According to the Times, former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson has signed a book deal with Penguin to co-write (with mystery author Sarah Lovett) a series of "international suspense" novels. The books will feature a fictional operative named Vanessa Pearson and be based upon Plame Wilson's own experiences, although I'm guessing her heroine's cover won't be blown by a political columnist.
I charged through Ally Carter's YA caper novel Heist Society like a rhinoceros on a mission, so I was hoping her Gallagher Girls series would prove equally absorbing. Unfortunately, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You and its sequel, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, were disappointingly light on plot despite the charms of their "teen girls at spy school" premise. Happily, the series won me over with its third book, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover. It has plot developments oozing out of its ears, making it an excellent pick for reluctant readers and balancing out the flimsiness of the two earlier installments.
The Gallagher Girls books are told from the perspective of Cammie Morgan, a high school student attending the Gallagher Academy, a top-secret boarding school for female spies-in-training. Cammie has spent years studying hand-to-hand combat, foreign languages, and advanced encryption, but her real skill is the ability to fade into a crowd. She's a gifted pavement artist—a spy who specializes in following people in public.
The first book in the series focuses on Cammie's feelings for Josh, a civilian boy with a gift for picking her out of a crowd despite her spy training. One wonders if Carter originally intended to make their relationship an ongoing one, but by book two Josh has been replaced by Zach, a mysterious spy-in-training from the Blackthorne Institute, the male equivalent of the Gallagher Academy. Carter might have been better off condensing the first two books into one. As it is, the romantic drama from the first is a non-starter in the second, and the two books feature embarrassingly similar climax sequences. Combining the stories would have created more personal conflict—which boy should Cammie pursue?—and given that poor, overused plot climax a rest. (Plus, it would have saved me nine bucks. What is up with charging $8.99 for a 288-page paperback, Hyperion?!?) Thankfully, book three finally gets the plot moving. There are new enemies, deepening relationships, and a fun twist ending, making it a huge step forward for the series.
I'll be reviewing the fourth Gallagher Girls book on the main site tomorrow. It features the series' best blend of plot elements and relationship evolution to date, and I really enjoyed reading it. However, if you're unwilling to wade through hundreds of pages of pointless teen angst just to get to the butt-kicking/name-taking bits, skip this series entirely and pick up a copy of Heist Society instead. It's cheaper*, it works as a standalone novel (although Carter is planning a sequel), and it offers a similar blend of romance, suspense, and cheesy-fun action.
...or you're just a really, really, really big Robert Crais fan*, you can buy a special limited edition copy of his upcoming novel The First Rule from The Mysterious Bookshop in New York. You can choose from the 100 signed and numbered copies (at $150 apiece) or the 26 signed and lettered copies ($275). They'll all have leather spines, marbled boards, and glassine jackets, and they'll be available by mid-December.
Normal Crais fans, like my dad, should probably wait until January 12th, where they'll only have to shell out $26.95.
In the first three pages of Paul Levine’s Illegal, disgraced trial lawyer Jimmy Payne bribes a judge, (literally) loses his shirt, and ends up with a gun in his face... and the pace of the book just picks up from there.
Still reeling from a family tragedy that ended his marriage, Payne is obsessed with happier times. When the last dregs of his life finally fall apart, his ex-wife convinces him to help Agustino Perez, a 12-year-old illegal immigrant looking for his mother, who was separated from him during their night crossing from Mexico. The search for Agustino’s mother takes Payne on a breakneck tour of the dark, hazardous world of California's migrant workers—a journey that neither he nor the boy seem likely to survive.
The boatloads of hardcore violence in Illegal might repel some readers, but pulp fiction fans will find a lot to enjoy about Payne, a wisecracking loser with a soft heart and a genius for getting into trouble, the bright, fearless Agustino, and Payne’s ex-wife, a consumer frauds detective with the L.A.P.D. Levine is already at work on the second novel in this series, and—while it might take a few months for our stomachs to settle from some of the ickier scenes in Illegal—we’re definitely looking forward to our next outing with these characters.
Stephen J. Cannell fans take note: in honor of Mr. Cannell's new book On the Grind, his website is running a contest with some truly excellent prizes, including a Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS, autographed copies of On The Grind, and a Sony Reader.
Daniel Silva’s upcoming novel Moscow Rules (due out July 22) is his eighth novel to feature art restorer and sometime Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon. As this installment opens, Allon’s honeymoon with his new wife ends abruptly when a Russian journalist is murdered. The fallout from the journalist’s death takes Allon to Moscow, where a former KBG agent has built a global investment empire—an empire that serves as a front for some very lucrative and deadly arms deals.
Moscow Rules feels like a novel from an earlier era. It pits an brave, determined hero—who, despite being middle-aged and broody, is hopelessly alluring to the lovely young ladies he works with—against a ruthless, vodka-swilling villain. (Spoiler: the good guys win!) Silva makes up for his cartoonish characters and simplistic storytelling by painting a vivid picture of post-Communism Russia, and the breathless action scenes and exotic locales featured in Moscow Rules are sure to appeal to people who can't wait for the next James Bond movie to come out.
