The Thieves of Legend by Richard Doetsch

Michael St Pierre and his at the moment ex-girl friend KC Ryan are forced into a life or death mission in Richard Doetsch’s latest fast paced thriller. Isaac Lucas, a US Army Colonel, will do anything to ensure they take this all but impossible mission – even blackmail.

The job takes Michael first to Macao and then to China to steal a box containing a book and papers that could change the balance of power in the world.  Michael takes his best friend Paul Busch (an ex-cop) with him to assist in this impossible task.   Michael has another possible ace up his sleeve..his mysterious friend, Simon, a priest.  All the while, Michael is being pressured by Lucas, who is desperate to get the box and the information it holds.  He claims if he doesn’t  get the box, it could mean the death of millions of people.  Lucas is not above threatening KC’s life to get what he wants.

When KC is heading back to London, she befriends an interesting woman, Annie.  Little does KC know the vital role Annie will play in her immediate future!  When KC’s plane is cancelled, Annie offers her a ride on her military jet, but Annie doesn’t know the destination is Granada and not London, and that her new friend is a compatriot of Lucas!

This fast paced thriller is nailing author Doetsch’s name amongst the top of today’s writers of international thrillers. Tom Clancy watch out!

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Doors Open by Ian Rankin

Willie Sutton, when asked why he robs banks, answered “because that’s where the money is.”  Our national museums can’t exhibit all the art they possess, so often some great art is stored in warehouses.  Maybe it would be interesting if some of that art was stolen, especially if it is not to be shown or appreciated!

Three friends decide to pull off a dangerous caper.  Mike Mackenzie, software titan, Allan Cruickshank, banker and Robert Gissing, an art professor come up with a bold plan… under the influence of a few  drinks.  Art shouldn’t be hidden away in private collections and businesses but should be available to the public in museums all the time. And since a lot of art is stored in warehouses maybe there are some extra pieces for each of them. This is the premise of Ian Rankin’s 2010 book Doors Open.

Gissing knows a student, Westie, at his college that may be an up and coming artist but is very adept at copying famous works.  And the conspiracy grows deeper. Mike realizes if Westie can copy several selected pieces they might be able to pull off a switch, replacing fakes for the real paintings.  The gang also decides that they need outside muscle to provide a van and assistants to spirit away the haul. Mike knows just the person to help them (for a percentage of the take) – Chib Calloway.  Chib is a local hoodlum who went to school and Mike suspects he would be interested in their scheme.

And now you are invited along for a slightly different type of Rankin adventure.  Add to the mix a local detective named Ransome, who just may get wind of the trio’s plans.  Rankin’s books are always well written and a wonderful read.

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The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

This is a difficult but fascinating work of fiction. North Korea is probably the most secretive society that exists today. And yet the author, Adam Johnson has woven a tale of some individuals seeking answers that might only lead to their demise in this thoroughly autocratic nation. Even though this is a work of fiction, you can’t fail to realize that we are truly getting a look at this terribly closed society. As difficult as it is to deal with China, this small nation is even more difficult to understand. And yet there emerges a tale of individual bravery and attempts to defy the odds and seek true freedom.  Adam Johnson was able to get into North Korea and although monitored with “escorts,” he was able to return to Stanford, where he teaches.  From his memories and thoughts of his encounters in this very different society emerges a more detailed and nuanced picture of DPRK…..the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I read this novel in 2004 when it was published. I still can’t get it out of my mind. Once in a while I will run across someone who has also read this book and loved it, and the resulting conversation is always interesting, and sometimes bizarre.

Richard Papen is a lower-income scholarship student from a strip mall-centered California suburb who is granted a scholarship to Hampden College in rural Vermont (based on the small, pricey Bennington College in Vermont where Tartt studied). He’s thrilled to get away from his indifferent blue-collar parents and head east for a new adventure. Upon arrival at Hampden, he is befriended by an odd little group of five students who devote their studies to the Classics under the tutelage of the distant and somewhat eccentric professor Julian Morrow. This odd little group embraces Richard and he’s drawn into their bizarre world of classicism – and ultimately – murder.

