Editing by Elizabeth

March 11, 2011

Tourquai by Tim Davys

He had become accustomed to violence, but that evening he realized he knew precious little about evil. – Falcon Ècu

A decapitation, an S&M escort service, drug addicted police officers, art forgery, and a mad scientist…just another day in Tourquai, one of the four districts which comprises Mollisan Town.

Acting on an anonymous tip claiming a murder has been committed, Police Superintendent Larry Bloodhound and his team, Inspectors Anna Lynx and Falcon Ècu, respond to Nova Park, a company located on the top floor of the most prestigious office building in Tourquai.

There they find a gruesome scene. Well known and extraordinarily wealthy venture capitalist Oswald Vulture has been beheaded in his office. There is no evidence, no murder weapon, and Oswald’s secretary swears no one has entered or left the office since the last time she saw Oswald alive.

Even more disturbing, the head has been taken from the scene. This is of particular note because Oswald Vulture being a plush animal, as are all the residents of Mollisan Town, if his head can be found within a reasonable amount of time it can be reattached and Oswald will be virtually good as new…and able to identify his own killer. →

March 09, 2011

Lanceheim by Tim Davys

What Maximilian offered us stuffed animals was a faith without fears. – Wolf Diaz

Eva Whippoorwill and Sven Beaver always wanted a cub (what all young plush are called regardless of species), but the Environmental Ministry (the agency responsibly for creating the Cub List) never saw fit to grant their wish.

One day while working in the forest on the edge of Lanceheim (one of the four districts which comprises Mollisan Town) Sven finds a small creature, alone and crying. It’s obviously a young boy, but Sven can’t quite identify what kind of plush animal he is. Knowing he won’t survive alone in the forest, Sven takes the young one home where he is named Maximilian and formally adopted by Sven and Eva.

It quickly becomes apparent that Maximilian is not like any other plush animal. His covering, for example, is a strangely smooth, pale material devoid of seams. Maximilian also grows as he ages, something no other animal does since they come from the factory fully made. He is also wise beyond his years and, over time, begins speaking only in similes and parables.

When his teachings begin to gain him followers hungry for an alternative to the harsh constructs of Mollisan Town’s orthodox church, it is only a matter of time before those desperate to hold on to their authority resort to extreme measures to silence Maximilian. →

March 07, 2011

Amberville by Tim Davys

Amberville is the first book in the Mollisan Town series by the pseudonymous Tim Davys. Initially published in Sweden in 2007, it was translated and published in the U.S. in 2009. Two sequels, Lanceheim (June 2010) and Tourquai (Feb. 2011) have since followed, with a fourth planned. I was so taken with this series, and dismayed that it hasn’t made it onto as many people’s reading radars as I think it deserves, that I’ve decided to devote the week to reviewing the series. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mollisan Town.

Amberville by Tim Davys Eric is doing well for himself. In his reckless youth he used drugs, kept pace with thugs, and worked as a runner for a mobster. But with age he settled down, married the love of his life, Emma, and has a prosperous job with a prestigious advertising agency. Life is good. Until the day Eric’s past comes back to haunt him and his world gets turned upside down.

His old boss, mobster Nicholas Dove, shows up at Eric’s house with two thugs in tow. As the thugs smash the place up, Nicholas “requests” Eric’s help. It seems Nicholas has been put on the Death List, and he demands Eric do whatever it takes to get his name removed. If Eric doesn’t get Nicolas off the Death List, his thugs will kill Eric’s wife. Sounds like a pretty standard setup for a crime story, right? Well, actually there’s a little hitch in the giddyap.

Did I mention that Eric is a plush bear? Yep, he’s stuffed with fluff. As is Nicholas Dove, so named because he’s, well, a dove. Amberville, you see, isn’t populated by people, but by plush animals. They go to school, have jobs, get married, acquire bad habits and vices, love, hate…they behave just like we do. Except they’re plush. Yeah, a visit to Amberville is a hell of a ride, so buckle-up because here we go. →

March 04, 2011

Truth About Dinosaurs Finally Revealed!
by Graham Parke

Hey, guess who showed up on the doorstep again? Graham Parke, that’s who. The No Hope for Gomez! author has been a frequent visitor here (see related posts below), and I’m happy to welcome him and his off the wall ramblings back. Today, boys and girls, Graham is going to tell us the truth about dinosaurs.

There is something terribly wrong with this dinosaur picture. At first I didn’t notice it either. I must have read this picture page with my son ten times before I saw it. But when I did, my blood ran cold. How could this be? What was going on? I don’t mind telling you, there’s something very unsettling about discovering a kink in the nature of reality through a children’s book. Any other place is bad enough, but a children’s book? I just wasn’t prepared. How could I be?

Of course you didn’t need to look at the picture ten times. You noticed it right away. Before you even started reading this post. But there are some readers (not you) who didn’t. I urge them to take another look. To really give this picture the once over. As soon as your breath catches, as soon as the back of your neck gets cold and you start having nightmares, right now while you’re still awake, you know you’ve found it. →

March 04, 2011

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

“What would you think of a postmistress who chose not to deliver the mail?” – Frankie Bard

A seemingly innocuous question, especially today in the era of Twitter and texting. After all, who actually even sends letters anymore? But change the setting. Go back to a time when, not only was there no Twitter or texting, but even having a television was virtually unheard of. A time when people got their information from the radio and newspapers, and communicated over distance mostly by letter. Such is the setting of Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress.

In 1940 the war in Europe was a nebulous concept for most Americans, something they heard snippets about on their radios. It wasn’t something that actually touched their lives. That changes for three residents of a small town in Cape Cod when, moved by the radio broadcasts of the London Blitz, local physician Will Fitch goes to volunteer in a London hospital, leaving his young wife, Emma, behind.

