Mr. Splitfoot by: Samantha Hunt
*** 3 out 5 Stars
Review by: Mark Palm I was a teenager when I first “discovered” South American Magic Realism. Now Magic Realism has been with us for a long, long time, from Laurence Sterne to Franz Kafka, but the South Americans were trending, and I read Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar, etc, but The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa was the one that warped my mind the most. It was so trippy that I had to resort to a notebook to keep it all straight, and even then most of the time I was reading it I felt like I had a serious fever. All of which brings me to Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt, which is probably the most hallucinatory book I have read since then. It’s a shame that I read this as an arc, because I can’t quote from it, and Ms. Hunt is a superb line-by-line writer, and her prose absolutely sings. Like The Green House however, I can’t quite grasp exactly what happened. Ruth grows up in the Love of Christ! foster home run by an abusive religious fanatic who mistreats his charges. After her older sister Eleanor ages out of foster care Ruth teams up with a boy named Nat, who can channel the dead. As teens the two meet Mr. Bell, who is a con artist. Ruth marries him, but they are stalked by Zeke, a dangerous psycho who wants Ruth for himself. This narrative is entwined with one fourteen years later, with Ruth’s niece, Cora, who is pregnant and unmarried and generally bored with her life. Ruth shows up, and silently convinces Cora to follow her. The two spend the next several months walking around New York state, even as Cora’s pregnancy makes it harder and more dangerous for her. Of course Cora has a Destiny, but by the time it came around I was pretty perplexed. There are cults and religious fanatics and raving lunatics, and I was just waiting for someone that felt like they were from this planet. Now as I said, Ms. Hunt is a wonderful writer of prose, but the biggest problem I had with this book was the characters. Almost everyone felt like they had dropped in from another plane of existence, and while there is nothing wrong with weirdness, I felt that the weirdness was sometimes forced. It didn’t help that almost no one was sympathetic either. I feel that this was purposeful, and I don’t believe that characters need to be likeable; but the level of inexplicably was a bit to high for me.
The Children's Home By: Charles Lambert
*** 3 out of 5 Stars
Review by: Mark Palm I couldn’t resist the pun. It’s not just cute, but it’s apt as well. The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert is one of those books that elude categorization and sits uneasily yet properly somewhere between Fantasy, Allegory and Fairy Tale. Just remember that Fairy tales can be quite dark at times, and you should be prepared for this spare and dream-like novel. Morgan Fletcher is severely disfigured, is the heir to a mysterious fortune and lives is a massive estate, and has been a willing recluse for years, since his mother died. He spends his days in his quiet study, avoiding his reflection and reading, with only his housekeeper Engel for company. Then one day two children, Moira and David suddenly appear, and Morgan takes them in, with few questions. Suddenly more and more children begin to show up, some in ways that seem to defy reality, only the details of the world of this novel are so sparse that it might not be the case. Morgan enjoys the children because they are not bothered by his appearance. When one of the children gets sick Engel brings the nearest physician, Doctor Crane, who is so kind and decent that Morgan overcomes his shyness and the two become friends. Eventually the Doctor gets his own room and begins to spend a great deal of time at the house. The children, however, are getting stranger and stranger. They seem to know a great deal about Morgan’s past, and when some sinister emissaries from a vaguely threatening State agency appear, it seems like the children literally disappear into thin air, making Morgan question his sanity. Some of the children's actions and the discoveries that they make in the house are wonderfully creepy, and somewhat disturbing, but also quite obscure. One of the things I enjoyed the most about this novel was also one of its problems; it’s dream-like quality. There were times when reading The Children’s Home when I felt like I was hallucinating while watching a surrealist play on a blank stage. Now it turns out that the children are at Morgan’s home for a reason, and he helps them near the end of the book, when he leads the children in an eerie trip to the Factory that his sister runs that has been the family business for years. I can tell you little without dropping spoilers, but also because the whole thing is so hard to pin down with any certainty, and while that ambiguity gives the book it’s unique quality it also can be frustrating, particularly for those of us who are not overly fond of allegory. I usually don’t like to have to search for”meanings” in my stories, but I found that I enjoyed this book more for the invention and the creepiness and not so much for the search for symbolism.
One day Scott notices something: the lights in the empty house next door go off at exactly eleven each night. Although it’s almost certainly a timer Scott becomes obsessed, and eventually breaks in. This small transgression invigorates him, and soon he talks his unhappy wife into joining him in his new-found passion. The pair gets drunk and go over to the house together, and in a moment of passion, make a disturbing discovery that sets off a chain reaction of horrific discoveries about Victor, Elise, and Carmelita, the “Winter Girl”of the title. There is not much more I can say about the book without dropping a ton of spoilers, but I can tell you that if the first part the story of this couple's life was bad the second half is a disturbing and compelling train wreck.