I generally judge the quality of a plot and the writing by how little I can say about the book without giving away the storyline. I can’t say much here without giving this story away, except that the group is involved in a murder and the subsequent cover up involves blackmail, secrets – and another murder, this time of one of the group of five.  This is all set against the backdrop of a picture-perfect New England small town and general college life.  All of this makes for a shocking juxtaposition, which I believe is what Tartt intended.

The characters are sharply and smartly drawn. Some are hateful and others sympathetic. Richard the narrator is probably the most recognizable, while other characters have personalities that verge on the bizarre. The funeral scene of their friend is tragic, yet ridiculously humorous.  The ending of the book will be recognizable – yet shocking – at the same time.

Tartt ties in Dionysian rituals, Classics, hormone-fueled college life, and a plot and narrative that will leave you wanting more. I waited years for her next novel, only to be disappointed in The Little Friend.

I doubt you’ll be disappointed in The Secret History - check it out today!

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The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain

CeeCee Wilkes is  a naïve young woman waitressing at a coffee shop in Chapel Hill in 1977. She is lonely and ripe for being duped. Regular customer Tim Gleason is sympathetic, and her innocent attraction to him turns into her first love affair. Tim, however, has designs for CeeCee that go way beyond their romance. He tells CeeCee that his sister has been wrongly jailed and is on death row for a murder he says she did not commit, and that he and his brother plan to get her out of jail. He asks for CeeCee’s help to kidnap Genevieve Russell, wife of the governor, and  hold her hostage for ransom until the governor pardons his sister. The plan Tim believes is foolproof goes horribly wrong – he doesn’t know Genevieve is very pregnant and a high risk patient. What happens to the infant and to CeeCee Wilkes over a period of two decades makes up the suspenseful plot, with rich and mostly sympathetic characters.  CeeCee goes underground, takes a new name, and has a family of her own. Twenty years later Tim is on death row for the murder of Genevieve and her baby. Only Cee Cee knows that the baby survived. Will CeeCee tell the truth about what happened to save Tim’s life, even if it means revealing her secret and destroying her family?

Diane Chamberlain is a bestselling author of suspenseful women’s fiction richly set in North Carolina.  She lives locally in the Raleigh area, as well as out at the coast, and local venues are recognizable in her twenty novels. She is often compared to Jodi Picoult in terms of writing style, and while I do see some similarities, I find Chamberlain’s characters more realistic and believable than Picoult’s (Picoult’s children in her novels are always ridiculously wise beyond their years, I find), and Chamberlain’s writing more straightforward and less symbolic and metaphoric than that of Picoult, which is fitting since Chamberlain writes suspense novels. Very good suspense novels.

Join Diane during “Meet the Authors: A Visit with Diane Chamberlain” at West Regional Library on Sunday, February 17 at 2 p.m., when she’ll talk about writing and answer your questions. Advance registration is required. Call 919-463-8500 to register.

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The Accident by Linwood Barclay

I think every librarian has an author she secretly adores, and who she likes to think the world is clueless about, a personal treasure, a guilty secret, so to speak. Linwood Barclay is mine (but he can be yours, too).
Barclay is a suspense and thriller writer whose settings are his homeland of Canada, as well as the northern US. He is a former graphic novel writer who made the leap successfully into suspense fiction. Barclay’s characters are believable, every day people, who have extraordinary things happen to them The Accident exemplifies this. A placid and benign suburban setting in Connecticut becomes the scene of an accident – or is it really an accident? Surburban mom Sheila Garber dies in a car accident, leaving her husband Glen and eight year-old daughter Kelly to cope with the aftermath of her death. Sheila wasn’t a drinker – yet her blood alcohol level showed she was very drunk at the time of the accident for which she was at fault – when a neighbor wife also dies under mysterious circumstances a week later. The cast of characters is varied and includes neighbors, employees, and friends, all of whom are flawed enough to be suspicious. The writing is tight, and the plot is credible. The ending is creative, and surprising. I don’t think I have read one of Barclay’s books and been disappointed at the end. I don’t know why this author has not reached the superstar status in terms of book sales like John Grisham. Stephen King has said of Barclay, “My idea of a sweet ride is three days of rain, a fridge filled with snacks, and a new Linwood Barclay.” Shhh, let’s keep him our secret.

