Monday, September 22, 2008

"River Ghosts" by B.R. Robb

B. R. Robb is the pseudonym for attorney, Bruce Steinberg of Chicago. He has one previous novel, "The Widow's Son," which won a first novel grand prize in Milwaukee in 2000.

"River Ghosts," is a masterpiece. It should be receiving critical acclaim for its author, whom I hope will write again much sooner than in eight more years. It has the same kind of psychological impact that "Lovely Bones" had and it should be getting the same kind of attention.

This is a police thriller and a commentary on racial prejudice in America, which is portrayed as still very much alive and well.

We are confronted with the release of a supposedly reformed Neo-Nazi who had been convicted of the murder of a racially mixed couple sixteen years prior in a smallish Midwestern city. He was convicted on the eye-witness testimony of the young son of the couple, who grew up to become a police officer in his home town. Understandably, the cop, Richard's sleep is regularly disturbed by images of his parents' murders and the man who committed the crime, whom he saw from his hiding place under a table.

This taught and beautifully written story uncovers how DNA evidence could have been manipulated to acquit a guilty man and how the young police officer and his partner managed to prove it.

Hopefully, that's not giving away too much of the plot. I believe anyone who reads this book will find it refreshingly literary. I know I did after a summer of reading good, but mostly formulaic mysteries by well known authors.

Yes, there is still a literary muse at work in new fiction!

Liz Nichols

Friday, September 5, 2008

Susan Wittig Albert's "Nightshade"

At first it was difficult to get in to the China Bayles mystery, "Nightshade," because this is the third of a trilogy. It continues "Bleeding Hearts" and "Spanish Dagger," both of which were about the death of China's father. The third book tracks the way China and her husband, Mike McQuaid, sleuth out her dad's killer.

China is a former assistant DA, who has become a shop owner in the hill country outlying Austin, TX. China's character has always bothered me a bit because I personally do not know any shop owner or restauranteer who can break away from the business long enough to solve a murder mystery. One has to suspend reality long enough to appreciate the plot.

While I found the information about the Nightshade family of plants-- including the tomato, tomatillo, chili pepper, potato, eggplant, petunia and tobacco, not to mention the other deadly varieties, I didn't really get how it tied in with the plot. Well, there is one character crucial to solving the case who raises tomatillos. I kept expecting someone to get poisoned.

No such luck. People got blown up, run over and shot in this one.

Still, it's a fast read and it kept my attention throughout, even though I never quite got into the characters or the plot.

I've read other China Bayles mysteries before, and I'm sure I'll pick them up again. I just don't think I'll go out of my way to go back to the two previous titles in the trilogy. I got the picture from the third one.

One thumb up.

Liz Nichols

"The Box" by Marc Levinson

In doing a group of articles on containerization for a client, I had the pleasure to read Marc Levinson's "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger."

For a very dry topic this is a very exciting book. It is one of those non-fiction creations that tells a story in a dramatic way. It's a page turner. You want to keep reading in order to find out how the heck the world could come together on standardizing something as complex as international, intermodal shipping.

The book brings to life some mid-20th century innovators whose achievements serve as powerful examples for us and for our children. "The Box" documents a recipe for creating large-scale change.

Great piece of social history.

Liz Nichols