I couldn’t just do one review this week. I’ve been plowing through books like nobody’s business and they’ve been going pretty well. I do have a couple new releases here, but many of them are books I just got at the library for whatever reason.

image from Goodreads

The Darlings by Cristina Alger is a page-turner with an unusual premise. It’s Thanksgiving. A hedge fund manager has just killed himself. By Monday his ponzi scheme will be front page news. In those few days, the book follows the Darling family, Manhattan socialites led by patriarch Carter Darling who runs an investment firm that worked closely with the tainted hedge fund. Heads will roll… and as the days pass the Darling family takes stock and tries to save their skins.

The most vulnerable of them is Paul, married to Carter’s daughter Merrill, who only recently started working for the family business. As he starts to put together what’s happening he doesn’t know whether he can trust his father-in-law or his ex-girlfriend at the SEC. Paul has to decide whether to save himself or be loyal to a family that he’s never felt he quite fits in with.

It’s a quick read, and particularly enjoyable if you like novels with a peek into high society, complete with charity balls and life in the Hamptons. There are lots and lots of characters (it can get a little confusing) and the novel switches between points of view quite often. But it ends up tying everyone together in a satisfying way. The ticking clock works well, with everyone waiting for the news cycle to start back up after the holiday weekend. As someone who tends to stick more to classic mysteries and not so much to thrillers involving high finance or other such things, I felt perfectly comfortable in this book. Alger does a good job taking you for the ride.

Image from Goodreads

Perhaps one of my favorite books so far this year is The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. I heard lots of good buzz about this one at the end of 2011 and put it on my library hold list. To me this book feels like the equivalent of a good movie from the 30′s or 40′s. Snappy dialogue, fantastic characters, nights out on the town. But it’s much more than that. It’s 1938 and Katey Kontent has worked her way up from her Russian immigrant family on Brighton Beach to a secretary at a legal firm in Manhattan. She works her way up even higher when she and Evey, a girl from her boarding house, meet Tinker Gray one New Year’s Eve. He’s every inch the upper class playboy and the three of them become fast friends.

What follows over the course of the next few years is something I will not spoil for you, but Katey’s social journey among the young and wealthy Manhattanites isn’t a romp, nor is it a melodrama, but it’s a story that constantly keeps you on your toes. Katey is immensely likable and she has all the verve and wit of His Girl Friday. This is a book that feels like fluff because it’s so often fun and buoyant, but the writing is top notch which makes it much more than fun.

Image from Goodreads

There are always more Norwegian crime writers to discover, and I just read my first Anne Holt: 1222. It is a very large-scale locked-room mystery. After a train crash during a huge snowstorm, former detective Hanne Wilhelmsen and the other passengers are stuck in a hotel in the mountains to wait out the storm. The idea of a storm so heavy and horrific that it scares these hearty Norwegians was pretty scary to me on its own. (Thank heavens for our mild winter this year!)

Wilhelmsen is one of your misfit investigators. She’s in a wheelchair from a gunshot to the spine. She’s not particularly nice to anyone. She keeps to herself, though she has a watchful and suspicious eye on all her fellow passengers. This is, apparently, one of many Wilhelmsen novels and I have to say that I quite like her. (Though I like any investigator who doesn’t fit the classic profile of being either young and attractive or old and grizzled.)

As far as the mystery it works surprisingly well given that there are over 100 people in the hotel. There’s an appropriate number of suspects, each of whom stands out from the crowd. Still, the large number of people is a challenge and Wilhelmsen’s detachment from all but a few characters can make it hard to see what exactly is going on at any time.

Image from Goodreads

I sought out Sister by Rosamund Lupton because I heard good things and she has another novel due out soon so I wanted to see if I’d be interested. Bee comes home to London after the disappearance of her sister Tess. Bee is the responsible one and Tess is the artistic one, but the two have always been close. Upon arriving Bee starts to find out that there are many things her sister hasn’t told her. The police have a theory of the case, but Bee has another and as she fights to find out the truth she begins to alienate everyone who could help her.