Note: Silva doesn’t address any of the complexities inherent in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in Moscow Rules, although he may have discussed this in earlier books.
Carol Plum-Ucci’s Streams of Babel kicks off with a bang and never stops moving. When two women die of brain aneurysms within hours of one another in the New Jersey suburb of Trinity Falls, it raises a few local eyebrows, and when their children fall ill with strange, flu-like symptoms, even the government takes notice. Thanks to information gathered by a teenage computer genius living in Pakistan, anti-terrorism agents have been hearing rumors of a water-based attack for months. No one knows why terrorists would want to attack a community like Trinity Falls, but it becomes increasingly clear that something is very wrong with their water supply....
Steams of Babel is absorbing, fast-paced, and creepy enough to send shivers up the spines of both teen and adult readers*. While the book’s ceaseless action gets a little tiring over 400-plus pages, and Plum-Ucci’s young protagonists are too articulate to be plausible (the mysterious illness appears to have struck down some of the most intelligent, self-possessed children on the planet), her story is intriguing enough to make a little suspension of disbelief worthwhile.
The Internet informs me that several of Plum-Ucci’s other novels feature deliberately vague endings. Unanswered questions may not be your favorite literary closing device (they’re certainly not mine), but please don’t let that stop you from reading this book: Streams of Babel is a complete story, and there are no major plot threads left hanging. A sequel would be great—not because Ms. Plum-Ucci leaves her story half-told, but because I would like to know what happens next in these intelligent and appealing characters’ lives.
*I’m going to be drinking filtered water for months. Maybe boiling it, too.
Timothy Hallinan’s The Fourth Watcher is his second book to feature American travel writer Poke Rafferty. After abandoning his "Looking For Trouble" series of travel books, Rafferty has settled down in Bangkok with his adopted daughter, Miaow, and his fiancée, a former bar girl turned cleaning business owner named Rose. Unfortunately for Rafferty, he doesn’t need to go looking for trouble. Trouble comes looking for him, and it isn't long before Rafferty finds himself embroiled in a case involving counterfeit money from North Korea, Chinese gangsters, a box of rubies, and his long-lost father—who wasn’t long-lost enough, in Rafferty’s opinion.
Despite featuring more unsavory topics than you can shake a stick at, Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty mysteries are incredibly readable. Hallinan writes with style and wit, neither romanticizing nor underplaying Bangkok’s seedier aspects—the city’s corruption, violence, and sex industry play significant roles in The Fourth Watcher, but Hallinan does an outstanding job of making his characters feel like real people, not noir stock players. The darkness of his setting might be off-putting to some readers, but Hallinan's rich characters, acerbic humor, and whip-smart dialogue make him a writer to watch.
Click here to read our review of Mr. Hallinan's first Poke Rafferty book, A Nail Through the Heart.
Mariah Stewart’s new novel Mercy Street is the first book in her "Mercy Street Foundation" series. The story centers on a shooting in a small Pennsylvania town: four high school seniors—three boys and a girl—enter a dilapidated park. The next morning, two of the boys are found shot, and the other two children have disappeared. When no other leads turn up, the police decide that the missing kids are probably responsible for the shootings. Desperate to find her grandson and prove his innocence, the accused boy’s grandmother (armed with some financial assistance from her parish priest, who happens to be best friends with a reclusive local bazillionaire) hires former detective Mallory Russo to discover what really happened in the park that night....
Mercy Street is Grade-A beach reading for romantic suspense fans. Stewart's novel features intriguing main characters, intense action scenes, and—while the primary mystery is neatly tied up by the book's end—enough tantalizing loose ends to fuel any number of sequels. (Plus, it’s not super-gory, making it a good choice for those of us whose stomachs aren’t up for any Silence of the Lambs-style hijinks.) Fans of J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas series should definitely check this novel out, as should anyone else in the market for a fast-paced, entertaining mystery featuring a quick-witted and complex female protagonist.
In honor of July 4th (the traditional weekend for big action film releases here in the States), we've decided to feature a variety of mystery/suspense reviews on both the blog and the main site this week. Check back over the next few days for reviews of books by Timothy Hallinan, Tana French, Daniel Silva, Mariah Stewart, and Carol Plum-Ucci.
But while you're awaiting our words of literary wisdom, may we direct you to the just-released trailer for the upcoming James Bond movie?
Quantum of Solace is the title of a short story in Ian Fleming's collection For Your Eyes Only, although I hear the film is otherwise unrelated. Looks fun, though.
According to the Times, former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson has signed a book deal with Penguin to co-write (with mystery author Sarah Lovett) a series of "international suspense" novels. The books will feature a fictional operative named Vanessa Pearson and be based upon Plame Wilson's own experiences, although I'm guessing her heroine's cover won't be blown by a political columnist.
