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Married with Zombies by Jesse Petersen

Meet Sarah and David.

Once upon a time they met and fell in love. But now they’re on the verge of divorce and going to couples’ counseling. On a routine trip to their counselor, they notice a few odd things — the lack of cars on the highway, the missing security guard, and the fact that there counselor, Dr. Kelly, is ripping out her previous client’s throat.

Meet the zombies.

Now Sarah and David are fighting for survival in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.  But just because there are zombies doesn’t mean your other problems go away.  If the zombies don’t eat their brains, they might just kill each other.

This book has been in my TBR for a year.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I bought the book at Browseabout Books last time I was in town, looking for a fun read for the beach, but then didn’t read it.  I keep moving it from the coffee table in the living room to the short stack of books that I mean to read in the near future, which I brought along with good intentions.  MwZ is a quick, fluffy read, for all that the blurb is pretty dour, what with the looming divorce and zombie problems.  It works as UF, as long as  you don’t ask for in depth characterization or world building.  Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer might like the series.  Despite the violence of the book, which seemed cartoonish rather than realistic, it works as a light read. But I don’t feel any particular urge to pick up the next book of the series, Flip This Zombie.  Zombies really aren’t my thing — too young exposure to Night of the Living Dead via a teenaged babysitter who had no grasp of what’s appropriate for an 8 year old.

New York to Dallas by JD Robb

It was one of Eve Dallas’s earliest takedowns back in her uniform days. A monster named Isaac McQueen had been abducting young victims and leaving them scarred in both mind and body.  Thanks to Eve, he wound up where he belonged, removed from civilized society in Rikers. But he’s not behind bars anymore.

After his escape, McQueen has two things in mind. One is to take up where he left off, preying on the young and innocent — when necessary, with the help of a female partner all too willing to be manipulated and to aid and abet his crimes.  His other goal: to get revenge on teh woman who stopped him all those years ago, now a high-profile lieutenant in the NYPSD and married to one of the city’s richest men.

Commanding Eve’s attention with a chilling and brazen crime, McQueen sets off the chase — forcing Even down a road marked with blood and tears, a road that eventually leads southwest to Dallas, Texas, the home Eve fled long ago.  And each new twist brings her closer to the harrowing memory of when she wasn’t a hardened detective but a vulnerable girl just like McQueen’s innocent prey.  As her husband, Roarke, tries to rescue her from the nightmares that claw at her mind, and her partner, Peabody, doggedly works to support her, Eve must confront — and call upon — the darkest parts of her own soul in order to survive.

I’ve been reading JD Robb’s books since they were issued in paperback, long before it was widely known that JD Robb was a pseudonym.  I think I’ve read all of the books, although I may have missed some of the novellas that are published in anthologies with other authors.  I no longer autobuy Roberts’ single titles or series, but I do still autobuy the Eve Dallas “In Death” books. (Can they still be called “In Death” books if the titling convention has changed?)  The last book worked as a procedural for me, but a great deal of the personal bits felt stale; the book before felt entirely recycled to me.  Of course, the series is now at 32 books plus novellas, so re-using some plot points is perhaps to be expected?

NYtD was NOT recycled, although it did have Dallas confronting someone she’d caught, like in one of the early novella (“Midnight in Death” is the novella taking place over Boxing Day through New Years with nemesis David Palmer).  But it was still pretty predictable (IMO) to anyone who’d read the series, especially with the return to Dallas and revisiting Eve’s personal issues.  I guessed very early about the big shocking thing that occurred about half or two thirds of the way through the book; I’m not sure if it was just a function of familiarity with the series or Robb telegraphing what was coming.  While the relocation to Dallas was necessary, the lack of interaction with Mavis, Feeney, Peabody, etc., really made the book lack for me.  While other readers read for Eve/Roarke, I read despite Roarke; while I appreciate the reversal of gender roles between them, I find Roarke’s omnipresence to be oppressive.