As unlikeable as they are at first, each and every character become worse and worse, until you feel like you are caught up in a nest of vipers. Mr. Marinovich’s skill is that in spite of this, or just maybe because of it, the story becomes more and more riveting. As the revelations come faster and faster, and get progressively worse you know that there is no way that this story can end well, but by then you are caught up in the narrative flow, very much like the characters themselves, and I was looking to see just how bad things were going to get. And trust me, they get real, real bad. There are a lot of coincidences that fall just the right, (or wrong), way near the end, and it was a bit distressing to read a book in which just about every single person is despicable, but I just kept turning the pages, which earns Mr. Marinovich a serious tip of my cap.
This story starts before the infamous encounter at the Reichenbach Falls, when a an Italian scholar visits 221 Baker Street and tells the detective a tale about an ancient parchment, written by Marco Polo, taken from a rubbing from an even older artifact found in the libraries of Kublai Khan. This parchment is half of a document that Polo, and another traveler, the famed Moroccan Ibn Batuta, both took dramatic steps to hide. Now a secret organization, The Brotherhood of the Letter, who may have ties with Moriarty, are searching for the document as well. The chase is on.
The set-up for this story works well, but the execution falls a bit flat. The details and the background of the story are top-notch, and delivered smoothly, and Mr. Murthy manages a few subtle digs at the racial and cultural tropes of the era, but the plot drags a bit and lacks in urgency. Mr. Murthy clearly knows his history, and his Canon, but the novel seems more like an old-fashioned adventure of the type that H. Rider Haggard did so well, with Holmes, Watson and Moriarty plugged in. There are a large and various amount of viewpoints used in the book, and they add a bit to the multi-cultural flavor of the book, but they are somewhat muddled, and I had to backtrack more than once to make sure who was narrating.
The tone of The Paradox is a bit darker and more elegiac than the first book, but it should, because the fate of the world is teetering on the brink. Like it’s predecessor one of the main strengths of this novel is its mix of gritty reality and imaginative fantasy, next to each other cheek-by jowl, each enforcing and playing off of the other. A perfect example of this is in the Mirror world, where space and time seem to have lost meaning, but the physical realities of Mr. Sharp and Sara’s trials are almost punishingly visceral.
You can read this book as a stand-alone, but I think that you should not. It’s rare to find two such splendid novels that fit together seamlessly, and tell such a powerful story. If I had to nitpick a bit I could say that The Paradox is a bit too much of a “second” novel in that even though the end is satisfying it’s still obvious that there is a lot of the story left to tell, but that would be nitpicking, and these two novels deserve all of the praise and attention that I can give, so do yourself a favor, and start reading; you won’t be disappointed. Wilkie Collins A brief Life
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As good as Mr. Ackroyd is at Collins life he really shines when discussing his art. He not only points out Collins artistic skills, which were prodigious, but his compassion for the underdogs and afflicted of Victorian society, and how the author went out of his way to shine a light upon them, and often featured them in his works in a way that was realistic and fair. In the end, where Wilkie Collins: A Brief Life succeeds best is in doing what literary biographies should do; make you want to experience the work if you have not before, and make you want to re-read it if you have. Now I am going to go dig up my copy of The Moonstone, if you don’t mind. You should do the same.
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Knight Moves
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***** 5 out of 5 stars
Review by: Stacy Palm Let's be honest, sometimes it is the greatest fun to get completely lost in a fictional fantasy that is a quick and easy romp into our imagination. These books don't have to be great works of literature. They are here for our pleasure and enjoyment, and I'm honestly a bit tired of people suggesting that you can't give a "best book" label to a romance. Well, guess what? I once more, fell in love with a time-traveling romance, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. The second installment to the Merriweather Sisters Time Travel Romance, Knight Moves, was even better than the first! I loved this book, and I loved the first book. This is a short and sweet novel that I was able to finish in a couple of hours, and I think that is awesome. Some times you need a sweet short read for the middle for a lazy Sunday afternoon and you don't want to be trapped in a slogging tomb of literary precision that requires more brainpower than an average work day (I'm looking at you Fates and Furies.) |
Knight Moves doesn't require a lot of information, a woman travels back in time to find her sister and true love. Sounds simple enough, but I enjoyed this book so much that I did not set it down once. The author has a true talent and gift for telling a story that keeps you riveted to the page. At no time did I want to leave my imaginary blissfully happy bubble, and that tells me that this was as perfect of a book as it could be. I highly recommend this book if you are a true romantic at heart.