Lupton is an excellent writer and I liked her prose and style very much. What kept it from being a completely successful book was the style used to tell the story. Going between letters and flashbacks, the device  isn’t always successful. And, I’ll warn you, there are those who’ll find the ending a big cheat. So while there are some drawbacks, I found Lupton’s prose and characters really appealing and I’m anxious to see what she writes next.

Last, but certainly not least, is Castle by J. Robert Lennon. Like the last couple of books I’ve mentioned, I heard about this one on Twitter. Following publishers, editors and librarians has given me a great new source for recommendations. This has been out for a few years but I hadn’t heard of it before. And I was really excited as I read it. Why? Because it actually deserves perfectly to be in the genre of “psychological thriller.”

Image from Goodreads

So few thrillers are in any way psychological. Sure, you can bring in your FBI profilers, but that usually takes a back seat to the plot. In this book the plot is completely about the inner workings of one character’s mind. Eric Loesch moves back to his hometown and buys a large piece of land. We don’t know why he’s there. We don’t know much about him, but we know that he was once a military man and that there is some kind of scandal in his past. He doesn’t seem to enjoy people much. Most of what he does upon arriving is fixing the old house on his property and exploring the surrounding woods.

The first half of the book is not much more than following Eric’s thoughts as he goes through these tasks. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t oddly gripping. There are small hints here and there about what Eric is hiding from us and I couldn’t stop reading even when nothing seemed to be happening. With that said, the second half of the book is full of shocking revelations about Eric’s past and what he’s doing in the present. And let’s just say, there’s a lot of psychological scarring there that begins to become more and more apparent as we get to know Eric better.

It was interesting to have a narrator who kept his audience so at a distance, hiding so much about himself. And Lennon is great at walking this fine line where he reveals just enough little by little to keep you going. This is, very much, a man’s man of a novel. It’s tough and kind of gritty and I enjoyed every minute.

I sped through all these novels (many while I was reading Great Expectations) and it was a pretty successful run. For now I have a big pile of advance copies to get through and another stack of books waiting for me at the library. Should be a good month ahead!

Thanks to Penguin and Netgalley for the advanced e-galley of The Darlings. It will be released on February 16, 2012. The rest of the books I’ve reviewed are already available at bookstores everywhere.

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Sometimes I think I would be a much happier reader if I’d never been in a courtroom and never read a police report. I began my obsession with crime fiction when I was only 12 or so and began devouring every Agatha Christie novel in my tiny library. (For a tiny library, they had a massive Christie selection.)

These days you see less Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple types. Instead you see cops and lawyers and cops and lawyers. It’s the way it goes. I have no problem with that. I’ve watched plenty of Law & Order marathons. While sitting around the last few weeks, I watched the entire first season of Murder One on Hulu. (I have also declared my love for Prime Suspect, which I still insist is one of the best cop shows ever even with only 13 episodes.)

But it’s one thing to watch a tv show, where the plot has to be condensed into a short time period. It’s another to read a book. And this is where I start to get picky.

Image from goodreads

Give me a book like Defending Jacob by William Landay and I have two immediate reactions: excitement and fear. I love legal thrillers but I find so many of them lackluster. (So how do I love them? I don’t really know. I love them… hypothetically.) Every now and then I find one that impresses me. I like Steve Martini most of the time. And I was a fan of Missing Witness, which came out a few years ago.

So I have to admit that Defending Jacob may have been at a slight disadvantage having me as a reviewer.

Let’s get to the story.

Andy Barber is a career ADA in a nice suburb. He has a wife and a teenage son. Everything’s pretty nice… until a high school student is killed. And Andy’s son is charged with the murder.

The ADA in him wants to get involved and solve the case, but he can’t be a part of the investigation. He also wants to defend his son, whom he believes is innocent. As Andy finds himself on the side of the accused instead of the accuser he struggles to decide how best to defend his son and clear his name. While Andy believes his son didn’t kill anyone, he is confronted by doubts and his own past, including a family secret he’s kept from everyone he loves.