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11/22/63 by Stephen King

If you had the chance to go back in time and change history to prevent a national tragedy, would you? That is the chance given to Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Maine. Al Templeton, the owner of a local diner, lets Jake in on a secret: there’s a “rabbit hole” in his storeroom that leads back to 1958. Al has a plan to go back and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing President Kennedy. But, Al is now dying of lung cancer, so he needs Jake’s help to complete his self-appointed mission to save the country by changing its history.

Jake also teaches adult GED classes and he read a theme written by his school’s janitor on “the day that changed my life.” It seems that there was a very gruesome and horrible event in Harry the janitor’s childhood – something that has scarred him for life, both physically and mentally. Jake’s not quite sure what to make of this time travel stuff, but decides that if it’s for real, he’s also going to try and change the course of events that led to this personal tragedy, in addition to trying to stop Oswald from killing Kennedy.

Of course, no story this good (and yes, it really is a good as everyone has said) would be so simple and straightforward. We learn that the past is obdurate. Don’t worry, I had to look that word up too. It means “unmoved by persuasion, pity, or tender feelings; stubborn; unyielding.” Basically, when you try to change the past, the past tries to stop you. The larger of a change you are making, the more the past will try to stop that change. And stopping Oswald from assassinating Kennedy is a mighty big change.

What makes Stephen King‘s novel so great is not just the premise (a fairly neat twist on the time travel idea), but the story itself and the characters about whom we come to care so much. Since the “rabbit hole” dumps Jake out in Maine in 1958, and Kennedy’s date with destiny is in Dallas in 1963, that leaves Jake with five years of living to do – as well as making sure that Oswald really did do it and acted alone. Along the way he gets a job teaching, meets a librarian named Sadie, and falls in love.

Does Jake stop Oswald? What would happen to our history if Kennedy had lived? What about Jake and Sadie? You don’t really want me to tell you, you really want to pick this book up and discover its wonder yourself. I’ll just end by saying that I’m not what you’d call a crying man, and it’s rare for a book to bring me to tears, but this is one of two books I read in 2011 that did just that.

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The Litigators by John Grisham

As a John Grisham fan, I was surprised to hear criticism of his latest book. However, as I got deeper into the story, I am starting to understand. This story has a lot more humor in it than many of his previous books. …..and that is good not bad!

One can’t help but chuckle at the law firm of Finley & Figg. They are the epitome of the storefront, ambulance chasing, divorces and DUI small time lawyers. They have never been very successful and they are just about able to pay their bills each month. Besides the two of them, they have a ‘do everything’ secretary, Rochelle Gibson. Actually there is a cautious ‘detente’ amongst all the players until two things happen that may change the lives of all of them. First of all, Wally Figg finds out about what may become a major class action lawsuit over a drug call Krayoxx. The drug allegedly helps to lower cholesterol but may in fact being causing people to die from heart attacks. And the second event is the landing of one, David Zinc on their doorstep. Zinc has been a successful associate of a big downtown law firm, when he has a complete meltdown. He is sick and tired of the corporate life and decides to ‘dropout’. He spends a day at Abner’s bar getting wasted and when he decides to leave, he doesn’t know where to go…going home and explaining this to his wife doesn’t seem like the thing to do. When he finally gets into a taxi, he notices a billboard sign for the law firm of Finley & Figg and he tells the driver that that is his destination. And now all the elements of Grisham’s latest book are in play. How will the law firm of Finley & Figg and their new associate handle the growing class action suit against Varrick, the manufacturer of Krayoxx? How many victims can they sign up to represent and can they be successful? None of them has actually tried a case before a judge!
Please enjoy Grisham’s latest legal saga with a generous dose of humor.

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Greatest Hits: The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

Join us the next five days and kick off the new year with The Book-A-Day Blog’s most popular posts of 2012!

Tad Williams is a well known Fantasy & Science Fiction writer (see The Dragonbone Chair & City of Golden Shadow), but this novel is set in a modern, real world setting (a fictional city in Northern California). Our narrator and main character is Bobby Dollar, a wise-cracking angel who lives on Earth and is an advocate for souls of the recently departed. In Williams’ world, when a person dies there is a trial and an angel and a demon each advocate for the soul to go to Heaven or Hell based on that person’s actions during life. The judge is one of the much higher levels of angels, and all of this naturally occurs outside of our perceived reality. It’s a pretty straight forward system – until one day when a soul goes missing before it can be assigned to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory for all eternity.

