to meet with the Department of Justice.

Now, in addition to trying to stay one step ahead of the militia members tracking him, Matt also has to decide whether to go to the authorities and trust them to believe his story, or try on his own to solve the puzzle of his abduction, his girlfriend’s disappearance, and why he’s being framed for murder.

Maps of Hell is a truly frantic and engaging read. It is decidedly unnerving to be thrust into a world where the narrator, normally the reader’s guide, himself doesn’t know precisely what’s going on. And author Paul Johnston has captured Matt’s fear and confusion in a way that’s so vivid it’s almost palpable:

When I came round, I didn’t have a clue where I was. My head was ringing with strange sounds and I saw a blur of colors and shapes. Gradually my vision cleared, but my ears were still filled with discordant voices. There was a foul stench in my nostrils. I tried to move, but my arms and legs were confined. I looked down and saw that I had been tied to a wheelchair. I was wearing paper clothes again. I felt a twinge of alarm and glanced around. What I saw wasn’t reassuring.

Having read the previous two books in the Matt Wells series is not required in order to enjoy Maps of Hell. In fact, not having done so could arguably enhance the experience as the reader would truly be discovering everything for the first time right along with Matt as he struggles to understand who he is and what’s happening to him.

Author Paul Johnston consistently produces books that manage to take a familiar premise and completely turn it on its ear, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Maps of Hell. If you’ve not read anything by Johnston before, grab a copy of Maps of Hell and begin your journey into the mind of one of the most creative – and criminally under the radar – thriller writers working today.

Maps of Hell is available from Mira (ISBN: 978-0778327783).

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I’m very pleased to have a guest post from Steve to wrap up Steve Mosby Week. I’ll just let him get to it…

I’ve been thinking about dead people recently. More specifically, dead women.

That’s not as weird or wrong as it sounds. I’m a crime writer, after all, so it’s natural for dead women to crop up. And these are fictional dead women, not real ones. The victims of murder – and worse – that cross my mind are pretty much always made-up, so it’s a harmless process: I think about this stuff; I write it down; and someone eventually reads it (cough cough). Nobody in the real world actually gets hurt.

But I’ve been thinking about the subject more than I normally do, for a few reasons. It started a couple of months back, during a conversation with another writer, who mentioned that my writing often contain ‘dead girlfriends’. Guilty as charged. As it happens, it’s even worse than that. I started out doing short stories, and even then I was well aware of my unfortunate tendency to include dead girlfriends. That was before I started writing my first book, so I should have known better, and yet The Third Person happened anyway.

Okay, it has a missing girlfriend rather than a dead one, but that’s the slimmest of technicalities and, from a narrative standpoint, they do exactly the same job. In a leap of unbridled creative genius, The Cutting Crew has an estranged wife rather than a dead one. Go, me. Except don’t go too far, because the story’s driven by an anonymous dead girl that haunts the main character. Next, in The 50/50 Killer, there’s simply a very obvious dead girlfriend. It’s shameless. Let’s just move on quickly … to Cry For Help, in which the whole concept is based around dead girlfriends. Now, at this point you might be wondering what the hell is wrong with me (I am), and we haven’t even got to Still Bleeding, which begins with the suicide of the main character’s wife. Jesus. Wept. (more…)

The final review of Steve Mosby Week is of The 50/50 Killer. Even though it’s not Steve’s most recent release (that’d be Still Bleeding), I saved The 50/50 Killer for the final review because it was the first book of Steve’s I read, and as such will always be my favorite for having been my gateway into Mosby’s world.

As any experienced officer will tell you, there is always room for instinct. As the years pass, you develop a finely tuned inner voice that you learn to listen to even when others cannot hear it. And, within reason, there is no harm in following this voice where it takes you. – From Damage Done, by John Mercer

Detective Sergeant John Mercer has made himself a legend in the police force by following his inner voice. Doing so has resulted in the capture of many killers, receipt of numerous professional accolades, and even a self-penned book based on his career.

Young officer Mark Nelson sees his new assignment to Mercer’s team as a tremendous opportunity, both for hands-on learning and as a way to advance his career. Little does he know he’s about to get the education of a lifetime.

Nelson has barely arrived for his first day at his new assignment when he and Mercer are called to a gruesome scene where a man has been found burned to death in his home.

The evidence indicates he was severely tortured before succumbing to his ultimate fate. Even more ominous, the evidence also suggests it’s the handiwork of a killer Mercer has seen before.

Known as the 50/50 Killer, his preferred method of madness is to stalk a couple, kidnap them, and then force them to choose which of them will die – after being slowly tortured – while the other is made to watch. He sees it as a game:

The last time Mercer got dragged into the 50/50 Killer’s game the investigation ‘ended’ with the murder of a member of Mercer’s team, and Mercer having a nervous breakdown. The 50/50 Killer was not caught.