There are certainly strong reminders of classic legal thriller Presumed Innocent by the daddy of legal thrillers, Scott Turow. Author Landay has certainly learned a thing or two from the master. Andy struggles with a host of legal and ethical issues. The plot is full of twists and turns.

So how does it measure up to a lawyer like me?

The courtroom scenes are excellent. The story is narrated in flashback through grand jury testimony and these scenes crackle with tension. Landay should be proud. He didn’t shortchange the courtroom scenes, he writes believable witness examinations, and the process all felt real. You can tell he knows what he’s writing about. (Unsurprisingly, Landay was an ADA himself before he turned to novels.)

Nevertheless I can’t give Defending Jacob a free pass. While the procedure is top notch, I found the characterization lacking. I tend to think that with decades of experience with the law, Andy is smart enough to know where to draw the line. But I often found his actions and responses unbelievable. He seemed to disregard everything he knew. I understand that when family is involved everyone can get a little crazy. As Andy is the 1st person narrator, I never felt convinced that his actions made sense.

I do seem to be in the minority. At least as far as the advance reviews go, Defending Jacob is picking up a lot of praise and buzz. I certainly can say I recommend it, it’s definitely a readable and well done legal thriller. (And, the ending does NOT disappoint, which is a big deal.) I’ve read enough books to know that my kind of quibble is one that’s personal and that many people won’t share.

So if you do enjoy a good courtroom thriller you should be on the lookout for Defending Jacob.

Thanks to Delacorte Press and Edelweiss for providing me with an advanced copy of Defending Jacob. And thanks to some lovely librarians on Twitter who recommended it. The novel will be released on Tuesday, January 31st. 

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There are a couple books I tend to be more likely to recommend than others. There are a small number that I think virtually anyone will read and love. I try to pick books people may not have heard about.

One of these books, perhaps the one I recommend most often, is gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. It is so full of Southern-fried charm, quirky characters and a killer mystery plot that I don’t see how anyone could read it and not love it.

gods is her first novel, but now she’s on her fifth, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, and I follow her and take pride in her the way I would one of my closest friends. So we haven’t ever actually met. But I read her blog faithfully. (I would tell you to read her blog, but then you will see how constantly witty and funny she is and YOU will want to be her BFF and you will find a way to steal her from me and then I would hate you forever.) After I read another of her books I loved, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, I sent her a fangirly email and she sent me a very nice thank you response. So obviously we are besties, no? (Yes. Obviously.)

Now before you think I’m completely biased in my review, I will admit that while I have my favorites of her novels, I have not-as-much-favorites, too. I liked Between, Georgia but found it a bit too twee for my liking. And I didn’t actually finish Backseat Saints because it and I just weren’t getting along. We respected each other and all, but we are not meant to be friends. So I went into AGUKOP with high hopes but knowing we weren’t necessarily destined for each other.

Image from Goodreads

Turns out, it’s her best book yet. It has the darkness of her last couple novels, a willingness to get into real sadness and pain. It has the brightness of her voice, full of spirit. It is, of course, fantastically plotted. And it contains, of course, wonderful, full characters. More than anything, though, I think her writing here is spectacular.

Jackson’s books are all related to one another. They’re all spread throughout the South. They follow gutsy and willful women through missteps and hard times and love. Still, I would never classify them as “chick lit.” They are not fluffy, even if their covers are sweet like sugar. I’d say they’re more like molasses: distinctive, strangely sweet, rich and darkly warm.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is about 3 generations of women: Big, Liza and Mosey Slocumb. Every 15 years they’re cursed. Big was 15 when she had Liza. Liza was 15 when she had Mosey. And now another 15th year has come. So far Mosey is safely out of trouble, but they’ve already been stricken with tragedy when Liza had a stroke. And now everything will get more dangerous when a mysterious box is unearthed in the backyard.

