Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

April is National Poetry Month, and as part of that celebration Gerald So, the man behind The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, has organized the 30 Days of The 5-2 Blog Tour to celebrate the fantastic crime themed poetry that appears on The 5-2.

Even if you think you don’t like poetry – I admit I don’t read a ton of it myself – if you’re a fan of crime fiction you really should be visiting The 5-2 on a regular basis. In addition to seeing many familiar names amongst the contributors, you’ll also be treated to the discovery of new talent you may not yet have had the pleasure of reading. Either way, you won’t come away empty-handed or disappointed.

And if you need a little push to get you going, just check out the stops on the 30 Days of The 5-2 Blog Tour, a tour during which different bloggers are taking turns spotlighting a poem of their choice every day in the month of April. I’ve chosen to feature the phenomenal “Nothing to See Here” by C.J. Edwards. (more…)

I’m very pleased to welcome Wiley Cash to the blog today. Wiley’s debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, has been getting tremendous advance reviews, and Wiley was kind enough to take time out of his schedule for an interview during this hectic run-up to the book’s official launch on April 17th (William Morrow).

First, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. I imagine you’re stretched pretty thin with the book about to launch. It’s a question I’m sure you’re going to get sick of answering, but since this is your debut could you give people a little background about yourself? You know, the standard “How did you come to be a writer?” question.

I started out writing doomy, self-centered, “no one understands me” poetry when I was in junior high school. I’ve talked to a lot of writers who started out this way; you listen to a couple of albums by The Doors and suddenly you understand the secrets of the literary universe. I, unfortunately, was sadly mistaken in my understanding of those secrets. I went to college and majored in creative writing so I could work on my poetry, but as soon as I got to college I realized that I was a terrible poet. I still enjoyed writing, so I decided to try my hand at fiction. I wrote my first short story during my sophomore year, and it was actually published. I thought, Man, this writing thing is a piece of cake! I was wrong. I didn’t have another story published for almost ten years, but I kept writing and I kept trying to improve. (more…)

It seems to be Inspector Kari Vaara’s destiny to lead a life out of balance. When we last saw him in Lucifer’s Tears his career had taken a turn for the better, with Kari being hailed as a national hero after being shot in the line of duty (for the second time, actually). Unfortunately he also learned that the crippling headaches from which he’d been suffering were caused by a brain tumor.

As Helsinki White opens Kari once again finds the balance in his life shifting. He and his wife, Kate, are the proud new parents of a baby girl, he gets an offer from the National Chief of Police to run a top secret unit dedicated to eradicating Helsinki’s most serious crimes, and Kari’s scheduled for surgery his physicians are optimistic will remove the tumor. That’s a little too much of a solid foundation given Kari’s history, so you know something has to give.

The first piece of the foundation starts to crumble when Kari realizes the real reason his little unit has been empowered with such autonomy and secrecy… it’s meant to be the ‘boots on the ground’ front for a few very highly placed corrupt government officials. Kari and his team – including the return of über intelligent if slightly unstable Milo Nieminien, as well as the addition of Sulo “Sweetness” Polvinen, a mountain of a man who has a surprisingly gentle soul – are expected to put criminals out of business by any means necessary, including stealing their guns and drugs, even framing people in order to get them out of the way, and then funnel the proceeds of their own criminal activity back up the highly selective chain of command. Not what Kari thought he was signing up for, he thought he would get a chance to stop the human trafficking running through Finland, but he’s in too deep to just quit. He has to go along until he can figure out an exit strategy. (more…)

Back in March of 2011 when I invited author James Thompson for a guest post in conjunction with the release of the second book in his Inspector Kari Vaara series, Lucifer’s Tears, I really had no idea what to expect from him. What Jim ended up writing, “My life just isn’t anybody else’s business,” was an incredibly powerful piece that really struck a nerve with readers. When I asked Jim back for another guest post in anticipation of the release of Helsinki White (March 15th from Putnam), this time he suggested we do an interview instead. As you’ll see, I tried to just stay out of the way and let my questions serve as jumping off points for Jim to, again, share with readers another incredibly frank look behind the curtain at both himself and Kari Vaara.