The town’s postmistress, Iris James, becomes the sole conduit for communication between Will and Emma, dutifully delivering his correspondence. Initially arriving on a daily basis, it eventually trickles to a stop. When another letter finally does arrive, Iris recognizes from the writing on the envelope it is not from Will. Impulsively, Iris chooses not to deliver the letter, instead taking it home and steaming it open to reveal the secrets contained within. →

March 03, 2011

Twice a Spy by Keith Thomson

“People don’t consider the benefits of being a fugitive.”
– Charlie Clark

Picking up just a few weeks after the events of Once a Spy ended, Twice a Spy finds father and son Drummond and Charlie Clark, fugitives wanted for capital crimes in America, on the run trying to avoid an international manhunt for them.

Along with Charlie’s girlfriend and renegade NSA agent, Alice Rutherford, the Clarks are off the grid in Switzerland, trying to find a way to establish their innocence as well as looking into alternative treatments for Drummond’s advancing Alzheimer’s.

Having only recently learned that his father’s entire humdrum life as an appliance salesman with Perriman Appliances had been a front for his career as a CIA operative, Charlie is still coming to grips with the fact his dad has James Bond-like skills and holds secrets with world changing implications in his increasingly unreliable mind.

When Alice is kidnapped by a group that demands Drummond provide them with the location of a nuclear bomb, which was disguised as a washing machine as part of the cover project Drummond and his fellow “appliance salesmen” were working on, Charlie and Drummond once again find themselves having to rely on Charlie’s street smarts and Drummond’s intermittent flashes of his old spy self in order to stay one step ahead of the law and save the day. →

March 02, 2011

A Razor Wrapped in Silk by R.N. Morris

A Razor Wrapped in Silk by R.N. Morris “Can you make anyone confess to anything?” – Captain Mizinchikov

Given his long and illustrious track record of solving even the most baffling of cases, said question is a fair one to be posed to Investigating Magistrate Porfiry Petrovich. Yet, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, the third outing for Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous investigator under the skillful hand of author R.N. Morris, finds Porfiry Petrovich challenged with solving two seemingly unrelated cases and, for the first time, beginning to question his skills as an investigator.

The intrigue begins when Petrovich is approached with a request from a privileged young woman to investigate the disappearance of several children. Barely more than indentured servants working long hours in a factory under horrendous conditions, disposable in the eyes of society at large, their absence was noticed by the young woman when the children stopped showing up for lessons at her free school.

Petrovich agrees to look into the matter, but when another young woman from the world of the aristocracy is murdered shortly thereafter while attending a play the full resources of the police force are brought to bear on that case, and the missing children investigation falls by the wayside.

As his investigation of the society murder progresses Petrovich begins to see connections between it and the missing children, connections that bring Petrovich into conflict with both the disdainful aristocracy and the distrustful revolutionaries, and which ultimately set Petrovich on a collision course with the Tsar himself. →

February 28, 2011

Set the Night on Fire by Libby Fischer Hellmann

Set the Night on Fire by Libby Fischer Hellmann “I believe you. And I believe you want answers. For all the right reasons. But some things are better left alone. This is one of them.” – Tom Reimer

For Lila Hilliard it’s too late to leave things alone. Not after her father and brother are killed in a house fire that would have also taken her life had she not stepped out to run a quick errand and, shortly thereafter, a mysterious man on a motorcycle takes a few shots at her as she’s walking home one evening.

That attack is foiled by another unknown man, who again rescues Lila when a subsequent attempt to kill her by blowing up her apartment is made. Lila knows she’s been targeted by someone, and that she also has a guardian angel looking out for her. What she doesn’t know is who, or why.

When she goes digging for the truth she discovers her guardian angel, Dar Gantner, is a recent parolee who knew her father more than 40 years ago in Chicago during the turbulent anti-war student protests of the late 60’s. Gantner tells Lila a story that reveals a side of her parents she never knew existed, causing her to realize they were not the people she thought they were. →

February 25, 2011

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

I’m going to do this a little differently than I usually do reviews because, quite frankly, my reaction to this book was a little different than I usually experience when reading a book. Very rarely am I ambivalent about something I’ve read. Love it or hate it – or so despise it I don’t even finish – my feelings about what I read are usually crystal clear. And yet, days after finishing Beatrice and Virgil I still can’t decide: do I love it, or hate it?

Of those who actually read, I may well be one of the few humans left on the planet who has not yet read Yann Martel’s Man Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi. Everyone I know who has read it raves about it, so when I was offered the chance to read Martel’s most recent offering Beatrice and Virgil, which sounded like it had a very similar presentation stylistically, I took it.

I knew something was off when, shortly after I started reading it, my husband asked me how the book was and the first – and only – word out of my mouth was “weird.” At the time I was about 60 pages into the book and, quite honestly, very seriously thinking about giving up on it. So far all I’d learned, in painstaking detail, was that a renowned author named Henry had given up writing after a book he had been working on for 5 years was soundly rejected by his agent and publisher. Having packed up his wife and moved to a major, yet unnamed city, Henry was living a jolly old life working in a chocolatería, responding to fan mail, and acting with an amateur theater company. Um, ok.

Things start to pick up, a little, when Henry gets a letter from a local fan with a short story by Flaubert, a few pages from an uncredited play involving two characters (Beatrice & Virgil), and a cryptic request for help enclosed. His curiosity piqued, Henry writes a response and hand delivers it to the return address, which he discovers is a taxidermy shop. There he learns the shop’s proprietor is the author of the play, and that Beatrice and Virgil are two of his creations, literally. Beatrice is a donkey, Virgil a howler monkey, and both are specimens which have been fully preserved by the taxidermist. →

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