Bobby is not like any other angel I’ve ever read about – he drinks, curses and indulges his carnal desires when on Earth, and while he’s good at his job, his behavior means that he’s not exactly held in high esteem by his superiors up in Heaven. Then there’s the opposition: in addition to the demon advocates, Bobby is soon also mixed up with the likes of a higher level demoness known as the Countess of Cold Hands. She and her hellish companions make life – or is it afterlife? – very difficult for Bobby, who just wants to find out where the missing souls (yes, there have been more since that first one) have disappeared to. To make matters worse, a very powerful demon lord believes that Bobby has stolen something from him and has sent an ancient and practically unstoppable monster after him.

This novel is filled with action as Bobby races to find out what’s happened to the missing souls, evades the ancient monstrosity that’s hunting him, falls in lust with the Countess, and tries to avoid getting his friends – fellow angels on Earth – hurt. He’s also periodically “called upstairs” to be questioned by angels much higher than him on the celestial ladder. Even though Bobby is assured by everyone in Heaven that “God loves you,” he gets the distinct feeling that his superiors aren’t telling him everything they know.

Williams’ world building is first rate and he really made me feel like I was right there with Bobby, both in the Bay area and up in Heaven. Tad has also created some wonderfully relatable and highly entertaining characters for Bobby Dollar to interact with and play off of, with tons of memorable dialogue. I’d recommend this book for those who like paranormal detectives, especially the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher, as well as anyone who liked Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, starting with On a Pale Horse.

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Best ‘New to Us’ Books in 2012: Melissa O.’s Picks

I am what you would call an eclectic reader. I love mystery, science fiction, thrillers, inspirational, and I am an avid nonfiction reader. I also love young adult and even juvenile fiction. So you see my difficulty in describing my reading interests. The good news is this makes it easy for me to make reading suggestions! Here are five of my favorite older books I read or re-read this year. (Yes, I am a re-reader!)  — Melissa O.

Skull Duggery by Aaron Elkins
Gideon Oliver is a forensic anthropologist (think old bones instead of recent murders). When Gideon joins his wife on a trip to Mexico he finds himself reluctantly pulled into yet another murder mystery. And it turns out someone will kill to keep it unsolved! Elkins manages to bring just the right amount of humor into his books, and you get the added bonus of traveling the world with the bone detective as he gets roped into, or manages to trip into, another unsolved crime.

A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony
I discovered this book in high school and it remains my favorite humorous fantasy series. We meet Bink, the only citizen of Xanth with no magic, a tragedy for which he will be exiled. So he sets out to find his magic and just might win the girl of his dreams in the process. This is the first of the Xanth novels and I reread it this year to remind myself why I love these books so much. If you are a fan of puns you will die laughing!

Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead
This is the first in the Pendragon Cycle and sets the stage for the next four books. Lawhead expands on the usual Arthurian legends by weaving the mythic city of Atlantis into the tale. Lawhead also skillfully weaves a more prominent Christian message into the novels, but in a way that will not put-off non-Christians. In addition to Taliesin we meet Charis, a bull dancer, and watch their lives come together in one of the greatest love stories I have read recently.

The Sacrifice by Robert Whitlow
When you read Whitlow’s inspirational legal thrillers you can tell he is writing from experience. A practicing attorney for decades, his books are gripping and believable. We also get the added bonus that Whitlow is a local author and sets many of his books, including this one, in North Carolina. Scott Ellis is an attorney who finds himself advising a mock trial team at a high school. Add in a school shooting and you won’t be able to put this book down.

The Loch by Steve Alten
Alten takes the legend of the Loch Ness Monster and twists it on its head while including the right amount of science to keep my inner biologist happy. Zach Wallace returns to Scotland when his estranged father is accused of murder. Unfortunately, Angus’s sole defense is that “something” in the Loch killed his business partner. Zach must solve the mystery even as more bodies continue to pile up. Much sleep was sacrificed as I was sucked into this story!