When a badly tortured, barely coherent young man is subsequently found wandering at the edge of a densly wooded area the police are able to get three pieces of information out of him: he and his girlfriend were kidnapped, he escaped, she’s still somewhere in the woods. Based on their previous experience with the 50/50 Killer, Mercer and his team know if they don’t find her before dawn she has no chance of survival. The race against the clock is on.

With the exception of a brief setup, the entire investigation unfolds over the course of an incredibly tense 15 hour timeline, and the story is told in short, tight chapters from multiple characters’ perspectives. The alternating narrative and frantic deadline result in the reader feeling slightly off balance, as if they were right there along with the police, racing to stay one step ahead of the ominous dawn deadline.

Without question The 50/50 Killer is the Mosby novel that comes closest to fitting solidly in one genre, in this case a straight-up psychological thriller, and as such may be the most accessible of his works as an entry point into his catalog. This being Mosby, however, there is definitely a philosophical subtext at work. Though the 50/50 Killer is an actual person, what he does to people is symbolic of any event that threatens a relationship and forces people to evaluate the depth of their commitment, to ask, “How much am I willing to sacrifice for this person?” It’s a tough question, from an author not afraid to show you how brutal the consequences can be depending upon your answer.

*****

As you can tell from my dedication of this entire week to reviewing Steve’s work, I am a huge fan of his writing. I think he has a way of combining action and intelligence that is incredibly rare, and thus a joy to read. Hopefully you’ve found something here this week which has intrigued you enough to give his work a try, and I’d love to hear back from anyone who does. Oh, but we’re not done yet…

Coming Tomorrow: Here to wrap up Steve Mosby Week, a guest post from the man himself.

In today’s continuing celebration of Steve Mosby Week here on Musings of an All Purpose Monkey I’m reviewing Steve’s most recent release, Still Bleeding, and just when you thought there was no way he could get better, Mosby goes and blows the roof off the joint.

In his experience, people were always interested in violence – attracted to it, even – so long as it wasn’t happening to them. – Detective Paul Kearney

Alex Connor couldn’t possibly have known when his wife, Marie, left to run a quick errand one January evening that it would be the last time he’d see her alive. When she fails to return in a timely fashion he calls her cell phone, only to have it answered by a policeman; Marie, he’s informed, committed suicide by jumping from an overpass.

Overwhelmed by the loss, Alex strikes out on a trip to clear his head that ends up lasting two and a half years. He’s only eventually drawn home again by the news one of his dearest friends, Sarah, has been murdered. The police have her killer, a confession, and a blood soaked crime scene, but no body.

The bodies of other several other women have been found recently though, each of them completely drained of blood. In charge of the investigation, Detective Paul Kearney is focused on the most recent woman to go missing, Rebecca Wingate, whom he’s convinced is still alive.

Kearney’s search for Rebecca puts him on a collision course with Alex, who’s determined to find Sarah even though he knows she’s dead. What they find, however, is a twisted underworld where people gather to celebrate death and collect other people’s suffering.

Going through Sarah’s things one evening Alex discovers she had apparently been researching a project online. Further poking around reveals a list of websites that focus on photos and videos of violent death: war crimes, crime scene and morgue photos, car crashes… suicides. As horrific as the sites are in and of themselves, Alex is stunned to find a cell phone video of Marie’s death among the gruesome collection, and the scene of Alex watching the video of his wife’s death is as emotional and difficult to read as anything I’ve ever come across in fiction:

Determined to find out who took the video and how it got online, Alex beings backtracking through the other posts only to discover photos that appear to be of some of the women who’ve recently gone missing. By the time Alex’s and Kearney’s investigations collide they are forced to confront the reality that there exist individuals so depraved that they collect more than just photos and videos of death, and that there are others all too happy to provide the collectors with what they desire.

If The Cutting Crew is Mosby’s most ambitious novel, Still Bleeding is far and away the most intimate, the one whose characters will hit you the hardest. Though he visited similar territory in his debut novel, The Third Person, the three novels in between have given Mosby a chance to really hit his stride as an author, the result of which shines through in Alex and Kearney.

Even in the darkest possible situations Mosby brings a believable, subdued humanity to them that one does not often find in crime fiction. There are no overwrought hysterics or brash campaigns for vengeance, merely people so haunted by feelings of guilt and confusion, anger and obligation that they feel they have no choice but to see their investigations through to the end, despite the devastating toll it takes on them.