When Lucifer’s Tears, the second book in the Kari Vaara series, came out you did a guest post here in which you reflected on how much of you is in Kari and vice-versa. You also spoke about a serious health issue you were having with severe headaches. As the third book in the series, Helsinki White, is poised to launch, how are your headaches doing, and have you and Kari gotten closer or farther apart?

The headaches aren’t gone, but have gotten much better. I spent a horrid few months playing guinea pig while my neurologist tried out different meds on me. It wasn’t his fault; he’s truly an excellent doctor. Note that he received thanks for serving as a consultant for Helsinki White. He loved the book, by the way. He checked it for accuracy in neurological matters and their behavioral consequences and told me I hit the nail squarely on the head. That was important to him because there are so many misconceptions about trauma-induced neural disorders (his specialization), and he hopes the book will raise public awareness.

Anyway…apparently I have very sensitive brain chemistry and even small doses of drugs that affect most people not at all made me physically and/or mentally ill. For instance, once, when the EMTs came in an ambulance to take me to hospital, I couldn’t tell them my name. I spent a fair amount of time in the emergency room during that time. We finally struck upon a meds combination that both keeps me in pretty good condition and my system can tolerate. I tire a little more easily than I used to. Other than that, I’m doing well. I thought for a while, after a straight talk from my doctor, that I was going to die with my head in the toilet. The sequence: uncontrolled vomiting, dehydration, shock, cardiac arrest, and goodbye. Interestingly, it made for a good incentive to write. Thinking I might have limited time made me want to produce more while I could. And on the practical side, writers are worth more dead than alive—as Larsson so graphically demonstrated—and I wanted to leave my wife financially secure. (more…)

Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing James LePore’s most recent novel, Blood of My Brother. Today, however, I am pleased to welcome James for a guest post and a peek behind the curtain at his writing process.

When my publisher asked me to write this post, I was in the middle of writing a love scene in the novel I am currently working on. When I say love scene, I do not mean a scene in which two people make love, although that may be part of it. I mean a scene in which the spark is lit, the click occurs, that moves two people into the mysterious state we call romantic love.

Since Musings had given me carte blanche, and since the difficulty of writing such scenes——for me at least——was much on my mind (I had already spent about five hours on an interaction that would take up no more than two or three pages in the new novel) it occurred to me that I would write about writing a love scene.

The first thing I did was to look at what I believe is the pivotal click moment in Blood of My Brother, to see how, and what, I did. This is it: (more…)

I recently reviewed No Hope For Gomez!, a delightfully odd book which is cleverly presented as a series of blog entries. In my review I compared reading the book to getting sucked down the rabbit hole into Gomezland.

Well, I am happy to be able to share with you an interview with the “Mad Hatter” of Gomezland, the author of No Hope For Gomez!, Graham Parke.

Thank you for your time, Graham. No Hope For Gomez! is certainly a unique story, both content wise as well as in how it’s presented. How would you describe it if you were doing the proverbial ‘30 second pitch’?

GP: No Hope For Gomez! is based on the age-old tale: Boy meets girl, boy stalks girl, girl already has a stalker, boy becomes her stalker-stalker. We’ve seen all this before, of course, but this time it’s different. If only slightly.

This time there’s an experimental drug trial involved, an army of unscrupulous phone-sex salesmen, and there’s this sexy lab assistant who’s unable to express herself in terms outside the realm of science.

What’s the funniest, or strangest, feedback you’ve received for No Hope For Gomez!?

GP: The funniest thing came about through a combination of factors. One of the initial reviewers commented something along the lines of, “Graham Parke is a genius.” Which is far too kind to be sure. Anyway, my wife found the review early in the morning while I was still asleep and asked my two year old son, “Do you know daddy is a Genius?” To which he replied, “No, daddy is sleeping.” And, to this day, this remains the most insightful description of my mental state. (more…)