The three women are all quite different. Big was a good girl who made one big mistake and then worked as hard as she could to make up for it. Liza was a wild child who ran off shortly after Mosey was born, only to return later in need of rehab from drugs, alcohol and men. Mosey is their pet who loves them both but is struggling to find her own identity.

All three of them find themselves reeling. Big struggles to keep her family together. Liza has more secrets to explain but doesn’t have the words to say them. And Mosey finds herself careening towards the kind of mistakes her mother and grandmother have made before her.

While I have tried to make it clear that there’s plenty of darkness in Jackson’s novels, I also want to be clear that they are a JOY to read. This is the kind of book I stay up too late reading. It propels you along but not so quickly that you can’t get to know the characters.

Once again, I feel like I’ve found a book I can recommend to nearly anyone. If you like chick-lit, I know you’ll like it. If you avoid chick-lit like the plague (as I do), you’ll like it. When a book is just plain good, one needn’t worry about such silly things as genre or whether the cover has a pretty picture.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go tweet this post so that my bestie Joss will see it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for giving me an advanced e-galley of the book. A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty comes out Tuesday, January 24th and should be available in bookstores everywhere. As part of her book tour, you can get signed first editions from The Alabama Booksmith of this or any of Joshilyn’s books. 

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The first Stewart O’Nan book I read was Last Night at the Lobster and I don’t remember why I read it. It’s not the kind of book that is going to immediately pull you in from the jacket copy. My best guess is that it was on the New Books shelf at the library, which is where I used to find most of my books.

Last Night at the Lobster has the kind of plot you could find either mundane or epic, depending on how you look at it. The Red Lobster is closing. Its staff must muddle through its final hours, knowing they’re about to lose their jobs. Not much of a pick-me-up. Sounds like just another day. But at the same time, for its characters, everything that happens is playing out on a heightened scale. Maybe one Red Lobster doesn’t matter much in the scheme of things, but for these people it is their livelihood. And what higher stakes do you need?

What drew me in to the book right away was the smooth quality of O’Nan’s writing. I found myself slipping into the story without realizing it. What kept me in the book was his characters. There is something so tangible about the people he creates even if the universe they inhabit is small.

Cover from Goodreads

The Odds is my third O’Nan book (and a reminder that I really should read more). Like many of his novels, this one has the same small scope. It follows Arthur and Marion, a middle-aged couple, on a trip to Niagara Falls. They say it’s a second honeymoon, but they both seem to know it’s the last time they’ll spend together before they end their marriage.

I understand if you think that sounds dismal. But this is where you have to trust Stewart O’Nan. He will make heartbreaking stories as involving as the tightest thriller. I read The Odds in the middle of a streak of thrillers and easy reading. It was my little reward for some of my tougher reading during the year. And I was surprised to find myself as sucked in to The Odds as I was to any of the books that began with gruesome deaths and shocking discoveries.

The book goes back and forth between Arthur and Marion, letting you see this marriage from both sides. You can see all the misunderstood gestures and words, just as you can see their closeness. In that way it reminded me of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, which follows a just-married couple as their relationship collapses on their wedding night. The two would go well together, both portraits of a marriage, one old and one new, and both with the kind of hold-your-breath suspense as you wonder what will happen to these people.

Still, while O’Nan keeps you on your toes, wondering what will happen between Arthur and Marion, he keeps it very real. There are dinners where not much is said. Marion gets sick. They go sightseeing where they confront long lines and uncomfortable crowds. It isn’t that much different from the trips you’ve probably been on.

Stewart O’Nan turns the mundane into the sublime and I wish I could tell you how he does it. The smallest act or word seems to draw Arthur and Marion closer together or farther apart. And it is, as its subtitle states, a love story. Just not the one you may be used to.

When I try to think about who I’d recommend this book to, I’m having trouble limiting the pool. His writing is fantastic without being show-offy or self-indulgent. His characters are people you can understand. His stories are often sad but never false. That’s the kind of book I think everyone wants to read.

Thanks to Netgalley and The Penguin Group for providing me with an e-galley of this book. The Odds will be released on Tuesday, January 19th. 

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