Right from the start with The Third Person Mosby’s writing has been confrontational; not for the sake of shocking readers, but in order to demand readers ask themselves, “Does this shock you and, if not, why not?” He’s an author who absolutely will not let readers be passive, nor will he allow them to remain within their comfort zone. He will drag you, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the very uncomfortable places most people would rather not visit.

Still Bleeding is an intensely challenging and engaging novel, one that clearly demonstrates Mosby is willing to continue to push himself, and readers, with each new offering. With five novels under his belt and just barely into his 30’s, it’s scary – and exciting – to think of what’s yet to come.

Coming Tomorrow: A review of The 50/50 Killer.

Welcome to the continuing celebration of Steve Mosby Week here on Musings of an All Purpose Monkey. Today I’ll be whetting your appetite with mini-reviews of The Third Person, Cry For Help, and The Cutting Crew.

When people look back on their lives, they have a tendency to stick pins in at key moments along the line; little, coloured flags that point out the crucial moments. Every moment is crucial, of course – if you remove any single instant, your future falls away from your past – but I’m talking about the moments we choose to view as different.
- Jason Klein

When Jason Klein’s girlfriend, Amy, leaves him with no more explanation than a note stating she’ll be back at some point he initially chalks it up to ‘just another one of those things’ in his not too brilliant life and tries to move on.

But when she not only doesn’t come back but no word at all is forthcoming, Jason decides he has to know where she went. Looking for clues as to where she may have gone he investigates what Amy had been doing on her computer in the time leading up to her disappearance. What he finds takes him on a journey to the darkest corners of cyberspace.

It turns out Amy had been exploring some deeply disturbing websites, sites featuring rape, torture – of both people and animals – and that glorified murder and death. Just how far down the rabbit hole she went, and how far he’ll have to go to find out why she did and what happened to her, pushes Jason to the very brink, challenging everything he thought he knew to be true about himself and his world.

Part psychological thriller, part noir, with just a hint of a near-future setting, The Third Person dares the reader to look depravity in the eye without blinking. It’s powerful writing, especially for a debut novel, but it’s not for the squeamish.

*****

Police work had brought him into contact with a great deal of violent death, but in this case it wasn’t the assault that appalled him so much as the indignity and inhumanity of what had been done. And perhaps what hadn’t. – Detective Sam Currie

In Cry For Help author Steve Mosby poses a straightforward question which, depending upon your answer, has profound implications: How much do you really care about your friends and family? Do you care enough to go out of your way to check on them if you haven’t see them in a while, or would a quick email or text from them satisfy you?

It’s the latter the killer in Cry For Help relies on. Immobilizing people in their homes and leaving them to die of dehydration, he sends just enough texts and emails ‘from them’ to their friends and family to, theoretically, reassure people everything is fine.

But as time passes and no one bothers to actually check up on the victims, the killer taunts those supposedly closest to them yet who couldn’t be bothered to dig deeper behind the sudden physical absence of someone from their lives.

With Cry For Help Mosby has taken what could have been a straightforward serial killer story and turned it into a philosophical reflection upon responsibility, both as individuals and as a society, and how much is required of us toward our fellow man.

*****

My guilt wasn’t in doubt, I thought, but all I could do now was keep moving and try to make it as right as possible. Responsibility doesn’t stop with guilt, after all. Even when you’ve fucked everything up, you can always make it worse for yourself by turning away. – Martin Weaver

The Cutting Crew is Steve Mosby’s most ambitious novel, and is certainly a challenge to wrap your arms around in terms of plot summary. In the broadest sense, The Cutting Crew is a detective noir tale of a fallen cop struggling for answers and redemption.

Originally part of a team attempting to solve the murder of an unidentified girl, Detective Martin Weaver’s world imploded after he and his fellow detectives failed to solve the crime… and his partner disappeared. The book opens with Weaver on the verge of committing an assassination, then spends the remainder of the story showing you what brought him to that point.

Perhaps the most compelling part of The Cutting Crew, however, is the city in which it takes place. Though not futuristic per se, it certainly is not one that exists on the same plane as the world as we know it. Divided into districts, each named after an animal (Wasp, Bull, etc.), the city is rumored to have been founded – and still run – by eight brothers who exercise an almost omnipotent control over everything that occurs in the city. Like any legend though, no one can quite pin down and verify the stories of the city’s history the residents grow up hearing.

What is known for sure is that the city pulses with an almost malevolent energy. Populated with crooked cops on the take from even more crooked politicians, all held together by a mafia underworld, the city is an incredibly dark, stifling presence. And the further the story progresses, the more the city itself takes over as the driving force, becoming an almost live creature:

The Cutting Crew will take you on a completely original, genre-bending head trip, and it’s a trip well worth taking.

Coming Tomorrow: A review of Still Bleeding.