Friday, September 26, 2014

Walk Among the Tombstones; Landline; Trixie Belden and the Mystery Off Glen Road; We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Lawrence Block's "A Walk Among the Tombstones" was excellent. Matt Scudder is an ex-cop turned private detective. He gets a call from Kenan Khoury, a drug trafficker. Two men kidnapped his wife and called demanding a million dollar ransom. Kenan talked them down to $400,000, delivered the money, and they sent his wife back to him in pieces. Kenan would like Matt's help in tracking them down. Matt agrees to take the case and goes to work trying to find out things while Kenan calls associates in the business to warn them to keep their wives safe. A few weeks later Yuri calls Kenan: his twelve year old daughter has been kidnapped and a million dollar ransom has been demanded. Set in the early '90s, before cell phones, it was amazing how Matt and his tech savvy street friends were able to accomplish tracking down the bad guys. Taunt, suspenseful, with a great gritty ending.

I love Rainbow Rowell. I really, truly do. She's so amazingly awesome. "Landline" was just brilliant. Georgie has to stay in L.A. over Christmas to work on her TV pilot, since a major network is interested. She and her husband, Neal, argue, since they had plans to go back to Omaha to visit his mom. Neal has given up everything for Georgie's dreams, and he doesn't think she appreciates him. Georgie *does*, she just doesn't have the time to show him. Neal takes their two daughters and goes to Omaha, leaving Georgie behind in L.A. to work on her show with her best friend Seth. She can't concentrate, though, worrying that her marriage is ending. She ends up going to her Mom's house rather than driving home to an empty house, and because her cell phone is dead, she digs out an old phone and plugs it into the landline and calls Neal's mom's house. She reaches Neal, but the Neal of 1998, 15 earlier, before they married. That was the last time they'd broken up. Neal went to Omaha without her that Christmas, and they didn't speak all week. Then he showed up at her house Christmas morning and proposed. Georgie is stunned when she realizes she's talking to the Neal of the past. Should she keep talking to him? Convince him to not marry her in the first place so he'd be better off? Then it occurs to her--what if Neal proposed 15 years ago BECAUSE she talked to him that week from 15 years in the future? It was so lovely, and touching, I really enjoyed it.

Trixie! I was in the mood for a fun laugh, and "The Mystery Off Glen Road" is my favorite one in the series. I love that the mystery is actually just a series of escalating misunderstandings, the result of keeping secrets. It just seems very realistic, unlike catching bank robbers and diamond thieves. The Bob-Whites have just finished getting their clubhouse all in order when a nasty storm downs a tree and rips out the ceiling and part of a wall. Brian gives up his $50 car fund to buy supplies to fix the clubhouse, and Trixie gives Mr. Lytell her diamond ring to hold the car for Brian until the club can earn the money to pay Brian back. In order to convince her dad to get the ring out of the safety deposit box, Trixie has to pretend to be in love with Honey's cousin Ben, who is spending the Thanksgiving holiday with the Wheelers. Meanwhile, their game keeper has quit, so the Bob-Whites talk Miss Trask into letting them take the job over the holiday so they can earn the $50. While out patrolling, Honey and Trixie are sure they are hot on the trail of a poacher! It's such good fun. I'm sorry Trixie wasn't more popular.

"We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" by Karen Joy Fowler was a complex book, but interesting. Rosemary was raised with a chimp named Fern  the same age as her until she was 5, and science experiment run by her dad. At the age of five, Fern is sent away and the Cooke's lives are turned upside down. Lowell, Rosemary's older brother, is upset by her dad using Fern and disposing of her so callously, and runs away to try to break Fern out of the lab where she's being held. Lowell ends up becoming a domestic terrorist, wanted by the FBI for his work freeing lab animals. Rosemary doesn't see him for years, since he's on the run.

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