Wow, that sounds pretty negative, and New York to Dallas wasn’t a bad book.  I think, though, that it may be time for me to take a hiatus from reading the series so I can return to it with a less jaundiced eye.

Headhunters by Jo Nesbo

Roger Brown is a corporate headhunter, and he’s a master of his profession.  But one career simply can’t support his luxurious lifestyle and his wife’s fledgling art gallery.  At an art opening one night he meets Clas Greve, who is not only the perfect candidate for a major CEO job, but also, perhaps, the answer to his financial woes: Greve just so happens to mention that he owns a priceless Peter Paul Rubens painting that’s been lost since World War II — and Roger Brown just so happens to dabble in art theft. But when he breaks into Greve’s apartment, he finds more than just he painting.  And Clas Greve may turn out to be with worst thing that’s ever happened to Roger Brown.

I didn’t realize that Nesbo had a stand-alone book coming out until AvidMysteryReader blogged about it.  I’ve only read a couple of his Harry Hole books so far.  This one…is different.  It’s suspense but not a procedural.  Its narration is extremely different from the Hole books — all from a single POV, told in first person by Roger Brown.  Which colors all the action in the book, of course.  Roger is full of hubris, yet desperate and somewhat pathetic, dancing on the edge of disaster in so many ways.  On one hand, he’s such an asshat (IMO) that it’s hard to want him to survive the challenges he’s presented with.  On the other hand, it’s fascinating to watch him lurch from disaster to safety back to near disaster and again to relative safety.

Originally posted at WordPress.


While on vacation last month, I read Tess Gerritsen’s The Keepsake, which was a good enough read.  I have to admit that although I’ve read one or two of Gerritsen’s early Harlequin suspense books, I’d never read one of her pure suspense books, or anything from her Rizzoli & Isles series.  I’m not a fan of the TV adaptation, finding the acting of Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander to be pretty painful, but knowing that the series was about a female detective and a female forensic pathologist did lead me to picking up a copy at the used bookstore.

Anyway, this past weekend I found myself at a grocery store with a fairly large selection of books, heavy on the categories and bestsellers, but with a variety of other books, including Gerritsen’s The Mephisto Club.

PECCAVI

The Latin phrase is scrawled in blood at the scene of ayoung woman’s brutal murder: I HAVE SINNED.  It’s a chilling Christmas greeting for Boston medical examiner Maura Isles and Dective Jane Rizzoli, who swiftly link the victim to the sinister Mephisto Club, a cult of scholars who aim to prove that Satan himself exists among.  Then, with the grisly appearance of another corpse, it’s clear that someone — or something — is indeed prowling the city.  Soon the members of the club begin to fear the very subject of their study.  Could the maniacal killer be one oftheir own — or have the inadvertently summoned an entity from the darkness?  Delving deep into the most baffling case of their careers, Maura and Jane embark on a terrifying journey to the heart of evil.

The back blurb makes this book sound much more woo-woo than it really is.  The Mephisto Club really does believe that demons in the form of Nephilim walk the earth, which explains the evil that science labels as sociopath or psychopath.  But they don’t really aim to prove anything; instead they are watchers or crime-fighters of sorts at a very high level.  They summoned nothing and wasted no time on that possibility.  The killer was not maniacal; he was methodical and practiced and very, very cold blooded about what he was doing. Was he descended from Nephilim?  He thought so and so did his mother.

The book read very quickly — it was very well paced and everything fit together.