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Salvage
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**** 4 out of 5 stars
Review by: Mark Palm I knew someone who died in a diving accident. They were exploring a sunken ship and got lost and ran out of air. Personally I cannot imagine a scarier way to go, so Salvage by Duncan Ralston gave me the heebie-jeebies from the beginning. Thirty years before the rural Canadian town of Peace Falls has been flooded to build a hydroelectric dam, and remains beneath Chapel Lake. The mysterious disappearance of the town’s Pastor, along with many of the church’s parishioners is still haunting the new community of Chapel Lake. The novel opens with Owen Sadler attending his younger sister Lori’s funeral, who drowned while scuba diving in Chapel Lake. Needless to say he is upset and depressed, and begins to question his sanity after seeing his sister’s ghost. So he decides to go to Chapel Lake and look into her death. He stays at the cabin where she did, and discovers a series of journal entries that she seemingly left for him, hinting that she was there trying to solve the mystery of Owen’s early life. It turns out that Owen’s father, about whom his mother never spoke, was from Chapel Lake, and Owen was born there. Owen decides to begin looking into his past, which includes diving into the same lake that took his sister’s life. He meets several townsfolk, and begins to piece together his life and his sister’s death. |
The only complaint I had with Salvage is a small one, and it is with Owen. In the beginning of the novel he is depressed, and Mr. Ralston shows us a very accurate portrait of someone suffering from this malady, but it makes the beginning of the book somewhat slow and ponderous. As the story unfolds Owen’s character begins to change and open up, and the pace picks up quite a bit. By the end of the story the revelations come quicker and quicker, and for me, the pages turned in the same way. There are a lot of mysteries to be solve, and Mr. Ralston does it in a way that is believable yet scary. So if you like good horror novels, (and who doesn't by the way) then read Salvage. You won’t be sorry. You may not want to go scuba diving again, however.
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Now that She's Gone
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*** 3 out of 5 stars
Review by: Mark Palm To paraphrase none other than myself, if there were as many serial killers as there are writers writing about them, I would probably rarely leave the house. I guess that I should be glad that not all of them are as scary as Hannibal Lecter, but in the case of this book, Now That She’s Gone, by Gregg Olsen, I would have liked a bit more terror than I got. Notorious serial killer Brenda Nevins seduces Warden Jamie Thomas, then uses her to escape from prison, then, unsurprisingly, abuses the crap out of her while pondering how to get revenge on our main characters Forensic Pathologist Birdy Waterman and Detective Kendall Stark. Stark is busy with this case, and worried about her marriage when a cable television show called “Spirit Hunters”, featuring a vindictive psychic, Pandora, and a washed-up macho detective, Wyatt Ogilvie, are filming an episode about the girl’s case, and the Sheriff’s department wants Kendall to appear on it. Naturally everything that can go wrong does, as Pandora and Wyatt manage to annoy everyone in sight, except Katy’s mother, who finds them believable, and Kendall finds herself working on the girl’s case as well. Before long, lives and reputations are ruined and bodies begin dropping like flies. |
Now I appreciate Mr.Olson’s effort in using a cast that is mainly women, but not too much is done with that. Brenda just does not have what it takes to be a compelling villain, (maybe because there has never really been a female serial killer), and Kendall and Birdy are such neutral characters that they really didn’t hold my interest. Most of the other characters are fairly one-dimensional and unsurprising, so the fact that they are women doesn't make a palpable difference.
Mr. Olsen’s prose was solid and transparent, which is a good thing, as I have said before, and the plot had enough twists and turns to keep me off balance, but the uninspiring characters muffled the shock factor. Now That She’s Gone is the second book in a series but I had no problem in keeping up as Mr. Olsen knows how to deliver information without devolving into digressions. The ending to this book came a little quickly, and in another sense, didn’t come at all. The story didn't end so much as it just stopped, which is not so surprising because a sequel is planned. So I guess I am stuck on a cliff for a little while longer.
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An Evil Mind
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*** 3 out of 5 Stars
Review by: Mark Palm Current FBI statistics state that there is somewhere between 35 to 50 serial killers active at any given time in the United States. You can believe these stats or not, but if you were to judge by thriller novels there is a whole lot more than that. I have read several excellent novels the past few years featuring serial killers, so it can be done, but their very ubiquity of the concept means that writers have to have a fresh take if they want to go down that road. An Evil Mind by Chris Carter is a good thriller, but it isn’t quite original enough to be considered a real standout. A traffic accident leads to the discovery of two severed heads in the trunk of a car. Robert Hunter, a detective for the Los Angeles Ultra Violent Crime Group, and a excellent criminal profiler, is asked by the FBI to aid them in this case, because the accused will only speak with Robert Hunter. It turns out that the man, named Lucien Folter, was Hunter’s room-mate at college. After this revelation most of the rest of the book is a series of interrogations between Hunter and Folter, with Agent Courtney Taylor along for the ride. There are plenty of twists and turns in Folter’s story, but for long stretches all we get are conversations between the three, with Hunter determinedly not reacting. |
About half way through the pace picks up a bit when Folter reveals that he has a live hostage hidden away who will die unless they acquiesce to his his demands. It adds a bit more tension to the story but it’s a device that has been used a lot before. There’s a lot of quid pro quo going on, and Folter spends an inordinate amount of time trying to get under everyone’s skin as his stories of his murders becomes more and more monstrous and gruesome. There are some genuine thrills and chills along the way but Folter’s explanation of his “mission” an attempt to create an “encyclopedia of evil”, strains credulity. Still, the plot picks up speed when the action does, and the characters start to do more than sit around and talk. Near the end he manages to get the investigators to accede to a ton of his demands, and they make some big mistakes, but the finale is satisfying and surprising.
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