But somehow I don’t feel compelled to read the next book of the series.  I mentioned to Keishon in the comments to yesterday’s post that the other Rizzoli & Isles left me feeling the same way.  I haven’t figured out exactly what the problem is; I ought to love this series: female ME, female detective, set in a city I like.  And yet both books left me feeling sort of flat.  Maybe I should have begun with the first book of the series, so that I would have some investment in the two main characters?  That’s the key, I think, I don’t really care about either protagonist or feel engaged by her, and I’m accustomed to that when reading suspense and/or mysteries.  Both should be very sympathetic characters to me.  And yet…

I’ve been trying to figure out what Gerritsen is doing with the two women, as narrative tools or what-have-you.  One is  well-educated and successful, presumably well-known in her field, and she seems to have financial resources; she’s also the daughter of a psychopath, or so I gather from comments made by other characters in this book.  And she’s a divorcee who has just embarked on an affair with a priest within this book.  The other is rougher around the edges, successful in her field but with less material resources, surrounded by a blue-collar family, and in what appears to be a successful marriage.  Is the subtext that education and reason are irrelevant when it comes to the heart, which wants what it wants?  Or is there no subtext at all?

Being non-christian, the idea of an affair with a priest does not offend any religious sensibilities I might possess.  But regardless of one’s position on the wisdom of a celibate clergy or the Catholic Church in general, it seems like a poor life choice; like a regular married man who will never leave his wife for his girlfriend or lover, it seems unlikely that Father Brophy will abandon the Church.  Once again, I have no idea what the backstory to their relationship is, and maybe if I’d read it as it developed over a period of books I’d be less frustrated by Maura’s choice and more sympathetic.

Eh, I don’t know.

I’m reading Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters right now, and am going to get a copy of the new Eve Dallas book tomorrow.

Originally posted at WordPress.


Bear, Otter and the Kid by T.J. Klune

© 2011, published by Dreamspinner Press

Three years ago, Bear McKenna’s mother took off for parts unknown with her new boyfriend, leaving Bear to raise his six-year-old brother Tyson, aka the Kid. Somehow they’ve muddled through, but since he’s totally devoted to the Kid, Bear isn’t actually doing much living—with a few exceptions, he’s retreated from the world, and he’s mostly okay with that. Until Otter comes home.

Otter is Bear’s best friend’s older brother, and as they’ve done for their whole lives, Bear and Otter crash and collide in ways neither expect. This time, though, there’s nowhere to run from the depth of emotion between them. Bear still believes his place is as the Kid’s guardian, but he can’t help thinking there could be something more for him in the world... something or someone.

I’m not entirely certain how this book came to my attention.  Maybe a give away, or a review online somewhere?  The blurb reminded me a great deal of the plot of the movie Shelter, and it prompted me to see how a novel might treat the same general plot.

As the blurb indicates, Derrick (aka Bear) is acting in loco parentis for his mother, who abandoned his young half-brother, Tyson (aka the Kid) to him just as Bear finished high school, putting the kibosh on any plans Bear had for a college education or escaping her white trash ethos.  He’s lucky, though, in that he has a strong support network made up of his childhood friends and their families, who stick with him for emotional and financial support as he raises the Kid, a “vegetarian eco-terrorist-in-training”.  In addition to Creed, his BFF, and Anna, his girlfriend and other BFF,  who have been physically present for the last three years, there is Oliver (aka Otter), Creed’s older brother  who was an original part of the support network but who disappeared abruptly for reasons that are made clear very early – there’s huge tension between Bear and Otter because Bear, ostensibly straight, kissed Otter, out and gay, while upset and drunk.  Otter disappeared, more or less, for three years because of his guilt over Bear kissing him and feeling he took advantage.  Until the beginning of the book, when he returns and all the tension comes to a head.  And that is just the set up of the book and the first couple of chapters! 

 With Otter’s return, the two of them have to negotiate some sort of truce or ruin their extended family unit.  Creed and Anna both notice the tension, and bug them to figure things out while not really understanding what the problem is.  The vast majority of what follows is Bear realizing he loves Otter, despite the fact that he is not gay and is not attracted to any other men.  In fact, he dismisses the idea of being “gay for you” as being impossible but for the fact that he does love and physically want Otter.  Otter is kind of a doormat, indulging Bear in whatever he wants relationship-wise and keeping everything on the down low in front of his brother and Anna.  Just as the two of them have begun to figure that out and are ready for the big reveal to Creed and Anna (who have a surprise of their own), potential disaster strikes, pushing them and their relationship back to square one.

There are the bones of a potentially good book buried here.  But the bones are buried deep.   The book read like a rough first draft, one that had not yet been betaed or reviewed by a crit group, let alone a content editor. Pacing, narration, and some language usage need tightening or review in the book.

Vacuous Minx, SarahFrantz, and I, among others, have noted on Twitter and elsewhere that many of Dreamspinner’s works need better content editing.  Even one of our mutual favorites, Sean Kennedy’s Tigers & Devils, could have been just a little bit better (from A- to A) with some words trimmed and the pacing tightened up.  And that is very much the case here.  BOatK was a Kindle book for me, and it had more than 9,000 “locations”; in comparison, an average mass market paperback usually has between 4,000 and 6,000.  Parts of the book dragged incredibly, and there was a great deal of repetitive angst that served no larger purpose.  Cutting a good third of the book would have been a mercy.

The Kid as a narrative device is both original and unoriginal.  He’s the center that Bear rotates around, and he’s essential to the plot.  And yet he’s conveniently absent or able to entertain himself through large chunks of the book, reappearing to give sage relationship advice to his older brother and to take care of him.  He’s quirky and different in his fascination with eco-terrorism, and his abandonment issues are realistic and very well done.  And yet his emotional intelligence is unrealistic for a child his age – having an eight year old give romantic advice to a twenty-one year old is just plain weird and kind of creepy.

The narration is by Bear in first person for the entire book, but for an epilogue narrated by Otter.  And in many places, the narrative style is extremely awkward and self-conscious.  Parts of the book scream for the POV of the other characters, but instead of changing POV, those passages are narrated by Bear in a “tell tell tell” fashion, filtered entirely through him and retold by him, even when dialogue or other stylistic devices could be used to better convey the events or speech/opinions/actions of the other characters.

The Gay4U trope and the relationship dynamic between Bear and Otter left me feeling uncomfortable, and I’m struggling to identify and articulate why.  I noted in a comment over at Vacuous Minx’s that a couple of the issues were: 1) failure to address the Gay4U issue other than to dismiss it out of hand completely while acknowledging that is exactly what Bear is for Otter – what a waste of an opportunity to actually explore the trope; and 2) the history of the relationship between Bear and Otter and the hints of very early attraction told via flashback, which seems a little squicky to me as it falls a little too closely into the gay=pedo smear.

The nicknames?   Cute for a minute and then irritating.

Bear comes perilously close to being a self-sacrificing Mary Sue.  And he spends large chunks of the book being an asshat, too.

Some words were used oddly.  For example, machismo for macho, tact for tack or tactic, etc.  At one point, Bear describes his eyes as being “tacky and crass” after crying himself to sleep; while I grasp what he meant, there is no usage of “crass” that makes sense in that context.

The ending is simultaneously delayed, in the sense that it should have come at least 10,000 words earlier, and abrupt in the sense that the HEA feels manufactured and way too soon for where Bear and Otter are in their relationship.

Someone on Twitter mentioned that the author is planning a sequel to this book, where some of the lingering questions and issues may be resolved, and that better pacing would come with practice and experience.  That’s a charitable position to take, but as a reader and consumer, I don’t appreciate being the testing or practice run for an author; if I’m paying full price for a book, I expect it to be polished and produced appropriately by the publisher, with the best efforts of both the author and the publisher.  The time for learning your craft is before you start asking people to pay for your work IMO.  (Yes, writers learn continuously and continue to hone their craft, but readers should be able to have minimum expectations of the books they buy, in terms of what the authors and publisher bring to the table and charge them for.)

As I read the book, I enjoyed it even as I noted all the things that were awkward or clunky or should have been fixed by a good editor.  But ultimately, I can’t really recommend this book to other readers without a huge caveat or warning.